critchley surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa, one by wallace stevens, and the brief sketch of a poetic ontology simon critchley in this paper, i attempt to give a reading of some poems by the great por- tuguese poet, fernando pessoa, focusing in particular on the relation be- tween thought and things or mind and world as it is figured in poetry. on this basis, i seek to develop a poetic ontology using certain insights of heidegger’s on language, interpretation and world. in the closing pages, i pursue this ontology through a reading of a key poem by wal- lace stevens. in “poetical” (“dichtenden”) discourse, the com- munication of the existential possibilities of one’s state-of-mind can become an aim in itself, and this amounts to a disclosing of existence. martin heidegger u nbelievably, the word “pessoa” means “person” in portuguese, and the original meaning of person, of course, is a mask or actor as in the notion of dramatis personae. those familiar with fernando pessoa’s work will know that he wrote using a series of invented personae or “heteronyms” that were not pseudonyms, but fictional voices complete with distinct biographies and dramatically different literary styles. there are at least twenty heteronyms, although we do not know for sure. after pes- soa’s death in , , fragments of writing were found in chests in his . this paper is dedicated and deeply indebted to thamy pogrebinschi. . heidegger, being and time . https://doi.org/ . /gramma.v i . https://doi.org/ . /gramma.v i . workroom in lisbon, in much confusion and containing a profusion of fic- tional, aesthetic, philosophical, political, sociological and autobiographical writings, in addition to a large quantity of verse. as only of these man- uscripts have been published, less than a fifth, there may well be some sur- prises in store in the future. pessoa’s maxim is “sêr plural como o universo!” (“be plural as the universe!”) (alguma prosa ), and his work is a galaxy, a vast and decen- tred plurality of stars. in my view, what is important to grasp with the idea of heteronymic authorship is that this galaxy does not orbit around one creative god-like authorial sun, but is a vast, shifting and interconnected energy field with numerous and conflicting centres that form into distinct personages. as bernardo soares, whom pessoa refers to as a “semi- heteronym,” writes in the book of disquiet, “this book is the autobiogra- phy of a man who never existed” ( ). what exists is a multitude irre- ducible to the authority of any imperial authorship. i would simply like to read a few poems by pessoa, or rather by the het- eronym alberto caeiro, who is always referred to as “the master.” caeiro was born in , a year after pessoa, and died of tuberculosis in , although - somewhat mysteriously - the master heteronym continued to write poems posthumously through the person of pessoa until . pessoa himself died in and may still be - who knows? - producing poems, perhaps through the person of someone reading this paper. caeiro was recognized as the mas- ter by two other of pessoa’s major poetic heteronyms, alvaro de campos - the sexually ambiguous whitmanesque “sensationist” who smoked opium, drank absinthe and studied naval engineering in glasgow - and ricardo reis - the horatian classicist and monarchist sympathizer who fled to brazil after the abdication of the last king of portugal in . in an extreme literary con- ceit, caeiro was also recognized as the master poet by pessoa himself, the orthonym as it were. what is perhaps most extraordinary about the galaxy of heteronyms is the intertextual communication, admiration and criticism that circles amongst the various personae, with caeiro writing prefaces to the verse of campos and reis, campos writing a memoir of caeiro that is de- lightfully critical of pessoa, pessoa writing the preface to the “factless au- tobiography” of soares, and so on, and on, and on. . . . the shape of the galaxy keeps subtly shifting. simon critchley . on the question of how to understand pessoa’s heteronyms, i have learnt a great deal from discussions and correspondence with judith balso and julia weber. i would al- so like to thank filipe ferreira for emboldening me to write on pessoa. i would like to begin with poem xxxix by caeiro: o mistério das cousas, onde està ele? onde està ele que não aparece pelo menos a mostrar-nos que é mistério? que sabe o rio disso e que sabe a árvore? e eu, que não sou mais do que eles, que sei disso? sempre que olho para as cousas e penso no que os homens pensam delas, rio como un regato que soa fresco numa pedra. porque o único sentido oculto das cousas É elas não terem sentido oculto nenhum, É mais estranho do que todas as estranhezas e do que os sonhos de todos os filósofos, que as cousas sejam realmente o que parecem ser e não haja nada que compreender. sim, eis o que os meus sentidos aprenderem sozinhos: - as cousas não têm significação: têm existência. as cousas são o unico sentido oculto das cousas. the mystery of things - where is it? where is it, since it does not appear, at least to show us that it’s a mystery? what does the river know about this and what does the tree know? and i, who am no more than they, what do i know about this? whenever i look at things and think about what people think of them, i laugh like a brook that sounds freshly against a rock. for the only hidden meaning of things is that they have no hidden meaning at all. it is stranger than all estrangements, than the dreams of all poets and the thoughts of all philosophers, that things are really what they seem to be and there’s nothing to understand. yes, this is what my senses learned on their own: things have no meaning; they have existence. things are the only hidden meaning of things. (obra poética ) surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa . the poems by caeiro that i cite are co-translated with thamy pogrebinschi. they are the poem sets out to undermine the idea of the mystery of things. for caeiro, the mystery of things is that there is no mystery. things are exactly as they seem to be and they have no hidden meaning. the hidden meaning is that things have no hidden meaning, where “hidden” translates “oculto,” a word that we will come back to. with regard to things, there is nothing to understand, for we understand them already. we understand them as they are and no more, but no less. caeiro insists - and this is the most compelling thought in the poem - that there is something stranger than all the dreams of poets and thoughts of philosophers: that things are really what they seem to be and there’s nothing to understand. that is, we understand things already, always already as heidegger might add, and the purpose of the poem is to point this out. this means that poetry, as nothing more but nothing less than the enactment of the poem itself, is the pointing out of that which we un- derstand already, but have forgotten or passed over. that is, the poem gives us reminders, it functions as what i like to call “everyday anamnesis,” the recollection that brings us back to the fact that things are what they really seem to be. such a notion of anamnesis does not, as it might do on a certain caricatural metaphysical reading of plato, invoke the existence of some world behind the scenes, some invisible and hidden meaning that supports visible and manifest meaningfulness. on the contrary, as caeiro insists, “things have no meaning” (“as cousas não têm significação”) in the sense of a hidden signification. what we can say of them, what the poet says of them, is that they exist, or better that they have existence (têm existência). things merely are; or better, they are in and through their mere existence in the world. this is what campos calls his master’s “direct concept of things” (“ao conceio direto des coisas”) (obra poética ). this line of meditation is continued elsewhere by pessoa, o que nós vemos das cousas são as cousas. por que veríamos nós uma cousa se houvesse outra? por que é que ver e ouvir seria iludirmo-nos se ver e ouvir são ver e ouvir? o essencial é saber ver, saber ver sem estar a pensar, saber ver quando se vê, simon critchley indebted to the versions published by richard zenith in fernando pessoa & co: selected poems, although i have striven for much greater literality than zenith. for the original text, see pessoa’s obra poética. poems are referred to by the pagination given in obra poética. surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa e nem pensar quando se vê nem ver quando se pensa. mas isso (tristes de nòs que trazemos a!), isso exige um estudo profundo, uma aprendizagem de desaprender e uma seqüestração na liberdade daquele convento de que os poetas dizem que as estrelas são as freiras eternas e as flores as penitentes convictas de um só dia, mas onde a final as estelas não são senão estrelas nem as flores senão flores, sendo por isso que lhes chamamos estrelas e flores what we see of things are the things. why would we see one thing when another is there? why would seeing and hearing be to delude ourselves when seeing and hearing are seeing and hearing? the essential is knowing to see, to know seeing without thinking, to know seeing when seeing and not think when seeing nor see when thinking. but this (sad are we who bring the soul clothed!) - this requires deep study, an apprenticeship in unlearning, and a withdrawal into the freedom of that convent of which the poets say the stars are the eternal nuns and the flowers the devout penitents of a single day, but where after all the stars are but stars and the flowers are just flowers, which is why we call them stars and flowers. (obra poética - ) although i am not at all sure about the image of the convent and the stars as eternal nuns (although pessoa was first educated in a convent in durban, south africa), let’s look more closely. we begin where we left off in the first poem, with the poet reminding us that what we see of things are things. nothing more and nothing less. just that. such is caeiro’s or pes- soa’s “sensationism,” which has a family resemblance to ezra pound’s im- agism and which is wonderfully and succinctly expressed by pessoa in a let- ter to an english editor: “art, fully defined, is the harmonic expression of our consciousness of sensations, that is to say, our sensations must be so ex- pressed that they create an object which will be a sensation to others. art is not, as bacon said, ‘man added to nature’; it is sensation multiplied by con- sciousness - multiplied, be it well noted” (“letter” ). keeping those words in mind, particularly the idea of the multiplication of sensation through the activity of the mind, the argument of the poem is deceptively simple, but its consequence is vast. it is the disappearance of the philosoph- ical problem of skepticism concerning the external world or other minds. caeiro asks: why would we delude ourselves into thinking that another thing is in front of us rather than the thing that we see. surely, seeing and hearing are seeing and hearing and that’s that. if they weren’t, then they wouldn’t be seeing and hearing. but in the second stanza caeiro makes a distinction be- tween seeing and thinking. we become deluded, and the consequences of this will begin to become clear in the third poem, when we think instead of seeing and fail to see when thinking. that is, when seeing becomes think- ing, then the possibility of skepticism announces itself and we bewitch our- selves with pointless ratiocination of various sorts: if the stick looks bent when i stick it in the pond, then how can i be sure of the evidence of my senses? or, how can i be sure whether the people to whom i am speaking are really people like me and not automata or aliens from another planet who have snatched some local bodies? the problem, in caiero’s words, the problem that gives rise to the so-called problem of skepticism, is that we have a clothed soul, a alma vestida, or what richard zenith translates as a “dressed-up heart” ( ) and this is something triste, something sad. we translate the line, with deliberate awkwardness, as “sad are we who bring the soul clothed.” therefore, we need to undress that soul, unclothe that heart, in order to see things as things and not think about things. as caeiro puts it with disarming directness elsewhere, “i don’t have philosophy: i have senses” (“eu não tenho filosofia: tenho sentido”) (obra poética ). yet, unclothing one’s soul is not so simple. caeiro insists that it requires um estudo profundo, a deep study; it requires, in richard zenith’s pleasing oxymoron, “lessons in unlearning” ( ). yet, the phrase is stronger and more tautological in the original (“uma aprendizagem de desaprender”), an ap- prenticeship in “disapprenticeship,” in unlearning or forgetting. this is where we withdraw or become sequestered (seqüestração) in the freedom of that convent where the stars are nuns and the flowers are devout penitents. simon critchley . i’d like to thank jim finnegan for alerting me to this passage. surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa when we have undergone this disapprenticeship, these lessons in unlearn- ing, then finally we will be able to see that flowers are just flowers and stars are just stars, which is why we call them flowers and stars. what we unlearn when we learn to undress our soul is the realization that things exist, or have existence, and that we see them before we think them. the “scandal of phi- losophy,” as kant might say, is that we bewitch ourselves with thinking rather than seeing and delude ourselves that such is both the properly philo- sophical attitude and the true comportment towards things. the scandal is philosophy itself, if by that word we denote the activity of thinking and the cultivation of the theoretical attitude towards things. as caeiro puts it in the first of his poemas inconjuntos: não basta abrir a janela para ver os campos e o rio. não é bastante não ser cego para ver as árvores e as flores. É preciso também não ter filosofia nenhuma. com filosofia não há árvores: há idéias apenas. há só cada um de nós, como uma cave. há só ume janela fechada, e todo o mundo lá fora; e um sonho do que se poderia ver se a janela se abrisse, que nunca é o que se vê quando se abre a janela. it is not enough to open the windows to see the fields and the river. it is not enough not to be blind to see the tress and the flowers. it is also necessary not to have any philosophy. with philosophy there are no tress: there are only ideas. there is only each of us, like a cave. there is only one closed window and everybody is outside; and a dream of what could have been if the window opened, which is never what is seen when the window is opened. (obra poética ) philosophy is life in the cave with the dream of an open window, it is the monadic life of ideas cut off from sensuous contact with things. if we want to learn to see, then we have to unlearn philosophy. poetry, we might conclude, is anti-philosophy. however, that conclusion is far too quick, for if we go back to the poem we can see that the similitude between stars and simon critchley nuns and flowers and penitents is something that the poets say, os poetas dizem. learning to see and not think also requires that we unlearn the les- sons of the poets, those mystical poets who believe that stones have souls and rivers feel ecstasy in the moonlight. i will turn to this line of thought in a third poem, but this brings out an important strand in caeiro’s verse. he declares, “i’m not even a poet: i see” (“eu nem sequer sou poeta: vejo”) (obra poética ). and in a fictional conversation between caeiro and campos, the latter reports of the former that what is important is not poetry, but seeing: “nem é poesia: é ver” (obra poética ). elsewhere, caeiro talks of the prose of his verse: “as for me, i write the prose of my verses / and i get happy” (“por mim, escrevo a prosa dos meus versos / e fico con- tente”) (obra poética ). if caeiro is opposed to philosophy’s theoreti- cism, then he is equally opposed to poetry’s mysticism. he writes: os poetas místicos são filósofos doentes, e os filósofos são homens doidos. the mystical poets are sick philosophers, and the philosophers are madmen. (obra poética ) permit me a brief anecdote: on the first occasion that i talked publicly about pessoa, the distinguished literary critic marjorie perloff was in the audience. let’s just say that we had a slight misunderstanding, particularly about my understanding of heidegger. but afterwards we were talking at length and she told me that her problem with pessoa, at least with the caeiro heteronym, was that she didn’t think the work was poetical enough. in a way that she perhaps didn’t intend, i think, she is right. caeiro is against poetry’s obfuscations and mystifications of our relation to things and perhaps that re- lation is best caught in the stark and disarmingly straightforward prose line of his verse. perhaps caeiro’s poetry is an anti-poetry or what i have called in relation to the very late lyrics of wallace stevens, a poetry of the an- tipodes of poetry. the final poem by caeiro that i would like to read was written “posthumously” in , four years after his “death.” the theme of the po- em is the critique of mysticism and it pushes the line of thought that we have seen in the first two poems in a slightly more radical direction. tu, místico, vês uma significação em todas as cousas. para ti tudo tem um sentido velado. há uma cousa oculta em cada cousa que vês. o que vês, vê-lo sempre para veres outra cousa. para mim, graças a ter olhos só par aver, eu vejo ausência de significação em todas as cousas; vejo-o e amo-me, porque ser uma cousa é não significar nada. ser uma cousa é não ser susceptivel de interpretação. you, mystic, see a meaning in all things. for you everything has a veiled sense. there is something hidden in each thing you see. what you see you always see to see something else. for me, by grace of having eyes only for seeing, i see an absence of meaning in all things; i see this and i love myself, since to be a thing is to mean nothing. to be a thing is not to be susceptible to interpretation. (obra poética ) the poem is addressed in the second person singular to the mystic “tu, místico,” where the comma breaks up the rhythm of the line for added em- phasis. the mystic is the person, often the figure of the poet in caeiro, who sees a meaning in all things and for whom all things have a veiled sense, um sentido velado. elsewhere, caeiro writes: li hoje quasi duas páginas do livro dum poeta místico e ri como quem tem chorado muito. today i read almost two pages of a book by a mystical poet and laughed like someone who has been crying a lot. (obra poética ) for the mystic, the mere existence of things is only a path that points beyond them to their hidden or occult meaning; once again, the word caeiro uses is oculta. the mystic - or indeed any person whose religion involves a commitment to invisible realities - has an intuition of a reality behind ap- pearances, an intellectual intuition whose keys, clues or symbols are written into appearances. the world becomes the visible symbol of the invisible truth of the divinity, whether this entails a belief in nature as the visible book written by the invisible hand of god or whatever, as for example in what is laughably called “intelligent design” at the present time. mysticism can be defined here as the belief in a power of metaphysical intuition, or an intu- ition of a hidden meaning or a world behind the scenes. the mystic “sees” or “thinks he sees” the hidden meaning of reality behind the disorderly meaninglessness of appearances, which is a deceptive trait common to gu- surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa simon critchley rus, sophists and some poets from antiquity to contemporary new ageism. for caeiro, on the contrary, all we see is an absence of meaning, ausência de significaçao, of meaning absenting itself in perception: “to be a thing is to mean nothing. / to be a thing is not to be susceptible to interpretation” (“ser uma cousa é não significar nada. / ser uma cousa é não ser suscep- tivel de interpretação”) (obra poética ). yet, how are we to understand the meaning of this statement? are things meaningless? what is the meaning of this declaration of meaning- lessness and this denial of interpretation? well, it is said - and here is the es- sential paradox of caeiro’s poetry, which encloses the meta-paradox that his words were not written by him but by the pessoa of another - in an act of meaningful interpretation. the poem is the formal, wrought and beautifully articulated meaning of meaninglessness. to see an absence of meaning in all things means, i think, seeing things without imagining some sort of hidden or occult meaning behind the scenes or interpreting the visible world by re- ferring it to some invisible domain. the point for caeiro and for us, i think, is learning to see things without thinking, to see that things are, that they ex- ist as such and they have been disclosed. we do not see in order to see some- thing else, something occult; rather we see in order to see precisely what stands before us. in the words of the first poem i cited, there is nothing to understand because we understand things already. to think is not to under- stand, and to understand is not to think: creio no mundo como num malmaquer, porque o vejo. mas não penso nele porque pensar é não compreender . . . i believe in the world as in a daisy, because i see it. but i do not think about it because to think is not to understand . . . (obra poética ) of course, one might respond that caeiro is simply replacing one kind of mysticism with another: that is, rejecting an other-worldly mysticism of the transcendent beyond with the here-and-now mysticism of immanent perceptual presence. to which caeiro might say, “that’s fine” (“está bem”); his would be a mysticism of the body, of the bodily presence of things to the senses. the contrast is between what we might call a mysti- cism of gnosis that claims to see beyond appearances to their invisible source of meaning and an agnostic mysticism that is essentially thought- less. caeiro does not claim to know anything about nature; he simply sings what he sees: surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa se quiserem que eu tenha um misticismo, está bem, tenho-o. sou místico, mas só com o corpo. a minha alma é simples e não pensa. o meu misticismo é não querer saber. É viver e não pensar nisso. não sei o que é a natureza: canto-a. vivo no cimo dum outiero numa casa caiada e sozinha, e essa é a minha definição. if you’d like me to have a mysticism, that’s fine, i have it. i’m a mystic, but only with the body. my soul is simple and doesn’t think. my mysticism is not wanting to know. it is to live and not to think about this. i don’t know what nature is: i sing it. i live on the top of a small hill in a whitewashed and solitary house, and this is my definition. (obra poética ) for caeiro, we need an apprenticeship in unlearning in order to learn to see and not to think. we need to learn to see appearances and nothing more, and to see those appearances not as the appearances of some deeper, but veiled reality, but as real appearances. of course, it is often hugely difficult to even see those appearances as our vision becomes obscured by habit, by what pascal called the machine. such machinic habit is what caeiro calls the “sickness of the eyes” that happens when we think and do not see: “pensar é estar doente dos olhos” (obra poética ). in our sickness, we pass over what is most obvious, most familiar and closest to us, namely the phenom- enon of the world, the fact that things simply are, in their plain, palpable and everyday presence. what caeiro counsels, and one finds similar advice in wallace stevens, is that we give up both the sceptical and mystical impuls- es that are distrustful of the world of appearances. if we follow the path of caeiro’s disapprenticeship, then what we might learn to cultivate is the art of appearances, the prose of things that surround us, those things that escape our attention because of their sheer obviousness, because they are under our noses. everyday anamnesis returns us to the recalcitrant and enigmatic sur- faces of things. to avoid the sceptical and mystical impulses means - and simon critchley this is important to underline - resisting two temptations, the philosophical and the poetic. both are forms of sickness that lead us away from the diffi- culty of the obvious. campos reports that he was away in england when caeiro died, while reis was in brazil. pessoa himself was present, but - campos adds, deli- ciously - it is as if he wasn’t (“mas é como se não estivesse”) (obra poéti- ca ). campos once asked caeiro, “are you happy with yourself?”; to which he replied, “no, i am happy.” * for reasons that i hope soon become clear, at this point i would like to sidestep into heidegger and connect what we have learnt from caeiro’s writing with some passages from sein und zeit (being and time) particularly heidegger’s remarks on understanding, interpretation and meaning. hopefully, the light cast here will reflect both ways: onto both caeiro’s and heidegger’s words. as readers of sein und zeit will know, there is precious little discussion of the ostensive subject matter of the book - the meaning of being - and heidegger keeps nudging it into the future until it falls over the edge of the published tome. heidegger focuses rather on trying to define the meaning of the being of that being for whom being is an issue, namely the human being or dasein. yet, about five chapters into the first division of the book, heidegger momentari- ly pulls back and expands the focus of his concern. he writes: if we are inquiring about the meaning of being, our investigation does not then become a “deep” one [tiefsinnig], nor does it puzzle out what stands behind being. it asks about being insofar as being enters into the intelligibility of dasein. the meaning of being can never be con- trasted with entities, or with being as the “ground” [“grund”] which gives entities support; for a “ground” becomes accessible only as meaning, even if it is itself the abyss of meaninglessness [abgrund der sinnlosigkeit]. (being and time ) that is, meaning is not deep. it is not a question of looking behind what ap- pears for some hidden meaning which structures appearance. inquiry into the meaning of being is not deep either. it just sounds deep. it sounds like we are after a ground, something determinate but hidden, something behind the scenes that pulls the strings of the world’s stage. this is what we might call a metaphysical misconstrual of both the meaning of meaning and the possible meaning of the meaning of being. the problem with being-talk is that it sounds as if being has some fantastic agency of its own, or that it is “miraculously transcendent,” as glaucon ironically replies to socrates as he is about to introduce the three similes for the relation of the soul to the good at the enigmatic centre of the republic. one can easily be persuaded of the mistaken idea that being is pulling the strings behind the scenes, like some sort of puppet-master and doing amazing things like shaping human action in the world and producing various historical epochs. this is an error. worse still, it succumbs to the sort of obscurantist temptation that continually se- duces readings and readers of heidegger. too many readers of heidegger see being as some kind of rabbit in a hat. there is no rabbit. the point is to learn to see the hat without wanting the rabbit. heidegger only asks (can only ask) about the meaning of being insofar as being enters into the intelligibility of dasein. the latter is characterized from the first pages of sein und zeit by its possession of understanding of being (seinsverständnis), although this is admittedly vague and average. so, meaning can only mean insofar as there is dasein. that is, meaning is dasein-dependent, or as heidegger puts it, “meaning is an existential of dasein, not a property at- taching to entities, lying ‘behind’ them, or floating somewhere as an ‘interme- diate domain’” ( ). as heidegger says, meaning is the “upon which” “das woraufhin” in terms of which something becomes intelligible as something. but this “upon which” is nothing other than dasein itself insofar as dasein lays it- self out (sich auslegt) as that being that understands meaningfulness. of course, this is the meaning of interpretation or auslegung in heideg- ger, where interpretation is understood as the laying out (auslegen) of the un- derstanding, or the act by which understanding becomes aware of itself. in interpretation, heidegger writes in one of his characteristic tautologies, “un- derstanding appropriates understandingly that which is understood by it [eignet sich das verstehen sein verstandenes verstehend zu]. in interpreta- tion, understanding does not become something different. it becomes itself” (being and time ). of course, this is to say that the act of interpretation is retro-active, it is the retroactivity or reactivation of a prior understanding. here we enter what heidegger sees as the hermeneutic circle. interpretation already understands, and what interpretation lays out is already understood and must have been already so understood. heidegger suggests that interpre- tation differs from what we might call “normal” scientific proof, or the logic of discovery, where it is illegitimate to presuppose what it is our task to pro- vide grounds for. with everyday human life in the world, or what we may call social being, it is precisely the other way around and we have to presuppose that which we provide grounds for, namely understanding. we are always stuck in a circle, and it is therefore a question of entering the circle in the surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa right way and not trying to get out of it. as may already have become clear, in my view, poetry also moves within the hermeneutic circle. the poet issues reminders of what we already know and interprets what we already under- stand but have not made explicit. poetry takes things as they are and as they are understood by us, but in a way that we have covered over through force of habit, a contempt born of familiarity, or caeiro’s “sickness of the eyes.” as caeiro says, “to think is not to understand” (fernando pessoa & co ). poetry returns us to our familiarity with things through the de-familiarization of poetic saying, it provides lessons in unlearning where we finally see what is under our noses. what the poet discovers is what we knew already, but had covered up: the world in its plain simplicity and palpable presence. in this way, we reach lucidity. but this lucidity is not a propositional explicitness, it is not the cognitive awareness that “water is everywhere and at all times two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen,” or that “benjamin franklin was the in- ventor of the lightning rod.” it is rather a lucidity at the level of feeling that the poetic word articulates without making cognitively explicit, as when pes- soa writes in a text on sensationism: “lucidity should only reach the thresh- old of the soul. in the very antechambers of feeling it is forbidden to be ex- plicit” (always astonished ). poetry produces felt variations in the appear- ances of things that return us to the understanding of things that we endless- ly pass over in our desire for knowledge. now, heidegger’s inquiry into the human being is phenomenological, it is concerned with trying to elicit dasein’s being-in-the-world phenomeno- logically. crucially, this is also not a deep inquiry. heidegger defines the greek word “phainomenon” as “that which shows itself” and “logos” as “that which lets see.” therefore, phenomenology is that which lets us see what shows itself, which is a tautology, as heidegger was perfectly well aware. phenomenology also moves within the hermeneutic circle and this is not a matter of occult, hidden or deep meanings; it is a question of surfaces. the phenomena, as those surfaces that show themselves, have to be brought to appearance through the activity of logos or what heidegger calls discourse, talk or rede, which is perhaps the most important and elusive concept in sein und zeit. it is discourse that lets us see what shows itself; it is the activity of talking that reactivates our prior and a priori understanding of things. yet, if i say that phenomenology is not deep inquiry, then that does not mean that it is superficial. phenomenology is the refusal of metaphysical or mystical depth and the cultivation of surfaces. it is a matter of opening one’s eyes and seeing the palpably obvious fact of the world that faces one and that one faces. human life in the world is two surfaces that touch and simon critchley resonate each with the other. phenomenology gives lessons in unlearning that allow us to relearn how to see the world. now, in my fancy at least, i want to imagine poetry as phenomenology, as an art of surfaces or the cul- tivation of what we might call surfaciality. the problem is that these sur- faces only show themselves with great difficulty, they are enigmatic sur- faces that come to appearance through the felt variations that flow from the poet’s words. i think this is what heidegger has in mind in the sentence from sein und zeit that i chose as my epigraph. poetry, in the broad sense of dichtung or creation, is the disclosure of existence, the difficult bring- ing to appearance of the fact that things exist. by listening to the poet’s words, we are drawn outside and beyond ourselves to a condition of being there with things where they do not stand over against us as objects, but where we stand with those things in an experience of what i like to call, with a nod to rilke, openedness, a being open to things, an interpretation which is always already an understanding (hence the past tense) in the sur- facial space of disclosure. if this sounds a little mystical, then i’d like to say with caeiro, “está bem, tenho-o.” if there is a mystery to things, then it is not at all other-worldly, or some mysticism of the hidden. on the con- trary, the mystery of things is utterly of this world and the labour of the poet consists in the difficult elaboration of the space of existence, the openedness within which we stand. * i’d like to finish by turning to one poem by wallace stevens, in the hope of complicating rather than confirming what i have already said. the poem i have in mind is “description without place,” which is a hugely complex late poem that i have always avoided in my writing on stevens. stevens begins with a characteristic qualification, a statement of possibility not actuality: it is possible that to seem - it is to be as the sun is something seeming and it is. surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa . i have been emboldened to begin a partial reading of the poem by judith balso, who perceptively noticed its absence in my little book on stevens, things merely are, and criticized my approach to stevens as being too kantian, too romantic, too tradition- al and not engaging adequately with the ontological dimension of stevens’s verse. i now think she is right and i am beginning to revise my views, although what we each mean by ontology is rather different. i want to argue for a phenomenological ontol- ogy, where it is poetry rather than philosophy that describes the way things are, that transfigures the everyday world but returns us to it, that ennobles the plainness of the the sun is an example. what it seems it is and in such seeming all things are. thus things are like a seeming of the sun or like a seeming of the moon or night or sleep. it was a queen that made it seem by the illustrious nothing of her name. her green mind made the world around her green. the queen is an example . . . this green queen in the seeming of the summer of her sun by her own seeing made the summer change. (palm ) stevens’s initial qualification must be respected: it is possible that seeming is being, and that it is in and through their seemings that things are the things that they are. the statement of possibility points in two directions at once, as both the declaration of the fragility and uncertainty of what is be- ing proposed and the elevation of possibility over any form of actuality. as heidegger famously writes of his conception of phenomenology, “higher than actuality stands possibility” (being and time ). both directions point together in stevens’s declaration in “notes toward a supreme fiction”: “it is possible, possible, possible. it must / be possible” (palm ). the move- ment of the above stanzas turns around a series of examples, a word with a highly charged meaning in the poem: the sun, the moon, night and especial- ly the queen. through what we might call the primal baptism that is “the nothing of her name,” the queen makes all around her green because of her green mind. the queen’s green seemings make all around her green. the queen names things, she produces her seemings and through them the sun and summer themselves are changed, transfigured, subject to a felt varia- tion. it is clear that these seemings are not mere things of fancy, fantasy seemings without an anchor in the way things are. stevens says at the be- ginning of the second section of the poem: “such seemings are the actual ones: the way / things look each day . . . ” ( ). the poem then moves on to an extraordinarily rich series of variations and examples over the next sections, offering teasing discussions of nietzsche and lenin in basel and their interactions, or lack of them, with swans: “lenin on a bench beside a lake disturbed / the swans. he was not the man for swans” ( ). simon critchley obvious without giving us anything back but the obvious seen through the lucid es- trangements of the poet - an enigmatic obviousness. surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa i’d like to turn to the final two sections of the poem, where these seem- ings are called “description without place.” what does stevens mean by de- scription? he writes: description is revelation. it is not the thing described, nor false facsimile. it is an artificial thing that exists, in its own seeming, plainly visible, yet not too closely the double of our lives, intenser than any actual life could be . . . ( - ) there is much to say and to call this verse oblique is to risk considerable un- derstatement. but description is the revelation of the thing that is neither “the thing described,” by which i understand the thing-in-itself, ding an sich in kant’s sense as the hard kernel of material nature; nor is it a “false facsimile,” a simulacrum like those images that flicker on the wall of plato’s cave. rather, it reveals “an artificial thing that exists in its own seeming” ( ). the thing is not a hallucination, it is visible through our seeming and yet not the double or replica of our lives. it is what i called above a real appearance. as the nameless interlocutor puts it in “the man with the blue guitar”: but play, you must, a tune beyond us, yet ourselves, a tune upon the blue guitar of things exactly as they are. (palm ) things upon the blue guitar are things exactly as they are, that is, as they are described; but they are turned around, subject to a felt variation, played in a tune that is at once beyond us and yet ourselves. this is the revelatory role of description: it gives us things as they are, but transformed in a felt but enigmatic lucidity, “intenser than any actual life could be.” higher than ac- tuality stands possibility. this line of thought is continued in the stunning last section of the poem: thus the theory of description matters most. it is the theory of the word for those for whom the word is the making of the world, the buzzing world and lisping firmament. it is a world of words to the end of it, in which nothing solid is its solid self. simon critchley as, men make themselves their speech: the hard hidalgo lives in the mountainous character of his speech; and in that mountainous mirror spain acquires the knowledge of spain and of the hidalgo’s hat - a seeming of the spaniard, a style of life, the invention of a nation in a phrase, in a description hollowed out of hollow-bright, the artificer of subjects still half night. it matters, because everything we say of the past is description without place, a cast of the imagination, made in sound; and because what we say of the future must portend, be alive with its own seemings, seeming to be like rubies reddened by rubies reddening. (“description without place,” palm - ) the theory of description is the theory of the word to those for whom the word is the making of the world. this can be linked to two other thoughts in stevens’s verse. firstly, from “the idea of order at key west,” when the poet and his silent interlocutor, ramon fernandez, remark of the female per- sona described in the poem: then we, as we beheld her, striding there alone, knew that there never was a world for her except the one she sang and, singing, made. (palm ) namely, that poetry is the enchantment of the world, the incantation of reality under the spell of poetic imagination. in other words, the world is what you make of it. the second passage is from “an ordinary evening in new haven,” where he writes: the endlessly elaborating poem displays the theory of poetry as the life of poetry. a more severe, more harassing master would extemporize subtler, more urgent proof that the theory of poetry is the theory of life. (palm ) it is a world of words, a world where things are through the seemings in surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa which we baptize them into being. stevens always hesitates to push this thought to its logical conclusion, namely that if there never is a world for us except the one given in words, and poetry is the highest use of the words, then poetry is the theory of our life in the world. in occasional moments of light-headed transport, such is my belief. stevens always qualifies himself by saying that this is what a more severe, harassing master would demand, perhaps a master like caeiro. yet it remains possible, possible, possible: in each of the double directions of possibility. the most extraordinary linguistic risk in the last section of “descrip- tion without place” is the solitary “as” followed by a comma. if things are through their seemings, then the way in which we take things as things de- fines the things that they are. this can be linked to heidegger’s notion of interpretation discussed above, where the way in which we take things as the things they are consists in the act whereby we lay out our prior under- standing of the world. this is what heidegger calls the “existential- hermeneutic as” distinct from the “apophantical as” which is a feature of propositional descriptions. to parody the early wittgenstein, it is poetry and not propositions that gives us a picture of the world, a picture that we take in the personal camera of our seemings. poetry is the existential- hermeneutic taking of things as things, which reveals the fact that things exist in the act that transfigures them. human beings make themselves in their speech and through their speech. the spanish gentleman (if not quite the portuguese personage) in the above stanzas invents spain in a phrase. the hard hidalgo carves out a seeming in words that mirror the mountains. and, to return to the last lines of the poem, this is also true of the past and the future; they are also descriptions without place. for stevens, the poet- ic task for the future is the reddening of rubies by rubies reddened. that is, the precious jewels of any future creation are the work of the seemings that baptize those things into being. the task of poetry is giving birth to being through seemings. * or at least, so it seems. can what i have said in this paper be taken as a description of the goal of poetry überhaupt, once and for all time and for all genres? not at all. i have tried to read a few stanzas of just one poem by stevens and, to return to caeiro, we must not forget that although he is the master, he is only one of the many heteronyms in pessoa’s work. besides the four-headed poetic enigma that is caeiro, ricardo reis, Ál- varo de campos and pessoa himself, we also find the anguished prose personae of bernardo soares and the baron de teive, as well as the philosophers antónio mora and raphael baldaya, three possibly related characters with the name crosse - thomas, i.i and a.a, the anglophone brothers charles and alexander search, the francophone jean seul de méluret, and the sole female heteronym maria josé. it’s quite a crowd. many of the voices flatly contradict the thoughtless anti-metaphysics of caiero. consider, for example, Álvaro de campos on the metaphysics of chocolate: eat your chocolates, little girl, eat your chocolates! believe me, there’s no metaphysics on earth like chocolates, and all religions put together teach no more than the candy shop. eat, dirty little girl, eat! if only i could eat chocolates with the same truth as you! (obra poéti- ca ) apart from chocolate poetry, there is also love poetry, hate poetry, po- litical poetry, apolitical poetry, narrative poetry, epic poetry, dramatic poet- ry and a great inward swathe of lyrical introspection, some wonderful, some decidedly not. what i have been concerned with is the poetry of things, a poetry of enigmatic surfaces that tries to describe our openedness to the world, and i have begun to adumbrate a poetic ontology by leaning on caeiro, stevens and heidegger. as we all know - although i will not engage the topic here for reasons of space and good taste - heidegger had his issues with other people. pessoa tended to project his personal despair onto his per- sonae, notably soares in the book of disquiet and the suicidal baron de teive in the education of the stoic, who kills himself after completing his only extant manuscript. and, as others have noted before me, stevens is a hugely impersonal poet. he writes in his adagia that “life is an affair of people and places. but poetry for me is an affair of places, and that’s the problem.” for the most part, i have talked about places and not people and tried to give some sense of the ontological ambition of poetry. but this should not be confused with any pronouncement on the ethical claims of poetry. that, as they say, is another story for another occasion. maybe it is not a story that i can tell. new school for social research, new york united states of america simon critchley works cited critchley, simon. things merely are. london: routledge, . heidegger, martin. being and time. trans. john macquarrie and edward robinson. oxford: blackwell, . ---. sein und zeit. th ed. tuebingen: niemeyer, . pessoa, fernando. alguma prosa. rio de janeiro: nora fronteira, . ---. always astonished. ed. edwin honig. san francisco: city lights, . ---. the book of disquiet. trans. richard zenith. london: penguin, . ---. the education of the stoic. san francisco: city lights, . ---. fernando pessoa & co: selected poems. ed. and trans. richard zenith. new york: grove press, . ---. “letter to an english editor.” always astonished. ed. edwin honig. san francis- co: city lights, . - . ---. obra poética. rio de janeiro: editora nova anguilar, . stevens, wallace. adagia. opus posthumous. ed. milton j. bates. new york: knopf, . - . ---. the palm at the end of the mind. ed. holly stevens. new york: vintage, . zenith, richard, trans. fernando pessoa & co: selected poems. by fernando pessoa. new york: grove press, . surfaciality: some poems by fernando pessoa the journal of academic social science studies international journal of social science doi number:http://dx.doi.org/ . /jasss number: , p. - , spring ii yayın süreci / publication process yayın geliş tarihi / article arrival date - yayınlanma tarihi / the published date . . . . american modernism and wallace stevens’s poetry amerİkan modernİzmİ ve wallace stevens’in Şİİrİ assist. prof. dr. erdinç durmuş mardin artuklu university department of english language and literature abstract in the early years of the twentieth century, a remarkable critical and literary frenzy, which was caused by the discussions of many scholars, happened concerning either the nature of the modernist aesthetic or the definition of it. there were a lot of voi- ces attempting to clarify what modernist aesthetic really was. one is supposed to keep in mind that the type of modernism in american literature was not originally a whole new movement created by the american writers of the times. the starting point of moder- nism was europe and the creators or the leading figures of the movement were the eu- ropean artists. the struggles and efforts of all the writers were aimed to an answer of what the modern literary or poetic aesthetic should be like. the literary world of the age was in search of what the aesthetic modernism dealt with. in many ways, modernism and american modernism were simply a revolt and all about newness in art and litera- ture. on the other hand, the position held by both theories and literature of wallace ste- vens is noteworthy in perceiving the ways how he informs an understanding of literary modernism. stevens does not see poetry as something totally independent from the problems of history. he considers poetry as the equating power of the interdependence of imagination and reality. his entire work explores the interaction of reality and what man can make of it in his mind. his theories do not argue that the poet’s task is just poli- tical or social. stevens is a leading figure in modernism as he is one of the representati- ves of the neo-romantic poetry of the twentieth century american literature. keywords: modernism, american modernism, theory, wallace stevens, poetry Öz yirminci yüz yılın ilk yıllarında çok sayıda bilim adamının tartışmalarından kaynaklanan dikkate değer bir eleştirel ve edebi taşkınlık yaşanıyordu ki bu coşkulu tartışmaların temel konusu ya modernist estetiğin doğası ya da bu estetiğin tanımı hakkındaydı. gerçekte modernist estetik anlayışının ne olduğunu aydınlığa ka- vuşturmaya çalışan bir çok ses yükseliyordu. akılda tutulması gereken şey, amerikan edebiyatında modernizmin türü, aslında o zamanlar amerikalı yazarlar tarafından erdinç durmuş yaratılan yepyeni bir hareket değildi. modernizmin başlangıç noktası avrupa'dır ve ha- reketin yaratıcıları ya da önde gelen figürleri avrupalı sanatçılardır. bütün yazarların mücadeleleri ve gayretleri modern edebiyat ya da şiir estetiğinin nasıl olması gerektiği konusunda bir cevabı amaçlamıştı. Çağın edebiyat dünyası, estetik modernizmin uğraştığı şeyleri araştırıyordu. bir çok yönden modernizm ve amerikan modernizmi aslında sadece bir başkaldırıydı ve genel olarak sanat ve edebiyatta yenilik demekti. diğer taraftan, wallace stevens’ın hem teorileriyle hem de edebiyatıyla koruduğu pozisyonu edebiyatta modernizmin ne olduğunu anlamamıza yardımcı olduğu için dik- kate değerdir. stevens, şiiri tarihin sorunlarından tamamen bağımsız bir şey olarak görmez. Şiiri hayal gücü ile gerçekliğin karşılıklı bağımlılığının eşitleyici gücü olarak değerlendirir. tüm eserleri, gerçekliğin insanın aklında ne yapabileceği ile etkileşimini araştırır. onun teorileri, şairin görevinin sadece siyasi veya toplumsal olduğunu iddia etmez. stevens yirminci yüz yıl amerikan edebiyatında neo-romantik şiirin temsilcil- erinden biri olduğu için modernizm akımında önde gelen bir figürdür. anahtar kelimeler: modernizm, amerikan modernizmi, teori, wallace ste- vens, Şiir it is equally as difficult to define the concept of modernism as a particular type of aesthetic representation as to determine the date when the modernist movement began to take place in the twentieth century american literature. discussions about the definition of modernist aesthetic vary from theorist to the- orist as well as from one person to another depending on what they understand or feel about the very nature of this particular type of aesthetic of the twentieth century. one is supposed to keep in mind that the type of modernism in american literature was not originally a whole new movement created by the american writers of the times. the star- ting point of modernism was europe and the creators or the leading figures of the move- ment were the european artists. what really happened in the twentieth century american literary modernism were, then, attempts of several writers to establish their own moder- nist aesthetic to which they could embrace to independent from the so-called european type of modernism. both the literary theorists and the wri- ters helped to create such a movement by their artistic and critical productions within the period of this kind of representation. in the early years of the twentieth century, a remarkable critical and literary frenzy, which was caused by the discussions of many scho- lars, happened concerning either the nature of the modernist aesthetic or the definition of it. there were a lot of voices attempting to cla- rify what modernist aesthetic really was. they struggled with the modern aesthetic. there were several different kinds of ideas and theories related to the art of literature during the so-called period. first of all, as bradbury and mcfarlane put it, “it is the lite- rature of technology. modernism is the art of modernization” ( : ). each theorist was looking at the literary word and the notion of the literary works from different points of views in order to determine what aesthetic modernism really meant to them. the strugg- les and efforts of all the writers were aimed to an answer of what the modern literary or poetic aesthetic should be like. in many ways, the literary world of the age was in search of what the aesthetic modernism dealt with. it would not be a false judgment to say that there was no definition of modernism during the time all these theoretical ideas and activi- ties took place. nobody really knew and ca- me to a conclusion what modern aesthetic exactly talked about. however, somehow or another the literary world during that time began to practice the modernist aesthetic for modernism became the dominant standpoint for writers and poets. “modernism is a revo- lutionary movement. it is a movement that is international in character and scope shared by many art forms. modernism is a major artistic american modernism and wallace stevens’s poetry movement responding to the sense of social breakdown in the early twentieth century” (bradbury & mcfarlane, : ). while the theorists and the writer- theorists were in an everlasting debate con- cerned with the nature of modernist aesthetic, they were also continuing to produce literatu- re in one or another form. maybe, the very fact that the writers of the age were already producing literature whether or not knowing what the modernist aesthetic really was pro- vides the reader with some useful hints lea- ding to form a definition of the concept of modernism. as it is already a known reality, modernism first began in europe as an artistic movement with the publications of the artists’ works of art. “modernism is widely known as the most creative time in the history of huma- nity. it can be defined as a sharp line which separates the past and find new forms of expressions” (tanrıtanır, : ). on the other hand, theorists and thinkers such as baudelaire, arnold and nietzsche had also been discussing various concepts of art, criti- cism and the nature of literature in their wri- tings and essays long before modernism came into being as an artistic movement. at this point, we come to realize that dependence on the preceding writers’ ideas or conceptions emerges just like the american modernist writers depended on europeans in adapting this aesthetic representation to their own works of art. seeds of modernism are to be sought especially in these writers’ critical essays and publications mentioned above. it does not necessarily mean that american the- orists and writers were not able to create a modernist aesthetic of their own; otherwise there would not have been such a literary movement in the twentieth century american literature which we are talking about. furt- hermore, if baudelaire is thought to be the father of modernism, t. s. eliot and ezra po- und are to be the priests of modernist move- ment in the twentieth century american lite- rature. there may not be a real clearly defi- ned historical moment when modernism be- gan or a certain definition of modernist aest- hetic, but it already took its place in the his- tory of literature and established itself under the name of “modernism.” this is unquestio- nable. however, the curious modernist rea- der may still feel uncertain to construe this particular type of aesthetic representation, for he or she too is perplexed by the variety of and differentiation between the literary works of art which the modernist aesthetic actually consists of. it seems that the problematic issue of defining modernism carries the solution within its own structure. the difficulty of such an undertaking may well serve as the basis of the starting point for our search of a definition of the modernist aesthetic. what, then, the curious reader is advised to do to find out his or her own answers as opposed to the question of the definition of modernism? the reader should start with the elements which constitute the difficulty in trying to find the definition of modernism. “moder- nism is formalist, confusion, obscurity and deep in sense and for modernist writers, the plot is non-plot; in which it doesn’t contain cause and effect” (tanrıtanır, : ). as already stated above, the variety and someti- mes huge differences between the literary works of the modernist writers help the rea- der to find an answer to the question of mo- dernism. we may be very close to the defini- tion of modernism if we think in terms of “variety of literary works,” “apparent diffe- rences between the works” and “many poets, artists and writers.” modernism, then, may be the “synthesis” of all these “various, diver- se, different” works of literary art of the “many poets, artists and writers.” in many ways, modernism may be considered to be a reaction to the notions and understandings of the arts including the literature of the prece- ding ages. “the sustaining structures of hu- erdinç durmuş man life are destroyed or shown up as false- hoods in modernism. emphasis is placed on the fragmentation of experience. modernism is an art of a rapidly modernizing world, a world of rapid industrial development, ad- vanced technology, urbanization, seculariza- tion and mass forms of social life” (bradbury & mcfarlane, : ). the writers of the modernist age chose their own ways of form, subject, style and mode to write in the opposi- te direction of the preceding ages whether or not knowing that they were gradually estab- lishing the modernist aesthetic. each of the writers and the theorists of the modernist movement developed their discussions around their points of views of understanding, writing, and treating literature which indeed eventually developed the con- cept of modernism as an aesthetic representa- tion of the twentieth century. “the sheer excellence of the modernist writers, and the intensely doctrinal nature of their view of art, could not but establish a tradition of its own. this was a tradition of the new” (homberger, : ). the american writers of the mo- dernist movement were somehow the repre- sentatives of modernism. an american mo- dernism was created and led by the writers and poets during the so-called movement. all of these writers were the modernists as each of them had responded to their times by their own unique ways of writings. each of them came up with new ideas, methods, styles, concepts and attitudes both towards literature and in producing literature. the task of the reader should be to analyze and synthesize all these elements in order to find a possible answer to the definition of modernism. each of these modernists was writing in a way that both their styles and subject matters were almost totally different from each other. the- re was not really a proper name or term to call these writers or to position them in the same category for they differed from each other. they were modernists and they were called the modern american writers maybe because each of them went on their own ways. each of them was a unique artist and each of them was somehow or another modernist since they almost shared nothing in common. “the poetry, novel and literature they were produ- cing were modern compared to the accumula- ted literature and art of their past. the con- ception of “newness” or “novelty” may de- termine the modernist aesthetic, too” (hom- berger, : ). as one of the scholars claims, “mo- dernist literature is notable for what it omits. it advances without explanation and ends without resolution. in modernist literature, rhetoric is understated and ironic. symbols and images abound, suggesting rather than asserting. a dynamic pattern exists beneath the surface. the concrete sensory images or details used are the direct conveyers of expe- rience. another important point is that a mo- dernist literary work has the characteristics of directness, compression, and vividness. the language used is colloquial and slangy. truth is arrived at by personal interaction with rea- lity” (homberger, : ). the final at- tempt of the modernist reader in finding a proper answer to the question of the defini- tion of modernism should be focused on the interrelations between and the synthesis of all the literary works produced during the mo- dernist movement. then, a final judgment about the definition of modernism may be reached. modernism may be the diversity of the literary works which eventually leads to the synthesis of them that defines this particu- lar type of aesthetic representation of the twentieth century. among the poets of the american modernist movement, the position held by both theories and literature of wallace ste- vens is noteworthy in perceiving the ways how he informs an understanding of literary modernism. stevens is a leading figure in modernism as he is one of the representatives of the neo-romantic poetry of the twentieth century american literature. he is a signifi- cant poet of the age in the sense that his poetic understanding and practice brought and re- american modernism and wallace stevens’s poetry surrected the romantic literary tradition into the twentieth century american literary mo- dernism. stevens is not only a poet but also a respectable theorist for he created new theore- tical ideas about the art of poetry. his mas- terpiece work “notes toward a supreme fiction” is one of the many written on the art of poetry and it has its secure place as the monument of its author in the literary world. according to wallace stevens, “a mo- dern poet should deal with all the historical issues for these historical pressures make a tremendous impact on poetry” (doggett, : ). stevens does not see poetry as something totally independent from the problems of history. he considers poetry as the equating power of the interdependence of imagination and reality. his entire work explores the inte- raction of reality and what man can make of it in his mind. his theories do not argue that the poet’s task is just political or social. the poet’s aim is to make his imagination that of the reader. stevens is a poet who truly belie- ves that a poet helps others to live their lives. “the poet creates the “supreme fiction” which is accomplished at the point he and his imagi- nation become one. the poet invades reality for it is understood by relationships” (pack, : ). almost all of his poems deal with the exploration of reality and imagination to de- termine the perfect nature of poetry. stevens introduced the “imagination-reality” theme into the literary modernism which actually occupied his creative life time. he argues that imagination can be a powerful force, even more powerful than reality. he reveals his idea about the concept of imagination in the following excellent lines taken from “another weeping woman.” the magnificent cause of being, the imagination, the one reality in this imagined world. (stevens, : ) so, as it is also obvious from the abo- ve lines, imagination becomes almost pure reality for stevens. according to him, poetry is the supreme fusion of the creative imagina- tion and objective reality. stevens was consi- dered to be a difficult poet from time to time because of the extreme technical and thematic complexity of his work. all kinds of difficul- ties caused by the poetry of stevens are likely to disappear as soon as the reader is acquain- ted with the theoretical ideas of him. then the reader enjoys the wonderful poetry of the poet. in the opinion of stevens, the poet’s purpose is to interpret the external world of thought and feeling through imagination. “his poetry introduced a new voice, a refres- hingly new idiom. stevens’s poetry includes all the complexities and contradictions of mo- dern life which determines its aesthetic pat- tern. the poetry of stevens deals with the present and common phase of reality. we see an abstract-concrete quality in his poetry” (mccann, : ). he tries to mirror reality and relies on imagination chiefly as it trans- forms reality and makes it available for per- ception. he believes that reality must be per- ceived through imagination. his poetry then, is centrally concerned with the search for rea- lity, the reality of the flowing moment since it always changes as it is obvious in the lines of “an ordinary evening in new haven”: the poem is the cry of its occasion, part of the res itself and not about it. the poet speaks the poem as it is not as it was. (stevens, : ) his poetry is the poetry of ideas, po- etry of the inner workings of the mind. for stevens, reality consists of both the external reality (the world) and the mind. imagination and the mind of the poet help comprehend reality by functioning as the transforming element of it. like his idea of the changing reality, he deems perfection as something which never shows any newness or freshness therefore inhuman because of its erdinç durmuş stability. poetry is not only the vital element of life that helps people understand the world but it is also the supreme fiction which eases the intellectual strain of modern people. it is a great saviour; it gives moral support to pe- ople who cannot endure the bitter reality in the absence of some stable faith. stevens rein- forces his idea by stating, “the relation of art to life is of the first importance especially in a skeptical age since, in the absence of a belief in god, the mind turns to its own creations and examines them, not alone from the aest- hetic point of view, but for what they reveal, for what they validate and invalidate, for the support that they give” (qtd in doggett, : ). stevens’s approach to the question of “imagination-reality” concept is sensitive and poetic. he perceives reality as it really is, not as it appears. reality cannot be as it really is without the interruption of the power of ima- gination. reality, which is easily available to perception, is not the real one, because it is hidden underneath the traditional associati- ons. imagination distorts reality and purges it out of all its taints. it goes through the same process and changes into something else as in “the man with the blue guitar”: things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar. (stevens, : ) stevens’s principal theme centers on imagination and its transfiguring role in life, then. even though imagination and reality are two opposite things, stevens’s poetry aims to reconciliate, and wants their happy inter- course. it is through the interaction of opposi- te things or opposite relationships to arrive at reality, as he clearly demonstrates in “notes toward a supreme fiction”: two things of opposite natures seem to depend on one another, as a man depends on a woman, day on night, the ima- gined on the real. (stevens, : ) imagination transforms reality into something bearable and stevens’s poetry de- als with the life, the form and function of imagination. “like coleridge, stevens belie- ves in the transforming power of imagination. both of them write in reaction to the rationa- list tradition of their times. in many ways, stevens is a neo-romantic poet, but unlike the english romantics, he never uses the faculty of imagination to form completely an ideal world aloof from the real one. the main duty of imagination is to transform reality, for him” (kravec, : ). and this is pro- bably what makes stevens a unique moder- nist neo-romantic poet. he successfully pro- tests the rationalist writers in one of his won- derful poems “six significant landscapes” as follows: rationalists, wearing square hats, think, in square rooms, looking at the floor, looking at the ceiling. (stevens, : ) imagination permits man a temporary escape from reality. it is larger than reason and mind because it includes the senses and our links with the world, it makes us think that, in stevens’s own words; “life is not pe- ople and scene, but thought and feeling. the world is myself. life is myself” (qtd in dog- gett, : ). imagination is more powerful than reason and intelligence, it challenges intelligence, thus the poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully. (stevens, : ). as stevens states in his poem “man carrying thing.” there is an abstraction of reality through imagination according to the theories of stevens. imagination is not only a way of creating but also a way of knowing. it takes us beyond the surface of things, the world and we feel able to know and unders- tand better. stevens embellishes his idea very well with the lines in my room, the world is beyond my american modernism and wallace stevens’s poetry understanding; but when i walk i see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud. (stevens, : ). from his poem “ of the surface of things.” imagination creates nothing that is not in the world. stevens gives the example of light to clarify his point. he compares imagination to light and says that “like light it adds nothing except itself to reality. imagina- tion offers us an insight into things and enab- les us to see more clearly than before. reality is both the things as they are and as they are perceived in the mind” (qtd in kravec, : ). stevens uses concrete, bold and fresh imagery in his poetry; he resorts to the tech- nique of dramatic monologue together with reflective, meditative, colourful and gaudy style and creates a valuable poetry. his po- etry is itself a search for poetry, poetry is the subject matter of his many poems as he also says poetry is the subject of the poem, from this the poem issues and to this returns. (stevens, : ). in “the man with the blue guitar.” references bradbury, m. & mcfarlane, j. ( ). name and nature of modernism, moder- nism - , (editor: malcolm bradbury, james mcfarlane) içinde, (ss. - ) england: penguin books. doggett, f. ( ). wallace stevens: the ma- king of the poem, maryland: the johns hopkins university press. homberger, e. ( ). chicago and new york: two versions of american moder- nism, modernism - , (editor: malcolm bradbury, james mcfarlane) içinde, (ss. - ) england: penguin books. kravec, m. ( ). stevens’s notes toward a supreme fiction, the explicator rd ser. : - . mccann, j. ( ). wallace stevens revisited: the celestial possible, new york: twayne publishers. pack, r. ( ). wallace stevens: an appro- ach to his poetry and thought, new jersey: rutgers university press. stevens, w. ( ). the collected poems, new york: vintage books. tanrıtanır, b. c. ( ). the use of camera- eye technique in the three soldiers and manhattan transfer, the journal of international social research, vol: , issue: . february: - . erdinç durmuş microsoft word - walk the line_thesis_final chair copy_ . . v .docx 	
   	
   	
   walk	
  the	
  line:	
  examining	
  the	
  factors	
  that	
  enable	
   peacekeepers	
  to	
  influence	
  their	
  local	
  security	
   environment	
   vanessa	
  frances	
  newby	
   bsc.	
  (hons)	
  psychology	
   m.	
  international	
  relations	
   	
   	
   	
   school	
  of	
  government	
  and	
  international	
  relations	
   griffith	
  business	
  school	
   griffith	
  university	
   	
   	
   	
   submitted	
  in	
  fulfilment	
  of	
  the	
  requirements	
  of	
  the	
  degree	
  of	
  doctor	
  of	
  philosophy.	
   june	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   abstract	
   	
   this thesis uses an ethnographic approach to investigate the microprocesses of a peace operation to understand whether peacekeepers on the ground can make a difference to their security environment. i examine the work of unifil in south lebanon since the implementation of resolution in and describe the work of local actors in the unifil mission and their engagement at three levels: the local, the national and the international. this thesis asked the following research questions: ( ) how do peace operations influence their security environment? and; ( ) what factors effect unifil local engagement? this research has found that at the subnational or local level, unifil is able to influence its security environment and thus contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security. it does this by sustaining local connections that serve to alert the mission to small incidents that it prevents from developing into bigger conflicts. the area of operations has experienced peace for almost eight years and this would suggest that these activities at the micro level have helped to provide an environment conducive to peace. on a practical level, the unifil mission has achieved this in three main ways: first by monitoring, reporting and intervening in blue line violations as part of a response mechanism, to avoid escalation. second, through the preventative mechanisms of liaising between the idf and the laf to encourage local level cooperation and produce micro security agreements to prevent misunderstandings. third, unifil has a very comprehensive local engagement mechanism that enables the mission to maintain local consent and avoid being affected by intrastate conflict. this research has identified three factors: time, autonomy and local knowledge that facilitate the above mechanisms and therefore agency at the local level. prior to this research, these three factors have not previously been linked together as key facilitators of agency amongst peacekeepers at the local level. what this thesis also extrapolates out are the benefits that accrue 	
   	
   from these three factors: time is linked to the benefits of trust, institutional memory and consistency of effort. autonomy is linked with the benefits of creativity and spontaneity. local knowledge produces cultural sensitivity and contingency in emergency situations. this thesis also revealed that the main constraints faced by unifil currently are the local- international legitimacy gap in the mandate, local agency and a lack of national and international support for peacebuilding projects and the middle east peace process. this thesis also revealed the nuances in relationships between peace operations and civilians of the host country in terms of how their interests divide and coincide at different points. this involves all the parties in a balancing act –the most noticeable contradiction for civilians was their desire for peace versus their support for national resistance movements. for unifil staff, it was balancing the international demands of the mandate with local consent for the mission. this thesis acknowledges the important role key regional actors play in the maintenance of international peace and security: should any party choose to recommence hostilities, there is little unifil can do. but thus far a resumption of war based on the escalation of a security incident has not occurred in the unifil area of operations. this has been achieved in large part by the actions of a small group of highly committed staff who operate at the subnational level. 	
   	
   statement	
  of	
  originality	
   this work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. to the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. (signed)_____________________________ disclosure:	
   this research was undertaken with human ethical clearance (er ) protocol gir/ / /hrec. i have identified the place and location of all interviews throughout this thesis. the names of interviewees i have kept confidential according to the preferences of interviewees. i can provide a list of names of all interviewees to an examiner on request. one publication in a peer-reviewed journal has been drawn from this research although in considerably different form to what appears in the dissertation. newby, v ( ) playing with fire: understanding the sunni-shia sectarian lifecycle, griffith asia quarterly, : / , pp. - . 	
   	
   acknowledgements	
   dedicated to my mother christine and my husband gharib. i put off writing the acknowledgements section until the last minute because i was always afraid that i was somehow tempting fate by writing it too soon. with a such a mammoth project (which in retrospect i am sure i made far too much fuss about), there are so many people to thank. first and foremost my deepest thanks go to my supervisor, dr. sara davies. she understood what i wanted to do with my project from the get-go and whilst i doubtless made her life immeasurably more difficult, she made finishing the phd a breeze (at least as much as a breeze as it can be for someone like myself who relentlessly over-complicates her life). the patience and trust that dr. davies placed in me was humbling and i honestly could not have done this without her endless support and wonderful pragmatism. whatever i write here is inadequate in terms of expressing my deepest and most heartfelt gratitude. thank you for believing in the project and me. i would also like to thank my other supervisors dr. wes widmaier and professor alex bellamy. dr. widmaier’s boundless enthusiasm for the project, infinite theoretical knowledge, and shared affinity for using song lyrics in academia made for a wonderful supervisory experience. professor bellamy’s expertise in peace operations provided unparalleled guidance in navigating the field. i particularly enjoyed the acerbic wit of his comments on my drafts in the final stages, when he knew i was far along enough to be able to take it. griffith university has always been kind to me and i would like to thank so many of the staff there that have helped me along the way in terms of providing useful advice and endless cups of coffee. my heartfelt thanks go to professor haig patapan, dr. giorel curran, dr. andrew o’neil, assistant professor halim rane, dr. frank smith and dr. michael clarke. two colleagues in particular were always a pleasure to connect with and i would like to thank them for their endless assistance and editing advice dr. daniel halvorson and jo-anne gilbert. i also 	
   	
   need to thank meegan thorley, kathy bailey, natasha vary and belle hammond for their unending support and assistance whenever i needed it. i will miss you all. in the field, there were people who enabled me to do the topic i wanted to do. my thanks go to andrea tenenti and sultan sleiman at unifil for facilitating my visits to the battalions and to sultan in particular for driving me all around the area of operations to meet with the civilians of south lebanon. those unifil staff who choose not to be named, i also thank whole heartedly for their incredible insights into their complex and challenging world. i would like to thank the american university of beirut for allowing me to be a visiting scholar and in particular to dr. karim makdisi and ms samar ghanam at the issam fares institute for public policy and international affairs. i must also thank salem osseiran and his father ali osseiran for facilitating my visit to the indian compound. i would like to thank all the respondents who agreed to take part in my research. i would particularly like to give my deepest thanks to the people of south lebanon who told me their stories, some of which were so dark and painful. i hope in a small way this thesis pays tribute to their courage and determination under terrible conditions. they inspired me to want to write this thesis, and their stories will continue to inspire me to write. there are a few people who absolutely have to receive special mention for their material support during my studies, dr. hunjoon kim, dr. sara davies, associate professor juan wang, and professor alex bellamy. without the work they gave me on a regular basis i could not have kept studying. professor jason sharman has to be mentioned in particular. professor sharman’s commitment to helping young scholars is phenomenal he is generous and more patient with us than we deserve. i would like to thank him for his wise advice as a colleague and a friend and apologise for my inexperience which at times caused me to deviate from it. his assistance in helping me locate work was also invaluable. in addition, i would like to thank professor tim dunne and dr. andrew phillips from the university of queensland for their assistance and advice which was invaluable. i would also like 	
   	
   to thank professor michael wesley for his endless advice and assistance over the past seven years, yes it has been that long, and no, you have not yet managed to phase me out. i can’t forget some of my phd buddies in australia and around the world who shared the experience and made it more fun in particular, constance duncombe, cathy moloney, andrea haefner, greta-nabbs keller, ghaida hetou, carmel o’sullivan and erin cory. thanks also need to go to my yoga buddies, who kept me sane – and very often fed and watered too. having a broke student friend for years on end must be very tedious. thanks in particular go to my wonderful friend and yoga confidante, karen uhlmann and of course to her husband glenn who had to suffer our endless chatting sessions. i would also like to thank lea wagstaff, tony gilby, stacey craven, jeanette proctor, yumi kaneko and aaron earley for their support and friendship. and my erstwhile flatmate tricia fanson, thank you for keeping me calm in the last minutes. finally my thanks go to my family, but most of all to my wonderful mother who made the writing up part of the thesis so enjoyable. her warmth and support were just brilliant at a time i needed it the most. this thesis is dedicated to her, and also to my husband who definitely suffered the worst of the fallout of my phd stress and always managed to make me smile. being apart whilst i was writing up was incredibly hard but he never made me feel guilty about focusing on my phd. last but not least, i owe dinner and drinks to most of the people noted above. 	
   	
   map : the blue line map : the unifil area of operations 	
   	
   table	
  of	
  contents	
   abstract	
  ........................................................................................................................	
   	
   acknowledgements	
  ......................................................................................................	
   	
   list	
  of	
  acronyms	
  .........................................................................................................	
   	
   introduction	
  ................................................................................................................	
   	
   introduction	
  ........................................................................................................................	
   	
   peacekeeping	
  operations	
  ...................................................................................................	
   	
   case	
  study	
  selection	
  and	
  methodology:	
  .............................................................................	
   	
   participant	
  observation	
  ..................................................................................................	
   	
   interviews	
  ........................................................................................................................	
   	
   the	
  argument	
  .....................................................................................................................	
   	
   contributions	
  of	
  the	
  study	
  ..................................................................................................	
   	
   the	
  structure	
  of	
  the	
  thesis	
  .................................................................................................	
   	
   chapter	
   :	
  a	
  review	
  of	
  the	
  literature	
  on	
  peace	
  operations	
  ......................................	
   	
   introduction	
  ........................................................................................................................	
   	
   section	
  one:	
  definition	
  of	
  peacebuilding	
  ............................................................................	
   	
   peacebuilding	
  models	
  .........................................................................................................	
   	
   section	
  two:	
  a	
  brief	
  history	
  of	
  peacebuilding	
  ....................................................................	
   	
   section	
  three:	
  past	
  and	
  current	
  debates	
  on	
  peacebuilding	
  ...............................................	
   	
   section	
  four:	
  subnational	
  peacebuilding	
  activities	
  ............................................................	
   	
   conclusion	
  ...........................................................................................................................	
   	
   chapter	
  two:	
  a	
  brief	
  history	
  of	
  the	
  unifil	
  mission	
  in	
  south	
  lebanon	
  ......................	
   	
   introduction	
  ........................................................................................................................	
   	
   unifil	
  i:	
  unifil	
  prior	
  to	
  resolution	
   	
  ............................................................................	
   	
   	
   	
   the	
  palestinians	
  ...............................................................................................................	
   	
   the	
  israeli	
  defence	
  force	
  (idf)	
  and	
  the	
  south	
  lebanon	
  army	
  (sla)	
  ...............................	
   	
   the	
  lebanese	
  resistance	
  .................................................................................................	
   	
   unifil	
  i	
  and	
  civilian	
  protection	
  ...........................................................................................	
   	
   leading	
  up	
  to	
  the	
   	
  war	
  ...............................................................................................	
   	
   the	
  post	
  resolution	
   	
  phase	
  .........................................................................................	
   	
   the	
  strategic	
  environment	
   	
  –	
  present	
  .......................................................................	
   	
   unresolved	
  issues	
  of	
  contention	
  ......................................................................................	
   	
   other	
  complications	
  .........................................................................................................	
   	
   israel	
  ..................................................................................................................................	
   	
   the	
  lebanese	
  government	
  ...............................................................................................	
   	
   hizbullah	
  (and	
  amal)	
  .........................................................................................................	
   	
   syria:	
  caution	
  is	
  the	
  better	
  part	
  of	
  valour	
  ........................................................................	
   	
   conclusion	
  .........................................................................................................................	
   	
   chapter	
  three	
  :	
  maintaining	
  peace	
  at	
  the	
  international	
  level	
  .................................	
   	
   introduction	
  ......................................................................................................................	
   	
   section	
  one:	
  response	
  ......................................................................................................	
   	
   maintaining	
  peace	
  and	
  security	
  on	
  the	
  ground:	
  walking	
  the	
  blue	
  line	
  .......................	
   	
   accidental	
  violations	
  .........................................................................................................	
   	
   shepherd	
  violations	
  ......................................................................................................	
   	
   farmers,	
  hunters	
  and	
  resorts	
  .......................................................................................	
   	
   deliberate	
  blue	
  line	
  violations	
  .........................................................................................	
   	
   stone-­‐throwing	
  and	
  lone	
  transgressors	
  .......................................................................	
   	
   organised	
  protests	
  ........................................................................................................	
   	
   air	
  violations	
  .................................................................................................................	
   	
   weapons	
  pointing	
  .........................................................................................................	
   	
   	
   	
   rocket	
  attacks	
  ...............................................................................................................	
   	
   confrontation	
  between	
  the	
  parties	
  ..............................................................................	
   	
   summary	
  of	
  section	
  one	
  ...................................................................................................	
   	
   section	
  two:	
  prevention	
  ...................................................................................................	
   	
   liaison	
  and	
  communication	
  at	
  the	
  international	
  level	
  .................................................	
   	
   the	
  tripartite	
  meetings	
  .................................................................................................	
   	
   brokering	
  micro-­‐security	
  agreements	
  ..............................................................................	
   	
   maintaining	
  impartiality	
  and	
  trust	
  ....................................................................................	
   	
   managing	
  an	
  incident	
  between	
  the	
  states	
  of	
  israel	
  and	
  lebanon	
  ....................................	
   	
   the	
  mechanisms	
  of	
  constant	
  liaison	
  and	
  communication.	
  .........................................	
   	
   case	
  studies:	
  .....................................................................................................................	
   	
   confrontation	
  between	
  the	
  named	
  parties:	
  the	
  case	
  of	
  al-­‐addaisseh	
  ........................	
   	
   hizbullah	
  vs.	
  israel:	
  the	
  case	
  of	
  labouneh	
  ...................................................................	
   	
   conclusion	
  .........................................................................................................................	
   	
   chapter	
  four:	
  capacity-­‐building	
  national	
  institutions	
  .............................................	
   	
   introduction	
  ......................................................................................................................	
   	
   working	
  with	
  the	
  national	
  government	
  ...........................................................................	
   	
   section	
  one:	
  local	
  government	
  ........................................................................................	
   	
   resolution	
   	
  and	
  local	
  government	
  ...........................................................................	
   	
   local	
  views	
  of	
  the	
  municipalities	
  ......................................................................................	
   	
   how	
  unifil	
  works	
  to	
  support	
  the	
  municipalities	
  .............................................................	
   	
   strategies	
  for	
  success	
  ........................................................................................................	
   	
   summary	
  of	
  section	
  one	
  ...................................................................................................	
   	
   section	
  two:	
  working	
  with	
  the	
  laf	
  ..................................................................................	
   	
   the	
  role	
  of	
  laf	
  in	
  resolution	
   	
  ...................................................................................	
   	
   cooperation	
  between	
  laf	
  and	
  unifil	
  ..............................................................................	
   	
   	
   	
   the	
  work	
  of	
  unifil	
  and	
  laf	
  ..............................................................................................	
   	
   unifil	
  views	
  of	
  the	
  relationship	
  with	
  laf	
  .......................................................................	
   	
   laf	
  views	
  of	
  unifil	
  ...........................................................................................................	
   	
   local	
  views	
  of	
  laf	
  .............................................................................................................	
   	
   walking	
  the	
  line	
  between	
  international	
  and	
  local	
  politics	
  ..............................................	
   	
   improving	
  laf’s	
  operational	
  capabilities	
  .........................................................................	
   	
   conclusion	
  .........................................................................................................................	
   	
   chapter	
  five:	
  maintaining	
  consent	
  at	
  the	
  local	
  level	
  .............................................	
   	
   introduction	
  ......................................................................................................................	
   	
   why	
  maintaining	
  consent	
  is	
  crucial	
  to	
  the	
  operation	
  ......................................................	
   	
   cimic	
  activities	
  .................................................................................................................	
   	
   cimic	
  services	
  ...................................................................................................................	
   	
   challenges	
  faced	
  and	
  lessons	
  learned	
  .............................................................................	
   	
   civil	
  affairs	
  .........................................................................................................................	
   	
   problem	
  prevention	
  ..........................................................................................................	
   	
   cultural	
  sensitivity	
  .............................................................................................................	
   	
   problem	
  solving	
  .................................................................................................................	
   	
   the	
  spanish	
  bus	
  crash	
  ...................................................................................................	
   	
   syrian	
  refugees	
  .............................................................................................................	
   	
   going	
  beyond	
  the	
  mandate	
  ..............................................................................................	
   	
   bridging	
  difficult	
  relationships	
  .........................................................................................	
   	
   conclusion	
  .........................................................................................................................	
   	
   conclusion	
  ................................................................................................................	
   	
   main	
  findings	
  ....................................................................................................................	
   	
   constraints	
  ........................................................................................................................	
   	
   	
   	
   legitimacy	
  .....................................................................................................................	
   	
   local	
  agency	
  ..................................................................................................................	
   	
   national	
  and	
  international	
  support	
  ..............................................................................	
   	
   where	
  unifil	
  does	
  not	
  succeed	
  ......................................................................................	
   	
   future	
  research	
  ................................................................................................................	
   	
   appendix	
  a:	
  resolution	
   	
  ...................................................................................	
   	
   appendix	
  b:	
  the	
  taif	
  agreement	
  ..............................................................................	
   	
   appendix	
  c:	
  key	
  political	
  parties	
  and	
  movements	
  in	
  lebanon	
  ................................	
   	
   bibliography	
  ..............................................................................................................	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   list	
  of	
  acronyms	
   ao	
   area	
  of	
  operations	
   apc	
   armoured	
  personnel	
  carrier	
   cao	
   civil	
  affairs	
  officer	
   cimic	
   civil	
  military	
  cooperation	
   dfs	
   department	
  of	
  field	
  support	
  (un	
   secretariat)	
   dpko	
   department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
  operations	
   (un	
  secretariat)	
   idf	
   israeli	
  defence	
  force	
   ied	
   improvised	
  explosive	
  device	
   laf	
   lebanese	
  armed	
  forces	
   nato	
   north	
  atlantic	
  treaty	
  organisation	
   ngo	
   non-­‐governmental	
  organisation	
   onuc	
   united	
  nations	
  operation	
  in	
  congo	
   pao	
   political	
  affairs	
  officer	
   qip	
   quick	
  impact	
  project	
   rpg	
   rocket	
  propelled	
  grenade	
   sla	
   south	
  lebanon	
  army	
   sofa	
   statement	
  of	
  forces	
  agreement	
   stl	
   special	
  tribunal	
  for	
  lebanon	
   tcc	
   troop	
  contributing	
  country	
   un	
   united	
  nations	
   undof	
   united	
  nations	
  disengagement	
  observer	
   force	
   unficyp	
   united	
  nations	
  force	
  in	
  cyprus	
   	
   	
   unga	
   united	
  nations	
  general	
  assembly	
   unhcr	
   united	
  nations	
  high	
  commissioner	
  for	
   refugees	
   unifil	
   united	
  nations	
  interim	
  force	
  in	
  lebanon	
   unmogip	
   united	
  nations	
  military	
  observer	
  group	
  in	
   india	
  and	
  pakistan	
   unsc	
   united	
  nations	
  security	
  council	
   unscol	
   united	
  nations	
  special	
  coordinator	
  for	
   lebanon	
   unsf	
   united	
  nations	
  security	
  force	
  in	
  west	
  new	
   guinea	
   untac	
   united	
  nations	
  transitional	
  authority	
  in	
   cambodia	
   untso	
   united	
  nations	
  truce	
  supervision	
   organisation	
   us	
  	
   united	
  states	
   	
   	
   introduction	
   on the outskirts of kfar shuba there is big pond, they collect the water for draining. this pond is used for cattle, mainly in summertime. now this pond is exactly on the blue line. it’s edge [is] on the blue line. and the blue line here is far from the technical fence some places [by] metres, some , something like that…and the technical fence is not a new one up there, it’s a very old one. one day, a cow came from the israeli side, found a gap in the technical fence, pushed the gap here and there and succeeded to come inside to come and drink water from the pond. what is the force up there? it’s indian. ok the first day it was one cow, the next day it was five cows, and so on and until it was cows! now you can’t say the cows were israeli, they were just cows from the israeli side. now who got upset? the shepherds, the lebanese shepherds! they keep the drinking water in the summer for their cattle. and this big flood of cows from the israeli side, they will lose water. so they complained to laf [lebanese armed forces], laf transferred the problem to unifil. unifil asked the israelis to stop allowing the cows to come in. they said we cannot stop the cows – they are cows come on, they are not people. you ask the cow to stop going outside? if the lebanese side doesn’t want the cows to come there, let them build a technical fence. of course, this is the technical fence, this is the blue line. so if the laf will build the line here, the israeli’s will consider it as a border, they swallow this place, about km. so laf said no, we are not going to build anything. israeli’s responsibility is to prevent this violation, otherwise we will let the shepherds kill the cows. the israelis said, if you kill the cows this is aggression against us! it was rising tension. and unfortunately if it was any other contingent, it was easy because the soldier will go to the cow and kick her away! but they are indians! they do not approach the cows! it’s impossible story but it happened! and it took months to solve it. how did we solve it at the end? unifil decided to build a technical fence around the pond only and with doors. whenever the cows come, they cannot get to the water. but when the lebanese shepherds will come, they will open the door let their sheep inside and they will close it when they leave. they made doors for this technical fence around the pond. introduction	
   since , the united nations interim force in lebanon (unifil) has stationed up to , troops to act as a buffer between the states of israel and lebanon. as the above quote demonstrates, the challenges faced by unifil troops on the ground can at times seem almost farcical. but it also highlights the sensitivity to territorial violations felt by both the named parties to the conflict. one day it is cows, but on another day, peacekeepers can be confronted with random rocket attacks from sub-state militias, violent civilian protests or a confrontation between 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  the	
  mission	
  mandate	
  provides	
  for	
  up	
  to	
   , .	
  	
  the	
  current	
  number	
  of	
  troops	
  serving	
  on	
  the	
  ground	
  is	
   ,	
   .	
   	
   	
   two militaries that has the potential to trigger a regional war. managing both inter and intrastate conflicts make unifil a complex mission despite the fact that was borne of an era when peacekeeping missions tended to be kept simple. how do we understand unifil today in the context of the changes that have occurred in peacekeeping over the past twenty years? i undertook to explore the work of the unifil mission because i wanted to understand this question. this thesis therefore investigates the work of unifil since the implementation of resolution in . i examine how the unifil mission continues to learn from developments in the peacekeeping literature. in particular, how does unifil negotiate a security role for itself in an environment where local civilians do not automatically view it as being on the side of ‘right’, but yet need it to feel secure from attacks launched by either of the warring parties? to date, there have been no in-depth detailed studies on the post- unifil mission (sometimes referred to as unifil ii). since the war and the revised mandate of resolution , there has been a very small body of literature on south lebanon which has looked at the effects of the war and the revised mandate, and peacebuilding efforts. scholarship that has examined the work of the unifil mission specifically is limited and mostly focused on technical aspects of the mission. for example, most research since unifil’s revised mandate has explored the legality and politics of the mission. murphy ( ) examined the use 	
  makdisi,	
  karim,	
  timur	
  goksul,	
  hans	
  bastian	
  hauck,	
  and	
  stuart	
  reigeluth,	
  unifil	
  ii:	
  emerging	
  and	
  evolving	
   european	
  engagement	
  in	
  lebanon	
  and	
  the	
  middle	
  east,	
  euromesco	
  paper,	
   );	
  makdisi,	
  karim,	
  'constructing	
   security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  for	
  lebanon	
  in	
  the	
  shadow	
  of	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  terror,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  hovsepian,	
  nubar,	
  ed.,	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  lebanon:	
  a	
  reader	
  (northhampton,	
  ma:	
  olive	
  branch	
   press,	
   );	
  nasu,	
  hitoshi,	
  'the	
  responsibility	
  to	
  react?	
  lessons	
  from	
  the	
  security	
  council's	
  response	
  to	
  the	
   southern	
  lebanon	
  crisis	
  of	
   ,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  jones,	
  bruce,	
  and	
  andrew	
   hart,	
  'keeping	
  middle	
  east	
  peace?	
  ,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  hamieh,	
  sylvia	
  christine,	
  and	
  roger	
  mac	
  ginty,	
  'a	
  very	
  political	
  reconstruction:	
  governance	
  and	
  reconstruction	
   in	
  lebanon	
  after	
  the	
   	
  war,'	
  disasters,	
   /s :	
  s -­‐s 	
  ( );	
  kingston,	
  paul,	
  'the	
  pitfalls	
  of	
  peacebuilding	
   from	
  below,'	
  international	
  journal,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  zahar,	
  marie-­‐joelle,	
  'liberal	
  interventions,	
  illiberal	
   outcomes:	
  the	
  united	
  nations,	
  western	
  powers	
  and	
  lebanon',	
  in	
  edward	
  newman,	
  roland	
  paris	
  and	
  oliver	
   richmond,	
  new	
  perspectives	
  on	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding	
  (tokyo:	
  united	
  nations	
  university	
  press	
  	
   );	
  mac	
  ginty,	
   roger,	
  'reconstructing	
  post-­‐war	
  lebanon:	
  a	
  challenge	
  to	
  the	
  liberal	
  peace?,'	
  conflict,	
  security	
  &	
  development,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  abi-­‐ezzi,	
  karen,	
  'lebanon:	
  confessionalism,	
  insitution	
  building,	
  and	
  the	
  challenges	
  of	
   securing	
  peace',	
  in	
  vanessa	
  shields	
  and	
  nicholas	
  d.	
  j.	
  baldwin,	
  beyond	
  settlement:	
  making	
  peace	
  last	
  after	
  civil	
   conflict	
  (madison,	
  nj:	
  fairleigh	
  dickinson	
  university	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
   	
   of force and rules of engagement; while hatto ( ) has examined the impact of the strategic military cell (smc) established in august to supervise the unifil ii mission in lebanon. the character of the unifil mission itself has received most focus from the perspective of how troops, from a variety of cultural and geopolitical backgrounds, navigate their roles and responsibilities with their rules of engagement. vuga ( ), for example, used the unifil mission to investigate the effect of cultural differences between troop contingents in multinational peace operations. liegeois ( ) used the example of belgian peacekeepers to examine whether francophone peacekeepers deployed to francophone areas were more efficient. ruffa ( ) analysed the drivers of perceptions of security of different nationality troops in the unifil mission and how this affected the way they behaved towards the local population. in sum, there are currently few studies that examine the interactions between both military and civilian staff within unifil, and local actors (civilian, military and political) from both perspectives. in terms of the broader literature, the majority of research in the past twenty years analysing peace operations has researched intrastate war, rather than interstate war and this research has also largely focused on heavy footprint missions in the post cold war era. researching the unifil mission is useful to help identify how much effect light footprint missions have on their security environments, particularly in light of current debates about the right weight of a peacebuilding operation footprint. therefore this thesis asks ) how do peace operations influence their security environment at the local level? and ) what factors effect local engagement? 	
  murphy,	
  ray,	
  un	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  lebanon,	
  somalia	
  and	
  kosovo	
  (cambridge:	
  cambridge	
  university	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
  hatto,	
  ronald,	
  'un	
  command	
  and	
  control	
  capabilities:	
  lessons	
  from	
  unifil's	
  strategic	
  military	
   cell,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  vuga,	
  janja,	
  'cultural	
  differences	
  in	
  multinational	
  peace	
  operations:	
  a	
  slovenian	
  perspective,'	
  international	
   peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  liégeois,	
  michel,	
  'making	
  sense	
  of	
  a	
  francophone	
  perspective	
  on	
  peace	
  operations:	
  the	
  case	
  of	
  belgium	
  as	
  a	
   minofrancophone	
  state,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  ruffa,	
  chiara,	
  'what	
  peacekeepers	
  think	
  and	
  do:	
  an	
  exploratory	
  study	
  of	
  french,	
   ghanaian,	
  italian,	
  and	
  south	
  korean	
  armies	
  in	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  interim	
  force	
  in	
  lebanon,'	
  armed	
  forces	
  and	
   society,	
  prepublished/ 	
  april	
   :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  paris,	
  roland,	
  'saving	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding,'	
  review	
  of	
  international	
  studies,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  see	
  page	
   .	
   	
   	
   peacekeeping	
  operations	
   un peacekeeping has existed in some form since , with the creation of the united nations truce supervision organisation (untso) in (then) palestine; but it was never part of the original mandate of the united nations. the enormous changes that have been made to peacekeeping since the early missions reflect how the organisation was learning on the job. another surprising element is that many of the oldest peacekeeping missions are still going today, situated as they are in the buffer zones of unresolved conflicts: kashmir, cyprus, palestine and lebanon. this is reflective of the nature of peacekeeping today: older style missions exist alongside more modern operations with complex mandates; and older style missions have over time incorporated more complex peacebuilding tasks into their operations. peacekeeping operations have changed over time, and so too have the peacekeepers themselves, the level of civilian staff in peacekeeping missions has increased, as have police forces and other specialists in justice and governance. the un itself does not have a definition of peacekeeping in its charter. however, there are two articles that refer to the concept of the maintenance of international peace and security, chapter vi and chapter vii. chapter vi provides for the peaceful settlement of disputes by, among other things, negotiation and adjudication; and chapter vii contains the collective security provisions which were intended to be the foundation of its policy on the maintenance of global peace. the un has largely avoided providing strict definitions of peacekeeping; however in it did provide a taxonomy of the tasks that comprise peacekeeping which help to provide clarity on the many varied roles of peacekeepers: 	
  these	
  are	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  peacekeeping	
  force	
  in	
  cyprus	
  (unficyp);	
  united	
  nations	
  truce	
  supervision	
   organization	
  (untso)	
  in	
  jerusalem;	
  united	
  nations	
  military	
  observer	
  group	
  in	
  india	
  and	
  pakistan	
  (unmogip);	
   and	
  united	
  nations	
  disengagement	
  observer	
  force	
  (undof)	
  in	
  lebanon.	
   	
  murphy,	
  un	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  lebanon,	
  somalia	
  and	
  kosovo.	
   	
   	
   military	
   civilian	
   assist	
  in	
  implementing	
  peace	
  agreement	
   help	
  former	
  belligerents	
  implement	
  complex	
  peace	
   agreements	
   monitor	
  a	
  ceasefire	
  or	
  cessation	
  of	
  hostilities	
   support	
  delivery	
  of	
  humanitarian	
  assistance	
   provide	
  a	
  secure	
  environment	
   assist	
  in	
  the	
  disarmament,	
  demobilization	
  and	
   reintegration	
  of	
  ex-­‐combatants	
   prevent	
  the	
  outbreak	
  or	
  spillover	
  of	
  conflict	
   supervise	
  elections	
   lead	
  states	
  or	
  territories	
  through	
  a	
  transition	
  to	
  stable	
   government	
  based	
  on	
  democratic	
  principles.	
   build	
  rule	
  of	
  law	
  capacity	
   administer	
  a	
  territory	
  for	
  a	
  transitional	
  period	
   promote	
  respect	
  for	
  human	
  rights	
   	
   assist	
  economic	
  recovery	
   	
   set	
  up	
  transitional	
  administration	
  as	
  a	
  territory	
  moves	
   to	
  independence	
   table : united nations peacekeeper tasks as the above table shows, peacekeeping operations no longer simply comprise a military force on the ground acting as a buffer between two states at war. peacebuilding activities have been incorporated into most peace operations with key roles for both military and civilian actors. this thesis further illustrates the fact that unifil has incorporated both traditional peacekeeping and peacebuilding tasks into its operational remit. further development of the un definition of peacekeeping has been the creation of five different categories under the heading of ‘peace and security activities’ of which peacekeeping is listed as being one of a number. this emerged as part of a un publication detailing the principles and guidelines of peacekeeping operations in an attempt to clarify a peacekeeping doctrine. the categories listed in this document were: conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace enforcement and peacebuilding. here peacekeeping was defined as: ‘the use of military, police and civilian personnel to lay the foundations of sustainable peace.’ the blurring of the lines therefore between peacekeeping and peacebuilding has gradually meant that peace operations comprise a range of functions from all five of these categories. 	
  format	
  taken	
  from	
  bellamy,	
  alex	
  j.,	
  and	
  paul	
  d.	
  williams,	
  understanding	
  peacekeeping	
  (cambridge:	
  polity	
   press,	
   )	
  p. .	
  	
  original	
  content	
  from	
  united	
  nations,	
  handbook	
  on	
  united	
  nations	
  multidimensional	
   peacekeeping	
  operations,	
  (new	
  york:	
  peacekeeping	
  best	
  practices	
  section,	
   ),	
  pp. -­‐ .	
   	
  department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
  operations,	
  united	
  nations	
  peacekeeping	
  operations:	
  principles	
  and	
  guidelines,	
   (new	
  york:	
  peacekeeping	
  best	
  practices	
  section,	
   ),	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   a review of the literature on defining peacekeeping by bellamy and williams, reveals that the necessary components of a useful definition are the following: ) they must take account of the fact that peacekeeping operations are not always run by the un; ) they must explain the underlying purpose of a peacekeeping operation; and ) they must be explicit enough to explain what a peacekeeping force consists of. in their book understanding peacekeeping, they provide a definition of peacekeeping which takes account of these issues: peace operations involve the expeditionary use of uniformed personnel (police and/or military) with or without un authorisation, with a mandate or programme to: ) assist in the prevention of armed conflict by supporting a peace process; ) serve as an instrument to observe or assist in the implementation of ceasefires or peace agreements; or ) enforce ceasefires, peace agreements or the will of the un security council in order to build stable peace. the un peacekeeping operations manual ( ) makes clearer mention of the civilian role in peace operations: peacekeeping is a technique designed to preserve the peace, however fragile, where fighting has been halted, and to assist in implementing agreements achieved by the peacemakers. over the years, peacekeeping has evolved from a primarily military model of observing cease-fires and the separation of forces after inter-state wars, to incorporate a complex model of many elements – military, police and civilian – working together to help lay the foundations for sustainable peace. both definitions are useful for clarifying what peacekeeping is for the purpose of this thesis. unifil is classified in the literature as a ‘traditional’ mission and therefore it is important to briefly explain what this term means. this label refers to peacekeeping missions that hew closely to the traditional principles of peacekeeping which are consent, impartiality and minimal use of force. the majority of this type of mission were established before the end of the cold war and often involved the imposition of a neutral force between the armies of two states at war. there are a number of traditional missions based in the middle east. this is due to the dynamics of the 	
  bellamy	
  and	
  williams,	
  understanding	
  peacekeeping.	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
  department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
  operations,	
  'united	
  nations	
  peacekeeping	
  operations:	
  principles	
  and	
  guidelines'.	
   	
  united	
  nations,	
  'handbook	
  on	
  united	
  nations	
  multidimensional	
  peacekeeping	
  operations'.	
   	
   	
   bipolar international system during the cold war, which meant that certain areas were considered by russia and the us to be ‘off limits’ for peacekeeping missions as they lay too close to their spheres of influence. the middle east was considered not to be firmly placed in either’s sphere, but conflicts that took place there had the capacity to escalate and draw both the great powers into a war, which neither or them wanted. a number of these missions remain there today in the absence of a resolution to the conflicts that triggered the interventions in the first place. traditional peacekeeping usually takes place in the period between a ceasefire and a political settlement and is comprised of activities that are suited to a holding phase or the creation of ‘a political space that will facilitate a political resolution of the conflict’. as such the activities usually attributed to a traditional mission are those of monitoring borders, verifying demilitarization and establishing buffer zones. however, bellamy and williams make the point that there is no consensus on what activities constitute traditional peacekeeping. this thesis demonstrates that the unifil mission has evolved to include both traditional and more modern peacebuilding activities. currently in the peacekeeping literature two competing models of peacekeeping exist which are termed ‘heavy footprint’ and ‘light footprint’. since the creation of more complex peace operations, (to be discussed in chapter one), there has been a debate about how involved peace operations should be in the political and institutional structures of the states in which they intervene. this debate has come about as the result of the failure of more complex peace operations to achieve their goals. paris ( ) describes the issues in the debate thus: on one hand… [international peacebuilders] were under pressure to expand the scope and duration of operations in order to build functioning and effective governmental institutions in war-torn states, and to avoid problems of incomplete reform and premature departure seen in east timor and elsewhere. on the other 	
  macqueen,	
  norrie,	
  peacekeeping	
  and	
  the	
  international	
  system	
  (abingdon:	
  routledge,	
   ).	
   	
  bellamy	
  and	
  williams,	
  understanding	
  peacekeeping,	
  p. 	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
   	
   hand, they were also under pressure to reduce the level of international intrusion in the domestic political process of the host states. achieving the first goal seemed to require a relatively ‘heavy footprint’, or a large and long-term international presence with extensive powers, particularly in cases where governmental institutions are dysfunctional or non-existent; whereas the second goal seemed to require a relatively ‘light footprint’, a small and unobtrusive presence that would maximise the freedom of local actors to pursue their own peacebuilding goals. squaring these two objectives became – and remains today – a crucial conceptual and strategic challenge for practitioners. simply put, if both the heavy footprint and the light footprint are problematic, what is the ‘right’ footprint? traditional missions usually fall into the category of light footprint. this is in no small part due to the era in which they were born whereby cold war politics meant that there was far greater emphasis on ensuring non-interference in the internal political structures of states in ideologically ‘neutral’ territory. this is the case with the unifil mission as its work is based at the subnational level and it is uninvolved in lebanese domestic political processes. in order to examine the details of the day-to-day work of peacekeepers, this thesis divides the praxis of the unifil peace operation into three levels of engagement: the international, national and local. at the international level of engagement i describe how peacekeeping troops (who monitor the blue line) and political affairs officers (paos) liaise with the named parties to prevent the resumption of conflict and provide solutions when incidents occur. at the national level, i show how paos and civil affairs officers (caos) are engaged in confidence and capacity building two national institutions: the lebanese armed forces (laf) and local government. at the local level, i focus on the work of caos and civil military cooperation officers (cimic) who liaise with civilians in the area of operations to maintain local consent for the mission in order to ensure the security of peacekeeping patrols on the ground, and work to prevent and resolve problems that arise between the local population and the peacekeeping troops. the research questions asked in this thesis ultimately examine the relationship between unifil staff and those local actors who must engage with unifil on a regular basis. 	
  paris,	
  'saving	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding',	
  p.	
   .	
   	
  although	
  it	
  should	
  be	
  noted	
  that	
  in	
  international	
  relations,	
  the	
  concept	
  of	
  state	
  sovereignty	
  was	
  then	
  and	
  still	
   is	
  applied	
  in	
  a	
  highly	
  selective	
  manner.	
   	
   	
   case	
  study	
  selection	
  and	
  methodology:	
   the case of unifil can be classified as a deviant case according to a list of classifications provided by gerring ( ). a deviant case is one that ‘by reference to some general understanding of a topic (either a specific theory or common sense), demonstrates a surprising value’. unifil is a deviant case because it differs considerably from all other traditional missions that are still running. it does so in a number of ways: ( ) it has a revised mandate ( ) the mission has had to deal with the effects of both inter and intra-state war; and ( ) it is much larger than all the other missions that are its logical comparators. ultimately unifil is an ‘old’ mission with modern components: it has a new revised mandate ( ) which comprises ‘old’ inter-state buffer zone responsibilities but it also has newer peacebuilding activities which have been incorporated in line with the developments that have occurred in peacebuilding praxis in the past twenty years. one purpose of using a deviant case study as an exploratory form of analysis is to understand whether the case is genuinely unique or whether findings from this case can be generalised across to other case studies. the findings generated from this research at the micro-level have identified traits consistent with those found in the literature on other peace operations (this is discussed in chapter one), as well as identifying new linkages between different factors that promote agency on the ground. given this analysis requires a sense of the mutual perceptions of unifil officers and civilians on the ground, it requires a qualitative, ethnographic approach. this is described by bray ( ) as ‘a naturalistic approach whose main data-gathering and analysing techniques consist of 	
  gerring,	
  john,	
  case	
  study	
  research:	
  principles	
  and	
  practices	
  (cambridge:	
  cambridge	
  university	
  press,	
   ),	
   p. .	
   	
  the	
  unifil	
  mission	
  currently	
  has	
   , 	
  troops,	
  but	
  is	
  mandated	
  for	
  up	
  to	
   , .	
  	
  of	
  the	
  other	
  four	
  traditional	
   missions,	
  undof	
  has	
   , 	
  troops	
  and	
  unficyp	
   .	
  	
  untso	
  and	
  unmogip	
  are	
  observer	
  missions	
  only	
  with	
  no	
   peacekeeping	
  troops	
  assigned	
  to	
  the	
  mission.	
   	
   	
   participant observation and open-ended interviewing’. the purpose of ethnography is to understand interactions, power relations and micro processes in the actual environment they occur. the aim here is not to conclusively prove something, rather it is to explore and understand the ‘why and how’ of processes in order to formulate a hypothesis for testing across multiple case studies. conducting research using ethnographic methods means the researcher must be reflexive and aware of their influence of their presence on proceedings. neufeld ( ) defines reflexivity thus: [reflexivity] can be understood to entail three core elements: (i) self-awareness regarding underlying premises, (ii) the recognition of the inherently politico- normative dimension of paradigms and the normal science tradition they sustain, and (iii) the affirmation that reasoned judgements about the merits of contending paradigms are possible in the absence of a neutral observation language. my main impressions in terms of observing my influence on the ground as i conducted the research was that all respondents felt very comfortable telling me what they thought of unifil, good and bad. they did not appear to be shy or nervous about this. i never obtained the feeling that respondents were reluctant to speak with me, or did not want to share their true feelings on the topic. as the year passed, i realised that my presence engendered a stronger reaction from some participants than they might ordinarily express possibly because they believed that perhaps what they said would be relayed back to the international community through my thesis. to conduct this research i spent a year in lebanon conducting interviews and observing the unifil mission at work in the area of operations. within that time i lived for six months in the shi’ite neighbourhood of dahiyeh which is a suburb south of beirut known to be predominantly 	
  bray,	
  zoe,	
  'ethnographic	
  approaches',	
  in	
  donatella	
  della	
  porta	
  and	
  michael	
  keating,	
  approaches	
  and	
   methodologies	
  in	
  the	
  social	
  sciences:	
  a	
  pluralist	
  perspective	
  (cambridge:	
  cambridge	
  university	
  press,	
   ),	
   p. .	
   	
  della	
  porta	
  and	
  keating	
  argue	
  that	
  qualitative	
  methods	
  enable	
  the	
  researcher	
  to	
  understand	
  the	
  ‘why	
  and	
  how’	
   of	
  a	
  research	
  topic	
  more	
  than	
  the	
  ‘what,	
  where	
  and	
  when’	
  obtained	
  from	
  quantitative	
  methodology.	
  	
  see	
  della	
   porta,	
  donatella,	
  and	
  michael	
  keating,	
  approaches	
  and	
  methodologies	
  in	
  the	
  social	
  sciences	
  (cambridge:	
   cambridge	
  university	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
  neufeld,	
  mark,	
  'relexivity	
  and	
  international	
  relations	
  theory,'	
  millennium,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  pp. -­‐ .	
   	
   	
   occupied by southern lebanese who migrated to beirut in waves as a result of the five successive conflicts in south lebanon. it is also a known hizbullah stronghold. i lived there because i wanted to observe the type of civilians that unifil interact with on a regular basis, the majority of whom are shi’a. owing to security reasons it was not possible for me to live in the area of operations, and therefore residing in dahiyeh was a good way of interacting informally with shi’a from the south of lebanon, many of whom retain property in the south and visit there frequently. this enabled me to observe informally the local culture but also to establish informally whether or not what i heard about unifil in interviews conducted in the area of operations corresponded with what people from the area said informally about unifil. as an arabic speaker, and a speaker of lebanese dialect, this experience provided a deeply ethnographic insight into local southern culture the techniques i employed in this research were participant observation and semi-structured interviews. participant	
  observation	
   over the course of a year, i observed a variety of interactions between unifil and stakeholders in the unifil mission whom i classify as members of the lebanese public and individuals in the named parties to the conflict. during the research, i was afforded many opportunities to observe unifil in the area of operations, interacting with the local population: on border patrols, medical and veterinary outreach visits, national day celebrations and the social calls of civil affairs officers. this enabled me to understand more about the ‘why and how’ of the interaction between unifil and the local population in terms of what unifil did and the local population response. 	
  in	
  this	
  area	
  of	
  beirut	
  most	
  people	
  do	
  not	
  speak	
  english	
  or	
  french,	
  only	
  arabic.	
   	
  owing	
  to	
  political	
  issues	
  it	
  was	
  not	
  possible	
  to	
  observe/interview	
  members	
  of	
  the	
  israeli	
  defence	
  force	
  (idf)	
  in	
   israel	
  or	
  lebanon.	
   	
  della	
  porta	
  and	
  keating,	
  approaches	
  and	
  methodologies	
  in	
  the	
  social	
  sciences.	
  	
   	
   	
   interviews	
   i conducted fifty interviews, of which thirty-seven were face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with a cross-section of stakeholders. all of these interviews were recorded and transcribed in full. these included unifil military staff which included cimic officers and peacekeepers themselves from three battalions (irish, indian and ghanaian). within the unifil mission i also interviewed civilian staff, namely political affairs officers (paos) and civil affairs officers (caos). other interviewees included laf officers; a journalist who specialises in reporting on unifil and the south of lebanon, local academics, unifil’s former spokesperson ( - ); and a wide variety of local civilians. civilians interviewed ranged from agricultural workers and villagers, to local business owners, local municipality politicians, former local politicians and local journalists from the area who still work and live there. some respondents had limited interaction with unifil and provided their impressions more through observations. others were more involved with unifil and had more to say about their dealings with them on a regular basis. some of the fifty interviews conducted were conducted informally with people from the south of lebanon during my time living in dahiyeh and were not recorded and transcribed. in general these were people who had properties in the area and who spent a fair amount of time in the south during their lifetime. other researchers using ethnographic methods have used the same approach in order to canvas as wide an opinion as possible and as part of the observational, ‘in situ’ aspect of this type of research. i did not use quotes from these informal encounters in my research for ethical reasons as i had not asked permission to use their comments in my research. i merely used the material as information to inform the thesis and to corroborate views that i heard in my formal interviews with civilians. all the formal interviews were recorded and transcribed. around percent of interviews were conducted in english according to the preference of the interviewee. those conducted in arabic 	
  for	
  example,	
  autessere,	
  severine,	
  the	
  trouble	
  with	
  the	
  congo.	
  local	
  violence	
  and	
  the	
  failure	
  of	
  international	
   peacebuilding	
  (cambridge:	
  cambridge	
  university	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
   	
   were translated and transcribed into english. all formal interviewees gave their consent to participate in the research and their identity has been kept anonymous with the exception of two interviewees. both pouligny and autesserre note that this kind of ethnographic research generates ‘inconvenient truths’, whereby no matter how many interviews one conducts, it is impossible to simplify views into discrete categories because for every person who expresses one opinion, someone else will have a different view. whilst this research was unable, owing to time and resources, to conduct as many interviews as the above two studies, the same issue arose. i have tried to incorporate the myriad voices into this research without coming across as too contradictory. there is, as i note later, a plurality to be found in the views of all respondents. official views differed from personal views; religious views clashed with the desire for personal security; political views about the unifil mission clashed with personal views about individual unifil staff, many of whom were loved. interviews were sourced on a rolling basis, termed ‘snowballing’ whereby a respondent will recommend another person who might be suitable for interviewing. unifil caos were extremely helpful in providing me access to civilians in the course of my research, who as noted above were happy to speak with me openly on the topic. my own knowledge of the region also afforded me access to respondents as i have lived and studied in syria and lebanon periodically since . what the ethnographic method identified is that within the structure of the unifil peace operation, certain variables improved the opportunity for individuals to effect influence over their environment. in the case of unifil staff, these factors were time, autonomy and local knowledge. 	
  i	
  interviewed	
  the	
  journalist	
  nick	
  blanford	
  and	
  the	
  former	
  spokesman	
  for	
  unifil	
  timor	
  goksul,	
  both	
  of	
  whom	
   were	
  more	
  than	
  happy	
  to	
  go	
  on	
  the	
  record.	
   	
  pouligny,	
  beatrice,	
  peace	
  operations	
  from	
  below:	
  un	
  missions	
  and	
  local	
  people	
  (bloomfield,	
  ct:	
  kumarian	
   press,	
   );	
  autessere,	
  the	
  trouble	
  with	
  the	
  congo.	
  local	
  violence	
  and	
  the	
  failure	
  of	
  international	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
   	
   the	
  argument	
   this thesis asks two main questions: ( ) how do peace operations influence their security environment? ( ) what factors effect unifil local engagement? this thesis identified three factors – time, autonomy and local knowledge – and argues that the presence of these factors improve the agency of unifil officers on the ground. furthermore i argue that each of these three factors generate benefits that also work to enhance effectiveness. for clarity, a diagram is provided below: 	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   figure : the factors that facilitate agency amongst unifil staff the first factor of time, relates to the importance of temporality in the work of actors at the subnational level; in particular continuity. paos and caos who have worked with unifil in excess of ten years have developed strong relationships with key individuals amongst the named parties: the israeli defence force (idf) and the lebanese armed forces. this generates three key benefits: trust, institutional memory and consistency of effort. i argue these are the positive benefits that come from retaining staff over a longer period of time. whilst there is an argument which contends that long-term staff can become stale or corrupt, my research found that the constant rotations provided more of a problem for peacekeepers and the local population owing 	
  moore,	
  adam,	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  practice	
  (ithaca:	
  cornell	
  university	
  press,	
   ),	
  pp. -­‐ .	
   	
   	
   to the lack of institutional memory. there are several examples: in the case of peacekeepers, it is always the newly rotated troops who commit cultural errors, or take a wrong turn on a patrol causing annoyance to locals. at the level of the force commander, laf officers complained about the time it took for force commanders to learn about what had gone before in order for them to become useful. civilians complained about the rotations of peacekeepers because no sooner had they built a relationship with a battalion then they were gone again. the problem of short-termism also became apparent in the different relationship cimic officers have with the municipalities which is instrumental and based on material factors, as compared to the relationship that caos have which appears to be based on relationships built over time which have generated genuine trust and liking. this is not just because caos are lebanese, paos, many of whom are international staff, also generated trustful relationships with the named parties. the issue of time and continuity is of course a double-edged sword. had there been a successful peace process in the last thirty years, the unifil mission would not still be there. however, the experience of the last twenty years has shown that peace operations that simply aim for a quick exit are not always the most successful. as a result, in situations where a peace process has not been formalised, it stands to reason that maintaining the status quo can be more of a positive than a negative, as this thesis argues. the second factor that facilitates the success of actors at the subnational level is autonomy. this issue was also identified by howard ( ) and moore ( ) who found in their comparative studies of peace operations that high levels of interference by the international community made officers less effective on the ground. in the unifil mission at both the local and international levels of engagement, incidents arise that have the potential to destroy it: at the international level, that is resumption of war and at the local level, that is the loss of consent for the mission. this 	
  paris,	
  roland,	
  at	
  war's	
  end:	
  building	
  peace	
  after	
  civil	
  conflict	
  (cambridge:	
  cambridge	
  university	
  press,	
   );	
   jett,	
  dennis	
  c.,	
  why	
  peacekeeping	
  fails	
  (new	
  york:	
  st	
  martin's	
  press,	
   );	
  sending,	
  ole	
  jacob,	
  why	
   peacebuilders	
  fail	
  to	
  secure	
  ownership	
  and	
  be	
  sensitive	
  to	
  context,	
  (oslo:	
  norwegian	
  institute	
  of	
  international	
   affairs,	
   );	
  polman,	
  linda,	
  we	
  did	
  nothing:	
  why	
  the	
  truth	
  doesn't	
  always	
  come	
  out	
  when	
  the	
  un	
  goes	
  in	
   (london:	
  penguin,	
   ).	
   	
  howard,	
  lise	
  morje,	
  un	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  civil	
  wars	
  (cambridge:	
  cambridge	
  university	
  press,	
   );	
  moore,	
   peacebuilding	
  in	
  practice.	
   	
   	
   thesis found that autonomy facilitated creativity and spontaneity in working practices. examples provided in this thesis show how these traits enabled paos and caos to problem solve effectively in situations of high tension where failure would have had serious consequences. equally, unifil’s peacebuilding work at the national level demonstrates how a lack of autonomy hinders progress. local knowledge was the final overarching factor that assisted actors working at the local level in successfully maintaining international peace and security. this thesis found that high levels of local knowledge facilitated contingency and sensitivity to local sentiment. the environment in which unifil officers work has experienced both interstate and intrastate conflict in the past thirty years. tensions still exist between the different religious communities; and sub-state militias representing a variety of political interests receive support from the local population. hizbullah is the main faction but sunni-backed islamic groups also still operate in the area. as such, unifil officers at the subnational level need to carefully consider local political and religious sentiment in the course of their interactions with the local population to avoid giving offence. furthermore, contingency is facilitated by local knowledge when problem-solving and in crisis management situations with the local population. contributions	
  of	
  the	
  study	
   this thesis asked the following questions: ( ) how do peace operations influence their security environment? and ( ) what factors effect local engagement? this research has found that at the subnational or local level, unifil are able to influence their security environment and contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security. they do this by working at the local level to prevent small incidents from developing into larger conflicts. the unifil mission has achieved this in three main of ways: first by monitoring, reporting and intervening in blue line violations as part of a response mechanism, to avoid escalation. second, through the preventative mechanisms of liaising between the idf and the laf to encourage cooperation and produce micro security agreements to prevent misunderstandings. third, unifil has a very 	
   	
   comprehensive local engagement mechanism that enables the mission to maintain local consent and avoid being affected by intrastate conflict. in sum, this thesis demonstrates how management of every aspect of potential blue line violations prevents incidents from escalating into sustained conflict. and the last eight years of peace would suggest that these micro- protocols have added up to form a continuing peace. this research has identified three factors that effect or facilitate the above mechanisms and therefore agency at the local level. they are: time, autonomy and local knowledge. this research has identified that benefits accrue from these three factors: time is linked to the benefits of trust, institutional memory and consistency of effort. autonomy is linked with the benefits of creativity and spontaneity. local knowledge produces cultural sensitivity and contingency in emergency situations. this research also highlighted the problem of the gap between the international legitimacy of the mandate and its local legitimacy. resolution is accepted by the international community as being a just solution to the war between israel and hizbullah. this view is not shared by the local population, who view it as not having taken account of the conditions under which the conflict began and is therefore biased towards israel. this acts as a constraint on unifil staff at the local and international levels of engagement. this research also discovered that there is a dual dynamic in the relationship between local civilians and international interveners: both parties have agency. currently there has been a focus in the peacebuilding literature on the importance of local engagement. i contend engaging with local actors on the ground is crucial, but those at the local level have the capacity for agency and desired outcomes and this should receive more critical acknowledgement in the literature. local actors are adept at pursuing their own goals and objectives in the relationship as political actors and not just as non-descript civilians. this research also shows how research at the micro-level of a peace operation reveals the contradictions and nuances in the relationship a peacekeeping mission has with the local 	
   	
   population. amongst all interviewees, both unifil staff and civilians, contradictions emerged between personal views, religious-political views, and security needs. amongst the civilian population lay the biggest challenge lay in managing their relationship with hizbullah and unifil in light of these conflicting loyalties. the	
  structure	
  of	
  the	
  thesis	
   the remainder of this thesis comprises five chapters and a conclusion. chapter one provides a discussion of the current literature on peace operations. section one provides a definition of liberal peacebuilding and establishes that most missions running today comprise elements of peacekeeping and peacebuilding and therefore a review of the peacebuilding literature is relevant to the research in this thesis. section two provides a brief history of the concept to illustrate how peacekeeping missions evolved into missions that comprise both peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities. section three then presents a discussion of the literature on peacebuilding and the debates in scholarship on the topic which come from two main theoretical perspectives: liberalism and critical theory. i argue that the recent critical turn in the peace operations literature is helping to make the study of peace operations a richer theoretical endeavour and enable scholars to connect up the practice of peacebuilding with theories of power and make it more relevant to the study of international relations. i note that the majority of research on peacebuilding has focused on the international and national levels and has not explored the local level interactions of peace operations. however, there is a small, emerging body of literature on the local level of peace operations that has developed over the past ten years, which is discussed in section four of this chapter. the importance of this new literature is expressed well by jeni whalan who makes the point that peace operations have a ‘two-faced’ nature in that they ‘straddle the international-domestic divide of international relations theory’, but as whalan notes, ‘analysis of their local face is sorely lacking’. in the chapter, i identify a growing interest in focusing on the local level interactions of peace operations in order to 	
  whalan,	
  jeni,	
  how	
  peace	
  operations	
  work:	
  power,	
  legitimacy,	
  effectiveness	
  (oxford:	
  oxford	
  university	
  press,	
   ),	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   understand how agency at this level informs outcomes. i identify studies that have made the case for understanding how contemporary peacekeeping missions engage at the local, or ‘subnational’ level, but few have sought to apply these new methods to the few traditional ‘light footprint’ missions that remain in place today – this is my contribution in seeking to understand the ‘local face’ of the unifil mission in lebanon. chapter two provides context for the fieldwork chapters with a brief history of the unifil mission in lebanon from to the present day. the chapter is divided into three sections. the first examines the early days of the mission and demonstrates two important factors that are relevant to the mission today. first, that the unifil mission (sometimes called unifil i) was established in the absence of there being a peace to keep, something that is not recommended in peacekeeping practice currently and this has shaped how the mission developed into what it is today. in addition some of the parties to the conflict were not named in the original mandate: this point is also relevant when considering the security challenges faced by the unifil operation in its current form. the second point of note from this era, is that the humanitarian work performed by the peacekeeping troops in the early days of the mission (prior to and resolution ) remains appreciated today. affection for unifil under the new mandate is in no small way due to local historical memory of the humanitarian acts of peacekeepers in the first unifil mission whilst the area was under israeli occupation. section two of this chapter discusses the circumstances that gave rise to the united nations security council issuing a new mandate for the mission in the form of resolution . this mandate brokered peace between israel and hizbullah but did not name hizbullah as a party to the agreement; this has made maintaining the peace harder for unifil as they are not able to deal directly with hizbullah’s military wing in the post- era. furthermore, this section explains why there is currently gap in perceptions of the legitimacy of the revised mandate at the international and local levels. the final section discusses the current strategic environment in the south of lebanon. i describe the 	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
  operations,	
  'united	
  nations	
  peacekeeping	
  operations:	
  principles	
   and	
  guidelines'.	
  	
   	
  as	
  will	
  be	
  shown	
  in	
  this	
  chapter,	
  the	
  second	
  mandate	
  repeated	
  many	
  of	
  the	
  mistakes	
  of	
  the	
  first.	
   	
   	
   position of all the relevant parties to the mandate – named and unnamed - in order to clarify the political position of all the stakeholders. i also briefly discuss how the syrian crisis has affected the area of operations and the calculations of key stakeholders, israel and hizbullah. chapter three describes how unifil works at the local level to reduce international tensions and this is one way it influences its security environment. management of the blue line is the most important activity of the unifil peacekeeping force owing to the potential for violations to escalate into full-scale conflict. this research reveals that that time and local knowledge play a key role in enabling unifil paos and peacekeepers to work effectively. this chapter divides unifil’s work at the international level into two categories: response and prevention. section one discusses unifil’s response tactics to blue line violations. these tactics are employed on a daily basis and involve peacekeeping troops and the laf on the ground. their activities include: attending to all violations at the scene; providing a visible security presence; dispensing cautions to potential and actual violators of the blue line; educating locals on the location of the blue line; patrolling with the laf and using the laf to disperse citizens where needed. in situations where peacekeepers have to advise locals on respecting the blue line they need to demonstrate sensitivity to local sentiment. working alongside them in the background are the political affairs officers (paos) who are: liaising between the parties in cases where hostilities break out; reporting all violations to unifil headquarters (and subsequently to new york); conducting investigations and reporting the results to both the named parties and un headquarters in new york. section two evaluates the preventative mechanisms paos have put in place at the international level in order to prevent a recommencement of hostilities. this section shows how time plays an important role in trust generation which assist unifil’s preventative mechanisms. this section includes a discussion of: the tripartite monthly meetings as a mechanism for building trust and confidence; liaison as a strategy for de-escalating incidents in order to prevent the resumption of hostilities; and brokering micro security arrangements between the named parties to . section two also examines more deeply how paos demonstrate impartiality and build trust between the parties and themselves. i discuss the 	
   	
   professional and personal attributes required by staff to conduct their work as they manage one of the world’s most sensitive and potentially explosive ‘borders’. in the final part examples of actual incidents are provided to illustrate how unifil has dealt with actual confrontations that have occurred. chapter four explores unifil’s peacebuilding work at the national level and argues that the mission does not only engage in a traditional ‘keeping the peace’ role, but has proactively sought a peacebuilding role. it reveals that that autonomy, time and local knowledge are the key factors enabling unifil caos and paos to work effectively. in this chapter i also present the point of view of senior laf officers and civilians to provide a multidimensional view of unifil engagement at the national level. i argue time plays a positive role in the peacebuilding work of unifil because it enables consistency of effort and institutional memory. caos and paos demonstrate creativity in the way they attempt to raise the profile of both the laf and municipal government and this is driven by the relative autonomy in the way they work which means they are able to spontaneously grasp opportunities for funding and profile building as and when they occur. this chapter also illustrates how a lack of international and national cooperation constrains unifil actors at the subnational level. unifil assists the national government of lebanon in two main ways: capacity building the lebanese armed forces (laf) and local government; and working to consolidate the authority of both institutions in the south. the first section assesses the limitations of unifil’s ability to generate local confidence in municipal government and explains how budgetary constraints by national government are the main hindrance. the second section discusses unifil’s work in capacity building the laf and again highlights how the israel lobby constrains unifil’s ability to build up the capacity of the laf. in chapter five i examine the local engagement of unifil actors at the subnational level: specifically the work of caos and cimic and identifies the challenges faced by peacekeeping 	
  i	
  have	
  tried	
  to	
  avoid	
  use	
  of	
  the	
  word	
  border	
  owing	
  to	
  the	
  fact	
  that	
  the	
  blue	
  line	
  is	
  a	
  line	
  of	
  withdrawal.	
  	
   currently	
  there	
  is	
  no	
  officially	
  agreed	
  border	
  between	
  the	
  two	
  states.	
  	
  however,	
  as	
  the	
  line	
  divides	
  two	
  states	
  i	
   have	
  used	
  it	
  here	
  to	
  clarify	
  this	
  point,	
  in	
  speech	
  marks	
  to	
  highlight	
  its	
  non-­‐legal	
  status	
  under	
  international	
  law.	
   	
   	
   missions on the ground. it reveals that that autonomy, time and local knowledge are all key factors enabling unifil caos and paos to work effectively. i use commentary from both unifil staff and local civilians to describe the misunderstandings that occur between the two groups and how unifil respond to them. examination of the local relationship with unifil reveals that both sides have agency. i illustrate how time matters at this level of engagement, in that the constant rotations of peacekeepers causes problems for unifil staff and locals in terms of cultural misunderstandings and lack of awareness of local sensitivities, but also in preventing the formation of long-term relationships in the case of cimic. both cimic and caos work creatively to prevent and resolve problems at the local level and are spontaneous in responding to changing local circumstances where possible. but time (continuity), local knowledge and autonomy give caos the ability to go further in reducing the risk of conflict between locals and unifil peacekeepers which could do irreparable damage to unifil’s local consent. in the final sections i provide case studies to clearly illustrate this point. the conclusion of this thesis presents a summation of the main findings of this thesis, and presents ideas for further research programs based on these findings. the next chapter, chapter one, will now critically explore how peace operations have been researched and how contemporary analysis has informed my approach to the unifil case. i identify how the evolution of new methods and frameworks have led to arguments for greater understanding of the local factors (not just international and national) that affect the daily operations of peacekeeping missions. 	
   	
   chapter	
   :	
  a	
  review	
  of	
  the	
  literature	
  on	
  peace	
  operations	
   introduction	
   how do peace operations influence their security environment? what factors effect unifil’s local engagement? this chapter provides a discussion of the existing literature on peacebuilding in relation to the research in this thesis. i argue that whilst there is a growing body of literature that discusses peace operations at the local level; traditional, light footprint missions such as unifil have not been evaluated according to this new frame of viewing peacekeeping operations. section one of this chapter provides a definition of liberal peacebuilding for the purpose of clarifying this aspect of unifil’s work. section two provides a brief history of the concept to illustrate how peacekeeping missions evolved into operations that comprise both peacekeeping and peacebuilding activities. section three presents a discussion of the literature on peacebuilding and the debates in scholarship on the topic which come from two main theoretical perspectives: liberal and critical theory. i argue that the recent critical turn in the peace operations literature is helping to make the study of peace operations a richer theoretical endeavour and enable scholars to connect up the practice of peacebuilding with theories of power and therefore make it more relevant to the study of international relations. however, the majority of research on peacebuilding has focused on the international and national levels and has not explored the local level interactions of peace operations. there is however a small, emerging body of literature on the local level of peace operations that has developed over the past ten years which is discussed in section four of this chapter. the importance of this new literature is expressed well by jeni whalan who makes the point that peace operations have a ‘two-faced’ nature in that they ‘straddle the international-domestic divide of international relations theory’, but as whalan notes, ‘analysis of their local face is sorely 	
   	
   lacking’. this literature review finds that there is growing interest in focusing on the local level interactions of peace operations in order to understand how agency at this level informs outcomes. however, whilst studies have focused on the role of civil affairs and cimic activities, there is currently little work that specifically investigates how peace operations influence their security environment using a structured approach at three different levels of engagement: international, national and local. this thesis therefore contributes to existing scholarship in identifying a third face of peace operations - local agency. certainly the combination of scholarship focusing on communities, culture and identity at the local level would lend itself to a deeper analysis of power/knowledge relationships between peacekeepers and the peacekept possibly using poststructural or other critical theories. i will discuss this in more detail in the conclusion of this thesis. unifil is what is termed a ‘traditional’ or ‘classic’ peacekeeping mission. as such it may appear at first glance that a discussion on peacebuilding is an irrelevance. as noted in the introduction chapter, unifil’s mandate does not incorporate as many peacebuilding activities relative to newer missions. however, this research identifies that the unifil mission is very much involved in peacebuilding work, engaging at the international, national and local levels and this is why the term is used to define the work of unifil in this thesis. call and cousens ( ) refer to the increased incorporation of peacebuilding into the praxis of ‘international agencies, parts of the un system, and nongovernmental organisations over the course of the s’. unifil too has been influenced by this trend albeit later than most, in the post- environment of late . as such, a discussion of existing literature on peacebuilding is important to locate the findings of this thesis within current peacebuilding debates. 	
  whalan,	
  how	
  peace	
  operations	
  work:	
  power,	
  legitimacy,	
  effectiveness,	
  p. .	
   	
  i	
  use	
  here	
  the	
  term	
  ‘peacekept’	
  introduced	
  by	
  fortna	
  ( ).	
  	
  see	
  fortna,	
  virginia	
  page,	
  does	
  peacekeeping	
   work?	
  shaping	
  belligerents'	
  choices	
  after	
  civil	
  war	
  (princeton,	
  nj:	
  princeton	
  university	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
  there	
  is	
  currently	
  some	
  work	
  at	
  the	
  local	
  level	
  that	
  has	
  used	
  feminist	
  and	
  critical	
  anthropology,	
  for	
  example	
   whitworth,	
  sandra.,	
  men,	
  militarism,	
  and	
  un	
  peacekeeping	
  :	
  a	
  gendered	
  analysis	
  (boulder,	
  co:	
  lynne	
  rienner	
   publishing,	
   )	
  and	
  rubinstein,	
  robert	
  a.,	
  peacekeeping	
  under	
  fire:	
  culture	
  and	
  intervention	
  (boulder,	
  co:	
   paradigm	
  publishers,	
   ),	
  richmond,	
  oliver,	
  a	
  post-­‐liberal	
  peace	
  (london:	
  routledge,	
   )	
  but	
  clearly	
  the	
   field	
  remains	
  open	
  for	
  further	
  endeavours	
  in	
  this	
  direction.	
   	
  call,	
  charles	
  t.,	
  and	
  elizabeth	
  m.	
  cousens,	
  'ending	
  wars	
  and	
  building	
  peace:	
  international	
  responses	
  to	
  war-­‐ torn	
  societies,'	
  international	
  studies	
  perspectives,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   prior to a discussion of the literature and for the purposes of clarity, a brief discussion of the definition of peacebuilding is provided below to broadly define the activities described in the following chapters. section	
  one:	
  definition	
  of	
  peacebuilding	
   definitions of peacebuilding range from being extremely limited, to quite detailed. there remains contention over what peacebuilding should comprise, and what it should not. these debates are reflected in the different definitions provided by scholars and key practitioners, such as the un. newman ( ) states that those who are keen to be able to measure the effects of peacebuilding tend to use more simplistic definitions, and those who wish to explore the effects of peacebuilding more deeply, tend to provide more detailed definitions. this in part relates to a debate around what peacebuilding should, or should not be, and resides in a discussion of whether or not peacebuilders are aiming for what is termed a ‘negative peace’, i.e. the absence of conflict, or a ‘positive peace’, i.e. a peace that can be ‘sustained in the absence of an international peace operation…that is inclusive of justice, equity and other core social and political goods’. however of note is that definitions provided by scholars of the field are often not consistently applied. barnett, kim, o’donnell and sitea ( ) analysed governmental and intergovernmental bodies active in peacebuilding, to identify how they conceptualised their mandate and found whilst there were common priorities, each organisation had a different definition of peacebuilding. roland paris, a key scholar in the field of the study of peacebuilding, as both a critic and supporter of it, has varied his definitions over the course of the past ten years. in he chose to use a united nations definition given by kofi annan which is: ‘actions undertaken at the end of a conflict to consolidate peace and prevent a recurrence of armed 	
  newman,	
  edward,	
  '"liberal"	
  peacebuilding	
  debates',	
  in	
  edward	
  newman,	
  roland	
  paris	
  and	
  oliver	
  richmond,	
   new	
  perspectives	
  on	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding	
  (tokyo:	
  united	
  nations	
  university	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
  call	
  and	
  cousens,	
  'ending	
  wars	
  and	
  building	
  peace:	
  international	
  responses	
  to	
  war-­‐torn	
  societies',	
  pp. -­‐ .	
   	
  barnett,	
  michael	
  n.,	
  hunjoon	
  kim,	
  madalene	
  o'donnell,	
  and	
  laura	
  sitea,	
  'peacebuilding:	
  what's	
  in	
  a	
  name?,'	
   global	
  governance,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
   	
   confrontation.’ later, he defines it as ‘an activity that takes place in post-civil-war environment, the purpose of which is to create the conditions for a stable and lasting peace and to prevent the recurrence of large-scale violence’. still later, he chooses to use the definition provided by boutros boutros-ghali, ‘to identify and support structures that will tend to strengthen and solidify peace in order to avoid a relapse into conflict’. in comparison, doyle and sambanis ( ) define peacebuilding in far more detail: [p]eacebuilding is an attempt after a peace has been negotiated or imposed, to address the sources of current hostility and build local capacities for conflict resolution. stronger state institutions, broader political participation, land reform, a deepening of civil society, and respect for ethnic identities are all seen as ways to improve the prospects for peaceful governance…the aim of peacebuilding is to foster the social, economic and political institutions and attitudes that will prevent these conflicts from turning violent. in effect, peacebuilding is the front line of preventative action. this detailed definition would appear to support the observations of paris ( ) who argued that peacebuilding is underwritten by an acceptance by the international community, of the aim of creating liberal free-market democracies, and this view is shared by other key scholars in the field. however, the idea that peacebuilding reflects liberal peace theory is not a given in all the peacebuilding literature. newman ( ) for example argues that peacebuilding is based on realism as it is oriented around the creation of strong states and ‘in reality tends to be aimed at containing or repressing conflict in the interests of international peace and stability in general or 	
  annan,	
  kofi,	
  the	
  causes	
  of	
  conflict	
  and	
  the	
  promotion	
  of	
  durable	
  peace	
  and	
  sustainable	
  development	
  in	
  africa:	
   report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary	
  general	
  to	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  security	
  council,	
  s/ / 	
  (new	
  york:	
  united	
  nations,	
   )	
  cited	
  in	
  paris,	
  roland,	
  'international	
  peacebuilding	
  and	
  the	
  'mission	
  civilisatrice','	
  review	
  of	
  international	
   studies,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  p. .	
   	
  ———,	
  'towards	
  more	
  effective	
  peace	
  building:	
  a	
  conversation	
  with	
  roland	
  paris,'	
  development	
  in	
  practice,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  p. .	
   	
  	
  boutros-­‐ghali,	
  b.,	
  an	
  agenda	
  for	
  peace,	
  (new	
  york:	
  un	
  department	
  of	
  public	
  information,	
   )cited	
  in	
  paris,	
   'saving	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding',	
  p. 	
  [footnotes].	
   	
  doyle,	
  michael	
  w.,	
  and	
  nicholas	
  sambanis,	
  'international	
  peacebuilding:	
  a	
  theoretical	
  and	
  quantitative	
   analysis,'	
  american	
  political	
  science	
  review,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  p. .	
   	
  paris,	
  'international	
  peacebuilding	
  and	
  the	
  'mission	
  civilisatrice''.	
   	
  pugh,	
  michael,	
  'the	
  political	
  economy	
  of	
  peacebuilding:	
  a	
  critical	
  theory	
  perspective,'	
  international	
  journal	
  of	
   peace	
  studies,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  bendana,	
  alejandro,	
  'from	
  peacebuilding	
  to	
  state	
  building:	
  one	
  step	
  forward	
   and	
  two	
  steps	
  back?,'	
  development,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
   	
   of particular hegemonic strategic interests, in line with the “new” security agenda’. richmond too defines the theoretical approach underpinning peacebuilding as realist/liberal. another interesting facet of the doyle and sambanis definition above is that they define peacebuilding as a ‘preventative action’. as does lacher ( ) who terms peacebuilding ‘post- conflict reconstruction’ and defines it as: ‘a wide range of efforts directed at rebuilding and transforming the institutions of state, society and economy in order to consolidate peace and prevent conflict from re-igniting.’ according to newman the ‘preventative’ aspect of peacebuilding remains under contention amongst scholars and practitioners and as yet the un has not defined peacebuilding in such a way as to include use of the term ‘prevention’. the united nations peacebuilding commission for example, lists its objectives thus, which do not specifically include treating peacebuilding activities as a preventative action: • to bring together all relevant actors to marshal resources and to advise on and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery; • to focus attention on the reconstruction and institution-building efforts necessary for recovery from conflict and to support the development of integrated strategies in order to lay the foundation for sustainable development; • to provide recommendations and information to improve the coordination of all relevant actors within and outside the united nations, to develop best practices, to help to ensure predictable financing for early recovery activities and to extend the period of attention given by the international community to postconflict recovery. many authors also disagree over whether or not peacebuilding should be conflated with the term statebuilding. barnett ( ) contends ‘peacebuilders must recognise that peacebuilding is 	
  newman,	
  "liberal"	
  peacebuilding	
  debates.	
  p. 	
   	
  richmond,	
  oliver,	
  'the	
  romanticisation	
  of	
  the	
  local:	
  welfare,	
  culture	
  and	
  peacebuilding,'	
  the	
  international	
   spectator,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  lacher,	
  wolfram,	
  'iraq:	
  exception	
  to,	
  or	
  epitome	
  of	
  contemporary	
  post-­‐conflict	
  reconstruction?,'	
  international	
   peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  p. .	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  peacebuilding	
  commission	
  website,	
  mandate,	
   http://www.un.org/en/peacebuilding/mandate.shtml	
  [accessed	
   	
  march	
   ].	
  	
   	
   	
   statebuilding’. richmond ( ) on the other hand, posits that liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding should be regarded as separate concepts. he elucidates the differences between the two thus: the statebuilding agenda is focused on political, economic and security architecture, and determines its outcomes as a neoliberal, sovereign and territorial state. this is in contrast to peacebuilding, which, we argue, focuses on the needs and rights of individuals, on sustainable communities and on the requirements for a self- sustaining polity of equitable representation without placing sovereignty, territory and the institutions of the state before that of the mundane needs of everyday life. clearly the type of peacebuilding that richmond refers to here is a specific conception of what peacebuilding is that differs from other definitions, once again highlighting the inconsistency in approaches and beliefs scholars and practitioners have about what peacebuilding is or should be. this difference is reflective of the different theoretical approaches taken by scholars of peacebuilding, which is further discussed in section three. there is an inference in the above definitions of peacebuilding that it only occurs in a post- conflict environment. call and cousens ( ) refer to the fact that peacebuilding can take place in the absence of a peace agreement. their definition of peacebuilding states: actions undertaken by international or national actors to institutionalise peace, understood as the absence of armed conflict and a modicum of participatory politics. post-conflict peacebuilding is the subset of such actions undertaken after the termination of armed hostilities. cockell ( ) also makes the point that peacebuilding can occur at all phases of a conflict, not just in the post-conflict stage and that the conceptualisation of the concept of peacebuilding itself should not be conflated with sequencing of activities, many of which do take place in the 	
  barnett,	
  michael	
  n.,	
  'building	
  a	
  republican	
  peace:	
  stabilizing	
  states	
  after	
  war,'	
  international	
  security,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  p. .	
   	
  richmond,	
  oliver,	
  liberal	
  peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
  statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding	
  (edinburgh:	
  edinburgh	
   university	
  press,	
   ),	
  p. .	
   	
  call	
  and	
  cousens,	
  'ending	
  wars	
  and	
  building	
  peace:	
  international	
  responses	
  to	
  war-­‐torn	
  societies',	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   transition phase from peace accord to stable peace. he notes that the un department of political affairs currently understands peacebuilding to be a ‘continuum of activities, which may be present in all phases of a conflict cycle’. john braithwaite ( ) makes possibly the clearest statement on the need to reject the idea of sequencing the concepts of peacekeeping, peacebuilding and peacemaking, stating: peacekeepers are both in the business of abating the last conflict and preventing the next one… ‘peacebuilding’ is a ‘postconflict’ activity that is at the same time about building sustainable peace on the ashes of the last conflict and building capacity to prevent the next conflict. the united nations definition on the website of the department of peacekeeping operations (dpko) currently states: peacebuilding aims to reduce the risk of lapsing or relapsing into conflict by strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundation for sustainable peace and development. it is a complex, long-term process of creating the necessary conditions for sustainable peace. peacebuilding measures address core issues that effect the functioning of society and the state, and seek to enhance the capacity of the state to effectively and legitimately carry out its core functions. for the purposes of this thesis, the un definition used by the dpko is used as it can be said to encompass all the levels of peacebuilding included in this thesis by its use of the words ‘strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management’. it is appropriate also because it does not use the terms ‘after conflict has ended’ nor does it refer specifically to intra- state war. 	
  cockell,	
  john	
  g,	
  'conceptualising	
  peacebuilding',	
  in	
  michael	
  pugh,	
  regeneration	
  of	
  war-­‐torn	
  societies	
   (basingstoke:	
  palgrave	
  macmillan,	
   ).	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
  braithwaite,	
  john,	
  'evaluating	
  the	
  timor-­‐leste	
  peace	
  operation,'	
  journal	
  of	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
  operations,	
  peace	
  and	
  security	
  -­‐	
  peacebuilding,	
   https://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/peace.shtml	
  [accessed	
   	
  march	
   ].	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
  operations,	
  peace	
  and	
  security	
  –	
  peacebuilding,	
   https://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/peace.shtml	
  [accessed	
   	
  march	
   ].	
   	
   	
   peacebuilding	
  models	
   there are now a number of typologies of peacebuilding, most of which use case studies from the past fifteen years to analyse post-cold war peace operations. richmond ( ) has identified three types of peacebuilding: the conservative model, the orthodox model and the emancipatory model. the conservative model is ‘characterised by top down approaches to peacebuilding and shaped by techniques of coercion, domination and hegemony’. this approach is characterised by military intervention, unstable or divided political conditions and the imposition of peace. richmond argues examples of this type of peacebuilding can be found in some chapter vii peacekeeping missions and in the us-led interventions in iraq and afghanistan. the orthodox model of peacebuilding centres on the idea of building liberal institutions, and the ‘claim of the normative universality of the liberal peace’. this model mixes bottom-up approaches with top-down, involves international organisations, institutions and ngos, but also attempts to promote local ownership. its primary goals are to implement democracy, the rule of law, human rights and the free market. this model in richmond’s view, concurs with the conservative peacebuilding model, in that it believes in prioritising security first. in many ways, this model embodies what many scholars and practitioners classify as a typical peacebuilding mission. the third type, the emancipatory model of the liberal peace emphasises local ownership and consent. richmond describes this as a bottom-up approach which allows ‘for a stronger concern for social justice and people’s needs and assumption of far greater local agency’. the major actors involved in this model are local and international ngos as well as major agencies and state donors. richmond equates this model with the civil peace (noted above) and it is largely driven by private actors and social movements. of all three models, this is perhaps the hardest to conceptualise, as there is currently no exemplar of such a form of peacebuilding to refer to. 	
  richmond,	
  liberal	
  peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
  statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding,	
  p. .	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   this may well be due to the fact that this type of model appears to be devoid of security concerns, and without those concerns it is unlikely a peacebuilding mission would have been deployed in the first place. newman ( ) also puts forward three different models of peacebuilding which he terms: transformatory peacebuilding; realist peacebuilding; and liberal peacebuilding. these models are very similar to those espoused by richmond. transformatory peacebuilding equates with richmond’s model of emancipatory peacebuilding. newman criticises this model for romanticising the local aspect of peacebuilding and neglecting the reality and importance of power both at the local and international levels. realist peacebuilding correlates with what richmond calls conservative peacebuilding. the obvious criticism of this model is that it prioritises security at the expense of all other considerations, and tends to only engage with local power holders thus possibly perpetuating existing tensions. richmond’s orthodox model of peacebuilding then corresponds to newman’s liberal model, although here newman differentiates between two strands of liberal peacebuilding: wilsonian and hegemonic neo-liberal approaches. his distinction between these two sub-types however is a fuzzy as he describes the former approach as ‘promoting democracy and market economies as a means of building peace’ and the latter as involving ‘top-down promotion (or imposition) of political and economic values’. identifying the differences between these two methodologies on the ground may come down to semantics. other authors have alluded to these same types of models, for example ian spears presents two models which he describes as ‘realist’ and ‘liberal’ which correspond to those of newman, noted previously. if the typologies described above were put on a continuum which ran from a top-down approach on the right hand side, and bottom-up on the left, it is very likely that the realist/conservative models (based on realist/neorealist theory) would reside on the right, the orthodox/liberal 	
  newman,	
  "liberal"	
  peacebuilding	
  debates.	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
  spears,	
  ian,	
  'the	
  false	
  promise	
  of	
  peacebuilding,'	
  international	
  journal,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
   	
   models in the centre (based on liberalism/neoliberalism) and the emancipatory/transformatory models on the far left (based on critical theories). in reality, peacebuilding missions run up and down these continuums, and as cooper et al note: ‘peace operations can move backwards and forwards along a spectrum of consent and coercion over time.’ whilst it is helpful to conceive of peacebuilding tasks along this continuum, it is unlikely that any one mission would fall discretely into any particular category. as such, the term peacebuilding should take account of all of these typologies and should be regarded as housing all of them under one umbrella. the following section provides a brief history of peacebuilding. section	
  two:	
  a	
  brief	
  history	
  of	
  peacebuilding	
   prior to the end of the cold war, peacekeeping missions comprised what are known as ‘traditional’ or ‘classic’ missions. they were predominantly military in nature, stationed in hot spots where there existed inter-state conflict. peacekeepers acted as a buffer between two states at war and were specifically instructed not to become involved in the domestic politics of the country. the reason for this was due to a conflict of interests between the major powers governing the security council. disputes over the funding and the terms under which a mission should operate were commonplace. norrie macqueen notes that owing to competition for influence, only certain parts of the world were regarded as acceptable for the establishment of missions by the us and russia. in order to secure security council agreement for peacekeeping operations, the question of the internal organisation of the state was avoided to bypass ideological battles over the best way to restructure a state. this also largely prevented clashes between the great powers over the amount of influence that any one power could exert over the internal politics of the host country. two exceptions to this were the ill-fated congo mission of (onuc) which became susceptible to this very problem, and a short running mission in west new 	
  cooper,	
  neil,	
  mandy	
  turner,	
  and	
  michael	
  pugh,	
  'the	
  end	
  of	
  history	
  and	
  the	
  last	
  liberal	
  peacebuilder:	
  a	
  reply	
   to	
  roland	
  paris,'	
  review	
  of	
  international	
  studies,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  p. .	
   	
  paris,	
  at	
  war's	
  end:	
  building	
  peace	
  after	
  civil	
  conflict;	
  bellamy	
  and	
  williams,	
  understanding	
  peacekeeping.	
   	
  macqueen,	
  peacekeeping	
  and	
  the	
  international	
  system.	
   	
  ibid.	
  	
  for	
  example,	
  eastern	
  europe	
  in	
  the	
  case	
  of	
  russia	
  and	
  latin	
  america	
  in	
  the	
  case	
  of	
  the	
  us	
  were	
   considered	
  off-­‐limits	
  for	
  peace	
  operations	
  as	
  they	
  were	
  regarded	
  as	
  providing	
  strategic	
  depth	
  for	
  the	
  two	
   superpowers.	
   	
  bellamy	
  and	
  williams,	
  understanding	
  peacekeeping.	
   	
   	
   guinea (now part of indonesia), the united nations security force in west new guinea (unsf). the latter succeeded because the two parties, indonesia and the netherlands had already agreed upon the terms of the transfer of sovereignty between them. at the end of the cold war, the international zeitgeist changed as communism fell out of favour as a competing ideology to liberal democracy. francis fukyama pronounced that the ‘end of history’ had arrived and that liberal democracy was now considered by nations to be the only workable state model. within the united nations, there now opened up new freedom for peacekeeping missions to comprise additional elements that would assist states in recovering from conflict. as paris and barnett argue, the peacebuilding activities of the international community is underwritten by an unstated belief in the principles of liberalism and the liberal peace theory. the post-cold war era, heralded a new kind of warfare, whereby civil war became the predominant form of conflict, as opposed to war between states. paris states that by , % of all conflicts were internecine civil wars. two factors were at the root of many of these wars: the us and russia withdrawing their patronage of small states in africa, asia and latin america; and secessionism by breakaway states from the former soviet empire. in order to address these ‘new wars’, the un conceived of a new type of mission. one that would not only put an end to fighting, but assist states in building up the capacity to maintain peace and stability over time. this became possible because there was no longer a debate among most member states in the organisation about what was the best model of government; china and russia were opening up and old divisions over political-economic models became less pronounced. as such, a large number of peacekeeping missions were launched from 	
  macqueen,	
  peacekeeping	
  and	
  the	
  international	
  system.	
   	
  fukiyama,	
  francis,	
  the	
  end	
  of	
  history	
  and	
  the	
  last	
  man	
  (new	
  york:	
  harper	
  perennial,	
   ).	
   	
  paris,	
  'international	
  peacebuilding	
  and	
  the	
  'mission	
  civilisatrice'';	
  barnett,	
  'building	
  a	
  republican	
  peace:	
   stabilizing	
  states	
  after	
  war'.	
   	
  paris,	
  at	
  war's	
  end:	
  building	
  peace	
  after	
  civil	
  conflict.	
   	
  kaldor,	
  mary,	
  new	
  and	
  old	
  wars	
  (cambridge:	
  polity	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
   	
   onwards that comprised elements of peacebuilding. to emphasise this shift in the political willingness to launch peace operations, and the rise in conflicts that arose in the post-cold war era, the following comparison is illustrative. from to , the un launched peacekeeping missions; since through to , missions were launched and the vast majority of them had a far broader remit than the early ‘traditional’ peacekeeping missions. the remit of peacebuilding missions became extensive and a full list will not be provided here but broadly most missions comprised some of the following tasks: reforming or strengthening deficient structures and institutions of governance (judicial, constitutional, electoral, bureaucratic); disarmament and demobilisation of warring factions; restoration of public order and the rule of law for example, training/creating police forces; demining activities; provision of technical assistance for independent media; building space within civil society for political mobilisation; monitoring, organising or supervising transitional elections and plebiscites; and support for economic rehabilitation and reconstruction of infrastructure. as the ’s progressed and not all missions proved successful, questions began to be raised as to the effectiveness of these new missions, termed ‘second generation’ peacekeeping missions, or ‘wider peacekeeping’. examples of the failures of these missions were states such as angola, rwanda and yugoslavia, where violence and genocide broke out during and after interventions. in cambodia and liberia, elections were held quickly and success for these missions was claimed. however democracy was swiftly subverted by the election victors in both states to the point where corruption and autocracy became defining features of the state regimes. examples like these, and others raised questions as to whether the interventions themselves had in fact 	
  united	
  nations	
  department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
  operations	
  website,	
  current	
  peacekeeping	
  operations,	
   peacekeeping	
  operations	
  timeline,	
  https://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/operations/current.shtml	
  [accessed	
   	
   march	
   ].	
   	
  selected	
  from	
  a	
  list	
  in	
  cockell,	
  conceptualising	
  peacebuilding,	
  pp. -­‐ .	
   	
  mackinlay,	
  j.,	
  and	
  j.	
  chopra,	
  'second	
  generation	
  multinational	
  operations,'	
  washington	
  quarterly,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  bellamy	
  and	
  williams,	
  understanding	
  peacekeeping.	
   	
  paris,	
  at	
  war's	
  end:	
  building	
  peace	
  after	
  civil	
  conflict,	
  chapter	
  three.	
   	
   	
   worsened the situation rather than improving it. the following section reviews the debates about peacebuilding that emerged following these failures. section	
  three:	
  past	
  and	
  current	
  debates	
  on	
  peacebuilding	
   there are two main bodies of literature that discuss and critique the liberal peacebuilding project. these two bodies of literature fall into what robert cox ( ) calls ‘problem-solving approaches’ and ‘critical approaches’ respectively. the first body is grounded in the liberal peace literature and is what cox would label, a problem-solving approach because it accepts the need for peacebuilding operations, but disagrees on how missions should be carried out or their functionality. newman ( ) provides an efficient summary of this idea: problem-solving approaches take prevailing social relationships and the institutions into which they are organised as the given and inevitable framework for action. they accept the assumptions that underpin existing policy and focus upon optimum effectiveness and performance. the second body of literature comes from critical theory, and this challenges the liberal literature on the very premise of peacebuilding itself. in other words it questions whether the act of peacebuilding should be undertaken at all, or its legitimacy, as well as commenting on its functionality. this critical approach, is again summarised nicely by newman: critical approaches in contrast, question how institutions emerge and are maintained, and do not accept existing policy parameters as a given or as necessarily legitimate. a critical approach questions – and if necessary challenges – prevailing structures of power and power relations, prevailing discourses or ways of thinking, and the interests they serve. indeed, a critical approach interrogates the institutions, and our understanding of “reality”. 	
  ibid.	
   	
  cox,	
  robert,	
  'social	
  forces,	
  states	
  and	
  world	
  orders:	
  beyond	
  international	
  relations	
  theory,'	
  millennium,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  newman,	
  "liberal"	
  peacebuilding	
  debates,	
  p. .	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   whilst these divisions are apparent in a review of the literature, it should be noted that there is considerable crossover between the two schools especially where criticism of peace operations is concerned. some liberal scholars such as paris, critique missions on the same grounds as critical scholars. equally, critical scholars such as richmond can be found making suggestions for improvements to future missions. in the body of literature on peacebuilding that is written within the problem-solving approach, one of the main criticisms levied at it, relates to how success should be measured. newman states that most scholars and practitioners favour a simplified definition of ‘maintaining a ceasefire’ as it enables a clear and feasible benchmark for judging the success of a mission which would be taken to be based on a negative peace. however, as noted above, some scholars are prepared to provide a richer definition because they are more interested in understanding the effects of complex missions on recipient states, or a positive peace. research on peacebuilding has been both qualitative and quantitative in nature. the research of doyle and sambanis is quantitative and establishes whether or not missions have succeeded or failed using a number of set indicators: hostility; local capacities and international capacities in an attempt to understand the factors that promote a stable and lasting peace. they found that multidimensional peacekeeping missions with extensive civilian functions including economic reconstruction, institutional reform and election oversight did help to end wars. other scholars, such as barbara walter used the coding criteria proposed by the university of michigan’s correlates of war project to classify and distinguish civil wars from other types of war. she then 	
  paris,	
  at	
  war's	
  end:	
  building	
  peace	
  after	
  civil	
  conflict.	
   	
  richmond,	
  liberal	
  peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
  statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
  call	
  and	
  cousens,	
  'ending	
  wars	
  and	
  building	
  peace:	
  international	
  responses	
  to	
  war-­‐torn	
  societies'.	
   	
  newman,	
  "liberal"	
  peacebuilding	
  debates	
  p. .	
  	
   	
  doyle	
  and	
  sambanis,	
  'international	
  peacebuilding:	
  a	
  theoretical	
  and	
  quantitative	
  analysis';	
  richmond,	
  liberal	
   peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
  statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding;	
  diehl,	
  paul	
  f.,	
  and	
  daniel	
  druckman,	
  evaluating	
   peace	
  operations	
  (boulder,	
  co:	
  lynne	
  reinner,	
   ).	
   	
  doyle	
  and	
  sambanis,	
  'international	
  peacebuilding:	
  a	
  theoretical	
  and	
  quantitative	
  analysis';	
  doyle,	
  michael	
  w.,	
   and	
  nicholas	
  	
  sambanis,	
  making	
  war	
  and	
  building	
  peace	
  :	
  united	
  nations	
  peace	
  operations	
  (princeton,	
  nj:	
   princeton	
  university	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
   	
   used comparative case studies to examine what has the greatest effect on ending conflicts. one of her key findings, relevant to this thesis, is that the presence of a third party to enforce or verify peace agreements between warring parties can assist the parties in upholding the treaties they have agreed to. richmond ( ) on the other hand used qualitative research to investigate the success of a selected group of peacebuilding missions on the following factors: democratisation, the development of the rule of law, of human rights, civil society, and free market reform and development. each factor was assessed in the context of their claimed objectives, and actual outcomes and consequences. moore ( ) used a comparative study of two cities in the same country in order to assess why peacebuilding worked in one town, but not in another. the way peacebuilding missions are measured very often dictates the level of success afforded to them. quantitative research seeks easily measurable markers to evaluate the ‘what’ that occurs in peacebuilding. hence doyle and sambanis ( ) found that a multidimensional un mission and a peace treaty can help to end conflict and violence and can contribute to the building of institutions that it is hoped will help generate a stable and lasting peace. in contrast richmond and moore (above) demonstrate the value of qualitative research which often provides the ‘why’. richmond researched un case studies after peacebuilding interventions and found the presence of a ‘virtual peace’, which is to say, not really a stable and lasting peace at all. moore ( ) identified how peacebuilding activities need to be shaped to be appropriate to the local conditions in order to succeed. in the literature there is broad agreement on some of the more spectacular failures, such as angola and rwanda, but less so on other missions. the issue of measuring the success of peacebuilding missions has been so diverse that it has led bellamy ( ) to argue that ‘there are no common criteria by which to evaluate the success or failure of peace operations because such 	
  walter,	
  barbara,	
  committing	
  to	
  peace:	
  the	
  successful	
  settlement	
  of	
  civil	
  wars	
  (princeton:	
  princeton	
  university	
   press,	
   ),	
  pp. -­‐ .	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
  richmond,	
  liberal	
  peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
  statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
  moore,	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  practice.	
   	
  richmond,	
  liberal	
  peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
  statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
   	
   judgements are framed by actors beliefs about the appropriate role for peace operations in global politics’. as such the concept of ‘success’ in a peacekeeping/peacebuilding mission is highly subjective. this thesis posits that in the absence of an effective peace process, a negative peace is the best outcome that can be hoped for in the case of lebanon and the unifil mission. what is unique about the unifil case is that in the pursuit of negative peace, unifil is going beyond its traditional mandate in order to help the lebanese people prepare for lasting peace. another critique of peacebuilding by liberal theorists has centred on the timeframe for such missions when it became clear that holding quick elections and then exiting the country was not the best way to ensure continued stability and democracy. the cases of liberia and cambodia highlighted how democratic systems set up by the un could be subverted by those who won the elections, and the potential for states to revert to war, such as the case of angola. paris has argued for ‘institutionalisation before liberalisation’ or ibl. he argues that states need to have solid institutions in place before they make the transition to democracy and market-oriented economic policies. he contends that states require political stability and the effective administration of institutions prior to the upheaval of moving towards a market-oriented economy or liberal democracy. whilst paris acknowledges the risk of this strategy is missions that never end, he states that the ‘quick and dirty’ approach to peace missions is ‘fundamentally flawed’. paris believes that a stable and lasting peace will take time and missions should be undertaken with a recognition that they may take several years to complete, if they wish to be effective. the issue of time is highlighted in this thesis as one of the most important factors that affords actors in a peace operation influence and this is discussed in the introduction and throughout the thesis. 	
  bellamy,	
  alex	
  j.,	
  'the	
  next	
  stage	
  in	
  peace	
  operations	
  theory?,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
   p. .	
   	
  lacher,	
  'iraq:	
  exception	
  to,	
  or	
  epitome	
  of	
  contemporary	
  post-­‐conflict	
  reconstruction?'.	
   	
  paris,	
  at	
  war's	
  end:	
  building	
  peace	
  after	
  civil	
  conflict.	
   	
  lacher,	
  'iraq:	
  exception	
  to,	
  or	
  epitome	
  of	
  contemporary	
  post-­‐conflict	
  reconstruction?'.	
   	
  paris,	
  at	
  war's	
  end:	
  building	
  peace	
  after	
  civil	
  conflict,	
  p. .	
   	
  ibid.,	
  chapter	
  ten.	
   	
   	
   another key debate in the liberal peacebuilding literature relates to how all-encompassing peacebuilding missions should be and whether they should comprise a ‘light’ or ‘heavy footprint’ – the idea being that a heavy footprint mission incorporates a wide range of functions, to the extent in some missions, of the un taking over the bureaucracy of a state in order to establish government institutions. a light footprint mission would not be as all encompassing. krasner ( ) argues for a heavy intervention which he terms ‘trusteeship’ and ‘shared sovereignty contracts’ for collapsed or failing states. other scholars have questioned imposing authority and ideas at such an integral level of the state arguing it would have a negative impact on local buy-in and the ability of the nation to generate local solutions to local problems. barnett ( ) implies that the weight of the mission (heavy or light) is not the main issue at stake in peacebuilding projects. rather it is the style by which peacebuilders attempt to state-build (which he equates with peacebuilding). he argues instead for a ‘republican’ model of statebuilding which incorporates local voices through the ‘holy trinity’ of deliberation, representation and constitutionalism. whilst barnett’s idea comes across as a better idea than a ‘quick fix’ solution of holding elections, he ignores the issue of external powers who are just as capable of subverting the peacebuilding process if it does not serve their interests no matter how inclusive of the views of the nation the peacebuilding process is. other key questions in the liberal peacebuilding literature include in what sequence peacebuilding efforts should occur, e.g. whether or not it is important to lock down security in a country before proceeding with elections; whether or not peace and stability should be obtained at all costs, e.g. to what extent should there be retribution for those who are known to have committed human 	
  for	
  example	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  transitional	
  mission	
  in	
  east	
  timor	
  (untaet).	
   	
  krasner,	
  stephen	
  d.,	
  'sharing	
  sovereignty:	
  new	
  institutions	
  for	
  collapsed	
  and	
  failing	
  states,'	
  international	
   security,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  richmond,	
  'the	
  romanticisation	
  of	
  the	
  local:	
  welfare,	
  culture	
  and	
  peacebuilding'.;	
  chesterman,	
  simon,	
   tiptoeing	
  through	
  affghanistan:	
  the	
  future	
  of	
  un	
  statebuilding,	
  (new	
  york:	
  international	
  peace	
  academy,	
   ).	
   	
  barnett,	
  'building	
  a	
  republican	
  peace:	
  stabilizing	
  states	
  after	
  war'.	
   	
  lebanon	
  over	
  the	
  years	
  has	
  been	
  particularly	
  prone	
  to	
  external	
  influence	
  in	
  its	
  internal	
  affairs	
  particular	
  from	
   syria,	
  saudi	
  arabia,	
  iran,	
  france	
  and	
  the	
  us	
  and	
  even	
  further	
  back,	
  turkey	
  during	
  the	
  ottoman	
  empire.	
  see	
  for	
   example:	
  traboulsi,	
  fawwaz,	
  a	
  history	
  of	
  modern	
  lebanon	
  (london:	
  pluto	
  press,	
   );	
  hirst,	
  david,	
  beware	
   small	
  states:	
  lebanon,	
  battleground	
  of	
  the	
  middle	
  east	
  (new	
  york:	
  nation	
  books,	
   );	
  fisk,	
  robert,	
  pity	
  the	
   nation:	
  lebanon	
  at	
  war	
  (oxford:	
  oxford	
  university	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
  paris,	
  at	
  war's	
  end:	
  building	
  peace	
  after	
  civil	
  conflict;	
  richmond,	
  liberal	
  peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
   statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
   	
   rights abuses during the state of war; to what extent, and what kind of coercion should be employed to push through the liberal peacebuilding agenda; should some societies be divided in order to obtain peace; and finally, if it is wise to suspend the sovereignty of a state and allow the international community to intervene and act as a defacto government. paris ( ), whilst an advocate for peacebuilding and one of the most prolific authors on the subject, has also provided an extensive list of its flaws: …inadequate attention to domestic institutional conditions for successful democratisation and marketization; insufficient appreciation of the tensions and contradictions between the various goals of peacebuilding; poor strategic coordination among the various actors involved in these missions; lack of political will and attention on the part of peacebuilding sponsors to complete the tasks they undertake, and insufficient commitment of resources; unresolved tensions in relations between the military and non-military participants in these operations; limited knowledge of distinctive local conditions and variations across the societies hosting these missions; insufficient ‘local ownership’ over the strategic direction and daily activities of such operations; and continued conceptual challenges in defining the conditions for ‘success’ and strategies for bringing operations to an effective close. the main difference between critical approaches to peacebuilding and problem-solving (liberal) approaches relates to the issue of legitimacy. criticisms of peacebuilding from those taking a critical approach, question the right of the ‘core’ countries (the most developed and wealthy countries in the international system) to dictate terms to the ‘periphery’ (i.e. less developed and less wealthy states). the questions asked by critical theorists about liberal peacebuilding are, as pugh ( ) notes: ‘who is peacebuilding for, and what purpose does it serve?’. the answer for most critical theorists is that it serves the interests of wealthier, developed states. 	
  richmond,	
  liberal	
  peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
  statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding;	
  spears,	
  'the	
  false	
  promise	
  of	
   peacebuilding'.	
   	
  doyle	
  and	
  sambanis,	
  'international	
  peacebuilding:	
  a	
  theoretical	
  and	
  quantitative	
  analysis'.	
   	
  paris,	
  at	
  war's	
  end:	
  building	
  peace	
  after	
  civil	
  conflict.	
   	
  spears,	
  'the	
  false	
  promise	
  of	
  peacebuilding'.	
   	
  paris,	
  'saving	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding',	
  p. .	
   	
  pugh,	
  'the	
  political	
  economy	
  of	
  peacebuilding:	
  a	
  critical	
  theory	
  perspective'	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   critical theorists contend that the peacebuilding project promoted and operated by international institutions and states is part of the liberal project whose primary objective in its interventions is to maintain international order by creating states in their own image – that is liberal market democracies. proponents of the liberal peacebuilding project include the world bank, the imf, western donor states, the united nations and its associated agencies and many ngos. they have according to critical theorists generated a model of peacebuilding that focuses heavily on security, economic liberalisation and institution-building at the cost of other important variables within the communities of host states. the rationale for this model comes from what richmond terms ‘the de-contextualisation of classical political theory and history’ which has been used to support a metanarrative of ‘liberal norms of market democracy, all of which are supposed to represent inclusiveness and plurality’. critical theorists argue that the idea of civil society and plurality espoused within liberal peacebuilding is artificial as it only engages with a thin veneer of society in recipient states who have been co-opted to cooperate with peacebuilding institutions. this means that large sections of the population are necessarily excluded from the liberal peacebuilding project. furthermore, the idea of liberal peacebuilding is that the economic benefits of the free market economy will trickle down to the lower levels, and that individual political rights are of greater priority than others, therefore again excluding the consideration of other local needs such as those of welfare and culture. ultimately, the critical approach to peacebuilding praxis aims to unpack and challenge the assumptions of the liberal peacebuilding project because it believes that it is imposed at great cost to local and indigenous interests on the ground. the critical peacebuilding literature therefore focuses more on local ownership, local capacity, local agency and even resistance to imposed interventions. bendana ( ) argues that the peacebuilding projects of both the us and the un have shifted towards ‘nation building’ and he questions the right of the developed world to enforce their model of the state onto selectively chosen recipients. the selectivity of the global 	
  richmond,	
  a	
  post-­‐liberal	
  peace.	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
   	
   peacebuilding/nation-building project in his view is reflective of the geopolitical interests of the developed world and is not driven by genuine humanitarian interests. furthermore, he shares with cox the idea that economic reforms which push liberal market economies onto ‘failed’ or ‘failing’ states, is in fact a political issue that has been deliberately depoliticised in order to come across as being the natural, and correct order of things. bendana argues that the ‘good state’ is ‘defined as how well the state enacts reforms featuring policies to privatise and liberalise.’ encarnacion ( ) also challenges the success of statebuilding or rather, intervention to promote the democratisation of states, on methodological grounds. he states that the modern method of attempting to transform states into democracies in a short time (using the above mentioned strategies) is unlikely to succeed, arguing that democracies emerge from societies that are already highly economically developed. he cites the evidence of post-war japan and germany; as well as latin american states that moved towards democracy once they had developed economically and possessed a unified national identity. encarnacion also points out the flaws in liberal peace theory arguing that the ‘rule’ stating liberal democracies do not go to war with each other only applies in the case of advanced democracies; states during the early phases of democratization often become more aggressive and war-prone and that democratic peace theory does not necessarily apply to civil wars in the same way as it might to inter-state war. finally, he also notes that in the pursuit of promoting democracy overseas, the us engages in distinctly undemocratic behaviour. however, these comments are directed at the us invasion of iraq, and he does not mention un peacebuilding missions. richmond ( ) argues that the liberal peacebuilding model is flawed because western liberal peacebuilders imagine civil society in a different way to the local populations they engage with. 	
  see	
  also	
  macqueen,	
  peacekeeping	
  and	
  the	
  international	
  system.	
   	
  cox,	
  robert,	
  'globalization,	
  multilateralism	
  and	
  democracy,the	
  acuns	
   	
  john	
  w.	
  holmes	
  memorial	
   lecture	
  (dartmouth	
  college: ).	
   	
  bendana,	
  'from	
  peacebuilding	
  to	
  state	
  building:	
  one	
  step	
  forward	
  and	
  two	
  steps	
  back?'.	
   	
  encarnacion,	
  omar	
  g.,	
  'the	
  follies	
  of	
  democratic	
  imperialism,'	
  world	
  policy	
  journal,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  mansfield,	
  edward	
  d.,	
  and	
  jack	
  snyder,	
  'democratization	
  and	
  war,'	
  foreign	
  affairs,	
   /may/june:	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example,	
  vreeland,	
  james,	
  'the	
  effect	
  of	
  political	
  regime	
  on	
  civil	
  war,'	
  journal	
  of	
  conflict	
  resolution,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
   	
   he posits that liberal peacebuilding sacrifices community and culture for individual rights and the state. in doing so, it causes local culture to reassert itself in ways that are detrimental to the peacebuilding project and the society at large. his point about the hypocrisy of peacebuilding that tries to impose ‘best practice’ liberalisation strategies that have often failed to work in advanced liberal democracies onto post-conflict states is well made. he is also very likely correct when he assumes that most peacebuilders envisage civil society and the state very differently to the local population. for this research richmond conducted interviews across a range of peacebuilding projects which include cambodia, timor-leste, kosovo, bosnia, liberia, namibia, mozambique, guatemala, and the solomon islands. however, his methodology still hinges on a top-down approach whereby he employs postcolonial and poststructuralist theories (broadly termed critical theory) to examine local peacebuilding practices. as such, he does not employ the ethnographic research methods that he argues are necessary to truly understand ‘the local, locality, contexts an their interactions with and against the liberal peacebuilding architecture that has developed’. paris ( ) defends liberal peacebuilding from critical theorists and argues that ‘there is no realistic alternative to some form of liberal peacebuilding’ highlighting a set of criticisms in the critical theory literature that he feels are based on five mistaken assumptions: conflating post- conquest and post-settlement peacebuilding; equating peacebuilding with imperialism or colonialism; defining the liberal peace too broadly; mischaracterising the peacebuilding record; and oversimplifying moral complexity. within the peacebuilding literature generally, there does appear to be a tendency to conflate peacebuilding with the unilateral statebuilding projects of iraq (and to an extent afghanistan), which is problematic as they have not been constructed in the same manner, and as noted above, 	
  richmond,	
  a	
  post-­‐liberal	
  peace.	
   	
  ibid.	
  	
  also	
  see	
  ashdown,	
  paddy,	
  swords	
  and	
  ploughshares:	
  bringing	
  peace	
  to	
  the	
   st	
  century	
  (london:	
   weidenfeld	
  &	
  nicolson,	
   ).	
   	
  richmond,	
  a	
  post-­‐liberal	
  peace,	
  p. .	
   	
  paris,	
  'saving	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding'	
  p. .	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
   	
   there is disagreement as to whether or not the two concepts should be merged. paris’s second criticism is less convincing, because whilst the objectives of the un in peacebuilding missions can be said to be more altruistic, there is no doubt that un missions, ultimately reflect the interests of their members, which are rarely philanthropic. with regards to his criticisms of the liberal peace being interpreted too broadly and the peacebuilding project being misrepresented, paris alludes again to the tendency of critical theorists to conflate unilateral military interventions, such as iraq, with un peacebuilding missions that operate on a consensual basis after a ceasefire between the parties has been agreed. he also argues that some authors tend to take the ideas underlying a peacebuilding mission to extremes and have equated them with the containment politics of the cold war, which he believes is a misrepresentation of the current liberal peacebuilding project. on the final point, paris’s critique is most salient. for example, in relation to peacebuilding missions, critical theorists talk about the need to work more closely with the local population to obtain locally owned solutions, but as spears ( ) notes, ‘whose vision prevails when there are differences that cannot be reconciled?’ issues like these speak to some of the broader criticisms of critical theory: that it fails to provide solutions to the issues it problematizes; and that it itself is hostage to western viewpoints that are equally as prescriptive in terms of the ethnocentrism of its approach. this is presumably why paris argues that critical theorists are in fact arguing against peacebuilding from within a liberal ideology themselves – he uses the term ‘liberals in disguise’. 	
  ibid.	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
  richmond,	
  'the	
  romanticisation	
  of	
  the	
  local:	
  welfare,	
  culture	
  and	
  peacebuilding';	
  cooper,	
  neil,	
  'review	
   article:	
  on	
  the	
  crisis	
  of	
  the	
  liberal	
  peace,'	
  conflict,	
  security	
  &	
  development,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  barnes,	
   catherine,	
  'civil	
  society	
  and	
  peacebuilding:	
  mapping	
  functions	
  in	
  working	
  for	
  peace,'	
  the	
  italian	
  spectator,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  spears,	
  'the	
  false	
  promise	
  of	
  peacebuilding',	
  p. .	
   	
  paris,	
  'saving	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding',	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   cooper, turner and pugh ( ), produced a paper in response to paris’s criticisms. to his first observation that there is no viable alternative to the liberal peace they argue instead that it is more ‘constructive’ to ‘investigate the variety of political economies in post-conflict societies rather than measuring them against a liberal norm’. they propose that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the neoliberal economic model requires regulation and that more controlled, or dirigiste economic approaches can and have been successful in developing successful democracies. on this point, they may be correct as the development of south korea and taiwan depended for a long time on the dirigiste practices of their governments rather than open market economies. it may well be that post-conflict states may benefit from heavy state- led regulation of the economy during the early stages of reconstruction. in their response, the authors also challenge a number of other claims made by paris. firstly, they argue that there have been occasions when armed coercion has been used in peacebuilding missions (they cite sierra leone and somalia) and therefore it is correct to critique un peacebuilding missions alongside us-led military missions in afghanistan and iraq. secondly that the literature focusing on the similarity between peacebuilding and colonialism occurs across a diverse range of theoretical approaches (not just critical ones), and therefore this is a legitimate comparison. they also posit that there are scholars coming from a critical approach who have in fact argued against this comparison, whilst describing new forms of a ‘diffuse and non-territorial kind of empire’ which they equate with the liberal peacebuilding project. but the question of whether it is legitimate to compare unilateral statebuilding interventions like iraq with un peacebuilding missions remains debateable. it is not just the use of force that defines the difference between unilateral statebuilding projects and un peace operations, it is the consensus of the international community and - post-cold war – intervention is based on under the conditions that there is a peace to keep. scholars have found that the un is more effective than 	
  cooper,	
  turner,	
  and	
  pugh,	
  'the	
  end	
  of	
  history	
  and	
  the	
  last	
  liberal	
  peacebuilder:	
  a	
  reply	
  to	
  roland	
  paris'.	
   	
  helleiner,	
  eric,	
  'economic	
  liberalism	
  and	
  its	
  critics:	
  the	
  past	
  as	
  prologue?,'	
  review	
  of	
  international	
  political	
   economy,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).;	
  pugh,	
  'the	
  political	
  economy	
  of	
  peacebuilding:	
  a	
  critical	
  theory	
  perspective'.	
   	
  cooper,	
  turner,	
  and	
  pugh,	
  'the	
  end	
  of	
  history	
  and	
  the	
  last	
  liberal	
  peacebuilder:	
  a	
  reply	
  to	
  roland	
  paris',	
   p. .	
   	
   	
   the us when it comes to ‘nation-building’; and doyle and sambanis ( ) found that un peacekeeping/peacebuilding missions are most effective when supported by a pre-existing peace treaty which in their words ‘do the heavy lifting’. this highlights the important role that consent plays in interventions. this research in part confirms the findings of doyle and sambanis ( ) and demonstrates that the fact of broad agreement to is what helps to constrain potential ‘spoilers’, and this is discussed in chapter five. cooper et al’s claims can also be challenged on other points. in his article paris is not arguing solely for a liberal free-market economy, rather he believes the liberal peacebuilding model provides the right framework, and with adjustments can be made to be more successful. as such, there is nothing in paris’s ( ) paper to suggest that greater regulation of the economy could not be employed. the authors also infer that security is not necessarily prior to development, stating that peacebuilding strategies are based on ‘the now near-universal conceit that “development requires security”’. this thesis contends that at the local level, security is prior to any other concerns. the suggestion that it may not be, strongly contradicts this research conducted amongst a local civilian population in a state that has been at war on and off for over half a century. as well as questioning the legitimacy of state intervention, some critical theorists also provide critiques of the methods by which peacebuilding enacts its role. most critical theorists and liberal theorists are increasingly taking the line that there is a need for greater local participation and local ownership of projects in any peacebuilding initiative. richmond ( ) advocates for more money to be disbursed on welfare, social and civic projects as opposed to purely 	
  dobbins,	
  j,	
  the	
  un's	
  role	
  in	
  nation-­‐building:	
  from	
  the	
  congo	
  to	
  iraq	
  (santa	
  monica:	
  rand	
  corporation,	
   );	
   sambanis,	
  nicholas,	
  and	
  jonah	
  schulhofer-­‐wohl,	
  'evaluating	
  multilateral	
  interventions	
  in	
  civil	
  wars:	
  a	
   comparison	
  of	
  un	
  and	
  non-­‐un	
  peace	
  operations.',	
  in	
  dimitris	
  	
  bourantonis,	
  kostas	
  ifantis	
  and	
  panayotis	
  	
   tsakonas,	
  multilateralism	
  and	
  security	
  institutions	
  in	
  the	
  era	
  of	
  globalization	
  (abingdon:	
  routledge,	
   ).	
   	
  doyle	
  and	
  sambanis,	
  'international	
  peacebuilding:	
  a	
  theoretical	
  and	
  quantitative	
  analysis',	
  p. .	
   	
  cooper,	
  turner,	
  and	
  pugh,	
  'the	
  end	
  of	
  history	
  and	
  the	
  last	
  liberal	
  peacebuilder:	
  a	
  reply	
  to	
  roland	
  paris',	
   p. .	
   	
  bendana,	
  'from	
  peacebuilding	
  to	
  state	
  building:	
  one	
  step	
  forward	
  and	
  two	
  steps	
  back?';	
  pugh,	
  michael,	
  'the	
   social-­‐civil	
  dimension',	
  in	
  michael	
  pugh,	
  the	
  regeneration	
  of	
  war-­‐torn	
  societies	
  (basingstoke:	
  palgrave-­‐ macmillan,	
   );	
  richmond,	
  'the	
  romanticisation	
  of	
  the	
  local:	
  welfare,	
  culture	
  and	
  peacebuilding';	
  sending,	
   'why	
  peacebuilders	
  fail	
  to	
  secure	
  ownership	
  and	
  be	
  sensitive	
  to	
  context'.	
   	
   	
   infrastructural ones, and advocates a more contextualised approach that uses local knowledge and avoids working from generalised ‘blueprints’. roger mac ginty advocates a hybrid peace whereby both liberal and critical models of peace can co-exist and this also advocates for greater agency at the local level. paffenholz ( ) suggests that civil society can contribute in limited ways to peacebuilding in the following ways: protection; monitoring; advocacy; socialization; social cohesion; facilitation; and service delivery as an entry point for peacebuilding. the new critical literature on peacebuilding has been useful in terms of broadening the peacebuilding literature and making it more relevant to the field of international relations. it has connected up the practice of peacebuilding with theories of power distribution, a key aspect of study in the field of ir. as such, scholars of peacebuilding are now able to engage with the ir literature using different theoretical approaches. this makes the study of peacebuilding less niche and a richer theoretical endeavour. both approaches, problem-solving and critical, have their weaknesses. the commitment to economic liberalisation in post-conflict states is rightfully questioned by the critical-approach literature. in the course of my research i bore witness to a great deal of poverty amongst the ‘losers’ in the free-market system in post-conflict society. ironically this was not imposed by the unifil mission, but it is something that it has sought to compensate for, as i demonstrate in chapter five. however, critical theory attributes too much forward planning and machiavellian scheming to the un - an organisation which is not always that organised; and to the developed ‘core’ of countries. in doing so, critical theorists themselves appear not to afford local participants living under current peacebuilding missions any agency of their own. this research in contrast has identified that the peacebuilding tasks employed by unifil have come from directives from 	
  richmond,	
  'the	
  romanticisation	
  of	
  the	
  local:	
  welfare,	
  culture	
  and	
  peacebuilding'.	
   	
  richmond,	
  liberal	
  peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
  statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
  mac	
  ginty,	
  roger,	
  international	
  peacebuilding	
  and	
  local	
  resistance:	
  hybrid	
  forms	
  of	
  peace	
  (basingstoke:	
   palgrave	
  macmillan,	
   ).	
   	
  paffenholz,	
  thania,	
  'what	
  civil	
  society	
  can	
  contribute	
  to	
  peacebuilding',	
  in	
  thania	
  paffenholz,	
  civil	
  society	
  and	
   peacebuilding:	
  a	
  critical	
  assessment	
  (boulder,	
  ca:	
  lynne	
  rienner,	
   ).	
  	
  by	
  service	
  delivery,	
  the	
  author	
  means	
   civil	
  society	
  organisations	
  that	
  can	
  help	
  peacebuilders	
  deliver	
  services	
  in	
  the	
  absence	
  of	
  a	
  functioning	
  state,	
  for	
   example	
  islamic	
  charities	
  in	
  somalia.	
   	
   	
   new york, but the way they are employed and approached is spontaneous. in addition, this research corresponds to the findings of goodhand and walton ( ) who identified that locals also have agency, and the ability to co-opt the un to achieve their goals. this review of the literature shows that there has been a heavier emphasis on critiquing peacebuilding projects and less emphasis on providing practical alternatives. of note, is that the majority of scholarship on peacebuilding has used a top-down analytical approach and with some exceptions, has not tended to analyse the success or failure of missions at the local level. it follows that perhaps the best way to investigate how missions can work more effectively at the local level is to examine how peace operations work on the ground. the next section discusses research that has been conducted at the grass roots level of peacebuilding e.g. the work of peace operations on the ground and local civilian responses to interventions. section	
  four:	
  subnational	
  peacebuilding	
  activities	
   this thesis employed ethnographic research to investigate the question: how do peace operations influence their security environment? this section reviews scholarship that has also examined peacekeeping missions at the ‘micro-level’ in order to locate this thesis in the literature that currently exists on this topic. over the course of the last ten years, the peacebuilding literature has seen the growth of a small but emerging body of scholarship that investigates peacebuilding/peacekeeping missions on the ground. these studies have taken a micro-level approach that investigate the daily activities of peacebuilders and how they engage with civilians in the course of their work. this research also provides a voice for recipients of peacebuilding – the local voice that top-down scholarship calls for, but does not illustrate in depth. work conducted at this level falls into two categories, the 	
  goodhand,	
  jonathan,	
  and	
  oliver	
  walton,	
  'the	
  limits	
  of	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding?	
  international	
  engagement	
  in	
   the	
  sri	
  lankan	
  peace	
  process,'	
  journal	
  of	
  intervention	
  and	
  statebuilding,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  mac	
  ginty,	
   international	
  peacebuilding	
  and	
  local	
  resistance:	
  hybrid	
  forms	
  of	
  peace.	
   	
  paris	
  is	
  an	
  exception	
  here.	
   	
  exceptions	
  can	
  be	
  found	
  in	
  richmond,	
  liberal	
  peace	
  transitions:	
  between	
  statebuilding	
  and	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
   	
   first use mixed methods (case study comparisons, discourse analysis and process tracing) and the second are far more ethnographic (using interviews and observational evidence). the first category are described below, followed by the second which have more in common with the approach taken in this research. sandra whitworth ( ) is one of the earliest authors to examine un missions on the ground. her research compared official discourse on missions with evidence from observers and civilians on the ground. she identified problems with peacekeeper behaviour in the form of sexual harassment and racism in cambodia and somalia. she argued this behaviour is borne of the contradiction between being a peacekeeper and a soldier and that the two cultures are inherently incompatible. of note in this research is that during my research i did not come across any reports of sexual misconduct or corrupt activity. as part of my ethnographic research i lived among civilians from the south and as the area of operation is small and the local population are very open in their views about unifil, it is unlikely that an incident could have occurred and i would not have heard about it. whitworth puts forward the recommendation that peacekeeping missions need to comprise a larger element of civilian officers as a way of balancing out and reducing the effects of creating a highly militarised environment when a peacekeeping/peacebuilding mission comes to town. of relevance to this thesis is that whitworth specifically recommends that the un and scholars learn from those who have had positive experiences of peacekeeping missions: some of these solutions might actually begin by listening to the people who have lived through both contemporary conflict and the peacekeeping missions deployed there, those who remember peacekeepers for the parks, the hospitals, the schools and the health services they provided. those who remember peacekeepers not for their warrior qualities, but for the moments in which they could contribute to ‘those tiny, cumulative efforts by which individuals and families reclaim their lives – a shutter repaired, a class taught, a palm-tree tended.’ 	
  whitworth,	
  men,	
  militarism,	
  and	
  un	
  peacekeeping	
  :	
  a	
  gendered	
  analysis.	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   this research into the work of unifil can be said to be comprise much of what whitworth has described above. jeni whalan ( ) used process tracing of secondary source documents and interviews to investigate how peacekeeping missions work on the ground in a structured focused comparison of two case studies: cambodia and the solomon islands. she argued that peace operations can only work with the cooperation of the local population. whalan uses a model that incorporates the concepts of power and legitimacy to explain why local populations choose to cooperate with un missions. she finds that when local peace operations are believed to be legitimate, they have a greater chance of succeeding. whalan also describes three forms of legitimacy: source, substantive and procedural. the latter two forms essentially differentiate between the goods and services offered by a peacekeeping mission, and the manner in which mission staff carry out their mandate. the first form, source legitimacy, is slightly more complex and relates to the mission’s claim to authority and credibility on its arrival in the host state; meaning how an initial show of security and aid can improve public perceptions of the good intentions of the peace operation. whalan also makes a salient point that local and international legitimacy can be at odds in a mission which she terms the ‘legitimacy gap’. as will be discussed in this thesis, this argument is particularly true of lebanon and resolution , where civilians feel that the terms of the agreement are biased in favour of israel. as such, unifil staff are engaged in a constant balancing act whereby they need to maintain legitimacy at the local level for the mission, despite the fact that the terms of their mandate are regarded as inherently unjust by the local population. within the ethnographic literature, one of the earliest works on understanding peace operations at the level of civilians was the work of beatrice pouligny. pouligny ( ) wrote about the 	
  whalan,	
  how	
  peace	
  operations	
  work:	
  power,	
  legitimacy,	
  effectiveness.	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
   	
   experience of civilians during peacekeeping missions in cambodia, somalia, bosnia, mozambique, haiti and sierra leone. she found that local civilians felt excluded from peace operations; regarding their work as either imposed upon them from above, or as not being serious. this view stemmed from civilian perceptions that peacekeeping forces did not understand the real nature of the threats to their life and property, or if they did, they were afraid to deal with them. pouligny’s finding contradicts the work of some critical theorists who argue that liberal peace operations are over-securitised. but this thesis also found that if anything, civilians wanted peacekeepers to do more for them, not less when it came to the security of their environment. however, contrary to pouligny’s findings, this thesis finds that the local population experience a feeling of shared suffering with the unifil troops. this is borne of the long-term nature of the mission which has been present since . as such, local perceptions of unifil have less of the ‘them and us’ quality that pouligny identifies in her book. the next major work to discuss un operations at the local level was that of severine autesserre ( ) who researched the un operation in the congo (monuc). autesserre found that a failure to resolve disputes at the subnational level in the congo was a major cause of on-going violence in the eastern part of the country. these disputes tended to be over land, mining sites, collection of local taxes, local authority appointments and the relative social status of groups and individuals. top-down pressures also sustained the violence owing to national and regional interference in local politics. however, autesserre argued that the congo case is reflective of a wider problem in international interventions whereby there are no comprehensive grassroots conflict resolution programs. her finding certainly can be said to be true in the case of lebanon, where there are currently no such programs included in the unifil mission. 	
  in	
  particular	
  richmond,	
  a	
  post-­‐liberal	
  peace.	
   	
  pouligny,	
  peace	
  operations	
  from	
  below:	
  un	
  missions	
  and	
  local	
  people.	
   	
  autessere,	
  the	
  trouble	
  with	
  the	
  congo.	
  local	
  violence	
  and	
  the	
  failure	
  of	
  international	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
   	
   autesserre attributed her findings to what she calls a ‘dominant international peacebuilding culture’ which constrained the actions of all interveners, whether un, diplomatic or military. she contends this was behind the failure to acknowledge that it was in fact local conflicts driving the continuation of violence in eastern congo. she identified a prevalent belief amongst peacebuilders that top-down causes were responsible for the majority of violence; and that the people of the region were inherently violent. in her view, these factors were the main roadblocks to the development of local conflict resolution programs. in addition the way peacebuilders framed the congo mission, as being a post-conflict environment, meant they invested too much effort in the election process and not enough on resolving conflicts at the local level. the factor of time, which is regarded as a key variable in this thesis, was also identified as an issue in the work of pouligny and autesserre. their research found negative local perceptions of peacebuilders because of their swift entry and exit from the host states. conversely, this research finds that the long duration of the unifil presence in south lebanon has been to their advantage in their civilian relations. the local population has become used to unifil’s presence and is accepting of it. local civilians experienced warm feelings towards the peacekeepers borne of the shared suffering they endured under the occupation, and unifil troops’ willingness to provide humanitarian assistance from their own supplies. rubinstein ( ) stands out as one recent scholar who chose to write about an older style mission arguing he did so because: i recognised that many of the new challenges and complications had resonances with earlier peacekeeping activities. indeed, it seemed to me that the range of functions carried out by observer missions and early peacekeeping forces was quite wide and actually involved considerable civilian effort. i began to suspect that traditional peacekeeping could help us understand and improve the new peace operations. 	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
  rubinstein,	
  peacekeeping	
  under	
  fire:	
  culture	
  and	
  intervention,	
  p.xiv.	
   	
   	
   taking a mixed method approach, that included archival research, interviews and some use of ethnography, rubinstein takes an anthropological approach to the study of the culture of peacekeeping. he argues that non-material and moral factors play important roles in international security and examines the symbols generated by the military aspect of peacekeeping missions. rubinstein contends the inversion of ‘normal’ military activity is how peacekeeping missions obtain local legitimacy. rubinstein considers that later missions (post- s) started to blur the lines between normal and inverse military activity which weakens peacekeeping’s moral capital and puts missions at risk of being viewed as imperial invaders. he considers the option of separating fighting troops from non-fighting troops in his recommendations, as one way of retaining local confidence in the peaceful nature of peacekeeping missions and avoiding this blurring of lines, stating ‘like humanitarian space, the actions of peacekeepers are wrapped in the moral authority that the cultural inversions create’. he argues that in order to maintain confidence in peacekeepers, there needs to be absolute consistency between the strategic goals of the mission and their enactment at every level of the operation; but those goals should stress the peaceful intent of peacekeeping – as most of the early peacekeeping missions did. rubinstein’s findings are relevant to this thesis in two main ways. first, this author shares my view that traditional missions can offer lessons for later peacekeeping models and that they comprise a wide range of activities and are not limited to patrolling. second, since unifil have not used force in any situations involving the local population or local political movements; as such their moral authority is reasonably high. it does however mean that they have been involved in a number of incidents with locals involving theft or damage to their vehicles, and they have chosen to stand back rather than defend their equipment. elements of the local population know this and as such will try to take advantage of it. but this thesis finds, along with rubinstein that this pacific behaviour leads to better outcomes for peacekeepers in the long term. 	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   another ethnographic study of grass roots peacebuilding was conducted by adam moore ( ). he researched micro-level peacebuilding missions from the perspective of a comparison of two cities in bosnia that experienced very different outcomes from the peacebuilding process. moore’s principal finding is that all peacebuilding activities need to be appropriate to local conditions and properly implemented. moore concludes that when multiple agencies work on the same peacebuilding project it leads to a lack of information sharing and differing priorities which can conflict with each other in the practice of peacebuilding. moore argues that coordinating and centralising peacebuilding efforts would have led to better outcomes in the towns he studied. this thesis argues that this is one of unifil’s strengths, in that they are highly coordinated, with the civil operations working in tandem with the military, under a military commander. the result is that there is minimal duplication and clarity over shared objectives. even the troop contributing countries, which have their own separate budgets consult with unifil headquarters prior to making a decision to fund qips projects. moore also posits that the lack of independence of some international staff officers led to reduced authority and therefore an inability to ‘devise and execute context-specific solutions’. this meant that local authorities often tended to ignore field officers and try to circumvent them in order to liaise directly with their superiors; moore here hints at local agency in achieving desired outcomes. again, unifil affords its civilian officers enough autonomy to avoid this problem and during the course of my observational research, i never came across an example of a civil affairs or political affairs officer being placed in a subordinate position in the local environment. of note, is that moore refers to the shifting priorities of european union interfering with the work of peacebuilders on the ground. here then we can see how unifil’s relative anonymity is a distinct advantage. unifil have to a large extent been able to work without highly publicised political pressure from the international community quite simply because the project is regarded largely as a ‘failure’. as such, unifil is not the hot topic of the 	
  moore,	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  practice.	
   	
  ibid.,	
  pp. -­‐ .	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   international media, and therefore is able to fly under the radar and get its job done with minimal external interference. lise howard noted in her work on peacekeeping that missions that were not micro-managed from above tended to be more successful. moore’s final finding of relevance to this thesis is that ‘embeddedness’ matters in international peacebuilding projects which he defines as ‘the degree to which international officials become effectively localized in relation to the social patterns, political networks and institutions that mediate relations at the sites in which they operate’. moore argues that embeddedness ‘enhances the ability of international officials to develop productive relationships with local actors and read situations on the ground correctly’. moore’s finding supports that of the work of holohan ( ) who argued that ‘social embeddedness’ is an important factor contributing to the success of peacebuilding missions. this thesis finds that embeddedness is useful, in terms of unifil’s employment of local staff, who are able to read the situation on the ground more accurately than international staff, but like moore, i would also argue that deep embeddedness of a mission can become a double-edged sword in that staff could become too used to routines and fail to employ fresh thinking to their environment. in the case of unifil stale thinking came across occasionally but from the peacekeeping troops who rotate quickly, rather than from long- term staff. research on the local engagement of peacebuilders has also identified successes in their local level engagement. schia and karlsrud ( ) conducted a study of civil affairs officers (caos) in the sudan, haiti and liberia. the authors found that not only are caos able to assist 	
  howard,	
  un	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  civil	
  wars.	
   	
  moore,	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  practice,	
  p. .	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
  holohan,	
  anne,	
  networks	
  of	
  democracy:	
  lessons	
  from	
  kosovo	
  for	
  afghanistan,	
  iraq	
  and	
  beyond	
  (stanford,	
  ca:	
   university	
  of	
  california	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
  karlsrud,	
  john,	
  and	
  diana	
  felix	
  da	
  costa,	
  'contextualising	
  liberal	
  peacebuilding	
  for	
  local	
  circumstances:	
   unmiss	
  and	
  local	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  south	
  sudan,'	
  journal	
  of	
  peacebuilding	
  &	
  development,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
   felix	
  da	
  costa,	
  diana,	
  and	
  john	
  karlsrud,	
  un	
  local	
  peacebuilding	
  and	
  transition	
  in	
  haiti:	
  contextualising	
  early	
   peacebuilding	
  activities	
  to	
  local	
  circumstances,	
  haiti	
  case	
  study	
  field	
  report,	
  (oslo:	
  norwegian	
  institute	
  of	
   international	
  affairs,	
   ),	
  schia,	
  niels	
  nagelhus,	
  and	
  john	
  karlsrud,	
  'where	
  the	
  rubber	
  meets	
  the	
  road:	
   friction	
  sites	
  and	
  local	
  level	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  haiti,	
  liberia	
  and	
  south	
  sudan,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );———,	
  contextualising	
  peacebuilding	
  activities	
  to	
  local	
  circumstances:	
  local	
  level	
  peacebuilding	
   in	
  south	
  sudan,	
  liberia	
  and	
  haiti,	
  (oslo:	
  norwegian	
  institute	
  of	
  international	
  affairs,	
   ).	
   	
   	
   with locally generated solutions, but they are also in a position to flexibly interpret their mandates (or peacebuilding activities) and fit them in with the needs of the population on the ground. the full report of this project also found that ‘un components to some degree do contextualise their peacebuilding activities to local circumstances, especially as regards the subnational level’. the importance of continuity in managing local relations was identified as a positive by felix da costa and karlsrud ( ) who found that % of the civil affairs staff in the un mission in haiti (minustah) had over five years experience with the mission; the long-term tenure of staff was seen as a positive in terms of growing and maintaining local civilian relations. the recent critical turn in the study of peacebuilding has prompted greater focus on ‘local solutions’ more broadly in the literature and a number of scholars have cited the importance of prioritising local solutions, local cooperation and local peacebuilders over and above top-down mandates and encouraging local ownership in peacebuilding projects. this focus on local solutions also implies an increase in civilian staff. de coning, karlsrud and breidlid ( ) argue that the role of civilians in peacekeeping missions has increased in part because of their value in the provision of services at national and local levels. barnes ( ) argued for an increased role for civil society in peacebuilding efforts, positing that: 	
  schia	
  and	
  karlsrud,	
  'where	
  the	
  rubber	
  meets	
  the	
  road:	
  friction	
  sites	
  and	
  local	
  level	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  haiti,	
   liberia	
  and	
  south	
  sudan'.	
   	
  schia	
  and	
  karlsrud,	
  'contextualising	
  peacebuilding	
  activities	
  to	
  local	
  circumstances:	
  local	
  level	
  peacebuilding	
   in	
  south	
  sudan,	
  liberia	
  and	
  haiti'.	
  	
   	
  felix	
  da	
  costa	
  and	
  karlsrud,	
  'un	
  local	
  peacebuilding	
  and	
  transition	
  in	
  haiti:	
  contextualising	
  early	
   peacebuilding	
  activities	
  to	
  local	
  circumstances,	
  haiti	
  case	
  study	
  field	
  report'.	
  this	
  research	
  by	
  authors	
  made	
  the	
   point	
  that	
  long	
  term	
  staff	
  bring	
  considerable	
  contextual	
  knowledge	
  and	
  institutional	
  memory	
  however	
  there	
  is	
  a	
   risk	
  that	
  they	
  could	
  become	
  too	
  settled	
  into	
  routines	
  and	
  not	
  see	
  how	
  needs	
  on	
  the	
  ground	
  might	
  be	
  changing.	
   	
  barnes,	
  'civil	
  society	
  and	
  peacebuilding:	
  mapping	
  functions	
  in	
  working	
  for	
  peace';	
  hayman,	
  carolyn,	
  'local	
   first	
  in	
  peacebuilding,'	
  peace	
  review,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  caplan,	
  richard,	
  'partner	
  or	
  patron?	
  international	
  civil	
   adminsitration	
  and	
  local	
  capacity-­‐building,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  schia	
  and	
   karlsrud,	
  'where	
  the	
  rubber	
  meets	
  the	
  road:	
  friction	
  sites	
  and	
  local	
  level	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  haiti,	
  liberia	
  and	
   south	
  sudan';	
  schia	
  and	
  karlsrud,	
  'contextualising	
  peacebuilding	
  activities	
  to	
  local	
  circumstances:	
  local	
  level	
   peacebuilding	
  in	
  south	
  sudan,	
  liberia	
  and	
  haiti';	
  keane,	
  rory,	
  'the	
  partnership-­‐conditionality	
  binary	
  in	
  the	
   western	
  balkans:	
  promoting	
  local	
  ownership	
  for	
  sustainable	
  democratic	
  transition,'	
  cambridge	
  review	
  of	
   international	
  affairs,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  felix	
  da	
  costa,	
  diana,	
  and	
  john	
  karlsrud,	
  moving	
  towards	
  local-­‐level	
   peacebuilding?	
  contextualizing	
  early	
  peacebuilding	
  activities	
  to	
  local	
  circumstances:	
  south	
  sudan	
  case-­‐study,	
   (oslo:	
  norwegian	
  institute	
  for	
  international	
  affairs,	
   );	
  whalan,	
  how	
  peace	
  operations	
  work:	
  power,	
   legitimacy,	
  effectiveness.	
   	
  de	
  coning,	
  cedric,	
  john	
  karlsrud,	
  and	
  marie	
  breidlid,	
  'turning	
  to	
  the	
  south:	
  civilian	
  capacity	
  in	
  the	
  aftermath	
   of	
  conflict	
  '	
  global	
  insights,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
   	
   …the primary role of outsiders is to create spaces and support inclusive processes that enable those directly involved to make decisions about the specific arrangements for addressing the causes of conflict. outsiders should help to build on the capacities that exist and avoid actions that displace or undermine home- grown initiatives or that promote short-term objectives at the expense of long-term prevention. hayman ( ) posited that local civilians engaged in local peacebuilding projects often have a clearer idea of how to use the funds they are given effectively, relative to international staff and that financing of projects should lie in the hands of local ngos and organisations. she stated that peacebuilders need to ‘ensure that assessment of impact is based on factors perceived to be important by the organisation and the community it serves’. conversely, this thesis found that because unifil, has been present for many years, the local population has become adept at ‘managing the peacekeepers’ to serve their own ends. there is a two-way dynamic in the local/international relationship. recipients of aid are not passive, they have their own objectives as well. therefore, the use of local civilian staff was important to avoid corruption and misuse of funds. local civilian staff understand the political and social order within the villages of south lebanon, they are better equipped to perceive when a request by a mayor is going to be for the benefit of the village or for an elite minority. the small but growing body of literature that examines peacekeeping missions at the local level has thus far described civilian reactions to peace operations; explained how peacekeepers fail to address violence and conflict at the local level; peacekeeper misconduct; and described how the peacebuilding system often fails to facilitate more localised solutions in conflicts and post- conflict societies. despite the growth in literature that examines the micro processes of peace operations, scholars in the field recently argued that ‘how peacebuilders actually interact at the local level is still significantly under-researched’ 	
  barnes,	
  'civil	
  society	
  and	
  peacebuilding:	
  mapping	
  functions	
  in	
  working	
  for	
  peace'.	
   	
  hayman,	
  'local	
  first	
  in	
  peacebuilding'.	
   	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
  schia	
  and	
  karlsrud,	
  'where	
  the	
  rubber	
  meets	
  the	
  road:	
  friction	
  sites	
  and	
  local	
  level	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  haiti,	
   liberia	
  and	
  south	
  sudan'.	
   	
   	
   in general, empirical research on post-conflict countries has not been able to integrate the heterogeneity of international organisations at the subnational level. this shortcoming is only slowly being remedied. the un components present at the subnational level that are designed to engage with local actors and deal with local conflict - such as the un's civil affairs section - are under-represented in the literature, which too often is dominated by a perspective that analyses the actions of international actors under the term 'peacebuilders', without acknowledging the substantial range of mandates and modes of interaction with local authorities and populations that exist. research has centred on national policies and the capital regions, ignoring efforts on the lower, subnational levels. conclusion	
   this chapter has provided a review of the literature on peace operations and identified two main theoretical approaches: liberalism and ‘critical theories’ which appear to largely come from poststructuralism, postcolonialism and some gramscian/marxist thinking. in this thesis i take a broadly liberal perspective because ultimately i do believe that security is prior to other needs. i do not believe that un peace operations that are a product of international consensus should be compared to other unilateral interventions because as the above research by doyle and sambanis ( ) has shown, agreement to the terms and conditions to some form of peace agreement is important for the continued success of a peace operation. i would also contend, that in the absence of the political will at the international level to move towards a peace agreement between lebanon and israel, a negative peace (e.g. the absence of fighting) is the best that unifil can hope for. as the literature review has shown, these assumptions are based on liberal or neoliberal views of peace operations. the above review has demonstrated that the majority of research on peacebuilding praxis thus far, from both theoretical strands has taken a top-down approach which has not sought to uncover the micro-processes of peace operations on the ground – in other words – how peace operations actually ‘do’ the job. more recent work in the past ten years has researched peace operations at the micro level from a variety of perspectives: to understand the perceptions of civilians, such as pouligny and whitworth; to understand the perceptions of those working in 	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   peace operations such as schia and karlsrud and bernstein; and finally some research has sought to understand both perspectives including autesserre, moore and whalan. this thesis sits in the third category of research as it uses evidence from both the peacekeepers and civilians in the area to understand the dynamics of the local peacekeeping environment. this localised research has uncovered a number of interesting findings: that the legitimacy of the mission is important; that top-down approaches cannot resolve local problems; that local knowledge is important; and that peacekeeper morality and aggression must be kept strongly in check if an operation is to retain local support. all these findings are deepened in this research, but what this thesis brings that is different, is a specific focus on the local aspects of the securitisation of a peace operation which takes into account both civilian and staff views. specifically the research questions asked in this thesis are: ( ) how do peace operations influence their security environment and ( ) what factors effect unifil local engagement? furthermore, this research identifies three factors – time, autonomy and local knowledge - that work to facilitate improved local engagement and effectiveness in terms of enabling peace operations to influence their security environment. the factor of time is not discussed in any great detail in the above literature, presumably because the objective of most missions is to exit the host state as quickly as possible. however, the short-term nature of peace operations does come through as a problem for civilians in the work of pouligny, and the schia and karlsrud point to greater success for civil affairs officers who have remained in their jobs for over five years. moore implies the need for greater autonomy in his book about bosnia, when he states that officers suffered from a lack of independence and overt interference from above in the 	
  whalan,	
  how	
  peace	
  operations	
  work:	
  power,	
  legitimacy,	
  effectiveness.	
   	
  autessere,	
  the	
  trouble	
  with	
  the	
  congo.	
  local	
  violence	
  and	
  the	
  failure	
  of	
  international	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
  schia	
  and	
  karlsrud,	
  'contextualising	
  peacebuilding	
  activities	
  to	
  local	
  circumstances:	
  local	
  level	
  peacebuilding	
   in	
  south	
  sudan,	
  liberia	
  and	
  haiti';	
  schia	
  and	
  karlsrud,	
  'where	
  the	
  rubber	
  meets	
  the	
  road:	
  friction	
  sites	
  and	
  local	
   level	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  haiti,	
  liberia	
  and	
  south	
  sudan';	
  moore,	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  practice;	
  pouligny,	
  peace	
   operations	
  from	
  below:	
  un	
  missions	
  and	
  local	
  people.	
   	
  whitworth,	
  men,	
  militarism,	
  and	
  un	
  peacekeeping	
  :	
  a	
  gendered	
  analysis.	
   	
  rubinstein,	
  peacekeeping	
  under	
  fire:	
  culture	
  and	
  intervention.	
   	
  pouligny,	
  peace	
  operations	
  from	
  below:	
  un	
  missions	
  and	
  local	
  people.	
   	
  schia	
  and	
  karlsrud,	
  'where	
  the	
  rubber	
  meets	
  the	
  road:	
  friction	
  sites	
  and	
  local	
  level	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  haiti,	
   liberia	
  and	
  south	
  sudan'.	
   	
   	
   course of their duties. as noted above, local knowledge is clearly stated as being important in maintaining local support for peace operations across all studies that reflect on local engagement. what this thesis extrapolates however is the sub-factors that sit beneath these three factors. i show how time (the long term nature of the mission) has three positive effects– it generates trust, institutional memory and drives consistency of effort. autonomy generates creativity and spontaneity amongst staff which helps them to be truly responsive to local needs. local knowledge affords staff the ability to be sensitive to their environment and work contingently according to the requirements of a situation. prior to this these thesis, these three factors have not previously been discussed together as having an impact on the effectiveness peace operations at the local level. the following chapter provides a brief history of the unifil mission in lebanon in order to provide context for the three fieldwork chapters that follow it. i explain the history of unifil in lebanon before resolution , provide a discussion on the terms and conditions of the current mandate and then provide an up-to-date discussion of the strategic environment from the perspectives of the main stakeholders in the unifil mission 	
  moore,	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  practice.	
   	
   	
   chapter	
  two:	
  a	
  brief	
  history	
  of	
  the	
  unifil	
  mission	
  in	
  south	
   lebanon	
   introduction	
   chapter one provided a review of the scholarship on peace operations to argue the case for deeper examination of how peace operations maintain security at the micro level through local actors. this chapter provides context for the fieldwork chapters with a brief history of the unifil mission in lebanon from to the present day. the chapter is divided into three sections. the first examines the early days of the mission and demonstrates two important factors that are relevant to the mission today. first, that the unifil mission (sometimes called unifil i) was established in the absence of there being a peace to keep, something that is not recommended in peacekeeping practice currently. in addition some of the parties to the conflict were not named in the original mandate. this point is relevant when considering the security challenges faced by the unifil operation in its current form. the second point of note from this era, is that the humanitarian work performed by the peacekeeping troops in the early days of the mission (prior to and resolution ) remains appreciated today. affection for unifil under the new mandate is in no small way due to local historical memory of the humanitarian acts of peacekeepers in the first unifil mission whilst the area was under israeli occupation. section two of this chapter discusses the circumstances that gave rise to the united nations security council issuing a new mandate for the mission in the form of resolution . this mandate brokered peace between israel and hizbullah but did not name hizbullah as a party to the agreement; this has made maintaining the peace harder for unifil as they are not able to deal directly with hizbullah’s military wing in the post- era. this section also illustrates why 	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
  operations,	
  'united	
  nations	
  peacekeeping	
  operations:	
  principles	
   and	
  guidelines'.	
  	
   as	
  will	
  be	
  shown	
  in	
  this	
  chapter,	
  the	
  second	
  mandate	
  repeated	
  many	
  of	
  the	
  mistakes	
  of	
  the	
  first.	
   	
   	
   the terms of resolution are viewed as unfair by the local population which affects the legitimacy of the mission at the local level. the final section discusses the current strategic environment in the south of lebanon. i describe the position of all the relevant parties to the mandate – named and unnamed - in order to clarify the political position of all the stakeholders. i also briefly discuss how the syrian crisis affects the area of operations and the calculations of key stakeholders, israel and hizbullah. unifil	
  i:	
  unifil	
  prior	
  to	
  resolution	
   	
   the acronym unifil stands for united nations interim force in lebanon. despite the inclusion of the word ‘interim’ in its name, unifil is one of the longest running un peacekeeping missions since the inception of peacekeeping missions in . despite its longevity, like all un operations its mandate is reviewed and renewed periodically by the security council. the periods of renewal for unifil have varied, from one month to one year, demonstrating concern on behalf of the security council as to the effectiveness of unifil in light of its difficult mandate. however, currently, its renewal period comes up annually on st august each year. like all older un missions established prior to , unifil is labelled a ‘traditional’ peacekeeping mission in that it exists to act as a buffer between two states that remain at war. the unifil mandate began in in response to the israeli invasion of south lebanon up to the litani river, which was termed ‘operation litani’. israeli forces invaded in response to continued attacks on israel by pro-palestinian groups operating in the south of lebanon. these had begun in the early s, caused by the expulsion of the palestinian liberation organisation 	
  on	
   	
  may	
   ,	
  when	
  the	
  independent	
  state	
  of	
  israel	
  was	
  announced,	
  lebanon	
  along	
  with	
  other	
  arab	
  states	
   (jordan,	
  syria,	
  egypt,	
  yemen,	
  saudi	
  arabia	
  and	
  iraq)	
  declared	
  they	
  were	
  in	
  a	
  state	
  of	
  war	
  with	
  israel.	
  	
  owing	
  to	
   internal	
  tensions	
  however,	
  lebanon	
  as	
  a	
  state	
  never	
  actually	
  went	
  to	
  war	
  against	
  israel.	
  	
  the	
  first	
  un	
  peace	
   operation	
  ever	
  established	
  -­‐	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  truce	
  supervision	
  organisation	
  (untso)	
  -­‐	
  was	
  able	
  to	
  swiftly	
   supervise	
  a	
  truce	
  between	
  lebanon	
  and	
  israel	
  that	
  continued	
  to	
  exist	
  up	
  until	
   .	
  	
  see	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
   march	
   .	
   	
   	
   (plo) from jordan in which resulted in the palestinian resistance movement moving its base from jordan to lebanon. un security council resolution was issued on march to address the deteriorating security situation in lebanon. the resolution requested approval from the secretary general for the establishment of an interim force comprised of , troops, drawn from member states, in the area south of the litani river. the aims of the operation were stated as being: …for the purpose of confirming the withdrawal of israeli forces, restoring international peace and security, and assisting the government of lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area. a second resolution, unsc resolution also on march , approved the duration of the mission for six months, and on may, , a third resolution (unsc ) approved an increase in troops from the original , to , . the initial troop composition of unifil was regionally diverse and comprised of troops from the following states: canada, fiji, france, iran, ireland, nepal, nigeria, norway and senegal. israel had unilaterally declared a ceasefire at the litani river on march and the first contingents of unifil arrived the following day. however, israel initially made it clear that it had no intention of leaving southern lebanon until the palestinian liberation organisation (plo) had been cleared from the area, and that they had zero confidence in unifil being able to undertake this objective for them. israeli troops were therefore under their own orders from 	
  seaver,	
  brenda	
  m.,	
  'the	
  regional	
  sources	
  of	
  power-­‐sharing	
  failure:	
  the	
  case	
  of	
  lebanon,'	
  political	
  science	
   quarterly,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  march	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  march	
   .	
   	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  iranian	
  troops	
  were	
  withdrawn	
  after	
  the	
   	
  revolution	
  and	
  replaced	
  by	
  troops	
  from	
  france,	
  nepal	
  and	
   norway.	
   	
  james,	
  alan,	
  'painful	
  peacekeeping:	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  in	
  lebanon	
   -­‐ ,'	
  international	
  journal,	
   /autumn:	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
   	
   the israeli government and had no intention of fulfilling the terms of the un instruction to leave until they had fulfilled their own objectives. other local militia were also predisposed to attack unifil. these groups were initially palestinian, or lebanese militia run by palestinians who had other international objectives and to whom the domestic concerns of the lebanon were of little interest. local doubts as to unifil’s neutrality were not helped by the fact that the largest unifil troop contingent was the former colonial power france (who provided , troops). rather the troops were seen by many on the ground as yet another foreign intervention aimed at consolidating the goals of western powers, who supported and bankrolled the state of israel with whom they were at war. it should be noted that later un peacekeeping missions have only been established when there is considered to be a peace to keep. unifil was created and organised at a time when lebanon was in the midst (and as it turned out, at the very beginning), of a civil war and whilst the country remained victim to a hostile act by another state. furthermore the area of operation of unifil, the region south of the litani river in south lebanon, was suffering from a power vacuum that had been filled by competing armed militia groups. these circumstances meant that from the beginning, whilst operating under a mandate more consistent with chapter vi of the un charter, peacekeepers were placed in an environment whereby their very survival and protection necessitated the use of force, which would be more consistent with a chapter vii mission. the initial period after deployment was therefore one of great danger owing to the security threats faced by unifil who were considered to be foreign invaders by many groups operating in the south. their position was precarious and they faced constant attacks on their personnel, their bases and equipment. they suffered from constraints on their freedom of movement and communication. in the first four years of the mission, unifil personnel died as a result of 	
  boerma,	
  maureen,	
  'the	
  united	
  nations	
  interim	
  force	
  in	
  the	
  lebanon:	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  a	
  domestic	
  conflict,'	
   millennium,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  it	
  should	
  be	
  noted	
  of	
  course,	
  that	
  there	
  is	
  no	
  specific	
  mention	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
  missions	
  in	
  the	
  un	
  charter	
   itself.	
   	
   	
   direct attacks (due to shootings and mine explosions). of the three unifil mandate objectives: re-establishing international peace and security, confirming the withdrawal of israeli troops and the re-establishment of the authority of the lebanese government in the area; it is clear that at least two of these three goals had no credibility with the political organisations operating out of the south. [f]irst of all they were at a total loss. they didn’t know why they were here – nobody was telling them. that was the palestinian time. the whole of the south was under palestinian control and they were told by the un that yasser arafat will be responsible for them. they were told, go and do your best. they were just thrown in here, without any clue. it was definitely not an environment conducive to peacekeeping. there’s a war going on in beirut, there’s a war going on in the south, and any peacekeeping force will need some kind of local authority to back them up. there was no state. well-meaning people here said, “oh yes, we love you, welcome” and all that but basically you are on your own. ultimately, the tasks that unifil did manage to achieve during the early years of its mandate included: …establishing roadblocks and checkpoints, setting up observation posts along key infiltration routes, engaging in foot and mobile patrols by day and night, and organizing night- time listening posts on a random basis. it also established a presence in as many populated areas as possible. after about a year efforts were made to improve unifil's attempts to limit infiltration and incursions. troops were deployed in greater density along the perimeter of the unifil area, and the technical surveillance and detection capacities of the force were improved. thus the number of night vision binoculars and strong searchlights was increased, while sophisticated ground surveillance radars were introduced. towards the same end, a number of contingents making up the force brought in armoured personnel carriers. the three main groups that unifil had to negotiate with in the early years of deployment are described next. 	
  james,	
  'painful	
  peacekeeping:	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  in	
  lebanon	
   -­‐ '.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  james,	
  'painful	
  peacekeeping:	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  in	
  lebanon	
   -­‐ '.	
   	
   	
   the	
  palestinians	
   the problem was the interference of the plo in everything. because they really saw themselves as the rulers of the land. and it took some time to settle that down, but you are dealing with groups of palestinians – each of them had one or two lebanese proxy groups. you are dealing with the mess of - armed groups all running around and here you are international force – official forces and all that – dealing with these people. after israel, the largest militia confronting unifil upon commencement of its operations in were the plo. by it is estimated that around , palestinians were living in lebanon, a country with a population of million at the time. the plo had established their base in tyre prior to the arrival of unifil, and possessed a large number of weapons caches around southern lebanon. they resisted any interference in their ability to access these arms in order to conduct military offensives against israel. as such they were a considerable force to contend with, and according to israel, the justification for the (and later ) invasions. relations between unifil and the plo were made more difficult by the fact that the palestinians were not considered a party to the mandate, which mentioned only lebanon and israel. as such, the plo argued they should be left alone by unifil. furthermore they justified their continued presence in south lebanon, under the terms of the cairo agreement of , which stated that the palestinians were entitled to operate in southern lebanon and in particular maintain control of tyre. but elements within the lebanese government were keen to re-establish authority in the south, and were pushing unifil to take control of tyre irrespective of these issues. in essence, the central government in beirut, weak as it was, wanted unifil to take on the plo on their behalf. the french were willing to attempt this goal at the outset of the mission, and this led to several serious confrontations with the plo who were determined to maintain their positions. interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  the	
  cairo	
  accord	
  of	
   	
  between	
  lebanon	
  and	
  the	
  palestinians	
  was	
  an	
  agreement	
  whereby	
  lebanon	
  had	
   given	
  palestinian	
  guerrilla	
  fighters	
  positions	
  in	
  south	
  lebanon.	
   	
  murphy,	
  ray,	
  'un	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  lebanon	
  and	
  the	
  use	
  of	
  force,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
   ( ).	
   	
   	
   after a plea from the un secretary general to the plo, unifil was able to come to a political agreement with the plo. on may, yasser arafat agreed to cooperate with unifil and to refrain from launching attacks on israel from southern lebanon. in addition, unifil agreed to the plo demand that those armed elements that were said by the plo to have held their positions in the area throughout operation litani should be allowed to remain and that non- military supplies should be allowed through to them; not least their headquarters area in tyre. as the israelis themselves had avoided invading tyre owing to the strength of the plo position there, the plo argued there was no need for unifil to take over an area that had never been occupied. on the ground palestinians entering into the unifil area routinely flouted the agreement. despite recording almost incidents of turning back militia members carrying weapons to the palestinians from through to , unifil estimated that the number of palestinian guerrilla fighters accessing the caches of weapons stored by the plo had increased from to by . in terms of the relationship between unifil and the plo itself, arafat is noted to have worked hard to maintain good public relations with unifil, and to be seen to curtail attacks on un personnel as much as possible. when attacks did occur, the plo was always quick to apologise. [w]e had an old plo guy who was the official liaison to unifil. they designated a liaison officer to unifil. plo guys around arafat usually weren’t that educated…we had confrontations with them, we had occasional clashes. we killed each other actually. they didn't like the idea that unifil soldiers were telling them not to carry guns, or not to go here. but we told them, “look you agreed at the beginning that this is the unifil area and you will not be in it”. but for them, guns are everything. it’s an honour you know? so we had problems like this with them and technically whenever we had a problem like this we had to go to the plo. but yasser arafat was such a character. whenever he felt he was not in good standing with the un he would say “oh! i don’t know those guys, i don’t know eventually	
  unifil	
  were	
  able	
  to	
  conduct	
  patrols	
  in	
  tyre,	
  see	
  james,	
  'painful	
  peacekeeping:	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
   in	
  lebanon	
   -­‐ '.	
   united	
  nations,	
  the	
  blue	
  helmets:	
  a	
  review	
  of	
  united	
  nations	
  peacekeeping	
  (new	
  york:	
  united	
  nations	
   organization,	
   ).	
   	
  boerma,	
  'the	
  united	
  nations	
  interim	
  force	
  in	
  the	
  lebanon:	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  a	
  domestic	
  conflict'.	
   makdisi	
  et	
  al.,	
  'unifil	
  ii:	
  emerging	
  and	
  evolving	
  european	
  engagement	
  in	
  lebanon	
  and	
  the	
  middle	
  east'.	
   	
   	
   who they are, ill-disciplined elements my brother.” meanwhile of course you know he is paying their salaries… in their attempts to manage the situation and prevent troop casualties there is evidence to suggest, that at times peacekeeping troops cooperated a little too closely with the plo as nachmias ( ) notes: …during the invasion israeli troops captured a plo bunker and discovered a written agreement between the commander of norbat and the plo, promising non-interference by the norwegians in any terrorist activity that took place in their zone'. kurt waldheim's response was that unifil was only permitting the delivery of 'supplies' to limited palestinian groups still in its area of operation. on another occasion, a senior unifil officer from nigeria was arrested near jerusalem with two suitcases full of explosives, detonators, machine-guns and ammunition that he was going to deliver to a plo gang. thus, israel argued that unifil was a biased, anti-israeli organization, supported by over lebanese military people. unifil headquarters also had a tough time managing those peacekeeping troops that were committed to deterring the plo. as a former unifil officer relates, some battalions, took matters into their hands at the checkpoints they established to try and prevent weapons transfers. they [militias] had very severe problems with the fijians. because the fijians they are very strict and tough guys. and fijians used to beat them up at the checkpoint - when they had a checkpoint. they couldn’t shoot them. so i mean we had problems like this… those peacekeepers that operated within the confines of the rules of engagement (roe) found themselves ineffective. …for example the dutch came. well the dutch don’t have any violent bone in their bodies, they don’t want to fight anybody and they want to enjoy themselves. and the plo really pushed them. instead of going to the fijian area, they moved south and decided to go to the dutch area. and then they exploited that. interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   nachmias,	
  nitza,	
  'unifil:	
  when	
  peace	
  is	
  non‐existent,	
  peacekeeping	
  is	
  impossible,'	
  international	
   peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ),	
  p. 	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   the	
  israeli	
  defence	
  force	
  (idf)	
  and	
  the	
  south	
  lebanon	
  army	
  (sla)	
  	
   the israeli withdrawal was planned to take place in in four stages. in the first three of those stages the israeli defence force (idf) handed over small pieces of territory to the auspices of unifil. however in the fourth and final stage, the idf ignored the un resolution, and refused to withdraw from the final sector in the south. maintaining a skeleton of idf troops, they initially handed over authority to a christian militia whom they continued to support. this was the south lebanon army (sla) run by a former lebanese armed forces (laf) officer, major saad haddad. their presence prevented unifil troops from conducting their operations up to the internationally recognised border. the literature on the unifil mission during the period of through to reports that of all the factions operating in the south at this time, israel, and its proxy force the sla, were by far the biggest problem for unifil. according to a former unifil officer, the israelis refused to take responsibility for the activities of the sla during the early stages of their military occupation which were extremely challenging for unifil. twice the unifil base was attacked and shelled by the sla; and peacekeepers were regularly attacked whilst out on patrols. [the sla] most of them were lebanese armed soldiers who had come to the south with haddad and stayed there and they were totally cut off from beirut. they were communicating through haifa and the israelis they made use of this. they opened this fatimah gate, for humanitarian services initially, and then it went to military assistance, then they started giving them weapons, then they started giving them training, then they start teaching them hebrew, right? it came to the point that when i met most of these guys, they were in israeli army uniforms. and the israelis would tell you, “we have no control over these guys, they are independent lebanese militia” whenever we had problems. 	
  boerma,	
  'the	
  united	
  nations	
  interim	
  force	
  in	
  the	
  lebanon:	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  a	
  domestic	
  conflict'.	
   	
  lia,	
  brynjar,	
  'islamist	
  perceptions	
  of	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  and	
  its	
  peacekeeping	
  missions:	
  some	
  preliminary	
   findings,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  thakur,	
  ramesh,	
  international	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  lebanon:	
  united	
  nations	
  authority	
  and	
  multinational	
  force	
   (boulder:	
  westview	
  press,	
   );	
  james,	
  'painful	
  peacekeeping:	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  in	
  lebanon	
   -­‐ ';	
  lia,	
   'islamist	
  perceptions	
  of	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  and	
  its	
  peacekeeping	
  missions:	
  some	
  preliminary	
  findings';	
  murphy,	
   'un	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  lebanon	
  and	
  the	
  use	
  of	
  force';	
  doyle,	
  e.d.,	
  'reflections	
  of	
  a	
  un	
  peacekeeper:	
  the	
  changing	
   fortunes	
  of	
  conflict	
  control,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( );	
  makdisi	
  et	
  al.,	
  'unifil	
  ii:	
  emerging	
   and	
  evolving	
  european	
  engagement	
  in	
  lebanon	
  and	
  the	
  middle	
  east'.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   unfortunately for unifil, their headquarters was located in israeli/sla territory which meant they could only leave the base with the permission of the sla. this created immense problems for unifil because they were instructed by new york to deal only with israel. [o]ur headquarters was stupidly right there in the middle of their area. it was really stupid. and so i mean, anytime he [major haddad] wanted he could put pressure on the un, he could close the roads, do this, do that. and we had rules that we don’t deal with these guys. we deal with the israelis. the israelis would say, “no no you deal with them, they are independent, we don’t know them. we are good friends but…”. it was a game that was being played. in addition, once the enclave had been established, unifil noted that the idf moved freely about within it, staging regular incursions into the unifil area of operations to pursue palestinian fighters. despite the sla’s rather obvious role as an idf proxy force, unifil had no choice but work out a compromise deal with them in order to be able to operate. as such, they came to an arrangement with haddad’s militia (and by default, israel). unifil would be allowed to move freely on the main roads in sla territory for five days a week for the purpose of re-supply and the rotation of personnel and unifil helicopters were permitted to fly over the area but only after advance ad hoc clearance. as time went on, it has been noted that the israeli government took every opportunity to discredit unifil at the un and internationally in their attempts to have the mission withdrawn from south lebanon. israeli contempt for unifil was ultimately demonstrated when israel re-invaded lebanon in : the unifil force commander was given minutes advance notice. at the time of the second invasion, some unifil contingents, particularly the french interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
  thakur,	
  international	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  lebanon:	
  united	
  nations	
  authority	
  and	
  multinational	
  force	
   ibid.	
   	
   	
   and the fijian and the nepalese, erected roadblocks and laid their flags on the road challenging the idf to drive over them. the idf is reported to have extended the unifil troops the courtesy of driving round the roadblocks for the most part rather than through them. in , the israelis announced the official establishment of the ‘security zone’, which stretched from naqoura in the west through to the southern end of the beqaa valley in the east. this made it easier for unifil as they were now able to deal directly with the israelis. once the idf had taken over formally, unifil had more scope to operate within the occupied zone. up until this point unifil had been given a limited number of static positions which were cut off from the rest of the area, more symbolic than anything else which they often had to reach by helicopter. in , unifil came to a further compromise with both the plo and sla whereby they agreed not to interfere in any clashes between them unless it directly threatened unifil staff. civilian assistance and protection became unifil’s primary role up until the israeli withdrawal in . the reason unifil stayed during the israeli occupation was based on a decision from new york. the view there was that there was little point in drawing down the mission because they believed that the israelis would withdraw from lebanon at some point. the feeling was that if the israelis withdrew, it was very likely that they would be asked to establish a new un mission to keep the peace in the area, so it was better to retain with what they already had. unifil became more visible on the ground after the israeli invasion. i thought we would all be going home, why should a peacekeeping force be running around in an occupied area? but they told us, look you stay because these guys will leave one day and we will need another un force, so why destroy what you have? 	
  james,	
  'painful	
  peacekeeping:	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  in	
  lebanon	
   -­‐ '	
   	
  thakur,	
  international	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  lebanon:	
  united	
  nations	
  authority	
  and	
  multinational	
  force	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   in fact, the israeli occupation of south lebanon lasted until , well after the end of the civil war which ended in and culminated in the ta’if accords of that established the current framework of lebanon’s confessional political system. the	
  lebanese	
  resistance	
   aside from the christians, the israelis and the plo, the other critical factions involved in south lebanon were the shi’a factions of amal and later hizbullah. initially unifil had no great problems with amal, the original shi’a resistance movement of the south, who saw greater benefit in cooperating with unifil than in attacking it. this was not the case with hizbullah, who emerged in the south in the mid- s. in the summer of unifil formally recognized two amal officials as liaison officers, reflecting the growing influence of amal in the south. for amal the relationship with unifil was important and sensible, as in the absence of a legitimate lebanese government the un presence in the south stood for legitimacy. moreover, in the light of assiduous israeli efforts to undermine unifil, they had certain interests in common and the unifil zone gave a certain degree of protection to amal from the idf. amal officials strove to ‘wed themselves with unifil’, which at times created strains in the relationship as amal attempted to get too close, risking perceptions of unifil impartiality. cooperation essentially consisted of amal assisting unifil in preventing hizbullah and palestinian groups from launching attacks on israel which would have led to further retaliatory attacks from israel on the people of the south. in addition, assisting unifil with checkpoints enabled amal to intercept the flow of arms to hizbullah, their political rival. however, as with all the groups that had a de-facto peace agreement with unifil, incidents between unifil contingents and amal still occurred from time to time. 	
  see	
  appendix	
  b	
  for	
  a	
  full	
  copy	
  of	
  the	
  english	
  version	
  of	
  the	
  ta’if	
  accords	
  that	
  ended	
  the	
  lebanese	
  civil	
  war.	
   	
  lia,	
  'islamist	
  perceptions	
  of	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  and	
  its	
  peacekeeping	
  missions:	
  some	
  preliminary	
  findings'.	
   ibid.	
  p. .	
   ibid.	
   murphy,	
  'un	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  lebanon	
  and	
  the	
  use	
  of	
  force'.	
   	
   	
   in , a new source of political authority emerged with the formation of the shi’ite group hizbullah. the evolution of the organisation is attributed to three factors: ( ) the perception that the needs of the growing shi’a population were not being served by existing factions in the civil war (christian and sunni but including amal); ( ) the impact of the iranian revolution and the radicalisation of shi’a worldwide; and ( ) the acceptance by amal of a role in the newly formed maronite christian dominated national salvation committee in , which was seen as a betrayal of shi’ite interests. the movement swiftly gained popularity in the beqaa valley and they began to infiltrate the south competing with amal for popular shi’a support. by , amal and hizbullah were conducting their own war for control of the south and this continued until they resolved their differences in the damascus agreement of . at the initiative of the iranians and the syrians, both shi’ite parties were summoned to damascus in order to find resolution. the agreement in damascus was that amal would allow hizbullah access to the south, but they could not conduct military activities. of note is that the leader of amal (both then and today, nabih berri) insisted that unifil must remain untouchable. since , there have been no major disagreements between amal and hizbullah, at least none that are openly discussed in public. from this point on, hizbullah were free to concentrate their energies on attacking israeli troops in lebanon. and this they did with increasing success. unlike amal, hizbullah was extremely hostile towards unifil throughout the s. this was due to the organisation’s belief that unifil and resolution , was a move on behalf of the international community to protect israel rather than the people of the south. as a result, hizbullah adopted a confrontational approach towards unifil and unlike the other militias, they rejected all attempts by unifil to come to compatible working arrangements with them. lia,	
  'islamist	
  perceptions	
  of	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  and	
  its	
  peacekeeping	
  missions:	
  some	
  preliminary	
  findings'.	
   ibid.	
   ibid.	
   	
  hizbullah	
  soon	
  chose	
  to	
  ignore	
  that	
  part	
  of	
  the	
  agreement.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
  	
   for	
  more	
  details	
  on	
  this	
  period	
  from	
   	
  –	
   ,	
  see	
  blanford,	
  nicholas,	
  warriors	
  of	
  god:	
  inside	
  hezbollah's	
   thirty	
  year	
  struggle	
  (new	
  york:	
  random	
  house,	
   ).	
   	
   	
   hizbullah’s aggression towards unifil placed the peacekeepers at significant risk owing to a number of checkpoint confrontations which resulted in fatal shooting incidents, and hizbullah’s use of roadside bombs to attack unifil patrols. however, unifil worked hard to normalise relations with hizbullah as quickly as possible. in the israelis assassinated the leader of hizbullah sheikh abbas musawi in his car with his wife and child. his replacement was hassan nasrallah, only years old at the time. nasrallah was known for his commitment to troops on the ground, his intelligence, charisma and an exceptional sense of humour. the former spokesman for unifil immediately went to see him to negotiate a deal between hizbullah and unifil. [a] few months after he was appointed, i went to nasrallah and said, “look sheikh, we don’t have to like each other, we don’t have to agree on everything. certainly we won’t agree on anything. all i want is that we don’t shoot each other. if you think that unifil is doing a good service for your people in the south, then let us stay. we will be careful in our dealings with the people but we are not going to replace you. so at least let’s stop shooting each other.” he said, “ok”. so right then he appointed, this was a first, an official liaison officer for unifil. for the first time. and he said to me: “whenever you have a problem with our guys, you find this guy. he will report directly to me. but in return i want to be able to directly send you a message”. so i had an office in tyre which became my contact point. it should be noted that attacks believed to be from hizbullah did not cease entirely after the aforementioned agreement. but these attacks occurred when the military wing of hizbullah perceived there had been a violation of their security or a direct attack on their personnel, and not because of a continued commitment to attack unifil for existential reasons. the vagueness of the unifil mandate prior to resolution was in many ways to blame as whilst it instructed unifil to prevent armed groups from infiltrating the area of operations, it did not take account of the lebanese right to resist occupation of their land. as such, lebanese armed elements felt justified in preventing unifil from interfering with their operations, even if that meant attacking unifil. ibid.	
   ibid.;	
  ———,	
  killing	
  mr	
  lebanon:	
  the	
  assasination	
  of	
  rafiq	
  hariri	
  and	
  its	
  impact	
  on	
  the	
  middle	
  east	
  (london:	
  ib	
   tauris,	
   ).	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   lia,	
  'islamist	
  perceptions	
  of	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  and	
  its	
  peacekeeping	
  missions:	
  some	
  preliminary	
  findings'.	
   	
   	
   therefore unifil continued to receive attacks on its personnel and property up until the israeli withdrawal of . not all attacks came from lebanese and palestinian militias. between – there were two further israeli invasions into south lebanon: operation accountability in and operation grapes of wrath in . unifil could merely watch and record the series of events that unfolded. one of the most serious events for unifil and civilians during this time was the israeli bombing of the fijian compound at qana in referred to widely as the qana massacre. here civilians died when the israeli air force bombed the hospital in the fijian un compound. the attack was condemned by the un and human rights groups, but israel determined it an accident and refused to take responsibility for costs or compensation, despite evidence clarifying that the pilots had known exactly what they were bombing at the time. unifil	
  i	
  and	
  civilian	
  protection	
   whilst unifil i were in many ways unable to fulfil the terms of the mandate, peacekeepers found other ways to make themselves useful during their time in south lebanon in the form of providing civilian protection and assistance. what emerged from this research is that affection for unifil is based a great deal on the historical memory of civilians during the israeli occupation. during this time unifil battalions gave the people what they could from their own national resources. at a time where life was very hard for southerners owing to constant invasions and occupation. the south was totally empty. people had escaped, and they were not going to come back. the palestinians were holding the place and at war with the israelis so whoever was left behind was typical lebanese scene. usually they leave behind their old people to take care of the property. all that sort of thing. and those bassil,	
  noah,	
  'israel:	
  international	
  rogue?,'	
  aq:	
  journal	
  of	
  contemporary	
  analysis,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   human	
  rights	
  watch,	
  israel/lebanon	
  'operation	
  grapes	
  of	
  wrath':	
  the	
  civilian	
  victims,	
  human	
  rights	
  watch,	
   );	
  united	
  nations,	
  'israel's	
  shelling	
  of	
  unifil,'	
  international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
  	
   makdisi	
  et	
  al.,	
  'unifil	
  ii:	
  emerging	
  and	
  evolving	
  european	
  engagement	
  in	
  lebanon	
  and	
  the	
  middle	
  east'.	
   	
   	
   people were absolutely dependent for everything, they had nothing. medical care, this, nothing! sometimes they didn’t have food. as such, unifil were regarded by many civilians as saviours. i tell you during the occupation for the people they were the saviours…unifil were for the local people like life raft for them. because they felt they are protected. if in the occupied area they [israelis] want to enter any house, unifil try to stop them. and that’s why for the people unifil were like this. but now as we have the local army and the situation is different. but i tell you when ever any unifil soldier want to come in to any house he will be welcome. so it was like a very warm and friendly relationship. because they came here in a very critical situation and they were the only refuge for the people. that’s why the relation was very strong and memorable until now. there was a strong sense that despite their limited resources, unifil troops would go the extra mile to help the lebanese. during the time of the israeli occupation, unifil battalions did not have the kind of numbers on the ground or resources that they have today. as such, they gave much of what they could from their own supplies. the locals knew this and appreciated it deeply. i can remember that we had no electricity – they provided the people with electricity. they used to have their own generators and they used to give them to the people. and they used to provide them with water. they used to…they started from the very beginning these humanitarian activities, providing people with services like medical, dental, even vet. so from the very beginning the norwegians started this initiative and the people got used to that. unifil troops also tried to protect local civilians from the worst effects of the occupying force. there was one scene i will never forget. in a village called burj ahal – it was raided by the israelis. and they were looking for some people. so they collected all the women and children in the school and they took the men some place else. and it was a village in a french battalion area. and they wanted to blow up a house. so immediately the french commander, without asking, he ordered his guys to climb to the roof of the building and sit there. so fifteen french ran to the roof of the building and sat there. people saw those things and it became legends. interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  d,	
  civilian,	
  hebbariyeh,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  june	
   .	
  	
   interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   we can say because the israeli occupation didn’t allow [you] to have a normal life. so they started to like, err, arrest people and the norwegians used to try their level best to prevent that within their limits and their mandate. the local population also spoke of their sadness when unifil soldiers paid the ultimate price for their tour of duty. we used to feel bad whenever we used to lose one of their lives because they are here for our sake and they used to die. they used to be young soldiers who came here just for ah – supposed to be here as peacekeepers. but some of them unfortunately they used to lose their lives and die here. it used to be really like pain for everyone. all the unifil soldiers who died are martyrs. we have great appreciation for the soldiers who came from a foreign place and died for our land. 	
   leading	
  up	
  to	
  the	
   	
  war	
   unifil’s work with civilians during the israeli invasions and in the subsequent recovery periods helped to further ameliorate tensions between them and hizbullah. hizbullah saw that unifil were genuinely caring towards the local population, and as a partly social organisation, they appreciated this. as a result, the relationship between the parties continued to improve. this paved the way later for unifil to be able to engage with hizbullah at the national level when they became involved officially in lebanese politics. the israeli withdrawal from lebanon should have heralded a more successful era for unifil in terms of the completion of their mandate, and in many ways it did. the dismemberment of the ‘zone of security’ meant that unifil was able to operate up to the internationally recognised boundaries, and was no longer the target of attacks from the troublesome sla which had been disbanded the instant israel withdrew (with many of its members and their families going to live in israel, fearing reprisals). interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  d ,	
  civilian,	
  qlayli,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   however, a number of factors conspired to prevent the long dreamed of peace for the region. israel had failed to withdraw from two small sections of internationally recognised lebanese land: shebaa farms and half of the town of ghajar. as israel had failed to coordinate its withdrawal in advance with the lebanese government, the vacuum that emerged in the area was quickly filled by hizbullah who were determined to get back the remaining pieces of lebanese land, as well as a significant number of lebanese prisoners who had been abducted during the israeli/sla occupation and remained in jails in israel. extremely organised as ever, hizbullah set up checkpoints, observation posts and a visible military infrastructure across the area of operations and became the de-facto politico-military authority in the area. their presence prevented the deployment of joint patrols between unifil and the lebanese armed forces (laf), for political and logistical reasons which will be discussed in chapter four. furthermore, the line of withdrawal (the blue line) remained contested in parts as the boundary was often unmarked leading to intentional and unintended violations that led to confrontations between the lebanese and the israeli troops. this meant that hizbullah continued to have a raison d’etre for its existence in south lebanon, by arguing that israel had not withdrawn from all lebanese territory; but there were other reasons too. in the absence of laf, hizbullah felt justified in continuing to maintain its forces on the blue line, in case of future attack by israel. for unifil, this meant they required the continued cooperation of hizbullah in order carry out their duties. for the most part, they had it but there continued to be incidents – some fatal – between hizbullah and unifil, as well between unifil and the idf. despite the constant insecurity during this period as a result of frequent clashes between the idf and hizbullah, some civilian respondents argue the presence of hizbullah on the border made 	
  the	
  laf	
  did	
  not	
  feel	
  confident	
  that	
  they	
  would	
  be	
  accepted	
  in	
  the	
  south	
  alongside	
  the	
  presence	
  of	
  hizbullah.	
  	
   there	
  also	
  remained	
  a	
  desperate	
  shortage	
  of	
  equipment	
  for	
  the	
  laf	
  which	
  (as	
  noted	
  later)	
  prevented	
  full	
   deployment	
  during	
  this	
  period.	
   	
   	
   them feel more secure than they do currently whilst there is peace. the frankest expression of this was provided by one shi’ite civilian respondent: during the resistance existence on the borders, the israelis used to pass on the borders, we were chanting at them, cursing them etc. but they never dared to answer back because they were afraid of the resistance. after , the israelis started to give the finger because they feel more secure because hizbullah is away (more) from their borders… for example, this fatimah gate, there was only one person from hizbullah, just observing, it was enough to make the israelis feel scared. even if he didn’t have weapons and was having slipper on his foot, but they were scared of him…israel only counts hizbullah. so they don’t care about unifil. because israel knows very well that hizbullah exists in every place on the borders and that’s what’s they are afraid of, not unifil. so the confidence that people have in unifil is a temporary confidence. but if something occurred, if an incident occurred, people know very well that unifil will not be in the middle. they will escape, they will leave, they will not confront the israelis. and who will confront israel is the resistance. the belief of the local population in hizbullah’s ability to defend them remains pertinent today, and it is for this reason that unifil cannot say they have obtained the full trust of the local population. experience has taught civilians that when hostilities break out, unifil will not be able to defend them, but hizbullah will. as such, many civilians maintain plurality of consent: consent for the laf and unifil on the one hand, and consent for the presence of hizbullah on the other. this comes into conflict only when the laf or unifil are alerted to explosions near the border, or when unifil (as occurred in the past) has attempted to monitor hizbullah activities too closely. as will be noted in the following chapters, on these occasions, the locals will close ranks and work to prevent unifil from entering certain areas. the strategic environment between and was not conducive to unifil doing any more than what they had done before, with one difference; they were able to now patrol the border areas. but they were not able to prevent altercations between hizbullah and israel. this meant that another major confrontation between hizbullah and the idf became inevitable. it occurred on july at the height of the summer tourism season. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  q,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   hizbullah had been taunting the idf in the years prior to the -day war or the july war as it is called in lebanon (harb al-tamooz). but they had always operated with the intention of hurting the idf enough to obtain a stronger bargaining position. they maintain publicly that they never intended to start a war. however, there is no doubt that their actions on july were highly provocative and what hizbullah had not counted on was a shift in the strategy of israel. there is a small body of literature that points to the fact that israel, tired of hizbullah attacks on the idf, was preparing for a war with hizbullah with the aim of eradicating the organisation and was therefore waiting for legitimate justification to begin a new conflict. on july , it came. hizbullah ambushed an idf patrol in the area of zar'it-shtula on the border with israel. they kidnapped two israeli soldiers and killed five more in the attack. hizbullah has always claimed they launched the attack to obtain a bargaining chip with israel on the issue of the imprisoned lebanese and palestinians in israeli jails. immediately after the kidnapping, hizbullah demanded the release of lebanese prisoners held by israel in exchange for the release of the abducted soldiers. israel however perceived their actions as an act of war and immediately launched a retaliatory response. this began with airstrikes and artillery fire on targets in lebanon aimed at lebanese civilian infrastructure, including beirut's rafiq hariri international airport; an air and naval blockade; and a ground invasion of southern lebanon. hizbullah then launched more rockets into northern israel and engaged the israel defence forces (idf) in guerrilla warfare from hardened positions. the war raged for days and ended with the implementation of resolution on august . during the course of the war it is estimated to have killed at least , – , lebanese 	
  shadid,	
  anthony,	
  'inside	
  hezbollah,	
  big	
  miscalculations',	
  new	
  york	
  times,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   zunes,	
  stephen,	
  'washington's	
  proxy	
  war',	
  in	
  nubar	
  hovsepian,	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  lebanon:	
  a	
  reader	
  (northampton,	
   ma:	
  olive	
  branch	
  press,	
   );	
  gendzier,	
  irene	
  l.,	
  'exporting	
  death	
  as	
  democracy:	
  us	
  foreign	
  policy	
  in	
  lebanon',	
   in	
  nubar	
  hovsepian,	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  lebanon:	
  a	
  reader	
  (northhampton,	
  ma:	
  olive	
  branch	
  press,	
   ).	
   shadid,	
  'inside	
  hezbollah,	
  big	
  miscalculations'.	
   	
   	
   people, and israelis. it severely damaged lebanese civil infrastructure, and displaced approximately one million lebanese and , – , israelis. the next section provides a description of the revised unifil in order to clarify the remit of the unifil mission today. this section also discusses the terms and conditions of resolution to explain why a exists a gap between the international and local legitimacy of the resolution which affect unifil’s operations on the ground. the	
  post	
  resolution	
   	
  phase	
   resolution was issued on august , however, in contrast to all other unsc resolutions, the ceasefire did not come into effect until three days later, at : am on august. it is noted in the literature on the war, that this enabled israel to continue and intensify its bombing campaign of south lebanon and so-called hizbullah strongholds, in the last three days of the war. the effect of the israeli efforts were the strewing of up to an estimated one million cluster bomblets (illegal under international law) across the width and breadth of south lebanon which continue to kill, maim and injure civilians in the area. falk ( ) argues the delay was engineered by the us to afford the israeli forces some political cover to ‘seize some vestiges of victory from the jaws of its defeat’. 	
  falk,	
  richard,	
  and	
  asli	
  bali,	
  'international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point',	
  in	
  nubar	
  hovsepian,	
  the	
  war	
  on	
   lebanon:	
  a	
  reader	
  (northampton,	
  ma:	
  olive	
  branch	
  press,	
   ).	
   fisk,	
  robert,	
  'lebanon	
  death	
  toll	
  hits	
   , ',	
  the	
  independent,	
   	
  august	
   ;	
  country	
  report—lebanon,	
   (london:	
  economist	
  intelligence	
  unit,	
   ).	
   unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   makdisi,	
  'constructing	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  for	
  lebanon	
  in	
  the	
  shadow	
  of	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  terror';	
  falk	
   and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point.	
   falk	
  and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point;	
  makdisi,	
  'constructing	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  for	
  lebanon	
  in	
  the	
  shadow	
  of	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  terror';	
  bennis,	
  phyllis,	
  'the	
  lebanon	
  war	
  in	
  the	
  un,	
  the	
  un	
  in	
   the	
  lebanon	
  war',	
  in	
  nubar	
  hovsepian,	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  lebanon:	
  a	
  reader	
  (northampton,	
  ma:	
  olive	
  branch	
  press,	
   );	
  gendzier,	
  exporting	
  death	
  as	
  democracy:	
  us	
  foreign	
  policy	
  in	
  lebanon.	
   gendzier,	
  exporting	
  death	
  as	
  democracy:	
  us	
  foreign	
  policy	
  in	
  lebanon;	
  bennis,	
  the	
  lebanon	
  war	
  in	
  the	
  un,	
   the	
  un	
  in	
  the	
  lebanon	
  war;	
  berrigan,	
  frida,	
  and	
  william	
  d.	
  hartung,	
  'us	
  military	
  assistance	
  and	
  arms	
  transfers	
   to	
  israel',	
  in	
  nubar	
  hovsepian,	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  lebanon:	
  a	
  reader	
  (northampton,	
  ma:	
  olive	
  branch	
  press,	
   ).	
   falk	
  and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   there is speculation among those who have studied the war, that resolution only came into being in its current form, after it became apparent that israel would be unable achieve its objectives if it continued prosecuting the war. up until august, america was pushing israel to continue the conflict in order to eliminate the problem of hizbullah once and for all. the first draft ceasefire agreement put forward by the us and france on th august demanded a cessation of all attacks by hizbullah and permitted israel to continue acting in ‘self-defence’. as the legality of what constitutes ‘self-defence’ by a state is unclear this could have allowed israel to remain in lebanon and to continue to conduct any military exercises it chose. as a result, the government of lebanon rejected the terms of the initial draft on th august, and was accused by condoleezza rice, of not being prepared to make peace. the second draft of the resolution was finally agreed on august by all parties and passed on the same day. there are a number of reasons why resolution has been critiqued for being fundamentally unfair. first, an examination of the text reveals a lack of context when articulating blame for the start of the war, which is clearly laid at the feet of hizbullah for conducting the kidnappings which were illegal under international law. expressing its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in lebanon and in israel since hizbullah’s attack on israel on july , which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons… the reference to injuries on ‘both sides’ does not reflect the disproportionality of israel’s response to the kidnappings: a bombing campaign which resulted in over civilian deaths on the lebanese side (not counting further deaths as a result of unexploded ordinance) compared 	
  makdisi,	
  'constructing	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  for	
  lebanon	
  in	
  the	
  shadow	
  of	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  terror';	
  falk	
   and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point;	
  hoge,	
  warren,	
  and	
  steven	
  erlanger,	
  'the	
  cease-­‐fire:	
  un	
   council	
  backs	
  measure	
  to	
  halt	
  war	
  in	
  lebanon',	
  new	
  york	
  times,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   zunes,	
  washington's	
  proxy	
  war;	
  jones	
  and	
  hart,	
  'keeping	
  middle	
  east	
  peace?	
  '.	
   	
  falk	
  and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point.	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
  ibid.;	
  makdisi,	
  'constructing	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  for	
  lebanon	
  in	
  the	
  shadow	
  of	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  terror';	
   zunes,	
  washington's	
  proxy	
  war.	
   united	
  nations,	
  'unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ',	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   with deaths ( of which were civilians) on the israeli side of the blue line. it is argued that this disproportionality contravened the international laws of war, but this was not acknowledged in the resolution. second, israel had been illegally abducting and withholding lebanese and palestinian nationals over the course of many years during their occupation of south lebanon. these acts were what hizbullah used to justify the kidnappings, whereby they argued that they were not trying to start a war and were simply trying to effect an exchange of prisoners. observers of the peace settlement argue that this should have been relevant in this context. as it is, the mandate alludes to israeli capture of civilians, but does not call directly for their release in the same urgent and unconditional terms: emphasizing the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasizing the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis, including the unconditional release of the abducted israeli soldiers, mindful of the sensitivity of the issue of prisoners and encouraging the efforts aimed at urgently settling the issue of the lebanese prisoners detained in israel. thirdly some scholars contend that by failing to call a ceasefire for days, the un was complicit in allowing an aggressor state to wage a military campaign which contravened the un charter and its prohibition on aggressive war. fourth, there is no mention in the resolution of israel’s use of illegal weapons israel’s: phosphorous and cluster bombs which are also widely regarded as being illegal under international law (although neither israel nor the us have signed the treaty banning their use). falk	
  and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point.	
   	
  makdisi,	
  'constructing	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  for	
  lebanon	
  in	
  the	
  shadow	
  of	
  the	
  war	
  on	
  terror'.	
   falk	
  and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point.	
   	
  unsc	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
  falk	
  and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point;	
  nasu,	
  'the	
  responsibility	
  to	
  react?	
  lessons	
  from	
  the	
   security	
  council's	
  response	
  to	
  the	
  southern	
  lebanon	
  crisis	
  of	
   '.	
   	
  falk	
  and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point.	
   	
   	
   this imbalance in apportioning blame leads the local population in south lebanon, who bore the brunt of the war, to regard resolution as a fundamentally unfair and biased document. the lack of acknowledgement of israeli culpability means that hizbullah’s continues to elicit support from the population in the unifil area of operation. as such, unifil and laf attempts to disarm and disband the organisation, and therefore fulfil a significant aspect of their mandate are quite simply impossible tasks. in the mandate unifil is specifically charged with assisting the laf to ensure the area of operations is ‘an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons’; in other words, an area free of hizbullah and other militias, specifically: - security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the blue line and the litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of lebanon and of unifil as authorized in paragraph , deployed in this area; - full implementation of the relevant provisions of the ta'if accords, and of resolutions ( ) and ( ), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in lebanon, so that, pursuant to the lebanese cabinet decision of july , there will be no weapons or authority in lebanon other than that of the lebanese state; - no foreign forces in lebanon without the consent of its government; - no sales or supply of arms and related materiel to lebanon except as authorized by its government; falk ( ) has commented that by calling for the disarmament of military groups in the area, the main aggressor in the war, israel, was rewarded by an acknowledgement that intervention to disarm and attack hizbullah is legitimate. this ‘chapter vii-like’ aspect of resolution , has raised the question of how much force should be applied in the enforcement of the disarmament aspect of the current un mandate. unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ,	
  p. .	
   ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
  falk	
  and	
  bali,	
  international	
  law	
  and	
  the	
  vanishing	
  point.	
  in	
  comparison	
  the	
  mandate	
  called	
  for	
  israel	
  to	
  stop	
  all	
   offensive	
  military	
  action	
  which	
  enabled	
  it	
  to	
  retain	
  its	
  troops	
  on	
  lebanese	
  soil	
  and	
  conduct	
  some	
  commando	
   operations	
  in	
  the	
  beqaa	
  valley	
  a	
  week	
  after	
  the	
  ceasefire,	
  under	
  the	
  cover	
  of	
  its	
  right	
  of	
  self-­‐defence.	
  	
  this	
  again	
   raises	
  questions	
  about	
  the	
  legitimacy	
  of	
  states	
  claiming	
  the	
  right	
  of	
  self-­‐defence	
  in	
  order	
  to	
  engage	
  in	
   disproportionate	
  acts	
  of	
  aggression	
  towards	
  other	
  states.	
   tardy,	
  thierry,	
  'a	
  critique	
  of	
  robust	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  contemporary	
  peace	
  operations,'	
  international	
   peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( )	
  jones	
  and	
  hart,	
  'keeping	
  middle	
  east	
  peace?	
  '	
   	
   	
   in addition to the above tasks, resolution significantly increased the troop numbers patrolling the blue line from , to a recommended , . bearing in mind the small size of the area of operation, these high troop numbers are rare in un peacekeeping missions, demonstrating the force of political will involved in crafting the new resolution. the resolution also called for un troops: …in addition to carrying out its mandate under resolutions and ( ): (a) monitor the cessation of hostilities; (b) accompany and support the lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the south, including along the blue line, as israel withdraws its armed forces from lebanon as provided in paragraph ; (c) coordinate its activities related to paragraph (b) with the government of lebanon and the government of israel; (d) extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons; (e) assist the lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment of the area as referred to in paragraph ; (f) assist the government of lebanon, at its request, to implement paragraph ; since the implementation of resolution , the predominant concerns of the security council have been that unifil prevent hostilities from breaking out along the blue line; increasing cooperation and capacity building between unifil and the laf; ensuring the removal of weapons from the area and the transit of new weapons into the area; and the prevention of attacks against unifil in the course of their duties. since resolution , later resolutions reflected an increase in cooperation between unifil and the laf with the stated purpose of establishing ‘a new strategic environment’, which should probably be interpreted as meaning one without the presence of hizbullah. the establishment of a laf liaison office at naqoura in was enhanced by the addition of an extra laf battalion in to assist unifil and the commencement of a strategic dialogue a	
  useful	
  comparison	
  is	
  the	
  democratic	
  republic	
  of	
  congo,	
  an	
  area	
  the	
  size	
  of	
  western	
  europe	
  where	
  the	
  un	
   has	
  currently	
  stationed	
  just	
  over	
   , 	
  troops.	
  	
  the	
  area	
  south	
  of	
  the	
  litani	
  river	
  is	
  an	
  area	
  two	
  thirds	
  the	
  size	
  of	
   the	
  us	
  state	
  of	
  connecticut	
  and	
  is	
  authorised	
  for	
  up	
  to	
   , 	
  troops.	
   	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ,	
  p. .	
  	
  see	
  appendix	
  e	
  for	
  the	
  full	
  version	
  of	
  resolution	
   .	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   between the laf and unifil. these efforts have culminated thus far in tripartite monthly discussions between the laf and the idf, mediated by unifil. to promote peace and security along the blue line, resolutions since have repeatedly referred to the need for clear demarcation of the blue line by unifil to limit the scope for unintended violations by civilians and troops on both sides of the line alike. mandates since have called upon israel to withdraw from the lebanese side of the town of ghajar currently occupied by israel which is divided by the blue line (owing to half of it residing in what is internationally recognised as the golan region of syria). perhaps in recognition of the difficulty unifil troops face carrying out their mandate, owing to popular support for the very organisations they are being asked to assist with disarming, post- mandates have frequently ‘encouraged efforts aimed at urgently settling the issue of lebanese prisoners in israel’. problems along the blue line continue to concern the security council in terms of their effects on unifil, the laf and civilians. these are discussed in detail in the following chapter on the international engagement of unifil staff, but they include roadside bombs, illegal incursions by israel and a brief outbreak of hostilities between the named parties (the laf and the idf). however, since , no major changes to the nature of the mandates have occurred, and the mission continues to boast one of the larger un peacekeeping forces currently. section one discussed the history of unifil i, the challenges it faced owing to the flaws in the original mandate and how the relationship between unifil troops and stakeholders in the area (militias and civilians) developed over time. section two described the changes to unifil’s mandate since . this final section of this chapter outlines the current concerns of all the parties (official and unofficial) with resolution to present the strategic environment that 	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  july	
   .	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example,	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   unifil operates in today and which contextualises the next three chapters on unifil’s current operations. the	
  strategic	
  environment	
   	
  –	
  present	
   there has been a strategic change subsequent to resolution . there have not been major military clashes across the blue line. there have been a couple of problems, a number of rockets, but nothing like before, an absolute sea change, as to what existed prior to the war in . the difference between the pre and post- environments in the area of operations has been commented upon by both unifil staff and local civilians. there is no doubt that the area is experiencing a period of peace longer than any other in the history of the unifil mission. what remains to be clarified for the purpose of this thesis is the political and strategic considerations of the named parties to resolution which are: israel, the lebanese government, and the lebanese armed forces. the considerations of another unofficial party to the resolution – hizbullah - are also described here as they play a significant role in influencing the actions and beliefs of the named parties. this section begins by outlining the major issues of contention between all the parties at the current time and then presents the position of each party to the conflict. this section concludes with a brief discussion of the effect of the syrian crisis on the area of operations. unresolved	
  issues	
  of	
  contention	
   the major issues of contention that exist currently between all the parties (israel, the lebanese government and hizbullah) and which are recognised by the un and the international community are the following: the continued israeli occupation of the northern half of ghajar and shebaa farms area; a number of points on the blue line that relate to territorial disputes and interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   in	
  reality	
  possibly	
  before	
  that	
  since	
  the	
  late	
   s	
  when	
  the	
  plo	
  started	
  to	
  move	
  into	
  the	
  area.	
  	
  incidents	
  that	
   have	
  occurred	
  are	
  discussed	
  in	
  chapter	
  three.	
   all	
  the	
  parties	
  includes	
  hizbullah;	
  where	
  i	
  used	
  the	
  term	
  ‘named	
  parties’	
  i	
  refer	
  to	
  those	
  named	
  in	
  resolution	
   	
  which	
  are	
  israel,	
  and	
  the	
  lebanese	
  government.	
   	
   	
   unresolved markings; lebanese (and palestinian ) prisoners still being held in israeli jails; israeli air and sea violations of lebanese sovereignty; and rocket attacks into northern israeli by armed elements from south lebanon. other	
  complications	
   unofficially however there is another story. the major issue for the israelis is not minor points of contention over the marking of the blue line, but the presence of the sub-state militia hizbullah on the blue line. the major issue for the lebanese government and for hizbullah is the existence of israel but on this issue the two parties digress in their views. the lebanese government is far less concerned with the existence of the state of israel, and far more concerned with getting rid of between , and , palestinians residing in camps in lebanon. the lebanese government’s official position on the palestinian presence in lebanon is that they cannot be naturalised as this will irreparably alter the delicate sectarian balance between the religions in lebanon that exists currently. the view is that the majority of palestinians in lebanon are sunni and in a population of . million people, the addition of this many sunni will give them an overwhelming majority. the lebanese government position is also that the problem of displaced palestinians is an international one that needs to be resolved internationally and lebanon is therefore not responsible for solving this problem alone. in other words, israel and the international community need to take responsibility for displaced palestinians in lebanon and not lebanon. the view is that lebanon has been a victim of unifil	
  has	
  thus	
  far	
  constructed	
   	
  points	
  along	
  the	
  blue	
  line,	
  and	
  verified	
   	
  with	
  both	
  the	
  named	
  parties	
   (with	
  the	
  remaining	
   	
  markers	
  awaiting	
  verification).	
  	
  at	
  the	
  time	
  of	
  writing	
  this	
  thesis	
  unifil	
  also	
  had	
  a	
  further	
   	
  markers	
  under	
  construction.	
  	
  unifil	
  declined	
  to	
  answer	
  how	
  many	
  points	
  along	
  the	
  blue	
  line	
  have	
  yet	
  to	
  be	
   agreed.	
  private	
  correspondence	
  with	
  a	
  unifil	
  political	
  affairs	
  officer,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   the	
  issue	
  of	
  palestinian	
  prisoners	
  in	
  israeli	
  jails	
  is	
  an	
  issue	
  that	
  concerns	
  hizbullah	
  and	
  not	
  the	
  lebanese	
   government.	
   the	
  issue	
  of	
  israel	
  air	
  and	
  sea	
  violations,	
  occupation	
  of	
  ghajar,	
  and	
  lebanese	
  prisoners	
  in	
  israeli	
  jails	
  are	
  raised	
   in	
  every	
  single	
  secretary	
  general	
  report	
  on	
  resolution	
   .	
  	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  	
   report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary	
  general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s	
  / / ,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   this	
  number	
  has	
  been	
  increasing	
  during	
  the	
  syrian	
  crisis.	
   	
  norton,	
  augustus	
  richard,	
  'the	
  role	
  of	
  hezbollah	
  in	
  lebanese	
  domestic	
  politics,'	
  the	
  international	
  spectator,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
   	
   circumstance and should not be made accountable for the actions of other states (israel, us and british policy from onwards). hizbullah’s position is simply that the state of israel should not exist. what this means in practice is somewhat less clear. however, hizbullah’s stated position is that all palestinians should be free to return to palestine. the two-state solution is not something hizbullah have ever stated that they agree with. one of the reasons therefore that the border dispute between lebanon and israel is so intractable is because it is linked to that other intractable middle east problem of the palestinians. and this is what ultimately prevents progress towards a peace agreement between israel and lebanon. the actual issues between the governments of the two countries - small territorial disputes and the release of lebanese prisoners - are viewed by staff at unifil as not impossible to resolve. i actually personally don’t think it would take much to see some form of agreement. lebanese government to israeli government. now the issue of the palestinians and the presence of the palestinians is something else, and in this sense, because of the weakness of the lebanese state, i don’t think you can possibly see an israeli- lebanese agreement coming out, happening before an agreement with the palestinians that settles the issue of the palestinian refugees on lebanese territory. i don’t think you can see that. it is linked, it is irrevocably linked. this government is not able to make an agreement like egypt or like jordan. and before we see a realignment, well no i wouldn’t say a realignment, but before you deal with the issue of the palestinian presence on lebanese territory i think it would be very very hard for an agreement to be reached. the real problem therefore resides between hizbullah and israel; neither will acknowledge the other’s right to exist. the weakness of the lebanese government means they are not equipped to confront hizbullah politically or militarily; and the government of israel are not prepared to take back around half a million palestinians in order to make peace with lebanon. nor are they 	
  'lebanon	
  accused	
  of	
  turning	
  away	
  some	
  palestinian	
  syrian	
  refugees',	
  the	
  guardian,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   qassem,	
  naim,	
  hizbullah:	
  the	
  story	
  from	
  within	
  (london:	
  saqi,	
   ),	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  chapter	
  four,	
  pp-­‐ -­‐ 	
  whilst	
  hizbullah	
  do	
  not	
  expressly	
  state	
  that	
  israel	
  should	
  be	
  destroyed	
  it	
  is	
  implied	
  in	
  hizbullah’s	
  approach	
  to	
   resistance	
  against	
  israel	
  and	
  its	
  refusal	
  to	
  accept	
  the	
  two-­‐state	
  solution.	
   interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   prepared to work towards the eradication of their own state! so there is an impasse that observers of the region will only be resolved by a large-scale, long and vicious region-wide war. the positions of all of the parties are described below in greater detail. israel	
   the israeli position can be summarised thus: israel is primarily interested in maintaining its security and by default its very existence. as such, along with its main ally, the united states, israel maintains a policy of ensuring that it possesses a qualitative military edge over all its neighbours in the region (including non-neighbouring iran). this policy means that for israel, the presence of any military force that is capable of compromising its security must be destroyed or disabled to the extent it can no longer pose a significant threat. this policy extends naturally to the destruction of hizbullah, and the prevention of weapons transfer to hizbullah. on a regional scale it involves the prevention of any state obtaining nuclear weapons such as syria or iran. but this policy also means that israel has extensively lobbied over the years to prevent the lebanese armed forces (laf) from obtaining any serious weaponry. israel will currently not allow the laf to use tanks in the area of operation and has lobbied against the laf obtaining any kind of military hardware particularly weapons such as surface-to-air missiles. however, at the same time, israel argues that it wants to see laf authority extended down to the border and the removal of hizbullah from the area of operations. the israeli position is that peace could be made if hizbullah no longer poses any kind of military threat to israel. in reality this would mean the disbanding of hizbullah as an organisation blanford,	
  warriors	
  of	
  god:	
  inside	
  hezbollah's	
  thirty	
  year	
  struggle;	
  hirst,	
  beware	
  small	
  states:	
  lebanon,	
   battleground	
  of	
  the	
  middle	
  east.	
   see	
  for	
  example	
  wunderle,	
  william,	
  and	
  andre	
  briere,	
  u.s.	
  foreign	
  policy	
  and	
  israel's	
  qualitative	
  military	
   edge:	
  the	
  need	
  for	
  a	
  common	
  vision	
  (washington	
  d.c.:	
  washington	
  institute,	
   ).	
   	
  for	
  example	
  in	
   	
  israel	
  is	
  widely	
  acknowledged	
  to	
  have	
  bombed	
  a	
  site	
  in	
  northern	
  syria	
  that	
  was	
  believed	
   to	
  be	
  enriching	
  uranium,	
  see	
  for	
  example:	
  sanger,	
  david	
  e.,	
  and	
  mark	
  mazzetti,	
  'israel	
  struck	
  syrian	
  nuclear	
   project,	
  analysts	
  say',	
  new	
  york	
  times,	
   	
  october	
   ;	
  follath,	
  erich,	
  and	
  holger	
  stark,	
  'the	
  story	
  of	
  operation	
   orchard:	
  how	
  israel	
  destroyed	
  syria's	
  al	
  kibar	
  nuclear	
  reactor',	
  spiegel	
  online,	
   	
  february	
   ,	
   http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-­‐story-­‐of-­‐operation-­‐orchard-­‐how-­‐israel-­‐destroyed-­‐syria-­‐s-­‐al-­‐ kibar-­‐nuclear-­‐reactor-­‐a-­‐ -­‐druck.html	
  [accessed	
   	
  may	
   ].	
  	
  the	
  iran-­‐israel	
  debate	
  on	
  nuclear	
  weapons	
   for	
  iran	
  is	
  well	
  known	
  and	
  will	
  not	
  be	
  discussed	
  here.	
   this	
  issue	
  is	
  discussed	
  in	
  more	
  detail	
  in	
  chapter	
  four.	
   	
   	
   entirely as hizbullah has a significant military presence in the east of lebanon in the beqaa valley and it is unlikely israel would accept this bearing in mind the close proximity of the beqaa valley to israel. however, as hizbullah is currently a significant part of the lebanese government and refuses to distinguish between its political and military wings, it is unlikely that this will occur. this is not least because the political party of hizbullah maintains significant support from the shi’a across lebanon and from some lebanese christian factions. in terms of their support of resolution , it can be said that israel tolerates the presence of unifil but they do not regard them as a serious obstacle. one unifil officer informed me off the record that an israeli officer informed him that israel views unifil as a ‘speed bump’ should they choose to invade lebanon again. in sum, the issues around the marking of the blue line, israeli air violations, occupation of lebanese land and lebanese detainees in israel would very likely be able to be resolved. but as israel perceives hizbullah as an existential threat peace with lebanon is not possible. the other issue at stake is of course how to deal with the large number of displaced palestinians in lebanon. it is highly unlikely that israel would be willing to take them back for the sake of a peace agreement with lebanon. the	
  lebanese	
  government	
   the position of the lebanese government regarding peace with israel is harder to define owing to the varying interests of the different religious parties that comprise its whole which means it rarely speaks with one voice. the views of hizbullah, who until recently formed the majority in government, will be discussed below. the lebanese government is divided on the issue of israel, mainly because of the issue of hizbullah. israel	
  recently	
  bombed	
  a	
  suspected	
  hizbullah	
  arms	
  convoy	
  in	
  the	
  beqaa	
  valley,	
  suggesting	
  that	
  this	
  is	
  in	
  fact	
   the	
  case.	
  see	
  'israeli	
  strike	
  on	
  rakan	
  al-­‐fakih,	
  hezbollah	
  missiles	
  killed	
  four',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  february	
   .	
   private	
  conversation	
  with	
  a	
  unifil	
  officer,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   .	
   	
  see	
  appendix	
  c	
  for	
  a	
  list	
  of	
  the	
  political	
  parties	
  that	
  comprise	
  the	
  government	
  of	
  lebanon.	
   	
   	
   broadly speaking the main rival faction to hizbullah that is also in government is termed locally ‘the march movement’. it comprises the two major christian parties: the lebanese forces and the kataeb party; and the largest sunni party: the future movement. at the international level the march th group is aligned with: the us; the gulf states of qatar; the emirates and saudi arabia. both at the local and the international level, the march th group oppose hizbullah. they argue that hizbullah is the cause of trouble with israel and would like hizbullah to disband and hand over its weapons to the laf. to some extent, this view is driven by a shift in local power politics. hizbullah and the power of the shi’a is a relatively new phenomena in lebanon. the reason for this is historical. for decades in lebanon, the christians dominated culture and education, and sunnis the trade and business; relegating the shi’a to the lower socio-economic strata of the population. there is unquestionably some resentment around the rise of the shi’a to prominence in lebanese politics. however, it is also understood that the march th faction, aligned as it is with western interests is opposed to hizbullah for reasons of compatibility with its allies. in comparison to the resistance movement, the march th faction are viewed by supporters of the resistance as having a more conciliatory approach to israel as they share its views on ridding the country of hizbullah. as such, the march th movement are extremely supportive of resolution , in particular towards the goal of disbanding and disarming of non-state militias, and through the laf, extending the authority of the government of lebanon down to the internationally recognised ‘borders’. 	
  sakr,	
  elias,	
  'hariri	
  slams	
  hezbollah's	
  arms	
  as	
  march	
   	
  steps	
  up	
  rhetoric',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  february	
   ;	
   wilkins,	
  henrietta,	
  the	
  making	
  of	
  lebanese	
  foreign	
  policy:	
  understanding	
  the	
  hezbollah	
  israeli	
  war	
  (london:	
   routledge,	
   ).	
   shaery-­‐eisenlohr,	
  roschanack	
  shi'ite	
  lebanon:	
  transnational	
  religion	
  and	
  the	
  making	
  of	
  national	
  identities	
   (new	
  york:	
  columbia	
  university	
  press,	
   );	
  blanford,	
  warriors	
  of	
  god:	
  inside	
  hezbollah's	
  thirty	
  year	
  struggle,	
   norton,	
  augustus	
  richard	
  hezbollah:	
  a	
  short	
  history	
  (princeton:	
  princeton	
  university	
  press,	
   );	
  mckay,	
   sandra,	
  mirror	
  of	
  the	
  arab	
  world:	
  lebanon	
  in	
  conflict	
  (new	
  york:	
  w.w.	
  norton	
  &	
  company,	
   ).	
   	
  slackman,	
  michael,	
  'u.s.-­‐backed	
  alliance	
  wins	
  in	
  lebanon	
  ',	
  new	
  york	
  times,	
   	
  june	
   ;	
  wilkins,	
  the	
   making	
  of	
  lebanese	
  foreign	
  policy:	
  understanding	
  the	
  hezbollah	
  israeli	
  war.	
   wilkins,	
  the	
  making	
  of	
  lebanese	
  foreign	
  policy:	
  understanding	
  the	
  hezbollah	
  israeli	
  war.	
  	
   	
   	
   that is not to say that the march th movement is pro-israeli; the rhetoric of all political parties in lebanon is strongly anti-israel. as with many arab states, it is forbidden to travel to lebanon if you have an israeli stamp in your passport. but, other than hizbullah, the impression obtained from unifil is that for many of the parties in the lebanese government it is the palestinian issue and small territorial disputes that prevent a peace agreement between the two states. hizbullah	
  (and	
  amal)	
   the position of hizbullah on resolution is that it is an agreement that favours israel over lebanon. they argue that if unifil are impartial, why are un peacekeepers only on one side of the line (the lebanese side)? like all political parties at the time, hizbullah agreed to resolution . so although consent for resolution was obtained, hizbullah have no intention of assisting unifil with its mandated objective of disarming and disbanding non-state militias (unless it is palestinian militias). in fact hassan nasrallah, the leader of hizbullah has stated publicly that he does not believe that the disarming hizbullah is in the mandate of resolution . it does however support the deployment of the laf down into the area of operations, and has managed to align itself with the laf with the slogan ‘the army, the people and the resistance’. this is because hizbullah’s legitimacy within lebanon depends upon them being seen as a national organisation and they are part of the national government. hizbullah was created in part as a resistance movement against the state of israel, and in their words, against israeli aggression towards lebanon. this position became less tenable after the this	
  is	
  a	
  comment	
  that	
  supporters	
  of	
  the	
  resistance	
  movement	
  often	
  make	
  to	
  unifil	
  officers	
  when	
  they	
  hold	
   information	
  sessions	
  to	
  educate	
  local	
  people	
  on	
  the	
  blue	
  line,	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
   south	
  lebanon.	
   	
  august	
   .	
  	
   this	
  is	
  believed	
  to	
  be	
  due	
  to	
  the	
  fact	
  that	
  hizbullah	
  did	
  not	
  want	
  to	
  be	
  seen	
  to	
  be	
  continuing	
  to	
  prosecute	
  the	
   war	
  when	
  so	
  many	
  civilians	
  were	
  dying	
  as	
  a	
  result	
  of	
  it	
  and	
  for	
  how	
  long	
  hizbullah	
  could	
  have	
  held	
  out	
  against	
   israel	
  in	
  a	
  long	
  war	
  is	
  questionable.	
  	
  therefore	
  peace	
  had	
  to	
  be	
  sought.	
  	
  see	
  noe,	
  nicholas,	
  voice	
  of	
  hezbollah:	
   the	
  statements	
  of	
  sayyed	
  hassan	
  nasrallah	
  (london:	
  verso,	
   ).	
  	
   	
  ibid.	
   norton,	
  'the	
  role	
  of	
  hezbollah	
  in	
  lebanese	
  domestic	
  politics';	
  hazmeh,	
  a.	
  nizar,	
  'lebanon's	
  hizbullah:	
  from	
   islamic	
  revolution	
  to	
  parliamentary	
  accommodation,'	
  third	
  world	
  quarterly,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   qassem,	
  hizbullah:	
  the	
  story	
  from	
  within.	
   	
   	
   israeli withdrawal from south lebanon. however, hizbullah have managed to maintain their raison d’etre with the argument that israel has not fully withdrawn from ‘every inch of lebanese land’, which is one of their demands. in this respect they refer to the continued occupation of northern ghajar, shebaa farms and kfar shouba hills. they also continue to cite the need for israel to hand over all lebanese prisoners that were imprisoned in israel during the israeli occupation. the third and oft used justification for their continued existence is their argument that they are the only force that have thus far managed to ‘win’ a war against israel and eject them from lebanese soil. as noted above, israeli intransigence in disallowing the laf to obtain serious weaponry does prevent the laf from becoming a credible deterrent. in contrast, hizbullah have been trained, primarily by iranian forces, in guerrilla tactics that make them extremely effective against conventional forces in a situation of asymmetric power. hizbullah argue that currently the laf do not have their level of expertise in this area to present a credible deterrent against israel. with regards to handing over their weapons to the laf, the other issue for hizbullah is that they do not trust the march th movement not to use those weapons against them to destroy the group entirely. this is not an unreasonable suspicion. the wikileaks documents revealed that during the war, elements within the march th movement were discreetly advising the israelis where to hit hizbullah the hardest. furthermore, hizbullah argues that the march th movement is soft on israel and cannot be trusted to use the laf against israel to ensure that lebanese sovereignty is respected in its entirety. so in other words, hizbullah feels it cannot sufficiently trust the state to put its weapons to good use if it were to hand them over. 	
  ibid.	
  	
  of	
  note	
  is	
  that	
  hizbullah	
  consistently	
  mention	
  the	
  kfar	
  shouba	
  hills,	
  the	
  un	
  does	
  not	
  refer	
  to	
  them	
  as	
   contested	
  territory.	
   noe,	
  voice	
  of	
  hezbollah:	
  the	
  statements	
  of	
  sayyed	
  hassan	
  nasrallah.	
   blanford,	
  warriors	
  of	
  god:	
  inside	
  hezbollah's	
  thirty	
  year	
  struggle.	
  	
  whilst	
  hizbullah	
  did	
  not	
  technically	
  ‘win’	
   the	
  war	
  against	
  israel	
  in	
   ,	
  they	
  didn’t	
  lose	
  and	
  created	
  a	
  stalemate	
  that	
  generated	
  human	
  costs	
  that	
  israel	
   was	
  unwilling	
  to	
  bear.	
  	
  	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example, 'give	
  me	
  a	
  chance	
  and	
  i	
  will	
  f***	
  hizbullah',	
  al	
  akhbar,	
  may	
   	
  http://www.al-­‐ akhbar.com/ war_cables	
  [accessed	
   	
  may	
   ].	
  	
  the	
  cables	
  were	
  published	
  in	
  may	
  in	
  the	
  then	
  arab	
   language	
  paper	
  al-­‐akhbar	
  newspaper.	
  	
  they	
  revealed	
  that	
  christian	
  and	
  sunni	
  leaders	
  had	
  indirectly	
  advised	
  the	
   israelis	
  to	
  continue	
  the	
  bombing	
  campaign	
  in	
  the	
  south	
  in	
  order	
  to	
  eliminate	
  hizbullah	
  from	
  the	
  area.	
   	
   	
   hizbullah’s position on the state of israel itself is unequivocal; it should not exist, but the organisation is deliberately unclear as to what this means in practice. as such hizbullah’s position on the blue line is theoretically that it should not exist in its current form unless it demarcates the legal border between palestine and lebanon (with israel no longer a state). however, as will be noted in following chapters, hizbullah has not violated the blue line since july , if they have, this has gone under the radar of both israel and unifil. hizbullah also no longer have visible military positions in the area of operations and have officially pulled back to the north of the litani river. they tolerate the presence of unifil as long as it does not interfere too closely with their military operations. as such hizbullah can be said to have given local consent to resolution in the sense that they largely refrain from obstructing unifil militarily and will engage with unifil politically. syria:	
  caution	
  is	
  the	
  better	
  part	
  of	
  valour	
   the syrian crisis is briefly discussed here as it informs the strategic environment in lebanon at the time of this research and continues to unfold. during the course of this research, the number of syrian refugees in lebanon rose from around , in to million in . the area of operations has generally suffered less than the rest of the country as access to it from northern lebanon is restricted to lebanese citizens; palestinians and other foreigners require a pass from the military to enter the area. however, several thousand syrians have managed to enter the area, presumably from the eastern side that borders onto syria. currently they total an estimated , in the area of operations. they are mainly located in rural areas and they often work for lebanese farmers as agricultural workers or shepherds. unifil has been allowing syrians access to their free medical services for humanitarian reasons. qassem,	
  hizbullah:	
  the	
  story	
  from	
  within.	
   private	
  correspondence,	
  unifil	
  political	
  affairs	
  officer,	
   	
  april	
   .	
   the	
  unhcr	
  has	
  listed	
  over	
   	
  million	
  persons	
  of	
  concern,	
  and	
  just	
  under	
  a	
  million	
  registered	
  syrian	
  refugees	
   ( ,	
   ).	
  unhcr,	
  syrian	
  regional	
  refugee	
  response,	
   https://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id= 	
  	
  [accessed	
   	
  may	
   ].	
   	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary	
  general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
   s/ / ,	
   	
  february	
   ,	
  p. .	
  	
   	
   	
   the political effects of the syrian crisis appear to have been to put hostilities on hold. it is likely that from the point of view of israel, the threat posed by rogue militia operating inside syria means that maintaining the status quo with lebanon is the safest policy for now. should a war break out with hizbullah, the border area between syria and lebanon could become highly porous and lead to an influx of islamic extremists who might be happy to take their fight to israel. aside from the issues of the refugees, the main issue currently for lebanon in relation to the syrian crisis is hizbullah’s involvement in it. hizbullah is believed to have begun providing military support to president bashar al-assad from december , but this cannot be confirmed. hizbullah openly admitted they were providing support in april . their actions have contributed to a number of political and security problems for lebanon. in , the lebanese government signed a resolution – the baabda declaration – which was a commitment to remain neutral and dissociated from the syrian crisis. as hizbullah is now in contravention of that agreement, politicians from opposing sides have tried to block hizbullah’s inclusion in a new government arguing that they are prosecuting a war in another state without securing the agreement of the lebanese people. this has led to a political stalemate which at the time of writing appears to have been resolved with the formation of a new government on february . however, lebanon was without a functioning government from april partly as a result of this issue. rabinovich,	
  itamar,	
  'syria:	
  the	
  view	
  from	
  israel',	
  the	
  guardian,	
   	
  august	
   ;	
  herzog,	
  michael,	
  'new	
  israeli	
   policy	
  dilemmas	
  in	
  the	
  syrian	
  crisis',	
  	
  britain	
  israel	
  communications	
  and	
  research	
  centre	
  (bicom),	
  	
  	
   	
  june,	
   	
   http://www.bicom.org.uk/analysis-­‐article/ /	
  [accessed	
   	
  may	
   ];	
  yaari,	
  ehud,	
  'israel's	
  growing	
  role	
  in	
   southern	
  syria',	
  	
  the	
  washington	
  institute,	
  	
  	
   	
  january,	
   	
  http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-­‐ analysis/view/israels-­‐growing-­‐role-­‐in-­‐southern-­‐syria	
  [accessed	
   	
  may	
   ].	
   sullivan,	
  marisa,	
  hezbollah	
  in	
  syria,	
  (washington:	
  institute	
  for	
  the	
  study	
  of	
  war,	
   ).	
   united	
  nations	
  general	
  assembly,	
  identical	
  letters	
  dated	
   	
  june	
   	
  from	
  the	
  chargé	
  d’affaires	
  a.i.	
  of	
  the	
   permanent	
  mission	
  of	
  lebanon	
  to	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  addressed	
  to	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  and	
  the	
  president	
  of	
  the	
   security	
  council,	
  a/ / 	
  -­‐	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  june	
   ;	
  nader,	
  sami,	
  'lebanese	
  independence	
  from	
   	
  pact	
  to	
   baabda	
  declaration',	
  	
  al	
  monitor,	
  	
  	
   	
  november,	
   ,	
  http://www.al-­‐ monitor.com/pulse/originals/ / /lebanon-­‐independence-­‐baabda-­‐declaration-­‐syria.html	
  [accessed	
   	
  may	
   ].	
  	
   'lebanon	
  forms	
  new	
  government	
  after	
  ten	
  months	
  of	
  deadlock',	
  the	
  guardian,	
   	
  february	
   .	
   	
   	
   the second and equally as serious effect of hizbullah’s involvement in syria has been that it has drawn fighters from syria into lebanon to enact their revenge against hizbullah. they have chosen to do this by targeting the civilian population in shi’ite areas that are known to be pro- hizbullah – predominantly an area to the south of beirut called dahiyeh. as yet, the bomb attacks have not spread to the area of operations and so they will not be discussed here. as hizbullah is already involved in syria, it stands to reason that they have fewer forces left on the ground in lebanon and with their resources stretched they could not manage a war on two fronts. as such is it likely that they are unwilling to trigger a confrontation with israel at the current time. even if hizbullah pulled out of syria in order to fight israel, which for strategic reasons would be very hard for them to do, they might well face attacks from sunni militants in lebanon as revenge for their syrian adventure. these issues would suggest that both sides feel constrained because of the unknown variable of the effect of the syrian crisis on them. whilst israel could conceive that hizbullah has more at risk than they do, should a war break out, this is not guaranteed. israel has an unstable egypt on its southern border and jordan has experienced political unrest in the last year. in short, the region is currently highly unstable and under such conditions, maintaining the status quo would appear to be the safest course of action. whether or not politicians in israel or senior hizbullah officials subscribe to this view is unclear. but the low level of incidents in the area of operations in and early would suggest they might. conclusion	
   this chapter provided a history of the unifil mission in south lebanon since ; the background to resolution and the revised mandate of ; and an analysis of the strategic 	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary	
  general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
   s/ / .	
   	
  blanford,	
  nick,	
  'hizbullah	
  silence	
  on	
  israeli	
  raids	
  conveys	
  burdens	
  at	
  home,	
  in	
  syria',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  february	
   .	
   	
   	
   environment in lebanon and how it relates to the unifil mission in the south. this chapter demonstrates how unifil have always needed to use local means of persuasion over coercion in order to conduct operations. i highlight how unifil built relationships over time with political organisations amal and hizbullah and civilians; both relationships remain important to the mission to this day. section two of this chapter discussed the circumstances that gave rise to the united nations security council issuing a new mandate for the mission in the form of resolution and explained why the terms of resolution are viewed as unfair by the local population which affects the legitimacy of the mission at the local level. the final section of the chapter discussed the current strategic environment in the south of lebanon. i showed that the issues of hizbullah and the palestinians that are the main roadblocks to peace between lebanon and israel and not the other issues of contention such as minor land disputes, lebanese prisoners in israeli jails and aerial violations of territory. however, these ‘minor’ issues do present significant risks to the region as they are the sparks that can light the fire of a larger existential conflict. the following chapter investigates just how unifil manage these issues on the ground to avoid escalation to maintain international peace and security. i describes how unifil influences its security environment by responding to incidents on the blue line; and working on prevention strategies behind the scenes with the lebanese armed forces and the israeli defence forces to build trust through the use of micro-security arrangements and regular liaison. 	
   	
   chapter	
  three	
  :	
  maintaining	
  peace	
  at	
  the	
  international	
  level	
   	
   seven years is a long time in the middle east. and in this sense, this is one of our great successes that the two parties have chosen not to go back to conflict. as i said, obviously if any political decision is made then the situation would change, but then going back to our role, it is to try to ensure that there are no accidental triggers. something could happen, some small incident that could easily flare up into something much much larger that both parties, all parties end up regretting. as i think they did in . introduction	
   this chapter will describe how unifil works at the local level to reduce international tensions and in this way influences its security environment. management of the blue line is the most important activity of the unifil peacekeeping force owing to the potential for violations to escalate into full-scale conflict, as was the case in . as a chapter vi mission, unifil is not able to adopt peace enforcement measures therefore obtaining cooperation from all sides is necessary to maintain international peace and security. this chapter will discuss the myriad issues faced by unifil in its key role of maintaining peace and security on one of the world’s most highly contested state frontiers. at the international level of engagement, i argue that unifil is deeply involved in preventing incidents from escalating. through the use of liaison, reporting and regular tripartite meetings, paos engage with both the israeli defence force (idf) and the lebanese armed forces (laf) to reduce tensions. they have established mechanisms which reduce or eradicate the ‘unknown’ factor when violations of the blue line occur. the factors that facilitate the work of actors at the subnational level are time, autonomy, spontaneity and local knowledge which increases their effectiveness on the ground. this chapter divides unifil’s work at the international level into two categories: response and prevention. section one discusses unifil’s response tactics to blue line violations. these 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   tactics are employed on a daily basis and usually involve peacekeeping troops and the laf on the ground. their activities include: attending to all violations at the scene; providing a visible security presence; dispensing cautions to potential and actual violators of the blue line; educating locals on the location of the blue line; patrolling with the lebanese armed forces (laf) and using the laf to disperse citizens where needed. working alongside them in the background are the paos who are: liaising between the parties in cases where hostilities break out; reporting all violations to unifil headquarters (and subsequently to new york); conducting investigations and reporting the results to both the named parties and un headquarters in new york. section two evaluates the preventative mechanisms that political affairs officers (paos) have put in place at the international level in order to prevent a recommencement of hostilities. this section includes a discussion of: the tripartite monthly meetings as a mechanism for building trust and confidence; liaison as a strategy for de-escalating incidents in order to prevent the resumption of hostilities; and brokering micro security arrangements between the named parties to . section two also examines more deeply how paos demonstrate impartiality and build trust between the parties and themselves. i discuss the professional and personal attributes required by staff to conduct their work as they manage one of the world’s most sensitive and potentially explosive ‘borders’. in the final part of section two examples of actual incidents are provided to illustrate how unifil has dealt with actual confrontations that have occurred. section	
  one:	
  response	
  	
   maintaining	
  peace	
  and	
  security	
  on	
  the	
  ground:	
  walking	
  the	
  blue	
  line	
   unifil’s area of operation extends from the litani river, which lies in the main just south of tyre, down to the blue line. as noted previously in chapter two, the blue line is a un created 	
  as	
  noted	
  previously,	
  i	
  have	
  tried	
  to	
  avoid	
  the	
  use	
  of	
  the	
  word	
  border	
  owing	
  to	
  the	
  fact	
  that	
  the	
  blue	
  line	
  is	
  a	
   line	
  of	
  withdrawal.	
  	
  currently	
  there	
  is	
  no	
  officially	
  agreed	
  border	
  between	
  the	
  two	
  states.	
  	
  however,	
  as	
  the	
  line	
   divides	
  two	
  states	
  i	
  have	
  used	
  it	
  here	
  to	
  clarify	
  this	
  point,	
  in	
  speech	
  marks	
  to	
  highlight	
  its	
  non-­‐legal	
  status	
  under	
   international	
  law.	
   	
   	
   (and therefore geographically artificial) line of withdrawal. maintenance of the security of the line is a priority for unifil owing to its importance to international security. as such, between and patrols of the blue line are conducted each day; of which a number, one estimate provided by a senior laf official was around - , are conducted with the laf. currently, on average unifil conducts almost , activities, including some , in close coordination with the lebanese armed forces per month. the main challenges faced by unifil on the ground are blue line violations which include accidental and deliberate land crossings as well as missile attacks by armed elements that cross the blue line into israel. a further challenge to unifil troops is the need to maintain local consent to operate on the ground. this issue will be discussed in a later chapter on unifil’s local engagement. by and large many blue line violations occur by accident as a result of the lack of clear markings of the line. but they can also be due to intentional violations. these intentional violations occur either as a result of a deliberate incursion by one of the named parties to the conflict or as a result of the actions of another party – traditionally referred to as a ‘spoiler’ in the peacekeeping literature. as the main aim of the mission is to prevent the occurrence of a violation that could trigger a resumption of hostilities, de-escalation is unifil’s main objective as outlined by a senior member of unifil staff: our words are to keep the place quiet. keep the south of the country quiet to try to ensure that there are no outbreaks of hostilities as what happened in july . 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
   security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  february	
   	
  p. ;	
  ———,	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐ general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  november	
   	
  ,	
  p. .	
  	
   figures	
  vary,	
  especially	
  at	
  the	
  present	
  time	
  because	
  of	
  the	
  tense	
  security	
  situation	
  in	
  lebanon	
  owing	
  to	
  the	
  syrian	
   crisis.	
  	
  the	
  laf	
  has	
  been	
  extremely	
  stretched	
  across	
  the	
  country	
  and	
  have	
  had	
  to	
  withdraw	
  some	
  troops	
  from	
  the	
   area	
  of	
  operation	
  as	
  a	
  result.	
   	
  united	
  nations,	
  peacekeeping	
  operations	
  principles	
  and	
  guidelines,	
  (new	
  york:	
  department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
   operations	
  &	
  department	
  of	
  field	
  support,	
   )	
  p. ;	
  newman,	
  edward,	
  and	
  oliver	
  richmond,	
  eds.,	
  challenges	
   to	
  peacebuilding:	
  managing	
  spoilers	
  during	
  conflict	
  resolution	
  (tokyo:	
  united	
  nations	
  university	
  press,	
   ).	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   one senior laf officer described the situation taking into account the fact that there is no current peace agreement in place with israel and the status of the current arrangement is simply the cessation of hostilities. and we worked hard in seven years in order not to go to war, without a decision to go to war. if there is no decision to go to war, we must not go to war over an incident, which can raise the tension in order to go to war… as noted in the introduction, the risk of war breaking out on the blue line remains quite high despite seven years of peace. in such an environment, it is important that no accidental violations of the blue line are misconstrued by either side as an act of aggression. one way to ensure that accidental violations of the blue line do not occur is by monitoring each and every transgression and managing the outcome. monitoring by the israelis consists of surveillance towers that work / to monitor the blue line including regular military patrols; sensors on the ground and a highly sophisticated electronic surveillance and communications network, which functions on both sides of the blue line. on the lebanese side of the line, where unifil operates in conjunction with the laf, violations of the line are also monitored and reported. in addition to reporting each violation, unifil, alongside the laf, attend to the site where the violation occurred to resolve the situation. the aim is either to prevent the violation from continuing or in some cases, to prevent any aggressive action being taken towards israeli forces. different types of violations call for different responses from unifil depending on their seriousness. the seriousness of the violation can be classified in the following order, the least serious being wandering shepherds, the next level up are repeated violations by farmers, 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  see	
  chapter	
   	
  of	
  blanford,	
  warriors	
  of	
  god:	
  inside	
  hezbollah's	
  thirty	
  year	
  struggle.	
   	
  ibid.	
  blanford	
  discusses	
  here	
  the	
  fact	
  that	
  israel	
  possesses	
  a	
  number	
  of	
  surveillance	
  mechanisms	
  within	
  the	
   state	
  of	
  lebanon	
  which	
  is	
  a	
  violation	
  of	
  lebanese	
  sovereignty.	
  	
  on	
  a	
  number	
  of	
  occasions	
  hizbullah	
  and	
  the	
  laf	
   have	
  discovered	
  these	
  mechanisms	
  and	
  dismantled	
  them.	
   	
   	
   resort visitors and hunters, and the most serious being a deliberate violation with the intention to commit harm. each type of violation will be addressed in the following passages. accidental	
  violations	
   shepherd	
  violations	
   accidental breaches of the line occur firstly, because a visible marking of the actual line is often not present (as noted in chapter two). these breaches are usually committed by shepherds, farmers and hunters. in the case of shepherds the violation is often initially committed by a roaming animal, be it cattle, sheep or goats. once the animal has wandered, the shepherd is forced to try and retrieve it, in the process violating the blue line. even if the shepherd knows he is committing a violation, his livelihood depends on maintaining his stock so he will go after it. the other potential cause for a shepherd crossing the blue line will be due to him being unaware of where the blue line actually is. in recent months, this occurrence has become more common owing to the increased use of syrian refugees as stockmen. …we’ve also had a number of syrian refugees who are employed to look after sheep and goats in that area, and they don’t know where the blue line is. so we've had an increase in blue line violations in recent months… on the lebanese side, unifil soldiers patrolling the blue line will call out to the shepherd to advise him that he is crossing the line and that he needs to move back into lebanese territory. unifil are unable to actually detain or prevent the lebanese from crossing the line should they wish to do so. according to unifil staff, the majority of violations occur in the shebaa region where the line is not marked at all owing to the conflict over this particular area of territory between syria, israel and lebanon. in this scenario, close communication with the local population is used to prevent incursions. 	
  the	
  author	
  cross-­‐checked	
  this	
  hierarchy	
  of	
  violations	
  with	
  a	
  number	
  of	
  unifil	
  staff	
  to	
  ensure	
  that	
  it	
  was	
  in	
  line	
   with	
  unifil’s	
  view	
  of	
  priorities	
  over	
  the	
  seriousness	
  of	
  violations.	
  	
   	
  to	
  date,	
  this	
  researcher	
  has	
  not	
  come	
  across	
  the	
  incidence	
  of	
  female	
  shepherdesses	
  in	
  lebanon	
  and	
  as	
  such	
   uses	
  the	
  masculine	
  pronoun.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   …our indian battalion over there talk a lot to the local people on the ground. they have their cell phones, they try to call them to ensure they do not cross the blue line. a lot of violations i think are prevented by the close relations but sometimes people do cross. so what happens, there are instances where the shepherds who are grazing their… maybe by mistake they … you know a few goats go into the blue line. because there are no borders there is nothing. they say that ‘the stone here - to that stone’ this is the blue line’. so there’s nothing marked. so there are a few incidences where violations take place. they call it violations, but it’s basically because of ignorance you know shepherds. so you know, we do butt in, during those times, whenever there is something. whenever there is someone approaching the blue line he patrols they go there, they caution them. they say, you know ‘we see you are going closer to the blue line’. so maybe he tries to get everybody back. so you know basically the goats go for the greener side right? so if it finds green somewhere so it starts drifting so we have to go there and say no, you’re going closer to the blue line. so we push them back. the indian battalion also conduct regular seminars to educate local peasants about where the blue line is. for instance, it’s almost on a regular basis, on a bi-monthly basis we have a shepherds meeting. we call all the shepherds in the area. we sensitize them on the blue line. we tell them because generally these violations i am talking about happen with the shepherds. so we call them. we tell them, we have a small tea party with them, we exchange our ideas. then we tell them see this is the fact of the blue line, this is how you are supposed to be you know it’s advisable. so they do take it in good heart. of course on occasion, shepherds will cross the blue line intentionally as they and their families have lived in the area for generations. this has substantial risks, not only due to the risk of being apprehended by the israelis, but also because many of the areas close to the blue line have been identified as containing unexploded ordinance. many locals are so familiar with the landscape, they will traverse these areas as they believe they are aware of where each and every type of mine is. but it should be noted that there remain thousands of unexploded cluster bomblets left over from the war, so they do this at great risk, as the following example shows. in this 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  hamyeh,	
  rajana,	
  'clearing	
  cluster	
  bombs	
  and	
  landmines:	
  lebanon’s	
  long	
  and	
  winding	
  road',	
  al-­‐akhbar,	
   	
   september	
   ;	
  see	
  mines	
  advisory	
  group	
  (mag),	
  http://www.maginternational.org/where-­‐mag-­‐ 	
   	
   instance, local confidence in the location of unexploded ordinance even led civilians to persuade unifil troops and a language assistant to come and assist them after the accidental death of a young shepherd, even though his death had been caused by stepping on a mine. i tell you one episode. it was one explosion once, there was a mined area close to al-wazzani. once one boy he stepped on a mine i think, a young boy and he was injured and killed. the people they came to the battalion – ‘oh you should come there, you should go inside’. some people there they know, they are walking between the mines. they get used, they are shepherds, they get used to do that. it was me and another colleague and the commanding officer (co) at that time and his duty officer. they were asking us to come…the people they thought, oh why you are so careless and why you don’t go etc. in this way they are talking. and at that time it was not really wise, the co and the officer they went and i and my colleague, we went with them. and then in the middle of the road, the co said, please stop. don’t go any further. it’s very dangerous. and then we went back with my colleague. and then one little boy, he is a shepherd and he was telling us. ‘here mine for heavy vehicle! here anti-personnel mine.’ … i realised when we reached the road i start to shake because when i was there i was walking but when i reached the road i was ah… you can imagine. some shepherds will also knowingly cross the blue line because of on-going territorial disputes, particularly in the region of shebaa. as one peacekeeper informed me: we just tell him “you are crossing the blue line”. we look to the lebanese [laf]to police their own people. we won’t stop them. we can only advise. it’s difficult for us, but it’s even more difficult for the lebanese because in this area that you’re talking about it’s not too bad but if you go up to shebaa farms, to the shebaa area, the lebanese see shebaa, as lebanese. the israelis, and the un consider shebaa as syrian. so if i ask a lebanese soldier “stop that shepherd from going in there”, he says, “how can i stop him, he’s going into his own country”. you know so? the peacekeepers interviewed all indicated their sympathy with the local shepherds and despite the fact they cause them daily alerts and reporting duties, they understand why they do it. there was never a sense of impatience from respondents over the issue: but again, saying this to a guy whose concerned about his livelihood, whose here all his life and will be here a lot longer than we’ll be here. you know you can only kind works/lebanon/#.utj hvyjrzi	
  [accessed	
   	
  january	
   ];	
  united	
  nations	
  mine	
  action	
  support	
  (unmas)	
  in	
   lebanon,	
  http://www.mineaction.org/programmes/lebanon	
  [accessed	
   	
  january	
   ].	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  d,	
  hebbariyah,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  june	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   of … you can only bring the horse to the trough as they say. it’s up to him i suppose, but just on a given day, you try to lead him off it. may be a bit of indifference there because they are used to hearing it, all their lives. so you’re not going to change their mentality a whole lot, but look once you’re forewarned them, i don’t know what more you can do after that you know? whenever a shepherd is caught entering israeli territory by the idf, he will be captured and questioned for a period of between – hours before being released back to the lebanese authorities. this happens on a fairly regular basis. unifil has appealed to israel to liaise directly with unifil when ground violations of this nature occur, but thus far the practice of detention has continued. if a shepherd should resist arrest by the israeli forces and run away, there have been occasions where the animals are captured and detained (presumably not questioned) for period of up to a week. perhaps this is done in order to punish the shepherd for his transgression. however, this ‘punishment’ has on occasion turned out to be a blessing. one unifil officer related the story thus: shebaa is always an issue. shepherds often cross the blue line with their sheep. sometimes it leads to shepherd apprehension. or an abduction, as the lebanese side refers to them. once a flock of goats crossed, they were kidnapped if you like, and they were vaccinated and sent back. the israelis offered a free veterinary service for the goats! 	
   	
   farmers,	
  hunters	
  and	
  resorts	
   violations by farmers in the region constitute a slightly more serious problem because of their repeated nature in the same area. this is regarded as more serious by the idf because of the potential for repeated transgressors to obtain intelligence about the border area. the issue here is that the blue line crosses farmland that is owned by lebanese farmers. there are number of 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  g ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  	
  s/ / '.	
   	
  zaatari,	
  mohammed,	
  'israeli	
  soldiers	
  kidnap	
  lebanese	
  goats',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  may	
   ;	
  dockery,	
  stephen,	
   'goats	
  taken	
  by	
  israeli	
  forces	
  returned',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  july	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   such farms along the blue line – mainly tobacco and olive farms – which have been there for generations. there are two main causes of farmer violations of the blue line. firstly, the blue line, has been present since . as such, the farmers who work on the field often have trouble with the idea that they are not allowed to farm their own land in certain sections when they have been farming it for generations. the result is that even if farmers are aware they are committing a violation, they continue to farm their land as they always have. the other main cause of repeated violations lies in the fact of the israeli technical fence which is often confused for the blue line itself. this is because it runs close to the blue line but is set back farther south into israeli territory by a few hundred metres in most areas. as a result, some farmers do not really understand where the blue line is and therefore believe they are not in violation of it because they are not crossing over the fence. one such case occurs regularly in the ghanaian area close to the blue line: for instance we have a place we call ta there is this farm that the blue line divides into two. ok so this farmer initially demands why we should tell him not to go to the other parts of the farm – it’s a tobacco farm – why we wouldn’t want him to go. and anytime he’s on his farm harvesting, we keep reporting, anytime he crosses to the other side to harvest, we have to send a report to say that – that there is a blue line violation. he crosses back to the other side he is in lebanon. you know these things initially he did not understand why he should be – because he thought he was in his country. but it took intervention of the company commander there who initially had a chat with him and he did not understand. eventually it went to the mayor of the place who came but it has still not been able to be resolved. fortunately the farm has been harvested now, and so the blue line violation has virtually stopped. but any time there is replanting we will find ourselves going back to the same situation. it is difficult sometimes. sometimes a person decides not to understand and there is nothing you can do. you can’t use force, you can’t – only you can go there. sometimes you are provoked and if you don’t take time you may do something outside your mandate. we are trained to control our temper, yeah we, that’s how we handle issues. it’s challenging sometimes. unifil’s method of dealing with regular transgressions is to contact the laf and together with a unifil patrol they will go to the location of the transgression and try to prevent further transgressions. laf can physically prevent the transgressor however, owing to their own 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,unifil,	
  qlay’aa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   concern with their image in the south, they are highly reluctant to use force. unifil can only advise the transgressor not to go any further. if there is no resolution for frequent violations by the same person, as noted above, a local official is brought in to explain to the farmer why he is unable to farm all of his land. if this fails, unifil have on occasion, brought in staff to demarcate the line on the farmer’s land so that he is clear as to where he can, or cannot go. one unifil peacekeeper showed how this worked in the case of the farm in area ta by the use of photographs on his computer screen. one day we can report a violation of the blue line, times…you see, we had to bring these un people in to come and tell us exactly where the blue line is. they told us exactly where the blue line passes – it is still within the farm. so you see [from a photo] we are walking on the blue line now. and this part is lebanon, and this part is israel and every day there is a violation. if the violations continue then the matter is passed up to the tripartite meetings between the two named parties and unifil in order to try to reach an agreement on how the issue can be managed. this will be discussed further in the later section on the tripartite meetings. the issue of repeated violations occurs also with hunters. however, these issues are a little more serious from the israeli point of view because the hunters carry guns. in lebanon, the sport of hunting involves a group of men with shotguns trying to kill any bird that happens to be flying overhead. as such it can take hunters anywhere as in lebanon there is no such thing as game reserves. hunting is actually banned in the unifil area of operations, however – as is the case with many laws in lebanon – this fact is overlooked by the general population when it suits. what we normally – the problems we normally encounter - are hunters. they keep crossing the blue line virtually daily. and israel will call us and say, there is a man with a weapon who has crossed the blue line. so they give us the grid reference, you go and yes it’s a hunter with a locally made weapon. that is a normal hunting gun or whatever. you are not able to physically prevent him from doing anything so you talk to him most of the time and this is also done in coordination with laf. when we receive such information we call laf so we move with laf together and 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,unifil,	
  qlay’aa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   laf, go to get the people out of the place. the same way when it’s sheep crossing or whatever. the way unifil deals with these transgressions was described thus: you hear the shots, the guys have a / watch on the post. and it will literally be km to your left. you would hear the shots fired, a patrol will be sent out and it could very well be that the guy has done his business and gone, or if he’s there he’s just questioned. but he could be there with what they’re after shooting or whatever. that goes up to the reporting line and the next day people are made aware. it’s just obviously if there’s shooting going on it’s of concern. we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t report because what’s not to say it’s the worst case scenario. but that’s how routine it is – i’d say the guys on the post would % of the time, would know that it’s just an armed hunter, but it's just healthy paranoia, that you have to go through the procedure, send out a patrol and report. potential repeated violation also come from resorts which have sprung up along the wazzani river which lies in places right next to the blue line. where the river is divided in half by the blue line, a line of string is used to demarcate it. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,unifil,	
  qlay’aa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  g ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   figure : picture of the wazzani river. blue rope seen tied to a tree at the top of the photo demarcates the blue line. one resort on the wazzani river caused a great many problems for unifil when it opened in . the israelis were concerned it would be used as a launch pad for attacks by armed groups posing as tourists. as such there was a great deal of liaison involved between the parties as the 	
  photo	
  taken	
  by	
  author,	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   resort was being built. water disputes between lebanon and israel are common, and in this instance, the issue was used in an attempt to prevent the resort from obtaining planning permission. the israelis argued that the resort would use up more than its fair share of the water from the wazzani. the relevant authorities did not support this claim and the resort exists today and is extremely popular in summertime. the israelis have built a road down to the river, and a helicopter pad opposite the resort in case of emergency; but thus far no serious incidents from the lebanese side at the site of the resort have been reported. the only effect thus far of the resort has been the odd swimmer in the river who has inadvertently crossed the blue line, lying as it does down the middle of the waterway (see above photograph). unifil visit the owner and sometimes eat in the restaurant. but as it is a lebanese owned business on lebanese land there is little they can do in terms of meeting the security demands of the israelis, certainly unifil is unable to interfere in the day-to-day management of the resort. as the owner stated: they have a very limited mandate, so they cannot do anything. they can observe and report. but anyhow so far the israelis didn’t make any direct aggression against us. however, tension remains over the water: we asked permission to clean the river here, but the israelis refused. because any work here, because we are on the blue line, so you need the approval of the two sides. so the israeli’s refused to allow us to do it, and unifil did nothing so far to help us with cleaning it. though, the last two years the israelis didn’t object to cleaning the river and now they are. we don’t know why. 	
  blanford,	
  nicholas,	
  'whose	
  water	
  is	
  it	
  anyways?	
  resentment	
  pools	
  on	
  israel-­‐lebanon	
  border',	
  the	
  christian	
   science	
  monitor,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  hamdan,	
  tarek	
  abou,	
  'a	
  lebanese	
  resort	
  emerges	
  on	
  anxious	
  israel's	
  border',	
  al-­‐monitor,	
   	
  october	
   ,	
   http://www.al-­‐monitor.com/pulse/culture/ / /the-­‐south-­‐lebanon-­‐resort-­‐village-­‐attracting-­‐tourists-­‐meters-­‐ from-­‐the-­‐enemy.html	
  [accessed	
   	
  march	
   ];	
  luca,	
  ana	
  maria,	
  'much	
  ado	
  about	
  a	
  summer	
  resort',	
  now	
   lebanon,	
   	
  july	
   ,	
  https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/reportsfeatures/much_ado_about_a_summer_resort	
   [accessed	
   	
  march	
   ].	
  	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example:	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
   security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / '.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  r,	
  civilian,	
  wazzani	
  resort,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  r,	
  civilian,	
  wazzani	
  resort,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   all the above types of violations reside in the category of non-deliberate violations because over time they have been shown to lack intent to commit harm to israel or the idf. the issue of farmers, hunters and hotels are perceived as more serious within this category because they have the potential to be repeated, which could mean (from the israeli perspective) that the transgressor could be laying ieds or gathering some kind of intelligence on a regular basis. violations by hunters with guns are viewed by the israelis as more serious than that of shepherds owing to the arms carried by the transgressors and so unifil needs to take every incident seriously. on the ground, peacekeepers use negotiation, persuasion and advice to manage accidental transgressions. they demonstrate sympathy for the local civilians in terms of ensuring they remain calm and respect local sentiment. peacekeepers interviewed understood that accidental transgressors feel they have the right to walk wherever they want on lebanese land, and simply aren’t aware of every twist and turn of the blue line. in addition, sensitivity to local feelings about the fact of israel means peacekeepers refrain from addressing transgressions in a forceful manner. accidental violations do ultimately cause a lot of work for unifil, and it is questionable as to how many of them are truly accidental and instead are more reflective of local agency whereby individuals chose not to respond to peacekeepers requests. in some cases these violations necessitate the need to come to a micro-security agreement with israel to manage the situation such as the case of the farmer in ta (as will be shown in section two). the second category of violations discussed in the following section are more serious as they have the potential to reignite hostilities between the two sides. this is the category of deliberate violations by parties on both sides of the line and they are described below. deliberate	
  blue	
  line	
  violations	
   deliberate violations are categorised here as referring to violations by persons who carry an intent to commit an unlawful act whether it be simply breaking international law by violating the blue line, causing damage to the israeli state, harm to the idf or israeli citizens. within this 	
   	
   category, the main transgressors are in order of seriousness: protestors, various armed groups, confrontations between the laf and the idf, and finally, in the view of the israelis, the most serious are violations involving engagement with hizbullah. stone-­‐throwing	
  and	
  lone	
  transgressors	
   protests against the state of israel happen at a very disorganised and local level and can consist of stone-throwing incidents by local lebanese. they occur at points where lebanese roads come close to the israeli technical fence where military patrols pass or where israeli troops are standing in position. these events are dealt with by unifil and the laf, with the laf taking the key role in dispersing lebanese citizens. for example a secretary general report on resolution notes: on august, lebanese civilians threw stones at an israel defence forces patrol passing south of the blue line before the lebanese armed forces arrived and removed the civilians from the area. unifil also do their best to prevent such incidents by increasing their presence in specific areas where tensions can develop. [f]rom al-addaisseh to kfar kila, where there is an israeli road running very close to a main lebanese road, and very close to the centre of kfar kila, we put in various de-confliction measures there. increased our presence. tried to impose ourselves whenever people came to throw stones on the lebanese side, which quite a few people tried to do. we have quite a heavy presence in that area. however these measures were not considered sufficiently effective, and a stronger defensive measure was installed by the israelis: the construction of a wall in the village of metulla where the blue line passes right up against the village. it should be noted that the wall was also justified by the israelis as being necessary to deter other types of attacks. 	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ',	
  p. .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   now the israelis eventually decided to build a wall. this came after a series of weapons aiming incidents that we were extremely worried about – that there were weapons aiming into each other between two armies could escalate rapidly. so the israelis went ahead building the wall. this was done in extremely close coordination with us, and through us, with the laf to ensure that no part of that wall, the wall itself, it’s foundations below ground, barbed wire on the top, did not protrude into lebanese territory. and it’s right there, it is on the blue line…all the parties felt they didn’t want to do that. but the israelis decided that operationally that was the decision they were going to take. which has obviously helped to decrease incidents a lot in that area… whilst this measure has reduced the incidence of stone throwing and weapons pointing it again demonstrates the constraints placed on unifil by the parties which reduces their agency to manage the situation on the ground in the way they see fit. in this instance the preference would have been not to have built the wall which would have been more sensitive to the local village on the lebanese side, as the following photos amply demonstrate. figure : photo of the blue line in metulla, prior to the building of the security wall. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  photo	
  by	
  author,	
  january	
   .	
   	
   	
   figure : the blue line after the construction of the security wall in the village of metulla (taken in the same location as the above photo). still minor, but slightly more serious violations occur when local residents cross the blue line. this happens infrequently but in there were two incidents of this nature undertaken by israeli citizens. on may, near ras naqoura (sector west), an israeli civilian crossed the technical fence into lebanon and was apprehended by a lebanese armed forces patrol. following questioning by the lebanese armed forces, the man was voluntarily repatriated to israel on may under the auspices of the international committee of the red cross, with the support of unifil. in a separate incident, on april, unifil observed one israeli civilian, who had climbed the t-wall along the blue line in kafr kela (sector east), shouting at lebanese armed forces personnel and civilians on the other side. unifil protested the incident to the israel defence forces. 	
  photo	
  by	
  author,	
  august	
   .	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  june	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   however, it should be noted that these incidents vary from year to year and other years they could just as well be committed by lebanese civilians as reports from the year before amply demonstrate. on april, a lebanese national and his two children crossed the technical fence from lebanon into israel near fatima gate in kafr kila (sector east), and crossed back to lebanon the following day, after the israel defence forces opened the gate at ras naqoura. unifil informed the lebanese authorities and the lebanese armed forces, who took charge of the three lebanese nationals. in all cases these violation occur quite rarely, the civilians are unarmed and on one recent occasion a man apprehended in this way was found to be suffering from a mental disorder. 	
   organised	
  protests	
   more serious, are the organised protests that occur on the blue line on significant days in the calendar of the palestinian resistance movement. these are days like land day ( th march), which commemorates resistance by palestinians in in response to forced israeli land appropriations; nakba day (the tragedy, th may), which marks the israeli announcement of the independent state of israel; and al-naksah (the setback, th june) which commemorates palestinian dismay at the israelis winning the day war. on these occasions, there will often be a gathering of palestinians and supporters of the palestinian cause which more often than not, leads to some kind of confrontation with israeli troops. the worst case in recent years was on th may when protestors attempted to scale the technical fence and enter the state of israel itself. the secretary general reported the event thus: unifil estimates that around , to , demonstrators, mostly palestinian refugees, participated in the event. organizers included palestinian and lebanese organizations, among them hizbullah. while the majority of demonstrators 	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  ———,	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general’s	
  report,	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
   implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  november	
   .;	
  ———,	
  report	
  of	
   the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  june	
   .	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  '	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ',	
  p. .	
   	
  yaakov	
  lappin,	
  'man	
  who	
  crossed	
  lebanon	
  border	
  returned	
  to	
  israel',	
  jerusalem	
  post,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   commemorated the day peacefully at the site prepared for the occasion, away from the blue line, around , protesters left the main gathering and, crossing through a minefield, moved towards the blue line and the israeli technical fence. using cordons and firing in the air, the lebanese armed forces was able to stop a first attempt by a smaller group to reach the technical fence but was not able to prevent the second attempt by the demonstrators. at the technical fence, demonstrators unearthed anti-tank mines, threw stones and two petrol bombs across the fence and attempted to climb it and bring it down. following a verbal warning and firing into the air, the israel defence forces then directed live fire at the protesters at the fence. after the arrival of reinforcements, lebanese armed forces special forces reserve moved the protesters away from the fence. the lebanese armed forces initially informed unifil that persons were killed. this figure was later revised to , with people injured. in addition, the respective parties informed unifil that lebanese armed forces soldiers and israel defence forces troops were lightly wounded by stones. one unifil soldier also sustained light wounds from a thrown stone. the result of the events of may , led to intense discussions between israel, lebanon and unifil as to how operations could be mitigated to prevent death, injury and escalation. these discussions will be dealt with the in following section on the tripartite meetings and bilateral liaison. air	
  violations	
   there is another major source of tension at the international level which unifil has to deal with and this is the daily air violations conducted by israel in the form of drone and fixed-wing aircraft surveillance. this takes place over the whole of lebanon and unifil protests these infringements of resolution on a regular basis. you have over-flights would be a continuous violation you know. i believe in the tripartite meetings it’s a continuous thing. and again, guys on the post would report, you can see them as clear as day, that would be a daily thing that’s going on also. it’s when there’s a spike in it, that it would be of interest to me. as mentioned above, at times the israelis will increase aerial activity or conduct war-like manoeuvres over local towns in the south. unifil can only record and protest these 	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  july	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  g ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  'unifil	
  complains	
  to	
  un	
  over	
  israel	
  overflights',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  may	
   ;	
  'iaf	
  jets	
  fly	
  mock	
  raids	
  over	
  south	
   lebanon	
  after	
  mysterious	
  aircraft	
  shot	
  down	
  over	
  israel',	
  haaretz,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   violations at the tripartite meetings and in their report to the secretary general who unfailingly mentions them in every report on . an example of israeli aerial activity is detailed here in one secretary general’s report: the israel defence forces continued to violate lebanese airspace almost daily during the reporting period, with overflights of lebanese territory and territorial waters by unmanned aerial vehicles and fixed-wing aircraft, including fighter jets. on january alone, there were some air violations involving multiple fighter jets. on november, at least six israeli attack helicopters entered lebanese airspace and flew at low altitude in the general vicinity of tyre, an action that could have resulted in a serious security incident, in addition to putting at risk unifil helicopters normally operating in the area. unifil protested about all the air violations to the israel defence forces, calling upon the authorities to cease them immediately. the government of lebanon also protested, while the government of israel continued to maintain that the overflights were a necessary security measure. unifil recognises that the air violations are a major source of irritation to the local population who view unifil’s inability to prevent them as an indication of their weak position against israel or as a sign that they do not do enough to stop them and are therefore complicit in them. weapons	
  pointing	
   on a regular basis, incidents of weapons pointing occur which have the potential to escalate between the two named parties – the laf and the idf. these situations of tension take place between both the named parties in broad daylight. in these instances, unifil troops have been known to intercept any potential military action by either of the parties by walking in-between them. at other times, the idf have pointed their weapons at unifil. reports by the secretary general often detail these types of incidents and one example will be given below. an examination of all the secretary general’s reports on resolution has shown that this type of confrontation occurs sporadically. in the example given below, ten cases were reported, but in only one. 	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  	
  s/ / ',	
  p. .	
   	
  incidences	
  vary	
  year	
  on	
  year	
  since	
   .	
  	
  it	
  is	
  too	
  soon	
  to	
  imply	
  that	
  the	
  lack	
  of	
  incidents	
  this	
  year	
  can	
  be	
  fully	
   attributed	
  to	
  the	
  work	
  on	
  unifil.	
   	
   	
   unifil observed cases of weapons pointing across the blue line. four instances involved israel defence forces soldiers pointing their weapons in the direction of unifil personnel; in five other instances the israel defence forces pointed their weapons in the direction of lebanese civilians or lebanese armed forces personnel. the most serious incident happened on june, when israel defence forces soldiers pointed a mounted heavy machine gun towards soldiers at a lebanese army checkpoint on the western side of ghajar. the incident temporarily escalated tensions on both sides of the blue line, and the situation returned to normal only when the israel defence forces patrol left the location. on one occasion, a lebanese armed forces soldier pointed his weapon towards israel in the vicinity of israel defence forces soldiers. unifil has protested against all incidents involving weapons being pointed and, when required and possible, interposed its soldiers between lebanese armed forces and israel defence forces soldiers, seeking to prevent such incidents from escalating. there were also a number of allegations of weapons being pointed, particularly in the areas of el adeisse and kafrkila, as a result of which unifil has established an additional observation point in the area of el adeisse. the next level of blue line breaches are the most serious and they comprise deliberate violations of the blue line by military or armed personnel and rocket attacks from armed elements which are directed at israel. as noted above, since , hizbullah has not claimed to have conducted any incursions south of the blue line into israeli territory. the idf has committed a number of land incursions into lebanese territory which increases tension between the idf and the laf. rocket	
  attacks	
   rocket attacks from lebanon into israel naturally constitute a serious violation of the blue line. since the war, hizbullah has not claimed responsibility for any rocket attacks that have been launched against israel. however, other armed groups in the area have done so and claimed responsibility. these incidents cause insignificant damage owing to the inaccuracy of the rocket which rarely pierce the ‘iron dome’ created by israel. but, when a rocket attack occurs, unifil are quick to conduct an investigation in order to reassure the israelis that in fact it was not launched by hizbullah. this is because of the 	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ',	
  p. .	
   	
  it	
  should	
  be	
  noted	
  that	
  the	
  laf	
  were	
  not	
  present	
  in	
  the	
  south	
  of	
  lebanon	
  until	
  late	
   .	
  	
  as	
  they	
  patrol	
  with	
   unifil	
  and	
  never	
  alone,	
  they	
  have	
  never	
  been	
  found	
  to	
  have	
  violated	
  the	
  blue	
  line.	
   	
  israeli’s	
  iron	
  dome	
  is	
  a	
  mobile	
  all-­‐weather	
  air	
  defence	
  system	
  developed	
  by	
  rafael	
  advanced	
  defence	
  systems.	
   the	
  system	
  is	
  designed	
  to	
  intercept	
  and	
  destroy	
  short-­‐range	
  rockets	
  and	
  artillery	
  shells	
  fired	
  from	
  distances	
  of	
   	
   to	
   	
  kilometres	
  away	
  and	
  whose	
  trajectory	
  would	
  take	
  them	
  to	
  a	
  populated	
  area.	
  	
  	
   	
   	
   seriousness of the perceived threat level israel attributes to a hizbullah attack relative to an attack by another less organised group. the most common source of random rocket attacks are al- qaeda affiliated groups and pro-palestinian groups that operate in the area. often a random rocket attack will not receive a response in kind from israel as unifil work hard to liaise with the idf to reassure them that this event is in fact a one-off and not the resumption of hostilities by hizbullah. you see for example, you have from time to time, firing of rockets. this is not the main players who are doing it. let’s say hizbullah and israel. and immediately we tell israel it is not hizbullah, things cool down. however, this scenario is starting to change, possibly due to israeli impatience with the inability of unifil to prevent such attacks. during the course of this research, on a day i was in the area of operations, a rocket was launched from nearby tyre into northern israel. unifil staff were immediately recalled to headquarters in naqoura and an investigation was launched by the laf and unifil to determine the source of the attack. the attack was claimed quite swiftly an al-qaeda linked group calling themselves the abdullah azzam brigades. israel conducted a proportionate response the following night by launching several rockets into a known base of the group the palestinian front for the liberation of palestine-general command (pflp-gc) at naameh, an area kilometres south of beirut. in the case of rocket attacks, the parties on both sides of the blue line do not always cooperate with unifil. after the rocket-launching incident on august , unifil were denied permission to investigate the site of the rocket landings in israel until the israelis themselves had investigated and removed the remnants of the rockets. unifil were then taken to a laboratory in israel and shown the remains of the rockets but could not verify whether or not these were the actual rockets that had been fired on august as they had not been allowed to access the site before it was tampered with. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  hussein	
  dakroub,	
  'lebanese	
  leaders	
  condemn	
  rocket	
  attack	
  on	
  israel	
  ',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  quilty,	
  jim,	
  'israeli	
  warplane	
  strikes	
  area	
  south	
  of	
  beirut',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   at the impact sites in israel, remnants of the rockets had been removed by the israeli authorities prior to the visit of the unifil investigation team. on august, unifil investigators inspected the purported remnants of the rockets at a laboratory in israel and found them to be -mm calibre rockets. the “brigades of abdullah azzam, ziad jarrah battalions” claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks, but unifil is not in a position to determine the veracity of this claim. equally, the secretary general’s report of june , noted that unifil requested permission from laf to excavate a rocket-launching site after they had been denied access by local civilians to the site shortly after the launch had occurred. the laf also refused them permission. with regard to the explosion in tayr harfa (sector west) on december, unifil found that eyewitness accounts, the material damage caused and the metallic ordnance fragments collected at the site all pointed to the detonation of a large quantity of explosives. unifil was unable to determine the cause of the explosion definitively, however, as the site had been disturbed before unifil and lebanese armed forces investigation teams could access it, leaving the possibility that evidence had been lost. the unifil request to excavate the explosion site was not accepted by the lebanese armed forces. naturally it is a source of frustration for unifil that they are unable to fully and effectively play their role as neutral observers to the situation if they cannot be relied upon to provide a clear and full explanation of these attacks when they occur. random rocket attacks work to erode trust between the parties, most particularly on the israeli side, who use these incidents to justify intrusive security measures on the blue line, such as building defensive walls, conducting ground incursions, and installing electronic surveillance equipment along the technical fence which is capable of eavesdropping on the entire population of lebanon. the attacks also weaken the laf’s standing with the idf as they demonstrate 	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ',	
  p. .	
   	
  as	
  will	
  be	
  explained	
  in	
  the	
  following	
  chapter,	
  the	
  laf	
  has	
  to	
  walk	
  a	
  political	
  tightrope	
  to	
  avoid	
  being	
  seen	
  as	
   impartial	
  by	
  any	
  one	
  sect.	
  	
  as	
  the	
  laf	
  still	
  view	
  themselves	
  as	
  in	
  the	
  process	
  of	
  winning	
  hearts	
  and	
  minds	
  in	
  the	
   south,	
  they	
  are	
  disinclined	
  to	
  place	
  too	
  much	
  pressure	
  on	
  hizbullah.	
  	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ',	
  p. .	
   	
  'lebanon	
  files	
  complaint	
  to	
  u.n.	
  over	
  israeli	
  spying',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  january	
   .	
   	
   	
   that they are unable to guarantee israel’s security against such attacks. this is frustrating for unifil as it is in their interests that the laf are viewed by israel as a capable defence force as they work towards the long-term goal of withdrawal from south lebanon. 	
   confrontation	
  between	
  the	
  parties	
   a confrontation between two parties is naturally the highest level of security threat to the unifil mission. it is during such an event that the work of the paos is most relevant, as such the process for managing confrontations and two case studies are provided in the following section. summary	
  of	
  section	
  one	
   this section has described how the unifil peace operation responds to blue line violations in order to influence its security environment to maintain international peace and security. the factors that facilitate the effectiveness of actors, primarily peacekeepers on the ground are local knowledge, in particular sensitivity to local concerns. in the absence of a chapter vii mandate, unifil peacekeepers use a combination of negotiation, persuasion and advice to manage accidental transgressions. they demonstrate sympathy for local civilians in terms of ensuring they remain calm and respect local sentiment when dealing first hand with transgressors. where possible, they involve local government figures and the laf wherever possible to assist them. unifil ensure a laf presence when they are dealing with violations conducted by local civilians because they know it presents a localised solution. this helps to not only increase laf’s presence in the area, and remind the local population that laf are there to serve them. but it also helps unifil to stand back, play more of an observational role and not be viewed as foreign interveners in lebanese security issues. most importantly, it reduces the risk of a violent confrontation between a lebanese citizen and a unifil peacekeeper which would have extremely negative effects on local perceptions of the mission. 	
   	
   where the international character of unifil is a positive, is that they ensure everything is recorded and subsequently reported to headquarters at naqoura, who will then include all violations in the report that will be sent to the secretary general in new york. in the case of deliberate violations, unifil also conduct an investigation which is subsequently reported to both the named parties and new york. this acts as a constraint on the parties, neither of whom wish to receive negative international attention. as noted by macqueen ( ) ‘providing a certain element of political theatre has always been a significant part of the peacekeeping role’. section one has described in detail unifil’s response tactics to violations of the blue line. section two will discuss the preventative mechanisms unifil has put in place to maximise opportunities for managing security crises along the blue line and building trust between the parties in order to prevent further incidents and escalations of such incidents into full scale war. 	
   section	
  two:	
  prevention	
   liaison	
  and	
  communication	
  at	
  the	
  international	
  level	
   as noted in the introduction, at the international level, operations on the ground are not the only components of unifil’s work towards maintaining peace on the blue line. unifil are highly engaged with the military forces of both the named parties at the strategic level to try to prevent confrontations. this work is conducted largely by unifil political affairs officers (paos) and the force commander. the mechanisms employed by paos include bilateral liaison between unifil and the israeli defence force (idf) and the lebanese armed forces (laf); the tripartite meetings and brokering micro security agreements. 	
  macqueen,	
  peacekeeping	
  and	
  the	
  international	
  system,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   the	
  tripartite	
  meetings	
  	
   the tripartite meetings are held on average once a month or every six weeks. they take place in a building in ras naqoura, a village on the border with israel. present at the meeting are the force commander of unifil, and several senior staff from the unifil political affairs department. also present are senior staff from the laf and the idf. the tripartite meetings are regarded by un headquarters in new york as an extremely positive aspect of unifil’s work in maintaining international peace and security, as evidenced by their frequent mention in secretary general reports who has described them as: …the most significant stabilizing factor within the framework of resolution ( ), serving to build confidence between the parties and defuse tension in potential flashpoints, as well as providing a platform through which unifil can facilitate practical arrangements on the ground between the lebanese armed forces and the israel defence forces. the meetings are unusual as both states remain technically at war, and at the political level of government, neither side has met in a very long time. however, here representatives of the military of both states come together to debate and discuss their on-going security concerns. israel and lebanon never speak directly to one another at these meetings despite being across the meeting table from one another. instead each side addresses the unifil force commander who then relays the information to the other side. informally, unifil staff have told me that sometimes the israelis will try to speak directly to members of laf, but they refuse to engage directly with the idf, rather they always speak through the force commander. the benefits of the tripartite meetings according to unifil staff are multiple. first, because they provide an opportunity for liaison on key security issues without recourse to arms. as a result of 	
  israeli	
  citizens	
  are	
  not	
  permitted	
  to	
  visit	
  lebanon.	
  therefore	
  the	
  meeting	
  has	
  to	
  take	
  place	
  in	
  a	
  special	
  building	
   that	
  essentially	
  sits	
  on	
  the	
  blue	
  line.	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ',	
  p. .	
   	
  this	
  is	
  due	
  to	
  a	
  great	
  deal	
  of	
  resentment	
  in	
  lebanon	
  towards	
  israelis,	
  borne	
  largely	
  of	
  the	
  five	
  invasions	
  they	
   have	
  conducted	
  since	
   ,	
  which	
  the	
  laf	
  have	
  been	
  unable	
  prevent.	
   	
   	
   the tripartite meetings, liaison agreements have been struck between the parties in order to better manage security incidents. the procedural terms of the liaison agreement was described thus, by a senior laf officer: the most important thing in this protocol was that we have to assign a senior officer who will be always ready when the first commander ask for a meeting – if he wants he can contact hours and days the general and the general in israel. the first thing that is important is that this person needs to be able to come to a meeting whenever the first commander asks for a meeting. the second thing that is important, that any movement of the armies of both sides must be in coordination with unifil and give the other side notification if there is any abnormal movement. they have to tell unifil what’s going on and unifil tell us. there is a system but we can put it as goodwill, it’s not a document, but goodwill they can put it. and so, this worked very well really, in six years, this is the seventh year, it works like that. always we are in contact at any time, hours, days, the first commander can contact us, and contact the other israeli general. he may put me on hold and speak with him at the same time. sometimes in my office when something is urgent we do it on speakerphone. the second benefit of the tripartite meetings is as a communication forum. the tripartite meetings also afford unifil the opportunity to protest violations to both the named parties, and explain to both sides the unifil perspective on what occurred. one senior unifil officer described the liaison and communication benefits of the meetings thus: and so it's a forum for liaison and coordination. it's a forum for us to discuss all security and operational matters. so whenever we have an incident, a violation of , or an incident, we report it in full. we obviously protest any incidents of violations to both parties immediately but then we report it in full at the tripartite meeting. we explain what happened, our understanding of what happened, and what we observed, the allegations of the parties, and then if it's a serious violation or serious incident, we will actually send an investigation team and we will carry out an investigation, into what happened… once we’ve written these reports we give them to the parties and we discuss them. and the parties protest or say they like this, or they don’t like this etc. but generally we have a basic agreement on what needs to be done to ensure these incidents don’t happen again. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   the meetings provide an effective forum for both sides to air their grievances and vent their feelings, for either side to protest over an incident, or for unifil to make an official protest to either of the named parties directly: in sum to vent their feelings over a particular issue. …the tripartite meetings allow them to let off steam. if both sides want to shout and yell at each other they can do so. they can let off steam, they can put their points of view, they have very different points of view, they have very forceful arguments but it is an effective forum in that sense. both sides get a lot out of it. the final benefit of the tripartite meetings is that they have enabled both sides to come to agreement on micro security arrangements. brokering	
  micro-­‐security	
  agreements	
   arguably the most practical use of the tripartite meetings is that they facilitate the creation of micro security agreements between the named parties. these agreements are not only helpful in the pursuit of maintaining peace and security on the blue line, they also demonstrate how liaison at the subnational level can generate localised agreements to maintain peace and security. specific examples of these micro-agreements were hard to source from respondents who were reluctant to reveal too much detail as they regarded these agreements as highly confidential and sensitive. however, one example was provided: like, for example we have olive fields at rueda, where we have or fields that cross the blue line. in we were able to persuade the israelis to allow, certain farmers to cultivate their olives south of the blue line, we had to fence them in. this was on the understanding that we would mark the blue line, but because of lack of agreement between the two parties we weren’t able to finalise that marking. we did most of it but we weren’t able to finalise that marking. but it was an effective way, at least for that year, for farmers to cultivate their olives. another officer alluded to the same agreement and how the deal was struck: 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   so what we try to do with the israelis is say, ok, let’s try and put some kind of an arrangement in here, so this guy can get to his olive trees. so you know we put a fence here like this around the area, so when the farmer comes in he can’t go any further you know? so this kind of agreement or something like that. so then we, on this side [lebanon], we have to say, “ok, we need to know who the farmer is. and whose coming with him, is it his first cousin, second cousin, his wife and his kids and all that kind of stuff.” because what this side [israeli] will say to you is “ah but he’s not a farmer. he’s hizbullah in disguise.” everyone is a hizbullah guy because they [israel] see everyone under a rock. so these are the kind of things you can do, at the local level. the number of micro security arrangements that unifil have been able to strike with both the parties is not clear. respondents did make it clear that they are not easy to achieve: you know it’s so difficult to even get the smallest little step because there is such mistrust between the two sides. we’ve had successes, we’ve had a lot of failures. and then we’ve had successes that last for a little while and then evaporate. you just, you know, there’s no mystery to it either, you just use your common sense, you try and get them to agree to a small, little agreement. something at the local level. you can look at the local level, not at the political level. i can arbitrate between this guy and this guy, ok you do this, and you do that, that way i can do it. and that can work, and then you get a little bit of confidence in that and then you try … it’s like going up the stairs, one step at a time. but you can be sometimes, go one up and two back. the liaison and communication channels that unifil have set up in the last seven years appear to make a strong contribution to the prevention of war. they demonstrate first and foremost that even when states are technically at war and only under the conditions of a cessation of hostilities they can come to agreement on some of the smaller issues that will prevent further conflagrations between the parties. that unifil has managed to establish these meetings and furthermore, maintain them is no small achievement. however, as noted in chapter two, the strategic environment is currently conducive to both sides not wishing to engage militarily. should the environment change significantly; there is every chance that these important mechanisms for conflict prevention could be discarded. but whilst both parties remain in agreement to the terms of , these agreements help to prevent needless security incidents which always have the potential to escalate. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   maintaining	
  impartiality	
  and	
  trust	
   all the paos interviewed, made the point that a lot of the liaison work they do at the international level involves building up strong relationships with personnel within the laf and also the idf. in the middle east, personal relationships are extremely important. once you have established a relationship it is extremely important to maintain it in order to build trust. this is the advantage that unifil has over and above most un missions owing to its longstanding nature. as noted in earlier chapters, one of the most frustrating aspects of unifil’s work are the constant rotations of troops which means valuable experience is frequently lost and new members of staff need to be educated and socialised which takes up time. owing to the length of time unifil has been present in south lebanon, there are some key members of staff in the political affairs and civil affairs sections who have been working for unifil for almost thirty years. these staff members are invaluable in terms of enabling unifil to maintain important relationships over time, educate newcomers, retain both institutional memory and the trust of the named parties. simply having been involved with unifil for a long period of time affords some staff members a great deal of leverage with the parties and the benefit of historical context. one staff member spoke at length about the issues he faced as a long-time staff member and they are detailed in this section. and i have my own credibility, i’ve been working with them a long time, you know? so they know my, the cut of my jib… this job that i do, is all personal. there’s no, like, if i get a degree from somewhere, that won’t stand with me. it’s purely personal. it’s a personal relationship you have with the two sides, simple as that. it’s how you do business with them. just try to be honest with them and hopefully they will see you for the honest broker that you are. but sometimes they doubt you because you are telling them things that they don’t want to hear. or you’re telling them things that the other guys are going to do…so. but this is not always an easy task. the same staff member commented on the difficulties in particular of maintaining trust. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   my major concern, as i said is the level of trust. that we never lose that level of trust. that’s my major concern. that is paramount to me being successful and being able to do my job. that would be my biggest concern that some guy doesn’t try to blacklist me or try to say things, and you never know. yeah that would be my biggest concern, that i would be misunderstood but i mean, not necessarily misunderstood…people will try to fuck you. so you just have to take care of people who will screw you. i don’t know, for personal reasons or something like that. the staff member went on to stress that he had on many occasions had to put a stop to rumours about him which actually put him at a security risk, owing to his work on liaison with the idf. despite his long relationship with both the named parties, he still has to prove himself on a continuous basis. this demonstrates how much work it takes to build trust and this is not something that can be achieved and maintained in a two year (or less) rotation. the relationship requires constant attention. i had people say, i am soft on the israelis, now telling people here on this side, telling people i am soft on the israelis could be very dangerous for me, you know? so then, the only thing i can say to people is: ‘look, you know me, you know my history, you know the way i operate.’ and you know the expression, ‘you’re only as good as your last game’? that’s here. you’re only as good as your last game. institutional memory, so you have to be continuously on your guard. the second key issue for unifil political staff is that of maintaining impartiality at both the professional and the personal level. just as the troops on the ground also have to maintain the same posture irrespective of whom they are dealing with, so they do at the higher political level, irrespective of their personal perspective on the security policies of either of the named parties. unifil’s approach to ensuring that both named parties view them as impartial is to maintain transparency and honesty in all aspects of their dealings with both sides. i think the transparency is the main thing. i mean, you have to be honest in this game … and to be honest with both sides. because you will very easily trip yourself up, or you’ll get yourself exposed. very quickly…[i]f you’re dealing with one crowd, you can’t say, “oh i’ll look after you now” [winks], you know? because they don’t know if you are saying the same to the other guys. so you can’t kind of say, a nod 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   and a wink, you can’t be like, that you know? although you might be trying to give them a break, trying to guide them in a certain way, to give them a bit of advice. but basically it has to be transparency and you have to be honest. if you’re not honest and therefore not transparent, you’re history. as part of this, it is important that key staff members do not make the mistake of being credited by either side for having been the decision maker. it is important that both of the named parties understand that liaison officers are simply passing on the message, they are not the generators of the message itself. transparency is easy. but honesty, because sometimes you don’t want to tell it. because sometimes when you come, sometimes you have to deliver information that they don’t want to hear and that they don’t accept. and they don’t like it. you know the story ‘don’t shoot the messenger’? you know we are often the messenger and we have to be very careful and sometimes the message that you have to deliver comes you know, i am only passing the message. i am not the originator of the message, so in that respect we have to be very careful as well…and then you have to be very careful. what you have to be careful of, when you’re doing a deal, is that you’re not making the deal. don’t put yourself out on a limb, like if i go to one side, and say “listen, look, ok we can fix that now” and don’t give guarantees to the other guys. you’ve got to get those from the other guys. because again, you’re a messenger… sometimes i’ve seen people write back and say “[name of interviewee] said that they wouldn’t do this’. i said “hang on a minute. this isn’t me speaking – they are doing the deal.” sometimes, this is where you can get caught. again this is with trust and transparency. i’ve seen a letter come from and they’ve said that i said they wouldn’t do this or that. and i’ve said, “hang on a minute, it’s not me”….and this goes back to the trust, and your modus operandi like. you are the messenger, and the go-between, i’m trying to do the exchange, but it’s not me. i am not negotiating for myself. for him or for him i am doing it. and that’s where you have to be careful in that respect. the secretary general reports on resolution regularly documents the fact that unifil has been unable to establish an office in tel aviv, in israel. however, the fact that key senior unifil staff reside on the lebanese side of the blue line is recognised by unifil as giving the idf the perception that unifil staff are biased. i think for the israelis, i have a good relationship with the israelis. i am not too sure, how far that extends with certain people because they see me sometimes as being…because i am living here. and my close proximity to the people, and i am 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
   ( ),	
  s/ / ;	
  s/ / ;	
  s/ / .	
   	
   	
   living in this environment and let’s say i have friends in the laf and so on. or just in lebanese society. so i think sometimes they are a little bit suspicious of me… because they might not be sure of where my loyalties lie sometimes. you know, you have to work at it. on the personal level, the officer admitted he has to watch himself to ensure his is not swayed by his environment. this is not always easy because unifil staff live on one side of the line only, the lebanese side and so naturally have been witness to many events that have had a negative impact on the lebanese people. so not to allow your own sentiments to get involved in your business you know, what i might say in private, you know, i might say in private, like you know. but basically on a day-to-day basis, you can’t afford that luxury, you just can’t. because then you are one-sided you know? and then you can’t …because the problem is that we are trying to do deals with them and stuff like that. very difficult, very very difficult, because there is a lot of bad history there. and what you are trying to do, is you’re trying to see the gap, but in trying to see the gap, you have to ensure, that you’re not from one side or the other. so you’re trying to find a gap that suits, the two of them can pass through. not just a gap for him, or him. the issue of the nationality of staff members also plays a role in these liaisons. one senior member of staff, noted that his own nationality is considered a problem by the israeli side. and then again, you know, not necessarily on the record, i have to look at my own nationality when dealing with the israelis. the israelis and ireland haven’t got a very good relationship, ireland is very pro-palestinian you know. managing	
  an	
  incident	
  between	
  the	
  states	
  of	
  israel	
  and	
  lebanon	
   the following sections will first outline how unifil use liaison to prevent the escalation of an incident, and the second section provides examples of two actual confrontations that took place since , the first between the laf and the idf, the second between hizbullah and the idf. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   the	
  mechanisms	
  of	
  constant	
  liaison	
  and	
  communication.	
   the above sections have described in detail how unifil troops work with the laf to manage blue line and resolution violations on the ground. at the international level, one of the most serious violations of resolution occurs when the armies of lebanon and israel engage. the first thing that will happen when an incident between the two armies occurs, will be a report from the unifil troops on the ground back to headquarters. as the laf do not patrol on their own and always travel with unifil, there is no occasion whereby they would be able to engage or confront the idf without the presence of un troops. this is the primary level of prevention that unifil is able to employ to prevent escalations – the ability to immediately report to unifil headquarters at naqoura that an incident is taking place between the named parties. the process as explained to this researcher was that more often than not the force commander is immediately notified. the next step is that headquarters will contact the closest un battalion near to the scene and attempt to saturate the area with un troops. this is done to ensure that both sides are aware of an international presence which it is hoped will reduce the chance of escalation owing to the fact that both sides will be aware that their actions will be monitored and reported. in the meantime, senior liaison staff are on the telephone to both the named parties. the process is described thus by one such unifil staff member who is primarily responsible for these matters. if we see something developing…we can see the writing on the wall, the force commander usually gets involved. we have hotlines. we have hotlines to the sides. tick tack, tick tack…the whole time, checking this. it’s as simple as that, nothing special about it, other than telling your guys, “listen relax we are sending people there. we are reinforcing the area, it’s saturated with unifil, we’ll do a blanket 	
  it	
  should	
  be	
  noted	
  that	
  owing	
  to	
  the	
  small	
  number	
  of	
  staff	
  at	
  this	
  level,	
  one	
  pao	
  deals	
  most	
  heavily	
  with	
  this	
   aspect	
  of	
  work	
  and	
  as	
  such	
  is	
  referenced	
  frequently	
  in	
  the	
  next	
  few	
  pages.	
   	
   	
   job on it,” and you know that kind of way, you know just tick tack the whole time. we get onto tel aviv, to idf headquarters and then from there onto northern command of the idf, and we say “listen tell your guys to back off, cool down”, same with the other side, “pull back, pull back, stop the firing, you know relax” and that said we’ve got people on the ground just trying. no mystery, other than talking. the key issue, as noted above is the risk that one actor termed by unifil as the strategic corporal will take an action that is not supported at the higher levels. because, as previously stated, neither side wants to go to war on the basis of a single incident. so the strategic corporal is the guy on the ground who can do something that can cause a war. because the guy on the ground can do something, some soldier, some officer on the ground can make a stupid mistake, or make a stupid decision, that brings his country to war. and that’s the chap you have to watch out for. if you want to go to war, that’s your decision, but we don’t want to be sucked into a war, not of our intention. that’s the strategic corporal… but no mystery vanessa. when the shit hits the fan, on the phones at all levels. operational, strategic level, bom bom bom. get the phones going you know? we ring whomever we have to ring. the most nerve-wracking element confronting the unifil liaison officer when managing an incident is time. he/she has to work as quickly as possible, with the aid of other senior colleagues to ensure that both sides at the senior level are able to contact their troops on the ground to cool them down. often the situation is started not with the intention of the higher level. so when this situation develops, we can talk to the higher level, and just give them time to impose themselves on their side at the lower level. because at a higher level, it was never their intention to start that. so they want to stop it as well, so they’re trying to intervene themselves, but it takes a while to pull back the dogs of war – they’ve got to be pulled back in. so generally the people we are tick tacking with, they want to stop it as well. but we just have to give them time. another frustrating element for the liaison staff is trying to intervene in a situation where both sides are keen to respond. and as the senior staff are often not present at the site, they can only 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  the	
  term	
  ‘strategic	
  corporal’	
  is	
  a	
  military	
  term	
  and	
  refers	
  to	
  the	
  decision	
  maker	
  on	
  the	
  ground	
  on	
  the	
  day	
  as	
   events	
  unfold.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   take the word of the parties at the time - prior to un troops present submitting a report – of what is occurring. [we need to] get a ceasefire in place. because with a ceasefire, one guy [will say], “they’re still firing”. [we say] “where are they still firing?”, [then they say] “well we stopped firing, but they started firing. we stopped, but they didn’t so we returned the fire because they didn’t”. so we’ve got to go through all this kind of stuff, so eventually you’ve got to kinda, put the fire out. once the incident has been de-escalated, the process of investigation takes place and unifil will liaise with both sides to establish what has occurred. the incident will be reported back to un headquarters in new york and receive mention in the secretary general reports which are submitted three times a year. back in lebanon, unifil will either convene an emergency tripartite meeting or wait for the next one in order to discuss the incident and its repercussions. most importantly, once they do meet, unifil will seek agreement between the named parties on putting measures in place to prevent a similar incident from occurring. one example of how this is achieved was after the events of th may , when the pro- palestinian protests escalated and civilians were killed (see subsection on organised protests in section one). after an investigation, an agreement was made with both sides on what measures could be employed to prevent incidents of a similar nature later on. what i would argue was one of our most successful investigations was following the nakba day incident on may , when seven palestinians were killed – six palestinians were killed. where we conducted a very thorough investigation, and we recommended that the laf do more to ensure, well firstly do not allow such demonstrations so close to the blue line. and secondly, make proper assurances that they will be policed to ensure that people do not move to the blue line. and on the other side, we said to the israelis that they should use rubber bullets and various anti-riot gear, tear gas etcetera along the blue line… [w]e very clearly laid out our recommendations, we very strongly implored the parties to fulfil those recommendations… [a]nd both parties have implemented those. we haven’t had another problem on the blue line, on this side since then, and the israelis as i understand have implemented quite a few changes to the way that their soldiers comport themselves along the blue line. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   what has not been mentioned above, but which needs to be taken into consideration, is the issue of non-named parties to the conflict. the acts of either random groups or the more organised non-state actor group, hizbullah, cannot be prevented by unifil using the same strategies. whilst unifil do work with hizbullah at the political level, within the municipalities, they do not have the mandate to liaise directly with hizbullah’s military wing. however, as noted in chapter two on the history of unifil, the visible armed presence of hizbullah is no longer present on the border. as such, face-to-face stand-offs in broad daylight between hizbullah and the idf have not occurred since . and no rocket attacks into israel have been publicly claimed by hizbullah since . in sum, when an incident occurs, paos liaise frequently with both the named parties in order to calm the situation down. it is felt that at the present time, neither side is itching for another war, and as a result both sides are keen to make the effort to prevent the escalation of incidents. but it is the work of the paos alongside their partners laf that has established processes and protocols that can be followed instantly to resolve a situation of tension. these processes enable paos to be spontaneous and therefore effective as they can respond quickly and speak to the right people. case	
  studies:	
   the following ‘case studies’ evaluate two serious security incidents that have occurred since in light of the processes described above. in other words, this section highlights how things can go wrong on the ground. confrontation	
  between	
  the	
  named	
  parties:	
  the	
  case	
  of	
  al-­‐addaisseh	
   in july , the most serious outbreak of hostilities to date occurred between the laf and the idf at a point along the blue line at the village of al-addaisseh. this research uncovered three perspectives on this incident, the official un report, an unofficial recounting from a unifil 	
   	
   staff member and the perspective of the local population, as recounted by a local journalist and an officer with the laf. the incident highlights several issues that unifil have to deal with: first, that the blue line is a volatile place where the smallest of issues can trigger an outbreak of hostilities; second that liaison with both sides cannot always prevent such an outbreak; third that when hostilities do occur, the reputation of the peacekeepers is damaged when the local population see that they are unable to intervene militarily. the issue that precipitated the stand-off was over the trimming of a tree which was overhanging the israeli technical fence causing the sensors to go off on a regular basis. any alert from the sensors necessitated a response from the idf who would have to go and inspect the cause of the trigger. as such, the israelis decided it would be helpful if they could trim the tree to prevent accidental triggers. unfortunately the tree itself was located in what is termed a ‘reserve area’, this is an area of land that neither of the named parties have yet reached final agreement over with regards to marking the blue line. in consequence, when the israelis arrived to trim the tree by use of a cherry picker, the laf were waiting on the other side to prevent any incursions into contested territory. the report by the un secretary general on the event reported it thus: unifil completed its investigation into the august incident and shared the investigation report with the parties in late august. the unifil investigation found that the location of the israeli tree cutting works and the deployment of israel defence forces troops were approximately metres south of the blue line. lebanese armed forces and unifil personnel were deployed along the main road in el adeisse, which is customarily used, with no objections from the israel defence forces, by the lebanese armed forces, lebanese civilians and unifil, although it is located some metres south of the blue line. as part of its efforts to prevent an escalation of the situation, unifil called on the lebanese armed forces not to open fire and proposed to the israel defence forces to delay work for one day and for unifil to carry out the work. both parties rejected the proposals of unifil. the lebanese armed forces soldiers were the first to take combat positions, aiming their weapons in the direction of israeli troops. immediately thereafter, the israel defence forces soldiers also took up combat positions, aiming their weapons in the direction of the lebanese troops. the investigation found that the first shot was fired into the air by a lebanese soldier, which was followed, within seconds, by two additional shots and a burst of fire by other lebanese armed forces soldiers. the israel defence forces deployed at the 	
   	
   location subsequently opened fire in the direction of the lebanese armed forces troops. the israel defence forces fire at the lebanese armed forces, including across the blue line, was subsequent to the lebanese armed forces fire directed at the israel defence forces. the exchange of fire lasted approximately three hours, with varying intensity and intermittent lulls. the lebanese armed forces used personal weapons, medium machine guns and, at least on one occasion, a rocket- propelled grenade. the israel defence forces used personal and heavy weapons, tank rounds, artillery rounds and missiles fired from attack helicopters. the investigation found that, in all probability, the israel defence forces officers were hit by aimed fire originating from the general area behind the lebanese armed forces deployment on the el adeisse road. in the course of the exchange of fire, the israel defence forces fired at lebanese armed forces positions located some distance away from the site of the incident. lebanese journalists present on the ground informed me that in fact the indonesians started to cry and it was they who carried them to a nearby safe-house before returning to the scene to witness events as they unfolded. this version of events was reported in the international media. when in there was an incident between laf and israeli army, the indonesians were there they started crying. so journalists there carried them to a safe place while they were crying and the journalists returned to the place where the fighting was taking place to cover the story. yeah and one of our colleagues was killed… as a civilian, and a local journalist, this respondent wanted to know why the rapid deployment force didn’t show up. it shows how the local population expect unifil to take up arms to defend them on the ground. the israelis came to cut the tree. laf refused and asked unifil to interfere. the israelis didn’t care for the position of unifil. laf threatened to shoot, they directly went on alert on the other side, and in this situation fighting erupted…and for example, the example of the addaisseh incident, we had this rapid deployment force of the french and it didn’t show up - at all. the spanish battalion didn’t show up – at all. and they left the indonesians on their own and the indonesians were crying and we took them away from the scene. so in total unifil did nothing! just was making the contacts between the two sides to calm the situation down. but on the ground there was nothing. 	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general’s	
  report,	
  fourteenth	
  report	
  of	
  the	
   secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  november	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
  'criticism	
  and	
  two	
  indonesian	
  soldiers	
  flee	
  lebanese,	
  israeli	
  battle	
  in	
  taxi',	
  agence	
  france	
  press,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  q,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  q,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   in addition, a senior officer with the laf also commented on the failure of unifil to assist in the addaisseh incident: but we have a bad thing, a bad example [of unifil]. for example the addaisseh operation when the laf need the assistance of the unifil, the unifil soldiers disappear in the field… when the laf, the chief commander of the brigade there, ask the unifil to do some intervention to stop the israeli intervention – no response. behind the scenes it was the paos at unifil who were able to liaise with the israeli side and the laf by telephone in order to get both sides to stand down as quickly as possible to prevent further escalation. the after-effects of the event were then dealt with in an emergency tripartite meeting convened shortly afterwards with the idf, the laf, unifil’s commanding officer and some paos. an investigation was subsequently carried out by unifil and reported (above) in the un secretary general’s regular thrice yearly report on the unifil mission. the effect of the event on local opinion was more serious because it re-affirmed the view of locals that unifil was not prepared to defend the lebanese against israeli aggression, nor assist laf in deterring israeli aggression; which in the view of some civilians, is the only point of having unifil around. at the international level, whilst unifil were able to contribute heavily to the prevention of another war through their liaison with both sides at the time of the incident; one unifil official told me the incident had destroyed about ‘two years’ worth of trust’, which unifil then had to try to rebuild. this incident illustrates first of all the constraints unifil face in terms of their mandate which is chapter vi and therefore cannot support peace enforcement measures. it also shows that civilians have expectations that the security offered by a peacekeeping mission should extend to the use of force. this contradicts the idea of some scholars of peace who contend that peace 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  y,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  september	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   operations and interventions in states have been over securitised. local sentiment suggests that this is what civilians in host states require in order to feel secure; on more than one occasion locals expressed their frustration to me that unifil could not do more when confrontations with israel occur. hizbullah	
  vs.	
  israel:	
  the	
  case	
  of	
  labouneh	
   the most serious violations of all are ones that occur as a result of hizbullah activity on the blue line. they are considered the most serious by all the parties because of the level of seriousness that israel accords to the hizbullah threat. the risk of violent escalation is therefore at its highest when such an event like this occurs not least because unifil cannot liaise with hizbullah’s military wing as it is not listed as a named party to the conflict. however, a deliberate incursion by the israeli side in august did demonstrate the continued presence of hizbullah in the area of operations. the secretary general’s report describes it thus: in the early hours of august, unifil observed and heard two explosions and gunfire, as well as flashes apparently from a trip flare, near united nations position - in the general area of labouneh, in southern lebanon. the israel defence forces subsequently confirmed that its soldiers had been involved in an operational activity north of the blue line related to its country’s concern about the alleged reactivation of hizbullah infrastructure and the presence of unauthorized armed personnel and weapons in the area. the israel defence forces also informed unifil that four of its soldiers had been slightly injured after they had crossed the line and that they had been engaged by another group, believed to be hizbullah. the latter stated publicly that it had taken action against the israel defence forces soldiers. the event was used by hizbullah to demonstrate their readiness to protect every inch of lebanese soil against israeli incursions. it also however demonstrated to the international community (and in particular to the israelis) that the area of operations is not free from all weapons or armed elements as per the requirement of resolution . 	
  richmond,	
  a	
  post-­‐liberal	
  peace;	
  mac	
  ginty,	
  international	
  peacebuilding	
  and	
  local	
  resistance:	
  hybrid	
  forms	
  of	
   peace;	
  cooper,	
  turner,	
  and	
  pugh,	
  'the	
  end	
  of	
  history	
  and	
  the	
  last	
  liberal	
  peacebuilder:	
  a	
  reply	
  to	
  roland	
  paris'.	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ',	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   it is this issue that is the hardest for unifil to deal with. they are required to ensure the area of operations is free and clear of any weapons other than that of the lebanese armed forces. however in practice, this is an impossible task to achieve owing to local and national concerns that the laf is currently unable to defend lebanese soil in the event of another israeli invasion. unifil is not permitted to enter private property which in reality means that is precisely where any weapons will be stored by armed elements in the area of operation. unless unifil come across a stash of weapons in open sight, they are unable to investigate. the best that they can do is inform the laf of their suspicions and then laf is expected to conduct an investigation. this issue is also a balancing act for the laf which will be discussed in chapter four which discusses unifil’s national operations. in terms of dealing with a deliberate violation of the blue line by israel (as per the above case) there is little unifil can do other than conduct an investigation after the fact. this is due to the covert nature of the incursion which was designed to avoid attention. in this case, as described in the secretary general’s report above, unifil concluded that both israel and hizbullah had violated resolution . the unifil investigation concluded that the presence of israel defence forces soldiers inside lebanese territory in violation of the blue line constituted a serious breach of the cessation of hostilities and the terms of resolution ( ), including the provision that there should be no armed personnel, assets or weapons other than those of the government of lebanon and of unifil in the area between the blue line and the litani river. the presence of hizbullah armed personnel and weapons, as well as munitions that caused the explosions in the area, also constituted a violation of the resolution. prior to , border clashes between israel and hizbullah were frequent. this was due to hizbullah’s presence on the line itself in unifil’s area of operation. since hizbullah has withdrawn north of the litani river and it is generally acknowledged by laf and unifil staff, that their physical armed presence in the area of operations has been greatly reduced. of those 	
  ibid.,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   unifil staff that would give a direct answer to how this has been achieved, some unifil staff attributed this fact to the increased presence of unifil troops and the laf: obviously the recent incidents in labouneh on august th when nasrallah came out very clearly and said that this was – that the israeli infiltration unit was stopped by hizbullah personnel and hizbullah would work to ensure that no israeli would set foot north of the blue line again. clearly, and the very presence of the rockets that have gone over including on august, clearly state that there are uncontrolled, unauthorised weapons but i would strongly dispute what other parties say, that hizbullah still has thousands and thousands of rockets inside our area of operations. we do what we can under our mandate. some people say it isn't enough and we should do more but then, you know if you want to do more, you have to have a chapter vii peace enforcement mandate, you’d be acting without the authority of the government and you would come across widespread opposition from the local people, and you'd probably end up similar to what happened to the mnf in . another unifil staff member felt that the reduced visibility of a hizbullah presence was down to the fact that they had made the decision to pull back in order to demonstrate consent to resolution . look when was signed, hizbullah were part of the government. right? so they knew what they were signing themselves up to. so they removed themselves from the south. they weren’t kicked out. they removed themselves. you know, we didn’t push them out – they left. because you can never push these guys out, you can’t. it’s like back in my country, you couldn’t kill off the ira. you could do it internally amongst themselves, and that is maybe the process some day in this country. but these guys left because they wanted to leave. and they signed up to something and they left. they only left across the river. but they’re just on the other side, fine, but they left. so we don’t see hizbullah, i was here before the war, and during the war, you don’t see hizbullah day-to-day. as a result of this, the potential for hizbullah to launch operations from the area of operation is a great deal more constrained. but this is not the only reason for their lack of action in recent years. the current strategic environment, as outlined in the previous chapter, precludes 	
  the	
  respondent	
  here	
  is	
  referring	
  to	
  the	
  peacekeeping	
  force	
  comprised	
  of	
  american,	
  british	
  and	
  italian	
  soldiers	
   that	
  was	
  stationed	
  in	
  lebanon	
  during	
  the	
  civil	
  war	
  to	
  oversee	
  the	
  withdrawal	
  of	
  the	
  plo	
  from	
  beirut	
  in	
   .	
  	
  the	
   mnf	
  (multinational	
  force	
  in	
  lebanon)	
  had	
  a	
  robust	
  mandate	
  and	
  it	
  ended	
  up	
  becoming	
  embroiled	
  in	
  local	
  wars.	
  	
   the	
  force	
  withdrew	
  from	
  lebanon	
  in	
  march	
   	
  after	
  the	
  bombing	
  of	
  the	
  us	
  marine	
  barracks	
  in	
  beirut	
  in	
   october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   aggressive action by hizbullah against israel. in fact, since there have been no open ‘border’ clashes between hizbullah and israel. as one unifil officer put it: but i don't think the situation is calm because hizbullah left. i think it’s calm because until now, the parties are living up to like the said they would. that’s why it’s calm. because there is no intention to start shooting, no side wants to start shooting. the above events demonstrate a number of weaknesses in unifil’s ability to maintain calm in the area of operations once an incident occurs. first, they cannot control for individual actions (the actions of the strategic corporal on the ground), second their protocol for dealing with incidents does not appear to have been fully followed in the case of addaisseh; and third, they are unable to deal directly with other non-named parties to resolution of which hizbullah is one. hizbullah is officially included along with other al-qaeda or palestinian militias under the term ‘armed elements’ which unifil are officially supposed to be working towards eliminating in the area of operations. however, local support for hizbullah in the area of operations is high and this makes it impossible for unifil place too much emphasis on this aspect of their mandate without risking the loss of local consent. this issue has been highlighted by whalan ( ) who speaks of the legitimacy gap between the terms of the mandate as set by the international community, and local perceptions of what the mandate should look like. however, despite these constraints, unifil did manage to end the fighting and more importantly, convene a meeting to ensure that peace was maintained afterwards. conclusion	
   the two examples described above at al-addaisseh and labouneh, show how (paos) and peacekeepers, are at times constrained by the terms of their mandate and the will of the named parties. the chapter vi nature of their mandate means that unifil is unable to act more forcefully on the ground when conflict breaks out. the fact that hizbullah are not a named party 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  whalan,	
  how	
  peace	
  operations	
  work:	
  power,	
  legitimacy,	
  effectiveness.	
   	
   	
   to the conflict means that unifil are unable to negotiate with them over the issue of arms in the area of operations. chapter five illustrates more fully how the local environment also constrains unifil’s ability to influence its security environment, and how this is related to the international/local legitimacy gap that exists in resolution . what the second half of this chapter highlights is the preventative aspects of the mission’s security strategy and how staff continuity enables them to use three practical measures on the ground to influence their security environment: the tripartite meetings, liaison and micro-security agreements. the factors that facilitate pao effectiveness in implementing these practical measures are their relative autonomy and their long-standing relationships with all the parties. as a long-term or some might say ‘failed’ mission, unifil is currently out of the international spotlight. this means they are generally left alone and not micro-managed by members of the international community; as noted by several authors, this is a distinct advantage. i contend it allows actors at the subnational level to interpret their mandate contextually and act spontaneously at critical moments. the factor of time relates to the long-term contracts of key staff which i argue affords them three key advantages: institutional memory; consistency of effort and trust. whilst the long-term nature of staff at unifil could be regarded as a disadvantage, i argue that it is not. first because it is the enduring nature of the relationships that paos have developed that enables them to win trust at crucial moments from key actors within the idf and the laf. second, their persistence and consistency in working towards generating solutions is what has obtained results. thirdly the institutional memory that these actors have enable them to respond swiftly to emergency situations to contain the violence. finally, it is well known that the un finds it hard to fill posts in certain countries. lebanon is not a safe country and in practical terms, it is more 	
  moore,	
  peacebuilding	
  in	
  practice;	
  howard,	
  un	
  peacekeeping	
  in	
  civil	
  wars.	
   	
   	
   productive to have posts filled by long-term staff, rather than empty posts because of an institutional requirement for constant rotations. but although unifil demonstrated flaws in their approach to the al-addaisseh incident in terms of how they managed the situation on the ground, it was the actions of the paos that prevented the situation from exploding back into full-blown war, not the international community or national government. even though on the ground unifil could not prevent the outbreak of hostilities, they were able to end them from behind the scenes through the use of liaison. yes we are a stabilising force, because the al-addaisseh and lots of other incidents. we are the water on the fire, we can put out the wars. if we weren’t there in al- addaisseh that day we probably still be in the bunkers, or you and i would still be in the bunkers. because there still could be fighting. so yes, unifil can intervene and stop at that critical time. that if we weren’t there, there would be another shooting match for sure. there would have been a few of them. so yes we are that force that stops the fighting, can stop the fighting, we do stop the fighting and we have stopped the fighting. we have stopped a war breaking out on a few occasions. for sure we have stopped it. but if they decide to go at it they’ll do it, they’ll do it. like at al-addaisseh, somebody decided they wanted to fire. as noted by the above respondent, peace can only be maintained where there is a will for peace by the parties concerned. but this is true of all peacekeeping missions. the following chapter discusses the issue of hizbullah as an unofficial party to the mandate in greater detail as it outlines the national engagement of unifil staff. here the relationship between unifil and local government, and the laf are explored in more detail in terms of how civil affairs officers (caos) and paos engage in peacebuilding activities. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   chapter	
  four:	
  capacity-­‐building	
  national	
  institutions	
   sometimes we find ourselves to be a bit of a political football, kicked around. but our primary focus is to stay out of lebanese politics as far as possible. we do not want to be sucked into lebanese politics and be used as a political football by any one side. and i think we are quite successful at staying out. so we ensure that our main messages remain the same. our key central message is that we are here to support the laf and resolution in our area of operations in the south of lebanon. and it will remain like that unless the security council were to change it. introduction	
   the preceding chapter discussed unifil’s work at the international level and identified longstanding relationships (time), and autonomy and local knowledge as the key factors that enable unifil to maintain international peace and security. this chapter explores unifil’s peacebuilding work at the national level. it also reveals that that autonomy, time and local knowledge are the key factors of influence in enabling unifil caos and paos to work effectively. this chapter also illustrates how a lack of international and national level cooperation acts to constrain unifil actors at the subnational level. unifil assists the national government of lebanon in two main ways: capacity building the lebanese armed forces (laf) and local government; and working to consolidate the authority of both institutions in the south. this chapter analyses the work of unifil at the national level and argues that the mission does not only engage in a traditional ‘keeping the peace’ role, but has proactively sought a peacebuilding role. at unifil headquarters, at naqoura, the staff involved in national institution building are the political advisers (paos) and civil affairs officers (caos). the main work of the paos was described by paos as: ensuring the force commander is informed of political developments; producing reports for un headquarters in new york, including reports to the secretary general; 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   managing tripartite and bilateral liaison with israel; liaising with unscol and capacity building the laf. caos work at the local level, liaising with the local population, managing the quick impact projects (qips) funding process and working with local government or ‘municipalities’ as they are termed. despite unifil’s long-term presence in the region, the mission does have an ‘exit strategy’, albeit a distant goal. in the absence of a peace agreement between the lebanese and israeli governments, unifil’s key objectives are to ensure that the southern region possesses a functioning local government to ensure that there is not an administrative vacuum in the region. the objective in building up laf capabilities is to facilitate the presence of the national army on the lebanese side of the israeli border to maintain peace and security and prevent random attacks on israel from non-state militia. the corollary of this is the idea that a secure environment coupled with a national government presence in the south will facilitate the necessary stability to stimulate economic growth. despite their subnational remit, unifil paos engage with members of the national government to a limited extent. the relationship between unifil and the national government of lebanon is described below. working	
  with	
  the	
  national	
  government	
   in lebanese politics there are three key individuals who sit in the highest positions in the lebanese parliament, and whose permission is required before approval for anything can hope to be achieved. as lebanon follows a confessional political system, these roles are both political and religious in nature and comprise: the president, who is always a maronite christian, currently this is michel sleiman; the prime minister, currently tamam salaam, who is always a sunni; and the speaker of the house, who is always a shi’ite, currently nabih berri. it should be noted 	
  based	
  on	
  interviews	
  with	
  unifil	
  paos.	
   	
  based	
  on	
  interviews	
  with	
  unifil	
  caos.	
   	
   	
   however, that within the workings of the government, speaker nabih berri is considered an elder statesman and so obtaining his assistance in any matter usually means a request will be successful. nabih berri is also the leader of amal, the main shi’ite party other than hizbullah, and his views tend to be more sensitive than hizbullah to international concerns about lebanon. he is and has always been a staunch supporter of unifil since the early days of the mission. however, as amal is aligned officially with hizbullah, berri is able to speak on behalf of hizbullah, in so far as he can speak for shi’a constituents within lebanon: many hizbullah supporters in lebanon also have enormous respect for nabih berri. in the absence of a functioning government, when decisions need to be sought from unifil, the strategy is to contact these senior statesmen individually. most lebanese national political parties appreciate the presence of unifil for a number of reasons. the south of the country needs an operational security mechanism to act as a deterrent against a take-over of the area by a militia group (as happened in the past). this in turn reduces the risk of war breaking out again with israel which would destroy the country economically and physically. as unifil provide so many services to the people of the south, their presence means there is one less part of the country to worry about in light of the current shortage of power, water and municipal services in general. whilst a signatory to resolution , hizbullah has reservations about the presence of unifil in the south because of the potential threat of exposure it poses to their military operations close to the border (some political parties in lebanon opposed to hizbullah view this as being yet another advantage of unifil). but broadly speaking unifil has multi-party support and is generally left alone to get on with its business. 	
  in	
  the	
  damascus	
  agreement	
  of	
   	
  which	
  made	
  the	
  peace	
  between	
  amal	
  and	
  hizbullah,	
  nabih	
  berri	
  who	
  was	
   leader	
  of	
  amal	
  even	
  then,	
  insisted	
  on	
  a	
  clause	
  that	
  stated	
  that	
  unifil	
  was	
  untouchable	
  and	
  should	
  not	
  be	
   attacked	
  by	
  hizbullah	
  (as	
  they	
  had	
  done	
  previously).	
  	
  since	
  the	
  earliest	
  days	
  of	
  the	
  unifil	
  mission	
  amal	
  have	
   been	
  extremely	
  protective	
  of	
  the	
  unifil	
  mission.	
  	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   staff at unifil headquarters in naqoura are not mandated to work directly with the lebanese government or political parties at the national level. their strategic partner in lebanon is the laf and so it is not in their remit to engage directly with government at the national level. this is the job of the united nations special coordinator for lebanon (unscol), a position currently held by derek plumbly (from britain), who works on behalf of the secretary general with the lebanese government. the main role of unscol is to coordinate the work of the un in lebanon with the lebanese government and its key focus is the implementation of resolution . this includes liaising with lebanon’s neighbours in order to obtain full adherence to resolution ; liaising with political parties in lebanon on issues that concern the full implementation of resolution ; coordinating donor assistance by the core group of donor countries supporting lebanon; and advocating for coordinated donor assistance to lebanon in consultation with the un country team and the government of lebanon. however, this research identified that unifil paos do liaise with national government in the course of their work on an informal basis. paos appeared to visit beirut regularly for meetings with national government officials. as such, it can be surmised that they operate outside of the mandate on certain issues in order to obtain the necessary support for peacebuilding activities in the area of operations. this is presumably because the experience of several long-serving paos means that they are best placed to explain unifil’s requirements to lebanese politicians and overseas visitors. at the time of writing this thesis and during fieldwork, lebanon had no functioning cabinet and so as such, when unifil does require assistance on an issue from the lebanese ‘government’, it necessary for the special coordinator to contact key individuals of influence to ensure consensus. so our primary contact with the political parties in the government here is derek plumbly, the un special coordinator. he has the role of being in touch with the political leaders. our main lebanese government coordinator to unifil is a lebanese brigadier general...and our main contact is with him. however, when the 	
   	
   force commander wants to have meetings with the senior political leadership of the country – president sleiman, prime minister mikati, prime minister hariri before him, speaker berri – [all of them] have always been extremely generous with their time and have been available to see him – general serra and his predecessors. whenever we have asked for meetings, i would say speaker berri especially plays a very very important role for us in that regard so as i say so we have contact with them when required but the bread and butter of what we do, our work, is with the laf. unifil paos are involved in lobbying the national government on two main issues: for unifil’s operational budget and for the establishment of national government offices in the south. according to the statement of forces agreement (sofa,) signed in , the government of lebanon is bound to provide unifil with all the facilities they require and for which unifil does not have to pay rent. over the years unifil have acquired many sites, some of which are on private property rented from the local population. at times this rent has gone into arrears which has led to anger from local landlords. it is then that unifil has to lobby hard to ensure that whatever government exists at the time passes an agreement in cabinet to pay the debts. the last time this occurred was in and unifil managed to secure the assistance of the prime minister at the time, najib mikati, to procure agreement to release the necessary funds. unfortunately for unifil, the local perception is that it is unifil paying the rent and not the central government. as such they bear the brunt of the negative publicity when this occurs. the current lack of government means that this problem will doubtless reoccur. unifil have been working for some time to try and persuade the national government to establish regional offices in the area of operations. as has been noted previously, the lack of any kind of government south of the litani led to considerable neglect of the area. owing to the large presence of a shi’ite population ( % of the population of the south), politicians from other political parties have been hesitant to visit the area. paos however have made some progress in persuading local politicians from across the political spectrum to come and visit. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  information	
  based	
  on	
  interviews	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   ;	
  respondent	
  l,	
   civilian,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   now we are in a phase for the first time in history, since , ministers are visiting unifil. we have minister of social affairs came here. we are bringing the government back you see?...the minister of information came, minister of social affairs came, minister of environment came you know? so this is also part to assist the lebanese government to restore law and order, which brings the police bringing the law, bringing the administration and all this. the objective is to have ministries establish regional offices in order to prevent a political vacuum from emerging when unifil do eventually leave. as one pao noted, if this is not put in place, there is a high risk of other non-state groups coming in to fill the void. if this happens then the area of operations could yet again become an ungovernable area that will heighten israeli security concerns and prevent movement towards a permanent ceasefire agreement. so the government wasn’t in the south. it’s not just the military, it's health, education, all these other offices. environment, all these other offices are not evident in the south either. so we try to engage these other ministries and say “look guys you need to get your people, get your offices down to the south to support the people. because if you don’t you have a vacuum. if you have a vacuum, somebody else is going to fill it.” and somebody else like lightening will fill it. and they did after the war. because after the war was a real example of that. after the war hizbullah were down overnight, round to the people. “your house is damaged”. next week, guy comes along, does an inspection of the house, “here’s a thousand dollars, maybe $ , , ok look after your family and we’ll give you more later when you build a house.” you know this kind of stuff. you know so they were very quick to get in there. finally, unifil paos and public affairs officers, together with unscol, have to work to clarify their role in lebanon so that they are not drawn into other debates on national security. we often have a certain misunderstanding of our mandate. many political party leaders, particularly from the th of march have been calling for unifil to be deployed on the border with syria. the broad coalition of parties entitled the march th alliance is keen to rid lebanon of hizbullah and they view unifil as one way of constraining hizbullah’s operations. their view is based 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   on the fact of hizbullah’s ‘withdrawal’ from the area of operations and the lack of hostilities in the area of operations since . the idea is that if unifil were deployed to lebanon’s border with syria, their presence would prevent syrian infiltration of lebanese territory and provide an international spotlight on the activities there which would have the effect of constraining militias (both syrian and lebanese) operating in the area. in sum, unifil’s involvement with the government of lebanon is largely managed by unscol, their strategic partner is actually the lebanese armed forces; but paos go beyond their mandate and engage with officials at the national level on an informal basis. the following two sections discuss the work of paos and caos in capacity building two national institutions, the laf and the municipalities. section	
  one:	
  local	
  government	
  	
   this section comprises four subsections. the first subsection describes what resolution says about government in the south, and how caos choose to interpret the mandate in light of the political situation on the ground. it also briefly explains the reasons for the absence of local government in the area of operations. subsection two presents local views of the municipalities to illustrate why unifil caos believe they need to promote the municipalities amongst the local population. subsection three discusses the work of caos with local government and how local conditions present challenges. finally subsection four describes the strategies caos employ to successfully maintain relationships with the municipalities which in turn, enables them to do their job. 	
  there	
  are	
  several	
  reasons	
  why	
  this	
  idea	
  is	
  unlikely	
  to	
  work	
  in	
  practice.	
  	
  first	
  and	
  foremost	
  because	
  the	
  criteria	
   for	
  a	
  successful	
  peacekeeping	
  mission	
  are	
  absent	
  in	
  this	
  part	
  of	
  lebanon.	
  	
  syrian	
  militia	
  groups	
  would	
  not	
  be	
   bound	
  by	
  any	
  agreement	
  made	
  between	
  the	
  un,	
  lebanon	
  and	
  the	
  syrian	
  government.	
  	
  as	
  such	
  there	
  would	
  be	
   no	
  peace	
  to	
  keep.	
  	
  the	
  area	
  contains	
  myriad	
  local	
  family-­‐run	
  militias	
  and	
  a	
  vibrant	
  drug	
  and	
  weapons	
  smuggling	
   industry.	
  therefore,	
  the	
  chance	
  of	
  a	
  un	
  peacekeeping	
  mission	
  being	
  able	
  to	
  prevent	
  outbreaks	
  of	
  fighting	
  is	
   minimal.	
  	
  secondly,	
  it	
  is	
  unlikely	
  hizbullah	
  would	
  sign	
  up	
  to	
  such	
  an	
  agreement	
  as	
  the	
  area	
  is	
  a	
  known	
  to	
  be	
  their	
   supply	
  route	
  for	
  arms	
  from	
  iran.	
  	
  thirdly,	
  even	
  if	
  agreement	
  from	
  hizbullah	
  were	
  obtained,	
  it	
  would	
  be	
  difficult	
   for	
  the	
  un	
  to	
  source	
  troops	
  for	
  a	
  mission	
  operating	
  under	
  such	
  dangerous	
  circumstances.	
  	
   	
  it	
  is	
  worth	
  noting	
  that	
  the	
  laf	
  role	
  in	
  the	
  south	
  includes	
  policing	
  duties.	
  	
  the	
  reason	
  for	
  this	
  is	
  sectarian.	
  	
  the	
   police	
  force	
  in	
  lebanon	
  is	
  sunni-­‐dominated,	
  and	
  as	
  such	
  is	
  not	
  trusted	
  by	
  the	
  shi’a.	
  unifil	
  officers	
  did	
  not	
  discuss	
   the	
  issue	
  of	
  reintroducing	
  the	
  police	
  force;	
  their	
  priorities	
  currently	
  are	
  focused	
  on	
  building	
  up	
  the	
  national	
  army	
   and	
  local	
  government.	
  	
   	
   	
   resolution	
   	
  and	
  local	
  government	
  	
   resolution calls for the restoration of government authority in the area of operations; the priority being the elimination of illegal weapons and armed militias. resolution does not direct unifil to work with local government. the mandate of does however refer back to two other important unsc resolutions, resolution ( ) and resolution ( ). both resolutions support ‘the extension of the control of the government of lebanon over all lebanese territory’; and furthermore resolution states: calls upon all parties concerned to cooperate fully and urgently with the security council for the full implementation of this and all relevant resolutions concerning the restoration of the territorial integrity, full sovereignty, and political independence of lebanon; support for resolution is reiterated in resolution . resolution continues security council support for the extension of lebanese government authority over all lebanese territory by supporting the two previous resolutions, and calling for: …full implementation of the relevant provisions of the taif accords, and of resolution ( ) and ( ), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in lebanon, so that, pursuant to the lebanese cabinet decision of july , there will be no weapons or authority in lebanon other than that of the lebanese state; several additional paragraphs reiterate the need for ‘the government of lebanon…to extend its authority over its territory’. in other words, whilst not specifically spelled out, it would appear that the un security council is concerned that the lebanese government have a visible presence in the south along with the laf to ensure its authority over the area. 	
  see	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  september	
   	
  and	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  september	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
  unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  september	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
  united	
  nations,	
  'unsc	
  resolution	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ',	
  p. ,	
  para. .	
   	
  this	
  can	
  be	
  found	
  in	
  paragraphs	
   	
  of	
  the	
  preamble,	
  and	
  paras	
   ,	
   ,	
  and	
   .	
   	
   	
   what this means for actors at the subnational level on the ground is unclear. as such, caos choose to interpret the mandate thus: ah it means for me on the ground…we succeed to help the local authority understand their role, their job. and help them against their shoulder to go ahead in doing their job. this is the way we are fulfilling our mandate. as such, unifil caos work closely with the municipalities in a number of ways to raise their profile amongst the local population. caos work autonomously which facilitates creativity and spontaneity in their dealings with the local population. as will be shown below, their local knowledge means that they appreciate the political situation, as it exists on the ground. this means they work contextually, in accordance with local needs within the municipalities themselves and within communities. for over thirty years there was no local government presence in the south. the term of municipal officers is six years, but the elections were the last to be held in the area of operations before the civil war. the first local elections since that date were held in , prior to resolution . so the lebanese institutions, state institutions were absent from until . so you can imagine this big area of the country which represents more than % of the area of the country – without any representation of the government for three decades. so unifil’s main task is not only to maintain peace and stability, but also to help the state takeover its role in this area of the country. and we do this through various ways. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  this	
  was	
  because	
  the	
  palestinians	
  arrived	
  and	
  took	
  over	
  the	
  area	
  in	
  the	
  early	
   s,	
  and	
  the	
  area	
  became	
  too	
   unstable	
  to	
  hold	
  elections.	
  	
  owing	
  to	
  the	
  presence	
  of	
  the	
  militias,	
  local	
  government	
  was	
  unable	
  to	
  extend	
  its	
   authority	
  over	
  the	
  area.	
  	
  the	
  militias	
  set	
  up	
  their	
  own	
  de-­‐facto	
  authority	
  south	
  of	
  the	
  litani	
  by	
  the	
  use	
  of	
  the	
  gun,	
   which	
  rendered	
  municipal	
  government	
  impotent.	
  	
  civil	
  war	
  then	
  came	
  to	
  lebanon,	
  and	
  then	
  finally	
  the	
  israeli	
   occupation.	
  	
  none	
  of	
  these	
  environments	
  were	
  suitable	
  for	
  the	
  holding	
  of	
  local	
  elections.	
  after	
  the	
  israelis	
  left	
   the	
  area	
  in	
   ,	
  hizbullah	
  operated	
  in	
  the	
  area	
  of	
  operations	
  as	
  the	
  de-­‐facto	
  authority	
  because	
  the	
  laf	
  were	
  not	
   present	
  in	
  the	
  area.	
  	
  prior	
  to	
   ,	
  elections	
  were	
  held	
  and	
  hizbullah	
  (along	
  with	
  other	
  political	
  parties)	
  took	
  part.	
  	
   since	
   	
  and	
  the	
  decision	
  by	
  hizbullah’s	
  military	
  wing	
  to	
  officially	
  pull	
  back	
  to	
  north	
  of	
  the	
  litani	
  river,	
  there	
  is	
   political	
  space	
  for	
  a	
  legitimate	
  form	
  of	
  local	
  government	
  authority.	
  	
  	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   the municipalities’ main problem is securing funding in order to provide the necessary services to the population. firstly, the local population are not used to paying taxes for services provided by the municipality. [t]his area of lebanon, was out of any kind of state control. so people are not used to pay taxes here for example. they are not used to pay for electricity or for water or whatever. everything was free of charge here…simply this was under occupation and the government cannot cut the water supply or the electricity supply for the area because it is under occupation. but it cannot collect the revenue of the supply because there was occupation you see? so people used not to pay taxes also for the municipalities and during occupation, years of occupation here you didn’t have municipalities. the second major problem faced by the municipalities is caused by constant political crises at the national level. as a result the national government is often unable to agree and assign budgets to the regional municipalities. this means that most municipalities are doubly underfunded: receiving little tax revenue from the local population and minimal funding from national government. when funds are allocated they are often paid two or three years in arrears making it impossible for municipalities to plan ahead. local	
  views	
  of	
  the	
  municipalities	
   some locals tended to view their municipality as useless because they do not have money. this area, follows the municipality of wazzani, which is a very very poor municipality. it cannot help with anything. others acknowledged that many of the problems faced by the local municipalities originated from the national problems that besiege lebanon. i think our municipality is a good municipality. because they are trying to help. but still the people complains. we are still part of this big country which has many problems with electricity and with the whole system. so we are still part of this, even in the south or in beirut it’s the same. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  r,	
  civilian,	
  wazzani,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  l,	
  civilian,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   we know that when they do projects, they do according to what capabilities do they have. how much money do they have. they cannot spend more than what they have and we can understand this. the level of trust civilians appeared to have for their municipalities came across a lukewarm. in part because of their low capacity to assist the population, but sectarianism also influenced perceptions. it’s about % confidence, because…here also the prejudice of the sectarian problem…for example when they have festival in marja’youn, you see this is an annual festival. and they know that i have all the facilities, light and sound facilities, for the festival. they don’t bring me, even though i give a lower price than the christian guy. so they bring the christians. i make a big festival in qatar and kuwait, but they don’t want to work with me because i am shi’a. whilst the local population appear to appreciate the limitations of their local government, rather than resenting them for it, they are still heavily reliant on unifil to fill gaps in public spending. where a local municipality does have money, this is due to the personal wealth of the mayor, who in some areas will use his money to fund local projects. oh the municipality…they are not so bad, they are good. they are doing something for the town, not too much but they are doing something… not the municipality, there are some people, for example in marja’youn. the head of the municipality …he is a rich man. and all the projects he is making is from his own pocket. you know, it is not the municipality is working, he is working to improve the town. he help too much people, too much schools, everybody that wants help he is opening his arms and he is very helpful. when he will go, i don’t know if we will repeat it again. i don’t know. because not too much people pay their taxes. collecting money is impossible. as a long-term strategy, the presence of magnanimous mayors still presents a problem for unifil as this does not contribute to the long-term strategy of having a functional local government in place. once a wealthy mayor has left his post, there are no guarantees that an equally wealthy or generous mayor will replace him. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  n,	
  civilian,	
  deir	
  mimas,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  q,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
  	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  p,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   one strategy caos employ locally is to educate the local population on the need to pay taxes to help fund the municipality, and explain that this is their civic duty. they do this on an informal basis of roaming the area of operations and stopping to talk to local civilians about their needs. this process is described in more detail in chapter five which discusses unifil’s local level engagement. in lebanon and in the south particularly, owing to the years of poor infrastructure, there is a tendency towards resources theft. in poorer areas it is possible to see a network of unofficial cables hanging from power company wires. caos therefore also try to educate people about the need to think of the larger community as opposed to just one’s own family. …when you hang on the electricity line and to steal power so you are damaging the whole network of the power. and then you are damaging the interests of the village. of the entire village. so this they have to discover it by time. if everybody made this hanging on the electricity poles it means there will be no power for the whole village. you see if everybody starts to steal water from the pipe, without paying. at the end, there will be no water supply. and this they needed time to understand this. caos work to raise the profile of the municipalities amongst the population as they believe this will help to convince locals to pay their taxes and become responsible citizens. caos also encourage locals to approach the municipalities first when they are seeking project funding in order to help them learn how to view the municipality as the first port of call, rather than unifil. how	
  unifil	
  works	
  to	
  support	
  the	
  municipalities	
   unifil currently has municipalities in their area of operation. each municipality consists of a mayor, a deputy mayor and some councillors. depending on the size of the town or village, 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   the number of members in a municipality varies from nine to fifteen in the region. caos are lebanese and therefore have a good understanding of the problems that beset the area. there is little unifil can do to alleviate the problem of national underfunding at this juncture. until such time as the national government is able to function, this problem will continue to exist. unifil works to support the municipalities in three ways: by providing education to municipality members; communicating the importance of the municipalities to the local population and running quick impact projects which involve the local municipality. quick impact projects (qips) are short-term projects that are financed by peace operations to assist local populations with reconstruction. within unifil, the budget for qips is $ , per project and owing to the damage caused to the infrastructure in south lebanon, the majority of project money is spent on improvements to road, water and power facilities. these types of projects are discussed in more detail in chapter five which describes unifil’s local relations with civilians. education is provided in the form of workshops for local municipalities to assist them in understanding what their role in the community should be. the workshops are one-off events which are run where they can secure agreement from the municipality to participate. sometimes we succeeded to make workshops for the local authorities, how to make the local authority function in a better way. members of the municipal councils they come and take part in a workshop for days, in which we bring high academic professors, to explain to them how to prepare their plan, how to prepare the budget for the municipality, how to do it, in a very technical way. you see this is also capability building for the local authorities. to strengthen the local authority, regardless of what political affiliation for this municipality or that. you see, we just give them the project and we tell them we have this project, are you interested or not? if we say they are interested we do it. in educating the municipalities about their role in the community, caos are encouraging responsible governance. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   we started to have elections for municipalities, those who came to be in power in these elections, didn’t know how to practice their role. so how to practice? it’s not just by making favours for the people. sometimes you have to collect taxes! and to prevent any law violation. the bulk of the work of civil affairs with the municipalities comprises involving the mayors in the implementation of the qips projects in order to raise the profile of the municipalities amongst the local population. in effect they are trying to demonstrate to the local population that the municipalities are the source of local authority in the area. all this, always you have to remember it. whatever information or project you reach through contact with normal people, we have to go back to the municipality, we have to go back to the mayor, the deputy mayor or the municipality. unifil caos ensure that they work on every qips project together with the municipalities from inception through to the finish. this includes ensuring the municipality is involved in the ceremonies that occur on completion of a project. the details of how they collaborate are expounded in chapter five. another form of funding for municipalities is from local charities and ngos. unifil civil affairs officers often connect up charitable organisations with municipalities. but we are not involved directly. we just connect them and coordinate their work with the municipality to play its role. and here we are under our mandate. to support the local authority maintain its power over the area. other than the problem of the lack of national funding for the municipalities, caos face other localised challenges. the role of mayor in the villages is often more ceremonial than anything else; regarded as a prestigious appointment more than a democratically elected office. the same principle applies to other members of the municipal council. one respondent explained how 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   influential families nominate a candidate for the municipality who is expected to ‘win’ by virtue of his family name. ok it’s like this. first of all the municipality is a mix between politics and families. so our municipality is a mix between who runs it is hizbullah and amal but through families. so some families will say this the name of our candidate, and we are just going to say that he is neutral for example. and he’s not amal or hizbullah. so some families do this. but some families don’t. some families maybe they have representatives, one amal, one hizbullah. as such, members of the municipality do not like to be unpopular, as losing the election would be an embarrassment to their families. this in turn affects their ability to do their job effectively. now local authorities is tricky issue because first of all if he pressures to have a good collection of taxes, then people will hate him! if he doesn’t then he will not have enough money to make projects in the village. you see it’s a tricky issue. another challenge for caos is the problem of absentee mayors. many elected officials live and work in beirut during the week and only visit their village on weekends. let me tell you something. here elections, it’s typical lebanese way of elections. the post of the mayor is not, a place to serve. it’s a place to show off. “i am elected as a mayor” you see it’s a show off. ok he doesn’t show in the village, but he is elected. why? because his family is big, because he is affiliated to a strong party, and his party decided to make him a mayor because his father was very important person, for so many reasons. you see? so they elect him and the next day he disappears – for years. if the mayor is rarely present in the village this means that when decisions need to be made, the rest of the municipality have to wait for his return. this can be up to over a month. if the mayor didn’t come for one month, then the whole administrative issues will stay for one month waiting for him. 	
  this	
  system	
  is	
  known	
  locally	
  as	
  the	
  zuama	
  (pl.)	
  system	
  in	
  arabic.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  l,	
  civilian,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   this kind of inefficiency undermines cao efforts to promote municipalities as committed local authorities. it also causes logistical problems for caos as the mayor is not available for meetings in the area of operation during the working week. the constraints that national factors place on unifil mean that cao agency is impeded. without sufficient funding from the national government, it is impossible for local government to run efficient services. in the absence of decent infrastructure, the local population will continue to refuse to pay taxes; engage in resource theft in order to protect themselves from the deficit in state provision of these services; and continue to rely on unifil to make up the worst of the shortfall. strategies	
  for	
  success	
   caos are keen to stress their impartiality in all their dealings with the local authorities in the area of operations. in practice this means observing three key rules which are: only dealing with the municipality; impartiality regarding the political affiliation of municipalities and respecting the hierarchy within municipalities. first, caos are committed to dealing only with the local municipality. they do not approach any other kind of community leader (such as the mukhtar or religious leaders) when they first make contact with a village, or even after they have made contact. the only time that a cao will contact a mukhtar directly is if the village is too small to have its own municipality, and it sits under the umbrella of the municipality of another town. whilst caos talk to civilians at any level in the course of their duties, when they are seeking to establish ties with the village the municipality is always their first point of contact, particularly the mayor. 	
  the	
  mukhtar,	
  is	
  the	
  local	
  record	
  keeper	
  of	
  the	
  village.	
  he	
  records	
  all	
  the	
  details	
  of	
  each	
  family,	
  the	
  births,	
   deaths	
  ad	
  marriages.	
  	
  depending	
  on	
  the	
  size	
  of	
  the	
  village,	
  he	
  will	
  also	
  have	
  some	
  other	
  administrative	
  duties.	
   usually	
  a	
  mukhtar	
  will	
  collect	
  the	
  details	
  of	
  his	
  particular	
  religion,	
  so	
  in	
  larger	
  towns	
  you	
  will	
  have	
  more	
  than	
  one.	
   	
   	
   so the main authority is the municipality, not the mukhtar. so because if you go the mukhtar, and you have a municipality then you will make problems with the mayor. conflict of interests. so the only time you go to the mukhtar, is where there is no municipality. so the main authority then will be the mukhtar. see? this is a very important issue. but whenever you have a municipality you have to be with the municipality. if the mayor is not there then the deputy mayor. the second rule is that unifil caos do not differentiate between political parties in the region. they operate using the hierarchy of the system as it is exists on the ground. this means that they are as happy to contact a mayor from hizbullah as they are to contact a mayor from one of the christian parties. as will be discussed in the chapter on local engagement, building relationships with municipalities is not always easy, but caos practice a policy of strict impartiality in this regard. it is crucial that unifil do business with everyone because to refuse to do so would lead to their marginalisation. you see here we are playing our role impartially, very objectively. we deal with people as what they represent. they represent the local authority. regardless of what political parties they are from. you see and this is very important. and it is not a secret here, but most of the villages are either ruled by a local authority that is affiliated by hizbullah, or to amal. so we have to deal with them, this is the reality. but we deal them not as political parties, we deal with them as local authorities and here we start to by practice, teach them how to be an authority. because the municipality is the highest authority of this village or this town. the biggest challenge for caos is engaging with municipalities that are wary of dealing with them because the mayor’s political party is that of hizbullah. here is one area where the gap between international and local legitimacy in missions is demonstrated and has to be managed by unifil. despite hizbullah consent to resolution , many hizbullah supporters view it as a one-sided agreement that favours israel. this means some hizbullah dominated municipalities view unifil as a pro-israeli organisation who may be spying for the state of israel. however, officially, hizbullah municipalities are given a free reign by the party to liaise with unifil as they see fit. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   	
   	
   	
   i know that the political ceiling for hizbullah in the relation with unifil, i know that they don’t have official position on preserving their relations with unifil. they are cautious of course, they are cautious about how to deal with unifil. but in general their directives to their people is to have positive relations with unifil. even after the eu decision to consider the military wing of hizbullah as terrorists, i wrote a feature about the reaction of the municipalities to this decision. all of them said it will not affect their relations with unifil. the situation you are talking about, about some reservations by some members, it depends upon the nature of the person himself – individuals not a political decision. they know the ceiling, but they are flexible in this and some have more reservations than others, but in general their political decision is to have positive relations with unifil. for many municipalities however the assistance unifil provides is appreciated. and this is not down to political affiliation alone, but rather on the basis of personal relationships. just as one mayor can refuse to do business with unifil because he is affiliated with hizbullah, another hizbullah mayor is very happy to work with them. this is human beings and they are not the same everywhere. even though they are from the same party. i know people, a mayor of hizbullah in this village is different to a mayor in that village. completely different. one of them you cannot say hello to him. he is all the time like that [makes a face], not friendly with you etc. and the other guy welcomes you, “hi how are you? how’s the family?” he takes minutes just asking about them before you discuss anything just asking about your health and your family. you see? these are human beings. one civilian respondent made the point that friendly hizbullah-run municipalities are in a position to take advantage of unifil resources; taking credit for projects and ensuring that they are not being spied upon. but it’s clever from the municipalities, it’s really clever, even though if they don’t feel safe, they should do this. because it’s making the place better. plus, it’s not – they [unifil] are not going to put some cameras in the water pump. they can know that, it is an integration with people. so both hizbullah and unifil are getting some positives through municipality and unifil work. unifil also have to be careful not to become too close to any one municipality because they need them to be seen by the local population as independent and not co-dependent. as such, caos walk a fine line in terms of how much contact they maintain with each municipality. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  z,	
  civilian,	
  tayredebba,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  l,	
  civilian,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   this some places, the municipality council became very friendly with us. when they made the elections they were accused to be puppets of unifil! so you can imagine how things might reach. so we had to decrease our contact with them in order not to put them in this embarrassing situation. but the issue of trust remains pertinent; caos often have to reassure locals of their impartiality. in particular, the incidence of photo-taking by unifil peacekeepers is a constant problem that caos have to deal with. so i went to see the mayor. and he is the senior hizbullah official of this village. he said, “come and see. can you explain to me, why unifil soldier is taking photo for this bridge? it’s a small bridge – it’s over a channel. why they are taking pictures for this bridge? from both sides? this is the picture, we took it from the memory chip of the camera. ok, why they are taking picture for my house? this is my house. i am the mayor, ok i am the chief of hizbullah, but i am the mayor also. and even if i am the chief of hizbullah they don’t have the right to be taking pictures of my house.” it’s a very embarrassing situation for us. this is wrong action. the third rule that caos follow is to work according to the established hierarchy within the municipalities themselves. this means dealing with the mayor first and foremost, then the deputy mayor. this can be tricky when there are divisions within the municipality, but unifil avoid becoming embroiled by sticking to the rule of law to demonstrate their impartiality. if the deputy mayor and the mayor are not on good terms it’s not our business. we deal with the mayor. he is the authority and we explain it for the deputy mayor. because according to the law of municipalities, the mayor is the real leader of the municipality. so, and you explain to the deputy mayor, if he is on bad terms with him, that democratically, you have to accept the fact, and we as unifil, are not allowed to violate the lebanese law. according to the lebanese law, this guy represents the authority and we have to deal with him. so we are sorry, we cannot deal with you as a representative for the municipality unless the mayor resigns. and sometimes, the mayor is from one party and the deputy mayor is from another party. what we do? what you do, is just deal with the authority. and so you explain it to the other guy that it’s not that we are not taking sides. it’s not that we don’t want to deal with your party. it’s the matter that we are dealing with the authority, and the authority is in the hands of this guy. so this time he is in power, next time you might be in power. we will do the same. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   summary	
  of	
  section	
  one	
   unifil paos’ national engagement is supposed to be limited to liaising with unscol as their strategic partner is the laf and not the government of lebanon. however, paos engage with officials at the national level on an ad hoc but regular basis to lobby the government on issues of concern to them. these are primarily: laf funding, the establishment of national government south of the litani and the unifil budget. to avoid being drawn into political debates about their mandate they rely on the public affairs office to re-state and reiterate the purpose of their mission according to resolution . unifil are however largely left alone by national politicians and this provides them the autonomy to focus on the issues that they consider important within the area of operations. part of unifil’s revised mandate (resolution ) states that they should assist in re- establishing the authority of the government throughout the area of operations. caos have chosen to interpret the mandate as meaning they should promote good governance at the local level and where possible build the capacity of the municipality. this demonstrates the importance of the local knowledge possessed by the caos who understand the political context in which they operate. their autonomy enables them to work creatively and spontaneously according to local preferences. at the community level they spontaneously drop in for chats to discuss local needs for public goods and services. they consult and liaise with the municipality on every qip project they run and ensure these projects raise the profile of the municipalities in the area. they also provide optional education workshops to promote good governance practices amongst local officials. unifil are careful to demonstrate impartiality in their dealings with municipalities to avoid perceptions of bias. currently their approach of adhering strictly to three key rules of engagement, all of which work towards the goal of demonstrating impartiality, appear to be 	
   	
   working. this research has found that the vast majority of municipalities are happy to work with unifil, although trust remains an issue with some hizbullah run councils. section	
  two:	
  working	
  with	
  the	
  laf	
   unifil paos are engaged at the national level in peacebuilding activities with unifil’s strategic partner, the lebanese armed forces (laf). 	
   we are here to monitor the cessation of hostilities, to assist the lebanese army in the south of lebanon, to ensure that there is no entry of weapons into the south of lebanon. and we also assist the lebanese army, to ensure that in the future, in the long-term, the idea is for the lebanese army to be fully in charge of the south of lebanon. important also to mention that the lebanese army were not present in the south of lebanon until . so after the cessation of hostilities, we’ve seen the deployment of the lebanese army here. we have been assisting them, and important role of unifil is to support the lebanese army in the south of lebanon. obviously the relations we have with the lebanese are more important than the other side because we are physically present here in lebanese territory. it is critically important that we work closely with the laf. this section discusses the work of paos with unifil’s national strategic partner the lebanese armed forces (laf). unifil paos have three main objectives in their work with the laf. the first is to assist with the re-introduction of laf into the area of operations; the second is to work with the laf to improve their operational capabilities; and third is to seek international funding for the laf in order to improve their technical capabilities. the overall objective for unifil in this project is part of their stated exit strategy: to ensure laf have full authority in the south of lebanon to the extent that they are able to control the security of the area. in practice this would mean the elimination of hizbullah’s military wing and other armed groups in the area. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  j,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  it	
  should	
  be	
  noted	
  that	
  hizbullah	
  state	
  that	
  they	
  do	
  not	
  separate	
  their	
  military	
  wing	
  from	
  their	
  political	
  wing.	
  	
   this	
  issue	
  arose	
  when	
  the	
  eu	
  listed	
  hizbullah’s	
  military	
  wing	
  on	
  its	
  list	
  of	
  named	
  terrorist	
  organisations.	
  	
  nasrallah,	
   hizbullah’s	
  secretary-­‐general,	
  made	
  several	
  public	
  statements	
  at	
  the	
  time	
  to	
  the	
  effect	
  that	
  hizbullah	
  did	
  not	
   accept	
  this	
  distinction	
  between	
  hizbullah’s	
  activities.	
  	
  see	
  for	
  example	
  chararah,	
  nasser,	
  'no	
  separation	
  in	
   hezbollah	
  military	
  and	
  political	
  wings',	
  	
  al-­‐monitor,	
  	
  	
   	
  july,	
   .	
   	
   	
   the lebanese armed forces (laf) have a similar problem to the municipalities in that they were not present in the south until . this was due to multiple factors. during the civil war the military did not have the reach to be able to operate in the south owing to a lack of equipment and defections to sectarian militia. the occupation of the south from by israel also meant that there was no place for the laf, as the israeli proxy force of the south lebanon army (sla) acted as the ‘national’ army in the area until . when hizbullah drove the sla and the israelis into israel in , the laf was not sufficiently equipped to re-take the south and did not have the confidence of the people in the area to do so. so it is unifil that have facilitated the return of the national army by including them on their patrols, providing them with equipment and resources and placing the laf at the frontline in dealing with both local and international incidents since . in the remainder of section two i address the stated role of laf in the area of operations according to resolution . i then describe the mechanisms unifil and laf have in place to foster cooperation and the work they conduct together. the following subsections discuss unifil-laf relations from the perspective of unifil and laf officers, and describe how the local population views laf since they returned to the area. the final section discusses how unifil work to help improve laf’s operational and technical capabilities. 	
   the	
  role	
  of	
  laf	
  in	
  resolution	
   	
   resolution clearly states that the reintroduction of the lebanese armed forces throughout lebanon is a major goal of the mandate. it appears in no less than four separate clauses: welcoming the efforts of the lebanese prime minister and the commitment of the government of lebanon, in its seven-point plan, to extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of lebanon… (preamble, para. ). 	
  barak,	
  oren,	
  the	
  lebanese	
  army:	
  a	
  national	
  institution	
  in	
  a	
  divided	
  society	
  (new	
  york:	
  suny	
  press,	
   ),	
   chapter	
   .	
   	
  unsc	
  res.	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   welcoming the unanimous decision by the government of lebanon on august to deploy a lebanese armed force of , troops in south lebanon as the israeli army withdraws behind the blue line and to request the assistance of additional forces from the united nations interim force in lebanon (unifil) as needed, to facilitate the entry of the lebanese armed forces into the region and to restate its intention to strengthen the lebanese armed forces with material as needed to enable it to perform its duties… (preamble, para. ). . upon full cessation of hostilities, calls upon the government of lebanon and unifil as authorized by paragraph to deploy their forces together throughout the south… . emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the government of lebanon over all lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution ( ) and resolution ( ), and of the relevant provisions of the taif accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of lebanon; the resolution also states clearly several times that one of the duties of unifil is to provide assistance to laf. . decides, in order to supplement and enhance the force in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operations, to authorize an increase in the force strength of unifil to a maximum of , troops, and that the force shall, in addition to carrying out its mandate under resolutions and ( ): (b) accompany and support the lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the south, including along the blue line, as israel withdraws its armed forces from lebanon as provided in paragraph ; (e) assist the lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment of the area as referred to in paragraph ; the objective of the above was to satisfy israel that the armed presence of hizbullah would not remain on the border. ideally, the international powers (and some national lebanese political groups) were keen to eliminate hizbullah from the whole of lebanon but this would not have been possible within the scope of the mandate. 	
  unsc	
  res.	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ,	
  pp. -­‐ .	
   	
  unsc	
  res.	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
  unsc	
  res.	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
  unsc	
  res.	
   ,	
   	
  august	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
   	
   cooperation	
  between	
  laf	
  and	
  unifil	
   and everything we do, the patrolling, everything is done in coordination with the laf. on the ground laf and unifil cooperate by conducting joint patrols in the area of operations. this was initiated as part of the objective of reintroducing laf to the area of lebanon south of the litani river. cooperation is not limited to this; at every level of laf and unifil command structures there is a liaison officer on both sides. these officers communicate on a daily basis to ensure both parties are across the day’s events, planned or otherwise. the head of the south of the litani branch of the laf liaises directly with the force commander of unifil. below that unifil is divided into two sectors, sector east and sector west. laf’s liaison officer at this level are brigade commanders and they liaise with the commanders of each unifil sector: sector east is currently headed by the spanish battalion and sector west by the italians. every morning at unifil headquarters a summary is produced of what occurred over the past hours. if there has been a serious incident then unifil and laf will discuss this, usually at the most senior levels between the liaison officers of both organisations at unifil headquarters. if necessary, the issue is raised to the level of the head of the south of the litani branch of laf and the force commander respectively. in this way the two forces aim to monitor the situation on the ground as closely as possible. one pao described it thus: so they really are, almost integrated with us…so there’s a total day-to-day level, you know at the tactical level, i said with the soldier on the ground patrolling. at the operational level – when i say operational level, i am talking about – you know we have sectors? so at the sector headquarters. and at the chief of staff, they are dealing day-to-day with the generals of the laf brigades or the general in charge of the south of the litani sector in tyre. so tick tack the whole time. so when something is happening, tick tacking the whole way, you know, on the phone the whole time, if not meeting with each other. so that’s on-going. the whole time. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  j,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   then at the strategic level, by that i’d say, our office and the force commanders office are liaising the whole time with laf. we have a meeting there once a week so we're talking about all kinds of stuff, so at every level, tic tacking the whole time. very strong coordination, very strong interaction on the phone the whole time, if not in person, you know it’s throughout, at all the different levels you know? in addition the headquarters of every unifil battalion has a laf officer who lives in the compound / . this is to ensure that there is full communication between unifil and laf at every level. and don’t forget in every single headquarters of the battalions around here we have a liaison officer sleeping there hours from lebanese army. to deal with us on a daily basis. from the perspective of unifil, the fact that the laf are able to act relatively autonomously of the lebanese government is an advantage. this makes unifil’s work considerably easier because decisions are made without delay. in addition when the situation in beirut or other parts of the country is tense, the continual presence of laf gives the area a strong sense of stability. actually one thing that’s good to point out is that even in times when the country didn’t have a prime minister, a president, government. the south was always ok. we were always able to conduct our activities. because the lebanese army has always been there. even in times when no one was around, the lebanese army was there. which is a big plus, i have to say. they have strict orders to solve any problem without going to the cabinet. there is a liaison mechanism. their mandate – it is all technical on the ground – you cannot go to the government for every single step. it will take time, bureaucracy. they are very cooperative. excellent relationship. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   the	
  work	
  of	
  unifil	
  and	
  laf	
   the main purpose of unifil/laf joint patrols is to prevent blue line violations and search for unexploded ordinance or illegal weapons. as the unifil mission expanded in , laf battalions were moved down to the south to accompany them on their patrols. laf accompany unifil on an estimated patrols each month. peacekeepers stress that they work closely with laf and play the role of observer as much as possible. the only time unifil consider intervening is when there is a stand-off between the laf and the idf. unifil place laf at the forefront of any blue line violations involving locals. we only operate with the laf. when there is an incident, the first people we call in to assist because it has to do with the locals, it’s the laf…so when it happens the idf contacts the force hq and send it down to us, and we are informed that within this grid reference, there is this violation happening. we call the laf and we move in with them. they are able to talk to their people and then they bring the situation under control because we are not allowed to physically prevent somebody. we are not allowed to stop somebody who is determined to cross the blue line. you can’t do that, it is the laf that is supposed to do it. so whatever, happens afterwards, we send our reports to the sector headquarters, and that’s how it works. in terms of intentional violations, such as stone throwing at the idf, laf are called upon to disperse the local population, but unifil will maintain a presence to ensure that laf and the idf do not engage directly. so there has been a number of occasions where the lebanese will throw stones at the idf and when it happens they reinforce their troops there and ghanbatt will have to go in. but always you have to do that with laf. and you try and prevent – normally you can’t talk to the israelis so you talk to – you try and calm the lebanese down. and you are able to disperse them. that has happened on a number of occasions. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   despite their broad popularity in the area, unifil are involved in incidents with local civilians. usually these are minor and relate to unifil patrols taking the wrong road or patrolling at night and making noise. occasionally criminals will hold up the convoys in order to steal equipment from them. on such occasions, unifil’s strategy is always to stand back, take a passive posture, and call in the laf who diffuse the situation. this strategy works because the local population will not attack their own army and it reinforces the idea that the laf are primarily responsible for security in the area. it also reinforces unifil’s image as a peaceful force, which rubenstein ( ) identified as important if peacekeepers are to retain their credibility. laf work closely with the peacekeepers on the retrieval of unexploded ordinance (uxo) left over from the many wars in the area. as in the cases of local incidents, laf are always called in to manage the retrieval and disposal of uxos or any other kind of explosives. the policy of unifil is to cordon off the area once the explosives are found and call the laf who take over from there under the observation of unifil. unifil peacekeepers themselves simply observe the whole process. if we find a uxo or a ied of some sort – they are rang initially. practically on the ground it would be a case of us securing the area until they arrive, and they come in and deal with the situation, which is right i think. because it gives them… the authority to go in and deal with it, in their own country and i think that’s the way it should be done. and i’d imagine they would like to come to the day when they would have the numbers to be able to come and do this themselves on their own. you know…we try and provide them with as much professional aid as we could, and experience, but it’s definitely their country and their place to carry out that side of things. 	
  secretary	
  general	
  reports	
  include	
  all	
  incidents	
  that	
  occur	
  between	
  locals	
  and	
  unifil.	
  	
  on	
  average	
  there	
  is	
  one	
   or	
  two	
  a	
  month.	
   	
  rubinstein,	
  peacekeeping	
  under	
  fire:	
  culture	
  and	
  intervention.	
   	
  improvised	
  explosive	
  device	
  (ied).	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  g ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   	
   unifil	
  views	
  of	
  the	
  relationship	
  with	
  laf	
   the relationship between unifil soldiers and laf appears to be very congenial apart from the language barrier. unifil peacekeepers spoke highly of the laf in terms of their manner and their professionalism as a force. sometimes of course the language barrier is there. but they have most of them officers coming along – a captain or a major. so that makes it comfortable and of course they are now used to us so they are comfortable. you find the same bunch of guys in circulation. so you’ll find them off and on same guys and the same fellows. it’s quite congenial actually. and i must say they are very cooperative. any time there is a situation and you call, immediately they come and they are assisting in bringing down tensions. so it’s been a very good working relations we have had with them. laf is good. they are professional and in many ways, like the patrolling and other things we have timings for that. they are very professional in that way. dealing with things. they come in time. whenever they are required they are available. it’s a very professional interaction that they have. it’s good. unifil peacekeepers were keen to stress that they do not interfere with the laf in the course of their duties. their role is very much an observational one in order to help bolster laf’s credibility. we basically are, you know, you can say, trying to help laf with carrying out their patrolling. we are not superimposing ourselves not imposing ourselves at all. we are with the laf. and laf carry out the entire thing, we just help them with patrolling, some checkpoints and that’s it. if they stop vehicles we are just trying to help them out. that’s it. peacekeepers also stressed that they found the laf incredibly responsive to their requests for assistance. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f,	
  unifil,	
  kfar	
  hammam,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  july	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  b,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f,	
  unifil,	
  kfar	
  hammam,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  july	
   .	
   	
   	
   we have had enormous operational support from the laf from onwards. they have consistently told us that they are ready to act when information is received, that they will go and search and check places. unifil staff from headquarters are always highly complimentary about the laf, describing the relationship as very positive and trusting. unifil also understand that the laf do not always have the same priorities, and they appear to accept that. i think at the strategic level, at the operational level, i think it’s very good. but notwithstanding that we have to always remember, that the laf are representatives of their government – when we have a government. so you know and their agenda, might not be our agenda, and they are the defence of their state so we mightn’t necessarily agree on things, because they’re coming at it from a different angle. so even if they are coming at it from a different angle, it doesn’t mean that we have fallen out with each other. but they have different agendas. they are a state institution and all that, so we mightn’t agree on what they’re doing, we might have wanted to stop it and all that, but that doesn’t mean that we are at odds with them. but i would say the relationship is very good. but they have to do what they have to do sometimes, and we have to respect that because we are not occupiers we are guests here and we are only here to support them. at the present time the laf are highly under resourced. as the army of the land, they are currently the only symbol of a unified lebanon and the syrian crisis is stretching their capabilities to the limit as they have had to be stationed all over lebanon. this has taken its toll on their numbers down in the south, but unifil are careful not to push laf for more brigades. they recognise the pressure the laf are under at the present time. you see we also cannot break the bone of the laf… because if the security of the whole country is civilised by the laf it will have a positive effect here. if you have tension in tripoli it will affect us here. so we have to also help the laf to be flexible. this army has not been reactivated or re-equipped and all this stuff since the civil war. once again, the most important aspect is for us to do most of our activities with the laf. of course in recent months, several units from the lebanese army have been moving to the north. and we have been trying to explain to the people through the lebanese army, that although there has been a movement of troops we would be patrolling as we did before. always in coordination with them, even if we don’t have them all the time. so it will be very useful of course to get more lebanese army in the south, and work more with them. but we do understand that 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   this is not something feasible because there are other issues in the rest of the country. laf	
  views	
  of	
  unifil	
   laf perceptions of unifil are also worth noting here to provide an holistic picture of the cooperation between the two parties. senior officers interviewed spoke highly of unifil. there was recognition that unifil work hard to maintain a close relationship with the laf and laf officers interviewed spoke highly of unifil’s commitment to resolving problems when they arose: yes. they always do their best. if you ask for an appointment – they say it’s up to you. afternoon, morning whenever – they are ready to come. they try their best not to disturb us and not to put us under tension, they want us to work in a good mood. they don’t put us under tension. there are many incidents happen they really they help us a lot. when they [israelis] were building a wall at kfar kila, we was going to war at that time, they still in my office from o’clock in the morning until pm at night. first commander and political officers. from my office, they called israel many times, and speak to this israelis in order that they can continue the work and finish. it’s not easy it’s very difficult. the most frustrating aspect of working with unifil for laf officers was the constant staff rotations. these commanders changed, and the battalion changes, the first commander changed – everyone changed. and one was coming, he needs time to know how to deal with this. and everyone has to discover how to deal with this culture, how to deal with these people, something not easy. so the people that are spending more time in lebanon, they know our culture, they know how to be with the issue, they know how to …now we are losing them one by one. x will leave, he is the key of everything. y also works very hard always. he was a very hard worker y. it’s not easy to change the people like this. new people always make problems for us. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  j,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interviewing	
  the	
  laf	
  in	
  relation	
  to	
  any	
  topic	
  is	
  highly	
  sensitive	
  in	
  lebanon.	
  	
  as	
  such,	
  i	
  was	
  only	
  given	
  permission	
   to	
  speak	
  with	
  the	
  two	
  most	
  senior	
  officers	
  that	
  have	
  dealt	
  with	
  unifil	
  for	
  many	
  years.	
  	
  	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   a related issue is that of the level of commitment of the unifil force commander. the same officer felt that some have not been as committed as others over the years. it depends on the commander. some commanders work bureaucratically. when they work like this, they sit in their office, he has his mandate under him and everyone must do as he wants. this case doesn’t work now in the south. if the first commander is not interested in going into the details of the details and knowing everything by his eye and be on the spot at the critical time the situation will deteriorate very fast. whenever we have a commander who is prepared to be deeply involved in the details we have no problems, whenever we have a commander who is bureaucratic and no interested in the details, we have problems. and we have had both kinds. both officers interviewed commented that the initial behaviour of some of the european troops on the ground immediately after the implementation of resolution was not suited to the environment in which they were working. at the beginning we had a problem with the officers that was coming to unifil [from overseas] that they were coming to an area of operation and it’s called an area of operation. we told them “look, it’s not an area of operation. it’s like your villages in your countries there are people living here. you cannot work with them as an area of operation. you cannot move in your tanks, you cannot move as if you are in the field. it’s not a field. it’s villages, people living in villages. if you want to drive your tanks you will destroy the roads and you will have problems”… the french always have wars outside france and they work as if they are in an area of operations and this makes problems between them and the people. but the nato troops, especially the french and the spanish troops, do not have good image in the lebanese view. the spanish, when they are coming here began the mission like foreign enemy troops. and their input in the lebanese heart had bad expression. the political leanings of the officers were reflected in the way they talked about unifil. the sunni officer in general was more supportive of the work of unifil, and his criticisms were more from an operational perspective. the shi’a officer (who is known to be a keen supporter of the resistance) was more critical and took more of a political perspective. but this difference 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
  	
  it	
  is	
  worth	
  noting	
  that	
  unifil	
  returned	
   the	
  tanks	
  they	
  had	
  originally	
  shipped	
  over	
  to	
  south	
  lebanon	
  in	
   	
  largely	
  because	
  of	
  the	
  damage	
  they	
  did	
  to	
   roads	
  in	
  the	
  area.	
  	
  the	
  force	
  now	
  only	
  use	
  armoured	
  personnel	
  carriers	
  (apcs)	
  to	
  patrol.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  y,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  september	
   .	
   	
   	
   in views is one of the key strengths of laf. it is able to tolerate widely differing political perspectives and still function efficiently. both officers criticised the mannerism of european troops, accusing them of being arrogant. but they differed in their comments on the non-european troops, the sunni officer was highly critical of non-eu troops: they are nothing. the indians, they are drunk in the evening. they are not serious. we don’t see that they are serious enough… they are from people who are not serious. they are there for money. if there is something wrong they don’t try to stop it. this view corresponds with the officer’s sympathies as part of the sunni population who are generally anti-hizbullah. it suggests he was happy for unifil to find and destroy weapons caches, and this indicated that the soldier was doing his job. in that sense his view is more aligned with that of the international community. however, the shi’a officer liked the non- european troops, possibly because they did not try to find weapons. his view corresponds much more closely to that of the local population. all the non-nato troops in the south are good troops. it is not a question mark about their behaviour. these differences in perspective on the different nationality troops did not appear to affect laf officers’ commitment to working with unifil. however both officers felt that unifil was biased towards israel, reflecting again, local sentiment that the principles underlying are unfair. for example, when do israel do something wrong, the unifil stop to speak. but when the lebanese do any little wrong things – oh that grow and grow and grow. and this behaviour let us understand that unifil is here against us – not for us. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  y,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  september	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  y,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  september	
   .	
   	
   	
   they [unifil] had problems because for the people of the south, they look at unifil – they are western and they like israel more than lebanon and they help israel more than lebanon. the laf officers confirmed unifil’s view that two strategic partners work independently of central government. one of the officers summarised it thus: the lebanese government? i spent seven years in the south. i never saw any of them there. when they have problems they pay attention but if everything is going ok, they don’t care. they have seven years until now, they have enough problems to deal with. and we don’t have – we get a government for month after month, no government. always like this, so we have to depend on ourselves and unifil. always i put the prime minister in the picture, but they have so many other problems. they say we trust you, and leave you to it. only siniora was taking care of every step. and after sinora, nobody cared. i was dealing with it, as if i was the country. only the commander of the army beside me. i spent about years, alone. local	
  views	
  of	
  laf	
   the process of re-integrating the laf into the southern community has on the whole not been overly difficult. local residents appeared to be very happy to see the presence of laf in the area. they demonstrate understanding that the laf is underfunded and under-equipped and they don’t blame their national army for being unable to fully be in control of the security situation. this was our demand, long, long ago to have our army spread or deployed on the borders. when you have money to invest in this area, you would like to see your national army protecting this area, not any other organisation…but as far as we don’t have thinking of peace in this part of the world, it’s very difficult to see laf taking over from unifil. yes of course. nobody prefer other soldiers to have positions or existence in your own country. you prefer that your own army will protect you alone. but in these circumstances, you prefer the existence of foreign countries to protect you, with the help of laf, in order to establish the peace, because the lebanese army alone, cannot do their job. laf is very weak, it cannot defend people. because if laf was strong enough, israel wouldn’t dare to enter our country and occupy it. but nothing is changed 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  r,	
  civilian,	
  wazzani,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  p,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   regarding the laf. laf is still as weak as it used to be. so laf cannot defend us. the level of trust civilian respondents had for laf however was noticeably high despite their lack of resources. there was always a feeling from respondents that laf is valued and respected, it is just not able to operate as it should owing to the political situation, both local and international. i don’t know why but people feel safety to the army. very safe. yeah so. i don’t know why they weren’t there before. it’s a stupid decision because they should be there because the people loves the army. but the army is part of the people. it is big part of southerners in the army. unifil staff had different views regarding local perceptions of laf. peacekeepers themselves had a more reserved view of laf popularity. i won’t say popular, but they maintain an influence actually. their comfort level of course is ah, you know equal in cases. because we are going along on an operation and we are going along with laf. so we find them [civilians] friendly, we find them happy, so this is ah i can say, this is both good towards unifil and laf. now i can’t differentiate how they are with unifil and how they are with laf. i would not be able to comment on this, but as i see when we go on patrol and other things, they are very friendly with us. well we are with laf, so the good will goes equally to laf and us. long-serving staff at headquarters were more positive in their assessments of laf popularity in the region. it is possible this is because they have witnessed the development of the relationship between laf and the locals over time, unlike peacekeeping troops who rotate frequently. [f]rom the moment the lebanese army came to the south of lebanon, you can see from people’s perception that they – their initial understanding of the laf was very poor, and they were more trusting of different political groups in the south of lebanon. more than the lebanese army. so state authority was not something that has ever been present in the south of lebanon. little by little, we could see that actually the trust, for the lebanese army has been increasing. so they are not just understanding but see the lebanese army as the army of the south. this has 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  q,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  l,	
  civilian,	
  al-­‐tiri,,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f,	
  unifil,	
  kfar	
  hammam,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  july	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  b,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   been, you know really increasing since ….increasing their credibility means increasing our own credibility. because the long term goal of the mission is to handover the responsibilities to the lebanese army. so once again, the importance of what the people think about the lebanese army is also like increasing the credibility of the mission. since the laf was reintroduced to the area, the impression i obtained is that they are very popular with the people, but are viewed as incapable of acting alone. civilians all stressed that they will be happy to see the laf take over – one day. we would prefer that the international community made a decision to allow the military to be armed properly, and then we don’t need the resistance. we are against israeli aggression and we support whoever can prevent it. so far it is the resistance and that’s fine. if unifil or the lebanese armed forces can do it, no problem. but so far, only hizbullah has succeeded. none of the civilian respondents suggested that the laf are ready to do that now. there is an understanding amongst locals that the strategic environment is not favourable enough for this to happen. those who support hizbullah do not wish to see them leave until the laf is fully equipped or if hizbullah and laf join forces (as described in chapter two on the strategic environment). those who do not support hizbullah simply wanted the laf to be better equipped and for unifil to stay until they are. i am very patriotic. i think this point will happen sooner or later…i don’t like politics but what i am saying that, because there is parties here in the region and all lebanon and they have unfortunately arms. not only the lebanese army have the arms. when there will be no arms in the normal people, outside of the lebanese army, the laf will get the mission instead of unifil. when there is other parties that can get war with israel or with any town else, then the laf has a big problem. then he cannot confront all the people that has illegal arms. it’s out of the power of the laf. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  j,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  b ,	
  civilian,	
  village,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c ,	
  civilian,	
  village,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  p,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   walking	
  the	
  line	
  between	
  international	
  and	
  local	
  politics	
   the laf are extremely popular throughout lebanon. their popularity is largely based on the refusal by many of their officers to defect to sectarian militias during the civil war. they were the first state institution to rebuild after the civil war and are regarded by the lebanese as a symbol of state unity. national day in lebanon on the november is primarily organised around the laf and the symbols of the military are ubiquitous – for example schoolchildren dress up in military attire whilst waving the lebanese flag on this day. but like all national armies who try to rebuild after internecine conflict, the laf face challenges to obtaining nationwide support from civilians. despite their nationwide popularity, laf walk a fine line in the south of lebanon and tripoli where there are concentrations of sectarian political movements: sunnis in tripoli and hizbullah in the south. they are aware that if they are drawn into a fight against these groups they may lose their own form of national impartiality that in many ways mirrors that of a un mission. whilst they are able to fight they cannot be seen to be waging a war against sections of their own population. in the past year, this has proven an enormous challenge for the laf in tripoli where there is a large pro-salafi population who consistently attack the minority population of syrian alawites who live there. the laf are called in to calm the situation, but in many cases are forced to act more like peacekeepers to avoid being drawn into the fight. one of the main tasks of resolution is ensuring the area south of the litani is free from armed personnel, weapons or assets other than those of the government of lebanon. 	
  barak,	
  the	
  lebanese	
  army:	
  a	
  national	
  institution	
  in	
  a	
  divided	
  society	
   	
  the	
  issues	
  faced	
  in	
  rebuilding	
  militaries	
  after	
  conflict	
  are	
  described	
  well	
  and	
  in	
  more	
  detail	
  in	
  edmunds,	
   timothy,	
  'civil–military	
  relations	
  in	
  serbia–montenegro:	
  an	
  army	
  in	
  search	
  of	
  a	
  state,'	
  european	
  security,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( )	
  and	
  bellamy,	
  alex	
  j.,	
  and	
  timothy	
  edmunds,	
  'civil–military	
  relations	
  in	
  croatia:	
  politicisation	
  and	
   politics	
  of	
  reform,'	
  european	
  security,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( ).	
   	
  there	
  is	
  in	
  tripoli	
  a	
  concentration	
  of	
  salafist-­‐leaning	
  sunnis	
  who	
  believe	
  that	
  the	
  laf	
  is	
  biased	
  towards	
  the	
   shi’a,	
  and	
  have	
  been	
  launching	
  attacks	
  on	
  the	
  laf	
  see	
  for	
  example;	
  amrieh,	
  antoine,	
  'tripoli	
  death	
  toll	
  hits	
   	
  as	
   clashes	
  intesify',	
  daily	
  star,	
   	
  march	
   .	
  	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example,	
  ‘army	
  capable	
  of	
  combating	
  terrorism:	
  kahwagi,’	
  daily	
  star,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  january	
   ;	
  misbah	
  al-­‐ali,	
  ‘tripoli	
  death	
  toll	
  rises	
  after	
  overnight	
  clashes’,	
  daily	
  star,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  january	
   .	
   	
   	
   emphasizes the importance of the extension of the control of the government of lebanon over all lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution ( ) and resolution ( ), and of the relevant provisions of the taif accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of lebanon; and the lebanese government is called upon to guarantee: - security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the blue line and the litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of lebanon and of unifil as authorized in paragraph , deployed in this area; - full implementation of the relevant provisions of the taif accords, and of resolutions ( ) and ( ), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in lebanon, so that, pursuant to the lebanese cabinet decision of july , there will be no weapons or authority in lebanon other than that of the lebanese state; as noted above, the laf are expected to perform these duties with the assistance of unifil; the idea being that the laf is more acceptable to the local population than a foreign force. however, owing to local support for hizbullah, laf also have to walk the line between fully enforcing the mandate and retaining popular support themselves. fully implementing the terms of the mandate is a concern for laf, not just from the perspective of managing their relationship with hizbullah, but also from a legal standpoint. their position was summed up by a pao: but they are also very concerned about their own image, their own standing in the south. just a couple of days ago, we were told that in the civil war years, laf were quite active in confiscating property – i wasn’t aware of this – and they faced a number of court cases, since the war ended, about their confiscations of property and their actions towards private property during the civil war years. and they are very very cautious about ensuring that they have the right legal documentation and the right grounds to search private property. now it’s obviously very easy for local people to say, ah you’re on private property, unifil can’t go on private property and we advertise the fact, every sg report, every months we say we can’t go on private property. so it is very very easy for other people to say: “ah you can’t go on private property, laf are not willing to search private property”. but again the 	
   	
   laf who are on a political tightrope – they walk a very very taught narrow tightrope – often for them political cover from the government here in beirut is extremely important. often it’s very difficult for them to have that full cover when there is only a caretaker government in charge. the storage of hizbullah weapons on private land is an open secret amongst the public, the authorities and some members of the international community. this is a sensitive issue for unifil who are constantly criticised as being ineffectual for not going onto private property to search and seize illegal weapons. as will be demonstrated in chapter five on local engagement, it is simply not possible for unifil to adopt a more ‘chapter vii-like’ approach in the region without running the risk of losing local consent. you might report to laf. you might report that there is information that there is some kind of cache and some arms and ammunition at some places. but you will not try and go in and probably try and catch it up, because we need some support from the local army. so once the local army is in place and we get the clearance from the unifil headquarters then obviously we go ahead and get it done. but we have to report back to our chain of command, and then they decide and we can only, you can say ah, we can indicate as to where the caches are or we can indicate where the arms are. but the final action, the final recover action has to be done by the laf. along with us, actually. so it’s very clearly and very set in demarcated lines that we can operate and we cannot operate within. but laf also have to walk this fine line, because as one respondent noted, when unifil leave, it will be they who remain with the people. so the laf came back, a state institution, they had to first of all have a presence; to assert themselves. and also they had to work out how they were going to dovetail with the resistance on certain issues. they have to live with these guys, you know how do you, on a day-to-day, at a working level, how do you do business you know? and with some things they are still struggling you know. in relation to the role of the laf in lebanon, hizbullah employ an intelligent strategy. they never criticise the laf or work against them publicly in any way shape or form. the have even woven the laf into one of their popularist slogans which reads: ‘the army, the people and the resistance’ indicating that they are as much as part of lebanon as the laf and that the laf are 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  nicholas	
  blanford,	
  journalist,	
  beirut,	
   	
  january	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  i,	
  unifil,	
  kfar	
  hammam,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  july	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   connected to them as such. but at the same time they continue to flout the authority of the laf by maintaining weapons caches, and possibly tunnels and other material inside the area of operations. one civilian respondent acknowledged that the army often knows where arms caches are stored but deliberately turns a blind eye: army they know about the activities of hizbullah. they know where they are, where their positions are and what is their role. but at the same time…some of them are covering their activities. before, unifil, before israel. because also the laf know that after all, unifil troops will withdraw, and those people will remain here. and tomorrow if we come to certain agreement that unifil should go, that means the people of the area should protect the area no matter what. maybe then, as they were talking before that hizbullah should be part of the laf, that they should be disarmed and then join the army. and this is as they say, if you see it on the border, they say ‘the army, the people, and the resistance’. this conflict of interests at times places the laf’s relationship with unifil under pressure. but unifil senior staff who liaise with the laf on a regular basis make the point that despite the difficulties laf face, they have demonstrated a commitment to showing that they are the authority. i won’t lie to you and say that life is very easy in our dealings with the lebanese armed forces all the time, but on the whole, we found the laf to be dedicated to be fulfilling resolution ensuring that the area does remain clear of armed personnel weapons. but you know it’s clear that they say they are in a very very tricky political situation and a lot of security incidents outside the ao means they don’t have as many forces in the south as had originally been envisaged back in . respondents spoke about laf’s determination to prove that they are as tough as hizbullah in terms of confronting israel. 	
  the	
  extent	
  of	
  hizbullah’s	
  operational	
  capacity	
  within	
  the	
  area	
  of	
  operation	
  cannot	
  be	
  confirmed.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  x,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   but i think for the laf, want to be themselves, the people who are in charge of security. it’s clear in their minds. they don’t see a role for hizbullah. they want to take ownership of this. and we’ve seen this on a number of occasions, where the laf, have shown their assertiveness, in dealing with the idf and stuff. no backing down. no backing down. even when they know they are facing superior technology, superior weapons, whatever. they still won’t back down, they are prepared to take casualties to prove their point that they are as brave as the resistance and they are here to stay. you know, so from that point of view, i think they are very highly motivated as a force. one laf officer interviewed attributed to the situation with hizbullah to global politics and not just laf’s physical capabilities. his assessment reflects the psychological comfort that lebanese draw from having the resistance as a deterrent. hizbullah doesn’t recognise or trust israel. if we [the laf] told them [hizbullah] “go home, we are going to be safe”, they don’t trust us. and if the un tell them that, they don’t trust them because they will say that israel always doesn’t apply the international law, and will not apply it and therefore they can’t be trusted and you cannot protect us. the most important thing is to have a government and army who is strong enough who can say, we can protect our country. if all people feel they have the protection, and they are protected enough, politically and military – the weapons means nothing in this case. whenever in lebanon we feel that we are not protected politically and we are not protected militarily so how we can tell the people they are safe and nobody will come? the same officer was pragmatic about the presence of hizbullah in the area of operations. he made the point that although hizbullah are still present, they are no longer out in the open and this has been one of the effects of since . there are hizbullah and other groups south of the litani – we know that – but it’s invisible. you can tell us there are weapons in a house, and we are ok, but it’s a house and we cannot go there – you must have a judge to give an order to search it. it’s not important not to have the weapon. it’s most important not to use them. this section has discussed how unifil has worked to reintroduce laf into the south of lebanon. in doing so it has discussed how unifil work with laf to put them at the forefront of their operations to improve their credibility amongst the local population and help them establish a presence. the political balance that the laf has to manage is not easy, but they have 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  s,	
  laf,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   got the sympathy of the local population who recognise that they do not have the capability to take over the area south of the litani at this present time. unifil work to support laf and their efforts have been aided by laf’s positive attitude towards cooperating with unifil. but the laf are engaged in a battle with hizbullah over their identity as ‘defenders of the land’. the laf clearly wish to be seen as the only defence force in lebanon but hizbullah’s raison d’etre is based on a similar idea. currently both parties have to work together for reasons of legitimacy as both require local support to survive politically. unifil paos take the lead from laf as to how they negotiate their relationship with hizbullah who remain an important unnamed party to the conflict which constrain unifil’s agency particularly in terms of searching for illegal weapons and preventing an outbreak of hostilities along the blue line. the final section discusses how paos help laf improve their operational and technical capabilities. improving	
  laf’s	
  operational	
  capabilities	
   unifil works to help build laf’s capabilities in two main ways: first by contributing to the campaign amongst the troop contributing countries (tccs) and other states to raise money to provide the laf with the necessary equipment required of a modern day force. secondly unifil also work with the laf to help them make improvements at the operational level. the problem of laf’s lack of resources, like so many of lebanon’s political problems, is deeply connected to international politics. there are two main problems. the first is the lack of a set budget from the national government meaning laf sometimes do not have even the most basic of equipment: and i don’t only mean the weapons. i am not talking about anti-aircraft missiles, i am not talking about sophisticated stuff. i am talking about – the soldier on the ground needs a uniform, he needs a rifle, he needs a place to stay, he needs food. 	
   	
   basic things – we are not talking about – you know, giving them surface-to-air missiles or anything. the other main problem for laf is their inability to procure modern weaponry. this is in no small part down to the lobbying of the israeli government who campaign internationally against any of the states on its borders obtaining weapons that will pose a threat to israeli security. this strategy has been termed ‘the qualitative military edge’ or qme by some analysts and it refers to the idea that israel, with the support of the us, will prevent any state in israel’s neighbourhood (described as ‘numerically superior adversaries’) from obtaining weapons that provide technological, tactical, and other advantages over israel. one pao who works the most closely with laf discussed israel’s approach to the problem of laf resources in a frank manner: [t]he laf have suffered greatly because israel have always had very strong lobbying not to support the laf. don’t give them weapons, don’t give them the technology. but at the same time the idf are accusing – accusing is too strong a word – the idf berate the laf for not doing the job. but at the same time, they won’t give them the means to do it. so you say, “what do you want guys? …you can’t expect us to do the job if we haven’t got the weapons”… but the israelis do a lot of lobbying. paos do not allow this element to interfere in their negotiations with israel. instead they lobby the international community hard to gain support and donations from the international community for laf. i think supporting the laf, not only physically on the ground in our area of operations but also supporting the laf at the political level in our daily contacts with the tccs, the troop contributing countries and other non-contributing countries, to bring out the point, to make the point at all political levels in all our dealings with the embassies, to make the point you know, that there is only one game in town, it’s the laf, you’ve got to get behind them, you’ve got to support them. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  see	
  for	
  example:	
  william	
  wunderle	
  and	
  andre	
  briere,	
  ‘u.s.	
  foreign	
  policy	
  and	
  israel's	
  qualitative	
  military	
   edge:	
  the	
  need	
  for	
  a	
  common	
  vision’,	
  washington	
  institute,	
  policy	
  focus	
   ,	
  	
   http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-­‐analysis/view/u.s.-­‐foreign-­‐policy-­‐and-­‐israels-­‐qualitative-­‐military-­‐ edge-­‐the-­‐need-­‐for-­‐a-­‐co	
  [accessed	
   	
  january	
   ].	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   unifil’s work to obtain support for the laf (in conjunction with unscol) often goes beyond the mandate of resolution and demonstrates how their autonomy facilitates creativity in their working practice. but as one pao pointed out, working to improve laf capabilities is an essential part of unifil’s exit strategy. it’s not , it’s outside of it, but it’s fringed on it. for us, what we are saying is, look unifil will forever here, if we don’t build up the laf! one major joint project is the strategic dialogue. in recent years unifil paos and laf engaged in a full analysis of the laf structure and capabilities and produced a joint report identifying where the gaps in the laf exist. this process enabled paos to organise a coordinating mechanism’ with unscol and they now work jointly to seek contributions from european states to specifically fill the gaps that have been identified. unifil also seek funding for the laf all over lebanon, not just for the battalions south of the litani; thus they offer countries a choice of donating to the area of operations or outside of it. the point of this is to prevent countries from being deterred from investing and at the same time, ensuring that the increase in the laf’s resources do not make the israelis nervous. we make this distinction, because if it’s just the south, for example, we’ll just take the germans for example, so if the germans wanted to give the laf some main battle tanks, we would say, the laf don’t need any tanks down south, you know? …so this is trying to watch the line between what the idf will complain about. but they can have the main battle tanks everywhere north of the litani, but not south of it. so we are looking at all these structures. and so we have a very highly developed document and that has helped them to, the laf to build up their army. unifil also assist by securing money from the un for the laf for basic resources. in the early days of resolution , unifil quickly realised that the laf would be incapable of accompanying them on patrols because they did not have any fuel for their vehicles. as a result 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   paos lobbied the united nations general assembly (unga) successfully for a sum of money, estimated by one respondent to be around half a million dollars, for the purposes of assisting the laf in purchasing essential supplies e.g. fuel. [a]nd in the beginning in when the laf deployed down to the south after the war, we needed to patrol the area to have a presence. the laf couldn’t come with us because they had no fuel you know? this is as basic as it is, you know? and laf have not had a budget for you know, i don’t know how many years, they have no bloody budget. so their minister can’t say ok your budget is , , , million. so they are on a day-to-day thing. it’s very difficult to operate in that situation. so when we are patrolling we want laf with us, you know, in the cars, we don’t travel in each other’s cars, we travel in our own vehicles. so we had to get fuel for the laf, we got money for them to begin with – which was a real exception for the un…but we got them some money, and a really big once off, the unga made this big exception to give them this money because the un doesn’t normally support in that way. another area unifil have worked on with laf is to help them develop cimic activities – a function they did not have previously. as noted above, the laf works hard to maintain its impartiality throughout lebanon and be seen as a truly national institution. having cimic offices in key areas of tension (such as palestinian camps) will help improve relations between the laf and the civilian population, much as it has done for unifil over the years. unifil is currently seeking funding for this from the eu peacebuilding fund: so now what we have done is we have taken in laf officers and given them cimic training. we’ve got the laf now to put within their structure a cimic unit – they are still working on it. we got peacebuilding funding money last year – we went to bat for them and got peacebuilding fund – which is very rare because normally they don’t give it for military. but we got it under cimic…now we are tapping into the eu now, to try and get the eu to support them financially as well. because the eu peacebuilding fund, it’s very difficult for them to support a military institution. but we are doing it under the auspices of civil military operations - it’s not bombs and bullets. so that seems to be taking a little bit of traction so these are other areas we work in that wouldn’t necessarily be in . unifil also support laf materially with resources. for example when unifil vehicles come to the end of their lifecycle, unifil donate them to laf. when they have compounds vacated by a battalion, they ask the relevant tcc to allow unifil to donate it to the laf, rather than 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   selling off the resources inside the compound and returning the land to its owner. this they have done successfully on a number of occasions. the final element of unifil assistance to laf is training. however, unifil were quick to point out that they do not train the laf, rather they train with the laf. this is because this is not in the mandate, but more importantly it could be sensitive for laf if they were seen to be trained by unifil. however, respondents alluded to various types of exercises that unifil run with the laf including joint exercises, shooting, artillery, computer exercises, and administrative training. one respondent referred to the amount of joint training as ‘a lot’. there are the joint exercises which are being conducted regularly between the laf and the battalions. this is in rotation, it happens frequently. so what happens is this becomes a platform for all of us to exchange our military you know thoughts for better coordination…so that helps us. you know joint firing exercises. we do all these things. so this is another field where the cooperation is there between laf and unifil. paos also bring down senior officers in the laf from other parts of the country in order to show them the liaison work between laf and unifil in the south. one such officer was due to arrive on the day i was in naqoura interviewing a pao. we will have the whole day with him, to tell him how we work, you see i am going to propose to them if they need training or you see? this is one of the things we do you know? conclusion	
   despite operating under what is termed in the peacekeeping literature as a ‘traditional’ peacekeeping mission, unifil engage in peacebuilding activities at the national level. their main objective in doing so is to work towards an exit strategy for the mission even if that 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  b,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   objective is currently a long way off owing to the regional political situation. in doing so unifil staff go above and beyond their mandate to facilitate change on the ground. the constraints faced by unifil in their work at the national level are mainly those of underfunding at the national level. both the municipalities and the laf suffer from a lack of regular funding for their activities. this reduces the impact of cao efforts to increase local government authority in the community as unifil is forced to continue funding reconstruction projects. pressure from israel at the international level constrains unifil’s ability to secure funding for the laf for capacity-building purposes; despite the fact that this could ultimately render hizbullah superfluous to the region were laf to develop into a fully functioning military force. nonetheless, in their work with the laf, unifil staff work to build laf’s profile in the area of operations; improve their operational capabilities; and seek funding to improve their technical capabilities. paos possess autonomy and demonstrate creativity in their interpretation of their mandate. this is illustrated most clearly in their work of building up the laf’s operational and technical capabilities. their approach goes some way beyond their mandate and they have initiated strategies to raise funds to improve the technical capacity of laf that enable them to circumvent the roadblock of israeli security concerns. at the operational level, unifil also show creativity by initiating joint exercises with laf and seek additional funding to for basic equipment from the eu and the un under the umbrella of peacebuilding and civil military cooperation (cimic). time, in particular continuity of staff in political affairs also plays an important role as the factor that facilitates consistency of effort on the above projects which take time to gain momentum and which are now beginning to reap rewards. local knowledge assists unifil paos in their relationship with the laf. paos take a pragmatic approach to the presence of hizbullah; they appreciate the delicate relationship laf have with the population of the south and do not place them under undue pressure as a result. 	
   	
   they also show sensitivity in recognising the laf’s need to prove themselves as the defender of the land and maintain an observational role as much as possible to place laf at the forefront of the patrols where possible. this also assists unifil in maintaining its image as a peaceful force which helps to retain local consent for the mission. the final fieldwork chapter discusses unifil’s work at the local level from the perspective of unifil actors at the subnational level, predominantly caos and cimic officers. it describes how unifil influence their security environment by maintaining local consent to operate. this is essential to preserve the security of peacekeeping troops who patrol the blue line and therefore maintain international peace and security. 	
   	
   chapter	
  five:	
  maintaining	
  consent	
  at	
  the	
  local	
  level	
   unifil don’t want problems with towns you know. they respect, the mentality or habits of the town. and for security reasons, you know they don’t want problems. in there was a bomb and soldiers were killed from unifil, from the spanish. and from that time there were some restrictions to go into the towns and there was some alerts… or security measures. for this they cannot go into towns and talk to everybody without the interference of the mukhtars, or municipalities or the laf. introduction	
   this thesis asks how peace operations influence their security environment. chapter three and chapter four examined the peacebuilding/peacekeeping work of unifil officers at the international and national levels of engagement. this chapter examines the local engagement of unifil actors at the subnational level; specifically the work of civil affairs officers (caos) and civil military cooperation officers (cimic). maintaining local consent is a crucial issue for unifil as it is a chapter vi mission and therefore unable to enforce peace. unifil face two risks if they fail to maintain local consent. the first is that they would not be able to operate, in other words, conduct patrols. the second follows from the first in that if the unifil mission were unable to carry out its duties, this would trigger an erosion of trust with one of the main parties to the conflict, namely israel. israel’s cooperation with resolution is dependent on their trust in the laf and unifil to maintain peace and security in the area of operations. if unifil is unable to conduct basic peacekeeping activities the israeli government could deem them incapable of preventing attacks on the state of israel. this would in all likelihood prompt the idf to unilaterally implement measures to securitise the area which would doubtless trigger a resumption of hostilities. therefore, it is of paramount importance to unifil that they maintain local support for their 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  p,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   operations. as one unifil staff respondent put it: ‘you cannot impose peace, if the people want you, you will succeed’. this chapter analyses in depth the work of caos and cimic at the local level of engagement and identifies the challenges faced by peacekeeping missions on the ground. in doing so i use commentary from both unifil staff and local civilians to describe the misunderstandings that occur between the two groups and how unifil respond to them. examination of the local relationship with unifil reveals that both sides have agency. local civilians are capable of determining the relationship as much as unifil staff. i illustrate how time matters at this level of engagement, in that the constant rotations of peacekeepers causes problems for unifil staff and locals in terms of cultural misunderstandings and lack of awareness of local sensitivities, but also in preventing the formation of long-term relationships in the case of cimic. both cimic and caos work creatively to prevent and resolve problems at the local level and are spontaneous in responding to changing local circumstances where possible. but time (continuity), local knowledge and autonomy give caos the ability to go further in reducing the risk of conflict between locals and unifil peacekeepers which could do irreparable damage to unifil’s local consent. this chapter begins with a brief explanation of why maintaining consent is particularly important in the case of unifil. why	
  maintaining	
  consent	
  is	
  crucial	
  to	
  the	
  operation	
   the most serious attack on a unifil battalion that occurred after resolution was on june when a spanish battalion was attacked on the road to al-khiam, a town near the blue line in the area of operations. the journalist nicholas blanford, who is considered a specialist on hizbullah and the south lebanon, writes that the suspected reason for the attack was because the spanish were overreaching the mandate, and had been seen monitoring hizbullah activity 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil	
  staff,	
  naqoura,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   north of the litani river, which is outside the area of operations. the attack was deadly, triggered as it was by an improvised explosive device (ied) close to the road and six peacekeepers were killed. the attack is suspected to have been carried out by hizbullah as a warning to unifil not to interfere with their operations north of the litani, but there has never been any confirmation of this. subsequent to the attack security measures for all unifil troops were greatly enhanced, such as ensuring mobile phone jammers were used by armoured personnel carriers (apcs) on patrols. the incident was a painful reminder to unifil that despite their best efforts to obtain consent to operate, their security cannot be guaranteed. this has not been the only ied attack on unifil patrols since but it was by far the most serious. other attacks have been launched, such as one on a tanzanian patrol on july , but in this case there were no human injuries. the perpetrators of this attack were suspected as being members of a radical palestinian group fatah al-islam. other less deadly reminders of the need to maintain local consent come in the form of regular incidents involving the local population. these are recorded by unifil and reported in the thrice-yearly reports of the secretary general. a content analysis performed on the secretary general reports on resolution in the year found unifil experienced a total of incidents with the local population. these consisted of confrontations with hostile groups of locals, stone-throwing incidents, crimes against unifil troops (including armed theft and theft) and a brief kidnapping incident. not all these incidents took place in the area of operations. often they occur when unifil troops are north of the litani river because civilians there do not benefit from unifil goods and services. the route from beirut down to the south is a single road and therefore it is relatively easy to ambush unifil troops and supplies en route. in , for example, a unifil logistics convoy and its occupants were held for several hours outside the area of 	
  blanford,	
  warriors	
  of	
  god:	
  inside	
  hezbollah's	
  thirty	
  year	
  struggle,	
  pp. -­‐ .	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   operations by armed civilians before the lebanese armed forces (laf) were able to secure their release. within the area of operations a number of incidents occur between peacekeepers and hostile locals each year. these types of confrontations are attributed by cimic officers as often being caused by new battalions losing their way and taking a wrong turn: again some places might be more sensitive than others, with regard to travelling in and out of their villages at certain times of the evening or something like that. and it could be something as basic as unfamiliarisation at the start of a mission. guys are getting a handover from the guys that are going home which takes a week you know, and then you have a young – the strategic corporal or the patrol commander and he might just overshoot a specific turn by metres and find himself in a village in the middle of the night where it might not be viewed upon in the best light you know? confrontations usually involve civilians blocking unifil vehicles and sometimes snatching items and equipment from them. one incident on february involved a man trying to hold up a unifil vehicle with a shotgun. another incident involved peacekeepers inadvertently approaching a mosque for women which aroused civilian ire and led to a brief confrontation. in all these types of incidents, the laf are called and they defuse the situation. for unifil, when they are in these situations, the role of the strategic corporal is again highly important; this time the strategic corporal is part of unifil and he or she has to play their hand extremely carefully: the worst-case scenario for us is that, we have to defend ourselves by the maximum, if you know what i mean. so we would always try to err on the side of common sense, you know. there’s different degrees of use of force, but there’s an 	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  	
  s/ / '.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  g ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / '.	
   	
  ibid.	
   	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  'report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary-­‐general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
  security	
  council	
   resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  	
  s/ / '.	
   	
   	
   awful lot to be said, for the guy who’s in charge on the ground at the time showing a bit of restraint and common sense…it’s called the strategic corporal…common sense and having a bit of manners goes an awful long way when it comes to certain things like that. whilst these incidents are not regarded as serious, they do reflect the very real concerns unifil have about the potential to lose consent on the ground which would very quickly make their mission impossible to execute. of crucial importance is that these incidents do not descend into fighting which would incur costs to unifil’s reputation that are hard to quantify. suffice to say, the blowback from such an event has the potential to threaten the viability of the entire mission. the area of operations is simply too small to allow unifil the space to avoid direct attacks on a regular basis; as the israelis discovered to their cost when they were occupiers. if an occupying force cannot withstand the guerrilla warfare tactics that would undoubtedly be used to eject foreign forces; lightly armed peacekeepers most certainly could not. after incidents such as these, cimic officers work with the municipalities in the vicinity of the incident to further reduce tensions: [m]aybe through cimic or [we] go out and meet with the local village leader – the mukhtar or whatever. and then just try and say that it was human error you know? so it’s that kind of…they appreciate it, a lot of the locals. if you can give them as much of a heads up as possible without infringing on your own security measures as to what your plans are, or what you are trying to achieve you know, i think that’s a big deal with them, which is understandable you know it’s their country at the end of the day. these types of incidents, whilst a regular occurrence, do not reflect local commitment to drive unifil from the area. as will be shown below, it is more a case of an underlying level of mistrust that exists among certain elements of the population and a desire by locals to protect areas that they feel are sensitive. in addition, hospitality is such an entrenched aspect of village and arab culture that many local people feel very uncomfortable when unifil are attacked because they are guests in their country. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  g ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  g ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   the above section has highlighted threats to unifil peacekeepers on patrols to illustrate how important it is for unifil to prevent the erosion of local consent. the rest of this chapter discusses the myriad factors that influence public perceptions of unifil in order to better understand how caos and cimic respond to the different voices at the local level. cimic	
  activities	
   the purpose of cimic is to support the peacekeeping battalions as they conduct their operations south of the litani river. force protection remains a key concern for unifil and as a result cimic activities are extensive at the level of headquarters and throughout the battalions. the purpose of cimic was described thus by a member of cimic staff from headquarters: all those activities are aimed at supporting the mission mandate. so whatever we are going to do, of course we are going to support the local population, but primarily to support the mission. in other words, whilst unifil is happy to assist the local population, the primary reason for the existence of cimic is to ensure the security of peacekeepers on the ground. because cimic is not a humanitarian asset. it could be of course like a catalyser that enables those humanitarian assets to perform their task that is humanitarian or delivery or activity or whatever. so the most important point is, support to the mission by enhancing and enabling those that are deputised we can say, to perform humanitarian activities. local civilians understand the nature of this relationship. so from the first moment we build up a friendship relation with them [unifil] because there was a mutual need for both of us to have this kind of relation. they needed to have stability, security and peace. we needed so many things for the needs of the village. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  m,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  m,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  z,	
  civilian,	
  tayrdebba,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   this is in essence the main difference between the approach of cimic compared to civil affairs which the local population recognises. cimic officers are time-bound in that they need to perform their duties in a short space of time before the next battalion rotation. as such their approach tends to be more instrumental in that they are strictly focused on providing material support for the purpose of maintaining a secure environment for the peacekeeping troops. caos were more focused on the well being of the community and on building long-term trusted relationships. cimic	
  services	
   the cimic services unifil battalions offer the local population in the area of operations are prolific. each battalion has a specific area of operation (within the larger unifil area of operation) and each is assigned a number of towns and villages in which to conduct their cimic activities. most unifil battalions provide some form of medical care for the local population living in their area. some have a hospital which local residents are able to visit hours a day for medical care. all medical services and medication provided by battalions are free. in addition, many battalions also operate what they call an outreach service whereby they visit the villages in their area on a rolling basis and set up a medical centre to provide care more locally. the frequency of these services varies greatly as they are dependent on the resources of each battalion. india for example visits all the villages in its area on a bi-weekly basis, whereas ghana rolls out the service on a six monthly basis. dental care is also offered by many of the battalions under the same conditions as medical care, detailed above. unifil headquarters also possess advanced medical facilities which include a physiotherapy unit and specialised medical care. headquarters take the cases that the battalions are unable to treat. in cases of severe emergency unifil dispatch a helicopter to collect patients and take them to naqoura. one cao estimated that unifil treat around , people a month across the 	
   	
   unifil area of operations. these medical services make unifil extremely popular owing to the lack of medical services available in the region and the fact that those that are available are often unaffordable for many locals. of late, unifil has also been treating syrian refugees who continue to flood into lebanon. there are fewer syrian refugees in the area relative to other parts of lebanon, owing to the control exercised over entry and exit. however, those who do make it through are usually very poor and therefore need to take advantage of the services provided. unifil are aware it is not part of their mandate to assist the syrian population but for humanitarian reasons they allow syrians to use it. as the numbers of refugees in the south is lower than in the rest of the country, currently the southern lebanese do not appear to mind, or at least mention was not made of it by any of the civilian respondents, except to note that owing to unifil’s presence they were grateful not to have been touched by the syrian crisis as much as other parts of the country. in these two years that we are passing through the circumstances in syria, for example, has affected too much lebanon, and thanks to the existence of unifil here we are a little apart. you know the conflict has transmitted to the towns of north lebanon and the beqaa but here in the area, thanks god, we not notice this although we have syrians here for example. but we don’t have problems with them…and the existence of unifil makes us somehow protected. should the number of refugees in the area increase substantially it is unclear how unifil will address this issue, especially battalions who are already short of resources. unifil battalions demonstrate creativity in that they have identified some important gaps in local services that they have been able to fill. one unique service that only the spanish and the indian contingents offer is a veterinary service in sector east. these services amongst the farming community are even more popular than the medical services. many respondents 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  the	
  unhcr	
  has	
  listed	
  over	
   	
  million	
  persons	
  of	
  concern,	
  and	
  just	
  under	
  a	
  million	
  registered	
  syrian	
  refugees	
   ( ,	
   ).	
  unhcr,	
  syrian	
  regional	
  refugee	
  response,	
   https://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/country.php?id= 	
  [accessed	
   	
  may	
   ].	
  	
  in	
  the	
  area	
  of	
  operations,	
   the	
  latest	
  secretary	
  general	
  report	
  states	
  that	
  there	
  are	
  currently	
   , 	
  number	
  of	
  syrian	
  refugees	
  in	
  the	
  area	
   of	
  operations.	
  see	
  united	
  nations	
  secretary	
  general,	
  report	
  of	
  the	
  secretary	
  general	
  on	
  the	
  implementation	
  of	
   security	
  council	
  resolution	
   	
  ( ),	
  s/ / ,	
   	
  february	
   ,	
  p. .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  p,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   mentioned them as being an incredible advantage for the region in a country where there are few vets who charge exorbitantly high fees for their services. one farmer, a retired soldier, informed me that without this service he would be unable to operate his farm. assisting farmers with their veterinary needs is one way that unifil helps to improve the economic environment of the region as it enables farmers to continue to function and therefore produce goods for sale on the market. but it also enables unifil to exert some influence over the local population when it comes to maintaining peace and security. if you look at a veterinary here in lebanon. firstly he is not available, and secondly, if you do get him from outside, then ah, you end up paying quite a hefty sum. i think it’s about $ which is too much for a shepherd…so when a shepherd gets a doctor who comes to his flock and then treats them it goes a long way in establishing a relationship. then it’s easier for us to tell the shepherd, because we do have a point of contact. because the vet has met him earlier, the men have also met him, so it’s easier for us to tell him you know, ok this is the blue line, respect it. the scheme also affords the battalions access to local intelligence from civilians: [w]e do get a lot of intelligence. for instance, the veterinarian, when he went on a normal veterinarian rounds. a guy, a farmer who was there, after he was treating his goat or something, so after that he told us “there is something happening three kilometres from here. so there is likely something happening”… so the veterinarian approached the operational branch here and we sent a patrol there and we found some rockets and something. it was ah … also this helps in our operational activity to a greater extent. other schemes that cimic officers from the battalions have run include training for farmers and agricultural cooperatives in organic agriculture and manufacturing agricultural products; training for medical staff; donating computers; donating sewing machines and providing training in sewing. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  e,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  july	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  b,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  n,	
  civilian	
  deir	
  mimas,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  z,	
  civilian,	
  tayrdebba,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  z,	
  civilian,	
  tayrdebba,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   since , the cimic teams in the battalions also meet with the municipalities to assess village needs. this activity serves two purposes: firstly it enables members of the battalion to engage with key civilians in the villages within their area. this is important for maintaining good relations to enable the battalions to conduct their patrols without fear of security incidents. obviously the locals here – and you wouldn’t like it wherever you lived, if there was a foreign army running up and down your village at night time maybe keeping you awake, of course you are not going to like it. but we can maybe iron out these issues. we can meet key leaders with the company commanders and say “listen, they have an issue with this and the issue is because…is there some way we can maybe change the patrolling timetable, or maybe we won’t go through the village at night time or we won’t go down this narrow street.” and all these things can be sorted out at these key leader engagement meetings. cimic has to be central to that. secondly it enables the battalion to conduct a needs assessment in each village that inform their decisions to fund projects for the villages. cimic and caos are responsible for assisting villages across the region with qips projects that have made their lives considerably easier. these types of projects include, but are not restricted to: building underground sewage systems, roads, water pumps, providing street lighting, building public parks, school playgrounds, and repairing important civic buildings and support walls on the roads. these services are invaluable to locals who greatly appreciate that without unifil’s assistance, their lives would have been much harder because of a lack of funding or interest from central government. simply we can say that the korean contingent gave us more than what the central government gave us...and now they are working on the pavement of the main road of the village. since four years the ministry of public works promised us and they didn’t do it. now the koreans are doing it. after the war unifil contributed a lot. our infrastructure was destroyed, our roads, water system, telecommunications, electric, everything. they helped us rebuild our water and electric system and cleared the roads. the money for the qips projects, comes from two main sources. the first is from unifil headquarters who since have had a remit to assist the local population in order to improve 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  h ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  z,	
  civilian,	
  tayrdebba,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c ,	
  civilian,	
  al-­‐amriyeh,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
  	
   	
   	
   civil-military relations. funds are provided by naqoura to each battalion for spending on local projects according to local needs. cimic officers send through proposals for funding based on their village assessments which are subject to the approval of a committee at headquarters. the total budget of unifil for qips is us$ . million per year. the three conditions for qips funding are designed to afford the current rotation of troops the maximum benefits of civilian goodwill. they are ( ) the cost of the project must not exceed us$ , ; ( ) it must be completed in three months or less, and ( ) that the project should benefit the maximum number of people possible in any village. in other words, it is essential that the project is not designed to only benefit one or two people, or a certain group of people. [w]hat we try to do is we get the local mayor, or whomever…[to] get three quotes for a project. and our job then is obviously to monitor the progress of the project as well and you know check up and make sure everything is going as it should be. we pay the contractors maybe or times over the duration of the project and then of course then we will inaugurate the project at the end. we put up a plaque to say this project was supported by finnaid or irishaid, whoever is in, whoever is working in that ao at the time. the qips are a recent innovation, prior to battalions donated goods and services to the local population that were paid for by their nation states. the qips were designed in recognition of the need to win local consent. so they came with the policy after , that we should have relations with the local authorities, which could be a mayor, a mukhtar, and with those people they can ask, how can we assist you in improving the condition of the village. and this will reflect positively on their relations with the locals. this policy was not [there] before …and they started to go out in the villages and ask them, “how can we assist, how can we assist?” and this is how we started these quick impact projects so this is now very famous and very popular in the area after . peacekeepers interviewed were of the opinion that cimic activities were important in improving and maintaining local relations: first because of the opportunity to communicate with local 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  h ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  with	
  the	
  exception	
  of	
  the	
  indian	
  and	
  ghanaian	
  battalions	
  who	
  have	
  always	
  received	
  money	
  from	
  headquarters.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   officials in the villages and secondly to win hearts and minds by showing that unifil is there to assist the local population. battalions from poorer countries run qips using only the money provided by hq at naqoura. as such, they tend to only run two or three projects a year. battalions from wealthier tccs however have the advantage of access to direct funding for these purposes from their own country and run projects more often than that. projects run independently by the wealthier battalions can cost up to $ , but owing to the swift troop rotations, they too are strictly time bound and monitored. these tend to be from the european countries: mainly the french, spanish and italians and also the koreans. if you go to most of the villages here [in the spanish area] they are having the solar system lights. why? because these projects are funded by the spanish kingdom. it was universally acknowledged that the koreans were by far the most generous of all the battalions. they have a small area to cover which comprises - villages and once they had saturated the area with infrastructure projects, they began to take lebanese civilians on cultural trips to south korea. villages that lie in areas with poorer battalions tend to envy those that sit close to the wealthy ones. one civilian told me, ‘the other villages say: “we envy you, you have the koreans in your area”’. however, the relatively high level of global awareness of the population means they understand that poorer nation states are unable to provide a lot of services and these battalions are not resented for their fiscal poverty. on the financial level, people can understand clearly that some of the units cannot do any help – like the ghanaians for example – and people here understand their situation. and they say, “god help them, they can hardly find food to eat to they cannot help us. so no problem”. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  z,	
  civilian,	
  tayrdebba,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  z,	
  civilian,	
  tayrdebba,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   this is somewhat of an exaggeration as, thanks to the support of unifil hq, even the poorest battalions are now able to fund two or three projects a year. but poorer battalions demonstrate creativity by undertaking other projects for the community that don’t require a big spend. the indians were especially motivated to engage with the community in this way. [t]here are activities that we carry out which doesn’t involve the financial part. that is within our capabilities like classes, yoga classes, computer classes, english classes. so that empowers them in a way. so these are the things that we are doing. in addition to that we do participate in community activities, if in villages they are having a party or some function. we go and help them out and any arrangements that they want to do, you know we participate in those. so for example last year during the summer vacation there were a lot of village festivals that were there. every village had a festival. so we did go, we did establish a stall for us we made a stall for indian snacks. so we distributed indian snacks to them. so we gave them some decorations, some carpets and stuff. with any assistance they needed we helped them with that. sometimes the smallest of gestures can go a long way to improving local relations. a spontaneous project run by the irish battalion demonstrates this: another one, we did just last week, because there was a fire in the church at ayn ibli. smoke damage, the crib caught fire. it was bad smoke damage. no structural damage but they wanted us to do something. so we went down there, sent our fire brigade and we cleaned the place and they were delighted with that. and things like that then, you know, with the local population you gain support for why we’re here. and we always hammer home the message we are here to monitor and support and assist you, and that’s our job. and we can do it very well through cimic. this kind of activity is not restricted to the less wealthy battalions for example, the spanish and french run language courses; the italians teach pizza making; and the koreans run taekwondo classes. these activities are again an important vehicle through which battalions can engage with the local population and show their human face. another feature of cimic activities run by some battalions, are public information sessions on the blue line. as discussed in chapter three, the blue line is still a relatively new concept for 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  b,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  h ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   the lebanese and in the unmarked areas is easily crossed. the indian battalion run evening briefing sessions for shepherds and farmers on a bi-monthly basis to educate them about the blue line so that they are able to avoid committing a violation. the meeting is another opportunity for civilian engagement: what happens is also…this meeting is not just for passing one-way information. it’s for two-way information. they give their point of view and they tell us their problems. so whatever is within our capacity, we help them out with it. the cimic activities of unifil battalions are designed to promote good relations between the peacekeeping troops and civilians. the consent of the local population is essential in order for unifil to carry out its duties according to the mandate. the primary purpose of these services is to obtain local consent in order to ensure the safety and security of unifil troops as they conduct their patrols. as well as providing humanitarian services to the local community, cimic activities afford unifil battalions on the ground an opportunity to engage with the local population to build trust, obtain local intelligence and effect some influence over local observance of the blue line. challenges	
  faced	
  and	
  lessons	
  learned	
  	
   this thesis thus far has highlighted many of the positive aspects of the issue of time in unifil’s work in terms of local knowledge, building trusted relationships and working consistently towards long-term goals. but as noted in the introduction, time is a double-edged sword. one negative aspect is that local councils and civilians now have high expectations of what unifil can do for them. the local population have become very savvy about knowing what they can get from unifil battalions. there’s an element to it – your cheque book – of course, i mean, i’ve gone to meetings where they can be very dour toward my battalion commander. when they 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  b,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   find out i am cimic, they start smiling – and really. so you have to be careful of that. there is a great deal of appreciation amongst the local population for the work that unifil conduct with civilians, but as noted above, there are a number of issues that cimic officers and caos face in the course of their work liaising with the population. they are: high local expectations, corruption, wastage, demonstrating impartiality and transparency and maintaining relationships over time. the more serious challenge for cimic officers is forging relationships with villages that are unfriendly towards unifil. civilians are all too aware that unifil has money to spend and many municipalities will not hesitate to ask for it, or try to play off one battalion over another: i’ve been to a lot of meetings over the last three weeks where “unifil have promised us this, unifil have promised us that, the irish have promised us this, the italians have promised us that.” you know what i mean… so when you go into a mayors meeting, they are keen to see what you’re going to do, but you can’t just hand it out. you have to ensure that there’s a proper structure going into projects and again that they are sustainable and that the village really need it you know? it has become sort of competition now. if you look at the sort of projects being undertaken in the european areas, ok with all their money yes. and so sometimes they feel we are not doing enough. another key issue for cimic is ensuring that they do not create more tension in the local communities by making promises they cannot keep; there is a need for transparency. here the approach to this problem differed between different nationality contingents. the irish battalion were very clear about not over promising and had a strict policy of not making the local municipalities wait around for an answer. this was because they felt it would do their relations with the locals more damage than saying no in the first place. and one of the most important things as well is that you cannot delay on an answer. you either tell them yes or no. well you know, they are hoping, they are hoping and then all of a sudden six months later you tell them no. and that 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  h ,	
  unifil,	
  at-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  h ,	
  unifil,	
  at-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   doesn’t…that’s no good. so if you do decide to do a project, as quickly as you possibly can you have to tell them yes or no. if it’s no, you move on to the next one. if it’s yes then you do the project. and i think there’s nothing worse than dragging a situation out. because it doesn’t improve relations. the ghanaians however, did not see this is as a problem as long as they were clear with the local municipality about what was happening: sometimes my commander wants to meet a mayor or a mukhtar, we go and they tell you, “we have this problem, we don’t have street lights in the community and the night is very dark. we’ve put in this request for the past years and nothing has happened and you keep coming and we have the same problem. we don’t know what you are doing.” so sometimes it’s frustrating but we are able to explain to them and they take it, they understand. so we explain that we are limited in whatever help we can give, it is limited and they know…some of them we tell them to their face that this one is beyond our battalion. we are forwarding the request to the force hq. and so whatever response will come we will communicate to them. so we keep going and in a diplomatic way, tell them it is still being considered. and so when the time comes if it is approved, we will communicate it to them. and that is how it goes. it is very likely that the irish, as a european battalion, experience higher expectations from the local population compared to the ghanaians. as noted previously, the local population understand the limitations of the non-eu battalions and as such, it is possible that the ghanaian strategy works, simply because they are ghanaian. if the spanish or another wealthier battalion employed that approach, it would not work because locals would assume they were lying and that they simply did not wish to spend the money. maintaining relationships is an on-going concern, not least because of constant troop rotations. to maintain the relationship. sometimes it is even i mean more tough than to set up the relationship. because it’s quite demanding you know? when you have set up relations with someone and then you have to set up relations with other authority and then go ahead in other villages, other municipalities and other provinces, districts etc. you have to maintain these relations with the same level of quality in the same time and it’s sometimes its very tough. so the holding phase is fundamental. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  h ,	
  unifil,	
  al-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  m,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   the issue of constant rotations was also frustrating to local civilians, particularly those who wanted to maintain good relations with unifil peacekeepers. this frequent rotations hurts the relations a lot. because as soon as you make relations with someone they disappear and you have to start from zero. cimic and caos have to also be very careful of ensuring that the money they approve for a project, is actually going to last into the future and is useful. avoiding corruption is important. [s]ometimes what happens in the past is when a garbage truck might have been provided and then sold on by the municipality – so you have to be careful about things like that. a further issue is ensuring projects benefit the maximum number of people in a village. this requirement is keenly felt owing to unifil’s experience of receiving project proposals that in fact are for the benefit of members of municipal council only. in one village the mayor asked for a public park and he told them “we want it here”. and it ended up that this ‘here’ was near his own house and it ended up this public park was a garden for him! the cimic team will go down to the villages, speak with the community leaders within the communities. they would then tell us what their priorities are. but their priorities may not be what we think is very important for them. basically we look at what will benefit the general population and not individuals or whatever. so when it comes to, let’s say, provision of potable water, renovation of schools and those things. those are what we think should be the priority and not renovating a mayors house and those things. so these projects will benefit the entire population and not individuals so those are the things we look out for. officers also need to avoid wastage and duplication. one good example is the incidence of solar lights, which have been installed in a good number of villages in south lebanon (as previously there was no lighting at night). one local municipality who had not yet received solar lights 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  r,	
  civilian,	
  wazzani,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  h ,	
  unifil,	
  at-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   decided that it would be a good idea to ask for them when a cao came along to assess the village needs: we went to a village in sector east called abu qamerah – it’s a really tiny village. and it’s mostly christian. it’s only christian. and there is no municipality there. so i went to visit the mukhtar…i asked him, “what do you think that you need in this village?” he said, “you know this solar system street lamps?” he saw it in so many places, he liked the idea so he said “i want this kind of things”. now before i went there i did my homework, to see what it is, how many people do they have in this village. there are only people living in this village! and i told him, “would you mind if we walk together on the streets, just to see?” he said “no come on”, and i saw on the streets, there are on each electrical pole, two lamps! i told him where will you put the solar system lamps? you see you don’t even have place for them. in addition, you don’t have big number of people here. i can buy you, from my pocket – this light – you know what this torch. it costs $ . so i give you $ and you can buy for each person, a torch for light! and think about a different project that will benefit for you. this will not be a benefit! another example is the building of public parks. in the early days of the new mandate there was a tendency to build public parks, at the request of the village mayors. as shown in the national chapter, owing to absenteeism mayors often do not have a good idea of the needs of their village. as a result, when caos or cimic asks them what the village needed, they often request a public park. as i drove around the area of operations, i was conscious of seeing a great many public parks, but they were rarely, if ever being used. unifil has learned to avoid spending their money in this way. we really look at the requirements as far as the population is concerned. we can go in for large projects where we make say a playground. it is there obviously but it is hardly being used. we can look at building say a football ground – but is it being used by locals? to a very limited extent it might be during the summer, for maximum maybe an hour a day or something. but if you look at an activity, where you give them medical cover or you give them veterinary aid, this is really very important as far as the shepherds of my area is concerned. then it really goes a long way in helping them. [h]ave you been to shebaa? you know this hospital – this never working hospital? well above it is the public park made by unifil...you have a public park. it’s bullshit, wasting money, wasting efforts and nobody will benefit from it. but the local authorities said, we want public park. now, since that time, my idea was in this area we don’t need public park. every house is a public park here. because every house has a garden here. we are not in city here, it’s not tyre. it’s a village 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  e,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  july	
   .	
   	
   	
   and in each village you have the house near it and there is a small garden at least. so why do you need a park for? you can make a barbecue in it, you can let your kids play, whatever. if you take care of your garden, then you can use it as public park for your family. and if you don’t take care for your own garden, you are not going to take care for the public park! so that’s why i was against this idea, and we had so many bad examples about public parks. at the local level, just as at the international level, demonstrating impartiality is crucial to avoid isolating certain groups. in the context of cimic activities, the process of managing this issue is fairly straightforward. officers track the projects completed in each village to ensure that each village receives an equal number of projects. we have to look at where the money has gone in the past and you know, you have to spread that money out. and if i look at a spreadsheet and say well- yeah. they are pretty much all the same. we try to keep a balance – there might be one or two that have a few more. we have as now, we have ten villages in our area. so we make it as a rule that every week, or a few villages every two weeks, a doctor or the veterinarian visits each village. we visit all of the area villages every six months, so maybe in every month we do two or three just to cover for all twenty. because when you do for one and you don’t do for another it’s a problem. of course, certain villages will have been more damaged than others or simply their needs are greater. as unifil have to evaluate each case on the tripartite criteria mentioned above, this does mean that some villages will receive more than others and it can lead to resentment towards unifil. however, the aim is to ensure that all the villages in the assigned area of a battalion receive a similar level of attention. where this plan can go wrong is if a village mayor is opposed to unifil’s presence and refuses to meet with cimic to discuss projects on the village. i have villages in the ao. there’s two villages that wouldn’t have had any projects, or have had very little projects in the last number of years, so obviously they are a priority. and whether that’s because, they didn’t wish to speak. sometimes you’d try and book appointments with the mayors and all of a sudden they don’t show up, or they cancel. and you can’t get in there to have that actual 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  j,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  b,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  u,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   discussion to say, you know, “we’re here to help, we’re here to support, and we’re here assist you. and is there something that we can do – maybe that we can help?” the problem for unifil battalions when this happens is that the lack of communication between unifil and the village can evolve into a security problem for the battalion. but other villages, if they don’t engage with you, then you can’t do anything. so i think they know that. one of the villages –sadata - that just wouldn’t engage with us. they just wouldn’t and as a result the cimic projects are very low…. it’s just something i need to be aware of as a cimic officer. constantly trying to engage and if they say, no no no then you can’t do anything for them… and that then sometimes causes a problem operationally in that it’s a no-go area. incidents happening there with local people. this issue is at the heart of the civilian engagement work that unifil do. simply put, if unifil are unable to conduct patrols in a secure environment, then they cannot in effect do the work they are there to do. a local christian civilian who runs a pharmacy in one of the towns provided an example of how local politicians unfriendly to unifil work as gatekeepers to ensure that the local population in ‘hostile villages’ do not engage with unifil. not in all the villages they have the opportunity to contact with people because there is restrictions unfortunately. some people, some towns, prohibit, if we can say this, the unifil to contact directly with the people without the intervention of the municipality. i had a bad experience in this. because one time, once, a woman came to me from a town nearby, and she told me that she has sick cats. and she want me to talk to the spanish veterinarian to go and consult to see them and give them the medicine. and i have good relation with the medical staff as i said. i contact with the veterinarian that was here, and i sent him to her. when the chief of municipality knew they make a big problem with me, and the veterinarian. they said to me: “who told you to send this guy directly to this woman? you are making a big problem because there will be a danger for them if they go to the town without our company and something like that, blah blah blah.” then i get embarrassed in front of the veterinarian, in front of myself, because i did not know all these complications. you know, and this town is shi’a and unfortunately i am saying this. because they said: “if someone will make harm to the veterinarian who will be the responsible. you must go through us, to accompany them to go to the house of this woman and to protect them.” yes. this was my bad experience and from that time i did not interfere with anybody. they forbid to me have the sense of helping people. i was shocked. really. this is embarrassing. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  h ,	
  unifil,	
  at-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  p,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   in these cases, where the personal opinion of the mayor dictates that a village has limited or no contact with unifil, i was informed that this did not necessarily extend to the local opinion of the population. rather it is a political decision that is enforced upon the population of the villages. it’s political unfortunately yes. because in the towns of the muslim area, there are political parties, hizbullah and amal, you know. and these laws are from this part, i think. in contrast in the christian area, there is no political parties that are governing the mentality of the people. everybody can do what he wants, without restrictions, without of course, in some limits, that he will not violate the general security of the town, but i don’t need to go to the municipality to get the permission to get the spanish people in my house, for example. but a woman from tibnin needs that. you know? unfortunately. yes. and it puts barrier. even when they are going to make the medical visit, every week? they need the permission of the municipality of the towns. the people have the confidence in unifil. they like to contact with unifil, but they don’t dare. to say it loudly. you understand me? everybody love the blue helmets but they don’t dare to say it. you know because all the unifil have good reputation, they don’t differentiate between muslim and christian. they treat them almost equally. unifil are extremely conscious of the fact they are guests in lebanon and operating under a chapter vi mandate. as such it is impossible for them to force themselves on a local community. where it has not been possible to make contact with a village, there is little than can be done and the area remains off-limits. for cimic and caos, the challenge then is always to keep trying to get through to a village where the municipality is not in favour of unifil to try and turn the relationship around. there are cases where battalions have been successful in doing so but the factor of importance here was the length of time the battalion were in the area: when we came initially we realised that there were one or two communities that were not too welcoming of un persons. not because it’s ghanbatt, but they have the perception that unifil in general. so they were not in favour of us, and i think one of them, as of now, we have not been able to make a contact with their mayor or mukhtar or whatever, because of this perception. but i am happy to note that there is one, and i can mention it – ayt al-shab – it’s predominantly hizbullah dominated ok, initially it was a no-go area at all for ghanbatt. but with persistence, we managed to get a mayor, to talk to him and i think after we sat down and had a lengthy chat with my commander and the cimic team and now their doors are open and we are always welcome. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  p,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   however, the material nature of the services offered by cimic can lead to a situation whereby locals take what they can get from unifil without actually building a trustful relationship. they accept them, within like … “i am a civilian. i am happy with unifil as long they are doing humanitarian services, they are socialising, they are visiting me for tea or coffee. but if they are seeking information, or going to places where they are not supposed to go, i turn against them.” i’ll give you an example, like in blat village. the village is under the spanish, we have like the litani river nearby, it’s outside unifil border[area of operations]. the litani is known place for the hizbullah, or the armed elements, whatever you want to say. so people they know that, the spanish, if they want to carry out patrols they should go to the border yes? so the moment they feel that they are coming, they try to give signals to the people, that say “don’t encourage them, don’t let them go, try to stop them”. you feel that if there is a movement for the hizbullah, they try to make sure that the unifil vehicles are not there. if they know that they are monitoring from one place, they make sure that as long as the patrol is there, no one moves. so people cooperate with the unifil to certain extent. and protect their own people in the other way. so they are playing a smart role i can say. the above section has discussed the local engagement of cimic officers as actors at the subnational level. i argue cimic officers demonstrate creativity and spontaneity in their work but are hampered by the factor of time in two ways. first owing to the fast rotations of staff, their approach towards the local population is time-bound and instrumental and the local population have picked up on this. as a result they have high expectations of the material benefits unifil can offer which can lead to misappropriation or tension when battalions cannot or will not deliver, and which does not necessarily lead to building a trustful relationship. those civilians that do wish to build a sincere relationship with unifil peacekeepers are prevented from doing so because of the short time they are there. nonetheless, cimic officers need to be in constant liaison with civilians in the villages to ensure that issues do not go unresolved. if they do not, then they run the risk of encountering problems with the locals which they need to avoid at all costs. however, where through persistence, some battalions have managed to overcome village suspicions about their intentions. this is not something that can be achieved overnight and the long-term presence of the same nationality battalions in the same area has enabled some breakthroughs. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   civil	
  affairs	
   as noted above, the course of civilian relations does not always run smooth. as a result, it is locally employed staff in the form of civil affairs officers (caos) who try to prevent (first and foremost) and then manage problems between the local population and battalions. the role of civil affairs is to: liaise between the local population and unifil to ensure that the message of unifil’s mandate is clearly conveyed to the population at every level; ensure that any problems or misunderstandings on the ground are prevented or resolved as quickly as possible; and convey public concerns about unifil back to unifil staff and battalions to avoid future misunderstandings. (there is a fourth role for civil affairs, and that is to assist in building up the authority of the municipal authorities in the area; this has been discussed already in chapter four.) civil affairs exists in part to support cimic services offered by the individual battalions. caos believe it is more important to afford battalions credit for qips to provide them the greatest opportunity to build local relationships with the municipalities. usually battalions who are looking to fund projects from their own national funds will ask civil affairs for their advice on what they think of a project proposal from a village. it is not incumbent on the battalions to listen to the advice of civil affairs, but cimic recognise the department has local knowledge and experience that they themselves lack owing to the constant troop rotations. two characteristics of civil affairs differentiate them from civil military cooperation (cimic). whilst both activities liaise with the local population over service provision and problem resolution, civil affairs’ approach is more social. caos spend a great deal of time simply talking to members of the local population, sometimes about their issues, but sometimes they are simply passing the time of day. they attend local ceremonies, which are common, and which celebrate either local achievements or the completion of a qips project that unifil has sponsored. the second key differentiator is that caos are lebanese civilians (as opposed to military) which 	
   	
   affords them local cultural knowledge which can be essential when problems arise and the long- term nature of their posts means they are able to develop lasting relationships with members of the local population. [w]e have this daily contact with the local people. it starts from building friendly relations. i just go to a shopkeeper and sit with him, to take a cup of coffee. to make friendship with this guy. and through this friendship he starts to talk about the needs of the village or whatever. so i catch it and i discuss it….chat with them about their problems, what they think. all this stuff you can raise it later with the local authority. this shopkeeper might tell you that, you know we have a problem with the sewage system, we don’t have sewage system, we are digging, i don’t know. so we go to the municipality and say, this is the problem. what we can help in solving this problem? in some cases we cannot help, or we can help. but even when we cannot help we will not raise their expectations by telling them, we are going to solve it don’t worry. no, we tell them we cannot solve it. and we think that the best way to solve it is to this, and that….so we teach them how to do it. at least we show them the path to reach how to do this. and this makes us have good relations with these people. civil affairs also help to connect up schools and villagers with the battalions through the use of cultural performances. these are particularly helpful for the poorer battalions who may not be able to fund large-scale projects. even when a charity has donated funds towards a particular project, civil affairs will try to involve a local battalion with the project. for example, in one case they asked the ghanaians to come and give a dancing performance during the handover of new computers for a school. problem	
  prevention	
   caos act as the liaison between the local community and the peacekeeping operation. the use of local civilian staff presents a more informal interface to a population wary of militia and the military and enables caos to interact easily with the local population. they ensure that where possible, problems are resolved or even better, prevented from occurring in the first place. there are three main problems that caos contend with on a regular basis: lack of cultural and religious awareness, troops taking photographs and speeding vehicles. these three issues 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august,	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   generate the most complaints from locals about unifil. they are for the most part caused by the frequent constant troop rotations. some battalions such as the indians, rotate once a year, some like the irish and ghanaians, every six months; and some, such as the spanish every four months. in the course of their work, caos work hard to educate battalions on local religious norms. i am lebanese so i know exactly what is the tradition is, and we transfer this cultural awareness to the military contingents. you see from different countries. you know unifil has countries has troops in this country. so imagine you have cultures, ethnicities. so its not easy job that they are dealing with different culture here. and every months or months or year this contingent is changed, so new soldiers come. old soldiers go and new soldiers come, so we have to begin this process again. because even that those soldiers have some training about cultural awareness in their countries before coming here but having the training is something, and living the reality is something else. you see, so this is the kind of our work. [s]o we have problems, we rotate constantly, new guys the whole time, so then it becomes very difficult. we have to repeat ourselves, mistakes are made the whole time. the first of the most commonly made mistakes by unifil troops is a lack of awareness of religious customs. simply knowing these small details can prevent many unintentional mistakes. misunderstandings…you know here they occur mostly at ramadan times and all these people who drink these things…and i don’t blame them because they don’t know and we keep teaching them you know? the second issue that caos are on the alert for relates to a political issue. the population of the south are extremely sensitive about foreigners taking photographs of the area. this issue is connected to the mandate’s local/international legitimacy gap and the perceived political preferences of european troops. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august,	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october,	
   .	
   	
   	
   political and religious beliefs do influence local perceptions of unifil. owing to the demographics of the region, the high number of shi’a in the region mean that there exists a crucial conflict of interests for many in terms of their relationship with unifil. this research identified a difference in attitudes towards unifil amongst the civilian population. those differences were not simply a shia/christian split, but can be broken-down further to reflect the different views of the shi’a population. those shi’a who belonged to the shi’ite political party, amal were more vocal in their support of unifil compared to those aligned with hizbullah. levels of support for hizbullah also varies between the population, many shi’a are committed followers, others less so. in interviews, shi’a tended to be less effusive about unifil than the christians, and more sceptical about their ‘true’ intentions. this reflects the beliefs of hizbullah who argue that has been constructed to benefit israel more than it does lebanon. otherwise, they argue, why is unifil not on both sides of the line? this idea comes across in shi’a respondent discourse on unifil, whereas it is absent from christian discussions of unifil. however, the extent of true and unflinching support amongst locals for hizbullah is impossible to gauge because of the overriding desire for peace that exists amongst southern people. i received the impression that sometimes respondents spoke the discourse of resistance, but they were more concerned to maintain the peace which they know that unifil can assist with far more than hizbullah. that is to say, that ultimately it will not be unifil who starts another war; hizbullah can provide no such guarantees. as such it is possible that respondents speak the language of resistance, but unless israel was to launch an unprovoked attack, they would prefer that hizbullah do not engage in provocative manoeuvres that could trigger another invasion. this is the mentality of the people. like ok, they don’t encourage hizbullah to provoke, but or to create the troubles or clashes because this will have a bad effect on them. but at the same time they don’t accept that people like, they will never encourage that you will tell where are they, where they gather, where their positions. they just give a blank about any information they ask in this regard. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   the hizbullah perspective is that any foreigners taking photos in the area of operations poses a security risk (tourists included), because if they were to pass into the hands of israel they would provide important strategic geographical information. when foreign troops take photos of the region many in the local population view the risk as being even more severe. therefore many of the shi’a, have a fundamental lack of trust in unifil soldiers who come from states that are friendly to israel. civilian respondents expressed their belief that troops from these countries can and do pass security information on to israel. [t]hey are always afraid of unifil because they think that maybe they will take photographs and information and give it to israel. this is the only thing that they are scared of. and this is the only thing that they don’t trust in unifil. as long as they don’t touch their own people, their own roots, they have no problem. but the moment they feel that, “ok they are like cooking for something”, they turn against. the local shi’a population in many places will be friendly and welcoming to unifil, but the bottom line is, they are suspicious that unifil are spying on them. [p]eople in south are very welcoming, but at the same time, some people are just not feel, very comfortable with unifil, maybe... it’s people there they have a long war with israel, so they think that maybe the unifil are there to protect israel, not protect the south. so they will feel not comfortable…they say that they are sure that the unifil soldiers are there, to protect israel. as a result, the taking of photographs by unifil soldiers is regarded as being highly suspicious by many locals in the population. whilst this is seen as being predominantly a suspicion held by the shi’a, as they comprise around % of the local population, this is not an issue unifil can ignore. unifil officers, both international and national understood very well local sentiment and do not have a problem with it because they appear to understand where it comes from. [y]ou know, people can be sympathisers they don’t have to be activists. so for me…they’re all sympathisers with hizbullah like, i mean you know the country i come from, i come from ireland. we had our own internal problems you know. i know lots of people who are sympathisers with the ira, but that doesn’t mean they have a weapon in their hands. but they’re nationalists, i know i grew up in this 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  l,	
  civilian,	
  at-­‐tiri,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   environment. so for me it’s not a problem. i see the local lebanese in the south, i know where their loyalties are. they don’t have to explain to me, it’s not a problem for me. it doesn't mean they are a raving hizbullah guy who wants to go running over the hill like. it doesn’t mean that. [support for hizbullah] this is in their blood…i don’t see these people will give them up. because in every single house you have someone who is killed. it is not easy to inhale the wound. as a result, unifil officers demonstrated sensitivity towards complaints from local municipalities and civilians on the issue of photo taking and caos consistently remind battalions not to do it. in every battalion compound i visited, there was a sign at the main gate instructing soldiers not to take photographs. unifil officers explained why it still happens: [b]ecause our guys, some of them it’s like a bit of military tourism. the guys are only over here for six months, it’s a big deal, they want to take photographs and take them home. but the people in the south are very sensitive to this because they feel, again it’s the perceptions. they feel if we are taking photographs, we are sending them to the israelis. and they feel that their house, will be in the next bombing raid, in the next war and that it will be destroyed. so i can understand where the local people are coming from, very clearly you know? we always lecture our people we tell them don’t take photos. you see it’s not an easy job, you have people from all different cultures. i understand the poor italian who comes here, i understand this poor european who comes here or anyone from asia. when he see in the morning a woman hitting the donkey to go and get the harvesting and all this, he want to take a photo and send it to his mum. and say “look mum where i am”. and innocent people. but these people, when they see camera they are sensitive to this. but the poor guy… we get report from a mayor, he say ‘please your people, we need the camera are you spying for israel?’ this one of the things you know? but we keep making our people aware about this. one further issue that unifil caos are concerned about is speeding vehicles on the local roads. apcs are heavy and sometimes can damage local roads which upsets the locals. in addition, all the civilians i interviewed listed speeding as one of the main problems with unifil troops. unifil are aware of this issue: 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
   	
   oh yes, i will tell you. my main worry is car accident. our apcs are very heavy if we smash a family in a car, kill them all. this is one of the things i am afraid of. you know the main ones [problems] are running into the villagers with our big trucks. [t]hey are not sometimes comfortable with our vehicles - the size of the vehicles through their villages. yes sometimes they complain about that. you know their roads are very tiny, so sometimes they complain that the size of the vehicle on that road will damage the route. so they complain about that and sometimes too on rare occasions they talk about speed. when you think on some of their roads, their children play so… unifil are very aware of the disruption the constant patrolling causes to the daily lives of villagers. in fact most villagers did not seem to mind it as it made them feel more secure. but patrolling in areas unfriendly to unifil needs to be done with care to avoid causing further friction. ensuring that the apcs do not regularly go through narrow or damaged roads is regarded as important. cultural	
  sensitivity	
   aside from religious misunderstandings and the suspicions that some locals hold towards european troops, the issue of communication style is also very important on the ground. at the personal level, some civilians found certain battalions easier to deal with than others. [b]ecause face-to-face, especially here in the middle east, i think it’s very important. when they trust you as a person, they will trust the whole mission. you know it’s important that the individual relationship that you may have with someone is paramount. in general, the personal characteristics of asian battalions were more popular than that of the europeans. many civilians spoke of the respectful nature of asian battalions, their friendliness and their shared values, such as family ties and hospitality towards guests. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a ,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  u,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  j,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   the indians, they have the oriental habits, traditions and for the locals here, their traditions are similar. and there are some common things between the people here… the relations between the family, they are stronger than the europeans. they are similar to the middle east – the indians i mean. the indians, they are very good. they are like, very friendly, the have almost the same culture as we have, same family ties and things like that. you don’t feel that there is a difference between you and them, and you have the same way of thinking also. with the norwegians in the beginning we used to feel a big gap between our way of thinking and their way of thinking. they are nice people [the koreans]. they highly respect the traditions and the culture of the village. they take good care of this part in the relations, to respect the culture and the traditions. usually the asian approach is a very respectful one. you know the asian system, so they are different to the europeans. the europeans face a far harder time in the area of operations. they already have to deal with the fact that many civilians view them as spies for israel, but in addition their mannerisms have often given offence. the european are very straightforward, they don’t ah, try to bend the rules. the asians, sometimes they work by their emotions and their sympathies. sometimes they bend the rules. but europeans they don't. people of this area are more friendly with the non-europeans because according to what they say, some of the soldiers of the european countries deal with them arrogantly. “they come to talk to us as if they are smarter than us. or they are giving us charity. we don’t need their charity and we are smarter than them. we succeeded to overcome israel which is the strongest army in the middle east.” one cimic officer raised this issue as a concern for unifil troops. the military operations can reflect the cultural differences…northern european are more direct, you know, are more, serious when they approach someone. even though they are the best, warm and simple person. southern people like me, i am from the south of italy…we do move our hands a lot when we talk, we smile a lot, and we are more friendly, but it doesn’t mean we are easy people. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  d,	
  civilian,	
  hebbariyah,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  june	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  z,	
  civilian,tayrdebba,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august,	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  c,	
  civilian,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august,	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  m,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   one cao commented on the need for the europeans in particular to avoid coming across as arrogant. yeah, for example passing by in the patrol and throwing chocolate for the kids. this is very bad. if you to give [it] to them, stop your patrol and give it by hand. and shake hands with the kid. this is the way to give help. even if it’s charity. if you want to give them a bottle of water, don’t throw it from the window or off the top of the vehicle. this is arrogant. from the local perspective there is even a hierarchy of preference amongst the different european battalions: [t]hey feel more comfortable with non-european soldiers. now among the non- european soldiers, they prefer to deal with the italians rather than with the french and spanish. you see even in this you have categories. because they consider the most arrogant of the europeans is the french. this is their feeling. and then after the french comes the spanish. for asian peacekeepers, local sympathy is a distinct advantage: well to be very frank i will say that the threats especially to our battalion are very low. very low as compared to that of the europeans. [y]ou know, in india we have a system, it means anybody who is a guest, he is a god. so we treat them that way. similarly you know people over here also have a good attitude towards the guests. we share that cultural link. so that helps in a way to actually bond with them well. so that helps us. due to security concerns, the spanish in particular have experienced more problems than other european battalions. as noted by ruffa ( ) in her paper on the security concerns of unifil troops, the spanish, have been affected by past experience of other peacekeeping missions. civilians in the south explained to me that the spanish adopted an attitude at the beginning of their time in the mission that came across to locals as aggressive. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august,	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  t,	
  unifil,	
  qlayaa,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  b,	
  unifil,	
  blat,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
  	
   	
  ruffa,	
  'what	
  peacekeepers	
  think	
  and	
  do:	
  an	
  exploratory	
  study	
  of	
  french,	
   ghanaian,	
  italian,	
  and	
  south	
  korean	
  armies	
  in	
  the	
  united	
  nations	
  interim	
  force	
  in	
  lebanon'.	
   	
   	
   once i was on taybeh road, the village called taybeh, i met the spanish battalion patrol. it was the beginning of the arrival in the area. i felt surprised that all the vehicles were still military colour it was not, painted with white. and they had assaulting guns, not defensive guns…the unifil that i used to know before, they were very friendly. but those spanish on their first arrival, they were very aggressive with us. and unfortunately until now the spanish still making this mistake. european troops may well be under greater threat than non-european troops as far as their security is concerned. however, it is important for unifil peacekeepers to adapt their behaviour and remember that they are in a civilian area and not a war zone. caos try to ameliorate this issue by first, reassuring the community that all troops are under unifil and the united nations flag; they are not representing their individual countries. secondly, cao are frank with battalions when they feel they have behaved insensitively towards the local population, as the example of how the spanish behaved at a local school for children with special-needs shows. let me tell you something. i recently met up with the force commander who is spanish, we went to a school which is for kids with special needs. ok and the guy who performed the entertainment is an officer of the spanish battalion. i was shocked to see that the soldiers who are coming to the performance, they are coming to the school with their pistols on their belt. come on. kids with special needs, coming inside the classrooms with your pistol? i can understand you have soldiers outside with their guns outside the school. but inside the school, inside the room, playing with the kids and your pistol is on your belt. and i told the spanish commander, “i told him this is unacceptable. if i were the principal of the school i would kick you out.”… now i cannot tell the officer, get out with your pistol. but i can report to his boss that this is not good for your relations. i gave you the good and bad side of the story. they are doing something great, they are making an entertainment performance, magic games and all this stuff. with your pistol on your side? come on! and with your uniform, ok your uniform i understand. you are a soldier. but carrying a pistol in a school with kids for special needs? in light of their suspicions about european troops, locals always complained about european troops taking photos and not the non-european troops. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  q,	
  civilian,	
  marja’youn,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   it was some separate cases some of the units behaviours were not that good. mainly the western europeans, the french, spanish and italians. in some villages, they exceeded their limits, for example taking pictures in some places, some sensitive places. and they were taking pictures in an environment that follows hizbullah, and people here have a high security sense. so this created so many problems in different places…and it was made to clear to them by hizbullah that you are welcome to do your work here, but your work is limited to the mandate which you have according to . and you should not exceed it. and this does not include taking pictures of our houses. the issue of the behaviour of battalions is important in an area of the world where personal relationships are paramount. caos, as noted previously are aware of this issue and work hard to sensitise troops to the problem. it is however impossible to eradicate the problem as each nation state has its own style of communication and deportment that comes from national character and military training. sometimes, battalions are simply loved for their personal style which other nationalities cannot mimic. you know what the difference is? the indonesian battalion for example, smile and wave at the people as they go past! they smile and wave. the experience of this researcher can attest to this. once whilst driving along a deserted road in sector east, members of the spanish contingent drove past at high speed and ignored me and my driving companion. five minutes later on the same road, an indonesian battalion drove past, slowed down, smiled and waved at us. there is no doubt it left a very different impression from the battalion that had passed by minutes before. whilst the issue of cultural compatibility may seem a frivolous factor to focus on in terms of its power to inform local perceptions of peacekeepers, it is not. firstly because of the importance attributed to face-to-face contact in the region, and secondly because of its potential to turn a bad situation into a serious security incident as the following section demonstrates. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  z,	
  civilian,tayrdebba,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  may	
   .	
   	
   	
   the above section has discussed the role caos play in attempting to prevent problems with the population. in doing so they demonstrate sensitivity to local concerns which is crucial for the successful management of issues when they arise amongst the local population. the next section describes how caos solve problems when they occur and how the autonomy of caos enables them to be creative and spontaneous in their dealings with civilians on the ground. problem	
  solving	
   the	
  spanish	
  bus	
  crash	
   on a cold winter’s morning in sector east, a unifil cao was instructed to go to marja’youn, a small town in sector east with a mixed christian and muslim population. there had been a bus accident in the centre of marja’youn between a spanish apc and a bus full of schoolchildren. when the cao arrived on the scene, he found an angry mob surrounding the spanish apc which included hizbullah. senior lebanese army officers were present but they had been unable to control the crowd and prevent them from encircling the apc. the crowd had blocked off the apc through the use of parked cars in order to prevent it from leaving the area. the spanish troops were outside the apc with their weapons cocked. making the situation far worse than it already was, were the cultural misunderstandings between the locals and the spanish. i reached there, there were apcs and local people put, a civilian car in front and behind each vehicle to prevent them from moving and they want the driver of the apc. why? now you see the difference in culture. here in lebanon, if a car accident occurs and there are wounded people what do people do usually? they do not wait for the ambulance, they just take the wounded people to the hospital. the spanish culture is, that you are not allowed to touch the wounded people you wait for the ambulance until it comes and then the ambulance will take you. and the accident occurred with a school bus. ten wounded children, shouting in the bus, blood coming in their faces… and the soldiers not allowing anybody to approach the bus. the situation was also aggravated by spanish security precautions which meant they were using technology that jams all the mobile phones around the apc - a precaution most european troops use to avoid remote detonation of ieds on the roads they patrol. so locals who had tried 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   to call ambulances had been unable to get through. the situation was turning nasty. as noted by the respondent: i reached there, everybody was shouting. laf can’t prevent people from approaching the apcs. soldiers on the apcs, their finger on the trigger, they are afraid because any wrong move might lead to a massacre out there. the outcome of this incident was in fact a very positive one. and this can in no small way be attributed to the skill and dexterity with which the civil affairs officer diffused the situation. it demonstrates how invaluable the presence of local staff are to a unifil mission. i reached there and i know the people of the area and i know who is leading them. the guy of hizb is leading them. “we want the driver who wounded our children.” i told them, “i am the unifil civil affairs officer, my name is… you know me as a reporter, now i am unifil, and those kids are my kids, you trust me or you don’t trust me?” they said, “we trust you.” i said, “ok. i will be with you until we solve the problem. what we need now is to provide medical help for the kids. isn’t it?” they said yes. i said, “ok, i will remain with you until you receive confirmation from unifil that your kids will be treated on our account. regardless of who is responsible for the accident, those are kids.” here i have to take the initiative. first of all to prevent contact between soldiers of unifil and the local people. because any contact might lead to a massacre. i told them “the first thing now is to see the military here go from here. let them leave, and if you trust me, i will stay with you.” and they allowed the spanish troops to leave. so i diffused the tension. now also i am a un officer, so i can be a hostage in this case. so how to solve it? laf intelligence was there, i told them, is it possible to stay here in the winter on the street? it started to rain, let’s go to laf office. it’s our partner. as if i brought them to my office. so in laf office i know i won’t be taken hostage. the outcome was that the spanish embassy in lebanon covered all the costs for the wounded children in hospital. it should be noted that the cao at the time had no way of knowing this. he simply knew he had to take the initiative himself in order to prevent what would have been a disaster for unifil in terms of retaining local consent to operate in the area. so regardless of who is responsible about the accident, we should help because this is very important to us. and the accident did not happen with a small car, it’s an apc it’s like a tank so they must drive more carefully. and the tank hit the bus in the middle. you see, this is confidence-building. to take a courageous decision at 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   a crucial time, in a crucial situation, you have to take the initiative….by the end of it the local people were kissing my hand. personal experience of unifil troops plays a big part in civilian views of unifil, highlighting again the importance of making contact with as many people as possible. those who had good experiences with unifil were full of praise for them. this suggests that politico-religious prejudices can be overcome to a large extent simply by building relationships. it also suggests that those municipalities who forbid their villagers from making contact with unifil are all too aware of this. syrian	
  refugees	
   another example of cao creativity and spontaneity relates to the current influx of syrian refugees into the area of operations. unifil is unable to directly provide assistance to the refugees, other than allowing them to use the free medical and dental services that the battalions offer. in the area of shebaa, the population are sunni muslims, and as many of the refugees fleeing syria are sunni, they have gravitated to shebaa. a cao related to me the story of how he helped resolve the problem the local mayor was having in regard to the sudden influx of syrian refugees into his town. look now we have a very crucial issue. the syrian refugees. it’s not in our mandate and we don’t have the right to interfere. but, in the sector east area, we have a lot of them – in shebaa, in kfar shuba, so how to help the local authorities without violating our mandate? how to do it? … when this wave of refugees came to shebaa one of my contacts called me. “hundreds of syrians are coming to our village! we don’t have food, we don't have place”… so i went up there to assess the situation. it happened that my friend, is the adviser of minister of social affairs. i called my friend i told him, you should have an emergency situation here, this is the case in shebaa and they need help. and i was talking with this guy in front of the deputy mayor. my friend said, “within a few minutes somebody will call you on behalf of the ministry and you will tell them what is the situation”. while i was sitting with the deputy mayor i received a call from this guy, i told him what’s happening and he said, “during the day we are going to send you help”. and he 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
  whilst	
  refugee	
  numbers	
  are	
  low	
  in	
  the	
  area	
  of	
  operation	
  (as	
  noted	
  previously)	
  they	
  remain	
  a	
  concern	
   particularly	
  in	
  sunni	
  areas	
  as	
  many	
  of	
  those	
  fleeing	
  are	
  sunni	
  and	
  they	
  therefore	
  gravitate	
  towards	
  sunni-­‐ majority	
  towns	
  and	
  villages.	
   	
   	
   sent a truck full of food and blankets and etc from the ministry to shebaa. you see? and the deputy mayor saw that and he was telling to people (that told me later) that “oh this unifil guy he is better than a president. he gave us the direct help in the same day”. now how make other un organisations involved? i called unhcr and i told them “there is this case, and you need to do something”. in the same day, the sent a committee up there, assessed the situation and directly in the same day they send them food and blankets. it was an emergency situation. and they started working and making lists and all this stuff. this kind of assistance goes above and beyond the mandate of unifil staff and it again reflects the autonomous conditions under which caos operate enabling them to be spontaneous and use informal networks in order to respond as quickly as possible to changing circumstances. going	
  beyond	
  the	
  mandate	
   even where problems do not exist, some caos work to assist the population in any way they can irrespective of the constraints of their mandate. they do this because they know that every positive connection or incident contributes to the success of the mission as a whole and helps in building long-term, trusted relationships with the local population. they recognise the importance of relating to the concerns of the local population, because they are lebanese. they demonstrate creativity by assisting local people without having to use unifil resources. one local school benefitted from the media attention a cao generated for them when the headmaster had a problem accommodating all his students in the class. this school, they had an extra number of students and there is no place for them. so what the principal did? he bought containers and put them on top of the roof of the building and made them classrooms. he made windows in them, he put some stove warming the room etc and he made them a classroom. classrooms made of containers. yes, shipping containers. so i went one day and i saw them. why there are containers on the roof of the school? so i went to the principal and i asked him, “what are you doing with these containers?” he said, “i have an extra number of students and you know we are very far village and people are very poor. those who send their kids to a public school are poor people. i am not going to say no for them, there is no place. so, i use my budget. i cannot build a new building but i bought these containers and i made them classroom”. i told him, “are you crazy? in winter you are there are metres above the sea shore and it snows in winter up there. you are putting them in a refrigerator! and unless the student is very close to the stove, the others will feel cold!” he said: “yeah, better them feeling cold than being illiterate”. i told him: “and even during the sunny 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august,	
   .	
   	
   	
   days, it will be very hot, putting them in an oven”. he said “what to do? do you have any other proposal?” i told him, “no, we cannot build this school”. so what i did, through my contacts with journalists, i raised the issue. i made the journalists make reports about it. you see this is the way to help also. you see to push the media to do something. i told a journalist: “you know? i found a very nice story. my god it’s fantastic! can you imagine writing a story about students studying in containers?” he said: “do you have this story?” i said: “yeah i saw it in shebaa! go and see it!” without telling them go and write. this is just to raise their curiosity. and see they did a big story in the newspapers about it. ask for, education even in the containers… you know prophet mohammed, said, “ask for education even in china”. so they used this part of mohammed’s speech: “ask for education even in a container”. and they made a report. and immediately the government was embarrassed and started to make plans to build another floor for the school and it was very good. civil affairs officers are prepared to go down to the micro-level of society to assist one particular individual as this example shows: in one small village called halta, it’s beneath kfar shuba. it's a small village about people. this was a few years ago. i went to this village, just assessment visit. they don’t have municipality because they are under the municipality of kfar shuba, it’s a small village. and they were having celebration. why the celebration? for the first time in the history of this village, a boy succeeded in the public exam of the baccalaureate. so his family doesn’t have money to send him to the university. it is pity, so he had to work as a shepherd. so the whole celebration is bullshit! they celebrate that he succeeded but what else? and of course i cannot help as part of unifil. so i went to the media people. they are my friends, they like me a lot, and i told them: “you can’t imagine how nice this story will be?” and they did the story about it. and this village is a sunni village. so the story was in a newspaper that was for sunnis. so he made a big report about it. and it ended up that bahia hariri, called the reporter asking him about this case, and told him i need his phone number to call him. she called his family and she decided to cover all the expenses of his studies for his university until he finishes. you see? this is a way. people know very well that i send this guy. ok unifil didn’t pay us money but helped us to do something. you see this is another way. civil affairs officers also work to connect up ngos and charities with villages and towns in the area of operations. often civil affairs officers find out the needs of the villages, and they will put them in touch with charities in beirut who are looking to make donations in rural parts of the country that are less developed. in this way, unifil acts as a facilitator and gains recognition for their role in a project without needing to draw on unifil resources. villages have benefited 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  a 	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  october	
   .	
   	
  bahia	
  hariri	
  is	
  the	
  sister	
  of	
  assassinated	
  former	
  prime	
  minister	
  of	
  lebanon,	
  rafiq	
  hariri.	
   	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   from tree planting projects, computers for schools, and bags for school children, funded by charities in beirut whom caos have put them in touch. bridging	
  difficult	
  relationships	
   as noted in chapter four, it is difficult for unifil to engage with all the municipalities as some hold prejudices against the mission. this is often more of a personality issue than a political one. caos have to work to convince the local mayor that unifil is impartial and wants to help. through the use of national charities and ngos, civil affairs also help to build bridges between unifil and the local population. in situations where you have unfriendly municipalities (as noted above), civil affairs can sometimes find a way through in ways that the military – cimic officers – cannot by using local connections and knowledge of local sensibilities. i can give you a fine example in a village called ayn etta. the mayor is hizbullah and i know that he is hizbullah but i don’t know him personally. but i know that he is. i went to meet him and i told him that there is an ngo in beirut that wants to help giving some trees. “are you interested to have trees? because i heard that you have a project of planting i don’t know how many trees in the outskirts of the village?”. he said, “what is this organisation?” i was joking with him! i said, “this is a zionist organisation, why do you care what is this? take the trees, plant them in your area and hide some rockets under them. i don’t mind what it the political affiliation of this organisation. they want to help. you want the help or you don’t want it?”. and he said, “let me think about it”. you know i have my contacts, even with hizbullah. so i told a member of parliament, he is hizbullah, “do you know this guy the mayor of this village?”... the next day the mayor called me and said, “yes, we want this thing.” in facilitating this project, the civil affairs officer managed to build up a relationship with a mayor of a village who otherwise would have rejected contact with unifil. now thanks to this project, unifil are able to visit the municipality and maintain relations with them. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  k,	
  unifil,	
  naqoura,	
  south	
  lebanon,	
   	
  august	
   .	
   	
   	
   conclusion	
   this chapter has described how unifil influences its security environment at the local level by maintaining civilian consent for the mission. it has shown how cimic and caos use qips to build relationships with the local population and how caos train peacekeeping troops in cultural awareness and are at the frontline when problems arise for unifil with the local population. this chapter has also shown how the local population has agency which can constrain unifil officers by preventing contact with certain villages which potentially poses a security risk to peacekeeping troops. unifil also have to control for corruption, wastage and duplication when financing projects. local politics and historical memory of previous invasions has also taught the local population to maintain a plurality in their dealings with unifil. whilst the majority will engage with unifil and are friendly towards them; at the same time they retain their loyalty towards hizbullah. this means that unifil have not always secured the trust of the local population over and above local resistance movements. as a chapter vi mission, unifil need to maintain the cooperation and consent of the local population through persuasion and not coercion. i argue that actors at the subnational level influence unifil’s local security environment by building and maintaining regular and face-to- face contact with the local population. the factors of time helps caos to build long-standing relationships with the civilian population. local knowledge and the fact of their being lebanese means that caos speak to members of local society at all levels, from tobacco workers to mayors. the autonomy with which they work enables caos in particular to be spontaneous and contingent when problem solving in situations of tension between unifil peacekeepers and the local population. in addition, caos demonstrate creativity when assisting the local population in all areas of their life, especially when they are unable to help them within the framework of their role within unifil. caos in particular go beyond their mandate to help the local population and as a result are appreciated for genuinely caring about the area which wins them support across all the religions. however, unifil also have to be aware of cao power and influence in 	
   	
   the community. the lack of locally-run, home-grown conflict resolution projects suggest that there is a risk that local civil affairs officers are failing to take the initiative of helping civilians build their own organisations. this issue is explored more deeply in the conclusion, but in the course of conducting my research i detected an element of patriarchy on more than one occasion in terms of unifil being the provider of all resources and civilians the willing recipients. cimic officers also demonstrate creativity in assisting the populations, particularly the poorer battalions who use their cultural strengths (such as dance and yoga) to engage with the local population when there is no money for projects. however, the swift rotation of troops, particularly european troops, prevents the development of trust between peacekeepers and the local population. as such, there appears to be more of an instrumental quality to the relationship between cimic officers and the local population. this is not necessarily a negative for unifil but it does highlight the fact that money alone cannot win hearts and minds. maintaining local consent is a crucial aspect of the security environment for any peace operation if it is to succeed, and the unifil mission appears to have been effective in this regard. this in turn enables the mission to meet its primary objective, the maintenance of international peace and security. 	
   	
   conclusion	
   [t]here’s a balance to it. there’s definitely a balance between what we are trying to achieve out here and the mission mandate, you know? the title of this thesis is ‘walk the line’ taken from a well-known johnny cash song. i selected it initially because i felt it described very well the actions of the peacekeepers who patrol and monitor the blue line that divides two states that remain technically at war. however, in the course of this research, i found that all the actors involved in the mission, peacekeeping troops, paos, caos, cimic, the laf, hizbullah and civilians, are engaged in a balancing act in their daily lives – walking a line - between defending local interests versus keeping international peace. more often than not, they walk this line together rather than separately but when there is separation it is invariably because unifil staff have had to balance a need for the good will of the local population with the rules of their mandate. equally, civilians who are deeply committed to the resistance movement often have to balance their political affiliations with their friendship with individual unifil officers. one the biggest balancing acts is how unifil staff interact with a local population that has to reconcile their need for peace with their political and religious affiliations. as one respondent informed me ‘everything is connected’ in this part of the world. the problems between lebanon and israel are deeply connected with the israel/palestine issue. the inherent power imbalance that exists between israel and the states that surround it, and how israel has chosen to exercise its power in the last thirty years has led to such deep, painful wounds in lebanese society that generations are needed before the people of these lands can feel a will to peace in their hearts. but at the same time, this research exposed the deep-seated need that the people of the south have for sustained peace. this is what sustains local support for the unifil mission - even 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
  i	
  walk	
  the	
  line,	
  by	
  johnny	
  cash,	
  released	
  as	
  a	
  single	
  on	
   	
  may	
   	
  from	
  his	
  album	
  entitled	
  ‘from	
  his	
  hot	
  and	
   blue	
  guitar’,	
  produced	
  by	
  sun	
  records.	
   	
   	
   when the presence and actions of troops, in particular, gives rise to local tension. one respondent expressed the deep contradictions felt by civilians about this issue: well i think the majority of the people, you know, irrespective of who they might support, i think the majority of people in every country you go to – they just want normality…when you take away the – how would you call it – the past difficulties. people just want to get back to normality. it’s just like everybody else – you know – you just want to your kids to grow up and go to school, you want to go on a holiday, you want to be able to – you know. and that’s what most of the people in the south are striving for and they know i think realistically, in their heart and soul – that while the resistance is necessary in their minds, and probably is, necessary, they know that they have to move beyond that too. they would like things to be normal and let the state cater for their security and their needs. main	
  findings	
   this thesis asked the following questions: ( ) how do peace operations influence their security environment? and; ( ) what factors effect unifil local engagement? this research has found that at the subnational or local level, unifil is able to influence its security environment and thus contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security. it does this by sustaining local connections that serve to alert the mission to small incidents that it prevents from developing into bigger conflicts. the area of operations has experienced peace for almost eight years and this would suggest that these activities at the micro level have helped to provide an environment conducive to peace. on a practical level, the unifil mission has achieved this in three main ways: first by monitoring, reporting and intervening in blue line violations as part of a response mechanism, to avoid escalation. second, through the preventative mechanisms of liaising between the idf and the laf to encourage local level cooperation and produce micro security agreements to prevent misunderstandings. third, unifil has a very comprehensive local engagement mechanism that enables the mission to maintain local consent and avoid being affected by intrastate conflict. 	
  interview	
  with	
  respondent	
  f ,	
  unifil,	
  beirut,	
  lebanon,	
   	
  november	
   .	
   	
   	
   this research has identified three factors: time, autonomy and local knowledge that facilitate the above mechanisms and therefore agency at the local level. prior to this research, these three factors have not previously been linked together as key facilitators of agency amongst peacekeepers at the local level. what this thesis also extrapolates out are the benefits that accrue from these three factors: time is linked to the benefits of trust, institutional memory and consistency of effort. autonomy is linked with the benefits of creativity and spontaneity. local knowledge produces cultural sensitivity and contingency in emergency situations. figure : the factors that facilitate agency amongst unifil staff temporality in the form of continuity plays a big role in contributing to the management of smooth relations between the named parties. long-term unifil staff have built trusted relations over time which enables them to generate solutions and introduce them to the parties as an ‘honest broker’. continuity also generates institutional memory and therefore paos understand ‘the rules’ that govern the perceptions of both parties. they have proved their impartiality and competence to both sides which has been key to enabling stand-downs at critical moments. temporality also facilitates consistency of effort which is all important in moving forward towards a sustainable peace. pao efforts in capacity building the laf are starting to reap rewards but this has been the result of years of effort and is not something that can be executed as a short-term goal. 	
   	
   temporality was found to affect all levels of engagement of unifil officers. the constant rotation of staff is acknowledged to be a problem both on the ground and at the top (in terms of the replacement of force commanders). this negatively affects unifil staff and civilians alike. civilians complained that it was hard to get to know the battalions because no sooner had they arrived but they left again. the laf, the institutional partner of unifil noted that without the presence of certain long-term staff little progress would have been made. one laf officer credited a long-term pao with helping to prevent the outbreak of war on one occasion. furthermore, the laf dislike having to re-educate a new force commander every two years. at the local level, the long-term appointments of caos also enables them to see shifts in the local environment (such as the effect the refugees are having) and build lasting relationships based on trust and genuine liking. this was most noticeable among respondents who were pro-hizbullah. even when they disagreed in principle with the unifil mission objectives, many civilians appeared to have a deep liking for the unifil cao they engaged with. autonomy, the second key factor was found to play the strongest role at the local level although it facilitated the agency of actors at all levels of engagement to some degree. the autonomy of caos enables them to be creative and spontaneous in their approach to their work which in turn makes them highly responsive to the needs of the local population. caos demonstrated the ability and willingness to go above and beyond their mandates to use their local contacts in order to assist anyone who asked for their help. this has also won hearts and minds across the area of operations because locals can see that the caos are authentic – they are going out of their way to assist and not just throwing money at a problem. at the international level, autonomy is provided by the fact that the unifil mission is out of the international spotlight. this means staff are generally left alone by the international community and not micro-managed. this naturally facilitates quick decision-making (spontaneity) and creativity in seeking solutions to problems. a good example of this at the national level is the way in which paos seek funding for the laf across the whole of lebanon to enable them to receive the maximum amount of resources without triggering israeli security concerns. 	
   	
   local knowledge has a strong impact on unifil officers’ ability to influence their security environment. at the international level of engagement, as noted above, paos know the ‘rules of the game’ and this enables them to take short cuts when making decisions under pressure. by this i mean paos understand the concerns of both parties and know how to find a way through – the ‘gap’ as one respondent termed it – through which they can pass to avert military confrontation. at the national level, local knowledge is demonstrated by caos when they work with the municipalities. the caos understand the concerns of the people on the ground and the constraints faced by members of local government – the political context in which they operate. as such they ensure that they deal with all parties equally and do not allow international concerns about who are the ‘right’ parties to deal with to interfere with operations on the ground. this encourages communication between unifil with villages that may be predisposed to think negatively of the mission and therefore facilitates a more secure environment for the troops. at the level of local engagement, caos train peacekeeping troops in local etiquette to reduce the risk of offending local sensibilities. in addition they use their extensive networks of local contacts to meet local needs – whether it is obtaining a scholarship for a young sunni student or helping a deputy mayor manage a refugee influx. these small endeavours build up over time into social capital for unifil. this eye for detail is often borne of local knowledge. constraints	
   this thesis also revealed that the main constraints faced by unifil currently are the local- international legitimacy gap in the mandate, local agency and the lack of international and national support for peacebuilding projects and the middle east peace process. legitimacy	
   the lack of international will to resolve the dispute between lebanon and israel comes through most strongly on the issue of the legitimacy of resolution . this research highlighted the gap between the international legitimacy of the mandate and its local legitimacy. resolution 	
   	
   is accepted by the international community as being a just solution to the war between israel and hizbullah. this view is not shared by the local population, who view it as not having taken account of the conditions under which the conflict began and is therefore biased towards israel. this affects the international engagement of senior unifil staff who are frustrated by the catch- -like situation of the laf being prevented from obtaining serious weaponry by the israel lobby whilst at the same time, being asked to securitise the border regions and eradicate hizbullah. the issue of legitimacy affects unifil peacekeeping troops on a daily basis at the local level of engagement. it provides the justification for locals who wish to attack patrols (usually to steal) and it makes traversing through some areas unsafe as a result of local hostility to the mission on account of the mandate. it also means unifil are prevented ultimately from conducting the full range of activities specified in the mandate owing to the lack of local cooperation. another way this issue is demonstrated is in the way that the local population talk about unifil’s use of force. as noted above, the local population regard security as important and often demanded more security, not less of unifil peacekeepers. however, how the local population wanted unifil to use force was the opposite of the mandate guidelines. locals became particularly frustrated that unifil were not willing to fight back during the incident at al-addaisseh. locals see themselves as impotent against israeli aggression and believe that unifil should exist to protect them from it. of course, according to their mandate, unifil are unable to use force against either of the named parties to the conflict. conversely the majority of the population do not want to see unifil use force against hizbullah to drive them from the area of operations even though, to the extent of conducting weapons searches and preventing any activity from armed elements, this is actually part of unifil’s mandate. 	
   	
   whalen’s categories of procedural and substantive legitimacy are helpful for disaggregating different types of legitimacy within a peace operation. but what this thesis shows is that the different types of legitimacy that whalan outlines: international/local, substantive, and procedural co-exist, and are related to each other in ways that whalan’s discrete categories cannot explain. whalan’s point about source legitimacy can also be questioned. the findings of this thesis are that when the unifil ii mission arrived in a show of force, the local population found this off-putting rather than reassuring despite the fact the area was just coming out of another war. the findings of other authors also refer to local discomfort with sudden shows of force, which civilians soon learn does not mean the soldiers will use it to protect them. as such, the concept of source legitimacy is debateable and possibly epiphenomenal to whalan’s choice of case studies rather than peace operations more broadly. local	
  agency	
   local agency acts to constrain unifil physically, but also by subverting the goals of peacekeepers. this research discovered that there is a dual dynamic in the relationship between local civilians and international interveners: both parties have agency. currently there has been a focus in the peacebuilding literature on the importance of local engagement. i argue the importance of engaging with local actors on the ground is crucial, but it must be regulated somehow. local actors are adept at pursuing their own goals and objectives in the relationship and this should be acknowledged more realistically in the literature on peace operations. corruption and duplication need to be avoided, and therefore un funded projects require mutual input from both local actors and those acting on behalf of international organisations. as noted by barnett and zurcher ( ), local elites can subvert the goals of the peacebuilding 	
  whalan	
  identifies	
  three	
  forms	
  of	
  legitimacy:	
  source,	
  substantive	
  and	
  procedural.	
  	
  the	
  latter	
  two	
  forms	
   essentially	
  differentiate	
  between	
  the	
  goods	
  and	
  services	
  offered	
  by	
  a	
  peacekeeping	
  mission,	
  and	
  the	
  manner	
  in	
   which	
  mission	
  staff	
  carry	
  out	
  their	
  mandate.	
  the	
  first	
  form,	
  source	
  legitimacy,	
  is	
  slightly	
  more	
  complex	
  and	
   relates	
  to	
  the	
  mission’s	
  claim	
  to	
  authority	
  and	
  credibility	
  on	
  its	
  arrival	
  in	
  the	
  host	
  state;	
  meaning	
  how	
  an	
  initial	
   show	
  of	
  security	
  and	
  aid	
  can	
  improve	
  public	
  perceptions	
  of	
  the	
  good	
  intentions	
  of	
  the	
  peace	
  operation.	
   	
  pouligny,	
  peace	
  operations	
  from	
  below:	
  un	
  missions	
  and	
  local	
  people;	
  autessere,	
  the	
  trouble	
  with	
  the	
  congo.	
   local	
  violence	
  and	
  the	
  failure	
  of	
  international	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
   	
   project to their own interests. this research identified that this dynamic operates at the level of local government and citizens who will happily pursue their own interests using international resources but allow the structures that created the conflict in the first place to remain in place. this dynamic was particularly noticeable in the relationship between cimic and the local population. the quality of the relationship between cimic and the local population was found to be very instrumental owing to the short time frames of projects coupled with frequent rotations. locals viewed the battalions as cash cows, as opposed to forces for change, which i attribute to the short-term postings of cimic officers. cimic did demonstrate institutional learning in terms of avoiding duplication and corruption, but my research found that soldiers regard the post of cimic officer as more of an opportunity to obtain public relations and media experience more than it is to get to know the local population. the local population appear to understand this and as a result respond differently to cimic compared to caos. in other words, they are not deceived by financial reward; the personal motivation of the officer is an important variable. unifil are physically constrained by local agency in that they need to balance pursuing the mandate and keeping the local population happy in order to retain consent. unifil’s moral authority, that rubinstein ( ) discusses, is reasonably high because they do not use force against the local population. it does mean however that when local civilians attack their vehicles and steal equipment, peacekeepers stand back rather than defend. national	
  and	
  international	
  support	
   at the national level, this research has revealed that top-down input is key to success in institution building. this was demonstrated clearly in chapter four, which described unifil’s efforts in building up the capacity of the laf, and local support and trust in municipal government. both institutions require the financial support of national government on a 	
  barnett,	
  michael	
  n.,	
  and	
  christoph	
  zurcher,	
  'the	
  peacebuilders	
  contract:	
  how	
  external	
  statebuilding	
  reinforces	
   weak	
  statehood',	
  in	
  roland	
  paris	
  and	
  tomothy	
  d.	
  sisk,	
  confronting	
  the	
  contradictions	
  of	
  postwar	
  peace	
   operations	
  (london:	
  routledge,	
   ).	
  	
   	
  rubinstein,	
  peacekeeping	
  under	
  fire:	
  culture	
  and	
  intervention.	
   	
   	
   sustained basis if they are to convince the local population that they are superior to other non- state actors in the area - hizbullah and unifil. currently both unifil (economically) and hizbullah (security-wise) supplant government institutions in lebanon. in the case of the laf, the international community can play an important role in ensuring that the laf receives the necessary funding, training and support so that it can evolve into an effective deterrent force that convinces the local population that there is no longer any need for sub-state militias. at the political level, the international community needs to convince politicians in israel that building laf capacity does not present a threat to their national interests. at the national level, politicians need to work hard to ensure that the laf retains its neutral image as a force that protects all lebanese and whose interests will not be hijacked by interested foreign parties. the issue of the effectiveness of the laf is highly interconnected with international politics and will not be easily resolved. the lebanese government has the ability to influence local perceptions of the municipal governments if it choses to invest more money in them to enable them to take over the work of unifil in rebuilding the infrastructure of the south. municipal government, as with the laf, does have legitimacy with the population of the south, owing to the fact that democracy as a system of government is accepted in lebanon. but without sufficient financial support, municipalities simply cannot offer as much support to locals as unifil currently does. at the national level too, there is a need for national offices to be placed down in the south to ensure that a vacuum does not emerge in the provision of government services that sub-state actors in the region would be only too happy to fill. the effectiveness of actors within the unifil mission engaging at the national level is constrained by actors at the national and international levels. where	
  unifil	
  does	
  not	
  succeed	
   this thesis has not talked extensively about the inevitable long-term problems that accompany the unifil mission: for example the problem of the mission never being completed until the 	
   	
   larger political problems of the middle east peace process are resolved, and the risk of local dependence on unifil resources. this is mainly because i was more interested in understanding what works in a mission than what does not. as noted in the literature review in chapter one, there is scholarship aplenty on failed missions and therefore i was keen to understand despite, inevitable problems, how this peace mission overcomes those problems. in the unifil mission, i sought to identify what particular factors have worked best for the mission’s engagement at the local level - in an environment that is relatively hostile to the mandate which includes disarmament of those non-state actors who civilians see as defenders of their territory. what i found, paradoxically, is that the civilian population in the area of operations is largely supportive of unifil and this view was corroborated to me formally through interviews and informally through my ethnographic experience of residing in lebanon for a year. however, there are a number of issues that i noted in the course of my research which i felt require future focus. the first is the issue of generating large-scale, coordinated, home grown conflict resolution programs, as described by autesserre, which are noticeably absent from lebanese society and certainly in the area of operations. it is possible that this is a direct result of the long-term presence of unifil in the area whereby civilians have devolved themselves of the responsibility of forming their own organisations to address the sectarian issue that continue to haunt lebanon post-civil war. if so this fits in with chandler’s arguments about the risk of dependency arising in peacebuilding missions. or it is possible that civilians in the area are primarily concerned with physical security and inter-state conflict which takes priority over domestic issues. unifil staff never alluded to the establishment of local organisations to work alongside them in their peacebuilding efforts. rather key individuals were used to broadcast the message of the benefits of the mission and the peacebuilding goals in general. whilst their mandate does not specifically support the creation of such programs (being an interstate conflict mission), it can be argued that 	
  autessere,	
  the	
  trouble	
  with	
  the	
  congo.	
  local	
  violence	
  and	
  the	
  failure	
  of	
  international	
  peacebuilding.	
   	
  chandler,	
  david,	
  'the	
  limits	
  of	
  peacebuilding:	
  international	
  regulation	
  and	
  civil	
  society	
  development	
  in	
  bosnia,'	
   international	
  peacekeeping,	
   / :	
   -­‐ 	
  ( b);	
  ———,	
  bosnia:	
  faking	
  democracy	
  after	
  dayton	
  (london:	
   pluto	
  press,	
   a).	
   	
   	
   working on such programs would benefit the area in the long-term. also, according to the civil affairs policy directive of , one of the key roles of civil affairs officers is ‘confidence- building, conflict management and support to reconciliation’. chapters three to five provide examples of unifil going beyond their mission in some circumstances, so why not on this one? this is something that unifil should be criticised for bearing in mind their network of contacts and the length of time they have spent in the region. there is no doubt that unifil has been dealt a tough hand when it comes to balancing local versus international interests, perhaps even more so after the events of . however, the impression i received from myriad private conversations is that attempts to clear the area of weapons are relatively benign. unifil rely on national laws about private property to avoid seeking out weapons and aggravating the local population in any way. overt attempts to fulfil their mandate may, perhaps, bring into question the factors that have explained their success in local engagement since . as such, it should be acknowledged that amongst some locals and local figures outside the region, unifil are regarded as ‘tourists’ and ineffectual. of course the biggest ‘criticism’ of unifil that i came across related to their inability to prevent the outbreak of another war. but this is perhaps a critique true of many peacekeeping missions in that there has to be a peace to keep in order for a peacekeeping force to function. should one of the parties choose to restart hostilities again there is little that unifil can do to prevent this. as such, it was all the more interesting to observe the degree to which mandated parties respected the processes and efforts put in place by unifil since to build trust amongst all parties and to make the mission the place that people should turn to if they wish to prevent a return to conflict. 	
  united	
  nations,	
  policy	
  directive:	
  civil	
  affairs,	
  (new	
  york:	
  united	
  nations	
  department	
  of	
  peacekeeping	
   operations	
  and	
  department	
  of	
  field	
  support,	
   ).	
   	
   	
   future	
  research	
  	
   understanding what facilitates the agency of peace operations at the micro level has been what this thesis has attempted to explain. there are a number of ways this research could be developed further. the most straightforward would be to test this question, using the same interpretative approach using multiple cases studies to understand if the same local factors identified here emerge across other peace operations – and note variations between ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ footprint missions. understanding local agency in peace operations requires further research. the current literature on peacebuilding is theoretically divided between liberal and critical strands. the increase in theoretical literature that looks at peacekeeping missions from the top-down has been an improvement in terms of making the study of peace operations a richer theoretical endeavour and more relevant to the field of international relations. future research that takes an ethnographic approach but examines peace operations at the local level from a critical approach would produce some interesting findings. thus far the work of rubinstein ( ) in the field of anthropology comes the closest to doing this. for example, using critical approaches to understand concepts such as representation, symbols, meaning and the identity in both peacekeepers and civilians on the ground could lead to some interesting findings as to how each sees the other and themselves within a conflict. for example, how do civilians view their own agency within a peace operation? this could in turn lead to improvements in local relations and greater understanding of how peace operations should present themselves to the local population. this thesis has argued that sub-national actors are able to influence their security environment and the factors of time, autonomy and local knowledge facilitate their effectiveness. however local agency on the ground has the capacity to constrain and subvert peacekeeping praxis and further research in this area needs to be conducted. for now, the area of lebanon south of the litani remains at peace, eight years after the implementation of resolution . this thesis 	
  rubinstein,	
  peacekeeping	
  under	
  fire:	
  culture	
  and	
  intervention	
   	
   	
   acknowledges the important role key regional actors play in the maintenance of peace: should any party choose to recommence hostilities, there is little unifil can do. but thus far a resumption of war based on the escalation of a security incident has not occurred. this has been achieved in large part by the actions of a small group of highly committed staff who operate at the subnational level – walking the line between their responsibilities under the international mandate and their need to gain the trust and respect of the local population. 	
   	
   appendix	
  a:	
  resolution	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   appendix	
  b:	
  the	
  taif	
  agreement	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   	
   appendix	
  c:	
  key	
  political	
  parties	
  and	
  movements	
  in	
  lebanon	
   name of party meaning main base of support leadership hizbullah/hezbollah party of god (lit.) shi’ite hassan nasrallah harakat amal hope movement (lit.) the other main shi’ite party in lebanon. shi’ite nabih berri al-kataeb al-lubnaniyya kataeb party previously known as the phalange. maronite christian sami gemayal al-tayyar al-watani al- hurr free patriotic movement (fpm) christian michel aoun al-hizb at-taqaddumi al- ishtiraki progressive socialist party the main druze political party in lebanon druze (largest druze faction) walid jumblatt al-quwat al-lubnaniyya lebanese forces maronite christian samir geagea tayyar al-mustaqbal future movement sunni muslim michel aoun march th movement shi’ite muslim, christian, druze hizballah march th movement sunni muslim, christian, druze future movement 	
   	
   bibliography	
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(spring ): – . © johns hopkins university press. crazy jane and professor eucalyptus: self-dissolution in the later poetry of yeats and stevens margaret mills harper . . . all talk about god, whether pro or anti, is twaddle. —wallace stevens, quoting professor joad fol de rol, fol de rol. —w. b. yeats, “crazy jane reproved” particularly in the two magisterial volumes the tower and the winding stair, the later w. b. yeats is a poet who might be typi-fied by the weighty line, the bardic voice, forms like the poised ottava rima and meditative style that helen vendler calls “spacious” (our sacred discipline ). late wallace stevens moves into sparer variants of his on- going poetic preoccupations, offering himself as “a diffident minimalist,” in charles altieri’s phrase ( ), substituting purgation for harmonium. these are overgeneralizations, of course. a parallel that interests me ap- pears if i juxtapose two late sequences, focusing especially on each poet’s late reworking, or redramatizing, of the poetic subject. the two texts i will consider are yeats’s words for music perhaps and stevens’s “an ordinary evening in new haven.” they are not stylistically or thematically similar, though both represent somewhat analogous moments in each poet’s ca- reer. considered together, yeats’s crazy jane poems in particular (which form a large part of the sequence words for music perhaps) and stevens’s multi-canto “an ordinary evening” represent ambitious experiments in creating dissolution by two wielders of powerful language. both works explore the paradox implicit in highly skilled poets confronting the ab- sence of the imagination, the seeming opposite of everything their abilities can and do make possible. for yeats, the effort involved following the magisterial poems of the tower with the abjection and exultation of a different kind of mask, a dif- ferent style, and arguably a different approach toward composition, than he had tried before. words for music perhaps was published by cuala press in and then included in the winding stair and other poems ( ), two years before yeats’s seventieth birthday. the title of the sequence is ironically misleading: the twenty-five short poems of the sequence are not the wallace stevens journal meant to be set to music—hence yeats’s playful “perhaps.” in march , the poet wrote his old friend olivia shakespear, “i am writing twelve poems for music—have done three of them (and two other poems)—no[t] so much that they may be sung as that i may define their kind of emotion to myself. i want them to be all emotion and all impersonal” (letters ). indeed, the idea of yeats writing for music seems to have amused both himself and his wife. r. f. foster quotes george yeats writing to thomas mcgreevy, a good friend, that “william . . . yesterday came dashing along from his cot to announce that he was going to write twelve songs and i had got to purchase ‘a musical instrument’ at once and set them to music. . . . all said songs being of a most frivolous nature!” (letter from february , , qtd. in foster ). given that she did not play a musical instrument, not to mention that it seems not to have mattered which musical instrument she was meant to buy, “frivolous” might be an understatement. the twenty-five short poems of words for music perhaps are technically very unlike some of yeats’s weighty and serious late poems, including the poems in magisterial ottava rima like “a dialogue of self and soul” or “coole park, ” and “coole park and ballylee, .” the poems that comprise words for music perhaps are light and somewhat tune-like, with short stanzas, frequent uses of refrain, and tetrameter or trimeter rhyming lines suggestive of ballads or shakespearean songs. the little lyr- ics are anything but frivolous, though. instead, their light touch is part of a spiritual/intellectual purpose that includes the question of words’ inherent musicality. the sequence foregrounds the idea of simple joy as wisdom, which is common to yeats’s late work. as an oft-cited (and often misquoted) passage in one of his last letters puts it, i am happy, and i think full of an energy, of an energy i had despaired of. it seems to me that i have found what i wanted. when i try to put all into a phrase i say, “man can embody truth but he cannot know it.” i must embody it in the comple- tion of my life. the abstract is not life and everywhere draws out its contradictions. you can refute hegel but not the saint or the song of sixpence. . . . (letters ) other philosophical motifs include two ideas that i suggest resonate with stevens: first, that souls create reality, by means of images or thoughts, and, in yeats’s thinking, through many lives; and, second, that truths must be local and temporally specific even though reality is spaceless and time- less. in late yeats, the particular self (or ego, or will, to use terms from his occult treatise a vision) is always in dialogue with the soul (that aspect of the human being that is timeless and spaceless). the opposition between these two is also a cooperation or refraction: the one requires the other. there is thus a continual interaction between multiplicity and singularity, that old platonic canard. indeed, yeats had been reading a good deal of self-dissolution in the later poetry of yeats and stevens plato, as well as plotinus and other neoplatonists, as part of the research for revising a vision, whose second edition, very different from the first, was published in after a decade of work. stevens, writing in the wake of “credences of summer” and “the auroras of autumn,” had extended further than before the pursuit of something that he had long admitted “is a constant source of trouble to me”: the question of “the relation or balance between imagined things and real things,” as he put it to ronald lane latimer in (l ). “an ordinary evening in new haven” was composed in his seventieth year; so not only ability but also age was at play, as it was for yeats. as is well known, “an ordinary evening” was published twice: in a shorter version in and then in the volume the auroras of autumn in . twenty years after george yeats’s breezy letter, stevens wrote thomas mcgreevy about his experience of composition, suggesting that “an ordinary evening” could be thought of as a sequence, not a single poem: “i decided to step out from under the whole thing for a little while. then, about the same time, perhaps as part of the pleasure of this relaxation, i became interested in doing a poem, which, like most long poems, is merely a collection of short ones, and they went on and on” (l ). after the poem was finished, in june , he wrote to barbara church, it is interesting to plan ahead for a long period of thinking and writing and, for me, it is something new because i have always done that sort of thing casually and as part of the experience of living. one of the drawbacks of going about it in this casual and intermittent way is that every fresh beginning is a begin- ning over: one is always beginning. one of the really significant reasons for devoting one’s whole life to poetry in the same way that people devote their whole lives to music or painting is that this steady application brings about a general moving forward. i shall know a little more about this sort of thing by the end of the year. . . . i have just finished one long thing and am ready to go on to the next. (l ) not every reader finds a sense of freshness and progress after application in “an ordinary evening.” more frequently, readings highlight themes of deprivation and even annihilation, echoing the oft-quoted passage from a letter stevens had written a month earlier than his comments to mrs. church, to bernard heringman: at the moment i am at work on a thing called an ordinary evening in new haven. this is confidential and i don’t want the thing to be spoken of. but here my interest is to try to get as close to the ordinary, the commonplace and the ugly as it is possible for a poet to get. it is not a question of grim reality the wallace stevens journal but of plain reality. the object is of course to purge oneself of anything false. i have been doing this since the beginning of march and intend to keep studying the subject and working on it until i am quite through with it. this is not in any sense a turning away from the ideas of credences of summer: it is a development of those ideas. (l – ) both letters vibrate with overtones from christian discourse, from the sense of teleological progress (“a general moving forward” as opposed to “one is always beginning”) to purgation (“of anything false”) as a prelimi- nary stage en route to perfection (“until i am quite through with it”). *** this is not to say that stevens’s poem displays anything like religious be- lief: debates about faith in one religious tradition or another, whether on the part of stevens or yeats, are not to the point. nonetheless, for stevens, at least, the question of religious belief is part of his discursive economy, in poems as well as letters. yeats is much happier than stevens to use words like soul, or indeed to posit that soul’s continuation through many lives; but the irish poet’s work does not display the protestant modes of thinking that were his familial inheritance (his grandfather and great-grandfather were rectors of the church of ireland), at least in terms of this issue. yeats’s lifelong investments in vernacular religion, western esotericism, and, at first through the lens of occult societies and later through more direct study, varieties of hindu and buddhist philosophy, may dispose him less often to consider questions of faith in a deity than stevens. put differently, we might say that yeats is more inclined toward religious orthopraxy, or, to be more precise, ritualism, or even mysticism, than the orthodoxy that is common to christianity. for example, poems such as “byzantium” or the lyrics in supernatural songs attempt to reproduce in rapturous language the experience of direct encounter with the supernatural: astraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood, spirit after spirit! the smithies break the flood, the golden smithies of the emperor! marbles of the dancing floor break bitter furies of complexity, those images that yet fresh images beget, that dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. (vp ) self-dissolution in the later poetry of yeats and stevens image piles upon image, verbal repetition carrying meaning like a mantra in words and phrases from earlier in the poem (mire, blood, golden, fury/furies, complexities/complexity, begotten/beget, image/images) as well as in the stanza itself (spirit, smithies, and break, as well as near echoes like flood/ floor or torn/tormented). sonority and rhythm rather than logical or even temporal sequence replace intellectual or even emotional assent as the primary maker of meaning. “what matter that you understood no word!” the hermit ribh exclaims in “ribh in ecstasy,” from supernatural songs (vp ). stevens is more likely to use the terms of christian emphasis on right belief, even when putting forth his endlessly internet-quotable proposi- tion that “the final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. the exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly” (cpp ). the creedal statement resembles the aphorism or adage, a form of which stevens was especially fond. however, stevens’s aphoristic statements often serve as propositions and counterpropositions rather than the seemingly simple statements of faith they impersonate. they condense complex states of feeling or perception into intense statements that often behave more like riddles than explanations. as beverly coyle notes, the claims that seem to serve almost as epigrams, summarizing the sense of the first four cantos of “an ordinary evening in new haven,” suggest less that the speaker is certain than that he is “of several minds about his subject” ( – ). taken together, these non-epigrams embody the “and yet, and yet, and yet—” that follows the first seemingly certain assertion and is actually a decent description of the structure of the poem. canto i announces, “the eye’s plain version is a thing apart, / the vulgate of experience” (cpp ). the next canto moves in extraordinarily impressionistic, syntactically complex language, yet concludes that the town’s “impalpable habitations” are “so much ourselves, we cannot tell apart / the idea and the bearer-being of the idea” (cpp – ). no thing apart here. in canto iii, a one-line sen- tence sounds plainly informative: “the point of vision and desire are the same” (cpp ). but canto iv begins, “the plainness of plain things is savagery,” not anything as distanced or unappeased as vision or desire (cpp ). in other words, the aphorisms do not finally close anything off—the meaning of the root word. coyle suggests that “a reader responds to a statement as an aphorism essentially because its formal and thematic ele- ments (sound and syntactic properties) create in him [sic] a sense of clo- sure. the word ‘aphorism’ is derived from the greek word, aphorizein, to mark off boundaries (i.e., to enclose)” ( – ). however, she continues, “the initial response he [sic] makes to the statement as an aphorism is to a seeming completeness in its linguistic structure—a response produced by sound and syntax—and need not include his perception of meaning” ( ). the illusion of certainty created by the linguistic structure of the the wallace stevens journal definitive statement is countered by the intellectual uncertainty suggested by the larger structures of apposition. this is the phenomenon vendler calls stevens’s late “inching style” (on extended wings ). vendler cites frank doggett, who in an early essay notes stevens’s characteristic way of proceeding in his late verse by “the recognition of conjunction of ideas, with modifications offered by other successive concepts presented apposi- tively” ( ). the impression of item succeeding item is not whitmanesque abundance, as in stevens’s earlier style with its “piling up of appositional noun phrases to suggest expansiveness and surfeit” (on extended wings ). instead, as vendler asserts in a more recent essay, the conjunctions stevens frequently leans on—if, or, and but—“cease for the most part to represent obstacles and become—to put it briefly—accretive, elaborative, and asymptotic instead of alternative and exclusive” (“wallace stevens” ). they are also performative, in the sense that the poem dramatizes the movement of the speaker’s thought. the western lyric poem reinvents or reiterates an experience. it does so through the convention of the imper- sonated voice of the “poet,” as opposed to the human being who writes the words. yeats’s description of this phenomenon—that the poet is “nev- er the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast”—is one of the clearest enunciations of this literary function. the notion of the poet as what yeats calls “something intended, complete” (later essays ) extends itself easily into modernist arguments for styles that mimic ac- cident and incoherence, like painterly abstraction. if lyric poems are all self-dramatizations on the part of people assuming the masks of poets, through the device of personified speakers, then the only way to write a poem of reality, as stevens might call it, is to slip out of the fun house of this constructed speaker or self and the linguistic structures that support it—beginning, perhaps, with sentences with subjects doing verbal work to objects or stretching themselves out into verbal complements. yet style is itself a mask. in on extended wings, vendler approaches this notion in her close reading of canto xvi of “an ordinary evening.” in that canto, the “oldest-newest day is the newest alone,” and the natural environment of day and night is contrasted with one of the “and yets”: “and yet the wind whimpers oldly of old age / in the western night” (cpp – ). to vendler, that whimper is “stevens’ own human voice turned beaten beast,” but “when the poet, on the other hand, speaks, it is through the mask, and that mask is, of course, this entire long poem on new haven” ( ). the “venerable mask above / the dilapidation of dilapidations” in this canto, with the etymological foreshadowing of the “dust” with which the poem will end in the word dilapidation (cpp , ), furthers the sense that beyond the mask is the real of an imaginative- ly destroyed town as well as the symbolic rock so common in late stevens. poetry that proceeds by analogy, the cognitive move of making one thing equivalent or nearly equivalent (perhaps using like or as in their self-dissolution in the later poetry of yeats and stevens roles as conjunctions), pushes metaphor into the realm of style, serving the same function as yeats’s beloved concept of the mask, or, in its less explicitly dramatized form, poetic voice. edward ragg notes that stevens seized onto the discussion of artistic form in henri focillon, underlining a passage in his copy of hogan and kubler’s translation of focillon’s la vie des formes that states elegantly the concept of style as mask. the passage reads, “in utilizing style as an absolute, we give expression to a very fun- damental need: that of beholding ourselves in our widest possible intel- ligibility . . . our most universal aspect, beyond the fluctuations of history, beyond local and specific limitations.” for stevens, as ragg argues (and as stevens himself was well aware), the continual lure is not, as it was with yeats, the escape from rag-and- bone shop into dream, so much as the escape into unbodied abstraction. in , stevens had used the word “danger” to describe his relationship with abstraction, telling latimer in response to a question about whether art is didactic, “my real danger is not didacticism, but abstraction” (l ). as with yeats’s poet unencumbered by any actual breakfast, though, it is good to note the touch of self-deprecating humor in stevens’s theorizing. the relation between the personal and the abstract, between “a natural object” and “its poetic characteristics,” stevens goes on to say to latimer, is like (using the very analogical logic his poetry prefers) “the boy whose mother told him to stop sneezing; he replied: ‘i am not sneezing; it’s sneez- ing me’” (l ). disembodied, pure abstraction, an always existing but never realizable state, may be the one necessary to the “possible poet” de- scribed in the lecture “the noble rider and the sound of words,” but not anything conceivable or expressible (cpp ). in , the year following this lecture, stevens glossed a passage in the first section of the part of “notes toward a supreme fiction” entitled “it must give pleasure” thus: “the abstract does not exist, but it is certainly as immanent: that is to say, the fictive abstract is as immanent in the mind of the poet, as the idea of god is immanent in the mind of the theologian. the poem is a struggle with the inaccessibility of the abstract” (l ). the fluid “inching style” allows stevens to aim in the direction of, make “notes” toward, but avoid arriving at a destination beyond stylistic performance into stable, perfect truth. *** that these two writers in their late years produced poetry that rubs against their tendencies to create palaces of the imagination does not mean a fun- damental change in the value each placed on those gorgeous structures. intellectually speaking, yeats and stevens have in common a lifelong in- sistence on the sovereignty of the imagination—and, seemingly, on the sovereignty of the human being who alone can imagine. the possibility the wallace stevens journal of imaginationlessness, as stevens famously notes in “the plain sense of things,” has itself to be imagined (cpp ). yeats makes one of the bold- est claims for the power of the imagination in “the tower,” a poem that in its third part contains one of his very few credos: and i declare my faith: i mock plotinus’ thought and cry in plato’s teeth, death and life were not till man made up the whole, made lock, stock and barrel out of his bitter soul, aye, sun and moon and star, all, and further add to that that, being dead, we rise, dream and so create translunar paradise. (vp – ) yeats’s inheritance from william blake, among others, of the saving power of the imagination has moved slightly to insist here that it is not the imagination figured as a transfigured christ but a “bitter soul,” filled with the remorse painfully recalled in the first and second sections of the poem, that makes everything. and by everything, yeats includes not only reality as encountered by an imagining self but the vastest expanses of the universe—and then, as the spirit rises (like christ, after all) and dreams after its death, eternal paradise. this exertion of poetic force occurs in pounding trimeter and sets of triples (“lock, stock and barrel,” “sun and moon and star,” “rise, / dream and so create . . . paradise”) as well as the binary doubles plotinus/plato, “death and life,” and an alternating rhyme scheme. there is some conceptual trouble, however, which oc- curs precisely in terms of that shift from transcendence to abjection, the plotinian soul turned “bitter.” the magisterial form is not adequate to the wild intensity of that bitterness, which, in the final stanza of part ii of the poem, undoes the world: “if memory recur, the sun’s / under eclipse and the day blotted out” (vp ). enter crazy jane, a mask that resembles other well-known masks (such as the ancient irish warrior cuchulain) insofar as she is opposite to what the terminology of a vision would term the poet’s primary self. yeats was a socially privileged nobel laureate, yet pricked by conscience; his creation jane is a social outcast, outspoken, defiantly sexual, and flamboyantly un- repentant of her choices in life. according to elizabeth cullingford, jane is “occult, unheimlich, and anomalous” ( ), transgressing norms and thus socially liminal and dangerous. she is mad (unlike yeats), with all the am- bivalences the category of “mad” brings with it. like her creator, she sings self-dissolution in the later poetry of yeats and stevens of love and posits philosophical ideas that aim to undo binaries, including those of love and hate, good and evil, and life and death. as the poem “crazy jane and jack the journeyman” puts it, “love is but a skein unwound / between the dark and dawn” (vp ). endless cycles of freedom and bondage are figured as a skein of wool (with all the resonances between textuality and textiles that underlie that metaphor, including gender norms). the skein is wound—the past tense of wind, suggesting echoes of two heteronyms (wound, as in injury, and wind as moving air), the root meaning of hebrew, arabic, greek, and latin words for spirit or soul—as the gyres of a vision spin around a central point, or as the earth moves around an axis. winding and unwinding dance in ceaseless relationship to each other. the poem associates this action and counteraction with the paradox of love and loss, bondage and freedom, represented by the image of a door left unlatched (interestingly, one of the first images and lines yeats worked with as he composed the poem in multiple drafts). this poem, written late in , begins with the speaker, presumably jane, saying “i know” that a lover’s glance moves deep with- in the body “to the bone,” and beyond it and subjectivity itself, returning finally to “the light lost / in my mother’s womb” (vp ). at the same time, as she imagines her body lying in the grave, she claims that human love retains power enough to make the dead walk. as a love poem, this is a frightening turn. if a dialogue between two quarreling voices, as yeats first drafted it, it seems to have proven too disjunctive: the blend of philo- sophically distanced and physically intimate material did not cohere. but the plainspoken ferocity of the final version, with first-person statements in short lines with almost the only words of more than one syllable being negations of single-syllable words (unlatched, unwound), make the form support the outlandish contradictions of the logic: i know, although when looks meet i tremble to the bone, the more i leave the door unlatched the sooner love is gone, for love is but a skein unwound between the dark and dawn. a lonely ghost the ghost is that to god shall come; i—love’s skein upon the ground, my body in the tomb— shall leap into the light lost in my mother’s womb. the wallace stevens journal but were i left to lie alone in an empty bed, the skein so bound us ghost to ghost when he turned his head passing on the road that night, mine must walk when dead. (vp ) “crazy jane and jack the journeyman” was one of the last poems writ- ten before “byzantium,” with its liminal place of iteration, somewhere between life and death and the impossible conjunctions with which it ends: physical warm-blooded dolphins in real water tormented by the sound of a gong ferrying the newly dead to paradise. at the conclusion of “byzantium,” marbles of the dancing floor are crazed as jane is. *** after the poems featuring crazy jane were published, yeats described finding them “exciting and strange” (letters ). yeats’s long experience as a dramatist combined with his mastery as a magician to create this voice, which functions both as a mask and something like daemonic pos- session—or so he wrote george yeats on december , . after discus- sion of what christmas presents to buy, he writes that he’s happy to be working again on his own dignified poetry, that i want to exorcise that slut “crazy jane,” whose language has grown unendurable. i am pleased with what i have written. for days i could get nothing & thought i was finished & now i have found a new life. i am reading balzac, with all my old delight, picking up old acquaintances, & reading shelley “prometheus unbound” with thought of an essay, not irish notes but some- thing you can send to “the criterian” [sic]. (cl intelex ) possessing (in the sense that his voice, of course, speaks through hers) and possessed by crazy jane, yeats was able to move through an impasse with what he perceived as sexual, social, and aesthetic constraints and “sing” some of his late poems. stevens’s lower-register version of yeats’s “sun and moon and star, all” might be summed up in a letter to hi simons responding to questions about section vi of “the man with the blue guitar”: “things imagined (the senses of the guitar) become things as they are. this is pretty much the same thing as to say that in the united states everyone sooner or later becomes an american” (l ). stevens’s prosaic analogy suggests a rela- self-dissolution in the later poetry of yeats and stevens tionship that is not as unidirectional as his sentence: americanness itself changes as it incorporates new americanness. the idea is in this sense a good deal more aristotelian than platonic, more the america of immigra- tion than of advertising—like being sneezed rather than sneezing. in “an ordinary evening,” the false dichotomy is presented like yeats’s janean unlatched door. it seems as true to assert that, as canto xxii avers, “to re-create, to use // the cold and earliness and bright origin / is to search” (cpp ), as it is to say that to search is to create “lock, stock and barrel.” stevens’s “endlessly elaborating poem” (cpp ) gives its re-creations and searches as “the edgings and inchings of final form,” as if or toward or like, sketched in the two images of the penultimate stanza, “a philosopher practicing scales on his piano, / a woman writing a note and tearing it up” (cpp ). for both yeats and stevens, reality is created by the imagination but also inflected by it. thus, every person—or every subject—or every thing—has its own particular imagination. every truth has an occasion from which it cannot be separated. it’s only lent, or perhaps rent, the triple-entendre meaning loaned for a price, torn, and rendered in one of the most famous of the words for music perhaps, “crazy jane talks with the bishop”: nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent. (vp ) some of yeats’s late obsessions were with the problems this conviction poses: can a truth larger than its creator be spoken by that creator? how can it exceed its moment? despite the oft-quoted declaration in “an ordinary evening in new haven” xii that “the poem is the cry of its occasion” (cpp ), stevens may be suggesting that the music (music perhaps?) plays a philosopher, as the contents of her note write a woman. *** the scale-practicing philosopher and the note-tearing woman at the end of “an ordinary evening” are not randomly chosen illustrations of a general principle. they, too, push back against the abstract propositions that salt the sequence. so do the various figures or personae, or perhaps imagos, that frequent its pages, from giant through lion of juda, ephebe, carpenter, ecclesiast, or alphabetical letters to hidalgo. the other semi-subjects, from “exhalations in the eaves” to “the metaphysical streets of the physical town,” also participate in this pushing back (cpp , ). of these personae, the figure of professor eucalyptus is closest to a yeatsian mask. the professor, neither a poet nor a resident in any other the wallace stevens journal town in connecticut, who is unlikely to succeed in his research project, appears in canto xiv, near the numerical center of the sequence. the pro- fessor, named after the tree and also its etymological source (eu-kalyptos, well-covered or hidden), looks for words to create/discover “reality” (cpp ). he aims to choose “the commodious adjective” that “makes it divinity”—a word that could touch the impossible center of a yeatsian gyre or still point in an eliotic turning world, the “still speech / as it touches the point of reverberation” (cpp ). although “he seeks // god in the object itself, without much choice” (cpp ), he will not find “this present,” that “venerable mask” (cpp ). to read “an ordinary evening” with my yeats-jaundiced eye is to notice that masks suffuse the sequence. so do references to religion, very much including occult-tinged spiritual states, from the “vulgate” of the second line of the poem and the “meditation” of the fourth (cpp ). a far from exhaustive list would include: “naked alpha” and “hierophant omega” (cpp ); “the spirit’s alchemicana” (cpp ); the “haunted” moon and sun that may “make gay the hallucinations in surfaces” (cpp – ); the “metaphysical streets” where “we remember the lion of juda” (cpp ); a jesus-like carpenter whose town (or who himself) is “the model for astral apprentices” (cpp ); “nameless, flitting characters” and “the hypnosis of that sphere” (cpp ); necessity, with its resonance of the greek diké, and “cythère” (cpp ); and “breathless things broodingly abreath” (cpp ). the poem in which, as stevens told bernard heringman, he was trying “to get as close to the ordinary, the commonplace and the ugly as it is possible for a poet to get” is surprisingly full of the extraordinary, the unheimlich, and the beautiful. “[a] shade that traverses / a dust, a force that traverses a shade” with which the sequence closes (cpp ), with its prominent indefinite article, is not the same as ordinary shade, the kind that collects under a tree in a town after dark, beneath its ordinary “bough in the electric light” (cpp ). this shade may be closer to a ghost: a trace or residue of a human be- ing, which after a kind of crossing over (travertere) and having become “a dust” remains among the living for some purpose that extends beyond its bodily life. the other noun in this final sentence is “force,” which leads me to my last point. in “notes toward a supreme fiction,” stevens writes that the poem refreshes life so that we share, for a moment, the first idea . . . it satisfies belief in an immaculate beginning and sends us, winged by an unconscious will, to an immaculate end. (cpp – ) self-dissolution in the later poetry of yeats and stevens the suggestion here is that poetry, or a “supreme fiction,” might attain ends commonly associated with philosophy or christianity, as indicated in phrases like “first idea” or “immaculate.” “we”—whoever that word may indicate in the poem (ephebe and older man, with perhaps a sugges- tion of erastes and eromenos?)—are borne aloft by “an unconscious will.” the poem suggests a telos that involves an unusual proposition paralleling the phrase “a force that traverses a shade”: the separation of agency from will. the shades, or a shade, of something hidden (kalyptos) in plain sight in “an ordinary evening” share with yeats’s crazy jane (or crazy jane’s yeats) a loosening at which stevens’s poem itself hints but does not make plain: a relaxation of consciousness without an accompanying loss of abil- ity to act. the idea of a subject, a self, usually requires a sense of agency to accompany it. but what happens if these two concepts are decoupled? as the anthropologist mary keller argues, this separation is one way to understand spirit or demonic possession. the act of possession, rather like madness, effectively severs subject from (possessed) body, leaving agency and willed action without an “i” in charge. in many cultures, this situa- tion occurs more often than not with women rather than men. in his last two decades, yeats was fascinated by the notion of the larger- than-human will. the sequence words for music perhaps is one of the clear- est illustrations of his working sense of what might be possible in poetry if the massive structures that support the subject, “monuments of unageing intellect” (vp ), were not as vital as he had spent most of his life as- suming. for yeats, various areas of research connected with a vision and eastern philosophy, poetic voice, and an urgent need to understand the implications of the aging body came together in the temporary intensity (or insanity) of the crazy jane poems. jane’s passion, which lasts beyond death, maybe even beyond all dissolution of the body into the bone—or even past that into “a dust” or “a road / that men pass over” (vp )— speaks of yeats’s awareness that an ordinary evening, or morning, de- pends upon the particular kind of normalcy one has created and in which one believes. the great poet experimented with solving the problem of representing the extrapersonal and supernormal by means of song. at the end of “crazy jane on god,” jane’s satisfied voice changes (one is tempted to add, utterly) into the utterance of an unlocatable and nearly imageless refrain, whose relationship to the stanza introducing it is as nonrational as a “fol de rol”: i had wild jack for a lover; though like a road that men pass over my body makes no moan but sings on; all things remain in god. (vp ) the wallace stevens journal yeatsian echoes in stevens’s poem point to shared concerns. what would happen if agency, the ability to will something into existence, could be separated from subjectivity, as in a “will of wills” (cpp )? is it pos- sible to have a person without the personal? could such a phenomenon intervene in the standoff between the imagination and reality? in “an ordinary evening in new haven,” the “philosopher practicing scales on his piano” (neither playing nor singing) is the first of two images. the second is the unspecified “woman” who evades full representation, or at least representation of what she has written (cpp ). she tears up her note, despite the desire of whatever voyeuristic reader of stevens’s poem to read it. the place i think we should look for answers to the questions above, or perhaps just further questions, is at a crossroads of three lines of inter- section between these two poems and poets: the occult, gender, and the comic—or, perhaps, the “almost” comic (cpp ). the occult, insofar as it can function as an other to revealed religion, can complicate and intensify forces unleashed by the unstable concepts that underpin gender. comedy, with its distancing effects, may provide space for exploration without doctrine. at any rate, as we know, crossroads are often places of power. the power they emanate may be likened to the lines of poems and the vicarious and uncontrollable pleasure upon which reading them depends. university of limerick ireland notes b. j. leggett notes that such an impulse dominates stevens’s late poetry: “this em- phasis on the real and the paradox it entails—the premise that the apprehension of the real requires a supreme act of the imagination, a supreme fiction—persists” ( ). the transcription of the text of the letter to lady elizabeth pelham on january , , is slightly incorrect as it appears in the letters; see also the collected letters of w. b. yeats, intelex electronic edition, accession number (hereafter cited as cl intelex with accession number). while mysticism fascinated yeats, he wanted to experience altered or selfless states of consciousness far more often than he actually achieved them. in a late, somewhat tongue-in-cheek letter to his friend ethel mannin, he wrote, “am i a mystic?—no, i am a practical man. i have seen the raising of lazarus and the loaves and fishes and have made the usual measurements, plummet line, spirit-level and have taken the tempera- ture by pure mathematic” (letters ). all poetry citations marked by vp refer to the variorum edition of the poems of w. b. yeats. among critics who discuss stevens’s aphoristic inclinations are litz, coyle, and perloff. altieri’s contention that abstraction, or rather “abstraction blooded” (cpp ), serves stevens as a “site where it becomes possible to rethink poetry’s relation to both heroism and to history” is relevant here ( ), as is his reading of “an ordinary evening in new haven” xxvii with an emphasis on how the word as “literally produces resem- self-dissolution in the later poetry of yeats and stevens blances, affords shifts in the level of discourse, and allows us to entertain provisional sympathies with a variety of attitudes” ( ). ragg , quoting from stevens’s copy of henri focillon, the life of forms in art ( in orig.; ellipsis by ragg); originally published as la vie des formes ( ). see the facsimiles of drafts with accompanying transcriptions in yeats, words for music perhaps – . keller’s work on female spirit possession is relevant not only to crazy jane but also to the work of george yeats and the system of a vision; see keller’s the hammer and the flute. works cited altieri, charles. painterly abstraction in modernist american poetry: the contemporaneity of modernism. cambridge up, . coyle, beverly. “an anchorage of thought: defining the role of aphorism in wallace stevens’ poetry.” pmla, vol. , no. , mar. , pp. – . cullingford, elizabeth butler. gender and history in yeats’s love poetry. syracuse up, . doggett, frank. “wallace stevens’ later poetry.” elh, vol. , no. , june , pp. – . focillon, henri. the life of forms in art. translated by charles b. hogan and george kubler, yale up, ; zone books, . foster, r. f. w. b. yeats: a life. vol. : the arch-poet, – . oxford up, . keller, mary. the hammer and the flute: women, power, and spirit possession. johns hop- kins up, . leggett, b. j. “stevens’ late poetry.” the cambridge companion to wallace stevens, edited by john n. serio, cambridge up, , pp. – . litz, a. walton. “particles of order: the unpublished adagia.” wallace stevens: a cel- ebration, edited by frank doggett and robert buttel, princeton up, , pp. – . perloff, marjorie. “beyond ‘adagia’: eccentric design in stevens’ poetry.” the wallace stevens journal, vol. , no. , spring , pp. – . ragg, edward. wallace stevens and the aesthetics of abstraction. cambridge up, . stevens, wallace. letters of wallace stevens. edited by holly stevens, u of california p, . ———. wallace stevens: collected poetry and prose. edited by frank kermode and joan richardson, library of america, . vendler, helen. on extended wings: wallace stevens’ longer poems. harvard up, . ———. our sacred discipline: yeats and lyric form. harvard up, . ———. “wallace stevens: hypotheses and contradictions.” representations, vol. , winter , pp. – . yeats, w. b. the collected letters of w. b. yeats. intelex electronic edition, general editor john kelly, oxford up, , www.nlx.com/collections/ . ———. later essays. edited by william h. o’donnell, scribner, . ———. letters. edited by allan wade, macmillan, . ———. the variorum edition of the poems of w. b. yeats. edited by peter allt and russell k. alspach, macmillan, . ———. words for music perhaps and other poems: manuscript materials. edited by david r. clark, cornell up, . proquest dissertations u ottawa l'universite canadienne canada's university faculte des etudes superieures l=d faculty of graduate and et postoctorales u ottawa posdoctoral studies l'university canadienne canada's university gaye elizabeth taylor auteur de la these / author of thesis ph.d. (english literature) grade/degree department of english faculte, ecole, departement/ faculty, school, department the meaning of the earth and the will of men: re-examining the nietzschean in wallace stevens' harmonium titre de la these / title of thesis donald childs directeur (directrice) de la these / thesis supervisor co-directeur (co-directrice) de la these / thesis co-supervisor bernhard radloff anne raine milton bates david rampton marquette university gary w. slater le doyen de la faculte des etudes superieures et postdoctorales / dean of the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies the meaning of the earth and the will of men: re-examining the nietzschean in wallace stevens' harmonium. a dissertation by gaye elizabeth taylor submitted to the office of graduate studies of the university of ottawa in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy april , . © gaye elizabeth taylor, ottawa, canada, * library and archives canada published heritage branch wellington street ottawaonk a n canada bibliotheque et archives canada direction du patrimoine de i'edition , rue wellington ottawaonk a n canada your file vote reference isbn: - - - - our file notre reference isbn: - - - - notice: avis: the author has granted a non- exclusive license allowing library and archives canada to reproduce, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, communicate to the public by telecommunication or on the internet, loan, distribute and sell theses worldwide, for commercial or non- commercial purposes, in microform, paper, electronic and/or any other formats. l'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive permettant a la bibliotheque et archives canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public par telecommunication ou par i'lnternet, prefer, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou autres formats. the author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. l'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. ni la these ni des extraits substantias de celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation. in compliance with the canadian privacy act some supporting forms may have been removed from this thesis. conformement a la loi canadienne sur la protection de la vie privee, quelques formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de cette these. while these forms may be included in the document page count, their removal does not represent any loss of content from the thesis. bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. + canada it must be an odd civilization in which poetry is not the equal of philosophy. (wallace stevens to henry church, october , ) abstract this dissertation is concerned with re-examining "the nietzschean" in wallace stevens' first book of poems, harmonium ( ). in the final decades of the twentieth-century, such critics as harold bloom, j. hillis miller, joseph riddell, milton bates, and b. j. leggett discovered deep and abiding affinities between nietzsche's thought and stevens' poetry. while never denying the existence of a nietzschean creative will in stevens, my dissertation argues for significant zones of ambivalence towards nietzsche's thought in stevens' poetry, particularly towards the nietzschean valuation of "the meaning of the earth." significantly guided by b. j. leggett's readings of nietzschean intertexts in a number of stevens' early poems, the second and third chapters of this dissertation seek to supplement—and to complicate—the idea of a nietzschean will to creative power in stevens by marking the ways in which these poems extend nietzsche's mandate by assigning creative agency first to women, and then to "the common man." the last two chapters of the dissertation, however, strike a more independent course, arguing that a number of famous early poems, such as "sunday morning" and "the snow man," but especially the long poem, "the comedian as the letter c," demonstrate that working against an investment in a nietzschean will to creative power was stevens' adamant conviction that the limiting function of the earth itself in all its guttural materiality ensured that the outcome of the will to imagine could only ever be, at best, "sufficient"—never self-surpassing. contents acknowledgments i abbreviations ii introduction: the alp at the end of the street. chapter i. "merely the effect of the epatant"?: the question of stevens and nietzsche. chapter ii. "heavenly labials in a world of gutturals": feminine becoming in harmonium. chapter iii. "a giant on the horizon": the will of the commons in "lettres d'un soldat, ( - )." chapter iv. on be(holding) the "meaning of the earth" in new england. chapter v. thus spake good clown crispin (and his four "chits"). conclusion: brave men and bare earth. works cited and selected bibliography acknowledgments i would like first to express my gratitude to my supervisor, don childs, for his spirited guidance over the past five years. i also thank milton bates, bart eeckhout, b. j. leggett, glen macleod, guy roytella, robert storey, and especially craig gordon, for their kind responses to queries, large and small. above all, i thank my family: my beloved husband, andrew, without whose indefatigable support on all fronts this dissertation would have remained unfinished, and our darling daughter, rebecca, a very high candle indeed, though only five years old. abbreviations wallace stevens cpp the collected poetry and prose of wallace stevens cs the contemplated spouse: the letters of wallace stevens to elsie. l letters of wallace stevens op opus posthumous sm secretaries of the moon: the letters of wallace stevens and jose rodriguez feo. sp souvenirs and prophecies friedrich nietzsche bge beyond good and evil bt the birth of tragedy dd the dawn of day gm the genealogy of morals gs the gay science otf "on truth and falsity in their non-moral sense " sl selected letters of friedrich nietzsche. ti the twilight of the idols wp the will to power z thus spake zarathustra introduction: the alp at the end of the street. ix statue against a clear sky ashen man on ashen cliff above the salt halloo, o ashen admiral of the hard, hale blue. . . . x statue against a cloudy sky scaffolds and derricks rise from the reeds to the clouds meditating the will of men in formless crowds. (wallace stevens, "new england verses," ) wallace stevens was notoriously reluctant to acknowledge his creative influences and his poetic allusions are almost always subtle and open to varying interpretations. in his entire poetic corpus there are only two lines that unequivocally and obviously allude to friedrich nietzsche: the reference to "nietzsche in basel" gazing into a pool in "description without place" ( ) and the use of the word "ubermenschlichkeit" in "the surprises of the superhuman," a poem from the "lettres d'un soldat" sequence ( ). yet a number of influential critics have repeatedly drawn the poet and the philosopher together in complex constellations, harold bloom, for example, identifying nietzsche as one of stevens' essential "influences." while eschewing the very concept of literary influence, others, notably j. hillis miller and joseph riddel (in their later work as deconstructionists, that is), and b. j. leggett in his early stevens: the nietzschean intertext ( ), have offered rigorous explorations of intertextual relation between stevens and nietzsche. rounding out a broad spectrum of "nietzschean" critics are milton bates, whose wallace stevens: a mythology of self '( ) estimates that "[n]owhere else in stevens does one have an intellectual influence whose sources and extent can be specified with as much certainty" ( ), and j. s. leonard and c. e. wharton, co-authors of the fluent mundo: wallace stevens and the structure of reality ( ), who believe nietzsche, that is, "particularly the later and increasingly flamboyant nietzsche of the gay science and thus spoke zarathustra" to operate as stevens' "poetic precursor even more than philosophical influence" (xi). extending bates' careful explication of the nietzschean aspects of the poet's "major man," leonard and wharton discover "a range of other nietzschean themes apparent in stevens' figurations—including the 'three metamorphoses,' 'death of god,' solar images, and 'eternal recurrence'" ( - ). according to leonard and wharton, "no poet has dealt with these nietzschean figures as explicitly, persistently, and insightfully as stevens (in prose, and from his earliest major poems—"sunday morning" and "peter quince"—to the last)" ( ). bringing to bear an impressive range of citations from stevens' corpus, leonard and wharton build a persuasive case that their poet was "influenced" by nietzsche. it seems likely, for example, that the opening lines in section v of "it must be abstract" in "notes toward a supreme fiction"—"the lion roars at the enraging desert, / reddens the sand with his red-colored noise, / defies red emptiness to evolve his match"—do "directly appropriate]" ( ) zarathustra's proclamation that "in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; freedom will it capture, and lordship in its own wilderness" (zi i). so, too, might the phrase "bright scienza outside ourselves" in "of bright & blue birds & the gala sun" be "a direct allusion to a gaya scienza,' the italian title under which the gay science was originally published" (leonard and wharton ). but the authors of the fluent mundo may be, nonetheless, too swift to discern an invariably positive trace in stevens of what the poet himself called nietzsche's "formidable poetry." after all, this striking assessment of nietzsche's works in the late essay "a collect of philosophy" ( ), which articulates stevens' sense of the difference between poetry and philosophy is not unalloyed praise: "when i say that writing in a poetic way is not the same thing as having ideas that are inherently poetic concepts, i mean that the formidable poetry of nietzsche, for example, ultimately leaves us with the formidable poetry of nietzsche and little more" {cpp , italics added). "without arguing this last point" (xi), as they put it in their preface, leonard and wharton proceed with dispatch to "trace stevens' poetic incorporation / transformation . . . [of] nietzschean tropes"(xi). while critics are certainly entitled to ignore authorial commentary—notorious as such commentary is for being unreliable—it is worth recalling that earlier in the same essay stevens describes "inherently poetic" ideas as those which "giv[e] the imagination sudden life" (cpp ). that steven should thus implicitly deny nietzsche's "formidable poetry" the power to "give the imagination sudden life" has always been, for me, a sticking point. following bloom, leonard and wharton identify echoes of the gay science in "esthetique du mai," arguing that the poem's celebration of the "yes [that is] spoken because under every no, / lay a passion for yes that had never been broken" (viii) originates in nietzsche's proclamation to "the children of the future" that "[t]he hidden yea in you is stronger than all nos and perhapses of which you and your age are sick" (gs ). so, too, might we read further echoes of the gay science—"build you cities on the slope of vesuvius!" ( )—in the poem's opening canto which finds a young man writing letters home from naples, with the volcano itself "groan[ing]" in the distance. but even if we accept nietzsche as "the presiding intelligence" (bloom ) of "esthetique du mai," there are places in the poem which seem to resist the presence of this "external master of knowledge." it seems unlikely, for example, that nietzsche "presides" freely over the poem's sixth canto which helen vendler describes as "an indulgent parable" revealing that although "the flawed was painful to stevens, it was also attractive" (on extended wings ). vendler is surely correct to read the canto's opening as "both sympathetic and comic, as each sentence rises and then sprawls in collapse" (ibid.): the sun, in clownish yellow, but not a clown brings the day to perfection and then fails. he dwells in a consummate prime, yet still desires a further consummation. for the lunar month he makes the tenderest research, intent on a transmutation which, when seen, appears to be askew. and space is filled with his rejected years. ( - ) and so, also, might we understand stevens' mention of a "too, too human god" (iii, ), as deliberately recalling nietzsche's human, all too human. stevens supplies this phrase as a gloss to the late poem, "the sail of ulysses." this touchingly ineffectual and perennially dissatisfied solar bumpkin who next suffers the indignity of "a big bird peck[ing] at him for food" ( - ) either reads nothing like nietzsche's emblematic "great star!" (zi, i)—or as a considerable parody of it. in my first chapter, which presents a sketch of the state of the question on stevens and nietzsche, i begin with a reading of "description without place"—a poem which stevens composed especially for the phi beta kappa commencement at harvard in . for leonard and wharton, this notoriously difficult text, which contains the sole explicit and direct reference to the philosopher in stevens' poetry, reveals "a subtle, affinitive understanding of nietzsche's philosophy" ( ), an opinion which, until very recently, shared in a wide-spread consensus that "nietzsche in basel" was a hero of stevens' imagination. in my reading of the poem, i interpret the nietzsche found therein as a far more ambivalent figure—indeed, as one who might give insight into stevens' judgement that the philosopher's thoughts were "formidable poetry. . . and little more." keeping in view this late expression of ambivalence—clearly not formed in ignorance of the philosopher's doctrines—my dissertation argues for zones of critical revision of—and resistance to—aspects of nietzschean thought in the early stevens. (constrained by time and space, my focus here is on harmonium, although i look briefly toward ideas of order in concluding.) building slowly towards my final chapter, which reads "the comedian as the letter c" as a mock-heroic tale of "ubermenschlichkeit lost," so to speak, my second and third chapters there has always been a minor strain of dissent. in one of the earliest monographs on stevens' work, images and judgments ( ), john enck finds nietzsche and lenin to share "an arid singularity of purpose" ( ). discussed in my first chapter is alison rieke's fine essay on "description without place," from the spring of , which reexamines, and complicates, the "place" of nietzsche in stevens' art. revisit the question of a nietzschean will-to-create in harmonium, a subject brilliantly articulated, and explicated, by b. j. leggett in his monograph, early stevens: the nietzschean intertext. while significantly guided by leggett's readings of such poems as "sunday morning" and "the surprises of the superhuman," i seek to supplement—and to complicate—the idea of a nietzschean creative will in stevens by marking the ways in which these and other poems extend nietzsche's mandate by assigning such creative agency first to women, and then to the "common man." having considered at some length such variations on the theme of a nietzchean creative will in the early stevens—a will "striving to realize itself in knowing itself (cpp ) by way of making one's relation to the earth as original and immediate as possible, as he explained it in his mature essay "the noble rider and the sound of words"—i turn in my fourth chapter to the decidedly complicated question of what the earth meant to stevens. without proposing a comprehensive answer to this enigma, i offer readings of "earthy anecdote," "the snow man," and "sunday morning," which suggest that working against stevens' investment in a nietzschean will to creative power was his adamant conviction that the limiting function of earth itself ensured the outcome of the will to imagination could only ever be, at best, "sufficient"—never self-surpassing. something of stevens' complex understanding of the relation between the earth and human creative will may be traced in the masterful mid-career poem "notes toward a supreme fiction." early in that work we are told that the poem refreshes life so that we share, for a moment, the first idea . . . it satisfies belief in an immaculate beginning and sends us, winged by an unconscious will, to an immaculate end. ("it must be abstract," iii, - ) but then, in the very next canto, we are reminded that the clouds preceded us. there was a muddy centre before we breathed. there was a myth before the myth began, venerable and articulate and complete. from this the poem springs: that we live in a place that is not our own and, much more, not ourselves and hard it is in spite of blazoned days. (ibid, iv, - ). it is because of this fundamental sense of alienation—"in spite of blazoned days—that stevens, no less than nietzsche, sought a hero for his imagination. given the earlier inclusiveness of the poem—"the poem refreshes life so that we share," "we live in a place / that is not our own"—it comes as no surprise that stevens' articulation of the necessary abstraction of poetry should end by invoking that figure "the major man," not as a heroic (possibly even nietzschean) "chieftain, walking by himself, crying / most miserable, most victorious" (ibid, x, ), but as a "happy fecundity, flor-abundant force" and "part, / though an heroic part, of the commonal" (ibid, - ). as daniel fuchs observes in his study of the "comic spirit" in stevens, "[h]uman existence, in all its poverty, is the starting point of [stevens'] aesthetic. . . . whatever his stateliness, whatever his gaiety, it all stems from the modern attempt at making a modest appraisal of human life" ( - ). it is, i think, this essential modesty in stevens' poetic which leaves him something rather less than a fully committed nietzschean. to read nietzsche is to encounter a gallant commitment to the exorbitant: "nietzsche is the philosopher of excess" ( ), observes peter burgard; "nietzsche's writing, and his thinking, is essentially hyperbolic"( ), writes alexander nehamas. indeed, in his famous essay on nietzsche's "ascensional psyche," gaston bachelard estimates the philosopher as "the poet of the summits" ( ), one who "works directly against the earth" (italics added, ). as one who once thought to write a poem called "the alp at the end of the street," stevens' poetic trajectory was decidedly less "ascensional." leonard and wharton might well object to bachelard's assessment of nietzsche as one who works "against" the earth, recalling as they do the moment late in thus spake zarathustra, when one of the "higher men," the scientific specialist, rebukes the melancholy vaporings of the wagnerian magician, snatching his harp and interrupting his song and crying, ""air! let in good air! let in zarathustra!" (iv lxxv). finding an echo of this scene in section xx of "the man with the blue guitar"—"what is there in life except one's ideas, / good air, good friend, what is there in life?—, leonard and wharton declare that here stevens "breathes the zarathustran "good air" of the earth.(l ). it is likewise, for leonard and wharton, a "zarathustran" poet who, in "parochial theme" ( ), bravely rejoices in the vitality—and fatality—of becoming "fully human in a human world" ( ): this health is holy, this halloo, halloo, halloo heard over the cries of those for whom a square room is a fire, of those whom the statues torture and keep down. this health is holy, this descant of a self, this barbarous chanting of what is strong, this blare. ( - ). for leonard and wharton, the statues here are "dehumanized doctrinal molds into which humanity tries to fit itself," the psychological and social strait-jackets which the nietzschean freed man has thrown off, and the "barbarous chanting of what is strong" expresses the very song of nietzschean "health" ( ). they may be correct. in the echoing "halloos" of the exultant hunters in stevens' poem we might well hear nietzsche's exhortation in the final poem appended to the gay science, "a dancing song to the mistral wind", dance, oh! dance on all the edges, wave-crests, cliffs and mountain ledges, ever finding dances new! let our knowledge be our gladness, let our art be sport and madness, all that's joyful shall be true! taken together, then, the halloos and healths of "parochial theme" do read as heralds of nietzschean free-spiritedness. but the deployment of these two words (or cognates thereof) in the ninth couplet of "new england verses" ( ), quoted above as the first half of my opening epigraph, however, suggests a more ambiguous engagement with nietzschean invitations to for insight into the significance of the concept of "health" in structuring nietzsche's thought, see malcolm pasley and mark letteri. dance at high elevations. admittedly, the first line of the couplet, "ashen man on ashen cliff above the salt halloo" might seem to foreshadow the statues who "torture and keep down" in "parochial theme" and therein to stand itself as a nietzschean figure for the "dehumanized doctrinal molds into which humanity tries to fit itself," to recur to leonard's and wharton's formulation. but that this "ashen admiral" is shown to preside over a "clear sky" described as "the hard, hale [that is, healthy] blue.. . ." (ellipsis in original) complicates this reading as clear skies, health, and "hardness," too, are all heralds of the nietzschean as leonard and wharton so ably demonstrate. that this "ashen admiral" presiding over a healthy span of clear sky is, in any event, no heroic figure, is confirmed by the tenth couplet of "new england verse," cited above as the second part of my opening epigraph. titled "statue against a cloudy sky," the couplet describes "[s]caffolds and derricks ris[ing] from the reeds to the clouds / meditating the will of men in formless crowds." contrary to its title, then, no formal "statue" is erected here: only the makeshift, multiple and transient shapes of ongoing labour. whereas the admiral seems severed from the prospect below and before him, the scaffolds and derricks are intimately part of the reeds and men, growing out of them. that strange verb, meditating, which can mean both "to ponder" and to actively "conceive or design mentally" (oed) is crucial here as it affirms that even as the scaffolds rise up, they maintain a complex and vital relation to their terrestrial, and notably humble, origin: "the will of men in formless crowds." here then, "the will of men" on earth occurs on a decidedly horizontal plain, nothing heroic, nothing surpassing, indeed, merely sufficient. and therefore, stevens implies, the very stuff of poetry. like leonard and wharton, and bates as well, i too read stevens' poems as suggesting that their author read nietzsche early, late, and deep. along the way, however, i have borne in mind (perhaps too suspiciously) the passage in "the figure of the youth as virile poet" (first given as a lecture at mount holyoke in ) where stevens speaks of "a cloud of double characters, against whose thought and speech it is imperative [one] should remain on constant guard. these are the poetic philosophers and the philosophical poets" (cpp ). believing stevens to have approached nietzsche as just such a "double character," i herein trace the poet and the philosopher in agonistic, rather than purely affirmative, relation. chapter one: "merely the effect of the epatant"?—the question of stevens and nietzsche. nietzsche walked in the alps in the caresses of reality. we ourselves crawl out of our offices and classrooms and become alert at the opera. (wallace stevens, "imagination as value," .) on june , , wallace stevens stood before the phi beta kappa graduating class at harvard and read a new poem, written especially for the occasion, titled "description without place." sharing the stage with him was sumner welles, former undersecretary of state to president roosevelt, who had moments earlier delivered as the commencement oration a speech titled "the vision of a world at peace," which projected the united states as the benevolent post-war superpower that would ensure peace and prosperity for all by "offer[ing] its moral leadership to the world" ( ). many in the audience doubtless knew something of welles from the newspapers, or perhaps were aware of his recent book the time for decision ( ). as a regular reader of the new york times, wallace stevens himself would certainly have had some prior knowledge of the statesman's determined advocacy of a new internationalism in which the united states would take a leading role. that welles, or any of stevens' other listeners, knew the poet's work intimately seems unlikely: a survey of reviews to this point in his poetic career although welles made only passing reference to the soviet union in his convocation address, this brief comment spoke to his conviction, laid out earlier in the time for decision, that the united states and the soviet union should set aside their "fanatical suspicions" of each other and recognize their shared interest in working together to ensure a peaceable world ( ). less than a year later this position would have lost all support within the american administration which was by then on full offensive against the soviets. see further leffler. by and large affirms an extraordinary talent being read by very few. "description without place," which harold bloom once declared to be "nobody's particular favourite" and destined to remain so "since it is apparently stevens at his most arid" ( ), is unlikely to have broadened the poet's reputation much on the occasion of its first reading. indeed, while it is impossible to reconstruct the scene precisely, it is reasonable to surmise that for every appreciative murmur which greeted the poem's final injunction that the future "be alive with its own seemings, seeming to be / like rubies reddened by rubies reddening," there were many more sotto voce rumblings of bewilderment. furthermore, whereas welles' energetic description of america's future supremacy abided by the protocols of the convocation genre in bountifully affirming a sense of place and purpose for the young graduates, stevens' elliptical heralding of the future as "description without place, / the categorical predicate, the arc" (emphasis added) might have seemed conducive only to moral vertigo. yet thus, for example, an anonymous reviewer of parts of a world ( ) for the new republic observed that "wallace stevens has been, and still is, very much . . . a 'coterie writer.' his audience is probably more restricted than that of any other poet of his importance" (cited in doyle, ). joseph riddel similarly criticizes the poem for its "dangerous aridity" in the clairvoyant eye ( - ). helen vendler once tartly dismissed sections of the poem as approaching the "unspotted imbecile revery" of the apotheosized poetic imagination envisioned in canto xiii of "the man with the blue guitar" (on extended wings, ). here i assume stevens to use "without" according to its common-place usage, that is, in the sense of absent of or lacking. such an assumption is fundamental to nietzschean readings of "description without place," as it authorizes from the outset such claims as that made by michael t. beehler, in one of the earliest of such readings: "since it is always 'without place,' description is not a revelation of anything beyond itself. it is only an internally-reflective system of vacant names, an 'artificial thing' with no referent beyond the structure of its own seemings"( ). but, in fact, the primary meaning of "without," albeit now archaic, is outside of or beyond—a meaning which arguably affirms referentiality. i defer exploration of this double- valency of "without" until my final chapter. for stevens, the poem was a major articulation of a subject no less crucial than welles' assessment of global politics. as he wrote to leonard van geyzel on may th, only a month before his reading at harvard and so while in the throes of writing "description without place," for a long time, i have felt the most intense interest in defining the place of poetry. it would be current cant to say the place of poetry in society, but i mean the place of poetry in thought and its place in society only in consequence of its place in thought, and certainly i don't mean strict thought, but the special thinking of poetry, or, rather, the special manner of thinking in poetry or expressing thought in poetry. (l - ) elusive and ungiving as the poem may have appeared, it addressed questions that were central to stevens' sense of poetic mission. that nietzsche (and lenin, immediately following) should figure so prominently in stevens' reflections on ""the place of poetry in thought" may well have further discountenanced the poet's audience that day. stevens introduced nietzsche and lenin as part of a curious group of five— "things are as they seemed to calvin or to anne / of england, to pablo neruda in ceylon, // to nietzsche in basel, to lenin by a lake" (iii, - ), and no doubt some of the poet's audience that day would have preferred to hear about the "seemings" of the first three persons. as it happened, however, the poet did not elaborate at all how things "seemed" to the french protestant theologian, the eighteenth-century english queen, or stevens' fellow poet—born in chile but here recalled for the reader in his early consular position in columbo. here, in full, is the extraordinary diptych stevens sketched for his audience on that summer day in : nietzsche in basel studied the deep pool of these discolorations, mastering the moving and the moving of their forms in the much-mottled motion of blank time. his revery was the deepness of the pool, the very pool, his thoughts the colored forms, the eccentric souvenirs of human shapes, wrapped in their seemings, crowd on curious crowd, in a kind of total affluence, all first, all final, colors subjected in revery to an innate grandiose, an innate light, the sun of nietzsche gildering the pool, yes: gildering the swarm-like manias in perpetual revolution, round and round . . . lenin on a bench beside a lake disturbed the swans. he was not the man for swans. the slouch of his body and his look were not in the suavest keeping. the shoes, the clothes, the hat suited the decadence of those silences in which he sat. all chariots were drowned. the swans moved on the buried water where they lay. lenin took bread from his pocket, scattered it— the swans fled outward to remoter reaches, as if they knew of distant beaches; and were dissolved. the distances of space and time were one and swans far off were swans to come. the eye of lenin kept the far-off shapes. his mind raised up, down-drowned, the chariots. and reaches, beaches, tomorrow's regions became one thinking of apocalyptic legions. it bears emphasizing that neither lenin nor nietzsche would have seemed ideal characters to conjure with in america in , and particularly not in such a public forum. as welles himself had recently observed in the time for decision, a long-standing and deep-rooted antipathy to communism had flourished in the united states throughout the years of the war, and was growing ever stronger as the war in europe ended and policy makers, and the public at large, nervously observed the shifting balances of power. although stevens' sketch of a down-at-heel lenin hardly made the poet vulnerable to the charge of being "un-american," his very decision to foreground the bolshevik leader may have struck his audience as mildly subversive. more immediately startling, however, must have been stevens' portrait of nietzsche in revery, endlessly plumbing the pool of "discoloured" human semblances, and subjecting everything to "an innate grandiose, an innate light." perhaps stevens believed that his phi beta kappa listeners, conscious of their society's founding motto, philosophia biou kybernetes ("philosophy the guide of life"), would receive his nietzsche first and foremost as an important, albeit radical, figure in the history of ideas rather than as the (appropriated) vaterfigur of national socialism. but he must have realized that some of his listeners would find his sketch of the philosopher both objectionably subtle and too golden by half: "the sun of nietzsche gildering for further insight into anti-communism in america, see joel kovel's red hunting in the promised land: anti-communism and the making of america and melvyn leffler's the specter of communism: the united states and the origins of the cold war, - . for insight into stevens' rhetoric relation to the cold war, see bauer. the pool," indeed! as manfred putz observes, during the second world war, as during the first, "almost any non-political literary or philosophical approach to [nietzsche or] his works was branded as an intellectual aberration severely frowned upon by the american public at large" ( ). while germany had surrendered six weeks before, the defeat of the nazis had hardly allowed an immediate recuperation of nietzsche's virtually criminalized reputation. although not one to be troubled by the opinion of the public "at large," stevens was a courteous man, and it is surely remarkable that he should have invoked two such charged figures as nietzsche and lenin on that convocation day, and with such seeming insouciance about their contemporary political resonance. though the poet himself seems to have believed that "description without place" might raise some eyebrows, judging from a comment he made to allen tate six weeks before about going to harvard to read the poem "if i have vitamins enough in my system to go there with it" (l ), that stevens' invocation of nietzsche and lenin on that summer day in was extraordinary is by no means a critical commonplace. subsequent readers have taken what is self- in pages following, i pursue in some detail the open question of what stevens actually meant by "gildering." some in stevens' audience that day would have been familiar with harvard historian crane brinton's scurrilous and simple minded attack on the philosopher in his popular monograph nietzsche ( ). nietzsche did have his few defenders within the american academy. see, for example, george morgan's what nietzsche means ( ), which a contemporary reviewer praised in specific comparison to brinton's study as "a most carefully reasoned statement, not of the psychological or historical roots and consequences of nietzsche's thought, but of its expressed and implied meaning" (foxe, ). morgan's study was not well- known, however. it would be another five years before walter kaufmann's powerfully redemptive nietzsche: philosopher, psychologist, antichrist appeared. for more information on the reception of nietzsche in america see hays steilberg. on stevens' courtesy see cleanth brooks in peter brazeau, . evidently the most charged passage in the poem, namely the nietzsche-lenin canto (hereafter canto iv), in stride. while i cannot claim that my survey of the criticism of "description without place" has been exhaustive, i have encountered only one reader, mark schoening, who addresses the contemporary resonance of canto iv—or at least that of its second half. schoening situates the poem precisely in the moment of a burgeoning cold war rhetoric of "sacrifice and sociability," of demands that "rational" and "logical" choices be made with inevitable attendant sacrifices for the good of the community, and argues that the poem reveals how stevens objected to this rhetoric, believing such a doctrine of "rational" sacrifice to lead only to an invariably "tragic" union, and that he meant his poem to offer a "profounder logic" of "multiplicity rather than singularity" ( )." according to schoening, stevens saw welles himself as a contemporary proponent of the "resolutionary [resolving] logic of american liberalism," and lenin as a figure for the same kind of inexorable rationalism underlying communism. against this odd coupling of proponents of the rational, schoening positions nietzsche as a figure of "suspension and speculation" ( ), a figure of courageous irrationality that encourages "multiplicity and inconsistency to become 'the world' rather than its undoing" ( ). strikingly, however, while schoening identifies lenin as a figure for "the soviet system while alan filreis and james longenbach engage specifically with the contemporary socio-political context of "description without place," neither critic addresses the resonance that nietzsche and lenin likely had for stevens' harvard audience. furthermore, both take nietzsche as a figure for an intellectual / aesthetic position, without reference to the man himself. welles' decision to title his study of the new world order to come the time for decision might be seen as one instance of this appeal to "logical" choices, however difficult. schoening positions welles as the evident quintessence of rationalism, and, therefore, as stevens' putative target, but of course welles himself does not appear in stevens' poem. thus, lenin the communist must bear the weight of schoening's claim for the "resolutionary logic" that american liberalism and communism share. with which [he] had become associated" ( ), and refers specifically to edmund wilson's to the finland station ( ) to elucidate his meaning, he interprets the nature of "nietzsche in basel" on the basis of "description without place" alone. for schoening, the poem presents stevens' philosopher as an emancipating intelligence, seemingly outside time, which, unlike the evidently monocular mind of the doctrinaire lenin, can "embrace, rather than resist, variation and fluidity" and which has "exchanged the project of establishing being for the project of sustaining 'the moving and the moving' of'forms'" ( ). published in , schoening's thoughtful argument articulates a long-standing and significant critical consensus on stevens' "nietzsche in basel." repeatedly, the nietzsche in "description without place" has been read as figuring stevens' unequivocal celebration of multiplicity over singularity, difference over identity, becoming over being. thus, for example, bloom finds "nietzsche in basel" to be the prime exemplar of "a jubilant celebration of the vagaries of individual seeing" ( ). similarly, joseph riddel in his essay '"neo-nietzschean clatter'—speculation and the modernist image" ( ) offers stevens' sketch of nietzsche in revery as a tribute to what the philosopher himself described in "on truth and lies in a nonmoral sense" as "the drive towards metaphor . . . . [that] continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams" ( - ). and so david jarraway understands the nietzsche of "description without place" to be whether one judges this figuration to be a marker of emancipating or escapist impulses in stevens has depended upon the ideological perspective of the reader. so also, of course, do vendler's and the early riddel's figuring of both nietzsche and lenin as nothing more than dissociated states of mind. a "man of possibility" ( )—here a short hand for jarraway's finely argued sense of nietzsche as a critically sustaining force in stevens' brave commitment to "the question of belief," even in the absence of its satisfactions. to speak broadly, then, stevens' "nietzsche in basel" has been read as corresponding to "the nietzsche" of gilles deleuze, whose ground-breaking nietzsche and philosophy critically celebrates the philosopher's affirmation of "laughter, play, and dance" as paths to our acceptance of "becoming" ( - , - ). paul de man and jacques derrida, too, have most persuasively presented nietzsche as the quintessential philosopher of deconstructive "play." so the fluidity and light in stevens' portrait of "nietzsche in basel" has become for many literary critics a bright foreshadowing of the philosopher as interpreted by post- structuralism. that stevens' philosopher in "gildering" revery has been thus understood is not surprising given that "description without place" seems precisely to meditate on something very like nietzsche's core doctrine of perspectivism, that doctrine which, in arthur danto's elegant phrasing, holds that "we score the blank surface of reality with the longitudes and parallels of concepts, but the concepts and ideas are ours, and they have not the slightest basis in fact" ( ), and which is, of course, a doctrine central to post-structuralist thought. one might be hard- pressed to find a better illustration of nietzsche's contention that "all life rests on semblance, art, deception, prismatic effects, the necessity of perspectivism and error" (birth of tragedy, "an attempt at self-criticism" ), than "description without place." the poem presents in turn the although in a decidedly non-celebratory key, james longenbach and alan filreis likewise emphasize nietzsche as a proponent of "multiplicity over singularity." for these critics, however, such a philosophical position leading to such postulates as "all the world is fiction" fosters political quiescence. semblances of a "green queen [who] / in the seeming of the summer of her sun / by her own seeming made the summer change" (i); of our own poetic reconfiguring of the ancient planet venus as a "wizened starlight growing young, / in which old stars are planets of morning, fresh / in the brilhantest descriptions of new day" (v); and then of an enigmatic "hard hidalgo," through whom stevens projects "a style of life, / the invention of a nation in a phrase" (vii). and so in his powerful study of the "nietzschean intertext" in stevens' early poetry, to which i turn repeatedly in the course of my own pursuit of the question of stevens and nietzsche, b. j. leggett reads "description without place" as "an explicitly nietzschean text" ( ) whose portrait of nietzsche in its fourth canto serves to affirm the poem's nietzschean premise that "for any being appearance is identical to reality in every respect—that to appear is to be" ( , italics in original). indeed, for leggett, the "innate light" of nietzsche's thought "gildering the pool" of human experience in canto iv positively foreshadows the final, and for him, patently perspectivist, lines of "description without place" which insist that "what we say of the future must portend, / be alive with its own seemings, seeming to be / like rubies reddened by rubies reddening" (vii). drawing on vendler's comment in on extended wings about the equivocal status of "redden" as both a transitive and intransitive verb, leggett finds the poem's final trope of rubies reddened (and reddening) to affirm that while "an imaginative interpretation of the world like that of nietzsche is entirely self-contained, grammatically intransitive if we seek to describe it, [it is] at the same time in some sense that is left unexplained, transitive—its deepening color shading interpretations of a like nature that it touches" ( ). that is, for leggett, "description without place" "go[es] beyond nietzsche's argument [for perspectivism] . . . (that it is we who create the beauty and sublimity of our own worlds) to argue that the imaginative thinker also creates the worlds of his fellow creatures" ( , italics in original). and so leggett reads the "innate light" of nietzsche's revery "that colors . . . everything around it" as "a variation on the figure of the reddening rubies" ( ). leggett is thus able to contain the puzzle of stevens' use of the word "innate"—twice repeated in the poem to describe "the sun of nietzsche"—a word whose expressive faith in the idea of the inborn, the essential, might be read as the ironic antithesis of the philosopher's own conviction that "all life rests on semblance, art. . . prismatic effects." appropriate to his reading of "nietzsche in basel" as an elegantly self-aware perspectivist tableau within the exemplarily perspectivist "description without place," leggett finds no distinction or gap between nietzsche's revery and the world: "[t]he poem's premise [is] that nietzsche's seemings are inseparable from what we call the real" ( ). citing the last half of line , followed by lines through in stevens' fourteen-line portrait of the philosopher, leggett asserts that "[nietzsche's] thoughts are colors subjected in revery here leggett is picking up on vendler's sense that it is "the latent transitivenesss of 'redden' [that] allows stevens his luminous colorings" ( ). but whereas leggett emphasizes the spatial effects of such luminosity in order to advance his perspectivist reading of "description without place," vendler reads the resonant glow of "redden" in temporal terms as a figure of "prophetic beauty"( , italics mine). for vendler, "'redden' is one of those verbs of progressive action which stevens finds immensely useful in his desire to guarantee the future. like other verbs which lean into the time to come (his favorites are 'become' and 'change' and 'transform'), verbs of progressive change, such as 'darken' or 'deepen' or 'spread,' draw us into the future with them" ( ). to an innate grandiose, an innate light, the sun of nietzsche gildering the pool, yes: gildering the swarm-like manias in perpetual revolution, round and round. . . ( - ). seeming to lend support to leggett's explicit identification of the philosopher's thoughts with the ostensible subject of his "gildering" meditation are lines - which speak of nietzsche's revery as "the deepness of the pool, / the very pool, his thoughts the colored forms." here, the absence of punctuation between "his thoughts" and "the colored forms" might seem to assert identity between nietzsche's semblances and what the poem earlier describes as "the greater seeming of the major mind" (ii, ). carrying forward the seemingly clear appositive logic of "his thoughts the colored forms," one might well read the solar revery of nietzsche in basel as a meditation which renders the philosopher's already brilliant world of "thoughts"/ "colors" ever more dazzling, and therefore positively pre-figures the self-reddening rubies of the last canto. but in fact stevens' portrait of nietzsche in basel does mark a gap between the philosopher's seemings and that which lies outside them. that is, whereas the rubies which glow so enigmatically at the end of "description without place" appear there ex nihilo, the "colors" which are "subjected" to nietzsche's "gildering" revery in the final third of canto iv are first introduced as "these discolorations . . . / / . . . moving and moving . . . / in the much-mottled motion of blank time" ( - ). that this moving motley is separate from and prior to the philosopher is surely confirmed by the descriptor "these," which throws the reader back to the wider field of "integrations of the past" which are identified towards the end of the third canto, in line , as composing a "museo olimpico" (italics in original, ) of semblances which apparently have turned dull and pale with age. drawing on the primary meaning of discoloured as "deprived of colour, pale. . . [or] changed to a duller, dingier, or unnatural colour" (oed), and then marking the shift to the phrase "colored forms" in the wake of nietzsche's "mastering" of the "integrations of the past," one might assume the poem to mean that nietzsche had thus restored to "these discolorations" something of their former depth and richness of palette—prior to "gildering" them in his revery. in this sense, then, we might well affirm that "nietzsche's thoughts are 'the colored forms," taking leggett's judgement that "[nietzsche's] thoughts are 'colors subjected in revery'" a critical step further. i say "critical" because if stevens' nietzsche can be understood as having added, or returned, color to a world made drab by time and habit, then the further "subjection" of this fresh palette—in an important sense become nietzsche's own—to the "innate light" of his thought may no more trouble us than does the poem's final trope of "rubies [being] reddened by rubies reddening." to recur again to leggett's assessment, we might here find no more and no less than the scene of "the deepening color" of nietzsche's "imaginative interpretation of the world. . . shading interpretations of a like nature that it touches" ( ). but there is another valency to discoloured, namely "variously coloured; of different colours; variegated, parti-coloured" (oed). with recourse to this meaning, it becomes possible to read the term "discolorations" in a positive light as a figure for semblances rich with and diverse in color, a meaning which can then be carried through to the later "colored forms," and even into their further articulation as "[t]he eccentric souvenirs of human shapes, / wrapped in their seemings, crowd on curious crowd" ( - ). in briefly sketching forth a world of "discolorations" / "colored forms," presumably all shades across the spectrum, "moving / in the much-mottled motion of blank time," the first lines of canto iv may thus recall together the "green queen" of canto i, "the red, the blue, the argent queen[s]" of canto ii, and the "purple- leaping element" of canto iii. if so, then it is this kaleidoscopic plenitude of colour that nietzsche's revery "masters," a parti-coloured mass going every which way, and nowhere in particular, until the philosopher sets it in a "gildered" spin. such a reading thus confirms the "colored forms" as matter prior to and independent of nietzsche's thinking, and within such a reading, stevens' depiction of the philosopher "mastering" motley, and "subjectfing]" eccentricity to an "innate grandiose" becomes much more troubling. depending on how one understands "discolorations," then, stevens' "nietzsche in basel" may be understood as a redemptive figure, recalling the philosopher's own zarathustra who would have us "be[come] the meaning of the earth" (z, prologue ) and then gild all with gayest laughter, or as one whose "strong mind distorts the world," to recall the poet's judgement to his friend and nietzsche aficionado henry church in a letter written several years before "description without place." interpreting "discolorations" as a synonym for rich motley is central to my own reading of steven's "nietzsche in basel" as revealing the poet's considerable ambivalence towards the philosopher. but there are other aspects of the poem which might also be read as casting a long shadow over the idea that "the sun of nietzsche" is in "description without place" a benevolent power. it is worth noting, for example, how the very syntax of canto iv itself seems to draw church first contacted stevens early in in his capacity as editor of the french little magazine mesures, seeking permission to translate several poems from harmonium for a special american issue. their friendship was established first in correspondence and deepened when church and his wife took up residence in new york in late , having fled france at the outbreak of the war. as leggett notes in his helpful summary, church initiated a "remarkable dialogue on nietzsche" with stevens in , which continued intermittently on the subject until church's death in . readers down into "the deepness of the pool, the very pool" of nietzsche's revery. admittedly, we begin pleasantly enough, wading into the gentle cascade of the first sentence of the canto: two couplets seeming to survey the pool of nietzsche's study, and "master[y]," of the discolored "integrations of the past." but, then, the canto's second sentence plunges into the pool itself, taking the reader down with it. five couplets long, this sentence is a tour de force of embedded subordination and oblique reference which seems to end at the bottom of the pool with the reader brought up short by the colon in line : "yes: gildering the swarm-like manias / in perpetual revolution round and round. . ." of course, the line can be read more positively. does nietzsche's sun not recall the reader to light and air? vendler, certainly, reads a return to the surface, or at least to " a reminder of the solar presence, the conferring mind of the visionary, 'the sun of nietzsche gildering the pool'" ( ). deferring for another moment the critical question of just what "gildering" means in this poem, i would suggest that at whatever depth we are left in the pool of nietzsche's thought, we are left suspended, as stevens' critical ellipsis suggests. in thus reading canto iv as mapping a discomfiting descent into a mind presented ultimately as a whirlpool, i depart significantly from leggett's approach to the poem which involves breaking the cascading second sentence of canto iv in half. for leggett, stevens' sketch of nietzsche in "description without place" celebrates the philosopher as one who has in her reading of the canto, vendler observes that "the imitative action here, as nietzsche creates a new coloration of the world, is a deeper and deeper sinking-in toward the object of vision as it become the visionary object" ( ). here i draw on bart eeckhout's engaging discussion of the ellipsis in "when language stops... suspension points in the poetry of hart crane and wallace stevens." "himself colored the way the world seems / is to us" ( ), and so he reads the first nine and a half lines of canto iv as serving simply "to illustrate how what once seemed to one mind now is, ... giv[ing] us a picture of nietzsche in the process of formulating his revolutionary thought" ( , italics in original). according to leggett, the comma following the words "all final" in the tenth line marks the canto's critical shift from figuring nietzsche's semblances as a self- contained idiolect to presenting them radiating outward, the bright lingua franca of "reality." what nietzsche thought has become what "is." for leggett, the final image of philosopher's revery, "gildering the swarm-like manias / in perpetual revolution, round and round . . .," "implies through its figuration that nietzsche, like any strong thinker, was the creative force, the reality (the sun) that colored his world, and by the end of the poem we have learned that the light of such strong imaginations gilders other worlds as well" ( ). thus explicating stevens' portrait of nietzsche as a scene of radiant expansiveness, of the sunny effulgence of spirit which zarathustra calls "the bestowing virtue" (i, xxii), might seem at first to produce a text free of ambivalent undercurrents. for leggett, that stevens' "nietzsche in basel" presents just such a scene of "bestowing" is confirmed by the word "gildering," which appears twice in the canto and is tacitly assumed both times by leggett to be a variant of gilding, in the sense of "covering] or tinge[ing] with golden light (said esp. of the sun)" (oed). in thus equating "gildering" with gilding in stevens' nietzsche portrait, leggett would seem to have considerable justification. certainly, readers of nietzsche who encounter stevens' "nietzsche in basel" might well recall the luminous passage in the gay science which speaks of a new happiness for humanity: "a happiness which, like the sun in the evening, continually gives of its inexhaustible riches and empties into the sea,—and like the sun, too, feels itself richest when even the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars!" (# ). and so, as we have seen, leggett confidently repeats the word gilder himself in his summation of "description without place" as a poem which shows "the light of. . . strong imaginations gilder[ing] other worlds," inexhaustibly bright. concluding his reading of the poem, leggett suggests that its nietzsche portrait also "incorporates as intertext. . . the central conceit of a commentary" given by anthony ludovici, in his nietzsche and art ( ), on a passage in the will to power where nietzsche rejoices in "[m]an as a poet, as a thinker, as a god, as love, as power" (qtd leggett ). leggett then goes on to quote the following from ludovici's text: this man, following his divine inspiration to subdue the earth and to make it his, became the greatest stimulus to life itself, the greatest bond between earth and the human soul; and, in shedding the glamour of his personality, like the sun, upon the things he interpreted and valued, he also gilded, by reflection, his fellow creatures, (qtd leggett ) according to leggett, stevens' text presents directly what is implicit in ludovici's commentary, namely that nietzsche was himself the great solar gilder, whose "glamour," to recur to the earlier critic's commentary, was a wholly positive enchantment. but where ludovici uses the word "gilded" to describe the radiant effect of the nietzschean spirit, leggett employs "gildered" to identify stevens' nietzsche himself as a radiant force, importing the term from "description see also z, iii, lvi, . without place," as if gilded and gildered were synonyms and could thereby be drawn together as an intertextual bridge point between the unabashed delight in nietzsche so apparent in ludovici's study and the decidedly more enigmatic sketch of the philosopher offered in stevens' poem. but as alison rieke reminds us in her very recent analysis of the "recalcitrant poetic sounds" ( ) of "description without place," gild and gilder are not synonyms, the latter, in fact, being an obsolete transitive verb meaning "to catch in a snare" (oed). of course, stevens may have chosen to write gild as "gilder," deciding on the bi-syllable form simply to maintain the dominant ten-beat line of "description without place." but then again, we may be witnessing stevens at serious semantic play as he moves, sleight-of-hand, between the actual meaning of gildering and its deceptive semblance to gilding. as eleanor cook once said, "stevens is so riddling a poet that it is possible to speak of much of his work as 'riddle' and go on to solve what we can" ( ). such riddling play is evidently at work in "description without place": rieke shows how stevens' diction plays upon secondary, outdated, or rare usages of words elsewhere in the poem, and it seems thus quite likely that the poet was aware of the actual meaning of "gilder" even as he sought to make play upon its semblance to gild. n in speaking of the "sun of while cook notes the obsolete meaning of "gilder" in her readers' guide, she offers no further commentary. this ten-beat metrical structure is not invariable, however. the second line in the canto's lenin portrait, for example, takes nine beats: "the swans. he was not the man for swans." a number of other lines in the poem are eleven and even twelve beats long. stevens' passion for getting the "right" word is well-known. one of the clerks at hartford accident and indemnity, charle o'dowd, recalls, "sometimes i'd run across a word [in stevens' correspondence] that struck me [as] out of p l a c e ; . . . . and i would do exactly what he nietzsche gildering the pool," stevens might indeed at first appear to be celebrating the generous radiance of the philosopher's meditations. to insist on the "actual" meaning of gilder here might seem counter-intuitive pedantry: a sparkle, not a snare, is the natural outcome of the sun upon the surface of water. but the poet's second use of "gilder," in the image that concludes his sketch of nietzsche, is more ambiguous: "yes: gildering the swarm-like manias / in perpetual revolution round and round. . ." if we understand the "swarm-like manias" as already revolving, it is possible to read nietzsche as the great gilder whose revery is redemptive, giving meaning, force, and beauty to human existence that would otherwise be a wheel grinding on drearily, pointlessly. but it is also possible to read nietzsche as a gilderer, as one who "gather[s] the world into a snare" (rieke, ) and thus participates in generating these revolutions. whether we read "gildering" as gilding or ensnaring will depend, once again, on definitive judgements we make about steven's far from definitive phrasing. indeed, no part of the final couplet in stevens' sketch of nietzsche in basel can be read categorically, not even that seemingly categorical "yes" that opens line eleven. positioned as if to affirm "the sun of nietzsche gildering the pool," this "yes" might be read as a nod to the philosopher's central faith in the need for "a holy yea unto life" (tsz i, i). if this is the case, however, a reader might wonder at the colon appended to it. where a comma might have served, stevens deploys a strong pause, thus seeming to arrest the potent radiance of this affirmation in the very moment of its expression: "yes:" similarly troubling is the phrase "swarm-like manias." if stevens did, indeed, used to do all the time: go out into the law library and get webster's big dictionary, look [up] the word, and sure enough, it was right on the spot. it was a word that was unusual, and it would make one think, he's missed it here—but you found it eventually. maybe it was the tenth or twelfth meaning, but it would be exactly the word that fitted what he was trying to get across" (cited in brazeau, ). "intend" to valourize his "nietzsche in basel," the phrase "swarm-like manias" seems an unfortunate choice, recalling as it does the philosopher's own tragic lapse into insanity. but it is the alleged solipsism in nietzsche's thought, rather than his personal history, that might constitute the more serious concern. is the final couplet in stevens' portrait of nietzsche meant as a consummate image of solipsism? such a reading might then see nietzsche's "gildering of "manias / in perpetual revolution" as an ironic inversion of the "green queen" of canto i. as cook suggests, this first of several queens in "description without place" may be read as a figure of spring, an interpretation which allows possible insight into the poem's riddling observation that "in the seeming of the summer of her sun / [she] [b]y her own seeming made the summer change." that is, the sun of spring only seems the sun of summer, being as yet too cold and brief, but it is, even so, this spring sun that draws forth summer. as stevens put it in "holiday in reality," published in the summer of , "spring is umbilical or else it is not spring." if this queen is, indeed, a primavera figure who, each year in a cycle without end, greens the motley earth in her own innately verdant light, then nietzsche's "gildering" revery could be read in happy parallel. but one might have to work a bit for this outcome. whereas the coming round again of "spring's bright paradise," to recur to stevens' phrasing in the late poem "farewell without a guitar" ( ), is surely an easy thing to rejoice in, the vision of "swarm- like manias / in perpetual revolution, round and round . . . " which concludes his portrait of nietzsche might provoke a more ambivalent response. see her reader's guide, . early in his study of the nietzschean intertext in stevens, leggett in fact identifies ambivalence in stevens' portrait of the philosopher "in basel," noting especially the phrase "swarm-like manias / in perpetual revolution" as a "negative term" ( ). certainly, it is not easy to cast "the swarm-like manias" in a positive light. "manias" is particularly difficult to salvage, although a striking word in context as in the singular it bespeaks a state of mind in which what seems to be is not. perhaps stevens meant to suggest, tongue-in- cheek, that all our semblances are "manias." this said, "manias" is not, in itself, a valourized term in stevens, appearing elsewhere in his poetry only once, and negatively, in "like decorations" ( ), to speak of "a man gone mad, after all, for time, in spite / of the cuckoos, a man with a mania for clocks" (xlvi, - ). "swarm-like," on the other hand, might recall a number of variant usages of both the verb and the noun swarm elsewhere in stevens: enigmatically, in "the man with the blue guitar" ( ), which at one point figures the imagination as "the swarm of thoughts, the swarm of dreams / of inaccessible utopia" (xxvi, - ); disturbingly, in "dutch graves in bucks county" ( ), when "angry men and furious machines / swarm from the little blue of the horizon / to the great blue of the middle height" ( - ); and luminously, in the final canto of "an ordinary evening in new haven" ( ), where we find the swarming activity of the formulae of statement, directly and indirectly get at, like an evening evoking the spectrum of violet, a philosopher practicing scales on his piano, a woman writing a note and tearing it up. (xxxi, - ) although not in themselves invariably positive words for stevens, "swarm" and its variants are themselves derivatives of motion, which as bloom notes, was "an honorific term" ( ) for the note the original meaning of euphoria as the feeling of well-being in a person who is in fact, very sick. poet. as in the above quotation from "an ordinary evening," "swarms" or "swarming" in stevens may even sometimes become explicitly identified with the meanings that poetry makes out of the otherwise barren rock of human existence, "meanings . . . / of such mixed motion and such imagery / that its barrenness becomes a thousand things // and so exists no more " ("the rock," ii, - , italics added). one might also consider the "swarming chitter // of crows that flap away beyond the creaking / of wooden wagons" in the early uncollected poem, "for an old woman in a wig" ( - ), or the "glass aswarm with things going as far as they can" in "looking across the fields and watching the birds fly" ( ). what, then, are we to make of "swarm-zz'fe"? might stevens just as well have used swarming for his intended sense, choosing the "-like" construction only to avoid the double jingle of two participles that "gildering in swarming manias" would produce? or perhaps he meant "swarm-like" to recall in itself his poem's larger thesis about being and like-ness—that is, seeming. but there is at least a third possibility. not only is "swarm" often a term with strongly positive associations for stevens, a term that evokes the energy of the natural world, but the word might be heard as an echo of "the buzzing world" named in the final canto of "description without place," a world of "being" and of "seeming[s] to be," and, of course, of the "actual" bee itself. indeed, it is worth recalling the literal connection between swarms and bees, especially the fact that bees swarm with one object in mind: to seek out and establish a new colony with a young queen. bee swarms are thus the very sign of ongoing life and renewal. it may thus be possible to infer a draining or deferral of vital force in the phrase "swarm-like manias," particularly as these are found "[i]n perpetual revolution, round and round. . ."(italics added), for confirmation of this fact, i thank my dad, a long-time keeper of bees. never coming to a place of rest and, therein, regeneration. the range of possible connotations of the phrase "perpetual revolution" is likewise broad. does this eternal round enact the second commandment of "notes toward a supreme fiction"—"it must change"—being a scene of the "booming of the new-come bee" (ii, ii, ), of perpetual "beginnings, gay and green"(ii, x, )? or it is "a withered scene" for which we should feel some unease because, to echo earlier lines from "it must change," "it has not changed enough. it remains, / it is a repetition" ( i , , - )? it remains difficult to say because, once more, stevens' lexical choices allow for no one definitive explication of his meaning. for example, we should probably not discount the possibility that in his deployment of the phrase "perpetual revolution," stevens was pleased to provide a witty segue into his portrait of lenin, playing, that is, on the phrase "permanent revolution," first used by marx and engels and championed by leon trotsky to describe the ongoing role of the proletariat and peasantry in bringing about the ultimate overthrow of the capitalist state. welles, at least, may have caught the allusion. but especially the word "revolution" would most certainly have had more poetic than political significance for stevens himself, inhabiting, as "swarm-like" does, a significant semantic field for the poet. early and late, the poet makes use of variants of revolve to meditate together the manner of the world's turning and the ways that we turn the world over in our minds. much else could no doubt be said about stevens' "nietzsche in basel." one might, for example, seek to explicate more fully the relation between lenin and nietzsche, and likewise trotsky developed the concept at length in permanent revolution ( ). see, for example, "sombre figuration" (iii, cpp ), and especially "the sail of ulysses" (vi, cpp ). examine the relation between political radical, radical philosopher, and the other three persons named alongside them at the end of canto iii: calvin, queen anne, and pablo neruda. what even this brief sketch of stevens' "nietzsche in basel" suggests, however, is a certain informed resistance to "the nietzschean" on the part of the poet. influence and affinity. in describing stevens' relation to nietzsche's ideas as rather more ambivalent than has been frequently asserted, i might seem to owe a certain debt to harold bloom's theory of anxious influence. but in fact, although bloom in the poems of our climate names nietzsche alongside william james, bergson, and "probably schopenhauer" as "part of the notion" of the "philosophical anteriority of the will in stevens" ( ), and while bloom discusses at length his poet's misprisions of emerson and whitman, he repeatedly seems to place stevens' nietzsche outside his own theory of the will to power over anteriority. according to bloom, indeed, as we shall see, stevens was quite sanguine about his poetic philosopher precursor, affirmatively reproducing multiple aspects of his forceful thought. at this point, it might be useful to review stevens' own well-known disparagement of any suggestion that he was in any profound way "influenced" by nietzsche's thought: either positively or negatively. while the poet admitted to having read something of nietzsche at two distinct periods of his life, first around and beginning again in late , seemingly on the my own tentative sense is that all five are figures for states of mind which, while powerfully transformative were not "poetic" in the sense stevens explained in "a collect of philosophy." see my preface, above. prompting of henry church, his remarks on the subject are generally evasive when not dismissive. more than once in letters to church, stevens is moved to strike preemptively against any surmises of correspondence between his thought and that of nietzsche. for example, when church makes casual mention of rereading nietzsche in a letter dated june th, , the poet is swift to insist, "my interest in the hero, major man, the giant, has nothing to do with the biermensch; in fact, i throw knives at the hero" (l ). similarly, in a letter of january th, , to jose rodriguez feo, stevens tartly dismisses all notions that his "major men" of "notes toward a supreme fiction" were in any sense "nietzschean shadows" (sm, ). notwithstanding his recurring protestations of dubiety and distaste to church about the substance of the philosopher's thought, however, stevens actively sought out works by nietzsche, expressing some hope, in june, , that a full set might "put itself together during the summer" (qtd in leggett, ). the question which has haunted my project, however, is what works of nietzsche stevens read between and , and how seriously he read them. as i will review in the following chapter, canto vii of "sunday morning" has inclined readers to suspect that stevens knew at least something of thus spake zarathustra as early as . a journal reference to "the idea of the universal superman" (l ), and a comment in a letter to elsie moll from regretting reading, pennsylvania, as "too, too human" may well be, however, as milton bates suggests in his a mythology of self, "phrases caught on the wind. . . [which] serve to remind us that nietzsche was much in the air in the first decades of [the twentieth] century" ( ). all that one can claim with fair certainty is that sometime around the poet was interested enough in feo first contacted stevens in as the editor of the cuban review origenes. nietzsche to have taken note of four volumes of his work, although the particulars of this small event can only be inferred from a letter stevens wrote to henry church on january , . here, stevens observes to his friend, you might be interested to know that i have now picked up the nietzsche books i had in mind. there are only four volumes; they were published at s. d., yet sold for $ . in new york. i am quite sure that the ones i have are the ones i saw twenty-five years ago. the ones that i have are a genealogy of morals, thus spake zarathustra, the case of wagner, and the dawn of day. (qtd. in leggett, ). stevens' comment on the original selling price may indicate that he has just purchased the four- volume the works of friedrich nietzsche itself first published in london by t. fisher unwin in for s. d. each. (if stevens did, in fact, purchase the unwin edition, it is worth noting that within the volume titled the case of wagner he would have found as well nietzsche contra wagner, the twilight of the idols, and the anti-christ.) in , stevens would recall having "seen," twenty-five years previously, the unwin edition of nietzsche, presumably in a new york bookshop. did unwin's volumes in particular attract the poet's attention in because he was then already well familiar with any or all of its texts: on the genealogy of morals, thus spake zarathustra, the compilation in the case of wagner, and the dawn of day! or was he drawn to the unwin edition because it contained texts he had only glanced at, having earlier read the birth of tragedy, the gay science, or beyond good and evil? he would, of course, have had access to the new york public library's thank don childs for pointing to this possibility. considerable holdings of nietzsche's works, both in the original german and in translation. the poet's early letters to elsie moll confirm that he spent many hours at the library reading and taking notes, particularly during his first ten years in the city. in a letter dated may , , for example, he speaks of a routine of "days at the office, early evenings at the library" and a few days later expresses the wish that he had preserved in his journal "even a small part of the notes" he had taken there (blount , ). as bates points out, stevens could have read nietzsche in the original, having taken six semesters of german at harvard, and, indeed, while bates's critical examination of the role of nietzsche in the poet's "mytholog[ies] of s e l f ultimately deals with affinities and does not presuppose direct influence, he does at one point affirm stevens as having been "actively interested in nietzsche . . . [in] the years before and during world war i" ( ). unfortunately, the precise dimensions of this interest seem permanently lost to us. was "the surprises of the superhuman" which stevens composed for his "lettres d'un soldat" series nothing more than the flippant consequence of a casual dip into h. l. mencken's popular study? or was this poem's debt to the philosopher even looser, a response to some nietzschean "phras[e] caught on the wind"? or did stevens' thoughts on ubermenschlichkeit in fact come stevens was a regular patron of the astor library throughout his first ten years in new york, and then of the new york public library which, with the astor's books transferred to its shelves, opened on may , . from the time of his earliest visits, stevens would have had access to german editions of the dawn of day, beyond good and evil, the birth of tragedy, the twilight of the idols, the case of wagner, the gay science, and the dithyrambs of dionysus, all published before . also on the shelves by the end of the first decade of the twentieth-century were german editions of thus spake zarathustra, and a french translation of the birth of tragedy. stevens could also have perused nietzsche's nachgelassene werke: der wille zur macht ( ), a number of nietzsche's letters in the original german, and a number of english commentaries including h. l. mencken's influential the philosophy of friedrich nietzsche ( ). in his - year, stevens attended lectures in german on goethe, lessing, and schiller. from his own reading of thus spake zarathustra! we simply don't know. in all of this, it is worth emphasizing that stevens' resistance to having any aspect of his work referred to nietzsche was very much characteristic of a poet who seems always to have taken very deliberate steps to avoid (or distill) the enchantments of other strong voices. thus bates in his introduction to stevens' common-place book sur plusieurs beaux sujects [sic] remarks on its pages being conspicuously free of notations from modern works of literature, and observes further that beau sujects "reflects a mind that . . . acquired knowledge unsystematically, in the way frost compared to picking up burrs while walking in the fields" ( ). but stevens' method of acquiring knowledge was perhaps not as fortuitously random as frost's evocative image suggests. stevens' description of his reading habits in the spring of to his fiancee elsie moll suggests rather a deliberate lack of system that would thereby permit his thoughts to mingle unconstrainedly with those of others—at least in theory: "i make notes as i read on little slips of paper which, it is true, i throw away before long, but which are interesting for a while" (qtd by bates in beaux sujects ). evidence of stevens' determination to assert originality is found in another letter to elsie early in the same year: "quotations have a special interest, since one is not apt to quote what is not one's own words, whoever may have written them. the "whoever" is the quoter in another guise, in another age, under other circumstances." for a general introduction to the question of the impact of nietzsche on english and american literature, see patrick bridgwater. for particular attention to the reception of nietzsche in the first decades of the twentieth-century, see wilfried van der will. for detailed insight into the impact of nietzsche on american literary theory, see all of the essays in nietzsche in american literature and thought, edited by manfred ptitz. stevens' observation here is quoted as an epigraph in bates' introduction to the poet's common-place book, sur plusieurs beaux sujects. the original unpublished letter is at the huntington library. that stevens' hostility to the very idea of precursors did not abate with the years is indicated in his reply of july th, , to hi simon's musing about the possibility of a french symbolist influence in his poetry: "i have read something, more or less, of all the french poets mentioned by you, but, if i have picked up anything from them, it has been unconsciously. it is always possible that, where a man's attitude coincides with your own attitude, or accentuates your own attitude, you get a great deal from him without any effort" (l ). that stevens himself thus denied all significant engagement with nietzsche complicates any attempt to suggest otherwise, though the poet's own words give us grounds to suspect obfuscation on the subject of what he read and what he took from this reading. but there is a further, and far more intractable, obstacle to any attempt to extrapolate the particulars of stevens' early engagement with nietzsche (as opposed to "the nietzschean") and that is the deep-rooted suspicion of the very idea of influence amongst some of the most prominent stevens' scholars, most particularly within that small, but distinguished, community that has sought to describe the significance of nietzsche to their poet. heavily inflecting the approach of these critics to the "question" of stevens and nietzsche has been the fact that nietzsche is, bar none, their philosopher of choice, as one who sweeps away outmoded ideas, causality and influence in particular. discovering a number of "nietzschean" ideas in stevens, including the philosopher's theorizing on the apollonian and dionysian impulses in art, his doctrine of "perspectivism" and his celebration of becoming over being, a number of these readers of stevens have shown a particular sensitivity, in their own practice, to nietzsche's critique of causality. pugnaciously for insight into stevens' complicated relation to french poetry, see lisa goldfarb, albert cook, and, of course, michel benamou. first set forth in beyond good and evil, nietzsche's attack on causality is further developed, with characteristic wit, in the twilight of the idols, where he diagnoses the "error of false causality" as arising out of an unexamined faith in the existence of three things: will, motive, and a sovereign ego. over this last piece of naivete nietzsche crows, and above all the ego! it has become a fable, a fiction, a play upon words; it has altogether ceased to think, to feel, and to will! . . . what follows therefrom? there are no spiritual causes at all! the whole of the alleged empiricism that seemed to be in their favour has gone to the devil! that follows therefrom! ( vi, iii). this is not the place to judge the philosophical merits of nietzsche's attack on casuality. what is of immediate interest here is the fact that the "nietzschean" readers of stevens have made nietzsche's assault on causality and empiricist filiation one of the central tenets of their craft. thus, in their explications of the "nietzschean" in stevens, the term "affinity" is used to gesture to areas of concordance between poet and philosopher, while the entire concept of influence which so depends on the notions of ego, will, and motive is rejected. it was against the fiction of influence that j. hillis miller announced, in his famous two- part essay "stevens' rock and criticism as cure" ( ), "the relation between text and precursor text is devious, problematic, never a matter of direct cause in effect" ( ). in an analysis which may have offended as many literary critics as it inspired, miller reflects in on the "inner drama or warfare of current literary criticism,"with the advent of the so-called "theory wars," and divides scholars into two uncongenial camps, the "uncanny" or apollinian / dionysian critics and the "canny" or socratic critics, respectively. while miller extends an olive branch at the end of his essay, suggesting that "the task of criticism in the immediate future should be the further exploration, as much by practical essays of interpretation as by theoretical speculation, of this coming and going in quest and in questioning of the ground" ( ), he is by no means a neutral herald of the field of battle. it is rather with the distinct air of announcing the losers in the lists that miller characterizes so-called "canny" critics in terms of nietzsche's socratic thinkers, whom the philosopher chides for their "imperturbable belief that, by means of the clue of causality, thinking reaches to the deepest abysses of being, and that thinking is able not only to perceive being but even to correct it" (bt, italics in original ). in stark contrast, the uncanny or apollinian / dionysian critic, according to miller, launches himself bravely out over the abgrund (abyss), which he knows to be bottomless, and follows not "the clue of causality" but the mise en abyme of language. a compounded avatar of ariadne and arachne (though invariably gendered masculine by miller), the "uncanny" critic works to "interpre[t] or solv[e] the puzzles of the textual web" by following innumerable threads of seeming logic through the labyrinth, but he can never escape the maze because he has extended it yet further with his commentary. for miller, then, "criticism is the production of more thread to embroider the texture or textile already there. this thread is like the filament of ink which flows from the pen of the writer, keeping him in the web but suspending him also over the chasm, the blank page that the thin line hides" ( ). it is in such a position, over an abyssal chasm bravely spinning threads, that miller himself reads stevens' "the rock" in the first part of his essay. his reading is a tour deforce of concentration, but for all readers interested in the place of nietzsche's thought in stevens it is notably, however, even miller cannot resist the romance of meaningfulness. observing that the work of an uncanny critic will regularly reach a point where all logic fails, he names this "abyssal" moment as "the moment of their deepest penetration into the actual nature of literary language" ( , italics added). doubly important as it declares "the rock" a proof of the universal condition of language as mise en abyme, a groundlessness theorized with particular force by paul de man's and jacques derrida's readings of nietzsche in the s. as leggett observes in his lucid summary of the state of the question on stevens and nietzsche in his first chapter, however, miller's thesis is not without its problems. in an admirably "canny" analysis of miller's reading of "the rock," leggett politely, but thoroughly, demolishes his compatriot's claim that stevens' poem is exemplary of the fact that "all poems deconstruct themselves . . .[as] mises en abyme" ( , italics in original). he observes that far from being exemplary of any universal condition of language, "the rock" seems rather revealed, inadvertently, by miller, to be "irreducibly idiosyncratic," and, ironically, as "a unique, intentional text" ( ). while leggett credits the brilliance of miller's neo-nietzschean reading of stevens' late poem, he diagnoses the insightful critic blind to the fact that "the very perfection of his illustration disqualifies it for any general illustrative function" ( ). notwithstanding this possible limitation in his argument, miller's sketch of a "nietzschean" (that is, especially "derridean") stevens, along with the work of such critics as joseph riddel, has had a significant impact on the study of nietzsche in stevens, producing a strange mixture of license and rigidity in the calculations of degrees of convergence between philosopher and poet. that is, within the paradigm of intertextuality, license to classify the works of nietzsche as "precursor texts" for the texts of stevens while prohibiting the application of the causal parameters "will, motive, and ego" has invariably led to readings in which philosopher and poet are in general agreement, or affinity. in the absence of such concepts as for example, while miller makes the critique of causality the theoretical bedrock of his reading, he seems to invoke a narrative of influence in his discussion of the "echoes" of emerson and whitman in "the rock," - . "will, motive, and ego" arguments for ofo-affinity become more difficult to make. if one removes the traditional kinds of causal connection, e.g., the notion that a poet is responding to a text because he has read it, there is nothing to connect texts, that is, little basis for discussing them together, except a relative harmony of perspective. the state of the question on stevens and nietzsche has thus evolved to be startlingly unanimous on one point: that the relationship between poet and philosopher was, however attenuated and tangential, invariably positive, even to the point of being replicative. off limits to "uncanny" readers of stevens would be the poet's own observation in his adagia that "the poet must not adapt his experience to the philosopher" (cpp ) since it presupposes a struggle of egos, an act of will. but even "canny" readers of stevens, that is, those committed at least to some degree to pursuing the question of whether and how nietzsche influenced their poet, and who have therefore to some extent made recourse to the structuring principles of will, motive, and ego, have tended to conceive this influence as invariably positive in origin and end. such inclination to interpret conjunctions between nietzsche and stevens in positive terms can be seen clearly in two "influence" studies, both published in the s when the so- called "theory wars" were at their height: milton bates' aforementioned study of stevens' central personae, a mythology ofself'( ), and j. s. leonard and c. e. wharton's examination of the shared import of nietzsche and ernst cassirer in stevens' idea of a "supreme fiction," ze fluent mundo ( ), considered in my preface. among the first of critics to deal substantively with the place of nietzsche in stevens' thought (all readers since are indebted to him for his painstaking reconstruction of the known facts of the case), bates focuses on the question of whether or not the american poet's "major man" owed a direct debt to the german philosopher's ubermensch? evidently very much a "canny" critic by miller's lights, bates begins his investigation of the possible significance of nietzsche's ubermensch to stevens' "major man" by reminding the reader of his poet's life-long attraction to the heroic ideal as that which might "lend nobility to life" ( ). having isolated some of the more stable attributes of stevens' protean hero—among these, an ambiguous nature at once superlative and abjectly limited—bates introduces the matter of nietzsche with notable confidence: "stevens' major man did in fact have something to do with the overman. . . . nowhere else in stevens does one have an intellectual influence whose sources and extent can be specified with as much certainty" ( ). evidently determined to defend his "canny" practice, however mildly, bates observes that "merely to gloss stevens' poems with passages from nietzsche would of course be an exercise in futility. one wants to know why stevens found nietzsche's ideas attractive at just this moment in his career, and how he modified them to suit his own purposes" ( ). in pursuit of these questions, bates offers thoughtful comment on the ways in which stevens' hero, like nietzsche's own, took partial root both in religious disillusion and in the experience of war. bates finds, moreover, earlier, frank doggett's stevens' poetry of thought ( )—the first full length study of stevens as a thinker—had pushed nietzsche quite literally into its margins as short footnotes. that is, while doggett—having emphasized in his preface that his book is no source study, that he quotes from "philosophic passages . . . only in order to bring out the latent concepts of the poetry" (x-xi)—repeatedly delineates and explores the common ground between stevens' ideas and those of schopenhauer, bergson, santayana, and william james, among others, he alludes to nietzsche directly only twice and both times seems at pains to assert his insignificance, or at least lack of originality. citing eric bentley's study of hero-worship in carlyle and nietzsche, bates notes that it was "upon witnessing an awesome calvary charge" while a medical orderly in the franco- prussian war that nietzsche "became convinced that the desire to overpower was the motive force of life itself ( ). where bates identifies the second world war as the event which "moved stevens to reflect seriously upon the hero" ( ), i will argue that it was the first world war that moved him to this reflection. significant overlap in nietzsche's and stevens' investment in human creative will. he notes, "while [nietzsche and stevens] appealed to different models of human history, they agreed that men create heroes—as well as gods and poetry—in order to dominate reality" ( ). such statements make good on bates' earlier declaration, summarizing in advance of his own explication, that the heroes of the poet and of the philosopher "are similar because they were shaped by similar needs and aspirations" ( ). yet, as bates' own evidence suggests, "major man" and ubermensch are hardly comrades-in-arms however much they were "shaped by similar needs." that is, while the "major man" was very likely shaped by his author's knowledge of the overman, this knowledge seems to bear fruit less in terms of identity, than in terms of difference. as bates reminds us, nietzsche yearned for a "glimpse of a man that justifies the existence of man, a glimpse of an incarnate happiness that realises and redeems, for the sake of which one may hold fast to the belief in manv (genealogy of morals. i xii, italics retained). stevens likewise hearkened all his life after "the master of life, or the man who by his mere appearance convinces you that a mastery of life is possible" (l ). yet, as bates himself shows, beyond their common root in a quasi- religious faith in human creative will, the respective heroes of nietzsche and stevens have significantly different raisons d' etre. noting that "the overman is his own reason for being; his value lies, not in any effects he might produce, but in his very superiority to ordinary men and their affairs," bates goes on to observe that "the overman's autonomy was part of his general critique of goal and purpose" ( ). this is in contrast to the "major man" whom stevens envisioned as "a means to enhance the quality of life" (bates ). that is, while stevens meant his "major man" to be the champion of the imaginative life, he did not mean him to apply a sledgehammer to the status quo. stevens was, after all, a man who at nearly thirty was still inclined to express his longing for the "sacred" in terms of propriety: "it would be much nicer to have things definite—both human and divine. one wants to be decent and to know the reason why" (l , italics in original). moreover, as bates himself concedes, and his poet's own projection of the "major man" as a member of "the commonal" confirms, stevens was "far more tolerant than nietzsche of the general run of humanity" ( ). first named explicitly in "repetitions of a young captain" ( ), this early version of stevens' "major man" is an accretion of power both brutally real, coming out the "calculated chaos" of war, and utterly spectral, being a product of a "make- matter, matter-nothing mind" who "accoutred in a little of the strength / that sweats the sun up on its morning way / to giant red," leaves behind him not warmed life, but "years of war" (iii, , , - ). notably, however, stevens' "young captain" distinguishes himself from this fearsome "giant" who "make[s] more than thunder's rural rumbling" (iii, ), observing at the end of the stanza that "my route lies through an image in my mind, / it is the route that milky millions find, / an image that leaves nothing much behind" (iii, - ). stevens' second explicit reference to the "major men" occurs in "paisant chronicle" ( ) where again we find the poet meditating on the nature of the heroic as something both composed of reality and "beyond" it. here, the "route that milky millions find" towards their heroic ideal is even more emphatically celebrated over the warrior's road: "what are the major men? all men are brave / all men endure. the great captain is the choice / of chance," the poem's opening verse asserts. and at the end of this poem we are told that "the major man" may be a most burgherly sort: "he may be seated in a cafe. there may be a dish of country cheese / and a pineapple on the table." and yet, as joseph riddel observes in the clairvoyant eye, the "major man" is "not a form so much as sense of human possibility" ( ). it is, finally, this sense of the humanly possible that we are left with in the "major man's" last explicit appearance in the final canto of "it must be abstract." again, however, this potentiality is given human shape, and, again, it is a most humble one. having earlier rejected "the maccullough" as a "pensive giant prone in violet space" (viii), that is, as too monumental to be a "major man," stevens proposes that the closest approximation of his hero of the imagination may be found in a chaplinesque figure who wanders plaintively "beyond the town" in a tattered coat and "slouching pantaloons . . . / looking for what it was, where it used to be" ( , - ). that stevens should have chosen to project this sadly comic figure as the apotheosis of "the major abstraction . . . the idea of man" (x) suggests a most original, and decidedly non- nietzschean, claim for the heroic potential of the human. where nietzsche's hero was projected to be "contemptuous of the 'herd'. . . . a mountain-dweller and a solitary" (bates ), stevens's "active man" might be found, as we have seen, "seated in / a cafe." as readers of "loneliness in jersey city" ( ) or "the noble rider and the sound of words" will recall, stevens was hardly innocent of the bigotries of his time, yet in the context of his projections of the "major man" / "supreme fiction," he was notably democratic. it is in this guise that he will, in "notes toward a supreme fiction," propose "the man / in that old coat" as "a possible finality" ( ), as vendler puts it in her magisterial reading of the poem. one may thus be inclined to doubt bates' conclusion of affinity between stevens' and nietzsche's heroes. given his stated project to assess as riddel notes in the clairvoyant eye, "as a major abstraction of the commoner [stevens' major man] recalls whitman's idyllic democrat, but stevens sees his representative man not as a 'literatus' but as a harlequin in the human comedy" ( ). "why stevens found nietzsche's ideas attractive," bates may have experienced a certain necessary blindness to patterns of ambivalence therein. nowhere is the critical impulse to read stevens as an inveterate celebrant of nietzsche's doctrines more apparent, however, than in bloom's the poems of our climate ( ) which remains an extraordinary benchmark in the turn of the critical tide towards a nietzschean stevens. while bloom's argument concentrates on developing the emerson-whitman "crossing" in stevens, it regularly invokes nietzsche as stevens' putative ancestor. thus, for example, bloom reading "the dew of harmonium [as] a synecdoche for everything in nature that still could be thought of as pure or refreshing" finds the "motto for such dew [to be] nietzsche's wistful admonition 'try to live as if it were morning'" ( ). similarly, bloom suggests "the idea of order at key west" ( ) as the scene of "stevens perspectiv[izing] desperately, in the nietzschean manner, to evade the fiction of the human self ( ); identifies "how to live. what to do" ( ) as a "triumph of the will-to-power" ( ); finds "the triumphant snap of.. . [the] 'that's it" which begins the final canto of "a primitive like an orb" ( ) to be "essentially nietzschean, recognizing as it does that the pleasure of art ensues from a willing error,. . .because truth either is or becomes death" ( ); and names nietzsche "the presiding intelligence" ( ) of "esthetique du mai" ( ). with similar conviction, bloom asserts that "[d]ance, in stevens as in yeats, is always a nietzschean trope" ( ), and later that the poet possessed a "nietzschean distrust of the subject as being only another fiction" ( ). in his own survey of nietzschean critics of stevens, leggett points out that bloom's method of constructing his nietzschean poet is characteristically free-wheeling, even cavalier: "bloom both dismisses traditional source study and engages in it when the evidence is present. . . .the result is that [he] moves back and forth between two positions—nietzsche as source, nietzsche as interpretative strategy. he pushes to its limits the tension between source study and reading as free play" ( ). but where bloom's carefree approach to source study seems strategic, there is an intermittent lapsing in the application of his own theory of anxious influence which may be less calculated, may even be unconscious. that is, as the previous selection of quotations from the poems of our climate suggests, over the course of his analysis of stevens' strong misreading of the poets of american transcendentalism, bloom frequently adopts an entirely "traditional" idiom to speak of stevens' engagement with nietzsche, a philosopher whom he names alongside freud in his first chapter in poetry and repression as one of the "strongest poets in the european romantic tradition" ( ). if nietzsche is therefore one of the "strong poets" in stevens' genealogy, why does bloom not regularly find the author of "esthetique du mai" "antithetically 'completing]' [this] precursor" (anxiety of influence )? while bloom repeatedly refers to nietzsche's "anteriority" to stevens, particularly in terms of the will to power, he never explicitly maps this anxious intersection. where is the misprision in reproducing nietzsche's will to power in "how to live. what to do," in showing stevens and nietzsche to share a love of the dance? bloom's lapse into a psychologically uninflected reading of nietzsche in stevens suggests that he, like many other celebrants of the "nietzschean" in stevens, beholds nietzsche as somehow immaculate, outside the interpretative act, beyond the text. bloom uses the term "anteriority" to challenge the commonplace idea that literary tradition—ie. posterity— is a benign influence on modern poets. according to bloom, modern poets suffer from the sense that they have come too late, that all has been said before and more powerfully by their greater precursors. thus in the anxiety of influence he speaks of modern poets being "in gladiatorial dialogue with the collective personae of anteriority" ( ). it is with acute awareness of the traps awaiting the art of explicating a stevens-nietzsche conjunction that leggett advances his own aforementioned study of the "nietzschean intertext" in the early stevens. in concentrating on the "nietzschean" in stevens' early poems, leggett broke new ground. where particularly bates and leonard and wharton focus on what one might call the fulfilment of stevens' nietzschean inclinations in his mature work, leggett identifies this orientation as flourishing in the poet's earliest published poems. through a series of interconnected close readings, leggett builds a careful argument in support of an "intertextual reading" of the nietzschean in stevens, finding the poet to share in particular the philosopher's conception of art as the product of tension between apollonian and dionysian impulses, his celebration of the "innocence of becoming" over the dessicated doctrine of being, and his doctrine of perspectivism. although leggett concedes that his "version of intertextual reading is admittedly impure—practical rather than theoretical and single-minded in its pursuit of the relations between two sets of texts," he insists that such impurity is in fact enabling: my motive in bringing together texts by stevens and nietzsche is not to say anything about the origin of stevens's poems or to identify sources but to produce readings. one value of intertextuality is to allow us to read aspects of a text that are otherwise unreadable, to propose new perspectives, and to identify different ideologies at work in the text, and these results obtain even when the question of influence is deferred, (viii) as leggett points out, his use of the "texts" of stevens and nietzsche, rather than their "works," deploys "barthes' distinction between the work, which is concrete . . . a repository of definable meaning, an object of consumption, and the text, which is a methodological field (experienced only in an activity or production) . . . [and] an object of play or production rather than consumption" ( ). reality and the sufficient imagination. central to leggett's understanding stevens' affinity to nietzsche is his explication of a number of stevens' early poems as reproducing both the aesthetic and ontological assumptions of perspectivism, as insisting always on the figure of the artist as interpreter—not as exegete—and as sharing nietzsche's conception of a world that, as danto puts it, "toss[es] blackly like the sea. . . . without distinctions, a blind, empty, structureless thereness . . . . a mystical, ineffable vision of a primal, undifferentiated ur-eine, a dionysiac depth" ( - ). midway through his initial discussion of stevens' use of perspectivism as "stylistic pluralism"—a term coined by alexander nehamas to describe how nietzsche's "most multifarious art of style" functions always to "make it impossible to get used to his presence [as an author / interpreter] and, as we do with many of the things we take for granted, to forget it" ( )—the literary critic maps an intertext between stevens' early poem, "of the surface of things" ( ) and nietzsche's early essay "on truth and lies in their nonmoral sense," noting in particular that both poem and essay conclude with a male figure drawing his cloak over his head. for leggett, this scene in both texts serves "to suggest something of the nature of metaphors—specifically, the manner in which they must of necessity come between the human perceiver and the "enigmatical x' (otl, ) that has no character apart from interpretations of it, whether in poets' fresh metaphors or in philosopher's stale ones" ( ). i discuss leggett's treatment of "of the surface of things" at greater in length in my fourth chapter. here i would simply say that while i do not dispute leggett's sense that stevens, like nietzsche, regarded the world as "enigmatical," i cannot follow him in his assertion that the poet likewise perceived "reality" as having "no character apart from interpretations of it." it is pertinent here to recall the poet's mature articulation in of "the motive for metaphor" as "a shrinking from / the weight of primary noon, / the a b c of being," as a swerving away from an "x" that, while no doubt "enigmatical," is also understood as "vital, arrogant, fatal, [and] dominant" ("the motive for metaphor," - , ). and so in his essay "the noble rider and the sound of words" ( ) stevens defines poetry as "an interdependence of the imagination and reality as equals" and as "a violence from within that protects us from a violence without" (cpp, , ). though nietzsche himself in "on truth and lies" takes pains to note that it is a "real storm cloud thunder[ing]" against which his stoical man draws up the cloak of his abstractions, the philosopher casts the fatality of the world as first and foremost an existential challenge to be overcome. something of the gulf which separated stevens from the nietzschean on the question of the "meaning of the earth," and humankind's relation to it, may be seen by comparing a passage in thus spake zarathustra with one of the earliest poems in harmonium, "valley candle" ( ). stevens' poem is short, but long enough to suggest his perception of the courage and the power, but also the frailty, of the imagination and its creations: my candle burned alone in an immense valley. beams of the huge night converged upon it, breazeale's translation, which is the one i refer to otherwise in my dissertation, translates "enigmatical" as "mysterious." until the wind blew. then the beams of the huge night converged upon its image, until the wind blew. where both stevens' "valley candle" and the images it had cast are snuffed out by the wind—although not before producing convergence with "beams of the huge night"— zarathustra projects his creative desire as unstoppable: my impatient love overfloweth in streams,—down towards sunrise and sunset. out of silent mountains and storms of affliction, rusheth my soul into the valleys. . . . utterance have i become altogether, and the brawling of a brook from high rocks: downward into the valleys will i hurl my speech. and let the stream of my love sweep into unfrequented channels! how should a stream not finally find its way to the sea! (ii, xxiii) for stevens the poet, the earth was always fundamentally alien—but self-possessed and complete in its own meaning—and in this essential otherness that was nonetheless meaningful, the ground for all imaginative acts that would be more than mere fancy. by contrast, for nietzsche the philosopher, the earth was the stage across which the ubermensch would some day stride, triumphant. zarathustra's praise for the man "who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build a house for the superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant" (prologue, see "the noble rider and the sound of words" for stevens' distinction between a "work of fancy" and a work of the imagination. (cpp ) iv), with its parodic echo of adam's dominion in genesis, shows clearly the subordination of the earth to this latter-day titan. where stevens' poetic required the faith that "the clouds preceded us. // there was a muddy centre before we breathed. / there was a myth before the myth began, / venerable and articulate and complete" ("it must be abstract" iv, - ), nietzsche's philosophy no less demanded that the earth be, at best, "a chaos" awaiting signification by a humankind newly awakened into its creative power. yet, a number of stevens' poems, early and late, suggest the poet was drawn to the figure of the nietzschean hero of the imagination, as the maker of values and courageous exponent of the "truth" that the only world we can know is the one we create in our mind's eye. leggett's suggestion that we might read stevens' perspectivism—and therein his creative will— as nietzschean is thus enriching. even so, leggett's take on the nietzschean in the early stevens gives too little scope to what he himself names as a "troublesome presence" ( ) of nietzsche in stevens. critical in all chapters following is my contention that fundamental in stevens' resistance to "the nietzschean" was its veneration of the superlative human: invariably male, aristocratic, and so full of exultant will as to be the very "meaning of the earth." whereas nietzsche valourized psychological and aesthetic mastery, stevens made the sufficient acts of imagination generated by ordinary men and women, upon an earth which possessed its own meaning, however "enigmatical," both the grounds and the objective of his art. where nietzsche scorned the "last man" as one who, made impotent by the puerile happiness of the every day, could "no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man . . .[in order] to give birth to a dancing star" (z, prologue, ), stevens would observe in "academic discourse at havana" ( ) "the burgher's breast, / and not a delicate ether star-impaled, / must be the place for prodigy" (iii, - ). stevens' life-long exploration of "the place of poetry in thought," to return to stevens' comment to van geysel on the eve of his reading "description without place," began in harmonium, and there we find a number of spirits revealing their insistent creative will-fulness: the woman of "sunday morning," the seamstress of "explanation," the three little girls in "plot against the giant," and the common soldier of "lettres d'un soldat." in the following two chapters, i consider at length leggett's explications of a nietzschean intertext in these poems, complicating his thoughtful exegesis of affinity with reflections on stevens' interest in the (sufficiently) prodigious imaginations of the feminine and of the commons. chapter ii: "heavenly labials in a world of gutturals": feminine creative will in the early stevens. look in the terrible mirror of the sky. and not in this dead glass, which can reflect only the surfaces—the bending arm, the leaning shoulder and the searching eye. look in the terrible mirror of the sky. oh, bend against the invisible; and lean to symbols of descending night; and search the glare of revelations going by! look in the terrible mirror of the sky. see how the absent moon waits in a glade of your dark self, and how the wings of stars, upward, from unimagined coverts, fly. ("blanche mccarthy" - ?) a powerful, intimidating, and mysterious figure strides through a number of stevens' later poems, most notably, "notes towards a supreme fiction." "give him / no names. dismiss him from your images"(ix, - ), warns stevens in the opening section of this famous poem. but critics have named him, frequently deploying one of the poet's own epithets for this recurring and elusive presence: "the giant." although this "giant" first appears in harmonium, his later appearances in parts of a world, transport to summer, and the auroras of autumn have attracted greatest interest. one of the earliest commentators on the giant of stevens' mature imagination is joseph riddel who in his reading of "a primitive like an orb" ( ) names this "bright excellence adorned, crested / with every prodigal, familiar fire, / and unfamiliar escapades" (xi, - ) as a "projection" of the poet's "act of mind . . . a part of himself married to reality" ( ).' later, riddel will summarize the giant as "a humanistic extension of finite man into creator of the infinite idea" ( ). but it is riddel's earlier stress on the giant's relation to "reality" which usefully reminds us that stevens' last giants reappear, after a long absence from his poems, in the context of the second world war, and are associated with his search for a hero of the imagination appropriate to this newly violent reality. such poems as "examination of the hero in a time of war" and "repetitions of a young captain" do refer to a world at war: to oceans full of submarines, to railway stations full of arriving and departing soldiers, to patriotic parades and paratroopers, and to a woman kneeling, in prayer or grief. the precise relation of stevens' giant to these things of the "actual world," however, remains ambiguous. indeed, in "repetitions" there appears to be not one giant, but two: against the "gold whipped reddened in big-shadowed black" of "the giant of sense," the "make-matter, matter-nothing mind" of gigantic reality, stevens opposes (and the young captain appears to choose) a giant who inhabits simultaneously both the real and the imagination, an "orator / of our passionate height.. . [who] wears a tufted green, /and tosses green for those for whom green speaks." here then we may follow riddel in finding stevens consecrating the marriage of reality and the imagination. but riddel's sense of this giant "as a humanistic extension of finite man into the creator of the infinite idea" is not a commonplace. david jarraway, for example, judges the giants of parts of a world, transport to summer, and the auroras of autumn to show stevens demonstrating a nietzschean refusal to project yet another "bearded peer" ( ), however it is worth noting further riddel's speculation that stevens' giant here may show critical resistance to wordsworth's vision in the prelude viii of the sublimity of man '"like an ariel cross,' atop the mountains, at the meeting point of the physical and the spiritual" ( ). apparently secularized, into the heavens. according to jarraway, for stevens, as for nietzsche, the humanist project is ultimately a failure of the imagination, a "foreclos[ure] on the world's peculiarity" ( ), the futile nostalgic mustering of "yet another model of presence in things" ( ). jarraway's compelling thesis which has stevens wishing above all to sustain "the question of belief," and therefore precluding any conclusive definition of the giant, thus thinks through these "moments of enlargement" as images for an "a/theological absence that holds out the only hope for keeping the question of belief alive in all his thinking and writing to the end" ( ). for jarraway, the giant which reposes late on steven's poetic horizon is "the force of absence . . . the nonoriginary 'strength' of rhetorical figuration itself ( ), in which the "question of belief remains blessedly forever in play. jarraway is right to insist that we must take seriously stevens' own refusal to name the giant of his mature poetry—"give him / no names. dismiss him from your images" ("notes"): "as the possible / impossible supreme absence, stevens' giant must destroy every foil, must evade every thought, must repel every look into his colored eyes, yet at the same time must continue to invite, 'in the manner of his hand,' all manner of 'accurate songs' and all method of 'studious' approach: 'but oh! he is, he is'" (italics in original, - ). perhaps the only thing we can say for certain about this giant of stevens' mature imagination is that he is male: "he is, he is." on the strength of such poems as "tea at the palaz of hoon" and "the man with the blue guitar" there has been an understandable tendency to see for further comment on the nietzschean aspect of stevens' late giants see, variously, bromwich and kronick. the early stevens as likewise figuring the imagination as masculine. according to frank lentricchia, the author of harmonium forged overtly masculine images of his poetic creativity in anxious response to contemporary perceptions that writing poetry was a lady-like occupation. commenting on the famous seventh canto of "sunday morning" which describes a "ring of men / . . .chant[ing] in orgy on a summer morn," lentricchia writes, "[t]he contradictions of stevens' early life and poetry—work, poetry, and nature itself, the conventional realm of female authority—all are reclaimed for a masculine totality, fused in an image of masculine power: father nature" ( ). while lentricchia's reading of "sunday morning" is in many ways persuasive, it gives too little to the woman's own creative powers. indeed, in pages following, i argue that steven's peignoired woman—and several of her "sisters" in harmonium—may be read as enacting something very like a nietzschean will-to-create, embracing as the philosopher himself prescribed, the value of illusion. it is, for example, in the full knowledge that she is projecting a fiction that the woman of "sunday morning" herself "devises"—or so i contend in pages following—the solacing illusion that within the "burning bosom" of death, "our earthly mothers wai[f].. .sleeplessly" (vi, , ). like nietzsche, stevens believed, early and late, that "we possess art lest we perish of the truth" (wp iii , italics in original), and that "lies" are necessary for our psychological and on the other hand, for discussion of the role of the feminine imagination in the early stevens see especially mary b. arensberg in schaum, - . lentricchia's argument here first appeared in the pages of critical inquiry, and his essay prompted a spirited reply from sandra gilbert and susan gubar titled "the man on the dump versus the united dames of america; or, what does frank lentricchia want?" lentricchia's own return salvo followed in the same issue. social, as well as material, survival. thus, the poet is that "potent figure . . . [who] creates the world to which we turn incessantly . . . and [who] gives to life the supreme fictions without which we are unable to conceive of it" (cpp ). but whereas nietzsche judged that "we have need of lies in order to conquer this [cruelly inchoate] reality, this 'truth,' that is, in order to live" (wp iii , italics in original), stevens held that poet could, at best, achieve "an interdependence of the imagination and reality as equals" (cpp , italics added), an interdependence that might "hel[p] us to live our lives" (cpp ). such is the judgement of the mature poet, at any rate. of interest to me in stevens' earliest figurations of his "giant," however, are the ways in which the imagination and reality are still in some ways at odds, not interdependent, and patently wn-equal. in the "giant" poems examined in pages following, stevens' perspective on the relationship between reality and the imagination is strongly gendered, explicitly projecting, in one case, the promise of "heavenly labials in a world of gutturals." it is also, at its earliest stages, rather surprisingly attuned to ethnicity. this chapter begins with opening discussion of the meditating woman of "sunday morning" as considerably more possessed of creative will than is often suggested. i then turn first to a number of entries in stevens' letters and diaries, and then to two early poems which contain his first explicit use of the figure of a giant, to consider the way the early stevens' understanding of poetic creativity was linked to the external landscape and—initially at least—to his early configurations of both reality and the imagination in terms of gender and nation. recurrent in stevens' earliest extant writing are evolving representations of a guttural reality as masculine and germanic, and a labial imagination as feminine and french. notably, however, what appears as definitive contrast between reality and the imagination in stevens' earliest meditations on the subject swiftly becomes a decidedly more subtle configuration of nation and gender. drawing together stevens' early meditations in prose and poetry, i present a poet figuring the imagination as nietzschean—but also as feminine. looking towards the argument of later chapters, i will also suggest how these early poems warn that even the power of a labially nietzschean imagination will never overcome the powers of that ur-giant, the "guttural" earth. * * * as i have suggested above, much of the discussion of stevens and nietzsche has drawn on the concept of affinity, partly because stevens' relation to any precursors is so elusive, partly because the concept of influence is so strongly problematized by nietzsche himself. in particular, b. j. leggett has offered powerful interpretations of a number of early stevens' poems as articulating a nietzschean attitude towards the relationship between imagination and reality. insightful as they are, however, leggett's readings remain incomplete—and in some ways inaccurate—because they either actively negate, or do not take into account, the way these texts deliberately herald, albeit with a certain caution, the imaginative potency of "the feminine." in this chapter, i focus in particular on leggett's readings of "sunday morning" and the slightly later "the plot against the giant" ( ) arguing that, notwithstanding the affinities between stevens and nietzsche that leggett so ably demonstrates, these texts also show the poet affirming feminine creative will to a degree that the philosopher himself never did, at least by no means transparently. while detailed discussion of the question of nietzsche's own decidedly complex attitude to women, "woman," and "the feminine" is beyond the scope of my project here, it is worth emphasizing the diverse range of opinion among nietzsche scholars on this subject. variously addressing the "woman question" in the philosopher, for example, are carol diethe, who identifies a discourse of sexuality underpinning nietzsche's thought in which "woman" is figured as a femme fatale: one "completely defined by the reproductive urge . . . . a female predator whose sole instinct is to crave for children" ( ); clayton koelb, who reads nietzsche as simultaneously repelled by and drawn towards the feminine as a figure for the "power [that] resides in the place of castration" ( ); lynne tirrell, who, while affirming that "nietzsche's writings deliver an unhealthy dose of misogyny," finds especially in the philosopher's attack on dualism and his perspectivism "the seeds of a deconstruction of that misogyny" ( ); and david krell, who in a reply to luce irigaray's famous critique of/ love letter to nietzsche, a mante marine: de friedrich nietzsche ( ), argues that the "man-in-the-mountain" may be much closer to his own "she-lover, sea-lover" ( ) than irigaray allows. amongst the most influential readings of nietzsche and the feminine is jacques derrida's spurs, which has been read both as a coy re-inscription of philosophy's historical misogyny (and nietzsche's own), and as a tour-de-force deconstruction of patriarchal conceptions of gender, in for further insight into the role of "the feminine" in nietzsche see also shutte and picart. which nietzsche is shown to be chief rebel angel. while personally declaring for neither side in the debate surrounding the feminist credentials of spurs, leggett takes as an illuminating intertext for "sunday morning" its enigmatic explication of a woman-ideality-christianity- castration nexus in nietzsche. particularly significant for leggett is derrida's attention to two passages from the twilight of the idols, the first being nietzsche's identification in his progressive genealogy of the idea of the "true world," the sorry stage at which it "becomes feminine, it becomes christian" ("history of an error," ti, italics retained). the second passage of note is the philosopher's summary judgement in the chapter which directly follows "history of an error" that this turn to a "woman's religion" (the will to power i, , quoted in leggett, ) is an arc into death itself: the church fights against passion with excision in every sense: its practice, its "cure" is castration. it never asks, "how to spiritualise, beautify, and deify a desire?" . . . . but to attack the passions at the root means to attack life itself at the root: the praxis of the church is inimical to life . . . ("morality as antinaturalness," i, emphasis and ellipsis in original). noting that his interest in such commentary differs slightly from derrida's ontological emphases (or what derrida calls "the enigma of truth's nonpresence" [spurs, ], leggett finds that in these passages, and so elsewhere in nietzsche, "all of life that is natural and instinctive is masculine, virile, and every attempt to transvalue it as christian morality is seen as the assumption of impotency or simulated femininity, castration" ( ). and so, addressing what he earlier termed compare, for example, the readings offered by kelly oliver and ellen armour. "the hierarchical conception of sexual identity" ( ) in "sunday morning," leggett proceeds to argue that the long-standing puzzle of the identity of the woman who graces its stanzas may be resolved to some degree if we read the poem as recapitulating a nietzschean distinction between a dionysian figure of affirmation, a virile male who knows well how to "beautify . . . desire," and a christian figure of negation, a sterile ("castrated") female who exists in a "passionless dream of being" ( ). while i follow in significant measure leggett's estimation that "sunday morning" is nietzschean in its celebration of "the hedonistic laws of becoming" over those of "a paradise of being" ( ), i reject his correlation of the poem's peignoired woman with the latter and especially his conviction that "the poem's characterization of her throughout disqualifies her from ever creating poetry in the ideology of creativity that [it] assumes" ( ). leggett finds the woman subordinate and largely silent before a male speaker / poet who converts her, at the last, to his dionysian perspective. by contrast, i believe her to be, from the outset, closer to that very position than leggett allows, and believe that she achieves her final sense of communion with an "unsponsored" (viii, ) earth via her own creative will to power. it might well be observed, of course, that save the "boisterous" interlude imagined in canto vii, the woman's celebration of the "laws of becoming" lacks the requisite nietzschean intensity. but then again, the secular eden that spreads before her at the poem's close itself hardly seems to demand much imaginative heat and light. as the woman comes to accept by poem's end, the death that is a part of life stalks as bloom puts it, "what is the dreaming woman there for in sunday morning anyway?" ( ). her, no less than it does the whistling quail and the "sweet berries ripen[ing]," but this figure is not immediately on the horizon, and so her imaginative energies, having overcome "the dark / [ejncroachment of that old catastrophe," easily come to rest again in the serene contemplation that is apparently habitual to her. a very different energy animates "the plot against the giant" whose young female protagonists are figured as fighting for their very lives with the only weapons they possess: their creative wills-to-power. as leggett shows, the young girls' brave strategy to "undo" their guttural opponent with the power of art alone could well be read as an expression of nietzschean perspectivism. somewhat oddly, perhaps, given his earlier discussion of "sunday morning" as a text which shows stevens harbouring nietzschean ideas about the feminine as instinctually inimical to both art and life, leggett's analysis of "the plot against the giant" does not take any account of the gender of either the young perspectivists or their fearsome adversary. convinced as i am that the gender of these combatants was important to stevens, my reading of the poem in pages following will address this issue. considering "the plot against the giant" in light of stevens' early predilections to figure the earth as a "giant" most "gutturalfly]"—that is, germanically—masculine, while flagging the successful imagination as likewise teutonic (and, rather surprisingly, the potentially unsuccessful imagination as gallic), i first offer context for leggett's intertextual mapping of affinities with nietzsche's ideas on the will-to-artistic power in the early stevens. as my opening epigraph from "blanche mccarthy" suggests, stevens began to meditate very early on the power the feminine, or "labial," imagination. in his consideration of this uncollected poem from - , robert buttel finds "blanche mccarthy" to show stevens' early attraction to symbolism and that movement's convictions about the revelatory powers of nature. as buttel observes, although she is "the ordinary woman, limited to a concern for appearances, for surfaces . . . the terrible mirror makes clear . . .[that] blanche, in her dark self and in the obscure darkness of 'descending night,' could penetrate beyond her whiteness . . . . to a profound enlightenment" ( ). though an ephebe of day and the sun, rather than of night and the moon, the peignoired woman of "sunday morning" ( ) is, like her dark-shrouded contemporary, first found in revery before her dressing table mirror—or so i will suggest. unlike blanche, however, the woman of "sunday morning" is explicitly shown to be the agent of her own creative will—a will which, moreover, guides her to perceive the sky not as a "terrible mirror" but as a benign emptiness and the earth, therefore, as an "island solitude, unsponsored, free" (viii). something of a nietzschean at heart, the woman of "sunday morning" embraces this space of "unsponsored" freedom as the canvas upon which she will trace her own sustaining fictions, in the full recognition that they are nothing more. another early poem, also from , "the plot against the giant," offers a somewhat different take on this labial imagination, setting it explicitly against a "guttural reality." in an uncollected essay, "the irrational element in poetry" ( ), stevens speculates that the first world war permanently transformed the imagination because it rendered reality newly and reading blanche as a "daughter, not of mallarme and of baudelaire, but of emerson, whitman, [and] dickinson," bloom judges her to be in potentia "a soldier in the war of the mind against the sky" ( ). indeed, while not explicitly naming blanche a nietzschean figure, he does so indirectly when he says that "she is a kind of older sister to stevens' hoon, though she cannot be expected to know that yet" ( ). permanently violent, and it was very probably in the context of his own (remote) witnessing of that horrific struggle that he was first drawn to the nietzschean imagination as potent enough for the most "guttural" reality. but again, stevens was from the outset a believer in the power of the "labial" imagination, though "the plot against the giant," in particular, shows him anxious that this power might prove insufficient because frivolous, or fragile, or naive. what both "sunday morning" and "the plot against the giant" do seem to affirm, in any case, is that stevens's interest in a nietzschean will-to-creative-power did not extend to a concomitant negation outright of the feminine imagination. * * * leggett's reading of "sunday morning," which spans some sixty pages, is humbling in its detail and theoretical sophistication as it engages most of the famous cruxes of the poem in an argument for nietzschean affinity that draws not only on barthes' theory of intertexuality, but also on pierre macherey's reflections on ideology. drawing particularly onthe birth of tragedy, thus spake zarathustra, and the will to power and declaring his debt to ofelia schutte's emphasis on a dionysian nietzsche in her beyond nihilism: nietzsche without masks, leggett argues that "sunday morning" traces the conversion of its peignoired lady by a male speaker from her initial position as an acolyte of the deathless—and therefore lifeless—condition of christian being to her final stance as a celebrant of the life and death affirming state of nietzschean becoming. for leggett, "it is with nietzsche's hierarchy of christianity privileged over life that 'sunday morning' begins" ( ), and with a nietzschean "ambiguity and seductiveness of an innocent existence freed from the responsibility of a supernatural will" ( ), that it ends. as leggett reads the poem, the dominant voice of the poem and the one whose point of view wins out triumphantly is that of a virile and spontaneous zarathustrian prophet speaking his dionysian catechism to the woman who, sterile and rigid, clings fearfully to the decorums of christian dogma. according to leggett, it is this masculine principle which dismisses, after the manner of nietzsche, "that old catastrophe" of christianity in canto i of the poem, rhapsodizes the "balm [and] beauty of the earth" in canto ii, and celebrates the erotic play of desire and death in canto iii, v, vi, and vii. in leggett's explication of "sunday morning," the woman speaks—and, indeed, thinks, but rarely. in the second half of his extended reading of the poem, leggett even goes so far as to read her as, entirely, a nietzschean synthesis of "feminine impotency, ideality, and christianity" against whom stevens opposes his masculine speaker's equally nietzschean synthesis of "virility, becoming, and creation and destruction" ( ). arguing particularly against lentricchia's charged reading of the poem as primarily mapping stevens' uneasy negotiation of nineteenth-century attitudes towards poetry as a feminine and genteel art, and the woman, therefore, as stevens' keatsian alter-ego, leggett insists that "the feminine self of 'sunday morning' cannot be a poet because she represents the antithesis of this creative world, and if her values prevailed this world as the source of song would be castrated, rendered bloodless and impotent" ( ). but is the woman of "sunday morning" a figure for ideality and the "antithesis of the creative world," of the procreative earth? much depends upon the degree of "repressed religiousity," to use harold bloom's term, that one suspects in the delinquent parishioner. that she is not entirely at ease about playing hooky from sunday service is made clear by the fact that when she, perhaps drowsy in the sun, "dreams a little," she immediately "feels the dark / [e]ncroachment of that old catastrophe" (i, - ). but we need not assume, as leggett appears to do, that her spirit welcomes this eclipse. interpreting the opening five lines of the poem as the briefest flicker of the vital and "pungent" intimacy of becoming before it is snuffed out by the "silence, darkness, and distance" ( ) of being, leggett asserts that it is "the woman's inability to accept becoming [that] leads to [a] loss of vitality, as the sensuous objects become ghostly inhabitants of the world of being: 'the pungent orange and bright, green wings / seem things in some procession of the dead,' and the day itself is transformed into a mere appendage of the woman's dream of being" ( ). but leggett's argument turns on the precise relation between the woman and those "sensuous objects." he implies that she is, at heart, apart from the world in which we find her as the poem opens, but the woman may well regard herself as chief among, or presiding over, all the things that add delight to her sun-lit sabbath-slighting morning. and so it is, i believe, that after envisioning in her half-sleep the grim phantasmagoria of coffee, oranges, cockatoo, and her own vital self being swept over the ocean "to silent palestine, / dominion of blood and sepulchre" (i, - ), she rouses herself, asking sharply, "why should she give her bounty to the dead?" (ii, ) in claiming that the woman is an alert interlocutor of her own spiritual condition, not the quiescent pupil figured by leggett, i draw upon riddel's early reading of the poem as "a see bloom . meditative argument in which the poet assumes the role of his lady-subject's conscience, both presenting and interpreting her drama of self' (clairvoyant ). where riddel hears the poet's (masculine) voice still dominant in the poem, however, i find stevens more fully assuming the persona of a woman both as a foil for his own desire, and anxieties, and in pursuit of his interest in the idea of a "labial" imagination. i am able to do this in part because, like bloom, for example, i read a significant degree of identity between the poet and his peignoired woman. naming her "the first instance of stevens' muse, his interior paramour," bloom argues that in this feminine figure, so deep in reverie, "stevens addresses an aspect of himself as surely and intimately as tennyson confronts his own early poetic psyche in mariana" ( ). although like leggett, bloom distinguishes two voices in "sunday morning" and likewise reads the poem as a scene of instruction, he ultimately finds stevens in argument with himself, with the woman articulating his need for "an ethos, a permanent sense of eden, an undying joy" against his "counter-tuition . . . in praise of the american pathos of 'power'" ( )." by contrast, readers like leggett who perceive a significant schism between the woman and the poet hear two voices maintained throughout "sunday morning." thus helen vendler, in a reading that provides a useful counter to leggett's explication of a nietzschean intertext, finds the poem's words (unevenly) divided between a dominant male presence who, speaking in litz similarly discerns "a dialogue between two halves of the woman's mind, or between her lingering doubts and the reassuring responses of the poem's 'voice'"( ). bloom judges that though stevens "moves himself, as he does us, yet he cannot persuade himself. his affirmations . . . though eloquent and even sublime, are quite derivative; they are the exultations and obsessions of the tradition, of wordsworth, keats, tennyson, whitman, more than they are the hard-earned misprisons of stevens himself ( ). "gravities of resignation"( ), constitutes a "voice from the sepulcher" ( ), and the woman whose "protestations" represent "some remnant of the last claims made on life" (ibid). in stark contrast indeed to leggett, vendler judges that "stevens has no nietzschean brio, and his prophecies of a new divinity are wistfully and even disbelievingly made" ( ). that two such fine readers of stevens could diverge so markedly on the meaning of "sunday morning" is a testament to its ambiguity, and internal ambivalence. it is with a strong sense of how elusive the poem remains that i begin my reading by proposing a possibility that has not yet, as far as i know, been suggested: that the woman is talking to herself—at least part of the time into the mirror before which she habitually combs her hair. too little attention has, i think, been paid to the words which begin "sunday morning": "complacencies of the peignoir." habitually, readers either pass over this odd little phrase or gloss it as a sensuous detail intended to emphasize the woman's physical—if not necessarily spiritual—delinquence from the christian holy day—and have done with it. deferring comment on that challenging word "complacencies" to pages following, i would here point to the etymology of "peignoir" as a guide to understanding further stevens' meaning. coming from the frenchpeigner, to comb, the word is cognate with the middle french pignoer, the box in which a woman kept her hairdressing instruments, and peignouer, the undergarment placed on a woman's shoulders while she—or her maid—combed her hair (oed). and so the phrase "complacencies of the peignoir" might be understood to introduce the scene of a woman deep in thought in the privacy of her own bed chamber, at least initially at her dressing table (since this is where such ladies normally combed their hair) and thus, presumably, before her dressing table mirror. (here we might recall blanche mccarthy.) all of us who have ever brushed our teeth before a mirror will recognize this moment as frequently such a time of reverie, however brief. and so it is i think that the poetic ebb and flow that is "sunday morning" constitutes an extended moment of such self-absorbed reflection in which the woman's thoughts circulate anxiously around the matter of "the measures destined for her soul" (ii, ). her protestations and questions rise swiftly and are as rapidly (perhaps too rapidly) answered by her own intuitions. (as i read it, all the questions which appear in the poem enclosed in quotation marks—save the last—are those that she herself speaks aloud. all the other questions, appearing in cantos ii, iii, and vi, are her silent thoughts.) as the critical debate suggests, the various cantos can be assigned to different voices in various ways. "sunday morning" is clearly a dialogue of sorts, but without speakers' cues; my argument will be that the poem can be read as the woman's dialogue with herself. if we assume that she is talking to herself, then her relation to the earth becomes immediately more intimate than leggett allows. admittedly, however, in the opening moment of the poem, this intimacy seems rather closer to the hothouse than to her native soil as neither coffee, nor cockatoos, nor even oranges are indigenous to america. as lentricchia notes, there the term boudoir, which belongs to a similar lexical field, might, indeed, be seen as a deliberate figure for a scene of meditation and self-reflexion, its literal meaning being "a place to sulk in" coming from the verb bouder, to pout or sulk. most critics take a more conservative line on assigning a speaker to the series of questions that interrupt the poem's meditative flow. most commonly, the woman is understood to utter only the lines explicitly indicated as issuing from her. buttel, for example, speaks of the poem's "leisurely, hedonistic situation" ( ). may be a certain irony in the image of the "green freedom" of the cockatoo upon the rug: it is no less a kept bird for all its being allowed to strut around her bed chamber. nonetheless, that she has released her pet from its confinement may be read as figuring her own break for freedom from "the dominion of blood and sepulchre." and in any case, if we assume that she is the dominant speaker of the poem, she is a woman clearly enamoured of the things of earth, first speaking of "unsubdued elations when the forest blooms" (ii, ) and then mourning the way in which christianity has divided the world, turned the sky which should be "a part of labor and a part of pain" into a "dividing and indifferent blue" (iii, , ). it is she who confesses "her desire for june and evening, tipped / by the consummation of the swallow's wings" (italics added). she is also close enough to the earth, and alert enough to its language, to acknowledge and fear its moments of silence, and so it is that she is honest enough to confess that she "still feel[s] / [f]he need for some imperishable bliss" (v, ). but it is not just the possibility that the woman arguably speaks much of the poem and is thus from the outset closer to the earth and consequently less under the thrall "of blood and sepulchre" that suggests she has more creative force than has often been acknowledged. "sunday morning" repeatedly figures the feminine as a source of life in ways that would seem to argue against leggett's reading of the woman as a nietzschean conglomerate of feminine impotency, ideality, and christianity. if the feminine in "sunday morning" is to be wholly identified with the lifeless idealizing of christianity, why then does the poem speak of death as like bloom, i read the cockatoo as an actual bird: not all readers do. some critics have interpreted the bird as an embellishment in the carpet itself. see lentricchia . "the mother of beauty" in canto v, presenting there a scene of youthful passion being impelled by a female deity of both death and desire? stevens writes, death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams and our desires. although she strews the leaves of sure obliteration on our paths, the path sick sorrow took, the many paths where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love whispered a little out of tenderness, she makes the willow shiver in the sun for maidens who were wont to sit and gaze upon the grass, relinquished to their feet. she causes boys to pile new plums and pears on disregarded plate. the maidens taste and stray impassioned in the leaves. dissenting from a significant critical consensus which has found this canto chief in the poem's "metaphorical proofs that it is death which makes us grasp things of the world with elan" (riddel ), leggett judges stevens' assertion that "death is the mother of beauty" to register not "a keatsian statement about the heightened sense of life that death brings" ( ) but rather a nietzschean "affirmation of death as a good in itself, as a source for release and renewal" ( ). as leggett rightly reminds us, stevens' glossing of the phrase "disregarded plate" for harriet munroe indicates that, indeed, the poet by no means saw death as the antithesis of life: "plate is used in the sense of so-called family plate. disregarded refers to the disuse into which things fall that have been possessed for a long time. i mean, therefore, that death releases and renews" (l ). weaving further the "nietzschean implications" of the canto, leggett marks a conjunction between its use of the metaphor of death as a wind that "strews the leaves / of sure obliteration in our paths" and "makes the willow shiver in the sun" and the philosopher's use of a similar metaphor in the birth of tragedy: a storm seizes everything that is worn out, rotten, broken, and withered, wraps it in a whirling cloud of red dust and carries it like an eagle into the sky. our eyes gaze in confusion after what has disappeared, for what they see is like something that has emerged from a pit into golden light, so full and green, so luxuriantly alive, so immeasurable and filled with longing. tragedy sits in the midst of this superabundance of life, suffering, and delight, in sublime ecstasy, listening to a distant, melancholy singing which tells of the mothers of being, whose names are delusion, will, woe [wahn, wille, wehe]. ( ) there are, indeed, striking parallels between this passage and stevens' canto of desire, destruction, and death. but the poet's own figuration of the "mother of being" is surely more positive than the philosopher's: where nietzsche presents the eternal round of generation and obliteration as a site of "longing," "delusion," and "woe," stevens presents this where leggett uses william haussmann's translation in the levy edition, i here use ronald speir's translation from raymond guess' cambridge edition. "consummation" of "our dreams / [a]nd our desires"(v, - ) as palliative—"although she strews the leaves / of sure obliteration on our paths," she also brings to "impassioned" consciousness "maidens" who would, otherwise, "sit and gaze / upon the grass, relinquished to their feet" (italics mine). while stevens' affirmation of death may well have a nietzschean aspect—leggett is, i think, correct to stress stevens' insistent linkage of desire and death—his determination to place a generous maternity at the origin of becoming is a clear departure from nietzsche's ambivalent conjuration of the "mothers of being." indeed, one might add this figuration of the "mothers of being" to leggett's own earlier assessment of nietzsche's common usage of the "x is the mother of y" aphorism, in the context of stevens' contention that "death is the mother of beauty." here leggett notes that while nietzsche never says "death is the mother of beauty" directly,... the aphoristic metaphor in which the assertion is framed is one habitual to him, and he does say that "joylessness is the mother of debauchery" ( , ii, ), that "intellectual sensitiveness" is "the mother of all genius" (jw [gs], - ), that "wounded vanity [is] the mother of all tragedies" (z, - ), that "fear is the mother of morals" (bge, ), that "danger is . . . the mother of morality" (bge, ), and that "falsehood, if not actually the mother, is at all events the nurse of kindness" (dd, ). ( ) that nietzsche did not "directly" say that "death is the mother of beauty" is hardly surprising, however, when one registers the extent to which the philosopher figured mothers as the origin of all manner of what he judges to be regrettables: joylessness birthing debauchery, vanity conceiving tragedy, fear nurturing morality, falsehood nursing kindness. setting stevens' text, "death is the mother of beauty," alongside nietzsche's text which tells of "the mothers of being, whose names are: wahn, wille, wehe" suggests that the poet's and the philosopher's valuations of feminine creative power were very much not identical. that "sunday morning" indeed intends the feminine to be understood as a locus of procreative and creative power (therefore, of "becoming") is further suggested by the other two references to maternity in the poem. in canto iii we are reminded of jove's "inhuman birth," "inhuman" because "no mother suckled him, no sweet land gave / large-mannered motions to his mythy mind," and in canto vi we are presented with a poignant alternative to a paradise which guarantees the reunification of loved ones (provided they are "saved" first). those who find the promise of such consolation false and hollow may rather "devise," that is, construct, within the "burning bosom" of mother death, with full knowledge of its illusory and makeshift nature, a space for "our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly." the point of this scene of "mystical," but not transcendent, beauty seems to be that it counterpoints the dreadful absence of the merest twinge of "inarticulate" desire in the christian idea of paradise, and so "reaffirm[s] . . . the primacy of earth." again, as leggett reads "sunday morning" much of the argument of the poem belongs to the male speaker, and we hear the woman's voice twice only within the marked quotations in cantos iv and v. that "sunday morning" does witness a woman talking to herself, however, is see a. walton litz's foundational study of stevens' poetic development, the introspective voyageur, p . further affirmed by canto vi where the speaker, commenting on the deathless/ lifeless stasis of paradise, a place which, while it mirrors earth's geography of longing ("with rivers like our own that seek for seas / they never find"), forever denies its inhabitants both the pleasure and the pain of desire: "alas, that they should wear our colors there, / the silken weavings of our afternoons, / and pick the strings of our insipid lutes!" leggett passes quickly over this puzzling eruption, perhaps because both its subject and idiom are hardly the stuff of the virile male rhapsody that he is glossing. indeed, what is being described here is the feminine work of sewing and embroidery and the repeated pronoun "our" makes clear that the speaker identifies in some direct sense with this labour. but in speaking here as she does, the woman of "sunday morning" also proves herself an able critic of christianity, seeming to recall the familiar medieval and renaissance tableau of opulently dressed angels plucking the music of the spheres upon their favourite instrument. meditative in the warm sun, the woman regrets that the silken products of the seamstresses' art, and even the music of the "insipid" lute, should have come to be appropriated as figures for the deathly beauty of paradise. it is, again, in contrast to this scene of stasis and sterility that the woman argues that the beauty begat by "mother" death is a "mystical," but nonetheless immanent, scene of desire for our original primordial loved ones, our mothers, endlessly deferred. the delicate sound of the lute perhaps contributed to its popular depiction as the instrument for angels. hortense panum speaks of the lute having "an honoured place in the celestrial orchestras" depicted in the sacred art of the middle ages ( ). leggett, by contrast, identifies these mothers, "spared from the sleep of death, waiting for us to join them in paradise," as partaking in the christian illusion and suggests that they symbolize yet further our departure from the world of becoming in which death is "the it is, i would argue, to relieve the painful tension of this longed for, but never to be realized, reconciliation with "our earthly mothers" that the woman next proposes to herself a scene of erotic "fellowship" between earth and sky, men and mountains, a celebration made all the sweeter for its being understood to be both illusory and ephemeral: supple and turbulent, a ring of men shall chant in orgy on a summer morn their boisterous devotion to the sun, not as a god, but as a god might be, naked among them, like a savage source. their chant shall be a chant of paradise, out of their blood, returning to the sky; and in their chant shall enter, voice by voice, the windy lake wherein their lord delights, the trees, like serafin, and echoing hills, that choir among themselves long afterward. they shall know well the heavenly fellowship of men that perish and of summer morn. and whence they came and whither they shall go the dew upon their feet shall manifest. (vii - ) destructive mother of the 'burning bosom'" ( ). such a reading, however, distorts the poem's clear assertion that it is "within" death's "burning bosom" that we picture our mothers waiting up for us. in reading this perhaps most famous canto of "sunday morning" as a kind of erotic dream emanating from the woman's consciousness, i directly contest leggett's explication of it as a nietzschean "affirmation of the innocence of becoming" absolutely antithetical to "peignoired woman's passionless dream of being" ( ). as riddel notes, this passage's "ritualist chant has a whitmanesque breadth" ( )—but we might also read a more direct debt to the american bard: reading stevens' peignoired woman as the origin of this erotically charged hymn of praise for the sun and for men, we might recall the memorable projection in "song of myself where a woman, alone in her house, "hid[ing] handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window," gazes down upon twenty-eight young men bathing luxuriantly in the sea, "their white bellies bulg[ing] to the sun" (xi, , ). while less suggestive of auto-eroticism than whitman's chant for "the twenty-ninth bather" ( ), the seventh canto of "sunday morning" has itself considerable sensual power—particularly if one reads it as conceived in the mind of the lounging woman. certainly, that this woman is still in her peignoir late on a sunday morning suggests that she may well be much closer to the passions of becoming than leggett allows. as "cy est pourtraicte, madame ste ursule, et les unze mille vierges" and "peter quince at the clavier," both also from , reveal, stevens was surprisingly frank about female sexual desire. while canto vii is undeniably a portrait of masculine virility, this does not de facto make it external to the woman, as has been so often suggested. among those who have understood canto vii to exclude the woman is james longenbach, who reads stevens' boisterously chanting "ring of men" as a "vision of masculine camaraderie" ( ) which reveals the poet's deep ambivalence about his status as a non-combatant in the first world war: "imagined in the world of , [the seventh canto] is not so much hedonism as desperation, an expression not only of stevens's desire but of his worst nightmare, the hyperbolic chant of mortal men for whom the beauty of the earth is not consolation enough" ( ). longenbach is absolutely right to insist that no reading of "sunday morning" can ignore the historical and social context of its composition. he is also, i believe, correct to mark the seventh canto as the moment when the war breaks into the poem. behind that figure of men rejoicing, dancing in a ring under a summer sun and chanting their reverberating song that the trees and hills repeat, and united in "the heavenly fellowship / of men that perish," was the contemporary fact of men facing each other in opposing lines, knee deep in mud and deafened by the scream of shells, slaughtering each other. longenbach may well be correct in his suggestion that stevens' transmutation of this shambles into a scene of "heavenly fellowship" reveals a certain anxious envy on the part of the poet that he was not a soldier, but i query the notion that the seventh canto also constitutes stevens' "worst nightmare, . . . [being] the hyperbolic chant of mortal men for whom the beauty of the earth is not consolation enough." surely what this passage asserts is that "the balm [and] beauty of the earth" should be consolation enough: the men are, after all, in "heavenly fellowship" not just with each other, but with the ephemeral "summer morn" as well. as i read it, the "ring of men" in "sunday morning" is a figure of complete communion with the earth's ebb and flow of existence: "divinity . . . live[s] within" each man and nowhere else—and, above all, without egotistical projection. leggett reads canto vii as figuring "the dynamic continuity of the whole of life," and as expressive of the way in which the "dionysian impulse breaks down the barriers erected by the ego and offers the continuity of existence in which the individual is submerged in the natural rhythms and cycles of the earth" ( ). where i depart from his reading is in understanding the woman to be the imaginative source of this upwelling of erotic connection. two years later in "lettres d'un soldat," or so i will argue in my next chapter, stevens would produce a decidedly ironic portrait of the "common soldier" and his sacrifice. "lettres d'un soldat" is not a transcript of consolation. "sunday morning," by contrast, suggests a poet still content to rather blithely trope upon the war, able for example, to transmute the death of soldiers into a figure of bravely joyous prodigality: of individual lives being gaily sacrificed within the "heavenly fellowship" of all other earthly and mortal things: "and when they came and whither they shall go / the dew upon their feet shall manifest." notably, these last two lines in canto vii emphasize that each of these chanting men will make his own mark upon the earth—though this imprint will swiftly vanish. this reference to the ephemeral dew from the grass of the earth upon the feet of the chanting men recalls the final lines of the opening canto of "sunday morning" which marks how the day is suddenly "stilled for the passing of the [woman's] dreaming feet / over the seas, to silent palestine." again, as i read it at least, the woman does not stay dreaming and drifting over the earth for long, but rouses sharply to defend herself against the residual incursions of her former faith. she might even have risen from her chair, with the force of her conviction, and planted her feet firmly on the rug, determined to share "the green freedom of [her] cockatoo." in the moment of the poem's opening, she apparently still needs to justify to herself her choice of a sunny chair over a hard church pew, but i would contend that the psychological pull of the "old catastrophe" of christianity is not the only thing holding her back from fully acknowledging that "the bough of summer and the winter branch. / . . .are the measures destined for her soul" (ii, - ). arguably, the most serious obstacle to the woman's burgeoning desire to live upon the earth in "heavenly fellowship / . . .[with things] that perish" is not the residual hold that the christian myth has over her spirit, but rather her own egotistical materialism. for lentricchia, "sunday morning" reveals stevens' ambivalence about the increasing commodification of life and culture in early twentieth-century america. noting that the poem's "site of production is new york, and the poem comes, in fact, at the end of almost fourteen years of mostly unhappy new york life," lentricchia observes how [e]veryday life in new york dramatized for [stevens] consumer capitalism as a frustrating spectacle of surreal narcissism: "everybody is looking at everybody else—a foolish crowd walking on mirrors." in this social setting, desire assumes mimetic form, and all commodities . . . become the mirrors of romance, promises of fulfillment quite beyond the explicit use of commodities: entries into an existence definitively more pleasurable than one's own, and available for a price. . . . only nature is exempted by him from his mimetic economy of desire. ( ) drawing together lentricchia's and leggett's very different perspectives on the poem, i read "sunday morning" as recording the woman's effort to break free from this mimetic economy and from the world of "foolish crowd[s] walking on mirrors" so that she may overcome her ego and enter into the "dynamic continuity of the whole of life." i suggest that the poem traces her selfi directed turn away from the "complacencies of the peignoir," where her own ego had dominated (perhaps especially in her moments of "complacency" before her looking-glass), towards "the heavenly fellowship / of men that perish." it is this arcing movement of her consciousness from the self-centred solitude of her sunny boudoir to the communal "isolation of the sky" at dusk that finally finds her participating in the dionysian scene of becoming—"the dynamic continuity of the whole of life" (leggettl ). where the poem may indeed begin with the woman looking at her reflection into her dressing-table mirror, it ends with her gazing out the window into a gathering dusk so full of life, yet also full of portents of death. what begins in complacency, ends with equanimity. while not yet fully belonging to "the heavenly fellowship / [o]f [things] that perish," the woman of "sunday morning" is closer to that condition. and finally, the prospect before the woman as her poem ends is, notably, a return to stevens' origins. what began as a seeming paean to a hothouse world—again, neither coffee, nor oranges, nor cockatoos are indigenous to america (and hardly acclimated to its north east corner)—ends as a poem of a more austere climate, one closer to the poet's own native sense of the earth. the giant and the ubermensch in the last piece of prose he ever wrote, "connecticut composed," stevens concludes that "going back to connecticut is a return to an origin . . . an origin of hardihood, good faith, and good will" (cpp ). earlier in the short essay, he identifies the "thrift and frugality," but also the ingenuity, dignity, and capacity for happiness, of the "connecticut yankee" as the product of determined struggle not just to survive, but to thrive, in a region of hard-scrabble. we get a clear sense of stevens' quiet pride in having become a native son of this austere soil in his description of a train journey he had just taken east by north across the state. the other day, early in april, when the weather was still bleak and everything still had the look of winter, i went from hartford to boston, on the railroad. . . . everything seemed gray, bleached and derelict and the word derelict kept repeating itself as part of the activity of the train. but this was a precious ride through the character of the state. the soil everywhere seemed thin and difficult and every cutting and open pit disclosed gravel and rocks, in which only the young pine trees seemed to do well. there were chicken farms, some of them abandoned, and there were cow-barns. the great barns of the other states do not exist. . . . yet in this sparse landscape with its old houses of gray and white there were other houses, smaller, fresher, more fastidious. and spring was coming on. it was as if the people whose houses i was seeing shared the strength that was beginning to assert itself. the man who loves new england and particularly the spare region of connecticut loves it precisely because of the spare colors, the thin lights, the delicacy and slightness of the beauty of the place. the dry grass on the thin surfaces would soon change to a lime-like green and later to an emerald brilliant in a sunlight never too full. when the spring was at its height we should have a water-color not an oil and we should all feel that we had a hand in the painting of it, if only in choosing to live there where it had existed. now, when all the primitive difficulties of getting started "connecticut composed" was written for the voice of america's "this is america" series in . have been overcome, we live in the tradition which is the true mythology of the region and we breathe in with every breath the joy of having ourselves been created by what has been endured and mastered in the past. we think of the state not only as matrix, but as the very mother, above all in the spring, when the reward of discipline is visible and tangible, or seems to be. we seem to be conscious then, more than at any other time, of the extent to which those who helped prepare each present season are a part of it, and of the extent to which the nature of the land is part of them and of ourselves. (cpp - ) i quote this excerpt in full to emphasize not just the elder stevens' evidently heart-felt sense of identity with and ease in austere new england, his quite material sense of continuity with the generations before him who have "endure[d] and master[ed]" this spare region, but also his sense of the region as a maternal soil—"not only as a matrix, but as a very mother, above all in spring." in spring especially, this mother is, notably, an artist, and so too are the people she nurtures, for "when the spring was at its height we should have a water-color not an oil and we should all feel that we had a hand in the painting of it." here new england as the "original" earth—broadly speaking, the site of america's first founding—is a territory in which reality and the imagination are interdependent equals, and each is, in significant ways, feminine. how differently stevens had conceived the landscape flashing by outside his train window—and the appropriate imaginative response to it—fifty-one years before. always a lover of marathon walks, stevens took a particularly lengthy stroll on april th, , out before dawn from his apartment in new york—"from undercliff to fort montgomery . . . just failing of west point. a good miles" (l ). no doubt bone-tired, he had returned in the evening by rail. although his long walk had filled him with rapture, his journal entry from the following day recalling his ramble ends fretfully: one word more. i thought, on the train, how utterly we have forsaken the earth in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. there are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. it is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes + barrens + wilds . . . . [which] still dwarfs + terrifies + crushes. the rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. man is an affair of cities. his garden + orchards + fields are mere scrapings. somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. but the giant is there nevertheless. and it is a proper question, whether or not the lilliputians have tied him down. (l ) depending upon when steven caught his train, he may not in fact have seen much of new york state flashing past his window that evening: he stopped walking at half past six and dusk would have come about an hour later. but that stevens' reflections on the "giant" earth had, in any case, little connection to the physical landscape, to "the character of the state" through which his train rumbled on that spring night is suggested by his concluding comment deriding one of his fellow passengers : "a girl. . . with a face like the under-side of a moonfish. her talk was of dances + men. for her, sahara had no sand; brazil, no mud" ( , italics in original). for the twenty-five year old stevens, the "giant" at large outside his train compartment that night was a projection at once primitive and sublime, a categorically masculine counter to the puniness of a superficial and complacent—and here egregiously effeminate—humanity. whether this crucial figure owes a debt to nietzsche's ubermensch must remain an open question. what is clear is that both stand in opposition to complacent bourgeois culture. while there remains no evidence that stevens had any reading knowledge of nietzsche in , his journal entry suggests that he would have concurred with zarathustra's exhortation to a crowd of burghers to spurn the lure of contentment: alas! there cometh a time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man—and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz! i tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. i tell you: ye have still chaos in you. alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. alas! there cometh the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself. lo! i show you the last man. "what is love? what is creation? what is longing? what is a star?"—so asketh the last man and blinketh. "we have discovered happiness"—say the last men, and blink thereby. (z, prologue, italics in original) clearly, for stevens, the young woman chattering of "dances and men" on the train that night came by her happiness too easily. the man who earlier on that "absolutely cloudless day" had thrilled to walk under the soaring arc of the sky— "god! what a thing blue is!" ( ), stevens exclaims at one point in his journal entry—might well have received zarathustra's talk of "arrows of longing" and "dancing stars" enthusiastically. about zarathustra's own sublime projection of the ultimate conjugation of humanity and earth, in the figure of the ubermensch, however, the aspiring poet might have felt some reservation. stevens' sense of the natural world as a "disparate monstrosity," as a sphere both material and mythic that will always exceed our "lilliputian" attempts to contain or shape it—whether actual or metaphorical—stands in contrast to zarathustra's exhortation to be as a "ploughshare" (zii, xxvii) in readying "earth, animal, and plant" ( i , iv) for the one who would "be the meaning of the earth."(i, iii, italics in original). in my fourth chapter, i discuss at some length arthur danto's explication of nietzsche's view of the world as "a blind, empty, structureless thereness" ( ). for leggett, stevens' early poems follow nietzsche on this point, "accepting] a world without meaningful distinctions as the ground on which our varied interpretations impose their patterns" ( ). i will argue, on the other hand, that stevens' early ' anthropomorphic projections of the earth rather suggest he perceived it as an inherently meaningful entity, though profoundly other. this early sense of a meaningful earth would come to full maturity in "notes toward a supreme fiction": "there was a muddy centre before we breathed. / there was a myth before the myth began, / venerable and articulate and complete" (i, iii, - ). all of this said, his journal entry of suggests that, if he had read nietzsche, the young stevens would have beheld the ubermensch as a compelling figure of creative will. nietzsche's invocation of the needs to exceed burgherly decorums resonates strongly with stevens' early evocation of the earth as physically, and therefore psychically, monumental. as it happened, however, the figure that loomed out of the april darkness as stevens returned by train to new york at the end of his marathon walk was rather less ubermensch than ogre—an atavistically fearsome presence which would reappear in more abstract form years later in "domination of black" ( ): at night, by the fire, the color of the bushes and of the fallen leaves, repeating themselves turning in the wind. yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks came striding. and i remembered the cry of the peacocks. ( - ) following an unsettling meditation on the commingled "turning" of the leaves and the peacocks tails, and again the latter's "cry," the speaker will recall his fear as "the night came, / came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks" ( - ). that such an atavistic vision of "the real" had considerable hold on steven's imagination is evidenced by the appearance of a similar figure in "like decorations," nearly two decades later: the sense of the serpent in you, ananke, and your averted stride add nothing to the horror of the frost that glistens on your face and hair, (xii) as milton bates observes, stevens here uses "ananke" in "the classical sense of fate or necessity" ( ). as bates notes further, however, this ominous presence would appear again only a year later, in , in "the greenest continent" ("owl's clover"), but in a very different guise, "standing] for 'essential imagination' (l )" and "symbolizing] pure poetry, an entity alike indifferent to regional differences and the day's news" (ibid.) that something of such a lord of the imagination—though decidedly less atavistic, and indeed more human—had, in fact, long been latent in stevens is suggested by a very different "giant" who appears very early in at least the poet's private lexicon. surviving among his - courtship letters to elsie moll are several in which the physically imposing stevens signs himself "giant." perhaps it was elsie who first named him thus, and no doubt her fiance was proud to affirm his ' " self as a tower against which his diminutive fiancee would shelter. there might also be a certain strain of courtly self-deprecation in stevens' signing himself "your giant." so might he suggest himself to his beloved as rather oafish, but nonetheless possessed of a rough charm, not unlike that of the "big- bellied ogres curled up in the sunlight / stuttering dreams.. ." whose "imagined lives" conclude part of bates' point here, is that this ananke as an early figure for stevens' "supreme fiction" will eventually be displaced by another more "compassionate, regarding humanity, 'as if he lived all lives, that he might know' ("the auroras of autumn" x, )" ( ). see, however, vendler's very different sense of this figure as one of "possible extinction, the minos or rhadamanthus of this world" ( ). more commonly, stevens signed off as "wallace" or "buddy." "inscription for a monument," an uncollected poem from (ellipsis in original). recalling stevens' "old sailor" who, "drunk and asleep in his boots, / catches tigers / in red weather" in "disillusionment of ten o'clock" ( ), these "big-bellied" dreamers may be significant as figures of prodigious imaginative potentia. latent within them is stevens' prescription of the necessity for a "violent" imagination. indeed, these rather un-prepossessing "ogres" might be seen as prefigurations of stevens' later giants of the imagination which would, as i note in the opening pages of this chapter, come to play a central role in the poetry of stevens' middle and late periods, where they are central in communicating his elusive conceptions of a "supreme fiction." but the figure of the giant as it appears in his earlier poetry also plays a significant role in the development of his theory of poetry as "an interdependence of the imagination and reality as equals" (cpp , italics added). as countless of his poems and scores of his critics attest, the interplay of imagination and reality was itself one of stevens' great subjects. it is one, as lentricchia, among others, has argued, that was strongly inflected by gender, with the imagination generally (but not, i have argued, exclusively) figured as male. but stevens' perspective at this early juncture was expressed not just by a metaphorical association of both reality and imagination with masculine / macho giants, but also by a metaphorical association of both reality and imagination with german and french culture. repeatedly in the early stevens (particularly in his journal and letters), one encounters praise for germans as a people rooted in the earth and in this rootedness correspondingly "at home" in their it was perhaps in the same spirit that stevens, in another letter to elsie written in may , named himself "caliban." (cs, ). imaginations. as i shall argue, in stevens' meditations on the nature of "the german" we find early evidence of his mature convictions that the imagination must be sufficient to its reality, that reality and the imagination must be interdependent equals. in striking contrast to this sense of germanic sufficiency are intermittent suggestions that to engage reality in a "gallic" manner is to risk insufficiency, to prove inadequate before the powers of earth. in suggesting that things german (or things conceived as such by the poet) were a considerable source of fascination for stevens, i would revise our understanding of a primary shaping force in stevens' early work: namely his love affair with all things french. as buttel confirms in his foundational study of harmonium, the early stevens was a considerable francophile, avidly reading verlaine, translating a sonnet by the sixteenth-century french lyricist, joachim du bellay, and once announcing in , at a banquet held in his honour in chicago by harriet munroe, that american poetry was lagging behind its european counterparts not "because [it was] too far from england, but because [it was] too far from paris" (qtd. in buttel ). and as stevens once told rene taupin, french translator and author of the influence of french symbolism on modern american poetry ( ), "the lightness, grace, sound, and color of french have had an undeniable and precious influence on me" ( ). that the early stevens see, for example, his comment in a letter to elsie, dated dec , , "i've a notion to run over to the library some night to take a look at the journal des debats. one must keep in touch with paris, if one is to have anything at all to think about" (cs, ). as the fall issue of the wallace stevens journal most recently affirmed, stevens' fascination with, and love for, the france of his imagination was lifelong. taupin observes further that stevens "not only used a french vocabulary extensively, but even the movement of his sentences was french . . . . in short, wallace stevens was french, being related to baudelaire by his taste for elegance and dandyism, and to laforgue by his was a man seduced by his vision of france as the locale of and gathering place for sophisticated beauty and a refined exoticism is further affirmed by a comment made to elsie, in a letter from september, , that "tonight i'd like to be in paris, sipping a bock under a plane-tree, and listening to madame's parrot from madagascar"( t ). as it happened, however, stevens never went to paris and the poet's love for france was thus largely a passion of the mind, the object of his adoration flowering like some rare bloom in a hothouse while he himself endured new york "far out on the bleak edge of the world" (l ). as a glance through his collected letters affirms, france became very early for stevens a figure for something not quite of earth, belonging rather to the realm of fancy, as we see in his comment from , after meeting marcel duchamp, that "[w]hen the three of us spoke french, it sounded like sparrows around a pool of water" (l ). at other times, france might stand for a delightful frippery, as when he commented on his friend pitts sanborn sailing from havre "bringing for me my autumnal bon-bons from the place de l'opera" (l ). even at the end of his life, france was for stevens still synonymous with a certain indispensableyh'vo/zye, as two years before his death he would observe, "[w]hat a great many people fail to see is that one uses french for the pleasure that it gives" (l ). but stevens' love for the france of his imagination suffered its moments of disillusion, most critically during the first world war. in several poems that stevens composed in , including much of "lettres d'un soldat," as i will show, france is made to stand, or so i shall nonchalant irony and the 'pierrot' tone of his poems. . ." ( ). for further comment on especially the question of stevens' debt to laforgue, see benamou. contend, for a debilitating, even dangerous, failure to engage with reality. furthermore, and crucially, this disengagement is emphasized not, as one might expect, as a simple absence of tough-minded common sense, but rather as the failure of the imagination to be sufficiently powerful: that is, fierce enough, radical enough to "pres[s] back against the pressure of reality," which, as stevens would go on to declare in "the noble rider," is the imagination's always herculean task in "help[ing] us to live our lives" (cpp ). that stevens should have so figured france while the war in europe still raged, and raged largely on french soil, is surprising, to say the least. even more startling, however, is the fact that the same poems that make france a symbol for an enervated imagination project creative potency as either implicitly, or explicitly, german. as passages from several early letters make apparent, stevens had been near to obsessed with germany in the years before the war, finding especially compelling what he regarded as that nation's proudly enduring connection to its peasant soil. "connecticut composed" confirms that such a connection to one's soil—whether native or immigrant—was one the poet valued all his life. from first to last in stevens, the human imagination is a titan only in so far as it engages with the giant earth. the journal entry about stevens' evening journey back to new york city affirms how early, and how literally, the poet conceived of this relation. thirteen years later, stevens would in several poems from reconfigure this ur-giant into his first giants of the imagination, ones which remained, however—in ways that later such giants would not—demonstrably connected to their parent, in what follows, then, i will be resisting frank kermode's passing comment that "lettres d'un soldat" was "very characteristic of the poet's francophile mood" ( ). being at times gutturally, even ogrishly, at one with the realities of earth. in its less ogrish, but no less reality-oriented, guise, this early giant would have a decidedly teutonic inflection. this ascription of ethnicity is less startling—though still surprising in the context of its genesis during the first world war—when one realizes that stevens was, at least for a number of weeks in , and very likely much beyond, considerably smitten with the "realistic" german imagination. this interest is clearly visible in a series of letters he wrote to elsie. on january th, , stevens went to see an exhibition of nineteenth-century german paintings at the metropolitan, and his comments to his then fiancee show a deep, if occasionally ambivalent, admiration for the teutonic. for example, writing to her in the morning, prior to his visit to the museum, stevens anticipates pleasurable viewing: "the germans have sense enough to paint what they like," but in a later aside about the origins of the florist trade jibes that this delicate art might first have occurred "in some visigothic chaumiere, perhaps—some wattled hut in merovingia" (l ). recording his impressions later in the day, however, stevens confesses himself uncategorically moved: how many senses the pictures touched! i am german to the uttermost. all the exiled ancestors crowded up to my eyes to look at the vaterland—to see those goslings in the water by the fence, the man and woman and baby trudging home through the rainy twilight, the meadows with the meadow trees, the oddities of undeveloped imagination, the infinite humble things.(ibid.) concluding, stevens declares, "one would like to understand the germans. they seem a nation of peasants" ( ). while elsie's reply to her future husband's rhapsody does not survive, she evidently dissented from stevens' identification with his rustic forebears, provoking the poet to insist in a letter three days later, "peasants are glorious. think. who inhabited arcady? who inhabited sicily?. . . i do not mean your staring, open-mouthed, poor devils" (l ). yet stevens' effort to reassure his discomfited elsie (for whom class was an abiding anxiety) surely finds him speaking somewhat disingenuously. his deep connection to and admiration for the figures in vaterland was not for the inhabitants of pastoral arcady, but for the tillers and harvesters of the humbly "actual" earth. stevens responded no less strongly to more recent german art. in a letter dated january th, , the poet tells elsie of having spent the evening reading a "capital serious" article in scribner's on contemporary german art: "you know i am still hammering at them, trying to get the feel of them." citing johann ludwig tieck's cataloguing of various german types, from the "war-like and pious bavarians," to the "handsome thuringians," to the "true-hearted" low- germans, stevens declares a special affinity for the last: "i love them, my dear . . . . i feel my kinship, my race. to study them, is to realize one's own identity. it is subtly fascinating" (l ). he goes on to describe a picture in the magazine of an iron foundry: "the mass of machinery, the hot iron, the grimy workmen—i looked at them for a long time, they were so familiar." he concludes, "no race has ever occupied itself with the realities of life more than the germans.—i should rather spend a year in germany than in any other part of europe" (ibid). this sense of identity persisted in stevens. see, for example, a letter to barbara church dated august , , where he names himself a "pennsylvania german" (l ). the "subtle fascination]" that the earth-bound german evoked in stevens may show itself in two poems which contain the earliest giants of harmonium. the first of these monumental figures is the title antagonist in "the plot against the giant," a figure who in his guttural monstrosity recalls the titan earth stevens glimpsed from his train window on his night ride back to new york city. the second "giant," or so i will contend, is the german mother in "explanation." the two poems appeared together in alfred kreymborg's others: an anthology of the new verse (october ), six weeks after stevens submitted "lettres d'un soldat" to harriet monroe. alongside their deliberate correlation of imaginative ineffectuality with things french, these poems foreground, the former for the worse, the latter for the better, the titanic energies of the german spirit. they also foreground questions concerning the real-world efficacy of woman's imagination. in "the plot against the giant," stevens scrutinizes the imaginative strategies that young girls develop in response to the violence threatened by the giant, perhaps regarding these girls with something of the same eye that earlier disdained his train companion's talk of dances and men. in "explanation," however, by poem's end, the german mother, however briefly, has performed a prodigious act of imaginative resistance and in that moment at least may be read as a nietzschean giantess of the imagination. unambiguously faithful to its title (a rarity in stevens' poems), "the plot against the giant" presents three girls rehearsing their plan to overthrow a "yokel" of a giant who "maunders" about the countryside perpetually "whetting his hacker." the stages in their tripartite assault—which presupposes a notable susceptibility to beauty in their brutish adversary—are advanced in ascending order of aesthetic complexity and corresponding power. thus we learn that once the first brave girl has "checkfed]" the giant in his murderous careering by "diffusing the civilest" of floral "odors," the second will "abash" him with delicate needlework, leaving him embarrassed by his own coarseness when she runs before him "[a]rching cloths besprinkled with colors / as small as fish-eggs." emboldened by this optimistic vision of a chastened giant, the third girl exclaims, "oh, la. . . le pauvre!," before declaring that she will utterly "undo" him with the sound of her words alone, sounds which she describes with palpable erotic force as "[h]eavenly labials in a world of gutturals." her apparent conviction is that their foe actively yearns for the ravishments of graceful speech and so will bend eagerly toward the "curious puffings" of her words and be disarmed. at poem's end the girls have not been disabused of this seductive faith. in his study of the canonization of wallace stevens, john newcomb speaks for what would seem to be a broad critical consensus on "the plot against the giant" when he dismisses the poem as just one of several "weird little ditties" ( ) to be found in harmonium. a. walton litz's foundational study of stevens' poetic development makes no mention of the poem, and such luminaries as harold bloom and helen vendler have likewise offered little comment on it. an exception to this critical silence is leggett's nietzschean reading of the poem as a perspectivist text, one that "adopt[s] the implications of point of view as a theme" ( ), partaking in something of nietzsche's conviction that, in danto's phrasing, "our ideas are such neglect is hardly deserved: as cook notes in her thoughtful reading of the poem, "playful as it is, this is a profound fable of beginnings" ( ). for insight into stevens' playful, and profound, use of sound symbolism in the poem, see borroff s "sound symbolism." arbitrary structurings of chaos, and the question is not whether they are true but whether we should believe them, and why" ( ). leggett does not elaborate on an explicit stevens-nietzsche intersection, however, choosing rather to read the poem in light of anthony ludovici's nietzsche and art ( ), a work which rejoices in nietzsche's perspectivism as confirming that in necessarily interpreting the world, we create it—as artists. leggett points to the following excerpt from the will to power as critical in ludovici's formulation of the artist as nietzschean perspectivist: "the object is, not 'to know,' but to schematize,—to impose as much regularity and form upon chaos, as our practical needs require" (ii, ). prior to considering "the plot against the giant" as a perspectivist text, leggett produces an insightful reading of "the snow man," likewise invoking ludovici, but primarily to show how stevens' poem moves beyond the thinking of the nietzschean sociologist, doing, in fact, greater philosophical work. interpreted by leggett as a virtuoso "unmaskfing] . . . [of] perspectivism's internal conflicts" ( ), "the snow man" goes beyond ludovici's straight-up celebration of nietzsche's perspectivism as "offer [ing] to aesthetics the paradigm of the imposition of order upon chaos" (leggett ) to confront the problem that this human order is itself preordained in language, a substance thus incorrigibly metaphysical. as nietzsche himself put it in human, all too human, "language contains a hidden philosophical mythology, which, however careful we may be breaks out afresh at every moment" (ii, xi). so leggett ultimately anthony ludovici was one of the primary translators for oscar levy's edition of nietzsche's works. by referring to ludovici's analysis, rather than to his, or other, translations of nietzsche, leggett avoids some of the difficulties of attributing to stevens a direct debt to nietzsche. see - , above. summarizes "the snow man as "humanist variation" ( - ) on nietzsche's famous aphorism from the twilight of the idols: "i fear we do not get rid of god, because we still believe in grammar . . ." (iv, v). turning to explicate the nietzschean intertext of "the plot against the giant," leggett discerns a rather simpler convergence in which stevens' poem quite straightforwardly shares ludovici's celebration of nietzsche's perspectivism as underwriting the artist's will to power over the chaos of life: "so different did ugly reality appear once it had been interpreted by the artist mind, that creating and naming actually began to acquire much the same sense. for to put a meaning into things was clearly to create them afresh—in fact, to create them literally" (nietzsche and art ). leggett finds ludovici's statement here to be a precise intertext for "the plot against the giant," observing, "faced with a giant and inarticulate reality, the third girl, the true artist, masters it through language, the 'curious puffing' by which reality is at last, in the terms of the poem, seduced" ( ). at first glance, leggett's suggestion that the artistic "devices" ( ) of the poem's protagonists do succeed "in the terms of the poem" is puzzling: such a conclusion surely runs ahead of the ostensible narrative that unfolds. as observed above, the poem ends with the fate of the girls and their plot unknown. reading on, however, one recognizes that the outcome of the encounter between girls and giant is, for leggett, merely an academic point. again, at this point following ludovici's interpretation of nietzsche, rather than nietzsche himself, leggett writes, [wjhether [the devices of the girls] could in fact succeed is a question rendered moot when we recall that we have understood this brute reality only from the point of view of those attempting to cope with it, and they have already ordered their reality in articulating their schemes. here again we uncover the persistent irony of perspectivism. in naming and characterizing this yokel, 'le pauvre,' so easily checked and abashed, [they] have undone the giant with language even before their plots unfold. their confidence is based on their own creation of a mythic adversary who requires civilizing and who can be undone by mere words. ( ) but does the poem present the giant as entirely the young girls' creation? the notion that the girls preemptively create and therefore control this reality through their naming, and therein (re)creating of it, fails to accommodate the giant's constant hacker-sharpening: why as part of "ordering] their reality" would they create him thus? the greater likelihood is that label the giant as they will, he is and remains the hacker-wielder who may well smash to pieces their delicate ideas of order. leggett suggests that there is no point asking whether the girls' confidence in their aesthetic power is misplaced, but this judgement requires that we ignore the ominous signs of inchoate violence abroad in the poem. words like "maunder" and "hacker" shouldleave us anxious for the young resisters, each of whom, it is worth emphasizing, remains distinctly wary of the giant as an external and unpredictable power. (all three affirm that they shall be keeping their distance: "i shall run before him . . ."). with all due respect to leggett, i believe that the question of the girls' plot succeeding—therein proving the resilient power of the imagination—is by no means "moot," being rather the very question that haunted stevens in the poem. in the following chapter, i read stevens' "lettres d'un soldat" ( ) as the poet's fraught engagement with his own ambivalent faith in the imagination, being rooted in his conviction that the imagination had to become more aware of and responsive to reality as that reality grew more implacable. here, i would propose "the plot against the giant" as a preliminary reconnaissance of this difficult terrain, a reconnaissance that can indeed be read productively through the lens of nietzschean perspectivism—but perspectivism as expressed by the philosopher himself, rather than by ludovici. in the young girls' brave determination to view their hacker-wielding foe as one who will be conquered by their delicate arsenal of flowers, embroidered clothes and the tender eroticisms of labial speech we may find precise illustration of nietzsche's sense of "the necessary perspective factor, by means of which every centre of power . . . constructs the rest of the world from its point of view—that is to say, measures it, feels it, and moulds it according to its degree of strength . . ." (wp ii, , italics in original). in the evident degree of disjunction between "the rest of the world," as figured by the giant, and the young girls' "plot" to master it / him, however, we might also identify another nietzschean intertext that serves to illuminate stevens' meaning, nietzsche's own stipulation in beyond good and evil that some points of view will prove more instrumentally "correct" than others: "the falseness of a judgement is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgement. . . . the question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps leggett himself cites this passage in his initial discussion of nietzschean perspectivism, "especially as it forms the basis of nietzsche's doctrine of the will to power" ( ). even species-breeding" (i, iv). such a question surely underlies the plot of "the plot against the giant": will the young girls' sense of the giant's susceptibility to beauty prove "true"? that is, will their judgement be seen to constitute one of the "irrefutable errors" of man," as nietzsche wittily described "man's truths" in aphorism in the gay science, or as rather a bitter miscalculation for which they will pay dearly? where jack the giant killer could only slay his foe—and all the ones who will no doubt follow after—the girls foretell an erotic coupling that may indeed bear fruit. perhaps in this early scene of young girls attempting to seduce a challenging "reality" we might find foreshadowing of the joyous scene in "notes toward a supreme fiction" where "winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace / and forth the particulars of rapture come." but they may not— and so the third girl will, in fact, hold in partial check the full scope of her own point of view, her own impulse to intimacy with "the rest of the world," her perhaps unwise over-identification with one who to this point hardly seems an ideal object for her affections. this, i think, is the meaning of the surprising interjection which introduces the third girl's contribution to the plot: "oh, la . . . le pauvre!" that is, for the briefest instant, her point of view, so bravely committed to constructing the giant as one who will turn weak-kneed before her verbal wooing, goes so far as to re-constitute him as feminine, as somewhat of herself and therefore less alien, less for a discussion of nietzsche's instrumental logic see danto, . cook, on the other hand, suggests la as "archaic or dialect eng[lish], adding emphasis and evoking [the french] la (there)" ( ). threatening. but then she corrects herself, reinstating the sexual difference which does of course provide the context for a potentially most fertile encounter: he will bend his ear then, i shall whisper heavenly labials in a world of gutturals it will undo him. but she also, and possibly in a manner most "life-preserving," restores something of the distance between herself and the as yet unseen giant, who still roves somewhere at large over the horizon. like one of nietzsche's "free spirits," the third girl dances especially close to the abyss. save for her gender, she might be zarathustra thumbing her nose at the spirit of gravity. as nietzsche never did, then, stevens here imagines the nietzschean imagination as feminine, building on a figuration first projected in "blanche mccarthy" and confirmed in "sunday morning." as in these two earlier poems, however, this figuration is not without ambivalence. while stevens seems to flag female power as valuable, even essential, he also seems to perceive it as problematic. while leggett reads the third girl's "le pauvre" as a triumphant expression of my argument here assumes that the initial phrase, if completed, would have been "la pauvre" (the poor female creature). if some other referent were implied, (e.g., la bete), then it might be feminine merely in grammatical gender. there is no indication, however, of what such an alternative referent might be. the third girl's faith in her eroticized linguistic arsenal is such that we may also choose to believe that the giant will be seduced by sounds so much more peaceably sweet than his own. poems like "of bright & blue birds & the gala sun" suggest that the latter hope was intermittently stevens' own secret romance. but the poet's more constant faith was in the imagination as "a violence from within that protects us from a violence without" (cpp ). her creative power, i interpret her sudden snippet of the french language here as flagging the possibility that her judgement may be fatally misplaced, that her imagination hasfailed to recognize and press back adequately against the force of axe-wielding reality bearing down on her. that stevens feared that the girls could not hope to disarm the giant without resorting to some equivalent measure of imaginative violence, and that he meant to signal the weakness in their "plot" with the sudden flash of french into the poem, is strongly suggested by the parallel narrative of "explanation." that stevens meant their guttural foe to stand for some earth-bound, peasant-associated aspect of a germanic spirit of reality also becomes clear when the two poems are read as companion pieces. generally considered to be another of the "weird little ditties" to be found in harmonium, "explanation" has suffered, like "the plot against the giant," a certain critical neglect. its fourteen short lines present a brief exchange between a young german girl and her mother, both of whom evidently long for some transfiguration of their daily lives. to her daughter's despondent comment that her efforts to transform an "old, black dress" by "embroidering french flowers on it" has produced nothing "by way of romance, /. . . nothing of the ideal," the mother replies, it would have been different, liebchen, if i had imagined myself, for example, despite the intriguing presence of a german "mutter" in a poem written in the year the united states entered the war in europe, longenbach's insightful study into the socio-political intertext in stevens' poetry makes no mention of the poem. in an orange gown, drifting through space, like a figure on the church-wall. the unhappy irony, of course, is that the mother has, if only in the fleeting moment of her speaking, imagined herself gowned in orange and drifting free—but this moment evidently now makes no difference at all. and yet this imaginative flight is extraordinary. that a german matron, here by implication habitually garbed in a sobriety of lutheran black herself, would think to reconfigure herself in a gown whose color and religious context together seems calculated to recall a figure such as michelangelo's delphic sibyl on the ceiling of the sistine chapel marks a substantial seizure of aesthetic, even theological, power. here then stevens fully realizes, as he does not in "the plot against the giant," the imagination as a feminine force successfully "pressing back against the pressure of reality" (cpp ). although the mother herself affirms both their efforts a failure: "it would have been different i liebchen," the final lines of the poem belie her despair as they maintain her aloft in the fiery voluptuousness of michelangelesque orange. more could be said about this little-studied poem. what most interests me at this juncture, however, is how its comment on the necessary violence of the imagination against "the pressure of reality" turns explicitly to both french and german to elucidate its theme. this aspect of such an extraordinary seizure of imaginative (and theological) power recalls a comment stevens made to elsie in a letter dated december , : "and don't you agree with me that if we could get the micheal angeloes out of our heads . . . we should find a multitude of lesser things (less but a multitude) to occupy us?" (l , italics in original) "explanation" has attracted scattered critical asides. bates, for example, mentions the poem in the context of discussing stevens' intermittent anxiety over what he perceived to be the effeminacy of writing poetry, equating a dismissive comment the poet made to his wife in about his "poesies [being] like the trifling designs one sees on fans" (l ) with "the french flowers the girl of 'explanation ( ) embroiders on her teutonic tunic" ( ). while bates does not expand on his meaning here, his remark follows from his earlier quotation from a letter stevens wrote to williams carlos williams in the spring of describing the delights of tennessee: "i spare you the whole-souled burblings in the park, the leaves, lilacs, tulips and so on. such things are unmanly and non-prussian" (qtd. in bates, ). in keeping with lentricchia's argument that stevens was made anxious by his society's estimation of poetry as a womanly art, one could read "explanation" as simply slighting at least a certain kind of verse along gender lines, dismissing it as effeminate french embroidery that is no match for the prussian manliness of black worsted reality. yet things are not so clear-cut. while it is true that the poem's striving protagonists are women whose decorous creative arts do not ostensibly alter the oppressive colouration of their lives, bates' reading of the german presence in the poem as a simple trope for a valourized masculine reality (thus his phrase "teutonic tunic" with its connotations of a knight's surcoat) scants the ways in which the poem itself links the german to a feminine reality: obviously in the "old, black dress" that both mother and daughter long to transform, but also in the mother's use of the tender diminutive, "liebchen." i read the poem, rather, as a more complicated version of "the plot against the giant." here, as in that poem, aspersions are cast on french imaginative powers. that is, the third girl's brave but naive "le pauvre" in the face of a hacker-wielding giant finds an echo in the liebchen's futile embroidering of french flowers on an old black dress. both activities are, in any real sense, inadequate to the task of pressing back against, let alone transforming, reality. but "explanation" differs from "the plot against the giant" in two notable and linked aspects. unlike "the plot against the giant," "explanation" offers a way forward for the imagination, or at least a glimpse at a will to imaginative power that would turn an old black dress the colour of flame. furthermore, and critically, both reality and the imagination in the poem are figured as german. considered as companion pieces, "the plot against the giant" and "explanation" clearly show stevens' interest in the figure of the nietzschean artist whose valiant perspectivism holds significant promise as a weapon for pressing back against a largely inchoate reality. where the poet clearly moves beyond or outside the philosopher's paradigm, however, is in his figuration of these artists as girls and women, and in his insistence, therefore, that the feminine be a site of the creative will to power. chapter iii: "a giant on the horizon": the will of the commons in "lettres d'un soldat ( - )" in the preceding chapter, i argued that "sunday morning" and two slightly later poems, "the plot against the giant" and "explanation," might be read as demonstrating stevens' interest in a nietzschean will-to-creative-power—one that, however, departed radically from its putative precursor in locating such an enfranchisement of spirit within the feminine imagination. in this chapter, i turn to stevens' infrequently studied poem series from , "lettres d'un soldat ( - )," a text surely significant to any reader interested in considering patterns of nietzschean affinity in stevens as it contains the single explicit reference to nietzsche's thought in all the poetry, namely, "ubermenschlichkeit" in its sixth poem, "the surprises of the superhuman." contrary to what one might expect, however, this singular allusion has elicited only passing comment—and always to the effect that stevens found the ubermensch not so surprising after all, and more or less congenial. glossing the poem with zarathustra's expostulation to his brethren that "man has [as yet] felt too little joy: that alone . . . is our original sin!" (ii, xxv), leonard and wharton confidently affirm that "the surprises of the superhuman" "directly advocates a nietzschean 'ubermenschlichkeit'" ( ). more cautiously, bates in his mythology of self 'cites the term only to suggest that the idea of superhumanness is here being favourably constrasted to "the bourgeois concept of justice" ( ). leggett offers the most stevens' description of a "too, too human god" in the third canto of "esthetique du mai" is often suggested as owing to nietzsche. among other possible allusions to, or riffs on, nietzsche's phrasing are the title of the poem, "less and less human, o savage spirit" and the reference to a "bright scienza outside of ourselves" in "of bright & blue birds & the gala sun." i l l thorough analysis to date, reading "the surprises of the superhuman" as further evidence of stevens' nietzschean rejection of idealism as that which by definition "defiles the existing world" ( ). i consider leggett's argument at some length in pages following. what none of these readings of the "nietzschean" in "the surprises of the superhuman" take into account, however, is its origin within an elaborate series of at least seventeen poems. nor do they consider the text which was this series' inspiration and significant source, a selection of letters written by a french soldier, a young painter named eugene emmanuel lemercier, to his mother in paris from the frontlines during the first eight months of the first world war. these approximately one hundred and forty letters were published under the title of lettres d'un soldat ( - ) in , a year after the young soldier himself disappeared during a battle in the argonne region in april . where previous critics have largely confined their discussion of nietzschean affinity to "the surprises of the superhuman," i here pursue the intermittent—but telling—signs of positive and informed engagement with nietzschean ideas from first to last in its parent series. while thus glen macleod's essay on "lettres d'un soldat, ( - )" as a poem sequence is essential reading, but it makes no comment on the place of the nietzschean therein. lemercier communicates his stoic idealism with poignant eloquence and it is hardly surprising that his letters which were first published in the revue de paris on the st and th of august, , and drawn together into a book a year later, had run through nineteen editions by —with an american translation becoming available in june, , two months after the united states entered the war. the publishing history of lettres d'un soldat shows it caught up in a tide of propaganda. see, for example, theodore stanton's dedication in the american edition: "to the young men of america: who may be called to the colors. . . may they take as their model this young french sergeant who died bravely fighting for his country against our common foe." such words at the very least fail to acknowledge lemercier's own ambivalence towards his "foe," shaped partly by his knowledge of and love for the cultural achievements of germany. following other readers in their exegesis of an underlying sympathy with certain nietzschean ideals in "the surprises of the superhuman," however, i also perceive ambivalence in that poem's presentation of the possibilities of ubermenschlichkeit. though a much shorter poem than "description without place," it shows the same fondness for the cryptic, for highly wrought and ambiguous syntax. as i will show, while it is certainly possible to read "the surprises of the superhuman" as celebrating ubermenschlichkeit, it is likewise possible to read the poem as either mocking or ironizing nietzsche's ideal. a similar ambiguity is present in the original first poem of the series, "common soldier." it is possible to read stevens' opening sketch of his soldier / poet persona both as a "last man" according to nietzsche's definition—one bovinely bereft of will—and as a stevensian "major man," a figure of creative will whose very will and creativity depend on his being "part, / though an heroic part, of the commonal" ("notes toward a supreme fiction" i, x, , - ). placing the ambiguous presentation of nietzschean ideas in "common soldier" and "the surprises of the superhuman" alongside suggestive traces of receptiveness to the philosopher's thought in at least five other poems in "lettres d'un soldat," i read the series as a whole as revealing both stevens' significant interest in the possibilities of a nietzschean celebration of human creativity, and his unhappiness about the way in which this celebration expressly scorns the quotidian life of the ordinary man of main street. where nietzsche's zarathustra derides this figure as "der letzte mensch" made imaginatively impotent by his craven attachment to his "little pleasures for the day, and [his] little pleasures for the night" ("prologue," ), stevens' speaker in "lettres d'un soldat," has, by the end of his poem series, at least begun to imagine this ordinary man—so ordinary in his weaknesses, obediences, strengths, and desires—as the very ground of a renewed imaginative engagement with reality. "lettres d'un soldat," i argue, marks an originary moment in stevens' thinking: namely, the inception of the aesthetic judgement pronounced in "of modern poetry" ( ) that in violent modernity, the imagination's mandate has become that of mere sufficiency: "it has to think about war / and it has to find what will suffice" ("of modern poetry" - ). not even "sufficiency" is the mandate of "lettres d'un soldat," however, as it is a very transcript of the moment when old habits of mind and art fell to rubble. in his essay "the irrational element in poetry" ( ), stevens named the first world war as the moment when "the pressure of the contemporaneous. . . [became and remained] constant and extreme" and spoke of the need for resistance, of the need "to collect oneself against all this in poetry as well as in politics" (cpp ). i read "lettres d'un soldat" as marking the very moment when "the theatre was changed / to something else" (ibid. - ) under "the pressure of the contemporaneous"—though it does not say what that "something else" will be. a harried witness to the moment when the accustomed stage became obsolete, had "becom[e] an atmosphere / of seeping rose—banal machine / in an appointed repertoire" ("lettre d'un soldat" xii, - ), stevens' poem series ends in deliberate disarray. its main purpose, i argue, is to show the old theater in shambles—but also to tentatively sketch forth the barest outline of the sufficiently prodigious imaginative talent who will stride across the boards of the new stage when it is erected. in pages following, i argue that the allusion to "ubermenschlichkeit" in "the surprises of the superhuman" is a serious one, showing stevens deliberating on the nietzschean imagination as that which might guide the modern poet in the "construct[ion] of a new stage." such a task might, indeed, seem to require "ubermenschlichkeit." but then again, ecstatic mastery, and not humble sufficiency, was the mandate of the superman. thus zarathustra prays in the closing moments of "old and new law tables": "o thou, my will! thou change of every need, my needfulness! preserve me from all small victories! . . . preserve and spare me for one great fate! . . . spare me for one great victory!—"(ziii, lvi, ). and so, i argue, "lettres d'un soldat" marks a contrasting mode of creative willing where stevens begins to conceive of the modern poet as a hero of and for "that which will suffice," and therein, "the commonal." * * * in the summer of , stevens read lettres d'un soldat in the original edition. following hard on the heels of this reading came the poet's own "lettres d'un soldat ( - )," a series of at least seventeen poems each introduced by brief quotations from lemercier's letters. while harriet monroe chose nine poems from those sent to her by stevens for publication in the may, , issue of poetry, the poet himself would, belatedly, preserve only four of the original seventeen in the second edition of harmonium ( ): "the death of a soldier," "negation," "the surprises of the superhuman," and "lunar paraphrase." readers whatever the original number of poems, only nine were chosen for inclusion in the may, , edition of poetry: i— "the spirit wakes in the night wind-is naked," ii— "anecdotal revery," iii—"morale," iv— "comme dieu dispense de graces," v—"the surprises of the superhuman," vi— "there is another mother whom i love," vii—"negation," viii— "john smith and his son john smith," ix— "life contracts and death is expected." much could be said about this "official" version of "lettres d'un soldat." because i am interested in the initial composition of "lettres d'un soldat," however, my own reading will concentrate on the thirteen-poem schema which survives from the poet's original composition and contains, in addition to the nine poems aforementioned, "common soldier" as poem i, "lunar paraphrase" as poem vii, "in a theatre, full of tragedy" as poem xii and "death was a reaper with sickle and stone" as poem xiii. the manuscript history of "lettres d'un soldat" is complicated. only thirteen poems survive in manuscript. as litz notes, that there were initially at least seventeen is indicated by the fact that the poem numbered xiii in the finished manuscript, is numbered xvii in an earlier draft ( ). have tended to concur with stevens' critical assessment, praising especially "the death of a soldier," but finding the poem series as a whole unsuccessful: both technically and tonally more than a little scatter-shot. as samuel french morse first judged over forty years ago, "lettres d'un soldat" does suggest a young poet "play[ing] the virtuoso" ("lettres," ) as he attempts to give ideal poetic form to a young soldier's words—or an ironic revision of the same. but the relation between poet and soldier is not straightforward: the abrupt tonal shifts of the poem series seem to offer by turns respectful reprise, ironic deflection, and, to use george lensing's word, "impertinent" parody of lemercier's private thoughts (a poet's growth ). i say "seems to offer" to avoid prejudging the relation between the soldier's letters and stevens' poem sequence. readers have tended to identify lemercier's letters themselves as the sole intertext for "lettres d'un soldat," and therefore to ascribe the poem's tonal vagaries to stevens' inability to identify sufficiently with the idealistic soldier. would propose a more tangential relationship between letters and poem, believing stevens' engagement with lemercier's words to have been critically mediated first by the grandiloquent thirty-page preface that accompanies them in lettres d'un soldat and which praises lemercier's sublimity of spirit. written by the french literary critic and man of letters, andre chevrillon, these thirty pages present lemercier's often muted, sometimes anxious, prose as a swelling rhapsody, the words of a man turned near-mystic by the war and a triumphant example of "the sublime message sent to us from the f r o n t . . . the high music that goes up still from the whole of france at war" ( ). given that he was a long-time friend of mme. lemercier, chevrillon's significant involvement in the publication of letters from her son may well have been intended to console a grieving mother, but it is likely that the critic see, for example, litz, , and macleod, - . had other motivations besides. as i will show, the preface frames the young soldier's letters as bespeaking the ideal imaginative and philosophical response to war. it is in part in the context of stevens' aforementioned doubts about the ability of / ' imagination francaise to be adequate to a newly violent reality that i read "lettres d'un soldat" as rejecting chevrillon's orotund complacencies about heroism, and most particularly his closing impulse to simultaneously infantilize and beatify the "common soldier": these men do but reflect nature. since they have renounced themselves and given themselves, all things have become simple for them. they have the transparence of soul and the lights of childhood. 'we spend childish days. we are children' . . . this new youthfulness of heart under the contemned menace of death, this innocence in the daily fulfilment of heroic duty, is assured by a spiritual state akin to sanctity. it is, i will argue, in angry rejection of such platitudes that one of the final poems of "lettres d'un soldat" finds a most earthy giant—clearly determined to survive through the assertions and action of his own creative will—stalking along to the measure of the child's rhyme: "fe, fi, fo, fum." it is interesting to consider chevrillon's preface alongside his england and the war ( - ), a contemporaneous account of the allied battle with the german "devil." here, as in his preface, he is at pains to present the allied soldier as an incandescently noble spirit. thus he writes of england as "a nation of sportsmen anxious to play the game—that is, to play it scrupulously, without excitement or hatred, without ever allowing the desire to win to overcome respect for the rules; respecting also their opponent, whom they believe to be worthy of them, and whose hand, whether they won or lose, they wish, after the struggle, to grasp honourably" ( ). chevrillon, moreover, simplifies lemercier's own reflection, in a letter dated december th, on the "child-like" dimension of a soldier's life. lemercier does speak of the passing days but stevens' turn to a (mostly) guttural giant late in "lettres d'un soldat" may have been determined by other impulses as well. it is in the context of steven's previously discussed interest in the germanic imagination as admirably "adhere[nt] to what is real" (cpp ), as "guttural" enough for this new reality, that i propose the poet's engagement with lemercier's letters to have been secondarily mediated by his interest in a nietzschean articulation of a war- like consciousness which would make fierce battle by thought and word against intellectual and imaginative conscription. though stevens' "common soldier"—so effusive in his declarations of obedience as we shall see—may appear "ever to say ye-a," like the poor donkey whom zarathustra derides in book iii of his narrative as one who "chew[s] and digest[s] everything.. . . residing] and abid]ing] where every one spitteth and spewth," i read him rather as one who, like zarathustra, "sit[s] on high masts of perception"(lv, ), determined to move by the beat of no one's drum but his own. and so, i contend, stevens' primary projection of a hero of the imagination in "lettres d'un soldat" may be read as nietzschean. like zarathustra, stevens' "common soldier" can be heard to say "wage war. . . for the sake of your thoughts!" (z i.x). but then again, when this "common soldier" sketches forth his vision of a "noble rider" for the new world (belonging himself to the "old"), the figure he imagines is hardly ubermensch. though emphatically earthbound and evidently prodigious within this sphere, the "common soldier's" / stevens' "giant on the horizon" in is no prometheus, being rather one who is projected to endure and evolve in terms which valorize the material quotidian of his existence. being like those of childhood, "gone before one knows it," and speaks warmly of the ways in which the horseplay of his companion soldiers is "only the surface of a deep underlying courage," but he judges that "a new youthfulness of heart" will be the gift only for "those of us who come back alive. " * * * but what, in all of this, of the letters of the young french soldier? whatever role chevrillon and the nietzschean (or nietzsche's works themselves) may have played in shaping "lettres d'un soldat," lemercier's words form the backbone of stevens' text which finds each poem prefaced by a fragment of the soldier's lyric prose. as we shall see, however, stevens puts a decidedly ironic spin on almost every thought he appropriates from this dutiful young frenchman's letters and it is apparent that however much stevens must have admired the soldier for his courage and shared in his passion for the arts, he could not bring himself to reproduce wholesale lemercier's convictions as an exemplary relation between the imagination and reality. "lettres d'un soldat" suggests that stevens found the soldier to be, in his delicate imaginative sympathies and sensitivities, "too noble a rider" (cpp ) for the newly violent reality that the poet understood to be looming on the horizon. as i noted in my preface, it was nineteen years after "lettres d'un soldat" that stevens categorically identified the first world war as the moment when the needs and the duties of the imagination changed—needing to become, as never before in the poet's estimation, one of "resistance." in his ensuing description of such resistance as the "conversion of. . . ominous and destructive circumstance . . . into a different, an explicable, an amenable circumstance" (cpp ) and his designation of this conversion as partaking in the "irrational," stevens might seem "lunar paraphrase" is the one exception to this pattern. the epigraph which accompanies the poem in the unpublished series was supplied by litz as the most likely candidate. here i differ from lensing, for example, who argues that lemercier's words have "a direct congruence with the poems flowing out of them" (a poet's growth ). to be advocating free-ranging flights of the imagination. this impression would be incorrect, however, as he goes on to insist that "the poet cannot profess the irrational as the priest professes the unknown. the poet's role is broader, because he must be possessed, along with everything else, by the earth and by men in their earthy implications" (cpp ). with the force of the historical situation, lemercier's letters could easily have crystallized (if they did not initiate) stevens' conviction about the need for a "resistant" imagination, one bravely "irrational" but always grounded in the "realities" of the earth. for stevens, or so i will argue, lemercier's imaginative arsenal was insufficiently "irrational" in its traditional repertoire of consolations, and notwithstanding his evident adoration for the earth, essentially aloof from "men in their earthy implications." this is not, of course, to say that the poet was scornful of the brave mental struggle so evident in the poignant sheaf of letters lemercier wrote to his mother: one could only hope to show equivalent fortitude in similar straits. there are consequently passages in "lettres d'un soldat" where stevens deliberately honours lemercier's "act[s] of mind" as in the belatedly published version of "lunar paraphrase" which offers an eloquent reprise of the soldier's comment on the power of the moon to conjure pathos. but such respectful paralleling is hardly the norm in "lettres d'un soldat": it bears repeating that the majority of its poems make some kind of ironic play on lemercier's most sincere beliefs. how are we to understand this? could stevens really have written his poems to belittle lemercier? this seems unlikely. (indeed, some critics, scanting the poem's many signs of irony, have seen "lettres d'un soldat" as an expression of stevens' own frustration with his own lack of engagement in the war and are persuaded that the poet found lemercier a heroic figure.) what seems more plausible is that while stevens meant no disrespect to the soldier himself, he approached lemercier's letters somewhat clinically, at least in the context of writing his own "lettres d'un soldat," as texts representative of a particular imaginative outlook. while "lettres d'un soldat" seems in significant measure to be an assault on what stevens perceived as the ineffectual fancies of / ' imagination francaise, its chief target in this regard is not one young soldier's personal repertoire of consolations but rather the particular edifice of french romanticism as promulgated by such as chateaubriand. the sentimentality and overwrought sensibility of "la vague des passions" are all too evident in chevrillon's preface to lettres d'un soldat) in his eulogistic supplement to the young soldier's correspondence, chevrillon praises the sublimity of lemercier as a spiritual flower of french youth whose words reveal "the mind of a complete artist [and] poet as well"( ). by chevrillon's estimation, the soldier "no doubt produced the best of himself in these letters; and it may be doubted whether, in the course of a successful artist's life, it would have been given to him to express himself with so much completeness" ( ). yet the very length of chevrillon's preface suggests a certain reluctance to let lemercier's letters speak for themselves. in a particularly telling passage he invokes krishna's command to arjuna in the bhagavad gita section of the mahabharata to suggest the near mystic pitch of the soldier's equanimity in the face of annihilation: see, for example, macleod, . see chateaubriand's the genius of christianity, vol. ii, . this and following passages from chevrillon's preface are taken from the constable edition, translated by "v. m." to fight with his brothers, at his own place, in his own rank, with open eyes, without hope of glory or of gain, and simply because such is the law: this is the commandment of the god to the warrior arjuna, who had doubted whether he was right in turning from the absolute to take part in the human nightmare of war . . . . plainly, it is for arjuna to bend his bow among the other kshettryas [hindu warriors] !( ) that it should have been this passage showing chevrillon in the full rhetorical plummage of romantic orientalism, rather than anything written by lemercier himself, that stevens chose for his opening epigraph to "lettres d'un soldat," suggests the poet's intention to emphasize his poem as a reprise of chevrillon's production oflettres d'un soldat, and not just of the private letters of an unknown soldier. notably, however, readers of "lettres d'un soldat" have tended either to pass silently over the poem's introductory epigraph, or to salute its appropriateness. morse and macleod, for example, offer no comment, while litz and lensing regard chevrillon's words as a right and proper introduction to stevens' poetic redaction of lemercier's letters. for litz, the french critic's rhapsody "sets the tone for the entire series," where he sees stevens identifying powerfully with the "tension between contemplation and action which marked lemercier's brief life" ( ) and thus celebrating the soldier's own stoic turn from the tranquil delights of painting, music, and philosophy to "le cauchemar humain de la bataille." although lensing argues that lemercier's phrases served stevens both "for lyrical increment and for ironic countermand" chevrillon is not without licence here as lemercier himself refers to the mahabharata in a letter dated january th. arjuna is one of the heroes of the mahabharata (not the ramayana, as chevrillon's comment on the following page appears to suggest). ( ), he, too, finds nothing ironic in the poet's prefatory use of chevrillon. indeed, in his rather startling assertion that "in the letters of the sensitive young soldier-painter, stevens found [an appropriate] moral posture to the reality of war . . . [namely] resignation to battle and death, not in pursuit of glory, but as natural fulfillment of a sensuously rich earthly existence" ( ), lensing seems to suggest that stevens concurred wholeheartedly with chevrillon's sentiments. we can never know what lemercier would have thought of chevrillon's preface: although the soldier himself had never met the critic, chevrillon was a friend of the family and what lemercier knew of him he seems to have admired. we, however, should hesitate before assuming that stevens's assessment of chevrillon was likewise admiring: certainly from the moment that its "common soldier" persona speaks, "lettres d'un soldat" suggests otherwise. the tendency to read "straight" chevrillon's presence on the threshold of stevens' poem may stem in part from the fact that the epigraph which introduces poem i, from lemercier's letter of september th, might be read as a (quieter) echo of the elder frenchman's rhapsodic allusion to arjuna's final acceptance of his fate: "nous sommes embarques dans i'aventure, sans aucune sensations dominante, sauf peut-etre une acceptation assez belle de lafatalite. . ." but then we hear from stevens' "common soldier"—that is, not from a kshettyra, not from an arjuna-like warrior /ruler. stevens' soldier neither declaims the commandment of the godhead, nor names fatality "beautiful," but simply notes, quietly: "no interpretative chaos. . . accept: / war, too, speaking of his desire to meet chevrillon in a letter dated march , lemercier writes, "i always had a love of letters, even as a child, and i am only sorry that the break in my education, brought about by myself, leaves so many blanks. i keep, however, throughout all changes and chances, the faculty of gleaning to right and left some fallen grain. of course, as i leave out the future, i say nothing of my wish to be introduced to [m. chevrillon] in happier times." although i do not understand." as i turn to stevens' "lettres d'un soldat," i juxtapose the first discomfiting words of his "common soldier" with the last words lemercier was known to have written his chere mere cherie": "here we are at noon at the extreme point of the attack. i send thee my whole love. whatever happens, life has had beauty for me." lemercier's last words to his mother were thus a kind of grace note or benediction: an exculpatory gesture of forgiveness with beauty trumping all. he begins to write his own elegy and so initiates the expected, and consoling, process of mourning and eventual accommodation. by contrast, the first words of stevens' soldier in emphasizing his own melancholic incomprehension withhold such grace from both himself and his reader. that stevens' intention was, indeed, to withhold the grace of easy comprehension from the readers of "lettres d'un soldat, - " is suggested by the poet's comment in a letter to monroe dated july , , that he hoped to send her "an outburst" before summer's end (l ). the word is striking: against what or whom was this outburst directed? chief among the signs of stevens' resistance to lettres d'un soldat are, as i already suggested in brief above, the pervasive disjunctions, in nearly every case, between poem and epigraph. aside from the aforementioned "lunar paraphrase," only "comme dieu dispense de graces," the fifth poem in the sequence, seems unambiguously to recapitulate the meaning of its attendant epigraph, in this case the soldier's comment on the delicate beauty of field mice in a wood on the edge of a battlefield. all the other poems in "lettres d'un soldat" either significantly depart from, or enact some manner of ironic turn on, the soldier's thoughts—in several cases, as we shall see, parodying these outright. unsurprisingly, therefore, the few critics who have studied either the original series, or the nine poems published a year later in poetry, have had to navigate the pervasive disjunctions between epigraph and poem which so often serve to emphasize all that divides the sensibilities of soldier and poet, rather than, as one might expect, what unites them. admittedly, not all readers have been troubled by these lines of fracture, nor indeed even read them as such. litz, for example, to whom all readers since remain indebted for his reconstruction of the remnants of the manuscripts of "lettres d'un soldat," finds any roughness of fit between a particular poem and its appended citation from lemercier's letters to be nothing more than evidence of stevens at work, "ransacking his poetic repertoire for old and new forms to express the ever-changing relations between landscape and mind, action and contemplation" ( ). for litz, "lettres d'un soldat" is above all an aesthetic experiment in keeping with "primordia" and "thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird," also from —these poems being self-evidently about the "ever-changing relation between landscape and mind." as litz reads it, lemercier's letters, which record his experience of the war with an acutely painterly eye, would have "jibed perfectly with stevens' current poetic interests, [while] enabling him to enlarge the emotional range of his art" ( ). no doubt "lettres d'un soldat" does represent some such enlargement of feeling in stevens' art. certainly, the wild see-sawing of tone and mood across its sections suggests a poet testing his own emotional limits, writing an "outburst" as he suggested to monroe. even so, litz's estimation of a "perfect" fit between lemercier's and steven's aesthetic sensibilities requires him to gloss over the many jagged edges between the thoughts of the soldier and those in attributing "lettres d'un soldat" to a single voice, i follow macleod who finds the "common soldier" of the first poem to be the unifying sensibility of the sequence. it is possible to read "lettres d'un soldat" otherwise, however. both morse and litz identify stevens himself as more or less the voice of the series. of the poet. probably the most severe example of a misfit occurs in the third poem of the series, "anecdotal revery," which finds stevens coupling lemercier's plaintive declaration in a letter dated october , , that "ce qu 'ilfaut, c 'est reconnaitre i 'amour et la beaute triomphante de toute violence" with the following comic-macabre scene: the streets contain a crowd of blind men tapping their way by inches— this man to complain to the grocer of yesterday's cheese, this man to visit a woman, this man to take the air. am i to pick my way through these crickets?— i, that have a head in the bag slung over my shoulder? i have secrets that prick like a heart full of pins. • the editors of the modern american library volume of stevens' poems and prose translate the epigraph here as "what is necessary is to recognize the love and the triumphant beauty of all violence" (cpp ). but the french is ambiguous. i follow stanton's determination that lemercier believed love and beauty to triumph over violence. permit me, gentlemen, i have killed the mayor, and am escaping from you. get out of the way! (the blind men strike him down with their sticks.) as lensing notes, here we find lemercier's triumphant beauty being "reduced. . .to a sniggering grotesquerie triomphant" ( ). to say then, as litz does, that stevens here is simply "extracting] the essential idea" of the epigraph and "illustrating] it" is surely inadequate. in the first place, it is by no means clear that "violence" is, as litz would have it, the essence of the epigraph. indeed, a case could be made that its core subject is "peace," depending in large part on how one reads the preposition "de." the larger problem with litz's reading of "anecdotal revery," and of "lettres d'un soldat" in general, however, is that he repeatedly downplays the often peculiar content of stevens' illustrations. viewing the "triumphant matching of subject and image" which he judges to occur in the th poem of the series, the one which would become "the death of a soldier," as the objective toward which stevens struggles throughout "lettres d'un soldat" ( ), litz either avoids speaking of the crude motley of most of the poem or interprets such patchiness as aesthetic failure. he does not entertain the possibility that stevens' apparent failure to match subject and image may in fact have been deliberate, appropriate to what i will assert is the dominant ironic mode of the poem. it must be admitted, however, that litz is hardly alone in his refusal to read "lettres owe my initial thinking on this subject to macleod's own passing observation that stevens may have intended to make "the breaking down of the very abstract values that sustained lemercier . . . the structuring theme of'lettres'" (italics retained, ). d'un soldat" as an ironic text. while macleod allows that "individual poems sometimes bear an ironic relation to their particular epigraphs," he nonetheless insists that "stevens' very lack of obliqueness, or irony, is the defining characteristic of 'lettres'" ( , italics in original), a judgement that follows naturally from his approaching the poem sequence as a transcript of stevens' fervent—but ultimately unrealizable—desire to conceive common poetic ground between himself and his unknown soldier. macleod also suggests, as longenbach has done more recently, that stevens' "sense of frustration over his own role in the war effort may have found temporary appeasement in the composition of 'lettres'" ( ). demonstrating how several of the poems do "suggest the contents of lemercier's letters over a period of time extending both forward and back from the dates of their epigraphs," rather than being a restricted comment on their attendant citations, macleod asserts that stevens "intended . . . to compose a poetic summary of the entire book" ( , emphasis added)—that, is, for the most part, to reproduce it without irony. where macleod does admit irony in "lettres d'un soldat," he judges it to originate in the soldier's letters, with the poet doing little more than extrapolating lemercier's markedly rare moments of disaffection or doubt. where litz judges stevens to have approached lettres d'un soldat relatively dispassionately, as materia poetica to be reworked, macleod believes that stevens' engagement with the volume of letters went far deeper: the francophilic poet finding an "attractive alter- ego" ( ) in the french soldier, but above all identifying profoundly with lemercier's "fine longenbach is, however, more convinced of the ironies at work in the poem. thus he argues that the "flip tone" of poem ix (titled "negation"), whose opening sally, "hi! the creator too is blind," would appear to challenge its epigraph's confidence in "une justice impersonelle," actually recapitulates lemercier's own ambivalence about the possibility of divine oversight. sensibility and his passion for the arts, even at the front" ( ). while acknowledging that stevens was "either unwilling or unable to present convincingly the traditional consolations which comforted lemercier at the end" ( )—namely, his faith in "a higher order" (october th)—macleod understands the soldier to have been nonetheless for the poet an exemplary hero for the imagination. citing a memorable passage from one of lemercier's last letters which relates how he and his companion non-commissioned officers had kept their spirits up by humming all of beethoven's symphonies— "i cannot tell what thrill woke those notes within us. they seemed to kindle great lights in the cave" (april )— macleod thus concludes: the world of war lemercier describes, in which finely cultivated souls are made to shine brighter and stronger through contact with the most terrible reality, is not too far removed from the world of harmonium, whose two poles would later be defined by the imaginative fulfillment of "tea at the palaz of hoon," and the final emptiness of "the snow man" ( ). i resist the sweep of macleod's summation here, at least as it applies to "lettres d'un soldat" itself. although the original lettres d'un soldat does indeed bear witness to a high-minded young man sustained in the midst of appalling brutality by his spinoza, beethoven, and corot, stevens' poem sequence seems intent rather upon pulling down to muddy earth many things traditionally placed at bright elevation. in his decision to follow chevrillon's rhapsodic allusion to the warriors of the bhagavad gita with his soldier's cryptic submission to orthodoxy in poem i, in his satirizing of lemercier's convictions about the dauntless power of love and beauty over violence in poem iii, in his rejection of traditional loci of power, both secular and religious, in poems vi and ix, but especially in his bitter dismissal of old habits of the imagination—figured in the "banality" of the tragic theatre and "dead" metaphors for death in poems xii and xiii, respectively—stevens again and again shows himself precisely resisting the traditional consolations of "higher" things. this is in sharp contrast to lemercier who again and again seeks to reassure his mother that his spirit remains aloft among the "higher" things, degraded by neither the banality nor the horror of war. on october th, , for example, he insists, you must find some comfort in this superb assurance that so far i have been able to raise my soul to a height, and keep it there, where passing events have not been able to get possession of it and where i promise you i will make every effort to render it impregnable. a month later, on november th, the soldier writes in a similar vein in praise of "the solitude of the soul which can turn a deaf ear to everything which does not vibrate in accord with it." for lemercier, such vibrations were emphatically those of beauty, harmony, order. thus of christmas night he would recall, "the marvellous night lavished on us her stars and meteors . . . . it was the eternal longing for harmony, the indomitable claim for order and beauty and concord" ( ). that stevens likewise valued—and longed for—beauty, order, and harmony is undeniable: but as his entire corpus makes clear, these were ideas that the poet felt necessary to interrogate anew, not make reflexive obeisance to in their old world configurations. it is as part of this interrogation that stevens' common soldier does ultimately "shine brighter and stronger through contact with the most terrible reality," as macleod ( ) puts it, doing so not as an elevated and impregnable soul in solitude, however, but rather as an emphatically earthbound member of "the commonal." * * * twenty-three years after composing "lettres d'un soldat," stevens would write the aforementioned "of modem poetry" which declares the poem of the imagination, that is, the imagination itself, to be a metaphysician in the dark, twanging an instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives sound passing through sudden tightnesses, wholly containing the mind, below which it cannot descend, beyond which it has no will to rise. (cpp ) at least by this definition, lemercier was no modem able to find comfort in improvisational scores of sound which, though they might "pas[s] through sudden tightnesses," would never ring true. rather than mere sufficiency in the idiolect of a solitary string, the soldier found an abiding sense of repletion in the received majesty of such works as berlioz's oratorios and beethoven's symphonies, whose chords so reliably affirmed "the eternal aspiration after harmony, [and] . . . indomitable demand for the beauty and concord of order" ( ). as a survey of the many authors mentioned by lemercier in his eight months of correspondence with his mother affirms, lemercier also found deep meaning in the symbolist movement whose purpose, as expressed by jean moreas in his symbolist manifesto ( ), was "to clothe the ideal in a perceptible form." while lemercier declared verlaine's life to be "as touching as that of some favorite diseased animal" and regretted the lack of a "moral guardian to brace. . . up" the self- described poete maudit, verlaine's poems revealed to the soldier, no less than beethoven's ode to joy, "an unquestionable intuition of the absolute" (feb. ) but lemercier was himself a painter first and it is with such an artist's eye that he regularly communicates especially the resilient beauty of the natural world—and his conviction that such abiding loveliness, despite human horror, could only signal a deeper and benevolent truth: "la justice eternelle" or "supreme wisdom," or, as he increasingly names it towards the end, "god." while he occasionally refers to such as corot, it is most apparently among the flemish and german painters of the sixteenth-century, whom he calls his "primitives," that lemercier finds the greatest sustenance for his faith in the "eternal aspiration after . . . beauty and the concord of order." thus in a letter from november th, recalling a "charming tramp" through idyllic countryside, he writes, at a distance we distinguished lofty plateaus, from which the view must have been extensive, all of whose outlines came out clearly or were easily divined in the haze. we remarked hills, covered with trees, which presented charming contours. it all made me think of the primitives and their landscapes so full of feeling and so conscientious. what fastidious majesty, whose grandeur seizes you at the first glance and whose details make such a profound impression on you. you perceive, dear mother, how god dispenses graces which are far above the reach of the miseries of the hour. as this passage affirms, lemercier's aesthetic sense was deeply religious and conservative after the manner of the symbolists who regarded the scientific, rationalist bias of modernity as lemercier mentions lamartine, villier d'lsle adams, musset, and verlaine, among others. of verlaine and musset he observes, "in fact, our two greatest poetic temperaments of the last century, musset and verlaine, were two unfortunate souls who had no moral guardian to brace them up, but who blossomed forth with a magnificence which intoxicates us" (nov. ). anathema to the world of numina which could only be "divined." that lemercier himself opposed his aesthetic to the "modem" is revealed in a passing, but resonant, comment on the rd of november as to how an unusual pink- and blue-toned morning mist had made his "favorite landscape, generally primitive in its precision . . . [take] on a subtility of shades and a varied richness which rendered it essentially modern." continuing, lemercier observes how this suddenly "modem" landscape had "brought back to [him] the more intellectual suburbs of paris with their infinite notations and their definite registers." two days after his recollection of early encounters with other such subtle and wayward modems, lemercier is happy to find his surroundings once more "a picture of [his] beloved primitives . . . [with details] . . . clear, fine, as if engraved, and yet at the same time tender . . . . [and] all delicately balanced as regards discreet and well-sustained values." with an air of palpable relief, lemercier recalls the "gray atmosphere, which drove from my mind the quite modem fairyland of shades of last sunday, took me back to that incisive conscience which moves you in a breughel. . . such also was the orderly and limpid profusion of the backgrounds of albert diirer" (november , ). stevens, by contrast, was a modem, playing seemingly infinite notations on a definite register—"listening for sudden tightnesses" on a single string, rather than hearing in his head, as lemercier had done, chords of universal and eternal harmony. like zarathustra, stevens might say, "by divers ways and wendings did i arrive at my truth.. . a testing and a questioning hath been all my travelling." thus stevens' "shearsman of sorts" in the penultimate stanza of "the man with the blue guitar" ( ) exhorts us to after remarking how "the senses" tutor us "without the aid of any instruction, a vague but unquestionable intuition of the absolute," lemercier observes, "a poor human being, possessing, perhaps, the genius of a savant, may declare that he has not found god with his scalpel. what a shocking blunder on the part of a superior mind" (february th). throw away the lights, the definitions, and say of what you see in the dark that it is this or that it is that, but do not use the rotted names. twenty years separate "lettres d'un soldat" from "the man with the blue guitar," while twenty-five separate it from "of modem poetry"—yet stevens' injunction to "throw away the lights," to find sufficiency in the ever-changing "speech of the place," rather than find repletion in an established script, may have roots in the poem sequence which sets itself to interrogate, resist, and begin to look beyond delicate, ritualized, and therefore dangerously disassociated habits of the imagination where, even in a scene of tragedy, "the stage [would become] an atmosphere / of seeping rose—banal machine / in an appointed repertoire" ("lettres d'un soldat" xii). in , with a fair show of bravado, stevens would ring the changes on the "surprises" (xxxii, ) afforded by his blue guitar. in , constrained by his subject matter and still in the process of articulating his own theory of imaginative power, he would ruminate, in "the surprises of the superhuman," on the possibility that ubermenschlichkeit might be our redeemer from the "banal machine." here is that poem, originally, numbered vi in "lettres d'un soldat," in full, with its attendant epigraph from a letter by lemercier, dated november , : j'ai laferme esperance, mais surtoutj 'ai confiance en la justice eternelle, quelque surprise qu 'elle cause a i 'humaine idee que nous en avons. the palais de justice of chambermaids tops the horizon with its colonnades. if it were lost in ubermenschlichkeit, perhaps our wretched state would soon come right. for somehow the brave dicta of its kings make more awry our faulty human things. none of the commentators on "lettres d'un soldat" has had much to say about stevens'—surely quite extraordinary given the context—conjuring of ubermenschlichkeit. the poet would have found some license, it is true, in gesturing towards nietzsche's overman given lemercier's own pantheon in which beethoven, schumann, goethe figured largely. yet the specific recourse to nietzsche's ubermensch seems deliberately challenging. and so beverly coyle finds "the surprises of the superhuman" to be stevens' "most highly charged" poem ( ), and lensing, affirming the "surprise" of recommending the ubermensch in such a context, wonders if stevens intended us to understand his proposal as "sarcastic and absurd," or was he "earnestly proposing the remedy of the german superman?" ( ). the question of whether stevens is mocking or proposing ubermenschlichkeit seems crucial for any reading of the poem. neither lensing nor coyle pursues the matter, however. indeed, the only critic to reflect at any length on the place of nietzsche in "the surprises of the superhuman" has been leggett in the context of his argument for nietzschean "affinities" in the early stevens. referring to the poem from harmonium ( ), a text thus shorn of its instmctive epigraph, leggett turns briefly to "the surprises of the superhuman" to support his argument for stevens' "nietzschean" celebration of the "innocence of becoming" over the arid and world- denying ideology of "being" in the earlier "sunday morning." according to leggett, the chambermaids create an idealized "palais de justice" just as the woman of "sunday morning" imagines the divine world of "silent palestine," and with the same results . . . . ["the surprises of the superhuman"] makes explicit the nietzschean assumption that controls the first stanza of "sunday morning"; the effect of a belief in the divine or the ideal is never neutral in regard to the real in that the very postulation of a world that does not exist defiles the existing world. ( ) but surely the poem is not so easily summarized. what, for leggett, is the status of ubermenschlichkeit in relation to the "ideal"? by leggett's definition, stevens could be proposing yet another "world that does not exist" in his allusion to the changes that might be wrought by an engulfing "superhumanness." of course, the ubermensch itself is presented categorically by nietzsche as a mode of being that would restore value to the existing world. to recall once more zarathustra's exhortation to a crowd of townspeople, "the superman is the meaning of the earth. . . . i conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes!" (z, prologue, , italics in original). but we should hesitate, i think, before reading "straight" stevens' citation of ubermenschlichkeit. surely there is at least a degree of ironic play between the poem's epigraph, which records lemercier's reflections on the potentially surprising form that "la justice eternelle" might take, and its title, "the surprises of the superhuman." it would indeed be surprising if ubermenschlichkeit—a condition which embraces the idea of heraclitean flux—became the conduit for anything "eternal." while the irony at work in "the surprises of the superhuman" thus might well resolve in favour of ubermenschlichkeit, it is surely important to acknowledge the tension between the poem and its epigraph. that stevens himself omitted the epigraph to "the surprises of the superhuman" when he belatedly chose to include it in harmonium does not diminish its relevance in critical approaches to the poem. but there may be further problems with leggett's reading of "the surprises of the superhuman." can one really interpret stevens' "palais de justice of chambermaids" as a figure for the ideal? for the superficial, perhaps. for the banal, no doubt. but such a structure is hardly equatable to "the thought of heaven," however much it "tops the horizon with its colonnades." following bates, i rather see the chambermaids' court as shorthand for a bourgeois hierarchy of values. again, leggett understands the "palais de justice" to have been "created^ ( ) by the chambermaids as, seemingly, a kind of heavenly court of appeal which would at last hear their pleas and give them justice. i say, "seemingly," because while leggett's identification of this horizon-topping court with the vision of paradise which he charges so fascinates the woman of "sunday morning" would seem to require that the chambermaids envision their court as a place of otherworldly solace and redemption for themselves, he is not explicit on this point. and indeed the "palais de justice of chambermaids" could no less be the seat of aproned demi-gods casting judgement on the less-than-perfectly-starched lives of those around them. and so one can read the chambermaids of "the surprises of the superhuman": not as supplicants to their phantasmagorical "palais de justice," but rather as the court itself. in their literal identity as servants dedicated to upholding the material values of their bourgeois masters or employers, stevens' maids are thus the antithesis of the ubermensch whose nature above all is to take to the nth degree, to make "superhuman," what thus spake zarathustra celebrates throughout its pages as the "creating agency" of the human. indeed, at the heart of zarathustra's attack on traditional mores is his conviction that this power has been lost, casually relinquished to the ease of living within a particular system of values. though he concedes that the establishment of value systems is essential to the survival of civilizations— "no people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbours valueth" ( )—he repeatedly urges his "brethren" to be as children in their "game of creating" ( ), to "create beyond [themjselves" ( ). thus he exhorts his listeners, verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven. values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself—he created only the significance of things, a human significance! . . . valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! valuation itself is the treasure and the jewel of the valued things. through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. hear it, yet creating ones! ( ) in stevens' allowing us to find here an image of adjudicating chambermaids we have par excellence an ironic figure of judgement enslaved to public opinion, or focused on the most banal level of human experience, but in any case in no wise meriting the title of "ye creating ones!" where leggett finds "the surprises of the superhuman" to reprise nietzsche's critique of idealism, his belief that "the concept 'hereafter,' 'true world,' [was] invented in order to devalue the only world there is—so as to leave no goal, no reason, no task for our earthly reality! (ecce homo, iv, ), i read the poem rather as partaking in—but reservedly, as we shall see—the philosopher's repeated assaults on the ignoble condition of "modern" man, and his corresponding quest for a new nobility. indeed, it seems just possible that stevens's potentially adjudicating chambermaids owe something to zarathustra's irrepressible clarifications to his "brethren" regarding the places in which this nobility will not reside: verily, not that ye have served a prince—of what account are princes now!—nor that ye have become a bulwark to that which standeth, that it may stand more firmly. not that your family have become courtly at courts, and that ye have learned—gay-coloured, like the flamingo—to stand long hours in shallow pools: (for ability-to-stand is a merit in courtiers; and all courtiers believe that unto blessedness after death pertaineth—permission-to-s\t\) (iii, lvi, , italics in original). while hardly gay-coloured courtiers, stevens' chambermaids-cum-judges might indeed be read as "bulwark[s] to that which standeth, that it may stand more firmly." it must be admitted, however, that stevens' final attitude to his maids—adjudicating or otherwise—is by no means unambiguous, thanks to a two-fold vagueness in pronoun reference ("it" in the third line, and "its" in the fifth) in the poem. if one understands "it"/ "its" to refer to "the palais de justice," then it is possible to read "the surprises of the superhuman" as, in fact, ennobling the chambermaids to the status of noble kings issuing "brave [if ineffectual] dicta." this reading finds the speaker imagining the "palais de justice of chambermaids" being "lost in ubermenschlichkeit"—after having been given its right and proper chance to correct, through its "brave dicta," "our faulty human things." but if this is the case, the designation of the chambermaids as kings seems an odd and unnecessary choice. it seems unlikely that the exigencies of rhyme were such that the chambermaids could not have been designated more appropriately as queens. ("scenes" could then perhaps have supplied the rhyme in the final line.) more importantly, however, such a reading renders the poem rather arch and trivializing: "those 'brave' regents, the chambermaids, have had their chance: bring on the ubermenschl," stevens seems to be saying—and it is possible, of course, that this is what he meant. but it is also possible to understand "it"/ "its" to refer, not to the "palais de justice," but rather to "our wretched state,"and such a reading finds stevens engaged in a more mature—and informed—reflection on nietzsche's idea of ubermenschlichkeit. according to such a reading, "the palais de justice of chambermaids" becomes very much a figure of irony and one that is moreover by the poem's end set adrift on the horizon like some slowly deflating balloon. to clarify, within such a reading, the noble kings of "our wretched state" have to this point stood in opposition to the "palais de justice," endeavouring to counter its puerile judgements with "brave dicta" of their own. ( just who these "kings" are remains obscure: they may, in fact, be rulers, but poets and philosophers and other creative sorts also seem possible candidates.) the abject failure of their noble intentions, however, which have, in fact, "somehow. . . / ma[de] more awry our faulty human things," is such that the speaker wonders if it might not be better to dispense with the whole notion of a human community struggling to evolve en masse, and to focus instead as sovereign individuals on becoming ubermenschen. a population of such resolutely independent creators and valuators would at the very least have the benefit of rendering obsolete the "palais de justice of chambermaids." while stevens' vision of noble kings being retired from service could well have been more or less original with him, or been inspired by some other source, that this scene of retirement depends upon both the sorry existence of adjudicating chambermaids and the adoption of the doctrine of ubermenschlichkeit affords a striking parallel to zarathustra's "talk with the kings" in book iv of nietzsche's prose poem. going through the forests that surround his cave in search of the "higher men" whom he had earlier heard crying out in distress, zarathustra is astonished to come across two kings (and one ass) and, "hiding hastily behind a thicket," overhears the following exchange as they sense his presence: "that may perhaps be a goat-herd. or an anchorite who hath lived too long among rocks and trees. for no society at all spoileth also good manners." [speaks the first king] "good manners?" replied angrily and bitterly the other king: "what then do we run out of the way of? is it not 'good manners'? our 'good society'? better, verily, to live among anchorites and goat-herds, than with our gilded, false, over-rouged populace—though it call itself 'good society.' —though it call itself 'nobility.' but there all is false and foul, above all the blood—thanks to old evil diseases and worse curers. good manners!. . . . no one knoweth any longer how to reverence: it is that precisely that we run away from. . . . this loathing choketh me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped and disguised with the old faded pomp of our ancestors, show-pieces for the stupidest, the craftiest, and whosoever at present trafficketh for power. we are not the first men—and have nevertheless to stand for them: of this imposture have we at last become weary and disgusted. from the rabble have we gone out of the way, from all those bawlers and scribe-blowflies, from the trader-stench, the ambition-fidgeting, the bad breath—: fie, to live among the rabble; —fie, to stand for the first men among rabble! ah, loathing! loathing! loathing! what doth it now matter about us kings!"—. (iv, lxiii, , italics in original) surprised and delighted by the nobility of spirit evinced by these two royals, zarathustra welcomes them as honoured guests to his mountain cave, declaring himself "enchanted" by their forthright declaration that "there is no sorer misfortune in all human destiny, than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. then everything becometh false and distorted and monstrous." to recur to the language of stevens' poem, the kings themselves understand that as merely token rulers of such a "wretched state," their "brave dictas" could only "make more awry our faulty human things." the tale that stevens tells in "the surprises of the superhuman" of maidservants (those agents of "good manners" and "good society"), brave kings, and ubermenschlichkeit thus bears intriguing resemblances to nietzsche's tableau of kings recently come from the "gilded, false, over-rouged" society over which they once ruled, "draped and disguised with the old faded pomp of [their] ancestors," to discover an admiring host in the cave-dwelling zarathustra. that stevens envisions ubermenschlichkeit specifically as a force that will release the world from the ignobly domesticated values of the bourgeoisie (symbolized by the "palais de justice of chambermaids") suggests that he was fairly well-informed about, and intrigued by, a nietzschean vision of a "new nobility" that would be defined by its independently valuating spirit. that stevens nonetheless felt a certain ambivalence toward the ubermensch may show, however, especially in the syntactical ambiguities which really do seem excessive in a poem as short as "the surprises of the superhuman." as aforementioned, the ironies at work between the poem and its epigraph may likewise register a certain reserve on stevens' part. finally, i would propose that the poet's decision to rhyme "ubermenschlichkeit" with the platitudinous phrase, "soon come right," is, at the very least, a tongue-in-cheek refusal to defer entirely to nietzsche's noble ideal. all this said, i believe "the surprises of the superhuman" to show nietzsche's ideas giving impetus to stevens' growing resistance to a malady of the imagination which continued to cherish old values for their beauty and their eloquence, unconscious of the fact that these were inadequate, or at least had to be strenuously revised, in a new dispensation which had violence as its governing principle. such a malady of the imagination might well have been confirmed for stevens in lemercier's letters which reveal an indefatigable faith in an "old table of values." * * * it is, then, i want to argue, stevens' own intuition that the imagination had to become more violent, more guttural in its engagement with reality, that may have led him to present his "common-man soldier"as a proto-modem poet trying on the nietzschean for size—most overtly in "the surprises of the superhuman," but also in "common soldier," as we shall see. before turning to consider the role of the nietzschean in the original first poem of "lettres d'un soldat," however, i would touch briefly on several other poems in the series which present striking parallels with nietzsche's critique of idealism and corresponding celebration of the creative and independently evaluating will. the first of these is the aforementioned third poem in the series, "anecdotal revery." in her analysis, coyle finds the poem to be about "a heroic figure who murders established, taken-for-granted ideas" who is in turn murdered by "ordinary, unthinking men" whose depiction reveals their "blind resistance to change," a thoroughly nietzschean tableau ( - ). in fact, but for the abrupt slaying of the iconoclastic messenger in its final line, stevens' poem could be summarized as a generally faithful adaptation of a scene in the prologue to thus spake zarathustra. in the blind townsfolk "tapping their way / by inches" we find an echo of the complacent, but also cautious, myopia of zarathustra's first audience: '"we have discovered happiness'—say the last men, and blink thereby. . . . 'formerly all the world was insane,' say the subtlest of them, and blink thereby" ( , ). in the man going "to complain to the grocer / of yesterday's cheese," and in those taking a stroll or on their way to an assignation—dismissed as "crickets" one and all by their derisive antagonist—we find traces of zarathustra's self-absorbed and trivial "last men." in stevens' mayor-slayer we find, additionally, the figure of nietzsche's prophet himself, bringing the news of the death of god into the world. but more generally, in the figure of the narrator who carries the mayor's "head / in the bag / slung over [his] shoulder," and "secrets / that prick / like a heart full of pins," and announces, " i . . . / am escaping from you / get out of my way!," we have a version of the scene in which zarathustra, fleeing the town which has turned against him, with the corpse of the rope-dancer on his back (the man to whom he had revealed the truth, "there is no devil or hell"), bates observes that in its presentation of "backward looking 'small people'," "anecdotal revery" "may reflect [stevens'] reading of thus spake zarathustra" ( ). is warned by the buffoon: "leave this town, o zarathustra . . . there are too many here who hate thee" (z prologue). but stevens' poem is its own creation as well, ratcheting up the violence to a pitch glimpsed only inpotentia in nietzsche's text. at the midpoint of his prologue, zarathustra tries to rouse the crowd of burghers from their complacent mediocrity: alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man—and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz! i tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. i tell you: ye have still chaos in you. (ibid) silenced by their hostility zarathustra observes, "and now do they look at me and laugh: and while they laugh they hate me too. there is ice in their laughter" (ibid). thanks only to the good counsel of an otherwise malevolent "buffoon," however, zarathustra departs the town before its inhabitants have their chance to murder him as "a danger to the multitude" (ibid). the ostensible protagonist in "anecdotal revery" receives no such reprieve from his author, however, being struck down upon the instant of revealing his identity as a killer of mayors. i say "ostensible protagonist" because while zarathustra is decidedly the hero of his story, the man in "anecdotal revery" is ambivalently drawn. while the blind burghers are hardly sympathetic, the protagonist seems, at least in part, a victim of his own myopia and self-absorption. but, of course, thus spake zarathustra is not the only text hovering on the edge of stevens' poem—"anecdotal revery" is far more apparently a rebuke of lemercier's naive conception that "ce qu 'ilfaut, c 'est reconnaitre i 'amour et la beaute triomphante de toute violence." "anecdotal revery" seems to suggest, by contrast, that "violence trumps all." yet again, as one who would years later describe the imagination as "violence within responding to violence without," stevens was himself clearly committed to conceiving of a violence allied to beauty and love. indeed, perhaps the speaker in "anecdotal revery" is more sympathetic than one might think. whatever else one might say about the protagonist of "andecdotal revery," he most certainly does have "chaos within"—to recur to nietzsche's image of self-surpassingly creative power—perhaps in his next life he will choose to "launch the arrow of his longing beyond man" rather than wield an angry hacker upon him. as stevens would go on to observe in "extracts from addressses to the academy of fine ideas," chaos should give birth to freedom: "the law of chaos is the law of ideas / of improvisation and seasons of belief." that stevens himself was by the summer of considerably committed aesthetically and philosophically to "ideas / of improvisation and seasons of belief is the substance of leggett's thoughtful reading of nietzschean affinity in "negation," the ninth poem in "lettres d'un soldat." as james longenbach points out in his overview of the poem, it reads as a "caustic rebuke"( ) of its chosen epigraph from one of lemercier's letters, dated january , . here is the epigraph and poem in full: la seule sanction pour moi est ma conscience. ilfaut nous confer a une justice impersonelle, independante de toutfacteur humain, et a une destinee utile et harmonieuse malgre toute horreur de forme. hi! the creator too is blind, struggling towards his harmonious whole, rejecting intermediate parts, horrors and falsities and wrong; incapable master of all force, too vague idealist, overwhelmed by an afflatus that persists. for this, then, we endure brief lives, the evanescent symmetries from that meticulous potter's thumb. the evident and compelling conjunctions between lemercier's faith in an impersonal, but harmonious, justice, the explicit "negation" of the poem's title, and its presentation of a fallible creator has generally led to the poem being read as a critique—nietzschean and otherwise—of divine omnipotence. only leggett, however, has sought to explicate this critique in nietzschean terms—a perspective which certainly enriches our understanding of the poem. as leggett notes, stevens' image of the creator as a "bungling potter" ( ) shows striking affinity with zarathustra's pronouncement against a similarly inept worker of clay: "too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not leamt thoroughly! that he took revenge on his pots and creations, however, because they turned out badly—that was a sin against good taste" (iv, lxvi, italics in original). by zarathustra's account, god compounds his "sinfulness" egregiously when he punishes his vessels for cracks and flaws that are in fact the consequence of his own artistic incompetence. as leggett notes further, however, stevens' margaret peterson, for example, has interpreted the poem as a jamesian interrogation, not of "the traditional god of christian theology. . .[but]. . .the god of modem idealism.. .[for whom] the particulars of reality in their temporal existence are meaningless"( ). litz, on the other hand, understandably asserts a strong debt to "the rubaiyaat of omar khayyam" in stevens' deficient "potter-god." potter-god "differs slightly from nietzsche's portrait in that his fault lies not so much in his lack of skill as in his over-idealistic conception of what his creations should be" ( ). for leggett, then, "negation" traverses some of the same philosophical ground as "sunday morning," presenting the error of focusing on the ideal, as such will inevitably blind one to the worth of "the real." leggett is, i think, correct to read "negation" as a nietzschean critique of idealism. what he does not articulate as fully as he might, however, is the extent to which stevens' poem shows its speaker—that is, its common-soldier / poet persona—actively celebrating, and quite in the manner of zarathustra, "the virtues of the real." that "negation" is, notwithstanding its title, a poem of nietzschean affirmation may be confirmed if we read it as a companion piece to the aforementioned poem "anecdotal revery" which presents god's pots (that is, his human creations) in a decidedly unprepossessing light as blind to all but their most immediate needs (and as compelled to react most viscerally against perceived threats to these things). that the two poems should be read together is suggested by the rather arresting salutation that begins "negation": "hi! the creator too is blind." this opening gambit, otherwise puzzling because without immediate antecedent, makes sense if the blindness of the "creator" is referred back to the blindness of the townspeople in "anecdotal revery." what the speaker of "negation" (that is, stevens' common soldier-poet) appears to be suggesting by poem's end is that he—unlike both the potter-god and his clay people—has clear sight: able to see both near and far. what the god of "negation" irritably rejects as "horrors, falsities, and wrongs" because he looks to see—and "too vague [ly]," at that—only the ideal, the speaker of "negation" perceives and affirms as "evanescent symmetries." in his clear-eyed recognition of the beauty of "intermediate parts," stevens' soldier-poet might even be said to possess something of the sanctity perceived in zarathustra by the old anchorite whom nietzsche's "wanderer" meets at the beginning of his tale: "pure is his eye, and no loathing lurketh about his mouth" (prologue ). it is, perhaps, in further rebuke of lemercier's and chevrillon's impenetrable faith in an enduring order of things that is accessible to us, their blindness to the fact that there can be, for us as finite creatures of thought, only "seasons of belief," as nietzsche tells us in other words, that stevens so pointedly changes the season of the soldier's death in the antepenultimate poem in the original manuscript of "lettres d'un soldat," later collected by stevens as "the death of a soldier" in the second edition of harmonium. here is the poem in full, accompanied by its original epigraph from one of lemercier's letters dated march , : la mort du soldat est pres des choses naturelles. life contracts and death is expected, as in a season of autumn. the soldier falls. he does not become a three-days personage, imposing his separation, calling for pomp. for an eloquent discussion of nietzsche's "rhetoric of vision"—that is, his "rethinking] of the nature of vision and visibility"( )—see gary shapiro's archaeologies of vision. death is absolute and without memorial, as in a season of autumn, when the wind stops, when the wind stops and, over the heavens, the clouds go, nevertheless, in their direction. placed last in the version of "lettres d'un soldat" in poetry, "the death of a soldier" has been often read as an affirmation of lemercier's statement that "la mort du soldat estpres des choses naturelles" ( ). for lensing, for example, "lemercier's sentence encapsulates the poem" ( ). even more emphatic is morse's assessment that "the series reached its logical climax and conclusion with 'the death of a soldier'; at least the two poems that followed completely lacked the poetic certainty of his deeply moving elegy" ( ). yet this is to presuppose the place of certainty in "lettres d'un soldat"—and, i believe, in "the death of a soldier" itself. its magisterial control of sense and syntax notwithstanding, i read "the death of a soldier" rather as a nietzschean assertion of the "law of chaos," or at least of a cataclysmic failure of human meaning, and as a heralding of the corresponding necessity to evolve a new "table of values," to use zarathustra's phrase. in one of the more recent readings of the poem, jahan ramazani asserts that notwithstanding the poem's own efforts to repudiate the elegiac, longenbach wisely observes "the trouble latent" in the word "pres" ( ). the death of a soldier is almost a natural thing. "the pathetic alignment of the soldier's death with nature's [nonetheless] underlies much of the imagery" in "the death of a soldier" ( ). thus, for example, while the poet's repeated use of the phrase "as in a season of autumn" (emphasis added) might seem to refuse the pathetic fallacy by emphasizing the relation between a soldier's death and autumn as pure metaphor, ramazani reminds us that "the autumnal setting, modestly offered as a thought-experiment, nevertheless returns the elegy to one of its traditional seasons" ( ). ramazani's claim that the poem is an elegy is persuasive. at the same time, however, i would propose that to gain insight into how stevens understood his autumnal poem, we need to take fuller account of his use of lemercier's reflection on "la mort du soldat fetantj pres des choses naturelles," a comment made on the th of march, as stevens' poem is careful to affirm; that is, at the beginning of spring. coming in the wake of "five days of horror" which left more than one thousand men dead and rotting on the battlefield, the soldier's words attest to a frantic desire to reassert the ultimate meaningfulness of existence. just prior to proclaiming the benevolent naturalness of the death of a soldier, lemercier observes, "how harmonious death is in the ground, and how . . . genial it is to see the body returning to mother earth." after affirming the "new life. . .with the earth" that the dead soldiers now experience, he closes with the counsel to his mother "to take refuge in the peace of spring." through all of lemercier's poignant musings from this period, then, there runs the desperate thread of effort to construct a narrative where so much violent death could harmonize with the coming of "peaceful" spring. in twice insisting that a soldier falls "as in a season of autumn," to be covered by fallen and decaying leaves rather than crowned with flowers that will bloom as memorial and promissary note of resurrection, stevens is asserting the law of cosmic chaos rather than one of harmony. following hard upon "the death of a soldier," at least in stevens' original draft of "lettres d'un soldat," came the further reversals and refusals of poems xii and xiii, which were never titled, but which begin, respectively, "in a theatre, full of tragedy," and "death was a reaper with sickle and stone." both poems are decidedly rough, almost draft-like, notwithstanding the fact that stevens evidently once thought them finished. unlike other readers, who have judged these two final poems in "lettres d'un soldat" to reveal either stevens' waning interest in his subject, or his admission of imaginative inadequacy, i believe the inconclusiveness of poem xii, and the stuttering enactment of failure in poem xiii, to have been purposeful and most appropriate to "lettres d'un soldat" itself, whose intent, at least in part, was to destroy, a la nietzsche, an old system of imaginative values. momentarily deferring my reading of poem xiii, i would propose the brief seeming fragment of poem xii, in a theatre, full of tragedy, the stage becomes an atmosphere of seeping rose—banal machine in appointed repertoire.. ., as a precise attack on symphonic orchestrations of value as opposed to single-string improvisation of belief. as morse first pointed out, there existed an earlier poem xii which, in comparison to the poem that stevens would eventually show to monroe, had a far less oblique relation to its epigraph: "j'ai oublie de te dire que, i 'autrefois, pendant la tempete, j 'ai vu dans le soir les grues revenir. une accalmie permettait d'entendre leur cri." below is the earlier text: the cranes return. the soldier hears their cry. morse suggests both a waning of enthusiasm and an admission of poetic inadequacy in the fragmentary nature of the last poems of "lettres d'un soldat." ( ) no: not as if the jades of willow-tree or river-fem came coloring the sky. but still the cranes return. the soldier hears their cry. he knows the fire that touches them—knows that he must not know nor burden his endurance with desire. but still the cranes return. endurance that grows heavy from despair, drowsed with the oblivion of oblivions— the chant of spring becomes an obsolete air— but still the cranes return. grows heavy from despair, too much alone to feel the spring infusing its relief in sleepiness, to resist that weight of sky. but still the cranes return. morse supplies fascinating details about stevens' attempts to edit this poem, so notably traditional in idiom and execution—at least in contrast to the poem he would eventually submit. the earlier poem is also striking in its fidelity to lemercier's words. as macleod was the first to observe, the poems of "lettres d'un soldat" most often do not confine themselves to commenting, ironically or otherwise, on their attendant epigraphs, rather picking up on passages of similar resonance elsewhere in the soldier's letters. the earlier poem xii is a case in point as it recurs with considerable poignancy to lemercier's own reiterated self-counsel not to acknowledge his own hopes and desires lest these break his fragile self-control. how then to explain the radical disjunction between this faithful testament to lemercier's harrowing experience, and the angry "outburst" that stevens chose in its stead? the answer, i believe, was that stevens judged both the measure and the matter of his first attempt to belong too much to the ritual consolations of the elegaic. early in his letters, lemercier recorded the leaving of the cranes in autumn; he was still alive in the spring when they returned, alive to hear their cries affirming their desire and the forceful desire of life itself. but he wasn't to live much longer and stevens knew this. while it was understandable that the soldier should have found some comfort in seeing life return despite the brutal waste of his surroundings, at a certain point the poet must have recognized that his reiterations of "but still the cranes return" resolved things too easily, and that his duty as a modem poet was to refuse the "appointed repertoires" of and for the "tragic." he had to propose a new stage, a new script, and above all, a new actor, or "act of the mind," that "ha[d] to be living, to learn the speech of the place, / . . .to face the men of the time and to meet / the women of the time" ("of modem poetry," - ). in the final section of this chapter, i examine the first and tenth poems of "lettres d'un soldat"—the aforementioned "common soldier" and the untitled and uncollected "john smith, and his son, john smith"—as together foreshadowing stevens' modem creator of "capable imagination" ("mrs. alfred uruguay"). as i read it, this "common soldier" is nietzschean in his valiant determination to think for himself, refusing, like zarathustra, to "build [his] tabernacle" amongst those who advocate or believe that we "have only one choice: either to become evil beasts, or evil-beast-tamers"(iii, lv, ). but he is, at the same time, rcoz-nietzschean in that his "arrow of longing" is not "launched. . . beyond man," but is rather clearly projected to fall among them, in all their "earthy implications." at the beginning of this chapter, i suggested that we might understand stevens' "common soldier" as rebuking chevrillon's dangerously high-flying rhetoric, but also as resisting nietzsche's rejection of the "common man"—even as he lays claim to a nietzschean will to creative power. having earlier invoked hindu kshettyras (warriors) to eulogize lemercier, chevrillon turns to the "common soldier" for a closing rhapsody about the "sublime message [being] sent to us from the front," a message he evidently found distilled in lemercier's letters: in all [lemercier's] comrades assembled for the great task, he too had recognized the best and the deepest things that his own heart held, and so he speaks of them constantly—especially of the simplest of the men—with so great respect and love. far from ordinary ambitions and cares, the things that this rough life among eternities brings into all hearts with a heretofore unknown amplitude are serenity of conscience and a freshness of feeling in perpetual touch with the harmonies of nature. these men do but reflect nature. since they have renounced themselves and given themselves, all things have become simple for them. they have the transparence of soul and the lights of childhood... .this new youthfulness of heart under the contemned menace of death, this innocence in the daily fulfilment of heroic duty, is assured by a spiritual state akin to sanctity. ( , italics added) here, as in his earlier rhapsody on the kshettyras, which again forms the opening epigraph to "lettres d'un soldat," chevrillon's deployment of "simplicity" is rhetorically charged. just as in the earlier passage it had been "plainly"—simplement—arjuna's duty to go into battle, so here are we told that "all things have become simple" for the common soldier. one could argue that chevrillon's closing patriotic effusion depends on casting soldiers as "simple," as childlike—that he can only reach these rhetorical heights by denying his soldier's doubt, anxiety, fear, and cynicism. whatever the case may be, it is clear that in such appalling sophistry, nietzsche would have had no part. indeed, his attack on the "state. . . [as] coldest of all cold monsters" in thus spake zarathustra contains what might be read as an explicit warning to his "brethren" to steer clear of just such men as chevrillon: "destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them" (i. xi). yet nietzsche himself had decidedly little use for chevrillon's man of "ordinary ambitions and cares": the very word "ordinary" would have been anathema to him, synonymous with mediocrity and conformity. to recall olivia schutte's observation on this question, while nietzsche did intermittently exhibit a certain "protective paternalism toward the masses. . . .[he] was also motivated to support a narrow elitism on account of his contempt for the values of the masses" ( ). "many too many are bom: for the superfluous ones was the state devised!" (i xi). in highlighting nietzsche's contempt for the "common man," i am thinking, however, particularly of his assault on this figure of "the last man" in the prologue of thus spake zarathustra where zarathustra mocks those who "have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night" ( ). nietzsche pinned his creative and philosophical hopes on the exceptional man, and saw his average neighbour as profoundly threatening. in a note from , he observes that "the masses, the miserable, and the most unfortunate concern me little—the first and most splendid types [concern me], and that out of consideration for the ill-bred (i.e., the chevrillon's england at war ( - ) shows a typically chauvinistic ignorance of nietzsche's thought. at one point, the author links "the diabolical nietzschean creed" ( ) with "the prussian theory of the absolute state" ( ). masses) they do not come off badly" (italic in original). it is, i propose, in his particular figuration as a "common soldier"—that is, as an unexceptional man of "ordinary ambitions and cares" but also of critical intellect who can be read as laying claim to be a nietzschean "warrior of knowledge" (tsz i, x)—that stevens' soldier / poet of "lettres d'un soldat" addresses himself not just to the dangerous platitudes of such as chevrillon, but also to the promise—and what he saw as the perils—of the nietzschean will to create. in mid-march, , stevens met harriet monroe and "weeded out the bad ones" from his draft of "lettres d'un soldat." according to lensing, stevens himself recommended the removal of "common soldier," and it has since remained uncollected and largely unread except by readers of the original draft of "lettres d'un soldat." here is the poem in full, complete with its epigraph from a letter by lemercier, one of the earliest, dated september , : . . . nous sommes embarques dans i 'aventure, sans aucune sensation dominante, sauf peut-etre une acceptation assez belle de lafatalite. . . no introspective chaos . . . i accept: war, too, although i do not understand. and that, then, is my final aphorism. i have been pupil under bishops' rods and got my learning from the orthodox. qtd in schutte, . the square brackets added are hers. it is worth noting that nietzsche's disdain for the "ill-bred" masses by no means included members of the peasant class. at one point in thus spake zarathustra he declares the peasant to belong in his coarse health, endurance, and "artfulness" to "the noblest tribe." for the unexceptional man of main street, however, nietzsche had only vitriol. i mark the virtue of the common-place. i take all things as stated—so and so. of men and earth: i quote the line and page, i quote the very phrase my masters used. if i should fall, as soldier, i know well the final pulse of blood from this good heart would taste, precisely, as they said it would. on first reading, and perhaps many subsequent, stevens' "common soldier" might seem the quintessence of passive obedience—of the proverbial lamb going to slaughter. after all, each of the poem's four stanzas contains an explicit reiteration of the soldier's opening claim that there is "no introspective chaos" within him. stanza ii is a dilated summary of the soldier's having been like wax under the impress of various educational forces—bishops' rods, the orthodox, the commonplace. stanza iii gives tri-fold assurances that he is no independent critic of life but rather "take[s] all things as stated," passively quoting "the very phrase[s] [his] masters used." the final stanza of the poem finds the "common soldier" apparently so persuaded of the sagacity of these aforementioned masters that he insists that "should [he] fall" his blood will "taste, precisely, as they said it would." in its opening phrase, readers may hear echoes of the first line from rupert brooke's "the soldier": "if i should die, think only this of me." "the common soldier" would thus seem little more than a drab redaction of its epigraph from lemercier's letter of september . where the young frenchman relates his lack of any dominant sensation, "except perhaps a beautiful enough acceptance of fate," as he and his companion soldiers are moved by train towards the front, stevens' "common soldier" himself seems not so much tranquil in the face of fate, as supine. yet to read lemercier's letters themselves is to discover that the french soldier's claim to equanimity, which stevens reproduces in his poem, was hardly representative of his state of mind on that september day, being merely the first line of a letter which in its fullness reveals the soldier's considerable distress as he observes "the fleeing civilians. poor souls, true exiles, or rather dead leaves flying before the whirlwind." lemercier's letter concludes, among these waifs of war an old woman touched me to the heart. she was a grandmother of eighty-seven, shaken and bruised by the jolts of the cars, by turns put down from and put back into these rolling cages; now trembling, now seemingly abandoned, and her head fairly swimming in the midst of it all. a similar transcript of a mind swerving between excitement and dread is found in lemercier's preceding letter of september , which finds him speaking of "horrible nights," the "monster" of war, and "this present horror" even as he records his synaesthesic reverence for the "sonorous and noble shores" of the loire and his awakening to "all that is filial and profound in the bonds which binds [him] to [his] native country." stevens seems thus to scant the complex range of lemercier's emotions as he moved toward the front line. yet the american poet may, in fact, have been truer to the french soldier's memory than it at first appears. my evidence for this is truly minuscule, but nonetheless significant: namely, the ellipsis within which stevens chose to frame lemercier's words when he used them to introduce "common soldier." here again, is the epigraph in question: ". . . nous sommes embarques dan i 'aventure, san aucune sensation dominante, saufpeut-etre une acceptation assez belle de lafatalite. . . ." we should not, i think, ignore stevens' precise typography here: none of the other epigraphs in "lettres d'un soldat" is framed in this way. taken in itself, the closing ellipsis might be explained easily enough as denoting, in standard fashion, omitted material. (we find stevens deploying the ellipsis to just this end within the epigraphs that precede poems viii and xiii in the series.) and, indeed, the closing ellipsis in stevens' epigraph for "common soldier" does omit a substantial portion of the sentence from which it came. in full, this sentence reads, "we have embarked on the great adventure without any dominant sensation unless it be a rather fine acceptance of fatality-but our sensibility is kept ever on the alert by the sight of the victims, especially by the fleeing civilians." this is no small excision. lemercier goes on to speak with considerable distress of watching his countrymen crammed into trains like livestock: "these poor, desolated, up-rooted beings suddenly fallen to the level of dumb, driven cattle." why did stevens make so free with lemercier's text? while explicating authorial intention on the basis of a few well-placed dots may seem a rather tendentious manouevre, i would propose that something of a reason for stevens' selective citation may be found in the ellipsis which he deploys in advance of lemercier's words. again, there might be several possible explanations for this punctuation mark. stevens may have wished to commemorate in some form from the outset that his poem sequence intersects lettres d'un soldat in something of medias res, rather than at the beginning. if this were the case, however, one might expect the epigraph to the final poem in manuscript (xiii "death was a reaper") to conclude with a parallel ellipsis, signaling stevens' exit, at it were, from lemercier's letters. that stevens was not merely wishing to flag the fact that he was quoting from the opening lines of a particular letter is confirmed by the fact that the epigraphs from poems iv and xiii are not prefaced by ellipsis even though these, like the epigraph to "common soldier," are taken from the opening lines of a letter. what then did stevens mean in framing the epigraph to "common soldier" in ellipsis? something of an answer may be found in lentricchia's comment on the ellipsis with which stevens affirms the expulsion from heaven of "us and our images" in the first canto of "it must be abstract": "the ellipsis: not words left out, but words impossible" (ariel ). that is, the seven dots which frame "common soldier" mark not a bibliographical omission, but a psychic or emotional repression: "not words left out, but words impossible." as i note above, lemercier's claim to serenity comes in the middle of revelations of his feelings of dread. while his letter from september begins by asserting the war as an "adventure" after the manner of brooke, it ends with thoughts on "the waifs of war." what remains, therefore, commemorated but unspoken in the ellipsis which bracket stevens' epigraph are lemercier's own moments of "introspective chaos." my use of stevens' opening phrase from "common soldier" to describe what in fact was lemercier's mental state as he moved across france to the frontlines is deliberate. i began my discussion of "common soldier" by emphasizing the ways in which this first poem of "lettres d'un soldat" suggests a persona nearly supine in its deference to authority. that we might have reason to suspect an ironic undertow in this soldier's protestations of obedience, however, may show itself even in his seemingly most straightforward assertion of passivity: "no introspective chaos. . . i accept." that is, the prominent ellipsis in the first proper line of "lettres d'un soldat," which might seem, at first, to reinforce the passivity of steven's "common soldier," may rather be read in a quite literal sense as spanning an abyss of chaotic thought and feeling—a psychic confusion simultaneously confessed and repressed by lemercier. in sum, i believe that the ellipsis in the first line of "common soldier" can be read as a space of strained silence and omission in parallel with the chaos marked by stevens' elliptical deployment of lemercier's own words in his epigraph. in suggesting that the "common soldier" may, indeed, feel considerable—and obstinately creative— "chaos" within, i dissent from macleod's assessment that we find stevens here reproducing lemercier's "unquestioning" idealism before battle: "he is naive enough to assert his inner strength in the form of a final aphorism'" ( ). indeed, i believe this "final aphorism" to rather hint at a significant critical intelligence which will, in fact, show itself forcefully in the final stanza of "common soldier." as stevens' soldier tells us in the opening moment of his poem, he "accepts" war. but as he is then swift to observe, he does not understand it, and in his refusal to grant war—and those who would dictate its meaning and value—the capitulation of his intelligence, his resistant imagination reveals itself. to be clear, it is the soldier's insistence that war is incomprehensible that attests to his fundamental, and intelligent, rebelliousness. he has no choice but to fight. it matters to no one save himself that he "does not understand," but he insists upon this point nonetheless and so clears for himself a significant space of intellectual integrity. indeed, that this "common-soldier" will meditate at length on his experience of war, that is, as the unifying consciousness of "lettres d'un soldat," suggests him as one who, contrary to his own expressed predilection to "take all things as stated," in fact "liveth in order to know," to recur to one of zarathustra's earliest formulations of the ubermensch. (prologue ). like zarathustra, stevens' "common soldier" might be heard to say, albeit by indirection, "wage w a r . . . for the sake of your thoughts!" (z i. x). admittedly, the second and third stanzas of the poem might seem to pose something of an obstacle to my argument for an empowered "common soldier." what to make of such fulsome descriptions of deference to all manner of authority? one possible answer is that the soldier's litany of obediences, running the gamut from orthodoxy to "the virtue[s] of the common-place," is meant to be excessive. that is, the degree of inflation in the soldier's seeming ode to the wisdom of his "masters" is proportionate to the speed and (quiet) savagery with which he then punctures this purported sagacity in the final stanza of his eponymous poem. that we should read the final stanza of "common soldier" as a rebuke of past masters, is, i think, undeniable. in its opening statement, "if i should fall, as soldier, i know well," we should no doubt hear an echo of brooke's "the soldier": "if i should die, think only this of me." yet stevens' "common soldier" is by no means simply cribbing from "master" brooke. where brooke exhorts his readers to imagine that, in death, [his] heart, all evil shed away, [will as] a pulse in the eternal mind, no less giv[e] somewhere back the thoughts by england given; her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day, stevens' "common soldier" foretells quite another end for his "good heart." where brooke projects some kind of ethereal reconciliation of his spirit into a community of "hearts at peace, under an english heaven," our "man of the line" notes only that "the final pulse" of his heart's blood, welling up into his mouth as his body, blasted by a shell or skewered by a bayonet, disintegrates fast or slowly into "some comer of a foreign field," will "taste, precisely, as they said it would." it is difficult to imagine a lonelier, and more useless, affirmation in the moment of death than this "precise" physiological fact. it is against such meaningless precision and empty certainty that the soldier's opening declaration of incomprehension in the face of war shows resistant intelligence. that in the soldier's intelligent resistance we may find trace of the nietzschean creative will, and indeed even of stevens' early receptive reading of thus spake zarathustra, is suggested in the poem's linkage of aphorism, blood, and self-knowledge. that nietzsche took delight in an aphoristic style hardly needs saying, but stevens' own adagia and materia poetica reveal the poet likewise held the aphorism in high esteem. as coyle reminds us, stevens seems to have regarded the aphorism as "an anchorage for thought" (l ), and so, pace macleod, i read the "final aphorism" of stevens' "common soldier" as marking not naive idealism, but rather a visceral understanding rooted in experience. early in the first book of thus spake zarathustra, its hero observes, "of all that is written, i love only what person hath written with his blood" ("of reading and writing"). a few line further on he declares, "he that writeth in blood and proverbs [spriichen: also translatable as aphorism] doth not want to be read, but learnt by heart." at risk of imposing a coherence on the poem that it cannot sustain, i would suggest that in "common soldier" we find trace of nietzsche's critique of "reading idlers": those parasites or otherwise weak spirits who "take all things as stated—so and so / of men and earth" rather than discovering the "bloody" truth for themselves. while stevens' "common soldier" seems at pains to identify himself as just such a passive creature, his very last breath falling into line behind "the line and page . . . the very phrase [his] masters used," he ultimately shows the bitter emptiness of his formal education. what stevens' "common soldier" has "learnt by heart" and would pass on to his fellow soldiers through a "final aphorism" is that while as "men of the [front] line, their bodies may be forced to "accept" war, if they will become like him, a "[modem] man of the [poetic] line"—that is, a man using his will-to- creative power—their minds will refuse such capitulation. it is in keeping with this refusal to "comprehend" war that stevens' "common soldier" will in the final lines of "lettres d'un soldat" interrogate poetic representations of death and, finding oddly enough, however, though coyle examines "lettres d'un soldat," she makes no mention of the explicit allusion to aphorism in "common soldier." them wanting, lapse into a stuttering silence. prefaced by a comment from lemercier on the way in which soldiers detailed to repair the trenches regularly dug up corpses, the final extant poem in the series first finds the common soldier—more fully taking on the mantle of poet here than at any other point in "lettres d'un soldat"—reviewing two standard images for "the truth of death" ( ). first up is the iconic image of death as "a reaper with sickle and stone, / or swipling flail" ( - ), followed by a figure of death as (perhaps) one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, "beating his horse, / gesturing grandiose things in the air, / seen by a muse" ( - ). thoroughly unimpressed by these shades of old masters, the soldier dismisses them as "[s]ymbols of sentiment.. . "( , ellipsis in original). he then does try to articulate a new way of speaking of the violence he has witnessed : "take this phrase, / men of the line, take this new phrase / on the truth of death—" strikingly, however, he concludes by asserting the knowledge of the other men of the line—"you know the phrase" (emphasis added). it is in this final gesture of deference to the experience of an amorphous group of other soldiers that i read stevens' "common soldier" and stevens himself as departing critically from a strictly nietzschean formulation of creative will. here we find traces of the poet's paradoxical attitude towards the general, the common. as bates has observed, crucial in the genealogy of stevens' hero of the imagination is a "chaplinesque figure [who] stands for the mass of humanity . . . [and] as such . . . balks the dreams of those . . . who long to surpass the human condition" and so does the "commonal" in stevens have its "pathetic dimension" ( ). but as bates goes on to say, the commons are also "heroic" in stevens: "magnify[ing] us in our own eyes by fashioning credible fictions of nobility" (ibid.) for nietzsche, by contrast, the hero and the commons were simply antithetical. it is my contention that "lettres d'un soldat" shows stevens beginning to formulate his theory of the valiant imagination which would eventually place the spirit of the commons at the centre of things that his interest in a nietzschean creative will-to-power thus did not involve a concomitant disdain for the imaginative resources of the common is made apparent in the tenth poem of "lettres d'un soldat": in the untitled, never collected, and rarely commented upon text which begins "john smith, and his son, john smith." that stevens would have chosen (in the company of monroe) to retain "john smith, and his son, john smith" for the issue of poetry initially surprises. on first reading, the poem seems too slight for serious consideration. here it is in full: john smith and his son, john smith, and his son's son john, and-a-one and-a-two and-a-three and-a-rum-tum-tum, and-a lean john, and his son, lean john, and his lean son's john, and-a-one and-a-two and-a-three and-a-drum-rum-rum, and-a rich john, and his son, rich john, and his rich son's john, and-a-one and-a-two and-a-three and-a-pom-pom-pom, and-a wise john, and his son, wise john, and his wise son's john, and-a-one and-a-two and-a-three and-a-fee and-a-fee and a-fee and-a-fee-fo-fum— voila la vie, la vie, la vie, and-a-rummy-tummy-turn and-a-rummy-tummy-tum. some critics have enjoyed the poem for its energy, and seen it as quite in keeping with its epigraph (from a letter dated february , ) which reads "hier soir, rentrant dans ma grange, ivresse, rixes, cris, chants et hurlements. voila la vie!" morse, for example, reads the poem as an "effervescent jest to illustrate [lemercier's observation]" ( ). but morse's implication that lemercier had greeted the revels of his men with equanimity is not borne out by the rest of the soldier's letter. lemercier was, in fact, distinctly put out by all the drunkenness and noise and speaks of taking refuge outside the bam with "[his] friend the moon and majestic night retiring before the morning, which took pity on me." at the same time, however, it must be said that the irritable anger thus contained in the phrase, "voila la vie!", was unprecedented and never repeated, but above all was hardly representative of his attitude to the "common soldier." while lemercier several times intimates his unhappiness at having to live in proximity with men clearly not habitues of parisian drawing rooms, in general his comments are praiseful, several times showing humble admiration for their courage and resilience. stevens' bizarre riffing on the soldier's sole expression of ill-temper seems thus at first only pointlessly disrespectful of lemercier's memory. but as the twelve-fold iteration of the decidedly generic but evidently anglo- saxon/american name john (smith) makes clear, this poem's soldiers, descending one from another in a sequence that recalls the begats of genesis —but to the decidedly non-liturgical beat of a child's nursery rhyme—are not figures for lemercier's brave compatriots. indeed, the gaiety of the diction marching through the poem, ringing the changes on the giant's chant in "jack and the beanstalk," suggests that these john smiths are perhaps not soldiers at all, or at least not ones destined for slaughter on the battle field. though these hardly yet seem kin to zarathustra's "warriors of knowledge" who wage war "for the sake of [their] thoughts" (i, x), they are at least animated by a buoyancy of spirit that nietzsche would commend. as the poem states, "voila la vie, la vie, la vie." coming near the end of a rather repetitious poem, and sandwiched between "and-a-fee-fo- fum—" and "and-a-rummy-tummy-tum," this celebration by stevens' "common soldier" of life enfrancais is easy to pass over. but the line should perhaps give us pause, as it is the sole instance in "lettres d'un soldat" of a full phrase from lemercier's letters being rendered complete as a line of stevens' verse. (the poet does, of course, excerpt three other words from lemercier's letters in his poem series: "justice," "beaute," and "chere," but there is particular force behind this inclusion of a full phrase.) there is considerable poignancy in the fact that "voila la vie!" should be the single line both lemercier's letters and "lettres d'un soldat" share. but of greatest interest to me at this juncture is the way in which the airy labials of "voila la vie, la vie, la vie," skipping suddenly through the "fo-fum" and "mmmy-tummy-tum" evolution of the anglo-saxon—and therefore gutturally germanic—john smith, recalls the linguistic preoccupations of the previously discussed "plot against the giant" and "explanation." in a striking departure from these other giant poems of , however, french and german (or rather, germanic) appear on an almost equal footing here: that is, while the actual power of life/reality is, as in the other poems, in some sense represented as germanic, through the generations of john smith succeeding on into infinity, this power is described in french. to put it another way, in "lettres d'un soldat" french is, at the last, found to be equal to the task of presenting "guttural" reality. that this should be the case in a poem otherwise devoted—or so i have argued—to interrogating the imaginative powers of the french as ineffectual is striking. perhaps the poet meant his final inclusion of lemercier's words within "john smith" as a kind of redress. i would suggest furthermore, however, that the suddenly explicit interplay between french and the anglo- saxon / germanic in the poem may signal, as i suggest above, that it is not about soldiers at all, but rather is a projection about a present, but especially future, imaginative power. with his "fee- fo-fum," john smith might be numbered among the giants of harmonium (although of course, only as a suppressed presence, as stevens did not include the poem there). yet john smith is not the anonymous ogre of "the plot against the giant," nor is he that more abstract figuration of the giant germanic imagination which appears in "explanation." rather, he is, as his seeming generic name would affirm, the gigantic quintessence of the common-place man. but then again, this john smith may not be quite as "generic" as he first appears, being perhaps as well an allusion to the captain john smith of american history and literary legend. though most commonly recalled in romantic (and romanticized) conjunction with pocahantas, captain smith was also the brave, resourceful, and decidedly anti-authoritarian leader, if not actual first founder, of jamestown, virginia. founded in as the first english colony in the "new world," jamestown might well have failed had it not been for the vigorous labours of smith. that there may be shades of this john smith appearing near the end of "lettres d'un soldat" suggests that stevens' first formulations of a new world hero of the imagination may see the life of captain john smith, the founder of virginia. ( ) ed. william gilman simms. have had a consciously american aspect, foreshadowing his mature efforts to write poems of his climate, poems of the american "new world." critically, any allusion to the good captain would also lend substance to stevens' articulation of the evolution of his giant in material terms: from lean to rich to wise. while captain smith, as the son of a well-to-do yeoman farmer, was not himself from the impoverished classes, his copious writings on his experience in the new world attracted many "leaner" sorts who came to new england determined to acquire all the riches that might be had "by labour, and diligence." in concluding, i would propose this seemingly slight poem late in "lettres d'un soldat" as a critical early moment in stevens' own efforts to "conjecture" his "supreme fiction" as a "violence from within responding to a violence without." here it finds primordial shape close to "the meaning of the earth," to recur to one of nietzsche's descriptions of his ubermensch in the opening pages of thus spake zarathustra. stevens' "john smiths" are powerful giants with the evident capacity to evolve: growing over the course of the poem from lean, to rich, to wise. and they inhabit the stuff of poetry: if only in the guise of a child's nursery rhyme. but they do not yet speak for themselves, as men of the "[poetic] line." stevens, through lemercier, speaks for them: "voila la vie, la vie. la vie." but most critically, they are not ubermenschen, although something of their nature may grow out of a productive engagement with the idea of nietzsche's supermen. in their evident generative (if not artistically creative) power, especially in stevens' deliberate linkage of this power to a child's rhyme, they may well carry something of nietzsche's blissfully creating child in them. certainly, these giant-children have nothing in them of the "transparence see smith's the generall historie of virginia, volume i i , . in the opening pages of book i of his narrative, zarathustra presents the three-fold metamorphoses of the human spirit from the "load-bearing" camel, to the nay-saying lion, to the of soul and the lights of childhood . . . . innocence in the daily fulfilment of heroic duty" celebrated by chevrillon. stevens may well have composed "john smith" as part of his "outburst" against the likes of this french man of letters. they are still not ubermenschen, however, most particularly because they are men of flesh, a vulnerable condition of earthliness which will be reinforced by "the death of a soldier," which immediately followed "john smith" in both the original manuscript and version of "lettres d'un soldat." while stevens' soldier-giants of the imagination may therefore be, at this early juncture, distant kin to the resourceful and rebellious john smith of american history, they are much more apparently kin to the "big-bellied ogres curled up in the sunlight, / stuttering dreams. . ." to whom the poet whimsically refers in the uncollected "inscription for a monument" from . lacking eloquence and rather indolent they are unlikely to be galvanized by zarathustra's exhortation to rise and surpass themselves, but their evident love for sunlight suggests their author might have yet at least heard of nietzsche's prophet of a new day. many years later in "the noble rider and the sound of words," stevens would describe a statue of andrew jackson on horseback in lafayette square in washington, the horse "with one of the most beautiful tails in the world," the rider "raising his hat in a gay gesture saluting the ladies of his generation," and observe, "one looks at this work of clark mills and thinks of the remark by bertrand russell that to acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy" (cpp ). it is in this context that stevens, following coleridge, then dismisses the statue of jackson as merely a work of "fancy," partaking "neither of the imagination nor of reality" ( ). against such public statuary which, according to stevens, revealed the sorry child. of this ultimate figure of free-spiritedness he writes, "innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy yea." extent to which "the american will as a principle of the mind's being is easily satisfied in its efforts to realize itself in knowing itself," the poet would oppose with palpable relief and delight, the "ribald and hilarious reality" imagined in reginald marsh's painting of carousel riders, "wooden horses" ( , ). for stevens, andre chevrillon was doubtless a latter-day clark mills. nietzsche most certainly was not. the poet's invocation of ubermenschlichkeit, however hypothetical, alone reveals that he knew enough about the philosopher to sense something of value on the horizon. in whatever he knew of zarathustra's excoriations of "old values" and postulations of radically new ones, stevens must have recognized a genuine prophet of and guide for " the mind's being, striving to realize itself in knowing itself." in claiming that stevens felt antagonism towards chevrillon as a bellicose rhetorician of the old world, i do not mean to assert the american poet as a latter-day wilfred owen. the first world war was always for stevens something of an abstraction, an event which he later articulated, as we have seen, in terms of its catalyzing effect on the imagination. as he observed in "the irrational element in poetry,""those who seek for the freshness and strangeness of poetry in fresh and strange places do so because of an intense need" (cpp ). it is difficult to read lemercier's letters and not envision a man in greater need of the "fresh and strange," and yet, unsurprisingly, he did not seek for novelty, but found solace in his accustomed haunts of poetic mediation of the world's beauties—and horrors. it was, i have argued, in the process of theorizing the war's effect on the imaginations of sensitive souls like owen had men like chevrillon in mind when he excoriated those who "tell with such high zest. . . the old lie; dulce et decorum est / pro patria mori." see, for example, his apology to harriet monroe on april , , for his insensitive "gossip about death" when for "too many people in the world, vitally involved. . . it is infinitely more than a thing to think o f (l ). lemercier's—rather than upon lemercier himself— that stevens took his first, ambivalent, step towards a projected nietzschean "warrior of the imagination" who was above all things to be "true to the meaning of the earth" and turn his back on all forms of "starry connaissance." for stevens, in such rootedness lay the imagination's renewed health and salvation. but as "lettres d'un soldat" suggests and "the comedian as the letter c" confirms, or so i will argue, in my fifth chapter, stevens was wary of whatever shadow of that germanic giant, the ubermensch, he perceived on his imaginative horizon. in this chapter i have argued that "lettres d'un soldat, ( - )" shows stevens attracted to the nietzschean celebration of the creative will of men, but troubled by the ways in which that celebration explicitly denied such creative power to most of humanity. in the following chapter, i read "sunday morning, " "the snow man" and "earthy anecdote" as engaging critically with a nietzschean perspective on "der sinn der erde"—"the meaning of the earth." that is, while arguably expressing the ecstatic feeling of "april-weather" in the midst of january snows that nietzsche insisted should attend our power to bravely create out of the void, these poems at the same time foreground the humbling meaningfulness of the earth's dark cold. see nietzsche's gay science, "preface to the second edition," vii. chapter iv: on be(hold)ing the meaning of the earth in new england. "let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the earth! [. . . .] that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning!" (nietzsche, thus spake zarathustra) one must have a mind of winter / [ . . . ] to behold [ . . . ] / [ . . .] the nothing that is. (stevens, "the snow man") speaking before the english institute at columbia in , stevens observed that "the great poems of heaven and hell [having] been written . . . the great poem of the earth. . . . will constitute the true prize of the spirit" (cpp ). he did not on this occasion—or any other—programmatically delineate the nature of this "great poem" to come. even so, to read the collected poems of wallace stevens is to encounter something very like a "great poem of the earth," in the sense of a deeply coherent work whose imaginative—and emotional—centre of gravity is the earth. this concentration on "the earth"—that is, not just precisely observed natural phenomena, but quotidian and domestic detail as well—in part stems from a sense of religious loss. in his early study of twentieth-century poetry, poets of reality, j. hillis miller declares that the "vanishing of the gods, leaving a barren man in a barren land, is the basis of all stevens' thought and poetry" ( ). as desolate as it sounds, this radical loss of locus for divine projection may be "a happy liberation," a clearing of the stage in which just two characters remain: "man and nature, subject and object" ( ). distracted no longer by the thought of many readers have commented on the sombre trajectory of a great deal of stevens' verse. as frank doggett put it so eloquently in an early essay on stevens as "the poet of earth," even in the moments of its greatest creative power, the "mind. . . is only a mortal spirit, a poor animal with numbered days playing the frail guitar of its poetic imagination" ("this invented world," ). heaven, human beings may at last become intent ephebes of the soil beneath their feet. as miller puts it, "culture has always been based on the permanence of sun, air, and earth. now man knows that this is so. he knows that 'the greatest poverty is not to live / in a physical world' ("esthetique du mai," xv, - ), and this brings about a sudden miraculous recovery of the vitality of earth" ( ). certainly, this is the possibility suggested by many of stevens' poems: "the auroras of autumn" ( ) instructs us to think "in the idiom of an innocent earth, / not of the enigma of the guilty dream" (ix, - ); "notes toward a supreme fiction" urges us to remember that "the particulars of rapture come" when "winter and spring, cold copulars, embrace" (i, iv, , ); and "phosphor reading by his own light" ( ) conjures us to hearken to our "elemental parent, the green night" ( ). and, of course, there is the sabbath-slighting woman of "sunday morning" who recognizes that with the sky no longer a "dividing and indifferent blue" (iii, ), the measures of her now doubly earth-bound soul will forever be "the bough of summer and the winter branch" (ii, ) but as stevens himself knew well, and early, even those boughs and branches could not be apprehended "in themselves": "it is never the thing but the version of the thing" ("the pure good of theory," iv, ) that we contemplate. stevens was, as miller observed over forty years ago, a poet of the mind's creative eye: from one end of his work to the other he reiterates a single idea, and all his work is an attempt to explore the endlessly variable perspectives from which reality can be viewed by the imagination. he is resolutely carrying out nietzsche's injunction that man the survivor of god should experiment tirelessly with new truths, new representations, new life forms. ( ) a poem like "thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird" ( ) does indeed suggest stevens as a tireless perspectivist. but as miller himself is swift to observe, "stevens' poems are rarely celebrations of the triumphant ease with which man 'imposes orders as he thinks of them' ( , citing "it must be abstract," vii, ). indeed, it is precisely ease which eludes the poet as "[his] mind wanders here and there seeking to capture a reality which is itself eternally changing" ( ). an early canto in "notes toward a supreme fiction" offers the same sombre conclusion: "from this the poem springs: that we live in a place / that is not our own and, much more, not ourselves / and hard it is in spite of blazoned days" (i, iv, - ). as i recall in my first chapter, miller became, in the early s, an eloquent exponent of nietzschean play in stevens. but his earlier, less ludic, reading of the poet makes a forceful case that in stevens' poetry, the imagination is "driven to its extravagant peregrinations not by a desire for novelty but by the fact that none of its strategies attains the fusion with life that it wants" ( ). it is miller's earlier sense of stevens as "a poe[t] of reality"—and especially as one who desired "fusion" with the world—that i wish to pursue here. as in preceding chapters, my argument responds in significant measure to b. j. leggett's reading of the early stevens. taking as my starting point leggett's exegesis of a commitment to a nietzschean creative will-to-power in stevens, i have, to this point, sought only to complicate his thesis by showing how the poet extends this power to women and to the "common man"—thus expanding by far the constituency of nietzsche's own polity of gravity-defying "free spirits." in this chapter, however, i turn from examining stevens' poetic representations of "the will of men" (representations which i follow leggett in reading as significantly nietzschean) to considering the poet's approach to "the meaning of the earth"—"der sinn der erde" as nietzsche puts it in thus spake zarathustra—arguing for fundamental differences. according to leggett, stevens' earth-bound aesthetic is fundamentally underwritten by something very like nietzsche's postulation, in the book i of will to power, that the world is nothing more than "aperspectival appearance whose origin lies in us" ( , italics in original). recalling the "muddy centre" that is identified as preceding humanity and its myths in the fourth canto of the first part of "notes toward a supreme fiction," leggett observes how "at times stevens' poems assume a world that is real, present, but crude or undifferentiated—a slovenly wilderness, the sea, a snow-covered landscape, clattering bucks, a giant yokel—something that must be given form or civilized" ( ). he then quotes at length from arthur danto's influential discussion of der sinn der erde in nietzsche. here is leggett's citation of danto, in full: nietzsche could not quite bring himself to the point of becoming an idealist, for whom there is no world outside the articulations of the mind. nor could he quite become a phenomenologist, believing that whatever is finally meaningful can be expressed in terms of our own [sense] experience. he could not do this because he felt, and not so differently from either kant or spinoza, that there was a world which remained over, tossing blackly like the sea, chaotic relative to our distinctions and perhaps to all distinctions, but there nevertheless. to some extent he was seduced by his own arguments. because he wanted to say that all our it is worth noting that nietzsche offers this position as something of an hypothesis, as an expression of "the most extreme form of nihilism . . . the view that every belief, every considering-something-true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world" (italics in original). it is also rather disconcerting to find nietzsche himself qualifying his comment on the fact that the world is nothing more than "aperspective appearance whose origin lies in us" with the parenthetical observation, "in so far as we continually need a narrower, abbreviated, simplified world" (italics in original). beliefs are false, he was constrained to introduce a world for them to he false about; and this had to be a world without distinctions, a blind, empty, structureless thereness. . . . nietzsche's view of the world verges on a mystical, ineffable vision of a primal, undifferentiated ur-eine, a dionysiac depth. ( , danto , square brackets and italics in original) passing over danto's suggestion that nietzsche's philosophical mandate pre-determined his sense of the world as a "structureless thereness," leggett identifies a kindred approach to "reality" in stevens: "it is perhaps because [his] early poems also accept a world without meaningful distinctions as the ground on which our varied interpretations impose their patterns that so much of his perspectivist poetry is built on the opposition of chaos and order" ( ). as leggett's eloquent analysis of the aphoristic style of "thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird" reveals, stevens can most productively be read as a nietzschean. when his subject is the power of the imagination, the poet could, indeed, be channeling the philosopher from basel. yet this much-cited early poem could also be read as an early illustration of stevens' mature contention in "the noble rider" that the "nature of poetry" is "an interdependence of the imagination and reality as equals" (cpp , italics mine). many of stevens' poems do suggest a nietzschean investment in viewing the world as an entity "present beyond dispute that is nevertheless impervious to description 'as it really is'" (leggett ). even so, some of these same poems—and certainly others besides—engage this irremediable failure to connect very differently from the philosopher's texts in passionately beholding this material shadow of the world with the eyes—and ears—of a lover who first and foremost wishes to acknowledge the positive identity and existence of his beloved. following such critics as vendler and lensing, i read this passionate attachment to the idea of the world as "present beyond dispute"—even as it remains forever aloof and unknowable—as the fundamental drive in stevens' poetic art. as he puts it in "a primitive like an orb" ( ), "the lover, the believer and the poet. / their words are chosen out of their desire" (iv, - ). in pages following, i offer close readings of two poems from harmonium which evidently take the relation between the artist—as, i will argue, "lover, believer, and poet"—and "the meaning of the earth" as their chief subject: "earthy anecdote" ( ) and "the snow man" ( ). as "sunday morning" likewise meditates on this relation, i turn once more to this important poem at the end of this chapter. i also turn briefly to another short poem from harmonium, "of the surface of things." whereas leggett presents these poems as focused on the artist (and readers) as nietzschean perspectivists—that is, as those who would "be the meaning of the earth" to recur to my opening epigraph from thus spake zarathustra— i read these texts rather as focused on the poetic—and psychological—necessity of never ceasing to behold the earth as meaningful unto itself. as stevens would put it many years later in "an ordinary evening in new haven" ( ), "we keep coming back and coming back to the real" (ix, - )—though this may be nothing more than "a shade that traverses / a dust, a force that traverses a shade" (xxxi, - ). it is my contention that "earthy anecdote," "of the surface of things," "the snow man," and "sunday morning" reveal stevens as only partially committed to a program of nietzschean perspectivism. it is undeniable that stevens was a post-nietzschean poet, that he wrote in the full belief that the gods are dead, and in the belief that reality is "[n]ot that which is but that which is apprehended" ("ordinary evening," v, ). but unlike nietzsche, he remained temperamentally and aesthetically predisposed to a "love of the real" (ibid, viii, ) and driven to search for this love object as something ultimately external to himself. in the twenty-second canto of "an ordinary evening in new haven," professor eucalyptus (whom i read as a spokesman for stevens himself) declares "the search / for reality [to be] as momentous as / the search for god" ( - ). meditating parabolically on this monumental quest, stevens first presents the philosopher's search for reality as "for an interior made exterior"—thus making the philosopher more or less a nietzschean perspectivist—and then the poet's search for reality as "for the same exterior made / interior" ( - ). the syntactical compression of this passage makes it nearly impossible to determine if stevens means to distinguish between the philosopher's and the poet's search for reality, or to hold them in parallel. what is clear, however, is that the poem suggests that both philosopher and poet should be focused on things external and prior: "breathless things broodingly abreath // with the inhalations of original cold / and of original earliness" ( - ). equally striking is the canto's insistence that humble re-creation, not quasi- divine fiat, is the proper task of philosopher and poet, as searchers: . . .the sense of cold and earliness is a daily sense, not the predicate of bright origin. creation is not renewed by images of lone wanderers. to re-create, to use the cold and earliness and bright origin is to search. likewise to say of the evening star that it is wholly an inner light, that it shines from the sleepy bosom of the real, re-creates, searches a possible for its possibleness. ( - ) stevens' rejection of the "lone wanderer" might be taken as a rejection of transcendentalist philosophizing or of any number of sublime romantic solitaries. but zarathustra is arguably one philosopher / poet whose promethean efforts to embody "the predicate of bright origin"—to imaginatively assume the power of the solar presence—cause him to neglect the "daily sense" of "cold and earliness," and stevens' reflections on the quotidian as "the meaning of the earth" might be brought into illuminating intertextual conjunction with zarathustra's own very different musings on der sinn der erde. of course, however, the import of this phrase in nietzsche is hardly straightforward. prior to offering my reading of the relation between "the meaning of the earth" and the creative will of men expressed in "earthy anecdote," "of the surface of things," "the snow man," and "sunday morning," i would, therefore, make a brief excursion into nietzsche's own resolutely creative approach to "der sinn der erde "—an approach given bravado expression in the three hundred and second aphorism in the gay science: "i am no seeker. i want to create my own sun for myself." * * * in his foreword to ecce homo, nietzsche assures his readers that his over-all purpose has been to rescue "reality"—that is, for him, the "reality of appearances"—from those ignoble ones who either out of fear or greed would construct some other world: "one has deprived reality of its value, its meaning, its truthfulness, to precisely the extent to which one has mendaciously invented an ideal world." in beyond good and evil, nietzsche envisions the "strange and wonderful task" of "translating] the human back into nature," such that it might stand "with fearless oedipus-eyes and stopped-up odysseus ears, deaf to the enticements of all the metaphysical bird-catchers who have been whistling to him for too long: 'you are more! you are of another origin!" ( ). and in thus spake zarathustra, nietzsche has his eponymous hero exhort an assembly of burghers to "remain faithful to the earth, and . . . not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes!"(prologue, italics in original) these and other such statements rejecting the metaphysical realm and so seemingly celebrating the physical earth have in recent years provided fertile soil for eco-philosophical readings of nietzsche. lawrence lampert, for example, in nietzsche and modern times: a study of bacon, descartes, and nietzsche, describes nietzsche's thought as "a complete immanentism affirming the natural order, an ecological philosophy . . . . [which seeks] . . . the naturalization of the human—his groundwork for a human society that affirms the natural order as it is" ( ). most recently, in grounding the nietzsche rhetoric of earth, adrian del caro submits that "the most serious use to which nietzsche can be p u t . . . is the reclamation and preservation of the earth—he made this his task, he set the standard at the threshold of the ecological age, for humanity's first attempt to dwell affirmatively, intelligently, and in partnership with the earth" while nietzsche generally means the transcendental when he speaks of otherworldliness, he is concerned with immanent, secular idols as well. see, for example, thus spake zarathustra, where both the idea of heaven and the idea of the state, "that coldest of all cold monsters" (i, xi), are excoriated as ideals / idols which deny or denigrate the "reality" of earth. see also kaufmann on the state as "the devil of nietzsche's ethics" ( ). ( ). that nietzsche's writings might be put to work in defense of our beleaguered planet is a heartening thought—but hardly a self-evident one: while the philosopher's rejection of idealism does in critical ways "affirfm] the natural order as it is," nietzsche himself repeatedly insisted that nature "itself be recognized as "a creation which is subjective in highest degree." when zarathustra first encounters the burghers at the start of his first "down-going," he does indeed exhort them to "remain faithful to the earth" (prologue), but it is the more comprehensive instruction which his disciples receive at the end of book i which may more fully present his view on the relation between humans and their planetary home: "let your bestowing love and your knowledge be devoted to be the meaning of the earth! . . . . that it may give to the earth its meaning, a human meaning!" (xxii, , italics added). where stevens would say, "i must impale myself on reality" (op, ), nietzsche projects the apogee of the human power to make the world in the coming ubermensch, whom we are told "shall be the meaning of the earth!" (z, prologue, iii, italics in original). just what this meaning shall be never becomes clear, but it is clearly triumphant, an erotic drive to encompass all things in an ecstatic "yes." the lack of inspired erotic connection in accustomed ways of for further discussion of an "ecological" nietzsche, see graham parkes in lippitt, - , and also parkes' earlier monograph, composing the soul: reaches ofnietzche's psychology ( ). see "on truth and lies in a nonmoral sense" in breazeale, pg. . nietzsche continues, "all that we actually know about these laws of nature is what we ourselves bring to them—time and space, and therefore relationships of succession and number." and so sarah kofman, commenting on nietzsche's desire "to translate man back into [the text of] nature," will insist that this "text" is for the philosopher "constituted, not given . . . . [and] interpretation is not a commentary on a pre-existing text; what exists before the interpreting is not text, but chaos" ( - ). knowing the earth seems to be the underlying target of nietzsche's metaphoric assault first on the moon and then on the clouds in books ii and iii of thus spake zarathustra. here is zarathustra contra the (man-in-the) moon: indeed, he is not much of man either, this shy nocturnal enthusiast. verily, with a bad conscience he passes over the roofs. for he is lecherous and jealous, the monk in the moon; lecherous after the earth and all the joys of lovers. no, i do not like him, this tom-cat on the roofs! i loathe all that crawls about half-closed windows! piously and silently he passes over carpets of stars:—but i do not like softly treading men's feet, on which no spur jingles. (zii, xxxvii). against such pruriently immaculate perception zarathustra then offers the lusty, but "innocent" creative desire of the dawning sun: "look there: how she approaches impatiently over the sea. do you not feel the thirst and the hot breath of her love? she would suck at the sea and drink its depths to her heights." and here is zarathustra contra the clouds, which dare besmirch the clear vault of the dawn sky into which he sings an adoring song of praise: o heaven above me, pure and deep! you abyss of light! seeing you, i tremble with godlike desires... daniel conway cautions against "precipitately attributing to nietzsche the provisional teachings of zarathustra" ( ). in here making zarathustra an unironized spokesman for nietzsche, i follow walter kaufmann, ofelia schutte and numerous other readers. together we have learned everything; together we have learned to ascend over ourselves to ourselves and to smile cloudlessly— — to smile down cloudlessly from bright eyes and from a vast distance, when constraint and contrivance and guilt steam beneath us like rain. . . . and whom did i hate more than passing clouds, and all that stains you? . . . i loathe the drifting clouds, those stealthy great cats which prey on what you and i have in common—the uncanny, unbounded yes and amen. (ill, xlviiif ten years before, in "on truth and lies in a nonmoral sense," nietzsche had in similar vein equated clouds with cravenness, with "a pressing need," and celebrated the "olympian cloudlessness" (breazeale ) with which the intuitive man in ancient greece had gaily shown "art's mastery over life" (ibid ). in thus highlighting nietzsche's metaphoric assault on the moon and clouds in thus spake zarathustra, i do not mean to diagnose in the philosopher some undercurrent of distaste for the natural world. my contention is not that nietzsche failed to "love" the earth (in the broad sense of the natural order), but rather that his philosophical concerns lay with the lover far more than with the beloved. as thus spake zarathustra makes clear, nietzsche's abiding romance was with the idea of man triumphant, self-overcoming, and purged of cowardice and shame. (and so see also zarathustra's prologue where he speaks of "the dark cloud" man. as it happens, however, nietzsche did apparently possess a personal antipathy to clouds. in a letter to franz overbeck, dated september , , he writes, "[w]hat a summer i have had! my physical agonies were as many and various as the changes i have seen in the sky. in every cloud there is some form of electric charge which grips me suddenly and reduces me to complete misery. . . . where is there on earth that perpetually serene sky, which is my sky?" (sl, ). it is that nietzsche's prophet will exhort his followers to "be the meaning of the earth," rather than to simply be "faithful" to that sphere, as he initially urges the burghers he encounters at the beginning of his first "down-going.") so far, zarathustra's denunciation of "the monk in the moon" can be read as a continuation of the attack on old habits of mind and judeo-christian guilt that nietzsche first launched in the birth of tragedy. the moon here is a figure in a metaphysical allegory that seems to have little to do with the natural order. but if the passage has little direct connection to the natural order per se, little connection to any particular moonlit cloudscape, it does turn on how the natural order is perceived. as i read it, zarathustra's assault on the impotent "peeping-tom" perception of the man in the moon and on the depressive ly obscuring nature of clouds gives a critical clue to nietzsche's own ideal orientation vis-a-vis the earth. illustrating bachelard's sense of nietzsche's "ascensional psyche," the philosopher seems invariably to project this relation as from a great height, "from a vast distance"—the earth itself being constituted into erotic life under a nobly "bestowing" eye of a perceiver who, like the sun, sees with an "unbounded yes and amen" and in such a boundless seeing, does not behold the earth, but rather creates it. thus zarathustra says in concluding his denunciation of the moon's furtive relation with the earth: "verily, like the sun do i love life and all deep seas. and this is what perceptive knowledge means to me: all that is deep shall rise to my heights" (italics added). that is, in both cases, moon and clouds disrupt what is named in beyond good and evil as "the pathos of distance . . . that longing for an ever-increasing widening of distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, more remote, tenser, more comprehensive states, in short precisely the elevation of the type 'man'" ( ). of course, bachelard's diagnosis of an "ascensional" nietzsche by no means negates recent efforts to discover a more earth-hound philosopher: i, for one, hope that our sense of nietzsche as an "ecological thinker," to use graham parkes' phrase, will be broadened and deepened by further study. the very existence of such "green" approaches to nietzsche, however, whatever their credibility, helps me to clarify two points that i would make in this chapter about stevens. first, critics like leggett and bloom who foreground nietzschean intertext and /or influence at work in poems like "earthy anecdote," "the snow man," and "sunday morning" see nothing "green" in the relation between imagination and reality that they describe in these poems—a fact hardly surprising given that the approaches of both men preclude consideration of the latter as a material force or presence. my second point, however, is that the effect of such persuasive and influential nietzschean readings of "earthy ancedote," "the snow man," and "sunday morning" is to occlude appreciation of just how "green" these poems may be. as i will show, the relationship between imagination and reality in these notably must here acknowledge david jarraway's important analysis of the poetics and rhetoric of "distance" in modernist american literature: going the distance: dissident subjectivity in modernist american literature ( ). as jarraway notes in his introduction, the act of "keeping one's distance" can function in two ways: as "a sort of self-protective mechanism that would stave off the alterity of experience by foundationalizing truths" and as "a type of optative psychic space that manifests itself... as a kind of 'delicacy and fragility of thinking' that would honor 'the impossibility of a coincidence between the idea and what fulfills it'" ( , internal citations from theodor adorno's minima moralia, ). as jarraway notes further, the poems of wallace stevens exhibit both forms of "keeping one's distance." in insisting that stevens' poetic hugged the contours of the earth in ways that might place him at odds with nietzsche's own "ascensional" poetic philosophy, i do not mean to deny stevens' own brave commitment to the fragile and delicate thoughts and acts that can only occur when we "throw away the lights, the definitions" and walk in "the madness of space" ("the man with the blue guitar," xxxii). nietzschean poems is clearly "greener" than has been heretofore recognized—and perhaps even in nietzschean ways if critics like lampert and del caro are to be believed. as bart eeckhout suggests in "wallace stevens' 'earthy anecdote'; or, how poetry must resist ecocriticism almost successfully," published in , stevens' poems do not generally fall as plums into the hands of readers of eco-critical bent, often appearing rather to "give of bird or bush" about as willingly as that famous jar in tennessee. and so it is that only one book- length study of stevens as an "eco-poet" exists to date, gyorgyi voros' notations of the wild: ecology in the poetry of wallace stevens ( ), which reads stevens' art as "promoting] an ethos . . . [which] articulates a philosophy for living and models a fruitful, enriching, and above all, necessary relation to the physical world" ( ). unfortunately, however, as eeckhout notes, voros's study ranges neither broadly enough nor deeply enough to make her thesis persuasive: "to distil a more or less consistent worldview, no matter how ecologically visionary in its appeal, from a poet as deliberately antisystematic, counterintuitive, and full of surprises as stevens is a risky undertaking: it tends to contain what on the page struggles hard to resist containment" ( ). eeckhout's own spirited reading of the multi-valencies of "earthy anecdote" confirms the extent to which stevens' art perpetually "defers the satisfaction of interpretive closure" ( ). it is nonetheless possible, however, to make more of the "earthy" elements in "earthy anecdote" than does eeckhout—or voros, for that matter. while eeckhout concedes that this "very sly poem.. . is about stevens' investment in earth's natural cycles and its unspoiled natural environments, and it is an affirmation (if an ambiguous one) of natural vitality rooted in the body and the senses" ( , italics in original), he insists that "earthy ancedote" is primarily "about" poetry and the poet. and so does he ultimately find the poem "to serve as a minor litmus test for what we think a would-be ecological poetry and a responsive ecocriticism may legitimately hope to convey" ( ). readers will not at the beginning of this chapter, i recalled leggett's allusion to the "muddy centre" which "notes toward a supreme fiction" identifies as that which existed "before we breathed" (i, iv, ). glossing this "centre" as "that [which] preceded our human efforts to make sense of it," leggett thus frames stevens' original clay as explicitly nietzschean: materially "real," but inchoate and awaiting the ideas of order of humankind. but leggett's reading scants the fact that stevens' poem in fact declares this "muddy centre" itself to be a place of order: the locus for "a myth before the myth began, / venerable and articulate and complete" (iv, - ). in the wake of such a comprehensive narrative, we are not creators, nor even explicators: rather, "we are the mimics"—and in a manner most wrc-nietzschean—"the clouds are pedagogues" ( ). moreover, as "notes toward a supreme fiction" confirms two cantos further on, what we observe in this earth is an inherent order: perhaps the truth depends on a walk around a lake, a composing as the body tires, a stop to see hepatica, a stop to watch a definition growing certain and a wait within that certainty, a rest in the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake. perhaps there are times of inherent excellence, find eeckhout's judgement here contradicted by notations of the wild, for although voros invokes "earthy anecdote" in the title of the prologue to her book, she (inexplicably) fails to comment on the poem itself at any point. as when the cock crows on the left and all is well, incalculable balances, at which a kind of swiss perfection comes and a familiar music of the machine sets up its schwarmerei, not balances that we achieve but balances that happen, (vii, - ) as a space productive of "times of inherent excellence" and of "balances that happen," the world itself was evidently for stevens an ordering principle. pausing to look at the " hepatica" and hearing the "familiar music of the machine," especially in the cyclical rhythms of spring, summer, fall, and winter, provides the human imagination with an essential substrate of meaning, a guide for thought, but especially for feeling: "passion of rain, or moods in falling snow; / grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued / elations when the forest blooms," in the idiom of "sunday morning" (ii, - ). stevens' sense of the "meaning of the earth" may indeed have been intermittently guided by some nietzschean "pathos of distance . . . within the soul." one need only consider the striking parallels between "tea at the palaz of hoon" and an aphorism from the gay science, titled "genoa," which speaks in praise of "superb, insatiable ego[tists]" whose "architectural thoughts" built the italian city, and which rejoices in the fact that here . . . on turning every corner you find a man by himself, who knows the sea, knows adventure, and knows the orient, a man who is adverse to law and to neighbour, as if it bored him to have to do with them. . . . with a wonderful craftiness of fantasy, he would like, at least in thought, to establish all this anew, to lay his hand upon it, and introduce his meaning into it—if only for the passing hour of a sunny afternoon, when for once his insatiable and melancholy soul feels satiety, and when only what is his own, and nothing strange, may show itself to his eye. ( ) in stevens' poem we likewise find a solitary, aristocratic (that is, purple-robed) man who knows the sea, adventure, and the east, and who would build his own world—indeed, would be that very world. stevens' palaz-dwelling hoon surely outdoes the nietzschean architects of genoa in his "superb, insatiable egotism": not less because in purple i descended the western day through what you called the loneliest air, not less was i myself. what was the ointment sprinkled on my beard? what were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears? what was the sea whose tide swept through me there? out of my mind the golden ointment rained, and my ears made the blowing hymns they heard. i was myself the compass of that sea: i was the world in which i walked, and what i saw or heard or felt came not but from myself; and there i found myself more truly and more strange. reading hoon as "the self in all its potential, the imagination at it were at the height of its powers," riddel finds this figure "eloquent and commanding" (clairvoyant eye ). hoon does, indeed, show his imagination, like that famous jar of stevens, "[taking] dominion everywhere," but we may glimpse the limits of this power in his final comment about finding himself "more truly and more strange" (italics added). it is possible, of course, to read this recognition of "strangeness" positively, as further notice of the courageous compass of hoon's power. he is one who can embrace the non-identical (unlike nietzsche's genoese who wants to see "only what is his own"). and yet there is poignancy in the word that ends the glorious egotism of "tea at the palaz at hoon": "strange." this word, being after all the root of stranger and estrangement, arguably reinscribes the melancholy solitude which hoon seems at pains to reject in his opening statement: "not less because in purple i descended / the western day through what you called / the loneliest air, not less was i myself." indeed, i would contend that something of "the loneliest air" abides about a man whose confident assertion of identity via a six-fold iteration of and a four-fold repetitions of myself is bookended by the decidedly down-beat phrases, "not less" and "more strange." as with nietzsche, the inner distance of self-estrangement is here linked to exotic lands and vast expanses, but in stevens this projection inward of promethean vistas is tinged with a sense of lack and absence—indeed, with a sense that meaning still lies elsewhere: down below, up above, anywhere, in fact, upon the earth itself one of stevens' most forceful—but also deeply enigmatic—explorations of the idea of the earth as an ordering principle is "earthy anecdote." as john miles notes, in his analysis of in wallace stevens and the seasons ( ), george lensing identifies stevens' own profound and abiding loneliness—both personal and epistemological—as one of the drives of his art: "stevens rescued himself from loss by reaching out for what had always bewitched and beckoned him, the world itself. if he could not find love in another, he could love star, sun, sea, and field. if he could not passionately possess another, he could passionately pursue the other, and to this end he gave both heart and head" ( ). the poem, this enigmatic "doorkeeper" ( ) to stevens' poetic house presents a considerable challenge to the reader. here is the poem in full: every time the bucks went clattering over oklahoma a firecat bristled in the way. wherever they went, they went clattering, until they swerved in a swift, circular line to the left, because of the firecat. the bucks clattered. the firecat went leaping, to the right, to the left, and bristled in the way. later, the firecat closed his bright eyes and slept. stevens himself initially expressed some hesitation about the poem: submitting it to carl zigrosser, editor of the journal the modern school, in the summer of , two months after the publication of "lettres d'un soldat," stevens commented, "here is a thing i like. if you don't like it, don't make any bones about saying so" (l ). but that the poet himself did care for "earthy anecdote" very much indeed is suggested by the fact that he maintained it as the opening poem in both his selected works ( ) and his collected poems ( ), after first selecting it to headline harmonium in . for many readers, the riddling aspect of "earthy anecdote" is its theme. thus milton bates describes the poem as an emblem of one's own engagement with this kind of poem: like the bucks, one's clattering, discursive mind, swerves left or right whenever it approaches the firecat, thus duplicating the pattern of bafflement and evasion in the anecdote. the poem continues to produced its intended effect—an effect that is also its subject—as long as the firecat remains a source of perplexity. ( ) as bates suggests, many critics have found the chief puzzle of the poem to be the firecat: although hardly transparent in meaning themselves, the bucks of "earthy anecdote" have attracted far less commentary. generally, these skittish characters are regarded as decidedly secondary to the feline creature which springs into their path "[e]very time" they go "clattering / over oklahoma"—a figure that has been read as, among other things, an oil well, a prairie fire, and the sun. most critics simply disregard stevens' own (admittedly cryptic) statement of intent that he meant "something quite concrete" by both the bucks and the firecats: "actual animals, not original chaos" (l ). many readers have approached "earthy anecdote" not as some little story "about" the earth, but rather as some kind of parable about the power of the artist. as george betar puts it, "stevens quite clearly envisions the poet, as, at least in part, a beast possessed of sheer animal vitality, with the power of discovering form in flux, of bringing order—however temporary—to chaos" ( ). in his analysis of "earthy anecdote," leggett offers fresh insight into the poem's seeming preoccupation with chaos and order by reading it intertextually as a "geometrical simplification" ( ) of nietzschean perspectivism, of the doctrine of the will to power which nietzsche believed found "every centre of power—and not man alone—construct[ing] the rest of the world from its point of view" (wp, ii, ). sharing bates' sense that "earthy anecdote" is "about" the act of interpretation, leggett reads the poem's self-designation as an anecdote in explicitly nietzschean terms, as the natural vehicle for pluralist thought. he does this by way of nietzsche's claim in his second preface to "philosophy during the tragic age of the greeks" ( ) that "it is possible to shape the picture of a man out of three anecdotes. i endeavour to bring into relief three anecdotes out of every system and abandon the remainder"—a claim which gilles deleuze summarizes in a pithy formulation, which leggett also cites: "the anecdote is to life what the aphorism is to thought: something to interpret" ( ). it is such a casting away of the contextualizing "remainder" that clears the ground for seemingly endless acts of interpretation. it is by designating the "firecat" as more significant, but less "real" than the bucks, that leggett finds this enigmatic creature to figure "the text's confession of its complicity in an infinite chain of representations" ( ). that is, "the presence of this imaginative creature among the more mundane bucks appears to be the poem's way of acknowledging its status as interpretation and thus of joining the host of nietzschean interpretations that 'announce themselves as such.. . . transmitting] that information through the very forms, the very styles. . . in which they are presented'"( ). the internal citation is from alexander nehamas' discussion of the relation between nietzsche's "most multifarious art of style" and his doctrine of perspectivism. according to given leggett's reading of "earthy anecdote" as a poem "about" interpretation whose apparently animal principals should really be approached as abstract figures in a "geometrical simplification" ( ) of nietzschean perspectivism, it is ironic that his identification of the famous "fire-dog" episode found in book iii of thus spake zarathustra as a potent intertext for stevens' poem arguably goes a considerable distance towards identifying a philosophical antecedent for that "imaginative creature," the firecat. that is, to read leggett's discussion of the parallels between nietzsche's "fire-dog" and stevens' "firecat" is to wonder whether this poem might constitute hard evidence of the poet's significant engagement with the philosopher. (it is perhaps in uneasy acknowledgment of this impression that leggett prefaces his discussion with the odd confession that he had "attempted . . . to suppress" such an "unlikely" [ ] intertext for stevens' poem.) but, of course, the mapping of influence is not leggett's purpose, and so he is careful to affirm the connections between nietzsche's text and stevens' poem at the level of the idea only. these are not easy to tease out, as zarathustra's parable of the fire-dog—which in fact contains two such creatures—is baffling enough in itself. the first firedog is introduced by zarathustra as one of the "diseases" of the skin of the earth (man in his current state is another)—and then called to account by nietzsche's prophet for being a "dissembling" and vicious "braggart" who is nothing more than "the ventriloquist of the earth . . . embittered, mendacious, and shallow . . . [who] doth like to speak with smoke and roaring" (ii, xl). having rendered this unsavoury nehamas, nietzsche's many styles "show his perspectivism without saying anything about it, and to that extent they prevent his view that there are only interpretations from undermining itself ( ). creature inarticulate with rage by this negative assessment of his character, zarathustra then gleefully asserts the existence of another fire-dog, quite unlike its belching cousin, one that "speaketh out of the heart of the earth . . . adverse . . . [to first fire-dog's] gargling and spewing and grips in the bowels." rejoicing in this second creature, zarathustra declares that through its "golden" breath and laughter, "thou mayst know it, — the heart of the earth is of gold" (italics in original). reading zarathustra's parable in particular light of deleuze's comment that whereas the first fire-dog is purely reactive, "bustl[ing] about the surface, in the din and fumes," the second fire-dog is "an affirmative animal" ( - ), leggett judges that "in stevens' anecdote of the earth, the bustle and din of the surface of things is represented not by the sham fire-dog but by the clattering bucks. . . . [and] [t]he authentic fire-dog that gilds the world like the sun is represented by a firecat around whom the noisy bucks move but who later closes his bright eyes in sleep" ( ). the turn to stillness and silence at the end of "earthy anecdote"—after, indeed, so much leaping and bristling and general bustle— is critical in leggett's alignment of stevens' text with nietzsche's as he completes his exegesis of the poem with zarathustra's own counsel to beware "great events" when there is much roaring and smoke about them." zarathustra declares, and believe me, friend hollabaloo! the greatest events—are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours. not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values, doth the world revolve; inaudibly it revolveth." (italics in original) in leggett's reading, the bright-eyed firecat—doubly suggestive in a nietzschean paradigm of both the solar presence and of the "golden" heart of the earth—is, from first to last, a figure of the artist as nietzschean perspectivist: that is, it is the fire-cat's active bristles and leaps which bring meaning to the chaos of reactive ungulates whose default motion is an otherwise aimless "clattering." leggett's reading of "earthy anecdote" thus presents the poem first and foremost as being about "the meaning of the earth" as it is forged by the poet: "the bucks are ordered only in the presence of the firecat, and after he has 'closed his bright eyes / and slept,' one presumes that they revert to their disordered clatter" ( ). again, leggett reads this poem within an explicitly nietzschean paradigm in which primordial chaos, that "structureless thereness" (the bucks), is temporarily ordered by the perspectivizing powers of the artist (the bright-eyed firecat). but as leggett himself admits, '"earthy anecdote,' unlike the other perspectivist poems . . . does not make altogether clear the nature of its ordering principle. it asks us to solve the riddle of the firecat... and as far as i know, the readers are still guessing" (ibid.). there is no doubt that "earthy anecdote" is a riddle, and it seems very likely that riddling per se is an important part of the story that this poem wishes to tell. but there may be more than one way to read this riddling. for example, one need not necessarily interpret the firecat and bucks as abstract symbols of order and chaos, respectively. if we do engage with stevens' own insistence that bucks and firecat are "actual animals," the apparent symmetry of their movements, leaping and swerving left and right, across the oklahoma prairie may be read, not as the product of the artist's will-to-order, but as the by-product—"balances that happen," to recur to the language of "notes toward a supreme fiction"—of the ontologically and epistemologically to properly follow leggett's point, it is necessary to adjust the citation from stevens' poem to read "closed his bright eyes / [in sleep]." equivalent motions of a predator and its prey. as discussed above, leggett reads "earthy anecdote" as a "geometrical simplification" of nietzschean perspectivism by foregrounding deleuze's sense of the (nietzschean) anecdote as "something to interpret." in advancing this perspective on the anecdote, leggett explicitly rejects lentricchia's characterization of the form as a "little story . . . [that] stands in for a bigger story, a socially pivotal and culturally pervasive biography which it illuminates" ( ). according to leggett, lentricchia's attempt to read such poems as "anecdote of a jar" in socio-political terms is to radically misread a text whose core aesthetic is abstraction. leggett may well be correct in his judgement here: "anecdote of a jar" certainly seems first and foremost to be "about" poetry. nonetheless, there may be merit in applying lentricchia's definition of the anecdote as a "representation of radical aesthetic unself-sufficiency" ( ) to "earthy anecdote." taking up lentricchia's conviction that in the anecdote "there is always something outside the text" ( ), i understand "earthy anecdote" as a "little story" that "stands in for" nothing less than the irresolvable riddle of the relation between the reality and imagination—a riddle which, however, begins with the faith, expressed by stevens at one point in his adagia, that "all of our ideas come from the natural world" (cpp ). and so i interpret "earthy anecdote," in part, as a "little story" sketched out of natural history. within this biological (rather than biographical or social) frame, we might describe the poem as a scene "red in tooth and claw." certainly, that bucks and firecat encounter each other in "oklahoma" might identify the poem as figuring the american wilderness: in a letter written to elsie during a business trip to oklahoma city in the autumn of , stevens speaks in anticipation of "a land of mustangs, indians etc." (l ). perhaps on this very journey, the young stevens was lucky enough to catch sight of a mountain lion, one of the denizens of the oklahoma wilderness, attacking a group of mule deer bucks, and observe them repeatedly dodging, left and right, to avoid their assailant. in stevens' carefully crafted poem, however, the instinctual movements of cat and bucks appear choreographed. adopting the artist's perspective, we observe reality and the imagination enacting an intricate dance which finds the firecat and bucks together carving "a moving contour," a sliver of the "fluent mundo" ("notes toward a supreme fiction," iii, x) across the oklahoma plain. through the lens of art, death is the mother of beauty. but as "earthy anecdote" is at pains to remind us, or so i contend, death would also attend a mountain lion catching hold of its long-limbed breakfast. i agree with bates and leggett that "earthy anecdote" requires an active reader—that interpretation, not exposition, is its primary drive. but interpreting "earthy anecdote" entirely by way of nietzschean perspectivism, that is, as a poem which finds the chaos of the earth being brought to (temporary) order by the artist, creates a blindness to the ways in which the poem may figure the earth itself as an ordering principle. for leggett, the firecat is the active agent, while the bucks are nothing but "mundane" reaction. but surely both firecat and bucks are mutually/ reciprocally impelled and impelling. admittedly, the first three stanzas seem to foreground the motive and directive power of the firecat. but the fourth stanza firmly reorients our gaze to stevens' journal entries from his hunting trip to south-eastern british columbia find him similarly relishing the wildness of this part of the world—that is, until the exhaustion of bush-wacking "through burnt timber patches, willow swamps, slash etc" began to take its toll. stevens records having "a huge amount of venison . . . on hand, however" (l ) and may have had some opportunity to observe the behaviour of herds alarmed by the threat of hunters, and other predators. young mule deer bucks do often congregate in small groups of three or four, outside the rutting season. affirm the power of the bucks to initiate and direct movement in the firecat: the bucks clattered. the firecat went leaping, to the right, to the left, and bristled in the way. it may be worth pointing out that if this firecat is anything kin to the "real" big cats of the earth, somnolence would be his default mode. we don't know what the firecat was doing before the bucks arrive, but the poem ends with this creature fast asleep. as leggett notes, we are not told what the bucks do once the firecat falls asleep, but it is reasonable to assume that they do return to clattering in no particular direction to and fro across the prairie: as the opening line of "earthy anecdote" implies, such is their habitual movement. but other questions also remain unanswered, such as, "does the firecat sleep with a full belly, or an empty one?" such a question might appear to belong to the "how many children had lady macbeth?" variety, but whether the firecat gets his breakfast is, in fact, another one of the riddles of the poem. indeed, the enigmatic observation with which the poem ends, "later, the firecat closed his bright eyes / and slept," solicits our attention to this question. notably, however, the poem leaves us none the wiser. perhaps the bucks escaped. (then again, there is something ominous in that word "later" which suggests that the firecat does not dream on an empty stomach.) in any case, the question of whether the firecat had his breakfast is worth posing simply because our inability to answer it highlights stevens' decision to keep the final outcome of the encounter between bucks and cat out of sight and thus beyond our making. interpreting "earthy anecdote" as withholding part of the story from the readers / viewer engages with stevens' insistence that firecat and bucks are "actual animals," are, in some important sense, creatures of an earth that was "venerable, articulate, complete" long before the coming of humans. the contrast here is, then, one between simple beasts, part of a natural order complete in itself, and its perceivers— "clever beasts" as nietzsche designated humans in his essay "on truth and lies in a non-moral sense." a similar valorization of the earth prior to any imposition by "clever animals" can be seen in stevens' enigmatic early poem "of the surface of things" ( ). here is that poem in full: i in my room, the world is beyond my understanding; but when i walk i see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud. ii from my balcony, i survey the yellow air, reading where i have written, "the spring is like a belle undressing." ill the gold tree is blue. the singer has pulled his cloak over his head. the moon is in the folds of the cloak. in his reading of this poem, and elsewhere, leggett draws heavily on "on truth and lies in a nonmoral sense" which rejects the idea of universal constants and defines truth as "a movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms" ( ), and has become, as leggett notes, "a central reference for contemporary theorists" ( ). as leggett reads it, "of the surface of things" offers perfect illustration of nietzsche's demolition in "on truth and lies" of the notion that our metaphors touch the reality of things: what arbitrary demarcations! . . . . what one-sided preferences, first for this, then for that property of a thing. . . . when we believe that we know something about things themselves when we talk about trees, colours, snow and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things—metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities. ( ) leggett also finds here clear presentation of nietzsche' insistence that humans "are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see 'forms.' their senses nowhere lead to truth, on the contrary, they are content to receive stimuli and, as it were, to engage in a groping game on the backs of things" (breazeale, ). as leggett reads "of the surface of things," the poem participates fully in nietzsche's foregrounding of the fundamentally aesthetic relation between ourselves and the world, "rememberfing] that our demarcations of trees and colors is so arbitrary as to result in apparent paradox: 'the gold tree is blue' (iii, )" ( ). the second and third cantos of "of the surface of things" surely lend support to leggett's contention that the poem "illustrates both the manner in which we glance over the see, for example, riddel in "neo-nietzschean clatter." robert buttel offers another explanation for this image, that it is deliberately painterly. buttel notes that "of the surface of things" is one of a number of poems which cause "the surface of harmonium [to] nearly persuad[e] the reader that one of his aims was to abolish the distinctions between poetry and painting" ( ). surface of things and create forms and the degree to which these forms are the metaphors and similes of human fancy" ( ). but the poem's opening gambit is less accommodating: "in my room, the world is beyond my understanding; / but when i walk i see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud." as a description of an "actual" landscape, this is clearly inadequate: the numerical precision of "three or four hills and a cloud" shows the perspectival eye of the poet still at work. nonetheless, the lack of imaginative flourish in the poem's first foray into describing "the surface of things" and its explicit statement that one gains "understanding" of the world through the physical act of walking through it arguably asserts the objective and meaningful existence of the earth. as i read stevens, this persistent assertion of the earth as the bedrock of meaning—"the real is only the base. but it is the base," as stevens put it in a famous aphorism in materia poetica (cpp )—affirms that while often engaged in nietzschean meditations on the arbitrary nature of perspectivizing, the necessary illusions of that species of "clever beast," humankind, he was equally prone to pursue a very different line on the question of our relation to the earth. one of stevens' most powerful meditations on this question, this relation, is "the snow man," which the poet himself once explained as "an example of the necessity of identifying oneself with reality in order to understand and enjoy it" (l ). such authorial glosses are rare in stevens and critics have been, in any case, reluctant to take them as gospel, none more so than bloom, who judges the above authorial interpretation of "the snow man" to be "the worst possible reading . . . of [the] poem" ( ). according to bloom, stevens' explanation "takes care of less than half the poem, the part in which 'reality' is 'regarded,' and not the larger part in which 'reality' is 'beheld' and so begins to become a passion" (ibid.). while my own reading in fact affirms stevens' "explanation," it also owes something to bloom, not least to his reading of "the snow man" as first and foremost a meditation on perception around which the processes of pre-conception, conception and reception are all in riddling play. also important in this meditation is, of course, perspective: the poem's raison d'etre, after all, being the pursuit of "a mind of winter." prior to engaging with bloom's explication of "the snow man" as a movement into a perceiving "passion," i would therefore turn to leggett's contrasting interpretation of the poem as a highly-wrought and abstract meditation on nietzschean perspectivism. judging the poem, indeed, to foreground, consciously or not, the central paradox of a doctrine which holds that "for every being appearance is identical with reality in every respect" ( ), leggett finds "the snow man" to "as[k] whether a world could remain over if point of view were cancelled or what the features of a perspectiveless world might be" ( ). according to leggett, the poem "does not deny the existence of its blank world [in his reading, the "nothing that is"]; it simply assumes that any feature it might exhibit must be imposed on it by the perceiver. a perceiver who willed himself to impose nothing on the blank (if that were possible) would confront only the blank" ( ). in "the snow man," leggett hears nietzsche chiding us, "as if a world would still remain over after one deducted the perspective!" (wp, iii, ). as leggett himself acknowledges, however, "for fourteen of its fifteen lines, 'the snow man' appears to hold a very different epistemology. . . .[suggesting an operation by which a perceiver might truly behold a winter landscape" ( ). here is the poem in full: one must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine-trees crusted with snow; and have been cold a long time to behold the junipers shagged with ice, the spruces rough in the distant glitter of the january sun; and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land full of the same wind that is blowing in the same bare place for the listener, who listens in the snow, and, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. according to leggett's nietzschean reading, however, the first fourteen lines do, in fact, dictate the necessity of "divest[ing] oneself of any perspective that would interpret the scene" ( ). this process of being "stripped of all human seeing and conceiving" ( ), as leggett sees it, proceeds without complication until the last line of the poem which affirms that with a "mind of winter" attained, one may behold "the nothing that is." because he interprets this "nothing" as "nietzsche's featureless becoming, the ground upon which we constract our worlds ( ) (as against miller's earlier reading of "the nothing that is" as the space of being), leggett quite justifiably identifies, at this juncture, a contradiction in "the snow man." that is, reading stevens' "mind of winter" as one which "desire[s] [and can achieve] a world of perspectiveless beholding" ( ), leggett finds fundamentally contradictory the poem's steady progress towards this desired "blank" via the perception of "pine-trees crusted with snow" and "spruces rough in the distant glitter / of the january sun." as leggett reads "the snow man," all these signs of human ordering—classification of arboreal species into subspecies, metaphoric descriptions of junipers being "shagged with ice," the thought of time imbedded in the idea of a january sun—are precisely the ways of knowing the world that would be eschewed by "the mind of winter." according to leggett, therefore, "the argument of the poem may thus be reduced to this form: in order to realize x, surrender the faculties by which x is realized" ( ). leggett's argument is characteristically insightful. but it neglects to engage one piece of the poem which arguably stands in contradiction to its thesis. again, leggett suggests that if we were to follow the snow man in taking on his wintry state of mind we would be "stripped of all human seeing and conceiving" (italics added). while there is an evident drive towards reduced subjectivity in the poem, specifically the elimination of the pathetic fallacy, leggett's reading overlooks the fact the snow man is himself invested with a perceptive faculty. that is, he of the "mind of winter" is also, and to the last, "the listener, who listens in the snow" ( ). it seems to me, therefore, that "the snow man" does not ask us to relinquish our capacity to perceive the earth, but rather that we leam to "see" it—that is, regard / behold it— as the snow man listens to it. the ultimate question, for my reading, is what such a "looking-as-if-one-were-listening" might mean. here, i must acknowledge my debt to bloom's reading of "the snow man." reminding us that stevens is in this poem, "as almost always . . . an orator with accurate speech" ( ), he asks, "is there a difference, for stevens, between regarding and beholding, or is this merely elegant variation?" (ibid.). for bloom, there is, indeed, a difference: to "behold" is to gaze at or look upon, but with a touch of expressed amazement. the beholder possesses the object; his scrutiny is active, going back to the root kel, meaning to drive or set in swift motion. to "regard" is a warier more passive verb. it is to look at something attentively, or closely, but with a touch of looking back, a retrospect, stemming ultimately from the root wer, meaning to watch out for something. ( ) as bloom reads it, "the snow man" thus begins with a verb "replete with negative intentionality"—a trajectory which he identifies as "prophetic" of later instances of "wary" perception in stevens, such as that of the father in "the auroras of autumn" who "sits, / in space, wherever he sits, of bleak regard" (iv, , italics added)—and ends with a verb that for bloom hints at a prodigal power latent in the solitary man of snow. no less than the wanderer of "nomad exquisite" ( ) who "beholds" the erotic abundance of florida and sends forth erotic flares of "forms, flames, and the flakes of flames" ( ), this frozen emblem of more austere climates will one day begin to generate his own internal heat—or so bloom would have it. with characteristic aplomb, he announces, "the snow man is not yet hoon, but he is going to be" ( ). i cannot follow bloom in his estimation that stevens' silent and severe man of snow need only "behold" the land a little longer to be transformed into the oratorical and resplendent hoon. following such readers as macleod, vendler, and the early riddel, i place stevens' "snow man" and "hoon" at opposite ends of an emotional—and aesthetic—spectrum in the poet. to read the snow man as nothing more than a precursor to hoon is, i think, to neglect the former's own independent stature as a figure of imaginative power, however austere. in a complicated mapping of anxious influence in "the snow man," bloom reads the poem as re- writing the venerable tradition of the "fictio[n] of the leaves" ( )—beginning in the iliad and ending in shelley's "ode to the west wind"—via ruskin's critique of the pathetic fallacy in modern painters. citing ruskin's comparison of dante's perfect image of "spirits falling from the bank of acheron 'as dead leaves flutter from a bough'" (perfect because persistent in the "clear perception that these are souls, and those are leaves") with coleridge's vision of "the one red leaf, the last of its clan, / that dances as often as dance it can" (a "morbid" and "false" image because the poet "fancies a life in [the leaf], and will, which there are not"), bloom judges the victorian critic's reflections to place us "rather closer to the poem than many of its exegetes have been" ( ). following bloom reading ruskin, i, too, interpret stevens' poem of snow, and wind, and leaves, and bare places as "urgently seek[ing] to avoid any indulgence of the pathetic fallacy" ( ), and, furthermore, as a "reduction to the first idea" ( )—that elusive abstraction which riddel describes as "one of a number of metaphors for a kind of ultimate reality" ( ) in stevens (others being the "rock," the "supreme fiction," and the "thing itself), that brief original instant "in which self and reality were one" ( ). for bloom, the snow man begins as a "regarder," as a "trope of ethos or of fate or of reduction to the first idea," but ends as "beholder," as a "trope of pathos or power, a revision or reimagining of the first idea" ( ). the roots of this paradoxical conjunction bloom finds in the notorious moment in emerson's nature when the speaker describes himself "[c]rossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight," and, caught up in "a perfect exhilaration. . . . [standing on the bare ground,—[his] head bathed in the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,— [feels] all mean egotism vanis[h] . . . [and himself] become a transparent eyeball." again, i follow bloom in finding the chill wind that blows in "the snow man" to be decidedly "new englandly" ( ), and agree that this "new englandly" element declares an important debt to emerson. but bloom does go too far, i think, in suggesting that stevens engages, even "very involuntarily" ( ), in emersonian rhapsody. observing that "emerson will go on to say that 'nature always wears the colors of the spirit,' so that for him the pathetic fallacy is no fallacy but ispotentia, or pathos as power, the will rampant," bloom implies that stevens' snow man shows signs of himself enjoying a perfectly emersonian "exhilaration." this triumphant finale to bloom's reading comes by way of a reference to nietzsche's culminating judgement at the end of the genealogy of morals that "man would sooner have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose." as i read it, however, "the snow man" shows stevens as neither "a very involuntary emersonian" nor a nietzschean on the question of "the will rampant." his imaginative power—which is considerable—lies not in a projection of self into "sublime emptiness" (bloom ), but rather an infinitely humble hearkening to a world full to the brim with life and meaning—however ultimately unaccessible. ultimately identified as the "listener, who listens in the snow," the snow man is singularly divested of "point of view"— that is, of the idiosyncratic perspective that attends acts of "regarding," of seeing . but this cold and snowy man in a cold and snowy world is obviously not divested of all perceptive power as he stands listening with great attention to the sound of the wind rattling the dry leaves and blowing through the branches of the pines and junipers. where bloom finds stevens' poem to turn on its early shift from "regard" to "behold," i find the meaning of "the snow man" to crystalize around its final movement into an almost purely aural realm. while we have the capacity to "regard" and "behold," the snow man can only listen but in doing so would seem to sense the very earth itself. it is, i think, because he is possessed only of the sound, and not the sight, of the winter world around him, and therefore does not project (or at least projects to a lesser degree), that the snow man is able to perceive something of the world around him: even if that something is nothing more than "the nothing that is." bloom emphasizes stevens' repetition of "behold" in "the snow man" as affirming a movement towards ecstatic (hoonian) possession of the world—and away from the guarded wariness of "regard." turning, like bloom, to the oed for support, i would suggest another possible reading of stevens' chosen verbs of vision in "the snow man." one of the listed definitions of regard is "to consider, look on, view as being something specified." while arguably suggestive ofpre-conception, this meaning of regard also suggests the existence of a meaningful sphere independent of the mind's creative eye. such a sense is clearly ascertainable in behold, a word whose modern usage tends decidedly towards the passive, being expressive of the act of "receiving] the impression of anything through the eyes." where bloom reads behold as denoting a nietzschean possession of the world by "the will rampant," i understand this privileged verb to valourize receptiveness, a hearkening to the world around one that as gary shapiro makes clear in his fascinating book on "seeing and saying" in foucault and nietzsche, nietzsche's engagement with tropes of vision was in fact very complex. shapiro describes at length, for example, nietzsche's critique of "the gaze." for nietzsche, the ideal moment of vision was that of the augenblick, the glance or the blink of an eye ( - ). corresponds to listening. to "regard / behold" the world as the snow man listens to it is to be acutely sensitive to—but less preconceiving of—what "late hymn from the myrrh-mountain" ( ) names as "the shadow of an external world" ( ). as i read it, then, "the snow man" suggests the possibility of being receptive to the "meaning of the earth"—in the full knowledge of its being "irreduciblfy] strang[e]" ( ), as harold tolliver describes steven's approach to reality in his study of the poet's treatment of the pastoral. at the heart of my reading of stevens' sense of the "meaning of earth" as distinct from nietzsche's sense of "der sinne der erde," then, is that the poet's conviction of "irreducible strangeness" is not identical to the philosopher's construction of "a blind, empty, structureless thereness . . . . a primal, undifferentiated ur-eine, a dionysiac depth." in concluding, i return to a famous moment in the early stevens that has been so often read as nietzschean: the scene of ecstatic revelry beneath an "old chaos of the sun" that forms the seventh canto of "sunday morning." one might, indeed, be hard-pressed to read this extraordinary scene—reproduced below—as anything other than a vision of nietzschean power triumphant: supple and turbulent, a ring of men shall chant in orgy on a summer morn their boisterous devotion to the sun not as a god, but as a god might be, naked among them, like a savage source. their chant shall be a chant of paradise, out of their blood, returning to the sky. certainly, for bloom, it is "the image of zarathustra's solar trajectory in nietzsche which dominates here" ( ). although he does not say so, bloom may well have precisely in mind the moment in thus spake zarathustra when its prophet-hero rejects the somnolent morality of the "old [law] table," encouraging his listeners to laughingly fashion anew their own rules to live by: thus did my wise longing, bom in the mountains, cry and laugh in me; a wild wisdom, verily!—my great pinion-rustling longing. and oft did it carry me off and up and away and in the midst of laughter; then flew i quivering like an arrow with sun-intoxicated rapture: —out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived,—where gods in their dancing are ashamed of all clothes. ( ) the parallels between the final lines of this passage from thus spake zarathustra and stanza vii of "sunday morning" are striking—sufficient to prompt speculation that stevens may have mis- remembered the date of his first reading of nietzsche's text. even so, there are notable differences, the most immediate to stanza vii being that whereas zarathustra finds himself carried "off and up and away" by his ecstasy, only the song of stevens' "turbulent" worshipers returns to the sky: the singers themselves remain emphatically earthbound and we are told that each will perish there like the dew. indeed, that stanza vii thus ends by drawing the mind's eye down from sky to earth prepares the reader for the "downward to darkness" gravitational pull of longenbach is a rare dissenter: "imagined in the world of , this is not so much hedonism as desperation" ( ). the poem's conclusion. furthermore, when zarathustra speaks of his "great pinion-rustling longing," he is figuring himself as an eagle—something he does repeatedly over the course of his narrative—who is, alongside a lion and a serpent, a beloved companion on his lonely road. notably, these creatures are all predators: figurations of animal power at its zenith. how different is "sunday morning" whose many creatures are the meeker ones of the earth: swallows and hinds, boys and maidens, quail and pigeons, even the chanting men, who, notwithstanding the supple turbulence of their limbs and boisterousness of their song, are destined vanish like the dew. although the "holy hush of ancient sacrifice" (i) has been thoroughly renounced, the "old chaos of the sun" in which we find ourselves at poem's end is a vision of the wild near to pastoral in its peace and temperate loveliness: deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail whistle about us their spontaneous cries: sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; and, in the isolation of the sky, at evening, casual flocks of pigeons make ambiguous undulations as they sink, downward to darkness, on extended wings. despite its pastoral tone, both leggett and bloom read this final tableau of "unsponsored" beast my point here is perhaps compromised somewhat by stevens' peculiar flexibility on the ordering and even content of "sunday morning" for its first publication by harriet munroe in poetry. and bird as nietzschean. for leggett, "sunday morning" ends with a celebration of "the essential qualities of becoming . . . beauty, spontaneity, ambiguity, transiency, isolation, and the final affirmation of death" ( ). gesturing to deeper theoretical affinities with nietzsche, bloom judges, there are no causes, only temporal effects, in this concluding topos, where the ripening is all and where the extended wings of the evening birds have ambiguous significances but no actual meanings. resemblances have receded here, because the tropes turn only from previous tropes. ( ) like thus spake zarathustra, "sunday morning," and specifically the opening verses of its eighth stanza, begin with a prophetic affirmation of the death of god: "the tomb in palestine / is not the porch of spirits lingering. / it is the grave of jesus, where he lay." yet, stevens' concluding image of timid pigeons finding the shelter of their roosts as twilight deepens is worlds away from one of zarathustra's final promethean exultations as a new day dawns: "mine eagle is awake and like me honoureth the sun. with eagle-talons doth it grasp at the new light" ( ). there is little of nietzschean affirmation in stevens' culminating vision of the beauty enabled by death—a vision of beauty whose evident "trajectory" is not upward in ecstasy, but downward in elegy. inscribed in the measured cadences of "sunday morning," therefore, but especially in the pervasive gentleness of all its figurations—including those of "mother" death herself—is a spirit which might be read as cottfra-nietzsche. indeed, in stevens' image of pigeons sinking "downward to darkness, on extended wings," one might well read submission to that which zarathustra reviles as the "spirit of gravity, and all that it created: constraint, law, necessity and consequence and purpose" ( ). indeed, i propose that the concluding stanza to "sunday morning" may in its entirety assert the constraint, law, necessity, and consequence of this "grave" spirit. while the "spontaneous" calls of the quail might seem to herald a nietzschean freedom from "actual meaning," as bloom suggests, these and the "sweet berries ripening in the wilderness" arguably convey a message most "actual" and most constraining: that the present sweet beauties of the earth will soon and necessarily "give [up] their bounty" to mother death. leggett's nietzschean interpretation of "sunday morning" as being "about the two most fundamental ways of conceiving of human life, the opposition of being and becoming"( ), undoubtably enriches our understanding of the poem. however, his privileging of the term "becoming," with its associations of the ecstatically dionysian, imposes a tonal shift on "sunday morning" that is radically distorting. while i dissent from helen vendler's acerbic dismissal of the "exquisite cadences" of the poem as "corpse-like, existing around the woman's desires in a waxy perfection of resignation" ( ), i concur with her description of it as one of stevens' "fugal requiems." it is, i believe, worth emphasizing the obvious fact that "sunday morning" is set on the sabbath and, furthermore, that stevens likely kept at least a residue of reverence for that once holy day. that he may even have hungered after this lost holiness is suggested by a journal entry made some nine years before he composed "sunday morning": "i wish that groves still were sacred—or, at least, that something was: that there was still something free from doubt, that day unto day still uttered speech, and night unto night still showed wisdom. i grow tired of the want of faith—the instinct of faith" (l , italics retained). while "sunday morning" looks forward to note vendler's comparison with keats. the possibility of a new dispensation of earth-bound belief with certain joy—as its nietzschean figuration of "boisterous devotion to the sun" reveals—it also looks back in wistful farewell to the majestic certainties of christianity in which "day unto day utter[ed] speech and night unto night reveal[ed] knowledge" (psalm ). indeed, something of precisely these liturgical cadences may remain in the gathering twilight that concludes "sunday morning." four years after "sunday morning," stevens would compose "ploughing on sunday," whose "exuberant violation of piety" (leggett )—in its depiction of labouring on the sabbath but especially in what may be a cheeky riff on the te deum in its self-delighting caroling of "tum-ti-tum, ti-tum-tum-tum!"—nietzsche would doubtless have approved. "sunday morning," however, seems less interested in disrupting pieties than in marking the hesitant beginning—so hesitant that it ends not with a new dawn, as does thus spake zarathustra, but at dusk—of stevens' difficult search for "satisfactions of belief." for him these satisfactions would be found not in the ubermensch's transcendence of the ostensible object of devotion, the earth, but rather in his perpetual search of "a possible for its possibleness"—for the ever-elusive "essential poem at the center of things . . . [t]he light of [which] is not a light apart, up-hill" ("primitive like an orb," i, vi). the eloquent calibrations of this late poem contrast to the hyperbolic reversals of "the comedian as the letter c," and yet the earlier poem—which is the subject of my next, and final, chapter—arguably shows a similar commitment to humbly earthbound efforts at will-full illumination. chapter v: thus spake good clown crispin (and his four chits) . . . what can all this matter since the relation comes, benignly, to its end? so may the relation of each man be clipped. ("the comedian as the letter c") in each chapter so far, i have treated poems of stevens that, with only a few exceptions, have been the subject of powerful nietzschean readings, that is, readings that illuminate stevens' poems by explicit and sustained recourse to nietzsche's thought, above all to his perspectivism. in keeping with nietzsche's own critique of causality, the critics i have considered take pains to eschew the concept of influence, and stevens' literary practice, in any event, tends to make any case for influence tenuous. instead, these critics have made recourse to the concepts of affinity (in which stevens' and nietzsche's texts are held to be mutually illuminating due to significant commonalities) and intertext (in which a text by stevens is completed by the active engagement of a reader drawing upon a text, or texts, by nietzsche), a mode of interpretation that b. j. leggett evokes with the suggestive title of his opening chapter, "nietzsche reading stevens." as leggett observes, drawing on nietzsche's texts to provide an intertext has forceful and destabilizing implications: the literary intertext, that is, brings with it its own body of commentary, a complication that in many cases—most, perhaps—has only minor consequences for practical criticism. yet in the case of writings such as those of nietzsche that have attracted what see leggett, esp - , drawing upon roland barthes and michael riffaterre. bloom (following nietzsche's genealogical practice) would call "strong" interpretations, the consequences may be considerable. this is not because nietzsche's commentators like danto, nehamas, and deleuze have produced a "knowledge" that is applicable to stevens but because their strong interpretations provide perspectives that open stevens' nietzschean texts to new readings. an intertext, like any text, does not simply present itself as material to be interpreted. it is, in the idiom of post-structuralism, always already interpreted, and the "meaning" of a text that incorporates a nietzschean intertext could presumably shift for any reader who encountered new nietzschean commentaries. ( ) certainly, as i indicate in preceding chapters, there are new, relatively "strong" readings of nietzsche - from feminist and ecological points of view, for instance - that are making possible the shifts of meaning that leggett anticipated. yet leggett's formulation of the scenarios by which meaning can shift in the stevens' texts that incorporate a nietzschean intertext posits an unnecessary - and presumably unjustifiable - passivity on the part of stevens' texts: they await the fulfillment of "stronger" readings of nietzsche. my approach in this chapter is somewhat different, for there appears to be no explicitly nietzschean reading of "the comedian as the letter c": leggett does not even mention the poem, and bloom finds no more nietzschean intertext in it than what is required to read it as stevens' shameful, tail-between-his-legs declaration of his failure to be the strong nietzschean artist that america needs. the only substantial reading of "the comedian as the letter c" with any affinity to the nietzschean readings of stevens' early work that i have surveyed above is offered by michael beehler in his t.s. eliot, wallace stevens, and the discourses of difference ( ). here, in a brief but compelling analysis, beehler finds "the comedian as the letter c" to affirm a deconstructive understanding of poetry as polyphonic echoes without source, signifiers with none transcendent, "a world of words to the end of it"—"description without place." i allude to stevens' convocation poem from the summer of —discussed at some length in my first chapter—because it is in fact beehler's earlier reading of "description without place," in an essay from , that makes clearer the nietzschean dimensions of his reading of "the comedian as the letter c." observing a pervasive tendency to read stevens' poetry as "descriptive" - that is, as presupposing "an ideal presence which is both the generating origin and ultimate foundation of poetry; a non-metaphoric, asymptotical, and external referent" ( ) - beehler anticipates both miller and riddel in arguing that "description without place" demonstrates stevens' commitment to "overturning] the notion of poetry as a description and language as representation" ( ). for beehler, then, as for later nietzschean readers of stevens, that poem's arresting vignette of nietzsche's "gildering" revery finds the poet insisting, unambiguously, that "it is repeated interpretation, the 'perpetual' placing of empty names into new relationships with each other, that provides these names with the fiction of hidden depth, in the same way that the revolution of colored discs creates the illusion of presence of whole, white light" ( ). such a vision directly underlies beehler's reading of "the comedian as the letter c" as a nietzschean paean to "the essential heterogeneity of truths and on their strictly local, differential significance" ( ). according to beehler, stevens' first long poem "provides the wading reader no place to stand that is not at once the trope of a bottom and a distorting interference" ( ). for beehler, "the comedian as the letter c" sails out upon "the sea of trope" ( ), and though its hero crispin makes landfall several times, neither he - nor his readers - ever find "a core of profound meaning, [nor] place to stand" ( ) - however earnestly they might seek these things. implied throughout beehler's reading of the poem is the conviction that crispin's experience (and ours, as well, as readers) prefigures stevens' thesis in the final canto of "description without place" that "it is a world of words to the end of it, / in which nothing solid is its solid self (vii, - ). as beehler puts it in his reading of the earlier poem, "[s]ince it is always 'without place,' description is not a revelation of anything beyond itself. it is only an internally-reflective system of vacant names, an 'artificial thing' with no referent beyond the structure of its own seemings.... [i]t is atautologous circle" ( ). as beehler reads it, crispin's search for a new land in which his imagination might dwell finds not solid earth, but merely another "poetic bottom" which, like all such bottoms, "echo[es] the polyphonic difference that washes over and dissolves their literal identity" ( ). yet there is more to this nietzschean intertext than has met the eye so far, for beehler's reading implicitly positions stevens as affirming nietzschean perspectivism as an accurate description of the human condition. that is, as beehler presents "the comedian as the letter c," it functions as a revelation of something beyond itself: the human condition. it is a description with place in human experience; its language has a referent: our experience in signs. as such, beehler's reading indirectly serves to highlight another nietzschean intertext within stevens' poem. as leggett points out, nehamas' reading of nietzsche suggests that nietzsche himself worked out a strategy to deal with the apparent contradiction of affirming as trath that there can be no affirmation of trath. with this problem in mind, leggett asks, "is there a style appropriate to perspectivism?" ( ). he points out that "nehamas has argued convincingly that in nietzsche's writings the doctrine does indeed carry stylistic implications, although it dictates not one exclusive style but a plurality of styles" ( ). according to nehamas, "nietzsche's effort to create an artwork out of himself, a literary character who is a philosopher, is . . . his effort to offer a positive view without falling back into the dogmatic tradition he so distrusted and from which he may never have been sure he escaped" (nehamas ; leggett ). as leggett explains, "nietzsche's problem, in short, is that he wishes to argue for a position without suggesting at the same time that this position is 'true,' a statement about the nature of reality" ( ). and so, according to leggett and nehamas, "the effect of his many styles is to deny the possibility of a 'single, neutral language' in which views of the world could be presented, and his constant presence as an author through his extravagant style demonstrates that 'theories are as various and idiosyncratic as the writings in which they are embedded'" (leggett , nehamas ). one can observe, then, that beehler's reading indirectly spies out the same strategy at work in "the comedian as the letter c": "stevens writes crispin's romantic quest for poetry's insoluble ding an sich only to parasitize it, only, that is, to interrupt it and deploy it as a problem" ( ). recalling stevens' oft-cited description of the poem as "anti-mythological" (l, ), beehler finds "the comedian as the letter c" to constitute "a parasitic erosion of the myth of poetry's profundity and of the essence of univocal meaning that lies within the depths of its words" ( ). enacting this "parasitic erosion," stevens creates an artwork out of himself (vendler and bloom certainly read the poetry as autobiography), doing so by creating two personae - one, a philosopher, the other an anonymous narrator - neither of whom is identical with stevens. one effect of the dramatic interplay between the points of view of crispin and the narrator is to affirm the nietzschean perspectivism that beehler's reading - as enhanced by the work of leggett and nehamas - documents. another effect is to remind readers of "the comedian as the letter c" that what they leam therein is not the truth, but points of view. the reading of nietzsche by nehamas and the reading of stevens by leggett combine to allow us to read beehler as revealing a nietzschean intertext according to which stevens' extravagant style in "c" is a nehamasian / nietzschean creation. projecting himself both as a literary character who is a philosopher and as a literary character who is a narrator, stevens performs an implicitly parodic exercise the purpose of which is to offer the positive statement that there are no facts, only interpretations - yet without doing so dogmatically. so it is apparently reference without referent in every way: the poem affirms that language can have no referent, and the extravagance of the voices that stevens invents acknowledges that the poem's nietzschean, poststructural affirmations cannot be located in a stable, sincere identity, for there is no affirmation without perspective (i use the word "without" advisedly). such might be our conclusion on the basis of an analysis of the poem's logic. yet, like any poem, this poem contains more than logic. that is, it contains emotions and feelings—not only those of the philosopher crispin whose voyage is narrated, but also those of the narrator so vitally engaged in the story of crispin. whatever he thinks of crispin's story, the narrator is also undeniably affected by it - and affected sincerely by it, it would seem. in the poem's whirl of references without referents that beehler so helpfully documents, it is nonetheless possible to identify a relatively stable core of feeling. for all of crispin's faults, limitations, and weaknesses, the narrator likes crispin; he likes crispin's domestic world of vulgar, common, feminine things; he likes crispin's decision to accept that there is a reality without description - without, that is, in the sense of "outside o f or "beyond" description. although this meaning of without is now generally regarded as relatively archaic, it is hardly beyond our ken, and it was certainly not beyond the ken of stevens. as i argued in chapter i, when the meaning of without as "outside o f and "beyond" is allowed to inflect a reading of "description without place," certain aspects of that poem appear to affirm referentiality. understanding the phrase "description without place" to indicate an understanding of "description" as being beyond and outside of, and thereby proximate to, place, for instance, makes sense of the poem's claim that description should be "a little different from reality" (v ). such phrases affirm a belief in "the referent" - if only as a residue, trace, or kind of ancestral memory. such a valuation of the experience of place - the emotional, physical, affective experience of place - even as we are always already outside it and beyond it - is, i think, fundamental to the movement and shape of crispin's comic quest. in short, "the comedian as the letter c" complicates a most sophisticated nietzschean intertext of thought about the human condition with an equally sophisticated stevensian text of feeling about the human condition. while it is true, as beehler observes, that the poem repeatedly discards "a cognitive core" ( ) - if this is how we understand the various, succeeding material places in which crispin's imagination might have taken root, if given time, and upon which the reader might have grounded the poem's persistent "turns of trope" ( ) - it does not necessarily follow from this that the poem abjures altogether an interest in - let alone the possibility of- "a cognitive core." while the poem is clearly designed, from one point of view, to keep its readers from gaining the single, coherent perspective of a transcendental signifier's high ground, from another point of view stevens' bumptious tale about a burgher from bordeaux who comes west across the stormy atlantic in search of a new world in which his imagination might dwell is just as clearly determined to pose emotional, felt sincerity as supplement to a world in which it is impossible to conceive of a word's sincerely representing its referent. the poem's ultimately quite generous treatment of crispin's quest attributes to place a degree of significance beyond that of a mere fictional construct. and so, in "the comedian as the letter c," stevens arguably supplements the nietzschean intertexts feelingly. stevens does not necessarily thereby assert that emotion, feeling, affect is without - outside (hors de) - signs (this aspect of the poem cannot necessarily be read as a suggestion by stevens that emotions and feelings presuppose a subject as transcendental signifier), but he clearly shows that the narrator's feelings contradict what are otherwise the poem's affirmations of the nietzschean intertexts described above. the narrator supports, perhaps even endorses, crispin's poststructurally reactionary abdication of his nietzschean responsibilities. stevens clearly implies, that is, that at least for his narrator there is more to the human condition than is dreamt of in nietzschean intertexts. capstone or imaginative failure? robert buttel suggests that stevens composed "the comedian as the letter c" "as the final flourish for [harmonium], as a long virtuoso piece" ( ). similarly james longenbach regards the poem as the "capstone" ( ) to stevens' first collection of poems, for which he very nearly chose the alternate title, the grand poem: preliminary minutiae. such claims might seem to run up against crispin's apparently limited capacities as both colonist and poet. but as daniel fuchs observes, stevens "makes clear at the outset that he is a small, sometimes playful, kind of organ voice. whatever his stateliness, whatever his gaiety, it all stems from the modem attempt at making a modest appraisal of human life" ( - ). and of course, for stevens, modesty had its own greatness. who better to "cap" such a collection of grandly humble minutiae than crispin, in whom both a certain appropriately comic grandeur and decided modesty coexist? for two of stevens' most venerable critics, however, the answer seems to have been not the 'aspiring clown,' one-time burgher of bordeaux. that crispin's aspiration takes him straight into domesticity—a wife and children and "cream for the fig and silver for the cream"—and seemingly straight out of poetry, is a trajectory mourned by both vendler and bloom. vendler regards "the comedian" as "a tale of false attempts and real regrets, which presumes intellectually on its felt satisfactions, asserting an ironic benignity it cannot render without revulsion, refusing to acknowledge an asceticism it cannot hide" ( ). bloom, by contrast, reads not error, but exhaustion in crispin's fate. that the search by stevens' comic hero for a new continent in which his imagination might dwell should ultimately find him in a "nice shady cabin" surrounded by his curly-headed "chits" confirms, for bloom, crispin's (that is, stevens') inability to "expand in force and freedom. . . .[sufficient] . . . to represent the transcendental selfhood not present in his european origins and awaiting him in america" ( ). for both vendler and bloom, crispin's vaunted ambition, expressed in canto iv, to "drive away / the while bloom suggests that "the comedian as the letter c" can be read as "either the crown or the exasperation of harmonium" ( ), he evidently conceives it as the latter. shadow of his fellows from the skies, / and, from their stale intelligence released, / to make a new intelligence prevail," comes to naught, and is a failure which presages steven's own much remarked upon entry into almost complete poetic silence until . for vendler, stevens' descriptions of crispin, an innocent abroad, first among the lusty "beak and bud and fruity gobbet-skins" of the yucatan and then in the midst of the "rumbling bottomness" of conjugal bliss and the consequent "din and gobble" of children, betray "the fastidious shudder of the involuntary ascetic" ( ). describing what she believes to be her poet's proper path, she writes, "stevens repudiates fertility in favor of discreet fineness; his gift above all others was to see, both comically and tragically, that 'fluttering things have so distinct a shade'" ( ). further on, she observes (rightly, i believe) how "stevens' best verse trembles always at halfway points, at the point of metamorphosis, when day is becoming darkness, when winter is becoming spring, when the rock is becoming the ivy, when a shadowy myth takes form before dissolving, when the revolving mundo hesitates in a pause" ( ). seeking to explain why stevens would "pursue the ignis fatuus of luxuriance" in "the comedian," when his "true instincts were for [the earth's] austerities and . . . dilapidations" ( ), vendler suggests the poem as part of a pervasive pattern in which "stevens' resolute attempts to make himself into a ribald poet of boisterous devotion to the gaudy, the gusty, and the burly are a direct consequence of a depressing irony with respect to the self he was bom with and an equally depressing delusion about the extent to which the self can be changed" ( ). as "an exercise in stressed physicality and stressed tropicality," "the comedian" is, according to vendler, one of the many poems in harmonium that contribute to the collection's intermittent air of "a strained dionysian tripudium" ( ). alongside "life is motion" and "ploughing on sunday" which vendler names as "classic instances" of stevens' laboured turns to a more corporeal idiom, one might place such poems as "decorations for bananas" and "the jack-rabbit." but these, and the handful of other such moments of "stressed physicality" which crop up in harmonium, hardly amount to a sustained straining towards a poetics of ribald ecstasy. no doubt a certain ambivalence towards his rather staid bourgeois self did contribute to early attempts by stevens to profess an inner whitman—as when he chose to rearrange "sunday morning" for its first printing such that the poem ended with its "supple and turbulent. . . ring of men" chanting their "boisterous" solar devotions. but stevens' restoration of the poem's original order for its inclusion in harmonium goes some way in confirming that a more mature stevens had come to accept that his poetic self was not at ease sounding a "barbaric yawp." my suggestion that stevens would have thus "worked through" his poetic insecurities about not being a luxuriant "kosmos," after the manner of whitman, would no doubt strike bloom as both woefully naive and entirely ignorant of the psyche of "strong poets." as he puts it in anxiety of influence, "to equate emotional maturation with the discovery of acceptable substitutes [to sublimate desire] may be pragmatic wisdom . . . but this is not the wisdom of the strong poets. the surrendered dream is not merely a phantasmagoria of endless gratification, but is the greatest of all human illusions, the vision of immortality" ( ). where vendler identifies stevens' "excessively interior" vision of the world, a product of a visceral repulsion away from "the provocations of the senses" ( ), as personal to the poet, bloom locates stevens' "world overinternalized" within "a broad movement of post-enlightenment consciousness" ( ). thus he speaks of stevens' "long and largely hidden civil war with the major poets of english and american romanticism—wordsworth, keats, shelley, emerson, and whitman" (ibid ). for bloom, "the comedian as the letter c" is a poem about stevens' desire to write "poems of his climate," as an american romantic. the poet is thwarted in his determination to "drive away the shadow of his fellows from the skies," however, because he is imaginatively exhausted by his "anxious" battle with his strong poet forebears. to confront the "heightened reality" of the american climate stevens needed "a visionary capacity for response" ( , ). for bloom, stevens had shown such capacity in a poem like "tea at the palaz of hoon," and would have to do so again in "the idea of order at key west," but not until he triumphed over the malady of belatedness. for vendler, "the comedian as the letter c" is "veiled autobiography, the semi-ironic confessional" ( ). concurring, but in a typically more florid idiom, bloom argues that stevens understood crispin's journey as the "odyssey of his own soul," and that in his self-identification with a descendant of the foolish braggart who sought (and failed to win) horace's poetic crown, stevens "courtfed], quite deliberately, a poetic suicide" ( - ). for both bloom and vendler, then, the abounding parody in this "capstone" to harmonium was largely self-directed. both critics use the term "bitter" to describe a poem that others have read in a gentler light, certainly with a sense of greater pleasure. but one need not follow vendler and bloom in recoiling from crispin's "return to social nature." indeed, a determination to accept crispin's endpoint in "a nice shady cabin" (canto v) amid "daughter with curls" (canto vi) on its own terms—which means acknowledging the edward guereschi's early reading of the poem ( ) suggests its satire to be directed "against the venerated myth of the american adam" ( ): "mockingly described as the 'socrates of snails,' he ludicrously confronts the unknown terrors once assigned to the promethean heroes of moby dick and leather stocking" ( ). moments of praise (and these are present) alongside those of parody—allows readings that are fundamentally more faithful to the poem's "cloudy drift." nowhere is this more evidently the case than in the conclusion to canto v in which the narrator, after conceding that "the quotidian saps philosophers / and men like crispin like them in intent, / if not in will, to track the knaves of thought," goes on to insist, "but the quotidian composed as his [crispin's]"—that is, a quotidian composed of the happy pleasures of his breakfast table, his garden, and his marriage bed— the quotidian like this, saps like the sun, true fortuner. for all it takes it gives a humped return exchequering from piebald fiscs unkeyed. both syntax and images here entangle and confuse and have not surprisingly produced an extraordinary range of readings while riddel discerns a bawdy pun at work in "humped return," and may well be right, the more immediate vehicle is surely a heap of coins which has grown from the patchwork thrift of pennies and dimes held in a fisc (in north american idiom, the state treasury), to the resplendent golden holdings of an exchequer. whatever we are able to make of such a baroque image, its basic message is clear: crispin's quotidian, "like the sun" to the earth, gives light and life to his world. given the centrality of the sun in stevens' imaginative pantheon, it is difficult to conceive this as an image suggestive of bitterness, just as it is difficult see, for example, comins, - , and murphy, . here, then, "piebald" may be punning against "exchequer," a term which derives from the checked cloth formerly used on counting tables in the english royal treasury. generally to accept judgements on "the comedian as the letter c" as a fundamentally "bitter" text. not only does such an epithet ignore the poem's title outright, but it denies the poem's evident, often giddily bumptious, delight in parody. that "the comedian as the letter c" is, at least intermittently, a parodic tour deforce is widely acknowledged, with its most commonly suggested targets being central texts in american and british romanticism. though he finds only anxiety, and no delight, in such a relation, bloom identifies whitman's "out of the cradle endlessly rocking" and "as i ebb'd with the ocean of life" as important precursor texts for stevens' poem. he also follows vendler in identifying as critical in the poem's genealogy shelley's "alastor, or, the spirit of solitude," whose poet hero "can tolerate neither nature nor other selves and who voyages until he dies, a victim of his own visionary intensity" ( ). that shelley's poem should have been elected as the likely chief progenitor of "the comedian" is not unreasonable, as there are certain structural parallels between the two texts. crispin, like shelley's hero, leaves hearth and home, "to seek strange truths in undiscovered lands," and he, too, gets bashed about as the "the multitudinous streams / of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war / rus[h] in dark tumult thundering." and stevens' hero, like alastor, finds himself upriver at one point. and the gaiety and over-the-top eroticism which intermittently bursts forth from "the comedian" might be read as burlesquing the melancholy morbidity that flows through "alastor." perhaps this idea informs longenbach's own support for the notion that stevens' poem may be read as an ironic riposte to shelley's text. am thinking here of cook's reading of this trope as an undoing of milton's "many a man and many a maid / dancing in the chequer'd shade," where "humped" and "piebald" function as "grim revisions of 'dancing' and 'chequer'd shade'" ( ). for longenbach, as for other readers, "alastor" functions more as a representative, than an actual, source for crispin's journey. in longebach's assessment, "alastor" belongs to a tradition of apocalyptic narratives which stevens was, in the wake of the first world war, determined to reject as solipsistic and self-aggrandizing. as longenbach reads it, stevens was determined that his post-war poem would eschew the neurotic and not present an "apocalypse of the self, a new world revealed by a new vision," and thus he has his crispin ultimately "sai[l] into an extraordinary mildness, to a place where continuities are affirmed," and commends his "self- conscious rejection of all manner of apocalyptic rhetoric" ( ). longenbach is right to insist upon stevens' refusal of the apocalyptic mode, upon the poet's requirement for "plain sense." such a modest, elliptical, and muted demeanour expresses itself again and again in stevens' poetry, a rhetorical stance well suited to "searc[h] a possible for its possibleness" in "an ordinary evening in new haven" ( ), to "speak humanly from the height or from the depth of human things" in "chocorua to its neighbor" ( ), to "share the confusions of intelligence" and "increase the aspects of experience," in "reply to papini"( ). as one who would declare, "amen to the feelings about familiar things," in "montrachet-le- jardin" ( ), stevens was evidently temperamentally at home in burgherly moderation. i concur absolutely then with longenbach's contention that "crispin's self-conscious rejection of all manner of apocalyptic rhetoric is no sign of stevens' failure of imagination" ( ). in his interpretation of "the comedian" as an allegory of the poetic imagination's passage from romanticism to realism, which stevens famously praised as being "correct, not only see, however, longenbach's insight into stevens' harvard sonnets as telling the story of "alastor" "in miniature" ( ). in the main but in particular, and not only correct but keen" (l ), hi simons judged crispin to end an "indulgent fatalist" and sceptic ( ). there have been strenuous demurrals from this judgement, but crispin's final equanimity amid chits and figs, quilts and cream, and his avowed disinclination to make much of anything else besides, supports simons' reading. my contention is that stevens meant to affirm crispin as a figure of equable moderation. vendler observes in words chosen out of desire ( ), that stevens' poems give frequent voice to "wintry feelings of apathy, reduction, nakedness, and doubt" ( ). although not itself a poem of winter, "the comedian" attests to the fact that summer's lease is short. by the end of his journey, crispin knows that the "meaning of the earth" requires his incremental diminishment and ultimate dissolution in dark cold. at the beginning of his tale, and some considerable distance through it, however, crispin moves westward chasing the sun, a comical ubermensch-in-training, as it were, desperately willing to take on something of its warmth and light and regenerative power. the soil and man's intelligence. though composed of six cantos of approximately equivalent length, "the comedian as the letter c" can be understood as a poem of two halves, each half beginning on a "note" of seemingly unequivocal affirmation. introducing the first three cantos of the poem, and arguably governing their progress, is the pithy observation, "nota: man is the intelligence of his soil" ( ). in a seeming reversal of the poem's opening statement, however, the first line of the fourth canto see, for example, bloom and cervo. will then declare, "nota: his soil is man's intelligence"—a judgment which i read as guiding the events and sentiment of the last three cantos of the poem. while of course making no claims for direct correspondence between "the comedian as the letter c" and nietzsche's thus spake zarathustra, it is, i think, worth pointing out their shared obsession with meditating on "the meaning of the earth" as a locus for aesthetic and philosophical power. it is with such common ground in mind that i understand the first three cantos of the poem to show the narrator comically relating the tribulations that his anti-hero crispin endures as he tries—and fails—to be "the intelligence of his soil"—as if this "socrates / of snails" (i, - ) had himself once read zarathustra urging his disciples to "be the meaning of the earth" (i, xxii, ) and thereby achieve the rank of ubermensch. there are, in fact, a number of intriguing, if ultimately coincidental, parallels between the two texts. for example, the heroes of both texts have roots in antiquity: crispin in the third century st. crispin, patron saint of shoe-makers, and zarathustra in the ancient iranian prophet, zoroaster. and neither hero inhabits his antique time: crispin embarks on a seventeenth-century voyage, and zarathustra's world, although intermittently suggestive of the medieval, seems for the most part located quite firmly in the modem period. more significant, as we shall see, is the fact that in "the comedian as the letter c," no less than in thus spake zarathustra, earth and sea, sun and moon, thunder and lightning play critical—and critically similar—roles in the story unfolding. so zarathustra says, "verily, like the sun i do love life, and all deep seas. and this meanth to me knowledge" (ii, xxxvii). the natural imagery in thus spake zarathustra is cast explicitly as an epistemological allegory. in "the comedian," too, the same natural polarities—earth and sea, sun and moon—and couplings—thunder and lightning—are crucial points not just of an unfolding story but of philosophical reflection. indeed, perhaps the most significant parallel is the fact that crispin is inspired by his voyaging to "the idea of a colony," while zarathustra dreams rapturously of "a living plantation for my thoughts," as he puts it in book iii of his tale. in the context of planning to make their "new intelligence[s] prevail," both crispin and zarathustra spend a good deal of time debunking received wisdom. both "the comedian" and thus spake zarathustra, then, are philosophical-poetical allegories in which each respective protagonist's progressive spiritual journey celebrates his movement away from an outmoded philosophical position: the itinerant zarathustra preaches especially against kantian idealism, while crispin crosses the atlantic to get away from high romanticism. but nietzsche's and stevens' respective heroes come to radically different ends. apparently marking no end for zarathustra himself who will continue wandering in search of his "proper men" (iv, lxxx), his narrative thus far concludes with his proclaiming, do i then strive after happiness? i strive after my work). well! the lion hath come, my children are night, zarathustra hath grown ripe, mine hour hath come:— this is my morning, my day beginneth: arise now, arise, thou great noontidel— (iv, lxxx italics retained) upon these words, zarathustra rises and "le[aves] his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning of course, nietzsche's purpose in thus spake zarathustra went far beyond an assault on kant. according to stanley rosen, for example, "whereas plato as it were establishes western european history on the basis of philosophy by writing the republic, nietzsche publishes zarathustra in order to destroy a western eurpoe that has been enervated by a deteriorated, historically exhausted christianity, or platonism for the masses" (xiv). sun coming out of the gloomy mountains." measured against the romantic sublimity of nietzsche's hero, who seems, perhaps, on the verge of willing his own self-surpassing into an ubermensch, but who is, in any case, still "launching the arrow of his longing beyond man," the happy crispin—"[effective colonizer sharply stopped / in the door-yard by his own capacious bloom" (vi, - ) (a "bloom" achieved only at the cost of his own withering)—seems a perfect figure for zarathustra's much disparaged "last man." it is with such a contrast in mind, that my reading of the last three cantos of "the comedian as the letter c" finds stevens' narrator clearing (and laying) the ground for his own vision of heroic human will, a heroism which begins and ends with a heartfelt deference to human weakness and limits. that such an insistence on the recognition of limits will be one of the themes of "the comedian"—even as the poem itself so clearly revels in exceeding the limits of language—is clear the moment we leave behind the all-encompassing sweep of its opening nota bene: "man is the intelligence of his soil." in comically reductive fashion, the narrator then sketches this "sovereign" logos as a petty fiefdom of bureaucratic pedantry: "as such, the socrates / of snails, musician of pears, principium / and lex." the narrator then muses, "sed quaeritur: is this same wig / of things, this nincompated pedagogue, / preceptor to the sea?" in the first version of the poem, "the journal of crispin," which stevens composed in some haste for submission to a poetry contest in december of , the narrator asks if the pedagogue of earth might not also be "the sceptre of the unregenerate sea." as eleanor cook notes, "unregenerate sea" is here a most pointed phrase, suggesting that this ocean waste has defied the apocalyptic prophesy of revelations . which states that following the establishment of god's kingdom on earth, there shall be no more sea. in both poems, the answer to the narrator's query regarding the capacity of this earthy "socrates" to encompass the sea is a decided negative. the first thing we are told of our representative pedagogue, crispin, whom we meet in medias res on voyage from bordeaux to yucatan, is that he "at sea / created, in his day, a touch of doubt." his credentials as an evaluator and creator clearly being limited to his mastery of such domestic minutiae as "gelatines and jupes," crispin with his "barber's eye" seems a most unlikely candidate to become an ubermensch, whether at sea or on land. as morse notes, he "can see the ocean only in the lingo of his trade. as a farmer [of salad beds and apricots] he is wholly unprepared to explain porpoises" ( - ), and so he finds the ocean waves to be "mustachios, / inscrutable hair in an inscrutable world." the humble crispin finds the material substance of both sea and earth no more knowable than the idea of heaven. and so it is that by the end of the second stanza of canto i we know crispin at sea to be utterly at sea, a bit of flotsam on the rolling waves. this "nincompated pedagogue" has nothing to teach the sea, no meaning to give its waves. rather, the ocean has stripped stevens' neophyte sailor bare of his meaning—his "mythology of self—in the face of such sublimity. closing his description of what is presumably crispin's first encounter with open ocean, the narrator then asks, "what word split up in dickering syllables / and storming under as a symbol of unrest and perpetual destruction, the sea has no place in the eternal peace of god's kingdom on earth: "and i saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea." whereas zarathustra, as the one who announces the death of god to the world, brings about a veritable avalanche of anxiety. nietzsche's word for "unknowable" is unerforschlichen, which hollingdale translates as "inscrutable." multitudinous tones / was name for short-shanks in all that brant?"(i, - ). drawing on his conviction that whitman's "out of the cradle endlessly rocking" exerts its inexorable force on "the comedian," bloom judges this word to be the american bard's "sweet, low delicious word, death." but this reading seems unlikely given that the term being sought is that which might name the short-shanked crispin. furthermore, the monosyllable "death" hardly fulfils the criteria given: no amount of tumultuous wave action is going to break it apart into "dickering syllables." (and indeed, such an immunity to fragmentation or dissolution is surely essential to whitman's own imaginative investment in the word.) in one of the few other attempts to read stevens' riddling here, cook points out that "clicker" itself is a term for both a foreman shoemaker and compositor, and suggests further that "shank" is a term likewise common to both shoemaking and printing. as the letter c made small, made "short-shanked" by the storm, the name for crispin "in all that brunt" is "minuscule" ( ). cook's reading is attractive, save that it is difficult to relate "minuscule" to "multitudinous storming" as the poem requires. is it possible that the word for that which roils and storms around poor crispin—waiting to christen our poor comic hero—might, indeed, be ubermensch? whatever it may be, the word that "storms under multitudinous tones," so much at odds with the meagre "short shanks" of common man, is surely a word of inflated language, a word that expresses a grandiose claim the narrator wishes to debunk. if so, the bandy-legged crispin hardly seems at this moment to measure up to any such exulted denomination, feeling instead "washed away by magnitude." indeed, the only sound remaining in him is the sound of the sea (and "c") itself. while whitman's ghost may well haunt this closing scene, the ocean sound longenbach, too, supports this view. which envelops crispin at this juncture is, luckily, not "death," but the "ubiquitous concussion, slap and sigh"(i, ) of actual waves, against the sides of an actual wooden ship. moving on, one of the many other riddles of the poem is why the narrator, having presented crispin's radical loss of self-hood when faced with the overwhelming might of the sea, then musingly reflects on whether this "skinny sailor" might be the one to teach economy and austerity to "a wordy, watery age / that whispered to the sun's compassion, [and] made / a convocation, nightly, of the sea-stars"(i, - ), and where one could still glimpse on the horizon, triton incomplicate with that which made him triton, nothing left of him, except in faint, memorial gesturings, that were like arms and shoulders in the waves. ( - ) as eduard guereschi once observed, the triton reference here may owe to wordsworth's "the world is too much with us" which ends with the speaker wishing once more to "hear old triton blow his wreathed horn." such a reading makes good sense of the "hallucinating horn" ( ) which makes its appearance in lines following. but what to make of that strange word, "incomplicate"? cook recurs to the now rare sense of this word—that is, simple—and from this derives the sense that triton is here being "unfolded from previous enfoldings, from all thoseplis that have come together to make [his] legend" ( ). but this explication, which emphasizes triton's existence as a function of narrative, accounts less well for the poem's emphasis on the body of the god still dimly seen drifting out in the waves and gesturing faintly. although stevens was no doubt aware of the proper meaning of "incomplicate," its rhyming echo with the first word used to describe crispin as the representative man, "nincompated" ( , ), suggests another possible layer of meaning. that is, extrapolating from cooks' own intuition that "nincompated" may be a portmanteau word combining "nincompoop" with "addle-pated," i read "incomplicate" as non- pated, and old triton, therefore, as having lost not his hom but his head somewhere in the waves, leaving nothing for crispin to see but arms and shoulders forlornly gesturing. while bloom may be correct that stevens' tableau here owes something to an image in "out of the cradle endlessly rocking" of "white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing," stevens' presentation of "arms and shoulders" suggests, as whitman's image does not, one of the many headless statues from antiquity. of course, stevens' image of a headless triton could simply be an extrapolation from whitman's trope. other possibilities emerge, however, when this singular image is placed alongside a moment late in the second book of thus spake zarathustra, when its wandering prophet irritably debunks "the poets" (amongst whom he commendably includes himself) as a group of lying and lazy sentimentalists whose superficiality is part and parcel of their vanity. explaining himself to his disciples who are discountenanced by their poet-prophet's sudden move to ironize his own project, zarathustra observes, [i] f there come unto them tender emotions, then do the poets always think that nature herself is in love with them.. . . i became weary of the poets, of the old and of the new: superficial are they all unto me, and shallow seas. they did not think sufficiently into the depth; therefore their feeling did not reach it is worth observing that no sea gods appear in whitman's poem. the bottom. some sensation of voluptuousness and some sensation of tedium: these have as yet been their best contemplation . . . . ah, i cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; but always did i draw up the head of some ancient god. (ii, xxxix) as he would declare in twilight of the idols, nietzsche preferred the idiom of the ancients themselves, particularly the odes of horace, those "lingual mosaic[s] where every word, as sound, as position, and as notion, diffuses its force right, left, and over the whole, that minimum in the compass and number of signs, that maximum thus realized in their energy" (t, "my indebtedness to the ancients"). i recall here how horace was likewise important to one of crispin's precursors, the absurdly self-inflated crispinus of jonson's poetaster who tries and fails to seize the crown of poet from the author of ars poetica after his poetic efforts reveal themselves to be maximum "in the compass and number of signs" while realizing the minimum in terms of their energy. now while stevens' crispin clearly owes much to jonson's crispinus, is it possible that he also owes something of a debt to nietzsche? certainly this scene might be read as heralding (momentary) progress in our hero's quest to be "the intelligence of his soil," "the meaning of the earth." that is, having glimpsed the headless triton out in the waves (zarathustra having "drawn up the head of [this] ancient god"?), crispin with a sudden, but as we shall see, premature, seizure of creative will, determines to impose a harder, drier, and generally nobler idiom on an age whose poets narcissistically find "tender emotion" in a compassionate sun, make tedious "convocation . . . of the sea-stars" every night, presumably from easily accessed inter-tidal pools (cf. zarathustra's "shallow seas"). such determination proves a false dawn, however. no sooner is the hope of crispin's assuming poetic dominion over the "verbose" sea put forward, however, than it is dashed: "the valet in the tempest [is] annulled" (i, ) by the heretofore placid ocean's abrupt shift into sturm unddrang, and "crispin, merest minuscule in the gales, / dejected his manner to the turbulence."(i, - ). as cook points out, "minuscule" here could be "a term from printing" with steven's hero thus now "a reduced c, with a short shank" ( ). but if we read crispin of the first three cantos as one seeking to be an ubermensch, then this scene of our hero "dejectfing] his manner to the turbulence" might be read as an effort to enact the first stage in zarathustra's doctrine of the three-fold metamorphosis of the spirit—from camel, through to lion, through to child—that a human must undergo enroute to becoming an ubermensch. explaining the first metamorphosis, zarathustra asserts that it is the camel, "the load-bearing spirit," who asks, "what is the heaviest thing, ye heroes? . . . that i may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength. is it not this: to humiliate oneself in order to mortify one's pride? to exhibit one's folly in order to mock at one's wisdom?" (i, i). admittedly, crispin does not so much take up his humiliation as have it thrust upon him as "merest minuscule in the gales." he seems less "load-bearing," than crushed, as he endures the salt [hanging] on his spirit like a frost, the dead brine melt[ing] in him like a dew of winter, until nothing of himself remained, except some starker, barer self in a starker, barer world, (i, - ) nonetheless, there is no denying that a metamorphosis of some kind has happened, and, indeed, crispin's turn at sea recalls something of zarathustra' contention that to be "a camel" is to "love those who despise us, and give one's hand to the phantom when it is going to frighten us" (i i). at one point in zarathustra's first, and ill-fated, attempt to bring news of the ubermensch as "the meaning of the earth" to the world at large, he exhorts a bewildered and increasingly hostile group of burghers, "in truth, man is a polluted river. one must be a sea, to receive a polluted river and not be defiled. behold, i teach you the superman: he is this sea, in him your great contempt can go under" ("prologue" iii). poor crispin rather finds the sea a contemptuous presence, apparently despising and trying to frighten him: "against his pipping sounds a trumpet cried / celestial sneering boisterously." (i, - ) now a "starker, barer self/ in a starker, barer world," that is, in a world without imagination as the title of canto i affirms, crispin becomes "an introspective voyager." what follows next is likely the most labyrinthine passage, both syntactically and thematically, in the poem: here was the veritable ding an sich, at last, crispin confronting it, a vocable thing, but with a speech belched out of hoary darks noway resembling his, a visible thing, and excepting negligible triton, free from the unavoidable shadow of himself that lay elsewhere around him. (i, - ) to attempt to untangle stevens' meaning at this point is to recall frank kermode's assessment of "the comedian" as being "a narrative of obscurely allegorical intent, harsh and dream-like... [with] its manner . . . a sustained nightmare of unexpected diction, so that one sometimes thinks of it less as a poem than as a remarkably physical feat" ( ). first to confront the reader is the paradoxical phrase, "the veritable ding an sich." at least according to kant, who designated the ding an sich as synonymous with noumenon and by definition therefore independent of the senses, stevens would seem to be writing nonsense here. that is, at least according to kant, crispin could not "confront" the ding an sich as "a vocable thing," "a visible thing." but stevens knew his philosophy and so most carefully precedes "ding an sich" with the word "veritable"and thereby, through the self-reversing properties of the word "veritable," clarifies his usage of the "thing-in-itself as metaphorical. but what is this "ding an sich" which crispin "confronts" on his horizon? no one to my knowledge has ever attempted a full exegesis of crispin's "confrontation" with that which is, again, described as having "a speech belched out of hoary darks" and as being with the exception of the "negligible triton, free / from the unavoidable shadow of himself / that lay elsewhere around him." to begin to make sense of this strange spectre, one might identify it as approximating an animal, in light of its capacity for communicating via "hoary belchings." the reference to "negligible triton" suggests, however, that what crispin confronts on the high seas is somehow linked to the human, or to the quasi-divine. but how are we to understand stevens' bewildering image of a shadow which seems both avoidable and eternally present? while the primary meaning of veritable is "conformity to truth," using the word to mean "properly so called," a secondary meaning—also identified in the oed—actually reverses its own strict meaning (rather like the idiomatic use of literal to mean metaphorical). so, for example, the statement that there was "a veritable army of backpackers" actually means that there was such a large group of backpackers that it might almost have seemed like an army. once again i would suggest thus spake zararathustra as an intriguing supplement to "the comedian as the letter c," specifically a moment in a chapter of its second book, titled "the sublime ones." it begins, calm is the bottom of my sea: who would guess that it hideth droll monsters! unmoved is my depth: but it sparkleth with swimming enigmas and laughters. a sublime one saw i to-day, a solemn one, a penitent of the spirit: oh, how my soul laughed at his ugliness! (ii, xxxv). in his aforementioned disquisition on "the poets," zarathustra uses the term "penitent of the spirit" to describe those commendable few who have become "weary" of their vanity, and who under critical self-examination have rejected their mode of sentimental solipsism and superficiality. while nietzsche's prophet does not say so explicitly, it seems, then, that these "sublime ones" whom he draws up from the depth (no poet of the shallows, he!) are themselves poets, though as zarathustra notes, of decidedly sombre guise: with upraised breast. . . thus did he stand, the sublime one, and in silence: o'er hung with ugly truths, the spoil of his hunting and rich in torn raiment: many thorns also hung on him—but i saw no rose. not yet had he learned laughing and beauty. gloomy did this hunter return from the forest of knowledge. from the fight with wild beasts returned he home: but even yet a wild beast gazeth out of his seriousness—an unconquered wild beast! as a tiger doth he ever stand, on the point of springing. (ibid). while nietzsche's prophet evidently admires the courage and strength of this "unconquered" creature, he ultimately finds him an uncongenial presence too self-engrossed in his own sublimity, and observes that "only when he tumeth away from himself will he o'erleap his own shadow—and verily! into his sun" (ibid, italics in original). in the notes which accompany his translation of thus spake zarathustra, antony ludovici glosses this "sublime one" as belonging in his "obdurately sublime and earnest" ( ) nature to the camel stage in zarathustra's doctrine of metamorphosis, but surely this hunter is more akin to the lion. in his evident stature as king of wild beasts, but especially in his successful slaying of "ugly truths," this entity has evidently achieved zarathustra's second metamorphosis as the lion who has fought and won his battle with the "great dragon" named "thou-shalt." it is with this vision in mind of the austere lion who says "a holy nay even unto duty," battling the serpent "thou-shalt," that i turn back to the scene of the introspective crispin "confronting" some rather fearsome thing-in-itself whose voice is "a speech belched out of hoary darks." recalling the peculiar fact that crispin and his "ding-in-sich" appear to have the shadow of the "negligible triton" in common, i want to suggest the narrator at this point presents his short- shanked aspirant to the ranks of ubermensch as hearing within himself the roar of zarathustra's lion. and so also does the poet crispin see himself as this sublime one who, though he still has to "o'erleap his own shadow," has evidently said a "holy nay" to a great deal: "severance / was clear. the last distortion of romance / forsook the insatiable egotist." in his reading of "the comedian" as an allegory of the poetic imagination's passage from romanticism to realism, hi simons judges the final moments of canto i to represent crispin's passage into "a realism almost without positive content" from his original miring in a "juvenile romantic subjectivism" ( ). as one who can "create [himself] freedom, and give a holy nay even unto duty" ( ), yet is powerless to "create new values," zarathustra's lion, too, might be described as embodying "a realism without positive content." and so, also, though crispin is "made new" by his encounter with (and transformation into) the roaring "thing-in-itself," he finds himself no longer "the maker": "the imagination, here, could not evade, / in poems of plums, the strict austerity / of one vast, subjugating, final tone" (i, - ). a rather quiescent king of beasts, in fact, crispin is left to observe, and this is what he next beholds: the drenching of stale lives no more fell down. what was this gaudy, gusty panoply? out of what swift destruction did it spring? it was caparison of wind and cloud and something given to make whole among the ruses that were shattered by the large. ( - ) in his reading of the poem, simons finds the sea, "that heretofore had been so adverse and terrifying, now enfolding] [crispin] like a beautiful and protective wrap. . . . [having] sacrificed all to reality; now he found that he had all of reality to compensate him" ( ). but surely it is something more than "reality" that is compensating crispin here. in the narrator's "caparison of wind and cloud," simons finds "the glory" of the placid sea following the cessation of the storm. but neither "caparison" nor "panoply," as terms of military pomp, can be easily conceived as images of tranquility after tempest. indeed, the "gaudy, gusty panoply" perceived by crispin seems in fact a resurgence of the storm, or another storm entirely, and so it is that the narrator asks another of his rhetorical questions, "out of what swift destruction did it spring?" recalling the "dickering" and "storming" of earlier lines, i would propose that something rather different is at work, beginning with the awkward syntax of the narrator's observation that "the drenching of stale lives no more fell down." admittedly, it is possible that this line refers to "the dead brine" of self in crispin that has slowly been melting away. "made new," crispin has no more "stale lives" in him—not apparently, at any rate. but "drenching" and "fell down" continue to niggle oddly within this explanation, neither seeming appropriate to describe the dwindling of crispin. what are we to make of what seems in fact an image of downpour from the sky? that crispin is indeed looking at the sky rather than at the sea, as simons suggests, is affirmed by the fact that he apprehends this "gusty, gaudy panoply" as a "caparison of wind and cloud." and what are we to make of this redoubled martial image being figured as "something given to make whole among / the ruses that were shattered by the large"? surely there is more than a tinge of irony in having this "swift destruction" so rapidly made the instrument of wholeness. what is this "panoply," this "caparison"? what does crispin see? and what are we to make of closing irony of canto i where it seems things shatter only to be made whole once again? returning first to the narrator's cryptic observation that "[t]he drenching of stale lives no more fell down," i propose that this image, together with the "gusty, gaudy panoply" that crispin witnesses on the horizon, may compose a vision of the coming of the ubermensch. again it is possible to supplement our reading of "the comedian of the letter c" with a passage from thus spake zarathustra, specifically the fourth part of zarathustra's prologue when he sings praises of the coming ubermensch to an unappreciative audience of burghers: i love all who are like heavy drops falling one by one out of the dark cloud that lowereth over man: they herald the coming of the lightning, and succumb as heralds. lo, i am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the superman.— later, zarathustra will name the dark cloud as humanity itself, that is, a cloud out of which a steady "drenching of stale lives" falls down. crispin, now a zarathustrian lion and so well on his way to ubermensch—though by no means yet arrived—sees this drenching cease, replaced by bolts of lightning, heralding his imagination's ultimately self-surpassing destination. and so it is as something of a zarathustrian lion that crispin enters the yucatan proud of having stripped the world and himself of its ugly dogmatisms, he declares himself "too destitute to find / in any commonplace the sought-for aid." like one of zarathustra's leonine "sublime ones" who knows that "[unattainable is beauty to all ardent wills" (tszii, xxxv), crispin is a man made vivid by the sea, a man come out of luminous traversing, much trumpeted, made desperately clear, fresh from discoveries of tidal skies, to whom oracular rockings gave no rest. into a savage colour he went on. having ostensibly achieved the second stage in his ascension to the rank of ubermensch, crispin roars on "in savage colour," and his progress towards becoming " the meaning of the earth" is duly recorded by the narrator who gaily announces, "how greatly had he grown in his demesne, / this auditor of insects!" apparently once a poet very much in the manner of those derided by zarathustra (writing "his couplet yearly to the spring, / as dissertation of profound delight" and so forth), crispin, "stopping, on voyage, in a land of snakes" finds "his vicissitudes had much enlarged / his apprehension." again, while not necessarily confirming material conjunction between "the comedian as the letter c" and thus spake zarathustra, crispin's sojourn on serpent island nonetheless corresponds remarkably to a moment in zarathustra's travels when he finds himself in the company of a group of sailors who have set sea from "the happy isles." at first zarathustra disdains contact, but soon rediscovers his affection for "all those who make distant voyages, and dislike to live without danger" (iii, xlvi ). having warmed to his fellow argonauts of the spirit, he then regales them with the story of the "enigma" of the shepherd whom he had encountered on the ground "writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth" (ibid ). he asks his listeners to interpret this awful tableau, but not surprisingly, they are unable to offer any exegesis. neither does zarathustra, at this point, unpack the parable. in what might be read as a comically lapidary gloss on these extraordinary events, the narrator recalls how crispin, "stopping, on voyage, in a land of snakes, / found his vicissitudes had much enlarged / his apprehension." although the hissing of "vicissitudes" suggests all that our hero might have experienced, we never know whether he ever found his own head inside the mouth of a snake. we are told only that his brief sojourn among serpents "made him intricate / in moody rucks, and difficult and strange in all desires" or a "sonorous nutshel[l] rattling inwardly" (ii, - , ). that is, crispin's mood parallels that of zarathustra, who after his encounter with the enigma of shepherd and snake, continues onward "with such enigmas and later in book iii, in "the convalescent" chapter, zarathustra reveals that he himself had choked on the serpent of his great disgust at the smallness of man. bitterness in his heart sail[ing] o'er the sea" (iii, xlvii). (crispin's reported temper may also parodically recall the sombre and ferociously nay-saying zarathustrian lion.) the seeming parallels continue as crispin's sudden perception that "coolness for his heat came suddenly, / and only, in the fables that he scrawled / with his own quill, in its indigenous dew,"(ii, - ) recalls zarathustra's epiphany following his encounter with the enigma of serpent and shepherd that whereas "companions did the creating one once seek, and children of his hope . . . . lo, it turned out that he could not find them, except he himself should first create them" (iii, xlvii). in a manner that might be seen to echo zarathustra's exhortations in the "old and new tables" chapter of book iii that a creator be hard as a diamond, crispin holds out hopes for "an aesthetic tough, diverse," (ii, ) composed of "beautiful barenesses as yet unseen" (ii, ). while he finds much in the way of "beautiful barenesses" in the caribbean amphitheatre, however, his response falls suddenly, and sharply, short of his former leonine disdain. crispin is deeply, troublingly affected by this earth, "[s]o streaked with yellow, blue and green and red / in beak and bud and fruity gobbet-skins" (ii, - ). as vendler notes, there is an element of squeamishness in stevens' description of the verdant jungle, but it is crispin's suddenly resolving affection under an explicitly maternal sun for "a new reality of parrot-squawks" (ii, ) that should catch and hold our attention. crispin is above all a clown, and as guereschi notes, "deadpan attitudes and sudden reversals" must attend him ( ). yet the narrator does not let his hero's sudden attachment to squawking parrots pass unremarked, though his comments purport to do just that: "so much for that" (ii, ), he says. "let that trifle pass" (ii, ), he opines. "don't worry," the narrator seems to be saying, "despite his unanticipated attraction to the 'juicily opulent' earth and one of its more raucous inhabitants, our freeman hero is still no less 'a man made vivid by the sea'." and indeed our now "affectionate emigrant"(ii, ) seems for a moment to follow still in the gaily nay-saying footsteps of zarathustra, as it were, when he sets himself to inspect "the facade / of the cathedral" (ii, - ), making notes rather than taking communion. so, too, does zarathustra in "the priests" section of book ii, bring his judgement to bear on houses of faith: "oh, just look at those tabernacles which those priests have built themselves! churches they call their sweet- smelling caves!" (xxvi). but whereas zarathustra vows that "only when the clear sky looketh again through ruined roofs, and down upon grass and red poppies on ruined walls—will i again turn my heart to the seats of this god" (ibid.), crispin finds himself scampering to take shelter inside this new world house of faith. that is, hearing and seeing an actual tropical thunderstorm "approaching like a gasconade of drums" (ii, ), crispin "t[akes] flight" (ii, ). after all, as the narrator observes, "an annotator has his scraples, too" (ii, ). and so, scrupling first to ensure the safety of his own skin, our "connoisseur of elemental fate" (ii, ) finds himself kneeling, now a rather cowardly lion, "in the cathedral with the rest" (ii, ). and yet, this "actual" (rather than metaphoric) thunderstorm does mark a true "sea-change" in crispin. that he feels "the andean breath" (ii, ) on his neck confirms that he is, at last, becoming an inhabitant of the new world, rather than the old. thus as he feels the mountain air of the new world blowing fresh and cold, he becomes "studious of a self possessing him, / that was not in him in the crusty town / from which he sailed" (ii, - ). canto iii, titled "approaching carolina," marks a critical turn. stevens begins to note riddel's wry observation that such an experience is "not unknown in the history of romanticism" [!] construct his hero crispin as one who truly straggles to keep both his own existence and his creative acts loyal to the realities of earth. what crispin will discover to be of value at this point in his voyage will be the "rancid rosin" (iii, ) of a working river in all its rude particulars. crispin discovers the "arrant stinks"(iii, ) of the everyday concourse of human affairs to be the meaning of the earth, and in this prosaic world the very ground of his poetic powers. appropriately, canto iii begins on a comic note of portentous anti-climax: "the book of moonlight is not written yet / nor half begun, but, when it is, leave room / for crispin, fagot in the lunar fire." as joseph carroll and others have noted, stevens' early passion for keats' endymion likely informs crispin's brief intoxication under moonlight. no doubt stevens is making gentle mock of the callow intensity of his own youthful attachment to what boorstein calls a decadent romanticism. but neither carroll, nor others like simons or daniel fuchs, takes adequate account, it seems to me, of the parodic intensity of crispin's lunar hallucinations of his new found land: america was always north to him, a northern west or western north, but north, and thereby polar, polar-purple, chilled and lank, rising and slumping from a sea in suggesting that it is in the latter half of the poem that crispin comes fully into his heroic own in his search for what "will suffice," i disagree with vendler who sees whatever heroism the poem offers being contained in its first cantos. in a journal entry from july , , stevens writes, "the moon was very fine. coming over the field toward the bridge i turned to see it hanging in the dark east. i felt a thrill at the mystery of the thing and perhaps a little touch of fear. when home i began the third canto of "endymion" which open with o moon! and cynthia! and that sort of thing. it was intoxicating" ( ). of hardy foam, receding flatly, spread in endless ledges, glittering, submerged and cold in a boreal mistiness of the moon. the spring came there in clinking pannicles of half-dissolving frost, the summer came, if ever, whisked and wet, not ripening, before winter's vacancy returned. the myrtle, if the myrtle ever bloomed, was like a glacial pink upon the air. the green palmettoes in crepuscular ice clipped frigidly blue-black meridians morose chiaroscuro, gauntly drawn, (iii, - ) no less than zarathustra under his sun, crispin under the moon is a figure "all will" in his search for a new continent for his imagination: how many poems he denied himself in his observant progress, lesser things than the relentless contact he desired; how many sea-masks he ignored; what sounds he shut out from his tempering ear; what thoughts, like jades affecting the sequestered bride; and what descants, he sent to banishment! (iii, - ) briefly obsessed with his vision of "morose chiaroscuro, gauntly drawn," crispin as a latter-day odysseus closes his mind to all "descants" which might distract, "descants" which the next section confirms to be those of the sun. at heart, however, he hearkens to a contrapuntal music and comes to embrace such variation. thus we are told explicitly that crispin eventually "conceived his voyaging to be / an up and down between two elements, / a fluctuating between sun and moon" (iii, - ). it is in keeping with his faith in contrapuntal melodies and rhythms that stevens in the final section of canto iii presents the "rancid rosin, burly smells. . .arrant stinks" of the river of humanity as part of the earth's "essential prose," and "as being, in a world so falsified, / the one integrity" (iii, , - ). in "from the journal of crispin," the first version of the poem, the reader is taken from the physical river deep into a river of humanity. from the working rankness of the river in what is perhaps now south carolina, we find ourselves on cobbled merchant streets, the shops of chandlers, tailors, bakers, cooks, the coca-cola bars, the barber-poles, the strand and harold lloyd, the lawyers' row, the citizen's bank, two tea rooms, and a church, (iii, - ) crispin is "happy in this metropole," and, moreover, meditates on it as source and substance of poetry. of bakers, crispin asks, "are they one moment flour / another pearl?", and the reader watches as in our hero's mind the "flimsiest tea room fluctuates / through crystal changes," and for another reading of "descants" see barbara comin. whereas zarathustra repeatedly pronounces himself sullied by the quotidian and the heterogenous, in his prologue describing man as "a polluted stream," crispin accepts all that he encounters as vital "[c]urriculum for the marvelous sophomore" (iii ). "even harold lloyd / proposes antic harlequin." as simons puts it, here, in "the beauty of the commonplace," he finds "the possibility of a realistic, an honest american poetry" ( ). that only through art can life be "justified" was one of nietzsche's chief tenets, and one to which stevens largely subscribed. but as stevens said, in his adagia, while "poetry is a purging of the world's poverty and change and evil and death," it is only "apresent perfecting, a satisfaction in the irremediable poverty of life" (cpp , italics mine). stevens believed that part of a new faith in human creative will meant the unceasing labour of "transmutating" "plain shops" into poetry, "[b]y aid of starlight, distance, wind, war, death," as he wrote in the early version of his comedian poem. like the "present perfecting" of poetry, crispin's colony offers only a temporary solution. the very opening verse to "the idea of a colony," the fourth canto of "the comedian"—"nota: his soil is man's intelligence"—suggests the cyclical force of time for it is a most deliberate inversion of the opening verse of the poem itself. it is in the face of the relentlessness of time, but also upon the strength of his new found conviction that the earth is the meaning of man, that crispin "la[ys] bare / his cloudy drift and plan[s] a colony." notably, however, this is not yet a colony of flesh and blood, but is rather a plymouth rock of the mind—and one of the striking things about crispin's "idea of a colony" is how it is set up to fail, and quickly abandoned. such "singular collation[s]" as "the natives of the rain are rainy men," and "the man in georgia walking among pines / should be pine-spokesman," are no sooner proposed than they are dismissed as part of the "racking masquerade" separating our poet-colonist still from the true intelligence of his soil. for martha strom, crispin's desire to know his native soil as an objective fact, without "active flourishes," marks him as a committed practitioner of "the local color" movement which was still very much in vogue in , and thus, ultimately, as no hero for stevens. as strom reads it, "the comedian as the letter c" "records stevens' ambivalence as he faced a crossroads where he would choose his route through contemporary currents in american literature" ( ). chief among the paths he had determined not to choose was the "evangeliz[ing] for a metonymic representation of experience in art" ( ) present in the photographs of alfred stieglitz and also in the poems of williams carlos williams. identifying george santayana as one of the shaping spirits behind "the comedian," strom argues that the philosopher's "sanction of the power of the irreverence of comedy to dislodge myth might well have led stevens to use his comic style as a weapon" ( ) against the myth of a purely american locale. it seems likely that stevens did read santayana's essays on comedy, and was influenced by them, perhaps most particularly, as strom herself notes, by the philosopher's conclusion to "the comic mask" that the mind is not a slave nor a photograph: it has a right to enact a pose, to assume a panache, and to create what prodigious allegories it will for the mere sport and glory of it. . . . to embroider upon experience is not to bear false witness against one's neighbour, but to bear true witness to oneself. . . . why should we quarrel with human nature, with metaphor, with myth, with impersonation? the foolishness of the simple is delightful; only the foolishness of the wise is exasperating, (qtd. in corrigan, ) for strom, it is the exasperating '"foolishness of the wise' to which crispin succumbs when he for insight into the intersections of santayana and nietzsche in stevens' poetics, see wesley north's dissertation, . creates his localist prologomena" ( - ). she suggests that after the "crepuscular moment" of canto iii that finds crispin fluctuating productively between his soil and his intelligence, the comedian "sinks more and more deeply into a quagmire of localism so extreme that it consumes all his emotions and leaves him nothing but the power to reproduce physically" ( ). but surely she misreads both crispin's and stevens' project here. focusing on the revisions stevens made to canto iii when he transformed "the journal of crispin" into "the comedian," in order that she might more fully demonstrate the poet's ambivalence towards the localism of his peers, strom neglects what might rather be read as crispin's own dismissal of the "local color" movement in canto iv. having briefly flirted with the poetic possibilities of having the "responsive man" in florida "prick[ing] thereof, not on the psaltery, / but on the banjo's categorical gut" (iv, - ) and of making melons "apposite ritual" (iv, ), crispin tosses this prolegomena into the trash as a reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that "the soil is man's intelligence." but as the early version of canto iv in "from the journal of crispin" confirms, in fact, the matter of how we are to understand the earth's command over man's intelligence is, for crispin, as much a philosophical question as it is an aesthetic one. that it is necessarily more a philosophical question than an aesthetic one is suggested by narrator's description of crispin's projected colony as a race of natives in a primitive land, but primitive because it is more true to its begetting than its patriarch, a race obedient to its origins and from the obstinate scrutiny of its land, and in its land's own wit and mood and mask, evolving the conjectural resonance of voice, the flying youthfulness of form, of a spirit to be singer of the song that crispin formulates but cannot sing. that is, crispin's engagement with his soil can only be philosophical—and physical—rather than poetic. he cannot compose the poems of his climate because he is too newly arrived: he has not scrutinized the land sufficiently to evolve a "conjectural resonance of voice" out of the land's own "mood and mask." t.s. eliot would say that his sensibility is not yet unified: he cannot yet feel his thoughts or think his feelings. as an early expression of stevens' interest in how poetry helps us live our lives, "the comedian as the letter c" distinguishes itself in combining a prodigious vision of what might, in future, be possible with the most humble limits of its immediate conclusions. although crispin does not renege on his conviction that "the soil is man's intelligence," he concludes that he himself is not ready to sing its song, the poem of the earth, and so it is that at the end of canto iv—the final canto in the early version of "the comedian"—crispin, preferring text to gloss ... humbly served grotesque apprenticeship to chance event, a clown, perhaps, but an aspiring clown. in so choosing to serve a "grotesque apprenticeship to chance event," stevens' mock-hero embarks on a humbler path than that proposed by zarathustra, who would assume absolute command of his climate: and how could i endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer, and riddle-reader, and redeemer of chance! . . . to redeem what is past, and to transform every "it was" into "thus would i have it!"—that only do i call redemption! (ii, xlii). crispin, by contrast, will be forever barking his shins against the shock of "it is" and "it was." that is, he will bumble through life as a clown, buffeted and rebuffed - but nonetheless resilient. as we are told in canto v, crispin will "has[p] on the surviving form, / for him, of shall or ought to be in is" (v, - ). for crispin there is no redemption. yet there will be poetry. in the weeks he took to revise "from the journal of crispin," stevens added a fulsome (and often florid) exploration of crispin's turn to domesticity in two cantos titled "a nice shady home" and "daughters with curls," respectively. unprecedented in any likely american and british precursors, cantos v and vi of "the comedian" are nonetheless so excessive in parts that they can only be read as burlesquing someone or something. as vendler observes, "except for the opening definitions of crispin, there are no excesses of elaboration [elsewhere in the poem] to equal the density of the picture of crispin's cabin as he returns to social nature" ( ). canto v opens upon crispin "as hermit, pure and capable, / dwelling] in the land." the narrator tells us that "if discontent / had kept him still the pricking realist," crispin "might have come / to colonize his polar planterdom / and jig his chits on cloudy knee." alas for the "living plantation of his thoughts," however, the clown finds contentment: crispin dwelt in the land and dwelling there slid from his continent by slow recess to things within his actual eye, alert to the difficulty of rebellious thought when sky is blue. the blue infected will. ( - ) with the exception of the yarrow which "seal[s] pensive purple under its concern"( ) as it observes crispin's distinctly unheroic ebbing from his quest for a "matinal continent" for his imagination, seemingly all other things of the earth, now this thing and now that confined him, while it cosseted, condoned, little by little, as if the suzerain soil abashed him by carouse to humble yet attach. ( - ) the narrator's convoluted syntax is most confining, almost swaddling, and therefore most appropriate to present crispin's child-like surrender to the security and comforts of his surroundings. crispin knows himself to be the contented, but dependent, son of his matemal soil. yet he is not troubled. what follows crispin's recognition of his place in the pattern of things is a long series of rhetorical questions about what might have seemed an appropriate response to such a falling off in ambition, beginning with, "was he to bray this in profoundest brass / arointing his dreams with fugal requiems?" (v, - ). in sum, crispin decides, no theatrics is best: "for realists, what is is what should be." and so crispin's cabin "shuffles up," his duenna brings "her prismy blonde," and the door closes upon a happy scene of domestic bliss. crispin is yarrow, legendary as an aid in staunching bleeding, is also known as soldier's woundwort. its latin name, achillea millefolium, apparently commemorates achille's taking the herb into battle. now the contented "magister of a single room." those appalled by this "haphazard denouement" might well be inclined to concur with zarathustra's disgruntled comment on the woe incurred by a wedding: "this man seemed to me worthy and ripe for the meaning of the earth: but when i saw his wife the earth seemed to me a house for the nonsensical.. . .this man set forth like a hero in quest of truth and at last he captured a little dressed-up life. he calls it his marriage" ( ). crispin, however, "in the presto of the morning," finds "a fig in sight, / and cream for the fig and silver for the cream, / a blonde to tip the silver and to taste / the rapey gouts," and he beholds the "good star" as that which gives meaning to the human. that is, the sun strengthens crispin in his revels at table and marriage bed. the ribald note continues to the end of the canto, concluding in the assertion of equivalence between the abundant bestowing virtues of the sun, and those of the quotidian. the narrator insists that while some forms of the quotidian may, indeed, deplete philosophers and poets, the erotics of the day-to-day, such as crispin experiences, "sa[p] like the sun, trae fortuner. / for all it takes it gives a humped return / exchequering from piebald fiscs unkeyed." the final canto of "the comedian as the letter c," titled "and daughters with curls," opens with the narrator in full mock-heroic song as he provides a "thrumming" introduction for crispin's "last deduction." the narrator of crispin's story heralds this "deduction" as "bubbling felicity in cantilene, / prolific and tormenting tenderness / of music, as it comes to unison." what comes on the heels of this rhapsody has much felicity and tenderness, and is certainly prolific, see for example, bloom who uses the term "rancid" to describe the "rumpling bottomnesses" of crispin's marriage bed. discuss some of the possible meanings of this puzzling line below, - . but could only ironically be described as "a grand pronunciamento"—though crispin is evidently in revolt against someone or something. we are told how crispin's "bluet-eyed" and curly-haired chits came to be jigged upon his knee, "leaving no room," on this "prophetic joint, for its diviner young." certainly, crispin's offspring are by no means divine. for some readers such as vendler, they are altogether too earthly, exuding a "resinous rankness" ( ) others, reading less viscerally, have found crispin's daughters easier to accept. frank kermode, for example, was happy to read them as "without doubt the seasons, cardinal to the life of nature and [their father's] own life" ( ). margaret peterson, finding kermode's judgement "untenable," interprets the daughters as "represent[ing] the commingling elements of the poet's creative process" ( ). i myself find most persuasive james baird's assessment of crispin's daughters as representing the centuries of his history on american shores: the first, in a "capuchin" cloak and hood (the mien of a puritan wife); the second, in a half-awakened state (a tentative national consciousness, as the eighteenth century advances); the third, a "creeper under jaunty leaves" ("leaves" of an emerging american poetry of the nineteenth century"); the fourth, still "pent," the one not yet fully grown (the inception of the twentieth). ( ) to baird's succinct assessment, i would add that crispin's landfall in carolina, rather than either the state south or north, establishes the date of his voyage as sometime between and as it was between those dates that the province of carolina proper existed. i would add further that just as the description of the third daughter as "jaunty under leaves" seems to refer, as baird bloom names the daughters "manifest poetic blots," and even goes so far as to wonder "if stevens is attempting to write badly" ( ). implies, to whitman's leaves of grass, thus definitively marking her as a figure for nineteenth- century poetic undertakings, so does her later incarnation as one "gaping at the orioles. . .[and] peaked for rhapsody." that is, this "queerly inane lady poet"( ), as vendler names her, is surely emily dickinson of the angelic widow's peak and author of "to hear an oriole sing." one wonders whom stevens might have had in mind when he sketched his infant modernist as "mere blusteriness that gewgaws jollified, / all din and gobble, blasphemously pink." pitts sanbom did bring back a copy of ulysses for stevens sometime in october and it is tempting to think that some early impression of joyce's bumptiously fleshy novel informs the poet's shorthand here. assessing the contemporary state of modem poetry, of which he is a part, less confrontationally, stevens finds it to have matured enough to be a "digit curious"—that is, both asking and provoking questions. crispin's "colony" of poets, of poetry, which was only inpotentia in "from the journal of crispin," thus comes to pass in a form most physical, involving] him in midwifery so dense his cabin counted as phylactery, then place of vexing palankeens, then haunt of children nibbling at the sugared void, infants yet eminently old, then dome and halidom for the unbraided femes, green crammers of the green fruits of the world, bidders and biders for its ecstasies, true daughters of both crispin and his clay. (vi, - ) as "green crammers of the green fruits of the world," these children appear creatures of most visceral appetite and seem rather less than ideal handmaidens to their father's dreams of poetry-at least at first. thus we are told how the "effective colonizer [was] sharply stopped / in the door-yard by his own capacious bloom" (ibid, - ). no doubt, as bloom suggests, there is a shade of whitman in crispin's excessively verdant door-yard. but where the author of poems of our climate finds a bitterness in this allusion which "tell[s] us how far short of whitman poor crispin had ended" ( ), i read it only as a passing nod of recognition to one of the patriarchs of american poetry. i say here that the narrator "nods" to whitman because the ensuing "tender" music of this final canto of "the comedian" reveals that crispin has not, in fact, been "stopped" by the blooming of his daughters. rather, his poetic aspirations will bloom in them. in them he finds a new continent in which his imagination might dwell, if only posthumously. he, like whitman, is one of the patriarchs of american poetry. he will not live to write america as a poem, but as we have seen, his daughters will—albeit on their own terms. and so the narrator concludes his portrait of crispin's progeny as four daughters in a world too intricate in the beginning, four blithe instruments of differing struts, four voices several in couch, four more personae, intimate as buffo, yet divers, four mirrors blue that should be silver, four accustomed seeds hinting incredible hues, four self-same lights that spread chromatics in hilarious dark, four questioners and four sure answerers, (ibid, - ) vendler, no less than bloom, finds this "denouement" a bitter failure. determined in her conviction that stevens himself felt an "active repugnance in the presence of the sensual and social daughters" ( ) of crispin, she quotes only the final line of this passage when she argues for crispin's "embittered" state when his "attempt to transform reality fails ... when he is faced with the same insoluble lump only disastrously multiplied" ( ). she writes, "stevens certainly cannot write lovingly about a collection of raw turnips, though he conveys their appalling rawness by din and gobble; nor can he truly transform them, though he tries to cast the mantle of the transformed over what he feels as the deformed by calling the multiplied turnips "four questioners and four sure answerers'" ( ). but vendler is simply (and surprisingly) wrong here. crispin and his daughters are of course part of the turnip world, but this rooted constitution is, at worst, cause for a certain fatalism, but never recoil. and she is wrong, moreover, to suggest that crispin's children represent nothing more than "a simple perpetuation of self ( ). that their identities do expand beyond their father's is made clear by the narrator's description of them as "four mirrors blue / that should be silver." that is, the daughters are pools of their own inscrutable selves, not mirrors for the father's reflection. rather than re-becoming a child, coming full circle, crispin becomes a father to his "chits." here riddel's insight into the several meanings of "chits" is most telling. as riddel points out, "one of the root meanings of 'chit'. . . is sprout or shoot; such a "re-becoming" into childhood would in fact achieve the third and final stage of zarathusta's metamorphosis of the human into the ubermensch. another . . . a voucher for debts incurred"( ). crispin's "chits" are a sign to crispin that a debt must, and will, be paid. but he is not unhappy. crispin is a realist, and "for realists, what is is what should be." we are thus left with a picture of crispin reasonably content with having passed on his comic motleyness to his four daughters who, "hinting incredible hues ... [will] spread chromatics in hilarious dark." these lovely lines celebrate the colour and comedy that crispin's "colony" of poet daughters will produce in and for america. as ones who "hinting incredible hues. . .[will] spread chromatics in hilarious dark," they will compose the "gay-coloured canopy" of night. but like their father before them, these "four blithe instruments / of differing struts" will be no "redeemers of chance," transforming every "it was" into "thus would i have it!" like their parent, crispin's daughters will acknowledge the plum as prior to its poems, "hasp[ing] on the surviving form, / for [them] of shall or ought to be in is." the sense of an ending the deliberately lackadaisical conclusion of "the comedian as the letter c" suggests that what the comedy of life gives in fact is uncertainty and inconsequence, even irrelevance. so, the narrator tells us, we may, if we choose, "score this anecdote" as something that crispin "willed," as "seraphic proclamations of the pure / delivered with a deluging onwardness." on the other hand, however, we may simply find that "the music sticks," that the "anecdote is false," and that crispin is "a profitless philosopher, beginning with green brag, / concluding fadedly." in any case, the narrator says, chiding gently, "what can all this matter since / the relation comes, benignly, to its end?" in his early reading of "the comedian," john j. enck asserts that the poem "becomes anti-mythological because it fully depicts a disinherited twentieth-century comedian only to deny that this congenial imago exerts abiding power" ( , italics added). i would submit that the mythology under assault from the outset in stevens' poem is the very notion of "abiding power." crispin's considerable imaginative strengths begin, in fact, with his acknowledgment of limits. he seeks only what will suffice. he himself is only—and at times just barely—sufficient. indeed, he is, as his very cipher suggests, incomplete. he is not a hierophantic omega o, but a demotic clipped "c," whose very voyage from bordeaux to yucatan to carolina "traces," as david laguardia observes, "an allegorical motif that approximates, but does not complete, a circle" ( ). that our comedian of the letter c will, and with amiable willingness, fail to inscribe a "perfectly revolved" journey, or narrative, or self, is presaged in "anecdote of the abnormal," which was written a year or so before "from the journal of crispin." here is the "odd little ditty" which i believe to foretell something of crispin's future identity as being of the letter c: he called the hydrangeas purple. and they were. not fixed and deadly, (like a curving line that merely makes a ring.) for eloquent and insightful comment on the question of limits in stevens, see bart eeckhout's wallace stevens and the limits of reading and writing. ( ) as eeckhout notes, desire is a function of limits, and thus, for stevens, "to be alive . . . was to desire, and to keep one's desire burning was to stay alive. this was his deep-rooted conviction, and it could never have been the conviction of a melioristic utilitarian or of a sociopolitically committed activist—but only of a man whose frustrations and alienations ran so deep as to require a basic vitalizing prop otherwise void of purpose of content" ( ). it was a purple changeable to see. and so hydrangeas came to be. the common grass is green. but there are regions where the grass assumes a pale, italianate sheen— is almost byzantine. and there the common grass is never seen. and in those regions one still feels the rose and feels the grass because new things make old things again.. . and so with men. crispin-valet, crispin-saint! the exhausted realist beholds his tattered manikin arise, tuck in the straw, and stalk the skies. samuel french morse, who in fact reads crispin's adventures as "bring[ing] him full circle," finds "no correlation between 'crispin-valet, crispin-saint' and the 'exhausted realist' who evokes them" ( ). as i read these poems, however, such a correlation may indeed be discerned if we understand the realist to be exhausted because of what has been his un-ending duty as a realist—in a world without imagination—to objectively name anew each day the flowers and the grass and all things of earth in all of their eternally "changeable to see" particularity. adam-like (but the son of no god), this realist must name each thing that it may be— "he called the hydrangeas purple. and they were"—but he cannot name them once and for all because that would deny their ever-changingness, would make them "fixed and deadly, (like a curving line / that merely makes a ring.)" with thus good reason to feel tired, the realist hallucinates his "tattered manikin," who, having both reality and the imagination in his bloodline, that is, as valet and as saint, might be better suited to take up the burden of all this naming, this perpetually making new. that is, this "manikin" might be a poet, the one to compose the poem of the earth, but a poem which must not inscribe "a curving line / that merely makes a ring." rather it must be a poem of purples "changeable to see," of poems and purples which mark the changes and breaks in the things of earth as expressing not "o" but "c." and so we glimpse here part of crispin's name and destiny. significantly, when crispin makes his second appearance, in "from the journal of crispin," this promise appears much reduced. we are told in its fourth and final canto, and in a line preserved in "the comedian," to "let the rabbit run, the cock declaim," as if to say, "let the earth be and name its own meaning!" and then the poem deliberately limits the scope of crispin's making and being: as crispin in his attic shapes the book one might recall here the inscription that precedes "notes toward the supreme fiction": "in the uncertain light of single, certain trath, / equal in living changingness to the light/ in which i meet you." that will contain him, he requires this end: the book shall discourse of himself alone, of what he was, and why, and of his place, and of its fitful pomp and parentage. thereafter he may stalk in other spheres. where the "exhausted realist" in "anecdote of the abormal" appeared to hope that his "manikin" might "stalk the skies," the narratorial voice of crispin's "journal" insists that his "introspective voyageur" may speak only to the "fitful pomp and parentage" of his own life. "thereafter he may stalk in other spheres"—but that will be the subject of a different book. at first glance, the final cryptic line of "the comedian as the letter c" might seem to be the final nail in the coffin of poetic aspirations on the part of crispin, "tattered manikin": "so may the relation of each man be clipped." set deliberately apart from the poem that precedes it, one might take the narrator's final comment on crispin to be stevens' judgment. i read it otherwise. recalling the prohibition expressed in "anecdote of the abnormal" against the "fixed and deadly. . . curving line that only makes a ring," alongside the twice made projections of crispin perhaps one day stalking like some giant across the skies or "in other spheres," i propose that it is, in fact, in the name of poetry that crispin does not, ultimately, "stalk" anywhere, but is rather "clipped" at the last and sent "benignly" to his grave. this destiny was latent in crispin's name and being from his inception, but i believe that only in the final stages of "the comedian" did stevens find "severance clear." what "the comedian as the letter c" insists is that the "meaning of the earth" is, for us, a muddy motley with a hard rock at the bottom. as he would write in "credences of summer," the rock cannot be broken. it is the trath. it rises from land and sea and covers them. it is a mountain halfway green and then, the other immeasurable half, such rock as placid air becomes. but it is not a hermit's truth nor symbol in hermitage. it is the visible rock, the audible, the brilliant mercy of a sure repose, on this present ground, the vividest repose, things certain sustaining us in certainty. (vi, - ) for stevens, there lay difficult solace in the certainty that the rock is no "symbol in hermitage" and that one day, for each person viewing the rock, "there [will be] nothing left of time," because out of this certain hard coldness comes the bright warmth of poetry. thus stevens drew his comedian of the commons, crispin, as part of the "credences of summer," at play under the brief summer sun, [a] f a t . . . roseate characte[r], free, for a moment, from malice and sudden cry, completed in a completed scene, speaking [his] parts as in a youthful happiness. (x, - ) the sound of the letter c as james baird observes, "the total act of the comedian is a strictly traced diminution from bravura," notwithstanding the evident linguistic "bravura" of "the comedian" itself. crispin and his early aspirations to be "the intelligence of his soil," to "be the meaning of the earth" are presented in a decidedly comic light: only when the aspiring clown becomes the humble "magister of a single room" does he, for the most part, cease be mocked. as fuchs observes, "in showing man in his poverty and his natural surroundings, stevens wishes to arouse him to a sense of modest possibility which will not be trammeled by the false claims of outmoded systems" ( ). stevens' respect for crispin's choices at the end of the poem - his determination to accommodate common things as his reality - is strongly suggested by a letter stevens wrote late in life to italian literary critic renato poggioli who would less than a year later see published his italian translation of a number of steven's poems. here, commenting on the considerable inherent difficulties of translating "the comedian as the letter c," stevens writes, there is another point about the poem to which i should like to call attention and that is that it is what may be called an anti-mythological poem. the central figure is an every-day man who lives a life without the slightest adventure except that he lives it in a poetic atmosphere as we all do. this point makes it necessary for a translator to try to reproduce the every-day plainness of the central figure and the plush, so to speak, of his stage. (l , june , ). as he did in "lettres d'un soldat," stevens seems determined here to extend the possibility of poetry to everyone, and in this he was no follower of zarathustra. "every-day plainness" and "modest possibility" are not goals for nietzsche's philosopher-poet persona—the very terms reeking of the mediocrity of the last man whom he derides for his bovine acceptance that man's ultimate goal should be happiness. in her early reading of "the comedian," francis murphy makes a passing but arresting comment about the absence of evil in crispin's reality. as "domination of black" and "anecdote of the prince of the peacocks" ( ) confirm, stevens was writing poems contemporaneous with crispin's voyage which dealt directly with this aspect of reality. useful in understanding the skewed emphasis on the good of happiness in "the comedian" is riddel's insight that while it is most certainly "a poem about poetry in the largest sense ... that its main concern is with the poetry of living more clearly accounts for its comic design" ( ). as is well-known to readers who have sought to understand his quixotic poem, stevens was uncharacteristically forthcoming about one particular aspect of "the comedian," namely that part of his intention in writing had been "in a minor way, [to] orchestrat[e]" the sounds of the letter c." the comment just past occurs at the end of a letter from stevens to hi simons which finds the poet replying at length to the critic's querying the meaning of "the letter c." earlier in his reply, stevens elaborates, you know the old story about st. francis wearing the bells around his ankles so that, as he went about his business, the crickets and so on would get out of his way and not be tramped on. now, as crispin moves through the poem, the sounds of the letter c accompany him, as the sounds of the crickets, etc. must have accompanied st. francis. i don't mean to say that there is an incessant din, but you ought not to be able to read very far in the poem without recognizing what i mean. the sounds of the letter c included all related or derivative sounds. for instance, x, ts, and z. (january , . l ) an earlier comment to ronald lane latimer gives further insight: "while the sound of that letter has more or less variety, and includes, for instance k and s, all its shades may be said to have a comic aspect. consequently, the letter c is a comedian" (november , l .) stevens' sense of comedy here extends beyond the simply humorous to tap the genre's association through its root, komodia, to revels of the commons. this fact is suggested by the poet's response, in the summer of , to poggioli's question about the identity of "man number one" in the third canto of "the man with the blue guitar." in the margins of a letter from poggioli, stevens wrote, "man without variation. man in c major. the complete realization of the idea of man. man at his happiest normal." stevens' linking of the key of c with "man at his happiest normal" is not surprising, given that his musical literacy was high. he would have known c major not only as one of the most commonly used key signatures but also as traditionally the key of "happy" music, whether charpentier's te deum or the early twentieth-century american folksong, "short'nin' bread." in choosing to ring the changes on the key of c over the course of crispin's search for a new continent within which his imagination might dwell, stevens appears, then, to have wanted to set the joys of the "normal" to music. as he remarked further on "the comedian" in the aforementioned letter to latimer, "the long and short of it is simply that i deliberately took the sort of life that millions of people live, without embellishing it except by the embellishments in the letter from poggioli, dated july , , is to be found in the translator's notes to his mattino domenicale edaltre poesie, , qtd. in baird ). here then i dissent from louis martz's contention that stevens' use of sound in "the comedian" is neither symbolic nor allegorical but is "rather an organizing, unifying factor that helps, by sonic emphasis and coalition to create the character of crispin" ( ). which i was interested at the moment: words and sounds" (l ). that stevens was, however, more deeply invested in his "embellishments" of the life of his everyman than his comment to latimer suggests is affirmed in a postscript to the aforementioned letter to simons in which he recalls that around the time of writing "the comedian" he had "[begun] to feel that [he] . . .wanted to share the common life" (l ). evincing the persistence of this desire, stevens concludes: "of course i don't agree with the people who say i live in a world of my own; i think that i am perfectly normal, but i see that there is a center. for instance, a photograph of a lot of fat men and women in the wood, drinking beer and singing hi-li hi-lo convinces me that there is a normal that i ought to try to achieve" (l ). a valorization of the "happiest normal," then, seems to have been central to the major c "music" of crispin's "introspective voyage": stevens' rhapsodic variations in the letter c, which are also variations on the key of c, a key of "man at his happiest normal," are written, as it were, on that instrument most suggestive of the quotidian "common life," the harmonium. in her recent commentary on the mature stevens' "love of the commonplace," liesl olson judges the quotation above to show "the older stevens. . .rereading] the verbal extravagance of his younger work, recasting "the comedian as the letter c" in a light more conducive to his new emphasis on the 'normal'" ( ). while olsen's contention that the quotidian becomes "an intensely theorized aspect of stevens' late work" is illuminating and valuable, her dismissal of the importance of a less theorized commons in "the comedian" bears reexamination (italics added, ). conclusion: brave men and bare earth. the heaviness we lighten by light will, by the hand of desire, faint, sensitive, the soft touch and trouble of the touch of the actual hand. ("an ordinary evening in new haven," xv, - ) composed by a man who urged us "to be the poets of our lives, and first of all in the smallest and most commonplace matters" (gs ), thus spake zarathustra is clearly concerned with "the poetry of living." that the quest for a "new happiness," as nietzsche named it in his preface to the second edition of the gay science, is the great subject of thus spake zarathustra is also apparent. shown from the outset to reject the "smug ease" (gs ) of modem man, zarathustra wants for us "to live in dangerl" (gs , italics in original), convinced as he is that peril and happiness go hand in hand. as f. d. luke shows us in his examination of the imagery of height in nietzsche, this is the significance of the figure of the seiltdnzer (tight-rope walker) at the beginning of thus spake zarathustra. to dance out across the tight-rope is "to defy the macabre tragedy of life, to laugh at the abyss, to achieve levity and overcome gravity . . . to be raised up like an eagle, to hover effortlessly, to dance lightly through the sky like a god" ( - ).' nietzsche's many comments on "the poets" suggest that he conceived their ideal representative to be one who, like the seiltdnzer, would dance out over the abyss, "achievfing] for insight into the impact of nietzsche's seiltdnzer on expressionist painting and poetry, see janice mccullagh. levity" (in both senses) and overcoming the "gravity" (weight, sorrow) of earthly life. wallace stevens' numerous figures of the poet or artist have little of the tight-rope walker in them, although some do seem participants in a rather down-at-heel circus act, like the "old fantoche" who "hang[s] his shawl upon the wind" in "the man with the blue guitar" (xxx, - ), or the figure who earlier in the same poem is cast as a performing seal: "he held the world upon his nose / and this-a-way he gave a fling" (xxv, - ). at the end of the second book of the gay science, nietzsche observes that "because we are heavy and serious men in our ultimate depth, and are rather weights than men, there is nothing that does us so much good as the fool's cap and bells" (# , italics in original). no less than nietzsche, the weighty wallace stevens did intermittently wear the fool's cap. but whereas nietzsche's fool is a figure of ludic power who in embodying "all arrogant, soaring, dancing, mocking, childish and blessed art" allows us not to get bogged down in our own weightiness and thereby "lose the free dominion over things which our ideal demands of us" (ibid, italics in original), stevens' fools often serve to remind us of our fragility and limits: of our essential helplessness in the face of forces larger than ourselves. where nietzsche's fool is always projected as the moving spirit of the revels, like feste in twelfth night, stevens' often seem closer kin to that quintessential modem butt of the cosmic joke, the waif-like charlie chaplin. my strong desire over the course of this dissertation has been to read stevens contra nietzsche. recognizing the practical, theoretical, and rhetorical problems that would attend see further in the gay science (nietzsche's preface to the nd edition delights in the selection of "songs" appended "in which a poet makes merry over all poets in a way not easily pardoned," and the very first aphorism in the book disparages "the poets" for having "always been the valets of some morality or other." see also thus spake zarathustra, especially the chapter titled "poets" in book ii. claiming direct contact, i have stuck largely to trying to complicate our understanding of stevens as a nietzschean. in concluding, however, i turn to three poems from ideas of order, "how to live. what to do" ( ), "delightful evening" ( ), and "evening without angels" ( ), arguing that these poems show trace of stevens actually reading of nietzsche—reading him, that is, both affirmatively, and resistantly. in a letter written to ronald lane latimer, on november , , stevens described "how to live. what to do" as his favourite poem in ideas of order "because it so definitely represents my way of thinking" (l ). here is the poem in full: last evening the moon rose above this rock impure upon a world unpurged. the man and his companion stopped to rest before the heroic height. coldly the wind fell upon them in many majesties of sound: they that had left the flame-freaked sun to seek a sun of fuller fire. instead there was this tufted rock massively rising high and bare beyond all trees, the ridges thrown like giant arms among the clouds. there was neither voice nor crested image, no chorister, nor priest. there was only the great height of the rock and the two of them standing still to rest. there was the cold wind and sound it made, away from the muck of the land that they had left, heroic sound joyous and jubilant and sure. recalling my earlier discussions of correspondence in imagery between stevens' poems and nietzsche's philosophical writings, i trace a further hearkening to the philosopher's thought in "how to live. what to do": in its moon that rises "impure upon a world unpurged" ( ); in the two men's search for "a sun of fuller fire"( ); and in their finding rapture "away from the muck of the land" ( ), in the sound of the wind that is "joyous, jubilant and sure" ( ). i also see striking parallels between this favourite poem of stevens and nietzsche's description of the moment of his discovery of his idea of eternal recurrence, recorded in ecce homo and reproduced by his sister elisabeth in her introduction to the oscar levy edition of thus spake zarathustra. as this famous passage reveals, nietzsche experienced this moment of discovery at decidedly "heroic height" (ibid, ): the fundamental idea of my work—namely, the eternal recurrence of all things—this highest of all possible formulae of a yea-saying philosophy, first occurred to me in august . made a note of the thought on a sheet of paper, with the postscript: , feet beyond men and time! that day i happened to be wandering through the woods alongside the lake of silvaplana, and i halted beside a huge, pyramidal and towering rock not far from surlei. it was then that the thought struck me. looking back now, i find that exactly two months previous to this inspiration, i had had an omen of its coming in the form of a sudden and decisive alteration in my tastes—more particularly in music. it would even be possible to consider all "zarathustra" as a musical composition. at all events, a very necessary condition in its production was a renaissance in myself in the art of hearing. in a small mountain resort (recoaro) near vicenza, where i spent the spring of , and my friend and maestro, peter gast—also one who had been bom again—discovered that the phoenix music that hovered over us, wore lighter and brighter plumes than it had done theretofore. while the correspondences are not absolute between nietzsche's recollection here and "how to live. what to do," they are compelling: in "the man and his companion" being re-bom in stevens' poem in the shadow of a massive rock and into the "many majesties of sound" of a cold wind we might read a conflation of nietzsche's own epiphanies, first in vicenza where he experienced with his beloved friend, peter gast, "a renaissance . . . in the art of hearing," and second, in that ecstatic moment before the "huge, pyramidal and towering rock not far from surlei." if we allow the possibility of such a conflation, we may glimpse, in fact, stevens' direct investment in nietzsche's program for "the poetry of living." that "how to live. what to do" may not simply recapitulate nietzsche's moments of glory, however—assuming that it does so at all—is suggested by the fact that the discovery by its "man and his companion" of a "tufted rock" is explicitly described as being achieved "instead [of]" the sought-after "sun of fuller fire." further defined as being invested with "neither voice nor crested image," this rock arguably refuses the kind of inspiration that nietzsche had sensed two months before his ramble above surlei. rather than ultimately perceiving something like "the phoenix music," stevens' alpine walkers find only "the great height of rock" and the sound of the wind. stevens' determination to strike an independent line from this heroic guide to life as poetry at high elevation, might be further discerned in "delightful evening," composed a year after "how to live. what to do" and positioned as the final poem in ideas of order. here is the poem in full: a very felicitious eve, herr doktor, and that's enough, though the brow in your palm may grieve at the vernacular of light (omitting reefs of cloud): empurpled garden grass; the spruces' outstretched hands; the twilight overfull of wormy metaphors although over the course of his study of nietzschean intertexts in the early stevens, b. j. leggett is scrupulous to avoid the rhetoric of "canny critics," even he is drawn to speculate that "delightful evening" "may actually be addressed to nietzsche" ( ). as leggett reminds us, when hi simon asked stevens to whom "herr doktor" might refer, the poet replied in typically cryptic idiom, "any philosopher, particularly one of the german type" (l ). that stevens' image of "any philosopher . . . of the german type" might well be nietzsche himself gains credence in light of the fact, as leggett notes further, that one of the best known and widely- circulated photographs of nietzsche "depicts the philosopher staring sternly and somewhat disconsolately to one side, his prominent brow resting in his right hand" ( ). recalling nietzsche's discussion of the "arbitrary" nature of metaphors in "on truth and lies in a nonmoral sense," leggett suggests the reference to "wormy metaphors" in "delightful evening" as a nietzschean figure that describes "at least in part metaphors that worm their way out of fixed designations, metaphors that are difficult to hold on to or that appear arbitrary, that are not inevitable" ( ). leggett's reading here is valuable, particularly as it does not simply assume that "wormy metaphors" could only be a negative figure. but he may stretch his point too far when he claims that the "wormy metaphors" of "delightful evening" and the "ecstatic air" of "botanist on alp (no. )"( ) exhibit an equivalent investment in a happy world of becoming. this "herr doktor" is, after all, said to "grieve" at "the twilight overfull i of wormy metaphors" ( - ), "overfull" surely suggesting unfortunate excess, rather than welcome abundance. furthermore, reading "delightful evening" as simply recapitulating nietzsche's thought suggests a certain blindness—or, rather, deafness— to the mildly teasing tone with which it addresses its philosopher subject: "a very felicitous eve, / herr doktor, and that's enough" ( - ). the writings of nietzsche suggest again and again that mere "felicity" is never "enough." finally, in its presentation of this "herr doktor" as one who "grieve[s] / / at the vernacular of light / (omitting reefs of cloud)," could "how to live. what to do" be recalling—and remonstrating with—first zarathustra's (and nietzsche's) distaste for the vernacular commons, and second, their passionate attachment to a clear sky as a space of transcendent nobility? while stevens' poetic (and philosophical) exploration of the "meaning of the earth" and the will of men" were undeniably nietzschean in some respects, his sense of the brave joy that should attend our recognition that "we live in . . . [an] island solitude, unsponsored, free" is patently stevensian in its essential humility. though stevens in the late poem "the final soliloquy of the interior paramour"( ) will name the imagination as "that highest candle lighting] the dark"( ), it is just a candle, solitary and ephemeral and destined to be blown out. something of the essential vulnerability of the human spirit registers in the final lines of "evening without angels," also from ideas of order: bare earth is best. bare, bare, except for our own houses, huddled low beneath the arches and their spangled air, beneath the rhapsodies of fire and fire, where the voice that is in us makes a true response, where the voice that is great within us rises up, as we stand gazing at the rounded moon. ("evening without angels" - ). of course, in stevens' litany, "bare earth is best. bare, bare," we might hear nietzsche's own determination to strip the altars of illusion, tradition, and custom, might hear zarathustra's exhortation that a humanity intent upon a "new happiness" must be hard as a diamond. but whereas nietzsche repeatedly projects his vision of heroic humanity above or beyond "the muck see tsz, iii, lvi, . of the land," overcoming gravity and dancing "on all edges, / wave-crests, cliffs and mountain ledges," to recall the words of nietzsche's "dancing song to the mistral wind," stevens identifies "the voice that is in us [that] makes a trae response" as coming from "our own houses, huddled low i beneath the arches and their spangled air, / beneath the rhapsodies of fire and fire" (italics added). moreover, while it is trae that elsewhere, and repeatedly, in stevens, that nietzschean "brave man," the sun, extends the promise of a greater than human splendour, here it is the "rounded moon" that draws forth "the voice that is great within us." admittedly, an earlier line in the poem, the emphatic declaration, "let this be clear that we are men of sun" ( ) has a more triumphant tone. while conceding that here again we may find the "nietzschean" stevens giving voice, i would counter that these "men of the sun" seem rather more forlorn than nietzsche would have liked: it is, after all, as "sad men" that they "made angels" of a warm star. the epigraph which accompanies "evening without angels," from the contemporary italian philosopher, mario rossi, reads: "the great interests of man: air and light, the joy of having a body, the voluptuousness of looking." there could well be something of the nietzschean readable in stevens' choice of these lines: certainly both air and light were essential to nietzsche's own bright spirit. given the physical suffering that nietzsche himself endured intermittently, and increasingly, throughout his life, the "joy of having a body" must have frequently eluded him. but then again, he did know that joy of "walk[ing] in the alps in the caresses of reality," to recall the epigraph to my first chapter. but what, finally, of the "voluptuousness of looking"? as the original exponent of perspectivism, as such a significant philosopher of vision, as gary shapiro as shown, nietzsche might equally be understood as the proponent of "voluptuous looking"—at least in the abstract. but in "evening without angels" the final scene of "voluptuous looking" constitutes a most un-nietzschean tableau. in my fourth chapter i referred briefly to the moment in book ii of thus spake zarathustra, when zarathustra derides the moon for its "immaculate"—that is, sterile—"perception," for pretending to a pregnancy that is false and a desire that is wholly retentive. in "evening without angels" we find the same planetary body in apparently fertile correspondence with the brave bare men of earth, who in fact discover that "the voice that is great within [them] rises up" as they "stand gazing at the rounded moon." where nietzsche projects the poet as a super-human hero who would seiltzaner-like dance out over the abyss, stevens' recurring focus is rather on the possibility of a poetics sufficient to help ordinary men and women, people of the commons, "live [their] lives" (cpp, ). as he put it in "an ordinary evening in new haven," we live by "instinct" in a perpetual dance between our brave projection of the earth as "gay tournamonde" and our even braver knowledge of it as "bare rock." this dance is nietzschean, at times, but it is more often, simply, stevensian. we can only "lighten" the heaviness of an earth-bound life, not overcome it, and only by "light will," at that. as stevens knew so well, our human attachment to such things as "the soft / touch and trouble of the touch of the actual hand" is an essential vulnerability that is the very soul of poetry. seepg. - . works cited primary sources bachelard, gaston. air and dreams: an essay on the imagination of movement. . trans. edith r. farrell and c. frederick farrell. dallas: dallas institute of humanities p, . brooke, rupert. 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"stevens' 'the rock' and j. hillis miller's practice of misreading." wallace stevens journal ( ): - . lensing, george s. wallace stevens: a poet's growth. baton rouge: louisiana state up, . wallace stevens and the seasons. baton rouge: louisiana state up, . lentricchia, frank. ariel and the police: michel foucault, william james, wallace stevens. madison: u of wisconsin p, . letteri, mark. "the theme of health in nietzsche's thought." man and world ( ): - . leonard, j. s., and c. e. wharton. the fluent mundo: wallace stevens and the structure of reality. athens: u of georgia p, . linebarger, david m. "'orchestrating' stravinsky: petrashka's ghost and stevens's 'the comedian as the letter c . " wallace stevens journal ( ): - . lippitt, john, ed. nietzsche's futures. new york: st. martin's, . litz, a. walton. introspective voyager: the poetic development of wallace stevens. oxford: oxford up, . longenbach, james. wallace stevens: the plain sense of things. oxford: oxford up, . luke, f. d. "nietzsche and the imagery of height." pasley, - . macleod, glen. "stevens at the front: 'lettres d'un soldat." wallace stevens journal ( ): - . mccullagh, janice. "the tightrope walker: an expressionist image." the art bulletin ( ): - . mencken, h. l. friedrich nietzsche. ( ) new brunswick, nj: transaction publishers, . miller, j. hillis. poets of reality: six twentieth-century writers. cambridge: belknap p, . - - - . "stevens' rock and criticism as cure." parts i, ii. georgia review ( ): - ; - . miles, john. "earthy anecdote." wallace stevens journal ( ): - . morgan, george allen. what nietzsche means. cambridge: harvard up, . morse, samuel french. 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"elegy and anti-elegy in stevens' harmonium: mockery, melancholia, and the pathetic fallacy." journal of modern literature ( ): - . riddell, joseph. the clairvoyant eye: the poetry and poetics of wallace stevens. baton rouge: louisiana state up, . '"neo-nietzschean clatter'"-speculation and the modernist poetic image, boundary . : ): - . rieke, alison. "the sound of the queen's seemings in 'description without place'." wallace stevens journal ( ): - . rosen, stanley. the mask of enlightenment: nietzsche's zarathustra. cambridge: cambridge up, . schaum, melita. ed. wallace stevens and the feminine. tuscaloosa: u of alabama p, . schoening, mark. "sacrifice and sociability in the modem imagination: wallace stevens and the cold war." contemporary literature ( ): - . schutte, ofelia. beyond nihilism: nietzsche without masks. chicago: u of chicago p, . shapiro, gary. archaeologies of vision: foucault and nietzsche on seeing and saying. chicago: uofchicagop, . shaviro, steven. '"that which is always beginning': stevens's poetry of affirmation." pmla ( ): - . simms, william gilmore. the life of captain john smith, the founder of virginia ( ). freeport, ny: books for libraries p, . simons, hi. "the genre of wallace stevens." borroff - . smith, hugh. "stevens' 'earthy anecdote." explicator ( ): - . steilberg, hays. "from dolson to kaufmann: philosophical nietzsche reception in america, - ." putz, - . stevens, holly. souvenirs and prophecies: the young wallace stevens. new york: knopf, . strom, martha. "the comedian as the sounds of the letter c." the wallace stevens journal ( ): - . - - -. "stevens' earthy anecdotes." the new england quarterly ( ): - — . "wallace stevens' revisions of crispin's journal: a reaction against the 'local'." american literature ( ): - . taupin, rene. the influence of french symbolism on modern american poetry. trans. william pratt and anne rich pratt. ed. william pratt. ams studies in modem lit. . new york: ams, . tirrell, lynne. "sexual dualism and women's self-creation: on the advantages and disadvantages of reading nietzsche for feminists." burgard - . van der will, wilfried. "nietzsche in america: fashion and fascination" history of european ideas ( ): - . vendler, helen. on extended wings: wallace stevens' longer poems. cambridge, mass: harvard up, . — . wallace stevens: words chosen out of desire. knoxville: u of tennessee p, . voros, gyorgyi. notations of the wild: ecology in the poetry of wallace stevens. iowa city: u of iowap, . welles, sumner. the time for decision. new york: harper, . "the vision of a world at peace." the virginia quarterly review. : ( ): - . wilson, edmund. to the finland station: a study in the writing and acting of history. new york: doubleday, . zapf, hubert. "elective affinities and american differences: nietzsche and harold bloom." putz, - . selected bibliography ackerman, r. d. "death and fiction: stevens' mother of beauty." elh ( ): - . bauer, paul. "the politics of reticence: wallace stevens in the cold war era," twentieth century literature ( ): - . bevis, william w. "the arrangement of harmonium." mcnamara - . . mind of winter: wallace stevens, meditation, and literature. pittsburgh: u of pittsburgh p, . blackmur, r. p. "examples of wallace stevens." . language as gesture: essays in poetry. new york: harcourt, . rpt. in brown and haller, - . bomstein, george. transformations of romanticism in yeats, eliot, and stevens. chicago: chicago up, . boroff, marie. language and the poet: verbal artistry in frost, stevens, and moore. chicago: chicago up, . brinton, crane. nietzsche. cambridge: harvard up, . brogan, jacqueline vaught. the violence within / the violence without: wallace stevens and the emergence of a revolutionary poetics. athens, ga: u of georgia p, . brown, ashley and robert s. haller, eds. the achievement of wallace stevens. new york: gordian, . davenport, guy. "spinoza's tulips" reproduced in the geography of the imagination. san francisco: north point press, . - . fussell, paul. the great war and modern memory. oxford: oxford up, . gelpi, albert. wallace stevens: the poetics of modernism. cambridge: cambridge up, . gemes, ken. "nietzsche's critique of truth." philosophy and phenomenological research ( ): - . gerber, natalie. "stevens' prosody: meaningful rhythms." wallace stevens journal ( ): - . gross, harvey ed. the structure of verse: modern essays on prosody. new york: ecco, . halliday, mark. stevens and the interpersonal. princeton: princeton up, , higgins, kathleen marie. comic relief: nietzsche's gay science. new york: oxford up, . holander, stefan. wallace stevens and the realities of poetic language. new york: routledge, . jarrell, randall. poetry and the age. new york: vintage, . kazin, alfred. on native grounds: an interpretation of modern american prose literature. new york: harcourt, brace, and world, . konzett, matthias. the listener's own sense: wallace stevens and the poetics of modernism. diss. emory u, . kuenzli, rudolf e. "nietzsche's zerography: thus spoke zarathustra." boundary ( ): - . leggett, b. j. late stevens: the final fiction. baton rouge: louisiana state up, . wallace stevens and poetic theory: conceiving the supreme fiction. chapel hill: u of north carolina p, . longenbach, james. "wallace stevens and figurative languge: pro and con." wallace stevens journal ( ): - . lydenberg, harry miller. history of the new york public library. boston: gregg press, . maeder, beverly. wallace stevens' experimental language: the lion in the lute. new york: st. martin's, . macleod, glen. wallace stevens and company: the harmonium years, - . ann arbor: umi research p, . mcfadden, george. "nietzschean values in comic writing." boundary ( ): - . morse, samuel french. wallace stevens: poetry as life. new york: pegasus, . nissen, axel. "perpetuum mobile: reading wallace stevens' "the man with the blue guitar." english studies ( ): - . norman, judith. "nietzsche and early romanticism." journal of the history of ideas ( ): - . o'connor, william van. the shaping spirit: a study of wallace stevens. new york: russell, . owen, david. "nietzsche, enlightenment, and the problem of noble ethics." lippitt, - , perry, petra. "deleuze's nietzsche." boundary ( ): - . quinn, justin. gathered beneath the storm: wallace stevens, nature, and community. dublin: university college dublin p, . richardson, joan. wallace stevens. new york: beechtree books, . riddel, joseph n. "the authorship of wallace stevens' 'on poetic truth'." modern language notes ( ): - . sharpe, tony. wallace stevens: a literary life. new york: st. martin's, . woodland, malcolm. wallace stevens and the apocalyptic mode. iowa city: u of iowa p, . microsoft word - abstract preface etc b.doc neglected knowing: some characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting by john tarlton (med, ma, ba, btrain) school of education and professional studies faculty of education griffith university submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of doctor of philosophy april, removal notice some images have been removed from the digital version of this thesis for copyright reasons. ii abstract this dissertation explores the human aesthetic experience. it does so through phenomenological investigations of two artist-educators, one full time artist and one art theorist-educator. this investigation is motivated by a curiosity to identify and explain the characteristics of ‘positive’ aesthetic experiences engendered by and used in paintings as an artistic art form. an eclectic blending of qualitative and phenomenological methods is used to address the guiding research question: what are the bases for the perception and description of the phenomena of aesthetic experience in painting? the findings suggest that understanding aesthetic experience requires reconciliation between intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist positions. only by acknowledging both of these positions’ contributions and reconciling their paradigmatic differences can a comprehensive account of the aesthetic experience be advanced. despite certain characteristic similarities, it is suggested that heightened pleasurable response to a painting remains fundamentally a subjective concern for the viewer and that the attainment of pleasurable response may incorporate any and all such relational or essentialist manifestations which the viewer believes or deems necessary. here, divergent importations, analytically elusive and non-conforming natures inherent in personal experiencing, rather than theoretical cannon, drives heightened aesthetic response. by implication, it is suggested that the quality of the desired experience should also drive the nature of pedagogical and curriculum implementation. nine major characteristics and five sub-characteristics (subsumed within the first characteristic) of positive aesthetic experience in painting are identified through this investigation. these characteristics relate to: (i) immediacy and totality of experience, (ii) associative aspects being embedded in form, (iii) metaphorical response replacing measurement, (iv) awarenesses of technical virtuosity, novelty and the idea of identifying with the ‘artist’s eye’, (v) personal remembrances associated with the experience, (vi) the acknowledgement of a sense of mystery, (vii) presumed transformative characteristics are present and relate to the subject self image, the view that paintings transcend their physical objective status and the idea of an on-going power of experience, (viii) aesthetic experience stems from a perceptual sensitising of ordinary experience, and that (ix) both mind and body are one within the experience. iii the five subsumed characteristics within the characteristic of immediacy and totality of experience concern notions of: (a) regard for pre-knowledge and a presumption of (b) effortless cognition. in addition, there is the (c) belief in a non- sequencing or ordering of the experience which can be (d) entered into from any number of divergent points of interest. finally, an acknowledgement of the (e) concept of the sublime is suggested that conflates both modernist and postmodernist thought. these characteristics, drawn from phenomenological reflections of the research participants, are set before informing concepts relating to aesthetics, the explicated characteristics of aesthetic experience as proposed by a selection of prominent scholars in the field and the influences of two generalised opposing epistemologies; those being intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist in nature. the key theoretical contributions arising from this investigation are nine fold. these contributions concern: (i) a further explication of characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting, (ii) a conciliatory positioning of epistemologies, (iii) the contribution of immediacy, (iv) qualities and meanings, (iv) self-justifying experience with underlying contextual importations, (vi) the relevance of modernist paintings in a postmodernist climate, (vii) intensified experience, (viii) a conciliatory sublime, and (ix) dominance of the experiential. the key pedagogical and curriculum implications concern aspects of experiential knowing, corresponding strategies for experiential knowing, the questioning of contemporary curriculum: a critique and drawbacks within the implications. iv statement of originality this work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. to the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. ______________________________ john tarlton v acknowledgments i would like to thank my supervisors dr stephen billett and dr glenda nalder for their expertise and encouragement. in addition, i would like to thank jill ryan for her succinct editorial advice and my fellow research participants chris worfold, caroline penny and dr elizabeth ruinard for their interest and enthusiasm throughout the project. paintings used in the dissertation pablo picasso. guernica ( ). tempera on canvas. museo reina sofia, madrid. peter booth. ( ). oil on canvas. national gallery of australia, canberra. jake and dinos chapman. zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model ( ). saatchi collection, london. damien hirst. this little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home ( ). steel, grp composites, glass, pig, formaldehyde, electronic motor. saatchi collection, london. eugene delacroix. liberty leading the people ( ). oil on canvas. musee du louvre. world war two american propaganda poster (rosey) ( - ). history s.about.com/…/photos/blywwiip .htm ( - - ). julie rrap. camouflage # (jeanne) ( ). photograph mounted on lexcen (edition of ). from the ‘a-r-mour’ exhibition ( ). roslyn oxley gallery, sydney. kathe kollwitz. self-portrait ( ). lithograph. los angeles county museum of contemporary art, los angeles. paula rego. recreation ( ). pastel on paper mounted on aluminum. kemper museum of contemporary art. kansas city, missouri. cristo and jeanne-claude. surrounded islands, biscayne bay, miami, florida ( - ). installation. (photograph by the artists). marcel duchamp. fountain ( , original lost). ready-made (urinal). philadelphia museum of art, philadelphia, pennsylvania. jim dine. five paintbrushes ( ). etching. art museum, princeton university, new jersey. reproduction of a photograph taken in of georges braque. image on title page of dissertation, pacific light (detail) ( ). john tarlton. watercolour, gouache and ink on paper. collection of the artist. participants’ selections of paintings for reflection (john tarlton) stieg persson. death’s head abstraction # ( ). oil on canvas. queensland art gallery, brisbane. vi georges braque. marble table ( ). oil on canvas. musee national d’ art moderne, paris. (chris worfold) julian schnabel. the conversion of st. paolo malfi ( ). gesso, oil, resin and print on canvas, pace wildenstein, new york. vincent van gogh. thatched cottages at cordeville ( ). oil on canvas. musee d’orsay, paris. (caroline penny) mary cassatt. emmie and her child ( ). oil on canvas. wichita art museum, wichita. claude monet. argenteuil ( ). oil on canvas. musee national d’ art moderne, paris. (elizabeth ruinard) jackson pollock. lavender mist: number ( ). oil, enamel and aluminum on canvas. museum of modern art, new york. selected works ( ) by chris worfold used in the creative synthesis (elaborated narrative) in chapter nine night light ( ). oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. a fleeting floating world ( ). oil and mixed media on sheet metal. circus roses ( ). enamel, oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. night chair ( ). oil and mixed media on board sail into an ocean leave a sea ( ). oil and acrylic adhesive on board. forked tree ( ). oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. southern cross ( ). oil and mixed media on board. sunflowers on the dining room table ( ). oil and mixed media on board. man in rain ( ). oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. the willing line ( ). oil, acrylic, acrylic adhesive and fabric. mother-in-law’s tongue ( ). oil and mixed media on board. songwriter ( ). oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. where he was, what he was doing ( ). oil on sheet metal. selected works ( ) by john tarlton used in the creative synthesis (elaborated narrative) in chapter nine duet ( ). charcoal/coloured pencil. the weight of all that beauty ( ). oil on wood and plywood construction. greetings from gallopoli ( ). watercolour/gouache/collage. (with lemon…) ( ). watercolour/gouache/collage. a letter to nora ( ). charcoal and coloured pencil. something quick for the kids ( ).watercolour/gouache/collage vii considering the simple vase ( ). charcoal and coloured pencil. … with cake ascending ( ). watercolour/gouache/collage. my attempts… ( ). watercolour/gouache/collage. the old singer ( ). charcoal and coloured pencil. myth number six: ( ). watercolour and gouache. post-modern post-mortem ( ). serigraph. selected works ( ) by caroline penny used in the creative synthesis (elaborated narrative) in chapter nine along the lane, nsw ( ). oil on canvas. spooky’s beach, angourie, nsw ( ). oil on canvas sunflowers and gladioli ( ).oil on canvas. across the flat ( ). oil on canvas. pressing the cotton ( ).oil on canvas. among the azaleas ( ). oil on canvas. ibis and cootes ( ). oil on canvas. brownie’s corner of the hunter valley ( ). oil on canvas. taking the horses home ( ). oil on canvas. pathway to peace ( ). oil on canvas. view from mcpherson’s point, brisbane ( ). oil on canvas. under the veranda, leatherhead ( ). oil on canvas. list of tables table - explicated characteristics and discriminating qualities of aesthetic experience ........................................................................................ page table - some characteristic comparisons of intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextual properties.......................................................................... page table - general attributes of modernism and postmodernism ......................... page table - structural elements (characteristics) of aesthetic experience by csikszentihalyi and robinson ( ) ............................................................... page table - knieter’s ( ) characteristics of aesthetic experience .................... page table - shared characteristics of aesthetic experience ................................... page table - moustakas’ ( ) critical processes ................................................. page table - epistemological orientations of observed characteristics................... page viii table of contents abstract ......................................................................................................................... ii acknowledgments .........................................................................................................v list of tables .............................................................................................................. vii chapter one -- introduction ........................................................................ the scope of the study ................................................................................................... purpose and focus of the study ...................................................................................... implications for education and justification of goals......................................... motivation.......................................................................................................... theoretical underpinnings ................................................................................. initial conceptual influences ............................................................................ the dilemma of conflicting epistemologies..................................................... the nature of the inquiry.............................................................................................. the research question and participants ............................................................ contributions arising from the dissertation’s findings and an overview of its implications for art education ...................................................................................... structure of dissertation ............................................................................................... chapter two -- establishing theoretical bases .............................. introduction and overview .......................................................................................... intentions...................................................................................................................... the aesthetic as a mode of knowing ............................................................................ fortification of the aesthetic ........................................................................................ the sublime.................................................................................................................. an intrinsic/essentialist account ...................................................................... a subjective/contextualist account .................................................................. summary .......................................................................................................... aesthetics as a discipline ............................................................................................. essentialist beginnings..................................................................................... introducing contextualist concerns .................................................................. the confusional air of aesthetics...................................................................... influences of feminist theory ........................................................................... theoretical pressures from the left .................................................................. practice and pedagogy ..................................................................................... discipline based art education (dbae)....................................................................... dbae in practice ............................................................................................. summary .......................................................................................................... chapter three -- intrinsic/essentialist perspective...................... introduction and overview ........................................................................................... the aesthetic attitude and disinterestedness ................................................................ psychical distancing......................................................................................... regarding human agency................................................................................. formalist qualities........................................................................................................ elements of elitism, percipience and sensibility.......................................................... summary ...................................................................................................................... ix chapter four -- subjective/contextualist perspective .............. introduction and overview ........................................................................................... influences from dewey................................................................................................ art cognition ................................................................................................................ looking is thinking .......................................................................................... the intelligent eye............................................................................................ cognition as interpretation............................................................................... aesthetic experience in postmodern and visual culture............................................... postmodernism................................................................................................. deconstruction ..................................................................................... reconstruction ..................................................................................... visual culture ................................................................................................... the further marginalisation of high art ................................................ resistance ............................................................................................ the search for meaning.................................................................................... feminist viewpoints ......................................................................................... socialising art................................................................................................... summary ...................................................................................................................... chapter five -- bridging essentialist and contextualist perspectives ....................................................................... introduction and overview ........................................................................................... bio-evolutionary theory ............................................................................................... aesthetic experience as a hybrid concept .................................................................. post-formal aesthetics ................................................................................................ pragmatist aesthetics .................................................................................................. aesthesia .................................................................................................................... the eclectic imperative .............................................................................................. conclusion and summary .......................................................................................... chapter six -- existing characteristics of aesthetic experience .................................................................................... introduction and overview ......................................................................................... intrinsic/essentialist characteristics of aesthetic experience ...................................... monroe beardsley .......................................................................................... harold osborne .............................................................................................. contextualist and conciliatory characteristics of aesthetic experience...................... mihaly csikszentmihalyi and rick robinson................................................ gerald knieter................................................................................................ david hargreaves and rod taylor ................................................................ summary .................................................................................................................... chapter seven – methodology ................................................................ introduction and overview ......................................................................................... the research question ................................................................................................ how the research aim was approached ...................................................................... separating theory from experience ............................................................................ a qualitative approach ............................................................................................... the de-privileging of a conceptual framework.............................................. x the selection of a heuristic/phenomenological approach .............................. heuristic research............................................................................... an overview of moustakas’ heuristic research methodology............ potential weaknesses within the selected methodology............................................. participant involvement in this study......................................................................... my inclusion as participant ............................................................................ participants’ selection and assessment and their chosen paintings................ criteria for selecting participants................................................................... disclaimer on the preponderance of modernist paintings within the selection of paintings ..................................................................................... sites................................................................................................................ ethical concerns and protocol .................................................................................... selection of tools for data collection ......................................................................... personal reflective writing and associated gatherings ................................... responding to set questions........................................................................... interview ........................................................................................................ collecting, collation and analysis of data .................................................................. moustakas’ six phases of heuristic research .................................................. further aspects of collation and analysis ................................................................... coding............................................................................................................ the search for themes .................................................................................... triangulation and validity issues ............................................................................... limitations of study ................................................................................................... chapter eight -- preview of the explicated characteristic of aesthetic experience ........................................... overview.................................................................................................................... aesthetic experiences................................................................................................. explicated characteristics of aesthetic experience ..................................................... nine observed characteristics of aesthetic experience ................................... comparison of the existing theories with the characteristics of aesthetic experience explicated within the study....................................... chapter nine -- elaboration of the characteristics of aesthetic experience through embellished narrative (creative synthesis)....................................................................................... overview and introduction ........................................................................................ creative synthesis ...................................................................................................... chapter ten – conclusion........................................................................... overview.................................................................................................................... purpose....................................................................................................................... summary of findings.................................................................................................. key theoretical contributions and implications ......................................................... explication of characteristics of aesthetic experience ................................... a conciliatory positioning.............................................................................. the contribution of immediacy...................................................................... qualities and meaning.................................................................................... self-justifying experience with underlying contextual importations............. the relevance of modernist painting in a hostile postmodern climate .......... xi intensified experience .................................................................................... a conciliatory sublime ................................................................................... dominance of the experiential ....................................................................... key pedagogical and curriculum implications .......................................................... experiential knowing ..................................................................................... corresponding strategies for experiential knowing ....................................... the questioning of curriculum: a critique...................................................... drawbacks within the implications................................................................ realities and further research..................................................................................... references .......................................................................................................... appendices ........................................................................................................... . information sheet to potential research participants .............................................. . expression of consent to selected research participants ........................................ . griffith university human research ethics committee approval ....................... . abbreviated qualifications of scholars presented in chapter six .......................... chapter one the aesthetic experience the scope of the study this dissertation explores, discusses and elaborates what constitutes and counts as aesthetic experience. this is realised through exploring the characteristics of positive aesthetic experience as observed through encounters with paintings, as an artistic form. it does so through phenomenological investigations of two artist/educators, one full-time artist and one art theorist/educator in order identify and explain the characteristics of ‘positive’ aesthetic experiences engendered by and used in paintings. however, there is no universal theoretical agreement on what defines the aesthetic experience. indeed, it is an “extremely ambiguous notion” (shusterman, ). hence, an initial task is to discuss what constitutes that experience and to adopt or develop a way of understanding that experience. rhetorical philosophical eloquence and epistemologies offer us some direction or another. yet, philosophers have hotly argued about the identity and characteristics of aesthetic experience for at least the last two centuries, with seminal western tradition discourse dating back to around the fourth century bc with the philosophical works of plato and aristotle (fenner, a). alternatively, other aestheticians, like dickie ( ), have questioned its very existence, claiming that the phenomenon of experience cannot be divided into distinct classifications. furthermore, the phenomenon itself may be disguised within other definitional tags such as the ‘illuminated experience,’ a term coined by taylor ( ) in reference to hargreaves’ ( a) trauma theory, or as being mirrored within heightened psychological states such as csikszentmihalyi’s ( ) concept of ‘flow experience’ or maslow’s ( ) earlier proposals of ‘peak experiences.’ in the end, an actual taxonomy or composition of the aesthetic experience may remain more as something perceived by individuals than a solid and identifiable, empirically resolved conceptual entity. that is, it can be considered as much a subjective experience as an objective fact. one of the reasons for these philosophical/definitional dilemmas about the aesthetic experience can be partly traced to the notion that: …different thinkers [have] different interests… [t]he difficulty facing all these attempts at definition and theorizing [aesthetic experience] is, of course, the diversity of our experience of things … (smith, , p. ). or, as pearson ( ) more simply states: there are multiple ways of understanding art because there are multiple ways of thinking about art (pearson, , p. ). in other words, the aesthetic experience resides within that subjective domain where we seek personal and societal relevance and gratification in our experiencing of the world beyond the skin. because of this subjective perspective, one interpretation does not rule out the possibilities of other multiple and alternative interpretations (efland, ). indeed, its sources may be derived from anywhere along a disparate line ranging from personal experiences or group mysticisms to unwavering pragmatic adherences to particular genres of artistic form. it may incorporate essentialist belief that the experience is a result of non-agentic response to the universal, intrinsic (i.e. inherent) qualities which the artistic work displays or be appreciated for its contextual particularities involving social, political or moral meaning making. however, for the purposes of this dissertation, a tentative definition of positive aesthetic experience can be considered as the affirming, heightened and intensified state and perception concentrated on or derived from experiencing an art object. also proposed is that the experience be considered capable of encouraging sustained and renewable subject-directed inquiry and satisfaction. in other words, it works at a higher level than the mere informational or appreciative. that is, it rewards our actual/immediate or reflective re-visitation through reaffirmation or the discovery of new stimuli for the observer from engagement with the work. this is what makes understanding the positive aesthetic experience so salient, yet also so complex. the experiences examined in this dissertation are not those of usual participant acquaintanceships. indeed, the actualisation of the presumed states of aesthetic experiences should be considered rare (bell, [ ]; beardsley, ; csikszentmihalyi & robinson, ), as will be later discussed within the dissertation. the goal here is to examine extraordinary experiential encounters which have the power for personal invigoration and positive change. this is because such experiences are considered vehicles for personal and aesthetic transformations for those who engage with them. my focused interest is in the explication of such characteristics as they relate to individuals’ aesthetic experiences with paintings. furthermore (as will be observed through the dissertation’s findings), it is proposed that this definition can encompass aspects of both non-instrumental sensuous experience and the idea of pleasurable response derived from effortful cognitive inquiry and interrogation. therefore, this dissertation advances the conception of aesthetic experience as characterised by any and all qualities and meanings which support the concept of a heightened appreciation. these may or may not be tracked to perceptual qualities of the object or event and may or may not be dependent on contextual implications. it also embraces shusterman’s ( ) assertion that the aesthetic experience is immediate primarily in its ability to be enjoyed and valued through direct response -- for its own sake. that is, the enjoyment being offered by the art work, both conscious and unconscious, rather than having to rely on future reflection for gratification and pleasure (shusterman, ). in other words, while later reflection may intensify an ongoing interest in the experience, deferred gratification is not the primary force motivating the immediate experiencing. the conception of the aesthetic experience as advanced in this dissertation’s findings (incorporating both aesthetic and instrumental concerns) is far broader in scope than that envisioned by traditional aesthetic theories (e.g. modernist) or aggressive post-modern contextualisms (e.g. visual culture). it is conciliatory towards both of these positions. this dissertation contends that the initial, experienced primacy of immediate (i.e. sensuous) encounter revealed through the work may be influenced by subject intuition or mediated reflection upon the experience, both during and after the encounter. as proposed by shusterman ( ), there is always some influence of past experiences which shapes our experience of the now. in other words, as participants in cultures and societies, our personal responses in and to experience are shaped by our encounters with the cultural norms and practices we have encountered. that is, the immediacy of perceptual response is not purely instantaneous; it comes to the experience already exercised. for example, dewey asserts that “[m]emories not necessarily conscious but retentions that have been organically incorporated in the very structure of the self, feed present observation” (dewey, [ ], p. ). correspondingly, this immediacy can incorporate cognitive processes of reasoning, interpretation and speculation during the actuating experience, as well as in later recollection and reflection (shusterman, ). in short, while the actualised emotive immediacy of aesthetic experience may be spontaneous, the spontaneity and involuntary-like natures of the reactions can be predicated on personal cognitions tacitly developed earlier. these are held by individuals and stand to be intensified during the encounter with the painting and through later interrogations and reflections. the implications of conjoining both sensuous and mediated attributes can be seen as widening the conception of aesthetic experience as delineated in many existing accounts. however, by incorporating a wider position of the aesthetic experience, it is made more amenable to encompassing aesthetic, non-aesthetic and even anti-aesthetic modes of responses which are discussed later in the dissertation. therefore, this position acknowledges that all (or some, or combinations of) frames of references can be used as descriptors of heightened experiential encounter. in this way, positive aesthetic experience results from the interaction of various importations derived from both negotiations between the personally subjective and the objective qualities of the artifact. the breadth of this definitional scope is necessary to embrace the life- enhancing possibilities a heightened encounter with art can afford. while heightened pleasurable response as aesthetic experience is only one way of interacting with an art work (see carroll, ; fenner, a), the combination of sensuous and meditative reaction regarding pleasurable response opens, rather than closes, the possibilities of constituent experiences. in all, it does not matter whether we attend the heightened perception of the formal, designal aspects of a composition (i.e. its essential qualities) for its own sake, actualise the meaningful visual messages of individual/societal emancipation or draw personal comfort from emotionally sympathetic content. this is because all the above experiential responses, among a vast array of other possible heightened experiences, can add to the vivification of life. that is, proactive contextual meaningfulness and aesthetic (sensuous) appreciation of art works helps to positively influence, elevate and articulate humankind’s position within its environment (dewey, [ ]). this conciliatory, definitional expansion of the term aesthetic experience is also aligned with contemporary attempts to broaden the definitional stances and concerns which preoccupy the discipline of aesthetics in general (e.g. carroll, ; fenner, b; parsons, ; shusterman, ). through this eclectic stance, the definitional requirements of traditional aesthetic theories and certain aggressive postmodern negations of autonomous classification of art works and their appreciation are unconditional. it simply suggests that no one theoretical stance can adequately cover all contingencies inherent in heightened experiences of art works. as garber ( ) suggests initially in relation to art education, but also with relevance to aesthetic experience: [w]hy should we even want to point to a single theory? there is no one theory, because the social bases are ever-changing, with the possibility of contributions from anyone, any group (garber, , p. ). art works, like people, are ever evolving whereas most theory is propositionally finite and reliant on defending the immobility of its tenets. my defense of an open and eclectic stance rests on the observable ends (i.e. the attainment of pleasurable and mediated life enhancement) outweighing the means (i.e. strict adherence to the demarcations of theoretical stances which may limit or impede holistic understanding). a conciliatory widening of the concept of aesthetic experience to include both sensual and instrumental importations accomplishes this. the analysis of the collected data, in association with my research participants, concurs with this goal. purpose and focus of the study my aim in this study is to attempt an understanding and sympathetic portrayal of the aesthetic experience as it pertains to painting and informed practitioners. the goal is to identify its possible characteristics in order to inform my own and hopefully others’ pedagogy. that is, it is an undertaking to clarify and to index significant characteristics of the aesthetic experience to facilitate reference to, or guidance for, practical application and understanding. by doing so, it is intended to contribute to the body of knowledge concerning the identification and promotion of aspects of art appreciation in adult and vocational art education as well as illuminating notions of art appreciation generally. the decision to limit the study to the discipline of painting was based on the researcher’s thirty year knowledge of the discipline as a professional practitioner, length and focus restraints of the dissertation format and the medium’s ability to cogently represent other disciplines within the visual arts field. it is also based on the notion that painting is currently considered a favoured art medium within contemporary art practices (emery, ). for the purposes of this dissertation, as painting is arguably the most familiar and representative discipline within the visual arts, all references regarding the term ‘art’ are used synonymously with the term ‘painting.’ implications for education and justification of goals fundamental to this investigation of the positive characteristics of aesthetic experience are its ramifications for art education in general. justification for this inquiry can be seen as an attempt to clarify characteristics of the aesthetic experience and to contribute to the body of knowledge relating to fostering general art appreciation. as such, justification for this educational research can be considered through its advocacy for art education in five distinct ways. first, hargreaves ( a) sees one of the aims of fostering robust art appreciation as a means for assisting the general proactive education regarding students’ abilities to perceive both cultural/societal and natural environments more fully (a point also forwarded by eisner, ). that is, the identification of the characteristics of the aesthetic experience may sequentially lead to promoting student recognition, understanding and final proactive student solicitation of such experiences as a reward for, and in, themselves. second, according to hargraves ( a), a student’s ability to experience a heightened awareness in terms of art appreciation can be beneficial to personal empowerment -- an idea also shared by dewey ( [ ]) and as echoed by maslow’s ( [ ]) concept of peak experiences. third, in correspondence to the above, efland ( ) considers the function of art education to be, in part, that of assisting in the building of personal ‘reality constructions.’ these reality constructions are representations of the world, both real and imagined. the reality constructions are sourced from the social/cultural milieu in conjunction with the possibilities inherent in representing that world through imaginative metaphoric elaboration. this, in turn, helps build within the individual an understanding of the social and cultural environment (efland, ). in other words, art can help contribute to our understanding of the world through its representations of that world, both real and imagined. fourth, in addition to contributing to our understanding of the world, robust art appreciation and experience may also assist the advancement of perceptual skills, informed judgment and autonomy, informed life-long and leisure pursuits, and the appreciation of the wealth of imagery derived from our own (and other) cultures (dewey, [ ]; hargreaves, a). fifth, additional general benefits are held to occur in terms of the classroom (while also addressing the need for promoting the relationship of art to life). taylor ( ) contends that the heightened experience of a work of art can also establish a bridge that connects studying art with the practical aspects of creating it -- a point also advanced by dewey ( [ ]) and eisner ( ). from these speculations, both general and instrumental outcomes are achieved from art appreciation. yet, despite the potential benefits derivable from an aesthetic encounter with a work of art, the australia council reports that the average visitor to an art gallery devotes only two-to-three seconds of time viewing a work of art. further to this, a considerable proportion of the population considers the arts to have no real value (speck, ). this suggests that the importance and benefits of fostering aesthetic experience and art appreciation/meaning in general are not fully recognised or effectively deployed within the formative and subsequent educational domains -- or that the perceived benefits are illusory. therefore, an additional intention of exploring phenomenological responses surrounding the characteristics of positive aesthetic experiences in painting is to illuminate such inconsistencies. motivation the motivation for this research was initially fueled by my observations as a fine arts/design lecturer within the vocational education and training sector. it arises from a concern about a perceived general disinterest and passive student participation in matters relating to experiencing art and its role in critically informing student well- being and creative production. in addition, while my colleagues were aware of the benefits inherent in fostering a heightened awareness and perception of art works for the student population, little had been done to establish a dialogue or index communal understanding of its positive characteristics in order to underpin and assist inquiry regarding aesthetic experience in painting. on further personal reflection and building upon work undertaken in my masters dissertation (tarlton, ). i concluded that a satisfactory beginning would be to first establish a systematic sampling of observations regarding the possible characteristics of aesthetic experience with painting as expressed by representative artists/educators associated with fostering its acquisition. similar projected future inquiry into various other stakeholder groups would add to the growing accumulation of data from which to draw. this dissertation is the beginning of that ongoing personal inquiry. theoretical underpinnings to gain both qualitative and subjective information about the aesthetic experiences of informed participants, systematic samplings concern the collection and analysis of the participants’ relevant lived-world essences. that is, it was deemed necessary to search for possible common and distinct bases of positive aesthetic experience characteristics encountered in painting by incorporating a husserlian ( ) concept of the participants’ lived, immediate experience (livedworld). this lived, immediate experience and way of knowing is proposed by husserl ( ) as the natural pre- theoretical understanding upon which our later theoretical attitudes and ways of knowing are based. it is the experiencing of an object or other phenomena through a state of naïve-like wonder -- the object in itself prior to its conceptual labeling and categorising by others. the collection and analysis of the participants’ livedworld essences, or the essential nature of the phenomena and that which is unique to it (van manen, ), encompasses both these pre-theoretical and theoretical ways of knowing. (phenomenological issues are noted in this first chapter and later addressed in chapter seven). it is proposed that the unraveling of these essences concerning the characteristics of heightened experiential encounter with painting establishes a working conceptual framework. this framework comprises a well of articulated feelings and emotions from which to consolidate and draw on for future remedial learning and delivery concerning art appreciation strategies. so, to create an understanding of how future practices might assist the fostering of aesthetic experience, a clearer preliminary understanding of the phenomenological nature of its characteristics first needs systematic identification. with these premises in mind, hargreaves' ( a) and abbs’ ( ) earlier work, along with aspects of csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) interpretative methodology, are used as beginning referents for compiling phenomenological bases of aesthetic experience. in this regard, an attempt is made to gather interpretative accounts of what it was and felt like for the participants to be involved in the personal, evocative, subjective and emotive states that might comprise the aesthetic experience in painting for them. the aim here is not to impose rigid analytical benchmarks, but rather to contribute to what eisner sees as the “... paradox of revealing what is universal by examining what is particular” (eisner, a, p. ). it follows that a better understanding of the specific essences and characteristics produced through the participants' experiential reflections relating to their aesthetic experience should contribute to a general understanding of that phenomenon. in addition, once identified, these characteristics could be incorporated with, or used to marginalise the importance of, characteristics of aesthetic experience as proposed from established theories. furthermore, it is envisioned that the discovered, re-discovered or re-defined characteristics of the aesthetic experience in painting also assists in the selection of the most appropriate aspects from both essentialist and contextualist points of view (discussed later) for educational dissemination. a more informed pedagogy might then be established to assist the teaching for, and promotion of, positive student disposition about aesthetic education specifically, and student self- actualisation generally. so, in all, this research is undertaken in order to better identify and find sympathies with that which is so valued in the arts and yet remains so teasingly ill- defined: the aesthetic experience. initial conceptual influences in order to systematically orientate this research, an articulation of selected conceptual stances is required. the intention here is to establish a conceptual framework open enough to accommodate interpretative conceptions, yet be limited enough to demarcate and inform the research inquiry. in acknowledging the initial conceptual influences within the dissertation, weitz’s ( ) contention that any attempt to formulate a definition of what constitutes art [and its experiences] through the establishment of prerequisite properties (e.g. form, emotion, cognitive, intuitive presences and so on) is inadequate to the challenge of addressing the openness inherent in contemporary art practices. this research also takes into account weitz’s ( ) and eisner’s ( ) contentions that art must be seen as an ongoing, open concept where the introduction of new cases and conditions necessitate the continuous expansion or alteration of the concept of art itself (weitz, ; eisner, ). that is, creative manipulation of new technologies, media and purposes or the alteration of traditional modes of representation must be recognised and encompassed within that which is deemed art. this follows weitz’s ( ) denunciation of attempts to categorise art as if it were an assumed specifiable class of object, identified by universalist classificatory properties, for a more open concept of exploring its overriding functioning and employment. following weitz’s ( ) and eisner’s ( ) leads, the expansion of what then might constitute a ‘painting’ for the research participants (i.e. whether it be traditional oil on canvas, more unorthodox embellishments of collage, montage, low relief sculpture, imagery generated by computer or objects from visual culture not traditionally associated with fine art painting) was left to their own discretion. as a result, the research participants’ personal selections of paintings (predominately mainstream modernist painted by male artists) also shaped the trajectory of this research. that is, within the participants’ selection, there was an unforeseen negation of non-traditional examples of visual culture objects to act as exemplars. these non-intentional omissions thus limited the input of active contemporary visual culture and postmodern examples/objects. however, propositional aspects inherent in both theoretical views are revealed within the findings. that is, contemporary concerns became an integral part of the analysis of the characteristics of positive aesthetic experience, despite art object classification. further limitations regarding this issue are addressed in the methodology chapter. the dilemma of conflicting epistemologies two seemingly antithetical conceptual premises underlie this study. the first is whether the elusive, personal and heightened sense of awareness and experience with art works can be fostered through simple exposure to the artworks’ qualities. this is the intrinsic/essentialist stance. alternatively, the second position asks whether the experience is actually grounded in contextualist ‘meaning’. this subjective/contextualist view asserts that meaning-made experience stems from personal interpretation based on ontogeny and socially sourced knowledge. or, as this dissertation proposes, can the aesthetic experience be fostered and achieved by acknowledging a type of reconciliation between both the above conceptual premises. in other words, can the nature and characteristics of aesthetic experience be found within the idea of possible co-dependence. in this way, the attainment of aesthetic experience derives from an end product and process occurrence where both intrinsic/essentialist qualities and subjective/contextualist meanings spark-off, initiate, magnify and/or intensify each other. this dissertation’s examination of both general concepts and its phenomenological/heuristic investigations into the essences and personal significances of what characterises the aesthetic experience in painting illuminates the possibility of such a partnership. the epistemological concerns are elaborated and discussed throughout the dissertation. the nature of the inquiry the research question and participants the focus of the research topic is to elucidate the positive characteristics of the aesthetic experience in painting as seen through discursive and non-discursive presented reflections (essences) from two professional artists/educators, one full time professional artist and one art theorist/educator. the question which underpins this phenomenological/heuristic investigation into the characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting and acts as the foci for the topic and the data collection and analysis is: what are the bases for the perception and description of the phenomena of aesthetic experience in painting? in addressing this question, the participants were initially required to reflect upon a maximum of two paintings with which they had personally had encountered aesthetic experiences, complete written responses to predetermined sets of questions, keep a reflective journal (incorporating both discursive and non-discursive entries) and participate in tape recorded interviews. here, the participants were continually directed to respond without attempts to explain, but rather address their reflections toward personal lived-experience descriptions without relegating the experience to causal explanations or interpretative generalisations (van manen, ). the repeated emphasis on what it was like was in an attempt to “question something by going back again and again to the things themselves until that which is put to question begins to reveal something of its essential nature” (van manen, , p. ). this process established a kind of reflected familiarity with the question, a continual unraveling and exposure of non- essential associations, until the inner core of experience was exposed. artists/educators are selected as research participants to unlock this ‘inner core’ of the positive characteristics of aesthetic experience. this is because my methodological approaches require the explication of deep phenomenological description of sensory experience and the heuristic requirement for subject/researcher intense personal identification with the explored phenomena (emery, ; moustakas, ). so, my decision to solicit the input of artists/educators is based on their interest and absorption in the subject, training, intimate participation with the aesthetic experience and their role as facilitators for student acquisition. in addition, their selection is seen as advantageous in that their responses encompass both the non- discursive aspects of art experience (as respected creators/appreciators themselves) as well as being able to participate at the discursive level as discipline-trained and pedagogically informed participants within the art education field. prerequisite here is for participants who can articulate their aesthetic experience. by incorporating artists/educators as participants both intuitive knowing, which may be heightened or even indigenous to practitioners, and the discursive input derived from educated and informed praxis are best served. as noted by langer ( ), the philosophy of art requires the input from the practising artist working ‘from the inside.’ this is required to “test the power of its [philosophy of art] concepts and prevent empty or naïve generalizations” (langer, , p. iv). in other words, what is needed is to underscore an understanding in the experiencing of art through a familiarity with concepts, problems and context-specific dispositional matters which are ripe within the field of practical application. it is these additions to understanding that need inclusion; ones attained through aspects of situated learning, additions fortified from the input of its metaphorical, as well as the discursive language and understanding of the domain (langer, ). as foreshadowed, by gathering particular artist/educators’ phenomenological personal significations of the positive characteristics of aesthetic experience in painting, a composite list of predominant characteristics might be identified. these characteristics could, in turn, be compared and contrasted with philosophical, psychological and pedagogical interpretations (as addressed in chapter two, three, four, five and six). the proposed result of such an investigation would be a better understanding of what might constitute the characteristics of aesthetic experience in painting. these insights might then be used as the basic conceptual materials from which future sympathetic pedagogical approaches for the fostering and acquisition of aesthetic experience could be fashioned. this systematisation of characteristics, while asserting no claim of universal absolutes, could be viewed as a starting point for identification, classroom debate and stimulus for further student and artist/educator critical inquiry. it is with these thoughts in mind that the contributions from the dissertation’s findings are now presented. contributions arising from the dissertation’s findings and an overview of its implications for art education the contributions arising from this research extend the claim that understanding aesthetic experience requires reconciliation between the intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist positions. only by acknowledging both of these positions’ contributions and reconciling their paradigmatic differences can a comprehensive account of the aesthetic experience be advanced. the contributions established by this research are nine fold and include issues relating to ( ) a taxonomy and expansion of explicated characteristic of aesthetic experience, ( ) conciliatory positioning of aesthetic experience with regards to intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist epistemologies, ( ) the contributions of immediacy within aesthetic experience, ( ) the amalgamation of aesthetic qualities with contextualist meaning-making, ( ) issues relating to self-justifying experience empowered with contextual importations, ( ) the continued relevance of modernist paintings for fostering aesthetic experience, ( ) the debunking of aesthetic experience as an autonomous and distinct classification of experience, ( ) a conciliatory concept of the sublime, and ( ) the dominance of the experiential over theoretical prescription. key pedagogical and curriculum implications resulting from this research concern issues relating to: ( ) experiential knowing, ( ) corresponding pedagogical learning strategies, ( ) a critique on the inadequacies of contemporary education policy to deal with aesthetic experiential learning, and ( ) the drawbacks within the suggested implications. the nine characteristics (and the associated dependent sub-characteristics) of positive aesthetic experience in painting explicated in this study are presented in the following table. table - explicated characteristics and discriminating qualities of aesthetic experience characteristic discriminating qualities . immediacy and totality of experience (dependent sub-characteristics) (a) minimal regard for pre-knowing (b) effortless cognition (c) non-sequencing of experience (d) divergent points of entry (e) aspects of the sublime experience comes all at once; response to wholeness rather than reduced through parts; acknowledged in feelingful states and associations; no critical, conscious examination or discourse; experience more intuitive than mediated; designal form blends with affective states; other sensuous modalities initiated by form; ffeelingful rather than analytical response. the feelingfulness of experience did not require propositional knowledge. understanding and awareness established through feeling rather than process of analysis; belief that cognition was somatic; cognition through sensuous immediacy. no particular systematic ordering of experience. no particular point of entry into experience; dependent on contextual predispositions of viewer. inability to comprehend the magnitude and power of representation and the associations of deep subjective longings (conciliatory position). . associative aspects innate in form elements and qualities of form trigger emotional and contextual associations; emotive, non-rational response to form. . metaphorical response replacing measurement imaginative rather than objectified response; elements and principles of design acknowledged metaphorically; non-discursive. . technical virtuosity, novelty and the ‘artist’s eye’ heightened awareness of technical aspects; awareness of innovative manipulation of materials, techniques and the artist’s perceived intention internalised into emotive personal and contextual response. .personal associations experience manifests personal, positive psychological associations; experience triggers recall of positive personal history; reaffirmation through subject matter, artistic styles, formal design relationships; associations to philosophical stance and universal themes such as love, death, existence, etc. . sense of mystery ineffable quality to experience; non-rational. . transformative aspects (a) in subject self-image (b) in promoting the view that paintings transcend their physical objective status (c) on-going power of experience promotion of heightened states of consciousness; promotion of desire for self-actualisation. paintings become vehicles for personal transcendence; paintings become representations of subjective realities and creative processes; paintings maintain an intangible form within future viewer reflections. the experience has a long term positive effect and becomes an internal personal referencing for artistic and pragmatic situations; may be correspondent to pragmatic and practical requirements of the viewer. . aesthetic experience and ordinary experience (a) aspects of heightened perception and focus (b) aspects surrounding the idea of experiential wholeness antecedence in ordinary experience; a perceptual sensitising and amplification of ordinary experience. both notions of a unifying and consummate wholeness of experience and a non-unified and sporadic fragmentation of experience identified . mind and body cognitive strategies employed on unconscious level within immediate, corporeal knowing; inductive rather than deductive; emotive, feelingful aspects of perception are considered a form of cognition; mentation and the immediacy of sensuous response become one in a heightened aesthetic encounter; no dualism acknowledged. structure of dissertation after this introductory chapter that overviews the case and contributions, chapter two attempts to delineate and synthesise certain concepts associated with aesthetic experience to elaborate the theoretical underpinnings of the case presented in this dissertation. these concepts underscore further observations and analysis and foreground and inform the phenomenological research. after the intentions and demarcations of these conceptual stances are established, the concept of aesthetics as a mode of knowing and further contextualist influences are discussed. the interrelated concept of the sublime, as oppositionally proposed by burke ( [ ]) and lyotard ( ) is then investigated. this is followed by the concept of aesthetics as a discipline. within this section, essentialist beginnings, contextualist concerns, problematic aspects of aesthetics as a discipline and influences and pressures arising from such advocacies as feminist and political left critiques are observed. confusional aspects of aesthetics as a discipline, its position in regards to practice and pedagogy and the implications of certain remedial attempts, such as discipline based art education, follow. chapter three, four and five set out a brief exploration of some of the conflicting theoretical views regarding aesthetic experience and related concepts. these explorations concern intrinsic/essentialist, subjective/contextualist and conciliatory positions. the purpose here is to establish a discursive background for the reader about pertinent aspects surrounding and influencing the concept of aesthetic experience and the ways in which we experience art. it is also an attempt to inform the reader on theoretical points which may present themselves and find justification within the later phenomenological investigation into personal reflections concerning the aesthetic experience in painting. in doing so, it does not attempt to promote advocacy of one perspective over others. the main concern here is to be as well pronounced as possible and overlook the occasional ‘nitpicking and hair splitting’ nuances which have seen the concept of aesthetic experience occasionally reduced to philosophic word plays and riddles, void of applicable relevance (eaton, ). correspondingly, my research horizon does not seek philosophic obfuscation or academic puzzlement for its own sake. rather, the goal within these chapters is to clarify concepts and characteristics which might contribute to the establishment of realistic and serviceable application of the aesthetic. in making this case for the clarification of concepts, chapter three, four and five are structured in the following manner. the intrinsic/essentialist position, which aligns itself with modernist preoccupations, is first discussed in chapter three. examined here are such concepts as aesthetic attitude, disinterestedness and the inevitable drawbacks for such concepts, psychical distancing, human agency, formalist qualities and elements of elitism and percipience. chapter four concerns positions related to subjective/contextual points of view and are aligned with postmodernist thought. presented within the subjective/contextualist positions are the concept of autopoiesis, an acknowledgment of the influences of dewey ( [ ]), aspects of art cognition, advocacies of postmodernism, visual culture, aspects of leftist and feminist critique and the socialisation of art. chapter five discusses theory bridging intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist positions. various contributing positions are outlined through an examination of such concepts as bio- evolutionary theory, aesthetic experience as a hybrid conceptualisation, post-formal aesthetics, pragmatist aesthetics and the concept of aesthesia. chapter six presents some explicit characteristics of positive aesthetic experience as advanced by a sequenced selection of past scholars who have attempted taxonomies. the purpose of this preview is in the hope of observing and explaining distinct characteristics which show influences from the opposing and conciliatory epistemologies observed earlier in chapters three, four and five. its purpose then is complementary. it seeks to present, first hand, concretised attempts to formulate taxonomies of the characteristics of aesthetic experience -- the overriding aim of my own phenomenological research presented in chapters eight and nine. a general summary of the characteristics and a concluding table setting out their shared characteristics follows. these observations are used later in chapters eight and nine to establish complements or contrasts concerning this dissertation’s findings regarding the positive characteristics of aesthetic experience in painting. the major contributions in this chapter are from: monroe beardsley, harold osborne, mahaly csikszentmihalyi and rick robinson, gerald knieter, david hargreaves and rod taylor. a brief account of their qualifications appears in the appendix section of this dissertation. chapter seven justifies the design, methodology and application followed in this research. generally, it pursues a qualitative, phenomenological epistemology- paradigm and is eclectically structured according to heuristic research methodologies as prescribed by moustakas ( ; ) and douglas and moustakas ( ). it draws upon aspects of heuristic research from the human science phenomenology of van manen ( ) and aspects of general expressive research by willis ( ; ; ), and willis & smith ( ). finally, aspects of reflective practice by boud, keogh & walker ( a; b) and concepts surrounding tacit knowing espoused by polanyi ( ) are advanced and incorporated. chapter seven also details methodological procedures. it begins with investigations surrounding the research topic and my personal participation within the research. this is followed by a section discussing the separation of the earlier theoretical stances from the phenomenological investigations of the aesthetic experience in painting. the de-privileging of an initial conceptual framework is argued for through the requirements of phenomenological and grounded research practices. from here, heuristic research is outlined together with its concepts and phases. also addressed are justifications for researcher participation, participant selection, participants’ selections of paintings on which they have based their aesthetic experience reflections, sites and ethical and protocol concerns. next, the organisation, collection, collation and analysis of the data used in the dissertation are described. finally, issues of triangulation, validity and the limitations of the study are presented. chapters eight and nine concern the findings and analysis of my phenomenological research. chapter eight introduces and previews the nine major aesthetic characteristics and five co-dependent characteristics specific to this research. here, the significant characteristics are identified and briefly discussed. these significant characteristics are briefly introduced later in this chapter under the section addressing contributions arising from the dissertation’s findings and an overview of its implications for contemporary art education. concluding the previewed findings in chapter eight is a comparison of correspondences between the above characteristics of aesthetic experience in painting and those (generally shared) characteristics observed through the propositions of the theorists examined in chapter six. chapter nine involves further examination and observation of the findings through the employment of an embellished narrative (creative synthesis). this is drawn from the participants’ phenomenological responses. here, the characteristics are examined through a framework of narrative which is elaborated with visual imagery, poetry, prose and participants’ anecdotes. within the narrative, subjects’ accounts are extensively employed in order to ‘exploit’ the participants’ personal subjectivities (peshkin, , cited in eisner, b). this embellished narrative is presented in an effort to forward both the deductive and inductive nature of the phenomena under investigation. to extend this point, paintings from the three participant-artists are also presented throughout the chapter in order to advance further an account of the feelingful states textually described. that is, the paintings are intended to articulate and to assist in transferring the participants’ aesthetic experiences. these qualitative and phenomenological strategies are employed to make the understanding of the examined characteristics of aesthetic experience more potent and holistic (yet accessible) for the reader (nielsen, ). chapter ten constitutes the conclusion section of the dissertation. the chapter summarises the major explicated characteristics (and co-dependent characteristics) of aesthetic experience particular to this study. theoretical and pedagogical contributions and implications of the findings are discussed and a conciliatory position incorporating both intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist epistemologies is advanced. theoretical and pedagogical contributions and implications are then proposed. this is followed by proposals for possible future related phenomenological areas of research. with this introductory chapter completed, chapter two will now delineate and synthesise certain concepts associated with aesthetic experience which will elaborate later theoretical underpinnings. chapter two establishing theoretical bases introduction and overview this chapter sets out the conceptual terrain through which the aesthetic experience might be traced and understood. the concepts discussed in this chapter also set the stage for further development of the aesthetic experience as seen through the expanded intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist points of view discussed in chapter three. to elaborate the conceptual premises of these discussions, the chapter begins by examining the terms and origins of the aesthetic as a modality of knowing (distinct from rational, deductive logic). this is followed by an elaboration of theoretical premises which further aesthetic knowing through contextualist implications, as exemplified within feminist and marxist critiques. a powerful mode of knowing, ‘the sublime’, a notion acknowledged by both epistemologies, is observed and its implications are drawn through essentialist and contextualist interpretations from burke ( [ ]) and lyotard ( ). next, a section devoted to aesthetics as a discipline examines the difficulties of understanding and implementing aesthetics for practising artists and arts educators. here, some of the difficulties can be traced to uncertainties and suspicions that surround the role and relevance of theory to practice and experience. these include concerns about the over-intellectualisation, elitist codification and inadequate teacher/professional development training. repositioning aesthetics as a relevant, distinct discipline within the visual arts as proposed by the introduction (and subsequent marginalisation) of discipline based art education (dbae) is then examined. finally, the positions of aesthetics within contemporary visual culture, with its call for the autonomous position of art to be de-privileged and subsumed within the plethora of non-fine art historic, sociological and contemporary imagery, are overviewed. in summary, the concepts discussed in this chapter set the stage for further understanding of the aesthetic experience as proposed by the forthcoming intrinsic/essentialist, subjective/contextualist and conciliatory points of view. intentions as foreshadowed, the intention here is to synthesise and delineate antecedent concepts that are central to understanding the aesthetic experience: its theoretical underpinnings. a familiarity with these propositions also provides a conceptual map to assist in choosing and demarcating a preferred pathway through such concepts as the aesthetic as a modality of knowing, aesthetics as a discipline and ideas and aspects which are salient to any notion of aesthetic experience. finally, these definitions will foreground and inform through comparison and contrast the final phenomenological gatherings that comprise the findings in chapters eight and nine. however, these theoretical concepts, by their very nature, are not to be considered axioms either by definition or within historical and contemporary debate. that is, they do not represent objectifiable and conclusive positions. in the end, no exact meaning here can be truly fixed. this is because we are not dealing with the quantifiable (eisner, b), but rather with a multiplicity of answers and emotional responses. that is, no discursive definition can contain all the possible pluralities of meanings inherent within a heightened experiential encounter with a work of art. indeed, theories and attempts at definitions concerning any aspect of art, the aesthetic modality, aesthetics and aesthetic experience can (and should) be contested. this is because these notions are indentured to human subjectivity and as such are subject to change. in addition, some feelings and states of mind during a heightened encounter with art may remain ineffable; beyond reportage (abbs, ). therefore, the theoretical concepts presented here should be seen to act more like critical routes from which further inquiry can travel. they represent initial epistemological platforms to foster inquiry and facilitate a discussion on the aesthetic experience. as suggested, the intention is to present assumed or contested propositions which may later be contrasted (or used as aspects for triangulation) in relation to the experientially-based phenomenological data examined in chapters eight and nine. in addition, the introductory propositions are presented (as far as possible) without personal agenda. indeed, to argue for or against theoretical preferences (prior to analysing the later phenomenological data) would initiate an undesired suggestion of rule-governed research. that is, it would promote the feeling of closure and negate the attempted presuppositionless nature of my phenomenological intent (van manen, ; husserl, b). inevitably, my inclusions and omissions may be questioned. however, the goal is to establish a clear and robust base to further understand and investigate the aesthetic experience in painting. it is an attempt to introduce the landscape surrounding the aesthetic. in so doing, a broader awareness of the aesthetic may be fostered -- for it is in this enrichment of the human organism through experiential appreciation (and creation) of art which can be seen as humanity’s most noble achievement (dewey, [ ]). hence, such a challenge presented by understanding the aesthetic experience is held to be worthwhile. the aesthetic as a mode of knowing the term aesthetic can be used as a particular way individuals knowingly perceive the world. it is distinct from deductive logic, as the aesthetic denotes our way of knowing phenomena and experience through the primordial modes of feelings and olfactory sensations, both simple and complex. in this way, it is a response inherent to sensuous experiential knowing (abbs, ), rather than verifiable deduction or rationality of thought or behaviour. for example, it is knowing the lavender bush, or the associated season of its flowering for that matter, by its distinct perfumed scent and the personal memories associated with that scent sparked within reflection. it is the response of sensuous experience that dewey ( [ ]) saw as having its own heightened meaning, the vehicle through which the living organism directly interacts and participates with that organism’s environment (dewey, ). sensuous knowing is held to be founded on the primordial experience of essences -- “the inner essential nature of a thing” (van manen, , p. ). that is, it is the intuitive understanding and interaction with the environment upon which other forms of knowledge take hold. it is the sensation of the heat, the dance and the mystery of fire prior to the harnessing of the phenomena for the practical purpose of cooking. sensuous knowing is primordially felt within one’s being, does not require deductive justification and can be elusive to discursive definition. it involves non- representational (i.e. does not act as a referent to something else) and intuitive, expressive ‘presentational’ symbolism (langer, ; langer cited in eisner, b). for example, it can be the orangeness of an orange which presents itself to us, the outstanding and perceivable quality of the piece of fruit. its ‘known-ness’ is experienced through the sharp tang to the taste buds when bitten, the minutely potted, lunar surface skin which when peeled away explodes in spray, the pleasant sensation of pulp and juice sliding down the throat. these are distinct from its instrumental persona of a unit of weighed and rated commodity produce, noted quantitatively on a spreadsheet. it is this initial sensual consciousness that triggers and stimulates awe, curiosity, investigation and interpretation (dewey, ). indeed, without primary olfactory awareness of our world there is nothing to discern, no need or purpose for further critical inquiry. from these initial stimuli of the senses, further, more controlled and mediated inquiry is initiated. we find meaning through decoding stimuli coming from the sensory modalities such as the symbolic, gustatory, visual and kinetic (to name a few) (eisner, ). hence, according to eisner, “[m]eaning is constructed by forming patterns that eventually become codes which carry meaning within them. creating meaning requires the ability to use the coding system in a way that will disclose what it is the expressive form contains or implies” (eisner, , p. ). as eisner ( ) suggests, we know and experience the environment through several ways of knowing. for example, he uses the notion of knowing a classroom not only through the linguistic sense of ‘school room’ or through discursive, quantitative axioms associated with locality or address, but also through experiential memory and associations of olfactory modalities such as smells, visual features and recollections which are symbolic and emotional in quality (eisner, ). that is, to recall or construct a person, thing, time, event or expression through imaginative interplays originating from, and dependent on, sensation in its emotive and expressive tones -- as is essenced in lines from mcgough’s poem, what you are: you are the apple for teacher left in a damp cloakroom mcgough, r. excerpt from the poem what you are ( ). here, mcgough’s reflection of a classroom is charged with the quiet, emotive metaphor of an apple; the sweet scent of the forgotten, slowly over-ripening tribute. one is left to personally recall such events or resonances, to smile and speculate on the abandonment of its delivery for some more pressing school yard childhood game. it is a mental picture of the classroom experienced and one we can all collectively envision. so, our personal associations can elicit mental pictures and sensations which go far beyond the scope of quantifiable school room inventories or locker checks. we remember, sense and reflect. what is brought into focus here is the unique insertion of human agency to the environment. it provides a more holistic account of knowing. in other words and from this perspective, to really know something is to also understand it through several sensory systems. what is proposed is that we may heighten our perception of what is presented through an intrinsic awareness of sensation and feeling that we possess as knowers. correspondingly, it is from the aesthetic modality (i.e. the form of knowing that operates through the senses and feelings) that the various art disciplines are initially represented, created and appreciated. they exist as its distinct examples; its symbolic forms (abbs, ). for example, the visual artist works through the manipulation of the sensuous modality of vision, while the musician directs attention through aural sensations. the audience may respond through their experiential feelings in combination with the sensual qualities and properties of the work. the conception of seeing art and aesthetics as a particular way of knowing the world is also echoed by langer ( a; b), who reiterates its non-discursive modality, separate from rationality and logical deduction (langer, a; b). for example, though we may know a precious gem (e.g. quantitatively) by its chemical components or monetary value, we may also know it in other non-measurable ways. we can also know it intrinsically through the inductive and primordial sensations of how it sparkles and dances when looked at or its cool feel when placed on the cheek. in this way, the aesthetic can be said to deal with the sensuous aspects of the experiential encounter (fenner, ). that is, while other relational objectives or stimuli may be part of the experience, the overall experience cannot be summarised solely through instrumental intention. there is a requirement to acknowledge the non- agentic function, the value of engaging in aesthetic behaviours (i.e. those directed toward experiencing the sensuous aspects of the phenomena at hand in a non- relational manner) simply for the rewards such experiencing induces (fenner, ). this is the basis of aesthetic response. however, it is not always easy to observe or experience free from pragmatic concerns. the majority of objects and events are primarily seen in the light of utilitarian experiences. for instance, the value of diamond or the aesthetic qualities of gracefully waving tall grass in the front yard are seen by most as a visual chastisement in terms of unattainable luxury or delinquent mowing; the ‘beauty’ of crockery lies in its ability to withstand the wrath of the automatic dishwasher or microwave; environments are unceremoniously traversed while rushing somewhere else. perhaps, most of the time, our tastes run responsibly towards the functional or are determined by the state of our finances. because of this, to perceive the full potential offered through an aesthetic encounter (by allowing the aesthetic modalities to operate) requires proactive subject- directedness. that is, we must willingly use our senses to engage with the object in order to heighten and totalise our experience. by doing so, we also decide how we will engage and negotiate with the environment. this type of dispositional prerequisite can be done by allowing (and preparing) our sensuous knowing to respond to formal qualities or expressive content (i.e. the essentialist qualities) or to stimulate inquiry and relish in personal interpretation and interrogation of meanings based on individuals’ ontogeny and socially sourced knowledge (i.e. the contextualist position). for this to occur, exercising the aesthetic mode of knowing or its contextualist equivalent requires active subject initiated participation (parsons, ). that is, bringing together an informed perspective and an aesthetic object offers a basis to consider a more comprehensive account of the aesthetic experience. because of this requirement, one may presume that the aesthetic lies within the individual and is achieved (in the essentialist state) through a tapping or re-tapping into our sensuous knowing. we may ready ourselves for the potential heightened encounter or simply be prepared to surrender to its invitation through the aesthetic qualities and wonderment that the environment may introduce. while all things natural or constructed share, to varying degrees, the ability to be responded to in this aesthetic fashion (stolnitz ; fenner ), many believe that it is works of art, intentionally created for this purpose, that promote and sustain this heightened state of awareness more readily (osborne cited in smith, r. & simpson, a, ; beardsley, ; smith, r., ). in summary, what is proposed is that the aesthetic is a way of knowing, distinct from deductive logic. it is founded in the primordial experience of essences originating in olfactory sensations and feelings. the aesthetic modality is the direct and unmediated interaction with the environment. further cognitive inquiries, such as emotive responses to the aesthetic experience, stem from this beginning. as such, in its non-deductive state, aesthetic knowing is initially presumed to be non-relational. in other words, it is the experiencing of the essence of the thing itself, rather than associative personas. the arts, in part, can be perceived as representations of this aesthetic modality in symbolic form. while all phenomena can be considered capable of promoting aesthetic awareness and experience, it is presumed by many essentialists that artworks, intentionally created for this purpose, are the best stimulants for gaining and sustaining a heightened sense of this awareness (osborne cited in smith, r. & simpson, a, ; beardsley, ; smith, r., ). fortification of the aesthetic if agreement concerning the idea that aesthetic response is a fundamentally subject- initiated phenomenon (e.g. it is the tongue that tastes, not the beverage) and barring the propositions of extreme formalists whose positions will be discussed later, then the addition of the effects from contextual influences inherent in the subject when formulating a concept of the aesthetic should be acknowledged. that is, our sensuous response to phenomena can be influenced by the societal activities, patterns and dispositions of the culture in which we participate (scribner, ). here, the individual will additionally adjoin personal and socially-sourced knowing to the primordial sensations of the aesthetic modality. these historical/societal inspired types of knowing are steeped in the social practices of the subject’s community/culture and may act as reinforcements for and within the aesthetic encounter (knieter, ). because of this contextualist addition, a broadening of the concept and definition of the aesthetic and its comprehension, apprehension and contemplation is achieved. what is proposed now is a concept of mutuality. firstly, it acknowledges an aesthetic which perceptually attends formal aspects, qualities and associated meanings and interrelations. that is, it addresses the formal, aesthetic, representational, expressive, semantic or symbolic properties of a work’s character/content. secondly, it is also attentive to perceptual features within the object which address themselves on a non-aesthetic plane (levinson, ). here, the non-aesthetic features suggested may be those which display sociocultural motivations and act as familiar societal reinforcements, which are themselves meaning-made through contextualist associations. so, we may heighten our sense of exaltation if the object examined bears reference to an individual identification within societal motivated activity. some examples of roman catholic icons and artifacts, for instance, while having formal properties (i.e. line, movement, rhythm etc.) are worthy of contemplation in their own right, yet may also carry additional heightened relevance for the viewer who identifies with that religious community. in this way, the inclusion of socially sourced ways of knowing -- a discriminate interaction of personal, social and political identifications -- may contribute to a more rigorous aesthetic and experience for the viewer (budd, ). in order to maintain the relevance and integrity of the aesthetic as a separate way of knowing removed from pragmatic interrogation, levinson ( ) proposes that the apprehension of any relational associations deriving from the work must be achieved through and in the structure of the work’s aesthetic individual qualities. that is, the visual reading of any contextual meanings, the articulation of possible psychological associations, must be made by the perceiver initially through the contemplation of the interplay of the autonomous artwork’s formal qualities (e.g. line, colour, form etc.). in this way, what levinson ( ) sees as the secondary meanings or detachable effects inherent in aesthetic appreciation (i.e. contextualist implications and meanings) can only be ascertained by the individual through the mediation of the formal qualities of the autonomous work (levinson, ). levinson’s ( ) proposed aesthetic establishes an initial conciliatory framework whereby instrumental associations may be introduced into the concept without deeming the experience non-aesthetic in nature (levinson, ( ). this loosening of the boundaries in terms of what constitutes elements within the aesthetic response is actually conducive to a relationist position. that is, according to fenner ( ), the aesthetic properties of a work of art are composed of a synergy which interweaves the relationship of the work’s objective properties (e.g. line, colour, form, etc) with that of the viewer’s subjective attendance. hence, while it may be accepted that a work contains aesthetic properties, those properties can only be brought to light through the attention and initiation of human agency (fenner, ) -- which, in itself, can be seen to be environmentally (e.g. socially) conditioned, as this arises through ontogeny. here, the objective properties of the artwork (e.g. line, colour, etc) and higher aesthetic properties (e.g. grace and harmony) are found in a conflation of both the objective properties and the active subjective state of the viewer (fenner, ). within this subjective state, a non-divisive combination of both formally aesthetic and instrumental inputs blends to form the experiential whole. as csiskzentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) research observed, the sequence of such an experience may come initially from a perceptual ‘hook’ the observer feels when focusing attention toward the physicality of the presented art object. this attendance, in turn, leads to a more detached form of intellectualisation. (i.e. meaning making). subsequently, this detached interplay of the intellect further informs the observer’s appreciation of the artwork (csiskzentmihalyi & robinson, ). from a deweyian ( [ ]) perspective, these conciliatory theoretical propositions see the blending of aspects from each point of view as significant for the creation of a unified continuity of aesthetic experience in conjunction with the normal processes of living. in summary, the above conciliatory propositions fortify the sensuous knowing of the aesthetic modality with the individual’s inherent sociocultural understanding of the experience. that is, the sensuous response is made more focused and intense through the influences of what scribner ( ) sees as the participatory activities, patterns and dispositions of an individual’s identified culture. here, the heightened state of perception associated with aesthetic experience is achieved through the integration of both intrinsic (i.e. aesthetic modality) and contextualist (i.e. meaningfulness) concerns. within these propositions, each approach may animate the other. however, there are proposed instances of acknowledged rare experience which defy our abilities to satisfactorily decode either intrinsically or contextually the perceptual stimuli which is presented. here, our sensuous knowing and sociocultural meaning-making seem to desert us. this powerful, interrelated category of overwhelming phenomenon and the heightened experiential state which accompanies it is referred to as ‘the sublime’. the sublime the idea of the sublime is important because it suggests the concept of a rare participant-induced psychological state which is embodied in the form of a particularly intense and transformative aesthetic experience. here, sublime refers to feelings which are associated with what stolnitz ( ) described as: … those natural spectacles of tremendous magnitude and power which seem to overwhelm and dwarf us … seem[ingly] to spill over any frame that we try to impose upon them (stolnitz, , p. ). in engaging with the sublime, our perceptual and imaginative capacities are tested against appearance of formidable natural phenomena (crowthers, ). correspondingly, the sublime is suggested in art when its scale, power, imagery or forms invoke such associations in the viewer (crowther, ). an example of such sublimity may be observed through the scale and ferocity of picasso’s guernica (see below). here, through unrelenting and savage interrogations of technique and content, a symbolic representation, a visual narrative of an atrocity of war is made manifest for many individuals. one’s imagination can be overpowered by the visual assault of twisted limbs, contorted grimaces and stupefaction of the depicted real and mythological participants. while we may attempt to interrogate guernica through allegorical reading, the majority of the experience remains ineffable. what can be felt (and not successfully described through discursive means) is its “imaging of unendurable pain” (greene, , p. ), its overwhelming veil of primordial angst, its accusative metaphorical presence, its elicitation of meaning-less, chaotic terror and annihilation. pablo picasso. guernica ( ). tempera on canvas. another example of a painting where the concept of the sublime might be observed is in the larger than life gothic drama of swirls and torrents of fire and retribution which engulf our perceptions when viewing booth’s painting s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library (see below). here, what can be seen and physiologically inferred falls short of that which is feelingfully represented. that is, its true experience (like in guernica) is sensed, felt through an ineffable, primordial state of knowing. this again transcends the physicality of the painting or our abilities to rationally interpret the full extent of what is being presented. peter booth. painting ( ). oil on canvas. the case for a potential overpowering aesthetic experience encountered by a viewer standing before the above two paintings can perhaps be traced in two differing notions of the sublime. the first account (i.e. intrinsic/essentialist) is by burke, ( [ ]), the latter subjective/contextualist proposal is by lyotard ( ). an intrinsic/essentialist account burke ( [ ]) proposes that the sublime is the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of experiencing. it concentrates on the physicality of the object and not on the existential (i.e. states of mind). seen in this light, sublimity becomes an essentialist matter with a universalist demeanor in that it is the object, scene or event which carries the value, not the psychological makeup of the viewer. the sublime stems, in this view, from any object or situation which has the capacity to elicit terror, pain or fear (burke, [ ]). it is considered an aesthetic value whose aspect is related to that of awe, shock and other feelings which register as a kind of ‘delightful horror’ (using burke’s term) or the pleasures which come with s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library danger. it is a highly charged emotional state of transcendence. this state is entered into by voluntarily witnessing associated qualities of infinity, vastness, chaos or power (all being observed at some distance from the phenomena, thereby moderating our experience in that we are not actually in harm’s way) which the observer cannot rationally catagorise. in other words, burke’s ( [ ]) experience of the sublime is related to the viewer’s response to the object’s overwhelming presence and through the mediated emotional states of danger and pain (crowther, ). characteristically, we find such notions as vastness (i.e. endless, incalculable horizons), massive proportions, such as the exaggerations of size and scale of mountains or precipices and atmospheres which are dark and gloomy. here, the sublime evokes the emotive tones of darkness, silence, obscurity and solitude from the physicality of the object or scene. it was this representation of sublimity which became synonymous with the gothic melancholia and the aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness (discussed later) found in the writings of the romantic poets, such as keats. it is also to be found in the pictorial themes associated with the period of romantic painting, most notable being the works of turner (boulton, ). a subjective/contextualist account in contrast to the essentialist notions of burke, lyotard ( ) proposes that the sublime is existential (i.e. involving states of mind) and can be seen in relation to the existence of longings at a deep subjective level that cannot be actively achieved through perception. also, for lyotard ( ), the sublime can relate to the exaltation of individual responses toward the infinite ways in which new and radical modes of representing this formlessness of sensation can be actualised. it becomes “… making an allusion to the unpresentable by means of visual presentations” (lyotard, , p. ). in this way, the strivings, the communion, the spiritual links with that which is in fact representationally unpresentable are suggested through an almost cathartic association. hence, sublimity is attained through the individual’s internalisation of an assortment of contextualised visual associations rather than through attempts to totalise or make absolute the phenomena through representational or figurative depiction (as in burke, [ ]). what is proposed here is that our response is teasingly incomplete and piecemeal, veiled, unresolved and in a constant state of development (unlike burke’s [ ] observed overwhelming environmental totality). according to lyotard ( ), our appreciation is due, in part, to our own efforts to conjure particular association, interpretation and to the acknowledgement of the art form’s depiction of innovative and startling manipulation of plastic formal elements which stimulate our affective response. summary the concepts of the sublime proposed above suggest an overpowering experience within the aesthetic mode of knowing which is linked to certain traumatic and conducive psychological states such as awe, agitation or instances of ineffability. the sublime can be activated through both pleasant and rapturous experiences, as well as experiences of emotional and intellectual confrontation. the above views of the sublime may also help to explain and delineate the essences or characteristics of disorientation or effortful contemplation which generate powerful emotions within the individual. while having correspondences with these theoretically-inspired definitions, the term sublime is a general description of response relating to something which is considered awe-inspiring. this awe is established through its exhibition of a presumed ultimate degree of worth in terms of the moral, spiritual or intellectual value. it is a term placed on what one views as the highest or supreme example. it is commonly connoted as something which takes our breath away and fills us full of wonder. the aesthetic as a distinct mode of knowing and being in the world is also explored through the forthcoming theories and observations expressed by the philosophers, academics and scholars and (phenomenologically) through the presented research participants' responses in chapters eight and nine. to this end, the next step in laying the theoretical foundation for aesthetic experience and to also inform the final phenomenological investigations is an exploration of the general intrinsic/essentialist, subjective/contextualist and conciliatory theories. this is undertaken because these theoretical stances have shaped the acknowledged conceptions of ‘affect’ or ‘effect’ in relation to encounters with art- related phenomena. that is, they concern the notions of whether the aesthetic experience can be advanced through non-practical sensuous response or through relational, meaningful interpretation and interrogation. aesthetics as a discipline essentialist beginnings the origin and discipline of aesthetics is traditionally associated with an intrinsic/essentialist point of view (this view and that of subjective/contextualist theories are taken up in more detail in chapter three and four). briefly, essentialism originates from eighteenth and nineteenth century british and german philosophical theories. the essentialist argument proposes aesthetic notions such as absolute and universal definition of art, judgment and aesthetic experience (crowther, ). the universalist sentiment also proposes a commonality of human experience and universal consciousness for patterns of thought (lamarque, ). for instance, what is proposed is that a powerful, similar-like experience of an aesthetically commanding work of art can be experienced by all. here, it is the intrinsic (inherent) qualities of the work which we respond to; qualities which are essential and belonging to its nature. in turn, these theories gave rise to the concept of the supremacy of formalist values as a defining characteristic of art and the idea of a disinterested and sympathetic subjective attitude (i.e. free from moral, ethical or political implications) in which to appreciate those qualities. this means that art is understood to be autonomous, devoid of any requirement for prerequisite influences. this intrinsic/essentialist stance is perhaps taken to the extreme by the formalist proposals of bell ( [ ]; ), who disavowed any need for communal/personal psychological conations or cultural/artistic theories. in this view, true art appreciation could be found simply by having a sense for line, colour and a feel for the third dimension. it is a concern: … only with lines and colours, their relations and quantities and qualities … [which produce an experience] … more sublime than any that can be given by the description of facts and ideas (bell, , p. - ). so, for bell ( [ ]; ), art needs stripping of anything that might impede the aesthetic journey -- the anticipation and guarantee of “… the austere and thrilling raptures of those who have climbed the cold, white peaks of art” (bell, , p. ). what is being iterated here is that there are universal, identifiable qualities inherent in a great work of art which can be experienced by all who attend it. hence, in this perspective, our individual responses to ‘good’ art will have a general commonality: we will all read these aesthetic qualities in a similar fashion and react with a similar emotive response. to experience this emotive response, one need only be aware of these qualities as they present themselves through an holistic observation of the work. within this essentialist/formalist tradition we intrinsically attend the experience without the prerequisites of informed proactivity, sociocultural or personal idiosyncratic backgrounding. in other words, we attend that which presents itself through the physicality of the objectified art work for its own sake. what is proposed here is that the experiencing of art has no pragmatic underpinnings and serves no functional or agentic purpose (this notion is discussed in more detail in chapter three). this experience is not educative in the discursive sense, nor is it influenced by social concerns. it is also not a cognitive puzzle reliant on interrogation and interpretation. instead, its purpose is simply to be hedonistically appreciated through the individual’s aesthetic response to formal designal elements and principles which the object displays. the essentialist perspective also proposes that these universal aspects observable in the object can be verified, understood and experienced by all (kant, [ ]). in order to experience such ‘guarantees’ we again need only look at and attend the object without bringing the trappings of preconceived social/individual sourced meaning-making. to an essentialist, if we clutter our response with purposive worldly attention, the response ceases to be an aesthetic one. this is because interest in the experience will end when the purpose for viewing has been reached. in the essentialist proposition, while we may initiate the experience by assuming a receptive, anticipatory role, the overall experience is a non-mediated one. yet, it implies some form of subject initiation. hence, it involves willingness for simple, effortless responses. in other words, individuals are to assume a more passive, rather than effortful and active, role as participants in the experience. we must also regard it with a sympathetic attitude. that is, allow the artwork’s aesthetic qualities to guide our internalisation of the work. introducing contextualist concerns at odds with essentialist notions of passivity are the various, more contemporary views that suggest essentialist closure as an elite practice lacking specificity and sociocultural contingencies. these perspectives (among others) reject the essentialist idea that there can be finite and unchanging universal similarity of response. this contextualist view is taken in light of what is seen within all the impinging contradictions inherent in differing social, cultural and individual consciousnesses which presumably embed themselves within formulating probable solutions. what is proposed here is that the plurality of meaning from various sectors necessitates the acknowledgement of divergent and impermanent points of view. for example, what works harmoniously in italian high renaissance painting for a european observer will not necessarily be received with the same acceptance or enjoyment by eastern or polynesian cultural response. here, the contextualist response advocates multiple, transitory definitions. that is, things will have different meanings and attain different appreciation levels which are dependent on one’s social, cultural, political and economic status. what is proposed is that there is no single answer, no single unified response that remains as a constant. the emphasis is switched from essentialist preoccupations with aesthetic qualities to critical discourse on the conditions and investigations of the artifact. appreciation becomes a matter concerned with relational historical and social constructs (lamarque, ; crowther, ). this being the case, the appreciation of art cannot be fully gained without first introducing aspects of the environment from which it sprang (i.e. economic, social, political, cultural etc factors). it is the various general positions these two opposing epistemologies present, referred to here as intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextual, in respect to the aesthetic experience that will demarcate and inform the discussions that follow. however, due to such divergent epistemological influences and in preparation for addressing these positions, the air of confusion which surrounds aesthetics as a discipline requires some clarification. this is done in order to quell troublesome aspects associated with the discipline of aesthetics that might otherwise impede a better understanding of its definitional aims and relevance. the confusional air of aesthetics the concept of aesthetics as a discipline needs clarification in order that it might separate itself from the historical view of philosophical and psychological writings on aesthetics that has tended to confuse and hide, rather than clarify (hamblen, ). aesthetics has fallen prey to intellectual sophistry and highbrow privilege, leading to uncertainty amongst most people as to what constitutes doing aesthetics in general (hamblen, ). here, aesthetics has become camouflaged within “vapid abstractions and metaphysical hyperbole involved in saying nothing in the most pretentious possible way” (passmore cited in battin, , p. ). the apparent malaise of aesthetics as a discipline can be traced from its philosophically essentialist origins. historically, according to battin ( ), aesthetics can be seen as a long and elaborate historical discussion; a continuum of theoretical formulations purporting to establish principled accounts pertaining to art, beauty and associated artistic and aesthetic phenomena. as in any field of conceptual development, each new account attempts to supersede or alter the theoretical position of its predecessor. however, the concern here is that this conceptual development has not been based on empirical work associated with the practice of aesthetic pursuits. this suggests that aesthetics as a discipline is not driven by praxis (i.e. informed by the practice of artists and the like), but by theory in its need to defend or challenge prevailing assumptions. in doing so, it has become an academic exercise whereby the art form and its experience has been stripped of specialty and specificity and is reduced to playing a minor and evidential role. this role is to prove or disprove points relevant only to theory and not to the promotion and enjoyment of art itself. in other words, the cart is suddenly placed before the horse -- theory attempts to drive art (this is true for both essentialist and contextualist commentary). by this scenario, aesthetics then assumes the illusory role of defending itself, rather than attending to its original ‘art reflector’ status. in this situation, the development of theory is prevented by mystification (stevens, ). that is, entrenched theory takes the defensive through the use of self-serving and confusing linguistic manipulation. it no longer develops in response to art. by doing so, it denies the need for theory to be responsive to the ever-changing re-inventions inherent in both the practice and appreciation of aesthetic pursuits. codification, discursive intellectualisation, the requirement for theory over the impact of experiencing first hand the intrinsic qualities and contextualist inspired meaning and interpretation inherent in art are impediments to a relevant and robust discipline of aesthetics. in terms of essentialist doctrine, the consequences of rigidly defending theoretical tenets that deny contingencies and disregard the input of alternative theoretical insight and praxis cannot keep a pace which is germane to its original intent. theoretical aesthetic relevance requires the maintenance of ongoing rigour, not reactionary obedience to paradigms. one is reminded, somewhat ironically if we recall his eminent position within modernism, of hardy's sage-like warning in far from the madding crowd. reflecting upon the execution of the young sheep dog after blindly and tragically following its instincts to muster sheep to the unchecked inevitable end-point of herding them off a cliff, we are presented with yet: … another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise (hardy, , p. ). sadly, the ‘consistent conduct’ of adherence to absolutes without contingencies, of defending epistemology over experiential impact, of intellectual obfuscation, of elitism and scholarly marginalisation in the past may have alienated prominent stakeholders in the game today. these affected stakeholders include both audience and artists alike. for many practitioners (and appreciators), it is unfortunate that the important discipline of aesthetics is being seen as mere ‘academic nit-picking and hair-splitting’ which bears little relevance within the practicing art worlds (arrell, n.d.). in addition to losing contemporary currency, audience immediacy and understanding of presented aesthetic inquiry are also hampered when discursive argument and deduction is so often written in ways that unnecessary inhibit meaning being established (smith, ). furthermore, in correspondence to this textual elaboration, is the frequent inclusion of arcane terminology which is seen as foreign and irrelevant to contemporary aesthetic concerns (efland, ). in other words, the privileging of stylistic traditions and outmoded definitions still hold a formidable position in aesthetic texts. for example, the defining characteristic of the word aesthetics itself (coined by the philosopher alexander baumgarten in the mid s to describe the ‘science of the beautiful’) has seemingly passed its use-by date. ironically, even the formalist bell ( [ ]) predates current postmodernist contentions when he considered that the term beauty may not have any aesthetic connotations left in it; that it had become synonymous with desirability and the associated concept of sexuality (bell, ( [ ]). in addition, the dubious validity of the term is exemplified by best's ( ) contention that the centrality of metaphysical questions concerning the nature of beauty has little relevance to the values and meanings within the contemporary art world (best, ). in other words, what best ( ) (and others) proposes is that much of the art being produced today concerns intentional confrontation and fragmentation, rather than representations of essentialist/modernist content. we must now contend with un-aesthetic and anti-aesthetic works whose presences lack or mock the ability for viewer sensuous response. within these works, aesthetic qualities are non existent. contemporarily, the talk about art becomes “… fuzzy and messy” (chalmers, , p. ). the works require other ways of understanding and appreciation. in addition, the importance of temporal and specific meaning these works profess outweighs the need for cumbersome rules. for example, gude ( ) goes as far as to suggest that the traditional elements and principles of art and design have little currency within contemporary art consciousness (gude, ). furthermore, universalist notions of beauty are superfluous to a pluralistic, contemporary art world which may ignore or explore issues antithetical to beauty. these issues may deal agentically with (or mirror) imagined states of the human condition which present aspects of ugliness, indifference or alienation, among others. for example, one need only consider the grotesque accumulation of the sculpted limbs, heads, genitalia and robotised faces of the naked, mutated mannequin/children presented by contemporary artists jake and dinos chapman (below). to suggest a relevance to, or contemplation of, baumgarten's ‘science of the beautiful’ makes no sense here. this is because, in viewing these sculptures, idealised form has been replaced or re-systhesised. jake and dinos chapman. zygotic acceleration, biogenetic, de-sublimated libidinal model ( ). furthermore, beauty, or any traditional conception of what is justifiability considered traditionally proper objects of aesthetic contemplation, is also challenged by such works as an actual bisected pig suspended in formaldehyde and presented for ‘inspection’ by the artist damien hirst (below). damien hirst. this little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home ( ). steel, grp composites, glass, pig, formaldehyde, electronic motor. the targets for the above artists are subversion of traditional aesthetic canon, of uneasy and terrifying black humour and parody of traditional values and status quo. there is no idealisation, no proclamation of beauty -- only form fashioned to feed an unsettling, disorientating nightmare. the viewer is titillated by shock as familiar perceptions are visually shouted at, abused, confronted and intimidated out of the security and familiarity of comfort zones. here, the only characteristic to experience is that of macabre fascination likened to unnecessarily slowing down to observe the victims of a car crash. s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library influences of feminist theory the relevance of the traditional concept of beauty is further questioned by feminist theory which sees the entire idealised concept as misrepresentative -- " … a cover for the male gaze, licensing a patriarchal vision” (nunn, . p. ). that is, the historically male-dominated view within art (and face of societal issues generally) has for centuries reduced the objective female form into an unrealistic and symbolic version of male subjective content (nunn, ; bovenschen, ). in other words, the female form is represented through the re-conceptualisation of the female identity and experience into male notions and preoccupations of what males construe to be definitive feminine beauty. general feminist theory proposes that this 'male gaze' concerning beauty subordinates and objectifies the female body into fetishisation. this fetishisation becomes the evaluative norm for concepts and markers of beauty within art and cultural identity generally (bovenschen, ). feminist argument contends that these markers are false, that these notions have neglected the important phenomenological aspects of what it means to be a woman. in other words, their innate persona, their distinctiveness, is reduced and reformulated to male perceptions, to exist as signifiers for concepts within traditional modernist genres. their depiction is that of supportive objectification for male interpretations which can range anywhere from seductress, mother, wife, saint or whore. some exist as depersonalised and objectified renditions of abstract concepts. they become vague identity-less icons complete with the addition of male fetishism regarding body parts representing such ideals as freedom. an example, taken at random from a vast array of possibilities, personifies the above concept through the image of a banner waving and emotionless heroine featured in delacroix's painting liberty leading the people (below). stoic and determined, heraldic in the classical sense and exquisitely proportioned like a classical greek sculpture, she is the male voyeuristic symbol of commitment-- woman objectified, breasts defiantly bared for the revolution. eugene delacroix. liberty leading the people ( ). oil on canvas. during other times of political expediency, womanhood becomes essentialism's blemish-less face of patriotism. for instance, we witness the universally depicted conformist exemplar of a lathe operating ‘rosey the riveter’ girl-next-door type (below). here, an image archetypical of dutiful womanhood happily works, backing-up the boys on the front with the tools of the war trade. the depicted operation goes as flawlessly and easily as a recent application of just the right amount of lipstick (additionally informing the male fantasy/fetish of what constitutes the trappings of female beauty). world war two american propaganda poster ( - ). a pointed and sarcastic contrast to the patriarchal-inspired negative archetypal objectification of womanhood, as embodied in ‘rosey’, is a theme explored in much of the contemporary works of the feminist artist rrap. in rrap’s work (below), the artist seems to be parodying such suggestions as ‘i’ve found the job where i fit best.’ instead of the obedient rosey character, rrap now presents a depiction of womanhood in short dress, heels and wearing lip stick. she is on hands and knees, caught in the process of blending and fading into the patterns of a checkered linoleum-like flooring. the usual accessory association of an accompanying scrubbing bucket is now replaced by a handgun. here, things are changing. the woman’s presumed environment of domestic duties suddenly becomes the camouflage for feminist sedition in relation to traditional patriarchal assumptions. julie rrap. camouflage # ( ). photograph mounted on lexcen. furthermore, the counteraction for the unrealistic male-perceived image of women towards one where women are more responsibly portrayed as subjects rather than as objectifications, can be found in the uncompromised social realism of kollwitz (below). here, the essence of beauty is realised through its synergies with moral and political determinations (greer, ). another more truthful and empowered representation, cleaned of superficiality and idolisation, is also illustrated by the anatomical particularities, idiosyncratic postures and sturdy mediterranean- features of women (in determined folly or seriousness) depicted in the paintings and graphic works of rego (also below). s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library kathe kollwitz. self-portrait ( ). lithograph. paula rego. recreation ( ). pastel on paper mounted on aluminum. so, what is being said within feminist discourse is that art is not, and never has been, a neutral, non-political concept. feminists advance a freer conception of art’s identity, purposes, materials and iconography. they find no relevance in traditional patriarchal governed essentialist aesthetics. nor, are they submissive to its unrealistic objectification of women and its gate-keeping constructs of universal and privileged male dominated benchmarks concerning what constitutes art or sanctified ways of appreciation. for feminists, the concepts of traditional aesthetics impede emancipation. its assumed outmoded restrictions are viewed with suspicion. this suspicion manifests itself within other marginalised schools of thought, as is evidenced by the political left, observed below. theoretical pressures from the left sharing feminist distrust for traditional essentialist concepts of aesthetics is also declared through accusatory critical theory propositions from the political left. the overriding contention here can be seen in the class-orientated distrust for the concept of aesthetics in favour of a more political emancipatory ideology, as exemplified through marxism. for example, eagleton ( ) observes that the rise of an autonomous aesthetic as a theoretical domain parallels the rising autonomy of bourgeois society and the resultant commodification of the art object (eagleton, ). the self-referential, discrete aesthetic sits approvingly with the self-justifying autonomy and subjective mind-set required by those who propagate a s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library materialistic/commodity driven culture (eagleton, ). in so doing, it creates a domain of appreciation and an art which is privileged as an idealised classification in which the dominant social order may take refuge from the otherwise dominant and actual values of materialism, competition and exploitation (eagleton, ). in other words, the concept of an autonomous aesthetic domain establishes a self-deluding sanctuary, a cultural escapism, while at the same time surreptitiously justifying and empowering the materialist ruling elite. for example, an executive may profess an agenda-less connoisseurship towards a recent purchase of a van gogh painting. however, his willing participation in the purchase and the exorbitant cost paid reinforces its exclusivity and position as an elitist pursuit. in addition, jameson ( ) suggests that any such refuge to be taken within traditional aesthetics is no longer relevant. that is, it is no longer possible, in the current milieu, to successfully assume an attitude of kant-inspired ( [ ]) disinterestedness (see discussion in chapter three) in order to achieve transcendent experience, as proposed by schopenhauer ( [ ]) (also discussed in chapter three). this presumed transcendence within experience was the vehicle by which one could arrive at an alternative experiential state in order to relieve, escape or vent oppositional situations, such as between work and freedom within postindustrial society. as suggested, for jameson ( ), this transcendental ability no longer exists. this he ascribes to: ( ) the intentional and general alienation and inaccessibility of postmodern art [through contingencies, pluralities and specificities] to be used as vehicles for imaginative experience (we can only remain as receptors to the stimuli, rather than as active cognitive participants; we simply can not ‘get it’) and; ( ) the nullification of imaginative free play through prescriptive commodity indoctrinisation of intentionally organised and ‘planified’ holidays, mass diversions and entertainment ‘packaging’ (jameson, ). in other words, the inescapable enculturation within contemporary consumer society necessitates the intervention and supervision of capitalist accoutrements. we are hand-fed with the required commodities and accompanying stylistic conceptualisations at the expense of proactive self-invention (jameson, ). summarily, we no longer assume a subjective attitude; we are given a profit-inspired objectified one. for critical marxist thought, individualisation, through personal meaning-making or contemplation of aesthetic qualities, has become redundant and surplus to the requirement for participation within contemporary culture. so, what the left is saying is that we can no longer find sanctity or escape within a traditional attitude of disinterestedness or within universal concepts. individualisation has become objectified through the reinforcements of capitalist- inspired commodity necessities. here, pastimes and pleasures are already prescribed within the enculturation process. with these prescripted objects and activities there is no requirement for subject-initiated imagination, meaning making or contemplation of aesthetic qualities. they are redundant. contestation has been replaced by the status quo, itself being an illusory invention to support the endless materialist-driven accoutrements which describe the contemporary milieu. yet, negation or confusion over matters of aesthetics is not simply restricted to an unaware general public. as the below observations will show, misinformation and confusion can be found, to a large degree, within the theoretical and practical fields of art production and education themselves. practice and pedagogy it is suggested that both artists and art teachers have also suffered from the confusion surrounding aesthetics as a discipline, primarily through a lack of preparation in philosophic aesthetics, heuristics and critical inquiry (hamblen, ; eisner, ; gardner, ). because of this situation, art teachers may prefer to rely on intuition to convey pertinent points, rather than acquisition of cognitive procedures or appropriate attitudes. this strategy is initiated hoping that the issues of aesthetic inquiry will be naturally resolved within a more dominant emphasis of art production (mandoki, ). the consensus here is that while the discipline of aesthetic education can be considered a cognitive exercise and systematic in delivery strategies, the notions which it addresses are decidedly pluralistic, subject to change and cannot be quantifiably justified. in other words, they remain non-discursive, illusory and subject-centred. a testament to the complexity of notions studied within the discipline of aesthetics and the skeptical belief systems surrounding its need or applicability in the production of artworks or ability to reinforce intuitive appreciation is acknowledged by mandoki ( ). to justify her position, mandoki ( ) notes that she knows of no artists who can explicitly define art or its underlying issues of beauty. nor, she claims, can these artists explain how art is produced through the harmonious interplay of imagination and free play or present evidence to testify to art’s real nature. while the artworld and the observer seem pressured to formulise artistic judgments, the formal tutoring, proof or guarantees for such requirements seem ill- defined and illusory (mandoki, ; abbs, ). furthermore, there is speculation that art students and artists beginning their careers view too much intellectualisation regarding their art with suspicion (arrel, nd.). that is, there is a feeling that aesthetic analysis will somehow hinder the flow from what they see as their creative unconscious or hinder their investigations regarding necessarily narrower personal aims within their specific discipline (arrell, nd.; csikszentmihalyi & robinson, ). in addition, there may be an innate fear that discursive investigation into the experience of art will somehow negate what bruner ( ) refers to as the “pleasures of innocence” (bruner, , p. ). that is, the implication that effortful inquiry into meaning may not be sufficient to unravel truer metaphysical knowing, meaning or intent. to this, the characteristic transformative, shape-shifting nature of subjects examined within the discipline of aesthetics is, in many cases, regarded as too ethereal, non-relevant or impracticable to use in current prescriptive, product driven competency-based assessment curriculum. this is because there is no concretised result which can be used for accountability requirements or tangible justification for teacher professional development funding purposes. in addition, earlier research by hargreaves ( b) uncovered a more politically agentic viewpoint from teachers themselves. he observed that many teachers within the expressive fields of visual arts and creative music justify a dismissive attitude toward fostering the appreciation of arts because of a perceived political agenda attached to promoting ‘high art’ or ‘high culture’. according to hargreaves ( b), some teachers come to believe that this situation fuels further alienation among the working classes and minorities by privileging the cultural currency of the higher societal echelons. furthermore, a dichotomy is established not only between the classes, but also between creation and appreciation of art works. hargreaves’( b) research indicates an apprehension among the trade and working classes to engage in discourse on the nature or creation of the art object itself. this can be seen as ironic in that the creation of art objects as an enterprise has always been traditionally associated with the trades and the marketplace, rather than with high culture and academia (kahn cited in gardner, ). indeed, the above noted skepticisms associated with ‘talking about art’ may be instrumental in fostering a type of covert acceptance of pedagogic principles based on practice, rather than theory. discipline based art education (dbae) in the united states (beginning in the s and following through the s) an attempt to address and combat the confusion and problematic aspects surrounding aesthetics was initiated through the introduction of discipline based art education (dbae). an initiative of the then getty center for education (later renamed the getty educational institute for the arts), dbae consolidated past and present educational advocacies concerning making the study of art more substantial and demanding. within dbae, aesthetics has been recognised as one of the four major disciplines that constitute education in the fine arts (the other disciplines being art making, art history and art criticism). with its inclusion as one of the four disciplines, a more applied approach to aesthetics has been developed. this approach is seen as one tempered and embedded with practical concerns and is considerably trimmed of the 'academic nit-picking and hair-splitting' irrelevance to which arrell (nd) earlier referred. in addition, the ‘applied approach’ of dbae supplanted the oppositional curriculum incentives of the national art education association’s excellence in art education: ideas and initiatives (smith, ). within excellence in art education, the study of art was approached as part of an overall liberal arts education. that is, the educational goal was to expand the horizons of human awareness and experience by the study of excellence in art as personified by exemplary works. by doing so, the development of dispositions required for the appreciation of excellence in art would be fostered, as well as the acquisition of those capacities to derive the peculiar qualities and meanings which the art imported (smith, ). however, some saw engrained within the analytically inspired excellence in art education manifesto biased and professed preferences. these concerns stemmed from the perceived intentions inherent in the study of predominantly traditional western essentialist/modernist exemplars and the adjoining notion of theoretical elitism. in addition, there was concern regarding its preference for developing dispositions for appreciation of a general class of art at the expense of practical involvement in art making (efland, ). furthermore, within the excellence in art education manifesto, there was a nullification of postmodern advocacy for plurality and postmodern negation of metanarratives -- the ‘big picture’ stories or accounts which attempt to order and present the idea of certitudes and logical historical progression. visual culture, with its egalitarian proposals for an expansion on the notion of what objects and phenomenon constitute worthy study and appreciation, was also ill-served. examples of such concern and discontent were rigorously asserted by the contemporary literature of feminist and afro-american agency (efland, ). in counteracting the positions of excellence in art education and the indeterminate educational position and nature of aesthetics in general, the thrust of dbae (as regards aesthetics) has been to demystify the discipline and make it more like a natural activity embodied in art education practices (parsons, ). consistent with the aims of dbae, the discipline of aesthetics has been summarised by crawford ( ) as being: … critical reflection on our experiences of art, whether from the standpoint of creators, appreciators, or critics. it aims at understanding the components of these experiences and the bases of the values we find there, as well as gaining insight into how these values integrate, or sometimes conflict, with other values (such as those of moral, economic, political, and religious realms) (crawford, , p. ). seen here, this more practice-based and reflective orientated approach to aesthetics offers a perspective focusing on authentic experience rather than sophistry. that is, aesthetics becomes applied first-hand in direct relation to the production, criticism and history of art forms. also, here, aesthetic argument is explicated through the observable creation of art, not through potentially aloof, vague and deceptive rhetoric conceptualised outside the studio environment. crawford ( ) contends that aesthetic inquiry addresses and confronts the nature of values. this proposal is achieved through reflections on experiences with art imaginatively reconstructed through participation as either appreciators of art or as creative practitioners. this critical reflection not only aims at the appreciation of our experience of the art works, but also engages us in reflections which consist in part of conceptual analysis involving the construction of principles of interpretation, critical reasoning and evaluation (crawford, ; eisner, ). these conceptual analyses and formulations of principles are informed through not only the creative works, but also through the correspondent disciplines of art history and art criticism. the entire presupposition for aesthetics and for its justification as a vital form of serious inquiry is grounded on the widely held view of many art educators that basic human values are involved with experiencing art through appreciation, creation and criticism (eisner, ; crawford, ; a statement on the arts for australian schools, ). in addition, the phenomenological, experiential aspects involved in aesthetics cannot be overlooked. for example: [w]e ‘do’ aesthetics, once again, when we think about what it means to release ourselves into an art space, an alternative reality. we ‘do’ aesthetics when we consider the challenge of transmuting a given work … into an aesthetic object, an object of our own aesthetic experiencing: something that offers a particular kind of pleasure, that illuminates in a distinctive way, that can be cherished in a distinctive way (greene, , p. ). dbae in practice unfortunately, aesthetics and critical inquiry into values, perception and transmutation, like the production of art itself, are not comfortably placed into measured, product-dependent assessment packages for government/industry accountability purposes. here, curriculum standards in art education can become restrictions (emery, ). for example, greene’s ( ) ‘alternative realities’ resist compartmentalisation and transcriptions into elements of competency or quantifiable skills (greene, ; abbs, ). this is because there is no tangible, physical evidence that can be deemed ‘competent’ in a measurable way. in other words, the pleasures of attending to the livedworld in an aesthetic or contemplative fashion are at odds with the prescribed accountability matrix required for competency-based training (eisner, ). for instance, the educational specification for such an exercise, if one assumes the requirement of a traditional aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness to, and autonomy of, the artwork and its experience (this concept is addressed in chapter three), would negate the motive-full action for being that of a distinctly aesthetic response. from this point of view, a purpose-full (instrumental) intention toward the artwork (our hypothetical assessment), or for any other activity outside percipient contemplation for pleasure, would invalidate the exercise. so, while theoretically, the inclusion of aesthetics within the four-disciplined dbae format was heralded by much lip-service, the reality is that its concept and dissemination was never properly understood or instigated (abbs, ). indeed, the status of aesthetics as a discipline today seems all but subsumed by the dominant (product-orientated, easier assessed) disciplines of art object production (abbs, ) and through the discursive orientations of criticism and art history. what has transpired from this is a movement towards a kind of pedagogical formalism, complete with emphasis on sequence and structure and anchored in discipline-based curriculum initiatives (efland, ). the study of aesthetics is further disserviced by the enactment of such curriculum. this is because of the difficulties inherent in conforming socratic inquiry into accountability prescribed assessments based on observable outcomes. in addition, contemporary concerns regarding a ubiquitous visual culture (discussed in chapter four) have also weakened the stance for considerations of traditional aesthetic inquiry (freedman, ). this is argued through the predominant visual culture rejection of the fundamental essentialist idea of fine art autonomy, the requirement of critical analysis regarding implications surrounding the current saturation of visual imagery and human development (freedman, ) and incorporation of aspects of postmodern ideology. correspondingly, the educational dilemma regarding inquiry into aesthetics is itself being subsumed within global economic rationalism and the materialistic, commodity-driven hierarchy which detractors see as championing a culture/society of shallow, immediate gratification and fickle consumerist attitudes (abbs, ). these ideas sit uncomfortably with the non-regimentation and general disorderliness inherent in humanistic and metaphysical thought (abbs, ). as an end note, curriculum indebted to dbae has been introduced in primary and secondary schools within queensland. currently, there is no such provision in the emerging visual arts and graphic design documents within the vocational training and educational sectors. summary to summarise the discussions above, aesthetics can be seen as the various discourses concerning the interconnectedness of art and life. it is concerned with the ways in which we inform our perceptions. this includes the examination of the conceptual difficulties resulting from the manner in which we engage in discourse and behaviour when confronted with art related experiential phenomena (parsons, ). hence, aesthetics can be viewed as a kind of conceptual trinity, a circular heuristic interaction involving the formal object, individual conceptions and agency and the shifting relationships between the two. the aim of this chapter is to delineate and stimulate inquiry on certain conceptual premises and realities which surround the notions of the aesthetic as a modality of knowing and aesthetics as a discipline. with this in mind, it is now necessary to focus upon a selection of various schools of thought (and their relationships to both the above concepts) that attempt to define the characteristics and elements associated with the phenomena of aesthetic experience -- the experiential interrogation of which is my dissertation’s final goal. chapter three intrinsic/essentialist perspective introduction and overview this chapter explores major concerns associated with intrinsic/essentialist theories. for the most part, these theories attempt to validate the idea of a kind of universalism. observed here, universalism sees both universal ways of thinking and livedworld experiences to be objectified, sharable phenomena. that is, within this perspective, patterns of thoughts and universal human experiences can prevail over the specificity of cultural and artistic traditions (lamarque, ). correspondingly, dutton ( ) describes universality in terms of art consciousness as the common nature inherent in art and appreciation which can be seen as universal and cross-cultural (dutton, ). for example, while acknowledging that much of the preceding features are also applicable to non-art experiences, dutton ( ) proposes that through an examination of the accumulation of cross-cultural investigations so far, a list of ‘signal characteristics‘ illustrating the universal features of art can be observed. these features include: ( ) expertise and virtuosity -- that the production of art requires specialised skills which are either learned or are exercised through innate abilities. ( ) non-utilitarian pleasure -- that the art work is viewed as a source of enjoyment and pleasure for its own sake and not for a functionality of purpose. ( ) style -- that the art object is rule governed in terms of form and composition and has identifiable (to a larger or lesser degree) stylistic conformities. ( ) criticism -- that some form of critical discourse (rudimentary to elaborate) exists which concerns appreciation and judgment of the object. ( ) imitation -- that the representation inherent in the art is based on, and representative of (in varying guises of abstraction and imagery), real or imaginary accounts of livedworld experiences. ( ) ‘special’ focus -- that the art is privileged, rarified to some degree, and made the focus of special experiential attention. ( ) the experience of art is an imaginary experience for artists and audiences alike -- that the object is elevated, through imaginative experience, beyond that of mere daily routine, tool or pragmatic ritual (dutton, ). endorsement for the above propositions of universal characteristics of art and its appreciation can be traced to kant’s ( [ ]) theoretical proposals which suggested that the ability to apprehend universal harmonic pleasures was grounded in subjective yet universally comprehensible experience (kant, [ ]). that is, for kant ( [ ]), the required aesthetic evaluative state rests upon two premises. these being that: ( ) the same abilities to cognitively understand one’s environment are shared by all people, and; ( ) that the competent viewer who initiates motivation for pure, concept-less contemplation of the object, in a state of disinterestedness, would be judging that object the same as anyone else who might contemplate the object in that same manner (kant, [ ]); fenner, ). as kant ( [ ]) observed; … where anyone is conscious that his delight in an object is with him independent of interest, it is inevitable that he should look on the object as one containing a ground of delight for all men (kant, [ ], p. ). in other words, as anyone is capable of assuming the required attitude, the universality of aesthetic absolutes can be verified (kant, [ ]; fenner, ). the proposal here is that if we all saw and experienced the same, we would accordingly be prone to mutual judgments. this elevation of concept-less contemplation, the elevating or separating of the art object or its experience from the above ‘mere daily routine, tool or pragmatic ritual’ -- or any instrumental concern whatsoever -- is a major underlying concept within intrinsic/essentialist theorising. indeed, an intrinsic/essentialist approach to the subject reveals the idea of exclusivity and disinterestedness (discussed below) concerning the work of art and is seen as a prerequisite of traditional theory (berleant, ). it corresponds to the general intrinsic/essentialist proposition that a work of art is gratituitous and serves no instrumental purpose. in this view, art and aesthetic experiences are characterised as solely intrinsic in value and are ends in themselves (shusterman, ). that is, the experience is not the end product of compartmentalised and sequential interrogations of reason. in fact, no other mental activity is required, as we are satisfied with that kind of knowledge which comes from direct apprehension (langer, ). essentialists propose that in order to attain such an experience, viewers must assume a specific attitude. this assumed attitude is called an aesthetic attitude, a voluntary and consciously entered into state-of- perceiving (fenner, a), which is disinterested in, or dismissive of, all extraneous or vested interests or concerns. the aesthetic attitude and disinterestedness historically, this distinctive separation of the aesthetic experience from self-interested motivations was in part a reaction to predominant hobbesian theory of the seventeenth century (osborne, ; parsons ). hobbes postulated that human interaction could be attributed to selfish motivations and that these selfish motivations guide human action. for example, if someone helps a friend, that assistance can be traced to underlying ‘interested motives’ such as avoidance of guilt, feelings of self-satisfaction, the thought of a reciprocal favour etc (parsons, ). viewed through hobbes’ perspective, a concept like aesthetic experience is seen vested and subsumed in personal and/or societal interests. however, to counterpoint, eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophic dissenters from hobbes believed that there could be experiences concerning matters of discriminating taste and judgment which could be motiveless and universally applied. to find such experiences their focus turned primarily towards the contemplation of the natural and the artistic through investigations concerning the notion of disinterestedness. this view found its seminal voice within the writings of the eighteenth century british ‘taste theorists’ such as shaftesbury, hutcheson, addison and alison (a contemporary of kant). these dissenting voices proposed that the separation of the aesthetic mode of attention from the pragmatic, moral and emotional realms of knowing is essential. as argued by kant ( [ ]), [a]ll interest presupposes a want, or calls one forth; and, being a ground determining approval, deprives the judgement on the object of its freedom (kant, [ ], p. ). in order to combat the waywardness of instrumentality, we find the requirement and advancement of the concept of aesthetic attitude. this attitude is described as: … disinterested and sympathetic attention to and contemplation of any object of awareness whatsoever, for its own sake alone (stolnitz, , p. ). in turn, stolnitz's ( ) ascribed meaning for the word 'sympathetic' as denoting the subject's preparedness for accepting the object's individual qualities on its own terms. that is, to be one with, respond and take the lead from the object, to give the object an opportunity and chance to exhibit its perceptual interest (stolnitz, ). the ‘disinterestedness’ opportunity for aesthetic contemplation can only be activated by the subject's bracketing out extraneous personal values, presuppositions and prejudices. if these requirements are not met, the assumed aesthetic attitude conducive to aesthetic experience cannot be achieved. this is because the kantian ( [ ]) proposition of aesthetic response requiring the free-form, concept-less judgment between understanding and the imagination is short circuited with the introduction of pragmatic influences and concerns to the experience (kant, [ ]). in other words, the experience becomes instrumental and cognitive, rather than one of sheer and intuitive pleasure. the concept of disinterestedness proposed that a motiveless attitude toward the presented artwork allowed the viewer a purified vision of the perceptual qualities inherent in the artwork. in other words, it was the subjective state of disinterestedness which allowed the object to be viewed aesthetically, rather than instrumentally. this purified psychological state rendered the object's universal properties observable to anyone who presumed the aesthetic attitude. that is, as anyone was capable of assuming the attitude of disinterestedness, the universality of aesthetic absolutes could be verified (kant, [ ]; fenner, ). the proposal here is that if we all saw and experienced the same, we would accordingly be prone to mutual judgments. the aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness was furthered by kant ( [ ]) and later schopenhauer ( [ ]) through the concept of identification of aesthetic judgment and aesthetic experience respectively through the contemplation of perceptual qualities and the requirement of an attitude of disinterest from agentic motivations during the contemplation of an object. briefly, kant ( [ ]) separated the aesthetic mode of knowing from the practical or the moral. cognition within the aesthetic mode, in terms of schematic, purposive problem solving activity, was also denied (kant, [ ]). this prerequisite of unmediated attention can also be seen later in stolnotz’s ( ) foregrounding of the kantian ( [ ]) non-practical contemplation and non- conceptualisation approach to the aesthetic. that is, stolnitz’s ( ) assertion that the thing in itself is pleasant to look at and requires no necessity to study, judge or be classified (stolnitz, ; kant, [ ]). in other words, we need no reason or reward to contemplate a work of art other than the purpose that aesthetic contemplation provides. kant's ( [ ]) concern centered on the possibilities of aesthetic judgment. these were to be realised through the subject-initiated attitude of disinterested, purpose- less disengagement from personal, ego driven agendas of beauty. hence, the pleasurable aesthetic value is derivable from the object by separating the aesthetic from the simply good or moral. judgments, other than aesthetic ones, necessitated the subject to regard ulterior motive or pragmatic concern. aesthetic judgment, however, did not. this was because, according to kant ( [ ]), the aesthetic judgment of beauty (i.e. pleasurable, aesthetic value) is unique contemplation, being born of free play and imagination. it comprised a concept-less judgment between the understanding and the imagination (kant, [ ]). later, schopenhauer ( [ ]) furthered the concept that aesthetic contemplation of an object resides in the subject's ability to attain an attitude of purposelessness to all concerns other than the presented phenomenal properties. in this case, an attitude of disinterestedness is assumed in order to free the percipient from the negative influences of the will, manifesting through conations such as desire, want and time/space awareness (schopenhauer, [ ]). the temporary elimination of these willful notions is the precursor for attaining the true essence exhibited by the object. schopenhauer ( [ ]) proposes that pure experiential essence cannot be found by mere contemplation of the physical object itself, but rather by attending to its ideal -- its pure expression, significance and innermost being -- through the objectification of the work (schopenhauer, [ ]). this objectification comes about through the subject’s ability to objectify individual consciousness. that is, to reach a will-less state in relation to personal agency or motivations. in other words, within experiencing the pure essences of the object’s ideal, the viewer loses personal individuality (is void of intentionality). this disinterestedness, schopenhauer ( [ ]) insists, … can happen only in so far as our contemplation of the object is not given up to the principle of sufficient reason, does not follow the relation of the object to something outside it (which is ultimately always connected with relations to our own willing), but rests on the object itself (schopenhauer, [ ], p. ). by assuming the attitude of disinterestedness, schopenhauer ( [ ]), goes further than previous proponents mentioned earlier in that he proposes the viewer actually transforms the ordinary object into an aesthetic object. so, the proposal here is that the subject initiated attitude actually changes the objective status of the object (schopenhauer, [ ]; fenner, a). the contemplation of this transformation regarding the object's phenomenological properties is held to give viewers a transcendent reward by momentarily freeing themselves from deductive logic, conceptions of actual time/space and the will-full and mundane experiences of the everyday (schopenhauer, [ ]). seen here, disinterested aesthetic contemplation is a requirement for achieving aesthetic experience -- and that experience can only be achieved through the synergy of both the objectified phenomenal properties of the object and a subject who is sufficiently (disinterestedly) disposed (schopenhauer, [ ]). so, what this means is that the ‘chance’ for aesthetic contemplation can only be activated by the subject's bracketing out extraneous personal values, presuppositions and prejudices. if these requirements are not met, the assumed aesthetic attitude conducive to aesthetic experience cannot be achieved. this is because the kantian ( [ ]) proposition of aesthetic response requiring the free-form, concept-less judgment between understanding and the imagination is short-circuited with the introduction of pragmatic influences and concerns to the experience (kant, [ ]). in other words, the experience becomes instrumental and cognitive, rather than one of sheer and intuitive pleasure. here, the aesthetic attitude concerns the manner in which the viewer perceptually confronts the object in order to separate and target it for purely aesthetic, rather than instrumental, purposes of contemplation. as stated earlier, following kant ( [ ]) and associated later theorists such as stolnitz ( ) and aspects of beardsley ( ), the specific foci of subject-orientated response would be directed to a non-agentic appreciation of formal aesthetic properties (i.e. line, form, colour, rhythm, etc.) of the object in question. it would not cater to any utilitarian or emotional associations. kant’s ( [ ]) point here regarding aesthetic attitude is that any object has the potential to be enjoyed aesthetically, depending upon the subject's attitudinal stance. for instance, regarding an apple for its graceful symmetry and colour, rather than as a nutritional or economical snack, makes the experience of the apple an aesthetic one. in other words, the answer is in how we regard and approach our experiencing. however, while any object such as an apple has the ability to be viewed aesthetically it is a work of art that is considered exemplar for aesthetic contemplation. in fulfilling this role, art objects have the capacity to be considered representatives of a distinct class of perceptual objects which have been specially adapted to sustain non- discursive aesthetic contemplation (osborne, ). in other words, what is proposed by intrinsic/essentialist-inspired theory is that the autonomous art object, with its interplay of aesthetic properties and sensual directedness, is best suited to act as an agent for promoting the required aesthetic attitude. this is because an essentialist-endorsed work of art as a phenomenon has the highest concentration of these interplays (beardsley, b; smith, ). following this line of thought, aesthetic experience induced by an aesthetic attitude composed through disinterestedness serves only its own end. that is, reward and inspiration from unique, motiveless and non-reducible contemplation of, and response to, values are derived from the sheer act of experiencing (eaton, ). here, the sensuous qualities of art inform our perception through displayed formal qualities. grandly stated, exposure to the artwork and the experience it generates can create, according to schopenhauer ( [ ]), the idea of aesthetic experience as liberation from moral, social, political, practical and scientific concerns (carroll, ; schopenhauer, [ ]). aesthetic experience, in this instance, becomes the vehicle for transcending our mundane existence. as attested to through the observations so far, the presuppositionless intrinsic/essentialist positions of aesthetic attitude and disinterestedness deny the pragmatic contributions of our personal psychological and sociocultural inputs into the aesthetic experience. this denial has bred controversy and contentious debate, as initially suggested below. achieving a state of aesthetic attitude takes time and practice and is hindered by extraneous cognitive interventions. indeed, one of the problems inherent within the concept and acknowledged by many of the contemporary proponents themselves is an awareness of the difficulties in transcending engrained personal values and predispositions. one need only imagine the odds of achieving such a state of grace for environmentalists confronting the ecological nightmare of an island and its surrounding tide pools suffocating under the draperies of a christo installation (below). the ecologists’ response to the event might be tainted by alarm for the endangered ecosystem of the tiny island. their moral and ethical indignation from ‘will-full’ ways of knowing outside that of the proposed intrinsically aesthetic mode endorsed by aesthetic attitude would make such a leap into free, concept-less play between their imagination and understanding improbable. cristo and jeanne-claude. surrounded islands, biscayne bay, miami, florida ( - ). installation. the concept required adjustment. one example of such an attempt can be found in the notion of psychical distancing, as observed below. psychical distancing it is the delicate line of balancing pragmatic, practical concerns with a type of attitudinal disinterested contemplation of an object aesthetically that bullough ( [ ]) confronts with his proposal of psychical distancing. explained here, distance refers to a demarcation and interplay between: ... our own self and its affections, using the latter term in its broadest sense as anything which affects our being, bodily or spiritually, e.g. as sensation, perception, emotional state or idea … [it] … lies between our own self and such objects as are the sources or vehicles of such affections (bullough, [ ]), p. ). psychical distance is what bullough ( [ ]) sees as a specialised mental attitude and outlook in which the viewer filters the experience from practical needs or ends in concordance with the requirement for a concentration and balance upon the particular objective ‘aesthetic consciousness’ of experience. in so doing, there is a s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library requirement for mutual interaction of subjective elements and the objective properties inherent in the perception of the art object. the inclusion of this subjective element in bullough’s ( [ ]) notion of distancing separates itself from the requirement of traditional concepts of disinterestedness, in the latter’s insistence for contemplating only those aspects inherent in the artwork (dawson, ; fenner, a). for example, psychical distancing proposes that our personal and particular interests and sentiments must initially kick-start our desire to pursue an extended contemplation of an object and the further disinterested interplay of the aesthetic properties. however, percipient over-balancing or under-balancing in either state (the pragmatic, personal associations and feelings or the aesthetic abstraction presented by the event or object) can result in the inability to initially engage with the object or to maintain a balanced and heightened extended contemplation of its effects. in other words, we may lose our capacity to adequately distance ourselves. this results in the disappearance of appreciation or in its transformation back into the realms of characteristically pragmatic interests. here, our subjective influences to the objective abstraction of the artwork must be maintained, yet minimalised for maximum aesthetic response. hence, such a response emphasises the role of human agency in constituting the aesthetic experience. regarding human agency within these propositions, the inclusions of minimal extraneous input within the aesthetic experience is now reservedly acknowledged and permitted. indeed, even the later, more conservative attitudinal stance postulated by stolnitz ( ) does not disavow the intrusion of personal experience. in fact, he cites bullough's ( [ ]) contention that generally there are no set rules regarding the aesthetic value of association (bullough cited in stolnitz, ). yet, for both aestheticians, the association is permissible and considered aesthetically relevant only if that association further enhances the attitude of disinterest. in other words, how it promotes our attention, our focus directly to the perceptual qualities of the object under contemplation. here selectivity of association is the key because pragmatic and motive-influenced preoccupations will dilute the percipient's required disinterestedness and distract attention from the perceptual qualities displayed. formalist qualities what is aesthetically experienced in an intrinsic/essentialist aesthetic experience is aligned to the formal, or formalist, properties of the artwork in adherence to prescribed qualities. these qualities are seen as universal (i.e. essentialist) attributes based on valued empirical judgments where the object, not associations, purportedly contains the meaning, significant value or intrinsic projection. this is derived through the sheer quality of experienced perceptual enjoyment arising from the arrangements of line, spaces, pattern, colour etc (dewey on formalism, [ ]; bell, [ ]). it is the intuitive experience of the sense and imagination of expressive form in perception (langer, a). this proposition suggests that the stimuli for aesthetic response may stand as a set of factors that exist exclusively for the need of observation. that is, they exist as institutional facts (searle, ), at varying degrees of success or failure, outside the requirement for a viewer. they are there for the taking. yet the possibilities for aesthetic experience come to life for the observer only when that observer is sufficiently motivated to assume an aesthetic attitude or aesthetic responsiveness to the qualities presented. indeed, bell ( [ ]) took this concept of the elevation of the surface values to an extreme. under his formalist banner, as foreshadowed earlier, it was solely the contemplation of the principles of a work's structural design, the expression of "significant form" (or as langer interpreted bell, its ‘form-ing’(langer, )) within the composition, which heralded the aesthetic experience. all attention directed to ancillary qualities such as representation, imitation or emotion was valued not for their own sakes, but through the work's presentation of line, colour, design etc. it was here that essentialist truth with universal application rested. however, bell ( [ ]) distanced himself somewhat from other attitude theorists through his conviction that the viewer's response was triggered, or aroused, directly from the designal properties of the object (the immediate perceptual force of line, colour etc upon the percipient) and not through the subject's intentional/attitudinal stance (fenner, ). in other words, the stimuli or focus for the attainment of aesthetic experience rested within the displayed object, independent of psychological/philosophical offerings that the viewer might bring to the encounter. the symbolic expression, the intuitive expression of the feeling of the art object as an entirety, could not be ascertained, logically deduced or derived at through the symbolism of discursive language (langer, a). the message was intrinsic within the object itself. this suggests an aesthetic experience that is objectified, complete within itself and requires no viewer mediated effort regarding personal, external associations. elements of elitism, percipience and sensibility within the intrinsic/essentialist epistemological generalisation there is also the element of elitism. this elitism relates to an aspect of traditional connoisseurship. that is, true appreciation is reserved for those who understand the codification of the essentialist aesthetic. here, sensitivity relating to propositional and dispositional knowledge is required. the fostering of such values and knowledge is equivalent to what osborne ( ) refers to as ‘percipience’ -- the cultivation of aesthetic appreciation and experiences in order to foster the ability to comprehend all the integrative experiences possible through proactive and rigorous interaction with a work of art (osborne, ; smith, ). it is this interpretive “grasp of meaningful qualities” (parsons, , p. ) which prepares us and intensifies the aesthetic experience. like osborne ( ), smith’s ( ) aesthetic also calls for percipience. for smith ( ), successful engagement with a work of art is incumbent upon attaining a sensitivity, understanding and knowledge in art which facilitates a subject's abilities to ask and answer questions relating to: (a) the manner in which the work was created; (b) communicated; (c) placed within art history; and (d) matters concerning art criticism (smith, ). so, what is being implied here is the idea that contributing knowledge and understanding relating specifically to objectified art works benefit and enhance aesthetic experience. personal and contextual inputs are seen as extraneous and do not assist. knowledge bases are required but remain exclusive to the concept of an autonomous art object and its related experiencing. a similar stance to smith ( ) is displayed by stolnitz ( ). he sees knowledge significant only so far as it cultivates discriminating interest and sensitivity. that is, discrimination must separate relevant from irrelevant knowledge. for stolnitz ( ), relevant knowledge is specifically that which: … [ ] does not weaken or destroy aesthetic attention to the object, [ ] when it pertains to the meaning and expressiveness of the object, and [ ] when it enhances the quality and significance of one’s immediate [my italics] aesthetic response to the object (stolnitz, , p. ). so, what stolnitz ( ) proposes is that the acquisition of extraneous information and its consequential associations may prove highly detrimental to fostering aesthetic attitude and aesthetic experience. this is because extraneous information and consequential associations forces attention away from the immediacy of response and remains external to the experience in perception (stolnitz, ). for example, what is implied here is that having knowledge of napoleon’s warfare strategies can actually interfere with the viewer’s attempted aesthetic encounter before david’s portrait of the french emperor. this is because the niggling knowledge of french history details impedes the instrumental-less required attitude of disinterestedness. here, benefits from ‘knowing about’ are permissible only if they can be successfully articulated within the immediate, perceptual experience of the artwork. it must accentuate that experiential grasp of perception, much the same way as an accentuating spotlight heightens perceptual response to the surface qualities of certain sculptures. so, what is suggested by stolnitz’s ( ) and earlier cited propositions is that personal values, predispositions, extraneous, discursive and propositional knowledge are potential hindrances to attaining aesthetic experience. this is because extraneous knowledge burdens with concepts the acquisition of perceptual response required for the proposed immediacy of encounter. as the sensuous ilya character in dassin’s movie, never on sunday observes, both birds can sing and bouzoukis can play (and we can listen) splendidly without the prerequisite ability to write or understand sheet music (never on sunday, ). summary the intrinsic/essentialist notions outlined in this chapter are based on the perceptual appreciation and feelingfulness of experience relating to the objectified qualities of the artwork. this experience excludes any outside associations of practical or scientific significance. therefore, while the intrinsic/essentialist experience may be either subject or object-induced, all share a commonality through rejection of value-laden or instrumental input. generally, the central criterion for an artwork is its ability to further the aesthetic experience by acting as a prescribed object on which the properly trained and prepared (i.e. competent) percipient may aesthetically contemplate (osborne, ). that is, the intrinsic/essentialist ‘truth’ is attained through distancing oneself from various presuppositions and allowing the work of art to act autonomously. the content of such an act is to hold away from nature and conventional concerns the immediately felt aspects of the object’s qualities, entertained intuitively for the communal experience it uniquely affords the viewer (weiss cited in osborne, ). in doing so, we react to the universal patterns of thought established through the objectified qualities displayed by the art work. here, universal human experiences prevail over the specificity of cultural and artistic traditions. for the viewer, this sustained aesthetic contemplation arises from the divorce of sociocultural meanings from the artwork in favour of practiced and attentive reflection on the formal pleasure-giving surface qualities displayed by the work itself. extraneous propositional knowledge is seen as a hindrance in attaining aesthetic experience. so, what is proposed in the general intrinsic/essentialist proposition is that our invitation to view aesthetically costs us our will, our desire to actively ascribe cognitive meanings or interpretations to the work of art. in other words, the possibility of utilising working or reflective connotations potentially associated with the artwork in terms of sociocultural insights is rejected by the intrinsic/essentialist mandate of assuming a subjective attitudinal stance of disinterestedness. it is this stance of an assumed aesthetic attitude that is prerequisite in general intrinsic/essentialist theory. the point being made here is that if we entertain the general position, we must intentionally assume an attitudinal stance before the art work which has no ulterior or instrumental embeddedness. we do this to be made receptive to the possibility of achieving an aesthetic experience: i.e. any experience otherwise attained can be put down to a mere duration of entertainment brought about by pleasurable sentiment -- that is, likes or dislikes. we must be, at the out start, psychologically ‘distanced’ from the art object; this state being intentionally assumed prior to viewing or accommodated through the act of being caught unaware or un-preoccupied prior to an art object’s sudden introduction. in other words, our aesthetic experience cannot be accommodated through relational associations or interests. for example, even though some may be avid fans of equestrian sports, that context should not play any significant role in their aesthetic experience as they stand before the race horses painted by george stubbs or eduard degas. the viewers must, if they follow intrinsic/essentialist propositions, transcend context. we may now solely respond and experience art for the intuitive rush of perceptual values, rather than as visual signifiers of psychological import. furthering this point, what is proposed is that this non-conceptual association puts forward the idea that works of art are beneficial in the ongoing cultivation and appreciation for the sake of aesthetic experiences alone (beardsley, b; osborne, ). in pursuing this end, the aesthetic experience has no redeeming social or personal consequences for the percipient. it is seen, like the art that stimulates it, worthy for its own sake (carroll, ; stolnitz, ). this state of perceiving becomes a distanced ‘art for art’s sake alone’ contemplation dependent on, and embedded in, the separation of concepts. for instance, one must experience an artwork in the present moment, where, say, the graceful lines and colouration that depict the fur cloaks or silk clothes worn by an eighteenth century family of nobility speak solely of sensuous virtuosity of form, balance and impeccable, seamless technique. one must ‘attitudinally’ remain distanced and unaware of opulence and waste or the needless slaughter of animals for body adornment. to draw conclusions concerning the intrinsic/essentialist propositions discussed in this chapter, it is proposed that a viewer’s aesthetic experience will be: ( ) intuitive and primarily subject directed; ( ) non-reducible and based on universal or essentialist qualities which are contained within the perception of the artwork; ( ) a concept-less judgment described as a kantian ( [ ]) state of free play between understanding and imagination attained through its separation from deductive/discursive knowing and moral/ethical constraints; ( ) correspondingly premised on an aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness regarding extraneous associations of social, political, moral or ethical evaluations; and ( ) achieved through passive contemplation which can be simply experienced for its own sake, or potentially intensified through subject familiarity with essentialist codification and experience-specific content information. having outlined the essentialist position, it is now necessary to more fully elaborate and discuss the opposing subjective/contextualist premises relating to the aesthetic experience. chapter four subjective/contextual perspective introduction and overvew presented below is a systematic observation of the propositions advanced by pragmatic, cognitive, postmodern (including feminist), societal interpretation and visual culture proponents. the loose affiliation of writers associated with these schools of thought share certain commonalities with a general contextualist view -- primarily in their rejection of essentialist and universal tenets. for the most part, subjective/contextualist epistemologies have replaced or dominate those of the intrinsic/essentialist within the current theoretical and practical aspects of the aesthetic and artistic milieu. the underlying assumption here is that the aesthetic experience (or equivalent) is by its nature an experience, not a passive reflection, and as a consequence contains influences of external phenomena which we might consider outside the realm of normally assumed intrinsic/essentialist aesthetic considerations (fenner, ). that is, the demeanors of experiences are already blueprinted from our personal and socially- sourced knowledge bases. this assumption corresponds to the currently popular theory of autopoiesis, as advanced by maturana ( ). this theory suggests that living is a process of cognition whereby a closed living system is self-referential and structurally coupled with the environment. here, cognition is recognised in terms of a basic ability to respond to environmental situations. within this theory of context-situated cognition, such phenomena as language [and art experiencing?] become an orientating function with the structural coupling of environment and nervous system activity. this orientating function also becomes an on- going adaptation within the organism’s behaviour (due to continuous nervous system changes in response to perception) for referential orientation to the environment (maturana, ); with observers making distinctions which are themselves tied to the environment. this process of making distinctions is a way of assisting the observer to make sense of perceived phenomena. here, cognition is the living interaction within the organism, aligned to the demands of on-going environmental agitations (maturana, ). that is, we react and adapt accordingly. so, what is being said here is that our ways of knowing are inextricably intertwined with our environment; cognition is contextual. more specific to our topic, because of contextual sourcing, concepts surrounding art and aesthetic experience assume a more holistic, relational and constructivist point of view. this experiencing is also grounded through participatory, informed and agentic engagement between viewer and artwork. it is a reconceptualisation of art and experience where instrumental meaning based on pluralities replaces aesthetic values and the idea of concept-less contemplation of the reified, autonomous art object. correspondingly, it recognises art experiencing as effortful, requiring cognition and discursive knowing. in addition, it advocates sociocultural interpretation over intrinsic disinterestedness, as well as proposing the importance of pluralities inherent in subject/time/space specificity over universal claims or authority. furthermore (in certain cases), it promotes a de-valuation of the hegemonic position of fine art as a discipline. what is proposed here is a subjugation of fine art and its appreciation/experiencing into the larger epistemological view related to social construction art theory or into popularist concepts of a general visual culture. many of the relational and critical theories concerning the promotion of art into the services of individual and social systems can be traced to the propositions expressed by dewey ( [ ]), as examined below. influences from dewey much of subjective/contextualist theory is indebted, derived, distilled or deconstructed from the observations of dewey ( [ ]) and his re-definition of art as experience. for dewey ( [ ]), this experience was one whose qualities could be seen as being complete, coherent and consummatory. it was also derivable from proactive, participatory engagement between viewer and artwork. what dewey proposed is the concept of an aesthetic experience which is pragmatically inspired and steeped in the psychological implications of purposive action (shusterman, a; fenner, a). aesthetic experience was conceived as a transformation involving participation and communication. so, unlike the intrinsic/essentialist perspectives which saw the will-less contemplation of art worthy in itself, art’s value was now dependent upon its instrumental abilities. dewey ( [ ]) proposed that the value and function of art (in its immediate experience) was not to serve any one particular end, but to delight and inform the participant in any number of ways. here, the aesthetic experience not only serves to focus and invigorate perception, but also to aid the pursuit of other life goals. in this way, it is quite distinct from intrinsic/essentialist thought, such as schopenhauer’s ( [ ]), which saw contemplation of art as a means of transcendence, of freeing the self from worldly concern. now, the beneficial communication and participation possible through aesthetic experience was synonymous with being absorbed in and re-vitalised by worldly activities (dewey, ; shusterman, ). for instance, a positive encounter with, say, an idyllic landscape painted during european exploration of the south seas can stimulate a general interest in the era and a desire for personal explorations of the subject within associated aesthetic fields, such as literature or music. one may even be further compelled to travel and experience first hand the various exotic locations. seen here, this progressively informed interest may become a source of personal inspiration, integrating with the concept of self. in so doing, the interest engrains itself into private and public interaction as well as remaining an important emotional channel for the release of simple and pleasurable daydreaming. for these reasons, aesthetic experience serves many ends. it becomes a source for intrinsic reward and an agent for positive self-image. in addition, it acts as a positive influence and inspirational communicative device for community interaction. through the emphasis on individual construction, rather than on aesthetic formulation, dewey proposes that the instrumental value of experiencing art would vitalise the life of the viewer as well as strengthen and secure art's position as an important vehicle for such transactions (shusterman, ). as observed earlier, dewey ( [ ]) proposes the concept of aesthetic experience as a proactive and dynamic vehicle for self-actualisation. it emphasises the actual experience and the far-reaching beneficial effects it professes for the individual. by doing so, it negates the motive-less attitudional stance required by essentialist disinterestedness. in addition, dewey’s aesthetic experience is based on the development and dynamics of experiential activity concerning the creation and perception of the artwork, not in the reified artifact itself (dewey, [ ]; shusterman, ). this emphasis on experiential process over art product is of primary importance, as dewey’s ( [ ]) antithetical proposition to essentialist claims for autonomy of the artwork becomes a foundational catalyst for much of the following contextual/constructive points of view that follow. art cognition at the core of these epistemological debates has been the introduction of the concept of cognitive ‘knowing’ to aesthetic experience. in part, this is due to the shifting and expanding notions of what visually constitutes art (previewed in chapter one). corresponding to this is the increased difficulty in assessing and gaining the full experience of some nineteenth and twentieth century and contemporary art by way of simple perception of formal qualities. in other words, some artworks, in both recent history and contemporarily, have been created deliberately to challenge our traditional ways of seeing and responding. here, pleasurable experience is found through the ability to promote and fathom intellectual puzzles. that is, the pleasure comes from cognitive visual problem solving achieved through praxis, not disinterested attention. contemporarily, the heightened awareness implied in aesthetic experience can have more to do with the work’s ability to stimulate idea and interpretation, to question and interrogate, rather than to act as aesthetically contemplative forms of perceptual properties. in short, we now must contend with works of art whose intentionality can be non- aesthetic or even anti-aesthetic (carroll, ). here, full experience depends more and more upon the textual reading, the understanding and interpretation of contextual association integral to the work. these new requirements challenge traditional content and context because much of what is now desired is hidden below the perceptual surface (fenner, b). for example, one would be hard-pressed to account for the experiences of readymade or embellished 'art objects' such as duchamp’s urinal/fountain or dine’s depictions of builder’s tools (or countless examples of conceptual art for that matter) in terms of the sensuousness of presented formal qualities. indeed, they challenge traditional meaning. marcel duchamp. fountain ( ). original lost. ready-made urinal. jim dine. five paintbrushes ( ). etching. to extract the full experiential rewards of such encounters, viewers must make effortful and cognitively informed investigations. that is, they must actively seek the answers to the visual and intellectual riddles. to do this successfully, viewers must have the cognitive abilities to interpret the multitude of meanings which present themselves (efland, ). this requires action. this is because there is more to be extracted from encounters with such pieces as those mentioned above than can be adequately contained or understood by an intrinsic/essentialist attitude of disinterestedness. looking is thinking this new ‘action’ prerequisite is required because of the contextual and constructive nature of much art work for appreciating or ‘reading’ artworks necessitates alteration or abandonment of traditionally assumed notions. one of these notions concerns the way in which we ‘know’ through art. subjective/contextualist propositions suggest that it is no longer reasonable to accept the traditional eighteenth century inspired aesthetic which disallowed the idea of s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library rigourous conceptualisation. what is argued now is that the aesthetic is itself cognitive in that cognition begins with the images given in perception (efland, ). here, the meanings inherent in imagery are ways of knowing and experiencing (davis & gardner, ). that is, they are considered differentiated and non-discursive cognitive forms of aesthetic behaviours -- ways of distinct thinking and understanding individual and societal environments. this opposition to traditional aesthetic knowing stems primarily from the observations, acceptance and refinements of cognitivist and gestalt psychological investigations over the last half century. it came through new propositions regarding information-processing or approaches to symbol systems (davis & gardner, ). here, the once purposelessness inherent in essentialist artistic appreciation was jolted with a systematisation of thought toward establishing meaning (csikszenmihalyi & robinson, ; parsons, ; davis & gardner, ). this new meaning came from the advancement of such cognitive developments as the concept of multiple intelligences (gardner, ) or the seminal view that art disciplines are vehicles for communication based on their own unique symbol systems -- as a kind of symbolic language in itself (langer, a; goodman, ). furthermore, the current thrust of cognitive developmental theory, once assumed only pertinent to propositional and procedural forms of knowledge acquisition, has expanded to include dispositions such as values, beliefs, and attitudes (billett, ). that is, in bringing the individual to the forefront of the aesthetic experience, it is necessary to consider not only the purely analytical component of human cognition (in making sense of or coming to know the aesthetic experience), but also the individual's preferences, interests and idiosyncratic ways of knowing. now, our heightened experience of art is fortified through the percipient’s employment of proactive problem solving processes inherent in cognitive theory. as billett ( ) explains: [c]ognitive theory proposes that individuals' knowledge resides in their memories and in different forms described as cognitive structures [knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation]. this knowledge is what we use in our everyday activities. it is also deployed consciously in demanding activities such as dealing with new tasks and problem-solving, including transfer of knowledge to new applications (anderson ; stevenson et al. ). in turn, through its use, this knowledge is developed further (billett, , p. ). what is suggested by cognitive theory then is that perception such as the aesthetic experience itself can be considered cognitive activities. in addition, the further development of knowledge through the cognitive structures which assist its acquisition promote the idea that proficiency in art cognition skills can be learned (reimer, ; perkins, ; parsons, ). by proposing the establishment of cognitive structures and their deployment in activities, the sufficiency of essentialist theories such as bell's ( [ ]) to adequately define aesthetic experience is contested. this counter-action to bell ( [ ]) is seen in aesthetic cognition’s proposals that the perceptual qualities (derived from the work’s structure and form) are, according to reimer ( ), intended to manifest suggestions, connotations, possibilities and implications (reimer, ). furthermore, the connotative capacities inherent in content (subjective meanings, associations, etc.) are integrated into the holistic experience of the form itself. from the above proposals, we can view the notion of aesthetic experience not as a simple subject response to presented formal relationships based on motiveless contemplation, but as effortful cognitive activity on the viewer’s part. as we mediate the experience, some proposed processes concerning the attainment of such an aesthetic/cognitive experience now require investigation. the intelligent eye by looking discerningly at this holistic experience, a type of reasoning takes place between eye and mind involving such cognitive activities as extrapolation, interpretation and interpolation. indeed, for perkins ( ), the concept of the cognitive powers of the 'intelligent eye' is based upon the fine tuning of experiential knowledge with that of reflective intelligence in an effort to cultivate thinking dispositions -- “a felt tendency, commitment, and enthusiasm … broad attitudes, tendencies, and habits of thinking” (perkins, , pp. - ). coincidentally, it is perkins’ contention that the formulation of these dispositions, rather than strategies, is the major agent for organising the viewer's cognitive powers. seen here, experiential intelligence is the knowing involved with day-to-day existence and associated structuring of routine problem solving skills and mental coping processes. experiential intelligence is the cognition of the familiar and is associated with initial intuitive engagement. in this way, it is characterised by quick and immediate interaction. reflective intelligence, on the other hand, is associated with metacognitions, in that it is seen as: … mindful self-management and strategic deployment of one's intellectual resources to intelligent behavior … a control system for experiential intelligence … [b]y cultivating awareness of our own thinking, asking ourselves good questions, guiding ourselves with strategies … steer[ing] our experiential intelligence in fruitful directions … to manage its powers for a fuller perception of art -- and more generally for better thinking about anything (perkins, , pp. - ). for this to occur, reflective intelligence requires time and patience, background information, associations, cognitive processing, hypothesis and so on. here, the aesthetic experience must be proactive and informed. one must thoughtfully and judiciously hunt for the clues and cues residing within the perception of an artwork’s form, content and feelings if one is to receive the long lasting intuitive, cognitive and instrumental rewards which are offered. cognition as interpretation yet these rewards require a commitment to inquiry. this is because of the growing complexities inherent in contemporary art. in addition to this, one can add the presumed corresponding inadequacies of simple perception to address these complexities within the postmodern/contextualist definition of artworks as ‘text-analogues’). in order to confront these issues, a fundamental role is given to the concept of interpretation as an elaboration within the cognitive process (parsons, ). for parsons, interpretation is what we attempt to do in coming to terms with understanding or finding significance in something. it is the essentially cognitive mental activity in which we engage in order to understand; the activity manifesting itself only when understanding is not immediately grasped. this activity and process of interpretation can run anywhere from the laborious to the intuitive (parsons, ). in other words, interpretation of the possible complexities of meanings which at times escapes intuitive knowing or the interrogation of ‘reading’ the symbolic language within the medium is prerequisite for a coherent perception of the artwork. however, we cannot perceptually grasp the significance of objects if obstacles bar that perception. intuitive and direct apprehension is not enough. we must be forearmed with substantive information and contingencies to assist, to ‘interpret,’ in order that our perceptions can crystallise. the dilemma is linked to the idea that while perception can be seen as a construct of the individual, understanding is embedded in sociocultural awareness (parsons, ). this appropriation of sociocultural knowing relates to what valsiner referred to as the co-construction of knowledge. that being: … the reciprocal interaction between socially-sourced knowledge and individuals' knowledge, itself socially constructed through their life histories (ontogenies) (cited in billett, , p. ). consequentially, art now requires background knowledge and the discursive assistance of language to convey that knowing. that being said, we can never finitely describe in discursive terms what we see. however, for parsons ( ), words and dialogue assist in focusing our attention. they are a clarification system that helps us locate that which is presented by the object for contemplation. discourse becomes as integral to the artwork as perception itself (parsons, ). in other words, language can be considered a conductor which helps align and give clarity to historic, cultural and psychological insights, allowing our visual interpretation to inform our perception of difficult imagery. this, in turn, enhances and leads the way towards a unified and coherent aesthetic experience. here, knowing ‘in’ requires knowing ‘about.’ in addition, new perspectives, such as those found in postmodernism and visual culture, have emerged which seek to disavow the idea of experiencing art as a non- rational and independent way of knowing. they suggest that art has a political basis, is used agentically to control or liberate and that art’s messages or experiencing cannot be applied in universal terms. these more contemporary perspectives are now examined. aesthetic experience in postmodern and visual culture from the beginning of the ‘aesthetic verses meaning’ epistemological debates between advocates of aesthetic disinterestedness and instrumental/pragmatism there was little room for compromise. indeed, the pluralistic, constructionalist views adjectively denied a place for a rarified and privileged autonomous art object. new theories championed the displacement of romanticised mysticism and essentialist disinterestedness regarding aesthetic qualities for responses that served to produce and advocate meanings. these meanings were achieved through approaches empathetic to the pluralities inherent in the way people recognise and reconstruct their worlds. in this way, significant agency was granted to the observer, as dewey ( [ ]) had earlier proposed. within this new order, idiosyncrasy, in terms of individual and group interpretation and construction, becomes recognised as significant importation into the idea of aesthetic experience. this places aesthetic experience as a culture-bound concept where social change may herald changes regarding what is deemed worthy of aesthetic experience (eaton, ). by proposing this input of various interpretational viewpoints, the aesthetic experience becomes capable of identifying and celebrating differences in values, customs and gender (eisner, ). postmodernism crowther ( ) refers to postmodernism as skeptical critical discourse opposed to essentialist and modernist theoretical preoccupations (crowther, ; lankford, ) (see table - general attributes of modernism and postmodernism). similarly, postmodernism is not seen so much as a theoretical body in itself, but rather observed through the unifying impulse of antithetical argument regarding the fundamental tenets of analytical aesthetics and modernism which it seeks to replace (jameson, ). correspondingly, postmodernism, in part, is defined by lyotard ( ) as a refusal of belief in metanarratives (i.e. discourses on legitimisation of knowledge) (lyotard, ). it is opposed to the modernist/essentialist negation of the need for contingent inquiry. postmodernism contends that everything, including art, is in a state of flux. it believes that borders, if they exist at all, concerning all spheres of contemporary life are ill-defined and amenable to interpretation. what was once a quest for order and system has now been replaced by complexity and pluralism. this complexity and pluralism, according to eagleton ( ), was brought on primarily by a shift in industrial production and radical information and communication technologies (eagleton, ). therefore, it is suggested that any past or present political and cultural restrictive iconocism cannot effectively deal with the experimental due to the expanding guises of contemporary ways of knowing and response. in considering postmodernism, gablik ( ) finds two distinct and generally opposing paradigms or ‘impulses,’ as jameson ( ) observed earlier. these oppositional paradigms are referred to as deconstruction and reconstruction. while professing antithetical aims, both positions agree on the irrelevance and inability of the modernist perspective to faithfully represent contemporary cultural or worldview concerns. the two paradigms are examined below. deconstruction the hegemonic position is held by deconstruction, with its rejection of perceived modernist attributes such as stylistic innovation, change, originality and uniqueness (gablik, ). in the case of art, the deconstructionist position proposes that we can no longer deal with absolute, definitive meanings of the visual signifiers (e.g. the text of the painting and its visual symbolism). this is because of the ambiguities and pluralities inherent in establishing meaning. in other words, there can be no universal consensus, no one way of interpreting that which is presented because of the shape-shifting character of specificity embodied within individual, time, space, cultural, economical or political meanings (gablik, ; belsey, ). it is at the point where the constructions of essentialist/modernist tenets seem to fail that the deconstruction of meaning (and the freedom for temporal understandings, or denial of all meanings for that matter) begins. for example, in art, we see the fruits of deconstruction in works that use antithetical, ambivalent, unorthodox and purposely misleading or definitively meaning- less symbols in terms of content, materials and production. the intention is to make a sham of all that can be construed as modernist. this is done without the need for offering a cultural alternative (gablik, ). its tools are those of parody and confrontation through anarchistic appropriation of traditional motifs. the points to be made are those of intentional shock or shame as in the earlier examples of the work of hirst ( ) and the chapmans ( ). deconstruction asks us to interrogate that which we are used to; to re-examine the comfortability and security of our theoretical, individual and communal belief systems. reconstruction reconstructional postmodernism, on the other hand, presents options and challenges the materialistic/mechanistic through the ‘reenchantment’ of art (gablik, ). what is proposed here is that the reenchantment of reconstruction postmodernism “ … implicates art in this awakening sense of responsibility for the fate of the earth and of the high levels of psychic and physical toxicity in our environment” (gablik, , p. ). in other words, it implies organic, holistic and nature/ecological orientations of instrumental resolve which aim toward bettering humanity. the above is presumably achieved through a re-orientation towards an ideology based on interconnectedness. that is, it targets social responsibility, deep ecological attunement, psycho-spiritual empowerment, positive and nurturing human relations, and an awakening renewal of the spiritual and the sense of the sacred (gablik, ). to accomplish the above, reconstruction embraces mysticism and alternative consciousness in order to create alternative, nurturing and productive realities. it reacts against what is considered the ‘ingrained mistake’ of cultural over-identification with deductive, rational processes (bohm cited in gablik, ). reconstructional postmodernism attempts a conflation of the ‘inner and outer realities’ and believes that knowing runs deeper than what is presented on the deductive or empirical surface (gablik, ). it calls for the artist as shaman (i.e. healer), as the bringer of apparitions. it invites ancestral or communal ritual to heal the effects of cultural and personal alienation (gablik, ). it calls for ecstatic experience and visionary cultural transformation through the lessening of ego-preoccupation and a re- mythologising of consciousness and the re-establishment of the primacy of ecological naturalism (gablik, ). through reconstruction postmodernity we celebrate the idea of being an integral part rather than continuing the attempt at being the positivistic controller of the cosmos. summarising these abbreviated postmodern references, and remembering weitz’s ( ) earlier proposition of an open concept, art and its response becomes a philosophical journey to discover new contingencies. it concerns new ways of addressing what is before us. furthermore, it does not act merely as examples or justifications for established rules or orthodoxies (lyotard, ). by advocating this exploration into the unknown, postmodernist thought denies authentication through pre-established criteria or judgments. so, what is being proposed here is that art is now free from being principle governed and that the quest for art and response now seeks those criteria which justify themselves (lyotard, ). in this way, postmodernism denies autonomy and universality to the work of art. consequently, aesthetic attitude in terms of disinterestedness is abandoned. this is because our heightened response can now come from any subjective source. one such contemporary source of response can be found in propositions advocated by visual culture, as presented below. visual culture the abandonment of traditional theoretical concerns through a re-conceptualising and subsuming of the aesthetic concept, experience and art itself is also favoured by advocates of visual culture. what is proposed is that art and its experience is positioned under a larger conception which takes into account all forms of visual imagery. consequently, the window is open to traditionally considered/assumed non-fine arts, such as sociological artifacts and past times, crafts, popular imagery and media. according to visual culture propositions, fine art would also share an egalitarian position with popular (and traditionally un-orthodox) stimuli and pastimes such as “ … computer games, manga, feature films, toy design, advertising, television programming, dreamtime paintings, fashion design, and so on” (freedman, , pp. - ). the reasoning behind this is the recognition of a global shift from text associated communications to image saturation and the resultant requirement for investigating its complexities, embedded meanings, codes and impact (freedman, ). throughout our daily interactions, we are confronted with visual imagery and media associated phenomena, much of this is consumer-culture, profit-driven. its omnipotent position can be seen to take precedent within our everyday perception and aesthetic response. in this eclectic amassing of genres, traditional aesthetic theories are found wanting. this is because they are unable to address all the contingencies associated with such diverse visual forms and experiences and the ever expanding image technologies and art media. to address this issue, proponents and/or observers of visual culture such as freedman ( ), duncum ( ; ) and efland, ( ) (among others) call for a redefinition and expansion of the aesthetic concept itself. that is, they propose pluralities of definitions that are expandable enough to promote critique and make relevant the continuous progression of increasingly sophisticated visual forms around us. this foundational rejection and reaction against intrinsic/essentialist notions becomes apparent in efland's ( ) summarisation of visual culture’s attributes. he cites: ( ) the use of critical investigation into the artwork's social system, rather than issues relating to formalist aesthetics; ( ) a marginalisation of interpretation regarding judgments and aesthetic value; ( ) the disenfranchisement of the concept of elitist, ‘high’ culture; and ( ) the proposal that all things, including visual culture, are politically motivated, thus requiring their subsumation within interdisciplinary studies in order to examine social ramifications (efland, ). to accomplish this new definition of aesthetic requires new foundations in understanding. in other words, it requires the employment of multiple and associated meanings and interpretation because the existing conceptions are not able to account for this multiplicity of meanings, interpretations and connections (freedman, ). this phenomenon of multiplicity in postmodern assessment is associated with a cultural shift which now sees the once differentiated concerns of aesthetic experience and the drive for capital profit in conflation (efland, ). to make this point, efland ( ) cites kellner’s ( ) contention that the popular culture in industralised nations is founded and maintained primarily upon the production of cultural phenomenon and objects (i.e. artifacts) explicitly intended for large scale distribution and profit. its aesthetic appeal is based on the non-offensive and promotes the conception of independence within the consumer by manipulative suggestions of opposing traditional concepts (efland, ). that is, the new is asserted and advocacy for continuous supply and demand is met by discrediting that which has gone before it. the premise is that one will not accumulate the new if the old is still seen to be relevant. in this way, experiential encounters are now channeled and periodically manipulated by prescribed dictates of market economics. we need no longer seek out objects or encounters for enduring aesthetic experience as these objects (deemed sufficient by others) are provided for us in increasingly rapid rotation. the further marginalisation of high art because of its visual dominance and immediacy, it is proposed that the heightened experience afforded by interaction within the everyday popular consumer culture outweighs experience with high arts. its ubiquitous nature, rather than an infrequent excursion into an art gallery, becomes the more dominant vehicle for signification regarding intrapersonal (i.e. individual) and interpersonal (i.e. group) identity (duncum, ; parsons, ). as with postmodernism tenets, the relevance of traditional aesthetics itself is put into question. in other words, what is suggested is that the heightened experience attainable through viewer introduction to unique art objects seems no longer to hold a significant function for individual vivification within contemporary culture. the modernist thought that a work of art is ranked as a special class of perceptual object is refuted. in addition, there is no room for what osborne ( ) and smith ( ) referred to as percipience or of the sustainable intrinsic pleasures afforded by motiveless contemplation of the autonomous art object, as advanced by essentialist doctrine. these notions have been replaced within popular visual culture for an emphasis on prescribed immediate and temporal visual gratification offered from a bombardment of profit driven commodities, as earlier proposed by jameson ( ). therefore, understanding the meanings, significances and consequences of the diverse array of ever-increasing and predominant consumer orientation of popular visual culture phenomena, in all its presentation guises, becomes the trajectory for critical philosophical and educational debate. yet, this everyday exposure to the social suggestion is not equally prosecuted or accepted by individuals. parson ( ) contends that popular visual culture is hesitant to promote a socratic response in terms of detachment, percipience or critical, contemplative rigour. for parsons ( ), the commercial contexts and values of visual culture can be quite different. he contends that the visual messages in aspects of visual culture are ripe with undesirable motivations and bias. he also sees some of this bias in relation to aspects of merchandising and associated promotion of unrealistic imagery related to race, gender, age and the environment, among others. so it seems that the over-riding tenets of visual culture stand in opposition to the concepts of traditional fine arts. in visual culture, ‘high art’ hierarchies are dissolved, as is the concept which presupposes fine art autonomy. like postmodernism generally, there is a devaluing of the uniqueness of fine art objects into the service of sociocultural agendas. that is, the fine arts are no longer viewed as exempt; they may now serve reductionist functions, taking their place as simply one of many visual tools to critique cultural meanings. also displaced is the idea of quiet contemplation in such modernist institutions as art galleries and museums. offered in their places are the new arenas of everyday visual culture. these arenas are found in cyberspace, mass media, advertisement, theme parks, malls and amusement centers (among others). as suggested earlier, these new loci of visual stimulation are primarily market driven by nature. they include the everyday thoroughfares of routine; intentional sites where the constant wave of materialist, technological and informational visual stimuli (signifiers of the un-cloistered activities of the everyday) wash over their human targets. within such localities and stimulations, knowledge and awareness likely comes from unrelenting, continuous exposure at the day-to-day humdrum routine of living. its absorption becomes unconscious and behaviouralist inspired. resistance for some schools of thought, the visual, instrumental battering in relation to all aspects of the individual's life and behaviour is seen as symptomatic of a contemporary and general human malaise (abbs, ). from the frenzy and superficiality of profit-driven and institutionalised-inspired experience, a trivialising of emotion is occurring. this idea has its antecedence in dewey’s ( [ ]) earlier cautionary observation that there is always a risk of sensations becoming mere automated responses to stimuli at surface level. in more contemporary discourse, kristeva ( ) is also cautionary. her concern surrounds our abilities to attain personal, unified and substantial experience within the current cultural environment. she sees this new environment as elaborated by the bombardment of popular and transient technological imagery. kristeva ( ) considers the down-side, the urgency in a situation where the individual is becoming robotised and transformed into virtual images. she sees this being achieved through the constant propagation of visual culture/consumer imagery and fears that the reality of our world is slipping out of our control and moving away from the capabilities to maintain its comprehension (kristeva, ). in other words, we simply cannot distinguish the reality from the illusion. similarly, greene ( ) sees the multitude of imagery coming from technological communication stunting imaginative thinking. greene ( ) also recalls dewey’s denunciation of “sloppiness, superficiality, and recourse to sensations as a substitute for ideals” (dewey cited in greene, , p. ) to draw attention to the current climate of conformity and prescribed, agentic codification of experience. what is being proposed here is that the “predigested concepts and images in fixed frames” (greene, , p. ) which encroach daily upon our senses pervert the possibilities of personal actuality and the alternatives achievable through imaginative response. for example, depression is assuaged by the fleeting experience of possession and participation in shopping -- our dreams become whitewashed with that which is saleable -- while a ubiquitous predictability overshadows our ideas of what actually could be possible (greene, ). to counteract such regimentation, greene ( ) sees the imagination, the ideas of possibilities, being fostered more through the ideas of unpredictability rather than the predictable and the instrumentally premeditated. the possibilities of the imagination and the unreal are honed on informed engagement, rather than what she sees as the apathetic passivity which is borne of imagery associated with post-industrial commercialistic conformity (greene, ). corresponding to greene’s concern over the lack of percipient exercise of imagination and the possibilities of alternatives is found in ruinard’s ( ) on-going action research into the postmodern aesthetic (as expressed by a selection of generation- y diploma of graphic design students). for example, when presented with representative examples of both western and japanime animation, ruinard ( ) observed that her research group was overwhelming more interested in the western animation than that of current japanime animation. the success of the western animation was not so much put down to aesthetic superiority. on the contrary, its popularity was based (according to dissenting participant observation) on the notion that learners did not want to invest the time and energy required for engagement with the more complicated story lines associated with japanime animation. instead, the majority preferred the ‘quick fix’ of western animation because of its familiarity and on the basis of it being more direct and simple to understand (ruinard, ). here, predictability and familiarity, rather than the exercise of effortful imagination and alternative possibilities as evidenced in ruinard’s ( ) research, seems to validate greene’s ( ) concerns. to this can be added the notion that the once clear separation and delineation of the internal and exterior world. that is, the personal/private from the public has become not only blurred, but obscenely combined (baudrillard, ). for example, those actions and desires once privately ritualised, personally rule-governed and distinct in personal, private symbolism are now no longer separable from the visual public domain (baudrillard, ). our personal domains are blended, reinvented, communalised with other private domains (and the pre-destined desires of commodity-driven commercialisation). the result is a composite, where an illusory apparition is projected and shadowed in our place. this re-invented image is thrown back at us, re-inforced through incessant projections of communication and advertising saturation. finally, we are interrogated and mirrored in the projected image until that depersonalised illusion is inseparable from our concept of self. our reality, as kristeva ( ) observed earlier, then slips covertly out of our own control. the points being made above concern the viability of the large amount of throw- away visual imagery (propagated on mass-market ulterior motivations) to successfully accommodate an intrinsically robust or meaning-full concept of self and aesthetic experience. dissenters may ask whether the nature of commodity/consumer visual culture, its intentions of immediate visual grasp and superficial gratification of consumer desires, promote the characteristics of aesthetic experience which dewey ( [ ]) ascribed as complete and unified? is it salient enough to generate transformation into participation and communication? are they, as schopenhauer ( [ ]) requires, worthy objects in themselves, capable of activating personal transcendence and helping us escape our mundane existence? or do they simply amplify it? visual culture is, in some respects, the descendent of dewey’s ( [ ]) celebration of the ordinary occurrence, complete with the possibility for personal vivification, if a unified communion is achieved. however, where dewey ( [ ]) acknowledged that the formal art object could in fact be a focal point for having a contemplative aesthetic experience (again, if that occurrence was full, unified and consummatory), the nature of the everyday aesthetic experiences associated with visual culture is established through fleeting, fragmented and disorientating visual imagery (duncum, ). indeed, in responding to much visual culture, our reactions are not ones usually associated with contemplation of qualities or meaningful problem solving. nor are entertained the roles of the individual's prior experiences in shaping what that individual experiences. as gergen ( ) notes, what we encounter -- and how we encounter it -- is manifested by an assemblage of experiences and ways of knowing from the past. in counterpoint, much popular visual culture denies or exploits the past for the immediacy of the now. it requires no historic referent other than pastiche or parody or mediated effort on the viewer’s part to receive its full perceptual impact. comparisons may be useful here. the aesthetic experiences of intrinsic/essentialist theories involve a degree of percipience and effortful subject engagement toward assuming an aesthetic attitude (as discussed earlier). correspondingly, within most cognitive and pragmatist- inspired aesthetics, self-initiated effort is required to find successful problem solving schema and the apprehension of significant meanings, symbols, codes, texts and interpretations. these are subjective induced states. by contrast, the effects of experiencing some aspects of popular visual culture can be seen as hallucinatory and directionless for the viewer. they are objectively defined. for example, this notion is exemplified by observing everyday visual culture’s nature. that nature being, as duncum ( ) sites featherstone ( ), more; … of the sense of intoxication, sensory overload, disorientation, and the intensities of experience to be had where there is a playful mixing up of codes and numerous unchained signifiers (duncum, , p. - ). by its nature then, this aspect of experiential popular visual culture celebrates the flashy, sporadic and strobe light-like assault on perception, rather than that of the individual's livedworld. we are entertained by its flash, its agenda -- but not for too long. this is because the engineered experience is by its nature and intent transient and forgettable, in order that the current image may not be a deterrent signifier for the plethora of consequentially introduced imagery. art or significant object becomes commodity; a means rather than an end. its lifespan is engineered simultaneously with its creation. the search for meaning as proposed from the above postmodern inspired observations, relational and instrumental fortification of the aesthetic, or demise of the traditional definition of aesthetic altogether, is through the consignment of relevant significations. these meanings go well beyond those of motive-less contemplations of an artwork's formal qualities, as proposed by essentialist theory. they now extend into the artwork's signification as an object within a sociocultural context. in other words, they are to be read, analysed as artifacts embedded with particular societal time and space implications (freedman, ; crowther, ). therefore, intrinsic argument for universalities (or metanarratives) is negated. our experiences of art become social constructs, based on the co-construction of knowing (as referred to earlier). what takes over now is concern for pluralities of interpretation of object and experience contingent on the demands of context. in other words, there is no one correct way to regard aesthetic or interpretational response. all responses are viewed through the specificity of a time/space cultural lens. all responses are suspect. here too is the pragmatic nullification of elitist preoccupations that separated high brow art forms and their contemplations from low brow or popularist pursuits. also rejected are the presumed essentialist injustices inherent in the idealisation of notions concerning gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, cultural beauty or correctness through stereotypical universalities. it is interesting to note that although aspects of popular visual culture can be considered subsumed within these postmodern concerns, its apparent bias to favour stereotyping and idealisation, as observed earlier by parsons ( ), is antithetical to the general postmodern proposition. now, to regard the meaning behind a painting of an apple is to regard the full consequences of its depiction in time and place. our postmodern concerns regarding the depicted apple may be many. along with our traditional introduction to its sensuous qualities are also the possibilities of purpose-full sociocultural implications and reductionism. for instance, is the apple symbolic of a commodity which signifies economic, cultural or social stratums? is there innuendo related to anti-feminist or religious connotations through subjective associations with temptation or guilt (biblical)? is there moralistic or behavioural intent (an apple a day ….)? is there a double coding of interpretation to be found in the fact that within an age of genetically modified food, are we actually considering an apple in the first place? while these examples might seem far-fetched, they nevertheless illustrate the postmodern concern regarding works of art and their experiential meanings. what is suggested is that artworks are products of particular contexts, steeped within their situatedness. here, the experiencing of works of art is contingent on interpretation and appreciated only through an understanding of the particular sociocultural constrictions from which they evolve (lankford, ). for example, consider the same imaginary portrait of the eighteenth century noble family (referred to earlier), all gloriously costumed and assuming the confident postures of the privileged. now, consider the relevance of this painting for the lives of those who work the aristocrats’ land. psychologically, the presumed graceful bearing of the depicted family (or the virtuosity of technique displayed by the painter) may well be viewed from the tenants’ perspective only as a despised visual proclamation of feudal tyranny. for the tenants, a kantian ( [ ]) attitude of disinterestedness regarding the work may be difficult or impossible to attain. that is, the tenants may have no positive content or contextual reference regarding the painting. if we bring back gergen’s ( ) earlier proposal -- that what we encounter and how we encounter it is made sense of by assemblages of experience and ways of knowing from the past -- then a history of punishments for failed crops or tardiness of rent may well influence the tenants’ dispositional interaction with the painting. feminist viewpoints within feminist thought, other proposed aspects of modernist injustice are propagated through patriarchal essentialist metanarratives that relate to the philosophical and historical idealisations and universalities of beauty, art and truth. here, it is suggested that our personal and societal aesthetic is based on a history written to reflect particular sets of values derived from the masculine point of view. it is proposed that the production, public control and normative evaluative standards of art have always been the reserve of male domain (bovenschen, ). therefore, what we perceive as relevant art, the physical and metaphysical depiction of women, their societal roles and hierarchical positioning, are products derived from a male supremacist agenda. because of this, our collective consciousness has been appropriated by dominant cultural values. feminist argument contends that the female viewpoint and psyche has been ignored, marginalised or is agentically presented or re-synthesised from male subjectivity (parker & pollock, ). they ask how can there be universal consensus about concepts related to aesthetic formulations when those formulations are postulated without conations or input from an entire gender? feminist artists and theorists, in keeping with postmodernist sentiments, have asserted their dissent and reconstructive art agendas within a plurality of fronts. that is, they believe that the traditional views held in all aspects of contemplation and production of art (because of their pedigree) are to be challenged. the focus of art shifts toward exposing the manipulative and political aspects of male dominance and the marginalisation of authentic female persona historically and in more contemporary arenas (parker & pollock, ). within this view, the faces of art as seen through both visual culture and traditional art disciplines can be considered propagators of a male dominated, cultural status quo. in addition, feminist propositions challenge the dismissive attitudes which categorise women’s art as simply decorative or dextrous (parker & pollock, ). they also challenge the objectification of representations of women which propagate their identification exclusively with domesticity or femininity (parker & pollock ( ). through advocacy of increasingly valid but divergent viewpoints from those of male inspired essentialism, feminist aesthetics initiate new and re-evaluative praxis within the area of standards for aesthetic evaluation (devereaux, n.d.). here, the status and viewpoints of theoretical and experiential investigations relating to traditional subject matter, fetishism, lesbianism, body adornment, the role of crafts and materials for legitimate artistic pursuits, fantasies and realities are introduced or re-evaluated through the female persona. furthermore, growing feminist critique can also be found at the cutting edge of discourse concerning misrepresentations and objectification of women within the (again) male dominated arenas of the new “spatio-temporally based technology” (nalder, ). that is, virtual reality and cyberspace. as nalder ( ) observes: because of the new possibilities for the regeneration of old knowledges or the generation of knowledges of a different kind, women are taking a position against the transportation of the old order of social relations—exploitation, exclusion and domination—into this developing space (nalder, ). these generations, regenerations and misrepresentations within the current and foreseeable future ‘informatics of domination’ concern the ‘male gaze’ objectification and reconstruction of women in computer and video games, the production of knowledge bases founded on, or continuing, repression and exclusion of women and through other cultural transformations (nalder, ). as seen from the above observations, feminist discourse helps reveal the inadequacies of european patriarchal essentialist propositions which attempt a complete account and closed-conception of what (essentially/universally) constitutes art (parsons, ). to this, much contemporary feminist critique now argues for the abandonment of all notions which purport formulating plausible aesthetic theory based on universals (garber, ), opting instead for the “irreducible multiplicity” (hein, , cited in garber, , p. ) inherent in the complex ways of understanding and knowing the world. in summary, feminist theories propose alternative socio-cultural perspectives and divergent points of view for critical inquiry. along with the advocacies and achievements of other marginalised social groups and activities, feminist critique has assisted in grounding and widening the sphere regarding what can and is considered valid for aesthetic (or contextually meaningful) action and contemplation. socialising art as observed above, theories within subjective/contextualist epistemologies deal with the idea that art has social implications and responsibilities. art is considered to be a purposive social behaviour. reflecting this pragmatic characteristic, most discourse related to social theories of art do not allow for things transcendental or metaphysical. they are viewed with suspicion or condemned outright in that they do not actively reflect the body corporate. fundamental here is the replacement of art from the esoteric to the everyday as a matter of necessity. this is because art is seen not as a vehicle of schopenhauer-inspired ( [ ]) escapism or a means of glorifying individual imagination or autonomy, but as simply another cultural tool to promote societal well-being. the purpose of experiencing of art becomes reductionist and instrumental. within this framework, the character of art is now seen within the processes of society, reduced from the illusory requirements of philosophical investigations, of intuitions and other- worldliness. art’s purpose lies in the pragmatic, the ordinary activities and functions which benefit the particular society in question. it becomes a non-threatening instrumental tool for the enrichment of the everyday, a modest social function or activity equivalent to cooking and eating, interesting conversation or a vacation (heywood, ). issues of art’s value and relevance again are regulated by its abilities to sustain and nurture the requirements of enriching the lives of those individuals (and groups) within its specific social environment. correspondingly, as in instances of postmodern/visual culture, an object’s or activity’s relevance and longevity as an art form is maintained by societal familiarity and consensus. here, the aesthetic experience itself may be regulated by societal ordinance. that is, the pleasurable experience associated with viewing artworks is embedded with status quo, communal (rather than individual transcendence) ends. in other words, we enjoy art because of its ability to foster communal harmony. it is re-affirming, familiar and non-contestational. summary in summary, what is found in the examination of this loosely associated and generalised grouping of subjective/contextual schools of thought, is an instrumental aesthetic and aesthetic experience grounded in participatory, informed and agentic engagement. it is also an experience where meaning replaces values and ideology replaces the motiveless aesthetic. here, aesthetic response is a relational response steeped in personal/cultural importations and is seen as context-specific and particularised. it disavows universal truths for fragmentation and pluralism. the experience is temporal and dependent on viewers’ ever-changing interests and desires. in certain circumstances, these ever- changing interests and desires may be prescribed or influenced from the lobby of various agencies and the extraneous manipulations and motivations of vested interest. significant here is that the subjective/contextualist positions generally recognise and propose a re-conceptualisation of art and aesthetic experience. in so doing, the general concepts of subjective/contextual propositions derived from this chapter’s examination involve: ( ) a de-emphasis on the sanctified art object and promotion of the instrumental value of experiencing artworks in order to vivify all areas of life. this vivification (through critical inquiry) encompasses social, political, economic, moral, gender, sexual preferences issues, and so on; ( ) a position which advocates interpretative sociocultural meanings associated with the object or experience rather than intrinsic disinterested aesthetic contemplation of formal qualities; ( ) the pluralities inherent in meanings surrounding art are considered temporal, situation/audience specific, indeterminist and negating of universal claims or authority; ( ) that experiencing is effortful -- art involves cognition and discursive knowing; ( ) a de-valuation of the hegemonic position of fine arts through its subjugation into social construction art theory and contemporary visual culture. table below presents the general orientation and comparison of the major intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist properties concerning the experience of art as examined in the last two chapters. the intrinsic/essentialist perspectives are presented in the left-hand column, while the antithetical perspectives associated with subjective/contextualist positions appear in the right-hand column. in addition to presenting the two opposing perspectives, this table graphically presents those properties and characteristics which may or may not become apparent within the forthcoming observations of livedworld reflections and responses regarding the aesthetic experience as exhibited by the research participants. table - some characteristic comparisons of intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextual properties intrinsic/essentialist subjective/contextual intuitive and primarily subject-orientated (with the exception of formalist thought which considers perceptual qualities originating within the object itself, that is, object-orientated). subject-orientated. advocates interpretative sociocultural meanings and associations of the artwork rather than intuitive contemplation. non-reducible. emphasis on aesthetic values and objective properties (internal formal relations of line, colour, form etc of the work). these are shared commonalities within all artworks. relational. emphasis on meaning. meanings themselves are considered temporal, situation/audience specific, indeterminist and negating of universalist claims of totality. empirical universal/essentialist qualities contained within the perception of the art object. aesthetic qualities and characteristics are universal truths which all people can comprehend (if perceptive or trained). rejection of universalist claims and legitimised discourse. experience is effortful and requires cognition and discursive knowing. emphasis on contingencies. autonomous aspect of artwork. art work as instrumental. art as a tool for social construction of knowledge. art as an inculcating agent for the vivification of all aspects of daily life. non instrumental judgment, appreciation and experience. the separation of aesthetic knowing from motive-full moral, ethical, political or cultural/social implications or interpretations. there is no separation of the aesthetic domain from worldly knowledge and associations. art is fashioned with a conscious, is political and agentic. aesthetic pleasure is predicated on assuming subject- induced viewpoint/aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness (motive-less contemplation). disinterestedness is rejected for purposeful sociocultural interrogation. moral, political, ethical, cultural/social implications enrich the experience, making appreciation multidimensional. primarily passive contemplation experienced simply for its own sake or potentially intensified through subject familiarity with essentialist codifications and experience-specific content. non- intentional aspect. intentional aspect. the requirement of essentialist codifications and formalities are rejected. instrumental and pragmatic aspects advocated. the separation of ‘high’ art from ‘low’ popular art. aspects of elitism. boundaries of low and high art blurred. the subsuming of high art into popular and visual culture. glorification of the common place. acceptance of modernist theory. rejection of all attempts at legitimisation of theory. postmodern. as a supplement for the above properties and for general reader orientation, table below sets out the major generalised contrasting attributes of modernism and postmodernism. as intrinsic/essentialist epistemologies are aligned with modernist tenets, and subjective/contextualist points of view with those of postmodernism, it is advantageous to present a basic orientation of these doctrines. the purpose of this table is to act as a supportive referent and summative supplement for the observations and arguments which have been presented in this and earlier chapters. modernist attributes are listed in the left-hand column, while contrasting postmodernist attributes are listed in the right-hand column. table - general attributes of modernism and postmodernism modernism postmodernism art works are autonomous and can be appreciated for their aesthetic experience by assuming a disinterested aesthetic attitude. the exalted position of fine art objects is rarified while generalist arts and crafts are rejected. there is a condemnation of eliticism. the distinctions between high- brow and low- brow art practices and appreciation are dissolved. art is construed to be an item of cultural production and reproduction. it is instrumental and value laden through contextualist/sociocultural meaning and relevance. art, like civilization, is seen as a linear, historical progression. each progressive art style is seen as surpassing the one before it, advancing the quality and potential of art. the proposal here is that civilization historically has not made linear advancement. that is, it is de- railed through actual periods of decline and non- progressive states. social change is promoted through the pure and instrumental- less motivations of the recognised art community. the arts community is seen as removed from society’s misadventures. political/economical influences on society are seen as reflected within art community. exclusivity and privileging of knowledge of art is questioned. the art community is now seen as acting as a forum for cultural critique and debate. a higher, more personal essence and reality for the experiencing of aesthetic experience is promoted through pure formalistic styles and relationships involving abstraction. the general rejection of realism. the promotion of a new realism is forwarded based on the study of society and culture (complete with uncertainties and pluralities). the appearance of the façade, rather than realism grounded in nature, is promoted. the assumed pureness of artistic form, traditional concepts of beauty and meaning are advocated through a reduction of elaboration. a feeling for organic unity is advanced. ornamentation and decoration are rejected. meanings are ‘double coded’ through the use of eclectic styles and appropriations from other periods of art which, when seen in its totality, can be viewed at many cross- levels of meaning and interpretation. elaboration and adornment is promoted. traditional concepts of beauty are dismissed. there is a quest for the assumptions of universality, essentialist styles and perceptions of reality which transcends the pluralities inherent in popular styles, local or ethnic concerns. what may be incorporated from the above concerns is to be reorganised and conceived in the manner of formalistic and expressive doctrine. there is an embracing of eclecticism, recycling and plurality which promotes multi layers of meaning and interpretation. the implication here is that older realities are creatively destroyed by the incoming, newer realities, thus supporting the linear, historical progression of art. the past and present are integrated through the blending of eclecticism and historical appropriation. (derived from a table presented in efland/freedman/sthur, . p. ) some staunch and inflexible advocacies exist within both of the two general epistemologies discussed so far. however, the opening up of the concept of art and its appreciation as a cognitive process, complete with co-constructions of knowledge, points a way for possible conciliatory propositions. some of these conciliatory propositions will now be advanced in chapter five. chapter five bridging essentialist and contextualist perspectives introduction and overview in order to advance a less theoretically restricted understanding of the concept of aesthetic experience, conciliatory positions are now advanced. these conciliatory positions attempt to amalgamate aspects of the two earlier observed opposing epistemologies. generally, these can be considered as attempts to build bridges so that the intrinsic/essentialist qualities of a work of art and its contextual abilities to be read as signifiers can be engaged. these bridging concepts are achieved in this chapter through examinations of aspects of bio-evolutionary theory, aesthetic experience as a hybrid conceptualisation, pragmatist aesthetics, post-formal aesthetics, and other notions which promote a blending of fine art appreciation with that of contextual relevance. the dichotomy of philosophic thought regarding the nature of aesthetic experience is a separation that some consider arbitrary (shusterman, ). indeed, the implication that these two distinct orientations have no common ground in which to dialogue would misrepresent current schools of thought (fenner, b; shusterman, ). today, many views advocate an eclectic, reconciliatory attitude, the blurring of boundaries which had previously demanded adherence to a particular perspective about the nature and characteristics of aesthetic experience (eaton, ; shusterman, a). both the intrinsic qualities of a work of art and its abilities to be read as a textual referent within a contextualist proposal are now being seen as synergic in the establishment of a working definition for aesthetic experience. for example, efland ( ) maintains the multiple forms of cognition, propositional and non-propositional, spring from the same basic source: of fundamental and primary bodily and perceptual encounters within the environment, which is itself considered culturally sourced and constructed. it is in the ability to build from both sources freely that promotes the possibilities of represented and extended metaphorical symbolic understanding. this, in turn, imaginatively creates and reflects our lifeworlds. so, what seems an intuition may in fact be merely the ability to experience and draw from an undivided world of both mind and body. it is thinking coupled with feeling and a synergic interplay between individual dynamics and the social world. this becomes the reflection of a lifeworld built from imagination fortified with the access and extension of sources “ … as represented and extended symbolically in thinking, feeling, and willed action” (efland, , p. ). bio-evolutionary theory efland’s ( ) initial conciliatory statement which suggests multiple forms of cognition springing from fundamental and primary bodily and perceptual encounters within a culturally sourced and constructed environment finds some correspondence with recent darwin-inspired bio-evolutionary theory. this can be seen in the re-positioning of art and its appreciation as an adaptation for survival, an emotional response to fantasy, imagination and stylised rehearsals for cultural activities (dissanayake, ). within this proposition, art is looked on as a behavioural tendency which is both innate to the species and based on selective, context-specific survival values. (for an introductory sampling of various biological adaptation premises, see de sousa, ). according to dissanayake ( ; ), art experiencing is seen as a general tendency to enhance and make special, rather than ‘art’ as a specific or single concept. it is professed to be a biologically intrinsic and universal necessity for the continuation of humankind. however, while the predispositional behaviour of art, or aesthetic making special (dissanayake ( ), is a prerequisite for species survival, its identifiable forms and meanings are derived from, and specific to, individual society and cultural specific inculcations and gate-keeping. so, what is being implied here is that, biologically, art is found in the proclivity to decorate, exaggerate, rarify and appreciate things and events in the hope of promoting and charging phenomena with spiritual/cosmic/magical intent and signification. its intention is to elicit assistance in species continuation by exercising some influence within the environment (dissanayake ( ). these acts of extraordinary experience are employed to cognitively prepare and familiarise the individual and community for activities related to survival and to understanding experience. by proposing a darwin- inspired bio-evolutionary perspective to aesthetic experience, the role of culture-creating with that of instinctive biological motivations are blended (dutton, ). in so doing, it suggests the acceptance of intrinsic/essentialist ineffable transcendence and participations with ‘other worlds’ of imagination as interfacing with characteristics derived from rationales embedded in sociocultural dispositions. here, experiences of art become holistic events. they are justified products of both mystery and meaning -- biological, intrinsic behaviours interlocked with cognition and dispositions which are culturally sourced. therefore, darwin-inspired bio-evolutionary theory acknowledges a conciliatory positioning which refutes the separation of feeling from reason, mind from body. aesthetic experience as a hybrid concept correspondingly, in attempting to clarify contemporary attitudes, fenner ( b) describes the situation as one in which the field of aesthetics can be seen as a hybrid. here, both the sophisticated empirical approaches regarding the nature of experience co- exist with philosophical views and bases. this is because in art, there is no one prescribed resolution that can cover all contingencies (eisner, ); that the privileged employment of a specific, theory driven epistemology negates what greene ( ) refers to as the possibilities inherent in the ineffable nature of the phenomenological and individualised response to art and experiences in general. for instance, within a suite of colour field, non-representational paintings identical in formal composition, individual viewers may be drawn or repelled from certain paintings in the set simply because of the psychological assessments they bring to certain colours or combinations. in addition, pluralities and contingencies are also required if one is to meet the demands of an artworld that is in constant expansion and re- definition. expansion and re-definition of what constitutes the properties and values which are deemed aesthetic to a specific time and place can be seen as simply expanding variables within the aesthetic equation. they become interchangeable properties, coupled within context specificity, which one attends for promoting subjective gratification from the experience. so, what is being said here is that aesthetic qualities can also be read as having contextual meaning. sensations are cognitions. cognition springs from the fundamental bodily and perceptual encounters once solely, and incorrectly, identified with the essentialist domain. as suggested, individual agency within this conflation of feeling and thinking is influenced from sociocultural input. therefore, what is considered aesthetic in terms of qualities and definition becomes relative to situated cognition. here, aesthetic properties and context specificity are interchangeable accordingly to meet the demands of an ever changing environment and art world. sensation is tacit mediation. we are not passive in aesthetic encounters. we are actively engaged (wertsch, ). post-formal aesthetics a kind of hybrid conception is also fostered through the proposal of a post-formal aesthetic. here, efland ( ) contends that the dichotomy involved with, and dominance of, visual culture over traditional ‘fine art’ today does not exempt aesthetic experience or aesthetic inquiry from cultural/context relativity (a point also advanced by boughton, ; parsons, ). that is, a desired balance can be achieved by crediting the aesthetic experience with cognition (i.e. construction of meaning) as well as the attributes of attending the artwork for intrinsic possibilities. efland ( ) believes the autonomy of art is closely linked to its abilities to vivify our cultural life in general (efland, ). art, in efland’s ( ) proposition, acknowledges both objects within popular culture and those found within the traditional fine arts. by this recognition, a middle ground is drawn where the understanding of objects can be viewed through their context in addition to perceptions related to art criticism practices. that is, observing how these contextual referents are represented is arrived at through the guidance of the perceptual aspects of the object (efland, ). for example, by serving the organisation and re-organisations of experience, finding associations, contrasts and widening perspectives for meanings (goodman in efland, ) both aesthetic and sociocultural conditions are met. here, as earlier suggested, “ … meanings have aesthetic qualities and … aesthetic qualities are meaningful” (parsons, , p. ). according to post-formal aesthetics, the percipient's visual experience can be heightened and informed through an awareness of both precepts and concepts. indeed, experience is weakened when the importance of sociocultural themes derived from visual stimuli disavows exploration, analysis or critically informed judgments regarding the perceptual qualities of the visual stimuli. after all, it is precisely those perceptual qualities which drew initial percipient attention (efland, ). so, the cognitive complexity of the visual signifiers of consumer/information phenomena associated with visual culture and those associated with traditional fine arts are equal. so, as efland ( ) sees it, contemporary and future visual culture will require equal attention to both the object's aesthetic qualities and its informed contextual implications (efland, ). to limit the exposure of one or the other’s contributions in fostering the individual’s understanding in terms of personal and micro-macro community identity is to limit both personal and communally shared experience. in post- formal aesthetics, the perceptual initially attracts and then instigates critical inquiry. what is being proposed here is that a proper appreciation and interrogation of, say, visual culture, requires both the interplays of aesthetic qualities and contextual meaningfulness. like weitz’s ( ) concept of opening up the notion of what constitutes art generally, the aesthetic experience is now broadened to accommodate expanded definitional characteristics. that is, there are more things to be included in and considered, both essentially and contextually, if one is to attempt comprehensive and robust formulations of aesthetic experiences as phenomenon. pragmatist aesthetics another contemporary theory that attempts to broaden the sphere of aesthetics into visual culture and popular art can be found in the pragmatist aesthetics as advanced by shusterman ( a). like dewey ( [ ]) and efland ( ), shusterman ( a) credits the aesthetic experience for its capacity to continuously vivify everyday life. yet, he also advocates an eclectic blurring of the historical dualism among theory and experience concerning universalist verses transitory and pleasurable popular idioms, as well as between active experience and contemplative reflection. the reasoning behind such a blurring is to promote a more open and accepting appreciation and interaction between high and low brow art and their audiences. by doing so, the seeking of pleasurable aesthetic experiences can be pursued without concern for contravening snobbish or isolationist hierarchical undercurrents (shusterman, a). to this end, shusterman's ( a) pragmatist aesthetics attempt to reconcile determinant aspects of analytical aesthetics with that of the pragmatist's acceptance of indeterminacy and flux. for example, shusterman ( a) proposes the broadening of fine art to serve utilitarian purposes. once freed from an essentialist isolation of ineffable and autonomous ‘art for art's sake’, fine art examples could be employed as powerful instrumental agents. this could be accomplished through initiation of critical debate regarding their previously dormant sociocultural and political dimensions. for pragmatist aesthetics, past concepts about the legitimacy of what constitutes art and privileged aesthetic response are seen as too restrictive. like the earlier idea of post-formal aesthetics, pragmatist aesthetics proposes that both concepts of aesthetics and art need to be expanded to take in all aspects of visual culture. for shusterman ( a), it is not the universal notion of aesthetic quality that separates ‘high’ from popular art forms, as aesthetic quality may be present or negligent in examples from both. in addition, shusterman ( a) proposes that essentialist principles which attempt to separate ‘high’ from popular art cannot be philosophically determined at all, but rather are constituted through historic and sociological bases. this, he contends, allows for interchangeability in status for artworks ( b). in other words, as with dewey ( [ ]), the object or event remains relevant to the aesthetic experience only as long as it retains the ability to generate and sustain the required unified, consummate and vivifying effects for the subject. this is true for the immediacy of the experience and for its experience in later reflection. in pragmatist aesthetics there is no permanency or essentialist guarantees within the experiential, shifting relativity. there are no universal absolutes. this is because the relevance of qualities and properties within that experience is contingent upon their instrumental capacities to enrich the goal of heightened and renewable subjective perception. things change. for the pragmatist, reality is a process, an interaction, rather than acquiescence to static claims for universal truths. for shusterman ( a) and dewey ( [ ]), the goal is in the promotion of art as experience, not empirical justification or units within conceptual classifications. by concentrating on art as an experience, shusterman ( a) proposes to open the definition of what art is in order to incorporate popular culture. theory’s role then becomes re-conceptualised as a rhetorical agent to promote our attention towards the experiential art phenomenon. the validity in considering aesthetic value and appreciation is then bestowed on objects (both fine and popular) due to their ability and requirement to stimulate pleasurable consummatory experience (shusterman, a). in other words, the consummatory values for the percipient of the object viewed, whether fine art or popular, necessitate classificatory changes to what is deemed art or is worthy of aesthetic contemplation. therefore, and again remembering the open concept of art as proposed by weitz ( ), the definitional restrictions of what is considered art must be widened and ready for continual adjustment to fit new and incoming phenomena. these incoming objects or events may be instilled with purposeful, utilitarian intent. such objects or events may now include fashion, posters, rap or any assortment of objects or events from popular culture. antithetical to the dictates of analytical or essentialist propositions is that the process of reality (i.e. the experiences with the object) defines and initiates the positioning of that object’s classification and role for subsequent theory. as observed, in pragmatist aesthetics this process can be instrumentally informed by theory as well as incorporating the immediacy of experience. any dichotomy is resolved through the requirement of ever-expanding re-conceptualisations regarding the meanings of art and aesthetics. here, no paradox exists. it seems that both essentialist preoccupations and pragmatic instrumentalism can be entertained providing they are conducive to the promotion of a unified and calmative percipient experience. by rejecting aspects of a strict functionalist viewpoint (where the experience of art is seen as a means of addressing sociocultural values), shusterman ( b), like dewey ( [ ]), stresses an aesthetic experience which is intended to be primarily consummatory rather than being instrumental in value (shusterman, b). that is, for pragmatist aesthetics, it is only the desired hedonistic end of the process which is of consequence: … its immediately felt rewards of pleasure, intensified and meaningfully enriched awareness, and heightened vitality … [rather than] … because of any specific practical purpose outside that experience for which it serves as a means (shusterman, b, p. ). the heightened consummatory value to which shusterman ( a; b) refers to is one which is fortified with the practical applications of art within the human experience. both the intrinsic and the functional sociocultural aspects inherent in experiencing art cannot be seen as mutually exclusive. to privilege one over the other weakens our experiential exposure and gratification when interacting with art. here, we consider and allow any and all qualities and meanings that act to reinforce art experiencing as life-enhancement. aesthesia a type of co-existence, or re-adjustment between the intrinsic/essentialist and the subjective/contextualist positions, is also offered by grace ( ). to do so, she enlists the less prescriptive concept of aesthesia (i.e. perception by the senses; the ability to feel) with the notion of the aesthetic. this, she proposes, can broaden the conceptual base in that the capacity to feel cannot be seen solely as a privileged factor within the domain of bodily sensation. here, the ability to feel also spills over into a sensuousness of thought as an embodied experience. in so doing, aesthesia incorporates such domains as the moral, ethical or contextual -- ways of knowing which have traditionally remained distinct from the aesthetic modality (grace, ). again, what is proposed is an informed perception of the aesthetic which sees no dichotomy between feeling and reasoning. it supports the concept of perception as an extension for thinking, feeling and communication. this fundamental premise echoes arnheim’s ( ) earlier proposition of the false dualism between perception and reasoning and directly informs the concept of visual perception as a cognitive activity. by assuming the particularity of agency within sociocultural and personal history to the concept of heightened somatic response, grace ( ) dismisses universalist discourse and embraces the multi-dimensionality and contingencies inherent in sensuous response. the eclectic imperative as suggested here and in chapter one, conciliatory theories advance a wider position of the aesthetic experience. they are more amenable to encompassing aesthetic, non- aesthetic and even anti-aesthetic modes of responses. they acknowledge that all, some, or combinations of frames of references can be used as descriptors of heightened experiential encounter. here, positive aesthetic experience results from the interaction of various importations derived from negotiations between the personally subjective and the presumed objective qualities of the artifact. eclectic stances are necessary to embrace the life-enhancing possibilities a heightened encounter with art can afford. they suggest that it doesn’t matter whether we attend the heightened perception of the formal, designal aspects of a composition (i.e. its essential qualities) for its own sake, actualise the meaningful visual messages of individual/societal emancipation or draw personal comfort from emotionally sympathetic content. this is because all the above experiential responses can add to the vivification of life. all help establish the appreciation of art works in order to positively influence, elevate and articulate the human spirit within its environment (dewey, [ ]). conclusion and summary conciliatory theories suggest an opportunity to incorporate aspects of both intrinsic/essentialist and subject/contextualist theories into the aesthetic experience. this amalgamation begins with the acceptance of sensuous response to aesthetic qualities as being foundational in the sequence of establishing cognitive processes and eventual meaning making. here, the sensuous modality of knowing, now locked into the socio/cultural matrix, opens the way to explore and perceive previously unorthodox objects and events. as grace ( ) proposes, the capacity to feel spills over into a sensuousness of thought as an embodied experience which can involve such contextual- specific domains as the moral or the ethical. within conciliatory propositions, the validity in considering aesthetic value and appreciation is found in the prerequisite capacity to foster pleasurable consummatory experience. additionally, fine art can also now be employed to act as socio-historical referents as well as objects for individual dependent isolated contemplation. correspondingly, visual and popular culture objects and events can be appreciated for their life-enhancing capabilities without the prejudices associated with high or low brow presuppositions. this is because the common denominator in both cases is the draw of initial perceptual qualities to begin the process of a final positive response. furthermore, there is now proposed a sociological and historic interchangeability to the status of appreciated objects, rather than a philosophical mandate, which sees experiential relevance only with respect to an intended positive outcome. that is, the experience with the object now dictates that object’s relevance as being worthy of aesthetic classification. this is true whether the experience is derived from inputs of essentialist, contextualist or in combination. here, praxis drives theory. as observed in this chapter, conciliatory concepts of what constitute art and its appreciation attempt cooperative interpretation where it is believed that adherence to either major epistemology may prove too restrictive. conciliatory positions believe that subjectivity can not be rule-governed. one size will never fit all. the contrariness inherent in human agency sees to that. it would seem that traditional notions and characteristics of aesthetic experience need to be expanded and fortified with contemporary concerns. this is because the ability of the traditional aesthetic to ‘define’ has not been periodically or sufficiently modified to keep pace with the ever-expanding visual phenomena currently acknowledged under the vast definitional ‘umbrella’ of fine art/visual culture. however, simply because the intrinsic/essentialist positions can not adequately fulfill the totality of definition, it does not mean that many of their concerns are not justified or defendable. they simply do not provide a conclusive picture. the same can be said of subjective/contextualist positions. relativism is too simplistic an answer for that which will always remain partially aloof to logical discourse. summarily, if we view the final destination of positive aesthetic experience as the primary goal, then establishing or defending the theoretical means by which we arrive at it becomes secondary and subservient to the desired experience. in such a proposal -- and in such a contemporary climate of possibilities -- it does not seem heretical to eclectically select from each. as distilled from the propositions presented in this chapter, conciliatory positions advocate: ( ) a conflation of presumed variant positions through a creation of hybrid epistemologies intending to expand, re-define and re-invent the conceptions of aesthetic responses; ( ) the fortification of the notion of concept-less perception of essentialist aesthetic experience with cognition (construction of meaning), allowing context relativity to strengthen perceptual experience; ( ) a more relevant and open concept of what constitutes the object worthy of aesthetic encounter; ( ) the idea of experience as an embodied phenomenon; and ( ) the perceptual qualities associated with the object to be exercised in conjunction with critical examination of the signifiers of visual culture. having examined intrinsic/essentialist, subjective/contextualist and conciliatory impact upon the concept of aesthetic experience, an examination of explicit characteristics of aesthetic experience illustrating aspects of epistemological positions is proposed. the intention here is to observe actual past attempts at formulating taxonomies. this will introduce the reader to their formulation and structure, prior to presenting the inchoate taxonomy proposed by this dissertation’s findings. these past explicated characteristics of positive aesthetic experience are advanced by a selection of individual scholars, now presented in chapter six. chapter six existing characteristics of aesthetic experience introduction and overview having advanced a reconciliatory position between the perspectives of the intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist epistemologies in chapter five, representative examples of past explicated characteristics of aesthetic experience are now presented. the purpose of this chapter is to present some explicit characteristics of positive aesthetic experience proposed by a small selection of past prominent scholars. the selection is qualified by the scholars’ conspicuous formulations of actual taxonomies of aesthetic experience characteristics which have sustained relevance for contemporary debate. the notable omission of feminist input within this section will be addressed in the methodology chapter. the importance of this preview is in observing and explaining distinct characteristics which show influences from the opposing and conciliatory epistemologies observed so far. its purpose then is complementary. it seeks to present, first hand, concretised attempts to formulate taxonomies of the characteristics of aesthetic experience -- which is the overriding aim of my own phenomenological research presented in chapters eight and nine. the presentations of the proposals are not to intended to privilege one viewpoint over another; nor are these observations and assumptions to be considered as conclusive or exhaustive on the subject. the selection is simply presented to exhibit workable and representative cross-sections of relevant thought, to acquaint the reader with formatted taxonomies and consider where conciliatory proposals may present themselves. the structure of this chapter consists of a sequential observation and examination of the proposed characteristics of each selected scholar and their correspondences with aspects of intrinsic/essentialist, subjective/contextualist and conciliatory epistemologies. a general summary of the characteristics is then presented, followed by a concluding table which sets out the shared characteristics of aesthetic experience observed. these observations will then be used later in chapters eight and nine to establish complements or contrasts concerning this dissertation’s findings regarding the positive characteristics of aesthetic experience in painting. the major theoretical contributions in this section are from: monroe beardsley, harold osborne, mihaly csikszentmihalyi and rick robinson, gerald knieter, david hargreaves and rod taylor. their abbreviated qualifications appear in the appendix. their contributions are as follows. intrinsic/essentialist characteristics of the aesthetic experience monroe beardsley beardsley identified the individual as having an aesthetic experience: … during a particular stretch of time if and only if the greater part of [the individual’s] mental activity during that time is united and made pleasurable by being tied to the form and qualities of a sensuously presented or imaginatively intended object on which [the individual’s] primary attention is concentrated (beardsley, , p. ). in other words, the experience is structured through the viewer’s attendance toward two aspects afforded by observing the object’s intrinsic elements. the first is attention to the formal qualities of artistic structures such as line and colour, etc. that beardsley ( ) labels the phenomenally objective field. the second features a response to the affective features and qualities (i.e. feelings and emotions as phenomenally subjective) and which are evoked only through an internalisation of the phenomenally objective field. a true aesthetic experience occurs when the viewer experiences both these elements. furthering the above points, beardsley ( ) ascribes the following four propositions that he believed to be almost universally held concerning the nature of having an aesthetic experience. here: . the viewer’s attention is firmly fixed upon the heterogeneous (but interrelated) components of a phenomenally objective field (as in visual, auditory or verbal). this phenomenon is separated from aspects of, say, simple daydreaming or utilitarian interrogations through the object’s ability to concentrate and focus our gaze. in other words, the object controls the viewing experience (beardsley, ). . intensity of experience is attained by the concentration of experience. the emotional, psychological sensations we may experience are bound to (and emanate from) the phenomenal field of the object. this concentration of intensity fixes our attention only in specificity to what we are observing and not to outside influences. the intensity of the experience may dispel outside interferences such as extraneous movement or sounds. in other words, the concentration is free and unhindered (beardsley, ). . the experience has an unusually high degree of unity and coherence in that there seems to be an ordered progression inherent in the experience. in other words, like dewey’s ( [ ]) consummatory aspects of having an experience, beardsley ( ) identifies the aesthetic experience as continuous, as having an innate guiding power which leads toward culmination. that is, it has a beginning, middle and end (what separates beardsley ( ) from dewey ( [ ]) here is beardsley’s notion that the experience is governed solely by the phenomenal field of the object)). even when interrupted, the coherence of experience can be easily re- entered (beardsley, ). . the experience is resolved and complete in itself. this notion refers to a ‘continuity of development’-- having achieved a feeling of equilibrium and finality which is remembered in memory as a single experience without the accompaniment of outside interferences or references (beardsley, ). the last two above propositions concern the nature of aesthetic experience as relating to matters associated with the concept of unity. beardsley ( ) assumed that the intensity of feelings associated with the experiential state of unity were in direct correlation to the intensity (higher or lower) of the aesthetic experience. this he referred to as ‘magnitude.’ any magnitude variations in terms of unity (i.e. completeness and coherence) and the experience’s complexity and intensity regulated whether the aesthetic experience was either better or poorer than another. for beardsley ( ), true aesthetic experience is an infrequent occurrence. this is because rarely do both the objective and the phenomenally-subjective elements required for the experience present themselves with sufficient force or sustained integration during an artistic encounter. formalistic contentions also imply that while other objects and natural phenomena may well possess these elements to higher or lesser degrees, examples of monumental (e.g. modernist) art provide the best catalyst. justifications are based on beardsley’s ( ) perception that good art is beyond instrumentalist concerns, void of functionality and can be appreciated solely for its own sake. the final effect on the viewer is one which is hedonistic (pleasurable and uplifting) and one in which a rare state of aesthetic gratification was achieved (beardsley, b; smith, ). beardsley’s characteristics of aesthetic experience beardsley ( a) proposes that there are five characteristics which constitute the aesthetic experience. in order to qualify as aesthetic, an experience must possess the first characteristic and at least three of the other characteristics. in the following passages, descriptions of the characteristics of aesthetic experience are quoted directly from his article “aesthetic experience” (beardsley, a, pp. - ) and are presented in italics. these passages are followed by brief commentary. . object directedness a willingly accepted guidance over the succession of one's mental states by phenomenally objective properties (qualities and relations) of a perceptual or intentional field on which attention is fixed with a feeling that things are working or have worked themselves out fittingly. in other words, the object of attention must have sufficient visual power and cohesion (derived from both formal qualities such as line, colour, etc. and phenomenally subjective associations) for viewers to relinquish presuppositions and allow them to be fully absorbed within contemplation of the object. in later writings, beardsley ( c) ascribes a kind of ‘essential institutionality,’ whereby he proposes that there may be an essential cultural function to artworks (beardsley, c). . felt freedom a sense of release from the dominance of some antecedent concern about past and future, a relaxation and sense of harmony with what is presented or semantically invoked by it or implicitly promised by it, so that what comes has the air of having been freely chosen. that is, by the immersion within pleasurable, intense contemplation of the work of art, a resultant sensation of one's spirits being lifted occurs. being part of the experience has the ability to lessen outside influences on the viewer’s immediate states of mind -- the experience becomes inseparable from the resultant effects. . detached effect a sense that the objects on which interest is concentrated are set a little at a distance emotionally—a certain detachment of affect, so that even when we are confronted with dark and terrible things, and feel them sharply, they do not oppress but make us aware of our power to rise above them. this characteristic, as well as aspects of characteristic . object directedness, is aligned (but not iconoclastically tied) with the notion of disinterestedness discussed earlier. while important and considered a possible feature of the art experience, beardsley ( a) separates himself from essentialist scholars such as stolnitz ( ) and osborne ( ) in his view that the effect of detachment is not necessarily prerequisite for aesthetic experience. the presence of this characteristic seems dependent upon the intentionality of the proposed object’s affect and fluctuates by varying degrees (beardsley, a). however, if present, beardsley’s ( a) characteristic of detachment implies that the viewer is capable of separating the actual work of art from its subject matter. it exists as a type of fiction once removed from that being depicted. for instance, while viewers may be overwhelmed with the power and tragedy perceived through viewing a classical greek sculpture depicting a dying soldier, the sculpture itself is never confused with an actual event of death. seen here, the degree of our emotional state is regulated by the reality of the experience. . active discovery a sense of actively exercising constructive powers of the mind, of being challenged by a variety of potentially conflicting stimuli to try to make them cohere; a keyed- up state amounting to exhilaration in seeing connections between precepts and between meanings, a sense (which may be illusory) of intelligibility. this is the proactive effort of the viewer to ‘read’ the work of art, to make sense and engage cognitive-like links to solve or connect the work’s parts in order to comprehend the totality of what is being presented. it is, “… the experience of discovery, of insights into connections and organizations …” (beardsley, a, p. ), which, in turn, make personal understanding of the artwork possible. . wholeness a sense of integration as a person, of being restored to wholeness from distracting and disruptive influences (but by inclusive synthesis as well as by exclusion), and a corresponding contentment, even through disturbing feelings, that involves self-acceptance and self-expansion. beardsley’s ( a) final characteristic concerns the sensations of self- actualisation. this renewal of the spirit is in direct response to the feelings of coherency and internal satisfaction the viewer receives from a heightened experience with a work of art. the encounter not only has the ability to emotionally lighten the burdens of everyday life, but also to point toward new personal horizons. in summary, beardsley’s ( a) aesthetic experience is one where the viewer’s concentration is directed towards the qualities and form intrinsic to the work of art. this is in correspondence with aspects of essentialist perspectives such as the aesthetic attitude of disinterestedness. this correspondence can be seen in beardsley’s ( a) concept of detached effect and the idea of object directedness. in aesthetic experience, viewer attention is focused on both the object’s formal qualities (e.g. line, colour, etc…) and affective features (e.g. emotions, feelings). the final state of hedonistic gratification is also attained through the characteristics of: ( ) emotional release; ( ) a lessening of concern regarding extraneous interferences outside the dynamics of the experience; ( ) a recognition of a degree of non-instrumentality of the art object (detached effect); ( ) proactive viewer participation to find connections and organisations in which to establish the experience as cohesive and unified and a feeling of wholeness and; ( ) personal integration that leads to self-actualisation. harold osborne harold osborne is another advocate of aspects of essentialist theory that share certain commonalities of aesthetic experience as advanced above. it also brings in the conceptual link of appreciation to that of aesthetic experience (osborne, ; ). in so doing, he identifies eight characteristics which he feels address the unique manner in which we attend aesthetic experience. he believes these features, both collectively and individually, help us to understand and differentiate aesthetic experience from other ways of experiencing. osborne’s ( ) eight characteristics of the aesthetic experience may be outlined as follows: ( ) in perceiving aesthetically, we become centred on the object or event. that is, it stands apart and becomes abstracted from its immediate environment. during such experience, the object is ‘framed apart’ from its surroundings and becomes isolated in perception for contemplation. our attention is ‘arrested’ or fixed by the object or event. awareness of extraneous surroundings or implications is dispelled by our contemplative focusing. osborne ( ) uses the analogy of the fixed targeting device of a painting’s actual frame, employed to centre our concentration. ( ) during this fixed concentration, we do not conceptualise or discursively think about the object. our concentration is directed solely to the object itself and is not effected by any practical or theoretical observations or classificatory implications. that is, the aesthetic experience exists separate from theoretical or practical outside associations (osborne, ). ( ) when apprehending aesthetically we perceive the object as a complex structure of interrelated parts. the parts, however, cannot be seen as constituents that can be discursively addressed in isolation. in other words, the parts are articulate to perception only in relation to the perception of the whole. we do not dwell on associations of its isolated components. here, we perceive the entire picture, its totality, rather than as an assemblage of independently operating classification of symbol, identity or meaning maker (osborne, ). ( ) as all practical and theoretical concerns are checked, the aesthetic experience can be said to have its own feeling of detachment (i.e. disinterestedness), serenity and emotional colour. because we are absorbed in the contemplation of the object in its own right, discursive associations and personal idiosyncratic moods, emotions and predispositions are held in abeyance. in other words, we have no inward dwellings and all contemplation is related to the perception of the autonomous work of art (osborne, ). ( ) as our awareness increases toward the object in perception, there is a loss regarding percipient plays of imagination and meditative musing. in other words, the aesthetic experience negates the presentation of symbols of ideas or images as conductors for imaginative speculation. these are assumed indulgences and preoccupations, all of which act as detractors from the concentration of the object in perception. that is, concentration is directed entirely toward the object. there is no day-dreaming or fanciful psychological embellishment (osborne, ). ( ) aesthetic experience concerns the appearance of the object presented, not with its real existence. we contemplate the manifestation, the apparition of perceived states, rather than the physicality of the object itself (osborne, ). ( ) aesthetic experience involves absorption which is due to the narrow field of contemplation and awareness confined to direct percipience. as a consequence, our mental alertness and faculties are stimulated, while the experience attains a type of heightened and enhanced quality. there is a feeling of impact and vividness associated with the experience. there is also a loss of time sense, body consciousness and the sense of place. osborne ( ) proposes that “ … we become identified with the aesthetic object by which our attention is gripped and held” (osborne, , p. ). however, this sensation of absorption never overpowers our ego-consciousness (we never lose the awareness of being spectators). we are but slightly removed in order to be cognisant, aware and absorbed by the heightened reality and vividness of the experience (achieved through concentrated perception on the object) (osborne, ). ( ) while any object can be considered a candidate for aesthetic appreciation and experience, it is works of art which are best suited to elicit the prolonged and repeatable activity of aesthetic experience. this is because they are intended to promote contemplation in the aesthetic mode through their sufficient perceptual complexities. in other words, they hold more robustly our aesthetic attention in perception, whereas contemplation of other objects may not support such an activity, thus falling into realms of the practical, instrumental or subjective sentimentality (osborne, ). in summary, osborne’s ( ) eight characteristics have commonality with those proposed by beardsley ( a). for instance, osborne’s ( ) interpretations concerning the aesthetic object being abstracted from the environment, concentration being fixed on the object which is contemplated in a non-discursive manner, and the belief that art objects are the primary source for prolonged and sustainable aesthetic experience echoes beardsley’s ( a) claims for object-directedness, detached effect (i.e. disinterestedness) and the belief that art objects are the best catalyst for the promotion of aesthetic experience. in addition, both taxonomies share an intrinsic/essentialist perspective through the promotion of non-instrumentality and through the concept that the pleasant, heightened experience affordable through contemplation of the formal qualities of a work of art is justification in itself for seeking out such experiences. contextualist and conciliatory characteristics of the aesthetic experience mihaly csikszentmihalyi and rick robinson structural elements csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) advance a basic definition of aesthetic experience within its structural elements as being “ … an intense involvement of attention in response to a visual stimulus, for no other reason than to sustain the interaction” (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, , p. ). as a consequence of this initial and heightened experiential interaction, the subject witnesses feelings described as: … a deep and autotelic involvement … intense enjoyment characterized by feelings of [ ] personal wholeness, [ ] a sense of discovery, and a [ ] sense of human connectedness (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, , p. ). the term autotelic refers to csikszentmihalyi’s ( ) earlier studies concerning optimal experiences, or ‘flow,’ (csikszentmihalyi, ) and shares commonality with aspects of maslow’s ( ) earlier investigations into peak experiences. here, flow can be defined as sought experiences entered into for the sake of the experience itself. this experience is immediate and is its own reward. in this regard, the elements of flow and csikszentmihalyi’s & robinson’s ( ) structural characteristics of aesthetic experience are correspondent in some respects to certain intrinsic/essentialist propositions presented earlier in the dissertation. this can be seen in csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) comparison of optimal experiences with that of the defining characteristics of aesthetic experience, as proposed earlier by beardsley ( a). for example, beardsley’s ( a) characteristics of object focus and the sense of felt freedom relate to the flow characteristics of merging action and awareness (where attention is focused upon the activity) and limitation of stimulus field (where past and future consequences are negated for a total concentration on the immediate phenomenon). in addition, beardsley’s ( a) criteria of detached effect and active discovery are paralleled with csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) characteristics of loss of ego (i.e. a transcendence of the self) and control of actions (i.e. the employment of sufficient skills to combat the challenges of content). finally, beardsley’s ( a) contention of the element of wholeness is mirrored somewhat in the optimal experience’s characteristic of clear goals, clear feedback and its autotelic nature (non-instrumental, personal reward) (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, ). of these characteristics, csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) research indicated that the attentional dimensions of object directedness, limitation of stimulus field and loss of ego were the most prevalently discussed by the research participants. by reviewing the above observations of both optimal experience (flow) and aesthetic experience, we can formulate an abridged working taxonomy of csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) structural elements of the characteristics and criteria for aesthetic experience. however, it must be noted that these structural elements are contingent upon first addressing the more expansive informational content of the experience (discussed after). the structural elements are presented in table format below. the left-hand column lists the structural elements, or characteristics. the right-hand column lists the discriminating qualities of the characteristics. table - structural elements (characteristics) of aesthetic experience proposed by csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) structural element (characteristic) discriminating quality ( ) merging of action and awareness the attention of the percipient is centred on the object. ( ) limitation of stimulus field there is no awareness of past or future. ( ) loss of ego there is a feeling of loss of self-consciousness and an additional sensation of transcendence of ego boundaries. ( ) control of actions perceptual and cognitive skills rallied to overcome challenges presented by the work. ( ) clear goals, clear feedback the subject’s effortful interaction is rewarded by the experience itself. ( ) autotelic nature the experience is intrinsically fulfilling. the experience is non-instrumental. there is no need for external rewards. within the autotelic nature of the experience, the percipient may experience sensations of (a) personal wholeness, (b) a sense of discovery and (c) a sense of human connectedness. (distilled from csikszentmihalyi & robinson, ; csikszentmihalyi, ). informational content however, what csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) discovered is that while the structural characteristics of aesthetic experience (as described above) may be experienced and recognised as having universal applicability irrespective of their emotional or cognitive content, the experience’s informational content, which they believe is pre-conditional to having the experience, has no such universal application. in other words, the structural characteristics (e.g. loss of ego or transcendence) we feel are dependent upon our ability to come to terms with the experience’s content. that content, far from being universal, is subject-particular and steeped in a type of sociocultural co-construction of knowledge. that is, response is constructed through the definitions of culture as well as personal ontologies. through these constructs, they contend that the aesthetic experience is formulated through a blending of information inherent within (i.e. coming from) the art object and that of retrieved and tacit knowledge stored by the percipient. in this respect, csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) research proposes a somewhat conciliatory attitude regarding epistemological stances. this is because both the formal values of the artwork are objectified for the viewer, yet those qualities, in order that they may be internalised as heightened subjective response, must be first conditioned by socioculturally based content. their proposal of what constitutes the elements of this content is broken down into two sets of preconditions which must be met in order for the aesthetic experience to actualise. these are referred to as ( ) the challenges contained in the object, followed by ( ) the skills the subject possesses. they are outlined as follows: . challenges contained in the object the challenges contained in the object relate to four main dimensions (or ways of response) within aesthetic experience, those dimensions being: (a) perceptual; (b) emotional; (c) intellectual; and (d) communicative. each is outlined below. (a) perceptual dimension the perceptual dimension refers to the physicality of the work itself and to the viewer being drawn into the experience by formal qualities of the work (e.g. size and scale, colour, line, texture, compositional elements, etc.). this intensified awareness of the formal qualities can also trigger traditional concepts of harmony, order and balance (among other essentialist notions of beauty). there is also a desire to engage other sensuous modalities of knowing (such as touch). while a large proportion of these feelings experienced through perception may be articulated with some clarity, csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) propose that a portion of the response remains ineffable. the work’s sheer presence speaks for itself. that is, there is a feeling that transformationally goes beyond looking or feeling and has a direct relation to what csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) observe as “ … the admission of the affective and interactive power of form and the surface of the work” (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, , p. ). this equates with notions of the intrinsic/essentialist epistemologies regarding the intuitive draw of the artwork’s formal qualities to initiate the aesthetic experience. (b) emotional dimension csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) also propose that the dimension of emotional response, like perception, is evident in most aesthetic experience. this dimension concerns the work’s ability to elicit emotional responses within the viewer. these primary responses csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) see as assuming either positive or negative emotional shadings, yet may change depending upon the duration of time spent interacting with the work. the emotional dimension is frequently introduced within the viewer through transpirations of surprise or feelings of familiarity and can assume such connotative states as comfort or nostalgia. these feelings are in relation to viewer sympathies and associations regarding personal histories which may embody past associations or engendered experiences. while the initial introduction to the work must meet with a precursory positive emotional response, that seminal affect may change and become more complex through periods of extended contemplation. (c) intellectual (cognitive) dimension the intellectual or cognitive dimension pertains to the viewer’s desire to find the clues, cues and codes in order to interpret the meanings inherent within the work. in other words, we use our intellect to attempt understanding. these meanings may be visually presented in easy access for viewer interrogation, or may be hidden or disguised through such devices as allegory or symbolism. csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) see the engagement of cognitive strategies and interpretation as ways in which the viewer seeks either closure or openness. strategies for attempting closure relate to employing direct problem solving skills, such as categorisation, to ascertain the work’s definitive and individual meaning for the viewer. closure, for many, is an integral part of appreciation. this is because closure may elicit self-actualising feelings of mastery and accomplishment. openness, on the other hand, pertains to investigating the work for the seemingly endless insights discoverable through ongoing facilitation. in other words, we see and appreciate the cognitive games and are intrigued, rather than annoyed, by the work’s complexities and contingencies. within csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) proposal of an intellectual dimension to aesthetic experience are three major modes of interacting with a work of art. these modes consist of: (c ) appreciation of the work historically, (c ) appreciation of the work in an art historical context and (c ) appreciation of the work biographically. these facets of the intellectual dimension, csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) believe, are integral in positioning the work within a social and cultural milieu. by doing so, the work becomes an integrative resource which works alongside history, opening the way for viewer insight and personal investigations into eras, art movements, or artistic personality. all of these facets can be as nurturing agents for the creation and understanding of the work. art sets up personal interest and experiences of the worlds it depicts. it mirrors or distorts eras, customs and sociological idiosyncrasies. by doing so, it establishes within the viewer recognition of his or her place within the larger society. csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) research proposes this experience at times to be a circular process whereby we observe the work as a link to setting up a dialogue with the past. we then reconsider its context, which, in turn, re-opens the work for further interpretation. in addition, the aesthetic response is empowered by our recognition of the artist’s intent, purpose, reasoning and idiosyncratic behaviours. (d) communicative dimension the fourth dimension of the aesthetic experience, as proposed from csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) research, deals with the dimension of communication. these interactions can be seen as internal dialogues which are viewer initiated in response to certain visual aspects presented by the work. again, this dimension works in cooperative action with the perceptual, intellectual and emotional dimensions. the communicative dimension relates to the thoughts and feelings which the work provokes. this occurs not only upon initial introduction, but also through continual change and effortful interrogation. csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) refer to the dialogues as significant feeling states, or the qualitative rapports that are established between viewer and art object. the feeling states are often characterised by the use of metaphorical language to describe the interaction. examples of such interaction can be found in personifications such as, “the work spoke to me,” or attributing to the work communicative activities such as singing, shouting or whispering (to name a few). here, communication dialogues fall under three broad categories, those being: (d ) communications involving an era or culture; (d ) communications relating to the artist; and (d ) communications which takes place within the viewer. these communication dialogues are discussed below. (d ) communications involving an era or culture the first category, communications involving an era or culture, can be further subdivided into two modes. the first deals with the distinctions of the past to the present, while the second refers to their commonalities. for example, we set up dialogues with the work’s historical references which may stimulate internal discourse concerning the vagaries of customs and preoccupations. on the other hand, csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) cite examples where the similarities of disparate eras may induce dialogue due to the work’s depicted, “symbolic intention and usage or on the simple facts of humanity” (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, , p. ). in other words, there is a mutuality of understanding which transcends time through such objects or events with identifiably allegorical intent (i.e. war, love, etc). (d ) communications relating to the artist communications with the artist concerns the experiential sensation of sharing with the artist his or her intentions and realities. for example, by viewing the swirls and agitation within technique and mood of a late van gogh painting, we believe that we can feel, understand or relate to the turbulence of his mental state or the consuming ferocity of his vision. (d ) communications which takes place within the viewer this refers to the personal, idiosyncratic and emotive response to a work of art. this response can present itself through feelings of personal association and sentiments, loss of ego and transcendence. in its most extreme case, the viewer is transported, through experiencing the work, into realms of fantasy and associations which have significant and mood altering effects. in summary, like beardsley ( a) and osborne ( ), csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) found that this exalted state is a rare occurrence and is, as in the cases of beardsley ( a) and osborne ( ), almost always associated with the viewing of reputed masterpieces. in addition, the viewer’s idiosyncratic background in relation to culture/history, art history and biographical knowledge of the artist, together with his or her personal life history, are variables in the acquisition of heightened aesthetic encounter. subject privileging (or ordering) of one of csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) dimensions over another within the experience may also influence the experience’s direction. for example, one may privilege investigating the intellectual challenges presented by the artwork, requiring a more extended period of interaction, over the immediate felt perceptual aspects of form. additionally, the proposals of csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ) concerning aesthetic experience share commonality with aspects of intrinsic/essentialist theories in regards to purpose-less, non-instrumental contemplation for no reward other than that which the experience itself affords. it also signals contextualist, effortful pro-activity on the viewer’s part. in addition, as observed, there is a significant differentiation between the structure and the content of the experience. upon observation, the structure seems correspondent to traditional characteristics as described by beardsley ( a) and others and is in line with the psychology of optimal experience (i.e. flow). however, the aesthetic experience’s content, divided into four dimensions, necessitate a purposive course of knowledge acquisition and informed sensitivity in order for the viewer to intensify the experience beyond that of singular perceptual immediacy. what is being proposed is that in order for the experience to succeed, the viewer must rise to the challenges of the perceptual, emotional, cognitive and communicative aspects that are offered by interaction with the artwork. the percipient’s levels of understanding in these areas dictate the complexity and magnitude of the encounter. cognition and interpretation are required. this overall idea of the amalgamation of intrinsic perception and meaningfulness finds synergies with the proposals of knieter ( ), who now follows. gerald knieter knieter ( ) considers the possibility that while some may find qualities in art universal, the true universality concerning experiential interaction with art remains in the individual’s capacity to respond to both internal and external artistic stimuli as a natural phenomena. he feels the purpose of evaluation of the aesthetic experience is better served by sidestepping ‘elaborate systems of description’ defining specific theories in order to concentrate on the essential characteristics of aesthetic experience generally. that is, to eliminate the need for artworks to substantiate theory by acting as validation examples for theory. in proposing such a notion, knieter’s ( ) concept of aesthetic experience is based on the belief that individuals are merely reacting naturally to values and meanings that are inherent within them and not the object. in other words, the aesthetic experience rises out of a fundamental source, that source being our natural response (emotional and cognitive) to our livedworlds. it is a quality of aesthetic personality which, knieter ( ) suggests, is shared by all. it is to be found by witnessing humankind’s aesthetic behaviours, rather than by observing elements or values which emanate from the art object. while knieter ( ) sets out five characteristics numerically, no hierarchical order is implied. indeed, they may all occur simultaneously. knieter’s ( ) characteristics of aesthetic experience are described in table format below. the left-hand column lists the characteristics. the right-hand column lists the discriminating qualities of the characteristics. table -- knieter’s ( ) characteristics of aesthetic experience characteristic discriminating quality ( ) the aesthetic experience involves focus and is highly directional. energy flows from the respondent to the work of art such that the respondent is stimulated by the object. to this, the aesthetic experience cannot be attained vicariously. in other words, it cannot occur merely through exposing a respondent to works of art in a casual manner (e.g. walking through a hallway with paintings in view), as a casual or fleeting encounter does not contribute sufficiently for percipient stimulation. ( ) the aesthetic experience involves perception or the process through which data from the senses (percepts) are utilised. a percept is that which is known of an object, quality or relationship through sensory experience. it is a state of awareness rather than an image or memory. percepts are organised around a series of related sensations actuated from internal or external stimuli. the organisation of a pattern of percepts may give rise to a concept or generalisation about a class of ideas, a percept or assorted data that is usually formed as a result of a group of related sensations, percepts and images. in this way, the aesthetic experience can be said to stress and require an active and directionary engagement of the percipient’s sensory faculties and perceptions. ( ) the aesthetic experience involves affect. there are two kinds of affective response which occur during an aesthetic experience. they are physiological change and feelingful reaction. physiological responses are in reference to psychogalvanic change (electric changes in the body resultant from mental or emotional stimuli such as pupil dilation, changes in blood pressure etc.). feelingful reactions refer to the heightening of a percipient’s emotional state during the encounter. ( ) the aesthetic experience involves cognition. respondents cannot simply stay preoccupied in emotional reactions. they must be acutely conscious while affectively engaged. in other words, we come to a new experience with a backlog of other experiences from which we (to varying degrees) can draw structural comprehension links. such links or intellectual awarenesses typically take the form of analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalisation or evaluation. ( ) the aesthetic experience involves the cultural matrix. art does not exist in a cultural vacuum. the process by which one acquires one’s value systems (acculturation) resembles the process through which one acquires one's social values. in other words, there exists a contextual, sociocultural element within the aesthetic experience. (distilled from knieter, ). in summarising knieter’s ( ) characteristics of aesthetic experience we see another significant shift away from essentialist perspectives. there is no advocacy here for the concept of an intrinsic, autonomous artwork. instead, the viewer now initiates dialogue with the object and allows the artwork to naturally disclose its formal qualities, interpretations and meanings to the viewer. in other words, both formal qualities (i.e. intrinsic/essentialist) and interpretation and meanings (i.e. subjective/contextualist) come into play through viewer initiation. in addition, the experience is heightened through purposive viewer engagement to find cognitive schema and to construct meaning. by these introductions, perceptual and meaningful responses are empowered through ontogeny and sociocultural associations. the aesthetic experience becomes both affective and value-laden. the heightened experience is characterised by the interaction of intrinsic, basic and natural aesthetic behaviours in conjunction with socially sourced mediations. knieter’s ( ) de-emphasis of theory in favour of the idea of natural response within experience is also observed within the characteristics identified by hargreaves and taylor which are now discussed. david hargreaves and rod taylor much has been done in terms of defining and exploring the concept of aesthetic experience theoretically. however, the subjective element inherent in art encounters always remains illusive to theoretical generalisation. logic and deduction, it seems, can only go so far. the intrinsic meaning of art can never be fully defined through language, propositional meaning and critical argument. moreover, for some (e.g. abbs, ; knieter, ), privileging theory over real-time activity can be detrimental to the aesthetic response. one of the ways to bring the experiential more into focus is through phenomenological means, as observed below in the investigations conducted by hargreaves and taylor. illuminating experience and conversive trauma to begin, the foundational work on what taylor ( ) describes as ‘illuminating experience’ (i.e. aesthetic experience) was derived from hargreaves’ ( a) earlier phenomenological gatherings. noteworthy here is that abbs ( ) later initiated a ‘quasi’ experiment with arts education student based on hargreaves’ initial research and found significant correspondences. hargreaves’( a) findings were based on responses to the question of how certain people believed they came to acquire their interest in art appreciation. from this simple phenomenological questioning sprang sufficient data for hargreaves ( a) to propose the idea that introduction into the arts could be seen as either conversively (i.e. positive) or aversively traumatic (i.e. off-putting). our interest is only with the conversive theory, in that it relates to the acquisition of positive aesthetic experience). the conversive trauma is seen as: ... a single experience ... [where] ... preconceptions are destroyed by an unexpectedly pleasant experience … [its] most notable characteristic is that it is a relatively sudden, dramatic and intensive process of initiation into an art form (hargreaves, a, p. ). hargreaves’ ( a) conversive trauma describes the percipient’s initial introduction to the art form. to this, art’s ability to sustain such states of awareness, the ‘lluminating experience’ (aesthetic experience), is considered by taylor ( ) as a type of itemisation of all these moments (elements). these moments, originally detected by hargreaves ( a) as being related to conversive traumatic theory and to which taylor ( ) attributes characteristics of illuminating experience, are now observed. in the passages below, the listed characteristics are followed by italicised defining quotes taken from hargreaves ( a). below these are appended further explanations. the four elements/characteristics of aesthetic experience ( ) concentration of attention. “one is totally absorbed in or unexpectedly fascinated by the art object, caught up in it, even taken over by it. in a strong form of the trauma, one’s sense of time and space is suspended and one loses consciousness of all extraneous matters. one is lost in the art object” (hargreaves, a, p. ). in other words, the participant experiences an essentialist-like forceful and overpowering feeling of being drawn towards the work’s intrinsic nature. the loss of awareness regarding extraneous matters and one’s place in the world also suggests that in its initial encounter stage there is a non-discursive nature to the experience, again, an essentialist perspective. ( ) sense of revelation “[o]ne has a sense of new and important reality being opened up before one or of entering a new plane of existence which is somehow intensely real. it is not merely that one's senses are, in contrast to everyday living, heightened and accompanied by a profound emotional disturbance; there is also a feeling of discovery as if some already existing core of the self is suddenly being touched and brought to life for the first time… the experience has cognitive or intellectual features certainly, but the emotional aspects are paramount” (hargreaves, a, p. ). the suggestion here is that, while elementary cognitive processes are activated, the major thrust is intuitive in nature. one’s sensations and emotions are momentarily confused and searching (in a positive, uplifting manner). there could also be considered a kind of spiritual deja vu that takes place. the heightened feelings and emotions culminate in ruminations not dissimilar to the desire for self- actualisation, as observed within the characteristics presented by knieter ( ). ( ) inarticulateness “[o]ne feels unable to express what has happened in words, either to oneself or to others. for some time there is no desire to communicate the experience to others; but when this urge is present it is usually impossible to achieve. the affective aspects can be so powerful that, as it were, feelings drown the words” (hargreaves, a, p. ). again, this element is reminiscent of the essentialist perspective advanced by osborne ( ) in which the viewer does not conceptualise or think discursively. the power is primarily intuitive and ineffable. ( ) arousal of appetite “[o]ne simply wants the experience to continue or to be repeated, and this can be felt with considerable urgency. in the weaker versions of the trauma there is still a lingering fascination which leads people to say that they felt 'hooked’ on the art object in some way” (hargreaves, a, pp. - ). this explanation can be linked with beardsley’s ( a) concept of gratification and its correspondent desire to cultivate the ability for further experiences. it also testifies to a desire for proactivity and the sense of a more on- going power of the aesthetic experience, as opposed to instructional, pragmatic experience. a general summary of the characteristics presented in chapter six looking back over the characteristics of aesthetic experience presented by beardsley ( a), osborne ( ), csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ), knieter ( ), hargreaves ( a) and taylor ( ) we can observe adherences to certain perspectives within both intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist epistemologies. there are also conciliatory and eclectic positions such as csikszentmihalyi’s & robinson’s ( ) and knieter's ( ) being forwarded. however, all consider the aesthetic experience to be beneficial and life enhancing, regardless of whether this state ensues through inductive enjoyment of art for its own sake (beardsley, a; osborne, ; csikszentmilhalyi & robinson, ), or through meanings derived through interpretations explicated from the cultural matrix (knieter, ; csikszentmihalyi & robinson, ). in addition, all taxonomies acknowledge (to varying degrees) the non-discursive nature and ineffable quality of aesthetic experience. table below sets out some of the shared characteristics suggested from the above selected scholars’ propositions. in the left-hand column are presented some of the major recurring characteristics to which the scholars in the right- hand column share (to varying degrees). the numbers appearing after the scholar’s name are in reference to the aesthetic experience characteristics and/or propositions, as in beardsley’s case, as proposed within their previously covered sections. table - shared characteristics of aesthetic experience object focus/ object directedness beardsley ( ) object directedness; osborne ( ) object centeredness; csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) merging of action and awareness object focused, ( ) limitation of stimulus field; knieter ( ) stimulation drawn from object; hargreaves ( ) concentration of attention toward object. feelings of detachment beardsley ( ) detached effect, set off from reality; osborne ( ) no theoretical or practical concerns, ( ) feeling of detachment, disinterestedness, ( ) loss of body consciousness, loss of time/space; csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) limitation of stimulus field, no awareness of past or future; hargreaves ( ) time and space suspended. feelings of active discovery beardsley ( ) feelings of active discovery, exercising constructive powers, sense of intellectuality (possibly illusory); osborne ( ) stimulation of alertness; csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) skills (cognitive) employed to overcome challenges, control of actions, ( b) sense of discovery, ( c) sense of human connectedness; knieter ( ) employment of cognitive schema; hargreaves ( ) feelings of new and important realities. feelings of self fulfillment, wholeness, self- actualisation beardsley ( ) integration as a person, gratification (hedonistic pleasure and sense of being up-lifted); osborne ( ) enjoyment, contemplative attitude; csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) realisation of clear goals, clear feedback, intense enjoyment, ( a) personal wholeness, ( b) a sense of discovery, ( c) a sense of human connectedness. knieter ( ) feelingful reactions, both physiological and emotional; hargreaves ( ) gratification of experience, arousal of appetite for further encounters. perception of the experience as a unified whole beardsley (proposition ) unity and coherence, (proposition ) totality of experience; osborne ( ) the parts of the experience are only important as they articulate the intuitive perception of the whole; csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) clear goals, clear feedback (intuitive ‘concreteness of presented image’ fortified by content awareness; hargreaves ( ) observed as a single experience, while cognitive structures are activated, the major thrust is intuitive in nature. inarticulateness hargreaves ( ) ineffable nature, words can not fully describe. feelings of identification with object beardsley (proposition ) emotional and psychological sensations bound to object, ( ) object directedness; osborne ( ) identification with object by our attention being held and gripped, absorption; hargreaves ( ) being lost in the object. as observed above, despite initial differences presented by some of the contributors, there is much that can be envisioned as reconciliatory within the scholars’ individual proposals and in their relation to the earlier propositions of the two major epistemologies. the explicated characteristics above and the theoretical propositions regarding aesthetic experience covered in earlier chapters, have now laid the conceptual groundings for this dissertation’s forthcoming particular exploration of positive aesthetic experience characteristics in painting. however, prior to that exploration of characteristics, this research’s selection and employment of methodological tools and procedures need to be examined. this examination is required to insure that the methodologies are deemed appropriate for my research’s aim. again, that aim is to elucidate the characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting through the discursive and non-discursive presented essences of my research participants. to underpin this investigation and act as a focus for the topic and collection of data and analysis is the phenomenological research question: what are the bases for the perception and description of the phenomena of aesthetic experience in painting? because of this aim, the intended methodology needs to be appropriate to filtering subjective livedworld essences of the research participants. it also requires the minimisation of theoretical pre-conditionings and must be responsive to the idiosyncratic, interpretive and inductive nature of subjective response. the methodology should also be flexible and open enough to foster a kind of reflected familiarity with the research question. this will allow a capturing of essences, non- discursive and discursive data which ‘responds’ rather than ‘explains’. all these requirements suggest a recruitment of methodologies aligned with qualitative phenomenological and reflective approaches. so, with the background informing chapters complete, methodological issues are now addressed in chapter seven. chapter seven methodology introduction and overview this chapter discusses the design, methodology and applications employed in this research. generally, it pursues a qualitative/phenomenological epistemology/paradigm and is eclectically structured according to heuristic research methodologies as prescribed by moustakas ( ; ) and douglas and moustakas ( ). it also draws upon aspects of heuristic research in the tradition of human science phenomenology of van manen ( ) and contributing aspects of general expressive research forwarded by willis ( ; ; ), willis & smith ( ). finally, aspects of reflective practice by boud, keogh & walker ( a; b) and concepts surrounding tacit knowing espoused by polanyi ( ) are incorporated into its design. the chapter begins with a description of the investigations surrounding the research topic, aim and how the topic was approached. next, the need to separate theoretical explications from phenomenological data is advanced. this, in turn, advances a defense of the qualitative approach employed here. the selection of a heuristic and phenomenological methodology is argued and an overview of moustakas’ ( ) heuristic methodology is presented. within this section, underlying concepts as identifying with focus of inquiry, self dialogue, tacit knowing, intuition, indwelling, focusing and inward frames of reference are discussed. other sections follow where the inclusion of myself as a research participant, the selection of the remaining participants and their selected paintings from which they would focus their reflections are discussed. in addition, the selection and assessment of research sites and ethical concerns are addressed. from here, tools for data collecting, such as reflective writing, responses to set questions and interviews are examined. an explanation of collection, collation and analysis of data used in this research is then promoted which incorporates moustakas’ ( ) six phases of heuristic research. previewed below, these phases include: ( ) initial engagement- locating and isolating the significant research question; ( ) immersion- becoming one with the question as it presents itself in all facets of daily life; ( ) incubation- the setting aside of the research question for gestation purposes; ( ) illumination- the discovery of new awarenesses which have remained hidden; ( ) explication- themes, qualities and descriptive phrases are fully examined and; ( ) creative synthesis- the transformation of all collected data into a new and creative format. further aspects of collecting and analysing the data, such as line-by-line interrogation of full texts, colour and numerical coding and indexing are presented. finally, issues of triangulation and validity are examined and the limitations of the study are outlined. the research question the focus of the research topic took the form of an aim. that aim was to elucidate the positive aesthetic experience characteristics in painting. these characteristics were to be explicated through the discursive and non-discursive data/essences from two artist/educators, one full time professional artist and one art theorist/educator. within this aim, the phenomenological question which underpinned the investigation and acted as a focus for the topic and the collection of data and analysis was: what are the bases for the perception and description of the phenomena of aesthetic experience in painting? being a practising painter and art educator, i derived the phenomenological question from a personal response and through involvement with the phenomena in question. that is, the question had both personal and general applicability. the internal search processes involved in formulating the question were achieved through personal immersion. this required the self-initiated processes of indwelling, internal frame of references and self-searching as discussed later. in approaching the above phenomenological aim and question, in all data gathering interludes, participants were continually directed to respond without attempts to explain. that is, they were encouraged to address their reflections toward personal ‘lived experience’ descriptions without relegating the experience to causal explanations or interpretative generalisations (van manen, ). this personal focusing was in an attempt to establish a repeated emphasis on what it was like. that is, to “ … question something by going back again and again to the things themselves until that which is put to question begins to reveal something of its essential nature” (van manen, , p. ). it was hoped that this would establish a reflected familiarity with the question. that is, a continual unraveling and exposure of non- essential associations until an inner core of experience was exposed. how the research aim was approached as in most expressive and phenomenological investigations, the research aim and question were developing before entering the research field. i acknowledge, as does most expressive research inquiry, that issues surrounding this exploration of the phenomenon of aesthetic experience were influenced by a personal, moral investment (willis & smith, ). as moustakas ( ) observes, “ … something that has called to me from within my life experience, something to which i have associations …” (moustakas, , p. ). in other words, both the motivation and the emphasis of my research were based on personal, subjective concerns and influences which had exercised (for some time) direct bearing on my own livedworld (moustakas, ; emery, ; van manen, ). moreover, having personal and direct experiential encounter with the phenomenon under investigation (in this case, aesthetic experience in painting) is prerequisite for heuristic inquiry (moustakas, ). here, the active, participatory role as researcher cannot be extracted and objectified from that which i research. it necessitates a personal commitment requiring my own placement within the situational, theoretical and phenomenological research contexts. it is this “ … [e]mphasis on the investigator’s internal frame of reference, self-searching, intuition, and indwelling [which reside] at the heart of heuristic inquiry” (moustakas, , p. ). this is because my livedworld and practice are inseparable, embodied. they are also multifaceted. my role as artist, lecturer, appreciator, inquirer and my interactions as a participant within a societal sphere (as well as the possessor of a unique and subjective personal ontology) are what make up phenomenological research’s initial data (moustakas, ; van manen, ). furthermore, through a positive ‘exploitation’ of the researcher’s personal subjectivity (peshkin, , cited in eisner b), eisner ( b) endorses the idea of formulating a unique signature within qualitative art-based research. he sees this personal (though informed) insight as being beneficial to the research situation by assisting the qualitative concepts of multiple, rather than single, views (eisner, b). separating theory from experience the intentions of the previous chapters have been to focus on elaborating the concepts and characteristics of aesthetic experience theoretically. along with those stated earlier in the dissertation, one of the purposes of reviewing this literature was in response to the qualitative requirements proposed by minichiello et al. ( ). these requirements pertain to the literature review acting as provocation for thinking. that is, as stimulant for investigation and reflection. according to minichiello et al. ( ), reviews of theoretical literature can: (a) acquaint the researcher and reader with what has conceptually gone on before and places the research within context; (b) act as a referent for making schemes for understanding and questioning further data; and (c) assist through possible suggestions regarding planning and methodological design (minichiello et al., ). in addition to acting as an historical perspective and a source for future interpretation concerning the data collected, garman ( ) proposes that the literature can be used as data itself. however, while my research’s epistemology was qualitative, the methodology is also phenomenological in nature. therefore, the assumptions and assertions derivable from earlier theoretical observations cannot be taken as fact, used as a prescribed framework or allowed to influence reflections or directions on later experiential essences (glaser, , cited in minichiello et al., ). in other words, they were not to be considered a priori to the experiences of the phenomenological findings of the research participants. in the first instance, the theoretical and the experiential are to be considered initially separate and distinct lines of inquiry. this is because the phenomenological investigations and the essential themes which it produced had to be free to take their own course and establish their own significance. in order to achieve this, theoretical pre-conditionings are minimised, least the research enterprise become simply an exercise in mimicking a pre- established theory. if this had occurred, the inquiry risks simply becoming “ … a biased project conditioned by distorted readings of the past and utopian hopes for the future” (lincoln & denzin, , p. ). so, the prior theoretical propositions became valuable only after the catching of the qualities, core and essential themes; these themes being extracted through the reflections of subjective aesthetic experience. that is, the ‘portrayal’ of the mixing of subjective and objective facets of the experience linked with actual people in actual time (willis & smith, ). the values of theoretical positions are in terms of comparison. through re- visiting observation of possible similarities or dissimilarities and the possible iterative characteristics which both theoretical and phenomenological sections demonstrate within the time/space/participant specificity of this research. the amalgamation of both theoretical and experiential reflections suggests that within some phenomenological data such collaborations between factual and hermeneutic descriptions could be mutually supportive (nielsen, ). for example, declarative factual information concerning the modernist emphasis on virtuosity of technique, placing the subject matter into its historical referent or use of allegory can be seen as factually supportive information assisting a more dynamic phenomenological encounter with, say, picasso’s guernica. therefore, what was envisioned was an addition of comparison regarding propositions arising from participants’ reflections, the theories themselves and livedworld subjective essences (as advocated above by minichiello et al., ; garman, ). in addition, the intention was to strengthen the representation and illumination of the phenomena for the reader and to address aspects commonly associated with concepts of validity (garman, ) (addressed later). a qualitative approach to elucidate reflections on individual dispositional phenomena, in relation to what might constitute the characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting, required the subjective and naturalistic position offered by qualitative research methodology. the idiosyncratic, interpretative and inductive nature of the research aim necessitates approaches that are intolerant of being eclectic, flexible and less determinist (bamford, ; kantor, ; la pierre, ). these approaches were necessary in order that the focus could be turned toward the qualities of context specific, experiential phenomena and away from scientific-empirical formulations of generalisations and causality, favoured in quantitative paradigms. in addition, the research methodology requires being sensitive to individuals’ defining social realities through the evaluation of events and meanings as personal and subjective constructs (burns, ). this is because the desired subjective meanings are to be found in the messy, indeterminate psychological indexes and identifications which shape our interpretations of the environment. for example, consider a nervous and erratic abstract cityscape (composed of bridges and other new york city industrial landmarks) created by john marin. here, the cityscape may be internalised and understood more readily and profoundly through personal associations and reflections by those who live and work within that abstracted and busy environment. in contrast, an enlightened south dakota rancher might appreciate the designal aspects of marin’s work, yet may be hard pressed to associate or elicit much else from the encounter. this is because the rancher’s interpretation and feeling for the same life-experience would come from other, more familiar rural stimuli. it would be found, say, within the visual tensions and electric movement of a cattle stampede painted by frederic remington. correspondingly, the data required for this dissertation could not be sourced through prescriptive, analytical measurement. it was better gleaned from particular narrative and descriptive accounts; through more inductive (i.e. aesthetic) rather than scientific (i.e. deductive) modes of knowing. for example, the appreciation and experiential impact of a john marin abstract painting representing the manhattan bridge does not come from counting the number of struts and cross beams depicted. it comes through the visual and psychological tensions which are represented and the compositional devices which serve the emotive feelings induced within the viewer. here, the patterns and meaning of knowing are better derived from the researcher’s and participants’ deep textural and non-discursive explications. that is, what is needed is an exploration into indwellings (i.e. tapping into what is known and what is felt), of self reflectivity and the search for tacit, internal sources of knowing the phenomena in order to discover its livedworld nature and meaning (moustakas, ). in this way, the qualitative approach proposes the notion that “ [u]nderstanding is visceral … [therefore requiring that] … [t]he fully interpretative text plunges the reader into the interior, feeling, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching worlds of subjective human perception” (denzin, , p. , cited in emery, , p. ). a more simple analytical tool might deny this full representation of the livedworld. by this, i mean that facts, logical deduction and causality cannot paint the full, holistic representation as advocated above. what needs to be exhibited and explored in order to represent the ‘visceral’ aspect of understanding are the patterns and meanings which present themselves in holistic, intuitive and emotional response (heywood, ). what is called for here is what geertz ( ) referred to as ‘thick description,’ a delving beneath the surface of literal meaning into the experiential understanding and knowing of those who attend it (geertz cited in eisner, b). therefore, the selection and structure of the methodological approaches had to ensure that these gatherings of descriptive phenomenological essences -- “ ... the inner essential nature of things ... a quality ... a description of a phenomena” (van manen, , p. ; p. ; p. ) -- formulate themselves as much as possible without bias or presupposition. it needed to be 'grounded research', hypothesis- generating rather than hypothesis-testing (kantor, ). it should not be based or committed to any particular prior knowledge (minichiello et al., ). in other words, direction was generated toward the often ambiguous and multi-dimensional aspects of inductive knowing. by its nature, this inductive knowing cannot be empirically predicted. this is because these dimensions “ … cannot easily be categorised as factual or non-factual ... [or] ... reside within conceptualisation” (nielsen, , p. ) as they present themselves in experience. hence, there was a need and preference for a subjective, naturalistic qualitative approach. the de-privileging of a conceptual framework for some qualitative research purposes, the distilled associations and characteristics of the aesthetic experience proposed within the theoretical explications as addressed earlier could well be considered an adequate conceptual framework. however, because of the phenomenological methodology selected to pursue my research aim, and the desire to seek potentially new horizons, the formulation of a conceptual framework based on presupposed theoretical characteristics was set aside. this was considered advantageous in order to safeguard against a rule-governing research method through constructs of predetermined and fixed methodological procedures. the justification here relates to the idea that the methods must be flexible and adaptive, discovered or invented, in response to the questions as they present themselves (van manen, ). in other words, the explication of phenomena -- the manifestations that are inherent in experience (willis, ) -- are best served by a conscious attempt to remain open to any alternative direction which might present itself hermeneutically. an initial theoretical conceptual framework prior to collecting data suggests a presupposition of prescribed routes for investigation. this is antithetical to the open-ended methodological stance of heuristic research (moustakas, ). furthermore, as this dissertation appropriates from qualitative grounded theory, it was conceived that findings would emerge as the study proceeded: as the data were collected, analysed and interpreted. that is, its emphasis was on the process of discovery (kantor, ). analytic codes and categories (charmaz, ) or core themes and patterns (moustakas, ) gradually emerged from the collected data, not from preconceived hypothesis (charmaz, ). here, simple ontological inspired sensitizing concepts replaced initial conceptual frameworks as starting points to initiate participant disclosure. from this point, authentic categories emerged as a result of the interaction of observer and the observed (charmaz, ). summarily, the establishment of an initial conceptual framework at the idiosyncratic level of experiencing would restrictively pin down aesthetic experience characteristics prior to investigation. this is because in order to pursue heuristic understanding i had to come with no pre-focused hypothesis to test. in order to accomplish this, the research question and aim were the key imperatives to orientate, negotiate and frame research proceedings. preferable was a framework and method orientation of research which could extract thematic elements surrounding the experience for the participants as they unfolded. by attempting this naturalistic approach, the assumed characteristic properties and themes from the participants could then be compared, contrasted and analysed in relation to the established theoretical frameworks advanced in chapter three through six. in addition, this final comparison would also assist in establishing triangulation. the selection of a heuristic/phenomenological approach to secure these aims, a general phenomenological inspired methodology which drew upon the heuristic research methodology of moustakas ( ; ) and douglas and moustakas ( ) was selected. in addition, aspects of the human science phenomenology as advocated by van manen ( ) and the expressive phenomenology orientations of willis ( ; ; ), willis and smith ( ) in combination with aspects of reflective practice as advocated by boud, keogh and walker ( a; b) were also adapted. in taking this blended position, the selection of systematic inquiries acknowledges the concept that methodology associated with art-based research is primarily an eclectic assortment of many systematic approaches used in combination (bamford, ). heuristic research emery ( ) contends that the requirement to focus on deeply subjective sensory responses is well served by heuristic inquiry (emery, ). she considers the methodological approach appropriate because of its ability to integrate and blend both the emotional and intellectual aspects of the phenomenon. she also sees the suggested six phases of methodological inquiry advocated by moustakas’ ( ) and douglas and moustakas’ ( ) heuristic phenomenology (discussed later) as advantageous in presenting and recognising the possible similar natures and meanings of an experiential state. this observation is based on moustakas’ ( ) contention that autobiographic-like self inquiry and dialogue with other interested participants concerning questions about one’s place in the world will inevitably have direct bearing on social or [perhaps] universal significances (moustakas, ). the presented explication of the subjective relatedness of the experiential state may have the ability to resonate its meaning and characteristics to those who have similarly encountered such states (emery, ). by doing so, it is proposed that a type of intersubjectivity to the experience, as attested to by language, social interaction and the mental processes and content similarities, may produce a feeling which approximates temporal, qualified objectivity. people can be seen to experience similarly, thus allowing for the examination and delineation of an essential experiential structure (tointon, ). from this perspective, the outcomes regarding an exploration of the characteristics of aesthetic experience in painting are not solipsistic (i.e. pertaining only to the particularised or obsessive preoccupation with oneself), but are generalisable in application (blumenfeld-jones, ; piantanida et al., ). an overview of moustakas’ heuristic research methodology as moustakas’( ) heuristic research methodology plays an integral part in the methodological formulation of the dissertation, an overview of its concepts, phases, and processes seems appropriate. moustakas’( ) use of the word heuristic refers to the employment of a clustering of processes which assist the personally involved initial researcher in formulating a systematic internal search (which is in response to an experiential question). so, from the beginning, this search had to be in response to a question of personal researcher significance. in this way, it was subjectively sourced, an internal investigation aimed at disclosing the nature and meaning of a phenomenon, as well as being the source for researchers’ self awareness and actualisation (moustakas, ; douglas & moustakas, ; van manen, ). the nature and meaning of the phenomenon explored and its personal significance to all involved in the research process was through the reflections, illuminations and revelations of direct, first person accounts of those who had encountered the phenomenon in question (moustakas, ). these acts of disclosure are realised through: … [a] recreation of the lived experience; full and complete depictions of the experience from the frame of reference of the experiencing person. the challenge is fulfilled through examples, narrative descriptions, dialogues, stories, poems, artwork, journals and diaries, autobiographical logs, and other personal documents. the heuristic process … [requires] … vivid perception, description, and illustration of the experience (moustakas, , p. ). the critical processes employed for the systematic procurement of meanings are previewed in the table below. the left-hand column presents the critical processes. the adjoining right-hand column describes their discriminating qualities. table - moustakas’ ( ) critical processes process discriminating quality (a) concentrated gazing where one concentrates on a search for meaning in response to a personally compelling question. (b) focus on a topic where the topic or question is formalised. (c) methods where the methodology for preparing, collecting, organising, analysing and synthesising data evolve. (distilled from moustakas, ) the interrelated concepts inherent in these critical processes are now discussed individually. these concepts comprise the notions of: (a) identifying with the focus of inquiry, (b) self dialogue, (c) tacit knowing, (d) intuition, (e) indwelling, (f) focusing and (g) internal frame of reference. (a) identifying with the focus of inquiry according to moustakas ( ), the researcher must become one with the question. this type of inverted familiarity is achieved through the processes of self-directed and open-ended inquiry and an immersion within the active experience itself (moustakas, ; douglas & moustakas, ). the initial self-motivation for pursuing the question is expanded through an exploration of the researcher’s personal knowledge and associated held significances of the phenomena. here, a holistic understanding of multiple meanings and the unique patterns of experiencing the phenomena commences with self discovery and awareness. this awareness may be motivated by a systematic and iterative personal inquiry into the makeup of the experience in question. it is achieved by formulating a personal engagement with the question through a constant blending of personally constructed concepts and the active and reflective phenomenological feeling in experience. it is an orientation of inquiry whereby the practitioner becomes one with the phenomena or situation through the interaction of “reflective conversation” (schon, , p. ). this state is further enhanced, as moustakas ( ) suggests, by allowing the question its own voice, to pose and validate its existence and meaning through the acts of self reflection on one’s own notions of personal meaning and social implications . (b) self dialogue one of the ways of achieving the above and to further explicate the significance and meaning of the experience is through what moustakas ( ) considers self dialogue. for moustakas ( ), self dialogue becomes the critical beginning for possible depictions of the experience’s core themes and essences. this is important because these themes and essences are the building blocks to discovering the characteristics and qualities of the phenomena in question. to begin, we must enter into dialogue with the question. that is, to speak directly to the experience and engage in question and debate (e.g. here, i kept a journal of personal dialogue). the concept of self dialogue suggests the importance of open, honest and willing self disclosure and the subsequent explication of tacitly held experiential knowing to be foundational to the overall concept of knowledge (rogers, ; maslow, ; douglas & moustakas, ; jourard, , cited in moustakas, ). in addition, self disclosure facilitates the self disclosure of others by establishing itself as an exemplar for contributory participation. that is, one feels more confident and secure in presenting ideas and feelings after having experienced the disclosures of others. this is because we may feel more familiar and at ease in knowing that others have exhibited their commitment. perhaps we become more inclined to add to the empathetic pooling of thematic cores and essences the more we are made aware of like sensitivities and understanding (douglas & moustakas, ). (c) tacit knowing the power and revelation of tacit (undeclarable) knowing allows the inception of “ … the hunches and vague, formless insights that characterize heuristic discovery” (douglas & moustakas, , p. ). in other words, we begin to sense the unity of an experience by understanding its individual component parts long before we can discursively understand or describe its totality. the notion of tacit knowledge explains the idea that we all know more than we can tell (polanyi, ; schon, ). tacit knowing is a type of spontaneous behaviour, of experiential knowing, which is not the result of prior intellectualisation (schon, ). in formulating the elements inherent in tacit knowing, moustakas ( ) cites polanyi’s ( ) divisions into the subsidiary and the focal aspects of experience. the former aspect denotes the observable, perceptual elements which stand out in experience. we recognise them often as the identifiable changing and vague cues and clues within our consciousness. these become unique and distinctive (moustakas, ). according to polanyi ( ), the focal elements are either implicit or subliminal and present themselves as unseen and invisible dispositional elements. it is when the combination of these two elements of experience are realised in combination that tacit knowledge of the phenomena is achieved. for example, we understand the idea of taking a bath with associations of recognisable elements such as the tub, water temperature and associated brought-into-memory images of bathroom environments, either real or imagined. however, the tacit knowing of the experience of taking a bath also registers within undisclosed sensory, discursively undeveloped knowing -- sensations allusive to subsidiary identification. these focal aspects relate to the undisclosed aspects within experience. for example, they are the un-specifiable natures inherent in the feel of the hot water upon aching muscles, the dreamy scent of the bubble bath or the temporal transcending bliss of associated complete relaxation. (d) intuition one of the essential characteristics of knowledge acquisition is the ability to construct patterns, relationships and inferences (moustakas, ; polanyi, ). intuition is held to be the conductor which connects the explicit with the qualities of tacit knowing. here, according to moustakas ( ): [i]n intuition, from the subsidiary or observable factors one utilizes an internal capacity to make inferences and arrive at a knowledge of underlying structures or dynamics. intuition makes immediate knowledge possible without the intervening steps of logic or reasoning (moustakas, , p. ). moustakas further states that in the intuitive process: … one draws on clues; one senses a pattern or underlying condition that enables one to imagine and then characterize the reality, state of mind, or condition (moustakas, , p. ). it is this ability to bridge the known with the unknown that establishes the inchoate formulation for a surmised whole and unified conception of the phenomena (i.e. to the best of our abilities to envision a whole and unified experience). it is through a process of examining and re-examining the cues and clues which present themselves through rigorous inferential interrogation. through intuition, one discovers patterns and meanings which may fortify, enrich and extend the knowledge base. (e) indwelling the process of indwelling requires the researcher to turn inwards in order to seek insights into the deeper meanings and signification inherent in the question. it is a practice dependent process which targets the beginning understanding and acknowledgement of intuitive manifestations along with the ineffable (focal) and observable (subsidiary) aspects of tacit knowing (polanyi, , cited in moustakas, ). conlan ( ) refers to indwelling as a fermentation period where the researcher taps into what is known and what is felt. it reflectively attempts a meditative awareness (adams, , cited in conlan, ) whereby sitting with the question and experience in concentrated, open- reflection draws to the surface its essential qualities and meanings. these qualities and meanings provide the data for further focusing and final portrayal through creative synthesis (conlan, ; moustakas, ). here, we follow the clues and cues of consciousness, we dwell inside its factors in order to explore every avenue of nuance, fact, texture or implication which may shed light and extend meaning regarding the contemplated phenomena. this process is considered non linear or logical. while maintaining a conscious and deliberate attitude, unlike simple day dreaming, indwelling necessitates the following of leads by any manner or sequence in which they present themselves into consciousness. here, we remain with the phenomena in question, going over its intuitive and tacit aspects and insights over and over again. by doing so, a general, more vivid presentation of the phenomena may begin to appear. it is likely to unveil itself through the discovery of its representations of feelings and emotions, facts and fantasies and the representations of its aspects in autobiography, poetry, music, art and in other non-discursive and discursive associations. by bringing to the fore and making conscious the details of the experience, we slowly and incrementally gather in the constituents of the life experience, attempting explication through reflective analysis (moustakas, ). (f) focusing moustakas ( ) defines the concept and process of focusing as: … an inner attention, a staying with, a sustained process of systematically contacting the more central meanings of experience … [it] … enables one to see something as it is and to make whatever shifts are necessary to remove clutter and make contact with necessary awarenesses and insights into one’s experience … [it] facilitates a relaxed and receptive state, enables perceptions and sensings to achieve more definitive clarification, taps into the essence of what matters, and sets aside peripheral qualities and feelings (moustakas, , p. ). according to douglas and moustakas ( ), focusing allows new meanings and perceptions of the experience through prolonged periods of renewed researcher’s concentration directed toward personal signification heuristic research steps used to achieve focusing include a kind of slowing down on the researcher’s part; a kind of personal re-grouping of attention and intention. here, the researcher attempts to consciously clear an inward space in order to tap and re-tap into the states, qualities and significations which may illustrate the phenomena’s meaning and concentrate on clarifying the question(s). through focusing, the researcher attempts to contact new personal explanations and examples in order to elucidate the experiential characteristics of the phenomena. in other words, its purpose is for clarification. it is an attempt to draw out and explicate possible neglected core themes (moustakas, ). (g) internal frame of reference all heuristic knowing is based on the concept that to understand any human experience one must source it through the phenomenal understandings of that experience from the participant point of view (moustakas, ). this knowing is drawn from the well of the individuals’ inward worlds, of their experiences and personal significances and explanations that they attach to it. this relates to both its factual and metaphysical aspects. the internal frame of reference requires empathetic observation and understanding of percipient perceptions, feelings, thoughts and sense- making. this internal frame of referencing is premised on the subject’s experience, their personalised experience and portrayals of experience, which provide its validity (moustakas, ). one must assume an empathetic position to what it is like for them (not others) in order to correctly ascertain and explicate its personal meaning. in addition, free and spontaneous self disclosure may assist researchers in adjusting or recognising their own point of view. in order to collect such personalised portrayals, researchers must create an atmosphere of trust, openness and connection. the success of phenomenological heuristic research rests on these premises. we must attempt to be attuned to and understand the phenomena from the view of the person who has had or is having the experience: to see and understand the experience through their eyes. potential weaknesses within selected methodology despite this dissertation’s concerted attempt at systematic inquiry, there are limitations to aspects of phenomenological methodology. these potential limitations are found in quantitative critique which focuses on the feasibility to responsibly deploy systematic rigour to investigations which deal with the psychological messiness of subjectivity and in understanding the nature and implications of consciousness generally (chalmers, , cited in salmon, nd.). so, there are doubts concerning the trustworthiness of self-knowledge and our ability to bracket off predispositions. for some, the significance of our livedworld awareness: … remains a half-certain, half-dubious accumulation of acquired indirect knowledge, a mass of significant images and ideative representations, abstract thought-counters, hypothesises, theories, generalisations … [which, in turn, make our internal knowing] … narrow and imperfect, our interpretations of its significances doubtful … (aurobindo cited in salmon, nd, p. ). in addition, some believe that it is not possible to fully bracket (i.e. mentally detach from preconceived concepts and assumptions held while examining the phenomena). as heron ( ) observes, “there is a dialectical tension … between the bracketed concepts and the declaration … [which suggests that ] … [t]here is no such thing as an absolutely pristine revelation of what the experience is really all about” (heron, , p. ). that is, our descriptions cannot be totally separated from interpretation -- and interpretation is embedded in sociocultural input and the interpretative demeanor of language and writing itself. in terms of the characteristics of aesthetic experience observed, the observations may indeed possess disguised or other non disclosed agencies which impact upon issues of validity. furthermore, while abbs ( ) advocates phenomenological investigations into aesthetic experience (a field of research, he believes, where little work has been attempted), he nevertheless sees potential limitations and pitfalls. while not insurmountable, these concerns revolve around questions of prior selection and truthfulness of participants’ accounts, collation and interpretation issues (abbs, ). these points being noted, it must be assumed that all research methodologies have both their strengths and weaknesses. the final selection of methodologies must be based on the researcher’s critical inquiry into what systematic base and eclectic distillations will best serve the project’s aim. it is my belief that the heuristic and phenomenological systems which were put in place within this research were sufficiently robust for the task. participant involvement in the study my inclusion as participant the inclusion of my voice within the research is a fundamental philosophical and methodological requirement of heuristic investigation. my personal gaze and commitment are the prerequisites for heuristic intention and process. indeed, my personal involvement through direct, vital and personal encounters with the phenomenon investigated warrants my active participation (moustakas, ). my participation is called for because of my connectedness and relatedness to the question (schon, ). seen in this light, the heuristic question and its explication are in essence my autobiographical search co-joined with the like-minded autobiographical searches of co-participants. in other words, this research was fundamentally my quest shared. the auto- ethnographical nature of my own experiences within the research culture was intended to foster personal growth and awareness (van manen, ). in addition, it was to act as an entrance point for self-other interactions and explication of experience (ellis, ). it is argued here that my contributions regarding interpretation are intended to advance the aesthetic integrity of the dissertation, rather than detract from it (piantanida, et al., ). participants’ selection and their chosen paintings the participants included in this research were myself and another artist/educator (both primarily painters), one professional full time artist-painter (with some past private tutoring experience but without educational institute associations or teaching qualifications) and one academic art theorist/art commentator/educator. the two artists/educators and the academic art theorist are based within the centre for arts, culture & creative industries (cacci), southbank institute of technology. the professional full time artist-painter works independently from her brisbane studio. the principal participants were: john tarlton - (myself) a fifty-six year old male art lecturer at the centre of arts, culture and creative industries at southbank tafe and practicing painter. bachelor of arts (fine arts) (state university of new york at albany); master of arts (fine arts) (state university of new york at albany); bachelor of training (griffith university); master of education (griffith university). i have had numerous exhibitions and am represented in public and private collections. the paintings i selected to illustrate the aesthetic experiences were death’s head abstraction # ( ) by steig persson and the marble table ( ) by georges braque. (both paintings illustrated below). steig persson. death’s head abstraction # ( ). oil on canvas. s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library georges braque. marble table ( ). oil on canvas. s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library chris worfold- a year old male art lecturer at the centre of arts, culture and creative industries at southbank tafe and practicing painter. bachelor of visual arts (queensland college of art); bachelor of visual arts, honours (queensland university of technology); graduate diploma in education (queensland university of technology). chris has had numerous exhibitions and is represented in public and private collections. the paintings selected by chris to illustrate his aesthetic experiences were the conversion of st. paolo malfi ( ) by julian schnabel and thatched cottages at cordeville ( ) by vincent van gogh. (both paintings illustrated below). s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library julian schnabel. the conversion of st paolo malfi (two panels from the twelve panel series ( )). gesso, oil, resin and print on canvas. vincent van gogh. thatched cottages at cordeville ( ). oil on canvas. s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library caroline penny- a forty year old female full time professional painter and recent mother. diploma in fine arts (bristol polytechnic). caroline has had numerous exhibitions and is represented in public and private collections. the paintings selected by caroline to illustrate her aesthetic experiences were emmie and her child ( ) by mary cassatt and argenteuil ( ) by claude monet. (both paintings illustrated below). mary cassatt. emmie and her child ( ). oil on canvas. claude monet. argenteuil ( ). oil on canvas. dr. elizabeth ruinard- a forty-five year old female art theory lecturer at the centre of arts, culture and creative industries at southbank tafe. bachelor of arts (honours) (university of queensland); d.e.a. (la sorbonne); ph.d. (university of queensland); bachelor of training (griffith university). elizabeth has published numerous art-related articles and criticisms. the painting selected by ruinard to represent her aesthetic experience was lavender mist: number ( ) by jackson pollock. (illustrated below). jackson pollock. lavender mist: number ( ). oil, enamel and aluminum on canvas. criteria for selecting participants the criteria and purpose of selecting the artists/educators and an academic art theorist was to help ground the research within the context of adult vocational education. this was seen as advantageous in that any findings and conclusions may have direct personal bearing, as well as more generalised application to the fostering of aesthetic experience within this sector. the selection of the art theorist/educator was also in an attempt to observe the aesthetic experience once- removed from the reflections of creators. the professional full time artist was selected as a possible counter balance to s text box image removed, please consult print copy of the thesis held in griffith university library institution-based practitioners. it was envisioned that this independent voice, free from the discursive aspects associated with instructing in art, would offset any possible domination of studio/classroom rhetoric and assist in more generalised data collection. the selection of participants from the three categories, rather than all participants being selected exclusively from artist/educational, academic/theory or professional full time art activity, was to establish what stokrocki ( ) terms a collaboration of “polyphonic voices” (stokrocki, , p. ). this creation of multiple signatures within the research was intended to ward off possible participant exclusivity problems. the added requirement of educational practice for the artists/participants was to ensure sufficient descriptions of characteristics and articulation of the aesthetic experience. this requirement was introduced to address the difficulties that getzels and csikszentmihalyi ( ), cited in csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ), encountered while researching aspects of the aesthetic experience derived solely from art practitioners. for instance, their research, using only art practitioners without pedagogic practices, found that as a rule independent artists were directionally self- obsessed toward their own sphere of creativity and, therefore, generally uninterested in viewing art works other than their own. in addition, their sole positions as producers rather than observers of art often prompted prejudiced and idiosyncratic opinions (getzels & csikszentmihalyi, cited in csikszentmihalyi & robinson, ( )). interestingly, the art critic sylvester observed this same behaviour in dealings with the artists bacon and giocometti (sylvester interviewed by tusa, ). an expanded pedagogic interest for the artists/participants was intended to dilute such presumed preoccupations. the second requirement for the artists/educators within the research group -- that of being a professional and practicing artist -- was also made in response to later research into aesthetic experience conducted by czikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ). here, the concern centred on their research being restricted to responses derived solely from museum professionals. these professionals comprised curators, educators and directors of major art collections; key players from various large corporation art holdings, prestigious private galleries and societies and large metropolitan public art galleries and museums. the reality of personal agendas in any participant group must be acknowledged. however, the concern here was that the sole responses of these key players employed in institutes, which, by the nature of institutes, value art as a privileged commodity might be overly influenced by corporate accountability and narrow content-specific expertise. their position as high salaried ‘art brokers’ within institutes with vested interests to promote certain restricted aesthetic viewpoints may question the possibility that intrinsic response may be distorted. for example, if we advocate from a visual culture point of view, what sometimes is labeled ‘fine arts’ can in actuality be seen “ … not so much as dazzling or even high human achievements, but as products representing what those in power choose to praise” (eisner, , p. ). here, phenomenological ‘bracketing’ of external influences might be difficult (as earlier noted). my participants, on the other hand, include employed artists/educators outside the museum-business world of art as commodity and rarefied object. their personal livelihoods are not intertwined or dependent on acquiescence to modernist museum/private gallery policies or agendas. in addition, the exclusion of data from practical creators of art limited czikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) research to responses founded in discursive, propositional knowing. the inclusion of the artist/creator voice as a bona fide practitioner of the trade helped promote the discovery of aesthetic experience characteristics based in application. this inclusion could then be used to expand the characteristics of aesthetic experience from a practical standpoint. it can be viewed as an attempt to balance the more declarative and discursive argument. by incorporating artists/educators as participants, i believed that both intuitive knowing (which may be heightened or even indigenous to practitioners), and the discursive input derived from educated and informed praxis, would best be served. as pointed out by langer ( ), the philosophy of art requires the input from the practising artist working ‘from the inside.’ this is required in order to “test the power of its [philosophy of art] concepts and prevent empty or naïve generalizations” (langer, , p. iv). in response to the above concerns, my selection of participants (having incorporated elements from creation, appreciation and pedagogy) seems better situated and more representative of the key players within the context of this inquiry. in all, there is an attempt to blend input from theory and experience, the discursive and non-discursive, the declarative and the ineffable -- samplings from the eye, the heart and the mind. in addition, the participants were selected from a larger group of possible participants familiar to the researcher. in the final selection, general criteria considerations were also in an attempt to establish (as far as possible) equity regarding differences in age, gender, cultural, political and economic factors. furthermore, a criterion for the final selection was the knowledge that each had experienced the phenomenon of an aesthetic experience and all were interested in furthering their insights into the nature and implications of that phenomenon (moustakas, ; ). their selection was also based on their abilities at verbal articulation, integral positioning within the phenomena to be observed, and their willingness to share their experiences and thoughts. these attributes were considered beneficial for compiling sufficient quantity and quality data (kantor, ). the selection also centred on the participants’ observable passion, training, and roles as facilitators and creators and intimate participation in aesthetic experience. disclaimer on the preponderance of modernist paintings within the selection of paintings used in this research all participants were advised of the subjective nature concerning their selection of paintings for reflection prior to beginning the study. this idea was initially presented to the (then) potential research participants in pre-study information, the required pre- research participant informed consent sheet and informally through discussions. here, it was made clear that this research would take into account weitz’s ( ) and eisner’s ( ) contentions that art (painting, in this instance) should be considered as an on-going, open concept. that is, the selection welcomed the introduction of new cases and conditions of contemporary art practices, as well as traditional modernist painting. from here, the selections of paintings were left to their discretions, not the researcher’s. in terms of a time line, the selections of paintings were done after their admission into the research group. the unforeseen result of this non-influenced selection process displays a marked inclination towards predominantly traditional modernist paintings (a somewhat unusual position for a contemporary study). however, this should not be read as intentional researcher bias. nor, should it be read as indicative of the participants’ sole preferences for a manner or consideration of painting. on the contrary, all participants are actively engaged within visual culture and postmodern agendas. because, from the onset of this research, i have attempted an open and presupposition-less attitude, the selection of paintings for reflection is simply how it is -- and simply reflects the participants’ interests at the time, space and specificity of this research project. sites (selection and assessment) some of the sites where participant meetings and interviews took place included: ( ) my residence and art studio in cannon hill, brisbane, ( ) individual studios and residences of the participants, ( ) individual visits to art galleries and museums for the purposes of informal data collection and ( ) informal meetings at cacci, morningside campus. these sites were deemed appropriate for what eisner ( a) refers to as a prefigured focus concerning the phenomena and participants involved. the sites selected for this research included the environments of working artists’ studios (complete with finished and in-progress artworks, related books and general artistic ambiance), art gallery strolls and informal meetings at an educational institution. these sites were considered ideal for their abilities to act as naturally occurring settings (kantor, ). that is, they were environments where the livedworld phenomena surrounding aesthetic experience might be experienced, re-experienced, observed and reflected. they were also considered safe and non-threatening environments conducive to positive social interaction. ethical concerns and protocol a relativist position toward ethical research philosophy, one that places the importance on the individual’s well-being and dignity over that of the quest for knowledge (cohen, ), underpinned all the research activities in this study. furthermore, the guidelines suggested by the national statement on ethical conduct in research involving humans ( ) and the human research ethics manual (griffith university) ( ) were followed. in addition, heuristic research implies that “ … individuals are autonomous and self-determined. being so, ethics arise from ‘inside’oneself and the individual is responsible for decision-making regarding what constitutes moral/immoral action” (beckstrom, , p. ). in other words, authority for determining what was ethically appropriate for inclusion for research purposes was owned by the individual participants and was not in response to restraints imposed by the researcher or from any outside authority. all the participants were volunteers. the options regarding anonymity and confidentially were waived as all agreed to being personally identified and associated with the research. procedurally, the participants were privy to all data collected at all stages and their agreement was sought to allow information to pass from consecutive reflective development stages to agreement on the dissertation’s final presentation. furthermore, the participants were all known, in varying degrees of familiarity, to the researcher. initial contact was through conversations at work and recreational events. at these initial meetings, we discussed the proposed topic, nature and methods which were intended to be pursued and inquired of their willingness to participate. following this, an ‘instructions to research participants’ letter and a ‘participation-release agreement’ form based on griffith university human research ethics manual and suggested examples by moustakas ( ) were sent. the participation-release agreement was returned to me and placed in secured storage. research participation involved no physical or mental threats and the participants had a right to redress all collected data and progressive and summative analysis. they were also assured that their participation or association in the research could be voluntarily withdrawn at any stage of its development. selection of tools for data collection the range of the methods for collecting data from participants comprised autobiographical and protocol writings, field notes, responses to set questions and tape recorded interviews. appraising and refining the above data was additionally assisted through processes of individual and group review and discussions that were tape- recorded and transcribed. an elaboration of these tools is now presented. personal reflective writing and associated gatherings because of the potential rich source of subjective responses and visual qualities for comparison and interpretation related to the phenomena, emphasis was placed on participants, including myself, keeping personal reflective journals. the contents of these journals consisted of reflective autobiography (e.g. ontological, personal history), self-dialogue and self-reflection, narrative, poems, stories, anecdotes, associated sketches, reproductions of representative examples, conversation, metaphor, additional paintings, and so on. these formed an important data source because they permitted the participants to shape the data, in ways not possible through more structured approaches. the justification for using protocol writing -- the creating of text from which the researcher can conduct a study (van manen, ) -- was based on the premise that in phenomenological investigations, accounts of the lived experience are promoted through participant-generated reflections. indeed, van manen ( ) considers this act (writing) to be the most straightforward way to go about phenomenological research. as van manen ( ) suggests, the process of writing focuses the participant into a reflective attitude, unlike conversational exchanges which are more immediate. writing the journal encouraged considered recall and allowed extended time for reflection and alterations or revisions through re-visitation. in this respect, the emphasis placed on reflective writing aligned more with the human science approach of van manen ( ), who views writing as a preeminent tool and synonymous with research, rather than moustakas ( ), who views reflective writing more as an augmentation to dialogic interview. furthermore, the use of written data was based on the assumption that writing is one of the best ways of individual reflection and for the stimulation of effective shared reflection with peers and colleagues. here, reflective writing was seen as an excellent mode of personal exploration (bolton, ). these personal explorations were intensified for phenomenological purposes by instructing the participants to emphasise emotive and intuitive aspects and feelings. this attention toward ‘feeling’ regarding the reflective journal entries was correspondent to reflective practice as advocated by boud et al.( a; b) who propose explication of the meaning and significance of an experience being tempered through reflection. for boud et al. ( b), reflection becomes the purposeful interaction of two components. the first component is the experience itself. this consists of: … the total response of a person to a situation or event: what he or she thinks, feels, does and concludes at the time and immediately thereafter… observations, thoughts, perceptions, reactions, awkward moments, and interchanges … (boud et al., b, p. - ). the final component is the processing phase of reflection itself. here, “[r]eflection becomes [the] important human activity in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it” (boud, et al., b, p. ). much of the reflective practice used in this dissertation followed the three stage recommendation of these authors. the first stage required the participant to recall, or return to the experience in order to recount salient points. the second step involved an attempt to join with the feelings that surrounded the event while attempting to bracket out nonessential or obstructive thoughts. the final step was to examine and re-evaluate the insights gained from the reflection and to internalise this new knowledge. here, the concern was for examining one’s conclusions in light of presuppositions and to ensure the newly acquired information was productively integrated into the individual's conceptual framework (boud et al., b). for these purposes, copies of instructions for following the three phases of reflective practice of boud et al. ( a; b) were given to the participants. this approach also supports the inclusion of additional material in an attempt to ward off the likelihood of being seen as self-fulfilling through the exclusivity of description regarding the initial event or issue (moon, ). the inclusion of additional materials was central to the phenomenological methodology which advocated the inclusion of intuitions, anecdotes, poetry, reminiscences. here, the participants were encouraged to ‘poetise’ their written reflections as much as possible. this was encouraged to further minimise the embedded logical and rational conventions associated with writing prose and thus expand the modes of reflecting and describing the experiences (crotty, ). this helped to promote a more complete disclosure of the phenomenological livedworld. responding to set questions it also is quite permissible within the phenomenological research to stand on the shoulders of giants. that is, to consult and utilise questions and findings from past literature which pertain to one's current investigations. this is perhaps acknowledged because of the ever-changing influences upon lived experience and the time/space specificity of any phenomenological (or general qualitative/expressive) research. in other words, answers to the questions posed in one particular setting, selection of participants or time can be responded to quite differently when asked within another set of circumstances. moreover, it was believed that the use of established phenomenological literature within my research could bring insight and creative contingencies regarding the pitfalls and possibilities of hermeneutic explorations. simply stated, it could smooth the way. as van manen ( ) observes, it becomes a source for dialogue whereby one’s attention to the ‘personal signature’ of noted phenomenological researchers helps inform one’s own position. so, this approach permitted and promoted the questions and considerations of others in the field to strengthen my research efforts. with these thoughts in mind, two sets of phenomenologically-orientated questions regarding aspects of the aesthetic experience (relating to the participants’ selected paintings) were also given to the participants for written responses. here, questions regarding the aesthetic experience once used by abbs ( ) in a ‘limited experiment’ and moustakas’ ( ) suggested general follow up questions were employed. these are presented below. abbs’ questions by revisiting abbs’ ( ) simple and direct questions after a time lapse of over ten years, a comparison of those answers he collected with my own current research responses could point to a kind of universal characteristic inherent in aesthetic experience. barring that, it could (at least) invite positive speculation concerning characteristics which have retained an over ten year shelf life (despite the ever changing patterns inherent in the indeterminate, contextualized, and fragmented nature (bagnall, ) of postmodern contingencies)). so, the purpose of the first set of questions posed for reflective protocol writing was to elicit recollections of felt sensations which surrounded aesthetic experiences as viewed in conjunction with the participant’s selected paintings. here, the paintings acted as affective springboards to encourage recollections of the aesthetic experience. the questions posed were as follows: “take any major aesthetic experience you have had in relationship to a work of art [paintings were used in this case]. a. details . what was the work of art? . where did you encounter it? . what age were you? b. the experience . try to describe as directly and fully as you can the nature of the experience. c. reflections on the experience . looking, again, at your encounter have you any further reflections on the nature or structure of the experience to add? . had anything prepared you for this experience? . what subsequent effects, if any, did the experience have on you in relation to the art and in relationship to your life as a whole? . can you say what qualities it was in the work of art that released your response? could it have been induced by any work of art or any other object?” (abbs, , p. ). moustakas’ questions following this, a further set of questions was initiated to ensure that the reflective protocol writings were subjectively rich and that their notations on the experiences were sufficient in terms of depth and scope. here, the use of more generalised questions was introduced in order to expand upon the participants’ reflected experiences. these broader questions were devised by moustakas ( ) as a ‘topical guide’ and were presented to the participants. they were: what dimensions, incidents and people immediately connected with the experience stand out for you? how did the experience affect you? what changes do you associate with the experience? how did the experience affect significant others in your life? what feelings were generated by the experience? what thoughts stood out for you? what bodily changes or states were you aware of at the time? have you shared all that is significant with reference to the experience? (moustakas, , p. ). additional questions additional probe questions, intended for clarification and further comment, also proved beneficial. these probe questions were formulated in response to my initial reviews of the participants’ periodically submitted journals. the probe questions were formulated by me in a desire to clarify participants’ explications and to pin-point discourse concerning emerging themes. here, probe questions dealt with direct requests for explanatory (both discursive and non-discursive) responses regarding emerging characteristics. specific examples here concerned re-visitations to aspects of the immediacy of encounter and the possible uniqueness or differentiation of aesthetic experience to ordinary experience (among others points). the probe questions also assisted in regrouping themes and essences by targeting participant response and re-aligning dialogue which, at times, varied from the dissertation’s specific aim or phenomenological question. in other words, they helped tidy, focus and expedite avenues for characteristic and theme-specific data collection. interview interview as a methodological tool for gathering data was also employed. its selection was based upon its capacity to draw out dialogue examples (i.e. data) which could represent the phenomena as experienced by the participants. in addition, interview was favoured for its abilities to encourage the investigated experience in presenting itself through expression and elucidation (moustakas, ). it was believed that interview as a major gathering tool could assist in establishing accounts which effectively accessed other peoples’ experiences and reflections on their experiences in order to identify the deeper meaning or significance of human experience in general (van manen, ). the methods of interviewing consisted of a combination of informal conversational interview (where questions were generated in response to informal interaction with the participant), standardised open-ended interview (where pre- conceived questions were presented), and a general interview guide (where more non- specific issues or topics were suggested as catalysts for dialogue (moustakas, ). here, general questions and topics (relating to the phenomenological research question) were initiated, with a final focus toward more specificity at the end of the interview (as in the use of predetermined probe questions). the pre-focusing of questions and topics for the interviews aimed to direct the participants’ responses back toward my phenomenological research question and to clarify or expand themes explored in their reflective journals. the interviews were also informed through phenomenological guiding questions intended to elicit richer experiential response (see below). the phenomenological concerns that underpinned my interviews were again derived from moustakas ( ). these concerns addressed: what does the person know about the experience being studied? what qualities or dimensions of the experience stand out for the person? what examples are alive and vivid? what events, situations, and people are connected with the experience? what feelings and thoughts are generated by the experience? what bodily states or shifts in bodily presence occur in the experiencing? what time and space factors affect the person's awareness and meaning of the experience? has the person shared all of the significant ingredients or constituents of the experience? (moustakas, , p. ). during the interviews, i also incorporated the original research question, again, that being: what are the bases for the perception and description of the phenomena of aesthetic experience in painting? while the above aspects of technical procedures for interview were used with varying success, the overall employment was one guided by researcher intuition. in other words, i attempted to extract essences of the aesthetic experience in painting following any which way the interviews seemed to go (at the price of later additional transcriptions and editing). during the interviewing processes, i acknowledged the observation of rapley ( ), noting that: … interviewers don’t need to worry excessively about whether their questions and gestures are ‘too leading’ or ‘not empathetic enough’; they should just get on with interacting with that specific person [author’s italics] (rapley, , p. ). this changeable and eclectic response to interview procedures was also based on qualitative interviewing as expressed by turkel (cited in rapley, ). here, reassurance for me lay in the advice to stay flexible and loose, observing that: [i]n the one-to-one interview you start level in the unconfidence, in not knowing where you are going … you experiment (turkel, , cited in rapley, , p. ). collecting, collation and analysis of data moustakas’ ( ) six phases of heuristic research are comprised of initial engagement, immersion, incubation, illumination, explication and creative synthesis. these six phases of heuristic research mapped out the basic research design which i followed. in addition, the phases also guided and directed the research as aspects of the phenomena continually presented themselves. the phases are built around the assumption that direct human experience is the probity of knowledge (moustakas, ; dewey, [ ], [ ]; kolb, , cited in boud et al, a) and that through self inquiry this knowledge can be disclosed and explicated (moustakas, ). the importance of the research phases (and heuristic research in general) “ … lies in its capacity to recognize the universal nature of what something is and means and it is this recognition that resonates with those who have experienced similar feelings … it seeks to explain the integration of emotion and intellect as they function in action” (emery, , p. ). presented below is a brief description of moustakas’ six ( ) phases (earlier previewed) followed by my corresponding research actions. acknowledged within these phases was a consideration and application of the interrelated concepts of identifying with the focus of inquiry, self dialogue, tacit knowing, intuition, indwelling, focusing and an internal frame of reference (described earlier). moustakas’ ( ) six phases of heuristic research . initial engagement phase the first phase involves locating and isolating a research question with personal and social significance. it is confronted through self-inquiry, self dialogue and autobiography. this phase involves a continued clarification until experience is presented in a simple, specific, clear and concrete form. normally, the research question is arrived at by; (a) unsystematicised, free association of topics; (b) clustering interests into subthemes; (c) removing of subthemes which implied causality or possible assumptions; (d) extraction of the central theme from remaining sub-themes; and (e) clearly formulating the question specifically to what it was assumed to research. (moustakas, ). my research question was arrived at through the above recommended processes. furthermore, my personal interest in the topic was a continuation and result of a re-formulation and crystallisation of the phenomenological question pursued in my masters of education thesis and a continued concern regarding student passive interest in art appreciation at work. to address this phase, a personal journal was kept, as well as frequent discussions concerning clarification and formulation of the question with a critical friend. once the research question was resolved (through personal immersion, self- dialogue and self-exploration), i began my own heuristic inquiry into the phenomenological question. in other words, i responded reflectively to my personal livedworld experiences of the aesthetic experience. this was accomplished through: (a) the keeping of a reflective journal (incorporating both discursive and non-discursive data), autobiographical (ontological) reflections, (b) reflections on two specific paintings which had personal aesthetic experience significance and (c) addressing the two sets of questions (from abbs, ; moustakas, ) in relation to the paintings. during these reflections, the three reflective phases of boud et al. ( b) (discussed earlier) were followed. here, i manually recorded my reflections. throughout these processes, emphasis was directed over and over again back to the phenomenological question. that is, what are the bases for the perception and description of the phenomena of aesthetic experience in painting? from these documents a personal, individual depiction of the aesthetic experience’s qualities and themes was constructed. after all participants had completed their reflective written responses and interviews, i collected and assembled all data. these collections included their annotated reflective journals, my unedited transcriptions from the tape recorded interviews and answers to the probe questions. each participant’s data was individually sorted and assigned into discrete named working folders. . immersion phase this is a phase where one attempts to become one with the question through observing how the question presents itself in all facets of daily life, dialogue thought and self reflection. it is to search for intuitive cues and clues, observable and ineffable aspects of tacit knowing related to the research question (moustakas, ). selecting one participant, i entered into what moustakas ( ) refers to a timeless immersion into the material until a comprehensive understanding of that individual’s experiences as a whole was apprehended. this act was accomplished through my attempts at self-dialogue, self-searching, tacit knowing and intuition (as earlier described). this process comprised a lengthy and intense engagement with the data: looking, thinking, empathising, arguing and admiring the specific texts and text analogues of the selected participant. i also engaged with the selected paintings in reproduction in an exhaustive search for clues and cues. i attempted to become empathetic to the participant’s perspective: to see the aesthetic experience through the glimpses of another’s livedworld. i attempted to induct its messages into my own various ways of knowing, to know it like the back of my hand. i made annotations in my personal research journal, focusing on the concerns of this phase. i re-entered periods of intense self-searching and autobiographical interrogations. in addition, i collected associated discursive and non discursive examples of the phenomena to help clarify the proposed research aim. these included the searching out of personal stories, poetry, sketches, examples of paintings and associated photographs and sketches which i believed held signification. . incubation phase moustakas ( ) proposes a sitting aside of the question in order that a gestation period might be entered into. here, intuition and inner tacit dimensions are allowed to formulate, to become clearer. during this phase, researchers separate themselves physically, emotionally and intellectually from the question. this is much the same as removing one’s self from the problem and letting things crystallise. (moustakas, ). i put aside the individual’s data to “facilitate the awakening of fresh energy and perspective” (moutakas, , p. ). that is, i placed the data back into its folders and started a painting, concentrated more on my teaching practice and enjoyed family and friends. after a week or so i revisited the data, attempting to re-introduce myself without predispositions. a review then followed where i started to identify the qualities and themes which presented themselves. from this, an individual depiction of the phenomena was constructed, through various themes and essences. after subsequent examination i then compared these responses with my own heuristic investigation. following this incubation phase, the individual depiction was then shared with the participant in order to verify comprehensiveness. misrepresentations and further participant explanations and examples were solicited and noted. these alterations were then added to the individual depictions and a final clearance from the participant in terms of accuracy of account was attained. after successfully completing the first individual depiction, the same processes were sequentially administered to each preceding participant’s data until individual depictions of all participants were represented. . illumination phase this phase concerns the breakthrough into consciousness of the qualities and clustering of qualities which have perhaps remained hidden, overlooked or distorted. the discovery of new awarenesses and fragmented knowledge is conducted with an open state of mind, receptive yet not concentrated. one begins to see and piece together that which was before unseen. the overall job of uncovering the essences and meanings is carried through by the explication of fortified tacit knowledge. new knowledge may make its appearance (moustakas, ). the individual depictions were then gathered together and i began another stage of immersion and rest periods until i had grasped the common qualities and characteristics. from here, i constructed a composite depiction -- where “ … all the core meanings of the phenomenon as experienced by the individual participants and by the group as a whole” (moustakas, , p. ) were explicated. these comprised the predominant characteristics of the witnessed aesthetic experience exposed by the research and all pertinent participants’ resonances and depictions pertaining to them. this composite depiction of the group regarding the phenomena of aesthetic experience and its observed characteristics reflected and included the components suggested by moustakas ( ), namely: … exemplary narratives, descriptive accounts, conversations, illustrations, and verbatim excepts that accentuate[d] the flow, spirit, and life inherent in the experience … vivid, accurate, alive, and clear … encompass[ing] the core qualities and themes inherent in the experience (moustakas, , p. ). . explication phase here, all relevant themes, descriptive qualities and essences are examined more fully in order to establish various layers of meaning. a more complete apprehension occurs thorough the sifting of implications derived from various points of view, features and textures of the phenomena. additional refinements, amendments and corrections are made. thorough familiarity with all data, qualities and constituents, themes and explicated meanings are achieved and the results assembled (moustakas, ). for this phase, i returned to the raw data of the individual depictions and constructed individual portraits of the participants, allowing both the investigated phenomena and the individual identity of the participants to emerge. these individual constructions were arranged by the prevailing themes, their explications coming to life through the personal signatures apparent within the uniqueness of each of the participant’s quotes, responses, anecdotes, poetry and prose. i once again interrogated the participants’ voices for clarity and uniqueness of experience. here, i searched for nuances and particularities until what i felt to be a comprehensive description of predominant characteristics of aesthetic experience in painting had been actualised. at the conclusion of this phase i believed that i innately understood and had assembled all the characteristic resonances and information i needed to precede to the next phase -- the attempt to comprehensively represent my research’s aim. . creative synthesis phase this final phase involves the transformation and shape-shifting of all collected themes, constituents and essential essences into a new and creative format. according to moustakas ( ), this creative synthesis usually takes the form of narration empowered by quoted material, examples, poetry, art works or other creative channeling. what is envisioned here is the creative heightening of awareness through a synthesised presentation which acts to mirror the researcher’s passion and the unique character of the phenomena (moustakas, ). after discursively previewing the explicated characteristics (which comprise chapter eight), i constructed what i hoped to be “ … an aesthetic rendition of the themes and essential meanings of the phenomenon” (moustakas, , p. ). this was enacted through creating an embellished narrative (creative synthesis) built around what i observed to be the iterative and correspondent characteristics of the aesthetic experience as portrayed and resonated by the research participants. again, the synthesis was re-enforced through the incorporation of individual participant’s creative texts and text analogues in an attempt to further intensify the uniquely personal responses of each participant (moustakas, ) interacting within like- experiences. issues of literary style, sequence and matters regarding cohesion and rhythm within the embellished narrative were trialed and eventually formulated. in addition, this creative transition process, the building of the dissertation’s embellished narrative, was seen to assist the cogency and plausibility of the experiential reflections. that it, its literary formatting somehow helped to create (initially for me and then my critical friend) an innate feeling of structural verisimilitude regarding the overall project. the creative synthesis comprises chapter nine. further aspects of collation and analysis coding in the first phase of collation, all pages of the participants’ reflective journals, notebooks, their responses to their selected paintings, answers regarding the two sets of questions, responses to the probe questions and my transcriptions of the tape- recorded interviews were assigned line numbering. this was done to establish a more effective system for cross-referencing and as a means for material citing used in the later analysis stage (steinmetz, ; ryan & bernard, ). in addition, line numbering was used for the referencing of the line-by-line search to identify essential statements that would later establish phenomenological essential themes (van manen, ). colour coding was also employed to assist identification of material relating to conceptual or thematic categories and frameworks. the use of the various forms of coding mentioned was the preferred method for collating and analysing data. coding was used because it promotes and supports researchers to make judgments and meaning concerning texts of similitude (ryan & bernard, ). in this respect, “coding … [becomes] … the heart and soul of whole-text analysis [authors’ italics]” (ryan & bernard, , p. ). in addition, large margins within the transcripts were created to accommodate the unforeseen accumulation of collation and analysis annotations, researcher reflective memos and to maintain order and legibility. these concerns were further addressed through employing additional photocopies of the original documents (steinhouse, ). later, additional inputs from the participants were also colour coded. the search for themes the documents that provided data were searched for the presences of themes. these core themes and essences usually defined themselves through verbatim quotes regarding specific feelings (ryan & bernard, ). this was achieved through a line-by-line search of the documents, as suggested by van manen ( ). the repetitive and time-intensive line-by-line investigation of the data was invaluable as a discipline in that it fostered a growing familiarity and nurtured the required empathy with each participant. that is, it assisted me in establishing moustakas’ ( ) requirement of researcher intimacy with the participants’ livedworld perspectives. this is because the line-by-line searches demanded that i be immersed personally in the data from the very start (and throughout the research). by doing so, it promoted an awareness and understanding of not only the apprehended phrases or words, but also of the meanings and resonances which surrounded them. in addition, the line-by-line interrogation of the texts (and the personal commitment it required) seemed more in tune with the underlying holistic heuristic research concepts of inquiry addressed in this dissertation. here, evidence of these evolving themes was noted through the recording of the participants’ usages of iterative phrasing, metaphor and idioms. the goal was to identify those qualities and themes which reflectively manifested themselves from the participants' experiences. characteristic of this type of examination is a process of separating what reflections were deemed relevant or inconsequential through a kind of progressive reduction (steinhouse, ). for instance, i systematically eliminated an over emphasis of autobiographical facts or reminiscences which did not seem pertinent to the project’s aim. here, a continual weeding of the case records (from their original size toward a more concise document) allowed the observation of essential themes and contexts to be slowly exposed and come into focus. this systematic ‘hunting out’ of themes is a favoured method of content analysis extensively used in qualitative research in the arts (ely, ). through this informed culling patterns began to emerge. the indexing of the pertinent phrases, sentences and larger portions of text also assisted in locating and formulating the ‘evidence.’ finally, the effectivity and efficiency of my analysis phase was again supported by a systematic ordering of phrases and key ruminations through the systematic use of colour coding and line numbering. triangulation and validity issues attention was given throughout the data collection, analysis and findings procedures to matters of triangulation, or the corroboration of evidence (kantor, ). however, the triangulation methods used within this research did not seek the substantiation of factual, scientific ‘reporting’ or apodictic ‘truths.’ this is because this research recognised the concept that knowledge is perspectival (eisner, b; smith, robert, ), provisional (mishler, ; eisner, b) and open to debate and judgment (eisner, ). that is, its validation or ‘measurement’ could not be strictly gauged through privileged rules, procedures or techniques (emery, ; mishler, , cited in smith, robert, ). it did not deal with static categorical variables but with the messiness and inconsistencies found within the pluralities and shape shifting aspects of human experience (as noted earlier regarding qualitative research in general). rather, the truthful appearance of this research had to come from producing what eisner ( b) refers to as “ … a mind-mediated version of what we take to be the case” (eisner, b). that is, the establishing of verisimilitude based on what eisner ( b) further proposed as simply “ … seek[ing] a confluence of evidence that breeds creditability” (eisner, b, p. ). this creditability can be validated through the idea of its embeddedness within social discourse and its final utility within the research community (mishler, ). in addition, final validity and sufficient triangulation can be seen as being in response to the phenomenological preference of plausibility -- that is, "whether it is true to our living sense of it” (van manen, , p. ) and to overall contextual trustworthiness of the generalisations, interpretations and observations (mishler, ). the final ‘believability’ of this research rests on its expressive abilities to establish insight, coherence and instrumental utility (eisner, b). again, according to eisner ( b; ), this version of ‘believability’ must be overseen through: (a) structural corroboration (the use of checking consistencies and inconsistencies within collected multiple data for reasonable interpretation and evaluation), (b) consensual validation (the use of informed others to validate descriptions, evaluations, themes and interpretations) and (c) referential adequacy (the persuasiveness of the text to promote reader empathy and reflected interaction) (eisner, b; ). regarding the above points, the structural collaboration of evidence in this research was accomplished by enlisting several different viewpoints and methods to check emerging themes or methodologies for consistencies or inconsistencies. this process addressed issues of validity, trustworthiness and reliability. in terms of triangulation and structural corroboration, the various vantage points used for data collection in this dissertation were: ( ) participants’ reflective journals and non-discursive additions. ( ) reflections on up to two specified individually selected paintings. ( ) protocol writing to predetermined questions in relation to the paintings. ( ) revisited annotated reflections to their answers regarding the above. ( ) tape-recorded interview. ( ) validation through systematic individual reflection. ( ) group reflection/agreement. ( ) verification through critical friend. consensual validation was achieved by enlisting the assistance of a critical friend, the contributions of the participant-researchers themselves and the content and methodological expertise of my doctoral research supervisors. the referential adequacy of this dissertation rests upon its ability to present the portrayed qualities within a certain light, one which promotes believability and credibility for the reader in terms of real world associations. that is, in this dissertation’s attempt to create a kind of virtual reality (barone & eisner, , cited in willis, ; garman, ) incumbent on reported credible response relating to aspects of aesthetic experience in painting. in addition, referential adequacy was achieved through the rendering of a creative narrative, intended as an aesthetic, multi- voiced and persuasive literary vehicle for reader contemplation. while the systematic triangulation within this dissertation relies upon the empathetic reading of multiple types of data, it is interesting to note that the opinions of prominent qualitative researchers vary on the number of alternative collection, analysis and findings viewpoints or methods required for triangulation. for instance, kantor ( ), and ely ( ) are satisfied with two methods or viewpoints, while la pierre ( ) sees the need for a minimum of three distinct vantage points. limitations of study certain limitations of the study must be acknowledged in terms of the approaches and procedures undertaken. these limitations are presented as follows: ( ) there are certain reservations concerning the ability to phenomenologically bracket presuppositions in that response is seen to be inevitably fixed within values and conventions. also, there are certain reservations regarding the dubious significance of our livedworld experiences in that their manifestations may be seen to be constructed from limited and imperfect recall. this, in turn, can bring up issues relating to interpretation, bias and the trustworthiness of participant’s accounts (also refer to earlier section concerning the potential weaknesses within selected methodology). ( ) the limitation of the numbers of theoretical and scholars’ contributions that comprise the discourse in chapter two through to chapter six due to the large and varied amount of scholarly research within aesthetics, sociocultural issues, art appreciation and art educational research methodologies in relation to the dissertation’s time and space restraints. ( ) the notable absence of explicated characteristics or taxonomies of aesthetic experience by women scholars in chapter six. while characteristics of aesthetic experience can be extrapolated from the writings of such scholars as langer ( ; a; b) or greene ( ; ), the requirement of chapter six necessitated actual taxonomies. the lack of significant input from recognised female scholarly voices concerning the indexing of aesthetic experience characteristics is perhaps a reflection of actuality concerning the priorities set within feminist discourse. that is, the idea that past feminist debate was taken up with addressing more pressing issues relating to patriarchal dominance concerning production, public control, normative evaluative standards of art and the role of women and their hierarchical positioning (bovenschen, ). in other words, there was little value for feminist agendas in explicating characteristics of aesthetic experience when those same characteristics could be construed as simple reinforcements for the historically male dominated view of what constitutes art and its appreciation (i.e. reinforcements for modernist injustices). to this can be added the idea that current feminist debate advocates the abandonment of all notions of formulating plausible universal aesthetic theory (garber, ), as previously observed in chapter four. ( ) the limited number of selected research participants sharing ethnic, socio/economic/political and locality correspondences and the specificity of participants’ time and space. ( ) participants’ acquaintanceship with the researcher (like-mindedness). ( ) the exclusive focus on painting at the expense of other art disciplines to elicit characteristics of positive aesthetic experience. this has excluded the unique contributions that their inclusion might have generated. ( ) the unforeseen restriction inherent in the selection of predominantly modernist paintings. this limited the analysis and scope of heightened response to examples of traditionally defined fine art. as a consequence, it minimised the appearance and investigation of matters concerning aspects of postmodern and visual culture aesthetics. all of the participants have knowledge and practice in postmodern and visual culture agendas, as attested to by their represented works and reflections within this dissertation. however, the homogeneous nature of this selection may point to possible undeclared presuppositional biases. the unforeseen hegemonic selection may also reflect general predispositions associated within like age, socio-economic and political demographics. this, in turn, may point to possible unacknowledged privilege relating to interpretation. as a consequence, certain reservations regarding what constitutes suitable examples for pedagogical strategies for the fostering aesthetic experience may be entertained. ( ) the predominant use of reproductions of the participants’ selected paintings for reflections and responses in this research, rather than immediate, recorded responses to present time/space experiential encounters (in authentic contexts). this limitation concerns the idea of authenticity. that is, the reliance on reproductions/web imagery in a variety of formats and quality of reproduction may be seen to dilute the authenticity of the original object. for instance, by relying on reproduction, there is a suggestion concerning loss of experiential encounter with the original painting’s “aura” [the idea of subject-directed veneration and awe] (benjamin, [ ], p. ). for benjamin ( [ ]), this aura was defined as “the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced” (benjamin, [ ], p. ). in other words, the authority (power and control in perception) imbedded in the uniqueness of the object (in terms of cult and exhibition value) is devalued in reproduction format. the original’s essential objective character, its mystique and significance (in real time/space) is forfeit. while benjamin ( [ ]) saw the loss of aura as potentially emancipating, adorno ( ) viewed the loss as detrimental to authentic reflection (adorno, ). however, it should be remembered that the original aesthetic experiences reflected on by the participants were based on experiencing original paintings in authentic contexts. the reproductions were employed as prompts for triggering that past, original heightened response; to act as means, not ends in themselves. ( ) the exclusive use of the concept of pleasurable, hedonistic response as the targeted category within aesthetic experience. while considered a legitimate reason for art experience (csikszentmahilya & robinson, ; stolnitz, , among others), it nevertheless omits various other heightened, non-hedonistic responses or intentions attributable to artworks (carroll, , among others). for example, the alternative roles and intentions of certain artworks to elicit non- or anti-aesthetic, pragmatic or socio-political reactions, awareness or confrontation which can also induce heightened response. ( ) the relative short duration for reflection (six months) and the inevitable limitations and scope of the collection tools. for instance, the omission of implicit possibilities gathered through artists’/participants’ creation of new work in response to the observed aesthetic experience and/or its characteristics. ( ) a potential western cultural bias must also be acknowledged in that none of the selected paintings were chosen from outside the western cultural milieu. in addition, the omission of aboriginal or tribal representations outside the european 'comfort zones' of the participants may point towards the concept of aesthetic experience being primarily a concern of western canon. that is, heightened aesthetic-like experiential encounter with aboriginal or tribal art-kinds may well expose significant alternative or antithetical characteristics. indeed, within a tribal context, the western concept of aesthetic experience itself may be fallacious. while an investigation into what the concept of aesthetic experience or its characteristics may mean in an aboriginal or tribal context would be fascinating, it is nevertheless deemed beyond the scope of this current study. ( ) the difficulties inherent in attempting to declaratively explicate non-discursive and ineffable qualities and resonances embedded within the inductive nature of sensuous knowing and the subjective areas of participant response. despite these limitations, it is maintained that the study still achieves cohesive and substantial signification within the terms of its intended phenomenological orientation. having discussed, justified and elaborated the methodology and procedures, the next two chapters provide the findings of this dissertation’s phenomenological investigations concerning explicating characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting. in so doing, chapter eight introduces and previews the characteristics, while chapter nine presents a creative synthesis of those findings. chapter eight preview of the explicated characteristics of aesthetic experience overview an introductory listing and preview of the nine characteristics and five subsumed characteristics of the aesthetic experiences as explicated through this study are presented below. this introduction and preview sets out what was found in the study described in the previous chapter, and will be elaborated on in greater phenomenological detail in the chapter that follows. because of the scope of the characteristics identified through the study, this introduction/preview is presented to provide support and act as an advanced organiser for the explication of the characteristics presented in creative synthesis format advanced in chapter nine. in addition, the preview includes a table that lists the nine explicated characteristics (and five subsumed characteristics) and presents a summary of their purchase. a second table is then presented which positions the characteristics in relation to their general intrinsic/essentialist or subjective/contextualist epistemological orientations (as provided in table , chapter four). finally, resonances between this dissertation’s explicated characteristics and those distilled from the characteristics proposed by the theorists presented in chapter six are considered. aesthetic experiences a list of significant points about aesthetic experiences was observed through this study of artist-practitioners conceptions of the aesthetic and forms the basis of what is proposed here. however, the characteristics listed and previewed below, and as elaborated in chapter nine, are not advanced as a definitive list of the characteristics of aesthetic experience. nor, are their explications exhaustive because of the limitations of this dissertation, participants’ time and place, on-going behavioural contingencies and the subjective nature of the topic. indeed, it is possible that the research participants may react differently in responding to other kinds of aesthetic experiences. the findings here are simply the results from this particular investigation. that is, they are the major recurring themes that presented themselves in the specificity of time, place and personalities, that constitute this study. as such, they are offered in the spirit of particularised scholarly discovery. they are presented in the prospect of their contributing to a generalised understanding of the characteristics of aesthetic experience; to find their place along the continuum of authentic art educational research results which run anywhere from influencing “ … policy decisions … [to] … simply enlight[ing] our knowledge of idiosyncratic events” (stokrocki, . pp. - ) that comprise the aesthetic experience. the characteristics and discriminating qualities are first listed below. this is followed by a section which furthers explanations of the respective characteristics. explicated characteristics of aesthetic experience through analysis of the data, nine recurring characteristics (and five subsumed characteristics) of aesthetic experience presented themselves. for reader orientation and referencing purposes, the nine characteristics and brief summations of their discriminating qualities are presented in graphic format below, as originally observed in table . in the left column, the characteristics are listed. in the right column, summaries of their discriminating qualities are forwarded. explicated characteristics and discriminating qualities of aesthetic experience characteristic discriminating qualities . immediacy and totality of experience (dependent sub-characteristics) (a) minimal regard for pre-knowing (b) effortless cognition (c) non-sequencing of experience (d) divergent points of entry (e) aspects of the sublime experience comes all at once; response to wholeness rather than reduced through parts; acknowledged in feelingful states and associations; no critical, conscious examination or discourse; experience more intuitive than mediated; designal form blends with affective states; other sensuous modalities initiated by form; ffeelingful rather than analytical response. the feelingfulness of experience did not require propositional knowledge. understanding and awareness established through feeling rather than process of analysis; belief that cognition was somatic; cognition through sensuous immediacy. no particular systematic ordering of experience. no particular point of entry into experience; dependent on contextual predispositions of viewer. inability to comprehend the magnitude and power of representation and the associations of deep subjective longings (conciliatory position). . associative aspects innate in form elements and qualities of form trigger emotional and contextual associations; emotive, non-rational response to form. . metaphorical response replacing measurement imaginative rather than objectified response; elements and principles of design acknowledged metaphorically; non-discursive. . technical virtuosity, novelty and the ‘artist’s eye’ heightened awareness of technical aspects; awareness of innovative manipulation of materials, techniques and the artist’s perceived intention internalised into emotive personal and contextual response. .personal associations experience manifests personal, positive psychological associations; experience triggers recall of positive personal history; reaffirmation through subject matter, artistic styles, formal design relationships; associations to philosophical stance and universal themes such as love, death, existence, etc. . sense of mystery ineffable quality to experience; non-rational. . transformative aspects (a) in subject self-image (b) in promoting the view that paintings transcend their physical objective status (c) on-going power of experience promotion of heightened states of consciousness; promotion of desire for self-actualisation. paintings become vehicles for personal transcendence; paintings become representations of subjective realities and creative processes; paintings maintain an intangible form within future viewer reflections. the experience has a long term positive effect and becomes an internal personal referencing for artistic and pragmatic situations; may be correspondent to pragmatic and practical requirements of the viewer. . aesthetic experience and ordinary experience (a) aspects of heightened perception and focus (b) aspects surrounding the idea of experiential wholeness antecedence in ordinary experience; a perceptual sensitising and amplification of ordinary experience. both notions of a unifying and consummate wholeness of experience and a non-unified and sporadic fragmentation of experience identified . mind and body cognitive strategies employed on unconscious level within immediate, corporeal knowing; inductive rather than deductive; emotive, feelingful aspects of perception are considered a form of cognition; mentation and the immediacy of sensuous response become one in a heightened aesthetic encounter; no dualism acknowledged. the above characteristics are now briefly examined individually in advance of the more elaborated narrative regarding the characteristics which comprise chapter nine. nine observed characteristics of aesthetic experience . immediacy and totality of experience analysis of the data indicates that all participants experienced an immediacy and totality of experiences with artefacts (i.e. paintings) that is reminiscent of the concept of a global entity of the object as proposed by csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ). that is, the heightened experience came all at once. the reflections and interviews also indicated that the encounters initially involved feelingful states and associations. these were free from critical, conscious examination or discourse and were in conjunction with and indistinguishable from their appreciation of the design of aesthetic works. the nature of these affective states experienced was a matter of personal choice and relevance. yet, for all, the immediacy of the experience was intuitive rather than a mediated response. in addition, other sense modalities were subjectively activated. the initial immediacy was one where feelingful response took precedence over analytical concerns, it was claimed. this characteristic is perhaps the most important within the findings, as the immediacy and totality inherent in the positive aesthetic experiences of the participants can be seen to have a direct bearing on subsequent characteristics reported. an additional five sub characteristics stem from the overall immediacy and totality of experience where identifiable. while these characteristics can be considered distinct, they are nevertheless grouped here because of their dependency and relationship to the parent characteristic. these are: (a) minimal regard for pre- knowing; (b) effortless cognition; (c) a feeling of non-sequencing within experience; (d) divergent points of entry; and (e) aspects of the sublime. they are now outlined below: (a) minimal regard for pre-knowing despite the fact that all participants (with one exception) had some degree of familiarity with the artists’ works, the initial immediacy of impact within aesthetic experiences was claimed not to have been a product of prior knowledge. that is, the deductions assumed from the subjects’ responses indicated that the feelingfulness of the initial experience did not require underpinning domain knowledge, because it was not seen as a prerequisite for interacting with a painting. here, didactic information in terms of the impact of pre-knowledge or past familiarity with the artist and/or style for three of the four participants did not rise to the conscious level in the immediacy of experience. on the other hand, all participants acknowledged that the aesthetic experience had promoted within them the desire for further personal investigation into the artists’ work, history and associated influences. the major impact of pre-knowledge seems to be in its abilities to act as vehicles for assisting reinforcement for the experience, the empowerment and continuation of aesthetic experience within the participants’ consciousness after initial viewing and as a possible stimulant for participants to seek out such experiences in the first place or like-experiences in the future. (b) effortless cognition the concept of knowing within aesthetic experience was assumed to reside within the heightened understanding the participants received through the sensuous modalities of knowing. that is, understanding and awareness were established through feeling, rather than through the processes of analysis: that it was known and understood somatically through the immediacy of response. here, the immediacy of somatic response tended to overshadow conscious cognitive processing to a point where the experience seemed unmediated and effortless. however, cognitive aspects implicit in understanding, associating, problem solving, identification (both literal and symbolic) and personal meaning-making were proposed as being present at the unconscious or tacit level. what initially could be misunderstood as passive contemplation was in actuality embedded in active mediation. that is, one form of understanding simply up-staged the other. generally, the role of conceptualisation within the aesthetic experience is unclear. here, an assumed unexplainable experiential nature becomes subsumed within the immediacy of response. if analytical processing or something else is going on and it is presumed by all participants that it is, it does not consciously present itself within the reported experiences’ feelingful immediacies. nevertheless, the concept of effortless cognition suggested here embraces both the sensual and the cognitively mediated. that is, they blend and are considered as one in interacting with phenomenon. by doing so, it negates the traditional separation of mind and body within experience. that is, the idea that mind and body are ontologically distinct categories, not reducible, and act separately in informing our concept of reality (this concept is further addressed in mind and body). effortless cognition, as observed by the research participants, may also be aligned with the idea of cognition being purely a biological occurrence as suggested by maturana’s ( ) theory of autopoiesis, observed in chapter four. that is, living is a process of cognition whereby a closed living system is self-referential and structurally coupled with the environment. here, cognition is recognised in terms of a basic ability to respond to environmental situations. (c) non-sequencing of experience analysis of the data from the research participants indicated that there is no particular systematic ordering of experience during aesthetic encounter. rather, there is a multitude of possible rudimentary cognitive ordering procedures which are sporadic and individually applied. it is, as one researcher reflected, “all over the shop” (elizabeth, line ). the initial perception of the design qualities of the painting may lead us into the work. however, the ordering of what is attended seems to be a matter of personal choice or is in response to the major impetus or intent of the painting. (d) divergent points of entry furthermore, the data indicated that there is no one way, no specific entry point for the participants into the immediacy of aesthetic experience. the sudden introduction within the experience seems influenced by contextual predispositions particular to the viewer. within the case of this dissertation, a general familiarity with the painters and the paintings was already established prior to authentic experiencing. introduction was also recorded as initiated by growing familiarity with the work on both a sensuous and cognitive level. this form of entry entails a progressional aspect, a kind of mind-set that one voluntarily enters into in order to yield to anticipation and expectation (whether the heightened experience eventuates or not). alternatively, being taken by surprise was also a common introduction. whether these surprise introductions were interrogated later for signs of contextual implications or not depend on the discretion of the viewer, as their discovery would not, it seems, alter the immediacy of response. (e) aspects of the sublime within this sub-characteristic of the aesthetic experience can be found associative aspects of the sublime which are conciliatory with both intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist thought as represented earlier by burke ( [ ]) and lyotard ( ) respectively. for example, the participants acknowledged an inability to comprehend certain abstract representations relating to such conceptions as infinity and mortality (burke, [ ]), as well as responding to deep subjective longings and exaltation of new and radical modes of representing that remained abstracted and unpresentable (lyotard, ). . associative aspects innate in form the perceptual nature inherent in aesthetic experience indicated that the alignment of concrete elements, such as colour and line, and qualities such as balance, harmony and grace also acted as devices which promoted immediacy of affective response. that is, the surface structures and organisational elements themselves became elemental triggers for emotional and contextual associations. these were emotive rather than rational in perception and explanation. . metaphorical response replacing measurement within their experiences, the participants exhibited a predisposition and enthusiasm for associating and describing the physicality of the paintings in metaphorical rather than analytical terms. this manner of description further embedded the immediacy and totality of aesthetic experience with an imaginative and emotive rather than objectified response. while obviously aware on an analytical level of the various and complex designal methods employed within their chosen examples of paintings, the research participants’ notations and experiences seemed to indicate that the mechanics -- the reading of the analytical ‘blue prints’ of creative assembly -- became central to the affective response. in this way, the appreciation of significant form seems to again relate to the feelingfulness of the painting. while discursive information and terminology concerning the elements and principles of design are tacitly held by the viewer, the preferred definitional responses to the states encountered are metaphorical ones -- those that imaginatively and sensuously resonate with the non-discursive aspects of the experience (which will be elaborated later in chapter nine). . technical virtuosity, novelty and the ‘artist’s eye’ acknowledged throughout the participant’s reflections was a heightened awareness of technical virtuosity, the manipulation of materials and techniques, and the artist’s particular vision which informed their aesthetic experience. this was referred to by the research participants in several instances as ‘the artist’s eye’. it was also acknowledged through researchers’ reflections that this inner vision might be related to the researchers’ propositional knowledge in the field as well as its tacit application during their experiences. it may also relate to the researchers’ acknowledgements of the practising ‘tricks of the trade’ (i.e. processes, skills, situated learning) needed to manifest their feelingful response. this comprised a heightened awareness of the technical aspects which activated (and became one with) the emotive experience. this characteristic of aesthetic experience seems to be founded on individual contextual influences and personal preferences. hence, the stylistic treatments of surfaces by the selected painters were of personal relevance to the researchers. in addition, like csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) characteristic of communications relating to the artist (d ), the participants acknowledged sensations of sharing with the artists their intentions and realities. . personal associations to varying degrees, the participants shared a characteristic of personal past or present links and memories to their experiences. in this way, the aesthetic experience manifested positive psychological associations; that exposure to the paintings triggered cognitive recall of personal histories which were reaffirming to the subjects. this was apparent in terms of subject matter, preferences to artistic styles, formal design relationships and associations to philosophical stances and universal themes such as love, death, domicile and birth. these recollections contained both identifiable indexation (concerning recall of the actual environments where the works were viewed), emotive and philosophical states triggered by their representations. in addition, the participants manifested personal associations from differently sourced affective states concerning other personal experiences which they believed were sympathetic in essence to the paintings’ overall intent. these associations were actualised within the immediacy of the aesthetic encounter or in further reflection and mediation. . sense of mystery apparent throughout much of the data was the notion that the aesthetic experiences of the selected paintings held a sense of mystery and an ineffable quality which ‘logical’ explanation or critical reflection could not adequately capture. much of what was emotively felt or intrinsically recognised were immediate connections whose sources stemmed from a presumed un-tappable unconscious (whether believed to be universal or personally idiosyncratic). the explication resided within the primordial experiences of sensations which, for the most part, could only be felt, deductively proven or discursively explicated. while later propositional input was seen as helpful in reinforcing the experience, it was not considered imperative. problematic conceptual puzzles which existed were filled with synergies or by a simple surrendering of consciousness to the multi-faceted perceptual immediacy. . transformative aspects transformative characteristics of aesthetic experience within the reflections of the participants were observed. these characteristics surfaced in notions relating to; (a) subject self image (i.e. perceptions of self), (b) in the belief that the perception of the painting surpassed its actual physicality (i.e. the object transcends its nature as an object in space and time) and became a vehicle for viewer transcendence, and (c) in the belief of an on-going power of aesthetic experience to promote positive reinforcement well past its initial experiencing. (a) subject self image in terms of perceptions of self, all participants claimed that the heightened experiential encounters promoted what they felt to be an advanced state of consciousness which promoted new ways of seeing and knowing. these transformative states further established the desire for self actualisation and for positive life changes. these changes were felt in direct and indirect ways, influencing lifestyle, professional choices and philosophical positions, as will be observed within the creative synthesis, chapter nine. the experiencing of the paintings produced feelings of personal wholeness and meditative sensations which altered present emotional states. furthermore, they acted as stimulants and initiators for purposive action and as positive reinforcing agents for practical and pragmatic activities. (b) the view that paintings transcend their physical objective status there is a further belief that the perception of the painting can surpass its actual physicality, its nature as an object in space and time and become a vehicle for viewer transcendence. that is, the painting can transcend its objective status and be perceived as an imaginative window for subjectively viewing depicted imagery. this experience gives form to thoughts unique within imagination and personal contexts. it becomes a representation of personal and positive memories and a motivation for creative drive. furthermore, it is believed that once the experience of the image is ingrained, the actual object/painting need not be required in order to act in the above capacities. the painting now resides not only in its physical sense, but also in an intangible form; an idea or concept within inspiration and personal celebration which the participant can initiate at any time. it was also believed that a painting can possess and exhibit heightened realities. it can become a model for the world, a representation of subjective reality and a valuable illustration of the creative process -- all of which goes far beyond the mere sum of its objective parts. (c) on-going power of experience there is also a shared notion that the aesthetic experience has an on-going positive influence in both the practical and appreciative aspects of the participants’ lives. it can have a substantial and beneficial longevity in that its intangible effect becomes a process, a proactive agent for personal growth and understanding. the experience itself can change and grow over time to accommodate future situations or influences. in most cases, it continues well after the initial viewing has passed and becomes an integral part of the personal referencing for both artistic and pragmatic concerns. this characteristic evaluation is shared by three of the four participant-researchers. however, while the longevity, the on-going power of aesthetic experience, may be seen by the majority of participants as possibly indefinite, there exists a dissenting notion. this notion contends that the on-going power can have a ‘use by’ date. that is, the aesthetic experience is contingent on its ability to service the needs and requirements of the viewer. this is in terms of both artistic practice and appreciation. here, aesthetic experiences maintain their unique positions in relation to the growth and changing predispositions of the viewer. in other words, the on-going power of aesthetic experience may also be correspondent to pragmatic and practical requirements. the experiences must be able to withstand continuous interaction and interrogation, to keep giving as required by the viewer. . . aesthetic experience and ordinary experience (a) aspects of heightened perception and focus found within the reflections of the research participants was the notion that aesthetic experience had its antecedence within ordinary experience. that is, aesthetic experience was considered a perceptual sensitising, heightening and amplification of the ordinary. in one reflection, it was described as a ‘sense’ description added to the drama and particularity of the ordinary moment. the aesthetic experience was differentiated from ordinary, pragmatic experience in its abilities to encourage internal dialogue within the viewer at a more profound level. it promoted effortful and personal inquiry well past the requirement for pragmatic attention. aesthetic experience was a focusing of attention in response to the sensuous and meaning making qualities of the art object. it was a slowing down and re-creation of the moment where the experience could be relatively free from extraneous, disruptive elements not particular to the experiencing. this heightened, sensitised state of consciousness could be found within the attuned experiencing of all manner of objects and events within the environment. (b) aspects surrounding the idea of experiential wholeness three of the four participants believed that there was a unified and complete wholeness to the aesthetic experience. the idea of experiential wholeness found expression in the feelings of being enlightened, of all things coming together at the right time and the right place. other expressions of experiential wholeness concerned the ideas of integration and harmonious interaction. it was a fulfilment of temporal experience which could re-invent itself in later reflection and immediate attachment, an intimacy and familiarity which became a unifying referent for future interactions within the environment. these aspects of totality were illustrated by recollections of calm, inward peace and personal re-invigoration. yet, on the other hand, the concept of fragmentation, of experience non- unified and sporadic, was also demonstrated. here, it was proposed that the full implication inherent in an aesthetic experience does not come all at once. it is linked with the requirements of the viewer’s onward personal journey and must be able to grow and change as required. this necessitates that the experience be open, unresolved and able to progressively and perpetually unfold new discoveries and aesthetic puzzlements. . mind and body the responses seem to promote a synthesis of the influences of the mind and body. it advances the proposition that the emotive, feelingful aspects of perception are indeed a form of cognition. this suggests that cognitive strategies and the immediacy of sensuous response become one in a heightened aesthetic encounter (considered within the limitations and specificities of this dissertation). here, corporeal knowing and perception of the sensuous modality of understanding within the immediacy of aesthetic experience is seen to be simply another domain within cognition. the ‘making sense’ of that which is presented in perception implies interpretation of symbolic and literal representations. it involves cognitive strategies which inform the experience on an unconscious level. in so doing, the findings do not advance the dichotomy of mind and body -- which was based on the age-old concept of an immaterial soul. that is, descartes’ ( [ ]) notion of dualism and the idea that consciousness and self-awareness are aspects of a non physical soul-like dimension (mind). for descartes ( [ ]), this mind presumably established our self-awareness and consciousness -- not the physical dimension associated with the intellect (brain) which received influences from non-rational bodily phenomena. he proposed that the intellect (brain) received input from sensory organs which, in turn, informed the soul-like (non- physical) dimension. here, self awareness and consciousness lived outside the capabilities of the physical. abstract thought, not the knowing within the physical material dimensions, was considered being. on the contrary, this research seems more aligned to grace’s ( ) earlier noted concept of aesthesia. that is, a widening of a conceptual base where the capacity to feel is not solely assumed as a privileged factor within the domain of bodily sensations. here, feeling spills over into sensuousness of thought as an embodied experience. perception is an extension, is one with thought, feeling and communication. this is somewhat correspondent with efland’s ( ) idea that multiple forms of cognition (i.e. both propositional and non-propositional) spring from the same source. that source being the fundamental and primary bodily and perceptual encounters within the environment (efland, ). furthermore, this identified unification of mind and body may also relate to the ideas of cognition as a simple autonomous biological function (maturana, ) or as a biological adaptation (dissanayake, ), observed earlier. the theoretical leanings of the explicated characteristics in reference to propositions forwarded by general intrinsic/essentialist, subjective/contextual and conciliatory propositions are now observed below. the left-hand column lists the explicated characteristics, which are then assigned appropriate intrinsic/essentialist, subjective/contextual and/or conciliatory columns. the placements of the characteristics are based on correspondences to observed and listed attributes of the epistemologies appearing within their respective columns. this is helpful for observing the general contributions of the epistemologies and to exhibit the general eclectic demeanour of the explicated characteristics. these observations will also be elaborated in chapter nine and ten). table - epistemological orientations of observed characteristics characteristics observed within participants’ responses intrinsic/essentialist inferences subjective/contextualist inferences conciliatory inferences . immediacy and totality of experience. (a). aspects of pre- knowledge. (b). effortless cognition. (c). non-sequencing of experience and (d). divergent points of entry. non-discursive. unmediated ( researchers). predominately at sensuous modalities level. a felt, inductive understanding. intuitive and primarily subject directed. immediate and feelingful rather than overtly mediated response. pre-knowledge of artist and aspects of art history inseparable from experience ( researcher). acknowledgement of underlying cognitive processes. ability to engage work at any level or response at the context interest of viewer. acknowledgment that cognitive strategies are employed at sub- conscious level. any mediation is believed tacitly employed ( researchers). belief that response is immediate and feelingful yet effortful and systematic cognition strategies are engaged at subconscious. both intrinsic and contextualist interests may initiate entry. (e). aspects of the sublime. inability to comprehend magnitude and power of certain representations. exaltation of radical modes of representation and association of deep subjective longings. both theoretical positions of the sublime noted. . associative aspects innate in form. response to designal aspects of work blended with context and relational specific influences. acknowledgment of designal appreciation and associated emotive psychological resonances it conveys. . metaphorical response replacing measurement. subjective response seemingly in reaction to the feelingful states objectified by the art object. idiosyncratic and subjective rather than analytical response. both intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist observed. . technical virtuosity, novelty and the ‘artist’s eye.’ acknowledgement of essentialist characteristics of technical virtuosity, uniqueness of artist signature and universally held content themes. acknowledgment of unique employment of unorthodox materials and techniques. personal preferences. both intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist characteristics, as observed. . personal associations. resonances are subject specific based on culturally sourced and personal ontogeny. . sense of mystery. ineffable and non- discursive quality. exaltation regarding innovative construction processes aspects of both positions observed. . transformative aspects. (a). subject self image. (b). the view that paintings transcend their physical objective status. (c). on-going power of experience. self actualisation. feelings of integration. autonomous aspect. vehicles for transcendence. paintings continue to perceptually delight ( researchers). informs desire for practical applications of experience the experience speaks to the viewer at a personal level, is understood as having particular relevance to the viewer. experience with painting influence instrumentally influence future art practice. makes one feel intuitively more alive and instrumentally resolved. a synthesising of both the objective physicality and subjective notions into one entity ( researchers). paintings enjoyed at perceptual and practical levels. . aesthetic experience and ordinary experience. (a). aspects of heightened perception and focus. (b). aspects surrounding the idea of experiential wholeness. autonomous aspect of art work. a satisfied culmination (beginning, middle, end) to experience ( researchers). intensified attention and heightened focus of ordinary experience. an additional aspect of fragmented, inconclusive experience ( researcher). conflation of perceptual uniqueness and intensified pragmatic discernment. . mind and body. accepted as perceived intuitively; feelingfully. acknowledgement of subjective informed backgrounding embedded within sensuousness of response. somatic and noetic. concept of employing various modalities of knowing. sensuous knowing empowered by tacitly and subconsciously held discursive knowing. (table derived from dissertation’s observed characteristics and the epistemological positions taken from table , chapter four). in addition to the above observations of the general contributions of the epistemologies and the exhibited significant eclectic demeanour of the explicated characteristics, it is of interest to further observe mutual correspondences between the characteristics of aesthetic experience and those characteristics explicated by the theorists examined in chapter six. comparison of the existing theories with the characteristics of aesthetic experience explicated within the study to accommodate such a comparison, six panels of generally shared characteristics of the aesthetic experience by the theorists observed in chapter six are presented. the number following the name of each theorist relates to the indexing of a correspondent characteristic within that theorist’s section presented in chapter six. below each of these panels i have selected extracts from the research participants’ reflections which share like qualities and resonances. the numbers within the parenthesises following participants’ names refer to the line numbering from the participant’s journals from which the passage used has been taken. what is significant within this comparison is a remarkable correlation between some of the theorists’ propositions, some dating back over fifty-three years and contemporary thought as illustrated through the reflections of the research participants. . object focus/ object directedness beardsley ( ) object directedness; osborne ( ) object centeredness; csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) merging of action and awareness object focused, ( ) limitation of stimulus field; knieter ( ) stimulation drawn from object; hargreaves ( ) concentration of attention toward object. … that incredible rush of energy and complete wonder. i’m grounded to the spot unable to move as a rush of adrenalin flows through me and i just stare and stare (caroline, - ). its effect on me was hypnotic, severely fascinating. the painting seems to reach out, grab you and pull you toward it … (elizabeth, - ). it’s the overall thing (like music) that you respond to rather than the style or genre. whether it’s jazz or pop, good songs, like good paintings, have the capacity to transcend those genres. similarly my appreciation of painting, my response to painting, is pretty immediate (chris, - ). it was almost confrontational in its appearance, it made me stop dead in my tracks, to see more, more closely (john, - ). . feelings of detachment beardsley ( ) detached effect, set off from reality; osborne ( ) no theoretical or practical concerns, ( ) feeling of detachment, disinterestedness, ( ) loss of body consciousness, loss of time/space. csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) limitation of stimulus field, no awareness of past or future; hargreaves ( ) time and space suspended. sometimes it’s just that something that makes you stop and i’ll just be sucked in, time disappears … (caroline, - ). when we are looking at images we are looking at spatial colour/tone. we are thinking what does this and that mean but we are also just enjoying the visual stimulation of the thing (chris, - ). you are totally incorporated into the painting and nothing else exists or matters during that time (elizabeth, - ). i was not aware of the past experience of any of the other paintings i had viewed. but i was strangely sensitised to the smells and peripheral colours and temperature of the immediate environment. the immediate environment seemed abstracted and nurturing for the experience. it seemed to come in closer, to slightly hum (john, - ). . feelings of active discovery beardsley ( ) feelings of active discovery, exercising constructive powers, sense of intellectuality (possibly illusory); osborne ( ) stimulation of alertness; csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) skills (cognitive) employed to overcome challenges, control of actions, ( b) sense of discovery, ( c) sense of human connectedness; knieter ( ) employment of cognitive schema; hargreaves ( ) feelings of new and important realities; i don’t think i would ever grow bored with it how many times i looked at it. it’s always surprising and relieving each time (caroline, - ). they really never run out of things to tell us. there are pieces of art that can play with you i think ages on and you are always drawn back to them (caroline, - ). you would be looking at something but you would be actually looking deeper and re- creating it. manifesting it in different ways (chris, - ). you’re participating completely with the work with every fibre of your body and every molecule of your skin, listening for the colours and the rhythm and the texture and the dance of it all -- it’s all happening under your fingertips and on the invisible hinges on the edge of your skin but it doesn’t feel like effort … (elizabeth, - ). … i did feel more intelligent, self assured with life in general, more ready to reflect on all sorts of things, in tune, focussed, aware, interested (john, - ). . feelings of self fulfilment, wholeness, self- actualisation beardsley ( ) integration as a person, gratification (hedonistic pleasure and sense of being up-lifted); osborne ( ) enjoyment, contemplative attitude; csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) realisation of clear goals, clear feedback, intense enjoyment, ( a) personal wholeness, ( b) a sense of discovery, ( c) a sense of human connectedness. knieter ( ) feelingful reactions, both physiological and emotional; hargreaves ( ) gratification of experience, arousal of appetite for further encounters. … my experience of viewing it [‘lavender mist’] made me feel as if i was intensely connected to nature -- in a field viewing a mass of blossoms or covered by a blanket of fog or mist or being lapped by a waterfall (elizabeth, - ). … i can go into a gallery feeling very flattened, exhausted, fed up or angry and then when you leave you are thinking that everything is possible. that you’re buzzing, that the world seems different and positive. you’re running, you’re buzzing and you’ve got all this energy again. that you have been totally fed and watered by the experience (caroline, - ). and also there is a deeper understanding within myself, just in the older you get the farther you see into life and things like that. when i look into these [the paintings] i see and understand a lot more than i used to (chris, - ) … these painters and paintings influence me in very direct ways an in a lot of indirect ways too (chris, - ). its experience influences the way i see the world immediately afterwards and like a vapour enters my back log of experience which will influence me in times to come. i can go back to the experience for inspiration, not only for art purposes, but for day to day experiences too (john, - ). . perception of the experience as a unified whole beardsley (proposition ) unity and coherence, (proposition ) totality of experience; osborne ( ) the parts of the experience are only important as they articulate the intuitive perception of the whole; csikszentmihalyi & robinson ( ) clear goals, clear feedback (intuitive ‘concreteness of presented image’ fortified by content awareness; hargreaves ( ) observed as a single experience, while cognitive structures are activated, the major thrust is intuitive in nature. i close my eyes and immediately re-create the image in my mind’s eye, it’s so complete an image, balanced and studied … (caroline, - ). … on the other hand, it does really feel like an integrated, harmonious experience you have with it even though you have the opportunity to re-visit it. my experience is that the experience has been of a very complete experience, at the time (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, - ). but the thing comes as a whole, a packaged thing … (chris, - ). i was content and did not feel the need to share. a kind of inner peace. i was part of something which was unknowable; i was linked to something, the human condition perhaps, more tightly. i felt a kinship with the universe in me … (john, - ). . feelings of identification with object beardsley (proposition ) emotional and psychological sensations bound to object, ( ) object directedness; osborne ( ) identification with object by our attention being held and gripped, absorption; hargreaves ( ) being lost in the object. i want to be there and i don’t need to be physically there because i feel as if i am there -- that my senses have moved into the image (caroline, - ). … there are things and people you have recognition of and there is this immediate connection, something going on there, whether its biological, spiritual or there’s a connection to something unexplainable, inexplicable, at least to the conscious mind (chris, - ). simultaneously, i found there to be something very sad about lavender mist; it moved me to tears and laughter and awe … (elizabeth, - ). there’s an immediate attachment to it. it becomes part of me, part of my personal referencing (john, - ) … through the years ‘marble table’ (and other works by braque) has consistently presented to me an inward feeling of peace and an outward feeling of direction. if i stumble over a reproduction of it in an art book or magazine, whatever i had planned is briefly interrupted. i am immediately slowed down and give it several moments for reflection. seeing it gives me a warm sensation, makes me involuntarily smile, like unexpectedly coming across someone you love on a busy street. i want to slow down and talk awhile (john, - ). it must be stated that the similarities apparent within the above comparisons and resonances of characteristics are not to be considered as advocating any position for universal characteristics. however, what is significant here is the idea that some of these characteristics of positive and heightened aesthetic response still remain relatively consistent. despite their longevity and temperament, they are noteworthy because of their assumed contemporary relevance (as attested to by the research participants). this is so, despite the abundance of propositions advocating the fragmented, contingent and temporal natures of modern life. in the chapter that follows, a fuller elaboration of the explicated characteristics is presented. this upcoming embellished narrative (creative synthesis) chapter incorporates narration informed by visual imagery, poetry, prose and participants’ anecdotes. as foreshadowed, the creative synthesis is now presented in an effort to forward both the deductive and inductive nature of the phenomena under investigation. chapter nine elaboration of the characteristics of aesthetic experience through embellished narrative (creative synthesis) overview and introduction this chapter orientates and elaborates the analyses of the data and findings of the research through a creative synthesis involving visual imagery, poetry, prose and participants’ anecdotes. this creative synthesis is presented as a narrative in an effort to advance both the deductive and inductive nature of the phenomena under investigation. furthermore, within the narrative, subjects’ accounts are extensively employed to ‘exploit’ [sic] the participants’ personal subjectivities (peshkin, cited in eisner ( b). to extend this point, paintings from the three participant-artists are also presented throughout in order to advance further an account of the feelingful states textually described. in this way, the paintings are intended to articulate and to assist in transferring the participants’ aesthetic experiences. these qualitative and phenomenological strategies are employed to make the understanding of the examined characteristics of aesthetic experience more potent and holistic, yet accessible, for the reader (nielsen, ). for clarity throughout the section and in order to separate the participants’ contributions from canonical references, the research participants will be referred to by their first names. that is, i shall be referred to as john, chris worfold as chris, caroline penny as caroline and elizabeth ruinard as elizabeth. corresponding numbering within the parenthesises refer to the line from the participant’s journals from which the passage used has been taken. in addition, the research participants’ reflective journal passages (verbatim) will be distinguished through the use of italics. again, initially presented in table , the characteristics elaborated through these analyses comprise: explicated characteristics and discriminating qualities of aesthetic experience characteristic discriminating qualities . immediacy and totality of experience (dependent sub-characteristics) (a) minimal regard for pre-knowing (b) effortless cognition (c) non-sequencing of experience (d) divergent points of entry (e) aspects of the sublime experience comes all at once; response to wholeness rather than reduced through parts; acknowledged in feelingful states and associations; no critical, conscious examination or discourse; experience more intuitive than mediated; designal form blends with affective states; other sensuous modalities initiated by form; feelingful rather than analytical response. the feelingfulness of experience did not require propositional knowledge. understanding and awareness established through feeling rather than process of analysis; belief that cognition was somatic; cognition through sensuous immediacy. no particular systematic ordering of experience. no particular point of entry into experience; dependent on contextual predispositions of viewer. inability to comprehend the magnitude and power of representation and the associations of deep subjective longings (conciliatory position). . associative aspects innate in form elements and qualities of form trigger emotional and contextual associations; emotive, non-rational response to form. . metaphorical response replacing measurement imaginative rather than objectified response; elements and principles of design acknowledged metaphorically; non-discursive. . technical virtuosity, novelty and the ‘artist’s eye’ heightened awareness of technical aspects; awareness of innovative manipulation of materials, techniques and the artist’s perceived intention internalised into emotive personal and contextual response. .personal associations experience manifests personal, positive psychological associations; experience triggers recall of positive personal history; reaffirmation through subject matter, artistic styles, formal design relationships; associations to philosophical stance and universal themes such as love, death, existence, etc. . sense of mystery ineffable quality to experience; non-rational. . transformative aspects (a) in subject self-image (b) in promoting the view that paintings transcend their physical objective status (c) on-going power of experience promotion of heightened states of consciousness; promotion of desire for self-actualisation. paintings become vehicles for personal transcendence; paintings become representations of subjective realities and creative processes; paintings maintain an intangible form within future viewer reflections. the experience has a long term positive effect and becomes an internal personal referencing for artistic and pragmatic situations; may be correspondent to pragmatic and practical requirements of the viewer. . aesthetic experience and ordinary experience (a) aspects of heightened perception and focus (b) aspects surrounding the idea of experiential wholeness antecedence in ordinary experience; a perceptual sensitising and amplification of ordinary experience. both notions of a unifying and consummate wholeness of experience and a non-unified and sporadic fragmentation of experience identified. . mind and body cognitive strategies employed on unconscious level within immediate, corporeal knowing; inductive rather than deductive; emotive, feelingful aspects of perception are considered a form of cognition; mentation and the immediacy of sensuous response become one in a heightened aesthetic encounter; no dualism acknowledged. embellished narrative (creative synthesis) on the explicated characteristics of aesthetic experience . immediacy and totality the findings of this research suggest that the initial introduction in a heightened positive aesthetic experience of painting is not cool and detached mediation. it does not begin with the calculating and discerning eye of objectivity. nor is one immediately pulled toward any presumed urgency for ordering the experience into logical sequence or a desire for enacting cognitive problem/puzzle solving schema, though these concerns may underpin or follow in such an experience. on the contrary, the introduction is one of overall and immediate impact; one where the physical presence and perceptive elements of the painting and conjoined affective states orchestrate the viewer’s attention. that is, it is a pronounced interaction with the painting’s entirety, a wholeness of encounter, the overall physicality of the painting, which csikszentmihalyi and robinson [ a] refer to as the global entity of the object. it begins with viewer interaction with the designal elements (i.e. colour, line, scale, repetition of form, movement, etc.) which transpires in what carroll refers to as “design appreciation” (carroll, , p. ) -- or concentration on the form of the art object -- on an immediate and intuitive level. this informs the content and emotional impact of the structure and imagery for the viewer, all of which is achieved within the blink of an eye. in this respect, the dissertation’s findings reflect beardsley’s ( ) earlier proposal of a two-fold aspect of aesthetic experience. his proposal was for a combination of the phenomenally objective field (i.e. formal qualities and artistic structures such as line and colour etc) with those of the phenomenally subjective field associated with the affective features (i.e. feelings and emotions) which are evoked through internalising the prerequisite objective field. because the perception of the painting’s physical elements or design appreciation initiates the experience, one first needs a conducive object or event on which to react. from this perceptual beginning, aspects of various content/context or transformational responses become encapsulated within that initial physical and designal immediacy. in other words, feeling and structure blur into each other and back into the whole. the perceptual and aesthetic qualities inherent in form and surface become intermingled, concomitant and at times interrelated to the experience’s affective nature. in correspondence with csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( a) and eisner ( ), the findings of this research indicated that perceptual qualities were not limited to vision, but also influenced and evoked researchers’ preoccupations in other sense modalities. for instance, it is a place where the viewer can “ … listen for the colour and the rhythm and the texture” (elizabeth, ) and want “to totally drink it in” (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, ); or see “ … the visual play[ing] with the sense of taste and the tactile” (john, ). a viewer can experience a point where; “ … it makes me want to stop and stare and i almost want to eat it” (caroline, - ). it is also a place where the experiencing of the colour green can be sensuously experienced as “delicious” (caroline, ). the amalgamation of components, the blending of perceptual form (i.e. design appreciation) and surface treatment into affective, interactive agents within the aesthetic experience is instantaneous and seldom differentiated at the conscious level. that is, all researchers professed an awareness of the perceptions of form and structure. yet, its isolation into a distinct and autonomous category for appreciation, as in traditional aesthetic contemplation and the notion of disinterestedness was minimised and seemingly conjoined with other sensorial and affective domains. in other words, design appreciation of the object’s form became an integrated part of an overall experience rather than being the sole focus, as in bell’s ( [ ]) proposal of significant form. what we are personally drawn to explore correspondingly seems a matter of personal relevance. as chris observed: it’s only through training that you begin to understand the division of elements, of line, tone, colour and those sorts of things … you may even try to emphasise them in the conscious mind (chris, - ). the same is true of any semiotic breakdown in terms of subject matter. the evaluation of all these things involves very rational processes ( - ). to use an analogy, they are like perspective drawing -- you want to know it but you finally want it to slip into the background of your mind so that it is not to the fore, not dominate the experience of the painting ( - ). chris worfold. night light ( ). oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. chris worfold. a fleeting floating world ( ). oil and mixed media on sheet metal. chris continues: for me, i don’t believe the analytical aspects reach my consciousness or operate on a conscious level in the immediate response to a painting. it’s a feeling thing ( - ), of immediate connections predominately linked to things unexplainable, inexplicable -- at least to the conscious mind ( - ). the experience comes as a whole, a package thing and is very much involved with feeling ( - ). chris finds this feelingful, yet unexplainable, nature resonating somewhat in passages from wordsworth: … but for those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things, falling from us, vanishings; … … for those first afflictions, those shadowy recollections, which, be they what they may, are yet the fountain-light of all our day, are yet a master-light of all our seeing … wordsworth,w. excerpt from the poem ode: paulo majora canamus ( ). chris’s take on wordsworth seems to suggest that we can see a more complete picture if that picture is lit from the un-analysed and non-distinct shadows cast from our subjective desires, rather than through the attempt to objectify those ‘obstinate questionings of sense and outward things.’ chris proposes that the pictorial vision is enhanced by limiting that which is too rational. chris’s sentiments on non- analytical immediacy of experience echo my own reflections on death’s head abstraction # . here: it is as if the true meaning-ness and experience goes past, transcends its structuring. although i am aware of the presence of numerous pickets and their regimented interstices, i do not count them when admiring the neighbour’s fence. i take the fence in totally. i think aesthetic experience is like that (john, - ). this sentiment can be taken further. for instance, the avoidance, and even shunning, of analytical probing within the initial immediacy and totality of experience is again addressed and recalled in the lines from my following poem: towards a non definition (n.z.) after the storm, before the churning thunderheads, a rainbow bright as a child’s birthday has hooked rangitoto island like a fish. i’ll leave it like that. i want no science or myth to explain, to drain all colour out and dress this moment for me in logic or specious cloak. to be here sliding eyes along its arched backbone is enough, my retinas reflecting prisms. ohms or oms, it does not matter. definitions will always pale dull and earth toned. tarlton, j. unpublished poem ( ). correspondingly, my aesthetic experience of braque’s the marble table also expressed the immediacy and intuitiveness of response. through reflection, my awareness of its fluid, cubist-inspired compositional elements and designal structures also seemed to be immediately blended with affective response. that is, the objective designal elements inherent in its compositional format had conflated with psychological feelings which i believed were also present. for example, a reflection states that i could not: … rationally identify the room. i felt the room… the essence ( - ). [it was] illusory form, not depicting but suggesting ( ) … i was truly absorbed into the painting ( ). it was the painting that took over ( ). although i could never forget who painted it (my past influences from braque’s work being so influential), the painting’s presence was the main attraction … and it came all at once ( - ). john tarlton. duet ( ). charcoal/coloured pencil. furthering this, elizabeth’s experience of lavender mist seems initiated by the confrontation of designal elements such as massive scale and: [t]he dazzling colour, dancing, scintillating in front of me (elizabeth, - ) …in an unbelievable entanglement of skeins and tendrils of lavender, mauve, pink, black and white ( - ). yet, it is the immediate totality of the experience that dominates. for example, elizabeth maintains that: the painting keeps your eye continually eager, not allowed to rest on any particular area ( - ), [where] my experience of viewing made me feel as if i was connected to nature -- in a field viewing a mass of blossoms or covered by a blanket of fog or mist or being lapped by a waterfall ( - ). its effect upon me was hypnotic, severely fascinating. the painting seem[ed] to reach out, grab you and pull you toward it ( - ). like chris and myself, elizabeth’s immediate experience seems to come as a whole. that is, she attempts to take in its full manifestation, rather than build up or construct the experience by concentrating on its distinct components. again, form is inexplicably linked with emotional content. this is evidenced by elizabeth’s reflection which suggests that the experience: … runs all over the shop. everything all exploding at once, hyper-manic thoughts and reactions racing and dancing and bouncing around everywhere, all competing for priority in one’s head/body ( - ). the immediacy and totality of the aesthetic experience is furthered by caroline. like the other participants, caroline’s observation below is also representative of the introduction of other sense modalities into the physicality of the work as well as taking in the totality of what is presented. this can be observed through the following passage: … taking in the wholeness of the image -- the physical size and presence, the colours, the brush marks, the image itself. i can’t think of what comes first … [t]hat incredible rush of energy and complete wonder. i’m grounded to the spot and unable to move as a rush of adrenalin flows through me and i just stare and stare. i want to touch it, to taste it, to run my hands all over the surface of the painting (caroline, - ). caroline penny. along the lane, nsw ( ). oil on canvas in addition, my reflections on death’s head abstraction # also promote the notion of immediacy and global entity within aesthetic experience. here: the experience cannot be solely dissected into states or stages. the entirety, the entity of the piece hits first, i saw the composites of the whole later (john, - ). it [the painting] was almost confrontational in its appearance. it made me stop dead in my tracks… i took in the whole feeling of the piece, then studied the components which made up the whole -- the colour, size, bold chunky divisions of composition, then slowly absorbed the components back into the whole again ( - ). it seemed to simply display its visual flavour -- its feelingfulness - - its significance -- and in response to this presented knowing, i forced no reasoning, no intellectualisation on the painting ( - ). i felt only a dark and primordial assurance ( ). summary as advanced in preview in chapter eight, analysis of the data indicates that all participants experienced an immediacy and totality in their aesthetic experiences reminiscent of csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) concept of the global entity of the object. that is, the heightened experience came all at once. the reflections and interviews also indicated that the encounters were initially involved with feelingful states and associations. these states and associations were free from critical, conscious examination or discourse and were in conjunction with, and indistinguishable from, their design appreciation. the nature of these affective states experienced became a matter of personal choice and relevance. the immediacy of the experience was intuitive rather than mediated response. in addition, other sense modalities were subjectively-activated. the initial immediacy was one where feelingful response took precedence over analytical concerns. five sub-characteristics of immediacy and totality of experience an additional five sub-characteristics of immediacy and totality of experience provide a more finely grained analysis of this characteristic, with their demeanours established as a result of the influence of experiential immediacy and totality. while each is distinct, they are nevertheless grouped here as sub-categories because of their dependency and relationship to the parent characteristic. these sub-characteristics are (a) minimal regard for pre-knowing; (b) effortless cognition; (c) a feeling of non- sequencing within experience; (d) divergent points of entry and; (e) aspects of the sublime. they are examined as follows: (a) minimal regard for pre-knowing despite all participants having some degree of familiarity with the selected artists’ works (other than my involuntary introduction to perssons’ death’s head abstraction # ) there was no conclusive agreement in terms of the impact of pre-knowledge or past familiarity with artist and/or style influencing or characterising the actual experience. it seemed the initial experience remained immediate and did not require underpinning domain knowledge. yet, all participants acknowledged that the aesthetic experience had promoted within them the desire for further personal investigation into the artists’ work and history. for example, i intentionally familiarised myself with other paintings by persson after the experience of death’s head abstraction # . the major impact of pre-knowledge seems to be in its abilities to act as vehicles for assisting reinforcement for the experience, the empowerment and continuation of aesthetic experience within the participants’ consciousness after initial viewing and as a possible stimulant for participants to seek out such experiences in the first place or like-experiences in the future. however, instances of pre-knowledge characterising the aesthetic experience do occur. for instance, elizabeth’s reflective journal indicates that although her aesthetic experiences prior to lavender mist were primarily sensual, the encounter with the pollock painting also entailed cognitive awareness of propositional knowledge in terms of style, historical, local and world-wide art scenes and pollock as an artist and as a man. as she reflects: in my recollection of my experience of this work it is impossible to separate out the cognitive dimension of that reaction and even as i responded to the work, breathing sped up, aroused, taken out of time, unable to arrest my gaze upon the work etc, simultaneously my knowledge of the conditions under which the work had been produced seeped into my consciousness at some level (elizabeth, - ). in this context, the interplay of elizabeth’s substantial understanding of art history and theory, in terms of enacting the clues and cues for assisting understanding and enjoyment, are part of her experience. caroline also acknowledges prior knowledge of monet’s and cassatt’s output which can be put down as a general affinity with the artists, era, those types of paintings and her past participation within an educational system (caroline, - ). indeed, all participants share in these same affinities to certain extents. to these must be added chris’s personal interests in his selected artists’ philosophies of life and art and their positions of influence on his own creative journey and my own discursive and personal affiliations with the work of braque. yet the initial immediacy of the aesthetic experiences reflected on in this study tends to minimise the importance of prior knowledge in the actual heightened aesthetic response. whether it is there or not does not seem to encroach upon the experience, as it is not seen as a prerequisite for interacting with a painting. furthermore, there is a general agreement among the participants that didactic information did not (in the immediacy of experience) rise to the conscious level (elizabeth’s experience of lavender mist being the exception). as chris explains: the semiotic breakdown in terms of the subject matter and other concerns, the evaluation of these things in a very rational process, is something that i have been taught, that i have been made aware of. in a sense its like perspective drawing, you want to know it, but you finally want it to slip into the background of your mind, so that is not to the fore (chris, - ) … it is the overall thing that you respond to, like music, rather than the style or genre. good paintings, like good music, have the capacity to transcend those genres ( - ). similarly, my appreciation of painting, my response to painting, is pretty immediate ( - ). chris worfold. circus roses ( ). enamel, oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. chris’s reflections and my own, in the case of the braque painting, also suggest that pre-knowledge of the artist’s output though tacitly held was considered inconsequential prior to and during the aesthetic experience. the absence of any prior knowledge of persson’s work did not diminish my aesthetic experience of death’s head abstraction # . whether pre-knowledge would have improved it will never be known. however, with my knowledge of art theory, i was tacitly aware of the painting’s stylistic demeanour and felt its approximate location along the line of contemporary australian and overseas art histories. yet these matters never entered into my experience with the painting and arose only in post experience reflection. during the response the painting had “assumed its own presence” (john, ), and my sense of awe was unencumbered by categorical knowledge. analytic probing within subsequent reflection suggests the inevitability of prior knowledge influencing the participants’ experience in knowing ‘about’ and ‘in’ art. it is an undeniable facet of their daily lives. however, whether such tacit information was used to inform the experience at a subconscious level can not be substantiated through the qualitative analysis and is therefore purely suppositional. john tarlton. the weight of all that beauty ( ). oil on wood and plywood construction. elizabeth’s final reflection and anecdote on whether pre-knowledge is a prerequisite for aesthetic experience perhaps best resonate an overall participants’ point of view: i think not necessarily. it might help slightly in that it encourages one to seek out that kind of experience again if it’s already occurred in a different context but i have seen kids from remote parts of australia in a gallery for the first time ever absolutely blown away by something, just because it happens to them, not especially because they know about it or because they have willed it (elizabeth, - ). summary despite all participants (with one exception) having some degree of familiarity with the selected artists’ works, the initial immediacy of impact within aesthetic experiences tended to minimise the importance of prior knowledge in the actual heightened response. in this way, the feelingfulness of the initial experience did not seem to require underpinning domain knowledge because it was not seen as a prerequisite for interacting with a painting. here, didactic information, in terms of the impact of pre-knowledge or past familiarity with the artist and/or style, did not rise to the conscious level in the immediacy of experience. on the other hand, all participants acknowledged that the aesthetic experience had promoted within them the desire for further personal investigation into the artists’ work, history and associated influences. the major impact of pre-knowledge seems to be as vehicles for assisting reinforcement for the experience, the empowerment and continuation of aesthetic experience within the participants’ consciousness after initial viewing and as a possible stimulant for participants to seek out such experiences in the first place or like-experiences in the future. (b) effortless cognition for the most part, the concept of knowing within aesthetic experience resides within the heightened understanding the participants reported as being received through the sensuous modalities of knowing. understanding and awareness were established through feeling rather than through the processes of analysis: it was known and understood somatically through the immediacy of response. for example, elizabeth, though well trained in the ways of cognitive interrogation and the hunt for meanings and underlying resonances within painting, she nevertheless considers that the heightened response of aesthetic experience is achieved “mostly [through] thinking with the body” (elizabeth, ). for elizabeth, aesthetic experience is not to be mistaken for art criticism. that is, in considering the terms effortful or passive viewer participation, she maintains that: the terms don’t really mean much here in this context. you’re participating completely with the work with every fibre of you body and every molecule of your skin… it’s all happening … but it doesn’t feel like effort. you are totally incorporated into the painting and nothing else exists or matters during that time ( - ) … one can think with one’s body ( ). here, the immediacy of somatic response tended to overshadow cognitive concerns to the extent that the experience seemed unmediated. this is not to propose that the cognitive aspects implicit in understanding, associating, problem solving, identification and personal meaning-making were not present or considered instrumental as underpinning the event. beneath what initially could be misunderstood as passive contemplation, effortful mediation was taking place. for example, chris, while acknowledging the immediacy of experience, believes that both passive contemplation and effortful viewer participation are indeed present within aesthetic experience. one simply up stages the other. he suggests that: there is an interaction between who we are and what we experience (chris, ). again, what you are actually doing when you’ve looking at the work (or other relaxing activities) requires an awful lot of mental activity. our brain is working overtime to make sense of these things. and i think that the notion of storytelling is where it really comes in. i mean, we all love stories, we love to tell ourselves stories and when we are relaxing, watching a particular thing, whether it be a painting or visual theatre or whatever, we become quite comfortable in it. this is where the idea of passivity comes into it, but the fact is that we are quite active throughout the process ( - ). chris worfold. night chair ( ). oil and mixed media on board. he continues: it is a very active thing. it just doesn’t happen to you if you hang around, posed like st theresa waiting for the arrow [a reference to bernini’s sculpture, the ecstasy of st theresa]. but then again, that’s not to say that to receive the experience you have to set yourself up into a position where you can be in the right way to receive it … it is a process ( - ). caroline’s response is understood through an innate knowing and her belief that the paintings’ experiences hold for her regarding what she refers to as the harmonies of life itself (caroline, ). that is, the experience is unencumbered and mediation and analysis play a lesser part. “to be honest …” caroline states: … in the past i haven’t probably studied and analysed painting anyway near the amount i have done while during this research. sometimes it’s just that something, that makes me stop and i’ll be sucked in, time disappears … ( - ). caroline penny. spooky’s beach, angourie, nsw ( ). oil on canvas. however, through reflection she returns over and over again to relive the experience and can reconstruct and enjoy her responses at leisure. occasionally, but not always, within her experience, mediation can be found through a type of unconscious sequencing where: initially it would be just looking at what i was looking at, seeing that initially, and then as i wandered around it with my eye, then other thing would be triggered through that, from ideas about understanding techniques to associating and establishing personal relevance ( - ). the response above is determined by what she is looking at ( ) and whether she immediately feels a kinship with the work (what chris referred to as a ‘connection’). at other times discursive influences can help to heighten an appreciation or understanding of a work which might otherwise elude her ( - ). also, evident within my reflections of death’s head abstraction # are signs of conscious mediative activity. yet, like the observations of the other participants, its role within the aesthetic experience is unclear and is held in check by what i assume to be the unexplainable nature of the experience. this notion is analogous to chris’s reflections which contend that the experience grows and changes over time (chris, ) and that the discursive aspects of the experience are buried within the immediacy of response. if analytical processing or something else is going on, chris believes that ‘something else’ does not consciously present itself within the experience’s feelingful immediacy ( - ). i concurred, noting in the experience of death’s head abstraction # : the painting’s experience is constantly changing in my head, it says many things, immediately and through quiet mediation. it keeps opening. it has no one face, nor does my experience of it. it and you keep changing throughout the dialogue. it is an adventure where you can’t really take a conceptual, propositional road map along. old roads (and ways of knowing) might not really exist, and new ones might point off in all directions. you can not expect or anticipate (john, - ). summary the concept of knowing within aesthetic experience was assumed to reside within the heightened understanding the participants construed through the sensuous modalities of knowing. understanding and awareness were established through feeling rather than through the processes of analysis; that it was known and understood somatically through the immediacy of response. cognition was held to occur through thinking with the body. the immediacy of somatic response tended to overshadow cognitive concerns to a point where the experience seemed unmediated and effortless. however, cognitive aspects implicit in understanding, associating, problem solving, identification both literal and symbolic and personal meaning-making were believed present at the unconscious or tacit level. what initially could be misunderstood as passive contemplation was in actuality embedded in active mediation. one form of understanding simply informed and up staged the other. in sum, the role of conceptualisation within the aesthetic experience, while unclear and held in check by an assumed unexplainable experiential nature, sees the discursive aspects becoming subsumed within the immediacy of response. if analytical processing or something else is going on and it is presumed by all participants that it is, it does not consciously present itself within the reported experiences’ feelingful immediacies. (c) a feeling of non sequencing of experience the ever-changing dialogue which comprises affective exchange and aspects of meaning making within heightened aesthetic response seems to defy easy attempts to identify any kind of systematic processing or logical sequencing within the experience. for instance, the occasional, unsystematised sequencing process described earlier by caroline is the only reference to acknowledging an ordering of experiential information by the research participants during aesthetic response. indeed, the majority of collected data (including caroline’s) points toward a sporadic and non-routine sequencing of reaction to stimuli. here, the paintings are constantly playing with you visually (john, ; caroline, ) and one can become totally lost (caroline, ) within the instantaneous, from here to there, shifting of attention. concerning the immediacy of experience, chris concluded that “what you decide to [initially] place emphasis on, i don’t know, i’m not sure what comes first” (chris, - ). chris worfold. sail into an ocean leave a sea ( ). oil and acrylic adhesive on board. the generalised character of a somewhat chaotic, non sequencing of experience within heightened aesthetic response, and one which seemed representative of research participants’ reflections, was summarised by elizabeth. here, she observed that the experience was: [n]ot necessarily sequential. it’s all over the shop. everything all exploding at once, hyper-manic thoughts and reactions racing. and dancing and bouncing around everywhere, all competing for priority in one’s head/body. there are a multitude of possible orders, directions -- chaosmosis (elizabeth, - ). elizabeth concluded: i think that sequence might occur in the sense that as a disciplined viewer of art [as are all the research participants within this dissertation], after i’ve calmed down, experienced the high, i might direct myself to attend to all the particular formal features of the painting that i might regret later if i don’t now as i may never have the chance again. but mostly it’s all mixed in ( - ). summary this ‘mixed in’ encountering within response displayed by participants concerning aesthetic experience disassociates itself from any idea of logical or schematic ordering of attention. our participation follows no routine or rational sequence. we are taken and absorbed at random by whatever is perceptually or affectively more dominant at that point in time and as orchestrated by the contingencies inherent in individual agency. the totality of experience advances several possible interactive points at once; that which the physical painting presents in terms of formal aspects and emotional tone and that which is induced within our own subjective response. it can not be experienced as a predetermined ‘walk through’ or as distinct observations along a single and straight trajectory. rather, the response is more akin to a constant shifting of focuses, a sporadic witnessing of multiple and erratic points along the undeterminable path of ricochet. (d) divergent points of entry while there is general agreement within the participants’ observations that the aesthetic experience is overwhelmingly characterised by its immediacy, the entry points into this immediacy (e.g. like the non-sequencing of the experience noted above) vary. the participants seem carried unrehearsed into the phenomena, the “ … welter of sights, sounds, feelings, physical strains, expectations, and minute, undeveloped reactions” (langer, , p. ) of actualising experience. this state of experiencing seems set in a state of consciousness which has not yet been organised through the ‘selection of impressions’ constructed through the organisation of personal past and future experiences in memory (langer, ). in other words, the experience appears to be apprehended in its initial totality which is unrestrained and non-discursive in aspect. what draws the viewer in first -- designal appreciation, emotive tone, associations and/or combinations -- tends to be influenced by contextual predispositions particular to the viewer and may “change and grow over time” (chris, ). entry points into response vary. for instance, it can register as a startling surprise -- a flash point -- which can metaphorically ‘blow you away.’ it can begin with an immediate and comforting feeling of integration, of an innate sense of harmonious understanding, a linkage. it can also come through a process of personal familiarity and practical investigation. like archimedes; an informed yet nevertheless thrilling ‘eureka!’ in observing the latter point of entry, unlike the other participants who professed an immediate and unconditional identify with the works, chris considered that much of his aesthetic experiences with paintings may not come for some time if ever. he believes that his experience is dependent upon its suitability as a focal point within present or future interests. chris claims these are part and parcel of the individual’s evolving journey and the deeper understanding of one’s self. for chris, a considerable attraction of the work is its instrumental link with his practice as a painter. here, a work which is not particularly valued today in one’s present pursuits or interests may indeed assume aesthetic experience candidature in the future by virtue of its associations with as yet unforetold interests. regarding both the schnabel and van gogh paintings, chris acknowledges that: when i was in high school i didn’t even respond to them. i knew they were there but my appreciation of them was a slow train coming. it didn’t happen quickly and so it was like a long term exposure and then suddenly realising that there was something there (chris, - ). he continues: i don’t usually have that response [a flash]. it’s like falling in love at first sight -- well, i’ve always been one for falling in love at second sight. the flash point might come on later visitations. for instance, like the schnabel’s paintings, i have been looking at these since the early nineties and i have looked at his stuff consistently ever since ( - ) ... the more we look the more we see ( ). caroline’s reflections correspond to chris’s in that she does not see the requirement of a flash point or ‘boom!’ sensation within the immediacy of aesthetic experience, although she does admit that they do frequently occur for her. indeed, while a flash point immediacy is the primary mode of entry point for caroline, she does believe that the experience can also be initiated by a growing familiarity with an artist’s work or through a collection (caroline, - ). acknowledgement and instigation can also be evolving and progressive. as caroline reflects: i don’t think there has to be a boom, or a flash. i think that you can walk past something and you might just see something out of the corner of your eye, and it won’t immediately say anything and you go on through the show yet there’s something niggling away and you think what is that something that keeps me remembering it and then i’m compelled to go back and i’ll stand there in front of the painting and study it ( - ). in an earlier passage, caroline suggests: there are pieces of art i think that can play with you for ages on and you’re always drawn to them ( - ). caroline penny. sunflowers and gladioli ( ). oil on canvas. although being immediately attuned to the emotional tone of the painting, a progressional aspect of entry is also found in my reflections of death’s head abstraction # , in that: it didn’t tingle or excite, more like making me step back a bit from it, and slowly approach it (john, - ) … i never felt that i had lost control, i simply promoted the amplification of the experience until it took over ( - ) … i was attracted to the piece and allowed the experience to happen ( - ). notions of predisposition, expectation and anticipation also present themselves as avenues into the experience. for instance, in my recollections on marble table i recall feeling an immediate intimacy with the painting which was originally established through observing and studying the work in books and catalogues ( - ). this follows elizabeth’s reflection that: we are seldom stopped by something that doesn’t resonate for us (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, - ) … i had wanted to see it [lavender mist] badly since i was about twenty-eight … and i was already totally overwhelmed (in a positive way) by my experience of new york, so in a sense i was expecting to be overwhelmed (elizabeth, - ). alternatively, entry into the aesthetic experience can simply be: … a kind of mind set that you consciously or even unconsciously decide to go along with and yield to the moment because sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t happen (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, - ) … sometimes it just all just seems to fall into place and you are in the right place at the right time and you totally drink it in (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, - ). finally, viewer initiation can be by “total surprise” (caroline, ). it can be an instance where: … this can happen in just a little art show where there is mostly rubbish on the walls and then there is just this one little bit of a painting and it will just stop you in your tracks and you think, gosh, that is just fantastically right ( - ). feelings of surprise -- of being taken unexpectedly off one’s feet -- may be the primary introduction into aesthetic experiences. all participants declared this aspect as an entry point into the experience to some degree. furthermore, whether we choose to interrogate the introductory impact of perceptual overload, feelings of integration or seductive visual puzzlements for contextual implications or not is a matter of personal choice. it would not for these participants, it seems, alter the immediacy of response. we interact experientially with the weather, as well as the forecast. however, to the notion of being unconditionally surprised, elizabeth attaches a proviso: i do feel that there is a kind of instinctual thing (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, ) … i think that we do get stopped instinctively by the things that have personal meaning for us … but you might not be aware of it at the time ( - ). summary analyses of the participants’ data indicate no particular systematic ordering of experience during aesthetic encounter. rather, there is a multitude of possible rudimentary cognitive ordering procedures which are sporadic and individually applied. it is, as one reflected, ‘all over the shop.’ while the initial perception of the design qualities of the painting may lead us into the work, the resultant ordering of what is attended seems to be a matter of personal choice or in response to the major impetus or intent of the painting. furthermore, there is no one way, no specific entry point into the immediacy of aesthetic experience. the sudden introduction within the experience seems influenced by contextual predispositions particular to the viewer. within the case of this dissertation, a general familiarity with the painters and the paintings was already established prior to authentic experiencing. the flash points of entry were not common among the participants. a flash point of entry seems most likely to be initiated by growing familiarity with the work on both a sensuous and cognitive level. this form of entry entails a progressional aspect, a kind of experience that one voluntarily yields to anticipation and expectation whether the heightened experience eventuates or not. alternatively, being taken by surprise was also a common introduction. whether these surprise introductions were interrogated later for signs of contextual implications or not depended on the discretion of the viewer, as their discovery would not, it seems, alter the immediacy of response. (e) aspects of the sublime within the participants’ responses there are correspondences relating to a highly charged emotional state analogous to those described by burke ( [ ]) and lyotard ( ) as the sublime. these states are held to be generated by the initial inability of both viewer perception and imagination to immediately deal logically with the qualities of vastness, infinity, chaos and power which are exhibited through the paintings. the descriptions of the non-instrumental immediacy of the response represented by the research participants indicate intermittent initial shock, wonder and inarticulation -- qualities consistent with the outlined ideas surrounding the sublime. the extension of burke’s ( [ ]) concepts of the physicality of the object controlling the experience and a certain pleasure-like response to a presumed foreboding and awe regarding abstractions such as infinity or vastness are witnessed below: it [death’s head abstraction # ] spoke to me visually of quiet, monumental, intuitive feeling -- of the unknowable end/fact/condition and conclusion of man [sic] -- mortality (john, - ) … it spoke through touching inside me the aches and unsatisfactory attempts of man [sic] to logically and rationally define mortality, endings, closure, the quiet nothingness … ( - ). furthermore, chris confronted what he believed to be the unanswerable vastness in the conversion of saint paolo malfi: what the hell is that? is that sky? … the space, you really go back into that … it’s like sky, heaven. the red is like velvet … the folds. the texture … (chris, - ). indeed, chris’s response to the painting echoes stolnitz’s ( ) essentialist notion of confronting a magnitude and power which seems to “ … spill over any frame that we try to impose …” (stolnitz, , pp. ). as chris relates: “i connected the work with the sky, so in my mind it was limitless” ( ). chris embraces the immediacy, the non-rational, endless and incalculable vastness. from an essentialist perspective, he has left behind all those “obstinate questionings / of sense and outward things, / falling from us, vanishings …” (wordsworth, w., previously cited). analogously, elizabeth construed the vast colour field she confronted in lavender mist as “infinity of tones” (elizabeth, ) and “ … something limitless, boundless, oceanic” ( ). caroline also repeatedly relates the idea of perfection, as in the atmospheric qualities of argenteuil or the emotive tones she finds inherent in emmie and her child. for caroline, they become sublime related exemplars of “peace… beauty… completeness…” (caroline, - ). in contrast, lyotard’s ( ) existential sublime, which proposes longings at a deep subjective level, is also suggested through caroline’s numerous associations with argenteuil. here, she strains at its representing intangible memory of a space and time beyond grasp; a sense, an essence of moments and a childhood full of wistful innocence and musings. to these longings, which at a deep subjective level cannot be resolved by perception, can also be added my own allusions to mortality and infinity, as observed through the reflections of death’s head abstraction # . furthermore, punctuating the research participants’ reflections were passages which corresponded with lyotard’s ( ) notion of an internalisation of an assortment of contextualised visual associations. that is, the pleasurable subjective efforts to bring about particular associations, interpretations and the elation of response to innovative and experimental materials and techniques. examples of these preoccupations can be found in elizabeth’s fascination with pollock’s action painting; chris’s expressed exuberance towards schnabel’s use of extensive scale and unorthodox materials and paint applications; and my own interests in persson’s employment of torn canvas sections and x-ray associated imagery. summary aspects of the sublime, exhibiting both intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist theoretical underpinnings, were observable through the participants’ reflections. these characteristics were presented through a fascination for, yet an inability to, adequately conceptualise matters concerning such ideas as vastness, infinitude and mortality, as suggested by burke ( [ ]). conversely, and consistent with lyotard’s ( ) suggestion, there were also inclinations toward heightened appreciation regarding new or unorthodox manipulation of materials and techniques. this could be seen as attempts to create cathartic associations, hoping to mirror that which is unpresentable (abstractions of thought). also, some participants displayed deep subjective longings in association with the paintings (lyotard ( ). . associative aspects innate in form the second notable manifestation occurred during the immediacy and totality of the research participants’ aesthetic experiences. design appreciation, rather than being simply exalted for its non-representational, non-associative and non-worldly aspects (i.e. ascribed to the contemplation of formal relationships, line, colour and acknowledgement of space in essentialist restrictions) can read equally as experientially affective devices. this notion is evident in elizabeth’s initial concern that the: … traditionally spatial, specular discourse of art reception is inadequate for the … reception [of painting] … because it limits perception of the world and the knowing of one’s place in the world to the illusion that this perception only occurs through vision and is totally stable and entirely graspable (elizabeth, - ). echoing these thoughts, we find within the appreciation of the manipulation of structure and surface treatment a place which welcomes sensuous interpretation and worldliness. the perceptual aspects inherent in the physicality and design appreciation of lavender mist advance states reminiscent of: … a field of dazzling colour [which is] dancing, scintillating (elizabeth, ) … ‘lavender mist’ is an orgiastic field of dancing colour and mist and scent, a massively multi-layered, overloaded experience of the world and beauty ( - ). elizabeth continues with experiencing associative qualities inherent in perceiving lavender mist: commentators have compared the experience of ‘lavender mist’ to being akin to being lost in an almighty snowstorm. i have never experienced a severe snowstorm but have been immersed in great fogs and mists and can feel the synergies between these experiences in nature and my participation in pollock’s painting ( - ). for caroline, the emotive quality drawn from the structure of a seemingly uncompleted painted edge of canvas (observed in emmie and her child) is empowered by the addition of an affective response and projected associations. caroline experiences the simple surface treatment and is drawn to the idea that: the way the painting isn’t completed to the edge indicates to me that i am watching a ‘moment in time’ -- a blink and the child will wake up properly. the mother will remember the washing to be hung up or the dinner to be prepared and this instant will disappear like smoke in the air. and what will be left is only the recollection of it and the craving to have that moment back again (caroline, - ). aspects inherent in surface treatment and designal elements also become one with affective response in chris’s experiencing of the swirling linear construction and intensity of colour experienced in thatched cottages in cordeville. it also appears in the physical, cosmic-like movements of paint in the conversion of st paolo malfi. regarding the former painting and much of van gogh’s work in general, chris acknowledges that: [w]hen we are looking at images we are looking at spatial colour/tone. we are thinking, what does this and that mean, but we are also just enjoying the visual stimulation of the thing (chris, - ). summary the perceptual nature of the aesthetic experience indicates the alignment of concrete elements (such as colour and line) and qualities (such as balance, harmony and grace) also acted as devices which promoted immediacy of affective response. these surface structures and organisational elements themselves became elemental triggers for emotional and contextual associations. it was emotive rather than rational in perception and explanation. . metaphor replacing measurement they said, “you have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are.” the man replied, “things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar. stevens, w. excerpt from the poem the man with the blue guitar ( ). within the reflections and interviews, the participants displayed a marked similitude for distinguishing and describing observed significant compositional elements and designal features through metaphorical response. that is, the responses are emotive rather than technicist explanations and consonant with what abbs ( ) described as employing a language of excited consciousness. for example, chris is concerned with the feelingfulness of the line quality within thatched cottages in cordeville. he responds to van gogh’s curvilinear markings for their metaphorical qualities, rather than solely for their physical, analysable and concrete nature as elements of design. for chris, the linear aspects of the painting are experienced in their immediacy as visual metaphor, as: … arabesque lines which are synonymous with feelings of joy, freedom and growth (chris, ). while obviously aware on an analytical level of the various and complex designal methods employed within their chosen examples of paintings, the research participants’ notations and experiences seem to indicate that, like chris’s earlier comments on the tacit rules of perspective drawing, the mechanics, the reading of the analytical ‘blue prints’ of creative assembly become part and parcel with affective response. that is, the appreciation of significant form seems to again relate to the feelingfulness of the painting. while reflecting on the large division of composition which accommodates monet’s massive sky in argenteuil, caroline experiences: a huge sky that dominates half the painting, opens up the area within to freedom, space and a chance to run to possibilities (caroline, lines - ) … it feels just enormous and dominating, and yet a very gentle, calming and reverent feeling as i stood in front of it ( - ). caroline relates this feeling with a line from e.m. forster’s passage to india. here: the sky settles everything -- not only climates and seasons, but when the earth shall be beautiful … the sky can do this because it is so strong and so enormous (forster. [ ], p. ). this feeling resonates within caroline’s own work. it is a portrayal of sensation that attempts (as caroline earlier reflected) an opening ‘ … up [of] the area within to freedom, space and a chance to run to possibilities.’ here, it can be induced through non-discursive visual metaphor, a kind of identification through synergies, as the below painting might suggest. caroline penny. across the flat ( ). oil on canvas. similarly, in terms of lavender mist, elizabeth’s reflection is not primarily one of critical or analytical dissection of its structure, but rather can be seen largely as a reaction in metaphorical terms. that is, the structural components of the abstract expressionist colour field painting are revealed through feelingful response and become: … virtually alive and breathing with coloured scribble, splattered lines moving this way and that, now thickening, now trailing off to a slender skein (elizabeth, - ) … the overall tone, the optical mix of the different hues used, is a pale lavender, made airy and active … ravishing and atmospheric ( - ). the measurement of significant form and totality of experience here is metaphorically rendered through elizabeth’s construction of the resonance between active response to lavender mist and the reflective reading of the metaphorical visions of the poet paul celan. below, she introduces this cooperative metaphorical idea and advances it with examples and explanations also granting this segment as having signification to characteristic (i.e. personal associations characteristic). elizabeth’s passage is set down in its entirety because of its poetic and qualitative abilities to articulate such a cooperative action. for the sake of reader clarity, i have italicised the passages of celan’s poetry which she had incorporated within her reflection. elizabeth’s passage begins: reading of pollock in association with the poetry of paul celan [excerpt from elizabeth’s journal] at the same time i was in new york for the first time i was in the process of discovering the poetry of paul celan, whose work i had briefly encountered earlier in the context of its connections with the paintings of german artist anselm kiefer. at last having access to the amazing bookshops of new york i was able to find bilingual (english-german) editions of this romanian jewish poet of the holocaust who wrote in german from the late s until his suicide in . admittedly i was co- encountering ‘lavender mist’ and much of the poetry of celan so it is perhaps inevitable that i associate them together, but simultaneously i felt as if i was discovering some resonances between the two, especially on the level of the explosion of light in the work of both and the sense of the atom being split and shards of particles being splattered in all directions into spacetime where it is meaningless to attempt to distinguish between past, present and future. collector of beacons, at night, your pack full, at your fingertip the guiding beam, for him, the one landing word-beast. master of beacons. for me, pollock was the collector and master of beacons in the dark night through which he leads us, lighting the way, emitting the guiding beam amidst the confusion of the abandonment of the representation of the world of appearances and the confusion that is the explosion of matter. he was also the wielder of the chalk-crocus at the coming of the light; your indivisible mellowed in the warrant, from-here-and-there-too, high explosives are smiling at you, existence the nick helps the snowflake come out of itself… pollock is painting with a flower and chalk at daybreak, breaking down old notions of the separation between here and there, now and then. viewing the work of pollock, being in it, is akin to being smiled at by high explosives and all the contradictions that such a notion involves, where existence is helping a snowflake issue out of itself; it is almost as if the very formation of matter is being imaged. further, hatching of grubs, hatching of stars, with every keel i search for you, fathomless. again celan captures the sense of matter issuing forth from nothingness with the receiver for a while totally disorientated in such a new representation of the creative act (and this statement could equally apply to the experience of viewing pollock too). further examples include: the sky dies ahead of our shards; heaven hurls itself into the harpoon; fragments of future findings, silver, in the cranial cockpit tunnels of vision blown into the fog of speech and you, island-meadow, you yourself fogged-in with hope. where all also connote the paintings of pollock to me in terms of effect appearing to precede cause—the presence of the shards of broken existence coming before the occurrence of death itself. they also reflect pollock in the way that eternity and its opposite appear to be the same thing—heaven harpooning itself. the cranial cockpit is the place from where operations are guided—again as above, where pollock is the master of beacons—but the resulting vision and predominant emotion is foggy and ephemeral and feels like clear obscurity ( - ). as proposed above, elizabeth’s response and inductive measurement of lavender mist comes through an awareness which involves terminologies more akin to poetry than to deductive logic. that is, she measures the painting’s signification through a resonance and a subjective alignment to a sympathetic aesthetic field. she marks the painting’s objective status through the synergies of the poet’s metaphor, rather than through quantitative description. similarly, within my own reflections, surface treatment within the marble table is not analytically described, but is metaphorically rendered and reduced to: that marble area, like looking into a tidal pool or when the areas of stark stars separate from a sea of cloudy night … like little shining bright things at the bottom of a nocturnal, still pool (john, - ). the observation of significant form within death’s head abstraction # also registers as metaphorical description rather than being isolated for autonomous contemplation. here, the immediacy of the painting’s large size and minimal composition transpires as being: restful, solid and reassuring in its simplicity. the large blocks of dulled red stimulated my eye. they were either symbolic door panels slightly ajar, exposing the central image, or a vast and empty plane, a void where persson had constructed his centrally positioned skull totem ( - ). this metaphorical response to the immediacy and design appreciation of significant form continues in such passages as: for me, experiencing the immediacy, totality and design appreciation of ‘death’s head abstraction # ’ was much like observing a visual, wordless landscape of natural and human inevitabilities ( - ). this landscape could not be solely articulated through simply acknowledging and demarcating the painting’s underlying compositional framework. rather, it was demarcated through an internalisation of the sights, scents and sounds that correlate to a subjective ‘knowing’ of its sensorial make up. the bold geometric abstraction of form and personal symbolic landscape became a scene not unfamiliar in feeling to the one illuminated in roethke’s poem the far field. in the poem, roethke presents an ‘image’ of a place painted through the rapport of metaphor and remembered mental snapshots. like death’s head abstraction # , it is more a symbolic representation that maps personal discovery, a place where: at the field’s end, in the corner missed by the mower, where the turf drops off into grass-hidden culvert, haunt of the cat-bird, nesting place of the field mouse, not too far away from the ever-changing flower dump, among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, -- one learned of the eternal … i learned not to fear infinity, the far field, the windy cliffs of forever, the dying of time in the white light of tomorrow, the wheel turning away from itself, the sprawl of the wave, the on-coming water. roethke, t. excerpt from the poem the far field ( ). like roethke, by his discovery of the far field, i inductively, through discovering the landscape of death’s head abstraction # , could ‘learn of the eternal.’ both painting and poem are terrains that can not be thoroughly understood or appreciated by pin-pointing an objective location on a surveyor’s map (even if that was possible). the painting, like the poem, becomes more a symbolic representation. its aesthetic response is read and articulated through feeling -- and feeling, as the data concurs, is best served and discerned through the approximations of metaphor. summary within their experiences, the participants exhibited a predisposition and enthusiasm for associating and describing the physicality of the paintings in metaphorical rather than analytical terms. this further embedded the immediacy and totality of aesthetic experience with an imaginative and emotive rather than an objectified response. as noted earlier, the participants were aware on an analytical level through their training of the various and complex designal methods employed within their chosen examples of paintings. however, their notations and experiences seemed to indicate that, like chris’s earlier comments on the tacit rules of perspective drawing, the mechanics, the reading of the analytical ‘blue prints’ of creative assembly become part and parcel of an affective response. the appreciation of significant form seems to again relate to the feelingfulness of the painting. discursive information and terminology concerning the elements and principles of design are tacitly held within the viewer. however, the preferred definitional responses are metaphorical ones -- ones which imaginatively and sensuously resonates the non-discursive aspects of the experience. . technical virtuosity, novelty and the artist’s eye all research participants conveyed special interest in technical virtuosity. that is, the manner in which paint was applied, whether by virtuosity of brush work or action painting. the responses seemed to be aligned with the methods the selected painters employed in order to accomplish their visual effects. that is, the innovative, novel or unorthodox techniques observable in the paintings which demonstrated how the artists’ work created the desired emotive component. as noted by chris in an overview of painting in general: paint, and especially oil paint, is magical stuff; the way it moves and slides like silk, the way it smells so ancient and yet so new, the way it holds its luminous texture and its colour (chris, - ) … since the year , maybe later, colour has been a big issue and also the materiality of the paint, the physical process of the paint … [it is] a really engaging sort of thing ( - ). specifically regarding schnabel’s the conversion of st paolo and van gogh’s thatched cottages in cordeville, chris expresses sheer delight in painterly application. a main characteristic for aesthetic experience in both these paintings is, in part, “the physicality of painting, the processes …” ( ). it is, according to his experiencing the conversion of st paolo: the experience of seeing virtuosity and freedom combined. it is marvellous and simply like the air just before it rains; it is just air but it changes all your expectations ( - ). chris’s heightened wonder in the physicality of the process is furthered by passages such as: [on schnabel] love that paint … it’s so loose; finger painting yes, chucked painted soaked rags, poured resin, how complex ( - ). regarding van gogh, chris sees: [t]hat linear mark, especially in his later works, that is often equalled to a joyous painterly response ( - ) … absolutely. van gogh engages me more because of the line that’s in there ( ) … and then there’s that whole thing about colour, that immediate application of paint, that immediate response that he is making and (for me) understanding and knowing how he made it ( - ). chris worfold. forked tree ( ).. oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. however, it is not always a positive, personal acceptance of the manner in which technique is applied in schnabel’s paintings that can stir the aesthetic experience for chris. puzzling and questionable applications can also generate extreme interest in the work, as schnabel seems to be continually pushing the window of what actually constitutes acceptable technique and effect. to these, chris observes a delight in being perplexed by the contemporary’s output, admitting that: … [i]n the new work there will always be the stuff that stumps me, that initially makes me say that’s not art, what are you doing? it’s just terrible … and then i come around to it, i understand it -- because it questions what painting practice is ( - ). virtuosity concerning the application of materials and techniques is also an important factor in general aesthetic experience for caroline. this constant remains her focal point regardless of whether she recalls paintings of a romantic nature or more contemporary ones which are intended to jar and confront (caroline, - ). she finds that: as a painter myself, i just love the craft of painting. something that is painted well, whether i like the imagery or not, will always stop me in my tracks because i think, ‘my god, how the hell did they mix that, or how did they put it down in that way which so perfectly describes the image.’ this is true whether the depiction is of a simple piece of cloth or the most detailed of landscape ( - ). addressing the heightened experience caroline felt while viewing (and later reflections on) the painting emmie and her child and argenteuil, she succinctly acknowledges the part technical virtuosity plays: i can look at cassatt’s work and just envy it in part just because it is so beautifully painted ( - ). or, in monet it’s the time of day, the sense of place which is captured (caroline, ). the artist makes it look so simple. that definitely is another aspect of wonder that i am often left with when i discover something that just stops me in my tracks. it always looks so amazingly effortless and simple to do -- i know from experience when facing a view myself that this is not the case ( - ). caroline penny. pressing the cotton ( ).oil on canvas. in death’s head abstraction # , i was drawn to the practical mastery within: … the specific-ness of the depicted skull in its immediate black background, the animal hide-like umbilical cord-like stripe which joined the top image with the bottom one. the surety of the realistic skull contrasted with the vaporous cloud of x-rayed skull at the bottom (john, - ) … on closer inspection, i was delighted that the artist had reaffirmed my feelings for the temporality of man through his usage of images which had been torn or ripped from some other endeavour. the finite bordered in shreds ( - ). john tarlton. greetings from gallopoli ( ). watercolour/gouache/collage. perhaps all this could be seen as heightened reflective ‘shop talk’ by the selection of participants. that is, interest and investigation which could inspire practical understanding for future personal artistic goals. however, the importance within aesthetic experience of the physical manipulation of paint was also expressed by the art theorist/educator (elizabeth) as well. her interest in the physicality of painting techniques related (in part) directly to the observed emotive effect of the paintings, rather than as ends in themselves. here, it is important to emphasise that this dissertation concerns personal response to aesthetic experience, not detached and discursive art criticism. as elizabeth observed in a discussion with caroline: although i am not a painter in the way you are, i probably wouldn’t care as much as you do about the way they mixed their colours (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, - ). yet elizabeth’s experience of lavender mist does acknowledge an acute awareness and regard for paint application techniques and for the physicality of direct material application (as her earlier cited reflections in the previous section revealed). these concerns are illustrated in such observations as: you can see that pollock has put his hands into the paint and placed them at the top right. this seems to be an instinctive gesture eerily reminiscent of cave painters who did the same and seems to be saying ‘i was here!’ (elizabeth, - ). or, in addition to referring to pollock’s surface treatment which presented “interfused lights and darks” ( ), elizabeth also responds to practical application such as: … [t]he indexical mark [that] can be read across and through the ascensional axis, working all the time to lower and desublimate the perceptual field … ( - ). indeed, elizabeth is ‘entranced’ by pollock’s virtuosity and mastery of action painting. she reflects on his renunciation of the paintbrush and ability to portray “ … an unseen moment of the creative process” ( - ), through vigorous actions of unorthodox and innovative paint application. elizabeth relishes pollock’s dismissal of the finely controlled brush point for abandonment into: … a wild, crazy bodily dance that took place at the edge of his huge works… flinging, swaying, splashing and dripping paint that flew from his frenzied body… enacting a dance of creation ( - ). what emerged was a sand painting in oil and enamel that was not a picture of a ‘thing’ but rather a record of the psychographic energy-charged movements pollock had made in the moment of now. his dripped line had a new elasticity that completely obscured its beginning and its end ( - ) … the patterns caused by the separation and marbling of one enamel wet in another, the tiny black striations in the dusky pink, to produce an infinity of tone ( - ). novelty and the ‘artist’s eye’ (appreciating the painter’s perspective) another observation of the aesthetic experience subsumed within technical virtuosity arose while analysing the reflective data. this aspect centred on all research participants’ fascination with how the selected painters had viewed their worlds. that is, the personal and idiosyncratic, the novelty displayed by the selected painters. this notion was associated with the personal artist’s response to process, product and points of view. it was enjoyed and considered a unique characteristic within the experiences of the selected paintings. examples of such enjoyment are noted throughout the collected data. indeed, all participants’ heightened responses shared this fascination of what they believed to be the uniqueness of ‘the artist’s eye.’ these observations point to the interpretation of the artist’s intention as being a significant component within heightened response. for example, a passage from one of caroline’s interviews concerning argenteuil acknowledges her interest in monet’s idiosyncratic perspective and point of view. she considers that: it’s within monet’s vision. it’s within the whole image itself ( ). it’s like through his brilliant eyes he’s analysed the scene, taken it all in and then very quickly balanced the whole paining out ( - ). monet and his genius has been able to capture the essence of the view of argenteuil and give it his ‘life’ and ‘spirit,’ while reacting with what he was presented with ( - ). monet is able to do this time and time again, whether it’s through colour, reflection of light, subject matter or brushwork -- he describes the extra subtleties that make his compositions unique and very personal ( - ). the artist literally plays with the image in a million different ways, from decisions of light to when and what to understate, etc. -- it is the definite rhythm of monet’s work ( - ). caroline continues: … maybe it’s in monet’s eyes, perhaps. you have the benefit of looking at it through someone else’s eyes, and their eyes are fresh to your eyes and they have looked at different things and in different ways and pinpointed things that have interested them about the view -- so that when i sit before a view the things that i might pick out to represent the landscape are not necessarily the ones monet picked out (caroline, - ). in a similar way, reflecting on thatched cottages in cordeville, chris sees the unique personal signature of van gogh’s linear mark. for chris, these marks: … express an emotional life (chris, ). if you could look at the world through the way in which he draws … [you could see that] … his gesture is a record of a state of mind, like the quality of hand writing ( ). indeed, the novel quality of van gogh’s pictorial response intrigues chris. viewing an alternative aspect or unique dimensional slant to reality, which van gogh displays, heightens chris’s own eye. he states: for me, van gogh’s work functions as a model for the world. i can look at the clouds in ‘thatched collages in cordeville’ and then look at the clouds outside and one changes the perception of the other. i can look at the cottages in the painting and then look at my own house and the perception and understanding of both things alter ( - ) … [s]o van gogh’s work seems to do far more than simply act as a picture, it functions as a screen or a reminder to see the best, to focus on it and to pull out colour ( - ). chris worfold. southern cross ( ). oil and mixed media on board. unlike most of elizabeth’s aesthetic experiences, the sensuous response and recollections of lavender mist is impossible to separate out from her propositional knowledge about the artist. she experienced “ … quite moving, an identifiable trace of the man himself” (elizabeth, - ). elizabeth recalls that: …even as i responded to the work, breathing sped up, aroused, taken out of time, unable to arrest my gaze upon the work, simultaneously my knowledge of the conditions under which the work had been produced seeped into my consciousness at some level. the solitariness of pollock’s experience was a very haunting element here, the way he had no real language with which to talk about it ( - ). examples of a heightened awareness of the artist’s intentions and unique signature are embedded throughout elizabeth’s aesthetic experience. elizabeth’s response to the work continuously intermingles with pollock’s life and vision. she is aware of his influences and his success in producing paintings that: … created new images that spoke directly to the issues einstein considered concerning our perception of space, time and light ( - ), … [his] …non- adherence to traditional notions of top and bottom, right and left ( - ), [his] … creation of a ‘thing’ that existed in the context of homogeneous space and linear time … seizing the moment of the ‘now’ through encoding a record of what he did in paint ( - ). elizabeth’s experience of lavender mist is in part her fascination with the artist and how pollock pioneered the ephemeral in art -- an art which could be extracted and created from such fleeting things as mist, fog, ice and sound. she sees the artist’s work as establishing the possibilities inherent in “ … opening the corporeal in painting and our discourse about it” ( - ). the novelty, the uniqueness of the artist’s point of view was also apparent in my reflections of braque and perssons. i appreciated what i presumed to be a shared: … personal need for order and formal coherence … their presumed requirement and particular abilities at placing things in association, arranging objects so see the spaces they create and the negative spaces created around them … and when their associations induce a psychological narrative, then that is even better (john, - ). john tarlton. (with lemon…) ( ). watercolour/gouache/collage. i am also unaware of any painter who has successfully made the still life motif more his own than braque. these he executes with an eye honed by absolute familiarity with the objects depicted, an ability to extract their essential ‘being-ness’ and the fluidity of an undeniably unique technique and palette. my reaction to braque’s uniqueness and originality, his personal vision, is attested to in lines taken from my poem on braque. some excerpts follow: on ochre elbows the tabletop still life blooms. symmetry. the stringless eye of the guitar, the rhythms of ovals apples oranges female navels snapped right from the stem (put it this way, one must paint the centre. the artist starts here a source for seeing inside out) upside down upon the flat checked cloth fleur de lis ricochet into rhythms of mandarins, apples outline like bullseyes … [another passage continues]: with a fly’s eye the cubist turns inward, interior themes to the same dreamy flute. braque moves into the canvas opening windows. a space the brush creates the loosely stretched canvas a door to be opened inward to a patterned room of juniper. to paint and not depict, a mark to show the smooth and rough of it, the pale grain of melons, the rapport of wood and fruit. (braque then splits the table with a vertical axe, commanding the stand to dance) … tarlton, j. excerpt from the poem on braque ( ). regarding death’s head abstraction # , it was persson’s unique vision which i found intensely refreshing. there was something original and defying about it; its stoic and minimal composition, its monotone palette, its meditative and solemn presence amidst a gallery full of overactive, highly colour-charged and meandering sameness which represented the majority of contemporary australian abstractions otherwise filling the gallery. there was also something very personal in persson’s construction methods which separated death’s head abstraction # from the rest. the use of torn strips of canvas (on which the distinct imagery was painted) seemed to raise, strengthen and highlight [the painting’s] point/presence toward another dimension, one far removed from the physical reality of the painting ( - ). the message of impermanence and the inevitability of consciousness was conjoined with the painting by being constructed from various strips of possible different and discarded paintings or studies. summary acknowledged throughout the participants’ reflections was a heightened awareness of technical virtuosity, the manipulation of materials and techniques, and the artist’s particular vision which informed unique treatment of surfaces. this was referred to by the participants in several instances as ‘the artist’s eye.’ here, an awareness of technical mastery and aesthetic inner vision might be related to the researchers’ propositional knowledge of the field as well as its tacit application during their experiences. it may also relate to the researchers’ acknowledgement of the practicing tricks of the trade needed to manifest their feelingful response. that is, a heightened awareness of the technical aspects which activated and became one with the emotive experience. this characteristic of aesthetic experience seems to be founded on individual contextual influences and personal preferences or participants’ ontogeneses. for example, elizabeth’s concentration of pollock’s drip methodology in its antecedent positioning to later aspects of body and feminist art and the influences on chris’s practical preoccupation with movements of paint and linear markings inherent in his selected paintings. . personal associations memories, not necessarily conscious but retentions that have been organically incorporated in the very structure of the self, feed present observations. they are the nutriment that gives body to what is seen. dewey, j. excerpt from art as experience, (p. - ), ( [ ]). it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. de saint-exupery, a. excerpt from the little prince, (p. ), ( [ ]). another characteristic of the aesthetic experiences shared by the participants, again to varying degrees, was to link personal past or present particular memories or experiences to the works in question. that is, the aesthetic experience manifested positive psychological associations; that exposure to the paintings triggered cognitive recall of personal histories which were reaffirming or meaningful to the subjects. this indicated that, in some ways, the aesthetic experiences shared by the participants were context specific and involved culturally-held dispositions as well as individual agency and surrender to sensations. this characteristic was found not only in terms of subject matter but also personal preferences to styles and formal relationships of design elements. in addition, to these predominately subject-specific associations can be found universally experienced emotive themes such as domicile, love, birth and death. caroline’s response to cassatt’s emmie and her child illustrates such personal preoccupations and undertones. initially responding to “the muddling of it all together” (caroline, ) within the immediacy of aesthetic experience, caroline is drawn towards personal associations triggered through response. these can range in focus from “ … a little glimpse of colour, that maybe i have even mixed before on my own palette, or the view itself may take me back to something that i remember doing from way back ” ( - ). for instance, caroline feels at once personally connected to emmie and her child by sharing in cassatt’s portrayal of a mother and young child. as a mother with young children herself, caroline pleasantly empathises with the setting and time. on a personal level, she shares in an association of: that incredible moment in time, in this case, between mother and child ( - ). it’s just such a moment, mother holding child, like the child has just woken up from an afternoon nap and is still in that half dreamy wake, all warm and soft from bed and smelling hot and delicious. it makes the woman in me want to just quietly hold and share in the essence ( - ). in those incredible times with my children [like those described above], all the screaming ‘heebe jeebies’ disappear -- the hard work, no sleep, no energy, repetitiveness of day’s endless routines -- are worth every second, just for that moment of sitting and disappearing with your child into a different place … a place where everything is possible and good, where all is forgiven … ( - ). in addition to a reaffirming association to her present life, personal past histories come to the fore, as do notions of family: it takes me back to my own childhood and the feelings of being held, cuddled, warm and protected by my parents; as children falling asleep in the back of the car and having our father carry us up gently to bed (caroline, lines - ). i can try to imagine the scent of the mother in the painting as i reminisce on my own childhood memories of my own mother’s smell ( - ). looking at the image definitely reminds me of my mother and all the love that she has poured out on me and my sisters over the years. that ache of love, that absolute raw compassion, animal instinct, to cater, foster, protect and nurture. ( - ) … i suppose it has given me a vague understanding of just how precious life is and how unimportant so much of our everyday worries and concerns are … that people in your life count ( - ). personal reminiscences permeate caroline’s response to monet’s argenteuil. “with argenteuil,” says caroline, “memories (filtered through me) are brought back to life through observing the work” ( - ). again, the painting takes her back to a pleasant time of childhood and her family’s numerous travels in the french countryside ( - ). she reflects on these associations which are interwoven into her aesthetic experience: it certainly reminds me of holidays with my family, of growing up with a love affair with france which will never leave me. it’s croissants, chocolate milk out of small bottles and ice cream everyday … it’s distant church bells tolling, french bread and the background noises and music so irresistibly french … it’s old french men in the shade in small villages clicking bowls, the women dressed in black and holding woven shopping baskets … it’s all the cheeses and breads and smells of coffee … it’s fruit right from the trees and animals-- pigs, chickens, dogs roaming the villages… it’s all those wonderful memories for me. but it’s also more … it’s the space in the sky, the beautiful shapes that their architecture has as it divides itself between earth and sky … the smell of wild garlic by the river banks and cooled grass in the shade ( - ). caroline continues: i know what it feels like to walk down that road ( ). as i walk down the path in this painting that gentle change in light and warmth across my whole body would occur as i pass through the cracks of the dappled light beautifully falling across the pathway. i can hear the footsteps of my flip-flops as i walk along the uneven dirt roadway … the noise of a distant dog barking … the very gentle and calm rustle of the warm air through the poplar trees. it makes me ache to be there, so many memories of pleasant and familiar french days ( - ). caroline penny. among the azaleas ( ). oil on canvas. elizabeth furthers the notion of personal associations as a characteristic of the aesthetic experience. her response and reflections of lavender mist are intertwined with having seen the painting on her first visit to the united states and to her exposure to the cultural wealth she found in new york city. as she observed: … my personal associations of being in new york city impacted upon my experience with ‘lavender mist’ … and how appropriate to experience a sublime example of american painting in new york! (elizabeth, - ). for instance, the experience mingles with personal associations of exploring such galleries as the museum of modern art and the metropolitan museum of art. for elizabeth, the response of lavender mist, in part, relates to being overwhelmed by extraordinary bookshops, street scenes and the art and cultural life force which almost electrically charged the air. here, it is found and reflected in cooperation with obtaining and experiencing celan’s poetry (already cited in relation to metaphorical response). the experience also resonates with elizabeth’s seminal fascination with feminist installation and body art and her later studies of pollock’s antecedent position within these genres. elizabeth believes that her ontogeny and personal associations with the aesthetic experience of lavender mist are undeniably related. as she reflects: they would have to be … with my background of looking at art seriously, my at the time proximity to another great painting by pollock, my history of trying to understand the shift from european modernism to the american modernist at that time in my life. a sense of it all coming together for me at a time and place and the pieces of the puzzle fitting together. the totality and formal elements of the painting would impact brilliantly on many other people as well, i am sure, but they could only impact this way upon me because of who i am and who i become through the experience ( - ). chris suggests that the specific characteristics of the aesthetic experience are always in a constant state of change. it is a personally evolving process (chris, ). in his youth, aspects of the dramatic or narrative elements drew his attention to a painting. contemporarily, the triggering devices within this process seem consistently in response to issues concerning colour, the materiality of paint and the manifestation of corresponding fluctuations regarding image and abstraction ( - ). he claims to be unaware of any mediated personal associative context within the immediacy and feelingful aspects of his reflected aesthetic experiences. for him, the aesthetic experience or what a painting means transcends its subject matter or personal associations. this notion is shared in varying degrees by the group. however, personal associations albeit it conscious or not may inevitably be bred from familiarity. the paintings chris selected relate to artists he has long studied and admired. through this familiarity, a relationship, a tacit like-ness relating to personal associations regarding preferences in technique or unconscious affinities with subject matter selection may have developed. in addition, any personal associations which are triggered by the encounter are not superfluous, though they might (for chris) assume a secondary role ( ). as chris explains: look, i think understanding the way the whole thing works one would be naive not to think that [personal associations] are there ( - ). the real question for me is whether the whole process is happening consciously; a conscious process of making those connections and links is what’s exciting, or whether it is an unconscious process, because it is definitely happening. i mean, that image of the thatched cottage [in the van gogh painting] has resonances to the cottage we stayed at in cornwall several years ago. there is a link between those two things ( - ) … there is an interaction between who we are and what we experience ( ). chris worfold. sunflowers on the dining room table ( ). oil and mixed media on board. he continues: there is also a deeper understanding within myself in the sense that the older i get the farther i can see into life and things like that. when i look into the van gogh i see and understand a lot more than i used to, say, just about the notions surrounding the concepts of a dwelling, home, place. and similar to the images within the schnabel, to a lesser extent [because] they do not have the figurative element, they nevertheless are very bombastic in their line, very much baroque, like a baroque painting of a cathedral ( - ). furthermore, if personal associations and preference in subject matter can be considered ‘hooks’ into aesthetic experience, chris believes that: there is a range of certain subject matter that i am interested in and if it sits in that range of focus then it will register, it will make it possible for me to get excited about it. but to this, it must not be forgotten, there are other things for me, the physicality of the painting, the processes (which may consciously have no bearing on personal associations or subject matter), but i don’t consciously know the list of them all before i engage with the painting, i mean all those things that establishes a green light and starts the engagement with an art work. for other people i can imagine the stimuli are quite different ( - ). unlike chris, my own reflections offer a stronger case for the inclusion of personal associations as a dominant characteristic in aesthetic experience. within the immediacy of death’s head abstraction # , i was aware that it had: … spoke through touching inside me the aches and unsatisfactory attempts to logically define or come to terms with such things as mortality, issues concerning personal closures, the nothingness within eternity … of the shape- shifting sand patterns of my human interior and exterior landscape, of the metamorphosis into the state of un-knowing. it gently coerced out of me the idea of my own impermanence (john, - ). by observing the painting, it was like placing my ear to the door of the unknown and the seemingly unknowable. these concepts defied logical conclusion. it was best to remain silent and absorb what was being intuitively given to me because i had no rational way of dealing with the feeling. recently, while engaged in research, i came across a statement by sibelman ( ) that related to my inarticulate silence during my confrontation with death’s head abstraction # . here, i found a type of verisimilitude in sibelman’s ( ) reflection. that being: the key resides in the act of listening, for if one truly listens, one can hear everything -- even the silences and their significations. (sibelman, , cited in conlan, . p. ). by unknowingly following sibelman’s proposal, i personally associated with the ineffable: the feeling radiating from and pointing to the meaning behind the painting. in other words, i listened to, not argued with, suggestions which resulted in my ability to attain: … a kind of knowing in the stillness which the painting represented to me. it was the feeling (or a kind of what-ness) of eternity, of a state of non-cognition. i associated with this painting the same sort of feelings i had experienced on valencia island, ireland while travelling there with my first wife decades ago …the island was not much more than a sparsely inhabited rock of a place on the cold north atlantic rim. but the unbelievable quietness of the place, the timelessness of its terrain, the ever-shifting grey blanket of clouds, the agelessness of the rock fences, the sparse out croppings of weeds and rocky dirt paths, the wind’s muffled, haunting whistle through the solitary telephone line …i felt that when i went to sleep i could sleep (dreamlessly) forever -- that my being-ness was obliterated. in fact, when i did sleep there, i always awoke without any real idea of what time or day it was. it all seemed to pass by without identifying itself. we spoke very little, as there seemed no need to speak ( - ). while the aesthetic encounter with death’s head abstraction # was an involuntary and predominately unplanned introduction, the still life paintings of braque, and specifically the ones of interior tabletop motifs, are full of personal associations. the marble table is no exception. it reminds me not only of overseas travel, the locations and the people i met, but also of a personal reaffirmation towards the compositions of intimate domestic objects and the perception of both positive and negative spaces which they create. it is a subtle visual indebtedness, but one to which i am now acutely aware. exhibited below, a personal anecdote directly from my reflective journal and a visual comparison of a photograph of braque with one of my current works may disclose and prove helpful in ascertaining the subtle associations. they are displayed as follows: (the photograph) i have an enlargement of a photograph of braque (circa ) sitting on a chair as he plays a small accordion in the midst of all sorts of objects. these objects are either neatly sitting around or on tables, on the floor or are fastened to the back wall. each object on the back wall is distinct in the photograph, has its own autonomy, as well as working as a component in a group (wall) collage. all these objects (especially the assemblage of them on the back wall) are wondrous to me for the juxtapositioning of forms in space … pipes in a rack, musical instruments, pitchers, jugs, african masks, sculpture, postcards and knick-knacks… this enlarged photograph has been in my possession for over thirty-five years. it is the only thing that i have kept throughout my life of travelling and various temporary digs and situations. i guess that it fit nicely into the bottom of a suitcase, or something. it has never had a frame around it and i have never really hung it up for any period of time. i see it popping up in various places where i have shifted it to and fro. but its appeal must be like family is for other people because, for better or worse, it has been my (mostly ignored) companion throughout the major portion of my creative life to date. only now i have found it behind my easel with an assortment of other things and i am looking at it … i am again suddenly aware of the impact that this depicted littered wall space behind braque has had on the compositional sense within my own work. that is, the isolation of objects on a flat plane and the fascination with interplays of the positive and negative spaces their proximities suggest ( - ). i realise an organisational aspect which i have almost unconsciously incorporated into my own work for all these years. maybe if i could not contemporarily justify the traditional still life motif within my own work, i have nevertheless extracted an element of his personal need for order and formal coherence into my own artistic temperament. braque has always been my starting point ( - ) … whereas braque hung his objects on the wall and took them down to be placed in his still lifes, i have decided to simply paint the wall ( - ). my photograph of georges braque (circa ). john tarlton. something quick for the kids ( ).watercolour/gouache/collage furthermore, i personally associate with the objects depicted and the calming, meditative environments they create. the obvious familiarity and love braque had for the assorted and recurring objects he used as subject matter in the still lifes personally relate to my own fascination with domestic objects as focal points for contemplation. that is: … they remind me of the tranquil times of my life, the various temporary digs that i set up (as comfortably as i could) as an arts student and the quiet coffees and conversations (around cluttered tables) with remembered friends ( - ). johntarlton. a letter to nora ( ). john tarlton. considering the simple vase charcoal and coloured pencil. ( ). charcoal and coloured pencil . or, … the placement of objects in association to one another, to be used as interpretative devices for visual narratives (john, - ). i love placing things in associations, arranging objects (even temporarily or in non artistic situations) to see how they visually relate, how they talk to each other -- and to me ( - ). this internal conversation and tacit familiarity inherent in the silent ‘knowingness’ of things about us are suggested through an excerpt from the poem, on braque (tarlton, ). it concerns such states of familiarity which the aging painter may have felt in his environment. the poem reads: the weeding machine (the garden has warned him, the starling and robin whisper) braque walks undisturbed, a frail branch moving among the autumn. certain paintings can only be done with old eyes, the quiet conversation of oil paint. braque has been preparing, a canvas primed bright white. he will be in the company of intimate friends, the fruit dish, pipe and tablecloth-- a spot of french sun on the soft eulogy of a bending peach. tarlton, j. excerpt from the poem on braque ( ). summary to varying degrees, the participants shared a characteristic of personal past or present links and memories to the experiences phenomenologically examined. the aesthetic experience manifested positive psychological associations; that exposure to the paintings triggered cognitive recall of personal histories which were reaffirming to the subjects. this was apparent in terms of subject matter, preferences to artistic styles, formal design relationships and associations to philosophical stances and universal themes such as love, death, domicile and birth. these recollections contained both identifiable factual referents, concerning recall of the actual environments where the works were viewed and emotive and philosophical states triggered by their representations. moreover, the participants manifested personal associations were sourced in personal ways and from different kinds of personal experiences which they held as being sympathetic in essence to the paintings’ overall intent. these associations were actualised within the immediacy of the aesthetic encounter or in further reflection and mediation. . a sense of mystery but old tricks teach us to be wary. the word betrays because it does not disclose a whole process. wakowski, d. excerpt from the poem the buddha turns base metals, flowers & butterflies into gold on his birthday ( ). within the general agreement regarding immediacy and totality, the synthesising of design appreciation of form with associations, metaphorical response, aspects of virtuosity and vision and personal association within aesthetic experience, the researchers also acknowledged a sensation of mystery or an ineffable quality to their encounters. logical explanations or critical reflection regarding representational imagery or abstraction could not totally encompass or resolve the response. this situation has already been noted by chris and is continued in his reflected analogy of the attraction we have to certain people. this being that: [t]here are things and people for instance, that you have recognition of and there is this immediate connection, something going on there. it could be biological or spiritual or any number of variables within the equation. but we can never be sure of what initiates the connection. it is a connection to something unexplainable, inexplicable, at least to the conscious mind… good painting holds that kind of mystery (chris, - ). puzzling aspects of the painting may turn out to be nothing, just part of the mystery -- that there is no real answer. and perhaps that is what i look for in a painting, that there is no end point, no final meaning, that it rests in a certain un-certain-ness, of ambiguity ( - ). chris continues: earlier on i wanted those answers that had resolutions but now … its like a technique within painting, when you get to a certain point with the technique it becomes as much of a trap as anything else (chris, - ). i’m constantly looking for that ‘conclusion’ i guess, but then again, once i’ve found it, the journey’s over ( - ). or, regarding the immediacy of the experience, caroline acknowledges that: … i don’t really know what grabs me. if i try to analyse it i still don’t really know what it is. it’s more a sort of inner calm, a sort of something that just goes ‘bing!’ or makes you begin to breathe deeply (caroline, - ) … perhaps it a mixture of craftsmanship, content and the associations stirred by the painting. much of this one can analyse and acknowledge, but at the core, there always remains a mystery, more like an inner calm, a triggering, an internal knowing that everything is there and just right ( - ). caroline penny. ibis and cootes ( ). oil on canvas. this point is also taken up by elizabeth: … i do feel that there is a kind of instinctual thing where you stop by the painting and you don’t know why you stopped by it (you may figure out some of the reason down the track) but you are firstly just pulled in by something for all the right reasons (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, - ) … a resonance perhaps … it’s attracting you but you are not aware of those reasons (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, ). for example, in lavender mist, elizabeth construes a connection with an over- riding spirituality through the painting’s ephemeral nature; its abilities to evoke transitions and transformations of structure and feeling. while elizabeth believes that a spiritual link is undeniably present, in her final analysis, there are no rational, quantifiable or symbolic flags which can be struck. explicating a cosmic apparition becomes an extremely difficult task and is abandoned for sensuous knowing (elizabeth, - ). that is, what is to be known through its ineffable nature resides within the primordial experience, within the immediacy of experiential encounter. as a passage from levertov’s ( ) poem a common ground might argue, what would be needed goes beyond the human capacity to utter, it requires: not ‘common speech’ a dead level but the uncommon speech of paradise, tongue in which oracles speak to beggars and pilgrims: not illusion but what whitman called ‘the path between reality and the soul’, a language excelling itself to be itself, speech akin to the light with which at day’s end and day’s renewal, mountains sing to each other across the cold valleys. levertov, d. excerpt from the poem a common ground ( ). in standing before death’s head abstraction # , i also found myself suddenly in a situation where my logical and descriptive voice could only effectively mumble. it was far from being able to define the meanings and sensations i felt. here: the bleakness was almost oppressive and overpowering both to my imagination and to my reasoning. i believed that i was suddenly, concretely aware of something that i could not actually explain … like a knowing of absolute silence, of finality, of the impermanence of the human coil. i felt as if i was in a presence (john, - ) …like the never ending repetition of waves which say nothing to us but can be felt so deeply, so primordially ( - ). and: i became very quiet, outside and within myself. i did not want to speak, did not want to artificially adorn the moment with words which would desert me anyway ( - ) … a kind of inner peace … i was part of something that was unknowable. i was linked to something, the human condition perhaps, more tightly. i felt a kinship with the universe (or maybe its dust) and it seemed pointless to talk. the silence informed me of all i needed to know ( - ). i could only find some sort of metaphorical synergy in a passage from larkin’s ( ) poem next, please. here: we think each one will heave to and unload all good into our lives, all we are owed for waiting so devoutly and so long. but we are wrong: only one ship is seeking us, a black- sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back a huge and birdless silence. in her wake no waters breed or break. larkin, p. excerpt from the poem next, please, ( ). summary apparent throughout much of the phenomenological gatherings was the notion that the aesthetic experiences of the selected paintings contained a sense of mystery and an ineffable quality which logical explanation or critical reflection could not adequately define. much of what was emotively felt or intrinsically recognised were immediate connections whose sources stemmed from a presumedly un-tappable unconscious, whether believed to be universal or personally idiosyncratic. the explication resided within the primordial experiences of sensations which, for the most part, could only be felt, not deductively proven or discursively explicated. while later propositional input was seen as helpful in reinforcing the experience, it was not considered imperative. whatever problematic conceptual voids which existed were filled with synergies or a simple surrendering of consciousness to a presumed multi-faceted perceptual immediacy. . transformative aspects the findings also indicated a transformative characteristic being integrated into aesthetic experience. this transformative nature of the experience manifested itself in terms of; (a) the subject’s self image (b) in the perception of the painting as surpassing its actual physicality, its nature as an object in space and time and becoming a vehicle for personal transcendence, and (c) the notion that the aesthetic experience has an on-going power. (a) subject self-image the findings from the interview transcripts and reflective journals indicated that the initial heightened and positive experiences of the paintings selected by the participants were acknowledged to be instrumental in changing their perception of self. that is, the participants proposed that the heightened experiential encounters promoted an advanced state of consciousness that promoted new ways of seeing and knowing. these transformative states further established the desire for self actualisation and the desire for positive life changes. for example, as i responded to my aesthetic experiences generally, and the two selected paintings specifically, we see that: it [the aesthetic experience] becomes part of me, part of my personal referencing, which i attend to from time to time. its experience influences the way i see the world immediately afterwards and like a vapour enters my backlog of experiences which influence me in times to come. i can go back to the experience for inspiration, not only for art purposes, but for day to day interactions too (john, - ). nowhere is this self actualisation aspect of aesthetic experience more apparent than in chris’s reflections. the heightened response to the works of van gogh and schnabel (as exemplified in thatched cottages in cordeville and the conversion of st paolo malfi) have been direct and major influences for personal actions. for chris, the transformative nature of aesthetic experience has impacted upon his life “in a big way (chris, ).” he explains: i mean, these painters and paintings influence my life in direct ways and in a lot of indirect ways too. certainly in choices i make, say, in where i live, in acreage outside of town. it would be naive of me to disconnect the conscious connection to van gogh’s life -- just being outside, on the fringes of it. and certainly the things i’ve built, the studio for instance, have been influenced by the size and scale of schnabel’s paintings. so the physical scale of the schnabel’s paintings and the content of van gogh’s paintings have really influenced and directly changed what i have done, and the massive energies i have spent in my life ( - ). chris continues: for instance, it took all my energies and time for twelve months to build a studio and house on the property; now i couldn’t have done that if i hadn’t seen these paintings, their size and the ramifications of that. now that’s a physical thing that came about through a hell of a lot of energy and dedication to make it so. why was it made so? because of the influences of the schnabel paintings ( - ). through the aesthetic experiences of these and similar paintings, chris’s conception of what life is about (e.g. relating to such notions as place, home or the nature and implications of ‘a dwelling’) ( - ) and his place within these concepts are internalised and acted upon. van gogh’s paintings are constant reminders or screens for chris to see the best and focus upon it ( - ). furthermore, the transformative nature of personal response to thatched cottages in cordeville is revealed through such passages as: van gogh’s work, more than any artists’ work, functions as a model for the [my] world. that is, i can look at the clouds in the painting and look at the clouds outside and one changes the perception of the other. i can look at the cottages in the painting and then look at my own house and perception and understanding/appreciating of both things alter (chris, - ). the transformative nature within chris’s aesthetic experience of schnabel’s the conversion of st paolo malfi also manifested itself through correspondent desires. here, chris expresses these desires: i wanted to paint on a large scale. i wanted to live large, in big places with big spaces. i wanted to be able to create with abandon and have people love it like the way i loved those [schnabel’s] paintings. i wanted to live in this state of mystery without having people complain ‘but what does he mean?’ freedom and love without justification ( - ). chris worfold. man in rain ( ). oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. transformational feelings are also stressed by elizabeth. she responds to lavender mist as if being in a state where: you’re participating completely in the work with every fibre of your body and every molecule of your skin, listening for the colour and the rhythm and the texture and the dance of it all …you are totally incorporated into the painting and nothing else exists or matters during that time (elizabeth, - ). elizabeth also feels what she refers to as a personal wholeness and describes the feeling as that of being all-knowing and all-sensing ( ). she recalls that: … it felt as if everything i had seen before and been moved by had logically and naturally led me to where i now found myself -- in front of this awesome work that seemed to be the natural culmination of so much artistic striving up to this point ( - ). here, elizabeth experiences a “particular soothing and compensatory sense of indissociable connection of the individual to eternity -- something limitless, boundless, oceanic” ( - ) which she also describes as sublime and hallucinatory ( ). as she reflects: this painting seems to reach out, grab you and pull you toward it and i think this corporeal aspect of pollock’s painting and my corporeal experiencing of it, responding bodily to it fed my then burgeoning fascination with installation art … ( - ). the experience of lavender mist was seen as a motivating factor in promoting elizabeth’s attempt to understand the shift from european modernism to american modernism at that time in her life ( ). she also feels the ephemeral and feminine quality of the work experienced was a seminal force in her later fascination and exploration of body, performance and feminist art forms ( ). for elizabeth, the transformational aspects can also be found within the mysterious aspects of the aesthetic experience itself. as she reflects, transformational feelings are generated: perhaps because it helps you to understand something and move on to the next level of knowing ‘ or things about art’, an element in an ongoing and unfolding mystery ( - ). to this elizabeth adds: it keeps you motivated and hungry for more looking. transcendence at the time and also somewhat ongoing to the extent that you know that you can always go to ‘art’ for comfort, exhilaration, stimulation, to feel alive, you know that it will feed and sustain you in some way,(but you really don’t know how ( - ). the transformative aspects of aesthetic experiences were also a dominant characteristic within my responses. that is, the paintings took me to other places and influenced my outlook. here: i forgot the reality that this [death’s head abstraction # ] was an object, a painting on pieces of canvas and wooden stretchers. it assumed its own presence. i felt as if i could crack its surface open and enter its inner sanctum. i felt that i could enter into its deaf knowing and be at peace (john, - ). the transformative nature of the experience continued. it connoted the quietude and absolute-ness i had experienced on valencia island, and the immediate sensations, wherein: i felt things around me more crystal, more clear. i grew more reflective. i looked at books and things in the bookshop more attentively. i was sensitised to the environment somehow. the birds, the colour of the grass, the lay of the land, the cut of the city cat [river ferry] on the surface of the river. i did not want to eat or drink. i did not want to talk. i felt inwardly informed; i knew something new, an insight that, as i could not explain it properly, i saw no need to share … i was content, a kind of inner peace. i knew i was part of something unknowable, linked to something, the human condition perhaps, more tightly ( - ). i had been transported to and experienced a realm landscaped “ … in depersonalisation, something resonating the life source /life span type of thing. it was cleansing” ( ). again, after the experience: everything and everyone seemed brighter and so did my outlook on life. i felt empowered, eager to engage in life and in my own work again. i think it mostly focussed my olfactory sensations to my environment more than anything else. in addition, i did feel somehow more intelligent, self-assured with life in general, more ready to reflect on all sorts of things. i was in-tune, aware and interested again ( - ). the experience generated feelings of: … a kind of calm, inward peace and awareness. the feeling like i suddenly knew something that i hadn’t recognised before (or had forgotten about), awe, silence, more alert to the environment, not necessarily happy, more of a feeling of being at peace, more alive, resolved and part of things ( - ). i was delighted that something new had entered my life/experience, something that had not been there before. it invigorated me. it stimulated me to look for more such like experiences. i think that it helped me prepare for such experiences in the future ( - ). john tarlton. … with cake ascending ( ). watercolour/gouache/collage. like chris and me, caroline ascribes to aesthetic experience the ability to inspire her practice as a painter. again, the experiences are seen as exemplars or stimulants for the making of her own art, rather than as something to emulate or copy. in other words, the experiences exist as reinforcements for her pro-activity within the art community and her craft. they are assertive in that the experiences proclaim “ … that it is all still out there and i come out of it feeling wonderful” (caroline, - ). for example, caroline reflects: experiencing ‘argenteuil’ makes me want to paint, to sit with my old fishing box and portable easel and just take in the afternoon, looking at all the gentleness in the world around me ( - ). caroline also furthers the already noted exuberance proposed within the transformational aspects of aesthetic experience. she believes in the experiences of the paintings to act as vehicles which can project her beyond a prior state of knowing. that is, to alter her livedworld: absolutely. prior to viewing i can feel flattened, exhausted, fed up or angry and then when i leave the experience i begin to think everything is possible … i’m buzzing and i’ve got all this energy again. i have been totally fed and watered by the experience (caroline, - ). its love really, you’re falling in love. everything is glossier, more wonderful after the experience ( - ). it is an upbeat thing that i get ( ). to this, while reflecting on her experience with argenteuil, she adds: i want to be there and yet don’t need to be physically there because i feel as if i am there -- that my senses have moved into the image. i can imagine sitting in the little sail boat, becalmed by the breeze, waiting for a slight gust to make my hair move and the sails to slowly fill with air as we edge over the glassy water ( - ). she also reflects: it’s like entering a complete new world … i seem to walk with a more lightness of step ( - ). it makes me, rounds me as a person. ‘argenteuil’ [and emmie and her child] fills me up, heightens my senses, makes my pulse quicken ( - ). it is a satisfying and complete feeling of being right with the world and the beauty in the simplest moments of everyday life. it makes me want to shout out loud and joyously with a complete feeling of freedom, a release, that there are lots of possibilities and achievements possible ( - ). i shut my eyes and immediately re-create the image in my mind’s eye. it’s so complete as an image ( - ). summary in terms of perceptions of self, the participants held the heightened experiential encounters promoted an advanced state of consciousness which was transformative in so far as it energised new ways of seeing and knowing. these transformative states further promoted the desire for self actualisation and for positive life changes. these changes were felt in direct and indirect ways, influencing lifestyle, professional choices and philosophical positions. the experiencing of the paintings produced feelings of personal wholeness, meditative sensations which altered present emotional states, acted as stimulants and initiators for purposive action and as positive reinforcing agents for practical and pragmatic activities. (b) the view that paintings transcend their physical objective status without subjective interpretations (as exemplified by caroline above), the actual, objective presences of the paintings reflected on in this dissertation could be quantifiably described as: loosely stretched rectangle pieces of canvas or other surfaces which accommodate surfaces of low relief paint applications whose proximities to each other resemble images or states of abstractions. this is an objective description. however, for caroline, the same assembly of materials is seen as a vehicle for transcendence. “it speaks of age, history, tradition, family life, respect, values, love, ways of life that have been around for centuries and will continue for centuries to come” (caroline, - ). this manifestation transforms the object in perception, in actual space and time, into a window for viewing images and thoughts unique within imagination and personal contexts. it becomes a representation of personal and positive memories; a subjectively viewed object which has the ability to “ … bring me back to europe, home, childhood, holidays, family and solid base of life” ( - ). caroline penny. brownie’s corner of the hunter valley ( ). oil on canvas. in addition, the same rectangle of canvas helps caroline motivate her own creative drive. it can alter her perception of the present, change her mood and (positively) physically and emotionally slow her down ( ). it is both a stimulant for action and an object capable of producing calm and reflective states. indeed, once the experience of the image is ingrained, the actual object/painting need not be required in order to act in the above capacities. the painting now resides not only in its physical sense but also in an intangible form; an idea or concept within inspiration and personal celebration which the subject can initiate at any time. the transformative ability of a painting to go beyond its perceived physical presence as an object is echoed throughout the research participants’ reflective journals and interviews. as i recalled persson’s death’s head abstraction # : the true meaning-ness of the painting is the presence which goes past, transcends the painted surface (john, - ). i felt as if i could crack its surface and enter its inner sanctum ( - ). i was immediately aware of its symbolic presence, that it was saying something which seemed to divorce itself from the objectified nuts and bolts of physical construction. it transcended its make-up. the message it was carrying existed in its own, beyond the materials. indeed, my experience with the piece initially had nothing to do with its actuality in the real world ( - ). john tarlton. my attempts… ( ). watercolour/gouache/collage. the status of marble table as a physical object in space is also transformed and an alternate perceptual dimension of the painting is established. here: it’s like the physical painting, the thing on the wall, goes ( ). the physicality is a simple introduction to ‘enter.’ it’s like two things really -- the objectified art object and the other world which it presents in your head. to go there, recognition of the physical side of the actual painting is left … it’s the portrayal, where it takes you, rather than the solid piece of painted ‘furniture.’ the physical painting is like the admired design of the bottle, whereas the ‘other,’ its message and life world, is the desired drink inside ( - ). the attraction of the transformative nature of the objective painting itself also fascinates chris. within his selected paintings, he finds the physicality of the paint and: … the shift as that moves in and out of image, how the image can move into abstraction and then back again … those sorts of fluctuation. that’s what kind of attracts me to those sorts of images … because they both operate on that level (chris, - ). moreover, as he observes, you may be looking at something but you would be actually looking deeper and re-creating it, manifesting it in different ways ( - ). in order to internalise the painting’s other presence, its intrinsic intentions, he looks further at and into the worlds of heightened realities the paintings reveal. artists like van gogh reveal this to us. he gives us a map and keys to this hidden world ( ). alternatively, a fascination with the different presences a painting can represent is also apparent in chris’s interest concerning the shifting natures of the painting as an object in itself, as distinct from its imagery. this can be seen in his response to the excessively large and over-riding herculean physicality and the effortful material distribution and application which personify schnabel’s work. these notions resonate in his own work, where textures and supports can encompass anything from clothes, garage doors or mattresses. these objects-as-physical amalgamations within the act and actuality of painting represent real things from, and of, the world. chris considers them ‘hybrids,’ maintaining their own integrity as objects and also being incorporated into the general intentionality of the painting. here, “the form has not changed; the image has changed the idea of the form” ( - ). chris worfold. the willing line ( ). oil, acrylic, acrylic adhesive and fabric. the ability of a painting to have a life outside its physical presence as an object on a wall becomes fundamental to the aesthetic experience. chris conceives painting as “a model for the world … it represents what i want to see, what i do see and what i haven’t seen yet” ( - ). to accomplish such requirements of representations, a painting must assume several guises. these guises, these other faces and subjective realities outside the physical object on the wall are also consonant with elizabeth’s aesthetic experience of lavender mist. for elizabeth, lavender mist is not simply the physical painting, a single representation of what the artist saw transposed to canvas. rather, it becomes an encoded record of what pollock did in paint (elizabeth, - ), the seizing of the moment of the now ( ). she enthuses on the innovative and experiential effect which the artist has achieved. it is: … not a picture of a ‘thing’ but rather a record of the psychographic energy-charged movements pollock had made in the moment of the now ( - ) … to translate actual physical motion ( ) … less concerned with portraying any image than with illustrating an unseen moment in the creative process ( - ). again, the heightened response to this painting is more than attention directed toward the mere physical presence of the object. while elizabeth states that she found it impossible not to be moved by the sheer physicality of the painting in terms of such physical attributes as monumentality of scale ( - ), she also sees lavender mist as attaining a life beyond its objective status. it is: … something like a force field, it is way more than the sum of all its parts. [like] ‘blue poles’ and its impact upon australia is more than a large expressive expensive canvas punctuated by dark blue, roughly diagonal lines. [like] ‘guernica’ is moral argument, an entire philosophy against war [so too] ‘lavender mist’ is an orgiastic field of dancing colour and mist and scent, a massively multi-layered, overloaded experience of the world and beauty ( - ). summary the perception of the painting can surpass its actual physicality, its nature as an object in space and time, and become a vehicle for viewer transcendence. that is, the painting can transcend its objective status and be perceived as an imaginative window for subjectively viewing depicted imagery as well as giving form to thoughts unique within imagination and personal contexts. it becomes a representation of personal and positive memories and a motivation for creative drive. furthermore, once the experience of the image is ingrained, the actual object/painting need not be required in order to act in the above capacities. the painting resides in its physical sense and in intangible forms an idea or concept within inspiration and personal celebration which the subject can initiate at any time. a painting can possess heightened realities below the surface of exhibited paint and canvas. it can become a model for the world, a representation of subjective reality and a valuable illustration of the creative process-- all of which goes far beyond the mere sum of its objective parts. (c) on-going power of experience the ‘experience of the world and beauty’ to which elizabeth referred to earlier is not one of mere transient, sensorial flirtation. it continues to inform. that is, all participants claimed that the aesthetic experience has an on-going positive influence in both the practical and appreciative aspects of their lives. this on-going power of the aesthetic experience also resonates within most of the characteristics observed within the findings section. also, it seems that the sway of the experience can change and grow over time (chris, - ; elizabeth, ; caroline, - ; john, - ) in order to accommodate future influences and situations. this becomes evident in the fact that the initial aesthetic experiences of all the paintings selected for investigation within this dissertation (with the exception of my relatively recent encounter with death’s head abstraction # ) range from over a decade ago to more than thirty-five years. in other words, the aesthetic experience can have a substantial and beneficial longevity. its intangible effect becomes a process, a proactive agent for personal growth and understanding. the on-going power of aesthetic experience becomes evident throughout the collected responses, as the below samplings indicate. in caroline’s case, the experience becomes (in reflection) “ … a moment to have and hold on to throughout old age and re-live over and over again” (caroline, - ). in clarifying this position, caroline continues: if we are talking about the two paintings in front of me [photographs of the originals], the cassatt is very relevant to me now … being a mother and all that. but if i looked at it as a grandmother it would have all the same elements, but maybe it would have more knowledge to give in that different context … and certainly with the monet, who doesn’t want to be walking down that path right now. i just want to be there, totally and utterly. i want to stand in that afternoon and in that painting in my mind now as i have in the past and hopefully in the future ( - ). caroline sees the experiences of the paintings as on-going phenomena: they never really run out of things to tell me. they are pieces of art that can play with you, i think, for ages and you are always drawn back to them ( - ). caroline penny. taking the horses home ( ). oil on canvas. as observed above, the experience does not finish when she leaves behind the actual painting. caroline reiterates: no, definitely not finished with it. because i think that paintings you love you really want to own. i want to own them. i want to keep them. i want to stay close to them. to say otherwise would be to presume that the paintings’ experiences have a life span for appreciation and i don’t think that is the case. they are too precious to me for that ( - ). i’m still fascinated by them ( - ). while the aesthetic experience of death’s head abstraction # is still quite a recent encounter for me it has nevertheless not diminished in my memory. i periodically draw upon it in reflection in order to illustrate some abstraction concerning infinity or cosmic inevitabilities. but it is the aesthetic experience of braque’s paintings that best denote the aesthetic experience as an on-going phenomenon. like caroline’s thoughts on her reflected paintings, i too am drawn back to the still life paintings of braque, as exemplified by marble table. like the rest of the participants, i feel the on-going, affirmative powers of the aesthetic experience which, in the case of braque, have been a part of my professional and personal life for over thirty-five years. the influence of the aesthetic experience on me has not faded, as reflected in such journal entries as: there’s an immediate attachment to it. it becomes part of me, part of my personal referencing (john, - ). or, as i later continued: i can recall the experience within my practice as an artist and appreciator of things around me. they help me put familiar and satisfying structure into my work and into my interactions with my environment. they are familiar and dependable. through the years ‘marble table’ (and other works of braque) has consistently presented to me an inward feeling of peace and an outward feeling of direction. if i stumble over a reproduction of it in an art book or magazine, whatever i had planned is briefly interrupted. i am immediately slowed down and give it several moments for reflection. seeing it gives me a warm sensation, makes me involuntarily smile, like unexpectedly coming across someone you love on a busy street. i want to slow down and talk awhile ( - ). john tarlton. the old singer ( ). charcoal and coloured pencil. caroline and i are closely aligned by sharing the view that the on-going power of aesthetic experience manifests itself as unconditional and unfaltering consistent. elizabeth also shares a similar point of view with caroline and me in her on-going fascination for the original work in both initial and reflective aesthetic experience. however, elizabeth considers that possible subsequent encounters of the artwork may promote variations of feeling from those experienced with its first viewing by virtue of time, place and personal agency specificities. yet she maintains, even with the re- focusing influences of contingencies, a conviction that the on-going power of her connection with lavender mist would make any future viewing of it fulfilling. as elizabeth proposes: although i have never had the possibility to re-see ‘lavender mist’ in the flesh … i do know that any reviewing of the painting would generate another intense experience -- not the same experience but something solid at the very least (elizabeth, - ). like caroline and i, elizabeth expresses the idea that the on-going power of the aesthetic experience she felt with lavender mist does not diminish with time. as she observes from a vantage point thirteen years post experience: … the memory of the intensity of that connection and blurring of boundaries between myself and the painting doesn’t really fade. i can call it up at will and belief in that kind of merging between observers and artworks has informed all the subsequent work i have done in the arena of art criticism, teaching art history etc ( - ). while chris concurs with the on-going power of the aesthetic experience, he nevertheless contends that this on-going power can have a ‘use by’ date. that is, the aesthetic experience is contingent on its ability to service the needs and requirements of the viewer, both in terms of artistic practice and personal appreciation. he sees the aesthetic experiences of paintings as maintaining their unique position in relation to the growth and changing predispositions of the viewer. in other words, the on-going power of aesthetic experience is also correspondent to the pragmatic and practical requirements of what chris refers to as ‘the on-going journey’ (chris, ). while paintings which once had great influence will always remain somewhat important or interesting (in varying degrees), their on-going power of influence and appreciation may wain. they must be able to withstand continuous interaction and interrogation ( ). as chris reflects, the experience must “ … keep giving, it has to be this journey and once the journey’s ended so is the experience of the painting” ( - ). for example, chris recalls past aesthetic experiences which no longer have the power to engage: looking back at the works i found exciting when i was younger -- i can see the reasons why i was excited about them -- but now i don’t find them stimulating because i have moved on ( - ). caravaggio, for example. i just loved this stuff when i was younger. i couldn’t get enough of it because it does have that narrative, that drama and all those things you look for when you are young. but it was also because they were beautiful paintings. however, when i saw a number of them when i was overseas they looked like reproductions of themselves, so flat and thin. also, once i understood to a certain extent the way to paint like that, there was a kind of end point. for me there was no more mystery there and in a sense that is what i want from a painting. they had met my expectations of them and that was the end of it ( - ). chris continues: it is a process, but it all comes back to those notions of the stories that you are comfortable with. maybe that goes full circle into what we are discussing all along and that is the idea of the journey. and when that journey ends, when you already know the story and the story has become so familiar to you that it finally becomes boring ( - ). once a painting stops giving me something to learn, when i’m just looking at it and appreciating it and not actually learning anything anymore, then my interest dies off quite rapidly … it’s not that’s it’s not still a great painting, its just that i no longer pay attention to it anymore ( - ). but for chris the end point of the on-going power of the aesthetic experience does not necessarily fade out completely. as he observes: i think that the work will always remain. but you’re never really inclined to give it the attention and time that you once gave it in the past. like a teaching tool, you pull it out from time to time say ‘isn’t that great,’ but you just don’t look at it anymore, you know, you don’t look anymore at the way it works ( - ). chris’s aesthetic experiences of the conversion of st paolo malfi and thatched cottages in cordeville are presently ongoing because of their qualities in holding their mystery and informative properties. this aligns with csikszentmihalyi’s and robinson’s ( ) concept of openness: the seemingly endless insights discoverable through ongoing facilitation. these works (and others by the same artists) have been influential in chris’s life for well over a decade. yet their positions as objects for indefinite long term robust aesthetic experiences are not assured and may eventually go the way of the caravaggio’s. as chris notes: these images have on-going stories to tell -- although i’m familiar with them, i’m not exactly sure where it all ends, so i’m constantly looking … ( - ). finally, the inevitable occurs: …to a certain extent, the schnabel paintings, because of my time spent engaging with them [beginning in the early s], are actually less engaging to me now than they were. it’s not to say that they might not open up for me again, but they are starting to close rather than to open ( - ). summary resonating through the transformational characteristic is the notion that the aesthetic experience has the capacity to continue to inform. that is, there is a shared belief that the aesthetic experience has an on-going positive influence in both the practical and appreciative aspects of the participants’ lives. it can have a substantial and beneficial life in that its intangible effect becomes a process, a proactive agent for personal growth and understanding. the experience itself can change and grow over time to accommodate future situations or influences. in most cases, it continues well after the initial viewing has passed and becomes an integral part of the personal referencing for both artistic and pragmatic concerns. this characteristic evaluation is shared by three of the four participant-researchers. however, while the longevity, the on-going power of aesthetic experience, may be seen by the majority of participants as possibly indefinite, there exists a dissenting notion. this notion contends that the on-going power can have a ‘use by’ date. that is, the aesthetic experience is contingent on its ability to service the needs and requirements of the viewer, both in terms of artistic practice and appreciation. here, aesthetic experiences maintain their unique positions in relation to the growth and changing predispositions of the viewer. hence, the on-going power of aesthetic experience may also be correspondent to pragmatic and practical requirements. in the final analysis, they must be able to withstand continuous interaction and interrogation, to keep giving as required by the viewer. in this proposition, while paintings which once had great influence will always remain somewhat important or interesting (in varying degrees), their on-going power of influence and appreciation may wain. within the reflections of the participants, transformative characteristics of aesthetic experience were observed. these characteristics surfaced in notions relating to subject self image, in the belief that the perception of the painting surpassed its actual physicality, its nature as an object in space and time, and became a vehicle for viewer transcendence. also was also apparent in the idea that the experience had an on-going power to inform and transform the participants’ lives. . ordinary experience and aesthetic experience a rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. de saint-exupery, a. excerpt from flight to arras (p. ), ( ). (a) aspects of heightened perception and focus all participants identified within their heightened positive aesthetic responses feelings which they believed were unique, focussed and correspondent with subject initiated, object-directed attentiveness. rather than identifying these experiences as autonomous and as unique manifestations of response (as in essentialist proposals), the majority of participants’ views indicated a belief that the aesthetic experience had its antecedence within ordinary experience. that is, a sensitising and heightening of ordinary experience which effectively held in check disruptive influences and that the experience’s duration was unencumbered by conflicting emotional or physical directions. participants’ pragmatic concerns were also considered advantageous in varying degrees for heightened responses. elizabeth, while reflecting on the possible differences of aesthetic experience from ordinary experience, considered the former: not that much different, in a way, far more intense, a full-blown technicolour version of the ordinary that makes ordinariness so much better (elizabeth, - ). she further explains: it [aesthetic experience] is a kind of amplification of the ordinary. you have to be receptive to the experience in the first instance, to allow it to emerge out of the ordinary … i can be driving along the freeway in polluted, horrible traffic and see the most amazing, exhilarating thread of cloud in a low sky and be totally overwhelmed by the precise opposite of ordinariness and be absolutely taken out of my own skin and that is such a liberating situation. it is an attitude that is open to being in the supremely right place at the right time and yes, it is staggeringly different from the ordinary and also not so, because it can emerge from the middle of the ordinary -- a flash of delightfully witty graffiti on a dull street on a grey monday ( - ). there is something about taking the ordinary and making it sort of magical (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, ). chris concurs: the more we look the more we see. the more we see the more beautiful even the mundane appears (chris, ). chris worfold. mother-in-law’s tongue ( ). oil and mixed media on board. chris continues on the idea that the aesthetic experience is predicated within ordinary experience. he finds that: routine experience has all these possibilities; the aesthetic experience simply distils and emphasises certain elements. when we are focussed on practical tasks and logical worries few visual experiences can interrupt the dullness of our own numbing thoughts. our focus is our perception ( - ). [for example] [s]unsets and sunrises show off all the colours and complements of the spectrum and are majestic aesthetic experiences perhaps beyond all others. but few if any would dedicate every dawn and dusk to view these even though each one is unique. instead it is only the occasional ‘incredible’ afternoon light that stops us in awe ( - ). furthermore, he contends that: you would be looking at something but you would actually be looking deeper and re-creating it, manifesting it in different ways ( - ). we have to give as much time to this [focus of perception] as we do to practical things. i think that we are trained to work in a very rational way and that makes sense, but in terms of enjoyment, that actually comes from a very nice balance between both of them. i think that the aesthetic experience must be there, available to people at all times, by looking intensely to diffuse their focus to the whole, in the greater totality … and in the miniscule ( - ). he relates this ability to fortify the ordinary experience into a state of heightened awareness through the example of appreciation he finds within van gogh. here: artists like van gogh reveal this to us [that routine experience can convert to aesthetic experience at any time given a different focus]. van gogh demonstrates this, all his subjects being of the otherwise banal things and surrounds of his everyday life … aesthetic experience and everyday experience interact constantly. there is a dialogue. in certain artist’s work that dialogue becomes a hymn, an open harmonious expression of a truth available to all but seen by few ( - ). there is a shared belief that heightened perception and focus intensifies ordinary experience. it is the ‘sense’ description [suggested by caroline] added to the drama and particularity of the ordinary (caroline, ). as caroline relates: for me this painting [argenteuil] has all that. it has that [otherwise ordinary] moment caught. it has that exact afternoon there to re-live over and over. it brings that instant back to life -- trees, air, temperature, atmosphere, sounds, the earth beneath one’s feet. it has it all. this all applies when i look at the painting and when i think about it, it applies to the mary cassatt painting as well. she’s done exactly the same. she’s caught that magic and, if you like, bottled it for life -- to re-live over and over again that incredible extra-ordinary moment in time between mother and child ( - ). for caroline, pragmatic thoughts within the aesthetic experience are minimised naturally as her attitude changes with the shifting and heightening of focus ( - ). she finds variation between aesthetic experience and ordinary experience through a personal evaluation of time. as she recalls: reality is always moving ( ). looking at everyday happenings often is done on the back of other things occurring simultaneously. for instance, i may see a stunning sunset, but if samuel is screaming for food and lydia needs attention [caroline’s young children] that natural sunset may be viewed as part of the whole process, beautiful, but too busy. whereas the notion of time as it relates to aesthetic experience seems to allow spaces for contemplation. it’s in the luxury of being able to return to the image (or reflection of it) at different times of the day and night to re-visit it. it’s bottled time, like a fantastic perfume ( - ). caroline penny. pathway to peace ( ). oil on canvas. the sensation of time slowing down and the changing focus of perception are also represented in my reflections concerning the differences and similarities of aesthetic experience with that of ordinary experience. here: the response within a heightened aesthetic experience is all about attention (john, ). my attention is directed solely at the painting. if there are external distractions they are overlooked or entered into briefly, dismissed and then i return to the work. the experience speaks of nothing but itself. it may have political/social messages to tell me but it tells me them through the piece itself. the experience is one of inner dialogue and a stimulant for reflection and engaging imagination ( - ). the differentiation between aesthetic experience and ordinary experience is further outlined: [aesthetic experience] is different from ordinary experience because it is more reflective, its dialogue seems re-directed to me personally. a beautiful car is a beautiful car. i may appraise its lines but for me it will always be a car, never quite indistinguishable from its functional intent. whereas the heightened experience of a painting goes beyond any functional purpose. heightened experience involves me going deep into myself, to explore, appreciate and learn -- it is a vehicle and activity which allows me to simply stare and let my emotions, critical self and personal history mingle with the work (a car can’t do that for me) ( - ). continuing along these lines, i found that: it is definitely about the focusing of attention and is different from ordinary experience in that i don’t feel the need to rationally analyse or justify my time spent before a wonderful work of art. the experience is its own reason for being there. a difference of experiencing is that the ordinary says just what it says, its dimensions are predictable or fathomable. that is, a peach is tasted expecting the familiar taste of a peach, etc. that taste is either as nice or not as nice as you had anticipated. in aesthetic experience there is no expectation implied by the experience and it is relatively clean (or at least tidied) of presuppositions. this is not so in ordinary experience where pragmatic results of instrumental action/reaction are expected ( - ). john tarlton. myth number six: ( ) watercolour and gouache. in addition, the differentiation of aesthetic experience from ordinary or pragmatic experience has also been established through the on-going power characteristic earlier observed. generally speaking, the idea here is that the aesthetic experience can become an intangible means for long term pro-activity among the participants, whereas unexplored ordinary experience has predominately an end point of influence. that is, the experience is finished when its instrumental purposes have been achieved. consistent with what has been proposed above, there is also apparent (in the participants’ reflections) a feeling of autonomy regarding aesthetic experience in memory itself. that is, the vividness of the experience in recall remains unified, is set apart and brought forward in recollection in a type of present-tense bond or a timelessness of past. this can be seen by the vivid articulation, clarity and familiarity the participants’ displayed when recalling actual experiential encounters, some witnessed decades past. this manifestation is in line with langer’s ( ) contention that deeply impressed incidents seem to almost “ … rise out of the past all alone, sometimes with such extraordinary detail that it suggests an experience just passed, scarcely modified at all … although the remembered event may be of old standing, it seems ‘as though it had been yesterday’” (langer, , p. ). this type of recollection is distinct from memories drawn from ordinary experience which tend to rely on peripheral facts or other associations in order to manifest the incident as a composite experience within recall. summary identified within the participants’ reflections was the notion that aesthetic experience had its antecedence in ordinary experience. that is, aesthetic experience was considered a perceptual sensitising, heightening and amplification of attention within the ordinary. in one reflection, it was termed a ‘sense’ description added to the drama and particularity of the ordinary moment. the aesthetic experience was differentiated from ordinary, pragmatic experience in its focussed attention and abilities to encourage internal dialogue within the viewer at a more profound level. it promoted effortful, deep looking and personal inquiry well past the requirement for pragmatic attention. as observed, aesthetic experience was considered a form of attention rather than a distinct class of experience; a focusing of attention in response to the sensuous, designal and meaning making qualities of the art object. it became a slowing down and re-creation (in recall) of the timeless moment where the experience seemed to be relatively free from extraneous, disruptive elements not particular to the experiencing or the recollection of the response. this heightened, sensitised state of consciousness could be found within the attuned experiencing of all manner of objects and events within the environment. (b) aspects surrounding the idea of experiential wholeness the idea of a unified and complete ‘wholeness’ of experience is a central concept of pragmatist-inspired proposals of dewey ( [ ]), apologists such as beardsley ( ) and earlier essentialist thought. three of the four participants concurred. elizabeth maintained a strong belief in the consummate qualities of aesthetic experience. she describes, in certain instances of the experience, the sensation that: you just sort of feel that you have reached enlightenment and you really understand in terms of the painting how its working and you kind of feel that you don’t need to interrogate it because it is just happening and you’re there. sometimes you get varying degrees of the feeling with other works, but it’s like all the right things come together at the right time within this one (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, - ). she continues: ... [i]t does feel like an integrated, harmonious experience you have with it even though you have the opportunity to re-visit it. my experience is that the aesthetic experience has been of a very complete sort, at the time (elizabeth in conversation with caroline, caroline, - ). caroline’s view corresponds to elizabeth’s and furthers the notion of a complete ‘wholeness’ to the experience. in reflecting on her responses to argenteuil she finds: it’s a satisfying and complete feeling of being right with the world and the beauty in the simplest moments of everyday life. it makes me, rounds me as a person. it fills me up, heightens my senses, makes my pulse quicken with the enjoyment of looking at the simple turned into absolute perfection (caroline, - ). caroline penny. view from mcpherson’s point, brisbane ( ). oil on canvas. my journal entries also present an idea of a completeness and satiation during and at the experience’s closure (one must finally disengage with the painting). its totality as an experience was sufficient to act as a unified base for influencing and informing the holistic manner in which i positively related to my immediate post experience environments (john, ). in addition, experiential wholeness presented itself through the feelings of immediate attachment ( ), immediate intimacy with the piece and with an almost deja vu like quality to the encounter. as i recalled: there was an immediate intimacy when i looked at it [death’s head abstraction # ]. it was as if, i don’t know, that i was already acquainted with the painting before i saw it ( - ). within aesthetic experiences generally, i reflected that: i would look and look until it all made sense ( ) … or if it immediately made sense (intuitively felt), i would just stand before it and enjoy ( ). the wholeness of the experiential encounter, the understanding of its significations, becomes organised into a totality, a unified reference which interfaces with future practical and personal experience (john, ). within this wholeness of experience comes the feelings of “calm, inward peace and awareness” ( ). yet, there is, nevertheless, an aspect which points to a possible fragmented nature within my experience and aligns with chris’s idea that the aesthetic experience constantly alters and grows with the passing of time (chris, ). as i recalled: the painting’s experience [death’s head abstraction # ] is constantly changing in my head. it says many things immediately or through quiet mediation. it keeps opening. it has no one face, nor does the experience of it (john, - ). finally, this notion that the encounter is constantly ‘opening up’ introduces chris’s belief in an aesthetic experience which is non-unified and sporadic in nature. as such, his proposal contrasts with those views held by caroline, elizabeth and (to certain extents) my own regarding experiential wholeness. that is, chris sees the experience as fragmentary, rather than anything that resembles a complete and unified feeling or response. here, mere appreciation becomes redundant. he links the aesthetic experience to the idea of a process and a journey of continuing pragmatic and imaginative discovery. these properties must have the ability to grow and change over time and never lose the ability to instruct and inform. in other words, the experience becomes a kind of tool. after the immediacy of encounter, chris describes the experience: it’s hard not to talk in metaphor or analogy and it’s not narrative. maybe it’s like picking up the bible, you don’t necessarily pick up where you left off, you open it here or there and start getting into it again and sooner or later, like a seasoned preacher, you begin to know where you are and what comes next and where things are within the whole meta-narrative (chris, - ). he continues: for me the whole painting and its experience doesn’t come at once, it comes in stages. if it did come all at once [and the feeling was complete], then that would be a pretty good example to me that the aesthetic experience isn’t satisfying … [because] … it’s about being able to go back, to return to the painting ( - ). chris worfold. songwriter ( ). oil, fabric and acrylic adhesive on board. for chris, the aesthetic experience must always entail more than the feeling of simple, passive enlightenment or idle contemplation. it is not a pocket watch to be ethereally reflected upon or admired (though admiration does come into play), but rather one to be taken apart and examined. summary the notion of a unified and complete wholeness to the aesthetic experience was not endorsed by all participants. however, three of the four participants believed that the idea of experiential wholeness found expression in the feelings of being enlightened, of all things coming together at the right time and the right place. other expressions of experiential wholeness concerned the ideas of integration and harmonious interaction. it was presumed to be a fulfilment of temporal experience which could re-invent itself in later reflection and immediate attachment, intimacy and familiarity. this, in turn, became a unifying referent for future interactions within the environment. these aspects of totality were illustrated by recollections of calm, inward peace and personal revitalisation. yet, the concept of fragmentation, of experience non-unified and sporadic, was also demonstrated. here, it was proposed that the full implication inherent in an aesthetic experience does not come all at once. it is linked with the requirements of the viewer’s onward personal journey and must be able to grow and change as required. this necessitates that the experience be open, unresolved and able to progressively and perpetually unfold new discoveries and aesthetic puzzlements in line with instrumental preoccupations of the viewer. . mind and body there is little evidence within the reflections of the research participants which would forward an adherence to the traditional essentialist stance of separating the aesthetic experience from praxis, individual or social/cultural importations. in addition, there is no case for assuming that the aesthetic experience separates the body from the mind, the apprehension of the senses from robust and proactive cognition and meaning making. rather, the reflections indicate a blending, a cooperative action of the two. for instance, elizabeth earlier observed that her experience of lavender mist was essentially sensual. nevertheless she could not separate that experience from propositional domain knowledge of the artist’s personal and historical placement within the context of the art world or her own personal attachments, preoccupations and ontogeny from the experience. she maintains that aesthetic experience and art making and art appreciation in general is mostly thinking with the body and that this corporeal knowing and perception is simply another domain within cognition (elizabeth, - ). similar notions can be observed throughout most of the reflections of the other participants. here, perception is cognition. for example, chris believes that both mind and body work together in aesthetic experience. he responds somatically (like elizabeth) to the immediacy and wonder which is “ …very much a feeling thing” (chris, ) and at the same time initiates analytical and cognitive problem solving schema which he believes inform the experience from a subconscious level (chris, ). as he observes this synthesis of mentation and sensuous perception: for me now it is both. perhaps when i was younger i might have thought that you could have that split [mind and body], but i don’t think they were ever really separate … i think that what happens to us physically and what happens to us mentally are linked (chris, - ) … that our brains are working overtime [and not at the conscious level] in making sense of these [immediately sensuous] things ( - ). chris worfold. where he was, what he was doing ( ). oil on sheet metal. in death’s head abstraction # , my first reactions were those derived from sensuous perception and a feelingfulness which required only acceptance of what was being presented (john, ). as i recalled, “i wasn’t asked for anything but to reflect and contemplate” ( - ) and was rewarded by the feeling of being at peace ( ). correspondingly, with marble table, i felt what i described as an effortless “ … oneness with the subject” ( ). again, i ascribed to the experience no need for logical or rational analysis. “i [did] not need to decipher, i could just float my eyes within it …” ( - ). this, i believe, is simply appreciation for its own sake ( ). yet these essentialist traits are conjoined with a requirement in which: i have always looked hard and long. i had to be sure. it had to be provable to my inner person ( - ). i would look and look until it all made sense ( ). this ‘making sense’ implies meaning making which, in turn, requires interpretation of symbolic and literal representations. it develops through the use of cognitive strategies such as association, comparison and contrast, clustering and the search for understanding through appropriate cues and clues. in reality then, the cognitive face behind perception is the engine below consciousness which allowed me to be effortlessly ‘at one with the subject.’ indeed, much of the familiarity with braque’s work (and painting in general) is through discursive means involved with study and analysis. this is true not only for appreciation purposes, but also for the assimilation of such responses into my development as an arts practitioner. these aspects of the aesthetic experience point to the requirement of noesis as well as sensuous response and the antecedent influences derived from contextual and social/individual sourced frames of reference. john tarlton. post-modern post-mortem ( ). serigraph. like elizabeth to lavender mist, caroline leans towards a predominantly corporeal response in the aesthetic experiences of argenteuil and emmie and her child. her experiences have little regard for an analytical side (caroline, ) and she does not consciously rationalise her responses. nevertheless, caroline’s reflections do illustrate the inclusion of aspects of mind through cognitive recall of personal anecdotes and associations with the works which assist in making the experience heightened and particular for her. as she reflects: it’s probably a mixture of the technique, content and then the associations that those give off. the muddling of it together, because i initially think it would be just looking at what i was looking at, seeing that initially and then as i wondered around it with my eye, then other things would be triggered through it (caroline, - ). on critical reflection, caroline acknowledges that the desire for meaning making and consequent cognitive interrogation of the art work is concomitant with desires instigated through sensuous response. that is, they both blend within experience. this is illustrated in the following passage: … if i’ve been standing in front of something and it makes me stop and stare, i almost want to eat it. i [also] want to look at every little square inch of it to work out what it is that is just so incredibly wonderful -- or incredible shocking or fascinating or whatever it is ( - ). caroline penny. under the veranda, leatherhead ( ). oil on canvas. summary by observing the sampling of the participants’ reflections above, the dualism of mind and body can not be advanced. in addition, the responses do not apologise for either essentialist or relativist positions. the reflections seem to promote a synthesis of the two and the proposition that the emotive, feelingful aspects of perception are considered a form of cognition. that is, it suggests that mentation and the immediacy of sensuous response become one in a heightened aesthetic encounter (considered here within the limitations and specificities of this dissertation). the corporeal knowing and perception of the sensuous modality of understanding within the immediacy of aesthetic experience is seen to be simply another domain within cognition. the making sense of that which is presented in perception implies interpretation of symbolic and literal representations. it involves cognitive strategies which inform the experience on an unconscious level. the above characteristics and sub-characteristics represent a presentation based on phenomenological exploration. together, these characteristics and sub-characteristics offer a way of understanding the positive aesthetic experience with painting of the informants and perhaps, through verisimilitude, others beyond. the creative synthesis of the explicated characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting concludes the findings chapters of this dissertation. the significances of these findings, in terms of outcomes, key contributions and implications are now advanced in chapter ten. chapter ten conclusion overview this chapter summarises the purpose, outcomes, contributions and implication of this inquiry into the characteristics of positive aesthetic experience. it commences with a rehearsal of its purpose and a summary of its findings. this includes the nine major characteristics with their associated five dependent sub-characteristics as previewed in chapter eight and elaborated in chapter nine. next, the key contributions and implications of the dissertation are advanced. this includes the claim that understanding aesthetic experience requires productive reconciliation between the intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist positions. only through acknowledging the positions’ contributions of both perspectives and reconciling their paradigmatic differences can a comprehensive account of the aesthetic experience be advanced. next, implications for pedagogy and curriculum are raised. finally, possible future directions of research are proposed. purpose this dissertation explored the phenomenological investigations of two artist/educators, one professional full time artist and one art theorist/educator in explicating characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in relation to painting. the purpose of this inquiry was to further understand the characteristics of the aesthetic experience in order to contribute to ongoing debate about this experience: to encourage further discourse on an enduring, yet under-researched, in phenomenological terms (abbs, ), phenomena. its purpose was also to advance the conceptualisation of this experience and to facilitate more informed art appreciation practices in future educational and life-long learning activities. the investigation was set against a background of discussion centred on two generalised opposing theoretical positions, intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist, that have provided distinct explanations of the aesthetic modality of knowing, the field of aesthetics and the aesthetic experience. the issue here was whether heightened response originated within perception of universalist characteristics unique to the object in experience (i.e. the intrinsic/essentialist position) or whether the response was orchestrated by relativist preconditioning (i.e. the subjective/contextualist position). in addition, certain aspects of conciliatory positions were reviewed. a review of literature ascertained the major discursive positions that underpinned the dialogue surrounding the notion of aesthetic experience and acted comparatively with the research participants’ reflections, additionally reconciling the intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist positions. the engagement with these participants was directed towards addressing the research question “what are be bases for the perception and description of the phenomena of aesthetic experience in painting?” their responses where engaged through a phenomenological study that provided data on the accounts, reflections and verifications of the interpretation of these accounts. the selection of painting to act as the representative art form for observing heightened aesthetic response was based on personal relevance for the researcher and the notion that painting was arguably one of the most easily recognised, accepted and manageable exemplars for observing and representing accounts of the phenomenon. the emphasis placed on immediacy and non-mediated encounters which characterise the research participants’ responses are indicative only to this investigation and are not offered as generalisations. it should also be noted that any potential conclusions that critique established scholarly propositions are not intended to minimise their significant contributions in the field of understanding aesthetic experience. summary of findings data responses were derived from both discursive and non-discursive reflections. through analysis, nine major characteristics and five sub-characteristics were identified and elaborated in chapter eight and nine. the explicated characteristics and discriminating qualities of aesthetic experience were: explicated characteristics and discriminating qualities of aesthetic experience characteristic discriminating qualities . immediacy and totality of experience (dependent sub-characteristics) (a) minimal regard for pre-knowing (b) effortless cognition (c) non-sequencing of experience (d) divergent points of entry (e) aspects of the sublime experience comes all at once; response to wholeness rather than reduced through parts; acknowledged in feelingful states and associations; no critical, conscious examination or discourse; experience more intuitive than mediated; designal form blends with affective states; other sensuous modalities initiated by form; feelingful rather than analytical response. the feelingfulness of experience did not require propositional knowledge. understanding and awareness established through feeling rather than process of analysis; belief that cognition was somatic; cognition through sensuous immediacy. no particular systematic ordering of experience. no particular point of entry into experience; dependent on contextual predispositions of viewer. inability to comprehend the magnitude and power of representation and the associations of deep subjective longings (conciliatory position). . associative aspects innate in form elements and qualities of form trigger emotional and contextual associations; emotive, non-rational response to form. . metaphorical response replacing measurement imaginative rather than objectified response; elements and principles of design acknowledged metaphorically; non-discursive. . technical virtuosity, novelty and the ‘artist’s eye’ heightened awareness of technical aspects; awareness of innovative manipulation of materials, techniques and the artist’s perceived intention internalised into emotive personal and contextual response. .personal associations experience manifests personal, positive psychological associations; experience triggers recall of positive personal history; reaffirmation through subject matter, artistic styles, formal design relationships; associations to philosophical stance and universal themes such as love, death, existence, etc. . sense of mystery ineffable quality to experience; non-rational. . transformative aspects (a) in subject self-image (b) in promoting the view that paintings transcend their physical objective status (c) on-going power of experience promotion of heightened states of consciousness; promotion of desire for self-actualisation. paintings become vehicles for personal transcendence; paintings become representations of subjective realities and creative processes; paintings maintain an intangible form within future viewer reflections. the experience has a long term positive effect and becomes an internal personal referencing for artistic and pragmatic situations; may be correspondent to pragmatic and practical requirements of the viewer. . aesthetic experience and ordinary experience (a) aspects of heightened perception and focus (b) aspects surrounding the idea of experiential wholeness antecedence in ordinary experience; a perceptual sensitising and amplification of ordinary experience. both notions of a unifying and consummate wholeness of experience and a non-unified and sporadic fragmentation of experience identified. . mind and body cognitive strategies employed on unconscious level within immediate, corporeal knowing; inductive rather than deductive; emotive, feelingful aspects of perception are considered a form of cognition; mentation and the immediacy of sensuous response become one in a heightened aesthetic encounter; no dualism acknowledged. key theoretical contributions and implications the theoretical contributions arising from this investigation are ninefold. these contributions concern: ( ) the explication of characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting; ( ) a conciliatory positioning; ( ) the contribution of immediacy; ( ) qualities and meaning; ( ) self-justifying experience with underlying contextual importations; ( ) the relevance of modernist painting in a postmodern climate; ( ) intensified experience; ( ) a conciliatory sublime; and ( ) dominance of the experiential. these contributions are observed below. . explication of characteristics of aesthetic experience the first and principal contribution of this investigation is the identification of a set of nine characteristics that explicate the aesthetic experience, as presented above. it is through the development of this set of characteristics that provide the platform for further contributions. in advancing these proposed characteristics, many are consistent with those attempts at explicating aesthetic experience characteristics as advanced by the scholars presented in chapter six and the characteristics earlier ascribed to intrinsic/essentialist, subjective/contextualist and conciliatory epistemologies. the consistent and generalisable similarities found within the past explications and the present research aggregates reinforces and extends the characteristics of aesthetic experience in painting. it also contributes to the validity and merit of continued interest in the collection of taxonomies for theoretical and pedagogical dissemination, as initiated by the contributors of chapter six and advocated by abbs ( ), among others. . a conciliatory positioning the characteristics explicated here extended significant parallels, contradictions and conciliations regarding intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist theoretical propositions. while some findings leant toward one epistemology or the other, overall, they indicated that a more conciliatory pathway is required. this implies, as fenner ( b) earlier suggested, a type of ‘hybrid’ consolidation of both concerns. this research contributes to the position that heightened pleasurable response to painting remains fundamentally a subjective concern for the viewer and the attainment of pleasurable response may incorporate any and all such relational or essentialist manifestations which the viewer believes or deems necessary. in other words, the experience, rather than theoretical cannon, drives heightened aesthetic response. these implications also support aspects concerning a conciliatory amalgamation of both essentialist and contextualist characteristics suggested originally by dewey ( [ ]) and later propositions inherent in pragmatist aesthetics, post formal aesthetics and aesthesia (among others). in so doing, this research contributes to a justification of their principle tenet of placing unqualified pleasurable life enhancement as the goal of the immediate and heightened experiential encounter. . the contribution of immediacy the immediacy of the aesthetic experience needs to be brought more centrally into the consideration of that experience due to the preponderances of contemporary relativist imperatives. the aesthetic experiences were characterised and guided by feelingful, rather than overtly mediated, responses. in most cases, the participants responded through an aesthetic sensuous apprehension of the paintings which was (a) primordially felt, (b) did not require deductive justifications and (c) somewhat elusive to discursive expositions. discursive and analytical foregrounding (while advantageous in certain instances) was not deemed strictly prerequisite. the contribution here is that it was the participants’ immediacies and initial sensual consciousnesses that triggered and stimulated initial awe, curiosity and the desire for further investigation and interpretation, not contextualist interrogations for meaning. again, within the hegemony of relativist argument, this observed phenomenon is not so clearly accepted in existing accounts. this contribution is revealed through analysis of the participants’ reflections concerning associative aspects and metaphorical response, transformational aspect of self and the objectified painting and the on-going power of aesthetic experience (among others). an implication suggested here is an alignment with aspects of intrinsic positions which see the positive aesthetic experience as being primarily intuitive. in this way, the research acknowledges and reinvigorates langer’s ( ; a) linking response to symbolic representations of feelings which are objectified within the perception of the object itself and subsequently driven into the aesthetic experience by the specificity of discreet subjective realities. there is a reaction, grasped in direct apprehension, of subjective response to the feeling states perceived as belonging to the objective painting. again, the implications of participants’ responses also seem to echo langer’s ( ) contention that the exhilaration (pleasure) of aesthetic emotions felt was comprised largely of imaginative stimulation and seemingly apprehended intellectual gratification without having actually employed systematic logic or deduction -- a point somewhat linked with beardsley’s ( ) earlier propositions. . qualities and meanings a contribution of this research is its observation of a conciliatory position which advances the idea of a synergetic relationship between essentialist qualities and contextualist meaning. that is, while the reflections of the research participants indicated a general non-political and non-agentic nature, those experiences were not simply esoteric. the reflected experiences were not bereft of examples pertaining to personal morals, socio-economical observations and arts practice ramifications. the implication here substantiates and aligns with dewey ( [ ]) and neo- pragmatist aesthetic thought which impress the notion of aesthetic experience with self-actualisation and pro-activity within all spheres of the participants’ lives. indeed, as contributable to this research, personal evaluations and predispositions were found to be imbedded within the participants’ assumed perceptual responses to designal qualities (i.e. its significant or designal form). the implications of this contextual importation opens up the traditional limited definition of percipience to one where the grasp of both qualities and meanings amalgamate to intensify the experience, as earlier suggested by parsons ( ). here, the ‘grasp’ became more generalised and took in not only the formal internal relations of the elements of the painting but also extraneous apprehensions contextually specific to the viewer. these contextualist inputs were seen to be manifested within an internalisation of presented aesthetic qualities. this implication of an amalgamation of contextualist input within the perceived qualities of the object also refutes any requirement of a traditional attitude of sympathetic disinterestedness during aesthetic experience, as professed by the essentialist claims of kant ( [ ]) and stolnitz ( ) (among others). . self-justifying experience with underlying contextual importations another contribution of this research is the forwarding of the idea that aesthetic experience is justified in its own right and does not require any external reason or reward. aspects of this intrinsic/essentialist implication can also be tracked back to langer ( ), the conciliatory accounts of csikszentmihalyi and robinson ( ), csikszentmihalyi ( ) and eisner ( ) (among others). in addition, there is also resonance with earlier essentialist-derived views of kant ( [ ]), schopenhauer ( [ ]) and stolnitz ( ) regarding the presumed ‘purposelessness’ enjoyment of such aesthetic contemplation. however, a strict adherence to the essentialist inspired prerequisite of delight in the object-independent of interest was contextually hijacked by tacitly held personal agency and external input. this contribution expands a conciliatory position of the aesthetic experience to emphasise feeling and meaning. experience can now be seen as self-justifying not through or because of the employment of disinterestedness or exclusively sourced importations, but through the correlation of divergent referents, both sensorial and psychological. the implication here is consistent with what dewey ( [ ]) and others earlier proposed. that is, the experiences of the participants were iterative and nurturing for the individuals because of what was sensuously presented within the immediacy of the experiences and because of the possible influences of the importation of non-exclusive references. it is analogous to the notion of optimal experience (or flow) (csikszentmihalyi ( ). that is, autotelic experience (i.e. imbedded with subjective interest) as sought encounters entered into for the sake of the experience itself. . the relevance of modernist painting in a hostile postmodern climate the sixth contribution is in promoting an exoneration of modernist paintings within the contemporary milieu to act as powerful and relevant exemplars for fostering aesthetic experience. within the specificity of this research, the participants’ selection of representative paintings and subsequent reflections also contributes to a refutation of visual culture contention that the unique art object is no longer a dominant or viable vehicle for signification regarding individual self-awareness. this is seen in the professed on-going power of experience and self-actualising potentialities inherent in the paintings selected (and their status as unique art establishment exemplars). the selection of paintings questions popular visual culture’s assumed inescapable lure of immediate and temporal visual gratification. that is, the assumed supremacy of ubiquitous and ever-changing object-as-commodity and transient titillation proposed within the popular visual culture phenomena (jameson ) did not negate or undermine the selection (or sustainability) of an autonomous and recognised familial class of object (traditional painting) to act as a contemporary referent for examining aesthetic experience. in addition, critical, societal interrogation of motive, the association of predictability, pre-mediation and superficial gratification inherent in aspects of visual culture did not play a significant part within participants’ reflections. also absent was the general postmodern and visual culture concept of the image exerting only temporary, fragmented and sporadic influence over the participants. this is implied through the characteristics of ongoing power, experiential wholeness (within three of the four participants) and the acknowledgment of probable employment of cognitive strategies believed to be engaged at a subconscious level within the immediacy of experience. the selection of modernist-inspired paintings and the subsequent findings of this research promote the validity of recognised historic and contemporary works of art to act as exemplars for fostering aesthetic experience. in so doing, it supports aspects of the earlier essentialist proposals forwarded by beardsley ( ) and osborne ( ), among others. . intensified experience the seventh contribution forwarded by this research concerns a debunking of the intrinsic/essentialist proposal that aesthetic experience is an autonomous and distinct classification of experience. this is substantiated by the recognition that while all participants believed the experience seemed unique, it was agreed to be premised on the heightening and intensification of ordinary encounters. the implication here is that aesthetic experience, rather than being a distinct class of experience, was more likely considered to be a form or extension of experience. this implication suggests that the form of experience associated with aesthetic experience is identified by the simple degree of attention (focussed concentration) that is voluntarily exercised (carroll, ; dickie, ). this type of heightened attention is ordinarily not deployed within the instrumental pursuits associated with perception in ordinary experience. additionally, the implied cognitive strategies required for “noticing, detecting and discriminating” (carroll, ) attention negates the traditional intrinsic/essentialist notions regarding aesthetic experience as uniquely activated through the presumed non-mediated characteristic of disinterestedness. . the conciliatory sublime the eighth contribution advanced is the promotion of a conciliatory notion of the sublime that acknowledges intrinsic/essentialist positions with those of subjective/contextualist stances. in certain instances, correspondences with essentialist propositions as earlier proposed by stolnitz ( ) and burke ( [ ]) were observed. for example, the participants acknowledged ineffable awe and wonder before what they considered inadequacies in their perceptual and imaginative capacities to cope with the scale, power, imagery and scope pictorially presented. knowing strategies failed within the immediacy and totality of response. all spoke of infinitude, limitlessness and the exhilaration of not being able to conceptually contain that which they were witnessing. there are instances cited advancing the burkean ( [ ]) associations of the sublime with solitude and obscurity of human agency dominate participant/painting interaction. in addition, there was a belief that the paintings became vehicles for personal transcendence and that the paintings had a life beyond their objectified status. again, these notions resonate with burke’s ( [ ]) metaphysical contention that the sublime was manifested through the physicality of the object. however, there was little indication that acknowledged shock or awe were the result of psychological states incumbent on associations with danger, pain or ‘delightful horror.’ conciliatorily, the sublime was also experienced through effortful internalisation of an assortment of contextualised visual associations. as proposed by lyotard ( ), these associations acknowledged cathartic allusions to personal strivings, communion and spiritual linkages. in addition, states of exaltation were reported when confronted with new and radical employments of materials and techniques: affective states were heightened by observing and acknowledging innovative and startling manipulations of plastic (i.e. responding to shaping or modelling) formal elements. summarily, both essentialist (e.g. modernist) and contextualist (e.g. postmodernist) epistemological views relating to the notion of the sublime were observed. this suggests a blended and eclectic influence of the two. . dominance of the experiential the final contribution advances and reaffirms the idea that no one theory can adequately claim exclusive definitional power in relation to the aesthetic experience. the suggestion here is that the characteristics of pleasurable aesthetic experience have certain correspondences with both intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist positions. what may be construed as universal attributes have (arguably) at their core subjective human agency. what is believed to be unmediated sensuous response is actually imbedded with cognitive strategies working just below the conscious level. the implication here is a reinforcement of the idea that we understand and appreciate a work of art through several ways of knowing, as advanced by eisner, ( b). some of these ways defy manifestation through rational and deductive logic. to perceive, to experientially apprehend, is a mode of cognition intertwined with many other modalities (abbs, ). the data also implies a correspondence with dewey ( [ ]) in that to place restrictions on the avenues of response, to deny any contribution because that response cannot be measurably quantified, limits the totality of experience. as an extension of the above, the overall implication is for an advancement of eclectic selection: the acknowledgement of the contributions of aspects of theory, rather than blanket acceptance and adherence to any canonical prescriptions. theory informs experiential encounter. it does not drive it. key pedagogical and curriculum implications to present a robust and thorough discourse on pedagogical and curriculum ramifications inherent in the presented findings would require its own study and goes well beyond the space limitations of the present dissertation. however, some general, contestable and inchoate implications can be raised. these implications are presented and tracked through the following sections: ( ) experiential knowing; ( ) corresponding strategies for experiential knowing; ( ) the questioning of curriculum: a critique; and ( ) drawbacks within the implications. . experiential knowing while a mediated grasp of the qualities and meanings of the experiences were considered beneficial, the findings implied background propositional or analytical knowledge was not prerequisite for aesthetic experience. involuntary and intuitive immediacy, rather than informed percipience or schematic interrogation, were foremost in participant response. the implications of this research extend the below propositions. there is a requirement of strategies based on the ‘now.’ that is, what is needed is an attempt to foster receptivity for living in the moment. to address such receptivity necessitates the establishment of environments where “… one becomes a participant in and an observer of the ongoing process of organismic experience, rather than being in control of it” (rogers, , p. ). simply put, we attempt to be responsive, to enter experience without agendas. for this to occur, environments must be attuned to langer’s ( ) idea that art is seen as an objectification of feeling. that appreciation comes from the mind’s ability to draw sustenance from the surrounding world, whereby our metaphysical symbols arise from that reality which confronts us (langer, b). it is nurtured and sensitised by tapping into the core of all human feeling and emotion. it evolves through time, tradition, habit and intimate knowing of the livedworld (langer, b). it is correspondent to what abbs ( ) sees as the representation and embodiment of the entire spectrum and depth of the human spirit-- a deep historical, spiritual and ecological connection-- to address and liberate the imagination (abbs, ). therefore, what is implied here is that environments conducive to intuitive, intrinsic and implicit enjoyment comes before the discursive symbolisms of judgment and criticism, as rogers ( ) also seems suggests. in some respects, the sensitivity to such worlds of feelings is an innate gift which requires no telic prepositional instruction (langer, b). therefore, a self-initiated process of sensitising one’s self to all aspects of the human condition seems prerequisite. this is in order to formulate intuition and familiarise our senses toward responding to all manner of expressive forms, both artistic and natural (langer, ). . corresponding strategies for experiential knowing instigation or attainment of heightened, sublime-like experiential encounter (through immediacy) would seem to require lateral or radical experiential pedagogical interactions. it is suggested that such existential participation requires authentic settings with authentic exemplars and other mutually supportive conditions such as experiential encounters in associated aesthetic fields and safe, non threatening social interaction. it also requires representations of art to be discussed and interpreted both inside and outside of the school environment (freedman, ). corresponding possible strategies would be experimentation with holistic approaches which were humanist by design, communities of inquiry, contemplative down time for socratic inquiry, preliminary introductions and familiarisation with the ‘how to’ of reflective experiential and aesthetic knowing, philosophy, individual and group self awareness encounters and other like-experiences. outcomes would be learner based. what is required is open-ended and reflected approaches; ones which promote purposeful sensuous curiosity involved with active engagement and not contingent on the procurement of a list of factual responses (abbs, ). that is, under pertinent and non-prescriptive guidance, one would feel one’s own way. . the questioning of curriculum: a critique implications of this research would suggest that the immediacy and reflective nature which characterises positive aesthetic experience in painting may not be adequately served by contemporary prescribed demands of standardised curriculum preoccupations and accountability. it is implied that: (a) the proposed immediacy of aesthetic experience sits outside the contemporary ‘blended deliveries’ which entail didactic lecture, product/unit orientation and on-line activities, though these same activities may initiate an awareness, interest and inform and intensify the on-going power of aesthetic experience after the event. (b) there seems no contingency within nationally-endorsed training packages or competency-based modular delivery and assessment to accommodate such humanist-inspired requirements. indeed, even the concept of prescribed ‘creativity standards’ is an oxymoron for art education (emery, ). this is because the pursuit of aesthetic experience involves life-long and unencumbered inductive evaluation. accountability rests solely within individual reflection and satisfaction. it defies outside assessment. (c) the classroom may prove advantageous as one of many environments for setting in place possible foundations and understandings for future aesthetic experiences (along with galleries, museums, cultural events and naturally occurring conducive environments). that is, while the need for creating avenues such as self reflection and experiential knowing are important, they may well not be the only viable strategies. (d) groundings in cognitive approaches and their various strategies for understanding how we know what we know, sociocultural implications inherent in experiencing, aspects of workplace learning, mediative and emotive effects of visual culture, investigations into philosophy, culture, associated arts and the study of various spiritual and mystic theories may all prove beneficial. in addition, all of these support the inclusion of both deductive and inductive modes of knowing. what is suggested here is that a personal liberal backgrounding in such fields might better equip individuals to be receptive, intellectually informed and emotionally ready to capitalise on the experiential moment when apprehended. . drawbacks within the implications that being said, even working within the conducive qualitative frameworks and approaches mentioned above, there would be no guarantee of success. one could only help set the stage. the unfolding of the story would rest on the animated and subject- induced attention/concentration of the actors (carroll, ). to borrow from an old adage appropriate to the idea of circumstance and variables, any pedagogical ‘leading’ to water (for possible aesthetic experience) does not necessarily mean that the individual will perceptually ‘drink’. if we are to believe that realisations of positive life-enhancing aesthetic experiences are possible for all (dewey ( [ ]), their attainment within both the art and general public still remains rare and allusive. more research is needed. realities and further research as observed, the characteristics explicated within the specificity of this research exhibit significant parallels, contradictions and conciliations with the foregrounded intrinsic/essentialist and subjective/contextualist theoretical propositions. in reality, however, a final and acceptable analytical indexation may be impossible (abbs, ). that is, a conclusive taxonomy of the characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting (or generally) may remain unresolved within the endogenous messiness of psychology and subjectivity. yet there are many consistent resonances which remain in play, both historically and in the phenomenological gatherings of this research, that validate the need for continued investigations. this would imply that: (a) more phenomenological investigations into heightened aesthetic experiences in order to effectively and continuously gauge the validity and relevance of traditional or expanding contemporary theories are needed. (b) there needs to be evaluation through the explications of various stakeholders’ experiences. as suggested, such experiential checks-and-balances would have far reaching implications for curriculum development, assessment and delivery strategies. in addition, the recording of characteristics within actual attitudinal modifications and moments of transcendence and motivation within strategic groups of people (say, ethnic or socio-political) could be utilised as component strategies to promote positive associations and foster like response in like (or other) target groups. (c) while a finite analytical taxonomy of characteristics of positive aesthetic experience may prove unattainable, a continued expansion of observed characteristics can only add to the body of knowledge which may effectively inform the promotion of art appreciation and life enhancement in general (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, ; csikszentmihalyi ; dewey, [ ]; eisner, ; shusterman, a, among others). further research and understanding can bring us closer to attaining the professed substantial rewards such experiences offer; rewards intended to benefit not only a marginal art community but also contribute to the hopes and aspirations of humanity in general (dewey, [ ]). this alone would indicate and validate the need for future research in the field. (d) as suggested, in order to assist in such a task, rigorous phenomenological investigations are required throughout all stratums, from various students’, art administrators’ and teachers’ responses, to ones focusing on experiential encounters with art drawn from gender, age and socio-economical specificities. (e) in terms of pedagogy, to have systematic and continuing data on the resonances of ‘how’ positive encounters with art effect us is the first step in fortifying our ‘how to’ ability to encourage the interaction. the promotion and enjoyment, in terms of what and how we display our cultural objects and aesthetic exemplars, for specific or general audience appreciation, could then be targeted more successfully. (f) synergetic discursive supplementation, to expand the concept of appreciation into a robust mediated experience, could be assisted in its design by using the collected clues and cues contained within in the phenomenological responses. future research to establish pools of such orienteering data may also help within the classroom by acting as informing referents for strategies more attuned to focussing interest and motivation. that is, by linking what was identified phenomenologically by the students to the selection of synergic learning outcomes and delivery strategies, more aggressive student involvement may be established. in other words, the more we see personal relevance in outcomes, the more likely we are to enthusiastically engage in the learning processes to achieve them. with these thoughts in mind, further on-going explication of the characteristics of positive aesthetic experience in painting (and the explication of characteristics from any aesthetic field which promotes the possibilities of life enhancement through interaction with art-related phenomena) remains a vast and relatively untapped area for qualitative investigation. by contributing further to the body of knowledge in this field, the potential rewards for the researcher, both extrinsically and intrinsically, are great. while the on-going explication of such characteristics demands considerable academic rigour and long term commitment, the journey can begin, as it did for me, simply by standing before a painting that you love. references a statement on the arts for australian schools ( ). a joint project of the states, territories and the commonwealth of australia initiated by the australian educational council. victoria: curriculum corporation. abbs, p. 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(pp - ). london: collins. appendices . copy of information sheet title of phd research: neglected knowing: the aesthetic experience information sheet who is conducting the research (research team) dr. stephen billett (chief research and primary supervisor) dip.t, ba, med st., phd associate professor s.billett@griffith.edu.au school of vocational, technology and arts education griffith university. phone dr. glenda nalder (supervisor) dip. fa, grad dip teach, ba, ma, phd lecturer g.nalder@griffith.edu.au school of vocational, technology and arts education griffith university. phone john tarlton (student researcher) ba, btrain, ma, med tarltonjb@ozemail.com.au phone why is the research being conducted (reason for the research) the research is being conducted as part of the above student researcher’s requirement for the degree of doctor of philosophy at griffith university, faculty of education, school of vocational, technology and arts education. (background) generally speaking, aesthetic experience can be viewed as those moments in which we participate with phenomena (painting, in this case) where a vivid, heightened and concentrated perception of its sensuous qualities and contextual associations are established within the viewer. some contend that the characteristics of such an experience include feelings of distancing from one’s surroundings and a state of wholeness. others characterise the aesthetic experience as creating sensations of déjà vu or transcendence. theoretically, traditional essentialist stances see the aesthetic experience as emanating from the object itself. that is, the visual qualities of the object set off our responses. postmodernist aesthetics contend that the experience is a result of context, that we read and understand a work of art through our individual and group social, political, and cultural vocabularies. (aim) the aim of this research is to explore the phenomenological responses of four content experts in fine art painting in an attempt to observe characteristics of aesthetic experience as they see and experience them. underlying these responses will be questions concerning essentialist or contextualist points of views. by conducting the research, a contribution to the general body of knowledge and research concerning aesthetic experience may be achieved. these characteristics could then be introduced (together with other recognised observations of the characteristics of aesthetic experience) into formulating possible pedagogic approaches to foster more robust art appreciation among student populations. the question which underpins all investigations is: what are the perceptions and descriptions of the phenomena of aesthetic experience and how can these experiences be observed and explicated? what you will be asked to do (project description) as one of the research participants, you will be required to keep a reflective, autobiographical journal concerning personal experiences and reflections regarding what constitute the aesthetic experience. this will include both discursive and non discursive entries. the keeping of the journal will be for a period of three months. in addition, you will be required to select a contemporary or historical painting with which you have had an aesthetic experience (reflections to be included in journal). written responses and tape recorded interviews (approximately one hour duration) of those personal responses to the paintings will be conducted. two further, recorded interviews and additional written reflective responses to aspects of aesthetic experience will be entered into. in addition, personal responses to two sets of questions concerning the aesthetic experience will be undertaken. after each data gathering exercise has been analysed by the researcher, all participants will assemble and participate as a group (community of inquiry) in informal surroundings in order to compare, contrast, amend and verify the accuracy of the accounts. approximate duration of each group activity is two hours. initial considerations for selection of paintings the initial conceptual consideration for this dissertation will take into account wertz’s ( ) contention that any attempt to formulate a definition of what constitutes art [and its experiences] through the establishment of prerequisite properties (e.g. form, emotion, cognitive, intuitive presences and so on) is inadequate to the challenge of addressing the openness inherent in contemporary art practices (wertz, ). it will also take into account wertz’s ( ) and eisner’s ( ) contentions that art must be seen as an ongoing, open concept where the introduction of new cases and conditions require the continuous expansion or alteration of the art concept itself (wertz, ; eisner, ). that is, creative manipulation of new technologies, media and purposes or the alteration of traditional modes of representation (as they present themselves) must be recognised within that which is deemed art. following wertz’s ( ) and eisner’s ( ) leads, the expansion of what then might constitute a ‘painting’ for a research participant (whether it be traditional oil on canvas, more unorthodox embellishments of collage, montage, low relief sculpture, imagery generated by computer or objects from visual culture not traditionally associated with fine art painting) will be left to your own discretion. the basis on which participants will be selected or screened (screening/exclusion/inclusion) your selection for this research is by researcher invitation. guidelines for selection included your experience and mutual interest in exploring the characteristics of aesthetic experience, content expertise in the field of painting and the ability to articulate those experiences. the expected benefits of the research there is no direct benefit for you other than in contributing to the body of knowledge concerning the aesthetic experience in painting. risks to you there are no physical, social, legal, psychological or other risks associated with this research. your participation is voluntary and you may terminate your association with the research at any time. your confidentiality you have agreed to be identified with this research project and its dissemination for the purpose of dissertation submission. in addition, refer privacy statement below. (feedback) your active participation in all research stages is anticipated. during the research period accuracy of data will be checked by the participant after each collection process before further data collecting processes are initiated. progressive and periodic participant authorisation (as well as review of final dissertation manuscript) will be actioned. your participation is voluntary you will be free to withdraw your participation in the research at any time. further questions please feel free to contact the researcher with any further questions in relation to the proposed research. any concerns or complaints regarding the ethical conduct of this project can be lodged in the first instance with an independent contact person. that person being: the manager research ethics, office for research, bray centre, nathan campus, griffith university (phone) - or research-ethics@griffith.edu.au privacy statement version two- anticipated disclosure the conduct of this research involves the collection, access and / or use of your identified personal information. as outlined elsewhere in this information sheet, your identified personal information may be reported to griffith university for submission of the doctoral manuscript. other than this disclosure, the information collected is confidential and will not be disclosed to third parties without your consent, except to meet government, legal or other regulatory authority requirements. a de-identified copy of this data may be used for other research purposes. however, your anonymity will at all times be safeguarded. for further information consult the university’s privacy plan at www.griffith.edu.au/aa/vc/pp or telephone ( ) . . copy of expression of consent expression of consent title of phd research: neglected knowing: the aesthetic experience research team dr. stephen billett (research and primary supervisor) dip.t, ba, med st., phd associate professor s.billett@griffith.edu.au school of vocational, technology and arts education griffith university dr. glenda nalder (supervisor) dip. fa, grad dip teach, ba, ma, phd lecturer g.nalder@griffith.edu.au school of vocational, technology and arts education griffith university john tarlton (student researcher) ba, btrain, ma, med tarltonjb@ozemail.com.au by signing below, i confirm that i have read and understood the information package and in particular that: i understand that my involvement in this research will include: the keeping of a autobiographical reflective journal concerning the phenomena of aesthetic experience (for a time period of three months); the selection and reflection on a painting which in the past has elicited an aesthetic experience; participate in three tape recorded interviews and two sets of written questions concerning the aesthetic experience; participation in a community of inquiry concerning the aesthetic experience (two hour durations); i have had any questions answered to my satisfaction; i understand that there are no physical, social, legal, psychological or other risks involved; i understand that there will be no direct benefit to me from my participation in this research; i understand that my participation in this research is voluntary; i understand that if i have any additional questions i can contact the research team; i understand that i am free to withdraw at any time, without comment or penalty; i understand that i can contact the manager, research ethics, at griffith university human research ethics committee on (or research-ethics@ griffith.edu.au ) if i have any concerns about the ethical conduct of the project; and i agree to participate and be identified in the project. name (please print) ………………………………………….. signature …………………………………………………….. date ………………. please return this expression of consent to the student researcher as listed below: john tarlton camelia street, cannon hill, brisbane, qld. . griffith university human research ethics committee approval griffith university human research ethics committee -jun- dear mr tarlton i write further to the additional information provided in relation to the provisional approval granted to your application for ethical clearance for your project "neglected knowing: the aesthetic experience" (gu ref no: vta/ / /hrec). the additional information was considered by office for research. this is to confirm that this response has addressed the comments and concerns of the hrec. consequently, you are authorised to immediately commence this research on this basis. the standard conditions of approval attached to our previous correspondence about this protocol continue to apply. regards gary allen manager, research ethics office for research bray centre, nathan campus griffith university ph: fax: email: g.allen@griffith.edu.au web: cc: privileged, private and confidential ( ) this email and any files transmitted with it are intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) and may contain information which is confidential or privileged. if you receive this email and you are not the addressee(s) [or responsible for delivery of the email to the addressee(s)], please disregard the contents of the email, delete the email and notify the author immediately. . abrievated qualifications of scholars presented in chapter six monroe beardsley, the author of aesthetics: problems in the philosophy of criticism, which is considered an important and influential work in philosophical aesthetics. harold osborne, an influential writer on aesthetics and founder and past editor of the british journal of aesthetics. his book, the art of appreciation, is considered an excellent resource for defining the concept of appreciation within the field of aesthetics (smith, ). mahaly csikszentmihalyi (in association with rick robinson), professor of psychology and management, drucker school of management and director of the quality of life research center, claremont graduate school, claremont, california. (csikszentmihalyi and robinson are the authors of the art of seeing ( ), in which they researched the interpretations of the aesthetic responses of fifty-two museum professionals). gerald knieter, professor of music at california state university at northridge and influential writer on aesthetics. david hargreaves, educator and professor at the university of surrey, roehampton. rod taylor, art educator and director of drumcroon art educational centre. (both taylor and hargreaves worked together in the formative stages of the critical studies in art education (csae) initiative in britain. a primary investigative aim of csae, through case study approaches, was to develop and foster student understanding and involvement with art appreciation). ‘Élan vital … and how to fake it’: morton feldman and merle marsicano’s vernacular metaphysics full terms & conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalinformation?journalcode=gcmr contemporary music review issn: - (print) - (online) journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr ‘Élan vital … and how to fake it’: morton feldman and merle marsicano’s vernacular metaphysics ryan dohoney to cite this article: ryan dohoney ( ) ‘Élan vital … and how to fake it’: morton feldman and merle marsicano’s vernacular metaphysics, contemporary music review, : - , - , doi: . / . . to link to this article: https://doi.org/ . / . . published online: apr . submit your article to this journal article views: view crossmark data https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalinformation?journalcode=gcmr https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showcitformats?doi= . / . . https://doi.org/ . / . . https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorsubmission?journalcode=gcmr &show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorsubmission?journalcode=gcmr &show=instructions http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi= . / . . &domain=pdf&date_stamp= - - http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi= . / . . &domain=pdf&date_stamp= - - ‘Élan vital … and how to fake it’: morton feldman and merle marsicano’s vernacular metaphysics ryan dohoney scholars have explored the relationship between us experimentalism and vitalist philosophy largely through john cage’s reception of henri bergson. recent scholarship has shown the importance of vitalism to the wider new york school. evidence from feldman’s archive suggests he too absorbed bergsonian philosophy. feldman signalled this when he wrote of ‘henri bergson’s élan vital … and how to fake it’ in his unpublished lectures, new york style. he borrows vitalist vocabulary for piece titles (extensions and durations) and, in an early sketchbook, describes his open-form intermission as ‘an outline of becoming’. these interests are also apparent in his collaborations. his nearly-lost dance piece figure of memory, written for choreographer merle marsicano, is feldman’s only other open form piece (along with intermission ). marsicano employed similar vitalist language to feldman and applied it to her dance. feldman’s collaboration with marsicano signals a shared vernacular metaphysics mingling bergsonism, self-abnegation, and aesthetic form. keywords: morton feldman; élan vital; vitalism; bergson; intermission ; figure of memory; merle marsicano in the years that i have been working with the morton feldman collection at the paul sacher stiftung, i have grown attached to particular objects. those i am most fond of provide portentous clues to feldman’s musical world but to some degree remain recal- citrant to investigation. one such artefact is a notebook titled ‘four lectures: new york style’ (feldman ) containing drafts and anecdotes for a series of talks given at the new york studio school in the – academic year. the content of the lectures ranges widely, and feldman references claude debussy, psy- choanalysis, zionism, søren kierkegaard, the marquis de sade, pierre boulez, contemporary music review, vol. , nos. – , – , https://doi.org/ . / . . © informa uk limited, trading as taylor & francis group http://orcid.org/ - - - &nbsp; http://www.tandfonline.com http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi= . / . . &domain=pdf&date_stamp= - - luciano berio, john cage, and norman o. brown et al. the lectures develop the themes of artistic anxiety and existentialist thinking explored in feldman’s published writing. other traces evince concurrent, if somewhat mysterious, intellectual commit- ments. at the beginning of the notebook we find a list of phrases that appear to be mnemonic devices for stories feldman might tell during his talks. some are elaborated in the pages that follow, others not. among these statements is the inspiration for my title: ‘henri bergson’s élan vital … and how to fake it’. feldman leaves the phrase largely undeveloped, save as an aside from a discussion of feeling and fantasy couched in largely freudian terms. there he writes: because the overall feeling of art was the belief in the immortality of its soul or the jewish equivalent which is really bergson’s élan vital. the creative ghost that reappears in every age—not unlike the ancient hebrew myth that as long as jews survive—there will always be just men … who carry on the law. (feldman , n.p.) feldman interprets élan vital as a generative force. it is a ‘creative ghost’ ensuring the continuity of art and the survival of the world. in a typical rhetorical gesture, he finds an analogy for artistic practice in a religious idea likened to metaphysical concept. bergson’s vitalism is placed in dialogue with a jewish parable—the story of the ten just men whose righteousness sustains humanity. this passage from ‘four lectures’ betrays feldman’s at least glancing familiarity with the philosophy of bergson. i have found no earlier named reference to the philosopher in any of feldman’s writings, published or unpublished. sebastian claren has cautioned against making too much of bergson’s role in feldman’s thinking. he notes that, although a certain correspondence between bergson’s train of thought and feld- man’s purpose is obvious, it would go too far to apply bergson’s theory to feldman’s understanding of the instrumental image, especially since bergson’s image plays only a subordinate role as mediator between reality and perception. (claren , ) my goal is not to apply bergson’s vitalist philosophy to feldman’s musicality directly, but to approach vitalism comparatively as part of the musician’s community of friends and collaborators. claren is certainly correct that attempting the former would shoe- horn feldman’s idiosyncratic metaphysics into something far too limiting, or expect him to maintain a philosophical consistency to which he did not aspire. yet, bergson’s presence in new york style and the evocation of élan vital sparked my interest in exploring vitalist discourse in feldman’s work prior to . in light of branden joseph’s studies of john cage’s reception of bergson in the s (joseph , ), it seemed plausible to consider the ways in which feldman also drew upon bergson specifically and vitalist metaphysics more generally. joseph has made a strong claim on the importance of bergson to cage, arguing that ‘cage’s mature understanding of silence as formulated in [ ] can be related to (if it did not, in fact, derive from) bergson’s critique of non-being as expressed in creative evolution’ r. dohoney (joseph , ). no such causal claim can be made for bergson’s presence in feld- man’s thought. we do find circumstantial evidence of his awareness of bergson in the titles of various composition series: extensions from the early s and the durations series from to . both ‘extension’ and ‘duration’ are fundamental concepts in bergson’s time and free will (bergson ). in the wake of joseph’s bergsonist reading of cage, there has been a broader recon- sideration of vitalism’s importance to the intellectual history of new york school mod- ernism. art historians including ellen landau ( ), jonathan katz ( ), and valerie hellstein ( ) have shown that cage’s interest in vitalism was more the rule than the exception among the interdisciplinary community of the eighth street artists club. katz notes that, ‘vitalism . . . was one of many competing early-twenti- eth-century attempts to detect deep structuring first principles, the array of invisible forces that shape and determine all creation. … all living things possess a life force that can be sensed intuitively’. he also notes that it was ‘less a systematic philosophy than grab bag metaphysics’ ( , ). more pointedly, hellstein argues that zen, transcendentalism, bergsonism, et al. comprised a sensibility held in common by figures as supposedly divergent as harold rosenberg and john cage: vitalism, although popular in the early part of the twentieth century, diminished as an influential discourse after , but after world war ii, with the disclosure of the horrors of the holocaust, the building of atomic weaponry, and the mass destruc- tion caused by two atomic bombs, many began to feel acutely that individuals were increasingly objectified. vitalism’s acknowledgment of a pervading, connecting rhythm, an élan vital in henri bergson’s terms, throughout all of existence that cannot be reduced to mechanistic or chemical explanation made it particularly attractive at this moment, offering an alternative worldview in which relatedness and connectivity are as fundamental as individual autonomy. (hellstein , ) bergson’s immense impact in the u.s. in the early years of the twentieth century was felt both in elite intellectual publics and popular culture (quirk ). his concepts of becoming and creativity were profoundly influential on the british-born harvard pro- fessor alfred north whitehead who developed a metaphysics of creative novelty in his process philosophy (whitehead [ ] ). whitehead’s importance to new york school modernism is hardly inconsequential (belgrad , – ); robert mother- well studied with whitehead at harvard and credited his teacher—as well as bergson— with a powerful impact on his painting and aesthetic theories (milz ). feldman was friends with motherwell, but the case for any transmission of these ideas between them must remain speculative at present. feldman does reference whitehead in the s (feldman b, , ), but it is difficult to say when he first read him. it is plausible that motherwell mediated these ideas in the s; the tenor of feld- man’s language suggests some familiarity with the spirit if not the letter of whitehead’s metaphysics. hellstein, katz, and landau recognise a communal vitalism suffusing the new york avant-garde which suggests that sharp distinctions between cagean indeterminacy and contemporary music review abstract expressionism may be less pronounced than scholars such as joseph and caro- line jones ( ) have argued. i do not deny such distinctions were salient from the s on, especially with the turn in cage’s work towards theatre and anarchy. yet, such distinctions cannot be made on the grounds of one’s supposed fealty to bergson. indeed, as hellstein notes, if one turns towards the matter of artistic experi- ence—particularly the de-centred, relational encounters proffered by cage, feldman, and abstract expressionist painting—one finds a remarkably similar mode of recep- tion. recovering feldman’s vitalist interests and the broader circulation of such ideals among his friends may go a long way to sharpening our understanding of the shared metaphysics of this community, and the socio-political situation of the s new york art world. in what follows, i home in on a particular rarity in feldman’s oeuvre—his use of open-form notation in which performers craft the continuity of a performance from a cluster of small gestures or musical fragments. there are only two extant works in such notation—the much-discussed intermission ( ) and the little-known figure of memory ( ) written for the dancer-choreographer merle marsicano ( – ) which accompanied her solo dance of the same name. i will consider the annotations that accompany feldman’s first version of intermission in his sketch- book from to , which attest to his absorption of vitalist ideas from the arts and philosophy. i will then explore feldman’s collaboration with marsicano on figure of memory. marsicano herself developed through dance the vitalist concerns of the new york school, and echoed many of feldman’s values. their shared sentiments offer evidence of a vernacular metaphysics circulating among their friends. by verna- cular metaphysics, i mean the heterodox and pragmatic development of concepts through artistic practice—a kind of loose talk used for self-understanding. the reson- ances of feldman and marsicano’s vitalism extended into the broader milieu of the eighth street artists club, especially in the genre of the artist film (jones ). i will conclude by briefly noting that films such as herbert matter’s works of calder, hans namuth’s jackson pollock painting, and nathan boxer’s sculpture by lipton the- matised the connectedness of abstract gesture (sound, paint, movement) to natural, energetic forces as representation of élan vital. it is no coincidence that these films were sound-tracked by feldman (for pollock and lipton) and cage (for calder). these events suggest that by feldman was well-versed in vitalist ideas and was actively assimilating them into his musical aesthetics. moreover, his music was by then already iconic of the sound of the communal vitalism shared by new york school modernism and bodied forth in marsicano’s dance. ‘ … just an outline of becoming’: intermission besides ‘four lectures: new york style’, another evocative object within the sacher’s feldman collection has long fascinated me. it is a sketchbook (designated skizzenbuch ) containing a number of works, drafts, and writings from mid– through . these include the soundtrack score for hans namuth’s jackson pollock painting, r. dohoney notations for the graph score marginal intersection, bits of extensions , , and , inci- dental music for a production of aristophanes’ the frogs, and the first version of inter- mission . skizzenbuch is among the earliest sources of feldman’s writing about his own music. a contemporaneous source is the statement henry cowell published in his ‘current chronicle’ (cowell ) which was republished in trans/formation that same year (feldman et al. ). skizzenbuch offers a number of insights into feldman’s early years of friendship with cage as well as his participation in the eighth street artists club. it also provides evidence for his early involvement with dance as we find references to collaborations with katherine litz and jean erdman (feldman, ). as a document of his interdisciplinary community, it is invaluable, showing us the range of his involvement across the arts and the interpenetration of each disci- pline into others by means of aesthetics and friendship. feldman shades his writings in skizzenbuch with a vitalist vocabulary shared by cage, pollock, lipton, marsicano, and rosenberg, and many others. feldman captures this in a note from march : yet one could think of each sound as a mov[emen]t of sensibility and in a proustian way investigate its countless juxtapositions for experience. but to see ‘things as they are’ requires a vision of style which transcends detail and becomes the now moment, the experience rather than the fruits of experience. this is so much that conditions and shapes ourselves. my desire is to find what in myself can recreate myself as to alienation in my art as well as life. one thing [is] certain. i must move, move. i must act regardless the action. live regardless the living. (feldman, . n.p.) he conveys an energetic urgency—‘i must move, move’—and aspires to ‘live regard- less the living’. two literary references tie feldman’s desire to vitalist matters. first, he imagines sound as ‘a movement of sensibility’ via the excavation of memory performed by proust’s in search of lost time. feldman’s desire to see ‘things as they are’ points up an anti-conceptualist and an anti-representational impulse that gets to the truth of things by dissolving illusion. his quotation marks around ‘things as they are’ indicate feldman was borrowing the line. gertrude stein’s novel of the same name (published in ) is one possible source. however, wallace steven’s ‘man with the blue guitar’ is somewhat more likely, given the relatively limited circulation of the stein novel at the time. in steven’s poem, his refrain insists upon a renewed attention to the world and ‘the rhapsody of things as they are’ (stevens , ). each of these writers (proust, stein, stevens) was impacted by turn of the century vitalism emergent in the nineteenth century via bergson, whitehead, and stein’s teacher william james. proust drew on bergson’s philosophy of memory (gunter ) while stein’s anti-representational aesthetics were inflected by her studies in psy- chology and automatic writing with james (meyer ). stevens was himself a devotee of bergson (quirk , – ). as susanne k. langer noted, bergson’s ‘nearness to the problems of art has made him pre-eminently the artists’ philosopher’ ( , ). bergson himself—in ‘the contemporary music review perception of change’—argued that artists had a special role in expanding our percep- tions of reality: it will be said that this enlarging is impossible. how can one ask the eyes of the body, or those of the mind, to see more than they see? our attention can increase pre- cision, clarify and intensify; it cannot bring forth in the field of perception what was not there in the first place. that’s the objection.—it is refuted in my opinion by experience. for hundreds of years, in fact, there have been men whose function has been precisely to see and to make us see what we do not naturally perceive. they are the artists. what is the aim of art if not to show us, in nature and in the mind, outside of us and within us, things which did not explicitly strike our senses and our consciousness? ([ ] , – ) bergson praises artists and glorifies their expansion of our capacities for feeling. this resonates with feldman, who conceived of sound as emotionally energetic—a ‘move- ment of sensibility’ akin to proust’s affective and involuntary memory. this takes on a more bergsonian sheen when feldman distinguishes between ‘experience’ and the ‘fruits of experience’ that remain in the wake of an authentic encounter with the absol- ute. such encounters allow us to experience things—sounds—as they are. feldman describes this as ‘the transcendence of detail’ which ‘becomes the now moment’. his valorisation of immediacy shares more than a superficial relationship to bergson’s notion of experience that we find in creative evolution: let us then concentrate attention on that which we have that is at the same time the most removed from externality and the least penetrated with intellectuality. let us seek, in the depths of our experience, the point where we feel ourselves most inti- mately within our own life. it is into pure duration that we then plunge back, a dur- ation in which the past, always moving on, is swelling unceasingly with a present that is absolutely new. but, at the same time, we feel the spring of our will strained to its utmost limit. we must, by a strong recoil of our personality on itself, gather up our past which is slipping away in order to thrust it, compact and undivided, into a present which it will create by entering. rare indeed are the moments when we are self-possessed to this extent: it is then that our actions are truly free. ( , – ) the movement into the ‘now moment’ as feldman calls it echoes bergson’s plunge into ‘pure duration’ in which we overcome alienation and achieve freedom. the artists films on pollock, calder, and lipton, for which feldman and cage composed music, each dramatised the act of creation and situated it within such a vitalist imagin- ary. feldman’s comments follow on his work on namuth’s pollock film in (also in skizzenbuch ) and show him developing a feeling for sound in terms of the vitalism coursing through his community. most salient to my argument is the co-presence in skizzenbuch of the piano piece intermission with statements quoted above (figure ). we are most familiar with the version published in by edition peters, which first appeared in the counterculture magazine kulchur. the most recent engraved edition by edition peters gives the date of r. dohoney composition as , though i am in agreement with alistair nobel ( , – ) that is the correct year based on its place between other dateable works in the sketchbook. intermission is one of two examples of feldman’s experimentation with ‘open form’ or ‘mobile’ notation, versions of which cage, earle brown, pierre boulez, and karlheinz stockhausen also developed in the s. in the version pub- lished in by edition peters, as well as in the little magazine kulchur, a pianist is confronted with a page sparsely covered with fragments of notation. she is free to move between any of the fragments and improvise the continuity of the piece. there are no time constraints, and a performance can continue as long as desired. feldman’s spatialised conception of the piece is a far cry from its original notation in skizzenbuch as well as the second iteration held in the tudor archive at the getty. most interesting is the instruction that accompanies the notation: ‘this piece is figure morton feldman, intermission , first version. skizzenbuch . morton feldman collection. paul sacher stiftung. used by permission. contemporary music review just the outlines of becoming. it can start anywhere, go any- where within these references of sounds and may be any length’ (feldman , n.p.) (figure ). a further direction instructs performers to ‘hold each measure until completely inaudible’. none of the previous commentary on this piece has noted the particular metaphysical charge of feldman’s language. to call this notation ‘just the outline of becoming’ suggests that the performance would be becoming itself. thus, feldman’s attempt to fake élan vital. furthermore, the anti-conceptualism foundational to berg- son’s philosophy and—as kevin volans ( ) insists—to feldman’s musical practice is evident only a few pages following intermission where we find feldman writing: time as time; texture as time; texture as a plastic image creating itself only in execution. the happening in time is the reality. space in music is illusion. an image created by intuitive relationships defining itself in all degradation of this illu- sion. starve the illusion and feed the energy that made it visible will then become an experience as yet unknown to me. (feldman , n.p.) intuition is a method that allows him to ‘starve’ the illusionary power of spatial rep- resentation in music in favour of an energetic surge that will produce new, unknown experiences. what we can glean from feldman’s thinking documented in skizzenbuch is that, at least in part, the open-form indeterminacy of intermission was a way of experimenting with becoming. this novel notation might make audible his burgeoning metaphysics of sound itself. ‘my person is a protean being’: figure of memory little more than a year after its composition, feldman returned to a variation of its open-form notation with the piano solo figure of memory. it was written for dancer-choreographer merle marsicano ( – ) and premiered on april with david tudor at the piano. in feldman’s lifetime, figure of memory was figure morton feldman, intermission , first version. (detail of performance instruc- tions). morton feldman collection. paul sacher stiftung. used by permission. r. dohoney performed extensively, likely more than intermission . marsicano performed it regu- larly for twenty-five years, first with tudor and then with pianist edwin hymovitz. we have hymovitz to thank for a reconstruction of the score which marsicano had lost by . hymovitz was able to reproduce it from memory and gave a photocopy of it to the sacher foundation, along with a number of materials related to marsicano’s career. tragically, her husband nicholas marsicano threw out the vast majority of her archive after her death. marsicano—more than even merce cunningham—should be credited as feldman’s most important choreographic collaborator. his music was used for at least four of her dances, and was included in many recitals she gave from the s through the s. she too was deeply enmeshed within the broader community of new york school modernists and present at the eight street artists club. her work with martha graham made her a colleague of jean erdman and merce cunningham. her husband was a painter and member of the club (pavia ) and she encountered feldman in this community of painters, dancers, and musicians (figure ). marsicano was born in philadelphia, and began her dance training in ballet with ethel philips and mikhail mordkin. she trained in spanish dance with angel cansino. she received a two-year fellowship to study with martha graham and louis horst at the neighbourhood playhouse. her work with graham put her in contact with jean figure merle marsicano. photographer unknown. edwin hymovitz collection. paul sacher stiftung. used by permission. contemporary music review erdman and merce cunningham, and these relationships led to her musical collabor- ations with feldman as well as with cage. she produced at least three dances in collabor- ation with feldman—three dances ( ), figure of memory and dance suite for merle marsicano ( ). marsicano also danced other pieces by feldman that were not written specifically for her, such as christian wolff in cambridge and chorus and instru- ments ii. recordings of both accompanied the dance fragment for a greek tragedy in . it had previously been danced to music by cage. of these dance scores, figure of memory was the most frequently performed and best received by critics. marsicano gave her premiere new york recital on february with a pro- gramme that included feldman’s three dances for piano as well as dances with the music of cage, stefan wolpe, and jerry petersen. david tudor played piano. she described her conception of dance a few years later: by the very nature of the dance, as differentiated from any of the plastic arts, each performance recapitulates the act of creation. the concept is alive and working and confronts one as a living presence. the dance itself … confronts one as a living thing, with the mental concept and the vibrant actuality merged into one image. how could we say what living thing the dance symbolizes? (marsicano a, ) marsicano here adopts a vitalist vocabulary. through the dance, she activates living energy and recognises the powerful agency of movement itself. she insists upon prolonging discovery through ‘the elasticity of a dance’s duration’ (marsicano b, ). this is also a form of anti-conceptualism. one could also interpret her understanding of durational elasticity as a movement-based conception of the open- form approach feldman took in intermission and figure of memory. it certainly calls to mind the ‘elastic form’ cowell developed in his collaborations with graham, and suggests that the elder composer’s own notational invention may have played some part in feldman’s conception of figure of memory (figure ). of figure of memory, dance critic don mcdonagh wrote: [marsicano’s] feet are in constant motion, carrying her to all corners in her search. her hands flicker momentarily, and then she will suddenly stretch her arms straight out, but the object of her search remains beyond her grasp. the feeling evoked is that of perennial searching without violent anxiety. … one does not detect the familiar beginning, middle, and end development of the dance. it always seems to have been there and, when it ceases, it does not finish with a sense of resolve. it just trails away. one is not concerned with the individual moments of the dance but more with the over-all web that enmeshes the attention. ( , ) mcdonagh’s language evokes clement greenberg’s conception of ‘all-over’ painting, in which a viewer’s attention cannot settle on one area of the canvas but is continually activated by a nonhierarchical field of gestures (greenberg [ ] , ). the immediacy of the dance’s image was reinforced by feldman’s music which hymovitz recalled: r. dohoney when we used to do figure of memory in concert to live music we spent a lot of time rehearsing feldman’s spare figurations so that they came in exactly the right places, not in time but at the right time. it sounded random but wasn’t at all. ( ) through her choice of collaborators for the recital in which figure of memory pre- miered, marsicano emphasized the eighth street artists club’s interdisciplinary ethos and its foundation in friendship. in addition to her collaboration with feldman, marsicano choreographed jet pears to a recitation of frank o’hara’s poem ‘augustus’. the sculptor richard lippold, another club member and friend of both feldman and cage, reviewed the performance. his review provides a sense of the reflexive nature of aesthetic discourse in which ideas were generated by the artists themselves. they set the terms of reception which were confirmed by an audi- ence of artists and friends and circulated in the public sphere. lippold wrote: merle marsicano is one of a small group of highly original dancers who, like the most experimental of today’s painters, sculptors, composers, and poets, have put aside the rather tired concerns with narrative psychoanalysis, social awareness, or classically-inspired forms of the recent past. ( , ) vitalism, though unnamed, is the guiding metaphysics of her work and it shares with feldman’s own thinking a stark anti-conceptualism and anti-representational bent. figure morton feldman, figure of memory (reconstruction by edwin hymovitz). edwin hymovitz collection. paul sacher stiftung. used by permission. contemporary music review lippold went on to make connections between marsicano’s dance and abstract painting explicit: some of miss marsicano’s dances such as jet pears and green song, two group works, suggest more than a casual relationship to painting with their dependence on color and on choreography which uses individualized dancers to describe a complex space of independent, though overlapping shapes. ( , ) lippold describes a situation markedly similar to cage’s compositional values of unim- pededness and interpenetration that marked most of the composer’s works from the mid- s until the late s. in lippold’s description, the tension of ‘independent’ yet ‘overlapping’ forms allows marsicano’s conception of dance merging into ‘one image’. her taught, gestic movement operates on stage in a manner similar to the new abstract painting. indeed, lippold presaged mcdonagh’s description of marsica- no’s dance as an ‘over-all web’. lippold elaborated in his description of feldman’s three dances: these are a somewhat moody group, full of a continuous flow of movements, rich in invention, always surprising, yet seldom rising or falling to either side of a rather turgid line, making a complex and rich design, like the surface of a de kooning or pollock painting. ( , ) this pseudomorphic logic transposes the social basis of these collaborations to the level of form. of marsicano’s dances, lippold singled out figure of memory for special recognition: of the solo dances, figure of memory is undoubtedly the richest of marsicano’s efforts. it sustains a magical quality throughout, and succeeds best in accomplishing what seems to be her intent in all her works: a convincing emotion, compactly stated with such expert abstraction that the presence of the performer is forgotten and the audience is transported by the experience of pure movement. ( , ) as an experience of pure movement, marsicano’s dance was capable of overcoming sym- bolisation and returning to flux and flow and—much like feldman—attempted to fake élan vital through the production of an abstracted, affecting image in intermission . marsicano echoes the decentred, all-over experience favoured by feldman and cage in draft writings that eventually became her essay ‘thoughts on the dance’ which was published in the house magazine of the eight street artists club, it is. she writes, i think of music as an art of untouched white upon which i must breath for my very existence, yet leave untouched, just as the music must pass through and around me without discoloring the white of my being. we must become one and yet retrain the separateness of our souls. (marsicano a, ) this reflects to some extent cage’s dialectic of unimpededness/interpenetration but also suggests the more generalised, non-hierarchical relationship of music and dance r. dohoney in the post-graham era of the new york avant-garde. whiteness here figures as a kind of distinctness or independence from other aspects of the performance event. she is concerned with making not faking élan vital, of producing an art that is becoming and resists being: the dancing figures is the person and becomes in the next moment, the wind. arrest the dancer anywhere on stage—her condition is flux. in stillness i change. and the composed shape of my figure suddenly explodes in a riot of configuration. my person is a protean being. (marsicano b, ) other passages from marsicano’s unpublished writings express stronger vitalist senti- ments, and emphasize notions of intuition and anti-conceptualism found in bergson’s writing: the innocence, the irrational, the inspiration and the improvisation of a living art such as the dance are lost when we attempt to rationalise [sic] the construction. the consciousness makes for self-conscious questioning, to which available answers can be supplied. the art suffers from rationalization. (marsicano c, ) her choreography hoped to escape such rationalising strictures of the known: i find myself subjected to the most critical exposures of analytical sophistication in our sciences, histories, and physical probings and communications. how can we find again mysterious motivations and the innocence of no memory—reason to the point of being unreasonable? sense that makes no sense? how to blindfold my ability to construct a dance? how to render speechless the common instinct for taste? how to create a jungle, to find again the hopeless situation [in] which only a magnificent failure could be acceptable. to confuse the known! and then have to depend again upon inspiration or desperation. (marsicano c, – ) as with feldman’s desire to ‘step aside to be in control’ (feldman [ ] b, ) and to compose as a dead man (cage , ), or similarly with cage’s vast, self-dis- ciplinary apparatus of chance composition through the i ching, marsicano developed an ascetics to get beyond her training ‘in this school of contemporary taste’ (marsicano c, ). marsicano’s anti-conceptualism gives free play to her emotions beyond an intended meaning: ‘i should like to feel free to allow my feelings to construct whatever shape and form they take, give them whatever image would depict most intensely so that they should stand in themselves not for or against anything’ (marsicano c, ). marsicano’s practice emerges as a kind of intuitive method that moves away from representation to the pure intensity of experience. she desired—as she said of figure of memory—‘powerful occurrence’ (marsicano c, ). conclusion despite the limited evidence of feldman’s contemporaneous writings in the early s, his music played an important role in the shared vitalist sensibility found in contemporary music review new york school modernism. his collaborative relationship with marsicano is one important example, and there are further beyond it as well. vitalism inflected a number of collaborations from the early s, especially the films jackson pollock painting by namuth, and nathan boxer’s sculpture by lipton, both with music by feldman. these films established—as had herbert matter’s works of calder with its soundtrack by cage—the equivalence of artistic creation with natural forces. in the words of matter’s voice-over for calder, artworks and the natural world get ‘mixed up’ and ‘dreamy’. in pollock and lipton, the artists and their art are surrounded by nature which is figured as a necessary source of energy. what joseph has recognised of cage is as much true for feldman, marsicano, pollock and lipton: cage did adopt bergson’s ideas of nature as flux in duration, of the role of tempor- ality in the perpetual creation of the new, and of the interrelated functioning of intel- lect and memory. like bergson, cage saw that to dissociate oneself from the intellect’s instrumental predispositions, one had to turn away from the anthropo- centric point of view and identify with nature—or, as cage termed it, the “outside”. (joseph , – ) we have seen how marsicano and feldman developed their own ascetic procedures— the former intended to ‘blindfold her ability to construct a dance’ —to get out of their personal tastes and leap into the immediacy of intuition. their community of artists developed signifiers for vitalism which operated as a ‘secular metaphysics’ (katz , ). as feldman put it, ‘if i want my music to demonstrate anything, it is that “nature and human nature are one”’ ([ ] a, ). katz gets at the vernacular quality of this shared sensibility, though he does not call it that: ‘indeed, the very casualness of pollock’s vitalism suggests that it was probably picked up third hand, less the product of direct study than of ordinary conversations among friends’. even if third hand, the intimate circulation of these ideas does not diminish their pervasiveness or seriousness, realised as they were through open-form compositions and imagistic dance abstractions, glimpsed in filmic experiments docu- menting artistic practice, and argued over at the cedar bar. more than through direct philosophical engagement, the vitalist sensibility of new york school modernism emerged through gossip, close listening, and extended attention to artworks. feld- man’s attempts at faking élan vital with intermission and his work with marsicano on figure of memory are marginal but telling documents of the wider importance of intuitive method and its metaphysical implications. by calling feldman’s and marsica- no’s vitalism a vernacular metaphysics, i want to stress the avant-garde’s interpenetra- tion with some aspects of popular culture and explore how the bergson-craze of the early twentieth century had an afterlife in new york school modernism. it preceded the revival of the philosopher inaugurated by gilles deleuze’s bergsonism ([ ] ). this particular relationship between popular culture and avant-garde practices to some degree prefigures later formations of what benjamin piekut has called the ‘ver- nacular avant-garde’ (forthcoming) and benjamin lee—working on s hipness— has termed ‘vernacular styles’ ( , ). r. dohoney lastly, i want to make a point on method and return briefly to my interest in those seemingly recalcitrant or mysterious objects within feldman’s archive. what i have tried to do in this essay is to make sense of some curious statements made by feldman, and account for the resonances of latent vitalist metaphysics within his prac- tice. these are usually drowned out by feldman’s kierkegaardianism, cagean indeter- minacy, or reductive conceptions of abstract expressionism as gut-spilling masculine hysteria. by turning to a little-known collaboration with marsicano, i am hoping to recover something that might account for these eccentric metaphysical references— feldman’s participation within a broader vitalist field of relations of which abstract expressionism was an important part, as was cage. also, my attention to marginal figures like marsicano is meant to extend joseph’s method of ‘minor history’ ( ) which offers tools to rethink the post-cage avant-garde. by extending joseph’s minor- itizing historiography backwards, we can see that the social situation pertaining to cage, feldman, and abstract expressionism—especially in the s—may be more in flux than we have previously thought. acknowledgement thanks to susan manning, michael gallope, and benjamin levy for their thoughtful comments on this essay. i am also grateful to the audience at the ‘performing indeterminacy’ conference at the uni- versity of leeds where my ideas were first presented. this essay is dedicated to sabine hänggi-stamp- fli of the paul sacher stiftung in gratitude for more than ten years of collaboration and her invaluable role in my research and writing. disclosure statement no potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. notes on contributor ryan dohoney is assistant professor of musicology at northwestern university. he writes on mod- ernism and experimentalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. he has particular interests in the musical communities around morton feldman, julius eastman, and wandelweiser. he is the author of saving abstraction: morton feldman, the de menils, and the rothko chapel (oxford, ) and morton feldman: friendship and mourning in the new york avant-garde (bloomsbury, forthcoming). notes [ ] on judaic references in feldman’s work see b. levy ( ). [ ] there is a later reference to bergson’s idea of cognition in the darmstadt lecture of (feldman a, p. ). [ ] ‘obwohl eine gewisse Übereinstimmung zwischen bergsons gedankengang und feldmans zielrich- tung offensichtlich ist, würde es zu weit führen, bergsons theorie auf feldmans verständnis des instrumentalen bildes zu übertragen, zumal das bild selbst bei bergson nur die untergeordnete rolle eines vermittlers zwischen realität und wahrnehmung spielt’ (claren , ). trans- lation by the author. contemporary music review [ ] my use of ‘new york school modernism’ is meant to invoke the interdisciplinary community to which feldman belonged and to reference a collective sensibility across the arts, one undergirded by friendship but also by the vernacular metaphysics of vitalism i elaborate upon herein. [ ] on the various versions of intermission see nobel ( , – ). [ ] skizzenbuch contains references to litz’s dance ‘thoughts out of season’ for which feldman wrote ‘ / min of music which can be inserted anywhere within the structure of the dance’ (feldman , n.p.). skizzenbuch also contains a draft letter to jean erdman that indicates some trouble over their collaboration on the dance changing woman. on feldman’s work with erdman see harrison ( ). feldman’s music, though used in the original per- formance, seems to have been subsequently replaced with music by henry cowell. feldman’s draft reads: i’m writing this letter with greater sorrow not for the money involved in the trans- action but neither for our relationship. it is things like this which subtly come between people and before you know it they are not speaking to each other [and] resent working together. i don’t want this to happen to us since i enjoyed working with you so much. i’m afraid that the remainder of the money will have to stand and be sent to me as soon as you can manage it. (feldman , n.p.) [ ] i am exceedingly grateful to william brooks on this point. [ ] feldman ( , ). [ ] other scholars have consistently misdated it. john holzapfel ( ) is off by a year and places it in (p. ). david cline ( ) recently hypothesised that figure of memory ‘is undated but probably contemporary with ixion*’ (p. ) which would date it to . [ ] see the sammlung edwin hymovitz. paul sacher stiftung. see especially, hymovitz . [ ] see video of the performance in the jerome robbins dance collection at the new york public library for the performing arts. nypl *mgzidf . [ ] biographical material gathered from an unnamed and undated grant application in the merle marsicano papers in the new york public library jerome robins dance division. see folder *mgzmd . [ ] see marsicano ( ). [ ] i have retained marsicano’s capitalisation. ‘[in]’ is in the original typescript. [ ] on affective formalism see cronan ( ). [ ] i will expand on these connections in the larger version of this chapter which will appear in my morton feldman: friendship and mourning in the new york avant-garde (bloomsbury, forthcoming). [ ] katz ( , ). orcid ryan dohoney http://orcid.org/ - - - references archival collections cline, d. . the graph music of morton feldman. cambridge: cambridge university press. feldman, m. . skizzenbuch . morton feldman collection. basel, switzerland: paul sacher stiftung. feldman, m. . four lectures: new york style. morton feldman collection. paul sacher stiftung. r. dohoney http://orcid.org/ - - - &nbsp; harrison, l. [ ] . “music for the modern dance: meditations on melodies, modes, emotion, and creation.” in making music for modern dance, edited by k. teck, – . new york: oxford. hymovitz, e. . letter to arlene croce. june. edwin hymovitz collection. paul sacher stiftung. hymovitz, e. . letter to felix meyer. september. edwin hymovitz collection. paul sacher stiftung. marsicano, m. . program of a dance recital at the ym-ywha dance center. february. edwin hymovitz collection. paul sacher stiftung. marsicano, m. a. speech—henry street playhouse. merle marsicano papers. new york public library jerome robbins dance division. (s)*mgzmd . box , folder . marsicano, m. b. the dance–further thoughts. merle marsicano papers. new york public library jerome robbins dance division. (s)*mgzmd . box , folder . marsicano, m. c. meditations of a dancer. merle marsicano papers. new york public library jerome robbins dance division. 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[ ] . bergsonism. trans. hugh tomlinson and barbara habberjam. new york: zone books. feldman, m. . marginal intersection, intersection ii, intermission vi. kulchur / , . feldman, m. [ ] a. “a life without bach and beethoven.” in give my regards to eighth street, edited by b. h. friedman, – . cambridge, ma: exact change. feldman, m. [ ] b. “the anxiety of art.” in give my regards to eighth street, edited by b. h. friedman, – . cambridge, ma: exact change. feldman, m. a. “darmstadt lecture.” in morton feldman says, edited by c. villars, – . london: hyphen. feldman, m. b. “toronto lecture.” in morton feldman says, edited by c. villars, – . london: hyphen. feldman, m., j. cage, p. boulez, and c. wolff. . “ musicians at work.” trans/formation ( ): – . greenberg, c. [ ] . “the crisis of the easel picture.” in clement greenberg: the collected essays and criticism. vol. : arrogant purpose, – , edited by john o’brian, – . chicago, il: university of chicago press. gunter, p. a. y. . “bergson and proust: a question of influence.” in understanding bergson, understanding modernism, edited by p. ardoin, s. e. gontarski, and l. mattison, – . new york and london: bloomsbury. hellstein, v. . “the cage-iness of abstract expressionism.” american art ( ): – . contemporary music review holzapfel, j. . “david tudor and the performance of american experimental music, – .” phd diss., city university of new york. jones, c. . “finishing school: john cage and the abstract expressionist ego.” critical inquiry ( ): – . jones, c. . machine in the studio: constructing the postwar american artist. chicago, il: university of chicago press. joseph, b. . random order: robert rauschenberg and the neo-avant-garde. cambridge, ma: massachusetts institute of technology press. joseph, b. . beyond the dream syndicate: tony conrad and the arts after cage. new york: zone. joseph, b. . “chance, indeterminacy, multiplicity.” in experimentations: john cage on music, art, and architecture, – . new york and london: bloomsbury. katz, j. d. . “jackson pollock’s vitalism: herbert matter and the vitalist tradition.” in pollock/ matters, edited by ellen g. landau, – . boston, ma: mcmullen museum of art. landau, e. g. . “action/re-action: the artistic friendship of herbert matter and jackson pollock.” in pollock/matters, edited by e. g. landau, – . boston, ma: mcmullen museum of art. langer, s. k. . feeling and form. new york: scribner. lee, b. . “avant-garde poetry as subcultural practice: mailer and di prima’s hipsters.” new literary history ( ): – . levy, b. r. . “vertical thoughts: feldman, judaism, and the open aesthetic.” contemporary music review ( ): – . lippold, r. . “merle marsicano.” dance observer ( ): – . mcdonagh, d. . the complete guide to modern dance. new york: doubleday. meyer, s. . irresistible dictation: gertrude stein and the correlations of writing and science. palo alto, ca: stanford university press. milz, m. . “essay in honor of robert motherwell’s centenary: ‘temporalized form’: mediating romanticism and american expressionism—robert motherwell, henri bergson, and the ontological origins of abstraction around .” journal of aesthetics and culture . doi: . /jac.v . . nobel, a. . composing ambiguity: the early music of morton feldman. burlington, vt: ashgate. pavia, p. . club without walls: selections from the journals of philip pavia, edited by n. edgar. new york: midmarch arts press. piekut, b. forthcoming. the world is a problem: henry cowell and the vernacular avant-garde. durham, nc: duke university press. quirk, t. . bergson and american culture: the worlds of willa cather and wallace stevens. chapel hill, nc: university of north carolina press. stein, g. . things as they are: a novel. pawlet, vt: banyan press. stevens, w. . “the man with the blue guitar.” poetry ( ): – . volans, k. . “what is feldman?” tempo ( ): – . whitehead, a. n. [ ] . process and reality. new york: the free press. r. dohoney https://doi.org/ . /jac.v . 	abstract 	‘ … just an outline of becoming’: intermission 	‘my person is a protean being’: figure of memory 	conclusion 	acknowledgement 	disclosure statement 	notes on contributor 	notes 	orcid 	references ‘only as good as your last gig?’: an exploratory case study of reputational risk management amongst self-employed musicians this article was downloaded by: [university of southampton highfield] on: may , at: : publisher: routledge informa ltd registered in england and wales registered number: registered office: mortimer house, - mortimer street, london w t jh, uk journal of risk research publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjrr ‘only as good as your last gig?’: an exploratory case study of reputational risk management amongst self- employed musicians christina portman-smitha & ian a. harwooda a southampton management school, university of southampton, southampton, uk published online: may . to cite this article: christina portman-smith & ian a. harwood ( ): ‘only as good as your last gig?’: an exploratory case study of reputational risk management amongst self-employed musicians, journal of risk research, doi: . / . . to link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/ . / . . please scroll down for article taylor & francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “content”) contained in the publications on our platform. however, taylor & francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the content. any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by taylor & francis. the accuracy of the content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. taylor and francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the content. this article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. terms & conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjrr http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showcitformats?doi= . / . . http://dx.doi.org/ . / . . http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions ‘only as good as your last gig?’: an exploratory case study of reputational risk management amongst self-employed musicians christina portman-smith* and ian a. harwood southampton management school, university of southampton, southampton, uk (received january ; final version received february ) reputations can take years to build and moments to lose, with significant impacts on the longer term viability of an organisation. there has been a signifi- cant increase in literature on reputation risk and its management in recent times, although this has essentially focused on larger corporations. at the other end of the scale, in micro-enterprises, there appears to be very little coverage. to start to address this gap, this study provides insights into perceptions of reputational risk (rr) and reputational risk management (rrm) practice in the music indus- try. it explores how rr is understood in an unconventional, non-corporate con- text using a case study of self-employed musicians operating in the south of england, uk. respondents identified ‘competition’ as being the key risk that they faced, along with insufficient funding, unregulated contracts and protecting intellectual property rights. they did not though, at first, view their reputation in terms of risk. there was no consensus on the definitions of reputation or risk, yet there was awareness that two components determined reputation: musical ability and personal qualities. despite appearing to have a lack of knowledge and understanding of rrm, the musicians were able to identify strategies for managing reputation, such as: behavioural adaptations, working with agents, choice of venues, use of technology, working collaboratively (with links to social identity) and being constantly reliable. they were also able to identify their stakeholders and the factors influencing their reputation, but this information was not widely used in a strategic way to routinely monitor or manage reputa- tion. an identified ‘barrier’ to rrm was the lack of understanding of this complex issue. having explored perceptions of reputation and rrm in micro-enterprises, this work forms a platform upon which the next stage of actually (re)designing processes and systems specifically for managing rrm in small- and medium-sized enterprises can be built. keywords: reputation; risk; musicians; risk perception; smes; micro-enterprise; social identity a loss or decline in reputation can have devastating effects on organisations and yet around half of those surveyed are not prepared for such events nor manage their rep- utational risk (rr) (aon ; accenture ). recent literature claims that reputa- tional risk management (rrm) should be integrated into an enterprise risk management (erm) framework (pagach and warr ; honey ; rayner ). however, erm is designed to look at risk across a whole organisation through a sharing of responsibility (coso ) such that risks can be dealt with *corresponding author. email: smith_christina@hotmail.co.uk © taylor & francis journal of risk research, http://dx.doi.org/ . / . . d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay mailto:smith_christina@hotmail.co.uk http://dx.doi.org/ . / . . by individuals at the correct level. the concept of ‘enterprise wide’ is therefore not applicable to self-employed individuals operating in a micro-enterprise. indeed, there appears to be a lack of research into rrm within small- to medium-sized enter- prises (smes) and this is despite data from the department for business, innovation & skills (bis ) suggesting that in the uk, . % of private sector businesses are smes, employing an estimated . million people with a combined annual turnover of £ billion ( . % of private sector turnover). the majority ( . %) of private sector businesses were sole proprietorships. it is perhaps then no surprise that smes are being viewed as the catalyst for the uk’s recovery (read ). the uk music industry contributes £ billion per annum to the economy (dcms ); £ m of which is generated from live music performances (dcms ). there are no published figures depicting the number of sessional musicians in britain, although the music industry as a whole is thought to employ approxi- mately , individuals (dcms ). so the music industry is a significant sector and one which thrives on reputation. despite this, little research exists on how rrm is being implemented or utilised within the industry, if at all. lathrop and pettigrew ( ) claim that typical self-employed musicians promote their tal- ents via the internet and will personally book gigs and build up relationships. indeed, freelance musicians’ ongoing work has been found to depend on networking (blair ; coulson ) and reputation in terms of informal social networks within the industry (gerstin ), but risk and reputation together and in a wider context have not been explicitly explored. this study seeks to fill this gap by investigating self-employed musicians’ awareness and perceptions of rrm via the following questions: ( ) what are the main risks faced by self-employed musicians? ( ) what factors are thought to influence their reputation? ( ) what strategies are used to actively manage their reputational risk? ( ) what are the perceived barriers to managing their reputational risk? ( ) who are their stakeholders and who is responsible for rrm? ( ) are perceptions of reputation monitored amongst their stakeholders? there now follows a brief review of relevant literature on rrm in order to set the theoretical context, followed by the key methodological considerations before moving on to the case study analysis. what is reputation? corporate reputation is frequently viewed as an asset (barnett, jermier, and lafferty ; rindova, williamson, and petkova ; rayner ) and more specifically as an intangible asset that is the ‘property’ of an organisation. other research indicates that reputation is purely a perception and something closely related to favourability (lange, lee, and dai ) which differs hugely amongst individuals. larkin ( , ) argues that ‘reputation is a reflection of how well or how badly different groups of interested people view a commercial name’. this definition high- lights the importance of varying interest groups or stakeholders, yet is somewhat diminished by its focus on ‘commercial name’. a reputation is dependent on much more than ‘name’ or brand, and so its explicit mention is unfortunate. in an attempt to encompass the complexity of the concept, low and kalafut ( , ) describe c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay reputation as something which is challenging to manage: ‘it’s literally nothing more than how the organisation is perceived … it is slippery, volatile, easily compro- mised, impossible to control [and] amorphous.’ essentially, the value of reputation varies based on perception. according to rayner ( ), the best way to convey this is through the form of a theoretical equation: reputation = experience − expectations. it demonstrates that reputation is dependent on whether or not a person’s experience of a business matches up to their expectations. although it is not possible to actually compute the equation, it highlights how elusive the concept can be. rr and its management rr is commonly regarded as anything which could result in damage to reputation. the board of governors of the federal reserve define rr as: ‘… the potential that negative publicity regarding an institution’s business practices, whether true or not, will cause a decline in the customer base, costly litigation, or revenue reductions’ (fed , . ). this highlights the idea that reputation can be lost whether allega- tions are true or false. however, its emphasis solely on reputational loss can be somewhat limiting. honey ( ) and neufeld ( ) consider rr to be both nega- tive and positive (in the same way that generic ‘risk’ can be defined). some risks can therefore be taken to improve reputation. in a definition somewhat related to the equation developed by rayner ( ), honey ( ) argues that reputation risk is the gap between stakeholder expectations and organisation behaviour. using this perspective, it is therefore perfectly possible to take positive risks in order to ‘lessen the gap’. other writers refer to a ‘reputation reality gap’, replacing the term behaviour with reality (eccles, newquist, and schatz ; klewes and wreschniok ) in the hope that greater emphasis is placed on the difference between what is experienced and what is expected. balmer and soenen ( ) claim that behaviour is not the only thing which determines reputation risk; visual and verbal manifestations should also be considered (i.e. image and communi- cation). one could argue that the term ‘reality’ more effectively denotes these factors rather than ‘behaviour’. maintaining a good reputation is thought to increase the amount of trade and investment a firm experiences (cravens and oliver ). it is therefore in the orga- nisation’s best interests to manage reputation risk. understanding how much interest stakeholders have, and how they interact with the firm, is a crucial part of the man- agement process. however, a distinction needs to be made between the management of reputation in a proactive manner (i.e. risk management, where risks are identified before they emerge as problems), and a reactive manner (i.e. crisis management, where risks are considered post-damage). reactive crisis management eccles, newquist, and schatz ( ) suggest that some companies focus on threats to reputation which have already emerged. by definition, this approach cannot be categorised as risk management; rather, it is referred to as crisis management. the notion of risk management is one which anticipates unforeseen events and develops strategic contingency plans (iso ). eccles, newquist, and schatz ( ) note that this is too often not the case. journal of risk research d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay a crisis is defined by millar and heath ( , – ) as ‘an untimely but predict- able event that has actual or potential consequences for stakeholders’ interest as well as the reputation of the organization suffering the crisis’. relying on crisis reputation management is a flawed strategy, since it is associated with ‘last-minute’ decisions which could lead to secondary problems (chapman and ward ). nonetheless, crises still happen, and reputation is at the forefront of the damage. in these instances, marlene and kovoor-misra ( ) emphasise the importance of honest crisis communication with stakeholders. it is thought that their perceptions are more influenced by the firms’ response than the actual event. this was proven to be the case with evian, who openly spoke to consumers about their product recall in after public worries of high levels of bacteria. however, proactive rrm (and indeed, risk management in general) should help prevent crises in the first place. proactive rrm it is widely acknowledged that reputation does not develop through chance (allen ; honey ). nonetheless, some critics question if rr can, in fact, be man- aged. hutton et al. ( ) go as far as to say that the concept of reputation risk could be a fad, due to the lack of consensus over definitions and the questionable validity of some measures. regardless, anthony fitzsimmons, chairman of risk spe- cialists ‘reputability’, publicly stated that ‘it is perfectly possible to manage reputa- tion and risks to it. but getting there is hard because few know the right questions to ask’ (lloyds ). standard rm procedures follow a similar structure to that shown in figure which can also be applied to rrm. reputation risk analysis and evaluation should then aim to answer the questions: what are the chances of an event occurring, how will stakeholders be affected, and how will stakeholders (most likely) react to it? ultimately, it is the stakeholders who will then determine whether or not reputation is damaged or enhanced (fombrun, gardberg, and sever ; fischer and reuber ). reputation risk control typical rm practice centres around four risk treatment categories: transfer, avoid, mitigate or accept (airmic, alarm, irm ). however, they are not all appli- cable to rr. transferring rr is not an option because the owner is known as a ‘moral hazard’ – something that will influence the degree of loss and the probability of making a claim (honey ). one could assume that, because corporate firms cannot directly insure against rr, they will have sophisticated ways of managing it. in reality, this is not the case. rrm is a subjective area; there is no objective way to measure reputation as an asset, and so it is hard to forecast how changes may affect figure . an iterative and proactive approach to rrm. c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay it. avoiding the risk is not plausible either – even daily norms act as a reputation risk (reputation risk is imbedded in other risks). two options are left to consider. mitigating reputation risk essentially means to reduce it. this strategy is usually implemented when people are confronted by a risk that is viewed as having negative implications. however, reputation risk can be positive or negative (neufeld ; honey ); therefore, risk mitigation is more appropriate for negative risks, since the aim is to reduce potential reputation damage. it is not as appropriate for so-called ‘positive risk’ because the focus shifts from reducing threat to exploiting opportunity (and the gains that come with it). literature relating to risk mitigation does not make this distinction (even within the irm risk management standard) and it is some- thing that should be acknowledged. when a risk is accepted, the intention is to prepare for both positive and negative consequences. it is often related to risk financing, where money is saved in case of damaging consequences. communica- tion is of upmost importance in this instance (marlene and kovoor-misra ). reputation risk management in smes smes have acknowledged that a good reputation is vital if they are to receive legiti- misation (acceptance) from stakeholders (woodward, edwards, and birkin ; goldberg, cohen, and fiegenbaum ). however, berthon, ewing, and napoli ( ) claim that smes do not have the time nor money to implement reputation building strategies, and instead adopt a ‘survival mentality’ where they simply do enough to get by – usually through focusing on their external image (goldberg, cohen, and fiegenbaum ). research has shown that larger organisations show a more effective understanding and monitoring of consumer needs in which past actions are evaluated. in contrast, smes do not (berthon, ewing, and napoli ). however, davies et al. ( ) claim that reputation management is not normally a budgeted activity, even amongst large firms, and so it raises questions about smes’ motivation and knowledge in this area. further sme-related literature frequently discusses the importance of maintain- ing trust in reputation management (bowey and easton ; cambra-fierro and polo-redondo ; kelly and scott ; welter ). maintaining trust (through cooperation, genuine concern and keeping promises) is thought to eventually shift the focus of attention away from other reputation-influencing factors (cambra-fierro and polo-redondo ). smes are also thought to build reputation through the support of other smes. wider research recurrently recommends the setting up of an internal rrm group due to the need to combine input from legal, strategic, financial and operations backgrounds (neufeld ). however, the formation of such a group is not relevant to micro-enterprise; quite often it is left to an individual who may lack the required knowledge (beaver ). smes are exposed to more barriers than larger companies because of their resource constraints (lack of time, staff, money and knowledge) (berthon, ewing, and napoli ) and so the need for sector-specific rm material aimed at smes is very apparent. the literature indicates that rrm is a complex, multifaceted topic with a gap in the literature relating to smes in general (and most certainly in the music industry). definitions and views on management vary but generic models are available, and risk factors and barriers to rrm are beginning to be identified. this study will seek to elicit how rr is managed within the context of self-employed musicians. journal of risk research d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay methodology there are limited rrm insights in the music industry and so this research took the form of an exploratory study. exploratory research was appropriate since its aim is to ‘seek new insights; to ask questions and to assess phenomena in a new light’ (robson , ). a qualitative approach was beneficial in this instance because differing perspectives and explanations of risk practice were sought through the inductive interpretation of narrative accounts. the study does not aim to general- ise findings but rather to gain knowledge in a specialised area and context in which little is known. a case study was therefore deemed the most appropriate methodol- ogy since the research focus was on ‘how’ and ‘why’ something is being done (yin ). to meet the research objectives, the study needed an in-depth investigation within the real-life context of freelance musicians. these two characteristics define case study research (yin ) providing justification for an exploratory case study. the initial convenience sample of self-employed musicians included four per- sonal contacts to one of the authors and another musician known to the other author. through snowball sampling thereafter, a total of participants operating as self- employed musicians in the south of england, uk were involved in the study, with their relevant characteristics shown in table . to gain general insights into reputa- tion risk, an experienced rrm consultant was also interviewed; however, the main focus here is on the musicians. rubin and rubin ( ) and yin ( ) suggest that case study interviews should be guided conversations – supporting the notion that ‘structured’ questions table . participant characteristics. respondent age years in industry (approx.) genre(s) instrument(s) income source(s) blues piano performing teaching folk bass session work jazz piano performing classical conducting teaching popular guitar performing rock piano instrument making teaching rock guitar performing session work blues guitar performing voice session work writing country guitar performing blues instrument making mixed drums performing piano session work mixed guitar performing jazz voice performing rock writing rock bass performing n/a (as a hobby) folk guitar performing voice c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay are not suitable when dealing with responses that may require expansion. semi-structured interviews were therefore deemed to be more appropriate so that views, opinions, experiences and concerns could be elaborated upon. the reliability of answers could also be checked with the addition of follow-up questions, thereby exploring perspectives as they emerged (saunders, lewis, and thornhill ; blumberg, cooper, and schindler ). following a pilot interview, a final set of semi-structured questions were formulated (along with ‘probes’ to illicit detailed responses): ( ) what would you identify as the main risks to musicians within the industry? ( ) what do you think influences your reputation in the music industry? ( ) do you consider reputation to be a risk within the industry? ( ) do you actively manage your reputation? ( ) can you give an example where your reputation was damaged or compromised? ( ) does anything prevent you from managing your reputation? ( ) do you think that anyone else can impact on your reputation? ( ) does the work that you do affect or impact on any other people or organisation(s)? ( ) who is responsible for managing/maintaining reputation? ( ) do you monitor your reputation amongst others? in order to explore the musicians’ attitudes to rrm in their own words, and to provide rich descriptions, all of the interviews were recorded and transcribed. the analysis then followed three activities which were continually interacting: data reduction (assigning codes to discover themes and patterns), display and conclusion (miles and huberman ). as suggested by eisenhardt ( ), the case study data analysis and discussion are combined together along with embedding relevant litera- ture at the same time. what are the main risks facing self-employed musicians? all respondents bar one only identified a single risk initially (see table ). ‘compe- tition’ was the most frequently mentioned risk. it cannot be avoided or mitigated since it is not possible to reduce the number of people entering the industry or to increase the amount of work available. although musicians’ must accept the risk of competition, cravens and oliver ( ) note that a good reputation leads to compet- itive advantage, thus making rrm an important issue for self-employed musicians. despite this, the musicians interviewed did not initially voice this as a priority and did not make any link between identifying risk, risk management and competitive advantage. probing their responses indicated that they were taking steps to identify risks, although they did not have, or were unaware that they had a strategy for managing them. interviewees did not share an accepted definition of reputation. there was also a similar lack of consensus over how reputation risk could impact on their careers. they appear to have had little exposure to the world of risk management, in which risks are considered as both a threat and opportunity (neufeld ; honey ). despite this, it is interesting that their comments do show some understanding of the journal of risk research d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay concept of reputation risk being the gap between stakeholder expectations and orga- nisation behaviour (honey ). although not explicitly stated, two respondents demonstrated an awareness of the need to align expectations and reality in order to manage reputation. respondent described a situation where there was a gap: what you send to people is the best possible representation of yourself … [a radio dj] heard our recordings and thought it was awesome … [but] he came to one of our shows and just turned to us and told us it was terrible and awful! … that was a bad decision on our part because we knew we could never pull off what we did on the cd recording … it depends how good a band you are in reality. additionally, respondent noted that the competitive nature of the music industry appears to be driving expectations to a very high level: ‘but expectations are so high now that any good band can have a frightful evening’. it would seem that respondents use their own experiences and instincts rather than theories and planned strategies to identify risks and manage their reputations. what factors are thought to influence reputation? when asked to highlight key factors that might influence their reputation, all inter- viewees stated ‘musical ability’ without the need for further probing. additionally, ‘being professional’ was mentioned on six occasions (respondents , , , , , ) two of whom described professionalism as ‘looking and acting the part’, i.e. a combination of the influences shown in figure below. table . main risks faced by freelance musicians. respondent risk identified quote availability of free music there are less opportunities for people to make music because people [are] … getting it for free. also … there are less places to playfew venues insufficient funds being broke! you can’t invest in any instruments and equipment few venues there are fewer venues now. so there is a lot less work available informal, unregulated contracts there is no such thing as collective thinking … if i can’t afford to do that gig i will say so. but there are semi-pro bands … who will come in at a lower price unreliable pay people who are paying you money, you never know if they are going to do it competition the musicians who are coming out now. they are going to college … i didn’t have that thing in my day informal, unregulated contracts treating it as a business … it’s tricky because a lot of people try and make money without a contract or record deal competition i think the competition, massively so … [and there] is less of a direct route competition competition from other people doing the same things as you … or doing it better transferable skills jeopardise my chances of getting a job [in engineering] insufficient funds the money is not very big at ‘the smaller end’ c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay no agreement was made about whether ‘playing more than one genre’ (musical variability) was beneficial or detrimental to reputation. nonetheless, the issue was thought to be an influence. the rrm consultant suggested that awareness of intel- lectual property law was important for proactive rrm. however, the theme of ‘legality’ did not emerge strongly amongst the musicians; only two respondents demonstrated some awareness: ‘i’ve just recently had a bunch of my stuff pats tested [portable appliance tested] which is a legal requirement. you’ve got to keep on top of all that; they’re the tools of your trade! it’s actually part of your profes- sionalism.’ [respondent ], and ‘[some venues] pay you in cash and get you to sign to say that they have paid you “this much”, then obviously, it is your responsibility to pay tax on it’ [respondent ]. generally speaking, musicians thought that being sincere (i.e. believing in what you play), helps contribute to good reputation. all respondents said the same for musical ability. age was also generally thought to affect reputation, with one respondent suggesting that a musicians’ reputation peaked across the age range of – years. what strategies are used to actively manage rr? five musicians said that they did not actively manage their reputations, and described it as ‘something which just happens’ (respondents , , , , ). however, despite being unaware, each of these five respondents had in fact used some of the strategies detailed below, albeit in an ad hoc fashion and with no overall planned approach. strategies for rrm: behavioural adaptation interviewees managed their reputations by ‘behaving differently’ around different stakeholder groups, although they did not recognise this as a form of management. four of the respondents said that they did not act differently in different situations (respondents , , , ), yet commented about occasions where, in fact, they had thus contradicting themselves. some examples of these ‘adaptations’ are listed in table . figure . reputation influences on freelance musicians. journal of risk research d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay table . behavioural adaptations. adapting behaviour … how? supporting quotes … amongst promoters • do not undermine their suggestions you usually go along with their idea because that’s what they do. and sometimes you disagree with them but … you just go along with it [r ] • come across business minded we can’t just say to a promoter that we ‘just want to play’ (even if we do) and will do it for free! you need people to think that [you’re] well sought after [r ] … in formal situations (functions, dinners) • act more conservatively i mean, when you are playing to people who are sat down eating dinner, you don’t want to get ‘too political’ or use sexual content [r ] if it’s a smart, polite situation (like somebody’s wedding) you don’t go in dressed in jeans and singing rowdy songs [r ] … whilst teaching • act with authority i suppose when i teach, i try to conduct myself with an air of mild authority, not like when i am with the familiar band [r ] … whilst interacting with the audience • engage in conversation i’ve realised that even the most boring and frustrating people who come and talk to you have bought that couple of minutes of your time, and you can’t afford to be brusque or rude [r ] you always get people who come over and want to tell you about their grand-daughter who has got grade on the flute or something … and inside you just think ‘that’s so boring’! you have to pretend you’re interested even if you’re not [r ] … at large venues • structure song list if you’re in front of people … you have to have a set list and know exactly what you want to do … so i suppose you approach it in a more obviously professional manner [r ] • louder performance we should be louder, and we have a big stage which we should move around on more [r ] … amongst co- workers • cater to the band’s needs; (act more formally in situations where a gig needs to be organised) in one particular band i am jokey, and in another i am always known as the miserable one because i want everything to be right, therefore i take responsibility. with the other band – that has everything sorted – i don’t have to take responsibility so i instantly lighten up [r ] c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay strategies for rrm: working with agents of the six musicians who had worked with agents, all of them described agents as problematic and did not perceive them to play a positive role in rrm. however, two recognised benefits to reputation were provided by: ( ) gaining access to presti- gious venues, and ( ) having someone to blame if anything goes wrong. the general consensus was that agents cannot be trusted to promote a good reputation, but the underlying reasons varied. firstly, agents do not provide regular work, secondly that agents limit musician/customer interaction, and thirdly that agents are not selective in their bookings and will ‘book any gig’ (even the wrong genre) as commented by respondent ‘they know what you do, but they will still book you for irrelevant things … i think it is bad management’. these problems were perceived to have a negative impact on reputation. conse- quently, five out of six musicians (respondents , , , , ) no longer use agents, and take responsibility for their own rrm. respondent said: ‘i associate them with being there to get you work rather than a reputation. i haven’t used them often as […] reflecting on things helps a lot.’ the role of agents in rrm is music industry specific and it is therefore difficult to relate this finding to existing literature. how- ever, agents were acknowledged as stakeholders and in this role, the literature agrees that they could impact on reputation (fischer and reuber ). strategies for rrm: choice of venues the musicians appeared to select venues based upon their own personal objectives to either build or preserve reputation, which were generally attributable to two sepa- rate age groups. younger musicians (with less experience and therefore needing to build reputation) said that they would be happy to play at a poorer venue since their main aim was to ‘get heard’: ‘we’re just starting out so we are happy to take as many gigs as possible’ [respondent ], ‘you are wanting to advertise yourself and get work … you might not decline it because it’s a gig at the end of the day’ [respondent ], and ‘just because it has a bad reputation does not mean you can’t make a living there’ [respondent ]. generally, the older more experienced musi- cians said that they would not be happy performing in poor venues because they wanted to preserve their own reputation: ‘they are definitely ones you don’t go to, they can make you look bad’ [respondent ], ‘if people see you playing in dreadful venues … they think that you’re cheap and it’s very hard to climb back up the ladder when you drop right down’ [respondent ], and ‘i would never go to any of those places as they do reflect on you. it is not worth the risk to you’ [respondent ]. ward ( ) has emphasised the importance of considering objectives for effec- tive, tailored rm. interestingly, although unaware of this, the musicians chose venues to fit their objectives (to build and preserve reputation). however, rather than display- ing acts of proactive rm, it is possible that those who chose to perform in any venue (generally younger musicians hoping to build a reputation) were characterised by a higher risk taking attitude instead of deliberately aligning rm to objectives. strategies for rrm: use of technology four different actions (and sources of technology) were found to assist in rmm: uploading videos to youtube, developing a personal website, making cds and journal of risk research d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay using social media (especially facebook). the majority view was that each of these actions could contribute to building or maintaining a good reputation. however, although the majority of respondents used social media, two contrasting viewpoints were highlighted. the musicians with the most experience (respondents , , ) were more reluctant to use it, and had a greater awareness of the risks involved: ‘i am very careful what i use. it has to be recent and it has to be good otherwise it can actually do damage’ [respondent ]. social media is therefore expressed in terms of being a barrier to successful management. the less- experienced musicians showed a lack of awareness of the negative risks (respondents , , ), and viewed the use of social media with optimism, stating only the positive outcomes. strategies for rrm: musicians working collaboratively literature suggests that smes build reputation through the support of other smes; forming inter-firm alliances (barnir and smith ). this behaviour was also dem- onstrated by self-employed musicians, who tried to protect one another’s reputation and work collaboratively in the hope that they would gain work as highlighted by the respondents: ‘now i’ve agreed to the work [in three bands] i feel like i can’t let them down otherwise i would look bad, we would all look bad’ [respondent ], and ‘i do get feedback saying “he [a fellow musician] is very miserable” and “he doesn’t talk to us” so i try and smooth it out. i am the one who does all the talking and not him … i try to protect him’ [respondent ]. the majority of respondents worked in a number of different bands in order to earn enough to live on. they also supported each other, often in networks that had built up over time, by standing in for one another during emergencies or when they were ‘double booked’. in this way, individuals were striving to achieve or maintain a positive social identity which is derived ‘largely from favourable comparisons that can be made between the ingroup and relevant outgroups’. (brown , ). they therefore considered their reputations to be interlinked and defending a colleague’s reputation was part of a strategy for protecting their own. strategies for rrm: being consistently reliable as might have been expected, interviewees showed an awareness that they should be consistently dependable and reliable; ‘you don’t let anyone down and don’t muck anyone around. that is the way to manage it [your reputation]’ [respondent ]. this was reinforced by respondent , who said ‘you won’t be given a second chance in this business’. the need to acquire a dependable and reliable reputation resulted in some musicians’ performing during very difficult times, often at great cost to their personal lives. this uncertainty and hardship are often deemed to be ‘occupational hazards’ within the performing arts to the extent of them forming part of the lifestyle choice of being a musician, as well as a wider characteristic of self-employed indi- viduals. despite these difficulties, all those interviewed had continued to work within the music industry throughout some very challenging times because they felt that the benefits of working in an area they were passionate about outweighed the occasional disadvantages. c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay what are the perceived barriers to managing rr? the respondents identified four main barriers to managing rrm, namely: controlling online media content posted by third parties, performance environment, perceptions of age and problems with agents/promoters. external social media uploads three respondents mentioned that they could not manage the comments/videos people had uploaded onto social media sites which may have a negative impact on reputation. firstly, audiences were said to record performances without permission, thus resulting in poor quality clips. secondly, there appeared to be an issue with people writing unregulated comments on the sites. comments included: people recording you on their phones and putting it online. especially in a small pub or small sized venue, it looks like a live recording but you can hear everything. i am not saying it is a poor performance it is just that it is very poor quality … that definitely doesn’t do your reputation any good … that is out of my control. [respondent ] ‘one compromising picture is there [on social media] for ever. you have to be incredibly careful [respondent ]’, and having a bad performance could lead to bad comments which could snowball among a group of people, giving you a bad reputation. that is where the social media can work against you instead of for you. that would be completely out of your control. [respondent ] respondents felt that they had no ‘quality control’ over the materials loaded by other people or the comments circulating within groups. this is interesting because, conversely, many respondents also viewed social media as a useful tool for managing and maintaining a good reputation. this reinforces the complex nature of reputation risk management within this multifaceted situation. performance environment three respondents felt that environmental factors had prevented them from maintain- ing their (good) reputation. these factors included other distracting activities within the venue, the quality of the sound system, the experience of the sound technicians and the layout of the venue. all were considered to be out of their control. for example, at this level, they could not afford their own sound engineer and were very dependent on those working at the venue to make them ‘sound good’. this was highlighted by respondent , who said: [instances] where you’re not in control of the environment. like the pa system, like the fact there might be people in a room next door watching the football very loudly, or you might be playing at an outside venue and it’s cold and wet … there are all kinds of environmental circumstances which i think you’re not in control of, which do affect you. journal of risk research d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay perception of age eight interviewees linked age to reputation, and most of them felt that the image they portrayed was part of their rrm strategy. older musicians voiced concerns that they may no longer be able to maintain their reputation as they got older. they per- ceived this barrier to be due to their older image, resulting in there being fewer opportunities. this risk factor could not be mitigated, since it was widely acknowl- edged that the music industry favours young musicians as one respondent explained: there is going to come a time where i’m not physically acceptable on a stage. even though i record for younger people who need good players, i am the wrong generation to be seen with them. there’s going to come a time when people think ‘what’s that old bloke doing up there’ before they think to listen … i’m not suggesting that a player has a clearly defined shelf-life, but you have to be aware that there is a limit some- where. even if it’s self-imposed. [respondent ] interestingly, the findings provide evidence that success within the industry depends on the management of two reputations, one relating to musical ability and another relating to individual attributes. although gerstin ( ) recognises the latter ‘aesthetics’ (including age) as being important in reputation building, the literature in general does not seem to make this distinction. problems with agents and promoters as described earlier, interviewees considered agents to be a barrier to their own rrm. generally, it was thought that agents and promoters prioritised their own business interests over those of the musicians they represented. they were thought to dictate rrm strategies and often placed constraints on musicians’ interactions with others. who are the musicians’ stakeholders and who is responsible for rrm? eccles, newquist, and schatz ( ), honey ( ) and rayner ( ) all note that the identification of stakeholders is a crucial part of rrm. interviewees identified a large (but not exhaustive) number of stakeholders as shown in figure , with fans/ clients most frequently named. additionally, the family was identified as a stake- holder group, although they are not mentioned in corporate stakeholder literature. the connecting arrows between fans, friends and clients represent two interesting findings. fans – or those who regularly watched the individuals perform – were often considered friends as well. respondent explained that, in order to get more publicity and more gigs, it is important to have established friendships within your fan base. similarly, clients were thought to be fans. generally, those who are respon- sible for paying the musicians were thought to enjoy and respect their performances too. this is clearly indicated by respondent , who said that ‘you rely on people liking you and wanting to employ you’. participants thought that, if their clients did not like them, they would not be invited back: ‘if you are not getting work … [it means] they don’t really like what you are doing. even though my style might be different to other peoples, they just might not like it … it is very subjective’ [respondent ]. interviewees felt that in the current economic climate, the number of venues hosting live music was decreasing, making it even more important that c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay they fostered and maintained good relationships with fans, clients or friends who frequented their regular venues. family was found to be a key stakeholder amongst several of the respondents, although their perceived effect on musicians’ work varied, as shown in table . responsibility for rrm every participant said that they felt primarily responsible for their own rrm. two reasons were given for this: ( ) reputation is dependent on their initial actions: ‘we are all responsible for the way we act aren’t we?’ [respondent ], and ( ) reputation is further dependent on their reaction to damage ‘[it depended on] how i dealt with it after’ [respondent ]. however, whilst some respondents said they were solely responsible, some also held other stakeholders accountable. two stakeholder groups were mentioned most frequently. firstly, fellow musicians (as mentioned by respondents , , , ): figure . a musician’s network of potential stakeholders. table . family influence as a stakeholder. family influence quote pressure to earn money it impacts greatly on my family – especially if i haven’t got any money [r ] confidence as a child … i have memories of concerts where i felt that i was being perceived as a joke whilst all my brothers and sisters were brilliant … [it gave me] a confidence issue [r ] help with promotion mary [partner] … puts gigs up [online] all the time [r ] general concern family are very, very, very important- they would be the most concerned out of anyone if i had a bad reputation [r ] affect ‘how’ you play the most significant (and traumatic influence) was death in the family … when my dad died that affected things big time! i tried to carry on working but i wasn’t performing as well [r ] when i had a break up … it affected the way i played and socialised … it is hard to present yourself well and get lost in the music [r ] journal of risk research d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay the people that you work with should help … if anybody asks me about world class players … [*his*] name always crops up because he is that good. [we] always mention [him] because that is how we perceive him to be. so he does not have to promote him- self when we are around. we do the promotion for him and i would hope that other people might do the same for me. [respondent ] and ‘[other musicians are responsible because], if i’m not working, several other people won’t be working either … they are the first line of fire’ [respondent ]. secondly, sound engineers were held accountable (as mentioned by respondents , , , ): ‘the sound guys, the engineers … you can come across awfully [if] someone isn’t doing the sound very well’ [respondent ]; and very often, you get someone saying ‘we’ll mix [the sound], don’t worry’ and they’re in control … and it’s not quite the sound we want at all. and, of course, at the level we are, you can’t actually hear what the audience are hearing! and afterwards, you get people coming up and saying [bad things]. [respondent ] despite having identified the key stakeholders, none of the interviewees moni- tored the views of all of them. the fans’ views were most commonly sought, but since these formed one isolated group of stakeholders, it is unlikely that reputation could be managed successfully using this limited information. indeed, all groups of stakeholders have the potential to influence other people’s perceptions of a per- former. the research indicated that stakeholders can have multiple roles and influ- ences, something which is infrequently discussed in stakeholder theory (freeman, harrison, and wicks ). this can make the management of reputation a very complex task but most of the interviewees seemed to simplify this by focusing more on the fans than any other group. all participants accepted responsibility for managing their reputation, and of those who cited others, fellow musicians were mentioned most frequently. this is not surprising, since they work together in a collective social identity (tajfel and turner ; ashforth and mael ) and have a vested interest in managing each other’s reputation so that it does not impact negatively upon themselves. this could result in a conflict of interest, as musicians in one band often compete against each other for work with other bands. few interviewees earned a living playing in just one band. are perceptions of reputation monitored amongst stakeholders? rayner ( ) makes the case for monitoring reputation, asserting that some knowl- edge of stakeholders’ expectations and perceptions is required before rr can be managed. however, the interviews indicated that only two stakeholder groups were primarily monitored (fans and fellow musicians). although respondent suggested that the most important stakeholders were venue owners and event organisers, none of the respondents were found to investigate their perceptions. the use of social media appeared to be a popular way of discovering fan and audience feedback. monitoring fan and audience perception six of the musicians interviewed monitored their reputation amongst fans using face-to-face conversations or social media. meeting fans’ expectations was consid- ered one of their priorities: ‘fans are a definite priority because there are so many of c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay them; it’s the law of numbers’ [respondent ], and ‘that’s where the word of mouth starts. without them you don’t have a reputation’ [respondent ]. five musicians (respondents , , , , ) did not monitor their reputation face-to-face; two of whom made assumptions about what to expect: i think that if someone’s got a comment; be it good or bad, then someone’s going to come and let me know’ [respondent ], and ‘you know if they come back to see you, you know you are doing something right. you know what i mean? [respondent ] respondent justified not gathering feedback face-to-face by saying he thought that fans’ responses would not be honest. social media sites were used instead because they were free, and provided a forum for fans to voice their opinions anonymously (respondents , , , ), as explained: ‘on the internet it’s a bit more anonymous and people, i think, feel more comfortable saying “he wasn’t very good that night”’ [respondent ]. although social media were regularly checked for responses, there was little acknowledgement of any bias involved in the process. monitoring musicians’ perceptions three interviewees did not ask fellow musicians for feedback. they made the assumption that, if they were being offered work, they must have acquired a good reputation: ‘i would not ask them [fellow musicians] what they thought … it is just accepted that, if you are working with these people, they must consider you to be capable of doing that job’ [respondent ], and ‘no, i don’t ask the musicians i work with what they think of me. them offering me work sort of tells me they think i am alright’ [respondent ]. other respondents said that asking fellow musicians for feedback played a cru- cial part in improving their performance and, hence, their reputation: ‘yes, definitely i ask their opinion, i say like, ‘what did you think of that melody’ or ‘would it sound better if i did that … that helps our reputation, which in turn helps my repu- tation’ [respondent ]. this is in line with gerstin’s ( , ) study where repu- tation on the musical scene is defined in terms of the ‘informal, consensual evaluations by which performers judge one another’s competence and relate to one another in a social network’. responding to feedback three respondents said that they did not act upon the feedback received (respon- dents , , ) whilst two were unsure, saying; probably [respondent ], and maybe … a couple of times [respondent ]. the remaining six noted that it was important to respond: well funnily enough yes. those comments are so necessary – you learn more from failure than success. you have to get it wrong to learn what to not do!’ [respondent ], and ‘yeah- it was actually one of the biggest changes i had. what i found out was probably related to the problems i had with all of my older bands … i did a music lec- ture where you have to play for a bit, and then the other students criticise you. i wasn’t really passionate enough and it sort of came across. [respondent ] generally, there was little evidence of a planned strategy for monitoring reputation and information appears to be gathered on an ad hoc basis. the structured journal of risk research d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay model for rrm in figure represents it as an iterative process involving very clearly defined steps. however, no respondents acknowledged the iterative nature of the process or the need for a stepped approach. some gathered no evidence, but monitored their reputation by making assumptions (e.g. if you had a reasonably sized audience, or a promoter rebooked you, then your reputation must be good). respondents who did collect evidence for monitoring purposes rarely questioned the quality of it. there was some recognition that face-to-face talks with fans might result in people saying only what the musician wanted to hear, but there was no acknowledgement of possible bias within this self-selecting sample. summary and conclusion this study has explored the perceptions of reputation risk and its management amongst self-employed musicians. the key risks being faced by this group were competition, followed by insufficient funds, unregulated contracts and protecting intellectual property rights. initially, the respondents did not cite reputation as a main risk, although further probing did indicate that they were all aware of the need to acquire a good reputation and the factors which could influence it, such as musical ability and professionalism. despite acknowledging the risks and reputation factors, many interviewees did not explicitly manage their reputations. however, on further probing, respondents demonstrated an awareness that reputations were not built ‘by chance’ and they were found to be adopting various strategies, including: behavioural adaptations, working with agents, choice of venues, use of technology, working collaboratively and being consistently reliable. the perceived barriers to managing rr were found to be: external social media uploads (online feedback), their performance environment, per- ception of age, and problems with agents and promoters, many of which they have little, if any, control over. respondents identified a large number of stakeholders with whom they form a network, with ‘family’ being seen as the key stakeholder. whilst some views from this network were monitored by the respondents (especially fans and fellow musi- cians), none of the interviewees had a planned strategy in place for managing or monitoring reputation. this is supported by the literature which indicates that one half of global smes do not monitor their reputation (eiu ). this could be a cause for concern, since fischer and reuber ( ) suggest that it is all stakeholders who ultimately have an impact on the reputation acquired. surprisingly, apart from the use of social media sites, media was not recognised as a significant influence on musicians’ reputations. this contradicts the literature which indicates that reputation is becoming more dependent on how it is media por- trayed (larkin ; lange, lee, and dai ). it is possible that the opposite affect is occurring in the context of self-employed musicians, as explained by respondent : it’s kind of the other way round; reputation was more dependent [on media] then. in the days when there were only two real music mags: nme and melody maker. they were like the bible; if they said you were good or bad then that was it. now, you can change stuff like that because the [media] circuit is so much bigger. nowadays, you can take it or leave it or do something about it. in the early days, if they said a player was tragic then it stuck to them. c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay it seems then in the self-employed music business, reputation risk management is an ad hoc event, with a general lack of theoretical understanding of this complex topic. one reason for this lack of knowledge could be that rrm literature is mainly focused on larger organisations, with little coverage involving micro-enterprises. one immediate impact of this is the notion of larger organisations being able to increase their risk maturity as they grow and develop, and in particular the associ- ated development of a dedicated risk control function (honey ). for micro- enterprises, this is simply unobtainable and hence total control of reputation risk in this environment is impossible (low and kalafut ), especially with such limited resources. it was clear though that the respondents saw themselves as being part of a com- mon collective (i.e. the concept of being ‘a musician’) and reliant on ‘interactionism’ (turner and oakes ) as derived from their social identity as a musician. at the same time, they recognised a wide range of stakeholders who either contributed to or otherwise critiqued their reputation. whilst the notion that ‘you’re only as good as your last gig’ might be true; this study has uncovered a far more complex and intertwined world within which sessional musicians develop and maintain their reputations. there is scope as an outcome of this study to expand research on reputation risk management into the micro-enterprise arena. due to the lack of resources and indi- vidual nature of this domain, it is most likely that influence and collaboration (rather than control as shown in figure ) will be of central importance in assessing and dealing with reputation risks, together with the notion of social identity and the nat- ure of collectivism and networks. new, agile processes need to be developed which reflect the tensions between individual reputation set within a rapidly moving net- work of contacts and stakeholders, who seem to operate with a ‘natural’ or intuitive, rather than theoretical, understanding of risk and its management. it is evident that sole traders are more reliant on trust and (reciprocal) goodwill to build and maintain reputation. this is in contrast to the established literature on generic rm processes which suggests that risks should be controlled. since a case study methodology was used, these findings cannot be generalised in a positivistic sense. however, they are valid to the respondents and it is plausible that similar perceptions of reputation and its risk management would apply in simi- lar settings. the challenge now is to build on this study in order to (re)design appro- priate reputation risk management processes to help smes to grow, develop and protect their reputations. acknowledgements no financial support or incentives were received during this research. the authors wish to thank all of the interview respondents for their participation and insights. the comments and feedback arising from the review process are also gratefully received and incorporated. references accenture. . report on the accenture global risk management study: risk management as a source of 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and context. london: witherby. welter, f. . “all you need is trust? a critical review of the trust and entrepreneurship literature.” international small business journal ( ): – . woodward, d. g., p. edwards, and f. birkin. . “organizational legitimacy and stake- holder information provision.” british journal of management ( ): – . yin, r. k. . case study research: design and methods. th ed. london: sage. c. portman-smith and i.a. harwood d ow nl oa de d by [ u ni ve rs it y of s ou th am pt on h ig hf ie ld ] at : m ay 	abstract 	 what is reputation? 	 rr and its management 	 reactive crisis management 	 proactive rrm 	 reputation risk control 	 reputation risk management in smes 	 methodology 	 what are the main risks facing self-employed musicians? 	 what factors are thought to influence reputation? 	 what strategies are used to actively manage rr? 	 strategies for rrm: behavioural adaptation 	 strategies for rrm: working with agents 	 strategies for rrm: choice of venues 	 strategies for rrm: use of technology 	 strategies for rrm: musicians working collaboratively 	 strategies for rrm: being consistently reliable 	 what are the perceived barriers to managing rr? 	 external social media uploads 	 performance environment 	 perception of age 	 problems with agents and promoters 	 who are the musicians` stakeholders and who is responsible for rrm? 	 responsibility for rrm 	 are perceptions of reputation monitored amongst stakeholders? 	 monitoring fan and audience perception 	 monitoring musicians` perceptions 	 responding to feedback 	 summary and conclusion 	acknowledgements 	references close encounters of a critical kind: a diffractive musing in/between new material feminism and object-oriented ontology carol a. taylor abstract for a number of years, new material feminists have been developing new theoretical tools, new modes of conceptual analysis and new ethical frameworks. object-oriented ontology, part of the speculative realism ‘movement’, has been engaged in something similar. yet these endeavours have often taken place in ‘parallel universes’, despite sharing – or at least colliding around – a range of somewhat similar ontological and epistemological commitments. composed as a diffractive musing encounter, the article brings barad’s meeting the universe halfway, already a ‘foundational’ text for new material feminism, into an encounter with a speculative realist text of the same ‘foundational’ status, harman’s the quadruple object. the article develops a notion of diffractive musing as embodied, sensory struggle which instantiates intellectual generosity as a mode of critique. introduction speculative realism first went viral on the internet a couple of years ago and is now making itself felt in academic articles and books. i came to speculative realism via my immersion in new material feminism and after many years of engaging with feminist theory and politics. while feminism continually tuned me into the daily politics of sexism and the need to combat these on an everyday basis through our intellectual practices with students as well as our individual and collective actions on the bus, in our homes, workspaces and in the streets, new material feminism had enlivened my senses, bringing to the fore engagement with the world as bodymind entanglement. it had propelled me, via the promise of diffraction, into a creative corresponding author: carol a. taylor, sheffield institute of education, sheffield hallam university, arundel building, charles street, sheffield, s ne. tel: . email: c.a.taylor@shu.ac.uk mailto:c.a.taylor@shu.ac.uk imaginary for thinking otherwise, and into pondering how, if we are thinking otherwise, we might also be reading and writing academic articles otherwise. more specifically, new material feminism touches me, presses on my skin as sensorium, with its invitation that knowledge is a material-discursive co-constitution by all sorts of agents not just human agents. it impels me to worry about and try to work out how to affectively and ethically embody mattering as an entangled responsibility for the actions we take (however small) which enact differences that matter for humans, nonhumans and other-than-humans alike (barad, ). it is perhaps worth stating here that the material feminism i activate in this article differs from an ‘earlier’ incarnation of material feminism which, in its alliance with marxist historical materialism, is principally concerned with the gendered inequalities entailed in the reproduction of capitalist modes of social and economic organisation. however, as lenz taguchi ( ) makes clear, it is also to be differentiated from a ‘renewed’ materialist phenomenological account on two fronts: one, because renewed materialism continues to privilege human subjects’ experience of matter in relation to what matter affords or enables humans to do; and two, because it explains material relations by resurrecting a mode of subjectivity based on conscious acts of making meaning which continue to gesture to a transcendent dimension with its hidden structures of truth or meaning beyond the human. so, although offering a valuable corrective to social constructionism, a renewed materialist phenomenological account ‘still takes the human subject as a starting point, and thus produces a negative and dialectical ontology’ (lenz taguchi, , p. ). in contrast, in the baradian-inspired ‘new’ material feminism i invoke, matter is not ‘given’ to the human but rather acts on its own terms in an emergent, contingent and dynamic practice of materialization which includes human and nonhuman bodies and gives rise to unpredictable, if sometimes enduring, assemblages and conglomerations. ‘new’ material feminism undoes the binary separation of knowing and being; and it troubles concepts of will, intention and agency, recognizing them not as individual possessions, nor as manifestations of the negotiated pull of structure and agency as in social constructionism, but as force, flow, affect and intensity distributed across a multiplicity of different human-nonhuman modalities. furthermore, the ‘weirdness’ of barad’s quantum physics promised a queer(y)ing that could undo identity by unmooring the fixed coordinates of time, place and space through an emergent ‘dynamic relationality between continuity and discontinuity’ (barad, , p. ), specifically, the word ‘weirdness’ produced an errant wandering to the concept of ‘enweirding’ and the agency of objects, from which i went to ian bogost’s ( ) book on ‘alien phenomenology’, and then from bogost to graham harman’s ( ) theory of object- oriented ontology, which is either an offshoot of speculative realism, its overarching field, or its origin, depending on who you read. the affinities between speculative realism and material feminism seemed immediately apparent: both theories proposed a realist ontology, albeit inflected differently and refracted through different disciplinary histories and epistemological affiliations; both questioned human exceptionalism and thereby (implicitly in the case of object-oriented ontology and explicitly in the case of material feminism) offered posthuman principles and allegiances, again differently inflected; and both opened new, radical ways of knowing and being by, variously en-weirding, diffracting or queer(y)ing knowledge production. but, at this early point, some considerable differences also seemed immediately apparent. for all her theoretical abstraction, barad’s world is a place of human-and-more-and-other-than human flesh, blood and bone entanglements. her concerns are to do with the materialisation and force of differences that matter in a ‘worlding’ of entangled relationality, that is, an ethic of being with/in the world. for harman and bogost, objects ‘withdraw’ from us. neither seem at all interested in the ‘livingness’ of things but with abstract concepts, in which re-reading the work of the philosophical fathers seem to take precedence over ethical praxis. as a feminist, this worried me (and there is more to come in what follows on the other worries that speculative realism provoked). nevertheless, the affinities and dissonances between speculative realism and material feminism continued to intrigue me, and i was encouraged by hird’s comment ( , p. ) that ‘a conversation between feminist science studies and critical theory, speculative realism and object oriented philosophy is overdue’ to pursue these wondering-wanderings further. first passage to critique: em/bodied diffractive musing em/bodied bell hooks ( , p. ) notes that the legacy of the cartesian cogito in educational practice has meant the erasure of the body in order that we may ‘give ourselves over more fully to the mind’ such that the normalized, governing assumption is ‘that passion has no place in the classroom’. and not just the classroom. it often seems that passion has no place in academic writing either, as we bend our thoughts, bodies and emotions to producing another star-rated journal ‘output’, engage in the never-ending pursuit for diminishing, and increasingly competitive, research funds, and burnish our public profiles on social media – meanwhile exhausting our passion in favour of commoditized, entrepreneurial academic productivity. yet, in opposition to this climate, and the concomitant propulsion in much (though not all) mainstream academic writing towards an ‘ablution of language’ (minh-ha, , p. ) in which (it is assumed) transparency of thought can be represented in the cold light of day on the dispassionate page, the forces of passionate attachment are ranged. these forces en- courage us – give us heart to – resist the tyranny that requires academic writing to display depth, surface, essence appearance, and competence in favour of instantiating the practices of performance, authenticity, pretence, truth, lies (maclure, ) which, although often castigated as ‘frivolous’, are more likely as practices to help recover some of the gleeful fun of playing with ideas that derrida thought should be the provenance of universities (myerson, ). it may be that such writing is risky. it may be, as barthes’s ( , p. – ) notes, that writing which works against the modes established ‘under the pressure of history and tradition’ may be ‘a mere moment’. it may also be that such writing provides examples of personal commitment and imagination that sword (as cited in badley, , p. ) thought was needed. the exemplars for doing this are beginning to multiply – but how might i do this? sensorializing mazzei and jackson’s ( ) concept of knowing-in-being is for me one way forward; one way to contest the assumed separation of mind and body, and unravel the notion that unreason attends and inheres in the (female) body while freeing the mind, as purer substance, for intellection (grosz, ). instead, thinking with/in/from the plurality of the sensory body generates differing modes of apprehension which, at least for me, are not those of the monstrous workbench in which i tongue the corpse of severed data (holmes, ), but an immanent sensory melody in which i hear-feel the deafening thrum of ‘all the bells of noon’, touch the ongoing rush and flush of flowing matter, breeze in the alive-ness of all things and beings. being-in-the-moment, as a buddhist might say. aiming to apprehend in skin-mouth-eyes-fingertips the joy of the world in its intra-active becoming, as barad ( ) might say. such sensory knowing is, as pink ( ) noted, embodied and emplaced. this (my) body is a specific body – here-now – but i attempt not to separate movement from seat- work (daza and huckaby, ) because i have a bad back which any stasis exacerbates. as i sit and write i move continually, attending to the micro-movements that occur, propelled into critique as the sensory joyousness of adventitious seeking, the hard-sought-after-going-on, gathering ‘materials’ in my getting-heavier pockets as i go, assembling ‘stuff’, turning ‘things’ over in my hands, enmeshed in the haecceity of moments, rather than worrying about the getting ‘there’ (wherever ‘there’ is) and having arrived, sorting, arranging, pinning, finicking. such sensory knowing continually unfinishes academic writing because the road is made by walking. thus, i think with latour ( , p. ) that: the direction of critique [is] not away but toward the gathering … critique [should] be associated with more, not less, with multiplication, not subtraction. such more-ish-ness becomes a taste on the tongue, an embodied experiment in writing which changes my thinking while changing ‘me’ (bridges-rhoads, ). diffractive a diffractive reading … spreads thought and meaning in unpredictable and productive emergences (mazzei, , p. ). theories […] matter, they induce difference into the intra-active becoming of the world. they matter because they are diffractive (seghal, , p. ). diffraction is not a singular event that happens in space and time; rather, it is a dynamism that is integral to spacetimemattering. diffractions are untimely. time is … broken apart in different directions, non- contemporaneous with itself. each moment is an infinite multiplicity. ‘now’ is not an infinitesimal slice but an infinitely rich condensed node in a changing field diffracted across spacetime in its ongoing iterative repatterning (barad, , p. ). the visionary potential of diffraction makes ‘a mapping of interference, not of replication, reflection, or reproduction’. diffractive mappings are not rationally made, because the productivity of diffraction comes from elsewhere (van der tuin, , p. ). critique is not just a reflection that leaves what it reflects upon unaltered, but a diffraction that changes what is put under critical scrutiny (folkers, , p. ). these five ways of looking at diffraction indicate the generative momentum of this concept as a way for thinking, doing, researching, being and becoming in productively different ways. i wish, like stevens with his thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird (why ? only ?), i could include more diffractive appreciations not simply to attest to its conceptual mobility, but also as an incantatory device in urging diffraction as a research practice which renders ‘methods’ as tools, ‘analysis’ as coding, and ‘methodology’ as a thinking frame for research obsolete. as barad ( , p. ) notes, diffraction ‘does not fix what is the object and what is the subject in advance’, which puts heidegger’s ( , p. ) point that ‘every inquiry is a seeking. every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought’ somewhat out of joint. diffraction en-courages us (gives us heart) to pay greater attention to research as an emergent enactment of materially-embodied socio-political practices, and to the cuts, boundaries and differences we co-constitutively produce through knowledge enactments. sensory knowing – that is, embodied diffractive musing as i develop it in this article – arises with/in the diffractive feminist ‘her/story’ told so well in recent journal special issues (gender and education, , vol. , issue ; parallax volume , number , , for example). this her/story pays homage to haraway as the ‘founding feminist mother’ of this concept, and her re-visioning of the masculine gaze of optics that diffraction his/torically tells, and to barad’s appropriation of diffraction as both a quantum phenomenon relating to interference patterns and a useful metaphor for methodological practices that entail ‘the processing of small but consequential differences’ which interfere with, contest and undo canonical tales, preferred readings, and dominant discourses. this her/story points up how ‘different differences get made, what gets excluded, and how these exclusions matter’ (barad, , p. – ). doing diffraction in this vein brings to mind a small (?) undoing of the masculine his/tory of optics: i re-member that spinoza was a philosopher-craftsman whose practical philosophy led him to the notion that ‘interacting with things and understanding things cannot be separated’ (hurley, , p. ii); that ‘the units of understanding are not propositions but acts’; which led deleuze ( , p. ) to suggest that spinoza’s affirmative philosophy had ‘enough confidence in life to denounce all the phantoms of the negative’. this re-minds me that in doing diffraction ‘one never commences; one never has a tabula rasa; one slips in; enters in the middle; one takes up or lays down rhythms’ (deleuze, , p. ). doing diffraction as sensory melody is, then, a becoming-movement towards embodying the figure of the ‘boarding-house lodger’, as deleuze ( , p. ) characterized spinoza, that is, one who ‘solicits forces in thought that elude obedience as well as blame’. musing meditative contemplation; thoughtful abstraction; critique as intellectual food; gustatory thinking. musing as slow theory. not theory which is developed at snail’s pace, but rather theory which partakes of the slow movement’s commitment to deceleration, consumption reduction, ethical environmentalism, and the nurturing of non-commercial forms of well-being. while honore ( ) is its most famous popularizer, perhaps the slow movement’s ecological impulses as found in slow cities, slow food, slow design (fuad-luke, ) have something useful for the development of critique as diffractive musing. roberts ( ) notes that a slow education would focus on ‘deceleration, patience, and immersive attention’. diffractive musing as slow theorising may help deterritorialize critique for those practices of ‘working the limits’ that mazzei ( ) thinks necessary. perhaps by valuing contemplation more in the unhurried spacetimemattering of doing, reading and writing critique we may also attend to the pulsing sense of immersive joy that comes-with emergent thinking. so that, like deleuze and guattari ( , p. ), we might say that ‘contemplating is creating’, it is an event that occurs ‘meanwhile’ and which ‘belongs to becoming [because] nothing happens there, but everything becomes’ (ibid, p. ). the longue durée of contemplative creation does not constitute musing as an apolitical practice. on the contrary, it provokes careful attention to ‘ideas’ as ‘technologies for pursuing inquiries’ (haraway, , p. ). musing critique directs a keener analytical gaze towards the ‘mark a minute’ cultures of postsecondary assessment regimes, and to contemporary university practices which condition bodies to accord with the finitude of ‘resource envelopes’. second passage to critique: reading and writing which maximizes in his engagements with other philosophers and writers – hume, bergson, spinoza, proust, foucault – deleuze was seeking a reading which maximizes. such a reading, according to hurley ( , p. iii) is an invitation to ‘come as you are – and read with a different attitude’, one more akin to the way we approach poetry. a reading which maximizes is less concerned with seeking a ‘full’ analysis (an illusion anyway and always) and is more about an affective reading which, as hurley notes, ‘may be more practical’. writing in this mode is ‘not a solitary pleasure [because there is] a connection between you and the material’ (winterson, ); it becomes an act of ‘receiving’ and ‘transmitting’, a form of ‘telepathy’ even, such that ‘we’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room … except we are together. we’re close. we’re having a meeting of the minds’ (king, , p. – ). of course, thinking this ‘meeting’ as a maximizing of diffractively em/bodied sensory knowing assuredly does not return us to the disembodiment of individualised cognition. instead, its musing mode works to instantiate the nonhuman with/in us. a diffractive reading and writing which maximizes focuses subjectivity as multiplicity and recasts burman and maclure’s ( , p. ) ‘necessary … but not necessarily paralyzing’ question ‘who am i to write this’ in a new light in which ‘to write is to struggle and resist; to write is to become; to write is to draw a map’ (deleuze, , p. ). above i endorsed latour’s idea that the direction of critique is toward the gathering, the multiplication. latour ( , p. ) argues that this formulation helps critique face away from its obsession with deconstructing matters of fact towards a more positive engagement with ‘matters of concern’. he proposes that, in dealing with matters of concern, the critic is: not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles … the critic is the one for whom, if something is constructed, then it means it is fragile and in need of care and caution (latour, , p. ). below, as i diffractively muse on speculative realism and material feminism, i want to activate this care and caution by engaging critique as a close encounter of the generous kind. the idea of critique as a more generous connection, as intimate association, as getting closer to in order to add to, not to take something away, be negative, hostile or destructive, works with barad’s argument that ‘critique is over-rated, over-emphasized, and over-utilized, to the detriment of feminism’ (barad, as cited in dolphijn and van der tuin , p. ). critique as a serious enterprise of more gentle holding begins with kirby’s ( , p. ) idea that: the practice of doing critique involves close encounters with another person’s way of thinking, intellectual commitments, ‘temperament’ and ‘personal idiosyncrasies that animate their writing style. thus, a diffractive reading in/between object-oriented ontology and material feminism doesn’t aim at a ‘murderous manoeuvre of dialectical reasoning’, as kirby ( , p. ) calls it, in order to highlight what is ‘good’, ‘better’ or more advantageous about one approach vis- à-vis the other, but rather to look at their utility for thinking differently in-between. i am mindful of st pierre’s ( , f.c.) advice that the best preparation for educational research is to study philosophy, not methodology, and she cites rajchman’s ( , p. ) point that: to make connections one needs not knowledge, certainty, or even ontology, but rather a trust that something may come out, though one is not yet completely sure what. in what follows i try to do this. i trust that something may come out but at the moment i write this, i am not quite sure what. third passage to critique: making connections/ soliciting forces i began this paper (a while ago) in a state of pique. my pique arose when i saw that the names associated with ‘the movement’ of speculative realism (in harman’s [ a] view it ought to be capitalized as a proper name) were all male, no women; and it seemed to me that the four men’s names – graham harman, quentin meillassoux, ray brassier, and iain hamilton grant – the ‘founding fathers’ of the movement – were engaging in a lot of incestuous mutual citing (perhaps, my gut told me, to convince themselves there was a ‘movement’). pique deepened to annoyance when i saw a similar thing happening with object-oriented ontology or tripleo (founded by graham harman, in alliance with ian bogost, levi bryant, timothy morton). and expanded when i saw the male philosophical lineage harman et al. in elaborating tripleo invokes: kant, husserl, heidegger. having witnessed the colonisation of a number of emerging fields by masculine interests over the years – the focus in cultural studies on young men’s oppositional and resistant subcultures and the lack of academic engagement with girls’ subcultures prior to angela mcrobbie’s work is one notable example – i was surprised at how much this irritated rather than simply wearied me as an another illustration of the ongoing monotony of gendered practices of exclusion. added to this, ray brassier said that he could see ‘little philosophical merit in a “movement” whose most signal achievement thus far is to have generated an online orgy of stupidity’ (cited in gratton: , p. ), a comment which encouraged me initially to relegate object- oriented ontology to a boys-own philosophical hinterland where clubby backslapping competed with the virtual violence of macho smackdowns. others, too, have noted the gendered exclusions: o’rourke ( ) remarks on a reference to speculative realism and tripleo as an unfriendly to women ‘sausage fest’, and van de tuin ( , p. ) notes ‘the androcentrism of much ooo work,’ although gratton’s ( , p. ) book – the first synoptic look at the ‘movement’ – ‘sees no reason to exclude’ some notable women theorists as ‘disparate thinkers’ questioning correlationism. and then, there is the wariness i felt of object-oriented ontology’s claim to the invention of a new philosophical universalism, a wariness not helped by the grandiose tone of some of harman’s ( , p. ) writing: his concepts, he says, are not ‘a taxonomy of entities, but are four structures of reality in general, found everywhere and at all times’. you can see my problem and perhaps you share my pique! here i reached for the comfort of haraway’s ( , p. ) observation regarding the ‘rarefield realm of epistemology, [of how] what can count as knowledge is policed by philosophers codifying cognitive canon law.’ and yet. nevertheless. meanwhile. i was intrigued. i had to know how barad’s worlding warped into bennett’s thingly power into harman’s objects. it seemed like ‘now’ was a good time to tangle with harman’s object lists which, like barad’s italicised theoretical summaries, affectively struck me as a more endearing stylistic tic. perhaps it was three moments, working their subdued magic, that helped shift me toward the more generous reading kirby feels necessary in close critical encounters. first moment. i remembered badley’s ( , p. ) injunction that joining a community of inquiry means engaging in ‘transactions’ with established authors’ texts in order to meet those texts from their own critical standpoints. second moment. meeting the third table halfway. this is harman’s ( ) little book which uses an anecdote from the british physicist, arthur stanley eddington, to outline object-oriented ontology via the ‘everyday table’ that eddington wrote on, the ‘physical table’ composed of atoms, and the ‘third table’ lying ‘between these two others’ (ibid, p. ). the third table, the ‘real table’ is not reducible to quarks or table effects on humans, neither does the practical use we make of it exhaust its reality. its reality is not simply dissolvable into small units; it is ‘a genuine reality deeper than any theoretical or practical encounter with it’ (ibid, p. ). third moment. feeling the pulsing energy of a deleuzian line of flight when harman ( , p. ) dismisses the two cultures, which he terms science and social constructionism, of c. p. snow as ‘failures as philosophy.’ proposing instead the ‘third culture’ of art as the only way to apprehend the reality of objects. this refreshing ‘beyond binaries’ instant promised a creative cartography which spoke to deleuze and guattari’s ( , pp. – ) proposal in what is philosophy? for a momentary conjunction of forces in philosophy, art and science ‘want us to tear open the firmament and … let in a bit of free and windy chaos’. how to pursue that invitation? perhaps by a wondering without confirmation (not knowing what will ‘come out’), a more generous reading, a musing critique. landing place : realism/ materialism a tune upon the blue guitar of things exactly as they are. so, that’s life, then: things as they are? it picks its way on the blue guitar. (from wallace stevens, the man with the blue guitar) graham harman has positioned materialism as the ‘hereditary enemy’ of any object-oriented philosophy. in the workshop which originated speculative realism as a movement, harman said ‘i’m an anti-materialist … materialism is a kind of idealism’ (brassier et al., , p. ). three years later, he published an article with the title ‘materialism must be destroyed’ (haman, ), and in the quadruple object, he wrote: what makes materialism such a special opponent is that it does not merely undermine or overmine the object, but performs both of these manoeuvres simultaneously (harman, , p. ) rather than ungenerously thinking that the gentleman doth protest too much, it is worth looking at what these dis/avowals intend. harman makes it clear he is not making a literal call for materialism’s eradication. he is using his title as a provocation for thinking in order to escape from the loose use of the word ‘materialism’ which, he contends, ‘has been used promiscuously for so many theories that to destroy it might mean to destroy every philosophical position that exists’ (harman, , p. ). he therefore uses his opposition to materialism as a means to define the core tenets of his own brand of speculative realism, object-oriented ontology. it is interesting to note here that harman speaks approvingly of bennett’s ( ) materialism in which all things, human, nonhuman and other-than-human, are placed on the same ontological footing, given that bennett has also been rather firmly co- opted into a range of new material feminist and posthumanist analyses of cultural and educational practices, and we have already seen the antipathy between speculative realism and feminism. what harman specifically approves of in bennett’s approach is her opposition to ‘reduction as a general philosophical method’ and the fact that she ‘dissolves the usual strict opposition between free human subjects and inert material slabs’ (harman, , p. ). this fits with harman’s critique that materialism is guilty of both undermining and overmining the object. a brief explanation: undermining is a reduction of the object to some primary element, principle or substance which itself can be dissolved into nothing but qualities, for example, the atom is not an ‘object’ at all but a ‘set of habitually bundled traits’ as is the apple, and so is the human (harman, , p. ). think heraclitus, empedocles, anaximander. in contrast, overmining is another reduction but one that reduces ‘upward’ by positing that ‘objects are important only insofar as they are manifested in the mind’ (harman, , p. ). this is a form of idealism which argues that what we think is ‘real’ is nothing other than a surface effect while the ‘really real’ is going on below that. here plato’s forms come to mind, as does marx’s base/superstructure dialectical materialism. but harman claims that overmining also happens in those forms of process philosophy which see objects in terms of relations (as in whitehead), and forms of social constructionism in which objects are the product of language, discourse or power (think foucault, butler). harman ( b, p. ) has also dismissed the let’s-have-our-materialist-cake-and-eat-it position which he calls ‘duomining’ which dissolves objects ‘simultaneously in two directions’. i will return to this concept presently for i think it is here that a key friction between tripleo and new material feminism might be located. for harman, the philosophical way out is to dispense with overmining, undermining and duomining materialisms in order to return to a realism that resides in the autonomy of objects. thus, his stated aim in the quadruple object: ‘objects should be the hero of philosophy’ (harman, , p. ). the object’s philosophical heroism accords with harman’s claim that there is a ‘third way’ of philosophical thinking, ignored since kant’s influential view that made things knowable through our experience of them. for harman ( , p. ), following heidegger, this third philosophy focuses on ‘the intermediate layer of autonomous objects, that are both actually individual and also autonomous from all perception’. in the quadruple object, ‘objects’: ‘include those entities that are neither physical nor even real’ (p. ). ‘must be accounted for by ontology’ (p. ). ‘not all objects are equally real, but … they are all equally objects’ (p. ). ‘in its primary sense an object is not used or known, but simply is what it is’ (p. ). ‘to be an object means to be itself, to enact the reality in the cosmos of which that object alone is capable’ (p. ). harman confirms that objects are ‘defined only by their autonomous reality’ (p. ) and because ‘an object is anything that has a unified reality that is autonomous from its wider context and also from its own pieces’ (p. ), then it follows that physical things and minds are objects, the european union is an object, and a hammer is an object (p. ): ‘everything both inside and outside the mind is an object’ (p. ), including unicorns (one of harman’s favourite entities) dogs, diamonds and the dutch east india company. harman’s object-oriented ontology is most notable for its suggestion that ‘objects withdraw’ from us and each other into their own inaccessible realms. on this point, early in the life of speculative realism, harman writes of: ‘objects infinitely withdrawing from each other into vacuums and only barely managing to communicate across some sort of qualitative bridge’ (brassier et al., , p. ). he reiterates later: the object is a dark crystal veiled in a private vacuum: irreducible to its own pieces, and equally irreducible to its outward relations with other things’ (harman, , p. ). however, although objects recede infinitely, they nevertheless touch, communicate or interact with each other, doing so via their sensuous qualities, their surfaces. as gratton ( , p. ) explains ‘real objects relate “asymmetrically” to other objects through sensuous qualities, and this is just as true for the coffee grinds as it is for the human relation of knowledge to things themselves’. for speculative realists, objects ‘nest’ within other objects, constituting ‘unit operations’ which are not atoms but systems of object conglomerations whose operations are ‘always fractal (bogost, , p. ). that objects touch explains how approximate stabilisations are formed and replicated amidst heterogeneous conjunctions of objects but, while objects remain hauntingly near, tangible and felt by each other, they are nevertheless ultimately inaccessible and atomized, locked within themselves (bennett, f.c.) but some speculative realists of the tripleo stripe find objects ‘touching’ in another sense captured nicely by bogost’s ( , p. ) phrase: ‘these things wonder about one another without getting confirmation’ which points to the idea that objects pursue philosophical divagation on their existential alone-ness amidst their lively relations and atmospheric reverberations. and all we can say to this is: well, maybe, and how could we know otherwise? bogost ( , p. ) confirms that: ‘to be a speculative realist, one must abandon the belief that human access sits at the centre of being, organizing it and regulating it like an ontological watchmaker.’ indeed, the ‘abandonment’ of human access is the thing that joins the speculative realists, who otherwise are a disparate bunch with little in common, together: they all want to escape the correlationist circle. ‘correlationism’ is the name meillassoux ( ) has given to post- kantian philosophy – which he calls the correlationist era – and which, he argues, is founded on the belief that we ‘know’ reality exists because we can think it and, concomitantly, we cannot think outside our own being in the world. along with other speculative realists, harman shares a commitment to stop thinking about how we know reality and focus instead on thinking what is real beyond human experience. as a group, they aim to distinguish themselves from other philosophical traditions which they argue remain mired in their inability to think the real in-itself. thus, for harman, actor network theory is praiseworthy in introducing an ontology in which objects are recognised as active players in the world although, in his view, ant’s insistence that things exist primarily in their interrelation misses the irreducible ‘objectness’ of the world. speculative realists also agree that ‘we can know reality and we can speculate on it’ (gratton, , p. ) and harman’s objects are his philosophical take on giving realism its due. so, to summarise: for harman what is real are things – objects; objects are where speculation originates; things are real beyond how humans access them; objects can relate to other objects but only to some part of them with other parts remaining infinitely withdrawn. the question arises: to what extent is this position shared by new material feminism? a point also raised by van der tuin ( , p. ) who notes that ‘these young fields are generated by a similar philosophical impetus; however, they diverge as separate schools of thought.’ in outlining his approach, harman ( , p. ) is aiming at ‘a new metaphysics able to speak of all objects and the perceptual and causal relations in which they become involved’. this sounds provocative and exciting yet immediately raises questions: for example, who is doing the speaking in this metaphysics, when, why, and how? responses to which seem, to me, to raise some rather fatal issues for the ‘objects’ of object-oriented ontology which i pick up later (see ‘weirding/worlding’ below). harman is fully aware that objections to tripleo are often made on the erroneous misunderstanding that he is championing ‘equal rights for objects’ when it is patently obvious that a rock or carrot, a pen or a sword, blue jeans and ipads as ‘inanimate entities [do not] possess the full human toolbox of mental abilities’ (ibid, p. ). clearly stung by what he refers to as ‘snide objections’, ‘sarcastic comments’ (ibid, p. ) and ‘silly’ criticisms (harman, a, p. ), haman makes the important point that: ‘there is no evidence that trees and houses write poetry, suffer nervous breakdowns, or learn from their mistakes. the question is whether this obvious difference between humans and non-humans deserves to be made into a basic ontological rift’ (emphasis in original) (harman, , p. ). this is a sound question, and one which also motivates new material feminist understandings as i elaborate below. here, in the first landing place, i have been at pains to describe the ‘objects’ of object-oriented ontology in some detail partly because it is central to harman’s explanation of why he is so antipathetic to materialism and because the human/non-human ontological rift object-oriented ontology wants to get over is shared by new material feminism. i now musingly diffract object-oriented ontology via new material feminism and, because i suspect the latter may be more familiar to readers of this journal, i will provide just a short overview of new material feminism, then focus on the main contours of barad’s account of agential realism as outlined in meeting the universe halfway. landing place : materialism/ realism new material feminists are no less a disparate bunch than speculative realists. nevertheless, they share a view that matter and discourse are co-constitutive and neither is foundational; that matter is agentic; that the human as the principal ground for knowledge production has to be displaced; and that all beings come to being through dynamic processes of co-constitutive emergence. new material feminists, like speculative realists, adhere to a non-dualist, flat ontology, which at the same time reworks epistemology but, unlike speculative realists, they have been particularly exercised by ethics as engaged, embodied, situated and gendered meaning-making practices which necessarily displace objectivity, ‘truth’ and ‘reason’ – what haraway ( , p. ) called ‘the god trick of seeing everything from nowhere’ – as central values in social research (alaimo and hekman, ; barad, ; bennett, ; coole and frost, ; braidotti ). in my own field of education, the implications of material feminism have been explored in some depth recently (jackson and mazzei, ; taylor and ivinson, ; lenz-taguchi and palmer, ). i now turn to barad’s agential realism which maps a particular cartography for new material feminism. it is perhaps first worth tackling head on the realism of agential realism. barad ( , p. ) states that hers is: a non-representationalist form of realism that is based on an ontology that does not take for granted the existence of ‘words’ and ‘things’ and an epistemology that does not subscribe to a notion of truth based on their correct correspondence. her incarnation of realism is aimed at getting out of the individualist and foundationalist (hierarchical and binary) assumptions that ‘prop up both traditional forms of realism and constructivism’ (barad, , p. ). she writes that in an agential realist account: ‘agency is cut loose from its traditional humanist orbit. agency is not aligned with human intentionality and subjectivity (ibid, p. ). however, while the sentiment expressed here accords with bogost’s abandonment of the human as ‘ontological watchmaker’ referred to earlier, barad’s ( ) agential realism crystallises a divergence which produces new material feminism as the arch enemy of tripleo cf. harman’s comments above – precisely because it commits the correlationist sin of thinking mind, word and world together. barad’s agential realism proposes a posthumanist performative as a means to escape the ‘representationalist trap’ (ibid, p. ) that ‘takes the notion of [human] separation as foundational’. the problem with humanist representationalism is, for barad, twofold. first, representationalism makes an ontological separation of words from things, thereby ‘leaving itself with the dilemma of their linkage such that knowledge is possible’ (ibid, p. ). second, representational practices which constitute the material world, nature and matter as separate ‘objects of thought’ set ‘man [a]s an individual apart from the rest’, bestowing on him ‘a place from which to reflect’ (ibid, p. ). for barad such reflection results in a geometrical optics that produces the same, and she counters this with a physical optics of diffraction that illuminates difference and illuminates the boundary-making practices that institute difference. the enactments of posthumanist agential realism, therefore, disrupts the metaphysics of individualism, and the tenets of humanism and representationalism that hold it in place. agential realism ‘doesn’t presume the separateness of any-‘thing’, let alone the alleged spatial, ontological and epistemological distinction that sets humans apart’ (barad, , p. ). barad argues that ‘matter and meaning are not separate entities’ (ibid, p. ), and that ‘[by] … allowing matter its due as an active participant in the world’s becoming, in its ongoing intra-activity [we] can think[…] the cultural and the natural together (barad, , pp. – ), a point also expressed by timothy morton ( ) in his ecological speculative realism. however, while tripleo and material feminism share a critique of human exceptionalism and both forcefully contest the assumption of power and privileges it has enabled humans to arrogate to ourselves, from this point they shoot off in opposite directions. remember that what harman and tripleo are looking for is an a-human real in which objects and the world appear without us – a position that bennett ( f.c.), citing brassier, weisman and meillassoux, ultimately sees as a somewhat chilling lead-in to a post- apocalyptic disanthropy or nihilism. whereas for barad ( , p. ) an agential realist critique of ‘the inheritance of distance’ leads the other way – towards a human-matter entanglement: a responsibility for and of the world-with-us. like kirby ( , pp. – ), barad’s account is one in which word, flesh and world are ‘utterly implicated … they are all emergent within a force field of differentiations that has no exteriority in any final sense’. barad ( , p. ), thus, talks of ‘bodies being constituted along with the world, as ‘part of’ the world, as being-of-the-world rather than being in the world. she thinks of the ‘worlding of the world’ as an embodied (more-other-than-human-and-human) ethical practice, in which ‘we are not outside observers of the world … rather we are part of the world in its ongoing intra-activity’ (ibid, p. ). the agential realist cartography of worlding barad elaborates will now be familiar to many. in her view, in nature there are no such things as ‘things’ i.e. entities which are have ‘inherently determinate boundaries’ (ibid, p. ). instead, ‘the primary ontological unit is not independent objects with inherent boundaries and properties but rather phenomena’ whereby ‘phenomena are the ontological inseparability/entanglement of intra-acting agencies’ (ibid, p. ). we may for a moment be tempted to think there is something going on here similar to the way objects ‘touch’ in tripleo but not so. an agential realist ontology maps the mutual constitution of subject-object always and only in/through the dynamism of their intra-active entailment; objects and subjects do not exist before or outside intra-actions. there is no object ‘itself’ possessing an autonomous reality, things are not ‘separate’ from us and don’t ‘withdraw’; they come into being through intra-actions. individual agency is reframed as the co-constitution of confederate agencies in which agency is a becoming-together in an ‘ongoing ebb and flow’ (ibid, p. ) (remarkably different from the ‘autonomous’ objects of tripleo or the actants of ant). and while distributed agency makes it difficult to know (and why do we want to know?) which ‘one’ makes a ‘decision’ (and anyway what constitutes a decision? ask the ebola virus in sierra leone about that), agential cuts are made (sometimes by humans, sometimes not) which instantiate boundaries, produce properties and deliver differentiation, all the while remaining entangled as phenomena within apparatuses. the piling up’ of concepts here – phenomena, cut, intra-action, apparatus – is a baradian feature, a ‘personal idiosyncras[y] [of] writing style’ (kirby, , p. ) i deal with when i am in a close encounter of a critical kind with barad, my mind entangled with her words, the page, the book. tom-tom. c’est moi. the blue guitar and i are one. where do i begin and end? and where as i strum the thing, do i pick up that which momentously declares itself not to be i and yet must be. it could be nothing else. (from wallace stevens, the man with the blue guitar) a musing diffraction in/between tripleo and material feminism means to dispense with worries about questions of correspondence between descriptions and reality and revel in the fact that together they open a pincer movement which undoes the (man-made) ‘problem’ of correlationism. for barad, it is an illusion of our own making anyway, because: ‘to theorize is not to leave the material world behind and enter the domain of pure ideas where the lofty space of the mind makes objective reflection possible. theorizing, like experimenting, is a material practice,’ (barad, , p. ). for material feminism, concepts are practices, theories are material methods for enacting life. the realist materialisation of thinking-in-doing/ knowing-in-being, radicalizes ontology, fusing it with ethics and epistemology, constituting a posthuman ethico-onto-epistem-ology, making all and each of us (however ‘we’ are constituted as phenomena) responsible for each and all of ‘us’ because ‘every intra-action matters’. she spells this out as follows: ‘realism [is] about the real consequences, interventions, creative possibilities, and responsibilities of intra- acting’ (barad, , p. ). in place of this, object-oriented ontology proposes that: ‘the in-itself is real. yet … this reality remains unattained by inanimate causal relations no less than by human subjects. for there is, in fact, a cotton-in-itself that withdraws from fire no less than from human awareness,’ (harman, , p. ). in order to escape what harman sees as the ‘claustrophobic honey trap’ that prevents us from thinking the thing-itself because we are endlessly caught up in our thinking about thinking it, harman offers a ‘weird realism’ of objects ‘that shows the human-world circle to be indefensibly narrow’ and its representations to be ‘narrow and false’ (harman, , p. ). the purpose of ‘rescuing’ objects from human thought and installing them as autonomous things is to ‘produce a new metaphysics able to speak of all objects and the perceptual and causal relations in which they become involved,’ (harman, , p. ). i now turn to this ‘speaking of’ which i identified earlier as, in my view, a rather fatal issue for object-oriented ontology. landing place : weirding/ worlding ‘the objects as presented in this book are as strange as ghosts in a japanese temple’ (harman, , p. ) weird, alien, strange. these are the terms valorised by harman ( ) and bogost ( ) in their elaboration of the withdrawal of objects and their estrangement from human capture. how, then, can we approach the alien strangeness of withdrawn objects in the weird realism of object-oriented ontology? what procedures, practices or even ‘methods’ might work? harman’s view is that we need to focus on allusions and in the quadruple object ( , p. ) he writes ‘we all know of a way of speaking of a thing without quite speaking of it; namely, we allude to it. allusion occurs in thinking no less than in speaking’. interesting but it’s unclear where this gets us to in understanding the secret life of objects, which indeed turns out to be harman’s point. we can’t ‘get’ anywhere nearer to objects or reality than we already are. so, access to the table (or any other object) is ‘not impossible, only that it is indirect’ (harman, , p. ). the approach to objects must be ‘oblique’, and even when we are ‘hunting’ objects we must make sure we are ‘non-lethal … since objects can never be caught’. they remain withdrawn from all access, making themselves available through ‘allusion and seducing us by means of allure’ (ibid, p. ). perhaps it’s me, but harman’s objects bear some resemblance to the femme fatale of film noir, a dangerous enchantress attempting to elude the male gaze, a thing capable of reworking the sexualised norms of abjection. bogost ( ) on the other hand, proposes a number of different strategies. beginning with the damning view that ‘for too long philosophers have spun waste like a goldfish’s sphincter’, (bogost, , p. ), and lamenting their allegiance to writing which he sees as a pursuit dangerous for the doing of philosophy, he argues that ‘real radicals … make things’. he adapts the homely and undoubtedly masculine notion of carpentry to ‘the practice of constructing artifacts as a philosophical practice’ (ibid, p. ) and, to exemplify this, constructs technological artifacts that ‘work’ without human intervention. except that this ‘alien phenomenology’ requires human presence to records ‘effects’. like harman, a seeker after the ghostly object, bogost writes: the experiences of things can be characterized only by tracing the exhaust of their effects on the surrounding world and speculating about the coupling between that black noise and the experiences internal to an object (ibid, p. ). an alien phenomenologist’s carpentry ‘offers a rendering satisfactory enough to allow the artifact operator to gain some insight into an alien thing’s experience (ibid, p. ). maybe. but who, i wonder, is doing the ‘rendering’? by whose criteria is this rendering deemed to be ‘satisfactory’? and, again, who is doing the ‘speculating’? undoubtedly bogost himself, alone or in collusion with other – male? – philosopher carpenters. this is the problem i signalled to earlier. bogost complains that posthumanism isn’t posthuman enough (ibid, p. ). if so, that’s also the case for object-oriented ontology but in this case the human who is reinstalled as recorder of traces is indubitably male, embodying an opaque set of values, and judging from a distance. lest this seem like a reinscription by other means of the sovereign, rational subject (as alaimo [ ] suspects it is) it is worth briefly reviewing another of bogost’s strategies: wonder, a stance he adopts in order to ‘respect things as things in themselves’ (ibid, p. ). but this sort of wonder opposes the ‘old methods’ which illuminate and enlighten, seeking instead a wonder ‘that hopes to darken, to isolate, to insulate’. while i wonder where the joy is in this, it becomes clear that bogost’s proposal is to replace the fiction of knowing with speculative fictions which gesture to ‘the awesome plenitude of the alien everyday’ (ibid, p. ) with its democracy of objects each of which exists within tiny ontologies that are at one and the same time a dense mass and a unit or part connected to other units. speculative fictions are ‘applied’ and ‘pragmatic’ (ibid, p. ), they are metaphoric, in the vein of magic realism and fiction (recall what harman said about ‘art’). in this way bogost hopes that speculative realism will become a practical philosophy ‘things speculate and [speculative realism] speculates about how things speculate (ibid, p. ). such speculation, bogost avers, is a funhouse mirror, where the scholar is a ‘carnival barker’ proceeding through ‘educated guesswork’ via creative acts which ‘earnestly but bemusedly’ approach the object through distortions which remain ‘a perversion of the unit’s [thing’s] sensibilities’ (ibid, p. ). speculative realism, in this iteration, is a practice of enweirding, in which the weird ‘other’ is approached, named, storied, fictionalised, turned into words (or ‘other’ things), but never known, because it remains the autonomous real in-itself. in other words, we ‘know’ about things – or think we do – because we (humans) make up stories, fictions, narratives about them. but this sounds suspiciously like what philosophy has been doing all along. and, despite joy’s ( ) praise for weirding as a practice for unmooring texts from their human contexts which accomplishes an ungrounding of ourselves in play and pleasure, there is the enduring worry that, while van der tuin ( , p. ) is right to say that object-oriented ontology, like material feminism, ‘revitalizes the question of subjectivity,’ the subjectivity that is ‘revitalized’ will have human lineaments, and remain – however implicitly – mired in his gendered magnificence. the brittlestar is not an object that withdraws. ‘brittlestars don’t have eyes, they are eyes, [it] is an animal without a brain’ … [it] can change its coloration in response to the available light in its surroundings, [it can] break off an endangered body part and regrow it … brittlestars are living testimony to the inseparability of knowing, being and doing (barad, : pp. – ). having a compound eye as a skeletal system, it grows toward, meets, mingles with, and works with, the creatures who live around it, with it, on it, and the seabed and sea which it and they lives with/in and inhabit. in meeting the universe halfway barad ( ) makes it clear that the unthinking brittlestar, in simply doing what it does, makes a vital (in all senses) contribution to worlding the world. it is itself a doing, a part of the world’s becoming, and ‘what’ and ‘how’ it sees/knows/feels/senses is enacted relationally and dynamically. there is no separation of knower, knowing and known. agential realism figures knowing not as an intellectual act requiring an intellective agent but ‘an ontological performance’, a distributed posthuman practice of open-ended articulation. in tuning into the different differences that matter, the difference that the brittlestar makes to the productive livingness of its surroundings comes into view – diffraction disrupts representationalism, figuring each and every intra- action an ethico-onto-epistemological matter, a quantum entanglement undoing cause and effect, effacing identity and sameness, reworking subjectivity as relation and ethics as embodied knowledge such that there is ‘no exterior position [of] contemplation … only intra- acting from within and as part of the world in its becoming’ (barad, , p. ). conclusion in this article i have followed st pierre’s/ rachjman’s advice: ‘trust that something may come out, though one is not yet completely sure what.’ the embodied diffractive musing in/between the two ‘foundational’ texts of object oriented ontology (harman’s the quadruple object) and new material feminism (barad’s meeting the universe halfway) i have engaged has enabled something(s) to come out. these principally concern the ontological and epistemological differences in orientation towards the realm of objects, things and materialities. object-oriented ontology proposes an autonomous realm of objects which, albeit touching each other weirdly via their sensory qualities, are cut off from thought and held at arm’s length, only to be known through the speculative fictions we (humans) construct about them. this contrasts markedly with new material feminism’s entangled ethic of knowing-in- being which refuses tripleo’s anti-correlationist stance in favour of a mutually constitutive desiring embrace of world-word-object. as a wondering without confirmation, this particular close encounter is an enactment of a more generous mode of critique which moves ‘beyond an easy sense’, shifting us away from the reductive and negative towards the ‘spreading of thoughts and knowledge,’ (mazzei, , p. ). in aiming to create space for the sensory happening of a little slow theory, i have sought to introduce a small gust of ‘free and windy chaos’ (deleuze and guattari, , p. ) into academic article writing. the various landing places are my attempts to proceed with the care and caution latour thought necessary. with that in mind, despite having an intense desire to wrest ‘weird’ from the speculative realists and resituate it with the feminist fore-mother of weirding, mary daly, i will pass on that for now. bibliography alaimo, s. ( ). thinking as the stuff of the world. o-zone: a journal of object-oriented studies, , page alaimo, s., and s. hekman, eds. ( ). material feminisms. bloomington: indiana university press. badley, g. ( ). academic scribbling: a frivolous approach?, teaching in higher education, : , - . barad, k. ( ). meeting the universe half way – quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. durham: duke university press. barad, k. ( ). quantum entanglements and hauntological relations of inheritance: dis/ continuities, spacerime enfoldings, and justice-to-come. derrida today, : , – . barad, k. ( ) diffracting diffraction: cutting together-apart. parallax, : , - barthes, r. ( ). writing degree zero. new york, hill and wang. bennett, j. ( ). vibrant matter: a political ecology of things. durham, nc: duke university press. bennett, l. ( , forthcoming). thinking like a brick: posthumanism and building materials. in c. a.taylor and c. hughes (eds.) posthumanist research practices in education. london: palgrave macmillan. bogost, i. ( ). alien phenomenology, or what its like to be a thing. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. brassier, r., hamilton grant, i., harman, g., meillassoux, q. ( ). speculative realism, collapse. vol. . bridges-rhoads, s. ( ). writing paralysis in (post) qualitative research, qualitative inquiry, : , – . burman, e. and maclure, m. ( ). deconstruction as a method of research. in b. somekh and c. lewin (eds.) research methods in the social sciences. (pp. - ). london, sage. coole, d. and s. frost. ( ). new materialisms: ontology, agency, politics. durham, nc: duke university press. deleuze, g. ( ). spinoza: practical philosophy. san francisco: city lights books. deleuze, g. ( ). foucault. london: continuum. deleuze, g. and guattari, f. ( ). what is philosophy? new york: columbia university press. dolphijn, rick, and iris van der tuin. ( ). “‘matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers’: an interview with karen barad.” in new materialism: interviews and cartographies. (pp. – ). ann arbor, mi: open humanities press. fuad-luke, a. ( ). reflection, consciousness, progress: creatively slow designing the present, conference presentation at reflections on creativity: exploring the role of theory in creative practices, university of dundee. gratton, p. ( ). speculative realism: problems and prospects. london: bloomsbury publishing plc. haraway, d. ( ). situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. feminist studies, , - . haraway, d. ( ). when species meet. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. harman, g. ( ). i am also of the opinion that materialism must be destroyed, environment and planning d: society and space. , – . harman, g. ( ). the quadruple object. alresford, hants: zero books. harman g. ( ). the third table. germany: documenta. harman, g. ( a). the current state of speculative realism, speculations: a journal of speculative realism iv, – . http://speculuations-journal.org. accessed . . . harman, g. ( b). undermining, overmining and duomining: a critique. in j. sutela (ed.), add metaphysics. (pp. – ). aalto university, finland: digital design laboratory. heidegger, m. ( ). being and time. new york, harper and row. holmes, r. ( ). 'my tongue on your theory: bittersweet 'quality' (in) research', paper given as part of symposium 'going beyond 'quality' in early childhood education' at the british educational research association conference, london. honore, c. ( ). in praise of slowness: challenging the cult of speed. hurley, r. ( ). ‘preface’, in deleuze, g. ( ) spinoza: practical philosophy. san francisco: city lights books. jackson, a. j., and a. mazzei. ( ). thinking with theory in qualitative research. oxon: routledge. joy, e. ( ). weird reading, speculations iv. www.speculations-journal.org. – . http://speculuations-journal.org/ http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/resstaff/mytongueonyourtheory.pdf http://www.speculations-journal.org/ king, s. ( ). on writing. london: hodder and stroughton. kirby, v. ( ). telling flesh: the substance of the corporeal. new york: routledge. kirby, v. ( ). quantum anthropologies: life at large. london: duke university press. latour, b. ( ). why has critique run out of steam? from matters of fact to matters of concern. critical inquiry, : , – . lenz taguchi, h. ( ) images of thinking in feminist materialisms: ontological divergences and the production of researcher subjectivities. international journal of qualitative studies in education, : , – . lenz taguchi, h. and palmer, a. ( ) a more ‘livable’ school? a diffractive analysis of the performative enactments of girls' ill-/well-being with(in) school environments. gender and education, : , – . maclure, m. ( ). entertaining doubts: on frivolity as resistance. keynote presentation to discourse, power, resistance conference, march, plymouth university, uk. mazzei, l. ( ). beyond an easy sense: a diffractive analysis. qualitative inquiry, : – minh-ha, trinh t. ( ). woman, native, other: writing, postcoloniality and feminism. bloomington: indiana university press. morton, t. ( ). ecological thought. harvard, mass: harvard university press. myerson, g. ( ). a new university space: a dialogue on argument, democracy, and the university. in r. barnett and s. griffin (eds.), the end of knowledge in higher education (pp. - ). london, uk: cassell. o’ rourke, m. ( ) ‘girls welcome!!!’: speculative realism, object oriented ontology and queer theory, http://www.speculations-journal.org/speculations- /. roberts, m. ( ). the power of patience. http://harvardmagazine.com/ / /the-power-of- patience. sehgal, m. ( ). diffractive propositions: reading alfred north whitehead with donna haraway and karen barad. parallax, : , - . st. pierre, e. ( , forthcoming) rethinking the empirical in the posthuman. in eds c. taylor and c. hughes. posthuman research practices in education. london: palgrave macmillan. taylor, c. a. and ivinson, g. ( ). material feminisms: new directions for education. gender and education, : , - , van der tuin, i. ( ). diffraction as a methodology for feminist onto-epistemology: on encountering chantal chawaf and posthuman interpellation. parallax, : , - . winterson, j. ( ). so you want to be a writer …, the guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/books/ /mar/ /creative-writing-courses-advice- students#start-of-comments http://www.speculations-journal.org/storage/orourke_girls% welcome_v .pdf http://www.speculations-journal.org/storage/orourke_girls% welcome_v .pdf http://www.speculations-journal.org/speculations- / http://harvardmagazine.com/ / /the-power-of-patience http://harvardmagazine.com/ / /the-power-of-patience http://www.theguardian.com/books/ /mar/ /creative-writing-courses-advice-students#start-of-comments http://www.theguardian.com/books/ /mar/ /creative-writing-courses-advice-students#start-of-comments u ottawa l'universiw canadienne canada's university faculte des etudes superieures ^ = faculty of graduate and et postoctorales u ottawa posdoctoral studies l'universitc canathenne canada's unh'ersity matthew gerald marc mongrain autemdelxtwsf/tuthorwthesis m.a. (english literature) department of english taojltetlcclo'epartewntrfmi light from canada: the poetics of james schuyler titre de la these / title of thesis david jarraway directeur (directrice) de la these / thesis supervisor co-directeur (co-directrice) de la these / thesis co-supervisor bernhard radloff david rampton gary w. slater le doyen de la faculte des etudes superieures et postdoctorales / dean of the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies light from canada: the poetics of james schuyler matthew mongrain thesis submitted to the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the ma degree in english literature department of english faculty of arts university of ottawa © matthew mongrain, ottawa, canada, * library and archives canada published heritage branch wellington street ottawaonk a n canada bibliotheque et archives canada direction du patrimoine de i'edition , rue wellington ottawaonk a n canada your file votre reference isbn: - - - - our file notre reference isbn: - - - - notice: avis: the author has granted a non- exclusive license allowing library and archives canada to reproduce, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, communicate to the public by telecommunication or on the internet, loan, distribute and sell theses worldwide, for commercial or non- commercial purposes, in microform, paper, electronic and/or any other formats. l'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive permettant a la bibliotheque et archives canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public par telecommunication ou par i'lnternet, preter, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou autres formats. the author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. l'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation. in compliance with the canadian privacy act some supporting forms may have been removed from this thesis. conformement a la loi canadienne sur la protection de la vie privee, quelques formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de cette these. while these forms may be included in the document page count, their removal does not represent any loss of content from the thesis. bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. * canada ii abstract this thesis discusses the poetics of james schuyler as they relate to three major concepts: his "painterliness," his technique, and his treatment of things. in the first chapter, schuyler's "painterliness" is argued to be a way to discuss the idea of representation in both his prose about art and his art-inspired poetry. in the second chapter, schuyler's technique, notable for its innovative lineation, is explored using the postmodern philosophy of gilles deleuze and felix guattari. it is argued that schuyler's purposeful lineation has the same ends as deleuze-guattari's project to expose the artificiality of systems of signs and allow ideas to connect more freely with one another. in the third chapter, the treatment of things in schuyler's poetry is argued to be emblematic of schuyler's poetry itself, and another way that he explores in his verse the meaning of the individual sign in relationship with subjectivity. iii acknowledgements this thesis was made possible by constant support and kindness from both david jarraway and alison pearce. i thank them with all my heart. iv table of contents introduction chapter the bright invisible: james schuyler, fairfield porter, and "painterliness " chapter revenge of the giant face: nothingness and faciality chapter it is just the thing: "a stone knife " and object matter conclusion convergences works cited introduction evangeline, our light is scoured and nova scotian and of a clarity that opens up the huddled masses of the stolid spruce so you see them in their bristling individuality. —james schuyler, "lightfrom canada" there has never been a better time to come to the work of james schuyler. with the march publication by farrar, straus and giroux of other flowers: uncollected poems, the student of schuyler now has every poem that survives in two thick, handsome volumes, which join his letters, diaries, and novels to form a scintillating trove of verbal treasures. as i write this, the current issue (june th, ) of the nation has a a feature article by ange mlinko, "scoured light," praising schuyler's poetry. and now that the new york school has, against all odds, gone mainstream (hit tv series mad men used the poems of frank o'hara as a plot point in a recent episode), one can only hope that the sudden explosion of interest in their poetry will shed some small light on a man who has been until recently a poet's poet, standing quietly off to the side while friends and contemporaries accepted curatorships and met presidents. it's not that schuyler is an unknown poet. after all, he won the pulitzer prize in for his late collection the morning of the poem. but, somehow, in narratives of the new york school of which he was a member, he seems overshadowed by the other primaries: kenneth koch, whose razor wit and affection for children made him one of america's most treasured teachers of poetry; frank o'hara, whose infectious joie-de-vivre and untimely death made him a folk hero; and john ashbery, who stands within the very highest rank of poets currently writing in america. paul hoover characterizes the dynamic: in the new york school ages of man, kenneth provides the uproarious infancy;... frank the excitable guest perpetually in his twenties; john the eloquent philosopher deluging the abyss; and jimmy the baffled uncle whom the children trust and love—no card tricks, just an absorbing walk with an interesting man. not that he's a poet of senescence; he simply grows on you, like light from canada. ( ) schuyler, unlike his friends, never made much of a name for himself during his lifetime. this is partially because he was rather late to the game. his first major collection, freely espousing, was published in . meanwhile, koch saw his glascock prize-winning poems published in , ashbery's some trees had won the yale younger poets prize in , and o'hara's breakout meditations in an emergency was released in . tardiness does schuyler's work no harm. even though the poems are unmistakably rooted in a place and an age—new york city in the latter half of the twentieth century— their trademark niceness of detail combined with the breadth of their subject matter causes them to overspill their context and remain achingly relevant. it is a cliche to call poems timeless, but schuyler's poems seem to exist along a different plane of time entirely. they exist at the moment they are read, as in this present-tense stanza from a few days' % "thursday": a summer dawn breaks over the city. breaks? no, it's more as though the night —the "dark," we call it—drained away into the sewers and left transpicuity. you can see: buildings, dogs, people, cement, etc. the summer city, where, i suppose, someone is happy. someone. {collected ) though the "summer city" is new york, it is at once chicago, washington, southampton, ischia, great spruce head, and every other place in which schuyler—and, by proxy, we his readers—may have worked and lived. from the specificity of his poems grows a powerful generality, and we feel that, even as schuyler is revealing his most intimate details, it is, in fact, our secrets that he is revealing. * * * james marcus schuyler was born november th, in chicago, and raised in the nearby suburb of downer's grove, a town now famous for its large number of sears catalog mail-order houses. there his father, marcus schuyler, ran a small newspaper before the family moved to washington, d.c. in for marcus to take a job with the washington post. soon after they moved, schuyler's mother margaret connor divorced his father, and two years later she married building contractor fredric ridenour. schuyler describes his life in washington as something out of "a novel by dostoyevsky" (letters xi); william corbett relates that "the senior ridenour so disliked his stepson's love of reading that as punishment he denied him a library card" (xi). it was during this time, too, that schuyler discovered both his homosexuality, the exuberant celebration of which can be found everywhere in his poems, and his desire to become a writer. he recounts the tipping point in a interview with contemporary authors: one day in my tent in east aurora, n.y., when i was about fifteen, i was reading unforgotten years by logan pearsall smith. he described how walt whitman visited his home outside philadelphia when he was a child, and how one day when he was hearing the poet sing "jim crow" in the bathroom, the thought dappled his mind like reeds that he might be a writer someday, too. i looked up from my book, and the whole landscape seemed to shimmer. i realized that, rather than an architect, i wanted to be a writer and would be one. ( ) he studied at a small college in west virginia, bethany college, before flunking out in from playing too much bridge. he then joined the navy, from which he was dishonorably discharged for homosexuality after he went awol in new york. the sale of an estate left to him by his paternal grandmother gave him the money to travel, and he went to italy where he became english poet w. h. auden's secretary at ischia, typing the poems that would become auden's nones. schuyler did not find a role model in auden; he recalls thinking "if this is what poetry is like, it is something far beyond my powers" (ca ). that changed upon his return to new york city in the summer of . there he met the men who would eventually make up the core of the new york school, john ashbery and frank o'hara, at an opening at the tibor de nagy gallery. from there schuyler launched his career as a poet and began a lifelong struggle with mental illness. his life from then on can be summarized as alternating periods of fervent artistic production and convalescence therefrom. ashbery recalls that "though he was seldom able to hold a job for long, he had a gift for being taken care of—first by his lovers charles heilemann and arthur gold, later by the porter family, and in his last years by a consortium of friends who helped pay his pills and his room at new york's hotel chelsea" (xiii). this period was punctuated by major events—notably the deaths of close friends frank o'hara and fairfield porter, and a fire caused by smoking in bed which nearly killed him and occasioned a four-year gap in his writing. near the end of his life, schuyler discovered religion, becoming an active member of the church of the incarnation, an episcopalian congregation on madison avenue. schuyler died in at sixty-seven from complications following a stroke. * * * schuyler's work is varied, comprising plays (sadly out of print), short stories, novels, diaries, letters, essays, and, of course, poetry. the suburban pastoral of his early youth is reflected in his gauzy, ethereal novels alfred and guinevere, a nest of ninnies (with john ashbery) and what's for dinner?. in his letters and diaries schuyler is as effusive and intimate as he is in his poetry: the former sparkle with wit and kindness, and the latter with introspection and glittering, snowy landscape. it is in his poetry, however, that all these strands in his work come together. his poems are at once witty and delicate, at once as intimistic as pierre bonnard and as broadly experimental as willem de kooning. john ashbery, in his introduction to schuyler's selected poems, wrote that after immersing myself in schuyler's music i often feel it's all i need—all other poetry is somehow present there. though he is in a sense saying the same thing again and again, it is, like the pages of one's diary, always new. the poems are seldom "about" anything in the way poetry traditionally is; they are the anything. to reread him is to live, as though life were an experience one had just forgotten and been newly awakened to ... (xiv) i agree with ashbery, of course: in schuyler's poetry one gets the uncanny sense of an entire world. what then, to make of that world? in the pages to follow, i hope to explore three threads in schuyler's work: his so-called "painterliness," his technique, and his treatment of material culture. the first chapter, "the bright invisible," discusses the concepts of realism and "painterliness" as they relate to the work of james schuyler. taking off from ideas drawn from the work of visual artists and critics who were contemporary to schuyler's maturation as a writer, i ask what it is in schuyler's poetry that makes him so uniquely difficult to explicate. i argue that this difficulty grows from his poetry's impressive multidisciplinarity, as schuyler borrows as liberally from artists and composers as he does from writers. the space between poetry and painting is frequently explored in schuyler's verse, and in this chapter i begin to map that space in discussing the interactions between the works of james schuyler and painter fairfield porter. porter painted realistic landscape, portrait, and still life in an age of near-absolute abstraction; in this he has a great deal in common with schuyler, who wrote "realistic" lyrics as his contemporaries were engaging in radical experimentation. i find in this interaction something messier and more complicated than the mere epigones schuyler's critics suggest he follows. i crib the title of my second chapter, "revenge of the giant face," from a film by quentin tarantino. in that chapter, i argue that "painterliness" in schuyler conceals a pervasive concern in his poetry for technique and style that comes down to the same radical experimentalism practiced by his friends, one hidden beneath schuyler's realistic, present- tense verse. the philosophy of postmodern frenchmen gilles deleuze and felix guattari guides me through an exploration of the face in the works of schuyler and porter, and what it might mean when that face begins to disappear. the third chapter, "no ideas but in things," navigates the concepts opened up by schuyler's idiosyncratic treatment of material culture. schuyler's poems are littered with things, and the way he describes them—in particularly the nebulous "things" of weather and sky—reveals much about the way we interact with the world around us. in things, schuyler finds a mirror for the world, and i find a link between his so-called "painterliness," his technique as a poet, and the "object matter" of his poems. these three chapters are not a comprehensive study of schuyler's work. this thesis will focus almost exclusively on his shorter poetry, with brief sideroads leading towards his art writing and diaries. his searching long poems and novels are altogether ignored. this is partially by necessity: his long poems are so rich and so challenging—sounding occasionally as though they were the work of a different poet altogether—that discussion thereof would take up at least two theses more. ashbery calls them "a high point in our poetry" (xiv), and i am tempted to agree. his novels, deceptively crystalline and light, would be another thesis further. what follows can be, i hope, a launching-point towards those other works, an extended argument not only for schuyler's quality—that much, after all, is assured by the company he kept—but also for his continued relevance and importance. schuyler's poetry is, above all things, exuberant: about life, about love, about those evanescent moments of unutterable beauty that dot our lives. as john ashbery remarked, "to reread him is to live" (xiv). i would consider this project a rousing success if i have managed to convey even the smallest fraction of that life. luckily for me, his poetry speaks for itself, even if the thing it whispers be only, as charles north claims, "look" ( ). chapter the bright invisible: james schuyler, fairfield porter, and "painterliness" there exists something of a minor literature on the difficulty of writing about james schuyler. david lehman, the new york school's premier biographer, skirts the issue in by highlighting that "there is a quiet insistence in all of schuyler's work on things in themselves, not the reasons for things or what they might mean" ( ); richard howard remarks in a review of schuyler's collected poems that "there is a certain concrescence here of qualifiers, which has yet to be philosophized by the right graduate student: the irrelevant, the childish, even the lunatic as a requisite dimension of modernity. maybe 'simply the best we have' is the adverbial truth" ( ). the finest digression on the problem, however, comes from charles north, probably the most vocal of schuyler's apologists, and, like many of his close friends, one of his finest critics: of all the poets now writing, i can't think of one less open to the usual critical advances, more needful of direct pointing. schuyler's work is simply beautiful, his decisions are invariably inspired decisions, whether about words or about lines ... or about conclusions or whatever. he is the farthest thing from a theoretical poet (though his intelligence is formidable) and his marvels are subtly marvelous. which makes it very hard to talk about his work. invariably in trying to do justice to the beauty on the page, one is reduced to saying: look. look how tangible, how remarkably clear, how moving, how masterful, how original. ( - ) it is therefore with more than a little trepidation that i throw my sword into this nearly- empty ring. and, besides trepidation, more than a little cursing. why did i take on a task that better critics than i have called impossible? why can't schuyler have written one poem, just one, with a cross or a phallus (severed or not, i'll take either), or maybe some class struggle or allegory about the intolerance of homosexuality in cold war america? surely the latter existed, and surely schuyler, as a gay poet in an age of repression, came face to face with it, but you can't tell it from his poems: instead he writes about toothbrushes, letter openers, hornets, flowers of all kinds, buttons, musicals, pie. it is difficult to deconstruct a pie. harder still to see oedipus in one, though, i imagine, still possible. so why take on a task with tools not inadequate, but simply made for different things, like pulling teeth with a compass? for the same reasons, i think, as messrs. lehman, howard, and north: schuyler's poems are simply too beautiful to ignore. knowing they exist is enough to compel me to write about them. to read schuyler's poems is to become their disciple. and while simply saying "look" is indeed the first instinct of anyone writing about schuyler—myself very much included—there is still so much to say about his work, so much that demands to be said. and that discussion, i believe, should begin and end with the poems themselves, in all their rich warmth of visual detail, in all their sometimes too- real "painterliness." * * * "freely espousing," the first and titular poem of james schuyler's first collection of poetry, establishes not only schuyler's poetics, but also a critical framework, weaving both into a stoned melange of recollections, free-associations, and misrecognitions: the sinuous beauty of words like allergy the tonic resonance of pill when used as in "she is a pill" on the other hand i am not going to espouse any short stories in which lawn mowers clack. no, it is absolutely forbidden for words to echo the act described; or try to. ( ) schuyler lets out a precision-aimed opening salvo at representation, itself a ghost by the time freely espousing saw publication in . american letters had long moved past the realism of its high modernists—epitomized by poets like william carlos williams, marianne moore, and robert frost—and launched itself into an abstract poetry partially spearheaded by schuyler's close friend john ashbery, who had won the yale younger poets prize for some trees in . by , sixteen years later, the explosion of abstract expressionism upon the american art scene had already settled to tasteful rubble picked over by an elite who, a quarter-century prior, had taken up arms against the movement's extreme abstraction. james schuyler, art critic and coterie poet of the new york school, is making a revolutionary statement about art long after the revolutionaries had been canonized. schuyler's and ashbery's new york school rose to prominence in the fifties, concurrent with a sea change in american art and letters, a shift away from the dense and bookish legacy of its tum-of-the-century incarnation in the expatriate poets t. s. eliot and gertrude stein. abstract expressionism, the "new american painting," was taking the art world by storm with the staccato and abstract works of willem de kooning, jackson pollock, and barnett newman. the beats, in san francisco, were writing the iconic american poetry of the fifties and sixties, and promulgating as they did their own brand of drugged-out, intellectual, neo-bohemian living. the black mountain poets, in north carolina, were theorizing about the new goals poetry might court in a changed america. but the new york school, based in the heart of new york city, had neither a lifestyle nor a program associated with its poets. they, like the others, were living in an america darkened by mccarthy's long shadow; the fear of communism still pervaded the american mainstream, and surveillance of artistic production for any sign of socialist tendencies was commonplace. the new york school, of which three key members (john ashbery, frank o'hara, and james schuyler) were gay, leftist poets, reacted to its antecedents and environment by writing poetry unencumbered by overt theoretical or political motivations. their motivation was simply to write poetry for the love of it. its energy unmoored to a program is partially why its relative lateness does not prevent "freely espousing" from having the peculiar emotional impact that it does. though he damns "any short stories in which lawn mowers clack," schuyler is only too willing to admit that there may be some exceptions to his broad kibosh against representation. the lines immediately following allow that onomatopoeia, the closest that the individual word will get to representation, is permitted "very directly / as in / bong. and tickle. oh it is inescapable kiss" ( ). he is not really saying anything about onomatopoeia or representation in these lines. though "bong" certainly has something of mimesis in it, the relationship that "tickle" and "kiss" have to the concepts they denote is far more nebulous. the poet has damned representational writing only to admit immediately that actually it's quite alright, as long as you're getting at what you're trying to get at. "clacking," schuyler claims implicitly, has as little to do with lawn mowers as "kiss" has to do with lips, though the words might sound nice together. so, we are tricked: he is not making a political point after all. what he is celebrating here, more than anything else, is the aesthetic magic of words, how "allergy" can be a beautiful word despite (or perhaps partially because of) its ugly meaning, how "pill" can resonate with its medicinal denotation and yet retain its semantically unrelated, and today badly deprecated, colloquial sense. schuyler's poetry is an attempt to get at those interstices in meaning, where what a word says brushes up against what a word sounds like it's saying. the painter and critic rackstraw downes, talking about schuyler's longtime friend and lover fairfield porter, claims that porter "[understood] the gap between what artists can consciously control and talk about... and what actually happens in the painting —the gap, in other words, between the recipe and the dish" ( ). keenly aware of that gap, schuyler's poetry elaborates a "painterly" aesthetic in an attempt to translate to poetry not only the revolutionary spirit of the abstract expressionists, but also its cryptic methods. the links between the artists of the abstract expressionist movement and the poets of the new york school are various and explicit, but it may be worth dwelling upon just how much they had in common. the artistic movement of abstract expressionism is aptly named: the works produced under its banner are both abstract (in that they largely attempt to depict ideas rather than things) and expressionistic (in that they convey states of subjective emotion rather than states of reality). it was the first american movement in the arts to gain recognition on the international stage, and was responsible for shifting the centre of the art world from its longtime capital, paris, to new york city, a title the city arguably holds today. in the work of the early abstract expressionists—particularly the work of its unofficial leader, jackson pollock—critics saw an art that was finally completely unsettled from its roots in representation, in which line and colour could be employed without needing to refer to anything else in a pure communication of the artist's feeling. harold rosenberg, one of the chief apologists of the movement and the coiner of the sticky phrase "action painting," observed that, at some point in the forties or the fifties, the canvas began to appear to one american painter after another as an arena in which to act—rather than as a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyse or "express" an object, actual or imagined. what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.... the painter no longer approached his easel with an image in his mind; he went up to it with material in his hand to do something to that other piece of material in front of him. the image would be the result of this encounter. ( ) the shift is paradigmatic. from the concept of a painting as yielding, after however much sweat and theoretical hair-pulling, a product (the work of art), the "new american painting" took as its goal the process of painting itself. in short, the value of a work was not to be found in the "finished" painting hanging on a gallery (or, worse, a museum) wall, but in the energy and will that fueled the creative act in the first place, and which the work of art chronicles and represents. central to this process is that it is contingent, unplanned from the start. jackson pollock famously claimed that his painting "does not come from the easel" ( ), but instead creates itself using the artist as its avatar: when i am in my painting, i'm not aware of what i'm doing. it is only after a sort of "get acquainted" period that i see what i have been about. i have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. i try to let it come through. it is only when i lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well. ( ) this is not to say that the artist has no control over his work. pollock reminds that he "can control the flow of the paint; there is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end" ( ). the same process informs the poetry of the new york school. schuyler, for instance, claimed in an interview with robert thompson that "the poem is invented as i go along, always, with anything. i never have a plan beforehand. i had no idea when i sat down to the typewriter that morning what i was going to say" ( ). the "product," whether poem or painting, emerges through the interaction of artist and materials, but does not necessarily have any antecedent in reality, whether actual or imagined. rosenberg's essay is a classic of art criticism, and restraint is required to keep from quoting it in its entirety. one of its most brilliant touches, though, is that it never mentions a single contemporary artist by name. it speaks of the movement only vaguely, in its effort to define the thorny "abstract expressionism" in general terms. this vagueness, according to rosenberg, exists because "this new painting does not constitute a school": to form a school in modern times not only is a new painting consciousness needed but a consciousness of that consciousness—and even an insistence on certain formulas. a school is the result of the linkage of practice with terminology—different paintings are affected by the same words. in the american vanguard the words, as we shall see, belong not to the art but to the individual artists. what they think in common is represented only by what they do separately. ( - ) abstract expressionism, in this rendering, is the first unselfconscious movement in american visual arts, the only one that did not begin with a program or with heroes but based itself upon being antiprogrammatical and antiheroic. the onus of responsibility for definition is not placed upon the movement to which the artists belong, but to the individual artist, who needs not even articulate his or her program (most didn't). the movement is thus profoundly individualistic, assuming as given the primacy of the individual talent and its ability to express itself using its own means. this is partially why the depth charge rosenberg releases in his closing sentence meets its target: "so far, the silence of american literature on the new painting all but amounts to a scandal" ( ). the artists might be mute, but a silent poet is of no use whatsoever. fortunately, rosenberg would not need to wait long for that silence to be broken. the poets of the new york school, in new york at the time of its meteoric ascent to worldwide prominence in visual arts, could not help but be swept along with the tide. their poetry very frequently refers to, and is often about, the painters and paintings that surrounded them. but, as david lehman explains, they could revere the painters of the new york school "without the slavish fidelity of epigones" ( ): the poets found their own aesthetic notions articulated in the paintings they admired, and this makes their art criticism doubly significant. james schuyler understood his own predilections when he was confronted with jane freilicher's paintings, in which a still life may be combined with an interior and a landscape. like freilicher, schuyler was determined to let order emerge from a faithful rendering of a scene rather than from an exercise of the artist's will. he and she had in common the ability to be satisfied, aesthetically, with one view from one window at different times of day, in changing light. ( ) schuyler is not the only poet of the new york school who participated in the art scene of new york. frank o'hara worked his way from the front desk of the museum of modern art to a curatorship at the same museum; john ashbery was a professional art critic for a quarter-century for high-circulation magazines like new york and newsweek, besides taking art for a subject in famous poems like "the painter" and "self-portrait in a convex mirror." despite the school's paint-soaked reputation, however, the trait of "painterliness" is almost exclusively applied to schuyler's poetry. so commonly, in fact, that it would appear that reviews or articles about schuyler are unpublishable if they do not address this point. gillan conoley, for instance, refers to what she calls his "watercolorist sensibility" ( ); richard gray to his "painterly manner" ( ); and mark silverberg to his "painterly gestures" ( ). michael hofinann calls him a "painterly poet" (np), and w. s. di piero, after claiming roundly that "[he doesn't] like 'painterly poetry,' the sort that pants after beauty," remarks of one of schuyler's "songs" "this is painterly" ( - ). a consensus, then. schuyler is a painterly poet. what, exactly, "painterly" might mean in the context of schuyler's work is more difficult to say. after all, a poem is not a painting, and to say that a poem looks like a painting is not to say very much about it at all except that it is probably bad poetry (schuyler's isn't.) what gives schuyler's poems the particular visual jolt they almost invariably contain, the rich graphic field that cannot help but be compared to the work of the artists who surrounded him? what makes his landscapes more freilicher than wordsworth, if that is even true? and, most importantly, what can it mean for schuyler to be so intent on exploring the bridge between art and letters in his work? for potential answers to these questions, it it helpful to look closely at the work of fairfield porter, schuyler's friend and "favourite painter" (sawi), a great exponent of abstract expressionism who painted landscapes and portraits, genres or forms ostensibly abandoned by the movement he championed. like schuyler's, porter's work is inarguably different from those of his peers in its realism and relative paucity of experimental devices— schuyler is as far from ashbery and koch in this regard as porter is from pollock or de kooning. both members of movements to which they can be ascribed only with difficulty, schuyler's poetry and porter's painting share a fascination with the the limits of representation, what representation looks like when it approaches the limit of abstraction. bin ramke remarks that "for both artists, there is a fire in the distance, either sun or simmering hearth, which in its danger dazzles" ( ). in contemplating this fire, the two artists endeavour to convey what porter termed an "energy," that animating force behind a work of art that no criticism, no matter how skilled, can ever fully convey. this impossibility, of course, prevented neither artist from trying. both worked as art critics for several decades, porter first for art news and later for the nation, and schuyler for art news, a position porter had convinced him to take. porter's critical credo —and about his aesthetics porter is never shy—is oft-repeated and deceptively simple: "good criticism is simply good description" (cummings ). (he cribbed this line from alfred m. frankfurter, then-editor of art news, but usually it is credited to porter, who more than anyone else writing about art at the time put the dictum into practice.) porter goes on to say that "accuracy is a weapon too" ( ), making somewhat more clear what he believes the purpose of criticism to be: a weapon in a cultural war. we can be sure, for one thing, that no lawn mowers clack in porter's work. porter's brand of description, however, is not the same as cataloguing. he tends to speak in metaphor and analogy about art, skirting what the work actually looks like to talk "directly about [a painting's] energy, which determines the character of the whole work" (downes ). about painter willem de kooning, for whom he proselytized extensively, he is particularly effusive in his "description:" de kooning's abstractions ... release human significances that cannot be expressed verbally. it is as though his painting reached a different level of consciousness than painting that refers to a theory of aesthetics, or that refers to any sort of program: in short any painting that is extensively verbalized. his meaning is not that the paintings have meaning, like certain vast canvases notable for the difficulty of containing them in any given space. nor is their meaning that they have not been done before. ... the vacuum they leave behind them is a vacuum in accomplishment, in significance and in genuineness. (porter - ) though, frankly, this is as good a description of de kooning as i can imagine, it does little to convey the appearance of his paintings, violent and bold and colourful and strange. it does, however, begin to sketch the feeling of actually looking at a de kooning. consider, for instance, schuyler's review of the same painter: there is no figure, the paint is put on fast and raw: only the colors (predominantly pink, yellow, blue and white) register conventional beauty. every stroke counts: the diagonal radius of brush marks draws a white taut as a membrane; a yellow stroke bends on itself and a shower of drippings fly off like sparks from a welder's torch; where the impasto is drawn in, the speed is that of a sicilian knife: a flash, a permanent immediacy. aloof, not arrogant, it is a continuous and self-contained drama about painting. {saw ) though this may seem better description, schuyler is working with the same metaphorical and allegorical paints as porter, particularly in his attempts to convey the aesthetic effects of de kooning's colour. white is a "membrane." yellow is "sparks from a welder's torch," an image that reinforces the procedural nature of abstract expressionist painting. the brushstrokes themselves are gently anthropomorphized ("bends on itself), and the artist presumably responsible for their being is nowhere to be seen, leaving the impasto to draw itself in and allowing the painting to exist by itself in a mutually enriching relationship with its viewer. most importantly, though, both critics insist upon relating the unrelatability of de kooning's work. for porter, the works of de kooning produce an effect that "cannot be expressed verbally;" the lesser kind of painting is the one that is "extensively verbalized." for schuyler, they represent a paradoxical "permanent immediacy," and the brushstrokes seem to refer back only to themselves in a "continuous and self-contained drama about painting." what makes the criticism of porter and schuyler so compelling to read is the struggle plainly visible on every page between the subject of their writing and its medium. here are two artists, a poet and a painter, struggling to find some way to make words refer to paint and paint to words, some way of exploring that messy interaction between the two arts. granted, it would be difficult to produce art criticism that engaged with its subject using its own medium (duchamp excepted), but words—the tools of writing, and of criticism—are certainly not up to the task, as porter and schuyler would have it. rather, any significance the paintings have is a "vacuum," an emptiness, a silence at the juncture of paint and words. why explore this desolate space? charles north, criticizing a review of schuyler's collected poems that appeared in the new york review of books, remarks that "it's hard to see how visual effects can be played down without doing serious harm to the critical enterprise" ( ). discussing the poetry of adherents of the new york school without mention of the artistic milieu under which they toiled would mean ignoring an element key to their quality and appeal. the word "under' is used carefully. schuyler, in an article he wrote for donald allen's seminal new american poetry, remarked that "in new york the art world is a painter's world; writers and musicians are in the boat, but they don't steer" (saw ). in much of schuyler's and porter's art writing, there is a sense of excitement barely hidden beneath the educated appraisals of current gallery shows, because they were participating, if sometimes peripherally, in one of the most exciting and vibrant movements in the history of american arts, one that confused and titillated critics in equal measure. the new york school's affection for the painters who birthed their movement in poetry, though, has as much to do with the paintings themselves as it does with the "way, or possible ways": "writing like painting" has nothing to do with it. for instance, a long poem like frank o'hara's second avenue: it's probably true to deduce that he'd read the cantos and whitman (he had); also breton, and looked at de koonings and duchamp's great dada installation at the janis gallery. or to put it another way rrose selavy speaking out in robert motherwell's great dada document anthology has more to do with poetry written by the poets i know than the empress of tapioca, the white goddess: the tondalayo of the doubleday bookshops. [...] of course the father of poetry is poetry, and everybody goes to concerts when there are any: but if you try to derive a strictly literary ancestry for new york poetry, the main connection gets missed. (saw ) this paragraph, appearing to anticipate the obvious critical moves that might be appropriated to shoehorn the new york school into the subgenre of ekphrastic poetry, is as concise a statement of the poetic ethos of the school as could be hoped for. schuyler weaves a web of influences dense enough to demand decoding. the cantos point to ezra pound's famous "make it new," fuel for the fire of abstract expressionism, reapplied anew to the arts once modernism had become codified. walt whitman may be termed either the new york school's first practitioner or at least its intellectual progenitor, from whom one can trace a line from emerson to stevens, and from whom schuyler in particular seems to borrow methods of lineation. willem de kooning was porter's favorite painter of his generation, and duchamp perhaps the greatest force in unsettling twentieth-century art from its representational roots. the nascent gay culture of which the new york school was a part, with its trappings of broadway and intellectualism, is represented by duchamp's female alter-ego rrose selavy and by tondalayo, a character played sultrily by hedy lamarr in 's white cargo, from which a contemporary gay-culture term for an effeminate man springs. he even works in a snipe at robert graves, favored poet of "campus dry-heads" ( ) (the school is rarely coy about its enemies.) schuyler, though not reticent to disclose his influences, refuses to allow them to dictate interpretation of his work. and yet, we must interpret his poems, necessarily, in reading them. they are not about language, though their language is beautiful; they are not about art exclusively, though art is figured frequently among them. they are not about poetry, though schuyler certainly read extensively. what is left to interpret in the description of the view from one window? the scarcity of criticism on schuyler and porter may simply be occasioned by their explicit critical perspectives on art. criticizing critics is an order of magnitude more difficult than criticizing art. as a result, explicator-style exegeses of their work seem to fall short of the material. donald r. reese's tight and cogent explication of schuyler's "a man in blue" in that publication as a "poem about the process of enjoying art without consuming it" ( ) is both true and convincingly argued, but it seems to me to miss elements central to the effectiveness of the poem: its dreamlike tone, its rich allusiveness, its rollicking sense of joy. mr. reese argues that the speaker of "a man in blue" is quite literally listening to brahms's second symphony while sitting in a "resonant plump easy chair" (collected ). to me, however, the poem is a liminal parable, an attempt to describe the drowsy feelings of falling asleep on an autumn afternoon by recourse to images of that space between media. in this poem, art, music, and poetry together enable the speaker to reach some kind of epiphany, all set to the tune of a writer falling asleep in an easy chair. from this intersection of waking and sleeping grows another, as the vocabulary of music melts into the speaker's poetic daydream: a round attic window in a radiant gray house waits like a kettledrum. "you got to start..." the brahmsian day lapses from waltz to march. the grass, rough-cropped as bruno walter's hair, is stretched, strewn and humped beneath a sycamore ( ) our speaker sits "under the french horns of a november afternoon" ( ), internalizing the information around him: a "man in blue" raking leaves, children playing soccer, and he himself beginning to fall asleep. in this alpha state of early sleep, the speaker's keen observational powers (he remarks, for instance, that the rake's pegs are not pegs but "dowels") are gradually replaced by free-association. a window becomes a kettledrum, the kids' shouts become tempo markers, the grass begins (not implausibly) to take on the aspect of brahms conductor bruno walter's hair. all this to the (mental) tune of the first movement of brahms's second, the exposition of which incorporates the theme from his famous and sleepy lullaby with a somewhat darker tonal twist that matches uncannily the drowsy, meditative tone of the poem. then, a hypnagogic hallucination of a conversation between brahms and walter, in which the conductor offers the following interpretation of the first movement: "let me sing it for you." he waves his hands and through the vocalese-shaped spaces of naked elms he draws a copper beech ignited with a few late leaves. he bluely glazes a rhododendron "a sea of leaves" against gold grass. ( ) walter's solution to the interpretative problems of brahms's second is to paint a picture, answering one medium with another. these lines are rife with paradox: "vocalese-shaped spaces," "copper beech." better still, he paints the portrait by "wav[ing] his hands," using his powers as a conductor to conjure a colourful autumn landscape. the result of brahms's "material ecstasy, / subdued, recollective" ( ) mixed with the speaker's poetic consideration of it and walter's conductor-painting is, of course, a numen tremendum: "life," he cries (here, in the last movement), "is something more than beer and skittles!" "and the something more is a whole lot better than beer and skittles," says bruno walter, darkly, under the sod. i don't suppose it seems so dark to a root. ( ) david reese reads this section of the poem as an analysis of the possibility for schuyler's immortality via brahms; that immortality is, he says, "dependent] on a host of contingencies, including the interpretation of bruno walter, and both of their immortalities depend most importantly on the fact that one man is sitting on a particular porch listening to a particular recording" ( ). the poem in this reading becomes a story about the "changing and tenuous nature of artistic immortality" ( ), like a "small, dusty, rather gritty, somewhat scratchy / magnavox from which a forte / drops like a used brillo pad" ( ). however, though artistic immortality is one theme of the poem—and of brahms's allusive second—the poem does not have a "purpose" quite as clear as that. it courts an aesthetic rather than a programmatic tone, one born, as in most of schuyler's poetry, from the record of things truly observed, in this case the liminal pastiche of early sleep. in this poem, for instance, the soporific melding of three media—poetry, music, painting—leaves the speaker considering something very vague indeed, an uncanny "something more," that same pure artistic energy that porter attempted to relay in his "descriptive" review of de kooning. this renders "a man in blue" effectively uninterpretable in my view. since the poem builds its foundation upon something by its nature unrelatable, the vague "something more," there is no description of the poem— mine, above, included—that would be able to approximate the effect of the work itself. as robert frost is rumored to have said to someone asking him to explain the meaning of his poems, "you want me to say it worse?" (adams ). similar sorts of things are going on in the paintings of fairfield porter. though deeply sympathetic to—and friends with—the abstract expressionists, porter's painting is invariably representational. his favorite subjects are his friends, his homes, and the new england landscape surrounding him. as a result, his critics have a tendency to downplay his involvement in the movement, either viewing his work as representative of an american maverick attitude towards art or of an inability to interact meaningfully with the new movement. that porter did not paint abstract expressionist paintings seems to me obvious —if de kooning or pollock ever painted a tree, it certainly didn't resemble one. the question of whether or not porter was an abstract expressionist, at least in spirit, is altogether different. robert hughes says flatly that porter had "no link to abstract expressionism" ( ), but he describes porter's island farmhouse ( ) as if it were an abstract painting: the white weatherboard asserts itself in a blast of light like a doric temple; the lines of shadow are a burning visionary yellow; everything, from the angular dog in the shade to the ragged trees, is seen in sharp patches, and yet • one's eye seems bathed in atmosphere, all the way out to the blue island on the remote horizon. ( ) "bathed in atmosphere"—or, in other words, in nothing at all. the house in the painting, despite this "abstract" description, recalls nothing more than the works of hopper and even the sere austerity of david hockney's exteriors, all straight lines and square windows, frankly and almost unnervingly realistic. but the world around the house, existing apparently apart form the house in its formlessness, is all colour: a curved patch of green for the grass, a different green for the shadow; blue for the water, a different blue (but not much) for the sky. the boat in the left background is simple, iconic, more the idea of a boat than a boat itself, like the black-and-white "angular dog" reclining in the shade. most interesting are the house's two windows, though, because they show that the house, too, is more the idea of a house than a house. the bottom window seems to show the lower half of the tree behind the house; the top one is a field of various blues, echoing the sky. there does not appear to be anything inside the house. it is either paper-thin or unusually (and selectively) reflective. the overall effect, combined with the strict front-facing perspective, is that the house becomes unidimensional, a false front, unnaturally flat, another field of colour in the painting. and so we come to a net effect not all that different from the works of the abstract expressionists that porter helped idealize and canonize. we have fields of colour; we have abstracted, iconographic figures; we have a pervading sense of irreality. that porter painted figures instead of abstracts, then, is perhaps not as important a point as it appears. what he seems to be gesturing towards in some of his work, as schuyler does, is the visual abstraction to be found in the mundane and the everyday, the sorts of shapes our eyes perceive without thinking. most telling in this regard is porter's utter fascination with effects of light, as can be seen not only in island farmhouse but in other luminous canvases like october interior ( ) ox july ( ), both of which feature light as a sort of actor in itself, delineating spaces of shadow as so many abstract forms. light is not just the medium but the subject of many of porter's paintings, as it is of schuyler's poems. schuyler argues of porter that he paints air as light that shatters on surfaces in a spectrum that is, unlike a rainbow, consistent only to itself. one may know that the trunk of a sycamore scales off and discloses a creamy underbark, and that its shadow is stretched on grassblades whose myriads only a computer could tabulate, but the paint sees trunk and shadow as a continuity, a brown-violet beam which has no existence out of its context, but which is the thing truly seen. (saw ) as i argued before, both schuyler's and porter's critical writing takes as its subject the unrelatability of the work of art, and the necessary presence of a viewer to make sense of it. one might attempt to describe a painting in criticism, but nothing can replace the experience of seeing the painting for oneself; to replicate a painting in prose is as impossible as conveying a novel with a sketch. in the paragraph above, schuyler explains how porter put this precept into action on the canvas. he achieves this by using paint to relate the unrelatable: light—the "thing truly seen" which, schuyler says, "the eye so much more readily grasps than does a camera" ( ). one of the ideas that porter's paintings explore, then, is the same as the field of "a man in blue:" process rather than product. in an article called "appearance and reality," schuyler says that "bowden, dash, koehler, burckhardt, button, katz, porter, know the fogs and water of maine and/or of sausalito: the new reality that abstract painters create they find already there, in changing light and weather; in seeing" ( ). not the seen but the seeing is the subject of porter's figurative painting, and in this way his work is aligned much more closely with the works of his abstract expressionist peers than it might seem. they share an attitude rather than an aesthetic, a focus on immediacy that tends towards abstraction and generality. perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in schuyler's diaphanous "light blue above." in the prose paragraph that begins the poem, schuyler's "painterliness" is on full show: light blue above, darker below, lightly roughened by the stirring air and with smooth tracks on it. there goes reynald hardie's lobster boat, taking a colorful load of pleasure-seeking shoppers to camden. ( ) this is as porter-esque as can be found, in only two evocative sentences. there is a perception of colour based on relationships rather than absolutes (the juxtaposition of the vague "light blue" and the vaguer still "darker"), the vocabulary of paint ("lightly roughened," "stirring," "smooth tracks") commingled with the symbols of the new england idylls ("reynald hardie's lobster boat"). schuyler's concern with detail, too, is apparent: his boat, less than the iconic boat of island farmhouse, is specific, discrete. it has an owner (hardie) and a destination (camden.) from this short paragraph, the poem launches into an apostrophe to one of porter's and schuyler's favourite subjects—air: oair the clear, the soot-bearer, the unseen that rips that kills and cures, that keeps all that is empty filled, the bright invisible ( ) schuyler's lineation is always purposeful, and the opening line of his ode to air is no different: it is suspended alone, surrounded by white space, the sound of the juxtaposed vowels ("o air") uncannily conjuring the sound of wind. we see, too, schuyler's recurring fascination with paradox, with the unrelatable. air "kills and cures," is "empty filled," is "the bright invisible." the rest of the poem investigates those abstract spaces that air haunts, imbuing air with personality but never with anthropomorphic volition: air "in silent laughter in a glass pushed down / into a basin at retreating puzzled water" ( ), "clinging to arm hair in mercurial bubbles" ( ), "the quick to heal / that wriggles up from hot / heat- wave pavement like teased hair" ( ). in this poem that is unabashedly about "nothing," we find a lot of "something." that something, the poem seems to argue, is the space in between, the enormous creative potential to be found where things are empty, as with his closing image of air in a nest between twigs, among eggs and we go on with it within us upon a dust speck in bubble air ( - ) air is everywhere as it is nowhere, and therefore participates deeply in the genesis of objects: air is "between twigs, among eggs," "within us." like the light of porter's paintings, air in schuyler embodies what might be called a positive emptiness, one that yearns towards creation, yearns to be filled—thence, perhaps, schuyler's fascination with sky, weather, light. in "light from canada," air (and light, "scoured and nova / scotian" [ ]) "opens up the huddled masses / of the stolid spruce so you / see them in their bristling / individuality" ( ). light can also confuse rather than reveal, as in the night of "freely espousing," the building apperceived as a "gold-green tetrahedron" ( ). these are poems about the unrelatable, about air, light, the process of their apprehension and the importance of emptiness to creation. it is in this sense, perhaps, that they are most "painterly." in a schuyler poem, one can almost invariably perceive swatches of canvas behind the paint. schuyler's "painterliness," however, is less that than a general concern with art in all its forms and how that art is made. take, for instance, these lines from "an east window on elizabeth street:" out there a bird is building a nest out of torn up letters and the red cellophane off cigarette and gum packs. the furthest off people are tiny as fine seed but not at all bug like. a pinprick of blue plainly is a child running. ( ) like much of schuyler's poetry, the source of these lines is the view from a window. the bird, a metaphor drained of its potency by centuries of acting as a poet-surrogate, is here invested with new life by exploring a new medium. instead of singing, the typical parallel to poetic creation, this bird is a mixed-media visual artist, building a nest out of "torn-up letters" and "red cellophane," recalling the collage paintings of jasper johns or robert motherwell. more poignant, though, is the "child running" in the last line of the poem. the lines at once dismiss the cliched simile of faraway people to insects and convey the deceptive nature of the human sensory apparatus. like a master painter, all schuyler needs to evoke his child is the smallest touch of paint: a "pinprick of blue" is enough, which also functions as a reminder of the artificiality of representation in poetry as in visual art, just as the iconic and unreal boat of island farmhouse made us question the reality of its surroundings. schuyler's child is abstract, made not of limbs and features but of a patch of pure colour. this has the effect of drawing the reader into the process of composition itself. poetry is made out of words, schuyler says implicitly, as surely as paintings are of paint. in both, a single stroke is often enough. typical, too, is the poem's deceptive simplicity, its sure command of its material. david lehman, whose last avant-garde is the definitive survey of the new york school poets, remarks that "the remarkable thing about [schuyler's] writing is how clean it is—not a word out of place—and how seemingly simple; only if you try to imitate schuyler do you see that it is not simple at all" ( ). in this poem, schuyler paints layers of detail to convey his aerial view of new york city: "dulled sparkling mica lights of tar roofs" punctuate a bleak landscape of "junky buildings, aligned by a child" that are "the color of weak gums" ( ). the city is "toned, like patched, wash-faded rags. / noble and geometric, like laurana's project for a square. / mutable, delicate, ugly, mysterious" ( ). the poem is coated thick with colour, but in ugly, muted tones that refer only vaguely to the colours they describe, "feeble blue" ( ) and "bristling gray" ( ); these draw the eye inevitably to the last lines of the poem, a patch of pure red cellophane and a sharp blue child. this technique—the juxtaposition of differences—was a favorite technique of the new york school poets and of the abstract expressionists. john ashbery, praising a new volume of gertrude stein's, commented that it was made up almost entirely of colorless connecting words such as "where," "which," "these," "of," "not," "have," "about," and so on, though now and then miss stein throws in an orange, a lilac, or an albert to remind us that it really is the world, our world, that she has been talking about. the result is like certain monochrome de kooning paintings in which isolated strokes of color take on a deliciousness they never could have had out of context, or a piece of music by webern in which a single note on the celesta suddenly irrigates a whole desert of dry, scratchy sounds in the strings. (hoover ) the cellophane and child have what ashbery calls "deliciousness," what porter would call "energy," an eddy of meaning in the poem in which the collage of the imagery of new york city streets and snatches of overheard conversation coalesce in a deeply evocative final image that is both verbal and visual. perhaps, then, schuyler is being disingenuous when he claims that "writing like painting" has nothing to do with it. he is certainly appropriating some of the artistic methods of the abstract expressionists: a freedom of form and spirit, a fascination with unusual combinations of colour, an ability to distil the beautiful from the ugly. his gift, apparently, is not in aping the methods of visual art, but rather in so accurately transposing its spirit to a different medium, an alchemist aboard the paint-slick boat. parsimony, however, is likely much more useful as an interpretative mechanism: probably the bird is not a metaphor for poetic creation, probably the bird is a bird, one schuyler saw and described. it's easy to see, then, why schuyler may have been frustrated with his near-constant characterization as a "painterly" poet, what gillian conoley calls his "watercolorist sensibility" ( ). to assume that his poems refer to anything other than their very real subjects, paintings included, is to deny the real achievement of his poetry. david lehman illustrates the problem of metaphor in schuyler best: the severe restriction schuyler placed on himself, the disciplined refusal to "take such license" as poets customarily seize, the resolute determination to praise what is tangibly present and only that, is connected to the sense one has of the tremendous psychic repression that schuyler endured in order to write so convincingly about happiness, which is to be found not in grand flights but in the celebration of ordinary pleasures. probably no other poet of our time has written so convincingly of the pleasures of rain, snow, a shampoo, the application of after-shave lotion, flowers of all kinds, a smoke in the backseat of a cab. a cup of coffee was a lyric occasion. ( ) this is a poetry of the beauty of the everyday. never are the objects of human apprehension sanely reducible to metaphor. indeed, schuyler claimed in an interview that symbols are "all horseshit! not the way things are, at all' (thompson ). to analyze the physical world in terms of its potential symbolic meaning is not to open one avenue of inquiry but to close several others, erasing the lines connecting things to their infinity of objective and subjective meanings. schuyler's "painterliness" is one way to translate the mystery of his poems to criticism, but to focus on this particular feature is to shut down exploration of his other lines of influence—classical and jazz, breton and bataille—that contribute to his uniquely holistic verse. it's also easy, though, to see why the "painterly" epithet is so frequently used to describe his work. there is a great deal of raw colour in his poems. though this is one of the first tools in the documentarist's toolbox, schuyler's colour is not rough paste smeared on his lines. it is not colour for the sake of colour: it is colour deployed to produce effects. to call him a "painterly" poet, then, is somewhat to misunderstand the aims of his "painterly" methods, or even what it might mean to write "poetry like painting." there is a gap, after all, between the two disciplines, one so obvious and unbridgeable that it hardly needs to be said: paintings are made of paint, and poems of words. what business does a painter have writing poetry, even though fairfield porter's poems are of uniformly high quality? and what business does a poet have criticizing art, though schuyler's criticism is among the most erudite and perceptive about a notoriously difficult movement in american painting? of course, the new york school did their best to see the two media mixed as literally as possible. jasper johns's famous flag ( - ) looks like paint from a few feet away, only to reveal a foundation of newsprint when examined up close. frank o'hara collaborated with norman bluhm on a series of "poem/paintings" in which action painting and action poetry met on the same canvas. there is something happening at the intersection of painting and poetry, subject and object, that these artists feel drawn to. as schuyler himself reminds in "hudson ferry," "you can't get at a sunset naming colors" ( ). this discussion, so far, leaves the critical reader of schuyler's poetry on uncertain ground, that treacherous crag called "interdisciplinary studies." schuyler's writing incorporates elements of the works of those artists, composers, and poets he liked best—no surprise, particularly when one considers that t. s. eliot is among the "precious little" {contemporary authors ) criticism he felt was valuable in the interpretation of his work. sometimes, as in "a man in blue" or "east window on elizabeth street," the elements of his influences are easier to trace. most of the time, however, they are obfuscated by deft linguistic zigzagging and an almost preternaturally transparent poetic style, as in "letter to a friend: who is nancy daum?" from his the crystal lithium: all things are real no one a symbol: curtains (shantung silk) potted palm, a bust: flat, with pipe— ( ) paul hoover argues that "for schuyler, shantung silk is shantung silk" ( ). symbol and metaphor, mainstays of poetic (and painterly) explication, are largely absent from his poetry, transmuted into the objects of "mere" description. without metaphor, though, schuyler invites us to perceive objects ourselves: instead of being told what the curtains of shantung silk mean, we are invited to look at the silk itself and divine its end on our own. his fascination with air, light, and space are not for nothing—his verse is spacious, allowing its reader the chance to luxuriate, reflect, and build something of his or her own. we come, then, to something of a conclusion, if perhaps one as gauzy as a reflected fairfield porter landscape. schuyler raises description to the level of art, makes the surprisingly bold assertion that sidney's brazen world has always been beautiful enough, is loath to decorate a world so filled already with decoration: "what is, is by its nature, on display" (collected al). in painting that world for us, he alerts us to the colour, the light, the air, and the sound of the world around us. these are poems that urge their readers to take a closer look at the things around them; more still, they urge us to make things of the world around us, not to take a sky or a pie or a bit of cellophane for granted but really to consider them, and thereby to make them our own. in description—in "painterliness"— schuyler demonstrates that the world around us is what we make of it. whether a lawn be bruno walter's hair or chopped by the insufferable clacking of lawnmowers, whether a landscape resemble a porter, a pollock, or a breughel, is ultimately up to the individual. and it is in this notion that schuyler shows himself to be truly a painter's poet. making something from nothing, he urges us only to see. and yet there must be something behind schuyler's elaborate facade of colour and shape, sky and weather, even if that "something" be, as schuyler and porter explore in their work, "nothing." in the next chapter, i hope to provide something of a critical framework for exploring schuyler's work, a work that seems—no matter how one looks at it—to be deeply resistant to criticism. what is there to criticize, after all, in the view from one window? perhaps, in the end, "shantung silk" is not merely shantung silk, as paul hoover argues, but something more: the words "shantung silk," or a stroke of blue paint that through some strange metamorphosis becomes a child. in asking us to look more closely at the things around us, schuyler also appears to be asking us to look more closely at his poems. but what if all we find there be approximation, illusion, mask? chapter revenge of the giant face: nothingness andfaciality the mask is the central metaphor that i will use in an attempt to construct a critical framework for understanding schuyler's poetry. i am stealing the term outright as it is used in natalie kosoi's perceptive article about mark rothko's signature paintings, "nothingness made visible: the case of rothko's paintings." rothko's signature paintings present a legendary critical problem: composed of square-like fields of colour superimposed upon other square-like fields of colour, they are as close to pure abstraction as is possible. they are, like schuyler's poems, ostensibly devoid of metaphor or symbol, and are seemingly about nothing. even barnett newman—whose works most resemble rothko's among his immediate contemporaries—seems to refer to something in his paintings: there is a firm relationship between the bands of colour and their background, even if it is only one of proportion and complementarity. but rothko's squares are not even squares. their edges are rough-hewn, allowing the colour in the foreground to bleed into the colour in the background. the fields of colour seem to share no relationship to one another other than their accidental superimposition by the artist's brush, held by someone who, from the point of view of the audience, appears to be completely invisible. what is most notable about the paintings, i think, is what might be called their "luminescence": they seem to glow with an immanent light, a trait they share with porter's paintings and with schuyler's poems. it is difficult, however, to hang critical apparatus upon luminescence. kosoi manages to do this by arguing that the absence of symbols is what evokes the spiritual exaltation of rothko's signature paintings. according to kosoi, the exaltation is linked to heidegger's concept of "nothingness," which "points to the impossibility of any salvation, as our impending nothingness is also what constitutes us" ( ). nothingness, then, is a duality: death and life in one. but it needn't have grisly connotations. the enterprise of nothingness is one of self-recognition, the "slipping away of the whole": when things "slip away" from us, they do not disappear and ... the difference between us and the world is not obliterated and we do not become one with it. instead, the world and its entities, to which we escape in order to avoid facing up to our being, remain, while our connection to them is severed, leaving only ourselves and our being, which is being-toward-death. it is not a state in which we are absorbed into the world, nor is it one of either self-forgetfulness or a shuttered consciousness ... it is rather a state in which we touch the deepest core of ourselves, the finitude that constitutes us. ( ) i believe schuyler's poems court the same ends: to expose the "deepest core of ourselves" in revealing the apparently contradictory "sublime-nothingness" of the everyday, what kosoi and heidegger term the "being," a third term apart from either object or subject. unlike kosoi, however, i do not believe that what she terms the "deepest core of ourselves" is by any means a finitude. schuyler and porter both articulate a vast interior network of meaning, an infinite zone of possibility opened up by their paradoxical melding of realism and abstraction. in telling us that the "real" world is as abstract as the entirely new worlds wrought by the abstract expressionists, schuyler and porter point towards the same turning-inwards that kosoi finds in rothko. but their project is not, like rothko's, about teasing the death out of life. it is instead about drawing life out of the "finitude" of the objects of the world. what i wish to thieve from kosoi is her idea of the "mask," which she identifies as the salient element of rothko's signature paintings. they are, however, masks of a particular sort, "masks that show what they hide" ( ). she asks, with barbara novak and brian o'doherty, "what is behind the mask? another mask, a fallible human presence—or nothing" ( )? the work of art is figured as a symbol mediating between artist and audience, something that at once conceals the face and is the face. by "mask" i do not mean that schuyler is concealing anything in his poetry, or porter in his paintings. i believe that the strength of both artists' work rests on its clarity, transparency, and relative freedom from the sometimes-burden of metaphor. despite the absence of metaphor in their works, however, both schuyler and porter seem to have found its use indispensable to the practice of criticism, as they both employ it in their writings about "nonverbal" or "vacuum" works. the metaphor of the mask is appropriate to criticism of schuyler and porter, i think, because the poetry and painting it hopes to describe is so resistant to interpretation, or, perhaps more accurately, calls for different interpretative tools. bruno latour says that "there is no greater intellectual crime than to address with the equipment of an older period the challenges of the present one" ( ). to this end, i turn to the theory of gilles deleuze and felix guattari, more specifically the concept of "faciahty" they outline in their landmark^ thousand plateaus. faciality—in the world of a thousand plateaus, the exploration of the ways the human face can produce meaning—works as an interpretative mechanism. when we describe a poem or a painting, we are describing what makes that poem or painting different from all of the others, what, in short, makes it particular. every face, according to deleuze-guattari, is particular, but the ways that we draw meaning from the multitude of faces that surround us can be varied as well as particular. for instance, as discussed above, the term most frequently employed to describe schuyler's poetry is "painterly." painterliness, then, is the way in which schuyler's poetry makes itself different from the poetry that surrounds it, that thing which constitutes the "face" of his work. i feel, however, that the term "painterly" is flawed in the sense that it is usually employed. for one thing, "painterliness" is a damnably vague term, apparently meaning that the poems resemble paintings (which they cannot). furthermore, no matter how much it is meant as a compliment, "painterly" seems to me inherently dismissive: it reduces the possibilities for meaning in schuyler's works to one, the visual field. perhaps worse, it says nothing about schuyler's poetry that is not immediately apparent to any attentive reader. schuyler worked as an art critic and ran in circles filled with artists: no surprise, then, that art should make itself pervasive in his verse. to analyze those links is not fruitless, and i have and will explore them, as they (particularly those to porter's work) constitute rich metatexts to the poetry. however, schuyler is no more a "painterly" poet than porter was a landscape artist; schuyler employed "painterliness" to a specific end, as porter did the landscape. the term "painterly," however, remains useful. it points the reader towards that element of his poetry that i feel schuyler is most intent on exploring. it's telling, for instance, that the most widespread description of his verse has nothing to do with poetry, but with another medium altogether. his work, quietly as it may insist upon it, is about breaking down boundaries, exploring the spaces in between, and it is in mapping those spaces that deleuze-guattari and their concept of the face make themselves most useful. the agenda of a thousand plateaus as i read it is not to call for a program of readings, but merely to provide a set of tools for expansive analysis. the book's politics are far from usual: in their essays about nomads, television, plant biology, freud, and the face, deleuze-guattari appear to be discussing everything and nothing at once. the "nothing" in their toolbox that i find most useful to the understanding of new york school poetry and abstract expressionist art is the concept of faciality. the idea of faciality grew, in the pseudochronological "plateaus" of the book, in the "year zero." it constitutes the first concept and the first interpretative mechanism, the ancestor of criticism. faciality exists at the intersection of two semiotic systems, signifiance and subjedification, the former figured as a "white wall" upon which information can be projected (in their metaphor, a film screen) and the latter as a "black hole" which receives information (in their metaphor, a camera). they argue that "a very special mechanism is situated at their intersection" ( ): oddly enough, it is a face: the white wall/black hole system. a broad face with white cheeks, a chalk face with eyes cut in for a black hole. clown head, white clown, moon-white mime, angel of death, holy shroud. the face is not an envelope exterior to the person who speaks, thinks, or feels. the form of the signifier in language, even its units, would remain indeterminate if the potential listener did not use the face of the speaker to guide his or her choices. ( ) deleuze-guattari posit a third entity in the speaker/listener (or artist/audience) relationship: the face. without the face, the signifier itself risks nonsensicality or misinterpretation. when one speaks, the expression upon one's face might not only add to the meaning of one's words, but could alter that meaning completely, leaving the word to exist in a quantum state somewhere between signifier and signified. if the deleuzian project is partially about unsettling the dominance of binary relationships in philosophy—male/ female, straight/gay, subject/object, signifier/signified—this third term, the face, is the important one, the one that takes the place of that dividing backslash. signifiance and subjedification are the twin processes whose combined workings produce the abstract machine of faciality. they seek to describe the twin functions of the human face: to produce and to receive meaning, respectively. this intersection is interesting in schuyler because he deals so much with issues of signifiance and subjectification; ruminations upon both occur to a significant extent over the course of his oeuvre. both terms, however, require significant elaboration if their applicability to schuyler is to be clear. the first half of faciality, signifiance, is one deleuze-guattari borrow from french structural linguist emile benveniste, a student-by-proxy of saussure's. it is not to be confused with signification. where signification has to do with the meanings or definitions of words, signifiance is the process by which that meaning or definition is formed. benveniste took issue with signification in peirce's vision of language as a system of signs whose signifiers were all, ultimately, still more signs. there must, after all, be some difference between sign and signifier: mais finalement ces signes, etant tous signes les uns des autres, de quoi pourront-ils etre signes qui ne soitpas signe? trouverons-nous le point fixe ou amarrer la premiere relation de signe? ... pour que la notion de signe ne s'abolisse pas dans cette multiplication a l'infini, il faut que quelque part l'univers admette une difference entre le signe et le signifie. ii faut done que tout le signe soit pris et compris dans un systeme de signes. la est la condition de la signifiance.... on devra constituer plusieurs systemes de signes, et entre ces systemes, expliciter un rapport de difference et d'analogie. in the end, what can signs, signifying each other, be that is not a sign? will we find a fixed point to anchor the first sign-relationship? so that the concept of the sign does not disappear in this multiplication to infinity, the universe at some point must admit a difference between sign and signifier. this is the condition of signifiance. we will need to build several systems of signs, and between these systems elaborate a relationship of difference and analogy. ( , translation mine) we have therefore another "third term," signifiance, occurring itself at the intersection of sign and signifier. signifiance becomes not about what words mean, but the process of becoming-meaningful in relationship to the words they are put into conjunction with. it constitutes a meaning in process. signifiance, as one half of the nesting-doll of faciality, is itself a term in constant flux. it is indefinite, uncertain, a minor deity of negative theology. why side with deleuze-guattari, then, instead of roland barthes or julia kristeva or even benveniste himself, who popularized (so to speak) the notions of signifiance and the "third meaning?" barthes, in clever analyses of stills from eisenstein, posits that there are three meanings to any image: the first, informational, consists of the literal meaning of the image; the second, symbolic, contains the "obvious" meaning of the image as it relates to a "common, general lexicon of symbols" ( ); and the third, which he terms the "obtuse meaning," is that subjective meaning that seems to be in addition to the informational and symbolic levels of the image. the term "obtuse" he feels is entirely justified: obtusus means that which is blunted, rounded in form.... do [these traits] not give the obvious signified a kind of difficultly prehensible roundness, cause my reading to slip? ... it belongs to the family of pun, buffoonery, useless expenditure. indifferent to moral or aesthetic categories (the trivial, the futile, the false, the pastiche), it is on the side of the carnival. obtuse is thus very suitable. ( ) some adjustments are necessary to fit this bit of barthes into the context of schuyler's poetry. because the second term (the symbolic) is so often missing in schuyler, the meanings of his poems are much more than otherwise caught up in what barthes calls the "obtuse meaning," and its definition must be widened to fit. it would be difficult for me to agree, for instance, that the "third term" in schuyler is "indifferent to moral or aesthetic categories." by process of accretion, the ethics and aesthetics in his poetry become clear, though they are never explicitly elaborated. in my view, the third term—in deleuze- guattari's constellation, faciality—is unrestricted in its potential for meaning precisely because of its subjective nature. to claim that the third term cannot encompass the moral or the aesthetic, that it can only be blunted or rounded in form (what makes an idea round? could the third meaning not be wave, hexagon, pyramid, tesseract?), is to ignore the infinite network of meanings subtending that term and the infinite network of individuals interpreting it. barthes's "obtusus" is not perfect, then. he identifies that there is something aside from the "informational" and "symbolic" levels of a text, but insists on delimiting it, giving shape (however "difficultly prehensible") to something that is by its nature undefinable, formless, protean, and strange. what interests me most in barthes's definition, though, is his idea of "useless expenditure," a superfluity of meaning contained in the third term. signifiance is composed of this superfluity, unbound by the meaning of the individual word and therefore surpassing it, like water overspilling a vessel and spreading in all directions, as in schuyler's gorgeous prose poem "milk" from freely espousing: on the highway this morning at the go-round, about where you leave new hampshire, there had been an accident. milk was sloshed on the gray-blue- black so much like a sheet of early winter ice you drove over it slowly, no mater what the temperature of the weather that eddied in through the shatterproof glass gills. there were milk-skins all around, the way dessert plates look after everyone has left the table in the concord grape season. only bigger, unpigmented though pretty opaque, not squashed but no less empty. trembling, milk is coming into its own. ( ) unconstrained and fluid, meaning cannot help but flow everywhere. if "obtuse" will not do, we need another word. "superfluous" works. it contains the connotation of "unnecessary:" this will do, as the third meaning is unnecessary. more importantly, it contains "overflowing:" the cup of meaning runneth over. signifiance, then, is this "superfluous meaning," a meaning-in-progress that exists in addition to the "stable" meanings of words, difficult to constrain or define but nevertheless real, the process that in its cogwheels engenders sign, signifier, and signified in the reader or viewer. subjectification is the second half of faciality. put simply, it is the process by which human beings construct themselves: a process of capture and assimilation, of building oneself in layers. deleuze-guattari's metaphor of the movie camera ( ) is useful: by the combination of individual frames, one eventually produces a film. and, like the film, the movement of subjectification is necessarily linear, moving as it does with time: deleuze- guattari argue that subjectification "essentially constitues finite linear proceedings, one of which ends before the next begins: thus the cogito is always recommenced, a passion or grievance is always recapitulated" ( ). subjectification is to the subject as signifiance is to the signifier: process rather than product. and so, inevitably, signifiance and subjectification, twin processes, must meet: for the work of making ourselves to progress, we must at some point encounter and process words and their superfluous meanings which we assimilate for ourselves. a human being is not a mute receptor of data. it captures, assimilates, synthesizes, builds. ideas are not merely added to our memories but added in relationship to other ideas to form a network of possible ideas. as deleuze-guattari would have it, a camera is of little use without a screen. and so we come to faciality, that strange plane where signifiance and subjectification come together. the face is an abstract machine that both produces and dissimulates information: it both projects and receives meaning. an abstract machine, like a real machine, is something that receives input and produces some kind of output. deleuze-guattari use an analogy to a synthesizer to explain how an abstract machine might function: by assembling modules, source elements, and elements for treating sound (oscillators, generators, and transformer), by arranging microintervals, the synthesizer makes audible the sound process itself, the production of that process, and puts us in contact with still other elements beyond sound matter. it unites disparate elements in the material, and transposes the parameters from one formula to another.... philosophy is no longer synthetic judgment; it is like a thought synthesizer functioning to make thought travel, make it mobile ( ) the machine, then, always reveals its methods in its functioning; its product is inextricable from the process that produces it. the machine never exists in a vacuum, but relates to other machines in a vast network of mutual meaning. the machine of a synthesizer is worthless without the machine of the musical scale, itself connected to the machine of the human ear which is a smaller part of the machine of the human body, that most emblematic of deleuzean machinic assemblages. at another point in a thousand plateaus, deleuze- guattari use the example of a book, itself a "little machine" ( ), its individual parts (letters, words, sentences, chapters; ideas, symbols, metaphors, characters) without meaning until they are put into conjunction with other concepts to produce another thing altogether ("book"): "we will never ask what a book means, as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand in it. we will ask what it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not transmit intensities" ( ). no machine exists in a vacuum; each and all are interconnected. faciality, then, is one such machine, composed of eyes, mouth, nose, ears, brows (knitted, high, soft): protuberances and cavities. a person "does not speak a general language but one whose signifying traits are indexed to specific faciality traits" ( ). faces "define zones of frequency or probability, delimit a field that neutralizes in advance any expressions or connections unamenable to the appropriate significations" ( ). what we have, then, is a sort of quantum mechanics of linguistics. meaning becomes "probable" rather than definite, and the meaning of any term is produced by two entirely different but eerily related processes, signifiance and subjectification, both of which occur upon that most commonplace arrangement of symbols, the human face. it is a screen both constantly changing and necessarily unreliable: smile or smirk? it captures information, too, but that information is subject to the machine of subjectification, which alters, synthesizes, and reorganizes even as it captures. "a horror story, the face is a horror story" ( ): one must, like dr. frankenstein, dismantle the face into its component parts in order to piece together its intentions. this process of dismantling works in deterntonahzations, another element central to the argument of a thousand plateaus. deterritorialization is a process by which machines change functions in their relationship to other machines. deleuze-guattari's example is what they call the wasp/orchid complex: "the orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. the wasp is nevertheless deterritorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid's reproductive apparatus. but it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen" ( ). such an assemblage they call a rhizome, a machine productive of multiplicities. there is an exchange between wasp and orchid that enriches them both within a web of connections. the same is true of the face. to perceive a face, an abstract machine, one must deterritorialize the human head, cease to perceive it as a system of protuberances and cavities and see it instead as a single and unified machine productive of meaning. eyes become monstrous when excerpted from the face, made into "cogwheels" in the machine of faciality. the cheshire cat's smile, disembodied, is more unsettling than friendly. put into combination, though, the elements of the face are able to convey an enormous variety of information that, individually, they are relatively powerless to do. extrapolating from there, not only the face is subject to facialization. the entire body can be facialized, and, by extension, any system of signs: if the head and its elements are facialized, the entire body also can be facialized, comes to be facialized as part of an inevitable process. when the mouth and nose, but first the eyes, become a holey surface, all the other volumes and cavities of the body follow.... it is precisely because the face depends on an abstract machine that it is not content to cover the head, but touches all other parts of the body, and even, if necessary, other objects without resemblance. ( ) the tendency of faciality to overcode those things that are ostensibly simple is the mechanism that allows faciality to be used as a tool for interpreting schuyler's poetry. it allows for a reading of his poems based on their individual parts, but also seeks to understand how those individual parts contribute to the whole. deleuze-guattari note that the dismantling of the face is not the affair of the french novel. but, they claim, the anglo-american novel has taken strides in that direction: "from hardy to lawrence, from melville to miller, the same cry rings out: go across, get out, break through, make a beeline, don't get stuck on a point. find the line of separation, follow it or create it, to the point of treachery" ( - ). american poetry, beginning from whitman's ecstatic explorations of the self in leaves of grass, follows a similar programme, perhaps most dramatically in the case of schuyler and his new york school contemporaries. the dismantling of the face is among the affairs of art, specifically, in the eyes of deleuze-guattari, american art: it is through writing that you become animal, it is through color that you become imperceptible, it is through music that you become hard and memoryless, simultaneously animal and imperceptible: in love. but art is never an end in itself; it is only a tool for blazing life lines, in other words, all of those real becomings that are not produced only in art, and all of those active escapes that do not consist of fleeing into art, taking refuge in art, and all of those positive deterritorializations that never reterritorialize on art, but instead sweep it away with them toward the realms of the asigmfying, asubjective, and faceless. ( ) faciality is a step "on the road to the asignifying and asubjective" ( ), but only if the face "is destroyed, dismantled" ( ). that the face must be destroyed is clear. for a literature and a painting that celebrates variety and multiplicity as much as the new york school does, the face is a dictator, culling the multiplicities engendered by signifiance and subj edification and replacing them with a single, "real" meaning, which cannot be other than the face itself. though the theoretical unpacking above is not perfectly synchronous with the oeuvres of schuyler and porter—their work is much too varied and rich for generalizations —it provides a rough scaffolding for the exploration of the paradoxes of realism and abstraction in schuyler's poetry and porter's painting, which operate, too, along the lines of deterritorialization described above. deleuze-guattari's system of faciality reveals the mechanism that produces the superfluous third meaning, and that mechanism is more dizzying and complex than can be fully understood. * * * what fruits does this approach yield when attempting to understand schuyler's verse, or porter's painting? deleuze-guattari's concept of faciality provides the reader of schuyler with a method for understanding how the poems work, how their individual parts create a net effect his critics have been content to call "painterliness." in their attempt to destroy the face, they are rife with misrecognition, misunderstanding, misapprehension. they are concerned deeply with words, and how they mean, as in the "unintelligible shapes of phrases" ( ) of "today," one of the factors that results in their eerily detached and crystalline tone. in their focus on the processes of signifiance and subjectification rather than the products of those processes, schuyler succeeds in dismantling the face and replacing it with something else altogether. take, for example, these lines from "freely espousing," which i identified earlier as the closest we shall get to an artistic credo in james schuyler: where tudor city catches the sky or the glass side of a building lit up at night in fog "what is that gold-green tetrahedron down the river?" "you are experiencing a new sensation." the bales of pink cotton candy in the slanting light are ornamental cherry trees. the green around them, and the browns, the grays, are the park. ( ) here are signifiance and subjectification writ large. the poem is partially about the process of seeing: a "building lit up at night in fog" is mistaken for a "gold-green tetrahedron," and the choice to put the product before the perception—the "building" before the "tetrahedron"—serves to reinforce the conceptual space between the two. as if to strengthen his focus on perception, schuyler places a second misrecognition immediately following: "bales of pink cotton candy" are "ornamental cherry trees," and, in a particularly "painterly" touch, he sketches in the fields of colour composing the park before telling his readers that it is a park. here are lines that read almost like a mystery story. the reader is given the materials to assemble the scene, and, at the end, the mystery is revealed: not a tetrahedron but a building, not colours but a park. and, as in any good mystery story, the magic here is in the process. like the slow falling-asleep described in "a man in blue," the hazy coming-together of perceived shapes gives the poem its almost mystical tone. but what sorts of shapes do we have? schuyler does not arrange his colors. because of the nature of his medium, he must be content to list them, which gives these lines their rothkoesque sensibility. they exist as blotches of colour not on the page but in the mind, with words standing in for paint. so, there is the signifiance: providing his readers with the materials, he leaves us to do the painting. subjectification, here, is even more directly addressed. the second-person pronoun helpfully informs the reader that he or she is "experiencing a new sensation." schuyler is involved in the politics of identity-building after all. and, as at any intersection of signifiance and subjectification, we find a face—not the face of the despot-leader or of the mother, but the face of the poem or the painting, pulled apart and reorganized. in poetry, the face can be difficult to detect, though it is invariably present. it is perceivable only peripherally, in constructions like rhyme, rhythm, and cliche, machines that tend towards fixity rather than expansiveness, though their fixity is heavily dependent upon their employment. when it comes to painting, however, the metaphor of the face is much easier to digest, particularly since fairfield porter's paintings so prominently feature the faces of those dear to him. take, for instance, porter's the mirror ( ), featured on the cover of justin spring's biography of the painter, a life in art. like many of porter's paintings, it appears uncomplex and even inviting at first. considering the picture more closely, however, reveals layers of conflict and paradox. in the foreground sits porter's daughter lizzie in fall colours. behind her is a mirror which reflects the back of her head as well as her father, standing a few feet further back, considering his composition. a jug of liquid—water, or turpentine—is also reflected, sitting under a window that overlooks a diaphanous autumn scene. between the reflected window and the reflected porter are photographs and sketches hanging on the wall, one of which looks uncannily like a mirrored detail of mona lisa's face. as in island farmhouse, the conceit of a frame within a frame is used to great effect. the painting is a portrait of porter's daughter, the mirror a self-portrait of porter himself, the reflected window the sort of gauzy suburban pastoral for which he is best known. reflected along the back wall are several other works of art: the inclusion of the mona lisa, shrunk and powerless, gives the picture some tongue-in-cheek humour. despite this brief flash of comedy, the picture is a serious one, even severe. lizzie seems to stare straight ahead at the viewer, her face still, her eyes unfocused. as is frequent in porter's paintings of figures, there is something awkward and even iconic about the daughter sitting on the stool. her knees bend at slightly unnatural angles, her left arm a little longer than her right. eerily, though, the reflection tells a different story. the reflected lizzie is looking a little to her right at her father, instead of straight ahead at the viewer. the reflected fairfield porter is much more accurately rendered, but his face is without detail, blank and eyeless. perhaps most oddly, the table against which the mirror is propped seems to continue into the right side of the mirror, an impossible confluence of angles that serves to reinforce the unreality of the reflected world. if the mirror is facing the viewer directly as perspective would indicate, why is lizzie's reflection off-centre? and where is porter standing, anyway? the window, too, seems to overspill the edges of the mirror, blurring the edges between reality and its reflection. it is possible to see something of deleuze-guattari's faciality in this painting. after all, in the conjunction of the mirror and the "real world" outside it, porter presents us with a series of differences. for one thing, where the universe outside the mirror prominently features a symmetrical face—and the face operating as power, the familial power of the daughter's face—the world within the mirror has "effaced the face," most obviously in the treatment of the mona lisa. the image of the mona lisa had been a fixture of avant-garde art for the last several decades (usually in attempts to discredit it), from duchamp's frankly hilarious l.h.o.o.q. ( ) to dali's bizarre self-portrait ( ) to warhol's dismissive serigraphs ( ). hers is inarguably the second most famous face in western art (after, of course, christ's.) and porter, like warhol, seeks to efface rather than to deface her face: her eyes, that most legendary part of the painting, are missing. she is also truncated, curtains surrealistically substituted for her hair. she is rendered in black-and white, made to be only one of a series of pictures. her face, in short, is stripped of its signifying (deleuze-guattari would say "despotic") identity piece-by-piece. it is recognizable, but only enough for us to know that it is being attacked. and what, then, to make of the artist's face, stripped of its cavities and protuberances and therefore its powers of signifiance and subjectification? for one thing, confusing the distinction between artist and viewer appears to be one of the explicit themes of the painting: daughter lizzie is at once staring at the viewer and at her father, who is wielding the phallic, promethean paintbrush. her gaze ties together viewer and artist in a relationship the painting is content to leave unclear. the artist's face becomes blank, a bit like the ideas we have of our own heads, that single region of the body which we can only ever see reflected. but dismantling the face is also about dismantling subjectivity, deleuze- guattari argue, and is therefore a political philosophy: if the face is a politics, dismantling the face is also a politics involving real becomings, an entire becoming-clandestine. dismantling the face is the same as breaking through the wall of the signifier and getting out of the black hole of subjectivity. here, the program, the slogan, of schizoanalysis is: find your black holes and white walls, know them, know your faces; it is the only way you will be able to dismantle them and draw your lines of flight. ( ) if the mirror demonstrates anything, it's that fairfield porter knows his faces. he has a famous one (mona lisa), a familiar one (lizzie), and his own (effaced). and the project of this painting is at least partially about "breaking through the wall of the signifier and getting out of the black hole of subjectivity." the jug, the couch and pillow in the background, and the window do not signify: they simply are. the black hole of subjectivity is deeply complicated by the conflation of artist, subject, artwork, and viewer: who is lizzie looking at? are the contents of the mirror the work of art? and what of the window, that potential for escape from the signifying face, secreted away in the parallel universe of the mirror? like the face, the asignifying painting is a "horror story." pulling its meanings apart provides no guarantees that one will be able to stitch it back together again. though faciality and painting seem made for one another—deleuze-guattari say as much when they discuss the french expressionist painters bonnard and vuillard ( ), both of whom were enormous influences on schuyler and porter—its applicability to poetry, and particularly to schuyler, may seem a bit more nebulous. it may be worth recalling that deleuze-guattari's metaphor of the face was itself split into a twin metaphor: the "white wall" of signifiance and the "black hole" of subjectification. the reason for the former metaphor is clear in their analogy to the film screen. projection involves moving light from the projector to the screen, and the film-image exists in various states between projector and screen. this metaphor is easily transposable to the printed page of poetry. between the "white wall" of the page and the mind reading it, meaning is mutated, transformed, pressed to fit the available apertures of the individual mind. the black hole, however, is a thornier metaphor. as subjectification is an apparatus of capture, one that receives but does not project, the metaphor of the black hole makes perfect sense. it is a dense, dark, unimaginable space into which information is pulled unwillingly. the challenge lies in finding that messy, complicated thing on the inarguably static and permanent page. to grant consciousness to a poem is a leap into the truly fanciful. we say that poems have a life of their own if they are good poems, but they certainly aren't writing themselves. how, then, can a poem really engage in the process of subjectification? it does so by working in tandem with the necessary companion of the poem, the wasp to the poem's orchid: the reader. reader and text participate together in the creation and/or dismantling of the textual face, with the text providing the white screen and the reader the black holes. it would, of course, be disingenuous to claim that every reader has subjectification in mind when he or she approaches schuyler's poetry. though his is admittedly a small audience, it seems unlikely that most of his readers are gazing upon the poem with analytic black-hole eyes. but it remains that one must attempt to make sense of a poem in reading it. that critical gaze on the part of the reader is what constitutes the "black hole" of the poem in an attempt to integrate the meaning of the poem into the reader's own consciousness. for this reason, schuyler's verse finds itself so resistant to the explicatory aims of criticism, and effortlessly disarms attempts to imbue it with political or philosophical meaning. because schuyler, like porter, is so adept at the deleuzean project of dismantling and dissimulating the face—because his poems are about process rather than product, beauty rather than politics—he effectively immunizes his poetry against "literary criticism." criticism, after all, is an interaction between two systems of thought: the critical method itself, and the text that is its subject. in this sense, criticism is a system of power that seeks to delimit the meaning of a particular text by emphasizing certain elements at the expense of others, in the same way that criticism of schuyler's poetry as "painterly" makes that "painterliness"—instead of its prosody, musicality, or any of its other traits—the most important element of his work. dismantling the face comes down to dismantling systems of power: what system of power, what despotic face, stands over contemporary poetry more prominently than the system of criticism? the project of faciality, like the rest of deleuze- guattari's work, is at the root anti-critical, allowing things to mean on their own without recourse to a system. the poetry of schuyler and the new york school, a poetic school without a programme, is also engaged in the same anti-critical enterprise. schuyler's peers were less coy in their attacks against the critical enterprise. the relationship is illustrated well by frank o'hara's acidic "the critic:" i cannot possibly think of you other than you are: the assassin of my orchards. you lurk there in the shadows, meting out conversation like eve's first confusion between penises and snakes. oh be droll, be jolly and be temperate! do not frighten me more than you have to! i must live forever. ( ) the critic is figured as deceptive satan, tempting the poet with immortality. the relationship, it would appear, is parasitic. the poet needs the critic to guarantee his immortality, but at a price: "orchards," the fruit of poetic labour. the tone, though, is genuinely sad and supplicatory: "do not / frighten me more than you / have to," a patient's plea. to illustrate the feeling further, here are some lines from kenneth koch's hilarious anti-critical (and anti-poetic) "fresh air: " why should we be organized to defend the kingdom of dullness? there are so many slimy people connected with poetry, too, and people who know nothing about it! i am not recommending that poets like each other and organize to fight them, but simply that lightning should strike them. ( ) funny, but vitriolic. there's also john ashbery, now the godhead of the new york school and without question its most prolific member, who deals with the critics by keeping one step in front of them, as nicholas jenkins argues: although he has won almost every major literary honor, perhaps no other th-century american poet has been more subtly attuned to the dulling effect of canonization than ashbery. for him, such prizes and fame seem little more than sweetly scented warning signs that his strategies have become too easily legible, that his poems are in danger of being embalmed as what w. h. auden once called "poetry with a capital 'p.'" certainly no other poet has been more diligent about finding new ways of "starting out" again—of continuously emerging from the shadow of his previous work. ( ) this hostility towards the critical reader is not entirely misplaced. this was a generation whose struggle was against power, and, to a poet, the critic exerts the most dangerous kind of power, the ability to make or ruin a career with a word. the poets of the new york school, therefore, had no choice but to react to criticism, as they knew that with literary fame would come inevitable scholarly exegeses from literary critics and, worst of all, graduate students. schuyler's terse interview for contemporary authors is telling: ca: is there any poetry criticism that you feel is valuable reading for information? schuyler: precious little. t. s. eliot, colerige [sic], the biographia literaria. william hazlitt. matthew arnold. (anon ) the criticism he feels is valuable is ancient, foundational, written before the ground was broken for most english departments. he later cites harold bloom and david kalstone as contemporary critics he enjoys; their reviews of schuyler's volumes were invariably encomia, and kalstone in particular was a personal friend. so: the reader/critic represents the black hole of subjectification into which the white wall of schuyler's poems tumble, that thing against which his poetry stands. his strategy, however, is not interpellation as it is in o'hara's and koch's invectives. schuyler's resistance to exegesis is, in fact, what his critics notice most about his poetry. they call it "painterliness." here are the first few lines of "february," probably his most frequently anthologized poem: a chimney, breathing a little smoke. the sun, i can't see making a bit of pink i can't quite see in the blue. the pink of five tulips at five p.m. on the day before march first. ( ) painterly, to be sure. a still life in pink and blue. but even these few lines are littered with red herrings, the poem dissimulated behind the smoke of the first line; the colours, and therefore the "painterliness," are there apparently only to throw the reader off the textual scent. these lines are, like the rest of his poetry, rich in contradiction and paradox: the sun is invisible, and pink, the wrong colour. the strangely specific coincidence of fives occurs not really in the february that the title of the poem seems to indicate, but somewhere between february and march, "the day before march first," either the th or the th. james schuyler is not only a painterly poet, then. he is much more technical and abstract— more concerned with words, and the spaces around and between them—than his poetry would let on. like fairfield porter, he only appears to be a realist until one looks more closely. the surrealist details then emerge. do critical projects actually resemble one half of the machine of faciality? it should be remembered that faciality does not necessarily operate through literal faces, though this is its most common (and most potent) mechanism of power. faces are engendered by an abstract machine of faciality (visageite), which produces them at the same time as it gives the signifier its white wall and subjectivity its black hole. thus the black hole/white wall system is, to begin with, not a face but the abstract machine that produces faces according to the changeable combinations of its cogwheels. do not expect the abstract machine to resemble what it produces, or will produce. {plateaus ) deleuze and guattari go on to say that the "abstract machine can be effectuated in other things besides faces, but not in any order, and not without the necessary foundation" ( ). when schuyler builds his textual landscapes, it is this "necessary foundation" that he is building, providing the individual elements (word, line, image, paradox) that engender the abstract machine of faciality only to enable the reader to pull them apart as he or she sees fit. the reader or critic generates the face of the poem, a face that schuyler has helpfully made into a mask for anyone to wear. * * * the abstract machine of faciality can be engendered by anything that is, itself, made up of smaller parts: a book, a building, a continent. these are things that we do not perceive as their thousands of constitutive parts but as one uninterrupted whole, which is undoubtedly a boon to our collective sanity. the poem, with its variety of pieces—the letter, the word, the phrase, the line, the stanza, rhyme and white space—is the ideal machine to examine in miniature. schuyler's poetry textually urges his readers to pay attention to those individual parts of the poem. the poem is deterritorialized in its rocky relationship to its reader, made various, broken into pieces before his or her eyes. schuyler's "skinny poems," which appear so fragile on the page, reveal a surprising strength in the combination and juxtaposition of words, as in "afterward": then it snowed. i saw it when i let the dog out into the dark yard, fat damp flakes, ag- glomerations of many flakes. ( ) in "afterward," schuyler taps into the potent image of snow, one that recurs throughout his work. snow is among the most simple of the "faces" built by the abstract machine of faciality. each flake is different, but the individual flake is invisible among the mass. in combination, it contributes to "snow," which schuyler accurately describes as "ag- / glomerations of/ many flakes." his ability to break a poem up into its constituent parts—or flakes, if you will—is on view in this short passage. the pronouns ("it") in the first and second lines appear to refer to the same thing—snow—but both are confused. the former is that vague and referent-free "it" that english speakers use when talking about the weather. the second, according to the sentence, refers to "flakes," rendering "it" grammatically nonsensical. schuyler also calls attention to the way individual words are made: "agglomerations" is put into sharp relief by its split, dividing the word into its latinate intensifying prefix ("ag-") and the rare word "glomerations" ("the process of forming into a ball or rounded mass"). schuyler typically does not end-rhyme his lines— that would make the dismantling of the face of the poem even more difficult, as their patterns must then be broken—but deploys the internal rhythm of these lines with able beauty: the alliterative, semantic and spondaic pairings of "dog out" and "dark yard"; the movement from a short "a" to a long "a" over the course of the three words "fat / damp flakes"; the slight difference in stress between the first and second repetitions of "flakes," which also serves to multiply the flakes further. those same rhythmic repetitions recur a few lines later in the consonance of "four- / wheel drive" and "mud slick hill" ( ). in these recurrent patterns of stressed words bunched together, there emerges some impression of how slow-going the drive to northfield must have been. the stresses literally slow the poem down with a series of mealy monosyllables that stick in the mouth. as a result of this calculated verbal slowness, an emphasis upon these smaller parts grows. in urging us to take our time, schuyler insists too that we look more closely at the way the poem is made. bin ramke, in an article about schuyler and porter, agrees with me that schuyler is not as "painterly" as he appears. he argues that the "painterliness" is negated by schuyler's focus on process, noting that in schuyler's "skinny" poems "the one- or two-word increments by which [the poem] accretes itself have a certain visual effect, but they work not the way a painting looks but the way a painting works" ( ). schuyler's language emphasizes, as always, process rather than product. besides the language, carefully erected to keep the thin structure of words standing, we have the same kinds of tricks of signifiance that schuyler used in "freely espousing." the process of perception is once again dramatized. first, a vague impression ("i saw it" in "the dark yard"); then, a more accurate picture ("fat damp flakes"); finally, a more complete impression ("ag- / glomerations of many flakes. a / white awakening"). these all build an image of "early, thawing snow." that image is refined a few lines later: the branches bent under their first winter weight: it wasn't pretty, a thawing snow seldom is, but it wasn't ugly, too. ( ) the ear expects to hear "either" at the end of those lines instead of "too," but in that single choice of word schuyler suggests that the trees are simultaneously "not pretty" and "not ugly." the combination of these two negations necessarily engenders a kind of superfluity in meaning. the two apparently irreconcilable images of the thaw force the reader to imagine a thaw, and therefore to decide for him or herself where along the spectrum of beauty that thaw lies. these things—imagery, theme, lineation, rhyme, and the rest—make up what i have been calling the "face of the poem." of course, a face and a poem are very different things, and to confuse the two does no-one any good. for this reason i recur to the metaphor of the mask, for which i believe there are three relevant justifications. the first has to do with a fundamental difference between the face and the poem: the former is mutable, the latter static. a face is by its nature constantly changing, providing through musculature information that can be captured and assimilated by its viewer. its ability to change is what gives the human face its ability to express the superfluous (or "obtuse") meaning. this constantly-shifting face also means that the superfluous meaning is itself evanescent and fleeting; it exists for a moment, only to disappear into the folds, protuberances and cavities of the face. the work of art, on the other hand, is necessarily static. once printed it cannot smile, or frown, or wince. its expression is fixed. the mask, like the poem, succeeds in triggering the abstract machine of faciality without recourse to the necessarily-conscious element of signifiance—that is for the reader to provide, after all. this is a benefit to the critical reader of poetry. though the superfluous meaning of a given work always differs from reader to reader, the work itself does not. the second justification for the metaphor of the mask is because it provides an easy vehicle for the relationship of reader to poem and poem to reader. if the poem is a mask— some distillation of the mind of the author—that mask can be taken off, exchanged, worn. the reader can take up that mask, use it to cover up his or her own face. in gazing upon the face of the poem, the reader takes on that face in the process of subjectification. he or she must identify with the poem, enter into it. according to artaud, the viewer of the mask experiences "a passionate overflowing, a frightful transfer of forces from body to body" (qtd. in derrida ). the mask is exchanged. the third justification is the rich weight of the mask as a metaphor, particularly in relation to the dionysian mask. ginette paris remarks that "dionysus is not the god behind the mask. he is the mask" ( ); tsu-chung su adds that "the mask of dionysus is its own double which imitates nothing, a double that nothing anticipates" ( ). the mask of dionysus, like the poem, cries out for interpretation. according to su, "dionysus's mask is said to have risen from the depths of the sea. it looks strange and foreign representing an enigma to be deciphered, an unknown power to be identified. in other words, the mask demands an interpretation, a fiction-making enterprise" (su ). the mask plays on the nature of process and illusion even as it burlesques reality: the fascinating gaze of dionysus plays with the tension between presence and absence. it is the gaze of "schizophrenic" nature in the deleuzian sense, able to see beyond "paranoiac" unity and conformity. in the hollow, empty gaze, blindness is vision and ecstasy is the surplus of vision which is characterized by multiplicity, proliferation, flowing, becoming, a dissolution of boundaries, and is constituted by partial objects, fragments of experience, memory and pathos, linked in chance and unexpected ways. whoever is fascinated by the gaze of dionysus loses the power to make sense. (su ) in schuyler's poetry, too, do we find "multiplicity, proliferation, flowing, becoming;" there especially do we find a world "constituted by partial objects, fragments of experience, memory and pathos, linked in chance." the shifting mask of dionysus is the erased face of his poems. at the beginning of this chapter i promised an interpretative mechanism to assist in the understanding of james schuyler's various verse. the tools of the mask and faciality provided by deleuze-guattari still leave our toolbox pretty empty, though; we are no closer to "figuring out" what schuyler's poetry means than we were at the outset. i'd very much like to believe, though, that this was at least partially the poet's intention. donald revell remarks that the poetry of james schuyler avers that the gorgeous harmonies of the world are a music of circumstance, not destiny, of transience, not eternity. schuyler honors variousness, credits it as though it bore a human face and name, and so it is simply just and candid here to observe how variousness honors him in return. [...] in the delicate, handsome gestures of his short poems, he reconfirms the dignity of particularity, of the small, habitable sites of clarity in which phenomena and events may receive and return our human affections, however injured, however injuring. ( ) the variousness, the complex web of possibilities engendered by faciality and the mask, the superfluous meanings of the poem—all of these are to provide the reader with the ability to build him or herself into the universe of schuyler's verse. his poems allow us to engage with the text as the black hole of subj edification while subverting that function, making of the mute apparatus of capture an active enterprise of meaning-making in which both ourselves and schuyler are involved. and they promise, though gently, to help us dismantle the face, to discover the more insidious and hidden apparatus of power in words. he provides us with so much room in his poems—so many skies, so much weather, so much white space blanketing his thin lines on the page—that we ought to feel comfortable stretching our imagination within them, putting on the mask for ourselves, and, if the weather should happen to be nice, taking a short stroll. this profusion of space, like the holes in the mask allowing us to seep into the poems, reminds us that the world that schuyler describes is not merely his world but ours too. and his world, like ours, is filled with things, objects that guide and alter our lives in immutable, tiny, often incomprehensible ways. chapter it is just the thing: "a stone knife " and object matter "every object tells a story, if you know how to read it. " —henry ford gary hustwit's documentary about industrial design, objectified, opens with a still shot of plastic shavings on a factory floor. the next shot shows an enormous winch holding up steel chains; then, a pressure gauge flanked by waving, cream-coloured plastic tubing. as the series of shots progresses, we see that these things are parts of a larger machine, and that the machine is manufacturing something. eventually, of course, the game is given up: a sleek swedish plastic chair emerges from the machine and is gently deposited on the factory floor by a robotic arm. a worker approaches and begins to shear off the seams of the chair with an x-acto knife. that, at least, explains the shavings. the central argument of objectified is that people do not pay much attention to the multitude of objects that constitutes the material environment of the modern age. they spend less time still considering the human hands that formed that multitude. as apple electronics designer jonathan ive remarks early in the film, "every object, intentional or not, speaks to who put it there." but the thing itself is a remarkably slippery construction. if a thing works well, after all, we hardly notice it: we use it, put it away, and go on with our day. it is only when our things stop working, as bill brown explains in his introduction to an issue of critical inquiry titled "thing theory," that we begin to notice that they are things at all: [there] are occasions of contingency—the chance interruption—that disclose a physicality of things.... as they circulate through our lives, we look through objects (to see what they disclose about history, society, nature, or culture—above all, what they disclose about us), but we only catch a glimpse of things. we look through objects because there are codes by which our interpretive attention makes them meaningful, because there is a discourse of objectivity that allows us to use them as facts. a thing, in contrast, can hardly function as a window. we begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us: when the drill breaks, when the car stalls, when the windows get filthy, when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, consumption and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily. ( ) things serve a function. when that functionality is arrested either by design, catastrophe or time, the relationships that things have with the world that conceived, produced, and used them are altered, and they begin the long, slow process of becoming either garbage or art. the latter contingency is best illustrated, as brown notes, by the sculptures of claes oldenburg. oldenburg's large-scale reproductions of everyday objects—from his forty- one-foot clothespin ( ) to his eleven-foot-wide pool balls ( )—require attention in a way the objects they represent do not. simply by increasing their scale, oldenburg forces us to take in the forms of objects that we may otherwise never have considered. in stripping them of their potential for use, he forces us to confront their thingness first and their (potential) meaning second. perhaps the most interesting of his sculptures is typewriter eraser, scale x ( ). an enormous red typewriter eraser is made to seem dynamic, or perhaps in use, by the smooth arcing movement of the blue steel bristles angling from the top. the date of its creation, however, is long after the last typewriter eraser saw commercial production: the object is not only frozen, monumental, and useless, but has also become literally nonsensical, referring to another object (the typewriter) which itself is no longer in common use. the broken chain of signs to signifiers in oldenburg resembles the anticritical "dismantling of the face" that i argued was taking place in the paintings of fairfield porter and the poems of james schuyler in the previous chapter. the machine of the typewriter eraser, severed of its connection to the machine of the typewriter of which it was a part, is deterritorialized, but having no other machine onto which it can reterritorialize, it becomes an object whose meaning is in constant process. its face, in short, has been effaced. oldenburg's preoccupation with the thing, and with thing-ness, is what gives his typewriter eraser its force. it is one thing for a word, a conceptual construction to begin with, to be considered a word-in-progress, and quite another for a thing—a physical, concrete thing— to be a "thing-in-progress." that seems impossible—a thing either is or isn't. oldenburg's things, however, explore the limits of what happens when things and signs brush up against each other, the confusion generated when a thing is a thing as well as something else. this confusion is shared by james schuyler. schuyler, like oldenburg, has a more than ordinary preoccupation with things, from the "polly red top thermos" ( ) of "with frank and george at lexington" to the "wrappers off blue goose oranges" ( ) of "a reunion." things populate schuyler's world, give it depth and a typically schuylerian whiff of the specific and the tangible. at the same time, however, schuyler's things are complex along the lines traced by bill brown and his fellow essayists. instead of littering his poems with "things," schuyler deliberately addresses issues of "thing-ness" in his poetry, revealing in his work the complex relationships that we can form with inanimate matter. schuyler's most concise and direct engagement with the concept of the thing is the crystal lithium's "a stone knife." in this epistolary poem, he writes to his friend, collaborator, and frequent roommate kenward elmslie in thanks for the christmas gift of a letter opener: dear kenward, what a pearl of a letter knife. it's just the thing i needed, something to rest my eyes on, and always wanted, which is to say it's that of which i felt the lack but for an alternate reading of "a stone knife" using bill brown's thing theory, please see mark silverberg's "schuyler's poetics of indolence" in literary imagination . ( ), pp. - . didn't know of, of no real use and yet essential as a button box, or maps, green morning skies, islands and canals in oatmeal, the steam off oyster stew. ( - ) leaving aside for a moment the slight cognitive dissonance of an epistolary poem about a letter opener, the genre of this poem has an interesting place in poetic history. daniel tiffany, in his essay "on riddles, materialism, and poetic obscurity" in brown's anthology, claims that the "object-" or "riddle-poem" potentially represents the origin of lyric poetry in english: "archaeological evidence reveals that the earliest poetry in english displays an affinity for objects whose rarity and eccentricity was signaled by a peculiar verbal identity. indeed, it may be possible to claim that lyric poetry first emerged in english as the enigmatic voice of certain highly wrought objects" ( ). in particular, he cites the dream of the rood, perhaps the best-known "riddle-poem" in old english, in which a crucifix discourses on theology with the speaker of the poem. (sections of that poem are also inscribed on the famous ruthwell cross, making even more literal the talkative crucifix.) in these riddle-poems, an object is allowed to describe itself. the object is invested with personality, and becomes the hero of its own story. "a stone knife" incorporates from the beginning elements of the riddle. its title does nothing to reveal that the subject of the poem is to be a letter knife—if anything, it conceals it, as the semantic difference between "knife" and "letter knife" is considerable. and the first line, too, intentionally obfuscates in casting the knife as a "pearl." it's also an object he defines quickly as notable by absence, a thing of which he "felt the lack" but "didn't know of." that the knife is also a phallus—or, as schuyler puts it later in the poem, "manly as a lingam" ( )—makes only vaguer this mysterious and unnameable "lack." the poem's resemblance to a riddle grows as schuyler presents us with the list of things that the knife resembles, none of which resembles a knife: "a button / box, or maps, green / morning skies." as in a riddle, schuyler attempts to describe the object diagonally, attesting to the things it is like rather than the thing it "is." the next issue raised by the poem is the question of use-value, the question of whether or not a particular object is valuable-as-useful or merely valuable-as-beautiful. schuyler is not saying that the stone knife materially resembles any of those "things." instead, they resemble the knife in terms of their usefulness. it should be noted, probably, that a letter opener was emphatically not a gift "of no / real use" to james schuyler. he was an inveterate letter-writer, as attested to by the volumes of his letters currently in print, and would certainly have used a letter-knife daily. what he means, of course, when he says that the knife is "of no / real use" is that he can just as easily open letters with his hands: the letter knife replicates an existing function of the human body without considerably improving upon it. in saying the knife has no "real use," however, he quietly establishes three use-value categories that an object can fall into: an object is useful, "of no / real use," or useless. he proceeds to list some things that might fall into the central category, among them "maps" and "islands and / canals in oatmeal." as before, it is the central category that schuyler finds most interesting, that class of things that are useful and useless at once. the riddle of the knife is expanded in the next section of the poem, in which schuyler beautifully describes the physical appearance of the knife: brown agate, veined as a woods by smoke that has to it the watery twist of eel grass in a quick, rust-discolored cove. undulating lines of northern evening—a munch without the angst—a hint of almost amber: to the nose, a resinous thought, to the eye, a lacquered needle green where no green is, a present after-image. ( ) in this passage, schuyler evokes the knife as graphically as possible, with the specificity of detail that gives his poetry its force, without ever naming it or using any word semantically related to "knife" (say, "edge" or "handle" or "keen"). in this way he keeps from facializing the knife into a serial object with a fixed meaning ("knife"). instead of being content with a knife, schuyler takes pains to characterize this knife, forcing the reader to imagine the knife as singular rather than plural. keeping faciality from colonizing the knife is accomplished by sweating the details: the knife is made of "brown agate," but, as it happens, the agate is much more than simply brown. it is also "veined as a woods / by smoke" with "undulating lines of/ northern evening"; so, too, is it "almost amber" and "green / where no green is." it is figured in those lines as a microcosm of the earth itself, partially evoked through his palette of browns and greens. schuyler also employs his trademark paradox to attempt to describe this admittedly strange object: it is a "munch / without the angst," a "present after-image." he is interested in the object qua object, in its physicality and sensuousness, even describing that it evokes the scent of "a resinous / thought." the knife, in short, is without question a real agate knife—at least within the universe of the poem, which is constituted entirely of the knife and its apprehender. its solidity, its "matter," is at least partially what schuyler admires about it. the matter of the knife, however, is much complicated by the end of the poem. schuyler shifts his descriptive eye from the way the knife looks to what the knife is: sleek as an ax, bare and elegant as a tarn manly as a lingam, november weather petrified ... ( ) just as schuyler provided some things that resembled the use-value of the knife, here he identifies things that resemble, in his view, the knife itself: it is an "ax," a "tarn," a "lingam," and "november weather petrified." the relationship of the knife to nature is strengthened a little; now it can count geography ("tarn") and meteorology ("november weather") among its domains. the lingam, however, seems not quite to fit. though it is likely the popular phallic connotations of the word were fully intended by schuyler—it is a knife, after all, and "lingam" is preceded by the phrase "manly as a"—the word has a richer denotative history than that. in hindu practice, the lingam is a cylindrical representation of shiva intended as an object of worship. the word means "sign" or "symbol," and the lingam itself is often perceived as aniconic rather than representational (britannica). with this single, strange word, schuyler intimates much about his knife, couching it in the language of (potentially phallic) idol-worship—the worship of what he terms "the un- / recapturable" ( ). the poem, therefore, is also taken up with the issue of the sign, most visibly in the case of the hazy lingam. if schuyler's knife is a riddle, it is a riddle without a solution. the knife itself, a machine that typically interacts with only one other machine (the envelope), becomes as deterritorialized as oldenburg's typewriter eraser. there is no sign in "a stone knife" that the knife will be used for actually opening letters, no lines apostrophizing its skill at smoothly tearing paper when the appropriate amount of manual force is applied. instead, the meaning of the knife is allowed to flow: into geology, into religion, into memory. in severing the connection of the knife to its mate, the envelope, the knife grows richer in potential meaning, signifying something other than itself. the poem is itself a sign for something else: the knife, "an / object, dark, fierce / and beautiful." it ought, perhaps, to go without saying that the poem is not a knife in the same way that magritte's la trahison des images was not unepipe. images, as magritte so forcefully and succinctly argued in his painting, are treacherous. but it is clear, in his attempts to represent the knife in words, that schuyler, like magritte, is interested in the intersection of matter and representation. this is the same intersection he courted in his "painterly" poems, that space between the poem and its subject, those things lost (or added) in transmutation. but, as suggested by magritte, the line between matter and its representation is not as firm as common sense would hold. matter is constantly revealed to be much more complicated than it was thought to be, and its representation is certainly more accurate to our senses than the quarks and gluons that subtend it in actuality. w. j. t. mitchell complains that the physical is a thoroughly metaphysical concept. the concrete is (as hegel points out) the most abstract concept we have; bodies are spiritual entities, constructions of fantasy. objects only make sense in relation to thinking, speaking subjects, and things are evanescent, multistable appearances; and matter, as we have known since the ancient materialists, is a "lyric substance" more akin to comets, meteors, and electrical storms than to some hard, uniform mass. ( ) despite his best efforts at evoking the knife, schuyler's "a stone knife" will never really resemble the knife he received as a christmas gift from kenward elmslie, if that knife is real at all. but schuyler's knife has its own strange sort of life, and one that is not altogether different from the mental life a real knife would have. and yet, the knife is multiple: through the machine of the poem, the knife that schuyler took such great pains to render as unique is made serial by reproduction. merely by reading the poem, we come into contact with some aspect of the physicality of the original knife. moreover, as mitchell remarks, the thing is "multistable" and therefore multifunctional. schuyler's knife is a thing with a clearly defined function—it is a letter knife, designed and intended to open letters— but for him it is just the thing to do what with? to open letters? no, it is just the thing, an object, dark, fierce and beautiful in which the surprise is that the surprise, once past, is always there: which to enjoy is not to consume. the un- recapturable returns in a brown world made out of wood, snow streaked, storm epi- center still in stone. ( ) for schuyler, then, the knife is "just the thing," a phrase that paradoxically denotes that it is at once the "ideal" thing ("this knife is just the thing for opening letters") and "just a thing." (every object, ultimately, represents this duality. every object we own is unique because it is "ours," at the same time that that object is one in a series of similar objects.) the pleasure of the thing, he continues, is that it can be enjoyed without destroying it, that "the surprise, once / past, is always there." it also represents the "unrecapturable," and evokes a "brown world / made of wood." the knife, in short, has become the poem itself. perhaps the best articulation of the strange ability of things to transmute themselves in our minds is jean baudrillard's the system of objects. in this book, baudrillard establishes a system for understanding the ways in which the objects around us affect us, and why we seem so curiously attached to our things. he begins by separating objects into two broad and (rarely) overlapping categories: "functional" objects and "marginal" objects. functional objects comprise essentially any object that serves or complements a function of the human body, a category he extends to chairs and interior decoration. in short, they are useful. marginal objects, on the other hand, are those whose value is not tied to their potential or actual functionality. they "answer to other kinds of demands such as witness, memory, nostalgia, or escapism" ( ). the latter kind of object is not entirely able to avoid the trap of "usefulness," but marginal objects are useful in a different way: "historicalness in the case of the antique object (or marginality in the baroque object, or exoticism in the primitive object" ( ). historicalness is not just an ancillary function of the antique object; it is in fact the primary function of the antique. schuyler's knife—with its attendant vocabulary of temporality and its overtly "antique" appearance—can be easily ascribed to this category. that leaves baudrillard to define "historicalness," and what it might mean for an object to signify it. he argues that the way in which antiques refer to the past gives them an exclusively mythological character. the antique object no longer has any practical application, its role being merely to signify. it is astructural; it refuses structure, it is the extreme case of the disavowal of the primary functions. yet it is not afunctional, nor purely "decorative", for it has a very specific function within the system, namely the signifying of time. ( ) by "mythological" baudrillard does not mean that the objects are connected to any system of mythology. instead he means that they exist in the "perfect tense," "that which occurs in the present as having occurred in a former time, hence that which is founded upon itself, that which is 'authentic'" ( ). antique objects are involved in the creation of the myth of the self, the process of subjectification, and allow their owners to revisit and rewrite their own histories through the medium of the object. as a result of its inevitable connection with individual myth, the antique object takes on a second, much stranger function. by occasioning reminiscence, the ultimate function of the antique object is to signify the moment of birth or creation, the furthest point to which memory can conceivably regress: says baudrillard, "i am not the one who is, in the present, full of angst—rather, i am the one who has been, as indicated by the course of the reverse birth of which the antique object is the sign, a course which leads from the present far back into time" ( ). in this way, all antiques become secularized crucifixes, sacred objects "called upon to exude their sacredness (or historicalness) into a history-less domesticity" ( ). schuyler's image of the knife-as-lingam begins to grow less hazy. could it be that the object itself, pregnant with genitive power, acts as a metonym not only for the poem but also for the act of poetic creation that generated it? and what happens when the face of the genitive antique is effaced? it is only when the antique object is considered in juxtaposition with the functional object that the machine of faciality begins to appear more clearly. where the antique object exists in the past and the present, the functional object exists in the present and the future. a functional object—say, a letter knife—is useful both because you are opening a letter with it right now and because it promises to open any future letter you might receive. it evokes therefore the process of signifiance: the use of a tool always constitutes a meaning- in-progress as the tool and its task deterritorialize and reterritorialize upon one another. the letter knife described in "a stone knife" straddles the two categories. it is at once unique and serial, beautiful and useful, "marginal" and "functional." schuyler's recurrent images from visual art thus serve as a link between the machine of faciality and the process of artistic creation. his objects further reinforce that link. the relationship of objects to the process of poetic genesis is not exclusive to schuyler, baudrillard, and deleuze-guattari. it is instead endemic to modern american poetry. william carlos williams, in his gemlike "a sort of a song," calls for writing —through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. compose. (no ideas but in things) invent! ( ) while schuyler, as i have argued, does not favour the "metaphor to reconcile," his aim—in "a stone knife," at least—is somewhat to unite "the people and the stones," to bring people closer to the incredible variety and number of things that surround them. williams's imperative is a paradox in itself. he urges poets not only to draw their ideas from the environment but to "compose" and "invent," to create the environment for themselves. because of this, "no ideas / but in things" is neither exaggerated nor particularly surprising. the time we spend during our daily lives in conversation with objects greatly outstrips the time we spend in conversation with people. schuyler is merely interested enough to record what is said. * * * the tradition of american writing that wound up at "no ideas / but in things" finds its root in walt whitman's leaves of grass, perhaps the most immediately perceptible of schuyler's influences. miles orvell, in the real thing, writes of the photographer's instinct everywhere present in whitman's verse, the urge to catalogue accurately and wholly the objects of one's apprehension. this urge results, according to orvell, in the birth of a new genre of poem unique to american letters, the "free-verse catalogue": a series of unrhymed lines of varying length, sometimes numbering over a hundred at a stretch, each of which names some single, concrete, complete image of a person or thing or place; it is a form that stands classical epic poetry on its head, making what used to be an extended pause in the action into the main substance and structure of the poem. ( ) the thing is given primacy in this new genre through lineation. each thing is made to be celebrated in itself by occupying a line of its own, and the thing's connections to other things are made vivid by the flow of lines into a poem. what makes whitman's free-verse catalogue so special—and so much an inversion of the traditional epic, whose themes are invariably lofty and grand—is that whitman draws no distinctions between "low" and "high" in his celebration of the things around him. "doorknobs, cups and saucers, dishes, pitchers, doorplates, piano keys, clock faces— nothing was too humble for whitman to celebrate" ( ), orvell remarks. take, for instance, this passage from canon staple "crossing brooklyn ferry": the sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars, the round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants, the large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilothouses, the white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels, the flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset, the scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolic-some crests and glistening, the stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite storehouses by the docks ... ( - ) the rest of the poem proceeds in more or less the same fashion: in each line, an object is described, each one contributing to whitman's perception of new york from the ferry. it is not a question of deciding whether a thing is "worthy" of inclusion in his list. what is important is that the things were there, and that he described them, and that their arrangement into lines allows them to exist in themselves as well as in complex relationships to the other "humble" things around them. this celebration of the "humble" thing signals somewhat of a sea change in american perceptions of material culture. when whitman was composing the first sections of what would become leaves of grass, the activity that most consumed his time was touring the crystal palace exposition in new york city. at this time, trade fairs and expositions were the major centres for display of consumer and industrial goods. expositions and similar shows had not yet been supplanted by the department stores and shopping malls of the twentieth century. both places—the exposition and the department store—deify the object, the exposition by raising it to the level of art and the department store by transforming it into the potential for social mobility. however, orvell argues, it is not so much the individual object but the idea of the object that was hallowed by the exposition: like the public gallery, the exposition was a nineteenth-century invention that combined education and entertainment, framing within its halls an encyclopedia of objects, a dictionary of technological miracles that subsumed the individual thing under the aggregate spectacle.... if there was a democratic, an american aesthetic, it was more visible in the rhetoric of the catalogue than in the objects on display. ( ) the list of objects, then, takes on a kind of primacy all its own. by evoking objects serially, one gets a sense not of a thing but of "things," the infinite panoply that serves eventually to constitute the individual human imagination. whitman makes the identity-building agenda of the free-verse catalogue most clear in "there was a child went forth every day." in this poem, he describes the working of a procession of things on the imagination of a child: there was a child went forth every day, and the first object he look'd upon, that object he became, and that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, or for many years or stretching cycles of years. ( ) whitman vividly illustrates deleuze-guattari's subjectification. the child acts as an apparatus of capture (or "black hole") that takes in, and thereby becomes, the things around it. through this process of taking in the objects of his apprehension—from "early lilacs" ( ) to "the light falling on roofs and gables of white or brown two miles off' ( )—whitman's child changes, alters, grows. the child is not the objects around him. instead, he "becomes" them, a word that indicates process rather than stasis. each object is deterritorialized in sequence to contribute to this process of subjectification by reterritorializing on the child. serially and together, the connections between the objects and the child grow, until there is a part of the child in the objects and a part of the objects in the child. most staggering, perhaps, are the closing lines of the poem, which describe meteorological phenomena: the strata of color'd clouds, the long bar of maroon-tint away solitary by itself, the spread of purity it lies motionless in, the horizon's edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud, these became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day. ( ) these lines—and others like it in leaves of grass—are an obvious source of inspiration to schuyler. descriptions of sky and weather take up a great deal of both his collected poems and, notably, his diary. the latter treats skies as a grand subject worthy of digression at epic length; nearly every entry in the twenty-three year span of the diary mentions the current condition of the sky in some way. the concept of the diary melts seamlessly into whitman's vision of subjectification, of "building oneself in layers." in recording and juxtaposing the events of discrete, single days, the form of the diary achieves in a potentially limitless scope the encyclopedic promise of the free-verse catalogue. it is precisely because of this limitless potential that schuyler's choice in his diary to focus so much on the sky is a meaningful one. the weather is, in the class of things, of the most protean and unstable stuff. william watkin asks, when considering schuyler's fastidious attempts to describe the sky, "was it worth it?": the poet is assiduous in his attempt to render the actual colour of the sky at this time of day and how it is changing, but he succeeds no more than turner or monet, and they had the right materials at hand. in fact one might wonder whether any artist has been able to render even the nature of an actual atmosphere, let alone those liminal times when light and humidity are at their most evanescent, lustrous and strange. ( ) when watkin says that schuyler "succeeds no more than turner or monet"—without question the two greatest painters of "atmosphere" in history—he gestures at once towards the "painterliness" of schuyler's work and towards schuyler's success at evoking effects of light, a rather remarkable quality given the poet's medium of words. watkin also means to suggest that it is impossible to render the appearance of sky in art regardless of medium. the effects of light (and, indeed, the sky itself) are constantly changing and therefore inaccessible to static representation. however, i think a case is to be made for schuyler as american poetry's foremost renderer of skies. though it is true that individual entries in the diary must fail at conveying the effect of an individual sky, their repeated description makes for an uncanny simulation of "skies." in the discussion above and below i make the claim that "sky" and "weather" can be "things." this observation is not immediately obvious—we tend to think of a thing as discrete, probably small, and usually useful. we rarely refer to very large things, like buildings or mountains or whales, as "things," even though the difference is one of scale alone. this is the space of claes oldenburg's large-scale sculptures: a clothespin made very large is no longer a clothespin but "art," a category whose thingness is always open to question. i contend that the weather and the sky, like oldenburg's sculptures, are things p a r excellence, things that best exemplify the notion of the thing as a mutable and changeable construction. much like the subtle stone knife, it is the sky's combination of mundanity and uniqueness that makes it ideal as a study of the way objects function in schuyler's poetry. the frequent rain and ever-changing skies in schuyler's diary and poems act as a constant reminder of the contingency and mutability of things, and their presence in schuyler's poetry is not incidental (or merely "diaristic") but actively connected to the "poetics" of things he explores in his poetry. of particular interest is the way that schuyler renders rainy skies. william watkin considers rain the epitome of the unrepresentable object: what do you call rain after it has, and are these grounded drops really rain? anyway, they don't touch the ground as something has intervened on the descent of these other things, again we don't know how many exactly, so the drops are suspended in mid air. they cling to the balcony, midway between the noun "rain" and the absent noun "puddle," both strangely singular collective nouns. ( ) rain, as watkin demonstrates, is potentially among the strangest of things. the word is able to stand both for the action and the thing itself, as well as naming both the individual and the collective drops. rain is always necessarily both a thing and a thing-in-progress, becoming itself in the act of falling (water that doesn't drop from the sky is not rain, though as things a drop of water and a drop of rain are hardly distinguishable.) because of this considerable potential for varied meaning, rain plays an important part in schuyler's meteorology of things. consider, for instance, two of the several poems about rain from the last collection schuyler published in his lifetime, a few days. one, called "poem," is terse in its dismissal of pathetic fallacy. i got my hair cut and it rains i'm waiting for the papers and it rains i'm waiting for pretty helena and it rains. ( ) the repeated and offset phrase "and it rains," with its two close alveolar consonants ("and it") followed by the sibilant " s " of "rains," admirably stands in for actual rain in the poem by reproducing its sounds. the rain in this short poem also has no discernible effect on the world around it other than the fact of the rain itself. schuyler steadfastly, even ascetically, refuses to link the rain to any negative occurrence or any particular drama. the rain simply adds atmosphere to the events of the day: a haircut and some waiting. the poem also refuses to date its events. though the three things described in the poem—a haircut, waiting, and more waiting—presumably occur on the same day, they could just as well have happened decades apart, linked together by the common factor of rain. the second poem from a few days says many of the same things, if more complexly. "faure's second piano quartet" twins rain with music in the same way that sleep was twinned to music in "a man in blue," discussed in the first chapter: on a day like this the rain comes down in fat and random drops among the ailanthus leaves—"the tree of heaven"—the leaves that on moon- lit nights shimmer black and blade- shaped at this third floor window. and there are bunches of small green nobs, buds, crowded together. ( - ) combined with his usual predilection for specificity in detail—the tree in this poem is not any tree but an ailanthus tree, a new york invader, the determined tree of a tree grows in brooklyn—this poem insists, too, on discrete moments: "on a day like this," "on moon-lit nights." schuyler is without a doubt a diaristic poet, but so many of his poems reach forward as well as backward in time. "on a day like this" implies a continuum of days, and places the ailanthus among not only the "random" variety of the rain schuyler is currently documenting but among all the rain that has fallen before the poem opens, confusing the unique with the serial. as schuyler listens to the patter of the rain and the related movement of the leaves, he finds that they are melting into the piano quartet of the poem's title: the rapid music fills in the spaces of the leaves. and the piano comes in, like an extra heartbeat, dangerous and lovely. slower now, less like the leaves, more like the rain which almost isn't rain, more like thawed- out hail. ( ) the rain, of course, "isn't rain." as watkin argued, rain is the most evanescent of things: it exists only for a moment though it falls continually. this rain takes on the character of music for schuyler, of the world around him, as it did in "poem": colour rather than substance. the continuity between the weather, nature, and human activity is explicit. rain, ailanthus, and quartet are continuous and coterminous as the music becomes "less like / the leaves, more like the rain." the objects deterritorialize and reterritorialize upon one another, becoming one another in the process, and by the process much widened in the scope of their potential meaning. the raindrops are now more than already-complex rain: they are also music and tree. this counterpointing of things finds its fullest expression in schuyler's descriptions of clearer skies. schuyler's diary contains few entries that do not in some way mention or describe the sky or its effects, usually at the opening of the entry. repeated in this way, schuyler's skies act as overtures or abstracts of the day that follows, a curtain softly opening. all have an eerie beauty, the persistent echo of memory. take, for instance, this one dated "wednesday, september ": yestereve the sunset shone briefly—a long while it seemed—causing an effect on loft-style stately building across the way: a glow that reminded me of what happens in venice when buckets of rain, including hail, fall upon istrian stone: an inner pinkness that goes on and on until... ( ) or "november , ": after a week of rain, late this afternoon the sun shone out under pigeon colored clouds and turned the elm twigs red, the last leaves on the plane tree glowed like dark red glass and the house, freshly painted white, became the color of the sun. ( ) or "palm sunday, march , ": cold, clear, a scatter of cloud scraps, the sky intensely blue as california where, at bolinas, it seemed so much bluer, so much more californian, than it ever does here. in the late afternoon clarity all colors have their beauty: the window frames of the building across the street are a rich and satisfying brown. ( ) these few entries, chosen at random, still give some impression of the overall effect of schuyler's ostinato skies. most, like the stone knife, have some link to a memory or a place: in the first entry a memory of his time in venice as english poet w. h. auden's secretary, in the third a memory of bolinas. all three of these skies, though, are very different. schuyler gives each sky the same attention and care he gives to individual flowers and individual trees, attempting to capture that thing that made them characteristic of the day they in some way represent. these three random entries also illustrate the remarkable continuity between schuyler's poetry and his dianes. schuyler evidently agreed with this sentiment—he published several excerpts from his diaries during his lifetime, most notably the creaky and light-soaked early in ' . but for lineation, the entries above read remarkably like schuyler poems, both in their impressive and paradoxical visuality ("inner pinkness," "pigeon colored," "a rich and satisfying brown") and in their subject matter. in another entry dated june , , schuyler characteristically begins by describing the conditions of the weather and his immediate surroundings: "differences from yesterday: the overcast sky is streaked with yellow, isle au haut is bluer, and, though only the most feathery of the grasses sway, the surface of the water is crinkled and running" ( ). here the mundanity of his subject risks overwhelming the material; he opens the diary entry by making small talk with himself about the weather. even in this short entry, however, schuyler manages to say something important about skies: they are characterized primarily by difference. this difference is why the mechanism of diaristic repetition functions so well in the diary. a sense of movement and change is possible in tracking the movements of the sky over a period of years in his diary that would be impossible to render in the description of a single sky. the repeated sky, then, stands as a sort of metonym for another thing. in the same way that the stone knife functioned as an analogy to the individual poem, the skies in schuyler's work come to stand in for his poetry. like the poetry, the sky is always in flux though rooted in the present moment, intensely visual, and intensely subjective. the sky is more than just atmosphere: it also stands for several threads in schuyler's work, like contingency and happenstance, mutability, light, and diarism. the sky remains emphatically a thing in schuyler's poetry and diaries, an object that is without rather than within, but schuyler encourages us to internalize the sky, to see some of ourselves in it, to efface our faces and replace them with skies. in doing so through the medium of a diary— another rather messy "thing"—he illustrates the dominion that things can have over the individual human life. the inclusion of things in his diary to such a vast extent gives things pride of place in the network of the human mind, the mapping of which is the ostensible end of diary-keeping. skies and things converge in one of the most affecting poems of the morning of the poem, the diaristically titled "dec. , ." the poem's date occurs in the centre of a hole in schuyler's diaristic writing. there is a decade-long break in the diary between and , a period which coincided both with schuyler's greatest stretch of personal turmoil (fairfield porter's death, repeated hospitalizations, and near-fatal burns caused by smoking in bed) and his greatest poetic output. the poem begins with a by-now expected description of the ambient conditions of its composition: the plants against the light which shines in (it's four o'clock) right on my chair: i'm in my chair: are silhouettes, barely green, growing black as my eyes move right, right to where the sun is. i am blinded by a fiery circle: i can't see what i write. ( ) schuyler's persistent employment of the present tense in his poetry says something about his engagement with ideas of temporality, and it also distinguishes the atmosphere of his diary from the atmosphere of his poems. in his diary he is always discussing yesterday's sky; in his poems, invariably today's. in the opening of "dec. , ," the sky is not described but its effects upon the objects in schuyler's room are. and, perhaps more notably, what is described here is not just the effect that the light has upon objects but the effect that it has upon the speaker's apprehension of objects. green plants become "barely green" and then "growing black" as schuyler's eye moves towards the sun. he is then "blinded by a fiery circle." "i can't see what i write" takes on a double meaning as a result, both literal ("the sun has caused me temporary blindness") and, well, literal ("i have written about my houseplants, but i can no longer see them"). the literal dimension engages, too, with schuyler's recurrent fascination with the problems of language: "i can't see what i write" is self-evident, as the things in his poems are no longer matter but words. as a result of this temporary blindness, schuyler's perception shifts to the sounds around him: a man comes down iron stairs (i don't look up) and picks up brushes which, against a sonata of scriabin's, rattle like wind in a bamboo clump. a wooden sound, and purposeful footsteps softened by a drop-cloth-covered floor. ( ) the sounds around schuyler are also tied up with things, as they must be: "iron stairs," "brushes," "a drop-cloth-covered floor," "a chinese rug." as with the effects of light in the poem's opening section, though, schuyler is less interested in the things themselves than the effects they have upon his senses—that is to say, what the things have become now that they have reterritorialized onto schuyler himself, become a part of him as he becomes a part of them. the drop cloth softens "purposeful footsteps," a "sonata of scriabin's" makes brushes "rattle like wind in a bamboo clump." this difference between the objects and their effects—the space of signifiance—is indicated partially by his repeated use of the word "against." in the first section, plants are "against" light, in the second, brushes "against" a sonata. he exploits the double meaning of that word in this context. "against" is both "opposed to" and "supported by," and it is unclear which of the two he means (if he means either and not, as i suspect, both.) all that is sure is that "light" and "plant" are as somehow conjoined as "sonata" and "brushes," two words relating to sense conjoined to two things. the present tense lapses momentarily ("last night i did wish—" [ ]), enough to allow a memory to seep through: "your poems," a clunkhead said, "have grown more open." i don't want to be open, merely to say, to see and say, things as they are. ( ) "merely," indeed, as though the project were easy and casual and not one that constitutes the vastest portion of schuyler's efforts in his poetry and diaries. even this impossible project—"to say, to see and say, things / as they are"—is not quite accurate. as he demonstrates in the poem where these lines appear, schuyler's project is as much about describing things "as they are" as it is about chronicling things as they aren't. subjectivity becomes changed when it comes into contact with things. this change is partially suggested by his choice of verbs. to "say" things as they are—that is, to write about them —is difficult enough. as schuyler's fascination with the methods of painting demonstrated, things cannot survive the process of transformation into words unscathed. schuyler's wish, however, and his exhortation to his audience, is also to "see" things as they are—that is, to perceive the objects for himself apart from their description in verse, to make the objects a conscious portion of his ongoing subjectification. his interest is not only in things, those physical objects around which his (and, according to william carlos williams, all) writing orbits. it is also in the zen-like search for mindfulness about things, to examine things closely and to reflect upon how and why they affect us, to take control of the process of subjectification and therefore to begin to efface the face. his verse is also, of course, about the things themselves. during his brief reverie, time has jumped forward about half an hour, and the objects in his room have grown visible again in the waning sunlight: that at my elbow there is a wicker table. hortus second says a book. the fields beyond the feeding sparrows are brown, palely brown yet with an inward glow like that of someone of a frank good nature whom you trust. ( ) here we have schuyler's fascination with things qua things in plain view. these lines consist of little more than a catalogue of the objects of his apprehension. the "wicker table" is of the purest type of thing, a functional object. "hortus second" is a catalogue of north american plants in cultivation, by badly out of date though still considered a classic, and one of schuyler's favourite sources of information about plants. in his catalogue of the objects around him, one of the items is itself a catalogue. the occurrence of the catalogue within the poem partially calls into question the thingness of the poem itself: hortus second, the printed book, is inarguably a "thing," but what of the individual entry in the catalogue, or the individual catalogue-poem? and what becomes of its status as a thing when it becomes only the idea of itself, a line in a poem? schuyler, as we might have expected, ignores these questions entirely, turning his mind and his pen back to reverie about ambiance: i want to hear the music hanging in the air and drink my coca-cola. the sun is off me now, the sky begins to color up, the air in here is filled with wildly flying notes. yes, the sun moves off to the right and prepares to sink, setting, beyond the dunes, an ocean on fire. ( ) here, schuyler deals with a different category of thing altogether. the vaguely-things in this final section of the poem seem to have an agency of their own: notes are "wildly flying," "the sky begins to color up," and "the sun moves." all three of those things are difficult to conceptualize as things: notes are waves of sound, the sky is unfathomably big, and the sun unfathomably bigger. and they are nevertheless included with a wicker table and coca-cola in schuyler's catalogue of "things / as they are," as in whitman neither ignored nor given pride of place. the poem, i think, becomes the ultimate case-study for the nature of the thing: existing like watkin's idea of rain in some liminal state, it becomes real for a moment on the printed page only to evanesce once more into the apparatus that contains it, becoming subsumed first by the thingness of the page and then reterritorialized onto the reader. like the things that affect whitman's child, the poem has an ability to insinuate itself into the individual consciousness. schuyler's fascination with the thing—particularly those things made of the most protean and gaseous stuff—consists of a further exposition of the ideas he drew from visual art. as with his interest in painting, schuyler's interest in objects and the material—in teacups and storms—is an interest in process. a thing, his poetry argues, is not stable and permanent. like the coca-cola in "dec. , ", which is not "coca-cola" but "my coca-cola," it exists only for a moment in the scope of the poem, but that moment is one that is both individual and one that can be endlessly iterated. schuyler's vision of things, then, is much more radical than it appeared at first. much more than matter, his things become a part of his internal environment merely by their apprehension. in an echo of baudrillard, schuyler's objects are not objects but, ultimately, mirrors—for where else but from within ourselves could our ideas of things spring? objects, according to baudrillard, become in their interactions with subjectivities "no longer simply material bodies offering a certain resistance" ( ). they become instead "mental precincts over which i hold sway, they become things of which i am the meaning" ( ). objects in verse are revealed to be much more then objects: instead, they are of the class of the most intimate confession. but does schuyler succeed in revealing himself through the mirror of thingness, "to say, to see and say, things / as they are"? his challenge is echoed by wallace stevens's "the man with the blue guitar:" they said, "you have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are." the man replied, "things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar." and they said then, "but play, you must, a tune beyond us, yet ourselves, a tune upon the blue guitar of things exactly as they are." ( ) "things as they are" are changed, inevitably, in their transubstantiation from matter to neuronal pattern, and then again from neuronal pattern to poetry. the thing is a "tune beyond us, yet ourselves," infinite in its possibility for meaning and yet saying something, as jonathan ive said in objectified, about "who put it there." but one also gets the overwhelming sense that schuyler's attempt is a success. his genuine affection for things, however small, is always surprising and heartening. schuyler is the "scholar of darkness" of stevens's "o florida, venereal soil," who searches, too, for a few things for themselves, convolvulus and coral, buzzards and live-moss, tiestas from the keys, a few things for themselves, florida, venereal soil, disclose to the lover. ( - ) that quiet disclosure from florida's "venereal soil" are those secrets that schuyler whispers to us constantly in his verse: that the things around us speak constantly; that they are impermanent; and, perhaps most importantly of all, that impermanence is what their conversation is about. as mark rudman remarks, "the process of telling is what compels him" ( ); schuyler's poems are "studies in perception," and "focus on the quiet spaces, the interstices, between the turbulence" ( ). in some sense, his poetry about things has a didactic element: "examine more closely the things around you," he seems to be saying, "and you stand a shot at becoming them—and they you." conclusion convergences first, the obligatory anecdote: when i was just launching upon this thesis project, our then-apartment flooded in the night because someone upstairs had been careless with a toilet. all night water poured from light fixtures and between the walls. in the morning we awoke to a nightmare. there was six inches of water on the floor, and everything in the apartment was destroyed—books, furniture, everything. chief among the victims—at least in my mind—was my pullulant research on james schuyler. my laptop was sitting on the kitchen table with my notebooks and papers, under one of the fixtures-cum-fountains. my copy of james schuyler's collected poems, lying face-down on top of the computer, did its best to protect the helpless thing: it had soaked up its share of the water pouring from the lamp hanging a few feet above. its efforts, unfortunately, were in vain. a book is a poor sponge, and the laptop and the data it contained were irrecoverably destroyed by the water. though the laptop was not recoverable, the poems were. an hour of alone time with a blowdryer and several days under a stack of bricks were enough to restore it to usable condition, and my marginal notes, at least, were rescued. but the book, besides being stained an ugly brackish colour, now has an intractable kink from the morning of the poem forwards, a firm wave that time has not evened. which is why, when i discovered stephen sandy's wonderful poem "falling asleep over james schuyler" in the paris review while just beginning the laborious process of recovery, i was somewhat heartened. sandy recalls falling asleep while reading schuyler, and accidentally leaving the book outside during a downpour. having failed to rescue the book from "damp midsummer" ( ), he remarks that now when i open your book the edges are rippled. that rain had pinched and crimped the pages like a pie crust: the little waves were permanent—mild ruffles firmly set—when i read them, flaky now, cracking faintly, dry like an excellent pie crust. ( ) schuyler, sandy remarks, had the ability to take "isolation and turn it / to solitude" ( ), just as rain had the ability to turn schuyler's poetry into "excellent pie crust." schuyler's skill at taking the materials of his life—from the seventies onwards, almost relentlessly tragic, a litany of deaths, breakdowns, hospitals, poverties—and turning them into something beautiful is, as donald revell remarks, "among the most decent things i know, his voice one of the few voices i shall never learn to distrust" ( ). my waterlogged copy of the collected poems remains the one i use for reference to schuyler, even though at this point i have most of his work in other editions. it's something about the way the paper feels, i think. * * * i l l as i mentioned above in my introduction, the three chapters this thesis comprises are nowhere near the limit of potential for schuyler criticism, or even near the limit of this particular thesis project. for the project, i had sketched out four chapters; only two made the cut, as the proposed first chapter on "painterliness" was expanded and rearranged to form the two first chapters as they appear here. in addition to the elements of painterliness, faciality, and thingness explored in this thesis, i intend to expand this project at the doctoral level to include discussion of schuyler's "urban pastoral" novels and of his encyclopedic long poems. the novels of james schuyler, his earliest published works, form interesting relationships with his poetry. they are invested in issues of suburban living, childhood, language, and addiction recovery. it is the last item that i find most interesting. schuyler's what's for dinner? is about american housewife lottie taylor's treatment for alcoholism at a local mental hospital. in addition to the obvious biographical links to schuyler's own life—schuyler, after all, spent a great deal of his life in mental institutions, though not for alcoholism—the novel interacts with a contemporary novel by john berryman, recovery. though schuyler had no friendship for berryman—he claimed in an interview with robert thompson that he "never read any of that" ( ) ("i only read good poetry!" he quips)—- his novel and berryman's tackle the issue of recovery very differently. schuyler's lottie, though perpetually good-natured throughout the novel, nevertheless hides a darker edge: her alcoholism is at least partially caused by her "double life" as an alcoholic and a model housewife. berryman's recovery, too, is wrapped in issues of doubleness and multiplicity. dr. severance, the hero of the text, is described by berryman as "intermittent and double" ( ). the links between these two texts—and the things they have to say about alcoholism and recovery—are vital, and i'd like to explore them further. schuyler's long poems are a bit of a tougher nut to crack. every one of his major collections from his second onwards is named after the long poem that closes it: "the crystal lithium," "hymn to life," "the morning of the poem," and "a few days." these constitute perhaps the most important element of schuyler's work, and ignoring them in the present thesis was necessary, but nevertheless irresponsible. these poems could be approached in much the same way as i did his shorter poems. they contain, too, the poet's trademark visuality and verbal ingenuity. the poems would profit more still, however, from a reading of them in comparison to some works of the other principals of the new york school, in particular to barbara guest. guest is often omitted from narratives of the new york school. her poetry is difficult and inaccessible, and it is not easily shoehorned into gender-based narratives of literary history. but her work is an easy fit with schuyler's longer poems. they share a predilection for surrealist details, a sense of purposeful lineation, and a deep interaction with visual arts (guest, like schuyler, worked for art news in the early fifties). these commonalities merit further study. * * * "salute" was james schuyler's first published poem, appearing in the new yorker after schuyler finished the first of many tenures at bloomingdale mental hospital in white plains, new york in early . as mark silverberg notes, "that particular scene of writing is totally absent, as is any self analysis. it is a poem that tries neither to explain nor change the past but which rests indolently with it" ( ). despite its brevity, the poem is the perfect example of what ashbery called "the anything" (xiv) in schuyler's poems: past is past, and if one remembers what one meant to do and never did, is not to have thought to do enough? like that gather- ing of one of each i planned, to gather one of each kind of clover, daisy, paintbrush that grew in the field the cabin stood in and study them one afternoon before they wilted. past is past. i salute that various field. ( ) schuyler wished for the poem "to appear as first or last poem in my selected'' (letters ), and it appears as the first. as schuyler's big break into poetry, it is an effective summary of many of the trends in his work that i have been discussing: it is painterly, "defacialized," and concerned with thingness. the speaker of this poem asks a pointed question: is the memory of a thing enough to substitute for that thing? the gathering and study of flowers never occurred, but "to have thought to do" is enough; as schuyler opines in the morning of the poem, "the thing said / is in the words, how / the words are themselves / the thing said" ( ). instead of the "gather- / ing of one of each," the poem is written, and the plan is now not only schuyler's but his readers' as well. in an echo of deleuze-guattari, the poem has a considerable textual emphasis on the parts of things, and how those parts fit together. schuyler's lineation in "salute" is purposefully fragmented. each line taken on its own forms no cogent grammatical unit. some lines ("daisy, paintbrush that," "enough? like that gather-") are frankly surrealistic. each line, individually, is deliberate nonsense, but together they make a simple, beautiful poem about memory and variousness. most interesting is the first line of the poem. "past is past" occurs unbroken the first time it is uttered, but by its second repetition at the end of the poem it has been fragmented into "past / is past." silverberg comments that the past, repeated in this fragmented fashion, becomes "a semiotic mirror image, a repetition, a four letter flash that returns in the very moment it is discarded" ( ), and that in schuyler's hands repetition is both a device of incompletion and a mechanism of attention—one that demands a certain kind of concentration.... throughout the poem, line breaks drive us forward and pull us back. enjambment ensures that no line is complete in itself, that each requires readers to move ahead and / then turn / back to remember / what the line meant / to do. ( ) the movement of the poem is therefore elliptical. its lineation requiring rereading, the past surfaces and resurfaces. it is that conceptual space in which the poem plays. past, in the poem, is past, but it is also present. and then we are bought to what is probably the most important "thing" in all of schuyler's poetry: the "various field." the "various field" plays host to all of the themes of schuyler's work. it is painterly in its pastoral detail ("clover," "daisy," "paintbrush," "cabin"), and is engaged with "thingness" in the terms expounded by baudrillard in its discourse between the real and the imagined and between the past and the present. a volume of tributes by schuyler's friends published soon after his death—that various field for james schuyler—illustrates the centrality of the image of the field. ultimately, though, it is schuyler's poetry itself that constitutes the "various field:" exuberance, multiplicity, lushness, and potency. works cited adams, robert. "why can't photographers explain?" american art . (winter ), pp. - . anonymous. "james schuyler." contemporary authors , pp. - . ashbery, john. "introduction." james schuyler: selected poems. new york: farrar, straus & giroux, . p. barthes, roland. image, music, text. trans. stephen heath. new york: hill and wang, . baudrillard, jean. the system of objects. new york: verso, . benveniste, emile. problemes de linguistique generale, vol . vols. paris: gallimard, . berryman, john. recovery. new york: thunder's mouth press, . p. brown, bill. "things." things. bill brown, ed. chicago: university of chicago press, . pp. - . conoley, gillian. "the inescapable kiss." the denver quarterly . ( ), pp. - . cummings, paul. 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(spring ), pp. - . reese, donald r. "schuyler's a man in blue." explicator . ( ), pp. - . revell, donald. "editor's preface." the denver quarterly . (spring ), pp. - . rosenberg, harold. tradition of the new. chicago: university of chicago press, . p. rudman, mark. "james schuyler's changing skies." denver quarterly . ( ), - . sandy, stephen. "falling asleep over james schuyler." the paris review (fall ), pp. - . schuyler, james. collected poems. new york: farrar straus & giroux, . p. —. the diary of james schuyler. santa rosa: black sparrow press, . —. just the thing: selected letters of james schuyler, - . william corbett, ed. new york: turtle point press, . p. —. other flowers: uncollected poems. james meetze and simon pettet, eds. new york: farrar, straus and giroux, . p. —. selected art writings. santa rosa: black sparrow press, . p. —. selected poems. new york: farrar, straus and giroux, . p. —. what's for dinner? new york: nyrb classics, . p. silverberg, mark. 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"let's make a list": james schuyler's taxonomic autobiography. journal of american studies ( ), - . whitman, walt. leaves of grass. new york: bantam, . willams, william carlos. the collected poems of william carlos williams: - . new york: new directions, . aalborg universitet the state of the art ten years after a state of the art future research in music information retrieval sturm, bob l. published in: journal of new music research doi (link to publication from publisher): . / . . publication date: document version early version, also known as pre-print link to publication from aalborg university citation for published version (apa): sturm, b. l. ( ). the state of the art ten years after a state of the art: future research in music information retrieval. journal of new music research, ( ), - . https://doi.org/ . / . . general rights copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. ? users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. ? you may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain ? you may freely distribute the url identifying the publication in the public portal ? take down policy if you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at vbn@aub.aau.dk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. downloaded from vbn.aau.dk on: april , https://doi.org/ . / . . https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/b c -ef a- -b dc-ee f b c https://doi.org/ . / . . d r a ft the state of the art ten years after a state of the art: future research in music information retrieval bob l. sturm∗ abstract a decade has passed since the first review of research on a “flagship application” of music information retrieval (mir): the problem of music genre recognition (mgr). during this time, about works addressing mgr have been published, and at least campaigns have been run to evaluate mgr systems, which makes mgr one of the most researched areas of mir. so, where does mgr lie now? we show that in spite of this massive amount of work, mgr does not lie far from where it began, and the paramount reason for this is that most evaluation in mgr lacks validity. we perform a case study of all published research using the most- used benchmark dataset in mgr during the past decade: gtzan. we show that none of the evaluations in these many works is valid to produce conclusions with respect to recognizing genre, i.e., that a system is using criteria relevant to recognize genre. in fact, the problems of validity in evaluation also affect research in music emotion recognition and autotagging. we conclude by discussing the implications of our work for mgr and mir in the next ten years. introduction “representing musical genre: a state of the art” (aucouturier and pachet, ) was published a decade ago now, a few years after the problem of music genre recognition (mgr) was designated a “flagship application” of music information retrieval (mir) (aucouturier and pampalk, ). during that time, there have been at least four other reviews of research on mgr (scaringella et al., ; dannenberg, ; fu et al., ; sturm, b), nearly published works considering mgr, and at least organized campaigns to evaluate systems proposed for mgr: ismir , ismis , and mirex , – . figure shows the massive amount of published work on mgr since that of matityaho and furst ( ). so, where does mgr now lie? how much progress has been made? one might find an indication by looking at how the construction and performance of systems designed for mgr have changed during the past decade. the reviews by aucouturier and pachet ( ), scaringella et al. ( ) and fu et al. ( ) all describe a variety of approaches to feature extraction and machine learning that have been explored for mgr, and provide rough comparisons of how mgr systems perform on benchmark datasets and in evaluation campaigns. conclusions from these evaluations as a whole have been drawn about research progress on the problem of mgr. for instance, bergstra et al. ( ) — authors of the mgr system having the highest accuracy in mirex — write, “given the ∗audio analysis lab, ad:mt, aalborg university copenhagen, a.c. meyers vænge , dk- copen- hagen, denmark, (+ ) , e-mail: bst@create.aau.dk. bls is supported in part by independent postdoc grant - from det frie forskningsr̊ad. http://ismir .ismir.net/genre_contest/index.htm http://tunedit.org/challenge/music-retrieval http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/wiki/mirex_home the bibliography and spreadsheet that we use to generate this figure are available here: http://imi. aau.dk/~bst/software. d r a ft p u b li c a ti o n s ismir conf. not ismir journal article in book master’s phd figure : annual numbers of published works in mgr with experimental components, divided into publication venues. steady and significant improvement in classification performance ... we wonder if automatic methods are not already more efficient at learning genres than some people.” in fig. , we plot the highest reported classification accuracies of about mgr systems all evaluated in the benchmark dataset gtzan (tzanetakis and cook, ). we see there to be many classification accuracies higher than the % reported by tzanetakis and cook ( ). the maximum of each year shows progress up to , which then appears to stop. similarly, humphrey et al. ( ) look at the best accuracies in the mgr task of mirex from to and suggest that progress “is decelerating, if not altogether stalled.” in spite of all these observations, however, might it be that the apparent progress in mgr is an illusion? our exhaustive survey ( b) of nearly publications about mgr shows: of ten evaluation designs used in mgr, one in particular (which we call classify) appears in % of work having an experimental component; and the most-used public dataset is gtzan, appearing in the evaluations of about published works ( %). these findings are not promising. first, classify using a dataset having independent variables that are not controlled cannot provide any valid evidence to conclude upon the extent to which an mgr system is recognizing the genres used by music ( a; b). in other words, just because an mgr system reproduces all labels of a dataset does not then mean it is making decisions by using criteria relevant to genre (e.g., instrumentation, composition, subject matter). in fact, we have clearly shown ( c; g) that an mgr system can produce a high accuracy using confounded factors; and when these confounds break, its performance plummets. second, we have found ( a; d) gtzan has several faults, namely, repetitions, mislabelings, and distortions. because all points in fig. use classify in gtzan, their meaningfulness is thus “doubly questionable.” what valid conclusions, then, can one draw from all this work? our “state of the art” here attempts to serve a different function than all previous re- views of mgr (aucouturier and pachet, ; scaringella et al., ; dannenberg, ; fu et al., ). first, it aims not to summarize the variety of features and machine learn- ing approaches used in mgr systems over the past ten years, but to look closely at how to interpret fig. . indeed, we have a best case scenario for drawing conclusions: these evaluations of many different systems use the same same kind of evaluation (classify) and the same dataset (gtzan). unfortunately, we find the faults in gtzan impose an insur- mountable impediment to interpreting fig. . it is tempting to think that since each of these mgr systems faces the same faults in gtzan, and that its faults are exemplary of the dataset can be downloaded from here: http://marsyas.info/download/data_sets d r a ft year of publication h ig h e s t r e p o rt e d a c c u ra c y ( % ) figure : highest classification accuracies (%) using all gtzan as a function of publication year. solid gray line is our estimate of the “perfect” accuracy in table . six “×” denote incorrect results, discussed in section . . real world data, then the results in fig. are still meaningful for comparing systems. we show this argument to be wrong: the faults simply do not affect the performance of mgr systems in the same ways. second, this article aims not to focus on mgr, but to look more broadly at how the practice of evaluation in the past decade of mgr research can inform the practice of evaluation in the next decade of mir research. an obvious lesson from gtzan is that a researcher must know their data, know real data has faults, and know faults have real impacts on evaluation; but, we also distill five other important “guidelines”: ) define problems with use cases and formalism; ) design valid and relevant experiments; ) perform deep system analysis; ) acknowledge limitations and proceed with skepticism; and ) make reproducible work reproducible. in the next section, we briefly review “the problem of music genre recognition.” the third section provides a comprehensive survey of how gtzan has been and is being used in mgr research. in the fourth section, we analyze gtzan, and identify several of its faults. in the fifth section, we test the real effects of its faults on the evaluation of several categorically different mgr systems. finally, we conclude with a discussion of the implications of this work on future work in mgr, and in mir more broadly. the problem of music genre recognition (in brief ) it is rare to find in any reference of our survey ( b) a formal or explicit definition of mgr; and few works explicitly define “genre,” instead deferring to describing why genre is useful, e.g., to explore music collections (aucouturier and pachet, ). aucouturier and pachet ( ) describe mgr as “extracting genre information automatically from the audio signal.” scaringella et al. ( ) and tzanetakis and cook ( ) both mention automatically arranging music titles in genre taxonomies. since % of mgr evaluation employs classify in datasets with uncontrolled independent variables (sturm, b), the majority of mgr research implicitly interprets mgr as reproducing by any means possible the “ground truth” genre labels of a music dataset (sturm, b). almost all work in our survey ( b) thus treats genre in an aristotelean way, assuming music belongs to categories like a specimen belongs to a species, which belongs to a genus, and so on. d r a ft so, what is genre? the work of fabbri ( , ) — dealt with in depth by kemp ( ), and cited by only a few mgr works, e.g., mckay and fujinaga ( ) and craft ( ) — essentially conceives of music genre as “a set of musical events (real or possible) whose course is governed by a definite set of socially accepted rules” ( ). this “course” applies to the “musical events (real or possible)”, where a “musical event” fabbri defines as being a “type of activity ... involving sound” ( ). adopting the language of set theory, fabbri speaks of “genres” and “sub-genres” as unions and subsets of genres, each having well-defined boundaries, at least for some “community.” he goes as far to suggest one can construct a matrix of rules crossed with subgenres of a genre, with each entry showing the applicability of a particular rule for a particular subgenre. by consequence, producing and using such a master list amounts to nothing more than aristotelean categorization: to which set does a piece of music belong? a view of genre alternative to that of fabbri is provided by frow ( ), even though his perspective is of literature and not music. frow argues that “genre” is a dynamic collection of rules and criteria specifying how a person approaches, interprets, describes, uses, judges, and so on, forms of human communication in particular contexts. these rules and criteria consequently precipitate from human communication as an aid for people to interact with information and with each other in the world. for instance, genre helps a person to read, use, and judge a published work as a scientific article, as opposed to a newspaper column. genre helps an author write and sell a written work as a publish-worthy scientific article, as opposed to a newspaper column. this is not just to say that the “medium is the message” (mcluhan, ), but also that a person reading, using, and judging a published scientific journal article is using cues — both intrinsic and extrinsic — to justify their particular treatment of it as a scientific journal article, and not as a newspaper column (although it could be read as a newspaper column in a different context). frow’s view of genre, then, suggests that music does not belong to genre, but that the human creation and consumption of music in particular contexts necessarily use genre. hence, instead of “to which genre does a piece of music belong,” the meaningful question for frow is, “what genres should i use to interpret, listen to, and describe a piece of music in a particular context?” in frow’s conception of genre, it becomes clear why any attempt at building a taxonomy or a list of characteristics for categorizing music into musical genres will fail: they lack the human and the context, both necessary aspects of genre. essentially unchallenged in mgr is the base assumption that the nature of “genre” is such that music belongs to categories, and that it makes sense to talk about “boundaries” between these categories. perhaps it is a testament to the pervasiveness of the aristotelean categorization of the world (bowker and star, ) that alternative conceptions of music genre like frow’s have by and large gone unnoticed in mgr. of course, some have argued that mgr is ill-defined (pachet and cazaly, ; aucouturier and pachet, ; mckay and fujinaga, ), that some genre categories are arbitrary and unique to each person (craft, ; sordo et al., ), that they are motivated by industry (aucouturier and pachet, ), and/or they come in large part from domains outside the purview of signal processing (craft, ; wiggins, ). processing only sampled music signals necessarily ignores the “extrinsic” properties that contribute to judgements of genre (aucouturier and pachet, ; fabbri ( ) also notes that genre helps “to speed up communication.” d r a ft mckay and fujinaga, ; wiggins, ). hence, it is of little surprise when subjectivity and commercial motivations of genre necessarily wreak havoc for any mgr system. the value of mgr has also been debated. some have argued that the value of producing genre labels for music already labeled by record companies is limited. some have suggested that mgr is instead encompassed by other pursuits, e.g., music similarity (pampalk, ), music autotagging (aucouturier and pampalk, ; fu et al., ), or extracting “musically relevant data” (serra et al., ). others have argued that, in spite of its subjective nature, there is evidence that genre is not so arbitrary (lippens et al., ; gjerdingen and perrott, ; sordo et al., ), that some genres can be defined by specific criteria (barbedo and lopes, ), and that research on mgr is still a worthy pursuit (mckay and fujinaga, ; scaringella et al., ). many works also suggest that mgr provides a convenient testbed for comparing new audio features and/or machine learning approaches, e.g., andén and mallat ( ); andén and mallat ( ). while most of the work we survey ( b) implicitly poses mgr as an aristotelean categorization, the goal posed by matityaho and furst ( ) comes closer to the conception of frow, and to one that is much more useful than the reproduction of “ground truth” genre labels: “[building] a phenomenological model that [imitates] the human ability to distinguish between music [genres].” although it is missing the context essential to genre for frow, and although the empirical work of matityaho and furst ( ) still treats genre in an aristotelean manner, this goal places humans at the center, establishes the goal as imitation, and prescribes the use of humans for evaluation. this has led us to define the “principal goals of mgr” ( b): to imitate the human ability to organize, recognize, distinguish between, and imitate genres used by music. “organization” implies finding and expressing characteristics used by particular genres, e.g., “blues is strophic”; “recognition” implies identification of genres, e.g., “that sounds like blues because ...”; “distinguishing” implies describing why, or the extents to which, some music uses some genres but not others, e.g., “that does not sound like blues because ...”; and “imitation” implies being able to exemplify the use of particular genres, e.g., “play the bach piece as if it is blues.” stated in such a way, mgr becomes much richer than generating genre-indicative labels for music signals. a survey and analysis of gtzan in this section, we look closely at gtzan since its creation a decade ago: how it has been used, of what it is composed, what its faults are, how its faults affect evaluation, and what this implies for mgr in the past decade, and gtzan in the next decade. . how has gtzan been used? figure shows how the number of publications that use gtzan has increased since its creation in . we see that it has been used more in the past three years than in its first eight years. the next most-used public dataset is ismir , which was created for the mgr task of ismir . that dataset appears in works, of which use gtzan as well. of the works that use gtzan, of them use only gtzan. http://kom.aau.dk/~jhj/files/ismir genre/ all relevant references are available at: http://imi.aau.dk/~bst/software. d r a ft p u b li c a ti o n s using gtzan not using gtzan figure : annual numbers of published works in mgr with experimental components, divided into ones that use and do no use gtzan. in our review of evaluation in mgr ( b), we delimit ten different evaluation designs. of the works using gtzan, employ the evaluation design classify (an excerpt is assigned labels, which are compared against a “ground truth”). in seven works, gtzan is used with the evaluation design retrieve (a query is used to find similar music, and the labels of the retrieved items are compared); and one work (barreira et al., ) uses gtzan with the evaluation design cluster (clustering of dataset and then a comparison of the labels in the resulting clusters). our work ( c) uses compose, where an mgr system generates new music it scores as highly representative of each gtzan category, which we then test for identifiability using a formal listening test. we find a few other uses of gtzan. markov and matsui ( a,b) learn bases from gtzan, and then apply these codebooks to classify the genres of ismir . in our work ( e), we train classifiers using ismir , and then attempt to detect all excerpts in gtzan classical (and two in gtzan jazz). as described above, fig. shows the highest classification accuracies reported in the papers that consider the -class problem of gtzan (we remove duplicated experiments, e.g., lidy ( ) contains the results reported in lidy and rauber ( )). among the published works using gtzan, we find only five outside ours ( c; a; f; e) that indicate someone has listened to at least some of gtzan. the first appears to be li and sleep ( ), who find that “two closely numbered files in each genre tend to sound similar than the files numbered far [apart].” bergstra et al. ( ) note that, “to our ears, the examples are well-labeled ... our impression from listening to the music is that no artist appears twice.” this is contradicted by seyerlehner et al. ( ), who predict “an artist effect ... as listening to some of the songs reveals that some artists are represented with several songs.” in his doctoral dissertation, seyerlehner ( ) infers there to be a significant replication of artists in gtzan because of how classifiers trained and tested with gtzan perform as compared to other artist-filtered datasets. furthermore, very few people have mentioned specific faults in gtzan: hartmann ( ) notes finding seven duplicates; and li and chan ( ) — who have manually estimated keys for all gtzan excerpts — remember hearing some repetitions. hence, it appears that gtzan has by and large been assumed to have satisfactory integrity for mgr evaluation. available here: http://visal.cs.cityu.edu.hk/downloads/#gtzankeys personal communication. d r a ft by metadata from last.fm label enmfp self # songs (# tags) # artists (# tags) blues ( ) ( ) classical ( ) ( ) country ( ) ( ) disco ( ) ( ) hip hop ( ) ( ) jazz ( ) ( ) metal ( ) ( ) pop ( ) ( ) reggae ( ) ( ) rock ( ) ( ) total . % . % . % ( ) . % ( ) table : for each category of gtzan: number of excerpts we identify by fingerprint (en- mfp); then searching manually (by self); number of songs tagged in last.fm (and number of those tags having “count” larger than ); for songs not found, number of artists tagged in last.fm (and number of tags having “count” larger than ). retrieved dec. , , h. . what is in gtzan? until our work ( a), gtzan has never had metadata identifying its contents because those details were not assembled during compilation. hence, every mgr evaluation using gtzan, save ours ( c; a; e; d), has not been able to take into account its contents. we now identify the excerpts in gtzan, determine how music by specific artists compose each category, and survey the tags people have applied to the music and/or artist in order to obtain an idea of what each gtzan category means. we use the echo nest musical fingerprinter (enmfp) to generate a fingerprint of an excerpt in gtzan and then to query the echo nest database having over , , songs (at the time of this writing). the second column of table shows that this identifies only of the excerpts. we manually correct titles and artists as much as possible, e.g., we reduce “river rat jimmy (album version)” to “river rat jimmy”; and “bach - the # bach album (disc ) - - ich steh mit einem fuss im grabe, bwv sinfonia” to “ich steh mit einem fuss im grabe, bwv sinfonia;” and we correct “leonard bernstein [piano], rhapsody in blue” to “george gershwin” and “rhapsody in blue.” we find four misidentifications: country is misidentified as being by waylon jennings (it is by george jones); pop is misidentified as being mariah carey (it is prince); disco is misidentified as “love games” by gazeebo (it is “love is just the game” by peter brown); and metal is metallica playing “star wars imperial march,” but enmfp identifies it as a track on a cd for improving sleep. we then manually identify more excerpts, but have yet to identify the remaining excerpts. figure shows how each gtzan category is composed of music by particular artists. we see only nine artists are represented in the gtzan blues. gtzan reggae is the category http://developer.echonest.com this is the file “country. .wav” in gtzan. “power nap” by j. s. epperson (binaural beats entrainment), . our machine-readable index of this metadata is available at: http://imi.aau.dk/~bst/software. d r a ft with the most excerpts from a single artist: excerpts of bob marley. the category with the most artist diversity appears to be disco, where we find at least different artists. from this, we can bound the number of artists in gtzan, which has until this time been unknown (seyerlehner, ; seyerlehner et al., ). assuming each unidentified excerpt comes from different artists than those we have already identified, the total number of artists represented in gtzan cannot be larger than . if all unlabeled excerpts are from the artists we have already identified, then the smallest this number can be is . we now wish to determine the content composing each gtzan category. in our previous analysis of gtzan ( a), we assume that since there is a category called, e.g., “country,” then gtzan country excerpts should possess typical and distinguishing characteristics of music using the country genre (ammer, ): stringed instruments such as guitar, mandolin, banjo; emphasized “twang” in playing and singing; lyrics about patriotism, hard work and hard times; and so on. this led us to the claim that at least seven gtzan country excerpts are mislabeled because they exemplify few of these characteristics. we find other work that assumes the genres of music datasets overlap because they share the same genre labels, e.g., the taxonomies of moerchen et al. ( ) and guaus ( ). in this work, however, we do not make the assumption that the excerpts in gtzan country possess the typical and distinguishing characteristics of music using the country genre. in other words, we now consider a gtzan category name as “short hand” for the collection of consistent and/or contradictory concepts and criteria, both objective and subjective, that tzanetakis employed in assembling music excerpts to form that gtzan category. to obtain an idea of the content composing each gtzan category, we query the appli- cation programming interface provided by last.fm, and retrieve the “tags” that users of the service (whom we will call “taggers”) have entered for each song or artist we identify in gtzan. a tag is a word or phrase a tagger associates with an artist, song, album, and so on, for any number of reasons (bertin-mahieux et al., ), e.g., to make a music collection more useful to themselves, to help others discover new music, or to promote their own music or criticize music they do not like. a past analysis of the last.fm tags (bertin-mahieux et al., ) finds that they are most often genre labels (e.g., “blues”), but they can also be instrumentation (“female vocalists”), tempo (e.g., “ bpm”), mood (e.g., “happy”), how they use the music (e.g., “exercise”), lyrics (e.g., “fa la la la la”), the band (e.g., “the rolling stones”), or something else (e.g., “favorite song of all time”) (law, ). d r a ft blues classical country disco hip hop p e rc e n ta g e robert johnson hot toddy john lee hooker clifton chenier buckwheat zydeco kelly joe phelps magic slim & the teardrops stevie ray vaughan mozart js bach vivaldi franz joseph haydn percy grainger franz schubert claude debussy maurice ravel henri dutilleux leonard bernstein beethoven willie nelson vince gill brad paisley george strait kc and the sunshine band the gibson brothers gloria gaynor ottawan a tribe called quest beastie boys public enemy cypress hill wu−tang clan jazz metal pop reggae rock p e rc e n ta g e coleman hawkins joe lovano james carter branford marsalis trio miles davis joe henderson dexter gordon dio new bomb turks metallica iron maiden dark tranquillity black sabbath rage against the machine britney spears mandy moore destiny’s child christina aguilera alanis morissette janet jackson jennifer lopez mariah carey celine dion bob marley dennis brown prince buster burning spear gregory isaacs queen led zeppelin morphine the stone roses simple minds simply red the rolling stones sting jethro tull survivor ani difranco figure : artist composition of each gtzan category. we do not include unidentified excerpts. blues classical country disco hip hop p e rc e n ta g e bl ue s zy de co bl ue sr oc k sw in g sw in gb lu es ca ju n cl as si ca l co m po se r th ce nt ur yc la ss ic al co un tr y cl as si cc ou nt ry ol di es w ill ie ne ls on di sc o s s po p so ul fu nk hi ph op ra p s jazz metal pop reggae rock p e rc e n ta g e ja zz sa xo ph on e co nt em po ra ry ja zz sm oo th ja zz ja m es ca rt er fipgi m m es um fr ie nd s gi m m es um fr ie nd s he av ym et al ro ck ha rd ro ck m et al th ra sh m et al cl as si cr oc k pu nk pu nk ro ck al te rn at iv er oc k s m el od ic de at hm et al ga ra ge pu nk ga ra ge ro ck po p fe m al ev oc al is ts rn b da nc e s br itn ey sp ea rs ro ck de st in ys ch ild al te rn at iv e so un dt ra ck ga ra ge ro ck re gg ae sk a de st in ys ch ild ro ot sr eg ga e da nc eh al l al te rn at iv e ga ra ge ro ck ro ck cl as si cr oc k s in di e po p ha rd ro ck al te rn at iv e ne w w av e br itp op m ad ch es te r qu ee n pr og re ss iv er oc k fo lk fe m al ev oc al is ts st in g s si m pl yr ed figure : category top tags for gtzan from last.fm. d r a ft the collection of tags by last.fm is far from being a controlled process. any given tagger is not necessarily well-versed in musicology, or knows the history of musical styles, or can correctly recognize particular instruments, or is even acting in a benevolent manner; and any group of taggers is not necessarily using the same criteria when they all decide on tagging a song with a particular tag appearing indicative of, e.g., genre or emotion. for these reasons, there is apprehension in using such a resource for music information research (aucouturier, ). however, last.fm tags number in the millions and come from tens of thousands of users; and, furthermore, each tag is accompanied by a “count” parameter reflecting the percentage of taggers of a song or artist that choose that particular tag (levy and sandler, ). a tag for a song having a count of means that tag is selected by all taggers of that song (even if there is only one tagger), and means the tag is applied by the fewest (last.fm rounds down all percentages less than ). we cannot assume that each tag selected by a tagger for a given song is done independent of those given by previous taggers, but it is not unreasonable to interpret a tag with a high count as suggesting a kind of consensus that last.fm taggers find the tag very relevant for that song, whatever that may mean. though last.fm tags have found use in other mir research (bertin-mahieux et al., ; barrington et al., ; levy and sandler, ), we proceed cautiously about interpreting the meanings behind the last.fm tags retrieved for the identified contents in gtzan. with respect to our goals here, we assume some tags are meant by taggers to be descriptive of a song or artist. using the index of gtzan we create above, the fourth column of table shows the number of songs in gtzan we identify that have last.fm tags, and the number of tags with non-zero count (we keep only those tags with counts greater than ). when we do not find tags for a song, we request instead the tags for the artist. for instance, though we identify all excerpts in blues, only of the songs are tagged on last.fm. of these, we get , tags with non-zero counts. for the remaining songs, we retrieve , tags from those given to the artists. we thus assume the tags that taggers give to an artist would also be given to the particular song. furthermore, since each gtzan excerpt is a s excerpt of a song, we assume the tags given the song or artist would also be given to the excerpt. with our considerations and reservations clearly stated, we now attempt to shed light on the content of each gtzan category using the last.fm tags. first, we define the top tags of a song or artist as those that have counts above . to do this, we remove spaces, hyphens, and capitalization from all tags. for example, the tags “hip hop”, “hip-hop” and “hip hop” all become “hiphop.” then, we find for each unique top tag in a gtzan category the percentage of identified excerpts in that category having that top tag. we define category top tags all those unique top tags of a gtzan category that are represented by at least % of the excerpts identified in that category. with the numbers of excerpts we have identified in each category, this means a category top tag is one appearing as a top tag in at least excerpts of a gtzan category. figure shows the resulting category top tags for gtzan. we can see large differences in the numbers of category top tags, where gtzan rock has the most, and gtzan classical and gtzan hiphop have the least. as seen in table , most of the tags for excerpts in gtzan classical come from those that taggers have entered for artists, which explains why the tag “composer” appears. most of the category top tags appear indicative of genre, and those appearing most in each gtzan category is the category label, except for metal. we d r a ft excerpt number e x c e rp t n u m b e r figure : taken from gtzan jazz, exact repetitions appear clearly with pair-wise compar- isons of their fingerprint hashes. the darker a square, the higher the number of matching hashes. also see signs of a specific tagger in three category top tags of gtzan jazz. with our considerations above, and by listening to entire dataset, it does not seem unreasonable to make some claims about the content of each gtzan category. for instance, the category top tags of gtzan blues reveal its contents to include a large amount of music tagged “cajun” and “zydeco” by a majority of taggers. gtzan disco appears more broad than dance music from the late seventies (shapiro, ), but also includes a significant amount of music that has been tagged “ s”, “pop” and “funk” by a majority of taggers. listening to the excerpts in these categories confirms these observations. . what faults does gtzan have? we now delimit three kinds of faults in gtzan: repetitions, mislabelings, and distortions. table summarizes these, which we reproduce online with sound examples. . . repetitions we consider four kinds of repetition, from high to low specificity: exact, recording, artist, and version. we define an exact repetition as when two excerpts are the same to such a degree that their time-frequency fingerprints are the same. this means the excerpts are not only extracted from the same recording, they are essentially the same excerpt, either sample for sample (up to a multiplicative factor), or displaced in time by only a small amount. to find exact repetitions, we implement a simplified version of the shazam fingerprint (wang, ). this means we compute sets of anchors in the time-frequency plane, compare hashes of the anchors of every pair of excerpts, and then listen to those excerpts sharing many of the same anchors to confirm them to be exact replicas. figure shows the clear appearance of exact repetitions in gtzan jazz. the second column of table lists these. our comparison of hashes across categories reveal one exact repetition in two categories: the same excerpt of “tie your mother down” by queen appears as rock and metal . in total, we find exact repetitions in gtzan. http://imi.aau.dk/~bst/research/gtzantable d r a ft we define a recording repetition as when two excerpts come from the same recording, but are not detected with the fingerprint comparison detailed above. we find these by artist name and song repetitions in the index we create above, and by listening. for instance, country and are both from “never knew lonely” by vince gill, but excerpt comes from later in the recording than excerpt . the second and third columns of table shows the excerpts we suspect as coming from the same recording. we find gtzan pop has the most exact and suspected recording repetitions ( ): “lady marmalade” sung by christina aguilera et al., as well as “bootylicious” by destiny’s child, each appear four times. in total, we find suspected recording repetitions in gtzan. the last two kinds of repetitions are not necessarily “faults”, but we show in section . why they must be taken into consideration when using gtzan. we define artist repetition as excerpts performed by the same artist. we find these easily using the index we create above. figure and table show how every gtzan category has artist repetition. finally, we define a version repetition as when two excerpts are of the same song but performed differently. this could be a studio version, a live version, performed by the same or different artists (covers), or possibly a remix. we identify these with the index we create above, and then confirm by listening. for instance, classical and are from “rhapsody in blue” by george gershwin, but presumably performed by different orchestras. metal is “enter sandman” by metallica, and metal is a parody of it. pop and are both “i can’t get no satisfaction” by britney spears, but the latter is performed live. in total, we find version repetitions in gtzan. . . potential mislabelings the collection of concepts and criteria tzanetakis used to assemble gtzan is of course unobservable; and in some sense, the use of gtzan for training and testing an mgr system aims to reproduce or uncover it by reverse engineering. regardless of whether gtzan was constructed in a well-definable manner, or whether it makes sense to restrict the membership of an excerpt of music to one gtzan category, we are interested here in a different question: are any excerpts mislabeled? in other words, we wish to determine whether the excerpts might be arranged in a way such that their membership to one gtzan category, as well as their exclusion from every other gtzan category, is in some sense “less debatable” to a system, human or artificial? toward this end, we previously ( a) considered two kinds of mislabelings in gtzan: “contentious” and “conspicuous.” we based these upon non-concrete criteria formed loosely around musicological principles associated with the names of the categories in gtzan. now that we have shown in section . that those names do not necessarily reflect the content of the categories, we instead consider here the content of each gtzan category. in summary, we identify excerpts that might be “better” placed in another category, placed across several categories, or excluded from the dataset altogether, by comparing their tags to the category top tags of each gtzan category. we consider an excerpt potentially mislabeled if not one of its tags match the category top tags of its category, or if the “number of votes” for its own category is equal to or less than the “number of votes” for another category. we define the number of votes in a category as the sum of the counts of tags for an excerpt matching category top tags. (we consider a match d r a ft as when the category top tag appears in a tag, e.g., “blues” appears in “blues guitar”.) as an example, consider the category top tags of gtzan country in fig. , and the pairs of tags and counts we find for country (“johnnie can’t dance” by wayne toups & zydecajun): {(“zydeco”, ), (“cajun”, ), (“folk”, ), (“louisiana”, ), (“bayou”, ), (“cruise”, ), (“accordeon”, ), (“new orleans”, ), (“accordion”, ), (“everything”, ), (“boogie”, ), (“dance”, ), (“swamp”, ), (“country”, ), (“french”, ), (“rock”, )}. we find its two first tags among the category top tags of gtzan blues, and so the number of votes for gtzan blues is, + = . we only find one of its tags (“country”) among the category top tags of gtzan country, and so the number of votes there is . hence, we argue that country is potentially mislabeled. listening to the excerpt in relation to all the others in gtzan country, as well as the music tagged “cajun” and “zydeco” in gtzan blues, also supports this conclusion. it is important to emphasize that we are not claiming country should be labeled gtzan blues, but only that if a mgr system learning from gtzan blues labels country as “blues”, then that might not be considered a mistake. of the excerpts we have identified in gtzan, we find with no tags that match the category top tags of their category, that have more votes in the category top tags of a different category, and that have the same number of votes in its own category and at least one other. of these, appear to be due to a lack of tags, and two appears to be a result of bad tags. for instance, among the tags with count of for “can’t do nuttin’ for ya, man!” by public enemy (hip hop ) are, “glam rock”, “symphonic rock”, “instrumental rock”, “new york punk” and “progressive rock.” we list the remaining potential misclassifications in table . as we have pointed out ( a; c), gtzan has other potential problems with ex- cerpts in its categories. disco is of barbra streisand and donna summer singing the introduction to “no more tears”, but an excerpt from a later point this song might bet- ter exemplify gtzan disco. hip hop is of “guantanamera” by wyclef jean, but the majority of the excerpt is a sample of musicians playing the traditional cuban song “guan- tanamera.” hence, gtzan hip hop might or might not be appropriate. hip hop and are drum and bass dance music that are quite unique among the rest of the excerpts; and reggae and are electronic dance music that are again quite contrasting to the other excerpts. finally, reggae and are exact replicas of “hip-hopera” by bounty killer, which might be better more appropriate in gtzan hip hop. we do not include these as potential mislabelings in table . . . identifying faults: distortions the last column of table lists some distortions we find by listening to every excerpt in gtzan. this dataset was purposely created to have a variety of fidelities in the excerpts (tzanetakis and cook, ); however, one of the excerpts (reggae ) is so severely dis- torted that the value of its last seconds is debatable. d r a ft gtzan repetitions potential mislabelings distortions category exact recording artist version blues john lee hooker ( - ); robert johnson ( - ); kelly joe phelps ( - ); stevie ray vaughn ( - ); magic slim ( - ); clifton chenier ( - ); buckwheat zydeco ( - ); hot toddy ( - ); albert collins ( , ) classical ( , ) ( , ) j. s. bach ( - ); mozart ( - ); debussy ( - ); ravel ( - ); dutilleux ( - ); schubert ( - ); haydn ( - ); grainger ( - ); vivaldi ( - ); and others ( , ) static ( ) country ( , ) ( , ) willie nelson ( , , - ); vince gill ( - ); brad paisley ( - ); george strait ( - ); and others ( , ) ray peterson “tell laura i love her” ( ); burt bacharach “raindrops keep falling on my head” ( ); karl denver “love me with all your heart” ( ); wayne toups & zydecajun “johnnie can’t dance” ( ); johnny preston “running bear” ( ) static distor- tion ( ) disco ( , , ) ( , , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) gloria gaynor ( , , , ); ottawan ( , , , ); the gibson brothers ( , , , , ); kc and the sunshine band ( - , , , , ); abba ( , , ); and others ( , ) boz scaggs “lowdown” ( ); cheryl lynn “en- core” ( ); the sugarhill gang “rapper’s de- light” ( ); evelyn thomas “heartless” ( ); barbra streisand and donna summer “no more tears (enough is enough)” ( ); tom tom club “wordy rappinghood” ( ); blondie “heart of glass” ( ); bronski beat “why?” ( ) clipping dis- tortion ( ) hip hop ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) wu-tang clan ( , , , ); beastie boys ( - ); a tribe called quest ( - , - ); cypress hill ( - ); public enemy ( - ); and others ( , ) lw “no more (baby i’ma do right)” ( ); aaliyah “try again” ( ); pink “can’t take me home” ( ); lauryn hill “ex-factor” ( ) clipping dis- tortion ( , ); skip at start ( ) jazz ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) james carter ( - ); joe lovano ( - ); bran- ford marsalis trio ( - ); coleman hawkins ( - , , , , , , , , , - ); dexter gordon ( - ); miles davis ( - ); joe henderson ( - ); and others leonard bernstein “on the town: three dance episodes, mvt. ” ( ) and “symphonic dances from west side story, prologue” ( ) clipping distortion ( , , ) metal ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( ) is rock ( ) dark tranquillity ( - ); dio ( - , - ); the new bomb turks ( - ); queen ( - ); metallica ( , , , , , , ); iron maiden ( , , , - ); rage against the machine ( - ); and others ( , ) ( ) is ozzy os- bourne covering disco ( ) creed “i’m eighteen” ( ); living colour “glamour boys” ( ); the new bomb turks “hammerless nail” ( ), “jukebox lean” ( ), “jeers of a clown” ( ); queen “tie your mother down” ( ), “tear it up” ( ), “we will rock you” ( ) clipping distortion ( , , ) pop ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , , ) ( , , ) ( , ) ( , ) mandy moore ( , - ); mariah carey ( , - ); ala- nis morissette ( - ); celine dion ( , , ); britney spears ( - ); christina aguilera ( - , ); destiny’s child ( - ); janet jackson ( - ); jennifer lopez ( - , ); madonna ( - ); and others ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) diana ross “ain’t no mountain high enough” ( ); prince “the beautiful ones” ( ); kate bush “couldbusting” ( ); ladysmith black mambazo “leaning on the everlasting arm” ( ); madonna “cherish” ( ) ( ) is from same recording as ( , , ) but with sound effects reggae ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , , ) ( , , ) ( , ) ( , ) ( , ) bob marley ( - , - ); dennis brown ( - , - , ); prince buster ( , - ); burning spear ( , , , , ); gregory isaacs ( , - ); and others ( , ) pras “ghetto supastar (that is what you are)” ( ); marcia griffiths “electric boogie” ( ) last s of ( ) are use- less rock ( ) is metal ( ) morphine ( - ); ani difranco ( - ); queen ( - ); the rolling stones ( - , , , ); led zeppelin ( , - ); simple minds ( - ); sting ( - ); jethro tull ( - ); simply red ( - ); survivor ( - ); the stone roses ( - ) morphine “hanging on a curtain” ( ); queen “(you’re so square) baby i don’t care” ( ); billy joel “movin’ out” ( ); guns n’ roses “knockin’ on heaven’s door” ( ); led zep- pelin “the song remains the same” ( ), “the crunge” ( ), “dancing days” ( ), “the ocean” ( ), “ten years gone” ( ), “night flight” ( ), “the wanton song” ( ), “boogie with stu” ( ); simply red “she’s got it bad” ( ), “wonderland” ( ); survivor “is this love” ( ), “desperate dreams” ( ), “how much love” ( ); the tokens “the lion sleeps tonight” ( ) jitter ( ) table : the repetitions, potential mislabelings and distortions we find in gtzan. excerpt numbers are in paren- theses. exact repetitions are those excerpts that are the same with respect to a comparison of their time-frequency content. recording repetitions are those excerpts we suspect coming from the same recording. artist repetitions are those excerpts featuring the same artists. version repetitions are covers of the same song. potential mislabelings are excerpts we argue are misplaced with regards to the category top tags of its gtzan category. distortions are those excerpts that we regard as having a significant amount of distortion. this table can be auditioned online at http://imi.aau.dk/∼bst/research/gtzantable . d r a ft . how do the faults of gtzan affect evaluation? we now study how the faults of gtzan affect the evaluation of mgr systems, e.g., the classification accuracies in the nearly published works seen in fig. . through our experiments below, we see the following two claims are false: ) “all mgr systems and evaluations are affected in the same ways by the faults of gtzan”; and ) “the performances of all mgr systems in gtzan, working with the same data and faults, are still meaningfully comparable.” thus, regardless of how the systems are performing the task, the results in fig. cannot be meaningfully interpreted. it is not difficult to predict how some faults can affect the evaluations of mgr systems built using different approaches. for instance, when exact replicas are distributed across train and test sets, the evaluation of some systems can be more biased than others: a nearest neighbor classifier will find features in the training set with zero distance to the test feature, while a bayesian classifier with a parametric model may not so strongly benefit when its model parameters are estimated from all training features. if there are replicas in the test set only, then they will bias an estimate of a figure of merit because they are not independent tests — if one is classified (in)correctly then its replicas are also classified (in)correctly. in addition to exact repetitions, we show above that the number of artists in gtzan is at most . thus, as seyerlehner ( ); seyerlehner et al. ( ) predict for gtzan, its use in evaluating systems will be biased due to the artist effect (pampalk et al., ; flexer, ; flexer and schnitzer, , ), i.e., the observation that a music similarity system can perform significantly worse when artists are disjoint in training and test datasets, than when they are not. since all results in fig. come from evaluations without using an artist filter, they are quite likely to be optimistic. to investigate the faults of gtzan, we create several mgr systems using a variety of feature extraction and machine learning approaches paired with different training data in gtzan. we define a system not as an abstract proposal of a machine learning method, a feature description, and so on, but as a real and working implementation of the components necessary to produce an output from an input (sturm, c). a system, in other words, has already been trained, and might be likened to a “black box” operated by a customer in an environment, according to some instructions. in our case, each system specifies the customer input s of monophonic audio data uniformly sampled at hz, for which it outputs one of the ten gtzan category names. some systems we create by combining the same features with three classifiers (duin et al., ): nearest neighbor (nn), minimum distance (md), and minimum mahalanobis distance (mmd) (theodoridis and koutroumbas, ). these systems create feature vectors from a s excerpt in the following way. for each . ms frame, and a hop half that, it computes: mfccs using the approach by slaney ( ), zero crossings, and spectral centroid and rolloff. for each consecutive frames, it computes the mean and variance of each dimension, thus producing nine -dimensional feature vectors. from the feature vectors of the training data, the system finds a normalization transformation that maps each dimension to [ , ], i.e., the minimum of a dimension is subtracted from all values in that dimension, and then those are divided by the maximum magnitude difference between any two values. each system applies the same transformation to the feature vectors extracted from an input. each classifier chooses a label for an excerpt as follows: nn selects the class by majority vote, and breaks d r a ft gtzan category fold fold blues john lee hooker, kelly joe phelps, buckwheat zy- deco, magic slim & the teardrops robert johnson, stevie ray vaughan, clifton che- nier, hot toddy, albert collins classical j. s. bach, percy grainger, maurice ravel, henri du- tilleux, tchaikovsky, franz schubert, leonard bern- stein, misc. beethoven, franz joseph haydn, mozart, vivaldi, claude debussy, misc. country shania twain, johnny cash, willie nelson, misc. brad paisley, george strait, vince gill, misc. disco donna summer, kc and the sunshine band, ot- tawan, the gibson brothers, heatwave, evelyn thomas, misc. carl douglas, village people, the trammps, earth wind and fire, boney m., abba, gloria gaynor, misc. hip hop de la soul, ice cube, wu-tang clan, cypress hill, beastie boys, cent, eminem, misc. a tribe called quest, public enemy, lauryn hill, wyclef jean jazz leonard bernstein, coleman hawkins, branford marsalis trio, misc. james carter, joe lovano, dexter gordon, tony williams, miles davis, joe henderson, misc. metal judas priest, black sabbath, queen, dio, def lep- pard, rage against the machine, guns n’ roses, new bomb turks, misc. ac/dc, dark tranquillity, iron maiden, ozzy os- bourne, metallica, misc. pop mariah carey, celine dion, britney spears, alanis morissette, christina aguilera, misc. destiny’s child, mandy moore, jennifer lopez, janet jackson, madonna, misc. reggae burning spear, desmond dekker, jimmy cliff, bounty killer, dennis brown, gregory isaacs, ini kamoze, misc. peter tosh, prince buster, bob marley, lauryn hill, misc. rock sting, simply red, queen, survivor, guns n’ roses, the stone roses, misc. the rolling stones, ani difranco, led zeppelin, simple minds, morphine, misc. table : composition of each fold of the artist filter partitioning ( excerpts in each). italicized artists appear in two gtzan categories. ties by selecting randomly among those classes that are ties; md and mmd both select the label with the maximum log posterior sum over the nine feature vectors. both md and mmd model the feature vectors as independent and identically distributed multivariate gaussian. while the above approaches provide “baseline” systems, we also use two state-of-the-art approaches that produce mgr systems measured to have high classification accuracies in gtzan. the first is srcam — proposed by panagakis et al. ( b) but modified by us ( a) — which uses psychoacoustically-motivated features of dimensions. srcam classifies an excerpt by using sparse representation classification (wright et al., ). we implement this using the spgl solver (van den berg and friedlander, ) with at most iterations, and define � = . . the second approach is mapscat, which uses feature vectors of “scattering transform” coefficients (andén and mallat, ). this produces feature vectors of dimensions. mapscat models the features in the training set as independent and identically distributed multivariate gaussian, and computes for a test feature the log posterior in each class. we define all classes equally likely for mapscat, as well as for md and mmd. as for the baseline systems above, systems built using srcam and mapscat normalize input feature vectors according to the training set. (see sturm ( a) for further details of srcam and mapscat.) we use four different partition strategies to create train and test datasets from gtzan: ten realizations of standard non-stratified fcv (st); st without the exact and recording repetitions and distortions (st’); a non-stratified fcv with artist filtering (af); af without the exact and recording repetitions and distortions (af’). table shows the composition of each fold in af in terms of artists. we created af manually to ensure that: ) each gtzan category is approximately balanced in terms of the number of training and testing excerpts; and ) each fold of a gtzan category has music tagged with category top tags (fig. ). for instance, the two blues folds have and excerpts, and both have d r a ft music tagged “blues” and “zydeco.” unless otherwise noted, we do not take into account any potential mislabelings. in total, we train and test mgr systems. we look at several figures of merit computed from a comparison of the the outputs of the systems to the “ground truth” of testing datasets: confusion, precision, recall, f-score, and classification accuracy. define the set of gtzan categories g. consider that we input to a system n(g) number of excerpts from gtzan category g ∈ g, and that of these the system categorizes as r ∈g the number m(g as r) ≤ n(g). we define the confusion of gtzan category g as r for a system c(g as r) := m(g as r) / n(g). ( ) the recall for gtzan category g of a system is then c(g as g). we define the normalized accuracy of a system by a := |g| ∑ g∈g c(g as g). ( ) we use normalized accuracy because the number of inputs in each gtzan category may not be equal in a test set. we define the precision of a system for gtzan category g as p (g) := m(g as g) /∑ r∈g m(r as g). ( ) finally, we define the f-score of a system for gtzan category g as f (g) := p (g)c(g as g) /[ p (g) + c(g as g) ] . ( ) to test for significant differences in the performance between two systems in the same test dataset, we build a contingency table (salzberg, ). define the random variable n to be the number of times the two systems choose different categories, but one is correct. let t be the number for which system is correct but system is wrong. thus, n − t is the number of observations for which system is correct but system is wrong. define the random variable t from which t is a sample. the null hypothesis is that the systems perform equally well given n = n, i.e., e[t |n = n] = n/ , in which case t is distributed binomialy, i.e., pt |n=n(t) = ( n t ) ( . )n, ≤ t ≤ n. ( ) the probability we observe a particular performance given the systems actually perform equally well is p := p [t ≤ min(t ,n− t )] + p [t ≥ max(t ,n− t )] = min(t ,n−t )∑ t= pt |n=n(t) + n∑ t=max(t ,n−t ) pt |n=n(t). ( ) we define statistical significance as α = . , and reject the null hypothesis if p < α. figure shows a summary of the normalized accuracies of all our mgr systems, with respect to the five approaches and four partitions we use. as each partition breaks gtzan into two folds, the left and right end points of a segment correspond to using the first or second fold for training, and the other for testing. for the ten random partitions of st and d r a ft md mmd nn srcam mapscat . . . . . n o rm a li z e d a c c u ra c y st st’ af af’ figure : normalized accuracy ( ) of each approach (x-axis) for each fold (left and right) of different partition strategies (legend). one standard deviation above and below the mean are shown for st and st’. st’, we show the mean normalized accuracy, and a vertical line segment of two standard deviations centered on the mean. it is immediately clear that the faults of gtzan affect an estimate of the classification accuracy for an mgr system. for systems created with all approaches except nn, the differences between conditions st and st’ are small. as we predict above, the performance of systems created using nn appears to benefit more than the others from the exact and recording repetition faults of gtzan, boosting their mean normalized accuracy from below . to . . between conditions af and af’, we see that removing the repetitions produces very little change, presumably because the artist filter keeps exact and recording repetitions from being split across train and test datasets. most clearly, however, we see for all systems a large decrease in performance between conditions st and af, and that each system is affected to different degrees. the difference in normalized accuracy between conditions st and af appears the smallest for md ( points), while it appears the most for mapscat ( points). since we have thus found systems with performance evaluations affected to different degrees by the faults in gtzan — systems using nn are hurt by removing the repetitions while those using mmd are not — we have disproven the claim that the faults of gtzan affect all mgr systems in the same ways. when we test for significant differences in performance between all pairs of system in the conditions st and st’, only for those created with mmd and nn do we fail to reject the null hypothesis. in terms of classification accuracy in the condition st, and the binomial test described above, we can say with statistical significance: those systems created using md perform worse than those systems created using mmd and nn, which perform worse than those systems created using mapscat, which perform worse than those systems created using srcam. the systems created using srcam and mapscat are performing signifi- cantly better than the baseline systems. in the conditions af and af’, however, we fail to reject the null hypothesis for systems created using mapscat and md, and systems created using mapscat and mmd. mapscat, measured as performing significantly better than the baseline in the conditions st and st’ — and hence motivating conclusions that the features it uses are superior for mgr (andén and mallat, ; andén and mallat, ) — now performs no better than the baseline in the conditions af and af’. therefore, this disproves that the performances of all mgr systems in gtzan — all results shown in fig. — are still meaningfully comparable for mgr. some of them benefit significantly more d r a ft gtzan category blues classical country disco hip hop jazz metal pop reggae rock precision blues . classical . country . disco . hip hop . jazz . metal . pop . . reggae . rock . . f-score . . . . . . . . . . acc: . table : the worst figures of merit (× − ) of a “perfect” classifier evaluated with gtzan, which takes into account the potential mislabelings in table , and assuming that the excerpts we have yet to identify have “correct” labels. than others due to the faults in gtzan, but which ones they are cannot be known. we now focus our analysis upon systems created using srcam. figure shows averaged figures of merit for systems built using srcam and the realizations of st and st’, as well as for the single partition af’. between systems built in conditions st and st’, we see very little change in the recalls for gtzan categories with the fewest exact and recording repetitions: blues, classical and rock. however, for the gtzan categories having the most exact and recording repetitions, we find large changes in recall. in fact, fig. shows that the number of exact and recording repetitions in a gtzan category is correlated with a decrease in the recall of srcam. this makes sense because srcam is like adaptive nearest neighbors (noorzad and sturm, ). when evaluating the systems we created using srcam in the condition af’, fig. shows the mean classification accuracy is points lower than that in condition st. with respect to f-score, excerpts in gtzan classical and metal suffer the least; but we see decreases for all other categories by at least points, e.g., points for gtzan blues, points for gtzan reggae, and points for gtzan jazz. we see little change in classification accuracy between conditions af’ and af (not shown). the question remains, what are the worst figures of merit that a “perfect” mgr system can obtain in gtzan? we first assume that the excerpts yet to be identified are “correct” in their categorization, and that the last seconds of reggae are ignored because of severe distortion. then, we assume a “perfect” system categorizes all gtzan excerpts in their own categories, except for the potential misclassifications in table . for each of those excerpts, we consider that the system chooses the other gtzan categories in which its number of votes are higher than, or as high as, the number of votes in its own category. for instance, country has its largest vote in gtzan blues, so we add one to the blues row in the gtzan country column. when a vote is split between k categories, we add /k in the relevant positions of the confusion table. for instance, disco has the same number of votes in gtzan disco, pop and rock, so we add . to the pop and to the rock rows of the gtzan disco column. table shows the worst figures of merit we expect for this “perfect” system, which is also imposed as the thick gray line in fig. . if the figures of merit of an mgr system tested in gtzan are better that in this, it might actually be performing worse than the “perfect” system. indeed, we have found that the classification accuracies for six mgr d r a ft (a) srcam, st (b) srcam, st’ (c) srcam, af’ figure : × confusion, precision (pr), f-score (f), and normalized accuracy (bottom right corner) for systems built using srcam, trained and tested in st and st’ (averaged over realizations), as well as in af’ (with artist filtering and without replicas). columns are “true” labels; rows are predictions. darkness of square corresponds to value. labels: blues (bl), classical (cl), country (co), disco (di), hip hop (hi), jazz (ja), metal (me), pop (po), reggae (re), rock (ro). approaches appearing close to this limit (each marked by an “x” in fig. ) are due instead to inappropriate evaluation designs (discussed further in section . ). d r a ft − − − − − number of exact and recording repetitions c h a n g e i n f o m ( % ) recall precision f−score figure : scatter plot of percent change in mean figures of merit (fom) for srcam between the conditions st and st’ (fig. ) as a function of the number of exact and recording repetitions in a gtzan category. . discussion though it may not have been originally designed to be the benchmark dataset for mgr, gtzan is currently honored by such a position by virtue of its use in some of the early influential works (tzanetakis and cook, ), its continued wide-spread use, and its public availability. it was, after all, one of the first publicly-available datasets in mir. altogether, gtzan appears more than any other dataset in the evaluations of nearly mgr publi- cations (sturm, b). it is thus fair to claim that researchers who have developed mgr systems have used, or been advised to use, gtzan for evaluating success. for instance, high classification accuracy in gtzan has been argued as indicating the superiority of ap- proaches proposed for mgr (li and ogihara, ; bergstra et al., ; panagakis et al., b). furthermore, performance in gtzan has been used to argue for the relevance of features to mgr, e.g., “the integration of timbre features with temporal features are impor- tant for genre classification” (fu et al., ). despite its ten-year history spanning most of the research in mgr since the review by aucouturier and pachet ( ), only five works indicate someone has taken a look at what is in gtzan. of these, only one (li and chan, ) implicitly reports listening to all of gtzan; but another completely misses the mark in its assessment of the integrity of gtzan (bergstra et al., ). when gtzan has been used, it has been used for the most part without question. gtzan has never had metadata identifying its contents, but our work finally fills this gap, and shows the extent to which gtzan has faults. we find exact repetitions, suspected recording repetitions, and a significant amount of artist repetition. our analysis of the content of each gtzan category shows the excerpts in each are more diverse than what the category names suggest, e.g., the gtzan blues excerpts include music using the blues genre, as well as the zydeco and cajun and genres. we find potential mislabelings, e.g., two excerpts of orchestral music by leonard bernstein appear in gtzan jazz, but might be better placed with the other orchestral excerpts of bernstein in gtzan classical; an excerpt by wayne toups & zydecajun appears in gtzan country, but might be better placed with the other cajun and zydeco music in gtzan blues. finally, we find some excerpts suffer from distortions, such as jitter, clipping, and extreme degradation (reggae ). having proven that gtzan is flawed, we then sought to measure their real effects on the evaluation of mgr systems. using three baseline and two state of the art approaches, d r a ft we disproved the claims that all mgr systems are affected in the same ways by the faults of gtzan, and that the performances of mgr systems in gtzan are still meaningfully comparable no matter how the systems are performing the task. in other words, evaluating systems in gtzan with classify without taking into consideration its contents provides numbers that may be precise and lend themselves to a variety of formal statistical tests, but that are nonetheless irrelevant for judging which system can satisfy the success criteria of some use case in the real world that requires musical intelligence, not to mention whether the system demonstrates a capacity for recognizing genre at all. this lack of validity in standard mgr evaluation means one cannot simply say, “ . in gtzan is the new ,” and proceed with “business as usual.” since all results in fig. come from experimental conditions where independent variables are not controlled, e.g., by artist filtering, the “progress” in mgr seen over the years is very suspect. systems built from mapscat and srcam, previously evaluated in gtzan to have classification accuracies of % without considering the faults of gtzan (sturm, c, a), now lay at the bottom in fig. below %. where the performances of all the other systems lie, we do not yet know. the incredible influence of the other uncontrolled independent variables confounded with the gtzan category names becomes clear with irrelevant transformations (sturm, g). some may argue that our litany of faults in gtzan ignores what they say is the most se- rious problem with a dataset like gtzan: that it is too small to produce meaningful results. in some respects, this is justified. while personal music collections may number thousands of pieces of music, commercial datasets and library archives number in the millions. the excerpts of gtzan is most definitely an insufficient random sample of the population of excerpts “exemplary” of the kinds of music between which one may wish a mgr sys- tem to discriminate if it is to be useful for some use case. hence, one might argue, it is unreasonably optimistic to assume an mgr system can learn from a fold of gtzan those rules and characteristics people use (or at least tzanetakis used) when describing music as belonging to or demonstrating aspects of the particular genres used by music in gtzan. such warranted skepticism, compounded with the pairing of well-defined algorithms and an ill-defined problem, highlights the absurdity of interpreting the results in fig. as indicating real progress is being made in suffusing computers with musical intelligence. one might hold little hope that gtzan could ever be useful for tasks such as evaluating systems for mgr, audio similarity, autotagging, and the like. some might call for gtzan to be “banished” — although we have yet to find any paper that says so. there are, however, many ways to evaluate an mgr system using gtzan. indeed, its faults are representative of data in the real-world, and they can be used in the service of evaluation (sturm, a,g). for instance, by using the gtzan dataset, we ( c; a; g) perform several different experiments to illuminate the (in)sanity of a system’s internal model of music genre. in one experiment ( c; a), we look at the kinds of pathological errors of an mgr system rather than what it labels “correctly.” we design a reduced turing test to determine how well the “wrong” labels it selects imitate human choices. in another experiment ( c; g), we attempt to fool a system into selecting any genre label for the same piece of music by changing factors that are irrelevant to genre, e.g., by subtle time-invariant filtering. in another experiment ( c), we have an mgr system compose music excerpts it hears as highly representative of the “genres of gtzan”, and then we perform a formal listening d r a ft test to determine if those genres are recognizable. the lesson is not to banish gtzan, but to use it with full consideration of its musical content. it is currently not clear what makes a dataset “better” than another for mgr, and whether any are free of the kinds of faults in gtzan; but at least now with gtzan, one has a manageable, public, and finally well-studied dataset. implications for future work in mgr and mir the most immediate point to come from this work is perhaps that one should not take for granted the integrity of any given dataset, even when it has been used in a large amount of research. any researcher evaluating an mir system using a dataset must know the data, know real data has faults, and know such faults have real impacts. however, there are five other points important for the next ten years of mir. first, problems in mir should be un- ambiguously defined through specifying use cases and with formalism. second, experiments must be designed, implemented, and analyzed such that they have validity and relevance with respect to the intended scientific questions. third, system analysis should be deeper than just evaluation. fourth, the limitations of all experiments should be acknowledged, and appropriate degrees of skepticism should be applied. finally, as a large part of mir research is essentially algorithm- and data-based, it is imperative to make all such work reproducible. . define problems with use cases and formalism. as mentioned in section , few works of our survey ( b) define “the problem of music genre recognition,” but nearly all of them treat genre as categories to which objects belong, separated by boundaries, whether crisp or fuzzy, objective or subjective, but recoverable by machine learning algorithms. the monopoly of this aristotelean viewpoint of genre is evinced by the kind of evaluation performed in mgr work (sturm, b): of published works pose as relevant the comparison of labels generated by an mgr system with a “ground truth” (classify). all but ten of these works consider mgr as a single label classification problem. we have posed ( b) “the principal goal of mgr,” but the discussion of what its principal goal is might be premature without the consideration of well-defined use cases. the parameters and requirements of a music recommendation service are certainly dif- ferent from those of a person wanting to organize their home media collection, which are different from those of a music library looking to serve the information needs of musicologists. the light provided by a use case can help define a problem, and show how the performance of a solution should be measured; however, only a few works in the mgr literature consider use cases. in the same direction, the mires roadmap (serra et al., ) recommends the development of “meaningful evaluation tasks.” a use case helps specify the solutions, and what is to be tested by evaluations. one good example is provided by one of the first works in mgr: dannenberg et al. ( ) seeks to address the specific scenario of interactive music performance between a musician and machine listener. it poses several requirements: the musician must play styles consistently; the classification must take no longer than five seconds; and the number of false positives should be minimized. dannenberg et al. evaluate solutions not only in the laboratory, but also in the intended situation. this work shows how a use case can help define a problem, and the success criteria for the solution. d r a ft to fully define a problem with no uncertain terms, it must be formalized. formaliza- tion is a tool that can disambiguate all parts of a problem in order to clarify assumptions, highlight the existence of contradictions and other problems, suggest and analyze solutions, and provide a path for designing, implementing and analyzing evaluations. by and large, such formalization remains implicit in much evaluation of mir, which has been uncritically and/or unknowingly borrowed from other disciplines, like machine learning and text infor- mation retrieval (sturm, c; urbano et al., ). we have attempted to finally make this formalism explicit ( c): we define what a system is, and what it means to analyze one; we use the formalism of the design and analysis of experiments, e.g., bailey ( ), to dissect an evaluation into its aims, parts, design, execution, and analysis; and we show how an evaluation in mir is an experiment, and thus makes several assumptions. when this formalism is made explicit, it becomes clear why the systematic and rigorous evaluations performed using standardized datasets in many mirex tasks can still not be scientific eval- uation (dougherty and dalton, ; sturm, c). consequently, what must be done in order to address this becomes clearer. . design valid and relevant experiments. no result in fig. provides a reasonable direction for addressing a use case that requires an artificial system having musical intelligence. that a mgr system evaluated using classify achieves even a perfect classification accuracy in a dataset having uncontrolled independent variables provides no logical support for the claim that the system is using criteria relevant to the meaning behind those labels (sturm, c, a,b). the same is true of the results from the past several years of the mirex mgr task, or the mirex audio mood classification task, or the various mirex autotagging tasks (sturm, c). an unwary company looking to build and sell a solution for a particular use case requiring a system capable of music intelligence will be misled by all these results when following the intuition that a system with a classification accuracy of over . must be “better” than one below . . this is not to say that none of the systems in fig. are using relevant criteria to decide on the genre labels (e.g., instrumentation, rhythm, form), but that such a conclusion does not follow from the experiment, no matter its outcome. in short, none of this evaluation is valid. in discussing the music intelligence of a system, and the lack of validity in evaluation for measuring it, we might be mistaken as misrepresenting the purpose of machine learning, or overstating its capabilities. of course, machine learning algorithms are agnostic to the intentions of an engineer employing them, and are unperturbable by any accusation of being a “horse” (sturm, g). machine learning does not create systems that think or behave as humans, or mimic the decision process of humans. however, there are different use cases where “by any means” is or is not acceptable. even when a problem is underspecified, e.g., “the mob boss asked me to make the guy disappear,” then any solution might not be acceptable, e.g., “so, i hired a magician.” if one seeks only to give the illusion that a robot can recognize genre and emotion in music (xia et al., ), or that a musical water fountain is optimal (park et al., ), then “whatever works” may be fine. however, if one seeks to make a tool that is useful to a musicologist for exploring stylistic influence in a music archive, then a system that uses musically meaningful criteria to make judgements is likely preferable over one that works by confounded but irrelevant factors. d r a ft validity in experiments is elegantly demonstrated with the case of “clever hans” (pfungst, ; sturm, g). briefly, hans was a horse that appeared able to solve complex arith- metic feats, as well as many other problems that require humans to think abstractly. many people were convinced by hans’ abilities; and a group of intellectuals was unable to answer the question, “is hans capable of abstract thought?” it was not until valid experiments were designed and implemented to test well-posed and scientific questions that hans was defini- tively proven to be incapable of arithmetic — as well as his many other intellectual feats — and only appeared so because he was responding to unintended but confounded cues of whoever asked him a question (pfungst, ). the question of hans’ ability in arithmetic is not validly addressed by asking hans more arithmetic problems and comparing his answers with the “ground truth” (classify), but by designing valid and relevant experiments in which careful control is exercised over independent variables. confounds in machine learning experiments create serious barriers to drawing conclusions from evaluations — which can also seen as the problem of “overfitting.” consider that we wish to create a classifier to predict the sexes of people. we begin by randomly sampling , people from around the united states of america (usa) in . consider that we are not aware that the sex of a person is determined (for the most part) by the presence or absence of the “y” chromosome, and so we ask about age, education, occupation, marital status, relationship to spouse, and many other things that might be relevant, and create a multivariate dataset from the entries. as is common in machine learning, we split this into a training dataset ( / ) and testing dataset ( / ), and then perform feature selection (theodoridis and koutroumbas, ) using the training dataset to find the best features of sex with respect to, e.g., maximizing the ratio of intra- to inter-class separation, or by considering the fisher discriminant. finally, we create several classifiers using these feature combinations and training dataset, evaluate each using classify on the testing dataset, and compute its normalized classification accuracy (accuracy). figure plots the accuracies of the classifiers as a function of the number of best features. we find that with the “relationship” feature we can build a classifier with an accuracy of almost . in the testing dataset. if we add to this the “occupation” feature then accuracy increases to about . in the test dataset. if we also consider the “marital-status” feature then we can build a classifier having an accuracy that exceeds . in the test dataset. since we believe random classifiers would have an accuracy of . in each case, we might claim from these results, “our systems predict the sex of a person better than random.” we might go further and conclude, “the two most relevant features for predicting the sex of a person is ‘relationship’ and ‘occupation’.” now consider these results while knowing how sex is truly determined. while it is clear that the “relationship” feature is a direct signifier of sex given a person is married, we know that the “occupation” feature is irrelevant to the sex of any person. it is only a factor that happens to be confounded in our dataset with the attribute of interest through the economic we use here the multivariate dataset, http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/adult this feature takes a value in { “wife”, “husband”, “unmarried”, “child”}. this feature takes a value in { “tech-support”, “craft-repair”, “other-service”, “sales”, “exec- managerial”, “prof-specialty”, “handlers-cleaners”, “machine-op-inspct”, “adm-clerical”, “farming- fishing”, “transport-moving”, “priv-house-serv”, “protective-serv”, “armed-forces”}. this feature takes a value in {“married”, “divorced”, “never-married”, “widowed”, “separated”}. d r a ft . . . . . number of features a c c u ra c y re la tio n sh ip ∪ o c c u p a tio n ∪ m a rita l-sta tu s ∪ h o u rs-p e r-w e e k ∪ c a p ita l-lo ss ∪ a g e ∪ w o rk c la ss ∪ e d u c a tio n ∪ e d u c a tio n -n u m ∪ ra c e figure : normalized classification accuracy of male/female classifier (in test dataset) as a function of the number of features selected by maximizing inter- and intra-class separa- tion. the three features producing the highest classification accuracy in the training set are “relationship”, “occupation” and “marital-status.” and societal norms of the population from which we collected samples, i.e., usa. if we test our trained systems in populations with economics and societal norms that are different from usa, the confounds could break and performance thus degrade. furthermore, the “occupation” feature only appears to be relevant to our task because: ) it is a confound factor of sex more correlated than the others; and ) it is among the attributes we chose for this task from the outset, few of which have any relevance to sex. hence, due to confounds — independent variables that are not controlled in the experimental design — the evaluation lacks validity, and neither one of the conclusions can follow from the experiment. our work joins the growing chorus of concerns about validity in mir evaluation. a number of interesting and practical works have been produced by urbano et al. (urbano et al., ; urbano, ; urbano et al., , ). the work in urbano et al. ( ) is concerned with evaluating the performance of audio similarity algorithms, and is extended in urbano et al. ( ) to explore how well an mir system must perform in a particular evaluation in order to be potentially useful in the real world. urbano ( ) deals specifically with the question of experimental validity of evaluation in mir; and urbano et al. ( ) extend this to show that evaluation of evaluation remains neglected by the mir community. aucouturier and bigand ( ) look at reasons why mir has failed to acquire attention from outside computer science, and pose it is due in no small part to its lack of a scientific approach. while evaluation is also cited in the mires roadmap (serra et al., ) as an current area of concern, such concerns are by no means only recent. the initiatives behind mirex were motivated in part to address the fact that evaluation in early mir research did not facilitate comparisons with new methods (downie, , ). mirex has since run numerous systematic, rigorous and standardized evaluation campaigns for many different tasks since (downie, ; downie et al., ), which has undoubtedly increased the visibility of mir (cunningham et al., ). furthermore, past mir evaluation has stumbled upon the observations that evaluations that split across training and testing datasets music from the same albums (mandel and ellis, ) or artists (pampalk et al., ) results in inflated performances than when the training and testing dataset do not share songs from the same album or by the same artists. just as we have shown above for gtzan, the effects of this can be quite significant (flexer, ), and can now finally be explained through our work as being a result of confounds. d r a ft evaluation in mir is not just a question of what figure of merit to use, but of how to draw a valid conclusion by designing, implementing, and analyzing an experiment relevant to the intended scientific question (sturm, c). for any experiment, thorough consideration must be given to its “materials,” “treatments,” “design,” “responses,” “measurements,” and “models” of those measurements. beginning ideally with a well-specified and scientific question, the experimentalist is faced with innumerable ways of attempting to answer that question. however, a constant threat to the validity of an experiment is the selection of the components of an experiment because of convenience, and not because they actually address the scientific question. another threat is the persuasion of precision. richard hamming has argued, “there is a confusion between what is reliably measured, and what is relevant. ... what can be measured precisely or reliably does not mean it is relevant.” another threat is the blind application of statistics, resulting in “errors of the third kind” (kimball, ): correct answers to the wrong questions. hand ( ) shows why one must compare the intended scientific questions to the statistical questions that are actually answered. while the absence of formal statistics in mir research has been highlighted by flexer ( ), statistics is agnostic to the quality of data, the intention of the experiment, and the ability of the experimentalist. statistics provides powerful tools, but none of them can rescue an invalid evaluation. one might be inclined to say that since one problem with fig. is that gtzan has faults that are not considered in any of the results, better datasets could help. however, though a dataset may be larger and more modern than gtzan does not mean that it is free of the same kinds of faults found in gtzan. furthermore, that a dataset is large does not free the designer of an mir system of the necessarily difficult task of designing, implementing, and analyzing an evaluation having the validity to conclude — if such a thing is indeed relevant to a use case — whether the decisions and behaviors of a system are related to the musical content that is supposedly behind those decisions (sturm, b,g). we have shown instead that the significant root of this problem, of which data plays a role, is in the validity and relevance of experiments (sturm, c,b). all independent variables must be accounted for an in evaluation, by controlling the experimental conditions, and by guaranteeing that enough material is sampled in a random enough way that the effects of the independent variables that are out of reach of the experimentalist will satisfy the assumptions of the measurement model (sturm, c). what amount of data is necessary depends on the scientific question of interest; but even a million songs may not be enough (bertin-mahieux et al., ). an excellent example providing a model for the design, implementation, analysis and description of valid and relevant scientific experiments is that of chase ( ) — which com- plements the earlier and pioneering results of porter and neuringer ( ). this work shows the effort necessary to planning and executing experiments to take place over a duration of about two years such that waste is avoided and results are maximized. chase designs four experiments to answer two specific questions: ) can fish learn to discriminate between complex auditory stimuli that humans can also discriminate? ) if so, does this behavior generalize to novel auditory stimuli with the same discriminability? chase uses three koi fish r. hamming, “you get what you measure”, lecture at naval postgraduate school, june . http: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnhcavi zpa d r a ft as the material of the experiment, and specifies as the stimuli (treatments) recorded musical audio, both real and synthesized, in the categories “blues” and “classical.” chase designs the experiments to have hundreds of trials, some of which investigate potential confounds, probe the generalizability of the discrimination of each fish, confirm results when the reinforcement stimuli are switched, and so on. from these experiments, one can conclude whether fish can indeed learn to discriminate between complex auditory stimuli like music styles. unfortunately, much evaluation in mgr, music emotion recognition, and autotagging has been just the kind of show performed by clever hans (pfungst, ): certainly, an evaluation observed by an audience and done not to deceive, but entirely irrelevant for proving any capacity of these systems for musical intelligence. this has thus contributed to the training of horses of many exotic breeds, and competitions to show whose horse is better- trained; but, aside from this pageantry, one does not know whether any meaningful problem has ever been addressed in it all. the design and implementation of a valid experiment requires creativity and effort that cannot be substituted with collecting more data; and a flawed design or implementation cannot be rescued by statistics. if one can elicit any response from a system by changing irrelevant factors, then one has a horse (sturm, g). . perform system analysis deeper than just evaluation. in our work ( c), we define a system (“a connected set of interacting and interdepen- dent components that together address a goal”), system analysis (addressing questions and hypotheses related to the past, present and future of a system), and highlight the key role played by evaluation (“a ‘fact-finding campaign’ intended to address a number of relevant questions and/or hypotheses related to the goal of a system”). a system analysis that only addresses a question of how well a system reproduces the labels of a testing dataset is quite shallow and of limited use. such an analysis does not produce knowledge about how the system is operating or whether its performance is satisfactory with respect to some use case. more importantly, an opportunity is lost for determining how a system can be improved, or adapted to different use cases. one of the shortcomings of evaluation currently practiced in mir is that system analysis remains shallow, and does not help one to understand or improve systems. the mires roadmap (serra et al., ) also points to the need for deeper system anal- ysis. one challenge is identifies is the design of evaluation that provides “qualitative insights on how to improve [systems].” another challenge is that entire systems should be evaluated, and not just their unconnected components. in a similar light, urbano et al. ( ) discuss how the development cycle that is common in information retrieval research is unsatisfac- torily practiced in mir: the definition of a task in mir often remains contrived or artificial, the development of solutions often remains artificial, the evaluation of solutions is often un- satisfactory, the interpretation of evaluation results is often biased and unilluminating, the lack of valid results lead to improving solutions “blindly,” and returning to the beginning of the cycle rarely leads to a qualitative improvement of research. . acknowledge limitations and proceed with skepticism. the third point to come from this work is that the limitations of experiments should be clearly acknowledged. in her experiments with music discriminating fish, chase ( ) is d r a ft not terse when mentioning their limitations: even a convincing demonstration of categorization can fail to identify the stim- ulus features that exert control at any given time ... in particular, there can be uncertainty as to whether classification behavior had been under the stimulus control of the features in terms of which the experimenter had defined the cate- gories or whether the subjects had discovered an effective discriminant of which the experimenter was unaware. ... [a] constant concern is the possible existence of a simple attribute that would have allowed the subjects merely to discriminate instead of categorizing. (emphasis ours) chase thereby recognizes that, with the exception of timbre (experiment ), her experiments do not validly answer questions about what the fish are using in order to make their decisions, or even whether those criteria are related in any way to how the music was categorized in the first place. in fact, her experiments were not designed to answer such a question. this same limitation exists for all mir experiments that use classify (sturm, a,c,b,g). that a mir system is able to perfectly reproduce the “ground truth” labels of a testing dataset gives no reason to believe the system is using criteria relevant to the meaning of those labels. the existence of many independent variables in the complex signals of datasets like gtzan, and the lack of their control in any evaluation using them, severely limits what one can say from the results. even if one is to be conservative and restrict the conclusion to only that music in gtzan, or ismir , we have shown ( g) that even such a conclusion is not valid. other limitations come from the measurement model specified by the experimental de- sign. any estimate of the responses from the measurements in an experiment (sturm, c) must also accompanied by its quality (confidence interval), and the conditions under which it holds, e.g., “simple textbook model” (bailey, ). (this is not the variance of the mea- surements!) with random-, fixed- and mixed-effects models, these estimates generally have wider confidence intervals than with the standard textbook model, i.e., the estimates have more uncertainty (bailey, ). in the field of bioinformatics, an evaluation that does not give the confidence interval and conditions under which it holds has been called “scientifically vacuous” (dougherty and dalton, ). it is of course beyond the scope of this paper whether or not an artificial system can learn from the few examples in gtzan the meaning behind the various tags shown in fig. ; but, that srcam is able to achieve a classification accuracy of over . from only training dataset feature vectors of dimensions in each of classes, is quite impressive — almost miraculous. to then claim, “srcam is recognizing music genre”, is as remarkable a claim as, “hans the horse can add.” any artificial system purported to be capable of, e.g., identifying thrilling disco music with male lead vocals that is useful for driving, or romantic pop music with positive feelings and backing vocals that is useful for getting ready to go out, should be approached with as much skepticism as pfungst approached hans (pfungst, ). “an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof” (truzzi, ). what conclusion is valid in this case has yet to be determined. d r a ft . make reproducible work reproducible. the final implication of our work here is in the reproducibility of experiments. one of the hallmarks of modern science is the reproduction of the results of an experiment by an independent party (with no vested interests). the six “×” in fig. come from our attempts at reproducing the work in several publications. in (sturm and noorzad, ), we detail our troubles in reproducing the work of panagakis et al. ( b). through our collaboration with those authors, they found their results in that paper were due to a mistake in the experimental procedure. this also affected other published results of theirs (panagakis et al., a; panagakis and kotropoulos, ). our trouble in reproducing the results of marques et al. ( a) led to the discovery that the authors had accidentally used the training dataset as the testing dataset. our significant trouble in reproducing the results of bağci and erzin ( ) led us to analyze the algorithm (sturm and gouyon, ), which reveals that their results could not have been due to the proper operation of their system. finally, we have found the approach and results of chang et al. ( ) to be irreproducible and determined that they are contradicted by several well-established principles (sturm, f). in only one of these cases (marques et al., a) did we find the code to be available and accessible enough for easily recreating the published experiments. for the others, we had to make many assumptions and decisions from the beginning, sometimes in consultation with the authors, to ultimately find that the description in the paper does not match what was produced, or that the published results are in error. among other things, “reproducible research” (vandewalle et al., ) is motivated by the requirements of modern science, and by the algorithm-centric nature of disciplines like signal processing. vandewalle et al. ( ) define a piece of research “reproducible” if: “all information relevant to the work, including, but not limited to, text, data and code, is made available, such that an independent researcher can reproduce the results.” this obviously places an extraordinary burden on a researcher, and is impossible when data is privately owned; but when work can be reproduced, then it should be reproducible. making work reproducible can not only increase citations, but also greatly aid in peer review. for instance, the negative results in our work (sturm and gouyon, ) were greeted by skepticism in peer review; but, because we made entirely reproducible the results of our experiments and the figures in our paper, the reviewers were able to easily verify our analysis, and explore the problem themselves. the results of all our work, and the software to produce them, are available online for anyone else to run and modify. the mires roadmap (serra et al., ) also highlights the need for reproducibility in mir. great progress is being achieved by projects such as soundsoftwatre. vandewalle et al. ( ) provides an excellent guide of how to make research reproducible. conclusions our “state of the art” here takes a much different approach than the previous four reviews of mgr (aucouturier and pachet, ; scaringella et al., ; dannenberg, ; fu et al., personal communication with j. p. papa. http://imi.aau.dk/~bst/software/index.html http://soundsoftware.ac.uk d r a ft ). it aims not to summarize the variety of features and machine learning approaches used in mgr systems in the ten years since aucouturier and pachet ( ), or the new datasets available and how “ground truths” are generated. it is not concerned with the validity, well-posedness, value, usefulness, or applicability of mgr; or whether mgr is “replaced by,” or used in the service of, e.g., music similarity, autotagging, or the like. these are comprehensively addressed in other works, e.g., (mckay and fujinaga, ; craft et al., ; craft, ; wiggins, ; sturm, c,b, a,b,g). it is not concerned with how, or even whether it is possible, to create “faultless” datasets for mgr, music similarity, autotagging, and the like. instead, this article is concerned with evaluations performed in the past ten years of work in mgr, and its implications for the next ten years of work in mir. it aims to look closely at whether the results of fig. imply any progress has been made in solving the problem. if one is to look at fig. as a “map” showing which pairing of audio features with machine learning algorithms is successful, or which is better than another, or whether progress has been made in charting an unknown land, then one must defend such conclusions as being valid with these evaluations — which are certainly rigorous, systematic, and standardized evaluations, but that may not address the scientific question of interest. one simply cannot take for granted that a systematic, standardized and rigorous evaluation design using a benchmark dataset produces scientific results, let alone results that reflect anything to do with music intelligence. questions of music intelligence cannot be addressed with validity by an experimental design that counts the number of matches between labels output by a system and the “ground truth” of a testing dataset (classify), but that does not account for the numerous independent variables of a testing dataset with flawed integrity. only a few works have sought to determine whether the decisions made by an mgr system come from anything at all relevant to genre (sturm, c, a), e.g., musicological dimensions such as instrumentation, rhythm (dixon et al., ), harmony (anglade et al., ), compositional form, and lyrics (mayer et al., ). metaphorically, whereas only a few have been using a tape measure, a level and a theodolite to survey the land, the points of fig. have been found using microscopes and scales — certainly scientific instruments, but irrelevant to answering the questions of interest. it may be a culmination of a decade of work, but fig. is no map of reality. these problems do not just exist for research in mgr, but are also seen in research on music emotion recognition (sturm, c,b), and autotagging (marques et al., b; gouyon et al., ). these kinds of tasks constitute more than half of the evaluation tasks in mirex since , and are, in essence, representative of the ir in mir. how, then, has this happened, and why does it continue? first, as we have shown for gtzan (sturm, a, d), many researchers assume a dataset is a good dataset because many others use it. second, as we have shown for classify (sturm, c,b), many researchers assume evaluation that is standard in machine learning or information retrieval, or that is implemented to be systematic and rigorous, is thus relevant for mir and is scientific. third, researchers fail to define proper use cases, so problems and success criteria remain by and large ill-defined — or, as in the case of gtzan, defined by and large by the artificial construction of a dataset. fourth, the foundation of evaluation in mir remains obscure because it lacks an explicit formalism in its design and analysis of systems and experiments (urbano et al., ; sturm, c). hence, evaluations in all mir are accompanied by d r a ft many assumptions that remain implicit, but which directly affect the conclusions, relevance, and validity of experiments. because these assumptions remain implicit, researchers fail to acknowledge limitations of experiments, and are persuaded that their solutions are actually addressing the problem, or that their evaluation is measuring success — the clever hans effect (pfungst, ; sturm, g). while we are not claiming that all evaluation in mir lacks validity, we do claim there is a “crisis of evaluation” in mir more severe than what is reflected by the mires roadmap (serra et al., ). the single most important the situation in mir is reminiscent of computer science in the late s. in an edito- rial from (mccracken et al., ), the president, vice-president and secretary of the association for computing machinery acknowledge that “experimental computer science” (to distinguish it from theoretical computer science) is in a crisis in part because there is “a severe shortage of computer scientists engaged in, or qualified for, experimental research in computer science.” this led practitioners of the field to define more formally the aims of ex- perimental computer science, how they relate to the scientific pursuit of knowledge (denning, ), and find model examples of scientific practice in their field (denning, ). six years later, basili et al. ( ) contributed a review of fundamentals in the design and analysis of experiments, how it has been applied to and benefited software engineering, and suggestions for continued improvement. almost a decade after this, however, fenton et al. ( ) ar- gue “there are far too few examples of moderately effective research in software engineering ... much of what we believe about which approaches are best is based on anecdotes, gut feelings, expert opinions, and flawed research, not on careful, rigorous software-engineering experimentation.” this is not a surprise to fenton, however, since “topics like experimental design, statistical analysis, and measurement principles” remain neglected in contemporary computer science educations (fenton et al., ). the conversation is still continuing (fei- telson, ). in summary, even statistics is not immune to these problems (hand, ). donald preece provides a stratospherically high-level of summary of hand ( ): “[it speaks on] the questions that the researcher wishes to consider ...: (a) how do i obtain a statistically significant result?; (b) how do i get my paper published?; (c) when will i be promoted?” there are no shortcuts to the design, implementation, and analysis of a valid experiment. it requires hard work, creativity, and intellectual postures that are uncomfortable for many. good examples abound, however. chase ( ) shows the time and effort necessary to scientifically and efficiently answer real questions, and exemplifies the kinds of considerations that are taken for granted in disciplines where thousands of experiments can be run in minutes on machines that do not currently need positive reinforcement. just as pfungst does with hans (pfungst, ), chase scientifically tests whether oro, beauty and pepi are actually discriminating styles of music. neither pfungst nor chase give their subjects free passes of accountability. why, then, should it be any different for artificial systems? acknowledgments thanks to: fabien gouyon, nick collins, arthur flexer, mark plumbley, geraint wiggins, mark levy, roger dean, julián urbano, alan marsden, lars kai hansen, jan larsen, mads g. christensen, sergios theodoridis, aggelos pikrakis, dan stowell, rémi gribonval, ge- offrey peeters, diemo schwarz, roger dannenberg, bernard mont-reynaud, gaël richard, d r a ft rolf bardeli, jort gemmeke, curtis roads, stephen pope, george tzanetakis, constantine kotropoulos, yannis panagakis, ulaş bağci, engin erzin, and joão paulo papa for illumi- nating discussions about these topics (which does not mean any endorse the ideas herein). mads g. christensen, nick collins, cynthia liem, and clemens hage helped identify several excerpts in gtzan, and my wife carla sturm endured my repeated listening to all of its excerpts. thanks to the many, many associate editors and anonymous reviewers for the comments that helped move this work closer and closer to being publishable. references ammer, c. 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( ). autonomous robot dancing driven by beats and emotions of music. in proc. int. conf. autonomous agents multiagent syst., pages – , richland, sc. pnas .. letter close but not proximate: the significance of phonological segments in speaking depends on their functional engagement converging evidence points to a difference between european and chinese languages in the type of the initial units of phono- logical encoding for speaking. the phonological access points or “proximate units” ( , ) are segmental in indo-european languages but whole syllables in chinese. accordingly, chinese speakers, unlike english speakers, do not register the presence of consistent initial consonants in several word production tasks. qu et al.’s ( ) intriguing report both supports and challenges this interpretation. in their experiment, mandarin speaking partici- pants produced picture descriptions comprising a color-adjective and noun that shared or did not share initial segments (e.g., green guitar vs. blue guitar in english). consistent with previous findings, there was no response time benefit of shared initial phonemes. in seeming contrast, there was an early dif- ferentiation between shared and different onset conditions in event-related potentials (erps). in combination, these findings can be interpreted as particu- larly compelling evidence for the subordinate role of phonemes in production of chinese: even though the electrophysiology reflected the presence of shared phonemes, there was no be- havioral effect. however, how exactly are phonemes subordi- nated? qu et al. ( ) proposed a complex account involving override of phonological activation by a monitoring process. however, this does not fully comport with the evidence. because object name retrieval is rapid but adjectives are prenominal, it is plausible that adjectives and nouns are coactivated. what is not clear is how the erp signature of the resulting phono- logical concord relates to production. the erp patterns arose in a - to -ms window, whereas speech was not initiated until about ms, fully ms later than that typically ob- served in single word production ( ). this suggests that the erps may index phonological connectivity but not necessarily functional engagement of segments in preparation for pro- duction. moreover, if the cancelling process account is cor- rect, one would expect facilitation, rather than a null effect, in faster single-word production tasks for which monitoring is not needed. we also question qu et al.’s equation of the proximate unit account ( ) with the view that phonemes are vestigial in pro- duction of chinese. we certainly do not endorse the idea that “phonemes are artifacts resulting solely from experience with an alphabetically organized orthographic system” (ref. , p. ). in the report by o’seaghdha et al. (figure a in ref. ), we spelled out a model for mandarin chinese in which syllables are primary but in which phonemic specification oc- curs for every selected syllable. our statement that speakers of mandarin “intend to produce syllables, perhaps to the ex- clusion of subsyllabic ingredients” (ref. , p. ) thus refers to an early intentional phase of production rather than to the entire process. these concerns aside, qu et al.’s findings ( ) bode well for future more complete accounts of word production across languages. their article promises that comparison of erp patterns for conditions sharing a variety of phonological units (e.g., syllables and segments among others) in chinese, european, and other languages will be very informative. padraig g. o’seaghdhaa, , jenn-yeu chenb, and train-min chenb adepartment of psychology and cognitive science program, lehigh university, bethlehem, pa ; and bdepartment of chinese as a second language, national taiwan normal university, taipei , taiwan . o’seaghdha pg, chen j-y, chen t-m ( ) proximate units in word production: phonological encoding begins with syllables in mandarin chinese but with segments in english. cognition ( ): – . . o’seaghdha pg, chen j-y ( ) toward a language-general account of word production: the proximate units principle. proceedings of the st annual conference of the cognitive science society, eds taatgen na, van rijn h (cognitive science society, austin, tx), pp – . . qu q, damian mf, kazanina n ( ) sound-sized segments are significant for mandarin speakers. proc natl acad sci usa ( ): – . . indefrey p, levelt wj ( ) the spatial and temporal signatures of word production components. cognition ( - ): – . author contributions: p.g.o., j.-y.c., and t.-m.c. wrote the paper. the authors declare no conflict of interest. to whom correspondence should be addressed. e-mail: pat.oseaghdha@lehigh.edu. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/ . /pnas. pnas | january , | vol. | no. | e d o w n lo a d e d a t c a rn e g ie m e llo n u n iv e rs ity o n a p ri l , mailto:pat.oseaghdha@lehigh.edu sample thesis title with a concise and accurate description a new materialist turn toward the textbook: an exploration of the relationship between history textbooks and historical narratives by katherine wallace (katy) b.a., the university of leeds, p.g.c.e., institute of education, university college london, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts in the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies (curriculum studies) the university of british columbia (vancouver) august © katherine wallace, ii the following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies for acceptance, a thesis/dissertation entitled: a new materialist turn toward the textbook: an exploration of the relationship between history textbooks and historical narratives submitted by katherine wallace in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts in curriculum studies examining committee: dr. penney clark supervisor dr. dónal o’donoghue supervisory committee member dr. lindsay gibson additional examiner iii abstract this study is concerned with history textbooks and historical narratives. shifting attention away from the notion that the teacher uses the textbook as a mute classroom tool, this study follows karen barad’s new materialist theories to conceptualise the textbook as a lively, vibrant object with animate and agentive capacities. this study focuses on how one history textbook, g.r. elton’s england under the tudors, shaped the historical narrative taught to history a-level students in the united kingdom about the reign of henry viii. by offering three ekphrastic descriptions looking at first the textbook’s material qualities, second, its conditions of arrival, and its conditions of use, as framed by the leadership team of the school and the school building, and lastly, the textbook’s role as part of the (im)material assemblage of the history classroom, this study explores how these aspects of the textbook work together and contribute to the onto-epistemo-ological historical narrative. this study adopts an aesthetic orientation toward the object of study and methodological approach. the ekphrastic descriptions are accounts of the material experience of teaching history in a certain setting using the textbook as an object of focus. this study highlights the benefits of considering textbook practices as material and bodily practices. it illustrates the unique nature of the relationship of any teacher and the textbook(s) they use to teach. it stresses the impact a school’s architectural style, culture, chosen aesthetic, and ethos can have on the learning that takes place there. finally, this study acknowledges the ontological dimension of history teaching, as well as the epistemological, and emphasises the importance of seeing the construction of historical narratives in classroom settings as something experienced and lived, rather than simply taught and then known. iv lay summary this study is an in-depth exploration of the researcher’s relationship with a specific history textbook and how this affected how a certain historical narrative was taught. by adopting an aesthetic sensibility, the study hopes to illuminate the lively, vibrant nature of the textbooks by describing the material qualities of the textbook, as well as the history classroom and school where the historical narrative was taught, in creative and imaginative ways. this study hopes the reader is affected by the descriptions offered as part of it and does not presume to have come to a totalising conclusion, however, the study does point to the unique relationship between teacher and textbook, this study stresses how significant a school’s culture and ethos is on shaping teaching, and finally, this study suggests that historical narratives that are taught in classrooms are not simply known, they are lived. v preface this dissertation is original, independent work by katy wallace. vi table of contents abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iii lay summary ............................................................................................................................... iv preface .............................................................................................................................................v table of contents ......................................................................................................................... vi acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... xi dedication ..................................................................................................................................... xi chapter : introduction ................................................................................................................ . brief history of the problem........................................................................................... . rationale for study ......................................................................................................... . purpose of study ............................................................................................................. . theoretical foundations.................................................................................................. . methodological approach and methods ......................................................................... . research aims ................................................................................................................ . limitations ...................................................................................................................... . positionality of researcher ........................................................................................... . organisation of thesis .................................................................................................. chapter : literature review ..................................................................................................... . introduction ................................................................................................................... . theoretical framework: the book ............................................................................... . . scholarly approaches to book studies..................................................................... . . robert darnton: the communication circuit model ............................................... vii . . criticism of darnton's communication circuit model ............................................. . . a status object ......................................................................................................... . theoretical framework: the textbook ........................................................................ . . textbook cultures ..................................................................................................... . history textbook resaarch: how textbooks are used in the classroom settings....... . . a brief overview ...................................................................................................... . . categorisation and classification ............................................................................. . . a closer look: lisa faden and terry haydn ........................................................... . . textbooks as textual artefacts ................................................................................ . new materialism ........................................................................................................... . narrative ....................................................................................................................... . . bedfellows: narrative, accounts, and interpretations .............................................. . . epistemology to ontology ........................................................................................ . aesthetics ...................................................................................................................... . . aesthetic encounter .................................................................................................. . . aesthetic orientation ............................................................................................... . . aesthetic emobdiement ............................................................................................ chapter : theoretical foundations, methodological approach and methods .................... . introduction ................................................................................................................... . theoretical framework: a reception-based study ..................................................... . theoretical grounding .................................................................................................. . methodological approach ............................................................................................ viii . . the object ................................................................................................................ . . orientation ............................................................................................................... . methods......................................................................................................................... . . the object revisited ................................................................................................ . . book or textbook ..................................................................................................... . . classroom companion (a concept for chapter four) ............................................. . . sedimentation (a concept for chapter five) .......................................................... . . portraits (a concept for chapter six) ..................................................................... . . . the classroom as an (im)material assemblage ..................................................... . . . a portrait of a classroom .......................................................................................... chapter : classroom companion ............................................................................................. . introduction ................................................................................................................... . ekphrastic description .................................................................................................. . . bookishness ............................................................................................................. . . textbookishness ....................................................................................................... . the uncanniness of england under the tudors........................................................... . . cover ........................................................................................................................ . . pages ...................................................................................................................... . . . the teacher-reader ................................................................................................. . . . paper ........................................................................................................................... . . weight .................................................................................................................... . concluding thoughts .................................................................................................. chapter : sedimentation ......................................................................................................... ix . introduction ................................................................................................................. . ekphrastic description ................................................................................................ . . the leadership team ............................................................................................ . . the school buliding .............................................................................................. . lingering with cultural capital and neoliberalism.................................................... . . cultural capital ...................................................................................................... . . cultural markers ..................................................................................................... . . neoliberalism ......................................................................................................... . a return to the object ................................................................................................ . . on brand ................................................................................................................. . . obligation .............................................................................................................. . . appropriation ......................................................................................................... . conccluding thoughts ................................................................................................ chapter : portrait of a classroom .......................................................................................... . introduction ................................................................................................................. . ekphrastic description ................................................................................................ . stories in the story ...................................................................................................... . . thomas cromwell: an obligation.......................................................................... . . cardinal wolsey: an (im)material assemblage ..................................................... . . the pilgrimage of grace: a personal rebellion..................................................... . concluding thoughts .................................................................................................. chapter : epilogue ................................................................................................................... . history textooks ......................................................................................................... x . historical narratives ................................................................................................... . thinking further ......................................................................................................... bibliography ............................................................................................................................... xi acknowledgements i would like to thank my supervisor dr. penney clark for her unwavering support and guidance for the two years i have been studying for my ma. i would like to thank dr. dónal o’donoghue for introducing me to aesthetics and showing me another way to think about history, teaching, and education. i would like to thank dr. lindsay gibson for his robust and supportive reading of my thesis and subsequent conversations that furthered my thinking. i would like to thank all the teachers who taught me while i studied at ubc (dr. jillianne code, dr. susan gerofsky, dr. rita irwin, dr. lisa loutzenheiser, dr. anne phelan, dr. kerry renwick) i would like to thank my fellow ma students in the department of curriculum and pedagogy, especially caitlin who sat next to me every day and shared my ma journey. xii dedication for my a-level students. chapter : introduction . brief history of the problem despite a wealth of research looking at history textbooks and historical narratives, lisa faden thinks, in general, “the interaction between history teachers and textbooks is largely unstudied” leaving a gap in the research. according to echardt fuchs and kathrin henne, “there is increasing interest in the way in which textbooks are employed in the classroom. jordan reed would welcome this new interest as he thinks that “reception histories are essential to the future scholarship of the textbook.” these types of studies should, according to reed, look into how the “content, narrative, and myth [of textbooks] was read, digested, and absorbed.” peter seixas says history education scholarship has, like textbook research, traditionally focused its attention on epistemological conceptualisations of narrative and concerned itself with how students “analyse, evaluate, and construct narratives about the past” (whereas textbook research has centred around epistemological narratives already constructed and presented in textbooks.) there is, however, an alternative, yet connected, body of work in history education, from scholars such as jörn rüsen, on historical consciousness. this looks at “the relationship lisa y. faden, “history teachers imagining the nation: world war ii narratives in the united states and canada,” in (re)constructing memory: school textbooks and the imagination of the nation, ed. j.h. williams (rotterdam: sensepublishers, ), . eckhardt fuchs and kathrin henne, “history of textbook research,” in the palgrave handbook of textbook studies, ed. eckhardt fuchs and annekatrin bocks (lonson: palgrave, ), . jordan m. reed, “the history of the textbook: the state of the discipline,” book history ( ): . reed, “the history of the textbook,” . seixas, peter, "teaching rival histories: in search of narrative plausibility," in international perspectives on teaching rival histories: pedagogical responses to contested narratives and the history wars, ed. henrik astrom elmersjo, anna clark, and monika vinterek (london: palgrave macmillan, ), . between the knower and the known” which offers an ontological dimension to historical narratives in the history classroom where “the focus…is less on thinking and knowing, and more on experiencing and being.” seixas thinks that the “ontological dimension of narrative competence is potentially a conceptualization for a more expansive and ambitious history education.” he makes no mention of whether this ontological dimension could spread to, or include, considerations of textbooks, but makes no claims that suggest it would not. an additional prerequisite of much of the research looking at textbooks and narrative is that the textbook is usually defined in its conventional manner as “a tool designed for students to learn, be taught, or work from.” there is, however, a shift towards an interest in “productivity and performativity” of textbooks as “(im)material assemblages” that “attends less to the content of the textbook and more to the mediality of textbooks” (emphasis author’s own) representing a turn toward the material in textbook research. . rationale for the study the rationale for this study is to respond to the aforementioned shifts or gaps in research about history textbooks and historical narratives. it is an in-depth exploration of my own relationship with a specific history textbook, g.r. elton’s england under the tudors, and the seixas, peter, “a model of historical thinking,” educational philosophy and theory, ( ), ( ): . seixas, “teaching rival histories,” . seixas, “teaching rival histories,” . fuchs and henne, “history of textbook research,” . felicitas macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” in the palgrave handbook of textbook studies, ed. eckhardt fuchs and annekatrin bocks (london: palgrave, ), . role this played on the historical narrative that was taught about the reign of henry viii to a- level students. . purpose of study manuel kõster, holger thünemann and meik zülsdorf-kersting suggest that when lessons are recorded the observations tend to overlook the “complexity of the classroom.” the purpose of this research is to adopt an orientation, theoretical framing, and methodology that will confront the complexity of my history classroom and seek to “untangle the myriad psychological and communicative” as well as material events that shaped the historical narrative constructed, taught, and learnt there. this study will do this by turning faden’s assertion that “the teacher chooses how and to what extent [a] textbook is utilized by students” on its head and instead ask to what extent the teacher is utilized, or conditioned, by the textbook. the textbook will be considered as a “holistic material” and “complex pedagogical” artefact made up of “lively” and “vibrant” matter, rather than a mute “classroom tool.” importantly, by shifting the gaze a-levels (advanced level general certificate of education (gce)) are externally marked public examinations taken by year ( -year old) students. they are the higher of the two main standardized form of examination (the lower being general certificate of education (gcse)) in england and wales. manuel kõster, holger thünemann, and meik zülsdorf-kersting, "introduction" in researching history eductation, ed. manuel kõster, holger thünemann, and meik zülsdorf-kersting, nd ed. (frankfurt: wochenschau verlag, ), . kõster, thünemann, and zülsdorf-kersting, "introduction," . faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . reed, “the history of the textbook,” john issit quoted in reed, “the history of the textbook,” . see karen barad, meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning (durham: duke university press, ). see jane bennett, vibrant matter: a political ecology of things (durham: duke university press, ). martin lawn, “designing teaching: the classroom as a technology,” in silences and images: the social history of the classroom eds. ian grosvenor, martin lawn and kate rousmaniere, (new york: peter lang, ), , from the teacher to the textbook is not presumed to be “already there” but emergent “through specific practices.” as well as shifting attention to the textbook this study responds to peter seixas’ query that perhaps “narrative has not only an epistemological but also an ontological dimension” in the history classroom and leans toward an understanding of myself, the teacher, and my students as “historical beings” who are “in history as we are in the world.” these arguably unconventional framings of both the history textbook and historical narrative (in classroom settings) are adopted to illuminate the unique relationship of the textbook, teacher, and historical narrative in any given history classroom through a close reflection on my own classroom and teaching practice. . theoretical foundations thomas r. adams and nicholas barker developed a model with five stages to study book culture and history. this was part of an extended conversation amongst book historians and bibliographers that provides a useful framework for this research this particular study sits in the fifth stage of the model: reception. the specific focus is on the reception of the textbook in the classroom meaning the research can be classified as textbook research. fuchs and hennes state that “textbook research is a broad and multidisciplinary field” with “neither a distinct theory nor barad, meeting the universe halfway, . seixas, "teaching rival histories," . david carr quoted by seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . thomas r. adams and nicholas barker, “a new model for the study of the book,” in a potencie of life: books in society, ed. nicholas barker, (london: british library, ). the five stages were: publication, manufacture, distribution, reception, survival. a specific arsenal of methods.” instead, it uses “approaches from the humanities and from cultural and social studies most appropriate to the issue in question.” for this reason they believe a more appropriate term is “text-book orientated research,” rather than just textbook research. my research is textbook-orientated and is concerned with the impact the textbook had on my teaching. it is therefore, according to peter weinbrenner, an “impact-oriented” textbook study. the term orientation is important as how i am choosing to orientate toward the book underpins the methodological approach (to be discussed in the “methods” section of this chapter). to provide a theoretical grounding that allows concerns regarding epistemology, ontology, and materiality to be thought about horizontally and concurrently, rather than hierarchically and linearly, this research moves with karen barad’s new materialist philosophy, agential realism. barad, a seminal scholar in the field of new materialism who traverses theoretical physics and feminist theory, states that “the new philosophical framework that i propose [agential realism] entails a rethinking of fundamental concepts that support…binary thinking, including the notions of matter, discourse, causality, agency, power, identity, embodiment, objectivity, space and time.” agential realism is an “epistemological- ontological-ethical framework that provides an understanding of the role of the human and nonhuman, material and discursive, and natural and cultural factors.” this grounding provides fuchs and henne, “history of textbook research,” . fuchs and henne, “history of textbook research,” . fuchs and henne, “history of textbook research,” . peter weinbrenner, “methodologies of textbook analysis used to date,” in eds. h. bourdillon history and social studies – methodologies of textbook analysis, (amsterdam: swets and zeitlinger, ), . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . a means to think about epistemological and ontological narratives together as well as provide nuanced theorisations about matter, agency, and performativity that underpin the idea of the textbook as a lively object. . methodological approach and methods the orientation of the researcher, methodological approach, and methods will be informed by art-led research and aesthetics. art-led research has the “capacity to reveal and represent the world in ways that other forms of inquiry and knowledge do not” meaning there will be an “openness to the world” and a “willingness to engage in seeing, interpreting and representing the world in ways that move beyond conventional ways.” dónal o’donoghue suggests that “to orientate oneself to the world aesthetically is to invite the world to show up in ways that it might not otherwise.” this orientation complements the theoretical offerings of barad’s agential realism by providing a means to explore emergent themes that present themselves in the writing organically and also provides an opportunity to engage with the complexity of the classroom in a different way to that which we are used to. the text of this study, the written thesis, will be presented in aesthetic form. this is in keeping with art-led research “as a way of doing scholarly work through the study of aesthetics, art theory, and artist’s writing” and the “production of research-based visual material.” the written thesis will be offered in place of visual material. each of three main research chapters dónal o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools. art-led understandings of masculinities (new york: routledge, ), . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . (chapters four, five, and six, to be expanded upon in the “organisation of thesis” section of this chapter) will hinge around an ekphrastic description and then linger with emergent themes to see what they say about the textbook and the onto-epistem-ological historical narrative. ekphrastic writing is traditionally an “account in words of a visual experience” or a work of art. the ekphrastic descriptions will be written accounts of material experiences drawing on ludmilla jordanova’s guidance about writing descriptions. the intention of ekphrastic writing is to “provoke vivid emotions” in the reader. inspired by peter de bolla’s “poetics of wonderment” and elliot eisner’s “aesthetic modes of knowing” the writing has both an aesthetic orientation and form that, as kathleen stewart proposes, loosens formal narrative binds” and aims, like sarah lawrence-lightfoot to “paint with words.” . research aims different aspects of the textbook need to be considered to provide a holistic understanding of the england under the tudors and the effect it had on the onto-epistem- ological historical narrative. first, the physical attributes of the textbook will be explored; its materiality and mediality. building on this, the second attribute in some ways goes backward to bill brown, other things (london: university of chicago press, ), . see ludmilla jordanova, the look of the past: visual and material evidence in historical practice (cambridge: cambridge university press, ). jordanova, the look of the past, . peter de bolla, art matters, (cambridge ma: harvard university press, ), . elliot eisner, “aesthetic modes of knowing,” in learning and teaching: the ways of knowing, (chicago: university of chicago press, ), . kathleen stewart, “atmospheric attunements,” environment and planning d: society and space , no. ( ): . sara lawrence-lightfoot, “reflections on portraiture: a dialogue between art and science,” qualitative inquiry , no. ( ): . go forward and considers the context in which the textbook was used and its conditions of arrival in the classroom; what jordanova refers to as the life history of the artefact. finally, the textbook’s role in shaping the onto-epistem-ological historical narrative created in the classroom needs to be considered. the specific research questions will therefore be: . what are the material qualities of england under the tudors as a textual artefact? . what were the conditions of arrival, and conditions of use, of england under the tudors in the classroom? . how did england under the tudors shape the historical narrative that was taught about henry viii? . limitations there are a number of what could be termed limitations to this study. some of these are not necessarily limiting but are observations worthy of note that point to the type of study this is and what this means for the conclusions it comes to about textbooks and historical narratives as well as other aspects of schooling and education. as this study uses an art-led methodology “it is important to…acknowledge that art…is inherently experimental, unpredictable, un-knowable, non-compliant and elusive”; meaning art rarely ever means “one thing or another once and for all.” aesthetic encounters are, according to de bolla, “tied up with their radical singularity” (emphasis author’s own) meaning this jordanova, the look of the past, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . description of an aesthetic response to elton’s england under the tudors is unique to the particular settings it was used in. moreover, because this thesis is written with aesthetic intentions the ekphrastic descriptions may (and hopefully will) provoke different responses in different readers. the emergent themes that are contemplated are just some of the emergent themes taken up by the researcher and do not represent all, or necessarily the most important, ideas, merely the ones that stood out to me, the teacher and researcher, as significant as i wrote about my experiences with england under the tudors. within the body of research that looks at textbooks this study is, as one particular experience from one teacher’s perspective, something tony taylor and stuart macintyre might define as a “micro-study” which is “useful anecdotally” but not in other ways. for taylor and macintyre this type of study “only offer[s], at best, vivid but isolated and often atypical findings.” the idea that a vivid study of an isolated classroom experience is atypical, and therefore less useful than other studies that are typical and offer insight on “a pattern of relationships” , is in conflict with both the radical singularity of aesthetics and barad’s agential realist philosophy which stresses how objects emerge through, and in, practice, meaning all experiences should, perhaps, be approached as isolated and unique rather than part of an over- arching pattern. however, as the study’s theoretical framing is that it is a textbook-oriented research it is worth noting that within the wider field of textbook research it may be considered in the way taylor and macintyre outline. de bolla, art matters, . tony taylor and stuart macintyre, “cultural wars and history textbooks in democratic societies,” in palgrave handbook of research in historical culture and education, ed. mario carretero, stefan berger, and maria grever, st ed. (london: palgrave macmillan limited, ), . taylor and macintyre, “cultural wars and history textbooks in democratic societies,” . taylor and macintyre, “cultural wars and history textbooks in democratic societies,” . a major critique of new materialist work is that it neglects issues such as race and gender, therefore, “the challenge for textbooks studies is to attend to the material dimension without losing sight of the textbook as a socio-political product and politicum of its time.” rooting this study in adams and barker’s theoretical book publishing model means england under the tudors will be considered in terms of the socio-political context of the book as an object but also the socio-political context framing the teacher’s reception and use of the book. however, neither race nor gender, as well as other pertinent issues such as class, are specifically critiqued or analysed as part of the study. any reference to race, gender, or class, or other issues such as these, will be in the context of how they emerge in and through the material textbook practice. a final observation comes from stewart’s ideas about what she calls “atmospheric attunements.” stewart suggests that her descriptions of the “charged atmosphere of everyday life” require the analyst to discover “her object of analysis by writing out of its inhabited elements in a space and time.” in this way stewart thinks atmospheric attunements are a process similar to heidegger’s worlding. worlding is the process of dwelling with spaces that “bear, gesture, [and] gestate” with “qualities, rhythms, forces, relations, and movements.” the writing style of this thesis is in part influenced by stewart and therefore the idea of atmospheric attunements and worlding is worth noting. this is not a limitation of the study but a point of observation regarding its style and theory. macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . stewart, “atmospheric attunements,” . martin heidegger quoted by stewart, “atmospheric attunements,” . to bring to life the rhythms, gestures, and movements of the material experiences discussed in the ekphrastic descriptions the style of writing will depart from the formality expected of academic writing, in keeping with its aesthetic form, to try to capture the essence of what is being said both through the description and stylistically. in terms of the theory, stewart, drawing on nancy rose, thinks this style of writing tries to “pull academic attunements into tricky alignment” as a way of becoming sentient to “ways of being in noise and light and space.” it is the “tricky alignment” that is germane for this thesis as some of the theory and theorists used to further thought about the emergent themes of the ekphrastic description are in what could be described as tricky alignment with the new materialist foundations of the study. this is in large part owing to the humanist orientation of the majority of the theorists used. the intention is not to attempt to create a harmony that does not exist amongst different theorists. instead, reference and use of theory is part of the organic thinking and writing process that ultimately seeks to convey the emergent themes of the ekphrastic description in a rich and considered nuanced manner. . positionality of the researcher i approach this study as a white, upper-middle-class, english woman born in the uk who has only experienced schooling and teaching from an english perspective, with much of my own experience as a school student taking place in independent schools. my time studying in canada has offered me some distance from the english education system, but as my research reflects on stewart, “atmospheric attunements,” . nancy rose quoted by stewart, “atmospheric attunements,” . a time before i had come to canada, the teaching practice that i will reflect upon is firmly rooted in the english context. i taught for four years in an inner-city , state-funded, comprehensive school in west london comprised of students of mixed-ability, multiple ethnicities, wide-ranging first languages, and varying socio-economic backgrounds. i also approach this study as a history teacher whose academic training prior to this ma in curriculum studies has been almost exclusively in history and history education. my ma studies have led to what david turnbull refers to in his spatial thesis as a “decentering” which is the recognition “that there are other ways of knowing the world in addition to our own eurocentric and egocentric ones.” this shift in thinking regarding western knowledge and knowledge in general was triggered by an introduction to, and exploration of, the clash in the canadian history classroom between indigenous historical consciousness and western historical consciousness. although this clash of historical consciousness is not the focus of this study the the school can be classed as an inner-city owing first to its location in central london rather than outer london. prior to the current head taking over the school it was known as troubled of “failing” school with poor exam results, a difficult student body with challenging behaviour, crime and drug issues, and a generally bad reputation in the local community and further afield. while i taught at the school the middle classes were aggressively recruited, but the catchment area of the school still included a variety of neighbourhoods that fell in line with the common usage of the term inner-city (low socio-economic areas, high crime rates, high levels of social housing etc). david turnbull, “reframing science and other local traditions,” in futures, ( ), ( ): . turnbull’s spatial thesis indicates that for knowledge to be created there are some essential requirements: people, skills, local knowledge and equipment, social strategies and technical devices. utilized together in a knowledge space these different elements create knowledge. the most important thing knowledge needs in order to be perceived as truth-like in a specific locality is trust: the community needs to trust the knowledge creators. this allows for the standardization and homogenization of knowledge in specific knowledge spaces leading to representational knowledge being the truth. knowledge is therefore always performative as a social activity or “performance” in a local space creating knowledge. knowledge is also representational as it is represented in a local space as (objective) fact adhered to by a community because of their trust in the knowledge producers. when he talks of decentering, he is referring to “mainstream, orthodox historians and sociologists” of western science but it is not something that is exclusive to field of science or history of science. see michael marker, “teaching history from an indigenous perspective: four winding paths up the mountain,” in new possibilities for the past: shaping history education in canada, ed. p. clark role it played as the catalyst for my personal process of “decentering” is significant because it was because of this process that i began to question the epistemological claims history makes and gravitate toward art-led research and theorists who allow me to orient toward and consider my teaching practice from a different perspective. . organisation of thesis the thesis is organised as follows: chapter : introduction chapter : literature review chapter : theoretical foundations, methodology and methods chapter : classroom companion chapter : sedimentation chapter : portrait of a classroom chapter : epilogue the second chapter, the literature review, is separated into two parts. the first part focuses on the theoretical framing of the study as textbook-orientated research that uses adams and barkers’ theoretical book publishing model. it looks at a range of literature starting with ideas from book history, bibliography, and literary theory regarding definitions of the book. it then considers various ways textbooks have been defined and different textbook cultures. it finishes by looking at textbook-oriented research about history textbooks and their impact in the (vancouver, bc: ubc press, ) for a detailed exploration of indigenous historical consciousness that elaborates on the importance of locality within indigenous epistemologies and the issues in traditionally “western” history classrooms. classroom with a specific focus on the emerging literature in this particular field connected to textbooks’ materiality and mediality. the second section explores literature related to three important theories that underpin the study: new materialism, narrative, and aesthetics. the third chapter looks at the theoretical foundations, methodological approach, and methods in turn. the theoretical foundations are split into the theoretical framework, which focuses on how the study is situated in adams and barkers’ model, and the theoretical grounding, which clarifies the study’s new materialist intentions. the methodological approach is in two parts looking first at how the object, england under the tudor, is conceptualised and second the orientation of the research and the researcher. the last part of this chapter looking at the methods outlines how each of the research questions will be responded to in chapters four, five, and six and explains the theoretical background of each of the concepts (classroom companion; sedimentation; portrait of a classroom) for each chapter and how the concepts will inform the ekphrastic description and subsequent discussion on emergent themes. the fourth chapter attends to the first research question and considers the materiality of england under the tudors. the fifth chapter attends to the second research question and looks at the life history of the artefact and how this conditioned the object’s arrival and use in the classroom. the sixth chapter examines the onto-epistem-ological historical narrative created in the classroom. all three of these chapters will start with an introduction that briefly summarises the concept for that chapter. there will then be the ekphrastic description followed by discussion of the emergent themes. although aspects of the onto-epistem-ological historical narrative may be touched upon in chapters four and five this will be fully explored in chapter six. this final research chapter is therefore informed by the previous two. consequently, the research and writing process is accumulative and this final chapter, in some ways, concludes or synthesises the research and writing process. it is for this reason that the seventh and final chapter is titled “epilogue” so as to avoid concluding the research in the same way twice. the seventh, and final chapter, will instead draw the study to a close by offering some final comments on history textbooks and historical narratives in a wider sense. chapter : literature review . introduction this literature review first considers the textbook and how, as an object, it will be theoretically framed in this study. the textbook is a specific type of book with a specific style. books show up to different audiences and different theorists in different ways. this literature review is going to touch upon a number of different definitions of the book to come to a conclusion about some qualities, or attributes, of the book that are pertinent to this study of a textbook, but will bear in mind that the book is what leslie howsam calls “a shape-shifter,” and therefore shifts between multiple definitions. after spending some time considering how the book has been defined in various fields, a discussion leading to a similar fluid definition of the textbook will be made. this study hopes to illustrate that the textbook, like the book, is also a shape-shifter that is moulded by its conditions of use. its position as a pedagogical tool means there are a number of rigid definitions that need to be discussed. the conditions of use of any textbook are linked to the textbook culture they exist in so there will be a concise overview of textbook cultures in order to situate england under the tudors accordingly. the next section is a review of history textbook research focusing on studies related to how textbooks are used in the classroom. the last part of this section of the review will consider the emerging literature that looks at textbooks as material artefacts and considers their mediality and materiality. leslie howsam, old books and new histories: an orientation to studies in book and print culture (toronto, buffalo, london: university of toronto press, ), . having situated the research in relevant literature pertaining to books, textbooks, and history textbook research the final section of the review will consider bodies of literature related to three central concepts that inform the study. first, there will be focus on the new materialist theories from which this work draws, specifically the work of karen barad and her theories of agential realism, but also work that considers objects as lively matter. next, there will be a review of literature from history, the philosophy of history, and history education that will consider the role of narrative in history and history education. this will look at both ontological and epistemological definitions and theories of narrative. at the end of this section epistemological and ontological ideas about narrative will be thought of alongside barad’s work to offer a working framework for how narrative is being explored in this new materialist study. the final section focuses on aesthetics, aesthetic orientation and aesthetic embodiment that informs the methodological approach of the research. . theoretical framework: the book amaranth borsuk rightly asserts: “the book would, at first glance, seem to be an object about which we all possess essential knowledge.” however, despite our familiarity with the book, it is “never simply a remarkable object” (emphasis author’s own). it is “the product of human agency” and “simultaneously a written text, a material object, and a cultural transaction” meaning “the thing we picture when someone says “book” is an idea as much as amaranth borsuk, the book (cambridge, ma.: the mit press, ), ix. borsuk, the book, . borsuk, the book, . howsam, old books and new histories, vii. an object” (emphasis author’s own). it is worth clarifying, as leslie howsam does, that, generally speaking, this book, about which we possess knowledge, is “the western book, and, with a few exceptions, the modern printed book.” although “every book has a history of its own” and each individual book is a distinct and individual object, borsuk believes we “no longer sense the hand of the scribe or craftsman when we pick up a mass market paperback” and nor do we notice the book as an object unless there is a mistake, for example a missing page. given the illusive nature of the book, despite ostensibly being one of the most recognizable human-crafted objects, the book is not easily definable. this study of elton’s england under the tudors will view the book as a written text, a material object, and a cultural transaction but it will elevate the definition of material object above the other two. consideration of the book as written text and as cultural transaction will be done so alongside its materiality. the book, as borsuk points out, is always going to be an idea and an object, but by lingering in a determined manner with the physicality of the object there are avenues of thought to explore that conceptualize the book as an idea from a materialist perspective. . . scholarly approaches to book studies howsam outlines three scholarly approaches to studies looking at the history of the book and/or the history of print culture: literary studies, bibliography, and history, each of which defines the book differently. the primary focus of cultural history is agency, power and borsuk, the book, . howsam, old books and new histories, viii. howsam, old books and new histories, viii. borsuk, the book, . howsam, old books and new histories, vii. experience meaning the history of books, or book history, is concerned with the power and/or agency of a particular book, perhaps focusing on the author, and the experiences of those who read books. literary studies, or literature, is a process of “reading literary texts and learning the skills of criticism.” texts “in the abstract cannot be separated from the material forms in which they appear,” meaning the book as an object has a place in literary studies, but it is the book as a “work”, the text or written content of the book, that is key. bibliography is the discipline “whose concern is with the book as a material object” and it appreciates that “virtually every copy of every early printed book is unique.” the book as a physical object or document is the primary focus and “the social context in which it emerges drops to the background.” these three fields of study do not operate in a hierarchy. instead, if each field of study represents one of the three points of a triangle (as howsam illustrates in a diagram) then the “triangle is susceptible to rotation; it is a matter of perception, not of primacy or superiority.” the three disciplines conceptualize and define the book differently, and as there is no hierarchy amongst them, there is no single clear definition of the book. it is not only their definitions of the book that are not the same, but also how they frame the book, meaning what it does is also different. bibliographers orient toward a (material) object, literary studies theorists orient toward a (literary) text and historians consider a (cultural) transaction and orient toward the conditions for such a transaction. the book, therefore, and as previously mentioned, is a judith walkowitch quoted in howsam, old books and new histories, . howsam, old books and new histories, . howsam, old books and new histories, . howsam, old books and new histories, . howsam, old books and new histories, . howsam, old books and new histories, . howsam, old books and new histories, . “shape-shifter” with a “vast scope and blurred boundaries” that defies a one-size-fits-all definition. significantly for this study the physicality of the object does play a role in each field which the following discussion will now seek to uncover. . . robert darnton: the communication circuit model given these three differing conceptualizations of the book, and the range of perceptions when approaching any studies centering on the book, robert darnton attempted to create “some distance from interdisciplinarity run riot” in his seminal essay, “what is the history of books?” where he proposed a “model of a circuit of communication in order to circumvent this clamour.” darnton did this in full knowledge that “books…refuse to be contained within the confines of a single discipline when treated as objects of study” but thought it “might be useful to propose a general model for analysing the way books come into being and spread through society.” reflecting on his original essay darnton says that “it seemed to me in that the history of books was suffering from fissiparousness” meaning different fields were “losing contact with one another.” interdisciplinarity run riot was, for darnton, a problem as it led to “fragmentation and specialization” that isolated the different theories, and theorists, from each howsam, old books and new histories, x. robert darnton, “what is the history of books?,” in the kiss of lamourette: reflections in cultural history, st ed. (new york: nornton, ), , darnton, “what is the history of books?” - . howsam, old books and new histories, . darnton, what is the history of books?,” . darnton, “what is the history of books?,” . robert darnton, “‘what is the history of books?’ revisited,” modern intellectual history , no. ( ): . other. darnton’s mission was to counter this fragmentation and show how “esoteric elements of book history” could connect “as a whole”: darnton’s mission was a unifying one. he considered his model of circuit communication “a general model for analysing the ways books come into being and spread through society.” this model was a “conceptual strategy for bringing specialized knowledge together and for envisioning the field as a whole.” his original strategy was intended to cover book publishing from to and had six stages: author; publisher; printers; shippers; bookseller; readers. he was “primarily concerned with demonstrating how ideas, embodied in printed texts, circulate in a given society, from author to publisher and printer (and others in the book trades), to bookseller and other distributors, and on to the reader, whose influence on the author serves to ‘complete the circuit.’” darnton’s model is about communication and relationships; the relationships of the different people involved in the book trade. this means that for darnton the book “is as much an abstraction standing for those mediated relationships as it is a physical artefact.” darnton’s attempt to provide coherence across a number of disciplines is significant largely because of its impact. “a great deal of work done in the last twenty years has been inspired by darnton’s thinking,” but as the definition and conceptualization of the book in a way remained quite fluid, gravitating more toward an historical definition (being that darnton is a cultural historian), much of the work that was inspired by darnton “has taken the form of darnton, “what is the history of books?’ revisited,” . darnton, “what is the history of books?’ revisited,” . darnton, “what is the history of books?”, . darnton, “'what is the history of books?' revisited,” . darnton, “'what is the history of books?' revisited,” . darnton, “what is the history of books?”, . howsam, old books and new histories, . resistance to the idea of the book as a circuit of communication.” darnton’s attempt at synthesis was significant in that it inspired works that shared his desire for coherence but also strident disapproval from theorists who were more than happy with the riot of interdisciplinarity and the nuances this afforded. . . criticisms of darnton’s communication circuit model revising his work in a subsequent essay written in “‘what is the history of books?’ revisited”, darnton maintains that there are three main questions to ask which underpinned his original essay: how do books come into being? how do they reach readers? what do readers make of them? christoph bläsi states that darnton’s model addressing these three queries has gone “essentially unchallenged” as the notion of book publishing being “universal in its essentials, over time and across cultures” has remained. however, this is clearly not the case as darnton himself considered it necessary to revise his own work and respond to criticism levelled at his model. criticism comes from all three scholarly approaches. peter d. mcdonald offers a critique from a literary studies perspective. mcdonald considers darnton’s model to be “simple and idealized” and fundamentally “a way of re-thinking and re-writing non-book history.” drawing on pierre bourdieu’s cultural theory, mcdonald suggests that darnton’s model “itself describes only part of another, larger whole.” for howsam, old books and new histories, . darnton, “'what is the history of books?' revisited,” . christoph bläsi, "educational publishers and educational publishing", in the palgrave handbook of textbook studies eds. eckhardt fuchs and annekatrin bocks, (london, palgrave: ), , https://doi.org/ . / - - - - . peter d. mcdonald, “implicit structures and explicit interactions: pierre bourdieu and the history of the book,” the library xix, no. , . mcdonald, “implicit structures and explicit interactions”, . bourdieu, the literary field is “a social ‘microcosm that has its own ‘structure’ and its own ‘laws’” these laws mean that there is a complexity to a literary culture that darnton’s model does not account for. bourdieu considers the complexity of literary culture to be connected to the literary field. for him, the literary field is “a field of forces” but also “a field of struggles” that tend to “transform or conserve the field of forces.” if the literary field is one of struggle and power relations this means the individuals operating within the field exist in a hierarchy or power dynamic. darnton’s conceptualization of the author and publisher is “of individualized, atomized” persons, however, mcdonald, drawing on bourdieu’s ideas regarding the literary field as one of struggle, suggests there are two competing groups or types of author and publisher in his particular area of research (the victorian literary text), the “purists” and the “profiteers.” this is an important distinction because the “literary culture of a particular society compromises a complex ranking of structurally interrelated communications circuits.” darnton’s model confines the book to the “narrow book world” but mcdonald’s research illustrates that victorian “writers and publishers of belles lettres and of other works for the discerning education reader (of literary art for art’s sake) disdained the work coming from commercially orientated individuals,” meaning the purists derided the profiteers because of their commercial intentions and their (presumed) lack of intellectual interest. factors from outside the narrow book world had an effect. each literary field is defined by differing conditions meaning darnton’s circuit of pierre bourdieu, the field of cultural production, - quoted by peter. d. mcdonald, “a critique from literary studies ( )” in british literary culture and publishing practice - , . pierre bourdieu, “the field of cultural production, or: the economic world reversed,” poetics , no. – ( ): . mcdonald quoted by howsam, old books and new histories, . mcdonald, “implicit structures and explicit interactions”, . mcdonald, “implicit structures and explicit interactions”, . mcdonald quoted by howsam, old books and new histories, . communication model is not fit for purpose in that it presumes a universality of conditions and experiences in the literary field that does not exist. james a. secord offers a critique as an historian in the histories of the book and of science. for secord, the idea that reading is a “profoundly private experience” is misleading as it is better understood “as comprehending all the diverse ways that books and other forms of printed worlds are appropriated and used.” if reading is understood in this way, then there should be more focus on “how books work outside the book trade in which they are made.” if the role of the book and how it works outside the book trade is considered then book history, as the study of authorship, reading, and publishing is disrupted. “by declining to give primacy to any of the three elements of the communication circuit second’s analysis transcends them all” meaning “it is contextual in the fullest sense of the word.” when revisiting his original model in , darnton chose to structure his defense around the critique offered by thomas r. adams & nicolas barker in “a new model for the study of the book” published in a potience of life: books in society. as bibliographers, adams and barker want to protect or enhance the status of bibliography. they draw attention to a “statement on the history of the book” drafted at an international conference in which refers to “all aspects of the history of production, publication and distribution, from the stage of see james. a. secord, victorian sensation: the extraordinary publication, reception, and secret authorship of ‘vestiges of the natural history of creation.’ (chicago, university of chicago press, ). james a. secord quoted by howsam, old books and new histories, . james a. secord quoted by howsam, old books and new histories, . james a. secord quoted by howsam, old books and new histories, . thomas r. adams and nicholas barker, “a new model for the study of the book,” in a potencie of life: books in society, ed. nicholas barker, (london: british library, ). authorship on through to the impact of books on readers and, ultimately, on society.” the word “ultimately” is problematic for adams and barker as it suggests that “bibliography again becomes ancillary to social history…a ‘handmaiden’ to another discipline.” this mirrors another bibliographer’s concerns, g. thomas tanselle, who criticised darnton for distinguishing between bibliography and history as “bibliography is a fully-fledged branch of history itself.” adams and barker’s model reduced the number of stages to five: publication, manufacture, distribution, reception, survival. darnton comments on the differences between the two models, noting there is a shift from the people who made the books (this would include the author) to the book itself. darnton concludes that “they [adams and barker] see my emphasis on people as a symptom of my general approach, one that derives from social history rather than bibliography” but defends this position as he considers studying the activities of book people to be “essential in order to understand the history of books” because, in the end, a book is a physical object whose creation is determined by decisions made by people. according to howsam, whereas darnton’s model is a metaphor of an electrical circuit which is closed, adams and barker regard their model as a map. this is significant because despite a circuit being more dynamic than a map, which is static, adams and barker uncover a “serious weakness of darnton’s model”: in darnton’s model “the book self-destructs when it has served its purpose of communicating between reader and author.” the issue of why and how books survive is not taken into consideration as the impetus is why people create and make adams and barker, “a new model for the study of the book,” . adams and barker, “a new model for the study of the book,” . g. thomas tanselle quoted by howsam, old books and new histories, . darnton, “'what is the history of books?' revisited,” . darnton, “'what is the history of books?' revisted,” . howsam, old books and new histories, . books, not preserve them. all book purchasers are considered equal in darnton’s model, but a collector who wants to preserve is not really the same as the average purchaser who will consume the book and then, perhaps, discard it. this in itself presumes an average purchaser cannot transition to become a collector during the process of reading, or using, the book. it also, to an extent, presumes consumers are the only ones who read books and readers are the only people affected by books, which is not necessarily true. books linger, materially as objects and immaterially in the minds and lives of readers and/or receivers, in many ways. susan houstan states that “the forces influencing the survival of printed material are crucial in determining a later generation’s perceptions” which highlights the benefits of the bibliographer’s model as it “allows for the tenacity of books.” . . a status object despite darnton’s best efforts to escape the interdisciplinarity issues they remain ever present; the book is still shape-shifting. however, critique of darnton’s circuit from different scholarly fields does offer an important area of overlap that is significant for this study. howsam thinks adams and barker expect too much of historians as they “put objects at the centre of inquiry”, in other words, the book as a material object not literary text or cultural transaction is the focus. emphasizing the object gives the object a certain status of importance. it is the book as a material artefact that has this status. mcdonald’s critique also exposes the status of the material artefact in a different way. as publishers can be either “purists” or “profiteers” they susan houstan quoted in howsam, old books and new histories, . howsam, old books and new histories, . howsam, old books and new histories, . themselves have different statuses within the book trade circuit. darnton’s model only conceives of their horizontal position within the circuit but mcdonald considers their vertical status in an “intricately structed field.” this means the publishers “not only issue books, they invest them with prestige.” publishers invest the physical artefacts with a certain prestige, a certain status. there is no reason that this idea of people investing books with prestige should be limited to just publishers. authors, readers, booksellers, and even people who merely look at a book and never read it all judge books and invest them with prestige. the world is constantly judging books, by their covers and their contents, despite being warned against it. secord approaches this issue of status from a different direction. as his analysis of the communication circuit affords no hierarchy to author, publisher, or reader he is concerned with how books work as objects, “how they exercise their power.” the book’s status from this perspective is connected to how it exerts its power from a socio-cultural perspective but its power is not attributed to any one human or group of humans. this is significant, considering it comes from an historian, as “human agency is central to historians’ characterization of the book as a force in history.” returning once again to the book as a material object, written text, and cultural transmission the elevation of the material object comes slightly more into focus after exploring these different ways that books come into being in different disciplines. this study is interested in the status and prestige afforded to the material object as a result of the written text and mcdonald, “implicit structures and explicit interactions”, . mcdonald, “implicit structures and explicit interactions”, . howsam, old books and new histories, . howsam, old books and new histories, . cultural transaction. having accepted the possibility of material status and prestige this study is also concerned with how this allowed the material object to have agency and exercise its power. . theoretical framework: the textbook discussing the definitions of the textbook after discussing definitions or attributes of the book suggests, implicitly, that perhaps this research views the textbook as just a subset of the book, meaning its “bookishness” is more important than its “textbookishness”. this is not the case. bourdieu points out that within the specific genre of the novel there are sub-categories eg. “the “society novel;” the “popular novel,” and each of these sub-categories is “defined by the system of distinctive properties by which it can be situated relative to other positions.” the textbook is a subset, or genre, of the book and the history textbook is a sub-category of this genre. as bourdieu explains (albeit not referencing textbooks explicitly), the very fact that genres have sub-categories, that the history textbook (in this specific case) is a sub-category of the textbook, has an effect on the “structure of the field i.e. the space of positions” and is important to recognize. it is therefore important to explore definitions of the textbook as separate, yet equal, to discussions and definitions of the book that have already taken place. chris stray describes textbooks as books “designed to provide an authoritative pedagogic version of an area of knowledge.” the word textbook does not actually appear until the nineteenth century; stray says the earliest example he found was textbook for young letter- bourdieu, “the field of cultural production,” . bourdieu, “the field of cultural production,” . chris stray, “paradigms regained: towards a historical sociology of the textbook,” journal of curriculum studies , no, ( ): . writers in . textbooks did exist before this, but were text books, and usually denoted the text that was used for instruction (predominantly latin or greek). the concept of the textbook shifted from text book to textbook over the course of the nineteenth century and went from “describing a book used in schools (among other places) to an educational medium produced explicitly for school education.” fuchs and hennes describe the textbook as “conventionally a tool designed for students or pupils to learn, to be taught, or work from.” textbooks combine “teaching, learning and workbooks ” as they contain “a range of tasks and assignments” that structure learning towards “competence development.” the textbook can actually comprise “a mix of media” meaning a textbook does not necessarily have to be a material object, however, for the purposes of this study the term textbook will be considering physical artefacts that students can see, touch, and smell (and even taste, although this is unlikely) but most importantly hold. richard j. paxton is highly critical of history textbooks, stating they “have regularly been called “dull,” “erroneous”, “difficult to understand,” and “overly broad.” this criticism is reserved for the “typical” history textbook which is “written by groups of authors” and therefore, according to paxton, becomes a “lifeless prose” with “errors of commission” and “errors of chris stray, “paradigms regained,” chris stray, “paradigms regained,” . steffen sammler, “history of the school textbook,” in the palgrave handbook of textbook studies, ed. eckhardt fuchs and annekatrin bocks (palgrave, ), . fuchs and hennes, “history of textbook research,” . a workbook is a book where students complete (individual) work. a workbook could be a blank exercise book “in which a record is kept [of] work [that is] completed or planned” or a book “designed to guide the work of a student by inclusion of questions, exercises” (http://dictionary.com) fuchs and hennes, “history of textbook research,” . richard j paxton, “a deafening silence : history textbooks and the students who read them,” review of educational research , no. ( ): - . omission” frequently occurring. this criticism does not only come from paxton. john issit suggests that “negativity surrounding textbooks in terms of use and status as both literary objects and vehicles for pedagogy is profound.” academics deride textbooks, considering them to have little “creative import” and the “last thing leading-edge intellectuals engaged in research ought to be doing.” by “doing” issit is referring to writing textbooks. this “sense of literary elitism” among academics means textbooks have a “low status as a literary genre.” the textbook’s status is therefore complex. steffan sammler rightly points out that the “authority of the printed text in book form provides a counterweight to the teacher’s lecture,” meaning the textbook, could be said to be an extension of the teacher. or, to put it another way, a gathering place where ideas, intentions, hopes, theories, and ideologues congregate. but, academic scorn of textbooks means there is a “contrast between intellectual and pedagogic authority” so although textbooks have a distinct pedagogic status, they do not necessarily carry much intellectual prestige. to further complicate the matter, whilst retaining this, at times, contradictory mix of status and prestige, textbooks can exert power for different reasons entirely. sammler states that the “textbook has been reformed as a product representing the “western society of knowledge” meaning “the process of colonization” displaced “alternative forms or traditions of conveying school knowledge.” as a “composite cultural commodity” the textbook is an “authoritative paxton, “a deafening silence,” . john issitt, “reflections on the study of textbooks,” history of education , no. ( ): . issitt, “reflections on the study of textbooks,” . issitt, “reflections on the study of textbooks,” . sammler, “history of the school textbook,” . stray, “paradigms regained,” . sammler, “history of the school textbook,” . pedagogic version of received knowledge” and many criticisms leveled at textbooks, history textbooks specifically, have been to do with their “eurocentric, male-dominated account of the past.” stray suggests, all textbooks “transmit messages but at a low level” because the “mundane channels” through which the work takes place means the “process of transmission leads to routinized mindsets.” despite stray’s casual reference to what would appear to be all teaching as “mundane” his comments retain some relevance regarding how textbooks exert power submissively in classroom settings. all these assessments of the textbook combined serve to identify the specificities regarding the textbook’s place as a status object. it holds authoritative status, lacks intellectual prestige but has pedagogic prestige in the classroom, and exerts power through cultural transmission, meaning just as books can be tenacious, so can textbooks. . . textbook cultures penney clark and katie gemmell state that adams and barker’s model is “a useful way to frame the process by which textbooks are produced” because adams and barker privilege publishing over authorship. the publisher is particularly significant within the specific realm of textbook publishing because “the textbook publisher takes a more prominent and diverse role than is assumed in the production of trade books.” reasons for this are the publisher typically seeks out the author rather than the other way around and the textbook publisher maintains stray, “paradigms regained,” . issitt, “reflections on the study of textbooks,” . stray, “paradigms regained,” . penney clark and katie gemmell, "free textbook provision in nova scotia," acadiensis: journal of the history of the atlantic region, , no. ( ): . clark and gemmell, "free textbook provision in nova scotia," . control over content, often citing curriculum guidelines or content outlines that need to be followed by the author. clark and gemmell’s understanding of the role of the textbook publisher is firmly based in the canadian context as they are discussing the distribution of free textbooks in the province of nova scotia. textbook publishing is not, however, a one-size-fits-all profession and there are distinct differences in different settings. taylor and macintyre suggest there are at least three types of textbook culture in developed nations: ) an endorsed system; ) an adopted textbook system; ) a pluralist textbook system. an endorsed system is when the government of a country offers an imprimatur (or denies one) to certain large publishers to publish state-approved textbooks. the textbook culture of both the russian federation and japan could both described as an endorsed textbook system. in this type of textbook culture the government has direct control over the production, and content, of textbooks. the system in place in nova scotia, discussed by clark and gemmell, is an adopted system. within an adopted system, a textbook is adopted by an education system and then used in schools in that education system. for this reason, publishers tend to take particular notice of curricular guidelines, as claimed by clark and gemmell, so the textbook aligns with the requirements of the curriculum. the english textbook culture is different; it is a pluralist system. a pluralist system is where a “significant number of rival publishers, some large and some small, compete within an education system to gain a profitable share of an entire market or market sector.” david cannadine et al. state that although “the influence of westminster and whitehall on the clark and gemmell, “free textbook provision in nova scotia,” . taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . organization, administration and funding of english schools (and on the history taught in them) is undeniable” usually day-to-day decisions regarding education have been left in the hands of local authorities, heads and teachers. this has led to an “astonishing diversity of educational experience across the length and breadth of england” that “constantly defies easy generalization.” this creates the grounds for a pluralist textbook culture as the people making the decisions about which textbooks to buy have always been, for various reasons, individual heads and teachers in individual schools. terry haydn echoes this sentiment. he suggests the uk is probably “atypical in terms of textbook use” as there is an “open market” where “schools are free to choose.” unlike other countries “there has never been any requirement for official authorisation of textbooks in the uk.” clark and gemmell are discussing a situation where the textbook defined the curriculum, and not vice versa, as they are talking about the introduction of an authorised free text that would then shape exactly what was taught to students (they are also not exclusively talking about history textbooks). the english textbook culture, in general and at the time this study is focused, is one where the textbook is one source among several and therefore is a different setting. the difference is one of degree not kind, meaning adams and barker’s model is still relevant and applicable as a theoretical framework. david cannadine, jenny keating, and nicola sheldon, the right kind of history: teaching the past in twentieth-century england (london: palgrave macmillan, ), . cannadine et al, the right kind of history, . terry haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks in the history classroom in the st century: a view from the uk,” yearbook of the international society of history didactics / jahrbuch der internationalen gesellschaft für geschichtsdidaktik, ( ): . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . . history textbook research: how textbooks are used in classroom settings annekatin bock “does not wish to engage in the potentially never-ending undertaking of listing topics and issues of research from the “broad landscape of textbook research” in her chapter in theories and methods of textbook studies. following this line of thought, this review will avoid a “never-ending” list of different textbook research studies and instead focus specifically on research that could be categorised as reception based according to adams and barker’s five stage model. this will include a brief overview of the field as it stands, an exploration of the different types of classification and categorisation used, and finish with a closer look at two specific studies talking about how teachers use textbooks to explore common themes. the two studies are lisa faden’s study looking at national narratives and textbooks in canadian and american history classrooms, and terry hadyn’s study looking at uk teachers’ views and perspectives regarding the use of history textbooks. . . a brief overview taylor and macintyre state that “research into the use of textbooks as a crucial element (or not) in history classrooms was until the s a low-yield activity that was methodologically varied and geographically scattered.” whilst they offer no definition for their term “low-yield” they do suggest there is a “paucity of attention” toward the textbook in comparison to “sustained inquiry into pedagogical methods,…educational theory and policy” suggesting low-yield simply annekatrin bock, “theories and methods of textbook studies,” in the palgrave handbook of textbook studies, ed. eckhardt fuchs and annekatrin bocks (palgrave, ), , https://doi.org/ . / - - - - . taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . means academia was not seeing many research projects that focused on textbooks before the s. fuchs and henne suggest that while “social studies approaches to research the impact and reception of textbooks are…currently gaining significance,” the field is “still in its infancy.” taylor and macintyre are dismissive of individual studies which they term “micro- studies” (referenced in chapter one). their dismissal is perhaps unwarranted, but their comments do provide one perspective as to why, other than the work of the georg eckert institute, there are a limited number of studies looking at the use of textbooks in classrooms. . . categorisation and classification peter weinbrener classes textbook research into three types: product-orientated; process- orientated and; effect-oriented. reception based textbook studies fall in the effect-oriented class or “impact-oriented textbook research.” fuchs and henne describe weinbrener’s impact- orientated genre as research that studies the role of the textbook “as [a] socialising factor in the classroom” and the subsequent effects this has on teachers and pupils as they use the textbook. this class of textbook research therefore covers how teachers and students receive books in the classroom and the ways they are conditioned to receive textbooks in the manner that they do. maria repoussi and nicole tutiaux-guillon suggest a change in focus is occurring in history textbook research from the textbook as a product to the textbook a something that is used fuchs and henne, “history of textbook research,” . fuchs and henne, “history of textbook research,” . taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . weinbrenner, “methodologies of textbook analysis used to date,” . fuchs and henne, “history of textbook research,” . fuchs and henne, “history of textbook research,” . and perceived. the researchers are more interested in “practices involving the textbook in classrooms and the teachers’ and students’ reception of the textbook” rather than the “messages included in the content or goals of the producers as related to the state, the authors, and the market.” repoussi and tutiaux-guillon use the term uphill studies for what they would deem the more traditional history textbook research looking at content and production, and downhill studies for the emerging style of studies which looks at use and perception. they think a newer trend is emerging as a result of this “slow change” where researchers question “the correlation between the uphill (content, production) and the downhill (use, perception).” weinbrener’s impact-oriented and repoussi and tutiaux-guillon’s downhill category would both fall under the umbrella of adam and barker’s reception stage. these different categorisations show that within the field of textbook research considerable thought and attention has been given to the textbook as something that is both part of a significant system of production, yet also an object used in a subjective and singular manner by individual teachers. . . a closer look: lisa faden and terry haydn faden’s study, “history teachers imagining the nation: world war ii studies in the united states and canada”, and haydn’s study, “the changing form and use of textbooks in the history classroom”, could be classed as impact-oriented and downhill focused studies. faden’s chapter focuses on “the teacher’s role in “enacting” or teaching the narrative content of maria repoussi and nicole tutiaux-guillon, “new trends in history textbook research: issues and methodologies toward a school historiography,” journal of educational media, memory & society , no. (spring ): repoussi and tutiaux-guillon quoted in taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . repoussi and tutiaux-guillon, “new trends in history textbook research,” . textbooks.” faden looks at how “teachers determine how texts will be used to tell the story” and how the textbook is utilized in the classroom. this study therefore combines theory regarding construction of narratives in the classroom, drawing heavily on james v. wertsch, and the use of textbooks. wertsch suggests that narratives are formed by “grasping together” different “actors and events into a plot, or a series of events that are linked together.” for faden, this idea is pertinent to her study because “the placement of particular figures, institutions, or movements in the central role of a heroic narrative is one way in which narratives are inscribed with value judgements.” faden was interested in what teachers placed at the centre of their heroic narrative about world war two and to what extent this was informed by, or contradicted with, the narrative of the textbook. faden’s research was a multiple case study where she interviewed thirteen teachers from the state of maryland in the united states and from the province of ontario in canada. as well as interviewing all the teachers faden observed five of the teachers teaching the unit of study covering world war two. this study is useful as it investigates how the narrative offered by the textbook may not be the narrative the teacher wishes to teach and considers this clash of narratives and how it plays out in the classroom. faden is commenting on american and canadian national narratives, and specifically those associated with world war ii, but the idea of the textbook informing aspects of the narrative taught in the classroom, but not all of it, is significant. faden exposes a “contradiction between the teachers’ stated beliefs and their practices” which offers an faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . james v. wertsch, voices of collective remembering, (cambridge, uk: cambridge university press, ), . faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . “important theoretical contribution to our understanding of how the history curriculum is enacted.” it is not the case that teachers teach the textbook narrative verbatim, but nor is it the case that teachers “simply enact their beliefs.” instead, the “relationship between teachers’ beliefs and teachers’ practices is complicated.” this is true of all teachers’ practices but in this specific case teachers’ textbooks practices are the focus. ultimately, faden’s study is about how teachers negotiate the context they teach in, including their use of the textbook. haydn’s study looks at how teachers use textbooks in uk classrooms. haydn interviewed history teachers (including heads of department) and student history teachers in the course of the study. haydn’s study, in part, contributes to a running theme evident in the literature which is an underlying assumption (of fear in some cases) that the role of textbooks is in decline owing to an increasing use of technology in the classroom. bock states that “the increasing digitalisation and media saturation our societies are currently experiencing is changing textbooks” and taylor and macintyre think the “primacy of the textbook as a resource may soon be at the end.” haydn’s research asks the overall question (of uk classrooms): “given the arrival in many classrooms of the dvd players, the data projector, access to the internet and presentation software such as powerpoint, has the textbook maintained its dominant position as a mode of instruction in the history classroom?” faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . bock, “theories and methods of textbook studies,” . taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . the response to this question is varied. a limited number of teachers had positive things to say about textbooks, specifically citing improvement in a-level textbooks and a way of encouraging teachers to be less dependent on powerpoint (all of these teachers were experienced teachers). in general, however, there was not a lot of support for textbooks. powerpoint and the interactive whiteboard (iwb) were preferred over textbook lessons owing to the ability to use active learning approaches and resources from the internet. textbooks were used for cover lessons (when the usual teacher is absent), homework and, in some cases, as a threat for bad behaviour. student teachers especially tended to prefer the iwb to the textbook, with some commenting they were overdependent on it. there was some indication of the use of textbooks being seen as bad or pedagogically unsound “in terms of good pedagogical practice, or in terms of department culture.” notably, no teachers said they did not use textbooks at all, but the prevailing trend was one toward using digital resources, especially powerpoint and the iwb, in the classroom. these two studies draw on some central themes that are particularly relevant for this study. first and foremost, they both point to the unique relationship between a teacher and the textbook; no one teacher uses a textbook in the same way. individual teachers are making decisions regarding how they use textbooks in their classrooms and, even if textbooks are not visibly present in the lesson, they may have influenced the way the lesson is taught. haydn directly states that student teachers claimed to use textbooks to plan their lessons. second, faden’s project is about the “way narratives speak to each other in the history classroom” and haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” - . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . makes an important connection between textbook narratives and the narrative a teacher chooses to create and teach. (this will be taken up further in the part two of this literature review.) third, haydn’s study brings to the fore other classroom tools that are used in the classroom in conjunction with, or in some cases instead of, textbooks and makes the important distinction that in the uk there is a “‘new orthodoxy’ in history classrooms, where all or most lessons are built around the use of powerpoint presentations.” finally, both allude to how outside influences affect the arrival of the textbook in the classroom. in faden’s study “the primary textbook is often selected for the teacher by a curricular authority,” (taylor and mcintyre’s “adopted textbook system”) and while haydn goes to lengths to not overstate the influence of department culture, the role of the department is visible in teacher interview responses. both of these studies touch upon specific conditions that contribute to different history teachers’ experiences. these elements, the unique relationship between the teacher and the textbook, the role of narrative in connection to the textbooks, the use of other classroom tools, and effects of outside influence are all things to consider when looking back at how england under the tudors was used in the classroom . . textbooks as textual artefacts eleftherios klerides conducted a comparative study that compared cypriot and uk textbooks. taylor and mcintyre describe klerides’ approach as a postmodernist one that is haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . faden, “history teachers imagining the nation,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . eleftherios klerides quote in taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . arguing for a “dual imagining of …textbook[s]” where they “are investigated as artefacts in themselves that are open to discourse analysis and gentrification.” klerides states that the “history textbook – as a discourse – is defined as a particular way of writing about the past” and as a genre can be split into two types: traditional and new. these two types of history textbook are “associated with a different context in the historical trajectory of education and is legitimized by a different paradigm of history teaching, a different pedagogic model, and a different philosophy and epistemology of education.” taylor and macintyre believe klerides’ claims to be bold and “based on decontextualized conceptual speculation that overlooks, among other matter, the uphill and downhill aspects of textbook production and the deterministic nature of the curriculum.” this claim could itself be seen as a bold claim as why a postmodernist approach focusing on discourse and genre would fail to account for the uphill / downhill approach is not made clear. in fact, klerides division of the genre of history textbooks into traditional and new, citing the “social transformations of the s and s” as the catalysts for change in history textbook production clearly indicates she is aware of aspects related to the uphill nature of textbook publishing while focusing her research on the downhill. additionally, although taylor and mcintyre criticise klerides for overlooking the deterministic nature of the curriculum, (which again, arguably she does not as she admits to a change in educational philosophy resulting in the “new” genre of history eleftherios klerides, “imagining the textbook : textbooks as discourse and genre,” journal of educational media, memory & society , no. (spring ): . klerides quoted in taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . klerides, “imagining the textbook,” . klerides, “imagining the textbook,” taylor and macintyre, “culture wars and history textbooks,” . klerides, “imagining the textbook,” . textbooks) they themselves overlook the fact that “textbooks are not mere collections of content but are textual artefacts.” klerides’ study is an example of textbook research concentrating on content analysis but there is a shift taking place that considers the textbook with a specific emphasis on text; the textbook becomes the textbook. magilchrist categorises klerides’ work as focusing on the “linguistic dimension” of the mediality of the textbook. the linguistic dimension draws “on discourse theories, and constructionist or post-structuralist theories” and “assume[s] that language does not merely describe or represent the world, but that language constructs and produces the world.” continuing on the path that klerides has forged by adopting a post- structuralist / constructionist stance the next step is to transition from considering the textbook as textbook, with a focus on the linguistic, to textbook, with a focus on the physicality of the material artefact. georg kolbeck and tobias röhl suggest that textbooks “are in practical use in the classroom” and that “textbook use is a bodily activity.” seeing the textbook in this way faciliates a shift where studies recognise the “performative sentiment” of a teacher’s role as a mediator between the text (‘intended curriculum’) and its use in the classroom (‘enacted curriculum). textbooks themselves are “cultural tool[s]” that are “both shaped by their use and shape how they are used.” seen as not just textual artefacts but physical artefacts with georg kolbeck and tobias röhl, “textbook practices : reading texts , touching books,” in the palgrave handbook of textbook studies, ed. eckhardt fuchs and annekatrin bocks (palgrave, ), . macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . “material qualities that affect their users” the material dimensions of the textbook comes into view. macgilchrist frames this materiality as one of three dimensions of a textbook’s mediality (the other two are linguistic, as already mentioned, and multimodal). influenced by debates in cultural studies and the social sciences, that draw on ideas from new materialism and posthumanism, this approach sees the textbook as a “material artefact embedded in a heterogenous network of human and non-human entities.” considering the textbook as part of a network with students and teachers means the classroom is a site of performative “practices of knowing” which “collaboratively enact[s] ‘ways of knowing’ in conventional and/or surprising ways.” materiality, as n. katherine hayles states, “is not merely an inert collection of physical properties but a dynamic quality that emerges from the interplay between the text as a physical artefact, its conceptual content and the interpretative activities of readers and writers.” a turn to the textuality of the textbook “draws attention to aspects of the textbook medium that have been hitherto neglected.” magilchrist explains that this is a vibrant yet still emerging field. she references works that look at the interplay of the material and political dimensions of textbooks, materiality of thought in mathematics classrooms, and considerations of “how the materiality of the textbook constitutes reality, social order, and relationships” meaning this field of research is varied in how it applies new materialist ideas to the textbook kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . n. katherine hayles quoted by macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . and the classroom. for this reason it is worth mining new materialist theory for the concepts that are most relevant to this study (which will be done in the next section). . new materialism barad’s new philosophy, agential realism, is far-reaching and ambitious in its scope. for the purposes of this literature review barad’s conceptualisation of matter, and in turn the effect this altered concept of matter has on our understanding of human, agency, and performativity is going to be explored in detail. for barad “language has been granted too much power” while at the same time culture and nature have been thought of as a binary when they should be thought of together “in illuminating ways.” by lessening the power of language (or discourses) and shifting our understanding of nature/culture, performativity takes on a new meaning that “allows matter its due as an active participant in the world’s becomings.” matter is not “immutable or passive” but “agentive” and with “inexhaustible, exuberant and prolific” dynamism. if, following what barad is suggesting, what has previously been considered as inanimate matter is in fact agentive, what does this mean about more traditional, humanist definitions and ideas about agency? a re-thinking on agency and its connections to “the human” is required. barad explains that “agency is not something that humans and non-humans have to varying degrees.” macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” - . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . the agential realist conceptualisation of the posthuman “does not presume that man is the measure of all things.” agency expands beyond humans without reducing humans to a place that is lesser than non-human matter. from this position we can come to understand “the world as a dynamic process of intra- activity and materialization.” the idea of an “intra-action” marks a significant “conceptual shift” that contrasts interaction. interaction “presumes prior existence of independent entities or relata” whereas “the notion of intra-action constitutes a radical reworking of the traditional notion of causality.” the boundaries and properties of “the components of the phenomena,” in other words human and non-human entities, “become determinate” or emerge “through specific intra-actions.” thus, a “lively new ontology emerges” that is “ongoing, open-ended” and an “entangled practice.” matter in this new ontology “is a substance in its intra-active becoming – not a thing but a doing". following this new materialist understanding of matter and agency, what have previously been considered “banal and mundane aspects” are now considered part of a textbook’s performativity, meaning researchers are looking at how these things “‘do’ something to the contents, the politics, and the practices of the textbook.” the textbook has been transformed into a lively object rather than a mute tool. as magilchrist highlights, this is an emerging approach in textbook research. there is, however, “a growing body of new materialist barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . work…shifting thinking about school spaces and educational research” in different educational research fields. alyssa d. niccolini and maya pindyck observe that most educational research focuses on human bodies and human intentions meaning classroom matter is only ever a “means to an end” and existent only for human forms of agency.” in their research looking at new materialism and haptic encounters in urban settings, they seek to “move ‘horizontally’ with the materialities of the classroom.” by moving horizontally with matter in the classroom they consider themselves as part of barad’s “entangled agencies”, intra-acting with the objects and “mutually constituting each other. this allows them to move away from the common assumptions about classroom spaces as “inert spaces made meaningful by humans.” it is not only niccolini and pindyck, who are themselves thinking with barad, who find ways to think of the world horizontally rather than vertically. barad herself draws ideas from the physicist niels bohr. bohr thought that “at the heart of quantum physics” is the idea that we are “part of [the] nature that we seek to understand” meaning we “don’t obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because we are of the world” (emphasis author’s own). bohr’s idea indicates a horizontal rather than vertical approach as he is drawing humans down into nature rather than elevating them above nature to view it from above. jane bennett, who considers herself a vital materialist and approaches these issues from the field of political philosophy, also has a horizontal perspective. bennett, quoting de landa, considers humans to alyssa d. niccolini and maya pindyck, “classroom acts: new materialisms and haptic encounters in an urban classroom,” reconceptualizing educational research methodology , no. ( ): . niccolini and pindyck, “classroom acts,” . niccolini and pindyck, “classroom acts,” . niccolini and pindyck, “classroom acts,” . niccolini and pindyck, “classroom acts,” . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . be made up of matter - “we are walking, talking minerals.” drawing on kafka, de landa and vernadasky, who she identifies as vital materialists like herself because they all note that “human individuals are themselves composed of vital materials” bennett argues that because humans are made up of matter, just like all other non-human objects, there is “no necessity to describe these differences in a way that places humans at the ontological center or hierarchical apex.” a new materialist turn to the textbook moves towards a more horizontal understanding of the classroom space as well as human and non-human roles within it. the textbook is the central focus of the study, not the human(s) who used it, however, as the textbook emerged as a vital and/or lively object through human use and human interaction, humans will be a part of the discussion. a horizontal understanding of the classroom is important in order to try to maintain a new materialist approach and refrain from automatically placing humans at the centre of the study through force of habit. . narrative writing about narrative plausibility in , peter seixas suggests he started thinking about the matter in when he wrote an article, “schweigen! die kinder! or does postmodern history have a place in the schools?” that touched on the subject. in both and he references hayden white’s ideas about historical narratives. seixas suggests white’s “influential de landa quoted by jane bennett, vibrant matter, . bennett, vibrant matter, . bennett, vibrant matter, . peter seixas, “schweigen! die kinder! or does postmodern history have a place in the schools?,” in knowing, teaching and learning history: national and intellectual perspectives, ed. peter stearns, peter seixas, and samuel s. wineburg (new york: new york university press, ), - . argument that historians impose narratives on the inchoate past as a literary trick akin to the work of novelists” produced a period of “intense hand wringing among historians.” in his seminal text metahistory, white, influenced by the literary critic northrop frye and following his methods, sought to deconstruct historical texts as literary texts. in his own words, white treats historical work as “a verbal structure in the form of narrative prose discourse.” his deconstruction of eight key texts by historians and philosophers of history revealed the following (amongst other things): ) all historians engage in explanation by emplotment – white identifies four types of emplotment – romance, comedy, tragedy and satire. ) as all historical accounts are explanation by emplotment, history is a poetic act rather than a scientific act. ) the best grounds for choosing one perspective of history over another are ultimately aesthetic or moral rather than epistemological. ) historical consciousness can be viewed as a specifically western prejudice by which the presumed superiority of modern, industrial society can be retroactively substantiated. these claims question the discipline of history’s epistemological credentials by framing all historical accounts as literary narratives. willie thompson notes that, “historiography from its seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . willie thompson, postmodernism and history, hampshire, uk: palgrave macmillan, , - . hayden white, metahistory: the historical imagination of the nineteenth century. baltimore: johns hopkins university press, , ix. white, metahistory, - . earliest beginnings, whether in the western tradition or elsewhere, assumed a basically narrative form – events succeeded one another.” a key reason for this, alex callinicos asserts, is that the aim of historical writing is explanation, an objective that can be traced back to the histories of herodotus. this is part of the discipline of history’s retort against white’s claims. for historians, just because explanation takes on narrative form does not mean the narrative is necessarily the objective of the history. callinicos thinks that “to equate historical writing with story-telling misconstrues the specific character of modern historical discourse.” it is not the purpose of this study to delve into this thorny issue but this very brief foray into what amounts to a very small, but significant, part of the conversation is to illustrate how the term “narrative” is a contentious one in history. . . bedfellows: narrative, account, interpretation the terms “narrative”, “account”, and “interpretation” are all used in history education. the fact that all three terms are used does not provide a solution to historians’ hand wringing but, perhaps, can be seen in the context of historians on-going deliberations about the discipline of history’s foundations and epistemological claims and how this has influenced and affected history educators and history classrooms. seixas suggests that the three terms (“narrative,” “interpretation,” “account”) are “over-lapping” ideas that are bound together by the fact that they can all be preceded by “historical,” making them all histories. an account is “accounting thompson, postmodernism and history, . alex callinicos, theories and narratives, theories and narratives: reflections on the philosophy of history, (cambridge: blackwell publishers, ), - . for herodotus the objective was to explain the reasons for the wars between the persian great king and the greek city-states. callinicos, theories and narratives, . seixas, "teaching rival histories," - . for x,” meaning the aim is to “coherently explain how or why something happened.” the coherence of accounts is largely “a consequence of the causative links amongst events.” one thing logically leads to another thing. “account” is a legacy of british education literature and has “generated an important body of work of empirical research on children’s ideas.” narrative goes further than accounts as it “suggests a story” with “a beginning and an end” as well as “moral valences” distributed amongst various (human) historical actors. “narrative”, in the context of history education, comes from narrative theory which questions how, and why, historical (and other) narratives are constructed whilst critiquing their epistemological credentials. an interpretation “introduces the active stance of the interpreter (or narrator, or historian) in the creation of her construct” meaning there is a “concomitant element of subjectivity.” this term arose from “discussions on hermeneutics” and is “crucial for conceptualizing how we deal in the present with texts and remnants from the past.” seixas goes on to say that for the purposes of his article he will be using the terms “interpretation” and “narrative” to “help recall the overlapping traditions, questions, and dilemmas that lie between them.” the same could be said of this study, however, as the term account is highlighted as being part of british education literature it deserves a little attention before we move away from it. stéphane lévesque and penney clark state that “the concept of seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . accounts (or narratives) has been a central concept in the work of english researchers.” accounts was added as a key concept in by peter lee and rosalyn ashby to an already established list of what became known as second-order concepts: cause and consequence, continuity and change, evidence and significance. this has not been the case in canada where seixas suggests accounts/narrative was not included as “these, we summarised, were related to all six of the concepts that we did include and were thus operating in a somewhat different way.” the term account therefore has a distinctly british background which has led to a focus on accounts in english research. lis cercadillo et al state that although “significant progress has been made” when it comes to researching british second-order concepts “the same cannot be said about students’ understanding of historical accounts.” they go on to give a detailed review of research in this area. their focus is on “students’ understanding of historical narratives and representations” because they believe “the importance of accounts in history is paramount because histories only exist in the present in the form of accounts of the past in written and other media.” cercadillo et al. exemplify how history educators are, in general, interested in the epistemological branch of narrative and how students might access this through analysis, evaluation, and construction of narratives. this is an important aspect of this study as these ideas about narrative informed stéphane lévesque and penney clark, “historical thinking: definitions and educational applications,” in the wiley international handbook of history teaching and learning, ed. scott alan metzgar and lauren mcarthur harris, st ed. (john wiley & sons, inc, ), . peter seixas, “a model of historical thinking,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . lis cercadillo et al., “organizing the past: historical accounts, significance and unknown ontologies,” in palgrave handbook of reearch in historical culture and education, ed. mario carretero, stefan berger, and maria grever (london: palgrave macmillan limited, ), . cercadillo et al., “organizing the past,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories” . those being taught in the history classroom, but it is not the framework or definition of narrative that informs the orientation and focus of the study as a whole. this is more ontological than epistemological. . . epistemology to ontology seixas leans on david carr to shift from “epistemological to ontological considerations of narrative in history education.” in time, narrative, and history, carr touches upon the epistemological debates surrounding narrative suggesting that in all these debates the narrative as a text is central. white, and others, have been “roundly criticised” for focusing on the narrative text and “missing the essence of history” which is about “discovery, explanation, [and] evaluation of sources” not “literary presentation.” whilst offering some level of agreement with these criticisms carr also moves away from them as he wants to look beyond the historian’s scientific process (historical enquiry) and creative act (writing a narrative text). carr is interested in what lies behind both of these things; he is interested in how narrative “pervades our very experience of time and social existence.” drawing on wilhelm dilthey who considered humans to be “historical beings” who are “in history as we are in the world” carr suggests that “human experience, is, itself, already in narrative form.” humans are “influenced by the past…act in the present…[and have] expectations and intentions of the future” which means “the stories we tell about ourselves shape the way we act in the world.” seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . david carr, time, narrative, and history (bloomington: indianan university press, ), . carr, time, narrative, and history, . carr, time, narrative, and history, . carr quoted by seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” - . seixas asks the question: “what if narrative has not only an epistemological but also an ontological dimension” in the history classroom? while discussing a framework for narrative plausibility seixas cites the work of jörn rüsen, suggesting that he “provide[s] us with a sense of ourselves in a present that has a temporal – and moral – relationship with the past and future.” ulrik holmberg, when discussing these ideas, quotes rüsen as saying “the most radical experience of time is death. history is a response to this challenge.” narrative is an attempt to see a “meaningful pattern in the course of time, a pattern responding to human hopes and intentions” and therefore confronting the “threatening experience of time” and its radical finality. rüsen’s theories of historical consciousness are therefore about “the relationship between the knower and the known” as well as being a specific orientational mode.” this offers an ontological dimension to historical narratives in the history classroom where “the focus…is less on thinking and knowing, and more on experiencing and being.” in other words, historical narratives are experienced through learning and being in the classroom, meaning narratives are not simply known, they are lived. whilst the orientation of this study leans toward ontological it needs to account for epistemological considerations as, it could be said, that the epistemological and ontological historical narratives existed at the same time. this speaks to barad’s agential realist ontology as seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . jörn rüsen quoted by ulrik holmberg, “’i was born in the reign…’: historical orientation in ugandan students’ national narratives,” london review of education . no. , ( ): . rüsen quoted by holmberg, “i was born in the reign,” . seixas, “a model of historical thinking,” . jörn rüsen, “historical consciousness: narrative structure, moral function, and ontogenetic development,” in theorizing historical consciousness, ed. peter seixas (toronto: university of toronto press, ), . seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . it “does not take separateness to be an inherent feature of how the world is.” instead barad thinks “practices of knowing and being are not isolable, they are mutually implicated” because “we are part of the world in its differential becoming.” the separation of epistemology from ontology is a “reverberation of metaphysics that assumes an inherent difference between human and nonhuman, subject and object, mind and body, matter and discourse.” what barad thinks would be more suitable is an “onto-epistem-ology – the study of practices of knowing in being.” it is the idea of practices of knowing that will inform discussions about narratives that were constructed and formulated in the classroom. . aesthetics arnold berleant notes that “it is common to think of aesthetics as a theory that accounts for the beauty or the pleasing quality of things.” he goes on to say that the scholarly discipline does not stray too far from this idea as philosophers, when they speak of aesthetics, are associating it with a philosophy of art and the “special value that the arts and nature possess.” over the past century the “application of aesthetic values” has spread and the field of aesthetics has expanded. environmental aesthetics “has emerged as an important part of the enlarged scope of aesthetics” and more recently applications of aesthetics have been made to “other domains of experiences” such as food and community. much of the literature from the field of barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . arnold berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” ambiances, ( ), . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . aesthetics discusses what john dewey would call “art-centered aesthetic experiences;” however, he believed that “all experience has an aesthetic component” and that as well as art-centered experiences there were also “naturally occurring aesthetic experiences.” berleant’s examples of environmental aesthetics, food, and community are part of this second classification. the “expanding scope of aesthetics raises challenging questions about the experience of appreciation.” if aesthetic experiences can be art-based and naturally occurring meaning they incorporate the “full range of life experience” then where is the common ground (if it exists) within the different domains of experience? the below discussions of aesthetic encounters, aesthetics orientation and aesthetic embodiment draws on literature that by and large is talking about art-centered experiences, but not exclusively. thinking with aesthetic values about the history classroom, and more specifically the history textbook, is not an application associated with the traditional philosophy of aesthetics (and therefore with works of art), but the expansion of the field means there is a place for an aesthetic application of this kind and there are concepts and practices to be drawn from a range of approaches to aesthetic sensibility. . . aesthetic encounters peter de bolla suggests that sometimes it is difficult to know or recognise “intense moments of aesthetic experience” as they belong in the “orbit of knowing, as if something has been barely whispered yet somehow heard.” an aesthetic encounter is “a state of ‘in-between- philip jackson, “chapter : experience and the arts,” in john dewey and the lessons of art, (new haven: yale university press, ), . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . bolla, art matters, . ness,’ as it were, part physical and part mental, in the orbit of the emotive,” a “state of mind” rather than “an item of knowledge,” a “non-cognitive” judgement that is akin to the state of wonder. de bolla claims that “it is certainly the case that i may learn from these experiences” and akin to “being in love,” an aesthetic experience, “colors all that we know we know.” maxine greene suggests that “if we are present as living, perceiving beings, there is always more.” this “more”, achieved through aesthetic encounters, allows us to “confront the mystery of our subjectivity grasping another,” to understand that there are multiple possibilities when it comes to inhabiting the world and, through human effort, come to have a “greater coherence in the world.” we “go beyond” our own little lives and in “circles of quietness” learn to appreciate the complexity of human experience through aesthetic encounters. aesthetic encounters can perhaps be classified as a non-cognitive state of wonder with the ability to allow us to see or know something we did not know before. to have an aesthetic encounter one needs to encounter something; this something is, traditionally, a work of art. on encountering a work of art, the experience of that work is not always going to be an aesthetic one. de bolla says aesthetic encounters “do not necessarily come easily; they may not be available on demand. we have to work toward them…and through de bolla, art matters, . de bolla, art matters, . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . de bolla, art matters, . de bolla, art matters, . maxine greene, “notes on aesthetic education ( ),” in variations on a blue guitar: the lincoln institute lectures on aesthetic education, (teachers college press, teachers college, columbia university: new york and london, ), . greene, “notes on aesthetic education,” . greene, “notes on aesthetic education,” . greene, “notes on aesthetic education,” . them.” o’donoghue builds on de bolla’s claim by stating that “seeing and experiencing a work is never a straight forward act” and the aesthetic experience associated with the work “can only ever be secured if the one who encounters a work of art reflects on what that encounter is doing.” to provide the conditions for aesthetic encounters to occur one therefore needs to nurture an aesthetic sensibility or orientation. . . aesthetic orientation alexander baumgarten’s definition of aesthetics is a “science of sensory knowledge directed toward beauty” which, when considering the etymology of the word, is close to the original greek aistheis meaning “perception by senses.” berleant builds on baumgarten’s ideas to develop and explore the contributing dimensions to what he calls an aesthetic sensibility for all “domains of experience.”” aesthetics for berleant is “at its base, a theory of sensibility.” this sensibility is a “perceptual awareness” or an “educated sensation” it is a deliberate mode of knowing rather than an accidental occurrence. although the aesthetic qualities of an object exist as part of the object, they can only be called forward by attending or orienting to that object in a certain way: aesthetically. an “intentional aesthetic orientation” therefore “requires sensitivity, curiosity and a commitment to see things beyond how they might first appear.” by orienting toward an object in this way you are moving beyond “conventional de bolla, art matters, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . alexander baumgarten quoted by berleant, aesthetic sensibility,” . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . berleant, “aesthetic sensibility,” . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . ways of making sense of it” and enlarging “one’s perception and understanding of the world already deemed familiar.” in this way, an aesthetic orientation is a “mode of meaning making” with “creative and agential capacity” as it “can contribute to the creation of another situation.” to facilitate an aesthetic encounter one needs to cultivate an aesthetic sensibility so as to orient toward the object of study with aesthetic values. this process is “an attempt to articulate the nature of the world in which we live” and it is deliberate rather than random or spontaneous (although spontaneous aesthetic encounters are not impossible). additionally, whilst a specific aesthetic encounter of a specific object, event or idea is an experience similar to wonder (as previously discussed), an aesthetic orientation or sensibility is not developed solely to wonder in awe at something and be left mute. an aesthetic orientation instead “is a way of seeing, thinking, feeling and talking about and understanding…objects” meaning an aesthetic orientation is not an end in and of itself, it is a means of access to the familiar world so it might show up in different and illuminating ways. an aesthetic orientation, sensibility or appreciation “has typically been described as an act of consciousness” but berleant suggests this “dualistic framing of the human presence in aesthetic occasions is inherently misleading” as “there is no consciousness without body, no disembodied consciousness.” the materiality of the aesthetic object has a similarly complex role as the human body within the domain of aesthetic experience. drawing on roland barthes idea of the punctum o’donoghue suggests an “artwork’s capacity to do can also be understood o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . greene quoted in o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . arnold berleant, “aesthetic embodiment,” in re-thinking aestheics: rogue essays on aesthetics and the arts. (london: routledge, ), . as the artwork’s materiality (emphasis author’s own).” looking at these two ideas together, the agentive forces at work within any given aesthetic experience are multi-faceted and complex. the non-dualistic understanding of the role of the human body and the active, dynamic materiality of an aesthetic object, and the effects these things have on agency, are ideas worth exploring in more detail given that a strictly dualist aesthetic orientation, that separates object and subject, is not going to serve the purpose for this study, inspired as it is by new materialist ideas. . . aesthetic embodiment berleant says that aesthetic embodiment “conveys the active presence of the human body in appreciative experience.” inspired by maurice merleau-ponty’s ideas of the body as “a charged field” (emphasis author’s own) berleant explains the “body is a concentration of forces that [are] part of a field.” this means the body is not so much ‘a body’ as ‘a self’, “’i” [is] a charged field,” and “embodiment meanings are experienced rather than cognized.” greene’s process of meaning making therefore becomes a bodily experience with our bodies “literally incorporating [meaning] so they become part of our flesh.” if aesthetic experiences are embodied they can no longer be only “contemplative”(if we take contemplative experiences to be cerebral rather than bodily), “objectifying,” or an “act of consciousness.” instead we must o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . berleant, “aesthetic embodiment, . maurice mearlau-ponty quoted by berleant, “aesthetic embodiment,” . berleant, “aesthetic embodiment, . berleant, “aesthetic embodiment, . berleant, “aesthetic embodiment, . think of the “aesthetic body, as a receiver and generator or sense experience” that has its “own dynamic force, even when inactive.” o’donoghue suggests that an “object’s materiality, history and conditions of display, as well as one’s prior knowledge of the object or similar objects along with one’s desire for the object to function in certain ways all play a part in how the object appears.” the ability of the object “to do” something during an aesthetic experience is because the “aesthetic capability of an object lies somewhere between the object and the one who apprehends it.” returning to berleant’s ideas of the charged self as a force field, the aesthetic capabilities of an aesthetic object exist partly in this charged self because the aesthetic capability is not something solely situated in the object, but instead an active part of the aesthetic encounter. this echoes barad’s ideas about matter being an intra-active becoming, a doing not a thing, meaning the aesthetic capabilities of any given aesthetic experience are an intra-active becoming where matter is dynamic and agency is spread between the human and non-human participants of the experience. this means that all encounters “rely to some extent on our personal histories, and our ways of noticing” so “knowing something about the context of conditions that lead to the production of the work can enhance one’s experience of it.” de bolla calls aesthetic encounters “radically singular” and berleant says “individual embodiment is ultimately particular” as it reflects the history of individual experiences mediated by…cultural factors”; what we know about the aesthetic object and who we are affects the aesthetic experience, and consequently will affect the berleant, “aesthetic embodiment, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, - . de bolla, art matters,” . meaning making process. the aesthetic body is “culturally shaped, entwined, and embedded in a complex network of relations, each of which has a distinctive character and dynamic.” the notion of aesthetic embodiment, therefore, allows for the specificities of the researcher/teacher’s experiences of england under the tudors based on her own positionality and prior knowledge of the book to be part of the aesthetic orientation toward the object. this accommodates and compliments the new materialist theories being used to define the object (and matter in general) being used in this study. berleant, “aesthetic embodiment, . berleant, “aesthetic embodiment, . chapter : theoretical foundations, methodological approach and methods . introduction this chapter will explain the theoretical foundations, methodological approach, and methods used for the study. the theoretical foundations of the study come from two different areas and therefore will be separated and discussed in turn looking first at how the study is framed in a wider body of reception-based book history with specific links to impact-oriented history textbook research. the theoretical grounding comes from new materialism. this section of the chapter will explain ideas from new materialism, most notably barad’s agential realism, will be the theoretical axis that the study hinges around. the methodological approach is in two sections looking first at how the object, england under the tudor, is conceptualised and second the orientation of the research and the researcher. the first section offers a basic conceptualisation of the object before explaining how ideas about aesthetic sensibility will inform the orientation of the research. the final section explores the methods. this will first consider general methods, based around jordanova’s ideas about description and drawing influence from a number of theorists whose writing styles aim to produce affects in the reader. having discussed a more general approach there will be a return to the object to consider how it will be specifically conceptualised and discussed in each of the research chapters (chapters four, five, and six). . theoretical framework: a reception-based study this study can be situated in adams and barker’s publishing model in the reception stage as it is to do with how a teacher received england under the tudors in the classroom as a teaching companion. two further things are worthy of note at this point. first, darnton says that “the last box in the adams-barker diagram, “survival”, represents a significant improvement over mine.” this survival stage is important for this study. england under the tudors was first published in but has survived as a textbook (it has never been out of print) and was being used in a history a-level classroom in / . second, whereas darnton, as an historian, specifically wants to focus on the people who made the book, distributed it and read it, adams and barker, as bibliographers, want to focus on the book itself. additionally, as this study is a sustained encounter with the book as a physical object itself, adams and barker’s model is more fitting as it centres around the book as an object. however, the people who read the book, namely the teacher, are also a key focus of the study. the author, as an eminent historian, also has a crucial role. implicitly, a number of other people played a part in bringing the book to the classroom. these people, together, are part of “a set of relations determined by lines of force and regulated according to the rules of the game accepted by the players.” the lines of forces at work affecting different people to create the specific set of relations could be bracketed or categorised in many ways but the notion of “intellectual influences,” used by adams and barker as factors to consider when looking at both the survival and publication stages, fits nicely. what intellectual influences were at work as lines of forces creating this set of relations? or, to put it another way, what intellectual influences affected the different people who created the conditions of arrival, and conditions of use, for elton’s text to be used as primary text years after it was originally published? therefore, if we stretch adams and barker’s model so intellectual influences are taken into consideration when looking darnton, “'what is the history of books?' revisited,” . darnton, “'what is the history of books?' revisited,” . darnton, “'what is the history of books?' revisited,” . at the reception of the book, we are left with a framework that serves the purpose of this study. the study sits in the reception stage of adams and barker’s model but, as the reception being discussed is not the initial reception after publication, but instead a secondary reception after the book has survived for years, elements of the survival stage, notably the intellectual influences that allow for its survival, need to be taken into account. additionally, this study would come under the following categories of textbook study: impact-oriented and a downhill focus as the object of attention is the textbook in the classroom. . theoretical grounding barad states that “matter and meaning are not separate” and this is a crucial idea for this study. following niccolini and pindyck who, inspired by barad, moved “‘horizontally’ with the materialities of the classroom” the aim of this study is to flatten the traditional, humanist understanding of the relationship of teacher and textbook (which places the teacher in charge of the textbook) and instead understand the textbook as a lively object that is part an entangled classroom. this entanglement includes the teacher and textbook, as well as other objects (human and nonhuman) in the room. this allows the classroom to be seen as something more than “inert spaces made meaningful by humans.” if matter and meaning are not separate this means matter makes meaning and meaning makes matter. england under the tudors makes meaning in the classroom. this means that the object at the focus of the study has agency. at the same time, meaning, which could mean barad, meeting the universe halfway, . niccolini and pindyck, “classroom acts,” . niccolini and pindyck, “classroom acts,” . cultural or social forces (what this study is referring to as intellectual influences) makes matter. this means these intellectual influences change how england under the tudors came into being in the classroom. this is all part of a “ongoing, open-ended” and an “entangled practice” where matter is “not a thing but a doing.” matter is active not static and dynamic not neutral. the focus on the object is a focus on the “intra-activity of becoming” but this study is also interested in the “ontology of knowing.” it will use the new materialist ideas as its axis in order to thinking about the onto-epistem-ological narratives being taught in the classroom. this element of the study is also grounded by new materialism because epistemology and ontology are being thought of together as entangled agencies rather than separately. . methodological approach . . the object the methodological approach centres around how the focus of the study, g.r. elton’s textbook england under the tudors, is defined as an object on a conceptual, and material, level. drawing from a range of disciplines and theories, as outlined in the literature review, the book is viewed as a lively object made of vibrant matter with aesthetic capabilities. at the same time, the book is a status object with prestige placed upon it that exerts power. this power is specific because the book is a textbook and therefore has pedagogic authority. central to the new materialist conception of matter is that humans and non-humans are part of an intra-active barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . becoming where humans are part of the nature they seek to know about. the conceptualisation of the object in this study is central to macgilchrist’s thoughts on textbooks as “performative and productive (im)material assemblages.” the textbook is one object amongst many in the (im)material assemblage of the history classroom in question, through which to explore the productivity and performativity of the assemblage as a whole. there are further ideas connected to the conceptualization of the object of study that will shape the research and writing process. these are the definition of textbook being a lively classroom companion, the notion of sedimentation (in relation to the object) and the metaphor of the classroom’s (im)material narrative assemblage as a portrait. before exploring how these ideas will inform the study it makes sense to discuss the aesthetic orientation the researcher will adopt and the writing methods in order to understand the “how” and “why” of the study before delving further into the “what.” . . orientation the methodological approach this study will take will draw heavily on the approach taken by o’donoghue in learning to live in boys’ schools. art-led understandings of masculinity. o’donoghue states that methodologically he approached his study from an art-led perspective. he goes on to define this perspective as an approach to doing scholarly work that is committed to seeking ways of accessing and understanding educational and social phenomena through the study of aesthetics, art theory, artist’s writing and the production of research-based visual, macgilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” . material, and conceptual forms that are most typically found in the visual arts, or associated with it. the idea of accessing educational and social phenomena through the study of aesthetics applies to this study. art-led research “employs and understands the term research as a form of creative work that is receptive to thought and cultivates and nurtures thought.” an aesthetic orientation toward the textbooks is an attempt to cultivate and nurture thought about the textbook and its role in the classroom. this definition of art-led research clearly identifies the production of research-based visual material as part of the research process. o’donoghue says that when “bringing concepts from somewhere else into fields in which they do not have a history” that we “ought to hold them lightly and not grip on them” but instead make space for these concepts “to operate differently, as they occupy new ground and… take new roots.” o’donoghue draws on mieke bal’s ideas regarding travelling concepts. bal suggests that “concepts are not fixed” and instead can “travel between different disciplines, scholars and academic communities.” bal’s central message is that these many “forms of travel render concepts flexible” and this “travelling nature is an asset rather than a liability.” adopting the principle of a travelling concept, this study will grip lightly the idea of art-led research so that it informs how the research accesses the o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . mieke bal, travelling concepts in the humanities: a rough guide, (toronto: university of toronto press, ), . bal, travelling concepts in the humanities, . object of the study in the belief that “arts make educational worlds visible in ways that social science inquiry does not” but will not produce any research-based visual material to accompany the written thesis. instead the written thesis itself will act as the vehicle to articulate the findings of the research as well as serving as a creatively produced piece of writing inspired by aesthetics. de bolla’s book art matters is a useful example of an aesthetically enthused style of writing i hope to imitate in my thesis. the book attends to the notion of an aesthetic sensibility as he states that “the reasons for writing this book are deeply embedded in my desire to understand more about the practice of wondering” writing the book was an attempt at creating a lexicon for the “poetics of wonderment.” the second chapter reflects on de bolla’s experience of barnett newman’s vir heroicus sublimis. with this specific artwork de bolla feels that the “calm, composed tranquil space” he enters when his gaze is on the artwork is one of serenity and this is “the material of my [de bolla’s] affective response.” the precision of the language, sentence construction, and all the other elements that contribute to the ebb and flow of this particular chapter are de bolla’s attempt at illuminating the sense of serenity that he experiences. each beautifully crafted phrase takes on a deeper meaning when considered not merely as description but an effort to connect with the mystical, metaphysical and transcendent aspects of affective experience. for de bolla, newman’s work has “majestic frequencies” and “the time of color.” time with the painting o’donoghue, learning to live in boys’ schools, . de bolla, art matters, . de bolla, art matters, . de bolla, art matters, . de bolla, art matters, . de bolla, art matters, . de bolla, art matters, . allows for “visibility of a commonly constructed presence” and knowledge of the “hushed sublimity of a shared world.” barbara tuchman believes the medium of expression to be an essential part of any creative process; for a writer the medium of expression is language. “when it comes to language, nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence.” clarity, interest and “aesthetic pleasure” are the aims of good writing which requires hard work and a good ear. elliot eisner when discussing tuchman’s writing (the opening passage in the guns of august) suggests “good writing”, such as tuchman’s helps us to understand “what the phrase “aesthetic modes of knowing” alludes to.” eisner uses tuchman’s writing as an example to illustrate that “the form of the work informs us as the “aesthetic capacities of language influence our experience.” this thesis will itself be an attempt to create a lexicon for discussing the material and immaterial qualities of the history classroom and historical narratives, focusing on the textbook’s place in this (im)material narrative assemblage, by adopting an aesthetic sensibility. taking a lead from both de bolla and tuchman, the form of writing as well as the content of the writing, will seek to illuminate the textbook from an aesthetic perspective. o’donoghue’s study adopted an aesthetic sensibility and turned “toward the world of schooling.” this research is doing the same thing with a specific focus on the textbook. an aesthetic sensibility in this context “requires one to open oneself to aspects of the world of schooling in ways that would put de bolla, art matters, . barbara tuchman, “the historian as an artist,” in practicing history: selected essays, (new york: alfred a. knopf, ), . tuchman, “the historian as an artist,” . eisner, “aesthetic modes of knowing,” . eisner, “aesthetic modes of knowing,” . o’donoghue, art matters, . one in contact with qualities of that world that often go unnoticed or rarely noticed.” this is the hope with this study, that qualities of the textbook that may have gone undetected, unnoticed, or at the very least not discussed and therefore not visible, may come into view and reveal things about textbooks, history classrooms and historical narratives that may not have been known before. . methods ludmilla jordanova’s book the look of the past: visual and material evidence in history practice explores different ways that visual and material evidence, physical objects of the past, can be used as historical evidence. the type of evidence that jordanova considers includes (but is not limited to); paintings, sculpture, and architecture. jordanova wants to encourage historians to turn to objects of the past as she believes “artefacts mediate past ideas and experiences making them ripe for historical analysis” as “every made item results from human attention” meaning they are “capable of embodying people and attributes.” jordanova provides a number of ways to utilise historical objects as historical evidence, one of them being description. although jordanova is considering objects in an historical setting the ideas she sets out about how to describe objects is useful for this study. jordanova opens her chapter on description by discussing the greek term ekphrasis which is a rhetorical device in which a work of art is evoked in another medium. she focuses in on descriptions of achilles’ shield as the figures engraved on the shield have often been o’donoghue, art matters, . jordanova, the look of the past, . jordanova, the look of the past, . described in narrative or poetic forms of writing; a story comes to life through the description of inanimate figures on a physical object. bill brown goes as far as to say that achilles’ shield is the “archetypal instance of ekphrastic poetry.” ekphrastic writing is therefore “an account in words of the visual experience prompted by a striking piece of art” and “such descriptions are designed to provoke vivid emotions in the reader, perhaps to deepen their understanding of objects, characters, plots, themes and of themselves.” jordanova’s understanding of ekphrastic writing has similarities to de bolla’s attempts to create a lexicon of “the poetics of wonderment” and eisner’s ideas about “aesthetic modes of knowing.” these ideas on description, rooted in ekphrastic writing, will inform the style of writing used in this study a description is produced when writers pay close attention to the object. attention is defined as “sustained careful looking, mental focus, concentrated reflection and consideration, and thoughtful, self-aware writing.” for this study attention takes on the additional quality of being informed by aesthetics and what it means to have an aesthetic orientation toward the world. jordanova suggests that, ideally, a description will contain: . physical properties (size, shape, colours, materials, subject matter, genre, date, maker) . life history of an artefact (who, what, when, where, why, cost, give to who, bought, sold, used, displayed, (re)interpretation) . consideration of provenance (record of ownership – role of gifts, forms of association) brown, other things, . jordanova, the look of the past, . jordanova, the look of the past, . jordanova, the look of the past, . jordanova, the look of the past, . chapters four, five and six will seek to cover these different aspects of a description as suggested by jordanova. each of these chapters will attend to one of the three research questions: . what are the material qualities of england under the tudors as a textual artefact? . what were the conditions of arrival and conditions of use of england under the tudors in the classroom? . how was england under the tudors used as textbook by the teacher to inform the historical narrative that was taught about henry viii? the style of ekphrastic description, and the general writing style of these three chapters, as well as the epilogue, will seek to be affective for the reader. there is an intentional commitment to writing in poetic and narrative ways that are in alignment with de bolla’s lexicon for the poetics of wonderment and eisner’s aesthetic modes of knowing. sarah lawrence-lightfoot, commenting on one of her articles, the good high school, published in , said she wanted to “develop a document, a text that comes as close as possible to painting with words.” this led to her “inventing a new methodology” that was a “blend of aesthetic sensibilities and empirical rigor” that used both “humanistic and literary metaphors.” this she eventually called “portraiture.” lawrence-lightfoot’s idea of “painting with words” is important for this study. she sought to develop this new methodology as a way of writing about schools that traced “the connections between individual personality and organization culture” while also “seeking to capture the texture and nuance of human experience.” lawrence-lightfoot, “reflections on portraiture," . lawrence-lightfoot, “reflections on portraiture,” . lawrence-lightfoot, “reflections on portraiture,” . this style of writing has similarities with the style and approach taken by kathleen stewart who sees herself “not as a trusted guide carefully laying out the links between theoretical categories and the real world, but a point of impact, curiosity, and encounter.” this means there is a loosening of “formal narrative binds” as well as “descriptive detours” that “write[s] theory through story” and “pull[s] academic attunements into tricky alignment.” the process of writing and theorizing is intended to create a text that “itself resonate[s] or tweak[s] the force of material-sensory somethings forming up.” the writing intentionally creates the conditions for affects in the read that illuminate the theory that informs it. this is the style of writing this study will seek to emulate. the teacher’s own copy of g.r. elton’s england under the tudors will inform the study, however, an important aspect of its conditions of arrival in the classroom is that each of the students in the a-level history class was gifted a copy of textbook by the leadership team. the teacher was encouraged to use england under the tudors by the leadership team. the students (and the teacher) had a copy of another textbook, aqa a-level history: the tudors: england - , published by hodder and approved by the examination board aqa. the teacher had a personal copy of a further aqa approved textbook, oxford qa history for a level: the tudors: england – , published by oxford university press that she often used to plan lessons and provided certain pages as extra reading. the reign of henry viii was taught as the second unit of study (the first was the reign of henry vii) in the first year of a-level study. the kathleen stewart and e-duke books scholarly collection backlist, ordinary affects (durham, nc: duke university press, ), . stewart, “atmospheric attunements,” . stewart, “atmospheric attunements,” . students took an as examination at the end of this year of study. the grade achieved did not count toward their final a-level (a ) grade. an important part of elton’s interpretation of henry viii, discussed in england under the tudors, but first developed in his phd dissertation, and later in the tudor revolution in government (published in ), is that thomas cromwell, henry viii’s chief advisor in the s oversaw a “revolution in government.” within tudor historiography this is known as the “elton thesis” and although elton did modify his original views on this matter he insisted to the end on their “essential correctness.” the “elton thesis” is a distinct interpretation of henry viii’s reign that carries a lot of weight and is referenced in aqa examination specification guidelines. adherence to the elton thesis shapes the perception of the periods before and after cromwell’s time as henry viii’s key minister. henry viii’s reign, therefore, felt the most appropriate of the four units outlined in aqa’s a-level specification to focus on in this study as, of the four, it has the most obvious and direct link to elton’s interpretation of the tudors. . . the object revisited the basic conceptualization of the object of the study, the orientation of the researcher and the methods for the writing process have now been established. there are three distinct concepts, or metaphors, that will loosely inform the structure of the three chapters looking at the research questions that can now be explored in more detail. these metaphors will be explained in patrick collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton - ,” the british academy ( ): . collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton,” . the a-level was split into two parts. part one: consolidation of tudor england had two sections, the reign of henry vii, - and the reign of henry viii, – . part two (a-level only): turmoil and triumph had sections, instability and consolidation: ‘the mid-tudor crisis’, - and the triumph of elizabeth i, - . turn but should be viewed as a collective rather than discrete concepts: they are all travelling concepts that travel between the chapters. however, before these detailed explanations happen a word needs to be said about my own understanding of what a book was and what a textbook was at the time of teaching. . . book or textbook? when i was teaching with england under the tudors, i did not consider it in the same vein as the other textbooks being used to teach the reign of henry viii, or any other textbook i was using. fundamentally i saw it as a book rather than a textbook. a historical book and a classroom tool. but a book rather than a textbook. owing to this, the ekphrastic descriptions, and emergent themes that emerge from them, swing between thinking about england under the tudors as a book and/or a textbook. this is most apparent in chapter four where the ekphrastic description is split into two sections, one looking at bookish qualities and one looking at “textbookish” qualities but is a running theme through the three research chapters. this following explanation provides some context and clarification as to why i did classify england under the tudors as a textbook. as touched upon in chapter two, terry haydn explains that the uk’s textbook culture is somewhat “atypical” because there is a free market approach where schools are able to choose the textbooks they use. the free market approach has meant textbooks have changed to reflect the changing curriculum over the years because publishers have wanted to capture the market by aligning the textbooks they publish with the needs of schools (and the public examinations haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks," . requirements.) this has led to “radical changes to both the form and purpose of history textbooks in the uk.” a significant catalyst for these changes was the introduction of the national curriculum in . there was a “change in the balance between progression being measured in terms of augmentation of pupils’ knowledge of the substantive past, and pupils’ understanding of history as a discipline or form of knowledge.” this “inevitably had an impact on the format of…textbooks.” prior to the s history textbooks “generally told one story about the past” but the “increasing influence of what was termed ‘new history’” meant there was a shift toward history didactics in schools and “more emphasis on source evaluation.” this had a very specific effect on what textbooks looked like. there were “more images, maps, cartoons and colour.” the narrative or text about the “substantive past” was “’squeezed’ in alongside sources, graphics, and source work exercises.” this style became known as the “dreaded two page spread” where “every topic [was] reduced to two facing pages within the textbook which included very simplistic basic factual information, some sources, some diagrams (or similar), and some questions. although lessons were learnt from the first textbooks produced like this, which were really “random stuff plonked together”, the shift in style for uk history textbook was permanent. the purpose of history textbooks was no longer “to simply inform students of the one, authoritative or definitive haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . haydn, “the changing form and use of textbooks,” . account of what happened in the past” and this had a very real and tangible impact on what history textbooks looked like. england under the tudors does not fit this form or purpose of history textbooks as described above. it was, and is, unrecognizable as a textbook at first glance to a student educated from the s onwards in the uk. this includes both myself and my students. however, england under the tudors is a textbook, or was written with the intention of being a textbook. it was not written by a group of authors, it was written by one author, g.r. elton, who, as an historian, is both “someone who is an authority on the subject” but also what stray terms (and critiques) as an author with the “special gifts of the creative mind;” a romantic notion of the author as a creative agent. it follows the form and purpose of history textbooks as they were prior to the s and before the introduction of the national curriculum. it tells just one story of the past, elton’s version. therefore, despite it actually being a textbook, i did not think of it that way when i was teaching. this has had a considerable effect on how i have thought and written about england under the tudors when i have returned to it as a researcher. . . the classroom companion (a concept for chapter four) martin lawn is “interested in the special tools of classrooms” with books and textbooks falling under this umbrella term of classroom tool. lawn’s interest is to do with how these “physical objects [are] used by human agency in the classroom as a means of educating and stray, “paradigms regained,” . stray offers a critique of this romantic ideology of creativity as a product of the shift from patronage to a capitalist market which negatively affected many artists. the romanticism of the author gave authority to the individual authors but created conditions where authors who were able to create without subscribing to consumer demands were in some way more creative. lawn, “designing teaching,” . controlling.” he suggests there is a “gap in our knowledge about why these objects were constructed and consumed.” the idea of the textbook as a classroom tool fits well with some definitions of textbooks, and books in general, that have previously discussed. the textbook as a tool clearly implies its pedagogic authority as the textbook is used by the teacher as a tool in the classroom and therefore represents “the imposition of adult authority” over students. in addition to this, textbooks are typically, stray suggests, “books whose users are not the buyers. in many cases, books are not just imposed on pupils by teachers, but imposed first on teachers by their employers or by the state.” the textbook is a tool used by teachers and, to a certain extent, over teachers (or on teachers). this is especially true in the case of england under the tudors as the book was chosen by the leadership team and bought for the teacher and students. the textbook therefore operated as a tool in a number of ways by exerting its power over different people in different ways. one significant problem arises if england under the tudors is viewed as a classroom tool: a classroom tool is mute matter. conceptualizing the textbook as a tool downplays its animate and agentive qualities. a tool is designed and given/bought for a specific purpose; how then can a classroom tool be vibrant matter if it is preconceived as a fixed entity with a fixed purpose? although the different definitions of books, textbooks, and schoolbooks go some way to animating the object owing to the multiple preconceived notions of its tool-like qualities operating at any given time, there is still more to say on the lively nature of a classroom tool. lawn, “designing teaching,” . lawn, “designing teaching,” . stray, “paradigms regained,” . stray, “paradigms regained,” . barad takes the time to consider bodily boundaries and offers the view that “objects are not already there; they emerge through specific practices.” richard feynmann, when discussing outlines, says they are “not something definite. it is not, believe it or not, that every object has a line around it! there is no such line.” feynmann is articulating the “mistaken belief in the givenness of bodily boundaries” which barad puts down to “human psychology.” having established that boundaries are blurred the preconceived notion of a classroom tool also blurs. maurice merleau ponty suggests that “the successful performance of everyday bodily tasks depends on the mutual incorporation of the instruments used to perform a task into the body and the dilation of our “being-in-the-world” into the instrument.” he uses the example of a blind man’s stick stating that the stick “ceases to be an object for him.” the stick ceases to be a tool and is instead part of the blind man’s body; the body and tool dilate. it is habit that “expresses our power of dilating our being-in-the-world or changing our existence by appropriating fresh instruments.” the textbook as a classroom tool retains its lively features by dilating with the teacher. the repetitive nature of textbook use, across a series of lessons, means habits are formed with, and by, the textbook allowing the teacher to appropriate the textbook as an instrument. the textbook is not simply a tool that the teacher uses it is her companion in the classroom. it is part of her being-in-the-classroom. the blurred boundaries between physical object and human, between book and teacher, means the tool-like qualities of england under the tudors: its status; its prestige; its literary power; its pedagogic authority; its materiality and so on barad, meeting the universe halfway, . richard feynmann quoted by barad, meeting the universe halfway, . maurice merleau-ponty quoted by barad, meeting the universe halfway, merleau-ponty quoted by barad, meeting the universe halfway, . are part of the lively intra-active becoming of the teaching process. in keeping with the new materialist direction of this study the textbook will be considered as a classroom companion, not a classroom tool, to distance this chapter, and the conceptualisation of the textbook in general, from the restrictions of the term “tool.” this does not mean that england under the tudors tool like attributes will be ignored or put aside. instead they will be approached from a slightly different angle to foster a sense of curiosity about the boundaries between the textbook and the teacher. . . sedimentation (a concept for chapter five) according to barad “matter is the sedimenting historality of practices/agencies and an agentive force in the world’s differential becoming (emphasis author’s own).” consideration of the book as a classroom companion is focusing on the object’s agentive force in the classroom’s differential becoming but in order to understand this force properly the object’s sedimented historality needs to be taken into account. returning briefly to darnton’s publishing communication circuit, it is here that the set of relations specific to england under the tudors and adams and barkers’ intellectual influences can be discussed. the inherent status, prestige, power, pedagogical authority, and so forth of the book are embedded in the object’s dynamic matter through sedimentation. barad uses the metaphor of tree rings to describe sedimentation saying “the rings of trees mark the sedimented history of their intra-actions within and as part of the world, so matter carries within itself the sedimented historialities of the practices through which it is produced as barad, meeting the universe halfway, . part of its ongoing becoming – it is ingrained and enriched in its becoming.” the idea of carrying its sedimented histories with it, and not on it, is important. sara ahmed also talks about sedimentation suggesting “what passes through history is not only the work done by generations but the ‘sedimentation’ of that work as the condition of arrival for future generations.” these conditions of arrival are not “something that is given in its sensuous certainty.” the sedimentation of an object is not merely “on the surface of the object” and nor is it the “property of the object.” instead, as barad states, “time has a history,” and the “making/marking of time is a lively material process of enfolding.” ahmed explores the marxian critique of idealism which “takes the object as a given” despite matter only being given form and value by being changed through labour. for idealists, such as hegel, the labour is forgotten when the object is perceived as given: “it becomes value only in its congealed state, when embodied in the form of some object.” for marx, the solution to this was to consider “commodities [as] made up of two elements ‘matter and labor.’” by drawing labour into focus the process of change where matter becomes form comes into view and therefore the conditions of arrival of the object are made visible. ahmed illustrates some flaws with this theory as the marxian definition of “making form” is “located in the transformation of nature into use value” meaning “nature…is simply ‘there’ waiting to be formed.” however, if the marxian approach were extended to barad, meeting the universe halfway, . sara ahmed, “orientations matter,” in new materialisms: ontology, agency, and politics, ed. diana coole and samantha frost, durham and (duke university press, ), . ahmed, “orientations matter,” . ahmed, “orientations matter” . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . ahmed, “orientations matter,” . karl marx quoted by ahmed, “orientations matter,” . karl marx quoted by ahmed, “orientations matter,” . ahmed, “orientations matter,” . consider the “very matter of wood” as well as “the form of the table” then “a dynamic history of things being moved around” is possible. both ahmed and barad are using the metaphor of sedimentation to illustrate that “matter isn’t situated in the world; matter is worlding in its materiality.” this means that sedimenting is an “ongoing process of differential mattering” where “the past is never left behind, never finished once and for all.” the conditions of arrival, and conditions of use, of an object become part of the object through a process of sedimentation. they exist within the object not on its surface. as previously discussed, the boundaries separating the book and the teacher (and indeed the book and the students) are blurred, meaning the sedimented conditions of arrival for england under the tudors are part of the lively intra-active becoming of the teaching process. the metaphor of sedimentation informs the metaphor of the textbook as a companion but the multiple preconceived ideas about the textbook being a pedagogic tool contribute to the sedimentation. the metaphors are therefore intertwined, or circular, rather than accumulative and linear. . . portraits (a concept for chapter six) . . . the classroom as an (im)material assemblage stephanie springgay and nikki rotas consider the art classroom from a new materialist perspective. they define “a new materialist ontology” as one that “recognizes the ahmed, “orientations matter,” . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . interconnections of all phenomena (human and non-human). springgay and rotas think barad would argue that in the “‘classroom as work of art’ students, classroom, and art are not distinct from one another but ‘mutually interactive agents.’” this, they believe, echoes bennett’s ideas of non-humans performing actions, producing effects and altering situations. the art classroom is not the same as the history classroom, but springgay and rota’s conceptualization of a classroom space from a new materialist lens serves as a useful starting point to discuss the history classroom. drawing on bennett’s theories, as they did, ideas about how inanimate matter perform and act in a group, an assemblage, is important. bennett offers some thoughts on an assemblage of objects she saw in baltimore in a storm drain; “glove, pollen, rat, cat, stick.” this group of objects rendered bennett temporarily immobilized on the spring morning she came across them as “in this assemblage, objects appeared as things, that is, as vivid entities not entirely reducible to the contexts in which (human) subjects set them.” the grouping, or collection, of the objects was significant. bennett goes on to explain that even though assemblages are “ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, of vibrant materials of all sorts” they are “living, throbbing confederations” that, as a group, have agency. considering the history classroom as an assemblage in this way is helpful as it allows discussion of england under the tudors to take place amongst an assemblage of other objects, human and non-human. these ideas also mirror, stephanie springgay and nikki rotas, “how do you make a classroom operate like a work of art? deleuzeguattarian methodologies of research-creation,” international journal of qualitative studies in education , no. ( ): . springgay and rotas, “how do you make a classroom operate like a work of art?,” . springgay and rotas, “how do you make a classroom operate like a work of art?,” . bennett, vibrant matter, . bennett, vibrant matter, . bennett, vibrant matter, . or compliment, magilchrist’s ideas about the history textbook as an (im)material assemblage with performative and productive capacities. g.r. elton’s england under the tudors both informed this assemblage and was part of it, implicitly and explicitly. the immaterial aspects of the historical interpretations and the material objects of the history classroom space (human and non-human) all form the (im)material narrative assemblage in its entirety. . . . a portrait of a classroom the style of writing, and the metaphor used to describe the (im)material narrative assemblage, is especially important for this chapter. barad says of her metaphor of the tree rings that it is limited in a number of ways, but she still includes it in her writing as it is “meant to be evocative” of the sedimenting process she is discussing. the same could be said of this metaphor, there are limits to its efficacy in describing what it intends to but if it is considered as a means to evoke thought, it works quite well. the idea of a portrait of a room, and the objects and people within it, comes from daniel miller’s the comfort of things. for miller, every object in a room is “a form by which they [the people he writes about] have chosen to express themselves.” the way a person moves about these objects in the space is a ritual but also “an aesthetic.” the aesthetic is created as people exploit “different potentials” that they perceive “in properties of each material medium” which creates “an overall cosmology.” the portraits he paints through his writing locates these daniel miller, the comfort of things (cambridge: polity press, ). miller, the comfort of things, . miller, the comfort of things, . aesthetic forms and amounts to a “configuration of human values, feelings and experiences.” the portraits he paints are incredibly moving. the first chapter looking at george, a desperately lonely man in his seventies living alone for the first time after spending most of his life in adult hostels, is painfully acute in its depiction of the loneliness of old age through the emptiness of the space. miller says he “can barely ever remember encountering… a habitation entirely devoid of any form of decoration. there is a violence to such emptiness.” just as miller capture’s george’s loneliness through the lack of object, he also captures elia’s vibrancy and colour depicting her as “a storyteller” and a “conjurer” through her objects. painting, or writing, a portrait of the history classroom as an assemblage using england under the tudors as a lens through which to do this means the protagonist will not be so clear- cut as in miller’s writing because the textbook is the central figure of discussion meaning there is no human protagonist. but, as the boundaries between the textbook and the teacher are blurred the teacher is still very present. considering the classroom assemblage as a portrait allows the other parts of the assemblage, the students, furniture, technology, other textbooks, exam papers, stationery, etc., to come into view. philip jackson suggests that teachers “in an effort to make their classrooms more homelike…spend considerable time fussing with the room’s decorations.” he reduces this “fussing” to resembling “the work of the inspired housewife” who rearranges and changes colour to make things more interesting.” despite what could be regarded as a rather derogatory (and miller, the comfort of things, . miller, the comfort of things, . miller, the comfort of things, . philip jackson, life in classrooms, (new york: teachers college press, ), . jackson, life in classrooms . gendered) depiction of teachers working with the objects in their classrooms he raises the important point that teachers want to personalise their classrooms and “all of these signs and smells become …familiar.” they are all part of the classroom assemblage. the immaterial aspects of the historical narrative are also present in this portrait. perhaps the historical actors are visible in image form in textbooks, workbooks, or on the iwb. perhaps the key historical events can be seen in written form in the text of elton’s book, or other documents being read, or in the words of student essays. miller says that “the study of material culture is ultimately a study of value and of values.” writing about the classroom in this way has value because it allows for what feels like a softer, aesthetic gaze on a rigid environment that allows peculiarities to come to the surface. lawrence-lightfoot says of her portraiture methodology that it is “probing, layered, and interpretive” in order that it might “capture the complexity and aesthetic of human experience.” this is true of this portrait of the classroom, but it seeks to capture the complexity and aesthetic of human and non-human experience. it is also about values, the values of the teacher and the values of the school, but significantly the values embedded in england under the tudors and the effect these values had on the onto-epistem-ological historical narrative of the classroom and the lived experience of those that experienced it. jackson, life in classrooms . miller, the comfort of things, . chapter : classroom companion . introduction this chapter will consider england under the tudors as a physical object and attend to the first research question: what are the material qualities of england under the tudors as a textual artefact? it will do this by offering an ekphrastic description of the object of study, the teacher’s personal copy of the england under the tudors. jordanova’s framework for writing descriptions informs what specific physical attributes of the object are discussed. following discussions in chapter about how, at the time of teaching, i did not consider england under the tudors as a textbook and instead thought of it as a history book (despite it being written specifically as a textbook) the ekphrastic description will be split into two parts. first, the focus will be on the bookish qualities of the book, and second, the focus will be on the “textbookish” qualities. kolbeck and röhl state that “the material qualities of the book itself, that is, its size, its weight, its binding, the thickness of its pages, and so forth…play a key role in shaping its use.” following the new materialist grounding of this study the object will be considered as a lively, dynamic object and these material qualities, such as the book’s weight and thickness of page, will be thought of in this manner. jerome mcgann is another theorist who recognizes the importance of the material features of books. mcgann thinks that “the reader interprets not a text, but a material object” including the “particularities” of the book. these “particulatires of kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . jerome mcgann quoted by david finkelstein and alistair mccleery, an introduction to book history, nd edition (london: routledge, ), . the physical book also influence and constrain the range of possible meanings.” hayles thinks that the materiality of a book should be understood as “exisiting in complex dyanmic interplay with content” meaning “texts are embodied entities” with “emergent properties” that shift into focus and “fade into the background depending on what performance the work enacts.” the “crucial move” for hayles “is to reconceptualize materiality as the interplay between a text’s physical characteristics and its signifying strategies “which this chapter seeks to do by bringing into focus england under the tudors’s lively materiality through the ekphrastic description. to offer some of the emergent themes room to develop certain aspects will be expanded on. to an extent, this is a continuation of the ekphrastic description, and is most definitely still approached aesthetically. this section of the chapter will also seek to make links with key concepts, ideas and theorists discussed in both the literature review and the methodology to consider the object’s animate and agentive qualities. . ekphrastic description . . bookishness the third edition of england under the tudors, published in , weighs grams. it is cm by cm with a cm depth. the cover, made from a thickish cardboard material, is covered with a thin, protective plastic finish. the image on the cover of the book, which takes jerome mcgann quoted by finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . hayles, “print is flat, code is deep,” - . hayles, “print is flat, code is deep,” . up the bottom half of the page is “a general description of england and ireland,” a map in dusty browns and soft, burnt orange hues. england and ireland are shaded white with thin brown outlines. a brown band separates ireland and england. it cuts through western scotland, the irish sea, the most westerly tip of south wales and neatly separates cornwall from the rest of england. it is not an intentional line as others on the map are. it is wider, and faded, and serves no clear cartographical purpose. perhaps it is the remnants of a well-worn fold in the original map? or a water stain? the counties are written out in red ink, towns in brown, all illegible. what would appear to be forests are marked by green splotches and an unknown geographical point of reference appears in yellow smudges. two ships sail in the north sea off the coast of east anglia while france peeks out of the bottom right-hand corner, a murky yellow base colour with noticeably fewer geographical markings. in the corner of this corner of france, in the same bottom-right- hand corner of the cover-page, is a small man surveying the scene; arms folded, he gazes toward the devon. what he is doing, where is he from, and why he is there is not made clear, but, nevertheless, there he is. the top half of the cover page is black with the title, “england under the tudors”, in a pale orange that compliments the tones of the map and the author’s name, “g.r. elton”, in a clean, clear, no-nonsense white. “england” and “tudors” are in a larger font size than “under the” making it immediately obvious to even the casual observer, who glances only quizzically and briefly, that this book is about england and it is about the tudors. the words “third edition” appear at the bottom of the cover page, over the top of the map, neatly plastered across devon and dorset before hugging the remaining southern coastline. a black border runs along the very bottom of the page underneath the map and another border runs along the top of the map. this top border is not a solid black line like the bottom border. instead it is two thinner black lines that sandwich a thicker band of colour which changes from the same pale orange colour of the title text to a murky dark grey or the black of the top half of the page. so perhaps the top half is not black after all. the top half is a faded black, an aging and mottled black, with hazy grey borders of its own and, on closer inspection, some markings that are faintly visible behind the text. what could be a coat of arms rests just above the capital “e” of “england” and something else is nestled above “d.” another coat of arms? the sheen of the plastic covering means that in some lights it is certain there is a coat of arms and in others maybe it is a scuff, or a stain, or simply a trick of the light. the copy of england under the tudors that i am looking at, my copy, is well-worn. the plastic covering has lost its stick along the right-hand side, the page-turning side of the book. running your finger over the area of separation is in equal parts satisfying and irritating. this malfunction, or flaw, reveals that the design of the front of the book is printed on the plastic not the cardboard. if you pinch the edge of the plastic in your forefingers and pull gently upwards while at the same time lowering your face to the same level as the book you can peer through this tiny section of plastic and observe part of the cover page from an entirely different perspective. without the solid, white firmness of the front cover’s cardboard materiality this sliver of an image is far less sturdy and far less certain. the temptation to pull at the plastic and separate the plastic and the carboard completely is almost overwhelming. but i don’t. but i wonder why i don’t. something similar happens along the edges of the back-cover page. the plastic not only frays at the left-hand edge but is also scuffed along the top and bottom edges as though the cover is shrinking at the edges or melting. the back-cover page is all black and is separated by the same orange-gold and grey border as the front cover. the black of the top half is the same black; grey black, soft black. is there some faint, illegible writing underneath the same would-be coat of arms in the top left corner? are there the foggy outlines of a flower in the centre, a tudor rose perhaps? or is it just the bright, spring light of the english countryside hitting the scruffy plastic at a particular angle? the bottom black is darker, denser, emptier. the plastic covering still creates the illusion of a pattern skimming the surface, but nothing shimmers below in the depths of this blackness. the fraying edges are all the more discombobulating because of this as the assured blackness is reduced to a cracked and crinkled blackish film with the remnants of its former glory lingering on the white cardboard underneath. the text on the back cover is in the same muted orange and white. obligatory snippets of complementary reviews appear in orange near the top and a brief overview in smaller, sharper white takes up the centre section of the back-cover page. we learn from the back page that the map “is the first ‘modern’ map of britain © the british library board, ” and that this book is officially classed as “history.” the very bottom of the back-cover page is reserved for the business of books, or perhaps more accurately the business of publishing books. a barcode, an isbn number, a logo, an address, a website, a statement: “an informa business.” these jarring and enforced requirements are all printed neatly in white and disrupt the literary pomp and ceremony of the other elements of the cover. and what of the spine? quite often forgotten, i would say, when the book is in use but arguably the most important section of the outer covering of a book as it is the most visible. presuming, that is, that a book of this size and this nature would live in a bookshelf or in a pile with its spine acting as its label, its name. the spine includes the most important pieces of information: the title (“england” and “tudors”) written vertically; “third edition” written horizontally; the author’s name (vertically); and the publisher’s logo. name; number; creator; provider. all in muted orange other than the publisher’s logo in white. the pages are crisp, white paper similar to that you would use in a printer. unlike the typical novel, the paper is completely smooth to touch with not even a hint of textured roughness. the pages of a typical novel, and by typical novel i mean any book published with the purpose of reading for leisure for a mass market, are not usually this same bright, smooth white. the colours vary, but there is always a hint of yellowness in varying degrees; an off white with a hint of buttery eggshell, a cream-ish beige, a soft straw-like colour. the white is less clinical, the texture less determined, the pages slightly thinner, the ambience less formal than england under the tudors. i have long had an aversion to printed pages. specifically, newspaper print, which i cannot abide at any time, but books have also been troublesome especially if my hands are dry, or the book is in any way damp, or stained, or overly dishevelled. a completely sodden book, accidently dropped in the sea, or the swimming-pool, or the sink, its pages returned to what seems like their original pulped state, that disintegrate under pressure and cleave themselves to your skin and each other, makes me physically wretch. the smoothness of the white pages of england under the tudors appeals to me as i can imagine water droplets running off this slick surface rather than into it. this is not what would happen. england under the tudors is not protected against accidental submergence in water any more than any other book, but my aversion to wet paper means the smooth, clinical whiteness of england under the tudors five hundred and twenty-two plus pages soothes me. there is a downside; england under the tudors has no detectable bookish “smell.” even the smell of a book is somewhat complicated for me, as i am aware that what i’m really smelling is paper, and i don’t like paper, but i still like the smell. maybe because it reminds me of reading, something i love, or bookshops, which are sanctuaries, or maybe simply because everybody is drawn to the smell of books and therefore it is an acceptable smell that one likes, like flowers, or babies’ heads. england under the tudors does not have this smell of anticipation and nostalgia all rolled into one that is assigned to books. england under the tudors is without a noticeable scent; aromatically silent. the typeface used in england under the tudors is institutional. i recognise the typeface from certain types of historical sources: government papers, formal letters, memos. whatever the font is, for i do not know its name, it is “traditional” rather than “modern”. the g’s have the looped bottom of a less-modern type face. the m’s have the noticeable difference in gradient on the left and right vertical legs and the two v’s of the w overlap rather than sit side-by-side. it is a typeface that attempts to replicate some of the niceties of cursive handwriting. the letters, and words, feel plump. the colour is black; black text on white paper. the text is single spaced, new paragraphs are not indented but are justified. there are, as mentioned, five hundred and twenty-two numbered pages of content in england under the tudors. eleven preliminary pages at the beginning, numbered with roman numerals, including the title page, publishing information, the prefaces to all three editions of england under the tudors, and the contents pages. there are nine remaining blank pages; one at the beginning of the book and the remaining eight at the end. there are seventeen chapters all with up-to five subchapters (other than the first chapter: the tudor problem). there is an extensive bibliography at the end (fifteen pages) and an index (seventeen pages). there are four “maps and diagrams” in the entirety of the book. . . textbookishness turning to the england under the tudors now, the things that stand out to me that suggest it is a textbook are the physical alterations and amendments that i have made to the object; i have transformed what i thought was a book into what i considered a textbook. i altered its materiality to fit with a pre-conceived idea of what a textbook is and what a textbook does. while most of these changes take place inside the book it is clear by looking at the book as it lies closed on the table that this is a book that has been used for a purpose because of the assortment of thin, colourful plastic tips protruding from its pages. mini post-it notes in purple, pink, green, blue, and yellow stick out from the side of the book. there is no order to the colours or obvious pattern. although not completely level the plastic tips are roughly the same size, not quite a square, more of a squashed rectangle. as i look down at them, i am tempted to re-stick the ones that stick out too far or not enough, but i worry the stickiness will be lost and i don’t have any spare. the first page of the book indicates this book belongs to the teacher part of my identity because “miss wallace” is written in the top right-hand corner and underlined twice. this first page only has “england under the tudors” printed on it; other than that, it is blank. but i have added a key: purple is for characters; green for government; pink, foreign policy; yellow, socio-economic; and blue, religious ideas, humanism, church. this page indicates how the textbook works. the different colours represent different themes related to the a-level scheme of work. if i wanted to flick through the parts of the book that were related to government, all i need to do is open the book where a green tab emerges. annotations do not appear on every page of the book and annotations are not the same on every page of the book that they do appear. sometimes the notes are detailed. there are explanations and comments in the margins, indications of what paragraphs are talking about, highlighted words or sentences as well as underlining, circling and arrows. these pages feel cluttered but important. pages with no markings are reduced to blankness. despite being filled with the same carefully constructed printed prose the black ink on white paper appears lacking without a colourful adornment. there is no colour scheme when it comes to annotations. sometimes the pen is green, sometimes black, sometimes blue, sometimes pencil. highlights are in yellow, orange, messy black and hurried green. sometimes quotations or key ideas are underlined, sometimes highlighted, sometimes both. underlines are single, double, squiggly. some pages contain important extra analysis, definitions of words, full sentences summarising the gist of an argument or explanation. some are all but blank other than a hurried scrawl or a careless highlight. there are higher concentrations of annotations in various parts of the book. henry vii, the first monarch, is fairly well covered. attention paid to henry viii is in some areas incredibly detailed, the pages on the “king’s great matter” are covered with ink, but some sections (important sections for the purposes of the a-level) are completely bare other than the occasional tab indicating what type of information is there. cardinal wolsey’s foreign policy is entirely without comment. the mid-tudor crisis is the most annotated section. elizabeth’s early reign and the religious settlement enjoy a lot of attention but as the book progresses fewer and fewer comments appear. the last page with any markings is page . how did i decide which pages to read? i’ve left no comments to myself about why i read and annotated certain pages. i know i wanted to read the whole book, but i could never find the time. annotations take on a temporal dimension: they are an indication of time spent reading. this gift of time to the page through markings and highlighting suggests it has something worthwhile to say. the annotations therefore draw meaning from the text written by elton but also tell another well-known story of the teacher with too little time and too much to do. . the uncanniness of england under the tudors brown says that a presence-at-hand encounter with an object, as described by martin heidegger, brings the “uncanniness of the ordinary” into view. what is the uncanniness of the ordinary? brown, who is interested in “how objects grasp you” would perhaps describe the uncanniness of the ordinary as aspects of an object that “elicit your attention, interrupt your concentration, assault your sensorium.” he is specifically drawing on heidegger’s ideas about objects as equipment when he talks about grasping objects. heidegger thought there were two ways that an object, that is also a piece of equipment, calls your attention. the first mode of encountering is to do with “the task rather than the tools” meaning the “essential characteristics” of the object, the “equipmental being,” “instrumentality,” and “‘ready-to-handness’ remain inconspicuous.” the second type of encounter, if we “stop brown, other things, . brown, other things, - . martin heidegger quoted by brown, other things, . and observe them” is one where the object’s “‘presence-at-hand’ becomes apparent.” this requires what heidegger thought of as a “vigilant passivity” that enabled “the other thing, the thingness of things, to dislocate itself.” the uncanniness of the ordinary is when the “essential characteristics” of an object that are just part of what makes it work as it should, heidegger uses the example of a door latch, irrupt as something quite different when you decidedly turn your attention toward them. in the case of england under the tudors it is when some of the essential characteristics, kolbeck and röhl’s “material qualities”, reveal themselves as something quite different the ekphrastic description of england under the tudors brings forth its uncanniness. the inconspicous weight, size, and paper become conspicuous; these ordinary qualities of the book become uncanny, strange, mysterious and perhaps unsettling. bennett says that vital materialists “will linger in those moments during which they find themsleves fascinated by objects, taking them as clues to the material vitaltity that they share with them” which is what i will now do to to explore further the uncanny ordinariness of england under the tudors. . . the cover finkelstein and mccleery define paratext as the “liminal devices [of a book] that control how a reader perceives the text, such as front and back cover, jacket blurbs, indexes, footnotes, tables of contents, forewords, and prefaces.” while paratext has been of interest to many brown, other things, . brown, other things, . bennett, vibrant matter, . finkelstein and mcclerry, an introduction to book history, . bibliographers it was gerald genette who looked at these elements of the book as more than hiding places for secret clues about production techniques. instead, genette was interested in how “these paratexts become zones of transaction.” having previously been dismissed as a less engaging or less relevant part of the written text they have been re-noticed as essential parts of the text that are also part of the materiality of the book. finklestein and mccleery offer an interesting story to highlight how paratexts can shape attitudes (and sales) of books. j.k. rowling’s harry potter series was re-promoted and re- released after the films were made and the publishers maximised cross-over sales between adult and children’s markets by providing separate jackets or covers to the book. this must, in part, be because people do in fact judge a book by its cover, and perhaps more importantly, fear being judged because of the cover of the books they read; would a power suit-wearing city slicker wish to be seen with a children’s novel on the morning commute? genette considers paratexts, book covers included, to be “a privileged place of pragmatics and a strategy of an influence on the publis.” material qualities of books have certain privileges that influence how people perceive the books. genette thinks this “is at the service of a better reception of the text and a more pertinent reading” which perhaps is true, although this does presume there is a “better” and “worse” reception of a text. what genette’s ideas, and the example of j.k. rowling’s novels, shows is that paratexts can, and are (and have been), “utilized to ensure for the text a destiny consistent with the author’s purpose.” issue could be taken with the idea that the author’s finkelstein and mcclerry, an introduction to book history, . finkelstein and mcclerry, an introduction to book history, - . gerard genette quoted by finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . genette quoted by finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . genette quoted by finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . intended purpose of a written text is the only thing affecting its destiny, but the more imperative matter at hand is that texts, and by extension books, can have a destiny, and perhaps more significantly a desired destiny. what was the desired destiny for this copy of england under the tudors? and who envisioned it? elton? publishers at routledge? was the book’s destiny decided before it arrived in my classroom? the notion of destiny clashes with barad’s agential realism. if an object’s destiny is decided during its, or because of its, production then the agential cut separating object and subject follows the cartesian tradition which “takes the distinction for granted” and “presumes…a prior existence of independent entities or relata.” the author or publisher (subjects) are separate entities from the book (object) which can therefore have predetermined boundaries and properties, such as a destiny, assigned to it. barad rejects this as “relata do not pre-exist relations” and instead “relata-within-phenomena emerge through specific intra- actions.” the object emerged through the process of authorship, publishing, reception, survival and, in the specific case of england under the tudors, a second and third round of publishing. but more than that, this specific material object is unique to my classroom and therefore emerged as an object in that classroom. barad says, “it is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of the components of phenomena become determinate and that particular concepts (that is, particular material articulations of the world) become meaningful.” these intra-actions “enact agential separability – the condition of exteriority-within-phenomena” barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . meaning the agential cut is not cartesian, instead agency must be seen as an “ongoing flow” that gives objects their exteriority, or boundaries, in the phenomena. boundaries, therefore, are not permanent, agency is ongoing, objects are changeable, destiny is not fixed: it changes. the paratexts of england under the tudors, especially the cover, act as reminders that the materiality of this object contributed to its intra-active becoming and changing destiny. the cover has been chosen for this third edition of the book for a specific reason with aesthetic and literary ideals in mind. as well as being assigned to the book for these immaterial reasons, the book was also physically assigned its cover; a plastic covering was stuck to the outer cardboard cover of the book. my copy of england under the tudors reminds us of this because the plastic covering is coming away from the cardboard acting as a physical reminder of the impermanence of that which we consider solid and permanent. if i were to tug gently at the plastic covering so that it became nothing more than a crinkled mess gathered at the spine of the book, leaving in its wake only a limp cardboard layer robbed of its former historical glory, would the book lose its sedimented values? the book is still england under the tudors, the written text remains present and its ability to culturally transmit is not lost, but it is weakened, because the cover of the book meant the object had certain power and status without ever being read, without even having to be opened. part of the book’s prestige is its cover; its materiality. the same can be said of its chapter formations, its lengthy bibliography, its detailed footnotes, its blank pages. all a physical reminder of the book’s entitled status, it can afford pages of nothing, nine of them in fact. although the author’s or publisher’s beliefs about the barad, meeting the universe halfway, . there were different covers for the first and second editions of the book. book’s destiny play a part in how the book unfolded in the classroom, these are sedimented values assigned in the materiality of the object rather than merely properties assigned to the book; they are part of its intra-active destiny, not its pre-determined destiny. significantly these beliefs are part of the object’s materiality; the power of england under the tudors does not reside solely in its written text or cultural transmission. the fraying edges of england under the tudors are a physical indication of the object’s ability to mutate. wear and tear have meant that the physical boundaries of the book are changing. the cover reminds us that book’s materiality is part of the book’s power, but power is not permanent, it can be peeled away. so, do judge a book by its cover, because it says a lot more about the book than simply what it looks like at first glance. . . pages . . . the teacher-reader john issit thinks “the general sentiment, in britain at least, seems to be that the knowledge in textbooks is in some way second-rate knowledge and that the teachers, the writers and the learners who engage with them in their different ways are somehow doing something second- rate.” much of this, according to terry haydn, is to do with what textbooks look like (as discussed in detail in chapter ). these are textbooks that are “intertextual field[s]” with “complex spatial order of textual elements” that includes textboxes, headers, footers in differing font sizes, issitt, “reflections on the study of textbooks,” . typeface and colour. these different elements are placed strategically on a page with graphics and visuals. there is a “hierarachical system of juxtapositions” meaning the text is organised in a non-linear manner that guides the reader to read in a certain order. this has the effect of making “some things big, and some things small, while others drop out of the picture altogether.” textbooks are designed so readers use the visual clues to “orient themselves and find their own way through the text.” the reading of this type of textbook is a guided practice: the reader is guided by the spatial organisation of the page. england under the tudors does not fit into this definition of a textbook despite being a primer for a-level. the experience of reading is therefore not guided and instead reading “is an interpretation that admits ambiguity and difference.” meaning “is the creation of the reader from the text rather than solely framed by the text itself.” there is a certain romanticism to this idea of reading. finkelstein and mccleery suggest that “the extremist wing of the reader-as- interpreter perspective would argue that the reader can create anything he or she likes from a text without boundaries or restriction” although they themselves adopt a more moderate view stating simply that “reading is not passive.” this type of reading does feel more active, more interesting, more lively than the version of reading associated with textbooks. what i would like kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . john law quoted by kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . law quoted by kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” - . kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . a primer is a type of textbook. it is often referring to a first textbook, a primary resource, but in can refer to any book that offers the basic elements of any subject. england under the tudors was a primer as it offered the basic elements of tudor history, according to elton, for a-level students being introduced to this period of history. finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . to ponder is how the teacher-reader, reading for the purpose of understanding, but also seeking ways to make other people (students) understand and, in this case, bring an historical narrative to life, reads in a way that sits in the liminal space between these somewhat binary conceptulizations of the reader as active or passive. the physical alterations i made were largely written meaning that as a teacher-reader i was both a reader and a writer. barad says that “meaning is not a property of individual words or groups or words but an ongoing performance of the world.” the teacher-reader who is a writer brings this sharply into focus. my appropriation of england under the tudors could be seen as an exercise in “‘finding places in the text’ or, in other ways, locating oneself relative to the text and its “phrases, argumentative steps, narrative parts and functions.” the highlighting, underlining, commentry in the margins, circles, arrows, post-it notes, etc…. altered the spatial arrangement of the page. the materiality of the paper meant markings were clear and despite there being no specific order to how i annotated the text, the chaos as a whole created a sense of order that changed the book so it operated as a textbook for me. i oriented myself in the text through my own comments taking meaning from the text but this meaning was not “solely framed by the text itself” because my commentry was part of the meaning-making proess. the first time i read a page, i actively read, but subsequent reading may have been more passive as i let my own spatial arrangements dictate my reading experience; a guided experience rather than a searching one. general wear and tear of the book through use and the application of post-it notes can not be included here but are still physical alterations that i made. barad, “agential realism,” . w. sharrock and n. ikeya quoted by kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . . . . paper writing has been considered the “physical manifestation of truth” owing to its “permanency that outlasted oral presentation” and its power that “exerted itself through its presence in material form.” the annotations i made to england under the tudors were a form of writing and could be seen as my physical manifestaion of truth in relation to the historical narrative i sought to create from the narrative presented to me as text by elton. the materiality of the paper made a difference to how this manifestation of truth emerged. from a new materialist perspective the idea of a human hand touching paper, and the subsequent reaction to the texture and feel of the paper, is complicated because the human hand is privileged over the paper if the hand is the only thing doing the touching. following barad’s observation that “we are not outside observors of the world” we are also not the only objects or bodies that touch. we are, as bohr reminds us, part of the nature we seek to understand meaning we touch nature but nature also touches us. this is echoed by sam mickey who says “it is not just a human who touches. even a stone touches. sense makes sense for everything, not just for humans.” following this line of thought, when i touch the paper of england under the tudors it also touches me. jacques derrida, when criticising maurice merleau-ponty amongst other theorists, referred to this privileging of human touch in philosophy as “humanualism.” the roots of humanulaism are deep and “the privileging of the hand” can be seen as “hand in hand with other finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, - . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . sam mickey, “touching without touching: objects of post-deconstructive realism and object- oriented ontology,” open philosophy , no. ( ): . jacques derrida quoted by sam mickey, “touching without touching," . hierarchies that emerged in the philosophies of ancient religious traditions, such as the subordination of the material to the spiritual, or darkness to light, and of women to men.” recognising that non-human objects touch objects, including humans, including myself, shifts my perception of my reaction to paper. perhaps this is less of a reaction to paper and instead is something paper is doing to me by touching me. this shift away from humanulaism provides a different way of revealing the animate qualities of the book. the material of the paper affected (and affects) me; the pages of england under the tudors have what could be called texturised agency. they are smooth and soothing to me. this causes an effect in my behaviour because i am happy and willing to touch them, and turn them, and write on them. my appropriation of the book to create, what to me, is a textbook is driven by the materiality of the paper: matter making meaning. this meaning is an historical narrative (of the epistmeological kind). it is informed by what textbooks usually do for me and my role as an active reader of elton’s text. comments that indicate my personal take on what elton is saying illustrate the entangled nature of materiality, reading, and and writing as a “manifestation of truth” in narrative form. . . weight having spent quite some time lingering with england under the tudors’s cover and pages i am keen to consider an aspect of the object that it shares with all physical objects, not just books, its weight. i am particulary struck by the weight of england under the tudors. a bag of sugar weighs kg or grams. england under the tudors weighs almost / ths of mickey, “touching without touching,” . one bag of sugar – approaching three-quarters of a bag of sugar. is this surprising? as i hold the book in one hand and a bag of sugar in the other the difference in weight feels hardly recognizable. but it is quite heavy for a book that is used every day. kolbeck and röhl suggest that textbooks are “designed in a way that meets certain anticpated demands of working with them that distinguises them from other books” with one of them being that “their weight is limited due to ergonomic concerns.” i cannot be certain that ergonomic concerns were high on elton’s agenda when he wrote his manuscript nor when methuen & co (who first published the book) published it. but, other textbooks that my students used more regrularly were more likely produced with this specific design criteria and therefore england under the tudors may have always been uncanny to my students in terms of its weight. rezart says “in order to use a book, one has to know how to manipulate it, how to hold it corretly, how to turn pages.” while i am not suggesting my students did not know how to read or hold books at all there is evidence that suggests they found holding and reading this book troublesome. there were many occasions when the students would “forget” to bring their copies of england under the tudors to school. as time progressed, and we got to know each other better, it emerged that this was because it was too heavy. heidegger, when talking of the interaction of objects and bodies, considered that “doing things “at” the table is what makes the table what it is and not some other thing.” ahmed talks of her own experience as a writer and how huddling over her desk means her “body feels a kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . rezard quoted by kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . ahmed, “orientations matter," . certain way.” both are alluding to how objects shape bodies. the majority of students did not like how their bodies felt when they had to carry elton’s book which meant they tended to leave their books at home; they did not like how the object shaped their bodies in particular ways. reading, as engert and kray state, “is a bodily practice with [a] textual artefact” and for my students the practice of reading included the transporation of the book to and from the classroom. the more the students “forgot” their copy of the book the less i used it in class as a textbook that we all read at the same time: the “material qualities [were] (made) relvant in and for practical use.” the weight of the book, an aspect that many may consider to be “banal and mundane” reveals itself to be an essential element of the book’s liveliness contributing to the intra-active becoming of the object as one of status and prestige in the classroom space. for although i had the same copy of the england under the tudors as the students, my copy was present in the classroom in a different way and its pedagogical authority, whilst being embedded in it from the outset, emerged in, and through, its visibility as well as my use and appropriation of the book, partly because i was willing (or compelled) to allow the object to shape my body in a certain way. barad discusses an experiment where one of the scientists, a man, smoked cigars. the scientist’s sulfuric breath turned “faint, nearly invisible, silver traces to jet black silver sulfide traces” meaning the results of the experiment being conducted were seen. if it had not been for the scientist’s sulfuric breath then the nearly invisible lines would have remained invisible. ahmed, “orientations matter,” . k. engbert and b. kray quoted by kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . kolbeck and röhl, “textbook practices,” . magilchrist, “materiality and mediality of textbooks,” barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad uses this example to highlight how “material practices that contributed to the production of gendered individuals also contributed to the materialization of this particular scientific result” or, in other words, “the gendered and classed performance of masculinity mattered.” in regards to the experiment barad is talking about how the gender and class of the scientist both mattered and emerged as material, bodily practices that affected the meaning of the experiment. matter and meaning were intertwined. as discovered by lingering with the pages of england under the tudors my personal take on elton’s historical interpretation emerged as part of the bodily practice of reading and writing the book. finkelstein and mccleery recognise reading as “both a social phenomenon…and an individual expereince” that is “itself creative, forming meaning from the interaction of reader and text.” the performance the work enacts on the reader is individual and influenced by the reader’s “values, experiences and cultural references” but also as a social act, “part of the history of reception” meaning individual readers tend to be part of what stanley fish calls “interpretive communities” who interpret texts in similar ways. my values, experiences and cultural references include my class and gender and would have had an effect on how i negotiated the historical narrative offered by elton and what guidance i provided for myself for future readings when appropriating the text. my copy of england under the tudors emerges in the classroom as a specific object with certain qualities that are a result of bodily, material practices on behalf of both the teacher and students that barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . finkelstein and mccleery, an introduction to book history, . results in a certain narrative, a certain take on elton’s text, my take, becoming sacrosanct in the classroom rather than the entirety of the text elton wrote. the weightiness of england under the tudors serves, in the end, to perhaps elevate my voice rather than elton’s. i teach about elton’s interpretation by using aspects of argument and quotations from his text but to what extent is it elton’s interpretation and to what extent is it mine? the students’ dislike of the way england under the tudors shaped their bodies meant nine times out of ten it was my copy of the object that was referenced and referred which meant our voices, mine and elton’s, emerged together rather than separately. . concluding thoughts the ekphrastic description, written as it is in its aesthetic form, cannot really be concluded. it is a product of the researcher’s aesthetic orientation toward the object, and vigilant passivity whilst observing and writing about it, but, as bal makes clear, the intention of an artist “over time gives way to abandon” and “abandon is the opposite of intention.” my intentions give way to abandon as soon as the ekphrastic description is read. i could choose to select the salient points but i choose not too as that would undermine the aesthetic purpose and form of the description as a whole so i will leave it as it stands. the emergent themes discussed in this chapter do warrant a brief conclusion. lingering with some different material aspects of england under the tudors and exploring their animate and lively qualities revealed a number of things. lingering with the cover illustrated that the boundaries of a book, material and immaterial, change and mutate meaning a book can never bal, travelling concepts in the humanities, . have a pre-determined destiny. from a new materialist perspective destiny is on-going and flowing, a condition of being rather than a finite destination. this revelation disrupted and questioned the book’s status, prestige, and power revealing these things to be material yet also impermanent. lingering with the pages revealed firstly that the appropriation of the text by the teacher was guided largely by an active experience of reading that created a subsequent passive one. it was a process of transformation where the book become a textbook for the teacher. this process was itself guided, or affected, by the texture, and textual qualities, of the paper. all this meant matter was the driving force behind the creation of meaning which was the teacher’s annotated historical narrative. finally, lingering with the weight of the book revealed how collective bodily practice on behalf of both my students and i resulted in my copy of england under the tudors emerging in a particular way. an on-going consequence of this was, perhaps, that the boundaries separating my narrative from elton’s was blurred in the classroom. these three emergent themes illustrate that how england under the tudors was part of a complex interplay of text, materiality, and teacher, connection meant the object’s status, prestige, and power materialised in the classroom in very specific ways unique to this particular relationship. the object is more a companion than a tool as the boundaries separating the teacher and the object are blurred giving both agency and animate capacities. england under the tudors was a material facet of the teacher’s being-in-the-classroom which had specific and tangible effects on the historical narrative that came to life in the classroom. chapter : sedimentation . introduction this chapter attends to the second research question: what were the conditions of arrival, and conditions of use, of england under the tudors in the classroom? the metaphor of sedimentation will be employed to explore these ideas. “sedimentation is generally considered by geologists in terms of textures, structures, and fossil content of the deposits laid down in different geographic and geomorphic environments.” it is the “settling of solid particles from fluids.” in regards to england under the tudors the terms “deposits”, “settling”, “textures”, and “structures” are helpful metaphors to think with for the ekphrastic description. ekphrastic descriptions, traditionally, are descriptions of visual experiences of works of art, but the works of art are always material objects, such as achilles shield or keats’ ode on a grecian urn. the metaphors of texture and structure used to provide clarity for the writing by providing something material to describe. going back to barad, to her use of metaphors, she says that metaphors are “not to be taken literally as representation; rather, it is offered as an evocation and provocation to think with.” approaching these themes in this way is an attempt to bring them to life through aesthetic capabilities of language to allow for eisner’s “aesthetic modes of knowing.” the second part of this chapter lingers with the ekphrastic description and darnton’s definition of bourdieu’s literary field: “a set of relations determined by lines of force and regulated according to the rules of the game by accepted players” it is a helpful definition as it https://www.britannica.com/science/sedimentation-geology https://www.britannica.com/science/sedimentation-geology barad, meeting the universe halfway, . eisner, “aesthetic modes of knowing,” . darnton, “‘what is the history of books?’ revisited,” . provides a foundation, or jumping off point, to think about the school’s culture, chosen aesthetic and ethos, as described in the ekphrastic description. by lingering with this ekphrastic description and darnton’s definition some of the “lines of force”, or sedimented values, can be explored. . ekphrastic description the two structures that will be discussed are: a) the leadership team (as a body of people) who presented the object to the teacher b) the school (both as architectural building and its chosen aesthetic style) as the space the object was used in as we are discussing how england under the tudors was used as a lively classroom companion the metaphorical structures being discussed are linked to the educational environment the object was used in, looking specifically at school cultures and how they are created. the ekphrastic descriptions of the leadership team and the school building not only provide something material to describe they are also descriptions of the school’s culture, the chosen school aesthetic, and the ethos of the school. . . the leadership team the leadership team wore black suits. armani black suits to be precise. or so the head always used to tell us. it always seemed like an odd topic to boast about but uniformity, smartness, style, and a whiff of wealth were important to him, so he told us all the time. the leadership team wore black suits with white shirts and a coloured tie but a respectable coloured tie: navy blue, burgundy, maybe a very deep, ecclesiastical purple. any patterns were subtle, understated. minimal white dots, a barely visible pinstripe. female members of the leadership team, of course, did not have to wear ties but it did throw the uniformity off. luckily this was rarely a problem. the leadership team stalked the corridors. sometimes they came into your classroom unannounced, sometimes they loitered in the corridors, sometimes they travelled in menacing packs. in the children’s film the never-ending story there is a mystical force called “the nothing.” in the film, “the nothing” is depicted as a black storm that sweeps through the land leaving nothing in its wake. as a child i was terrified by this nothingness, a mute, deadened blackness that descended on the world to extinguish life and light. “the nothing” was a cause and an effect; the leadership team operated in the same way. their presence was both a cause and an effect. as a whole, the bodies of the leadership team were a black shadow moving about the school. they were feared, just as “the nothing” was, and their presence stifled the liveness of the space they were in. voices were muffled, eyes lowered, bodies tensed. there was a frantic stillness to this atmosphere which was submissive but expectant of release. and release generally came, when the shadow moved on, and life seeped back into the classroom and everybody breathed a sigh of relief. the leadership team were oppressive. the leadership team were sleek. there was an oiliness to their being-in-the-world. not in a sleazy or dirty way, but instead in a smooth and gliding way. their presence was never abrupt and rarely noisy. sometimes they were shrieking, loud – yelling with ear-splitting screams in the faces of children. but it was a calculated roar and separate to their present-ness in a room. they approached quietly, and carefully, their oiliness spreading into a space, coating the surfaces with a shimmering, grey sheen. as they left, the oiliness departed, but it left a residue of oppressive softness in its wake, clinging to the surfaces and slowly dissipating. the leadership team had sharp lines. the sharp lines of their suits, their cuffs, their polished shoes. the sharp lines of their postcards they used to communicate. left as notes on your desk, rather than an email: a sharp-edged instruction on a stiff, white cardboard. a calling- card of uniformity. the leadership team drew sharp lines when they crossed out children’s writing in their workbooks or made students line up in the corridor. the leadership team stood in sharp lines when they stood at the gate welcoming children to school. the leadership team sat in straight lines in front of the staff during staff meetings. the leadership team were all right- angles and paper-cut edges. there was no softness to their form. . . the school building the school building felt as though it was more space than building. the classrooms hugged the edges leaving the heart of the structure as space and light. this was a celebrated building where the clean, light, transparent atmosphere was billed as the perfect environment for rigour (a favourite word used by the head) study, and scholarship. the building was innovative, modern, a glittering symbol of devotion in glass and steel to the gods of order and calm. the building was extraordinary, not ordinary. the building represented the aspirations of the school’s staff and students. for something better, lighter, brighter, something crystallised and translucence. an ethereal objective; the embodiment of moving out of the dark into the light. the building was the students’ (supposed) journey to a better life. the classrooms reflected the order of the building in its entirety in neat, individual units. one side of the building was for specialised classrooms: science labs, the design and technology studio, art classrooms, and it rooms with suites of computers. the other side was for standard classrooms. these classrooms were all exactly the same and spread over four floors. tables were in a horseshoe formation with four further tables (to seat eight) in two neat lines in the centre of the horseshoe. the tables and chairs were bespoke. made by the furniture design company ercol the chairs were ergonomic excellence in sleek and sculptured elm. pleasing to the eye and smooth to touch, the furniture was perfectly suited to a hardly used dining room of an absent family. for constant use in a busy school they were less than ideal. they broke (because children swing on chairs). routine checks meant chairs in the danger zone were marked with tiny red stickers. red dots of potential disorder. the front of the classroom was all cupboard doors with an interactive white board in the centre. behind the cupboards were cubby holes and cupboards as well as a desk space for the teacher to work. textbooks and exercise books, exam scripts and revision guides sat in these spaces. the teacher space was everything the teacher needed. a marking space, a planning space, a place to print (all classrooms had a printer), a place to store personal belongings (all classrooms had a lockable teacher cupboard). this space could also be the staff room, the dining room, a changing room. why leave your classroom at all if everything is provided for you there? the building was clean. sparkling clean. the carpets were always hoovered, the bins always empty, the walls always painted, the windows always washed. the building was tidy. surfaces were always cleared, cupboards always closed, papers always stacked. the building was ordered. chairs were tucked in, tables were straight, books were piled. no loose papers fluttered in the wind. no equipment languished on the floor. objects had a place, and a purpose. and into this space came the chaos of children but they were subservient to the power of the building. they too had a place, and a purpose. their uniform was tidy (otherwise they went home), their books were neat (otherwise they were thrown away) and their pencil cases had the right type of pen (otherwise they were no good). applied to this canvas of order and calm was an aesthetic of scholarship. the corridor and classroom displays were chosen by the leadership team. large, square images and text in black and white. margaret thatcher, the queen, and winston churchill adorned the walls. the poetry of t.s. elliot and philip larkin nestled amongst the spires of oxford. alan bennett was present in every classroom. shakespeare littered the corridors. but none of his frivolity. much ado about nothing and twelfth night had no place here. this scholarship was serious. and male. king lear was present. and hamlet. and henry ii. the romans were invited. and the tudors. queen elizabeth had pride of place. the americans were there – jfk and perhaps martin luther king. but other than that, the walls were mainly british or the unknown wilderness – the desert, the rainforest, the tundra. around this corner you found durham cathedral. around that one was the yorkshire moors. collectively the images did not create a narrative, nor provide anything specific. this was a representation of scholarship that sat on the walls as decoration. scholarship was an idea, an attitude, an atmosphere. . lingering with cultural capital and neoliberalism this discussion about the “lines of force” that the ekphrastic description of the leadership team and school building allude to is focused on two specific emergent themes that are entangled in english school settings: cultural capital and neoliberalism. each line of force is considered separately, with some consideration given to the theory behind it and how this presents itself in the english education system and english schools. . . cultural capital a literary field, as conceptualised by bourdieu, including an educational field, is a field of struggles (as touched upon in chapter two) because it is where the “culture of the dominant class is transmitted.” cultural capital is the most valuable form of capital in the educational field where “teachers have the most cultural capital” and “value it.” cultural capital is therefore, according to bourdieu, a power resource. bourdieu clarifies that cultural capital is made up of objectified cultural capital , institutionalized cultural capital, and embodied cultural capital. these three forms of cultural capital are in a relationship together because “institutionalized cultural capital develops as a result of one’s having embodied cultural capital and successfully connecting it via the education system.” dominic pollard and patrick alexander offer some interesting insight into how the term “cultural capital” has, in their view, been “co-opted” by the political mainstream meaning it is used as “an unproblematic language for calculating the cumulative ingredients required for social mobility.” in reference to the english schooling, speaking specifically about one school in susan a. dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success: the role of habitus,” sociology of education , no. ( ): . bourdieu ( ), bourdieu ( ) and dimaggio and useem ( ) quoted by dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success,” . dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success,” . dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success,” . objectified cultural capital are objects that require cultural capital to understand them e.g. works of art. dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success,” . institutionalized cultural capital are educational credentials and credentialzing system. dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success,” . embodied cultural capital is a “disposition to appreciate and understand cultural goods.” dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success,” . dominic pollard and patrick alexander, “‘an attempt to tip the scales’: music and embodied capital in an english secondary school,” british journal of sociology of education , no. ( ): , https://doi.org/ . / . . . north london (regent’s park academy) , pollard and alexander assert that a privileging of “certain kinds of dominant cultural practice” takes place “within an unproblematic framing of social mobility.” the issue with this practice is that bourdieu frames “the school” as somewhere that “validates the cultural capital already disproportionately held” amongst its students. he states that the necessary “linguistic and cultural competence” needed for a “relationship of familiarity with culture” can “only be produced by family upbringing” and not by schools. it is because “the education system demands of everyone alike that they have what it does not give” that it upholds the status quo. pollard and alexander state that he goes as far as to warn against the “illusory nature” of cultural capital “as [a] direct means of changing one’s position in society.” pollard and alexander are looking specifically at regent’s park academy’s musical instrument programme and the tensions that exist between its “emancipatory aims “ and its “sanctioning and championing of certain types of dominant culture.” they conclude by stating that “even the most laudable attempts to ‘tip the scales’ of social justice in schools can become ensnared in neoliberal discourse about social mobility and aspiration” which ultimately uphold “the markers of difference they set out to topple.” their pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” - . regent’s park academy is located in an “under privileged, ethnically diverse area of north london.” it is a “non-selective, non- denominational, mixed-gender, combined primary and secondary school.” the school opened in . the majority of students are “children from arabic backgrounds, and of muslim faith.” pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” bourdieu, , quoted by pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” . bourdieu quoted by dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success,” . bourdieu quoted by dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success,” . pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” . pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” . every year student is given a string instrument (violin, viola, or cello) for three years. if they take music at gcse, they can keep the instrument for a further two years. pupils attend music lessons every day. the entire project is free. pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” . pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” . research suggests that on the whole cultural capital is a confused and problematic concept that has a very distinct place in english schools and the curriculum that is conceived and enacted in these schools. . . cultural markers the ekphrastic description of the leadership team and the school building take on new qualities if they are considered alongside the ideas about cultural capital in english schools put forward by pollard and alexander. the leadership team’s dress code, their postcards which resembled the stationery of the victorian elite, the expensive, bespoke classroom furniture in chic elm rather than tacky plastic all promote a very specific culture. you could go as far as saying that the wall displays were objectified cultural capital that required embodied cultural capital in order to understand them. these textures and structures of the leadership team and school building that are caught up in an overly simplified conceptualisation of cultural capital could be said to be the cultural markers of the school. the idea of cultural markers comes from tom bennett. in bennett, the uk’s department for education’s “behaviour tzar” , wrote a report “creating a culture: how school leaders can optimise behaviour” commenting on english schools. bennett’s focus was/is behaviour but his comments about how a school creates a culture are pertinent to this study. https://researched.org.uk/sessions/tom-bennett/. tom bennett became the uk government’s school ‘behaviour czar’ in . he advises the government on behaviour policy. tom bennett, “creating a culture: how school leaders can optimise behaviour,” uk department for education, no. march ( ), - . bennett was appointed by the minister of education in an advisory manner to conduct this report and has been appointed a further role to respond to a problem in some english schools with behaviour. with the help of a £ million government initiative bennet will oversee a crackdown on bad behaviour https://researched.org.uk/sessions/tom-bennett/ bennet thinks that “good school leaders are the conscious architects of their school cultures.” as conscious architects they are also role models because “school leaders possess the widest and most influential levers to influence the school culture. what they do or not do – is crucial.” when speaking to headteachers, bennet says they often “spoke of the need for them to constantly display the values and habits they wanted to see in their staff by setting a good example” and “they also agreed that senior staff were key role models for the staff body, as well as students.” a school’s culture “can be publicly conveyed” through “cultural markers or levers” which are “visible reminders that the school has a shared identity with shared values.” cultural markers and levers can include things such as uniform, stationery and equipment, and wall displays but also include the values, habits and examples set by the head, their leadership and the staff as a whole. this is all part of the school’s chosen aesthetic and ethos. class and cultural capital are intrinsically linked because family upbringing, which determines cultural capital, is “dependent on social class.” an off the cuff comment from mr. samson, the assistant head of music at regent’s park academy, captures how class and cultural capital are constantly and consistently intertwined in english schools. he believes that the school’s musical instrument programme will open up “valued forms of cultural participation” helping roughly struggling schools. this is a response to a real crisis in english schools and bennett’s conversation about behaviour is restricted to behaviour and school cultures. bennett, “creating a culture,” . bennett, “creating a culture," . bennett, “creating a culture,” . bennett, “creating a culture,” . bennett, “creating a culture,” - . the term aesthetic here is used interchangeably with both look and style. this is different to the definition of aesthetic that informs the orientation of the study. dumais, “cultural capital, gender, and school success,” . such as the proms to his students as they will believe it is “something they could go to, not just some posh person’s thing.” the “intention to redress this “presumed perspective on the behalf of his students is, pollard and alexander think, “admirable,” but laced with implicit assumptions about both his students and the proms. his students are not posh, the proms is posh. attending and appreciating the proms is a “legitimate cultural practice” and therefore by helping his students to achieve this goal he is helping them by legitimising them. the entire set of relations here, the teacher’s assumptions and intentions, the musical instrument programme, the proms as a goal all serve to invalidate cultural practices from students’ own upbringing and “frame social mobility as an ideal attainable through the accrual of certain capacities and bodies of knowledge.” the same could be said of the textures and structures of the leadership team and the school building. so many of the cultural markers of the leadership team and school building are connected to british nuances of class. the types of image and types of text used such as shakespeare, the tudors, thatcher, oxford’s spires, are saturated in and by class. even the way the leadership moved about the building, presented themselves, used their voices, even wrote – in cursive handwriting on stiff cardboard not printed text on floppy paper or a blinking screen. all these gestures, movements, tones were to an extent about class and classed. the proms, short for “promenade concerts” are orchestral, and mainly classical, music concerts organised by the bbc. they take place every year in london from mid july to september in a variety of venues including the royal albert hall and outdoor locations. they were started more than years ago. pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” . bourdieu ( ) quoted by pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” . pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” . the intentions behind this are potentially laudable, to an extent. pollard and alexander state that “bourdieu provides a powerful point of departure for framing how, at the subtle level of embodied cultural capital, ideas about culture and its values are installed through everyday movements and everyday sounds.” he points out that this embodied cultural capital is still illusory and will have not real effect on your social standing, but nonetheless he does point to the possibility of acquiring a diminished version of cultural capital. this was the leadership team’s intention: to model for students a way to be in the world that the head and the leadership team considered appropriate and successful. their version of embodied capital drew what could be called more obvious objects of cultural capital with links to class but was also about a way of being that was reserved, refined, considered, appreciative, contemplative, hushed, and ultimately classed. a way of being that they thought would allow the students to succeed. however laudable intentions, there is no escaping the fact that the leadership team’s actions and intentions fed into a wider movement in english schools that uses the language of aspiration and social mobility to mask a “less benevolent” agenda that “underpin the practice[s] in terms of reinforcing asymmetries of power.” this brings us to our next line of force: neoliberalism. . . neoliberalism pollard and alexander bring to the conversation the tension of cultural capital as a mechanism used in schools to bring about social justice and social mobility whilst simultaneously contributing and facilitating a neoliberal agenda. they allude to neoliberal pollard and alexander, “an attempt to tip the scales,” . values and ideals without offering an in-depth definition of what that means. gert biesta deconstructs the neoliberal educational experience in the following way which is a helpful addition to this conversation. the “learner is the (potential) consumer, the one who has certain needs” which positions the learner as an empty vessel who needs to be filled up. the teacher or the educational institution “is seen as the provider…who is there to meet the needs of the learner” meaning “education itself becomes a commodity – a ‘thing’ – to be provided or delivered by the teacher or educational institution.” thus “learning equates to consumption.” the learner as a consumer is caught up in what zipin et al call “doxic” aspirations. the term “raising aspirations” has become a widespread policy prescription, zipin et al argue, without consideration that aspirations are “subjective and intersubjective” and can be theorized in a number of ways. neoliberal discourse has shifted the conversation regarding aspiration from being a societal responsibility to an individual one: “individuals must take responsibility, as lifelong learners and entrepreneurs of the self, to navigate their own achievement of well-being, or have themselves to blame for becoming ‘wasted lives.’” “doxic” aspirations are those based on what bourdieu calls doxa logic, or “common sense” assumptions and beliefs, that “circulate[s] powerfully across diverse settings of everyday life: constituting underlying logics gert j.j. biesta quoted by tyson e. lewis, “rethinking the learning society: giorgio agamben on studying, stupidity, and impotence,” studies in philosophy and education , no. ( ): . biesta quoted by lewis, “rethinking the learning society,” . lewis, “rethinking the learning society,” . lew zipin et al., “educating for futures in marginalized regions: a sociological framework for rethinking and researching aspirations,” educational philosophy and theory , no. ( ): . zipin et al., “education for futures in marginalized regions,” . zipin et al., “education for futures in marginalized regions,” . that seem more-or-less unquestionable for many.” the meritocratic principle that “if you work hard enough you can attain your dream” whatever it is becomes logically, “common sense.” working hard, at the cost of other aspects of life, say socialising, is a “necessary sacrifice” for those intent on pursuing “upwardly mobile life chances.” however, should students fail to achieve their dream doxic logic suggests this is a deficit on the student’s behalf for wasting their “talent, hard work and focus” when they were offered the chance to capitalise on them when in school. a consumer-student with aspirations to “improve” their life wants a school that “markets” itself as a place where this can be achieved, where they will capitalise on their talent and will be able to work hard and focus. when market values are applied to schools, the way a school looks is important because the school is constantly marketing itself. its unique pattern of order or culture become part of the brand of the school which is advertised to prospective students (and their parents). the ekphrastic description of the school leadership team and the school building illustrates how this specific school chose to market itself and which particular cultural markers they chose to adopt. the clinical nature of the school’s chosen aesthetic, the enforced order, uniformity and contrived sense of calm are caught up in the school adherence to doxic aspirations. the sharp lines of the leadership team, the efficiency of the classrooms, the compartmentalisation of bodies and books, even the materiality of the building: glass, metal, wood all contribute to a brand that is corporate and business like. there are no distractions here. no scrappy student work on the walls. no zipin et al., “education for futures in marginalized regions,” . zipin et al., “education for futures in marginalized regions,” . notices about cancelled football matches. there are hardly any signs of children. why would there be? is this even really about children? . a return to the object this brief survey of cultural capital and neoliberalism reveals how powerful these lines of force are on the set of relations for both the english education system in general and each individual school that is part of it. in a way it forces us to question to what extent the leadership team could have been “conscious architects” of the school culture and perhaps posit them as unconscious architects adapting to the lines of force that regulate the rules of the game. whatever their role, conscious or unconscious, it is in this context that england under the tudors was gifted to myself and my class. this next section will consider how the lines of force affected the conditions of arrival and conditions of use of england under the tudors by returning to the object. as part of the intra-active becoming of the school space the sedimented historality of the leadership team and the school building are also the sedimented historality of england under the tudors. this all had an effect on how the object’s lively nature and how it was used as a classroom companion. . . on brand the object was part of the school’s aesthetic; it was chosen as a cultural marker. it shows up as an object of cultural capital that sits amongst these other objects of class and, thinking specifically of the book’s bookishness, of its status and prestige, these two qualities can be seen as very distinctly classed. england under the tudors fitted with the tone of aspiration and elevation the leadership team wanted to emulate. if my classroom was visited by prospective parents or important guests (which it routinely was although less so the more i chose to orient myself differently to that of the leadership team) then it would look “good” if the students had a copy of the book on their desks. having walked along the corridors past t.s. elliot’s verses, st paul’s cathedral, and a windswept beach in north norfolk, england under the tudors neatly fitted in with the scholastic setting and the conversation about seeing student potential, aspiration, and academic success. peter mcdonald talks about publishers “investing books with prestige” but in this case it was the leadership team and the school building itself that invested in england under the tudors. preferably the book would not even be open; the cover gives the book much of its status. first there is the name: elton. elton personifies these ideas about class and cultural capital. elton was born gottfried rudolph otto ehrenberg on in tübingen, germany. the family lived in prague until when elton’s mother fortuitously arranged their passage to england. in his last years elton would say “that england was the country he should have been born into.” his brother believed that “it was the army which turned his brother into an englishman, even a ‘super-englishman.” either way, elton went on to not be just any englishman but instead a cambridge don (he was a fellow at clare college, university of cambridge), a “colossus” of the university’s faculty of history working there for years and occupying the seat of regius professor of modern history for his last five years. his father before him had been awarded the litt. d honorius causa at the university of cambridge, the first refugee scholar to be offered this award. this only adds to elton’s status as mcdonald, “implicit structures and explicit interactions," . collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton - ,” . collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton - ,” . this makes him part of britain’s “intellectual aristocracy.” being a member of this group is important as it is a signal that your cultural capital is embodied, inherited, and generational rather than learnt or acquired. how many visitors would know about g.r. elton a heavyweight tudor historian who died in the early s? it is impossible to say, however, even the style of the book (a book not a textbook), the prominence of place of his name, the size of the book, its weight (as perceived by somebody looking at it on a table), and the font all gave the book its status as a scholarly book. a book that is difficult to understand. a book that suggests hard work but also an ability in the reader of the book. england under the tudors was both an object of cultural capital and representative of the students’ embodied cultural capital as they were reading it. . . obligation owing to the importance place on england under the tudors because of its class status and associations with needed and wanted cultural capital i felt obliged to use it. to be obliged is cannadine, keating, and sheldon, the right kind of history, . it is very difficult to gauge this, but more people do know about elton because his interpretation of thomas cromwell, henry viii’s chief minister during the reformation, has been used and upheld by hilary mantel in her historical novels about this period (wolf hall and bringing up the bodies). mantel’s novels focus on cromwell and although they may not follow elton’s interpretation to the letter the fact that she chose to write an entire trilogy (we are still waiting on the third book) about cromwell is partly due to elton discovering him in the archives in the first place. both of mantel’s books were made into a very successful bbc -part series, wolf hall, starring mark rylance as thomas cromwell that aired in january in the uk. i have no way of proving this, but i think my head wanted me to teach the tudors because of this miniseries. i did not start teaching the tudors until september but the decision to teach the tudors came way before that and it came from the head. he was a huge fan of the miniseries and brought copies for my students to share (i think he bought eight copies in total for them to share in groups of three). he also showed clips in assembly all the time. as a marketing ploy, teaching the tudors and having england under the tudors on the desks of his a level history classes was both on trend (people really did talk about that miniseries for a long time afterwards) and provided him with something to talk to visitors about as soon as he came into the classroom. to be legally or morally bound to do something. i felt obliged to use england under the tudors as a textbook in my classroom because it was purchased for me and my students by the leadership team. my obligation to use the book was tied up with how i oriented toward it as an object. “to be oriented in a certain way is how certain things come to be significant, come to be objects for me (emphasis author’s own).” by this ahmed means that objects appear and function in specific and individual ways. the leadership team’s obsession with uniformity and order meant i oriented toward england under the tudors in a certain way. the object acquired its shape through my orientation toward it as a symbol of control; an extension of the leadership team that was in my teaching space, an intruder. in some ways you could say i was afraid of england under the tudors. i was scared of the consequences if i did not use it. as well as being a feared object it was also a tainted object. it stained my teaching practice with the oily residue of the leadership team. the object was reduced to neither a book nor a textbook and was merely a tool of oppression, a spy in the classroom, a dull, grey symbol of order and uniformity that had been thrust upon me. but i still used it as a classroom tool and a textbook. i used it a lot. i read it, and questioned it, and paraphrased it, and discussed it. it was an ever-present part of the historical narrative i taught. and despite it being an infiltrator it was also welcomed and cherished; the spy who came in from the cold. i did not allow the object to fully control me and my students and i believe that was also to do with my obligation but this time to my students. melanie janzen and anne phelan https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/oblige ahmed, “orientations matter," . “conceptualize the teacher’s need to respond to students as obligation.” this sense of obligation is a “visceral sense” to respond to the “tugging at our sleeves” by children. it is “what gives teaching its moral integrity, while at the same time, takes an enormous emotional toll on teachers.” i felt obliged to use england under the tudors because i felt it enhanced the learning experiences of my students. no matter how tainted it became it was still elton’s interpretation of the tudors and still a relevant epistemological narrative that the students should know. . . appropriation the appropriation of the text and changes to the physical appearance of the object are tied up with this sense of obligation. in order to oblige the needs of my students i had to manipulate the object so that it conformed to what i perceived those needs to be. much of this is to do with the type of historical narrative i was teaching (to be discussed further in chapter six). as previously discussed in chapter four my actions as a teacher-reader meant i was transforming the book through writing in it and this appropriation was affected by the lively nature of the physicality of the object: its weight and its texture among other things. what i want to consider now is how the appropriation of the text was in part an act of defiance. janzen and phelan talk about “acts of disengagement from the profession” being “necessary [acts of] disobedience.” these acts of disobedience are necessary for the student but also for the teacher. disobedience melanie d. janzen and anne m. phelan, “‘tugging at our sleeves’: understanding experiences of obligation in teaching,” teaching education , no. ( ): . janzen and phelan, “tugging at our sleeves,” . john d. caputo quoted by janzen and phelan, “tugging at our sleeves,” . janzen and phelan, “tugging at our sleeves,” . janzen and phelan, “tugging at our sleeves,” , . are “practices of resistance” that “struggle against/with the practices of performativity.” disobedience becomes a daily experience and a practice of freedom for individual teachers. in a structure that imposes uniformity and instructs its staff to exhibit a sense of order in performative ways disobedience is a release, an escape, an expression of individuality, and a witnessing of the self. how did i witness myself and express my individuality when i wrote in england under the tudors? feminist scholars, ahmed states, have pointed out the masculinity of philosophy through the “disappearance of the subject under the sign of the universal.” this means that some objects, and some bodies, are associated with the masculine because the universal has been synonymous with the masculine. ahmed uses the example of writing and male philosophers writing at the table. “gender becomes naturalized as a property of bodies, objects, and spaces” meaning the table is masculine. women have historically claimed spaces that do not traditionally belong to them by “doing things” with objects in those spaces. for the female writer then, “the table is not simply what she faces but it is the ‘site’ upon which she makes her feminist point.” her feminist point is material and immaterial; the point is both the tip of her pen marking the paper she writes on and the point she wishes to convey in her text. in a school labouring under the sign of universal in order to create desired sense of order any teacher choosing to make a point that disrupts the pattern is making a feminist point; a rebellion against stephen ball and antonio olmedo quoted by janzen and phelan, “tugging at our sleeves,” . ball and olmedo quoted by janzen and phelan, “tugging at our sleeves,” . ahmed, “orientations matter,” . ahmed, “orientations matter,” . ahmed, “orientations matter,” . the masculine disguised as the universal. every line, every comment, every arrow, every ink stain in england under the tudors then becomes part of this feminist rebellion. . concluding thoughts the process of writing the ekphrastic description and lingering with the ideas of cultural capital and neoliberalism has provided me, the researcher and (former teacher), with a very important lexicon about english schooling at this present moment in time. much of the discussion about neoliberal shifts, complications regarding cultural capital, and aspiration are things i felt as i worked as a teacher but did not necessarily have the language to articulate. the writing process of this particular chapter has therefore been a cathartic experience. for that reason, and for the same reasons i gave in the conclusion to chapter four, i will choose not to offer any concluding comments on the ekphrastic description itself nor on the considerations of cultural capital and neoliberalism and instead leave them as they stand. but i will draw together the comments made about how the lines of force affected the conditions of arrival, and conditions of use, of england under the tudors by returning to barad. a central tenant of barad’s agential realism (previously mentioned) is that “relata do not pre-exist relations.” lingering with bourdieu’s concept of cultural capitalism and the connected impact of neoliberalism in english schools brings this idea sharply into focus. the ideas here are part of the sedimented historality of the object. these historialities come from the “practices through which [the object] is produced.” england under the tudors emerged a barad, “meeting the universe halfway, . barad, “meeting the universe halfway, . specific cultural marker of class because of these specific sedimented values. the subsequent conditions of arrival which in turn created the conditions of use are a result of these lines of force. my obligation to use the text, my fear of it combined with my reverence were affected by different lines of force that were part of the set of relations of the school. these aspects of the object (the relata) did not pre-exist the relations. if i used the book in another school would i have felt the need to witness myself and make a feminist point? would the conditions of arrival of the book have had the same pomp and splendour as it received in this school? how might the object emerge in an untidy school, or failing school, or an independent school, or a school outside of london? this links back to emergent themes from chapter four about books and their destinies and how these are ever-changing. this ekphrastic description of the leadership team and the school building has shown how england under the tudors was “enriched” and “ingrained” by the “work done by generations.” it illustrates how the culture and ethos of a school not only affects humans but non-humans and become part of the “property of the object.” ultimately this means that the “past is never left behind, never finished once and for all.” the work of generations, in connection to class, politics, education and schooling, never finishes. changes in policy or attitude do not signal the end of something. instead these ideas reverberate through subsequent generations through their sedimentation only to emerge in diverse ways in different settings. barad, meeting the universe halfway, . ahmed, “orientations matter,” . ahmed, “orientations matter,” . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . england under the tudors can therefore be seen as not only a lively and vibrant object but also an on-going product of its conditions of arrival and conditions of use. chapter : portraits of a classroom . introduction this chapter will consider how england under the tudors was used by the teacher to inform the historical narrative that was taught about henry viii by offering an ekphrastic description of the material objects and immaterial aspects in the teaching space in which england under the tudors was used. the ekphrastic description attempts to paint a portrait of barad’s idea of an onto-epistem-ological historical narrative that seeks to move away from dualist notions of object and subject, human and non-human, material and immaterial, epistemological and ontological, and past, present and future. it does so in light of the previous two chapters looking at england under the tudors materiality as well as the lines of force affecting its conditions of arrival and conditions of use and draws upon some of the emergent themes from these two chapters. the portrait is, despite its heavy theoretical conceptualisation, is simply of an ordinary history classroom looking closely at one particular textbook. returning to jane bennett’s ideas, she suggests that the grouping of different items is significant. for her the assortment of random objects she encounters (glove, pollen, rat, cat, stick ), presented themselves as “live, throbbing confederations” that are vibrant because they are a collection, not individual items. to attempt to capture the throbbing vibrancy of the history classroom the ekphrastic description will focus on the collective presence of objects rather than magnify in detail the individual qualities of each as chapter four did with england under the tudors. bennett, vibrant matter, . bennett, vibrant matter, . having painted a picture, or written a portrait, of the history classroom and its objects, certain aspects of the narrative of henry viii that form the assemblage of the classroom will be lingered with: these will be elton’s depiction of thomas cromwell, cardinal wolsey and his embodiment of the catholic church, and the pilgrimage of grace. ultimately, this chapter is thinking about how i taught the narrative of henry viii, how i lived it in the classroom, and it speculates on how my students may have lived the narrative in order to know it. it is about painting a portrait of our being-in-the classroom to try to capture the experience of history and the effects this had on the different epistemological narratives that were part of this experience. how was this experience particular to the conditions and situation that gave rise to it? how did we formulate or co-construct a narrative as we worked with narratives of others? what was england under the tudors’ role in this? . ekphrastic description the teacher’s desk is an ordered explosion of colour. a secretive rainbow of stationery and history hidden behind a blue sliding door. concealed every evening, and discovered each morning, this left-hand corner of the classroom belongs to the teacher. nestled amongst the objects provided by the school (black and red uni-ball pens in cath kidston mugs, hb pencils, and a wicker basket for correspondence) is a ramshackle collection of things. material objects and immaterial ideas essential for teaching. a collection of autobiographies and biographies to assist with teaching modern british history. in the red corner harold wilson sits next to tony blair (perhaps he would be pink rather than red.) and in the blue corner are margaret thatcher and john major. gandhi’s autobiography sits alongside the oxford book of quotations and john keats’ anthology of poetry, a remnant of the teacher’s own a-level studies. when henry viii, or thomas cromwell, or cardinal wolsey appear on the interactive whiteboard (in word or image form) they do so always next to these tomes. these books are the tudor historical characters classroom confidantes. various historical books and textbooks (a-level and gcse) on britain, the tudors, the french revolution and more take up the right-hand side of both the top and bottom shelves of the desk (there are only two). there are also some rouge geography gcse textbooks and re workbooks to assist with teaching topics far removed from the teacher’s comfort zone to younger students. the books on the french revolution remind students, and the teacher, what is yet to come (the french revolution is the next period of history to be studied for history) and the books on modern britain remind them what could have been, as if they were just a year older (the students only this time), they would never have been introduced to cromwell and instead clement attlee, roy jenkins, and edward heath would have been their academic escorts because the year above follow a different curriculum. on the top shelf a poster with a wise owl saying, “our lives are not full of problems, they are full of learning opportunities” rests against the wall, flanked by a -minute sand timer and some candles. what is really a fake gold jewellery stand, but resembles, rather helpfully, a golden cross, is joined by a tiny fake crown, purchased on a school trip to the tower of london, and a blue buddha head. the jewellery stand is part of the classroom version of the catholic and protestant church because the crucifix remained central to both. when the jewellery stand is part of the catholic church it is joined by the candles, by a large silver jewellery box, by the teacher’s crystals (amethyst for creative thinking, clear quartz for clarity, black for tourmaline) to represent riches and wealth. when the jewellery stand is part of the protestant church is stands alone with only the bible to keep it company. a small, white copy. a christening present given to the teacher that has only ever found purpose in this classroom setting. the crown is at times henry viii’s, but previously it has been henry vii’s and as the classroom is shared with other students learning other things sometimes the crown is william the conqueror’s. sometimes it is king harold’s and it falls from his head when he is shot through the eye. the left-hand corner of the bottom shelf is for stationery. writing instruments that rebel against conformity: spare gold and white pencils, spare pens that are not uni-ball; broken pens, blue pens, biros. colouring pencils, felt-tips, contraband highlighters, spare rulers collected from forgetful students, multi-coloured bull-dog clips, abandoned pencils cases, maths equipment, and broken rubbers. classroom essentials not deemed necessary hide in boxes: blu tack, sellotape, stickers and jazzy coloured labels; but only when the classroom rests and teaching does not take place. during lessons all these items escape their enforced static state and burst to life in the hands of children. they mark books, make mistakes, fall on the floor, blot, spill and very occasionally fly through the air. it is these material objects that materialise the immaterial narrative. enhance certain aspects. stress particular plot lines and story arcs. highlighters codify students’ work to exemplify what fact fits what theme. pink is for political. the national survey ( ), the supplication of the ordinaries ( ), and the fall of the cromwell ( ) are all fuchsia facts. some facts are two-toned. the publication of thomas more’s utopia ( ) is orange and blue: socio-economic and religious. the dissolution of the lesser monasteries ( ) is a veritable rainbow: pink, orange and blue. blue tac attaches these concepts, printed on a paper, to walls and cupboards and desks or the students, depending on the lesson format. maybe somebody is going to be anne of cleves today. or mary queen of scots. bull-dog clips group similar ideas together: a bundle of henry viii’s wives perhaps, a collection of key acts of parliament, a pile of vital battles, lost and won. rulers underline for emphasis, stickers mark important passages, sellotape mends broken words. the main desk is meant to be clear for important work but during the course of a lesson it becomes littered with the debris of the day. confiscated mobile phones, disposable coffee mugs, water bottles, random exercise books, piles of work, piles of paper. the far-left corner is reserved for important books and notes: the teacher-set of a-level notes, exercise books full of model essays, the textbooks that inform everyday lessons. this is the essential information of the teaching day; the oil that ensures the engine runs smoothly. if the oil runs dry, if the teacher forgets, these items need to be close at hand to stop the machine from completely grinding to a halt. by the end of the day some of these items lie open, some have pages folded over, some have additional notes added, some remain closed and in the corner. it all depends on what oil is needed that day. there are some ideas that are always needed, the most fundamental element of oil: the carbon. cardinal wolsey became chancellor in and fell from grace years later. cromwell reigned (almost, or so elton would have us think) supreme until . cromwell was a “new man” and wolsey was church man. henry viii had six wives: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived (but we’ll only really discuss the first two). the right-hand side of the classroom, the other side of the interactive white board (if you are facing the front) is all cubby-holes for exercise books (which must be marked), for piles of textbooks to be handed out to students. for piles of old copies of the magazine history today donated by an elderly neighbour of the school. for accumulated further textbooks, and articles, and books, and dvds. all stored in neat piles, a semblance of order to save them from the bin. fancy dress items live in the larger cupboard behind the door. a full-length purple, velvet coat – ideal for both catholic priests and kings. a silky kaftan – large enough to be put on over any child’s full uniform, including the jacket. a number of police hats, a bowler hat, a top hat (my grandfather’s), a bonnet. some toy swords. some items that are too awkward to store. the blocks for students’ scissors. spare pritt sticks. posters, and model villages, and other student-made items that are not needed anymore but hold so much hard-work, determination, pride, and joy they are too special to discard. and instead will clutter the cupboards until the end of the year when tiredness will decide their fate. a paucity of space, resources, time, and money creates a needs-must in the history classroom. tudor ladies did not wear kaftans, but the kaftan symbolises the feminine in this history classroom because that is all there is available. so, should there be a part of the lesson with acting, it is not uncommon for jane seymour or anne of cleves to be in a kaftan. there were no police hats in the sixteenth century. there were no police. at least not in the same way that they are police today. but things were policed. and so, when the king’s men, on cromwell’s orders, arrived at the monasteries to assess their wealth and remove their riches they did so in this history classroom wearing a black and white police hat to represent law and order, and with a plastic sword to represent the threat of violence. to a certain extent, as the teacher, i control how these objects move about the room. or at least i have a plan for them. and i know them all. i know the good pritt sticks are hidden right at the back of the cupboard. i know i have lent the top hat to another teacher. i know there is spare paper under the printer. i know that the resources for that day are laid out on the window sill. i know where my coffee is. i know students should understand the consequences of the ten articles of faith ( ) by the end of the lesson. i know that it doesn’t matter if they don’t remember the exact date catherine parr married henry viii, only that she was last and after catherine howard. the first year a-level students who enter the room, who are being taught the narrative, cannot really be planned for in the same way. they are good students and it is a strict school, so they behave. they listen. they are interested (for the most part). they want to do well in their exam. with each lesson we all get to know each other a little more. we get to know the rhythm of learning that takes place and how it works best for us. but we cannot know everything about each other. instead we come into being in the classroom together. each student comes into being in a particular manner in the teaching space bringing their own sedimented histories with them; their stories, their possessions, their thoughts, and their questions. the same can be said of every object that comes into the space. each object materialises through practice to emerge as a product with a past, a future, an intention, a value, a use that are all part of their materiality in this particular set of relations. the students are different to the objects of the room because they are visitors. they will leave when the bell goes for the next lesson or the end of school. again, the same thing could be said of all the objects in the room. time is always fleeting, and they will not stay forever. but i am reminded of something a student said to me in my first term of teaching. “you live near me, miss! i can’t really imagine you leaving this classroom. i always think of you here, in your classroom.” the students enter miss wallace’s history classroom with miss wallace’s things. the things, and the space, and the learning, and the ideas are all part of the experience of miss wallace’s teaching. the students connect to the material objects and immaterial aspects in different ways. some need to borrow equipment. some need new books. some have forgotten their books and need paper. some want to alter the lesson resources. they want to cut them down to size, fold them, tear them, doodle on the back. some could not care less and slot them into a pile of papers at the end of the lesson, to be lost forever. some come prepared with their own notes-- homework tasks begrudgingly completed. some don’t bother. sometimes an essay is due to be marked. this is different. its absence is noted and questioned. it belongs in a different exercise book. it should be a certain type of length. it should be legible. it should exist. in these notes and essay, snippets of the narrative are pressed together to varying degrees of success. luther’s thesis ( ) was a catalyst for change across europe (yes, tick) and influenced henry viii greatly (debatable, what about the fidei defensor in ?) wolsey only called two parliaments during his time as chief minister in and (yes and no, the second was – but the dates don’t matter, yet). elton considers the tudor revolution to begin when cromwell was promoted to the inner ring of the council in (very good!) the “rough wooing” did not work but war with france started in (yes, but how do these things connect to each other?) and where, in the assemblage, is england under the tudors? everywhere. and sometimes nowhere at all. england under the tudors is an essential text in the left-hand corner of the teacher’s desk. it is idolised by students for its signs of use, so worn, so many post-it notes, so many annotations. it is a physical representation of time spent on learning, something they admire, even crave, but do not necessarily want to commit to. further copies may or may not be on students’ desks, or in their bags, or in their hands, but it is the teacher’s copy that is always present and guides the lessons. elton’s words are written on the interactive whiteboard, paraphrased by the teacher, quoted by students. elton is derided for revering thomas cromwell so keenly and so deeply. elton is himself revered for the impact he made on tudor historiography. elton is compared to other historians such as david starkey, john guy, and j.j. scarisbrick, all of whom are contemporaries to elton, some of whom were his students. england under the tudors is used as a reference on some occasions. england under the tudors is used as a prop; a physical representation of an historical interpretation. passages from england under the tudors are set as homework. passages are read aloud during lessons. passages are critiqued in order to assess whether it provides a “convincing interpretation” in comparison to another historian’s views; a prerequisite for the exam. england under the tudors is one object amongst many others, just another book on the shelf. but its conditions of arrival, and conditions of use, bring it forth in unique and interesting ways. . stories in the story the ekphrastic description offers a portrait of the classroom that attempts to describe the lived experience of the onto-epistomo-logical historical narrative by picturing the classroom as an (im)material assemblage. this next section magnifies some of the stories within the story; some of the different interpretations nestling within narrative in its totality. using england under the tudors as the starting point and returning to some of the emergent themes from chapters and , the aim of the final part of this chapter is to consider how the materiality of the book, with its sedimented values, had an effect on the onto-epistem-ological historical narrative. aqa, “as history tudors: england, - / c consolidation of the tudor dynasty: england, - ” (aqa, ), . before launching into the different aspects of the onto-epistem-ological historical narrative i want to note my choice of language when it comes to the “bedfellows” discussed in chapter two: “narrative” “account” and “interpretation.” when i studied for my post-graduate certificate of education at the institute of education, i was taught that interpretations, not accounts, was one of the second-order concepts. as a teacher i have therefore always approached this broader idea of histories from the angle that there are different interpretations of the past. this means the interpreter, the historian, has always been very central to my teaching practice. for this reason, i stray away from the term account in this chapter. this was what i understood interpretations to mean while i was teaching, and, to an extent, how i understood historical narratives in the broader sense from an epistemological perspective. while i did not employ the term narrative very much at the time of teaching, if i had used it, it would have been interchangeably with interpretations as, at the time, i saw no drastic differences in these two terms. . . thomas cromwell: an obligation in the preface to the first edition of england under the tudors (written in july ) elton says: “i have come to some conclusions, especially about the place of thomas cromwell, the importance of the s, and the nature of the tudor polity, which – though by no means necessarily original – go counter to some accepted notions.” after spending two years in the public records office, elton finished his phd thesis “in record time” which went on to inform this is not to say that the term account was not used but it was not the one we used day-to-day despite it seemingly being so important in britain. g.r. elton, england under the tudors (routledge: london and new york, ), vii his first published book the tudor revolution in government. the main thrust of his argument in this work was that “the s constituted a great age of reform in the institutions and process of english governance, a veritable revolution.” according to elton, in the space of one decade the english state “attained full sovereignty” and replaced personal government and financial management of the king’s household with “westminster bureaucracy which had at its heart the progenitor of modern cabinet government.” he repeats the views he put forward in the tudor revolution in government in england under the tudors saying that cromwell “founded the modern constitutional monarchy in england and organised the sovereign national state.” he signals cromwell’s entry into the narrative as the moment when “the tudor revolution was about to begin.” despite heavy attack on this interpretation from the outset cromwell “insisted to the end on [its] essential correctness” stating in the preface to the second edition of england under the tudors: “i continued to stand by the view of the sixteenth century which i expressed here from the first” which he does not deter from in the preface to the third edition. patrick collinson thinks that “it became fashionable to say that elton, the effective, tough but principled go-getter, formed thomas cromwell in his own image.” at the very least collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton,” . elton’s thesis was titled “thomas cromwell: aspects of his administrative work.” he began his research in september and had finished by . collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton,” . collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton”, . elton, england under the tudors, . elton, england under the tudors, . collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton, . professor r.b. wernham challenged elton’s thesis when it was first published in english historical review, however, it did, for a time, become the “new orthodoxy” it came under attack in the s “by some of elton’s own pupils. this knocked it from its top-spot as the go to text and orthodox interpretation. elton, england under the tudors, v. collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton, . cromwell was “an incarnation of elton’s philosophy of history” which was that “the past had really happened, and the truth could be told.” despite vociferously rejecting the idea that the historian is part of the history he writes, elton’s cromwell is somewhat synonymous with him: the historian and history are mixed up together. elton deemed cromwell to have a “naturally powerful intellect” yet also be “virtually devoid of passion” making him “the most remarkable revolutionary in english history – a man who knew precisely where he was going and who nearly always achieved the end he had in view.” this vision of cromwell was of that of an efficient bureaucrat-come-revolutionary. cromwell was “cold”, “killed for purpose only” (rather than in a fit of passion like henry viii), and “showed no weakness – attractive or otherwise.” elton rejects a widely held assumption that cromwell was machiavellian and instead presents him as a man who was “ruthless in affairs, but lacked cruelty” while also seeing “little purpose in mercy.” he was a man of determination and resolve who had a plan that he wanted to see come to fruition. he was a man with aspirations. elton dismisses criticism of cromwell, putting it down largely to “the sentimental eighteenth century [that] went maudlin over the ruins of the monasteries” and a need to “exculpate henry viii” and find a scapegoat. there is, however, a sense, although perhaps not machiavellian, cromwell was a stubborn and inflexible man with tunnel-vision toward an ultimate worthy goal. collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton, . collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton, .collinson describes elton as an uncompromising positivist. elton, england under the tudors, . elton, england under the tudors, . elton, england under the tudors, . elton, england under the tudors, . it would be unsurprising if elton saw these attributes as positives rather than negatives. perhaps because he himself, by all accounts, was so unwavering in his views about cromwell but also the discipline of history in general. collinson considers elton’s “brief for history epistemologically shaky” because it refuses to consider how the historian does in some sense invent her history through the questions she asks. he thinks elton’s views are “most applicable to the history of government and political institutions, least helpful to the study of ideas, or, as it might be, art, or religion.” collinson considers his views to be “rooted in a passion for liberty and order” but this does not take away from the fact that there is a stubbornness and narrow-mindedness to elton’s “passion and order” exemplified in both his philosophy and practice of history. thinking back to some of the ideas introduced in chapter from mcgann and hayles about how readers interpret books as material objects, not just the texts, i want to consider how the materiality of england under the tudors contributed to its “emergent properties” that informed the historical narrative and shaped this specific story within a story about the role of thomas cromwell. from a new materialist perspective, it is not only the author and text that collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton,” - . elton’s philosophy of history (a term he considered pejorative) is best exemplified in his book the practice of history. published in this is usually read as a response to e.h. carr’s what is history? (published in ). it extolled the virtues of mastering “the relevant evidence in its totality.” the purpose of studying and writing history was “on its own terms and even for its own stakes.” collinson suggests these views are no longer fashionable. collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton,” - . collinson thinks that elton believed in the “autonomy of history” and pushed against offerings from other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology. doug munro, “michael turnbull, g. r. elton, and the making of the practice of history,” historical journal , no. ( ): . doug munro furthers this by saying that elton was “insistent on the ‘independent reality’ of the past and proclaimed that ‘the historian [is] the servant of his evidence.” collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton, - . hayes, “print is flat, code is deep,” . exist together but also content and materiality, which exist in a “complex dynamic interplay.” cromwell and/or elton become “embodied entities” that come into being in the classroom with the book’s material and sedimented qualities, and vice versa. the physicality of the book: its weight, its size, it’s very bookishness – the cover, the institutional typeface, the chapter headings, the endless identical pages of black ink on white paper are all part of the experience of the author and of cromwell. when thomas cromwell sets about getting henry viii a divorce from catherine of aragon the acts he passes, which are part of the tudor revolution in government, are not only read in the book, they are the book. the act against annates (january ) , the act in restraint of appeals ( ) , and the act of supremacy ( ) come into being in the classroom with the formality of england under the tudors. the ideas hang heavy with the status the book affords them as they are all part of the “elton thesis.” elton’s meticulous description of each act, each change, each criticism, and each consequence need to be liberated hayes, “print is flat, code is deep,” . hayes, “print is flat, code is deep,” . michael tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors: england - , (oxford university press: oxford, ), . the act of annates (formally known as the act in conditional restraint of annates) was passed in . it was “designed to increase pressure on the papacy by withholding conditionally the first year’s income from the office of bishop which the papacy had traditionally enjoyed.” or, in other words, this act stopped one of the flows of money from the church in england to rome. tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors, .the act in restraint of appeals restricted anybody from appealing to rome regarding church court decisions on matters to do with matrimony. it meant catherine of aragon could not appeal to rome when her marriage was annulled by church courts in england. the preamble to this act is particularly important, and highlighted by elton, as it declares the monarch possessed imperial jurisdiction meaning no foreign power (i.e. the pope) could interfere. it was drafted by cromwell and is a central part of both the break with rome and the “elton thesis.” elton says of the act in restraint of appeals “it stated as accepted facts that the king was supreme head and the realm a sovereign state free from all foreign authority.” elton, england under the tudors, . tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors, . the act of supremacy “gave legislative force to the royal supremacy” set out in the preamble to the act in restraint of appeals. it was this act that “effectively accomplished the break from rome.” from the prison of black ink on white page formality and turned about in the classroom in order to understand them. the teaching activities that accommodate this tend to mirror the methodological approach of both historian and historical character. lessons looking at cromwell and the tudor revolution are ones with comparisons, lists, datelines, comprehension questions and bullet points. these lessons included pritt stick , needed to stick in various tables, definitions, and exemplar paragraphs. these lessons include highlighter colour codes, dictionaries, quizzical looks, fuzzy heads and a dominant teacher voice. the learning is logical, linear, and often limp. this is a story in a straight line, a clear account where one thing led to another clearly and coherently with little outside interference. this was cromwell’s mission retold by elton caught in england under the tudor’s bookishness and released into the classroom cromwell’s material presence in the classroom brings with it the sense of order and obligation that are part of england under the tudor’s sedimented values (as discussed in chapter ). there are similarities to be made between cromwell (and indeed elton) and the leadership team as conscious architects of the school with a specific mission. just as cromwell had a goal, so did the school, and the goal, for both, was aspirational. was cromwell’s goal a doxic aspiration? was elton following the mantra of “if you work hard you can attain your dream” by burying himself in the archives? were the leadership team ruthless and lacking in mercy but because they felt their mission was justified? the dynamic interplay of text and materiality, materiality and sedimented values, sedimented values and narrative are seemingly circular rather pritt stick is a british brand of glue stick. than linear. one does not lead to the other, all of them lead to each other and emerge in the classroom together. the desire for order and calm, the desire for uniformity, for method, for process and procedure that the leadership team imposed on the school reverberates anew through cromwell’s tudor revolution in government and elton’s strident and uncompromising assessment of him. the same feelings of fear, obligation, and defiance that were part of england under the tudor’s being-in-the-classroom as a material object are part of the story of thomas cromwell. this particular interpretation of henry viii’s reign, this specific way of knowing and understanding the past, becomes one that i was obliged to tell but is not necessarily the story i wanted to tell. this does not detract from the fact that it is an important part of the experience of the historical narrative as a whole. it is a convincing and significant interpretation that had an impact on other stories. students do need to know these things; their exam requires they do so. it is the dominant story. it is the school-approved story. but is it the right story? and is it the story i would choose to tell? . . cardinal wolsey: an (im)material assemblage i would now like to look at one strand of (im)material assemblage that contributed to wolsey’s story in the classroom considering england under the tudors’ role within this as one classed object amongst many. elton recognised cardinal wolsey as a man with “zeal”, “ability in administration”, “outstanding powers of work”, and “assertive self-confidence.” he also believed him, as henry viii’s chief minister, to be the man who ran the country between to elton, england under the tudors, . in addition to being a cardinal of the catholic church and papal legate. however, in terms of wolsey’s domestic policy (the area where cromwell shone), elton thought wolsey “ proved a singularly ill-advised minister who ruined the finances, exasperated those people whose support was essential to the monarchy, and could not translate his boundless energy into anything profitable to the commonwealth.” in short, elton holds wolsey in much lower esteem than his successor, cromwell. this meant the lines of force connecting elton to this particular historical character, and his story within the historical narrative of henry viii’s reign, were not so direct and tightly secured as that of elton’s to cromwell. consequently, wolsey’s material manifestation is not so forcefully wound-up with england under the tudor’s formality and sedimented values of order, control and aspiration. instead, wolsey presented himself as somewhat of a classed immaterial object, an object seeped in cultural capital owing to his connection to the catholic church. arguably the most significant part of the narrative of henry viii, from whichever angle you look at it, is that during his reign england broke with the catholic church, thus creating the church of england. elton’s focus is always on the political manoeuvres that led to the king being both “supreme head of the church of england” as well a monarch of a “sovereign state free from all foreign authority.” but elton was not much interested in religion. he had a “distaste for religions as something which only contributed positively to civilisation in its most elton, england under the tudors, . wolsey obtained his cardinalate from pope leo x in , the same year he became chancellor for henry viii. he was granted papal legate a latere in meaning he could exercise specific papal powers without needing to seek permission from rome. he was granted papal legate for life in . this meant that wolsey, until his fall in , was the “ecclesiastical rule of the two provinces of the church” and the permanent “resident of rule of the church in england” in general. elton, england under the tudors, . elton, england under the tudors, . elton, england under the tudors, - . moderated and compromised forms” and “could hardly forgive thomas cromwell for having “‘got religion,’ and would have preferred to have him as a secular proto-modernist.” david knowles made a quip when discussing a specific monastery, and its dissolution, that it was “without visible religion (like geoffrey elton’s reformation).” religion is not centre stage for elton, even in a story about the rupture of western christianity. although religion does not dominate the direction of elton’s narrative it is ever present in the background. his text is full of the language of the catholic church and christianity. elton speaks of an english clergy are anti-clerical; their abuses are nepotism, absenteeism, and simony. for him the monks and friars of the monasteries are complicit in this anti-clerical abuse, not just the priests, but bishops and archbishops. the catholic church involves the seven sacraments including baptism, confirmation and the eucharist. heaven and hell are separated by purgatory where those who die are destined to wait unless they (or their relatives) buy indulgences from the church, documents signed by the pope that alleviate sins and quicken the journey to heaven. thomas more and desiderius erasmus are notable catholic clergyman, but also humanists. they are aggrieved at the abuses of the church, but would never convert to the protestant cause, for that would be heresy. each and every one of these words: heresy, indulgences, archbishop, nepotism etc. are terms that needed to be explained and explored. the class that was encountering these words through elton, as well as through other texts, on the whole had no real understanding of them. wolsey’s place in the story served as a vehicle through which to introduce (and re-introduce in some cases) the catholic church and its rich terminology. collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton, . david knowles quoted by collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton, . in contrast to the story of thomas cromwell this part of the story about thomas wolsey needed to be felt rather than understood. there were parts of wolsey’s narrative that needed the same tables, and lists, and definitions but because his placement in the narrative came at a time when the students needed to absorb centuries worth of philosophy and debate about catholicism there was a sense of the experience driving the knowledge; ontology shaping the epistemology. the part of the catholic church in the overall narrative does not begin and end with wolsey he just provided a useful conduit through which to explore some of the need to know beliefs and institutions. for that reason, wolsey came to embody all that was beautiful and sacred about the church, but also all that was wrong with it. a portrait by an unknown artist of cardinal wolsey, painted sometime between to (based on a previous work produced circa when he was still alive) hangs in the national portrait gallery in london and is the most well-known painting of the cardinal. it adorns many a history textbook and i used it often in lessons on the interactive whiteboard to cement who exactly it was we were discussing that day. in this painting wolsey wears the cassock of a catholic cardinal in deep, vivid red: cardinal red. the painting is oil on panel and the artist, whomever they may have been, has managed to emphasise the luxurious and ornate texture of the cassock by using white to suggest the garment shimmered with sleekness and textual depth. the other physical objects in the classroom that were part of the assemblage of wolsey and the catholic church embody similar notes of ostentation: the gold jewellery stand that serves as a cross; the large silver jewellery box with engravings and a plush, mauve, velvet lining; the purple velvet frock coat with silk cuffs and collar; the crystals in pink, black, and https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw /thomas-wolsey green that catch in the light. the very words themselves that are associated with the catholic church, the immaterial aspects of the assemblage, have a certain richness to them: pluralism, transubstantiation, excommunicate. within this context england under the tudors is representative of a certain way of being- in-the-world that is at ease with these terms and ideas. it is its status as a classed object, an embodiment of cultural capital, and a representation of scholarship come into view in this particular story. the burnt orange hues of the cover sat well alongside wolsey’s cardinal red cassock and the velvet luxury of the teacher’s props. whereas with cromwell it was perhaps an occasion where the book, as a classroom companion, was controlling the teacher, with wolsey it was the other way around. to fully realise the detail of elton’s interpretation of wolsey i needed to bring his words to life as an experience in the classroom so students could feel some of the aspects of the catholic church and catholicism that were so central to the henry viii’s court, the english reformation and subsequent historical debate on the matter. . . the pilgrimage of grace: a personal rebellion on the subject of the pilgrimage of grace , a rebellion during henry viii’s reign, the oxford aqa history textbook for a level and as states that the “difficulty in analysing the rebels’ motivation is reflected in the work of historians, who have asserted a multiplicity of motives.” the causes of the pilgrimage of grace are not clear cut. religious motives are the pilgrimage of grace was a rebellion against henry viii. it was the largest single rebellion in the history of tudor england and also, geographically, the most widely spread. it started in october and had religious and secular motives. it was largely unsuccessful at realising any of its aims. tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors, . generally thought to have played a part because the dissolution of the monasteries started in the same year ( ). at this stage it was only the smaller monasteries that were being dissolved there were a number of adverse effects that could be classified as religious issues including the actual loss of the monasteries, which performed charitable and educational functions in many places, the loss of parish churches that were monastic properties, and a general fear in the north of england that monastic lands would be taken by southerners. my teacher’s notes for this particular event suggest that the historian christopher haigh argued that the pilgrimage of grace was a product of religious centred grievances whereas c.s.l davies claimed the main motivation was a fear of absentee landlords. john guy argues that a distinctive aspect of the rebellion was that it was a “popular rising by northerners in general” that combined “nobles, gentry, clergy and people.” according to richard hoyle the driving forces were “fears for religion in parish churches” and “agrarian discontents.” elton has a different take. in elton wrote: “the whole course of the rebellion – its start, its spread, its open and secret purposes, and its end – becomes clearer when it is recognised that it was at the heart the work of political faction.” it was his belief that the rebellions were “primarily a courtly conspiracy prompted by councillors the dissolution of the greater monasteries started in . tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors, . these historian summaries are from my annotated teacher notes used to plan the lessons. most likely i found these historians’ ideas in textbooks. it does not reference where these ideas specifically come from but because they are part of my teacher’s notes, i know they would have informed what i taught to students. john guy, tudor england, quoted in tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors, - . richard hoyle, the pilgrimage of grace and the politics of the s, quoted in tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors, . geoffrey r. elton, “politics and the pilgrimage of grace’ in after the reformation: essays in honor of j.h hexter, quoted in tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors, . who had been supporters of catherine of aragon.” although he does not specifically put forward this idea in england under the tudors he dismisses the role of monasteries, thus diminishing some of the central causes of the rebellion. elton suggests “monasticism was…in such decline that its end might have come spontaneously.” he felt the “laity had no respect left for monasticism” and the monasteries did not “play a useful part in the community.” the attack on the monasteries “does not really merit the central position commonly allocated to it” when discussing the pilgrimage of grace and “in some ways it was almost the least revolutionary part of the revolution.” doug munro thinks social history “was beyond the pale” for elton. collinson’s assertion that elton’s philosophy of history was best suited for politics and government, and specifically not religions, goes some way to explaining why elton may have come to this conclusion about the pilgrimage of grace. as previously mentioned, elton was not interested in religion other than how it played out in the political sphere. another factor could be that elton was not particularly interested in the common man in history. collinson says of elton’s historiography in general that “people…were often noticeable by their absence” coupled tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors, . catherine of aragon was henry viii’s first wife, a staunch defender of the catholic faith with connections to catholic monarchs on the continent. she was also the mother of the future catholic queen of england, mary i. elton believed the main motive of the conspirators was to restore princess mary as heir (she was written out of the succession after henry’s divorce and second marriage to anne bolyen). lord darcy and lord hussey were said to be key members of the court who orchestrated the rebellion and there is evidence to suggest that they were involved, made especially relevant owing to the fact that when a smaller contingent of rebels renewed the revolt in in cumberland darcy and hussey were brought to london, tried and executed. elton, england under the tudors, . elton, england under the tudors, . elton, england under the tudors, - munro, “michael turnbull, g. r. elton, and the making of the practice of history,” . with “an almost total lack in his work of…sense of place.” whatever elton’s reasons, the main thrust of his theories was that the rebellion was “planned and organised from above” or what i termed a top-down rebellion. the way i taught the pilgrimage of grace, this particular story within the historical narrative experience, was that it was not a top-down rebellion, it was a bottom-up rebellion. i introduced the pilgrimage of grace to students by first exploring some key themes and ideas that usually accompany any rebellion: long-term causes, trigger causes, leaders. to explain, i referenced a number of other rebellions ranging from the london riots in to gandhi and the indian nationalist movement. i drew upon examples from margaret thatcher’s premiership including the battle of orgreave and the hillsborough disaster to explain some of the widespread distrust of the police in england at the time of the london riots as well as more contentious current policies such as stop and search. when discussing gandhi, i talked about his role as a leader, the often-forgotten role of additional leaders and the actions of the indian people who were part of the wider indian nationalist movement. these were examples that were very specific to me and what i was interested in. my personality and my preferences emerged in this teaching episode. this was reflected by the material presence of books about british politics, gandhi, indian nationalism and revolutions that sat on my shelves as i was teaching. i used these examples to explain the central role of collective will and shared grievances and/or aims in any rebellion. collinson, “geoffrey rudolph elton, . collinson is specifically referring to elton’s last publication the english ( ), however he uses this particular book, which is more, he says a book about rulers and the state than the english people, to make an overall comment about elton’s style of history. tillbrook, oxford aqa history: the tudors, . england under the tudors, for these lessons, came to represent a view that was contradictory to the one that i was putting forward as it symbolised a top-down approach. considering the book as a spy in the classroom; a symbol of the leadership team in the room, the rejection of elton’s interpretation of the pilgrimage of grace was also a rejection of knowledge being handed down from above. my appropriation of the book so that it operated like a textbook for me was more visible, and more significant, because it gave weight to my rejection of elton’s ideas as i knew them in order to rebel against them. england under the tudors materialised as an old book with outdated views in this particular story within the story. the historians who counter elton’s views were often part of the next generation of tudor historians: revisionists. john guy in particular became an important part of the immaterial assemblage here because he had been elton’s student at the university of cambridge. the dispute between teacher and student, a clear, understandable and relatable example of a power imbalance, helped define the pilgrimage of grace’s role in the historical narrative as a moment to rebel against the accepted order. this all meant that for me, the teacher at the front of the room, teaching the pilgrimage of grace was a liberating experience. it was a part of the historical narrative experience as a whole where i felt my own views and philosophy of history came into being in the classroom. i would go as far as to say that, for me, this historical event was reflected in the objects i considered rebellious that i had brought into my classroom. the highlighters, the coloured pencils, the paintings, the crystals, the candles, the props. all of these things symbolised a certain streak of rebellion against the imposed order. it was not drastic, i kept all these things tidy, or hidden away. but just as these possessions were how i made my mark on my teaching space, the way i taught the pilgrimage of grace was how i made my mark on the narrative of henry viii. . concluding thoughts england under the tudor’s material qualities and sedimented values come into being in many different ways in a classroom where the historical narrative is lived rather than just known. it informed and shaped both the epistemological interpretations and the ontological experience of henry viii’s reign. after painting a portrait seeking to capture how the narrative came into being with the other objects in the room with and through england under the tudors, which, as with the previous two chapters, i will not offer a conclusion to, this chapter then focused on three specific interpretations. choosing to select a key character (cromwell and wolsey) or event (the pilgrimage of grace) in order to linger with the materiality of each interpretation and consider what role england under the tudors had in each, as well as how it was part of a “throbbing confederation” of material objects and immaterial aspects, this chapter has been an attempt to amalgamate new materialist ideas with historians’ (and history educators’) views on historical narratives. the amalgamation is not intended as a fusing of the different ideas, or even a blending together, but instead the amalgamation is more of a mingling, where different ideas have sat with each other to potentially unearth new truths about england under the tudors, the history classroom and the experience of the historical narrative. barad says: “there is an important sense in which practices of knowing cannot be fully claimed as human practices.” this has emerged as a central theme of this study in general but particularly in this chapter. the practices of knowing that went on in the classroom were not solely human practices. they were material practices of knowing. miller thinks “people exist barad, meeting the universe halfway, . for us in and through their material presence.” miller’s ideas exist in a similar space to barad’s new materialist agential realism because both swerve away from a purely humanist approach and turn their attention toward objects, however, barad would disagree that people exist solely “in and through” their material presence and instead, i believe, would argue that people exist in, through, and with their material presence, which is a doing, not a thing – a being-in-the world. this means human and non-human are existing and being-in-the world together; this is a horizontal conceptualisation of the word which disrupts miller’s idea of people and possessions. human and non-human objects, miller’s people and possessions, are what stephanie springgay and nikki rotas call “mutually interactive agents” involved in an intra-active becoming. material practices of knowing are horizontal practices where human, object and knowledge itself are on a level playing field. objects and knowledge are more than just commodities or abstract things for humans to understand, and therefore conquer, they are part of the entangled practice of mattering. returning once again to bohr’s ideas: we are part of the world we seek to understand, not raised above it. following on from this, the historical narrative taught in a history classroom becomes something that is materially and cognitively experienced rather than simply taught and then learnt. narratives are not simply known, they are lived; they are ontological experiences that encompass the epistemological, what barad called onto-epistem- ology. this somewhat turns on its head the research question that guides this chapter: how was england under the tudors used by the teacher to inform the historical narrative that was taught miller, the comfort of things, . springgay and rotas, “how do you make a classroom operate like a work of art?," . about henry viii? sometimes the teacher used the textbook but at other times the textbook used her, or perhaps a better way of thinking about it would be that sometimes the textbook informed the historical narrative and shaped the experience of learning, and sometimes it was the teacher. and sometimes it was the teacher and the textbook. but, as mutually interactive agents operating together in the classroom both were present all of the time. significantly, an exploration of england under the tudors with a new materialist lens suggests that while england under the tudors did inform the epistemological narrative it did much more than that. it contributed to, and was part of, the historical narrative as an on-going, intra-active becoming. its materiality and sedimented values were important not only in terms of how the teacher (and students) experienced the textbook as a material object, a written text and a cultural transmission, the materiality and the sedimented values of england under the tudors materialised in the classroom with the immaterial experience of the historical narrative. the bookishness of england under the tudors cannot be separated from thomas cromwell. nor can cromwell’s aspirations be separated from the school’s or elton’s. its status as a classed object sits alongside cardinal wolsey. its role as a symbol of control and order, and the way it was appropriated for use by the teacher, are reflected in how the pilgrimage of grace was experienced in the classroom. we are reminded that books, textbooks included, are shape-shifters , and this remains so from a new materialist perspective. england under the tudors shifts shape depending on what aspect of the historical narrative is being taught and the other objects that form part of the (im)material assemblage. it has a different material, epistemological and/or conceptual presence in different historical interpretations. it is dynamic. it is agentive. it is howsam, old books and new histories, x. lively. it is anything but a “lifeless prose” and, within the context of the lived historical narrative, it is very much alive. paxton, “a deafening silence," . chapter : epilogue chapter six, in some ways, brought together a number of the emergent themes and central tenants that underpin this study by considering how england under the tudors shaped the onto- epistmo-logical historical narrative of the reign of henry viii. as mentioned in the introduction this final chapter will not rehash what has just been said but instead serves as an epilogue, a closure to the proceedings rather than a summarising conclusion. because this study was about history textbooks and historical narratives this epilogue will close by reflecting on what the research has revealed about these two things. . history textbooks chapter two spent some considerable time discussing books and textbooks. the study started with an understanding that the book was a material object, written text, and cultural transmission but that this study would elevate the materiality of books. this study was interested in the status and prestige afforded to the material object as a result of the written text and cultural transaction as well as how the material object had agency and exercised power. this conceptualisation of the book informed ideas about the textbook which was considered as an object with an authoritative status, that lacked intellectual prestige, but had pedagogic prestige in the classroom, and exerted power through cultural transmission, meaning just as books were tenacious, so were textbooks. this notion of the book was grounded by barad’s new materialist take on matter which positioned the book as lively, not lifeless and vibrant, not mute. what has this understanding of the history textbook shown us? to explore this question let’s return to darnton’s original questions he asked of books in his original essay “what is the history of books?”: how do books come into being? how do they reach readers? what do readers make of them? this study goes some way to answering these questions. this study reflected on england under the tudors materiality, its sedimented historality, its conditions of arrival, its conditions of use, and the relationship of teacher and textbook to think about its role in the classroom. but, perhaps an equally significant consequence of this study is that it disrupts darnton’s questions by framing them from a new materialist perspective. darnton is concerned with how books come into being whereas this study was more interested in how books continue to be. darnton wanted to know how books reached readers and by this he meant how the book was created and physically moved around so readers could access it: this is in large part a question about distribution. this study was more interested in how books reach toward readers. how did their materiality, in a complex interplay with their content, affect and move readers? this is not about how a book ends up on a person’s desk or in their hands, it is about how the book affects the reader once it is already there. it is about practices of use as well the transmission of ideas. finally, darnton asked what do readers make of them (books) whereas this study is really asking what do books make of readers. how do books shape and change the people who read them through both material and immaterial practice? this study has been about exploring the lively and animate nature of england under the tudors and, through this exploration, makes a comment about all textbooks (and indeed all books). textbooks are not mute classroom tools nor lifeless prose. england under the tudors has revealed itself as a shape-shifter, shifting from object of cultural capital, to revered historian’s interpretation, to an object of fear and trepidation, and back to an essential teacher companion, or aid, all in the space of one lesson. england under the tudors boundaries shifted. it is an object that is on-going, it has not come into being to then stop, it continues to be. it changes both materially and immaterially. its physical form is not set, and neither is its written text or abilities to culturally transmit. it was afforded certain privileges, a certain status, a certain prestige because of its conditions of arrival and conditions of use. it is an object “enriched” and “ingrained” by the “work of generations” yet not defined by it. instead these qualities emerged through practice because “relata do not pre-exist relations.” all of this has shown that textbooks are, just as books are, tenacious, they are persisting in their material and immaterial existence, and this matters because it means that “matter and meaning are not separate elements” when it comes to textbooks. . historical narratives chapter two, as well as reviewing literature connected to book and textbook research, also spent some time exploring the idea of historical narratives. this exploration looked into both epistemological and ontological ideas about historical narrative and concluded that, for the purposes of this study, historical narratives were going to be thought of as something experienced through being in the classroom, meaning narratives are not simply taught and then known, they are lived. in order to intentionally move away from binary thinking, epistemological and ontological ideas of narrative needed to be thought of at the same time. barad’s notion of “onto-epistem-ology – the study of practices of knowing in being” provided a framework through which to do this. england under the tudors provided a lens through which to consider this particular barad, meeting the universe halfway, . ahmed, “orientations matter,” . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . barad, meeting the universe halfway, . conceptualisation of narrative and look at how one textbook can shape an onto-epistmo-logical historical narrative. to offer some insight into what this study has shown about historical narratives in the classroom by adopting this specific orientation i would like to turn to sam wineburg. in historical thinking and other unnatural acts, wineburg states that “history holds the potential, only partly realized, of humanizing us in ways offered by few other areas in the school curriculum.” he thinks there are two poles when it comes to the past; the pole of familiarity and the pole of distance. it is “the pole of familiarity [that] pulls most strongly” but veering too far in this direction means the past is viewed as “usable” and then becomes “yet another commodity for instant consumption.” the danger here is that the “past becomes clay in our hands.” the other side of the tension is the unfamiliar, the “strangeness of the past” which can offer “surprise and amazement.” the trouble here is that if the past is too distant, too “detached from the needs of the present” it becomes “esoteric exoticism” that is only interesting to a “small coterie of professionals.” the task at hand, to achieve “mature historical thinking,” is to “navigate the uneven landscape of history, to traverse the rugged terrain that lies between the poles of familiarity and distance from the past.” this idea of “traversing the rugged terrain” was (and is) important to me as a history teacher and framed much of my teaching practice. i always presumed that this traversal between the familiar and unfamiliar past was something i was leading. i facilitated certain conditions for sam wineburg, “historical thinking and other unnatural acts,” phi delta kappan , no. ( ): wineburg, “historical thinking,” . wineburg, “historical thinking,” . wineburg, “historical thinking,” . wineburg, “historical thinking,” wineburg, “historical thinking,” . students to learn a certain way of thinking: mature historical thinking. but perhaps the terrain between the poles of familiarity and distance is not an entirely epistemological terrain, perhaps it is ontological as well. perhaps the experience of the historical narrative in the classroom is part of the familiarity of the past. this experience is a material and immaterial experience and not something i had ultimate control of. the material familiarity of textbook and the classroom space were part of the ontological experience of the narrative of reign henry viii. the epistemological interpretation(s) full of facts, dates, strange words, and unfamiliar ideas was the distant past. looking again at the emergent themes from chapter six the familiarity of the story of thomas cromwell is embodied in england under the tudors. the book is a constant and familiar object. the pages, the cover, the typeface, the weight, are all familiar and hold in them the distant past full of acts and orders and dissolutions. similarly, the collective material assemblage of the objects that represented catholicism in the room are familiar, they are the teacher’s possessions and props, but the immaterial concepts: heresy, indulgences, nepotism, are part of a distant past. wineburg thinks finding the perfect place to encounter the distant past is essential as by encountering “people, places, and times” we are “spur[red]…to reconsider how we conceptualize ourselves as human beings.” this is all part of the “sustained encounter with the less-familiar past” that “teaches us the limitations of our brief sojourn on the planet and allows us to take membership in the entire human race.” for wineburg, “the relevance of the past may lie precisely in what strikes us as its initial irrelevance” which leaves us in “awe of the face of the wineburg, “historical thinking,” . wineburg, “historical thinking,” . wineburg, “historical thinking,” . expanse of human histories.” thinking about the history classroom as a site of historical experience that connects the familiar and distant past reimagines the act, or process, of teaching history in school settings. teaching history is a sustained encounter with the past because the onto-epistemo-logical historical narrative is an experience of history in order that it might be known. thinking back to what carr says, inspired by dilthey, as people we are “in history as we are in the world.” perhaps as history teachers and history students we are in history as we are in the classroom. experiences of learning history allow us to make “meaningful patterns” that helps us understand “threatening experience of time” by materially connecting the knower and the known . this means that each and every classroom experience of learning history, with different textbooks, and different teachers, and different objects, and different students, in specific teaching spaces, in specific schools, shapes how we “take membership in the entire human race.” the idea that each history classroom experience is different to the next is hardly a new idea, but the idea that the human and non-human objects facilitate and shape history classroom experiences, which in turn have an effect not only on the distant epistemological historical narratives that are taught but also the ontological historical narratives that are lived perhaps is something new. . thinking further what do these ideas about textbooks and historical narratives say about current and future research in these areas. first and foremost, in regard to textbooks, and counter to taylor and wineburg, “historical thinking,” . david carr quoted by seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . rüsen quoted by holmberg, “i was born in the reign,” . macintyre’s comments about the usefulness of micro-studies, this study suggests finding out that classroom experiences and use of textbooks are “atypical” and “isolated” is important in itself. what taylor and macintyre would dismiss as “anecdotal” and insignificant is significant in that it shows how radically different each experience is. vibrant findings of micro studies are helpful to both researchers and history teachers because they assert the individuality of teaching and learning experiences. in terms of historical narratives, seixas suggested that perhaps an “ontological dimension of narrative competence” may lead to a “more expansive and ambitious history education” so let’s explore this idea. thinking about the ontological dimension of narrative is a way of seeing the history classroom in a different way. it provides an opportunity to shine a light on history teaching and learning with a different focus and see what is happening. this study used one specific object to re-live the teaching experience, but this is only one way of thinking about the classroom. you could look at assemblages of objects. you look at the use of a specific object, for example a textbook, in different spaces. you could look at space itself. chapter five, supported by pollard and alexander’s findings, illustrated how impactful school sites can be on learning experiences. this provides a connection with bodies of work that consider ‘where things happen” to be “critical to knowing how and why they happen” (emphasis author’s own) because space, in edward soja’s words, is a “vital existential force.” in the field of education research, ian grosvenor et al. think that “to some extent, the [school] building seixas, "teaching rival histories,” . barney warf and santa arias, “introduction: the reinsertion of space into the social sciences and humanities,” in the spatial turn: interdisciplinary perspectives, ed. barney warf and santa arias, st ed. (new york; london: routledge, ), . edward w. soja, “taking space personally,” in the spatial turn: interdisciplinary perspectives, ed. barney warf and santa arias, st ed. (new york; london: routledge, ), . itself” can “shape the life inside of it.” martin lawn thinks modernism, “as a movement in school building” focuses our attention on the “aims and intentions”, or what you could call the aspirations of a school, but “now the future seems to have broken again” owing to the state’s vision of the future being reduced to “acts of individual progress” it is imperative that researchers look back at the history of school buildings because “the future looks to be behind us now.” this is just one example of how thinking about what shapes the experience of learning history, and how this might affect the onto-epistmo-logical historical narrative that are taught, may be “expansive” for history education. seixas did caveat this claim about expansion and ambition by saying that these ideas were at such an “abstract level that it has little use, practically.” it seems foolish to reject this last comment completely out of hand because thinking about the history classroom in this way is abstract, however, that is not to say that it is not of any use at all. presuming that by practical use seixas is thinking about practical use for classroom practitioners, there are a number of ways that this study, and other studies of its like, may provide practical guidance for history teachers. studies such as this help history teachers to engage with their own practice as unique and individualised. it requires teachers to reflect on the way they are in the classroom and how this may shape the teaching that takes place there. it also compels teachers, and schools, to think about how a school’s culture and ethos may not simply be having an effect on the experience of grosvenor, ian, lawn, martin and rousmaniere, kate, “introduction,” in silences and images: the social history of the classroom, (pp. - ) edited by ian grosvenor, martin lawn and kate rousmaniere, (new york: peter lang, ), . martin lawn, “building ruins: abandoned ideas of the school,” in designing schools: space, place and pedagogy, ed. kate darian-smith and julie willis, st ed. 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( ): – . https://researched.org.uk https://www.britannica.com https://en.oxforddictionaries.com https://www.npg.org.uk https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/ https://www.npg.org.uk/ 	abstract 	lay summary 	preface 	table of contents 	dedication 	chapter : introduction 	 . brief history of the problem 	 . rationale for the study 	 . purpose of study 	 . theoretical foundations 	 . methodological approach and methods 	 . research aims 	 . limitations 	 . positionality of the researcher 	 . organisation of thesis 	chapter : literature review 	 . introduction 	 . theoretical framework: the book 	 . . scholarly approaches to book studies 	 . . robert darnton: the communication circuit model 	 . . criticisms of darnton’s communication circuit model 	 . . a status object 	 . theoretical framework: the textbook 	 . . textbook cultures 	 . history textbook research: how textbooks are used in classroom settings 	 . . a brief overview 	 . . categorisation and classification 	 . . a closer look: lisa faden and terry haydn 	 . . textbooks as textual artefacts 	 . new materialism 	 . narrative 	 . . bedfellows: narrative, account, interpretation 	 . . epistemology to ontology 	 . aesthetics 	 . . aesthetic encounters 	 . . aesthetic orientation 	 . . aesthetic embodiment 	chapter : theoretical foundations, methodological approach and methods 	 . introduction 	 . theoretical framework: a reception-based study 	 . theoretical grounding 	 . methodological approach 	 . . the object 	 . . orientation 	 . methods 	 . . the object revisited 	 . . book or textbook? 	 . . the classroom companion (a concept for chapter four) 	 . . sedimentation (a concept for chapter five) 	 . . portraits (a concept for chapter six) 	 . . . the classroom as an (im)material assemblage 	 . . . a portrait of a classroom 	chapter : classroom companion 	 . introduction 	 . ekphrastic description 	 . . bookishness 	 . . textbookishness 	 . the uncanniness of england under the tudors 	 . . the cover 	 . . pages 	 . . . the teacher-reader 	 . . . paper 	 . . weight 	 . concluding thoughts 	chapter : sedimentation 	 . introduction 	 . ekphrastic description 	 . . the leadership team 	 . . the school building 	 . lingering with cultural capital and neoliberalism 	 . . cultural capital 	 . . cultural markers 	 . . neoliberalism 	 . a return to the object 	 . . on brand 	 . . obligation 	 . . appropriation 	 . concluding thoughts 	chapter : portraits of a classroom 	 . introduction 	 . ekphrastic description 	 . stories in the story 	 . . thomas cromwell: an obligation 	 . . cardinal wolsey: an (im)material assemblage 	 . . the pilgrimage of grace: a personal rebellion 	 . concluding thoughts 	chapter : epilogue 	 . history textbooks 	 . historical narratives 	 . thinking further 	bibliography review reviewed work(s): i wanna be me: rock music and the politics of identity by theodore gracyk; disruptive divas: feminism, identity and popular music by lori burns and mélisse lafrance review by: jaqueline warwick source: journal of the american musicological society, vol. , no. (fall ), pp. - published by: university of california press on behalf of the american musicological society stable url: http://www.jstor.org/stable/ . /jams. . . . accessed: - - : utc jstor is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. we use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. for more information about jstor, please contact support@jstor.org. your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of the terms & conditions of use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms university of california press, american musicological society are collaborating with jstor to digitize, preserve and extend access to journal of the american musicological society this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms journal of the american musicological society in one of several provocative strategies, murray opens the canon to a more organic repertory, one demonstrating a line of development. the interlinear trope “gaudeamus hodie” can supplement the mass for christmas day that is included in the norton anthology. in his discussion of anthologies as canons, murray asks what history is created, and what values are embedded therein. thus, palisca might have chosen perotin’s gradual viderunt omnes to relate to the chant in the mass for christmas day, instead of the gradual for st. stephen’s day, sederunt principes. the student could in this way discern the development from chant around to the mass with tropes of about to the setting as notre dame polyphony of around . murray takes the case further: he would choose as his “requisite” palestrina mass the missa hodie christus natus est, also based on one of the chants from the christmas mass. in murray’s pedagogy, musical examples become “part of an unfolding world . . . not the history but a history that encapsulates values of change and continuity, of borrowing and transformation” (p. ). given the breadth and imagination of its discourse, teaching music history is essential reading for all musicologists who teach. the contributors’ devotion to teaching will stimulate readers. i urge that our discipline consider the model of this compilation seriously, pursuing mary natvig’s recommendation to study the teaching of music history as a critical component of musicology. james r . briscoe i wanna be me: rock music and the politics of identity, by theodore gracyk. philadelphia: temple university press, . xi, pp. disruptive divas: feminism, identity and popular music, by lori burns and mélisse lafrance. new york: routledge, . xix, pp. my former dissertation advisor has a favorite story about popular music and identity: a professor at a large american university designs and implements a “history of rock ’n’ roll” class for general enrollment. thrilled to be intro- ducing a university class on music that plays a vital role in students’ lives, he carefully prepares lectures on a wide array of genres, styles, and performers of popular music throughout the twentieth century. aglow with happy expecta- tions, he turns to his course evaluations at the end of the semester. the first comment reads: “this course sucks—no blue Öyster cult.” anyone who has taught this kind of class can almost certainly supply a simi- lar anecdote; students’ emotional investments in popular music are so pro- found that any slight to their preferred artist is bound to be felt as a personal affront. music from the western art tradition, of course, can and does inspire deep and valuable commitments from students, but these are generally of a this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms reviews more consciously reasoned nature. it is difficult to imagine such a petulant re- sponse to a class on seventeenth-century music that omitted j. j. froberger. but why should a teenager in the mid s feel so strongly about an ob- scure heavy metal band from the early seventies? why should an acquaintance at a cocktail party be so offended at my casual remark that robert johnson improved dramatically at playing blues guitar because he practiced, and not because he sold his soul to the devil as the legend posits? why should a neigh- bor in my apartment building feel the need to spend an evening alone playing the supremes’ “living in shame” repeatedly and at maximum volume? popu- lar music—and i do not mean merely contemporary music heard on the radio, for listeners often form allegiances that transcend time and place—plays a cru- cial role in forging senses of self in ways that are important to understand but difficult to explain. two recent books, disruptive divas: feminism, identity and popular music and i wanna be me: rock music and the politics of identity, grapple with the complexities of popular music and identity. theodore gracyk’s i wanna be me is less a book about popular music than a book about the philosophical issues at stake in producing and listening to popular music. as such, it raises important questions about meaning in music, issues of appropriation, and the politics of gender. who is responsible when brutish fans misinterpret an anti-rape song as a celebration of misogyny? how are we to understand the notion of authorship when listening to “cover” ver- sions? to what extent can rock music be understood as masculine—and can sound have a gender at all? these are among the questions thoughtfully—and, for the most part, satisfyingly—explored in gracyk’s work. gracyk, a professor of philosophy whose scholarly interests focus on aes- thetics in rock music, begins by drawing an important distinction between mass art and popular culture. like popular culture, mass art relies upon a ver- nacular language in order to be accessible to most members of a society— whether or not one is a fan of justin timberlake, his music is comprehensible to most ears because it draws on a conventional vocabulary of sounds and ges- tures. in gracyk’s formulation, mass art differs from popular culture in that it relies on mass production and dissemination, so that fans of timberlake around the globe can enjoy his work without having any contact with him or firsthand knowledge of his lived experience. a musician rooted in a local scene, on the other hand, trades in familiarity with specific events and locales, and interacts with an audience exclusively through live performance, thus par- ticipating in popular culture but not mass art. this differentiation is useful for understanding the connection between musicians who sell millions of records and recording artists who count their fans in the hundreds. the actual number of record sales has no bearing on whether or not one is a mass artist; for gracyk, that kind of popularity is beside the point. mass art is often despised for its commodifying ways; critics assert that “au- thentic” musical experiences ought to connect listeners to performers and bring people closer together in an ongoing process of musicking (christopher this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms journal of the american musicological society small’s influential term conceiving music as an activity). the paradox of mass- disseminated, commercial recordings is that listening to them can be at once an isolating and deeply intimate practice. instead of sitting by the fireside mak- ing music with family members in some idealized folk tradition, the listener of commercial records can retreat to her bedroom to partake alone, shutting out siblings and parents. at the same time, the persona encountered through the cherished recording—what gracyk terms a token—may seem closer and more sympathetic than anyone in her actual community, in spite of the fact that lis- tener and performer will probably never meet. what is more, the listener can feel a sense of community with the millions of others presumably interacting with tokens in their own bedrooms around the world. as in his earlier work, rhythm and noise: an aesthetics of rock, gracyk is interested for the most part in music that uses the vocabulary and conventions of rock: guitars, drumkit, untutored vocal styles, production values that emu- late concert performances, and the valorization of expressive sincerity—this last concern being central to an ideology of authenticity which holds that in- terpreting the music of professional songwriters is less worthy than writing and performing one’s own, ostensibly unmediated, material. gracyk is conver- sant with the work of many of the most influential scholars working in the area of popular music studies, writers whose fields range from musicology to soci- ology, cultural studies, and mass communications. his engaging writing style often draws on his own experiences with popular music, and he illuminates his theoretical concepts with references to musical examples from a wide range of genres and eras. occasional errors imply that this breadth may sometimes overreach his familiarity; for example, a mention of neil young’s “before the gold rush” presumably refers to young’s “after the gold rush,” an apoca- lyptic vision rather than a prelapsarian fantasy (pp. – ). the reader should not doubt, however, that here is a scholar who is invested in rock music as a fan and as a critical thinker. it is small wonder that this book was identified as “book of the year” (along with gary giddins’s bing crosby: the early years) by the u.s. branch of the international association for the study of popular music. for the reader interested in the issues and concerns of popular music studies, i wanna be me provides an excellent introduction. one of the most provocative sections of the book tackles the question of appropriation—what kind of musician has “gotta right to sing the blues?” by tracing biographies of songs such as “goodnight irene” (popularized in the s by a white folk quartet, the weavers, and credited to black bluesman leadbelly, but probably derived from a nineteenth-century minstrel tune), gracyk ably illustrates the cross-pollinations and borrowings that keep popular music vibrant and meaningful. he then ponders the complexity of musical appropriation by considering reactions to different kinds of borrowings: . theodore gracyk, rhythm and noise: an aesthetics of rock (durham, n.c.: duke uni- versity press, ). this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms reviews it is often asserted, with minimal argument, that appropriation is fine unless one belongs to a dominant cultural group. no one, so far as i can tell, has ever criticized the navajo people for appropriating drypainting and weaving tech- niques. no one sees any problem in african americans in new york’s south bronx creating hip-hop music by borrowing jamaican dj practices and puerto rican syncopation from recent immigrants. yet many cultural theorists and per- sons of color believe that appropriations by white europeans and americans from other cultures are automatically exploitative and fundamentally wrong. (indeed, many recent writers treat “appropriation” as synonymous with “wrongful cultural appropriation.”) since rock would not exist without appro- priation, this is a deeply troubling charge against rock. (pp. – ) gracyk makes a convincing case for more nuanced understandings of appro- priation. he distinguishes between the hybridization that gives rise to new musical styles, the immersion of respectful musicians who endeavor to learn the traditions of cultures not their own, and aestheticism, when sounds and other signs are used to create an interesting effect without any acknowledg- ment of their original significance or function. this last kind of appropriation is most offensive in gracyk’s formulation. unsurprisingly, much of this discussion hinges on paul simon’s controver- sial graceland and the criticisms that have followed its release. simon recorded much of this album in johannesburg during the years of the unesco boycott of the south african music industry (although, gracyk notes, he did not technically violate the ban, which prohibited only public per- formances). in creating wonderful tunes such as “diamonds on the soles of her shoes,” “i know what i know,” and “you can call me al,” simon worked with black south african and senegalese musicians such as ladysmith black mambazo and youssou n’dour. recording with simon launched many of these musicians to international fame, and simon shared credits and royal- ties fairly, as he did with his american graceland collaborators, louisiana’s rockin’ dopsie and the twisters and los angeles band los lobos (and, presumably, with the more famous musicians heard on the record, such as the everly brothers and linda ronstadt). nevertheless, louise meintjes (with whose authoritative work on grace- land gracyk does not engage), timothy taylor, and george lipsitz are among many scholars who have criticized the symbolic relationships enacted in graceland: simon superimposed his voice as a soloist singing new melodies and “lyrics about cosmopolitan postmodern angst over songs previously . gracyk cites the work of anthropologist michelle moody-adams, who problematizes as- sumptions that cultures are internally integrated and self-contained. he also responds to martha bayles’s wish for contemporary rock music to return to its blues roots and regain its “soul.” see michelle moody-adams, fieldwork in familiar places: morality, culture and philosophy (cam- bridge: harvard university press, ); and martha bayles, hole in our soul: the loss of beauty and meaning in american popular music (new york: free press, ). this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms journal of the american musicological society situated within the lives and struggles of aggrieved black communities.” gracyk reprimands critics like these for allowing a repugnance for the com- modification of music through the mechanisms of mass art to color their re- sponses to a case of hybridization, the kind of process that is crucial to the continued vitality of music. south african music-making, he argues, was un- harmed by the graceland phenomenon: the original meanings of the songs were not changed by their new contexts, and simon and warner bros. thus did no damage. although gracyk avoids stating explicitly which kind of ap- propriation is involved in graceland, his rebuttals of taylor and lipsitz sug- gest that he considers simon to have engaged in a benign, perhaps even beneficial, act of hybridization. simon’s own statements about the record, in his liner notes and elsewhere, seem more in keeping with the attitude gracyk has identified as aestheticism: “exoticism for the sake of novelty” (p. ). gracyk calls for responsible listening, urging listeners to participate in music by making the effort to understand what they hear: “the problem arises when a person approaches all music as an item for pleasurable consump- tion, as if music were, say, of no more cultural significance than a candy bar that one buys for oneself at the market” (p. ). as long as there are listeners less sophisticated and critical than gracyk’s ideal, however, it is difficult not to feel uncomfortable with the enormous success of graceland, and with the ac- colades bestowed on simon for his musical “discoveries.” the album was bought by millions who had only the vaguest notions of the creative processes behind the music, and who accepted simon as a sole author who dictated and controlled the contributions of the other musicians. as george lipsitz notes, simon’s initial response to criticisms of the album was to insist on music’s au- tonomy from politics (aestheticism), and it was only in the face of continued objections that he began to emphasize the positive effects of graceland on african politics. ultimately, it is hard for me to accept that harm to african music is the only possible negative outcome of the graceland album (even if we accept, as many readers will not, that african music-making was not compromised). surely we should also be concerned with the consequences within western society of rep- resenting a relationship in which a famous american male can insert himself as soloist over the music of “township” bands. the song “i know what i know” evolved through a process that is closer to karaoke than collaboration: simon invented a melody and witty lyrics that fit over a preexisting record by . george lipsitz, dangerous crossroads: popular music, postmodernism and the poetics of place (london: verso, ), . see also timothy d. taylor, global pop: world music, world markets (new york: routledge, ); and louise meintjes, “paul simon’s graceland, south africa, and the mediation of musical meaning,” ethnomusicology ( ): – . . lipsitz, dangerous crossroads, . this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms reviews shangaan musicians general m. d. shirinda and the gaza sisters, creating the illusion of call and response between him and female “backup” singers. indeed, this song might have been a useful object for discussion in the final section of gracyk’s book, where he examines the politics of gender in rock. the phenomenon of a male soloist supported by a group of undifferentiated women is a mainstay of many genres of popular music, and one that can cer- tainly be understood to symbolize the unacknowledged female drudgery be- hind male success that is critiqued by marxist feminists. in these chapters, gracyk problematizes the commonly held assumption that rock is coded male and sexist, and ponders the options available to women in rock. drawing on the work of scholars of gender like judith butler as well as musicologists like susan mcclary, gracyk explores the strengths and weaknesses of strategies of gender solidarity (e.g., “women’s music,” riot grrrl, and lilith fair) and gender transgression (patti smith, tina turner, and female performances of men’s songs, such as aretha franklin’s recording of otis redding’s “respect”). his often sophisticated discussion is sometimes marred by uninformed ref- erences to genres that clearly do not engage him as a listener, as with the tru- ism that women in rock in the s and s were dependent on “the men who were the true creative forces (a phil spector or berry gordy behind the scenes)” (p. ; emphasis added). in the very next sentence, gracyk applauds carole king as one of only a few women in rock who were able to challenge the dominance of male creativity in the seventies. but king was one of the most prolific and successful composers of the brill building in the early sixties, collaborating regularly with producers like spector and writing hits for all of the major girl groups as well as many male performers. even if we fail to rec- ognize “true creative force” in singing and other forms of interpretation, carole king’s role as a composer in the early sixties, along with ellie green- wich, cynthia weil, jackie de shannon, and valerie simpson, surely ought to complicate gracyk’s assessment of a male-dominated system. gracyk considers that “it’s not enough that there are women in rock: their presence must dis- rupt rock’s dominant masculinity. . . . if rock accommodates women’s voices and yet those voices express femininity as ordinarily constructed, what’s gained?” (p. ). by bringing the concerns and experiences of teenage girls . simon’s liner notes for this song state: “the music for ‘i know what i know’ comes from an album by general m. d. shirinda and the gaza sisters, a shangaan group from gazankulu, a small town near petersburg in northern south africa. as more and more shangaan people have migrated to johannesburg, their music has grown increasingly popular, and several shangaan records have recently become hits. an unusual style of guitar playing and the distinctive sound of the women’s voices were what attracted me to this group in the first place” (paul simon, liner notes for graceland, warner bros. lp - [ ]). . see, for example, nancy hartsock, money, sex and power: toward a feminist historical materialism (boston: northeastern university press, ). this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms journal of the american musicological society to center stage of mainstream culture with songs like “will you love me tomorrow?” carole king and the shirelles surely introduced a radically new construction of femininity—the “nice” girl who articulates sexual desire—into rock. there are, of course, many genres of popular music where representations of femininity as ordinarily constructed are meaningful and valuable to millions of listeners, if only “rockist” critics could bring themselves to acknowledge them. gracyk gestures in this direction by suggesting that it is also important to celebrate artists whose musical performances are unlikely to be taken as authentic expressions of the singer. . . . an interpretive “singer” like dusty springfield or linda ronstadt may be as central to the rock canon as an “artist” like joni mitchell and patti smith, and today we need the spice girls, britney spears and jennifer lopez as much as we need ani difranco and tori amos. (p. ) this assertion, it seems, would ring hollow with lori burns and mélisse lafrance, whose disruptive divas comprises close analyses of songs by four fe- male artists who have carefully positioned themselves as peripheral to the mainstream. burns, a theorist of popular music who has also written on bach’s music, and lafrance, a cultural theorist informed by french critical thought, have collaborated on a book that examines songs by tori amos, courtney love’s band hole, me’shell ndegéocello, and pj harvey, musicians who “have disturbed the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ female musicianship in ways both socio-cultural and musical, and are thus important objects of inquiry” (p. xi). these writers uphold the singer/songwriter as the most creative model of musicianship in popular music, relying on a valorization of authenticity that contrasts with the ideas proposed by gracyk. the notion of authenticity— truthfulness in performing music that stems from intensely felt (and usually painful) personal experience—is at the heart of central debates in popular music studies. a scholarly book paying careful and respectful attention to the work of four women artists represents a significant and welcome shift in popular music studies. in the relatively short history of the discipline, case studies like this have tended to be devoted only to male artists (i think of the legion of books on the beatles), even though the confessional lyrics, untutored vocals, self- taught tunings and fingerings, and heartfelt expressions of personal experience upheld by the ideology of authenticity are all, arguably, coded feminine. it is . see, for example, kevin j. h. dettmar and william richey, eds., reading rock and roll: authenticity, appropriation, aesthetics (new york: columbia university press, ). . see sarah dougher, “authenticity, gender, and personal voice: she sounds so sad, do you think she really is?” in this is pop: in search of the elusive at the experience music project, ed. eric weisbard (cambridge: harvard university press, ), – . perhaps the perceived fem- inine aspects of the singer/songwriter style may partly explain the aggressiveness with which men working in this genre have been valorized. this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms reviews laudable to accord the same kind of attention to women musicians who exert a powerful force in the lives of countless listeners, male and female. burns and lafrance describe their choices of artists and methodologies: “this book endeavors to read [the selected] musical works for their disruptive, subversive, and countercultural potential. it also attempts to disrupt the con- ventional mores of academic disciplinarity by combining cultural and musico- logical perspectives” (p. xiv). they point out that, because all four of the artists represented emerged during the s, their book can serve as a “ ‘snapshot’ of [the epoch]” (p. ), and they are candid about having selected music that they liked. their apologia for choosing to write about music they love instead of aspiring to some ideal of neutral, quasi-scientific objectivity is supported with apt citations from writers ranging from antonio gramsci to john shepherd. the quartet of musicians they choose to investigate nevertheless troubles me. this is certainly not a snapshot of the s as i experienced them, and it seems instead a lopsided view in which events at the margins of culture are more valuable than activity at center stage. this approach to making sense of popular music typifies the work of writers associated with the birmingham school of cultural studies, who celebrate subcultural, marginalized practices as forms of resistance, and it developed in response to adornian views of mass culture as a tool of capitalism that controls and regulates the hapless prole- tariat. recent scholars such as adam krims (and, indeed, theodore gracyk, as discussed above) have developed alternate understandings of mainstream hit music and subcultural scenes. as compelling as are all of the recordings discussed by burns and lafrance, there is a sense in which such dissenting messages coming from figures who take great pains to position themselves as outsiders are predictable, and perhaps even reaffirm the status quo. why was alanis morissette not mentioned at all in this study? the aggres- sive musical language, defiant stance, and vitriolic lyrics of her jagged little pill were undoubtedly disruptive in , earning it comparisons with the work of tori amos and liz phair, and making its grammy award for album of the year all the more astonishing. morissette’s use of the language of so- called alternative rock—a term used to describe the punk-influenced, guitar- driven music of s bands such as sonic youth and jane’s addiction, who positioned themselves as outside the market—irritated many because it was appropriated by a former pop singer whose material is cowritten by industry professionals. because of her success, morissette represented alternative music . see in particular dick hebdige, subculture: the meaning of style (london: methuen, ). . see adam krims, “marxist music analysis without adorno: popular music and urban geography,” in analyzing popular music, ed. allan f. moore (cambridge: cambridge university press, ), – ; and idem, rap music and the poetics of identity (cambridge: cambridge university press, ). this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms journal of the american musicological society and values to mainstream audiences, adding insult to injury to those invested in notions of a pure, anti-commercial subculture. the importance of this artist to discourse about women in rock during the s and beyond would be hard to overstate, and yet she is nowhere to be found in this book. still more problematic in an explicitly feminist project is the preservation of an image of the isolated creator, rather than the acknowledgment of the many layers of collaboration in performance, recording, and production. the solo artist, facing the onslaughts of the world armed with only “three chords and the truth,” is one of the cherished romantic ideals of rock, and female artists who perpetuate this myth are, in a sense, highly conventional. furthermore, if one of the goals of feminism is to break down artificial barriers between women and foster a sense of solidarity (as in the seventies slogan “sisterhood is powerful”), then the adulation of solo artists who present themselves as loners brooding earnestly over the dangers of personal relationships seems counterin- tuitive. what is gained if we can only uphold lonely, tortured women as femi- nists, dismissing as too upbeat the collaborative work and collegiality enacted by ensembles? even if hip hop groups like tlc and salt ’n’ pepa cannot be considered in this kind of study (for reasons i shall address presently), it is disappointing to find bands like bikini kill, l , and sleater-kinney accorded no space. mélisse lafrance identifies the dangers of isolating women from their peers in her perceptive introduction to the section on courtney love and her band hole: the popular media’s portrayal of hole as a serious and accomplished alterna- tive rock group and of courtney love as a confused and hysterical woman al- lows the press not only to elaborate love as radically distinct from the creative work of her group, but to oppose love and hole in a vertically dichotomous relationship of “good” and “bad.” (p. ) thus, burns’s and lafrance’s focus on love as the driving creative force behind hole is a well-intentioned effort at rehabilitating her as a formidable musician. as admirable as this endeavor is, there is also a risk of perpetuating a sense of her talent as exceptional, even freakish, by maintaining the love/ hole division. many feminist thinkers will applaud the approach taken here, but i cannot altogether ignore its possible pitfall. this criticism indicates the healthy variety of positions available in feminist thought, and it points the way for lively and fruitful debate. the discussion of me’shell ndegéocello would similarly be strengthened by a more thorough discussion of ndegéocello’s peers. lafrance and burns connect the artist to the hip hop genre in their analysis of her “mary . although hole is a band, burns and lafrance focus almost exclusively on courtney love in their discussion of hole’s album live through this, correctly recognizing that love was the main force in the band as well as its official spokesperson. indeed, the relevant section of the book is titled “courtney love (hole), live through this ( ).” this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms reviews magdalene,” but to my ears, this song demonstrates all the hallmarks of a soul ballad: a / meter, slow groove, saxophone solo (rather than sampled riffs used percussively), and quiet, nonpercussive speaking that alternates with warm, full-throated singing. here, the conventions of a style associated with the tender, sexily vulnerable confessions of men like otis redding and percy sledge have been boldly adopted by a bisexual woman singing a love song to a female object of desire—and a character from the new testament, no less. identifying ndegéocello with a specific genre might have been more carefully nuanced if the authors had chosen to position her alongside other artists, such as erykah badu and mary j. blige, who helped to transform r&b during the s. for many readers, the most controversial aspect of disruptive divas will certainly be lori burns’s staunch avowal of the value of formalist music- analytical techniques, and her claim that “reductive analysis can be modified to accommodate the distinctive features of popular music harmony, melodic de- sign, and form” (p. ). i agree wholeheartedly that attention to musical detail —the grammar, vocabulary, and syntax with which tunes make themselves understood—is crucial to popular music studies, and that many scholars work- ing in this area have been too quick to dismiss the tools of musicology and music theory. as allan moore insists in the introduction to his recent essay collection analyzing popular music, to ignore sounds in our study of music is ultimately disabling: “listeners everywhere are encouraged to conceptualize the invention of music as a branch of magic, to believe that musical actions and gestures cannot be subject to any level of explanation, and hence under- standing, beyond the trivially biographical.” i share moore’s dismay at the suspicion directed at music analysis; i also consider that explicating the musical structure of a rock song cannot be an end in itself, and that the methodologies employed by burns are not always helpful in getting at how and why a song works. her emphasis on “harmony, melodic design, and form” goes a long way toward explaining why hip hop artists are not among the objects of study here; harmonic reduction can do little to illu- minate groove, rhythm, and the percussive register—to say nothing of timbre, a crucial carrier of meaning in popular music. indeed, focus on melody and chord progressions is sometimes a limitation even in the repertory she does examine. for example, tori amos’s “crucify” features a prominent african drum on the backbeat throughout each chorus that is not discussed in the thirty-four pages devoted to this song. the hollow, booming timbre domi- nates the lower sonic range, suggesting repeated blows to the body or the . moore, introduction to analyzing popular music, . the issues of music analysis of popu- lar music have been widely debated; for some recent discussions apart from moore’s volume, see david brackett, interpreting popular music (berkeley and los angeles: university of california press, ); susan fast, “same as it ever was? musicology continues to wrestle with rock,” canadian university music review , no. ( ): – ; and stan hawkins, settling the pop score: pop texts and identity politics (aldershot: ashgate, ). this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms journal of the american musicological society “cannonball in my stomach” that amos describes in her lyrics, and it is essen- tial to the mood of barely controlled fury and self-inflicted violence in the piece. the history of rock (and indeed, history in a larger sense) has been pep- pered with moments of discovery of the participation of women; during the s and s, it seemed that every year was proclaimed “the year of women in rock” as cultural institutions became suddenly excited about female activity. these moments of attention to and praise for women who have man- aged to infiltrate rock are dependent upon other (longer) moments when the contributions of women are forgotten or erased, so that each crop of female artists can be perceived as a fresh new trend that does not disturb the historical norms of male dominance. although i find it disappointing that the book should reinforce a sense of women in rock as singular and marginal, disruptive divas is nonetheless part of a sustained and steadily growing effort to work against this phenomenon, resolutely carving the names of women into the scholarly literature on popular music. i am intrigued by the implications of a coincidence in the publication of these two books: the cover art is strikingly similar. in both cases, a black-and- white photograph under a title in a coarse, irregular typeface captures a young white woman, seated and facing right, arching her back and leaning her head back, eyes closed and mouth open in what looks like ecstasy as she fingers her instrument. the pictures of tori amos at her piano and ani difranco with her guitar are arresting, and were doubtless chosen for the way they depict a mo- ment of introspection and authentic feeling (to say nothing of the sexual plea- sure they hint at). what fascinates me is the fact that the figure of a woman should be the symbol of this deep communion with music, replacing—with apparent ease—the more usual images of men such as jimi hendrix or eric clapton. what might it mean that the notion of identity should be repre- sented by a white woman? has feminist scholarship led to a belief that only women have complex, painfully constructed identities? or do these images connect to conventional euro-american depictions of the muse as an attrac- tive, if melancholy, female? are we to contemplate these pictures with an awareness of gender, but not race, as though the artists’ whiteness is somehow neutral? these are questions that may come to engage all of us interested in the role that music plays in forging a sense of self. jacqueline warwick this content downloaded from . . . on wed, nov : : utc all use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms macquarie university researchonline this is the published version of: mitchell, james ( ) ‘red and yellow songs : a historical analysis of the use of music by the united front for democracy against dictatorship (udd) and the people's alliance for democracy (pad) in thailand’ south east asia research, vol. , no. , ( ), p. - access to the published version: http://dx.doi.org/ . /sear. . copyright: copyright c soas. reproduced by permission of ip publishing ltd. publisher: ip publishing - http://www.ippublishing.com http://dx.doi.org/ http://dx.doi.org/ south east asia research, , , pp – doi: . /sear. . red and yellow songs: a historical analysis of the use of music by the united front for democracy against dictatorship (udd) and the people’s alliance for democracy (pad) in thailand james mitchell abstract: the increase in social protests in thailand since has been marked by a dramatic rise in the use of music for protest. this article examines the use of music by the yellow and red shirts, and contextualizes the pad and udd within the history of two simi- larly named but very different genres of thai song: phleng chiwit [life songs] and phleng phuea chiwit [songs for life]. phleng chiwit was part of a flowering of satirical art forms during field marshall plaek phibunsongkhram’s second term as prime minister ( – ) before censorship forced many songwriters to change to the new commercial genre of lukthung [thai country song]. phleng phuea chiwit was the preferred music of leftist students in the pro- democracy movement of the s. however, the rehabilitation of phleng phuea chiwit as the official thai protest genre has disguised the role that lukthung played during the armed struggle of the com- munist party of thailand (cpt). the article examines the use of satirical songs and lukthung during thailand’s most recent politi- cal struggle, from to the present. it appears that red-shirt protestors (the udd) have accessed a wide range of memories, includ- ing the most powerful counter-hegemonic traditions, whereas their yellow-shirt opponents (the pad) have drawn on a much narrower selection of hegemonic cultural memories. keywords: yellow and red shirts; lukthung; phleng chiwit; phleng phuea chiwit; pad; udd author details: the author is a researcher in the department of media, music, communications and cultural studies at macquarie university, sydney, australia. e-mail: james.mitchell@students.mq.edu.au. south east asia research the increase in social protest in thailand since has been marked by a dramatic rise in the use of music in a political context. unlike the leftist movement of the s, which embedded the view of ‘songs for life’ as the accepted thai protest genre, the people’s alliance for democracy (the pad – or yellow shirts) and the united front for democracy against dictatorship (the udd – or red shirts) have made use of almost every kind of music found in thailand. remarkably, this outpouring of rebellious sounds has taken place against a backdrop of increasing state censorship, self-censorship by media and recording companies, and punitive lese-majesty laws. why this has been possi- ble is not straightforward. certainly, advances in the areas of satellite television, home recording equipment and the internet have made censorship easier to overcome, and the competing political movements have developed sophisticated protest strategies by learning from each other. this article suggests that part of the answer also lies in the messages and memories communicated both lyrically and musically, consciously and unconsciously, through the songs and music used by each group. lukthung a central focus of this article is phleng lukthung or thai country music. lukthung is a fusion genre blending western and latin dance rhythms from the s and s with thai melodies. traditionally accorded low cultural status, largely because of the heavy involvement of isan people, it began to be acclaimed as a national art form after a royally sponsored concert series in . in the aftermath of the asian economic crisis, lukthung was hailed as the most authentic thai popu- lar music genre (see amporn, ). however, at that time a process of isan cultural revival and political maturation was under way, and con- tinued attempts to appropriate lukthung as an example of central thai supremacy have only served to strengthen this process. lukthung was see mitchell ( , pp , ); and lockard ( , pp – ). isan refers to the population of the north-eastern region of thailand, most of whom are of lao descent. the north-east only officially came under the control of siam following the revolt of the vassal state of vientiane in , and isan people have endured ongoing discrimination and chauvinism at the hands of the central thai. hesse-swain provides an excellent summary of the history of isan identity ( , pp – ). see also mccargo and hongladarom ( , pp – ) and lockard ( , pp – ). see mitchell ( , pp – ). red and yellow songs already identified with isan culture and during the last decade morlam [traditional lao folk music] and lukthung have been conflated across generic boundaries under the various titles of lukthung prayuk, isan lukthung and morlam sing. for over years, lukthung has been the preferred music of thai- land’s poor. rural peasants and the urban working class have found common ground in the stories and melodies of this genre. as demon- strated by ubonrat siriyuvasak in her seminal article on the genre, lukthung is embedded in a political context through its music, lyrics and subject matter ( , pp – ). however, the apparent absence of overt social protest in a working class genre has discouraged the atten- tion of western scholars and surprised the few writers who have delved into the popular music of thailand. craig lockard surveyed the popu- lar music genres of thailand for counter-hegemonic discourses and concluded that lukthung ‘could probably not serve as a model for musi- cians interested in more overt protest music, owing to its frequently lavish, almost circus-like stage productions (often involving elaborately clothed dancing girls), its progressive commercialization (and perhaps increasing co-optation) and the conspicuous consumption of its wealthy superstars’ (lockard, , p ). this article demonstrates that lockard did not have sufficient information available to him to show truly the counter-hegemonic potential of lukthung and that, during the present conflict, a wide range of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic (including even the most commercial) elements of lukthung have been used for protest. in the thai context, hegemony refers to the establishment, con- sisting of the military, the royal family, the government and the buddhist leadership (in possible descending order of influence); whereas counter- hegemony is any opposition or alternative to that establishment. method while denisoff’s ( , p ) categories of magnetic (which promote group solidarity) and rhetorical (which present a political message) protest songs remain valuable, it is generally accepted that any definition of protest music must include the capacity and cultural significance of the although the grammatically correct term for lao-isan folk music is lam and a prac- titioner is a mor lam [‘professional singer’], the latter term has become commonly used to describe the genre. sing means ‘fast, racing or dangerous’. morlam sing usually refers to fast tempo morlam set to dance-club beats. south east asia research music itself. as this article will confirm, certain melodies and genres can be extremely powerful cultural and political symbols, and some protest songs gain power through the appropriation of familiar tunes. potentially, lukthung lends itself to being considered as part of the larger discourse on protest music. but that is not the main purpose of this article. eyerman and jamison ( , p ) propose that ‘protest’ music should be interpreted through a framework ‘in which tradition and ritual are understood as processes of identity and identification, as… collec- tive meaning and memory’. music gives rise to ambiguous and open-ended images and symbols, which can ‘open channels of identifi- cation through which the past can become present’ (eyerman and jamison, , pp , ). what can we therefore learn about the yellow and red shirts from their musical preferences? that lukthung has been used si- multaneously by two opposing groups for competing political objectives is intriguing. but how can this be so? the answers lie in the historical configuration of the music and the nature of the political contours that have emerged since the s. structure part one builds a foundation for this study by introducing the compet- ing political movements, summarizing the development of relevant thai musical genres and providing an overview of the performers and gen- res preferred by each side. part two aims to contextualize the music of the pad and udd by examining some episodes within the history of two similarly named but very different genres of thai song: phleng chiwit [life songs] and phleng phuea chiwit [songs for life]. phleng chiwit was part of a flowering of satirical art forms during phibunsongkhram’s second term as prime minister ( – ) before censorship forced many songwriters to change to the new commercial genre of lukthung. phleng phuea chiwit was the preferred music of leftist students within the pro-democracy movement of the s. however, the rehabilitation of phleng phuea chiwit as the official thai protest genre has disguised the role that lukthung played during the armed struggle of the communist party of thailand (cpt). phleng plaeng [altered lyrics] using the tunes of famous lukthung songs were extremely popular among the rank-and-file insurgents, particu- larly those in isan. part three examines some of the satirical songs and phleng plaeng produced during the recent political struggle. the use of lukthung by red and yellow songs each side is surveyed and the types of collective memory evoked by this use are discussed. it appears that the red shirts have accessed a wide range of memories, including the most powerful counter-hegemonic traditions, whereas the yellow shirts have drawn on a much narrower selection of hegemonic cultural memories. part description of the protest movements the people’s alliance for democracy (pad), led by media mogul sondhi limthongkul, was formally established on february in order to protest against the alleged corruption of prime minister thaksin shinawatra. with a support base drawn from middle and upper class bangkokians and southerners, conservative factions of the thai army, the democrat party, some ngos and labour unions, the pad is charac- terized by ultra-nationalist, pro-monarchy rhetoric and the wearing of yellow – the official colour of the thai king. after the september coup, the pad disbanded, only to reform in march to campaign against the people’s power party governments of samak sundaravej (january–september ) and somchai wongsawat (september– december ). this period was notable for the blockade of parliament house and the occupation of bangkok’s airports. when the somchai government was dissolved in december , the pad once again went into hiatus. since that time, pink-shirt and multicoloured groups have held demonstrations that have stressed loyalty to the monarchy and to the state and have often included pad personnel. the united front for democracy against dictatorship (udd) was first formed in as the democratic alliance against dictatorship (daad) to combat the appearance of the pad and to oppose the coup and ensuing military government. initially only consisting of support- ers of thaksin shinawatra, the movement has expanded to include pro-democracy and some leftist groups. after the election in december of the people’s power party, the udd went into recess until may when it responded to the pad’s seizure of parliament house. early udd protest methods were amateurish compared with those of the pad, the wearing of pink shirts by royalists became popular after king bhumibol left hospital in november dressed in pink. the inspiration for a pink-shirt group appears to have come from morlam/lukthung singer jintara punlap, whose song, ‘mob si chomphu’ [‘pink protest group’], appeared in march . south east asia research and it was not until that the red shirts emerged as a coherent po- litical force with power bases in the north-east and north. in april , the red shirts forced the fourth east asia summit, held in pattaya, to be abandoned, and major demonstrations were held in bangkok. after these demonstrations were dispersed by the military, the udd appears to have spent the next year quietly planning and mobilizing for the dra- matic protests that took place in bangkok from march to may and which resulted in the deaths of people. thailand’s musical genres traditional music is divided into the court-centred ‘classical’ tradition and various folk traditions. central thai classical music is performed by mahori [stringed and percussion instruments] and piphat [percus- sion and wind instruments] ensembles and also accompanies the khon [masked] and lakhon [non-masked] dance-drama forms. the term phleng thai doem [‘original thai song’] refers to the large thai classical reper- tory. since the s, classical music has increasingly been adopted by the bangkok middle class as a marker of status and identity (see moro, , pp , ). the most significant folk genres in terms of influence on lukthung are the central thai folk traditions of phleng lae, phleng choi, phleng isaeo and lamtat and the north-eastern morlam tradition. although all thai folk genres use pentatonic scales, the equidistant tuning of central thai genres contrasts greatly with the natural pentatonic minor scale of north-eastern genres. likay is a theatrical form that has blended cen- tral folk traditions with classical elements. thai popular music can be traced back to phleng thai sakon (univer- sal or western songs) of the s and s. under the leadership of field marshall phibunsongkhram and luang wichit wathakan, thai melodies and lyrics were combined with western harmony and instru- mentation. folk melodies were adapted to create ramwong [‘circle dance’] – a hybrid genre that rivalled the popularity of western dance music such as the tango or the waltz. after the second world war, phleng thai sakon gradually developed subgenres such as phleng talat [market songs] or phleng chiwit [life songs], which discussed rural concerns and were sung with rural accents. all of these central thai folk traditions employ chanted rhythmic dialogue and equi- distant tuning. according to ubonrat ( , p ), central thai folk singing was influenced by suat khaek or malay chanting introduced by malay prisoners during the reign of king rama iii ( – ). red and yellow songs during the s, a formal division was made between these realis- tic songs sung in rural accents and incorporating myriad folk styles – lukthung [literally, ‘children of the field’] and romantic love songs sung in a western style – lukkrung [literally, ‘children of the city’]. phleng phuea chiwit [songs for life], which combined american folk with thai lyrics, melodies, singing techniques and instrumentation, provided a voice for the leftist student protest movement of the s and has since developed into a commercial country rock genre. opposed to songs for life were phleng pluk-jai [patriotic marches], which developed from western brass band music during the nineteenth century. through a process of cross-pollination with lukthung, isan folk has developed into the hybrid genres of molam sing, isan lukthung and kantruem. lukkrung soon developed into string (western pop with thai lyrics), which then followed similar paths of development to western popular music. disco and funk were important influences in the s, while more recently, britpop/alternative, j-pop and k-pop, ska and hip hop have been incorporated in local variants. western jazz has been appre- ciated by the thai upper and middle classes since the s and is particularly associated with king bhumibol (r to the present). music of the pad anyone who has followed the turmoil in thailand over the last six years is probably aware that music has played an important role in the pro- tests. the pad’s combination of free-to-air satellite television coverage and continuous demonstrations centred around a performance stage (rather than the object of protest) has resulted in a blend of protest en- tertainment. just as the proliferation of cable television networks around the world has led to a massive increase in demand for content, so astv’s -hour format meant that musical content was essential. furthermore, the pad appears to have had high levels of support from bangkok’s entertainment industry (see clewley, , pp – ). this was clearly seen when pongpat wachirabunjong accepted the award for best sup- porting actor at the nataraja awards (for thai tv) ceremony on may . to a standing ovation, he gave a speech, ‘if you hate father, no longer love father, just get out of here. because this is father’s house. because this land belongs to father.’ as a result of this support, a constant kantruem is a folk-rock genre, usually sung in khmer and practised in the isan provinces closest to cambodia – surin, buriram and srisaket. this speech can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x tw rnnwx . south east asia research stream of celebrities has been available to perform at pad protests. correspondingly, well educated middle to upper class viewers with an interest in the fine arts did not want to watch hours of uninterrupted speeches. consequently, variety programmes such as jor yellow [yel- low screen], hosted by the well known actor sarunyu wongkrachang, became key drawcards for the pad. many of the genres favoured by the pad constituency, such as phleng phlukchai [patriotic marches], thai and western classical, lukkrung, jazz, electronica and thai alternative rock, can be described as elite genres that signify high status and are produced by and for the most affluent segment of urban society. artists in these genres, who joined the pad campaigns between and , include classical musicians nat yondararak and his wife wongduean indharavud, alternative group apartment khunpa, natda wiyakan [phleng wan] and electronica project the photosticker machine. another elite artist to come out in support of the pad was the artistic director of the bangkok opera, s.p. somtow, who famously proclaimed ‘having returned to the country of my birth after having spent some years abroad, i had never felt more free’ (somtow, ) just weeks before the junta’s ministry of culture censored his opera ayodhya for fear of bad luck (condie, ). a number of other genres are not elite culture per se, but are usually followed only by niche audiences. these include the central thai folk genres of lamtat and lae, represented by wang teh lamtat ensemble and the pas- tiche folk group farmer’s son, plus the teochew chinese opera genre of ngiw. however, not all the pad’s music is so easily classified as elite cul- ture. many phleng phuea chiwit musicians have campaigned for the pad, including top southern bands hammer and malihuanna [mari- juana], folkner and the leader of the prototype songs-for-life group caravan, ‘nga caravan’ surachai jantimathon. nga caravan even wrote original protest songs for the movement including ‘march phantamit mai klua dad’ and ‘sanam luang’ (clewley, , p ). lanna (northern) folk singer suntaree vejanond (mother of pop star lanna commins), most famous for the song ‘ka jao pen sao chiang mai’ [‘i am a chiang mai girl’] first appeared for the pad in (kelley, ). country rock has been featured at many protests through slow sweet pop similar in nature to the older lukkrung. translates as ‘march pad not afraid of the democratic alliance against dictator- ship’. site of protests in bangkok. red and yellow songs artists such as sek saksit and nasu rapin putichat and the su su band. other popular music performers include rock artists sip lor [ wheels], sukanya miguel and rang rockestra, and actress joy sirilak pongchok (lukthung), referred to on the protest stage as nang ek khwanjai phantamit [‘darling heroine of the pad’]. the pad claims to be waging a ‘holy war… to protect the three insti- tutions of thailand, namely the state, the religion, and the monarchy’ (palphol, ), so it is not surprising that royal music and patriotic songs have featured at demonstrations. songs written by king bhumibol, such as the anti-communist anthem ‘rao su’ [‘we fight’], jazz tune ‘chata chiwit’ [‘destiny of life’] and songs in praise of the king have been especially popular at yellow- and pink-shirt protests. in septem- ber , an australian folk singer, kelly newton, performed her own song ‘long live the king of thailand’ on the protest stage at govern- ment house to rapturous applause. with such emphasis on royal and elite culture, the yellow shirts consciously differentiate themselves from the working class. a pad video accompanied by a rock version of an old phleng phlukchai, ‘rak kan wai thoet’ [‘please love each other’] draws a clear distinction between pro-thaksin thugs who smoke, drink and expose themselves, and peaceful, orderly yellow shirts who par- ticipate in central thai folk arts and customs. the video ends with a shot of the phrase muea khon thoi pen yai, khon thai yorm dueat rorn [when scum become big, thai people accept trouble]. this strong demarcation of boundaries of heritage and status is inevitably reflected in the pad’s attitude to working class music. certainly, both the pad’s demographic and its assumed mantle as the protector of the monarchy have led to an expressed preference for elite culture and tradition. music of the udd after the people’s power party was dissolved and the democrats came to power in december , a proliferation of udd media content in- cluded a dramatic increase in the use of music. over the course of , the udd had learned much from the pad regarding organization and use of media technology. launched soon after the democrats began governing, dtv (democracy television) was a repackaging of the ear- lier ptv (people’s television) that was clearly intended to emulate the this performance can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnvzk-o zma. the video can be downloaded at http://cid-f b f b c.office.live.com/ self.aspx/boringdaysfiles/media/rakkanwaiterd .wmv?ccsf= . south east asia research figure . from truth today, – september . the words at the back of the stage read: ‘the exquisite voice of paijit – paijit aksonnarong’. source: used with permission from bangkok.com. red and yellow songs role played by astv in coordinating the protests against the samak sundaravej and somchai wongsawat governments. the channel fol- lowed the same ‘infotainment’ format and featured such programmes as political talkshow khwam-jing wan ni [‘truth today’] and khui kap adison [‘talk with adison’]. the latter was a music variety show hosted by adison phiangket, who composed songs for the cpt during the years of the isan insurgency before embarking on a political career in which he rose to be mp for khon kaen and a minister in thaksin’s govern- ment. however, perhaps illustrating the difference in demographic, the key medium for mobilizing support for the udd was radio, rather than tel- evision. a large network of community radio stations interspersed political rhetoric with lukthung and morlam, the preferred genres of the udd demographic. the mixing of political and commercial content in such radio programmes effectively appropriated these genres to the udd cause. demonstrations featured entertainment spots, karaoke singalongs and, occasionally, specially composed political songs. vcds and mp s of red-shirts music were distributed at protest sites and through the internet. after the songkran setback, the udd consolidated sup- port throughout thailand via a series of fundraising concerts. at the time of writing, the most popular red-shirt singers include paijit aksonnarong (see figure ), muk methini and phloidi (lukthung), satian noi and ee-sompo (morlam), phithan songkamphon (country rock) and orm khaphasadi (kantruem). of these, only paijit has had a con- siderable commercial career (singing chinese-flavoured lukthung and phleng wan for the nithithat company). while it is true that some of the pad artists no longer have active careers, there does not appear to have been any industry-led censure of those performers who support the yel- low shirts. the same cannot be said of artists who support the red shirts – no currently contracted lukthung or molam star has performed at red- shirt rallies – not even s superstar sayan sanya, who was a member of thai rak thai. the appearance by grammy star takataen chonlada hybrid folk-rock genre, sung in khmer dialect, found in isan provinces close to cambodia. sayan, possibly the most famous living lukthung singer, had his album banned by the public relations department after he made a speech critical of the junta. since then he has kept a very low profile. of course, this may also have to do with his questioning the authenticity of fellow legend yodrak salakjai’s terminal cancer. this writer has also heard that s isan lukthung star dao bandon appeared for the red shirts, but he does not have a current recording career. the dominant thai entertainment company. south east asia research figure . lukthung star takataen chonlada at thaksin’s th birthday, july . photo by nick nostitz. used with permission. at thaksin’s th birthday party (see figure ) held at mangkorn luang restaurant on july could perhaps qualify as an endorsement, but lukthung stars are often booked for private celebrations. the udd leadership itself boasts a formidable trio of musicians – paijit’s hus- band wisa khantap (songs for life), a former member of caravan, politician adison phiangket (morlam/country rock) and s pop heart-throb arisman phongruangrong (phleng wan). one of the most popular red-shirt songs since the events of march–may has been former communist activist jin kamachon’s nak-su thuli din [‘warri- ors of the dust’], which valorizes the fallen protesters. perhaps inspired by the pad’s successful use of satire (see ‘ai na liam’ in part ), there appears to have been a concerted attempt to produce low- brow satirical phleng plaeng in various popular genres by artists such as nakara and lorlian. this song can be heard at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coo ftaxhf &feature =related. red and yellow songs part phleng chiwit in his second term as prime minister from to , phibunsong- khram was not in the position of ultimate power he had experienced during his first term. among the problems he faced were growing charges of economic discrimination from north-eastern politicians, an uneasy alliance with ambitious elements in the armed forces and how to main- tain a democratic facade while still hanging on to power. it is not surprising, therefore, that a range of satirical art forms developed at this time. for example, the novel pattaya by dao hang satirized the social engineering policies of phibunsongkhram’s government (thiraphap, , p ), while malai chuphinit protested against phibunsongkhram’s simplified thai writing system by halting his famous novel, our be- loved land [phaen-din khorng rao, ] before its conclusion (ubonrat, , p ). malai, in the field of the great [thung maharat, ] and senee saowaphong, in wanlaya’s love [khwam-rak khorng wanlaya, ] and ghosts [pisat, ] abandoned the conventional aristocratic hero in favour of ordinary protagonists who fought for the underprivi- leged (klausner, ). at a nationwide likay competition organized by radio thailand in , the most popular group, homhuan, were disqualified because they deviated from the approved script in order to criticize the political situation at the time (ubonrat, , p ). the earliest incarnations of lukthung, variously known as phleng chiwit [life songs] or phleng talat [market songs], were renowned for their biting social criticism and popularity among the working class. song- writers such as saengnapa bunrasri (the first to use phleng plaeng for protest), saneh komarachun, chalo traitrongson and phaibun butkhan decried the exploitation of farmers and extolled the virtues of the com- mon man. when phaibun’s klin khlone sap khwai [‘muddy odour and stinking buffalo’] was first broadcast in , it created a sensation, selling over , records in one week (wat, , p ). it was banned by phibunsongkhram’s government for drawing unhelpful comparisons between rural and urban conditions. the most controversial lines were: ‘the smell of the buffalo is mixed with the smell of the young men and women of the farmers/it’s not upper class like the people of heaven’, which referred to the residents of bangkok (krungthep, the city of according to phayong mukda, the first composers to write phleng plaeng were saengnapa bunrasri and nakhon monklayon (siriphon, , p ). south east asia research angels). the song implied that peasants received no help from the cen- tral government and warned listeners not to ‘look down on farmers as if they are poor things’ (wat, , p ). saneh komarachun and ‘samlor khaen’. one of the likay actors re- sponsible for the protest previously mentioned was the famous songwriter saneh komarachun. one of the true renaissance men of thailand, saneh began acting in jam-uat [slapstick drama] and likay before periods of singing lead and backing vocals for an orchestra, composing for the navy band, dubbing voices for foreign films and acting in radio plays and film. later, he popularized the horror film genre when he produced and directed the iconic comedy mae nak phrakhanong [‘nak of phrakhanong’, ]. saneh seems to have borne a grudge against phibunsongkhram on at least two counts: he had royal blood through his mother’s line; and, like many other musicians, he was angered by the restrictions placed on phleng thai doem during phibunsongkhram’s first regime. during his period of singing life songs, his signature performance was a medley called suphapburut pak khlongsan [‘gentleman of khlongsan asylum’]. wearing a waistcoat and shirt, with burning in- cense sticks inserted in a coloured bandana and sometimes holding a portrait of phibunsongkhram, he would begin by praising nature with his popular navy band song ngam chai-hat [‘beautiful beach’], then pass through phleng choi, lamtat and ho before finishing with phleng sansoen phra barami [‘praise to his majesty’]. at the end, he would sing tut dawai chai chayo [‘praise the victory’] and then tell the audi- ence he was a gentleman from the mental asylum. witnesses say that the performance was so manic and hilarious that even politicians iden- tified by name would not take offence (see siriphon, , p ; and thiraphap, , p ). arguably, saneh’s most influential song was samlo khaen [‘the re- sentful pedicab driver’], written in to express the frustration of pedicab drivers who were threatened with expulsion from the streets of bangkok (siriphon, , p ). through its use by these drivers dur- ing a campaign of protest stretching from to , samlo khaen became linked to emerging isan regional identity. in a contemporary ethnography of the pedicab drivers, textor recorded that the majority of drivers came from isan and that ‘the degree of interest in parliamen- tary politics [among them] is probably greater than that found among other working people, in bangkok or elsewhere in thailand’ (textor, , p ). red and yellow songs other famous songs by saneh included phu-taen khwai (‘buffalo representatives’), which criticized politicians, and police thue krapong which compared the newly adopted police truncheons to kitchen pes- tles. the latter spelled the end of his career in life songs because the notorious head of phibunsongkhram’s secret police, pao sriyanon, is- sued saneh with an ultimatum to cease singing or cease living. saneh chose life and took on the role of spokesperson during phibunsong- khram’s next election campaign (wat, , p ). despite its composer’s pragmatic decision, the cultural memory of ‘samlor khaen’ has persisted until the present. this author first became aware of the song through a link from a red-shirt website and the lyrics have been posted on red-shirt forums. today’s equivalent of the samlor drivers is the isan-dominated pro-thaksin taxi drivers protection as- sociation [samakhom phithak phon-prayote phu-khap-rot taxi] led by red-shirt leader chinawat habunphad. similarly, the involvement of professional members of the bangkok entertainment industry on the side of the pad evokes the memory of saneh and other phleng chiwit composers. indeed, the atmosphere of phibunsongkhram’s second re- gime bears some similarities to thaksin’s final term. both governments attempted to win support via populist measures; both made use of mass communications; and, while each was criticized for attempting to cen- sor opposition, both periods were marked by an outpouring of satirical protest music. phleng pheua chiwit and lukthung during the isan insurgency, – in , massive demonstrations by students led to the overthrow of the military regime of thanom kittikhajorn and praphat jarusathien. one significant element of the student protests was phleng phuea chiwit, a song genre clearly influenced by the protest music of performers such as bob dylan, joan baez, joni mitchell and pete seeger. finger-picked acoustic guitar was the main accompaniment for traditional-sounding pentatonic minor melodies. although the influence of american folk was paramount, the performers also drew from isan melodies, com- pletely eschewing the central thai folk genres such as lae, lamtat and isaeo, which figured prominently in lukthung. the art for life [sinlapa phuea chiwit] ideology of the thai communist writer jit phumisak can be observed in the students’ choice of music. jit differentiated between art for imperialism, which imposed vulgar popular culture on the masses, and art for the people, which protested injustice and offered solutions south east asia research for society’s problems. in the early s, lukthung appeared to fit jit’s description of art for imperialism. it had developed from phleng thai sakon, a product of phibunsongkram’s era of social engineering, and had recently produced thailand’s first popular music superstars in suraphon sombatjaroen and phongsri woranut. by , the travelling bands of artists such as sayan sanya and saksayam phetchomphu fea- tured troupes of dancing girls, amplified instruments and huge sound and lighting systems. the students of bangkok’s elite universities clearly did not see lukthung as a form of music useful for protest (see lockard, , p ; and vater, ). following the october revolution, many urban thai students from the upper and middle classes were committed to political change. the october massacre of students at thammasat university in forced many student activists and ‘songs for life’ musicians to flee to laos and the north-eastern region of thailand, where they found ref- uge with the cpt. since they were unsuited to the hardship of life in the forests, the students were organized into teams and assigned to the isan villages under communist control. their duties included the creation and dissemination of propaganda via pamphlets, radio and tape cas- sette (see wat, , pp – ). this created a situation in the north-east whereby the majority of the foot soldiers were isan peas- ants, but the propaganda units were made up of bangkok students directed by the cpt leadership influenced by china. it is not surprising that a cultural disjunction developed between these three groups, a disjunc- tion that has had important implications for the present political struggle. communist lukthung. because phleng phuea chiwit has become insti- tutionalized as the thai protest genre, it is often assumed that the communist party of thailand (cpt) only used songs for life. however, publications by waeng phalangwan ( ) and wat wanlayangkul ( ) reveal that, despite the cpt leaders’ preference for chinese-style marches and the student activists’ preference for phleng phuea chiwit, the most popular genre among the rank-and-file insurgents was lukthung. the experiences of adison phiangket and wisa khantap vividly illustrate this cultural divide. as an undergraduate adison used to play the khaen [bamboo mouth organ] onstage with caravan at thammasat see myers-moro ( , p ). according to nga surachai from caravan: ‘“when i was young i listened to luk thung”, but i was looking for something else. we wanted to shout at the govern- ment. “luk thung” lyrics did not deal with serious issues.’ (vater, ) red and yellow songs university (wat, , p ), but after the massacre, he and cara- van member wisa (a ramkamhaeng university student) fled to the forest where they were placed with propaganda unit a . their first attempt at writing communist propaganda had a melody pieced together from three thai doem songs, and their first broadcast composition was ramwong neung thanwa [‘ december circle dance’], which was ac- companied by guitar and piano accordion (wat, , p ). they recall that they were then encouraged to write in chinese style, as in the song jet singha su bon thang puen [‘ august fight on the road of the gun’], which used a melody written by a member of the chinese prole- tariat named chot wongchon and was accompanied by khim [a dulcimer] played to sound like a piano (wat, , p ). adison soon realized that the best way to inspire isan insurgents was to use morlam and lukthung. he had written lukthung songs with al- tered lyrics before entering the forest, and decided to compose a phleng plaeng using suraphon sombatjaroen’s rueang khorng faen phleng [‘a tale of music fans’]. he changed the famous lyrics of the chorus, fang, fang, fang, siang phleng roem dang ik laew… suraphon ma laew [‘listen, listen, listen, the loud sound of song has begun again… suraphon has come’] to pang, pang, pang siang puen dang singha/pluk muean pracha/luk kuen ma jap puen’ [‘bang, bang, bang, the loud sound of guns on august/stir up the people/stand up and take a gun’] (wat, , p ). waeng records that there were many other isan insurgents who put communist lyrics to well known lukthung songs sung by popular sing- ers such as sarika kingthorng and yortrak salakjai. the most prolific communist songwriter was phloeng nalak, a forest guerrilla who wrote more than songs criticizing the government with such lines as ‘the government’s power comes from the barrel of a gun’ (waeng, , p ). sornchai mekwichian’s popular song khon ngam luem ngai [‘beautiful girls soon forget’] was changed to tuen thoet chao na thai [‘awake thai farmers’] (waeng, , p ). yutachak charali, of company, used the slow and sad melody of faen ja yu nai [‘where are you darling?’] by saengsuri rungrot for his song pa chan [‘sheer cliff’], which celebrated the exploits of his company against the thai soldiers: the khim was introduced to thailand in the late s by chinese immigrants living in the yaowarat chinatown district of bangkok. actually, adison incorrectly remembers the original title as ‘suraphon ma laew’ [suraphon has come], which is a completely different suraphon song. south east asia research ‘this sheer cliff has a story it is a story about arresting thieves who came to make trouble the enemy came to the cliff like a crazy man they wanted to kill people on the cliff the sound of the gun never disappeared… pity the people who are slaves the master uses the slaves but never sees the truth the sheer cliff bit the enemy and they rolled down like monkeys.’ (waeng, , p ) yutachak sees the thai government soldiers as invaders of peaceful communities and portrays the guerillas as enforcing the law – a com- plete inversion of the establishment history. ironically the communist lukthung songs were banned, not only by the government, but by the senior members of the cpt, who decreed that only chinese songs were to be sung (waeng, , p ). the lukthung songs were thought to be too commercial and the cha-cha rhythm unsuitable for marching (waeng, , p ). nevertheless, waeng reports that many of the insurgents defied orders not to listen to ‘enemy radio’ so that they could keep up to date with the latest songs ( , p ). lukthung was used both to boost morale and to mourn. writer khaen sarika asserts that the insurgents were more motivated when they listened to lukthung: ‘when the young people at ban suankhorp sang “from the ricefield” in the style of ramwong or lukthung (with lyrics like “get him to cut off his head/receive the karma that he’s made”) and you heard what they were singing it made you feel more courageous than the march- ing songs.’ (wat, , p ) khaen also recalls that his time in the insurgency began with the song ramwong su rop [‘fighting ramwong’], ‘from the ricefields we will say goodbye to our parents/ go far away to the jungle with hatred in our hearts’, and ended with the song yu kap khwam-phit-wang [‘living with disappointment’] by sayan sanya, ‘to leave and never go back to your hometown’. he remembers his friend ‘sitting and humming the famous song by phi bao (sayan’s nickname) on the sad day when the female fighters of the artists’ unit no surrendered to the authorities’ (wat, , pp – ). the tragedy of the october massacre at thammasat university in red and yellow songs had seemed to create a climate for full-scale rebellion, but the ensuing period was in fact an indian summer for the cpt. the wider thai population, including isan, did not want to abandon the king or the buddhist socio-cultural order for an alien social structure (marks, , p ). events in china, laos and vietnam combined with local factors, such as government amnesties and investment, strangled the insurgency, which was effectively over by (marks, , p ). ensconced as the official thai protest genre, phleng phuea chiwit was absorbed into the thai popular music industry, and the use of lukthung plaeng by the insurgents was forgotten. over the past years, ideological lines have become increasingly entangled. since the end of the insurgency, many on the thai left have become ardent royalist nationalists (thongchai, b, p ), while samak sundaravej, adjudged to be one of those most responsible for inciting the thammasat massacre, joined forces with thaksin and ended up serving as prime minister. an examination of the key per- sonalities involved in the present conflict reveals that on the side of the pad, pipop thongchai, therdpoum chaidee, nga caravan and politician poldet pinprateep were involved with the cpt insurgency, as were udd leaders weng tojirakarn, thida thawornset, jaran dittapichai, suthachai yimprasert, adison phiangket and wisa khantap. this confusion of ideology has been reflected in the strange juxtapo- sition of ultranationalist anthems such as nak phaen-din [‘the scum of the earth’] and leftist songs such as ‘the internationale’ together on the pad stage (thongchai, a, p ). however, perhaps even more star- tling than the return of the right-wing nationalist anthems of the s is the pad’s preference for phleng phuea chiwit and the overall prefer- ence of phuea chiwit artists for the pad. while covering the pad rallies of , clewley ( , p ) wrote, ‘the one songs-for-lifer not seen at all – ad carabao – said he was too busy to make it, but it is more likely that his being co-opted to many thaksin government projects had compromised his position’. the irony here is that these populist government projects are perceived by many working class thais to be the fulfilment of what the original generation of phuea chiwit musi- cians called (and fought) for. to many red shirts, the idea of nga caravan campaigning to bring down a democratically elected populist govern- ment is incomprehensible. chuwat rerksirisuk, editor of the independent (and anti-pad) news website prachatai, referred to songs for life when he drew a satirical distinction between the yellow and red shirts: south east asia research ‘there would not be any life music or protest songs from the intellec- tual bands for you to listen [sic], since there will only be country music songs and easy understanding sentences from those giving the speech on the stage.’ (chuwat, ). chuwat clearly believes there has been a shift in the position and func- tion of phleng phuea chiwit in thai society and that the aspirations of the thai working class are now represented by lukthung. part these two historical episodes provide the context for an understanding of the musical choices of the present conflict. the next section exam- ines some of the songs and artists of the pad and udd in more detail. the social satire of phleng chiwit echoes through the satirical songs of the pad and udd, and the spirit of songwriters such as saneh komarachun can be seen in the involvement in the conflict of profes- sional songwriters such as wichaya ‘nong’ vatanasapt. the role of lukthung and phleng plaeng during the struggle of the cpt helps to explain the use of these genres by the red and yellow shirts and illumi- nates the musical preferences of each side. satirical songs of the pad and udd ‘ai na liam’. the involvement of many professional songwriters in the pad movement has resulted in a regular flow of original, profession- ally recorded satirical songs. ‘ai na liam’ [‘mr square face’], which appeared in march , has been arguably the most influential protest song produced by either side. it was instrumental in mobilizing sup- port against thaksin’s government, which was so frustrated by the song’s rapid distribution through the internet that it asked the songwriters to identify themselves so they could be arrested (clewley, , p ). the lyrics exhaustively catalogue thaksin’s faults before lampooning in turn everyone associated with him. the music is a blend of funk and rap with a chorus typical of the central thai folk genre lamtat. this use of one of the building blocks of lukthung can be interpreted as an at- tempt to widen the appeal of the pad’s message beyond bangkok. see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slgtopd uh . an english trans- lation of the lyrics can be viewed at http://www. bangkok.com/ / squarefacesong. shtml. red and yellow songs however, the choice of lamtat over morlam or kantruem confirms a pattern of struggle for cultural supremacy discussed by this author in a previous article (mitchell, , pp – ). the increasingly domi- nant identification of lukthung with isan culture by both thais and non-thais is perceived in elite circles as a threat to central thai cul- tural hegemony. the asia pacific database on intangible heritage for unesco identifies lamtat as central and morlam as north-eastern thai culture (unesco, ). thus, for the pad, lamtat is a pure folk genre that confirms central thai hegemony. the photosticker machine. one artist who demonstrates both the close links between the pad and the entertainment industry and the eclectic musical preferences of some within the pad constituency is wichaya ‘nong’ vatanasapt, a member of legendary thai ska band t-bone. wichaya writes sound tracks for commercial thai films and is also a freelance producer, working on a regular basis for the entertainment giant grammy. he describes his solo vehicle, the photosticker machine, as lounge room jazz electronica, usually produced for a limited circle of industry insiders and friends (interview with the author, january ). in . wichaya wrote and recorded a song to support the pad’s protest movement against then prime minister thaksin. ‘corruption’ is an extremely hard-hitting piece of social commentary that could be about thai society in general, although the song’s subtitle ‘fta (fucking “ts” agency)’ made it clear who was being targeted. wichaya says that the recording of ‘corruption’ was a cathartic process that allowed him to express the anger he felt at thaksin’s betrayal of thailand’s three insti- tutions (interview with the author, january ). the first verse addresses the greed of politicians: ‘day after day you think, think what law can make return on your money if you cannot find it then you write your own law to fill your pockets.’ the second verse contrasts this greed with the faithfulness of a dog: ‘you’ll never know the land’s goodness, which you can work until you are satisfied and happy the song’s lyrics are in thai, apart from the title. all translations are the author’s own. south east asia research even dogs know the goodness of the people, poor or rich, never proud, faithful to their owner if anybody doesn’t know, think for yourself, no ethics, get the dog to teach you.’ the comparison to a dog is an obvious insult, yet this verse also in- vokes both the royal self-sufficiency programme and the king’s book about his favourite dog, thorng daeng. the final part of the song is a rapped curse that calls on ‘sacred spirits anywhere in the universe’ to give suffering to this thief: ‘stay around, pay your karma, in the prison of the dark place/forever the fire of hell burning you.’ the song is an impeccably assembled piece of social criticism in which the musical elements have been consciously chosen to reinforce the composer’s message. for example, the spoken curse is echoed by wah- wah guitar stabs, which, the composer explains, were supposed to sound like the thai word yet mae [‘motherfucker’]. however, the eclectic, cosmopolitan nature of the musical elements serves to narrow the song’s appeal and thus its influence. the opening led zeppelin-like riff is then meshed with reggae rhythm guitar and record scratching. the vocal melody, sung in a western style, descends from the minor th through the notes of the major scale. a heavy blues guitar solo precedes a rap break, reminiscent of the beastie boys, with psychedelic falsetto back- up vocals. musically, the song is a pastiche of western styles – styles, moreover, that would be familiar only to thais who had received a western education or travelled extensively. nakara. unlike the pad, the red shirts have almost exclusively used famous songs as their vehicles for satire. these phleng plaeng are gen- erally poorly recorded and tend to be more humorous and lowbrow than their pad equivalents. for example, nakara’s ‘mi na hak’ is an altered version of ‘family mi phaenda’ [‘panda family’] sung by nong benz jr that questions abhisit’s achievements as prime minister. the origi- nal song was a surprise independent dance hit featuring a cute thai girl singing about the cute pandas on loan from china to chiangmai zoo. nakara’s version changes the title to ‘mi na hak’ (‘vomit bear’, but sounds like ‘cute bear’ in isan dialect) in order to suggest that abhisit in , king bhumibol adopted a stray dog and in wrote a book about her, which stressed how respectful and well behaved she was, despite coming from a lowly background. red and yellow songs is just a pretty face and that in reality his achievements have all been insubstantial publicity stunts. verse one describes the competition to find a name for the baby panda: ‘ask the villagers, they answer straight away that this panda’s name is na hak’. the second and third verses are concerned with two cases that dominated the general interest news during may and september : keiko sato, an abandoned thai boy who was looking for his japanese father; and mong, a stateless burmese-shan boy, who was eventually given a temporary passport so that he could take part in a paper aero- plane competition in japan. the fourth verse criticizes the cost of security for abhisit’s visit to the north-eastern city of ubon ratchathani to deliver a cheque to yai hai, an elderly isan woman who was owed compensation from the government: ‘gave it only to one person, you don’t care about other people, then you fly away in a helicopter, not brave if compared to the cute panda’. plays on words abound: man jop oxford rue ork lek wa [did he graduate from oxford or as a welder?]. for the most part, the tone is good-humoured and down to earth, but in the last verse the song descends into pure vitriol: ‘don’t you know that they hate you like shit?/if you are so stupid go take care of buffalos.’ as with the majority of red-shirts video clips, the production quality is low, featuring poorly ‘photoshopped’ pictures of abhisit dressed as a panda. ‘khwai daeng’. directly after the military crushed the red-shirt pro- tests on may , there was an outpouring of anti-red-shirt invective on social networking web pages such as facebook and the video-shar- ing website youtube. the professionally produced rap song ‘khwai daeng’ – translated by the songwriter as ‘red shit’ – is fairly repre- sentative of the sentiments expressed during those days. the first verse accuses ordinary red-shirt supporters of being gullible, stupid and greedy: ‘you dumb water buffaloes, how much did they pay you per day you rushed to take it, to admit that you are low peasants.’ class difference is a key concern of the song – the rural red shirts who follow thaksin are referred to as bia rap chai [slaves]. the second verse see, for example, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn a .html. see, for example, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/ / stateless-boy-allowed-to-leave-thailand-for-paper-aeroplane-contest.html. see http://www.nationmultimedia.com/ / / /politics/politics_ .php. this song can be heard at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrfb nynddg. south east asia research gloats over the death of seh daeng – ‘you weren’t able to show off for long, you took a bullet in the head’ – while the third and fourth verses are devoted to red-shirt leaders nattawut saikua and jatuporn prompan. the fifth verse is of particular interest to this article because it addresses arisman: ‘kee [arisman’s nickname] is another one, you were not brave enough father liam [thaksin] gave you a million per day, you said ‘yes… i’m brave enough’… kee you are the vilest scum, you lolly-sucking dog.’ the songwriter’s knowledge of his subjects is impressive – he plays on the title of one of arisman’s biggest hits, ‘jai mai dan por’ [‘not brave enough’] and alludes to the popular story that arisman’s singing voice was so sweet because he constantly sucked (halls) lozenges. when it comes to thaksin, however, the songwriter is overcome by rage, alternating accusations with chants of ‘sat maeo, hia maeo’. thaksin’s alleged crimes include attacks on the monarchy, a desire to be president, payments made to phrai [serfs], the bribing of thailand’s government assembly, and living in comfort while his followers are killed on the streets. in the final section, the singer curses thaksin (‘may you have cancer in your testicles’) and urges the red shirts to ‘move to montenegro’, one of several countries in which thaksin found refuge and of which he holds citizenship. lukthung although lockard ( , pp – ) concludes that lukthung is gen- erally unsuitable for protest, he follows ubonrat in acknowledging that it both affirms establishment views and challenges the institutions of socio-political power. it is ostensibly a simple matter to classify the various musical and cultural elements that make up lukthung as hegemonic or counter-hegemonic. in terms of hegemonic elements, there are many lukthung songs that praise the institutions of king, country and religion or glorify the military. up-tempo lukthung songs and con- certs are unifying sites of community celebration that affirm the thai tradition of collective sanuk [fun]. the commercialism and extravagant performance style of lukthung qualify it as bourgeois culture, as was maeo is thaksin’s nickname. sat means animal, but could be translated as bastard. hia means lizard, but can be translated as a range of insults: for example, asshole. red and yellow songs shown by the cpt leadership’s reaction to the ‘communist lukthung’ songs. finally, amporn ( ) has shown that lukthung has been in- creasingly viewed as authentic thai culture since , and this author has written on the appropriation of lukthung as a symbol of central thai superiority (mitchell, , pp – ). in terms of counter-hegemonic elements, many songs deal with themes of separation and mourning and the social dislocation resulting from economic migration. ubonrat ( , p ) shows that lukthung often presents a more frank discussion of sexual matters than the establish- ment would like. in commercial lukthung, indirect social criticism is common and direct satire, though rare, does occur. class difference is communicated through the music – the vocal styles of lukthung singers usually make use of rural accents and the vibrato [luk khor] and embel- lishment [uean] found in folk songs. although it may seem to contradict the final points of the previous paragraph, lukthung is often considered by many thais as part of isan identity, due to the high degree of isan involvement in the industry. however, as intimated in the introduction, any assessment of music according to theories of hegemony versus counter-hegemony is prob- lematic because musical elements are ambiguous and can act simultaneously for and against the dominant culture. the situation in terms of this present conflict is further complicated by the changes in government that have taken place during the period in question. for example, while thaksin shinawatra, samak sundaravej or somchai wongsawat were in power, the pad could be reasonably designated as counter-hegemonic, but under general sondhi’s regime and abhisit’s government, the pad became part of the hegemony. for these reasons, classifying the use of lukthung during this struggle as hegemonic or counter-hegemonic is not overly helpful. however, it is certainly possi- ble to observe which musical elements and cultural memories are tapped into by each side and then draw conclusions as to the success of such use and some of the implications raised by each side’s choices of music. the red shirts’ use of lukthung. the current isan cultural resurgence and the dominance of isan people in the udd have ensured that lukthung and morlam have been the most performed genres on the red-shirt pro- test stages. kantruem, northern lanna folk music, central thai folk see miller ( ), ‘from country hick to rural hip: a new identity through music for northeast thailand’, asian music, vol , no ; also kreangsak ( ), ‘cracking up the egg emperor’, the nation, bangkok. south east asia research music and rock/songs for life are also featured, but far less frequently. the problem with regional genres such as morlam or kantruem when performed for televised protests, or those held in bangkok, is that the lyrics are inaccessible to a certain proportion of the audience. this is one of the strengths of lukthung – the use of central thai language mixed with certain words of class and ethnic identification, such as bor (isan and northern thai or khammueang dialect for ‘no’) appeals to the largest possible audience. despite the gaudiness of its commercial concert presentation, musi- cally speaking, lukthung is suited to certain counter-hegemonic circumstances. slow and melancholy songs function effectively as la- ments for loved ones lost through death or separation. the theme of longing and separation taps into cultural memories such as the unful- filled political objectives of the cpt insurgents, years of seasonal migration to bangkok and almost years of separation from lao people on the northern bank of the mekong. reaching further into the past, lukthung echoes the subject matter of the ancient siamese travel literature genre nirat [literally: separation, departing from something that is dearly desired]. the definition of nirat as a poetic expression of love-separation melancholy with a journey in the background aptly de- scribes the lamentation found in many lukthung songs. as thongchai winichakul ( , p ) observes, until the second half of the nine- teenth century, travel was not a desirable activity and pleasure was not its primary purpose. for the thai working class, this is still the case and so lukthung songs are full of accounts of loss and forced separation. whenever these channels to the past are accessed, a deep emotional investment is created. in an interview with the bbc, kwanchai praipana, who leads the rak udon group (a red-shirt chapter from udon thani in the heart of isan), described himself as ‘lukthung’ in the literal sense that he is a ‘child of the field’ (or a country boy). as a dj and long-time friend of the legendary singer sayan sanya, this description is not acci- dental. kwanchai states that he used to care only about music, but that the degree of political participation made possible by thaksin’s gov- ernment inspired him to become involved with the red-shirt movement (ash, ). thus lukthung has become a political statement and a ral- lying point. muk methini. a case study of the songs of muk methini demonstrates that lukthung has been used by the red shirts to lament, praise and cel- ebrate. muk, who had a minor singing career before becoming the face red and yellow songs of udd entertainment, is one of the most polished red-shirt perform- ers. rueang sao muea chao ni [‘sad story from this morning’] is a lament for narongsak krobthaisong who died during a clash between pad and government supporters in september . the singer adopts the persona of the dead man’s wife, who learns of his passing on the morning news: ‘sad story one morning always remember and never forget never have the words to say goodbye there’s no young man to come back home again.’ narongsak is not mentioned by name; rather, his story is that of all isan migrants: ‘you said before you left home you said you wouldn’t be gone for long you went looking for work in the big city.’ in the chorus, which proclaims ‘you died for all of thailand/great de- mocracy/joined the protest until death’, the singer’s individual loss is linked to the wider political struggle. another common use of lament by the red shirts is to mourn the ab- sence of thaksin. khon di thi na neung [‘top-rate person’] is a hymn of praise to thaksin that lauds his efforts to help the poor: ‘at the time you were here you took care and had mercy for those with no place to sleep, the answer to their desires lay in ban uea athorn many projects this thaksin did got rid of thailand’s debt, he was vilified so had to flee into exile.’ the perceived usurping by thaksin of the king’s place in society has been one of the key drivers behind the yellow-shirt movement. consid- ering that lukthung songs of this kind are usually written to praise the king, thaksin is here seen to be taking the place of the king in provid- ing care for thailand’s most needy. the following excerpt from the chorus makes this point explicitly: cheap housing development in khon kaen. south east asia research figure . red shirt hang khrueang (dance revue). photo by nick nostitz. used with permission. ‘since the day you left the villagers have been waiting intensely for you to come back to heal the poor.’ many up-tempo commercial lukthung songs, which are otherwise cel- ebratory, assume a background of separation forced by economic migration. at red-shirt rallies, muk often sings sao udon jam-dai [‘the girl from udon remembers’], a slightly altered version of sao udon jai dam [‘the hard-hearted girl from udon’], which, ironically, was originally sung by sotsai rumpotorng, who served as a junior minister in the abhisit democrat government. sao udon jam-dai has the simple premise of an isan girl declaring that she will definitely return to her country boyfriend after she finishes working in bangkok. separation is an established part of everyday life for isan families, and the theme of waiting and enduring through prolonged absence can be easily applied to the political climate of december to june , during which many red shirts felt disenfranchised and abandoned by thailand’s elite. as with blues, lukthung is able to fulfil the seemingly contradictory functions of lament and celebration. in ramwong prachathipadai [‘democracy ramwong’], muk adopts the role of entertainer by address- red and yellow songs ing the protesters as an audience: ‘you are the players i will be the singer’. she seeks to include speakers of all dialects by calling chan ja ho la na (central), chan ja ho la noe (northern), chan ja ho la wa (southern), ao chan ja ho la woei (isan) [i will sing ‘ho’]. throughout this upbeat lukthung song, muk is accompanied by the customary danc- ing revue costumed in red. it is significant that the commercial elements of lukthung (such as elaborate costumes and dancing girls) identified by lockard (see section on lukthung at the beginning of the paper) as discouraging to overt protest musicians have actually been embraced by red-shirt performers (see figure ). num na khao, sao na kluea. the collective meaning and memory em- bodied in lukthung are aptly demonstrated by a red-shirts version of num na khao, sao na kluea [‘the rice farm boy and the salt farm girl’]. this famous duet was perhaps the most popular song of and earned its writer, soraphet phinyo, a phaen siang thorng kham [lit- erally, ‘gold record’], a highly prized honour from the royal family. in , num na khao was listed in the top lukthung songs of all time by the office of national culture. its enduring popularity among karaoke singers has inspired any number of phleng plaeng, such as an amusing version in which the male and female singers declare their love for al- cohol of all kinds. musical elements of the song have become ingrained in the public consciousness. the introduction’s rhythm and cha-cha- cha cadence are so well known that thais inevitably begin the opening lyrics at exactly the right spot – no easy task with a syncopated anacrusis. a key factor in the original’s appeal is the ubiquitous nature of the characters – the peasant boy and girl are hard-working urban migrants drawn together by their humble origins. the girl is identified as ‘yuphin’, a traditional peasant name that can also be used to refer to any woman whose name is unknown. a second factor is that lukthung provides the comfort of tradition to those who are most confronted by the alienation of cosmopolitan life (see amporn, , pp – ). although tempted by their independence, the characters choose to conform to societal expectations by seeking parental blessings on their relationship and returning to live in the girl’s home town. finally, the song itself is a well known symbol of the inequality of modern thailand. in , song- unlike gold or platinum records in the western pop industry, it does not signify sales of a certain amount. the first lines of this version are – m: ‘my village drinks alcohol, alcohol before food every time’; f: ‘i like to drink beer, i drink beer before looking for food’. south east asia research writer cholathi thanthorng complained that soraphet was paid only , baht by his company for a song that had made over million baht (ubonrat, , p ). soraphet has informed this writer that he is unable to re-record his most famous song because he does not own the copyright (interview with the author, january ). each of these channels of identification resonates with the red-shirt constituency on deeply emotional levels. num suea khao sao suea daeng [‘the boy in the white shirt and the girl in the red shirt’] draws on these collective meanings and memo- ries while adding new layers of meaning in a political context. first, it appears to be sung by the original female singer, norng nut duangchiwan, who now lives in norway. the ubiquitous peasant girl of the original is individualized in the lyrics as the isan celebrity norng nut and acknowledged as politically stronger and more aware than the male protagonist. her acceptance of him as a partner depends on his acceptance of and active participation in her politics. the subtext is clear – those who were formerly subservient now have a political agenda. second, some elements of the song are informed by new realities. the villagers in the original are identified by the kind of labour they pro- vide, whereas in the red-shirt version they are identified according to political persuasion. at the time of the original song, dao khanong was a new, vibrant market place; but it is now run-down and out of favour. the characters of the red-shirt version go to dao khanong to attend a protest, rather than for social or commercial reasons. this is a translation of num na khao, sao na kluea: m: my village farms rice, plants rice at all times f: i harvest salt, sell salt to buy food to eat m: my village is in kalasin f: as for me, yuphin, i live in samut sakon m: i have come to meet a beautiful girl and visit dao khanong f: i count it as good luck that when i met you, you greeted me first m: i really want to go to live at samut sakon f: from what you say i’m afraid that is not true found on an undated vcd purchased at a red-shirts demonstration in khon kaen on january . this demonstrates the involvement of the thai diaspora in the present political struggle. correspondingly, s pop star nata wiyakan returned from living in canada to ap- pear on the pad’s performance stage. red and yellow songs m: i, the rice farmer, love a young girl f: i am a salt field girl m: the rice field boy will never forsake you m: if i will go what will your father say? f: i’ll be very happy if you truly go ask for my hand m: the rice field boy guarantees i will not forsake you f: if you love me truly don’t leave the salt field girl. and this is a translation of num suea khao sao suea daeng: m: my village is white-shirt. i’ve met a strong woman f: i am a red-shirt woman of the strongest kind m: my house likes to watch nattawut f: as for me, norng nut, i follow everyone m: i came to meet my red-shirt sister and have visited dao khanong f: so that is my good luck to meet you before you turn into a yellow shirt m: i am interested in the red shirts – you must help to teach me f: from what you say i’m afraid you are not truly red m: i want to go to the protest. can you come as my friend? f: so you must wait till the end of the month m: if you’re my friend don’t leave me m: if i change to become a red shirt, are you going to tease me? f: i will be very happy if you become truly red m: this white-shirt man guarantees that i will not go back on my word f: if you love me truly don’t leave the red shirt girl. the use of lukthung by the pad logically, there would be significant advantage for the yellow and pink shirts in employing lukthung and morlam to spread their message. morlam was used beneficially by the united states information service (usis) during the vietnam war and by the thai government during the com- munist insurgency (see miller, , pp – ). however, until the recent campaign by the red shirts, the pad ignored morlam and tended to send the wrong messages when attempting to use lukthung. in concen- trating on hegemonic and satirical elements, the pad has missed an south east asia research opportunity to engage with the working class on a visceral level. for example, joy sirilak became a popular lukthung star after her appear- ance in the soap opera sao noi café [the young girl in the café, ]. yet when she appeared for the pad in july , rather than any of her hits, she sang only khon thai rak chat lae satsana [‘thais love the nation and religion’], honouring the three institutions. it is signifi- cant that most of the use of morlam and lukthung by the pad has occurred since the beginning of the songkran protests in the context of youtube videos satirizing the red-shirts demographic. the mocking khwai, khwai, khwai (daeng) is fast lukthung; suraphon sombatjaroen’s khamen lai khwai [‘the cambodian buffalo herder’] accompanies simple animation of thaksin riding the other red-shirt leaders; and folkner’s mob weng [‘weng’s mob’, alluding to dr weng tojirakarn] is a cross between lukthung and morlam. likewise, attempts by the pink shirts and the democrat government to capitalize on the popularity and ubiquity of lukthung have usually come across as forced and heavy-handed. on december , the long-running television concert lukthung show, wethi thai [thai stage], diverted from its usual programming to broadcast a pink-shirt rally fea- turing prime minister abhisit. when long-term fans of the show arrived at the alternative venue, they discovered that about a thousand pink- shirted supporters had already arrived by bus, along with a sizeable security presence. the stage featured a huge backdrop of the king with a halo effect looking over farmers planting rice. an introductory film interspersed footage of the king with footage of abhisit and his gov- ernment. before the prime minister made his appearance, grammy artist mon khaen sang morlam accompanied by dancers all holding khaen, the musical symbol of isan. abhisit and other dignitaries then sang chom thung [‘admiring the rural scenery’] (see figure ), originally sung by lukthung legend phloen phromdaen, before being presented with garlands and roses by a procession of poor people. despite being carefully this performance can be viewed at http://www.boringdays.net/joy-pad-beloved/. this video can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olagrkosw i& feature=related. this video can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= tyfpvwlp & feature=related. in , weng was a student leader who joined the armed struggle of the cpt and later took part in the democracy movement. he has become one of the key leaders of the udd. this video can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc_kkcdblxy& feature=related. red and yellow songs figure . abhisit singing next to famous likay and lukthung singer chaiya mitchai. behind them is finance minister korn chatikavanij. photo by peter garrity. designed to appeal to the lukthung demographic, the overall effect was undermined by the prime minister’s obvious discomfort and lapses in memory during the song. it has already been established that the pad has been far less likely to make use of phleng plaeng than the udd, yet an exception to this rule shows what the unifying force of lukthung might achieve. at a pad rally in may , nga caravan sang a phleng plaeng of fon duean hok [‘rains in june’], composed by phaibun butkan in for rungphet laemsing. the choice of song hints at compromise – phaibun being honoured by both the establishment, as central thailand’s great- est songwriter, and the collective of thai revolutionary songs project [khrongkan banthuek lae phoei-phrae prawattisat ngan phleng pathiwat], as the father of left-wing protest (wat, , pp – ). the original evokes the spirit of rural thailand with the sound of frogs calling in the this performance can be viewed at http://www.boringdays.net/wet-firewood/. south east asia research rice fields during the rainy season. nga’s version maintains the wistful, lilting singing style and some of the lyrics of the original, which suited the inclement weather in which the protest took place. the restrained altered lyrics attacked corruption and the bullying of the press without resorting to the extreme invective characteristic of recent pad songs. overall, it came across as a well performed and credible piece of propa- ganda that could have appealed to the working class. conclusion an exceptionally poignant moment occurred at the red-shirts concert in khao yai on november when adison phiangket broke down while singing about his younger brother, killed during the cpt insur- gency (nostitz, ; see figure ). the symbolism of this moment shows why the red shirts have succeeded in becoming a nationwide movement. as adison and wisa discovered years earlier, real change in the thai social order could not be brought about by weapons or ide- ology. the cultural disjunction that developed between the cpt leadership, bangkok students and isan farmers showed adison that a common purpose was best promoted through a musical genre that rep- resents all thais. a significant factor in the cultural unity of the red shirts has been that their favoured genre, lukthung, allows for regional and ethnic differences while maintaining a high degree of thainess. in contrast, the yellow shirts have confined their appeal by explicitly pre- ferring elite and westernized genres that exclude thailand’s working class. while it is surprising that the pad have not made greater use of lukthung, perhaps this is a reflection of the degree to which lukthung and morlam have become conflated in the eyes of the thai public. this article shows that, although the pad has used a much wider variety of music than the udd and has produced music of better qual- ity, its choices have acted to exclude the majority of thais. perhaps this issue of agency is what truly connects the three periods examined here. during the era of phleng chiwit, talented, highly educated songwriters protested on behalf of the muted lower classes, but the state was even- tually able to stifle their criticism by force. during the struggle of the cpt, the rank-and-file insurgents had songs written for them by bang- kok students in genres prescribed by the cpt leadership, but were also able to produce phleng plaeng in their preferred genre of lukthung. after the insurgency, however, phleng phuea chiwit was celebrated as the official thai protest genre, while lukthung plaeng were silenced. during red and yellow songs figure . adison phiangket mourns his younger brother. photo by nick nostitz. used with permission. the present conflict, both sides have made use of lukthung, but, by chan- nelling a wide variety of cultural memories and musical elements within the genre, the red shirts have successfully appealed to the working class. perhaps this indicates that, for the first time in thai history, working class thais are making their own political choices. it appears that lukthung has gained traction among the red shirts because of the social configuration of their movement. attempts to use lukthung by the yellow shirts have not been successful because lukthung does not have the same emotional resonance within their demographic. this discussion can contribute to the larger discussion of protest music through the way it has highlighted deeply felt issues of identity and emotional investment associated with a musical genre and how these can be har- nessed to political ends. there is scope for further investigation, particularly into the role played by music during the dormant periods of each group. it will be tempting to apply eyerman and jamison’s obser- vation that ‘music, and song… can maintain a movement even when it no longer has a visible presence in the form of organizations, leaders, and 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newspaper, bang- kok, website: http://www.khaosod.co.th/view_news.php?newsid=turob lyqxhnr ek tvrfmu npt = (accessed october ). title south east asia research issn - x publisher i p publishing ltd. country united kingdom status active start year frequency times a year language of text text in: english refereed yes abstracted / indexed yes serial type journal content type academic / scholarly format print website http://www.ippublishing.com/sear.htm description contains research papers on southeast asia studies, focusing on political, social, cultural, and legal issues. related titles alternative media edition ( ) basic description subject classifications additional title details publisher & ordering details price data online availability other availability demographics reviews http://ulrichsweb.serialssolutions.com/title/ / of / / : am microsoft word - document poyi! bamana jeli music, mali and the blues lucy durán* department of the languages and cultures of africa, soas, london, uk (received april ; final version received april ) the search for the african roots of the blues has long been a subject of fascination to writers, scholars and musicians, with mali taking an increasingly central role in the popular imagination as the missing link in the blues’ dna. many malian artists have found their music being labelled by journalists and record companies with such tags as ‘mali blues’, ‘desert blues’ and ‘bambara blues’, in recognition of the strong stylistic similarities with the delta blues in particular. but which way around did the influences travel? a crucial piece to the puzzle is a bamana jeli (griot) song called ‘poyi’, which, according to oral tradition, may have been the last tune that war captives of the empire of segu ( – ) heard, before being taken into slavery. this article explores the complex trajectory of the trans-atlantic conversations between the blues and mali, by focusing on one musical tradition that has so far been ignored in scholarly studies of both blues and mande music – that of the bamana (‘bambara’) griots from segu in the middle niger valley, with their trademark lute, the ngóniba. drawing both on extensive academic research carried out on mande music, and on long practical experience of working as music producer of mande artists, it argues that bamana music could well be a strong contender for the ‘roots of the blues’. keywords: malian blues; mande music; roots of the blues introduction on a late afternoon in february in garana, a village deep in the countryside of segou pro- vince (mali), a local crowd was gathered in the courtyard of a family of bamana jeliw (hereditary musicians or ‘griots’ of the bamana people ). they were hosting some festivities to welcome a renowned marabout (muslim cleric) to the village. seated in the centre of the courtyard was the head of the jeli household, the veteran female singer yakaré damba, together with several of her sons, ranging in age from their s to late s. all were exceptionally talented performers of the ngòni, a west african lute with a wooden resonator and skin sound table. around the imposing figure of the matriarch were many of her grandchildren, some barely old enough to walk, some in their late teens – all budding singers, dancers and drummers in this intensely musical family. yakaré’s son bassekou kouyaté was the family’s most celebrated artist. he had been touring and recording with some of mali’s most prominent musicians since the early s, and was known for his innovative approach to the centuries’ old music of the bamana griots with which he had grown up. one such innovation was to attach the ngòni to a strap slung around his shoulder, guitar style – which was how he was holding the instrument that day. by contrast, his elder brother, modibo kouyaté, played in the more traditional way, seated on the ground, his right leg hooked over the ngòni (see figures and ). the two had been raised together in garana © journal of african cultural studies *email: ld@soas.ac.uk journal of african cultural studies, http://dx.doi.org/ . / . . cjac techset composition ltd, salisbury, u.k. / / (along with other brothers and sisters), but modibo stayed in the village, while bassekou moved to bamako in his late teens. garana lies in the heart of the historical region known as dò. in the epic tradition of the mande jeliw, the mande empire was founded by sunjata keita in c. , and his mother, sogolon kone, was from dò. just km away from garana, at the top of a small hill in the middle of an arable figure . bassekou kouyaté on stage with his band in lisbon, . one of his first performances with his band ngoniba following the release of their first album, segu blue. note the straps that hold the instruments. source: aq c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t figure . modibo kouyaté, older brother of bassekou kouyaté, plays the ngòniba. his daughter bintou kouyaté, a budding singer, sits with him, at home in garana, segou province, . source: photo by thomas dorn, by permission. c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t l. durán field, is the supposed grave of sunjata keita’s aunt, dò kamissa, the ‘buffalo woman’. this little- known, and rarely visited, spot plays a significant role in the imaginary of bamana jeliw, as it was from her lineage that sunjata was believed to have derived his esoteric strength, with which he led the mande to power (see figure ) aq . like many of the surrounding villages in this part of mali, the middle niger valley, garana has a mixed population consisting of four main ethnicities – the bamana who are the farmers, the fulbe who are the pastoralists, the bozo who are the fishermen, and the soninke who are the mer- chants and muslim clerics, along with the jokarame (a sedentary branch of the fulbe). for the day’s festivities, each one of these had provided their own drummers and singers to represent their communities and to entertain the crowd. megaphones connected to a rudimentary sound system had been mounted around the courtyard, blaring out the music. when the drumming and dancing finished, the village schoolteacher gave a formal welcome speech. then it was time for the kouyaté family to perform the songs for which they were known throughout the region: bamana jeli (griot) music. most of their repertoire dates from the time of the segu empire (c. – ) (figure ). bamana jeli music shares some elements with other, better known and more studied, forms of mande music, but it has also many features that set it apart. the repertoire is made up of a number of songs that tell the stories of segu’s rulers and warriors, typically accompanied on the ngòniba, a large four-string version of the lute, the preferred instrument of segu’s rulers (as described later on in this article). the songs are characterized by pentatonic scales, / rhythm and slow tempo. combined with the timbre of the ngòni, derived from fingering tech- niques that include slides, pulls, hammers and vibrato on the strings, bamana jeli music is at times heavily redolent of the blues. one piece in particular, ‘poyi’, stood out that day as a blues ‘dead ringer’ – especially the way it was played by bassekou kouyaté. i was in garana at the time, researching the bamana reper- toire for a recording project with bassekou. i was already familiar with several of the best-known bamana songs such as ‘da monzon’ and ‘bakari jan’, but ‘poyi’ was new to me. perhaps i had figure . bassekou kouyaté at the spot marking the supposed grave of dò kamissa (the buffalo woman), aunt of sunjata keita, who founded the mali empire in . source: thomas dorn, , by permission. c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t journal of african cultural studies heard ‘poyi’ before but had failed to recognize it, since it is more of a template accompaniment than a specific song, much in the way that the blues is. while his older brother modibo played a slow, two-bar melody in / time on the large ngòniba, bassekou gradually added variations on a smaller ngòni, some of which sounded distinctly bluesy, at times reminiscent of the kinds of guitar riffs one might hear on a john lee hooker track. that evening when the festivities were over, i asked the two brothers to tell me more about ‘poyi’. bassekou explained that it was an old, very traditional piece, which had several regional variants. he had taken his father’s version and modified it in his own way – a common enough process by which mande jeli pieces evolve through time and the oral tradition. bassekou’s way of playing ‘poyi’ reflected his contact with blues musicians on stages and in studios around the world. nevertheless, his upbringing in a remote village as the son of a knowledgeable and distin- guished jeli family had provided him with a solid grounding in local oral narrative. from bassekou’s description it emerged that unlike most of the mande jeli repertoire, ‘poyi’ is not connected with any one historical person or song. instead it is an accompaniment, over which male jeliw would improvise spoken praises for those who have demonstrated great bravery and strength. it could also be played as an instrumental, which is unusual in the mande repertoire. ‘poyi’, added modibo (who had never heard of the blues), was a term to signify bravery on the battlefield, at the time of the segu empire. it was the tune to which nobles swore an oath. it also had grim associations with the battlefield. poyi is the original bamana blues. we were taught it by our father moustapha kouyaté who was a great ngòni player, and his father before him. he never even heard of the blues, but when he played poyi, it was the blues. poyi means to kill people; it means to shed blood. it was considered better to capture your opponent alive than to kill him. would they ever come back alive to their homes and family – or would they lie dead in the battlefield, food for vultures, or be captured and enslaved? figure . modibo kouyaté playing the ngòniba, through a small amplifier, surrounded by his family: his mother, the singer yakaré damba (wearing an orange and green scarf) and his sister oumou kouyaté (far right). source: garana ( ). c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t l. durán after the battle, all those captured alive had to line up, and the jeli would play poyi. … one after the other each would be asked, ‘do you want to go into slavery?’ if he says yes, he passes out of the line and he belongs to his captor. if he says no, he has to stand still, and his head is chopped off. (bassekou kouyaté, personal communication, garana, aq ) there is plenty of gore in the bamana epic tradition (see, for example, the vivid description of a bloody massacre by hatchetmen of bamana elders after the death of monzon; conrad , – ). yet the kouyaté brothers’ account of how ‘poyi’ was linked to the precise moment when captured warriors had to choose between shameful life in slavery or honour in death, opened up new perspectives on the so-far undocumented connections between the blues and bamana music. it raised the question: how significant was the context in which such music was played, if it was the last piece to be played to warriors before they went to battle? what effect would such an association with warfare, bloodshed and indeed esoteric power have on the minds of cap- tives, some of whom might have been shipped across the atlantic? this article attempts to address some of these questions. a major part of the discussion is devoted to a long-overdue ethnography of bamana jeli music, giving descriptions of its historical and cultural context, its musical and lyrical features, its main instrument, the ngòniba, and its repertoires, in order to better assess their place in the quest for the roots of the blues. the article draws on extensive research conducted by the author with mande jeliw over many years in mali. the family of bassekou kouyaté in garana, who represent an old and authoritative oral tradition, have been a particularly important source of information on the bamana repertoire, but many other musicians have also been consulted on the topic in both segou and bamako and in the diaspora. the discussion ends with a focus on ‘poyi’, a tune that has been little reported and for which there are few recordings. yet there is enough evidence from oral tradition, documentary literature and a few extant recordings to suggest that it was once a powerful signifier of core bamana values. ali farka touré, the leading figure in mali’s ‘desert blues’, cited ‘poyi’ as a kind of proto-blues: ‘i have always said the word blues has no significance here in africa … if there’s a need for a label, there’s no reason why the americans shouldn’t call it the blues. but if i say … seygalare, ... or ndoondo, or mbowdi, or poyi! everyone here knows what that is.’ writing about uprooted populations on the borderlands of south africa, mozambique and swaziland, angela impey observes that: ‘sound, song, and the effect of music-making represent a much under-utilised historical research resource, particularly in contexts of spatial and social rupture’ (impey , ). ‘poyi’ may well be such a resource, a piece of musical archaeology surviving in the oral tradition, which has a bearing on the story of mali and the blues. the quest for specific african sources of african-american musical genres is highly proble- matic (see kubik , – ). in a interview for the american radio programme afropop worldwide, kubik, whose book africa and the blues ( ) is the most comprehensive study to date, emphasized the futility of looking for african roots of the blues. in african and african-american history as elsewhere in the world we have to operate from sources: written sources, oral sources, recorded sources, if possible, archaeological sources. where there are no sources, there can be no safe conclusions. ‘roots’ is too vague to be used beyond casual statements that such and such tradition is based on something, somewhere. for example all the talk about roots of the blues in mali is just enough to satisfy the public’s need for wild imagination. but we want to know which traditions, by whom in mali or elsewhere, and in which time period – late th century? – were relevant as a background for the rise of blues in the us a century later. popular formulations such as ‘from mali to mississippi’ are anathema to historical studies. (gerhard kubik, interview with banning eyre on afropop worldwide, aq , pbs radio) in an attempt to move beyond the public’s ‘wild imagination’, this article seeks to provide some answers to kubik’s three questions, as follows: journal of african cultural studies ( ) ‘which traditions?’ this article argues that bamana jeli music is one tradition that has so far been overlooked as a music which might well have fed into the early rural blues, and, before that, slave banjo music. bamana music belongs to a wider regional style in central mali, overlapping with other neighbouring cultures such as those of the fulbe and soninke, but it may have been the conduit by which such musical traits crossed the atlan- tic with the slave trade; ( ) ‘played by whom in mali?’ i suggest that the answer to this is the bamana jeliw, with tunes such as ‘poyi’; ( ) ‘during which time period?’ this question can be answered at a broad level by citing the bamana segu empire during the eighteenth century, a time of intensive slave trade, to which the empire certainly contributed. not only did the bamana segu empire thrive on slavery, but it was ruled by former war captives (the diarra lineage), from to (conrad ). but perhaps we can further narrow down the ‘which time’ question, and even suggest a likely specific context in which this possible root of the blues would have been played: that is, precisely around the many battles that were an intrinsic feature of life in bamana segu and that engendered vast numbers of slaves, some of whom were sent across the atlantic. while the epic recitations by bamana jeliw with their vivid stories of segu’s rulers (faamaw) have been well documented from the point of view of their texts (kesteloot, courlander, dumestre, conrad aq ), the music, which is equally steeped in the history and ethos of the region, has still not been researched. bamana music is not included in charry’s otherwise comprehensive study of mande music, which focuses on maninka and mandinka traditions, though he does acknowl- edge that ‘the reign of the bamana of segu in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is an important source of pieces for malian musicians’ (charry a, ). in addition, there are very few internationally available recordings either of bamana music or of the ngòniba, its emble- matic instrument. this general lack of source material no doubt explains why bamana music has been omitted in studies of the possible african antecedents of the blues. it is only mentioned very briefly in kubik’s book africa and the blues ( ), which betrays a general lack of information about the styles from the middle niger valley. yet kubik’s instinct is to look for clues in precisely this region, referring to the music of mali’s griots as one ‘likely candidate for early models that were still remembered by african americans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, eventually becoming a factor in the development of the blues’ (kubik , ). kubik asks ‘how such a “memory” could have survived until the end of the nineteenth century’ (kubik , , italics in original), postulating that ‘we are at least eighty years too late for reconstructing proto- blues forms. on the other hand’ he adds, ‘the absence of written sources testifying to such memory does not present a puzzle’ (kubik , ). ‘poyi’ is perhaps one piece of that puzzle of memory and musical survival – from the other side of the atlantic (figure ). the search for the roots of the blues the search for the african roots of the blues has long been a subject of fascination to blues and african music scholars (charters, oliver, evans, kubik, coolen aq ), as well as to american musi- cians of all sorts from blues and jazz to banjo players (too numerous to mention here), and most recently film makers (for example, scorsese’s feel like going home, aq ). the malian singer and guitarist ali farka touré was the first to draw international awareness to the similarities between traditional genres of mali’s northern desert and the blues, resulting in the label ‘desert blues’, coined in the early s. his grammy-winning album, talkin’ timbuktu, l. durán figure . (a) map of mali showing segou province, mali’s fourth region. source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:un-mali.png; (b) map of segou region. garana is km east of tamani. source: macdonald et al. ( ). c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t journal of african cultural studies in which he collaborated with american guitarist ry cooder, captured the public imagination, and won him the epithet ‘king of the desert blues’. touré himself rejected such descriptions, however. he refuted the influence of the blues on his music, claiming that it was the other way around. in fact, the excessive interest of western journalists in his blues connection irritated touré. he would often joke that, for him, blues meant doctors, because doctors in mali wore a blue uniform (per- sonal communication, nick gold aq ). touré was a farmer and not a griot – a guitarist and singer whose connection with music came from his grandmother, kounandi samba, a medium of the river spirits (gibbal aq , ; durán ). he was inspired by the ngòni among other traditional instruments of the niger valley, and indeed his early recordings often featured the ngòni or similar lutes played by griots from other ethnicities, such as gambare played by barou sambarou, a soninke, and the hoddu, played by nassourou saré, a fulani. kubik, who dedicates a large part of his chapter , ‘return to the western sudan’ to a dis- cussion of touré, finds his music ‘only vaguely related to any type of blues’ (kubik , ), and questions whether touré’s ‘personal synthesis could be used to confirm pre-twentieth century historical connections [with the blues]’ (kubik , ). i would argue that there is only one way of doing so, which is to look at the local styles and songs that inspired him, rather than seeing it as a ‘blues derivative’. touré drew on a number of malian styles; his favourites were the ones from his region, the bend of the niger and the middle niger valley. some decades before touré put mali on the musical map of the blues, senegambia (particu- larly wolof music) was considered a primary source of the blues, first suggested by david ames (ames ). this argument was developed by oliver in his pioneering book savannah synco- pators ( , – ), and then echoed by charters ( aq , ) coolen ( , , ), and others. as kubik points out, the enormous success of alex haley’s book and tv series roots in the late s and early s, which places the gambia at the centre of the story, certainly stimu- lated the african-american imagination (kubik , ). senegambia was an important source of plantation slaves in the deep south (coolen ). there are undeniable resemblances between blues guitar fingering styles and the thumb and finger interlocked plucking techniques on the mandinka kora (charry a, – ). banjo enthusiasts have also put forward other senegambian string instruments, such as the jola long-necked lute called akonting, as poss- ible antecedents to the blues, and this connection has been explored most recently by the work of such banjo players as bela fleck on his grammy awarded album, throw down your heart. the lack of research on music from the middle niger valley has, however, resulted in too narrow a focus on particular regional traditions of savannah west africa without setting them in the wider context. for example, coolen suggests the fodet, a term used by wolof xalam players for both tunings and generic accompaniments, as a kind of template for the blues. while not wrong, fodet as a musical concept cannot be attributed solely to the wolof, since similar concepts are shared by griots of neighbouring peoples all the way across the middle niger valley. also, there is much oral evidence to show that many wolof xalamkats trace their ancestry to the manden (the heartland of mande culture in present-day western mali and eastern guinea), and a good part of their repertoire consists of well-known mande jeli tunes like ‘manga yira’, ‘alfa yaya’, ‘tutu jara’ and ‘sunjata’; they even sing some of the choruses in maninka, not in their own language, wolof (see charry aq ¶ , ; duran a). kubik is sceptical about arguments for the senegambia, and instead gives stronger weight to the central sudanic region as one core area of provenance of some of the rural blues’ most characteristic traits: the region from mali across northern ghana and northern nigeria into northern and central cameroon, rather than the westernmost geographical sudan (senegal, l. durán the gambia). other possible core areas include northern guinea and the sahel zone from mali into mauritania. (kubik , – ) it is well documented that captives from segu were sent across the atlantic, though not in large numbers. curtin estimated that percent of the total slave exports to the new world were transported between and , or roughly during the entire era of the segu bambara state. slaves from segu destined for the atlantic trade were probably sent to senegambia and sierra leone. slaves from these two regions accounted for only – percent of the total slave exports from to and bambara slaves constituted only a fraction of this total. (roberts , – ) the scots explorer mungo park attests to the common practice of slavery in his account of his travels through the mande countryside in . his chapter is an interesting first-hand account of the various ways in which people became slaves, mainly warfare but also insolvency. in his diary entry for july , he writes ‘i was met by a coffle of slaves, about seventy in number, coming from sego [sic]’ (park / aq ). there are numerous other sightings of slaves throughout his travels. this is significant because, as kubik mentions, ‘the story of the bambara rice cultivators brought to louisiana specifically for their technological expertize aq ¶ , has opened up new aspects of the fine meshes and economics of the slave trade and its huge networks into the interior of the west central sudan’ (kubik , ). carney’s rich study of what she metaphori- cally calls ‘black rice’ shows that rice cultivation in the western hemisphere was indeed intro- duced by bamana slaves – mainly women, who to this day are the principal rice cultivators of the region – and ‘depended upon the diffusion of an entire cultural system, from production to consumption’ (carney , ). bamana slaves were ‘central to understanding louisiana history’ (eltis, morgan, and richardson , ). the banjo, derived from west african lutes such as the ngòni, was one of the main instruments of louisiana slaves (conway , aq ¶ ). in kubik’s chapter entitled ‘why did a west central sudanic style cluster prevail in the blues?’ he points on the one hand to the numbers of slaves to the new world from this region during the eighteenth century: senegal was part of the french slave trading network to louisiana. eventually, in the th century, some of the descendants of deportees from senegal, guinea, and mali ended up on farms in missis- sippi and elsewhere in the deep south … the names of ethnic groups from the geographical sudan (as from other parts of africa) were well remembered in new orleans into the nineteenth century, though sometimes in the form of an interesting phonetic transfer into french. for example, fulbe or ‘fula’ became ‘poulard’ (fat chicken). (kubik , ) on the other hand, kubik comments that ‘in a group of people thrown together by the hazards of life, even one person is enough to transmit esoteric knowledge that might later become the property of a majority … in culture contact situations it often happens that minorities win’ (kubik , ). applying that argument to a piece of music, rather than a person, one could argue the case for ‘poyi’ being recreated among slave communities in the deep south, or, at very least, providing some key musical features that contributed to the foundation of the blues. rather than either old world folkways or new world environments, we need to encompass both and become much more thoroughly atlantic … rather than frame the issue as solely one of transfers and conduits, we should also think of transformations and overlapping circuits. (eltis, morgan, and richardson , ) here i am not arguing that bamana jeli music was directly transplanted via the slave trade to the deep south, but that aspects of it stayed in the memory there during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though perhaps relived in ‘thoroughly atlantic’ ways (figure ). journal of african cultural studies ‘flooding the ears of their hearts’ : the bamana of segu a few salient facts about the bamana are required here, as this provides the historical backdrop for how and why their music plays a part in the story of the blues. the bamana are a mande people in the middle niger with a complex historical and ethnic makeup. they rose to power during one of mali’s last pre-colonial, and non-islamic empires, known as segu, – . the name bamana also refers to the language (known as bamanan or bamanankan) spoken throughout the south of the country, in some cases as a mother tongue by many who would not consider themselves eth- nically bamana; for example, the sedentary populations of fulbe descent living in the regions of wasulu and of brigo in southwest mali. also, the term is often used generically to describe the mande peoples of mali in general – including the maninka, the wasulunke and khassonke. this section refers specifically to the bamana of historical segu, and the representation of ‘bamanaya’ (what it is to be bamana) in bamana jeli song lyrics of today as represented in live performance and recordings. these songs are usually short and tend to be based on one episode or character in the story of segu; it is extremely rare to hear full-length recitations such as those of tayiru banbera. nevertheless, these songs, with their catchy pentatonic tunes and slow swinging / rhythms, keep alive the stories of the segu era with their chivalry and gore. ‘segu is not a cosy story’ comments bassekou kouyaté, drawing on oral traditions he heard as a child from both his father, moustapha kouyaté, and his maternal grandfather, one of mali’s most iconic jeliw of the post-independence era, banzoumana sissoko, ‘the old lion’ (c. – ). ‘love does not play a role in this. there was the cult of bravery. there was no fear of death, because if you were a coward, you couldn’t marry, your family would reject you – so it was better to die.’ (bassekou kouyaté, personal communication ). bamana jeli songs glorify animist belief and practice, such as the consuming of alcohol and the worship of shrines containing boliw (power objects). they tell of the customs around warfare, such as the feasts (maa nyènajè) held on the eve of battle outside the walls of the town to be figure . segou countryside, near garana, january . the bamana are farmers. source: aq c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t l. durán aggressed, in which both sides participated, consuming large quantities of capalo, beer made from millet. they recount the exploits of the tònjòn, the dreaded slave army, who regularly looted villages and stole women, some of whom would be given to jeliw as wives. the tònjòn even had their own tònjòn dance, with humorously grotesque gestures designed to both amuse and terrify. the history of bamana segu, described as ‘a state of intrigue’ (conrad ), has been well documented. much of what we know about this late pre-colonial period of mali’s history comes from the recitation of oral epics by bamana jeliw, published in numerous transcriptions and translations. these focus on the esoteric power of one or two rulers (especially da monzon diarra – ) and warriors (such as bakari jan koné). the most detailed of these is a line-by-line transcription of performances by tayiru banbera (conrad ; banbera ) and constitutes ‘one of the longest epics recorded in africa’ (johnson, hale, and belcher , ). conrad describes the bamana of segu as ‘a society famous for maintaining its traditional cul- tural values and characterized by a wide range of secret ritual methods of tapping into spiritual sources of protection and power’ (conrad aq , ). the bamana resisted islam in a series of confrontations with fulbe armies until finally defeated in by al-hajj umar tall, a fulani warrior cleric. instead they had their own ‘complex cosmogony that included a supreme creator and a pantheon of less deities … the carrying out of the most serious of … duties often required the use of a ritual object called a boli, which focused as a locus of sacrifice performed as a means of calling upon and influencing the vital spiritual force known as nyama’ (conrad , ). founded by biton mamary coulibaly ( – ), the bamana empire was built on military conquest, with thousands of war captives that contributed to a vast and productive slave population. ‘warfare was an inseparable component of the political economy of the middle niger valley. capturing slaves and conquering territory were its clearest expressions’ (roberts , ). segu’s rulers, entitled faama, derived power from the tònjòn, a voluntary association comprised of men from all levels of society (noble to servile), which was segu’s army (figure ). the death of biton coulibaly was followed by a period of anarchy ( – ), with succes- sive rule by three former war captives until a fourth, ngolo diarra ( – ), founded a dynasty that lasted until . his grandson da monzon diarra (ruled – ) is the most celebrated of the segu rulers, remembered and revered by bamana jeliw for his power, wealth, ruthlessness and generosity with the jeliw. da was not a ruler to be trifled with; oral tradition has it that da had only one eye, and there- fore, no one in the land could pronounce the word ‘one’ without risk of being beheaded. the opening chorus of the song dedicated to da monzon says ‘ask da! if a poor man even mentions the name of the faama [ruler], he’ll be sold for the price of one barrel of beer’, showing that he valued alcohol more than human life (figure ). the linking of music with esoteric power (nyama) is common to all mande jeli culture – and also the blues. many jeliw express the view that the regional traditions of bamana segu are deeply infused with ngaraya or musical mastery, which in turn carries high levels of nyama. there is also the view expressed by some elder jeliw that it is more ‘authentic’, less commercial and has greater depth than the maninka styles that were popularized in the capital from the late s onwards (duran b). the consumption of alcohol during the segu era is one of the themes of the segu repertoire. tayiru banbera, one of the great bamana jeliw of the twentieth century, was a ‘devout muslim’ (conrad , ), but his descriptions are full of irreverent humour. this is what the bamana beer drinkers say: journal of african cultural studies figure . the tomb of biton mamary coulibaly, founder of the segu empire, in sekoro (old segou), next to a recent reconstruction of his palace with its seven vestibules, . source: aq c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t figure . mud-dye (bògòlan) cloth depicting some of the major characters connected with nineteenth- century malian history: (upper row) european travellers and colonizers, including mungo park and general achinard; and (lower row) pre-colonial warlords and rulers, including (second from right) da monzon. note his one eye. source: segou market ( ). c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t l. durán the marabout of the east says not to drink for it is bad. the marabout of the west says there is no harm in drinking. there are two different opinions. but while the marabouts argue about the difference, let us drink and forget about the thirst of the world. what they are talking about is lahara. we have not been there we know nothing about it. we will not give up our habit to wait for that. let us get drunk. the bamana drink so much that they flood the ears of their hearts. (conrad , : lines – ) to this day, the bamana are known for their relaxed attitude towards islam, and there are (or were until the time of writing) many places that openly brew and sell capalo, even in bamako – places where bamana and other peoples from around segou, mainly of the older generation, go to meet and socialize, and reaffirm their regional identities. all this contributes to the people of segou, or ‘segovians’ as they are known locally, having a certain reputation in mali. tayiru banbera recites: everybody who comes to power in mali, if it is said that he comes from segu, he will be feared. (conrad , ) and conrad comments, regardless of where the person in power actually comes from, this expression labels him as shrewd, or even ruthless. it might be said, ‘so-and-so’s wife is from segu’, meaning she dominates her husband. similarly, if it is said that someone gave you ‘segu porridge’ … it means they outwitted you at some- thing. (conrad , ) in february , as part of our preliminary research for his album, bassekou took me to visit the tomb of da monzon, which is located in banankoroba, a village a few kilometres east of segou. it was a simple vaulted grave made of cement, located inside the courtyard of a house, under the custody offamily whose surname – ironically – is coulibaly. bassekou, for whom da monzon sym- bolizes the essence of bamanaya, took his ngòniba out of its case, knelt down by the grave and in a solemn fashion began playing da monzon’s fasa (praise song), over which he declaimed: i say now to my great grandfather’s king – he was such a great warrior, right from the beginning to the end of his life, no-one trod on his foot. no one dared look him in the eye and say no. i praise him for all the great things he did for us jeliw. he used to give us cows, horses, slaves. he used to capture a village and give the whole village to one jeli. with da monzon, no jeli was ever hungry. that’s what i praise him for. and he said two things to them. he said, ‘when i die, my jeliw will leave, because no other king can support them like i did. and there will never be another good bamana king after me. i will be the last.’ and no other king was a true bamana like he was. being a true bamana means never cheat- ing with another man’s wife. it also means giving one’s word and never taking it back – if a bamana says ‘i will do this’, he will do it. and a true bamana will always be prepared to die for his honour (figure ) in subsequent discussion, bassekou explained that these were the kinds of words that da monzon would want to hear at his grave, even if he, bassekou, as a man of the twenty-first century, abhorred the idea of slavery and warfare. journal of african cultural studies as we left the grave, i asked the custodian, mr coulibaly, how he felt about being entrusted with care of the grave of the diara lineage, who had wrested power from the his own ancestor, biton mamary coulibaly, founder of the segu empire. ‘if da monzon had power, it’s only because we the coulibaly lineage lent it to him’ was his reply. the concept of betrayal (janfa) in segu was specifically linked to the act of breaking one’s word, or reneging on a mutual agreement (dumestre , ). in the words of tayiru banbera: if a noble swore an oath they would say ‘i am serious’, it is the word of a noble. they pledged their honour, if a noble swore such an oath, that was all. … that was the end of it, that was enough. if he swore to kill a man, he would kill him. (conrad , ) this is echoed in frobenius’ account of a series of heroic narratives entitled pui, to which we return at the end of this article. in pui, the jeli asks the ruler, ‘how does one keep one’s word, half or whole?’ and the ruler replied, ‘one keeps one’s word whole completely’ (frobenius , ). the implications of this are considerable, since, according to bassekou kouyaté, ‘poyi’ was the tune to which a noble would swear to uphold his word (as discussed later). the seizing of power from the coulibaly lineage and the establishment of the diarra rule by a captive had major consequences for social structure – and music – in the middle niger valley. ‘this was the first time [in the feudal societies of the western soudan] that those who were figure . bassekou kouyaté plays the ngòniba at the grave of da monzon diarra, ruler of segu from – . source: banankoroba, segou, . c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t l. durán noble by blood were supplanted by the power of arms … it became possible for an individual to become noble, and for member of a caste or a slave to escape their status and become a respected warrior’ (kesteloot and dumestre , ; my translation). tayiru banbera recites …those times were different from today. if you could catch somebody, you could sell him. if somebody could catch you, he would sell you. there was no such thing as prison. they never tied people up and beat them. if you killed someone, it was all right. but if somebody killed you, that was all right. this is how the bamana behaved. they could do what they wanted. (conrad , ) thus, through the epic traditions and songs of segu, we learn that it was a place where anyone could become a captive at any time, or, conversely, go from captive status to becoming a ruler. might such stories not have had resonance with slaves taken from the region, infusing their mem- ories of music in segu with powerful emotional and psychological associations? bamana jeli music – characteristics and repertoire according to kubik, the ‘west central sudanic belt is the style world that presents the closest sty- listic parallel from any part of africa to what can be heard in the blues’ (kubik , – , but bamana jeli music is not included in his discussion). what new evidence can this tradition throw on our understanding of the african sources of the blues? and why has it been overlooked to date? the bamana repertoire is inextricably connected with the region of segou. unlike other mande jeli pieces from mali, it has not migrated westwards into senegambia (see charry a, ) and therefore was omitted from the first public exposure to mande music in the s. in fact, until the recent solo project of bassekou kouyaté and his quartet of ngònis, it was little known outside mali. bamana music has much more in common musically with the blues than the heptatonic styles of the maninka and mandinka, which are the dominant sounds of the southwest of mali, upper guinea, southern senegal and gambia. ‘bajuru’ (or bajourou, using the french spelling), is one of the few heptatonic tunes in the bamana repertoire, and virtually the only one that is also played by maninka, mandinka and wolof griots, where it is better known by the name ‘tutu jara’ (or ‘toutou diarra’). according to oral traditions in senegambia and western mali, ‘tutu jara’ originated in segu, but it has either been maninka-ized in its melodic features, or else, as some oral traditions suggest, it originated in the mande heartland, but was ‘captured’ by the bamana. bamana jeli music belongs to the ‘style-cluster’ of the middle niger valley, sharing musical characteristics with neighbouring peoples, the soninke, sonrai and fulbe, who also have the lute as their principal instrument and have ‘co-existed for centuries of cultural interchange, living in the region as distinct but overlapping cultures’ (kone ). the instrument par excellence of the bamana jeli is the ngòniba, the large lute (also known as bamanangòni), with four strings, as described in more detail later on. kubik identifies two main strands of west sudanic traditions that might have contributed to the blues: ‘ancient negritic’ and islamic (kubik , ). he outlines the following journal of african cultural studies characteristics (amongst others) for rural blues from the deep south, such as a primarily solo singing tradition; ‘wavy intonation’; ‘rather slow triple or swing tempos’; a relationship between the vocals and instrumental accompaniment of unison or heterophony, pentatonic vocal melodies; the use of string instruments, and the absence of percussion (kubik ). pentatonic scales are a significant feature of bamana jeli music. there are two main bamana pentatonic scales, corresponding roughly to cdega (major pentatonic) (for example, as in the song ‘da monzon’) and cdfgb flat, sometimes described as minor pentatonic (because of its flat seventh) (for example, as in the song ‘bakari jan’ or ‘sarafo’). however, these scales are not tempered, and intonation of particular pitches can vary in both vocal and instrumental per- formance, especially the second degree of the scale, which may be either flattened or sharpened as to sound between a major and a minor third, once again strongly reminiscent of the ‘blues third’. the ambiguous third in a pentatonic scale is a feature of some other musical traditions in mali, including that of hunters’ associations from the wasulu region in the south of the country, whose music also is felt to sound close to the blues. no specific research has been con- ducted on the relationship between wasulu hunters and bamana jeli music, though it is well known that hunters’ music predates and contributes to that of mande jeliw (see charry a, ). the pentatonic scales of the bamana repertoire are a significant factor in its limited circulation outside of the middle niger valley. musicians who belong to heptatonic (seven-note) musical cul- tures (maninka, khassonke, mandinka, wolof) seem to find it difficult to perform the pentatonic (five-note) music – and vice versa. this creates a fundamental musical divide between heptatonic and pentatonic-based music, ‘which in effect means that the two live in different spheres’ (charry a, ), and is relevant to the story of which of the two is the more likely source of the roots of the blues. in my own experience, maninka musicians often complain that bamana singers cannot ‘voice’ maninka music properly. wassoulou artists such as oumou sangaré, who are firmly in the ‘pentatonic camp’, find it challenging to perform the heptatonic songs of the maninka. preliminary investigation of the bamana jeli repertoire reveals that it is relatively small, in terms of musically distinctive songs and accompaniments. (however most bamana jeliw also include many pieces from the wider mande repertoire, such as sunjata.) performances usually consist of a free-rhythm introduction on the ngòniba, which then goes into the ostinato accompa- niment known as sen or riff. the vocals may consist of spoken recitation (tariku), punctuated by improvised singing (tèrèmèli), and choruses (dònkili) that are dedicated to specific characters or episodes in the epic. while women may sing refrains or choruses (dònkili), recitation of the bamana epics is invari- ably considered the work of male jeliw, using the mode of heightened speech known as tariku (see durán b). this was the mode of recitation that bassekou kouyaté used at the grave of da monzon, as described above. this mode of heightened speech is common among all the male griots of the middle niger valley, including those of the soninke and fulbe ethnicities. there are no recordings on the international market of bamana jeliw performing long recitations; mostly they are only available on local cassettes (see newton ). spoken recitation over the slow pentatonic accompaniment of the ngòniba bears a strong resemblance to the genre of blues known as ‘talking blues’; for example, robert pete william’s prisoner’s talking blues, recorded in while he was in the notorious angola prison on a murder charge. it is perhaps no coincidence that robert pete williams was from louisiana, the region to which many bamana slaves were taken in the nineteenth century. the bamana repertoire consists mainly of a series of accompaniments and pre-composed songs that relate to specific rulers and warriors of the segu empire, in particular bambugu nce diarra, son of ngolo diarra; da monzon diarra, who ruled from to (as discussed above); and bakari jan koné, a warrior by that name who was a contemporary of da monzon (see conrad ). l. durán one of the difficulties of assessing the scope of the bamana repertoire is that musicians may collapse the time span of these characters and sing about all of them in one song, moving from one tune and chorus to another without a break. this is the case, for example, of one of the best-known recordings of bamana music, an lp dating from c. by the ensemble instrumental national du mali, entitled dah monzon ou l’épopée bambara, played frequently on malian radio. it fea- tures a large ensemble with various mande jeli instruments, a male speaker, a female chorus and a solo female singer, hawa dramé. part (side a) begins with a slow version of the ‘bambugu nce’ song, which, like many bamana fasaw (praise songs), is a lament. its chorus mourns the passing of several rulers, by saying that ‘their (alcohol) drinking days are over’. then at ! it goes into the tune for ‘da monzon’, which remains the accompaniment until ! , when it changes into a faster, minor tune known as ‘segu tònjòn’. part , on side b continues with the story of bakari jan. after the first minute of da monzon’s tune, (including the chorus ‘ask da’ as described earlier on), the ensemble play bakari jan’s tune (figures and ). another praise song, also for bambugu nce, celebrates his building of a canal from the niger to his village, bambugu, east of segu (see conrad , – ). it is one of the few bamana tunes that is heptatonic rather than pentatonic. nevertheless, in the popular imagination it has retained its core bamana values, giving it a certain weightiness as a praise song for patrons. one of the most often recorded of the bamana jeli tunes is dedicated to the warrior bakari jan koné. a kind of superhero with extraordinary strength, the song celebrates his victory against bilisi, a monstrous and powerful sorcerer who caused terror in segu with his disdain for human life: when he [bilisi] was on his way to the drinking house he would capture any child he hap- pened to meet. he would take him and give him to the brewmasters. he would sell him. the next time he went out for a drink, whoever’s virgin daughter he met, figure . ensemble instrumental national du mali, on the roof of their regular rehearsal space, the carre- four des jeunes, bamako, . note the four ngòni players, from various ethnicities. source: aq c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t journal of african cultural studies he would capture and sell her. (tayiru banbera in conrad , ) bakari jan is remembered not only for his prowess as a warrior but also for his love of the ngòniba – hence the opening chorus in his song, juru naani fò, jeliw be juru naani fò (‘the four strings, the jeliw are playing the four strings’). the ngòni riff for this tune is in the minor pentatonic. two pieces that occur frequently in the bamana repertoire are ‘mbowdi’ (variant spellings: m’baoudi, mbaoudi, nbaoudi, m’baudi, bawdi, baudi) and ‘njaaro’ (variant spellings: djarou, jaru, n’dyarou, njaru). both are almost certainly fulbe in origin. this is not surprising, given that the fulbe lived side by side with the bamana for centuries, and finally destroyed the segu empire in . both terms mbowdi and njaaro appear to be fulbe/fulani. in taylor’s ( ) fulani-english dictionary, bawde is translated as ‘powers, capabilities’, and bawdo as an ‘able, capable, experienced person’. njaru is defined as a ‘feast, festivities’, the kind of festiv- ity that was held the night before the battle to rally the warriors. by contrast, in bailleul’s ( ) ‘bambara-french’ dictionary, neither mbowdi nor njaaro are listed. ‘mbowdi’ and ‘njaaro’ share musical features with ‘poyi’. they are pentatonic, in slow tempo, and considered amongst the most ‘sacred’ and powerful in the bamana repertoire. frobe- nius cites ‘the baudi’ as an epic tradition of the fulbe (frobenius , ff). amongst the djel- gobe fulbe in the northeast of burkina faso, near the border with mali, the bawdi is a repertoire of the descendants of captives (riimaybe), who are aq ‘dispossessed of their cultural origins after having figure . cover of lp featuring the recording of dah monzon ou l’épopée bambara, c. . source: aq c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t l. durán been captured during wars or raids, or purchased from neighbouring powers by the fulbe. in a recording of their music made by the musée de l’homme, bawdi are defined as drums (sing. mbaggu), and bawdi laamu are drums of power, ‘a repertoire formerly performed in times of war to galvanize the warriors on their departure’ (loncke ). once again, we see the battle- field as the context for this music – played by captives. there are many recordings of ‘mbowdi’ and ‘njaaro’, played by the fulbe, soninke, bamana and even sonrai musicians – thus they are veritable songs of the niger valley. ali farka touré recorded ‘mbowdi’ on guitar together with an ngóni player, ousmane gadjaka. sleeve notes to a field recording of ‘njaru’ by fulbe griots in mopti, mali, defines ‘njaru’ as ‘stimulation of the world of the fulani’. the music is a rapid-fire spoken panegyric accompanied on the fulbe four-string lute, the hoddu (brandes and malé ). the soninke gambare player, demba fadiga, has recorded a track called ‘nbaoudi’ with spoken recitation in soninke, inter- spersed with vocals by a female singer in bamanankan, praising a fulani patron. even if ‘mbowdi’ and ‘njaro’ are fulbe in origin, they have been thoroughly absorbed into the bamana tradition. bamana jeli music in the public sphere why is bamana music not better known outside the region, either in scholarship or through recordings? one reason is that the epic tradition of bamana segu has never had the kind of wide exposure as that of the story of sunjata keita. there is no ritual space or time for its recita- tion, such as the re-roofing of sunjata’s sacred hut in kangaba every seven years (jansen aq ; ganay ). conrad found, while first working in with tayiru banbera (who was generally acknowledged as one of the most ‘knowledgeable and skilled raconteurs of mali’) that even this celebrated jeli was performing on an infrequent basis (conrad , – ). the american scholar robert newton, as part of his investigation into the bamana epics, attended an event in in honour of the great bamana warrior bakari jan kone at djoforongo, but was somewhat dismayed to find that the only music played was an old recording of the ‘bakari jan’ song, by mali’s ensem- ble instrumental national du mali (newton ). as already stated, mali’s first government under president modibo keita favoured the bamana style over others. during the height of mali’s dance band era, the orchestre régional de ségou, later renamed super biton de ségou, were the pioneering modernizers of the bamana style and repertoire. they were the first orchestra to perform an arrangement of part of the bamana epic, at the first biennale of arts and culture for the young in (mazzoleni , ). the song, titled ‘da monzon’, is . minutes long – much longer than most record- ings by local dance bands of the time. it includes the traditional accompaniment and chorus, da nyininka (‘ask da’), and a spoken recitation of excerpts of the story, over a full horn section and electric guitars. at c. . minutes into the recording, the tune changes to segu tabali tè (figures and ). the balance between the slow pentatonic bamana style versus those of the heptatonic and faster maninka songs began, however, to tip in favour of the latter under the rule of moussa traoré, mali’s second president ( – ). one reason for this was the popularity of neigh- bouring guinea’s dance bands, who drew primarily on the heptatonic maninka styles of upper guinea, with arrangements and instrumentation borrowed from cuban as well as congolese music, with which they had many musical features in common. cuban and congolese music however did not mesh as well with the more harmonically static and slow, pentatonic bamana repertoire. as is well known, recordings of cuban music circulated widely in west africa after world war ii. by contrast, there is little evidence of direct exposure to the blues in guinea and mali journal of african cultural studies during this period. it is more likely that knowledge of the blues was received via rock ’n’ roll and jazz recordings. louis armstrong visited mali in , making an enormous impression on the director of the orchestre régional de ségou, trumpeter amadou ba (mazzoleni , ), but figure . cover of an lp issued in mali in as part of the anthology of malian music series (bare- nreiter musicaphon bm l ), featuring the band that later renamed itself super biton de segou. source: aq c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t figure . cinquantenaire ( th anniversary of independence) photo of banzoumana sissoko, ‘le vieux lion’, recording ‘mali’, bamako . source: aq aq . c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t l. durán there is no evidence that any blues musicians visited the country. the word ‘blues’ is rarely refer- enced in the music of either guinea or mali until the s. with the decline in popularity of mali’s dance bands from the s onward, and the end of the biennale festivals, bamana music had a much lower profile than some other regional traditions. only a few artists such as the singer abdoulaye diabaté, former lead vocalist with kéné star, continued to champion the pentatonic bamana style, singing in the segu dialect of bamanan. in the absence of bamana music on the scene in bamako, some foreign scholars even concluded that all jeliya, the music of the mande jeliw, is essentially heptatonic. the s saw the meteoric rise in bamako of the popularity of the jelimuso (female jeli) and a style of music that developed around the wedding party circuit in bamako, a style which con- tinues to dominate in the twenty-first century. the bamana ngòni has no place in the ensembles that accompany these singers. instead it is the smaller and higher-pitched maninka griot lutes (nkòni, kòni) that feature alongside electric guitars – not the lower-pitched bamana ngòniba, whose sound is considered too ‘masculine’ (figure ). even the choice of skin for the sound table of the ngòniba is conceptually ‘masculine’. until very recently, we only used the skin from the head of a cow for the ngòni, because the ngòni is like the head of the family, who is always a man. so only men can play it. it was not intended for women’s ears … we would talk about wars and battles, slaves and warriors; this was male conversa- tion (cè baro). the music of the bamana ngòni has power. because there are many bamana powerful kings remem- bered by the ngòni. because the bamana kings had the power of the boliw [shrines]. now, we live in the era of human rights and electricity. so the ngòni is changing. now, we don’t sing about wars, we sing about the problems of life today – health, money, marriage, children, schools, politics. and the cow skin can come from any part of the cow, we’re in such a hurry to make new instruments and sell them. (bassekou kouyaté, personal communication ). bamana jeli music is considered by its practitioners to be cèfoli – music by men for men. in that respect, it runs counter to the musical trends in mali described by some authors as the ‘feminiza- tion’ of malian music, whereby women singers are the main stars, and where radio, television and wedding parties with music are their main platforms (diawara ; durán ; schulz ). the bamana sound is often described by malians as ‘heavy’, ‘sombre’, ‘powerful’, and ‘mascu- line’, all of which would sit equally well with the blues. bassekou kouyaté’s acoustic band ngoniba, created in , has renewed awareness of bamana jeli music among local audiences in mali, and also taken it to international audiences for the first time. ngoniba is a quartet of different-sized ngònis, including the ngòniba, and a larger, bass ngòni invented especially for the group – which includes percussion and the voice of bassekou’s wife, the singer amy sacko. bassekou’s idea of making an acoustic ensemble out of the same instruments has been influential among young musicians in bamako, and the ngòni is currently enjoying something of a revival (figure ). the bamana ngòniba boat-shaped or round plucked lutes with skin sound tables and pole-like fretless necks are found with a variety of names across savannah west africa. the playing techniques and styles of the bamana ngòni reflect the porous boundaries between historically connected traditions of neigh- bouring ethnicities to the bamana, such as the fulbe and soninke; professional hereditary musi- cians (griots) of the region have always made it their business to learn and appropriate each other’s repertoires. charry’s comprehensive review of these lutes classifies them into two main morphological types, differentiated by the shape of their bridges, by their geographical distribution, and by journal of african cultural studies which kind of musician, griot or non-griot, plays them. which of the two – griot or non-griot – and from which particular culture the ancestor of the banjo comes, is not known (kubik , ). one issue here is the claim that griots were never enslaved, because they possessed valuable information for the survival and honour of lineages. stories are common amongst jeliw of ances- tors who were threatened with death, but always managed to talk their way out of it. jeliw them- selves were slave owners. if their patron was killed or overthrown, they would change allegiance to the new rulers, rather than be enslaved. banzoumana sissoko, the ‘old lion’, famously said in the early years of post-independence: ‘in the rivalries between african parties, i refused to take a firm stand on one side or the other. i like the winner; therefore i like nobody before the end of the battle’ (quoted in keita , ). even if griots themselves were never enslaved, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that timbres and musical instruments from west african griot traditions were recreated by slave com- munities across the atlantic. the banjo provides one example of this. although we do not know which of the many west african lutes the banjo is descended from, the first account of the banjo in the new world dates as far back as (conway aq , ), and it was a favourite instrument of slaves, described in one account as ‘their beloved banjar’ (conway aq , ). there are many references to black banjo players in louisiana in the early nineteenth century (conway aq , ), which, as we have seen above, coincides with the period of intense slave trade from the segu empire, and to which many bamana slaves were taken. the music of the slave banjo was certainly one element that contributed to the birth of the rural blues (kubik ; conway aq ). figure . ba issa koné (left) playing the small maninka ngòni, and modibo djan diabate on electric guitar, at a wedding party in bamako, . source: aq c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t l. durán the fretless neck of the west african griot lutes makes it possible to vary pitches, as opposed to the fixed pitches of the kora and the hunters’ harp (other contenders for the origin of the blues). bending, sliding, ‘wavy’ intonation, and ambiguous thirds, fifths and sevenths are intrinsic to the ngòniba and cannot be attributed to contact with the blues. they can be heard clearly on older recordings from the s and s featuring major bamana artists of the time, who were most unlikely to have ever heard any recordings of the blues and who were known to be fiercely traditional in outlook. the bamana ngòni falls into the category of wooden-trough lute with a fan-shaped bridge, which charry calls ‘griot lutes’ – ‘probably the oldest melody instrument used by griots, dating back perhaps many centuries before it was first mentioned by al-umari and ibn battuta in the fourteenth century’ (charry , ). the bamana ngòniba has four strings, of which only two are stopped against the neck, while a third string, the shortest (nearest to the head of the player), is plucked by the thumb as a kind of drone, plus a fourth string that is plucked open as melody. this non-sequential arrangement of pitches (sometimes termed a ‘re-entrant tuning’) is also found on the banjo. there are two main bamana ngòniba tunings, called jè (meaning white) and erediné. the latter name is confusing, as it is phonetically close to both ardin and ‘ordinaire’, terms that are widely used for tunings on a variety of local lutes (see charry aq ¶ , – , for lists of lute tunings with names and staff notation). ‘ordinaire’ is probably a french-language corruption of ardin, which is the name of the moorish harp played by female moorish griots (tigiwit, iggawen). charry cites coolen’s etymology for ardin as the fulbe word ardo ‘“to lead”, or in another context, a certain kind of fulbe warrior leader’ (charry aq ¶ , ). once again, we find the connection between warriors and the lute. there is also a kora tuning known as hardino, ‘most probably borrowed from the koni’ (charry aq ¶ , ). figure . ngoniba in the bogolan studios, bamako, while recording their album, i speak fula. basse- kou kouyaté is second from right and his wife, the singer amy sacko, is second from left. source: aq c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t journal of african cultural studies the ngòniba tuning called erediné is exactly the same as that cited by charry as tutu jara ardin (charry aq , ) (minus the fifth or highest pitch string, furthest away from the head of the player). ‘tutu jara’ is one of the best known pieces of the bamana jeli repertoire, and its use as a name for a wolof xalam tuning, combined with ardin, reinforces the view that the bamana ngòni and its more northern variants, the soninke gambare and the moorish tidinit, have been important sources for styles and repertoires throughout the region. as charry says, ‘the relationship between these three uses of ardin – moorish harp, a koni (and xalam) tuning, and a mandinka kora tuning – is not clear, but it does indicate some process of diffusion at work among griots of neighbouring ethnic groups’ (charry aq , ). the other tuning, jè (white) is, according to various ngòniba players, the original tuning for accompanying singers. bassekou kouyaté claims that his father moustapha kouyaté (died c. ) only ever used this tuning. it is the same as the xalam tuning called tutu jara ordinaire, minus the fifth and highest string, cited in charry (charry aq , ). the use of tutu jara in the name of a xalam tuning shows the influence from the mande tradition. the principal way of sounding the ngòniba strings is with a downwards movement using only the thumb, index and middle fingers. the downwards strike allows the player to flick back with a rhythmic tap against the sound table. this added percussive element has been borrowed by kora players, who occasionally tap the wooden handle of the instrument with the knuckle of their first finger. ‘frailing’, ‘claw-hammering’, (to use banjo terminology) and damping of the strings are old playing techniques used on all griot lutes of the middle niger, as are bending, hammering and sliding notes on the neck. in the mid s, bassekou kouyaté introduced a new way of plucking the strings, with an upwards stroke, using for the first time all three fingers, making it easier to produce fast solos to mirror those of the guitar but also thereby changing the acoustic, making it sound more like a kora (bassekou kouyaté, personal communication ). for this reason, audiences often confuse the sound of the ngòni with that of the kora. according to charry, the bamana ngòniba is the largest of the griot lutes. its wooden resona- tor has a slight concave or waist, as opposed to the canoe-shaped resonators of the smaller lutes in the senegambia region and upper guinea (figure ). this larger type of lute is not exclusive to the bamana, but is also played by griots of the fulbe (who call it hoddu), and the soninke (who call it gambare). it was almost certainly the instrument that was transported by slaves to morocco and transformed into the gimbri, the lute of the gnawa sufi brotherhoods, whose oral traditions specifically trace their ancestry to the ‘bambara’. charry suggests that the name gimbri is derived from the soninke gambare (charry , ), reflecting the important role of the soninke as a point of diffusion of musical styles, instruments and linguis- tic terms in the region (figure ). in the search for the origins of this instrument type, charry refutes farmer’s theory that it came from ancient egypt, and calls for further investigation into movements of ‘soninke and other mande peoples north into morocco … any link with ancient egypt would most likely have reached the north african gnawa gimbri via the south from where it originated. that link would most likely have been the soninke gambare’ (charry , – ). a full exploration of the musical connections with soninke culture is beyond the scope of this article; however, the regional importance of the soninke gambare as the ancestral lute takes on extra significance in our discussion of the song ‘poyi’. the ngòniba was the only melody instrument that segu jeliw played during the time of the segu empire. there is no evidence that either the kora or the maninka balafon ever made their way to the courts of the middle niger valley. so emblematic of the bamana tradition is the lute, that bamanangòni is used as a generic term to describe bamana music (brandes and malé ). l. durán evidence for the existence of the ngòni as the favoured instrument of segu bamana’s rulers comes from oral tradition, as in the following extract from an epic recitation by kabiné sissoko: da monzon reigned in segu, the city of balanzans [acacias] figure . bassekou kouyaté at the niger near his village, garana, holding the bamana ngòniba. note the slight waist on the resonator, the bridge attached to the end of the neck, and four strings. source: thomas dorn, , by permission. c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t figure . the gimbri, played by a member of the gnawa brotherhood in essaouira, morocco, . source: aq c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t journal of african cultural studies where the tonjons [slave army] had built a palace with seven vestibules thirty-five guitars [ngònis] flattered the ears of the king (kesteloot , ) this may be hyperbole; it is usual for jeliw to boast of their importance in pre-colonial times. however, a twentieth-century descendant of the diarra dynasty, gaoussou diarra, attested that his ancestor monzon diarra (who ruled segu from to ) had in his entourage jeliw who were ‘fearless warriors, a law unto themselves … they took the best horses, chose the best women, and wore a silver bracelet on their left arm and a gold earring on their right ear’ (sauvageot, quoted in kesteloot and dumestre , – , fn. my translation). tayiru ban- bera’s epic recitation places the jeli tinyetigiba danté at the centre of the intrigues that unfold at the court of segu during the rule of da monzon diarra. it is danté who advises da monzon at all times on all matters of both war and love. despite the descriptions of large ensembles of lutes at the court of segu, the only time such an orchestra has existed in living memory is when bassekou kouyaté brought ngòni players to perform at the presidential palace in september , as part of the th anni- versary of independence celebrations. otherwise, the bamana ngòniba is usually played on its own or with one other ngòni, accompanying recitation (see for example, frobenius , – ; kesteloot and dumestre ; and also recordings of fotigui diabaté, in brandes and malé ). ‘falling a little differently’ – ‘poyi’ and the blues we now return to the piece called ‘poyi’, with which this investigation began, and its possible links with the blues. as we have seen in the description by the kouyaté brothers in garana, ‘poyi’ is a tune played to accompany recitations of praise for bravery – as are many other pieces in the mande jeli repertoire. but there is a special ethos to ‘poyi’. poyi is a sacred [ritual] piece. it recalls three things: new life, fresh blood, fresh excrement. it’s a tune that you make an oath on. if you swear on poyi that you will do something, you’re obliged to fulfil your promise, or otherwise, you’d better hide behind your mother! it’s like janjun, but more powerful. janjun is for the griots, but poyi is for the true nobility. if a noble swears on poyi and doesn’t keep his word, he’ll be at the bottom of the ladder of his entire race. it’s like that. (bassekou kouyaté, personal communication, london ) how can such oral testimony be corroborated? the picture is complicated by the paucity of recordings with the title ‘poyi’ (or similar spellings). a bit of detective work is therefore required. by piecing together evidence from ethnolinguistics, a few local recordings, transcriptions of epic recitations and references in obscure literary texts, a convincing case emerges for this tune as being different from all other bamana tunes. in essence, it is an instrumental accompaniment over which oaths would be sworn, or war captives would take their decision to live as slaves or die as warriors. one of the few named recordings of the piece, called ‘poi’, is found on a cassette featuring banzoumana sissoko, the ‘old lion’, who (as already stated) was one of the most influential and respected musicians of the post-independence era. the exact provenance or date of this recording is not known, but it most probably was recorded for radio mali in the s. interestingly, the other two pieces on the cassette are both major ‘ritual’ pieces in the mande jeli repertoire: ‘sunjata’ and ‘janjon’. on the recording banzoumana accompanies himself on the ngòniba; the traditional iron rattle placed on the end of the neck can be heard clearly. the piece begins with a sung recitation, but quickly turns into an instrumental performance – probably the only l. durán instrumental that the old lion ever recorded. bassekou states that there are three or four regional variants of ‘poyi’, all of which are ‘minor’ pentatonic and in slow / , and that banzoumana – bassekou’s grandfather – had his own individual way of playing it. another instrumental recording, cited as ‘poyi, le blues du griot’ is played by the musician amadou diarra on the ngòniba. there are surely many others, for which further research is required (figure ). the polysemous vocable poyi (with its variant spellings: poui, pui, puyi, poi) may carry as much weight as the music itself. poyi is listed in the main bamana-french dictionary as a ‘poem or epic – griot vocabulary’, and also as a verb, ‘to appear suddenly’ (bailleul ). its use is widespread in the countryside of southern and central mali, where it denotes strength and exceptional bravery. some informants have told me that it is onomatopoeic, conveying the noise of an arrow or sword slicing the air, or a scythe cutting through grasses. in the wasulu region, which has produced some of mali’s most popular music over the past two decades, poyi is a term for praising a strong farmer or hunter. ‘poyi’ or ‘poyi sensen’ is the name of the first song that one learns to play on the kamalengòni. the wassoulou musician kokanko sata explains that ‘poyi sensen was the first song i learnt – it means a strong worker, a brave young man – poyi sensen means to walk slowly, in front, steadily, without fear’ (personal com- munication with the author, ). in her study of wassoulou music, heather maxwell considers that figure . a local cassette copy of a radio mali recording by banzoumana sissoko [using the spelling bazoumana]. source: http://wrldsrv.blogspot.co.uk/ / /old-lion.html (accessed august ). c ol ou r on li ne , b /w in pr in t journal of african cultural studies poyi is a borrowed word from the specialized jeli vocabulary but its meaning is polyvalent. poyi, also meaning foli in bamanankan, means a poem, an epic, to greet, salute, thanks, and speak. it is a heavily weighted word … (maxwell , – ) ‘poyi’ was also the name of a song from the upper niger in guinea, accompanied on the dan (a now almost extinct calabash-resonated pluriarc that was one of the precursors of the wasulu youth harp). meaning ‘going’, ‘poyi’ was ‘dedicated to war veterans and young men who achieved something special for the public good’ (camara , ). coumba sidibé, one of the pioneers of wassoulou, recorded a popular track entitled poui- kanpoui. it opens with a man exclaiming ‘poyi! pouikanpoui!’, the sound of which is echoed with ringing harmonics on the kamalengoni (youth harp). in fact, it is not uncommon to hear exclama- tions of ‘poyi’ at the beginnings of bamana songs, articulated in a plosive manner, as if conjuring the sound of a bullet whistling through the air. (the late lobi traoré, bamana guitarist and singer from segou, whose music has been called the ‘bambara blues’, often opened his performances at nightclubs in bamako by shouting ‘poyi!’.) i have also heard that the term poyi was shouted during wrestling matches in mali during the first decades of independence, to encourage cham- pion wrestlers. such exclamations are also found in the line-by-line transcription of a little-known episode from the bamana segu epic, concerning the siege of jonkoloni (french spelling dionkoloni), a well-guarded fortress town some km northwest of segou, during the reign of da monzon ( – ). the story goes that da monzon wished to annex the town to his empire, but, according to the jeliw, jonkoloni had recourse to great mystic power, capable of rebuffing all the attempts of da monzon diarra’s dreaded tònjòn army. the story revolves around a hero by the name of silamakan, and there are many overlaps with a fulbe epic, silamaka et poullori (see belcher ). kabiné sissoko, a bamana jeli originally from segou, performed a recitation of ‘dionkoloni’ in bamako in for the french scholars, kesteloot and dumestre, accompanying himself on the ngòniba. sissoko had been the apprentice of banzoumana sissoko, the ‘old lion’, for six years (kesteloot and dumestre , ), and he may well have learnt the tune from his master, who was the first to record ‘jonkoloni’. in kesteloot and dumestre’s bilingual (bamana-french) transcription of kabiné sissoko’s performance, the term ‘poyi!’ occurs from time to time at beginnings and endings of sections – a kind of sonic and metaphorical representation of power: da [monzon] declared that he would never give up the fight to jonkoloni; jonkoloni said she [the town] would never fear da monzon. poyi! (kesteloot and dumestre , ); mariheri of jonkoloni claims that he can drink the poyi juice … ( kesteloot and dumestre , ); poyi! iron slurry, cold water that puts out the fire, the big drum that blocks the path, the madman who settles in the ruin, the stranger with a dirty head at the end of the field (kesteloot and dumestre , ); jonkoloni is a wasps’ nest, a scorpions’ nest, it’s a city of valiant knights, this is the truth! and now, poyi! (kesteloot and dumestre , ). (translations mine) there is, however, one view that poyi was a bamana genre of recent origin, connected to the rise of radio broadcasting in mali. the malian anthropologist and politician pascale baba couloubaly stated the ‘poi’ tends towards fantasy and boisterousness, as can be seen in the performances of jeli baba sisoko and in those of the ‘poikanpoi’ group. jeli baba sissoko is a well-known griot and radio announcer whose tuesday evening broadcasts have attracted a substantial audience both in mali and in the malian diaspora. the tuesday evening ‘poi’ is a new style of narrative that has borrowed l. durán from all the traditional genres, while establishing a renewed focus on eroticism, luxury, wealth, and the miraculous. in doing so, jeli baba loosely translates tales from the thousand and one nights into the bamana language and adopts the technique of segou, thus redrawing, according to his own imagination, the countenance of a brave and warlike feudal bamana society that has been morally undermined by women and money. (couloubaly , ) couloubaly’s description may focus on a new interpretation of ‘poyi’, but it undoubtedly has res- onances with the meanings that have already been explored in this article. it also mirrors an important but overlooked literary source on middle niger epics – a little-known publication in german by leo frobenius, who travelled around africa in the early twentieth century collecting oral traditions. volume six of frobenius’ ( ) -volume publication describes a series of heroic songs entitled ‘pui’ (clearly a variant of poyi) collected amongst a soninke community in benin. belcher, a scholar of african oral literature, questions whether these texts are genuinely of soninke origin, ‘for in fact the discernable language is more often than not bamana, and the cul- tural horizon involved belongs not to single group but to a sort of generic heroic world that in modern and reliable transcriptions is best represented among the fula’ (belcher , ). conrad, too, believed that many of frobenius’ conclusions are highly questionable … and the possibility of the existence of the dausi and of the related genre of shorter material called pui as perceived by him, should be studied further before being accepted as having been part of west african tradition. (conrad and fisher : fn. ). nevertheless frobenius’ description seems to confirm the evidence presented here on poyi and suggests that poyi was once a much more widespread performance genre than it is now. it is unli- kely that knowledge of this rather obscure and old text in german, never republished and only available as a rare book in some libraries, would have fed back into the tradition. frobenius defines pui as a collection of songs recounting the stories of heroes of the region known as kala in the northeast of segou province; he states that every griot (he uses the term dialli [jeli], though mostly he does not cite indigenous names) knows at least one of these songs, though not all of them, nor are they performed as a unity or continuous story, unlike another genre that he cites, the dausi. frobenius explains that it was difficult to compile a com- plete document of the pui, partly because ‘titles differ’. thus, pui was a genre, not a specific piece (frobenius , ). he also provides detailed and accurate line drawings (frobenius , ) of what he describes as the ‘bard’s lute from segu’ which elsewhere he calls ‘djuma koni’ (fro- benius , ), but in the stories just calls ‘guitar’. the pui stories frobenius relates are infused with the kinds of bamana values mentioned earlier in this article. they extol the virtues of bravery and honour, of keeping one’s word. the metaphorical language is so idiomatic to that of the jeliw, that it is difficult to imagine that fro- benius could have made it up, and it contains some interesting references to the pui itself. at least one of the stories concerns a ‘hero’ from kala, sirrani korro samba, and a jeli, signana samba. one day, while sirrani’s wife is travelling, she is surrounded by ‘heroes’ from segu, on the lookout for booty. she said: ‘what kinds of robbers and vagabonds are you that even a respectable woman draws your attention? aren’t you ashamed to be standing around in the sun with your thievish thoughts, so that i can see each one?’ amazed, one of the sixty heroes said: ‘woman, what gives you the courage to speak thus to the sixty foremost heroes of segu?’ sirrani korro samba’s wife said: ‘oh, what great heroes you are, daring to talk so boldly to a woman. just wait till my husband comes: he’ll teach you to fart from fear … and there will soon be an end to your splendid courage in front of a woman.’ signana samba, the jeli, struck on his guitar and said, ‘if the courage of the husband of this woman does not belong in the pui, then at least one should sing about the quick-witted responses of this woman. woman, who is your husband?’ journal of african cultural studies sirrani korro samba’s wife answered: ‘who my husband is? do you really want to know? then you should hurry to look for mouse holes in the fields and birds’ nests in the trees and hide there with your ponies. it’s from there that you can best get to know my husband: but take care not to be trampled underfoot by his horse.’ massassi diadierri said: ‘woman, you absolutely must accompany us to segu, so that the king can learn something out of the ordinary. has anyone ever heard such a bird sing? onwards to segu.’ the wife warns the heroes that her husband sirrani is drunk, and therefore especially danger- ous. when sirrani turns up, he takes three of the heroes prisoner, and the jeli taps on his lute and sings: ‘you heroes of segu, consider that you are sixty men who have been poisoned by a woman’s mouth, and must now be slaughtered as sick people. just think, that you are heroes, you sixty men from segu.’ then the jeli rode up to the woman and said: ‘if this matter is ever to be sung in the pui as it deserves to be, then we must get a jeli to do so, for these men running away are certainly not going to tell the story. but if the jeli reports this matter in the pui, at that point he will be far away from the brave woman he has got to know that he wishes to sing about, too far for her to be able to make him a gift.’ thereupon the wife of sirrani korro samba took off one of her heavy gold earrings and gave it to the jeli. the story continues with the jeli creating on the spot a song that he calls ‘one-sixty’, with which he taunts the heroes of segu by insinuating that the of them had been defeated by the one hero from kala. the jeli refers to ‘the pui’ several times as if it were a medium through which brave deeds would be recounted, almost like a column in a newspaper. for instance, when the heroes have returned to segu – or rather, those who have survived and not been taken captives by sirrani – the ruler demands that the jeli explain the meaning of ‘one-sixty’. the heroes all gathered in the evening. the jeli had hung his sixty-one gold rings on his guitar. the king asked: ‘what is in pui?’ samba said: ‘one-sixty.’ they all looked at him. signana samba asked massassi diadierri: ‘how does one keep one’s word, half or whole?’ massassi diadierri said: ‘one keeps one’s word whole’, and the jeli said ‘one-sixty’ … (frobenius , – ) frobenius’ descriptions of the pui are consistent with ‘poyi’ as performed and later described to me by bassekou kouyaté and his family in garana, on that day in . they are also consistent with the poyi songs in the wasulu region, and the exclamations of poyi! during kabiné sissoko’s recitation of ‘dionkoloni’, and by bamana musicians in general. the difficulty of finding many named recordings of ‘poyi’ could well reflect the fact that it is more of a generic concept than a specific tune, connected with a vanished cult of bravery on the battlefield, and, as such, is fading from memory amongst the younger generation of singers. it is also sometimes performed with the title of ‘mbawdi’, a tune with which it shares various musical features. in a sense, the most important thing about ‘poyi’ is not so much what it might have sounded like during the era of bamana segu, or whether indeed, as several musicians have expressed, it can be seen as ‘the original bamana blues’. if, via the memories of captives, ‘poyi’ and other bamana tunes ever did reach the new world, they would in any case have most certainly been recreated in a ‘thoroughly atlantic way’. perhaps more to the point is that ‘poyi’ is a window on the role of bamana jeli music as part of the little researched and complex musical traditions of mali’s middle niger valley, and their relationship with the blues. conclusion mali is frequently cited as one of the sources of the blues, yet the discussion is not nuanced, since there is almost no research available on the music of the middle niger valley, and, until very recently, not many recordings either. bamana jeli music is one of these traditions. its musical l. durán resonances with the blues and with the banjo have had recent exposure on the international stage through the work of the ngòni player bassekou kouyaté. this article has attempted to document the historical reasons for these similarities, taking the little-known piece ‘poyi’ as its starting point, suggesting that the context in which it was played, before and after battles, to warriors and war captives, and its ritual or ‘sacred’ ethos, provide an important missing piece in the quest for the roots of the blues. the article provides the first detailed account of bamana jeli music, with its emblematic instrument the ngòniba, its origins in the bamana segu empire, its slow, bluesy tempo, pentatonic scales, male ethos, and lyrics that glorify fighting and bloodshed. although bamana music is one of several middle niger valley musical cultures that share traits with the rural blues of the deep south, it may have been the principal conduit for the trans- atlantic flows of these traits, in view of segu’s culture of warfare during the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries, which generated thousands of slaves. they may have had a broader cultural impact than their small numbers would imply, perhaps even recreating the sonic memory of the last piece of music they might have heard before being sent westwards. in the words of kabiné sissoko: ‘and now, poyi!’ notes . throughout this article i use two spellings for the region of segou and its capital town. segou is the french spelling that is widely used on maps and in literature, as french is mali’s official language, while segu is the official dnafla spelling (direction nationale de l’alphabetisation fonctionnelle et de la linguistique appliquée). i use these different spellings to distinguish between references to pre-colonial segu (cf. conrad ) versus present-day segou (the town and region). . in keeping with most english-language mande scholarship, i have chosen to use the term bamana rather than ‘bambara’, the former being an endonym (that is, the term from the bamana language itself), while the latter is mainly used in french-language literature and conversation (and also by some other ethni- cities to refer to the bamana). see vydrine ( , ) for detailed discussion of the term bamana. in general, i have used dnafla spelling for bamana terms and song titles, except for surnames which are written with french orthography. . at this stage, in , bassekou had yet to record his first solo album, segu blue (one of the first inter- national recordings showcasing the bamana ngòni). . the story of dò kamissa the buffalo woman is one of the best-known episodes of the sunjata epic, and there are dozens of versions of it. see conrad ( , – ) for a line-by-line transcription of one version. . for a full account of this empire as told by a bamana jeli, see conrad ( ). . more discussion of this is found later on in the article. the main study to date of mande music (charry a), for example, does not include bamana jeli music. . the blues scholar paul oliver points to the ‘“blue notes” created by ... slide and sideways pressure on the string” as an intrinsic feature of the blues (oliver , ). . this project eventually turned into segu blue, the first of two albums that i produced by bassekou kouyaté and his group ngoniba (durán a). . a version of ‘poyi’ by bassekou kouyaté can be heard on track of the album segu blue. another version by bassekou can be seen in a live performance at the royal albert hall in at http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka ertcqupo. (accessed march ). other recorded versions of ‘poyi’ by other malian artists are cited later on in this article. . charry states that ‘all the pieces played by jelis are named and have some kind of story behind them ... [they] are usually dedicated to a single person, such as a great leader, warrior, or patron’ (charry a, ). . see charry, camara, and jensen ( : ) for discussion of the concept of shame as ‘a crucial orga- nizing factor in mande society’. . i have been working with musicians in mali since , primarily as researcher but also as music pro- ducer and broadcaster. i have known bassekou kouyaté and his family since the early s, but it was only in that i began researching bamana music, following the encounter described above, which culminated in two albums by bassekou kouyaté featuring the ngòni (see durán a and ). in journal of african cultural studies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka ertcqupo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka ertcqupo addition, from to , i spent long periods in mali working on a project to document children learning music in griot families, in garana amongst other locations, funded by an ahrc beyond text major grant, ‘growing into music’ ( – ). research in segou during that project has con- tributed significantly to the present article (see https://www.growingintomusic.co.uk). . (radio interview with jay rutledge, for bayern , bayerischer rundfunk, bavaria.) ndoondo is one of the fulbe genres of professional music; see for example loncke ( ); it is also mentioned in the reci- tation of the ‘siege of jonkoloni’ (kesteloot and dumestre , ). ‘seygalare’ is the title of one of ali farka’s early recordings, on the album radio mali, wcd . . http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/id/ /gerhard+kubik- (accessed june , ). . while kubik is right that touré’s success paved the way for others in mali to be labelled as blues artists (kubik , ), he is misinformed about aspects of touré’s life; for example, he did not spend long periods of time in europe, or even in bamako; in fact, he was well known to all those who knew him as someone who was openly antipathetic to life in europe, and who chose to spend as much of his time as possible farming in niafunke. . see for example the following websites, suggesting connections between the senegambian jola akont- ing with the banjo. the name akonting is borrowed from the mandinka kontingo (a variant of ngòni): http://www.myspace.com/akonting; http://www.myspace.com/uncleshlomo; http://www.myspace.com/ banjoroots/blog. . this is quoted from a line about drinking alcohol, recited by tayiru banbera, and cited later on in this section. . the lack of performance contexts for bamana epics is discussed later on. . an example of this is the song ‘mbowdi’ on the album segu blue (durán a). ‘mbowdi’, its place in the bamana repertoire and its fulbe origins are discussed later on in this article. . an example of this is the how the jelimuso (female jeli) bako dagnon got her name. her paternal grand- father, bouloukoumba dagnon, took her grandmother, bako diarra, as ‘booty’ in the late s, when passing through segu, during the wars between the french army and almami samory touré. bako dagnon (personal communication ). . see conrad ( , – ) for a concise description of the bamana of segu, their language, social structure and religious beliefs, and – for references to the many other published variants. . al-hajj shaykh umar tall founded the umarian state, which ruled until when segou fell to the french army under general achinard. . tayiru banbera however recites that this was not the ‘real fasa for da’, citing instead a chorus ‘rooster of the canoe-bow, take us forward with you. one chief along cannot be a whole army’ (banbera in conrad , ). ‘ask da for me’ (nyininka, da nyininka) has been recorded in many popular variants by many artists and groups, including the ensemble instrumental national, the super biton, banzoumana sissoko, koni koumaré, and most recently bassekou kouyaté and ngoniba. for further discussion of this song see conrad ( , ). . the belief in jinns as the source of some kind of divine musical inspiration is also prevalent in mande thought (charry a, ). see kubik ( , ) for discussion of the ‘demonic’ reputation of blues musicians and their use of ‘evil magic’. . this speech, in french, was recorded as part of a radio documentary entitled ‘bambara blues’, recorded in and around segou, broadcast on bbc radio on march , http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ p xlv (accessed july ). . i am grateful to professor owen wright of soas for his translations from the original german. . the first kora players to tour the usa, in the early s, were alhaji bai konte and jali nyama suso, both from the gambia. jali nyama was the main informant in the pioneering research on mandinka kora by knight ( , ). . see durán ( a and b), charry ( , ), coolen ( , – ) for further discussion of this tune in the mandinka kora and wolof xalam repertoire. . see bird ( , – ) for further discussion of ‘captured’ tunes. for the story of how this tune may have originated in the mande heartland and been brought to (and captured by) segu, see discussion of the ‘river tune’ in durán ( a). . it should be noted that there are other kinds of bamana music which are not the domain of jeliw, such as bara drumming and dancing to the bara, a calabash drum, and balani (non-jeli xylophones). they overlap with jeli music in that they may also be perceived as ‘warlike’ (see brandes and malé et al. , track ), and may reference the segu empire, but their musicians do not recite the epic, which is always considered the work of the jeliw. all these different factors tend to cloud the perception of what actually constitutes bamana jeli music. to complicate the issue, several well-known malian l. durán https://www.growingintomusic.co.uk http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/id/ /gerhard+kubik- http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p xlv http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p xlv ‘artistes’ (a term used in mali to describe non-jeli musicians) such as amadou & mariam, djeneba seck, rokia traoré, and the late lobi traoré base their music on bamana styles, but not the jeli repertoire, with its stories of segu. . see strawn ( ), the most detailed study to date of the music of wasulu hunters. . to hear a recording of prisoner’s talking blues, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zadljj kpme (accessed july , ). for more information on the artist and the album, see http://thedailyguru. blogspot.co.uk/ / /january- -robert-pete-willams-prisoners.html (accessed february , ). . for further information on this lp, see http://www.maliwatch.org/socio-eco/hadi/recital_dah_ monzon.htm (accessed march ). . another version of ‘bambugu nce’ can be heard on bassekou kouyaté’s album i speak fula, entitled ‘bambugu blues’. a faster version of this tune, renamed ‘cheikhna demba’, can be heard on the album new ancient strings (see duran ), featuring kora duets. it was significantly adopted by ortm (mali’s national television station) as their signature tune from c. – . . ensemble instrumental national du mali. lp recording, kunkan ko . . . source: http://wrldsrv. blogspot.co.uk/search?q=ensemble+national (accessed december ). . versions of this have been widely recorded, especially during the s and early s by popular jeli- musow (female jelis) such as ami koita and tata bambo kouyaté, to praise the malian benefactor babani sissoko. see schulz ( , , ), and eyre ( , – ). . see the transcription by rosemary bock in conrad ; one of the few notations of a bamana jeli tune, it is an accurate representation of the melody although it is usually played in / not / as transcribed here. an example of bakari jan can be found on segu blue, track ‘juru nani’ (see duran a). . see for example le hoddu peul/the fulani hoddu, compact disc (ocora, ). see also hawa dramé’s ‘mbaoudi’ on her cassette, syllart syl . . ali farka touré, red & green, two compact discs, world circuit wcd . spelling of the track is ‘m’baudy’. originally recorded at radio mali in , re-released by world circuit in . . demba fadiga – camara production présente hommage abrahima diakite. compact disc. . see charry ( a: chapter ) and counsel ( ) for discussion of the modernization of maninka music. . one of the few recordings of the post-independence years that specifically references the blues is the guinean piece entitled ‘kadia blues’, which is in minor key and slow triple time. it was originally com- posed and recorded by the guinean guitarist kanté facelli, and later immortalized by the dance band kélétigui et ses tambourinis. ‘kadia blues’ can be heard on the cd the syliphone years – (stern’s african records). kanté facelli and his musical partner keita fodéba were, incidentally, very influential guitarists in the region; ali farka touré cites keita fodéba as the first guitarist he ever heard, and it could be that some of touré’s initial ideas about the blues came from here. . for example, heather maxwell notes that the music of wasulu – which is pentatonic – is ‘just a small part of a larger genre of popular song that is only different in terms of its distinction from jeliya, which uses a heptatonic mode’ (maxwell , ; my italics). . cf. the music of hunters’ associations in southern mali which is also considered to be cèfoli (strawn , ). . at the time of writing, in march , there is however no clear indication of how recent political events in mali will affect the once vibrant music scene in the country. . see bird ( , ). the non-enslavement of jeliw has been cited to me by virtually every jeli i have spoken to. . see for example the playing technique of diadia fadiga and his ensemble, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kcoimcgwn s&feature=g-vrec (accessed july ). . this is my translation from kesteloot’s french (no bamana version of the epic is supplied), where the term ‘guitars’ is used, but ‘guitar’ has been used as a synonym for the ngòni by many authors including frobenius ( ), so it seems appropriate to reinstate the indigenous term ‘ngòni’. . tayiru banbera accompanied himself on the ngòni for the performances transcribed by conrad (see conrad , ), but when performing for dumestre a decade earlier he was accompanied by another ngòni player called biton (no surname given) (dumestre , ). . during the making of the album kulanjan with a group of malian musicians including bassekou kouyaté, the african-american bluesman taj mahal stated ‘all you do is take these melodies and make them fall a little differently, and you have the blues’ (taj mahal, personal communication to the author in the studio while recording the album kulanjan ). see sleeve notes to taj mahal & toumani diabate: kulanjan, compact disc, hannibal hncd ( ). journal of african cultural studies http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zadljj kpme http://thedailyguru.blogspot.co.uk/ / /january- -robert-pete-willams-prisoners.html http://thedailyguru.blogspot.co.uk/ / /january- -robert-pete-willams-prisoners.html http://www.maliwatch.org/socio-eco/hadi/recital_dah_monzon.htm http://www.maliwatch.org/socio-eco/hadi/recital_dah_monzon.htm http://wrldsrv.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=ensemble+national http://wrldsrv.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=ensemble+national http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcoimcgwn s&amp;feature=g-vrec http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcoimcgwn s&amp;feature=g-vrec . bassekou recited the three in bamanan: a be ni kènè wele (it recalls new life), a be joli kènè wele (it recalls fresh blood), a be bo kènè wele (it recalls fresh excrement). for discussion of ‘janjun’, a song in the maninka repertoire also considered ritual (see charry , – ). . it can be heard at http://wrldsrv.blogspot.co.uk/ / /old-lion.html. . it can be heard at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbxcai t ye. . see durán ( , ). . bambara blues was the title of one of lobi traoré’s albums. compact disc, buda records, . . [ ] musique du mali. volume . banzoumana sissòko. le vieux lion. volume . bärenreiter-musica- phon. bm l . lp disc. there are very few other recorded versions of ‘jonkoloni’. one listed as ‘djongloni’ is by the female bamana singer koni coumaré accompanied on ngòni, recorded in . see http://www.radioafrica.com.au/discographies/malian.html (accessed july ). other versions include ‘ja dugu kolo ba’ by bamana singer and guitarist bassi kouyate, on his album entitled mali: chants des griots bambara, and ‘jonkoloni’ by bassekou kouyaté on segu blue (durán a). . i am grateful to professor owen wright of soas university of london for translating the german into english. the source of the texts quoted below is frobenius ( , – ). references ames, david. . “wolof music of senegal and the gambia”, sleeve notes, long-playing discs folkways fe . arnoldi, mary jo. . playing with time: art and performance in central mali. bloomington/ indianapolis: indiana university press. aq austen, ralph, ed. . in 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manding-english dictionary (maninka, bamana). vol. , st petersburg: dimitry bulanin publishing house. zahan, dominique. . the bambara. leiden: brill. aq journal of african cultural studies http://www.aijournal.com/article/view/ai. / http://www.aijournal.com/article/view/ai. / [pdf] no one is an island. | semantic scholar skip to search formskip to main content> semantic scholar's logo search sign increate free account you are currently offline. some features of the site may not work correctly. 	doi: . /science. . . corpus id: no one is an island. @article{oloughlin nooi, title={no one is an island.}, author={luke s o'loughlin}, journal={science}, year={ }, volume={ }, pages={ } } 	luke s o'loughlin 	published 	history, medicine 	science my supervisor waved goodbye and boarded a plane. i had just started my ph.d. studying invasive species on a remote oceanic island, where i would be spending most of the next years bashing through rainforest to count invertebrates. my supervisor had done his own ph.d. here on christmas island in the indian ocean decades earlier. he had found me a place to stay and introduced me to the handful of other ecologists who were managing the national park or conducting their own research, but i wasn… expand view on pubmed science.sciencemag.org save to library create alert cite launch research feed share this paper topics from this paper 	confusion 	speech 	dropping 	community 	bands related papers 	abstract 	topics 	related papers stay connected with semantic scholar sign up about semantic scholar semantic scholar is a free, ai-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the allen institute for ai. learn more → resources datasetssupp.aiapiopen corpus organization about usresearchpublishing partnersdata partners   faqcontact proudly built by ai with the help of our collaborators terms of service•privacy policy the allen institute for ai by clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our privacy policy, terms of service, and dataset license accept & continue the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community a dissertation submitted to the temple university graduate board in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree doctor of philosophy by tatum l. petrich may, examining committee members: miles orvell, committee chair, english and american studies sue-im lee, english eli c. goldblatt, english laura levitt, external member, religion and women’s studies, temple university ii © copyright by tatum l. petrich all rights reserved iii abstract the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community seeks to revise our understanding of the beat community and literary tradition by critically engaging the lives and work of five women beat writers: diane di prima, joyce johnson, hettie jones, carol bergé, and mimi albert. this dissertation argues that, from a position of marginality, these women developed as protofeminist writers, interrogating the traditional female gender role and constructing radical critiques of normative ideas in fiction and poetry in ways that resisted the male beats’ general subordination of women and that anticipated the feminist movement of the late s and s. a project of recovery and criticism, the girl gang provides literary biographies that explore how each writer’s experience as a marginalized female writer within an otherwise countercultural community affected the development of her work; it also analyzes a range of works (published and unpublished texts from various genres, written from the early s through the turn of the twenty-first century) in order to illustrate how each writer distinctively employs and revises mainstream and beat literary and cultural conventions. the dissertation’s critical analyses examine each writer’s engagement in various literary, cultural, and social discourses, drawing attention to their incisive and provocative treatment of thematic issues that are central to the postwar countercultural critique of hegemonic norms—including fundamental beat questions of identity, authenticity, and subjectivity—and that are developed through experimentation with literary conventions. ultimately, the girl gang argues that the literary achievements of the new york city women beats collectively reconceptualize the prevailing notion of the beat community and canon. iv table of contents page abstract……………………………………………………………………...………iii introduction: redefining the image of the beat writer: women beats and protofeminism in the beat literary community……….........................v chapter . “so here i am the coolest in new york”: hip slang and the female bohemian in diane di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward………….…………………………………………...……………… . “the outlaws were about to welcome another member”: female subjectivity and (un)gendered social space in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance…………....…...…........ . “the object of everyone’s attention”: interracial motherhood and the postmodernist dilemma in hettie jones’s in care of worth auto parts…………………………….… epilogue: “we are members of that anomalous group of the s”: carol bergÉ and mimi albert…………………………………………......... bibliography…………………………………………………………………….... v introduction redefining the image of the beat writer: women beats and protofeminism in the beat literary community the social organization which is most true of itself to the artist is the girl gang. why, everyone would agree, that’s absolutely absurd! —joyce johnson, minor characters when the beats emerged in the late s and s, mainstream american literature was generally considered “traditionalist” and “academic.” in contrast to representative writers of the period, such as poets t.s. eliot and richard wilbur, and novelists saul bellow and john updike, beat writers experimented with literary form and subject as part of their overt condemnation of contemporary society’s social and political values. with the movement’s defining and controversial publications in the mid- to late s—allen ginsberg’s howl ( ), jack kerouac’s on the road ( ), and william burroughs’s naked lunch ( )—and the obscenity trial of howl in as well as the ban of naked lunch in , the beats established themselves as antithetical to the mainstream’s “academic” literary culture. they were lauded and admired by young rebellious readers, yet criticized and even mocked by the mainstream media and leading intellectuals. however unwittingly, ginsberg and kerouac (and burroughs to a lesser extent) quickly became spokesmen for the beat generation, and this literary community and cultural movement as represented by these writers and their publications became synonymous with a decidedly male ethos. the image of on the road’s sal paradise and dean moriarty, for example, escaping normative male expectations for work and marriage and instead pursuing “girls, visions, everything” on their own terms became the epitome of what it meant to be “beat.” in this representative text and in the beat vi community itself, women were generally considered by the men as mere “experiences,” or as kerouac writes, as “girls [who] say nothing and wear black.” many of the male beats expected women to play the role of lover, housewife, mother, or secretary, and in fact, several of the women beats were romantically involved with and helped support the men. as such, women beats are often positioned in the background of prominent beat texts—fictional and nonfictional—as well as in photographs, letters, and interviews documenting the period. however, many women beats were also aspiring writers who set out, like the men, to radically redefine normative ideas through writing and through their involvement in various literary endeavors, such as the publication of small magazines. nevertheless, women beat writers were subject to conservative postwar notions of the female role and were largely marginalized by their male counterparts accordingly. the attitude of the male beats toward women writers is aptly expressed in a “dream letter” by john clellon holmes (recorded by allen ginsberg in ): “the social organization which is most true of itself to the artist is the boy gang.” the male beats’ assertion that the “true” organization of artists is a “boy gang” reflects their perpetuation of the dominant gender discourse of the period, and in light of this attitude, beat women consistently faced gender-based discrimination—from male beats as well as from the press, critics, and publishers—in their efforts to become writers. importantly, in the epigraph to this chapter, we see how female beat writers resisted their subordination as women within the beat community and their exclusion from the role of artist. the passage in the epigraph comes from beat writer joyce johnson’s memoir and represents her attempt to claim social status for female artists: “the social organization which is most true of itself to the artist is the girl gang. vii why, everyone would agree, that’s absolutely absurd!” in the italicized line, johnson revises the passage by holmes/ginsberg quoted above, appropriating for female artists the recognition of male artists as defining the “true” social organization. the subsequent line in the epigraph, however, illustrates how her effort is ultimately undermined by society’s general attitude toward the idea of the female artist as on par with the male artist; such a possibility, johnson suggests, is considered “absolutely absurd!” significantly, despite the prolonged struggle of women beats to overcome society’s limited assumptions about female writers, the act of revision itself demonstrated in the epigraph—johnson’s attempt to speak for and claim status for the female artist by rewriting the quotation that epitomizes the male beats’ gender discrimination—signifies what adrienne rich referred to in as an act of “survival.” “until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched,” rich writes, “we cannot know ourselves.” johnson’s deliberate confrontation of the male beats’ attitude toward and treatment of the female artist, and her attempt to “refus[e] the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society” through writing signifies the fundamental achievement of women beat writers. they refused to be resigned to the margins of the beat literary community and instead set out to develop their own voices as writers and their own critique of postwar society, including a critique of hegemonic—and countercultural—gender norms. much of their work, however, has been ignored by literary scholars due to the pervasive image of the beat as an iconoclastic male figure. the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community addresses this limited attention to and the narrow portrayals of these writers as it examines the lives and works of five women beat writers in new york city. i set out to redefine prevailing conceptions of the new york viii city beat literary community by arguing that beat women played an integral role, not merely as support for the male beats, but more significantly as female figures who sought to develop social and political status as artists within this largely male homosocial community. that the women writers were generally marginalized by the male beats and did not foster a female literary community amongst themselves points to the complexity of their experiences within this context and underscores the particular significance of their individual efforts to pursue their literary endeavors while confronted with the limited expectations of their male counterparts. the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community examines these efforts through recovery and criticism. as a recovery project, this dissertation aims to provide more insight into these writers’ lives and bodies of work than is currently available—these writers’ literary accomplishments include major works of prose and poetry and illustrate a range of interests and a diversity of styles. as a work of criticism, this dissertation discusses women beats as writers in their own right, providing readings of select texts in order to show how these writers employ and revise mainstream and beat literary and cultural conventions and engage in questions of subjectivity, identity, and community in ways importantly shaped by the female experience. specifically, the girl gang focuses on the poetry of diane di prima and on the fiction of joyce johnson and hettie jones in the main chapters and on the fiction of carol bergé and mimi albert in the epilogue, including unpublished texts and texts published from the late s through the s. at a time when most publications by beat women are memoirs by sisters, wives, and girlfriends of prominent male beat writers and when publications about beat women include studies of figures such as neal cassady’s wife, ix luanne henderson, in order to provide further insight into beat men’s experiences, this dissertation focuses on beat women whose role in beat history and literature exceeds their personal relationships with the men. some of the writers i discuss here employ beat literary techniques, while others generally use traditional literary conventions to write about beat experiences. regardless of their approach, this study reveals serious writers who, collectively, engage in discourses of subjectivity, the contemporary avant-garde, feminist geography, postmodernism, and interracialism, and in doing so, challenge and extend our understanding of their contributions to the beat literary tradition. the girl gang draws attention to female beats who were writing alongside beat men—literally or figuratively—and whose work has distinctive and significant literary, cultural, social, and political implications. *** my study of the lives and work of women beats is predicated on the role that community played in both the genesis and later development of these understudied women writers. it was within the countercultural community of the beats that these women sought freedom from their stifling homes and conservative postwar society as well as inspiration for their independence and artistic interests. they endeavored to become writers, but, as mentioned above, within this bohemian community they faced the male beats’ perpetuation of the hegemonic female gender role. though the men in general dissented against the conventions of the mainstream, their critique of the male gender norm precluded attention to a critique of the women’s. in light of the male beats’ fundamentally conventional and discriminatory attitude toward women writers within this otherwise countercultural community, female beat x writers faced a paradox. as nonconformists in their own right, women beats were able to escape their families’ restrictive expectations by living on their own amongst fellow bohemians within the new york city beat community, but within this same social space, their work as writers was generally not encouraged nor fostered as part of the community’s reaction against the mainstream. that is, as i explore in more detail shortly, the women beats were part of the beat community in that they had friendships, romantic relationships, apartments, and jobs with male and female writers and artists— indeed, the women beats often financially supported many of the male beats and directly participated in the editing and publishing of beat work while writing on their own—but they did not experience the sense of camaraderie or the support for their writing that the beat men did. as a result, many beat women wrote privately during this period, not sharing their work with other writers—male or female. thus, the mutual support and collaboration that was a defining element of the male beat writer’s experience—and is a defining element of literary communities in general—was lacking for most female beat writers, and as such, the very nature of community is especially complex for the women beats. in light of this complexity, this dissertation examines the women beats’ experiences as burgeoning writers within this context and the impact of these experiences on their writing and on the development of female subjectivity within their work. in order to contextualize this framework, i discuss the basic concept of the literary community as well as its role in american literary history before providing an overview of the development of the beat literary community. xi individual literary communities can each be defined by their own particularities; indeed, each is shaped by its own historical, geographical, social, cultural, and political contexts. i use the term literary community broadly to refer to a group of writers committed to producing writing that reflects, not necessarily similar aesthetics, but common social and artistic values, and perhaps shared political and philosophical beliefs. these values and beliefs often take shape in the community as a reaction against an already established group or literary tradition, as in the case of the beats writing in resistance to the academic tradition of the new critics or of the modernists writing in reaction to the realists before them, for example. such groups of writers are also often involved in related literary endeavors, including the founding of literary magazines, book presses, or publishing houses, as well as the organization of literary readings. almost always, the most basic element of a literary community is the fostering of each other’s work. the central role that community has historically played for writers in the u.s. can be traced from the knickerbocker group in new york city in the early s, to the concord group in massachusetts in the s and s, to the boston brahmins in the s and s, to the modernists in new york city and the “robin’s egg renaissance” in chicago during the s and s, and to the harlem renaissance as well as to the literary renaissance in santa fe, both from the s to the s. following such nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary communities were the several communities contemporary to the beats during the s and s: the san francisco renaissance, the black mountain college school, and the new york school of poets. xii as one of the earliest american literary communities, the concord group helps demonstrate the particular function of community for developing writers. in the mid- nineteenth century, writers such as ralph waldo emerson, nathaniel hawthorne, henry david thoreau, bronson alcott, margaret fuller, herman melville, and walt whitman collaborated with each other and drew inspiration from their concord setting—all of which enabled the production of what would come to define a new national literature. these writers—many of which are identified as transcendentalists —set out to establish an american literature distinct from the european literary tradition, and as perry miller argues, they did so in conjunction with a general resistance to conventional expectations for earning a living. miller writes, “they turn[ed] their protest against what is customarily called the ‘protestant ethic’: they refuse[d] to labor in a proper calling, conscientiously cultivate[d] the arts of leisure, and [strove] to avoid making money.” these writers rebelled against “the materialistic pressures of a business civilization” and fostered a community through which they could pursue their philosophical and artistic interests and develop various styles of literary expression. histories of this literary group emphasize the intertwining of the writers’ personal and literary lives, including various friendships, romantic relationships, and literary inspirations as well as similar political and philosophical beliefs shared amongst them. together, this group of writers held “conversations,” published each other’s works in literary magazines, and ultimately set out to develop a uniquely american literature. importantly, regardless of their common interests and values and relatively similar approaches to writing, each writer is characterized by his or her distinctive writing style, such as emerson’s poetic prose, driven by his reliance on intuition, and whitman’s xiii organic and breath-driven poetry. this representative american literary community illustrates how such a community functions through the development of individual literary practices and aesthetics that are fostered simultaneously through shared attitudes toward the writers’ social, cultural, and political contexts. additionally, the development of the concord literary community reveals the particular significance of its geographical context—that is, the role that place fundamentally plays for literary communities. in the early formation of the concord group, emerson helped convince alcott to move from boston to concord because, as scholar susan cheever explains, “it was in the quieter precincts of concord, calmed by the rhythms of village life, that men could think important thoughts uninterrupted by others’ opinions and obligations.” though the concord writers’ attraction to the rural town of concord presents an interesting contrast to the attraction of the beats to city life (to be discussed below), this emphasis on the distinction between concord and boston— how the former could potentially allow for more intellectual and artistic creativity than the latter—nevertheless highlights the importance of place for the development of a literary community. another example that illustrates the function of place for literary communities is the group of writers in taos, near santa fe, in the early th century. writers such as witter bynner, mary austin, and mabel dodge [luhan] were drawn to the “aesthetic trends developing around architecture in the city” as well as to “positive working conditions for artists there, [and] some aspects of weather, terrain, and [the] proximity of native peoples [“to their ancestral traditions”].” amidst these unique characteristics of the southwestern city, writers found an “artistic milieu and atmosphere of collegiality” xiv that helped foster a literary community. michael davidson likewise emphasizes the particular landscape of san francisco as having influenced the flourishing of writers in the postwar period. he cites “the city’s undeniable physical beauty—its position at the edge of the continent, its hills, its quickly shifting weather patterns, and its wild seacoast” as features that worked in conjunction with its “underground culture” to ultimately become “[an] invariabl[e] central character” in the work of the san francisco renaissance poets. further, the actual shared spaces of the city, “the circles, salons, and bars,” provided the opportunities for “artists [to] invent out of the earthly city a heavenly city of fulfilled potential.” these examples indicate that the role of place for artistic development within literary communities is central, and this will be evident in my study of the women writers of the new york city beat community as well. as for other american literary groups, community provided the beats with an opportunity to develop a collective counterpart to the mainstream in its fostering of nontraditional artistic, spiritual, and philosophical expression. the countercultural nature of the beat community can be traced back to the first group of american bohemians, which took shape in the early decades of the s when avant-garde writers and artists in greenwich village set out to pursue possibilities for cultural transformation as the nation entered a new century. for these earlier bohemians and for the beats, community provided a space within which individuals—particularly nonconformists and artists— could escape and critique the mainstream and its culturally-defined restrictive mandates. as elizabeth wilson argues, bohemianism is undeniably a “collective enterprise,” one that offers an alternative space for those who intend to revolutionize society through art as well as those only somewhat committed to or productive in art. xv ironically, the countercultural beat community was initially formed on the campus of columbia university in the early s. the friendships between columbia students ginsberg, kerouac, lucien carr, and burroughs (a former graduate student), were based not only on a mutual interest in writing, but perhaps more distinctively, on a shared pursuit of what ginsberg referred to as a “new vision”—what edward foster describes as “a new way of understanding the world.” ultimately, what brought these beats together in this community—and the others that would follow—was a common attitude toward the artificiality of american society at the time. in the face of the country’s growing “modernization and homogenization,” the beats sought “a new and authentic space” within which “[they could] found an identity on the bedrock of the naked self, free of compromising cultural and historical accretions, an adamic desire for an experience of freedom, integrity, and authenticity generally unavailable within conventional culture.” regardless of any individual differences in artistic practice, the beats as a group were fundamentally drawn together by a fevered pursuit of the real and authentic—of a lived experience free from the constraints of societal constructs and defined by intimate contact with material reality. and although the new york city beat community began with the friendships of young men, it also attracted young rebellious women, for whom an alternative community had the potential for supporting their own acts of nonconformity—such as dropping out of college, leaving home to live on their own, or immersing themselves in the avant-garde. the experiences of the women within this community may have been quite different from those of their male counterparts, but the men’s and women’s fundamental attraction to new york city bohemia is largely indistinguishable. xvi as mentioned above, new york city itself played a key role in shaping the beats’ attempts to pursue an authentic experience. ann douglas explains that despite the “frightening american empire” growing in certain areas of post-wwii new york city, beat writers found inspiration in neighborhoods that were “then visibly on a downward slide.” for the beats, “the city’s vitality lay in its subterranean life of creative decay, its status as a place, in ginsberg’s words, ‘too vast to know, too/myriad windowed to govern.’” though the male beats traveled all over the world—to mexico, tangiers, and paris, for example—new york city was where they met and began to seek out an authentic american experience; it was where their formative years as writers would take shape, and it would become a central trope in much of their writing. the women beats, on the other hand, did not go “on the road” in the same way the men did, and so they developed as women and as writers strictly within the city—moving out of their parents’ homes, even if only a few blocks away, to explore the city as independent women. in was within new york city that beat women came into their own; they held various jobs, raised children, and wrote and published their work in new york city. thus, new york city was central to the development and writing of the beats in general and of the women beats in particular, and i explore this further as it more specifically applies to the individual writers throughout my discussions of their work. while the new york city beat community emerged as a collective response to what was perceived as the overwhelming and growing confinement of postwar america, it is notably marked by a wide range of aesthetic diversity among its individual writers. indeed, no two beat writers necessarily share the same aesthetic practices—not entirely unlike the concord group discussed earlier. the variety of literary styles among the beats xvii ranges from kerouac’s spontaneous prose method to burroughs’s cut-up method to ginsberg’s whitmanesque breath line as well as to di prima’s vernacular poetics to johnson’s traditional prose style to jones’s postmodern narrative techniques. regardless of this plurality, beat scholars ronna johnson and nancy grace usefully argue that “what is distinctively beat is the historical moment and social context in which its iconoclasms were practiced.” overall, they continue, “beat writers are united fundamentally by their challenges to conservative postwar consumer culture and by their formative mutual associations. … social, artistic, personal, geographical links—literary camaraderie and life relations—underlie most writers’ identification with beat.” despite the women beats’ lack of “literary camaraderie,” this emphasis on various other unifying connections is the logic that underlies my study of the women beats and their experiences within the beat community. it is important to note that although literary communities are often characterized by a plurality, by a diversity of ideas and literary practices, some women beats reject being categorized as part of this literary community. ultimately, however, looking at the women beats—and writers in general—within the context of a literary community, whether they self-identify as a part of the community or not, is useful in examining the myriad ways in which they individually and collectively experience common geographies, social spaces, cultural contexts, and artistic endeavors. the study of a literary community in these terms can reveal how each writer contributes to the particular “literary landscape” as well as what distinguishes the community from their predecessors or contemporaries. grace and ronna johnson argue for the importance of studying writers in the context of communities: xviii it is the function of literary historians and critics to make sense of literature’s evolutions and developments by recognizing and defining schools, movements, and writers’ aesthetic tendencies. and particularly in the recovery of overlooked and negated writers, grouping the beat movement’s female practitioners effects their visibility as artists and makes their literary expressions legible… . following in grace and johnson’s claims about the function of studying writers within the context of a literary community, this dissertation is based on the argument that by studying beat women within the context of the beat literary community, not only do we gain access to writers otherwise absent from literary history, but also we see how their work revises and expands current understandings of the beat community and its literary tradition. the women beats’ marginalization within the beat community as well as within beat studies, though, presents a notable contrast to the general inclusion and recognition of female writers within several different american literary communities that precede the contemporary period. in many of the earlier communities, women writers were leading figures, integral to their community’s literary achievements and various endeavors alongside their male counterparts. these include fuller of the transcendentalists; h.d., gertrude stein, marianne moore, and mina loy of the modernists; harriet monroe of the chicago literary renaissance; jessie fauset and zora neale hurston of the harlem renaissance; and dodge from the santa fe group. a survey of literary communities in the mid-twentieth century including the beats, however, highlights the peripheral status of most women writers. denise levertov and m.c. richards of the black mountain community; barbara guest of the new york school of poets; joanne kyger, helen adam, and lenore kandel of the san francisco renaissance; and the new york city beat writers i examine here—di prima, johnson, jones, bergé, and albert—are almost xix always secondary—if present at all—in discussions and histories of their respective literary communities. charles olson, robert creeley, and robert duncan of black mountain; frank o’hara, john ashberry, kenneth koch, and james schuyler of the new york school; jack spicer, lawrence ferlinghetti, lew welch, philip whalen, gary snyder, and michael mcclure of the san francisco renaissance; and kerouac, ginsberg, burroughs, and gregory corso of the new york city beats—these are the writers almost exclusively associated with these contemporary literary communities. in his discussion of the inescapable politics of inclusion and exclusion within any literary community, michael davidson offers an explanation for this historical disparity. in reference to shari benstock’s study of female modernists in paris, he writes, “salons, circles, and sects became major forums for new aesthetic positions as well as supportive environments for women—heterosexual and lesbian—within masculinist culture.” for example, natalie barney’s salon, benstock explains, “operate[d] as a support group for lesbian women” who were “committed to producing serious art.” and from this woman-centered space, barney led “a feminist effort that would eventually become an endeavor on behalf of lesbian literature and art.” in contrast to the availability of such support for female writers in the early twentieth century, davidson continues, american bohemia of the s lacked all but the most perfunctory recognition of women as artists. without the supportive environment of either an underground salon network or a feminist movement, women writers of the s and early s defined themselves largely within the male ‘circles.’ unlike many female modernist writers, for example, beat women often wrote in isolation without the support of men or women around them, as noted earlier. xx scholars and writers alike provide various explanations for this tendency of contemporary literary communities to be predominantly defined and led by male writers. ronna johnson and grace provide a useful summary: beat has in common with its affiliated literary schools [black mountain college, the new york poets, and the san francisco renaissance] and with the dominant culture from which all emerged unexamined assumptions of women’s intellectual, creative, even sexual inferiority, and in particular, the supposition that women could neither originate nor help to advance the aesthetic and artistic breakthroughs and innovations that galvanized the schools. the general absence of women writers from the literary histories of these contemporary communities does not mean that there were not innovative women writers engaging in key issues of the period. rather, as ronna johnson and grace suggest, the marginalization of women writers within these communities themselves was a direct reflection of the period’s cultural norms. there was a general lack of support from male writers, difficulties getting published as women writers, and the related decision to oftentimes keep their writing private until much later—and this has led to the elision from literary history of women beats and other women writers from affiliated communities. the complex relationship between the women beats and the beat literary community should not preclude attention to how they developed as writers despite these various tensions nor to how they created work with significant literary, cultural, social, and political implications from the margins. indeed, the girl gang explores how precisely from this position, these women developed as protofeminist writers, often exploiting the paradoxical nature of the countercultural community to their own ends. as such, understanding the nature of literary communities broadly and of the beat literary community in particular is central to this project. this dissertation examines the impact of the complexities of the beat women’s experiences within this community on their xxi writing—experiences that were stifling and problematic, as well as generative and inspiring. i examine a variety of connections and disparities between the work of several women beats as a way to illustrate how each writer’s individual experience within the beat community takes shape in her writing and works in conjunction with other women beats’ work to collectively reconceptualize the prevailing notion of the beat community as defined by male writers. *** looking at the actual relationships of the various writers within the beat community helps contextualize how the general differences between the male and female beats’ experiences take shape in their work. the sense of camaraderie that defines the male beats’ experiences within the literary community is represented by their various friendships and influences on each other as developing writers, all of which has been well documented by scholars and the writers themselves. studies of the beats including bruce cook’s the beat generation ( ), john tytell’s naked angels ( ), ann charters’s beats and company ( ), edward hasley foster’s understanding the beats ( ), steve watson’s the birth of the beat generation ( ), matt theado’s the beats ( ), and the more recent brother-souls: john clellon holmes, jack kerouac, and the beat generation by ann charters and sam charters ( ) provide detailed histories of the lives and literature of male beat writers like kerouac, burroughs, ginsberg, corso, snyder, holmes, and cassady—documenting their formative years as individuals and in relation to each other. certainly there were complexities within these various relationships, but of particular importance is the fact that the beat men did not face the issue of whether or not they should or could support each other as writers because of their xxii gender. instead, many male beats unquestionably provided the encouragement and collaboration central to the development of their fellow beat’s work. in contrast, the female beats’ experiences as writers within the community are rarely characterized by such camaraderie—with each other or with the male beats. the women’s relationships with the men were primarily based on romantic relationships, such as johnson and kerouac’s relationship in the late s and jones and leroi jones/amiri baraka’s marriage from to . as i address in more detail in chapter three, jones kept her writing private for many years, even from her husband, who was becoming a well-respected writer of his own during their marriage. johnson, on the other hand, shared some of her early work with kerouac and claims he was encouraging, though the level of encouragement seems somewhat limited. grace explains that, most of the women writers identify males who were sympathetic to their work. however, their story still asserts that the misogynist qualities of beat bohemia did not encourage sisterly relationships to foster the women’s art, did not mentor women artists into the group, and did not validate the women artists as part of the history of the movement. though some of the women may have looked to the beat men as role models— exemplifying through their lives and work the kind of self-defined search for authenticity and independence the women also sought —the men did not play the role of supporter. di prima is an exception in this group of women; although she was romantically linked to baraka, she also forged working relationships with several male beats at the time, including baraka, ginsberg, and kerouac, as well as with writers of affiliated literary communities, such as olson and o’hara. many scholars agree that di prima more fiercely pursued her writing than some of the other women writers; for example, she published her work herself when she couldn’t get it published otherwise. di prima’s xxiii relationship with baraka strained her friendship with jones, however, and although she and johnson went to hunter high school at the same time, they didn’t know each other well. interestingly, during their high school years, johnson didn’t know of other women writers or talk to other women about writing, but di prima recalls sharing her work with fellow female poets at hunter. also, johnson and jones were good friends (and remain friends today), but they did not share their work with each other during the beat period, and johnson was also close with another beat writer, elise cowen, though they also rarely shared their writing with each other, if at all. it is important to note that jones and di prima each contributed to the literary community through their work with baraka on separate projects that supported and published the work of the writers around them. during their marriage, jones and baraka founded a literary magazine, yugen, and book press, totem press; di prima and baraka published the floating bear magazine together beginning in . however, both women recall their major contributions to each endeavor being largely credited to baraka. di prima describes this realization matter-of-factly: though roi and i coedited the bear, and often it was he who got the credit for the whole thing, most of the actual physical work devolved upon me and those friends i could dig up to help me. most of the time. i am sure this was also true for hettie, for the totem press books, in fact, before things got too sticky between us, i often helped her and witnessed how it was she who typed the camera copy, proofed (most of the time) and pasted up (always), but it was roi’s press, and in this he was not any different from any other male artist of his day. it was just the natural division of labor / and credit. as i described earlier, what is often characterized as the misogyny of the male beats is generally attributed to the larger social and cultural contexts of the time, as di prima suggests here. nevertheless, these examples of the women’s relationships with each other and with the male beats begin to illustrate the complexities of their experiences as writers xxiv within this literary community—especially in contrast to the personal and working relationships that existed between the men. the women beats had relationships with the men as lovers and with each other as friends, but their role as writers was, with the noted exception of di prima, secondary to their role as women. the “boy gang” mentality of the beat community is evident not only in the actual dynamics within the community, but also in how women figure into the fiction and poetry of the male beats in limited ways, namely as “mothers, wives, sisters, lovers, virgins, whores, demons, or angels,” which i explore in more detail in the main chapters. in various letters, interviews, and essays over the years, the male beats likewise express a narrow view of women beats. in july , for example, ginsberg writes, yes, it’s all right to blame the men for exploiting the women—or, i think the point is, the men didn’t push the women literally or celebrate them. … but then, among the group of people we knew at the time, who were the writers of such power as kerouac or burroughs? were there any? i don’t think so. we’re responsible for the lack of outstanding genius in the women we knew? did we put them down or repress them? i don’t think so. … where there was a strong writer who could hold her own, like diane di prima, we would certainly work with her and recognize her. for ginsberg, the marginalization of women beat writers was due to their lack of talent. indeed, as noted above, he had a working relationship with di prima and perhaps encouraged her writing; he is also credited as having mentored beat writer, janine pommy vega. nevertheless, the basic perpetuation of the dominant gender discourse of the period within the beat literary community led many women beats to struggle as developing writers or to get their work published in ways most male beats did not experience. as ronna johnson argues, “the men’s tribal ethics of mutual support … xxv nurtured and helped to publish the minor poets peter orlovsky and carl solomon, but not elise cowen.” despite ginsberg and cowen’s friendship before her death in , for example—they had also been lovers briefly in —the poet deemed the work of orlovsky (ginsberg’s lover and longtime partner) and solomon (ginsberg’s friend to whom howl is dedicated) more publishable than that of cowen’s. whether this is because of her status as a female poet, because of their previous romantic relationship, or because she simply was not as strong a writer as orlovsky or solomon is indeterminate. the point remains that the fundamental impetus of the beat community to foster one another’s work was strained when it came to the women, and the various extra-literary writings of the male beats reveal their limited assumptions about women as a whole and about women writers, more specifically. for example, in a similar vein as the ginsberg passage above, kerouac somewhat blithely dismisses beat women in a essay. in “origins of the beat generation,” kerouac categorizes the beats as either “cool” or “hot.” women’s inclusion here is limited to the “girls [who] say nothing and wear black”—not necessarily writers, but girls who belong to the “cool” hipsters. and as amy friedman discusses, when kerouac recommended writers for a beat anthology in , he included only four women; of these four, he described barbara moraff as “best girl poet” and di prima, similar to ginsberg’s distinction noted above, as “other best girl poet.” the distinction kerouac draws between male and female beats in both sources ultimately perpetuates the traditional hierarchy between the two genders, and other male beats express a similar attitude toward women. upon rereading his first novel, go, in , holmes questions in a new introduction: “can it really have been like that? did we really resemble these xxvi feverish young men, these centerless young women?” in holmes’s recognition of the societal changes since he first wrote his novel (a rendering of the early beat community), he points to—however inadvertently—his initially dismissive perception and representation of beat women as “centerless.” as these examples illustrate, though the men acknowledge the presence of women within the beat community, it is clear that they did not consider the women as equals. from the men’s perspectives, the women were mainly there to play the same role expected of them outside of the counterculture—to provide domestic support (in the form of ironing or cooking, paying for rent, food, or bus trips, etc.) or to be girlfriends or lovers. that the women happened to be writers as well was secondary to the men—and that they might have had “such power as kerouac or burroughs” was even less likely. richard peabody writes in his discussion of the women beats’ marginalization: “the male-defined misogynist social climate of the fifties and sixties [is] the primary culprit. too many passive women accepted their assigned roles. others devoted their time and energy to the men, or promoted the men instead of addressing their own work.” the different dynamics of the experiences of di prima and other women beat writers of the new york city community attest to the various complexities that peabody points to here. whereas johnson strongly supported kerouac’s writing career—emotionally and financially—and struggled to find time for her own work, for example, di prima simultaneously pursued her own writing career while helping to promote the work of others. despite any such differences, though, women beat writers were faced with and struggled to negotiate with the somewhat similarly confining role expected of them by the conservative mainstream and within the beat community. xxvii this dissertation argues that studying the women beats as writers in their own right within the context of their experiences described here shows how their work revises the predominant representations of the female beat in the literary and extra-literary writing of the male beats. further, when we include the lives and work of beat women into beat history, we are exposed to a broader, more inclusive narrative of the beat literary community—one that is based on the very struggle of the women beats to overcome their subordination or marginalization as women. looking through a new lens into beat history, we see daring work that addresses the very social structures that have led to the women beats’ elision. accordingly, the girl gang sets out to show how women beat writers make an undeniably important contribution to beat literary history as well as to feminist history, contemporary literature, and postwar american history, more broadly. *** critical scholarship on the beats emerged in the early s when, as jennie skerl explains, “the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of on the road in marked the beginning of a beat revival and an outpouring of biographies, memoirs, films, recordings, exhibitions, celebrations, and websites.” although this surge in critical attention to the beats eclipsed the negative attention they had received in the s and s by the mass media and academic critics, many beat scholars have since argued that much of this initial scholarship perpetuated the narrow image of the beats as a white male community in its focus on writers like kerouac, ginsberg, burroughs, snyder, ferlinghetti, and corso. significantly, ann charters included a range of writers in the portable beat reader ( ), including non-white beats and several women beats. and in recent years, scholars have made concerted efforts to draw serious xxviii critical attention to african american and chicano male writers such as bob kaufman, ted joans, and oscar zeta acosta, as well as to various women beat writers from the new york city and san francisco communities. although the existing critical attention to beat women remains significantly limited as attention to male beats continues to thrive, it nevertheless reflects the important work of much feminist scholarship in its fundamental efforts to recover under-recognized women writers. the publication of women of the beat generation by brenda knight in and a different beat by richard peabody in established more substantial attempts to redefine the beat literary culture as it is traditionally understood to be a “boy gang.” knight’s and peabody’s anthologies unearthed and brought attention to the lives and work of many women beats. up until this time, women beats appeared in beat histories, biographies, or studies of male beat writers and their work, but in these instances, the women are primarily mentioned within the context of their personal relationships with the men. and when their roles as writers are acknowledged in such texts, it is often only in passing—as secondary to the writing of the men or to their connections to the male beats. thus, knight’s and peabody’s anthologies had a significant impact in beat studies as they put these women’s roles as writers front and center. although these collections did not include critical discussions of the writing, they prompted such work. published the same year as women of the beat generation and a different beat, maria damon’s “victors of catastrophe: beat occlusions” ( ) presents a brief, yet compelling argument for critical attention to beat women, and amy friedman’s “‘i say my new name’: women writers of the beat generation” ( ) and “‘being here as hard as i could:’ the beat generation women writers” ( ) began this very project. in the xxix first essay, friedman discusses the work of bonnie bremser/brenda frazer, di prima, and kyger; in the second, she provides a survey of several beat women’s work, such as jones, di prima, johnson, kyger, kandel, anne waldman, and joanna mcclure. these two essays were undeniably crucial in providing initial attention to the literary value of the women beats’ work, but their task was considerable and the attention to some of the beat women was delimiting as a result. for instance, johnson and jones are identified as memoirists (in both friedman’s and damon’s essays), which precluded subsequent attention to both writers’ fiction, other nonfiction, and poetry. in fact, while johnson’s and jones’s inclusion in charters’s beat down to your soul ( ) signifies important attention to the female beat perspective (they are two of several women beats included), their texts are excerpts from their memoirs of the beat period, while the works of other beat women, such as di prima, kyger, and mcclure, include poetry. this limited portrayal of johnson’s and jones’s status as beat women writers problematically overshadows attention to, for example, johnson’s first novel, which depicts the development of female subjectivity in beat bohemia, or jones’s early poetry or short stories, which similarly engage in important questions of hegemonic cultural norms of the beat and post-beat periods. this is not to diminish the significance of johnson’s and jones’s memoirs nor of such editorial efforts to include the voices and perspectives of women beats alongside beat men—certainly all of this is important work that has led to this dissertation. but the narrow representation of some women beats in such attempts to explore, as charters’s subtitle asks, “what was the beat generation?”, signifies the ways in which, even within efforts to broaden perspectives of beat history, many beat women are marginalized. xxx ronna johnson and grace’s girls who wore black ( ), a collection of essays entirely devoted to women beat writers, was pivotal in expanding critical attention to women beats. there had been a handful of single-author essays previously published in various journals, but in its ten essays, girls who wore black offers sustained critical readings of the poetry, fiction, and memoirs of many women beats, discussing unpublished work (as in the case of elise cowen) and bringing together writers from both coasts: adam, di prima, johnson, jones, cowen, frazer, kyger, pommy vega, and waldman. it is important to note that along with grace’s essay in girls who wore black on the various literary and cultural achievements of the memoirs by di prima, johnson, jones, and frazer, are essays on di prima’s poetry, johnson’s fiction, and jones’s poetry. that is, girls who wore black as a whole simultaneously argues for the importance of the female beat memoir beyond the scope of beat history as well as for the importance of other literary contributions of these particular writers. following in , skerl’s reconstructing the beats includes three essays on beat women, two of which were not the subject of essays in girls who wore black (kandel and ruth weiss [sic]), and grace and ronna johnson’s breaking the rule of cool ( )—a follow-up to girls who wore black—provides an updated essay on the status of women in beat history and scholarship alongside nine previously unpublished interviews with the female writers. all of these recent publications represent significant strides in attention to beat women over the last years or so that promise to continue, and the girl gang is one such effort. this survey of current scholarship on the women beats also clarifies, though, that there is much to be done in the recovery and study of the dozens of women involved in the beat movement and their multi-genre work that spans decades and xxxi continues today. indeed, many women beat writers remain excluded from the relatively small body of existing scholarship. regarding the writers who do receive attention, scholars tend to either treat several works by an individual writer at once, thus providing only cursory insight into each major work (as in the case of di prima) or to focus on only one or two texts by an individual writer, thus overlooking the full scope of their literary achievements (as in the case of johnson and jones). also, there is debate about how to approach situating the work of the women beats within the beat literary tradition. some scholars maintain that the women beats should be considered on par with “the second tier of beats” such as michael mcclure, baraka, and ferlinghetti (maintaining kerouac, ginsberg, and burroughs as the most “important” beat writers), while others argue that a novel such as johnson’s come and join the dance is “on par with renegade declarations of on the road or “howl” or naked lunch.” while such arguments point to the need to explore these distinctions further, they also suggest a delimiting framework for studying the women beats—one that might potentially merely situate them in either of the two “tiers” of male beats. it is my contention that doing so would overlook the ways in which the work of the female beats is importantly shaped by their experiences as simultaneously a part of and marginalized within the male beat literary community. the girl gang examines not only how the women beats were doing work that should be considered as important as the work of their male counterparts, but also significantly, how beat women confronted and revised the patriarchal assumptions that shaped the literature of both the contemporary mainstream and avant-garde from their paradoxical positions within and on the margins of the male-dominated literary community. xxxii in scholars’ attempts to begin to recover the work of and study the women beats, they tend to isolate the work of each female beat from that of another’s, which precludes attention to the myriad ways in which each writer uniquely engages in similar themes or literary techniques, as well as how contrasts in the subjects or forms of each writer’s work may enrich a reading of another’s work and of the beat community itself. this approach to each individual writer and her work, then, essentially overlooks how studying the women beats within the context of the beat community can provide a clearer understanding of how they both individually and collectively responded to the literary, social, and cultural norms of the period—and how their works can mutually inform each other. this dissertation provides a corrective to these gaps. the girl gang is a multiauthor study that critically engages an expanded canon of women beats. this project sets out to continue the recovery work begun by beat scholars by looking at texts that are overlooked in existing discussions of several women beats (in the main chapters on di prima, johnson, and jones), as well as by looking at writers who are absent in current scholarship (in the epilogue on bergé and albert). in my attention to such texts and writers, i expand the discourse on the women beats in multiple ways. first, this project aims to construct a revised narrative of the beat literary community and tradition by focusing on writers and texts from the earlier to the later and post-beat years, which provides a trajectory of the beat movement as it takes shape over the course of several decades. additionally, the texts examined throughout the dissertation represent multiple genres: poetry, the novel, the short story cycle, the novella, and the short story. this approach highlights the diversity of literary modes and the breadth of work among the women beats. xxxiii also importantly, threaded throughout the dissertation is explicit attention to the impact of the beat literary community on the women beats. the girl gang addresses how each writer’s particular experience within the new york city beat community as a developing female writer takes shape in her work, and how this helps us not only better understand the lives and work of these women and the function of community, but also the history of the new york city beat community itself and the development of protofeminist work from within this context. further, this study expands current critical attention to women beats by putting the work of several writers in conversation with each other in more depth than is currently available. specifically, i give explicit attention to the ways in which key beat issues or questions of identity, subjectivity, community, authenticity, and the act of writing itself take shape in the work of the various writers studied here. in doing so, this project highlights the continuities, gaps, and disparities between the work of these writers in order to illustrate how, collectively, their work contributes to our understanding of literary communities in general and how, more specifically, it revises prevailing notions of the beat community and its literary tradition as defined by the male beats and a male ethos. lastly, the girl gang explores the writers’ engagement in various literary, cultural, and social discourses, such as feminist geography, postmodernism, interracialism, and motherhood. this major aspect of my project illustrates precisely why extending the ways in which these writers are included in the beat literary tradition and the contemporary literary tradition more broadly is vital. the work of beat women broadens and complicates the current critical discourse of beat writing. more than adding female voices to beat history and literature, the girl gang draws attention to how the xxxiv female beats’ work addresses issues that are central to the contemporary countercultural critique of hegemonic norms and that are representative of the beats’ experimentation with innovative literary techniques. this dissertation’s literary analyses provide multiple new ways to study women beats’ writing and highlights their incisive and provocative treatment of timely thematic issues—often in conjunction with nontraditional narrative forms or strategies. ultimately, while this dissertation builds upon the existing scholarship on women beat writers in its endeavor to revise prevalent notions of the beats as a male literary tradition and to draw attention to beat women as important writers, it also significantly expands the existing recovery work and extends the current critical discourse on beat women in all of these ways. in addition to its contribution to beat studies, the girl gang calls attention to a group of writers whose work also contributes to and raises important questions for the fields of women’s writing, feminist studies, and contemporary american literature, as well as for the study of literary communities. this dissertation reveals how female beats use writing as a means to consciously construct and assert their voices as female writers—how they set out in reaction to patriarchal discourses “to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives” (in the words of adrienne rich). i examine how these writers struggle to construct identities as women writers and endeavor to develop various modes of female subjectivity within their work. in all of these ways, this dissertation broadens and further develops studies of the women’s literary tradition while simultaneously contributing to feminist scholarship in its continued recovery of elided female writers. xxxv further, the breadth and diversity of the women beats’ individual and collective bodies of work point to multiple ways in which this dissertation can inform and enrich not only the field of women’s literature, but also of contemporary american literature, more broadly. the analyses of how these writers engage in questions of genre, theme, and aesthetics as well as in various critical discourses undoubtedly raise new questions for thinking about, for example, the role of the novel, the colloquial, and the social space of the car in contemporary literature by both male and female writers. indeed, within the individual chapters, i situate the primary texts and issues of my analyses within and against both beat and non-beat texts, which begins to illustrate how the dissertation can inform the field of contemporary american literature beyond the scope of beat studies. the girl gang also intervenes in the important study of literary communities—of the mainstream and the avant-garde. the scholarship on american literary communities ranges from studies of the knickerbocker group to those of the modernists and the harlem renaissance writers, and of the language poets. the scope of this scholarship underscores the function of community for major american writers while highlighting the importance of these writers and their respective communities for the study of american literature from its earliest period to the contemporary period. the dynamics of the women beats’ coming-of-age experiences and the bodies of work that initially developed within the beat community undoubtedly raise provocative questions about the nature and function of literary communities in general, as well as about the function of place, the role of gender, and the development of the avant-garde within this discourse. integrating a study of the women writers from the new york city beat community into xxxvi existing scholarship on literary communities would open up such studies in undeniably insightful and productive ways. *** in its attention to understudied women writers, this dissertation is fundamentally a feminist project, whose central purpose is to examine beat women as writers in their own right. specifically, i examine how each individual writer provides a different lens into the beat community and its primary interests in issues of identity, authenticity, and storytelling as these issues are shaped by questions of gender. threaded throughout the dissertation is a focus on how these writers develop a female subjectivity in response to their marginalization as women as well as in response to the typical depiction of women within male-authored beat texts as sexual objects, or more broadly, as intellectually, biologically, or psychologically inferior and therefore unable (or unprivileged) to act as a subject. my use of the term “subjectivity” throughout the dissertation refers to the process of developing one’s consciousness. whereas “identity” refers to one’s sense of self as it is defined by categories such as race, gender, and religion, “subjectivity” refers to one’s ability to act with agency and authority—to assert ownership over one’s thoughts, decisions, and behaviors. defining “subjectivity” in this way follows with leading uses of the term in feminist and beat scholarship. for example, for ronna johnson, subjectivity is signified through “an evolution from understanding to interpretation, from seeing to naming,” and for feminist scholar rita felski, it is a “transformation of consciousness.” further, subjectivity signifies an understanding of oneself in relation to others, to society, to the world. as nick mansfield explains, “the word ‘self’ does not xxxvii capture the sense of social and cultural entanglement that is implicit in the word ‘subject’: the way our immediate daily life is always already caught up in complex political, social and philosophical—that is, shared—concerns.” if we understand “subject” as something fundamentally and constantly developed in relation to others, we can understand the significance of the women beats’ development of subjectivity for their female speakers or characters in relation to post-wwii america, new york city, bohemia, and the beats—in relation to a multitude of forces. understanding subjectivity in this way clarifies a key aspect of the term—that it is a process, not something that is fixed or achieved, or owned or exercised without further or ongoing transformation. sally robinson, for example, explains that subjectivity is an ongoing process of engagement in social and discursive practices, not some immanent kernel of identity that is expressed through that engagement. it is not constructed, once and for all, at some locatable point in the individual’s history; rather, it is a continuous process of production and transformation. subjectivity, like gender, is a ‘doing,’ rather than a being. subjects are constituted, differentially, across complex and mobile discursive practices in historically specific ways that involve relations of subjectivity to sociality, to power and to knowledge. subjectivity in my analysis is therefore used to identify the process by which the female figures in the work of the women beats begin to overcome whatever obstacles impede or diminish their ability to act as a subject. nancy miller’s primary definition of feminist writing is useful for framing my analysis of the women beats’ work. according to miller, feminist writing “articulates as and in a discourse of self-consciousness about woman’s identity.” felski offers a somewhat similarly broad but useful definition of feminist literature as “those texts that reveal a critical awareness of women’s subordinate position and of gender as a problematic category, however this is expressed.” the women beats were certainly xxxviii critical of their marginal position as women in the s and s; this is evident in their work in multiple ways, and is a useful lens into their texts. however, it is important to note that although the women beats’ work falls into the category of feminist literature, much of it was written prior to the women’s movement that began in the late s, and is therefore more accurately considered protofeminist. as ronna johnson and grace argue, to characterize the beat women as feminist would be anachronistic; in fact, the scholars clarify that the protofeminism of the women beats was “fostered unintentionally.” nevertheless, as ronna johnson and grace write: members of the group display a persistent understanding of the importance of asserting themselves as women in the alternative communities in which they lived, and which denied them, during the fifties, and even to some extent today, value as artists specifically because of their gender. their recognition of this condition exemplifies their protofeminist impulses. drawing attention to the women beats’ protofeminism is of primary importance in the girl gang and will be discussed throughout the chapters accordingly. my study of the writing of the women beats as protofeminist literature is not meant to perpetuate their distance from the work of the male beats. in the same way that the men explore issues of identity and subjectivity specific to their gender, so too do the women, and this does not necessitate boundaries to be drawn between a male beat and a female beat literary tradition. doing so would assume consistent similarities within and clear boundaries between the men’s and women’s texts, and this is not necessarily the case. as noted earlier, the diversity of beat writing—among the men and women—points to one of the fundamental characteristics of a literary community. specifically, my analysis is based on the claim that issues of gender largely motivate and shape the women beats’ engagement in questions of identity, subjectivity, race, sexuality, and language, as xxxix well as in various narrative and poetic forms and techniques. the themes explored and the literary techniques used by the women beats may not necessarily be unique—though some are—but the way in which these themes and techniques are employed to make claims about and through the female experience does highlight their uniqueness within the beat context as well as their particular importance in the period preceding second wave feminism. thus, this dissertation will illustrate that beginning with their critique of cultural and literary gender norms is one way in which to enter into the work of the women beat writers and to understand their literary, cultural, social, and political achievements. rather than establishing a female beat literary tradition, the girl gang reveals the importance of the women beats’ work as well as the treatment, through both content and form, of various concerns shared with male beats. in addition to the application of feminist theory, this project also draws on historicist methodologies evident in the basic components of the individual chapters. in the main chapters and epilogue, i situate select texts of each writer within her literary, cultural, and political contexts, as well as within the context of her formative years as a writer in the new york city beat community and her larger body of work. situating the literary texts alongside and against literary predecessors and contemporaries and within the larger cultural and political contexts is based on the assumption that in order to understand the ways in which these writers revise literary and cultural norms, it is important to understand what these norms are and how they may have affected each writer’s understanding of the issues their work explores. as tony trigilio aptly argues, unless we look at “the way that [women beats’] work itself is imbricated in [their] cultural moment,” we cannot fully understand these women as xl writers. to reiterate, “what is distinctively beat is the historical moment and social context” out of which their writing emerged. thus, i highlight how these writers’ texts connect to and diverge from relevant previous and contemporary literature as well as how they engage in issues significantly shaped by the historical context, such as interracialism, in order to draw attention to the various achievements and implications of their work. this attention to the cultural context of the women beats’ work also includes a focus on the role of place, as noted earlier. following in the attention to the function of place in studies of female modernists in paris (benstock), female modernists in new york city and berlin (miller), beat poets in san francisco (davidson), and language poets in new york city, san francisco, and washington, d.c. (vickery), among others, this dissertation is rooted in the assumption that the women beats’ lives and work were shaped by new york city. as i examine in more detail in the chapters, the writers studied here were especially drawn to and came into their own as writers within new york city bohemia. their writing engages both directly and indirectly in the culture of new york city, and as cristanne miller argues in the context of the modernist period, this highlights that “many … writers were conscious of the relevance of location to writing.” although my analysis of the literary works may include how new york city is explicitly treated, of primary importance to this dissertation is how new york city and new york city bohemia, more specifically, “enabl[e] and influenc[e] [the] writing” of beat women. further, situating the writers’ select texts alongside their coming-of-age experiences within the beat literary community and within their body of work employs a xli methodology especially important for the study of beat writers—male or female. trigilio argues that “reader reception of beat writing depends on critical understanding of biography; if anything, the neoromantic impulse of most beat writing demands that readers know something of the sovereign, expressivist self claimed behind each literary work.” however, the tendency to focus mainly on and to mythologize beats’ lives has overshadowed serious critical attention to much of their work, and so this attention to biography needs to be tempered—to be in the service of the writing, not in place of it. indeed, trigilio explains, “when literary commentary collapses [literature] into biography, as it often does with beat writers … such scholarship is undertaken at considerable expense to the cultural work of the [texts] themselves.” likewise, though, trigilio continues, “it would be a disservice to argue that biography should be displaced entirely in favor of [the literature].” the approach taken in the girl gang follows this argument: providing relatively concise literary biographies helps to highlight the writers’ relevant personal experiences and the scope of their work that, together, effectively contextualizes and provides insight into the particular issues addressed in the texts examined in each chapter. *** as the diversity of the beat literary community suggests, there are many women beat writers to consider in a project of recovery and criticism such as this. together, for example, knight’s and peabody’s anthologies include a total of about women, with only overlaps, and peabody recognizes many other writers he considered including. as noted earlier, this dissertation focuses on the work of diane di prima, joyce johnson, hettie jones, carol bergé, and mimi albert. possible other writers to study here include joanne kyger, lenore kandel, brigid murnaghan, margaret randall, janine pommy xlii vega, sandra hochman, fran landesman, barbara moraff, bobbie louise hawkins, and brenda frazer, among many others. the criteria for inclusion or exclusion of women beat writers are different for each scholar and editor, and what this fluidity indicates is that, as ronna johnson and grace explain, “the canon of women beat writers has not been definitively established, but is transitory and subjective.” regarding girls who wore black, for example, the editors discuss that while jane bowles and denise levertov had foundational affiliations with or connections to the beat community, they “proceeded to other movements [and thus] demarcate a beat cusp [and] clarif[y] the way that beat emerged contemporaneously with several other avant-garde literary communities.” as such, bowles and levertov are not the subject of essays included in girls who wore black. tim hunt similarly comments on the fluidity of the canon of women beats. he writes, “joanne kyger’s ties to gary snyder and ginsberg, her travels to japan and india, mark her as beat, yet her approach to writing, which owes little to beat practice, developed as it did almost in spite of her involvement with the beats.” interestingly, kyger is included in both girls who wore black and breaking the rule of cool. peabody, in his anthology, exercised a rather liberal rationale for inclusion of women beats; he includes writers, such as sandra hochman, whose direct connection to the beat community seems to be represented by an appearance in a photograph documenting the beat scene with prominent beat writers. all of these different approaches to the category of beat writers raise undeniably interesting questions about the nature of literary scholarship itself, but more to my point, they speak to the fundamental diversity of the lives and work of beat women themselves. xliii my focus on di prima, johnson, jones, bergé, and albert represents a selection of award-winning writers who, individually, contribute in important and distinctive ways to the beat literary tradition, and who thus, collectively, create a dynamic narrative of beat history. the first criterion for their inclusion is that although they didn’t all remain in new york city after the beat period, they were each born and came of age in new york city, and their formative years as writers took place within the new york city beat community. specifically, di prima lived in new york city until relocating to san francisco in the late s, while johnson and jones still live and write in new york city today. bergé lived in new york city until when she moved to woodstock, ny and continued writing and editing before she moved all over the country for about a decade to teach. she finally relocated to santa fe in the s until her death in . and albert lived in new york city until the s or s when she relocated to the bay area of california, where she continues to write. elise cowen is an example of another possible new york city beat writer to include in this project, but she primarily wrote poetry, and the bodies of work of the five writers i study here include a range of genres—a second criterion for my choices. their versatility exemplifies their breadth as writers and enables me to draw comparisons between their work and a wide selection of other contemporary writers’ work, as well as to explore the ways in which their experiences within the beat community take shape in distinct genres. further, my focus on these particular five writers provides a look into each of the three generations of women beats—a useful structure established by ronna johnson and grace. in the three-generational breakdown, bergé falls into the first generation, which xliv includes the writers born in the s and s, such as adam, weiss, madeline gleason, and sheri martinelli. these writers were contemporaneous with the three core male beats (kerouac, ginsberg, and burroughs) and faced the societal conditions and postwar changes as well as the stifling influence of the “academic and traditional literary models” simultaneous with the men. born in the s, the second generation of women beats, including di prima, johnson, and jones, along with cowen, kandel and others, was “directly influenced by seminal works” of the core male beats and “faced male beat obliviousness to and/or prejudices against their capacities as writers and rebels.” ronna johnson further highlights one of the key distinctions between the first two generations of beat women: “the women writers of the second beat generation were usually not so obviously sidelined as those in the first, but they were nevertheless discounted through presumptions of their inferiority.” bergé’s status as a beat writer in contrast to that of di prima’s, johnson’s, and jones’s—bergé is much less visible in beat studies—begins to confirm this distinction, and i address this further within the dissertation. albert represents the third generation of women beats, accompanied by waldman and pommy vega, all born in the s. interestingly, albert is not included in ronna johnson and grace’s survey, perhaps because, unlike waldman and pommy vega, she was not “included in beat bohemia and literary circles from the start.” pommy vega had close working relationships with several male beats, including herbert huncke, orlovsky, and ginsberg, as did waldman with ginsberg, o’hara and others of the new york school. albert’s affiliations with the beat community itself are less well- documented and presumably less substantial than those of the other writers included in xlv this study, and while pommy vega and waldman “looked to living beat generation writers for influence and inspiration,” albert looked to the beat period and culture “for influence and inspiration”—not necessarily its writers, at least not through personal connections. ultimately, i include writers from each of the three generations of female beats in order to construct a more textured and inclusive narrative of beat history that draws on these generational differences as one way to illustrate how each writer distinctively revises and expands our understanding of the beat literary community. *** di prima, johnson, jones, bergé, and albert had vastly different experiences as beat writers, including different degrees of involvement within the community itself, and this is reflected in the structure of the dissertation. the three main chapters focus on di prima, johnson, and jones—three women beats who knew each other and were, in various ways, part of each other’s lives and experiences as women writers in the male- dominated literary community. more than others, di prima, johnson, and jones appear consistently in beat anthologies and in existing scholarship on the female beats—perhaps because their connections to the prominent male beats initially helped draw attention to their writing. in the main chapters, i expand the current scholarly attention to each of these three writers, illustrating how their experiences within the beat community reflect the contemporary cultural, social, and political contexts in markedly different ways. these three chapters are chronologically ordered by the composition dates of the particular texts i examine, ranging from the s to the turn of the twenty-first century. of the five writers i study here, di prima’s body of work is the largest (comprising about books of poetry, fiction, and memoir), and she is the subject of more critical xlvi discussions than the others. this is perhaps not surprising in light of her status as a “strong writer” among the men during the beat period itself. however, the existing scholarship on di prima is still relatively scant; she is included in the multiauthor essays described earlier and is otherwise the subject of approximately seven single-author essays. that her experience as a female writer within the beat literary community was generally inclusive takes shape in her writing in interesting ways, and juxtaposing the ways in which her work differs significantly from that of johnson and jones illustrates the remarkable dynamics of the beat community itself. in chapter one, i read di prima’s first book of poetry, this kind of bird flies backward alongside a collection of unpublished poetry from her college years in order to trace the development of her poetics as it was largely shaped by the contrast between her suburban social space in college and the urban, avant-garde beat community of new york city. this contrast is most notably represented through her use of hip slang, and this poetic style highlights two key achievements: her resistance to the predominant academic style of poetry of the time, which situates her alongside poets such as ginsberg and olson, and her revision of the representation of women in the work of these and other male avant-garde contemporaries. employing m.a.k. halliday’s theory of antilanguages, my analysis demonstrates how di prima uses the slang of the bohemian community to redefine and substantiate the identity of the bohemian figure as well as to develop a subjectivity for the female bohemian in particular—a move predating the feminist poetry of the s. chapter one explores how di prima resists and revises the commonly objectified or victimized depictions of female figures within the work of her male contemporaries. she gives voice xlvii to female experiences of love, sex, and motherhood—unabashedly portraying the emotions and experiences of desire, jealousy, hostility, and independence that are often subdued or silenced in postwar poetry. through a reading of her first published poetry within the context of her earlier unpublished poetry and the work of her contemporaries, chapter one draws attention to how di prima challenges poetic conventions of the time while bringing uniquely female experiences to the fore with authenticity and honesty. that johnson and jones are largely regarded by scholars as the girlfriend and wife of prominent beat writers, respectively, and that their bodies of work are notably smaller than di prima’s raises important questions about their consistent inclusion in various beat anthologies over the years and the focus on their work in much of the current scholarship on women beats. as i mentioned earlier, when their work is included in beat anthologies, it is almost exclusively each writer’s memoir that is excerpted and used to represent their literary accomplishments. likewise, though friedman and damon include johnson and jones in their foundational critical essays described earlier, they refer to both writers only as memoirists. as such, it can be argued that much of the attention that both johnson and jones have received over the last few decades is due, not necessarily to their individual literary achievements, but to the insight they and their memoirs provide into the lives of kerouac and baraka. both are strong and versatile writers in their own right, however, and have considerable oeuvres that also include fiction (johnson and jones) and poetry (jones). currently, only a total of three critical essays begin to look at these accomplishments, and chapters two and three set out to address this critical neglect. xlviii to date, there is only one attempt to broaden readers’ understanding of johnson’s literary contributions beyond her memoir, which include several novels, non-beat memoirs, and nonfiction texts. in chapter two, i continue the work begun by ronna johnson in her reading of johnson’s first novel, come and join the dance ( ). i examine how in come and join the dance, johnson develops a model of female subjectivity that directly challenges the depiction of female protagonists in male- and female-authored beat and non-beat contemporary novels. my reading reveals how johnson not only revises the way in which women are portrayed by her contemporaries, but also how she does this by transgressing the discourse of traditionally gendered social spaces. by engaging in the tropes of the home, the streets, and the car, johnson destabilizes the hegemonic norms of public and private spaces. my analysis of her first novel is advanced through the lens of feminist geography, which frames my reading of the “paradoxical spaces” johnson creates in her revision of the public/private dichotomy. using the social spaces of the home and the car to do so is especially significant, i argue, in light of the historical and cultural associations of each space. johnson challenges the association of women in the s with the domestic space of the home; she suggests that the home is a stifling and oppressive space for women— anticipating the female malaise explored in betty friedan’s the feminine mystique in . further, she appropriates the american image of the car as a quintessentially male space, as a symbol of freedom and of the male beat pursuit of an authentic american experience to which women were denied. my analysis shows how johnson uses the car as a space within which her female protagonist asserts her subjectivity through sexual agency. interestingly, though, my discussion in chapter two highlights how johnson xlix resists the centrality that di prima gives to sexual agency in her depiction of female subjectivity. further, whereas new york city bohemia is a fundamentally positive space, one that is supportive and fosters individuality in di prima’s early poetry, in johnson’s first novel, the new york city bohemian community is depicted as oppressive and dysfunctional. in all of these ways, i draw attention to the complex and distinctive literary achievements of each writer. what makes jones unique among many women beats is that she kept her writing life private during the beat years and did not start publishing until the s. however, since then, jones has published in a range of genres including short fiction, poetry, essays, and young adult literature, but her work remains largely absent from critical attention. in chapter three, i examine a short story cycle that is currently unpublished, in care of worth auto parts, in order to illustrate jones’s engagement with the gender and racial politics of the s and the literary and cultural context of postmodernism in the s and s. drawing on her personal experiences in the beat community, jones focuses on the figure of the white interracial mother, disrupting hegemonic, hierarchical racial and gender norms and giving voice to this racially-defined figure, whose perspective in literary texts is often overshadowed by the figure of the interracial child. my analysis illustrates how jones employs various postmodernist techniques to portray the experience of the interracial mother as subject to a “social gaze” that fractures and destabilizes her sense of self. the genre of in care of worth auto parts itself is especially significant in the treatment of this complex experience. the short story cycle is defined by its dual structure of independence and interdependence: it includes stories that can be read autonomously, but that only fully make meaning when read in conjunction l with one another. my analysis of in care of worth auto parts demonstrates how jones uses this unique structure to reflect and embody the gradual development of the interracial mother’s subjectivity in the face of others’ racial discrimination, and to stylistically perform its themes of unity and disunity. of particular importance is how jones explicitly considers the intertwining of race and gender, which is treated only implicitly in the other writers’ texts examined here. whereas the main chapters build on the current critical attention to di prima, johnson, and jones, the epilogue integrates two women beat writers, who are almost exclusively absent from critical studies, into the discourse on women beats. although bergé and albert appear in some beat texts, such as peabody’s anthology, there are currently no published critical studies of their work. albert is mentioned in a somewhat obscure article on the women beats by jim burns in , but is otherwise absent from scholarly discussions of the beats, and although bergé is recognized for her inclusion in leroi jones’s four young lady poets ( ) and for her role in the oral poetry scene of the s, she is hardly, if at all, recognized for her prolific body of work that she began publishing in the early s. in the epilogue, then, i discuss the lives and work of bergé and albert in order to begin the important task of expanding attention to women beats who, though currently overlooked in beat studies, nevertheless challenge and contribute to our understanding of the beat literary tradition in significant ways. specifically, the epilogue examines select texts from each writer, employing the critical framework established here. i explore how the work of bergé and albert, like that of di prima, johnson, and jones, simultaneously engages in and diverges from fundamental beat themes in ways importantly shaped by a critique of the period’s social li and cultural norms. first, i examine bergé’s novella, “in motion,” with particular attention to how she treats questions of identity, subjectivity, and authenticity from a distinctively non-beat setting—from the upper east side of manhattan. i examine how bergé embeds her critique of the normative female gender role within a larger critique of the postwar ideal of upward mobility and how she diverges from patterns in much women beats’ work through her development of a female subjectivity that is mutually constitutive instead of defined as an autonomous process. next, i discuss albert’s short story, “the small singer,” with attention to how the writer uses this particular genre to embody the text’s depiction of the female protagonist’s gradually diminishing sense of empowerment and subjectivity. unlike the other female characters or speakers examined throughout the dissertation, albert’s protagonist is not defined by the role of lover, wife, or mother—nor does she struggle under the pressure to eventually accept the latter two roles as they are traditionally defined. rather, albert depicts the life of a singer as largely defined by her artistry, and albert uses the singer’s voice to symbolize the potential for her ability to develop and maintain independence and subjectivity as a woman. albert’s portrayal of female subjectivity, however, diverges from those provided in the other texts included in my study, which highlights one of the important distinctions of albert’s work. in part, i have chosen to focus specifically on bergé and albert because they meet the same criteria for my selection of the writers included in the main chapters. like di prima, johnson, and jones, bergé and albert are each award-winning writers who were born and came of age in new york city and whose bodies of work include a range of literary genres. in light of these general similarities, the epilogue continues to develop a lii cohesive narrative of women writers of the new york city beat literary community. that is, the final portion of my study further demonstrates the distinctive literary achievements of female beats whose individual experiences as women on the margins of the largely male homosocial new york city beat community shaped their work in important ways. in order to extend the narrative of women beat writers, however, i have also chosen to include bergé and albert for the ways in which they each diverge from the relative similarities between di prima, johnson, and jones and thus represent a broader spectrum of female beats. as noted above, bergé and albert remain on the periphery of beat studies—relative to the others that i include in this study, that is—as do many other women beats, such as frazer, kandel, hochman, and weiss. further, neither bergé nor albert was romantically involved with any of the prominent male beat writers (nor does either have a published memoir that explores such relationships), and as such, they represent the many women beat writers who remain peripheral within beat studies in part because they lack the personal affiliations with male beats that may have initially helped bring the existing critical attention to those who did have such relationships. attention to the lives and work of writers such as bergé and albert emphasizes that it is not only beat women who were closely connected to beat men who deserve to be regularly included in the community’s literary history. my discussion of bergé and albert illustrates what is to be gained by entering such unrecognized writers into this important literary and cultural discourse. additionally, as noted earlier, bergé and albert are from the first and third generations of the beat period, respectively. they each represent very different beat histories as shaped in part by their generational differences, which also distinguishes liii them from di prima, johnson, and jones (from the second generation of women beats). specifically, bergé directly participated in the new york city poetry scene as a young writer, and her work engages in beat themes and aesthetics, but generally only indirectly describes or addresses the beat scene itself in her work. in contrast, albert’s involvement in the beat community was more tangential than bergé’s, and she did not start publishing until the late s, but the beat scene itself is an explicit and central focus in her writing, particularly in her two novels. in light of these differences, the epilogue provides insight into these writers’ respective generations and the role that each writer’s distinct historical context played in the development of her work. overall, the inclusion of bergé and albert in the epilogue challenges available frameworks for establishing the canon of women beats as it repositions albert and bergé from the periphery to the center of women beat studies. indeed, the epilogue illustrates how situating such marginalized writers alongside the more recognizable women beat writers can expand our understanding of the various continuities, gaps, and disparities between women beats. the epilogue concludes the dissertation by exemplifying the ways in which attention to a wide range of women beat writers can raise new questions for understanding how these writers individually and collectively contribute to and reconceptualize our understanding of the beat community and its literary tradition. *** the girl gang: women writers of the new york city beat community ultimately illustrates how the lives and work of women beat writers provide a continuous, yet multifaceted view of the new york city beat community. it argues that women played an integral role in this undeniably important literary and cultural movement as writers in liv their own right. this study expands the current canon of women beats in its effort to redefine current conceptions of the beat community as a “boy gang” and to critically engage the protofeminist work of writers who remain marginal within beat studies as well as within the studies of women’s writing and contemporary fiction and poetry, more broadly. this dissertation creates a new, more inclusive beat narrative by looking at both relatively well-known and marginalized female beats and at texts that are published, out of print, or unpublished, from a range of genres, as well as from the early and later years of the beat period. the girl gang shows how women beats engage in key literary and cultural discourses as they resist and rewrite representations of the female figure. through its study of five women beat writers, this project highlights, in johnson’s words, how a “girl gang” of writers can indeed exemplify the role of the artist, and more importantly, significantly contribute to and redefine the notion of the beat writer. lv notes . i address the status of eliot’s writing as both “academic” and nontraditional in chapter one. (see chap. , note .) . ann charters identifies the period between and as when the beat movement “flourished.” foreword to the beats: literary bohemians in postwar america (detroit, michigan: gale research co., ), xii. . jack kerouac, on the road (new york: penguin, ), . . barbara ehrenreich, the hearts of men: american dreams and the flight from commitment (new york: anchor press/doubleday, ), ; kerouac, “the origins of the beat generation” (san francisco, ca: grey fox press, ), . . qtd. in joyce johnson, minor characters (boston, ma: houghton, ), . . johnson, minor, (emphasis in original). . minor, . . adrienne rich, “when we dead awaken: writing as re-vision” (new york: w.w. norton & co, ), . . rich, . . rich, . . women beat writers continue to publish, but these publications are less frequent and perhaps less visible or noted than the others i refer to here—precisely because of the tendency to view women beats as lovers or sisters rather than as writers and to assume that their work is most valuable for its insight into the beat men’s lives. these recent memoirs include joan haverty kerouac’s nobody’s wife ( ), carolyn cassady’s off the road (reprinted in ), edie kerouac-parker’s you’ll be okay ( ), elizabeth von vogt’s lexington ave ( ), and helen weaver’s the awakener ( ). . see gerald nicosia, one and only: the untold story of on the road and of luanne henderson, the woman who started jack and neal on their journey ( ). this isn’t to suggest that scholars are not otherwise furthering the recovery or criticism of women beat writers, but the frequency of such publications has slowed down since the first wave of recovery in the late s and early s, which i discuss further shortly. . my use of the term “bohemian” throughout the dissertation refers to the larger countercultural community of artists, including musicians, dancers, performers, and painters, that also includes the beat writers, who were generally associated with, if not lvi directly involved with artists of this larger group in a personal or artistic capacity. when referring specifically to the beats, i vary between “beat community” and “beat literary community” depending on the context and need for emphasis. in general, “beat community” refers to the group of men and women who collectively resisted mainstream standards in postwar new york city—with the exception of the men’s acceptance and perpetuation of the normative female gender role—and that often worked together on various texts or literary projects, in some cases lived together, and spent time in the same social spaces. . susan suleiman, as discussed by elizabeth frost, refers to this paradoxical position of such women writers as a “‘double margin.’” (qtd. in frost, the feminist avant-garde in american poetry [iowa city: university of iowa press, ], xviii.) frost explains, “along with their male counterparts, [women] are at the edge of the mainstream culture from which they emerge… . but often they also remain on the fringes of the very groups that seek sexual and psychic liberation.” the feminist avant-garde, xviii. . hawthorne, melville, and whitman were not transcendentalists, but they were a part of this broader concord literary community nonetheless. also, the concord community is especially relevant to a discussion of the beats as the transcendentalists are considered one of the beats’ major american influences, both philosophically and aesthetically. tim hunt, for example, describes how the beats saw the transcendentalists “as precursors … who offered a way to think of literature as a way to move beyond the quotidian and contingent.” (“many drummers, a single dance?,” girls who wore black: women writing the beat generation, ed. ronna c. johnson and nancy m. grace [new jersey: rutgers university press, ], .) and jennie skerl writes, “like their american precursors, the transcendentalists, [the beats] fashioned a role as poet- prophets who sought a spiritual alternative to the relentless materialist drive of industrial capitalism.” (reconstructing the beats [new york; houndmills, england: palgrave macmillan, ], .) also, see bradley stiles’s emerson's contemporaries and kerouac's crowd: a problem of self-location for more on the connections between the transcendentalists and the beats. . perry miller, the american transcendentalists, their prose and poetry (garden city, n.y.: doubleday, ), x. . miller, x. . susan cheever, american bloomsbury: louisa may alcott, ralph waldo emerson, margaret fuller, nathaniel hawthorne, and henry david thoreau: their lives, their loves, their work (new york: simon & schuster, ), . . henry jack tobias, santa fe: a modern history, - (albuquerque: university of new mexico press, ), . . tobias, . lvii . michael davidson, the san francisco renaissance: poetics and community at mid-century (new york: cambridge university press, ), - , , . . davidson, . . elizabeth wilson, bohemians: the glamorous outcasts (london; new york: i.b. tauris, ), . . christine stansell writes in her discussion of the development of american bohemianism in greenwich village in the s, “when they imagined bohemia, turn-of- the-century americans called up an imagery of art, hedonism, and dissent from bourgeois life that originated in paris in the s.” she continues, emphasizing the social or communal and countercultural nature of bohemia: “by midcentury the word had acquired a wider meaning, as an enclave of rebels and impoverished artists.” (american moderns: bohemian new york and the creation of a new century [new york: metropolitan books, ], .) and as marty jezer explains, bohemianism is fundamentally developed “out of the requirements of creative work,” and thus the bohemia of the post- wwii period was defined by the need for community. (the dark ages: life in the united states, - [boston: south end press, ], .) see chapters one and two for more on this. . edward h. foster, understanding the beats (columbia: university of south carolina press, ), . . robert holton, “‘the sordid hipsters of america’: beat culture and the folds of heterogeneity,” reconstructing the beats, , , . . throughout the dissertation, i use the term “avant-garde” (somewhat similar to donald allen’s term “new american”) to refer to the various countercultural artists of the postwar period, including not only the beats, but others such as black mountain and new york school poets. my use of the term follows in frost’s definition of the “avant- garde”: “any artistic practice that combines radical new forms with radical politics or utopian vision.” (the feminist avant-garde, xiv.) this usage is also consistent with frequent descriptions in beat scholarship of the beats as an avant-garde group. see johnson and grace, girls who wore black, for example. . ann douglas, “the city where the beats were moved to howl,” the rolling stone book of the beats: the beat generation and american culture, ed. holly george- warren (new york: hyperion, ), . . douglas, “the city,” . . ronna johnson and nancy grace, “visions and revisions of the beat generation,” girls who wore black, . from this point forward, all references to ronna johnson in the body of the text will include her full name in order to distinguish between her and joyce johnson. lviii . johnson and grace, “visions,” . . this rejection of or resistance to one’s categorization in a particular literary group is not unique within the beat community. for more on this issue from the perspectives of the writers themselves, see ann charters’s beat down to your soul as well as grace and johnson’s breaking the rule of cool. . shari benstock, women of the left bank, - (austin: university of texas press, ), . . grace and johnson, breaking the rule of cool: interviewing and reading women beat writers (jackson: university press of mississippi, ), x. . frost notes other contemporary poetic groups, including vorticism, the black arts, and the language poets, within which the women poets have not been “visible spokespeople, theorists, or anthologized representatives.” the feminist avant-garde, xviii. . davidson, . . benstock, , . . benstock, . . davidson, . . johnson and grace, “visions,” . . see also collections of correspondence, such as jack kerouac and allen ginsberg: the letters ( ). . the nature of the beat literary community as a “boy gang” has been well established in studies of the beats as well as in various histories of the period, such as barbara ehrenreich’s the hearts of men and david halberstams’s the fifties. . in discussions of jones and baraka as a couple, most scholars refer to jones by her maiden name, cohen, and to baraka as jones (cohen didn’t become jones until , and jones didn’t become baraka until , after their divorce—first imamu amiri baraka, then the imamu was dropped in ). however, to remain consistent with my use of hettie jones as her authorial name and to prevent confusion between her and her husband during the course of their marriage, i refer to hettie as jones and to leroi as baraka. . in chapter two, i discuss how the aspect of their relationship as it was shaped in part by their shared work as writers is often overlooked, but it is nevertheless important lix to note here that although johnson did share her concerns about her writing, kerouac’s feedback or advice was often superficial. see johnson and kerouac’s door wide open. . grace, “interviewing women beat writers,” breaking, . . see rachel blau duplessis’s “manifests” and “manhood and its poetic projects” for more on the way in which women beat writers were inspired by the male beats, despite their general exclusion from the men’s lives and work. . this is the case regarding the women’s literary pursuits as well as their actual living conditions. as jennie skerl points out, beat women could be argued to have sustained the beat community themselves as the primary “wage-earners.” (“mid-century bohemia redefined: portraits by beat women” presented at the mla conference in december .) the women held regular jobs and pursued their writing during their other time. further, it was their apartments that housed the community itself. see ehrenreich for more on the male beats’ rebellion against the bread-winner role, and see various beat histories for details regarding the women’s apartments as the center of the beats’ activities. . they had an affair on and off for several years during his marriage to jones and had a child together in . . see johnson and kerouac’s door wide open and di prima’s recollections of my life as a woman. . johnson played an integral role in getting kerouac’s visions of cody published in after his death, but this was not a collaboration in the same sense as jones/baraka’s and di prima/baraka’s discussed here. . see jones’s how i became hettie jones and di prima’s recollections. . di prima, recollections of my life as a woman: the new york years: a memoir (new york: viking, ), . . grace, “snapshots, sand paintings, and celluloid: formal considerations in the life writing of women writers from the beat generation,” girls who wore black, . . ginsberg qtd. in a different beat: writings by women of the beat generation, ed. richard peabody (new york: high risk books, ), . . r. johnson, “mapping women writers of the beat generation,” breaking, . . tony trigilio is currently editing a collection of cowen’s poetry to publish. lx . see davidson and ehrenreich for more on the fundamental male homosocial nature of the beats. . kerouac, “origins,” . . “origins,” . . kerouac qtd. in amy friedman, “‘i say my new name’: women writers of the beat generation,” the beat generation writers, ed. a. robert lee (london: pluto press, ), . . john clellon holmes, go (new york: thunder’s mouth press, ), xvii. . ginsberg qtd. in peabody, . . peabody, . . skerl, reconstructing, . . writer norman podhoretz, for example, attacked what he called “the know- nothing bohemians” in a issue of partisan review. (in , podhoretz published “a howl of protest in san francisco” in the new republic, which was then expanded into “the know-nothing bohemians.”) comparing the beats to the previous american bohemianism of the s, which podhoretz describes as having “ideals [of] intelligence, cultivation, [and] spiritual refinement,” he claims that the s bohemianism “is another kettle of fish altogether”: “it is hostile to civilization; it worships primitivism, instinct, energy, ‘blood.’ to the extent that it has intellectual interests at all, they run to mystical doctrines, irrationalist philosophies, and left-wing reichianism. the only art the new bohemians have any use for is jazz, mainly of the cool variety.” (“the know-nothing bohemians,” beat down to your soul: what was the beat generation?, ed. ann charters [new york: penguin books, ], .) for podhoretz and others such as john ciardi, diana trilling, and irving howe, the beats were anti-intellectuals, “miserable children,” who merely put on a “front of disreputableness and rebellion.” (trilling, “the other night at columbia: a report from the academy,” beat down to your soul, .) these contemporary bohemians, such critics claimed, were interested only in superficially protesting against society and were certainly not capable of expanding the american literary tradition with their writing. (see john ciardi’s “epitaph for the dead beats” originally published in saturday review in february , diana trilling’s “the other night at columbia” originally published in partisan review in the spring of , and irving howe’s “mass society and modern fiction,” also published in partisan review .) the maynard g. krebs character of the many loves of dobie gillis (a popular television show that ran from to ) represents a more light-hearted version of this response to the beats—though nonetheless disparaging. krebs was the typical bohemian stereotype, speaking in beat slang like, “chick,” “beat,” and “dig,” and providing a stark contrast to the titular character in his general silliness and aversion to lxi work. also, krebs had a goatee and looked shabby in general, further playing into the bohemian stereotype as sloppy and anti-intellectual. . see, for example, charters’s beats and company, foster’s understanding the beats, and steve watson’s the birth of the beat generation. one notable exception to this is davidson’s discussion in the san francisco renaissance of the poetry of helen adam, joanne kyger, and judy grahn in his study of the (mostly male) beat poets on the west coast. . references to bonnie bremser/brenda frazer fluctuate from the use of her married name (bremser) to that of her maiden name (frazer); for consistency, i use frazer throughout the dissertation. . johnson’s and jones’s texts included in holly george-warren’s the rolling stone book of the beats were also nonfiction recollections of the beat period, essentially updated versions of memoir excerpts, but the entire collection was nonfiction essays documenting and commenting on the period—in contrast to charters’s literary anthology. . hunt makes a useful argument for the importance of the women beats’ memoirs: “the remembering and reconstructing and imaginative probing in works such as how i became hettie jones are context for understanding how writing got done in this period and thereby help us understand the broader cultural negotiation of beat that was not only the process of producing literary texts but also the process of creating literary communities and trying to leverage cultural change through those texts and communities.” “many drummers,” . . for example, see blossom kirschenbaum’s “diane di prima: extending la famiglia” and linda russo’s “on seeing poetic production: the case of hettie jones.” . as i discuss further in chapter three, barrett watten’s essay on jones discusses her memoir as well as her first book of poetry. . graduate students and established scholars alike regularly present conference papers on beat women such as johnson, di prima, cowen, and frazer. . cornel bonca, “the women who stayed home from the orgy,” rev. of women of the beat generation, by brenda knight and a different beat, by richard peabody, college literature : ( ): . . r. johnson, “‘and then she went’: beat departures and feminine transgressions in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance,” girls who wore black, . . as discussed earlier, there are multiauthor essays on the women beats, but, for example, the essays by amy friedman function more like surveys intended to introduce the female beats as writers and briefly discuss exemplary works from their oeuvres without exploring comparisons or contrasts in depth. nancy grace’s “snapshots” lxii also looks at the work of multiple women beats at once and provides an important comparison of the memoirs of four writers, but its focus only on the memoirs has itself been delimiting for several of these writers, as mentioned earlier. . rich, . . the connections between my project and the field of women’s writing stem from the groundbreaking work of sandra gilbert and susan gubar, who in constructing a canon of female writers in the s, identified patterns within the work of women writers, including efforts to consciously develop an identity as “women writers” as well as to, conversely, “[insist] on the genderlessness of the artist’s mind.” sandra m. gilbert, rereading women: thirty years of exploring our literary traditions (new york: w.w. norton & company, ), , . . see fred w. mcdarrah and timothy s. mcdarrah’s kerouac and friends for the use of “non-beat” in reference to poet frank o’hara of the new york school; my use of the term is similar, but more broadly as an alternative to “mainstream.” . see susan friedman’s mappings for a discussion of “identity” as simultaneously constructed by difference and sameness. she explains how identity “involves the perception of common qualities” with others and, at the same time, “requires a perception of difference from others in order for the recognition of sameness to come into play.” mappings: feminism and the cultural geographies of encounter (princeton, nj: princeton university press, ), . . r. johnson, “‘and then she went,’” ; rita felski, beyond feminist aesthetics: feminist literature and social change (cambridge: harvard university press, ), . . nick mansfield, subjectivity: theories of the self from freud to haraway (new york: new york university press, ), - . . sally robinson, engendering the subject: gender and self-representation in contemporary women’s fiction (albany: state university of new york press, ), - . . for more on subjectivity as a process and fundamentally affected by various forces outside of the self, see critics such as linda kinnahan, who draws on the work of diana fuss, teresa de lauretis, and mary gentile in poetics of the feminine and rachel duplessis, who draws on the work of julia kristeva in genders, races, and religious cultures in modern american poetry, - . . as i discuss further in chapter three, it is important to note that the women beats i examine here primarily engage in issues of a white, middle-class subjectivity. although they were marginalized because of their status as female writers, these beat women nevertheless garnered some privileges due to their race and class—not unlike lxiii many of the male beats—and this is reflected in their work as it is often uncritical of hegemonic racial norms or treats them only implicitly. . nancy k. miller, subject to change: reading feminist writing (new york: columbia university press, ), . . felski, . . johnson and grace, “visions,” . . “visions,” - . . the chronological basis of this distinction of the women beats as protofeminists and not feminists is slightly complicated when addressing those of their texts that were written during or after the feminist movement (such as the work of jones discussed in chapter three). but to remain consistent with the rationale provided by beat scholars and employed throughout the dissertation, i use the “proto” qualifier in each case. . as duplessis notes in her study of contemporary women’s writing as feminist in its revisions of (male) literary conventions, “one cannot claim complete exclusivity, as if no male novelist or poet had ever invented anything like … postromantic strategies. … the point does not have to be exclusive to be studied: for reasons that can be linked to their gender position, women writers formulate a critique of heterosexual romance.” (writing beyond the ending: narrative strategies of twentieth-century women writers [bloomington: indiana university press, ], xi.) robinson makes a similar argument in her study of contemporary women writers and their treatment of women’s self- representation. she writes, “to argue for a specificity of women’s writing does not necessarily entail a reading of women’s texts in isolation from men’s texts, the canon, or hegemonic representations of woman, the feminine, and so on.” (engendering the subject, .) likewise, my reading of the women beats’ work as feminist literature is not meant to exclude the possibility of male writers engaging in similar formal techniques or themes. . trigilio, “who writes? reading elise cowen’s poetry,” girls who wore black, . . johnson and grace, “visions,” . . cristanne miller, cultures of modernism: marianne moore, mina loy, & else lasker-schüler: gender and literary community in new york and berlin (ann arbor: university of michigan press, ), - . . c. miller, . . trigilio, . lxiv . trigilio, . . trigilio, . . whereas peabody includes only writers, knight’s anthology also includes “muses” (such as joan vollmer adams and edie parker kerouac) and “artists” (jay defeo and joan brown). . johnson and grace, “visions,” . there is similar debate regarding the male beats as well. see, for example, foster’s understanding the beats, tytell’s naked angel, cook’s the beat generation, and watson’s the birth of the beat generation. . “visions,” - . . hunt, . . interestingly, carol bergé dedicates a poem to hochman, but the nature of their relationship is unclear. see “fragment (a gift)” in from a soft angle. . r. johnson, “mapping,” . (“mapping” in breaking the rule of cool is an updated version of johnson and grace’s co-authored “visions” in girls who wore black.) the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are also from “mapping”: , . . both quotations in this paragraph are from r. johnson, “mapping,” . . ginsberg qtd. in peabody, . . this is the case in charters’s the portable beat reader and peabody’s anthology; knight includes an excerpt from jones’s memoir as well as one story and a few poems. . gillian rose, feminism and geography (cambridge: polity press, ), . . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on’: jack kerouac and the postmodern emergence,” the beat generation: critical essays, ed. kostas myrsiades (new york: peter lang, ), . chapter “so here i am the coolest in new york”: hip slang and the female bohemian in diane di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward i. introduction in the beats, one of the first anthologies of beat literature published in , writer and editor seymour krim introduced diane di prima as “one of the very few ultra- swinging girl writers on the scene.” included in this collection of “the most vital and controversial writers on the american scene” was only one other female writer, brigid murnaghan, described simply as “a fine upright beat lady.” as ann charters notes, di prima “didn’t play the role she was supposed to”—that of the silent woman in black. and as mentioned in the introduction, allen ginsberg himself noted di prima’s distinction among other women writers: “where there was a strong writer who could hold her own, like diane di prima, we would certainly work with her and recognize her.” it is unarguable that this recognition of di prima during the beat period itself has contributed to the fact that she is still the most renowned of the women beats. this distinction of di prima among other women beat writers can be attributed to her initiative and dedication to developing as a writer as well as to the quality of her writing itself. di prima’s role as a writer was primary for her; she sacrificed the financial stability that she may have acquired with a standard office job for the pursuit of her artistry. prompted by the publication of howl, she initiated a correspondence with city lights publisher lawrence ferlinghetti about her own writing, and from there developed friendships with various writers of the beat and closely associated literary communities, including ginsberg, jack kerouac, frank o’hara, and charles olson. like such male writers of the avant-garde, di prima experimented in her writing with language, form, and genre, and in , she self-published her first book of poetry with the help of various friends and printers. since that time, di prima has produced a prolific body of work that continues today to draw attention by both writers and critics. di prima’s oeuvre is remarkably varied in terms of genre and style. it represents the evolution of an artist whose work was shaped by a range of experiences that includes her involvement in the beat community of the s and s and in the civil rights and women’s rights movements of the s and s, as well as her practice of zen buddhism and her study of mythology. the progression of her work corresponds with her earliest experiences on the east coast, mostly in new york city but also in upstate ny in the mid- to late s, and later on the west coast, particularly san francisco, where she moved in . comprised of more than books, including poetry, prose, and memoirs, her body of work includes: this kind of bird flies backward ( ), a collection of approximately poems; dinners & nightmares ( ), a combination of poetry, short prose, conversations, and other literary forms that “revel in the domestic squalor and luxury” of new york city bohemia; the politically-charged, performance-based poetry of revolutionary letters ( ); and the prose poems of the calculus of variation ( ). the -part poem, loba (published between and ) is considered seminal in its “visionary exploration of woman as wolf goddess.” and perhaps the most popular of di prima’s work is memoirs of a beatnik, published in . described by di prima as a “potboiler” and by ronna johnson as “soft-core porno for hire,” memoirs is based on di prima’s re-imaginings of new york city that are “enhanced” by her fictional descriptions of “more sex” encouraged by the publishers—a distinct mixing of memoir and tantalizing fiction that helps explain the attention it receives. di prima more recently published a memoir true to the nonfictional promise of its genre, recollections of my life as a woman: the new york years ( ). recollections provides an engaging detailed account of her first years as she grew up and made her way through the early new york city bohemian arts culture, establishing herself as a poet, playwright, and publisher. this more recent memoir also highlights her work as co-founder and editor of ground-breaking literary magazines such as the floating bear, as founder of the poets press, and as co-founder of the new york poets theatre. throughout her prolific literary career, di prima has received numerous awards and honors, including poetry grants from the national endowment for the arts in and , the award for lifetime achievement in poetry from the national poetry association in , the fred cody award for lifetime achievement, and most recently, in , di prima was named san francisco’s fifth poet laureate. in this chapter, i read di prima’s first book of poetry, this kind of bird flies backward ( ), in conjunction with a collection of unpublished poetry as i trace how the development of her poetics was shaped by her shift from a suburban social space in college to the urban, avant-garde beat community in new york city. specifically, i examine how this shift led to a poetics marked by the use of hipster slang and the expression of female subjectivity. my analysis demonstrates how di prima uses the slang of the bohemian community to define and substantiate the identity of the bohemian— male or female—as well as to develop a subjectivity for the female bohemian in particular. i situate an unpublished collection of di prima’s poetry alongside one of her relatively understudied books in order to reveal the importance of hip slang for the development of di prima’s poetics through which she portrays the new york city bohemian culture and the female bohemian in important ways. specifically, i argue that di prima speaks overtly for the bohemian experience, using slang to embody one of the primary distinctions between the bohemian community and the mainstream. writing openly about themes such as individualism, love, and death through this defining characteristic of the beats, di prima gives voice and validation to the experiences of the bohemian. that is, she expresses and celebrates this figure’s subjectivity through the hipster slang that represents one of the countercultural community’s reactions against the mainstream. also importantly, this chapter draws attention to how di prima uses slang to speak specifically for the female bohemian. she develops a subjectivity for this figure who was marginalized and objectified by mainstream gender norms and even within the countercultural work of contemporary male poets, such as ginsberg and olson. as my analysis illustrates more specifically, in this kind of bird flies backward, not only does di prima include women in the bohemian community’s critique of society’s norms, but also she resists and revises the commonly objectified or victimized depictions of female figures as well as notions of romantic love and female sexuality as they were derisively perceived and represented by many mainstream and avant-garde male writers at the time. through the use of beat slang, considered inferior and vulgar by traditional literary standards, she boldly and unapologetically expresses female experiences of love, sex, and motherhood— experiences that are often silenced, suppressed, or distorted in postwar poetry. as noted in the introduction, di prima’s oeuvre receives more critical attention than those of most other female beat writers. current single-author studies on di prima include anthony libby’s “diane di prima: ‘nothing is lost: it shines in our eyes,’” in which libby traces the evolution of her revolutionary poetics, and timothy gray’s “‘the place where your nature meets mine’: diane di prima in the west,” a study of how experiences in various western parts of the country inflect her writing. also, roseanne giannini quinn’s “‘the willingness to speak’: diane di prima and an italian american feminist body politics” and anthony lioi’s “real presence: the numina in italian american poetry” each examine how di prima’s italian heritage takes shape in her work. the particular areas of di prima’s work that i focus on here, the development and practice of a slang and protofeminist poetics, are also present in various discussions of her work. amy friedman, for example, in “‘i say my new name’: women writers of the beat generation,” argues how “di prima eviscerates the myth of female domesticity” in the “thirteen nightmares” of dinners & nightmares and how she “superimposes the experiences of female creativity and fertility, and of motherhood” in poems written in the s, such as “song for baby-o, unborn,” “lullaby,” and “jeanne poems.” michael davidson and alicia suskin ostriker likewise address di prima’s attention to the topic of female identity throughout her work. further, within existing scholarship, as well as in various interviews, scholars consistently acknowledge and inquire about di prima’s experimental use of hip slang. in his attention to di prima’s mixing of opposites throughout her work, for example, libby briefly addresses the appearance of beat slang in the poetry of dinners & nightmares. the scope of libby’s essay, though, prevents a more sustained analysis of this aspect of her work. in fact, the use of slang within her work is more extensively addressed by di prima herself, as she frequently discusses her own understanding of the motivation for and effect of slang within her work in various published interviews. the existing discussions of both of these aspects of di prima’s work raise important issues about her work’s cultural, social, political, and racial implications, but overall, they are limited either to a cursory critical analysis within a broader discussion or to the author’s own descriptions in interviews. my reading of this kind of bird flies backward in conjunction with her unpublished college poetry provides a more sustained look at the development of di prima’s slang and protofeminist poetics in order to effectively understand the significance of her experience within the new york city beat community and how this largely affected her experimentation with language, style, and gender politics. this chapter will highlight the function of community for di prima’s poetics, draw attention to di prima’s first book in new and important ways, and demonstrate her unique contribution to the beat literary tradition as well as to the contemporary avant-garde and feminist studies. ii. the development of a beat poetics di prima’s development as a beat poet can be traced back to her shift from academia to the culturally-vibrant bohemian community of new york city. as a student at swarthmore college, di prima was reading traditional, formal poetry and struggling to write within these conventions. within the countercultural community of new york city, di prima developed a critical perspective toward academia, its poetic tradition, and the mainstream in general that then led to her experimental poetics. di prima was born in brooklyn in , and her earliest poetry found in handwritten notebooks is dated at age six. though she had been writing for several years, at age , di prima realized her desire to “be poet [sic].” when she read novelist somerset maugham’s reference to a keats quotation (“beauty is truth, truth beauty” from “ode on a grecian urn”), she was inspired to seek out keats’s letters, which then significantly shaped her ideas about poetry and strongly influenced her commitment to the arts. in particular, di prima explains that keats’s theory of the imagination had a profound impact on her, helping her realize that “if you could imagine anything clearly enough, and tell it precisely enough, … you could bring it about.” likewise, keats’s concept of negative capability influenced di prima’s sense of how, as a poet, she could write freely, “not pursuing any viewpoint” deliberately through her work, but rather “letting [poetry] come through you. leaving behind opinion and judgment.” immersing herself in keats’s letters, di prima continued to write poetry, but her brief stint at college from the fall of to the end of would prove to be a rather difficult experience for her and inhibit her poetic development as she recalls in her memoir, recollections of my life as a woman. di prima characterizes swarthmore college as having a “cold intellect,” which made her feel “buried alive”—as an environment where she could “smell the ultimate poverty of spirit.” she attended the private liberal arts college in the philadelphia suburbs because her parents thought a relatively small college not too far from their brooklyn home would be most suitable. at age , she initially welcomed the opportunity to be away from her home and family but soon discovered college as a place “cut off from the world” that made her feel lost. she describes constantly trying to write at swarthmore but ultimately being unable to produce: “this is the only place i have ever been where it is next to impossible to write a poem.” she was studying the classics such as chaucer and shakespeare in her english classes, and found her professors to be “tired [and] cynical.” though she had access to outdoor space unavailable at home in brooklyn and took part in conventional college activities such as attending football games, dating, and drinking beer, di prima describes the environment at swarthmore as “dreary”— perhaps a combination of the tiresome approach to studying literature by her “jaded” professors and her superficial attempts to fit in and take part in the “normal” college experience. di prima’s overwhelming desire to go “no day without a line” set her apart from most other students on campus. she attempted to spend some of her time privately, but found that the girls around her worried about such “odd” behavior. she explains, i frequently shut my door, lock it sometimes, play music, write, and daydream. sometimes when i open it, i find people waiting outside. … they always say that they are worried. so unusual is it to lock one’s door that sometimes they wonder if i killed myself. i hate it. feel invaded. hate being spied on. some of di prima’s new friends did share her artistic interests (a group that she describes as “all maverick”), but they began dropping out by the second year. wanting to live as a student and poet on her own terms, di prima began to see that her “hunger for truth [was] turning into rage.” her individual interests and values set her apart from most others, and as her friends in similar circumstances began leaving, the suburban college setting left her feeling isolated and dispirited. in manhattan for winter break in , di prima became overwhelmed with what new york city had to offer, particularly in contrast to that of the college environment: i am again in new york. it is a relief to be here: the energy, the noise of the city. even the crudeness—loud voices on streets and in restaurants—is a blessing. nothing here is muffled or polite. it is huge and unruly and jostling for space. i find it exhilarating. having completed only three semesters, she dropped out of swarthmore at the end of and moved to manhattan—a place that could nurture rather than stifle her independent and artistic spirit. di prima was intensely drawn to the life of new york city from a young age. as she describes in her memoir, her grandfather would take her out at night when she could absorb “the lights, the noises” and “smells of mystery” that captivated her. as a young woman, di prima and her friends “felt safe and at home” in the city. and upon leaving swarthmore, it was in new york city that she, along with fellow artists, be it a “writer, dancer, painter, musician, actor, photographer, sculptor, you name it” sought to live and create. in a vivid passage from memoirs of a beatnik, di prima describes her all- encompassing “love affair” with new york city as: an overwhelming love of the alleys and warehouses, of the strange cemetery downtown at trinity church, of wall street in the dead of night, cathedral parkway on sunday afternoons, of the chrysler building gleaming like fabled towers in the october sun, the incredible prana and energy in the air, stirring a creativity that seemed to spring from the fiery core of the planet and burst like a thousand boiling volcanoes in the music and painting, the dancing and the poetry of this magic city. though di prima would eventually realize that “new york city was not the center, but one center” after taking several trips to different parts of the west of the country beginning in , new york city provided di prima with the culturally- and creatively- stimulating life she sought as a young bohemian. once she moved to the lower east side of manhattan in early , di prima promptly immersed herself in the burgeoning arts scene around her. she had experienced firsthand at swarthmore the deadening impact of the academic establishment and of mainstream conformity in general, and the bohemian community in new york city provided a space within which her critical perspective on academia and literary conventions could be developed and supported. she and her fellow “outlaw artist renunciants” positioned themselves deliberately on the margins of the mainstream so as to escape the growing materialism and “get-ahead thrust of america ”—and they did so collectively. distancing oneself from the mainstream at this time certainly did not entail individual isolation. on the contrary, with other artists similarly seeking refuge from the steadily “progressing” post-wwii society—manifested in what they perceived to be the mainstream’s threatening conformity and homogeneity—di prima found a community of various artists who strongly believed in the importance of fostering personal creativity and individual freedom. as i discuss in more detail later, an essential part of such a countercultural community is the use of language as a means for its members to embody and express their nonconformity. the use of beat slang that reflects this particular community’s cultural and social rebellion appears in di prima’s first book of poetry and continued to evolve throughout her body of work—becoming one of the defining characteristics of her poetics. dinners & nightmares, for example, which contains much of the poetry first published in this kind of bird flies backward, also contains new material, in which di prima extends her use of slang to several other genres, such as short prose and what she calls conversations. in one of the conversations, “the quarrel,” di prima describes the female speaker’s anger and resentment toward her lover, mark, for his sexist assumption that she should do the dishes because she’s a woman and he has more important things to do. capturing the hegemonic hierarchical relationship between men and women even within this bohemian setting, di prima describes the speaker thinking to herself: “i probably have just as fucking much work to do as you do. … i am just as lazy as you. … just because i happen to be a chick i thought.” but the speaker suppresses her anger and doesn’t actually say any of this to mark “because it’s so fucking uncool to talk about it.” in this text’s themes of what ostriker aptly refers to as “masculine self-love and feminine self-suppression hipster-style,” di prima’s use of slang is simplistic and cliché, using words such as “chick” and “uncool.” nevertheless, in conjunction with the use of profanity, this use of slang depicts the female bohemian’s frustrated response to a struggle that is itself clichéd. that is, the male bohemian perpetuates the same gender- based behavior responsible for marginalizing women within the mainstream. and in this way, di prima’s particular use of clichéd slang evenly reflects the situation to which the female bohemian responds. in subsequent poetry, such as that published in the new handbook of heaven ( ), earthsong ( ), and loba, di prima’s use of slang is combined with a more experimental use of space on the page as well as with her adoption of ezra pound’s abbreviations, such as wd, yr, cdnt. a poem such as earthsong’s “the passionate hipster to his chick” exemplifies di prima’s use of slang and humor as she presents a contemporary version of christopher marlowe’s “the passionate shepherd to his love”: come live with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove that railroad flat or hot-rod wheel or tea-pads am conceal. and we will sit upon the floor and watch the junkies bolt the door by one cool trumpeter whose beat tells real bad tales for the elite. and i will make a bed of coats and dig with you the gonest notes. you’ll get a leather cap and jacket i know a cat that’s in the racket … i know a bunch that really blows from friday night till sunday goes if all these kickes thy minde may move then live with me, and be my love. writing in the same form as the renaissance poet and using marlowe’s opening and closing lines, di prima quite humorously replaces, for example, marlowe’s shepherd’s offer to share with his love the experience of “seeing the shepherds feed their flocks” and to hand make “a gown made of the finest wool” with her hipster’s offer to “watch the junkies bolt the door” and give his “chick” a stolen “leather cap and jacket”—all while “digging the gonest notes.” also, marlowe’s “delights” are substituted with di prima’s “kickes” in the penultimate line (a spelling itself symbolizing di prima’s playful revision of marlowe’s “literary” language). in this particular example, di prima overtly responds to the formal poetic tradition of the renaissance, which is represented in the contemporary period by the academic poetry of writers such as robert lowell and richard wilbur. in her slang revision of this classic “literary” poem, di prima deliberately mocks the traditional. and it is precisely this playful use of slang that di prima incorporates throughout her work in various ways—all of which functions to represent her interpretations of the new york city bohemian community experience. it is important to note that once di prima left the new york city bohemian scene and settled on the west coast, the appearance of slang within her poetry decreased. timothy gray points out that in conjunction with di prima’s move from “the harsher style of the new york scene” to the west and its “ecological and mystical paradigms,” her “diction and tone [veer] away from hipster irony.” nevertheless, in a poem written in the s such as “a spell for felicia, that she come away,” di prima’s depiction of a “chick” trapped in domestic burdens is powerfully expressed through the hipster slang that characterizes her earliest work. di prima also moves back and forth between hipster slang and more elevated poetic diction throughout loba, an epic poem in which she “rewrites western religious history, its central narratives and characters, to refigure god and the soul in the form of a sister.” given the hip slang’s roots within the new york city bohemian scene, it is not surprising that its prevalence decreases throughout di prima’s later work; as her context and subject matter evolves, so does her poetic style. indeed, the evolution of her use of slang throughout her body of work helps demonstrate the progression of di prima as a poet over + years. iii. the colloquial and slang in american poetry between and , di prima wrote the poetry that would be published in this kind of bird flies backward. like many of her contemporaries, such as olson, o’hara, robert creeley, joanna mcclure, joanne kyger, and carol bergé, di prima followed in the tradition of walt whitman in the use of the colloquial. whitman, along with other key american literary figures such as washington irving and mark twain, championed the value and the literary use of slang. in “slang in america” published in , for example, whitman argues that slang is the root of the american language, that which “produces poets and poems.” he argues, “slang not only brings the first feeders of [language], but is afterward the start of fancy, imagination and humor, breathing into its nostrils the breath of life.” as louis untermeyer describes, whitman was one of the first american writers to favor “the richness and vigor of the casual word” at the expense of “the polite language of the pulpit and the lifeless rhetoric of its libraries.” in an effort to develop a uniquely american literature that would draw on the subtle differences between american speech and the english literary language, whitman elevated the language of the masses through his writing, blurring the boundary between formal or “literary” language and the colloquial. this colloquial tradition strongly influenced modernist poets such as william carlos williams and ezra pound, and for contemporary avant-garde poets, this literary style signified their “reaction against the serious, ironic, ostentatiously well made lyric that dominated the post-war poetry scene.” as james smethurst describes, one of the key factors that characterized di prima and other contemporary poets was the “shared concern with establishing an authentic american diction that was both popular and literary, both self-parodic and self-celebratory, and often saturated with the vocabulary, the usages, and the accents of mass culture.” like their literary predecessors, the avant- garde poets of the s were inspired to cultivate poetry that used concrete particulars and everyday objects for its subject and the “vocabulary drawn from up-to-date american speech” and “the cadences of contemporary american life” for its language and rhythm. the opening lines from o’hara’s “adieu to norman, bon jour to joan and jean- paul” ( ) represent the post-wwii poet’s deliberate use of “non-literary” language: it is : in new york and i am wondering if i will finish this in time to meet norman for lunch ah lunch! i think i am going crazy what with my terrible hangover and the weekend coming up as illustrated here, the work of many “new american” poets (in the words of donald allen) reflected a direct resistance to the willfully complex, symbolist, opaque poetry practiced by t.s. eliot and other formalists. considered to be impersonal and objective, the academic poetry of new critics and the new york intellectuals provided the model against which di prima and other poets in new york city, along with those of contemporaneous communities, such as the black mountain and san francisco poets, would work. di prima and other beat writers, such as ginsberg, however, infused their poetry not only broadly with the colloquial, but also specifically with the slang used by the new york city bohemian community. for example, in love poem # from this kind of bird flies backward, di prima writes, remember you long as sodomy, sure as the black taste of morning timeless as folded to no love backwards lips and the arch ache swinging from back to thighs clued in for crazy cool and endless not enough. not yet. for di prima, the colloquial is highly contextualized—using words and phrases (such as “swinging” and “crazy cool”) derived from and evoking rhythms akin to the s and s bebop scene. and in this particular example, di prima’s use of slang has a sharpness, a vividness, generally lacking in the relatively plain colloquial of o’hara’s poem. somewhat similarly, ginsberg’s use of slang is characterized by an intensity and richness of language. in howl, for instance, ginsberg describes how the “best minds of [his] generation” were a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off empire state out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars as jonah raskin explains, ginsberg “released a torrent of words, images, emotions, and experiences,” writing “with verbal pyrotechnics, rhetorical flourishes, and dramatic phrases.” in effect, raskin argues, “reading [howl] yields a feeling of intoxication. the words produce an electrical charge that is exhilarating.” ginsberg’s use of slang is notably original, often defying common usage, and this has largely defined ginsberg’s strength as a poet. in contrast to the overt intensity of ginsberg’s poetics, di prima’s slang poetics is generally more subtle and minimalist—fluctuating in her representative first book of poetry from the less frequent but more textured use of slang, such as in the love poem quoted above, to the more frequent literal use of slang and the appearance of some clichéd slang such as “cool,” “dig,” and “flip.” the quotation in the title of this chapter, for example, “so here i am the coolest in new york,” illustrates di prima’s use of the simple and commonplace phrase “the coolest” as well as the considerable sparseness of her poetic line to express the bravado of the beat writer. such stylistic distinctions between ginsberg’s and di prima’s use of slang may suggest that di prima’s poetics is less bold or effective than ginsberg’s. in fact, it could be argued that, at least superficially, her style affirms mainstream critiques of the beats as anti-intellectuals, claims that the use of hipster slang indicates a “simple inability to express anything in words,” as critic norman podhoretz argued in the late s. however, this is not the case. the style of di prima’s slang poetics signifies her endeavor to self-consciously construct and portray the identity and voice of the beat or bohemian figure. writing poetry in a style that is, as seymour krim described in , “honest [and] terse,” di prima asserts and expresses a beat stance with purity and authenticity, using the language spoken on the margins of society as a means of communicating truths from this outsider perspective. she uses beat slang as it is spoken in its basic form as a means to validate and substantiate the experience of the bohemian. while ginsberg reacts against the formal and considerably dense quality of traditionalist poetry in a whitmanesque style, di prima does so in a minimalist style—like that of williams—infusing her poetry with “the vocabulary, the usages, and the accents” of her fellow nonconformists in a manner that is unadorned. within a discussion of how the beats’ language developed through the “absorption of the vocabularies of marginalized cultures and subcultures that had developed distinctive dialects,” robert holton argues that there is more to the use of jargon than what it might represent superficially. in the words of m.m. bakhtin, “language is conceived as ideologically saturated, language [is] a world view.” it is my contention that di prima’s slang poetics embodies this notion of language as representative of a “world view” as it represents her confrontation and revision of the traditional in multiple ways. her slang poetics resists and revises the traditional as it is represented by the poetic use of “literary” language, by the marginalization of the beat or nonconformist in general, as well as by the subordination of women in society and literature. thus, the boldness or intensity of her poetics lies, not necessarily in the actual slang itself—though sometimes this is the case—but in her efforts to express the bohemian experience with honesty and authenticity, as well as to speak directly for the female bohemian—all while using beat slang. importantly, as noted earlier, this latter achievement stands in distinct contrast to much of the work of di prima’s male beat and non-beat contemporaries, including howl and its almost exclusive focus on the experiences of ginsberg’s fellow “underground men.” the motivation behind such efforts is also highlighted when the slang poetics of this kind is situated alongside di prima’s earlier college poetry, as this reveals a deliberate shift from a more sophisticated to a more seemingly simplistic use of language that is nevertheless powerful and provocative. iv. di prima’s slang and protofeminist poetics slang and individualism in this kind of bird flies backward a brief overview of the overall style of this kind is useful to contextualize my more focused discussion of its slang. like williams, pound, and h.d. before her, di prima’s early poetics can be described as “on a thin diet” —seeking precision and directness through minimalism and a use of the vernacular rather than presenting extraneous description and abstract symbolism through “literary” language. as such, throughout this kind, the poetry is concise, using language sparingly, but effectively. the appearance of slang fluctuates throughout the book—more prominent in some poems than in others. overall, this first book of di prima’s poetry reads as casual, playful, energetic, and self-assured. in notably short lines, ranging from monosyllabic lines to the less frequent length of or syllables, there is an immediacy to this poetry; most of the poems are fast-paced and unrhymed, at times staccato-like, expressing an overall informality and spontaneity. also, there is an almost exclusive use of the lowercase throughout this kind, contrasted only infrequently, such as in this first of three playful “riffs” in all capitalized letters: so babe who sez it’s cool to cut just cause the house burned down? the capitalization here clearly evokes a sense of urgency, and the first five lines of two syllables each read with a well-defined beat, evoking its own rhythm as a bebop piece might—an effect suggested by the title of this short series itself, “riffs.” following this capitalized poem is the second “riff” below, which in almost all lowercase and with wider spacing reads much more casually, at a slower pace that virtually embodies the very directions the speaker gives: walk easy hang loose stay cool just once i dare you as in this poem, the majority of poetry of this kind lacks end punctuation, contributing to the casualness or informality of the speaker as well as to the open-endedness of the poem. in the third and final “riff,” di prima poses a question without a question mark: what happens on the day the sky doesn’t fall di prima reverses the typical form of the idiomatic exclamation that the sky is falling here. in conjunction with her resistance to standard capitalization and punctuation, the idiomatic reversal embodies the poetic experimentation and nonconformity that represents the bohemian experience itself. further, the pacing of the poetry throughout this kind is most effectively achieved through the combination of di prima’s experimentation with capitalization, punctuation, and lineation. specifically, the staccato-like rhythm of many of the poems in this kind is often achieved through di prima’s playfulness with enjambment, similar to williams’ lineation in a poem such as “the red wheelbarrow” as well as in the work of his poetic admirer, robert creeley. incorporating similarly unconventional line breaks in her poetry, di prima fragments her poems in unexpected ways, at times emphasizing particular words and images. overall, this helps her achieve a playful, though sometimes choppy pace that may defy readers’ expectations—creating unexpected pauses and, in doing so, actually propelling the reader forward. although the following poem lacks the slang more strongly illustrated in the preceding poems, each stanza of “the window” demonstrates di prima’s use of enjambment in conjunction with the absence of punctuation and sentence- or line-based capitalization that blurs sentence boundaries and achieves a moderate halting effect. here is the poem in its entirety: you are my bread and the hairline noise of my bones you are almost the sea you are not stone or molten sound i think you have no hands this kind of bird flies backward and this love breaks on a windowpane where no light talks this is not time for crossing tongues (the sand here never shifts) i think tomorrow turned you with his toe and you will shine and shine unspent and underground that each stanza begins with an end-stopped line and then proceeds with enjambed lines embodies di prima’s undoing of poetic convention as the poem progresses. the isolation of a word like “noise” in the first stanza gives it particular emphasis as its own line, creating a pause at this insult of the addressee, who is described in this way as a nuisance for the speaker, trivial and bothersome. somewhat similarly, the enjambment of the final four lines of the poem creates suspense as the speaker first hints to the addressee: “and you will,” then teases with the one-word line, “shine,” teases again with the repetition of “and shine,” then concludes with the final defeat: “unspent and underground.” examining the style of this kind in these ways brings into focus how di prima uses beat slang as well as the colloquial, more broadly, to represent the nonconformity and express the agency of the bohemian. for example, most of the end-stopped lines of “the window”: “you are my bread,” “you are not stone,” “i think,” “you have no hands,” and “this kind of bird flies backward” illustrate how di prima speaks for the bohemian from a position of agency. at times, this is illustrated through a contrast between an enjambment like “you are almost / the sea” and the end-stopped “i think,” which is, significantly, the only line to appear twice in the poem. the “you” in this poem has no hands, has lost the ability to feel or touch or reach out on its own. in contrast, the speaker’s presence is asserted clearly and strongly and demands the reader’s attention accordingly in a line such as “i think.” as this analysis suggests, threaded throughout this kind is the theme of the importance and celebration of individualism that is expressed through the speaker’s confrontation of an outside force attempting to objectify or inhibit the speaker, somehow threatening the speaker’s independence and subjectivity. “the window,” notably the first poem of this kind, presents di prima’s speaker as having overtaken a previously overpowering or oppressive force, aptly representing di prima’s effort to assert the voice and agency of the bohemian. having overpowered an omnipresent force, the speaker accepts and embraces that she is different from others. she thrives on her uniqueness: “this kind of bird flies backward / and this love / breaks on a windowpane / where no light talks.” the speaker no longer feels pressured to “fly” in the same direction that others do. it is the “you” of this poem that is doomed to “shine / and shine / unspent and underground.” in this way, di prima presents an image of the bohemian as strong and independent. the lack of standard capitalization exemplified in “the window” also helps convey the collection’s theme of self-assertion and agency. di prima’s consistent adherence to the capitalization of “i” within this kind represents not her adherence to poetic convention—as evident in the variety of experimental uses of language, form, and mechanics—but rather her deliberate assertion of the presence and agency of the “i” for which she speaks. what seems to be her acceptance of convention works in conjunction with the unconventional practices of di prima’s poetics to embody the very nature of bohemia itself: not an outright rejection of all that is considered conventional, but rather a lifestyle defined by oneself rather than by others or the “norm.” of ultimate importance in bohemia and in di prima’s poetry is one’s ability to decide for him or herself—to resist conformity. di prima’s consistent use of the capitalized “i” exemplifies the confidence with which the bohemian speaks as a nonconformist. the second poem of the collection continues the first poem’s assertion and celebration of those who are considered different or those who “fly backward”—in this case, the unicorns: notice to all land offices: investigate new holdings it is rumored that the unicorns have staked a large claim in the rocky mountains di prima uses the simplistic metaphor of the unicorns—a symbol of the unique, of the nonconformist—to describe the individual strength generated by the solidarity of all of the unicorns. this image of the unicorn reappears in “tale for a unicorn” in dinners and nightmares, in which di prima writes that “poets and unicorns … belong to the myth kingdom” in which they can “see each other even when they are invisible to other species and this makes them very attached to each other.” indeed, no longer hiding or living in the outskirts, beyond the center of things, “the unicorns” in this poem are staking their claim in the land, representing di prima’s effort to substantiate the image of the bohemian. and in the third poem of the collection, the final line is a direct and playful example of a stereotypical slang expression of the bohemian: i don’t forget things fast enough, i sing last summer’s ballads winter long like that’s uncool in the last line that is positioned apart from the preceding stanza, di prima marks her poetic style with a hip bravado that maintains the tone of self-assertion established in the preceding two poems. in this short poem, di prima represents another instance of going against the grain; she mocks the idea that a minor deviation from the norm could set someone apart from the crowd and lead to the dismissal of someone who might “sing / last summer’s ballads / winter long” as “uncool.” and in doing so with the poem’s final line that presents a play on the bohemian’s use of slang, di prima writes in a language that smethurst describes as simultaneously “self-parodic” and “self-celebratory.” these representative poems of this kind illustrate the overall poetics of the collection, including di prima’s use of the colloquial mixed with hip slang such as “babe” and the casual and phonetic “sez,” as well as phrases such as “hang loose” and “stay cool.” i suggested earlier that the simplistic or seemingly dated style of this slang may appear to confirm the critique of the beats as anti-intellectual by the mainstream media or academic critics at the time. for many of these critics, the beats’ “know-nothing[ness]” was represented in their literary use of hip slang. more recently, in one of the critical studies of di prima’s work, libby argues in a cursory discussion of her poetic slang that “her use of hip slang, such as ‘cool,’ ‘dig,’ ‘pad,’ and ‘chick,’ … does not wear well.” that is, libby argues, di prima’s use of “self-consciously in-group jargon troubles the surface of the poems” unlike “the less specifically marked colloquial language [that] is an effective counterbalance to the ancient high style of romantic utterance.” in light of such arguments, it is my contention that di prima’s particular use of beat slang—self- consciously cliché at times—signifies her reaction against critiques of the beats as uncultured and as artificial or ineffectual nonconformists and highlights her efforts to speak for the beats’ fundamental resistance to mainstream values in a way that frequently takes shape through a playful irony. that is, she uses slang that might be considered “primitive” with self-awareness —as a means to express the agency of the beat figure and to reinforce the beats’ countercultural critique of mainstream values and conventions that, in large part, is developed through the use of hipster slang itself. indeed, from the start of this kind, her slang poetics works in conjunction with her experimentation with conventions of verse form, lineation, punctuation, and capitalization to speak for the bohemian as a clearly identified “i”—an individual uninhibited by others’ resistance to difference. an earlier poetics of tradition and struggle the emphasis on the nonconformity and individualism of the bohemian that takes place through the slang poetics of this kind is further highlighted when situated alongside and against the poetry that di prima wrote during her years at college. notably, this earlier poetry is relatively traditional in its formal diction and style; it reflects di prima’s study of poetry at the time, including the british romantics and shakespeare. also important to note is that the poetry of her college period is distinct from the previously-discussed poetry of this kind in that it speaks from a position of struggle rather than of confidence or strength in the face of conformity. this examination of di prima’s earlier unpublished poetry reveals an original and often striking use of language and imagery that is especially significant in light of what i described above as a seemingly simplistic use of slang and imagery in this kind. that di prima’s developing poetics shifted from a more overt level of sophistication to a more informal, unadorned, and minimalist style underscores the deliberateness with which her latter “anti- intellectual” poetics was composed. the following poem, dated october , illustrates di prima’s practice of poetic convention in the poetry from her college period: return not twice where ethel goes in youth and dance and song when summer berries burst their skins and summer grass is long but come you back when grass is dry and white bones reach like trees and grave upon your heart in pain what ethel never sees. several aspects of this poem are particularly distinctive when compared to the poetry of this kind. perhaps foremost is the use of the rhyme scheme called common measure, in which the lines alternate from iambic tetrameter to iambic trimeter with an abcb rhyme scheme. such standard form was used by emily dickinson as well as british romantics williams wordsworth and percy bysshe shelley. other notable formalities of this poem include the diction itself, closer in style to that of the academic poetry of the time; the colloquial is absent here, as is the fundamental casualness or energy of di prima’s slang poetics of this kind. with the conventional diction throughout the poem and the inverted syntax in lines one and five, the poem evokes a formal tone. and the use of capitalization and end punctuation further characterizes the overall use of convention here and highlights the contrast to the poetry of this kind. similarly, in the following poem, dated , di prima uses the half measure abab rhyme scheme, maintained through the use of a contraction in line seven: now i turn from dust and stone where the broken things suffice tossing like a driftwood bone in a sea of splintered ice. now from rain i turn to rest quite alone prepare to sleep. cold. the fiercer way’s the best. lad, a restless bed i keep. in its traditional form and standard diction, the poem avoids local references, seeming timeless and placeless—a notable contrast to the locality of slang. and not unlike the previous poem’s imagery of deterioration resulting from the passing of time, this poem represents what will be an eternal struggle as the speaker faces death with resistance, implied by the “splintered” ice, the “restless” sleep, and the “cold” of this final rest that is given particular emphasis in its one word sentence. as these two poems exemplify, di prima’s college-period poetry contrasts with the poetry of this kind not only in its use of formal convention, but also in its theme of the struggle to survive, to maintain one’s sense of self and individuality. throughout the poetry of this short period, the use of regular meter and rhyme scheme is less consistent than the use of formal or elevated diction, standard line capitalization, punctuation, and the themes of isolation, despair, and struggle, all of which works together to express a markedly serious tone. specifically, thematic variations of the inability to maintain one’s individuality are expressed through a poetic voice that is often immobile or struggling in darkness or blindness under some threatening or oppressive force. the theme of struggle in these poems points up the important shift in di prima’s poetry represented by this kind’s emphasis on the acceptance and celebration of one’s individuality. in another example of this darker college-period poetry, di prima writes, i have been taken apart and marked and now, though i walk with many none can touch me. the mark of the brand is deep salve will not heal it nor will the crimson be quieted. angry and searing it eats thru the flesh the pain is chill at my marrow. the speaker suffers at the hands of difference, of being “marked” by something outside of herself, and as such, cannot meaningfully connect to anyone around her. rather, she breathes through the pain and is subject to endure in this way for time to come. in its free verse form, this poem stylistically performs the very chaos and uncontrollability of the speaker’s situation. and while this poem illustrates a higher level of sophistication than the previous examples in their restricted use of traditional form, it also heightens the contrast between the style and theme of this earlier poetry and that of this kind. additionally, throughout her college-period poetry, di prima frequently uses images of threatening or dangerous elements to evoke feelings of suffocation or paralysis for her speakers. in “receive what comes,” for example, an “oil green lake” “swallow[s] all,” making any individual hopes, desires, or questions meaningless. and there is “the fluid / and it is thick, like syrup” that causes “strengthlessness” and the speaker’s plea for others to “stand / walk / try / before you die of it” in “strengthlessness, weak at the hands.” the imagery used in these poems to depict themes of intense struggle and oppression works in conjunction with the use of formal diction, mechanics, and poetic structure described above to express the theme of isolation and struggle throughout this poetry. this earlier collection of poetry uses language such as “redundant ones,” “exiles,” or “the lost ones” to refer to those who were outcast and suffering because of their individualism. in contrast, the poetry of this kind uses relatively cliché language such as “bird,” “unicorn,” and “the coolest” to emphasize the acceptance and celebration of individualism and difference that di prima highlights through her use of beat slang. as i noted earlier, she uses beat slang in such a manner—seemingly simplistic and unoriginal, yet pure and authentic—in order to underscore the function of beat slang in a “self- parodic” fashion. another primary distinction between the two sets of poems is the lighter, self-possessed poetic voice that characterizes the poetry of this kind—a voice expressed through the use of slang and various other unconventional formal practices. in a final illustration of this contrast, di prima contemplates struggle and fear in the following, dated january : god give me strength i am afraid of pain death, though it comes but once is a terrible thing but pain cannot be borne it comes too many times. included in this kind, di prima writes the following: there’s one or two dominions i’d give death rather than have this other thing corrosion sit pretty there not afraid to face death or the pain that accompanies it, di prima’s speaker in this latter poem is willing to concede to death if it means the end of “corrosion” that pretends to “sit pretty” around her. this comparison between di prima’s two early collections of poems demonstrates that along with di prima’s use of slang and experimentation with various other poetic conventions, her poetic voice transformed from more formal and fearful to more casual and bold. the poetry di prima produced during her time at college is dark in tone and theme and restricted in form and language, whereas the poetry produced within the new york city bohemian community is lighter and playful in tone, more self-assured in theme, and unrestricted by form or language. as noted above, these two sets of poems are also distinguished by the former’s sophisticated use of language and imagery in contrast to the latter’s frequent use of dated or simplistic slang and imagery that might suggest a dullness or lack of quality, especially when situated alongside the slang poetics of a contemporary like ginsberg. these contrasts, however, highlight the way in which di prima’s particular use of language and style in this kind works in conjunction with the poems’ thematic emphasis on an unwavering celebration of an authentic american experience that is achieved through resistance to constraining traditions and expectations—including the use of “literary” or academic language. this development of di prima’s avant-garde poetics took shape within the context of the new york city bohemian community. unlike the rigid and formal environment of swarthmore, the bohemian community in new york city represented a space within which nonconformists could thrive as individuals in light of the absence of the mainstream threat of conformity. in its anti-establishment, anti-academic perspective, the bohemian community provided the space within which di prima could move away from tradition and toward a more personal expression of creativity—and it is this emphasis on individualism and authenticity that i argue di prima’s first book of poetry embodies. as described earlier, di prima considers her development as an artist to have truly begun when she moved to new york city. as my analysis illustrates, simultaneous with di prima’s departure from the polite, orderly, prescribed social and cultural context of college, was her departure from the similarly formal and disciplined poetic tradition, and her move toward a slang poetics through which she could move away from struggle and insecurity to express agency as a bohemian. the female bohemian what makes di prima’s poetics in this kind especially important is her use of slang in a consciously “female” way. significantly, di prima gives voice to and develops a subjectivity for the objectified and marginalized figure of the female bohemian. this is particularly important given how even contemporary avant-garde poets like ginsberg, gregory corso, and john wieners continue to perpetuate the inferiority and marginalization of the female gender through their poetry, however unwittingly. in “praise for sick women,” for example, gary snyder seems to sympathize with the female experience of menstruation, as he compares this “sickness” to “hell” as women are “in a bark shack / crouched from sun, five days, / blood dripping through crusted thighs.” yet, he simultaneously and uncritically maintains that women’s physical “fertility” precludes any mental “fertility.” he writes, the female is fertile, and discipline (contra naturam) only confuses her who has, head held sideways arm out softly, touching, a difficult dance to do, but not in mind. routinely subject to this “sickness,” then, women are “wounded,” left only to “[dream] of long-legged dancing in light,” snyder suggests. in contrast to such portrayals of women in which their intellectual, emotional, and physical capacities are limited by their biology, di prima’s portrayal of the female experience reveals women’s participation in the bohemian community’s critique of dominant gender discourse and provides representations of love and sexuality from a female perspective. in doing so, she revises the notions of women as innately distinct from men intellectually, as unconditionally content in or even naturally desiring the role of wife and/or mother, and as “silent.” in these ways, di prima addresses the female malaise that would soon receive national attention with the publication of the feminine mystique in —indeed, this remarkable aspect of this kind highlights di prima’s work as protofeminist. di prima expresses authenticity and honesty in her poems overtly on love and sex, such as the grittiness and hostility or anger often experienced by women who were consistently faced with others’ expectations of submissiveness or passivity. in doing so, di prima exposes aspects of the female experience traditionally expected to remain private and unspoken. what is especially notable about her work is that she does this while using the same style of hip slang that i examined earlier. not only does her particular style of slang poetics in the context of female identity and subjectivity reflect the female beat experience with boldness and bravado, but also it largely relies on clichéd slang as a means to confront and subvert the subordination or objectification of women that has itself become trite. further, di prima was able to integrate women’s experiences into her poetry that, in general, speaks for the bohemian community as a whole—rather than merely reversing the traditional hierarchical gender binary. while contemporary male poets tend to exclude women or narrowly represent them in their writing, men are not absent from nor necessarily subordinated within di prima’s descriptions of bohemia. that is, for di prima, making women visible does not necessarily entail making men invisible or marginal. the title of this kind’s love poems series itself signifies di prima’s resistance to dominant conventions and portrayals of women at the time, as within this series, she starkly disrupts traditional notions of love and of expectations for women’s roles in romantic relationships. the thirteen love poems are written in similar language and style to the other poems of the collection, and using the slang of the bohemian community, di prima provides candid portrayals of the female bohemian’s romantic and sexual experiences. the love poems describe the female speaker’s various reactions to relationships or lovers throughout which she attempts to express and maintain a position of being “cool” and in control of her own experiences and relationships. throughout these poems, the speaker describes extremely intimate knowledge and ownership of her own and her lovers’ bodies, as well as sexual experimentation and assertiveness—all of which reverses the passivity and relative silence of women that normative gender roles assume. the first poem in this series begins abruptly with a violent expression of rage, which functions to quite startlingly raise questions about how the “love” of the series title is defined or by whom: i hope you go thru hell tonight beloved. i hope you choke to death on lumps of stars and by your bed a window with frost and moon on frost and you want to scream and can’t because your woman is (i hope) right there asleep. baby i hope you never close your eyes so two of us can pick up on this dawn. di prima uses a markedly strong tone to express the female speaker’s feelings of jealousy and anger, then concludes more softly as the speaker speaks calmly and expresses her desire that ultimately generates the jealousy. the speaker shifts from being scorned to wanting to have sex with the man that scorned her, and in this way, she exhibits a sexual freedom and desire for sexual satisfaction traditionally suppressed in poetry of the time. in what may seem to perpetuate the stereotypical image of the woman as dependent upon the man, helpless in her overwhelming desire and his commitment to another, this poem makes no attempt to hide the speaker’s desire for her lover. rather, di prima enables her female speaker to express the jealously she experiences honestly—acknowledging the grittiness involved in such relationships rather than hiding or denying it. in subsequent poems, di prima positions the female speaker as sexually assertive and open about her lack of inhibitions with her body and that of her lovers. one example is the second love poem (quoted earlier) that includes some of di prima’s most energetic use of slang: remember you long as sodomy, sure as the black taste of morning timeless as folded to no love backwards lips and the arch ache swinging from back to thighs clued in for crazy cool and endless not enough. not yet. the intensity of the language and imagery here matches the intensity of the sexual experience itself—a combination of sensuality and aggressiveness. in the language such as “timeless” and “not enough,” and particularly in the final line of the poem (“not yet.”), the speaker expresses her insatiableness in this sexual experience—surely unexpected from a woman at this time. the speaker’s strong physical desire is further depicted through the use of enjambment, as di prima places particular emphasis on the lover’s lips and thighs. in these ways, di prima resists the tendency by her contemporaries to obscure the physicality and sensuality of the female sexual experience and instead puts such descriptions at the fore. in the sixth love poem, di prima reverses the typical gender roles of heterosexual relationships; anticipating rejection by her lover, the woman takes control of the situation: in case you put me down i put you down already, doll i know the games you play. in case you put me down i got it figured how there are better mouths than yours more swinging bodies wilder scenes than this. in case you put me down it won’t help much. notably, the speaker here appropriates a man’s use of “doll” to refer to a woman—a term implicitly carrying with it the suggestion of a woman as an object or toy to be played with. di prima appropriates this term for her female speaker and in doing so exemplifies the subjectivity of her female speaker, no longer an object to be condescended to or rejected. burt kimmelman aptly describes the use of slang in this poem: “this is the language of jazz and communal living and it is most of all the proclamation of freedom in an alternative life style—all built into the word ‘swinging.’” in the same way that di prima uses slang in her poetry as a resistance to academic poetry, she uses it to redefine the role of the female bohemian—giving her a freedom and subjectivity denied in the mainstream and by many men of the counterculture. di prima continues this air of sexual bravado in the th and th love poems: no babe we’d never swing together but the syncopation would be something wild you are not quite the air i breathe thank god. so go. in this latter poem, di prima’s speaker is especially confrontational. with concise directness, she severs any potential dependence upon another for survival, expressing a strength and independence which is emphasized in the poem’s final imperative line of dismissal. as illustrated here and in previous examples above, di prima represents the female bohemian in the love poems series as someone in control, often in the dominant position of a relationship. rather than being objectified and limited in her ability to engage in “wild” sexual experiences, the female bohemian in this series expresses a subjectivity, strong sexual desire, and assertiveness that the traditionally hierarchical male/female relationship denies or suppresses. in conjunction with the somewhat overpowering bravado illustrated in the love poems series, the two “pomes for bret” later in this kind strike an effective balance between the aggressiveness described above and a calmer level of contentment. the first of these two poems is similar to the confrontational tone of the first love poem, including lines such as “you’d better watch your step / deari-o. / i seen your tricks / and babe / i’ve got my eye / on you.” but the second poem expresses a revelation of sorts: you know it’s good for once not to be dug because i know so much or i’m so cool or any o-help reasons it’s nice to run a pad where both of us are cool enough to know we’re both uncool by the end of the poem, the speaker backs away from her superficial attempt to portray confidence in the face of rejection. instead, she accepts the circumstance and tempers what began as an aggressive attack on the “mister with [his] i-hate-you love poems.” unafraid to portray the complexities that accompany traditionally-romanticized relationships, di prima represents the female bohemian experience in the love poems series and here in pomes for bret as one characterized by sexual curiosity, assertiveness, bravado, and intimacy, as well as insight and satisfaction. and to do so, she uses the hip slang of bohemia (such as “swinging,” “wild,” “dug,” “cool,” “pad,” and “deari-o”) to overtly represent and speak for the female bohemian experience. without the use of slang in poems such as these, the ability to portray this lifestyle that is a deliberate alternative to the mainstream would be lost. speaking directly for the representative female bohemian and her participation in the countercultural confrontation and revision of gender norms, di prima uses hipster slang to redefine what is largely accepted as the passive position of women. di prima’s revision of traditional conceptions of women defined by normative gender codes continues throughout other poems in this kind, particularly through the theme of motherhood. in “requiem,” for example, di prima explores the struggles and pain that frequently accompany motherhood, representing the complexity of this female experience often romanticized in portrayals of women as mothers. di prima writes: i think you’ll find a coffin not so good baby-o. they strap you in pretty tight i hear it’s cold and worms and things are there for selfish reasons i think you’ll want to turn onto your side your hair won’t like to stay in place forever and your hands won’t like it crossed like that i think your lips won’t like it by themselves notably less energetic than many of the other poems of this kind, “requiem” revises the traditional image of the mother as naturally emotional or sentimental. faced with the death of her baby, the speaker laments her lack of control to provide any real comfort. she responds to this tragic circumstance in a seemingly detached or disconnected tone, focusing on the superficial and unable to express any degree of love or loss. somewhat similarly, in “for babio, unborn,” the speaker poses questions to her body that complicate the notion that women innately become mothers and therefore, without question understand “whose flesh / has crossed my will” or “whose hands / broke ground / for that thrusting head.” as amy friedman points out, in this poem, di prima “focuses on poetic gifts she has to offer her child over material ones.” di prima writes: sweetheart when you break thru you’ll find a poet here not quite what one would choose. i won’t promise you’ll never go hungry or that you won’t be sad on this gutted breaking globe but i can show you baby enough to love to break your heart forever di prima’s speaker identifies first as a poet and second as a mother, acknowledging that this isn’t necessarily “what one would choose.” as such, di prima suggests how her speaker’s identity as a poet willingly compromises her ability to provide for a baby, materially and psychologically, as the conventional role of mother as domestic provider would prescribe. constrained by her unfixed or meager income as a poet, the speaker has only her experiences with and capacity to love to comfort her child. in contrast to the bravado expressed in the love poems series, here the tone is one of confusion and slight sadness or guilt. in this way, di prima challenges the notion that women instinctively or willingly identify as mothers and do so at the cost of anything else, perhaps especially at the cost of identifying as a poet or an artist. significantly, di prima’s protofeminist representations of women exemplified in this analysis of poems such as “requiem,” “for babio, unborn,” “pomes for bret,” and the love poems counter representations of women even in the work of other beat poets like ginsberg, as mentioned earlier. in the example of howl, it is important to note that “the best minds” that ginsberg speaks for are almost exclusively limited to male writers and artists. this is implied in various references, such as one to the struggling writers who “were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts.” rarely were women of the bohemian community acknowledged as writers at this time—and that they would be described as “waving genitals” seems similarly unlikely. more importantly, the female figures that appear in howl illustrate precisely what di prima confronts and revises in this kind. for example, ginsberg describes the “angelheaded hipsters”: who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom in this first explicit inclusion of women in the poem, they appear derisively as “shrews”: one defined by an association between sex and money, one defined by her biological imperative as a mother, and the third defined by doing nothing except deliberately impeding intellectual creativity. in the subsequent line, the female figure is merely second in a list of objects present during copulation: who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness no more valuable than beer or cigarettes, the “sweetheart” is merely a moment in the men’s process of reaching sexual climax. other females appear in the poem similar to this last passage, in nameless, faceless references to objects of male sexual satisfaction: these descriptions include “the snatches of a million girls,” “innumerable lays of girls” and “gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings.” ultimately, this survey of the appearance and function of women in ginsberg’s seminal poem illustrates that, as rachel blau duplessis argues, “while male figures in ‘howl’ have many activities and outlets…, the female figures are far less particularized, and they essentially have no heads.” further, duplessis argues, the poem “actively, sometimes disdainfully suggests that females are part of the forces of containment. … female figures in ‘howl’ are offered a narrow band of reviled or pitied emotion, without capacity for transformation.” the representations of female figures in this avant-garde text are limited to sexual objects or to figures that are intellectually repressive or limited. and the ways in which women figure into ginsberg’s poem are not unlike the work of other contemporary male poets such as olson and creeley of the black mountain school. di prima’s revision of mainstream and countercultural portrayals of women is also particularly interesting in light of her personal recollections that complicate what has now been well-established as the consistent marginalization of women within the new york city beat community. interestingly, she attests to being unaware of the impact her gender had on her life as a writer during this period. in a interview with anne waldman, for example, di prima explains: it’s only more recently i’ve come to spend any time realizing or thinking about the fact that if the body of work i had done by ’ when the new hand book of heaven was out and the calculus of variation was finished had been done by any of the male writers on that scene at that point, who were my close friends, i think the acknowledgement that a body of work was in progress would have been much greater. in her memoir, di prima further explains that “there truly was this male cabal: self- satisfied, competitive, glorying in small acclaims. … but i never saw it then.” on the contrary, di prima considered the various struggles she endured to be shared by most artists at the time. she continues with waldman: in those days, i was just expecting trouble all around, so it never occurred to me. … i didn’t distinguish which of these things is happening because i’m a woman, which of these things is happening because that’s just the way the world is, and there was a lot of that’s just how the world is, don’t forget, in the air in the ‘ s, too. we all expected the worst. di prima’s own sense of inclusion in the beat community in the s is undeniably important for an inclusive history of the period. but more to my point, although she may not have considered herself marginalized or objectified as a woman within the new york city bohemian community, my analysis of gender and sexuality within this kind illustrates how di prima asserts the presence of the female bohemian in revisionary ways. specifically, she uses the language of the bohemian community—at once subtle and bold—to develop a female subjectivity and to include women in the community’s critique of mainstream social and cultural norms. literary and racial boundaries di prima’s slang and protofeminist poetics is complicated by issues regarding the use of slang as a means of communication between those who are a part of the bohemian community and those who are not, as well as by issues of race in light of the beat community’s slang roots in the black vernacular. exploring these complexities entailed in the literary use of slang further highlights important implications of di prima’s deliberate use of a “non-literary” language to speak for the bohemian. as noted earlier, slang, as the term has come to be shaped, refers not only in general to colloquial speech, but more specifically to a particular code of communication between members of a community. in the th century, washington irving described the use of slang as representing “superiority over the uninitiated.” and written over a century later, but nevertheless emphasizing the same point, norman mailer describes slang, or “the language of hip,” as “a special language … that … cannot really be taught—if one shares none of the experiences … then it seems merely arch or vulgar or irritating.” indeed, the use of slang carries with it an “insider” status inaccessible to “outsiders.” exploring this key aspect of slang further, linguist m.a.k. halliday, within a larger discussion of what he calls antilanguages, explains how members of an alternative community of some sort, or what he refers to as an antisociety, develop an antilanguage as “a mode of resistance” to the outsider or mainstream society. it is the community’s antilanguage, halliday argues, that “provides the means of maintaining identity in the face of its threatened destruction” or in the face of pressure that exists by virtue of the very resistance to the mainstream upon which the antisociety is based. therefore, the development of this antilanguage relies upon the “closed communication” of the antisociety’s members. further, it is formed by a partial “relexicalization”—the substitution of some standard words for new words that “are central to the activities of the subculture and that set it off most sharply from the established society.” in fact, halliday emphasizes that “it is … not the distance between the two realities [or languages] but the tension between them that is significant.” therefore, the ways in which slang is used by members of communities to communicate specifically with each other as well as to construct or maintain the identity of the community and its members as somehow resistant to the “norm” are two essential factors of its development and use— and this highlights precisely the purpose that i argue the poetic use of slang serves for di prima. in light of the boundaries that exist between those within a community who use slang and those outside of the community, though, the literary use of slang raises issues regarding the relationship between the writer and reader. as critic gary dyer discusses, through the use of slang in literary texts, writers “poin[t] out and dramatiz[e] the role of codes in communities to which [they] belon[g].” dyer maintains that the literary use of slang is not meant to invite nor enable readers that are not members of these communities to understand or access them. on the contrary, dyer argues that this use of slang serves to “emphasize difference: to deny that there is some ‘we’ that can be appealed to easily, to deny that there is some unproblematic ‘you’ that the poet can address, to deny that there is only one ‘i’ that speaks.” for dyer, this suggests that the use of slang in a literary text “is as likely to reflect constraint as to reflect freedom”—that “it actually indicates only that [the writer] is free to allude to the inhibitions that shape speech and writing.” complicating this argument about the effect of slang for readers, critic brita lindberg-seyersted claims that the literary use of slang actually functions to “lessen the distance between [text] and reader, for it is hard not to be affected by [the use of informal language], whether pleasantly or unpleasantly.” for example, in her reading of sylvia plath’s later poetry, lindberg-seyersted argues that plath’s use of “speech-like language” creates a “voice [that is] speaking to us [as] one we can hear in our daily lives; it may even be our own.” richard bridgman makes a similar claim to lindberg-seyersted in his broader discussion of the colloquial tradition in american prose when he asserts that “the reader’s mind is more than normally engaged by the actual structure of the vernacular word. … vernacular tricks with language arouse various responses in the reader.” neither lindberg-seyersted nor bridgman argues that, in direct contrast to dyer’s position, literary slang categorically enables readers or outsiders insight or access into the writer’s community. more accurately, they suggest that the literary use of slang may affect readers in a stronger manner than traditional literary language might— blurring the very boundaries that dyer insists are reinforced through the literary use of slang. as my analysis illustrates, di prima uses the slang of the bohemian community to represent what distinguishes this community as an alternative to the mainstream and to express the agency of the male or female bohemian while also developing a subjectivity for the female figure. following with halliday’s theory of antilanguages, then, di prima’s deliberate use of slang in her poetics serves to redefine, validate, and sustain the identity of the “insiders”—the bohemian community—and to do so as an act of resistance to the “outsiders”—the mainstream community. as such, her efforts to use the language of the bohemian community as a means to celebrate the bohemian’s agency and to construct an image of the female bohemian as a subject inevitably entail the perpetuation of the already existing boundaries between the bohemians, the “insiders,” and the mainstream, the “outsiders.” what is at stake for di prima isn’t whether or how “outside” readers might respond to her representation of the bohemian; rather, at stake for di prima is what she considers an authentic portrayal of the bohemian. in her efforts to create such a portrayal, di prima speaks directly to and for her fellow “insiders.” whereas dyer suggests that such differences between insiders and outsiders marked and maintained by the literary use of slang reflect pressure or constraint on the writer, for di prima the poetic use of slang represents not constraint but liberation. the poetry of this kind represents di prima’s deliberate choice to work outside of the traditional boundaries of academic poetry, which strictly adheres to the use of “literary” language. it also represents her liberation of the female bohemian either from absence altogether or from being portrayed in various problematic ways by male writers of both the academy and the avant-garde. as a result of these choices, di prima is able to celebrate the development and use of experimental poetics in direct resistance to the mainstream and to enable the female bohemian to speak for herself from a position of subjectivity. this liberation, though, raises important questions in light of the fact that the slang of the bohemian community that di prima uses in these ways is rooted in the black vernacular and bebop culture of the s and s. examples of the hip slang within this kind include: words such as cool, uncool, broad, doll, dig, pad, flip, swinging, syncopation, and jam; the “-o” added to various names and words; and phrases such as “hang loose,” “zigzag beat,” and “stay cool.” regarding such language, nancy grace and ronna johnson, in a brief introduction to an interview published in , point to the fact that much of di prima’s early poetry, particularly that of her first two books, “unabashedly speak[s] the hipster argot that drew on the black vernacular.” because the slang words and phrases that appear in this kind indeed derive from the black vernacular of the period, they carry important implications when used by a white writer, especially when used as a means of constructing and expressing subjectivity. one particular poem of this kind presents the beat community’s slang roots in the bebop culture more strikingly than the other poems in the collection. the following poem not only integrates a more exaggerated version of the slang of the bebop scene than we have seen in previous examples from this kind, but it also depicts the bebop scene itself with strong imagery. the poem is part of the in memoriam series of this kind and is dated august : damn you ghostface sounding quietus now, i thought we’d dig a coupla sets in hell. won’t say i didn’t love you dad back when long hands and dirty tore a breathless blue good morning blues guitar and that junkriding face went coolly wild. you know the games swing wide in hell there’s riffs behind my teeth could keep you flying. but now it’s small fun digging long gone songs while you play square games never out of bounds. like man don’t flip, i’m hip you cooled this scene. but you can hock the jazz guitar, in limbo they play ballads. in this lamentation, di prima maintains the hip bravado expressed throughout the collection. she also deliberately creates an overt tension between the “wild” bebop scene and its “square” counterpart, a tension developed through the exaggerated use of slang. in this poem, we see the slang included throughout this kind, such as “flip,” “cool,” and “dig,” as in “like man don’t flip, i’m hip you cooled / this scene.” but we also see a more inventive and original use of slang here, as in “breathless blue good morning” and “junkriding face went coolly wild,” which creates more depth and distinction in the imagery of the poem while still emphasizing the function of “non-literary” language for di prima’s poetics in general. the bebop tradition in which this slang is rooted is defined by its experimentation with music: the resistance to well-defined form, structure, and style, and the liberation that comes with improvisation and spontaneity—all in an effort to “diverg[e] from the fundamental conventions of popular [swing and big band] music.” it is thus not merely the language of bebop, but more precisely the culture itself that provided an inspiring model for poets such as di prima, who were looking for an alternative to mainstream society and poetry. as such, in expressing feelings of loss over the passing of a friend directly part of and representative of this cultural scene, di prima intensifies the contrast that exists between the mainstream and the counterculture. she reinforces the boundaries between these two communities while expressing the solemn experience of the speaker through the imagery and language of bebop. in light of the boundaries between the mainstream and the bohemian “antisociety” that are underscored throughout the poetry of this kind, and especially in this poem, it is important to note that entailed in perpetuating these divisions is the impetus to blur racial boundaries. that is, di prima’s use of slang that derives from the black vernacular—her use of this “antilanguage”—represents a distance or tension between the beat counterculture and the mainstream that is partly founded on the fundamental desire of the beat community to erase traditional racial boundaries. in its function as an alternative to the “norm,” the beat community resisted the racial divisions and hierarchies perpetuated in mainstream s society. following in this basic desire to develop a countercultural community not defined by race as well as to develop aesthetic forms and practices that reflect an intermingling of racialized art forms, di prima does not set out to construct nor perpetuate racial differences. instead, in her endeavor to develop a critique of the mainstream through an authentic portrayal of the bohemian community throughout this kind, di prima highlights how this community is itself defined by the blurring of racial and social hierarchies traditionally upheld in the mainstream. that di prima’s use of slang signifies the bohemian’s attraction to the style and language of the bebop culture, however, suggests that her poetics is also fundamentally representative of the desire of a white artist to appropriate some form of black culture— of the romanticization of the black culture—despite her beliefs, values, or desires. di prima’s slang poetics is complicated by the issues of race inextricably linked to this “non- literary” language; she may use hip slang to express the subjectivity of the bohemian and to challenge the marginalization and objectification of women within this countercultural community, but, ultimately, she is unable to transcend the racial implications bound up in this very language. it is important to acknowledge that scholars have frequently critiqued the white beat writer’s attraction to and treatment of non-white racial figures, cultures, and discourses, and similar critiques appear within discussions of white non-beat contemporary writers as well as of white modernist poets. as i described earlier, di prima’s and her avant-garde contemporaries’ use of slang or the colloquial can be traced to the championing and use of the colloquial from whitman to the modernists, and the motivation of di prima and others is notably similar to the white modernist poet’s use of black dialect. as michael north discusses in the dialect of modernism, dialect of the modernist period provided an alternative to the mainstream, authoritative “literary” language that was shaped by “printing, education, and ‘elocution masters’”; it represented an act of rebellion in its “purity” and authenticity. during this period of the early th century, north explains, white writers appropriated the language of black culture as a means to blur the boundaries between the literary and nonliterary—to challenge and undermine the privileged status of the former. however, while dialect represented a natural language, speech free from “‘the artificialities of civilization’” for white writers, it represented a language that was suffocating and oppressing for black writers. as north argues, white poets’ use of dialect made it virtually impossible for black writers to use the very language derived from their heritages. in a similar vein, duplessis argues that white modernist writers who sought to resist the authoritative standard language were simultaneously “resisting coequal citizenship with blacks.” in other words, however inadvertently, such writers maintained a hierarchical relationship between the races through their appropriation of black dialect to enact poetic liberation. as a result of such complexities bound up in this use of language, north characterizes the modernist period as one of “confused white attempts to understand, absorb, emulate, or dismiss black language and culture.” applying a similar argument to the white beat writer’s use of slang in the post-wwii period points to an important paradox. while white writers like di prima and ginsberg used slang that derived from black culture to achieve and express an authenticity that they believed was unattainable through academic literary language, black writers like leroi jones/amiri baraka and bob kaufman also used the language of bebop in their work that, though not exclusively, often addressed racial politics of the period. this suggests that white beat writers’ use of slang did not necessarily prohibit or complicate its racially- and politically-charged use by black beat writers. however, widening the context outside the scope of beat writers, it is important to note that the period of di prima’s and ginsberg’s early work overlapped with that of the burgeoning civil rights movement, and in this context, the very language that represented poetic liberation for these writers was also the language that black figures like malcolm x had to abandon in favor of standard english as a means to gain respect and authority in the pursuit of racial equality. in the case of malcolm x, he found that his writing in the vernacular of his community was inarticulate and inappropriate for his interest in issues of racial equality and black nationalism. he needed to learn and use standard english in order for his voice to be heard—in order to fight against the racial discrimination and inequities faced by the black community. in this way, we see that the language of authenticity and liberation for white beat poets was also the language that inhibited many black figures during the civil rights era. and the ineffectual use of dialect for blacks was itself a product of the social, cultural, and political authority of whites—an authority signified through the privilege of poets like di prima and ginsberg to shift between standard english and black dialect in their own literary and cultural endeavors. thus, in the same way that the inclusion of women within the bohemian community did not preclude the perpetuation of hegemonic gender codes in the community as well as in its male-authored literature, the white bohemian’s attraction to black culture and attempts to integrate it into the interracial bohemian community likewise could not automatically erase the racial implications of a white writer’s use of the slang rooted in black culture. my analysis of this kind, particularly in contrast to di prima’s earlier poetry, illustrates how she uses slang to substantiate the identity and subjectivity of the figure of the bohemian, but examining the relationship between language and race points to the complexity of this poetics and indicates that the liberation di prima exercised through experimentation with language, style, and gender politics is inevitably constrained by the fundamental relationship between language and race. this should not, however, diminish the significance of di prima’s poetics as illustrated throughout the chapter, but rather point to the various complexities tied to the use of language and di prima’s attempt to subvert hegemonic gender and racial inequities. v. conclusion like her contemporaries olson and ginsberg, di prima’s poetics took a dramatic turn in the early s from its relatively traditional or academic style in the school of what baraka described as “bullshit school poetry” to what more closely resembles the unconventional, minimalist poetry of ordinary speech in the vein of williams and pound. for olson, the shift toward a new poetics that was put forth in his manifesto, “projective verse,” symbolized his independence as a poet, as he came to believe in “the poem as a ‘field’ of action rather than a sequential ordering of materials.” for ginsberg, it was williams himself who inspired the younger poet to be free of traditional verse and the use of abstract symbolism and to instead find his poetic voice in “the real language,” the “‘actual talk rhythms’ of the everyday world.” for di prima, as she recalls in her recent memoir, leaving the academy by dropping out of swarthmore college in late and immersing herself in the beat avant-garde community on the lower east side of new york city became the turning point that would shape the progression of her poetics for more than years. the juxtaposition of her college-period poetry and that of this kind of bird flies backward illustrates how using the colloquial in general and the hip slang of the new york city bohemian community in particular provided a way for di prima to express the agency of the bohemian figure and to develop a subjectivity for the female bohemian. di prima’s first book of poetry exemplifies how a female writer, not unlike the better known male writers, was experimenting with the poetic tradition in innovative ways and was challenging the hegemonic gender codes of the period. setting her apart from her male contemporaries, however, this kind also demonstrates how a female poet managed to revise notions of the female bohemian by using slang to speak from a position of agency. with her first book of poetry, di prima represents not just a woman writing from within this community, but a woman writing from within this community with a language and about experiences considered artificial or vulgar. using the hip slang of the bohemian community that ginsberg also uses in howl, but using it in a markedly different style and to a significantly different end, di prima addresses the complex relationship between the counterculture and the mainstream in terms of literature, identity, gender, and community. throughout this kind of bird flies backward, di prima resists the formal poetry of the academy and instead uses hip slang to celebrate what helped define the bohemian community as alternative, and she resists the subordination and objectification of women within both the mainstream and countercultural communities and instead puts women’s experiences with love and sex at the forefront. in this way, di prima challenges familiar notions about what is considered literary and about who and what defines this bohemian community. examining di prima’s early contribution to beat literature, especially in contrast to her earlier unpublished poetry, helps to shape our understanding of what the new york city beat community meant for its various members. this community provided a space within which di prima’s critical perspective toward the mainstream and traditional poetics could be developed. rather than prompting struggles with isolation, confusion, and insecurities in the face of conformity and homogeneity, the s new york city bohemian community engendered di prima’s individualism and personal creativity—in ways that strongly differ from the experiences of many of her fellow women beat writers, as i address in the forthcoming chapters. as this analysis of this kind suggests, that the community distinguished itself from the mainstream and from the traditional poetry of the academy through its use of hipster slang provided an important way for di prima to assert the individualism and agency of the bohemian and to develop a subjectivity for the female bohemian. writing in beat slang provided di prima a means to speak directly to and for her fellow artists. importantly, looking closely at this kind expands our understanding of the women beat writers as protofeminists. the resistance to the traditional female gender role is quite remarkably addressed by di prima in this publication. di prima anticipates the issue of female malaise in the broader post-wwii society, which would later lead to the second-wave feminist movement. and in portraying the various complexities of womanhood as they are experienced with the bohemian community, she also undermines the perpetuation of mainstream gender codes by her male contemporaries. with this kind of bird flies backward, di prima demonstrates what it was like to write as a woman in the s, and ultimately, what distinguishes di prima from her contemporaries is her use of beat slang to substantiate the figure of the bohemian—male and female—through a poetic style that was relatively unique and liberating. whereas di prima’s first book of poetry illustrates her reaction against the academic and androcentric poetics of the postwar period, joyce johnson’s first novel reveals her resistance to and revision of the restrictive patterns of female characterizations in the contemporary novel, and this is the subject of chapter two. notes . seymour krim, the beats (new york: fawcett, ), . . krim, front cover, . . charters, beats and company: a portrait of a literary generation (garden city, ny: doubleday, ), . . ginsberg qtd. in peabody, . . r. johnson, “mapping,” . . breaking, . loba was published in increments as each new part was written; the current parts were first published cumulatively in . . di prima, memoirs of a beatnik (new york: olympia press, ), ; r. johnson, “diane di prima’s anarchist heritage and revolutionary letters - : global radical chic,” mla conference paper (december ); di prima, memoirs, . . whereas “colloquial” or “vernacular” refers more generally to spoken language, my use of the term “slang” follows from its definition as a particular mode of communication between members of a countercultural community (to be discussed in more detail later). i sometimes refer to the slang of the s new york city bohemian community as “hipster” or “hip” slang, which is defined by its distinction from the language of the mainstream, the academy, the “square.” slang in this context is recognizable as such in its use of language derived from the s and s bebop scene, such as “cool” or “dig.” (there are more complex variations of slang that i address throughout the chapter.) . as i noted in the introduction, my use of the term “bohemian” instead of “beat” in certain contexts throughout the dissertation is meant to distinguish between the larger new york city community of artists and the specific group of beat writers within this community. both terms refer to groups of both men and women, despite the lack of support or camaraderie regarding the women’s work as writers. . see mary paniccia carden, maria farland, and blossom kirschenbaum for additional essays on di prima’s work. . a. friedman, “‘i say,’” . also appearing in later publications, “song for baby-o, unborn” and “lullaby” were originally published in this kind (the former as “for babio, unborn”). . see davidson’s the san francisco renaissance and alicia suskin ostriker’s stealing the language: the emergence of women’s poetry in america (london: the women’s press, ). . for example, see anne waldman’s interview, published in arthur and kit knight’s the beat road; tim kindberg’s interview, “the movement of the mind” published in magma; and tony moffeit’s interview, published in grace and johnson’s breaking. . this is included in the diane di prima papers (box ) at the syracuse university library, special collections research center. . di prima, recollections, . . recollections, . . di prima, “light/and keats,” talking poetics from naropa institute: annals of the jack kerouac school of disembodied poetics, vol. ., ed. anne waldman and marilyn webb (boulder: shambhala, ), . . di prima, “light/and keats,” , . in a letter dated december , , keats describes his theory of negative capability: “the excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth. … several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which shakespeare possessed so enormously—i mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” qtd. in di prima, “light/and keats,” . . di prima, recollections, , , . . recollections, . . this and the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from recollections, . . the quotations in this paragraph are from di prima, recollections: , , , , . . this and the preceding quotations in this paragraph are from the same source as above: , , . . di prima, memoirs, . . di prima, recollections, (emphasis in original). . recollections, . . the distinction of di prima among most other women beat writers is important to reiterate here. her own sense of inclusion and the male beats’ recognition of her work at the time undoubtedly contribute to her particular depiction of the bohemian experience throughout her work. this matter becomes more complex regarding her assertion of female subjectivity, however, and i address this in more detail shortly. . most of the new material included in dinners & nightmares was written between the publication of this kind in and dinners in , with the exception, for example, of the thirteen nightmares, which was written in . . di prima, dinners & nightmares (new york: corinth, ), . . dinners, . . ostriker, . . di prima’s experiments with poetic space are perhaps reflective of olson’s theory of projective verse which emphasized that “form is never more than the extension of content.” (collected prose, ed. donald allen and benjamin friedlander [berkeley, ca: university of california press, ], ). as such, the poem is considered “a verbal action” rather than a “sequence of images” determined by form. burton hatlen qtd. in edward foster, understanding the black mountain poets (columbia: university of south carolina press, ), . . interestingly, after exposure to the beat poets in san francisco, lowell’s poetic style changed from what he describes as “distant, symbol-ridden, and willfully difficult” to the open and straightforward style of the beats. qtd. in the norton anthology of american literature, th ed, vol. , ed. nina baym (new york: w.w. norton & company, ), . . like “the passionate hipster to his chick,” the in memoriam series in this kind exemplifies di prima’s confrontation of and resistance to mainstream or standard poetic conventions—revised through the playful use of slang that, to various degrees, rewrites classic, traditional poems. the in memoriam series represents a contemporary version of alfred tennyson’s poem of the same name. for example, she includes more colloquial variations of various phrases or images present in tennyson’s poem: tennyson’s “friend of mine” becomes “brother of mine” and his “white-faced halls” becomes “the whitebellied monster.” further, tennyson’s “thy voice is on the rolling air; / i hear thee where the waters run; / thou standest in the rising sun, / and in the settling thou art fair” takes an unconventional shape in one of the poems of this series, dated may , . di prima writes, “… now in a world of sense / a world of fear you are my guerdon, and when / my gestures large for space throw living out of / focus and the quest screams fearless in the / ending night, it is i remember you who never / were and always are, for you are rain by now / and wind and all the nights of my life black and / young and yes my lad i love you first and truest.” . timothy gray, “‘the place where your nature meets mine’: diane di prima in the west,” journal x: a journal in culture and criticism , no. ( ): . gray defines “the west” for di prima as defined by “a series of encounters in places as diverse as san francisco, wyoming, new mexico, and even upstate new york (one of america’s first frontiers)” that began in the s. “‘the place,’” . . “a spell for felicia, that she come away” is in selected poems, - . . anthony lioi, “real presence: the numina in italian american poetry,” melus , no. ( ): . . walt whitman, “slang in america,” completed poetry and collected prose (new york: literary classics of the united states, ), . . whitman, . . louis untermeyer qtd. in eric partridge, slang, today and yesterday (new york: the macmillan company, ), . . richard bridgman, the colloquial style in america (new york: oxford university press, ), . . mark ford, ed. the new york poets: an anthology (manchester, great britain: carcanet, ), xiii. . james smethurst, the black arts movement: literary nationalism in the s and s (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, ), . . baym, - . . frank o’hara qtd. in ford, . . the beats themselves spoke to this contrast to eliot and the establishment poetry of the academy, such as ginsberg in his mock-letter to eliot in and john clellon holmes in his essay, “unscrewing the locks: the beat poets.” importantly, however, despite this self-avowed distinction, scholars have drawn useful connections between the poetics and theories of eliot and the beats, specifically regarding ginsberg and burroughs. see john tytell’s “the beat generation and the continuing american revolution,” jonah raskin’s american scream, and raj chandarlapaty’s the beat generation and counterculture, for example. . see chapter one of smethurst’s the black arts movement for a more detailed discussion of what he refers to as the “alliance between the new york intellectuals and the new critics,” which is represented by their generally similar literary aesthetic, despite important political differences between the two groups. the black arts movement, . . ginsberg, howl and other poems (san francisco: city lights books, ), , . . raskin, american scream: allen ginsberg’s howl and the making of the beat generation (berkeley: university of california press, ), - . . raskin, . . the quotation is from “three laments” in this kind of bird flies backward (new york: totem press, ), . . podhoretz, . . krim, . . smethurst, . . holton, . specifically, the slang of the beats took shape by drawing on the language not only of the jazz and bebop culture, but also of non-white, lower class americans, and of what holton refers to as “the anomic”—that is, “the diversity of maladjusted individuals existing beyond—or perhaps beneath—the reach of conformity.” included in this category is what holton describes as “a variety of eccentrics: drug addicts and transient carnies, homosexuals and fringe artists, criminals and visionaries, misfits of all kinds.” holton, . . m.m. bakhtin qtd. in holton, . . significantly, within the context of her poems that overtly treat the female experience, di prima’s minimalist style anticipates what suzanne juhasz calls the “first feminist rhetoric” of the feminist movement beginning in the late s. juhasz describes the work of feminist poets such as rich, lucille clifton, kathleen fraser, and susan griffin as marked by a rhetoric “of direct statement; of literally—and with minimal complexity—naming the components of a woman’s life and thereby making those things, emotions, and ideas valid…; of the accompanying honesty, personalness [sic], immediacy, and accessibility.” (“transformations in feminist poetry,” frontiers , no. [ ]: .) certainly, this characterization, much of which is evident in the poems i discuss below, emphasizes the ways in which di prima’s work anticipates the work of feminist writers. that di prima’s minimalist style of honest and authentic expression is used throughout her body of poetry of this period, however—not just within the work that overtly seeks to validate the female experience—speaks to my reading of her dual expression of agency and subjectivity in this kind—that of the female bohemian and of the bohemian in general, male or female. . raskin, . elise cowen is the exception to ginsberg’s reference to his male contemporaries in howl, such as kerouac, burroughs, and cassady. . richard ellmann, ed., the norton anthology of modern poetry (new york: w.w. norton & company, ), . . see, for example, creeley’s “language” in the collected poems of robert creeley, - . . though untitled when originally published in this kind, “the window” appears with this title in di prima’s selected poems - . . di prima, dinners, . . podhoretz. . anthony libby, “diane di prima: ‘nothing is lost: it shines in our eyes,’” girls who wore black, . . libby, . . see the introduction for more on this characterization (note .). . podhoretz, . . though di prima describes having written only one poem at swarthmore, a collection of her unpublished poetry dated through indicates that she was indeed writing during this period. see the collection of early poems ( - ) in the diane di prima papers at the syracuse university library, special collections research center (box ), from which all of the poems from this period discussed in this section come. in addition to writing poetry at college, di prima published one short story, “the ethic of sidney mccosh” in the swarthmore college magazine, the dodd, in the spring of . . smethurst, . . in “manhood and its poetic projects,” duplessis discusses how in their efforts to “bring ‘masculinity’ and normative male expectations up to scrutiny,” new american male poets of the s, including beats and black mountain poets, “implicitly or explicitly reject the possibility of making a bilateral gender critique.” in their “desire to alter male possibility,” di prima’s male contemporaries produced texts within which “often enough, female figures were recast as normative, centrist, [and] controlling.” duplessis notes, though, that this exclusion of women from the male poets’ critique of hegemonic norms “was unconscious, perhaps somewhat conscious; it was unthinking or half-thought; it was uncritical, and perhaps sometimes deliberate; it was innocent, and sometimes maliciously motivated.” regardless of motivation, however, duplessis ultimately helps illustrate how “this peripheral cohort” of s male countercultural poets “participates in centrist thinking” regarding female gender codes. her essay specifically discusses the work of ginsberg, olson, and creeley to support this argument. (“manhood,” - .) see also poems by gregory corso, such as “marriage,” and john wieners, such as “feminine soliloquy,” and the prose of various new american male writers. . gary snyder qtd. in charters’s the portable beat reader (new york: viking, ), . . snyder, in charters, portable, . . snyder, . . this refers to the passage in kerouac’s “origins of the beat generation,” in which he epitomizes the male beat’s expectations for women to be silent and in the background; he describes female beats as “girls [who] say nothing and wear black.” “origins,” . . di prima is not the only contemporary female avant-garde poet to write directly about women’s experiences; however, her work examined here is unique in its use of the slang of the bohemian community to revise both mainstream and countercultural depictions of women—and to do so in the late s. for other female poets writing in the colloquial and addressing issues of gender, see for example carol bergé’s from a soft angle, including poetry written in the s and joanne kyger’s the tapestry and the web, published in . . when some of the love poems from this kind were republished in dinners & nightmares, the series was titled “more or less love poems.” . burt kimmelman, “from black mountain college to st. mark’s church: the cityscape poetics of blackburn, di prima, and oppenheimer,” rain taxi (spring ). . though “pome” can refer to a simple rhyme, when republished in dinners & nightmares, these poems are renamed with the correct spelling as “poems for bret.” . although “baby-o” may be a slang term for men as well, di prima frequently uses this term throughout her treatment of motherhood. in addition to “requiem” and “for babio, unborn” from this kind, see others such as “lullaby” and the “jeanne poems.” also, see a. friedman and ostriker for further discussions of di prima’s treatment of motherhood throughout her work, which include her use of “baby-o” as i suggest here. . a. friedman, “‘i say,’” . friedman’s discussion is within the context of the poem’s reprint as “song for baby-o unborn” in di prima’s selected poems. . the quotations in this paragraph are from ginsberg’s howl: , , , , - . . this and the subsequent quotation are from duplessis’s “manhood”: , . . the poets of the black mountain school, closely associated with the beats, are sometimes distinguished from the contemporary new york school of poetry by their “machismo.” daniel kane, all poets welcome: the lower east side poetry scene in the s (berkeley: university of california press, ), . . di prima, “an interview,” . . di prima, recollections, . . di prima, “an interview,” . . washington irving qtd. in gary dyer, “thieves, boxers, sodomites, poets: being flash to byron’s don juan,” pmla , no. ( ): . . norman mailer, “the white negro,” advertisements for myself (new york: putnam, ), . . m.a.k. halliday, language as social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning (baltimore: university park press, ), . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same text: , , , (emphasis in original). . see holton, pgs. - for more on the function of a countercultural community’s use of language. . this and the following two quotations are from dyer, . . brita lindberg-seyersted, “‘bad’ language can be good: slang and other expressions of extreme informality in sylvia plath’s poetry,” english studies , no. ( ): . . lindberg-seyersted, , . for lindberg-seyersted, the slang in plath’s poetry is not the same hipster slang i examine in di prima’s work, but expressions such as “keeping in cahoots”—american slang more broadly. . bridgman, . . although this boundary issue is attributed to the use of slang in its fundamental function as an alternative to the mainstream, it is important to note that the demarcation between “insiders” and “outsiders” perpetuated by the literary use of slang is not unlike the boundaries that the poets associated with new criticism enforced between themselves and those outside of the academic poetry establishment. through their exclusive use of the formal, elite language of the academy, such poets excluded new american poets from their conception of the american literary tradition; the latter were considered to be non-academic or anti-intellectual by virtue of their literary use of the colloquial. in fact, this division between the academic and non-academic poets was confirmed in the anthology, new poets of england and america, which only included poets associated with the academy such as ted hughes, philip larkin, w.s. merwin, louis simpson, and anne sexton. edited by donald allen, the new american poetry published in , though, represented a response to the previous anthology’s exclusivity and included the most recognizable poets affiliated with the beats, the black mountain school, the san francisco renaissance, and the new york school. . grace and johnson, breaking, . . holton, . . see chapter three for further discussion of the beats’ attraction to black culture. . michael north, the dialect of modernism: race, language, and twentieth- century literature (new york: oxford university press, ), . an example is from williams’s spring and all (poem xvii): “our orchestra / is the cat’s nuts— / banjo jazz / with a nickelplated / amplifier to / soothe / the savage beast— / get the rhythm / that sheet stuff / ’s a lot a cheese. / man / gimme the key / and lemme loose— / i make ’em crazy / with my harmonies— / shoot it jimmy / nobody / nobody else / but me— / they can’t copy it.” spring, . north’s inclusion of eliot in this context refers specifically to the modernist period, including his letters and works such as the waste land, sweeney agonistes, and “mélange adultère de tout.” it was in the post-wwii period that eliot’s ideas about and approach to writing poetry shifted to the more formal poetics encouraged by the academy—the poetics that helped shape new criticism and against which many contemporary poets reacted. in this later poetics, eliot “insist[ed] on the preservation of poetic diction,” arguing in that “‘if every generation of poets made it their task to bring poetic diction up to date with the spoken language, poetry would fail in one of its most important obligations.’” raskin, ; eliot qtd. in raskin, . . north, . . james weldon johnson asserted in that “‘the passing of traditional dialect as a medium for negro poets is complete.’” (qtd. in henry louis gates, jr., figures in black: words, signs, and the ‘racial’ self [new york: oxford university press, ], .) north affirms this claim in his discussion of how when black writers subsequently “attempted to renew dialect writing by freeing it from the clichés johnson criticized, fashionable white usage of the same language stood in their way as a disabling example.” (north, .) however, claude mckay’s dialect poetry represents one of a few exceptions as he used dialect in a deliberate effort to maintain the identity and culture of his jamaican heritage, reinforcing cultural differences. as wayne cooper explains, in contrast to paul laurence dunbar’s use of dialect that was “inherited from the whites who had forged it to perpetuate the stereotype of negro inferiority,” mckay’s dialect represented an effort “to utilize the language of his people in portraying their life and thought.” the dialect of mckay’s poetry was comprised of “west african words, phrases, syntax and rhythm, as well as a treasury of african folk tales”—a dialect that “assured [the] survival” of jamaicans in the face of british colonization. the dialect poetry of claude mckay (new york: books for libraries press, ). . duplessis, “‘darken your speech’: racialized cultural work of modernist poets,” reading race in american poetry: “an area of act,” ed. aldon lynn nielsen (urbana: university of illinois press, ), . . north, . such attempts include not only the use of dialect, but also the use and exploitation of common racial stereotypes. also, interestingly, despite the racial boundaries argued to have been maintained through this tradition, gates points out that there was at least one successful attempt in the white modernist use of dialect. gates argues that in sweeney agonistes, eliot “uses ridiculous yet sublime language and a portrayal often approaching caricature”; he “has made the american vulgar tongue contain the rhythms and idiom common to its slang uses at the time. yet it is expressive of more serious, almost deadly double entendres and puns.” (figures, .) and, for gates, such success with dialect is only otherwise evident in some of the work of black modernist poets such as langston hughes, sterling brown, and paul laurence dunbar. . aldon lynn nielsen addresses the appearance of dialect and of racial discourse more broadly in the work of contemporary poets. he argues, through examples like robert duncan, frank o’hara, lew welch, and john wieners, that not unlike the modernists, contemporary white poets were, as charles bernstein describes, “trapped in a racist ventriloquism.” (“poetics of the americas,” reading race in american poetry: “an area of act,” ed. aldon lynn nielsen [urbana: university of illinois press, ], .) nielsen cites “comportment” by lew welch, for example: “think jew / dance nigger / dress and drive oakie.” (qtd. in nielsen, reading race: white american poets [athens: university of georgia press, ], .) the racial discourse in poems such as this one, according to nielsen, signifies an “identification with an idealized and romanticized sense of blackness” and does so not through the use of actual dialect or slang, but in reference to the culture from which this derives. (this and the following two quotations are from nielsen, reading race: white, .) nielsen explains, “poets like welch and john wieners accept many of the white assertions about blackness as being adequate referential descriptions and then want those same descriptions to apply to themselves. they want to become ‘niggers,’ to step into the image structure of the farthest outsider.” indeed, similar versions of this desire often take shape in the exoticism of racial others in contemporary poetry. in “the poet in the attic,” o’hara writes, “and as nubian niggers rub / their bellies against his open lips / he fashions a constrictor / out of a dead feather boa.” as nielsen describes, o’hara “wants to kiss this representative of the otherness or primitivism, to fondle it in the privacy of his imagination’s attic.” (reading race: white, .) suggested by this reading of the racial discourse in the work of di prima’s contemporaries and by the motivation behind and effect of the use of dialect in white-authored modernist poetry as north argues, two issues are at stake in the white poet’s use of racial language or discourse: the construction or perpetuation of racial boundaries and the blurring or erasing of racial boundaries, achieved by the romanticization or appropriation of experiences of blackness. . see malcolm x’s description of his “homemade education” in the autobiography of malcolm x (new york: ballantine books, ), . . see chapter three for further discussion of race and beat literature, including white privilege and racial discourse. . baraka qtd. in kane, . . foster, understanding the black mountain poets, . . ginsberg qtd. in raskin, . chapter “the outlaws were about to welcome another member”: female subjectivity and (un)gendered social space in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance i. introduction joyce johnson (née glassman) was an aspiring writer in the late s when she moved out of her parents’ home to live on her own. determined to support herself financially, johnson’s job as a secretary took precedence over her literary pursuits—as did her two-year love affair with jack kerouac, which began in . though she did manage to write a novel during this period—the first female-authored beat novel, come and join the dance, published in —johnson is most commonly identified either as kerouac’s girlfriend when on the road was published and he instantly became a beat icon or as a beat chronicler or memoirist, attributed to her memoir, minor characters: a young woman’s coming-of-age in the beat orbit of jack kerouac. indeed, she is often referred to as the young woman who paid kerouac’s way to new york city “so he’d be in the city when on the road officially came out” and who always gave him a place to stay when he would return to the city for brief visits. after publishing her first novel in the early s, johnson transitioned from being a secretary at literary agencies to an editor. though this became her primary source of income for many years, she also continued to pursue her writing career. her body of work spans several decades and genres, and two publications have received esteemed literary awards. after come and join the dance, johnson published two more novels, two memoirs, a collection of letters, and a documentary nonfiction book—and she continues to write today. notably, minor characters won the national book critics circle award, and the penultimate chapter of her novel in the night café, “the children’s wing,” won the o. henry award first prize. nevertheless, because of her relationship to kerouac and the relatively sporadic publication of her books (an average of eight years between each novel and memoir) johnson’s contributions to the beat literary tradition remain largely overlooked. even though johnson asserted her independence when she left her family as a single young woman to free herself from conservative constraints, her competing roles within the beat community—as writer, girlfriend, and secretary—prevented her from more directly challenging normative gender roles within this context. the title of her memoir, minor characters, aptly describes the secondary role that johnson considers herself and many women of the new york city beat community—including kerouac’s first wife, edie parker, william burroughs’s wife, joan vollmer, and young writers elise cowen and hettie jones—to have played during the late s and s. as has been well-established, johnson and these other “minor characters” were generally expected by the male beats “to sit quietly and listen, to laugh a lot, be sympathetic, and make sure there was something to eat, … to do the dishes and go to bed occasionally.” however “minor” johnson characterizes her role at this time, her commitment to her financial independence and to her writing career challenges how neatly she fits in to this image of the ideal female beat and points to the complicated nature of her experience within the beat community. accordingly, this chapter examines how johnson’s multifaceted experience during this period affected her writing. specifically, this chapter situates come and join the dance within two equally important contexts: the mainstream and the beat literary traditions. johnson began writing her first novel in the mid- s, and at this time, beat and non-beat contemporary fiction tended to depict women in two limited ways. they were represented as subordinate to or objectified by men, or as suffering from madness or depression, often linked to the desire to be an artist. this chapter examines how johnson disrupts these restrictive patterns in her first novel by confronting the hegemonic gender codes from which they derive and developing a prescient model of independent female subjectivity. as the first female-authored beat novel, come and join the dance is significantly distinguished in its representation of early feminist imperatives. my analysis illustrates how the novel’s depiction of female subjectivity—defined as “the individual’s significance in a cultural or theoretical sense” —is achieved by johnson’s reshaping of traditional gender relations within public and private spaces. johnson creates what feminist geographer gillian rose calls “paradoxical spaces”— “space[s] through which to unsettle and displace key assumptions underlying predominant ways of thinking about and experiencing gender.” in doing so, she engages not only in the normative gender discourse of the period of the novel’s composition in important ways, but also in the discourse of what is now identified as feminist geography—rooted in the importance of the relationship between gender and space. this chapter also explores how come and join the dance significantly diverges from the portrayals of female subjectivity and the new york city bohemian community represented in female- and male-authored beat texts. while come and join the dance shares an important achievement with di prima’s work in its resistance to the normative female role, it also interestingly complicates the model of female subjectivity represented in di prima’s work. come and join the dance subtly critiques the viability of this bohemian female subjectivity through the protagonist’s ambivalence toward her psychological and sexual liberation. as shown in chapter one’s analysis of this kind of bird flies backward, di prima consistently depicts female subjectivity of the bohemian community through sexual assertiveness and bravado. this centrality of sexual agency for female subjectivity is undermined in come and join the dance by the way in which johnson’s protagonist, susan, is psychologically and physically unfulfilled by her self- initiated sexual experiences, as well as by the subtle identity crises she faces throughout the novel. in this critique of di prima’s version of female subjectivity, johnson creates a unique and provocative model that raises questions about burgeoning efforts within the beat community to revise the traditional female gender role in the s. further, whereas for di prima and other beat writers such as kerouac, the new york city bohemian community is depicted as a fundamentally positive, supportive, or valuable space that fosters the development of subjectivity, this chapter illustrates how the new york city bohemian community within come and join the dance is represented as ultimately dysfunctional. in the novel, new york city bohemia is unable to provide an effective alternative to the conservative mainstream for susan and her friends, and this culminates in the defeat or hopelessness of the novel’s bohemian characters as well as in susan’s departure for paris at the end of the novel. the one major critical study of this otherwise overlooked novel, ronna johnson’s “‘and then she went’: beat departures and feminine transgressions in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance,” treats the novel’s development of female subjectivity in undeniably important ways (which i discuss in more detail throughout the chapter). my analysis complicates and extends this existing scholarship with attention to how the novel’s female subjectivity is predicated on the relationship between gender and space, as well as to several ways in which the novel challenges key elements of female- and male-authored beat literature that are outside of the scope of ronna johnson’s essay. this chapter highlights johnson’s heretofore unrecognized contributions to the beat literary tradition and challenges johnson’s status as a “minor character,” positioning her alongside di prima as a significant beat writer in her own right. ii. the first female beat novelist many of johnson’s experiences that are fictionalized in her novels or documented in her memoirs reflect an ongoing struggle not uncommon for a woman coming of age in new york city during the post-wwii period: the struggle between the conservative world of her family and the countercultural world of bohemia. from a young teenager to an adult, johnson’s identity fluctuated from what she would describe as a “good girl” to an “outlaw” with a temporary “collegiate” period in between. the gender-based expectations for johnson—those of her family and of the male beats—strongly affected her ability to develop a sense of self as she evolved through these various phases of her life. as such, the issue of gender as it shaped her identity and her understanding of what it meant to be either a “good girl” or a bohemian would come to be one the primary issues explored in her writing. new york city itself plays a significant role in her life and writing as well, as manhattan was the site of her development as a college student and a bohemian, the site of her professional career as a writer and editor, as well as the setting of her body of work. johnson was born joyce alice glassman in brooklyn in . her father, daniel glassman, was considered by her family to be unambitious—never seeking anything beyond what he originally considered a temporary job as an auditor for the metropolitan tobacco company—a job that he held for years until his death in . her mother, rosalind rosenberg (later ross), perhaps overcompensated for the lack of drive in johnson’s father as well as for her own disappointment in abandoning her dream to become a singer for marriage and motherhood (she worked as a housekeeper when johnson was growing up). dreaming that her daughter would become a famous composer or actor and singer, johnson’s mother introduced her to acting and the piano at a young age. johnson became a child actor around age eight, beginning as a dancer in bobino and an acting understudy for i remember mama; at age , she even composed a full-length musical comedy. but as she describes in her memoirs, minor characters ( ) and missing men ( ), during these years on stage and at the piano, johnson felt like an imposter. despite her mother’s fierce ambitiousness, johnson wasn’t drawn to acting or composing; her exposure to the arts at such a young age attracted her to writing instead, and her affinity for the literary arts grew as she explored new york city beyond the broadway theater. in her family’s second home in queens and later in their apartment on the upper west side of manhattan, johnson grew up with what she calls a “cultural loneliness.” the furniture, music, fashion, and values seemed old-fashioned, representative of her parents’ efforts to achieve and maintain an image of having only “the finer things,” and as such, her home was stifling. she recalls painfully her parents’ living room and “the tensions of gentility” that pervaded the atmosphere: “it’s as if all these objects—the piano, the rug, the portrait—are held in uneasy captivity, hostages to aspiration.” johnson explains that she “was to be guarded [by her mother] from the contaminations of everything ‘popular’—chewing gum, soda pop, comic books, the bobbsey twins, [and] frank sinatra.” faced with such prohibitions by her mother, johnson recalls childhood experiences of rebelliousness that would perhaps shape her later, more overt and substantial resistance to conservatism. for example, she recalls being excited by the thrill of danger when she would accompany her father on his routine gambling rounds—kept secret by both johnson and her father from her mother. she describes feeling “thrilled to be invited into” her father’s “faintly illicit” routine that “seem[ed] tinged with glamour.” and upon her first visit to the washington square section of greenwich village at age , johnson would begin more consciously and regularly rebelling against what she considered her parents’ conservative restrictions. with her friend maria, johnson took public transportation every sunday down to washington square—pretending to go to the movies or to be doing homework—where she experienced “real life” in its stark contrast to the conservative culture of her home, her neighborhood, and her school. in downtown manhattan, johnson was exposed to bohemia and its “interesting grownups who had no visible means of support: artists, poets, communists and anarchists, guitar-pickers, jailbirds, scavengers.” for the next few years, she spent time in quintessential bohemian hangouts such as the waldorf cafeteria and the art center, learning about the world outside of her “genteel” home; she was introduced to jung’s theories, existentialism, abstract expressionism, the partisan review, and the existence of current racial and social injustices. but after some time of trying to manage her “long[ing] to turn [her]self into a bohemian” with her good girl image at home—of “moving back and forth between antithetical worlds”—johnson surrendered this “double life,” decided to be a “collegiate,” and entered barnard college at age in . not unlike di prima’s college experience at swarthmore, johnson explains that at barnard, “tradition reigned supreme.” as a child, johnson read classics such as ivanhoe, little women, little men, black beauty, and the last of the mohicans, and at college, she continued to study canonical literature such as the romantic poets and shakespeare. still drawn to the unconventional and unable to subdue her rebellious impulses, though, johnson left barnard in without graduating; she was one course shy of meeting the requirements (and this is the experience that becomes the basis of come and join the dance). ultimately uncomfortable in her deliberate attempt to be a “collegiate” and determined to fulfill her “abstract desire to be ‘free,’” johnson left college and enacted a more controversial rebellion for a young, middle-class woman: she moved out of her parents’ home and into her own apartment a few blocks away in at the age of . the quotation in this chapter’s title, “the outlaws were about to welcome another member,” refers to the implications of susan’s decision in come and join the dance to lose her virginity to a boy she barely knows—yet it fittingly speaks to johnson’s decision to begin living on her own. the quotation captures the invigorating combination of fear, anticipation, and excitement that susan feels as she sheds her “good girl” persona and becomes an “outlaw.” like susan, johnson acted on her irrepressible desire for something unfamiliar and exhilarating, and her ensuing experience with the beats would come to shape her life as a woman and a writer. the new york city bohemian community provided the opportunities for living the kind of culturally-vibrant life johnson yearned for and for escaping the conservative expectations of her family who, like the larger mainstream society at the time, disapproved of her desire to be a young woman living and working on her own. johnson began working as a secretary in order to support herself, but the time outside of her job was what she considered her “real life” when she would write. johnson had first started writing around age eight. she wrote in a variety of genres, including a play that she also directed and starred in when it was performed by her fourth-grade class, patience’s christmas, as well as poetry and monologues, compiled in what her aunt entitled the book of joyce alice glassman by her aunt leona ross. later, she wrote for her high school and college literary magazines, and soon after living on her own, she began writing what would become her first novel. though influenced by some of the canonical writers she had studied, such as henry james, around the time that she left her parents and began her life as an independent young woman, johnson also broke away from her traditional literary studies. she identifies, for example, jane bowles and carson mccullers as two particularly influential contemporary women writers. johnson attributes the motivation to value what she might not have otherwise considered “literary” material such as that “about mothers and daughters” to the drama of bowles, and mccullers’s tendency to critique normative ideas of gender, sexuality, and identity is not difficult to identify in johnson’s own writing. although the style of johnson’s writing isn’t experimental in the way that much work by both male and female beats is, this chapter illustrates how the subject matter and the thematic development of johnson’s work reflects her move away from convention. each of johnson’s three novels, come and join the dance ( , under glassman), bad connections ( ) and in the night café ( ), is set within bohemian new york city in the s or s, and is based on real-life experiences from various periods in her life. this trilogy is marked by johnson’s restrained prose style in the vein of ernest hemingway; she writes with conciseness and efficiency, avoiding elaborate metaphors or abstract language. her style often evokes a sense of urgency, detachment, and at times an alienation reflective of the novels’ post-war contexts. it is through this writing style that johnson comments on and critiques women’s gender roles—whether of the mainstream or of the nascent feminist movement. come and join the dance, which i examine in more detail shortly, fictionalizes johnson’s final days at college, taking place over the course of ten days. susan levitt, a -year-old white, middle-class college student, slowly begins withdrawing from her “good girl” persona and gravitating toward a community of what she considers bohemian “outlaws” in search of a more authentic life. she enacts various kinds of rebellion, including cutting so many physical education classes that she cannot graduate on time, as well as initiating nonmarital sexual experiences and taking a solitary trip to paris at the end of the novel. in the tradition of henry james and his attention to what nancy grace describes as “the psychological dimension of experience,” come and join the dance uses a third-person narrative perspective to explore the psychological element of susan’s experiences. also, having read the french novel, the counterfeiters, by andré gide, in which taboo homosexuality and sexual experiences are made explicit, johnson was inspired to explore the female gratuitous sexual act, which distinguishes come and join the dance from contemporaneous fiction. the development and critique of female subjectivity that johnson expresses through her subtle and witty prose style of come and join the dance is further explored in her subsequent novels. as my analysis of her first novel in the following sections suggests, women’s efforts to resist gender norms and to instead develop an individual sense of self becomes the central theme of johnson’s fictional work—and the roots of this theme are evident in her two memoirs as well. johnson’s second novel, bad connections, is an astute and at times melodramatic retrospective of molly held’s romantic and sexual relationships intertwined with unexpected motherhood in the age of the sexual revolution. not entirely unlike susan from come and join the dance, molly contemplates her true sense of self, as she is caught up in the societal changes achieved by the feminist movement of the late s and the subsequent new pressures to be financially and sexually independent. with incisive humor and irony, johnson depicts molly’s ambivalence toward the feminist movement as molly confronts the “female malaise” that this “new cultural phenomenon” created. for instance, once she frees herself from a loveless and abusive marriage, molly feels more restricted and confined by her relationships with various lovers than she had before. addressing the complexities of women’s roles after the second-wave feminist movement, johnson’s second novel extends the critique of female subjectivity and liberation begun in come and join the dance. but unlike her first novel, in bad connections, johnson moves away from the consistent use of third-person perspective and instead adopts a less conventional shifting between first- and third-person narrative perspectives. doing so enables johnson to move in and out of focus, embodying the very nature of instability and the struggle for clarity or insight that molly herself experiences throughout the novel. in the night café was also influenced by the feminist movement, expressing an ambivalence that simultaneously celebrates the various freedoms afforded women while condemning the unspoken restrictions or expectations bound up in these new freedoms. in in the night café, johnson fictionalizes the experience of losing her first husband to a tragic motorcycle accident. johnson’s third novel tells the story of joanna gold, a photographer who reflects on her marriage as she tries to understand how the relationship has helped shape her sense of self. not unlike the female protagonists of johnson’s first two novels, joanna struggles with her identity, looking to her memories with her husband to help her make sense of particular experiences and sometimes pretending to be someone she’s not in an effort to seem more interesting. in between her second and third novels, johnson published her best known literary work, her memoir minor characters. documenting the pivotal period of the beats in new york city between and , minor characters begins briefly with johnson’s childhood and then details her experiences with the new york city bohemian community, focusing in particular on her friendship with barnard classmate and beat poet elise cowen and on her relationship with kerouac from - , whom johnson met through cowen’s friendship with allen ginsberg. the memoir concludes with cowen’s suicide in and johnson’s subsequent reflections on the s. with a focus on this critical period in johnson’s life, minor characters, draws parallels between the publication of quintessential male beat texts and the authors’ corresponding rising popularity with the various experiences and struggles—literary and otherwise—of johnson and other female beats, namely cowen and hettie jones. though the memoir is recognized as the first text to bring attention to these women who were otherwise overlooked in beat accounts, minor characters is perhaps more often credited as providing “the best portrait we have of kerouac, revealing in fuller detail the kerouac those who love his books encounter.” the memoir opens with johnson’s reflection on a popular photo of male beats in an unidentified book; the photo is of hal chase, ginsberg, burroughs, and kerouac. johnson reimagines the scene of the photograph, filling in some blanks based on what she’s since learned first-hand and otherwise; she then finds her name in the book’s index, and uses this snapshot and her inclusion in the historical moment it captures to frame her recollections of her young adult life in new york city. johnson employs this unique narrative structure throughout the memoir, constructing “simultaneities” —moments of potential overlap (in time, place, or experience) between her life and kerouac’s—to provide insight into her own experiences and their larger context. the importance for johnson of her short-lived love affair with kerouac is further highlighted in her edited collection of letters between the two writers, door wide open ( ). this publication reveals a part of kerouac’s life previously undocumented, and it shares their intimate dialogue about each other’s writing, especially about johnson’s struggles as an early writer. the book shows how johnson struggled to focus, to find the time to write while supporting herself, and to be pleased with her progress and her work. several letters suggest that receiving encouragement from kerouac was particularly important for johnson’s progress as a writer. though she had to negotiate between her innate desire to revise her writing and kerouac’s insistence on minimal (if any) revisions, her annotations of the letters emphasize the importance of his support in light of the general isolation she felt as a woman writer during the late s. johnson’s latest book, a memoir published in , missing men, also focuses on pivotal relationships from throughout her life. in missing men, johnson tells her mother’s story along with her own, and explores her relationships with her father, her first husband, james johnson, and her second husband, peter pinchbeck. johnson’s body of work also includes a nonfiction book published in , what lisa knew: the truths and lies of the steinberg case. in this text, johnson “mingles autobiography, reportage, the gothic novel, and docudrama” as she recounts the famous murder of six-year-old lisa steinberg and the subsequent trial of the girl’s illegally adoptive father, joel steinberg. in her examination of the trial and the events leading up to the murder, johnson offers her own condemnation of steinberg and his lover, hedda nussbaum. in addition to her work as a novelist and memoirist, johnson established herself as an editor and regular writer for various magazines and newspapers. with her initial work experience as a secretary at literary agencies, johnson advanced to the position of editor, and she has worked at various publishing houses over the decades, including farrar, strauss, and cudahy, william morrow, the dial press, and mcgraw-hill. notably, she edited many new left books of the s and early s, including leroi jones’s blue people ( ) and abbie hoffman’s revolution for the hell of it ( ), and she edited and helped get published the complete version of kerouac’s visions of cody in . johnson has also written critical essays, continues to write book reviews for the new york times, and is currently working on a biography of kerouac in which she examines his development as an artist through the lens of his french-canadian background and bilingualism. this overview of johnson’s sustained career as a writer suggests that although it was initially difficult to find the time and focus to write, johnson successfully overcame any such obstacles and has produced a body of work within which gender discourse, the counterculture, and new york city are all integral factors. as noted earlier, johnson appears in various histories of the beat period and in kerouac biographies, but in most of these instances, she is more often given attention as kerouac’s girlfriend and beat chronicler than as a writer in her own right. critical scholarship on her work is almost exclusively limited to discussions of minor characters, and when the memoir is excerpted for beat anthologies, it is almost always passages directly about kerouac that are chosen to represent johnson’s contribution to beat history. subsequently, johnson’s place in beat literary history has been largely established as a memoirist. this is the case even within criticism that seeks to revise beat history as male-dominated. in “victors of catastrophe: beat occlusions,” for example, maria damon notes the “considerable poetic oeuvres” of women beats such as di prima, joanne kyger, and janine pommy vega, but minimizes the literary accomplishments of johnson as she categorizes her as one of “the memoirists of the era” along with carolyn cassady, brenda frazer, and hettie jones. amy friedman’s “‘i say my new name’: women writers of the beat generation” introduces johnson as a novelist, but then also identifies and focuses on her role as a beat memoirist. and in her “‘being here as hard as i could:’ the beat generation women writers,” friedman refers to johnson only as a memoirist. this approach to johnson’s work draws attention to the ways in which she and other women beat memoirists “crystalize and transform extra-literary prohibitions against women to invent an alternative, woman-centered discourse of beat generation dissent” through life writing. scholars argue that the women beats’ use of the memoir has helped “reterritorializ[e] them in the beat community and literary canon from which they have been elided.” however, this narrow focus on johnson’s work, in particular, precludes attention to her work as a novelist, and the two aspects of her literary career should not be mutually exclusive. looking at johnson’s larger body of work reveals how she resisted the assumption that in order to be visible and to “figure [oneself] as subjec[t],” she must write in a genre not used by the male beats —a genre thus considered subordinate to that of fiction or poetry. instead of establishing herself as a writer outside of the genres dominated by the male beats, beginning with come and join the dance, johnson engaged in writing practices also used by her male counterparts. in her novels, johnson used basic fiction techniques in order to “write [her] beat [tale]” — not unlike beats such as kerouac and burroughs. though she didn’t experiment with language or structure in the way that these novelists did, her use of the fiction genre is nevertheless significant. therefore, focusing on her first novel, this chapter sets out to expand our understanding of johnson’s accomplishments as a writer—to reveal the literary, cultural, and social achievements of her work as a novelist that extend the current attention to her work as a memoirist. as i mentioned earlier, the relatively limited scholarship on johnson that is focused on her first memoir is currently accompanied only by one critical essay on come and join the dance. in “‘and then she went’: beat departures and feminine transgressions in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance,” ronna johnson argues that johnson’s first novel should be considered “a beat urtext” alongside the “renegade declarations of on the road or ‘howl’ or naked lunch.” this argument is based on what ronna johnson importantly shows is the development of female subjectivity within come and join the dance. she examines how the novel “both adopts and refutes beat conventions” practiced by male beat writers and in doing so “enact[s] an oscillating subvert/install maneuver” used in postmodern critical discourse. ultimately, my analysis of come and join the dance continues the work begun by ronna johnson and provides new ways in which to understand johnson’s model of female subjectivity as it is developed through a reshaping of the private/public dichotomy and as it challenges common representations of women, men, sexuality, new york city, and the bohemian community within both male- and female-authored beat texts. iii. the female character in the contemporary novel though it wouldn’t be published until , johnson began come and join the dance in , drawing on a piece she had written for a writing workshop at barnard. come and join the dance is an important novel through which johnson simultaneously develops her critical stance toward traditional expectations for women present in society and literature of the time, as well as her skepticism of the role that sexual agency might play in such a critique. a brief overview of come and join the dance within the context of contemporary novels highlights the significance of these achievements. set in the mid- s, come and join the dance tells the story of -year-old susan levitt and her journey toward self-understanding and female subjectivity. at an unnamed women’s college in new york city, susan is divided between the opposing forces of the conservative mainstream—represented by her parents, college, and society in general—and a community of what she considers bohemian outlaws—represented by kay, peter, and anthony. the story takes place over the course of ten days, during which susan takes her final college exam, breaks up with her boyfriend, jerry, a representative “square” character, and spends time with her bohemian friends. the turning point of the novel is when susan loses her virginity to anthony in a deliberate act to initiate herself into the community of bohemians. she then participates in her college graduation even though she has skipped so many gym classes that she cannot officially graduate until she makes up the necessary credits over the summer. the novel concludes shortly after the night of graduation, when susan goes to bed with peter and then embarks on a trip to paris. susan’s attraction to the “mysterious underground brotherhood” inhabited by kay, peter, and anthony is the driving force of the novel as susan propels herself into their world as a kind of refuge from the world of her parents and school. kay has been living in the southwick arms hotel since dropping out of college three months earlier. susan admires kay’s self-defined freedom and feels it is time to make a similar change in her own life. one way in which she attempts to do so is by having “gratuitous” sex with anthony. described by susan’s schoolmates as “a campus bum,” anthony is years old and was recently “expelled from college for bringing a girl up to his room.” anthony recently reached a breaking point at his parochial high school and experienced what johnson describes as “a delinquency of books and violence.” he felt trapped by traditional literature, such as dickens and sir walter scott, and instead felt empowered to write his own poetry after reading the likes of thomas wolfe, arthur rimbaud, and d.h. lawrence. susan’s ultimate attraction, however, is to the divorced peter, whose interest in taking aimless drives in his packard over finishing his master’s thesis has earned him the reputation of a “perpetual student” at age . by the end of the novel, susan acts on this attraction, sleeping with peter the morning she is to set sail for paris. after initially escaping college to experience life as a bohemian, susan ultimately escapes both the new york city mainstream and bohemian communities in her departure for paris. come and join the dance is the first female-authored beat novel and the first contemporary novel to feature a female protagonist who seeks independence and sexual liberation on her own terms. in providing for susan an escape from the confines of society—an escape that results from her own decision-making and leaves her free to explore the world how she chooses—the novel reaches beyond what was available for most young, white, middle-class women within the boundaries of both mainstream society and the bohemian community within s new york city. in contemporary beat novels, such as kerouac’s on the road ( ) and john clellon holmes’s go ( ), women do not play a major role (indeed, beat novels are largely autobiographical). rather, female characters are consistently in the background: silent, submissive, and/or objects of the men’s physical desires. for example, two women in on the road are consistently manipulated by the novel’s hero, dean moriarty, and his seemingly insatiable sexual appetite. sal explains, “dean is balling marylou at the hotel … . at one sharp he rushes from marylou to camille—of course neither one of them knows what’s going on—and bangs her once … . then he comes out with me … then at six he goes back to marylou.” further, dean later asks sal to “work marylou,” presumably because “he wanted to see what marylou was like with another man.” for dean, women are sexual objects and are subject to his self-serving “schedule.” in another example, galatea dunkel, the wife of one of sal and dean’s fellow travelers, is promptly “[given] the slip” by her husband and dean while on the road because she was not meeting their expectations; she “kept complaining that she was tired and wanted to sleep in a motel.” galatea’s “complaints” seemed to confirm for the men that women did not have the capacity—physical or otherwise—to go “on the road” with them. in holmes’s go, the female characters are generally positioned alongside the male characters in their shared existential despair—a balance absent in on the road. nevertheless, many of the novel’s female characters are still subject to the same limitations exemplified in kerouac’s text. both christine and kathryn, for example, have affairs outside of their unhappy marriages, but the former is left devastated when gene stops communicating with her after their affair, and the latter is distraught after her own brief affair when she finds letters that her husband, paul, has been writing to his mistress for the past three years. further, in some ways, both kathryn and paul feel trapped within their marriage and in their lives in general, but kathryn in particular struggles to manage working during the day to support herself and paul, an aspiring novelist, who wants to go out on the town with his friends at night. these few examples of female figures within go and on the road illustrate that the marginalization most women experienced in the beat community is in fact mirrored in male-authored beat novels. not surprisingly, the female protagonists of non-beat male-authored novels of the period play similar roles—even though they are not secondary characters. the eponymous character of herman wouk’s novel, marjorie morningstar, for example, initially pursues her dream to be an actress and something other than a “good girl.” she soon realizes, though, that, in fact, she wants to settle down in the suburbs and be a wife and mother—meeting her parents’ conservative expectations after all. in a relatively more traditional portrayal, the wife of sloan wilson’s the man in the gray flannel suit ( ), betsy rath, is a stay-at-home mother of three. though she feels betrayed upon learning of her husband’s affair when he was away in the war, she ultimately supports his decision to financially provide for the son of his extramarital relationship. in this way, wilson portrays betsy as trapped not only within the confines of her marriage, but also within the confines of her sense of duty as a wife as this role has been culturally defined. it is important to note that within female-authored novels of the time, female characters are likewise marginal, objectified by men, limited to the domestic role, and/or suffering from mental illness or instability—in general, subject to a subordinate role and to various gender-based oppressions. in shirley jackson’s hangsaman ( ), for example, the female protagonist, natalie waite, is a college student struggling to avoid a future like her mother who is “trapped in a kitchen” as well as struggling against her overbearing and authoritative father, who attempts to control every aspect of her life. unable to overcome this oppression, natalie becomes schizophrenic. published three years later, harriette simpson arnow’s the dollmaker ( ) tells the story of gertie nevels, whose desire to become a sculptor is made impossible by her financial obligation to her increasingly impoverished family. grace metalious’s peyton place ( ) daringly made young women’s sexual desires and exploits explicit in her melodramatic novel; however, the female characters are nevertheless limited to the role of wife or mother, ill-fated to suicide or madness, or subject to an abortion or exile from town as a result of their sexual adventurousness. and barbara probst solomon’s the beat of life ( ), though it explores female restlessness in s new york city, concludes with the female protagonist’s suicide after her “therapeutic abortion.” in fact, upon learning she would have to claim to be suicidal in order to get a doctor’s approval for the procedure, natasha protests, “‘but i’d never commit suicide.’” in an ironic turn of events, natasha does commit suicide—a denouement that situates solomon’s novel alongside others in which women are ultimately victim to the various oppressions that surround them. this brief survey brings into focus how come and join the dance astutely disrupts the patterns demonstrated in these representative contemporary novels—of the beat and mainstream literary traditions. susan is not confined to the kitchen or the bedroom; nor is she subject to a fate of madness or death. rather, susan acts on her rebellious impulses, explores her sexuality, and chooses her own fate, which at the end of the novel, begins with a trip abroad. in come and join the dance, johnson creates a female protagonist who may be confronted with society’s limited expectations for women, but who is able to overcome them. in light of the novel’s transgressive portrayals of female agency, rebellion, and sexuality, it is perhaps not surprising that come and join the dance received mixed reviews at the time of its publication. as ann douglas explains, some of the “disapproving” reviews were due in part to the novel’s intervention in the period’s “debate about troubled female adolescents.” readers, like those at time, who “thought the silent generation’s most serious problem was its young women,” certainly would not have embraced johnson’s depiction of susan’s and kay’s rebelliousness. new york times reviewer gerald walker, on the other hand, praised “the depth and the deftness” with which johnson treats susan’s various acts of rebellion. further, he asserted that the novel is “artful and unaffected” as it “reminds us that youth is … . a period of becoming whose essence is flux: the lostness or wildness [that others criticize] are merely way- stations along this road of change.” notably, walker’s appraisals were echoed by kerouac, who provided a decidedly laudatory endorsement of johnson’s first novel; in door wide open, johnson recalls that kerouac “gave [editor] hiram haydn an extravagant blurb for the publication of … come and join the dance: ‘the best woman writer in america.’” it is of course reasonable to argue that kerouac’s intimate relationship with johnson influenced what might seem to be his overstated endorsement of the novel. nevertheless, his enthusiastic approval of come and join the dance has since been echoed by beat scholars, who argue that the novel “claims the seminal status of comparable texts” including major works by kerouac and other male beats. it is likewise my contention that the unconventional and controversial elements of come and join the dance—its daring revisions of literary and social norms—are what define it as an undeniably important novel. iv. female subjectivity in come and join the dance possibilities for resistance in paradoxical spaces female subjectivity within the novel is represented by both susan and kay in various ways. overall, for both women, rebelling against the rules of their families, schools, and tradition represents how they come into their own, deliberately resisting the norm and instead making decisions that reflect their own desires and needs. kay, for example, has dropped out of college and is described as being sexually active, something that not only marks her general nonconformist behavior, but also that is linked to what seems to be her strong sense of self. in a scene in which kay is naked in front of susan, susan thinks to herself: “kay wasn’t a virgin. perhaps once you had irrevocably gone to bed with a man, you took your body for granted—you knew, which was different than knowing about.” as ronna johnson emphasizes in her discussion of the novel, female subjectivity is demonstrated throughout the novel through the female characters’ agency and assertiveness, especially regarding their bodies and sexuality—through their resistance to being treated as objects by men and their “negotiations for the sexual satisfaction that authenticates female subjectivity.” both kay and susan make decisions about who to sleep with and under what conditions to do so—factors which challenge the s expectation that women were to have sex only after marriage and only with their husbands. their rejection of this and other prescriptive standards, as ronna johnson argues, represents a bold model of female subjectivity. through susan, subjectivity is also represented by the novel’s opening act of walking out on her college exam without completing it, as well as by her decisions to stop picking up her campus mail, to hand in term papers late, and to cut a considerable amount of physical education classes—so many, in fact, that, as noted earlier, susan cannot graduate. additionally, as the novel proceeds, susan stands up and then breaks up with her boyfriend, stops returning library books, decides to have sex with relative acquaintances, and in the conclusion, leaves for a trip to paris by herself regardless of her parents’ wishes for her to stay in new york city. all of these acts of nonconformity—some more substantial than others— represent susan’s subjectivity and agency, her willful choices that defy the behavioral standards for a young, middle-class female student. resistant to the traditional expectation that she will behave as a “good girl” and inevitably become a wife and mother, susan exerts her subjectivity as she realizes that she has been experiencing life according to others’ rules. now nearing the end of her college career and facing an unknown future, susan undergoes a “transformation of consciousness” from object to subject. in focusing her novel on this development of female subjectivity, johnson revises the narrative patterns in contemporary novels that perpetuate the subordination or oppression of female characters, and she does so through a transgression of a similarly restrictive gendered association of social spaces. more specifically, the development of female subjectivity within come and join the dance is achieved through a reshaping of the traditional public/private dichotomy. it is unquestionable that in s america, “the ideology that associates men with the public realm and women with the private” dominated. it was within the private space of the home that women were expected to find meaning and through which to define and identify themselves. the extent of this ideology in practice is evident in friedan’s the feminine mystique, which addresses its previously unspoken consequences faced by many women at the time. even in bohemia in the s, it was difficult for women to have access to and situate themselves within, rather than on the margins of public spaces where men could dissent against mainstream america—such as “on the road.” as noted earlier, the female beats were largely expected by the male beats to fit in to one of the following roles: “mothers, wives, sisters, lovers, virgins, whores, demons, or angels”—most, if not all of which are defined by the domesticity of the private space. further, as nancy duncan clarifies, “most men move between public and private spaces and spheres with more legitimacy and physical safety … than most women,” which fundamentally supports the sense of entrapment associated with women’s location in the private space during the s. as susan asserts her subjectivity through the course of the novel, she destabilizes and transgresses this traditionally gendered spatial dichotomy. significantly, johnson displaces the mainstream and bohemian locus of power between men and women in both public and private spaces through the construction of “paradoxical space[s].” within the discourse of feminist geography, space is one way in which feminists “can acknowledge the difference of others” as they define spaces “which [do] not replicate the exclusions of the same [masculine] and the other [feminine].” what makes spaces paradoxical within this discourse, rose explains, is that what “would be mutually exclusive if charted on a two-dimensional map—centre and margin, inside and outside—are occupied simultaneously” as an act of opposition to hegemonic or oppressive norms. she argues further that a paradoxical space is a space that represents the effort “to acknowledge both the power of hegemonic discourses and to insist on the possibility of resistance.” within the paradoxical spaces that johnson constructs in her novel, the gendered dichotomy of private/public is challenged as susan resists what she experiences as oppression within the patriarchal hegemony, representing what rose calls “[a] strateg[y] of subversion.” as the following analysis shows, it is in public spaces, specifically the new york city streets and the car, where susan develops and asserts subjectivity, and it is in private spaces, such as the home, where she lacks subjectivity, where she becomes motionless and disconnected from her sense of self—compromising her ability to act as subject. the streets johnson first challenges the gendered spatial discourse in the beginning of the novel when, after walking out on her exam, susan stands up her boyfriend, jerry, and goes wandering aimlessly around what she’s identified as her six-block new york city radius. she finds herself watching a solitary man walking aimlessly in front of her, and she’s drawn to him. she eventually recognizes this man as peter, who she’s met several times through kay. she runs up to catch him, loudly calls his name, and, as johnson describes, practically startles peter “out of sleep.” susan’s approach is quite powerful here as this becomes the first time she and peter are alone together—an encounter that prompts susan’s sexual interest in peter and leads her to eventually seduce him. she and peter agree to visit the college inn for coffee, and here, susan, already having initiated their meeting, now becomes the “provider” as she buys him coffee and pays for the music on the jukebox. she also then continues to walk the new york city streets with peter “paying off his debts” with her money. throughout this scene, susan is in the dominant position and, as such, reverses normative gender roles. within the context of s bohemia, however, susan in the role of the financial supporter may not initially be considered unusual. in fact, male beats are often described as deliberately rejecting “the family wage system,” as “refus[ing] to undertake the support of women.” in fact, douglas describes how, during johnson’s relationship with kerouac, johnson experienced “the perverse but real pleasures of buying [kerouac] dinner or lending him money.” in contrast to this real-life bohemian relationship, however, susan’s role as temporary financial supporter for peter in the novel is followed by her sexual seduction and ultimate rejection of peter. as such, johnson allows susan to play into the male bohemian fantasy of having a woman support him (the role peter’s parents usually play as they regularly send him checks), yet susan does so not within the private space of the home where the family finances are traditionally handled, but rather in various public spaces throughout the city. in this first example of paradoxical spaces in the novel, it is within two public spaces of the city, the street and the coffee shop, that johnson enables susan to develop and assert her subjectivity. the role of the streets in this context is particularly notable given that the street is frequently the key signifier of the public space, distinguished from the private through the role of the body. phil hubbard explains, one of the central props of [the social etiquette of the streets] is the idea that there are certain activities deemed acceptable in private but wholly inappropriate and ill mannered when performed on the streets. .... the common denominator in these proscriptions [of public activities in the urban west] is that these activities involve a transgression of the boundaries of the body[, such as spitting or defecating]. though susan’s behavior on the streets is not tied to something physically “crossing the threshold of [her] body” through such acts to which hubbard refers, the positioning of her behavior as a subject on the streets illustrates johnson’s critique of the general association of female agency as limited to the privacy of the home. susan’s act of approaching peter in this early scene signifies the frequent sense of power or exhilaration that she experiences on the new york city streets. having initially perceived her six-block radius around campus as overwhelmed by a disappointing “grayness,” susan determines to make new york city hers, and over time, “the streets had since taken on color, had slowly accumulated layers of significance.” walking around these streets, susan gradually comes to see herself more clearly in new york city, to the point at which she “discovered that she could stand still on the street if she wanted to, that aimlessness could have its own legality.” in fact, it is also on the new york city streets that susan later breaks up with jerry. with cars and people rushing around her as she shocks jerry with her decision, susan feels as though she and jerry are the only stable beings at this moment. she finds her grounding on the streets, has built the strength for such a confrontation, and triumphs over the many mirror reflections of herself that she initially tried to avoid. walking the city streets, more intimately learning about herself within this public space, susan makes a connection to her sense of self so that walking aimlessly, meeting with peter, and breaking up with jerry become defining moments of power and freedom. the car when susan decides to initiate herself into the community of outlaws by losing her virginity with anthony in what she describes as “a gratuitous act of sex,” johnson transforms peter’s car into a paradoxical space. in a car ride with peter, kay, and anthony, susan initially feels exhilarated and free from any worries or responsibilities, but she’s soon confronted with the realization that she’s not quite like the others, she’s too much of a “good girl.” as they drive through an epitome of the typical conformist family lifestyle in washington heights—“through endless streets of blond brick apartment houses … and women wheeling baby carriages home from the supermarkets”—peter says to susan, “you be a good girl, susan, and they might let you live up here.” in response to her immediate cry of frustration, “‘i don’t want to be a good girl!’”, peter assures susan to her dismay that “‘that’s your particular fate.’” in a subsequent move she considers “safer” than succumbing to this supposedly pre-destined life of a good girl, susan then daringly matches anthony’s somewhat playful attempt to come on to her. he asks why she doesn’t adopt him, saying “if you do, you’ll have to sleep with me.” she admits to her virginity and ends up telling anthony she’ll meet him the following day—presumably to sleep with him. anthony keeps the game going, asking why not now—why wait until tomorrow, why don’t they meet this afternoon? to everyone’s surprise, at the next red light, susan suddenly gets out of the car. even anthony is caught off guard—he doesn’t think susan would take his teasing seriously. susan asserts, “‘let’s go downtown.’ … ‘aren’t you coming downtown, anthony?’” as anthony figures out what to do—he’s no longer leading the game—susan waits on the street for him. acquiring peter’s apartment key, anthony finally exits the car as well, peter and kay drive off, and susan thinks to herself, “i’m doing it, i’m doing it.” susan initially decides to accept the outlaws’ invitation to go for a ride because she “wanted to be set in motion too, to run mindlessly and not feel too much.” in the car, she, anthony, and kay cannot help but be reminded of the freedom afforded to peter through his car as “he always kept the back seat littered with the fragmentary preparations for a journey.” and although johnson initially explains that “they were all in [peter’s] power that afternoon; he had made the car their only reality,” susan quite promptly takes control of her reality as she makes the aggressive move with anthony and shocks all three friends with her behavior. susan may not be driving the car, able to control where they go or how fast they move, but rather than remain powerless at peter’s position in the driver’s seat and at what he claims is her “conservative” fate, susan asserts her subjectivity and takes control of the situation. in doing so, she stops the car, puts peter in the position to wait for her, and leads anthony to the bedroom. later in the novel, susan acts even more assertively in a car when she seduces peter. after peter’s car breaks down and he sells it for an infuriating five dollars, susan and peter take a taxi home. in the absence of any initiation on his part, susan reaches for peter in the taxi and decides not to go to her dorm, but to go home with him instead. johnson writes, “[she] couldn’t bear not touching him. she was no longer afraid. she turned to peter and put her arms around him, led him close to her.” in a car that belongs to neither of them, after experiencing peter’s loss of what epitomizes his identity (he considers his car “the place where he really lived—he only inhabited his apartment”), susan again acts as a subject and exerts sexual agency. she physically moves closer to peter, comes on to him in the car, and initiates the change of destination for the driver. in doing so, susan portrays the same sense of power and subjectivity here as she did earlier in peter’s car and on the streets. further, and as ronna johnson highlights, peter is stripped of his “male power” in this scene through the demise of his car; susan is the “sexual aggressor” “at the cost of male mobility and the viability of the road tale” epitomized in on the road. johnson revises the traditional gendered association of the car as depicted by kerouac. she transfers the power typically possessed by the man with the car and embodied in his freedom “to disappear for a few days” —as peter has become accustomed to—to susan as she does not hesitate to act on peter’s vulnerability here and, subsequent to the loss of his “male power,” seduces him. the access to public spaces that cars offer apply to both men and women, but the association of cars with male freedom and identity is one that has long pervaded american popular myth and literary history. in her study of the car in women’s fiction, deborah clarke argues for connections between this popular myth, its consistent representation in american literature, and the actual car industry in which “women still report being patronized by car sales personnel and intimidated by auto mechanics.” significantly, in this archetypal masculine space in american literature and society, susan, in the first scene with anthony, boldly reacts to the threat of her future as defined by outside forces rather than by herself, and then, in the later scene with peter, acts on their sexual attraction and uses her physicality to become sexual actor and agent. through susan’s behavior in these two key scenes, johnson challenges both the celebratory and negative aspects of the car as represented in the quintessential beat text itself, on the road. while the image of the car in on the road epitomizes the freedom and power afforded men and denied women and provides the means through which sal can escape convention and conformity, it also “embodies a negative side.” roger n. casey explains: “there is a gradual festering disillusionment with road culture and automobility” as well as “a disenchantment prevalent in sal’s growing awareness of dean’s instability” throughout on the road. like susan, sal isn’t actually the driver of the car during his journeys back and forth across the country, but for sal this means that “he is unable to control america”: he “[does] nothing to claim it, change it, or even interact with it.” in johnson’s depiction of the car as a paradoxical space in the two scenes described above, susan quite deliberately—in acts of outright resistance to her perceived oppression and passivity—seizes the power that anthony assumes to exert when he begins teasing susan at the start of their drive and that peter feels in his car as the driver. in contrast to sal’s behavior, rather than willingly submit to what the others perceive is her fate as a “square” or to feminine passivity in general, susan redefines the nature of this masculine space. the bedroom the significance of susan’s actions in public (and masculine) spaces is further highlighted when contrasted with her lack of subjectivity within private spaces. for example, at peter’s apartment in an early scene with anthony, anthony tells susan that he was about to kiss her before she left his side on the couch. as she now stands at the window looking out, she waits for him to approach her and initiate a kiss. when he remains where he is, susan attributes his reluctance to be aggressive to his timidity or immaturity and doesn’t make a move herself—a stark contrast to her behavior in the car shortly afterwards. somewhat similarly, when in her dorm room, susan is overwhelmed with stillness and inaction—she becomes lazy and sleeps to overcome feelings of entrapment. also, during a conversation in kay’s room about her interest in drawing, susan begins to feel that “she and kay were shouting to each other across space, like people on long-distance phone calls shouting uselessly.” the feelings of stability, strength, or clarity that susan experiences in public spaces disintegrate here in kay’s room. precisely, kay’s room, peter’s apartment, susan’s own dorm room, her bedroom in her parents’ house—all are spaces within which susan feels stifled and immobile. on the city streets, though, susan is time and time again, invigorated and active. more striking examples of susan’s lack of subjectivity within a private space are her experiences in peter’s bedroom—first with anthony and then with peter. despite her behavior on the streets and in the car, susan is not the physical aggressor in the bedroom. having exited the car to anthony’s surprise, once susan is inside the apartment with anthony, she is reluctant to move forward and feels paralyzed to enter the bedroom where anthony waits for her. sitting on the couch, she has to “concentrat[e] fiercely on the impossible act of standing and manag[ing] to uncurl her legs.” the sexual experience itself is even characterized by a lack of physical feeling on susan’s part. johnson writes, there was not even much pain—a vague feeling of something inside her, moving. … his body drove at hers over and over again. her legs were cramped. … she would have to tell him he was too heavy, complain that the sheets were wet. her attempt to do so is silenced by anthony, though, who then ends things abruptly as his “terribly thin” body drapes over hers. susan feels “embarrass[ed]. she had always imagined a rape, an overwhelming of herself, the victim, never that she would be left with a starved, spent child.” instead of having an extraordinary physical experience for her first time, susan’s loss of virginity is characterized by a disconnect from her own body. we see this before she moves into the bedroom, when she feels paralyzed, during intercourse, when her legs cramp and she can’t reposition herself comfortably, and after intercourse, when anthony’s body is on top of hers and she lies unfulfilled. the very ability for susan to assert herself that we see in the public spaces of the car and the streets dissipates in the private space of the bedroom. this is also illustrated when susan sleeps with peter several days later in the same place she slept with anthony. in fact, the two experiences are not that different—most notably because peter, too, fails to bring susan to orgasm. as with anthony, susan is not assertive in the bedroom, and her body and mind are left unfulfilled after sleeping with peter. however, with peter, susan’s physical experience is slightly more intense than with anthony. johnson describes the scene after susan and peter have had sex, when susan begins thinking about her trip to paris that same afternoon and begins to feel the pressure of time as she realizes she needs to pick up her suitcases and catch her train. before she leaves, though, she recalls that “there had been a rightness when his body had entered hers … and then there had come a time when she had felt herself becoming flooded with light, and she had floated up, up—toward something she had almost reached.” though she initiates their sexual encounter in the taxi, once in the bedroom itself, susan is unable to communicate with peter or to even maneuver herself in such a way to achieve the orgasm she had almost reached. in one way of reading these two sex scenes, johnson complicates the traditional notion of the private or domestic as primarily female through susan’s utter lack of physicality, embodiment, and subjectivity in the apartment. this strategy is undermined, however, in light of the paradox that has come to define mainstream notions of the home—that patriarchal authority extends itself from the public space to the private space of the home through sexual relationships, in spite of the home as gendered feminine. referring to the work of marilyn frye, rose explains that “in the bedroom [a woman] has no authority to speak independently. there she is not to speak her mind, but to be eloquent only with her body, for his pleasure.” in these scenes, then, johnson seems to actually perpetuate this paradox, rather than complicate it—allowing anthony and peter to play the normative masculine role in the bedroom, being in control and silencing susan during the respective sexual experiences. however, two key aspects of both scenes complicate this possibility. first, that anthony and peter fail to bring susan to orgasm and ultimately leave her unfulfilled and even disappointed diminishes the full sense of dominance for which the above paradox allows. second, in denying or withholding from susan the subjectivity she develops in public spaces, johnson transforms the bedroom into a paradoxical space within which the image of the sexually assertive female bohemian is undermined. female beats generally resisted the traditional expectation of a woman’s passivity in a sexual relationship. ronna johnson explains that “they performed the socially mandated roles of mother, wife, lover, but with bohemian sexual freedom.” this characteristic of the female beat is evident in both male- and female-authored beat literature. male beats often describe the women with whom they have sexual encounters as uninhibited: for example, in on the road, sal describes how outside of a gas station, “incidentally, a very beautiful colorado girl shook me that cream; she was all smiles too”; in a letter to kerouac, neal cassady tells of a brief affair with cherry mary, who didn’t remain a virgin long after they met: “i ripped into her like a maniac and she loved it.” female beats also share similar characterizations—but with a key distinction. in the men’s accounts, women are seen as objects, fleeting “experiences” in the lives of the men with no real voice or sustained function in the men’s lives. in the women’s accounts of similar behavior, the power is redistributed to the women as they are the agents of their sexual behavior, deciding on their own with whom to sleep and under what conditions. this is evident, for example, in di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward as my analysis in chapter one demonstrates. in this collection of di prima’s early poetry, women are consistently defined by a sexual bravado, celebrating their sexual freedom and emphasizing their sexual assertiveness and connection to one’s body. additionally, in di prima’s memoirs of a beatnik, di prima’s semi-fictionalized depiction of herself “is a self who finds joy and liberation in sex” and engages in various sexually-explicit acts with men and women. similarly, as mentioned earlier, in come and join the dance, kay represents this sexually assertive female bohemian. kay has become comfortable enough with her body to be in her apartment naked in front of susan—a move susan attributes to the fact that kay has certainly been sexually active. susan recognizes in kay’s nonchalant physical behavior a “knowing” of one’s body that susan yearns for and is unable to experience when losing her virginity with anthony and when sleeping with peter. not able to connect to her body through physical aggression or fulfillment in the bedroom, susan relinquishes the subjectivity that she asserts in public spaces and in doing so challenges the common depiction of the bohemian female as sexually confident, assertive, or experimental. in contrasting susan’s behavior in public and private spaces in these ways, johnson daringly destabilizes the traditional relationship between gender and space as well as mainstream and bohemian notions of female subjectivity. the ambivalence of susan’s subjectivity: a critique of bohemian female liberation simultaneous with johnson’s condemnation of hegemonic gender norms and their relationship to the traditional spatial dichotomy is her subtle critique of the bohemian image of female subjectivity, represented largely through sexual agency as described above. susan’s subjectivity is marked by an ambivalence throughout the novel that raises interesting questions about the viability of female agency and subjectivity as it is defined within the bohemian community. in constructing a portrayal of female subjectivity that is ambivalent toward the primacy of sexual agency, johnson deepens our understanding of the literature of the women beats and of protofeminism more broadly as she expresses a skepticism of how female sexual agency seems central to other women beats’ efforts to revise the normative gender discourse. that both anthony and peter fail to bring susan to orgasm is a key element of the novel that helps illustrate the ambivalence that characterizes susan’s subjectivity. after their respective experiences in the bedroom with susan, both men acknowledge their failures. anthony expresses utter frustration at the situation, grabbing susan’s shoulders and shouting, “‘next time it’ll be better. next time i’ll make you come!’” peter is calmer, acknowledging to susan, “‘i didn’t even make you come—i wanted to do that.’” in her response to each, susan experiences brief moments of strength: she daringly tells anthony that “‘it had nothing to do with you. it was an experiment’”; she takes more care to assuage peter’s frustration, telling him “‘i knew what it meant.’” in these responses and her subsequent dismissal of each man’s offer to take her out, susan attempts to hide and essentially escape her true feelings of disappointment. underneath the surface of susan’s bravado here is an effort to subdue what is unquestionably disappointing for her after having initiated these two sexual experiences and having expected something much more satisfying. after the experience with anthony, for example, johnson describes susan’s confusion and disappointment: “where was the moment when everything became luminous and the earth shook? she would remember being bored and not knowing what time it was.” and though she experienced more physical pleasure with peter, susan nevertheless lies to him when she says, “‘it was good anyway.’” susan’s ambivalence is thus rooted in her undeniable disappointment in asserting herself sexually and then finding such anti-conservative behavior anti-climactic. in her essay on come and join the dance, ronna johnson argues that susan’s physical and emotional disappointment that results from her sexual experiences with anthony and peter represents johnson’s revision of “the s freudian discourse which blamed women for sexual failures that were overdetermined by masculinist social norms.” she asserts that in the male lovers’ inabilities to satisfy susan sexually, johnson depicts “male failure” and “male self-doubt rarely voiced by male beat writers.” ultimately, ronna johnson concludes that in susan’s moments of clarity or strength following each sexual experience, johnson privileges the “satisfaction of perspective [over] sexual gratification.” it is unquestionable that johnson notably undermines the male sexual prowess so often celebrated in male-authored beat texts. however, i argue that in consistently highlighting the inability of susan to feel sexually satisfied—despite her obligatory claims of contentment to anthony and peter—johnson also importantly questions the presumed satisfaction that sexual freedom provided women and therefore the nature of female subjectivity as it is defined within bohemia. in chapter one, my analysis of di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward pointed to a connection between the development of female subjectivity and women’s sexual agency. a crucial aspect of di prima’s revision of women’s passivity and objectivity is the bohemian woman’s overt acknowledgment and celebration of sexual agency—in contrast to contemporary literary representations of women as unwittingly silent, passive, or submissive regarding romantic or sexual relationships. whereas di prima fairly consistently emphasizes the sexual satisfaction associated with the assertion of female subjectivity, johnson mildly, yet powerfully, critiques this. though susan acts rebellious in many ways, it is sexual experimentation and assertiveness that she understands will allow her entrance into the bohemian community—that will enable her to come into her own, like kay has, and no longer “[be] only a member of the audience.” however, that her self-initiated “gratuitous” sexual experiences lead to physical and emotional disappointment, cause a sense of confusion and frustration, and provoke what amounts to a superficial bravado challenges the self-assuredness with which di prima characterizes the sexually-liberated female bohemian. in questioning the actual psychological and physical satisfaction of the sexual freedom entailed in female bohemians’ revisions of the traditional female gender role, johnson complicates the possibility for a seamless transition for women from object to subject. susan assumes that sexual agency will be fulfilling and enable her to feel connected to her body and sense of self as she sees in kay; however, when this is not realized, her subjectivity becomes troubled. the ambivalence of susan’s subjectivity is illustrated in multiple ways. when susan is initially playing the role she’s “supposed” to, such as taking her final college exam, she is restless and experiences a moment of disembodiment. johnson writes, “she had watched, far off, the smooth running of her mind, and had thought, i am doing that, but could not really believe it,” which leads to her feeling “frozen into a deadly laziness.” likewise, even in her acts of rebelliousness, susan doesn’t feel composed or real, but rather lost or nonexistent. when looking in the mirror after walking out on her exam and standing up jerry, for example, susan experiences a disconnect: “there were so many mirrors on broadway. her image floated ahead of her like a balloon, hovering in the windshields of cars, appearing transparent, ghostlike.” susan sees an image of herself that represents a distance from or a disappearance of her sense of self. this fractured sense of self is also often manifested in a restlessness, a desire to be where she isn’t. for example, when sitting in the coffee shop with anthony, susan is drawn to the street. she even notices and reflects upon her fundamental unease with wherever she may be at a given moment. johnson writes, sitting in schulte’s with anthony she could not take her eyes off the street. and yet it was funny, she thought—if she had been outside at that moment, she would have been staring in, at the tables, the people, probably at anthony; so in a way you never ended up seeing the place where you really were at all. this anxiety or discomfort that susan feels periodically leads her to make what she calls “gestures”—moves that she thinks represent to others something more meaningful than what she truly feels. this includes using words such as “incredible” or “strange” because she thinks doing so projects an image of detachment, “which was more sophisticated than being innocent.” this tendency to perform along with susan’s moments of disembodiment point to the fundamental instability of her sense of self, even when asserting subjectivity. all of these examples show that even once susan begins “taking certain risks” and acting with agency, she struggles with the implications of this independence—of “taking care of [her]self.” what she yearns is for something to happen to her—something to add “urgency” to her life. and when she resigns herself to provoke such experiences when it seems she has no other option—namely through her sexual assertiveness—she is left disappointed and disconnected from herself and those around her. thus, as susan attempts to resist her tendency to be passive and instead acts on the bohemian model of female subjectivity as exemplified by kay and represented in the work of di prima, she experiences mild identity crises that take shape in moments of disembodiment, pretense, or restlessness during which her sense of self is lost or confused. through this multifaceted and ambivalent depiction of susan’s female subjectivity, johnson reveals perhaps heretofore unrecognized or unspoken concerns associated with the promise of female liberation. she suggests that for female subjectivity to be viable, it must not be primarily defined by sexuality. when it is, as susan’s experiences demonstrate, women may inadvertently perpetuate the way in which men are traditionally dominant and women are relatively powerless in sexual situations. though johnson does complicate this via the inability of the male characters to bring susan to orgasm, that susan is herself unable to exercise the power in the bedroom necessary to fulfill her own needs—or to even let peter or anthony know the true severity of her disappointment—signifies the lack of authentic liberation that such sexual behavior may actually yield. in portraying this potential outcome of the bohemian model of female subjectivity, johnson adds an important dimension to our understanding of how sexuality functions for the development of subjectivity, and how women beats conceived of the approach to and the impact of resisting traditional gender roles. she provides an undeniably important contribution to the discourse of female subjectivity as it takes shape in the protofeminism of the s. subjectivity and the new york city bohemian community: susan’s trip to paris the importance of how johnson’s depiction of female subjectivity within come and join the dance complicates the model portrayed in di prima’s poetry is further highlighted when read in conjunction with johnson’s revision of the function of the new york city bohemian community as well. specifically, come and join the dance undermines the reciprocal relationship between the city and subjectivity mediated by one’s participation in a bohemian or countercultural community—a relationship depicted in beat texts such as di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward and kerouac’s on the road. examining this aspect of the novel further reveals the myriad ways in which johnson’s first novel helps redefine the beat literary tradition and our understanding of the beat community and its effect on various writers. elizabeth grosz argues in “bodies-cities” that the relationship between the body and the city is mutually constitutive and allows for subjectivity to take shape. as neither the body nor the city is fully formed independently, it is within and through the relationship with each other that both bodies and cities are perpetually defined. grosz clarifies, though, that the reciprocation between the body and the city is not equally balanced; she suggests instead “a fundamentally dis-unified series of systems and interconnections, a series of disparate flows, energies, events or entities, and spaces, brought together or drawn apart in more or less temporary alignments.” and it is this mutually constitutive relationship, however imbalanced, grosz argues, that is the basis for the development of subjectivity. she explains that cities establish lateral, contingent, short- or long-term connections between individuals and social groups, and more or less stable divisions, such as those constituting domestic and generational distinctions. these spaces, divisions, and interconnections are the roles and means by which bodies are individuated to become subjects. .... this means that the city must be seen as the most immediately concrete locus for the production and circulation of power. grosz clarifies the particular function of the city as an integral part of the process of subjectivity, and this brings into focus the fundamental relationship between the bohemian, community, and the city. as noted in the introduction, there is an historical link between bohemia and community. writer and historian marty jezer explains: after a day alone at a typewriter or in front of a canvas, there is a need to unwind and relax with convivial company and to share and challenge each other’s ideas. hence an informal communalism and the famous bar scenes of the s and the incessant party going. despite the general marginalization of women within contemporary bohemian or avant- garde communities, jezer suggests that crucial to bohemianism is a community that provides a social space within which members can escape the mainstream and its culturally-defined restrictive mandates and can share and further develop similar ideas, values, and interests. further, bohemian communities are almost always formed in a city. elizabeth wilson, for example, links the development of the bohemian in the nineteenth century to the growth of the city: an essential precondition for the emergence of the bohemian was the expansion of urban society. …. [city life] provided an escape from the responsibilities of the family, and made possible the formation of new groups and friendships based on interests and work rather than on kinship. studies of more modern versions of bohemia continue to emphasize this particular attraction of the bohemian to the city in contrast to the countryside. for example, christine stansell emphasizes the city’s “easy sociability” provided by its “compactness,” “the plethora of cafés and saloons,” and “the twists and turns of the streets.” likewise, raymond williams describes the city as a kind of open, complex and mobile society, [within which] small groups in any form of divergence or dissent could find some kind of foothold, in ways that would not have been possible if the artists and thinkers composing them had been scattered in more traditional, closed societies. indeed, as noted earlier, the cultural geography of new york city played an important role for the beat community, and on the road helps illustrate this relationship. although women were marginalized in the image of the bohemian community depicted in on the road, its importance and its connection to new york city are nevertheless key aspects of sal paradise’s search of “the pearl.” kerouac writes, “la is the loneliest and most brutal of american cities; new york gets god-awful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets.” this passage draws attention to the undeniable magnetism of new york city—the place sal calls “the great and final city of america”—and the importance of camaraderie or community and its particular presence in new york city. new york city is the initial setting of the novel and is the ultimate destination for sal as he moves from city to city across the country. and an integral part of this journey is the community of “mad ones,” “intellectuals,” and “slinking criminals” as sal refers to its unofficial and often-changing members. likewise, the development of individualism and nonconformity is the primary aspect of the mixed-gender bohemian community that di prima underscores in her first book of poetry; and new york city was indeed central to this experience. in contrast to the creatively-stifling suburb of di prima’s college experience, new york city represented a space within which avant-garde artists and like-minded nonconformists could collectively develop and nurture their interests. johnson interestingly revises this beat discourse of the role of the city and bohemian community in the construction of subjectivity—male or female—through susan’s ultimate rejection of the new york city bohemian community at the end of the novel. in contrast to works by di prima and kerouac, in come and join the dance, johnson suggests a rethinking of what these key beat elements actually offer. in the novel’s conclusion, susan chooses to explore paris as a temporary escape from new york city, and she does so alone. susan’s desire to go to paris by herself is unquestionably motivated by what she begins to see as the dysfunction of the bohemian community. as the novel progresses, susan realizes how the outlaws she once admired are actually falling apart. susan is initially attracted to kay, peter, and anthony because of their self-claimed freedoms: kay has freed herself from college and from her parents and their rigid expectations; peter has freed himself from the burden of being financially independent and from being a steady student tied to deadlines or goals; and anthony has freed himself from the rules of college, now living away from home and writing poetry outside the conventions of traditional or academic literature. in general, as kay explains to susan, each bohemian’s “work” is “living… just living”—on their own terms. though susan may realize that “[n]othing was happening at all” in her friends’ lives, she still initially feels that when she isn’t with them, “everything was happening without her.” this changes, though, when this bohemian community fails to deliver what susan had perceived as its promise of camaraderie based on a shared resistance to conformity. the more time susan spends with these bohemians, the more clearly she begins to realize the level of dysfunction that accompanies their outlaw lifestyles. kay, for example, initially hopes that if she is to become a failure in her new countercultural lifestyle, that she will be a “magnificent” one; by the end of the novel, however, she has dismally accepted what she perceives to be her “mediocrity.” underneath the façade of kay’s contentedness and strong sense of self linked in part to her sexual independence lingers an anger and disappointment in her life. susan observes, for example, how kay’s “face was very tired, as if she knew too much,” and susan notes the despondency with which kay tells susan that “‘everybody uses everybody. that’s the way it is.’” peter, though free in theory from work and school, is still dependent upon his parents’ financial support, and in this way, is still bound to the constraints defined by others—a reality that he often tries to escape by taking aimless drives in his car. the growing hopelessness and deterioration of these characters culminates at the end of come and join the dance, on the day of susan’s graduation. kay would have also graduated the same day had she not dropped out of college, and when susan finds her at the bar, kay is hopelessly drunk and depressed. whether over her regret at dropping out of school or her jealousy of what seems to be peter’s interest in susan (as kay had previously slept with him casually, as part of her sexual independence), it is clear that in this final scene, kay struggles to accept the choices she’s made. susan and peter have to escort her home and put her to bed, and it’s at this time that susan reaches a new understanding of kay’s living space. having initially envied kay’s hotel room as representing “the real world,” susan soon begins to feel emptiness in this room, that rather than enabling kay’s self-defined freedom, the room in fact merely contains “the debris of kay’s life, the pictures that kay had tacked on the green wallpaper that she would not have chosen herself.” within what susan had once considered the epitome of bohemian freedom and independence, susan experiences her final sense of entrapment in this private space: “the room was suddenly much too bright—she could see its sadness too well. this was a room she never could have lived in.” the equivalent of kay’s room at the southwick arms hotel for peter—his packard—similarly deteriorates by the end of the novel. after taking susan for a drive, peter’s beloved car breaks down, and the emasculation he experiences when failing to satisfy susan sexually later the next morning is foreshadowed when he is forced to face the car’s worthlessness and abandon it. no dealer will pay him for it (his highest offer is a five dollar courtesy payment), and so he wrecks it with a hammer before giving it up entirely. peter’s behavior in this scene reveals his frustration with and lack of control over his life as an outlaw. and after they sleep together, the novel concludes with susan’s final assertion of subjectivity: “‘you know,’ [peter] said, ‘you must never regret any thing.’ ‘i know,’ [susan] said. and then she went.” responding to her realization that this community would only further stifle her, susan makes another escape—this time not from the mainstream, but from her bohemian friends and new york city. susan realizes that the freedom she and her friends sought in new york city away from school and family is not attainable here. she witnesses the growing defeat of her friends as they wander in and out of various bohemian hangouts and as they live in their new york city apartments that “had been assembled defiantly” and were perhaps after all “rooms in the same endless apartment … furnished with the massive, imperishable castoffs that parents whose children had left home gave to the salvation army.” the city that susan originally thought would allow and perhaps further nurture her resistance to confining social conventions in fact turns out to disappoint her. simultaneous with susan’s rethinking of her former admiration of her bohemian friends, then, is her consideration of what paris may offer that new york city may not. though somewhat ambivalent about her impending trip to paris throughout the course of the novel, susan gradually comes to terms with experiencing a new city. her parents “didn’t really want her to go [to paris]” and “were somehow able to reassure themselves by imagining a humdrum existence for her even there.” regardless of their reservations, susan cashes in her bonds for her trip. as for so many other americans during the post-wwii period, especially the creative or nonconformist, paris potentially provides susan the opportunity to “breathe more freely” without being subject to “french mores and prejudices” as a foreigner. johnson provides susan an international experience with the opportunity to “over[come] obstacles to independence and self- fulfillment” that she experiences in new york city. rather than include any part of susan’s trip to paris in the narrative itself, johnson enacts a narrative strategy that rachel blau duplessis refers to as “writing beyond the ending.” in employing an open-ended conclusion in come and join the dance, johnson further revises patterns in contemporary beat and non-beat fiction. in her critical study of th -century women writers, duplessis argues that narrative strategies such as an open-ended conclusion—what lisa hogeland refers to as “a kind of textual feminism” —“produc[e] a narrative that denies or reconstructs seductive patterns of feeling that are culturally mandated, internally policed, hegemonically poised.” johnson’s ending of the novel with susan’s departure for paris challenges the conclusions common in contemporary novels, such as “the ending in death and … the ending in marriage, once obligatory goals for the female protagonist” that act “as closure of historical movement and therefore as the end of development.” concluding the novel with an undefined future for susan as she continues her journey of self- development, johnson revises, broadly, the traditional bildungsroman regarding its resolution of the protagonist’s development, and more specifically, the concluding patterns for women within mainstream contemporary novels as noted above. more interesting, the ending of come and join the dance also signifies johnson’s resistance to literary patterns within beat novels. precisely because susan feels that the bohemian community in new york city has failed to satisfy her, she makes change happen for herself—she asserts control, refusing to resign herself to do as others expect. this is quite different from the ending of kerouac’s on the road. casey argues that in the conclusion of on the road, “the car and the system of possibility it represents recede and fail [sal].” casey continues, emphasizing “that kerouac’s travels in on the road ‘end in a tired acceptance of an unchanged self and society.’” whereas on the road closes with sal’s final return to new york city in a state of disappointment and disillusionment, come and join the dance concludes with the continuation of susan’s development, with her hopefulness toward a future that she sets out to experience on her own terms. the conclusion’s open-endedness enacts a significant narrative strategy that challenges standard endings in contemporary fiction. further, susan’s solitary departure for paris undermines the privileging that both new york city and the bohemian community receive in beat discourse and thus implicitly questions the value of these beat elements for the development of subjectivity. in this way, johnson revises the mutually- constitutive relationship between new york city, the bohemia community, and subjectivity. new york city bohemia may have provided the opportunity for susan to initially develop subjectivity, but as we see, she does this only through a revision of the traditional gendered association of public and private spaces. once susan confronts the true “mediocrity” of the community of outlaws in new york city, she sets out to make “a fresh start, a clean break” in another city. v. conclusion come and join the dance undoubtedly signifies important ways in which johnson destabilizes and revises various patterns in mainstream and beat literature of the period. whereas both male and female contemporary novelists tend to limit representations of women to the home or to tragic fates, or more simply to the bedroom as sexual objects, johnson portrays a female protagonist who not only develops subjectivity, but more interestingly, does so in traditionally masculine spaces. throughout the novel, johnson suggests that it is the subordination of women to a secondary role in conjunction with the positioning of this role within the private space of the home that is ultimately oppressive for women. as such, johnson frames her revision of the normative gender discourse within a reshaping of the restrictive gendered public/private spatial dichotomy. in doing so, johnson provides a model of female subjectivity that was absent in contemporary fiction and that speaks to the entrapment so many women were experiencing in the post- wwii period. though the work of diane di prima represents a similar effort to johnson’s—and both writers’ work is unquestionably significant in this way—for di prima, a fundamental element entailed in challenging the oppressive hegemonic female role is sexual agency. for johnson, this association of sexuality with subjectivity is inadequate. certainly, johnson engages in a similarly important resistance to female subordination and objectivity; however, johnson also questions the impact of di prima’s particular approach to redefining gender discourse. as suggested by susan’s sexual and psychological dissatisfaction with her nonmarital sexual adventurousness and her subsequent experiences of disembodiment and confusion, johnson challenges the ways in which defining female subjectivity through sexuality can compromise authentic female liberation. as suggested by susan’s ambivalence toward her experiences and by her trip to paris at the end of the novel, female subjectivity must exceed the limits of sexuality and instead be developed through various acts of agency that do not necessarily perpetuate, however inadvertently, male dominance and female subordination in the bedroom. ultimately, susan’s departure for paris illustrates her resistance to the conventional expectations for her as a white, middle-class woman as well as to the new york city bohemian expectations for her as a woman acting as a subject. for susan, her subjectivity will continue to take shape on her own terms—outside of the new york city mainstream and bohemian communities. in addition to challenging this beat discourse of subjectivity, the city, and the bohemian community, johnson’s achievements exemplified in come and join the dance also challenge the assumption that the only way for women beats to write themselves into the beat literary tradition is through the genre of memoir. as demonstrated through this analysis of her first novel, johnson challenges discourses of gender and sexuality, space, and community through a depiction of female subjectivity that is simultaneously protofeminist and skeptical of the way in which bohemian protofeminism makes sexual agency a primary factor. importantly, she does this in the genre of fiction—engaging in its fundamental elements as do her male beat contemporaries. this is illustrated, for example, in her adaptation of james’s psychological realism and of hemingway’s canonical prose style, as described earlier. notably, she also complicates traditional approaches to the genre by undermining the typical resolution reached in standard coming-of-age novels, and, more interesting, by revising the role that the female protagonist and archetypical literary tropes, such as that of the car, play in contemporary fiction. expanding our attention to johnson’s body of work in all of these ways highlights her valuable contributions to the beat literary tradition and significantly extends our understanding of women beat writers. whereas chapter one explored the connection between di prima’s generative experience within the beat community and her corresponding emphasis on individualism and the development of female subjectivity within this context in her early poetry, this chapter examines the ways in which johnson’s somewhat more complicated experience in the same context manifested in her writing accordingly. my analysis shows that although johnson’s status as a beat writer is largely defined by her relationship with kerouac and by her beat memoir, her work as a writer has many significant cultural, literary, and social implications that should no longer be ignored. looking closely at how johnson’s complex experience within the new york city beat community affected her writing brings to our attention an important writer who dared to challenge mainstream norms and literary practices, as well as various discourses present in male- and female-authored beat literature. as such, this examination of come and join the dance demonstrates how multifaceted each writer’s experience within the beat community was and thus, the myriad ways in which each writer’s body of work can contribute to our understanding of this pivotal period in american literature and society. the next chapter continues this endeavor through a study of hettie jones. i examine how jones engages in the hegemonic discourses of race and gender and in the literary and cultural context of postmodernism through the trope of the interracial mother, and how she opens up the discourse of beat writers in general and of women beat writers in particular in these distinctive and important ways. notes . charters, kerouac: a biography (new york: st. martin’s press, ), . . charters, beats and company, . . see the introduction for my discussion of the women beats as protofeminists, which follows with the use of this term in current beat scholarship. specifically regarding come and join the dance, r. johnson argues: “its instantiation of women as beat subjects anticipates, but does not equal in promise or achievement, the second-wave feminisms emerging in the late sixties and the early seventies. despite the novel’s emphasis on white female subjectivity, it makes no claim to address directly the emancipation of women; its corrective discourses are written in a beat key rather than with the rhetoric that would be familiar from later women’s movements.” “‘and then she went’: beat departures and feminine transgressions in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance,” girls who wore black, . . r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . liz bondi and joyce davidson, “situating gender,” a companion to feminist geography, ed. lise nelson and joni seager (malden, ma: blackwell pub., ), . consistent with the use of the term “space” within feminist geography (see nancy duncan, phil hubbard, and linda mcdowell, for example), i distinguish between “space” and “place” per michel de certeau’s distinction, as described by tovi fenster: “space is place made meaningful. …. [the] everyday act of walking in the city [for example] is what marks territorialization and appropriation and the meanings given to a space. … de certeau actually defines the process in which a sense of belonging is established, a process of transformation of a place, which becomes a space of accumulated attachment and sentiments by means of everyday practices. belonging and attachment are built here on the base of accumulated knowledge, memory, and intimate corporal experiences of everyday walking.” “gender and the city: the different formations of belonging,” a companion to feminist geography, . . in highlighting similarities and differences between di prima’s poetry and johnson’s novel, my intention is not to blur genre differences but rather to draw on relevant thematic comparisons between the two writers. . see minor characters for johnson’s use of “collegiate” in this context; the terms “good girl” and “outlaw” as i use them here and throughout the chapter come from johnson’s fictional characterization of herself and of other characters within come and join the dance. . johnson, minor characters, . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same text: , , . until otherwise noted, the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from minor, and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . minor, , . . minor, , , , , , . . minor, , , . . come and join the dance (new york: atheneum press, ), . . minor, . . “in the night café,” interview by grace, breaking, . though antithetical to the beat writing aesthetic, james provided johnson a model for exploring what she describes as “what was underneath the action” and helped inspire her to write prose. “in,” . . johnson, “in,” . . though johnson doesn’t use the term “bohemian” in the novel, her use of “outlaw” implies a meaning similar to “bohemian.” in the context of the novel, the “outlaw” characters are not criminals by any means, but share a general rebelliousness against the conservative mainstream as well as artistic interests (kay is an artist and anthony a poet). the protagonist’s use of “outlaw” to describe these characters reflects her own perception of the significance of their choices to live on the margins of society. my discussion of the novel shows how the two terms (“bohemian” and “outlaw”) overlap, and, as such, i use them interchangeably. . grace and johnson, breaking, . . johnson, bad connections (new york: putnam, ), . . johnson originally began writing in the night café in the early s promptly following the real-life experience of her husband’s death, but she abandoned it for some time when she remarried, had a child, and worked as an editor. she then went back to it after having written and published bad connections and minor characters in the meantime. . douglas, introduction to minor characters, xxvii. . johnson, minor, . . this more detailed documentation of johnson and kerouac’s relationship in door wide open than that of minor characters reveals that their relationship was not just romantic or sexual, but also based on their shared experiences as writers. in a letter dated mid-october , for example, kerouac writes, “write. get your novel done, dont [sic] worry about whether it’s good or bad, just do it ... it’s written in the stars, you have no power over the stars any moren [sic] i do. the already stars.” likewise, in mid- august , he writes, “your prose is probably not as bad as you think. … but if you feel such remorse about yr [sic] prose somehow that sounds good to me, as if you were really doing good. your trouble is probably the same i’m having with memory babe, boredom with the story.” his letters during this two-year period are consistently supportive in this way, and johnson emphasizes that “except for jack’s continued encouragement, i felt very alone with my work.” nevertheless, this aspect of their relationship—their mutual respect as artists—is often overshadowed by her role as his lover and as his source of support—financially or domestically (ironing and cooking for him, for example). door wide open, - , , . . catherine r. stimpson, rev. of what lisa knew: the truths and lies of the steinberg case, by joyce johnson, entertainment weekly may , . . of the following four such anthologies, peabody’s is the only one in which the excerpt is not about kerouac: charters’ beat down to your soul, knight’s women of the beat generation, charters’ the portable beat reader, and peabody’s a different beat. . maria damon, “victors of catastrophe: beat occlusions,” beat culture and the new america: - , ed. lisa phillips (new york: whitney museum of art, ), . damon refers to frazer as bonnie bremser. it is also worth noting that carolyn cassady is a painter, whose only publication is indeed a beat memoir: off the road: twenty years with cassady, kerouac and ginsberg ( ). though also a poet, frazer remains best known for her memoir, troia: mexican memoirs ( ), which tells the story of her relationship with beat poet ray bremser. see chapter three for my discussion of jones as a writer beyond the scope of her memoir, how i became hettie jones. . see also helen mcneil’s “the archaeology of gender in the beat movement” and grace’s “snapshots.” . r. johnson, “mapping,” . . “mapping,” . . “mapping,” . . several male beats have since written in the memoir/autobiography genre, including ed sanders’s tales of beatnik glory ( ) and neal cassady’s the first third (published posthumously in ). . “mapping,” . . this is with the recent exception of katie mills’s two-page discussion of come and join the dance in the road story and the rebel, in which mills argues that the novel “serves as a crucial bridge between kerouac’s road stories and those by women that will come in the next generation.” the road story and the rebel: moving through film, fiction, and television (carbondale: southern illinois university press, ), . . r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . “‘and then,’” . . johnson, come, . the quotations in the rest of the paragraph are from come as well: , , , , . . the quotations in this paragraph are all from on the road: - , , , - , . . herman wouk, marjorie morningstar (new york: doubleday, ), . . elaine showalter, a jury of her peers: celebrating american women writers from anne bradstreet to annie proulx (new york: vintage books, ), . . see halberstam for a discussion of how peyton place “was a book before its time” regarding the representation of women. (the fifties, [new york: random house, ], .) halberstam also recognizes, referring to kenneth davis, that despite the forward-thinking characterization of women within the novel, they “‘were far from the perfect exemplars of the shining new woman that eventually followed with the onset of the feminist movement.’” qtd. in halberstam, . . barbara probst solomon, the beat of life (new york: great marsh press, ), . . solomon, . . douglas, introduction, xxiv. . douglas, introduction, xxiii. . gerald walker, “fugitive from girlhood,” rev. of come and join the dance, new york times jan. , : . . walker, . . johnson and kerouac, door, . . grace and johnson, breaking, . . johnson, come, (emphasis in original). . r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . in the next section, i address susan’s rejection of this association between subjectivity and sexual agency as it signifies johnson’s critique of the bohemian representation of female subjectivity. . felski, . . phil hubbard, “women outdoors: destabilizing the public/private dichotomy,” a companion to feminist geography, . as rose explains, this ideological construct “depend[s] on a white middle-class conception of domesticity.” (feminism, .) also, see nancy duncan for a more general discussion of how “both private and public spaces are heterogeneous and not all space is clearly private or public.” “renegotiating gender and sexuality in public and private spaces,” bodyspace: destabilizing geographies of gender and sexuality (london; new york: routledge, ), . . grace, “snapshots,” . . duncan, . duncan notes here that “most men” in this context generally excludes homosexual men. . rose, . the positioning of power that i argue johnson disrupts is of course not unique to the public/private dichotomy. drawing on foucault, duncan reminds us that inherent in any personal relationship is a relationship of power: “it is a statement of fact that personal relationships are also power relationships and that everyone is implicated in the production and reproduction of power relations.” “renegotiating,” . . rose, . see rose, pg. , for a discussion of geography as fundamentally “masculinist” and the subsequent gendered association of the “same” and “other.” . rose, . . rose, . . rose, . . johnson, come, . . come, . . ehrenreich, . . douglas, introduction, xv. . see hubbard and duncan for more on the role of the street in discussing the public/private dichotomy. . hubbard, . . hubbard, . susan’s sexual aggression on the streets is of course considerably mild in contrast to sex workers for whom sexuality is at the forefront of their behavior on the streets. . johnson, come, , . the subsequent quotation in this paragraph is from the same text: . unless otherwise noted, the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from come as well, and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. i will use this pattern as necessary throughout the remainder of the chapter. . come, , , , , , , , . . come, , , . . come, , . . r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . come, . . deborah clarke, driving women: fiction and automobile culture in twentieth-century america (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, ), . . roger n. casey, textual vehicles: the automobile in american literature (new york: garland publishing, ), . . casey, . . casey, . . come, . . come, , , . . come, . . duncan, . . rose, . . r. johnson, “mapping,” . . kerouac, on the road, - ; cassady, “‘joan anderson’ letter to jack kerouac,” the portable beat reader, . . grace, “snapshots,” . . come, , , , , , . . the quotations in this paragraph are from r. johnson, “‘and then’”: , , . . come, . . come, , , . . come, , , . . come, , , . . elizabeth grosz, “bodies-cities,” sexuality and space, ed. beatriz colomina and jennifer bloomer (princeton: princeton architectural press, ), . . grosz, . . jezer, - . . e. wilson, . . stansell, . . raymond williams, “the metropolis and the emergence of modernism,” unreal city: urban experience in modern european literature and art (manchester: manchester university press, ), . . the quotations in this paragraph are from kerouac, on the road: , , , , , . . come, - , . . come, , , . . come, (emphasis in original), , , . . come, . . come, . . benstock, . . benstock, . . duplessis, writing, . . lisa marie hogeland, feminism and its fictions: the consciousness- raising novel and the women’s liberation movement (phila, pa: university of pa press, ), xvii. . duplessis, writing, . . duplessis, writing, , . . casey, . . casey, . . come, . chapter “the object of everyone’s attention”: interracial motherhood and the postmodernist dilemma in hettie jones’s in care of worth auto parts i. introduction a key factor that sets hettie jones apart from diane di prima, joyce johnson, and other women beat writers is that, aside from a few poems and essays published in her college literary magazine between and , jones did not publish any writing until the early s. jones explains that she lacked confidence in and was ashamed of what little writing she struggled to produce during the beat period—writing that she considered “not only bad but worthless.” instead of more actively pursuing her own writing during this time, then, jones worked as a subscriptions manager for the jazz magazine, record changer, and then the partisan review, where she was also managing editor, before taking a more prominent role as co-editor and co-publisher of her and her husband’s (leroi jones/amiri baraka) literary magazine, yugen, in , and poetry and book press, totem press, in . these experiences helped immerse jones in the growing literary and cultural scenes of new york city in the s and s, which unquestionably helped influence her growth as a writer on her own terms and in her own time. jones began publishing her work in the s, gave her first public reading in , and has since produced a body of work that includes poetry, short fiction, non- fiction essays, stories and books for children and young adults, as well as edited collections of prison writing. however, not unlike the impact that johnson’s relationship with kerouac has had on her literary reputation, jones’s relationship with baraka has limited scholarly attention to her work. like johnson, jones is often referred to as a memoirist; her multi-genre body of work is generally overshadowed by her memoir, how i became hettie jones, in which her relationship with baraka and the role that this played in her development as a woman and writer are central. jones’s experiences in the beat community as an aspiring writer and as the wife and mother of an interracial family do indeed provide an insightful angle from which to read her work; however, in an effort to draw attention to her literary accomplishments outside of the scope of her memoir, this chapter examines an unpublished short story cycle through which jones interestingly engages in beat and postmodernist discourses in a genre otherwise absent from the beat literary tradition. as demonstrated in chapters one and two, each writer’s particular experience within the beat literary community uniquely informed her writing. for both di prima and johnson, the objectification and marginalization of women within the mainstream and beat communities and literatures resulted in distinctive and complex representations of female subjectivity in their work. in this chapter, i examine how jones’s short story cycle, in care of worth auto parts: stories at the intersection, is shaped by her personal experiences as a developing writer in the beat community and as the white wife of a black man who left her in because of racial differences. the well-known baraka left his marriage and the interracial beat community because he wanted to authenticate his growing beliefs in black nationalism and to pursue his political leadership in the black community. my analysis of in care of worth auto parts demonstrates how jones destabilizes the hegemonic and hierarchical racial and gender categories that motivated this racially-driven rupture. specifically, it focuses on how the text is informed by two important cultural contexts: the racial politics of the s and the postmodernism of the s and s. these two contexts mutually inform in care of worth auto parts, respectively, through the trope of the interracial mother—a figure who was particularly affected by the intertwining racial and gender politics of the post-civil rights period—and through the fragmentation and shifting of identities, various metanarrative techniques, and the use of magical realism. during the mid- to late s when the civil rights movement for racial equality and integration gave way to black nationalism and racial segregation, a white mother of interracial children was positioned ambiguously between white and black communities, and in particular, between the vastly different experiences of the white and non-white intraracial mother. the racially privileged status of a white woman was significantly diminished for a white mother of interracial children, and she was simultaneously subject to the struggles of “survival, power, and identity” so often experienced by non-white mothers in american society as well. a white mother of interracial children was thus situated on the margins of both racialized communities and subject to a “social gaze” ; as jones writes in this chapter title’s quotation, the figure of the interracial mother was in fact often “the object of everyone’s attention.” a result of the ambiguity surrounding and the tension toward interracialism, this “social gaze” objectified the interracial mother, and her identity would become destabilized and fragmented; her subjectivity would be diminished. throughout in care of worth auto parts, jones explores this fracturing of the self and subsequent efforts by the figure of the interracial mother to develop subjectivity. examining how all of this takes shape throughout the text, this chapter argues that jones undermines the essentialist gender and racial categories upheld in prominent beat fiction. specifically, i explore how jones interestingly reconfigures the beat quest for an authentic american experience and “individual truth” and engages in the discourse of protofeminism through the use of narrative techniques and a genre that work together to reflect and embody the postmodern experience of the interracial mother. the short story cycle is distinct from other genres in its reliance on the “interrelationship [between individual parts] [to create] the coherent whole text.” this genre has been used by classic writers such as giovanni boccaccio and geoffrey chaucer, as well as american modernist writers such as sherwood anderson and ernest hemingway. its use by contemporary women writers to explore the issue of the subject’s fragmentation and fluidity that has come to define postmodernism is most relevant to my reading of jones’s text. literary critic karen weekes explains that particularly “in the wake of the s and the second wave of the women’s rights movement,” “the structure of [this genre] replicate[d] the complex structure of women’s identities” and “reflects attempts to connect these fragments in a meaningful way.” weekes cites lorrie moore’s anagrams ( ), for example, in which the protagonist, benna carpenter, seeks to unify her various roles of widow, singer, professor, and mother that pull her in competing directions and “manifest themselves in a fractured identity.” through the structure of “an evolving sequence of narratives,” characters such as benna “shor[e] ‘up their own fragmented identities’ while the cyclical structure uses the same accretionary method to unite the fragments of stories into a meaningful whole.” this analysis of moore’s novel aptly illustrates how the short story cycle is strategically used by contemporary women writers to achieve a parallel between structure and theme. jones uses the genre of the short story cycle in similar ways, illustrated through the structural parallel of the shifting identities of the female narrator-protagonist, lizzy, who struggles to develop a unified sense of self amidst her various roles of an interracial mother, a woman in her own right, and a storyteller. but jones also notably employs the short story cycle to explore the intersections between gender and race as they were especially fraught in the post-civil rights era. the structure of in care of worth auto parts informs the text’s themes and concerns: the unity and disunity that simultaneously exist between the stories—at once independent of and dependent upon the structure of the narrative cycle—are also explored thematically as the tension between unity and disunity exists between races and is experienced by the racialized mother in particular. throughout in care of worth auto parts, lizzy, a white mother of three interracial daughters, and close friend zulima, a black woman with an interracial son, share stories and experiences that have affected their identities as interracial mothers. through these central characters, jones uses the structure of the short story cycle to highlight the importance of developing not only a female subjectivity that represents a response to the general subordination or oppression of women in post-wwii society—as di prima and johnson address in their work—but also, more specifically, a maternal subjectivity that confronts the ways in which patriarchal motherhood “regulates and restrains” mothers and their mothering. within in care of worth auto parts, lizzy’s effort to develop a maternal subjectivity as an interracial mother represents her struggle toward “empowered” motherhood, an experience in which the mother can claim the “agency, authority, authenticity, and autonomy denied to [her] in patriarchal motherhood” as well as by the racial tensions of the period. as such, jones’s work importantly draws attention to a particular experience of female subjectivity that is affected by the multifaceted context of gender and race politics from the post-civil rights period on. in doing so, jones challenges the representation of race and gender in male- authored beat novels and extends how the issue of female subjectivity figures into the work of women beat writers. in all of these ways, jones makes a unique contribution to our study of the beats. looking at her unpublished short story cycle not only expands current scholarly attention to her body of work, but also reveals her efforts to examine what is at stake in the beat search for authenticity in a genre that is unique within the beat literary tradition. in her exploration of fundamental beat questions of identity and subjectivity through the discourse of postmodernism and from the perspective of the racialized mother, jones establishes herself as an important beat writer whose writing is indeed far from “worthless.” ii. the literary community, marriage, and becoming a writer jones’s gradual development as a writer was undoubtedly shaped by multiple formative experiences. her work as a drama major in college, her jobs at various magazines, and her involvement in the new york city beat community all contributed in unique ways to her understanding of her role as a female writer within a largely male- dominated literary community and as the white wife of a prominent writer and literary and cultural critic. similar to di prima’s and johnson’s experiences, new york city exposed jones to a multitude of perspectives on gender and race as well as on the function and purpose of literature. her diverse body of work reflects the impact of such perspectives and experiences, and reveals a versatile writer who explores a range of important issues. life at college and in new york city jones was born hettie cohen in queens in . from a young age, she felt the lure of manhattan when she and her family would travel from their home through manhattan to visit family. she describes feeling a sense of urgency in manhattan, an intriguing mysteriousness about the manhattan streets that, as a young girl, she hoped to experience and explore firsthand. before moving to manhattan on her own, though, jones attended mary washington college, the woman’s college of the university of virginia, between and . as jones explains in her memoir, how i became hettie jones, this school appealed to her parents because it was cheaper than others in the city, and it appealed to jones because of its distance from home. she was motivated to escape home in queens because, as she writes, “unlike any woman in my family … i was going to become—something, anything, whatever that meant. to accomplish this i felt the need to cloister myself for a while, away from the usual expectations.” as a means to begin exploring life outside of the relatively conservative neighborhood of laurelton, jones left for college at age seventeen. like other women beats, jones claims to have “never had ‘normal’ fifties plans,” and with her venture to college, she hoped to begin her process of “becoming”—though what she would “become” had yet to be determined. similar to di prima’s accounts of feeling different from most students around her at college, jones recalls describing herself in an interview for the school newspaper as a “mutation.” she was reluctant to become a “suburban matron”—the role expected for so many women in the s—and so she gave herself “an odd” haircut and wore “girl scout oxfords that seemed … the perfect signal of a new, sexy but surefooted woman.” jones’s individuality may have made her feel like a “mutation,” but she was an active student at college nonetheless, particularly in the arts. she majored in drama and performed in several plays and musicals, such as george bernard shaw’s arms and the man and thornton wilder’s our town, and at least one of her own plays, “café au lait,” was performed at school as well. the title of her thesis, “the poet in the theater,” signifies her overlapping interests in the theater and literature, and in the hopes of eventually “writ[ing] the plays of [federico garcía] lorca,” jones began developing her writing skills through poetry and short prose that was published in the college’s literary magazine, the epaulet. these short pieces include the poem, “essay on man— modernized slightly,” which appeared in the may issue and is jones’s witty response to alexander pope’s “essay on man,” as well as a collection of humorous observations on the college campus, “grazing the grounds…with the beneficent burro,” and two more poems published in the spring of . as noted earlier, these short works would be the only of jones’s to be published for some time; however, they reveal the early development of jones’s playful poetic style marked by her witty and unabashed critique of her immediate context. after graduating college, jones moved to manhattan. she did postgraduate work at columbia university and worked in the center for mass communication before it lost its funding. she then began working at the jazz magazine, record changer, and, as noted earlier, after this she worked at the partisan review. these jobs would become formative experiences for jones, especially in light of her realization after college that her education was perhaps just beginning—that she had been “barely educated [at college], with great intellectual gaps where everyone else had stored movements and cultures.” now in manhattan and at the partisan review, jones was immersed in the literary and cultural scenes and exposed to the work of a variety of writers and critics—all of which would influence her own writing that she pursued privately during this period. there weren’t many books in jones’s home when she was growing up, and her father once told her, “you won’t find life there [in books].” at the partisan review years later, jones found herself surrounded by “literary quarterlies, international journals, dissent, midstream, hudson, poetry, kenyon, encounter, the london times—and books, books! an ocean of words and opinion surrounded [her].” contrary to her father’s admonition, jones considered all of this literature to be her “present education.” partisan was a leading literary and intellectual journal that published the literary avant-garde alongside its political counterpart, american radicalism. in the center of the literary scene, jones was reading a variety of writers, including new critics (at which she and other beats “balked,” beat poets such as allen ginsberg and gregory corso, african american writers such as ralph ellison, contemporary poets such as denise levertov and frank o’hara, as well as criticism by delmore schwartz and others. during this time, jones also read the work of “academic” writers, such as mark strand and john hollander, but she clarifies that she did so perhaps “not as carefully” as the avant-garde literature to which she was more drawn. with such a wealth of literature at her fingertips, jones was able to gain insight into others’ interpretations and depictions of “these cold war fifties.” and as she continued her “education” at partisan, she found herself in the middle of the beat literary community. jones met baraka at the record changer in , and together they frequented beat “hangouts” such as jazz on the wagon and the cedar tavern. they went to poetry readings and met corso, di prima, o’hara, and others including black mountain poets. in an effort to help promote and disseminate the work of such writers, in the late s, jones and baraka started their own magazine, yugen, and press, totem press. they soon became what fellow beat writer brenda frazer describes as “the mother and father of the literary scene at that time,” hosting parties and housing the production of their publications. the subtitle of yugen, “a new consciousness in arts and letters,” aptly describes the flourishing new york city literary scene that their publications helped to develop. they published a myriad of writers including baraka himself, jack kerouac, corso, ginsberg, basil king, joel oppenheimer, fielding dawson, robert creeley, john wieners, charles olson, gary snyder, frazer, michael mcclure, and william burroughs. jones explains that though she didn’t include any of her own work alongside these others, she found solace in the publication of those around her: “if i hadn’t yet managed to speak for myself, here at least were these others.” from such close contact with these writers and their texts, jones would have access to a range of writing styles that helped show her what kind of writer she did and did not want to be. though jones lacked confidence in her ability as a writer and refrained from publishing during the s and s, she did find a certain sense of creative freedom or empowerment from letter writing to her friend helene dorn. she describes finding herself somewhat awakened by this process: “having been absorbed for hours with trying to tell, i’d be conscious suddenly, and almost surprised to see the dark shapes of the poverty trees at the window. something in language went, now, where nothing else could go.” jones considered letter writing different from other prose because, as she explains in her memoir, she could write “long, detailed, continued accounts, and sen[d] them with bargain remnants from the bins at paterson silks. i said whatever came to mind.” the informal and private nature of letter writing was clearly distinguished for jones from the writing she considered more fit for publication, and it is perhaps through this genre that jones, consciously or not, developed as a writer. jones claims that “nothing but [her] own voice held [her] hostage” during the beat years, but her status as a woman and her relationship with baraka seem to have, to a notable degree, affected her ability to consider herself a writer and to write publicly within a predominantly male writing scene. for example, in how i became hettie jones, she describes how baraka would write poems about “moments of personal failures between [them],” which included his disappointment in her silence as a writer; she also describes being intimidated by his writing as he “wrote the truth” so seemingly effortlessly. in fact, in a interview, jones describes that her perfectionism set her apart from other writers around her, most notably baraka. she explains, i really work on my things and i didn’t understand, because leroi was so adept, he would pull a poem out of the typewriter and come running and show it to me, it was perfect. but my poems had to be revised because they’re not perfect when they come out. this necessity of revision and drive for perfectionism is useful in understanding jones’s insecurities as a poet and why letter writing became her primary writing outlet during these years. further, though she played a prominent role in the production of yugen and totem press—her connections at the partisan review helped get yugen distributed, and she physically assembled the magazine before they could afford for this to be done professionally—she recalls that baraka placed his name on the magazine front and center, while she “had become the ‘advertising and circulation manager’” on the masthead inside. and as baraka emerged as a leading poet and critic during their years together, his increasing popularity would come to overshadow her. she would soon become the silent woman merely seated next to him in interviews, the woman referred to in reviews of his work not as an editor or publisher, but rather as “his white wife, the former hettie cohen.” so not only was jones faced with personal insecurities about her poetry in a literary scene largely dominated by male writers, but also her husband’s role in the literary community had implications for her development as a writer. an interracial beat marriage unquestionably affected by the historical and social contexts during which they were married (between and ), the relationship between jones and baraka is complex. in her memoir, jones provides her perspective on their marriage, emphasizing how “race disappear[ed] in the house” —how, for her, the racial differences that characterized their marriage as taboo for so many people around them vanished in the privacy of their relationship. in an effort to understand how jones’s ideas about interracialism and the role of race in her marriage to baraka shape in care of worth auto parts, i briefly examine multiple ways in which to understand the dynamics of and contexts surrounding their relationship. when jones and baraka got married in , anti-miscegenation laws still existed in more than half of the country, and her family strongly disapproved. in fact, her parents essentially cut her off from contact for years to come. their marriage was one of only a few interracial relationships in downtown manhattan at the time, and jones describes being “unsettl[ed]” by others’ perceptions of their marriage as a “blackman/ whitewoman couple” because, for her, “black/white was … a slippery division.” she recalls, “it was a joke to us, that we were anything more than just the two of us together.” the cultural scene around her seemed to resist the culturally-defined racial categories and hierarchies of the mainstream. her experience with the burgeoning jazz scene played a particular role in this perception. it introduced her to a new language, “a music [she] could trust”—largely because it brought people together in a shared, powerful sensory experience. for jones, the jazz scene was a relatively uncomplicated interracial culture, defined and shared by “all of us there—black and white—[who] were strangers at first.” despite claims that “only blacks had figured out” jazz, jones didn’t hear the difference between white or black musicians, and she recalls everyone at the five spot, “trying to laugh off the fifties”—that there were no racially-based distinctions in bohemia’s response to “the pall of the cold war, the nuclear fallout.” jones was invigorated by the interracial makeup of the jazz scene, and this parallels with her sense of the absence or inconsequential nature of racial differences within the context of her marriage. jones’s perception of the “slippery” nature of racial identities in the late s and s can be traced back to her own understanding of her jewish ethnicity as a young woman. she came from a jewish family and community in queens, but she describes always feeling like “an outsider jew.” at a hillel meeting, for example, jones recalls that “all [she] saw … were people unlike [her].” additionally, she describes thinking about her developing identity as a young woman and considering that she “could have tried for white, aspired to the liberal intellectual, potentially conservative western tradition. but [she] never was drawn to that history.” as deborah thompson explains, “there was a vast whitening of jewish ethnicity” during this period, but for jones, “the shift in american jewish identity from dark semitic other to assimilated white standard didn’t fit.” similar to her experience of feeling different from her female classmates at college, jones felt marginalized within her own ethnic group and, more importantly, that the nature of this ethnic identity was fluid. that is, she did not feel innately connected to her jewish ethnicity, but rather that this was somewhat of a superficial identity marker. undoubtedly, this is useful in understanding what might be considered her romanticism of the status of interracial relationships during this period. for jones, as her memoir suggests, one’s racial or ethnic identity, though defined by one’s heritage, is not necessarily reflective of one’s actual sense of self nor is it stable. the status of her jewish ethnicity had shifted from dark “other” to white “standard,” and this “slipperiness” undermined the fixed nature of ethnic or racial identities upon which socially-constructed identity categories—and racial discrimination—rely. as such, the racial differences within her interracial marriage to baraka that others perceived as problematic were relatively nonexistent for her. what essentially amounts to colorblindness in the context of her interracial marriage, however, is more complicated than jones’s account suggests. in fact, it is possible to interpret jones’s attraction to baraka in terms similar to what has been criticized as the exoticism of blacks by white male beats. jones’s attraction to baraka can be seen as her attempt to reject society’s expectations for her as a white (jewish) woman, to “[break] with ‘the nuclear family, white house, and picket fence.’” as historian renee c. romano argues, “for the women of the beat crowd, an attraction to black men and culture could be a form of rebellion against the strict gender-role expectations of the s. … becoming involved with a black man ensured that [jones] would not end up in suburban westchester.” in this way, jones’s perception of her interracial marriage as transcending racial differences represents a critical paradox: on the one hand, we see her advocacy and practice of racial integration beginning in the pre-civil rights period, and on the other hand, we see her—perhaps inadvertent—exoticism or exploitation of the black race as her marriage to baraka signifies a rejection of the mainstream and its expectations for her as a white woman. interestingly, however, romano explains that jones’s account of the role of race within her marriage was not altogether unusual during this period. she explains, “most [interracial couples] minimized the role that race played in their relationships in an effort to present themselves as legitimate and respectable.” she continues, by highlighting the ways in which their marriages were like any other, interracial couples made a radical statement about race in postwar america, challenging the widely accepted belief that race defined people and that the gulf separating blacks and whites was too vast to cross. accordingly, jones’s marriage to baraka and her efforts to downplay their racial differences may significantly represent a consciously radical act. to this point, it is important to note that even within the bohemian community, jones and baraka experienced racial discrimination, such as catcalls when walking down the street together. jones also describes having witnessed “shocking and painful” race prejudice when without her husband or children in “whites-only groups.” as jon panish explains, interracial couples in bohemia “were plagued by many of the same unequal power dynamics that troubled … other social and cultural interactions.” thus, in the face of such discrimination and as a result of having felt distanced from her own jewish ethnicity, jones perhaps willfully overlooked her and baraka’s racial differences as a means of rebellion and survival—including the survival of their children—not as an act of exoticism or the romanticization of black culture. and as my analysis will show, these very issues of identity and survival take shape in the narrative and structure of in care of worth auto parts in multiple interesting ways. in the mid- s, as the civil rights movement gave way to the black power movement and its cultural offshoot, the black arts movement (in which baraka played a primary role), jones’s attempts to transcend or ignore her and baraka’s racial differences were ultimately defeated. as andrew epstein explains, baraka “was pressured by the increasingly urgent racial politics of the time to reconsider and rediscover his connection to african-american culture.” as a result, in , he abruptly left his interracial family and community in downtown manhattan for harlem and then newark, nj and “became a spokesman for black cultural nationalism and a militant political organizer and leader.” although their marriage had been strained by tensions related to their shared interests in writing and editing, as well as by baraka’s affair with di prima, it is clear that baraka’s racial politics—his desire to authenticate his involvement in the black community—was the primary reason for their divorce. being married to a white woman compromised baraka’s leadership in the black arts movement. subsequently, their personal relationship became quite distanced, but jones maintained a close relationship with baraka’s family, who was devoted to jones and baraka’s two children. outside of this black community, though, jones’s alienation from her family continued—perhaps to a lesser degree—and she would continue to face discrimination as a white mother of biracial children. ultimately, with the destruction of their marriage, jones had to face issues she had previously attempted to avoid. confronting her identity as an interracial mother in the aftermath of the divorce led jones to a clarity about her sense of self that ultimately gave her the strength to come into her own as a writer. just a few years after the divorce, jones began publishing her work, which directly explores these inextricably linked issues of gender and race. jones’s body of work jones’s first publications were texts for children and young adults, including the trees stand shining ( ), an edited collection of native american poems, and big star fallin’ mama: five women in black music ( ), a biography of ma rainey, bessie smith, mahalia jackson, billie holiday, and aretha franklin. she published several young adult novels during the s and into the s as well, such as forever young, forever free ( ) and i hate to talk about your mother ( ). the former novel tells the story of young jannie and tsepo, who attempt to overcome various obstacles in an effort to maintain their friendship across the color line. the latter novel also explores themes of race as well as those of gender, class, and sexuality in its story of alicia prince’s experiences as an adolescent. these earliest publications indicate jones’s attention to key issues that take shape throughout her multi-genre body of work. in , jones published her first collection of poetry and prose in the chapbook having been her. in addition to publishing poetry in various periodicals and anthologies over the years, she has since published three books of poetry: drive ( ), all told ( ), and doing ( ). notably, drive won the poetry society of america’s norma farber first book award. from her start as a poet, jones admired the work of william carlos williams, levertov, o’hara, and barbara guest, but charles olson’s theory of projective verse has perhaps had the strongest influence on her poetry— particularly as she saw its influence on baraka’s writing. jones explains that “[the idea] that one thought leads to another, that you don’t have to have an initial idea that you follow all the way through … that … you learn your own breath [through this process]” is especially appealing. nancy grace explains that in the vein of olson’s theory, “jones uses the page to experiment with long prose and tight haiku-like lines as well as alphabetical and anaphoric catalogues.” as grace suggests, jones’s poetry is marked by a fluidity and an adventurousness in form and style. what remains consistent throughout her work is the strength of the poet’s voice and the honest treatment of her subjects, whether family, romance, or writing. jones has yet to publish a collection of her short fiction, but she began publishing short stories individually in various journals and anthologies in the s. having been her includes the stories “the x-ray technician” and “the indian party,” and over the last few decades, several other stories have been published in various publications, such as “how she beat the bogeyman” in the village voice ( ), “how she recognized her last fling when she found it” and “enough of this” in frontiers ( ), and “his future career” in global city review ( ). like that of many beat writers, jones’s fiction is largely autobiographical, and as such, her new york city bohemian experiences during the s and s are frequently the subject of her short fiction. this isn’t to suggest a limited focus in her stories, though; texts such as “how she beat the bogeyman,” for example, go back to jones’s childhood as she explores various experiences with beauty, loss, and strength that helped shape her sense of self. interestingly, jones has described her short stories as “morality tales”—that she is “a preacher at heart.” for jones, as my analysis of in care of worth auto parts will show, using writing as a means to share the lessons she herself has learned throughout her life is of primary importance. as suggested earlier, the issue of women’s subjectivity is central to much of jones’s writing. grace notes that “a theme repeated almost ritualistically throughout [jones’s] work is the need of a woman to claim her own agency.” in the poem, “she,” for example, jones describes the titular woman’s attempt to find the psychological and sexual satisfaction she desires as she “is getting over divorce.” aroused by the touch of a farm boy, “she drives him to a place where no one can / see them under the stars. … sweet jesus, she pulls him down.” exerting control and sexual agency, the woman seizes the fulfillment for which she longs. further, that she does so outdoors in an open and natural space, where “the grass is high, / wet with rank summer” represents her rejection of the domestic/indoor/private space long associated with such an encounter. in this depiction of sexual agency and female assertiveness outside of the home, jones’s poem addresses issues of vital importance in the post-second-wave women’s movement era and connects with the work of di prima and johnson in significant ways, namely through the emphasis on female subjectivity, as well as the destabilization of the traditionally gendered spatial dichotomy. jones makes a distinction between this attention to gender in her poetry and her focus on race in her fiction. she explains in an interview, “gender issues find their way into poems but not race. but i do deal with it in my stories. perhaps because i’m angrier and therefore less immediately articulate about race issues and i need the space that prose offers to tell the stories that race imposes.” in a poem such as “the man in this house,” though, jones cannot escape the question of race. short and simplistic, this poem describes the sheer and overwhelming joy that the speaker experiences as she admires “[t]he man in this house” and the “aura of bright blue [that] surrounds his brown body.” “if i speak,” she writes, “a hundred doves will fly from my mouth / and fill his small house with their flight.” celebrating the speaker’s happiness and desire for her black lover, this poem treats the theme of interracial love that dominates much of jones’s short fiction. though a survey of her poetry indicates that race is more frequently the subject of her short fiction, there are several poems such as this one that illustrate the thread of gender and race throughout her prose and poetry. jones’s body of work includes not only children’s and young adult literature, poetry, and short fiction, but also collaborations such as the memoir with rita marley, no woman, no cry: my life with bob marley, and from midnight to dawn: the last tracks of the underground railroad with jacqueline l. tobin. additionally, from to , jones led a writing workshop at the new york state correctional facility for women at bedford hills and has published collections of the writers’ work in more in than out ( ) and aliens at the border ( ). in , along with fellow beat poet and prison writing committee member janine pommy vega, jones also published words, walls, wire: how to start a writing workshop in a prison. despite this range of jones’s work, most critical attention is to her memoir, how i became hettie jones ( ). the memoir is set within the new york city beat community, the jazz culture of the time, the civil rights movement, and the beginning of the black power movement. as such, it provides useful insight into the beat period and its surrounding contexts while it reveals jones’s struggle within this literary community to actually become a writer. in her essay on women beats’ memoirs, grace highlights how “jones uses the memoir to pick at the question of whether she is a writer, and if so, what kind.” grace insightfully explores how jones creates a “mosaic effect” throughout the memoir—how “she constructs the copresence of three temporalities: the self of memory, the self of artful creation, and the self of material reality.” the memoir, grace shows, is thus successful not only for providing a new perspective on the beat community, but also for its aesthetic achievements. deborah thompson’s “keeping up with the joneses: the naming of racial identities in the autobiographical writings of leroi jones/amiri baraka, hettie jones, and lisa jones” likewise focuses on jones’s memoir, particularly on the function of naming. in her essay, thompson reads how i became hettie jones alongside the autobiographies of jones’s husband and daughter “in order to historicize white american identity shifts relative to shifts in african american and biracial american identities.” this scholarship by grace and thompson is undoubtedly important in drawing attention to jones as a writer in her own right and, more specifically, in situating her memoir within larger discussions of the genre of life writing as well as of the history of race in post-war american culture. poet and critic barrett watten, however, notably expands—if only minimally—this focus on jones’s memoir in “what i see in how i became hettie jones.” watten argues that jones’s memoir is “an exemplary account of the relation of poetry to knowledge” as he examines “the divergence of the possibility of poetry as material practice.” in order to do so, watten extends his focus on jones’s work from her memoir to her first book of poetry, arguing that “another dimension of the becoming of hettie jones … is the publication of drive.” in his brief yet insightful analysis of her poetry, watten illustrates how drive embodies “a poetics of transformative particularity”: “she writes of everyday details—of cars, lovers, relatives, and kids—but these are framed … in terms of a poetics of identification and solidarity with women in other patriarchal contexts.” in this essay, watten importantly traces the appearance of issues such as identity and gender within more of jones’s body of work than her memoir, and in doing so, he provides several ways to approach her various literary achievements. following in this direction, i extend critical attention beyond jones’s memoir, and my focus on the inextricable link between race and gender in her short story cycle follows in these scholars’ attention to how jones’s experiences as a developing writer within the beat community and as a white woman in an interracial marriage affected her writing. iii. the representation of race in beat fiction and memoir in order to understand jones’s particular revision of and contribution to the beat discourses of gender and race, it is important to more fully examine how race figures into the beat community and its prominent fiction. the beat movement is broadly defined by a resistance to mainstream society’s growing homogeneity and by a desire to create a heterogeneous space within which writers or artists of any racial or ethnic background, social class, even criminal background, could escape the mainstream. despite the interracial makeup of the community itself, as jennie skerl notes, “the reified canon of white male authors obscures the african american and other ethnic presences in beat history,” including writers such as ted joans and bob kaufman. subsequently, in discussions that refer to the beat community as a white literary community—and in fact, reflective of the fundamental impetus for racial and ethnic heterogeneity within the community—the beats are characterized by their attraction to and appropriation of non- european-american cultures, particularly the african american culture, which manifests itself in beat literature in various ways. as norman mailer argues in “the white negro” ( ), in the face of society’s “murderous” nature as demonstrated by the war, “the [white] american existentialist— the hipster” set out (in contrast to “the square”) “to live with death as immediate danger, to divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, [and] to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self.” african american culture was the model for this response to post-wwii society, because, according to mailer, “the negro … has been living on the margin between totalitarianism and democracy for two centuries.” not unlike the lives of criminals and drug users to which the beats were also drawn, african americans were situated on the outskirts of mainstream society and were thus appealing to the beats who saw this marginality as “a benefit to their spiritual development.” as steve wilson argues, “[kerouac] and other beats believed that black culture revered [“the intense moment … and intuition”] because a life lived outside an anglo worldview … ensured blacks would stay in touch with a certain essential humanness anglos had lost.” the desire to experience the lives of african americans (or other types of marginalized “others”) largely took shape in beat literature through, as robert holton describes, “the appropriation of language … [and] the valorization of jazz, especially bebop.” this appropriation of african american culture by the beats is exemplified in kerouac’s formal experimentation with spontaneous prose—his rejection of the process of revision and his celebration of improvisation. kerouac’s explanation of the composition of the subterraneans in his essay, “essentials of spontaneous prose,” makes direct connections between jazz music and the “essentials” of his formal endeavor. for instance, he compares his use of “the vigorous space dash” to mark “rhetorical breathing” rather than the use of periods for the separation of sentences to how a “jazz musician draw[s] breath between outblown phrases.” though representative passages from his body of work are too long to cite here, regina weinreich points to the language, phrasing, and rhythm throughout kerouac’s writing to demonstrate how his “literary structures are motivated by the same impulses as the structures of jazz riffs.” as this example suggests, african american music provided a way for beat writers to work outside of the boundaries of realism that were considered inadequate for addressing issues arising in the post-wwii era and to instead follow their impulses toward performativity and spontaneity. the complexities and consequences of the beats’ attraction to and appropriation of black culture are perhaps more evident in the prevalent representations of non- european-american identities and cultures in beat literature than in their formal experimentation. in their efforts to resist the period’s growing modernization and homogeneity, to preserve their own white male individuality in the face of a threatening “domestic/conformist absorption of the self/individual,” the core beat fiction writers (kerouac and burroughs) consistently, though to varying degrees and for various purposes, appropriate marginalized identities throughout their work, most often black and mexican, and in doing so, engage in racial practices of primitivism, exoticism, and essentialism. for example, in kerouac’s on the road, sal paradise recalls, wishing i were a negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me… . i wished i were a denver mexican, or even a poor overworked jap, anything but what i was so drearily, a ‘white man’ disillusioned. … i was only myself…wishing i could exchange worlds with the happy, true- hearted, ecstatic negroes of america. in this oft-quoted passage, kerouac reveals a limited understanding of or an unwillingness to confront the actual conditions of african americans’ lives during the post-wwii period when this was written and takes place. he overlooks the socially- constructed racial discrimination, subordination, and inequality to which african americans were subject and instead perceives them as “happy” and “ecstatic”—a projection of his own image of the racial other that enables or validates such a fantasy. additionally, grace draws our attention to maggie cassidy, the subterraneans, and tristessa, in which kerouac’s “engagement with the africanist presence fuels the project of self-construction” through the way in which he “conflate[s] racial categories so that [his] creation of dark characters … encodes a subtext of ‘otherness’ that speaks of the black experience as well as that of other marginalized groups.” though grace emphasizes how race functions throughout these three texts to provide kerouac with an “allegory of [his] own condition as a marginalized male, a masculine hybrid,” it is nevertheless important to note how kerouac collapses racial and ethnic differences into one “other” identity category that is set in contrast to white identity, and that his depiction of such characters is ultimately self-serving—as in on the road. likewise, martinez argues that, evident in the yage letters, burroughs was attracted to “the world of the fellaheen [as it provided] a passage into an alternate existence in which the white male can experience difference and its liberating side effects, without having to give up the privilege of whiteness.” at issue in such examples of white writers’ appropriations of black culture is the very freedom of writers like kerouac and burroughs to adopt and adapt other cultures’ traditions for their own purposes. this pattern of white beat prose writers’ appropriations of racial or ethnic others is also evident in brenda frazer’s troia: mexican memoirs. for example, frazer describes the impact of her relationship with the mexican “policewoman procuress” referred to as “j” in the memoir, with whom frazer communicates through “gibberish” as “neither of [them] understands the other’s spoken idiom.” she writes, “i know that i am as much mexican as i am new yorker or even spade, negro, veracruzana, i have undergone the metamorphosis completely and my heart is warm and happy.” in an interview with grace, frazer explains how her experience as a prostitute in mexico led her to this “metamorphosis”: she describes identifying a “darkness in [her]self” with the people in mexico’s “open[ness] to their poverty [or] to the oppression of being down- trodden.” though frazer’s characterization of racial or ethnic others in mexico acknowledges what she sees as their cultural, political, or economic suffering, it nevertheless demonstrates the freedom of frazer as a white woman to, in kerouac’s language, “exchange worlds” with racial or ethnic others and to appropriate their culturally-based identities. all of these examples represent white privilege exercised by beat writers—male and female. regarding the beat practice of white privilege, john cooley explains that “many blacks were forced by birth and racial identity to a desperate way of life,” while the hipster, or beat, “chose to embrace” this life and “could always return to the mainstream of white life if driven to do so.” interestingly, holton points out that many readers overlook the degree to which this white privilege leads to problematic representations of racial or ethnic others—representations that are “ignorant of the actual living conditions [of these others].” instead, holton argues, readers “[respond] positively to such images of heterogeneity.” that some readers perceive such depictions in beat literature as acceptable portrayals of racially marked figures and cultures while others consider them a form of racism (e.g., primitivism or exoticism) illustrates the paradox of the beat community itself that manifests in much of its white-authored literature: the simultaneous rejection and perpetuation of hegemonic racial norms. amor kohli explains that “although the bohemian environment was certainly much more progressive in its views of race relations than was mainstream america, many in that atmosphere were still unable, unwilling, or simply unprepared to comprehend the stories of black people in america.” therefore, although these beat representations of racial or ethnic others do depict an american experience that is defined by a mixing of cultural traditions or experiences, they nevertheless perpetuate what toni morrison reveals to be a pattern of much white-authored american literature throughout the th and th centuries: the use of “africanist presences or characters or narrative or idiom” as a “mediating force” through which to develop a “quintessential [white] american identity.” martinez emphasizes the self-serving nature of the beats’ appropriation of racial and ethnic others by clarifying that this “identification with downtrodden ethnic peoples has been misread as a direct attack on middle-class, anglo conformism. it is rather a maneuver useful for the beats’ own purposes.” he argues, when their vicarious empathy for ethnicized liminality encounters an actual civil rights movement for racial liberation, the individualism based on freedom of personal movement finds its antithesis in a political movement based in a communion of shared values and community of shared identity. in his analysis of beat writers’ appropriations of racial or ethnic others through their lives and work, martinez highlights how, often depicted through essentialism, primitivism, or exoticism, racial or ethnic others function as exploitable objects through which many beat writers attempt to develop and maintain their own individual autonomy and subjectivity when it serves them best and does not compromise their own needs. in addition to this treatment of race within the beat community and beat literature, it is important to acknowledge the work of the black arts movement of the late s and early s that also undoubtedly informed jones’s understanding of race and gender as she set out to address these issues in in care of worth auto parts. strategically similar to the work of many beat writers, the writing of the black arts movement relied on distinctions between races—on the separation of “the black aesthetic” from “the white thing,” “white ideas,” and “white ways of looking at the world”—in its endeavor to represent and express pride in the black experience. in both poetry and prose, the literature of this movement focused on the lives and the historical, cultural, and political experiences of african americans. the poetry, in particular, used the african american vernacular and its use in various african american cultural forms such as sermons and music to embody and emphasize the authentic african american experience. overall, in the wake of the civil rights movement, artists of the black arts movement set out to express a renewed sense of pride in the african american culture. also important, the black arts movement, somewhat similar to the beat movement in this way, limited the role of women in its endeavors. as james smethurst discusses in his study of the black arts movement, “caricatured versions of [the black power movement and the black arts movement] as fundamentally and unusually sexist distort them and the legacy of black women (and some men) in those movements.” however, smethurst also helps clarify that evident in “the relegation of women to a supporting role in umbra” (a poetry workshop for young black writers) and the prevalence of women’s struggles against “male supremacy” in the bam, the movement was “in the mainstream of downtown bohemia in terms of gender roles rather than following some black nationalist imperative.” despite the prominence of several female writers of the blacks arts movement, such as nikki giovanni, sonia sanchez, and gwendolyn brooks, and their attention to women’s issues in their work, the general misogyny of many of the movement’s male leaders overshadowed, if not subordinated, many black women who were interested in like-minded cultural and political changes. this undoubtedly resembles the perpetuation of the traditional female gender role within the beat literary community. this overview of how race and gender figure into the literary and cultural movements preceding the composition of in care of worth auto parts draws attention to the uniqueness and importance of jones’s treatment of race and gender in her text. many white beat writers romanticized or appropriated non-white figures or cultures as a means to escape what they perceived as stifling or oppressive white privilege, and writers of the black arts movement sought to cultivate a literary tradition defined only by african american cultures and experiences, which entailed the exclusion of any “white ideas” or cultural practices. significantly, jones disrupts the tendency of these beat and black arts writers to romanticize, appropriate, exploit, subordinate, or exclude the racial “other” and to marginalize women. in in care of worth auto parts, she examines what is at stake in perpetuating hegemonic socially-constructed race and gender norms, and in doing so, she brings attention to the figure of the interracial mother whose complex experience during the post-civil rights era is reflected through the formal structure of the short story cycle. iv. in care of worth auto parts: interracialism and postmodernism the composition of in care of worth auto parts: stories at the intersection spans from the early s to the early s, and in its current manuscript form, the text includes twenty-one stories—half of which have been published autonomously—and fifteen vignettes. the vignettes function as metanarratives in which the primary narrator- protagonist, lizzy, contextualizes the upcoming story or stories and reflects on the process of storytelling itself to her friend, zulima, who is at times the protagonist of a few of lizzy’s stories. as noted earlier, two of the stories, “the x-ray technician” and “the indian party,” were first published in jones’s chapbook, having been her, in , and nine others have since been published in journals such as ikon and ploughshares, as well as in anthologies such as women of the beat generation and bearing life. archived correspondence indicates that jones first attempted to publish a volume of these stories in , but it was rejected, according to the publisher, because “it seem[ed] premature to think yet of … publishing a volume of the stories.” within the next decade, jones experimented with linking the stories together—with what is now the short story cycle—and she received a grant from the money for women/barbara deming memorial fund in to continue pursuing the project in its new form. however, in , the manuscript was rejected by curbstone press, who urged jones to reshape the content into novel form, reassuring the author that “this work has the makings of being an exceptional novel.” in my recent conversation with the author, jones explained that, despite the publisher’s suggestion, she wasn’t interested in writing a novel and eventually “ditched” the manuscript because she was no longer confident in her attempt to link her stories together as a short story cycle. whether referred to as a short story cycle, a short story sequence, a composite novel, a short story composite, or a story book, the genre of in care of worth auto parts is a collection of stories, each of which has self-contained character and plot development and can therefore potentially be read autonomously, but that are linked together in a variety of ways—such as a narrative thread, one or more characters, the setting, or vignettes—and in this way, work as multiple parts of a larger whole. in fact, although the stories can be read autonomously, writers use this genre in order to convey a larger meaning to be achieved only when the stories are read as part of a coherent whole. rocio g. davis explains: “the term ‘short story cycle’ implies a structural theme for the working out of an idea, characters, or themes, even a circular disposition in which the constituent narratives are simultaneously independent and interdependent.” referring to forrest ingram’s study of several short story cycles, roxanne harde explains that the genre is “dependen[t] on ‘dynamic patterns of recurrence and development.’” nineteenth- and twentieth-century american examples include sarah orne jewett’s the country of the pointed firs, hemingway’s in our time, anderson’s winesburg, ohio, amy tan’s the joy luck club, and tim o’brien’s the things they carried. with in care of worth auto parts, jones joins this list and provides a stylistically and thematically unique short story cycle rooted in the beat pursuit of an authentic american experience. the stories and vignettes of in care of worth auto parts are told from the turn of the twenty-first century as the narrator looks back at her life beginning in her twenties or thirties in s new york city bohemia. as noted earlier, jones’s fiction is autobiographical, and as such, the stories are based on jones’s relationship with baraka and center on lizzy’s and zulima’s particular experiences as interracial mothers. further, the new york city arts culture serves as the backdrop, and so the stories include characters who are painters, musicians, actors, and writers. jones began writing the stories of in care just a short time after the supreme court decision to repeal anti- miscegenation laws nationally. the text is initially set in this post-civil rights era when interracial marriages were officially legal, but such couples were still subject to racial discrimination from both white and black communities, and the cycle traces the evolution of this taboo over subsequent decades. each of the stories of in care is rich with portrayals of the experience of racialized motherhood, but i focus on the stories of the cycle in which the trope of the interracial mother and the use of postmodernist narrative techniques figure through lizzy most prominently and interestingly: “enough of this,” “disintegration,” “no visible means of support,” “minor surgery,” and “full circle.” looking at the first and last stories in addition to a few in between, my analysis addresses the cyclical movement of the text to highlight the various ways in which the particularities of the genre itself contribute to the stories’ thematic development. “enough of this” “enough of this” is the first story of in care, in which jones succinctly establishes the text’s primary topic of racial discord as it is experienced broadly by blacks and whites and, more specifically, by the interracial mother. from the first-person perspective of lizzy, jones describes one particular evening in the s shared by lizzy, her soon-to-be ex-husband and rising trumpet star, elliott, his friend, the “‘incendiary’ playwright” nathan, and nathan’s girlfriend, moonlight sonata. both are interracial couples, and the story centers on a night when they attended a party thrown by a “hip” producer in new york city—they had likely been invited because of nathan’s current popularity as a playwright and elliott’s status as the “new star” according to a poll by the jazz magazine, downbeat. during the course of the party, lizzy reflects on the different dynamics between the two couples as well as on the character of moonlight, a white woman who stands out with her red, curly hair and her bold personality to match. the most interesting aspect of the party involves moonlight as she is mistreated by the host. overall, the story draws attention to the sense of isolation that interracial mothers experience as well as to the perpetual tension surrounding interracial relationships. race is thematized from the start as the story begins with lizzy’s distinction between the ease with which nathan, a black man, “[uses] [moonlight’s] whiteness” to help the group get a cab for the party, whereas elliott “never did that” with lizzy—“[her] being white was never his tactic, he got [their] lofts and [their] cabs.” not unlike jones and baraka’s relationship described earlier, jones suggests here that elliott made a conscious effort to resist whatever discrimination he might face as a black man and not to take advantage of whatever privileges to which he might have access due to lizzy’s whiteness. the way in which lizzy describes this distinction between their and nathan and moonlight’s relationship also suggests her own sense of pride in her and elliott’s mutual understanding that although they are an interracial couple, they do not define their relationship by race. however, lizzy is ultimately unable to escape others’ racial discrimination and the subsequent isolation she faces as a mother of biracial children. she subtly notes, “in those years, having few examples, [moonlight and i] were concerned about raising our interracial children but settled for trying to feed and clothe them.” in this brief passage, lizzy points to the absence of models she and moonlight had to follow in their unique motherhood experiences. additionally, the very issue of being able to provide for and support their children becomes a primary struggle that lizzy continues to deal with throughout the decades and stories to follow. in the somewhat abrupt conclusion of the story, lizzy recalls a particularly memorable moment from the party—the moment after which jones titled the story. seeing moonlight talking to one of the black waiters working at the party, the producer approaches moonlight from behind, “put[s] his hands under her elbows and lift[s] her up and out, as though casting her into flight. … ‘that’ll be enough of this,’ he said.” lizzy then laments in the concluding lines that although “moonlight has gone … nathan died young [and] elliott and i are divorced[,] i’m still … watching america make more of this, more of us.” the producer’s race is unidentified, but his reaction to moonlight in conjunction with lizzy’s comment that this type of behavior still occurs about four decades later, emphasizes the continual resistance toward interracial relationships from within both white and black communities. the story’s conclusion highlights how the motivation behind this incident in which moonlight and the waiter are treated like objects and humiliated for apparently crossing what the producer considered the line between racial and class boundaries is still existent and problematic at the turn of the century. despite the changes in the individual characters’ lives since this incident in the s, there has been a lack of progress regarding the taboo of interracialism. lizzy is “still watching” people’s unease with interracialism decades later. further, lizzy’s use of “us” in the final line (“i’m still … watching america make more of this, more of us”) is especially significant as she draws attention to what ronna johnson refers to as the “social gaze” to which she and moonlight are subject as white mothers of biracial children—alongside their respective partners. as racialized mothers, lizzy and moonlight are subject to discrimination, objectification, and marginalization, and we see this more clearly in the stories that follow. importantly, nathan’s and elliott’s prominent status within the cultural scene suggests that they are not necessarily victim to racial discrimination solely as black men. rather, lizzy’s comment suggests that all four individuals are subject to discriminatory behavior precisely because of their interracial relationships—or, as portrayed in moonlight’s experience at the producer’s party, because of their attempt to transcend or ignore hegemonic racial boundaries. in initially portraying these complex experiences of interracialism and interracial motherhood in the cycle’s first story, “enough of this,” jones begins to disrupt the hierarchical categories of race that essentialist differences between experiences of whites and non-whites assume. we begin to see how the issue of interracialism itself redefines what it means to be both a white woman and a black man in the post-civil rights period. at stake for the former is any previous unearned privileges she had as a white person and for the latter, whatever degree of racial equality the civil rights movement helped achieve. these issues are taken up further in the cycle’s next vignette and subsequent story, as is the issue of shifting and multiple identities. from lena to lizzy in the vignette that follows “enough of this,” lizzy explains that “lizzy” is a nickname, that she had previously changed her name from lena “for the less ethnically challenging leanne, then quickly lost that for liz, plain and simple, lizzy to be cute.” the process of these name changes has implications for lizzy’s understanding of her own ethnic identity as she attempts to erase what she perceives as marked jewish connotations of lena. lizzy deliberately chooses a name that she feels is more neutral, less ethnically marked. her name changing is clearly tied to what i described earlier as jones’s own sense of marginalization as a jew and her unease with unwittingly identifying with this ethnic identity from which she feels innately disconnected. as such, these name changes establish the fundamental struggles that lizzy faces throughout in care regarding ethnic and racial identities and her attempt to develop subjectivity as a racialized mother in the face of others’ assumptions about racial and ethnic identities and their presumed fixity and hierarchical relationships to one another. as the short story cycle proceeds, jones expands upon this postmodern literary device of name changing and the shifting of identities, and as suggested in “enough of this” and explored further in the subsequent story, “disintegration,” lizzy’s particular struggles with her identity and subjectivity are rooted in the taboo of interracial motherhood. “disintegration” the second story of in care, “disintegration,” continues to provide an interesting rendering of jones and baraka’s relationship as well as of jones’s experience as a mother after the divorce, and the story also depicts the postmodern experience in general— symbolized by the renaming and shifting of identities. the title itself signals the societal changes represented in jones and baraka’s divorce, and thus in lizzy and elliott’s split. set against the rise of black nationalism and the corresponding rupture between races, lizzy narrates “disintegration” in the first person, beginning in the summer of after elliott left her, and then jumping to when lizzy is forced to seek welfare because she can no longer provide for her children on her own. because of elliott’s fame, lizzy worries that she won’t qualify for financial assistance; the welfare worker sympathizes with this situation, though, and allows her to apply under a fake name, one that is not legally connected to her ex-husband. using the name nelly, lizzy qualifies for welfare, and the story then focuses on the complex dynamics of this experience of shifting identities. the “disintegration” of the title is represented in the breakup of two of lizzy’s important relationships, first with elliott and next with her friend, betty. lizzy never directly explains why elliott left her, but various moments throughout the story suggest the growing animosity she feels toward him, likely rooted in her feelings of abandonment. describing how she and elliott don’t see eye to eye on how to raise their children, especially after their divorce, lizzy mentions, “elliott calls from somewhere. which could be anywhere, since now he’s everywhere, in sandals and flowing cloth.” references such as this suggest that elliott has left his family to pursue his jazz career, which has taken him all over the world, and this provides a fair fictional parallel for baraka’s actual departure from jones to pursue his political leadership role in the black community. also, elliott is on the cover of time with what lizzy considers a “furious face”—a portrayal reflective of the serious demeanor and dedication with which elliott/baraka pursued his respective commitment to jazz/black nationalism—perhaps at the cost of his family’s well-being. further, jones’s allusion to elliott in traditional african garb is certainly derisive, representative of the resentment lizzy/jones experienced as a white woman left for the black community. despite his success, elliott is clearly not helping to provide for their children, which requires lizzy to apply for welfare. the separation between lizzy and elliott is coupled in “disintegration” with the temporary separation of friends, lizzy and betty. betty is a black woman and the sister of nathan, who appeared in “enough of this.” the two women had been good friends for many years, but around the same time elliott left, so did betty. lizzy never specifies that betty left their neighborhood to be in an all-black community or to pursue beliefs in black power; rather she reveals more broadly in the subsequent vignette that during the s when they didn’t see much of each other, “betty married, divorced, and changed her name to zulima.” that betty, like leroi jones to amiri baraka, changes her name to one that is more ethnically marked, demonstrates the prevalence of black race pride during this period and presents a notable contrast to lizzy’s attempt to escape the ethnic connotations of her given name, lena. and zulima’s return to the new york city bohemian neighborhood coincides with the decline of the black power and black arts movements in the mid- s, further suggesting the motivation behind her departure. overall, through the temporary separation of lizzy and betty/zulima and the split between lizzy and elliott, jones draws attention to the commonality of such racial segregation in society during what lizzy aptly refers to as “dis-integration time.” the racial politics that motivate lizzy’s various experiences of “dis-integration” are also responsible for her frequent encounters with racial discrimination as an interracial mother throughout the story. for example, the girlfriend of the welfare worker in lizzy’s home “gapes” when one of lizzy’s daughters enters the room and jumps onto her mother’s lap. lizzy explains, “she has never seen the likes of us,” and this stranger’s response to lizzy with her children is not uncommon. a toll collector has a similar reaction to lizzy with “several children of color” in her car, and when in the hospital for surgery, a medical insurance investigator initially explains to lizzy that she doesn’t qualify for welfare because she “look[s] intelligent” and “[has] been a teacher.” however, once the investigator notices the picture of lizzy’s children, lizzy “must not be what [she seems]. ‘stay on welfare and go to school,’ [the investigator] says, relenting. ‘make something of yourself.’” seemingly innocuous, such reactions represent the interracial and intraracial tensions that gradually diminish lizzy’s sense of self and subjectivity as she is continually objectified as an interracial mother and struggles to fulfill her fundamental responsibility as a parent to provide for her children. in each of these instances, lizzy is subject to a “social gaze,” and in emphasizing how lizzy is scrutinized by these onlookers and “reconstituted as [a racialized] object,” jones—continuing from “enough of this”—destabilizes the normative racial and gender hierarchies perpetuated in beat literature in multiple ways. specifically, by frequently subjecting lizzy to what ronna johnson refers to as a “punitive gaze,” jones highlights her objectification and marginalization, which presents a notable contrast to the seeming stability of a black figure like elliott. lizzy is characterized in “disintegration”—and throughout in care—as a white person subject to racial discrimination and marginalization. this is contrary to the position of white privilege from which frazer, kerouac, and burroughs speak about nonwhite figures. it is elliott who is seemingly free from the racial struggles that lizzy suffers. he is a black man living in the mainstream of society, not on the margins—not as a racial “other” romanticizing a liminality typically portrayed in texts such as on the road or the yage letters. in frazer’s memoir and in the fiction of kerouac and burroughs, it is the white figure who typically exercises racial privilege and exoticizes or objectifies the racial other. here, jones disrupts and essentially reverses this pattern of white privilege and nonwhite discrimination, marginalization, or objectification. also, without elliott present, lizzy takes on the traditional role of both mother and father; she is responsible not only for maintaining the domestic space and for bringing up her children, but also for financially providing for her children—the role generally assumed by the father in traditional patriarchy. in this way, jones uses the unique experience of the figure of the interracial mother to complicate the traditional gender hierarchy perpetuated in most male-authored beat texts as well. further, jones destabilizes the hegemonic and hierarchical racial categories often perpetuated in beat texts by portraying lizzy’s struggles with what i described earlier as the characteristic themes of non-white motherhood: “survival, power, and identity.” lizzy’s application for welfare itself signifies her struggle to ensure the survival of her children. lizzy also struggles to survive in the face of the “social gaze” that often pushes her to retreat into her own seemingly isolated experience, which has been severed from any larger community. the struggle for power is illustrated in lizzy’s attempt to transcend the effects of the discrimination she faces by internalizing her frustration and relying on the strength of her overall commitment to her role as a mother to help her achieve the authority, authenticity, and agency to which she is entitled. and lizzy’s struggle with identity is manifested in how she unwillingly becomes hyper-aware of her position as a “nontraditional” mother and attempts to develop a subjectivity in the face of the racial discrimination that gradually deteriorates her sense of self. in all of these ways, lizzy experiences racial discrimination not typically associated with white mothers but rather with racial or ethnic minority mothers. as these struggles for “survival, power, and identity” illustrate, though, lizzy’s racial discrimination is not near the degree of racial oppression suffered by minorities whose discrimination is not linked only to their role as mothers. in this multifaceted and ambiguous characterization as a “nontraditional” racialized mother, then, jones continues to undermine essentialist racial categories, blurring the boundaries between white and nonwhite motherhood and therefore redefining what these racially-defined categories mean. the experience of lizzy’s name change to nelly in order to qualify for welfare because elliott does not help support their children perhaps most interestingly represents lizzy’s struggle for subjectivity as a white woman and mother as it simultaneously represents jones’s engagement in the postmodern discourse of shifting or multiple identities. in fact, the storyline in which lizzy experiences an identity crisis once she changes her name and pretends to be nelly illustrates what ronna johnson refers to as “the postmodern destabilization of identity and narrative.” as lizzy describes her experience as “nelly,” her narrative position itself shifts from first to third person, representing the destabilization and fluidity of her identity as well as of her narrative role. as the narrator of “disintegration,” lizzy describes herself as nelly in the third person—shifting between “i” and “she”—which suggests her attempt at the time of the experience to maintain a distance between her true identity and her made-up identity— thus preserving the former. this shift in narrative perspective illustrates a splitting of lizzy’s identity into two parts—each part reliant upon the other—lizzy on nelly for financial stability, and nelly on lizzy to maintain the pretense. under the name nelly, lizzy goes about her life as normal: she shops for groceries, cashes checks, and even goes to the hospital for emergency surgery. however, lizzy gradually has trouble distinguishing between her real identity and her fake identity. she begins to experience “a slow collapse of [herself],” to feel that her “world has ended. and nelly’s has begun.” when she realizes the danger of continuing to pretend to be nelly, lizzy discards the fake identity and tries to provide for her family on her own. but, in doing so, she faces the fear of how to adequately recover the “cherished lizzy thompson, [who was] like a little sister young and tragically dead.” lizzy’s sense of self had already been so troubled by the abandonment of her black husband and by the racial hostility she encounters as an interracial mother that her efforts to preserve her identity as lizzy when she pretended to be nelly were futile. she may have exercised clarity and strength in recognizing the consequences of shifting identities, but she then has to revive herself as lizzy from being “tragically dead.” and this struggle to reclaim her identity as lizzy and to develop a subjectivity as a woman and a mother continues to progress throughout the cycle’s stories. importantly, the tension between unity and disunity portrayed in the relationship between lizzy and nelly is mirrored in a similar tension within the structure of in care itself. the themes developed in “disintegration”—namely, the struggles of the “nontraditional” mother, the disruption of hegemonic racial and gender hierarchies, and the postmodern condition of multiple or fragmented identities—rely upon this story’s connection to the other stories and vignettes within in care to achieve full meaning. only when situated within lizzy’s collective experiences as an interracial mother over the years and through the short story cycle are the social, cultural, and political implications of lizzy’s experiences in “disintegration” substantiated. lizzy’s experience as nelly in “disintegration” is reflected in the fragmented structure of in care, and in this way, jones is able to more effectively draw attention to the various and complex consequences of the perpetuation of essentialist racial categories and the hierarchical relationships and discrimination these categories foster. “no visible means of support” in “no visible means of support,” the following story of in care, jones continues to explore the issue of maternal subjectivity thematically as well as through metanarrative techniques that perform the fracturing and shifting of identities that we first see in “disintegration”—namely, through the shifting of the narrative perspective from first to third person. in this story that is set in the early to mid- s, lizzy is still struggling to support her children, especially after she loses her job at a literary agency for “black militant” beliefs that somehow negatively influenced her ideas on “a book about hunger for children.” after losing her job, lizzy immediately worries about how to pay for rent, food, and laundry. her middle daughter, ten years old here, has even sought a job to make some money, walking a younger child home from school. throughout the story, jones juxtaposes lizzy’s inability to support her children financially with her efforts to support them emotionally and psychologically as they face various obstacles, many of which are a result of their interracial background. this is illustrated in the central conflict of the story when lizzy is called to meet with her daughter’s junior high school sewing teacher and is faced with the teacher’s presumptions about her racial identity. the teacher calls lizzy in to discuss whether or not the african print fabric that her daughter has brought to class will be easily hemmed because the pattern itself may make it difficult to measure accurately. the middle daughter is dark skinned and is described as having a “high wide afro” and an ankh around her neck, and jones suggests that this is why the teacher assumes that her mother is black. thus, as lizzy has come to expect, the teacher, upon seeing her, does a “doubletake, ahem, the eyes jumping around.” she seems nervous and surprised, having expected, perhaps, “someone not only black but unskilled”—both characterizations that are overturned upon sight of lizzy’s white skin and her confident offer to simply help her daughter sew with the african print. like the examples in “disintegration,” lizzy is the object of the teacher’s gaze as a racially-marked mother, and the teacher’s reaction to lizzy forces her to be acutely conscious of her identity and her racial differences from her daughter. though strong when facing the teacher’s ignorant behavior, when she exits the classroom, “lizzy weeps that all she can do to defend her children is be white.” lizzy is frustrated not only that the teacher assumed she would be black, but also that the teacher assumes that a black mother would be “unskilled”—unable to actually help use the african print fabric, and perhaps unable to stand up for her daughter and her interest in maintaining her ties to her african heritage. further, rather than seeing lizzy and her daughter as a black mother and child, as she assumed, the teacher sees them—to her own surprise—as a white mother and a biracial child—as something so startling, she cannot muster anything other than a weak response to lizzy’s offer to help her daughter sew: “oh well, then…,” she manages to say. the daughter had initially come home from school “in a crying rage” because of her teacher’s response to her fabric. now, lizzy’s compassion as a mother for her daughter is overshadowed by the way in which her whiteness is reason enough for the teacher to change her mind. all lizzy has to do is show up, “be white,” and the teacher no longer takes issue with the african fabric. drawing attention to lizzy’s feelings of sadness and helplessness in this situation, jones critiques the white privilege that lizzy unwittingly exercises in her confrontation with the teacher. rather than being identified as her daughter’s white mother, lizzy wants to be treated simply as a mother, regardless of her race or her racial differences from her daughter. she wants to assert a subjectivity that will not be undermined by others’ assumptions about her identity or role as a mother. importantly, in the very beginning of the story, lizzy explains that she “had come to think of [her]self” in the third person—as “she.” throughout the course of the story, she suggests that this shifting sense of self is a result of constantly being objectified and marginalized by others as an interracial mother. after initially acknowledging her narrative shift from “i” to “she,” lizzy writes, “one or two things about her. i answered to my legal name, of course, but who was lizzy thompson? people saw black or white, one thing or another; all i saw was cross-reference. mostly, every which way i turned i was her. through this metanarrative technique, lizzy draws attention to the instability and fragmentation of her identity and to the cause of this situation: others’ inabilities to see beyond the racial differences between her and her children, such as the sewing teacher. as exemplified in her similar prior encounters with various people who misjudge and objectify her as a white mother of biracial children, it is the contrast between what lizzy herself sees and what others see that leads to this fracturing of her identity and her shift in narrative perspective—all of which symbolizes her fundamental lack of subjectivity. more specifically, in describing her perception of herself as “cross-reference” rather than as either black or white, lizzy reflects on her inability to define herself according to others’ categories and thus on her inability to avoid being scrutinized and judged. for lizzy, her experience as an interracial mother invalidates, but is limited by, the socially-constructed categories of white or black motherhood. lizzy feels naturally tied to her children in such a way that she does not necessarily want to be identified as belonging to the white community because that identity carries with it assumptions about her life and her family. conversely, although her experiences overlap with those of nonwhite mothers, as a white woman, she also obviously does not identify as a black woman either. as such, lizzy suffers with what she describes as her sense of “cross- reference.” this ambiguous sense of identity and her marginalization within any context troubles lizzy’s subjectivity. though she determines to provide for her children in any way she can, because she is constantly confronted by others’ attempts to define her—and is therefore subject to the objectification and marginalization this leads to—she struggles to assert a subjectivity that will let her claim authority and authenticity as a white mother of interracial children in this post-civil rights period of racial segregation. and it is precisely this struggle that provokes her to shift her narrative perspective from first to third person, symbolizing what i referred to earlier as “the postmodern destabilization of identity and narrative.” through this metanarrative technique, jones draws attention to lizzy’s role as a storyteller, and in doing so, continues to demonstrate the function of the genre of the short story cycle to embody her particular experience throughout the development of the text. reflective of jones’s experience as a writer, lizzy attempts to discover herself through the process of narrating her own experiences, and she makes this explicit in “no visible means of support” as she identifies herself as the story’s primary character, as a “she” that is “the growing i.” lizzy is unable to speak of herself as a clearly distinguished “i” after the culmination of various experiences with racial discrimination described in this and previous stories. through the genre of the short story cycle, then, which deliberately links these various experiences together and illustrates their continued impact on lizzy, lizzy uses her role as a storyteller to help this “i” come into being. lizzy thus “us[es] writing as a means to create a semblance of order and meaning in [her life].” in these ways, “no visible means of support” further illustrates the significance of jones’s experimentation with the short story cycle genre and continues to demonstrate the ways in which the text simultaneously engages with the historical context of interracialism as taboo and the cultural context of postmodernism in order to explore the issue of maternal subjectivity as experienced by the interracial mother. it is important to note that its focus in this way on maternal subjectivity situates in care within the larger tradition of maternal literature that emerged in the post-second- wave feminist movement. however, in care is nevertheless distinguished within the discourse of maternal subjectivity by its focus on the figure of the “nontraditional” mother—the mother who does not fit into the culturally-determined role of white or black motherhood. the socially-constructed binary of white and non-white motherhood that positions the interracial mother somewhere in the middle of these two communities likewise takes shape in narratives of the “textual mother.” for example, explaining how black motherhood is often explored in twentieth-century prose in ways distinct from white motherhood, elizabeth podnieks and andrea o'reilly clarify that whereas “white women may have experienced a need to sever themselves from their mothers—to disidentify with them … black women in discriminatory societies necessarily ‘struggle to affirm the value of their lives: race, class and gender oppression intensify their need to uncover a strong matrilineal heritage.’” thus, in jones’s focus on the white mother of interracial children, she explores the struggle for maternal subjectivity as it takes shape outside of this dichotomy of racialized motherhood, and in doing so, she not only revises the representation of race and gender in much beat literature, but also expands attention to the figure of the mother within the larger literary tradition of “textual mothers.” “minor surgery” lizzy’s use of the third-person narrative perspective in “no visible means of support” is continued in “minor surgery” and the stories in between them. this story— about a third of the way through the cycle—is set in . the title of this story is a play on the irony of such an expression to refer to and significantly downplay the stigma of abortion. lizzy accompanies her middle daughter to have this “minor surgery,” and throughout the day, lizzy reflects on her own two abortions in the past. in “minor surgery,” jones extends her focus on the experience of the interracial mother depicted in the previous stories of my analysis as she explores an experience that is not necessarily unique for a woman in an interracial family, but rather one that transcends racial differences. further, jones situates this important issue alongside a unique confrontation that lizzy has with a white woman about being a parent to interracial children, and in juxtaposing these two situations, jones thematizes racial equality and integration in new ways. lizzy’s struggle for maternal subjectivity that we saw foregrounded in “disintegration” and “no visible means of support” is de-emphasized here in order to illustrate the potential for racial equality and integration to abate the isolation and fragmentation experienced by the interracial mother. much of the narrative of “minor surgery” describes lizzy and her daughter as they wait for the doctor to arrive and listen to the nurse, mrs. weinberg, in the meantime. the nurse talks to all of the patients—including lizzy’s biracial daughter, a japanese woman, and a white woman—about issues such as birth control options and future pregnancies. during this time and when her daughter is having her surgery, lizzy is lost in her thoughts as she reflects on her abortions in the pre-roe vs. wade era. she recalls, for example, the courage it took for young women such as herself to have gone for an abortion when it was illegal—often alone without anyone for support and to an isolated place “where the authorities wouldn’t’ find [the doctor].” she remembers when there were “women who marched, and testified, and died” for the legal right that young women today are able to take advantage of and, often, with someone to accompany and support them without as much risk—physical or otherwise. one recollection is particularly moving as lizzy currently watches each patient exit the operating room to recover in the waiting area: images of pain crowded lizzy’s mind. images of fear. of hemorrhaging on street corners, of the time the nurse’s tube had taken two weeks to do its job. and before roe, the doctor’s mill in the suburbs of the legal state, where the waiting and recovery room had so few beds that most of those recovering had to lie on the floor. … their clothing had been taken except for dresses and blouses, and so those who’d worn pants were naked below the waist. in this passage, jones rather strikingly depicts the differences between her and her daughter’s experiences, as her daughter has only mild pain and recovers relatively comfortably in the bed with her mother beside her. and even though her daughter makes it through her surgery with no complications, lizzy can’t help but reflect with noted despondence and frustration on the reality that “the lives of all women … still [depend] on a house of cards that could any day, come tumbling, tumbling down.” lizzy is tired of being always indignant about foams that didn’t work and were despicable … and the tasty jelly and rubber baby buggy bumpers that for some women spoiled all pleasure, every ability to work that thing. she went on, raving in her mind, at the pill with its fake pregnancy followed hard by embolism, the iud of babies and untreatable infection. in emphasizing this inner rage that lizzy feels toward women’s limited options for birth control and the all too common need for abortions as a result of contraceptives’ failures, jones shifts the focus—if only temporarily—from lizzy’s frustration when confronted with problems based on others’ resistance to or rejection of her interracial family to a situation shared by women of any color and not defined by race. the focus on this important woman’s issue that transcends racial differences is coupled in “minor surgery” with another incident that somewhat similarly blurs racial boundaries. initially, lizzy is once again the object of a “social gaze” when nurse weinberg noticeably stares at the sight of lizzy and her daughter at the clinic, clearly surprised to see this mother-daughter combination together. jones explains that in response to this loaded stare, “lizzy fixed her with the patient cold eye she assumed to deal with people’s confusion when confronted with herself plus child or children, who were all different shades.” though nurse weinberg glosses over her initial confusion and instead emphasizes “how much it means to [her] to see a mother here with her daughter,” she raises her voice for the other patients to hear, and soon lizzy finds herself “the object of everyone’s attention.” in previous stories, such unsolicited attention drawn to lizzy because of the racial differences from her daughter results in the fragmentation of lizzy’s sense of self and her subsequent use of third-person narration, as the gaze of others objectifies her and reinforces the ambiguity of her societal position. interestingly, in “minor surgery,” the nurse’s focus on lizzy and her daughter has a much different impact because the nurse’s attention to lizzy’s race actually stems from the nurse’s own personal situation. her son has married a haitian woman, and the nurse looks to lizzy for advice about having a biracial grandchild. although the nurse comes across as presumptuous in her assumption that lizzy can or should speak to any such interracial situation, jones uses this as an opportunity for lizzy and nurse weinberg to express their innate willingness to love their children and grandchildren unconditionally—no matter their race. the final line, spoken by lizzy’s daughter, “‘thank you for being my mom,’” is a somewhat trite conclusion, but it nevertheless emphasizes the unconditional love shared between mother and daughter that lizzy hopes will define nurse weinberg’s relationship with her grandchild-to-be as well. in the story’s focus on the shared female experience of abortion across racial boundaries and in this conclusion, then, “minor surgery” continues the cycle’s advocacy of racial integration as well as what is here the implicit erasure of hierarchical boundaries between blacks and whites. lizzy’s use of the third-person narrative perspective in this story continues to represent the negative impact that racial discrimination can have as it has led to a confused and fragmented sense of self that lizzy hopes to better understand through the act of storytelling itself. “full circle” in the final story of in care, “full circle,” jones presents the culmination of the corresponding thematic issues and structural elements developed throughout the short story cycle. the longest story in the cycle, “full circle” is also the most complex as it uses the mode of magical realism to address the “postmodern destabilization of identity and narrative” explored throughout the cycle’s previous stories. a “particular strain” of postmodernism, magical realism “can be used to explore the realities of characters or communities who are outside of the objective mainstream of our culture.” magical realist texts often do so by “depict[ing] the real world of people whose reality is different from ours,” and in doing so, they “de-center privileged discourses and disrupt what may have previously been taken as ‘logical’ or ‘normal.’” though jones’s experimentation with this literary mode only subtly engages with these objectives, she interestingly does so in order to further emphasize the socially-constructed categories responsible for the positioning of the interracial mother as an outsider. stylistically, “full circle” employs this literary mode as it breaks down the boundaries between the story itself and the metanarrative vignettes that throughout the rest of in care have been consistently formally separated from one another by page breaks and by the completion of each respective story before the next vignette. in this final story, jones uses only paragraph breaks and bold font to mark the distinctions and thus enables lizzy, in the first-person, to shift back and forth between the story she tells and her conversations with good friend zulima, introduced earlier as the black mother of a biracial son, about the story and the process of storytelling itself. as such, the metanarrative techniques illustrated in previous stories of the cycle are more explicit and have a stronger impact in this final story, as jones’s deliberate construction of the narrative of “full circle” is revealed as part of the story itself. the story’s plot development—intertwined with the structural development—also represents jones’s use of magical realism. lizzy actually narrates multiple stories within “full circle”—stories that are connected to each other through the passing down of a belt she once owned. she is prompted to tell the stories by a recent visit to a thrift store where she is convinced she saw that same plastic seashell belt for sale. “full circle” begins in and gradually progresses to the present day. lizzy begins the story describing how when they were still married, lizzy and elliott had visited a leatherstore where lizzy traded in her plastic seashell belt for another belt made by al, the leatherman, who ran the store. al, a white man, had put her belt on the street with the garbage, and a passerby, vince, also white, then picked it up and coincidentally wandered into the same bar al was in down the street. the belt caught al’s eye, and this prompted their meeting, which soon evolved into a long-term romantic relationship. at this point in the narrative, lizzy is no longer involved as a character in the story; she steps outside of the text and is simply the narrator of al’s experiences. the narrative picks up in the summer of , when al has a brief affair with a black woman named vera, which leads to the birth of their biracial daughter, sunshine. al doesn’t learn about sunshine until she is five years old, when vera leaves her with him after suddenly showing up at his store, and vera then virtually disappears from their lives. after vince and al adopt sunshine in , they pass the seashell belt on to her, but it is misplaced sometime later. lizzy’s narration then jumps to a scene in which sunshine, in her mid-twenties, is in zulima’s office (her profession is unidentified) and is talking to zulima about her biological and adoptive fathers, al and vince. lizzy suddenly re-inserts herself back into the story as a character, appearing alongside sunshine in zulima’s office and tells zulima in response to her strong feelings of connection to sunshine, “think daughter.” then, in a twist that interestingly complicates the story, lizzy describes how zulima reveals herself as sunshine’s actual mother. zulima says to sunshine, “‘by now vera would appear to you as a total stranger’”—as sunshine hadn’t seen vera since she was a child. sunshine replies that she and her fathers “had a story about that,” and zulima clarifies: “‘well, you’re in it.’” then, in the concluding scene, sunshine is at the thrift store with both lizzy and zulima looking for the seashell belt, and to lizzy’s dismay, the belt is no longer there. sunshine “says kindly, ‘do we need the belt now that it’s come full circle?’” indeed, the belt is no longer worth chasing now that it has effectively brought the estranged mother and daughter—zulima and sunshine—into one another’s lives through lizzy’s intervention in the story. as noted above, magical realism is often developed through the portrayal of a narrator’s or character’s reality that seems counter to objective reality. in this case, the renaming of vera—the shifting of identities from vera to zulima as sunshine’s mother— was revealed through the insertion of lizzy as a character in the latter story of which she is not otherwise a part. as such, this shift in identity invites readers to reconsider the causal relationship between lizzy’s early encounter with al and sunshine’s presence in zulima’s office years later. whereas it initially seems that lizzy tells the story of al, vince, and sunshine as an offshoot of tracing the whereabouts of her belt, we learn that her intention is twofold. first, in order to “make these stories good, so everyone’d want to be in them” and thus include zulima as a character, and, second, in order to emphasize the various experiences of “nontraditional” motherhood, lizzy disrupts the linear plot development and transforms the character of vera into zulima. the previous instances of shifting or multiple identities in earlier stories reflected lizzy’s various struggles to develop a maternal subjectivity as an interracial mother and were treated explicitly by lizzy—such as her description of taking on the identity of nelly to collect welfare in “disintegration” or her deliberate shift from “i” to “she” as the narrative voice beginning in “no visible means of support.” in contrast, in “full circle,” lizzy shifts the character of vera into zulima without explicitly highlighting her narrative intent, requiring her audience to temporarily suspend disbelief and to accept what otherwise seems counter to reality. further, zulima’s immediate willingness, as both lizzy’s listener and character, to “run with” lizzy’s renaming of vera to zulima in the story works in conjunction with the “swollen … parental pride” zulima feels toward sunshine to represent the strong sense of self she has as an interracial mother. this notably contrasts with the struggle for a stable identity and subjectivity that lizzy often experiences as the protagonist in her own stories. changing vera into zulima and inserting herself into the scene with zulima and sunshine at the end of the narrative enables lizzy to construct a parallel between the development of her subjectivity as a storyteller and zulima’s development as an interracial mother. jones intertwines the metanarrative element of the text with the thematic development of maternal subjectivity through the mode of magical realism as this allows lizzy to construct a reality that invites readers to “compassionately experience the world as many of our fellow human beings see it.” that is, it allows lizzy/jones to revise the ways in which characters like lizzy and zulima are so often scrutinized, condemned, objectified, or discriminated against by others as “nontraditional” mothers. in light of this multi-layered story, it is important to clarify several points. first, in terms of understanding how this story’s new characters fit in to the cycle’s theme of interracial relationships and racialized motherhood, it is necessary to reiterate that al is white, and that despite the initial description of vince as white, he is later described as “colored” due to his italian dominican heritage and looks. vera/zulima is black, and sunshine is biracial. second, it is important to acknowledge that as the story shifts from lizzy’s initial experience at the thrift store with elliott to al’s story with his lover, husband, and child, jones shifts the role of the protagonist from lizzy as the interracial mother to al as an interracial father then finally to zulima as an interracial mother (now of both her biracial son, malcolm, mentioned earlier, and of sunshine). further, though al fathered sunshine with vera/zulima, jones’s focus is on his relationship with vince as lovers and as the adoptive fathers of sunshine, indicating another shift in jones’s text from a heterosexual to homosexual relationship. in advancing the narrative of “full circle” and in care in these multiple ways, jones uses the final story of the text to signify the breaking down of barriers that she thematically explores throughout the course of the cycle. by erasing the boundaries between the stories and the vignettes and combining them within “full circle,” jones “self-consciously expos[es] the way her [text] is constructed [and thus] expose[s] the way interracial relationships are constructed.” that is, what jones ultimately accomplishes in “full circle,” and therefore throughout the whole of in care, is to emphasize life’s fundamental interconnectedness—to highlight the importance of transcending the boundaries between different cultures, races, genders, or sexualities that essentialist ideologies perpetuate and of achieving unity as a result. doing so, “full circle” suggests, can allow for the development of subjectivity and a stable sense of self—represented not only through the plot points i have highlighted, but also through the fact that lizzy tells the various stories of “full circle” through the first-person perspective. her various roles of woman, mother, and storyteller that had been fragmented and shifting throughout the previous stories and decades have finally been unified and have thus enabled lizzy to shift back to the narrative perspective of “i.” if the various socially-constructed boundaries described above are perpetuated, the text suggests, figures such as the interracial mother would continue to struggle to develop a subjectivity in the face of discrimination against her “nontraditional” position, and to overcome a fragmented and troubled sense of self, represented in lizzy’s previous use of the third-person perspective. by engaging in magical realism, a literary mode used to “problematize present- day disjunctive realities,” jones extends the text’s earlier engagement with the postmodern discourse of identity fragmentation and destabilization. having gradually progressed from an unstable sense of self that shifted from lizzy to nelly as well as from “i” to “she,” lizzy fully comes into her own as a storyteller here. she narrates from the first-person perspective and interestingly shapes a story that creatively captures the attention of her audience by bridging the gap between what is assumed to be real and what is assumed to be fantasy—particularly through the revelation that zulima is sunshine’s mother. in the end, lizzy’s coming into her own as a storyteller signifies the development of her subjectivity. in this culmination of the thematic and formal elements of the whole cycle, jones uses the genre of the short story cycle to destabilize the hegemonic and hierarchical categories of race and gender and to portray the progression from disjunction and fragmentation to unity. the “happy ending” in depicting what may be described as a “happy ending” in “full circle”—the uniting of the biracial daughter, sunshine, with her black mother, zulima, and lizzy’s development of subjectivity as an interracial mother and storyteller signified in her use of the first person—in care may be scrutinized for perpetuating “the integration illusion”— what suzanne jones describes as “images of racial integration served up ubiquitously by whites in power.” as leonard steinhorn and barbara diggs-brown argue, although desegregation “is a necessary precondition for integration,” the two are not the same. desegregation refers to “the elimination of discriminatory laws and barriers to full participation in american life.” actual racial integration, steinhorn and diggs-brown argue, “is about the realm of life governed by behavior and choice, not by statutes and institutions” and “is built on a universal acceptance of people as individuals.” that is, blacks and whites may indeed live next to each other or work together, but this does not necessarily depict integration, which is more accurately described as when “blacks and whites would choose to live side by side, socialize with ease, see each other with peers, recommend each other for jobs” and so forth. in this definition, racial integration relies on both “color-blind[ness] and color-conscious[ness]”—on one person evaluating another based on character, not on skin color, as well as on each person having a mutual respect of one another’s cultural background, history, and practices. drawing on suzanne jones’s argument about how to effectively evaluate happy endings in interracial literature and distinguish between “the integration illusion” and actual racial integration, i argue that in care does not merely suggest that racial integration and equality—or maternal subjectivity for that matter—can be achieved easily or effortlessly, nor defined by whites as a categorically privileged race. rather, as illustrated throughout the corresponding progression of the structure of the short story cycle and of lizzy’s initially fractured and troubled sense of self and lack of subjectivity, jones uses lizzy’s unique experience as a white mother of biracial children to portray the gradual and complex evolution of race relations in america following from the post-civil rights era. more specifically, she concludes with a “happy ending” that does not carelessly perpetuate “the integration illusion.” jones “suggest[s] that solutions are not simple,” and she shows “how intricately conflict [is experienced] and how believably conflict is resolved.” it is over the course of four decades and many different struggles and obstacles that lizzy’s development and experience of authority, agency, and authenticity take place. circling back to the ending of the cycle’s first story, “enough of this,” it is important to reiterate that in the beginning of in care, jones highlights the ever-present racial discrimination that lizzy still witnesses at the turn of the twenty-first century. even though lizzy has a “happy ending” in “full circle,” this is relative to her multiple complicated experiences with discrimination over the course of many years; it is not to suggest the absence of racial discrimination in the twenty-first century, but rather lizzy’s individual ability to overcome its effects. v. conclusion an anonymous reader for curbstone press in claimed that the primary reason the in care of worth auto parts manuscript was not yet suitable for publication was the lack of “details of the setting, the deep, revelatory contemporaneous details of the people, and the exposing details of the politics and art of the period”—overall, “the raw stuff” necessary “to tell this crucially important story.” the reader’s criticism of in care is fairly accurate; some of the characters and context of the text are underdeveloped. for example, in jones’s focus on the narrative of the interracial experience from the perspective of the white mother, she deprives the protagonist’s children of sufficient characterization that could help readers better understand the mother’s own situation and struggles. additionally, there are a few minor inconsistencies between the stories— though these seem reflective of the status of the manuscript as unfinished—such as the description of the secondary character, nathan, as a playwright in the first story but as a painter in subsequent stories. regardless of any such weaknesses, my analysis illustrates that with in care of worth auto parts, jones significantly redefines our understanding of the fundamental beat pursuit of an authentic american experience in several important ways. drawing on her personal and complex experiences within the beat community, jones disrupts and challenges the pattern of developing a white subjectivity at the expense of the romanticization, subordination, exoticism, or primitivism of nonwhites often portrayed in male- and female-authored beat texts. that is, jones undermines the essentialist gender and racial categories upheld in prominent beat fiction and redefines the beat quest for individual truth. responding to the separation between whites and blacks and the marginalization of women in beat literature and in the post-civil rights period with the rise of the black power and black arts movements, jones draws attention to the multifaceted problems that such racial and gender segregation or discrimination can have. she simultaneously emphasizes the possibilities for and the importance of racial integration and equality as well as female subjectivity. it is through the figure of the interracial mother that jones addresses various complexities of racial and gender politics beginning in the mid- s. she destabilizes the traditional gender and racial dichotomies between whites and nonwhites and between men and women commonly exploited in beat texts by focusing on a figure whose very experience as a white mother of biracial children, in the case of lizzy, undermines the stability or rigidity of these dichotomies. the ambiguity of the interracial mother’s position in between racial communities enables jones to portray white characters whose identities are troubled and fragmented and black characters whose identities are well- defined and strong. in challenging hegemonic racial hierarchies in this way, jones not only revises the representation of race in beat literature, but also shifts the attention onto a female figure often marginalized in both the beat and maternal literary traditions. drawing attention to the interracial mother and her experiences beginning in s new york city bohemia puts jones’s writing in dialogue with that of di prima and johnson in interesting ways. although in care is initially set in the same general context as di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward and johnson’s come and join the dance, a key element of di prima’s and johnson’s work—the new york city bohemian community—plays a notably less prominent role in jones’s short story cycle. as my analysis shows, jones’s text spans from the s to the turn of the twenty-first century, and her emphasis over the course of these four decades is on the ambiguous positioning of the interracial mother between white and black communities rather than within the new york city beat community. as i explained earlier, to varying degrees, the beat community simultaneously resisted and perpetuated hegemonic racial and gender norms, and began to dissolve in the late s. thus, rather than limit her analysis of racial and gender politics to the context of the beat community, jones uses this site as the initial context through which to establish the nature of racial- and gender-based tensions that she then explores more broadly as a way to highlight the implications of their very pervasiveness in society. also importantly, whereas di prima and johnson seek to develop a subjectivity for women in general and for the female bohemian more specifically, this chapter argues that jones seeks to develop a female subjectivity specific to the experience of the mother— and of the nontraditional or racialized mother in particular—which illustrates how jones distinctively engages in the women beats’ discourse of protofeminism. chapter two demonstrated how johnson’s treatment of female subjectivity both engaged in and revised that in di prima’s work; this chapter illustrates how jones’s focus on maternal subjectivity further extends the ways in which both di prima and johnson explore the development of female subjectivity. this isn’t to overlook how some of di prima’s early poetry draws much-needed attention to the female perspective of the experience of motherhood. rather, this is to highlight how, for jones, this experience is inextricably and explicitly linked to issues of race. significantly, jones explores essential beat questions of identity and authenticity by engaging in the discourse of postmodernism. as this chapter illustrates, the postmodern experience of the interracial mother is embodied through the genre of the short story cycle, the thematic treatment of multiple, shifting identities, and the use of metanarrative techniques. in all of these ways, jones illustrates the fundamental fragmentation and self-reflexivity that defines postmodernism. further, in using the unique structure of the short story cycle to stylistically perform the experiences of disunity and unity, jones concludes in care with a “happy ending” that also interestingly disrupts the defining fragmentation and ambivalence of much postmodernist fiction. all of these accomplishments demonstrate that despite any shortcomings of jones’s short story cycle, in care of worth auto parts significantly expands our understanding of jones’s contributions to the beat literary tradition. more than a memoirist, jones is a versatile writer who examines issues of race and gender in ways heretofore absent within the beat tradition. although jones’s development as a writer was more tentative and gradual than other women beats, it is clear that her formative experiences within the beat community shaped her work as a writer in unquestionably important ways. reading her work alongside that of di prima’s and johnson’s illustrates each writer’s uniqueness and highlights the many ways in which they redefine the literary history of the beats. in the epilogue that follows, i add carol bergé and mimi albert to this discussion, shifting them from the margins to the center of the discourse on women beats. notes . h. jones, how i became hettie jones, a memoir (new york: dutton, ), . . for consistency, i refer to hettie jones as jones and to leroi jones as baraka. . as discussed in the introduction, several women beats writers did not begin writing, writing publicly, or publishing until after the beat period. as such, many readings of women beats’ work examine texts written after this literary movement that are, nevertheless, fundamentally rooted in implicit or explicit connections to the beat period through the treatment of quintessential beat concerns or the practice of beat aesthetics. see charters for more on the continuation of beat literature in the s and s. . for example, see damon and a. friedman. . this connection between each writer’s experience and the degree to which this experience shapes her work is not meant to suggest that race is not an issue in the work of di prima or johnson. the distinction here is that while race figures into di prima’s and johnson’s work in the development of a white female subjectivity, it is not an explicit focus for them. more specifically, di prima’s poetic use of slang in this kind of bird flies backward was bound up in the language’s roots in the black vernacular and was simultaneously representative of the beat endeavor to blur racial boundaries, but this aspect of her poetics is only implicitly expressed as she seeks primarily to represent the individualism of the bohemian and the subjectivity of the female bohemian. for johnson, the gendered dichotomy of private and public space was implicitly rooted in the context of a white, middle-class identity that likewise defined the female subjectivity that she constructed throughout come and join the dance, but race was not treated overtly in the novel. jones’s principal focus on the intersections between race and gender in her writing therefore extends the ways in which race is generally treated in much women beats’ work. . emphasizing the relationship between gender and race as it affects the figure of the mother in particular, laura doyle argues that “hierarchies of race and gender require one another as co-originating and co-dependent forms of oppression rather than merely parallel, compounded, or intersecting forms; and … these co-dependent structures of race and sex converge especially on the mother, who reproduces racial boundaries in her function as subservient procreator.” bordering on the body: the racial matrix of modern fiction and culture (new york: oxford university press, ), . . throughout the chapter, i draw on elaine tuttle hansen’s use of the term “nontraditional” to describe this particular experience of motherhood in which the mother is marginalized due to racial differences from her children. in mother without child: contemporary fiction and the crisis of motherhood, hansen identifies various other types of “nontraditional” mothers, including lesbian mothers, mothers without custody of their children, slave mothers, etc. mother, - . . patricia hill collins, “shifting the center: race, class, and feminist theorizing about motherhood,” representations of motherhood, ed. donna bassin, margaret honey, and meryle kaplan (new haven: yale university press, ), . collins explains, “the importance of working for the physical survival of children and community, the dialectical nature of power and powerlessness in structuring mothering patterns, and the significance of self-definition in constructing individual and collective racial identity comprise three core themes characterizing the experiences of native american, african-american, hispanic, and asian-american women.” “shifting,” . . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . h. jones, in care of worth auto parts, n.d., hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york, . . johnson and grace connect the beats’ emphasis on “individual truth” to a fundamentally “masculinist emersonian” impulse, and i apply this phrasing of “individual truth” to my analysis of jones’s work accordingly. “visions,” . . as noted in the introduction, jones’s work might more accurately be considered feminist in light of the fact that she did not begin writing much of it (including in care) until the s. however, i refer to jones’s treatment of female subjectivity within this text as protofeminist in keeping with the consistent characterization of women beats as such in current beat scholarship. this is not to overlook the importance of how the text is shaped by its composition beginning in the post-civil rights period and the early feminist movement but rather to reflect the fundamental distinction in “promise” and style between the work of many of the women beats and that of feminist writers such as adrienne rich. see r. johnson, “‘and then,’” . . for more on the beats and postmodernism, see r. johnson’s “mapping women writers of the beat generation” and “‘you’re putting me on:’ jack kerouac and the postmodern emergence,” tony trigilio’s “‘will you please stop playing with the mantra?’: the embodied poetics of ginsberg’s later career,” and erik mortenson’s capturing the beat moment: cultural politics and the poetics of presence, as well as various discussions of the work of william burroughs. . farrell o’gorman, “the things they carried as composite novel,” war, literature, and the arts: an international journal of the humanities . ( ): . . karen weekes, “postmodernism in women's short story cycles: lorrie moore's anagrams,” the postmodern short story: forms and issues (westport, ct: praeger, ), , . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are also from this text: , , . . doyle explains that the figure of “the racialized mother” is one for whom “the boundaries of race or ethnicity crucially constitute [her] importance.” (bordering, - ). i use this term accordingly when referring broadly to the experience of motherhood as significantly shaped in any way by the mother’s race or that of her children. i use the term “interracial mother” when referring more specifically to the particular experience of a cross-racial relationship between mother and child. . elizabeth podnieks and andrea o'reilly, ed., textual mothers/maternal texts: motherhood in contemporary women's literatures (waterloo, ontario: wilfred laurier university press, ), . . podnieks and o'reilly, . . jones, how i became, . . though queens and manhattan are both a part of new york city proper, my general references to the beat community as a new york city community refer specifically to manhattan. here i mark the distinction to prevent confusion with queens. . jones, how i became, . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same text: , . unless otherwise noted, the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from how i became as well, and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . how i became, , , , . . how i became, . . this representative list of contemporary journals indicates the range of ideas to which jones was exposed. for example, the kenyon review fostered the ideas and poets of the new criticism, while dissent was (and continues to be) “a magazine of the left,” a “radical” departure from the traditionalism pervading the literary scene at the time. dissent, foundation for the study of independent social ideas, , web. . how i became, , - , , , , . . baraka was applying for the position of shipping manager. . how i became, . . “yugen” is a japanese term defined as: “the subtle and the profound. yugen is at the core of the appreciation of beauty and art in japan. it values the power to evoke, rather that the ability to state directly. the principle of yugen shows that real beauty exists when, through its suggestiveness, only a few words, or few brush strokes, can suggest what has not been said or shown, and hence awaken many inner thoughts and feelings.” jonathan p. walsh, “japan - from asahi to zen,” melmoth the wanderer (jonathan p. walsh, ), web. . brenda frazer, “artista,” interview by grace, breaking, . . how i became, . . helene dorn was the wife of black mountain poet ed dorn. per my personal telephone interview with jones on feb. , , she is currently working on publishing a collection of their correspondence. . how i became, - , . . how i became, , , . . jones, “drive,” interview by grace, breaking, . . how i became, , . . how i became, . as before, unless otherwise noted, the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from how i became, noted after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . see renee romano’s discussion of how interracial relationships, particularly in the s and s, “make clear the tenuous nature of the boundary between what is traditionally considered ‘public’ and what is traditionally considered ‘private.’” race mixing: black-white marriage in postwar america (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, ), . . how i became, , , , , , , , , . . it is important to note that jones is not alone in her optimistic account of the state of interracial relationships during this time and at the five spot in particular. jon panish cites similar accounts by historian terry miller, musician david amram, and writer dan wakefield. in response to such accounts, however, panish argues that “the dawn of harmonious interracial relations in the village … never came close to realization. despite the optimistic rhetoric and high expectations, the achievement of an integrated village community occurred only in relatively superficial interpersonal relationships and myth.” (the color of jazz: race and representation in postwar american culture [jackson: university press of mississippi, ], .) i discuss how this is illustrated in beat literature in the next section. . how i became, , , . . deborah thompson, “keeping up with the joneses: the naming of racial identities in the autobiographical writings of leroi jones/amiri baraka, hettie jones, and lisa jones,” college literature . (winter ): . . romano, . . romano, - . . romano, , . . how i became, , . . panish, . . smethurst notes that in addition to his literary and cultural contributions, baraka “coin[ed] … the term that came to designate the [black arts] movement.” (black arts, .) andrew epstein likewise credits baraka for having founded the movement. see beautiful enemies: friendship and postwar american poetry (new york: oxford university press, ), . . epstein, . . epstein, . . see how i became hettie jones as well as di prima’s recollections of my life as a woman for each woman’s account of the relationship between di prima and baraka, including the details of di prima and baraka’s child. . see baraka’s autobiography for more on this, as well as his autobiographical play, the slave (under leroi jones), which depicts the ambivalence with which baraka struggled surrounding his decision to leave jones. . see romano for a discussion of how baraka’s racially-driven departure from his family and community was not uncommon for black leaders at the time, as well as of the tendency of white partners in interracial families to assimilate into black communities. . jones, “drive,” . . grace qtd. in jones, “drive,” . . jones, “drive,” . . grace qtd. in jones, “drive,” . . jones, drive (new york: hanging loose press, ), . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same page. . “drive,” - . . this and the next quotation are from drive, . . grace, “snapshots,” . . “snapshots,” . . thompson, . . barrett watten, “what i see in how i became hettie jones,” girls who wore black, . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same source: . . see chapter one for a discussion of how race figures into beat poetry, and see chapters one and two for discussions of the representation of gender and of female roles, in particular, in beat literature. . skerl, reconstructing, . panish argues that despite the presence of both white and black artists in the beat community, “the village community—including its social, political, cultural, and economic dimensions—remained predominantly separate and unequal during [this] period.” the color of jazz, . . mailer, “the white negro,” , , . it is important to note that mailer’s text has been criticized for its “profound lack of understanding of the ‘mind’ of the racial other.” manuel luis martinez, countering the counterculture: rereading postwar american dissent from jack kerouac to tomás rivera (madison: university of wisconsin press, ), . . mailer, . . steve wilson, “the author as spiritual pilgrim: the search for authenticity in jack kerouac’s on the road and the subterraneans,” the beat generation: critical essays, . . s. wilson, - . for additional discussions of european americans’ attraction to african american culture, see panish and wini breines. . holton, . . kerouac, “essentials of spontaneous prose,” good blonde & others (san francisco, ca: grey fox press, ), . . regina weinreich, kerouac’s spontaneous poetics: a study of the fiction (new york: thunder’s mouth press, ), . . martinez, . . kerouac, on the road, . . grace, “a white man in love: a study of race, gender, class, and ethnicity in jack kerouac’s maggie cassidy, the subterraneans, and tristessa,” the beat generation: critical essays, , . . “white man in love,” . . martinez, - . “fellaheen” is a term derived from german historian oswald spengler, referring to “‘the peasantry, ‘everlasting’ and historyless … the primitive people, surviving when the form of the nation passed away again.’” (qtd. in john lardas, the bop apocalypse: the religious visions of kerouac, ginsberg, and burroughs [urbana: university of illinois press, ], .) according to lardas, “for each beat [kerouac, burroughs, and ginsberg], those despised and rejected people without status qualifications or socially desirable characteristics represented the essence of america.” (bop apocalypse, .) as such, fellaheen functions in the same vein as the racial, ethnic, and social “other” that the beats were fundamentally drawn to, as a broader term that theoretically includes mailer’s image of the african american figure that the beats sought to appropriate. . frazer, troia: mexican memoirs (london: dalkey archive press, ), . . frazer, troia, . . frazer, “artista,” . . kerouac, on the road, . . john r. cooley, savages and naturals: black portraits by white writers in modern american literature (newark: university of delaware press, ), . . holton, . the subsequent quotation is from the same page. . amor kohli, “black skins, beat masks: bob kaufman and the blackness of jazz,” reconstructing the beats, . in a similar vein, panish criticizes scholars who attempt to temper the implications of the beats’ exercising of white privilege. he cites wini breines, for example, who claims, “‘young people and bohemians in the fifties were learning about white culture by appreciating black culture; if they were racist in their objectifications … they were also drawn to it respectfully.’” (qtd. in panish, .) in response to such accounts, panish argues that “if we understand ‘respect’ to connote not only esteem but also the kind of deference that prevents one from interfering with the object of esteem, then we cannot say the white youth and outsiders respected african american culture. it was precisely because these euro americans stood in superior social and political position vis-à-vis african american culture that they could appropriate or exploit these resources.” color of jazz, . . toni morrison, playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination (new york: vintage books, ), , , . this overlaps with my analysis of race in the context of di prima’s (and other white writers’) use of black dialect or slang in their poetry. for additional studies of white american writers’ appropriations of racial or ethnic cultures within both poetry and prose of the th and th centuries, see john cooley’s savages and naturals: black portraits by white writers in modern american literature, renée curry’s white women writing white: h.d., elizabeth bishop, sylvia plath, and whiteness, rachel duplessis’s “‘darken your speech’: racialized cultural work of modernist poets,” aldon nielsen’s reading race: white american poets and the racial discourse in the twentieth century, and jean radford’s “race and ethnicity in white women’s modernist literature.” . martinez, . the subsequent quotation is from the same page. . larry neal, “the black arts movement,” the drama review: tdr : (summer, ): . . smethurst, . . smethurst, . . after its first series from to , which published writers such as fielding dawson, jerome rothenberg, grace paley, and diane wakoski, ikon was reincarnated in with a focus on women artists. the issues that include jones’s stories ( / , , and ) also include works by writers such as audre lorde, cherrie moraga, adrienne rich, sonia sanchez, margaret randall, and meena alexander. ploughshares boasts that “many of today's most respected writers had their first or early work published in ploughshares,” and such writers and guest editors include tim o'brien, robert pinsky, jayne anne phillips, rosellen brown, raymond carver, and tobias wolff. ploughshares (ploughshares, ), web. . sally arteseros, letter to hettie jones, march , , hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york. . sandy (no last name, from curbstone press), letter to hettie jones, november , , hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york. . as she explained to me in our telephone interview on feb. , , jones is working on publishing some of these stories in a collection entitled race tracks. . for a discussion of the genre’s various identifiers, see roxanne harde, “teaching women's story books: genre and gender politics in lives of girls and women,” eureka studies in teaching short fiction . ( ): - . . rocio g. davis, “oral narrative as short story cycle: forging community in edwidge danticat's ‘krik? krak!’” melus : (summer, ): - . . harde, . . jones, “enough of this,” frontiers: a journal of women’s studies . (winter ): . “enough of this” was missing from the archived manuscript of in care, and so my citations in this discussion refer to the page numbers of its published version in frontiers. the quotations in the next few paragraphs are from this source and are noted after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . “enough,” , . . “enough,” , . . all of the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . social class is inevitably linked to issues of race in incidents such as this one but is outside of the scope of my analysis. . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . jones, in care, . . regarding my earlier review of scholarship on jones’s work, note the overlap between my focus on multiple identities and naming in in care with grace’s attention to the multiplicity of jones’s representation of herself and thompson’s attention to the function of naming within her memoir. this overlap in analyses highlights the various ways in which these thematic and formal elements take shape throughout jones’s body of work. . jones’s choice of “nelly” is worth noting. in baraka’s autobiography, he used “nellie kohn” to refer to jones (with her maiden name, cohen). in my conversation with jones, she recalls deliberately using “nelly” here “out of spite”—that she was “trying to distance [herself] from how [she] felt about being disappeared.” this is implied within the context of this story, when lizzy describes how, as nelly, she felt “a slow collapse of herself” and “decide[s] to call it ‘getting nellied.’” (in care, .) it is interesting to note how she is indirectly indicting baraka here for essentially erasing her from his life. . in care, , . as before, unless otherwise noted, the quotations in this section of the chapter are from the in care manuscript, cited after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. i will use this pattern as necessary throughout the remainder of the chapter. . in care, , . . in care, , , , , . . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . collins, . . to reiterate, my use of the term “nontraditional” here follows from hansen to refer to a figure such as lizzy who doesn’t belong to either the white or black community by virtue of her interracial motherhood. . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . in care, , , , . . in care, , . . that jones does not name lizzy’s daughters is particularly interesting in light of the fact that an anonymous reviewer of the manuscript identified this as one of the missing elements of the text that he/she would like to know (and thinks readers should know) more about. (hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york.) in response to this suggestion, jones explained to a publisher (in a letter to victoria—no last name— presumably at curbstone press dated september , ) that although she considered cutting out the other daughters—who are mentioned only once or twice in passing—and including only the middle daughter “with a proper name,” she then took the advice of her own daughter not to do so. jones explains in the letter, “she said that ‘the middle daughter,’ generically, is someone who is often overlooked, or left out, and to focus on her as that would be inclusive rather than dismissive. but then she has not read the ms as a whole. so i am entirely open to suggestion re this.” (jones, letter.) this suggests, of course, that perhaps had jones not abandoned the manuscript, she may have ended up naming this or all three daughters in the narrative. nevertheless, in its current form, the absence of names for her children highlights jones’s attempt to focus primarily on the figure of the mother. . though not exclusively symbolic for african american culture, the ankh is often used to represent “afro-centrism and black pride.” the ankh: key of life (san francisco, ca: red wheel/weiser, ), . . all of the quotations in this paragraph are from in care, (emphasis in original). . same as previous note. . in care, , (emphasis in original). . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . in care, (emphasis in original). . madeleine sorapure, “paul auster,” postmodernism: the key figures (malden, ma: blackwell, ), - . . as podnieks and o’reilly discuss, following in large part from rich’s of woman born ( ), “mothers are significantly prominent” in “postmodernist plots of the s and s,” representing a “shift from the daughter-centric stories … that [had] … dominated maternal traditions.” textual mothers, , , . . jones’s text also notably shifts the focus of much interracial literature from the mixed-race figure to the white figure of interracial relationships. . the phrase “textual mother” is from the title of podnieks and o’reilly’s book. . podnieks and o’reilly, (emphasis added). . in care, , - , , , . . this isn’t to suggest that jones (or i) overlooks how class differences may complicate the ability for any woman to get an abortion; however, as noted earlier, this is outside of the scope of my discussion. . in care, , . . in care, . . r. johnson, “‘you’re putting me on,’” . . theo l. d’haen, “magical realism and postmodernism: decentering privileged centers,” magical realism: theory, history, community, ed. lois parkinson zamora and wendy b. faris (durham: duke university press, ), ; bruce holland rogers, “what is magical realism, really?,” writing-world (moira allen, inc., ), web. . rogers; thomas crisp, “from romance to magical realism: limits and possibilities in gay adolescent fiction,” children's literature in education: an international quarterly . ( ): . . in care, (emphasis in original), , , . . in care, (emphasis in original), , . . rogers. . in care, . . suzanne w. jones, race mixing: southern fiction since the sixties (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, ), . . jasmina murad, magical realism in toni morrison’s beloved and ana castillo’s so far from god (norderstedt, germany: druck and bindung, ), . . s. jones, , . . leonard steinhorn and barbara diggs-brown, ed., by the color of our skin: the illusion of integration and the reality of race (new york: dutton, ), . the subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from the same source: , , , , . . s. jones, , . . rev. of in care of worth auto parts, hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york. epilogue “we are members of that anomalous group of the s”: carol bergÉ and mimi albert the preceding chapters have argued that the achievements of diane di prima, joyce johnson, and hettie jones extend beyond their few texts that currently receive scholarly attention, namely their autobiographical works. attention to how each writer’s experience within the beat literary community takes shape in select texts reveals daring protofeminist work that explores central beat themes through the lens of the female perspective and, importantly, develops varied models of female subjectivity that are otherwise absent in beat literature. through challenging cultural norms and experimenting with formal literary conventions, these writers significantly revise our understanding of female writers of the beat movement and of its history and literary tradition more broadly. extending current scholarly attention to the lives and work of these three writers, though, is only part of the recovery of women beat writers. noted earlier, the canon of women beats is subjective and fluid. despite this open-endedness, within the existing critical work on women beats there is attention primarily to only a handful of writers. as a result, many female beat writers remain absent from beat studies. the goal of this epilogue is to establish a more expansive canon of women beats as it explores how lesser known female beats also importantly engage in fundamental beat issues. specifically, this epilogue introduces carol bergé and mimi albert into beat literary studies by providing an overview of their lives and work and discussing a representative text from each writer within the critical framework established in the preceding chapters. i set out to enter these currently understudied writers into beat scholarship by exploring the continuities and disparities between their work as well as between theirs and the work of the more recognizable beat women. in doing so, this epilogue provides a more comprehensive narrative of beat literary history and demonstrates the importance of including these and other currently understudied women writers into beat studies. as explained in the introduction, i have chosen to include bergé and albert here not only because they each contribute to our understanding of beat literature and history in important and distinctive ways, but also in light of their differences from the writers included in chapters one through three. that is, although bergé’s and albert’s participation in the new york city beat literary community overlapped with that of di prima, johnson, and jones in various ways, the latter three writers were more intimately connected to one another as well as to prominent male beats. this major biographical difference may largely contribute to the distinction between the current literary status of di prima, johnson, and jones and that of bergé and albert. indeed, bergé and albert represent many other women beats who may also have been relatively less directly involved in the beat community or who were not romantically linked to prominent beat men—but are nevertheless valuable figures in this literary community. my inclusion of bergé and albert endeavors to broaden our current understanding of the women beats by extending critical attention beyond those few writers who more frequently appear in existing scholarship—perhaps because of their personal and working relationships with one another and with beat men. this epilogue presents bergé and albert as undeniably important writers in their own right and as representative of a broader spectrum of women beats who remain unrecognized. the title of this epilogue comes from albert’s novel, skirts, and is useful in signaling that despite the current status of bergé and albert on the periphery of beat studies, these two writers were indeed involved in the beat literary community and have contributed to it through their lives and work in important ways. in the context of albert’s novel, initially set in late , -year old helene elphrick is reflecting on her and her friends’ “misfit” status. in the passage quoted in my epilogue title, “we are members of that anomalous group of the s,” helene asserts that despite any former associations with “conventional” peers or behaviors, she and her friends in fact don’t fit in to the “norm.” they find themselves rejecting the “proper trappings of a new york virgin in the s”; they skip prom in order to be “on ‘the scene.’” they cut school and quit work in order to immerse themselves in the arts scene, hanging out at the cedar tavern and the five spot, getting to know various artists and writers who “create, [who] pull new things out of themselves and let them breathe.” in the terms used to describe the beats, helene and friends find themselves drawn to those who seek—and they are themselves in pursuit of—an authentic experience primarily through art, or in general through a rejection of mainstream culture and values. though their families or peers may have yet to recognize their “misfit” status, helene and friends quite clearly see themselves as part of the postwar countercultural community. it is my contention that this same level of recognition applies to bergé and albert—they were likewise part of the beat community and should no longer be elided from its history. the inclusion of bergé and albert in this study broadens our understanding not only of the women beats, but also of the beat community more broadly. calling attention to the work of bergé and albert allows us to gain more insight into how women beats developed as writers within a literary community and historical context that generally subordinated women to the role of wife, lover, or mother. this expanded beat narrative illustrates how the work of bergé and albert resists and revises literary and cultural conventions in unique ways, further exemplifying the important protofeminist work of the women beats. carol bergé carol bergé (née peppis) was born in manhattan in and published over books, including poetry, novels, short stories, and nonfiction, between the early s and her death in . she wrote her first story at age eight and her first poem at age fourteen; before publishing her writing, bergé worked as a journalist and editorial assistant in the s. she attended (without graduating) nyu, columbia university, and the new school, studying literary arts and production, social science, and the fine arts. during her time at nyu, she had poems published in the nyu-based lines & letters. her first poetry chapbook, the vulnerable island, was published in and was followed by two more chapbooks, poems made of skin ( ) and circles, as in the eye ( ). in , bergé also published her first nonfiction text, the vancouver report: a report and discussion of the poetry seminar at the university of british columbia. these publications were followed by several books of poetry, including an american romance ( ), from a soft angle ( ), and a song, a chant ( ). bergé’s first work of fiction, the unfolding (part ), was published in , and contains two short stories that were then included in a larger collection of short stories and novellas, a couple called moebius: eleven sensual stories ( ). she subsequently published several novellas, including hanging tough ( ), experimental fiction, such as food & love ( ) and watch out for children ( ), and several more books through the early s, such as acts of love: an american novel ( ), fierce metronome: the one-page novels ( ), and zebras; or, contour lines ( ). bergé received various literary awards throughout her writing career: the helene wurlitzer foundation fellowship in , a grant in fiction from the new york state council on the arts in , and a national endowment fellowship for creative writing, with which she published a collection of short stories, timepieces, in . in addition to writing, bergé was an editor for various publishing houses, the founder and sole editor of an international avant-garde literary magazine, center, from to , as well as a teacher at several universities. her diversity as an artist is further evident in her more recent pursuit of her lifelong interest in antiques, opening blue gate art and antiques in santa fe and publishing antics: for everyone who loves antiques… “a book of ours” in , a year before her death. bergé’s inclusion in leroi jones’s four young lady poets in helped establish her as a burgeoning new york city poet and indicates her recognition by male avant-garde writers at the time—not unlike di prima’s status among ginsberg and others. bergé played a prominent role in the s new york city poetry scene: she was one of the original organizers of the reading series at les deux mégots café (starting in ) and played an active role in the readings at le metro café (starting in ). both cafés were predecessors to the prolific st. marks poetry project (starting in ) and hosted readings by beat poets such as di prima, lenore kandell, allen ginsberg, peter orlovsky, and john wieners, black mountain poets such as paul blackburn and joel oppenheimer, and new york school poets such as ron padgett and ted berrigan. undoubtedly, bergé played an integral role in the development of this distinguished american poetry community. in addition to her role as organizer in the lower east side poetry scene, bergé contributed to this community of avant-garde poets and its influence on subsequent cultural forms and practices through her work as a documentarian. the vancouver report ( ) documents the pivotal three-week seminar at the university of british columbia led by innovative new american poets, such as ginsberg, denise levertov, charles olson, robert creeley, and robert duncan. she subsequently published a chronograph of the poets in , and light years: an anthology on sociocultural happenings (multimedia in the east village, - ) was published posthumously in . for this latter book, bergé edited a collection of memoirs by various poets, novelists, and playwrights, who developed as writers alongside visual and performing artists of the new york city downtown scene and created an innovative and influential arts community. as she writes in the introduction, the memoirs illustrate how these writers took poetry off the page, how they developed the heady amalgam multimedia. voices and words were thrust into perspectives where the body and the space around it became extensions of poetry; this is what made the light years poets different from others of its era: taking skills into the realms of audio and visual experimentation, and exercising freedom to reconstitute academic learning so as to create new arts. bergé sets out to highlight not only the uniqueness of this group of artists, but also its impact on later generations. she argues, “[the] chapters [in light years] intimate how the avant-garde becomes classical and is incorporated into culture, with innovative performances and adventurous objets d’art forming a basis for a mainstream of the future.” bergé’s work as a documentarian attests to her contribution to this important piece of american literary and cultural history, and participating in this arts scene in new york city was a vital part of her own development as a writer. through her involvement in this community, bergé developed ideas about and approaches to writing that would take shape throughout her literary career. despite bergé’s active role within the s poetry scene, her work remains largely overshadowed by attention to her male counterparts. as with other women beat writers, bergé was subject to marginalization as a woman writer even by her avant-garde contemporaries. within the particular context of the lower east side poetic community, poet and editor ed sanders illustrates what he considered, as described by daniel kane, “the link between nontraditional sexual mores and oral poetry” at les deux mégots café. in what reads as an advertisement for upcoming poetry readings published in his mimeograph, fuck you: a magazine of the arts, sanders writes: carol bergé: sweet poetess whom the entire editorial board, you may know, would just love to fuck. known to lurk about the les deux mégots coffee house on mondays, wednesdays, & thursdays. mary mayo: fur burger supreme. poetess. hustles at the les deux mégots on mondays & wednesdays. however satirical such references to female poets were intended to be, the sexual objectification of bergé and mayo in these passages is not unlike the misogynist representation of women in male-authored beat poetry and fiction described in previous chapters and similarly undermines the status of such female poets. this treatment of bergé and mayo as sex objects shows the obstacles such female writers confronted and worked to challenge through their writing. bergé may have been a leader and active participant in the avant-garde poetry scene, but her role as a woman unquestionably affected her experiences as a writer and her status in literary history. as mentioned earlier, there are no critical studies of bergé’s work at this time, yet she was a prolific writer with a multi-genre body of work, which signifies her versatility and reveals valuable contributions to the literary tradition of women beats, specifically, and to beat literature and history, more broadly. *** in this epilogue, i examine bergé’s novella, “in motion.” written in and published in her collection of short fiction, a couple called moebius, “in motion” illustrates bergé’s critical stance toward postwar social and cultural norms, undoubtedly shaped by her experiences as a female writer in the beat and contemporary avant-garde arts communities. my analysis of this novella focuses on how bergé, like di prima, johnson, and jones, critiques the mainstream’s “modernization” and its subsequent “homogenization” as well as postwar hegemonic gender norms. my analysis also highlights how bergé diverges from these other writers’ approaches through, for example, non-bohemian characters and settings and a unique take on female subjectivity as it is developed through a mutually constitutive relationship, rather than as an autonomous process. further, looking closely at one of bergé’s novellas—the fourth genre examined in the girl gang—highlights the genre diversity of the women beats. as critic william giraldi argues, “an expert novella combines the best of a short story with the best of a novel.” that is, the novella generally focuses on a small number of characters and a single situation or theme—like a short story—but it does so in considerable depth—like a novel—without losing focus on its movement toward the conclusion. “in motion” demonstrates how bergé skillfully uses the genre of the novella as she tells the story of a couple, louise and len, over the course of a pivotal two-year period in their lives. giraldi asserts that it is “difficult to get a novella to span more than a month” because “development and change take time,” but in this novella’s fourteen sections, bergé provides insight into key moments in the characters’ lives that enable readers to understand the motivation behind and the impact of some of their most life- defining choices and experiences over a two-year period. she also includes excerpts of stories that louise and len have written themselves, which provides a textured narrative perspective and structure that is not precluded by the relatively short length or limited depth of the novella, and she does so without losing focus on the continuity of the story. though any number of bergé’s texts would fit into a discussion of her contributions to the beat literary tradition, “in motion” illustrates bergé’s accomplishments as a writer while importantly drawing attention to the diversity—in character, setting, theme, and genre—of the work of the women beats. “in motion” takes place in the early s. louise was nineteen years old when she met len, who was about twenty years older and a public relations businessman. the text is primarily set in manhattan; however, unlike the other texts examined throughout this dissertation, “in motion” is not set in the downtown beat scene or in bohemian culture in general. rather, bergé explores fundamental beat themes of identity and authenticity from an upper class setting. louise and len represent a mainstream couple on the upper east side of manhattan who attempt to embrace the postwar societal and economic advancements that the beats argued would strip people of their individuality and freedom. in depicting the impact of society’s changes on such non-beat characters, bergé provides a different perspective than that of di prima and jones and exposes how this period was experienced by the very demographic against which the beats rebelled. the nature of louise and len’s experiences themselves ultimately validate the motivation behind the beats’ rejection of mainstream values. specifically, from the beginning of the novella, we see how louise and len struggle as a couple and as individuals in the postwar context. on one level, we see them struggle between an attempt to live as a typical mainstream couple of the s—with len at work on madison avenue and louise at home minding the maid—and the couple’s growing feelings of entrapment in this life that is motivated by materialism and a desire for upward mobility. both characters have an innate passion for the arts (he writes poetry and fiction and she yearns to paint—like key figures in the works of di prima, johnson, and jones), but these pursuits are suppressed by the couple’s attempts to play the roles society expects of them. the majority of len’s time is spent working at a job that he finds creatively stifling but that enables him to provide an affluent lifestyle for him and louise, and louise dutifully fills her time shopping and tending to their home. as the novella begins, they are beginning to realize that this is not a life of their own choosing, but rather a life they think they are supposed to lead. embedded within this larger critique of the postwar ideal of social mobility is bergé’s critique of the dominant gender discourse of the period. through much of the text, louise struggles against her assigned subordinate role as a woman, which is perpetuated by her husband, who continually treats her as something in his control, as one of his possessions. in fact, the oppression that louise suffers culminates when she intentionally overdoses on a bottle of sleeping pills midway through the text. after she recovers from this pivotal experience, however, louise and len seek therapy and endeavor to improve their marriage and their lives in general. at the end of the text, they have left new york city and are living happily on a farm in france, expecting their first child—an ending that intervenes in beat discourses in various important ways. the characterization of louise and len and the complex dynamic between them help illustrate the oppressive female gender norm that bergé sets out to critique throughout the text. notably, louise is different from the female characters developed in the work of the other women beats studied in this dissertation; for example, she comes from a wealthy family and attended finishing-school in maine. her attraction to “sex and pot” might align her with the typical female bohemian in her resistance to conventional “good girl” behavior, but louise’s representative act of rebellion against her conservative parents is interestingly different from a typical female beat’s assertion of independence from her parents often represented through dropping out of school or acquiring an office job. in contrast, having told her parents she was attending another finishing-school, louise, for a short time, worked as a playboy bunny. louise was used to gaining attention because of her looks—she was “brilliantly fair, tall, long-legged”—and so, perhaps her experience as a playboy bunny illustrates her attempt to use her sexuality as a means to provide for herself, to exploit the way in which men tend to objectify her for her own gain. the lack of subjectivity that she exhibits in her subsequent relationship with len, though, suggests that her role as a bunny was not necessarily an act of transgression, but rather indicative of her inability to challenge how she is generally expected to be subordinate to and a sex object for men. throughout much of their relationship, louise passively accepts len’s authoritative position. despite her desire to paint and the consistent boredom or restfulness she endures, she plays the role len expects of her. len’s tendency to objectify louise and treat her as a possession can perhaps be traced to his experience growing up with his family in poverty, an upbringing that—in conjunction with society’s pressures for the man to be the “breadwinner” of the family— drives his fierce pursuit of wealth and upward mobility. whereas male beats sought an authentic connection to the world that was fundamentally defined by a rejection of the consumerist culture and life on madison avenue, len immersed himself in this lifestyle, accumulating expensive things and surrounding himself, for example, in a “forty-five foot living room, with its mild alabaster and marble statues.” but not unlike the beat men’s marginalization or subordination of women, len essentially considers louise another object of beauty that he has acquired, an object to be molded in his hands, despite his awareness of and even respect for her intellect. in fact, it is important to note that while len feels that his responsibilities as a businessman take him away from his interest in writing, it is len himself that impedes louise’s desire to paint. when he learns that louise wants to paint, he decides that this is not “pertinent.” bergé writes, “he guessed she’d get over that”—through her preoccupation and presumed fulfillment with their life together at home, traveling, mingling with friends, etc. len’s overall attitude toward louise is effectively expressed in the following passage: “he thought of himself as europe and of louise as america, magnificent of itself but waiting to be colonized, civilised [sic]; full of natural beauty and natural resources, but unable to put them to use.” this dynamic between len and louise epitomizes a traditional hierarchical heterosexual relationship marked by len’s authoritative position and louise’s disempowerment. louise’s growing unease with and ultimate rejection of this gendered dichotomy, though, signifies bergé’s gradual critique of the mainstream—and beat—gender norms, which culminates in the development of louise’s subjectivity. the development of female subjectivity in “in motion” can be explored through a few key aspects of the text—the role of writing, the turning point in louise and len’s relationship, and the ending of the text—each of which engages with the work of di prima, johnson, and jones in interesting ways. for example, similar to how lizzy’s role as a storyteller in jones’s in care of worth auto parts becomes part of her development of subjectivity—how jones intertwines the thematic and structural elements of the text— bergé integrates the act of writing into her text and uses this as a means to develop and then challenge the traditional hierarchical relationship between louise and len. specifically, both louise and len write stories as part of the narrative of “in motion”; it is through the act of writing that they initially express and explore their otherwise latent or suppressed feelings about the various oppressive forces around them. this narrative element of “in motion” thus provides deeper insight into each character than the third- person narrative perspective of the rest of the novella and demonstrates how the act of writing is itself a means for understanding and examining one’s social, cultural, and political contexts—as bergé herself exemplifies through the composition of “in motion.” interestingly, the contrasts that bergé creates between louise’s and len’s individual stories perpetuate len’s authoritative position and louise’s passivity and struggles as a woman. ultimately, however, this element of “in motion” intensifies bergé’s critique of the dominant gender discourse of the postwar period as the novella ends with a letter that louise has written to her sister in which she asserts her voice and emphasizes her newly- developing subjectivity. in the one story that louise writes within the narrative of “in motion,” women are victim to a tragic fate at the hands of the men around them, and the men are then able to continue living their lives unaffected by the absence of women. louise’s story envisions women as defined strictly by their sexuality and as dangerous and dispensable as a result; men are depicted as authoritative and powerful, and as the only ones deemed worthy or safe to survive. the first of the two stories that len writes, on the other hand, situates the main male and female characters in a shared struggle against the oppressive “majority group” around them; they are not alone in their tragic fate, nor subject to their fate by virtue of their genders. and in len’s second story, the male narrator laments the loss of his beloved wife, emphasizing how their relationship contributed to his life’s fulfillment, as he now celebrates the “purity” of his life in solitude. somewhat similar to his first story, len focuses on the shared experiences between his male and female characters as well as on the surviving husband’s invigorating sense of autonomy rather than on a sense of isolation or danger that he may experience without his wife or simply because of his gender. these contrasts between the stories written by louise and len function as manifestations of their own positioning within normative hierarchical gender roles; louise’s story expresses her understanding of women’s oppression as they are treated as inherently subordinate to men, and len’s stories suggest that, generally, a man’s gender has no bearing on his situation or on his ability to overcome obstacles. however, this traditional gendered dynamic is transgressed as the narrative of “in motion”—and the relationship between louise and len—progresses. in the turning point of the novella, which takes place not long after louise writes her story described above, len finally recognizes the severity of louise’s oppression as a woman when he discovers that she has overdosed on sleeping pills. notably, bergé develops this storyline simultaneous with the composition of len’s first story in which a man and woman are equally oppressed by mainstream society. in constructing these two stories at the same time, bergé suggests that len’s seemingly unintentional treatment of louise as an object—as innately inferior to him and limited to the domestic role—and his inability to see how this gendered role affects her, has willed her behavior. while he writes his story, she experiences ultimate despair, deliberately taking sleeping pills as a means to permanently escape the particular oppression she suffers as a woman. the seriousness of this situation leads len to reconsider how he treats louise, and after she recovers, the couple works together to more openly express their concerns and to help each other overcome their individual and shared struggles. they end up leaving new york city and their life of luxury behind, settling in france on a farm, and expecting their first child. after louise survives her suicide attempt and confronts the various aspects of her life that are causing her to suffer, she reaches a sense of clarity and self-assuredness that has eluded her up until this point. she realizes that deciding things for oneself is worth losing the security that a person may have—a security that may in fact be superficial and meaningless. she says to len, “seems to me there’s more pain in trying to stay far in than in coming out and making a choice.” importantly, her awakening and developing subjectivity motivate len to examine his own life and the way in which he had devalued her and attempted to define her. she helps him see that they don’t honestly know one another because neither is being true to him or herself, and she helps him realize how detrimental his treatment of her is to her well-being—that in fact she isn’t merely his to be handled or controlled. she says, for example, “part of what i have to learn is to talk back and keep myself talking back, not [being] quiet and taking all the punishment.” rather than trivialize or dismiss her concerns as he may have done previously, len now understands that, together, they can transform their lives, and in doing so, they enact bergé’s final critique of postwar mainstream values. they mutually decide to sell their belongings and seek a life in which they can be true to themselves, a life that is authentic and meaningful, not measured by material things or economic or social gain—nor defined by hegemonic gender norms. they both endeavor to pursue their artistic interests; they bring his typewriter and her painting supplies, and are “ready to work with the minimal comforts of the house” in rural france. significantly, at the end of the novella, louise feels as though she has been “reborn”; she has begun to assert subjectivity and agency—to experience life on her own terms. in contrast to the suppression of her voice up until this point, it is louise’s voice that concludes the text, reading a letter she has written to her sister that describes her new fulfilling life marked by an authenticity that had previously been out of reach. for example, she writes, i see len now, and he sees me, and it is good. no more of moving in a trance, moving through life by rote; everything we do feels right, and you can’t imagine how marvelous this is to me. … before, i thought there was a system, or plan, to account for every move or action of any of us. i still think this is somehow true, but now i see how the earth itself, the nature of the earth, and we as animals on the earth, are part of it. … here, we drop the masks or façades we must give to the world, and they ease and disappear. in contrast to the lack of voice, authority, and clarity that louise had earlier, especially compared to len, this letter signifies a renewed sense of insight and clarity that embodies louise’s transformation from object to subject. she “sees” things clearly now and has a deeper understanding of the damage that her and len’s pretense was having on her sense of self. that the novella concludes with louise’s voice reading her own letter illustrates this process of coming into her own—that she is not subject to the same tragic fate as the female characters in the story she wrote earlier. notably, this assertion and emphasis of louise’s voice at the end of “in motion” resembles the consistency with which di prima depicts the strength and agency of her female speakers in this kind of bird flies backward, as well as lizzy’s coming into her own at the end of in care—each indicative of the women beats’ protofeminist desires. also significant is the similarity between this ending of “in motion” and that of johnson’s come and join the dance—namely, each text’s revision of the typical male beat “road narrative.” bergé, like johnson, rejects the confining postwar experience and the typical “ - job in an office or factory” and does so from the female perspective and through an escape from new york city. louise laments life in the united states where people have a “loss of sight which seems almost willful.” however, situated alongside come and join the dance and johnson’s resistance to the traditional “obligatory goals for the female protagonist” as described in chapter two, the ending of “in motion” may seem rather conventional in its resolution. johnson’s conclusion challenges the traditional ending of the bildungsroman as well as of the mainstream contemporary novel, in which the female protagonist is usually positioned within the confines of the culturally-defined restrictive female gender role. on the contrary, louise’s final role as a wife and mother seems to perpetuate the narrative strategies of traditional “patriarchal fictional forms” rooted in the hierarchical ideologies of androcentric culture. however, i argue that louise’s role as a wife and mother at the end of the text is a role that is stimulating and invigorating, not confining nor oppressive; it is a role marked by the development and expression of louise’s subjectivity and voice. and this particular focus on the impact of louise’s upcoming motherhood on her subjectivity importantly overlaps with di prima’s attention to the various complexities of this female experience in this kind as well as with jones’s focus on lizzy’s and zulima’s experiences as mothers in in care, as examined in chapters one and three, respectively. throughout the course of the text, louise is trapped in the role that society has defined for her—that of a wife and potential mother subject to the authority of her husband and his perpetuation of the hierarchical gender binary, and her voice is both suppressed and troubled. at the end of the text, though, louise has overcome this oppression and finally asserts an agency and authority that was previously absent or overshadowed by len. her voice overtakes the dominance and authority of len’s voice as she describes the overwhelming fulfillment she is able to experience as a woman in her own right, a woman who has achieved clarity, who now has a say in her marriage and feels inspired by the child growing inside of her. motherhood is not a biological imperative that may provide a superficial solution to her feelings of loneliness (as suggested earlier in the novella), but rather an enriching experience that helps her further understand who she is as a woman. that louise does not seek independence in the same way susan does at the end of come and join the dance does not diminish the significance of louise’s development of subjectivity. bergé’s intertwining of louise and len at the end of “in motion” interestingly challenges the ways in which johnson, di prima, and jones each—in her own way—emphasizes the development of female subjectivity as represented by an autonomous “i”; for bergé, female subjectivity can be expressed as part of a “we.” as louise explains in her letter to her sister, her life in france has not been perfect and is still shaped by “old angers and anguishes.” but, louise and len ultimately work through such issues and successfully “clea[r] the air, and [get] … through [other] of those official- type ideas which [don’t] belong to [them] at all.” the will that she and len share to escape societal pressures “to impress, to win, [and] to gobble up” has led them to a place in which they “accent each other” and “complement each other.” they now “can work well together” and each mutually contributes to their new lifestyle, signifying the respect each has for the other. together, louise and len reject society’s confining expectations and define their lives on their own terms. this emphasis on louise’s development of female subjectivity as largely shaped by her relationship with len reflects the theme of the collection in which “in motion” is included, as suggested by its title: a couple called moebius. the moebius strip signifies that there is no beginning or end to the connections forged through one’s relationships— no way to completely separate oneself from the impact that another’s life has on one’s own. but rather than consider this intertwining of people’s lives as inhibitive or detrimental to female subjectivity, bergé portrays it as generative and valuable. for her, the development of female subjectivity is defined by the assertion of a woman’s agency and choice, which does not necessarily entail separation from others. louise is no longer positioned in her marriage to len by his control or his domination; she has redefined the nature of their relationship and consciously reshaped her role in relation to him. bergé’s critiques of mainstream norms come to fruition as louise acts as a woman in her own right in a lifestyle that is not defined by materialism. the subjectivity louise exhibits at the end of “in motion” reflects her confrontation of that which was objectifying and inhibiting her sense of self. both louise and len are being true to themselves, and what they seek is not burdened by societal pressures—or by one another. not all of bergé’s texts examine the lives of members of the upper class in new york city or of new york city bohemia, for that matter; in fact, the settings of the stories collected in a couple called moebius range from that of “in motion” to the rural setting of “the farm woman” to the mexican island setting of “the water ceremony,” for example. what remains consistent throughout her work, though, is the confrontation of mainstream social and cultural norms that in various ways stifle or oppress individual development. as illustrated in “in motion,” of particular importance for bergé is the development of female subjectivity, which represents her rejection of the period’s hegemonic female gender role. this, in conjunction with her treatment of the larger issues of individualism and authenticity in the postwar period, highlights the importance of including bergé in the beat literary tradition, as well as her distinctive contribution to the female beat discourse of protofeminism. as noted earlier, it is clear that bergé played a key role in the s poetic community, and this brief look at one of her texts demonstrates what is to be gained by entering currently unrecognized writers such as bergé and albert into beat literary studies—to understand their importance beyond their role in beat history. mimi albert though born over a decade after bergé, albert’s experiences as a young female writer take shape in her work in ways that significantly overlap with and diverge from those of bergé and other women beat writers. mimi albert was born anna cohen in brooklyn in . albert’s adoptive parents were “closet artists,” and under their influence, she grew up with a love for the arts, attending her first opera at age six and taking music, art, singing, acting, and dance lessons as a young child. after a handful of experiences as a young actor (first on the radio, then in an off-broadway play), albert set out to pursue her interest in writing. although she flunked out of city college, she then studied anthropology and philosophy at hunter college and finally earned her m.f.a. in writing from columbia university in or , where she studied under edward dahlberg and richard elman. albert has since published novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and excerpts from a memoir. while working toward her degree, albert published a short story in the transatlantic review, and her thesis later became her first novel, the second story man, published in . while she worked on developing her thesis into a novel, albert had stories published in various literary journals and presses. in , the same year that the second story man was published, albert’s first collection of short stories and poems, the small singer, was also published, notably by shameless hussy press, the first american feminist press. albert would soon write a memoir based on her year living in india, go to calcutta, and though this project remains unpublished as a whole, albert has had several pieces of her memoir published in various collections, including the anthology lips unsealed. she began teaching writing at various colleges and universities as she continued publishing short stories, such as “some human beings” ( ). her next novel, skirts, was published in , and she has continued to publish short stories, including “crone dance” ( ) and “this is what it is to go blind” ( ). albert has received several writing grants and awards throughout her career, including a new york council on the arts grant for fiction, a yaddo foundation grant for fiction, a pen/national endowment of the arts award for short fiction, and the los angeles pen u.s.a. award for best california story. her body of work is marked by incisive attention to the act of rebellion, and, more specifically, to women’s resistance to cultural norms explored through a variety of themes including desire, domesticity, motherhood, marriage, divorce, and the body. like the prose of johnson and bergé, albert’s work mainly can be described as beat in subject and theme rather than in style or form. that is, whereas di prima and jones experimented with formal literary conventions as many male beats did, albert’s work “tell[s] [stories] about beat, but not necessarily … in beat style.” albert’s novels, for example, are comparative to johnson’s novels not only in their portrayal of the new york city bohemian scene of the s and early s, but also in albert’s prose style, which is similarly marked by a general adherence to convention and is in the vein of ernest hemingway in its succinctness and emotional restraint. albert more frequently than johnson uses the first- person narrative perspective in her novels, though, and through this, achieves a confessional-like quality that simultaneously expresses the strength and vulnerability of her narrator-protagonists. as i mentioned in the introduction, whereas the individual experiences of the other writers i study in the girl gang within the beat literary community are relatively well-documented within beat history, albert’s affiliations with the beat community itself are more ambiguous. her inclusion in jim burns’s “beat women” and richard peabody’s ’s a different beat speak to how her experiences living and writing in new york city bohemia during the s and s and how much of her writing itself indeed overlap with the experiences and writing of the more well-established beat writers, but it is unclear to what degree she knew other beat writers, male or female. although she moved around manhattan several times over the beat period, she identifies the lower east side as the “scene of [her] teenage escapades,” and she immersed herself in the new york city arts scene during and after the beat period. further, having her work published by shameless hussy press in the late s and early s put her in contact with female writers associated with the san francisco beat community and the area’s burgeoning feminist literary movement. although the press was located on the west coast, albert formed literary friendships with contemporary poets including alta and judy grahn, which undoubtedly helped shape her experiences as a young writer. albert’s involvement in the new york city beat literary community may have been more tangential than that of the other women beats i discuss throughout the dissertation, but the new york city beat scene is central to much of her work, and she engages in the beat discourses of identity, authenticity, and the new york city bohemian community and, more specifically, in the female beat discourse of protofeminism in important ways. what makes albert’s work particularly unique within a study of the women beats is her attention to the dark underside of new york city bohemia—the stark poverty, criminality, and drug use more often treated by male beats—as well as her depiction of the inability for individual women to successfully overcome the oppressive female gender norm of the postwar period. this latter aspect of her writing works in conjunction with her effectual development of female subjectivity to illustrate a complicated and multi-faceted protofeminism throughout her body of work. in her two novels, the second story man and skirts, for example, albert develops female characters who leave home to seek independence and autonomy outside of the constraints of mainstream social norms. within each respective novel, these young women have various experiences with the world of drugs and crime, which lead to very different conclusions for each novel’s female characters, especially regarding their desire for and development of female subjectivity. at the end of the second story man, mary is unable to overcome her drug addiction and suffers with various degrading jobs, which make her feel like an object, “a machine” and “a human sacrifice,” while barely helping her support herself financially. anna, however, emerges at the end of the novel with a strong sense of self. she resists being victimized by dangerous temptations around her, and even tries to save mary from her self-destruction. anna is able to see that she can only depend on her own choices, and she walks away from mary—not to return home to her family, but to continue developing her subjectivity as an independent young woman defining her life on her own terms. somewhat similarly, in skirts, ruth is found robbed and naked two days after she was beaten to death attempting to deal drugs for the bohemian zalman, while helene forces herself to withdraw from her drug addiction and takes back control of her life. she frees herself from the grip she previously allowed zalman and his lifestyle to have over her. she gets a job and plans to move to chicago to enter a ph.d. program in archeology, and the novel ends with her “on [her] way.” albert’s novels express a critical stance toward the period’s hegemonic female role likewise developed in the work of other women beats. perhaps more importantly, through the contrasting experiences of each novel’s respective characters, albert depicts two possible fates for the female nonconformist, and in doing so, draws attention to the complexities of the period’s protofeminism. though we see other female characters in the works of di prima, johnson, jones, and bergé struggle to various degrees with poverty and oppression as they attempt to develop subjectivity, albert’s portrayals of female drug addicts and petty thieves reveal a side of bohemia more often described by male beat writers and therefore more likely presumed to be outside of the female bohemian experience. in the same way that the other women beat writers studied here redefine the male-dominated beat literary tradition by appropriating, for example, the road narrative or sexual agency for the female bohemian, albert examines the beat subculture of drugs and criminals as experienced by women. that their involvement with drugs and crime may complicate the desire for subjectivity or may lead to material or psychological poverty or death reflects the authenticity and uniqueness with which albert depicts the female bohemian experience. these novels are only a small part of albert’s body of work, though, and her literary accomplishments, like bergé’s, continue to be overlooked within beat studies. in an effort to show in more depth how albert’s work can broaden our understanding of the beat community and add to the beat narrative in significant ways, i focus my attention here on one of albert’s short stories, which continues to highlight the generic and thematic diversity of the women beats’ work. *** “the small singer” was first published in and later published in albert’s first collection of short poetry and fiction of the same name. while other women beats such as di prima and johnson largely wrote in and revised the conventions associated with genres used by male beats (the poem and the novel, respectively), albert, like jones and bergé, experimented with a genre largely neglected by the male beats. in this representative short story that is a mere two and a half pages, albert provides an intimate look at the female protagonist’s struggles to find what she “really want[s].” through economical precision, albert describes her protagonist’s experiences as a young woman, a singer, a teacher, and finally, an older woman looking back on her earlier choices. albert portrays one woman’s struggle to be independent and to lead a meaningful life amid various forces that continually thwart her ability to do so. developing this story through the genre of the short story—and in only two and a half pages—albert demonstrates remarkable control as a writer. like his argument regarding the relation between narrative time and textual space within the novella, giraldi argues that “it is difficult to get an effective short story to span more than a week.” albert is able to span several years in “the small singer,” however, as she seamlessly moves her narrative lens in and out of focus, moving from close attention to specific representative moments in this unnamed woman’s life to more general descriptions of experiences that span many years altogether. through the course of the story, the singer comes to realize that there is only limited time and opportunities to live one’s life the way she desires, and albert uses the genre of the short story to embody this theme in a concise narrative structure. that is, the size of “the small singer” reflects the singer’s empowerment and subjectivity that have been shrunken or diminished over the course of several years. written in the s, “the small singer” is set in an unidentified city (universal in its representativeness), and although it is not set in the bohemian scene as some of albert’s other work described above, this story treats quintessential beat questions of identity, individualism, and authenticity from the female perspective. as many of the female figures in the work of the other women beat writers studied in the girl gang, albert’s protagonist is an artist, as the title suggests. notably, she is not a wife or mother, nor is she defined by a sexual relationship to a man. she is introduced as a woman in her own right, seemingly free from the domestic role which so many women during this period are expected to fill. the story begins after the woman’s final singing performance and establishes her reputation as “the singer” as well as her growing frustration with the city around her as it is characterized by “cracked pavements,” “bad air,” “people beating one another up,” and “lines and lines of cars waiting for what they cannot get.” this image of the city sets the tone of the story as it symbolizes the growing deterioration of society in general. the singer’s personal experiences parallel this gradual decline as what had been her source of confidence and strength—her voice—now “has gone away” inexplicably. as a result, the singer finds herself without money; because her voice is no longer of the quality to sing in commercials and she is “too shy to take off all her clothes” as a nightclub singer, she becomes a singing teacher. by the end of the story, the singer “has become old” and her life has become empty. she no longer sings, teaches, nor hears from any of her old friends, and she is left wondering to herself, “‘why did i ever become a singer? what did i really want?’” like the other texts examined throughout this study, “the small singer” portrays a woman’s attempt to develop her own sense of self and assert agency while facing various obstacles rooted in cultural constructs of the postwar period. significantly, though, as the conclusion of this short story suggests, unlike the other texts i have examined, “the small singer” does not conclude with the assertion of female subjectivity. this particular aspect of the text draws attention to its uniqueness within and contribution to the discourse of the women beats’ protofeminism. throughout the story, the woman’s experiences are marked by a tension that is rooted in her role as a singer. her voice symbolizes the potential for her independence and subjectivity as a woman, but this potential is consistently stifled as she struggles to use her voice to express herself and to make a living in the arts, which presumably values individual expression over material gain. the power that the singer’s voice initially gives her is evident in moments when she stands up for herself against men who objectify her; she quite daringly responds to the “injustice” enacted by strange men on the street who “tell her what they would like to do to her eyes and fingers, her nostrils, her big toe and her cunt.” in response, she shouts things like, “‘pigs! go fuck yourselves! go put it in your mother’s twat!’” through such a reply, the singer appropriates the obscene sexual innuendos spoken by men and uses similarly vulgar language to express her anger and assert her sense of power. she rejects the cultural assumption that she is voiceless or powerless as a woman alone on the street, subject to the men’s crude desires, and this resistance to being sexualized or objectified reflects the protofeminism of the women beats. importantly, it is albert’s protagonist’s singing that brings her such strength in these situations: “this [would happen] because she was a singer, because her own voice, swelling out of her diaphragm, filled her up and gave her courage to respond with violence, with rage.” the woman knows she is one of only a “few women [who] can lam into a man like that,” and this behavior certainly highlights the strength her voice can provide her—how her voice symbolizes her potential subjectivity as a woman. however, such moments are fleeting, and more frequently than not, the singer struggles to express herself. for example, albert writes, “walking alone over the cracked pavements through the city she feels sometimes that her throat is about to swell up and crack with the swelling of the song she has inside her and yet cannot sing.” in moments like these, the singer’s ability to communicate is stifled, seemingly out of her control. she lacks the strength and agency illustrated when she defends herself against male catcallers. once she loses her singing voice, her sense of self and her subjectivity begin to wane. because she is known throughout the city as “the singer” and is often confronted with people’s limited notion of who she is, the woman becomes dependent upon her voice as her only means of communication, fulfillment, and financial support. she believes that once her voice goes away and she can no longer sing, “there is nothing else.” and when her voice is gone, she starts to envision apocalyptic images. the city that was initially characterized by “bad air,” violence, and failed attempts to fulfill one’s needs is now marked by “buildings collaps[ing] [and] streets explod[ing].” the parallel between the loss of the singer’s voice and the final destruction of the city signifies her forthcoming struggles to develop an identity on her own terms and experience an authentic connection to the world around her. specifically, when she becomes a singing teacher, she is confronted with more troubling realities that ultimately contribute to her final experiences of emptiness and powerlessness. for instance, her sense of value as a teacher is diminished as multitudes of students enroll in the school at which she teaches. more and more students want to become singers, but rather than signifying a growing desire for individuality through the development and refinement of one’s voice, this actually represents the growing desire for upward mobility and the increasing conformity of the period. the students want to circumvent the curriculum requirements and skip courses so that they can move ahead faster; they are in pursuit of fame rather than education. in fact, the superficiality of the students’ experiences is illustrated by the characterization of the city as “being polluted and destroyed by noise”—the noise of the students who continue to enroll despite what they acknowledge is their lack of interest in music. this situation speaks to the inauthenticity and meaninglessness of the mainstream pursuit of material things and of upward mobility that is also treated by bergé in “in motion.” in the same way that louise and len superficially pursue the accumulation of the finer things in bergé’s novella, the students in “the small singer” do not seem genuinely interested in what might be gained from learning to improve and share one’s voice with others, from expressing oneself artistically. rather, they want to achieve high grades with little effort. however, the curriculum itself, the teacher learns, makes most students’ attempts at success basically worthless as there are courses in total, and “only one out of three hundred students can qualify for [the final course], and afterwards there’s nothing left for them to do but graduate.” this detail signifies albert’s critique of such stultifying values. the superficial pursuit of success is futile, albert suggests, and this teaching experience thus contributes to the protagonist’s inability to develop an authentic sense of self. as the teacher, this woman is helpless within the guidelines of the program. she goes through the motions with her students, and the way in which albert describes the woman’s actual teaching reflects the monotony and emptiness of the experience. albert writes, “she listens to the songs. tone and modulation. harmony and scales. she begins to teach them all to write their own songs. she teaches them about images. metaphors. similes. authenticity of feeling. ‘what are you singing about?’ she asks again and again.” the teacher recognizes that her students are not truly invested in their work, and the frustration she faces is illustrated here. interestingly, the struggles that the singer faces as a woman and a singer without a voice are captured in the first line of a song that one female student has written: “they buried her and they laughed.” this is the only line of the song that albert provides, and in its isolation, it underscores the misogynistic treatment of women during this period as well as society’s general apathy toward others. this line epitomizes the oppressive circumstances of albert’s title character. the loss of her sense of self, which began with the loss of her voice and its potential to express her sense of agency and subjectivity, is perpetuated as her friendships with members of the singing community vanish. when her old singing friends call her on the phone, “she can barely hear them”—perhaps because they, too, have lost their voices and are struggling to express themselves. whether as a singer, a teacher, or a friend, the protagonist is isolated in the city. like susan in johnson’s come and join the dance, this woman does not fit in to the various communities around her, but rather than leave the city as a symbol of her subjectivity as susan does, albert’s singer remains in the city as she continues to grow old, eventually unable to practice singing, to teach singing, and to communicate with her friends. although the singer’s attempts to be independent, to assert her voice, and to defend herself when objectified and mistreated signify albert’s challenge to the gender discourse of the period—similar to how susan seduces peter in come and join the dance or how louise redefines the notion of motherhood in “in motion”—albert does not conclude her story with her protagonist’s assertion of female subjectivity. unlike the female figures in the other texts examined throughout the girl gang, albert’s singer is unable to overcome the various oppressive factors in society. the men that catcall women on the streets, the young people who relentlessly pursue upward mobility, the loss of individualism they represent, and the institutions that ineffectually “educate” this youth— all of these societal elements stifle the woman’s voice and her ability to develop subjectivity. despite the singer’s assertion of subjectivity illustrated in her refusal to be dependent on a man for financial support and to be objectified and sexualized on the street, she is left wondering “‘why did i ever become a singer? what did i really want?’” however, rather than conclude the story with this sense of confusion and lack of clarity, albert adds the final line: “but most of the time, she knows.” this subtle, yet suggestive line—emphatic as it constitutes its own paragraph—points to the singer’s awareness of the possibility of overcoming the various oppressions that she faces. she realizes that through singing she might have been able to express herself freely and powerfully—that she may have been able to support herself as a single woman through a profession that is based upon the expression of the female voice and thus challenges the traditional suppression of the female voice in the s and s as well as the conventional positioning of the woman in the home. this awareness, however subdued or undeveloped, complements the woman’s previous acts of rebellion against sexual objectification and the traditional female gender role, and in this way, gestures toward the protofeminism of the women beats. however, somewhat similar to johnson’s treatment of female sexual agency in her first novel, the ending of “the small singer” represents albert’s ambivalence toward the development of female subjectivity underlying the protofeminism of this period. through the story’s tentative depiction of female subjectivity, albert draws necessary attention to the struggles entailed in women’s attempts to challenge the hegemonic discourse of the postwar period. her female protagonist is stunted—as the title suggests—by the oppressive social and cultural norms around her that inevitably complicate such feminist endeavors. notably, however, albert does not subject her protagonist to the tragic fate of so many female protagonists in contemporary fiction; the woman, though alone and no longer a singer, is not victim to sickness or suicide, nor is she confined to marriage or any traditional domestic or sexualized role. rather, albert argues for the necessity of challenging constricting hegemonic norms and points to the complexities involved in such a daring endeavor. as suggested in this reading of “the small singer” and in the overview of albert’s novels provided earlier, confronting and challenging the normative female gender role is a consistent theme throughout albert’s work. although the new york city bohemian scene plays a central role in albert’s treatment of this issue in the second story man and skirts, in light of the acute concision of “the small singer,” albert uses an unnamed city as the representative context for her title character’s attempts to develop and express her empowerment as a young single woman. for albert, as for the other women beat writers included in this study, the issue of female subjectivity is of critical importance as it undoubtedly shaped the writers’ own experiences as female artists in the new york city beat community. albert may be the least recognizable of the five writers i discuss throughout the dissertation, but it is clear that her absence within beat histories should not preclude attention to her role as a beat writer whose work has social and cultural implications. by including both bergé and albert in the study of women beat writers, we see how writers of the first and third generations of women beats extend our understanding of the beat community in important ways: exploring, for example, how the mainstream’s thrust toward materialism and social mobility affected those outside of the middle class and the bohemian community. indeed, that each of the five writers i examine may have had a different relationship with the male beats, their work, and their perpetuation of the mainstream female gender norm based in part on their generational differences helps illustrate the importance of broadening the canon of women beats to develop a more inclusive and expansive beat narrative. conclusion with its focus on this currently understudied yet undeniably rich part of beat history and culture, the girl gang reconceptualizes the beat community as indelibly shaped by its female members. this dissertation shifts our focus from how beat women helped shape the lives and work of beat men to how they also developed as writers in their own right in ways that critically engage the hegemonic norms of postwar america. as part of the new york city beat community, the women beats were not only lovers, wives, and co-editors, they were also writers themselves who most notably contributed to the beat community by resisting traditional and academic literary conventions as the male beats did, while also simultaneously challenging the dominant social and cultural discourses of which even the male beats were uncritical. women beat writers thus deepened the community’s development of its countercultural impulses—and this is evident not only through memoirs written after the beat period. these writers produced poetry and fiction beginning in the s and s that reexamined female identities in ways that would later define the feminist movement, and this dissertation begins to delve into this significant body of work. women beats consciously engaged in what adrienne rich describes as a “radical critique of literature,” and the girl gang illuminates how five women writers from the new york city beat community each uniquely problematized, appropriated, and revised social and cultural conventions present in the literary works not only of their male predecessors and non-beat contemporaries, but also in the works of many of their female predecessors and contemporaries as well as of their male beat counterparts. rather than perpetuate the typical absence, silence, objectification, or tragic fate of women within their works, female beat writers transgressed the dominant gender discourse of the s and s and set out to include women in the beat community’s critique of society’s hegemonic norms, primarily through the portrayal of female subjectivity. in diane di prima’s this kind of bird flies backward, the development of female subjectivity is achieved through complex representations of female experiences of love, sexuality, and motherhood—all of which is depicted through the literary use of hip slang. in joyce johnson’s come and join the dance, this entails destabilizing and reshaping the traditionally gendered dichotomy of public and private spaces while simultaneously disrupting the standard bildungsroman resolution and the typical conclusion for the female protagonist in the contemporary novel. in hettie jones’s in care of worth auto parts, female subjectivity takes shape as a maternal subjectivity through the trope of the interracial mother as well as through the use of a genre and various literary techniques that embody this figure’s postmodern experience. in carol bergé’s “in motion,” female subjectivity is developed through a mutually constitutive relationship and through the reclaiming and redefining of the traditionally compulsory and oftentimes confining role of wife and mother. and in mimi albert’s “the small singer,” female subjectivity is expressed through independence and the assertion of one’s voice, but is also portrayed as a complicated and sometimes ineffectual experience. in these unique ways, each of the writers discussed here expresses a protofeminism that undoubtedly alters our understanding of the beat community and that significantly anticipates the feminist movement that began in the late s. ultimately, the girl gang demonstrates how the intertwining of the cultural geography of new york city with the gender politics of the period took shape in the beat literary community in both stifling and inspiring ways, and how the work of women beat writers raises new and important questions for the fields of beat studies, feminist studies, women’s writing, and contemporary american literature. notes . mimi albert, skirts: a novel (new york: baskerville publishers, ), . . skirts, . . skirts, , . . skirts, . . kane explains that four young lady poets was a key exception “to the dearth of published women poets in the early part of the s.” (all poets welcome, .) the three other writers included were barbara moraff, rochelle owens, and diane wakoski. . see kane for more on this history. . as suggested in this brief overview, the poetic community described here was one part of the larger new york city beat literary community. . carol bergé, light years: an anthology on sociocultural happenings (multimedia in the east village, - ) (new york: spuyten duyvil, ). the excerpts quoted in this paragraph are from carolberge.com. . kane, . . sanders qtd. in kane, . . see kane for more on sanders and his use of satire as a way to challenge what were considered sexual taboos at the time ( - ). . holton, . . william giraldi, “the novella's long life,” southern review . ( ): . . giraldi, . . unlike di prima’s female bohemian figures who embrace the impoverished life of the artist and jones’s lizzy who applies for welfare as she struggles to support her children, johnson’s susan is perhaps closer in social class to bergé’s characters in this context. susan comes from a middle-class family, and part of her fundamental struggle in come and join the dance is to negotiate between the life her parents expect of her as an educated, middle-class woman and the life of bohemia to which she is drawn. . carol bergé, “in motion,” a couple called moebius (new york: bobbs- merrill, ), . unless otherwise noted, the quotations in this section of the epilogue are from “in motion,” and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . “in motion,” . historically, playboy has been the subject of feminist critique for its objectification of women in the service of what ehrenreich describes as “something approaching a coherent program for the male rebellion [during the s]: a critique of marriage, a strategy for liberation … and a utopian vision.” (the hearts of men, .) (this critique was perhaps most notably initiated by gloria steinem’s investigative experience as a playboy bunny.) however, more recently, critics have begun to challenge this somewhat narrow view of the magazine and its various manifestations by arguing that the role of the playmate (or bunny) provided women with “the potential for empowerment by directly engaging female sexuality.” carrie pitzulo argues, for example, that “the playmates were undoubtedly a product of the relatively conservative postwar era, but compared to the cultural terrain around them they contradicted the notion that the only place for women’s desire was in the matrimonial bed.” bachelors and bunnies: the sexual politics of playboy (chicago: university of chicago press, ), , . . “in motion,” . . the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . as noted earlier, the novella is broken into fourteen sections, and as the narrative progresses in a linear fashion, a few of these sections are comprised of stories louise and len each write separately. . “in motion,” , . . “in motion,” , , . . “in motion,” , . . “in motion,” , . . duplessis, writing, . . ellen g. friedman and miriam fuchs, ed., breaking the sequence: women’s experimental fiction (princeton, nj: princeton university press, ), . . “in motion,” , , , . . when adopted at six-months old, cohen’s name was changed to mimi ginsberg; albert is her married name. . albert, “changeling,” contemporary authors online (detroit: gale, ). . albert was one of the first students to earn an m.f.a. in writing from columbia. . albert refers to dahlberg as “‘the father of the beats’ because of his influence on poet robert creeley and some of creeley's peers.” (“changeling.”) dahlberg briefly taught at black mountain college before charles olson took his place, and creeley refers to dahlberg as his “elder american friend and mentor.” (“a reminiscence,” gravesiana: the journal of the robert graves society . [ ]: .) dahlberg is also one of “the male sources of olson’s key precepts” identified in olson’s “projective verse.” andrew mossin, “‘in thicket’: charles olson, frances boldereff, robert creeley and the crisis of masculinity at mid-century,” journal of modern literature . poetry, poetics, and social discourses ( ): . . bergé’s poetry is similar to di prima’s in its resistance to poetic convention, evident, for example, in her use of the colloquial and hip slang. . grace, “snapshots,” . . albert, “changeling.” . alta (gerrey) founded the shameless hussy press in , and grahn established the women’s press collective in . . albert, the second story man (new york: fiction collective, ), , . . albert, skirts, . . most male beats wrote poetry or novels; a few exceptions include kerouac’s atop an underwood, a posthumously published collection of early short stories, and two kerouac novellas, tristessa and the subterraneans. . albert, “the small singer,” the small singer (san lorenzo, cali: shameless hussy press, ), . . giraldi, . . “the small singer,” . unless otherwise noted, the quotations in this section of the epilogue are from “the small singer,” and for readability, the corresponding note is provided after the final quotation of each respective paragraph. . “the small singer,” , . . the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . “the small singer,” . . “the small singer,” . . “the small singer,” , . . “the small singer,” . . the quotations in this paragraph are from pg. . . see chapter two for my discussion of the typical treatment of female protagonists in contemporary fiction. . rich, . bibliography albert, mimi. “changeling.” contemporary authors online. detroit: gale, . ---. the second story man. new york: fiction collective, . ---. skirts: a novel. new york: baskerville publishers, . ---. the small singer. san lorenzo, cali: shameless hussy press, . the ankh: key of life. san francisco, ca: red wheel/weiser, . arteseros, sally. letter to hettie jones. march . ts. hettie jones papers, box , folder , rare book and manuscript library, columbia university in the city of new york. baraka, imamu amiri. the autobiography of leroi jones/amiri baraka. new york: freundlich books, . ---. 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(spring ): – . © the johns hopkins university press. the maker’s rage: narrative in stevens’ poetry carra glatt commonly considered among the most abstract of twentieth-century american poets, wallace stevens has rarely been read for his narrative qualities. after an early attempt at conventional nar- rative with the mock epic “the comedian as the letter c,” stevens largely abandoned sustained plotting in favor of a renewed commitment to the lyric and contemplative modes that would dominate his career. the few critics who have considered the narrative features of stevens’ works— daniel r. schwarz in narrative and representation in the poetry of wallace stevens and, more recently, milton j. bates in “stevens and modernist nar- rative”—have emphasized his revisions of conventional narrative struc- tures. the storytelling impulse, they argue, far from being absent from stevens’ poetry, is rather redirected into an overarching intellectual quest narrative that informs both individual poems and the stevens canon as a whole: if there are few traditional plots in stevens, there is nonetheless an ongoing investment in an extended künstlerroman that rivals the journey of the novelistic hero. citing roman jakobson’s distinction between the metaphoric and metonymic poles, bates adds that stevens’ long poems es- tablish covert narrative sequences by replacing the metonymic figuration normally associated with realist prose with an equivalent metaphoric or- der, a gesture he identifies with prevailing trends in modernist narrative. yet, from the rewriting of the biblical story of susanna in “peter quince at the clavier” to the tropical voyage of canto xxix of “an ordinary eve- ning in new haven,” stevens also constructs a number of narratives that follow more traditional patterns of plotting and characterization. in this article, i will discuss several such narrative poems, considering the rea- sons behind stevens’ decision periodically to utilize conventional plots and how that choice informs our understanding of his larger aesthetic journey. the case for narrative “metaphors of a magnifico” is not a narrative poem, but it does, perhaps better than any other in stevens’ corpus, encapsulate the poet’s negotia- the maker’s rage: narrative in stevens’ poetry tion between competing literary modes. its opening images are metaphors only in the most technical sense: twenty men crossing a bridge, into a village, are twenty men crossing twenty bridges, into twenty villages, or one man crossing a single bridge into a village. (cpp ) since one bridge is not twenty, and twenty men are not a single man, the statements satisfy—barely—the plain meaning of metaphor, equating two (or, in this case, three) different scenarios. but these are hardly the imagi- native transformations of the poet; indeed, were it not for the title, we would not read them as metaphors at all, but as a philosophical formula about the nature of perception. each of the twenty men has a distinct sub- jective experience of the crossing of the bridge: twenty men crossing en masse are twenty men having parallel but entirely separate experiences. the men, however, are not the only ones whose perceptions must be con- sidered. the magnifico, one of stevens’ many creator figures, presides over the poem, the maker of metaphors and manipulator of men. but if his metaphors are not the images of imaginative poetry, then what are they? belonging entirely neither to lyric nor to philosophy, these open- ing statements suggest the varied possibilities of narrative, the way the mythmaker can inflate one village into twenty or the novelist can shrink epic experience into the drama of the individual consciousness. the unit of marching men becomes twenty potential stories to be told, which be- comes the single story selected, by authorial fiat, out of all the others that might have been. the magnifico manipulates reality, taking an image and turning it into a more satisfying story. stevens, however, seems frustrated by the result: “this is old song / that will not declare itself . . .” (cpp ). the refer- ence to “old song,” rather than an old song, detaches his objection from the specific and moves it instead into the realm of genre: that which “will not declare itself” is the old song of the epic tradition of narrative poetry. stevens’ use of the verb “declare” suggests the disparity between the in- herent reality of the scene and the magnifico’s magisterial impositions; he declares a fictive reality that does not otherwise “declare itself” to the viewer empirically observing the world. while stevens—or perhaps the magnifico himself—appears to be unhappy with this narrative distortion of reality, its clearest alternative serves him no better: the wallace stevens journal twenty men crossing a bridge, into a village, are twenty men crossing a bridge into a village. that will not declare itself yet is certain as meaning . . . (cpp ) in this formulation, the two sides of the putative metaphor are identical, a point emphasized structurally by the isolation of “are.” while the line lengths of the ostensible equivalencies in the first stanza are wildly dispa- rate, the twin statements around the central word here are arranged sym- metrically, reflecting each other literally rather than metaphorically. this mirroring of reality, like the old song, will not “declare itself.” in this case, however, the failed declaration is not a result of the image’s lack of cor- respondence to reality, but of the failure of pure mimetic representation to say anything at all. if the first sentence is a potential metaphor that turns into simple assertion, “certain as meaning” is rather a seeming assertion that is better read as simile: the image is as certain as meaning, but is not in itself meaningful. indeed, it may not even be certain: the statement ends on an ellipsis, further complicating what initially appears to be an affirma- tion. twenty men crossing a bridge do have twenty different experiences; in the world seen through limited and subjective perspectives, reality can be determined only by an assertion of a necessarily subjective vision. choosing accuracy over imaginative transformation, the artist who com- mits himself to mimesis alone resigns his role as the declarative force that might have rendered his world coherent. once he has done so, the poet loses all capacity to shape or respond to reality in meaningful ways: the boots of the men clump on the boards of the bridge. the first white wall of the village rises through fruit-trees. of what was it i was thinking? so the meaning escapes. the first white wall of the village . . . the fruit-trees. . . . (cpp ) the maker’s rage: narrative in stevens’ poetry the syllogistic sentences of the beginning of the poem have broken down into fragments, the stories they contained dissolved into impres- sionistic sensations: clumping boots, a blank wall, trees. in one sense, this seems like a productive development, a collapse of rigid narrative formu- lations that permits the birth of the modernist lyric. yet, stevens presents it instead as a total loss of imaginative agency. deprived of the conscious thought (“of what was it i was thinking?”) that could have imposed a meaning that instead escapes, the poet, no longer the magnifico, trails off into ellipsis. in the end, “metaphors of a magnifico” suggests the need for a com- promise between the two modes. narrative elaboration is a contrivance that privileges story over discourse, the overarching structures of plot over the impressionistic particulars of poetry. at the same time, the other extreme—lyric description unmediated by the narrative impulse to order, shape, and manipulate reality—ends in the denial of the poet’s imagina- tive agency. it is only through the synthesis of these two competing modes that the magnifico’s metaphors can acquire, not the stable meaning that could be only a simplification, but the capacity for meaningful articula- tion. the terms of the compromise this is not to say that the balance need be symmetrical. as schwarz and bates suggest, the narrative mode in stevens is more forceful as an implicit shaping mechanism in otherwise non-narrative poems than as an equal counterpart to lyric. there is no cohesive story in stevens’ long poems, but there is nonetheless an order to them that transcends their segmentation into numbered cantos. sometimes this order is explicitly rhetorical, as in the further division of “notes toward a supreme fiction” into three canto sequences (“it must be abstract,” “it must change,” and “it must give pleasure”), each representing one step in a progression from the most con- ceptual to the most narrative to the most sensory aspects of poetry. it can also be, as bates suggests, associative and metaphorical. “the man with the blue guitar” opens with a dialogue between the player, whose blue guitar transforms reality, and his audience, who demands that he play a tune “of things exactly as they are” (cpp ). like many of stevens’ nar- rative personae, the guitarist and his companions are even less developed novelistic characters than what henry james, in his preface to the portrait of a lady, called ficelles, nominally differentiated figures that have a func- tional role rather than a realized subjectivity ( – ). part of, rather than contained within, the structural apparatus of the poem, the personae are formal components of a narrative framework that need not enclose a story to serve to modify the impulse toward lyric abstraction. the story that the the wallace stevens journal poems do contain is less a plot than a meta-plot, a fiction about fictions that dramatizes the poet’s search for meaning and expression as part of an epic quest narrative. following this general rule, “the man with the blue guitar” uses the opening dialogue, not as the beginning of a story, but as a formal pretext for a series of meditations on the nature of art. stevens teases epic possi- bilities in the second canto (“i sing a hero’s head,” the narrator says [cpp ], following homer and virgil), but never realizes them, instead aban- doning any pretense of particularity by replacing the guitarist and his lis- teners with a narrative “i” and a responding, generic “we.” at the same time, the closing of the poem refers implicitly to its first lines, creating a narrative continuity established through sequences of images rather than sequences of events. in the first canto of the poem, the day is green and the guitar blue, an irregular color scheme that reflects the non-mimetic representational world of the modern artist. in the last canto, the narrator seems to pull back from this aesthetic, confining to inspired moments the imaginative freedom that offers such an unusual palette: here is the bread of time to come, here is its actual stone. the bread will be our bread, the stone will be our bed and we shall sleep by night. we shall forget by day, except the moments when we choose to play the imagined pine, the imagined jay. (cpp ) the imaginative and actual worlds are here strictly separated. the visions of night will be forgotten by day, unmentioned save in delineated moments of artistic expression—or so the speaker claims. his words, however, be- tray him. an “imagined pine” and an “imagined jay”: green and blue, side by side, at last as at first. yet, this time the imagined and the actual have merged. before, the day was green and the guitar blue only by grace of art. but it takes no painter’s brush to keep pines green in winter, and no poet’s pen to send a blue jay out into the morning. what the narrator relegates to an isolated imaginative realm is in this case a property of the world of the actual. the improbable palette does not belong to art alone; playing things “exactly as they are” can also mean reflecting a world that satisfies the deepest desires of the imagination. as in “metaphors of a magnifico,” what is required is not a choice but a synthesis, both of art and nature and of competing generic modes. the blue of aesthetic distortion is also the the maker’s rage: narrative in stevens’ poetry blue of a natural aesthetic; the narrative momentum that propels the poem is carried out in the images of lyric. what happens, then, in those rare moments in which stevens allows the narrative mode to predominate? one obvious answer is that his characters cease to exist mainly as projections of his own poetic imagination. indeed, stevens seems to insist in these poems upon the particularity of his char- acters. in “cy est pourtraicte, madame ste ursule, et les unze mille vier- ges” (a title translated by eleanor cook as “here is depicted madam saint ursula and the eleven thousand virgins” [ ]), a female worshipper in the habit of leaving exquisite bouquets on the lord’s altar instead makes a humbler, private, even bizarre offering of radishes and flowers. hearing her appeal, “half prayer and half ditty,” as she leaves her tribute, the lord feels “a subtle quiver, / that was not heavenly love, / or pity” (cpp ). like so many of stevens’ characters, ursula is an artist, of a sort, choosing her colors with care (she “gathered them, / with flowers around, / blue, gold, pink, and green”) and composing an extemporaneous prayer that stevens compares to song. she is distinctly not, however, an aesthete. the poem, from its old french title to the description of ursula’s usual bou- quets, full of marguerites and coquelicots rather than daisies or poppies, flirts with a higher register that it consistently rejects. radishes replace roses; holy liturgy becomes a demotic “ditty.” the poem itself, with its inconsistent stanza lengths, irregular meter, and shifting rhyme scheme, shuns obvious marks of finely wrought poetic design. for his part, g-d, the ultimate creator, against whose transcendent truth stevens will later write his “supreme fiction,” is humanized: “the good lord in his garden sought / new leaf and shadowy tinct, / and they were all his thought.” the products of the garden are “all his thought” in two senses. he is pre- occupied with them, but they are also, literally, the manifestations of his omnipotent will: g-d spoke, and they were so. yet, he finds, pygmalion- like, that his desire for his own creations outstrips even the power that conceived them. in an inversion of the more typical dynamic of a stevens poem, in which a nominally individualized persona takes on the qualities of the poet-narrator, in “cy est pourtraicte” the creator figure instead be- comes imbued with physical desire for an embodied woman. this is stevens at his most human. yet, he does not require narrative to serve as an antidote to intellectual abstraction. poems like “the plain sense of things” and “an ordinary evening in new haven” demon- strate stevens’ ability to write in domestic and local, as well as cosmic and universal, tones, even without recourse to conventional narrative. be- yond these detours into a comparatively intimate regionalism, however, stevens’ poetry serves as a refutation of the notion that a focus on the aesthetic is incompatible with a concern for the human. that the setting of “final soliloquy of the interior paramour” is the poet’s mind, rather than a grove or garden, or that its characters are a poet and his muse, rather than a man and his lover, does not minimize the force of its “intensest the wallace stevens journal rendezvous” (cpp ). both the lyric and the narrative poem, ursula’s elegant coquelicots as well as her homely radishes, are offerings that arise from and bear witness to human concerns and desires. instead of asserting the necessity of conventional narrative, stevens perhaps makes use of a more traditional plot structure in order to chal- lenge it. ursula, as the poem’s title reveals, is st. ursula, a legendary mar- tyr who was murdered with her , virgin handmaidens while “fleeing the persecution of christians and/or an arranged marriage” (cook ). using an established figure, rather than a generic persona, further human- izes the character, allowing a preexisting literary and historical tradition to provide the contextualizing details that stevens, in such a brief poem, cannot offer. yet, his allusion to the ursula story also draws attention to what is missing from the poem: there are no marriage, no attempted es- cape, and no , virgins. the only evidence that stevens’ ursula is, in fact, st. ursula comes from a title that is deliberately alienating, written, not just in french, but in archaic french that, if it does not entirely prevent comprehension, at least encourages the reader to turn his attention at once to the more accessible english text. the story we are left with is the ursula legend stripped to such bare essentials as to be unrecognizable. indeed, it has become an iteration of the oldest narrative, involving, as it does, a man, a woman, and a garden, even if the man happens, in this case, to double as g-d himself. what do we lose when narrative is so ruthlessly curtailed? not much, suggests stevens. certainly, extended narrative has a scope that the lyric poet cannot match. when we first read the solemn title of the poem, we may not recognize the absurdity of its promise to portray ursula and the , virgins. in retrospect, however, the notion that the limited scope of either a “pourtraicte” or a brief poem could possibly contain their story becomes comic, a satire on the pretensions of an artist who lacks all per- spective about the parameters of his craft. part of the joke is that his ambi- tion is unnecessary: a love poem cannot do what an epic can, but neither can an epic match the quiet eroticism of the lyric. “this is not writ / in any book,” the poem ends (cpp ), challenging both the religious and secular narrative traditions. unlike holy writ, in which a man-god can be imagined only if he is perfected past the ordinary limits of humanity, the poem dares to represent an unabashedly sexual deity. but the poem’s critique of narrative extends beyond this bawdy defiance of scripture. no book, stevens’ speaker claims, contains such a story: while the prose nar- rative can accommodate ursula and her martyred legions, the lyric is bet- ter equipped to capture the momentary stirring at the heart of the tale. the poet can produce conventional narrative, as stevens here proves, but his claims do not depend upon it. just as the epic story of ursula can be done justice in a lyric vignette, so the more sublimated narrative structure of other poems allows for an aesthetic grounded in the human. the maker’s rage: narrative in stevens’ poetry covering the spouse in “cy est pourtraicte,” stevens turns to narrative to challenge narrative. elsewhere, he will use it to question the essentialist mythologies that per- vert stabilizing structures into rigid totalities. in several respects, the story of nanzia nunzio in canto viii of the second section of “notes toward a supreme fiction” reads like a rewriting of “cy est pourtraicte.” like ur- sula, nanzia, whom we find “on her trip around the world” (cpp ), is a figure whose actions within the poem take place against the backdrop of a larger, implied narrative context. she, too, makes an offering at the altar of a deity, of sorts, and she too is placed in an eroticized relationship with that god, even as she, like ursula, appears before him “like a vestal long- prepared.” yet, while in “cy est pourtraicte” it is ursula whose sexual longing for her creator remains sublimated as the lord feels an unmis- takably carnal “quiver,” in the canto in “notes” the dynamic is reversed: nanzia bares herself before ozymandias, while he, impassive in the face of her nudity, tells her that “the spouse, the bride / is never naked. a fic- tive covering / weaves always glistening from the heart and mind.” nanzia’s display is less liberating than it may at first appear. both stories—of ursula and nanzia—narrate the paring away of adornment: stevens, as i have suggested, reduces the narrative tradition surrounding ursula to its barest essentials, while nanzia literally strips naked. none- theless, the two acts are fundamentally opposed. the deflation of the ur- sula story leaves untouched—or, indeed, allows for the creation of—those lyric particulars that tell her tale more intimately than any epic: her story resides, not in mass martyrdoms or heroic resistance, but in radishes and flowers, the tears of a supplicant and the arousal of a god. what nanzia nunzio tries to rid herself of, by contrast, are precisely the particulars that stevens preserves in “cy est pourtraicte”: i am the spouse. she took her necklace off and laid it in the sand. as i am, i am the spouse. she opened her stone-studded belt. i am the spouse, divested of bright gold, the spouse beyond emerald or amethyst, beyond the burning body that i bear. i am the woman stripped more nakedly than nakedness, standing before an inflexible order, saying i am the contemplated spouse. (cpp ) the wallace stevens journal having traveled the world in search of experience, nanzia now prepares herself for an encounter with unmediated reality. shedding the trappings of culture in the desert sand, she presents herself naked, not any longer as nanzia, but as an avatar of the eternal feminine. more naked even than nakedness, she transcends language: her nudity is the very form of nudity, the word itself a mere approximation that must be defined against her undeniable presence. nanzia is more naked than nakedness, too, because her self-negation extends well beyond divestiture of artificial ornamentation. the progres- sion of discarded objects runs from the man-made to the body itself. she begins with the necklace and the belt, objects of human manufacture and design, before moving on to gold, emerald, and amethyst—stones that, despite their use in the craft of jewelry, are found in nature. finally, she is beyond even her own “burning body.” rather than celebrating an imme- diate human reality, she seeks incorporation within a platonic world that surpasses it, a world in which her eroticism, like ursula’s, can be chan- neled into service to an ideal. in doing so, she becomes more destructively depersonalized than any of stevens’ poetic personae. if those figures are undifferentiated, it is be- cause they are imaginative surrogates whose role is to create rather than to be. a degree of self-suppression is the price of aesthetic vision: stevens must be able to imagine himself, not only as the hartford insurance law- yer he was during the day, but as a rose rabbi or a spanish guitarist or a dreaming woman, just as the ephebe must start by emptying himself of private preconceptions and become “an ignorant man again / and see the sun again with an ignorant eye” (cpp ). nanzia, by contrast, is a figure, not of creation, but of annihilation, a quality suggested almost im- mediately by her name. literally, “nunzio” means messenger or ambassa- dor (cambon ), as in a papal nuncio. the name also, however, carries sonic resonances of a series of negations: nanzia nunzio suggests non and “none” as well as nonsense, the latter reinforced by the tongue-twisting quality of the alliterative name. rather than being contradictory, the two senses of the name, one laden with meaning and the other a denial of it, are intimately linked. nanzia believes in a reality beyond artifice. eventually, ozymandias will tell her explicitly that there is no such thing: “the bride / is never naked. a fictive covering / weaves always glistening from the heart and mind” (cpp ). in the meantime, her effort at engaging with the real consists of no more than the replacement of particularizing fictions—her own name, the orna- ments she wears—with totalizing narratives. to assert oneself by saying “i am” is already to concede that the knowable self is a verbal construct; it is a conceit worthy of a magnifico. but to conclude that declaration, on the other end of an enjambed phrase, with “as i am, i am / the spouse” (cpp ) is to replace a private assertion of reality with submission to a preexisting paradigm, or indeed, to several paradigms. whether as the the maker’s rage: narrative in stevens’ poetry bride in an alchemical marriage between flesh and spirit, as primitive ur- woman, or as heavenly messenger, nanzia nunzio is a figure of myth, the “contemplated spouse” created out of the mind of men or gods. far from resisting artificial adornment, nanzia has merely shifted her role in the aesthetic landscape from potential creator to resigned creation. “as i am, i am” is an echo of g-d’s self-identification in exodus : : “i am that i am” (jps). but nanzia, neither a divine nor human artificer, can- not permit that assertion to stand unmodified. she rejects the opportunity to create herself through words, first bounding her existential declara- tion within the limits of a paradigmatic espousal, then demanding of her groom that he define her with language’s shaping power: “speak to me that, which spoken, will array me” (cpp ). nanzia, however, seems to have misinterpreted the nature of the su- preme fiction. standing before ozymandias, she believes that she is in the presence of “an inflexible / order” (cpp ), a transcendent design in which the naked earth-mother’s destiny is to shed her humanity and achieve consummation with the infinite. she sees herself and him, in oth- er words, as part of a narrative progression that must end in completion and perfection. but ozymandias is a poor representative of permanence. while the dynamic intended by nanzia and her spouse is one of wor- shipper and deity, ozymandias is not stevens’ nor nanzia’s to use in an arbitrary manner, but a distinctly non-divine figure imported from p. b. shelley’s famous poem of that name. he is the broken statue of a man who thought himself a god, the evidence that all human power will prove transitory in the end. the fragility of her idol creates a difficulty for nanzia nunzio, the woman who would be spouse, the body that would be spirit. she seeks in him the absolute and unchanging, and longs to be herself apotheosized and perfected as wife of the god-king. to replace her cast-off garments, she asks to be clothed “entire in the final filament” (cpp ), imagin- ing an end to the transformation she initiates in laying her necklace in the sand. her meeting with ozymandias can be a “confront[ation]” only because he refutes—if only she would acknowledge it—the assumptions that guide her. but the impermanence that should exclude him as nanzia nunzio’s chosen lover is also what allows ozymandias to emerge as ste- vens’ hero. in shelley’s “ozymandias,” the plinth’s words serve to mock the fallen tyrant: beside a broken statue, in the desert wasteland where a forgotten empire once stood, the inscription on the pedestal of the statue proclaims, “‘my name is ozymandias, king of kings: / look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’” ( ). in stevens’ account, however, ozymandias is given the last word with his defense of the “fictive covering” (cpp ). no matter how fallen, he suggests, how degraded and decayed, creator- man is never naked so long as he has a mind with which to clothe himself. the perfection that nanzia nunzio seeks would be the death of art. the first section of “notes toward a supreme fiction” instructs the ephebe the wallace stevens journal that “it must be abstract,” a dictum that might satisfy nanzia, ever seek- ing after an ideal she mistakes for the most vital reality. the second sec- tion, home to nanzia and ozymandias, declares that “it must change.” ozymandias, the king who became a statue, the statue that became a ruin, is an embodiment of this principle. even as an aesthetic subject, he does not rest: he is represented by the sculptor, ironized by shelley, and recuper- ated by stevens. the final address to nanzia reflects his own awareness of change: although she has consistently called herself “the spouse,” it is of “the spouse, the bride” that he speaks. a woman cannot be a spouse with- out being first a bride, and as she changes, so too do the human inventions that cover her, from the woven veil to the ever-weaving imagination that sees her, even in the marriage bed, through a screen of romantic idealism and subjective perception. but these fictions, unlike the ones nanzia imag- ines, do not demand her negation. dynamic forms capable of adapting to the human metamorphoses of a mortal woman, they remind us that she need not transcend the body to find a satisfying aesthetic. ozymandias is not the only statue in “notes.” in the third canto of sec- tion ii, we encounter “the great statue of the general du puy,” of “a per- manence, so rigid / that it made the general a bit absurd, / changed his true flesh to an inhuman bronze” (cpp ). he has completed the transformation that nanzia sought, from body to bronze, from the man he was to the story that remains. but if he begins the canto as the perfected nanzia, he ends it as the fallen ozymandias: “yet the general was rubbish in the end.” he is a reminder, like shelley’s ozymandias, that all is transi- tory, and a reminder, like stevens’, that all should be: the truest death is not to die at all, to be excluded from the mortal’s lot of change and decay. he is a call, as well, for a human art: it is not merely the general, but the general that is rubbish in the end. the general falls, and the abstraction of the poem’s first section gives way to the change of the second and the plea- sure of the third. still, as stevens’ narratives remind us, dreamy lyricism and detached intellectualism are not the only paths to inhuman abstrac- tion. the narrative structure that works against the collapse of meaningful articulation into allusive fragments is a version of the same order that, at its worst, keeps monstrous statues standing and turns passionate women into vestals or symbols, into spouses that have never been brides and will never be mothers. narrative has its place in stevens. but when it becomes dominant, it is, more often than not, to remind us that it should not be. harvard university notes jakobson’s original argument can be found in his paper “two aspects of lan- guage and two types of aphasic disturbances.” in bates’s reading of the poem, this passage represents the breakdown of initial narrative promise into “metaphor-challenged aphasi[a]” ( ); it is the loss, not of met- the maker’s rage: narrative in stevens’ poetry onymic sequence, but of transformative metaphor that causes the breakdown of mean- ingful signification. for a comprehensive account of stevens’ poetic avatars, see frusciante. works cited bates, milton j. “stevens and modernist narrative.” wallace stevens journal . ( ): – . print. cambon, glauco. the inclusive flame: studies in modern american poetry. bloomington: u of indiana p, . print. cook, eleanor. a reader’s guide to wallace stevens. princeton: princeton up, . print. frusciante, denise marie. the poet figure in the poetry of wallace stevens: disentangling the multiplicity of selves. lewiston: edwin mellen, . print. jakobson, roman. “two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances.” selected writings ii: word and language. the hague: mouton, . – . print. james, henry. “preface to the portrait of a lady.” the novel: an anthology of criticism and theory, – . ed. dorothy j. hale. malden: blackwell, . – . print. jps hebrew-english tanakh. philadelphia: jewish publication society, . print. schwarz, daniel r. narrative and representation in the poetry of wallace stevens. new york: st. martin’s, . print. shelley, percy bysshe. the complete works of percy bysshe shelley. vol. : poems. ed. roger ingpen and walter e. peck. new york: gordian, . print. stevens, wallace. wallace stevens: collected poetry and prose. ed. frank kermode and joan richardson. new york: library of america, . print. aer _web .. http://aerj.aera.net journal american educational research http://aer.sagepub.com/content/ / / the online version of this article can be found at: doi: . / : originally published online february am educ res j jatila van der veen teaching draw your physics homework? 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art as a path to understanding in physics teaching jatila van der veen university of california, santa barbara the persistent fear of physics by learners motivated the author to take action to increase all students’ interest in the subject via a new curriculum for introductory college physics that applies greene’s model of aesthetic education to the study of contemporary physics, utilizing symmetry as the mathematical foundation of physics as well as the conceptual link between physics and the arts. the author describes the curriculum and suggests how students’ drawings and written commentaries can provide insights into students’ preferred learning modalities, promote understanding of abstract concepts through visualization, and reveal students’ preexisting at- titudes toward science. outcomes align with the goals of improving students’ attitudes toward physics, indicated by their comments, written work, and re- sults of the maryland physics expectations survey. keywords: physics education, aesthetic education, interdisciplinary educa- tion, arts-integration, symmetry, contemporary physics in spite of government initiatives to attract a more diverse population ofstudents into science and technology, research conducted by the american institute of physics (aip) suggests that although the percentages are up from the % to % range in (the first year that such data were collected), there is still a dearth of women and minorities in physics and engineering in the united states (aip statistical research center, n.d.-a, n.d.-b; ivy & ray, ). in , % of all physics phds in the united jatila van der veen is a visiting researcher in the department of physics and lecturer in the college of creative studies at the university of california santa barbara, santa barbara, ca ; e-mail: jatila@physics.ucsb.edu. she is also serving as the educa- tion and public outreach lead for the nasa collaborators on the international planck mission, a satellite that is measuring the cosmic microwave background radiation of the universe with unprecedented detail. her current research focuses on the applica- tions of interdisciplinary strategies and media-arts technology in physics and astron- omy education. american educational research journal april , vol. , no. , pp. – doi: . / � aera. http://aerj.aera.net at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net states were awarded to women while % went to men (aip statistical research center, n.d.-b). when the numbers of phds in physics in the united states in are broken down by race and ethnicity, only % were awarded to hispanic americans, % to african americans, while % went to white americans and % to foreign nationals (aip statistical research center, n.d.-a). hazari, sonnert, sadler, and shanahan ( ) cite recent stud- ies that show that physics lags behind biology and other sciences in awarding bachelor’s degrees to women, so that the relative number of female students graduating with degrees in physics has actually declined in proportion to the number of women in other sciences. in addition to the persistent lack of female and minority students, they also note a decline in the total number of degrees (to men and women) awarded in physics between and relative to other sciences, indicating general lack of interest in studying physics among all students. it behooves us to ask: why should this be so? negative popular opinions of physics appear to have been woven into our western culture for some time. in an article in the journal physics education in , physicist victor weisskopf wrote, ‘‘why is physics as a sci- ence considered ‘inhuman’ by so many people, including some of the stu- dents we teach?’’ (weisskopf, , p. ). a generation later, a quote from an interview with a female sculpture major at a california university in- dicates that students’ perceptions of physics may have not changed much over the years: children grow up learning that science is scary and—especially physics and math. somehow, chemistry doesn’t have that big of a stigma, but physics and math—it’s like, oooo, scary. . . . i think there’s just some- thing that is done in the way that it is arranged or taught that makes people really afraid of it, and i think it is taught in a way that is kind of—seems very exclusive. and i always had that feeling about physics, i always had the feeling that scientists are exclusive . . . so, if there’s some way to kind of . . . make it a little less . . . frightening, i don’t know how, though. (van der veen, ) the possible role of the introductory physics sequence in maintaining the status quo the standard introductory physics course begins with newtonian mechanics, in a curriculum that was established in the s in response to the western world’s race for space (brekke, ; stuver, ). osborne ( ) suggested that although newton’s contributions were cer- tainly revolutionary for his time, they represent a world view that is ‘‘relent- lessly deterministic, linear and remote from human action or influence.’’ he further suggested that the complete overrepresentation of newtonian phys- ics at the expense of contemporary physics presents a distorted view of the world, which fails to address what should be the goals of contemporary art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net physics education: ontology—what is the nature of reality and how did the universe come to be?; and epistemology—how do we know that which we claim to know? recent studies suggest that the way physics is taught to beginning students may play a nontrivial role in both the persistent gender bias as well as the declining interest in studying physics among college stu- dents. blickenstaff ( ) examined years of research on the gender imbalance in physics in the united states and concluded that the very nature of science may be a significant contributor to what has been called the ‘‘leaky pipeline,’’ whereby women have greater attrition rates than men in physics. in a study of nearly , students from randomly selected american colleges and universities, a lack of self-identification with physics was one of the most potent deterrents to studying physics, particularly for girls (hazari et al., ). the ongoing relevance of science education (rose) project in europe finds similarly negative attitudes toward school science among -year-old pupils in northern europe and the united kingdom (sjøberg & schreiner, ), and towards physics in particular (kessels, rau, & hannover, ). after surveying adolescents in this age group in countries in europe, africa, and the pacific islands about their attitudes toward science and tech- nology, schreiner and sjøberg ( ) suggest that the perception of science as taught in schools may not be compatible with youth culture identity in contemporary western societies and that perhaps young people perceive the identity of an engineer or a physicist as ‘‘incongruent with their own’’ (p. ). their survey also suggested that boys prefer topics such as explo- sives and machines, which figure prominently in the introductory physics curriculum with its heavy emphasis on newtonian mechanics, while girls prefer topics relating to biology, health, ethical, aesthetic, and ‘‘new age’’ concerns (sjøberg & schreiner, ). in a preliminary study (not yet published) i interviewed second graders in a public school in santa barbara, california, after they attended a physics demonstration show put on by students from the local university. i found that girls and boys were equally interested in the demonstrations, but when asked what they want to be when they grow up, the majority of boys responded with occupations that deal with adventure and high risk (e.g., swat team, fire fighter, super hero), while the girls responded with a wide range of occupations that included medicine, education, entertain- ment, and the arts. introductory physics, with its emphasis on newtonian mechanics, relies heavily on scenarios involving projectiles, collisions, ex- plosions, sports, machines, and military applications, which correlate with the adventure and high-risk occupations chosen by the boys i interviewed. recent research suggests that topics from contemporary physics are equally of interest to girls and boys and thus may provide a more gender- neutral entry point for introductory physics. sjøberg and schreiner ( ) noted that both girls and boys reported equally high interest in studying van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net topics from contemporary physics, including black holes, space science, unsolved mysteries in outer space, philosophical issues, and phenomena that scientists still cannot explain. angell, guttersrud, henriksen, and isnes ( ) reported that unlike the topics from standard school science, adoles- cents have the sense that topics from contemporary physics relate to their own interests and personal lives. these findings lead me to suggest that it is time to change the way in which we introduce physics to beginning students if we are truly interested in promoting at least a more equitable gender balance in the physics com- munity in future generations. aesthetic physics education: a new approach to introductory college physics they said, ‘‘you have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are.’’ —wallace stevens ( ) as quoted by greene ( ) in an editorial in in physics today, the monthly news-and-opinion publication of the american institute of physics, anthropologist sheila tobias suggests that equal access to physics may be achieved through a new ped- agogical paradigm, within which teachers can recognize a talent for physics that is ‘‘differently packaged from the norm’’ (p. ). in another editorial in the same journal, physicist kent eschenberg ( ), quoting a study of scientists and artists by psychologist robert root-bernstein, correlates the ‘‘ability to imagine new realities,’’ which is the basis for new discoveries in science, with ‘‘what are traditionally thought to be nonscientific skills . . . usually associated with the arts, music, and literature’’ (p. ). with these comments in mind, and the sense that physics—a profoundly creative en- deavor—is still perceived as inaccessible by so many, the following question motivated this study: how can we bring the values of aesthetics and creativ- ity, which are important in the practice of physics, into the teaching and learning of physics at the introductory college level without sacrificing the conceptual rigor that is necessary for proper understanding of the practice of physics? in other words, how can we humanize the teaching and learning of physics so as to make physics accessible in the broadest sense, without losing the qualities of honesty, objectivity, and repeatability, expressed through the language of mathematics, that define physics as a way of know- ing and seeing? maxine greene’s aesthetic education provides the philosophical frame- work for a new pedagogical paradigm for introductory college physics that, i suggest, has the potential to attract students who are ‘‘differently packaged from the norm.’’ in variations on a blue guitar, greene ( ) defines art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net aesthetics as ‘‘the way in which a work of art can become an object of expe- rience, and the effect it then has in altering perspectives on nature, human beings, and moment-to moment existence’’ (p. ). she describes education as a ‘‘process of enabling persons to become different’’ by which ‘‘the learner must break with the taken-for-granted, . . . and look through the lenses of various ways of knowing, seeing, and feeling in a conscious endeavor to impose different orders upon experience’’ (p. ). for greene, education should be ‘‘an initiation into new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, moving’’ and should ‘‘nurture a special kind of reflectiveness and expressiveness, a reaching out for meanings, a learning to learn’’ (p. ). unfortunately, for many students, their experience with introductory college physics leaves a permanent sense of frustration (mazur, ). greene ( ) proposed a set of capacities for aesthetic learning as the desired outcomes of aesthetic education: noticing deeply, embodying, questioning, identifying patterns, making connections, exhibiting empathy, creating meaning, taking action, reflecting and assessing (holzer, ). i suggest that the first five capacities (noticing deeply, embodying, questioning, identifying patterns, and making connections) are, in essence, nondifferent from the goals of any introductory physics course, since physics represents a new way of seeing the world and requires students to develop a new vocabulary with which to interpret experience. i suggest that the next four capacities (exhibiting empathy, creating meaning, taking action, and reflecting and assessing), goals of contemporary educa- tion that seeks to promote a sense of social justice, should also be goals of contemporary physics education if we as a community of physics educators are to redress the problems of equity, diversity, and the sense that physics is ‘‘scary’’ and ‘‘inhuman.’’ aesthetics is not part of the lexicon of physics education, yet physics as it is practiced by professionals does seem to be motivated by a certain sense of aesthetics. nobel laureate steven weinberg ( ) asserts: in this century, as we have seen in the cases of general relativity and the electroweak theory, the consensus in favor of physical theories has often been reached on the basis of aesthetic judgments before the experimental evidence for these theories became really compel- ling. i see in this the remarkable power of the physicist’s sense of beauty acting in conjunction with, and sometimes even in opposition to, the weight of experimental evidence. (p. ) i suggest that an introductory college course that incorporates learning strategies from the arts into the teaching of physics, and which begins with the th-century world view and later addresses newtonian mechanics, may be effective in attracting a more diverse population of students than the present curriculum. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net about this study this article reports on the preliminary results of teaching an experimen- tal college-level curriculum in aesthetic physics education. this study began as a dissertation project in the fall of . the initial experiment was con- ducted during the winter quarter (january through march) of at the university of california santa barbara (ucsb), a public university in california, and reported in van der veen ( ). i had the enthusiastic coop- eration of the dean of the college of creative studies (ccs), a small honors college within the larger university, to experiment on his students, as ccs encourages faculty to develop interdisciplinary, experimental courses. my course, symmetry and aesthetics in contemporary physics, which i first taught in , received such high evaluations from the students that i have been invited to teach it each year. i have taught it again in , , and , with a hiatus in while i was teaching out of state. in the second section i briefly describe the rationale for a symmetry-based physics curriculum and the theoretical frameworks that support the idea that aesthetic physics education has the potential to promote greater access to physics and cite previous studies that support the use of arts in promoting access to physics, math, and engineering education. in the third section, i briefly describe the curriculum and the demographics of the students. in the fourth section, i discuss an application of drawing for understanding in physics and how students’ drawings, in conjunction with their written work, can give insight into their preferred learning modalities, their attitudes toward physics and physicists, as well as their understanding of a reading assignment. i follow several students’ progressions through the course, as demonstrated by some of their other writings and physics-art projects, which indicate their various transformations in attitudes and conceptual under- standing. in the fifth section, i suggest further research that would build on these preliminary results and discuss possible implications of aesthetic physics education for increasing diversity in physics. theoretical frameworks the conceptual framework for a symmetry-based introductory physics curriculum was primarily inspired by lawrence krauss’s ( / ) book fear of physics and by anthony zee’s ( / ) fearful symmetry. lengthy discussions with professors krauss and zee (both theoretical phys- icists), as well as e-mail conversations with professor christopher hill of the fermi national accelerator laboratory (fermilab), helped clarify some of the teaching strategies. critical discussions with professor david gross, nobel laureate and director of the kavli institute for theoretical physics (kitp) at the university of california santa barbara, provided additional strategies for tying together topics in physics with the thread of symmetry. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net the pedagogical model that informed the design of this curriculum is greene’s ( ) model of aesthetic education, as discussed in the previous section. support for aesthetic education as an educational paradigm that has the potential to increase access to physics can be found by combining the following models: multiple worlds theory (phelan, davidson, & yu, ), which illuminates the difficulties that minority students face when at- tempting to navigate the boundaries and borders that separate their home worlds from the world of the dominant culture in public schools; sociolin- guistic theories of language and power (bourdieu, ); studies that sug- gest that the discourse of physics, which includes the language of mathematics, serves to set physicists apart from everyday interactions (bazerman, , among others); and the historic importance of visualiza- tion in discoveries in physics (holton, ; john-steiner, ; miller, ). aesthetic education as a means of reducing the barriers presented by the discourse of physics i suggest that incorporating teaching strategies from aesthetic education in introductory college physics can assist students in overcoming some of the difficulties of entry into physics that are associated with the way physicists use language. the discourse of science presents borders that separate sci- ence, particularly physics, as a speech community (gumperz, ) by virtue of its specialized language. the discourse of physics, which includes the lan- guage of mathematics, sets physicists apart as a privileged group (traweek, ), which often leads to a general mistrust of physicists (bazerman, ), yet, in order to understand physics, students must first learn to use language in the way physicists do (hestenes, ; may & etkina, ). this language barrier can be especially problematic for minority culture students (aikenhead, ; brown, kloser, & henderson, ; lee, ; phelan et al., ). according to the multiple worlds theory of phelan et al. ( ), students from minority culture home worlds must make a transition to the dominant culture of the school world, with language being one of the barriers. corson ( ) discussed the use of ‘‘high status vocabulary’’ as being problematic for minority culture students in dominant culture schools and recommended that managing discourses in school can be a powerful means of ameliorating inequalities. i suggest that the dominant position of sciences over arts in edu- cation resembles the hegemonic positioning of majority and minority culture students as described by phelan et al. eisner ( ) describes the origins of the cultural dominance of science over the arts as arising from the enlightenment period in western society, which was heavily influenced by the emergence of newtonian physics: van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net science was considered dependable; the artistic process was not. science was cognitive; the arts were emotional. science was teach- able; the arts required talent. science was testable; the arts were mat- ters of preference. science was useful; the arts were ornamental. it was clear to many then, as it is to many today, which side of the coin mattered. (eisner, , p. ) i have observed, over the years i have been teaching this course in an interdisciplinary setting, that even in a culturally homogeneous group of aca- demically high status students, the same difficulties with language exist for arts-oriented students relative to physics as exist for minority culture students in a majority culture school relative to dominant culture discourse (van der veen, ). i suggest that incorporating arts-based learning strategies of aesthetic education can help reduce barriers presented by language. as one of the art students in the course, a white female, said in a post-course interview: [at first] i didn’t have the background to understand what we were discussing or what we were looking at. i didn’t understand the words we were using, the language that we were using, was such an issue for me. taking the class has opened the way i perceive my world . . . because my perception of my existence and of the world is different. (female art major, ) aesthetic education as a means of facilitating the language of math i suggest that the incorporation of cognitive strategies and ways of knowing from the arts in concept development in physics can help students learn how to visualize the relationships that are described by the unfamiliar language of mathematics. hickman and huckstep ( ) compared math to a language, in that once taught the rules of grammar, a student should be able to extract meaning from symbolic sentences (equations) and construct his or her own syntactically correct sentences, follow logical arguments, and apply descriptors to new situations. mathematics in physics education can be compared to bourdieu’s langue in the sense that facility with math-as-a- language represents not only linguistic competence in physics but also rep- resents the symbolic capital that defines a student’s position within the social hierarchy of a physics class. according to bourdieu ( ), ‘‘all particular linguistic transactions depend on the structure of the linguistic field, which is itself a particular expression of the structure of the power relations between the groups possessing the corresponding competences’’ (p. ). the hegemony of math-speakers and non–math-speakers emerged in some of the remarks of my students in their essays: art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net physics major (male): when you get down to pure mathematics, such as abstract algebra and number theory, there is nothing but art . . . reading a book on a subject like real analysis is like going to an art museum. art major (female): i cannot speak about the greater concept of mathematics as i have no real knowledge about the subjects, however in relation to the golden ratio i believe that there is a simple yet unsettling beauty which enables the forms it creates to be interesting and intriguing. art major (female): not knowing how the other half lives makes physics seem inaccessible to the commoner, which is not necessarily true. the potential of incorporating learning strategies from aesthetic education for changing these attitudes is suggested by some of the final com- ments of the students. the art major quoted previously commented in her final essay: the creation of the final project was important for me to be able to digest many of the concepts that we discussed in class. it gave me the ability to develop an understanding and a personal reference to concepts that i found challenging. this was an invaluable part of my study of physics and i greatly appreciated the opportunity to learn in an integrated manner. equations represent rich and sophisticated schema that a student can recall to give almost instantaneous access to a complex concept. a schema, defined as ‘‘a cognitive construct that permits us to treat multiple elements of information as a single element, categorized according to the manner in which it will be used’’ (sweller, , p. ), can be anything from an apple to faraday’s electric field lines to einstein’s field equations. thus, the languages of the arts can pro- vide a means of helping students visualize the relationships in the physical world that are described by mathematics. as one art major (white female, third year) wrote in one of her weekly reading reflections, perhaps anyone who is interested in physics should first undergo a basic math training so that equations make sense, and also a ‘‘lan- guage course.’’ in this course, students would be taught metaphors with which they can understand and remember what terms like ‘‘a volt’’ or ‘‘symmetry’’ actually mean. but it is not a description that is memorized for each term, but a picture. the importance of visualization in physics education physics addresses phenomena that span a range of orders of magni- tude in scale, only a tiny fraction of which are directly accessible to our sen- sory perception. the rest must be imagined through symbolic representations: equations, images, and specialized language. visualization has been seminal in the development of western science, and mathematics van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net provides a powerful nonverbal language that allows us to visualize phenom- ena in the physical universe that we cannot experience directly. bruno latour’s ( ) evaluation that science is not about making ‘‘words corre- spond to worlds’’ but about ‘‘building reference chains through a cascade of transformations from matter to form’’ is certainly applicable to the way physics is practiced today. a useful concept in physics teaching, which was first developed by th- century swiss educator johann heinrich pestalozzi ( – ), is anschauung: mental imagery developed by abstraction from phenomena that have been directly experienced (miller, ; pestalozzi, / ). according to pestalozzi, understanding is built on making sense of the ‘‘sea of confused sense impressions, flowing one into the other,’’ and it is the ‘‘business of instruction to remove the confusion of these sense impres- sions’’ (pestalozzi, / , p. ). in other words, knowledge evolves from confusion to definiteness, from definiteness to plainness, and from plainness to clarity (pestalozzi, / ). pestalozzi advocated a threefold system of interrogating the world: visualization, numeration, and descrip- tion, or what he called form, number, and language. for successful educa- tion, these three aspects of making sense and creating meaning out of the physical world cannot be separated (pestalozzi, / ). einstein himself was trained in this method of anschauung in high school at the kantonsschule at arrau (miller, ), and pestalozzi’s influence is evident in his description of the nature of science in his ( ) essay ‘‘physics and reality,’’ which i have students read and draw for the first homework assignment. drawing as a means of concept development in physics drawing is a means by which a learner (artist) can get in touch with and express her or his own inner language, and is thus a way to connect stu- dents’ internal translations of external experiences through symbolic repre- sentations. although most of the research on the use of drawing for understanding has focused on primary education, i suggest that the use of drawing for understanding is entirely appropriate for introductory college students, who may harbor completely naı̈ve interpretations of concepts in physics based on prior assumptions, misunderstanding of texts, or simply a lack of previous exposure to physics. several studies reported by rinne, gregory, yarmolinskaya, and hardiman ( ) suggest that the use of arts as a teaching methodology lev- erages a number of factors that promote comprehension and long-term memory. edens and potter ( ) demonstrate that students who were given the opportunity to draw their understanding of concepts related to the prin- ciple of conservation of energy, concurrently with verbal descriptions, per- formed better on tests than students who were given only verbal art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net descriptions. based on the results of their study and others, they suggest that ‘‘visual-based instructional strategies may be particularly useful for concepts associated with non-observable scientific concepts’’ (p. ). brooks ( ) discusses drawing in teaching science to young children as a means of assisting them to move from linking concepts to objects at a basic, recitative level to a more metacognitive understanding that promotes higher level thinking. drawing on the methodology of vygotsky, brooks uses young children’s drawings of concepts in science to better understand the way children think about science. she suggests that drawing can help children bridge the gap between naı̈ve thinking and scientific thinking, between understanding that is bound to sensory experience and more abstract, symbolic thinking. in the fourth section, i will demonstrate how art-making in a college class has been useful in both understanding how older students think about science, as well as in development of abstract concepts. kendrick and mckay ( ) suggest that children’s drawings reveal a great deal about the literacy narratives they bring with them to school. peterson ( ) reported on a study of elementary students and graduate students in which a combination of students’ drawings about topics dealing with science and talking with students about their drawings yielded valuable information about how the students process and retain information, as well as their attitudes toward science. chambers’s ( ) fascinating study of more than , elementary students in the united states and canada suggested that as students grow up, from lower to upper elementary school, their perceptions of a scientist increasingly approach the th-century ‘‘standard’’ image of the man in the white lab coat. the same result—that students’ perceptions of who is a scientist and what con- stitutes the domain of science—was obtained by she ( ) in a study of elementary and middle school students in taiwan. she concluded that one of the greatest influences on how young students perceive science and scientists comes from the images and topics discussed in their school text books, which is not surprising, as text books tend to reproduce the cul- tural norm (gosling, ). in a study of an elementary classroom, crafton, silvers, and brennan ( ) suggest that students’ drawings, used in conjunction with reading, writing, and talk, serve to mediate new understandings of self and the world in young children. lemke ( ) advocated the importance of developing multimodal representations, or ‘‘multi-literacies,’’ in science education that include verbal, mathematical, visual, musical, and choreographic. the success of interdisciplinary, multimodal instructional methods at the college level in making physics accessible to a broader population of stu- dents has been reported in several previous studies. dartmouth’s math across the curriculum (matc) program was successful in attracting a diverse population of students, averaging more females than males over the years van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net the program was offered (korey, ). the matc evaluation team reported that based on surveys and individual interviews, the courses in the program were successful in expanding students’ understanding, awareness, and appreciation for math as it relates to art, music, literature, and society in gen- eral (korey, ). an important realization reported by the dartmouth fac- ulty who taught in the matc program was that although some students were timid about math in the beginning, they wanted to improve their compe- tence in mathematics, and it was this interdisciplinary environment that facil- itated their feeling more confident about their math abilities (korey, ). faculty who teach in the interdisciplinary center for arts and technology at connecticut college report similar results with the students from arts and computer science who enroll in their program (izmirli & baird, ). students who enter the program from arts backgrounds are ini- tially uncomfortable in a technology-based environment but report greater self-confidence regarding math and technology after taking computer sci- ence courses; similarly, students who enter the program from computer sci- ence backgrounds report a greater appreciation for the arts after working in the interdisciplinary arts-sciences environment (izmirli & baird, ). as eisner ( ) suggested, the incorporation of arts as a way of know- ing can help students develop their sense of qualitative reasoning in any content area. the students who have taken my interdisciplinary physics course over the years i have taught it report similar changes regarding their attitudes, in that arts and humanities students report a greater appre- ciation for physics and math and the human side of physics. similarly, physics students report a greater appreciation for the arts and the rigor involved in making art. based on previous studies, as well as analysis of my own students, i suggest that the methods of aesthetic education applied to physics teaching can have a potentially transformative effect in changing students’ perceptions of science and their attitudes toward sci- ence and scientists. the experiment a brief description of the students ucsb is a public university situated in central coastal california, with a total undergraduate enrollment of more than , . according to the ucsb website (http://bap.ucsb.edu/ir/ucsb_portrait.pdf), % of the undergraduates come from california, with % out of state and % from other countries; % are female, and % are male. of the undergraduates, % identify as white, % as asian or pacific islander, % as hispanic, and % as african american, with % ‘‘unknown’’ and % foreign. i teach in the interdisciplinary studies program of the college of creative studies, the smallest of three undergraduate colleges within the art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net university. all ccs classes are intentionally kept small, with a maximum of and an average enrollment between and students per class. although my course, symmetry and aesthetics in contemporary physics (hereafter referred to as symmetry), is open to all undergraduates, the major- ity of students who have enrolled in the course have been from ccs, which has fewer requirements and more flexible grading options than the other colleges. i have taught symmetry during the winter quarter (one quarter is equal to weeks of instruction) in , , , and , and it is planned again for . (during i was out of state, teaching at another university.) symmetry is an elective, outside the regular physics department; thus, the students who enroll are fulfilling a curiosity rather than a require- ment. in order to publicize the course, i post flyers around campus and also send announcements to the undergraduate advisors of the various depart- ments, which they then send out to their students. a total of students ( male, female) have taken symmetry over the years it has been offered. table shows the distribution of students by gender, year in school, major, ethnicity, and home college. the average class size was students. of the students who have taken symmetry in , , , and , % were male and % were female, with the greatest number of females in . in addition, % of the students who elected to take symmetry have been white, % latino, and % asian. at this time i have no explanation as to why the demographics of symmetry do not more closely reflect the demographics of the student body as a whole. because the course is an elective, the title naturally attracts a self-selected sample of students with both an interest in the subject (‘‘high task value’’) and an expectation that they will succeed in the course (duschl, schweingruber, & shouse, , p. ). the question of why such a course title and description should attract a student sample that is ‘‘more white’’ than the general student body is reserved for a separate line of inquiry. a brief description of the course symmetry and aesthetics in contemporary physics is an interdisciplin- ary, introductory college course, designed to introduce students to the ways of thinking about, interacting with, and interpreting nature that are important for the practice of physics in the st century. why symmetry? the reason for beginning with the concept of symmetry is that symmetry and asymmetry are motivating principles that are common to both physics and the arts and thus provide a basis for opening the dialog between the scientific/mathematical and artistic/humanist approaches to learning. in addition, beginning with symmetry as the mathematical basis for all the laws of physics provides an opportunity to foreground professor emmy noether, little-known contemporary of einstein, whose mathematical theorems provided the proof that general relativity was van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net consistent with the principle of conservation of energy (byers, ). noether suffered discrimination both as a female and because she was jewish, and left germany in the s for america. thus, bringing noether into the narrative of physics at the introductory level is also impor- tant in potentially changing the perception of women in physics. the course begins with the contemporary view of spacetime, motion, and gravity, rather than starting with the newtonian mechanistic view. levrini ( ) suggests that introducing the contemporary ideas about space and time into physics education early on can provide a powerful means of drawing learners into the study of physics because it interrogates ‘‘pre- scientific’’ concepts of space and time that have historically been at the cen- ter of cultural debates, and thus of general human interest. more importantly, space and time are historically of concern to other disciplines such as art, lit- erature, and philosophy and thus can be a powerful bridge to other subjects, table demographics of students who took the course over years gender males females year in college first year second year third year fourth year major physics geology biology art math computer science psychology, biopsychology music humanities ethnicity euro/american latino asian home college creative studies letters and sciences art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net allowing for a comparison of the physics ways of looking at space with other points of view (levrini, ). the instructional methods and classroom activities incorporate strategies from art, music, literature, mathematical derivations and physics demonstra- tions, guest lecturers and field trips, and student-led collaborative projects and presentations. overall, the course emphasizes both math and the arts as interdependent semiotic systems for making sense out of and interacting with the phenomenological universe. throughout the course i incorporate various ways in which artists have explored math and physics in their work. the first guest lecture, usually in the second class meeting, is pre- sented by the artist in residence at the kavli institute for theoretical physics on campus, who demonstrates his methods of creating algorithmic art. this presentation introduces students to the idea that art can be an expression of mathematics. during the first part of the course, i explore var- ious expressions of math in nature, such as the golden ratio, fibonacci series, and fractals. in the second part of the course, we analyze paintings by the th-century artists pablo picasso and m. c. escher in which these ar- tists attempted to represent concepts from relativity theory on canvas. in particular, when discussing einstein’s proof that there is no simultaneity of events for observers in relative motion, we analyze in detail picasso’s les demoiselles d’avignon, and in discussing the way that gravity is represented in general relativity, we analyze some of the paintings of m. c. escher that deal with this topic. analyzing the way in which artists have attempted to express mathematical ideas gets students to realize that making art for the purpose of exploring a concept in physics is just as valid as drawing a dia- gram and that the artist is not bound to a literal representation. for most, this is a new concept. the assignments include: weekly readings and written reflections on those readings, which are discussed in class; three drawing (or alternate form of representation) assignments based on the readings; a symmetry demonstration in any medium (art, music, movement); and a final project in which students are asked to create a ‘‘physics work of art’’ that explores and expresses one topic that most interested them during the quarter, in any medium they choose, and present it to the class. the classroom activities include student-led discussions in small groups, instructor-led discussions involving the class as a whole, instructor-led lecture-presentations, student presentations, and art-math projects done in small groups. to introduce stu- dents to professionals who are involved in art and physics research, in addi- tion to inviting guest lecturers to class, i also organize several ‘‘field trips’’ around campus: a visit to the art gallery in the institute for theoretical physics with a tour led by the artist in residence; a visit to the lecture- demonstration room behind the main physics lecture hall, with a presenta- tion of relevant demonstrations by the department’s lecture-demonstration expert; and a visit to the media arts technology center, with a demonstration van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net in the ucsb allosphere, an immersive laboratory designed for multimodal representation of multidimensional data, to demonstrate artistic expression of mathematical physics through media arts technology in a d immersive space. at the end of each class i ask the students to write anonymous ‘‘exit-card comments,’’ in which i ask them to give me feedback, ask questions, or make requests. this feedback allows me to make adjustments in the course in response to their needs, and gives the students a sense of agency in their own learning. visualizing the process of science: einstein’s ( ) essay ‘‘physics and reality’’ each year that i have taught this course, i use the first homework assign- ment to introduce the idea that one can use drawing as a means of under- standing in a physics class. at this point the students have had one introductory lecture that included a discussion of the nature of physics as an attempt to make sense out of the universe and ways in which abstract ideas in math that, once discovered, ‘‘appear’’ in nature, such as the golden ratio, fibonacci series, and fractals. for the first homework assign- ment, i ask students to read einstein’s ( / ) essay ‘‘physics and reality,’’ draw the way they visualize einstein’s description of the process of science, and write an explanation in their own words. i chose this article because einstein gives an explanation of the nature of science from a phys- icist’s point of view, using richly descriptive language that lends itself to being drawn. in addition, reading einstein’s own words provides a glimpse into the way he thought in images. in a letter to mathematician jacques hadamard in , einstein wrote: the words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanisms of thought. the physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be voluntarily reproduced or combined. (hadamard, , p. ) at the time this drawing assignment is given, we have not yet analyzed famous works of art in which the artist attempted to express concepts in physics. i want the students to get in touch with their own internal visual lan- guage and work directly from einstein’s rich description to express the way in which they see what he is trying to say and then share their vision with the class. einstein ( / ) starts with the premise that to understand the pro- cess of science, one must first understand the nature of thinking, as ‘‘the whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of every-day think- ing.’’ he then asserts that what we call ‘‘reality’’ is nothing more than the art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net agreed-upon existence of a ‘‘real external world,’’ which is postulated by means of the symbols we develop to express, codify, and unify our sensory experiences of it. rather than postulating an absolute external reality, einstein says that it is impossible to separate with certainty the real external world from our internalized conception of it, at the same time remarking on the mystery that through human thought, we can comprehend the universe. one may say ‘‘the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibil- ity.’’ it is one of the great realizations of immanuel kant that the pos- tulation of a real external world would be senseless without this comprehensibility. (einstein, / ) he goes on to describe the process of making sense out of the totality of sensory experiences by connecting them through layers of conceptual relationships: the aim of science is, on the one hand, a comprehension, as com- plete as possible, of the connection between the sense experiences in their totality, and, on the other hand, the accomplishment of this aim by the use of a minimum of primary concepts and relations. (einstein, / ) in einstein’s ( / ) view, primary concepts are connected directly to sensory experiences but lack in ‘‘logical unity.’’ they are then connected to each other through a secondary level of concepts, which has a higher degree of logical unity, but is removed from direct sensory experience, and which is connected through a still higher layer. further striving for logical unity brings us to a tertiary system, still poorer in concepts and relations, for the deduction of the concepts and relations of the secondary (and so indirectly of the primary) layer. thus the story goes on until we have arrived at a system of the greatest conceivable unity, and of the greatest poverty of con- cepts of the logical foundations, which is still compatible with the ob- servations made by our senses. . . . while wrestling with the problems, however, one will never give up hope that this greatest of all aims can really be attained to a very high degree. einstein’s ( / ) writing is full of analogies and visual metaphors. for example, he describes the connection between sensory experiences and logical concepts not as a vague abstraction, but as a direct connection: the relation is not analogous to that of soup to beef but rather of check number to overcoat. his writing thus lends itself to being interpreted visually and is reminiscent of pestalozzi’s ( / ) description of the process of learning as making sense of the ‘‘sea of confused sense impressions, flowing one into the other.’’ van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net moreover, in spite of the dated language (which, admittedly, some students find tedious to wade through), his conclusion is relevant to the true nature of phys- ics, namely, that the practice of physics may be messy, full of false starts and inconsistencies, but physics as a way of knowing is held in high esteem by vir- tue of its theoretical validity, even as it is constantly evolving. we have to deal, however, with the science of today, in which these strata represent problematic partial successes which support one another but which also threaten one another, because today’s system of concepts contains deep-seated incongruities. (einstein, / ) the intention of this assignment is twofold: to set the tone for the study of symmetry as the mathematical and conceptual foundation of the study of physics, as symmetry principles represent that highest level of abstraction einstein describes, and to establish the validity of using drawing and visual- ization in understanding concepts in physics. most students report that this assignment represents the first time they have been asked to draw their understanding of an article, especially in a science class. some report that it was difficult to get started, but once they did, the drawing flowed easily. some report that they visualize concepts and equations naturally, so that although they had not been asked to draw their understanding in previous courses, the assignment felt quite natural. others took this opportunity to express not only their visualization of einstein’s article, but their disdain for conventional science teaching. in addition, over the years that i have given this assignment, i have observed that there are certain categories into which students’ drawings tend to group, which are suggestive of learn- ing preferences, and that individual students’ drawing styles remain fairly consistent throughout the course. thus, i suggest that students’ drawings not only reveal whether or not they understand an article or a concept, but that students’ drawings offer a glimpse into the way they process information. students’ drawings of einstein’s article ‘‘physics and reality’’ and learning preferences in this introductory assignment, before delving into the actual physics content of the course, it is possible to get a peek into the way that students think and process information. the topic itself—the nature of the scientific process—does not depend on prior physics or math knowledge, thus stu- dents’ preexisting attitudes toward science and scientists, as well as the modalities by which they receive, process, and internalize information, may be apparent. this kind of information about students can be highly ben- eficial for the instructor in designing teaching strategies and organizing stu- dents into cooperative groups, as well as beneficial for students to understand what types of learners they are. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net felder ( ) and felder and silverman ( ) describe learning prefer- ences among undergraduate engineering students as combinations five types of opposite traits, in varying proportions: sensory versus intuitive, visual versus verbal, inductive versus deductive, active versus reflective, and sequential versus global. they described the characteristics of each type of learner as follows: sensory learners tend to favor information that comes in through their senses, while intuitive learners favor information that arises internally through memory, reflection, and imagination. visual learners tend to learn best from visual images (e.g., pictures, demonstra- tions), while verbal learners favor verbal material (written and spoken words and mathematical formulas). inductive learners prefer to learn by seeing specific examples first and then working up to general principles and theo- ries by inference, whereas deductive learners prefer to begin with a theory and deduce its consequences and applications. active learners tend to learn best by active experimentation, bouncing ideas off others, and are comfort- able working in groups; reflective learners prefer introspective processing of ideas on their own, prefer to think things through before trying them out, and prefer to work alone or in pairs. sequential learners acquire understand- ing of material in a linear fashion, whereas global learners take in informa- tion in seemingly unconnected fragments and achieve understanding in large leaps. global learners may appear slow and do poorly on homework and tests until they grasp the total picture, but once they have it they can often see connections to other subjects that escape sequential learners (felder, ; felder and silverman, ). over the years i have taught symmetry, i find that students’ drawings have tended to fall into general categories that suggest combinations of the learning preferences described by felder and silverman ( ). i have labeled these categories abstract-representational, direct-symbolic, meta- phoric-analogical, allegorical-creative, flow chart, hybrid, and incomplete understanding. i considered drawings to be correct interpretations of einstein’s article as long as they represented the process of science as including three basic el- ements, which they also explain verbally: first, that they indicate that science starts with some form of sensory input or experience; second, that they indi- cate some way of interpreting experience; and third, that they indicate some means of coming to a unified interpretation. drawings that did not include these elements, at least by inference, i considered to represent incomplete understanding, or perhaps an incomplete reading of the article. the stu- dents’ written descriptions that accompanied their drawings were also used to interpret students’ understanding of the article. member checking. effectively, member checking was done through a combination of in-class discussion and students’ written explanations. on the day the assignment was due, each student presented his or her draw- ing to the class, first in mixed-major groups of two or three students and van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net second in front of the class as a whole. during the students’ presentations, i and the other students had the opportunity to comment and ask clarifying questions. each artist explained the aspects of the article he or she was at- tempting to draw and what the symbols in his or her drawing represented. the combination of the in-class presentation and discussion and the stu- dents’ written explanations, which were turned in as part of the assignment, informed my analysis and evaluation of the work. coding the drawings. i coded the students’ drawings based on general characteristics, rather than the presence or absence of specific iconic ele- ments, such as moustache, lab coat, baldness, or glasses, that have been used in previous studies such as the ‘‘draw a scientist test’’ (chambers, ). the general characteristics that i looked for are: . the type of symbols used: abstract, geometric, or pictorial; . the type of representation: direct mapping of concept in the article to symbol in the picture or representation of concepts in the article by a pictorial analogy or metaphor; . the representation of some sort of temporal progression; . the representation of the article as a whole with an allegory or ‘‘what if’’ scenario. abstract-representational drawings use abstract symbols with a one-to- one correspondence between the symbol and the concept being repre- sented. direct-symbolic drawings utilize recognizable objects to represent concepts in a one-to-one mapping of symbol to concept, using arrows to indicate correspondences or placing labels directly on the drawing. metaphoric-analogical drawings represent the concepts discussed in the arti- cle with an analogy or metaphoric representation. allegorical-creative draw- ings represent the article as a whole with a pictorial story that builds on the idea of science as making sense of a myriad of sense impressions, perhaps going off on a ‘‘what if’’ tangent. flow charts incorporate some element of temporal progression to indicate the development of concepts, and hybrid drawings include elements of two or more categories. drawings that indicate incomplete understanding of the article are of two general types: the draw- ing lacks one or more of the basic elements of the process of science, or the drawing does not address the article at all. drawings of the second type include a caricature of einstein and representations of a general question along the lines of, ‘‘what is the meaning of life?’’ table gives a list of these categories, a summary of the markers i used to categorize the drawings, and the characteristics of felder and silverman’s ( ) learning styles that are suggested by the types of drawings when considered along with other infor- mation such as students’ written assignments, interviews, and in-class discus- sions. of the students who completed the course, turned in drawings for this assignment. the distribution of drawings is shown in table . art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net examples of students’ drawings and commentaries direct-symbolic drawings. the greatest number of students ( ) drew direct-symbolic representations of the process of science, in which they used recognizable images or symbols and incorporated textual labels on their drawings. the unifying feature of the drawings in the direct-symbolic category is the one-to-one mapping of symbol in the drawing to concept in the article, often with labels written directly on the drawing, suggesting table types of drawings with description of the elements that define each type drawing style defining markers felder and silverman ( ) characteristics abstract- representational student uses abstract symbols with a one-to-one correspondence between the symbol and the concept being represented. intuitive, visual, deductive, reflective, sequential direct-symbolic student uses pictures of recognizable objects to represent concepts in the article in a one-to-one mapping. sensory, visual, inductive, active, sequential metaphorical- analogical student represents the layers of scientific reasoning with a metaphor or analogy of how a scientist may derive a set of inferences from direct observations. sensory or intuitive, visual, deductive, reflective, global allegorical- creative student represents the intention of the article with a pictorial story or takes off from the article by drawing a ‘‘what-if’’ scenario. sensory, visual, inductive, reflective, global flow chart student uses elements of temporal progression to indicate the development of concepts in the article. sensory, visual or verbal, inductive, reflective, sequential hybrid student’s drawing shows qualities of several categories. various combinations incomplete understanding student’s drawing and verbal description indicate a lack of understanding or incomplete reading of the article. can’t determine from this assignment van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net that students who drew this type of representation are literal thinkers. examples of direct-symbolic drawings are shown in figures , , and . i chose these examples because they represent a range of literal pictorial in- terpretations of the article, from geometric shapes (figure ) to shapes that suggest mountain ranges (figure ) to a drawing of a person with an exposed brain (figure ). from their drawings and written descriptions, i suggest that these students exhibit learning preferences for sensory, visual, inductive, active, and sequential modes. their preexisting attitudes toward science, with which they approached this course, are also apparent in their drawings and essays. figure was drawn by a first-year female literature major in . although she has not written the label sensory perceptions on her diagram, it seems apparent from her description that sensory perceptions would be at the base of the pyramid: in this essay, einstein discusses the limits of human knowledge. he describes a subjective reality which is built on the framework of ‘‘sense perceptions’’ tied together by logical deductions. einstein, then, describes an ontological hierarchy, a pyramid of sorts, in which primary concepts and statements of reality are narrowed down until we are left with the point of the pyramid, which is the essence of real- ity. . . . the way einstein sees it is that as long as there appears to be a method to the madness, or the apparent ‘‘chaos’’ of sense percep- tion, it is worth attempting to establish a pattern between these perceptions. she has clearly understood the description of the process of deriving a hierarchy of logical deductions from sensory impressions, but her description of the process as a ‘‘method to the madness’’ suggests a certain skepticism toward physics. in a subsequent essay she describes her way of un- derstanding as an active process, which she visualizes taking place inside her body: table numbers of drawings in each category drawing type number direct-symbolic abstract-representational metaphoric-analogical incomplete understanding hybrid allegorical-creative flow chart art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net for me personally, understanding something new is at once visceral and mentally systematic, if such a combination of seemingly incon- gruous experiences is indeed possible. i feel the piece of knowledge in question becomes assimilated into the network of neural pathways figure . direct-symbolic drawing, literature major (female, first year), . used with permission. figure . direct-symbolic drawing, geophysics major (male, fourth year), . used with permission. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net which constitute my higher mind, and the sensation is almost physical. the drawing shown in figure was made by a fourth-year male geo- physics major, in , who was also double-majoring in southeast asian studies. his drawing shows einstein’s layers of observation, interpretation, and unifying theoretical framework as ‘‘individual disciplines of knowl- edge,’’ ‘‘limit of understanding,’’ and ‘‘unity of knowledge.’’ it is interesting that his second layer, limit of understanding, is shown as a wavy line, and he has labeled it ‘‘arbitrary.’’ in his essay, he wrote: einstein is clearly of the opinion that science is something deeper than the sum of all its disciplines. to me, this is a message of inspi- ration or hope to all those questioning the validity of existence. the fact that processes of the universe can be analogized and under- stood at intuitive levels to humans reinforces the notion that there is an underlying connection between all things. figure . direct-symbolic drawing, biopsychology major (female, fourth year), . used with permission. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net he has understood einstein’s point that through thinking we can understand the external world. as a geophysics major, he has a positive attitude toward sci- ence, unlike the skepticism of the literature major. in another essay he wrote about the importance of art in developing his interest in studying science: art has been absolutely vital to my current comprehension of any and all areas of science; one of the first books i remember looking at is ‘‘powers of ten’’ in which scales from near the planck length to near the breadth of the universe are represented by an artist. books like this and others all served to pique my interest in the sciences from an early age, and would not have done so if artists had not created these images of the world and physical processes around me. the third drawing was done by a fourth-year female biopsychology major. her drawing contains the elements of sensory experience and interpretation, but perhaps due to her training in psychology, she appears to disagree with einstein’s premise. she claims that ‘‘the solution cannot be in our minds because our consciousness distorts reality’’ and equates ‘‘stimulus’’ with ‘‘exter- nal reality.’’ this interpretation is opposite to the process of science that einstein describes, in which sensory experiences cannot be taken as ‘‘reality,’’ but an understanding of a ‘‘real external world’’ can only be developed through think- ing. in her essay she wrote, ‘‘it was very hard to wrap my head around einstein’s words, so translating it was hard to do visually and verbally.’’ although she stated on several occasions how she really enjoyed physics in high school, and was fascinated with the idea of string theory, in a sub- sequent reading reflection, in response to an article on the way physicists use numbers to represent concepts, she felt inspired to compare scientists who use arguments that invoke occam’s razor to atheists who ‘‘hold them- selves with such offensive arrogance, as if atheism is some kind of intellec- tual rite of passage.’’ however, at the end of the course she wrote the following evaluation, signing her name, although the evaluations were sup- posed to be anonymous: thank you so much for teaching this class. i don’t think i’ve ever been quite so stimulated by a class here as much as your class has done for me. i thought the material was awesome and the readings were great, although difficult at times. . . . thank you for opening up my mind more! (signed with her name) interestingly, over the four times that this assignment has been given, a total of five of the eight students who drew direct-symbolic drawings included eyes and/or brains. all were drawn by females: one literature major ( ), one political science major ( ), one biology major ( ), and one psychology major ( ), in addition to the example shown in figure . the literature major and political science major in this category dropped out of the class after weeks. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net abstract-representational. five students drew abstract representations of the article. the unifying feature of the drawings in this category is the use of completely abstract designs to represent the description in the article, yet from the students’ verbal explanations, it is clear that they symbolically rep- resented the elements of sensory observation, interpretation, and unifying theory. students who drew abstract-representational drawings also showed characteristics suggestive of learners who are sensory, visual, inductive, active, and sequential. figure was drawn by a first-year female physics major in . she cor- rectly summarized the article: in formulating our scientific views, we want as complete a connection as possible between sense experiences. however, we want to be able to formulate scientific views based on the minimum amount of con- nections possible, since each connection has a certain level of uncer- tainty. einstein hopes that, given the success of science so far, we will be able to approach a more and more unified system of science. figure . abstract-representational drawing, physics major (female, first year), . used with permission. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net she described the meaning of her drawing: in my visual representation, each dot represents a sensory perception of the nebulous reality (shaded area). the size and substance of each dot may represent the accuracy of our measurements, or the number of times the sensory perception has been repeated and confirmed by different people/methods. the lines between sensory perceptions are mental connections we have made. the lines may be faint if they are based more in mental speculation than sensory evidence. (for exam- ple, string theory may be represented by a large complex web of faint lines and dots.) some perceptions and connections are completely separate from other webs. some connections are broken, as they have been shown by substantial sensory experience to be unlikely. there are not well-defined layers, since, as einstein stated in his arti- cle, ‘‘the layers . . . are not clearly separated. it is not even absolutely clear which concepts belong to the primary layer.’’ although my visual representation has a lot of holes and seemingly random struc- ture, one could imagine those holes filling up with more sensory experience and connection, finally creating a whole, unified picture that gives shape to the shadowy gray of reality which it describes. two other examples of abstract-representational drawings are shown in figure . i do not have written descriptions, but in each case i determined that each student understood the article by means of verbal explanation. figure a was drawn by a first-year math major, female, in . she ex- plained the meaning of her drawing as representing einstein’s layers from sensory input (shaded ball at the bottom), to secondary layer of concepts, represented by the two open circles, and finally up to the third level, which explains everything below with a unified theory. the dashes surrounding the perimeter, she told me, represent the limit of our present knowledge. figure b was drawn by a third-year male math major. he explained that the brick-like objects in the foreground are sensory perceptions, and the shaded portion in the center of the drawing, which appears behind the bricks, is the theoretical explanation which unifies all the experiences. metaphoric-analogical. five students chose a pictorial metaphor or anal- ogy by means of which to represent einstein’s progression from sensory per- ception, through increasing levels of abstraction, to a simplified theoretical framework. the unifying feature of the drawings in this category is the use of a pictorial metaphor or an analogy to represent the elements of sen- sory observation, interpretation, and unifying theory that einstein described. students who drew abstract-representational drawings seem to show charac- teristics suggestive of learners who are visual, reflective, and global thinkers, in that they represent the article as a whole, rather than a direct mapping of symbol to concept. i chose to reproduce four examples from students with different backgrounds (physics, math, biology, and art). their essays suggest that the physics and math majors favor intuitive modes of learning, while the biology and art majors favor sensory learning. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net figure was drawn by a first-year male, who was double-majoring in physics and math. his written explanation indicates that he understood the intent of the article: einstein proposes that the goal of science is reductionist by its very nature. to take the entirety of our sensory experiences (and now, things that are well beyond it) and congeal it, if you wish, into a form which is both elegant and complete. he suggests that we must strike a balance between seeking logical unity through ‘‘abstrac- tion’’ and a direct connection with our experiences. in response to the question of how he felt about being asked to draw his understanding of an article in physics, he wrote: it was quite natural. i think of calculus, differentials, and many other things visually. i am so entrenched in math that i use rudimentary forms of ‘‘visual calculus’’ even when i play games. to imagine a curve of a damped oscillator is as intimately connected with a spring as the word ‘‘apple’’ is to holding one in your hand. figure . abstract-representational drawings. a (left): female math major, first year; b (right): male math major, third year. used with permission. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net from his description of his own thinking/visualization process, it would seem that this physics major shows similarities with the creative thinkers in science and mathematics described by john-steiner ( ). the ‘‘reptile of science’’ (figure ) was drawn by a first-year male math major. he explained his drawing thus: at the top, you see a fairly detailed, intricate picture of something that looks intimidating, but as the viewer’s eyes progress down, the shape is simplified and simplified until it becomes an innocent, almost stick- figure-esque drawing. this symbolizes how our sense impressions of the real world, a powerful experience, is abstracted by science until it becomes something simpler and more friendly to use. in several of his subsequent essays, this student alluded to his feeling of satisfaction when a given explanation from the reading allowed him to make sense of the world in simple, user-friendly terms. a second-year female art major chose to represent einstein’s description of the process of science by using the analogy of understanding the inten- tions of her pet rabbit by observing the animal’s body language (figure ). she wrote: in his essay, [einstein] described how the pursuit of science was dom- inated by sense impressions and its relationship to concepts. these figure . metaphoric drawing, first year male, physics major, . used with permission. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net impressions were related to concepts based on a set of rules and it was by this method that the scientist would work his way to a conclu- sion. in this way, a person could figure out what a pet wants based on sense impressions, brought upon by examinations, and knowl- edge of pre-set concepts that are related to what is examined. this art student has revealed a subtle perception that was not apparent in any of the other students’ essays, namely, that scientists are male. the gen- der referencing of scientists as male, as compared to ‘‘people’’ and ‘‘pets’’ is apparent in her statements, ‘‘the scientist would work his way to a conclu- sion’’ and ‘‘a person could figure out what a pet wants.’’ in chambers’ ( ) ‘‘draw a scientist test,’’ out of the , students who were tested, . % represented scientists as male, although % of the students tested were girls. this art student’s preexisting view of scientists was apparently aligned with the cultural stereotype. whether her view of scientists as male was reversed as a result of this course is not possible to say; however, her final essay suggests that her attitude toward physics did change as a result of the course: [before] i thought of physics as existing in numbers and equations found by others while i regarded art to be a result purely from the artist’s mind. to tell the truth, i placed art in a much higher respect than physics because i never thought of the beautiful process that figure . ‘‘the reptile of science,’’ metaphoric-analogical drawing by first year male math major, . used with permission. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net led to equations and the relation to nature that physics possessed. . . . i think what changed most for me was my concept of physics now that i have seen it outside of the textbooks. i found that the pursuit of figuring it out was as important and creative as the work of ex- pressing nature through art. a fourth-year male marine biology major ( ) was the only student who created a d representation for this assignment, instead of a drawing (figure ). he explained his sculpture as follows: when einstein is referring to the constraints on a physicist’s thoughts being restricted by ‘‘fundamental concepts and fundamental laws, which are so well established that waves of doubt cannot reach them’’ it rang true to the struggles i have felt in science. i think it is a misrepresentation of science when textbooks are not portrayed as theory, but instead as bibles of the natural world. in my piece i tried to capture the weight of theory that you must subvert with waves of doubt in the ‘‘s’’ shaped stand creeping under a heavy stone. einstein also discusses how preconceived rules may get in our way when we try and use them to explain new problems. . . . to try figure . drawing by second-year female art major, , using the analogy of in- terpreting the intentions of her pet rabbit by observing his gestures and body lan- guage. used with permission. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net and show how we naturally force ourselves to see things in the con- text we have seen them before, i created a simple optical illusion. when you look at this d wooden box image you will suddenly start to see it as a d cube with one box in front and the other off in the distance behind, then it will suddenly switch and the other box will jump to the foreground. this chaotic flip-flopping is a hilariously con- fused attempt by your mind to turn this pseudo familiar image into something you recognize, when in fact it is simply straight lines. like the art student in the previous example, he is expressing his attitude toward science, although with deliberate intention. allegorical-creative. two students represented their understanding of einstein’s description of the process of science with allegorical drawings that extended the concepts of the article into a pictorial narrative, building upon the ideas presented. figure , ‘‘plato’s cave,’’ was done by first- year male physics major in , and figure , ‘‘a world without eyes,’’ was drawn by a second-year female political science major in . both drawings contain the elements that indicate a correct understanding of the article: a reference to sensory experiences that are interpreted and from which a theoretical explanation of the ‘‘real external world’ can be derived, figure . metaphoric representation of einstein’s article by a fourth-year male marine biology major, . a (left): frontal view; b (right): side view, revealing the illusion. used with permission. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net but these students have taken the assignment to another level in applying the process of observation and interpretation to a new scenario. the student who drew figure explained that einstein’s description of developing a theoretical model to explain sensory observations reminded him of plato’s allegory of the cave. he explained that the figure with his hand over his eyes is looking toward the light, not at the shadows on the wall like the others, wondering what he would find if he were to climb the stairs and follow the light. the student who drew figure chose to extend einstein’s model by exploring how our models would be different if we lacked the sense of sight. she wrote on her drawing, ‘‘this is a lighted version of a world with no figure . ‘‘plato’s cave,’’ first-year male physics major, . used with permission. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net eyes.’’ above the picture she drew a sun with a circle around it, crossed by a diagonal slash, as if to indicate ‘‘no sun allowed here.’’ the fingers and toes of the beings in her picture have extended pads, indicating an enhanced sense of touch. she wrote: in a world with no sight priorities for necessities in a house would change. people would maybe [be] ultra-sensitive and appreciate things like music and fuzzy walls more. here there would be less ab- solutes without visual aids. the idea that the blanket is warm and fluffy is stronger than the idea of the blanket itself. she added a few notes at the bottom of her discussion: ‘‘ th sense: heat sensory? privacy is not a term. beauty changes.’’ both students’ drawings are suggestive of sensory, visual, inductive, reflective, global learners, but also reminiscent of the drawings of highly cre- ative students discussed by getzels and jackson ( ) in their study of ado- lescents in a midwest suburban high school. when given a drawing prompt, the students in their study who were identified as high-iq tended to draw figure . a world with no eyes, second-year female political science major, . used with permission. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net literal interpretations, whereas the drawings of students identified as highly creative tended to be freer and less rule-bound. for example, when asked to draw a picture of playing tag in the school yard, the students identified as high-iq drew the school, the yard, the playground equipment, and children running, whereas those identified as high-creative drew liberal, sometimes whimsical, interpretations, including animals and aliens playing tag, and a map of the interior of the school with a note: ‘‘note: it is ghosts who are playing tag’’ (getzels & jackson, ). in characterizing the highly creative students, getzels and jackson ( ) described the following traits: the ability to play spontaneously with ideas, colors, shapes, relation- ships—to juggle elements into impossible juxtaposition, to shape wild hypotheses, to make the given problematic, to express the ridic- ulous, to translate from one form to another, to transform into improbable equivalents. it is from this spontaneous toying and explo- ration that there arises the hunch, the creative seeing of life in a new and significant way. (p. ) the use of drawing for understanding has the potential to reveal these kinds of highly creative students, such as the two who drew figures and , who might go unrecognized in a standard introductory physics class. the student who drew figure wrote the following in her final evaluation, which she signed: thank you for one of the craziest (cool) classes i’ve taken my whole time being here. not many classes care about what you think, but in your class i felt like my understanding was the whole point. flow charts. flow charts are visual representations that indicate progres- sive relationships between concepts, often depicted with arrows or connect- ing lines. four students drew interpretations of einstein’s description that incorporated elements of temporal progression. only one student, a fourth-year male physics major, drew a pure flow chart, with words only and no pictures (figure ). he drew this same type of representation for all his drawing assignments, suggesting that his preferred learning modality may be intuitive, verbal, inductive, reflective, and sequential. on his drawing he wrote, it is fairly easy to draw this as there is something fundamentally sim- ple going on: using logic to refine logic. hybrid drawings. four students drew interpretations that embody char- acteristics of two categories, such as a flow chart or equation that utilizes metaphors, an abstract representation that tells a story, or an abstract repre- sentation with labels written directly on the drawing. figure , drawn by van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net a first-year male physics major, is a pictorial equation, which i consider a combination of a flow chart (representing temporal progression) and a met- aphoric representation. his drawing also embodies a sense of sophisticated humor, reminiscent of the drawings of the highly creative students in getzels and jackson’s ( ) study. he explained the meaning of his equation as ‘‘the sum, from i = to all thinking (represented by a brain sitting atop the summation symbol, where the upper limit would normally be indicated) of all forms of existence adds up to an increasingly accurate picture of real- ity.’’ the ‘‘higher order terms’’ represent what we don’t yet understand. figure , drawn by a fourth-year male physics major, combines an abstract representation with a metaphor. he explained that his drawing is supposed to represent the cantor set, a fractal in which one third of a line segment is removed with each iteration, until one is left with ‘‘cantor dust.’’ he also dis- played a sophisticated sense of humor: his caption reads, ‘‘you ‘can’t’ always trust your intuition.’’ figure , drawn by a third-year female art major, combines abstract rep- resentation with direct-symbolic representation, in that the scribbles cannot be figure . flow chart, fourth-year male physics major, . used with permission. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net said to truly resemble any recognizable objects, yet the labels written directly on the drawing are suggestive of the kinds of literal interpretations drawn by students who drew direct-symbolic representations. her drawing follows the progression of science from ‘‘our sensory experiences—touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste’’ through ‘‘perception,’’ which she represents with a tangled web of lines; through ‘‘interpretation,’’ which lies just outside of the web of perceptions; to arrive at the level of ‘‘thought or expectation.’’ throughout the course she commented on numerous occasions, in class discussion and in her homework essays, that she learns by sensory experiences, and for her, understanding must be grounded in a bodily experience. she had not taken math since th grade, and had never taken physics. she described her own process of understanding as relying on bodily experiences, exempli- fying the type of sensory learner described by felder and silverman ( ). when determining how i ‘‘understand something’’ i perceive my understanding in my head that relates to by bodies experience or my perceived experience. one’s gut feeling is an important place to start from when coming to an understanding. i myself must often visualize a situation which i then get about to imagine in my body or through a direct experience that i have already had. in a subsequent essay, she wrote the following about herself: i . . . believe that the prospect of learning, understanding and imag- ining certain theories is daunting. they are challenging because often one has to imagine an experience that does not relate to our everyday experience or perception. i do believe however that it is possible to engage in this imagining process if one is trained to use their imagi- nation in such a manner. figure . hybrid drawing: flow chart metaphoric, male physics major, first year, . used with permission. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net as the course progressed, she had difficulty coming to terms with con- cepts in physics which appeared to her to contradict her direct sensory ex- periences. she stated on several occasions that it was ‘‘not fair’’ of physicists to appropriate terms from daily language, which she understood, and assign to them alternate meanings. she stated in a homework essay that this prac- tice caused her to mistrust physicists in general. she had particular difficulty coming to terms with abstract concepts from relativity, for which we can have no direct experience, and expressed a deep mistrust of physicists for attempting to reinterpret experiences that she had come to accept as figure . hybrid drawing: abstract metaphoric, fourth-year male physics major, . used with permission. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net ‘‘reality,’’ as she expressed in her critique of feynman’s description of the surface of a cylinder as representing flat space: in trying to understand richard feynman’s article specifically in regard to curved space, i am struck with my difficulty to understand ‘‘excep- tions’’ of this idea. . . . when it comes to a cylinder whose space seems to be obviously curved we find it does not have curved space because euclidian geometry holds. my first reaction is to say that the definition that feynman gave in the beginning must be wrong. students who are concrete learners may need extra help in developing the ability to make the leap of faith from descriptive to hypothetical or the- oretical understanding in science. interdisciplinary multimodal teaching strategies that cross-pollinate between multiple ways of making meaning of the phenomenological world can provide the critical momentum neces- sary to help such students bridge the gap from concrete to imagined realities. this was clearly the case with this art major, as she demonstrated by the end of the course. in her final essay, she wrote: figure . hybrid drawing, art major (female, white, third year), . used with permission. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net the creation of the final project was important for me to be able to digest many of the concepts that we discussed in class. it gave me the ability to develop an understanding and a personal reference to concepts that i found challenging. this was an invaluable part of my study of physics and i greatly appreciated the opportunity to learn in an integrated manner. in her final evaluation of the course, she wrote: i found this course to be wonderfully exciting. i had to overcome and grapple with a lot of struggles with math and understanding the lan- guage of science. i wish that this class would continue and i could continue to study the math and science in such an integrated way. incomplete understanding. i considered a drawing to represent incom- plete understanding if one or more elements of einstein’s model (sensory ex- periences, intermediate layers of interpretation, higher level of unifying theoretical explanation) to be missing or if the drawing did not address the process of science, and the written explanation was either missing or did not match the article. six drawings appear to represent incomplete understanding. of these, three students (one male physics major, one male biology major, and one female art major) appear to have missed a key element, perhaps through misinterpretation or too quick of a reading. two drawings, one by a male math major and the other a female religious studies major (who dropped the class after the second assignment) give the impression that the student may have tried to wade through the article, more or less got the idea of science being a process of making sense out of a myriad of sensory experiences, but gave up and drew a representation on the order of ‘‘what is the meaning of life?’’ neither student turned in a written explanation. one student, a male art major, simply drew a caricature of einstein (figure ). while an excellent drawing, it did not represent the pro- cess of doing science, and his brief written explanation did not indicate that he made it through the entire article, as he referenced only the first page. figure was drawn by a fourth-year male physics major and resembles a diagram of atomic orbitals in the hydrogen atom. this drawing appears to be a direct symbolic representation, in that it contains recognizable symbols (atomic orbitals), and a description, or legend, is provided directly on the drawing. i consider it incomplete as there is no representation of sensory experience, in that electron orbitals cannot be directly observed, but repre- sent a theoretical interpretation. on his drawing, he wrote: the axes represent axioms. the line, the plane, etc. are axioms of geometry. the lobes are electron orbitals, representing probability, uncertainty, the scribbling is meant to represent fuzziness to signify the (word is lost in reproduction) of axioms. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net in his summary of the article, he wrote: einstein is saying in a very roundabout and overly complicated way that the basic assumptions made in science in the past, which were assumed to be true, no longer appear to be so. scientists need to look at their most basic assumptions (axioms) such as the nature of time and space, gravity and light and rebuild their theories from better assumptions. in my opinion he is rather inefficient with his words, building up a complex description about layers or degrees of concepts and then subsequently breaking down these barriers with fuzzy boundaries. compared with descriptions and drawings of the other physics majors in the same class ( ), shown in figures , , and , this student surprisingly missed the point. perhaps he just did not have time to read the article com- pletely, due to other homework pressures as a fourth-year physics major. this student was initially skeptical that art and physics could have similar goals. figure . caricature of einstein, first-year male art major, . used with permission. van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net in his reflection on another article that was assigned for homework (campbell, ), he wrote: the author’s comparison of art and science requiring similar levels of formal training is laughable to me. . . . the difference is that nobody can intuit something like the structure of dna that took years to dis- cover, while any artist could decide how to make a sculpture or com- pose a song without any training. through the course, this student showed a transformation that is similar to those reported in the dartmouth study (korey, ). this transformation is apparent from his final paper, which accompanied his final project: it is interesting to me that some of the students in the class were com- menting that one of the barriers to understanding physics is learning how to speak the language, or learning to use the symbols, notations and conventions of physics. it is intriguing to me that music has its own set of notations and symbols that any musician understands but many of them are incomprehensible to me. for me, working on this project made me think of music from a more physical point of view. i thought about how i might use the notation of physics to represent musical cues. for example a musical instrument playing a note expressed as a dot product with a score. discussion and implications for physics education reform this population of students is admittedly small and self-selected; how- ever, some interesting patterns emerge from an analysis of their drawings. figure . incomplete understanding, fourth-year male physics major, . used with permission. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net students’ drawings reveal something about the type of learners they are, which can be described in a number of ways. i identified six types of draw- ings: abstract-representational, direct-symbolic, metaphoric-analogical, alle- gorical-creative, flow chart, and hybrids, which embody more than one style. the markers that i used to define these categories are listed in table . i suggest that these categories of drawing are suggestive of combinations of learning styles identified by felder and silverman ( ) among under- graduate engineering majors. understanding students’ learning preferences and ways of meaning-making can be valuable for instructors in designing appropriate learning strategies, adjusting reading assignments, organizing collaborative groups, and providing a supportive learning environment. even in a more traditional physics course, drawing should be seen as a useful exercise for students as a means of organizing their thinking about difficult concepts as well as a potential learning strategy for effecting con- ceptual change. particularly when conceptual change requires a restructuring of learners’ fundamental ontological commitments, such as is required in transitioning from the galilean notion of static space and universal time to the post-einstein view of space and time as dynamic and interdependent, the process of expressing difficult concepts through artistic visualization can be a potentially transformative experience for the learner. i suggest that student-generated drawings, together with written reflec- tions, can support the recommendations for change in science pedagogy in the united states that have been proposed in the report of the national research council (nrc) committee on science learning, taking science to school (duschl et al., ). according to the nrc report, one of the most important considerations in designing appropriate and effective sci- ence instruction is for teachers to take into account students’ ideas, prior ex- periences in science, and cultural experiences, which will help them make sense of scientific phenomena and practices. to do so, teachers must have access to students’ ideas and employ a range of strategies to learn what stu- dents understand about a given topic (p. ). having students draw their understanding of an article or concept is a powerful means of accessing stu- dents’ preexisting attitudes toward science, as in the case of the art major who indicated an initial association of scientist-as-male (figure ), or the marine biology major who protested the way science had been presented to him previously (figure ). drawing for understanding supports another recommendation of the nrc: the need for instructional strategies that encourage articulation and reflection as part of the scientific process. when students are asked to draw their understanding of a concept, they must first articulate their under- standing in order to produce the drawing; when they present their drawing in class, they have the opportunity to reflect on their understanding, as well as reflect on how effectively their drawing, and their explanation of the drawing, communicates their understanding to others. students’ drawings van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net can also provide a method of formative assessment for instructors in that drawings reveal whether or not a student understood a concept or reading (e.g., figure ), but even more importantly, drawings provide a window into students’ preferred learning modalities. understanding students’ individ- ual learning preferences can inform the way an instructor adjusts curricular materials and manages classroom interactions, for example in organizing cooperative learning groups. the nrc report strongly recommends that to support student sense-making in instruction, teachers need to know how students think, have strategies for eliciting their thinking as it develops, and use their own knowledge flexibly in order to inter- pret and respond strategically to student thinking. (duschl et al., , p. ) students’ drawings of their understanding provide powerful means of assessing how students think and process information. in addition, assessing students’ understanding through drawing forces the instructor to continually use his or her own knowledge flexibly in order to interpret and respond to student thinking, as well as improve his or her own understanding of the concept by seeing how different students understand it. the use of drawings throughout a course can also reveal changing atti- tudes and a maturing of students’ perspectives regarding their relationship with the subject. katz et al. ( ) used drawing as a means of assessing stu- dent teachers’ changing self-perceptions of themselves as teachers and their students as learners as a result of their experiences in an informal science education program. the student teachers’ drawings revealed significant changes in their perceptions before and after exposure to an informal sci- ence education program. similarly, i suggest that instructors can have stu- dents revisit a concept that they drew early in the course with a follow-up drawing toward the end of the course, asking students to comment on any differences in understanding that their early and late drawings reveal. although i did not have students revisit a subject that they had drawn earlier, their increasing ability to synthesize the big picture concepts as the course progressed was revealed in their written assignments, subsequent drawing projects, and their final physics works of art. the creation of the final project was important for me to be able to digest many of the concepts that we discussed in class. it gave me the ability to develop an understanding and a personal reference to con- cepts that i found challenging. this was an invaluable part of my study of physics and i greatly appreciated the opportunity to learn in an inte- grated manner. (female art major, excerpt from final paper, ) i was really glad to make my final project. it helped me develop my view of the interconnectedness of things. (female art major, signed exit card, ) art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net my favorite [assignment] was definitely the final project, because there was just so much freedom in what we could do, that i felt like. . . . it hardly felt like an assignment at all, it was just something that i was doing that i enjoyed, and that i wanted to show to other people . . . and that i hoped they would enjoy, too. . . . so . . . i got to learn something about math and physics and aesthetics and art all at once, and create something that i really liked, so i thought that was educational, and also purely fun, and good. (male physics major, post-course interview, ) possible implications for addressing the lack of diversity in physics and engineering in , the first year that this course was taught, i administered the maryland physics expectation survey (mpex) (redish, saul, & steinberg, ). the mpex was designed to measure changes in students’ attitudes toward physics before and after they experienced year of introductory col- lege physics. in their benchmark study of , college students in six col- leges and universities, redish et al. ( ) demonstrated that students’ attitudes toward physics decrease significantly after taking a standard intro- ductory college physics course. moreover, they demonstrated that when stu- dents adopted the behaviors that led to good grades in their introductory physics courses, their actual learning of physics concepts and understanding of the deeper connections between mathematics and physics decreased. not surprisingly, the students in my class who took the mpex as a matched-pair, pre- and posttest demonstrated significant gains in attitudes toward physics, and art students improved significantly in their sense of self-efficacy regard- ing their ability to learn physics (van der veen, ). hanrahan ( ) noted that successful science teaching should take into account psychological, sociocultural, and cognitive factors that students bring with them to class. important factors to consider in building an equal-access classroom are the development of trust among students, trust between stu- dents and teachers, whether students feel personally affirmed in the class, and the degree to which students have input as to what takes place in class (hanrahan, ; van der veen, ). hazari et al. ( ) cite several class- room strategies by which minority culture students can establish a sense of their own identities within science. such strategies include allowing students the opportunity to express their own voice through presentations, establishing a respectful/encouraging classroom atmo- sphere that minimizes the anxiety of public expression, positively acknowledging students’ views, allowing students to see the ‘‘back- stage’’ learning struggles (that even a teacher faces) rather than pre- senting the material from an elite transfer perspective, and, in general, creating hybrid spaces within classrooms. (hazari et al., , p. ) van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net my research with students at a california public university suggests that the relative positioning of physics and arts students parallels the positioning of majority and minority culture students in schools (van der veen, ), suggesting that interdisciplinary strategies have the potential to provide the kind of hybrid space described by hazari et al. in which arts-based stu- dents can begin to appreciate math and physics and see these subjects as meaningful in their own lives. as one student wrote in an exit card comment, i feel doubtful that i will ever ‘‘click’’ with the math. i’m just very glad that my not-understanding does not make me feel desperate, as this seems sort of a ‘‘safe environment’’ where it is good thinking that counts, which i am capable of. (february , , reported in van der veen, ). the separation of arts and sciences has been ingrained in western soci- ety at least since the th century and embedded in american education since the th century (eisner, ). the separation in education between arts and sciences also seems to follow boundaries of gender and race, in that white males continue to dominate in science and technology fields in spite of government initiatives to attract women and minorities into physics and engineering, and women and minority students gravitate toward the more ‘‘emotional,’’ nonscientific fields (brown et al., ). in a study of implicit attitudes of college students at yale university, nosek, banaji, and greenwald ( ) found that math and science are still identified with being male and arts with being female. thus, it is logical to ask whether integration of arts and sciences in education may also improve gender and racial inte- gration in physics and engineering or, at least, reduce fear of physics and math and thus improve science literacy in general. like all communities, physics must have a way of managing the identi- ties of insiders and outsiders and of reproducing itself (traweek, ). sheila tobias ( ) and anthropologist sharon traweek ( ), who study the physics community from the outside, have explained how, from an anthropologist’s point of view, physics education may be serving to repro- duce the physics community in the image of its elders—namely, white males. thus, there may be little hope of diversifying the physics and engi- neering communities unless we change the way we reproduce our members through education. the very real cultural differences between physics stu- dents and art students that emerged in this course may offer a fresh approach to understanding how to develop a more diverse community through inter- disciplinary and multimodal teaching strategies. the very positive reactions of the arts-based students to learning about physics with physics majors sug- gest that interdisciplinary, arts-based teaching strategies had a positive effect on their sense of agency relative to physics. art as a path to understanding in physics teaching at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net i started gaining so much from that experience of just . . . being in discussion with everyone in the class, it didn’t even matter—to me it didn’t even matter that ultimately . . . how much . . . i can calculate . . . a physics problem now, after this class or not but to have the intellectual discussion with the people who were in the class was the most . . . fascinating thing. (female art major, , from a post-course interview) i felt really comfortable and really safe to ask questions, and they [the physics majors] were so willing to explain things to me, and have discussions with me—and i give a lot of credit to them as well because they helped me to learn. . . . and i understood a lot of what we were discussing from them—i just feel like the atmo- sphere of the class itself created an atmosphere where everyone was willing to learn from each other and to . . . to understand and discover new things with each other. (female art major, , from a post-course interview) the male physics majors also appreciated the opportunity to think about physics in a new way, as well as the opportunity to interact with the art students. what i especially liked about [the course] was, it got me thinking about a lot of really big, deep questions in physics like, does the math that we use really have any genuine connection to the physical world? or, why are the equations that we state without proof such as, you can rotate things and it’s still the same, why should those things be true? and, like, all the things that we just take for granted when we’re working through problems . . . ah, really should be thought about a little bit, because they’re not easy questions at all. . . . being able t’ think about those sorts of things is not something i would get out of a typical physics class. so that was really good. (male physics major, , from a post-course interview) for me, i think, the number one thing was the input we would get every week from the two visual arts majors in the class, because . . . they were . . . so assertive . . . in, um, the way they understand things, and whenever they don’t understand things, they would never hesitate right away t’ come out and question things, and ask why, and, that led to a lot of really good discussion and . . . um, they say that when you . . . teach other people something you’re helping yourself learn it even better at the same time, and i think that, for at least myself, trying to explain some of the more difficult ideas in physics to them, helped to . . . ingrain it into myself even further. . . . but, um . . . but it went both ways, because some of the things that they were saying about aesthetics and visual arts was also very compelling to me . . . and, um . . . basically, every week that they were there was guaranteed to bring a lot of controversy and argu- ments, and that was great because that’s a lot of fun. (male physics major, , from a post-course interview) van der veen at univ california santa barbara on april , http://aerj.aera.netdownloaded from http://aerj.aera.net with the current focus on attracting more females into physics and engi- neering, we may be overlooking those males who have difficulty with phys- ics. the results of my initial study (van der veen, ) suggest that this often-neglected group of male students also benefits from an interdisciplin- ary approach. it [the course] opened up the subject to me . . . when i go to the book- store, i usually go to the philosophy section, or the art section, but, now i’m starting t’ go to the physics section, to check out what’s there, and it’s very exciting to me . . . the range of topics to explore. (male book arts major, post-course interview, ) to test whether this approach will have the desired effect of increasing access to physics and diversity in the physics community, i suggest that it should be tested with a larger population in more diverse settings. the power of the method lies not in replicating it exactly, but in taking the topics and arts-based learning strategies and tailoring the readings and assignments to the appropriate target audience, utilizing examples from the art and music of the local culture to illustrate principles of symmetry, space and time, and relativity. finally, aesthetic education has at its core the intent to develop empa- thy, an element that is missing in most traditional physics education, which, i suggest, may be at the root of the complaint by students that was penned by physicist victor weisskopf in . note this work was originally part of the author’s doctoral research, supported in by grants from nasa, the planck mission, and the gevirtz graduate school of education at the university of california santa barbara (ucsb). the author wishes to thank professor jenny cook-gumperz, graduate school of education, and professor philip lubin, department of physics, ucsb, as well as the aerj reviewers for critically reading the man- uscript. ongoing support for the course, symmetry and aesthetics in contemporary physics, is provided by nasa grant from the planck mission, jet propulsion laboratory, in pasadena, california, and the college of creative studies at ucsb. the course materials for the current year can be found on the internet at http://web.physic- s.ucsb.edu/~jatila/ccs- _ .html. references aikenhead, g. 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/enu (use these settings for creating pdf files for submission to the sheridan press. these settings configured for acrobat v . / / .) >> >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [ ] /pagesize [ . . ] >> setpagedevice modal processor effects inspired by hammond tonewheel organs modal processor effects inspired by hammond tonewheel organs werner, k. j., & abel, j. s. ( ). modal processor effects inspired by hammond tonewheel organs. applied sciences, ( ), [ ]. https://doi.org/ . /app published in: applied sciences document version: publisher's pdf, also known as version of record queen's university belfast - research portal: link to publication record in queen's university belfast research portal publisher rights © by the authors; licensee mdpi, basel, switzerland. this article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the creative commons attribution (cc-by) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . /), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited. general rights copyright for the publications made accessible via the queen's university belfast research portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. take down policy the research portal is queen's institutional repository that provides access to queen's research output. every effort has been made to ensure that content in the research portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable uk laws. if you discover content in the research portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact openaccess@qub.ac.uk. download date: . apr. https://doi.org/ . /app https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/publications/modal-processor-effects-inspired-by-hammond-tonewheel-organs( d a - - be - -cc fd b ada).html article modal processor effects inspired by hammond tonewheel organs kurt james werner * and jonathan s. abel center for computer research in music and acoustics (ccrma), department of music, stanford university, lomita drive, stanford, ca - , usa; abel@ccrma.stanford.edu * correspondence: kwerner@ccrma.stanford.edu; tel.: + - - - academic editor: vesa valimaki received: march ; accepted: june ; published: june abstract: in this design study, we introduce a novel class of digital audio effects that extend the recently introduced modal processor approach to artificial reverberation and effects processing. these pitch and distortion processing effects mimic the design and sonics of a classic additive-synthesis-based electromechanical musical instrument, the hammond tonewheel organ. as a reverb effect, the modal processor simulates a room response as the sum of resonant filter responses. this architecture provides precise, interactive control over the frequency, damping, and complex amplitude of each mode. into this framework, we introduce two types of processing effects: pitch effects inspired by the hammond organ’s equal tempered “tonewheels”, “drawbar” tone controls, vibrato/chorus circuit, and distortion effects inspired by the pseudo-sinusoidal shape of its tonewheels and electromagnetic pickup distortion. the result is an effects processor that imprints the hammond organ’s sonics onto any audio input. keywords: audio signal processing; modal analysis; room acoustics; signal analysis; artificial reverberation; digital audio effects; virtual analog; musical instruments . introduction the hammond tonewheel organ is a classic electromechanical musical instrument, patented by laurens hammond in [ ]. although it was intended as an affordable substitute for church organs [ ], it has also become widely known as an essential part of jazz (where it was popularized by jimmy smith), r & b and rock music (where the hammond playing of keith emerson of emerson, lake & and palmer and jon lord of deep purple is exemplary). the most popular model is the hammond b- , although many other models exist [ ]. the sound of the hammond organ is rich and unusual. its complexity comes from the hammond organ’s unique approach to timbre and certain quirks of its construction. in this article, we describe a novel class of modal-processor-based audio effects which we call the “hammondizer”. the hammondizer can imprint the sonics of the hammond organ onto any sound; it mimics and draws inspiration from the architecture of the hammond tonewheel organ. we begin by describing the architecture and sonics of the hammond tonewheel organ alongside related work on hammond organ modeling. the hammond organ is essentially an additive synthesizer. additive synthesizers create complex musical tones by adding together sinusoidal signals of different frequencies, amplitudes, and phases [ ]. in the hammond organ, sinusoidal signals are available. these sinusoids are created when “tonewheels”—ferromagnetic metal discs—spin and the pattern of ridges cut into their edges is transduced by electromagnetic pickups into electrical signals, a technique originated in thaddeus cahill’s late- th century instrument, the telharmonium [ ]. hammond organ tonewheel pickups have not been studied much in particular, but modeling and simulation of electromagnetic pickups in appl. sci. , , ; doi: . /app www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci http://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci http://www.mdpi.com http://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci appl. sci. , , of general is an active research area [ – ]. any nonlinearities in a pickup model will cause bandwidth expansion and add to the characteristic sound of the hammond organ. in the case that this bandwidth expansion would go beyond the nyquist limit, alias-suppression methods become relevant [ – ]. these tonewheels are tuned approximately to the twelve-tone equal-tempered musical scale [ ]—in scientific pitch notation, the lowest-frequency tonewheel on a hammond organ is tuned to c (≈ . hz) and the highest-frequency tonewheel is tuned to f# (≈ . hz) [ ]. the lowest octave of tonewheels do not form sinusoids, but more complex tones that have strong rd and th harmonics, making them closer to square waves than sine waves [ ]. some aficionados have pointed to crosstalk between nearby tonewheel/pickup pairs as an important sonic feature of the hammond organ [ , ]. the tone of the hammond organ is set using nine “drawbars”. unlike traditional organs, where “stops” bring in entire complex organ sounds, the hammond organ’s drawbars set the relative amplitudes of individual sinusoids in a particular timbre. these nine sinusoids form a pseudo-harmonic series summarized in table [ ]. this pseudo-harmonic series deviates from the standard harmonic series in three ways: ( ) each overtone is tuned to the nearest available tonewheel; ( ) certain overtones are omitted, especially the th harmonic, which would be between the th and th drawbar); and ( ) new fictitious overtones are added (the th and sub-octave). table . hammond organ drawbars—pitch in organ stop lengths and musical intervals. pipe pitch ’ / ’ ’ ’ / ’ ’ / ’ / ’ ’ scale interval sub-octave th unison th th th th th nd stop name bourdon quint principal octave nazard block flöte tierce larigot sifflöte semitone offset − + + + + + + + error e (cents) n/a n/a − . + . − . the raw sound of the hammond organ tonewheels is static. to enrich the sound, hammond added a chorus/vibrato circuit [ ]. earlier models used a tremolo effect in place of the chorus/vibrato circuit [ ]. the sound was further enriched by an electro-mechanical spring reverb device [ ]. although hammond did not originally approve of the practice, it became customary to play hammond organs through a leslie speaker, an assembly with a spinning horn and baffle that creates acoustic chorus and tremolo effects. the leslie speaker has been covered extensively in the modeling literature. various approaches have involved interpolating delay lines [ , ] and amplitude modulation [ , ], perception-based models [ ], and time-varying finite impulse response (fir) filters [ ]. recently, pekonen et al. presented a novel leslie model [ ] using spectral delay filters [ ]. werner et al. used the wave digital filter approach to model the hammond vibrato/chorus circuit [ ]. although hammond had stopped manufacturing their tonewheel organs by , the hammond sound remained influential. many manufacturers developed clones of the hammond tonewheel organ [ , – ]. commercial efforts have been accompanied by popular and academic work in virtual analog modeling [ ]. gordon reid wrote a series of articles for sound on sound on generic synthesis approaches to modeling aspects of the hammond organ [ , – ]. pekonen et al. studied efficient methods for digital tonewheel organ synthesis [ ]. the hammondizer audio effect is implemented as an extension to the recently-introduced “modal reverberator” approach to artificial reverberation [ – ]. although there are many other approaches to modal sound synthesis in the literature (e.g., [ – ], the choice to extend the modal reverberator architecture to create the hammondizer effect was a natural one for two reasons: ( ) there are strong similarities between the system architecture of the hammond organ and the system architecture of the modal reverberator; ( ) the modal reverberator is already formulated as an audio effect which processes rather than synthesizes sound. the rest of the article is structured as follows. section presents a simplified system architecture of the hammond organ, section reviews relevant aspects of the modal processor approach, appl. sci. , , of section presents the novel hammondizer digital audio effect, section demonstrates features of the hammondizer through a series of examples, and section concludes. . hammond organ system architecture here we extend the qualitative description above and present a mathematical formulation of the basic operation of the hammond tonewheel organ. referring to figure , the player controls the organ by depressing keys on a standard musical keyboard shown on the left. each of its keys has a note on/off state nk(t) ∈ [ , ] that is indexed by a key number k ∈ [ · · · ]>; these are collected into a column n(t). here and in the rest of the article, t is the discrete time sample index. route tone wheels + y(t) Γ(r(t)) ψ(t) � r(t) � n(t) � a(t) � y(t) figure . hammond tonewheel organ block diagram. the timbre is controlled by nine drawbars shown on the top. each drawbar has a level rd(t) ∈ [ · · · ] that is indexed by a drawbar number d ∈ [ · · · ]>; these are collected into a column r(t). the drawbars may be changed over time to alter the sounds of the hammond organ. each drawbar’s level rd(t) is converted to an amplitude in − db increments (table ) [ ]. table . amplitude of each drawbar rd, d ∈ [ · · · ]. rd amplitude (db) − − − − − − − −∞ furthermore, each drawbar has a tuning offset od, corresponding to the tuning offset in semitones of each pseudo-harmonic. the entire set of offsets is o = [o · · ·o ]> = [− , , , , , , , , ]> ( ) each tuning offset (except the first two) approximates a harmonic overtone. this is discussed further at the end of the section. each tonewheel has a frequency fw and amplitude aw(t) indexed by a tonewheel number w ∈ [ · · · ]>; these are collected into columns f and a(t). each tonewheel is tuned to the twelve-tone equal-tempered scale fw = ( ) (w− )/ hz ( ) appl. sci. , , of in practice there are slight deviations according to the gearing ratios, producing deviations of up to . cents [ ]. the outputs of all the tonewheels are summed by the × gain block = [ · · · ]> on the right to form the output signal y(t): y(t) = >y(t) ( ) the × routing matrix Γ(r(t)) forms the -tall column of tonewheel amplitudes a(t) from the -tall column of key on/off states n(t). this is accomplished by a matrix multiply a(t) = Γ(r(t))n(t) ( ) Γ(r(t)) is sparse (most entries are ) and has a pseudo-convolutional form [ ] in which the non-zero entries r (t) · · ·r (t) ∈ [ · · · ] are dictated by the -tall column of drawbar levels r(t). denoting each entry in Γ(r(t)) as γw,k(t), we have γw,k(t) = ∑ d= rd(t) δ (w − k − od) ( ) where δ(x) is the kronecker delta function δ(x) = { , x = , x = ( ) the tonewheel block is comprised of tonewheel processors ψw(t) in parallel. as shown in figure , each individual tonewheel processor has a tonewheel producing a periodic signal xw(t) at a particular frequency fw, an amplitude input aw(t) provided by the routing matrix Γ(r(t)), and an electromagnetic model pw (). each tonewheel processor forms an output yw(t) by yw(t) = aw(t) pw(xw(t)) ( ) × pw() × aw(t) yw(t) xw(t) ψw(t) pickuptonewheel figure . one tonewheel processor. a block diagram of an individual tonewheel processor is shown in figure . the matrix equation describing the entire bank of tonewheels is y(t) = p(x(t))� a(t) ( ) where � is the hadamard (elementwise) product operator (a � b)i,j = ai,j bi,j ( ) where ai,j denotes the ijth element of the matrix a. appl. sci. , , of the lowest tonewheels produce roughly square-wave signals and the rest produce essentially sinusoidal signals: xw(t) = { π sin( π fw t) + π sin( π fw t) + π sin( π fw t) , w ∈ [ · · · ] sin( π fw t) , w ∈ [ · · · ] ( ) as a final note, we can discuss the pseudo overtone series of the hammond organ in more detail. equation ( ) implies a certain relationship between any pressed key k and the set of frequencies that are produced. here we state this relationship explicitly. given equations ( ), ( ) and ( ), we can see that pressing any key k will, in general, drive a set of nine tonewheels with frequencies fk,d = ( ) (k+od− )/ , d ∈ [ · · · ] ( ) most wind and string instruments are characterized by a harmonic overtone series—i.e., one where overtone frequencies are integer multiples of a fundamental frequency. most of the tonewheel frequencies given in equation ( ) approximate idealized harmonic overtones with frequencies given by f̃k,d = ( ) (k− )/ nd , d ∈ [ · · · ] ( ) the first two tonewheel frequencies fk, and fk, are the octave below the fundamental frequency and approximately a fourth below the fundamental frequency—they are not approximations of standard harmonic overtones. in general, f̃k,d = fk,d. the error in “cents” ( / of a semitone) is given by ed = log ( f̃k,d / fk,d ) = [od / − log (nd)] , d ∈ [ · · · ] ( ) the tuning error of each tonewheel frequency is independent of k; it depends only on the drawbar index d—i.e., which overtone it is supposed to be approximating. these errors are given for each drawbar in table . for the fundamental and octave overtones, the tonewheels are perfectly in tune. for the th and th, the tonewheels are ≈− . cents flat of the ideal overtones. the th is ≈ . cents sharp. this detuning is very unique to the hammond organ. . modal processor review the hammondizer effect involves decomposing an input signal into a parallel set of narrow-band signals, analogous to a bank of organ keys. each of the “keys” is then pitch processed according to the drawbar settings, and distortion processed according to the tonewheel and pickup mechanics and electromagnetics. it turns out that this structure closely resembles that of the modal reverberator [ , ], which forms a room response as the parallel combination of room vibrational mode responses. in the following, we review the modal reverberator and adapt it to produce the needed pitch and distortion processing. the impulse response h(t) between a pair of points in an acoustic space may be expressed as the linear combination of normal mode responses [ , ], h(t) = m ∑ m= hm(t) ( ) where the system has m modes, with the mth mode response denoted by hm(t). the system output y(t) in response to an input x(t), the convolution y(t) = h(t)∗ x(t), is therefore the sum of mode outputs y(t) = m ∑ m= ym(t), ym(t) = hm(t)∗ x(t) ( ) appl. sci. , , of where the mth mode output ym(t) is the mth mode response convolved with the input. the modal reverberator simply implements this parallel combination of mode responses ( ), as shown in figure . denoting by h(t) the m-tall column of complex mode responses, we have y(t) = >(h(t)∗ x(t)) ( ) with h(t) = ψ(t)� (g(t)∗ Γϕ(t)) ( ) and where convolution here obeys the rules of matrix multiplication, with each individual matrix operation replaced by a convolution. heterodyne gain smooth modulate + x(t) y(t) ϕ(t) Γ g(t) ψ(t) � m � m � m � m y(t) figure . basic modal reverberator architecture. the modal reverberator is the parallel combination of resonant filters matched to the modes of a linear system. the mode responses hm(t) are complex exponentials, each characterized by a mode frequency ωm = π fw, mode damping αm, and mode complex amplitude γm, hm(t) = γm exp{(jωm − αm)t} ( ) the mode frequencies and dampings are properties of the room or object; the mode amplitudes are determined by the sound source and listener positions (driver and pick-up positions for an electro-mechanical device), according to the mode spatial patterns. rearranging terms in the convolution ym(t) = hm(t) ∗ x(t), the mode filtering is seen to heterodyne the input signal to dc to form a baseband response, smooth this baseband response by convolution with an exponential, and modulate the result back to the original mode frequency, ym(t) = ∑ τ e(jωm−αm)(t−τ)x(τ) = ejωm t ∑ τ γm e −αm(t−τ) [ e−jωm τ x(τ) ] ( ) all m γs are stacked into a diagonal gain matrix Γ. all the heterodyning sinusoids are stacked into a column ϕ(t), and all of the modulating sinusoids into a column ψ(t). the mode damping filters are stacked into a column g(t). this process is shown in figure . the heterodyning and modulation steps implement the mode frequency, and the smoothing filter generates the mode envelope, an exponential decay. x(t) × γm e−αm t × ym(t) e−jωm t ejωm t heterodyne smooth modulate figure . mode response implementation. the mode response may be implemented as a cascade of heterodyning, smoothing, and modulation operations. using this architecture, rooms and objects may be simulated by tuning the filter resonant frequencies and dampings to the corresponding room or object mode frequencies and decay times. appl. sci. , , of the parallel structure allows the mode parameters to be separately adjusted, while equation ( ) provides interactive parameter control with no computational latency. as described in [ ], the modal reverberator architecture can be adapted to produce pitch shifting by using different sinusoid frequencies for the heterodyning and modulation steps in equation ( ), and adapted to produce distortion effects by inserting nonlinearities on the output of each mode or group of modes. the modal processor architecture has been used for other effects, including mode-wise gated reverb using truncated infinite impulse response (tiir) filters [ ], groupwise distortion, time stretching by resampling of the baseband signals, and manipulation of mode time envelopes by introducing repeated poles [ ]. . hammondizer modal processor implementation the hammondizer effect system architecture is shown in figure . it turns out that this structure closely resembles that of the modal reverberator (figure ), which forms a room response as the parallel combination of room vibrational mode responses. both have inputs designated by x(t), a column of narrow-band outputs designated by y(t), summed to form the system output y(t). heterodyne smooth route smooth tone wheels + x(t) y(t) ϕ(t) gpre(t) Γ(r(t)) gpost(t) ψ(t) � r(t) � n(t) � n′(t) � a(t) � a′(t) � y(t) figure . block diagram of the hammondizer effect. in the hammondizer, the input signal x(t) is heterodyned to baseband by a column of modulating sinusoids ϕ(t): n(t) = ϕ(t)x(t) ( ) these baseband signals are smoothed by a column of pre-smoothing filters gpre(t) n′(t) = gpre(t)∗ n(t) ( ) a column of tonewheel amplitudes a(t) is formed by the drawbar routing matrix Γ(r(t)), a(t) = Γ(r(t))n′(t) ( ) and further smoothed by a column of post-smoothing filters gpost(t): a′(t) = gpost(t)∗ a(t) ( ) a set of mode outputs y(t) is formed by the tonewheel processing stages ψ(t), which include a column of pickup models p() and modulating signals x(t) y(t) = p ( x(t)� a′(t) ) ( ) an individual tonewheel processing stage is shown in figure . notice the slight change in architecture from the analogous figure . in figure , the pickup distortion has been moved to appl. sci. , , of operate on the output rather than the raw tonewheel signal. the reason for this change is artistic—it disambiguates the effects of the memoryless pickup nonlinearities and the distortion of the tonewheel basis functions. × × pw() a′w(t) yw(t) xw(t) ψw(t) pickupmodulator figure . one tonewheel processor in the hammondizer. finally, the output y(t) is formed by summing all of the mode outputs: y(t) = >y(t) ( ) in the rest of this section, we describe in detail how aspects of the modal processor are tuned and adapted to create the hammondizer. pitch processing adaptations include tuning the modes to the particular frequencies and frequency range of the hammond organ section . ), introducing drawbar-style controls to pitch processing (section . ), adding vibrato to mode frequencies (section . ), and adding crosstalk between nearby modes to simulate crosstalk between nearby tonewheels (section . ). distortion processing adaptations include adapting saturating nonlinearities for each mode to mimic the pickup distortion of each tonewheel (section . ) and replacing modulation sinusoids with sums of sinusoids to mimic non-sinusoidal tonewheel shapes (section . ). . . frequency range the first step of adapting the modal reverberator to create the hammondizer effect is to pick the mode frequencies which specify the heterodyning and modulating sinusoids ϕ(t) and ψ(t). the unique sound of the hammond organ is largely due to the tonewheels being tuned to the -tone equal tempered scale. here we discuss how to preserve this feature in the context of the hammondizer audio effect. since each mode of the modal reverberator is a narrow bandpass filter, a sufficient frequency density of modes is required to support typical wideband musical signals. in particular, unless each frequency component of the input is sufficiently close to a mode center, it may not contribute audibly to the output. for this reason, tuning the modal reverberator ’s frequencies to the -tone equal tempered scale used by the hammond organ heavily attenuates the frequencies “in the cracks”, producing an artificial sound (compare to composer peter ablinger’s “talking piano” [ ]). to avoid this effect, we use many exponentially-spaced mode frequencies per semitone. denoting the number of modes per semitone as s, the tuning of each mode is fw = f w/( s) hz ( ) (cf. equation ( )). s is chosen to satisfy two subjective constraints. as s gets larger, the computational cost of the modal processor grows. as s becomes small, the modal density decreases and produces an artificial sound. we found by experimentation that s = is a good setting that balances these two constraints. heterodyning and modulating sinusoids at constant frequencies are given by ϕw(t) = exp{−jωw t} ( ) ψw(t) = exp{+jωw t} ( ) appl. sci. , , of (cf. equation ( )). the next step of adapting the modal reverberator to create the hammondizer effect is to choose the range of mode frequencies. the range of the hammond organ is c (≈ . hz) to f# (≈ . hz). for simplicity, we set f = hz and let the modes range up seven octaves, up to f = hz; these modes are indexed by a tonewheel index w ∈ [ · · · ]. these round numbers correspond very closely to the range of the hammond organ. forty hz corresponds to k ≈ . and hz to k ≈ . ; therefore, this range technically cuts off ≈ semitones from the top and bottom of the range of the hammond organ tonewheel range. nonetheless, it does not negatively affect the qualitative effect of the hammondizer. . . tone controls the heart of the hammondizer effect is the drawbar tone controls. as before, the drawbar settings give a column r(t) of registrations, which drive the entries of the sparse matrix Γ(r(t)) according to γw,k(t) = ∑ d= rd(t) δ (w − k − od s) ( ) the only difference from equation ( ) is the presence of s to account for the multiple modes per semitone. in the hammondizer context, the entries in Γ(r(t)) control a hammond-style pitch shift. the structure of Γ(r(t)) means that energy in a smoothed baseband signal nw(t) (centered at some mode frequency fw) contributes to nine different tonewheel amplitudes fκ , κ ∈ w + so, according to γw,κ(t). . . vibrato a vibrato effect that can mimic hammond organ vibrato is created when the frequencies of the modulating sinusoids ψ(t) are varied. in this case, modulation sinusoids can be implemented with phase accumulators xw(t) = exp{−jθw(t)} ( ) each vibrato phase signal is given by θw(t) = θw(t − ) + vdepth / sin( π/ fs vrate t) π/ fs ( ) where vdepth is the vibrato depth in cents and vrate is the vibrato rate in hz. an early hammond patent [ ] praises “. . . a musical tone containing a vibrato, that is, a cyclical shift in frequency of approximately . %, at a rate of about per second. . . ” to match that design criteria, we typically choose a vibrato depth of cents ≈ . % and a vibrato rate of hz. of course, these can be parameterized as desired. . . crosstalk some aficionados point to crosstalk between tonewheels as an important part of hammond organ sonics. we can consider that since mode filters are not “brick wall” filters, there is already a sort of crosstalk built into the hammondizer effect. drawing inspiration from pekonen et al. [ ], we can explicitly simulate leakage between adjacent tonewheels by adding another matrix multiply between gpost(t) and ψ(t). this creates a new set of signals with crosstalk that includes modes one semitone away from the main modes with a crosstalk level c: a′′w(t) = ca ′ w−s(t) + a ′ w(t) + ca ′ w+s(t) ( ) appl. sci. , , of . . memoryless pickup nonlinearities as detailed in [ ], distortion effects may be generated by passing a mode through a memoryless nonlinear function or by substituting a complex waveform for the modulation sinusoid waveform. here we adapt both types of distortion to mimic aspects of the hammond organ’s sonics and design to the hammondizer. note that since both kinds of distortion are applied separately to each mode, the output will contain no intermodulation products. drawing inspiration from the mustonen et al.’s model of a guitar pickup [ ], we propose a memoryless nonlinearity of the form yw(t) = ( − e−αxw(t)a ′ w(t) ) /α ( ) this memoryless nonlinearity is shown for values of α ∈ [ . , . , . ] in figure . this has the property of maintaining unity gain around zero, but distorting signals with a large swing around zero by compressing positive signals and expanding negative signals. in this article, we will use a value of α = . . − − . . . − − . − − . . tonewheel signal x w (t)a w ′(t) p ic k u p o u tp u t y w (t ) y w (t)=x w (t)a w ′(t) α= . α= . α= . figure . memoryless tonewheel pickup nonlinearity. typically, memoryless nonlinearities like this will produce effects including “harmonic distortion” (new frequencies at multiples of existing frequencies) and “intermodulation products” (new frequencies at sums and differences of existing frequencies). since this memoryless nonlinearity is applied to the output of a bandpass filter, mostly harmonic distortion will be created, since energy is concentrated at one frequency. . . tonewheel basis distortion on the hammond organ, tonewheels may not be perfectly sinusoidal. also, the lowest octave of tonewheels are cut closer to a square wave shape than a sinusoid. this can be considered a distortion of the sinusoidal basis functions that the tonewheels represent. to approximate this distortion of the lower tonewheel basis functions, we can replace each modulating sinusoid ψw(t) with a sum of sinusoids ψ̃w(t) = π exp(jww t) + π exp(j fw t) + π exp(j fw t) ( ) (cf. equation ( )). drawing inspiration from the hammond organ, this should be done for the lowest octave of tonewheels. in practice, it can be useful to define the effect for a large range of modes. appl. sci. , , of note that this distortion is very different in character from the saturating nonlinearities. specifically, it has the unique feature of being amplitude-independent. . results and discussion to demonstrate the features of the hammondizer, we present a series of examples. examples of the pitch processing and distortion processing hammondizer components, operating on a pure tone input, are presented in sections . and . , respectively. examples of the full hammondizer, applied to program material, are described in section . . aspects of the hammondizer’s sonics are visible in the spectrogram and explained in the text. to understand the full effect of the hammondizer, it is necessary to listen to it. audio recordings (.wav file format) of all these examples are available online [ ]. for all of these examples, the hammondizer is configured to have exponentially spaced modes, with modes per semitone over the seven octave range from hz to hz. the two columns of smoothing operations gpre(t) and gpost(t) are set so that the gain of each mode during the smoothing operations is set to unity. gpre(t) is simply a column of ones. except where noted, each mode is assigned a -ms decay time. we form gpost(t) using smoothing filters which are applied twice, as suggested in [ ]. this creates impulse responses with a linear ramp onset and a -ms decay (e.g., [ ])—i.e., of the form t exp{−αt}. although we have not emphasized the variation of the mode dampings and complex amplitudes in this article—focusing rather on the novel aspects of the hammondizer—the mode dampings and complex amplitudes can be set just as in the modal reverberator [ , ], creating hybrid hammond/reverb effects. the different hammond organ registrations shown in these results are given in figure and are taken from a hammond owner’s manual [ ] and a keyboard magazine article [ ]. . . pitch processing examples in this section, we demonstrate the hammondizer’s drawbar tone controls (figure ), its frequency range (figure ), and crosstalk and vibrato processing (figure ). figure shows spectrograms of a pure tone input signal and versions processed with the hammondizer. the input signal (figure a) is a . -second-long sine wave tuned to middle c (c , ≈ . hz). the output signal (figure b) shows five different hammondized versions of the input signal. each of the five versions uses a different registration; the vibrato, crosstalk, and distortion were disabled. the different hammond organ registrations shown in these results are given in figure . figure b uses the first five registrations of figure in order. (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) figure . various hammond organ registrations and their names. (a) fundamental; (b) “bassoon”; (c) “mellow-dee”; (d) “clarinet”; (e) “shoutin’ ”; (f) “all out”; (g) “whistle stop”; (h) “jimmy smith”. appl. sci. , , of (a) (b) figure . (a) c sine wave input and (b) hammondized version with five different registrations. the c sine wave is tuned very close to the center frequency of mode w = . knowing that the hammondizer uses the matrix Γ(r(t)) to drive output modes that are offset from each analysis mode by the length- column o (recall table and equation ( )), we expect that an input consisting of a single sinusoid will in general create output signals with nine sinusoidal components (recall equation ( )) near modes ( , , , , , , , , ). however, since Γ(r(t)) is a function of the registration r(t), the output behavior is heavily dependent on the registration. notice that the registration does not affect the signal much beyond a slight lengthening due to the decay time of the modes near c . since each r(t) except r (t) is zero, only one sinusoid comes out. the second setting, “bassoon” ( ) produces three sinusoids in response to the input sinusoid, since it has three non-zero r(t)s. the amplitude of each sinusoid depends on its corresponding drawbar setting (recall table ). the “bassoon,” “mellow-dee,” and “shoutin’ ” registrations have non-zero first drawbar settings—notice that they produce energy an octave below c . the “shoutin’ ” and “all out” registrations have no non-zero drawbar settings—notice that the individual sine wave of the input has driven nine sine waves in the output, and that their relative amplitudes reflect the “shoutin’ ” and “all out” registrations ( and , respectively). figure shows spectrograms of a sinusoidal input signal and its hammondized response. the input signal (figure a) is a series of nine . -second-long sine waves, generated at octave intervals from c (≈ . hz) and to c (≈ . hz). the hammondized output (figure a) used the (“shoutin’ ”) registration, and the vibrato, crosstalk, and distortion were disabled. in a broad sense, the hammondizer imprints the “shoutin’ ” partial structure onto the input sinusoids. note, however, that since the hammondizer does not have any modes outside the hz to hz frequency range, the c and c inputs generate little output, though transients in the c sinusoid produce a ghostly “whoosh” sound. appl. sci. , , of (a) (b) figure . showing range of hammond tonewheels. (a) c –c input signal; (b) hammondizer with “shoutin’ ” registration. the hammondizer crosstalk and vibrato components are now explored using the pure tone input of figure a. in figure a, the effect of crosstalk is illustrated using the “clarinet” registration with vibrato and distortion disabled. crosstalk amplitudes of −∞, − , − , − , and − db are simulated. note the increased presence of energy in adjacent notes with increased crosstalk amplitude. in figure b, the effect of vibrato is studied using a “whistle stop” ( ) registration, with crosstalk and distortion disabled. each output uses a hz vibrato, with (from left to right) vibrato depths of , , , , and cents, with a depth of cents being typical for a hammond tonewheel organ. as expected, there is a sinusoidal variation in the output frequency of each partial. (a) (b) figure . (a) clarinet registration, various levels of crosstalk ∈ [−∞,− ,− ,− ,− ] db and (b) whistle stop registration, various levels of vibrato ∈ [ , , , , ] cents on the right. . . distortion processing examples here, we demonstrate the hammondizer’s tonewheel shape distortion (figure ) and its mode-wise distortion (figures and ). appl. sci. , , of (a) (b) figure . keyboard split demonstration. (a) c –c input signal; (b) driving keyboard split. figure shows an input signal spectrogram (figure a) and a hammondized version showing the tonewheel shape distortion (figure b). the input signal is the collection of sinusoids c through c . this is applied to the hammondizer set to a fundamental-only registration ( ), with vibrato and distortion disabled. as described above, the lowest two octaves of tonewheels are given rd and th harmonics. notice how c , c , and c produce pronounced rd and th harmonics even though the registration is , but that c –c don’t generate harmonics. figure shows spectrograms of an input signal and its hammondized version. figure a shows the input signal: five . -second-long sinusoidal bursts, all tuned to c . from left to right, the input sinusoid amplitudes are , − , − , − , and − db. notice in the output (figure b) that the degree of distortion decreases as the amplitude decreases, as is typical of saturating memoryless nonlinearities. (a) (b) figure . decreasing amplitude interacting with distortion. (a) c input signal, various amplitudes; (b) distorted. recall that the hammond distortion is generated separately on each key, and accordingly there is no intermodulation distortion. to demonstrate this and to test the presence of intermodulation distortion in our hammondizer process, we use a signal having c and e notes which appear both individually and overlapped—see figure . figure b shows the hammondized result. notice that there is little to no intermodulation distortion in the output; the response to the combination of c and e is very nearly equal to the sum of the response to c and the response to e . figure c shows the result of a modified algorithm y(t) = p( >(x(t)� a′(t))) in which the hundreds of individual mode pickup distortions are replaced by a single pickup distortion that operates on the sum of all modes. appl. sci. , , of (cf. equations ( ) and ( )). this more typical approach to implementing distortion produces heavy intermodulation distortion. this sort of intermodulation distortion can be considered unpleasant; its absence can be considered a unique feature of the hammondizer. (a) (b) (c) figure . showing how the hammondizer mode-wise distortion does not cause intermodulation distortion. (a) input signal; (b) hammondizer with mode-wise distortion; and (c) hammondizer with “global” distortion. . . full examples in this section, we present examples of the full hammondizer processing program material, a guitar (figure ) and a violoncello (figure ). (a) (b) (c) figure . blues guitar lick, original and two different hammondized settings. (a) input signal; (b) hammondized, “jimmy smith” registration; (c) hammondized, “all out” registration. (a) (b) (c) figure . beginning of “el cant dels ocells” [ ], original and two different hammondized settings. (a) input signal; (b) hammondized, “bassoon” registration; (c) hammondized, “clarinet” registration. figure a shows a blues guitar lick, and two hammondized versions, with a “jimmy smith” ( ) registration in figure b and an “all out” ( ) registration in figure c. notice that appl. sci. , , of the relatively full-range input of the guitar is mostly restricted to below hz in the hammondized examples. especially from – s, the vibrato is visible. in the “all out” registration, some pickup distortion is visible above the -hz tonewheel limit. figure a shows a melody “el cant dels ocells” played on the violoncello, and two hammondized versions, with a “bassoon” ( ) registration in figure b and a “clarinet” ( ) registration in figure c. . conclusions in this article, we’ve described a novel class of audio effects—the hammondizer—that imprints the sonics of the hammond tonewheel organ on any audio signal. the hammondizer extends the recently-introduced modal processor approach to artificial reverberation and effects processing. we close with comments on two extensions to the hammondizer audio effect. we’ve discussed parameterizations of each aspect of the hammondizer which are chosen to closely mimic the sonics of the hammond organ. for example, the mode frequency range of the hammondizer is chosen to match the range of tonewheel tunings on the hammond organ, and the the vibrato rate and depth are chosen to mimic a standard hammond organ vibrato tone. in closing, we wish to mention that these parameterizations can be extended to loosen the connection to the hammond organ but widen the range of applicability of the hammondizer. for instance, the mode frequencies can be tuned across the entire audio range (≈ – hz) rather than being limited to – hz. in this context, some of the connection with the hammond organ is relaxed, but the drawbar controls still give a powerful and unique interface for pitch shift in a reverberant context. although the hammondizer is designed to process complex program material as a digital audio effect, it is possible to configure the hammondizer so that it will act somewhat like a direct hammond organ emulation. this can be done by driving the hammondizer with only sinusoids (e.g., a keyboard set to a sinusoid tone) which act as control signals, effectively driving n(t) directly. this is particularly effective using short mode dampings (as in this article). an example is given alongside the other audio online [ ]. acknowledgments: thanks to ross dunkel for discussions on the hammond organ. author contributions: kurt james werner drafted the main manuscript and helped write signal processing code. jonathan s. abel supervised the research, helped in the preparation of the manuscript, and wrote the signal processing code. conflicts of interest: the authors declare no conflict of interest. references . hammond, l. electrical musical instrument. u.s. patent , , , april . . ng, t.k. the heritage of the future: historical keyboards, technology, and modernism. ph.d thesis, university of california, berkeley, ca, usa, . . faragher, s. the hammond organ: an introduction to the instrument and the players who made it famous; hal leonard books: milwaukee, wi, usa, . . smith, j.o., iii. spectral audio signal processing. additive synthesis (early sinusoidal modeling). . available online: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/sasp/additive_synthesis_early_sinusoidal.html (accessed on march ). . bode, h. history of electronic sound modification. j. audio eng. soc. 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owner’s manual. document id: - v . - . . finnigan, m. great b- drawbar settings; keyboard magazine: san bruno, ca, usa, . . xavier serra. “el cant dels ocells.” january, . used under creative commons attribution . unported (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . /), available online: https://www.freesound.org/ people/xserra/sounds/ / (accessed on march ). © by the authors; licensee mdpi, basel, switzerland. this article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the creative commons attribution (cc-by) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . /). http://www.stefanv.com/electronics/hammond_drawbar_science.html http://www.stefanv.com/electronics/hammond_drawbar_science.html https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/mdft/convolution.html https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~kwerner/appliedsciences/hammondizer.html https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . / https://www.freesound.org/people/xserra/sounds/ / https://www.freesound.org/people/xserra/sounds/ / http://creativecommons.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . / 	introduction 	hammond organ system architecture 	modal processor review 	hammondizer modal processor implementation 	frequency range 	tone controls 	vibrato 	crosstalk 	memoryless pickup nonlinearities 	tonewheel basis distortion 	results and discussion 	pitch processing examples 	distortion processing examples 	full examples 	conclusions creative wandering: writing, reading, painting as knowing through a/r/tography by alison fast b.f.a., emily carr university of art and design, a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts in the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies (art education) the university of british columbia (vancouver) december © alison fast, the following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: creative wandering: writing, reading, painting as knowing through a/r/tography submitted by by bybyy by alison fast in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts in art education examining committee: rita irwin, curriculum and pedagogy, ubc supervisor dónal o’donoghue, curriculum and pedagogy, ubc supervisory committee member sylvia kind, education & childhood studies, capilano university supervisory committee member ii abstract this thesis project addresses ways of knowing at the intersection of a multiplicity of ways of being as mother, artist, researcher, teacher and learner. the pages that follow aim to document the entanglements of learning and living, making and being made by creative acts. through a year filled with the immense life challenges such as this year, , acts of making and arts education have the capacity to transform lives and to awaken persons to their will to imagine a society of love. arts education can cultivate hopefulness for living and a resistance to the systems of domination as those who engage the arts gain a critical awareness, moving from numbness to action. the document is a record of a period of time in a woman’s life that is postpartum, the time following the birthing of a child and the birthing of the self as a mother in the world. it also documents the negotiating of identities, and how the various callings one takes up in life have the power to inform and enrich the others. painting is recognized as enabling the development of thought alongside reading and writing. through taking up processes whose outcomes are unknown, one may experience the unsettling ambiguity of going to a place one has never been before and searching for meaning and understanding in processes that are so familiar, yet difficult to understand in their totality. the work is meant to encourage a disposition of curiosity in the world and attuning oneself to take notice of that which shows up in the world, continually learning and growing. the hope would be that in taking up a living inquiry curiously in the world, one’s life may be enriched and enlivened, hope-filled and transformed. this work is largely indebted to the writings of tim ingold, sylvia kind, rita irwin, mary oliver, maxine greene, anne lammott, bell hooks, walter brueggemann, carl leggo, jorella andrews, and maurice merleau-ponty, amongst many others. iii lay summary this project explores the conditions for knowing as an artist, researcher, teacher, and mother. painting, mothering, reading and writing are processes examined simultaneously to understand their relations in creating environments for learning and teaching. the work also explores the potential for art education to contribute to social justice through empathy, caring for the inner self, living hope-filled and nurtured lives, and the power of creative imagination. iv preface this dissertation is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, alison fast. v table of contents abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………iii lay summary……………………………………………………………………………………iv preface……………………………………………………………………………………………v table of contents …………………………………………………….…………………………vi list of figures ……………………………………………………..…………………………...vii acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………...ix dedication………………………………………………………………………………………..x introduction……………………………………………………………………………………... chapter : on being: writings, working writings, made things………………………… chapter : thinking with tim ingold’s making…………………………………………….. chapter : on being mom, documenting postpartum………………………………………. chapter : on painting, material presences…………………………………………………. chapter : coming into focus, the societal role of art education ………………………. chapter : on moving forward ……………………………………………………………. bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………….. vi list of figures figure , small summer, . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure painting on studio floor with smaller watercolour sketches over top (own photo). . . . figure , work in progress painting leaning up against wall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure , work in progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure , hands holding (own photo). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure , work in progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . figure , paint palette (own photo).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure , watercolour painting in progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure , crossed feet . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . detail of a painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. figure . flat painting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. figure . drawing play . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . folded hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . small hands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . painting leaned against studio wall. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . beachcombing, . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo). . . . . . . . .. . . . . . figure . landscape, . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . song, . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . still hills, . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . on every road, . oil on canvas, x inches (own photo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . still hills installation view. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . still hills installation view. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii figure . still hills installation view. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . figure . still hills installation view. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii acknowledgements i would like to thank rita irwin for her continual support throughout my graduate studies. her encouragement and belief enabled me to continue on in making work despite the early challenges of becoming a mother. i would also like to thank sylvia kind for welcoming me several times into her studio, so i could observe and learn from her way of thinking with and through materials. i would like to thank dónal o’donoghue for his encouragement in my writing, ideas, and interests. he helped me to believe in my ability as a writer and thinker, so much so that it was his belief that gave me the courage to take on this project in the first place. i would also like to thank the faculty i worked with during my time at emily carr university as they all contributed to my desire to remain curious and take up painting. i would like to thank my family, my parents, my brother’s family, and my husband — you’ve all encouraged me to follow and develop the passions and interests that make me feel alive, no matter how afraid i may be. thank you from the bottom of my heart for believing in me. ix dedication this project is for my son and future children. i write and study with the hope of understanding processes of learning and making so that i may be better at helping them know what it means to be continually learning and living with curiosity, empathy, and, most importantly, hope. while being rooted, anchored, and freed in promise and always growing in the knowledge of what it means to live well in the world. introduction go to a place you have never been before from the beginning of my time spent in art school, i have wrestled with developing a way of talking about the meaning of making. i’ve hoped for a better understanding of the creative processes in my own life and the works of other artists that i encounter. it may be the inner creative impulse that james mckernan ( ) describes as an essential trait of the artist, teacher and researcher. i’ve wished to identify my own creative impulse and follows its beckoning trail. in this way, i hope to see the way that creative processes transform and change those who engage them. graeme sullivan ( ) suggests, “art practice, in its most elemental form, is an educational act, for the intent is to provoke dialogue and to initiate change” (p. ). creative processes have the potential to move us to think differently, envision change, and be renewed. in the act of making, perspectives shift or change in ways one could hardly know would have happened otherwise. one comes to know themselves more, or differently, seeing the world differently. the potential for transformation in acts of making and looking at art is expansive. in this thesis, i hope to investigate what is at play in acts of making and encountering art. a pedagogy of art making recognizes creative acts as emergences of new understandings which have the ability to alter or shift one’s way of knowing and seeing in the world. in variations on a blue guitar, maxine greene ( ) believes that education is, “a process of enabling persons to become different” (p. ). thus, engaging in acts of making shares in educational hopes for growth and change. to live a life devoted to art making is an engagement in a process of becoming. greene suggests in her book that this becoming requires a severing from assumptions or things taken-for-granted to allow persons to imagine the world as otherwise (greene, , p. ). to me, this reflects a call for movement. a call to go to a place which you have never been before and to take up a disposition of openness to what shows up for you in the world, to what might happen. where are the places we have never been before? for my own creative processes with this thesis, i have found resonances with the prompt to go to a place you have never been before. i was first introduced to this idea in a course taken with dónal o’donoghue at the university of british columbia in the spring of . i think of place as new awareness, perspective, and ideas, through and around the making processes. these could be places at which we arrive unexpectedly through inquiry, with a willingness to imagine otherwise. new places can be concepts or moments of awareness that i arrive at through engagement in reading and writing. i also think of new places through on ongoing relationships to paintings as they can lead to new awareness, a place i’ve never been before. making calls for a correspondence with materials that brings maker to a stance of mutual leading and following, ending up in a place different from that which may have been anticipated. for my thesis project, i desire to know more of what happens in moments of making, by simply attending to them and writing about experience. my hope is that in the making, writing, and living i would come into a deeper knowledge of what is happening in these moments, of their purpose and value to my life and potentially of others who wish to pursue the same thing. what in this study, i began by setting limitations to work within, in order to collect data that gives the work a sense of direction. i decided on writing a certain amount each day for forty days. the idea was that during this specified period of time i would also be working in the studio, painting. the choice of forty days was not meant to be specific; it was more so a familiar number. forty is a number used repeatedly in the bible to distinguish a time of significance whether waiting, wandering or wondering. these initial days of writing and making were filled with uncertainty and waiting, not knowing what exactly would come of it all. the creative process is done in waiting and anticipation of something that we hope might happen. as a new mother, i underestimated the way that this role determined the way that i was able to continue in this creative process. the way of being as a mother caused me to see that i would work in fragments; short, sporadic snippets throughout the day, the in-between moments. there was an urgency as the ideas that showed up needed to be caught, in order that i may gain openings of clarity. the process of working, writing, and living simultaneously aid me in understanding the homes of knowing i inhabit. my hope would be that in documenting new awareness and the way i am made different through the educational act of artistic inquiry and scholarly inquiry, i may understand the potential at play in acts of making. though i do not know exactly what will come to fruition, i hope to engage this process of growth through painting, writing, looking, learning, listening, and living. in the end, there will be a body of paintings which will be presented as a solo exhibition at a gallery in east vancouver. there will between - paintings, ranging from size inches by inches up to approximately inches by inches. i will continue ways of working in the studio i have already begun, but now with an emphasis of taking notice through an education lens, so that i may develop ways of understanding the significance of the work. the paintings are being made up of various thoughts, images, and fragments of my lived experience. i imagine stitching together aspects of the world that i encounter and bringing them to the canvas. through this process i will arrive at a new place, with new awareness of the potential in the ordinary bits of living. the written part of the project will be in the chapters that follow this one. i hope to document the writing as it happened, then to revisit it in the passing of time in the hope that moments of clarity and new understandings will emerge for moving forward. i will simultaneously look at what is happening in the writing and the studio work, and perhaps diffract from these both to offer perspective on the various roles in which i inhabit as mother, co-learner, artist, scholar, teacher, friend. a word on painting painting demonstrates a way of seeing the world in fragments. it’s exactly this way for raoul de keyser. when reviewing keyser’s exhibition at whitechapel art gallery, andrew wilson ( ) states that keyser “…has realised that the world about us is glimpsed as fragments and that painting itself contributes to such a way of seeing: the abstraction is already there in life as much as in painting” (p. ). as i am going about my everyday life, there are moments that stop me, when i see the world as painting and painting as the world. i see with a new awareness of it. i think about paintings when i look around and imagine with a curiosity for the not-yet, what is not yet made, but could be. paintings are fragments of what already exists in the world. through my self-study in a/r/tography, i wish to embody these ideas of painting as a way of seeing and imagining that which is not immediately seen. for this reason, i have chosen to include images of paintings i made during the past year as interludes in between chapters. also between chapters are short poems written in the ebbs and flows of daily living as a mother and artist. the “why?” dónal o’donoghue ( ) describes scholarship as, “a form of creative work that is receptive to thought, cultivates and nurtures it, without insisting that knowledge ought to be created to support or abandon previous understanding” (p. ). the inquiry i am proposing in this thesis offers a way of seeing the entanglement of scholarly and artistic inquiry, the value of engaged reading and writing as a process of growing. aesthetic education maxine greene ( ) believes in the tremendous potential of aesthetic education, imagination, and freedom. aesthetic education provides learners with experiences that develop a sensitivity of perception, senses, and imagination, particularly in a work of art, that calls for attention (greene, , p. ). aesthetic education offers a mode of thinking and doing that enhances living. greene identifies the importance of the imagination in education as a way of seeing beyond the given world to imagine the not-yet. to go to a place you’ve never been before requires the will to re-imagine. the imagination is transformative, enabling individuals to gain perspective on their world, with the capacity to see what needs to change. greene suggests the importance of individual engagement of materials and encounters with aesthetic objects to develop a sensitivity of perception for the imagination to be freed (greene, , p. ). students need a personal encounter with the materials in order to free themselves to imagine. greene argues that by attending to aesthetic objects, the student is transformed in how they engage with the world around them. through experiences in aesthetic education, greene suggests that students and teachers find their own voice, their own agency, and practice using them (greene, , p. ). greene’s work relates to the work of sylvia kind, as she emphasizes how engagement with materials causes one to think in dialogue with others, bringing forth new thoughts and ideas to emerge. kind’s research involves the children's centre at capilano university in british columbia, where she investigates the ways that materials enable thought. kind asks the question, “what if materials shape us as much as we shape them?” (kind et al., , p. ). kind believes the studio elicits a call for attentiveness, slowness, and paying attention to the correspondence of happenings in the studio. she emphasizes the need for an active listening to what emerges for children as they engage with materials. the collective gatherings in the studio at the children’s centre illuminate a pedagogy of togetherness. co-learning is an important nature of the work as multiple ways of thinking become entangled. kind sees the children she works with as co- learners with her in the becoming of material awarenesses. for kind, the entire environment is at play in acts of making. thus, the studio requires a focused attention to piece together layers of meaning. with materials, children can participate in a deeply transformative and embodied mode of learning and knowing. kind’s notions of the liveliness of materials are present to me in my studio work as i think about engaging painting and thinking with materials. from kind’s work, i have come to be better attuned to the way that materials move me. further, how does material engagement inform written inquiry? through this project, i hope to see these two processes reverberate back and forth in a dialogue that leads to questions, wonderings, awareness, and new knowledge. moreover, i think about the everyday practices of mothering as creating a mode of working that emphasizes the way that thoughts are generated, captured, and documented. the nature of the work, written or painted, reflects the nature of being that was a part of its making. ingold on making tim ingold ( ) is a significant influence in my thinking through making as he discusses engagement with materials, transformation, being, and the art of inquiry in the book making: anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. ingold quotes dormer and adamson when saying that thinking through making is when one allows “knowledge to grow from the crucible of our practical and observational engagements with the beings and things around us” (ingold, , p. ). ingold believes in a back and forth relationship with the materials; just as we act on to them, they also act on to us. ingold offers this as a possibility for how artistic inquiry can offer new ways of knowing across other disciplines. in advocating for learning by doing, ingold states, “we grow into knowledge rather than having it handed down to us” (p. ). as a teacher, ingold considers how his perspective towards knowing informs his teaching practice by arguing that the intent behind teaching must be transformational, where learning is not about passing on information but rather creating a space for self-discovery. ingold offers the possibility of thinking through making as a process of growth (p. ). he wonders about “the extent of human involvement in the generation of form” (p. ), meaning that there are multiple forces at play in making, humans being a part of the way made things come together. in discussing a basket weaving activity from a course he taught, ingold observed how the material reflected something back about their maker, as each was different and the conditions of making also shaped the form that each basket took. this basket weaving exercise was significant for ingold’s understanding of “what it means to make things, about how form arises through movement, and about the dynamic properties of materials” (p. ). in what is meant by materials, it is worth mentioning that there are many understandings, one as being the physicality of the world’s inherent nature, the other being the human agency that appropriates this physicality, taking the raw and manipulating it to finished objects (ingold, , p. ). to me, ingold wishes to articulate the interrelationship between material agency and human agency, that rather than assuming one dominates over the other there is instead a mutual responding that occurs. both ingold and kind’s research with the agency of materials suggests that materials have the capacity to take us places we have never been before, shifting thinking and bringing change. their ability to act on us and elicit an unexpected response portrays their potential as guides to new awareness. a/r/tography and self-study as methodology a/r/tography is the methodology which best resonates with my way of thinking about artist, researcher, and teacher throughout this thesis project. a/r/tography explores the rhizomatic relations of theory and practice (springgay et al., , p. xx). instead of seeing theory as separate from practice, a/r/tography attempts to restructure theory as practice. as a rhizome is understood as an “assemblage that moves and flows in dynamic momentum” (springgay et al., , p. xx), a/r/tography seeks new understanding at the thresholds of artist, researcher, and teacher. a/r/tography is a process of continual becoming, asking of questions, and the creation of new meaning through dwelling in in-between spaces. in describing a/r/tography, irwin and springgay ( ) state, “a/r/tography as practice-based research is situated in the in-between, where theory-as-practice-as-process-as-complication intentionally unsettles perception and knowing through living inquiry” (p. xxi). irwin and springgay ( ) paraphrase doherty and kwon when they acknowledge that within contemporary art, place is “re-imagined as ‘situation’…a relational constitution of social, economic, cultural and political processes” (irwin & springgay, , p. xxi). places are the situations we find ourselves in, entangled with their social, economic, cultural, and political meanings. within art and education literature, the artist practice is being legitimized as a form of research practice, as a way of coming to know place. springgay and irwin ( ) state, “the intellectual, imaginative and insightful work created by artists and educators as practitioners is grounded in ongoing forms of recursive and reflexive inquiry engaged in theorizing understanding” (p. xxii). further, irwin and springgay claim that artist, “practices are not comfortable taken-for-granted ways of being but are rather the challenging practices of learning to perceive differently within our everyday practices” (p. xxii). these two statements portray the tremendous effort of artists and researchers to identify ways of learning and knowing that may be overlooked or unnamed. to be an artist researcher practicing a/r/tography is to engage in artful inquiry and writing, understanding these two processes as interconnected in the pursuit of understanding (springgay et al., , p. xxviii). irwin and springgay identify six guiding concepts for the a/r/tographer’s practice: continuity, living inquiry, metaphor, opening, reverberations, and excess. metaphor stands out as relating to my work, as place is understanding arrival at new knowledge or meaning in artist practice. moreover, the theme of arriving at a new place relates to all six of these guiding concepts. the places of a/r/tographical inquiries are saturated with potential. the identities of artist, researcher, and teacher explored through a/r/tography can lead to an investigation of one’s living practices through self-study. hamilton and pinnegar ( ) define self-study as, “the study of one’s self, one’s actions, one’s ideas, as well as the ‘not self’” (p. ). further, hamilton, smith, and worthington ( ) summarize the work of laboskey in her description of the elements of self-study when they say, “laboskey outlines five elements of self-study: it is self-initiated and focused; it is improvement-aimed; it is interactive; it includes multiple, mainly qualitative, methods; and it defines validity as a process based on trustworthiness” (hamilton et al., , p. ). self-study largely emerged out of a desire from teachers to improve their own practices (bullough & pinnegar, , pp. - ). this meaning that teachers sought out to further attend to their own perspectives towards teaching in order to grow themselves. carl leggo ( ) writes about the need for the study of self in order to be able to make connections outside of ourselves (p. ). he suggests, “we need to write personally because we live personally, our personal living is always braided with our other ways of living…” (leggo, , p. ). writing from the personal enables one to develop and nurture a “sense of voice” (p. ). this sense enables one to know themselves, and perhaps in knowing ourselves more we can understand the significance of the work we do and then offer this awareness to others. in her book teaching community, bell hooks ( ) speaks to the need for feminist thinkers to utilize accessible terms that would enable a larger inclusive audience (p. xi). she feels as though feminist ideas remain hidden within academia rather than reaching out due to lack of accessible language. the personal as political can become a message that transgresses boundaries outside the academic world (p. xiii). this offers a way of understanding the form that my thesis takes, a personal self-study, meant to be accessible in portraying a process of living and learning, painting, reading and writing, mothering and growing. as hooks speaks of the creative process, particularly for women artists, she recognizes the entanglement of living and making—that making is never happening solely in the interaction with materials. acts of making begin in the forethought, the preparation, the downtime and anticipation of what might happen. a/r/tography through self-study emphasizes the voice of the researcher as one navigates living in a continual process of becoming. carl leggo’s ( ) poems are reflective of his own memories and history. he comes to understand his life through writing and studying his own voice in recalling his past. furthermore, anniina suominen guyas ( ) describes her writing and artistic practice by saying, “i form words and sentences and consider connections to texts and the experiences of others,” (p. ) and “i continue to use my photography to create surfaces for understanding” (p. ). guyas’s work portrays a continual becoming evident in the practices of artist/researcher/teacher. in further articulation of her work, she states: “i find the necessary break for survival personally and professionally, a space in which shifting meaning, incoherence, and resonance replace coherence, permanency, and reaction” (p. ). her process remains open to that which emerges through practice, the unknowns and questions. her work demonstrates the process of discovering, searching, and finding. guyas’s statement shows what is characteristic of the artistic practice with an aim at revelation through slow discovery rather than telling the truths of someone else. renee norman’s ( ) writing and artistic practice represent her identifies as artist, researcher, and teacher, as well as wife and mother. norman’s work exemplifies the entanglements of these identities. pauline sameshima ( ) uses metaphor to illustrate her practice in a/r/tography when she describes the way that her mosaic tile art practice pulls together parts that were separate, much like the way she would “think about connections and situations from multiple frames” (p. ). she comes to deeper understanding and knowing when her hands are in motion (p. ). further, she states that “the act of motion, touch, and manipulation produces a movement toward acknowledgment of the unexpressed known in both physical and metaphoric ways” (p. ). this idea of the unexpressed known reveals a reality of continual emergence and becoming through acts of making. sameshima states, “living a/r/tographic inquiry is situating and accepting self as a continuous burgeoning being” (sameshima, , p. ). to engage in a/r/tography is to tune into a lived becoming. methodology - the how? the methodology for this thesis will be a/r/tography through self-study. these methodologies reflect the paradigm of interpretive inquiry which embraces complexity, unknowing, unforeseen outcomes and a desire for new knowledge. in self-study the specifics of the outcome are not predictable in their fullness and the results cannot be articulated before engaging in the research. when thinking about going to a place i’ve never been before, the place ends up being different than i imagined before arriving. with a desire to understand, interpretive inquiry can aid in the process of self-awareness and discovery. in this way, a/r/tography is similar to action research as one investigates their own practice with the desire to improve it through deeper understanding (smith, week , ). my hope is that through this a/r/tographic self-study i could gain clarity and understanding of my own creative process and production of knowledge through making and writing. both these fields of thought focus on understanding as well as lived experience. self-study comes from lived experience as a practice-led research inquiry. practice-led research enables the possibility of utilizing creative practice as research. this self-study will incorporate contemplations on my creative practices in relation to scholarship as a way of working that enables and investigates thought, developing new ideas and awareness about what it means to make. (o’donoghue, , p. ). graeme sullivan ( ) defines practice-led research in visual art programs as a process in which “studio art practice is being reconceptualized as questions about degree programs beyond the mfa are addressed” (p. ). the challenge here is to understand how visual art programs engage studio-based teaching and art learning practices as forms of scholarly inquiry (sullivan, , p. ). for the purposes of my study, i have engaged practice-led researchers as my conversation partners in the research, such as carl leggo, sylvia kind, rita irwin, di brandt, barbara bolt, luanne armstrong, natalie leblanc, and veronica hicks, to name several. through my self-study, i aim to understand how this living inquiry consisting of painting, reading, writing, researching, and mothering reflects a disposition towards pedagogy that i embody, a process of lived learning. dewey & a/r/tography in the text “dewey through a/r/tography”, richard siegesmund ( ) explores the relation of dewey and the study of a/r/tography. he recognizes the parallel between john dewey’s emphasis on knowing through sensing and a/r/tography as, “a process of knowing through the senses” (siegesmund, , p. ). this idea of knowing by sensing suggests an inquiry with emergent outcomes, unfolding and stumbled upon. painting also is a way of knowing that develops through sensing. john dewey’s ( ) idea of experience speaks to how a series of events correspond and influence each other. dewey conveys an experience with an illustration of the way a stream flows into a river. he says, “in an experience, flow is from something to something. as one part leads into another and one part carries on what went before, each gains distinctness in itself” (dewey, , p. ). dewey’s comments suggest the potentials held within our experiences as parts come together and intersect. there is always more at stake in experience and with careful attention one can tune themselves to recognize all that is at play. dewey explains the nature of an experience when he says, every experience is the result of interaction between the live creature and some aspect of the world in which he lives. a man does something; he lifts, let us say, a stone. in consequence he undergoes, suffers, something: the weight, strain, texture of the surface of the thing lifted. the properties thus undergone determine further doing. the stone is too heavy or too angular, not solid enough; or else the properties undergone show it is fit for the use for which it is intended. (dewey, , p. ) dewey ( ) explores the relationship that arises from the correspondence of creature and object. he speaks of experience as a pattern and a structure in relationship. through perception, action and consequence are joined in relationship and dewey says, “this relationship is what gives meaning; to grasp it is the object of all intelligence” (dewey, , p. ). when one grows in understanding of an experience, meaning is deepened. dewey says, “…art, in its form, unites the very same relation of doing and undergoing, outgoing and incoming energy, that makes an experience to be an experience” (p. ). the doing, undergoing, outgoing and incoming of experience are parts of making and inquiring that i hope to access—a relationship that develops between perception, action, and consequence. i hope to see how a disposition of paying attention is a way of knowledge production, a process of knowing through making and studying where ideas and thoughts flow with each other. i mention all these writers, thinkers, scholars, artists, because i believe in the rhizomatic connections they have with the inner creative impulse that propels me forward to further study and inquiry. i am hopeful that i will find more connections along the way. this project is one that in ways i have already been living and will continue on after concluding. i wish to continually enter in to these places that i have never been before, and hopefully draw others to notice their own new places. in that way, i think of the thesis as a cross-section into where i am now, what i am thinking and making without knowing exactly what that will lead to. i also hope the work could be a proposition for others to consider what it would mean for them to engage in going to the places they have never been before. i hope to convey that in stepping into uncharted territories, one takes up a disposition of continually learning and remaining curious. i hope to suggest that learning is a way of living in the world, remaining continually curious, and this curiosity about the world can develop the criticality to seek change as well as the means to endure difficulties. figure small summer note. . oil on canvas, by inches (own photo) cotton drive when we walked down cotton drive, pink petals covered the street. parting ways as we move through them. weightless and in piles together on road’s edge. how many had fallen while we stood watching? brightly beaming through panes. the jagged tree branches break up a blue wide sky, like a mosaic stained glass window. snowflakes fallen gently to meet the ground swept away by the next chilling gust that nearly knocks us off balance. we’ve walked past this street dozens of times and every chance we get we notice the spring goes again. pink petals replaced by the smallest specks of green, bright and fresh. the buds to flowers to leaves as the speck fills in the tree. chapter one on being: writings, working writings, made things a large part of this project was to generate a body of writing as a form of data collection whilst making a group of paintings. i embarked on forty days of writing in an effort to collect and gather thoughts about my own acts of creation. in this way, everyday becomes a search for meaning by collecting and gathering fragments throughout the day. with writing, i am hoping to come to a better understanding of the meaning of the creative act, ways of knowing with materials, and how materials are alive, acting on artist and maker. in tandem with writing, i am interested in the way that painting causes movement and captures a gesture. it situates artist and viewer, connecting the body to the present. further, in taking up this process i hope to shed light on valuable principles for pedagogies of teaching and learning in the processes of maker and material. this chapter includes excerpts of words from the forty days of writing; as i went back through the writing i selected these passages as potentials for further thinking. this process gave space for thoughts to be documented, worked with and developed for further understanding. with this process, i hope to suggest that learning is a way of living in the world, remaining continually curious, and this curiosity about the world can offer the stamina for living with hope in the face of difficulties. i have the growing conviction that curiosity is the precursor to humility, that in being curious, one recognizes that there is much that they do not know and must grow to understand. humility is necessary for seeing the humanity in ourselves and each other, thus bringing about togetherness rather than division, love of self and those around us. in the book making: anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture, tim ingold ( ) states that “it takes effort and vigilance to hold things together” (p. ). to me, this means that growth, knowledge and learning require a conscious focused attention. i’ve found this to be true in my life as a mother, artist, writer, and student. the pages that follow document the precious first months of my son’s life. in this time, i became a mother and would reconcile my desire to pursue my creative practice in and through this new identity of mother. ultimately this work is about finding myself in the midst of giving constantly to another, and how this posture of serving is what lead to a renewal of self. it is a kind of storying through the lived experiences of becoming in motherhood. i thought, perhaps, that these strands of identity would enhance and inform each other. and that maybe, in writing about it all, i could come to know myself, my creative practice, the ideas and concepts of interest, and the things i value as a mother, all as part of my own process of growth in learning and knowing, making and being. this project is very much so for myself, and maybe even my son. it became a place to work out the thoughts that i caught throughout the day before wrestling with them. in turn, it’s become a way of living, inquiring, questioning, writing and making, and i hope to have caught a wave that i will continue to ride for the duration of my life as a mother. i know more than i did before i began, but in no way do i feel able to resolve, to confidently say, this is that. rather, i’ve come into knowing a way of chasing, capturing, pursuing and finding meaning that i wish to pass on to my own children in order that they may remain continually curious about this world, as a means of having hope and courage, hoping for the best and being captivated by creativity and all the things one can come to know if they take up a disposition of learning to learn in the world. therefore, this effort, this work to hold things together, is for my family, my son, with the aim of inspiring him to know what it is to learn and live in continual inquiry, wondering and wandering throughout his life; rooted and anchored, but frequently pursuing a deeper understanding. the reality is that each new awareness, idea and thought that i write about may be familiar, in fact common, to others. by no means do i consider any of this writing to be novel or nonexistent anywhere else, for that would be silly. instead, it is simply another iteration of what may be already known to someone else. just that it is a first attempt for me. maybe this record may reveal how one lives and learns with curiosity about what shows up to them in the world. more so, how one can take hold of the circumstances of their life, noticing the ways of knowing that are present there. perhaps, it is also about working with conventions and disruptions. in the book stylish academic writing, helen sword ( ) portrays the importance of interconnecting disciplines within academic research and writing. she believes in taking up ways of writing and researching that are outside of one’s area of expertise in order to gain different insight on what may seem given to a particular scholar within a particular field. she says, like surgeons who believe they have nothing to learn from pit stop mechanics, academics who think they have nothing to learn from researchers outside their own discipline risk missing out on one of the greatest pleasures of scholarly life: the opportunity to engage in stimulating conversations, forge intellectual alliances, and share ideas with people whose knowledge will nurture and stimulate our own. (sword, , p. ) sword’s words here suggest the value of engaging in the unknown, in order that it may illuminate what one thinks they know already. i look for resonances, by allowing my differing identities a place to dialogue with each other, in written word and in doing, in making and living. day one beginnings it is an unsettling thing to begin a project where the outcome is unknown. the path is also unknown. i am not sure what it is exactly that i am setting out to do nor am i aware of what it will require of me. i have this urge to do something, that there is something to understand more deeply. this involves the process of making, of creating, of thinking and writing. it is a process of understanding myself and the meaning that i pursue for reasons that i want to know more. my work as an artist has always been continually a fulfilling and also frustrating endeavour. it drives me, but also puzzles me. i feel muddled in my words in the attempt to describe it or give it meaning. i wonder at why we feel the need to fill our actions with meaning by using words to describe them. i feel frustrated when words fail. simultaneously, words can illuminate a creative process. words can give access to a process that feels only personal. perhaps, words reflect our making experiences back to us in a way that offers fulfillment. further, perhaps pairing words to our own processes of making has the ability to reflect the making processes of others back to themselves. we identify ourselves through other’s words, and through the webbing of words and experiences together, we come into ourselves and our processes more deeply. one may ask, why does this matter? why do we search for deeper understanding of the creative process of ourselves and others? it must be because there are aspects of these processes that are so personal that they are difficult to describe, yet they are so meaningful that they locate us in a way. they help us to know ourselves and to sense our own being (debolla, ). to sense our own being is something that may be a condition of being human. we want to know and sense that we are here. we also want others to know and sense ourselves as “here” too. we hope to listen and be heard. we hope that our gestures of making will mean something. i’m not sure who i refer to as the collective we. but i mean we in the sense that i am assuming that i am not the only one who feels this way, i am assuming that others also have a desire to be validated as being here. it is perhaps something so personal, that our desire for others to validate our existence is not something that we talk about in the way that it is so literal. rather, we seek out validation from others in differing ways, in approval. perhaps, in speaking and writing about the creative process, one is searching for validation, for the acknowledgement of being here. the desire to have our being noticed may be a result of an underlying reality that our presence in the world is finite. and because of this finitude there is the longing to outlive ourselves, to be noticed. we desire to be seen, heard, felt and known, for ourselves and from others. day two impulses, desires i am curious about the impulse to make something visual. one looks at something, say a scene, an object, or imagines an image and desires to create from that experience. for myself, i see something, and i want to reconfigure it, remake it with paint. i wonder what it is about looking that leads to making. what does looking provide to the process of making? maybe it provides content or a structure to create within. this is something that seems relevant to the creative process, a framework or structure to create within. perhaps, because what can constitute an artwork seems limitless, a structure offers the bounds necessary to have an assurance about the result of a creative process. looking involves noticing the way that things appear in relation to each other, their meeting points. to look, one notices voids and gaps, interesting configurations. there are overlapping shapes and textures. this way of looking offers the opportunity to see beyond the practicality of things, into their potentials as the content for something else. the act of looking locates us, we know ourselves as present in a space based on how it appears to us. the act of looking is not neutral, we see with our own lenses and perspectives, informed by the fabric of our lives. think of a classroom of multiple students sitting around a still life painting all different things, we see things differently. this is why it is important to identify what we ourselves see, we understand ourselves better in coming to see how we see, as we come to know that which shows up for us. it may be that coming to know ourselves becomes a theme as i write, the creative process enables us to come to know ourselves. we want to know ourselves more deeply, this may just be a condition of being human. we spend a lifetime trying to figure ourselves out. the search to find ourselves is often filled with uncertainty, a sense of feeling lost. finding ourselves is a roundabout process, requiring an active letting go in losing ourselves (solnit, ). losing ourselves reveals something about us in the process. so why endure the process of losing ourselves? it seems to me that it is important not to remain stagnant, rather to keep moving towards, to remain in pursuit. one may suggest that you may have never found yourself if you never truly lost this sense of self. losing oneself is about a pursuit of something beyond oneself. it’s about delaying assumptions to let in light and newness. it is a movement. the impulse to make something can be a venture towards losing self. an opportunity to question the possibilities of certain marks, shapes, colours, and forms. in this losing, with time one can see anew that which was veiled before. the act of looking involved in making requires an active noticing (greene, ). this takes practice, which then becomes utilized in other ways of knowing. through looking, one can sharpen their ability to become attuned to their surroundings. day three presence the act of making allows for a specific focus on the present. presence is the power of the act of making. in the present moment, it is all too easy to focus on the regret of the past or the fear of the future, thus causing the now to be clouded. in the creative act, one is able to escape from the enticement of past and future. for myself, i cannot help but only think about the decisions i make in the present as i am in the mode of creating. this state of being is cause for the emergent nature of the studio. in remaining present to the creative act one can experience liberation from thoughts that drift to past and to future. i experience a relief, a refreshment whilst making that offers a moment of reprieve, a pause from habitual ways of thinking. the act of making offers the possibility of emergent outcomes that i could not force. therefore, i work with an eager anticipation of that which i cannot predict. the outcome unfolds before my eyes in a way that is exciting, frustrating and discouraging. the presentness possible in the studio helps me to locate my own self. i feel my presence in the way that i look, the way that i paint or draw. i see the marks that are made from my own hand and i learn in this process. what constitutes a good or bad decision in the studio? what about my decisions do i accept or when do i reject and make over? i decide without knowing the decision as “good” or “bad.” only in hindsight later on, after time passes, am i able to see a work with the clarity to affirm the decisions made in the process. what causes or leads to the decisions that i make in the paintings? i take from moments and glimpses that stand out to me throughout the day, these moments when i am caught up in the act of looking. in looking, i capture something that is to become transferred onto the surface of my painting. this capture offers a structure for what emerges in the act of presence in the studio. why is there a need for structure for the act of making in the studio? within a context that has such vast possibility, a structure offers an artist a sort of niche to work within. stepping into the studio space is like capturing a mindset of presentness to the ever fleeting now. the act of making offers the possibility to focus that which is before us. making gives the opportunity to be present to ourselves, to sense our own movement, our own way of making decisions. though the present may be muddled, as time passes clarity emerges. day four lagging, intuition it is difficult to sit down to write, when the subject of the writing is undetermined. the possibilities feel endless. sometimes, it feels as though the subject will determine itself through the doing of it, other times this does not seem so clear. like today, for instance, i sit down to work on a painting, then i move on to the writing and i cannot figure out how to articulate or write about the experience of painting. yet, i feel this desire and need to capture what it is about this experience that continually moves me. a constant question in my head while painting is, “what if?” what if i do this, what if i change that, what if i add that? action often precedes the question but satisfaction is delayed. i do not know if the decision was successful or not until i have had distance from it. directly following the action are moments of uncertainty, lack of confidence in the decision, which elicit more decisions and changes to the painting. finally, there is a breaking moment where all the decisions come together in a moment of pause, to look and feel satisfied or dissatisfied with their culmination. that which i am looking at whilst making the painting, provides the structure for these decisions to be made. however, i abandon what i am looking at and focus on that which is emerging on my painted surface, and this takes over. it is as if the decision-making process of painting is like a tunnel, and the decisions are made without knowing what awaits or how things will fit together. there are moments when things open up and i can see more clearly how the parts come together as a whole. this process yields continually differing results, new places i arrive to. painting offers this opportunity—to take a journey, arriving at a place i have never been before, to see the gestures of my lived life in a way i did not anticipate. i see the way that colours relate in ways that are surprising, a combination of shapes and colours that draw me in and help me to see the now. these times spent looking, noticing, and decision-making in painting are moments of reprieve in the present moment. the intuitive and impulsive take over. i step in to instances of absolute clarity, knowing what to do next, and unsure of where this kind of “knowing” comes from. i wonder how i reach this sort of intuition, what has caused me to make the kinds of decisions that i find myself making. i believe this kind of intuition is the culmination of the fragments and collected ideas throughout one’s living. figure painting on studio floor with smaller watercolour sketches over to note. own photo day five recollections of / i cannot help but write to record my experience of september , on this day years later. i was in elementary school enjoying a regular day at school, perhaps in spelling class. i noticed the adults around me take on an unexpected demeanor, flurrying and coming in and out of the classroom. i saw my german teacher walk quickly down the hall, coat and briefcase in hand as if leaving in a hurry. then, i remember black box tv screens turned on in the corner of the classroom, with teachers huddled around them. i had not been told the events that were causing such behavior; however, the tension in the room was calling for me to notice. leaving school that day, there was a rush of embraces; siblings, parents, children all holding each other tighter than hours previous. there was awe, shock, and fear in the air. it was not until arriving home after being informed of the events that occurred that day, that i began to piece together the tension and behavior i witnessed among my teachers earlier. following the events of that day, the horrific images on the screen of planes flying into the buildings were replayed continually. it is as if their continual reemergence in media changed them into a spectacle to view rather than the horrific act that they were. moving forward, i found myself thinking of the dust that enveloped the city. noticing the masks worn by the residents in new york. i remember seeing videos of pedestrians running away, fleeing the buildings. i obsessed over the stories of the people who were fortunate to escape the towers, and constantly watching the news and hearing of the bodies recovered in the rubble. the stories of firefighters and police that sacrificed their lives to protect and save others were numerous. i remember watching george w. bush stand behind his small podium in the white house, addressing the nation with solemnity and disbelief. i remember maxine greene talks about the creativity necessary to think up such an awful act. i think this draws attention to the negative potential of creativity. creativity is typically discussed in a way that is positive and empowering, but the negative possibilities for a developed creative mindset can be horrifically destructive. i hesitate to even use the word creativity when referring to such an act as that which occurred on september , . the twisted minds that conjured up such an event seem to be isolated from the love that exists in human relationships and the grief that ensues in losing a loved one. day six movements, empathy as thoughts of / linger in my mind, i wonder, how does one continue in the artistic pursuit when exposed to such adversity? how can i continue to make whilst there is suffering around me? how does making help the reality of the horrible atrocities that occur every day in the world? maxine greene ( ) writes that art will not change the world, but it will change the individuals who in turn can change the world. art can cause the onlooker to be moved so profoundly in a way that enables one to see beyond themselves. this is what is so important for those of us in the world, that we practice the ability to see beyond ourselves. it is paradoxical that the creating or encountering of a work of art at once causes one to notice themselves, looking internally, and also to be moved beyond oneself, practicing noticing surroundings. with these realities of encountering a work of art one could ask, why is it important that one notice themselves as well as notice their surroundings? there are many ways to answer this question, so perhaps i will attempt naming some of them. this is, of course, only from my perspective and may be highly disagreed upon. it is important to be moved to look beyond oneself because it causes the world to be opened up for what it is, filled with vast differing perspectives and understandings. it is our nature as humans to look internally and become consumed with our own worlds, and it is counterintuitive to look outside of ourselves. this meaningful act needs to be practiced. we need to look outside ourselves. making art and looking at art allow for this practice to happen. looking outside of ourselves enables the ability to look to others’ needs, possibly even before our own. this is immensely useful in resolving disputes and in reconciliation. looking beyond ourselves enables an individual to imagine possibility, outside of their own understanding of what is possible. for example, exposure to a range of cultures and ways of knowing illuminates a whole range of possibilities that may have been veiled before. it is extremely helpful at times to come into knowing new ways of thinking about the fixed compartments of our lives that may provide limitations. aesthetic education provides learners with experiences that develop a sensitivity to their perception, senses, and imagination, particularly in a work of art, that calls for attention. by attending to these moments, the student is transformed in not only how they engage with artworks but also with the world around them. through these experiences, greene suggests that students and teachers find their own voice, their own agency, and practice using them (greene, , p. ). as individuals, we are changed when exposed to circumstances that cause us to rethink what seems given in our lives. at times, this exposure is desired and at others it is a tremendous burden. either way, in the exposure to that which illuminates our fixed world we are moved, shifted from where we were before. these changes can be mountainous or incremental. this is how we grow and change. perhaps as greene suggests, this is the way art can save us. greene says, “i believe that opening windows and doors for persons, releasing them to use their imaginations and their minds and their perceptual capacities, may save lives as well as change them” (greene, , p. ). stepping outside of our own perspectives, into another’s shoes requires the imagination. this moves us from our fixed worlds towards a more inclusive perspective. this is how one can stand with the immense suffering of the world in one hand and the importance of the creative pursuit in the other, because the imagination through creativity changes lives by helping us see beyond ourselves. this ignites relationships and interaction. perhaps, through growing in perspective, we can participate in alleviating some of the suffering of the world by cultivating the ability to see each other. day seven playing rocks i feel joy when i can watch children discover something for the first time. children engage beautifully with so many simple pleasures of life, often the overlooked. adults have an opportunity to develop a new appreciation for the things at which a child wonders. i had the opportunity to watch my niece collect rocks, place them in a container, throw and hit them together. as i watched her, i thought about the tendency to become so familiar with the experiences of our lives that small things lose our interest. in a way, our familiarity blinds us to the beauty that surrounds us. her fascination reminds me of what there is to be noticed in these rocks, in the things that surround us. it is a reminder to pay attention, to notice, and appreciate what i see. in order to have aesthetic experiences, one must practice the skill of taking notice of what is before them. my niece exemplifies the kind of attention that can be paid to the ordinary with a disposition of awe. these moments help us notice ourselves noticing. whilst discovering parts of the world, she is discovering herself. she feels what it is like to see, touch, and hear. she practices noticing her surroundings. in early childhood education and beyond, i wish to help students practice noticing their surroundings. this active discovery enhances the experience of living. as humans, we have a growing awareness of our finitude. this is reason to focus on the present moment. the aesthetic experience enables presence in a specific moment of being. i see that clearly as i watch my niece play with the small rocks; she is present to the moment of discovery and it reminds me of the importance of this kind of experience just by watching her. i feel this kind of presence whilst looking and painting. perhaps that is what is so captivating about watching a child engage with materials, for they embody a sort of fascination that reminds me of what there is to be appreciated. as i think about this young girl, fascinated by rocks, i think about the opportunity to arrive at a place one has not been before. these rocks offer something new, a new discovery or place, that she has not experienced before, and in watching her i am brought along in that experience as well. i can step into her shoes and reimagine the experience of feeling a rock, being enthralled by the noises and feelings and letting these things consume me. day eight colour, petrified worlds, critique a painting offers the opportunity to play with many varying combinations of form and colour. the potential held within colour seems endless. as i spend time painting, this is what strikes me most, the potential possible within colour. colours come together that i have not seen before, but the question of “what if” propels me to try. laying colour grounds onto the surface, i hear, almost like a gentle whisper, the next colour to mix and add to the growing composition. then, in actualizing this colour, it almost never matches the colour that came into my head, the colour becomes what it is. achieving distance from a painting is as important as the making of it. distance enables one to see it more clearly for what is without the attachment from the process of making. in this way, distance enables clarity is many areas of life. distance from a place we are familiar, from what one attaches themselves to, causes what is there to show up in the places that were hidden before. the process of achieving distance is often a path of uncertainty in wonderment of what it will be like to return to that which is being left. as i come back to a painting i have left, or attempted to forget, i come back to it and this coming back is characterized by surprise. as i come back to the painting, i feel disappointment or sometimes i feel pleasant surprise. another kind of distance is one where i am able to enter into someone else’s perspective. whilst looking at a painting, another’s position on the painting, what it elicits for them, is a way of achieving distance from my own perspective. we are undoubtedly changed when we become aware of the perspectives of others around us, when the seemingly familiar becomes strange. i see my own work differently once exposed to the nature of how someone else sees it. i understand maxine greene’s ( ) notion of the need to be freed from a petrified view of the world in this way, with an ability to imagine things as otherwise (p. ). that is the same with the works of art that one creates; they become fixed objects, seen only in a specific way, but once opened up to others, we gain clarity. this is the benefit of the critique within art education. a critique offers the perspectives of others to be taken into further consideration. in art school, i experienced many of these and for them i am grateful. yet, a concern that lingers would be the possibility for critique to cause the student to lose their own voice in the midst of participation. for example, there is no avoidance of a hierarchical structure of whose opinions matter most within the critique setting, and for reasons that i cannot entirely unpack here, however, this may cause the student to omit their own perspective and adopt someone else’s. day nine performing painting, exhausted painting, knowing painting i’ve thought often of the urgency i feel to continue painting, to keep moving forward, each day in some way or other. with painting, one can take on a painterly way of looking at the world. this constant and everyday mindset gives painting a way of being understood as “exhausted.” the urgency to keep painting is a constant beckoning call. i do not feel the sense that i have arrived, i keep doing. rather, there is always more to be done, more to paint. this is where i think of the idea of exhaustion, the work is tireless. i also thought of the exhausted painting while looking at paul housley’s work, “the ego and the id” recently at monte clark gallery in vancouver, bc. the work had a quality that felt “exhausted”, that housley had worked tirelessly on the painting. to me, the paint drips feel like sweat drips, exhausted, losing their “preciousness.” the paint has been worked over. this paint has picked up, collected, elements in the room of its making, dust, hair— indicators of where it came from. this painting feels worked over. it knows struggle, indecision, lack of precision, quickness and speed. it knows repetition coming back over and over again. there is a sense of motion. it feels coincidental like an unknown result, becoming what it is through the process of being made. it reveals how labor intensive it is not from its precision but from its urgency. these figures appear exhausted, both with their heads down. it’s almost as if this is a moment in the fight where these fighters catch their breath. day ten anticipation yesterday, i was on a flight from chicago to vancouver. just prior to landing, the pilot made his routine announcement to ready the cabin for arrival. there was then a noticeable shift in the demeanor of the passengers on the flight, a shift from a drowsy endurance to one of anticipation. from the rear of the plane, i looked forward to see many of the heads in front perked up over the headrests, leaning for a view out the window, a chance to see what surroundings were visible as a way of locating themselves. i wondered about the many times i and others on the plane may have experienced this sort of anticipation. however many times one may have had this experience, the desire to locate oneself in relation to their surroundings did not seem to lose its novel. at least it had not for me. i have revisited this moment several times since it occurred, and i have wondered what about it has sparked my interest. i think it may have to do with the objectivity and singularity of each passenger’s experience in anticipating arriving at their destination. it may have seemed that each person was interested in looking out the window to locate themselves, perhaps to identify how much longer till landing, or whether the plane is over land or ocean. a passenger may look out the window to identify surroundings from a different perspective. i noticed the intersection of main street and southeast marine drive in a way i had never seen it before. in that moment of identifying this intersection, my mind immediately recalled the experience of crossing through that intersection as a pedestrian or in a car. using these past experiences, i was able to identity the intersection, thus offering a way of locating myself in anticipation of arriving. the anticipation of arriving at a destination provides sustainment to continue on. there are images that come to mind of what it would be like to land at the destination, what would be waiting for me. each passenger imagines a different destination. passengers on an airplane anticipate the arrival at a destination, in the same way that through learning, one anticipates the clarity in self-discovery. tim ingold suggests that we learn through self-discovery, and that anticipation characterizes the path of self-discovery (ingold, , p. ). figure work in progress painting leaning up against wall note. own photo day eleven simple meanings as i read the parables from the new testament teachings of jesus christ, i notice profound lessons that lay in simple words. in this way, i wonder at how the small moments of our lives hold more than what they may seem. simple experiences are an opportunity to come into deeper understanding of what seems mundane, or given. perhaps, this is a way forward for a project, looking for meanings lingering in the experiences of my every day. i am interested in stopping to take notice of the moments that could pass me by, making the familiar strange. this takes an active focus and sense of questioning as i live out the day. with the passing of time, one cannot control the way that a day rolls into the next, the years roll into the others; the only thing one can do about this is to become present to the moments that are now. one could take up a disposition of anticipation of arriving at a destination, taking the time to notice the moments that show up to us through the process. i suppose in reading the parables of jesus it makes me think about the meanings that lay in many of the simple things in life. these meanings wait to be discovered, and by attuning myself to that around me throughout the day, i may be able to uncover them. day twelve studio and mothering, not knowing a studio is a difficult space to set up. it is an environment that must be able to capture a specific atmosphere. but there is the need to be able to cultivate a certain rhythm in the space, for it takes time and effort to feel at home. as a mother, i find my artistic inquiry all the more intertwining with my living, out of necessity. i have no other choice but to think about my creative process while doing other things. i recorded my morning thought process today as a way of unpacking how i think about creating whilst living the mundane and ordinary parts of my day. wake up, feed baby, change baby, put in laundry, glance at studio desk, hold fabrics, imagine how i will sew them together, imagine stretching the fabric. pull out sewing machine, rock baby, lay baby down for nap. sit down, sew, hear baby, switch laundry, eat. feed baby, sit down to sew, think about what to eat for lunch, think about what i have not prepared for dinner. take baby for a walk, feed baby, lay baby down for a nap. wish i could be sewing, wish i could be painting, wish i could be rocking baby. motherhood is filled with conflicting feelings, at once longing for what i do not have and once i have it, longing for what i had. it is also an exercise in balance. balancing the various things that call for my attention throughout the day; the work at home, the work i want to do, the ways i want to be present to the fleeting moments. the balance is difficult to find, as it requires a focus on the present moment, forgoing all else and making the difficult decision to only be thinking of that which is before me now. the nurturing responsibility of mothering stirs up a way of remaining constantly attuned to his needs. i care for him in the present because i must, he needs my body right this moment. my body works for him and it has been from the beginning. mothering is the most sacrificial thing i have ever done and i suppose will ever do. i give much of myself to raise this little boy and give him all that he needs to come into this world. it is my body that must do this difficult task. there is an uncertainty in making artwork that i am uncomfortable with, i want to know what i am doing, where the process is going. i feel uneasy with not knowing what to do or what will become. this is where the making of an artwork feels like being in a tunnel without having a light source to indicate the ending of the tunnel. it is disorientating, unsettling. i feel that also with the process of a/r/tography, for the unpredictability of the process leads to an uncertainty that feels risky. the potential of a dissatisfying outcome lingers. this makes continuing on in the process difficult, and moments of breakthrough are what propel the work forward. waiting for the breakthrough is tiring. day thirteen learning for learning, doing, following flow i wonder how often the question of whether this work even matter comes across my mind. does this matter, and whom does this work benefit? then i think about the way that tim ingold ( ) talks about learning to learn. he says, “it is, in short, by watching, listening and feeling — by paying attention to what the world has to tell us — that we learn” (p. ). perhaps, the work only benefits me in the sense that i am that one that learns what is to be learned. but it is the spirit of learning to learn that i am able to share with others through the work. that each person can be encouraged to learn what there is to be learned in the world. it is an orientation towards the world that i am trying to understand for myself, in order that others may too see the value of this way of living in the world. the experiences of our lives form the way we think about the world, and this way of thinking becomes “given” to us. we become comfortable in our ways of seeing and understanding the world, yet this can become a limitation when we become unable to unpack the experiences that have shaped us. for this, we need to make the familiar strange and investigate our inclinations, assumptions, and what seems given to us. tim ingold ( ) describes the nature of the anthropologist when saying, “if its method is that of the practitioner, working with materials, its discipline lies in the observational engagement and perceptual acuity that allow the practitioner to follow what is going on, and in turn to respond to it” (ingold, , p. ). in the same ways, an artist works with materials and responds to that which emerges in the process. in the acquiring of knowledge, the knowing that comes from doing is often overlooked. one might attend a course, in order that they may gain a kind of knowledge they previously were not aware of. but with being as knowing, there could be more that lies in our everyday lives that is to be noticed and learned from, rather than an assumption that the only places to learn are within the four walls of a classroom. perhaps, it is these “four walls” that offer the space to consider the learning that happens elsewhere. what if the classroom is meant to orientate students outward, recognizing the potential for learning outside of it in a living inquiry? this is where self-study holds its strength. there is much to learn from what we take notice of in the world, a focus on our sense of being. the events of our lives change us, causing a response that affects the trajectory of our thinking and lived lives. i resonate with ingold when he says, “in the art of inquiry, the conduct of thought goes along with, and continually answers to, the fluxes and flows of the material with which we work. these materials think in us, as we think through them” (ingold, , p. ). i experience this idea as true in the coming together of a painting; there is much that cannot be predicted before the painting is in its phase of being made, the choices made during the process are specific to the moment. the materials lead my thinking and move me to make certain decisions. i follow the materials unfolding before me. in the same moment, my curiosity pushes the material towards the next thing, a moment of “what if.” figure work in progress note. own photo day fourteen mothering changes today, my baby rolled over twice. as his mother, it is interesting watching levi grow and change. as the person who has continually been closest to him, sometimes i see the changes in hindsight rather than as they are happening. i wonder how this relates to the way that we learn, in thinking about the perspective that distance provides. it is only through photos that i can register just how much levi has grown since his early days. other ways i know he is changing are based on memory, for he is heavier and my arms fatigue quicker. how do we learn from hindsight? noticing the changes in things allows one to see more clearly the way things were before. day fifteen aliveness what does it mean for bodies to be alive? i am intrigued when ingold ( ) describes the body as a “tumult of unfolding activity” (p. ). he continues to say, “it takes effort and vigilance to hold things together, whether pots or people” (p. ). to me this seems to suggest there are other forces in action on our bodies, and that we may have no control over our bodies. our bodies are on a trajectory that we cannot alternate; though we can delay the effects of this force, we can never stop it. in this sense, time changes everything, but the ability to withstand this varies. day sixteen teacher and student, co-learners today i witnessed the interaction of educator, student, and material in an unexpected way. of course, the interaction cannot be accurately summarized by these three parts, as there were many more parts that contributed to the event. it was compelling watching educator and student correspond with each other by alternating leading and following in the act of working with charcoal. the alternating of roles suggests different ways of being than the commonly hierarchical perspective of teacher over student, as here they are co-learners. student and teacher as co-learners offers an alternative to the role of teacher, seeing student’s ways of thinking as opportunities for new ideas about the subjects that can become stagnant. this student moved, rolled and tapped in an emancipated way that was striking. i wondered of the work that had to be done to cultivate this kind of environment for student and educator. they played with movement, material, with a disposition that was curious for what might happen, what could be possible. i watched as the two placed the charcoal on their toes, feet, hands and faces. there seemed to be an absence of fear whilst these two subjects were co-learning. they were freely anticipating what was possible in their interaction with the material. there was a disposition to this child of confidence. the charcoal brought out a belief in this experience for the student and the assurance to see what could be done, that something would happen. i was captured and brought into the flow of this event between them; between the materials, the music, all the factors in the room that animated the experience. we were all brought into and caught up by this moment of flight, that went beyond the factors and towards something more, something significant. there was silence and yet also noise, pauses whilst also moving. the children seemed caught up in the rhythm of the flow in the studio as if they believed in it, as if they believed in the experience of letting in to that which charcoal provokes in them. this, of course, takes practice, a constant returning back to the material. throughout the time in the studio with these children, the charcoal was acting upon the educators, students and myself as a viewer. it was wrapping us all up in the experience of it. i felt captivated by this flow between student, teacher, material and environment. ingold ( ) closely studies the event of flying a kite to explore the dance of agency between human and material (p. ). dance is a fitting word as the roles of the two parts are meant to become indistinguishable, since both are fully required in order to make the dance of flying a kite happen. but ingold is drawing his readers’ attention to what animates this interaction of kite and flyer. there is something that happens that causes the flying in a way neither the kite nor the flyer could have anticipated; this is the role of the air. in a lecture to a class of students, sylvia kind described this kind of flight as something that happens that is more than either of the individual parts could have done on their own (sylvia kind, personal communication, november , ). day seventeen mark-making does in a class to her students, sylvia kind asked the question, “what does mark-making do?” (sylvia kind, personal communication, november , ). in asking this question, kind suggests that it is not a question to be answered but rather a question to ask so that it might lead somewhere or to something else. this way of thinking derives much from karen barad’s idea of diffraction. my experience with mark-making is by no means universal. there are many factors to what mark-making does, and it is ranges amongst all kinds of makers. for me, mark-making captivates. it requires all of your attention. it is transformative, in the sense that little by little mark-making causes one to change their way of focusing on the world. mark-making is a translation of how i experience the world, it is also direct, which is my experience of the world. i take in moments throughout my day and bring them to the paintings, translating them into this emerging, constantly changing visual language. mark-making causes me to try out possibilities, it causes me to succeed and also to fail. it causes me to bring things together that would otherwise be separate. mark-making moves my body to “dance” the painting. i step back, step forward, kneel down, stand back up, bend forward, tilt my head, sit down. it controls the way my body moves around the studio. i am consumed by bringing the marks together to make something and that causes an urgency in moving my body. mark-making alters the way that time passes, i become so caught up that time becomes different. mark-making exhausts me, it exhausts the painting. there are endless marks to be made on a painting and thus the marks portray the effort. mark-making causes me to become prolific, accumulating many marks. mark- making feels like a continual pursuit, always chasing after what is waiting on the horizon, only to realize that this horizon continues to move as i move towards it. but this does not discourage the effort, it is as if the possibility of arriving at the horizon is what keeps me going and continuing to make marks. ingold ( ) suggests that, “the living work of art, however, is not an object but a thing, and the role of the artist is not to give effect to a preconceived idea but to follow the forces and flows of material that brings the work into being” (p. ). this describes how an artist responds to mark-making in a way that is a call to follow and attend to that which shows up in the marks. it is the agency of the marks that call for the action of the artist. this view of artist working is distinctly different than artist possessing an idea in mind then bringing it to fruition in a physical sense, so therefore the artwork is simply the embodiment of a prior idea. for ingold, the liveliness of an artwork is in the material. the material is what calls for the response of the artist. the artist develops the ability to remain attuned to the material, to push and change and react to what shows up for them in it. figure hands holding note. own photo day eighteen - responsiveness in the studio rather than seeing the mind and materials separate or as one acting upon the other, ingold refers to gregory bateson’s understanding of mind and environment as corresponding alongside each other. ingold quotes lambros malafouris, saying that if “cognition is indissociable from action — ‘then material culture is consubstantial with mind’” (ingold, , p. ). there is an entanglement of body, mind, and materials that wraps these parts into an all- encompassing experience. ingold, bateson, and malafouris bring my attention to the way materials act on me whilst in the studio, how i am moved physically, visually, mentally in the presence of paint and the environment of the studio. this takes the emphasis off of myself as the “creator” and moves it towards my role as responder, participant. responsiveness is an essential state of being in the studio, a posture of responding to what emerges in that space. as one practices a disposition of responsiveness, seeing themselves as a participant in the space, one is able to take better notice of that which happens in the studio is beyond themselves. like many other disciplines, responsiveness takes repetitive practice. in acquiring this disposition of responsiveness, one develops a sensitivity to the world around them. responsiveness transfers to other parts of being, having the ability to be attuned to the events that come up in a life. therefore, in thinking about “cause” and “effect” within the studio practice, malafouris’ quote calls for me to see the way that materials act on me. it makes me think about how my mind is at work whilst i respond to that which the materials are bringing up. the studio offers the space to notice visibly the way materials shape and affect me. it gives me reason to look and notice how the materials of my everyday living affect the way i live amongst them. somehow in responding to what materials draw out of us, we become more aware of the things in our lives that we may otherwise avoid or remain naive to. we can become so caught up in the way the world operates that we forget to, as maxine greene ( ) says, imagine things as otherwise. for greene, this is the way to social change, helping people to imagine things as otherwise and to reimagine petrified worlds. there is potential held in making that causes makers to better notice the realities of their worlds. day nineteen slowness time acts on me as it brings a sense of urgency. i feel a lack of time in relation to the time that i feel i need. slowness is counterintuitive. it is as an acceptance that all one may or want to accomplish will not be achieved, or it will become in a time register devoid of rushing. it will come as it may. to take on the disposition of slowness in the world is to resist the given parts of the world. day twenty mothering, mother, motherhood motherhood brings what is unforeseen. no one enters into it knowing how it will feel or what it will be like. it is a state of being which requires a continual surrender to the new and the unknown. mothering requires the sacrifice of body, mind, and spirit. you are no longer your own, for a younger, more vulnerable life needs the care and nurturing of a mother. as a mother, time changes, and children are embodiments of how time changes us. there is an entanglement of time passing and the growth of a child and mother. time feels complex, it both moves forward and stands still. mothering causes one to feel satisfaction at levels they could not have imagined as well as anxiety that feels troublesome. due to the necessary demands on a mother, she must live to collect ideas as fragments in the midst of living life. this can cause the work to feel frustrating, yet it also has the potential to bring further meaning and purpose to the role of mother, as offering the space to think differently about things in a generative way whilst living out the demands of motherhood. mothering has the potential to bring up ideas, thoughts and considerations that otherwise may not have occurred. to be a mother is an opportunity to practice balancing the many roles in which she operates. the coinciding of different roles, or ways of being, is the chance to imagine the possible ways these parts can inform each other. being an artist informs the way i mother, which informs the way i relate to others around me as a friend, daughter and partner. mothering is transformational in the way that what it requires of you is so demanding it calls for a complete shift in the way one thinks of themselves in relation to those in need of care, forcing an attitude of selflessness. motherhood necessitates multitasking, operating at multiple levels of thought at once. at one moment considering basic needs of food, the next considering developmental needs, the next consumed with thoughts of one’s own needs. day twenty-one studio presence a couple months back, paul housley had a show at monte clark gallery in vancouver, british columbia titled, the player becomes the game. one of the works i came back to several times was, “the ego and the id.” an overall impression left from the work was exhaustion. the tireless work of the artist made the painting feel tired, as if so much effort, time, thought into the painting left the work exhausted by the process of its making. one painting, “the player becomes the game,” held within it everything that was ruminating from the rest of the work; it held a state of being exhausted. the paint drips seemed like sweat drips and, exhausted, it has lost its “preciousness.” the paint had picked up elements in the room of its making, dust, hair— indicators of where it came from. this painting felt worked over. it knows struggle, indecision, lack of precision, quickness and speed. it knows repetition, coming back over and over again. there is a sense of motion. it feels coincidental like an unknown result, becoming what it is through the process of being made. it reveals how labor intensive it is, not from its preciseness but from its urgency. these figures appear exhausted, both with heads down. it’s almost as if this is a moment in the fight in which they are catching their breath. i feel the difference between how quickly time passes when making an artwork and yet, in onlooking, time seems to move much slower. i feel exhausted. i look at tired bodies, bodies pushed to their limit. bodies pushed, bodies tired. bodies giving it their all, bodies sweating, bodies longing for rest, bodies pushing out every effort. in their effort they are not concerned with appearance, but zoned in on their craft, their sport. being present to this work i cannot help but feel, sense, see, how it has an affect on me. peter debolla ( ) refers to a barnett newman painting when writing about this same kind of presence. he says the painting causes him to be present to himself, his existence, and his being there in front of it (p. ). i imagine how this relates to housley’s presence in his studio whilst making the painting that i look at before me. how does the act of making also, like looking at an artwork, cause one to notice themselves as present? i think about the differences between housley being present to the painting in a different way than i find myself present to it and to myself now. the paint causes a kind of action on housley, a movement on his body as he pushes it around. in ways, the painting continues to do so to me as i stand before it, it holds me there for a moment, lingering. as i step forward and back, the paint reveals itself over time. the work in the studio is another kind of presence to the body. studio presence causes the body all sorts of movements with the purpose of following what emerges when body, mind and material correspond with one another. perhaps art-making is the opportunity to practice presence in a way that will enable one to be present to their life in a whole new way. art-making has the capacity to wake one up to notice the parts of their lives that show up for them. by this i mean that an art practice provokes the artist to pay attention to moments of significance that rise up as the inevitable result of living with curiosity towards the world. figure work in progress note. own photo day twenty-two kite-flying, corresponding in chapter seven of tim ingold’s ( ) book making, he describes the entanglement of roles between a kite-flyer, kite and air, potter, wheel and clay, herdsman, toggle and rope, all as a dance of animacy. the dance of animacy between artist, paint and paintbrush would also be interesting to explore in the context of how ingold discusses these other relations. he explains this dance of animacy between human and artifact as not simply an interaction but rather a correspondence. in the example of kite-flying, he suggests the need for the artifact, the kite, in order to correspond with the material, the air (ingold, , p. ). the material itself cannot be credited with holding all the agency for the correspondence to occur, rather, it is better described as a dance, where the components take turns leading and following. finally, using the example of a cellist using a cello, the musician not only plays the instrument but also, possibly more importantly, corresponds with sound. it could be argued that anyone can learn how to play an instrument, but what sets one musician apart from another is their own particular way of corresponding with the sound that the instrument enables. this is where ingold suggests the importance of craftsmanship, of “finely honed manual-gestural skills” (p. ). day twenty-three something happens, anticipation and in-between much of the work in the studio is done with the anticipation of something happening. one prepares the space for this something to happen. a potter wedges clay, a painter prepares a canvas, a photographer loads film. these are moments of anticipation, an in between space, left but not arrived at yet. the in-between is uncomfortable, filled with ambiguity, uncertainty. the in-between is liminal, lacking clarity of what will transpire. perhaps, the unknown has become familiar in the sense of not knowing. one may know what has become of this anticipation in times prior; however, the present is new. these traces of circumstances prior may be a part of what propels the artist forward, for she has felt the anticipation and arrived, finding the sweet reward of her efforts. the material moment has been initiated, yet it has not been actualized. the artist does not know exactly what their preparations will bring about. therefore, in this sense, the work of the artist is a venture into unknown potentialities. the artist sets the stage for this “something” and waits with expectancy, hoping that their efforts will not be wasted. i move about the studio, pacing, moving. moving this, placing that, shifting. i leave and come back, still preparing. the wonderment of what will fill this space, what will cover the surface and how will i arrive there? all i can do now is prepare, set the space for the event to occur. in one way, the painting is an event that occurs, it has a beginning and an end. however, this beginning and end are ambiguous, when does the painting begin and when does it end? from this vantage point, the whole process of bringing the painting into being is under scrutiny. does it begin with the thought, or inclination to begin the process, i.e. acquiring the support? or, perhaps, the collecting of moments and fragments with the desire to bring them together somehow? when does the painting end? this has long been a topic of discourse surrounding the impossibility of identifying a clear ending to the work. one might suggest that the work continues in each interaction with it, while others may deem the work finished once it departs from the studio or when the artist declares it is finished. in this sense, the beginning and the anticipation and the ending of a work of art are entangled together. the anticipation is what causes the collection of ideas and fragments, the preparing of the support, setting up the space. for me, these are beginning points of the painting and these moments of start are wrapped up in the emergence of the painting. anticipation is cause for a quality of slowness. our anticipation of events occurring gives these events the feel of slowness, lagging. the lead up feels slow and laborious, exhausting. the reward comes slow, after much build up. sometimes the reward is never really that, a reward. a disposition of anticipation is a slow presence to what emerges from the preparing for something to happen. the something that i am describing is that which animates, activates, the correspondence of human and material in the making of an artwork. ingold writes, “…even if the maker has a form in mind, it is not this form that creates the work. it is the engagement with materials. and it is this engagement that we must attend to if we are to understand how things are made” (ingold, , p. ). from the engagement with materials, something happens. the artist may have an idea in mind, a direction they are headed in, but the actualization of this thought is only done in correspondence with materials. ultimately, the materials act upon this initial idea or thought, causing it to come to fruition in ways one may not have initially predicted. the “something” is the part of making which reaches beyond what a maker could have foreseen. figure paint palette note. own photo figure watercolour painting in progress note. own photo day twenty-four studio as anticipatory continued… i have mentioned before the structure, system, or limitations an artist may develop to create their work within. to me this lends to the idea that the artist initiates, creating the space for “something” to happen. as mentioned before, this is often characteristic of the time spent in the studio, with an anticipatory mindset, in preparation for what will happen. therefore, the limitations that an artist creates within are done so with the anticipation that something will happen. though it varies as to what one can predict will come about, an artist anticipates that there will be something that comes about in the process. anticipation is surprising when the anticipated often does not come to fruition in the way imagined. the anticipated brings with it the unknown, newness, unfamiliarity, surprise, and clarity. the anticipated is a process begun with the hope to discover. however, it requires an effort of forever chasing, as it never becomes what one might imagine it to be. anticipatory is a quality that begins to makes sense of the emergence in the studio, processes that bring about work that i could not have fully predicted or imagined in their totality. the work is always different than i thought it would be. this is what makes the work in the studio invigorating, it’s a constant unfolding of new forms and ideas that keep me continually anticipating what would come about next. in identifying the quality of anticipation, one may understand that the work in the studio is never conclusive but rather a continual becoming. anticipation is not meant to be descriptive of the way one works in the studio, but rather offering one way of meaning to what happens in this liminal space. day twenty-five knowing in present, realizing in hindsight, making sense of motherhood is a learning by doing. the moments of uncertainty are so because they lack familiarity. i do not know yet how to respond or act, so i learn by doing. one may suggest that you can never really be prepared to become a parent. others might say that you do not know what it is like to be a parent, a mother, give birth, etc, until you do it. it is a way of knowing that comes through action, moment by moment. i had this funny encounter once with a person late one evening in my studio. after making some kind of comment about the continual necessity i am to my baby, and the exhaustion that came with that, this person responded, “well you knew what you were getting into right?”. and in the moment, i contended and said yes of course, i knew. but in further thinking, i really did not, for how could i? i could imagine, of course, what it would be like to be a mother, but i couldn’t know what it felt like until i experienced mother myself. so, in hindsight, i wish i would have said something like, “well, not really actually, it’s only become real as i’ve come to experience it.” but, alas, the conversation is long gone, and so is my chance to assert what i really feel. i have found that i come to see things only in hindsight rather than in the present. it causes me to wonder if we know things before we realize that we know them. this suggests that awareness of knowledge is different that the knowledge itself, it takes time to know that we know what we know. often knowing is not apparent immediately, but after repetition or the passing of time. knowing reveals itself at a later time. rather, there is a way of knowing that reveals itself in the present moment. in this way to know, and to know that one knows, is both a present and reflective of past. for example, standing in front of an artwork, knowing is in the presence of this artwork. yet, the event lingers and this also reveals ways of knowing the art work when one is absent from it. why does one feel the need to make sense of things? what propels one to the journey of self-discovery? where does the motivation come from to bring meaning to our experiences? it may be a shared human condition to derive meaning from the experiences that make up our lives. however, the question remains, how does one come to understand meaning? i want to suggest that meaning comes from doing. in first chapter of his book “making”, tim ingold ( ) talks about the class that he developed at university of manchester where he facilitated regular conversations between artists, architects and anthropologists discussing the overlap in their fields of study. it was not long before he realized the need for “doing things ourselves” (p. ). their conversations, while meaningful, could only take them so far. conversation about making lacked a way of knowing that only comes through doing. therefore, the class began to do acts of making together and they concluded that the doing offered much meaning to their discoveries together in other ways than what is accomplished in seminar. just as with ingold’s class, there are ways of knowing that only come through making, doing. i take only five minutes of doing in the studio before i realize how little control i have over the materials with which i engage. paint dries out before i am able to use it, or colour mixes in ways that get out of hand. there is a continual initiating and responding that happens, in moments that come up as i experience them rather than being able to predict or anticipate them. familiarity builds in time as the continual surprise of the unknown becomes part of the activity in the studio, but every surprise is different. doing whilst making is an act of discovery. the work of an artist, learner, and educator all entail a process of search and discovery. day twenty-six achieving distance, painting, painted learning is like following a chain link rope, one link in the chain leads to the next, to allow one to make sense of the previous chains and illuminate future links in the chain. making is the same way, it is a journey from one step to the next following where the path leads, a “flow” from one thing to the next (ingold, , p. ). in chapter five of his book making, ingold refers to deleuze and guattari when he suggests the possibility that “…painters cannot see what they are painting” (ingold, , p. ). one must achieve a certain distance in order that they may be able to fully see the work they are engaged with; then again, one could argue whether or not they will ever truly be able to “see” the work. i achieve this distance by spending time away from the painting, days, weeks, months. time helps me to see the painting. somehow, documenting the painting with a photograph, taking the painting out of the same physical space i am in, allows me to see the parts that i cannot see when i am with it. just as it takes time to learn the characteristics of the material, how it acts on me, how it moves and behaves, it also takes time to learn how to stay at a distance from the work, allowing me to truly see it. what would happen if i purposefully remain close and resist the urge to keep my distance? how does remaining close hide what is revealed at a distance? how does keeping a distance from the work alter the trajectory of it? while thinking about the perdurance of an artwork, the way that an artwork endures time, i wonder, how does a painting come alive? does an artwork have pointed moments of aliveness? i could try to identify all the moments in which a painting comes alive. every new encounter with it, coming back to the painting in the studio after time spent away from it, breakthrough moments where the painting and i become dislodged from the fixed point we may have been caught up in, each different voice that speaks to their presence felt beside the painting, each voice speaking to the presence of the painting. every time the work enters into a new space, seen differently. each time a stretcher is built, or the supplies to create the stretcher are collected. each “a-ha” moment before the painting, when time spent in front of the work gifts the viewer with a new part of itself. every new layer of paint, or every moment the artist steps back to see the whole. the paint leads the artist to see the work differently. any time one achieves this kind of distance brings the surprise revelation of what is held within the artwork, veiled before yet visible now. figure crossed feet note. own photo figure detail of a painting note. own photo day twenty-seven writing and painting, reading why is it that the writing feels more important than the painting? there is a sense of hierarchical value between the two disciplines of this project, the writing and painting. perhaps this comes forth from the tendency to place a great emphasis on understanding through language, seeing language as the best way to infer information back and forth, to convey meaning. is it not possible to communicate with other ways, other mediums of communication? of course it is. therefore, one cannot suggest that writing is of most importance in achieving dialogue or developing ideas. this structuring of importance is a falsity, for both practices inform and bring clarity to the other. the writing is a way of working out with plain language what happens in the studio. it is in this way that the writing reverberates back a way of knowing that which is the experience in the studio. the painting gives substance to the writing in that it provides the content for which to roll ideas around, to bounce back and forth. writing implies reading. reading is an integral process, as it pushes along ways of thinking about writing and painting, materials and makers. vice versa, the writing offers new ways of thinking about what paint does, how it acts on those who use it. however, the way that they inform each other is not always so clear. much like the way ingold ( ) suggests that materials are not passive but rather active, causing those who encounter them to respond in ways that alter or change one’s course of action, so it is with reading the thoughts and ideas of others. one’s own curiosities can be found in the words and writings of another. this shapes the way one’s thoughts develop. the three processes of reading, writing and working with paint cannot be distinguished in terms of differing value but are rather caught up in an ever-circulating system, continually informing each other. because of the nature of these entangled processes, the one who engages them is caught up in a never- ending project. from the beginning, one may think that there is an end point, an arrival to anticipate that these practices of reading, writing, and painting will eventually lead them to, only to find out that this end point is a moving target. the maker, writer and reader will become swept up in an entangled process that is a living inquiry. it becomes a way of living, of being. in this sense, the practice becomes a way of showing up in the world, rather than a means to an end. in the end, to look towards a practice such as the one i have developed, and to assume that it will lead to a final destination, is a mislead hope; rather this process lends to adopting a disposition of anticipation of what is to come, to what is there and what can be seen. it is an attempt to come into deeper ways of knowing and being in the world. day twenty-eight clay ecologies while participating in a course taught by sylvia kind, the class was tasked with the prompt to choose a material, and notice the ecology surrounding us whilst working with it. in her book, encounters with materials, kind ( ) and her co-authors, veronica pacini-ketchabaw and laurie l. m. kocher, demonstrate the potential ecologies that are present in the engagement with clay. the use of the word ecology describes the way in which a material has a life and acts upon its environment. the focus of the course was to pay attention to the way a material acts on an environment, human and non-human. there were several realizations during this exercise that have lingered. first, the clay caused us, the participants, to re-conceptualize the liveliness of a dead tree laying across the forest floor. we noticed the way clay fills cracks, collects debris from the ground as it drops, and covers. clay moulds to the surface it is laid upon, it imprints and imitates. the air was cold and the clay retained the coldness, transferring cold to our hands. clay left remnants with skin that was left dried out, it transferred pigment as the moisture of the bark attached to the moisture of the clay. after more time spent with the clay, we began to notice the collective impulses of filling in the gaps in the bark with clay, then clay was filling in crevices, cracks, holes, and voids. the clay created the space for us as participants to notice the small details of this fallen tree, noticing the qualities in the bark, the way that pine needles attach themselves to the clay in a way that is magnetic. the clay moves our bodies around the log, over it and under it, looking for more places calling to be filled in. as participants in the experience, we walked outside without much of an idea of how clay would act on us and where it would stop us. the experience was full of entanglements of clay stopping, moving, changing us whilst we manipulate, move, and change it. it is a continual back and forth without clear linearity as to how one exactly acts upon the other, but we can only wonder at what these relations might be, or how they come about. in this instance, a clear distinction of roles, of cause and effect, is not necessary as it is not the goal of the process. rather, the motivation is to notice and wonder at what is happening in the interactions, in the experience itself. i can only know that i did not have an ability to predict what would happen with the clay, but something did happen, and how that “something” came about is what i am curious about. day twenty-nine coming to love what one loves in james k.a. smith’s ( ) book, you are what you love, he asks his readers to consider the ways that one learns to love the things that they love. perhaps, he suggests, it is through the habits of our lives that form and shape that which we come to love. what kind of habits do we cultivate in our lives that develop a sense for the things we love most? how can this be thought of in relation to the way one thinks through making? a continual return to materials, to seeing what they can do, what they do. and perhaps, smith suggests, this correspondence with materials only causes a maker to delve deeper into noticing the potentialities of these materials. i want to consider colour as material in the sense of ingold’s ( ) notion of material and maker. the way colour acts in the making of a painting could be thought of in the same way that ingold ( ) thinks of writing a book, with a mind of its own, charting its own path, beckoning its writer to follow. colours call out and reverberate from each other. paint does have a mind of its own, and a painter follows its path. the painting becomes in the process of its formation. it is through the laying down of different colours beside each other that one knows how to continue on, for the thinking is laced in the doing. painting is not the execution of a plan, the plan is to make the painting; therefore, to follow its path. this path is one that becomes itself through the exchange of material and maker corresponding, leading and guiding together. the studio is a space for working, thinking, and making all intertwined with each other. this is why i work in the studio while writing on this project, as i am thinking through making, and writing these thinking thoughts down, documenting and painting. writing and painting offer a way of reflecting back the experience, making sense of it, and going back to the studio again to test what came of it. the making kickstarts the thinking, the thinking causes the making; it is an entanglement that i am satisfied with, always wondering at the intermingling, where one begins and one ends. day thirty material lives i think of the liveliness of processes of making, such as writing and painting. when talking about materials such as charcoal sylvia kind ( ) suggests that, “materials are not just static bits of matter waiting for someone to do something to them, but are always already in the midst of becoming something else” (kind & pacini-ketchabaw, , p. ). kind’s words offer a way of thinking of materials from a non-human centered perspective, recognizing that materials have lives of their own. kind ( ) asks, what if humans’ role in shaping materials is not as central as we believe? what if materials shape us as much as we shape them? what if we pay attention to the effects of things and to how things move together, not asking what an object or a thing or a material is, but what does a material do? (p. ) materials do things that show lives of their own. what materials do, demonstrates their own liveliness. it seems to me that this can be said of most all materials, that they do what they do. a painting remains alive, even when it may be considered finished. paint rots its surface, loses it colour. other come to see it, and the painting lives on in another imagining of it. of course, materials do the things they do as they are experimented with. thus, experimentation is largely a quality of the encounter between maker and material. kind ( ) says, experiments are not without risk, of course. outcomes cannot be predicted or known in advance. there is always the danger of reproducing the same, of decomposing one or more elements of the assemblage. but if we are prudent in our experimenting, we can open up worlds. (p. ) with perseverance, and an active working with what a material does, new worlds of what is possible begin to emerge. new moments, potentials, come from noticing what is possible with a material. due to a material’s inherent liveliness, artist and maker experiment with what comes of a material encounter. it is unpredictable and requires an attention, an active noticing of what shows up. in this way, kind explains how time is much like materials. borrowing from karen barad, she explains that time is a “dynamic participant in framing life…time is unpredictable, a materializing force that brings newness and surprise” (kind, , p. ). once we begin to notice the ways that materials have lives of their own, we can begin to recognize all the more so how a human-centered notion of the world fails to acknowledge all that is the liveliness of materials. day thirty-one makers as making it is interesting to think of maker as both a verb and a noun. a maker is what one is and also what one does all tangled into one word. it is with a shift in perspective that one sees maker in differing ways. maker seems to imply a sense of control over that which is being made. though there is an element of control, too often one fails to see the way that a maker encounters and reacts to the materials she works with. working with materials is transformative in this sense, for materials have the capacity to change us, to change the way we act, think, and know. in borrowing from tim ingold’s ( ) making, one comes to know through doing. the doing is a process of knowing for oneself rather than being told. in thinking about the way that ingold brings different disciplines alongside each other in his book, one can only wonder, what is the same amongst all materials? are there universal qualities to the materials we work with, and if so, how does that make one think about the effectiveness of the word disciplines to distinguish ways of knowing from each other, is this really necessary? perhaps i could attempt to understand these material commonalities. working with materials opens new ways of working with those materials, it is an ever- flowing emergence, a path to be followed. as makers engage with them, materials open up to their makers in a continually unfolding process. figure flat painting note. own photo figure drawing play note. own photo day thirty-two learning and pack-donkey people as an educator, ingold’s book making informs the way the students learn. much like the way ingold speaks about straight-lined people and pack-donkey people, could this also apply to the way that one thinks about education? a straight-lined approach towards education may only see students as receivers of knowledge, acquiring education for the ability to be qualified for a specific career path. a pack-donkey approach towards education may be one that emphasizes enabling students to take on a life of living inquiry, pursuing knowledge and learning for themselves. though becoming qualified for specific career positions is important, what would happen if a disposition of curiosity and a living inquiry were just as important as being qualified? ingold’s book confirms the importance of enabling students to become curious about the world and learn things for themselves. the question then becomes, where does the educator fit in all of this? the best thing an educator can do for their students, i believe, is offer support and set students on a path of lifelong learning. but how does one come to know the importance of learning as a lifelong journey? maxine greene’s book variations on a blue guitar suggests that as educators, one must live a life of inquiry in order to encourage students to do the same. day thirty-three making and deciding why is it that any time i may have an idea, a vision for what a work will look like, it does not materialize in this form? perhaps this is because of the liveliness of materials, which alter the outcomes of our encounters with them. i can have a very specific plan and still there is a surprise, an unexpected turn, in seeing the way things come together. artist responsiveness directly correlates with what materials do. in my experience, colour has a mind of its own, suggesting what comes next, which colour belongs beside the other. making denotes deciding. one could choose to only see decision-making as an imposition onto materials, such as the idea of artist as the genius from which the work is produced. rather, decisions emerge in correspondence with materials. the decision-making process of the making of an artwork is an entanglement of artist and material, as ingold ( ) states, a force field of flows between maker and material. much like the way the air acts for the kite and kite-flyer, enabling their correspondence, i am curious what the third component is between painter and paint. this is perhaps the surface for the painting, for without a surface a painter is unable to paint. i do not mean surface in the traditional, rectangular sense, as there are plenty of painters painting in a variety of forms and surfaces. however, it is the surface that enables one to push paint along and that causes one to paint. i do and then i come back and write. the writing informs the way i think as i make, and the making informs the way that i come to write. ultimately, the materials act on me. i am captured and curious, i hope to makes sense of this action by writing and continuing to correspond with materials. day thirty-four barad, knowledge, mothering as stated in an interview with rick dolphijn and iris van der tuin ( ), karen barad believes that the agency in things, human and non-human, is the potential for things to mutually respond to each other. barad says, “agency is about possibilities for worldly re-configurings” (dolphijn & van der tuin, , p. ). perhaps barad is suggesting a different way of thinking of relations with things. in so doing, one can begin to release the human subject from being the central force recognizing the entanglement of human and non-human in the way things come to be. further, barad encourages readers to consider all other contributors at play beyond the human and non-human. after reading barad’s interview, a thought lingers— it is difficult to see things differently, to be open to things not being as they appear. as she mentions a lack in scientific literacy, barad argues for “all kinds of people around the lab bench, so that scientific literacy should no longer be seen as being solely the responsibility of the sciences” (dolphijn & van der tuin, , p. ). one of the greatest difficulties is having the courage to see things differently. to think with other disciplines, thus changing the way one sees their own, in turn recognizing the interconnectedness of things in ways otherwise taken for granted. one thought that i have had since becoming a mother, this entirely vulnerable thought as i wake in the wee hours of the morning to the whimpering cry of my newborn, is that there is no one else who can do this for me. in these early days, it is only me for this little babe. i am fortunate to have the support and assistance of family and friends around me, but i cannot be replaced by them. i long for supportive families for all women mothers but i know this is not the case. i am grateful. yet, no one else can achieve the inquiry, acquire new ways of learning, of knowing, for us; we must venture down its path ourselves. we are, of course, encouraged along by the ideas, thoughts, and input of those around us, yet these sources of input do not replace our own way of doing to know things. we must seek after that which we desire to know. therefore, knowledge becomes something to be gained through doing rather than information to be downloaded. figure work in progress on easel note. own photo figure folded hands note. own photo day thirty-five materials surprise, paintings as assemblages i think of the painted works, and written works as assemblages, collecting and gathering ideas to make sense of them in correspondence with each other. in being present to a making moment, one does not hold a full understanding of all that is there. it takes time and distance to be able to hold things together to make sense. much like the paintings, this writing process is a stitching together of ideas, thoughts and input from others, piecing them together to know what there is to know. artists come to know through doing. artists also enable insights into what happens in acts of making by doing. they think with the materials and processes that emerge. as with painting, one may not know what the outcome will be, but one courageously, and hopefully, follows the path of its making. artists are inquisitive, posing questions, problem solving, finding solutions. artists’ work is tireless effort, always searching, moving towards an ever moving, shifting target. always in pursuit, never arriving, yet sustained by this pursuit. it is the pursuit that is shaped by the artist’s correspondence with materials. materials shift, change, stay the same, move, and more. materials surprise the one who lingers with them. this surprise is one thing that particularly interests me, the way we can be so attentive to a material, then in a moment be completely caught off guard. one can know a material in one moment and then in the next moment feel completely distant. i would call this a moment of shift, when materials change from familiar back to unfamiliar again. this characterizes a leap in one’s awareness of the potential held within a material. a moment of surprise, i would suggest, is what propels forward a pursuit of a material. the possibility of having one’s perception shift and expand lures one towards a fascination with materials. the moments of surprise, as mentioned before, demonstrate all that is held within our experiences that are veiled and then revealed. one can become so enthralled with their perception of how things are that in a moment’s notice a shift can open up new ways of understanding from a shifted perspective. this is not to say that our perception of things is false, rather, one’s own perception is just that, one’s own. it can hardly be understood as representational of an entire experience, rather simply a sliver. when we come to terms with the limits of our perception, we may become more motivated to understand what or how one’s perception was constructed in the first place. perhaps this is why artists engage in material pursuits, to continually be brought to a new or different perception of what was seemingly familiar. when the familiar becomes strange, opportunities for knowing and learning present themselves. as the familiar continues to be made strange, one is able to separate themselves from their taken-for-granted world. for me, painting offers an opportunity for familiarity to become unfamiliar again. as i combine fields of color, the gestures and mark making surprise me time and time again. i can begin with a plan only to have it completely altered by the surprises that emerge as a result of what the paint does. day thirty-six forms, designs the process of engagement changes form in its material presence, as well as in the mind of the maker. there is a transformation that happens from what was thought to what is, and the result is often surprising. the surprise, i would suggest, becomes the hope for every creative pursuit. thus, artists and makers continue in their processes in hope of more moments of surprise. ingold’s quote offers the dilemma to understand more of how things are made, and this making event is one that is puzzling and intriguing all at once, causing scholars, artists and viewers to want to understand a making moment. this is where karen barad’s concept of diffraction is particularly useful, for one does not assume that an event of making can be understood in its totality; rather, one derives possible meanings and potential outcomes in a generative and suggestive manner (dolphijn & van der tuin, ). in this way, diffracting from events of making gives ways of knowing and understanding the significance of these events, not in an effort to be prescriptive but to develop layers of meaning. his question towards the end of the quoted section above illustrates the need to go through with making things to come to understanding. making causes something to happen; in being with the things made, this changes how they act and thus changes the way one perceives them. a design is filled with anticipation for what the “destination” or the actualization of the design will be like. but a design is only that, limited in its actuality, limited in what it can hold. ingold’s questions asks readers to consider that the design is only part of the process of making; through actualizing a design, the design is refined and sharpened, and made to be what it is. in order to understand how things are made, ingold proposes one pays attention to the engagement with a material. in paying attention, one may think diffractively about what happens in moments of engagement. it requires an attention that is sensitive to the back and forth, mingling dance of all that animates a making moment. pedagogical narrations in early childhood educational settings attempt to be focused on that which comes about in encounters with materials for children and educators. day thirty-seven living inquiry, processes of thinking how does one best document processes of thinking? perhaps, in this very writing process, the writing is another form of documenting thinking. i think with the words that i write. just as painting documents part of the thinking, the writing documents another part of thinking. the writing is an attempt to document the artist’s way of thinking, connecting, gathering, collaging, assembling, putting together. the initial format for this project was a chronological recording of forty days of writing, attempting to write a certain amount each day and failing or often barely meeting the mark. this demonstrated the way that thinking processes are entangled with living a life. as a young mother, time is not my own. i am sitting down in one moment, the next i am back on my feet to care for my young one. i take a breath, lift my feet from the weight that holds them down, to rest and anticipate time to myself, only to have that switch in an instant. this writing and working process is one in which i hold ideas and concepts of making, learning, thinking, painting all in tension, and this tension guides the process without determining its outcome. kind is continually asking her students to consider what is at work, at play, in acts of making. she encourages students to notice the maker in relation to material and the environment. i wonder how then we can notice ourselves in relation to material and environment? how is our way of noticing limited, what do we miss, what do we pay attention to? this is where it becomes most interesting to me, the realization of the things that capture us. day thirty-eight thinking with, endings as pauses in chapter two of making, ingold describes the event of making baskets with the a’s class. this event was heavily generative for thinking about the ways of engaging with and thinking with materials. there was much to learn in the act of making baskets, thus showing that something is revealed in the acting and doing of basket-weaving. that “something” is up for interpretation. however, one can wonder how the environment surrounding a making event has its effect on the event of making. ingold suggests that in basket weaving, one develops “a rhythm and feel for the material” (ingold, , p. ). in one of her classes, sylvia kind spoke of the environment of materials using a metaphor of attending to all that transpires at a birthday party. a birthday party cannot be broken down into being simply cake, candles, decorations, etc. for the party is much more than this; it involves who does and does not come, how one feels after, or before in anticipation of the event. and when does the party end? well, as kind suggests, endings are never that, an end. rather, an ending is a space, pause, or continuation of something else (sylvia kind, personal communication, october , ). in “collective improvisations,” sylvia kind ( ) writes of her studio experiments with charcoal with children as part of the children's centre at capilano university. one thing that showed itself whilst working with charcoal was the way the children became fascinated with seeing themselves in each other’s drawings. this novelty of seeing themselves represented from another vantage point was continually curious. kind witnessed the children, on several occasions, come across a roadblock in their drawings, unsure how to translate what they see with charcoal onto paper. these problems became opportunities to think with the materials, towards growth (kind, ). day thirty-nine musical becomings recently, i had the opportunity to attend the vancouver symphony orchestra’s performance of j.s. bach. there was much that was at play in the making of music before me. the entanglement of music made resonated with the way that ingold ( ) talks about kite- flying, in that there are many parts working with each other. just as ingold ( ) suggests that a maker develops a “rhythm and feel for the material” (ingold, , p. ), the musicians had learned a way of signaling, following and leading, waiting for each other as they correspond with the instruments. each player learns to give the space necessary to each sound and instrument in the becoming of a song. the sounds of an instrument move the body to find them, with all the fine tuning and honing of skill to access. while sitting, listening to the musicians, instruments and sounds, i thought about ideas as active in the way they come and go. there is the hope that they are snatched, recorded, or caught. ideas that come to mind are ways of thinking with the events of our lives, provoking their beginnings. we think within our lived lives in that the things that show up for us cannot be predicted or foreseen; they happen and it is up to us to decide how we listen, document and record them. perhaps a living inquiry is a disposition toward what shows up for us in the world, and involves not only noticing but recording these moments, so as to continually build upon that which our lived experience stirs up. another thought that came while watching and listening to the musicians and sounds before me was the idea of music making as a gesture. gestures are a large part of the way one thinks about mark making, particularly in visual arts. musicians also make gestures in the making of music. only the most talented of musicians can notice the subtle differences between gestures of musicians in the way one plays and corresponds with a musical instrument. the musicians played a particular piece by j.s. bach that required them to perform in rounds which, to my naive musical knowledge, means that they would play alternating who begins and who follows. this different way of beginning the piece allows for continually making a familiar melody unfamiliar in the way that differing instruments come together, notes and sounds alternating their alignment in the duration of the piece. it is a continual reimagining and hearing the potential for the ways that sounds can align. i think about the way of alternating and changing what is already present in the making of an artwork to see the work differently, perhaps changing the orientation of the piece by looking at it from a different angle day forty gestures what would change if we saw learning as a way of living in the world? how would this affect the way students engage with their education? gestures are a part of the way that a painting comes to be, a musical piece is heard, and humans communicate. gestures are tangled up in the way that one lives their life. identifying one’s own gestures in the world offers a way of living that is enriched. as i am painting, i have become less interested in representing something; rather, i am interested in gestures in and of themselves. gestures capture movement in a way that causes a viewer to imagine the hand of the maker. gestures demonstrate their liveliness in the way that they hold action. just as sounds move the body, paint moves the body too. ideas move the body to record and document them. gestures can be exhaustive, for they are laborious and require much effort. writing over the past forty days has been both challenging and revealing. it has been challenging to find ways to put into language the thoughts and ideas that come up throughout the day. it has been revealing in that it gives space to work out what i think about things. i am thinking with the writing practice that i have taken up. there are often moments of silence, uncertainty about what is transpiring, and other moments of enrichment, of developing a better sense for the things that show up to me in the world. this has been a process of documenting and recording, as living is filled with potentials for deeper knowing and understanding. the writing has encouraged me to take notice, to ask questions, to ponder and think further rather than take things as they are. i have developed another level of thinking through things, thinking beyond things towards what they stir up. when there is difficulty in expressing the thoughts and ideas that i am attempting to record, remaining attuned and enduring the difficulty develops the writing, the thinking, and the way of speaking the ideas. writing is very much so for myself, for as i write i speak back to myself things that i have thought. this reverberating of thoughts into text, and text to thoughts, allows for an enlivening of my everyday experiences, recognizing their potentials to pull me deeper, bringing me closer to that which i am always chasing. figure painting leaned against studio wall note. own photo figure beachcombing note. . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo) what got us through we eat breakfast together in the morning. two eggs sunny sides up, music playing buoyant melodies. over shoulder glimpses to you, sat in your highchair, your throne. spoon cautiously clasped in a learning hand. you are playful being you. flashes thrust back, flash forward of baby squabbles, mid-nights alarm clock cries out of deep rest. then back to this morning five-part symphony a chattering, clacking and clanging. each days lines are walked alike the next and the former. chattering morning, clacking afternoon, clanging evening, these daily symphony lines, this music written already and yet to be written to you, to you, again. chapter two thinking with tim ingold’s making after much writing and thinking, i’ve come to realize that i’d like to spend a bit more time with the ideas of tim ingold’s book making. thus, i’ve decided to do delve into concepts from the book. introduction while working in the department of social anthropology at the university of manchester, tim ingold found himself working with students of art and architecture. this close correlation with different disciplines caused him to question the possible relations between anthropology, art, and architecture. he was curious about the way that these disciplines understand making and living in the world and how their perspectives could inform each other, offering new ways of thinking about one’s own practice. from this curiosity sparked the initiation of a seminar class, with the objective of conversing and sharing with each other in the hopes of finding connections between these fields of study. they decided to engage in the act of making together as a way of offering insight to the conversations they had in class. though they did not set out a plan of what would be achieved in the course, ingold and those who participated agreed that the course was significant in giving new ways of thinking about the interrelationships of their fields of study (ingold, , p. ). as ingold moved on to the university of aberdeen, he collaborated with faculty at the school of fine art and the visual research centre in his pursuit of understanding teaching and learning practices of art and architecture from the perspective of anthropology. this is when, along with his colleagues, ingold developed the course “the as: anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture.” this course is largely the premise behind writing his book making: anthropology, archeology, art and architecture. the purpose of this course was to help students think about the possibilities of thinking about these disciplines from the perspective of learning with rather than about. ingold states, “the aims of the course were to train students in the art of inquiry, to sharpen their powers of observation, and to encourage them to think through observation rather than after it” (ingold, , p. ). much like a hunter, learning to hunt from observing and knowing the ways of the animal they are pursuing, ingold wants to instill a way of seeking after learning in this same sort of way, learning through observing, acting, and being (ingold, , p. ). similar to the purpose of the course “the a’s”, in the book making ingold ( ) sets out to demonstrate that these disciplines are ways of “thinking through making” (ingold, , p. xi). for ingold, making is a correspondence, a mutual leading and following, between maker and material (ingold, , p. xi). with this book, he aims to explore the ways that art, architecture, anthropology, and archaeology all exist as processes of maker and material, mutually corresponding with each other. the hope would be that in seeing the relation between these disciplines, their own manifestations of maker and material would offer insight onto other disciplines, or perhaps see that though separated by academic institutions or professions, they really have more in common that one may assume. with this agenda in mind, ingold effectively explores the fields of study, exemplifying their relations through materials. in his preface, he suggests that books “have minds of their own” (ingold, , p. xi). this is very much so the way the book seems to have come about as you read it, it reads as a process of stitching together ideas and thoughts, present and past, in a web of text that accomplishes a book’s purpose. it does so not in a descriptive way, but rather through a way of offering experiences and ideas, suggesting ways of understanding maker and material. in doing this, ingold mentions the materializing of a book, this book in fact, acknowledging his role as an author in correspondence with the emergence of the writing. this suggests that materials, even those which one may feel they have “control” over, do have a life of their own. they become something that one may not have predicted and this lends to this idea that as makers, we follow their lead in more ways than we may know. learning with ingold begins by clarifying what he understands as a way of learning in anthropology. he does so by reflecting on an experience with the saami people in north-eastern finland. in this instance, he was continually encouraged to “know for yourself” (ingold, , p. ). this idea suggests that knowledge can be gained through a process of self-propelled discovery, that we come to know through our own experiences rather than being told of this knowledge. in the work of anthropology, ingold suggests, one learns through observing and doing. ingold encourages his reader to consider how one can learn with the things that we study rather than about them (ingold, , p. ). for example, a student of music could learn all that there is to learn about the instrument, but this is only part of the learning. learning with a musician would offer a completely different experience, knowing an instrument not from information gathered but rather from close exposure to one who is a master of this instrument (ingold, , p. ). ingold is not suggesting that this is the superior way of learning but rather one that must be considered alongside other ways of growing in knowledge. searching throughout the remainder of the book, ingold emphasizes the importance of an approach towards learning that is doing. he suggests that through doing we come to know the things that we know (ingold, , p. ). doing requires an active searching, and it is through searching that we come to know; not that the searching leads to an end result, but rather it becomes a way of living in the world. in searching, one takes up an orientation towards the world that seeks to find and learn from it. this becomes the intention of the doing, in that one does with an intention to continue learning. the mind and the heart become engaged in learning through doing as a means of growth and movement. ingold acknowledges the entangled processes of human initiative and material response, describing this as the force field around materials (ingold, , p. ). the force field encompasses the liveliness of a material, human and non-human. in this sense, ingold refers to deleuze and guattari when describing the flow of materials, and that those who work with materials follow this flow (ingold, , p. ). ingold says this: materials are ineffable. they cannot be pinned down in terms of established concepts or categories. to describe any material is to pose a riddle, whose answer can be discovered only through observation and engagement with what is there. the riddle gives the material a voice and allows it to tell its own story: it is up to us, then, to listen, and from the clues it offers, to discover what is speaking….to know materials we have to follow them.… their every technical gesture is a question, to which the material responds according to its own bent. in following their materials, practitioners do not so much interact as correspond with them…making then, is a process of correspondence: not imposition of preconceived form on raw material substance, but drawing out or bringing forth of potentials immanent in a world of becoming. (p. ) here, ingold speaks to the liveliness of materials, the ways that they act on those who engage them. materials have the ability to alter a life’s course in however small or large a way. they demand a response. in attempting to understand the cause for mounds, a common archaeological find amongst the ruins of ancient civilizations, ingold ( ) argues that the becoming of mounds is a process of continual growth. ingold argues against the notion of archeologists who suggest that mounds are discovered as monuments, petrified in the past. rather, he conveys the need to see these mounds as alive, continually growing, both in the times of their beginning as much as now. he says, “today’s deposit becomes tomorrow’s substrate, buried under later sediment” (ingold, , p. ). this demonstrates the way that mounds are continually evolving. this is true for the mound as a whole as much as the individual parts that come together to make up the mounds, the particles continually changing, becoming. in this sense, mounds are ineffable as they are difficult to locate a beginning and end, rather only understood through a lens of continually growing (ingold, , p. ). this is how ingold proposes one comes to see thinking through making, as in continual movement. a question in his book, ingold seems to suggest that materials continually come from and return to the earth, much like that which happens in the life of a mound. however, i am curious how this could be seen in the realm of the sustainability issues that are urging residents of the earth to take notice. what about the materials generated by human hands that the earth cannot absorb back into itself? how do we see earth’s rejection of some materials? ingold suggests, “to inhabit the world, by contrast, is to join in the processes of formation” (ingold, , p. ). how can we, as inhabitants of earth, join in its formative processes to offer help to the earth rather than harm? mark dion is an artist whose work raises an awareness for how art can respond to the environmental crisis imposed by global capitalism. dion’s artworks which incorporate plastics found in the ocean act as a warning for what will become a much larger issue. in thinking about dion’s work, one can imagine the role that art plays in making viewers to face issues of consumption and excess, particularly how art works relate to the world they live in (lookofsky, n.d, paras. - ). ingold ( ) offers warrior by henri moore and infestation piece by simon starling as examples of artworks that each, though similar, suggest a different kind of aliveness of materials. infestation piece has been submerged underwater for several years, and its surface taken over by mussels. thus, when one encounters it, they cannot help but feel the overwhelming sense of the way these mussels are taking over the figure. while warrior, on the other hand, would seem static, frozen, and petrified. there is an aliveness in infestation piece that is captured by the visceral quality of the mussels covering the surface of the piece. when looking at infestation piece ingold suggests, “…we can at least look with it and feel some sympathy for its plight” (ingold, , p. ). ingold discusses the fact that living and non-living things need careful care and attention to remain held together. without this care, things rot, fall apart, breakdown and disintegrate. ingold makes the point that, “left to themselves, materials can run riot. pots crumble; bodies disintegrate. it takes effort and vigilance to hold things together, whether pots or people” (ingold, , p. ). it is interesting to think about the nature of things to trend towards their own destruction, and they need intervention for their own restoration. this shows that materials have lives of their own, regardless of human intervention. humans work to maintain and preserve; this shows that materials have a life that cannot be contained and suggests that as humans we have less control than we may think. in each of ingold’s chapters, he offers a kind of image or example which he expounds upon to convey the essence of making and materials. one image he uses is of a kite and kite flyer. human and artifact engage in a dance of agency (ingold, , p. ) where there is a continual overlap of leading and following, corresponding with one another. however, ingold highlights that the dance is not between two members but rather, three. there is a third component that enables the kite to fly, and that is the air. a kite does not fly solely with a kite flyer and kite, one must have air as well. ingold offers readers the chance to think about the kite flyer’s need to correspond with the air (ingold, , p. ). the kite flyer and kite, once animated by the air, are able to do more than what they are capable of individually. the three parts are caught up in a dance of animacy, following what comes up in each moment. one may be inclined to describe this as an interaction between the three parts described before, yet ingold hesitates from the use of this word as he feels it implies, “… that the interacting parties are closed to one another, as if they could only be connected through some kind of bridging operation” (ingold, , p. ). hence, ingold uses correspondence as a word to suggest what happens between maker and material. he says, “to correspond with the world, in short, is not to describe it, or to represent it, but to answer to it” (ingold, , p. ). this answer back to the world is cause for newness to reveal itself, through presence with and attending to that which happens around us, the materials of our lives. the artist’s work is a way of offering an answer back to the world. the work does not describe or represent, even in the instance of a photograph; it is an answer to that which shows up in the world for the artist. it is possible that the artist never sets out to describe or represent, but instead offers a perspective into the world, their answer to it. in this sense, the artist thinks with and answers to the world of materials. telling, drawing ingold speaks of the kind of telling in stories that enables readers to follow a path. stories enable their writers to tell what they know without articulating it verbatim, but rather by creating an experience for their reader to discover (ingold, , p. ). ingold conveys the difference between telling and articulate speech by suggesting articulation’s preoccupation with cohesion and fluency. telling of stories leaves the space for generative thinking, it remains open. whereas, ingold suggests, articulate speech is closed, fixed in its transference of information. however, “…if all speaking were like that, we would have no stories, no myth, no poetry, indeed no verbal arts of any kind. if all making were like that, we would have no axes and no cathedrals. and if all thinking were like that, we would have no sympathy” (ingold, , p. ). telling encompasses the way that ingold thinks about language, making, and thinking. the words of told stories move their readers. finally, when thinking back to the exercise of making baskets with the a’s class, ingold attempts to summarize that which was at play between basket and weaver when he says, “…as in our experiments in basketry… the twist of the string was generated in a kind of force field that included both the forces imparted by our manual movements and those intrinsic to the material itself” (ingold, , p. ). there is a give and take correspondence between materials and makers that is tangled in a force field of energies acting between and on each other. finally, ingold proposes drawing as a way of telling (ingold, , p. ). he goes on to offer different kinds of lines, geometric, abstract, and awful. lines tell. they are traces to be followed, they do not represent, but rather aim to capture an essence. in this way, “the drawing is not the visible shadow of a mental event; it is a process of thinking, not the projection of a thought” (ingold, , p. ). one thinks with the drawing of a line. the drawing of a line captures one’s thinking process, because it is this process. he captures this idea in comparing the modern city with an ancient city. the modern city is characterized by many straight lines, roads that predate the buildings surrounding them. whereas in the ancient city roads follow the wandering lines of their original journeyers, pack-donkeys, winding about. lines have essences that leave their mark on the those who follow them, so much as lines capture the qualities of their maker (ingold, , p. ). ingold ( ) tells us the following: yet as we have already seen, the quality of movement when we write by hand, or for that matter when we draw, extends into the lines that appear on the paper. the duration, the rhythm, the varying tempo, the pauses and attenuations, the pitch and amplitude are all there. these lines are both inspired by, and carry forth, our affective lives” (p. ). rather than straight geometric lines with their start points and end points, ingold urges his reader to think about the ways that in life, these do not exist, rather, “…there are only horizons that vanish as you approach them, while further horizons loom ahead” (ingold, , p. ). he believes that there is a way to embody living as a straight-lined person and a pack-donkey person. straight-lined people are much like the modern city, connecting points in the quickest way possible, while the pack-donkey of the ancient city follows a path that may not be the quickest, easiest or most convenient. the pack-donkey engages a meandering line, wandering through the city, so the process becomes just as important as the destination. the straight-lined donkey overlooks the journey, with the sole focus on a destination. ingold’s understanding of maker and materials is that both follow a journey without a specific destination in mind, but rather something emerges throughout a wind-path, much like that of a pack-donkey. ingold quotes t.s. eliot’s question, “where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?” and suggests that, “truly, never in the history of the world has so much information been married to so little wisdom…” (ingold, , p. ). perhaps, he is suggesting that we live in an age of much awareness and so much information at our fingertips, yet in his eyes, this abundance has not been married to a growth in wisdom. ingold’s words cause the reader to consider what it would be like to take up the disposition of a pack-donkey in the world: obdurate, capricious, dogged, curious, petulant, at once captivated and astonished by the world in which they find themselves. they will not be hurried but go at their own pace. they live in hope, not under the illusion of certainty. their paths may go this way or that, unpredictably. they find the grain of things and follow it, and in so doing find themselves. all learning…is self-discovery. where next? know for yourself! (p. ) with this disposition ingold calls for particular kind of attunement to the world, one that is curious, hopeful to discover and eager to learn, following lines of many kinds, in order that one may take up the attitude of learning to learn (ingold, ). remaining thoughts one thought that lingers for me throughout the book is a desire to understand what ingold considers to be included as art. he speaks of nature, archaeological digs, anthropology, and yet does not seem to specify what he considers to be art. in further thinking, perhaps ingold is not concerned with defining art so much as he is interested in conveying the way that architects, anthropologists, archaeologists, and artists all have similar ways of engaging with materials as makers of differing kinds. he is not out to define these roles and their differences, but rather offers the potential of their similarities. in chapter one, ingold gives the metaphor of swapping out books from their usual places. by switching them into different genres, this provides new insight to otherwise fixed ways of thinking about them, and gives them a new context (ingold, , p. ). ingold is hoping that the convergence of differing disciplines will illuminate qualities that may not have been noticed without their comparison. perhaps, in discussing the relationship between material and maker, ingold is suggesting a wider perspective on what constitutes a maker, one who corresponds with materials. the ability to see the relation between disciplines furthers the potentials within themselves, to continue to think new and emergent thoughts about the capabilities within a discipline. thinking with ingold, with his convergence of disciplines, makes one think that the materials makers work with are physical and also conceptual. what possibilities are present when we think about materials as concepts? the maker, scholar and artist all correspond with materials. maker is both a noun and verb. the idea of a maker is both what one is and an action, that one is doing something generative, creating and producing, responding, corresponding. ingold accomplishes that which he set out to do in the preface, create a deeper understanding of maker and materials through the different lenses of anthropology, archaeology, architecture, and art. the methodology of the book is one in which ingold follows the path of the book as it emerges, piecing together experiences and ways of thinking from each discipline to come to better understandings of making with materials, learning and teaching. the book is not descriptive in the sense that it comes to a finite conclusion, but rather each chapter points to something for the reader to consider and take notice of, furthering their own understandings of maker and material relations. this is where the effectiveness of ingold’s “argument” makes its impact, in the way that ingold in the very process of writing is thinking with the writing, thus doing what he is also trying to write about. the writing as process is tangled up in what it is trying to divulge to its reader, the maker and material process of relation. there is a strong resonance between the writing itself and the processes ingold wishes to capture. this is precisely the book’s strength, that ingold continually takes up the way of learning, or knowing, that he tries to convey to readers throughout the book. ingold’s book is not meant to be understood as a means to an end, descriptive and conclusive. rather, ingold thinks with the experiences he writes about to make sense of the maker and material, learning and knowing. therefore, the book does not have a final resolution; rather, it is a line offering readers to follow its path. figure landscape note. . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo) after he goes to sleep the second time bedtimes are rushed minutes much more than a few months ago. i tire and wait, watch and long, to take me back to when my bedroom window faces west. morning comes light air afresh, and new. morning eyes, heavy, tired, not willing to let go the night sleep. this time like the first dive underwater into a cool lake, refreshing after an afternoon spent in the sun, soothing like bath bubbles that fill the room with pockets of perfume. to be ice cold awake, wishing now could linger rather than fade. freeze here. i used to sit and rock levi. head pressed i’ve woken up to the dripping, filling presences of rain drops drumming on my window sill. after days of sun brilliant to meet me, wet air feels cold. to chest, mouth slowly drop open falling into a deep sleep. back and forth, forward and back, from toes to heels, no feel to rush to reach for the next to-do post like a button carrying me on to the next lap of the race. i used to hold him as long as i could but the day continues, minute turns to minute an hour by hour. morning eyes turn to day eyes, and forget their sleepiness. and reluctantly put him down in his crib. little sun shadows that bend around curtain screens that open. i saw those. only now i distract easily, these words bring me back to focus, to figure how to spend days end with levi in arm again. i know more now than the last time i looked at these trees at this time but still less than tomorrow. guard and guide these steps of mind. chapter three: on being mom for many of the mothers whose work i have read, we toil with the nature of motherhood, but we do not wish it away, or regret the decision. i wanted to be a mother. i read of mothers who choose to write poetry, or write in short concentrated segments, bracing for the next disruption to take them away from focus. i’ve found this to be the case for myself as well, continually aware that the next disruption can come at any moment. i’ve heard it said once that disruption is good, it is important so that one does not continue on in one way of thinking but rather is interrupted to consider something else. in living and learning, we must embrace the distractions, the disruptions in thinking and accept them as generative for developing thought and digging more deeply into that which we chase after, that creative impulse. as i learn as a mother, and artist, i’ve come to be regularly in the company of ambivalences. _________ through the working out of this thesis, sorting, finding, reading and searching, i’ve become a mother. my hope was that i would be able to document the processes of coming to a place i have never been before. and in writing that proposal before birthing my son, i had no idea that mother is the most significant of the new awarenesses i’ve come to and have never been to before. mothering has challenged my idea of what it means to be an artist, a student, a writer, and scholar. to be mother felt like it would be able to remain a separate compartment of my life while i continued on in pursuing my artistic inquiry, only to realize that the demands of motherhood shift the way i carry out all other parts of my life. i am continually distracted, disrupted, from moments of focused attention. there are moments where i feel i could burst with delight in the aftermath of a glimmering smile from my son, then moments where the hours move slower than leaves changing seasons. i think often of the responsibility for this young vulnerable life, while simultaneously feeling vulnerable myself. i learn stories and know moms who have lost sons and daughters and i hold my little babe, looking into his eyes and being reminded of the need to let go and recognize how little is really in my control. that is where i cling to the ordinary, the mundane, everyday duties, the opportunities to care for my son, as teachers of gratitude. i hope to remain faithful in these small moments. i’ve wondered often, how do i continue my creative work amidst the demands of mothering? this writing that follows is meant to elaborate on the qualities of being a mother that transform and change me. i hope that in writing about these things, i might see them for what they are. i believe that as a woman, speaking about being a mom, it might do ever so small a part in breaking down that which has boarded up motherhood to keep it out of view. as i rely on the courage of mothers before me, my own mother to birth me, i hope to do the same for mothers after me. i write about it in this way to offer my story into the legacy of the valuable work of nurturing and caring, raising up life. i write to help others to feel the courage to write and share of their experiences. it is too often that one may feel their story is not significant enough to merit the attention of another. but perhaps the inclination to validate our lives based on the attention of others misses the point, maybe we should see that we ourselves have the ability to choose to believe and know that each and every life is valuable. and perhaps, if we can fuel the courage to share our lives, this might change us to believe, see, and write out the value of our own lives. _________ the irony in motherhood is the juxtaposition of togetherness and isolation. one might feel together with surrounding community while also terrifyingly alone. if a mother has a partner, there can still be stifling isolation here. a partner will struggle to understand what it is to be a mother. i want him to know, to feel, to experience what it is like, but i am continually confronted by the fact that he will not. not that he does not want to, but we live with the startling dissonance that empathy only takes one so far, the shoes of another cannot be fully stepped into. so, we try. we talk, share, and listen in hopes of moving towards the other. ______________ i am encouraged to read the words of moms who are being honest with themselves in their writing. they try their hardest to name what mothering brings up in them. that is what i want to read, the words that feel so honestly true that i see myself. for a moment, someone else understands, validates, and resonates. i am taught by the words of mothers. i seek out the guidance, familiarity and learning that come from finding myself in stories told by other moms. robyn sarah ( ) says: i had children, and for them — with them — i recreated a lost realm, the embrace of a primary home. in becoming a mother i felt myself viscerally linked to all humanity and all of human history. these are no small things. caught in the powerful undertow that is generation, i felt the elemental currents and cross-currents of time, the layering of natural and human cycles; and those currents, as i regained voice, became my chief delight as a writer. time, once the tyrant, became my subject. (sarah, , p. ) she sees becoming a mother as partaking in a larger story beyond herself, giving meaning, purpose, to the day to day, menial and mundane. ______________ the work of mothering is an art of navigating distraction. you can expect not to be able to complete any one task without there being something expectedly unexpected to happen. levi is beginning to be communicative. i’ve wondered what it will be like once he can speak back to me, argue with me, and disagree with me. how will i know how to respond? when that time comes, i hope to remember him as a baby, in my arms quietly content. i’ve become so focused on time with him. i write things down daily to help myself remember the things i’ll one day forget. i fill a box full of the things that hold reminders of these early days. we need reminding of the moments that hold significance. i need to set things aside for a later time in the hope that these things would bring me back to the moments they point towards. __________ rebecca solnit ( ) writes about life in a way that pays attention to the overlooked. she notices what is to be noticed, hidden in the mundane familiarity of everyday living. her writing enlivens the experiences of the ordinary and makes one believe in their significance. her focus reminds me to focus on my own daily living. ________ in her chapter in the book double lives, susan musgrave ( ) writes, ““i’m a writer,” i say trying to sound convinced. throughout my pregnancy, i’ve been determined to hang on to this image of myself, though lately, instead of writing, i’ve been pricing crib monitors and, instead of reading dostoyevsky, speed-reading diaper dialogue” (musgrave, , p. ). musgrave portrays the ambivalences of mothering and continuing on in one’s creative work, the struggle with identity and how to fit them together. i’ve felt this way too, struggling to hold on to the image i have of myself, while also embracing the new image. the duties of mothering become excuses not to work. or do they? or is the mothering the real work? it may be easier to fold laundry than it is to figure out a painting, for instance. both take a different kind of exertion of effort. one’s daily tasks can easily become barriers to studio work. it is a deliberate fight, a worthwhile battle to do the creative work. the mothering work is work that takes a priority of immediacy, while the work of making has a sense of urgency. things need to be attended to here and now, they cannot wait. but i also find moments to remember my curiosity and interests outside of my mothering life. mothering and making have to work together: there must be the space for both. a mother’s pursuit of her passions, no matter how they materialize, must be able to coexist with the nurturing of children, should she choose that path. a woman should not have to choose between work and family. there must be the space for both together. to choose one over the other, artist over mother, mother over artist, feels as though i would be deserting one side of myself. susan musgrave ( ) quotes ken kesey when he says, “i felt like you can write forever, but you have a short time to raise a family” (musgrave, , p. ). kesey’s words make me think about the finite periods of time we have for certain things to be accomplished. bodies have windows of time. bodies tell us when they can no longer do. bodies tire, and bodies disintegrate. the finite motivates me, perhaps more than i even know or come to recognize. _________ it is necessary to document the struggles, ambivalences, challenges, and joys of motherhood to learn from them and gain an understanding of being a mom. i hope to see the real experiences of others, as a way of understanding and naming difference. the pressure of mothering and challenge of home-making force me to be honest. a day’s work is filled with partially completed tasks. nothing is finished in its entirety. it is a continual carrying on of partial tasks taken up from the day before. writing and making remind me of the dialogue happening continually inside me. i wouldn’t know what to think, writing and making speak back, communicating myself to myself. as a mother, making and writing remind me that i am here. i can keep paying attention to learning and growing. ————— robyn sarah ( ) says, “over the years i’ve learned that long fallow periods are part of my rhythm as a writer (as they were even before i had children) and that this is something i must simply accept and work around” (sarah, , p. ). we have to believe that as mothers, we are still working towards our crafts in the pauses and openings. mothering forms our perspectives on the things we work towards. motherhood keeps me from taking for granted, in time and mental space. there is an urgency when i have a moment of focused attention. mothering helps me recognize that there is potential in the way that i use my time. mothering helps me see the finite nature of time, that there is not an endless amount. that one day, my time as it is will run out. mothering shakes me awake to the movement of time. therefore, i must use the time that i do have, that i have been given. __________ i let myself attune to the building of knowledge in my son’s mind and heart, as a way of disrupting the familiar for myself, learning again by watching him. di brandt ( ) also believes in the creative energies of early childhood. she says: how i loved sitting on the floor with my children and their friends, making up poems while they played with their dolls and crayons and kittens and blocks and puzzles and paper and scissors. early childhood was a perpetual state of intense creative chaos, an environment in which i and my poetic instincts thrived. i was blissful, i felt tuned to the cosmic wellspring of creativity and expressiveness. but it was also a very fraught time, given its many cultural pulls and stresses in so many aspects and directions. (brandt, , p. ) here, brandt also says much of what i have been trying to say all along, but she says it better. she describes this time of being with her young children as a “fraught” time, one of difficulty considering the challenges of cultural influences on her own priorities. yet she also mentions the tremendous “creative energies” she experienced in the midst of mothering with her children. to mother is to recognize the entanglements of being. it is almost as if in mothering, one is in a correspondence with the children in care. i think of when one refers to the birth of a child, one hardly ever mentions the birth of a mother that has happened at the same time. perhaps, this reveals a tendency to look beyond, to look past, or to forget a mother. ___________ there is pressure on the time i am away from levi. these moments away from him are like the breaks, the cracks, the in-between. luanne armstrong ( ) says, “i practiced writing in the bits and pieces and cracks and fractures of my life, and i learned to live there as well” (armstrong, , p. ). as i read the stories of mothers and their pursuit of creative careers, there words are filled with struggle, fight, challenge, and difficulty, yet also joy. learning to work in the gaps, the spaces of time. throughout this process, i’ve learned a rhythm of working in the in-between. i’ve also come to see the way that the in-between moments of my life sustain and fill up the other kinds of moments. i am more fully myself when i take captive, and hold onto the overlooked, in-between. in this sense, i hope to stitch together, collect, the things that happen in the in-between spaces of living. as i live in motherhood, nothing is too small for my attention, or at least i aspire to think this way. i hope to be invested in the small bits, to look and take notice of what is, collect and hold together, to truly see. i hope. figure song note. . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo) this could go one of two ways i wait for your eyes to droop, heavily, down and close, letting rest take over. you trust me to know how long to wait before you’ve given in completely, then you know i’ll turn you over and gently set you down. i’ll leave you now for a brief while, while i put my feet up, take my deep breath and rest till together we fill again with liveliness. chapter four: on painting stephen westfall's ( ) article titled “slow painting” speaks of a painting’s ability to call for a viewer’s attention and time in a slow reveal. in quoting art historian robert storr, westfall says that john zurier’s works “emphasize the phenomenology of surface and colour through the visible traces of the painter’s labor, though his touch is by comparison almost shockingly light and simultaneously visible…paintings are the sum of sudden insights and urgent responses” (westfall, , p. ). sudden insight and urgent responses speak to the way that time acts on the process of a painting becoming. a painter develops a sensitivity to flows and rhythms of insight and response whilst sitting with the work. the viewer of paintings comes to see these insights and responses perform themselves over time spent with the work. westfall believes in slow painting as a stance in the world. westfall suggests that there are contemporary painters who “insist on a phenomenological experience over a connotative one” (westfall, , p. ). further, he believes that the phenomenological experience of painting has a specific contemporary significance and this lies, perhaps, in a painting’s slowness, for by comparison to the quick digital world, paint is always slower. westfall continues in stating that all the painters mentioned in the article take up a certain preoccupation with time in the making and viewing of paintings. when speaking of frecon’s paintings, westfall ( ) says: to be fully present with frecon’s paintings, one had to adjust one’s sense of being in time. upon making such an adjustment, visitors were rewarded by the revelation of a layer of meaning that subtends the merely retinal: the fullness of frecon’s paintings could be said to emerge from their illumination rather than to be laid bare by it, and that sense of emergence is something that must be felt in time. (westfall, , p. ) here westfall conveys the way that time engages the viewer in being present to frecon’s paintings, in a slowness of reveal. as one recognizes the layers of meaning within the visual, time passes and moves forward, transforming the viewer in the process. “the slow painter openly courts time as a partner in the process of distributing paint on a surface and as an arbiter of style” (westfall, , p. ). in this sentence, westfall believes in the slow engagement with time as an important co-maker in the coming together of a painting. ________ i am trying to say that there is meaning hidden in things even if we do not originally perceive it as so. one might write something off, because of not being familiar with it or not having a previous interest. but perhaps, in leaning into the things that are unfamiliar, perhaps even uncomfortable, meaning will flow and rise to the surface. we may see our own selves in a different way, or fall in love with something entirely new. one must be willing to be caught off guard by that which they are unfamiliar with, and let that unfamiliarity have its way in them, changing and transforming them. this prepares for the next experience of this kind until living is a never-ending acceptance of the new, and transforming it into that which one already knows, a process of becoming. mothering, making, writing, all are a slow chipping away at the same thing over and over again, over a lifetime. i realize how much of mothering happened before levi, before even pregnancy, in the anticipation. without the luxury of hours on end to sit away at the studio, or at the laptop writing, the project of making as a mother is in small bits over long periods of time. __________ i tried to teach myself how to paint a bird today, i painted over fifty birds. looking at pictures, imagining them in my head, i painted them again and again. i figured something out. the problem of painting asserts itself to me like an unrelenting headache. yet, amidst the pain and disorientation, i continue and am ever growing in my belief in the project of painting. i hope to bring together the voices of many others whose words on painting have offered me some relief, some glimmer of hope that this unrelenting headache will rise, ease and that perhaps clarity will ensue. this practice has not been linear, but has been rather loopy, almost like a meandering line. like the line blazed by a pack-donkey, the logic is inherent and intuitive, it must be decoded as the animal makes a decision to turn here, wander there, sometimes moving, sometimes stopping (ingold, ). drawing from art historical paintings, sketches, photographs, and intuitive impulses, the paintings i make become a record of a multitude of encounters, the balance of following a plan and making things work together as i go. as a mother, i am interested in the balance of work and labour, dealing with the constraints of child caring whilst continuing to live with the preoccupation of painterliness in the experience of my daily life. therefore, much of my work deals with that which is at hand, documenting the domestic and incorporating that as the bones which hold up the work. painting provides an opportunity to focus, and yet to welcome disruption which has become so prevalent in the way of being and living as a mother. ————— in the chapter “‘before her time?’ lily briscoe and painting now,” allison rowley writes about lily briscoe’s painting from virginia woolf’s book, to the lighthouse. rowley says, “for lily briscoe, as for eva hesse, the act of making art is ‘absurd’ or ‘impossible’, but it is also fundamentally necessary to her existence” (rowley, , p. ). i live with this idea of inherent complexity in acts of making. the processes we take up as makers have histories that are complex and layered. making denotes an output, a footprint, and made things take up space. we must negotiate the terms of our made things, over and over. __________ in her introduction to the book unframed: practices and politics of women’s contemporary painting, rosemary betterton ( ) takes an interest in the materiality of paint and one’s engagement with it. paint has an ability to hold the actions of its making and, for this, the viewer is able to reimagine these actions over and over, thus the painting takes on new life with each presence with it. throughout the chapters selected in her book, betterton argues that, “… painting is… a complex practice that engages with the psychic and the somatic; it is ongoing and relational and, at the same time, located in specific times and places” (betterton, , p. ). furthermore, betterton suggests that this conception of painting remains distinct from historical notions of what a painting could be. she points to an understanding of painting as an intersubjective process rather than only a system of signs or an object (betterton, , p. ). to me, this means the process of how the painting comes into being is legitimized as a primary topic of discourse surrounding the work. ___________ betterton ( ) refers to griselda pollock when she explains, “women share the fantasy of the creative self, desire that privileged space of imaginary freedom called the studio according to the masculine modernist tradition” (betterton, , p. ). yet, this place is one of contradiction. there is a tension inherent in the desire to paint as a female. in light of this, feminist art practices displace the male genius at the center of the modernist movement. by inserting a body other than male, feminist art practices challenge the notion of the “hyper- masculine” artist, working away in their studio (betterton, , p. ). betterton focuses on how female writers and artists confront a male discourse, grasping at the complexity of feminist artistic painting practices (p. ). ___________ in every instance of making a painting, there is a point where i seem to be dabbling with losing it. there are risks, momentary decisions, revelations that bubble up where i am left feeling like i need to hold things together. perhaps, this is the painting acting on me, moving me in space, shifting my perception of it. in this part of the making of paintings, i feel like i am juggling, holding my breath, holding out hope in anticipation of a moment of surprise to have its effect on me. barbara bolt ( ) writes of her own experience of this when painting, suggesting that the painting has a life of its own (bolt, , p. ). bolt asks the question, “if a painting comes to perform rather than merely represent some other thing, what is happening?” (bolt, , p. ). to me, bolt is recognizing the liveliness of materials, and the way that paint holds the actions and motions of their making in a way that enacts themselves in the glance of the viewer. ___________ barbara bolt ( ) attempts to theorize the performativity of paintings. she utilizes gilles deleuze and his use of performativity through his concept flexion. bolt employs deleuze by suggesting that language and bodies reverberate to one another, speaking back and forth. language, in this sense, would be that of materiality. materials are communicative. as deleuze is quoted by betterton, language has the ability to reflect the body that held it (bolt, , p. ). bolt proposes that, “…in painting there can be a mutual reflection between bodies and imaging” (bolt, , p. ). when one looks to an image, the body is also there in it, with the image. when i think to my own practice, materials have their way, and i find myself following along, playing, figuring. in a similar way, bolt says, “where materiality insists, the visual language begins to stutter, mumble and whisper” (bolt, , p. ). barbara bolt ( ) suggests that paul cézanne’s work captures the overlap of essences between landscape, paint, and actions. bolt says, “in cézanne’s paintings, we become aware that a picture is not separate from its production” (bolt, , p. ). there is an exchange, a back and forth, a response and co-respondence of all that is at play in the making of things. recognizing this is important for any maker of things, to see that they themselves do not hold a heightened position, but are caught up in an entanglement with the materials that move them. bolt mentions the presence mastery. how can mastery be thought of with materials that assert themselves? in what ways is mastery a misleading word, as it seems to imply dominance over, rather than a corresponding with? perhaps mastery with materials recognizes the liveliness of matter that takes vigilance, effort, and time to know and understand. when discussing the paintings of indigenous australian artist, jane harris, bolt suggests the performance of paintings plays out slowly over time and with committed attention. she says that paintings hold the motions of the body, the landscape and the materiality of paint. the painting plays over the acts of its making. rebecca fortnum ( ) employs norman bryson’s notion of the glance to suggest the viewing body is given the perspective of the artist, and made the central figure in the viewing experience (fortnum, , p. ). in the book, painting, terry r. myers ( ) includes a comment made by mary heilmann, when she suggests that each of her abstract paintings can be considered an autobiographical marker (myers, p. ). heilmann says: this is the front. that’s behind. no, that’s the front and this is the background. that’s an edge. no it’s a line. that’s a space. no, it’s a thing. round and round, and over and over. this way of looking makes a still moment move in time. gazing at a picture like this can amuse me for hours. it’s like watching a movie. (myers, , p. ) here, heilmann plays with and is captivated by the performance of the painting. she describes the kind of viewing experience that i feel to bryson’s glance and fortnum’s description of jane harris’s works. myers ( ) quotes marlene dumas as she writes, “painting is about the trace of the human touch. it is about the skin of a surface. a painting is not a postcard. the content of a painting cannot be separated from the feel of its surface…” (myers, , p. ). she also says the following: (painting is a messy business.) it cannot ever be a pure conceptual medium. the more “conceptual” or cleaner the art, the more the head can be separated from the body, and the more the labor can be done by others. painting is the only manual labor i do. (myers, , p. ) in both statements from dumas, she negotiates the thinking and making that become entangled in the labor of painting. in the book, painting at the edge of the world, douglas fogle ( ) suggests that dumas’s writing portrays a personal way of relating to painting (fogle, , p. ). dumas’s sentiments about painting are strongly connected to her person, her way of making, and her body living through painting. paintings capture a visual language and time of a maker’s life, they hold moments, fragments even, of a life, and this undoubtedly has its effect on those who encounter a painting. bolt ( ) engages charles sanders peirce’s idea of fact as, “the pressure of the dynamic object in constituting meaning and effects. in imaging, the dynamic object insists that its presence is felt” (bolt, , p. ). the materials of the painting assert themselves in the way they cause both viewer and maker to not simply look past but to look at, to notice materials in and of themselves. materials make their presence known and felt by embodying the subject who moved them. myers ( ) proposes that, “painting is a great unbroken tradition that encompasses the entire known history of man. painting is, above all, human” (myers, , p. ). the acts of mark-making are actions that have existed through the entirety of humanity. perhaps, this is the reason for painting’s continuous revival, for as humans exist, painting exists. painting has survived multiple deaths, and its resurgences often come through in other mediums. painting’s presumed death could be because paint itself was overlooked and became a means of accomplishing something else, out of a concern of representation. in painting, myers includes part of daniel birnbaum’s text, where is painting now, when he explains that painting has become a medium that is not limited to a rectangular frame. painting is identified in other genres, mediums, and modes of work. this demonstrates a shift in understanding what a painting can be and where it can be. painting may have been deemed dead but it has shown through in many other genres. its death has enabled artists and painters alike to identify painting as a philosophical way of thinking and making (myers, , p. ). _________ in february , a panel discussion at monica king contemporary in new york took place in conjuncture with the show new skin, addressing the current state of abstract painting (two coats of paint, ). participating in this discussion were katherine bradford, sharon butler, craig stockwell and thomas micchelli, along with curator and artist jason stopa. stopa began the conversation by addressing the possibility for abstract painting as a political act. both sharon butler and craig stockwell believe that, as a return to traditional and meditative practice, painting has the ability to aid in enduring through difficult times. stopa utilized bradford’s point to question: is it necessary that art engage contemporary societal issues? stopa and micchelli propose that just because an artwork is not addressing politics overtly does not mean that it is not politically engaged. both stopa and micchelli acknowledged that art has the ability to move us, in ways that can be difficult to put into words, and this is the great power of art. stopa furthers the dialogue by introducing the correspondence that happens with materials acting on maker, and maker acting back on material. further, bradford suggests that painters build up a vocabulary that they rely on over and over again. in talking about chance, sharon butler remarked, “in the intentional, there’s an element of chance, and in chance, there’s an element of intention” (two coats of paint, , para. ). by speaking of chance, butler identifies the liveliness of materials. stopa contends that the current conversation within abstract painting is about developing a way of talking about art making. in the face of a neoliberal capitalist society, a painting calls for a different kind of attention from the viewer, slow and time absorbing. in this sense, the paintings reveal themselves slowly, over time. paintings offer a kind of experience for those who choose to engage with them differently from a rushed, strictly functional, profit- motivated way of being in the world (two coats of paint, ). _________ anne ellegood ( ) interviewed amy sillman in about her show directions at hirschhorn museum. sillman is interested in making her paintings in a way that appears as though they are barely holding themselves together, almost falling apart, showing vulnerability, fragility, and humility. she is curious about the possibility of finding meaning in making something by hand that is not completely understood in its totality by the maker. she pursues the edges of what she knows, to see what lies on the other side, to push for something unexpected and surprising. by utilizing the weird, uncomfortable, and awkward beauty, she works through a position of discomfort to see what is possible (ellegood, ). i continue to think of painting as a way of arriving at a place i’ve never been before, this being a process of discomfort and creative wandering. i may have a plan or an idea for the painting and yet it often becomes something different than that. somehow what i imagined the painting to be becomes lost in translation of the material moments that comprise its emergence. figure still hills note. . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo) a brushstroke is a word is a gesture paintings with poems and words with paint paints painting words with paint or writing with words so written painted words paint like words write with paint. chapter five: coming into focus as i have continued on in this living inquiry, life circumstances and world events have made me question, reconsider, revisit, and change. the global pandemic of covid- has brought a waterfall of unforeseen circumstances. the riots following too many black persons losing their lives unjustly are yet another indicator that things are not how they ought to be. my curiosity throughout all of this has been, how am i changing? how am i a part of the problem and in what ways can i help? these events have given me reason to question the motive behind my writing and artistic practice, and a desire to search for the purpose of my work as a contribution to a reimagined society that is just, filled with peace, hope and love. i have come to see that an investment into the importance of the imagination and education for freedom are necessary to address in understanding what is at play in acts of making. acts of making are transformative. the arts have the potential to grow, to change and transform those who encounter them. this transformation is a part of the puzzle in transforming society, by building a community of love, hope, and peace. in this chapter, i think with carl leggo, jorella andrews, walter brueggeman, and bell hooks, in theorizing the importance of creative practice for personal and societal growth. carl leggo and storying the world throughout my a/r/tographic study, almost daily writing has been a way of processing thought, developing ideas, and coming to understand what i know. i began writing shortly after my son was born. this functioned as a two-fold way of writing that would be necessary to complete my ma program, and also as a way of remembering and being present to all that may be happening in the transition to motherhood. writing became a reflective gesture to speak myself through the unknowns and learning curves of motherhood. the writing became a way to look back and to notice how i progressed and changed across time. this also represented those times where i was not able to be in the studio painting, so writing filled a need for expression, for making. then i began to find myself intrigued by playing with words in ways that related to how i would play with paint. this is where poetry became the seeming next step in the inquiry process. poetry was not something i had spent much time with, in fact i had mostly written off my ability to engage with poetry because of how my previous teachers would grade my ability to engage poetry. they judged my ability as often subpar or below; therefore, i’ve lived the last decade assuming that i was clumsy with poetry. as i grew in paying attention, and taking notice, i found that the poetic inquiry would well up inside of me and come out onto my small pocket notebooks. i began my play at poetry. through this i began to see that poetry could be a way of being, of knowing, and of coming to understand my surroundings. poetry could heal, and offer a space of rest and peace. poetry could fill, enliven, and sustain me through the days of the hard work of childrearing. poetry could actually cause me to enjoy the mundane leaps and bounds more than i would have thought. and thus, i began to experience the transformative power of poetry. this is when rita reminded me of the work of carl leggo. leggo’s work was a homecoming for me, as it spoke to much of what my a/r/tographical study had become: a way of knowing through doing and being. leggo’s narrative inquiry is a way of making sense of his experiences and therefore coming to understand, grow, and change. leggo speaks of the way that the writing shapes him (irwin et.al., p. x). william f. pinar ( ) introduces the book storying the world: the contributions of carl leggo on language and poetry, as a project that encapsulates the work of carl leggo. he begins by quoting leggo, who says, “to engage with poetry is to live in the heart’s way, to acknowledge the truthfulness of emotion and experience as significant teacher” (pinar, , p. ix). pinar demonstrates leggo's relationship to poetry as a practice that lives with him, forms and shapes him. pinar points to leggo’s interest in understanding what it means to be human and how one goes about finding answers to these kinds of questions (pinar, , p. xi). pinar again quotes leggo, saying this: poetry connects us with wonder and mystery,’ leggo promises us. ‘poetry is a way of knowing and being and becoming.’ becoming human? ‘what does it mean to be human? a poetics of research asks this question, and seeks to answer it. (pinar, , p. xi) this resonance of wonder and mystery, of seeking after language and attaching this to experience, furthered my investigation into leggo’s work, as it relates to materiality and material engagement with lived experience. erika hasebe-ludt ( ) recognizes a pedagogy of the heart as the pivotal part of leggo’s contribution to discourses about learning and teaching (hasebe- ludt, , p. ). leggo’s work recognizes the heart as a source of knowing through listening and paying attention. hasebe-ludt speaks to how leggo urges readers to follow the plea of virginia woolf, “to find relations and affinities between seemingly incompatible things and ‘to re-think human life into poetry.’ …to address fear with a curriculum of love and with courage” (hasebe-ludt, , p. ). throughout my painterly, scholarly and living inquiry, i have searched for links between things to see how they resonate, strengthen and develop together. leggo ( ) describes that painter harlan hubbard recognized the relation of his interest in painting as an interest in living (leggo, , p. ). this shows that creative engagement is living experience. poetry enables leggo to engage in living. furthermore, poetry opens worlds of understanding to how one makes sense of experience. as such, leggo suggests that, "poetry can inspirit our curriculum studies by opening up innovative ways for paying attention to language, which, in turn, opens up new ways of knowing and becoming, and new ways of researching the experiences of daily, quotidian, human experiences” (leggo, , p. ). by forming knowledge on human experience through poetry, we can come to know, see, hear, and feel. along with poetry, leggo understands story as a way to know and journey through living. in the experience of grief, leggo utilized writing in making sense of the tragedy of loss. leggo suggests that poetic inquiry could be confused for a search towards self-discovery. leggo says this is not so for him. he says, “i search, but i am not searching ‘to know myself.’ i search in order to live, to become, to explore possibilities in a kind of creative wanderlust. i am engaged in ‘the perpetual and elusive process of becoming’. poetry is my companion on the journey” (leggo, , p. ). for leggo, writing inquiry is a continual process of searching to continue searching, it is an unending source of engaged living. leggo ( ) describes the entanglement of narrating story when he says, “so, we narrate ourselves and we are narrated by our lived experiences. therefore, we are both the subjects and the predicates of the discursive functions that compose our subjectivity which is always plural, multiple, tangled, mysterious, malleable, and unpredictable” (p. ). in this way, our becoming is always in process, moving and changing. writing our story, through narrative, poetry, and painterly inquiry, are companions helping to make sense along the way. with an investment into our own stories of making, we come to see identity, place, and relationship to those around us (leggo, , p. ). leggo ( ) encourages students to write autobiographically in an effort to sit with and learn from experiences in order that they may become more effective teachers (leggo, , p. ). leggo proposes that in paying attention to our own stories, we can better aid in the process of a student wandering through their own. hope is a word that leggo ( ) uses often in his work to describe the outflowing of his writing projects. he describes himself as surprised and challenged by the way that writing reveals glimpses of hope. leggo quotes virginia woolf in saying that the task of poetry is this: to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry. (leggo, , p. ) this struck me as significant to my own inquiry, as i have set out to stitch together ideas to form new understandings. i have sought to seek after the mysterious affinity of things, to tease out meanings and develop a deeper awareness of processes that have brought healing and hope to my life. leggo ( ) writes, “in my writing, i seek to live attentively in the moment, and to know the momentous-ness of each moment. i seek to enter lived experiences with a creative openness to people and experiences and understandings” (leggo, , p. ). this statement summarizes what painting, reading and writing have grown to mean to me as a way of knowing and being. when i think of all the tragedy, struggle, turmoil and challenge that has happened this year, i think to leggo’s suggestion that, “lifewriting is all about recognizing (as in knowing again) one’s position and the possibilities of relationship that emerge from a keen sense of location” (leggo, , p. ). in life-writing, one can be made to face their position in the world, for as uncomfortable and challenging as it may be, it is necessary for a life that seeks justice. in this way, life writing has the potential to be the beginning of change, for with critical introspection one can see the room for growth. irwin ( ) quotes robert bringhurst when he states, “what poetry knows, or what it strives to know, is the dancing at the heart of being” (p. ). i’ve wondered, what does poetry know that painting also knows? what could it mean to dance at the heart of living? leggo’s work demonstrates a constant grappling with the purpose and meaning in storying through life. he suggests that, “the real purpose of telling our stories is to tell them in ways that open up new possibilities for understanding and wisdom and transformation” (leggo, , p. ). i recognize this as leggo’s underlying awareness of an unending need for growth and change. an orientation towards living that is open to change understands the limits of perspective and the need for renewal. leggo ( ) quotes jean vanier from becoming human when saying the following: we have disregarded the heart, seeing it only as a symbol of weakness, the centre of sentimentality and emotion, instead of as a powerhouse of love that can reorient us from our self-centredness, revealing to us and to others the basic beauty of humanity, empowering us to grow. (leggo, , p. ) leggo utilizes vanier’s belief in the power of heart to demonstrate that storying speaks to and from the heart. leggo is trying to help us see that the heart has been misunderstood as weak and unreliable, when in fact it has the potential to connect us to the real. poetic inquiry aims at the space between things. as leggo ( ) says, “becoming human is a lifelong commitment that requires practice. a poetics of research acknowledges that we are all in process, always in process” (p. ). poetry seems to be a way to access and preserve the process of becoming. leggo continues on to say that his relationship to poetry is rhythmic, holding him to each day and moment (p. ). for leggo, poetry is sustaining, hope-filled and energizing in the midst of the ordinary busyness of living. throughout his work, leggo refers to walter brueggemann’s book the prophetic imagination. leggo appreciates brueggemann’s work in the way that the imagination is realized as a powerful act of resistance to dominant consciousness and leggo writes that in each of his poems he seeks this kind of imagining (leggo, , p. ). leggo and brueggemann both understand the energizing passion poetic engagement ignites. when speaking of coherency, leggo makes a remark that spoke to the inner conflict i have been feeling throughout this last year of becoming mother while also working, writing, painting, and learning. i have struggled to know how to fit the various parts of me together. i have struggled to know how to fit the parts of this a/r/tography project together. leggo writes, my lived stories are not coherent because i am not coherent. i do not stick together. most days i am fractured, broken, piecemeal, divided, decentred. i present a facade that seems seamless, but the image is really a patch-work quilt, an extemporized contraption of scraps. so, why should my writing create the illusion of coherence when i really want my writing to re/present the multiple subject positions that i occupy in my living experience? i am not one main and complete idea. i am a legion of ideas—ideas without end. (leggo, , p. ) for leggo, writing reveals. writing is an opportunity to tell the truth, be honest, and move through living with hope. the question of painting throughout this past year, painting has been a way of coming to understand the ideas i’ve wished to explore in this thesis. it has been the surface to play with and push beyond limits of my perception. in the book, the question of painting, jorella andrews ( ) refers to the power and entanglements in leah durner’s paintings when she says, as explorations of colour and of the materiality of paint, durner’s poured enamel abstractions unashamedly embrace the often complex dynamics of beauty…at issue instead are reconfigurations of awareness, passion, insight and rhetoric with respect to how the world — including the complex, layered image-worlds in which we are immersed— might be enjoyed, observed, pictured and questioned. (andrews, , p. ) this demonstrates the way in which painterly abstraction grapples with reconfiguring, layering complexity. painterly abstraction calls on a viewer to navigate the problems of the painting. in this way, paintings confront and challenge viewers to navigate their murky terrain. every time a viewer may encounter a painting that reconfigures what is known in the world, they are reminded of the possibilities within perception, thus changing their perception. andrews utilizes the ideas of maurice merleau-ponty throughout the book. she states, “merleau-ponty, by contrast, argued that philosophical propositions could be regarded as viable only insofar as they were rooted in our lived engagements with the world and applicable to these realities” (andrews, , p. ). philosophy must speak to and resemble the reality of one’s experience in the world. andrews suggests that merleau-ponty understood painterly practice as being able to ask the kinds of questions which cause one to consider one’s place in the world in a way that is lived and practical (andrews, , p. ). andrews portrays merleau-ponty’s fascination with painting as a way to be challenged and changed. she says this: following merleau-ponty, at issue is painting’s capacity both to enter and create territory that is unavailable to cognition as conventionally understood, which remains unnoticed, unimagined and, therefore, also unquestioned within the exigencies of everyday life. the willingness to enter this under-examined and therefore unfamiliar territory, in which we find ourselves complicit, and in which we may find ourselves subject to challenge, change and what feels like dispossession — rather than the more conventional visual bringing-to-expression of particular ideological positions or critiques; within the merleau-pontean model those are secondary practices — i take to be foundational to social and political efficacy at whatever level or intensity this might be required. crucially, these modes of awareness are fundamental orientations that can be cultivated and practiced, without, exclusion, by everyone, everywhere. (andrews, , p. ) here, andrews ( ) is demonstrating with merleau-ponty’s ideas that the openness to receive a painting that is unconventional, surprising, or unexpected reflects a certain orientation towards the world that is useful for societal change. sitting with that which challenges and obscures cultivates a readiness and willingness to accept the limits of knowledge. in this way, andrews suggests that while one’s work might not overrule previous knowledge, it can speak to a kind of human experience that is relatable and this is valuable (andrews, , p. ). painting has an ability to enact the everyday and mundane in a way that calls for attention, raising one’s awareness of the mundane in ordinary living, thus transforming living (andrews, , p. ). andrews ( ) demonstrates merleau-ponty’s belief that empiricism and rationalism failed to acknowledge the complexity of human experience in the world. the notions of objectivism established a false sense of being able to detach mind, body, and world. andrews writes of merleau-ponty, “his overall objection was that the systems of thought produced in each case failed to articulate the richness of our everyday experiences of what it is like to live in the world of other people, things and events” (andrews, , p. ). andrews describes merleau-ponty’s interest in the observance of everyday encounters with the world as a starting point for understanding human behaviour (p. ). merleau-ponty believed that perception through naïve consciousness is already in itself meaningful without the need for an external structure to make it so (andrews, , p. ). one could derive much knowledge from paying attention to and unpacking everyday engagements with the world. andrews states, “merleau- ponty presented painterly investigation as characterized by the creation of new structures” (andrews, , p. ). in referring to the artist el greco, andrews points to merleau-ponty’s call to proactively reimagine that which is otherwise overlooked. he suggests that the paintings of el greco represent his “active navigation of his condition, and of the world, by means of this altered mode of seeing” (p. ). andrews speaks to the complex entanglements of hands, eyes, materiality, history and the unseen in painterly practice, thus being a place where one’s condition in the world can be articulated, expressed, and made known (p. ). from andrews’s use of merleau-ponty’s notions of perception, i recognize an emphasis on the immediate, moment by moment presence to that which reveals itself to us. in paying attention to that which shows up for us in the world, we can come to better understand ourselves, our behaviours and our position in the world. from understanding, we can grow, change, and be transformed. for merleau-ponty, “…the world in its visual and material being immediately presents itself to us as significant, even if that significance is unresolved” (andrews, , p. ). ultimately, my work has been an attempt to philosophize my way of engaging in the world through making, thinking, believing, feeling, caring, nurturing and understanding. perhaps, it is useful to think with the world rather than about it. in this sense, it may be helpful for understanding our lived experience of the world to speak directly to experience rather than to hypothesize and project what one might think to be true (andrews, , p. ). one of merleau-ponty’s missions is to dismantle false objectivist claims and relish in the complexity of everyday lived experience as a way towards understanding. as andrews states, this mission is already being carried out by everyone who is willing to approach their perceived world as such a beginner, in an attitude of at least provisionally relinquishing inherited knowledge, and belief, and with the ability to convey, in words, imagery or gesture, the meanings that arise, thereby making them available for exploration (and reinterpretation) by others. (andrews, , p. ) perhaps this is the power of painting as merleau-ponty believes it enables one to reimagine their perceived world in a way that enlivens one’s perception. andrews utilizes merleau-ponty to state that a work of art can “awaken perception in others and initiate a process in which accepted notions about self and world become destabilized, require questioning, and are reconfigured” (andrews, , p. ). what value does an engaged and destabilized perception offer to self and society? art works and processes of making are open in the sense that they are always subject to different ways of interpretation (andrews, , p. ). an artwork offers the opportunity to let the unfamiliar sit with us and to learn what we do with it (andrews, , p. ). merleau-ponty recognized the way that “an image, through its very unfamiliarity, would provoke us to scruntinize it, and in so doing, to scrutinize ourselves also” (andrews, , p. ). one’s way of responding to an artwork is worth paying careful attention to, by asking what does the artwork do to you? when we open ourselves up to what an artwork can do in us, we have the tremendous potential to form new ways of thinking about the habits of living so often taken for granted. andrews continues on to say, “for merleau-ponty, then, cézanne’s paintings, and his statements about the experience of painting, did not retrospectively record completed processes of thinking, perceiving or learning, or retrospectively point to the birth of new meanings but rather enabled them” (andrews, , p. ). painting enables ways of thinking, knowing, and being in the world. the reason i have begun to think expansively about learning and teaching is because of my ongoing commitment to the practice of painting. painting enables my shift in perception. merleau-ponty theorizes events of abstract movement. andrews summarizes acts of abstract movement according to merleau-ponty by saying, “by this, he meant our ability to project or throw ourselves into tasks and situations that are not demanded by actual or pre-existing conditions. abstract movement is, in the first place, brought into play — largely but not wholly — by our own initiative” (andrews, , p. ). here, merleau-ponty describes abstract movement as that which is not attached to necessity. this movement possesses a freedom, resembling the world and also embodying that which did not exist before. andrews explains the significance of the aesthetic sensibility when it comes to motivating social and political change. the emphasis here lies on the personal, the self, and the need to be changed individually in order to initiate collective change. herein lies the power of painting, to alter or suspend for a moment one’s perception of things with the prompt to reconsider and shift. change comes in the willingness to inquire into the parts of self that are confronted by lack of understanding and to sit with the discomfort (andrews, , p. ). further into andrews’s ( ) book, she mentions merleau-ponty’s understanding of a painter’s uses of space, style and language as responses to the visual world. andrews identifies merleau-ponty’s notion of style as gradually emerging through an artist’s focused attention on their experience of being in the world (andrews, , p. ). andrews writes, works of art communicate, then, not because their content resembles the world as we have already seen it but because they present particular ways of perceiving and responding to the world, and of sustaining intentionality and inventiveness towards it, that arouse our interest. (andrews, , p. ) andrews demonstrates merleau-ponty’s belief that painters search for a level of depth that is politically and existentially useful, thus deserving further attention (andrews, , p. ). paintings have the ability to bring a kind of engagement with consciousness that transforms our encounters with the world. the prophetic imagination in the book, the prophetic imagination, walter brueggemann ( ) names the prophetic imagination as the ability to raise an alternative consciousness towards dominant culture. the prophetic imagination aims at locating effects of domination in culture to liberate, free, and point towards the implementation of a new kind of reality, by thinking beyond the seeming constraints within a society to imagine what could be possible. it is the role of artists, creatives and deep thinkers alike to point society towards wholeness and the role of society to listen (brueggemann, , p. xiv). one must look beyond how things have always been in order that a new reality can be envisioned. what could it mean to live a curriculum of love and a community of hope fueled by a prophetic imagination? brueggemann speaks to the necessity to be a part of dominant community, yet to have an awareness of it, in order to remain distinct. the beginning of change lies in the ability to look beyond present circumstances while still operating within them. arts education has the capability to awaken, enliven, and reignite a belief for passionate and hopeful living. perception as practiced in arts education is crucial to the resistance of dominant consciousness. the arts create the space to dabble in perception and dialogue with those whose perspectives differ, thus informing our own. the willingness to sit with an artwork reflects an orientation of openness towards another’s perspective. what if this willingness, practiced in the experience with art, was present in circumstances where perspectives differ? as perception grows, consciousness follows, and as consciousness grows a pursuit of an alternative becomes possible (brueggemann, , p. ). brueggemann suggests that dominant consciousness leads to a focus on self-service without consideration of a new kind of future (brueggemann, , p. ). our thinking is so bound to what is possible within everyday constraints that we have lost the ability to imagine differently (brueggemann, , p. ). brueggemann recognizes the artist as capable of proposing new ways of looking at the present so that a new future can be realized and able to help others grasp their own ability to imagine. in this way, art communicates. art that is about suffering and death can remind us of our finitude and reengage our perspective (brueggemann, , p. ). as a community, prophets of alternative consciousness can offer perspectives that embolden and enliven those who engage them by offering hope (brueggemann, , p. ). hope recognizes a reality beyond the here and now. hope knows that more is promised. brueggemann identifies jesus of the new testament as an example in raising an alternative consciousness towards the numbness invoked by royal consciousness. he says, “jesus penetrates the numbness by his compassion and with his compassion takes the first step by making visible the odd abnormality that had become business as usual” (brueggemann, , p. ). further, brueggemann suggests, "the replacing of numbness with compassion, that is, the end of cynical indifference and the beginning of noticed pain, signals a social revolution” (brueggemann, , p. ). artists, as prophets of the prophetic imagination, engage a focused reconsideration and reorientation towards the present in order to enable hope for a new reality. art on my mind in her book, art on my mind, bell hooks ( ) addresses identity politics within the art world, how and whom gets their work seen and heard. her focus lies in the black liberation struggle, specifically how art is transformative and necessary for the black community. hooks writes: it occurred to me then that if one could make a people lose touch with their capacity to create, lose sight of their will and their power to make art, then the work of subjugation, of colonization, is complete. such work can be undone only by acts of concrete reclamation. (hooks, , p. xv) concrete acts of reclamation are necessary for the prophet of alternative consciousness to dismantle the royal consciousness of oppression and domination. unfortunately, those who perpetuate the belief that art is not relevant to one’s daily life are in positions of power that silence those struggling to reclaim art’s importance for collective flourishing. somehow some children grow up to forget the meaningful engagements with making that were so formative for knowledge development. how can we resist this tendency to forget the importance of making as we leave childhood? in what ways must education be framed so that the arts are not seen as an extracurricular? the imagination is a contested space. perhaps the diminishment of the imagination moves individual focus away from self-care to a place of self-forgetfulness. and this is not on a level that one is conscious of, rather, it is a subtle silencing of genuine needs of self- care. as a result, any kind of engagement in art-making is framed as sensitive and weak rather than the incredibly courageous and important work of caring for self and society. from a young age, children often build up a belief that their voice is insignificant. what happens in a child’s heart when their courage to share is silenced? over time, what message does this teach children? what if a child was encouraged to follow the inclination to share, to be vocal and to record their ideas, thoughts, and creations? rather than being overlooked, what if children were encouraged to share their ideas with consideration, respect and love for others? this ultimately could look like teaching children what it means to care for self, in an effort to cultivate and care for culture. in speaking about the black liberation struggle, hooks ( ) writes, “if black folks are collectively to affirm our subjectivity in resistance, as we struggle against forces of domination and move toward the invention of the decolonized self, we must set our imaginations free” (hooks, , p. ). the imagination is a tremendously radical space in which to reimagine systems of oppression and fight for change. bell hooks quotes the painter charles white when he says, “…without culture, without creative art, inspiring to these senses, mankind stumbles in a chasm of despair and pessimism” (hooks, , p. ). art must be recognized for the self- transformation it cultivates in the lives of those who engage with it. change begins with personal change, and personal change can be aided by acts of making and engaging art. hooks writes, “collectively, black folks must be able to believe fully in the transformative power of art if we are to put art on our mind in a new way” (hooks, , p. ). hooks quotes ntozake shange as she shares the meaningfulness of art in her life: “paintings and poems are moments, capturing or seducing us, when we are so vulnerable. these images are metaphors. this is my life, how i see and, therefore, am able to speak” (hooks, , p. ). hooks recognizes the importance of art making in the process of self-realization. just as the car needs gas in order to run smoothly, the soul needs to be nurtured and cared for, and this can be done through acts of making (hooks, , p. ). bell hooks quotes the critic susan crane when she says, “art is not simply the secret, delectable, beautiful object, but the transcendental power of creativity, the alchemical potential of materials” (hooks, , p. ). here, crane speaks to the incredible potential within materials that enables them to reach beyond themselves, to touch, change, and transform those who engage them. this, in turn, moves beyond the boundaries of the material capabilities into the realm of transformation that is significant for cultural reconciliation. hooks speaks to the multifaceted nature of beauty in its ability to offer hope in the midst of difficulty. she refers to john keats’s writing, saying, “when keats wrote the lines ‘a thing of beauty is a joy forever, its loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness,’ he attributed to beauty the subversive function of sustaining life in the face of deprivation, unrelenting pain, and suffering” (hooks, , p. ). beauty is not here meant only in a visceral sense, but in a sense of transformation, a thing of beauty is a thing that transforms. circumstance is transformed in the presence of beauty. when hooks refers to the absences and openings in felix gonzalez- torres works, she suggests that us, as viewers, fill those holes with whatever comes from our own experiences (hooks, , p. ). in this way, we face our own realities in the midst of encountering this work. the private and public collide, suggesting perhaps that we all may have more in common than we’d like to admit and thus, this encounter enables a new way of envisioning togetherness (hooks, , p. ). the more i’ve engaged in this project of learning what is at play in acts of making, the more i’ve come to see the imagination as a political act. not only the imagination but also the will to imagine, a belief in the imagination. hooks says, "the practice of freedom in daily life, and that includes artistic freedom, is always a liberator act that begins with the will to imagine” (hooks, , p. ). hooks believes that engagement with beauty has the potential to provide the sustenance to endure the most difficult of human experiences and that the will to imagine frees us. hooks continues by saying: beauty can be and is present in our lives irrespective of our class status. learning to see and appreciate the presence of beauty is an act of resistance in a culture of domination that recognizes the production of a pervasive feeling of lack, both material and spiritual, as a useful colonizing strategy. (hooks, , p. ) teachers of all kinds can encourage the ability in themselves and their students to identify beauty and appreciate it, in their own work and the work of those around them. this is a way to counter the silencing of one’s voice, which may mean radical change and transformation in the lives of young students. hooks calls for the theorization of beauty in one’s life. ultimately, she believes that in theorizing the meaning of beauty this will lead to education for critical consciousness, engaging in issues such as the place of beauty in one’s life even when money, material and basic needs are scarce. by engaging these notions of beauty, hooks feels that this will allow for strategizing acts of resistance by feminist thinkers developing a collective sense of communal struggle for progress, through which the soul is sustained by beauty that abounds and uplifts (hooks, , p. ). as hooks speaks of the creative process, particularly for women artists, she recognizes the entanglement of living and making—that making is never happening solely in the interaction with materials. acts of making begin in the forethought, the preparation, the downtime and anticipation of what might happen. she also deems times where potentially nothing is actively happening as still time where something is happening (hooks, , p. ). hooks expresses that despite the presence of feminist thinking and practice, women struggle to justify their uses of time (hooks, , p. ). this speaks to my experience of living as a mother whilst maintaining a creative practice. it is extremely challenging to be paying attention to the present moment without concern for how else the time could be used. she says, “women artists cannot wait for ideal circumstances to be in place before we find the time to do the work we are called to do; we have to create oppositionally, work against the grain” (hooks, , p. ). women artists might consider utilizing their constraints as informers of their practice. rather than ignoring limitations, use them. likewise, those in influential positions within the art community must make efforts to support and validate the efforts made by women artists. teaching community in her book teaching community, bell hooks ( ) begins by specifying the need for feminist thinkers to deliver their message in accessible terms that would enable a larger inclusive audience (p. xi). too often, she feels as though feminist ideas remain locked within academia rather than permeating outside of it, due to a lack of accessible language. with accessibility, she believes the personal as political can become a message that transgresses boundaries outside the academic world (hooks, , p. xiii). engaging in art education for students of all ages builds empathy and critical consciousness, which can be part of the solution toward a more just society. hooks writes, “educating is always a vocation rooted in hopefulness” (hooks, , p. xiv). as the title suggests, the loss of and hope for community is hook’s primary focus. she identifies the danger of the academy isolating itself from the world beyond it (hooks, , p. xv). she suggests that the outcome of a progressive education is a critical consciousness of the world we live in. when speaking of critical consciousness, hooks says, “progressive professors did not need to indoctrinate students and teach them that they should oppose domination. students came to these positions via their own capacity to think critically and assess the world they live in” (hooks, , p. ). when students are given the tools to scrutinize the world they find themselves in, they are better able to come to their own awareness of systems of domination. with their imagination set free, students can better envision an alternative society rid of oppression and domination. this hopefulness and recognition of systems of oppression must be protected and nurtured before the voices of cynicism stifle any chance at growth. hooks states, “our senses are assaulted by the stench of domination every day, here in the places where we live. no wonder, then, that so many people feel terribly confused, uncertain, and without hope” (hooks, , p. ). our voices are silenced at a young age by the indoctrination of schooling that leads children to feel shame, embarrassment and judgement. i, too, feel as though for a long time the criticism and evaluation i received in school did little to help me and more to harm me. i find myself questioning the validity of my own voice, assuming that there is nothing of benefit there, or that my own perspective is only unreliable. in the past, this sense of being voiceless had led me to a lack of interest as i see now. only in encounters with teachers who have listened, affirmed, and provoked the areas of interest that i pursue, have i been able to gain a level of critical consciousness that enables me to question that which i formerly remained numb to. we are taught from a young age that our job as students is to please and respect the teacher, to acquire a good grade and complete the program. we are taught as students that we have an inherent lack that must be enlightened in the classroom (hooks, , p. ). hooks writes, “public schools as well as institutions of higher education must be transformed so that learning is an experience that builds, enhances, and affirms self-esteem” (hooks, , p. ). referring back to hooks’ comments earlier, no wonder so many people walk around feeling confused and without hope, for they’ve only been told of their lack, their inability, their shame rather than being built up. in order for education to be generative, students must be affirmed in their ability to think critically about the world they live in, to be encouraged in their accomplishments, their interests and dreams. hooks ( ) writes, “education as the practice of freedom affirms healthy self- esteem in students as it promotes their capacity to be aware and live consciously. it teaches them to reflect and act in ways that further self-actualization, rather than conformity to the status quo” (hooks, , p. ). how would society change if students were taught to seek after conditions of freedom rather than only a higher position of academic excellence? what would happen if students were indoctrinated in the language of love and freedom rather than domination (hooks, , p. )? hooks quotes parker palmer when he says, “the courage to teach is the courage to keep one’s heart open in those very moments when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able so that teacher and students and subject can be woven into the fabric of community that learning, and living, require” (hooks, , p. ). a teaching vocation is a commitment to service. in serving, one is continually preoccupied by the needs of students, helping them gain clarity and understanding. hooks suggests that “every caring teacher knows that our ideas are always in process. unlike other professions we have the opportunity to return to our written work and make it better” (hooks, , p. ). a continual struggle for me during this thesis process has been the fight for perfection. i have felt uneasy coming to finish my thesis project for fear of all that i have not included, all that should have been said. this is a fear that i will one day face regret over what i wish i could have said. in this way, i have had great difficulty knowing how or when to finish this project. i may not have said everything that needs to be said at this moment, but i am committed to revisiting and rewriting my ways of thinking moving forward. i commit to remaining open and receptive to what i’ve missed, to continue learning and growing. the breaking down of shame in the classroom will lead to freedom of living and learning for students. words chosen too hastily and without consideration have such cuttingly serious consequences (hooks, , p. ). i’ve begun to experience what i’ve known to be true: that learning and living are integral to each other, requiring a focused attention and presence. as an art educator, my hope would be that students i am with sense me pointing them towards a focused engagement in their own learning and living, within and without the classroom setting. hooks ( ) quotes palmer parker again, stating, “education is about healing and wholeness. it is about empowerment, liberation, transcendence, about renewing the vitality of life” (hooks, , p. ). with the help of hooks, i recognize the art classroom as a crucial space for developing a critical consciousness in students, enabling them to lead lives that are committed to ending domination (hooks, , p. ). art education creates the conditions for humanization of all students, to encourage self-esteem, confidence, endurance and empathy. hooks recognizes that the majority of white people she grew up with who committed to lead anti-racist lives, made this decision when they were children (hooks, , p. ). this speaks to the tremendous potential and responsibility of early childhood educators to engage an anti-racist classroom. art education done well creates the conditions for a practice of freedom of all students, encouraging self-esteem, confidence, endurance and empathy. hooks writes of the potential for a loving classroom. in this case she states, “the loving classroom is one in which students are taught, both by the presence and practice of the teacher, that critical exchange can take place without diminishing anyone’s spirit, that conflict can be resolved constructively” (hooks, , p. ). within art education, critical exchange can happen through art critique, but without serious care and attentiveness art critique can turn into an experience of shame. within art institutions, students and professors must be made aware of what is at stake in the carrying out of art critiques. when all that is at play is named, and given attention, students will have power over the critique they receive rather than feeling helpless to the voices of those speaking with institutional authority and without care. art classrooms have the tremendous potential to teach community with a curriculum that is guided by love. she says, “to be guided by love is to live in community with all life. however, a culture of domination, like ours, does not strive to teach us how to live in community. as a consequence, learning to live in community must be a core practice for all of us who desire spirituality in education” (hooks, , p. ). learning to live in community is a necessary part of a curriculum that leads to justice, wholeness, and the collective joy in togetherness. hooks ( ) writes, “schooling that does not honor the needs of the spirit simply intensifies that sense of being lost, of being unable to connect” (hooks, , p. ). this speaks to much of what is at the roof of my confusion following art school. i do believe that a sense of not-knowing is generative to grow into new awarenesses, but not at the expense of a personal disconnectedness. within art schooling, being lost in the process of inquiry and personal disconnectedness must be distinguished. artist professors must prioritize enabling students to move towards wholeness. if community and connection are at the centre of art curriculum, many more students would leave art school feeling satisfied and accomplished rather than assuming that their way of working is somehow lacking. art school can set one up to believe ways of making are lesser than if they do not emulate the professors they worked with. what if art schools enabled students to leave with a sense of passion, rather than a fear of what they lack? while there have been caring teachers along the way that have helped me to think otherwise, the feeling of self-doubt still weighs heavily. hooks writes, “…students are socialized via conventional pedagogy to believe that their own “now” is always inadequate and lacking” (p. ). in what ways do modes of learning stifle growth by discouragement and lack of belief in the potential of students? if students feel as though they do not measure up to one mode of learning, how does that transcend to their image of their own ability to learn and grow? hooks quotes parker palmer again when he says: education is about healing and wholeness. it is about empowerment, liberation, transcendence, about renewing the vitality of life. it is about finding and claiming ourselves and our place in the world… i want to explore what it might mean to reclaim the sacred at the heart of knowing, teaching, and learning—to reclaim it from an essentially depressive mode of knowing that honors only data, logic, analysis, and a systematic disconnection of self from the world, self from others. (hooks, , p. ) i have found the idea of reclamation of ways of knowing, teaching and learning to be at the heart of my own journey of becoming, as i have continued on in following what lingers, intrigues, inspires, transcends, puzzles, and amazes me. throughout a year of tumultuous changes through becoming a mother, living through a pandemic and being reminded to join the fight against systems of oppression, learning though painterly, poetic and writing inquiry has brought me life, endurance, hope and a sense of peace. i have sought to reclaim those parts of me that have been stilled by those who were not considerate with their words, and i have learned to be cautious in moments where my words hold weight. hooks ( ) speaks to the way that academic institutions limit the imagination and indoctrinate minds rather than free them (hooks, , p. ) freedom is found in the imagination, the power of imagining things otherwise, and in taking the steps towards their realization. ultimately, art education must serve the purposes of opposing systems of domination, sparing individuals from hopelessness, to lead energized lives with the will to imagine. hooks writes, “individuals from marginalized groups, whether victimized by dysfunctional families or by political systems of domination, often find their way to freedom by heeding the call of prophetic imaginations” (hooks, , p. ). it is my hope to bring experiences with art-making to as many people as possible, in order that their imaginations can be freed. ultimately, laughter has the potential to bind us together as hooks suggests (hooks, , p. ). finally, hooks states that “dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, identifying in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community” (hooks, , p. ). art education has the ability to bring us together, to see and hear one another, to laugh, celebrate and grow together. figure on every road note. . oil on canvas, x inches. (own photo) morning or evening icicle blue window to the sky. pink pastel powdery blanket of silhouetted trees stitched together with leaves. but time was as time is, a ruthless force, the least forgiving i’d expect it to be. chapter six: on moving forward with further discussion and reflections, it has become clear that the place at which i have arrived through this inquiry is out of a desire to live fully and with hope. one could say that the creative impulse as a driving force has been hopefulness and love. through the daily ritual of writing and setting time aside to think about the things that matter to me, i have come to see that a life of writing and thoughtfulness leads to a fuller engagement with the world. it is worthwhile to note that while i have been finalizing this document, the world has been living through a pandemic, which has been full of all kinds of unknown, loss, disparity, and the tendency to lose hope. there have been glimpses at collective efforts to have hope, such as the cheering for health care workers that happened every evening at pm. how can we carry on this way of living hopefully despite our circumstances? it’s evident that much is out of our control in this world, yet the choice to be curious and to look for beauty can still uplift the soul whilst enduring difficulties. surprisingly, that has become a pivotal part of this project, the realization that acts of making and creating, paying attention and being attuned to the world are about being hopeful. i have fallen into a love for writing as a way of working through the ideas and thoughts that come up throughout the day. rather than holding them, or in many cases missing them, i have come to recognize the immense value of taking thoughts, catching them, and working through them in the act of writing. it’s been a continual navigating of the playfulness of language and thought. i learned in this process that reading and writing are essential vehicles for growing in knowledge, understanding, and awareness. i undervalued writing and reading, mostly because i thought i was no good, as enablers of thought formation taught me. in this way, this project has become a record of my growth in reading, writing, and understanding what it is that i am truly curious about, what is at play in acts of making and what art can contribute to society. just as the writing has recorded thinking, so too do paintings record processes of thinking. this is what i hope to investigate further moving forward, how painting enables and shapes thought. i found it quite difficult to carry on with making paintings while the writing felt unresolved or without direction. i see now that when the writing inquiry was less sure of itself, the paintings reflected this same uncertainty. i underestimated the nature of my becoming mother in its effect on how the work came to be. i found that i could not separate my becoming mother from my thinking processes because it was mothering that determined the very structure for how the work was formed. in the spirit of entanglements, becoming mother was integral to the nature of the work. my hesitation to speak of motherhood made me curious about what messages had made motherhood feel unnecessary to include. by taking up a methodology of a/r/tography, this allowed for the inclusion of my experience as a mother, despite not knowing how it would develop within the project. it was relevant because it was part of my life while writing and making. as a painter, i have come to resonate with the possibility of poetic inquiry. writing has led me to link words to experience in emotive ways, resembling the connection of paint and expression. i’ve grown into a great love for writing, by investigating ideas through the written word. by the integration of writing and painting practice into a poetic inquiry of living, i have found avenues for engagement when faced with the duties of being a mother. the work becomes a daily celebration of all that is possible in the midst of raising children. i did not realize this at the time the initial forty days of writing began. now i continually engage with writing as a means of becoming. i thought it would be temporary but the spirit of daily writing has carried on. moving forward, poetry is something i will engage with as a way of growing in understanding my way of living and noticing in the world. in the writing and working in my studio, i have come to notice that i am invested in the idea of slowness, of things taking time and spending time with that which reveals itself slowly. i do so in the very nature of this project, giving time to think, write, do and be, all with a focused attention so that i may learn, grow, and change. i am convinced that in the effort and vigilance to understand, meaning reveals itself over time. writing is a way of identifying the learning that happens in living. writing is learning. in her book upstream, mary oliver ( ) writes, “in the beginning i was so young and such a stranger to myself i hardly existed. i had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before i knew at all who i was, what i was, what i wanted to be” (oliver, , p. ). from oliver’s words here, she expresses the way that knowing ourselves takes time and effort. coming to know ourselves involves risk, and leaning into the unknown. i think back to maxine greene’s belief in making the familiar strange. this offers a way of examining what otherwise remains overlooked. with careful attention and humility, writing can enable one to identify and question patterns of thinking and behaving that may otherwise be taken for granted. throughout my writing and making, the unknown and unforeseen have continued to be topics of interest in relation to the creative process. this is essential to a creative pursuit. the search for what is not known is what pushes the limits of knowledge, expanding one’s awareness. it is a means of looking beyond. i believe this to be an acknowledgement of my own process of growing. that what is known is not everything, and there is more to become known. in her book, a field guide for getting lost, rebecca solnit ( ) writes of the unknown in this way: certainly for artist of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the tale that has not yet arrived, is what must be found. it is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it’s where their work comes from although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own. (solnit, , p. ) in solnit’s book, she opens with a question: “how will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?” (solnit, , p. ). her question is one that is relevant to the creative process, for how does one follow the creative impulse to what they do not know? in the present, i move forward not knowing exactly what the discovery will be yet confident that there will be discovery. solnit ( ) also asks a similar question when saying, how do you calculate upon the unforeseen? it seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculations, to plan, to control. to calculate on the unforeseen is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us. (solnit, , p. ) perhaps the art of living and making is that we become students of how to dance with that which is unforeseen. solnit shares that she has a grandmother whose story remained largely hidden to her for a long while. once solnit learned her story, it was much different from her expectation. solnit ( ) reflects on the hidden grandmothers of art history when writing, art history in particular is often cast as an almost biblical lineage, a long line of begats in which painters descend purely from painters. just as the purely patrilineal old testament genealogies leave out the mothers and even the fathers of the mothers, so these tidy stories leave out all the sources and inspirations that come from other media and other encounters, from poems, dreams, politics, doubts, a childhood experience, a sense of place, leave out the fact that history is made more of crossroads, branchings, and tangles than straight lines. these other sources i called the grandmothers. (solnit, , p. ) solnit’s words relate to how i am thinking about the entanglements of writing, making, and living that inform the paintings and vice versa. solnit acknowledges the life surrounding an artwork. she recognizes the entanglement or sources drawn up, and influenced by, suggesting that a linear understanding of how works come to be fails to hold the messiness of living. that the sources and references that affect the works made by an artist are so entangled that it is difficult to tease them out, pointing to this or that to suppose that a work comes from some singular thing. all of living is caught up in the way an artist comes to make something. solnit resonates with the pack-donkey of ingold ( ), a meandering, wandering line. just as it is with the methodology of a/r/tography, solnit is inclined to think that our questions have the capacity to be more profound than the answers one seems to give as a response. questioning, wondering and wandering are of deep value in uncovering the unknown and unforeseen, leading their questioner to a new place, new understanding, and new work. __________ much of living is learning to notice, listen, and pay attention. artists teach this in their ways of collecting fragments, ideas, moments, and bringing them to sit with, ponder, and wait for things to reveal themselves. artists live with anticipation that there is great surprise, great excitement on the other side of knowing. i have come to develop a sensitivity to what the day calls for, whether it be writing, reading, resting, or making. i have also recognized the importance of going out into the world, of getting oneself in front of something that is happening in the world and responding to it. this takes practice, it takes routine and planning for the unexpected to happen. mary oliver ( ) writes about the romance of romeo and juliet, suggesting that had they not kept up with their appointments to meet each other, there would have been no romance. in writing, in making, oliver believes in the necessity of making appointments and keeping them. one must show up to the thinking space, and keep showing up, and then in this way something will begin to happen there (oliver, , p. ). after all this writing, working and making, mothering, learning, and becoming, i’ve made a resolve to keep going, to keep learning because it fills me. but moving forward, i think i’d like to take up writing poetry. in writing, mothering, painting, learning, and teaching, there is much that is hidden, waiting to be understood, discovered. to me, poetry is a way of putting words to feelings and emotions, experiences, ways of knowing, while still recognizing the unknowable, the mystery, the entanglements, that which will always be a little beyond reach. poems comfort and validate. oliver says, “i learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak—to be company” (oliver, , p. ). poems speak into existence, the things that have been there all along. ___________ as i have come to think of and read about poetry, i have found a similar kind of relation to paintings and poetry as a way of seeing, of looking at the world. painting and poetry require a focus and attention to the unfolding present. painting and poetry transform the way i look and notice as i move around in the world. i am taught by paint and poem to not overlook the mundane, to question and ask, inquire, and wonder about the little things that fill the day. i am struck by the inversion, the switchbacks, the times of being caught off guard, of shifting perspective, framework and understanding. reading, writing, making, and looking, all together—shift, transform, change me. painting and poetry communicate that no thing is too small for a focused attention. that a walk around the block can be filled with encounters that become the openings to enter into the language of paint and words. as oliver ( ) writes, “i did not think of language as the means to self-description. i thought of it as the door—a thousand opening doors!—past myself. i thought of it as the means to notice, to contemplate, to praise, and, thus, to come into power” (oliver, , p. ). words enable us to become ourselves by writing ourselves. the poem is a moment—an instance of attention, of noticing something in the world. perhaps the imagination comes alive in the world of things—of objects. perhaps the poem, to become radiant, needs images, and images always involve things (oliver, , p. ). oliver’s words pose an interesting thought for the relationship of paintings and poems, further their presence as objects and things. paintings, like poems, can come from things. as i am going about my everyday there are moments that stop me and i see the world as if it were a painting. i see the world with a new awareness of it. poetry does this too. painting and poetry alike contribute to a way of seeing, of living and being in the world, taking notice and paying attention. it is this way for painter raoul de keyser. andrew wilson ( ) describes the way that de keyser’s work demonstrates a way of looking, of seeing the world. of de keyser, wilson says, “…he has realized that the world about us is glimpsed as fragments and that painting itself contributes to such a way of seeing: the abstraction is already there in life as much as in painting” (wilson, , p. ). painting is a stance, an orientation towards looking, noticing, and seeing. just as the practice of writing changes the way that one reads, so painting transforms the way that one sees and looks. i particularly resonate with the way that wilson describes de keyser’s way of painting as these glimpsed fragments of the world. paintings are fragments of what exists in the world. __________ the real educational work, as i will argue, is precisely not about facilitating expression but about bringing children and young people into dialogue with the world. it is about turning them towards the world and about arousing their desire for wanting to be in the world and with the world, and not just with themselves. (biesta, , p. ) along with gert biesta, educational work of worth points learners to the never-ending possibilities held in the desire to learn. from what biesta is saying here, i gather that art education causes one to look outwards. the student sees beyond themselves in the encounter with an artwork. they are taken somewhere else, to a new place, a challenging, surprising, or unexpected place. the student of art also comes to know that art and living are very much so in an entanglement with each other. the artist’s life and their work speak to each other and communicate in a back and forth dialogue. __________ i’ve taught in several different kinds of settings, art programs mostly. and the more i think about it, lots of the teaching i’ve done has been mediocre. i really do think of this often, as it seems that i have an internal conflict in every teaching situation i find myself in, always asking myself what is the goal, the purpose of teaching? what are these students hoping to get from me, from this experience? i regularly notice a difference in expectations of what should happen versus what ends up happening. there is a way that i prioritize the unfolding of interests, discoveries or outcomes over the expectation of what should be accomplished in the class. i find there is a mixed response, and yet, other times, i find that students leave accomplishing something they’d not known they were hoping to gain. the outcome regularly looks different than what any would have expected, and yet, it is still not always satisfactory. my hope would be that. in any teaching position i find myself in, a student would find their own voice and gain a passion for living. that they would venture past the utilitarian and into a realm of possibilities. i can only hope that what i have gained in taking up this process of searching for that which is unknown to me—reading, writing, making, learning, it is the focused attention on process that has further propelled me to dig deeper, to read, write, make, look, and more—to take pictures, draw regularly, write and read continually, and notice always. that i may encourage any student of mine to take notice of what interests them and to follow that path vigorously. to not consider anything unworthy of their attention, to always search for the resonances, to stitch and bring things together. mary oliver ( ) writes of the teachers that she has had along the way, “thus the great ones (my great ones, who may not be the same as your great ones) have taught me— to observe with passion, to think with patience, to live always caringly” (oliver, , p. ). oliver speaks of how she carries the voices, words, and wisdoms of her teachers with her in every thought. she feels undoubtedly in debt to them, her great ones. they are her continual company in mind and thought. she says, “they were dreamers, and imaginers, and declarers; they lived looking and looking and looking, seeing the apparent and beyond the apparent, wondering, allowing for uncertainty, also grace, easygoing here, ferociously unmovable there; they were thoughtful” (oliver, , p. ). i would hope to be thought of as a teacher who was thoughtful and guided students into leading lives of thoughtfulness. of ralph waldo emerson, oliver ( ) describes him as the following: this is the crux of emerson, who does not advance straight ahead but wanders to all sides of an issue; who delivers suggestions with a kindly gesture—who opens doors and tells us to look at things for ourselves. the one thing he is adamant about is that we should look—we must look—for that is the liquor of life, that brooding upon issues, that attention to thought even as we weed the garden or milk the cow. (oliver, , p. ) the imagination comes alive in careful observation to the ordinary, the mundane, and the overlooked. paintings from objects out in the world are the materializing moments when thought takes flight. a teacher and students must know that their interests are valid, and their creative impulse is worth following. oliver says, “and you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life” (oliver, , p. ). perhaps, this is the goal of teaching in the end, to enable students to recognize the value of their voice, and to create the space for them to share it. as students are encouraged to share their insights and perspectives, they gain a hold of their own voice, communicating to themselves and others. in doing so, students can know and come to believe that they must keep making, keep searching, keep learning. in her creative work, oliver states that, “reading, then writing, then desiring to write well, shaped in me that most joyful of circumstance—a passion for work” (oliver, , p. ). students and teachers alike develop a passion to continue working when their interests are validated and encouraged along by the supportive environment of a classroom. i know for me that is what has been most meaningful about this project, a concentrated effort to discover and follow the things that stand out to me in the world—to develop a passion for the work of noticing and making. in her book bird by bird anne lamott ( ) says, “what a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you” (lamott, , p. ). here she speaks of books, yet her words suggest that what we notice in the world affects us, leaves a mark, changes and transforms us. poems, artworks, any made things seem to require a focused attention on that which unfolds in living. therefore, how could a mother overlook this part of self in lieu of making things? or if she does, perhaps she does so because of a hidden message that suggests she must. lamott shares of her experiences sitting down to write; the toil, the angst, the distractions that all vie for her attention. then she focuses her gaze on a small, one-inch square frame standing there on her desk, reminding her that this is all she must focus on in that moment, just one small short assignment (lamott, , p. ). i, too, have found this to be a useful, necessary practice throughout writing; that projects must be taken up piece by piece, and the stitching together of small bits brings into focus what one’s creative endeavour is really about. __________ as i ruminate on what has transpired throughout this project, i am all the more convinced of the potential of a/r/tography. i set out without a predetermined outcome, yet by engaging acts of making and creating, writing and reading, i have come to a new place in awareness of the things i may have otherwise never known. as an emergent practice in merging various creative forms, engaging in a/r/tography caused me to take up new forms of making, such as poetry, and to reexamine previous forms of making, such as painting. by engaging in these practices, whilst writing and reading, the resonances showed themselves and i did my best to articulate them. i am hopeful that with further thinking and making, i will continue to gain awareness of what is at play in the blending of roles of artist, teacher, and researcher through a/r/tography. the research moves forward with time and engagement with ideas and thoughts that emerge from the a/r/tography (leblanc & irwin, , p. ). this is the case for me. i see renderings that have emerged from this project, such as the role of poetry in forming new knowledge of what it means to be a mother artist, the societal role of art, and the power of hope in the imagination as awarenesses that i will carry with me into further making and thinking. through a/r/tography, i have been able to blend the roles i live in as artist, researcher, and teacher to see their meanings together. triggs & irwin ( ) suggest, a/r/tography considers what one creative image-making practice might learn from another, as well as how the spaces between already determined practices generate previously unthought images that might foster more relational ways of thinking and knowing. (triggs & irwin, , p. ) a/r/tography enables stitching together creative acts of making to see how they interrelate. through my own art practice, writing, and learning poetry, i’ve come to understand the importance of making an image for self and for others to be able to enter into. triggs & irwin ( ) write, “making images in art practice is a way of sensitizing ourselves to noticing the making of images that moves us through the world” (triggs & irwin, , p. ). i’ve come to recognize the way that making images, and being made by images, uniquely moves me through my living in the world. further, “irwin describes image-making as attending to a living responsibility that cares and nurtures the urge to create” (triggs & irwin, , p. ). a/r/tography nurtures the impulse for image-making by helping artists, researchers, and teachers understand the potential for further learning in acts of making. through a/r/tograpy i’ve been able to use acts of making in painting, writing, and poetry for inquiry into understanding the creative process. this study in a/r/tography has allowed me to develop my own living curriculum. with time, i hope to revisit and rewrite the research as i grow. _____________ in the chapter “weak theory in an unfinished world”, kathleen stewart ( ) speaks of the nature of ontologies that are caught up in the middle of things (stewart, , p. ). in stewart’s chapter, she seems interested in the something that happens when things come together. this something is filled with potentiality and newness, emergence and belief in life being filled with things worth investigating. these moments of poesis are thrilling, as something happens that was not there before. paintings can act in this way, bringing together parts to amount to something generative, exciting, complexing and full of potential. __________ i hope to consider further the nature of this work as a postpartum journey. i started writing just before my son was born and have continued now up to his first birthday and beyond. i can imagine how postpartum may have been different for me, had i not taken up the practice of writing daily, hourly, in the gaps and cracks of caring for my son. i will never know what these months would have been like without the writing, and yet i recognize the growth and strength that have come through in writing. i’m further down the road of becoming who i want to be, and i have my son largely to thank for that, and this writing project as well—a concentrated focused, attempt to come to a better understanding of processes of making as a mother, artist, researcher, writer, teacher and lifelong learner. through her work, the artist mary kelly explores the relationship of mother and child as it relates to sexual difference (mccloskey & kelly, , p. ). her work post-partum document ( - ) layers a complex scholarly and artistic inquiry into the relationship of mother and child, women’s movement, and mother-as-artist, while a collecting objects from her lived experience (mccloskey & kelly, , p. ). she pulls from personal references of living encounters into the work as a subjective investment in her own identity (mccloskey & kelly, , p. ). her work represents a multiplicity and multilayering that speaks to the ambivalences of motherhood, particularly the psychological aspect of the mother and child relationship (mccloskey & kelly, , p. ). her work helps me see my own subjectification happening through this thesis project. in upstream, oliver ( ) writes, “one learns by thinking about writing, and by talking about writing—but primarily through writing” (oliver, , p. ). here, she talks of writing, but i think what she is suggesting is that makers of any kind must continue to do and act in order to grow and learn. anne lamott ( ) focused on the square inch frame on her desk, reminding her to focus on the task before her, an effort to handle unhelpful distractions. the way colour acts in the making of a painting could be thought of in the same way that ingold ( ) thinks of writing a book, with a mind of its own, charting its own path, beckoning its writer to follow. i have found this to be true in this project as well, as i have followed a meandering and thrilling path. perhaps that is the best way to think of processes of making, learning, teaching and mothering, that there is a path to follow, to stick to and see through in a never-ending process of becoming. as oliver ( ) says, “attention is the beginning of devotion” (oliver, , p. ). paying attention leads to a greater commitment to listening and learning. attention and devotion lead to living with hope and the desire to find beauty in the unexpected. living with hope provides the will to imagine a new reality of freedom, love, and justice. attention and devotion build hope in the ability to be changed personally, having the ability to assess with critical consciousness and contribute to the redemption of the world. in the end, i did have a solo exhibition of the body of paintings that were made during the time i spent writing this thesis. the paintings enabled thought, brought new ideas to write about, and furthered my learning inquiry; therefore, i thought it would be appropriate to include a few pictures of the paintings together in a room and out in the world. i titled the show still hills, inspired from a poem by t.s. eliot called virginia. in the poem, t.s. eliot looks at the river before him and reflects on the way time continues forward and no effort by him can stop this. so making a poem and being present to his surroundings is the only thing he can do in an effort to slow time and notice what there is to be seen. the poem becomes an effort of slowness. in a similar way, i thought of the paintings as my own efforts to remain present in a time sensitive world. i would like to conclude with this short poem by mary oliver i found along the way. it stood out to me, resonated with me and propelled me forward. i will carry it with me. the world i live in by mary oliver i have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs. the world i live in and believe in is wider than that. and anyway, what’s wrong with maybe? you wouldn’t believe what once or twice i have seen. i’ll just tell you this: only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one. 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( ). raoul de keyser. art monthly, , – https://www-jstor-org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/stable/ . /visuartsrese. . . https://www.elearning.ubc.ca/ https://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/ / /panel-discussion-the-issues-facing-painting-in- .html https://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/ / /panel-discussion-the-issues-facing-painting-in- .html http://www.altmansiegel.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/ / / _jd_slow-painting_email.pdf http://www.altmansiegel.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/ / / _jd_slow-painting_email.pdf microsoft word - _pdfconv_ _cdd f cc- f - e - aa - bd d d .doc i stages of recovery in individuals with deep to phonological dysphasia: insight into treatment approaches a dissertation submitted to the temple university graduate board in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree doctor of philosophy by laura mary mccarthy august examining committee members: nadine martin, advisory chair, communication sciences and disorders, college of public health, temple university jamie reilly, communication sciences and disorders gayle dede, communication sciences and disorders tania degiovannetti, psychology mary purdy, external member, communication sciences and disorders, southern connecticut state university ii © by laura mary mccarthy all rights reserved iii abstract the presented dissertation grew out of the need to achieve a better understanding of the relationship between language processing and short-term memory (stm) in persons with aphasia (pwa). deep dysphasia and phonological dysphasia form a classification of aphasia identified by a pattern of speech errors attributed to chronic verbal stm impairment. exploring evidence demonstrating the pattern of speech errors mediated by stm impairment in pwa, research objectives were three-fold: • to add to the knowledge base on deep dysphasia and phonological dysphasia and extend the characteristic presentation of this; • to determine the characteristic profile of recovery in deep dysphasia, providing further evidence that deep dysphasia is an impairment that exists at the most severe point along a continuum of recovery which in milder form demonstrates phonological dysphasia. • to evaluate the efficacy of treatment approaches developed on the basis of dell and o’seaghdha’s ( ) two-step interactive activation model of word production and using repetition to improve verbal stm and word processing. first, a comprehensive systematic review of the deep dysphasia and phonological dysphasia literature base was conducted. this review addressed the paucity of case studies reporting the diagnoses of dysphasia. studies investigated individuals with chronic stm impairment in the auditory modality as well as other characteristic markers of deep and phonological dysphasia, such as an imageability effect. in repetition tasks, an imageability effect indicates that concrete (high-image) words are repeated with greater ease when compared to accuracy in the repetition of abstract (low-image). the review supported the iv hypothesis that these profiles reflect a chronic impairment of auditory-verbal stm existing on a continuum of severity. evidence from this review supports the hypothesis that deep dysphasia and phonological aphasia are two points on a continuum of an impairment mediated by verbal stm (martin, saffran & dell, , willshire & fisher, ). second, with the insights from this review, a single-subject multiple-baseline, multiple-probe treatment study was undertaken. the participant lt presented with a pattern of repetition consistent with the continuum of deep-phonological dysphasia, including an imageability effect in repetition (martin et al., , wilshire & fisher, ). this treatment approach sought to directly remediate language and short-term memory abilities using a repetition task targeting imageability effect. in order to improve access to and repetition of low-image (li) words, this approach aimed to enhance semantic context. results of this study indicate improving lt’s access to abstract word pairs improved verbal stm as well as language processing. third, the single-case study led to the development of a four-condition, multi- participant facilitation study that aimed to improve access to and repetition of li words by embedding them in a context that enhanced their imageability. the goal of this manipulation was to increase the probability of accessing lexical and semantic representations of abstract words in repetition by enriching their semantic-syntactic context. ten participants with chronic impairment in verbal stm demonstrated that this approach participants’ ability to repeat those words when presented in isolation. evidence from pwa has confirmed that a damaged language processing system includes disruption to stm (martin & saffran, ; martin et al., ; martin & v saffran, ; martin & saffran, ; martin & ayala, ; kalinyak-fliszar, kohen, & martin, ; allen et al., ). recent investigations have provided evidence that stm tasks can be used as mechanisms to improve language processing (kalinyak-fliszar et al., ; salis, ; berthier et al., ). despite the central role repetition plays in functional communication and the difficulties pwa encounter with repetition due to stm impairment, few treatment approaches have targeted stm and the language processes supporting repetition (martin, kohen, & kalinyak-fliszar, ; kalinyak-fliszar, ; berthier et al., ). this dissertation research filled that void and demonstrated the promise of clinical approaches that directly target language processing and auditory verbal stm impairment in pwa. vi dedication to my parents, who taught me that the greatest privilege is knowledge and raised me with values that continue to define my purpose in life. my mother has been my enigma, she moves with the grace of a formally trained dancer, speaks with the intellect of a college professor, and has maintained the most unshakeable belief in my potential. my father has been my tender pillar of guidance, i remain in awe as he humbly solves intricate state accounting matters with the same ease he strums the chords of a blues guitar riff. your love is responsible for this and every accomplishment i have achieved. vii acknowledgments this dissertation has been a labor of love. it would have remained a distant dream if not for the support of the people dearest to me and the courage of the persons with aphasia who participated in this research. it is of utmost importance to express my sincere gratitude to the members of my doctoral committee. my advisor, dr. nadine martin, has been an inspiration with her lifelong commitment to improving the field of aphasiology research on a global scale. dr. jamie reilly’s insights made me dig deeper. dr. mary purdy from connecticut offered thoughtful comments. i would also like to thank michalene kalinyak-fliszar and francine kohen, my colleagues within the eleanor m. saffran center for cognitive neuroscience, and my many other mentors, within and outside temple university, who encouraged me to pursue a career in scientific research. while pursuing this doctorate, i have worked as a visiting home health-care speech and language pathologist. from my patients, i have received countless words of encouragement. i am grateful to all the persons with aphasia who have enhanced my understanding of this field of research. i extend my deepest gratitude to the individuals who enthusiastically volunteered their time and efforts to participate in my research study. my little brother michael became my rock during the course of this program. thank you for always picking up the phone, always telling me to stop what i am doing, put on my sneakers, and go for a run, “like an adult.” five marathons and over twenty half-marathons later, my favorite races will always be the ones we run together. i will always be grateful to my mother and father, who together embody all that i wish to become. the day my parents and brother helped me viii move here, we made one stop. for the remainder of the drive, a seven-week-old puppy slept in the palm of my hand. in the seven years that have followed i have never been far rom the pure, unconditional love of a special dog named walter. under the philadelphia skyline, i found the love of my life. brad, you have opened my heart wider than i thought possible. you selflessly have carried me through illness and have had more faith in me than i have had in myself. i can’t wait to marry you. ix table of contents page abstract ..................................................................................................................... iii dedication ................................................................................................................ vi acknowledgments ............................................................................................... vii list of tables ........................................................................................................... x list of figures ......................................................................................................... xi chapter . introduction . systematic review of the deep to phonological dysphasia literature base . the effects of semantic context on deep to phonological dysphasia: a treatment study . improving access to words of low imageability on a continuum of impairment: a facilitation study examining the effects of semantic context…………………………………… . discussion references cited x list of tables table page . search terms ......................................................................................................... . severity of auditory-verbal short-term memory impairment ............................ . summary of background information ................................................................... . further classifying auditory-verbal short-term memory span in single-word repetition ......................................................................................... . auditory-verbal short-term memory span as related to semantic errors ...................................................................................................... . systematic review of literature of repetition performance and imageability effects ........................................................................................ . systematic review of literature of repetition performance and frequency effects ............................................................................................ . cases reporting imageability effect, span size, and rate of semantic errors ...................................................................................................... . lt’s performance on standardized language evaluation: pre- and interim-treatment .................................................................................... . lt’s performance on talsa span measures ..................................................... . effect sizes for treatment and maintenance phases of treatment one and treatment.two ............................................................................................................. . experimental stimuli ............................................................................................ . experimental stimuli defined ............................................................................... . experimental stimuli -word definition: conditon one, two, three, four ........ . experimental stimuli -word definition: conditon one, two, three, four ........ . - participant algorithm for administration .......................................... xi . participant demographic information ......................................................... . talsa pre-/post-testing performance- item/list iso/iao ............................. . talsa pre-/post-testing performance- item/list iso/iao ............................. . talsa pre-/post-testing performance- item/list iso/iao.............................. . summary of paired t-test results and effect sizes pre-/post facilitation administration, prediction : iso/iao ....................................................................... . condition one performance iso/iao .................................................................... . prediction of paired t-test result and effect sizes condition pre-/post facilitation administration, prediction iso/iao ......................................................................... . condition two performance iso/iao ................................................................... . summary of paired t-test results and effect sizes pre-/post facilitation administration, prediction : iso/iao . condition three performance iso/iao ................................................................. . summary of paired t-test results and effect sizes pre-/post facilitation administration, prediction : iso/iao . condition four performance iso/iao ................................................................... xii list of figures figure page . lexical network structure in the spreading activation production model ................... . an interactive activation model of single-word repetition ........................................... . proportion correct on li-lf probe trials in sem+syn, syn only and limited exposure treatment stimuli across phases of treatments ............................................... . conceptual framework of facilitation study session one-session six. ......................... chapter introduction the role of repetition in communication and language processing this dissertation research focused on repetition as a means of remediation of language processing and verbal short-term memory (stm) in persons with aphasia (pwa). repetition is a fundamental building block of everyday communication (tannen, ). within conversation, repetition has many functions. it has been characterized as a basic support process in conversation (wallace, dietz, hux & weissling, ). a qualitative study by hengst, duff, and dettmer ( ), viewing the role of repetition through a sociocultural lens, found that participants meaningfully reinforced one another’s conversational contributions. other studies have concluded that repeated engagement promoted both learning and memory as well as deeper communicative meaning (francis, clark, & humphreys, ; hengst et al., ; berthier et al., ). the integrity of any conversational exchange can be compromised by impaired repetition. insights drawn from communication disorders caused by repetition impairment have led to increased interest in the relationship between language processing and verbal stm in pwa (dell, schwartz, martin, saffran, & gagnon, ; dell, martin, & schwartz, ; martin & saffran, ). aphasia is an acquired neurogenic communicative disorder characterized by impairment in language processing (mcneil & pratt, ). cerebrovascular accident (cva) has been established to be the most common cause of aphasia (lutz & camicia, ), as well as the leading cause of long-term disability globally (lundström, smits, borg, & terént, ). døli, helland, and andersen helland ( ) reported that following cva roughly fifty percent of individuals presented with emotional disorders such as depression or anxiety. the damage that impaired communication causes is exceptionally devastating. aristotle famously opined that “man is by nature a social creature” (as cited in lewis, ). a sudden disruption in one’s social capabilities has a profoundly negative impact on quality of life, and in an investigation of sixty diseases aphasia outranked dementia, quadriplegia, hiv, and cancer in its negative effects (lam & wodchis, ). much of this impact is due to the communication impairment characteristic of aphasia: impaired expression, comprehension, reading and writing will limit social interactions (mcneil & pratt, ). in pwa with verbal stm impairment the consequent inability to repeat words or phrases makes participating in conversational interactions difficult (baldo, katseff, & dronkers, ). indeed, in one of the earliest theoretical models of aphasia, lichtheim ( ) proposed the use of repetition as one of many diagnostic tools in aphasia . since then, repetition impairment has been well documented in case studies of aphasia (geschwind, ; warington & shallice, ; kertz & benson, ; shallice, & warrington, ; saffran & martin, ; martin & saffran, ; berndt & mitchum, ; martin & saffran, ). historical frameworks past investigators once recognized stm as a capacity that could be isolated from language processing (atkinson & shiffrin, ; baddeley & hitch, ; baddeley, a, b). span tasks requiring the repetition of several words were conducted as studies of stm rather than language processing (dell et al., ). repetition is defined by the authors as an immediate and effortless task for normal speakers. dell and colleagues ( ) reasoned that this automaticity may explain why early models of language processing and stm were developed and investigated separately. in the early ’s, error patterns in the repetition of pwa were first investigated as an impairment in the processes that mediate language processing and maintenance of information in stm. a deficit in repetition was characterized as being influenced by the ability to maintain access across levels of language representation (saffran, ; martin & saffran, ; berndt & mitchum, ). these initial studies became the frame of an influential theoretical model that greatly improved the understanding of language processing in aphasia. this model, known as the activation-maintenance hypothesis (martin & saffran, ), was an extension of the interactive activation (ia) model of language processing (dell, ; dell & o’seaghdha, ). consistent with the assumptions of the original ia model, martin and saffran ( ) concurred that language took place across a time-course, but for the first time also addressed stm processing as part of the underlying impairment in pwa. their activation maintenance hypothesis of language processing assumed that the processes that mediated language function, activation spread and activation decay, also made possible the maintenance of information in verbal stm (martin & saffran, ). it is now widely accepted that damaged language processing systems invariably include disruption to verbal stm in pwa (martin et al., ; martin & saffran, ; martin & saffran, ; martin & ayala, ; kalinyak-fliszar, kohen, & martin, ; allen et al., ). verbal stm can be due to an underlying impairment in phonological or semantic processing. the deep dysphasia and phonological dysphasia population presents with pervasive impairment of auditory-verbal stm due to impaired phonological processing, particularly in repetition. although other subcategories of aphasia indeed include verbal stm deficits, those which composite phonological scores indicate a reliance on the higher levels of processing (martin & saffran, ). the most compelling evidence of the involvement of stm in language processing comes from error patterns in deep to phonological dysphasia (butterworth & warrington, ; martin et al , ; majerus & van der linden, ; ablinger, abel, & huber, ). despite the critical role repetition plays in communication, few treatment approaches developed for pwa have targeted stm and language processes (martin, kohen, & kalinyak-fliszar, ; kalinyak-fliszar et al., ; berthier et al., ; salis, kelly, & code, ). studies using repetition within treatment methods have, however, reported that targeting the activation and maintenance of representations for repetition led to generalized gains in other areas of phonological as well as semantic language processing abilities (francis et al., ; schwartz et al., ; kalinyak-fliszar et al., ; salis, ; berthier et al., ). et al., ; salis, ; berthier et al., ). purpose of the dissertation through an investigation of speech error patterns caused by damaged stm in pwa, the objectives of this dissertation research were three-fold: • to add to the knowledge base on deep dysphasia and phonological dysphasia and extend the characteristic presentation of this ; • to determine the characteristic profile of recovery in deep dysphasia, providing further evidence that deep dysphasia is an impairment that exists at the most severe point along a continuum of recovery which in milder form demonstrates phonological dysphasia. • to evaluate the efficacy of treatment approaches developed on the basis of dell and o’seaghdha’s ( ) two-step interactive activation model of word production and using repetition to improve verbal stm and word processing. the functional relationship between language processing and stm as extended to the ia model (martin & saffran, ) served as the theoretical framework for this research. to best understand how the rehabilitation of stm can be improved, the subcategory of aphasia most closely identified as demonstrating a marked deficit in stm was studied. treatment approaches in deep-phonological dysphasia have not been considered by researchers. a key objective of this dissertation research was to provide evidence that a damaged language processing system can be repaired directly through the context of an auditory-verbal stm task. approaches to deep dysphasia in the literature deep dysphasia is a rare subcategory of aphasia first identified by michel and andreewsky ( ). the authors proposed this diagnostic label to identify individuals who demonstrated patterns in repetition analogous to the error patterns in reading associated with deep dyslexia (morton, ; goldblum, ). the hallmark features of repetition in deep dysphasia and reading in deep dyslexia are greater accuracy on words than nonwords (lexicality effect), greater accuracy for high-image than for low-image words (imageability effects), and the occurrence of semantic errors in single-word reading or repetition (howard & franklin, ; katz & goodglass, ; martin & saffran, ). critically, case studies of deep dysphasia have shown that profoundly reduced auditory-verbal stm capacity was the underlying cause of error patterns (katz & goodglass, ; martin & saffran, ; trojano, stanzione, & grossi, ; martin, dell, schwartz, saffran, & gagnon, ; butterworth & warrington, ; martin, saffran, & dell, ; majerus & van der linden, ; ablinger, abel, & huber, ; tuomiranta et al., ). the profoundly reduced auditory-verbal stm capacity was attributed to a rapid decay of the phonological representation (katz & goodglass, ) or both the phonological and semantic representations of the word to be repeated (martin, et al., ). the seminal case of mr, michel and andreewsky ( ) used the influential logogen model of word processing (morton & patterson, ) to account for the deficit pattern in this syndrome. in this model, input can be auditory via the spoken word or visual via the written word; interaction between levels in the model is assumed. within this model, michel and andreewsky postulated that deep dysphasia resulted from disruption of the sublexical input-output phoneme route and in the connection from input auditory to output logogens. in analyzing their case study of mk, howard and franklin ( ) also invoked the logogen model and postulated two loci of impairment to account for mk’s repetition pattern (imageability effects, semantic errors and inability to repeat nonwords): the sublexical route and the direct lexical route between the auditory input lexicon and the phonological output lexicon. these two impairments left only a semantic route to support repetition of words. according to this hypothesis, semantic representations of words activated by input phonological and lexical activation supported activation of output word forms in the output lexicon. other researchers have proposed involvement of auditory-verbal stm in deep dysphasia. for example, katz and goodglass ( ) reported a case study of sm, who presented with a deep dysphasia pattern of word repetition. the authors proposed that impairment of phonemic memory affected word repetition and developed a box and arrow model to explain three possible routes of word repetition ( ). this model suggests that word repetition impairment could be due to impairment in three possible routes of word repetition: ( ) a non-semantic route where word form is affected, ( ) a nonlexical route to explain word and nonword repetition, and ( ) a lexical-semantic route, where repetition via access to word meanings that activate word forms in the output lexicon. these early accounts agreed that multiple loci of impairment were necessary to account for the poor repetition of words and nonwords and the semantic errors in repetition characteristic of deep dysphasia. katz and goodglass’s addition of a processing component (phonemic memory impairment) illustrates the beginning of a shift away from representational accounts to explain aphasia. the theoretical framework for the present study is an interactive activation model of word processing (dell & o’seaghdha, ) that views aphasia as a processing impairment that affects access to and/or maintenance of activated semantic, lexical, and phonological representations of words over the course of comprehending, repeating, and producing words. another pattern of impairment in aphasia is identical to deep dysphasia but for one feature—semantic errors in single-word repetition. the term “phonological dysphasia” has been used to describe this pattern (e.g., wilshire & fisher, ).the overlap in symptoms of deep and phonological dysphasia has led to the hypothesis that they share the same root cause, impaired maintenance of activated representation of words, but differ in severity of that impairment, with deep dysphasia being more severe. furthermore, although semantic errors do not occur in single-word repetition in this group, they are present in multiple-word and sentence repetition tasks (saffran & marin, ; martin et al., ; trojano, stanzione & grossi, ). evidence that these two syndromes (deep and phonological dysphasia) lie on a severity continuum comes from multiple sources: a longitudinal study (martin et al., ) of changing error patterns in repetition and verbal stm associated with recovery from deep dysphasia; reports of semantic errors in repetition of word strings (trojano et al, ; martin et al., ; reilly et al., ) and sentences (saffran & marin, ), as well as observations of associations between verbal span size and severity of naming and word recognition impairment (martin & gupta, ). a common feature across deep-phonological dysphasia profiles is an imageability effect in recognition (howard & franklin, ; martin & saffran, ; weekes & raman, ), oral reading (martin & saffran, ; majerus et al., ; weekes & raman; ), and repetition of low-image (li) words (howard & franklin, ; katz & goodglass, ; butterworth & warrington, ; hanley, dell, kay & baron, ; majerus et al., ; gold & kertesz, ; weekes & raman; ). an imageability effect is correlated with superior semantic processing abilities when compared to phonological processing (martin & saffran, ). semantic errors in single-word repetition can be understood within dell and o’seaghdha’s two-step interactive activation model of word production (here inafter, the ia model) as the incorrect selection of a primed semantically related competitor during a period of rapid global decay (martin & saffran, ). in the context of serial recall tasks, the initial words in a list receive the greatest amount of semantic feedback (martin & ayala, ). in the performance of multiple-word repetition, reduced recency or increased accuracy for items at the beginning of the word list has been frequently reported (trojano et al., ; martin & saffran, ; majerus, ; wilshire & fisher, ). this pattern of errors is referred to as a primacy effect in serial recall, due to rapid global decay. the effect of primacy indicates that the first word is more likely to be repeated correctly than the seccond word (martin & saffran, ). in martin et al.’s ( ) longitudinal report of recovery in deep dysphasia, imageability influenced nc’s repetition accuracy across positions in serial recall. a frequency effect, less often reported, has also been identified in recognition (howard & franklin, ; martin & saffran, ; weekes & raman, ), oral reading (katz & goodglass, ; majerus et al., ; gold & kertesz, ; weekes & raman; ), and repetition of low-frequency (lf) words (howard & franklin, ; butterworth & warrington, ; hanlet et al., ; majerus et al., ; gold & kertesz, ; weekes & raman, ). it appears that a frequency effect may decrease as recovery occurs along the deep-phonological dysphasia continuum. milder cases do not report significant frequency effects in reading (jefferies, sage & lambon ralph, ), repetition (wilshire & fisher ), and repetition with a filled delay (martin et al., ). evidence from studies of deep-phonological dysphasia have revealed an influence of imageability (hi>li), frequency (hf>lf), and modality (visual>auditory). in some cases, imageability and/or frequency have been reported to influence success in visual processing tasks such as oral reading (nolan & carmazza, ; toumiranta et al., ). as previously noted, auditory-verbal stm has been clearly identified as an area of impairment in deep-phonological dysphasia, but treatment paradigms aimed to improve language function within this population of pwa have not been proposed. the presentation of deep-phonological dysphasia is characterized by an advantage in visual processing, when compared to auditory processing of the same stimuli (howard & franklin, ; martin & saffran, ; wilshire & fisher, ; ablinger et al., ). the most pervasive impairment across this continuum is the limitation of auditory-verbal stm capacity. this limitation has been attributed to a rapid decay of the phonological representation (katz & goodglass, ), rapid decay of both phonological and semantic representations (martin et al., ), or weak connection weights between the phonetic and phonological input levels (ablinger et al., ). as an individual’s recovery continues toward a mild presentation of phonological dysphasia, the pervasive impairment of phonological auditory-verbal stm remains (martin & ayala, ). it has been noted that the presentation of deep to phonological dysphasia exhibits some variability. the traditional western aphasia battery-revised (wab-r; kersetz, ) aphasia classification that most suitably fits the profile of deep dysphasia would be more severe than wernicke’s aphasia presentation as described by michel and andreewsky ( ), howard and franklin ( ), martin and saffran ( ). with recovery and a less severe phonological dysphasia presentation, a traditional aphasia classification would most likely be conduction aphasia (martin & saffran, ; wilshire & fisher, ; huber, ablinger, abel & huber, ; mccarthy et al., ). as a person with phonological dysphasia further recovers, differential performance across visual and auditory maintenance tasks is likely to persist, as intact visual processing abilities are consistent with this continuum (ablinger, et al., ). verbal stm may still be affected, even in cases where traditional aphasia classification is reported as non-aphasia/normal (mccarthy et al., ). a marked advantage in the visual input processing of words over auditory processing characterizes the presentation of deep-phonological dysphasia (howard & franklin, ; martin & saffran, ; wilshire & fisher, ; ablinger et al., ). underlying this deficit is a severe impairment in the ability to maintain activation of semantic and phonological representations in stm (martin & saffran, ; wilshire & fisher, ; ablinger et al., ). to compensate for the rapid decay due to deficits in phonological processing (martin & saffran, ; martin & ayala, ), persons with deep-phonological dysphasia employ relatively superior lexical-semantic processing (martin & saffran, ; martin et al., ). error patterns in the recovery of deep- phonological dysphasia substantiate a reliance on lexical-semantic activation and reduced stm capacity. theoretical motivation the ia model of word production (figure ) and its extension to word repetition (martin et al., ; figure ) provided a theoretical framework for the treatment protocol used in this study. this model functions in an interactive, bi-directional fashion. to account for deep to phonological dysphasia, activation of semantic and phonological representations of words is governed by two parameters: connection weight (strength of activation spread) and decay rate (stability of activation strength). activation at one level spreads to the next in the form of feedforward spreading activation and also spreads back to the preceding level as feedback. figure . lexical network structure in the spreading activation production model (dell & o’seaghdha, ). the interactive nature of spreading activation takes place over the time-course of word retrieval (figure ) and ensures that later stages of word processing (whether phonological in naming or semantic in repetition) influence the earlier stages (semantic activation in naming and phonological activation in repetition). figure . an interactive activation model of single-word repetition (martin et al., ). the activation of semantic and phonological representations of a word contributes to the strength of the word (lexical) nodes through the feed forward-feedback process and eventually determines which word node is highest in activation when the intended word is retrieved. sometimes the word that is retrieved is the intended (“target”) word (e.g., “cat”) and sometimes it is another word node in the lexicon, often semantically (e.g., “dog”), phonologically (e.g., “mat”) or both semantically and phonologically (e.g., “rat”) related to the target. impairment to one or both of the processing parameters—connection weight and decay rate—can alter the balance of semantic and phonological input to the activation of the target word and its competitors and lead to the wrong word being selected. schwartz and colleagues ( ) modeled the naming error pattern observed in a case study of fl, who demonstrated fluent speech and a high rate of nonwords in his production. the model was extended to repetition in the case study of nc, who demonstrated deep dysphasia (martin & saffran, ; martin, et al., ). martin and saffran ( ) proposed that a global rate of decay account for the unique symptom of deep dysphasia, namely semantic errors in repetition of single words. martin et al. ( ) used the ia framework to model nc’s error patterns in naming and repetition in a computer simulation of word retrieval by increasing the decay rate of activated nodes, but maintaining the normal levels of connection strength. a notable achievement of this modeling study was that a single lesion to the decay rate parameter was able to simulate the high rate of semantic errors in repetition. the ia model and the severity continuum the ia model was used in another study to address co-occurring changes in error patterns and auditory-verbal stm span that were observed over the course of nc’s recovery (martin et al., ). as noted, nc initially demonstrated the classic features of deep dysphasia, lexicality and imageability effects and semantic errors in single-word repetition (martin & saffran, ); his auditory-verbal stm word span was less than one item, whether the span task required a repetition or pointing response. as nc recovered, he no longer made semantic errors in single-word repetition and his word span increased to two or three words. this pattern of recovery suggested an association between increased decay rate and rates of semantic errors. a simulation of this pattern in the ia model demonstrated a significant positive correlation between the severity of the decay rate impairment and the presence of semantic errors in repetition. it is the presence of semantic errors in single-word repetition that distinguishes deep dysphasia from phonological dysphasia. in two follow-up studies of nc’s recovery, martin et al. ( ) tested the severity continuum hypothesis by reducing the rate of decay toward normal levels (though still abnormally high). this adjustment in the model parameters led to a pattern of symptoms associated with what eventually would be termed phonological dysphasia (wilshire & fisher, ). as a further test of the severity continuum hypothesis, martin et al. ( ) tested the prediction that adding memory load to a word repetition task would lead to a re- emergence of semantic errors. memory load was added either by imposing a five-second delay before a repetition response or by increasing the number of items to be repeated. as predicted, the result was an increase in error rates overall and an increase in semantic errors. this pattern was simulated with two manipulations of the computer simulation. first, the decay rate was increased, but to a lesser degree than the extremely high rate that led to semantic errors in single-word repetition. second, performance with this parameter setting was examined at different time-steps to simulate the effects of time passage that would happen in the repetition task if a five-second delay was imposed before responding or if two words were to be repeated. on the basis of these behavioral and computer simulation data, martin et al. ( ) proposed that nc’s repetition performance at earlier and later stages of recovery in deep dysphasia could be characterized as two points on a functional severity continuum of a single cognitive ability, maintenance of the activation of semantic and phonological representations in auditory-verbal stm. the researchers further hypothesized that two variables—auditory-verbal stm span and task demands on that span capacity—would predict the point of breakdown on this severity continuum and indicate where semantic errors would appear in the repetition error pattern. if verbal span were severely limited (e.g, less than one word), then semantic errors and imageability effects in single word repetition would expected to be present. if span capacity were greater than a single item (e.g., two to three words), semantic errors would not be present and imageability effects would be reduced in single-word repetition. data from the study of nc’s recovery bore out these predictions (martin et al., ). semantic errors and imageability effects reappeared when cognitive load was increased during testingm which was demonstrated with a delayed interval prior to repetition as well as an increase in repetition word span size (martin et al., ). the case study of nc provided evidence that auditory-verbal stm capacity and the size of imageability effect in repetition interact with the degree to which the limits of verbal span capacity are stressed by the number of stimuli or delay in response time. the literature base reporting a classification of deep dysphasia or phonological dysphasia is limited; a report published in indicated fewer than twenty studies (ablinger et al., ). moreover, mild phonological dysphasia has not been considered in detail, and evidence guiding recovery in deep dysphasia is needed in the research base to inform best clinical practice.to gain insight into the pattern of deficit presentation characteristic of persons with chronic auditory-verbal stm impairment and to bring greater clarity to the profile of recovery along the deep-phonological dysphasia continuum, the present research undertook a systematic review of case studies reporting a repetition pattern consistent with deep-phonological dysphasia (see chapter ). the analysis of case studies in the literature base provided the historical foundation of the theoretical and empirical understanding of deep and phonological dysphasia that framed this dissertation research. chapter a systematic review of the deep to phonological dysphasia literature base the literature base documenting deep and phonological dysphasia is highly relevant to better understanding of recovery in aphasia. the pattern of errors reported as characteristic of this ‘syndrome’ has provided some of the clearest evidence that this presentation of aphasia is the result of underlying damage to both language and stm processes (martin & saffran, ; ablinger et al., ). best practice in aphasia rehabilitation now considers the importance of interventions targeting damaged cognitive processes in conjunction with language processes. in the longitudinal case study of deep dysphasic nc, it was proposed that a changing pattern of errors in repetition was mediated by severity of verbal stm (martin et al., ). as previously discussed, this important study led the authors to hypothesize that deep (most severe) and phonological (less severe) dysphasia were the same impairment, but reflected two different points on a severity continuum.(martin et al., ). the most recent study reporting on the existing research base of deep to phonological dysphasia determined it consisted of fewer than studies (ablinger et al.. ). nevertheless, the progression of symptoms in a subtype of aphasia known for severe deficit in verbal stm is of great interest. understanding the pattern of errors characteristic to a subcategory of aphasia has the potential to improve treatment and promote recovery (martin et al., ; martin & saffran, ; dell et al., ). the current systematic review cast a wider net than past reviews in order to gather evidence of a severity continuum mediated by severity of impairment of auditory-verbal stm capacity. in an attempt to determine if additional studies in the literature base existed that could be used to provide evidence of this severity continuum, this systematic review examined all case studies reporting a profile consistent with deep to phonological dysphasia. deep dysphasia and deep dyslexia in , michel and adreewsky characterized deep dysphasia as a severe impairment of repetition analogous to the error pattern noted in the severe aquired reading impairment (marshall & newcombe, ) deep dyslexia. first described by beringer and stein ( ), this impairment was studied across the twentieth century (goldstein, ; marshall & newcombe, ; friedman, ), deep dyslexia is the most severe presentation of this acquired neurological impairment characterized by inability to read single words and the occurrence of semantic paralexias during those attempts (glosser & friedman ). the first published review of deep dyslexia was by marshall and newcombe ( ); this review was then expanded by morton ( ). then, friedman ( ) conducted the largest review of the literature to date and examined eleven cases with the aim of increasing understanding of the progression of symptoms in deep dyslexia and phonological dyslexia. friedman used a pattern of errors to provide evidence that these impairments were the same, mediated on a continuum of severity ( ). in , jefferies, sage, and lambon-ralph completed an investigation of deep to phonological dyslexia in order to test friedman’s theory. this study investigated the performance of twelve individuals and concluded that the results constituted further evidence of the existence of a continuum. what sets deep dyslexia apart from the otherwise similar phonological dyslexia is the occurrence of semantic errors in single-word reading vs. multiple-word reading. the error patterns of acquired dysphasia and acquired dyslexia appear to differ in a way that provides insight into the underlying impaired modality. the presence of semantic paraphasias/paralexias categorizes the distinction between both deep and phonological dysphasia and deep dyslexia and phonological dyslexia (glosser & friedman, ). with the goal of further defining acquired dysphasia, a cursory review of the historical background of acquired dyslexia was completed. exploring the history of research informing understanding of deep to phonological dyslexia provided guidance for proceeding with an investigation of acquired dysphasia. additionally, the disparity in the available research bases of these two acquired language impairments illustrated the challenges that early researchers in dysphasia faced. over fifty years of research in deep dyslexia as well as evidence from thirteen case studies exploring treatment approaches for this impairment preceded friedman’s hypothesis of a severity continuum in . that same year, martin et al. ( ) presented the single case of nc, a detailed and elegant description of the evolving pattern of errors in recovering deep dysphasia. given the exceptionally small literature base, the authors used a weight/decay model in which the single parameter of decay could be manipulated to predict patterns of errors in deep dysphasia along a continuum. the importance of the study of nc was the evidence that it provided supporting severe auditory-verbal stm impairment and language processing impairment occurring in tandem. phonological dysphasia was introduced as a classification by wilshire and fisher ( ). studies that followed lacked clear of the notion of a severity continuum. jefferies, sage, & lamdon ralph ( ) posited that deep and phonological dysphasia shared a phonological impairment due to damage to the primary auditory system, but the authors did not extend this hypothesis or address the presence of a severity continuum. in fact, participants were excluded from their study on the basis of severity (too mild and too severe). ablinger et al. ( ) conducted a nine-month longitudinal case study of jr, a person with deep dysphasia. although jr presented with significant recovery across the four time points measured, the study did not discuss the premise of a continuum or use jr’s performance to justify a revised theoretical model. the first use of the terminology “deep to phonological dysphasia continuum” was within a case series study of individuals characterized in an analysis completed by berthier et al. ( ), who cited the above references, although none of these studies had adopted the terminology of a “continuum” (martin et al., ; wilshire & fisher, ; jefferies et al., ). the current systematic review following the lead of research completed in the field of deep to phonological dyslexia, this investigation conducted the first systematic review of case studies describing individuals presenting with the characteristic markers of deep to phonological dysphasia. of particular concern in previous research was the ambiguity of relevant studies that appeared to allude to a continuum of severity, but avoided consistency using this particular terminology. a primary purpose of this systematic review was to analyze and describe cases presenting with symptoms of deep to phonological dysphasia. the notion that dysphasia exists on a continuum from deep to phonological is central to the predictions of this dissertation. the characteristics of this disorder (imageability effects, frequency effects, and rate of semantic errors in repetition) and changes in these symptoms as severity of auditory-verbal stm impairment improves drove the following predictions: • deep and phonological dysphasia are two points on a continuum of severity mediated by auditory-verbal stm. word span size will serve as a quantifiable variable and predictive marker of severity along this continuum. • severity of auditory-verbal stm impairment will predict the presence of semantic errors in deep dysphasia. semantic errors will negatively correlate with increased word-span in repetition tasks. • severity of auditory-verbal stm impairment in deep-phonological dysphasia will predict imageability and frequency effect size in verbal span. both effects will diminish in degree of severity with recovery in deep to phonological dysphasia, but if demand on verbal span is stressed, the presence of both effects will reappear. method search terms. seminal case studies defining characteristics of deep- phonological dysphasia were applied in the development of operational search terms for this review (katz & goodglass, ; martin & saffran, ; trojano et al., ; butterworth & warrington, ; martin et al., ; majerus et al., ; ablinger et al., ; tuomiranta, gronholm-nyman, kohen, rautakoski & martin, ). population-related search constructs were developed to capture the broad population in question (adult or acquired or “geriatric not child”) and more specific diagnoses (dysphasia or “deep dysphasia” or “phonological dysphasia” or aphasia). lexicality databases used: pubm ed, ebscohost research databases (including: academic search premier, m edline, psy carticles,
 psy chology and behavioral sciences collection, psy cinfo). journals used: ap hasiology , neurocase boolean phrase: (adult or acquired or geriatric) not child and (dy sp hasia or “deep dy sp hasia” or “p honological dy sp hasia” or ap hasia) and (memory or "short-term memory " or "short term memory " or "avstm " or auditory or "auditory -verbal" or p honological) and (frequency or imageability or lexicality or concrete or abstract) and (eval* or diagnos* or assess* or “case study ”) table search terms "short term memory" geriatric frequency "short-term memory" "phonological dysphasia" imageability memory not child diagnos* phonological "deep dysphasia" eval* "auditory verbal" adult assess* avstm aphasia concrete construct related search terms population related search terms topic related search terms auditory acquired abstract see table for a complete list of the search terms used. both deep dysphasia and phonological dysphasia include the diagnostic criteria of reduced auditory-verbal stm and effects of lexicality, imageability, and frequency in repetition (howard & franklin, ; martin & saffran, ; wilshire & fisher, ; abel, huber & dell, ; ablinger, abel & huber, ). in past studies (martin & ayala, ), auditory-verbal stm had been referred to as avstm, which was included in the criteria. these markers were used to develop construct-related search constructs (memory or "short-term memory" or "short term memory" or avstm or auditory or "auditory-verbal" or phonological) as well as topic-related search constructs (frequency or imageability or lexicality or concrete or abstract and eval* or diagnos* or assess* or “case study”). terms used to define inclusion criteria produced the final boolean phrase: (adult or acquired or geriatric) not child and (dysphasia or “deep dysphasia” or “phonological dysphasia” or aphasia) and ("memory" or "short-term memory" or "short term memory" or "avstm" or "auditory" or "auditory-verbal" or ‘phonological’) and (frequency or imageability or lexicality or concrete or abstract) and (eval* or diagnos* or assess* or “case study”). literature search. the following databases were used to identify relevant articles: pubmed, ebscohost research databases (including: academic search premier, medline, psycarticles, psychology and behavioral sciences collection, psycinfo). the journals aphasiology and neurocase were used to identify relevant articles because both were known to include articles of interest due to preliminary research in this area. within this search, if articles included citations referencing studies with the potential to meet inclusion criterion that were not previously identified, these studies were also reviewed. inclusion criteria. the critical threshold for inclusion was a marked auditory- verbal stm impairment defined as a word-span less than items. errors in repetition word span also had to meet one or more of three classic markers of deep to phonological dysphasia: imageability effect, frequency effect and/or lexicality effect. cases were required to have been published between and and written in english. study participants were also required to be adults (defined as age or older), with an acquired neurological deficit resultant in dysphasia. experimental design. descriptive statistics were employed to report the following demographic information in this systematic review: age, years post-onset, education level, gender, etiology, cor, responding neurostructural presentation, and traditional aphasia classification as defined by the western aphasia battery-revised (wab-r; kertesz, ). for each study, reference information included author(s), year of publication, and identifying label (in most cases a combination of two letters). additionally, measures of auditory-verbal stm span included performance on word, digit, and letter repetition when provided in the study. repetition performance was assessed for an imageability effect, a frequency effect, and a length effect. percentage of semantic errors in single and multiple words were collected (if reported). in the context of the entire sample size, the mean, median, and standard deviation of each listed variable were reported to identify patterns in performance. the purpose of this portion of the data analysis was to calculate the range and average trends in variables underlying deep- phonological dysphasia presentation. data analysis. in order to test the above predictions, inferential statistics were performed using spss predictive analytics software (statistical package for the social sciences, ibm, ). severity of auditory-verbal stm impairment was quantified using a severity scale of repetition performance on word span tasks. in order to organize a large number of studies which met inclusion critierion, but reported word repetition abilities as severely or profoundly impaired, specific points on the continuum of deep to phonological dysphasia were defined. as seen in table , word span repetition performance was categorized in seven groups, i to vii, according to severity of auditory- verbal stm impairment. severity level i reflected the most profound deficit of auditory- verbal stm impairment (unable to repeat single words). level ii most closely characterized the profile of individuals with deep dysphasia (single-word repetition > . ). level iii was the first to capture points on the proposed contrinuum that would fit the classification of phonological dysphasia (single-word repetition accuracy for one- word span ≥ . , but inability to repeat two words). level iv included many persons with phonological dysphasia (single-word repetition > . ; two-word span repetition < . ). the last three levels demonstrated what would be expected during recovery in phonological dysphasia: level v (accuracy for two-word span ≥ . ). level vi (for three-word span ≥ . ); and, finally, level vii demonstrated the maximum level of performance considered for inclusion (accuracy for three-word span ≥ . ). table . severity of auditory-verbal short-term memory impairment word span category criteria unable i unable to repeat single words, accuracy = . < word ii accuracy for repetition of single words < . word iii accuracy for repetition of single words ≥ . > word; < words iv single word repetition > . ; two-word span < . ≥ words v accuracy for two-word span repetition ≥ . ≥ words vi accuracy for three-word span repetition ≥ . ≥ words vii accuracy for four-word span repetition ≥ . multiple linear regression was used to describe the relationship between the dependent variable (auditory-verbal stm severity) and the independent variables defined in each prediction. in order to examine the prediction that severity of auditory-verbal stm could be employed to the presence of semantic errors, case studies were divided into two groups for linear regressions by word span: less than a single word (deep dysphasia) and greater than a single word (phonological dysphasia). in a second multiple regression analysis across the two groups, severity of auditory-verbal stm was used to examine the relationship between this repetition word span and presence of semantic errors. a final analysis examined the relationship between the severity of auditory-verbal stm and imageability and frequency effect, to determine if the measures of word span could predict the severity of these effects. results a review of the literature base from to identified articles; these were all assessed for possible inclusion. thirty-six case studies of deep and phonological dysphasia met inclusion criteria; of these cases represented one-time point (single report of participant) and cases reported more than one-time point (longitudinal data reporting the performance of an individual at more than one point of testing); a total of time points were recorded. all the sample cases demonstrated severe deficit in repetition. the main reason for excluding articles was the absence of report of repetition performance. table provides demographic information. participants included males, females, and whose sex was not reported. the average age was . years old (minimum= years old and maximum= years old). average time post-onset was . months or years (minimum < month and maximum = months). dominating etiology was a left cva (. ), which for most of the participants involved the left temporal region (. ). twenty-three cases ( . ) reported classical aphasia taxonomy labels. dominating these descriptions were wernicke’s aphasia (. ) and conduction aphasia (. ). table . further classifying auditory-verbal short-term memory span in single word repetition . - . ii a . - . ii b . - . ii c . - . ii d span accuracy, single word repetition < sub-categorized single word span twenty cases met the inclusion criterion for this analysis in deep dysphasia—a word span of less than one. this provided a rich sample size to test whether the severity of auditory-verbal stm impairment could be used to predict the presence of semantic errors in deep to phonological dysphasia. a regression analysis was performed to determine if accuracy of single-word span was predictive of the amount of semantic errors and imageability. a linear regression revealed that the rate of semantic errors negatively correlated with word span size (f ( , ) =- . , p < . ) (smaller word span resulted in a higher rate of semantic errors). furthermore, the average of semantic errors in each category decreased as span accuracy improved on single words, as noted in table . span size iia had an average of . semantic errors; span size iib, an average of . semantic error; span size iic, an average of . errors; and span size iid, an average of . errors. this systematic decline provided further evidence of a severity continuum (see table ). table . auditory-verbal short-term memory span as related to semantic errors study # first author (year) case study michel ( ) mr ii a . . . . . . jefferies ( ) dysphasic ii a . . martin ( ) n.c. ii b . . . . ablinger ( ) j.r. t ( month post) ii b . . wilshire ( ) m.s. ii b . . marshall ( ) m.c.h. ii b . . cappa ( ) g.m. ii b . . majerus ( ) c.o. may ii b . . metz-lutz ( ) g.l. ii b . . franklin ( ) d.r.b. ii b . . howard ( ) m.k. ii c . . . . butterworth ( ) m.e.g. ii c . . valois ( ) e.a. ii c . . tree ( ) p.w. ii c . . ablinger ( ) j.r. t ( months post) ii c . . croot ( ) c.b. sept. ii c . . hanley ( ) p.s. ii c . . duhamel ( ) n.z. ii c . . . basso ( ) a.m. feb.-mar. ii c . . ablinger ( ) j.r. t ( months post) ii d . . trojano ( ) s.c. ii d . . . . . . knott ( ) f.m. ii d . . basso ( ) a.m. april-may ii d . . gold ( ) m.m.b. ii d . . jefferies ( ) dysphasic ii d . . cappa ( ) g.m. ii d . . auditory-verbal stm span (iia-iid) semantic errors single words se average nouns- average across i/f reports single words hi single words li single words adjectives single words- verbs although the terminology used to describe the impairment ranged from deep dysphasia, phonological dysphasia, to short-term memory impairment, to auditory-verbal stm impairment, all reported cases demonstrated a severe deficit in repetition.the most notable initial findings indicated a high occurrence of imageability effects in repetition across the stages of recovery (. ) and a high occurrence of semantic errors (. ). twenty-seven cases met the criteria for inclusion. (eliminated were gl, mch, p, meg, gm, dro, am, jva). a pattern was observed in which imageability effects negatively correlated with size of auditory-verbal stm (f ( , ) =- . , p < . ). the findings in table identified a high occurrence of imageability effects in repetition across the stages of recovery consistent with the prediction of continued errors. by contrast, the occurrence of a frequency effect was not found to be significant (f ( , ) =- . , p < . ). only twenty cases met that criterion for inclusion, as frequency effect was less reported. (see table ). table systematic review of literature repetition performance and imageability effect study # first author (year) case study auditory-verbal stm span (i- vii) imageability ratio (hi : li) ( hi ÷ li) normalized difference score nolan ( ) b.l. iii : . . michel ( ) m.r. ii : . . duhamel ( ) n.z. ii : . . howard ( ) m.k. ii : . . katz ( ) s.z. ii : . . vallar ( ) e.r. v : . . coslett ( ) w.t. iii : . . martin ( ) n.c. ii : . . trojano ( ) s.c. ii : . . franklin ( ) d.r.b. ii : . . departz ( ) a.m. months iii : . . valois ( ) e.a. ii : . . martin ( ) n.c. - months post iii : . . hanley ( ) p.s. ii : . . r. martin ( ) m.s. vi -word . . -word : . . croot ( ) c.b. march iii : . . c.b. september ii : . . knott ( ) f.m. ii : . . majerus ( ) c.o. may ii : . - . tree ( ) p.w. ii : . . gold ( ) m.m.b. ii : . . wilshire ( ) m.s. ii : . . jefferies ( ) dysphasic ii . . jefferies ( ) dysphasic ii : . . weekes ( ) b.r.b. english ii . . b.r.b. turkish ii : . . ablinger ( ) j.r. t ( month post) ii : . . j.r. t ( months post) ii : . . j.r. t ( months post) ii : . . j.r. t ( months post) iii : . . mccarthy ( ) l.t. pre-treatment v -word : . . l.t. post-treatment vi -word : . . tuomiranta ( ) a.a. ii : . . repetition performance- auditory . . . . . . nouns- average across i/f reports . . high imageability noun accuracy . . . . . . . . . . low imageability noun accuracy difference in accuracy (hi - li) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . table . systematic review of literature frequency effect study # first author (year) case study auditory-verbal stm span (i-v frequency ratio (hf lf) ( hf ÷ lf) normalized difference score friedrich ( ) e.a. v : . . howard ( ) m.k. ii : . . vallar ( ) e.r. v : . . coslett ( ) w.t. iii : . . martin ( ) n.c. ii : . - . trojano ( ) s.c. ii : . . departz ( ) a.m. months iii : . . valois ( ) e.a. ii : . . martin ( ) n.c. - months post iii : . . hanley ( ) p.s. ii : . . r. martin ( ) m.s. vi -word : . . -word : . . knott ( ) f.m. ii : . . majerus ( ) c.o. may ii : . . gold ( ) m.m.b. ii : . . wilshire ( ) m.s. ii : . . jefferies ( ) dysphasic ii : . . jefferies ( ) dysphasic ii : . - . weekes ( ) b.r.b. english ii : . . b.r.b. turkish ii : . . ablinger ( ) j.r. t ( month post) ii : . . j.r. t ( months post) ii : . . j.r. t ( months post) ii : . . j.r. t ( months post) iii : . . mccarthy ( ) l.t. pre-treatment v -word : . . l.t. post-treatment vi -word : . . repetition performance- auditory high frequency nouns low frequency nouns difference in accuracy (hf lf) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a regression analysis (table ) was performed to determine if rate of semantic errors and imageability effect could be predicted from accuracy of word repetition. twenty-two cases met the inclusion criterion for this analysis—word span of more than . a linear regression revealed a negative correlation between semantic errors and word span size (f ( , ) =- . , p < . with smaller word span resulting in higher rate of semantic errors. discussion the purpose of this review was to determine if a characteristic profile of recovery along the deep-phonological dysphasia continuum could be established through the evidence base within the existing literature. the review identified concrete inclusion criteria from different cases, and a comprehensive picture of the pattern of recovery emerged from the examination of multiple aspects of patient language performance. an important finding was the commonality of specific impairment with respect to li words. the presented research provided the opportunity to test a model-based treatment approach based on the predictions of the ia model as developed by dell and colleagues (dell & o’seaghdha, , martin & saffran, ; martin et al., ) and its extension in martin and saffran’s activation-maintenance hypothesis (martin & saffran, ). results were consistent with the literature that noted pervasive impairment of verbal stm as predictive of severity along a continuum of deep-phonological dysphasia (e.g., martin & saffran, ; martin et al., , foygel and dell, ; hanley et al, ; dell et al., ). a characteristic error pattern was the presence of semantic errors. the consistent report of an imageability effect in these findings was encouraging, but these errors should in the future be reviewed in the context of auditory-verbal stm performance. the pattern of semantic error rates and imageability effects in repetition were systematically related to auditory-verbal stm span. auditory-verbal stm capacity was not found to be a significant predictor of frequency effect.the well-known and prominent marker of semantic errors was an unexpectedly subtle error pattern in even the most severe cases. semantic errors in repetition were not as common as many other speech errors. to put this into perspective, dell et al. ( ) examined a total of , errors in repetition produced by sixty-five pwa and reported zero occurrences of semantic errors. when seminal articles of deep dysphasia were examined for overall presence of semantic errors and single-word repetition, the percentages were relatively low. howard and franklin ( ) reported mk presenting with . semantic errors; trojano ( ) reported sc presenting with . semantic errors; martin and saffran ( ) reported nc presenting with . semantic errors. the prominent marker of semantic error production was less obvious in testing for deep dysphasia than for deep dyslexia. this differential has hindered identification of deep dysphasia deficits. dell et al. ( ) explained how the two-step model of lexical access could not include more than two percent semantic errors due to the assumption of perfect recognition for auditory input. along with the rarity of the disorder, the testing limitation might account for the few articles available. howard and franklin ( ) compared deep dysphasia to the likelihood of simultaneously presenting with dental, viral, abdominal and podiatric ailments. it is important to note observations that have drawn significant distinctions between these two modality specific impairments. karanth ( ) reported that while deep dyslexia was the third major type of acquired dyslexia, the rarity of deep dysphasia in its purest form presented a challenging disadvantage to researchers seeking to find appropriate participants. karanth concluded that the identification of deep dyslexia in the literature covered a wide range of errors characterized as semantic ( ). categorization could include visual semantic errors (milk->depot, hike-> hitchhike), (dogma->dog, woman) and/or visual and semantic errors: sympathy: orchestra->sympathy “symphony”, stream->steam “train”) marshall & newcombe, ; saffran, schwartz, & marin, ). this examination of the literature base also raised challenging practical and theoretical questions about the extent to which clinical intervention can influence the pattern of recovery in this population. as typically observed in deep and phonological dysphasia and consistent with the presentation of nc, imageability effects in repetition of single and multiple words remained a marker across the continuum of dysphasia; hi words were repeated more accurately than li words. the review findings on imageability effects in repetition served as a key theoretical motivation for this dissertation and led to the focus on the one feature common to aphasia profiles wherever they fall on the severity continuum. chapter the effects of semantic context on deep to phonological dysphasia: a treatment study findings from the literature base were used to inform understanding of recovery along a continuum of deep to phonological dysphasia. the greatest practical ramification of the preceding findings within the foundational literature was an unanswered question: what treatment approaches best promote improved performance for this population during recovery? the literature, when investigated systematically, provided irrefutable evidence that this impairment exists on a continuum of severity. this dissertation research then undertook a single-case study and a broader four-condition, multi- participant facilitation investigation with the goal of developing and testing appropriate treatment approaches. the profound contrast between superior visual processing in contrast to auditory processing and a pronounced imageability effect were consistent markers of this impairment continuum. deep-phonological dysphasia has been recognized as a phonological impairment where impaired maintenance of activation across levels of processing is subjected to rapid decay, thus restricting auditory stm (martin et al., ; dell et al., ). in the clinical setting, it is common to note a patient’s strengths and weaknesses and attempt to use these strengths to compensate for areas of impairment. in the consideration of an effective treatment approach, a visually supported system was considered. ultimately, a strictly auditory approach was hypothesized to be a direct and relevant method. the strength of visual processing was not forgotten. the present research investigations, however, focused on strictly auditory tasks and whether they could be used to manipulate the integrity of the visual processing system. this focus resulted in the development of a treatment approach aimed at improving imageability effect, a trademark impairment of this continuum, and was first employed in the following single-subject case study with participant lt. the primary purpose of the lt study was to investigate whether lt’s ability to access and maintain activation of li words could be improved by creating contexts (adjective-noun phrases) that enhanced the imageability of li words. specifically, the study sought to determine if pairing li words in semantically cohesive adjective-noun phrases (e.g., long distance; social exclusion) would facilitate their repetition in the context of that phrase and later when presented in word pairs for repetition (e.g., distance- exclusion). imageability effect had been manipulated previously in a naming treatment experiment in which kiran, sandberg and abbot ( ) provided evidence that training abstract (li) words showed greater generalization to untrained concrete (hi) words than the reverse. this result followed the principle of the complexity account of generalization between trained and untrained items—that is, training more complex (abstract) words leads to greater generalization to untrained less complex words (concrete) words. (see also kiran & thompson, .) in the lt study, the rationale for manipulating imageability of abstract word stimuli derived from the assumption in the ia model that there is interaction between lexical and semantic levels of word representation. manipulating imageability of abstract words by narrowing their semantic interpretation in an adjective-noun phrase should make them temporarily more accessible, but importantly this improved access should carry over to repetition of low-image words without the phrasal context. specific predictions of the lt study include: • training repetition of li-lf nouns in semantically cohesive li-lf adjective- noun phrases (e.g., long distance; social exclusion) will improve accuracy of repetition of these same nouns when they are presented as word pairs (e.g., distance exclusion). • treatment effects for repetition of li-lf pairs will be less robust when training repetition of li-lf adjective-noun phrases that are not semantically cohesive (e.g., purple agility). • improvements in repetition of li-lf pairs will generalize to improvements in repetition of untrained li-lf pairs. method the treatment involved repetition of abstract word pairs (modifier-noun phrases) created in a way that increased the semantic and syntactic cohesiveness of words in the pair. for example, to improve the repetition of the word pair “distance– exclusion,” the participant was provided the phrases “long distance” and “social exclusion.” the goal of this manipulation was to increase the probability of accessing the abstract words’ lexical and semantic representations by enriching their semantic-syntactic context. it was hypothesized that this increase in accessibility would be maintained when the words were repeated without the contextual phrase. participant. the participant was lt, a year-old, right-handed, college- educated female. she experienced a left middle cerebral artery infarct involving the left temporal and parietal lobes, and posterior insula in october, . lt’s employment history included work as a teacher, poet, writer, and actress. she was approximately months post-onset at the beginning of this study. prior to participation in the treatment study, lt gave written informed consent as approved by the institutional review board (irb) of temple university. as per study guidelines, lt passed an audiometric pure- tone, air conduction screening at decibels hearing level (db hl) at k, k, and k hertz (hz) bilaterally. pre-treatment assessment. lt was administered a number of standardized and laboratory-developed assessments to determine aphasia type and language profile. (results can be found in table .) unlike many reported cases of deep-phonological dysphasia (e.g., howard & franklin, ; martin & saffran, ), lt presented with minimal impairment of picture naming, scoring . ( / ), with mainly non-responses and two semantic paraphasias on the long form of the boston naming test (bnt; goodglass, kaplan & weintraub, ). to measure auditory comprehension, the complex ideational material subtest of the boston diagnostic aphasia examination (bdae, goodglass et al., ) was used. lt’s pattern of responses on the bdae revealed decreased accuracy as a function of difficulty of the auditory comprehension task. in contrast, spontaneous language was preserved and was judged as grammatical and free of paraphasias. although the western aphasia battery-revised (wab-r; kertesz, ) was not administered immediately prior to testing, it was notable that lt’s aphasia classification was conduction aphasia, with an aphasia quotient (aq) of . ( . / ). lt’s ability to discriminate words from nonwords was tested using the auditory lexical decision test (martin & saffran, ). her performance was greater than standard deviations (sd) above the mean performance of persons with aphasia when tested in aphasia rehabilitation research laboratory at temple university (arrl) on recognition of words z= . , n = , . ± . , and nonwords z= . , n = , . ± . , indicating a relatively spared ability to map phonemes onto lexical representations. lexical comprehension of abstract, concrete, and emotional concepts was tested using the shallice test of abstract, concrete and emotional concepts (shallice & mcgill, unpublished). here, lt demonstrated a significant advantage in the identification of concrete words compared to abstract words ( % compared to %, p = . ). pre-treatment cognitive measures. repetition span subtests of the temple assessment of language and (verbal) short-term memory in aphasia (talsa, martin, et al., ) were used to assess digit and word span capacity. results are reported in table . all span measures reflect serial order recall. for digit span, performance was within sd below the mean performance of persons with aphasia (pwa) tested in arrl for pointing z= -. , n = , . ± . and repetition z= -. , n = , . ± . . measures of verbal span on talsa subtests provided a refined diagnosis of lt’s impairments. (see table .) lt presented with a moderate to severe auditory-verbal repetition deficit influenced by lexicality and imageability effects. performance was similar on measures of pointing word span, z= -. , n = , . ± . , and repetition word span z= -. , n = , . ± . . word span was more than sd below the mean score of pwa tested at arrl, z= -. , n = , . ± . . nonword span was also below average z= -. , n = , . ± . . when span was varied for imageability and frequency, accuracy was lowest for hi-lf words z= -. , n = , . ± . and li-lf words z= -. , n = , . ± . . in word repetition span tasks, errors included semantic and phonological paraphasias and unrelated word errors. on a probe memory span task that manipulated semantic and phonological characteristics of words in span, lt’s semantic span was close to the mean of pwa tested in the arrl, z= -. , n = , . ± . . probe memory phonological span was an area of strength, with lt scoring over sd above the mean, z= . , n = , . ± . . table . lt's performance on talsa span measures with language variations. pre post digit and word span digits (iso) pointing . . repetition . . words (iso) pointing . . repetition . . word . . nonword . . hi . . li . . hf . . lf . . probe memory span semantic . . phonological . . maximum string length = items maximum string length = items maximum string length = items maximum string length = items hi-hf: high image, high frequency li-hf: low image, high frequency hi-lf: high image, low frequency li-lf: low image, low frequency word and nonword repetition span repetition span for words varied for frequency (f) and imageablility (i) pre-treatment evaluation of functional communication. the communicative effectiveness index (ceti; lomas et al., ) was used to quantify the perceptions of lt and her primary caregiver (mother) of lt’s functional communication abilities before and after her stroke on a - scale. both mother and daughter rated the various aspects of communication requiring intact auditory processing as poor to fair (range - ; mean = . ). this index provided functional examples of the impact lt’s aphasia had on her everyday life. conversational situations noted to be difficult for her included initiation, participation, spontaneous topic change, fast pace of speech, and multiple conversational partners. experimental stimuli stimuli were selected from a corpus of words that varied in frequency and imageability assembled in the arrl. the stimuli consisted of li-lf noun pairs that were four to six syllables in length. words in pairs were neither semantically nor phonologically related. frequency and imageability ratings were verified through use of the mrc psycholinguistic database (wilson, ). three sets of hi-hf noun pairs, ten pairs per set, were assembled and assigned to two treatment conditions and a response generalization condition: set (treatment , tx ): “semantically + syntactically cohesive” (sem+syn) adjective-noun phrases (e.g., high rating). set (treatment , tx ): “syntactic only” (syn only) adjective-noun phrases that are not semantically cohesive (e.g., purple agility). set (response generalization): “limited exposure” condition including ten noun pairs to assess response generalization. selection of adjectives for the adjective-noun phrases followed the procedures and criteria for selection of the nouns. experimental design a single-subject multiple-baseline multiple probe design was used to analyze acquisition, maintenance, follow-up, and generalization effects of treatment. the dependent variable was accuracy of repetition of li-lf pairs in probes. during the baseline phase, the li-lf noun pairs were continuously measured in probes in randomized order with no visual support until a stable baseline was achieved. a stable baseline was defined as no more than . variability between two consecutive probes within three consecutive trials, a moderately conservative criterion used by wambaugh, et al., ( ) and others (wambaugh & ferguson, ; kiran, et al., ). during the acquisition phase of tx , set probes identical to those in baseline were administered prior to the start of each treatment session in randomized order, while li-lf pairs in set (for tx ) were maintained in baseline at a reduced probing schedule, every other probe session. the li-lf pairs in set , the limited exposure set, were probed every fourth session to assess response generalization. after the acquisition phase for tx , the probing schedule was switched so that set items (tx ) were continuously probed and li-lf pairs in set (tx items) were probed every other probe session in maintenance. criterion for acquisition of li-lf pairs was . correct across two consecutive probes. set li-lf noun pairs were probed every other probe session in maintenance. follow-up probes for tx , tx , and response generalization conditions were administered three, six, and eight weeks following the end of all treatment. pre- treatment language evaluations were re-administered between treatment conditions. at the completion of treatment, subtests from the talsa (martin, et al., ) were re- administered. each treatment session included the repetition of phrase primes in total. treatment followed an implicit priming protocol. implicit, masked priming, refers to tasks which immediately and automatically activates the language processing system (silkes, dierkes & kendall, ). the subject was instructed to repeat adjective-noun phrase primes (e.g., “common fallacy”) three times following successive verbal presentation. following repetition of the target primes, the target li-lf word pair (e.g., rating-fallacy) was presented for repetition one time. ten repetitions of li-lf word pairs occurred within one session. the treatment program consisted of two treatment conditions: • treatment condition one (tx ; sem+syn): li-lf nouns in pairs from set were combined with adjectives to form semantically cohesive adjective-noun phrases (e.g., long distance; social exclusion) to be used as primes for the li- lf pair targets (e.g., distance-exclusion). • treatment condition two (tx ; syn only). adjective-noun phrases were formed from li-lf pairs in set for use as primes. adjective-noun phrases were not semantically cohesive (e.g., purple agility). the order of presentation of the phrase primes for each noun in the pair was alternated across treatment sessions using an abba design (e.g., treatment session one: ab - “high rating” followed by “common fallacy”; treatment session two: ba- “common fallacy” followed by “high rating”; treatment session three: ab- “high rating” followed by “common fallacy” and so on). sessions were held two times per week and lasted between and minutes. each included repetition of to li-lf probes followed by the treatment, which required a total repetition of li-lf adjective-noun pairs. (see appendix a for an example of the treatment protocol.) reliability and procedural fidelity measures were employed throughout all conditions. primary observers were licensed speech and language pathologists and secondary observers were laboratory research assistants. all primary and secondary observers worked in the arrl and were trained in the data collection protocol as well as proper response coding and provided operational definitions to support these procedures. primary observers handwrote all participant responses in real time using a pre- constructed checklist, and all sessions were audio-recorded. inter-rater reliability was established using independent secondary observers present in real time within the session and audio recordings. independently written transcriptions by a secondary observer within the treatment room were collected in of sessions across conditions. the result was . agreement among examiners. following all sessions, a secondary observer listened and re-transcribed responses that were audio recorded in probe testing, with . ( / items) agreement with the other examiners. effect sizes. to estimate the strength of treatment effects in each condition, effect sizes were calculated according to the guidelines of beeson and robey ( ). for tx and tx , effect sizes were calculated using the mean of all baseline probes and the mean of last three treatment probes. they were also calculated for follow-up effects using the mean of all baseline probes and the mean of the three follow-up probes. results and discussion data analysis. the proportions of li-lf pairs repeated correctly in probes during each treatment condition and in all phases of treatment are shown in figure . lt demonstrated stable repetition performance across tx , tx , and response generalization probes prior to the beginning of treatment, as defined by . or less accuracy across three sessions for all three conditions. by baseline session ten, lt’s proportion correct of stimuli was within . across baselines eight, nine, and ten. across these sessions, proportion correct of tx stimuli averaged . ; for tx stimuli, . ; and for response generalization stimuli, . . her level of performance met the study criterion for baseline stability across all conditions. figure . proportion correct on li-lf probe trials in for syn + sem, syn only and limited exposure treatment stimuli across phases of treatment. lt’s proportion of correct repetitions of li-lf pairs in tx probes demonstrated steady improvement. her ability to repeat treatment word pairs during probe testing increased by . in tx , and behavioral criterion was met by probe . baseline testing was extended before application of treatment to tx li-lf pairs to re-establish stable accuracy levels. four baseline probes were conducted, resulting in mean repetition performance of . , which was a . increase from baseline performance levels. despite this modest increase, lt’s proportion of correct repetitions of li-lf pairs in probe testing was variable, and the behavioral criterion was not met. given lt’s variable performance during the tx condition, a semi- replication of the tx condition was introduced using the stimuli from tx . semantically cohesive adjective-noun phrases were created for each tx li-lf word. unexpectedly, in baseline testing lt reached criterion on repetition of the noun pairs by the third baseline probe. as a result, there was no need to continue this attempt at replication of the sem-+syn treatment. although not shown in figure , these data were obtained following the end of tx and before the first follow-up probe, three weeks after the last tx probe. accuracy for the response generalization stimuli remained in the baseline range with no evident improvement. during tx , effects of tx remained above baseline levels but below final acquisition levels. all probes were administered three weeks, six weeks, and eight weeks following the end of the tx condition. thus, tx ended approximately weeks prior to the final all probe. despite this lapse in time following tx , accuracy levels for these pairs remained at the same behavioral criterion level as the last probe within the treatment condition during the three-week follow-up probe. accuracy then declined by . in subsequent follow-up probes, resulting in mean repetition performance of . . accuracy for the tx stimuli was variable, as it was during treatment. no change in accuracy for response generalization stimuli was observed. effect sizes. effect sizes are reported in table . the effect size for tx was more than two times the effect size for tx , indicating that semantic coherence of the adjective-noun phrase was a key ingredient of the priming effect of the adjective noun phrases. effect sizes in the follow-up phase were lower than in the treatment phase, but the effect size for tx was greater than tx . table . effect sizes for treatment and maintenance phrases of treatment one and treatment two. condition treatment follow-up treatment condition one: sym+syn . . treatment condition two: syn only . . during the baseline testing between tx and tx , some interim language evaluations were re-administered. results of these tests are reported in table . lt’s pre-treatment performance on a test of auditory lexical decision (martin &saffran, ) was within normal range (table ) and did not require re-administration. lexical comprehension of abstract, concrete, and emotional concepts using the shallice test of abstract, concrete and emotional concepts (t. shallice and j. mcgill, unpublished) revealed a small increase in accuracy for abstract words. lt demonstrated improved auditory comprehension on the complex ideational material subtest of the boston diagnostic aphasia examination (bdae, goodglass et al., ), with a . increase in accuracy. picture naming improved by . on the boston naming test (bnt; goodglass et al., ). although not administered immediately prior to treatment, the post- treatment aphasia quotient for lt improved points, from . to . . according to the wab-r (kertesz, ). this result was notable because lt’s post-treatment aphasia classification as measured by the aphasia quotient changed from a diagnosis of conduction aphasia to normal or non-aphasic. performance on repetition span subtests of the talsa (martin et al., ) following treatment are reported in table . most notable, for repetition of digit span, performance was improved more than sd above the mean performance of persons with aphasia, from a span of . to a span of . . with respect to the repetition of words, lt also demonstrated an increase in accuracy with performance falling just under mean performance of pwa in the arrl. performance on probe memory spans manipulating semantic and phonological characteristics revealed modest improvements in accuracy on each span. results on other measures of span were unremarkable. the communicative effectiveness index (ceti; lomas et al., ) was administered after post-testing to determine the perceptions of lt and her mother concerning lt’s functional communications. lt’s mother’s ratings showed improvement across categories and demonstrated an overall increase of . . most notably, lt’s own ratings increased to . . she reported that she perceived her functional communication abilities across categories to be as efficient as they were before her stroke. anecdotally, lt and her mother reported that following the conclusion of the treatment study lt felt comfortable speaking on the telephone, as opposed to alternative means of visual electronic communication. implications for future treatment. treatment outcomes indicated that increasing the semantic cohesiveness of low-frequency and low-imageability words improved this participant’s ability to repeat those words in the context of the adjective- noun word pair and also in isolation. this study was initially developed to extend current understanding of damaged language processing and damaged stm in pwa. while the literature base has confirmed that in pwa damaged language processing and damaged stm recover in tandem, there is a need for treatment approaches that target both areas. chapter improving access to words of low imageability on a continuum of impairment: a facilitation study examining the effects of semantic context the case study of lt discussed in chapter pioneered the use of a treatment paradigm developed to improve auditory-verbal stm capacity as a function of the language processing system. evidence from this single-case study indicated that manipulating lexical and semantic influence within an adjective-noun phrase enhanced lt’s semantic processing as well as auditory-verbal stm (mccarthy et al., ; mccarthy et al., ). specifically, embedding these words within a cohesive phrase generalized and increased the likelihood of successful repetition later without the semantic and syntactic context. the phase of the research reported in the current chapter is an extension of the original single-case study. the main object of this research was to further test paradigms developed to improve auditory-verbal stm capacity as a function of the language processing system. the primary question was whether increasing semantic cohesiveness was an effective method for the treatment of repetition impairments in aphasia. the facilitation studies reported in this chapter were designed to test the usefulness of treatments that control for the manipulation of stimuli characteristics and modality of presentation. the following predictions were developed to quantify the efficacy of this treatment: • training repetition of li nouns in semantically and syntactically cohesive li adjective-noun phrases (e.g., business casual) or sentences (e.g., the affair is business casual) will significantly improve performance in repetition of these same nouns when they are presented as unrelated noun pairs/triplets for serial recall (e.g., casual-poverty/-wisdom) following a ten-minute delay. • immediate and delayed facilitation effects of training repetition of li adjective-noun phrases (e.g., rude agility) or sentences (e.g., calcium is a rude agility) that are not semantically cohesive will have a significantly smaller effect on performance on repetition of these same nouns when they are presented as unrelated noun pairs/triplets for serial recall in comparison to the effects of the matching condition which employed semantic enhancement. • training repetition of li nouns in semantically related serial recall span tasks of pairs/triplets (e.g., faith-hope/devotion) demonstrates an approach that will complete repetition priming and semantic priming. immediate improved performance in repetition of these same nouns when presented as unrelated noun pairs/triplets for serial recall is expected. • treatment facilitation effects will generalize to improved performance on all- stimuli post-test/talsa (martin, et al., ) post-tests, when compared to all baseline levels as determined by stimuli-pre-test/talsa(martin, et al., ) pre-test. method participants: inclusion and recruitment. potential research participants were evaluated in the eleanor m. saffran center for cognitive neuroscience within the department of communication sciences and disorders at temple university. initial contact with participants was made in two ways: (a) from a laboratory pool of participants (experimental and control) who had previously participated in the center’s studies and had agreed to be contacted for future studies and (b) via referral from physicians, speech language pathologists, or other clinicians. participants were fully consented prior to enrollment. the study goal was to recruit an equal number of males and females, aged to , that were representative of the racial demographics of the philadelphia area. participants were required be at least six months post-onset of left cva (cerebrovascular accident). background testing completed prior to the facilitation study included the talsa (martin, et al., ). performance on this assessment revealed participants that demonstrated difficulty with repetition span tasks and was used to determine if the participant was appropriate for the two-word or three-word condition of this study. relevant standard participant demographic information was defined as age, education, sex, race, time post-onset, and etiology of acquired neurological deficit. this information was collected during the first session. following the completion of data collection, these data were analyzed in order to characterize the sample of participants through the use of common descriptive statistics. background history results included measures of central tendency (mean, median) and variation (standard deviation, interquartile range). pre- and post-test facilitation study assessment. pre and post-facilitation test background testing included a repetition span subtest varying frequency and imageability from the talsa assessment battery (martin et al., ). this testing revealed sensitivity to the repetition of hi versus li words and also provided information on word-span capacity. if a participant’s performance on this standardized language evaluation was identified as appropriate for candidacy in this facilitation study, continued assessment was conducted. level of repetition impairment determined if a second screening tool would be administered, depending on whether the participant met qualifications for participation in the two-word or three-word version of the facilitation study. a second screening tool, developed specifically for this facilitation study, measured performance accuracy on the repetition of all trained and untrained stimuli used in the facilitation study, varied across word order position. at the conclusion of the facilitation study, these measures were re- administered. post-test performance assessed change in the participant’s ability to repeat trained versus untrained stimuli in isolation. post-testing on the talsa (martin, et al., ) determined if there was a difference in repetition performance of words varied for imageability and frequency. facilitation study design: experimental stimuli experimental stimuli were selected from a corpus of li-lf nouns developed specifically for the investigation. the talsa (martin, et al., ) subtest varied for frequency, and imageability served as the primary pre-test that determined eligibility for participation in study. it was logical to create a corpus of experimental stimuli using the properties of li (“abstract”) targets within the word repetition span subtest of the talsa battery. list lengths one through six of the talsa subtest consist of li-lf laboratory developed noun targets. performance on this measure was a primary pre-testing tool. frequency, imageability, and syllable length of the talsa (martin, et al., ) items were used to control syllable length and phonological similarity in addition to maintaining imageability ratings consistent with the talsa li-lf repetition span task items. to maintain consistency, lf words were included. in terms of syllable length, there were one-syllable ( . ), two-syllable ( . ), and three-syllable items ( . ). the -item experimental stimuli set mean frequency was . (sd= . ), following pastizzo and carbone ( ); rating and mean imageability was . (sd= . ), following the coltheart ( ) rating system. low imageability words were defined as ± ¾ sd of the mean frequency used on talsa (martin, et al., ) stimuli (min , max ). sixty items were selected as experimental stimuli; these were previously reviewed. noun lists from the -word corpus were exclusive to an assigned ondition. (see table for the itemization in detail.) table . experimental stimuli defined, -word/ -word condition one condition two condition three condition four . habit: condition one trained targe (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . dispute: condition two tra target a (imag. ; syl.) . halt: condition three traine (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . habit: condition one trained ta (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . routine: condition one trained t (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . graphic: condition two tra target b (imag. ; syl.) . pause: condition three traine (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . routine: condition one trained t (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . tribute: condition one trained t (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . impulse: condition two tra target c (imag. ; syl.) . talent: condition three trai (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . tribute: condition one trained t (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . compliment: condition one traine (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . loyalty: condition two tra d (imag. ; freq. ; . skill: condition three traine (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . compliment: condition one traine (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . vow: condition one trained targe (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . pat: condition two trai (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . loan: condition three trained t (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . vow: condition one trained ta (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one trained ta (imag. ; syl.) . fare: condition two tra f (imag. ; fre . debt: condition three t (imag. ; freq. , syl.) . pledge: condition one trained t (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one trained ta (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one trained t (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one traine (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one tra (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one trained ta (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one trained t (imag. ; syl.) . alter: condition one generalizati (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . clever: condition two gene target a (imag. ; syl.) . shame: condition three generaliz (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . alter: condition one generaliza (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . bury: condition one generalizati (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . recruit: condition two gene target b (imag. ; syl.) . blunt: condition three generaliza (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . bury: condition one generalizat (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . comfort: condition one generaliz (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . wasteful: condition two generalization target c (im ; freq. ; syl.) . sincere: condition three generaliz (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . comfort: condition one generali c (imag. ; freq. ; s . devotion: condition one generaliz d (imag. ; freq. ; s . zodiac condition two gene target d (imag. ; . ease: condition three generaliza (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . devotion: condition one general d (imag. ; freq. ; s . mood: condition one generalizat (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . scent condition two gene target e (im . bawl: condition three generaliza (imag. ; syl.) . mood: condition one generaliza (imag. ; freq. ; syl.) . saint: condition one generalizati (imag. ; syl.) . myth: condition two gene target f (imag. ; syl.) . ate: condition three generalizat (imag. ; freq. , syl.) . firm: condition four generaliza (imag. ; freq. , syl.) . pledge: condition one trained ta (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one trained t (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one traine (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one tra (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one trained ta (imag. ; syl.) . pledge: condition one trained t (imag. ; syl.) "practiced routine" ___________ "eager graphic" ___________ "skill-ambition" ________________ "fraud-kale" __________________ "practiced routine" ___________ "eager graphic" ___________ "skill-ambition" ________________ "fraud-kale" __________________ "practiced routine" ___________ "eager graphic" ___________ "skill-ambition"________________ "fraud-kale"__________________ | | | second pause | | | | | | second pause | | | | | | second pause | | | | | | second pause | | | "solemn vow" ___________ "morbid fare" ___________ "loan-debt" ___________ "saint-hazard" _____________________ "solemn vow" ___________ "morbid fare" ___________ "loan-debt" ___________ "saint-hazard" _____________________ "solemn vow" ___________ "morbid fare" ___________ "loan-debt" ___________ "saint-hazard"_____________________ | | | second pause | | | | | | second pause | | | | | | second pause | | | | | | second pause | | | "routine- vow" ______________ "fare- graphic" ______________ "fare- graphic" ______________ "fare- graphic" ______________ | | | second pause | | | | | | second pause | | | | | | second pause | | | | | | second pause | | | repeat -- total sets in each treatme (set defined as the above: repea sec.] repeat phrase bx [ s pause, repeat noun pair x [ s repeat -- total sets in each t segment set d above: repeat phrase a x ; repeat phrase bx [ sec pause, repeat noun pair x ) repeat -- sets in treatment segm set defined as the above: re x ; [ sec.] repeat phra pause, repeat noun pair x [ s repeat -- sets in treatment segm segment defined as the above repeat unrelated -word span a x ; repeat phrase bx [ sec.] pause, repeat unrelated noun pair x [ s repetition trials during facilitation: se noun phrase prime: repetitions across c primes per cycle). practice probe - word unrelated noun repetition span: re across cycles ( proves per cycle). repetition trials during facilita adjective-noun phrase prime: repetiti across cycles. ( primes per cyc practice probe: -word unrelated noun repetition span: repetitions ac ( probes per cycle). repetition trials during facilitation: se adjective-noun phrase prime: repetitions acros cycles. ( primes per cycle). practice probe: -word unrelated noun repeti repetitions across cycles ( probes pe repetition trials during facilitation: s adjective-noun phrase prime: repetitions ac cycles. ( primes per cycle). practice probe: -word unrelated noun repe span: repetitions across cycles ( probe cycle). structured-only word span(unre mkkaslmfsldsaa;mflmsla generalization stimuli: word: condition ( - ) generalization t f) (imagability rating [im frequency rating [freq.]; # of s [#syl.]) semantic +synactic (related) dsadmsakksmakdmksmakmkm synactic-only (unrelated) sad semantically structured (related) zxfczccccxzxcxz within facilitation examp trained stimuli: word: condition ( - ) trained target: (a-f) (im rating [imag.]; f rating [freq.]; # of syllable table . experimental stimuli precise definition: two-word span- condition one, condition two, condition three, and condition four condition one condition two condition three condition four linguistic structure: within fa condition adjective - noun adjective - noun noun - noun noun - noun pre-test accuracy pre-test administered: xx . pre- test immediately before tx pre-test administered: xx . pre-t immediately before tx pre-test administered: xx . pre-tes immediately before tx pre-test administered: xx . pre-test immediately before tx number of stimuli : trained a one-syllable: one-syllable: one-syllable: one-syllable: two-syllable: two-syllable: two-syllable: two-syllable: post-test accuracy probe tests administered: xx . immediate post-test xxq . min.delay post-test dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijs probe tests administered: xx . immedia post-test xxq . min.delay pos dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija probe tests administered: xx . immediate post-test xxq . min.delay post-test dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojd probe tests administered: xx . immediate post-test xxq . min.delay post-test dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojd li-lf nouns: t untrained: items s adjectives items: items li-lf nouns: t untrained: items s adjectives items: items li-lf nouns: t untrained: items li-lf nouns: t untrained: items structured-only word span (unrelated) mkkaslmfsldsaa;m facilitating repetition via: -w stuctured repetition span task tasl dksaolskldklasdl fsc : -word syn+span research slp: ............;............................................. ejiaisjdijsiojdijsija . verbally states syn+span using unrelated two-word s for immediate.repetition... vresearch slp: dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . three opportunities provided to correctly repeat syn ,,,,,,,,dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, . repeat , with new syn + span pair targeted. ..........wo- word noun span targeting trained li-lf nouns pair:..... ..;............................................. . two-word noun s targeting trained li-lf nouns pair: participant has one opportunity to repeat accurately. variation of monosyllabic, bisyllab word presentation: incudes traine and untrained items condition format v vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvc,,,ccccccccccc dsdddddapproachs loklkl; dkm saa abbreviation presentation: wit facilitation condition research slp: ........................................... . verbally states sem + syn adjective-noun phra for immediate repetition. dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . three opportunities provided to repeat se adjective-noun phrase. ds jawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . repeat above steps - , new sem + syn targeted. dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . two-word noun span targeting trained li-l pair: participant has one opportunity to repea accurately. research slp: dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . verbally states syn-only adjective-noun phra immediate repetition. dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . three opportunities provided to repeat sy adjective-noun phrase. ............;............................................. . repe above steps - , new syn-only phrase targe ............;............................................. . two-word noun span targeting trained li-l pair: participant has one opportunity to repea accurately.. research slp: ............;............................................. . verbally states sem+span two-word span sti immediate.repetition.....; ................................... . ......... . three opportunities provided to correctly repea sem+span. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, . repeat , . new sem + span pair targeted. .................;............................................. . two-word noun span targeting trained li-lf nouns pair: part one opportunity to repeat accurately. semantic +synactic (related) dsadmsakksmakdmksmakmkm faciliting repetition via: sem noun phrase xccfcccccccnsniaojsijfjiojijiojij fsc : -wor sem+syn synactic-only (unrelated) sadmsakksmakdmksm faciliting repetition via: sem noun phrase xccf fsc : -word syn-only semantically structured (related) zxfczccccxzxcxz facilitation repetition via: -w repetition span task zxfczccccxzxcxz fsc : -word sem+span table . experimental stimuli precise definition: three-word span- condition one, condition two, condition three, and condition four condition one condition two condition three condition four linguistic structure: within fa condition noun- adjective - noun noun- adjective - noun noun - noun - noun noun - noun - noun structured-only word span (unre mkkaslmfsldsaa;mflmsla facilitating repetition via: - word stuctured repetition span ta tasl dksaolskldklasdlksldak;s fsc : :-word syn+span research slp: ............;............................................. ejiaisjdijsiojdijsija . verbally states syn+span using unrelate word span stimuli for immediate.repetition... vresearc slp: dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . three opportunities provided to correctly re syn+span. ,,,,,,,,dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, . repeat , with new syn + span triplet targeted. ..........wo-word noun span targeting trained li-lf nouns pair: ..;............................................. . three-word noun span targeting trained li-lf nouns tripl participant has one opportunity to repeat accura condition format v vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvc,,,ccccccccccc dsdddddapproachs loklkl; dkm saa abbreviation presentation: wit facilitation condition research slp: ........................................... . verbally states sem + syn noun-adjec sentence for immediate repetition. dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . three opportunities provided to repeat s syn noun-adjective-noun sentence ds jawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . repeat above steps - , new sem + sy targeted. dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . three-word noun span targeting trained l nouns triplet. participant has one opportuni repeat accurately. research slp: ........................................... . verbally states syn-only noun-adjective-noun sentence for immediate repetition. dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . three opportunities provided to repeat sy noun-adjective-noun sentence ds jawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . repeat above steps - , new syn only sent targeted. dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . three-word noun span targeting trained li-l triplet participant has one opportunity to repe accurately. research slp: . ejiaisjdijsiojdijsija . verbally states sem+span using re three-word span stimuli for immediate.repetition... vresearch slp: dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija . three opportunities provided to corre repeat sem+span. ,,,,,,,,dsjawiijiaisjdijsiojdijsija,,,,,,,,, . repeat , with new sem + span triplet targe ..........wo-word noun span targeting tra ............................................ . three-word noun span targeting traine nouns triplet participant has one opport to repeat accurately. semantic +synactic (related) dsadmsakksmakdmksmakmkm faciliting repetition via: s noun-adjective-noun phrase xccfcccccccnsniaojsijfjiojijiofsc : -word sem synactic-only (unrelated) sadmsakksmakdmksm faciliting repetition via: s noun-adjective-noun phrase xcc fsc : -word syn-only semantically structured (re zxfczccccxzxcxz facilitation repetition via: - word semantic+ repetition spa zxfczccccxzxcxz fsc : -word sem+sp in each condition, nouns were divided into two equal groups, half selected as trained stimuli and half to be used for untrained generalization items. of the experimental stimuli selected, half were used as probes to determine the facilitative effects of four conditions and half as generalization items. all were balanced for syllable length, and words in pairs were neither phonologically nor semantically related. conditions one and two matched four -syllable words, six -syllable words, and two -syllable words. conditions three and four matched ten -syllable words and two -syllable words at the two-word level as well a ten -syllable words, seven -syllable words, and one -syllable words at the three-word level. prior to each condition, a pre-test of the current condition’s stimuli and matching stimuli for generalization was administered. figure provides a conceptual framework of the protocol. figure . conceptual framework of facilitation study session one-session six. dependent variable. the facilitation study employed a case series design and used repeated measures analysis. the primary dependent variable of interest was accuracy on repetition probe span tasks on two-item or three-item lists. a second dependent variable of interest was accuracy of recall on recall tasks presented immediately following treatment, serial recall as well as in any order. baseline accuracy of li pairs was measured in the pre- and post- test screening tools. the facilitation program consisted of four facilitation conditions targeting two-word or three-word repetition (table *). conditions were constructed to demonstrate a variation of semantic and/or syntactic context and were formed using abstract noun pairs or noun triplets: • facilitation condition one (c ; sem+syn): li pairs/triplets were trained through the repetition of semantically and syntactically cohesive li adjective- noun phrases (e.g., practiced routine; solemn pledge) or sentences (e.g., a habit is a practiced routine; a vow is a solemn pledge). • facilitation condition two (c ; syn only): li pairs/triplets were trained through the repetition of syntactically structured li adjective-noun phrases (e.g., eager graphic; modified fare) or sentences (e.g., a dispute is an eager graphic; a pat is a modified fare). the participant was informed that this repetition task was nonsensical. • facilitation condition three (c ; sem+syn span): li pairs/triplets were trained through the repetition of semantically related two/three-word serial order tasks (e.g., faith-hope; wisdom-knowledge-information). • facilitation condition four (c ; syn only span): li pairs/triplets were trained through the repetition of unrelated li two- or three-word serial order tasks (e.g., stern spirit; rude agility; fact- stern-spirit; calcium-rude-agility). participant algorithm for administration. to control for the possibility of an effect of order of condition administered, treatment order, pre-/post-test order, or a learning effect, a randomized algorithm was developed. this list of order of administration was generated prior to recruitment. ten versions of the pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test were created for each condition. additionally, three versions of each treatment administration were created to ensure randomization. (see table for the master algorithm for administration.) a structured record ensured that the examiner did not have control of order of condition and stimuli presented. this procedure was expected to provide a more interesting analysis of the data as it reflected performance on multiple treatment variations. table . - participant algorithm for administration subject subject subject subject subject subject subject subject subject subject subject subject participant id kc eh xh- ec- up- mi- iu- qh- el- nf- kt- km- date initiated / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / consented yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes talsa pre-test , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , all word pre-test -word -word -word -word -word -word -word -word -word -word -word -word condition pre-test version treatment version a b a c b b b a c b a post-test version a post-test version b condition pre-test version treatment version c b c a c b c c c a post-test version a post-test version b condition pre-test version treatment version c b c a b c a b a c post-test version a post-test version b condition pre-test version treatment version a c c b a b a c a b post-test version a post-test version b all word post-test -word -word -word -word -word -word -word -word -word -word talsa post-test , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , date completed / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / conditions randomized: , , , pre-tests randomized: versions per condition treatments randomized: versions per condition post-test a: tested immediately, versions per condition post-test b: following a minunte delay, versions per condition scoring system. tests were scored within facilitation by the examiner, as well as after administration via audio recording. a second reviewer examined the results and any disagreement in results was resolved via discussion. change from pre-test was defined as the proportion of word and list accuracy at post-test (immediate and -minute delay) subtracted by these values at pre-test. paired t-tests were used to determine statistically significant differences in change from pre-test within each of the four conditions separately. the null hypothesis assumed that the true mean difference was equal to , and the upper-tailed alternative hypothesis assumed that the true mean difference was greater than . additionally, repeated measures analysis of variances (anova) was used to determine if there were statistically significant differences in change from pre-test between conditions one and two and between conditions three and four. a bonferroni correction for pairwise comparisons was applied to the p-values and confidence intervals. the null hypothesis stated there were no differences in change from pre-test between conditions one and two or between conditions three and four. this test allowed for comparisons in single-factor studies, as all participants in the facilitation study completed all conditions. for categorical variables, measures included frequencies and percentages. because the small sample size might limit the statistical significance of the results, effect sizes to demonstrate a direct treatment effect were calculated to assess the magnitude of change from pre-test to post-test performance scores on all-stimuli as well as talsa (martin, et al., ) performance. magnitude of effect sizes was interpreted based on benchmarks specific to lexical retrieval in aphasia studies. these benchmarks were developed by robey & beeson ( ) and intended to extend application of busk and serlin’s ( ) calculation of cohen’s ( ) d statistic to pwa. aphasia effect size benchmarks within multiple participant studies were as follows: small: > . , medium: > . , large: > . (robey & beeson, ). simple regression models were used to determine whether the robustness of response to treatment was predicted by the size of imageability effect in pre-tests or size of span. due to the small sample size, these regression models were exploratory in nature, and beeson & robey ( ) effect sizes were calculated to determine the magnitude of change. lastly, a post-hoc power calculation was conducted using the obtained sample size (n= ) to determine the power to detect differences in change from pre-test. statistical significance was taken at the . level. results ten participants with aphasia presented with chronic auditory-verbal stm impairment and the general results of this treatment approach indicated that all participants improved in repetition abilities. analyses were driven by the previously defined research predictions and addressed performance before and after the facilitation study in serial order (iso) or in any order (iao), as well as comparisons between the semantically enhanced conditions and the syntactically well-formed conditions. all analyses were conducted using the software program statistical package for the social sciences (spss, ibm corp., ). participants. descriptive statistics included measures of central tendency (mean, median) and variation (standard deviation, interquartile range) for these measures. relevant participant demographic information can be viewed in table . nine participants ( . ) had more than years of formal education. sex ( males, females) was more evenly distributed when compared to distribution of race ( african american, caucasian [ . ] and time post-onset ( months [sd= , range = - ]). the measure of word span repetition performance developed for the systematic review (table ) was determined to be an appropriate tool to use in this study. auditory-verbal stm impairment was categorized in seven groups, i (most severe) to vii (least severe) , according to severity of auditory-verbal stm impairment to severity of auditory-verbal stm impairment. the sample size had a range of severity of auditory-verbal stm impairment: participants ( . ) were characterized as severity level v (accuracy for two-word span ≥ . ), participant ( . ) was categorized as level iv (single-word repetition > . ; two-word span repetition < . ), and participant was ( . ) be categorized as level i (single-word repetition > . ). three participants qualified for the two-word condition and seven participants qualified for the three-word condition. given a range of deficits spanning from more phonologically impaired to more semantically impaired, it was critical to review results iso and iao. tables , and iso provide examples of one-, two-, and three-word talsa (martin, et al., ) pre- testing scoring on items and lists. tables , , and iao provide examples of one-, two-, and three-word talsa (martin, et al., ) pre-testing scoring on items and lists. table . participant demographic information id # subject age education sex race date of onset etiology date enrolled time post onset severity of auditory- verbal stm impairment completed kc years m aa / / lt. cva,seizures / / months v y eh years f aa / / lt. mca cva / / months v y xh- years m aa / / lt. cva / / months iv y ec- years f aa / / aneurysm clip, seizures / / months v y up- years m aa / / lt. cva / / months v y mi- years f aa / / lt. posterior temporal- occipital cva; lt occipital avm / / months v y u- years m c / / lt. parieto- ocipital cva, lt. mca cva / / months v y qh- years m c / / lt. ich and craniotomy / / months vii n el- years f aa / / lt. cva, thrombo- embolic / / months iv n nf- years f aa / / lt. cva / / months v y kt- years m aa / / lt. mca cva / / months i y km- years m cc / / lt. mca cva / / months v y prediction : training repetition of li nouns in semantically and syntactically cohesive li adjective-noun phrases (e.g., business casual) or sentences (e.g., the affair is business casual) will significantly improve performance in repetition of these same nouns when they are presented as unrelated noun pairs/triplets for serial recall (e.g., casual-poverty/- wisdom) following a ten-minute delay. prediction - analysis : effect of semantically cohesive phrases or sentences. condition one trained repetition of li nouns in semantically and syntactically cohesive li adjective-noun phrases or sentences. the first research prediction was specific to performance before and following a ten-minute delay after the facilitation. sample t-tests were conducted to analyze iso/iao performance on words and lists. the training did not have a significant immediate effect on repetition performance for lists (tables , ). results showed a small effect of word repetition iao (m= . , sd= . ); t( ) = - . , p = . . these data were also supported by a small-medium effect size of . (beeson & robey, ). prediction : analysis : delayed effect of semantically cohesive phrases or sentences. two paired-sample t-tests focused on comparing pre-test performance and delayed post-test performance on words and on lists repeated accurately in any order. in words and lists, a significant difference was found in both iso and iao (table ). prediction : analysis : condition one over time. a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance was conducted in order to compare scores among participants. this analysis made it possible to determine if there was a significant change in performance between time (pre-test, prior to intervention), time (post-test immediately after intervention), and time (ten-minute delay). there was a significant effect in condition one for words, wilk’s lambda = ( . ). f ( , ) = . , p =. , and for lists, wilk’s lambda = ( . ). f( , ) = . , p= . . these results suggested that within condition one, performance accuracy on both word and lists significantly increased over time. prediction : immediate and delayed facilitation effects of training repetition of li adjective-noun phrases (e.g., rude agility) or sentences (e.g., calcium is a rude agility) that are not semantically cohesive will have a significantly smaller effect on performance on repetition of these same nouns when they are presented as unrelated noun pairs/triplets for serial recall in comparison to the effects of the matching condition which employed semantic enhancement. prediction : analysis : immediate effect of the syntactically well-formed facilitation condition. analysis of condition one demonstrated significant improvement in post-test performance. using the same statistical measures, condition two performance was investigated, comparing pre-test and immediate post-test results. as expected, treatment effects were not significant following training repetition of li adjective-noun phrases/sentences that were not semantically cohesive. paired-t-tests determined there was no significant change in performance in repetition iao of these same nouns during pre-testing performance on words/lists when presented as unrelated noun pairs/triplets for immediate serial recall of words/lists. (table reports iso and iao performance.) prediction : analysis : delayed effect of syntactically well-formed facilitation condition. whereas performance during condition one improved following a ten-minute delay, in condition two there were no significant findings from paired t- tests comparing performance on words/lists in pre-testing to both immediate and delayed post-testing. prediction : training repetition of li nouns in semantically related serial recall span tasks of pairs/triplets (e.g., faith-hope/devotion) will result in immediate improved performance in repetition of these same nouns when presented as unrelated noun pairs/triplets for serial recall. prediction : analysis : semantically related word spans. condition three gave participants semantically related two- and three-word serial recall span tasks. in order to investigate the benefit of training repetition of li nouns in condition three, paired t-tests were completed. as predicted, a paired t-test investigating performance on words pre-test and post-testing showed significant differences, a second paired t-test investigating pre-test performance on lists found that post-test performance significantly improved (table , report, iso/iao performance.) prediction : analyses : related versus unrelated word span. condition four presented nouns as unrelated pairs or triplets. semantic boost was the only element differentiating condition four from condition three. a paired t-test investigating pre- testing performance on words within condition four (m= . , sd= . ) found no significant difference in immediate post-test performance on words or lists within condition four iso/iao. effect sizes as calculated using the beeson and robey ( ) method supported a medium effect between word accuracy on pre-/post- ( . ) and list accuracy on condition three ( . ) compared to these same effects of word ( . ) and list ( . ) within condition four (table , ). a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance was conducted in order to compare scores and analyze change in performance between time (pre-test, prior to intervention) and time (post-test immediately after intervention) in conditions three and four. the results of this analysis supported earlier findings and demonstrated a significant effect between condition performance for words, f( , ) = . , p =. and for lists, f( , ) = . , p= . prediction : treatment facilitation effects will generalize to improved performance on all-stimuli post-test/talsa post-tests, when compared to all baseline levels as determined by stimuli-pre-test/talsa pre-test. prediction : analyses : improvements in post-testing performance. a final important research question involved overall improvement from pre-testing to post- testing on two important measures. first, overall performance on a post-test containing all stimuli was predicted to be significantly improved when compared to pre-testing performance. two paired-samples t-tests were conducted to compare pre-test and post- test performance on words and on lists repeated accurately in any order. there was a significant difference in accuracy of words and in number of lists repeated correct iso/iao in pre-test accuracy and post-test accuracy (table , report iso/iao performance). effect sizes (beeson & robey, ) also supported improvement between pre-and post- test. for words, a medium effect size was found ( . ) and for lists, a very large effect size ( . ). prediction : analyses : improvements in talsa performance. paired t- tests were conducted to compare pre-test and post-test performance on words and on lists repeated accurately within the talsa (martin, et al., ). there was a significant difference in improvement in accuracy of words and lists repeated correctly at each level of the talsa (martin, et al., ) testing. significantly, there was an effect iso and iao between hi and li words during pre-test, but not post test. li was significantly different across pre-test to post test. this was not true for hf vs lf within or across conditions. this persisted across the three levels of the talsa (martin, et al., ) test ( - item lists). effect sizes although no standards are available for evaluating the significance of effect sizes for repetition treatment, the relative size of treatment effects could be evaluated for condition one (semantically cohesive adjective noun phrases/sentences) and condition three (semantically related word span) and compared to the results under condition two (adjective noun phrases/sentences that are not semantically cohesive) and condition four (unrelated word span). the comparative evaluation demonstrated significant improvement in accuracy for conditions one (table , ) and three (see table , ). discussion. results were exceptionally rich, given the variety of participant performance. this varied improved performance supported the assumptions of the interactive activation model that served as the theoretical framework of this investigation. both conditions one and three demonstrated that manipulation of semantic presentation provided a significant benefit over presentations that did not include semantic enhancement. in terms of the ia model of language processing, semantically enhanced conditions activated lexical and semantic levels of processing, making maintenance for repetition more attainable for individuals with chronic auditory-verbal stm impairment. overall, significant improvement in repetition of both words and lists was noted. by examining whether repetition improved an individual’s facility with repetition, the current research established greater understanding of theory-driven treatment paradigms and provided insights that have direct implications for the treatment of chronic auditory-verbal stm impairment. chapter : discussion the preceding chapters address the presentation of deep to phonological dysphasia. deep to phonological dysphasia is a complex impairment known for chronic and severe impairment of auditory-verbal stm (martin et al., ; wilshire & fisher, ; mccarthy et al., ). this research expanded understanding of this population and supported the premise that the two disorders exist on a continuum of severity, as first proposed by martin and colleagues ( ). pwa are, thus, the ideal population to investigate the efficacy of a treatment approach targeting language and stm. it is now widely accepted that aphasia is an acquired language disorder that disrupts language processing and stm and, furthermore, that these damaged areas recover in tandem. despite this recognition, few treatment studies have examined whether treating both language and stm provides greater gains across areas. as discussed in chapters and , a literature review of deep to phonological dysphasia revealed new insight into the expected pattern of recovery in this population. this research aimed to provide additional evidence to support the hypothesis of a continuum from deep to phonological dysphasia (martin et al., ) with severity determined by the degree of global decay across the phonological-lexical-semantic levels of language processing. the longitudinal case study of nc (martin et al., ; ; ) is reported to be the longest case study of recovery in deep dysphasia (ablinger et al., ). results supported the premise that a predictive relationship exists between auditory-verbal stm span and imageability effect. these findings were consistent with conclusions from other studies that a relationship exists between auditory-verbal stm span and rate of sematic errors. overall, the findings aligned with the predications of the ia model. the pattern of semantic error rates and imageability effects in repetition were related to auditory-verbal stm span. this analysis yielded theoretical, empirical, and clinical insights into the deep-phonological dysphasia continuum. results of the current dissertation research provided further support for the hypothesis of a severity continuum and, by examining the role repetition plays in improving performance, sought to directly inform clinical practice. its findings, thus, emphasized the value of a theoretically motivated approach to an essential component of functional communication. several conclusions can be established from its single-case study of lt and multi-participant facilitation investigations. the treatment approach embedded in this research showed a positive effect on auditory-verbal stm capacity, as evidenced by generalized improvements in post-testing measures including word span. the results, taken together, add more precision to the understanding of deep to phonological dysphasia on a continuum of recovery. as predicted, adding semantic context (in the form of adjective-noun phrases/sentences) to each word in the li pair facilitated access to and maintenance of li word pairs/triplets when the semantic context was removed and the li words were repeated in isolation. the single subject case study of lt as well as the ten-person treatment protocol showed that when semantically cohesive adjective-noun phrases were used as primes, repetition of li word pairs in probes improved robustly during maintenance and follow- up. similar improvement did not occur in either study when adjective-noun phrases that lacked semantic cohesion were used as primes. these results supported the hypothesis that feedback activation from the semantic network strengthens the lexical and phonological representations of words and that increasing the strength of that semantic feedback activation improves access to low image words. this strategy facilitated lt’s immediate access to the words in the context of the adjective-noun phrases and generalized to isolated repetition in probes. lt’s ttreatment outcomes indicated that increasing the semantic cohesiveness of low-frequency and low-imageability words improved her ability to repeat those words in the context of the adjective-noun word pair, but also in isolation. clinical and research implications the treatment approach embedded in this research showed a positive effect on verbal stm capacity, as evidenced by generalized improvements in post-testing measures including word span. the increases, in turn, resulted from improvement of one or both parameters that mediate spreading activation—connection strength and decay rate. thus, embedding hard-to-access li words in more imageable adjective- noun phrases improved activation and short-term maintenance of semantic representations of words. these improvements were evident in greater accuracy in repetition of words as well as an increase in verbal span capacity. stm span for li words increased following intervention. the study aimed to develop a treatment that would strengthen access to li words and thereby improve repetition of these words. the theoretical framework of the ia model of language processing and repetition in aphasia (martin et al., ; martin & saffran, ) framed the predictions for this treatment approach and, in turn, served as a means by which the results could be understood. repetition of words in an ia model is mediated by input phonological activation of the word form in the lexicon and feedback activation from semantics, which together converge on lexical nodes (the target word and competitors) in the lexical network. hi words benefit more from stronger top-down semantic feedback activation than li words. this difference accounts for imageability effects in word repetition. manipulation of the linguistic context of an adjective-noun phrase influenced, for example, lt’s ability to activate and maintain activation of the phonological forms of these low-image words. access was facilitated by embedding the low-image words in a context that increased imageability and the strength of semantic feedback to the lexical form of the word. this feedback increased the number of opportunities for successful activation of the word form in the lexicon, contributing to generalization of access to the li words without the semantically enriched context. future directions often, success was found within treatment sessions when participants were given three opportunities to respond. the first, perhaps timid or uncertain response would enhance maintenance, which would then be reinforced with another trial. by the third trial, many participants stated a correct response confidently, avoiding a rapid decay of the information to be repeated. as the primary clinician administrating this treatment approach, verbal and nonverbal observations of participant’s reactions to treatment should be briefly touched upon. during this study, a consistent observation was that a participant would react with joy in the success of giving a correct response. informal notations made during sessions recorded the clear difference in the way a positive semantically related probe (e.g., talent-skill-ambition) was vocalized for repetition in comparison to a probe with negative word associations (e.g., loan-debt-frugal). this enthusiasm was akin to the practice of repeating positive affirmations. positive affirmations are also intended to be repeated three times and are often composed of abstract words.in a semantically cohesive context, however, they become more imageable. integration of the concept of mindfulness and positivity in future repetition treatments may provide a fruitful area of continued research. another future direction would be the exploration of other presentations of semantically cohesive adjective noun phrases that could increase the likelihood of generalization to untrained stimuli. for example, the noun “habit” could be paired with multiple adjectives in phrases that vary in length and complexity (e.g., new habit; daily habit, creature of habit; break the habit). it is possible that embedding a difficult-to- access low-image word in a variety of semantically enriching contexts may stimulate stronger and more sustained semantic activation. improvement in repetition of li pairs would not be linked to a single specific adjective and could promote greater response generalization to untrained li pairs. clinical relevance. there are countless real-life situations where repetition and auditory-verbal stm capacity are essential for communicative success. for individuals with stm impairments, simply talking on the telephone can be unmanageable. say a pwa gets a call from a doctor’s office regarding a change in medication. if the conversational context does not provide the necessary level of semantic support, abstract words used in the call may be difficult to process and repeat. establishing the safest and highest level of independence communicating wants and needs seem superficially easy, as persons with verbal stm impairment often compensate using strengths. functionally, even the most rudimentary literature provided regarding the prevention of stroke is overwhelmed with abstract words that could be combined to enhance semantic meaning. treatment of increased semantic cohesiveness could assist in recovering ability to understand verbal directions (e.g adjective-noun word pairs: “hypertensive crisis”; “medication management”; “oral intake”). the results of this dissertation research indicate that treatments that repeatedly facilitate successful attempts to access a lexical word form can potentially improve ease of access to that word without facilitation. limitations. there is a caveat to the generalizability of this treatment protocol. the approach is appropriate for someone whose repetition and maintenance of words in auditory-verbal stm relies primarily on activation and short-term maintenance of semantic representations of words, relative to the ability to activate and maintain activation of phonological representations. there are individuals with aphasia, however, who show an opposite difficulty in repetition—poor access and maintenance of semantic representations of words relative to phonological representations. in theory, these individuals should demonstrate a reduced imageability effect in repetition, as recall will be based primarily on the phonological activation of words with little feedback from semantic support. this reliance on phonological activation would likely lead to a reduced auditory-verbal repetition span, but with errors that are more phonologically than semantically related. this pattern has been observed in some studies (e.g., martin & saffran, ), but remains to be tested more fully. the repetition of abstract words (e.g. “exclusion; distance”) is most challenging for some persons with aphasia because they do not evoke a clear mental representation. in order to enhance semantic processing and auditory-verbal stm, the treatment approach investigated in this dissertation improved semantic availability by embedding an abstract word into the context of an adjective-noun phase (e.g., “social exclusion; long distance”). often, success was found within treatment sessions when participants were given three opportunities to respond. the first, perhaps timid or uncertain response would enhance maintenance, which would then be reinforced with another trial. by the third trial, many participants stated a correct response confidently, avoiding a rapid decay of the information to be repeated. concluding remarks. this dissertation presented the first treatment approaches that specifically target the repetition impairment in chronic auditory-verbal stm deficits. its results have extended the literature base beyond its previous focus mainly on characterizing the nature of the impairment. outcomes of this study demonstrated two important potentials of targeted intervention. first, the view of aphasia as an impairment of processing that affects access to otherwise intact representations of words opened up a new way of thinking about treatment approaches. following the principles and specific components of a model that embraces this view can guide future development of treatment protocols. second, dynamic models that focus on aphasia as an impairment of processing demonstrate that cognitive plasticity is feasible and provide the guidelines to stimulate cognitive changes. the notion of cognitive plasticity is akin to neural plasticity. evidence for the latter comes in the form of neural changes (e.g., increased or decreased neural activity) observed in imaging studies before and after treatment (fridriksson, ; fridriksson et. al., ; sandberg & kiran, ; sandberg, bohland & kiran, ). at the cognitive-behavioral level, behavioral treatments designed on the basis of cognitive models can result in measurable changes in performance that reflect cognitive plasticity. these changes may or may not be manifested in neurological changes. it may be ideal to observe both neural and cognitive changes following treatment, and rehabilitation research should assess both these levels of change. for clinical purposes, however, the measures of 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( ). the mrc psycholinguistic database: machine readable dictionary, version . behavioural research methods, instruments and computers, ( ), - . announcing... new monographs women and american politics a series of instructional units the monographs, designed for use in undergraduate courses, can be used individually to augment text- books, or collectively to offer a course on women and politics. the monographs were prepared as a result of an apsa education project. test editions were used widely by faculty and students. the association is publishing revised and updated editions of: • women in the judicial process by beverly b. cook, leslie f. goldstein, karen o'connor, and susette m. talarico. • women's movements: organizing for change by joyce gelb and ethel klein. • women and power in american politics by milda k. hedblom. • women, political action, and political participation by virginia sapiro. • women's rights, feminism, and politics in the united states by mary lyndon shanley with an introduction and epilogue by shelby lewis. order from apsa/publications, new hampshire ave., n.w., washington, d.c. at $ . each or $ . for two or more titles. h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms new for spring from cq press forthcoming congress reconsidered — fourth edition lawrence c. dodd, university of colorado—boulder bruce i. oppenheimer, university of houston, editors available in january for spring classes, app. pages. candidates, parties, and campaigns electoral politics in america — second edition stephen a. salmore, rutgers university barbara g. salmore, drew university february , app. pages. state of the states carl e. van horn, editor, rutgers university february , app. pages. f j u s t p u b l i s h e d "| the supreme court — third edition lawrence baum, ohio state university november , app. pages. politics and public policy carl e. van horn, rutgers university donald c. baumer, smith college william t. gormley, jr., university of wisconsin—madison august , pages. congressional procedures and the policy process — third edition walter j. oleszek, congressional research service july , pages. religion in american politics charles w. dunn, editor, clemson university august , pages. mass media and american politics — third edition doris a. graber, university of illinios—chicago july , pages. invitation to struggle congress, the presidency, and foreign policy — third edition cecil v. crabb, jr., louisiana state university pat m. holt, former staff director, senate foreign relations committee august , pages. international relations contemporary theory and practice george a. lopez, university of notre dame michael s. stohl, purdue university, editors august , pages. . . . and available from congressional quarterly how the u.s. got into agriculture and why it can't get out david rapp the nuclear age atomic energy, proliferation, and the arms race — second edition william sweet budgeting for america — second edition john cranford state government cq's guide to current issues and activities - thad l. beyle, editor, university of north carolina-chapel hill guide to current american government — spring £ press for more information on these and other cq press titles, contact: college services nd street, nw, washington, d.c. ( ) - h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms elect a winner in ... american democracy second edition lewis upsitz.university of north carolina-chapel hill david speak, georgia southern college casebound. pages publication: february instructor's manual, study guide, test item file, computerized test item file, and the st. martins press resource manual for teachers of american government available to request an examination copy of any of these titles, please call us at our toll-free number, - - , ext. ; or write us on your college letter- head, indicating your course title, present text, and approximate enrollment. send your request to: st. martin's press college division • department jr • fifth avenue • new york, ny h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms — s f f i p — elect a text for american government governing the american republic economics, law, and policies second edition alan stone, university of houston richard p. barke, georgia institute of technology a comprehensive introduction to the american political system, governing the american republic remains, in this second edition, unique in its focus on the roles of both economics and law, with emphasis throughout on the economic, legal, and historical contexts and implications of policy choices. new to this edition are complete coverage of the election, an entire chapter on federalism, more conventional chapter sequences in the institutional and policy parts, and "study guide" material at the end of every chapter. paperbound. pages (probable) publication: january instructor's manual and test item file available american government a brief introduction fifth edition max j. skidmore, university of missouri, kansas city marshall carter tripp, us. department of state this comprehensive—yet brief and objective —core text for the basic american govern- ment course provides students with the most essential information about united states government and the american political process. the text has been brought fully up to date for this edition and includes the election results. new to this edition are a section on the media, four new case studies, and entirely new chapter-opening quotes. paperbound. pages (probable) publication: february instructor's manual available for international relations and foreign policy world politics trend and transformation third edition charles w. kegley, jr., university of south carolina eugene r. wittkopf, louisiana state university like its two highly successful predecessors, the third edition of world politics is a com- prehensive introduction to international relations and global problems. it blends historical information with conceptual discussions to examine the entire global, system, focusing throughout on the process of change against a backdrop of continuity. the third edition includes a completely new chapter on foreign policy decision mak- ing, expanded coverage of such important topics as state-sponsored terrorism and arms control agreements (including the inf treaty), and new interpretations of such crucial global issues as the arms trade and u.s.- soviet relations. paperbound. pages (probable) publication: january instructor's manual available the nuclear reader strategy, weapons, war second edition edited by charles w. kegley, jr., university of south carolina eugene r. wittkopf, louisiana state university a compact anthology of articles, the nuclear reader introduces students to the varying viewpoints on the nuclear debate. the articles—all by acknowledged experts in the field—have been organized into three major sections on "strategy," "weapons," and "war! new to this second edition are of the articles; new topics, including sea- launched cruise missiles and the morality of nuclear deterrence; and new coverage—vir- tually every new article addresses the ques- tion of the impact of sdl in addition, all of the introductory essays have been rewritten, and the glossary of "nuclear nomenclature" now appears at the back of the book. paperbound. pages (probable) publication: january h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms from st. martin's press the domestic sources of american foreign policy insights and evidence charles w.kegley, jr. university of south carolina eugene r.wittkopf, louisiana state university a collection of readings that covers the central issues that influence the formation of american foreign policy: leaders' personali- ties, the bureaucracy, governmental institu- tions, interest groups, and public opinion. it also includes up-to-date coverage of american foreign policy issues, including those that have recently surfaced during the reagan administration. the editors' introductions to the book and to each section provide an analytic framework that ties the readings together. paperbound. pages. for public administration a budget quartet critical policy and management issues donald axelrod, state university of new york at albany a stimulating new supplement for courses in budgeting and other courses in public administration, a budget quartet provides in-depth coverage of the policy and manage- ment dimensions of four major issues in budgeting—reliance on public authorities, the role of the courts in budgeting, the use of the budget as a leverage device, and the budgetary relationships between different levels of government. in discussing these four issues, axelrod expertly covers all levels of government—national, state, and local— and also highlights relevant budget practices and related policy issues in other countries. paperbound. pages (probable) publication: january budgeting for modern government donald axelrod, state university of new york at albany all of the standard budgeting t o p i c s - planning, implementation, accounting, capital budgeting, and budget reform—are expertly covered in this comprehensive text. in addition, the author treats all levels of governmental budgeting as well as inter- governmental budgeting, and he discusses the controversies that are at the core of contemporary budgeting. each chapter concludes with a summary and several questions for discussion. a unique com- parative perspective is provided where appro- priate to familiarize students with relevant budgetary developments around the world. casebound. pages. public administration social change and adaptive management n. joseph cayerand louis f. weschler, both of arizona state university this text presents a thematic overview of the fundamental issues of public administra- tion. viewing public administration as an integrated process rather than a series of loosely connected activities, the authors base their interpretation of the field on the contrast between its reality and the unreal expectations that society has of public organizations. throughout the text, they focus on the idea that public managers, because they face a murky, uncertain work environment, must be inventive, flexible, and adaptive. paperbound. pages. to request an examination copy of any of these titles, please call us at our toll-free number, - - , ext. ; or write us on your college letterhead specifying your course title, present text, and approximate enrollment. send your request to: st. martin's press college division • department jr • fifth avenue • new york, ny h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms harvard political science book award winners whose votes count? affirmative action and minority voting rights abigail m. themstiom the sixth annual policy studies organization book award the american bar association certificate of merit the anisfield-wolf book award in race relations political ethics and public office dennis thompson the gladys m. kammerer award of the american political science association politics and society in the south earl black and meile black the ralph j. bunche award of the american political science association the v. o. key book award of the southern political science association the personal vote constituency service and electoral independence bruce cain, john ferejohn, and morris fiorina the richard e fenno, jr., prize of the legislative studies section of the american political science association h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms s y r a c u s e the rise of egyptian communism, - selma botman based on extensive primary re- search and numerous firsthand in- terviews with many of those active during this period of history. pages, index $ . now in paper! the state, religion, and ethnic politics afghanistan, iran, and pakistan edited by ali banuazizi and myron weiner pages, index paper $ . available in english for the first time! tungsten a novel cesar vallejo translated by robert mezey foreword by kevin o'connor "insightful and relevant today as it was upon publication, when it broke new ground as the first novel of social realism from a latin american writer."—booklist (ala) pages $ . syracuse university press sly jamesville avenue syracuse, new york - announcing the first two titles in a new series ... modern arab studies tareq y. ismael, series editor arab women in the field studying your own society edited by soraya altorki and camillia fawzi el-solh a unique work presenting the results of research done by arab women in their societies in leba- non, saudi arabia, egypt, iraq, jordan, and a bedouin community in the egyptian western desert. pages, cloth $ . index paper $ . the egyptian bureaucracy monte palmer, ali leila, and el sayed yassin "a notable success in providing us with an empirically rigorous as- sessment of egyptian bureaucratic l i f e . . . . an important contribu- tion."—r. h. dekmejian, univer- sity of southern california pages, index $ . h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms chicago politics ward by ward by david k. fremon cloth $ . paper $ . jfk history of an image by thomas brown $ . the green and the black qadhafi's policies in africa edited by rene lemarchand $ . revolutionary ethiopia from empire to people's republic by edmond j. keller $ . the dialectics of oppression in zaire by michael g. schatzberg $ . environmental policy in china by lester ross $ . t h e economic challenge of theasecond \ w o r l d (teodor shanin the economic challenge of perestroika by abel aganbegyan $ . five days which transformed russia by sergei mstislavskii cloth $ . paper $ . rural russia under the new regime by viktor danilov $ . the peoples of the soviet union by viktor kozlov $ . red bread collectivization in a russian village by maurice hindus foreword by ronald grigor suny doth $ . paper $ . indiana university presstenth and morton streets bloomington, indiana - - h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms war, aggression and self-defence yoram dinstein professor of international law and yanowicz professor of human rights, tel aviv university this book re-examines the topics of war, aggression and self-defence, as well as related issues, such as collective security and the use of force short of war. the first part deals with such questions as: what is war? when does it commence and terminate? what is the difference between peace treaties, armistice agreements and cease-fires? where can war be waged and what is the meaning of neutrality? the focus of the discussion in the second part is the contemporary prohibition of the use of force and its standing as jus cogens. the meaning of aggression is explored. the concept of crimes against peace, which evolved in the nuremberg trial, is examined. some controversial implications of the illegality and criminality of war are analyzed. the third part explores the concept of self-defence. the scope of armed attack, prior to the exercise of the right of self-defence, is investigated, distinguishing between attacks launched by a foreign state and those that are carried out from its territory by armed bands. special attention is given to such disputed points as the legality of armed reprisals and the protection of nationals abroad. pp., including index, table of cases and table of treaties published february price: hardback £ . (us $ . ) isbn chernobyl: law and communication edited by philippe j. sands research fellow in international law at st. catharine's college and research associate at the research centre for international law, university of cambridge chernobyl: law and communication brings together in full the up-to-date texts of the most important materials necessary for a comprehensive examination of the international law and communi- cation issues arising from nuclear accidents with transboundary effects. the texts reproduced include multilateral and bilateral treaties, non-binding acts of international organizations and private associations of scholars, and national legislation. each text is introduced by a note summarizing its background and main provisions, and is accompanied by a select bibliography. in his introduction the editor discusses the current law by reference to the texts. both the texts and his conclusions will be a convenient reference work for those interested in international law, as well as in communication, environmental and nuclear issues. pp., including index published april price: hardback £ . (us $ . ) isbn the legal status of berlin i. d . hendry and m. c. wood legal counsellors at the foreign and commonwealth office a description of the unique legal status of berlin as it emerges from the practice of the four occupying powers (uk, france, usa and ussr) and the various german authorities. set within the framework of the legal position of germany as a whole, the topics covered by the book include access to berlin, its relations with the frg and with international organizations, demilitarization and security issues. of interest to all concerned with the history of post-war europe and the present structure of east- west relations. pp., including index published june hardback: £ . (us $ . ) isbn air mail postage £ . (us $ . ) per volume order from any bookshop or direct from grotius publications limited p.o. box , cambridge cb bp, england h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms new from m l c h i < j a n _ michael s. lewis-beck economics and elections the major western democracies does a government's fate at the ballot box hinge on the state of the economy? is it inflation, unemploy- ment, or income that makes the difference? what triggers economic voting for or against the incumbent? do voters look at their pocketbooks or at the national accounts? are voters' judgments based on past economic performance of future policy promises. these are some of the questions raised by economics and elections, a major cross-national study of the effect of economic conditions on voting behavior in the united states and the western european democracies. " . . . resolves several outstanding controversies with some bold strokes." —helmut norpoth, state university of new york, stony brook $ . michigan residents, include % sales tax. gggg the university or michigan press michigan dept.aw p.o. box ann arbor, michigan ^ < m ^ < * democratic education amy gutmann who should have the authority to shape the education of citizens in a democracy? this is the central question posed by amy gutmann in the only available book-length study of the democratic theory of education. in a clear and readable style the author tackles a wide range of issues, from the democratic case against book banning to the role of teachers' unions in education, as well as the vexed questions of public support for private schools and affirmative action in college admissions. " . . . [democratic education] is unusual in offering a spe- cifically political theory of education, intended to provide principled answers to the question: who should make edu- cational policy and subject to what constraints? [the theory] is rigorously deployed and its practical implications are con- scientiously demonstrated in a close, well-documented and instructive discussion of controversial issues in the politics of american education...." —times literary supplement paper: $ . isbn - - - at your bookstore or m$ &%^^m [iggf princeton university press •^•pjpi^a%&:ii%£*-a'ti& v l l i l / william st. • princeton, nj • ( ) - orders ^rs-isbn ( - ) h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms the american political science association and academic information systems/ibm announce poli-ware a political science software review program the apsa has a pilot project to identify, evaluate and disseminate instructional software. the project is supported by ibm's academic information systems. authors of political science software for students are invited to submit their programs, with the information requested below, for review by the apsa software review committee. software must be ibm compatible. software submissions should include: • five copies of the program • a statement of the program's purpose and learning objectives • descriptions of: . student audience, topics and courses . methodology and teaching strategy . hardware and other software needed to run the programs this information will be the basis of a user's guide to the software. instructional and research software judged by the review committee to be of exceptional pedagogical and technical quality will be offered for sale. proceeds will be used to pay royalties to authors and underwrite the peer review process. the political science software will be widely distributed through apsa as part of the academic software library (tasl) in cooperation with wise-ware software distribution center, submissions/information: poli-ware/apsa new hampshire ave., nw washington. dc h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms science a s power discourse and ideology in modern society stanley aronowitz aronowitz challenges the claim of science to be the only legitimate form of human knowledge, independent of the influence of social or historical conditions. he discusses science and technology as hegemony; the shifting notions of science and its discourse in the marxist tradition; and developments in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. he calls for a social theory of science that combines critical distance with historical analysis. $ . cloth, $ . paper schooling and the struggle for public life critical pedagogy in the modem age henry a. giroux rejecting the gloom-and-doom analyses of both right and left, giroux proposes a language of hope for our educational system. he urges a theory and practice that link schooling not to labor market needs or worship of cultural artifacts, but to the quest for a radical and concrete form of democracy. $ . cloth, $ . paper american culture series universal a b a n d o n ? the politics of postmodernism andrew ross, editor whose interests are served by postmodernist cultureis abandonment of the universalist foundations of enlightenment thought in the west? tackling a wide range of cultural, political, and philosophical issues, the contributors to this volume reach no consensus but insist that the question should continue to be asked. $ . cloth; $ . paper cultural politics series status • bryan turner turner argues that status groups are characteristically social collectives, requiring the reproduction of a typical life style, as opposed to classes linked only by economic circumstances. the concept of status therefore, in his view, provides a richer understanding of social stratification. $ . cloth, $ . paper concepts in social thought series three books by dick howard. the politics of critique writing about theoretical problems in the relationship between criticism and politics, howard considers the work of rousseau, kant, and marx as well as the experiences of the american and french revolutions. he addresses the concepts of origin, theory, and practice, showing that the separation of theory and practice is not inherent in critical theory itself. $ . cloth; $ . paper defining the political in this companion volume to the above, howard analyzes historically and theoretically the framework of assumptions that make possible some political actions rather than others. $ . cloth; $ . paper also available the marxian legacy second edition $ . doth; $ . paper university of m i l l l i e s o t a press v minneapolis mn h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms new trans- portation fuels ,a strategic approach to technological change daniel sperling "must reading for corporate planners and government policymakers who hope to understand our most difficult energy dilemma—the development of a clean transportation fuel whose price and supply are unaffected by political events in the persian gulf." —charles r. imbrecht, chairman, california energy commission $ . max weber and thomas mann calling and the shaping of the self harvey goldman "i would rate the importance of this work as high. it addresses a question that extends beyond the particular preoccupations of weber and mann.... goldman provides the reasons why so much recent debate in social and political philosophy has been concerned with finding a new concept of self distinct fronrits 'bourgeois' origins." —peter breiner, state university of new york at albany $ . africa endurance and change south of the sahara catherine coquery- vidrovitch translated by david malsel "coquery-vidrovitch's book is not merely good; it's marvelous. it represents the finest product of the annales tradition of structural history." —immanuel wallerstein this masterful synthesis presents an explanation for the process that has made africa what it is today, a land torn by incessant conflict among its impoverished peoples and countries, a continent living through the gravest social revolution of its history. $ . reds or rackets? the making of radical and conservative unions on the waterfront howard k meldorf kimeldorf provides a fascinating examination of the american labor movement from the inside out, as it were, by analyzing the divergent sources of radicalism and conserva- tism within it. reds or rackets? is an exploration of the dynamics of trade unionism, sources of membership loyalty, and neglected aspects of working class consciousness. $ . spain's empire in the new world the role of ideas in institutional and social change colin m. maclachlan "a new and convincing interpreta- tion which provides the intellectual framework for the recent economic and social research on colonial spanish america.... this study is a model of its kind." —william f. sater, california state university, long beach $ . planning in the face of power john f. forester "a major contribution to the theory and practice of planning—an indispensable text for planners and for all those concerned about the future of democratic organizations." —david held, co-editor, classes, power and conflict "full of insight and fun, forester's book will direct students and scholars in creative directions." —aaron wildavsky, author of how to limit government spending $ . cloth, $ . paper power and popular protest latin american social movements susan eckstein, editor eckstein provides a wide-ranging investigation of the causes and consequences of protest move- ments in latin america. the authors examine rural guerilla movements, discuss multiclass protests, and analyze different popular movements similarly grounded in liberation theology. $ . cloth, s . paper h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms new in paperback the u.s. press ronald and iran foreign policy and the journalism of deference william a. dorman and mansour farhang "dissects the press's performance during almost three decades of us involvement in iran and its contribution to a foreign policy failure 'second only to vietnam.' most interesting, however, is its analysis of the interrelationship between foreign policy and the press during the 'age of media politics.'" —christian science monitor $ . paper controlling bureaucra- cies dilemmas in democratic governance judith e. gruber "gruber grapples successfully with one of the most fundamental problems of modern democracy." —choice "the most sophisticated and systematic work on the subject.... exceedingly well written—succinct, direct, and even graceful." —dale rogers marshall, co-author protest is not enough $ . paper principles of group solidarity michael hechter "an important work in contempo- rary theory and essential reading for all of those who are interested in developing a general theory of human social organization." —annals of the american academy of political & social science california series on social choice and political economy $ . paper reagan the movie and other episodes in political demonology michael p. rogin "one of the best books on american politics published in the last decade."—chicago law review "fresh, provocative, and full of vitality, this is a first-rate contribu- tion to the study of political culture." —sheldon wolin, princeton university $ . paper the health planning predicament france, quebec, england, and the united states victor g.rodwin with a new preface by the author "an eminently readable and instructive work that successfully integrates practical and theoretical concerns, and illustrates the pitfalls that are inherent in health planning." —journal of health politics, policy and law comparative studies of health systems and medical care $ . paper greek tragedy and political theory edited b y j. peter euben "an extremely stimulating collection.... euben and his fellow contributors (four classicists, two philosophers, and four political scientists) attempt to show how tragic discourse—with its recogni- tion of human contingency and particularity—can enrich political theorizing."—choice $ . paper american broadcast- ing and the first amendment lucasa.powe,jr. "powe's seminal—and remarkably readable—work should go a long way in righting this basic half-a- century-old constitutional error which adversely affects the free flow of information essential to a viable democracy." —richard salant, former president, cbs news $ . paper averting catastrophe strategies for regulating risky technologies joseph g. morone and edward j. woodhouse "the authors make perceptive observations, distill important lessons and offer sensible recommendations for future policies and institutional struc- tures."—the los angeles times "well-written, concise, and accessible." —political science quarterly review $ . paper at bookstores or call toll-free - - . visa and mastercard only. university of california press berkeley h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms - s - - nssi oo'sts =m°d -ez - d nflsi 'cis aid *saissnj)s asoqt in ajbuiuiopdjd ssms jo qj suibjdxa eq xjooq b puc suoi;bziug jo [ppos joi^o q ?m , q s q i[q iq eqi suoi}bpj xppos-oie^s p ppoui b :xopbjsd q jbmsub ub sasodoid jepsiw vtya ib k b am u; siojbaja pub sjapunoj jjaq xq paaiaouoo asoi{) may iiraiajjip xijedipei s [dpuud uo ai&iado xai;) u )jo ;bi{ siesasli 'laadmoq 'sapuase asaq; jo sousuuojjad am ye ̂ooj osop v 'sasbuta )oui j soui am ua\a }o suoi?e[ndod oq) suouie asuasaid tuaubiu d b p qstiqb)s a\bi[ suonnwsui oibis 'baijauiy ui;bt pue 'baiijv ' e i s v u i ut - z e - -o ngsi s' zs : -apbj) uui -bj)ui {bqo{s pub 'x;!ieuoiibupjnui 'asuapuadap vtodxs jo sai [buoi biua ui aq; suiui -uibxa xq sisai{ s;m sdojaaap >iooq oiy, -suijij pajuoijo xnbaijsaiuop aaoui ueq; ^iuoi cud ssbj aq \\}m. suop^ouuoa ibuoi;bu«}ui j b j i^im suijij snqj, - s i suisb j ui xq uoi old ui s j ui ji l{ s npai \pi\\m 's i iui u ibuoi •buj ui ,svu j }o mmojs uioj sui s sq/ m? j° asuodsoj siuol oid p i -uijl l{ b s nsib {s - ubij piib s b s paiuifl l l' u ! x i] d apefl uo s j pub u pu d pj ui xui uco {buoi bui ui jo ujmols q sozx̂bub -i ui )\ uaph 'wsiuottosfojfj suijsts^ uj ^s i ;ib j {b^hh^ p ue iuiouc»a jb[iuns u; sqz am «? jbsddbai 's()z l l h p iwjds siuoi ojd su. ,up;p x x uim 'a a p bi l puoiibujaiuj p sopipj aip pue saijisnpuj uisxuoipajoij s f/u utsaib)s u'eausuiy supcj xnusuns stnaiqaid au. uba |u psiip aacq osje suotsnpuoa s)| 'xio) -*v\ pue xioaq) ui xpn) xjibioqas y -sstihod ibuoitctuaiui jo sanssi xajf aieutumni o| sases [eauoisiq jo asn am ui ppoui e si u -asoid ppnj pue 'eisxjbire u|)uiauad 'qweasaj aaitsneqxa sauiquioa mwjjj, ai h pub '{babu '[bpueuy '{bu snpui s xj;unoo jiaq; ui uoisois jo aouapwa j -tui aq papuodsai pue poo;saapun saajna s^uejsug moq suiejdxa sjaqpouj ucuey 'saajnos jo x} uea apim e uo suimejq 'xin u q;ai;uam? aq } uin aq utb ug ut xsj aoi)uo jejiuiis b jo xpn s ui bj u d b si uojtj, (lnafft aqj, •adueoytusis suissaid 'a^etpamuii ub uo u >[b aeq suoi sanb asaq ' bqap leapijod ueauauiy ui uraq luauiuicud x(sui -sb j u} ub sauioaaq auipap ibuopeu sy iuiaq puodsaj ^aas xaq op moq pub idmod a bi j ui syiqs [qbjoabjutl jo jbmb ui q u uis b s op moh - uodvy s -s 'aurpaa aapbiah jo d ssaij h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms nflsi-shcl- shhaho fr£ fi\ 'nql dnmj • is wvitiim it ssaij ho -raaisaooa huoa iv - zzch - n si os'zis = ffv i tf-p )u uin op xjqiadns puc uopeuuojin msu jo nnj 'xjojsiu, uijiwmua uy,, -quioq uasoipxq am "»q;oue joj iparas did po[ ,/uo<jgom suiuuim,, s,bdijouiv jo ajnjibj am pue 'uoisoidx i poounouue modsojaj ' t" l u i 'uoiun i^iaos sqi i])im suopeifosau ui ueape ainiosqc ub ,/uodeam uiuuia\,, b quioq iuo}b am a^eui oi pau; -ojdip ueououiy ii j e)v\ pl-io^\ joye 'xijm pue 'moh jbdp sa^eui i(ooq quiog di j-s zz -l " n si os'zis : j/ij utijv puo umus\i( iswo-j t{i uo fnlojj ny tuoij saipnjs *s£ l u ? mŝsx ubduouiv oqi p suipunoj q; sduis saeax sq? ui xnesaj puc 'x 'xiibotinouoas 'xippos 'xhb ijo;siii ueoin seq aouejnsui i q -xa xpn;s xjbuiidpsipjaiui siq; ui sxesso oqx ^sapipd xiunoas {epos jo xt̂ienb qsuaaaj a\w\\n od avp suieidxa te^m i^ b ? s a-rejpm uiapoin am xq po;dope sajoj xumn p uoiiezneaud-sj aq; aziseqduia o) smass jeqi iuaui -uojiaua lespijod xjbjodmaiuoo e jo spueinap aq) oj a^enbape xsopapi ;eip st 'os ji ixsoioapi oiqepuajap pus juajoqoa b aabq xiunoag ibpog saoa mt)t{svw "i rjlad[ pun xouuvyf •# duopodi[± fiq pd}ipz stsijq jo ouoiairi eip puo^feg -s zz - - n si os'zes :* siqi ui aieqop )o asjno aq; auiuua^p him ;ei{; uoissnssip pire ibsiiaioaqi jueijoduii ub sapiaoid saijjfty puv '/isoioppj 'uosvt$ •uoipe pus iqsnom l^hh ^ uaam^q qpj aip jo uopb^jdjaiui a^enbapbui ub xq pajaduieu. uaaq sbq qoibas -at ibduidiua pub sut^uiij} |b i]ajoai{) ipoq )o jbap jedj b )bq) smoqs sisquasojj 'aouaps ib i i{od ui saaipadsiad )ubuiuiop aqi jo auios suimaiaajj -xsoioapi jed d jo xpnjs am o; qapoidde mbu b sjbjjo saaquaso^ ua\bqs 'jjooq siqi ui h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms exceptional political science textbooks available earlier than ever before! democracy under pressure an introduction to the american political system sixth edition miuon c cummings, jr. david wise hardcover, pages available january for spring classes. c ummings and wise's democracy under pressure has been one of america's best-selling introductory government textbooks for over years, and for good reason. no other textbook offers the same exciting, up-to-date analysis of the constantly changing political scene. now the new, thoroughly revised sixth edition — to be available earlier than ever before — passes on to a new generation of students an unequaled tradition of authoritative scholarship balancing historical and contemporary perspectives. democracy under pressure's coherent, easy-to-teach organization is the product of a long-standing collaboration between a respected political scientist and a leading political writer. together they have produced an in- sightful, provocative work that bridges the gap between political rhetoric and political reality by asking the important questions: how should our polit- ical system work? how does it actually work? what can we do to make it better? students are challenged to consider these questions as they apply to every facet of the political process. the material also encourages students to discuss the rights and responsibilities of citizens in a democracy. the sixth edition continues the book's blending of careful examination of american governmental and political institutions in their proper historical context with an overview of how they influence contemporary issues. up- to-the-minute coverage of current affairs includes a discussion of the reagan-gorbachev summit meetings, the iran-contra arms deal, and the presidential campaign, with special full-color inserts on both the re- publican and the democratic national conventions. new photographs and illustrations, political cartoons, and boxed inserts complement the engaging, highly praised writing in democracy under pressure. annotated bib- liographies at the end of each chapter; appendixes containing the constitu- tion, the declaration of independence, and a list of u. s. presidents; a sum- mary ("perspectives") at the end of each chapter; and a glossary of terms and definitions at the back of the book support the narrative. student study guide • videotapes • computerized test bank • testbook h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms also new for ideologies politics in action max j. skidmore paperbound, pages available december a comprehensive exploration of political ideologies viewed from a history of ideas perspective. includes a broad definition of ideology and treatment of feminism, managerialism, political anarchism, the political effects of ideologies derived from economic and religious thought, and more. available now! american constitutional law essays and c a s e s otis h. stephens, jr. john m. scheb, ii hardcover, pages, public policy in america government in action dennis j. palumbo hardcover, pages, american judicial politics harry r stumpf hardcover, pages, harcourt brace jovanovich, inc. college sales office, caldwell avenue, chicago, il ( ) - h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms politics from chicago the university of chicago press south ellis avenue chicago, ii islamic liberalism a critique of development ideologies leonard binder "binder thinks broadly and fast, knows his authorities, sees through their arguments, and confronts east and west with mastery. islamic liberalism will be of great interest to students of political thought as well as religion and development."—-i. william zartman, johns hopkins university paper $ . pages library cloth edition $ . the blue guitar political representation and community nancy l. schwartz "writers after schwartz, whether in democratic theory or in the empirical study of representation, will have to come to grips with schwartz^ rethinking of the potential that inheres in the act of participating in a representative election." —jane mansbridge, northwestern university cloth $ . pages silent revolution the transformation of divorce law in the united states herbert jacob "a thoughtful and thought-provoking history and analysis of the momentous changes that have occurred in divorce law, property division, and child custody over the past thirty years." —barbara nelson, university of minnesota "the definitive political history of a period of major change."—paul burstein, university of washington cloth $ . pages the spectacle of women imagery of the suffrage campaign - lisatickner tickner discusses the british suffragist use of spectacle in a challenging work about the role of representations and images in social and political change. "no attentive reader will henceforth wish to rebuild the barrier between the history of art and the history of politics that tickner has so carefully and comprehensively torn down." —brian harrison, times literary supplement cloth $ . pages color plates, halftones h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms holt, rinehart & w i n s t o n - classics with a vote of confidence a new edition of a classic: the american political dictionary, /e jack c. piano, western michigan university milton greenberg, american university this unique resource to understanding american government and politics can be used to investigate a single concept or to study all major concepts that relate to one of the sub-fields of american government. more than , major and , minor issues are defined and discussed. isbn - - - pp. paper available now! understanding the constitution, /e ] j.w.peltason, university of california-irvine — this classic supplement for american government and constitutional law is the only text that provides a line-by-line reading of the constitution and its amendments, and covers all relevant decisions of the supreme court through july ! isbn - - - pp. paper b - apsr- how to order: western regional office: - -the-text central regional office: - - -text eastern regional office: - - -book h o l t , r i n e h a r t a n d w i n s t o n fifth avenue new york, new york important new offerings from praeger publishers and greenwood press from trust to tragedy the political memoirs of frederick nolting, kennedy's ambassador to diem's vietnam by frederick nolting nolting's frank and perceptive account of the events that culminated in the overthrow of the diem govern- ment in november explains his belief that by encouraging the military revolt against diem the kennedy administration set the stage for the tragic war that followed. pages; hardcover - - - , $ . ; paperback - - , $ . . dancing on a volcano the latin american drug trade by scott b. macdonald this provocative new study explores what is rapidly becoming a major obstacle in inter-american rela- tions: the international drug trade. macdonald warns that both the united states and latin american nations must control the drugs-insurgency nexus and deal with the increasingly political nature of the drug trade. pages; hardcover - - - , $ . ; paperback - - - , $ . . praeger publishers transfer of arms, leverage, and peace in the middle east by nitza nachmias although israel has been primarily dependent on u.s. arms for its national security since , supplying military aid has not conferred the degree of policy leverage anticipated by the united states. this study analyzes the reasons why the tactics of transferring or withholding arms have foiled to achieve u.s. foreign policy goals in the middle east. pages, - - - , $ . . victims and survivors displaced persons and other war victims in viet-nam, - by louis a. wiesner this is the first systematic documentation of the human consequences of the viet-nam war. based on american, vietnamese, and international records, as well as a wealth of personal experience and eyewitness accounts, it examines the scope of the tragedy, what was done to cope with it, and what lessons can be drawn from the experience. pages, - - -x, $ . . greenwood press j dtvisionsoforeenwoodpre s,inc. po«troadwes«,box ,vfestpoit,ct l ( ) - ' h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms supplementary empirical teaching units in political science financing congressional campaigns by clyde wilcox a setups is an instructional unit that includes a monograph and dataset. the monograph introduces students to the substance and analysis of a recent research topic in political science, and provides exercises and the code book for the dataset. the dataset allows students to engage in research on the topic themselves. order prepaid, at $ . a copy. the dataset accompanies or more copies of the setups at no charge. write: apsa/education publications, new hampshire ave., nw, washington, d.c. h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms new from south carolina the south's new politics: realignment and deallgnment by robert h. swansbrough and david m. brpdsky this book examines the important issue of whether the once solid democratic south is becoming a republican heartland. approximately pages; cloth $ . ; available october on global war: historical-structural approaches to world politics by william r. thompson the five periods of global war that have occurred are examined as a generic group from three major historical-structural perspectives in international relations. approximately pages; cloth $ . ; available october chinese politics: documents and analysis volume two: ninth party congress ( ) to the death of mao ( ) edited by james t. myers, jiirgen domes, and milton d. yeh this volume brings the record of mainland china's politics forward to the death of mao tse-tung in the fall of . approximately pages; cloth $ . ; available november also available bargaining for national security: , the postwar disarmament negotiations by lloyd jensen pages; cloth $ . negotiating nuclear arms control by lloyd jensen pages; paper $ . , • " ; • • • • • • • • • - ; • • • • • • • • ) i f ' • * ' • " • , / ; / be sure to visit our booth during the meeting '•#*" ":'<n/ • * , . , , . - ' ' "'•"•• , y university of south carolina press assembly st., columbia, s.c. ( ) - h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms we are pleased to announce the combining of the brooks/cole authorship with the authorship formerly associated with dorsey press. a tribute to our authors for the past twcdecades we have been publishing the words and ideas of authors who bring their particular vision to the political science discipline. we at brooks/cole are pleased to be a part of the educational process and to have had the privilege of working with the talented men and women who are helping to shape students' understanding of political science... james e. anderson * barry bozeman » david w. brady * jeffrey l. brudney * charles s. bullock, iii a robert p. clark « alanl. clem » byronw. daynes • glencaudill dealy s robert b. denhardt * thomas r. dye » cynthia fraleigh « leonard freedman » charles funderburk • larry n. gerston * elizabeth m. gunn * richard b. harvey a leo herbert a kim quaile hill * kenneth r. hoover * robert huckshorn a karlf. (rick) inderfurth a thomas g. ingersoll a loch k. johnson « charles o. jones * larry n. killough * charles m. lamb * denise e. markovich a kenneth j. meier a kenneth r. mladenka » david morgan * robert e. o'connor * dennis c. pirages « ronald e. pynn * roger a. riske s michael j. ross a john t. rourke » robert schwab * john r. schmidhauser » alan walter steiss a joseph stewart, jr. a jeffrey d. straussman a ronald d. sylvia a raymond tatalovich m john wanat m louise g. white a fredh. willhoite » deils. wright harmon zeigler to request a copy of the brooks/cole political science catalog or for ordering information on any of the political science titles formerly published by dorsey press, please write: cindy stormer bc brooks/cole publishing company forest lodge rd. pacific grove, ca ( ) - * m h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms together we bring you books that reflect the ideas and the vision of each of these dedicated political scientists. a welcome to our new authors we at brooks/cole are delighted to welcome the authors from dorsey press. we look forward to a mutually beneficial partnership with this dedicated group of men and women who, likewise, are helping to shape students' understanding of political science.., henry j. abraham * herbert b. asher harry a. bailey, jr. * charles bell » robert benewick « randall w. bland « garry d. brewer » bernard e. brown » gerald butt john comer * cary r. covington s donald critchlow » roger h. davidson « christopher j. deering s paulr diehl * peter deleon » alexn. dragnich « gwynne dyer « william h. flanigan s grace a. franklin * harold f. gortner a w. robert gump ellis hawley » lawrence j. r. herson s albert c. hyde * alan c. isaak malcolm e. jewell it loch k. johnson » charles o. jones s barry d. karl william j. keefe * joseph t. keenan a john kessel * rais a. khan * desmond s. king * david c. kozak m b.b. kymlicka *• michael b. levy s julianne mahler « roy c. macridis * jean v. matthews s john d. macartney * james d. mcniven clifton mccleskey john l. mikesell * lawrence b. mohr « henry t. nash » jeanne bell nicholson » morris s. ogul * david m. olson a j. steven ott a samuel c. patterson m beryl e. pettus i james p. pfiffner * jackc. piano a charles price * r. m. punnett * jorgen s. rasmussen « brian redhead » johnrehfuss » robert e.riggs « randall b. ripley * lyman tower sargent » lester g. seligman s david saffell * jaym. shafritz » melvin small j. david singer » john w. spanier grover starling alfred b. sullivan * eric m. uslaner a ivan volgyes * susan welch myron e. weiner » paul wingrove * james r. woodworth when you think of political science texts, think of brooks/cole. h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms penn state press wagner building university park, pa ( ) - john paul stevens and the constitution: the search for balance robert judd sickels a thorough study of john paul stevens's approach of deciding individual cases well instead of applying constitutional principles in abstract to cases by category. unique to this work is a meaningful introduction to the term moderate when applied to a supreme court justice, a definition based on careful analysis of the interplay of general rules and in a specific, case-by-case context. as such, it is the very essence of stevens's own way of judging and thus enables analysis of the work of a pragmatist on his own terms rather than through the distortions of a conflicting theory of law. pages $ . federal social policy: the historical dimension donald critchlow and ellis hawley, editors a penetrating examination of the development of social policy in th-century america. seven original essays explore the historical context for understanding the formulation, implementation, and administration of social policy as it has emerged. specific essays focus on social policy and women and the aged, social security in the new deal, and interest-group lobbying and the politics of policy-making; others address the broad meaning of the state and the american policy of the th and th centuries. pages $ . the three mile island crisis: psychological, social, and economic impacts on the surrounding population peter s. houts, paul d. cleary, and teh-wei hu this work presents a record of how people living in the vicinity of the three mile island power plant were affected by the nuclear accident on march , . in the eighteen months following the accident, , telephone interviews were conducted. the results, presented here, should be important to scholars who study the social and political significance of crises, to planners who prepare for public emergencies, and to social scientists who try to understand why people respond as they do to crisis situations. pages paper $/ . greatness in the white house: rating the presidents, washington through carter robert k. murray and tim h. blessing a narrative account of a survey of , historians on what constitutes a successful performance in the presidency. this book examines why historians rate presidents the way they do and analyzes those qualities and traits historians look for in a successful president. it also delimits what constitutes a failing performance and marks the major pitfalls which almost assuredly lead to an adverse historical verdict. in the process, the study demonstrates that there is not always a close correlation between what historians say a president should do and what they feel when actually ranking presidential performances. pages december paper $ . the coal of el cerrejon: dependent bargaining and colombian policy making harvey f. kline this study of two contracts the colombian government made for coal development in the early s goes beyond the literature on dependencia and on bargaining to closely examine the power struggles between "nationalists" and "reactionaries" in the decision-making process. a fascinating study of contract-bargaining and its political, economic, and social effect. pages $ . involvement by invitation: american strategies of containment in iran kuross a. samii "involvement by invitation tells the story of america's tangled relation with iran with great authority, meticulous research and literary grace. reading kuross a. samii's remarkable book one understands what came to pass between the u.s. and iran: the attraction, the entanglement, and then the feud. a book that merits praise and attention." — fouad ajami pages illus. $ - announcing an important new journal this journal will provide a forum for a developing field of interdisciplinary scholarship—the application of historical perspective to policy studies. it will have natural appeal not only to scholars but to policymakers and others concerned with public policy in the united states. the first volume will include articles by robert kelley, douglas e. ashford, sanford lakoff and herbert f. york, hugh davis graham, theodore marmor, and richard smithey. published quarterly beginning january . one year: indiv. $ , inst. $ . other countries: indiv. $ , inst. $ - h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms the fdr years the life and times of a nation the first three volumes of arthur m. schlesinger, jr.'s classic study, the age of roosevelt, will provide your students with a powerful interpretation of the political, economic, social, and intellectual history of the fdr years in terms of the controversial figure who became the period's spokesperson and its symbol. volume i: the crisis of the old order, - professor schlesinger presents a general picture of the years pre- ceding roosevelt's presidency. the author weaves together two separate histories which were destined to meet in the democratic convention of : america's years of new nationalism, return to normalcy, and the great depression, along with a young man's days of personal development and growing aspiration to become the leader of his country. $ . paper volume ii: the coming of the new deal this history of franklin delano roosevelt's first two years as president depicts turbulent times as the american government fought to bring the nation forth from the great depression. it follows the reform and recovery efforts of the new deal and describes the nation's reaction to fdr's programs—from the resurgence of conservatism to the vindication of new deal policies provided by the congressional elections. mr. schlesinger concludes this volume with an insightful description of the evolution of a president, showing roosevelt in his relations with the cabinet, the congress, and the press and in his capacity as an executive, a leader, and a politician. $ . paper volume iii: the politics of upheaval concentrating on the period of — , mr. schlesinger vividly details the characters of the era such as huey long and father coughlin; the president's dealings with the supreme court; and the election in which roosevelt defeated alfred m. landon. like the first two volumes, students will find the politics of upheaual lively, readable, and thoughtful, as "schlesinger's panoramic style captures much of the sweep and excitement of an era more historically dramatic than most." (time) $ . paper for more information or to order, contact your local houghton mifflin sales representative or write: houghton mifflin paperbacks two park street boston, ma publishers of the american heritage dictionary h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms apsa research grant program the council of the american political science association announces the small grant program to support research hi all fields of political science. scope of award projects should address a significant problem in political science. pro- posals must state how the project relates to previous research and theoretical developments, and how the project contributes to scholarship within a field. eligibility applicants must be apsa members. in addition, the principal in- vestigator must be one of the following: (a) a political science faculty member at a college or university that does not award a phd in political science. (b) a political scientist not affiliated with an academic institution. funding. grants will be awarded annually by the committee on research support. the council has made $ , available for research grants. individual grants will not exceed $ , and are not renewable. funds may be used for such research activities as: travel to archives; travel to conduct interviews; administration and coding of survey in- struments; and purchase of data sets. this list is merely illustrative, but specifically excluded from funding are: travel to professional meetings; secretarial costs except for the preparation of final manuscripts for publication; and salary support for the principal investigator. format proposals should be no more than five pages (single-spaced) with a budget and curriculum vitae attached. proposals must address all items under the scope of award and indicate the precise purpose for which the requested funds will be used. any financial support the principal investigator is already receiving or anticipates receiving should be specified in the proposal. eight ( ) copies of the proposal with accompanying budget and curriculum vitae should be submitted to: apsa research grants american political science association new hampshire avenue, n.w. washington, d.c. submission deadline the deadline for the competition is february , . decisions will be announced by may , . h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms political theory from chicago the university of chicago press south ellis avenue chicago, nietzsche's new seas explorations in philosophy, aesthetics, and politics edited by michael allen glllespie and tracy b. strong makes available for the first time in english the best recent nietzsche scholarship from germany, france, and the united states. "a stimulating, dynamic experience for the reader."—ofelia schutte, university of florida cloth $ . pa^es hegel's critique of liberalism rights in context steven b. smith the genesis of many of the criticisms of liberalism being made today—its abstract methodology, its excessive concern with private nonpolitical goods, and its insensitivity to public issues of citizenship and public virtue—can be found in the philosophy of hegel. cloth $ . pages hegel's phenomenology of spirit a commentary based on the preface and introduction werner marx translated by ester heath marx eludicates the preface and introduction of the phenomenology, as a means of clarifying the whole work, setting the stage for an examination of post-hegelian philosophy. paper $ . pages the critique of pure modernity hegel, heidegger, and after david kolb through the novel strategy of presenting both heidegger's critique of hegel and the critique of heidegger that hegel might have made, kolb uncovers new ways of thinking about modernity. "a fine, clear, serious philosophical treatise." —charles townshend, times literary supplement paper $ . pages h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms princeton university press security and economy in the third world nicole ball third-world governments devote substantial human, material, and financial resources to their security sectors. does this military expenditure aid economic development, or does it retard it? although a number of theories have at- tempted to describe the interaction of the security sector with economic growth and development, the role of this sector has remained curiously peripheral to the post-world war ii debate on development strategies. here nicole ball brings the effects of security expenditure to the center of that debate, examin- ing in detail how the potential negative consequences on development out- weigh the potential positive effects, doth: $ . isbn - - - the immanent utopia from marxism on the state to the state of marxism axel van den berg in this comprehensive analysis of marxist thought on bourgeois politics and the state, from marx himself to the present, axel van den berg radically chal- lenges the viability of a distinctly marxist theory of the state and of recent marxist theorizing in general. through his exhaustive review of the literature, van den berg shows that neo-marxist theories are, for the most part, not em- pirically testable. to the extent that it is possible to draw any empirical implica- tions from these theories at all, such implications are virtually indistinguishable from those of "bourgeois" theories. riper: $ . isbn - - - cloth: $ . isbn - - - merleau-ponty and the foundation of an existential politics kerry h. whiteside drawing on previously unexplored sources, kerry h. whiteside presents the political theory of maurice merleau-ponty ( - ), one of france's best- known twentieth-century philosophers. whiteside argues that merleau-ponty's objective in his political writings was to make existentialism into the founda- tion for a philosophically consistent mode of political thinking. this study dis- cusses the inadequacies merleau-ponty found in the traditional philosophies of empiricism and idealism, and then examines the subject-object dualism that he believed deprived previous forms of existentialism of political significance. after explaining merleau-ponty's modifications of the views of sartre, aron, and others, whiteside investigates how he applied his political theory in editorial exchanges with communists and liberals. pkper: $ . isbn - 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"goldstein's study is the most important analysis to date of the links between economic and mili- tary forms of competition in the world-system." —christopher k. chase-dunn figs. new in cloth ($ . ) and paper ($ . ) signals from the hill congressional oversight and the challenge of social regulation christopher h. foreman, jr. does congress do a good job of overseeing the work of the important legislative agencies—the epa, fda, osha, and others—that it has estab- lished to protect the public from some of the risks of modern technology? combining analysis and anecdote, christopher h. foreman, jr. looks into the oversight tools available to congress, the kinds of issues that arise between agencies and congressional committees, and the personal networks that affect relations between them. $ . extended deterrence and the prevention of war paulichuth a government seeking to prevent an attack on an ally may, in what is called "extended," or third-party, deterrence, threaten the use of force to protect its ally. in this book paul k. huth defines the political and military con- ditions under which a policy of extended deterrence is likely to succeed or fail. 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"a powerful description of judicial politics." —david j. danelski $ . marxism and democracy in chile to the fall ofallende julio faundez in this book julio faundez traces the develop- ment of chilean politics, from the thirties to the overthrow ofallende. relating the various phases in the evolution ofthe political system to the concrete problems that had to be faced, faundez discusses how class alliances, political mobilization, and the role of organized labor affected developments in the country. $ . the materialist conception of history karl kautsky abridged, annotated, and introduced by john h. kautsky; translated by raymond meyer with john h. kautsky an early disciple of marx, karl kautsky was regarded as the leading orthodox interpreter of marxism from the s to - now his magnum opus—a systematic explanation in marxist terms of human history and of evolu- tion in nature—has been translated into english and abridged to make it accessible and useful to modern readers. $ - h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms new views for changing times city bound: urban life and political attitudes among chicano youth martin sanchez jankowski a wealth of interesting, new material, supported by sophisticated quantitative analyses, on the political attitudes of urban chicano youth, new voting members of the fastest-growing ethnic group in the united states. a choice outstanding academic book for . "important not only to those concerned with chicano issues but also to those interested in assimilation, urbanism, and political attitudes."—american journal of sociology "the most important study to date of urban chicano political socialization."—choke cloth: $ . paper: $ . announcing the inaugural volumes of the university of new mexico pubuc policy series the goal of the series is to make available to a wide audience discussions of contemporary policy issues of regional as well as national importance. photos from social security at bookstores or write dept. apsr reforming welfare: lessons, limits, and choices edited by richard m. coughun the passage of the family welfare reform act does not mark an end to the need to understand this vexing social problem. these essays provide an overview of the politics and history of welfare reform, and the efficacy of past policies. cloth: $ . paper: $ . social security: the first half century edited by gerald nash, noel h. pugach & richard f. tomasson the social security act of began a program of social insurance that is one of the most successful, but misunderstood, of federal undertakings. with contributions from social program pioneers as well as scholars, this volume corrects many myths about social security. cloth: $ . paper: $ . university of new mexico press albuquerque, new mexico h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms houghton mifflin new for american politics: classic and contemporary readings allan j. cigler and burdett a. loomis both of university of kansas about pages • paperback • instructor's manual • test bank • just published cigler and loomis's introductory reader presents a balance of classic and contem- porary readings on core topics in american politics. each selection has been carefully chosen for readability and usefulness to the classroom. text annotations for each reading help explain new terms and concepts. the human polity: an introduction to political science second edition kay lawson san francisco state university about pages • hardcover • instructor's manual with test items • just published the human polity offers a highly readable, full-scale survey of all the key concepts in political science. the second edition extends and reinforces the theme of global interdependence in each chapter, lending perspective, continuity, and coherence to the major topics. before the law: an introduction to the legal process fourth edition john j. bonsignore, ethan katsh, peter d'errico, ronald m. pipkin, stephen arons, and janet rifkin all of university of massachusetts, amherst about pages • paperback just published the fourth edition's diverse collection of provocative court cases and selected read- ings continues to provide a multi-faceted introduction to the american legal system and to the role of law in society. main- taining its interdisciplinary approach, the material represents opposing, contrasting, or alternative views culled from law as well as philosophy, sociology, and other disciplines. practicing texas politics seventh edition eugene w. jones angelo state university joe e. ericson stephen f. austin state university lyle c. brown baylor university robert s. trotter, jr. el centro college of the dallas county community college district about pages • paperback • instructor's manual with test items • study guide microstudy plus: computerized study guide • microtest: computerized test bank • call-in test service • transparen- cies • texas government newsletter just published this best-selling text continues to provide top-notch coverage of texas government, incorporating public policy in every chapter. the highly successful text-reader format pairs insightful, contemporary readings with unbiased narrative to deliver the clearest possible presentation. seventy- five percent of the readings are new. also available american government alan r. gitelson loyola university of chicago robert l. dudley george mason university melvin j. dubnick, baruch college, city university of new york pages • paperback • complete ancillary package available free to instructors and students will be a post-election addendum to the text, containing results and analysis of the presidential campaign and election. avail- able by request after december, . for adoption consideration, request examination packages from your regional houghton mifflin office. ^ houghton mifflin midway rd., dallas, tx - s. batavia ave., geneva, il e. meadow dr., palo alto, ca campus dr., princeton, nj h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms political science from agathon press recent titles— constitution making: conflict and consensus in the federal convention of by calvin jillson, dept. of political science, university of colorado pp. isbn - - - (cloth) $ . january - (paper) $ . political science: the science of politics edited by herbert f. weisberg, the ohio state university published in cooperation with the american political science association. pp. isbn - - - (cloth) $ . - (paper) $ . electoral laws and their political consequences edited by bernard crofman, university of california, irvine and arend lijphart, university of california, san diego pp. isbn - 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h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms quun, a psa... apsa biographical directory. lists , political scientists with date of birth, education, honors, employment history, current position, principal publications, and fields of speciali- zation. $ /members; $ /nonmembers. $ . postage per copy. directory of black americans in political science. contains entries of over black american political scientists by name, ad- dress, phone, degrees, and fields of specialization. $ /members; $ /nonmembers. $ postage per copy. women and american politics: a series of instructional units. the monographs, designed for use in undergraduate courses, can be used individually to augment textbooks, or collectively to offer a course on women and politics. $ . each or $ . for two or more titles. $ postage per copy. • women's rights, feminism, and politics in the united states by mary lyndon shanley. introduces the reader to the relationship between philosophy of feminism and american politics and contains a history of women's political ac- tivities. • women, political action, and political participation by virginia sapiro. focuses on women's opportunities for ac- tivism, communication and influence, as well as how women have united into effective organizations devoted to political action and electoral participation. • women in the judicial process by beverly b. cook, leslie f. goldstein, karen o'connor, and susette m. talarico. forthcoming! • women's movements: organization for change by joyce gelb and ethel klein. forthcoming! • women and power in american politics by milda k. hedblom. forthcoming! v.o. key, jr. and the study of american politics, by milton c. c u m m i n g s , jr., editor, with articles by walter dean burnham, philip e. converse, cummings, and david r. mayhew. first volume in the kirkpatrick series on current issues in political analysis and the intellectual history of the discipline. $ . /members; $ /nonmembers. $ postage per copy. bulk rates available. the style manual for political science. prepared under the auspices of the apsr in consultation with political science journal editors, this manual is fast becom- ing the standard of style for the profession. $ /members + $. postage; $ . /nonmembers + $ postage. bulk rates available. all orders must be prepaid. foreign checks under $ cannot be accepted; please send international money order in u.s. dollars only. order from: publications/apsa, new hampshire avenue, nw, washington, d.c. . h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms america's health care proposals for l l a t i v e action "by sharing this process with you, we hope to provoke a broader na- tional debate on the flaws of our current health care system and direc- tions of needed change. -the editors how can america meet its health care needs? at least million americans do not have health insurance, and more than million older americans are exposed to sky-rocketing direct costs for needed long-term care services. alarmed by these facts, the american associ- ation of retired persons invited four highly respected leaders in health policy research to help design a blueprint for a better american health care system. while the researchers agree universal access to health care must be guaranteed, the specifics of their differing approaches, as presented in this book, will stimulate rigorous debate. share in their effort to set an agenda for reforming america's health care system. order your copy today. mail to: aarp books, dept. cah scott, foresman & company miner street des plaines, il to order changing america's health care system, send $ . per copy (aarp members send $ . per copy) plus $ . shipping and handling to cover entire order. do not send cash. we accept checks, money orders, visa and mastercard. (credit card orders must include card no., exp. date, and cardholder signature). all orders must be prepaid. please allow - weeks for delivery. or call toll-free - - - (credit card orders only). aarp books are published byaarpand scott, foresman and company, and sold by scott, foresman and company. h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms new. significant. basic. all consuming images the politics of style in contemporary culture stuart ewen $ . the company of critics social criticism and political commitment in the th century michael walzer $ . the great u-turn corporate restructuring and the polarizing of america bennett harrison & barry bluestone $ . homeward bound american families in the cold war era elaine tyler may $ . liability the legal revolution and its consequences peter w. huber $ . minds at war nuclear reality and the inner conflicts of defense policymakers steven kull $ . the new american politician elected entrepreneurs and the changing style of political life burdett loomis $ . rendezvous with reality the american econom murray weidenbaum the american economy after reagan murray weidenbaum $ . the ring of power the white house staff and its expanding role in government bradley h. patterson, jr. $ . social science i n government uses and misuses richard p. nathan $ . world resources - the international institute for environment and development and the world resources institute $ . cloth $ . paperback coming in winter/spring ' the anxious years america in the vietnam-watergate era kim mcquaid $ . february the democratic imperative exporting the american revolution gregory a. fossedal $ . april a new republic book fluctuating fortunes the political power of business in america david vogel $ . march judicial compulsions how public law distorts public policy jeremy rabkin $ . april the new competitors how foreign investors are changing the u.s. economy norman". glickman & douglas p. woodward $ . april retreat from doomsday the obsolescence of major war john mueller $ . april shooting war photography and the american experience of combat susan moeller $ . february war ends and means paul seabury & angelo codevilla $ . march wrong number the breakup of at&t alan stone $ . april available at your bookstore or direct from the publisher. call toll-free - - - . major credit cards accepted. j basic books, inc. e. rd st., new york ny h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms new from kansas conceptual change and the constitution edited by terence ball and j. g. a. pocock distinguished political scientists and historians bring into bold relief the linguistic and conceptual dimension of the ameri- can founding. contrib- utors are terence ball, lance banning, james farr, russell l. hanson, daniel walker howe, peter s. onuf, j. g. a. pocock, gerald stourzh, garry wills. "calls attention to the changing or multiple meanings of key concepts and terms in revolutionary-era political thought."—jack rakove, author of the beginnings of national politics. pages. $ . private interests, public policy, and american agriculture william p. browne 'the most comprehensive and sophisticated treatment of the interest politics of agricultural policy."—robert h. salisbury, author of citizen participation in the public schools. pages. $ . cloth, $ . paper the politics of urban development edited by clarence n. stone and heywood t. sanders "a stunning collection of articles by leading urban scholars. it is brilliantly conceived and executed."—dennis judd, author of the politics of american cities. pages. $ . cloth, $ . paper the social meaning of civic space studying political authority through architecture charles t. goodsell "goodsell is the first to scientifically examine the social and psychological implications of architec- ture and come up with convincing observa- tions."—william lebovitch, author of america's city halls. pages. $ . montesquieu's comparative politics and the spirit of american constitutionalism anne m. cohler shows the importance of montesquieu's teaching for modern legislation and for modern political prudence generally, with specific reference to his impact on the federalist and tocqueville. "cohler goes much farther than most interpreters in spelling out the relation between montesquieu and the framers."—wilson carey mcwilliams, author of the idea of fraternity in america. pages. $ . requiem variations on eighteenth-century themes forrest mcdonald and ellen shapiro mcdonald "challenges prevailing liberal interpretations of the evolution of the constitution in a manner guaranteed to promote reflection, cerebration, and even debate."—richard b. morris, author of the forging of the union, - . includes mcdonald's widely acclaimed neh jeffer- son lecture. pages. $ . announcing a new series american political thought edited by wilson carey mcwilliams and lance banning this will be an open-ended series, intellec- tually meritorious on its own terms but also likely to appeal to instructors seeking read- ings for courses. the backbone of the series will consist of comparatively short, au- thoritative books on major thinkers, move- ments, themes, schools of thought, and institutions. among existing works, a few suggest the kind of books that the series seeks to attract: herbert storing's what the anti-federalists were for, richard k. mat- thews's radical politics of thomas jefferson, and peter bachrach's theory of democratic elitism: a critique. university press of kansas carruth, lawrence ks h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms reflections on political identity a n n e n o r t o n what are the connections between politics and language, violence and abstraction, individuality and collectivity in the constitution of political identity? drawing on a wide range of sources—plato and rousseau, nietzsche and freud, derrida and lacan—anne norton sets forward a theory of authority and constitution that is both a respectful recollection and a daring revision. norton shows how nations are constituted in contradiction by considering the role of others—enemies, allies, aliens, and minorities—in defining national identity. combining political science and literary theory, philosophy and anthropology, norton offers a new theory of the constitution of political identities. the johns hopkins series in "constitutional thought sotirios a . barber and jeffrey k. tulis, editors $ . hardcover the constitution of a commentary george anastaplo "a marvelous instrument for introducing citizens to their constitution." —mortimer j. adler a distinguished authority on american constitutional and political thought writes the first book to offer a section-by-section commentary on the u.s. constitution of . in a clear, conversational style, george anastaplo explains how the constitution is put together and reveals the vitality of the american constitutional endeavor. "george anastaplo's bicentennial commentary on the constitution is less a commentary —in the ordinary sense—than it is a communion with the text. in that respect, it reminds one of nothing so much as leo strauss's parallel study of plato's laws."—harry v jaffa, claremont graduate school $ . hardcover $ . paperback national security and the u.s. constitution the impact of the political system edited by george c. edwards iii and wallace earl walker what are the consequences of the u.s. constitutional system for national security policy? a distinguished group of authors examines how a political system built on an eighteenth- century document can meet today's national security needs. the thirteen chapters focus on the government's ability under the constitution to develop and mobilize support for a national security strategy; to raise, organize, and equip the armed forces for waging war; to protect citizens abroad, conduct diplomacy, and negotiate agreements; and to budget for defense, engage in trade, and manage international monetary policy. $ . hardcover the johns hopkins university press west th street, suite , baltimore, maryland h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms "this is the most complete, thorough, ambitious, and competent text in our field." —j. david singer, university of michigan available for examination in january bsuce russfc' r • hahvcr sta.bk w o r l d politics the menu for choice world politics the menu for choice third edition by bruce russett, yale university and harvey starr, indiana university thoroughly updated, the third edition of world politics continues to offer the most balanced synthesis of traditional and contemporary social-scientific approaches to international relations. this substantial revision includes expanded coverage of inter- national political economy, greater use of competing theoretical perspectives, new material on public opinion as a policy constraint, new discussions of terrorism, and more historical coverage integrated throughout. hardbound, pages, illustrations, isbn - - - is w. h. freeman and company the book publishing arm of scientific american madison avenue, new york, ny h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms new in the pitt series in palicy and institutional studies the add rain controversy james l. regens and robert w. rycwft an introduction to the scientific, technological, economic, and political aspects of the problem. /$ . cloth, $ . paper iran and the united states a cold war case study richard w. cottam traces the spiraling decline of the u.s.-iranian relations since the cold war and the political consequences of those years. /$ . cbth, $ . paper imagery and ideology in u.s. policy toward libya, - mahmoud g. elwarfally " a n excellent discussion of the american government views of and policies toward the qadaffi regime." —lisa anderson, middle east institute, columbia university /$ . s the u.s. experiment in social medicine the community health center program, - alice sardell describes and evaluates the federal government's only experiment in social medicine. /$ . s cloth, $ . paper the politics of the u.s. cabinet representation in the executive branch, - jeffrey e. cohen a quantitative study of the charac- teristics of presidential cabinets from washington through the first reagan administration. /$ . (tentativeprice) now in paperback for classroom use managing the presidency carter, reagan and the search for executive harmony colin campbell, s.j. winner of the richard neustadt award of the apsa ' 'this book ought to be read carefully by all students of the presidency." - j a m e s p. pfiffner, public administration review l /$ . cloth, $ . paper pittsburgh university of pittsburgh kmj press > pittsburgh. pa h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms american government is ready for a new challenge the challenge of democracy: government in america second edition kenneth janda, northwestern university jeffrey m. berry, tufts university jerry goldman, northwestern university about pages • hardcover • study guide microstudy plus: computerized study guide • idealog: computer activities in political values • crosstabs: a computer program for american government, revised edition • crosstabs: student workbook • instructor's manual lecturebank: computerized lecture out- lines • test bank • microtest: computerized test bank • call-in test service • videotape transparencies • diploma ii: electronic classroom management system gpa: grade performance analyzer just published freedom, order, equality.. .pluralist versus majoritarian democracy. these two themes—integrated even further in the second edition—give coher- ence and relevance to the facts about government. up-to-date coverage includes the presidential campaign and elec- tion, the rehnquist court, as well as greater attention to the role of media in politics and the struggle over economic policy. for adoption consideration, request an examination package from your regional houghton mifflin office. houghton mifflin midway rd., dallas, tx - s. batavia ave., geneva, il e. meadow dr., palo alto, ca campus dr., princeton, nj h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms the best in political science the courage of their convictions sixteen americans who fought their way to the supreme court peter irons almost without exception, the celebrity of supreme court cases is matched by the obscurity of those who initiate them. irons introduces us to human beings hidden behind the "mask of the law" in civil liberties cases spanning five decades and four major issues-religion, race, protest, and privacy. here are the personal stories behind the cases, why each was begun, the public and personal reaction, and what happened after the justices ruled. " l i k e anthony lewis' gideon's trumpet, this book presents constitutional law with a human face. it will be a classic."-norman dorsen, president, american civil liberties union a history book club alternate selection pages - - -x $ . the moral dimension toward a new economics amitai etzioni blending elements of psychology, philosophy, and sociology with economics, etzioni presents a bold new vision of social science-which proposes that broader moral, social and political concerns modify economic behavior and shape individual decision-making "the moral dimension is at the leading edge of social thought in this country. it may be the most important book of the y e a r " -john w gardner, former secretary of health, education and weliare pages - - - $ . technology and war from b.g to the present martin van creveld destined to become the standard work, mis volume-based on a five-year research project originally commissioned by the pentagon-reveals the historical changes technology has-and has not-wrought in the waging and winning of war "essential reading for everyone interested in the history of warfare" -allan r. millett, co-author, for the common defense a history book club main selection pages - - -x $ . a call to civic service national service for country and community charles c. moskos " a call to civic service is a call to america to restore its civic vision through a plan for voluntary citizen service moskos is judicious, thoughtful, and highly practical. if america is to find its way out of the privatization and greed of the last decade, back into its civic spirit, moskos" book may offer us a vital text-not just telling us why but showing us h o w " -benjamin r barber, author of strong democracy a twentieth century fund book pages - - - $ . private acts, social consequences aids and the politics of public health ronald bayer in this exploration of how public health policy can most effectively control the proliferation of aids, ronald bayer considers the explosive political issues created by an incurable infectious disease spread in intimate relations. bayer argues that to actually stop the spread of aids, while maintaining the balance between public safety and private freedom, a shared culture of restraint and responsibility must be fostered to protect those at risk, as well as to ensure the well-being of society " a much-needed, thoughtful, and thought- provoking book on aids within its historical cultural, and social-political context should be read not only by public health officials and politicians but, obviously, by everyone" -mathilde krim, founding co-chair, american foundation for aids research pages - - - $ . the coming soviet crash gorbachev's desperate pursuit of credit in western financial markets judy shelton " t h e book of the year in revealing the desperate need for hard currency by the soviet union and the profound decision western governments must face in whether to underwrite the soviet colonial empire a must read for american policy makers."-representative jack kemp, (r-ny) jan. pages - - -x $ for visa, mastercard or american express orders, call toll-free - - - between am- pm eastern time. h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms crucial decisions leadership in policy making and crisis management irving l. janis " a remarkable book.. .in its analyses of international crises, in its comprehensive model of decision-making.. janis has brought persuasive order out of the longstanding theoretical chaos in the field of decision making. this book deserves a readership to match its breadth- and that means academics of many disciplines, managers and those who teach them, and people at all levels of government." -robert l kahn, institute for social research pages - - - $ . the iranian triangle the untold story of israel's role in the ban-contra affair samuel segev "the first [book] to elucidate systematically the israeli role in the iran-contra affair-and with historical perspective...an illuminating book for both experts and non-experts."-joseph j. sisco, former under secretary of state for political affairs pages - - - $ jo beyond globalism remaking american foreign economic policy raymond vernon and debora spar " i n this pathbreaking book, vemon and spar show why a sensible foreign economic policy is as crucial to our future as is a sensible defense policy-and why the former is so difficult to achieve all who want to understand the real workings of international political economy should read this book and take to heart its lessons."-robert b. reich, harvard university rages - - - $ . the presidency a n d the management of national security carnes lord "lord's incisive analysis demonstrates a central point: the national security council would have to be invented if it did not exist. centralized white house coordination is the point of departure for an effective national security policy, and lord makes important and timely recommendations for the enhancement of effective presidential leadership in foreign policy-making"-zbigniew brzezinski pages - - - $ middle american individualism the future of liberal democracy herbert j. gans "indispensable for anyone who wants to understand why most americans grumble about the status quo yet shrug off radical changes. but make no mistake: in the form of modest proposals, herbert gans has given us a sensible way of thinking about a political agenda that would be both visionary and practical. this book should be read by anyone interested in reconstructing a politics more representative, more participatory-more fully liberal in the best sense."-todd gitlin, author of the sixties pages - - - $ . falling from grace the experience of downward mobility in the american middle class katherine s. newman "newman's splendid book shows us our culture when its promises fail. she reminds us of millions of people we would rather forget and, even more importantly, she calls us to reexamine our deepest beliefs. hers is an indispensable voice in the current american cultural conversation." -robert m. bellah, co-author of habits of the heart pages - - - $ . now available in paperback— secrecy a n d power the life of j. edgar hoover richard gid powers " t h e best biography of hoover so far.. .probing balanced, and lively. it is a fascinating story, powers tells it precisely and well." -the new york times - - - $ . the causes of war third edition geoffrey blainey " i know of no better book on war than blarney's causes, which has already become a classic in the field of international relations. this third edition will demonstrate once again the power of his exciting, provocative ideas and penetrating understanding" -amos perlmutter, the journal ofstrategc studies - - - $ . the free press a division qfmacrmuan, inc. third avenue; new york, new york h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms princeton university press new order of the ages time, the constitution, and the making of modern american political thought michael lienesch were the early americans a distinctively modern people, a people without a past? or were they motivated by a premodern or classical republican mental- ity? to examine the shift from eighteenth-century classical republicanism to what we call modem liberalism, michael lienesch shows how americans adopted modern ways of thinking about time (e.g. concepts of reform, develop- ment, and progress), while they continued to be influenced by classical republi- can ideas, a sometimes paradoxical mix of beliefs that continues to characterize american political thought today. "lienesch traces the foundation of the idea of time in american politi- cal thought—an area in which he is already recognized as the leading thinker of the profession. he captures much of the tone of the eighteenth- century argument. conspicuously fair-minded, as well as subtle and shrewd, he leads the reader into direct involvement with the arguments and controversies of the period." —wilson carey mcwilliams, rutgers university doth: $ . isbn - - - constitutional dialogues interpretation as political process louis fisher who makes constitutional law? is constitutional doctrine the monopoly of the courts? in accessible and persuasive prose louis fisher explains that constitutional law is not solely or even primarily the supreme court's "fi- nal word" but rather a richly political convergence of separate interpreta- tions. with a broad range of examples, he argues that constitutional princi- ples emerge from a dialogue among all three branches of government— executive, legislative, and judicial. 'this book captures the ongoing role that the congress performs in shaping the meaning of the constitution. writing about an important, but generally neglected, subject, louis fisher breaks with past dependence on judicial caselaw to capture the dynamic and constructive dialogues that occur between the branches of government. constitutional dialogues is an impressive contribution to the bookshelf of those interested in public policy and the workings of our government." —robert w. kastenmeier, chairman, subcommittee on courts, civil liberties and the administration of justice, committee on the judiciary, u.s. house of representatives riper: $ . isbn - - - d o t h : $ . isbn - - - h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms condemned to repetition the united states and nicaragua robert a . pastor here is an insider's account of u.s. policy making toward nicaragua, written by a major participant. robert rastor was director of latin american affairs on the national security council from to , a crucial period in u.s.-nica- ragua relations. with scholarly evenhandedness he offers a new interpretation of the kinds of choices that u.s. policy makers faced as they responded to the nicaraguan crisis during the carter administration, in which he served, and through the reagan years. paper: $ . isbn - - - i violence and law in the modern age antonio cassese translated by s.j.k. greenleaves this remarkable and thoughtful book examines some of the most shattering events in recent history, from the annihilation of hiroshima and nagasaki to mass murder in sabra and shatila, from the hijacking of the "achille lauro" to torture and murder by officials of the state. in each case cassese tries to under- stand why states—nietzsche's "cold-hearted monsters"—acted as they did, and what this bodes for the future. the picture of world events presented here is vivid, and cassese's analysis is clear and provocative. this is a book not only for students of politics, law, and international affairs, but also for general readers who wish to observe the actions of the state with as much objectivity as possible, doth: $ . isbn - - - the general will before rousseau the transformation of the divine into the civic patrick riley "this interpretation will certainly challenge what is widely taught and believed to be the case about the 'general will/ the work is unrivaled in information and profundity—and it often reads like a good detective story, which it is." —george armstrong kelly, the johns hopkins university studies in moral, political, and legal philosophy marshall cohen, editor paper. $ . isbn - - - at your bookstore or princeton university press william st. • princeton, nj • ( ) - orders -prs-isbn ( - ) yy. h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms iroxford renewing italian socialism nenni to craxi spencer m. discala, university of massachusetts, boston the first comprehensive history of italian socialism in english, this book ranges from the defeat of socialism by mussolini in to its resurgence as a powerful force in italian politics today, and sheds new light on such figures as morandi, nenni, and italy's first socialist prime minister bettino craxi. pp. $ . democracy and market system charles e. lindblom, yale university representing the whole spectrum of lindblom's thought from advocacy of incrementalism to criticism of certain social institutions, this collection ofhis papers—many previously unpublished— covers such topics as "democracy and economic structure," "the rediscovery of the market," "american politics since ," "bargaining: the hidden hand in government," and "integration of economics and the other social sciences through policy analysis." (a norwegian university press publication) pp. $ . church and politics in a secular age kenneth n. medhurst, university of bradford, and george h. moyser, university of vermont using a wealth of survey, interview, and documentary evidence, the authors here assess the impact of the church of england on english political life through an examination of the church's internal workings and attitudes of its leaders. pp.; line drawings, tables $ . sipri yearbook world armaments and disarmament edited by sipri praise for previous editions: consistent with sipri's high standards, the book is an authoritative source of data... .invaluable to negotiators, u.n. staff, and policy makers involved in public debates, as well as the general reader."—bulletin of the atomic scientists. the sipri yearbook discusses the december inf treaty, the abm treaty, the iran-iraq war, and disarmament and development. pp.; tables, figs. $ . winner of the elaine and david spitz book award the morality of freedom joseph raz, balliol college, oxford "as significant a new statement of liberal principles as anything since mill's on liberty!'—times literary supplement. ranging over central issues of morals and politics and the nature of freedom and authority, this study examines the role of value-neutrality, rights, equality, and the prevention of harm in the liberal tradition. (paper ) pp. paper $ . cloth $ . the decline and fall of the liberal republicans from to the present nicol c. rae, florida international university showing how changes in electoral behavior, party structures and candidate appeal have contributed to the decline of liberal republicans, rae here demonstrates how these changes permitted conservatives to gain control of the gop. he also discusses party factionalism and the rise of new political elites. january pp. $ . prices and publication dates are subject to change. to order, send check or money order to: humanities and social sciences marketing department to order by phone using a major credit card, please call ( ) - . oxford university press o n n madison avenue • new york, ny = = = = ^ = h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms foxford= an anthology of western marxism from lukacs and gramsci to socialist-feminism edited by rogers. gottlieb, worcester polytechnic institute advance praise: "a very good introduction to the high points of western marxism... .these selections are quite the best. i am not aware of any comparable book now available... .the undergraduate will find [it] intelligible and interesting... .gottlieb's introduction [is] a first-rate piece of scholarly writing." —richard schmitt, brown university january pp. paper $ . cloth $ . studies of development and change in the modern world edited by michael t. martin, california state university, los angeles, and princeton university, and terry r. kandal, california state university, los angeles this broad-based, multidisciplinary anthology reassesses the theoretical and methodological issues crucial to the study of development and social change, using case studies from the caribbean, latin america, and africa. february pp.; illus. paper $ . cloth $ . survival and change in the third world edited by ben crow and mary thorpe, both of the open university of britain provides a much-needed interdisciplinary framework for debate on third-world development and underdevelopment, addressing theories of development, colonial economies, industry and agriculture, and the influence of the world economy. pp. paper $ . cloth $ . the ecology of city policymaking robert j. waste, california state university, chico advance praise: "scholarly, comprehensive.... provides a thorough analysis of city policy issues and concepts."—paul hirsch, georgia state university. waste's highly original ecology model throws new light on the full range of urban policy issues. january pp.; illus. paper $ . cloth $ . now available in a new edition f r e e d o m a n d t h e c o u r t civil rights and liberties in the united states fifth edition henry j. abraham, university of virginia completely updated, this classic study includes a wealth of new material on freedom of expression and religion and the debates over affirmative action and abortion. "cool, objective... .useful for anyone who wants a systematic, detailed and up-to-date analysis."—public law (on an earlier edition) pp.; tables paper $ . now available in paperback the tolerant society lee c. bollinger, university of michigan law school "a novel and imaginative perspective on the role of freedom of speech in our society."—new york times book review. "a distinctive and attractive argument that deserves to figure prominently in all future deliberations on the subject."—political theory. (paper ) pp. paper $ . cloth $ . h a r d j u d i c i a l c h o i c e s federal district court judges and state and local officials phillip j. cooper, state university of new york, albany "excellent.... undergraduate and graduate courses should profit enormously from this detailed, learned account of the federal courts and policy decisions... .very well written and clearly presented. " —harold w. stanley, university of rochester pp.; illus. paper $ . cloth $ . the supreme court on church and state roberts! alley, university of richmond "excellent.... helpful to the student. the presentation of cases is clear and attractive. this is an important subject of general interest in our time."—frank klingberg, southern illinois university pp.; chart paper $ . cloth $ . prices and publication dates are subject to change. to request an examination copy, write on school letterhead giving full course information, including course name, level, expected enrollment, ana your decision deadline, to: college humanities & social sciences marketing department oxford university press = = ^ = madison avenue • new york, ny ^ ^ = = = h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms chatham house publishers, inc. box o n e , chatham, new jersey telephone; ( ) - the postmodern president the white house meets the world richard rose, university of strathclyde "professor rose's latest book begins with an adlai stevenson quotation about talking sense to the american people and it does just that. presidents and presidential candidates may not want to hear such good sense, but at some point ordinary u.s. citizens are going to have to wake up and listen. this is one of our much-needed wake-up calls." hugh heclo, george mason university o- o- - $ . the symbolic presidency how presidents present themselves to the nation barbara hinckley, new york university hinckley utilizes the public papers to examine the activities of presidents. she focuses on the symbolic presentation, combining content analysis and a more detailed textual 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cumulative index of the review, volumes - , - , also may be obtained from university microfilms. articles appearing in the review are listed in abc pol sci and current contents: behavioral, social & management sciences. book reviews are indexed in book review index. books intended for review and all book review correspondence should be sent to the h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms contents articles politics, markets, and the organization of schools john e. chubb & terry m. moe the political economy of state medicaid policy charles j. barrilleaux & mark e. miller organized interests and agenda setting in the u.s. supreme court gregory a. caldeira & john r. wright organizational maintenance and the retention decision in groups lawrence s. rothenberg mass dynamics of u.s. presidential competitions, - courtney brown class compromises in industrial democracies marick f. masters & john d. robertson the renaissance of political culture ronald inglehart condorcet's theory of voting h. p. young history and discipline in political science john s. dryzek & stephen t. leonard the tyranny of reason in the world of the polis arlene w. saxonhouse liberal virtues william a. galston research notes upsetting national priorities: the reagan administration's budgetary strategy mark s. kamlet, david c. mowery & tsai-tsu su presidential prenomination preferences and candidate evaluations patrick j. kenney & tom w. rice simple explanations of turnout decline carol a. cassel & robert c. luskin review essay skeptical studies of language, the media, and mass culture murray edelman book reviews political theory american politics comparative politics international relations index to volume h tt p s: // d o i.o rg / . /s d o w n lo ad ed f ro m h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re . c ar n eg ie m el lo n u n iv er si ty , o n a p r a t : : , s u b je ct t o t h e c am b ri d g e c o re t er m s o f u se , a va ila b le a t h tt p s: // w w w .c am b ri d g e. o rg /c o re /t er m s. https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms the devil’s prayers: metal music in iran by jeremy david prindle a thesis submitted to the faculty of the university of utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts in middle east studies department of languages and literature the university of utah may copyright © jeremy david prindle all rights reserved t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f u t a h g r a d u a t e s c h o o l statement of thesis approval the thesis of jeremy david prindle has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: soheila amirsoleimani , chair / / date approved chris lippard , member / / date approved margaret toscano , member / / date approved and by johanna watzinger-tharp , chair/dean of the department/college/school of middle east center and by david b. kieda, dean of the graduate school. abstract metal music is a highly misunderstood style of music that is dismissed and demonized all over the world; even in the us and europe where it originated it is still vilified and viewed as an unsophisticated style of music. in the islamic republic of iran the same views are amplified to the extreme as a very foreign and western style of music is growing in popularity. i explored the history of metal music to show where this genre originated so a better understanding of this music could be attained. through an understanding of the genre it is much easier to understand how this music has spread across the globe like a wild fire and people in third world and oppressed nations are being inspired and motivated to become musicians and stand up for themselves and their beliefs. iran is an excellent country to examine a growing metal music scene because of its status as an islamic republic. music in general is a very controversial issue in iran and metal music takes this controversy to another level because it is completely forbidden. this has not stopped many iranians from attaining instruments and starting their own metal bands even though they are harassed and demonized by iranian authorities. i conducted qualitative research using solo and focus group interviews with eight persian metal bands and many fans and friends of these bands that identify themselves as metalheads. i had very long and detailed discussions canvasing many aspects of their lives, how they live as outcasts within an islamic society, their goals in life, and what they want people outside iran to understand about them. i analyzed the data i collected using a critical ethnographic and grounded theory method which allowed me to experience their lives with them and create life-long friendships. iv this thesis is the story of thousands of metalheads in iran that are right now, as you read, playing metal music far underground where no one can hear them. as they play they are envisioning the uncertainty of their lives and the hope they have of a future where they can play in front of a crowd and feel the energy that music generates. metal music fuels the fire that burns within their souls like gasoline and i hope that this thesis can help stoke that fire into a raging inferno. dedicated to my best friend, who must remain unnamed, without his influence this thesis would never have been written, and to all my metal brothers in iran, you know who you are, this is for you. table of contents abstract .................................................................................................................... iii acknowledgements.............................................................................................. viii chapters : introduction ........................................................................................................ origins of research ............................................................................................. aims .................................................................................................................... : literature review .............................................................................................. : methodology ..................................................................................................... theory .............................................................................................................. critical ethnography (method ) ....................................................................... grounded theory (method ) ........................................................................... research setting .............................................................................................. informant selection .......................................................................................... conceptual framework .................................................................................... data collection methods .................................................................................. observation ...................................................................................................... interviews ......................................................................................................... protection of human rights .............................................................................. analysis ............................................................................................................ participant observation .................................................................................... field experience .............................................................................................. : analysis: origins of metal music ............................................................. : analysis: music, popular culture, and iranian sentiment ............. : analysis: the iranian regime and metal music .................................... : analysis: the metal music scene in iran ................................................ : analysis: musical instruments in iran ................................................... : analysis: metalheads in iran ..................................................................... vii : analysis: band activities: practicing, concerts, and recording .............................................................................................................. : analysis: the influence of technology on the iranian metal scene........................................................................................................................ : analysis: the future of the iranian metal scene ............................ : conclusion ..................................................................................................... appendices a: band profiles .................................................................................................. b: song lyrics ...................................................................................................... references ............................................................................................................ acknowledgements i would like to thank the members of my committee, soheila amirsoleimani, chris lippard, and margaret toscano for reading this thesis and helping me organize it. i would like to thank roxane farmanfarmaian for giving me a lot of great advice concerning the methodology of my thesis. i would like to thank caren frost for her help with the logistics of presenting my research project to the institutional review board (irb), without her help i would have never been able to travel to armenia to conduct my research. i would like to thank arash of tarantist for allowing me to come to los angeles and film a video with him that helped me gain credibility with iranian musicians. i would also like to thank my beautiful wife, chereen, for all of her help in formatting this document with me. i don’t know what i would have done without her help. chapter introduction the culture of metal music is universal. there is no racial, linguistic, or cultural barrier that separates one metalhead (an avid metal music listener and/or musician) from another. this is why metal bands like iron maiden and metallica, for example, can perform for crowds in excess of , people anywhere in the world. through metal music people come together and cross boundaries that would normally stop them from communicating with someone they share nothing in common with. it is how a person like myself can travel halfway around the world to a country i have never been to, meet and interview people i have never met, and despite our language and cultural differences, be so comfortable with each other it was like we had known each other for many years. metal music is a very western phenomenon, but over the past forty years metal music has branched out to countries all over the world. for example, there is a metal music scene in vietnam with bands that cover a wide range of genres from power metal to death metal. there was even a metal festival in hanoi, vietnam called hanoi death fest . there is a metal scene in nicaragua, botswana, lebanon, almost every country in the world has been penetrated by metal music but there is one country that has a very unique metal scene because of its status as an islamic republic, and that is iran. iran is different from the other three islamic republic’s in mauritania, pakistan, and afghanistan. of these four countries none of them share the same idea about what an go to www.metalarchives.com and search by country and you can find metal bands anywhere in the world. islamic republic is. afghanistan has a largely secular government that was installed after the taliban was deposed in . pakistan and mauritania share the idea that a path between a secular state and a theocratic state can be achieved, although their views on this path are wildly different. the clerics in iran have established a fully theocratic state which adheres to the teachings of ayatollah khomeini and his vision of an islamic state in iran. khomeini’s beliefs are stated clearly in his book velayat-e faqih (governance of the jurist), as well as his vision for iran. after the iranian revolution in all music was banned but the regime could not fully eliminate it and had to succumb to the people and tolerate certain genres of classical and regional music. all other forms of music were outlawed because of their alleged powers of seduction and corruption and most importantly, because they were western. metal music in iran is illegal and metalheads live with the constant fear that they could be harassed by the regime, or even worse. there is no freedom of speech or freedom of the press in iran, freedom is only allowed in the confines of islam, any speech that is un- islamic is not allowed. article of the islamic penal code of the islamic republic of iran states that “anyone who engages in any type of propaganda against the islamic republic of iran or in support of opposition groups and associations, shall be sentenced to three months to one year of imprisonment.” the word “propaganda” in this article is if you are interested in reading velayat-e faqih the iran chamber society has translated it into english at http://www.iranchamber.com/history/rkhomeini/books/velayat_faqeeh.pdf ameheh youssefzadeh. “the status of music in the islamic republic of iran.” fis- iran.org. foundation for iranian studies, n.d. web. aug. . http://www.fis-iran.org/en/irannameh/volxix/iran-status-music. freemuse. “world premiere about music censorship in iran.” freemuse.org. n.p., n.d. web. aug. . http://freemuse.org/archives/ . iran human rights documentation center. “isalmic penal code of the islamic republic of iran – book five.” iranhrdc.org. iran human rights documentation center, n.d. web. sept. . http://iranhrdc.org/english/human-rights-documents/iranian-codes/ -islamic-penal- code-of-the-islamic-republic-of-iran-book-five.html# . very vague and is used to stifle any speech the islamic republic of iran disagrees with. a perfect example of this took place in september when two newspapers, shahrvand-e emrooz, a weekly reformist news magazine, and a leading reformist daily, rouzegar, were temporarily closed for publishing anti-regime propaganda. i grew up in the us listening to and playing metal music whenever and wherever i wanted. in the garage, in my car, at parties, my friends and i listened to metal all the time. we were free to express ourselves however we wanted and i used my experience growing up listening to metal as my critical position throughout my research. the thought that i could be persecuted by my government for this was not a thought that ever crossed my mind until i learned about the metal scene in iran. i thought, “metal is illegal in iran? but why?” and, “how do people listen to metal there if it’s illegal?” even in the us there has always been an opposition to metal music because people view it as rebellious, evil, and “not really music,” but illegal? the thought of people being persecuted for metal music was problematic for me and i wanted to learn more about this dangerous social situation that a growing number of iranians found themselves in. i wanted to know, “what is life like for a metalhead in iran?” origins of research the origin of this research began when i met my best friend, metalhead , while in the us navy, and listened to the many stories he would tell me of growing up in iran and listening to metal music. we shared three years together in the us navy and during that time i learned a lot about iran, iranian culture, and the metal scene there. he influenced freedom house. “iran.” freedomhouse.org. freedom house, . web. sept. . http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/ /iran. my best friend wanted to remain anonymous for my research so i will refer to him throughout my paper as metalhead . the reason i included a “ ” is because in my analysis piece on government i kept all of my sources anonymous and will refer to them as metalhead , metalhead , etc... my interest in iran so much that when i left the navy i went to school to learn the persian language. as i began my graduate studies i went through a rough period where i just could not decide what i wanted to research for a thesis. the frustrating aspect of this period, now that i look back, is that the answer had been sitting right under my nose, i just did not see it. i had an epiphany one night when i was searching through netflix and i came across this documentary called “heavy metal in baghdad.” i was about half way through the film and this light bulb went on above my head and i yelled, “that’s it!” at the time i had no idea how i was going to conduct this research but i was determined to succeed. i gave up on a couple different plans i created to research this topic because traveling to iran was more difficult and potentially dangerous than i had initially imagined. when i sadly came to terms with the fact that i was going to have to conduct my research over the internet, an important opportunity presented itself. i discovered that an organization called zhesht events was promoting a persian metal festival in yerevan, armenia on september , . this was a huge development because it meant that i could actually meet persian metal musicians and fans in person. armenia was a country that i could easily travel to and conduct my research in. returning to the metal scene in baghdad, iraq for a moment, i wanted to share that the metal music scene in iraq is in a much more dire position than the metal scene in iran. this is mainly because of the chaotic and lawless society that is apparent there now. according to freemuse, an organization that monitors the freedom of expression through music around the world, over musicians have been killed in iraq since the this film is about a metal band in baghdad, iraq amidst the iraq war in and the many struggles they faced because of the war, society, and religion. you can view information about zhesht events here, www.zhesht.com. us invasion in . shia and sunni extremists have each attempted to impose their own religious restrictions on the people of iraq and many musicians are in hiding or have fled the country. freemuse reported that the iraq newspaper “the observer” interviewed a musician that said: the government is not giving us any protection. i witnessed two of my friends being killed for singing western songs at weddings. the shia extremists who killed them shouted that that was the price they had to pay for singing “the devil’s words”. we are packing and next monday i should be far from iraq, a country that one day inspired my songs but today is just a disgrace. the metal scenes in iran and iraq are both dealing with oppression, but this oppression stems from very different sources because the political and social aspects of these countries are very different. looking at another country that borders iran we see a totally different metal scene that is not plagued by any of the restrictions that iranians deal with. the armenian metal scene emerged after the fall of the soviet union and musicians in armenia are free to express themselves using metal music. the metal scene in armenia is very interesting because even though armenia is a republic that promotes democracy it also recognizes the armenian apostolic church as the national church of armenia, so christianity is a very strong influence on armenians. some of the most popular metal bands in armenia are devout christians, like the band blood covenant, some even play black metal , like freemuse. “religious restrictions cause singers to flee.” freemuse.org. n.p., n.d. web. sept. . http://freemuse.org/archives/ . freemuse. “religious restrictions cause singers to flee.” freemuse.org. n.p., n.d. web. sept. . http://freemuse.org/archives/ . black metal originated with the band venom and their album black metal in . the album focused on anti-christian and satanic themes. many bands emerged within this new genre, especially in scandinavia focusing on anti-christian and misanthropic themes. today black metal does not necessarily have to do with satanism because many bands are adopting the musical style of black metal without the traditional themes. daeron. these are some examples of the diversity of metal music in armenia. armenian metalheads have been very accepting of iranian metalheads because armenia is the only place iranian metalheads can express themselves freely. i witnessed this firsthand and will discuss this relationship more when i discuss my fieldwork. these examples of metal scenes in countries that surround iran show that metal music is a very malleable culture and it can exist anywhere in the world, even under the most oppressive conditions. metal music may have emerged in the west but it is by no means a western style of music. it has seeped into cultures all over the world and each of those cultures has molded it to represent their own identity and claim it as their own. aims the aims of my research are: first, to examine the literature about where metal music originated. it is important to have an adequate understanding of the genre so the passion of its practitioners and fans can be understood. metal music has a rich history that has been explored by only a handful of scholars and its arrival in many nations around the world has yet to be explored. in addition, a fresh perspective can be used to view the metal scene in iran and how metal culture influences the many talented musicians that are forced underground and silenced. second, to investigate metal bands in iran and learn more about their music, lifestyle, and how structures and norms affect their agency. by investigating some of the social phenomena in iran and uncovering the injustice that metal musicians experience, an awareness will be created that promotes change. to be involved with metal music in iran is not just a casual, recreational experience as people in the west experience it. it can literally be a matter of life and death, and the danger that these iranian metalheads go to http://caucasusmetal.blogspot.com/ and there is information on metal bands from caucasus countries georgia, armenia, and azerbaijan. are in by standing up for who they are is very real. the courage of these iranians is undeniable and they deserve to be heard. third, to analyze and interpret the data i receive from iranian metalheads. analyzing the data consists of identifying patterns, categories, and themes about these bands and their environment to explain two important theoretical concepts. first, structures , and how certain social, economic, political, historical, and cultural norms and institutions operate inside iran and affect metal musicians. second, agency , and how metal musicians interact with these structures and if structures determine all of the choices they make. the metal scene in iran has only known oppression and if the regime were to vanish tomorrow the metal scene in iran would instantly transform into something it has never known. interpreting the data consists of attaching meaning and significance to these patterns, categories, and themes. there is no “method” to interpreting data, interpretation occurs through knowledge, experience, and understanding of everything a researcher has learned. there are theoretical guides to interpretation and i will be taking a reflexive approach. this approach allows the researcher to openly reflect on his or her own beliefs and values and show intimate involvement with the research and its outcome. the goal of this research is a clearer picture of how metal musicians in iran live their lives. the agency of metalheads in iran is affected by structures and their resistance to structures are the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available. in the case of metal in iran, structures refer to cultural norms, tradition, and ideology. see cultural studies: theory and practice, pg. by chris barker. agency is the capacity of an individual to act independently or the freedom to make your own decisions. see cultural studies: theory and practice, pg. by chris barker. helen vandenberg and wendy hall. “critical ethnography: extending attention to bias and reinforcement of dominant power relations.” nurse researcher . ( ): . academic search premier. web. sept. . conform to these structures reveals their identity, and passion for freedom and music. metal for many of these iranians is all they have, as iran’s economy is so bad they cannot find work. many of them are highly educated and have no outlet for their frustration of not being able to pursue a career, except through their music. it is important that the metal scene in iran flourishes because it is an ancillary form of protest against an oppressive regime whether the musicians see themselves as protesting or not. these musicians are passionate, caring, determined, individuals and they deserve a valid and reliable account of their accomplishments, as well as their struggles. it is important to note that all the metal bands i interviewed that are currently living in iran have no desire to become political as a band and cause trouble for themselves. unfortunately no matter what their lyrical content or what they stand for they are politically involved just by playing metal music. it is a rather peculiar situation to be in because no matter how much a band proclaims not be political… they are. chapter literature review the literature that i found most useful was the history of metal music and where it originated. the origin of metal music is important to understanding metal culture and how it interacts with other cultures, especially iran. all of this literature gave me the insight needed to analyze and interpret the interviews i conducted with iranian metal bands and create a picture of their lives inside iran as well as give them some hope for the future. without the blues the music you hear today would be very different. jazz, pop, contemporary, rock, and of course metal are all in existence because of the blues. in the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century a blues musician could be heard anywhere in the south, in front of the local store, on a plantation, in a juke joint, or on a porch. people could watch a blues musician move a broken bottleneck up and down the fret board of a guitar and not give it much thought. it was part of the landscape during this time, but it impacted the united states in a way no one envisioned. especially blues musicians themselves, who howled their frustrations, sorrow, and hopelessness to the skies, expecting nothing but the peacefulness of being lost in the music. today the blues can have many different meanings for people. for blacks it obviously carries memories of slavery and oppression, but also more positive aspects, like heritage and tradition. for non-blacks it can represent these things as well, although in a much different context; but more simply it is an inspiration that changed music forever. from my research i came to see the blues as intense personal feelings that found expression through music after hundreds of years of oppression. the blues is the story of poor and humble men and women who became well-known in their communities, and for a few, the whole southern region of the united states. these men and women were extremely talented musicians whose music was severely overlooked, ignored, and ultimately lost forever. luckily for us, a few of them were given the opportunity to create recordings that will forever be treasured. robert walser, author of running with the devil is adamant that more historians need to trace the birth of rock and metal music back to its african roots. overlooking the blues can no longer be acceptable because without the passion of blues musicians, music like metal would not exist. robert palmer wrote in his book deep blues: we need to understand what blues came from, where it grew, how it changed, what sorts of camouflage it had to adopt in order to preserve its identity. and we need to understand the people who made and listened to blues, not just as blacks or oppressed americans or romantic archetypes or clever technicians or successful entertainers, but as particular people who made particular personal artistic choices in a particular place at a particular time. an interesting truth that must be pointed out when discussing the history of the blues is that it commonly begins at the point of white dominance. walser confronts this truth by asking how black sabbath’s fascination with the occult can be discussed, but robert johnson and his struggle with the devil is forgotten. also, how the guitar prowess of jimmy page and eric clapton can be discussed, but not the musicians they were imitating. walser said, “the debt of heavy metal to african-american music making robert palmer. deep blues. . scholars have documented many different stories about the mysterious life of robert johnson by interviewing his living family and friends (some being legendary blues musicians themselves), but none of these stories can be proven or corroborate with each other, which leads to a lot of skepticism and plays into the mythical and mystical stories we hear about robert johnson’s life. walser is asking why stories by more current rock and metal musicians are accepted and not stories from old blues musicians. robert walser. running with the devil: power, gender, and madness in heavy metal culture. hanover: university p, . - . print. has vanished from most accounts of the genre, just as black history has been suppressed in every other field.” the african music the blues emerged from arrived in the southern united states with the first african slaves. there are over fifty countries in africa and over , tribes and languages, so it is easy to see that these slaves brought with them knowledge of many different styles of song, dance, instruments, and traditions. during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries most slaves came from the western coast of africa, which the slave traders referred to as senegambia. this region stretched from modern day senegal to guinea, it was ruled by the wolof empire who had reigned over this region since but had been in a state of collapse since the sixteenth century. trade with european nations had made the kings of the vassal states along the coast of africa more powerful than the wolof emperor himself and war ensued between these vassal states. these senegambian kings had been in the slave business before war erupted in the region, but now as the emperor’s soldiers were being captured the senegambian kings decided that instead of killing them, they could sell them to the europeans. there were three benefits; they got rid of their enemies, they became rich, and the war could be maintained so more slaves could be captured. the slave trade became so lucrative that kidnapping even became a way of procuring slaves from senegambia if slave traders could not get the amount of slaves they needed to fill their ships. musically, senegambia was not known for drums and drumming as many other areas of africa are well known for. senegambia was a very arid region because it lay just to the southwest of the sahara desert. it was also heavily influenced by the arabs and robert walser. running with the devil. . nations online project. “languages of africa.” nationsonline.org. nations online, n.d. web. http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/african_languages.htm. berbers who traveled through the sahara trading in caravans, therefore the senegambians had many stringed instruments. these instruments could be very primitive, like a gourd fiddle, or they could be very complex, like a guitar-like lute that could have anywhere from two to twenty strings. vocally, senegambia was known for a style of group singing known as call and response. this style consists of a soloist who leads the singing and a chorus who echoes the singers’ lyrics in different ways, while keeping in rhythm with the music. they also were known for clapping their hands when they sang because drums were not a part of their tradition. musicians in senegambia were from a social caste known as griots. these men would sing about the wealthy and powerful and they would also memorize long epic genealogies so oral histories of their people could be retained. these musicians were not looked down upon or seen as part of the lower class, they were admired, respected, and could attain a very good reputation and a lot of wealth. they were surrounded by a lot of superstition and despised by many because it was believed that their talent was bestowed upon them by the evil spirits that they consorted with. during the seventeenth century the slave trade grew and began expanding south into present day sierra leone, liberia, ivory coast, ghana, togo, nigeria, and cameroon. these nations compiled what was famously known as the slave coast. on the slave coast music was very different. here drumming was the most influential style of music and musicians could play a solo drum or be part of an orchestra of drums accompanied by rattles, bells, or anything that complimented the drums. the rhythms of the slave coast were more complex as the different drums being used would play different rhythms at the same time, known as poly-rhythm. robert palmer. deep blues. . robert palmer. deep blues. . vocally, the slave coast was more complex than senegambia because they did not follow the call and response style of music. musicians had a soloist but the soloist was not imitated. the soloist and the chorus would overlap each other and also come together in unison creating harmony, and they were very good at singing several melodies at one time. in the west a pure and clean sound has always been what musicians have sought after, but in africa musicians will do whatever they can to interrupt that pure sound. there are many examples of this; they will attach tin to the head of a drum or to the neck of a stringed instrument to generate a rattle or buzz, they may hum along to the melody of a flute, and while singing, guttural grunting, throaty growls, and falsetto shrieking are common. this preference to interrupt the sound as much as possible goes against western ideas of what music is. in the west music was developed by scientists and philosophers who searched for quantitative ways of organizing and playing music. music students went to school to learn how to play music and study scores and tablature following different methodologies and scales, but in africa music could not be written on paper, it was part of african culture and it was learned through imitation, tradition, and feeling. ted gioia, author of delta blues, describes the idea of music in the west and africa perfectly, saying, “what in africa remained a matter of feeling and doing, in the west, became an area for thinking and counting.” thousands of slaves were transported across the atlantic ocean by slave traders and they were dying in large numbers. the malnourishment and disease slaves suffered on their captive journey was one aspect of their mistreatment, but the inability to move robert palmer. deep blues. . ted gioia. delta blues: the life and times of the mississippi masters who revolutionized american music. new york: w.w. norton and co., . . print. around was also a huge problem as slaves were stuffed like sardines into the holds of ships and not let out until they arrived in the us. the high mortality rates of slaves on the journey was causing slave traders to lose a lot of money so they began to encourage exercise and recreation. slave traders knew music was a big part of the lives of these slaves so they encouraged slaves to play music and dance. the slave traders encouraged it so much that they began to punish slaves who would not dance or exercise and these practices are well documented from to . slaves never forgot their culture and traditions when they arrived in the united states. they made drums and horns and continued creating the music that reminded them of their home until the middle of the eighteenth century when the united states banned the use of drums and horns by slaves. there was an important reason for this: slaves organized many rebellions using drums and horns to communicate and send codes. when these instruments were banned they resorted to a familiar form of singing while out in the fields known as call and response. africans used call and response when they participated in group work in africa, and slave owners allowed them to sing in the fields in the united states because they saw that the slaves were more productive. call and response was also known as hollering and there were many different techniques involved in this style of singing, one of the most important was “voice masking.” voice masking is a vocal technique that africans used in village rituals. they wore masks which they believed would transform their identity into a spirit, legendary animal, or mythological creature. these rituals were used for different occasions, but most importantly they were ways of passing down tribal heritage since most tribes had no written language. when a person enveloped their new identity under the mask they also modified their voice. africans mastered deep chest growls and false bass tones ted gioia. delta blues. . produced in the back of the throat. these techniques were used a lot by slaves out in the fields because they sang throughout the day. blind willie johnson, charley patton, son house, and rubin lacy were pioneer delta blues musicians who regularly used voice masking techniques. after the american civil war ended slaves became free men and the reconstruction of the us began. some blacks set out on foot to discover what this new era had in store for them, traveling to towns and cities looking for work. unfortunately many blacks were so poor that they remained working at the plantations they were previously slaves for money. many of the blacks that explored the united states as free men were musicians and they traveled from plantation to plantation playing for crowds at local parties and get- togethers. they played on street corners or in front of stores for tips on saturdays when a lot of people were in town. these musicians became known as songsters, musicianers, and musical physicianers and they had a large repertoire of different styles of music. they would play country dance tunes, black and white songs from the minstrel stage, and spirituals. songsters, musicianers, and physicianers were very specific descriptions and were not a synonym for a musician. a songster was a black man who regularly sang or made songs, a musicianer was considered an expert in the banjo or fiddle, and a physicianer traveled from place to place and possessed a combination of these qualities. many of these musicians found work in minstrel shows which were very popular before the american civil war and the most popular form of entertainment during the nineteenth century. after the civil war these shows became less popular, but they still robert palmer. deep blues. . robert palmer. deep blues. . justin driver. “the mirth of a nation.” new republic . ( ): . academic search premier. web. nov. . remained a viable form of entertainment into the early twentieth century. minstrel shows were a combination of music, skits, dancing, and novelty acts that were initially performed by whites painted with blackface. before the civil war these troupes would perform in a manner that defended slavery, portraying blacks as dim-witted and in need of the civilizing influence of white people; in addition, they used their platform to counter the abolitionist movement who was pursuing the emancipation of all slaves and an end to segregation. these troupes would travel around the us following the same circuit as circuses, bands, and other forms of entertainment, and they performed in the street, saloons, or theaters. in the late s blacks began performing in minstrel troupes of their own and painting their already dark skin black with coal. they claimed that they were giving audience members a more authentic version of the black experience, but unfortunately they just enforced the negative stereotypes people already had. as the twentieth century neared minstrel shows were decreasing rapidly in popularity and only about ten of the large companies that organized minstrel shows remained. blacks had disassociated themselves with the minstrel shows, because as they adjusted to their freedom they saw the stereotype that minstrel shows portrayed and they found it insulting. by the end of the nineteenth century call and response was not being performed by most of the black population. blacks had been free for about forty years, and as the twentieth century approached slave songs were not relevant to free men nor were they relevant to young black men who had been born after the era of slavery. many black musicians were influenced by white middle-class culture, and music from the era of slavery was seen as inferior by whites and blacks. only the most sacred black folk ibid. . music was acknowledged as being respectable and it ironically became more polished as whites began to take interest in it. by the s relations between whites and blacks had deteriorated greatly as the doctrine of white supremacy spread through the united states, especially the south. according to politicians in the south the black man’s place was on the farm, and although on paper many blacks owned land, laws had been put in place that made it very difficult for a black man to leave his farm to pursue another profession. expert in folklore and blues music, bruce bastin, in his book red river blues wrote, “once tied to the land, black farm laborers were actually dependent upon their white neighbors.” blacks became very frustrated with their predicament because many experienced the greatest event that ever happened to them, being set free, as a meaningless achievement. instead of experiencing the free and productive life they envisioned they were marginalized and discriminated against. blacks in the mississippi delta region were some of the poorest people in the nation. many of them could not read or write and they possessed nothing. many were not considered by whites to be respectable enough to be a servant or hold a responsible position in the community. for some blacks, church and gospel music became an outlet for their frustrations, and for others, secular music, like the blues, was the outlet they needed. the blues became a means of escape from problems to which there was no immediate answer. it opened up a whole world that a man could insert himself into and create a story. the blues was a state of mind that a person could sing himself into, bruce bastin. red river blues: the blues tradition in the southeast. university of illinois press, . . print. bruce bastin. red river blues. . bruce bastin. red river blues. . where he could sing about the small details of everyday life that subliminally captured the larger social situation. through the lyrics of heartache, hardship, and rootlessness, a blues musician could capture the plight of a black man in the south. the blues has always been viewed as a very depressing and pessimistic style of music, but buried inside these feelings are feelings of hope, honor, and happiness. it clearly sounds strange, and to get a better understanding paul oliver expands on the issue in blues fell this morning: the most astonishing aspect of the blues is that, though replete with a sense of defeat and downheartedness, they are not intrinsically pessimistic; their burden of woe and melancholy is dialectically redeemed through sheer force of sensuality, into an almost exultant affirmation of life, of love, of sex, or movement, of hope. no matter how repressive was the american environment, the negro never lost faith in or doubted his deeply endemic capacity to live. two of the most important developments for the blues musician in the delta during the s were the expansion of the railroad and the post office’s mail-order catalog. these expansions were important for one simple reason: it gave blacks access to acquiring their own musical instruments, namely the guitar. “from to railroad construction averaged over , miles per year. by there were almost , miles; in the following decade figures jumped %.” this massive railroad expansion allowed goods to be delivered to many places they could not previously be delivered to, and it allowed the post office to improve their system of delivery. “in the number of post offices had reached , , and by they had reached their highest-ever peak of , . the system of rural free delivery, officially suggested in , became a reality in . in rural free delivery served routes and , families; by it served , routes and , , families.” paul oliver. blues fell this morning: meaning in the blues. new york: cambridge up, . xv. print. bruce bastin. red river blues. . ibid. . in a company emerged that would revolutionize the mail-order catalog and become the most widely used form of postal service, the sears roebuck company. sears forcefully yanked the business of mail-order from montgomery ward who had been in the mail-order business since . they were allowed to send out their catalogs by train as second-class mail which allowed the catalogs to make it into rural areas where montgomery ward did not do business. sears was very customer friendly; they insisted that the customer was always right and they told their customers that if they did not have an order form for something they wanted, to write it on a piece of paper and mail it and they will take care of it. montgomery ward on the other hand had very strict rules and very lengthy forms. sears was known for sending very personable letters to its customers to make them feel good about their purchase and prove to them that sears had their interests in mind. they also promoted the use of money orders by telling their rural customers which banks were “sears” friendly. customers could send their money to these banks who would create a money order and send it to sears. customers could also give money to the postman who would take their money to the bank for them and create a money order and mail it to sears. these developments allowed the rural person to participate in a lifestyle that had previously only been available to a townsperson. musical instruments were not included in the sears catalog until , but each year after the musical instrument section grew, and in it consisted of pages. in , guitars had a full page in the catalog, a year warranty, and a month free trial with prices ranging from $ . - $ . . by , the catalog had six pages of guitars from $ . - ibid. . bruce bastin. red river blues. . $ . . it is unlikely that many of the people buying these guitars were blacks from the south. they did not have money to spend on luxury items like a guitar. most likely, white people purchased these guitars and realizing it was harder to play than sears advertised, they gave up. the guitar was then put aside, and found its way into black hands where the aspiring guitarist was more skilled and had a greater desire to learn. at the turn of the twentieth century guitars had become relatively affordable for many blacks who wanted to learn how to play. whether they were purchased new from a mail- order catalog or used from a local pawn shop, the guitar was becoming popular. it was a new instrument and it represented urbaneness, social status, and modernity. it carried none of the baggage that the banjo possessed: slavery, minstrel music, or any other negative stereotypes associated with race. it did, however, come to be seen by god fearing blacks of the south as an instrument of the devil because it was used to play secular music (the blues), which was generally played where drinking, smoking, dancing, sex, and fighting took place. for many god fearing blacks the guitar provoked and symbolized evil acts and as with many things in black culture in the south, the guitar held many bad superstitions and associations to the devil. in delta blues, ted gioia writes about b.b. king’s (a famous blues and jazz musician) experiences with churches in the delta in the early twentieth century and their views on the guitar: b.b. king found that many delta churches would cancel the performance of his gospel singing group when they learned that the vocalists relied on guitar accompaniment—the six-string instrument had been so tainted by its association with the blues that many ministers could not bear seeing it inside the house of god. ibid. . adam gussow. “ain’t no burnin’ hell: southern religion and the devil’s music.” arkansas review: a journal of delta studies . ( ): . academic search premier. web. jun. . ted gioia. delta blues. . alan lomax, an ethnomusicologist who studied the blues and american folklore, wrote in the land where the blues began about the feelings the guitar held for many god fearing blacks in the south: “the guitar is butted against the hips . . . and handled in a masturbatory way. meanwhile, the strings are choked down close to the sound hole, and plucked, stroked, frailed, as if female erotic parts were being played with, while the instrument itself emits orgiastic-like sounds.” with preachers demonizing the guitar it is easy to understand why for many in the south, the guitar was feared and abhorred. despite these feelings by the god fearing black folks in the south the guitar continued to revolutionize music as the blues sound continued to develop. the blues developed common structures for playing, and became more popular. the most common form of blues came to be known as the twelve-bar blues. the twelve-bar blues was twelve bars of music accompanied by three lines of verse. the vocals were most commonly referred to as aaa or aab which signified that a vocal phrase would be repeated three times or repeated twice and then answered. a good example, and one of the first published blues songs was w.c. handy’s “st. louis blues.” here you can see the first line being repeated twice and then answered by a third line: i hate to see de ev’nin’ sun go down, hate to see de ev’nin’ sun go down, ‘cause ma baby, he done lef dis town. the “twelve-bar blues” was the most popular but it was not the only way to perform the blues. there were eight, eleven, and twelve-and-a-half bar blues as well. the blues was a style of music that allowed and encouraged improvisation and once a blues musician was inside the music psychologically there was an infinite amount of paths to alan lomax. the land where the blues began. new york: pantheon, . . print. w.c. handy. “st. louis blues.” pace & handy music co., . follow, which proved to be an effective barrier against its standardization. the guitar aided the blues musician in weakening the european system of how music should be written and composed. blues musicians loved to tune down their guitars from the standard tuning to a half step, a whole step, or even lower. this allowed the blues musician to tune his guitar to a chord such as e or a, and play a simple sequence by the barre alone, and it allowed a lot of freedom in rhythmic-patterns and finger-picking. using a knife to slide up and down the strings was a common technique and it resembled the cry of a human that was reminiscent to field hollers during the era of slavery. a broken bottle top could be put on the finger and used to slide up and down the strings as well. most blues musicians used this technique sparingly, but some used it almost exclusively such as blind willie johnson. in the west musicians had relied on the heptatonic scale for centuries. this scale has seven notes and is where the major and minor scales come from. blues musicians relied on the pentatonic scale which has five notes and two different versions; the hemitonic and the anhemitonic. the hemitonic scale, unlike the anhemitonic, takes advantage of semitones which are the smallest intervals in western music. these semitones are dissonant sounds between notes and are unique to the ear of a person used to western music, and heptatonic scales. hidden inside the pentatonic scale is the mysterious tritone that many people in the south considered the note of the devil. the tritone can consist of a flattened third, fifth, or seventh note, inside the pentatonic scale and has an eerie, ominous quality. these tunings made the blues unlike any music that had been heard in the united states, which opened it up to heavy criticism because of its unknown qualities. it was so different that paul oliver. blues fell this morning. . paul oliver. the story of the blues. boston: northeastern up, . . print. even many black people did not accept it and found its tonal qualities to be very disturbing. nobody knows for sure where the blues surfaced for the first time but the consensus of many blues scholars is that the blues first began blossoming in the delta region of the state of mississippi. the delta region was known for its cotton fields during the nineteenth century and was proclaimed to be the most fertile soil anywhere on the globe. to the people that lived in the delta this was an ugly paradox because the majority of them lived in poverty. the delta region begins in vicksburg, mississippi and stretches north to memphis, tennessee. vicksburg and natchez were the two main cities in the delta region and whites outnumbered blacks two to one, but in the countryside the opposite held true as blacks outnumbered whites five to one. white people lived in the cities conducting business, while blacks lived in the country as slaves picking cotton in the fields. the cities, where most cultural influences on things such as music begin to emerge, were dominated by white people but the influence that blacks had in the cities and rural mississippi, because of their sheer numbers, shaped the cultural tone of the whole region. there are three important historical encounters that helped solidify the theory the blues origins are in the delta region. in , a man named charles peabody, of harvard’s peabody museum, was the first man to document blues music. peabody had come to the delta region to do an archaeological dig at some indian mounds. he brought with him a black work crew to help him uncover the mounds and as they dug one ted gioia. delta blues. . ibid. . ibid. . black man would sing a lyric and the rest of the men would respond with their own lyric. these men would sing about women, the bible, the road, and other topics, as they dug and they would time their digging with the rhythm of their singing. peabody took notes about the lyrics these men sang and some musical transcriptions of the guitar notes, but he was not a practiced musician so he found it difficult to transfer such a strange type of music to paper. despite this, his descriptions of what he witnessed were published in the journal of american folklore in . gertrude “ma” rainey was a singer with the rabbit foot minstrels who toured with a vaudeville tent show that travelled all over the us. in , she was performing in a small town in southern missouri and she heard a young girl singing a song about how her man had left her. she was so intrigued by the strange tune that she began to look for similar songs and began to incorporate them into her act. her black audience loved the songs and she became extremely popular. she was one of the first blues artists to record her music and is extremely influential to many other blues artists. she is known as the “mother of the blues.” w.c. handy was a traveling musician with mahara’s colored minstrels and he too traveled all over the united states playing music. in the early s he was asked to come to mississippi to lead a black band called the knights of pythias. one night in , handy was waiting for a train in tutwiler, mississippi and as he dozed off there was a black man next to him that played, as handy describes, “the weirdest music i had ever heard.” the man sang “goin where the southern cross the dog” three times and answered each line with a knife that he pressed against his guitar to imitate his moaning voice. handy went on to formalize the strange style of music he robert palmer. deep blues. - . robert palmer. deep blues. . heard and become known as the “father of the blues.” mamie smith, bessie smith, and “ma” rainey were some of the first blues musicians to record their songs. mamie smith’s “crazy blues” were recorded on august , and became very popular, proving the marketability of blues music. soon after these women became popular men started to record. blues musicians like charley patton, son house, willie brown, and arguably the most famous blues musician in history, robert johnson, were heard throughout the united states. robert johnson is a legend in music because of his amazing musical talent and his dark persona. the stories surrounding robert johnson are dark and tell of a lanky, good-looking man with sharp features who was a restless and troubled man who made deals with the devil. he had amazing potential as a musician, and like other musicians of their day, jim morrison and kurt cobain for example, he died before his time at the young age of twenty-six. muddy waters, one of the most influential blues guitarists in history, was an accomplished guitarist during the same period as johnson, but the two did not know each other even though they had the same mentor, son house. waters once said of johnson: he used to work the jukes. i don’t know what sort of work he did. he always had a guitar with him whenever i saw him around. i never did talk to him much. he was the kind of guy that you wanted to listen to, get ideas from. . . but he didn’t seem to stay in any one place too long you know, kind of restless. johnson was born in hazelhurst, mississippi, on may , . he had a very troubled childhood, his mother did not have much success with men and he had three different fathers growing up. he grew up living on different plantations and labor camps and giles oakley. the devil's music: a history of the blues. new york: da capo, . . print. john cowley. “really the ‘walking blues’: son house, muddy waters, robert johnson and the development of a traditional blues.” popular music ( ): . jstor. web. jun. . eventually ended up in robinsonville, mississippi where he learned how to play the diddly-bow, or jew harp, and progressed to the guitar. he became very interested in music and practiced relentlessly. he met a local musician named willie brown, and his friend charley patton, and he followed them to juke houses and studied their techniques. charley patton was an entertainer, he could do things with a guitar that people like chuck berry, jimi hendrix, and michael angelo would do to years later, like playing behind your head, playing upside down, and throwing your guitar in the air. charley is considered to be the father of the delta blues and robert johnson was heavily influenced by him. one day a man came to town by the name of son house. house began playing with brown and patton, and johnson was mesmerized. these men teased johnson a lot when they drank, and chided him about his novice guitar skills. johnson would pick up one of their guitars whenever he got the chance, even during breaks at the local juke. house said of johnson: such another racket you never heard. it’d make the people mad, you know. they’d come out and say, “why don’t y’all go in there and get that guitar away from that boy! he’s running people crazy with it.” i’d come back in and i’d scold him about it. “don’t do that robert. you drive the people nuts. you can’t play nothing. it is obvious that these men had no idea the influence they had on a young, impressionable man who wanted to be just like them. johnson was seventeen years old when he met virginia travis and they became married. she soon became pregnant and decided to move in with her family during her pregnancy. johnson had a stable job at this time doing farm work and playing guitar on charles murray. talkin’ charley patton. dir. stephen gammond. white crow, . web. ted gioia. delta blues. . the side to supplement his income. he did not want to move in with virginia’s family and decided to travel around as a guitarist and make enough money to return and support his family. david “honeyboy” edwards, a fellow delta blues musician of johnson said that he loved playing with johnson because he could make more money in one night than he could make in a week as a field hand doing hard labor. unfortunately, virginia died during childbirth and when johnson came to visit her he did not receive a warm welcome from virginia’s family who viewed johnson as a man who was gone playing the devil’s music while his wife perished in childbirth. they felt that his music had attributed to his wife’s death and that johnson had relations to the devil. while johnson had been traveling he improved his musical skills greatly. when he visited house, brown, and patton again they were in awe of how much he had improved. stories began to circulate that johnson had made a pact with the devil while he had been gone. blues scholars elijah wald, barry lee pearson, and bill mcculloch discredit the story of johnson selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads. they see the story as a blot on blues scholarship and think that a moratorium should be placed on the topic. this is strange because johnson writes about the devil many times in his lyrics. here is an example of johnson singing about the devil in “me and the devil blues:” early this morning when you knocked upon my door early this morning, oooo when you knocked upon my door and i said hello satan ibid. . luther brown. talkin’ charley patton. dir. stephen gammond. white crow, . web. ted gioia. delta blues. . i believe it's time to go me and the devil was walkin' side by side me and the devil, woooo was walking side by side and i'm going to beat my woman 'til i get satisfied she said you don't see why that she would dog me 'round (spoken:) now baby you know you ain't doin' me right don'tcha she say you don't see why, whoooo that she would dog me 'round it must-a be that old evil spirit so deep down in the ground you may bury my body down by the highway side (spoken:) baby, i don't care where you bury my body when i'm dead and gone you may bury my body, woooo down by the highway side so my old evil spirit can get a greyhound bus and ride ideas of meeting the devil at a crossroads are rooted deep in african tradition. a crossroads represents a connection between the earthly realm and the divine and can be a very dangerous place, especially in the south for a black man at night. some towns could even arrest an unknown black man wandering their streets at night. johnson describes his experience in “crossroad blues” by singing how he fell down on his knees asking the lord for mercy and yelling for help from his friend willie brown as he is sinking down. david evans, a blues scholar, recorded a story told by reverend ledell johnson whose brother, tommy johnson, a delta blues musician, told him many times. ledell johnson recalls his brother’s story: now if tom was living, he’d tell you. he said the reason he knowed so much, said he sold himself to the devil. i asked him how. he said, “if you want to learn how to play and learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where a road crosses that way, where a crossroad is. get there, be sure to johnson, robert. “me and the devil blues.” the complete recordings. cd. columbia. . get there just a little ‘fore twelve o’clock that night so you’ll know you’ll be there. you have your guitar and be playing a piece sitting there by yourself. you have to go by yourself and be sitting there playing a piece. a big black man will walk up there and take your guitar, and he’ll tune it. and then he’ll play a piece and hand it back to you. that’s the way i learned to play anything i want.” and he could. it is clear from johnson’s lyrics that he was fascinated with supernatural imagery and felt like the devil was on his trail. when he heard these stories about himself he encouraged them because he felt that they could be true, although some of johnson’s satanic references are macho posturing. these stories heightened his fame, they were an attention grabber and any attention a struggling musician can acquire is good attention. johnson embraced his new identity because he knew he could not escape the label that had been placed on him. his wife’s passing really affected him and the centuries of african superstitions that he was exposed to his whole life became real for him. johnson traveled all over the us during his early twenties trying to make a name for himself. he was the new generation of blues musicians. his mentors charley patton and son house were about ten to twelve years older than him and mostly played for field hands in the delta. johnson had ambition and did not want to be on the plantation playing for field hands. he loved whiskey and he was always well groomed and wore a nice suit to impress the ladies. johnny shines, a blues musician that played with johnson described johnson as a seduction artist. shines said: he played songs of seduction like “kind-hearted woman” and “come on in my kitchen” to bring women under his spell. instead of singing to the crowd he would pick out a specific woman and he would sing a song directly to her regardless of who she was with and then he would generally take her home that evening. ted gioia. delta blues. . robert palmer. deep blues. . johnny shines. the search for robert johnson. dir. chris hunt. channel , . web. he eventually decided he wanted to follow in blind lemon jefferson and charley patton’s footsteps and record some of his songs. in , he went to meet h.c. spier, a local record store owner who would record demos and send them to record labels. spier saw potential in the demos he recorded for johnson and passed on his name to ernie oertle, who controlled the southern region for the american record corporation (arc). oertle saw potential in johnson as well and a recording session was arranged in san antonio, tx where he recorded sixteen songs. one of them, “terraplane blues” became a regional hit and brought johnson a relative amount of fame in the region. in , johnson traveled to dallas, tx which was his final recording session. he recorded thirteen songs, and the first song he recorded on that sunday morning was “hellhound on my trail.” this is a very unsettling and eerie song and considered to be his most masterful performance. you can sense that the hellhound is genuinely on his trail. in , johnson was in greenwood, tx playing shows at a local juke at night. the best information that exists about what happened to johnson in greenwood comes from david “honeyboy” edwards who had been traveling with johnson at the time when they were playing some shows together. edwards tells us that johnson had gotten involved with the wife of the man he was working for and that the man had found out that johnson had been seeing his wife. the man did not lose his temper but remained friendly toward johnson so he would not suspect anything. at midnight on august , , edwards recalls that he walked into the juke that johnson had been playing at and found him in the corner hunched over and very sick. he helped johnson to the back of the juke so he ted gioia. delta blues. . you can listen to “hellhound on my trail” here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= uvgh jqsnq. could lie down, and later accompanied johnson to where he was staying back in town. johnson remained in bed for several days and sonny boy williamson ii, a legendary blues harmonica player, visited him the day he died and was his last visitor. robert johnson may have died before his time but his music lives on today and heavily influences musicians from many genres of music. eric clapton, who is considered one of the best guitarists ever, and lead guitar player to one of the very first metal bands, cream, said of johnson, “i think that he is the greatest folk blues guitar player that ever lived… and the greatest singer, the greatest writer…” his musicianship was legendary, he could play things on a guitar that many people could only dream of playing. his voice could hit notes that make the hair stand on the back of your neck and give you that eerie feeling. keith richards, legendary guitarist for the rolling stones, said of johnson, “his songs and the subject matter… and the way they were treated… let alone the guitar playing which is like bach… and the voice was so eerie and compelling… and you put that in a class by itself.” even though johnson’s career in music was very short he would influence music around the world in a major way, especially metal music as the supernatural and satanic imagery inspired a new generation of legendary guitarists. during the s and s technology influenced farming at a relentless pace as bigger and better farm machinery was being invented and used on farms all over the south. these machines could do ten times the work of one man and were the biggest factor in the extinction of the farm hand. blacks began leaving the south after being fired or liberated, depending on how you david edwards. the search for robert johnson. dir. chris hunt. channel , . web. eric clapton. the search for robert johnson. dir. chris hunt. channel , . web. keith richards. the search for robert johnson. dir. chris hunt. channel , . web. view it, and traveling to bigger cities like memphis and st. louis looking for work, and they took the blues with them. from memphis and st. louis they traveled to detroit and chicago where the blues really began to transform into a modern style of music. technology influenced music a lot during these decades as blues musicians began to start playing electric guitars instead of the acoustics they played in the south. the chicago blues as they came to be known, never really became mainstream in america. it lived on the fringes of what was popular in the us during the s, never being able to compete with rock and roll. fortunately, there was a blues revival that took place in s but it was not in the us, it was in britain. the youth in britain were struggling to find an identity in post-wwii britain as life for them began to change. these youth were looking for something that would reflect their new changing environment and the chicago blues was a huge influence. dave allen, in “feelin’ bad this morning: why the british blues” writes, “the unexpected popularity of british blues in the ’s is often characterized as a direct consequence of some young people’s rejection of what they perceived as the artifice of pop music at a time when they needed a more real mode of cultural expression.” this is awkward considering blues musicians sing about oppression, sadness, and hopelessness but the blues was also music used for entertainment and celebration. the demand for blues was so strong in britain that blues musicians began traveling to britain to perform concerts. leadbelly toured britain in and big bill broonzy played many concerts in britain throughout the s. muddy waters played in britain in and and both of these shows produced live recordings that were released a couple years before the rolling stones emerged on the british blues scene and popularized blues through rock and roll. muddy waters said of the rolling stones, “before them people didn’t know dave allen. “feelin’ bad this morning: why the british blues.” popular music . ( ): . jstor. web. jun. . anything about me… i was making records that were called ‘race records’… then the rolling stones and all those other english bands came along playing this music, and now the kids are buying my records and listening to them.” the arrival of the rolling stones signified a shift in british culture in . the stones were covering songs by muddy waters, jimmy reed, bo diddley, robert wilkins, mississippi fred mcdowell, and robert johnson. keith richards, guitar player for the rolling stones, said that they started as a white london imitation of south side chicago blues, which is ironic considering that within a few years they were recording a blues ep at the legendary chess studios in chicago. two years after the emergence of the rolling stones bands were popping up all over britain playing the blues and covering songs by howlin wolf, muddy waters, john lee hooker, and many others. the british blues boom led directly to a new style of music, heavy metal. heavy metal is a genre of music that emerged out of the destruction of the youth revolution of the s. in , robert f. kennedy was assassinated, as well as martin luther king. in , a terrible shooting occurred at kent state university that permanently scarred the government and the youth counterculture. the beatles broke up, devastating youth around the world. jim morrison, jimi hendrix, and janis joplin, all died of drug overdoses devastating youth around the world. the elimination of the military draft by the government in also ended an extremely important issue that youth rallied around. the youth counterculture collapsed after these events and the s era of love and peace turned to a s era of evil and darkness. earth tones and rainbows changed to black, soft woven fiber changed to leather, and those who preserved the community dave allen. “feelin’ bad this morning.” . dave allen. “feelin’ bad this morning.” . came to be known as “deadheads” or “jesus freaks.” the s were the “me decade” and the youth had become, as ian christie writes in sound of the beast, “disillusioned with pacifist ideals. idealism was out and the new pragmatism was in.” since its emergence, heavy metal has been ignored and chastised by academics, rock critics, politicians, and parents. unfortunately, for these people heavy metal has been the most enduring genre of music in the last forty years. during the s especially, it was the most influential genre of music in many countries including the us. ronald byrnside’s theory of how a genre of music is constructed states that genres follow a three stage pattern which is formation, crystallization, and decay. during formation a new style of music emerges out of old styles. during crystallization this style is acknowledged and recognized but the boundaries are very transparent. decay of course, is the decline of the genre into oblivion. heavy metal has repelled the stage of decay, according to byrnside, where the genre will generally become so familiar and predictable that artists and audiences lose interest. it seems people either love heavy metal or hate it because according to a survey that robert walser references in running with the devil: power, gender, and madness in heavy metal music conducted by american demographics in , researchers “found that ten million people in the us (like or strongly like) heavy metal and that nineteen million strongly dislike it.” by looking at this survey it is clear that no matter which side you are on people have strong feelings about heavy metal. heavy metal has its own code that is used to determine if a band can be considered a deena weinstein. heavy metal: a cultural sociology. new york: lexington, . . print. ian christie. sound of the beast: the complete headbanging history of heavy metal. new york: harper, . . print. deena weinstein. heavy metal. . robert walser. running with the devil. xi. heavy metal band. this code has a very strong base that has been created over the years. deena weinstein points out in heavy metal: a cultural sociology that this code “also marks off a periphery at which heavy metal blends with other genres of rock music or develops offshoots of itself that violate parts of its code or develop new codes.” weinstein writes that the code used in heavy metal consists of three categories which are sonic, visual, and verbal. the sonic requirements are that a band needs a certain sound according to composition, instrumentation, and performance. visual requirements state that authenticity is a moral virtue, there is no respect for not being yourself. the verbal requirements have wrought much controversy because metal musicians sing about taboo topics and tell the blunt truth about reality as they see it. the eruption of heavy metal took place sometime between and , and much like the emergence of the blues no specific date can be determined. there were new sounds emerging in bands during this time and it was clearly the formative phase of a new genre of music. bands like blue cheer, cream, and steppenwolf were the bands breaking boundaries, but there is debate as to who is the heavy metal band that codified the sound during this period. this debate is essentially between two bands, black sabbath and led zeppelin, although some will argue for others. americans tend to vote for led zeppelin in this debate and brits tend to vote for black sabbath. i am an american who believes that the chicago blues influence on british bands in the s sets the stage for the emergence of heavy metal. i agree with andrew cope, author and professional musician, who wrote black sabbath and the rise of heavy metal music. cope analyzes the musical code of black sabbath and shows how they took blues and rock music and morphed it into something totally new, whereas led zeppelin took these same styles and retained them in their deena weinstein. heavy metal. . ibid. . music. cope disagrees with authors like deena weinstein and robert walser who claim that led zeppelin is a heavy metal band, and writes that more musicologists need to analyze heavy metal so a more concrete origin for heavy metal can be established. black sabbath were musicians ahead of their time in the late s even though the city they grew up in was buried under the rubble of wwii. much like their blues forefathers they grew up in a very dark and depressing environment. they did not see a future for themselves and the lyrics and the tone of their music reflect that. their strongest musical influence was the blues and at the time of their emergence onto the music scene they considered themselves a blues band. black sabbath’s origins take us to birmingham, england where in the late s the music scene was growing rapidly. birmingham was a large industrial city during the s and had been labeled as such since when the industrial steam engine was invented there. during the s an extensive canal system was created, allowing easier access to fuel for industry and in the grand junction railway was created. a year later the london and birmingham railway were built and the population and industry of birmingham grew rapidly. during wwii birmingham was one of the leading manufacturing cities of arms and planes, and because of this, the german luftwaffe bombed it mercilessly. it was the third most bombed city in britain during the war after london and liverpool. over , homes had been vaporized; , were declared uninhabitable; and over , more had been damaged. these statistics were obtained by a government housing survey in and they also describe the conditions of the city in that year, which were very poor. andrew cope. black sabbath and the rise of heavy metal music. farnham surrey: ashgate, . . print. leigh harrison. “factory music: how the industrial geography and working-class environment of post-war birmingham fostered the birth of heavy metal.” journal of social history . ( ): . jstor. web. jun. . the housing survey states that there was a major problem with overcrowding and the density of the population was compounded by factories that were blended with residential areas. they also discovered that noise and smoke coming from the factories prevented light and air reaching the homes around them. this survey shows how industry and destruction were influential subjects in the lives of youth that grew up in this city during the s and s. by the late s, which is roughly twenty years after the war, only , of the uninhabitable homes had been demolished. terrance butler, bassist for black sabbath recalls, “in the second world war, in birmingham, that was where all the ammunition was made. that’s why it got so heavily bombed. so there was a lot of bricks all over the place, bombed out buildings, all that kind of stuff.” wages were higher in the s for the working class than during the war. this allowed the youth in birmingham to pursue more recreational activities, which for some meant buying instruments. unfortunately life in the city was still dark, loud, polluted, and depressing, and many of the youth believed they were destined to work and die here just like their parents. one way of escape from reality was music; teens formed bands and played at bars and clubs. british youth liked american popular music at the time but the youth in birmingham could not identify with it. peace, love, and harmony were not characteristics of life that youth in birmingham associated with their lives. ozzy osbourne, the lead singer of black sabbath, recalls, “we lived in a dreary, polluted, dismal town and we were angry about it. for us the whole hippy thing was bullshit. the only flower you saw in aston was on a gravestone. so we thought, let’s scare the whole fucking planet with leigh harrison. “factory music.” . ibid. . music.” leigh harrison writes in factory music: how the industrial geography and working- class environment of post-war birmingham fostered the birth of heavy metal that ozzy osbourne was born in and had a rough working class upbringing. both of his parents worked in a factory and his dad was a drunk. he had five brothers and sisters and they all shared the same bed growing up and they each only had one pair of pants, one shirt, one jacket, and no underclothing. the other members of black sabbath grew up in the same neighborhood so their upbringings were similar. tony iommi, the guitar player for black sabbath, worked in a factory, the lucas car plant, when he was eighteen. one day he had a dangerous accident at work that influenced his style of guitar playing as well as the future of metal music. iommi recalls: i worked in a factory, doing welding and stuff… the person who cut the sheet metal wasn’t in that day, so they put me on this sheet metal machine that chops and bends metal. i had never worked on it before. it came down… and cut the ends of my fingers off, it made me create a different style of playing. which was great really, because it eventually became heavy metal. iommi also stated that growing up in birmingham really affected his attitude and style of play: “aston (birmingham) was very rough, not a good area… it had just got run down. i hated living there. i hated it. i think that influenced our music, the area where we came from.” terrance “geezer” butler, bass player for black sabbath, was also their lyricist. it is obvious when reading lyrics to black sabbath songs that the environment he grew up andrew cope. black sabbath and the rise of heavy metal music. farnham surrey: ashgate, . . print. leigh harrison. “factory music.” . ibid. . metal: a headbanger’s journey. dir. sam dunn, and scot mcfayden. seville pictures, . dvd. in influenced his lyrics. a great example is the song “wicked world” from their first album, black sabbath. the world today is such a wicked place fighting going on between the human race people got to work just to earn their bread while people just across the sea are counting their dead a politician's job they say is very high for he has to choose who's got to go and die they can put a man on the moon quite easy while people here on earth are dying of all diseases a woman goes to work every day after day she just goes to work just to earn her pay child sitting crying by a life that's harder he doesn't even know who is his father butler strayed from the misogynist themes of rock and blues and wrote about fantasy, horror movies, like boris karloff’s three faces of fear, and science fiction like hg wells. butler recalls, “i still love all that stuff – the time machine, the invisible man – because it’s so out there. i was living in aston, the shittiest place on earth. i needed escapism.” butler believed that if people would pay to be scared by a movie then why would they not pay to be scared by music? he took the name black sabbath from one of the three faces of fear films and penned some lyrics that would freak people out. a great example is the song “black sabbath” off of the album black sabbath. what is this that stands before me? figure in black which points at me turn around quick, and start to run find out i'm the chosen one oh nooo! big black shape with eyes of fire telling people their desire satan's sitting there, he's smiling watches those flames get higher and higher black sabbath. “wicked world.” black sabbath. cd. vertigo. . leigh harrison. “factory music.” . andrew cope. black sabbath and the rise of heavy metal music. . oh no, no, please god help me! is it the end, my friend? satan's coming 'round the bend people running 'cause they're scared the people better go and beware! no, no, please, no! the lyrics to this song can be viewed in many ways, for me it is reminiscent to the story of robert johnson at the crossroads in mississippi seventy years earlier when he sold his soul to the devil. bill ward, drummer for black sabbath, was a very aggressive drummer and this aspect of drumming became very important in metal music. he credits his aggressive style of play to the environment he grew up in and the sounds of the factories. ward recalls, “you could hear the drop of the stamp forges, and i’d be laying in bed at night, just kinda tapping on the headboard, putting the extra rhythm into the stamp.” tony iommi was the core of black sabbath, and as we can now see after forty years of metal, the core of a new genre of music. deena weinstein said, “if you don’t have an electric guitar with really good amps and really good distortion you don’t have the core of heavy metal.” when iommi played his guitar again after his injury he discovered that bending the strings was painful so in order to remedy this he began to tune down his guitar. a guitar is normally tuned to e which is the standard tuning and the strings are very taut. when it is tuned down you are loosening the strings making them easier to bend, lowering the pitch, and changing the tone. iommi would tune his guitar to c# which is one-and-a-half steps lower than standard tuning, giving him a very heavy sound. c# and black sabbath. “black sabbath.” black sabbath. cd. vertigo. . leigh harrison. “factory music.” . metal: a headbanger’s journey. dir. sam dunn, and scot mcfayden. seville pictures, . dvd. lower tunings are normally avoided in rock music, which added to the uniqueness of iommi’s sound. iommi played a gibson sg and since the neck was shorter on this guitar it gave him a darker sound as well. andrew cope, a musician and music scholar, explains, “the shorter the scale length of the instrument the ‘darker’ it will sound. thus, a gibson sg (used by iommi) with a scale length of . inches tuned to e would sound darker than a fender stratocaster (used, for example, by jimi hendrix) in the same key with its scale length of . .” cope gives us much insight into iommi’s influences, style, and technique, which help us understand how the sound of metal was created. iommi’s hero was django reinhardt, a european jazz guitarist, who many consider one of the greatest guitar players to ever have lived. reinhardt was badly burned in a fire when he was eighteen and doctors told him he would never play his guitar again. reinhardt dismissed the doctors and through perseverance and determination taught himself how to play the guitar again in a new way using only his ring finger and middle finger on his left hand to press the strings down on the neck because his ring and pinky finger were paralyzed. iommi took inspiration from reinhardt after his tragic accident in the factory and retaught himself how to play the guitar with no middle and ring finger. cope writes: what he did to overcome the problem of the missing middle fingers was to play his chords with the index and little finger resulting in a chord with no rd, a kind of mutant chord with no major/minor tonality but having a new, unique character marked by a certain starkness when combined with the timbre of down-tuned guitars. iommi was also influenced by alvin lee, the guitarist and lead singer for the band ten years after. this band was famous within the s british blues scene and lee used modes (types of musical scales and melodic phrasing within a given scale) and the andrew cope. black sabbath and the rise of heavy metal music. . ibid. . pentatonic minor scale in unique ways, adding his own blues notes. he also played the pentatonic minor scale in its pure form while adding melodic riffs using different modes. people respond to different modes in different ways and metal musicians choose their mode carefully to fit the theme of their music. walser writes in running with the devil about modes and how the terminology we use for them is taken from medieval and renaissance music theory. modes go back much further than this though as people alive during the renaissance borrowed modes from the greeks who named different scales after the musical styles of different ethnic groups: the dorians, the aeolians, the phrygians, and others. walser also gives a great example that shows how playing the same piece in different modes can affect how a musical piece is perceived. he writes: a mode is a scale that implies a set of functional syntactical relationships and affective potentials. the differences are quite easy to hear: imagine the beginning riff of deep purple’s “smoke on the water” in its original blues-aeolian form (g-b flat-c, g-b flat-d flat-c); now play it in major/ionian (g-b-c, g-b-d-c) – it sounds like a pat boone cover; give it a phrygian twist (g-a flat-d, g-a flat-e flat-d), and it sounds like megadeth. iommi began to experiment with these styles and techniques and he created a style and sound that no one had yet experienced. iommi tells us in metal: a headbanger’s journey, a film directed by anthropologist sam dunn, how music influenced his style: “i liked the blues. that’s actually where we started. before we called ourselves black sabbath we were a blues/jazz band.” black sabbath did not use the coding of rock and roll in their music, they used blues styles and techniques, but the context of their music was so far from the blues that the andrew cope. black sabbath and the rise of heavy metal music. . robert walser. running with the devil. . metal: a headbanger’s journey. dir. sam dunn, and scot mcfayden. seville pictures, . dvd. band acquired a whole new identity. black sabbath was considered musically violent; bill ward attacked his drums with ferocious strikes, the volume and distortion of iommi’s guitars were deafening along with the level of attack (how hard the guitar strings are plucked) he used while playing his riffs. on top of it all the violent outbursts of ozzy created a barrage of sound hitting your face like a freight train. iommi described their sound as “the sound of being… you know… demonic. it just appealed to us. we liked what we were doing. we liked the idea of these evil sorta sounding riffs.” black sabbath was an angry band and this is where people have a problem understanding metal music. these guys were angry with their situation, they were not angry or hateful of others, and they were not evil, they were young guys who felt trapped, betrayed, and hopeless, and as ozzy recalls, “we had nothing to gain, nothing to lose… it was better than working in a factory.” metal was a constructive release for the anger they felt. it was an escape into another realm where tension and frustration rode away on the notes being aggressively played. this is a very important theme in metal music and we can see it remains true from the original blues musicians, to the birth of metal, to the metal musicians in iran. when people are oppressed their feelings of depression, anger, and hopelessness build and compress and need an outlet; for some that outlet is metal. bill ward described black sabbath’s music as “healthy anger” so releasing these feelings through metal is a positive thing and should be viewed as such. black sabbath, along with bands like led zeppelin and deep purple were the most metal: a headbanger’s journey. dir. sam dunn, and scot mcfayden. seville pictures, . dvd. “never say die.” seven ages of rock: heavy metal - . dir. anna gravelle. bbc worldwide, . web. ian christie. sound of the beast. . influential bands during the formative years of metal music. according to weinstein the formative years ended in and metal began to crystallize. the crystallization phase lasted from to and bands like judas priest, alice cooper, motorhead, thin lizzy, ufo, and rainbow began adding to the bricolage of sonic, visual, and verbal categories that make up the genre of metal. judas priest appeared on the metal scene right on black sabbath’s heels and took the genre in a different direction musically by creating more organized music. black sabbath was very primal and chaotic and as ian christie writes in sound of the beast, “judas priest’s music was very formal, tightly organized around breaks, bridges, and dynamic peaks.” rob halford, the lead singer of judas priest, wrote lyrics about politics, oppression, genocide, fantasy, and literature. coming from the same area of britain as black sabbath he shared much of their outlook on life and perceived the world and its happenings in much the same manner. christie writes: this was the mission of heavy metal: to confront the big picture – to create a connection between life and the cosmos. if there were to be love songs, they would be epics, not odes to teenage puppy love at the soda shop. lyrical conflict would exist on a grand scale, which in the ’s meant lashing out against despots, dictators, and antidemocratic watergate burglars. visually, judas priest created an image that would be copied by metal bands for decades. they popularized leather, wearing the stuff from head to toe complimented with steel studs and spikes. they began using pyrotechnics which is a staple of any big metal concert and halford’s epic stage entrances on a harley davidson is a common deena weinstein. heavy metal. . ian christie. sound of the beast. . ibid. . talking point of anyone who has been to a judas priest show. rob halford reminisced about the early years of their existence: we really, truly created metal fans as we made album to album. we would go around the uk and europe, and eventually over to america, and people were just slowly turning on to this brand-new style and brand new sound. each generation finds something that’s relative musically, that they want to identify with and call their own—that’s how we were connecting with our new fans. from to metal music took an unprecedented turn and the decay that byrnside claimed all musical genres pass through did not happen as metal music began to grow at a rapid pace. it is true that during the last half of the s record sales for metal music had slumped because of disco, punk, and rock, but just as black sabbath had exploded out of britain, new bands were about to explode out of britain again and what is known as the “new wave of british heavy metal” took place from to . bands like iron maiden, scorpions, def leppard, saxon, motorhead, and venom began bringing new fans to the genre by the thousands. walser writes in running with the devil, “the new wave of metal featured shorter, catchier songs, more sophisticated production techniques, and higher technical standards.” bands in britain and the us began appearing everywhere and by two major subgenres had established themselves. these subgenres were very much the opposite of each other. the first, lite metal included bands such as van halen, def leppard, and poison. this genre was aimed more at the mainstream of music and removed the thick undertones of traditional metal while emphasizing melodic guitar work. the vocals utilized harmony much more than traditional metal vocals and abstained from growling. the lyrics focused on love and lust rather than heaven and hell or politics. lite metal musicians ditched the black leather ian christie. sound of the beast. . robert walser. running with the devil. . and primped their big hair and wore colorful costumes. metal’s traditional audience had many names for these bands like “poseurs,” “nerf metal,” “poodle bands,” and “glam.” next, thrash metal emerged out of the new wave of british heavy metal and punk (another genre of music that exploded in the late s). thrash metal was a “fundamentalist strain” of metal music, as weinstein calls it in heavy metal: a cultural sociology, meaning that many traditional metalheads were disgusted with the flamboyance and decadence of lite metal and wanted to return to the golden age of metal, or what many metalheads perceived as a prior state of purity. thrash metal was different from traditional metal in that it sped the tempo up and stayed away from many of the elements that characterized it; the overblown, the fantastic, and the heroic. it succeeded in being everything that lite metal was not, giving it a very mean image. lyrically, it moved away from the vague, mysterious, and elusive and took a more direct approach. the lyrics focused on the real world, corruption, war, politics, and the atrocious way people around the world treat each other. some of the bands that make up this genre are metallica, megadeth, sepultura, anthrax, and slayer. thrash metal grew in popularity in the mid- s, and from this genre many metalheads went even further underground and new genres of metal were spawned. these genres, like black metal and grindcore are known as “extreme metal.” michelle phillipov writes in death metal and music criticism that “extreme metal refers to a diverse collection of musical styles, each of which seeks to disrupt the expected conventions of pop, rock, and heavy metal in an attempt to remain as inaccessible as deena weinstein. heavy metal. . kahn-harris, keith. . extreme metal: music and culture on the edge. new york: berg, . . print. deena weinstein. heavy metal. . possible to “mainstream” audiences.” extreme metal challenges our notion of what music is and how it can be understood. the sounds created and fused can be heard nowhere else, as experimentation with instruments and equipment created endless possibilities. black metal emerged in the early s when a band called venom, who was musically a very fast tempo band, released an album titled black metal with very anti- christian and satanic themes. venom and many of the black metal bands that followed during the s were not actual satanists, occult themes were simply a powerful resource for songwriting and created a very visceral and entertaining live show. of course this takes us back to robert johnson who used these same themes to get attention. this all changed in the early s with the emergence of norwegian black metal in norway. bands like mayhem, burzum, darkthrone, gorgoroth, and others defined themselves as staunch opponents of christianity. they proclaimed a very misanthropic style of satanism and even spoke out against the church of satan for their freedom and life- loving views. they hated everything and everyone and the black metal scene in scandanavia eventually became awash in crime, church burnings, verbal and physical band disputes, and murder. after the deadly second wave of black metal came to an phillipov, michelle. . death metal and music criticism: analysis at the limits. lanham: lexington, . xiv. print. kahn-harris, keith. extreme metal. . ibid. . esa lahdenpera. “northern black metal legends.” kill yourself! magazine, . web. black metal archive. http://blackmetalarchive.wordpress.com/ / / /northern-black-metal-legends/. the black metal scene in scandanavia is and was extremely complex, if you want to learn more about the bands and the chaos surrounding them read lords of chaos: the bloody rise of the satanic metal underground. end many subgenres of black metal began to emerge, like doom, viking, war, blackened, suicidal, symphonic, and pagan metal. the most controversial new subgenre of black metal is unblack metal. black metal musicians denounce this genre because the fundamental ideology of black metal is against christianity but unblack metal artists claim that black metal has transformed from an ideological movement to a purely musical genre as simon rosen, the lead singer of unblack metal band crimson moonlight said: we believe that all kinds of music are now neutral. i mean, a music genre cannot be “evil” itself. it all depends on the purpose: why you’re doing it and what the lyrics are about. i will use an illustration to explain: a knife in the hands of a murderer can kill life, but a knife in the hands of a doctor can save life. now is the knife evil itself? no, it depends on how you use it. the power is in our hands to decide what we want to use music for. black metal and its subgenres have also been heavily influencing the middle east and the anti-christian ideology of the norwegian black metal scene has influenced a lot of bands in the middle east to replace the anti-christian ideology with an anti-islam ideology. for example, seeds of iblis are a black metal band from iraq with songs like “the black quran” and “allah is dead” the ideology of the band is clear. black metal in iran is very popular, if you go to encyclopedia metallum and search the active metal bands in iran, many of them are black metal bands. the most important subgenre to emerge out of thrash metal and early black metal was death metal. the practitioners of death metal were born around the time of black sabbath’s debut and grew up listening to the songs of heavy metal bands during the s and s, not the blues musicians that the founders of metal had been influenced by. the bands that would emerge in the death metal scene like death, morbid angel, and deicide would take traditional heavy metal and create a louder, jason jordan. “crimson moonlight at their most brutal.” ultimate metal, jul. . web. ultimate metal. http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/interviews/ -crimson-moonlight-their-most-brutal.html. angrier, and more chaotic genre of metal. christie described what death metal brought to the scene in sound of the beast writing, “death metal elevated songwriting to a brutal new level of melodic depth, compositional prowess and technical skill.” it was just as fast as thrash metal but it also slowed the beat down drastically creating many tempo and time signature changes within a single song. drummers utilized two bass drums that could create a wall of thumping that is known as “machine gun bass.” guitars played bone-crushing riffs using palm muting and tremolo picking, taking the listener down and bringing them up with wild shredding solos. vocally singers utilized guttural growls, roars, and grunts to emphasize their intense lyrical content. death metal has spawned numerous subgenres, for example, brutal death metal, deathcore, swedish death metal, melodic death metal, technical death metal, black metal, deathrash, and deathgrind. some of these have genres that have spawned under them as well, and this proves that the possibilities within metal music are virtually endless. trey azagoth, guitarist for morbid angel, described what the genre of death metal meant to him: some people think death metal is all about a sound. they think if you get a heavy distorted guitar and growling vocals you’ve got death metal. death metal is a feeling—it’s not just a sound. the way the rhythm attacks and moves is what matters. i mixed up a groovy extreme—a chaos, a madness, a bunch of piranhas that would be jumping out of the speakers and chewing you as you listened. that’s what i wanted to pursue with my playing. i wanted to get something that was like listening to black sabbath on an eight-track tape that was dragging, or a warped record. like a storm moving forward, something triumphant. christie, ian. sound of the beast. . the website “map of metal” introduces a user to all of the different genres of metal and from which genre they emerged and what genres each is related to. this website creates a visual picture of the world of metal music. go to http://mapofmetal.com/#/home ian christie. sound of the beast. . extreme metal was underground so musicians and fans relied on live shows and cassette tape-trading to distribute music. tapes were recorded by simply popping a cassette into a boombox and sitting it in front of a stack of speakers and hitting record. these tapes would be inserted into networks of traders and they copied it and passed it on or sold it. with the cassette and the help of local media outlets musicians and fans were connected throughout the us and progressively all over the world. tape trading was taken to a whole new level as the death metal scene grew in popularity during the s. people were recording performances and sharing them all over the world. a most important forum for people to trade was through magazines or newsletters that connected people through classifieds or advertising. one of the most influential magazines that was established in the late s was metal maniacs which included pen-pal listings, ads for tape traders, amateur bands, and a forum where readers could write about anything from scene politics to world politics. albert mudrian describes what tape trading meant to death metal and the global metal scene perfectly in his book choosing death, he wrote, “if it hadn’t been for the demo tape-trading underground, death metal and grindcore wouldn’t have reached the attention of their audiences, of the record companies who signed the bands, or of the musicians themselves.” little did everyone know that these tapes arrived in places many people never heard of, and knew nothing about. a field of research that has been growing is global metal studies which compares local and global metal scenes around the world. scholars like keith kahn-harris compared local and global scenes in israel in an article called “i hate this fucking country: dealing with the global and the local in the israeli extreme metal scene.” the ian christie. sound of the beast. . mudrian, albert. choosing death: the improbable history of death metal and grindcore. los angeles: feral house, . . print. relationship between these scenes clash with the dominant idea of what it means to be an israeli. he has also studied extreme metal in brazil focusing on the famous thrash metal band sepultura. he wrote “roots? the relationship between the global and the local within the global extreme metal scene” and showed how sepultura managed their brazilian culture and a western style of music in the global scene. mark levine, author of multiple works about global metal including the book heavy metal islam, has researched metal scenes in the middle east and north africa and explains how metal takes on a new meaning in these places. here metal is a cultural tool used to criticize the status quo and imagine a more positive, fulfilling, and free life that removes them from under the oppression that they are experiencing. governments in many of these countries outlaw metal recordings, concerts, metal clothing, and even alterations to your appearance that would associate you with the metal community or the western world, such as long hair and tattoos. these governments fear metalheads because they threaten the authoritarian order that has been established and raise moral, ethical, and political questions. levine determined that metal has an important role to play in the transition to greater transparency, tolerance, and democracy in these nations, including iran. iran has had a very rocky relationship with music over the centuries, and during the late s that relationship was rocky as ever. the economy was booming and entertainment, such as music, was in high demand. hamid dabashi, professor of iranian studies at columbia university, describes iran in the late s saying “there was a cosmopolitan multicultural… before multiculturalism became a four letter word here. a presence in iran in the s and ‘ s that you would have a very difficult time dividing it between westernization and non-westernization. it was a global culture with an iranian spin on it.” some traditional iranians and muslims felt that the music scene in iran was sleazy and irreligious, that it was too western and threatened persian culture. there were also those who felt the opposite, or simply did not care. bruno nettl, an ethnomusicologist, was doing fieldwork in iran during the late s and early s. he was interacting with a small group of classical persian musicians and observing their lives. from his writings during this time he gives a detailed view into the music scene in iran and the attitudes of iranians toward music. in a formal interview nettle described how music is viewed in iran, “music is simultaneously feared and loved, enjoyed but viewed with suspicion; it is subject to a kind of ambivalence. in islamic societies, music must be kept far from the centers of religion; devout muslims should avoid it. instruments are to be viewed with suspicion, and dancing is to be viewed with even more suspicion.” while nettl was in tehran the population of the city was only about four million people. that is not very many people considering that in the population of tehran is about . million people. the population of iran has exploded since the revolution and i will explain the reason for this shortly, but in the late s iran was growing at a steady pace. there were few musicians in iran at this time and according to nettl there were only between and professional musicians in the whole country. these musicians regarded themselves as professionals in much the same sense as professional musicians regard themselves in the west. they performed on the radio and hamid dabashi. googoosh: iran’s daughter. dir. farhad zamani. atash, . film. patricia shehan campbell. "bruno nettl on music of iran." music educators journal . ( ): . professional development collection. web. oct. . world capital institute. “ tehran, iran.” worldcapitalinstitute.org. world capital institute, mar. . web. july . http://www.worldcapitalinstitute.org/makciplatform/ -tehran-iran. patricia shehan campbell. “bruno nettl on music of iran.” . the stage, they taught students, and they performed for the government at regular and special events, all for a fee of course. there were three main types of music in iran at this time and they were classical persian music, popular music, and folk music. folk music was not necessarily the least popular but it was hard to judge its popularity in iran because it was a very regional music that changed dramatically throughout iran. persian classical music on the other hand was known by most iranians. by this i mean they knew the music existed, they had heard it throughout their lives, but it was not necessarily something that they listened to for pleasure. many iranians told nettl that although they did not actively listen to classical persian music they felt the music represented them. they felt that this music separated their culture from neighboring cultures around iran. they also felt that listening to classical persian music identified them in a way that was not necessarily good, and potentially dangerous. it either identified them as someone very traditional which meant that you identified too much with iranian culture before the arrival of islam, or it identified them as a more modern person who did not care much about the iranian clergy’s disapproval of music. classical persian music is very complex and very different than the western structure of music. in the west we have two modes that we use called “major” and “minor,” but in iran there are twelve modes known as “dastgahs” and each of these dastgahs has a different mood. inside a dastgah a musician will use quarter tones, half tones, and whole tones. quarter tones are rarely used in western music because they do not translate bruno nettl. “attitudes towards persian music in tehran, .” the music quarterly . ( ): . jstor. web. july . bruno nettl. “attitudes towards persian music in tehran, .” the music quarterly . ( ): . jstor. web. july . into western music theory easily. some of the dastgahs are actually unplayable on fixed key instruments like the piano. rhythm is also very complex and includes nonmetric music as well as music in many different meters. to play classical persian music you must study it for four years under a master. there is a book, known as the radif, which is a book of small pieces of work, known as “gusheh,” that have been compiled over the centuries. the “gusheh” can vary depending on the master that you are studying under. the radif is learned by memorizing the entire thing and can take anywhere from eight to ten hours to play. it is never performed in public, only for the master, and taught to be your guide as you begin to write your own music and choose your own direction. popular music really grew in popularity as iran became more modernized. pop music in iran was very different than western pop music because it drew inspiration not only from the west, but from iran, and many of its neighbors, such as egypt, india, and different arabic countries. when it came to performing though, persian pop music was divided specifically into western and persian styles. the western style was performed in nightclubs, similar to nightclubs in the west. the music was usually performed by iranians singing in english, french, or italian, but there were many foreign musical groups in iran at this time performing as well. these venues brought in tourists, and modern-minded iranians because they attempted to imitate western nightclubs. they were also very women friendly. the persian style of pop music was performed by iranian musicians in large music patricia shehan campbell. "bruno nettl on music of iran." . ibid. . bruno nettl. “persian popular music in .” ethnomusicology . ( ): . jstor. web. july . ibid. . halls that were almost exclusively found in one area of tehran. the main street through this area was called lalezar avenue and featured countless music halls to choose from. these halls were open for business about five to six hours every evening and were frequented almost exclusively by men. interestingly, each hall has a specific clientele that is based upon occupation. there were music halls for taxi drivers, businessmen, construction workers, etc. much of the entertainment in these music halls was dancing: folk dancing, unauthentic dances from neighboring countries, belly dancing, and even more suggestive dancing. all of these dances were performed using different ensembles of instruments. there were groups who performed using only persian traditional instruments, groups using only western instruments, and groups who chose to use both. women were very popular performers at these halls and performed many different styles of persian pop music. googoosh, who is without a doubt the most iconic singer in the history of iran, grew up in the nightclubs and cabarets of tehran during the s. her father was an acrobat who performed in cabarets in tehran and she lived with her father during her childhood in a small apartment directly above one of these cabarets. googoosh began performing at the age of five or six and she became so popular that she quickly began making more money than her father. by her teens she was already the most popular singer in iran and she was performing, recording, acting in films, and making television appearances. she is one of the main reasons pop music became such a force in iran and one of the reasons the record and television industry began to blossom as well. bruno nettl. “persian popular music in .” . bruno nettl. “attitudes towards persian music in tehran, .” . googoosh: iran’s daughter. dir. farhad zamani. atash, . film. the record companies that were producing records in iran were small but there was a lot of them and they were mostly located in the entertainment district of tehran. most of these record companies produced recordings of western popular music at cheap prices (a record could be purchased for as little as thirty-three cents from a record store in iran in ). these records were one-sided and held four songs. nettl describes in his article “persian popular music in ” how the record labels and listeners could not distinguish between the different genres of western music. the records contained a random grouping of four songs from genres like rock, soul, jazz, gospel, and it made no difference to the listener. as i have discussed, heavy metal appeared in britain in the late s, and by the s there is evidence that rock music and possibly metal music had influenced musicians in iran. there was a band known as the scorpio who played in tehran in the early s. they formed in and they performed for about four years together covering western rock hits. they played in a german club in tehran that only allowed performers of rock music, as well as other nightclubs and discos. the most influential rock musician in iran during the s was kourosh yaghmaei. he was a masterful guitar player and considered the jimi hendrix of iran. his father had given him a santour when he was ten, and he learned a lot about classical persian music. when he was fifteen he acquired a guitar and became immersed in western rock music. his biggest influences were the ventures, the beatles, the rolling stones, and bob dylan and he successfully melded these influences with his knowledge of classical bruno nettl. “persian popular music in .” . ibid. . the scorpio. dir. faride saremi and omid hashemlu. rush group, . film. “kourosh yaghmaei biography.” kourosh-yaghmaei.com. n.p., n.d. web. july . http://www.kourosh-yaghmaei.com/biography/biography.htm. persian music creating a very genuine hybrid style of rock music. kourosh was the embodiment of anyone in iran who wanted to be a rock god. by the mid- s iranians were becoming visibly frustrated with the shah’s regime, including musicians who began encrypting their lyrics with allegorical musings against the regime. shahyar ghanbari, a singer and songwriter who wrote for famous iranian singers like dariush, farhad, and googoosh, talked in the movie googoosh: iran’s daughter, about how hard it was to be a songwriter writing modern music. many people were against it and did not like the fact that they were breaking rules. he said, “music is about freedom of expression, and we didn’t have it in iran. there was censorship, although it is nothing comparable to what we have right now, but we had it and i remember once the secret agent who was sitting in front of me told me “how many times did we tell you that you shouldn’t write such a thing?” as the iranian revolution grew closer the shah really cracked down hard on musicians and many of them ended up fleeing the country or being arrested. shahyar ghanbari was one of the musicians arrested before the revolution and he said: you know i spent a couple months in prison, in an awful place called evin. the reason was… was a song called “booye khube gandom.” seems it was yesterday. dariush was in prison too. yah, that was very tough situation and you never know why you’re in prison next to someone who wanted to kill someone. the musicians that fled the country before the revolution were spared the grief that the new islamic regime would impose upon them, but the ones that stayed are held with high regard by many iranians, and in the case of googoosh, who decided to stay in iran, jessica hundley. “they rocked in iran before the revolution.” los angeles times aug. : . latimes. web. dec. . http://articles.latimes.com/ /aug/ /entertainment/la-ca-iranian-rock-reissues- . shahyar ghanbari. googoosh: iran’s daughter. dir. farhad zamani. atash, . film. shahyar ghanbari. googoosh: iran’s daughter. dir. farhad zamani. atash, . film. she is arguably more of a persian icon now than she would have been if the revolution did not take place. the islamists were the strongest party because they had the support of millions who believed in khomeini, whether they were muslims or not. the islamists swiftly and violently went after all opposition and within about a year they had consolidated their power and began focusing on social life. the new islamic republic, as the islamists decided to call iran, began to impose sharia law and decided that one of the things that needed to be completely removed from iranian society was the “popular” aspects of iranian culture. all prerevolutionary singers and performers were informed that they no longer had the right to perform music. a lyricist and friend of googoosh, zoya zakarian, said about the regime’s attitude toward music, “well it was very quick and without any pretenses that they prohibited it. the recording of songs, the singing of songs. the broadcasting of songs from the radio and television, in the way that it was done before was forbidden. it was forbidden. one day it was just forbidden. it’s that simple.” unfortunately the prohibition of music went much deeper than just the commercial aspect, the regime did not want people listening to music anywhere. this happened in other aspects of popular culture as well including film and fashion and it took many iranians by surprise. many were in a state of shock after the revolution, they were so depressed that they internalized all of their broken hopes and dreams and just tried to live their lives. my friend farhad described to me how dangerous it was to even have cassettes in your car in the early s. he said: there was a time i remember i was a kid, god forbid you had a cassette in your car driving around, if you got pulled over… they do regular pull-over all of the sudden there is a roadblock, religious police checking the cars. if there is a car googoosh: iran’s daughter. dir. farhad zamani. atash, . film. zoya zakarian. googoosh: iran’s daughter. dir. farhad zamani. atash, . film. with two young guys and two young girls, definitely get in trouble. or two, three guys, they’ll search the car, so… god forbid they find a cassette, i remember, my dad at that age with a family… he would like hide it up the ass of the car somehow if he sees a roadblock. people who get caught with cassettes they will take them, they arrest them. ooh! it used to be like even having a cassette was… things were about to get even worse for iranians as saddam hussein decided to pre- emptively invade iran to overthrow the new islamic regime. there are many reasons given for the origin of this invasion, but simply put, saddam hussein saw an opportunity, with iranian regime change, to destroy it before it destroyed him. the iran-iraq war which started in september, , had a devastating effect on iran’s youthful population. hundreds of thousands of young iranians lost their lives during the war and the islamic republic began encouraging people to have more children through islamic war propaganda. the encouragement was a success because the population growth percentage rose from . % to . % and the amount of people under jumped from - % of the population to . % of the population. these are amazing results and prove that even if many iranians were unhappy with their new leaders they were proud of their country and not willing to give up. for the regime, the plan to keep the army’s ranks full of new fighters backfired when the war ended in august . they soon encouraged people to stop having children, but it was too late, the damage was done. just to put the population explosion in perspective, in the census iran’s population was million people, and in the census indicated that iran’s population had reached million people. the regime had no idea how to socially and economically deal with the new generation. there were no jobs available for the youth so the unemployment rate was, metal musician . personal interview. july . kaveh basmenji. tehran blues. london: saqi, . . print. shahram khosravi. young and defiant in tehran. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, . . print. and still is extremely high today. literacy and education rates of iranian youth were high until the university level, then they declined. iranians place a very high value on education and millions of youth being turned away from a higher education and a chance to fulfill their dreams brought serious depression, anger, hatred, hopelessness, and a myriad of other feelings. learning about the youth culture of iran and their mindset and attitudes toward all aspects of their lives was essential to my research. there are a handful of scholars that have written about youth culture in iran and the most important works for my research were: tehran blues, by kaveh basmenji, young and defiant in tehran, by shahram khosravi, passionate uprisings, by pardis mahdavi, lipstick jihad, by azadeh moaveni, warring souls, by roxanne varzi and persepolis, by marjane satrapi. these works allowed me to understand the youth and explain my experience with iranian metalheads better. when the war was over the youth went back to being youth and focused their time on discovering who they were and getting involved in things they enjoyed, and although music had essentially been vanquished from iran in the previous ten years it was returning with the speed and force of a lightning bolt. young iranians were aware of the world outside of iran and they had a strong ambition to become part of the global community. one of the easiest ways for them to get involved in global culture was music, and millions of young people in iran wanted to get their hands on cassette tapes. the black market exploded with cassette tapes and there was nothing the regime could do to stop it. negar shaghaghi described the black market during this time in iran as a place in central and northern tehran where a person who was nostalgic for popular music during the shah’s time could find cassettes that would remind him of the cabaret and clubs of the ‘ s and a younger person could go and find cassettes of nirvana and black sabbath. she also described how the popularity of western music could be seen in graffiti throughout tehran. the literature for my research gives insight into the origins of metal music and the culture that developed in the west, and then iran. for early blues musicians the blues was a genre of music that was an outlet for the oppression and hopelessness that they experienced every day. the blues was an ominous sounding music to an outsider, but to many blacks, hope, unity, and optimism were buried in its notes. in birmingham, england, during the late s, black sabbath was heavily influenced by blues musicians from the united states and they adapted it to fit their time and place. they were hopeless teenagers who visualized their life and death in a poor, dark, polluted city. their interpretation of the blues became a new genre of music called metal. metal’s influence covered the globe and in iran in the early s teenagers discovered the genre of metal. a metalhead in iran said to mark levine when he discovered metal music, it was “like a flower in the desert.” to iranians metal stood for something different than it did for young americans in the early s. metal music in the early s was all about rebellion, rebellion against commercialized metal and authority figures. young americans had the freedom to express themselves in this manner and release the feelings they had inside. young iranians on the other hand did not have the freedom to express themselves and instead of standing for rebellion, metal in iran stood for freedom. as a kid entering my teenage years in the early s the message of metal music from the previous decade was still very strong and i remember being a part of that and negar shaghaghi. “sounds of silence.” index on censorship . ( ): . academic search premier. web. aug. . mark levine. “headbanging against repressive regimes.” jan. . . web. mar. . http://freemuse.org/archives/ . feeling those feelings, but now after researching the metal scene in iran i realize that whatever young people in the us felt they were rebelling against by listening to metal music was trivial and a part of me feels ashamed. young people in iran have grasped the true spirit of metal just like black sabbath did in birmingham in the late s. under the dismal tone, ominous lyrics, and emotional power many people see darkness, sadness, and pessimism. iranians have discovered freedom, optimism, and hope. they have brought purity back to metal music and i hope that my analysis of the iranian metal bands i interviewed reveals that purity. chapter methodology when i began my research into the topic of metal music in iran i did not have much to go on, and i was not sure if i was going to be successful at breaking into this underground music scene. as i mentioned before the literature about metal music in iran is virtually nonexistent and i was worried that i would not be able to create a project worthy of research. i compiled the literature i found and the conglomeration of blogs, articles, and iranian metal band social website pages and tried to envision the theme these data were telling me. i had an overall question in my mind as i did my research which was “what is life like for a metalhead in iran?” and at the time, the way i perceived this question was very literal and the underlying truth to what life is like for a metalhead in iran eluded me. i knew the music was illegal according to the regime and that metal musicians played their instruments in secret but that was about it. at this point i was frustrated how i was going to proceed because according to traditional theory i needed to have my hypotheses ready to prove or disprove and i did not feel i had enough data to make proper decisions. this is when i discovered critical theory and the idea that i should not conduct my research in an objective manner but truly become a part of it. this appealed to me greatly because the more data i pieced together about these bands the more i wanted to know them on a personal level. after learning more about critical theory i discovered two methods that employ it brilliantly and were exactly what i needed to motivate me to continue my research. these methods were critical ethnography and grounded theory. once i started learning about these methods my research ideas really began to take off and i knew that i could bring a proper awareness to the metal scene in iran and most importantly write a thesis that could foster actual change for my informants and all the metal musicians in iran. theory theory is knowledge that has been stored up and formed to create understanding or explanation of facts, and in the case of this thesis, societal facts. critical theory is a social theory that has the goal of critiquing and changing society and freeing people from oppressive societal circumstances. critical theory was first discussed by max horkheimer, in , in his essay traditional and critical theory, and is a strain of marxist theory that emerged from dissident marxists who were unable to accept the inherent authoritarianism of current stalinist marxist thought. they were interested in lesser known strands of marxism that carried a libertarian leaning, for example, emma goldman and anarcho-communism, and karl kosch who were responsible for western marxism. these scholars gathered at frankfurt university and they came to be known as the “frankfurt school.” these scholars began challenging the regimes of power in the world at that time, especially the liberal and democratic ideologies inherent in capitalism, and claimed that ideology is the major obstacle to human liberation. there are a couple key concepts at the core of critical theory: first, that critical theory should be aimed at the totality of society at the specific time in history that is being researched. horkheimer said, “in this intellectual work the needs and goals, the experiences and skills, the customs and tendencies of the contemporary form of human existence have all played their part.” second, that critical theory should use all of the raymond guess. the idea of a critical theory. cambridge: cambridge university p., . . print. max horkheimer. “traditional and critical theory.” critical theory: selected essays. new york: continuum, . . print. sciences available, natural and social, to understand its subject. horkheimer believed that using traditional theory was not sufficient for uncovering the true picture of individuals and groups in society. he used the example of proletarian consciousness claiming that “it would yield only an application of traditional theory to a specific problem and not the intellectual side of the historical process of proletarian emancipation.” if the researcher, however, took a step closer and turned his objectivity into subjectivity so that the societal contradictions he came across were not only viewed using already established historical facts, but also as a force to foster change, then a researchers true function would emerge. in ethnography, theory is theory, but also method; for example, in ethnography theory is used as an interpretive or analytical method. the theory is relied upon to spotlight an individual or group and inspire the researcher in design, but the method is what directs the completion of the research. critical theory is at the core of critical ethnography and a simple way of thinking about these two things is that critical ethnography is critical theory in action. jim thomas emphasized this point when he said: the roots of critical thought spread from a long tradition of intellectual rebellion in which rigorous examination of ideas and discourse constituted political challenge. social critique by definition is radical. it implies an evaluative judgment of meaning and method in research, policy, and human activity. critical thinking implies freedom by recognizing that social existence, including our knowledge of it, not simply composed of givens imposed on us by powerful and mysterious forces. this recognition leads to the possibility of transcending existing forces. the act of critique implies that by thinking about and acting upon the world, we are able to change both our subjective interpretations and objective conditions. ibid. . ibid. . d. soyini madison. critical ethnography: method, ethics, and performance. los angeles: sage, . . print. jim thomas. doing critical ethnography. london: sage, . . print. thomas describes how a researcher should approach employing critical theory in research, but also the aim of critical ethnography and how research can bring about real social change. critical theory is rooted in marxism as i mentioned, it was created to address the injustice that occurred during the rise of industrial and corporate capitalism as a political- economic system, but i take a different approach, i focus on politicizing social problems in iran in a historical and cultural context, implicating myself in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and then discovering what these problems are dependent upon. applying this in my research meant that i focused on the social problems that metalheads in iran must contend with in their day to day lives and how these problems affect their lives, the people around them, and why they exist. recently some critical theorists have moved away from marxian thought and using critical theory with other sociologic and philosophical traditions, which marxists call revisionism. i tend to be a more classical liberalist thinker and this really fits well with the subject of my research because metal music culture is rooted in non-conformist thought. martin jay stated that “critical theory is best understood as not promoting a specific philosophical agenda or a specific ideology, but as "a gadfly of other systems." critical ethnography (method ) critical ethnography relies on the same methods as ethnography and is basically the same methodology, the difference being that when you examine things critically you dig deeper and expose underlying problems that are not visible from the surface. this position is appropriate because as the researcher i have an intimate connection to this thomas lindlof and brian taylor. qualitative communication research methods. thousand oaks: sage, . . print. martin jay. the dialectical imagination: a history of the frankfurt school and the institute of social research, – . los angeles: university of california p, . . print. research and the participants. i have been listening to metal for over twenty years and have been involved in metal culture for just as long. i also have a strong understanding of the persian language and culture through my education and my iranian friends who enjoy sharing their culture with me. critical ethnography attempts to discuss processes of unfairness or injustice within a particular lived domain. researchers interpret the data showing how these make sense for the participants, then they reframe the data showing it in a new way, revealing aspects of exploitation, power, and injustice. they do this reflexively, always aware of how their own ideas have affected their work. tina koch and ann harrington describe “reflexivity” well in their article reconceptualizing rigour: the case for reflexivity by stating, “we contend that researchers bring to the research product, data generated, a range of literature, a positioning of this literature, a positioning of one-self, and moral socio-political contexts. we suggest that reflexive research is characterized by ongoing self-critique and self-appraisal and that the research product can be given shape by the politics of location and positioning.” critical ethnographers feel that they have a responsibility to their participants to make a significant contribution to changing their lives. in the case of this research i feel i have a moral obligation to inform people about the lives of metalheads in iran, based on basic human freedoms. traditional ethnographers have been quick to dismiss “reflexivity” as being narcissistic, and a “diary disease” as a famous american anthropologist clifford geertz referred to it. i think that many ethnographers that use “reflexivity” would agree that karen o’reilly. key concepts in ethnography. london: sage, . . print. tina koch and ann harrington. “reconceptualizing rigour: the case for reflexivity.” journal of advanced nursing. . ( ): . academic search premier. web. aug. . douglas foley. “critical ethnography: the reflexive turn.” international journal of qualitative studies in education . ( ): . academic search premier. web. aug. . focusing too much on the ethnographer could lead to a narcissistic portrayal of the ethnographer, but as phil carspecken notes, including the self in a dialogue with the “cultural other” gives the ethnographer two unique positions not available to a traditional ethnographer. first, being a participating witness in a cultural scene positions the ethnographer in a much less imperialist position. second, it requires that the ethnographer acknowledge that the people being studied have inalienable rights just like himself and he has a responsibility to affect change in the cultural scene being researched. as i mentioned earlier, i do not identify with marxist thought, i identify more with classical liberalist philosophy. i do not share the marxist idea that industrial and corporate capitalism should be abolished, which is not to say i agree with the present system of capitalism, but regardless, i believe that individual liberty is the highest political end. all humans have natural rights and no matter what nation state a person lives in today natural rights are being violated by the state, especially in iran. this is another reason why studying metalheads in iran is so important for me, because the ideology that is currently in power in iran is totalitarian. it not only controls all aspects of government, it controls all aspects of social life and i empathize with my persian metal brothers living in iran who are subject to this totalitarian ideology. i identify with them so strongly that i asked myself, “will i be content to understand the situation of my informants without attempting to change it?” the answer is “no.” two of the most important influences in critical ethnography are phil francis carspecken, who wrote critical ethnography in educational research: a theoretical and practical guide, and jim thomas, who wrote doing critical ethnography. these two gentlemen really showed what can be accomplished through a critical approach to ibid. . ethnography and how researchers can change people’s lives, rather than just observe them. carspecken writes, “criticalists find contemporary society to be unfair, unequal, and both subtly and overtly oppressive for many people. we don’t like it and we want to change it.” while i do not agree with the marxist thought behind this statement claiming that society needs to be changed because of its unfairness and inequality, which in my opinion are not bad qualities of society, i do agree that societies can be overtly oppressive and people should be free to live the life they want. even though my view of what we should be critical of in society is different than carspecken, the core aspects of critical ethnography still apply. grounded theory (method ) i also employed aspects of grounded theory in research. grounded theory is the act of generating theory through the data, rather than verifying the theory after the data has been collected. by taking this approach a researcher can be relatively sure that the theory will fit and work within his research. glaser and strauss, the presenters of grounded theory explained that theory; that was based on data was very difficult to refute or replace with another theory because it is so intimately linked with the data and was destined to last. grounded theory takes advantage of both inductive and deductive reasoning to generate theory; for example, grounded theory does not search for truth in empirical data using deductive reasoning but attempts to conceptualize what is happening. deductive reasoning is used in the beginnings of research to collect empirical data that help phil carspecken. critical ethnography in educational research: a theoretical and practical guide. new york: routledge, . . print. barney glaser and anselm strauss. the discovery of grounded theory. chicago: aldine, . . print. conceptualize the subject of the research and create questions. inductive reasoning is applied to the data that is collected to generate theory. grounded theory is not used as a descriptive method (like ethnography), but a method that generates concepts that explain the way people deal with social problems in their lives. grounded theory does this by intensely analyzing the data through coding, which breaks down data sentence by sentence and phrase by phrase to not just collect and make order of a large mass of data, but to organize ideas that emerge from the analysis process. i used this method to code the interviews i conducted in armenia. i transcribed the interviews onto paper and i read through them carefully pulling out re-emerging themes. i categorized these themes and then carefully read through each category identifying more specific trends and patterns. from these trends and patterns i carefully read through my data one more time recognizing even more specific trends and patterns. i discovered over themes, patterns, and trends that i used to organize and create my analysis. research setting armenia is on the northeast border of iran and was a republic of the soviet union until its disintegration. in the years since it has embraced democracy and as of is attempting to become an associate member of the european union. armenia adopted christianity in the first century and it is the dominant religion, which is a large contrast from its southern neighbor iran, which is islamic. many iranians travel to armenia for vacations, freedom of dress, and opportunities to enjoy entertainment, like movies, music, and alcohol. yerevan, the capital city, is only miles across the border of iran and about miles from tehran which is about a hour bus ride. anslem strauss. qualitative analysis for social scientists. cambridge: cambridge university p, . . print. during my research a festival took place in yerevan, armenia, called the persian metal festival . this festival showcased ten iranian metal bands encompassing many genres of metal music from folk metal to death metal (figure . ). it was the first festival ever put together exclusively showcasing iranian metal bands and gained a lot of publicity across the middle east and the caucasus. i attended this festival and conducted six of my interviews in yerevan. i conducted these interviews in many different locations throughout the city: in apartments, rented homes, and in public. the persian metal festival was possible because of the vision of a man named meraj, the lead singer of one of the most influential persian metal bands today, master of persia. the members of master of persia relocated to yerevan from mashhad, iran after some of its members suffered severe persecution by the government, which i will refer to in more detail later. meraj started his own music company called mop music co. and organized the persian metal festival that i attended. the festival brought well deserved recognition to a struggling group of invisible, underground, iranian metal musicians as well as interest about iranian culture and society. metal music is not a new phenomenon in iran, it has been around for decades, but so far underground it was difficult to find. now, many factors, the most important being the internet, have made it possible for iranian metal musicians to ascend to the surface and become part of the global metal community. informant selection when i started my research i discovered about fifty underground metal bands in iran. i spent days scouring the internet, navigating through social media websites like facebook, myspace, metal music forums like ultimate metal and metal forum, metal music databases like encyclopaedia metallum and wikipedia, popular metal websites like metal storm and metal hammer, websites where musicians upload music like reverb nation and soundcloud, and video websites like youtube and vimeo. i created a list of the bands and then began to research each band individually looking for a band website, facebook page, myspace page, or reverb nation page. i gathered all the data i could find on each band and then i began to break the bands down into their members and began scouring facebook for profiles of these individuals. the profiles i researched fascinated me because in a country where metal music was publicly oppressed, it was thriving on the internet. many bands were very open on the internet about what they stood for and the attitude they held toward the social and economic situation of many iranians. i compiled quite a bit of empirical materials from the internet and after organizing the materials i created a solid picture of the expanding metal scene in iran. now that i collected the data on these bands and their members i needed to contact them. my best option was to travel to iran and meet them in person, but i knew that this would be dangerous for a couple reasons: first, i am an american who served in the military, second i would be visiting metal musicians who are not friendly with the regime, and third i would be recording and possibly filming my conversations with these individuals. i was definitely worried that i could create trouble, but i was willing to take that chance if the opportunity to travel to iran became possible. these guys needed to know that there were people who care about their plight. unfortunately my attempts failed and i could not get a visa to go to iran. this was very disappointing, but it did not deter me. many of the iranians i know in the us enjoy using a messaging service called oovoo to communicate with friends and family in iran. this service is similar to skype and they use oovoo because it seems to connect well through iran’s highly guarded internet servers. if i could not go to iran then i would contact as many of these metal bands as i facebook was an extremely important tool for this research and to me it will always be much more than just a social network, it is an ethnographer’s dream. could and see if they would do an interview with me through oovoo. the great thing about oovoo is that there is the option to record conversations, so i could conduct a great face to face interview without having to worry about taking notes. one of the bands i researched was named tarantistt. i discovered through facebook that the lead singer and bass player of tarantist, arash, had recently relocated from iran to los angeles, california. this happened at a very fateful moment because i was going to record a video of myself soon, directed to metalheads in iran, describing my research. now i had the idea that if i could go to l.a. and convince arash to say a few good words about me and my research in the video it could really help my chances of being viewed by the iranian bands as authentic. i contacted arash through facebook and told him who i was and what my plans were concerning my research. he was very happy to hear from me and i learned that he was a very outspoken advocate of human rights in iran. he had appeared on telecasts such as voice of america informing people about his story and the persecution he had received, and the persecution his bandmates still in iran were receiving. from our conversations on the phone i learned that he knew many of the band members that i wanted to get in contact with, not personally, but through the underground and through the internet. he would be the credibility i needed to gain the trust of these individuals. it was important for me to convince metalheads in iran who i was. i wanted to showcase for them my knowledge about their language and culture, and my passion for metal music. for all they knew i could be a spy to get them to talk about things that could get them in trouble. i needed to show them that although we were not brothers by blood we were brothers by metal music and i wanted to help them. one technique ethnographers use to convince people to communicate with you is to emphasize how little you know about them and that you are reliant on them for information. by essentially playing “dumb” you facilitate the willingness of people to want to talk about themselves. in the case of my research i did the exact opposite. my experience with persians has shown that when i make an effort to show them how much i know about iran their expressions widen and they are so happy. they absolutely love the fact that an american has a genuine interest in their culture and lengthy conversations generally ensue, because of this i made every effort to show them how much i knew about iranian language and culture, metal music, and the metal scene in iran. showing them my passion for them and their lives would hopefully translate into them being excited to reveal their lives to me. in may, up in the hills looking down on salt lake city i recorded a video in farsi, wearing a black metal t-shirt, jeans, black combat boots, and sunglasses. i informed metalheads in iran who i was, what i was researching, why i was interested in their lives, and how i wanted to communicate with them in the future. i ended this message by telling them that i have an iranian friend that lives in l.a. that i want them to meet and he will give more information about myself and what i am doing. shortly after recording this video i traveled to los angeles and met with arash for the first time. we talked for a while and got to know each other. he told me that because of his outspoken stand for human rights in iran, his family in iran was being threatened, and it was a very scary time for him. he allowed me to interview him, and he was my first formal interview participant. we went up into the hollywood hills with arash’s brother arsalan, who is the guitarist of tarantist, to record the second half of the video and arash and i stood on a precipice overlooking the valley and arash gave the metalheads in iran more information about me, my research, and how it is important for this research to be done so the world can hear about what is happening inside iran, concerning young people and musicians. arash was the gatekeeper for my research and i hoped that his presence and participation in my research would influence bands from iran to contact me. after the video was complete i created a small package of items i would send to the bands. it consisted of an irb consent form stating that these questions could be answered anonymously if they wished, pseudonyms could be used, and it would be published. the video, and a letter written in english and farsi that reiterated points from the video, but also gave them a detailed description of the research, ethical issues in the irb consent form, and how we could contact each other and remain in contact. i was ready to contact the bands when one day i discovered some news about a persian metal festival. i was intrigued and spent some time researching the event. i postponed contacting the bands and followed the facebook feeds for the next few days because iranians were buzzing about the festival. i discovered that there were going to be ten persian metal bands playing at this festival and the festival would be held in yerevan, armenia, at the puppet theater. instead of contacting the bands that seemed to be the most active online i focused my attention on the ten bands that were going to be at this festival. i sent my package to all ten bands that were scheduled to be at the festival. these bands were grs, arsames, avesta, credenc, death-fuse, master of persia, mordab, persian force, slave mark and scox. in less than twenty-four hours i began receiving responses and communicating through email with some of the bands. our email conversations swiftly transferred to facebook and friends were added and instant messages flew back and forth. i was surprised with the speed and enthusiasm that some of the bands contacted me. i knew through my experience with persians in the us that listened to metal that metalheads in iran love all things american including clothes, cars, movies, comics, etc., and i could sense that they were excited an american was interested in them and had contacted them. i received responses from every single band see appendix a for a profile of all ten bands at the persian metal festival. and at this point i knew that the persian metal festival in yerevan, armenia is where i needed to go to meet my informants. conceptual framework finding a framework for my research was difficult because there is very little research that discusses metal music in iran. there is a slightly larger amount of research that discusses metal music in the middle east, but nothing that focused on iran. there is quite a bit of literature on youth culture in iran and this research correlates well with metal music in iran because many of the people in iran that listen to metal are young people, so whether youth in iran are metalheads or not they share many of the same societal dilemmas. the initial research using empirical materials helped me construct a “conceptual framework” of broad domains that i wanted to learn more about. ) personal band information ) instrumentation ) metal culture ) persian culture ) technology ) islam and politics ) practice/live shows ) the future (band, personal, iran) carspecken wrote in critical ethnography in educational research: a theoretical and practical guide that a critical ethnographer should not focus on one research question because there is a risk of introducing bias. do not even create specific questions, but formulate general, flexible questions. create domains from topics discovered from empirical research and create questions from there. i wrote down each domain on a sticky note and stuck it to the wall so i had eight sticky notes in a lateral row. i set a goal of ten questions for each domain and i brainstormed these domains for a week. while carspecken suggests not having one specific research question to focus on for fear of introducing bias, all of the domains and subsequent questions i created fall under the question i put forth in my introduction which was, “what is life like for a metalhead in iran?” the domains and questions under this one overarching question address the historical, social, and political factors that contribute to the understanding of power relations between the iranian regime and the metal community. i scoured the internet looking for any information i could find about metal bands in iran and researched as many band webpages as i could find. i talked with my persian friends who were associated with bands while they lived in iran and tried to get a clearer picture of life as a metalhead in iran. i also reflected on my own experiences growing up with metal music and the friends i had who were in rock and metal bands. combining this knowledge i inserted myself, metaphorically, into the life of an iranian metalhead and i came up with eighty questions. i used the questions i had come up with to create one question that would accurately represent each domain. the interviews i would conduct would be formal interviews but i wanted them to be relatively unstructured. i wanted to bring up a domain with a question and lead them into talking about the many subdomains or questions that i created. these are the questions that i created and used to conduct my interviews: ) tell me about you band? how many members? what is the theme of your band? what is your purpose or objective? ) how do you get your instruments? how did you learn to play them? how do you maintain them (strings, cables, drums, drumsticks)? phil carspecken. critical ethnography in educational research. . ) how is metal perceived in iran? in the west metal is seen as childish and rebellious, do people take metal seriously in iran? what is the most popular genre of metal in iran? why? ) are there a lot of metal fans in iran? who are they? what distinguishes a metalhead in iran (clothing, hair, tattoos)? ) how does your persian culture and language influence your music composition? do you use any traditional persian instruments? do you use any persian rhythms or scales? lyrically, do you prefer english or persian? why? ) how has the internet affected metal in iran? ) how does metal fit with islam? how has the metal scene changed from when khatami was president to ahmadinejad? (this question was only asked of my informants that do not presently live in iran.) ) where do you practice? do you ever perform for an audience? if so where, and how are the performances arranged? ) where do you see metal in iran in five years? where do you see yourself? where do you see your band? what would you do if you could not play music anymore? data collection methods i obtained my data using two methods: participant observation and in-depth interviewing. observation i observed these metalheads interact with each other, relax, party, prepare and perform a music festival, and i was fortunate to observe them for the whole week i was there. i was not treated like an observer while i was there. they treated me as an insider and i felt very comfortable around them. this was very important and helpful because interpretation of culture requires an insider’s, or emic perspective and an outsider’s, or etic perspective. from the moment i made contact with the first band in yerevan i was able to observe my informants for at least twelve hours every day. they were the greatest hosts i could have asked for and i really enjoyed observing and interacting with them and i felt that they really enjoyed interacting with me as well. interviews i conducted interviews with six bands in formally unstructured focus group interviews at the apartments the bands rented and in public. i could not conduct interviews with all ten bands because of time constraints and the busyness of the festival. in addition, two of the bands were harassed at the border of armenia and iran, detained briefly, and sent back to tehran. i conducted this research over a period of one week from september , until september , . i conducted my interviews before the festival and after it. i conducted them at all hours of the day because trying to schedule an interview with a band during a busy music festival is very difficult. all of the interviews i conducted in yerevan were focus group interviews. for some of the interviews the whole band was present and for some they were not. the conditions for conducting the fieldwork could not have been better. the bands were enthusiastic about my project and eager to participate. they were all staying in close proximity of each other within yerevan which made them easily accessible (except for persian force who was staying outside the city center). yerevan is a fairly small city so i was able to walk everywhere i needed to go and the weather was beautiful which made travel easy. i also conducted interviews with two members of two different bands outside of yerevan. i conducted an interview with arash, from the band tarantist, in los angeles, california, in may of , and i conducted an interview with sina, from the band death- fuse, in los angeles, california, in may of . these interviews were both one-on-one interviews and very different from the large focus group interviews i conducted in yerevan. the reason for this is that arash and sina had been given permission to come to the us and the other members had not. metal bands in iran face a lot of adversity because of situations like this, where one member is given the opportunity to leave iran, forcing the band to break up or find a new member. my interview with arash, from tarantist, was the first interview i conducted and this is important because i need to determine that the domains i had created were going to allow the concepts to emerge. if the concepts i wanted to emerge did not, then my goal was to find out through our discussion what domains i should be focusing on. the interviews vary in length. the longest one lasted about two hours and the shortest one lasted about forty minutes. none of these interviews were conducted with a deadline because the bands had other obligations, they were in-depth discussions that lasted until all the domains had been covered. the discussion varied by band and their willingness to speak. some bands were very talkative and had a lot to say. some bands were more reserved and did not elaborate on the topics a lot. protection of human rights as a researcher i took many precautions to ensure the confidentiality and protection of the participants’ human rights. my experience with iranian culture and my preliminary research helped me determine what type of questions would be acceptable for this research. i drafted a consent cover letter that i gave to all the iranians that i interviewed which stated that their identity would be protected if they chose. if there were questions they were uncomfortable with they did not have to answer them and most importantly, their participation was voluntary. the consent cover letter included the contact number and email address for the middle east center at the university of utah and the contact number for university of utah institutional review board. analysis the analysis of this research was an inductive, and reflexive, process. by inductive i mean that the patterns, themes, and categories came out of my data. of course, as i mentioned earlier i created domains from preliminary research, but these were subject to change based on the data. the patterns, themes, and categories that emerged from the data were driven by what i wanted to know and how i interpreted the data according to my critical position. the data i acquired was unstructured data, which means that i did not collect it in an organized fashion such as a survey. the data were acquired in the form of open-ended interviews, field notes, and other empirical sources. my critical position in this research takes me all the way back to my teenage years when i listened to metal music freely and publicly anywhere and anytime i wanted. i also played metal music freely and publicly and i had friends who were in bands that played shows all over portland, or, where i grew up. i never once considered that i should be careful for fear of being branded as an enemy of my country, or being arrested and sent to prison for my actions. when i think about the great experiences i had growing up playing and listening to metal music with my friends it really stirs emotions within me that my informants are not able to experience the music we all love so much, freely, without the fear that they could end up in prison. i want iranian metalheads to be able to have the same nostalgic memories about growing up playing and listening to metal that i did, therefore i am constantly aware of the freedoms i have as a metalhead in the us and i will never take them for granted. i documented a surface description of metalheads in iran, but i also dug beneath the surface to understand the metal culture in iran and how it interacts with social and political structures in iran. to do this i applied a method used and written about by prachi srivastava and nick hopwood. “a practical iterative framework for qualitative data analysis.” international journal of qualitative methods. . ( ): . academic search premier. web. aug. . glaser and strauss in the discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. applying grounded theory allows the data from my interviews to be coded into concepts. these concepts were organized into categories, which agreed and disagreed with the domains i originally created for my interviews and allowed theory to be generated. this process is contradictory to traditional research as the theory is generated after analyzing data and not before. combining critical thought to grounded theory allowed me to not only look at the individual actions of my participants but also the social structures that affected metalheads in iran. corbin and strauss wrote, “to understand experience, that experience must be located within and can’t be divorced from, the larger events in a social, political, cultural, racial, gender-related, informational, and technological framework and therefore these are essential aspects of our analyses.” interpreting the data was a reflexive process. i described the data i collected from my participants and maintained a critical self-awareness during the whole process. for example, i took responsibility for the research process; i chose the topic, the questions, the participants, what i heard, what i saw, and what i recorded, these things are all done in the context of who i am. my participants were not just people i interviewed, they are my friends, and their input on what data they would like to be used and how i should present it is of great importance to me. analysis and interpretation are processes that never really end and i will learn from my experiences, and this process as a whole, to represent metalheads in iran in a way that will make them proud, as well as myself. as charlotte davies wrote in reflexive ethnography: a guide to researching selves and others, “critical reflexivity is not an end in itself—the research is not about the juliet corbin and anselm strauss. basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. thousand oaks: sage, . . print. ethnographer; rather it is a means—in fact, the only means—of coming to know, however imperfectly, other aspects of social reality.” participant observation i contacted zhesht productions, the company producing the festival, and confirmed that if i made the journey i would be guaranteed a ticket to the show because i could not just buy one online. they assured me that tickets would be available and there was no need to worry about not being able to attend the festival. it was difficult to nail down any definite meetings or interviews because i had never traveled to armenia. i did not know the city, i did not know anybody. i did not know where any of the bands were staying in the city, i did not have any phone numbers or way to communicate with any of these people except through the internet. i was flying blind, but these people knew i was coming and i had faith that i made a good impression on them over the internet. there was one band that i communicated with really well through facebook and that was grs. these guys gave me the most hope that i would be accepted in the social circle of these bands if i decided to make the trip. yashar and pooya are members of grs and they really encouraged me to come to the festival. they spoke english very well and it was easy to communicate with them on facebook. they were excited that i was interested in their music and i could feel this as we communicated online. without their support i would have been more nervous on my journey to yerevan than i already was. i did not want to travel to armenia, attend the festival, conduct some interviews, and return home. i wanted to spend time with these guys while i was there and get to know them. charlotte davies. reflexive ethnography: a guide to researching selves and others. new york: routledge, . . print. the opportunity i had while i was there to observe my informants was better than any pre-conceived notions i had of how much i was going to be able to interact with them. once i was introduced to everyone i was officially part of the group and i slept, ate, traveled, and partied with these guys for six days. at certain times, as an american, i felt as if i was imposing upon them, but they would not listen to me when i communicated this to them. i kept a journal of my observations and my experience and documented the festival, my interviews, and my everyday interactions with my informants with photographs. field experience the night i arrived in yerevan, a taxi driver, hired by the theatre hostel i lodged at picked me up the zvartnots international airport and drove me to the hostel. when i arrived at the hostel it was around : p.m. and the guests were preparing tea. i was welcomed warmly and after introductions i discovered i was lodging with people from all over the world: georgia, poland, russia, belarus, switzerland, and iran. a young iranian man i met was named majid and i began talking to him. he was impressed by my knowledge of farsi, and his english was also very good. i told him what i studied and why i was in yerevan and he became excited because he enjoyed metal music and was not aware of the festival taking place on september , . we talked for a bit and decided to connect the next morning and he would show me around. the next morning majid and i headed into the city. i had a couple important tasks i needed to accomplish and majid knew exactly where i needed to go. i had to buy an adapter for my laptop so i could use it in my room. my battery died on the long trip and i needed to recharge my laptop so i could contact the bands. i needed to buy a ticket to the festival and according to the promoter i could purchase a ticket from two different pubs in the city. the first was troll pub and the other was the factory. i also needed to be at the puppet theater, where the festival was going to be held, by noon, because i made tentative plans through messaging on facebook to meet with the band grs the day before i left salt lake city. majid took me to buy an adapter and we found the factory with no problems and bought tickets (figure . ). majid was supposed to leave for georgia the next day but he could not pass up the opportunity to attend the festival so he decided to stay. it was nearing noon so we headed to the puppet theater and i told majid that i had plans to meet the band grs at the theater at noon. we arrived at the theater and went inside to look around. it was totally deserted but there was a woman at the box office who i attempted to talk to, but she spoke absolutely no english. we returned outside and waited for about ten minutes and then i noticed five guys walking up the sidewalk with long hair, wearing black t-shirts, black and camouflage shorts, and boots. they stopped in front of the large persian metal festival poster that was in the window of the theater and talked excitedly. i approached the guys and introduced myself and their eyes lit up and they said, “jeremy?! it is good to meet you!” we exchanged greetings by hugs and handshakes and i discovered this was indeed the band grs. the guys were very happy to meet me and they immediately wanted to know about life in america. we talked for about fifteen minutes in english and they informed me that there was a meeting here at the theater at p.m. that night. they told me all or most of the bands were in yerevan now and the meeting was to discuss how the festival will be conducted. i asked them if i was invited to this meeting and they laughed and said, “of course you are invited.” we ended our conversation shortly after this and majid and i departed after saying our goodbyes and returned to our hostel. i was really excited because this was more than i could have hoped for. all of the bands were going to be gathered together in one place and i was invited. before i arrived at the meeting at the theater that night i was nervous because i was going to meet roughly seventy persian metalheads all at once and it was slightly overwhelming. i did not want to waste even one second so i arrived really early, around p.m. i had to wait an hour before the first band even showed up and my nervousness was building. persian force was the first band to arrive and i identified them easily because of their hair, black jeans, metal t-shirts, and boots. our greeting was similar to my greeting with grs, hugs and handshakes. they knew who i was instantly and we began talking about life, metal, and the festival. i do not remember being nervous at all after they arrived, it was like we already knew each other. this feeling grew as more bands arrived and i realized that most of the individuals in these bands had not met each other either. they knew each other through social media and their shared identity through metal music and being iranian, which seemed to transcend the fact that they had never physically met each other. i, of course, am not persian, but my passion for their culture and metal music had been viewed as genuine by the bands and they greeted me as a trusted friend (figure . , . ). bands continued to arrive, and if you were a stranger who happened upon this gathering you would think you were in the midst of a family reunion. everyone mingled and talked for about a half hour before meraj (lead singer of master of persia and festival organizer) decided that we should take the gathering inside. i enjoyed watching this gathering unfold and tried to observe without becoming overly involved. this was impossible and i eventually gave up (figure . , . ). i was overwhelmed with persian names and i did my best to remember as many as i could but the attempt was futile and it took me a couple days to have a functioning knowledge of everyone’s name. we entered the theater and we all got comfortable in the lobby as meraj laid out how the festival was going to proceed. he informed us about rehearsal times for each band, set times, equipment sharing, and a myriad of other things the bands would need to know for the festival to run smoothly. meraj also called me out at the end of the meeting and officially introduced me to everyone, which i was not expecting. i told everyone who i was and my purpose for being in yerevan and everyone cheered loudly at my presence, which felt strange. i did not know what to say so i made it clear that i was just a normal guy from the us and the real stars were the iranian musicians that surrounded me and their passion for metal music. after the meeting everyone hung out and talked for at least a couple of hours or so and many pictures were taken. i took this opportunity to talk to as many people as i could and try to set up some interviews. at some point during this time yashar from grs asked me if i wanted to come to their place and hang out after the meeting. i gladly accepted and after the meeting i walked with the band through the city reminiscing about what had just happened. we stopped at a nice restaurant that was open and we ate, drank, and talked. i tried to buy my food, but they would not hear of it. i tried to buy a round of drinks to celebrate their accomplishment but that was unacceptable as well. it was my first true experience with persian hospitality. i experienced it many times over the next few days as i was not allowed to pay for anything if i was with an iranian. after dinner we headed to the apartment they had rented and talked more, listened to music, and shared some kotayk beer, which is a local armenian beer. yashar asked me if i wanted to interview them and i said, “now!” the whole band was in agreement and said, “of course, now!” we had all had a couple beers and everyone was loosened up, so i thought this would be beneficial to my interview because everyone wanted to talk a lot. the interview went perfect and we talked for about an hour and a half which was more than i could have hoped. during and after our interview a few members from other bands and their friends came by and we had a small late-night party taking shape. unfortunately for me the hostel i was staying in had a policy that you had to be inside the building by a.m. because they lock the doors. i told yashar and pouya that i was going to have to leave soon so i could make it back by a.m. they both said, “man you aren’t leaving you are staying with us tonight.” i tried to turn down their generous offer but they were adamant so i relented. after people left the apartment and the grs members began to go to sleep, pooya took me upstairs and showed me his bed where i would sleep. it was a king size bed and i said, “no way man i can’t take your bed, i am more than happy to sleep on the floor or the couch.” i soon realized this was another situation that i was not going to win so i slept in pooya’s bed with faraz, the bass player, that night. we arrived at the theater the next morning about a.m. and i spent the next five hours watching sound checks and getting to know the bands more (figure . , . , . ). meraj did a great job of getting all the bands set up and dialed in for the concert and making sure they were confident with their sound checks. zhesht productions was the company in charge of producing the festival and they worked with every band creating the sound each band wanted and how their instruments would be set up. each band had about minutes to accomplish everything they needed and for the bands with many instruments it was more stressful, but meraj and arsen (the ceo of zhesht productions) coordinated nicely to complete the arrangement of the festival. there were some minor technical difficulties with some of the bands, but they were dealt with as best they could, considering the time constraints. the bands did not bring very much equipment with them, only the necessities, guitars, basses, keyboards, and traditional instruments. all other equipment was provided by zhesht productions, because traveling by bus to yerevan is a long trip and not suitable for bringing lots of equipment. the other reason is that carrying lots of musical equipment through iran is not a good idea because it advertises that you are a musician and for a metalhead this is dangerous. for themselves and their equipment, which could be confiscated for any number of reasons by iranian officials, and with the prices that musicians pay for instruments, it was not worth the risk. the festival was scheduled to begin at p.m. and a couple hours before that the bands and crews received their backstage passes from zhesht productions. i did not receive a pass but it really did not matter because the organizers of the festival knew who i was and my relationship with the bands. whenever i had a problem with the security guards, who did not know me, someone in one of the bands always vouched for me. i went outside the front of the venue a couple of times to see if people were gathering and by the time the doors opened there was quite a long line to get in and a nice crowd of people mingling in the lobby. the order of the line-up for the festival was master of persia, scox, credenc, persian force, avesta, grs, mordab, and arsames was the headliner. there was about people that came out for the festival which was a perfect amount for the size of the theater. the theater had seats in it so you could sit or stand in the aisles but there was quite a large gap between the stage and the seats so it was perfect for a great metal concert and i made sure i was right up in the front for every band, head banging with everyone else to show my support (figure . , . , . , . , . , . , . ). there were some memorable highlights during the festival. credenc got the crowd excited with a couple metallica covers which was a big deal for a lot of the bands and fans that were there. many iranians that were there listened to metallica growing up and to hear metallica songs live, whether by metallica or a cover band, was exciting. grs took the stage making history for the persian metal scene by being the first metal band to perform live with a female vocal. an iranian woman is forbidden to sing any style of music as a solo vocalist in front of men and an iranian woman screaming solo in a slave mark is not included in this line-up because only one of their members was present and nobody, including ehsan kayedi, the drummer of slave mark, knew why the other members of the band still had not shown up. it was a definite worry in the back of all the bands minds. roxana saberi. “exiled from iran, a singer makes the case for beauty.” npr music, feb. . metal band in front of hundreds of men is on a whole different level. the audience was aware of the significance of grs performance and cheered loudly when they came out and after their set screams for an encore were heard. it was clear after grs left the stage that they were the crowd favorite at this point in the festival. arsames, the headlining band, put on a really good show and it was clear from their performance that they had the most experience performing live. they are highly respected by the iranian metal scene for their professional accomplishments of playing gigs in other countries. arsames brought credibility to the festival and the energy of the crowd proved their status as mosh pits opened and closed during their set. after the festival all the bands hung out with all the fans that showed up and it was a big party as people talked and took pictures (figure . , . , . , . , and . ). i spent this time walking around and observing the bands as they enjoyed being the center of attention. for most of them this was their first taste of feedback from people actually seeing them perform and they loved the critiques, good or bad. all of the bands seemed very excited to hear what i had to say about their performance and i told every band the truth. i said, “i was really blown away by your performance. i have been going to metal show since i was seventeen and i have seen amazing bands and horrible bands. to go out there with little to no experience and perform at that level proves to everyone the passion, hard work, and talent that is imprisoned in basements throughout iran and i was very surprised.” i was honest with them about being surprised, because i was not expecting their performances to feel like i was at a metal festival in the us. they were all really excited and i felt good for them, that their talent was able to be admired by so many people. navid, one of the guitarists for credenc commented to me as i roamed around that he really enjoyed my energy during their set. it made me feel http://www.npr.org/ / / / /exiled-from-iran-a-singer-makes-the-case-for-beauty. good knowing that his confidence had been boosted. i also arranged interviews with mordab and master of persia for the next day. the next morning i got up about nine am and began a long walk through the city to reach the british embassy where i was going to meet mordab for an interview. nazanin, the wife of ali, the guitarist for mordab, came and met me outside the embassy at a.m. and we walked a short distance to an apartment that mordab had rented while they were in yerevan. we talked for a while and had some tea and biscuits, and then i interviewed them. this interview was much more toned down than my previous interview and i had some really good discussion with mordab (figure . ). ali’s english was not very good, but sohrab, the guitarist, and elnaz, sohrab’s sister, helped translate for him if he needed help with the questions. i only had an hour and a half to conduct my interview with mordab because i had to rush over to the yerevan opera house to meet meraj for an interview at p.m. i made it to the opera house in plenty of time but meraj never showed up. i was going to leave when i saw the pouya and pezhman, twin brothers and members of persian force, walking in my direction. we greeted each other and they informed me that meraj was really busy and he had called them to come meet me instead so i could still conduct an interview. i was really glad meraj had done this and it was good to know he had my interests in mind. i conducted my interview with pouya and pezhman in the square outside the opera house. they were very excited to talk to me and i think they gave me the best interview out of all the bands. they really had a lot to say. after this interview we parted ways and i headed back to my hostel for a much deserved and needed nap. i slept for a couple hours and then headed across town again for the after party that meraj had planned for the bands at a place called stop club. this was a pretty cool little bar that was two levels and the top level overlooked the lower where there was a stage. meraj had arranged for a few armenian and georgian metal bands to perform while we were there. i arrived early and waited patiently at the bar. navid, the guitar player of credenc, was the first to arrive and as he came in i waved to him and he came took the seat across from me and we began to talk about the show. he really wanted to hear about what i thought of their performance some more and i told him that i really enjoyed the style and quality of his guitar playing. i wore my new mordab t-shirt that ali had given me when i interviewed him. he asked me if i would wear it to the after party and i said, “of course.” when ali, nazanin, and the rest of mordab arrived ali saw me with the shirt and he was very pleased. we talked for a bit and he gave me a nice mordab pendant that he had with him. i thought this was a generous gesture and i accepted it gladly. more people began to arrive and i had a good time listening to many of the guys tell stories about things that happened to them the previous night while they were on stage and different views of the festival experience as a whole (figure . , . , . ). eventually the bands started playing and they were entertaining, but nothing compared to the bands the night before at the festival. after the bands finished everyone gathered downstairs for a spontaneous jam session and various people grabbed an instrument and began playing. siamak, a guitar player for credenc, did some great soloing on the guitar (figure . ). certain guys even got called out by everyone to perform, like shervin, the drummer of avesta, and yashar, the drummer of grs, who seized the moment and expressed the positive effect this festival was going to have for the persian metal scene and thanked everyone band by band for their involvement. after this meraj came up and gave a speech about the positive outlook for future festivals and how everything had gone very smoothly. he thanked all the bands and reinforced the common bonds they all shared and were proud of; one, they were all iranians and two, they were all metalheads. after the after party everyone remained outside for a couple of hours talking and horse-playing. these guys were all very playful and joking, they were running around jumping on each other’s backs and being very physical with each other, having a good time. i arranged interviews with credenc and master of persia for the next day while we were all gathered outside and everyone took a lot of crazy pictures to remember the experience. soon it was time to say goodbye for two of the bands, grs and mordab, as they were going back to iran the next day. as we began to disperse something happened that i absolutely did not expect to happen. i felt a little emotional as i said goodbye to these guys. especially grs, we really connected well and if those guys lived in the us we would definitely be closer friends. as i was walking through the city to my hostel i stopped at a fast food joint called hi lunch that was open late to get something to eat. i ran into masoud, the drummer of persian force, and his three friends, hossein, hamid, and houshang. we talked for a while about the last couple of days and they wanted to know more about the us, and the metal scene there. unfortunately i could not eat with them and i had to take my pizza and run because i was in danger of not making it back to my hostel again by the a.m. deadline. if i had to name a negative aspect of my research it would be the interesting conversation i missed out on because of my curfew. the next morning i got up at a.m. again and went to meet credenc at the same location i had met nazanin the day before at the british embassy. i arrived at the embassy and the guys from credenc arrived shortly after me and we walked about a half mile to the apartment they had rented. on the way we stopped at a market and bought some sodas and water and i offered to pitch in knowing that it would not be accepted. as an american i found it difficult to be treated with such generosity. their apartment was in this very large building and when we got inside the small elevator i almost walked out before the doors closed. this elevator was not safe, but we arrived on the eighth floor and i remember thinking, “i am taking the stairs when i leave.” we talked for a bit about the festival, my research, and family and then began the interview. i really enjoyed talking to these guys and getting a slightly different perspective on my research, because credenc is from the mazandaran area which is north of tehran on the caspian sea. the other bands are from tehran except for arsames who is from mashhad, and master of persia who is also from mashhad but is now living in yerevan. after the interview they asked me if i wanted to stay for lunch and i said, “sure!” apparently there was a burger joint nearby and a couple of the guys took everyone’s order and headed down to the burger joint to pick up lunch. while they were gone we talked some more about iran, the us, metal, and life on the caspian sea. i had to leave soon after we ate lunch to walk down to the opera house to meet artib, the guitar player of master of persia, and ehsan, the drummer for slave mark, at p.m. when i arrived at the opera house i waited around for a while before they showed up and i went with them to meraj’s apartment. there was quite a few people at the apartment because master of persia was getting ready to do an interview for the persian metal festival dvd. i hung out for a while and observed what was happening because everyone seemed occupied with something (figure . ). i talked with shahin, the drummer of mordab and master of persia, out on the balcony for a bit. he wanted to know about my life in america and i could tell that america really intrigued him. he eventually got called inside for the interview and i went in as well and listened quietly. the interview took about an hour and afterwards i was worried that they would not want to do another but meraj looked at me and asked me if i was ready to interview them so i jumped up and pulled out my recorder. the interview went very well and i again i received a slightly different perspective on the metal scene in iran because master of persia is from mashhad, which is in the northeast of iran, and one of the most important religious cities in iran. the shrine of the eighth imam, imam reza, is located here and muslims from all over the world come here to visit the shrine. the band had some huge problems in mashhad that i learned about and this was the main reason they were living in yerevan now. when my interview was finished someone was sent to the sandwich shop down the street who came back with two big bags of sandwiches. i talked with meraj while we ate and he informed me about a meeting that was taking place that night at the apartment that persian force was renting. all of the bands that were still in yerevan would be there and a discussion was going to take place highlighting the positives and negatives for everyone at the festival and how things could be improved. it was an important meeting that could determine if there was going to be another festival. there was about twelve of us so meraj coordinated with a few taxi drivers about where we were going and i jumped into the taxi with shahin and a couple of others and we headed out of the city center up into the nearby mountains. it took us about thirty minutes to get there and it was getting dark when we arrived and below you could see the whole city as the sun set behind it. you could also see mt. ararat perfectly, it is the most gigantic mountain i have ever seen. we hung out on the balcony for a while and then i went inside and realized what an amazing building i was in. we had to go up to the second floor to get into their place and i realized that the whole floor was one big apartment. there were at least three or four bedrooms and the family room and dining rooms were huge! i got the tour from hossein, the photographer for persian force, who they brought along to document their experience, and we all cracked a beer and relaxed and waited for everyone to show up. everyone came except grs and mordab who had left the day before and we all easily fit into the family room for our meeting. while everyone was gathering a guitar was passed around and a few guys played some riffs and passed it on, but arash the lead singer and guitarist for avesta, played a whole song that he had just written and it was really good. the meeting was conducted in persian so i listened quietly and tried to understand as much as i could. we were sitting in a giant circle so meraj started and then we went around the circle and everyone talked about the things they liked and disliked about the festival. from what i heard it seemed liked the rushed sound checks and a lot of minor technical problems, that musicians think are huge but the average fan in the crowd never notice, were the main issues. of course the main concern that was still on everyone’s mind was the fate of death-fuse and slave mark. these were two very important iranian bands that never arrived at the festival, and up until then, which was two days after the festival took place, no one had heard from them. most, if not all these guys had cell phones and not even ehsan, the drummer for slave mark, had heard from his bandmates. it seemed that the metal gods were looking over us that night because during our discussion meraj received a phone call that both bands were alright and they were in tehran. that was all meraj told us and everyone cheered that the bands were alright and back in tehran. i would not find out more to this story until i interviewed sina, the drummer for death-fuse in los angeles, california eight months later. at the end of the meeting meraj began to talk about me to the group and asked me if i would give my critique of the concert and the organization of the festival. as i stood up everyone began to clap and cheer. it was a little strange because i see myself as a normal guy, but to these guys i was more than that, i was a symbol of freedom. many of ehsan, the drummer of slave mark, had traveled to armenia separately from the rest of the band and he arrived in armenia without any problems. things i do on a daily basis i never think twice about, like what i have to wear to go out in public or the authorities might hear my music. these are two of many things that the guys in this room had to consider every day and when i was around these guys i thought about things like this a lot. it really humbled me and made me appreciate the freedoms i have. i told the guys that the many technical difficulties they were discussing were not noticeable from out in the audience. of course, these issues are important to becoming better musicians but i do not think that the people in the audience noticed these things and were talking negatively about them. i told them i had been to many metal concerts in the us and this concert really felt like a metal show at any venue in the us. any band in the us would not like this comment because they want to stand out but my informants could not have been happier. i told them that the most exciting moments of the concert judging by the crowd were the metallica cover songs that credenc played and the historic performance of grs. during the conversation they had discussed the location of the next festival and locations like turkey, georgia, armenia, azerbaijan, and the us were tossed around. they had talked about location and i wanted to reinforce the reality that the farther they travel from iran the more difficult and expensive the festival is going to become. i suggested staying close and traveling further when more of a permanent base had been established. as far as a festival in the us, if there was anything that i could do to support them they knew how to contact me. the idea of having a festival in the us was impossible for them under the current regime but my informants are optimistic about the future and i wanted to encourage that. we hung out for a while after the meeting and people eventually started to leave (figure . ). it was getting late and as the group i arrived with were leaving and going down the stairs to the street an older man came out of his apartment on the first floor and was yelling and cursing at us in armenian. meraj actually tried to calm the guy but he was inconsolable and meraj walked away and told us to get walking down the street. we walked for about a mile and i tried to figure out what happened by asking meraj. apparently we had been loud and the guy was going to call the police. there was also some racial tensions between iranians and armenians that meraj expressed but he did not go into detail about it so i let it go. meraj called some taxis that eventually came and picked us all up and i got into a taxi with meraj and a few others and headed back to the city. when we got out of the taxi meraj and i scheduled a meeting with arsames the next day. he told me to call him at a.m. and find out more details. no one had a pen and we had to walk around and ask people for a pen. this was my first observations of multiple interaction between armenians and iranians in the city and i could feel the disdain of people towards us as we tried to find a pen. i never did discover if this was racial tension or because of the way we were dressed but from my observations it seemed like a little of both. at a.m. the next morning i called meraj from my hostel and he told me to meet him outside a restaurant near his apartment. i walked over and met him and anahid, the other vocalist for master of persia, and we walked to the apartment where arsames was staying. when we arrived meraj told me that arsames was also doing an interview for the dvd as well and we arranged the furniture a little bit in the living room to accommodate the interview. the interview took about an hour and a half and again i was worried that i would not get a chance to do conduct my interview. after the interview we took some pictures and a short break and the band told me they would sit again and answer my questions. ali, the lead singer of arsames, asked me if the band should answer the questions in persian or english and i told him, “whichever makes you the most comfortable.” he told me, “i can answer the questions in english but i can give more detailed answers in persian.” i said, “persian would be fine because i can translate the answers later.” he threw me off guard when he told me to ask the questions in persian. i was already nervous for the interview because they were the main iranian band and i had not prepared to ask my questions in persian. i made it through a few questions, but then i had to switch to english. the interview went well and a lot of it i could not understand but i knew i would have some good material to translate when i returned to the us. we relaxed for about an hour and talked and then i said my goodbyes to arsames who thanked me for the research i was doing. i said my goodbyes to meraj and anahid and i thanked meraj for everything he had done for me while i was there. if it was not for him i do not think i would have accomplished as much as i did. when i left arsames’ apartment i felt relieved because my trip was a success. all the interviews i conducted went smoothly and i gathered more information than i imagined i would. i visited a beautiful city, attended a once in a lifetime concert, and my made a lot of new friends. as i walked into the airport just outside of yerevan to return to the us. i took one last look at mt. ararat, which loomed over the airport in the distance and headed inside. i had a lot of information to process and a lot of experiences to analyze and as i settled into my seat on the plane i knew i would have plenty of time to document my thoughts. figure . . handbill for persian metal festival . source: persian rock and metal festival http://www.persianrockmetalfestival.com/?p= figure . . majid and i buying tickets to the persian metal festival. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . bands arriving and meeting outside the puppet theater. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . arsames and i before the meeting in the puppet theater. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . taking our gathering into puppet theater . source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . taking our gathering into the puppet theater. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . persian force doing their sound check. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . avesta doing their sound check. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . mordab doing their sound check. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . master of persia opening up the festival. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . scox performing. source: jeremy prindle . figure . . credenc performing. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . persian force performing. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . avesta performing. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . grs performing. source: jeremy prindle . figure . . arsames performing. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . picture with credenc after the show. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . picture with avesta after the show. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . picture with persian force after the show. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . picture with master of persia after the show. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . all of the bands together after the show. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . my interview with mordab. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . spending time with the members of avesta, persian force, and mordab at the after party. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . spending time with members of avesta and credenc at the after party. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . spending time with members of avesta at the after party. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . siamak and shahrokh from credenc playing at the after party. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . ehsan, the drummer for slave mark, and i at meraj’s apartment. source: jeremy prindle, . figure . . sobhan, the bass player for persian force, and i at the meeting. source: jeremy prindle, . chapter analysis: origins of metal music in iran my most important connection to the origins of metal culture in iran are through my best friend, whose name i must change to farhad for security reasons. he grew up in tehran during the s and s and was involved with the metal culture. he gave me great insight into how metal culture blossomed there. his first exposure to metal was at a friend’s house in tehran who had a satellite dish. satellites were not common in and only a handful of middle-class families had them because they were still very expensive. one day the satellite dish at farhad’s friends’ house was tuned to mtv and farhad caught a glimpse of a commercial for metallica’s album load. he recalls: we were at somebody’s house and i just caught a glimpse on tv, and i’m like “whoa!” and i remember james like doing some sound (farhad growling), with his beard (farhad grabbing his beard), and i’m like “whoa, that’s why they say these people are weird huh?” literally, at first i was like “that’s so frickin weird.” many youth had this experience in iran and the urge to discover what was happening in music outside of iran was overwhelming. heather rastovac described this phenomenon in “contending with censorship” and said, “the very intention of abolishing music in public life unexpectedly led to increasing practices of music… by the younger generation of all social classes.” metal musician , interview by jeremy prindle, salt lake city, ut, july , . rastovac, heather. “contending with censorship: the underground music scene in urban iran.” intersections online . ( ): . intersections. web. may . farhad was a junior in high school in and he heard people talk about metal music but no one really knew what they were talking about. people were aware of the style of music, they had seen images and heard songs, but they were ignorant about metal culture. what metal music was, what it stood for, what it was doing, was not understood by people in iran that were listening to metal music at that time. there was a cassette trading scene at farhad’s high school and kids were getting their hands on many kinds of different music cassettes. ninety-nine percent of the cassettes that kids had were copies and these copies came from any number of different sources. as sohrab, the guitar player for mordab, recalls, “we used to record from the tv to the tape so we could listen to the song.” another way, during the few years since the end of the war, young people who had connections with people that left the country had cassettes brought to them. these cassettes were copied and they filtered down through iranian society. zan azlee, director of a film titled i am muslim too traveled to iran and interviewed the band arsames in . they briefly discussed the availability of metal music and the difficulty of acquiring cassettes. ali, the lead singer of arsames said, “it was hard to find a cd or cassette and when someone go to a foreign country, someone went to other country, like us or european country, i told him to bring me a cassette or cd from there… to buy it for me. all the time it was very difficult for us.” these cassettes were expensive and many iranian youth could not afford them but the ones that could were trading music. farhad recalls, “ooh, it was expensive, it was expensive. i had to like basically put together all of the money that my dad gave me. sohrab alimardani, interview. i am muslim too. dir. zan azlee. fat bidin media, . film. ali madarshahi. i am muslim too. dir. zan azlee. fat bidin media, . film. you know the little money you get every week.” he told me about a box of blank maxell cassettes he purchased that had required months of saving. farhad’s first tape was acquired for him by his friend and it had two songs on it by a band called nirvana. these songs were covers of songs from a band named metallica. farhad liked the songs and after listening to the tape for a few days he approached a friend that was involved in tape trading and asked him to find an album of the band metallica. his friend found a metallica album and copied it on a blank tape farhad gave to him. when farhad received the tape he took it home after school to listen to it and his reaction was “holy shit this is pretty cool! “sad but true,” “holier than thou,” the triplets (a guitar technique), i was like ‘damn! these are so cool!’ then it started dude. everyday all day listening to that.” ali azhari, a former member of arsames, and founder of the iranian metal band arthimoth said something very similar when he first listened to metal music. he said: since the very first day i listened to some metal i realized this is my way of living. this is what gonna be. if i’m gonna be a musician let’s be a metal musician. let’s do it this way because it’s all about positive aggression. i realized that this is my life and it’s gonna be my way of living from now till fifty years, seventy years, years. there was no visible metal scene in the mid- s, but like-minded people eventually find each other and as farhad began making connections and discovering new bands a primitive metal culture was uncovered and began to grow. being part of this new culture was dangerous because people who did not listen to metal automatically identified people who did, as outcasts. separating yourself from others, standing out, going against the grain, are not actions that are looked highly upon in an islamic culture, they are viewed with great suspicion. metal musician , interview. ali azhari. i am muslim too. dir. zan azlee. fat bidin media, . film. farhad recalls his view of people at the time acknowledging publicly that they were metalheads: it would take a lot for you to come out and say you’re a metalhead because even your friends would be scared of you a little bit thinking… everybody thought metal was like murder and kill because you know, it’s harsh, it’s violent a little bit, it sounded. it’s brutal, it’s not for softies, right? metal is not for softies, so if you identified yourself like that they would think you might… i don’t know… liking violence, not thinking… i mean you wouldn’t realize the dimension of metal until you actually start, until you become it, until you get into it all the way and then you understand there is way more to the business than just a harsh sound. as the metal culture was developing tape trading was a very selfish business as farhad recalls: it was a big time trade you would see nothing like. there were some albums that you have to give four to get this one. cause it’s very hard to find, and the person owning them would give crap to everybody. “ya i got this album, none of you motherfuckers have it. you want it? i want four albums before i give you this.” armin, an iranian metalhead described his tactics in heavy metal islam: everyone was greedy and hungry to get albums, and they would be copied literally a million times, which meant you wanted to make sure to get one of the first copies, because cassettes lost quality with each copy. and we were also tricky. we’d always keep a song for ourselves, and people would have to beg to get it. tampering with cassettes was a serious offense and people used protective methods to protect the inside of their cassettes. farhad recalls how people who let others borrow their tapes could end up being scammed for their generosity: every cassette was taped around with umm… nail polish so you could not, it’s like sealed. you could not open that tape without me knowing. because i don’t want anybody to switch the insides. every time you record a tape the quality of the second one is lower than the first one. no matter how you do it. but if somebody records and then swaps the insides so they have the better quality and they give the crappy one back to you. i would write… handwritten, on the tape, all my tapes, the name of the band, the year, name of the album, and i would tape on that so if you ever ripped that tape, like re-taped you would rip up my writings too. metal musician , interview. metal musician , interview. mark levine. ( ). heavy metal islam: rock, resistance, and the struggle for the soul of islam ( st ed.). new york: three rivers press. pg. . print. farhad described another form of trade that he used to acquire cassettes and that was his basketball skills. he was one of the best players at his high school and kids were always playing basketball for money. farhad would team up with a guy he wanted a cassette from, and the money and prestige that came from winning was a fair trade. the selfishness of tape trading for metalheads began to wear off as they became a tighter group. farhad recalls how instead of trying to get a better trade deal, he and others began copying cassettes for others who were deemed to be worthy of the “metalhead” identity. he said, “you’re a metalhead. i will hook you up. you’re one of us.” he also recalled, “if i know that you are a true metalhead, because i want you to enjoy listen to more stuff, i’ll record for you, like trying to, basically thinking distribution within your own ranks.” this camaraderie among young metalheads in iran is the fuel metal music needed to spread throughout iran. the next breakthrough in the spread of metal culture came with the usage of cds. the interesting thing about cds in iran is that no one listened to an original cd, or a cd that had only one album on it. they became popular about the same time mp s were becoming popular and people were creating cds with hundreds of songs on them with their computers which were also becoming more popular as they became cheaper. most people still did not have access to the internet to download their own mp s but there were rich people who had internet connections and again mp s, like cassettes, filtered down through the iranian population. farhad had this to say about his experience with these versions of media: so mp came out i remember, it was, it was a madhouse. so now, because there was mp s you didn’t have to have cds. buying cds, empty cds were expensive. not everybody could afford having like fifty of them, no, but you could metal musician , interview. metal musician , interview. metal musician , interview. pack them in the hard drive. hell yeah, the computer became the friend of everybody. there were people who had thousands and thousands of mp s and they would have a thick binder of hundreds of pages of albums to choose from and you would choose what you wanted and that person would go home and create a cd. it was expensive to buy music this way, but it was convenient and saved people the time of trying to piece together the music they wanted through many other sources. not many people distributed music in this manner because it was extremely dangerous to get caught with a large amount of western music, and also get paid for it. farhad left iran for the us in and most middle-class people still did not have access to the internet. according to the world bank less than one out of every people had access to the internet in . the internet really opened up in iran in and the amount of people using it has steadily risen. by , twenty-one people out of every had access to the internet. this has been instrumental in the growth of the metal culture and the explosion of bands in iran. metal musician , interview. metal musician , interview. world bank. “internet usage in iran.” worldbank.org. world bank group, n.d. web. july . http://search.worldbank.org/all?qterm=internet% usage% in% iran. chapter analysis: music, popular culture, and iranian sentiment music has a rich history in iran, as we know, and the function of music in iranians’ lives has changed a lot over the centuries. music is an active part of social life in iran whether iranians realize it or not, it influences how they form their identity, their cognitive, emotional, and social functioning and can serve as an avenue for youth that feel they need to express themselves outside of social norms. george simmel, a german sociologist, believed that the functionality of music gave social groups the ability to communicate emotions that could not be communicated verbally. this is absolutely the case in iran, as many youth feel the only way they can bear the weight of the oppression that crushes them is by expressing themselves through music. the expression that is released becomes an aspect of social relationships that is continuously changing. as i mentioned, soon after the iranian revolutionaries consolidated their power in they immediately banned popular music because of its religiously contested status, its association with dance, and the fact that the pahlavi monarchy had promoted it as ali delevar and flora forooghiyan. “iranian social rap music, the developed individuality of the youth.” european journal of social sciences. . ( ): . european journal of social sciences. web. sept. . ibid. . part of its modernization policy. during the next decade popular music was torn between many intersections in iranian discourse like: local and global, quasicolonial dependence and independence, religious and secular, and tradition and modernity. slowly, over the next ten years the revolutionary zeal concerning music began to fade and the ban on traditional folk music was lifted. light classical music began showing up on the radio and television for the first time since the revolution and even western popular music made it into the background music of television programs, without lyrics, of course, as these are still illegal today. immediately after the end of the iran-iraq war in august, young iranians began to focus on their own interests, and music, once again became a controversial topic. the regime also had more time to focus on societal issues and islamic values now that the war was over and they labeled all popular music that was flooding into the country as a cultural invasion. they viewed it as unauthentic and thought the us and its allies were responsible, and the youth, the future of iran, needed to be protected from the demoralization that it caused. unfortunately for the regime, they could not stop the flow of music into iran as the youth had turned into musical addicts consuming whatever music they could find. a huge influence on the youth in iran was the iranian community in tehrangeles or irangeles, (los angeles) as elnaz, the manager of mordab, referred to it as. iranians in l.a. had created whole new lives for themselves since leaving iran around the time of nooshin, laudan. “underground, overground: rock music and youth discourses in iran.” iranian studies. . ( ): . jstor. web. mar. . laudan nooshin. language of rock: “iranian youth, popular music, and national identity.” media, culture, and society in iran: living with globalization and the islamic state. ed. mehdi semati. new york: routledge, . . print. article : global campaign for free expression. “unveiled: art and censorship in iran.” . . web. sept. . http://www.article .org/resources.php/resource/ /en/unveiled:-art-and-censorship-in-iran. shahram khosravi. young and defiant in tehran. . the revolution. while iran had been hidden under the fog of war iranians in los angeles had been creating culture, especially popular music. youth in iran were listening to it everywhere and the regime adapted quickly by producing their own version of pop music that was considered to be islamic and acceptable. the regime knew that stopping the flow of music into iran was impossible so instead of tackling the problem from the top down they attempted to infiltrate music from the inside in order to gain control. the regimes’ strategy worked in the sense that many people liked the music and listened to it, but it became just another genre of music to listen to along with all of the other genres, it did not stop people from listening to western music, or beginning to experiment with music themselves. many iranian citizens had a problem with popular music on a more secular level. they listened to it and heard nothing that connected it with being iranian. in iran music and national identity have always been connected and many iranians judge music by its display of “iranian-ness.” since the revolution societal discourse has constantly shifted between tajadud and sonat (modernity and tradition) and the regime succeeded in convincing many iranians that music was part of the shah’s modernization process that stripped iran of its cultural identity. young people in iran faced a dilemma because by listening to popular music they identified with tajadud, and this became problematic for them as the regime saw this as rejection of traditional islamic values. young people in iran were tired of being isolated though, and music helped them make their first steps to joining the global community. a very important fact that i learned from my informants is that iranians love music. all types, all genres, anything that they can get their hands, they listen to it. yashar, the laudan nooshin. “underground, overground. . shahram khosravi. young and defiant in tehran. . drummer of grs, told me, “iranian people love music. we got a very powerful traditional music. every single person in iran loves music no matter what it is, maybe traditional, maybe pop music, maybe jazz music, metal music… but metal music in iran is as i said facing a lot of misconception.” iranians are so enthusiastic about music, that any genre of western band could come to iran and fill the national stadium with screaming iranians, according to arash, lead singer and bassist of tarantist. he told me that iranians are “party people” and they love to socialize. it does not matter the occasion, if there is any reason to have a party iranians will celebrate. many iranians use the frequent religious ceremonies that take place every year as a reason to get together and socialize. arash said, “people get together just for like socializing, finding boyfriends, and girlfriends you know, and just having fun, just being out, because we love to just… party and you know, be together and socialize.” a public space that has really developed since the end of the iran-iraq war is the coffee shop. coffee shops have popped up everywhere in tehran, especially in the north of the city. here, young people gather and talk about social issues like the opposite sex, music, movies, fashion, cars, and many other topics, but they do not talk about political issues, which seems like it would be extremely difficult because of the nature of the regime in iran, every topic is political. in the book young and defiant in tehran, shahram khosravi writes: in the coffee shops young people, according to what they themselves claim, do not discuss “political aspirations” but talk tirelessly about their “social aspirations.” they make a distinction between “political” issues that deal with anti-regime activities, and “social” ones, that highlight the “unpretentious” anxieties and needs of young people. in spite of their tactic of denial of “political” topics in yashar mojtahedzadeh. personal interview. september . arash, interview by jeremy prindle, los angeles, ca, may , . arash, interview. order to avoid provocation, their “social demands” are very much “political demands. iranians are also very informed, and according to elnaz and sohrab, the guitar player for mordab, they watch all the movies and tv series, and listen to all the music they can get their hands on. piracy is not illegal in iran, like it is in the us. it is a rather peculiar problem because in iran it is not illegal to pirate music, but possessing and listening to the music is. in the us, obviously it is the exact opposite, pirating music will get you into trouble, not possessing and listening to it. arash told me that people need to understand that iran is much different than the arab countries around it. iranians are so up to date and educated and they know about many things going on in the world that americans are not even aware of. in a portion of my interview with mordab they told me: sohrab: because of the piracy thing we talked about a little bit earlier you know. it couldn’t be that a band release an album and iranian people wouldn’t listen to it, or some movie came out and the iranian people wouldn’t watch it. elnaz: they are so up to date. sohrab: exactly, because of piracy every iranian is probably more up to date than even… jeremy: americans? because you guys can get all the movies and… sohrab: and we do! the thing is we do! elnaz: we are so enthusiastic! the enthusiasm that my informants described to me was evident the whole time i was with them because i was bombarded with questions about popular western culture. on shahram khosravi. young and defiant in tehran. . arash, interview. sohrab alimardani and elnaz alimardani, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . the day i interviewed mordab i wore an old retro t-shirt from the s with marvel’s “avengers” on it. elnaz surprised me when she asked me why i was wearing a marvel t- shirt and not a dc t-shirt (dc and marvel being the two most popular comic book companies in the us). she said: elnaz: can i ask you a question? why marvel? jeremy: why? elnaz: why not dc? jeremy: oh i like dc too, it’s just a t-shirt, i mean i don’t know… elnaz: well it represents you. what you wear, doesn’t it? jeremy: ya, i like dc too but marvel uhh… i don’t know, that’s a good question, cause i like batman and superman… elnaz: in iran these two are very conflicting. jeremy: oh really? elnaz: it is like pepsi and coke. dc and marvel aarrggh! young people in iran today are known as “third generation” iranians and people that were young during the revolution are known as “first generation.” there is a big difference between these two generations of young people as the “first generation” was responsible for an anti-western revolution that overthrew the shah and his modernization policies while the “third generation” is extremely curious about western life and the global community. khosravi asked a young person in iran why young iranians have such a fascination with the us and he said, “it is because mullahs shout all the time about how awful america is. a thing which is awful in their eyes must be a wonderful thing.” this statement is very telling and proves that the regime has no idea elnaz alimardani, interview. shahram khosravi. young and defiant in tehran. . shahram khosravi. young and defiant in tehran. . how to solve the problem that the young population is creating for them. by banning and restricting access to music, the opposite sex, the internet, and many other things they are creating a rapaciousness among the youth for those very things. elnaz went on to ask me if i had seen the dark knight and i told her it was one of my favorite films. she told me they had a low key screening of the dark knight in a cinema in tehran and everyone that heard about it arrived at the cinema wearing batman t-shirts and the excitement was thick in the air. i asked her if she went to this screening and she said, “ya! you bet i did! but we still haven’t seen the dark knight rises cause we don’t… we don’t want to watch it with the poor quality… the camcorder quality.” the dark knight rises had recently been released in theaters around the world and elnaz was disappointed that no theaters in yerevan were showing it. the eagerness of iranians to become part of the global community is strikingly apparent. it is as if iran turned into a black hole and information about popular culture is sucked into it and consumed by millions of people. youth in iran use technology to determine the social aspects of their lives. they look globally to musicians, actors, and sports figures to be role models because they do not have any role models to look to in iran. these role models are counter to current official iranian culture, therefore the youth are driven underground and they must constantly negotiate between these two realms. the idea of being famous is shunned by the regime because they believe that this takes away attention that should be focused on god. the regime views the youth who look up to people outside iran as victims of western ideals who blindly consume and elnaz alimardani, interview. elnaz alimardani, interview. imitate foreign cultural products. enthusiasm for western culture is very dangerous, especially for metalheads. metalheads are forced to listen and play metal in their homes, or special private places. playing, listening, or promoting metal music in public in iran will get you harassed, arrested, and in some cases, worse. sina explained to me how it is not only government propaganda that is influencing iranians and their view of metal. he said: they are showing on national tv a bunch of crazy dudes playing metal, and like getting into different problems. using pill and like drinking so much and everything, so i think that’s the reason but… i think cause metal is more of a noisy genre and you need to have a certain level of understanding of music in order for you to listen to metal and get what they are talking about. ali, the lead singer of arsames, has a very different view of the way television has influenced iranians concerning metal music. he believes that satellite television has helped iranian perception of metal music and iranians have become more accepting. he told me that since iran is an islamic country metalheads are rare and when people see a metalhead they are surprised. the more exposure they have to metal music the more accepting they will become. both of these viewpoints hold truth because many people do not have unlimited access to a satellite television and their encounters with metal music are very limited. the brief encounters they do have tend to portray metal music in a negative light. on the other hand many iranians now have satellite dish access in their homes and exposure to metalheads in public and this softens their ignorance about metal music. mahmood shahabi. “youth sub-cultures in post-revolutionary iran.” global youth?: hybrid identities, plural words. ed. pam nilan and carles feixa. new york: routledge, . . print. sina talebian, interview with jeremy prindle, los angeles, ca, may , . ali madarshahi, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . iranian ignorance about metal music today is still very common. i asked faraz, the bass player for grs how he felt his fellow iranians viewed him and he said to me, “is a hard question to answer you know, because they don’t even know what metal is. they just tell you ‘is that music?’ they don’t even understand what it is.” faraz also explained to me the difference between the northern and southern areas of tehran. the north is where more middle- and middle-upper-class people live and the south is where the lower-class live. in the north people have had a small amount of exposure to metal music but in the south people do not understand what metal music is. ali, the lead guitarist for mordab, said that he thinks people in iran view metal how people in the us viewed metal fifty years ago. i agree with this statement wholeheartedly because metal music is a new culture in iran and it is going to go through the same metamorphosis that metal music had to go through in the western world. the opposition to metal in iran is more intense than it was in britain or the us in the s, but as metal culture grows, exposure to metal grows and ignorance gives way to awareness, then knowledge. iranian ignorance of metal music leads to many misconceptions. yashar told me that many americans have misconceptions about metal music (which they do), so how can you expect iranians who do not understand many things about the global community to understand this style of music. faraz jabbari, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . faraz jabbari, interview. ali esfahani, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . yashar mojtahedzadeh, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . this was an excellent point, because as a metalhead in the us i deal with misconceptions about metal music by people on a regular basis. if educated people in the us have misconceptions about this genre of music, the misconceptions by an iranian with minimal exposure to popular music in general is going to be substantial. sina told me that his father is one of his biggest fans but he has to sit down with him and explain to him the lyrics and what the songs are about because he does not understand the music. he said: my father says "ok, come sit here and explain to me what you are saying right now because i don’t get anything from this music.” then i’m like “ok, in this we are trying to show the frustrations behind leaving your country.” and he was like “ya great, so why don’t you just…why are you growling? why don’t you just say these things in like a more normal way?” i was like “this is metal! this is metal dad!” misconceptions lead people to make judgments and the most common judgment is that metalheads are satanists. there was no disagreement about this by any of the metalheads i interviewed. all of them agreed that this judgment is very common and they regularly have to defend themselves. they described having to explain metal music to their family members so they would not think they were crazy or satan worshippers. faraz told me that he showed pictures of metal musicians to his family to show them that they are regular people who also have families. he said it is embarrassing to tell members of your family that you are a musician because in iran there is no future for a musician. satanic elements have been associated with metal since its inception and i described in the literature review the satanic labels black sabbath had to deal with. the speedy judgment many iranians make is that satanic symbolism in metal means that metalheads have an interest in satanic ideologies. for the majority of metalheads in iran these sina talebian, interview. faraz jabbari, interview. symbols represent a rebellion against social constraints and a desire for more freedom. adam levine wrote a fantastic piece about how people in the middle east are responding to the metal scenes that are growing in many countries there. he describes the black metal scene that emerged in scandinavia during the early s and the violence and murder that surrounded it. this scene in no way represents the global metal scene as a whole, but such savage stories have made a global impression on people’s view of metal music. levine makes an important point that “satanism in the extreme metal scene has by and large been concerned more with ‘liberation from perceived constraints’ of humanity than worshipping evil.” i experienced some of the feelings these guys deal with while i was in yerevan. while i was there i mostly wore a metal t-shirt, jeans, and boots, and people would give me strange looks, or even stare. at the time i was not sure if it was because i was american or because of my clothes. i assumed it was most likely both but i asked pezhman and pooya, twin brothers from the band persian force if they experienced these things and they said, “of course!” they told me: pooya: one thing i want to say… ahh, and now i want to tell you about the people scene metal music in iran, you know for example, a regular person in iran when you see… that you said before last night “why are armenian people staring at me like “oh my god he is wearing black t-shirt and boots” you know. in iran is like too. when you are going out with chain and… pezhman: necklace… hecker, pierre. “taking a trip to the middle eastern metal scene.” north-south currently ( ): . academia. web. mar. . levine, mark. “doing the devil’s work: heavy metal and the threat to public order in the muslim world.” social compass . ( ): . academic search premier. web. mar. . pooya: necklace, black t-shirt they are saying “oh they are satanist, absolutely satanist.” despite the ignorance, misconceptions, and judgments iranians have toward metal, mehrad, the drummer for master of persia, said that iranians do not have a problem with metal music. they may not understand it or like it, but they do not have a problem with people that are involved with metal music. the government has a problem because of islam, but the people do not have a problem. it is clear that iranians place an extremely high value on culture and it is an important part of their lives. many of my informants talked about music and film like they were drugs and they needed as much of it as they could get their hands on. iranians are very globally aware and with their high level of education and access to the internet they learn as much as they possibly can about the rest of the world. this hunger for culture has proven to be the reason subcultures like metal are growing in iran, and despite the ignorance, misconceptions, and judgments that metalheads receive by other iranians they are respectful and do what they can to inform iranians about metal and give themselves a better name. the legal and social status of music in iran is constantly changing as religious and political figures use music to benefit their agenda. the quran does not officially condemn music as something that should not be allowed, but the clergy in iran believes that music is a gateway to immoral acts like dancing, lust, sex, drinking, and people’s attention should be focused on god, not these earthly things. pooya and pezhman moradi, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . mehrad motamedi, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . chapter analysis: the iranian regime and metal music in this chapter i had to take a different approach for citing my informants to protect them. i refrained from asking any questions to any of the bands that currently live in iran, specifically mordab, persian force, credenc, grs, and arsames about islam and politics. the regime does not take criticism lightly and i do not know their boundaries when discussing these topics, therefore i only discussed these topics with my informants that live in the us and armenia. even though these bands are free from persecution and wanted their name attached to their statements, i simply thought it best to keep all quotes from my informants anonymous for this chapter. it was important for me to learn if the twelver shi’ism that the islamic republic of iran rules by could eventually allow metal music to exist. i wanted to learn from my informants whether it was the government that has a problem with metal music, shi’ism, or both. mehrad mentioned at the end of the first chapter how the government had a problem with metal because of shi’ism. is this the consensus? or did my informants have other views. some of my informants were very adamant that metal music can never have any relationship with shi’ism and since their own country makes them feel like outcasts the i refer to all of my informants in this chapter as “metalhead - , and band - .” i will refer to the islamic republic of iran’s version of islam, known as twelver shi’ism, simply as shi’ism throughout this chapter and when i use “islam” i am referring to the global religion. nonconformist and antireligious aspects of metal was one of the initial attractions to the genre for them. i asked metalhead about metal’s relationship with shi’ism and he answered me with a question, “what is the relationship between a car and water? do you understand what i am asking?” when i asked band what the connection was, they all just stared at me for a few seconds and then one of them asked me to repeat the question. after i repeated it they began laughing and told me there is absolutely no connection at all. metalhead told me that music in general has almost no place in islam, it is practically forbidden. he then answered me with the question, “if almost all music is forbidden in iran, how do you think the regime feels about metal music?” these answers were the most common answers i received and the ones i expected, but there were some more extreme answers, and thankfully some optimistic answers as well. metalhead had an interesting view, he flipped the table on me and pointed out that everyone was saying islam cannot accept metal when in reality it is metal that cannot accept islam. this brings me back to my earlier point about iranian metalheads choosing metal for its antireligious aspects which gives them a psychological edge by demonstrating that it is the metal community in iran that does not approve of the regime. the global metal scene though, has changed dramatically over the last ten years as christian metal is now flourishing in the west and other nations, like armenia, which i mentioned in the introduction. this does not necessarily mean that shi’ism is going to metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. band , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. wikipedia. “list of christian metal bands.” en.wikipedia.org. wikipedia, n.d. web. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_christian_metal_bands. accept metal, but i absolutely believe that it is possible for shi’ism and islam to accept metal and vice-versa, neither of these subjects are monolithic. there is no more obvious example than the one given by mark levine in heavy metal muslims. mark levine, a global metal scholar, interviewed a black metal band in egypt that were devout muslims. black metal is the most extreme genre of metal and the most antireligious so for levine to discover a black metal band of muslims in the middle east is stunningly hopeful for the relationship of islam, shi’ism, and metal music. in heavy metal muslims the band discussed how they attend prayer at the local mosque every friday and then go practice. a member of the band said, “we pray, and then go play black metal.” this is the clearest example that can be given to prove that metal and islam can exist together. if black metal and islam can begin a relationship then there is absolutely no reason that shi’ism and metal music cannot start a relationship of their own, which leads me to believe that the problems between metalheads and the islamic republic of iran are purely political. some of my informants held the belief that since metal has become such a global force, is present in almost every country, and is in contact with almost every religion, there is no reason to believe that it cannot be accepted by shi’ism. they pointed out that there are metal bands in countries like saudi arabia, iraq, and other arab countries. metalhead told me that islam never mentioned music in a clear manner and the government imposed its interpretation of how music should be dealt with. he is right, there is nowhere in the quran that specifically mentions music or how music should be levine, mark. “heavy metal muslims: the rise of a post-islamist public sphere.” contemporary islam . ( ): . print. this is absolutely true and i will refer you again to the encyclopaedia metallum where a person can do a band search and discover many different metal bands that exist in the middle east. http://www.metal-archives.com/. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. viewed. there are a few verses that muslims who believe music is “haram” use to validate their argument, one of the most common being this verse: “and of the people is he who buys the amusement of speech to mislead from the way of allah without knowledge, and takes it in ridicule. those will have a humiliating torment.” according to mark levine, this verse warns that a person should avoid things that prevent focus on god. the focus here is on the term “amusement of speech” and during the early years of islam, scholars argued, that this could be interpreted to refer to music. there are also verses in the quran that can be interpreted to support music, for example: “say, have you seen what allah has sent down to you of provision of which you have made lawful and unlawful? say, has allah permitted you, or do you invent about allah?” there are muslims and non-muslims who believe this could be interpreted to show that the scholars who believe music is unlawful are deceivers. an article from the sydney morning herald in reported that ayatollah khamenei had spoken out about music in iran. he said that young people needed to focus on education in science and useful skills and stop wasting time with music. he went on to say "although music is halal, promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the islamic republic.” this is an interesting statement because he was giving a speech condemning music and its teaching, yet he is acknowledging that music is lawful. this brings us to another interesting dichotomy, if music is lawful why are people in iran being persecuted for it? i imagine this is a quran. “ : .” quran.com. quran, n.d. web. sept. . http://quran.com/ . levine, mark. “doing the devil’s work: heavy metal and the threat to public order in the muslim world.” social compass . ( ): . academic search premier. web. mar. . quran. “ : .” quran.com. quran, n.d. web. sept. . http://quran.com/ / . sydney morning herald. “iran’s supreme leader seeks music ban.” smh.com.au. fairfax media, aug. . web. aug. . http://www.smh.com.au/world/irans-supreme-leader-seeks-music-ban- - xn.html. question that will not be answered anytime soon and this causes a lot of frustration, especially with metal musicians. many of my informants would shake their heads at me when i would press them about the details about islamic law and tell me that i should not try to rationalize this problem because the regime keeps it confusing and vague to benefit themselves. actual constitutional law in iran is not much clearer than the quran about musical expression. according to certain articles in the iranian constitution the government only has the authority to crackdown on freedom of speech when the expression is against islamic values. article of iran’s constitution states: all civil, penal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political and other laws and regulations must be based on islamic criteria. this principle applies absolutely and generally to all articles of the constitution as well as other laws and regulation, and the wise persons of the guardian council are judges in this matter. here it states that as long as a person expresses themselves within the boundaries of islam their expression will not be confronted, but if their expression is outside islamic boundaries the law is being violated. this gives the regime a lot of flexibility in interpreting what they believe is outside the boundaries of islam. article also states something similar, “publications and the press have freedom of expression except when it is detrimental to the fundamental principles of islam or the rights of the public. the details of this exception will be specified by law.” as you can see there is not a specific law that prohibits metal music and the governing norms of the regime are learned by metalheads through experience. if someone gets arrested for wearing a pentagram word will travel through the metal assembly of experts. constitution of the islamic republic of iran, oct. . constitution. http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/government/constitution- .html. assembly of experts. constitution of the islamic republic of iran, oct. . constitution. http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/government/constitution- .html. community by word of mouth and online letting people know what happened. authorities crackdown selectively and inconsistently and metalheads live with constant anxiety. metalhead vented his frustration to me saying, “we have no idea what they’re doing. we have no idea what they are, you know, uhh… politic or whatever their way is. why do they forbid this kind of thing? metalhead said, “we don’t have any certain law in iran, if for example you steal something you are a criminal. this is a certain law. if it is about metal music, tattoo, piercing, or long hair… (raises his arms in bewilderment).” the anxiety that my informants exude when they tell me about this situation is disheartening. constantly feeling that you could be arrested at any moment for any reason, none of those reasons being actual laws, is an unfortunate fact of life for them. unfortunately conditions in iran for metalheads have regressed and it is hard for many of them to accept. the situation was better for metalheads in when khatami was elected president than it is now. in he instituted many cultural reforms, concerning things like music that had been banned since the revolution, and the youth loved him at the time of his election. this of course changed during his two terms, as the conservatives limited his power. despite this, when he was elected the whole cultural environment of iran improved. in “contending with censorship: the underground music scene in urban iran,” written by heather rastovac, she describes some of the reforms that khatami implemented, for example media publications began to express different viewpoints, rastovac, heather. “contending with censorship: the underground music scene in urban iran.” intersections online . ( ): . intersections. web. may . metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. certain concerts were allowed to proceed, and a legal market for cassettes and cds emerged. musical instruments were now able to be legally purchased as long as they served a licit purpose. there is no description of what a “licit purpose” actually means and again is left to the interpretation of the regime giving them full control. the government established eight cultural centers throughout tehran that promoted concerts and music education. musical publications also became popular, for example, the art of music, and the mahur quarterly. the radio and national television stations also implemented huge changes as they began playing more styles of music than war hymns and religious music. metalhead told me, “ya, there were major changes, because back then when khatami was president, at that time, music… at least musically everything was rolling and every aspect of music, every aspect of cultural activity, was trying to get better. i remember back then there wasn’t a week coming without a metal concert.” metalhead talked about how the metal scene really began to grow during this time and the bravery of all the musicians as they brought their talents into the public sphere. he told me that he played live concerts during this time and his band pushed the boundaries because they always played their shows with a vocal singing in english which was not allowed, but they found ways to do it. one of the festivals he was a part of was an online festival that was put on by the rastovac, heather. “contending with censorship: the underground music scene in urban iran.” intersections online . ( ): . intersections. web. may . ameneh youssefzadeh. “the situation of music in iran since the revolution: the role of official organizations.” british journal of ethnomusicology . ( ): . jstor. web. nov. . rastovac, heather. “contending with censorship.” . metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. website called tehran avenue, and was designed to give iranians a place to find cultural events happening in tehran. the festival tehran avenue organized in was not a physical festival, it was only online because a live rock music festival was not possible yet. the official name of the festival was the underground music competition and twenty-one bands officially entered. it was an unprecedented event in iran and it showcased new iranian styles of music to many iranians who had no idea the bands even existed, showing the international community that there is a rock music scene in iran. bands entered via tehranavenue.com where people could come listen to songs from the bands and vote on their favorite. laudin nooshin wrote in underground, overground: rock music and youth discourses in iran that the winner of the contest was given webspace, time in-studio, contact with professional musicians, and a place in a concert comprised of the bands that had placed in the top four spots. the concert was to be held at farabi hall but was cancelled two days before it took place. regardless of the prizes this was a huge event for every band involved and really opened up iran and the world to music that was being produced underground there. metalhead told me about a concert that took place in azadi square in tehran. azadi, which means freedom, is the largest square in tehran and has a large monument, known as azadi tower, in its center. a huge stage was erected in the square and they would hold concerts there during khatami’s presidency. metalhead said, “there was a metallica tribute on a huge stage in middle of azadi center, just imagine playing a metallica tribute on that stage. right now it is almost impossible to play on that stage, tehran avenue is an interesting website because it is still operational in the sense that you can examine the archives of the website but nothing new has been posted for a few years. i am not sure what the situation is with this website. http://tehranavenue.com/. nooshin, laudan. “underground, overground: rock music and youth discourses in iran.” iranian studies. . ( ): . jstor. web. mar. . play metal on that stage.” some of my informants, while they agreed that khatami’s reforms were helpful, did not want me to be deceived into believing that this meant they were free to listen and perform metal music. metalhead said to me, “of course we have lots of changes when khatami was president, but we have a problem too, you know. you can’t say lots of changes, no, they are not lots of changes. that time is easier to have a festival. you can go up and show yourself and playing your songs.” metalhead said, “you had more… i don’t want to say freedom, like comfortability in doing things, so it was going in a better direction.” a conversation i had with band about khatami’s reforms went like this: jeremy: he was very open-minded i guess kind of… ali: no… little. jeremy: little, ya. but i mean he allowed… sohrab: within his own limits you know, that the government, that they… you know the president is like part of a system in iran. elnaz: he is the presenter of the system. sohrab: you’ve got the supreme leader, you’ve got the parliament… you’ve got all types of things in the government, he was a little bit more open-minded… elnaz: a little bit sohrab: peace and, let’s be friends. but, but… don’t think that he was in his time iran was a free place and then ahmadinejad came and, no it wasn’t like that. i think the point that they were making here was that reforms were strictly metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. band , interview by jeremy prindle. political and that yes, they had more freedom, but they were not free. the president is just the spokesperson for the supreme leader and while he has a little room to make changes he ultimately does what he is told. metalhead did not think that there was much benefit from khatami’s reforms, he felt that maybe more harm had been done than good. he said, “i think khatami as president was like a painkiller, just like a painkiller.” i asked him why he felt this way and he told me that because of the reforms instituted by khatami many metal musicians surfaced from the underground and showed themselves to the public. this ended up being very bad for them because when khatami’s second term was finished and mahmoud ahmadinejad took office the reforms vanished and the government knew who all the metal musicians were. i think that metal bands were over enthusiastic about the new shape the public sphere was taking during khatami’s presidency and should not have appeared aboveground so quickly because khatami was interested in making concessions with young people about pop music, not metal music. khatami brought pop music to the surface allowing the government to take control of it and create an industry which came to be known as pop-e jaded (the new pop). metal musicians were excited as pop musicians surfaced and they followed, thinking they would be included, but this was not the case. metal musicians unknowingly moved in to occupy the space that pop music had vacated when it was allowed to surface. khatami spent a lot of time improving and promoting civil society but he had a rough time enacting many of the reforms he talked about because the hardliners in power metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. nooshin, laudan. “underground, overground: rock music and youth discourses in iran.” iranian studies. . ( ): . jstor. web. mar. . marginalized him until his time as president was over. when the hard-liners got their man “ahmadinejad” into power they immediately took action against the civil progress khatami had made. ahmadinejad, as president, was also the head of the supreme council of the cultural revolution and he revived the harsh rules that khatami had loosened, and banned all western music from the state media. he also cracked down on most musical expression in the public sphere and metal musicians were forced back into their basements. from the discussions with my informants i learned that there was an interesting dichotomy that had appeared since the succession of ahmadinejad to the presidency. despite reforms disappearing and rules directed at musicians becoming stricter, there are still more and more bands making themselves known in iran. i think this is a testament to the power of metal music and iranians love for it. once the door that restricted music was cracked by khatami the weight of the iranian people pushed against it and when ahmadinejad’s cabinet decided that door needed to be closed they simply did not have the strength to close it. metalhead believes that the metal scene in iran is growing because of the strength of the musicians. he said, “after khatami it was harder and bands could not play concerts. there is a proverb ‘what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.’ bands have become stronger and it is easier now for them to come out of iran.” there is a lot of truth to this statement because originally bands were unaccepted by the regime, then reforms made it acceptable, and then one day it became unacceptable again. i think it hard-liners are people and regime officials that fully support the regime and are in direct opposition to reformists. article : global campaign for free expression. “unveiled: art and censorship in iran.” . . web. sept. . http://www.article .org/resources.php/resource/ /en/unveiled:-art-and-censorship-in-iran. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. was very hard for bands to deal with and many disbanded because of it, but many continued, setting an example for new bands. the government, like the iranian people, have misconceptions about the global metal scene. metalhead mentioned that since the reforms were introduced many bands showed themselves in public. the regime was surprised at the amount of young people that were involved in rock and metal culture during khatami’s administration and conducted research into the culture. they discovered the dark side of metal music and labeled all metal musicians and fans as devil worshippers. metalhead said, “some metal bands in the world, lyrics about satan, lyrics about anti-religion, anti-christ. they fucked it up for everybody else.” metalhead and said: : you can’t play in our country, you know. : yes, it is like satanist. : you know they are stopping you like that. mahmood shahabi wrote about “bricolage” in his piece titled youth sub-cultures in post-revolutionary iran and how all aspects of global culture are being filtered by the youth of iran. objects and meanings create a sign within a culture and these signs are assembled into discourse. when these signs are collected by another culture a new discourse is created. iranian metalheads have created their own metal culture in iran by collecting symbols and meanings from all different metal genres and the regime has interpreted this to be a metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead and , interview by jeremy prindle. shahabi, mahmood. “youth sub-cultures in post-revolutionary iran.” global youth?: hybrid identities, plural words. ed. pam nilan and carles feixa. new york: routledge, . - . print. conscious politically motivated act against the regime. the regime examined global metal culture and found overtly political and satanic symbols and meanings and interpreted them without examining how these things have filtered through the iranian youth. there are many different symbols and meanings for every genre of metal and to lump these into one category shows how the regime is focused only on the satanic aspect of metal. while many iranian metalheads display a bricolage of metal culture symbols there is by no means any evidence that these metalheads are involved in active political resistance. for them these symbols mean freedom of religion, freedom of thought, and their desire to be themselves. all my informants made it clear to me that they do not care about the islamic republic, all they want is to be able to play their music, be left alone, and make a living. global metal culture in its very nature is not an organized culture, it is the exact opposite. one of the core attributes of metal culture is nonconformity and this is no different in iran. shahabi said, “youth subcultures in iran lack any focus to formally challenge existing political structures.” this is because the subcultures that are becoming popular in iran are once removed from their place or culture of origin. for example, in the us punk music culture was driven by ethnicity, in britain it was driven by class (very similar to metal) and once it made its way to iran the political meanings were not carried with it. shahabi said, “there was no sociocultural base for a movement dedicated to subverting the consumerist lifestyle in a developing country with a different level of development and affluence.” freemuse is an organization dedicated to the freedom of musical expression around the world and they published an article in about a party in karaj that was broken up shahabi. mahmood. “youth sub-cultures in iran.” . ibid. - . by police and people were arrested. there were rock bands, rap groups, and djs who performed as well. the government confiscated alcohol, cds, and un-islamic clothing for women and labeled the whole event as a satanic event. swedish-iranian free-lance journalist nima daryamadj was interviewed for this article and he does not believe the event was satanic, he said, “hard rock groups do flirt with satanism, just like a funny thing, maybe it has been misinterpreted. but most often the regime is using these words on things they consider immoral or un-islamic. for example they refer to the usa as the great satan.” negar shaghaghi wrote in sounds of silence about this concert as well and she described the state run media reporting “the musicians had served blood and screened pornography.” this is another example of the government not being clear about what the law is regarding these things, because they have to create scenarios in order to charge people with crimes. kave, a musician who attended the concert said, “satanic concert? i don’t understand what neither vahid dj nor that rap group have to do with satanism!” the government is cracking down on things deemed un-islamic, and therefore “satanic” in their eyes, and literally charging them with satanism. there is a major disconnect between the government and modern society and the government likes this because it always keeps modern society guessing about what is lawful and unlawful, and islamic and un-islamic. moral panics have been incited against metal all over the world for acts of violence kristina funkeson. “about people arrested during a ‘satanic’ music event.” freemuse.org. freemuse, . web. jun. . http://freemuse.org/archives/ . negar shaghaghi. “sounds of silence.” index on censorship . ( ): . academic search premier. web. aug. . kristina funkeson. “about people arrested during a ‘satanic’ music event.” freemuse.org. freemuse, . web. jun. . http://freemuse.org/archives/ . and devil worshipping and it is no different in iran. the regime creates a moral panic about metal musicians being satanists and the panic is magnified in iran because of iran’s relationship with the word “satan.” there are paintings all over tehran claiming that the us is “satan.” the name satan is also thrown around a lot by the regime especially during ahmadinejad’s presidency. there are many international news reports of him calling the us a satanic nation, president bush being inspired by satan, zionists being a manifestation of satan, etc. labeling something or someone as satanic in iran is not something to be taken lightly and metalheads have a lot to worry about by being falsely accused of such dangerous acts. iranian metal musicians never know when they could get in trouble but they tell me they have a much easier time if they stay away from two specific topics, which are women and politics. by women, i am referring to women participating in the band, especially vocally, which is forbidden. by politics, i am referring to lyrical content of songs, because any vocal dissent about the iranian regime is strictly forbidden. it is forbidden in iran for women to sing as a soloist. a woman can sing in a band if she is a back vocal, but only if there are three or more. i had never heard of this until i talked to metalhead and and i was curious about this law and wanted to learn more about it. again, attempting to understand the reasoning behind a law is extremely difficult. here is a piece of our conversation: : you cannot understand the law. jeremy: you have to have three but… : he’s confused. : at least three women as a back vocalist not solo vocalist because… because islam or akhoun or something like that said, “one woman can turn you on.” but with three women their sound… mix together and you don’t turn on. : we don’t understand this either. : this is serious. jeremy: hmmm… but wouldn’t three women turn you on three times as much? : no, because the sounds mix together and you can’t tell which one is singing. jeremy: ok, ok, so then… so three women coming to one voice and creates like, one sound, wouldn’t that be the same as one woman? : you should tell that to them. there are bands in iran that are challenging the idea of women singing and grs is a current iranian band living in iran with a female vocalist. the reason i am mentioning them here is that this information was documented at the persian metal festival, and their performance can be seen on the dvd. at the festival grs was one of the most popular bands because they have a female vocalist. the crowd was aware of the significance of their performance, because this was the first time that a female vocalist living in iran has performed in a live metal concert. master of persia, who also performed at the festival, has a female vocalist, anahid, but the band currently resides in yerevan so they do not face the same problems that grs does. anahid is well aware of the situation though, she grew up in mashhad, iran and was forced to leave because of problems she faced with the government. she was afraid for her life along with other members of master of persia and they fled to armenia together. the government is unpredictable in their treatment and enforcement of law in iran and you can never know when they will take action. metalhead told me how the government would randomly tell bands to disband. he said, “in internet for example we have a problem. sometimes in random they are sending messages to stop your work. metalhead and , interview by jeremy prindle. persian metal festival. audio/video production by vladimir melikyan. zhesht and mop music co, . dvd. for example you see one band stop so you say ‘oh ok, easy, easy, easy. don’t go so fast.’” a more severe action the government randomly takes against metalheads is arresting people. i experienced the intense fear, while i was in yerevan, that an arrest can cause because many times the government does not tell friends and family someone has been arrested and it is impossible to know what can happen once an arrest is made. in armenia death fuse and slave mark were supposed to participate in the festival but they did not arrive. everyone was worried about what happened to them and although no one knew for sure, it was evident to everyone they had been arrested at the border of armenia and iran. everyone had been worried for four days at this point and it was an odd experience for me. i say odd because i grew up in america where we blast metal music until our ears bleed. i had never experienced what it would be like to be arrested by your government for listening to music, and it really hit me hard to experience that with them. here is an excerpt from a conversation i had with band about the situation: : they got to the iran and armenian territory and they got caught there. : ya. : death-fuse. : death-fuse band is not complete, not news from them and… : why? : we don’t know about… : we don’t know what has happened. : this can be very dangerous. : and slave mark band. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. : they said their t-shirts… but they can’t go to armenia, i don’t know why. : we worry about that. we worry. we worry about that. jeremy: so you guys… : i have not news about death-fuse and slave mark guys and we hopefully have not problem. metalhead told me that he felt very lucky that he was never arrested while he lived in iran because many of his friends who were in bands were arrested for playing metal and they were in prison for months. one of his friends got arrested before band practice one day and he told me this story: “so the guitarist, he has long hair. he has long blonde hair and every time we had practice in the studio, those guys were trying to help us as well, so every wednesday or thursday if i’m not mistaken we used to see those guys in the studio and there was a day i remember he just… he came like an hour late to the studio and we were like ‘dude, what happened?’ he was like ‘i got arrested because of my hair. they were trying to cut my hair and i had to bribe them to just let me go.’ he was crazy about his hair.” metalhead told me that he had been imprisoned twice and the second time he had received lashes. he acted like there was more to the story but he did not give me any more information and i did not pry. my best friend, metalhead , spent time in the notorious evin prison for political reasons, and his involvement with metal music prolonged his imprisonment. the torturous acts committed by the authorities scar many young iranians for life, physically and emotionally. my informants constantly told me that all they want is to be allowed to play music. band , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. they have no desire to get involved in politics or religion. if the government would leave them alone they would not hear a word from them. metalhead said, “politics is for politicians, religion is for religious men. we are not any of these, we are just musicians who want to play music. there is not going to be any religious or political statements coming out of this band.” as long as bands stay underground the government seems to ignore their presence, but any attempt to surface gets them in trouble. there is a red line that the government has established and as long authorities are never alerted to a bands presence they can exist, but do not attempt to publicize that there is a metal music culture in iran, because officially there is no such culture. one of my informants in los angeles told me, “i respect the religion and everything but unfortunately in my country religion is becoming more like a prison for people. cause the ones that tend to respect religion trying to stay in a circle that religion have created for them so… and everything outside that circle is just restricted or not accepted by society. this of course is the crux of the problem because the interpretation of islamic jurisprudence that the government rules by is very oppressive, and when it comes to islam, christianity, and other religions there is no gray area, only black and white. unfortunately, i just do not see any compromise that can be made that would allow metal musicians to be more accepted in society at this time. i asked one of my informants in los angeles if there was any support at all in government for metal musicians. he looked at me and started laughing and said, “are metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. you kidding me? imam, or those people, they are saying… like labeling us as devil worshipper against religion and all of those things.” i knew the question was ridiculous when i asked it but i felt in my “american” mind that there had to be a reformist in the government that was advocating for more freedoms for musicians but this is absolutely not the case. the only positive aspect to the metal scene in iran that my informants talked about was the fact that the government has much bigger problems to worry about than what metalheads are doing underground. metalhead said, “they don’t have time for metal. if they get a little bit more free they can come to arrest. yes, there is always something for them to come.” metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. metalhead , interview by jeremy prindle. chapter analysis: the metal music scene in iran the metal music scene in iran is very diverse, there are bands in so many different genres of metal music. if you go to the encyclopedia mettalum and select iran there are fifty-five band entries at the moment and the genres of these bands include power, doom, progressive, death, black, technical death, brutal death, symphonic, progressive death, depressive black, and many more. it really is quite remarkable that the metal culture has developed so well in iran after roughly twenty years of oppressive existence. the metal scene in iran is just one small scene in a transnational network of local scenes that are independent of each other but operate in the same fashion. in iran an infrastructure of bands, record labels, shops, magazines, and fans operate underground below the public sphere. this metal scene is a grassroots music scene that is growing as musicians and fans use this genre of music to express themselves. being part of this scene is a form of indirect resistance against the iranian regime whether members of this scene see it that way or not. critics of metal music in iran claim that this genre of music is another example of extreme westoxification and it should not be given any opportunity to become part of public discourse. “iran.” metal-archives.com. encyclopaedia mettalum: metal archives, n.d. web. oct. . http://www.metal-archives.com/lists/ir. if you go to the wikipedia link below there is a list of many of the subgenres of metal and a description about these subgenres. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/heavy_metal_subgenres. laudan nooshin. “underground, overground.” . the sound of the overdriven guitar through an amplifier is a very unnatural sound and is purely western, music in iran has always sounded natural and been judged by its nationalistic qualities. laudan nooshin said in “the language of rock” that iran “wears its national identity on its sleeve.” by this she means that iranian music is purely iranian and western influence has not tainted it. critics fear that allowing metal music to emerge from the underground will taint the purity of iranian music. metal musicians do not see things this way and have no desire to be identified within a nationalistic framework. metal musicians want to be identified and judged for their metal on the global stage, not their nationalistic fervor in iran. this absolutely does not mean that metal musicians in iran are not proud of their national identity, on the contrary, my informants are extremely proud of their iranian heritage, but they want a cultural dialogue to be opened about iran, and the future it has as part of the global community. since official discourse in iran has labeled metal music with its illegal status all metal musicians participate in a high anxiety scene where they never know what could happen to them, ironically though, the illegality of metal music in iran is what gives the scene its power. the foundation of metal music is about being an outcast, individuality, having no hope, being oppressed and the scene in iran embodies these qualities completely. looking at the conditions of the extreme metal cultures emergence in the us during the s, it has become hard to sympathize with the first world problems that young people who gravitated toward metal music faced after discovering the metal scene in iran. according to my informants the two most popular genres of metal in iran are thrash metal and death metal. i had a rough time deciding on a clear answer as to which was the most popular because they could not decide. after hearing their arguments i decided laudan nooshin. “language of rock.” . heather rastovac. “contending with censorship.” . they are both equally popular; here is an example of how most of the conversations with my informants went: jeremy: ok, what is the most popular… is there a most popular genre of metal music in iran? sohrab: i think thrash metal is the most popular. ali: thrash metal, and death metal. sohrab: after that ya, death metal. ali: after that, after that. thrash metal more than… the most common reason given for thrash metal was the fact that the origin of the metal scene in iran began with people listening to bands like metallica and slayer and for a metalhead bands like this never die, they will always be legends and at the core of most people’s music collection. the case for death metal was stated perfectly by shahin, the drummer of mordab and master of persia, he said: the fact that the majority of people that listen to metal listen to death metal because iranians themselves… because they have a big culture, because this feeling of largeness comes over you when you’re listening to death metal. looking at the headlining for this show, shows how much death metal matters. it’s the main taste of iranians in metal music. i think it is acceptable to say that since the metal music scene is growing in iran, most genres are growing as well, including very controversial styles of metal, like black metal. black metal is on the fringe of the metal scene in the west and highly controversial even between metalheads because of its satanic and misanthropic nature. in iran it seems to be becoming a very popular genre, pooya said: after lots of black metal, gothic metal going up, like for example, gothic metal, within temptation… after that band nightwish. black metal for example, sohrab alimardani and ali esfahani, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . shahin jebelli, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . behemoth, dimmu borgir, cradle of filth, immortal, you know, fans of these genres is going up in our… for example in our university i have lots of friends that listening to black metal. and when they saw me, exactly about that story i told you “are you listening to metal music?” “yes, yes, yes.” and we have lots of conversations and they say to me “you know i like black metal genre” and i say “oh my god! one person i have found that listen to black metal music.” as i said, black metal is extreme even within the metal community and to see it rising in popularity in a place like iran is not surprising. black metal originated in scandinavia and strongly rejects christianity; it uses every opportunity to portray christianity in the most vile way, and celebrates pre-christian pagan codes and ancient northern european mythology. the core message of black metal is that there is absolutely no hope, it is about emptiness, sadness, death, hate, and attaining solace in darkness. iranians have acquired a bricolage of black metal symbols and meanings and created a scene where christianity, which is vilified by the black metal scene in the west, has been substituted for shi’ism in iran and a focus on pre-islamic empires and ancient iranian mythology is valued. there are no direct references to shi’ism in any iranian black metal that i have come across, it is unnecessary, because just being a black metal band sends a clear message. astoundingly, of the bands from iran on encyclopedia mettalum are black metal bands. arvin, a satanist living in iran, from the book young and defiant in tehran said: gradually i became interested in the philosophy of satanic worship. you know, i like its sorrow, loneliness, and hatred. the world is full of misery, war, and hostility. it means that it is satan who dominates our life and not god. the master is indeed satan. look at our own society, which is called “divine.” i seek refuge from this divinity in satan. now, there are many people who listen to and play black metal who are not satanists. not all black metal carries the satanic element and not all fans are satanists as i pooya moradi, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . pierre hecker. “taking a trip to the middle eastern metal scene.” . shahram khosravi. young and defiant in tehran. . discussed in the literature review. in iran many metalheads listen to black metal strictly because it is the absolute opposite of islam. iranians are drawn to the evil and eeriness of the music because it is the ultimate attitude of defiance and a way to communicate to others that they are not supportive of the regime, and are an extreme individual. as i mentioned in chapter , mark levine discovered a black metal band in egypt that were devout muslims. the metal scene in egypt may have different elements than the scene in iran which supports such a phenomenon but i have not met any black metal fans from iran who were muslims. it will be interesting to see if this phenomenon spreads and creates a new vein of religiously grounded black metal in the middle east. it is ironic that many iranians find hope in the hopelessness of black metal. i just hope that the popularity of black metal does not crush the metal scene in iran for everyone, similar to what ali mentioned earlier about black metal, because it has the ability to terrify people, especially a government who rules in the name of god. the most popular band that is active in iran right now is the ancient melodic death metal band arsames. arsames was the king of the parsa, which had been given to him by his great-grandfather teispes. cambyses i was arsames’ first cousin and he had been given arshan to rule by teispes. cyrus the great, the son of cambyses i, gained control of parsa, creating the achaemenid empire, and brought arsames and his son darius to live in anshan with him. the transition was smooth but there was some shame involved when arsames relinquished his power to cyrus. darius hated cyrus for what he did to his family and when cyrus’ successor, his son cambyses ii, took control of the empire darius murdered him and became the leader of the persian empire. levine, mark. “heavy metal muslims.” . ancient melodic death metal is death metal set to the theme of ancient cultures. hamma mirwaisi. return of the medes: an analysis of iranian history. tucson: wheatmark, . . print. arsames’ music is about ancient persian history and they tell many stories of ancient kings, battles, and folklore. all the metal musicians in iran look up to arsames because of the success they have had as a band. they have been together since and have played in festivals in istanbul, turkey, dubai, and the u.a.e. they have been invited to play in other festivals in the middle east, india, and eastern europe, but for varying reasons, some involving the iranian government, some not, they could not make it to those festivals. i experienced the almost god-like status arsames has in relation to fellow iranian metal musicians while i was in armenia. ali madashari, the lead singer, and morteza shahrami, the lead guitar player, are the core members of the band and are treated like father figures by the other metal musicians. they are humble and gracious guys and have taken the role as the “spokesband,” so to speak, for the iranian metal community. they have learned how to promote themselves and maneuver around the iranian regime without too much trouble. meraj had this to say about arsames and their influential status in iran: what most people like about metal music, the taste of iranian people is completely obvious and shown in their music. the principles of the society is completely obvious and shown in their music and all the norms and unnorms of listening to metal in iran. arsames really showed a lot by being the headliner and being from a religious city. meraj is absolutely right. the lyrics of arsames songs speak to the pride of persian culture and the attitude of arsames and the way they present their music gives iranians pride in their culture. the feeling of empowerment that arsames give to their fans is the reason they are respected so much. here are the lyrics from two songs from their album immortal identity: persepolis standing antiquity on the ground with dignity meraj, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . mythic territory that make us proud to be irani kingdom of toleration away from carnage majestic throne our cultural heritage stay tenacious the mountain of courageousness there is no fire to destroy your stone shining place on our land the diamond of persia we never built columns on the blood and genocide the symbol of freedom without lashing the masonry not to instead of lashing people for masonry not for build the columns on the blood and genocide there is no fire to destroy your stone shining palace on our land the diamond of persia cyrus the great unsuccessful guys in capturing our land unsuccessful guys in capturing our blood voming with fear and hesitation varying hill of presents on their shoulders they're staring with protruded eyes looking at the sun but they see nothing unsuccessful folks in capturing our bravery unsuccessful folks in capturing our glory voming with fear and hesitation varying hill of presents on their shoulders their souls have shrunk in their corpses their minds have been torn in pieces defeating all their aces we had on our feet their kisses our cyrus gave them culture no pain no sigh no torture to live in peace is our nature not killing like a vulture arsames. “persepolis.” immortal identity. self-release. . this is the first kingdom of the world (persian empire) the state on the earth as wide as the sun unsuccessful guys in capturing our land unsuccessful guys in capturing our blood coming with fear and hesitation carrying hill of presents on their shoulders they're staring with protruded eyes looking at the sun but they see nothing i must say that as an american i do not have the ancient cultural history that persians have. my cultural history only goes back roughly three hundred years while persian cultural history dates back thousands. after watching and listening to arsames it makes me wish i had a culture as ancient and diverse as persian culture. the lyrics are so powerful and i got to see how this band makes iranians feel and why they are so revered. arsames is based in the city of mashhad, iran, the second most important religious city in iran because the shrine of imam reza, the eighth imam, is located there. arsames deserves a lot of credit for being able to peacefully continue their work in such a religious city. i think that metal bands in iran can learn a lot from arsames and how they maneuver the religious and public sphere. one of the main things that metal musicians lack in iran is music education. i asked my informants about their knowledge in music theory and how persian culture influences their music, and most of them told me that they are just not educated enough in persian classical music to feel comfortable incorporating it into metal music. they explained to me that metal music comes from the west where the modes and scales of music are totally different than in iran. arsames. “cyrus the great.” immortal identity. self-release. . refer back to pg. in the literature review. ironically i was discussing this issue with pooya and pezhman outside the university of music in yerevan and they told me that it is difficult for them to connect metal with persian classical music because there is no place where they can study it. the only option that they have right now is to learn what they can from the internet. pooya said, “if you want to use traditional instruments you must be so powerful in theory to connect these but some of the bands use it as a sound effect you know, for example, using the sound of sitar in metal music, but as sound effect, not theory playing, yes?” pooya is saying here that of course any band can take a sitar and play some notes on it to incorporate the instrument into a song, but to actually play the instrument as it was intended to be played on persian scales and incorporate that into metal music which is played using western scales is extremely difficult. i discussed this with grs as well and here is what they said: jeremy: what about rhythms or scales? pooyan: it is a different issue. is a different issue i think you need to have a lot of information and you have learned a lot of things to use the subject in your music. farhaz: it is not that easy. pooyan: it’s not that easy. farhaz: it is really hard. yashar: but the point is it’s very easy to use an instrument like sitar or daf in the middle of a song if you just play drums but the point is how to convert the original rhythms… to convert it into metal. pooya moradi, interview. pooyan madadi, faraz jabbari, and yashar mojtahzadeh, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . since ahmadinejad became president in iran he has gotten rid of most of the reform minded officials and replaced them with military commanders and religious hardliners. these officials have cracked down on music very hard and shut down all music academies. pezhman said, “they close all of music academy in our country, like daneshgha tehran, university of tehran. university of sooreh in our country in tehran closed the music, academic… you know we don’t have any academic.” the only music education that iranians can receive is through private instructors and this seems to be fairly common as a few of my informants talked about the private instruction they were receiving from professional musicians. for example pooya talked with me about how he is learning the theory of jazz privately, he said: ali is our theoristic teacher, he is the father of jazz in iran and he is learning music in france, in a conservatory in france and he is teaching jazz music for about thirty-five years in france and england and after that he is coming back to our country and when we found him “oh my god! he is my god!” you know. the lack of music theory education has divided the metal musicians in iran on the subject of whether persian classical music should be fused with metal music. certain bands like mordab, arsames, and tarantist, and master of persia feel more comfortable with fusing the two and have created some great metal with a persian feel. a perfect example is the song “ years” by mordab. the introduction of the song incorporates a persian scale on the guitar that gives a very ominous middle eastern feel to the song to portray iran’s ancient history. ali dareini. “you can’t stop the music, say young iranians after ban.” washingtonpost.com. the washington post, dec. . web. sept. . pezhman moradi, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . pooya moradi, interview. mordabband. “ years.” online video clip. youtube. youtube, aug . web. feb. . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkat m djs. when i talked with arash he said, “well i am personally in my band tarantist, i am trying to mix, or bringing some kind of like local rhythms and melodies into that, to sound like something new and exotic. ali and morteza said: ali: yes, yes, we want to use rhythms from traditional music with distortion. morteza: we want to incorporate our sound, our culture in metal music. on the other side, there are bands that are against fusing musical theory with metal music. bands like credenc and death-fuse are not interested in fusion, they want to keep their culture out of their music. it is not because they are less educated in persian musical theory it is simply that they do not want to be identified within the metal community as being exotic. not because they are ashamed of their heritage, but they want to be judged by their metal only, not where they are from. when it comes to persian instruments there is division as well. bands like master of persia, because of their folklore style of metal use persian instruments regularly. meraj said, “yes of course, in our album, and album we have a sitar, daf, mix with metal. tar, ne, doduk, flute, daf, dohol, neanban. we have fifteen, fifteen instrumental, folkloric instrumental, is in this album.” ali, the lead guitarist for mordab, told me that he would love to use persian instruments in all his songs but because of the differences in western and persian music theory it is very hard to use them correctly. he said, “you can’t just pick up a sitar, it is very complicated. i would bring in a professional otherwise i could ruin the track. i use arash, interview. ali madarshahi and moteza shahrami, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . meraj, interview. these instruments only when it is perfect.” ali and morteza of arsames said: ali: we don’t want to use all the traditional instruments… maybe some parts. morteza: there is a limit for us to use these kind of instrument, sitar, daf… we try not to. we try to use our intonation or accent within metal structure to distinguish ourselves. persian force is open to the idea of using persian instruments in their band but they feel that because there is no place they can get educated about persian instruments they just do not feel comfortable trying it. bands like death-fuse and grs are against using persian instruments in their music. here is part of my interview with grs: jeremy: do you guys ever use like a daf or a… pooyan: once, we did it once. yashar: it’s something that, i think so many iranian bands try to do that... pooyan: it not work. jeremy: it doesn’t work? pooyan: in the long time. in the long time it not work, i think, this is my opinion. in long time. for most of my informants it comes down not having enough education with persian music theory to incorporate the instruments properly. the fear of not knowing if you are proceeding in the correct manner is also a deterrent because i got the impression that they could really embarrass themselves if they used the instruments in the wrong way, ali esfahani, interview. ali madarshahi and morteza shahrami, interview. pooyan madadi and yashar mojtahzadeh, interview. and this goes back to the nationalistic aura that surrounds iranian music. i was curious if this pertained to lyrics as well and wanted to know how they felt about singing in persian and english. laudan nooshin interviewed an iranian rock band called in her article “the language of rock: iranian youth, popular music, and identity.” she asked them about why they use english lyircs and one of their members said: i am so tired of answering this question. do you guys ask sepultura or air or bjork why they don’t sing in their native tongue? this phenomenon started in england and the us for instance, german rock is never sung in german, and if it is it will never go beyond german borders. prominent bands such as the brazilian sepultura, the german metal groups jane and eloy that are famous worldwide make use of english lyrics. all of the bands i interviewed had the same feelings about language. they felt persian in metal music is not a good idea and not something they are interested in trying. there were four different reasons for this, the main reason being that english is the only choice if you are interested in being an international band. sina said, “if you want to work like, internationally, then you need to. you need to have your listener to know what you are talking about, if you are going to talk in persian no one is gonna understand what you are talking about. that’s why we only writing the lyrics in english.” sohrab, the rhythm guitarist for mordab said: “mordab wants to communicate with a wider audience, with other countries other than iran with its music. ya, like you’ve heard “ years” you can check its lyric up and see what he’s singing about, but when a band is singing only in farsi, it will only communicate with people in iran.” the other bands had similar statements and pooyan, the lead guitarist of grs pointed out that it makes the music making process harder for them to incorporate english lyircs laudan nooshin. “language of rock.” . sina talebian, interview. sohrab alimardani, interview. because english is not their first language, but despite the difficulty they feel it is very important. my informant’s portrayed one thing very clearly, they all want to learn english better. i was expecting to practice my persian with them, and we did a little, but these guys wanted to speak english with an american more than anything and i hope they learned a lot from me. the second reason is that according to sina you can translate your feelings better in english. he said, “i think you can translate your feelings better in english than in persian, like right now when i am talking to my family, like from time to time i use some english words in my… while i’m speaking. when i’m thinking about it i think the best way to put it is in english because i can’t find any better words in farsi.” the third reason is that the persian language does not have as many words you can use to express yourself, as english does. using english you can be much more precise about what you want to say and the meaning can be interpreted globally, and also, many of these musicians know english and there are many feelings and expressions that just do not translate into farsi. here is what the guys from credenc said: navid: our lyrics are english. jeremy: right. navid: all of them. jeremy: all of them, so you’ve never… shahrokh: so far… of course. jeremy: you’ve never thought about using farsi in any of your… navid: no because farsi i think is a little difficult in a… kind of western music. shahrokh: it doesn’t fit in the music. it doesn’t fit in this kind of music. if you do fit it doesn’t sound good. then you can’t… you won’t be able to… sina talebian, interview. navid: choose a lot of words in your lyrics. because it’s kinda funny when you use some words in farsi as a lyric but it’s not in english, you can use anything you want. the fourth reason is the stresses used in english and the large amount of breaks or choppiness to english. persian is a very poetic language and it has a very beautiful flow to it. in metal music this is not good because there is a lot of growling, screaming and changes in tone of voice and it is hard to do that in persian. sina said, “think about it like you want to say a simple sentence like ‘i can’t take this anymore’ and in farsi it’s like ‘man deeghe nemi toonam’ so it’s just a longer sentence and you can’t fit it in, in one or two bar, and… just the stress are different and i think it takes a lot more time to try to fit those lyrics into music that way.” sohrab and elnaz said: sohrab: and there is another reason as well i think, i can check with him too but, this type of music, metal type music really fits english because of the accents. because persian it’s just like uhh, more flowing… elnaz: up and down. ebb and flow is different. sohrab: ya, but english you’ve got accent that really fits the metal music so that’s why i think many metal bands in iran, even local bands use english language for their lyrics. a reason that was not told to me by informants but discussed in laudan nooshin’s article “underground, overground: rock music and youth discourses in iran,” is that by using english lyrics it totally disconnects a band from the nationalist discourse that navid asadian and shahrokh kafashzadeh, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . sina talebian, interview. sohrab and elnaz alimardani, interview. surrounds iranian music. this is not the result that some bands want and mordab is a perfect example. they incorporate a persian identity into their music and their goal is not too disconnected from iranian nationalism, to redefine what it means to be iranian. there was one band at the festival called avesta who sang their lyrics in persian, but unfortunately i did not get to interview them. they were one of my favorite bands at the festival and i loved the fact that they sang in persian. arash, their vocalist and rhythm guitarist, has a great voice and he uses the language superbly in his songs. the only other metal band i know about that sings their songs in persian is electroqute. lyrics for metal bands in iran are a very controversial topic because in a country that is governed by religion every topic becomes political. most of the bands i interviewed sing about social problems in their lyrics. pezhman said, “the lyrics is about the problems in the public. but because our genre is about black metal, as you know, lots of black metal band lyrics is about satan and god, but our lyrics is about problem, problem about everything, like rape, thieving, or things that are a problem for your mind.” ali said: most of the lyrics of the songs are antiwar and the mental occupation of the problems of iranians. also problems that the whole world is involved with, not just iran, physically and emotionally. also love songs that deal with hate, love, and lies, problems that drive a person to commit suicide. problems the whole world is struggling with. a song titled “war” off their album room no. x, written by ali and performed by mordab, is an excellent example of one of their antiwar songs. here are the lyrics: laudan nooshin. “underground, overground.” . amir v. khakestari by electroqute. online video clip. youtube. youtube, jun. . web. mar. . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weimqtmj_yi. to read lyrics from some of the bands i interviewed go to appendix b. pezhman moradi, interview. ali esfahani, interview. from first day until the end war has spoken about death innocent hearts, such roses are overturned in the river virtuous spirits in way of home turns in blood they see their doom criminal minds are so glad to confuse social rules stop the war stop the war oh you have to hide let them die look at her eyes, you can see fear of the noise, vagrancy what is her sin? she must be in battlefield, conspiracy brutal countries, as demons have eaten lands, no remorse millionaires rule in earth you have my words, you're like horse stop the war stop the war oh you have to hide let them die the music problematizes the metal scene just as much as any controversial lyrics, so iranian metal musicians do not necessarily need to make their lyrics overly controversial. nooshin wrote: ultimately, rock’s meanings are shaped by a series of discourses: official government discourses through which its peripheral position has been largely defined; the verbal discourses of musicians themselves, which oscillate between capitalizing on their enforced peripherality while also recognizing the need to become part of the “center”; and finally, the discourses of the music itself. and it is the latter that have become a unique space of empowerment, a forum in which young iranians—politically marginalized for so long—are making their voices heard. mordab. “war.” room no. x. cd. zurvan. . laudan nooshin. “underground, overground.” . what nooshin explains here is that since the revolution the official discourse of rock music in iran associates it with the west and its anti-establishment ideology. for these reasons alone rock music without any lyrics carries a very oppositional quality. there is no place for rock music to exist outside of this discourse which is why it is underground. when lyrics are added to the music it only adds to the opposition that is already being displayed and is like throwing gasoline on an already large bonfire. chapter analysis: musical instruments in iran acquiring instruments in iran can be difficult if you do not have a lot of money, but access to the instruments is not a problem. there are many shops in tehran that sell musical instruments and musical accessories. the interesting aspect of buying things in tehran, whether it is a musical instrument or a lamp, is that there is a special street or section of the city that all shops for a certain item are gathered. for example, if you want to buy a lamp you would go to lalezar street, if you want a guitar you would go to jomhuri street, if you want a sound system you would go to the opposite side of jomhuri street. shahin told me that it is important that i understand that iran did not always have music shops. when he started playing drums ten years ago there were no shops where you could buy musical instruments and advance your skills. he said, “there are many, many shopping, buying instrument everything. but ten years ago there is no shopping, buy instrument, there is no drum set, there is no guitar, there is no everything, understand? but yes there are just folkloric instrument. there is no cymbal, no drums, no… people today have access to these.” today there are shops everywhere on jomhuri street selling musical instruments. mordab told me more about jomhuri during our interview: shahin jebelli, interview. elnaz: ya, there is a street that is the center, center for instruments and it is called jomhuri. sohrab: you just go and even if they don’t have it on display you go and ask them “i want this” and they will bring it to you like in a week or something. it’s easy to buy, ya. ali: like dubai, but in iran is very, more. sohrab: ya, it’s real easier. there are a lot of musical instruments you can buy. ya, it’s not a problem. there are even a few shops that specialize in metal music, which was interesting to hear because it is a huge risk for a merchant to make his shop vulnerable by supporting metal music. these shops appear to be regular music shops just like the others in tehran but the owners like metal music and help metal musicians. according to sohrab you can buy cds, tickets to live shows, guitars, and other instruments. these shops are not legal, but they manage to stay under the radar and supply metalheads with the things they need. the problem for the metal musicians that buy instruments at these shops is that they cannot play them. shahin said, “ya, you can go to buy it, but you can’t play it. metal music, rock music, everything. and this is, this is very big problem now and uhh, everything is forbidden, everything is bad.” mehrad said, “there are stores in iran… music… music instrument store in iran that you can buy instrument, maybe a metal guitar… like v or something. like it’s not a problem, the problem is you can’t use it you elnaz and sohrab alimardani, and ali esfahani, interview. sohrab alimardani, interview. shahin jebelli, interview. know… you can just buy it. you can’t use it.” the availability of instruments in iran is a complicated topic because instruments are easy to acquire, and difficult at the same time. it is clear from my informants that there is no shortage of instruments in iran and you can get any instrument you want, but there is one catch, as yashar, the drummer for grs said: you can have any single instrument, anything… any tiny part of the drum, drum head, tama, cymbal, zildjian, paiste, anything… if you have… it’s just for you to spend a little money. you can order, you can go to shop and say, “i want this custom… the best pedal, or the cymbal, or the cymbal stand, the best snare, or the best drum head.” you can order and they provide you but… but… as i said you have to spend money. drummers seem to have particularly hard time because there are so many intricate pieces to a drum set. pouya said, “the drummers is more than problem… so many pieces and is too expensive. you know for example, last night after festival our drummer say ‘did you see avesta cymbals?’ is about , , toman in our country!” although there is no shortage of instruments in iran that does not mean that the instruments metal musicians are looking for are available. metal musicians use certain brands of instruments to achieve the metal sound they are looking for and to portray a certain image. faraz said, “there is always an instrument, you love to have that instrument but you can’t get that. i myself when i want to buy a bass guitar i exactly know what i need. that instrument doesn’t exist (in iran) you know so…” the selection of different brands is a problem in iran and many metal musicians cannot buy the instruments they want. arash said: you only have a few choices, you cannot get the thing that you want so you have to deal with whatever they have. you know whatever is available there. and of mehrad motamedi, interview. yashar mojtahedzadeh, interview. pooya moradi, interview. faraz jabbari, interview. course we don’t have like good instruments, and like the top brands, and like up to date amplifiers, and those things. either, i mean the only option is that you may just go buy from abroad, or somebody brings it to you. faraz said, “i had to go to shops and play with any instrument that they have. i chose the instrument that is nearest to… had in my mind. for example, i went to that shop, i played with that bass, and i said to myself ‘that’s it… is the nearest sound… the closest sound.’” the quality of the instruments that people have access to is also a problem. the quality of instruments that the shops in iran carry is poor because the instruments come from places like china, japan, and india. high quality guitars are rare in the music shops and they are extremely expensive. pezhmn said, “all of the brands from china, japan, and indian guitars but the best guitar center have, all of them, one jackson, one bc rich, one washburn, you know… and they are so expensive, for example i bring , , toman and the owner said, “oh, that instrument is about , , .’” a guitar company that makes high quality guitars that iranians have access to is ibanez. ibanez is based in japan and there are no trade restrictions between japan and iran so it is much easier to get a high quality ibanez guitar than any other brand. the us, and many european countries do not trade with iran and guitar brands like washburn, dean, and bc rich have to be smuggled in, therefore they cost a lot more. many of my informants told me how they spend months waiting for a guitar they are interested in to show up in a shop. i asked my informants about buying instruments online and if this was an easier way to acquire instruments, but this is an even bigger problem since there is no trade between iran and western countries, companies are not allowed to ship their products to iran. arash, interview. faraz jabbari, interview. pezhman moradi, interview. the other problem is that iranians cannot buy anything online anyway because iranians do not have credit cards. arash said, “if you want to purchase something online you have to have credit card so… we don’t have that. international credit card, and then post office, or those companies in the west… in america or in europe, they will not ship to iran.” another problem that people have when they buy an instrument in iran is determining if it is fake or real. many of the instruments that shops sell are copies of expensive brands and shops sell them as if they are the name brand guitar and people get ripped off. pooya told me a story about an experience he had in a music shop on jomhuri street. he said: about two years ago i and my brother have lots of information about our genre and other genre instruments. i am going to johmhuri and i say “oh my god is that gibson?” it had working on the wood you know, umm… d pictures, for example dragon comes out and i go into the store and say “sir, how much does it…” and he said, “you can’t buy it!” and i told him “how do you know i don’t have any money are you looking at my side?” and he said, “please keep your voice down it is about , , . now you have the money?” and i… and one person came to that store before me and he buy a piano, a grand piano,yamaha, and he’s going to pay money about , , toman, uhh… , , toman. in your country is about… i think now price of the dollar is $ , $ us dollar. i said to him “are you kidding me!” because that gibson is from china, not the us. us never do that to some artwork on wood. he said, “keep your voice down he is paying us” and that person catch all of the money and go out and no buying piano. not only do they have to worry about the instruments from other countries being fake they have to worry about shop owners altering cheap guitars to look like name-brand expensive guitars. pezhman said: you know in our country we have two problem, expensive instrument and fake instrument. you know, our country…. because all of the stores have no choice to bring the best guitars on the us and very expensive so they call to for example, nearest brands and bring it and then change the brand with lots of problem and sell it to each people and they think for example, buying a jackson, but it is from china. arash, interview. pooya moradi, interview. the most reliable way to purchase a quality, name-brand instrument in iran is to have a connection to someone who travels to the west and can bring you what you want. connections are very difficult to find, especially one that can be trusted, so most people do not have this option. pooya told me about a friend he has in the west and a guitar he bought from him. he said: one of my friends called me and said, “yes i can. i have a mastercard,” you know we have lots of problems to have a good instrument in our country. so i told him i want jackson that was a signature of mushroomhead guitarist and he told me that it was about $ for you. i said, “ok i have no problem,” in my country the price going to be umm… , , tomans and i said, “ok i have this money.” after he bring this to my country the dollar is going up and i must pay it in my country about , , tomans. i say, “ok i don’t want this you can sell it and i buy another.” another problem that became apparent when listening to pooya’s story is because iran’s economy is so bad the inflation of iranian money fluctuates drastically and swiftly makes things so expensive at times that iranians cannot afford them. pooya also told me that he has an aunt that lives in canada and they always ask her to buy things for them because she visits iran occasionally and can bring them. even with a family member as a connection it is difficult because iranians cannot just send large amounts of money to family members overseas and vice versa. the government pays close attention to these things as sina, who is currently living in the us going to school, said, “even when my father keeps sending me money and everything, they always call me to see where the money is coming from and what do you want to do with this money and all these crazy questions.” the black market in iran is massive and is always an option for people to buy things that they would not be able to buy legally. elnaz said, “we have a saying in farsi, they pezhman moradi, interview. pooya moradi, interview. sina talebian, interview. say ‘az sheere morghe ta june adamizad.’ it means ‘a hen’s milk to a person’s life you can find in tehran.’” hens obviously do not have milk but this is the point, if you wanted it you could find it in tehran. money is a huge factor in the black market as well, because buying things from the black market that have to be smuggled into the country costs a lot of money. not all items people buy from the black market are expensive though, especially things that do not have to be smuggled, like dvds. elnaz and ali told me: ali: all the hollywood movies in iran cheap. i buy dvd with… elnaz: five movies in it… ali: more than, to movies… elnaz: for like half a buck. ali: hd quality, in the dvd with one dollar. elnaz: less. one thing that my informants have been telling me when they talk about things that they are forbidden to have is that they will always get what they want, and they will always find a way. ali told me a couple times that “we will find the eye of a needle and go through.” metal musicians must be very cautious with their equipment because the time and money it takes to replace something can be a big problem. this is especially hard for metal musicians because metal music is not meant to be played conservatively, but this is exactly how metal musicians in iran must play, conservative. i talked with credenc about this dilemma: siamak: they don’t have repairing support. there are no dealerships. elnaz alimardani, interview. elnaz alimardani and ali esfahani, interview. ali esfahani, interview. navid: when something breaks you can’t fix it because there is nowhere to fix your instrument. jeremy: especially drums, i mean a drum set is a hundred pieces of equipment i mean, if something breaks do you have to like wait weeks before you can find… shahrokh: uhh… i think it is easier when it comes to drums… jeremy: oh, really. shahrokh: yes, because when you are talking about a guitar, electric guitar, there are you know electronics and you know, stuff like that, but about drums it’s all physical and it’s all you know like… navid: hardware. shahrokh: hardware, right. siamak said that there are no official vendors in iran where they can get their instruments repaired. it is important to note that companies that make instruments like jackson, bc rich, and zildjian do not have official shops in the us either. they sell their products through local music shops and music superstores like guitar center. these places also do maintenance and repair work. in iran music shops do not do repair work and a broken instrument can be catastrophic. iranians really have a tough time acquiring and maintaining their instruments but this has not hindered them from doing whatever they can to become better musicians. the quality of some of the metal music coming out of iran is very good and it would be incredible to see how metal musicians in iran would improve if they had free access to musical instruments on the global market. siamak mobarhan, navid asadian, and shahrokh kafashzadeh, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . chapter analysis: metalheads in iran are there a lot of metalheads in iran? well, it depends on how you look at it. i asked my informants this question, but it can be perceived in an optimistic or pessimistic way, much like the question, “is the glass half full or half empty?” i received varying answers from my informants, for example, bands like credenc and death-fuse told me that there are not very many people in iran listening to metal music for the simple reason that not many people know about metal music. bands like master of persia, mordab, and persian force disagreed and told me that there are many metal fans in iran. meraj believed that if he arranged the persian metal festival inside iran at least , people would attend. shahin said, “there are million people iranian ok? i think to you for example percent of people listen to music i think… , , people listen to metal music ya.” no one really knows how many people are interested in metal music in iran because it is completely underground. answers to this question will always vary drastically until metal moves aboveground, but the aspect of this question that can be fairly judged is that iranians believe the metal scene is growing. ali said, “during the past few years i think they have increased. if you see on facebook you can see that each band has credenc and sina talebian, interview. meraj, interview. shahin jebelli, interview. many fans.” one thing all my informants did agree on is that the majority of people interested in metal music are young people. pouya and pezhman believe that most metal fans are between the age of fifteen and thirty. i agree with them, but it is important to note that more than a few of my informants were over thirty years old. the youth may be the majority of people listening to metal but there are older people listening to and playing metal as well. pooya told me a story about an encounter he had with an older cab driver in tehran, he said: one day i catch a cab and sit, sit exactly near him, in the front of the car and he said to me, “don’t worry i play music” and i said, “no it is ok” and when he play it i say “is that ac/dc?!” and he said, “yes, you love it?!” and he is about, for example or years old. i said, “oh yes i like that! thank you very much!” every taxi i catch, songs is too… dim, fucking, i hate that… and he really say “oh thanks god one customer come along and like my song.” then i say “ok, give your number and i call you every time i want a cab.” it is clear that we cannot get an accurate picture of how many metalheads live in iran but we can determine who they are. all of the metalheads i interviewed came from middle to upper middle class families, because in order to travel to armenia, play gigs, buy instruments, equipment, and have space to practice is expensive. this is a sharp contrast to metalheads in the western world, who tend to be middle to lower class. another good example is that all the bands i interviewed in yerevan had rented flats or apartments to stay in while they were there, not one of them stayed in a hotel. now this could simply be that they could get cheap group rates by renting a house as opposed to staying in multiple hotel rooms, or maybe they have connections and know people who own flats in yerevan, but regardless these flats were very nice and could not have been cheap. ali madarshahi, interview. pooya moradi, interview. deena weinstein. heavy metal: the music and its culture. massachusetts: cambridge, . print. they are also very educated. most of my informants were attending a university or had attended one in iran and some of them had advanced degrees in different types of engineering, biochemistry, and physics. i distinctly remember when the bands gathered a couple days after the festival to discuss future events, at the flat of persian force, i looked around the room seeing a bunch of metalheads, but if they all changed their clothes and put on a suit i was surrounded by doctors, scientists, and engineers. nooshin had much the same experience when she spent time with underground rock and metal musicians in iran. she said, “members are primarily urban, young, educated, relatively affluent, as well as modernist, internationalist, and secular in outlook, lifestyle, and aspiration. the global metal scene has always been viewed as an all-male scene but as the culture has grown women have become more and more involved. women are members of many famous metal bands around the world including bands like arch enemy, lacuna coil, otep, and nightwish. women in iran also like metal music and are becoming more involved in the scene. all of my informants told me that they had women friends who listened to metal and a few of the bands like grs, arsames, and mordab all brought women with them to yerevan. some were wives, friends, photographers, and band managers. i asked arash if he had many female friends that listened to metal and he said, “ya, ya, a lot of them. a lot of my friends, they were coming to our like, basement for practice, i mean watching we practice music and also listening to metal music. i have, personally i have a lot of female friends that they love metal music. ya, there are a lot of them.” i met the two most important women involved in the iranian metal scene currently and they are sanam, the lead singer of grs, and anahid, the co-lead singer of master of laudan nooshin. “underground, overground.” . arash, interview. persia. these women are inspirational to other women in iran who have a desire to express themselves but just have not found the courage to try. these two women are just as much an inspiration to men as to women because of their passion for the music and the high level of risk they carry being female musicians and vocalists in iran. it has been established how metal music arrived in iran, but why do iranians like metal so much? iranians love music in general, but metal music is how more and more are choosing to express themselves. the guys in credenc told me that none of them have any academic knowledge of music theory at all. they are all civil and electric engineers, but they love music so much that despite their lack of knowledge about music theory and the illegality of metal, they will continue to make music. mark levine believes they love metal because even though the iran-iraq war is over, iran is a highly militarized society and heavy metal culture is an identity that is against this. one of levine’s informants said, “metal is like an asylum. a mental asylum that rejuvenates you and gives you hope.” sina said, “i think it is just a love we have for the music that we keep holding on to… making these songs and playing music.” a deeper answer is, for the same reason that many people in the west like metal, because it is an excellent outlet for emotion. pooya and pezhman told me: pezhman: i told lots of my friends, when i am angry, so pissed off, i play my guitar, and i am going to be cool… pooya: we can’t imagine what happened one hour ago. pezhman: you know, for example i fight my brother… i just, just play one song credenc, interview. mark levine. “headbanging against repressive regimes.” . sina talebian, interview. and i say “ok i am so sorry.” the songs, and playing guitar, and musics, i myself, it cools me down very much. it doesn’t matter i have problem or not i am pissed off or not it makes me so cool down. sina told me that his father did not understand why metal vocalists had to scream the lyrics instead of sing in a more normal way. sina told me, “i always keep telling him, i’m like ‘when you are frustrated, when you’re angry, you’re not like ‘i’m angry.’ so you’re angry! you need to show your like, emotion and everything that is how we show it in metal.’” sina does not need that outlet for his emotion as much as he used to now that he is living in the us he said: i came here like months ago so, and back then in iran i used to listen to metal music every day, i mean from my house to my workplace and everything, but ever since i came here… i can’t… i listen to metal, but it is harder to listen to metal because everything is perfectly normal here. you don’t have no restriction, no boundaries, so you’re like free, your mind is free, your mind is not restricted. you don’t have those frustrations that you used to have in iran and you’re like “i think i am going to listen to, i don’t know, ben howard [a british folk guitarist] for now.” so, and that has a lot to do, i mean when i’m looking back at myself when i was in iran even the lyrics that i wrote, they’re coming out of the frustration that we experience back then because of everything. my informants had much to tell me about the characteristics of metalheads in iran. they were very vocal about the stereotypes and judgments that are placed on them, and the fact that they are not true. they want people to understand that metalheads in iran are sophisticated, talented, professional, and determined. yashar said, “they are very [have a lot of] potential, they are very sophisticated, they are very talented, they can do a lot of things but they just need a little bit of support and pezhman and pooya moradi, interview. sina talebian, interview. sina talebian, interview. help to expose themselves and show to the rest of the world what they are made of.” pooyan told me that metal musicians in iran should not be judged on their work because it just cannot compare to the west at this time. people need to see that they have a strong professional attitude and they take the idea of being in a band and creating music seriously. one thing i heard and felt from all of my informants is that they will never give up. sina told me “they never give, they never give up. that’s the thing with all these guys in iran.” i absolutely believe this is true because metal music is not a passing phase for metalheads, it is their outlet, their religion in a sense. they need it to survive. without metal music many of my informants could possibly be in a very dark place where all hope is lost and they turn toward drugs and risky behavior just to feel something. faraz believes in the determination of metal musicians but he had a more realistic view of the success that determination may or may not bring, and he said, “i think the important thing is that we do our best. we want to do something, and we wanted to do something, and we tried our best.” metal musicians also struggle with negative feelings like doubt, depression, and hopelessness. there is no future as a musician in any genre of popular music (except islamic pop) in iran and i heard many stories about encounters my informants had with family and friends about being a musician and not many of them were positive. some of them have support from their immediate families and some do not, but either way, extended family and friends did not approve of their desire to be a musician. it was not yashar mojtahedzadeh, interview. pooyan madadi, interview. sina talebian, interview. faraz jabbari, interview. because they disapproved of the music, but the fact that there is no future for a musician in iran and they do not want to see their family member or close friend waste their life. depression is a very big problem for many metal musicians. faraz expressed to me his disbelief with the metal scene and he questioned his love for metal and could not figure out why he loved it because it caused him nothing but trouble. pooyan emphasized faraz’s disbelief and said, “we are doing this in iran!” he said this while shaking his head and i understood that these guys have just as much trouble processing the fact that they are criminals as any westerner. arash, who is fortunate to be in the us, receives e-mails all the time from youth in iran asking for advice, support, and encouragement to combat the hopelessness they feel. he said, “well, some people are seeing no hope in their, for their future. i mean i’m getting e-mails from these people and i’m trying to just tell them that this is not the way that you should think. just look forward, make something as a goal or a plan. take it. go for it. you know.” i imagine this is difficult for him because he knows about the emotions these people are experiencing first-hand and there is not much he can do about it except send them e-mails of hope and encouragement. unemployment of the youth in iran is a big problem and one the iranian regime has not found a solution for. in iran youth with less than a secondary education have a better chance of finding a job than someone with a degree. the government has responded with superficial policies like offering free public services and marriage and employment subsidies, but these are treating the symptoms not the root of the problem. pooyan madadi, interview. arash, interview. djavad salehi-isfahani. “growing up in iran: tough times for the revolution’s children.” brown journal of world affairs . ( ): . academic search premier. web. aug. . djavad salehi-isfahani wrote in growing up in iran: iran’s over-regulated labor markets constrain employers from taking advantage of rising demand to create jobs for youth. an important reason why firms do not employ more youth is because youth lack the skills they need. moreover, the jobs for young workers who do have the skills are restricted to those newly created because existing jobs are occupied by older workers and are not open to competition by young workers. despite all the negative feelings and situations that metal musicians in iran struggle with, they band together and continue on. in my interview with grs, yashar, with much conviction, said: after thirty one years you will find what you are made of. you can stand in front of the mirror and say to yourself “hey, i am a musician. nothing but a musician.” i have a lot of different experiences far away from music, i’m just a medical technician. a lot of ups and downs, but this is who i am, this is my life. there is no way out to being a musician for me, it’s difficult for me to do something else, i mean, i am a musician this is what i do. everyone in the room affirmed his statement with cheers and i knew he was speaking for everyone. i think as long as these guys are not taken away from each other they will survive. i wish there was a more positive outlook, but their future as musicians is unknown. appearances in iran are very important. islamic dress is very conservative for men and women and style in iran is very limited. clothing in iran should not be worn that would attract attention but some people bend the rules as much as they can. meraj said, “if you want to be different you are bringing problems. yes, you even may go to prison if you look very much different than someone else.” meraj is referring to the very noticeable way that most metalheads dress. metal culture originated in the west and when iranians use any aspect of this in their appearance it is very noticeable. there are no clothing requirements for men under ibid. . yashar mojtahedzadeh, interview. meraj, interview. islamic law, but in the quran it says that clothing is simply to cover your private areas. in iran this means clothing that makes you stand out from other people is not good and potentially illegal. there are varying degrees of what is considered “flashy” and the combination of flashy, western style, and metal create a very dangerous combination in iran. metalheads in iran embrace metal culture because it visibly separates them from the islamic republic. women in iran are required to wear the hijab in public to protect their modesty. many women push the boundaries of how the hijab should be worn and it is their form of political resistance. ten years ago the hijab was heavily regulated in public and morality police arrested and tortured offenders, but today women have banded together and changed the social norm. women now wear relaxed islamic dress in many areas of tehran as well as make-up. this does not mean that women are not harassed anymore about their appearance, because like any social unnorm in iran if someone is in the wrong place at the wrong time the authorities will confront them. anahid was faced with an interesting dilemma while she lived in iran because she has a mohawk and a faravahar (a guardian angel in zoroastrianism) tattooed on the side of her head. she dressed very conservative in public because she could not afford to be harassed by the authorities. she told me she had to be extremely careful, she said, “i had to cover my head entirely. i had to wear a long dress. it had to be in a way that nothing is showing because they may catch me for worshipping satan and send me to prison.” the intensity of the way a metalhead dresses has different levels. for example, black quran. “ : .” quran.com. quran, n.d. web. sept. . pardis mahdavi. passionate uprisings: iran’s sexual revolution. stanford: stanford university p, . . print. anahid, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . metal culture is the ultimate in defiance and individuality. black metalheads wear tight black jeans, boots, and a black t-shirt with their favorite black metal band or a pagan symbol. they have many accessories like spiked belts and gauntlets, pentagrams or upside down cross necklaces. they also apply paint to their face which is known as “corpsepaint.” this paint is applied to make a person look as evil and demonic as possible. i am not familiar with any country that is accepting of black metal culture. next is the more traditional metalhead clothing which is boots, jeans, and a black t- shirt, advertising your favorite metal band. bodily traits include long hair, tattoos, piercings, and long styled beards. lastly, it is becoming more common in metal culture in the west to dress very casual and even classy. many metalcore bands today in america are dressing like this, for example, august burns red, the devil wears prada, and parkway drive all wear clothing that does not associate them to traditional metal culture at all. i have not heard of anyone in iran displaying black metal culture in public, it would be too dangerous. persian force represented the black metal genre at the festival but their image, which was more intense than the other bands, was very tame for black metalers. i think the reason for this was because even within the metal community black metalers are on the fringe of the culture. traditional metal culture is the category most of the metalheads i met fall under. every genre of metal has a variation of style taken from traditional metal culture and iranians use these style variations for two reasons. first, to show that they do not agree with the principles of the islamic republic, and second, to be identified by, and be able to identify other metalheads and the genres they are interested in. mahdavi interviewed a young iranian man who was not a metalhead but his comment about what he likes to wear apply to all young people in iran experimenting with appearance; he said, “without our looks, well, we might as well just go and die; it’s a way to entertain ourselves, to make ourselves feel better, and to show that they [the regime] can’t touch us.” some bands like death-fuse, credenc, and mordab dress very casual and it would not occur to anyone that they are metalheads. navid said, “you see us, we are not… we don’t use that kind of stuff, we are just uhh… pretty normal. we try to be normal.” dressing very casual could mean two things; first, that they do not want to be identified with metal, or as sina told me “they are trying to look more normal and try to express their feelings more in their music than just their appearance.” ali agreed and said, “music in iran is more important than appearances, metal music included.” ali and morteza told me there is another category of metalheads and that is those who are forced to hide their appearance. they said: morteza: some people because of their job they might not be able to grow their hair or grow a beard. ali: a business man may like metal music but he couldn’t act like a metal fan. morteza: elements like black t-shirt or long hair are looked at to be more aggressive. you can see people with normal hair and appearance who know metal well, it is not often you see these people. this most likely applies more to the older generation who have jobs and careers and not to the youth who have the freedom to drastically change their appearance. almost all aspects of metal culture in personal style are banned in iran. in regards to clothing, blue jeans, and black metal t-shirts are very western and can potentially get pardis mahdavi. passionate uprisings. navid asadian, interview. sina talebian, interview. ali esfahani, interview. ali madarshahi and morteza shahrami, interview. you arrested. elnaz said, “if you wear t-shirts of bands they will catch you.” then sohrab said, “no, if you just wear a t-shirt and walk the streets you will be ok but you can’t, of course you can’t wear that t-shirt to work or something.” this is another good example of the uncertainty that metalheads in iran must deal with. wearing a metal t- shirt in public is taking a risk. it is possible a person runs into authorities who will arrest them, or they could ignore you. a metalhead in tehran must think about many things, like the part of the city they will be in, what time it will be, and is the area known for a police presence. styling the body is also banned in iran. in metal culture beards are styled in hundreds of crazy ways and styling a beard in an un-islamic fashion could land a person in jail. acceptable beards in iran have many different styles, but none of them would attract attention, they are very modest. there are clerical, government, and military style beards that vary slightly but identify a man with a certain group. long hair is a core characteristic of a metalhead, but this hairstyle is banned for males in iran. in july, the ministry of islamic culture and guidance released a catalog of hairstyles that were permissible for men, unfortunately long hair was not included in the catalog. shahin has very long hair that hangs past his waist. i asked him how he maneuvers in public with his long hair. he told me that he would show me, and he stood up and took elnaz alimardani, interview. sohrab alimardani, interview. rana rahimpour, a journalist for bbc persia, was recently interviewed about the different styles of beards in iran and what they signify, she also discusses president rouhani’s beard and what his style signifies. here is a link http://www.theworld.org/ / /iran-beards-reforms/. anita singh. “iran government issues style guide for men’s hair.” telegraph.co.uk. the telegraph media group, jul. . web. sept. . http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/ /iran-government-issues- style-guide-for-mens-hair.html. his hair and tucked it inside his t-shirt so it looked like he had short hair. piercings and tattoos are also banned and are viewed with more scrutiny because they are permanent body modifications. as with music, and clothes, there is no specific law that prohibits tattoos and piercings but the regime uses interpretations of islamic law to enforce its policy. here is a part of my interview with master of persia: jeremy: right. umm, how about tattoos? mehrad: it’s really dangerous, if you put a tattoo on you will have problems. meraj: satanist symbol, just to own… jeremy: can you get tattoos in iran? are there tattoo artists? shahin: no, no. there is no. reza: we don’t have any shops. zohreh: there is underground. the underground tattoo culture is growing in iran as more iranian artists are learning the trade. none of my informants that lived in iran had a lot of tattoos but there were a few guys that had one or two. navid said, “it’s illegal you know, is illegal places you can go and you have to… you should have a link, you know someone should introduce you to the person.” mahdavi interviewed a young iranian in a shopping mall about how social norms in iran were changing and she described him as wearing baggy jeans, a fauxhawk, a tight t- shirt, and he had his eyebrow, nose, and lip pierced. this is so contradictory to what mehrad motamedi, meraj, shahin jebelli, reza karimi, and zohreh alavi, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . you can learn more about tattooing in iran here: http://observers.france .com/content/ -needles-hijabs-iranian-tattoo-artist. navid asadian, interview. pardis mahdavi. passionate uprisings. . print. my informants told me, but again, young iranians have learned the boundaries of the public spaces they live in and they wear certain things in certain places or at certain times when the probability of them being harassed is low. sometimes metalheads can become stuck in some very bad situations when they dress “metal” and go into public. grs told me that they were going to a friend’s house one day and when they arrived at the house there was an active police presence. they had to hide in their cars for almost an hour until the police left so they could get out of their cars and go inside. metalheads are very aware. they are constantly analyzing what they can and cannot wear according to what they are doing and where they are going. as a female, sanam, the vocalist for grs, was much more adamant about this than the guys in the band. she told me that this is on her mind all of the time. arash said, “sometimes in, in like local places, in like your neighborhood, in your home, in your private places, yes you can wear that but when for example, you cannot go to like university, or a school with that, most of the times ya. and then in the public, ya you might also face a problem, walking in the street, ya.” communication between metalheads in public is an interesting phenomenon. if a person is wearing jeans and a metal t-shirt the connection is easily made but a person cannot always wear what they want so communication takes a more subtle approach. there are hundreds of different symbols that the metal community has adopted, as well as many more by individual bands. wearing a necklace or some other type of jewelry with a metal symbol is a discreet way of being identified as a metalhead. pooya and grs, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . sanam pasha, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . arash, interview. pezhman said during our interview: pezhman: you see the chain and the necklace and you show the devil horn and he show it. pooya: you can see from these stuff who are the metal fan. pezhman: and many times they will come over to you “are you listening to metal music?” and i say “yes.” pooya: with the long hair and the long beard. pezhman: yes, long hair it is one of the signatures of metal fans in iran and i say “yes, which band do you like?” and he says “this band and this band.” i told him “i have a band and please go to our facebook page and like it” and he says “ok! nice to meet you.” in many times we exchange our numbers you know, he gave me and i gave it to him… to have a connection. because of that we have a lot of connection in iran’s metal fans. pezhman mentioned showing the devil horns as a way of communicating. the devil horns are an international symbol within the metal community and originated from ronnie james dio. today the symbol is called many different things and means many different things but in traditional metal culture the “devil horns” have nothing to do with the devil as dio explains: i think you'd have to say that i made it fashionable. i used it so much and all the time and it had become my trademark until the britney spears audience decided to do it as well. so it kind of lost its meaning with that. but it was.... i was in sabbath at the time. it was a symbol that i thought was reflective of what that band was supposed to be all about. it's not the devil's sign like we're here with the devil. it's an italian thing i got from my grandmother called the "malocchio." it's to ward off the evil eye or to give the evil eye, depending on which way you do it. it's just a symbol but it had magical incantations and attitudes to it and i felt it worked very well with sabbath. so i became very noted for it and then everybody else started to pick up on it and away it went. but i would never say i pezhman and pooya moradi, interview. take credit for being the first to do it. i say because i did it so much that it became the symbol of rock and roll of some kind. the harassment, persecution, and lack of opportunities for musicians causes many metalheads to attempt to leave the country. this can be extremely difficult if a person does not have a lot of money. first of all, military service is mandatory in iran and past the age of nineteen, if a man has not signed up for military service he is not allowed to receive a passport to leave the country unless he has special permission. this is a problem for many young guys in bands who want to play a concert outside of iran. a man can buy his way out of service with a bribe, but he must know who to talk to and it costs thousands of dollars. many young men do not have thousands of dollars to spend so they are essentially trapped in iran. those who do acquire a visa to leave the country have put themselves in a dangerous position because as soon as they leave iran they are labeled as a security threat. when these iranians return to iran they are subject to being detained and questioned about what they did while they were gone. this does not happen to everyone and like most government harassment it can happen at any time, or it may never happen. sina told me that his brother is in a tough position in regards to his service, and many musicians feel it is worth the sacrifice to be able to leave freely, he said: my brother’s plan was to come here to us and he had admission and everything but he didn’t get the visa so he had to stay in malaysia otherwise he had to go back to iran and serve in military and who wants to waste two years of their life serving in the military so... it’s funny because back then when i was in iran everyone was trying not to go to military but i think over time they realized that they can’t fight it no more and they have to go there, so i think right now four or five or six friend of mine who were playing in different bands they are serving in the military. cause they just want to get their passports and get over with this madness. evilg. “interview with the voice of metal ronnie james dio.” metal-rules.com. metal rules, mar. . web. sept. . http://www.metal-rules.com/zine/index.php?option=content&task=view&id= . laudan nooshin. “underground, overground.” . sina talebian, interview. all of my informants really want to come to the united states, i cannot emphasize this any stronger. while i was in armenia i had a couple of my informants ask me if i could get them into the us it was hard for me to deny them this hope, but at the moment there was nothing i could do for them. there are ways for iranians to come to the us, for example certain professions are provided visas, and students can apply for visas. there is a more desperate avenue that can be taken like applying for asylum in the us because of persecution for race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership of a particular social group; some current examples are being gay, baha’i or christian. applying for asylum is not easy and the us takes only a small amount of asylum seekers from around the world every year. sina told me a creative avenue to come to the us that his friends attempted, he said, “oh believe me lots of them tried to get married and it didn’t work out well for them, it didn’t work out for them. i know two or three different guys that they were actually talking to the same girl to get married and come here to the us and none of them succeeded to get married. cause, it seems like they charge you for that.” the normal route to coming to the us costs thousands of dollars and many years of waiting. elnaz told me that the only hope of succeeding in coming to the us is if you know somebody that will vouch for you on your application and even then there is no guarantee. i asked sina if any of his band mates had applied for a visa to the us and he said, “not to u.s cause us is hard to apply for. they require you to have like, like a financial background, like at least a house, or like owning a house or something like that. those guys don’t have anyone here except me so… but they are trying to more go to europe and then maybe, and coming from, coming here from europe. cause it’s hard to get here from iran.” sina talebian, interview. sina talebian, interview. chapter analysis: band activities: practicing, concerts, and recording bands in iran have a very tough time finding a place to practice. practicing in a house only works if the musicians play at a very low volume, and practicing in a studio is risky as well, for the musicians and the owner of the studio. the safest place bands in iran have found to practice is in the basement. these basements are everywhere, in abandoned buildings, warehouses, homes, and apartment buildings. bands are forced to practice in these places and have created their own small world. in these places the only people that will ever see these bands perform are the other bands that share the space and a handful of invited friends and family. many of my informants told me about how the social environment determines if they can practice or not. some bands have their space below a very public place during the day so they can only use it at night. some bands have neighbors that do not appreciate the noise of the band so they can only practice when they are not home. there are many scenarios that bands have to work around, not to mention every band member’s personal free time. i asked faraz if grs practiced every day and he laughed and said, “no! this is like dream. it is one of our biggest problems you know. we can’t even practice properly. in the best situation we can practice two maybe three times a week… in the best situation.” yashar added, “so many, you know, so many bands have to faraz jabbari, interview. disband because of this problem. many bands practice in their home and for a metal band this is a worst case scenario because they must practice very softly. metal music is loud and to play it properly you need to be able to perfect your sound, and it is very hard to do this when you cannot play your instruments at the proper volume. iran does not really have suburbs like we have in the us where people own their own house. tehran is very dense and most people live in condominium style buildings or apartment buildings therefore it makes it difficult to practice in your home. for many bands they do not have a choice and their home is the only place they have. i asked credenc if they had a studio or basement to practice in and shahrokh laughed at me and said, “we wish man! we wish!” navid said, “we don’t have any studio… but we practice in our house, in our houses and uhh, there is an institute, a music institute and just one day a week we can practice there together.” i asked navid if they practice at home also and he told that they do not practice as a band at any band members home. they practice their own parts individually at home and then they come together once a week at this institute and put everything together. i asked sina where death-fuse practices and he told me, “we had lots of problems finding a place to practice. we all, i mean me and shahrooz were playing at my house but there was only a place or two of us, and we were five, we couldn’t like get into one room cause everything, we were squish together so…” some musicians have created studios in their homes, like ali, the guitarist of mordab. ali told me that he has professional equipment in his home and has turned a room into a space that his band can practice in and record. if you listen to mordab’s album room shahrokh kafashzadeh, interview. navid asadian, interview. sina talebian, interview. no. x you can hear the quality that a dedicated iranian musician can create in his home and it is very good. pooya told me that nima , persian force’s guitarist, has a home outside the city where they have created their own studio and they do all their practicing and recording there. pooyan told me that he was blessed to have a great place to practice. he told me that he is the landlord of a large apartment building so he has access to the basement area and his band practices in this basement. not every band has a basement, but the ones that do enjoy the freedom they experience only in this small underground space. only grs, arsames, and tarantist have a basement that they can crank up their instruments in and when i asked morteza about the location of arsames’ basement he said, “very far underground” with a devious smile. it is hard for metal musicians to censor their sound because playing at maximum volume is a core principle of metal music. arash said that like grs they also practiced under an apartment building in the center of tehran two stories underground. even though they were two stories underground they could only practice at certain times because the noise bothered some of the tenants in the building above. unfortunately while writing this i discovered from my friends in persian force that nima passed away. he was building a giant treehouse and fell and broke some ribs which punctured his lung and he died from the complications. i only knew nima for a few days but he was a very fun guy to be around and he liked to joke around even though he was a fairly quiet guy. he was a stellar guitar player and i enjoyed watching him perform onstage. he will be greatly missed by everyone that knew him. pooya moradi, interview. pooyan madadi, interview. morteza shahrami, interview. arash, interview. sound is big problem for most bands and being just below the surface they occasionally come into contact with the public and it causes problems. arash told me he had a lot of problems with his neighbors because his band would be too loud and they would call the cops. he said, “we had a lot of difficulties actually. some people didn’t like that. some neighbors were calling the cops. complaining, yelling at us, and calling the cops. ya. i mean we had a lot of difficulties.” these encounters with the public can lead to metal musicians having their equipment seized or being arrested by police. the best way for metal musicians to avoid these encounters is to sound proof the room they practice in. this requires a lot of work and money, but it seems to be a common practice. pouya said, “nima, our lead guitarist, he told us ‘ok, i have money and i want to acoustic out my room.’ (use it as a dead room), his room, and (we can come here and practice our song). he did it, and we have lots of practice in here.” arash told me about how his band had sound proofed a closet size room with lots of cardboard so that the band could barely fit inside. drums are arguably the loudest instrument when a band plays and i learned from my informants a couple ways they combat this. first, yashar told me that he bought an electronic drum kit so he can control the volume and they can play quieter if they need too. another option is to stuff the bass drums with pillows. pouya said, “the drummer have lots of problem because the place and the neighbor’s come ‘oh turn down your arash, interview. pooya moradi, interview. arash, interview. yashar mojtahedzadeh, interview. sound!’ you know… for example our real drummer, that i told you, behtad bring lots of bed stuff. pillow. pillow in a drum bass to turn down the sound, you know that problems make us tired.” a third option is to build a drum set out of wood and cover the drum piece with padding and set it up like a real drum set. i know this sounds crazy but arsames did this and you can watch them use it in a little documentary they created and posted online. many bands try and rent studio space to practice but it can be very difficult because renting space costs a lot of money and studios generally do not want to rent to metal bands because it could bring trouble. sina said: it was hard, it was definitely hard. i remember we were looking for at least like two or three weeks for a studio to practice and everyone was rejecting us and we were offering them more money to practice, like $ for an hour or something like that and they didn’t accept it. they were like “no, i’m not gonna jeopardize my studio just for a $ thing.” sina also told me an interesting story about the difficulty of finding a studio and what happened when they actually found one that accepted them. he said: we went to different studios to make an appointment for practice and they were like “sorry guys we don’t accept metals.” so we got rejected by like at least twenty of those and back then when uhh, when the tension was so high because like the government was looking after metal musician and everyone was trying not to let metal musician to come to their studio because they got in trouble and everything so, uhh… i vividly remember the, the studio that we were practicing in and he just called us and was like “i think i am gonna shut it down for a while cause i’m kinda afraid that i might get arrested.” we had a gig in dubai back then and we were like “shit! we have no place to practice, what to do!” we searched a lot of studios, and we ended up practicing in a studio that was a x or x x square meter or something like that. i mean i remember like shahrooz’s guitar was in my face while i was playing drum but we kept it alive. cause i think nothing stop us, it was real hard trying to find, i think there is only, in tehran there is only like two or three studios that they allow, they allow you to play metal in their studio. pooya moradi, interview. ali madarshahi. “arsames documentary.” youtube. youtube, sept. . web. sept. . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= -lq gk-nl . sina talebian, interview. sina talebian, interview. persian force told me that they went to a studio five or six times to prepare for this festival and it cost them about , tomans a visit (about $ ). here is a piece of my conversation with them: nima: five or six times we went. pezhamn: and we pay a lot. about , or , toman you know… pooya: yes all of the bands is like this. if the one bands have lots of money and they are working, so they… pezhman: if you are a rich guy you can play anything. pooya: yes, in our country say something uhh… “if you pay much you can have ash” do you know what this means? jeremy: soup? [ash in farsi translates to soup] pezhman: soup, ya, ya. pooya: yes like “more ash” you know “if you pay more you can have more” you know? that’s the problem for practicing but, except the place we must go somewhere that have good accessories to listening to what you are for example, playing. studios usually have a variety of instruments and when the studio is rented the renter receives access to those instruments. in iran though most studios will not allow access to their instruments by metal bands because of their play style. sina said: ya, it’s really hard. even if they let you to play in their studio they always gonna keep the good instruments out of your… they don’t let you have access to their best instrument because like, the ones that play metal they have, they tend to play hard and the crash is so high that the instrument might get crush or everything so just before every practice they come and just collect every cymbals and everything. they say “hey this is my personal cymbal, i’d rather to put it here. you can bring your own ones.” nima, and pezhman and pooya moradi, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . sina talebian, interview. despite all the restrictions metal musicians face they still manage to find ways to play live. sometimes it is an illegal underground concert, sometimes it is in a café or a university, which is quasilegal, and sometimes bands take the arduous route of getting government approval. underground concerts are a huge risk that bands take to be heard. many bands do not even perform in underground concerts because they feel the risks are too great, but some do. mordab told me that underground shows are extremely popular and many people go to them if they hear about one. they said: ali: in small gigs it gets so crowded they have to lock the place down. sohrab: even in the smallest concerts, it is so crowded they have to lock the place down so no one else would enter the place. elnaz: yes, there are underground gigs. there are underground gigs and they get very crowded. arash told me that tarantist had a lot of underground shows. he said, “we had shows in our basement. selling tickets also for those private shows. we performed at our own places.” performing legally is much more complicated than an underground show because musicians must receive permission from the council of islamic guidance and culture. levine interviewed an iranian metal musician in “headbanging against repressive regimes,” who had gone through this process and he said: to receive a license to perform in a concert you should tape all you want to play on a cd then take it to the associated ministry and fill the forms about the information of your band and your songs and sign for accepting the rules of a performance. and then their experts decide about your request in some steps. i guess it was last year that they added a new subject to it, and that is you need to record your band’s performance on a camera and give the video as well. they only took the picture of band members before but now they want to get the ali esfahani, and elnaz and sohrab alimardani, interview. arash, interview. impression of how they play during the concert and how they look like! when you have the license then you need to go to another part of ministry which is entirely isolated and need to let them know about your concert. this is the part that they ask you about your connection with organizations outside of iran, terrorists, if you have any relatives outside of iran or if you have changed your name or address before. even if you pass all the steps it’s not certain that you’re going to play. because maybe they change their mind, or another organization prevents your performance even before going up the stage or even during the concert. very few metal bands have been given permission to perform live and this causes a lot of problems for struggling metal bands because legally they are not allowed to play for an audience until they have secured permission, but to secure permission they have to have a catalog of material to submit. none of this material can legally be listened to so bands have a very tough time receiving feedback about their work, so the songs they create are floating in this audience-free vacuum. the final and most vexing aspect of this process is that laws about practicing are ambiguous, like most other laws, so bands can be arrested for creating music that they are trying to get government approval on. two bands that i interviewed had performed legal concerts inside iran. the first band was credenc, who has performed a number of legal concerts. navid told me that they performed in a festival with different styles of music and they were the only metal band there. they were not allowed to use english lyrics because singing in english is forbidden and since they do sing in english they just played an instrumental set with no vocals. arash told me that they performed in a few universities and cultural houses after they received permission from the government. one festival in particular, called sound of solidarity, was comprised of mostly classical groups but a friend of theirs had managed to get them permission to play. unfortunately, even though they were given permission mark levine. “headbanging against repressive regimes.” . laudan nooshin. “underground, overground.” . navid asadian, interview. to play authorities were not going to allow it. arash said: they were not going to let us to play. we were the only rock band so… we were supposed to play sometime around nine o’clock, it was eleven-thirty, and we still trying to get on the stage. so we finally took the stage and started playing and all the people that were spreading out around that park, they came into the venue, you know, suddenly they heard metal music, distorted guitars, and they came in, and then basiji forces they shut the sound off and then they wanted us to leave the stage. and then on the next day, the last day of the festival, we won the gold prize of playing, for music and guitar players in that festival by the ministry of tehran. and this guy… ahmadinejad’s assistant, he gave the prize to us. i mean that’s kind of surprising you know. you guys were not letting us to play and the next day we are winning a prize because we were cool and we played awesome music. it is not uncommon to gain permission to perform in a concert and then have the concert shut down by authorities before it even begins. if a concert is shut down usually authorities give no type of explanation, but sometimes they do, as nooshin discovered after a rock band called o-hum had their concert cancelled in . the concert was supposed to take place at milad hall but authorities cancelled the show saying they “could not guarantee the security for such an extraordinary concert with such music and excitement, since all concert attendees would be young energetic boys and girls.” this explanation is rather vague but it seems that according to authorities young people with energy can be extremely dangerous to themselves as well as others if they are in an environment that produces excitement. i was curious to know how the audience is allowed to respond during these legal concerts and i asked credenc if the audience acted like an audience at a metal show in the west, with mosh pits and head banging. shahrokh laughed and said, “no, no. like this.” he then sat straight up in his chair with his hands folded in his lap and a smile on his face. he was exaggerating with his impression but the message was clear that arash, interview. laudan nooshin. “underground, overground.” . shahrokh kafashzadeh, interview. iranians must remain in their seats and avoid showing too much emotion. navid followed up and said, “ya, just like sit and watch, when you are in a theater or a cinema. you are watching movie.” sitting used to apply to the musicians as well but today they are allowed to stand. grs told me about how they performed in cafes a few times. permission from the government was most likely sought after by the café owner because he would not want to jeopardize his café by allowing illegal music to be played. most likely the owner had some connections with certain ministry of culture and islamic guidance officials to allow music to be played in his café. it would have been much harder for grs to apply for permission on their own. they played these shows unplugged so it would not attract too much attention, but since they performed more than once eventually word got around. here is how grs described their unplugged shows: pooyan: last year, more than a year, we performed three times in a coffee shop unplugged yashar: café pooyan: café, unplugged, but it is so fucking dangerous. and finally they put a label, they put a label on us… jeremy: you have acoustic guitars and acoustic bass or… farhaz: imagine playing metal unplugged pooyan: acoustic bass but we plug it in amplifier, but very low sound…. very low. sohrab attended one of their shows in a café and he said that the café was packed navid asadian, interview. article : global campaign for free expression. “unveiled: art and censorship in iran.” . pooyan madadi, yashar mojtahzadeh, and faraz jabbari, interview. with people and they played unplugged so it was not too loud. he told me that grs had advertised the show on facebook and had invited many people to come to the show. i asked pooya how he had advertised for the show and he told me that grs did not really advertise their shows publicly. they sent out invites through facebook, e-mail, and personally, with close friends that they trusted. these friends brought friends and that is how they filled the café. sometimes bands can play at universities without permission from the government: milad hall at the university of tehran, farabi hall in tehran’s art university, and tehran conservatory. universities are outside the prying eyes of the morality police to regulate their activities and occasionally metal concerts will take place. this does not mean they are free to perform as they choose, many restrictions still apply, like using drums or having vocals. as i got to know my informants i discovered that some of them had never played in front of an audience before and the persian metal festival was their first time playing live. persian force was one of these bands and their performance was remarkable for their first performance ever. it was hard for me to believe that some of these bands had never performed live. it is essential for a band to play in front of people so they can receive feedback and learn how to make their sound better. i asked the bands if they ever brought people into their practice spaces to listen to them and all of them said that this was a common practice, but that caution must be taken because people filing in and out of your practice sessions sohrab alimardani, interview. pooyan madadi, interview. heather rastovac. “contending with censorship.” . mark levine. “headbanging against repressive regimes.” . can bring unwanted attention. shahrokh said, “yes, you know we have that kind of thing they come over, they listen to us and we talk about that kind of stuff, the sounds, but mostly it’s inside the band. there are not very many people that we can have and count on this part.” pezhman said that at most they had two or three friends come and watch them occasionally because they were curious about what their friends were doing. ali said that they would usually restrict access to no more than ten people because they did not want anyone to become suspicious and because the place they practice was so small no more than ten people could fit anyway. ahmad, the bassist for arsames, said, “even that small garage or underground basement we had lots of people coming in and listening to our practice but we try to be careful and we usually tried to limit the amount because we want it to be safe for us.” shahrokh kafashzadeh, interview. pezhman moradi, interview. ali madarshahi, interview. ahmad tokallou, interview by jeremy prindle, yerevan, armenia, september , . chapter analysis: the influence of technology on the iranian metal music scene in iran the doors to the global information superhighway are locked by the islamic republic. people in iran have access to the internet but it is heavily censored by the government. iranians are very technology savvy and they circumvent government internet filtering by using virtual private networks, or vpns (a virtual private network hides activity passing through the public network, it is similar to a person who accesses his company’s intranet out of the office). through vpns iranians have access to an even more wide open internet than people in the us arash said, “the doors of information technically is closed by the government, but the doors are a lot wider open than even here, or even europe.” this is an intriguing paradox, but there are no copyright laws in iran so iranians can freely download anything they want. the internet has clearly affected many aspects of iranian politics and culture and i wanted to hear from my informants how the internet has affected the metal scene in iran. yashar said, “you cannot imagine! it’s had the biggest effect on us!” elnaz said, “how has it not? the internet has affected everything!” arash said, “the internet just opened the doors, even for my band. i mean, we started on the internet. we got arash, interview. yahsar mojtahedzadeh, interview. elnaz alimardani, interview. exposed on the internet and then we got invited to the festivals, to tours, and then it changed our life.” sina said: oh, a lot, a lot… cause back then like or years ago internet wasn’t that popular. people were destined to only listen to certain things. the only albums that were available back then like metallica, slayer, and all these stuff but… but after like internet got more popular in iran they got access to different websites downloading different albums, different artists so… three websites have given the metal scene in iran a mega boost of confidence, and those websites are myspace, youtube, and facebook. myspace was the first real popular social networking site and bands like arsames used myspace to its full potential. ali said, “i believe that the biggest thing that helped arsames was myspace. the early days of myspace. before we couldn’t make any contact with other countries like america or europe. we couldn’t introduce our music to them. myspace helped a lot we put our tracks on it in .” youtube became popular about the same time as myspace and metal bands began making music videos and posting them on youtube. it seems the first videos of an iranian metal band that were uploaded to youtube were by someone with the username barzakh. this person uploaded a bunch of videos on may , by bands called seven deadly sins, cotalors, arthimoth, kahtmayan, and ahoora. some of these videos are live underground shows, a couple look to be shot outside iran at large festivals, and only the arthimoth video is an actual music video. the arthimoth video contains very dark imagery with poor sound quality but it is nicely filmed and edited and showed iranian metalheads what they could achieve. sina talebian, interview. ali madarshahi, interview. here is the link to his youtube profile and you can view the many videos he has posted about metal music in iran: http://www.youtube.com/user/barzakh/videos. barzakh. “arthimoth, death metal band from iran” youtube.com. youtube, may . web. apr. . youtube is banned in iran so it must be accessed using a vpn or proxy server and pooyan told me that if you go to youtube in iran without one of these a picture of the statue of liberty comes on the screen with a bunch of people throwing rocks at it! facebook is undoubtedly the most important website for iranian metalheads. every iranian metal band has a band profile page with access to their songs and videos and through facebook they can communicate with the world. meraj said, “facebook is joy for metal people.” if it was not for facebook my own research would have been very difficult. i have spent many hours on facebook discovering new bands, listening to their music, and communicating with my informants. i can stay updated with their lives and see how their bands are progressing. even though i only got to spend a week with my informants in person, i have spent a lot of time with them on facebook and i am constantly learning new things from them. without the internet metal bands in iran would have very little communication with anyone outside of iran. the internet has allowed them the opportunity to receive feedback about their music from people around the world. i asked ali if he receives a lot of messages about arsames from different countries and he said: i had american friends listen to these songs and they couldn’t believe it came from iran. and i said, “yes, we have metal bands in iran.” one american ask me “do you have electricity in iran?” here the media show a lot of things about you. they show that you have no facility in iran but you are playing electric guitar? this caused a bout of laughter during our interview, but in all seriousness i think this shows how ignorant people are about the country of iran. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gekmyu z_a&list=tlgxtbt swa . pooyan madadi, interview. meraj, interview. ali madarshahi, interview. many people have misconceptions about iran and metal music in iran and now that the internet has allowed iranians to communicate with people around the world they can help clear up many of the misconceptions about their country and the metal scene there. i talked with many of my informants about how their communication with people outside iran always involves misconceptions about their culture and metal music, but they never take offense. they see it as an opportunity to tell people the truth. bands like master of persia were one of the first metal bands to leave iran and begin educating people about the iranian metal scene in armenia. meraj, the lead singer, put together the persian metal festival for two purposes: one, to educate people around the world about the iranian metal scene, and two, to help iranian metal bands reach an international audience with their music. sina said: i think it’s because of all these activities that other guys like meraj, and all those guys is doing in armenia and georgia. cause i think music is like international language so the more you have connections in talking to different people and cultures and everything you get to spread your words out better. the things that meraj, shahin, and those guys are doing is really helping a lot cause they’re like a bridge from iran to international world. faraz told me that iranian metal bands must seek feedback internationally because they cannot seek feedback in iran and as musicians it is very difficult for them to create music only for themselves. the purpose of playing music is self-expression and recognition, and it is frustrating for them when they cannot express themselves freely and receive feedback from people. faraz said, “we cannot communicate with each other anywhere, you know… because we, we… for example wrote a song and we can’t publish it anywhere. so just the danger sina talebian, interview. faraz jabbari, interview. (of using the internet) is the only way to communicate outside…” metal musicians in iran have a very tight network because of the internet and websites like facebook. there are a couple ways that musicians can network and that is through music teachers and facebook. here is a piece of my conversation with grs: faraz: i don’t play in the past for like six months i haven’t had a band. it is so boring you know. jeremy: right faraz: all day i search for a band i can play in and finally one day he called me (motions toward pooyan) and it is like a dream come true. jeremy: i mean how do you… in iran how do people find each other? faraz: usually i think it’s some masters that teach students and i think maybe for example that some of them would want a bass player for or call a teacher and ask “how can i find him?” pooyan: but there is another way you can put an advertisement on facebook and your friends. jeremy: because i mean you guys didn’t know each other, you just… pooyan: no. faraz: i heard his name but i had no image. one day he called me… yashar: this is the power of metal music. this community is connected together. if you want to find a member you can easily do this. jeremy: right, so all the bands i met tonight, you guys might not know each other physically, like you’ve met, but online… faraz: we know who it is. jeremy: so out of the bands tonight… or the bands that are in the festival how faraz jabbari, interview. many of those bands did you know before you came here, like you actually… pooyan: most of them… but some of them maybe we don’t know face to face but they heard my name, i heard his name, her name… we are connected in facebook but maybe we never have not seen each other until tonight. using facebook to promote themselves, metal bands in iran connect with the global metal community and are being received warmly. through facebook bands accept invitations to festivals outside of iran in places like u.a.e., turkey, armenia, georgia, and germany. metal music promoters are aware of the iranian metal scene and are inviting bands to their festivals. most of the invitations have to be declined because it is very expensive to travel internationally, and of course passport and visa issues, which i mentioned before. some bands are in a better situation than others and are able to travel. pooyan said, “last summer we invited to dubai to play in… in some festival, just because of internet. we didn’t know them they don’t know us. they just search iranian band or something like that, they found us and message me… we confirm and go there.” faraz added that all the arrangements they made to come to the persian metal festival were made solely through facebook. the guys in persian force told me that one of the ways they promote themselves is through a website called metal messiah radio. this website streams live radio djs from all over the world that play underground metal music from all over the world. one of their more than thirty djs is dj yusef, who is located in miami, florida and hosts middle faraz jabbari, pooyan madadi, and yashar mojtahzadeh, interview. pooyan madadi, interview. faraz jabbari, interview. pezhman moradi, interview. east mayhem from p.m. to p.m. on wednesdays. dj yusef plays metal from bands all over the middle east that send him their music. metal bands in iran are not allowed to promote themselves inside iran or sell their music, therefore the only way they can be heard is to put their music on the internet for free. i asked sina about how bands promote themselves and he said: the most that we can do is to put our song on itunes, but that even doesn’t work cause then we have to spend like $ or $ bucks for a month to upload our songs to itunes. and trust me, $ right now if you wanna change it to my currency, it’s gonna be like , or , rials… that’s why we only uploading our songs onto reverb nation, sound cloud, cause these ones are actually free.” these websites that sina mentioned are utilized by almost all my informants and they are also great tools for discovering new bands. for bands like credenc, they do not even concern themselves with profiting from their music. navid said, “it is not important to us.” shahrokh added, “we can’t have shows so we have to find a way for people to you know, hear us, hear our music, then we can have the financial things.” it is sad that metal musicians in iran must give their hard work away with no compensation, but hopefully with more exposure this can change. sharing their music through these different online mediums, iranian metal bands are making a name for themselves and becoming connected with bands from other countries. metalheads are also using the internet for more than just promotion, they are using it to educate themselves how to be better musicians. pooya and pezhman told me how metal messiah radio. “metal messiah radio.” metalmessiahradio.com. metal messiah radio, . web. july . http://metalmessiahradio.com/community/. sina talebian, interview. navid asadian, interview. shahrokh kafashzadeh, interview. many of the metal techniques they have incorporated in their songs they learned from the internet. for example, pooya had no idea about the proper technique to sing harsh, or growl, as they say in the metal world. in order for him to learn how to effectively use this vocal technique he went online and discovered a pdf file created by chuck schuldiner, the lead singer of the death metal band death (schuldiner, who passed away due to brain cancer in , is considered the father of the death metal genre and metal musicians around the world look up to him.). pooya said, “my brother singing harsh depends on that pdf.” pooya also talked about guitar techniques that he did not know how to do until he went online to see how people did them. he said, “if i have a sweep (a sweep is a very difficult fast and fluid technique performed in metal music) for example, learning sweep on an electric guitar, i am going to youtube and see ‘ok that is the sweep i am practicing.’ internet has lots of influence.” another big influence for metal musicians in iran is guitar pro, which is a computer program that creates tablature for guitar, bass guitar, and drums, and can edit multiple tracks. i talked about guitar pro with a few of my informants and they all said it was a very influential tool they used to learn how to play musical instruments. arash said, “the general idea of how to play music, or guitar, how to play notes, you can learn it from somebody, and then this guitar pro program was a big influence.” another important aspect of guitar pro is that anybody with the program can create tablature for a song and upload it onto an online database of guitar pro tablature where anyone can then download it. a person can download a catalog of tablature of their pooya moradi, interview. pooya moradi, interview. arash, interview. favorite songs and learn how to play them. there are two major problems that prevent iranians from gaining access to information on the internet and that is the speed of the internet and government filtering. the internet speeds in iran are dreadfully slow, which give iranians a lot of problems when it comes to accessing websites, and downloading and uploading of multimedia files. the opennet initiative, an organization dedicated to investigating global internet filtering and surveillance practices, wrote a profile about the state of the internet in iran and how it’s centralized filtering system is one of the most extensive in the world. in this profile it states that the ministry of communications and information technology (mict) issued an order designed to thwart household access to broadband internet, forbidding isps from providing internet connectivity to households and public internet access points at speeds greater than kb/s. my informants told me about how difficult it is to download and upload music in iran and it can take days to download an album from one of their favorite bands. pooya said, “in good time you have kb/s” and navid said, “it’s pretty slow we have problem for uploading stuff.” filtering is the other big problem in iran as the regime has increased the amount of filtering it does by establishing a centralized filtering system that routes all public internet traffic into its proxy servers. from here strong filtering software monitors specific websites and keywords, who accesses them, as well as blocks certain sites from being viewed. the opennet initiative exposed the iranian regime’s increased filtering of opennet initiative. internet filtering in iran. opennet initiative, june . . pooya moradi, interview. navid asadian, interview. human rights websites, which the ministry of information and communication technology had previously denied. pooya told me how he had been so excited once he arrived in yerevan because he could access apps on his cell phone that he could not access in iran. he said: the first time that i can use the special facebook icon on my mobile phone is in here. i say “oh my god, thank you very much!” because we have to use vpn in our country, or antifilters. the most popular way to access filtered websites is using a proxy server. it is slightly different than a vpn and much cheaper. when a person uses a proxy they are essentially telling their computer to contact another computer before contact is made with the internet. by doing this the internet will think the first computer is the second computer allowing the user access to the internet under a disguise. the user also is limited to accessing what the proxy server allows, but that is the point, and these proxies generally have no restrictions. i talked with credenc about their use of proxy servers and here is what they said: jeremy: you have the filtering and the uhh… you guys use like proxies to… shahrokh: ya navid: sometimes proxy’s just off and we have a lot of problem with that and uhh… facebook is forbidden in iran. jeremy: but you can use it with a proxy right? navid: ya but… shahrokh: use a proxy’s even slower (laughter) navid: it makes the speed more or less. you know. jeremy: interesting, so… cause i don’t remember somebody told me that you can… you guys buy proxies, it’s like a dollar or something. opennet initiative. internet filtering in iran. . pooya moradi, interview. navid: ya, you have to buy a proxy. jeremy: how long does it last? shahrokh: well it depends. jeremy: i mean does it end? do they disappear? if you buy one does it last forever? shahrokh: no navid: no, no, you can buy it for a month, for three months, for six months when you just… out of the date… shahrokh: credit navid: out of the credit it just stop working. then you have to pay again, charge it. proxys are sold on the black market and are pretty easy to come by. one of my informants mentioned how someone will get a proxy and send it to all of his friends so they can use it as well. cnet published an article in june shortly after the iranian presidential election, when the regime had blocked access to many important websites like facebook and twitter. it also told about how websites were being created to help iranians access the internet, like proxysetupforiran.blogspot.com and websites with details on how to create your own proxy server for people to access. iranians pirate everything they can get their hands on and share it with each other, even charging each other for it, if it is something difficult to find. to most people in the west this would seem very unethical, but it is important to understand that there are no laws against pirating in iran because of its isolation from global society and business practice. there is no tower records or sam goody in iran, there is no access to shahrokh kafashzadeh and navid asadian, interview. declan mccullagh. “iranians find ways to bypass net sensors.” cnet, jun. . http://news.cnet.com/ - _ - - .html. amazon or ebay, if a person wants to get their hands on a western music cd or dvd they must pirate it or find it on the black market. pezhman said, “we don’t have any music center like yerevan to buy arch enemy or obituary, you know, but internet is very powerful in our country because we can to download our bands’ music like obituary, amon amarth, dimmu borgir, you know.” sohrab and elnaz told me about their experience pirating during our interview: elnaz: we can get anything now! because you know we cannot buy music. we don’t have mastercard, we don’t have visa. and we cannot buy music… sohrab: ya, we pirate. elnaz: we cannot support the musicians. so we have to pirate it, we have to download it. sohrab: so… we pirate everything. i mean my hard drive is probably worth a million bucks or so, just counting the albums i downloaded. this brings me to a very important quality i learned about iranians, which is that they will always find a way. with every question i asked them that referred to something they were not allowed to do they responded by telling me exactly how they go about doing it. the last two generations of iranians do not like having their lives micromanaged and regulated by the government and they will subvert government authority any chance they get. elnaz said, “look, iranians will always find way, let me tell you that. they won’t stop, he won’t stop (referring to ali). he would smuggle in instruments. really! nothing will stop iranians.” ali emphasized elnaz’s statement by saying, “if i can’t buy instrument i will get a pezhman moradi, interview. elnaz and sohrab alimardani, interview. elnaz alimardani, interview. shovel…” he then pretended to play the shovel like a guitar which told me that no matter what, he will always be a musician, and nobody will ever be able to stop him from making music. ali esfahani, interview. chapter analysis: the future of the iranian metal music scene despite all of the opposition metal musicians in iran face, from the misconceptions of first generation iranians who do not know a lot about metal music to the iranian regime that actively suppresses it and persecutes its practitioners, metal music is progressing steadily. sina told me that metal music has progressed a lot since he became involved seven or eight years ago. he said: eight years ago dream theater (a progressive metal band from boston) songs got popular in iran and everyone was trying to move to progressive metal and trying to learn more about progressive and get better at what they were doing. i don’t know, playing drums and everything so… it had a lot to do with the progress in music. today in iran sina’s band, deathfuse, has been heavily influenced by the metalcore genre that has exploded in the west over the past decade. he told me about how bands like august burns red and parkway drive (metalcore bands) are being listened to and analyzed by many iranians. they are gaining inspiration from this new genre of metal in their country and as sina said, “those guys (metalcore bands) they affect your music, your mindset, your inspiration. they just change everything.” i asked my informants about the future of the metal scene in iran and where they see their future as metal musicians and the future of the metal genre in iran in five years and sina talebian, interview. sina talebian, interview. i received mixed predictions. some of my informants were skeptical and some of my informants were optimistic. no matter which direction they believed the scene to be headed none of the answers they gave me were given in a confident manner. they all seemed to take a deep breath and ponder this question deeply before saying anything and this really shows the unpredictability of the many factors that have been discussed so far. shahrokh’s response to my question summed up the skeptical view of many of my informants, he said: i don’t know if anything is going to change inside our country. obviously if it goes on like this i don’t see any uhh… bright future, but if we can get out once in a while like this (referring to the festival in armenia) and do our job and do our live shows and you know, do our music, it can get better. it depends, it really depends on the… everything goes back to the political stuff. shahrokh emphasizes the most important thing for all of my informants, which is that unrelenting need for feedback. playing metal music in your basement is fun and allows you to express yourself, release that aggression, and escape, but it does nothing for the musicians’ need to know that they are progressing and becoming better musicians. as i have mentioned, metal is not just sonic and verbal, it is extremely visual and releasing your energy, showing off your techniques, and commanding a stage are huge aspects of metal music. until metal musicians in iran can fulfill this aspect of metal music in their journey, as musicians they will never feel any sort of accomplishment. arash was also skeptical, he said, “it’s a hard question to answer. there is two options. one is if the situation keeps going in the same way, which i hope not, the mood and the passion will be dead maybe… maybe. and the other option is that umm, we are going to tour across the country with big bands.” other informants of mine said the same thing and i would have to respectfully disagree with the first part of this statement. if there was anything that i learned during this research it was the determination and shahrokh kafashzadeh, interview. arash, interview. passion of metal musicians in iran and i see absolutely no scenario where the passion of metal musicians in iran dies, absolutely none. the most important thing that i learned from this remark and the others like it is simply the hopelessness that many of them stare in the face every day. on the bright side, i had informants that felt there was only one direction for the metal scene in iran to go and that was straight up. sohrab said: i think it will progress pretty fine, because uhh… you know, maybe right now things in iran are kinda messed up in a way right now but the speed of progression is really fast so in five years i think there will be a lot of other bands, a lot more bands playing music as well as other types of music, and uhh… in five years i think it will happen. i mean there might not be shows played in iran but still bands are getting more and more musicians coming to play and i think it has a bright future. pooyan said: i am very optimistic, very optimistic because just about the power of iranian metalhead there is nothing they can’t do with this kind of attitude. this is raised day by day in iran. i think they are gonna grow up in five or six years. not perfectly, not perfectly, for example we will not have concert in stadium or public place but i think it’s gonna get better. pooyan sees the determination in himself and his fellow metalheads that i saw from all of them while i was in armenia. with guys like him taking a leadership role in the scene and encouraging his fellow metal musicians, i agree that the immediate future will not be perfect, but it will be bright enough to require sunglasses. at the end of the conversation i had with master of persia i could feel the hope that they had to one day be able to express themselves and perform in iran: reza: hopefully one day comes when we can play metal music in our own country. jeremy: me too, because then i can go to iran. meraj: ya, of course. sohrab alimardani, interview. pooyan madadi, interview. mehrad: and she (referring to his armenian girlfriend)… jeremy: can go too. mehrad: can go to iran with me. shahin: if you need a rest i think prison is a very good place for you (laughter). mehrad: for us. for all of us. anahid: i wish for the day when we can have concert in iran at azadi square and you will be there. jeremy: ya? mehrad: with us, on the backstage. jeremy: that would be awesome man (laughter). shahin: don’t forget us. mehrad: interviewing… shahin: drinking blood together (laughter). jeremy: and we will all worship satan (laughter). meraj: cheers. the sarcasm at the end of this conversation really had all of us laughing hysterically and while we were laughing i could not help but think about the fact that we are laughing about this but in reality it is a very serious situation; sometimes the best way to deal with a difficult situation is to just have a hard laugh with friends in the same predicament. i got the feeling that we were all subliminally saying to each other, “hey, we are all in this together and as long as we stick together we will be alright.” i was very honored by the fact that they wanted me to be there with them backstage when they play a concert in azadi square. azadi means “freedom” and i could not think of a more epic place for a metal concert in tehran, than the biggest square in tehran. the most important thing that i was told during any of my interviews was what reza told me during my interview with master of persia, he said, “it’s very precious to us and important that you send this culture, metal culture, abroad, in america, or wherever you go because we are not known. no one knows that iran has metal music. no one knows of us.” again i felt honored that reza was entrusting me with this mission and for all the honor and respect that my informants showed me i hope that i have given them the honor and respect they deserve in my analysis of their situation. i hope this research will inform people of the many talented metal musicians that live in iran and hopefully they will attain the iranian and global respect and recognition that they deserve. reza karimi, interview. chapter conclusion many important issues were uncovered in the analysis of my interviews with persian metal music bands. due to the political, religious, and cultural norms in iran, all music has had a very tumultuous relationship with the iranian people. today, the youth of iran have an insatiable hunger for western music and popular culture and this creates a lot of conflict in their lives and with their cultural identity. metal music satisfies this hunger for many young iranians and their decision to embrace a metal lifestyle is not viewed in a positive manner by traditional iranian culture or the current ruling regime. metal music in iran is an unknown genre of music and many iranians have never listened to it or know anything about it. this creates a lot of misconceptions and false judgments about metal music culture and the character of metalheads. it is clear from my interviews that metalheads in iran are not rebelling from iranian society in a manner that would disassociate them from society. they want to be part of society, there are proud of their heritage, they just want to be accepted for their decision to be metalheads and they are doing their best to educate iranians about metal music by setting a positive example about life as a metalhead. the answer of whether the iranian regime’s interpretation of shi’i islam and metal culture can co-exist remains unanswered. there are just too many differing opinions to answer this question in any reasonable manner. i would like to take the optimistic view and say that anything is possible. if a clear distinction could be made on the subject of music between religious and constitutional law that benefits both sides maybe progress could be made, but as of now there is no distinction, and metalheads find the regime to be very untrustworthy and unpredictable. the regime, like traditional iranian culture, carry many misconceptions about metal culture due to their ignorance of it. the regime feels threatened by metal culture and claims that metalheads pose an organized political threat, but through research that has been done in iran by scholars like nooshin and shahabi we know this to be false. one of the main attributes of metal culture is nonconformity and organizing politically as metalheads goes against everything metal music stands for. another important reason is that metal culture in iran is once removed from certain aspects of the formation of metal culture in the west. many of these meanings are not transferable to a country like iran because the sociocultural base there is totally different. one of the most important points that needed to be documented was the mistreatment that metalheads in iran face by the iranian regime and the violation of their human rights that is taking place as i write. all metalheads in iran live in a perpetual state of anxiety and fear because of the ambiguous policies of the iranian regime. all of the metalheads that live in iran that i talked to have one wish and that is to be left alone, to be able to play music in peace without fear of mistreatment or arrest by authorities. the metal scene in iran is very diverse. there are many different genres of metal music that have influenced iranian metalheads, the most important being thrash metal and death metal. metal musicians would love to be able to incorporate traditional persian music in their metal music but they just do not have the proper education in traditional persian music to give them the confidence to do so. iranian metalheads are proud of their heritage and culture and for some of them it really pains them that they do not have the opportunity to challenge themselves in this way. lyrically, metal musicians prefer to use english lyrics in their music for a few different reasons. first, english is a harsher language and more jagged than the flowing sound of persian. second, it is easier to translate feelings in english because of the enormous vocabulary of words that can be used to express yourself. third, using english opens their music up to a wider audience. bands face criticism by iranians for using english lyrics because of the nationalist aura that pervades english vs. persian lyrics in music, but metal musicians in iran do not care about this. they do not feel that their decision to use english lyrics makes them any less proud of their heritage than any other iranian, they just want to be recognized on the global metal scene. instrument shops in tehran are common and the majority of them are located on jomhuri street; some of these shops even secretly specialize in metal music. an interesting paradox surrounds these shops because it is legal to buy musical instruments, but playing them is essentially illegal. some of the problems metal musicians face when it comes to purchasing instruments is that the selection they have to choose from is severely limited due to trade embargos that many countries have with iran. since demand for instruments is high, countries like china who do not have a trade embargo with iran produce very poor quality instruments that can be purchased in iran. these shops also contain many fake instruments, produced in countries like china that claim to be high-quality brands when they are not. when a metal musician wants to purchase a high-quality brand instrument he must purchase it off the black market for an exorbitant sum or have a connection outside of iran that is willing to ship the item to them. this can also be very expensive. metal musicians also tend to play their instruments very hard so metal musicians in iran have to be more cautious because replacement parts or new instruments can be expensive and difficult to acquire. the majority of metalheads in iran are young and from upper-middle-class to middle- class families. this of course is in stark opposition to metalheads in the west who tend to be from low- to middle-class families. most iranian metalheads also tend to be highly educated which is in stark opposition to the west, although this has changed significantly in the past decade. there are also a lot of women metalheads in iran and despite the current iranian regime’s position on women and music, women are becoming more actively involved in metal bands. iranian metalheads are drawn to metal for different reasons but a couple of the most important reasons are the antiviolence aspects and its ability to be an emotional outlet. iran is a highly militarized society and the humanist lyrics of many metal bands speak to young iranians. they feel that global sense of camaraderie and want to be included with humanity, not isolated from it. this isolation creates a lot of psychological problems for young iranians and some will tell you that the aggressive style of metal music is the only productive outlet for their frustration that works for them. metal musicians in iran are exceptionally talented, determined, and proud individuals. they want to believe that they have a bright future ahead of them, but sadly for most of them this is currently not the case. the oppression they are subject to by the current regime and traditional iranian society causes severe depression and hopelessness. they need people to care about their situation and take an interest in it. this is a perfect example of why they were so happy to talk to me. the fact that an american cared enough to travel across the world and empathize with them and tell them that he wanted to help inform people about their situation meant a great deal to them. metalheads also face many problems with the attire that is common in metal culture. jeans, t-shirts, and boots are a very western style of dress and conflict greatly with the islamic style of dress that is enforced in iran today. long hair, piercings, and tattoos are extremely problematic and i heard many stories of guys being arrested and having their long hair forcibly cut. i did not hear any stories about anyone being arrested for piercings and tattoos, and this is because these are not common among metalheads in iran. communication among metalheads in public is usually determined by clothing, jewelry, and hand gestures. for example any metalhead that sees another person wearing jeans and a black t-shirt may have a pretty good idea that they are a metalhead and confirming evidence may be a symbol attached to a piece of jewelry or the traditional “horns” that metalheads will gesture to someone with. if someone shows you their “horns” and you show them back, that is a way of saying “hi, i am a metalhead too.” practicing for metal musicians is a difficult process. there are many problems that metal musicians in iran face when it comes to finding a safe place to practice. many metal musicians practice in their homes and are forced to play quietly or loudly only when neighbors are away. some bands practice in studios, but they can be expensive to rent time in on a regular basis and most studios do not like renting time to metal bands because it could potentially cause the studio to be shut down if the regime discovered this and decided to follow up. many of the metal musicians i talked to had never played in front of a live audience before, the persian metal festival was their first time. despite this lack of experience playing live by the metal musicians i talked to, underground concerts are common in iran, but very risky. they tend to be small events because if too many people find out about them the probability that authorities will be alerted rises. many mass arrests have taken place because of raids on secret underground concerts. the internet in iran is heavily censored but iranians are extremely tech savvy and employ virtual private networks (vpns) to maneuver around the censors. this not only grants them access to the virtually any website, but grants them even greater freedom on the internet than most people in the west experience because there are no restrictions. the internet has had a massive effect on the metal music scene in iran. websites like myspace, youtube, and facebook have given iranian metal bands the opportunity to communicate with the world and upload their music so people can hear it. the most important aspect of this is the feedback they receive from people about their music. since metal musicians in iran cannot play publicly they rely on feedback from people on the internet. metal bands in iran cannot make money by posting their music online because websites like itunes, pandora, and spotify are based in the west where the trade embargo affects internet business as well. metal musicians in iran upload their music to websites like facebook, youtube, soundcloud, and reverbnation strictly for the love of metal music and the feedback they need to hear so they can improve as musicians. another aspect of the internet that has greatly affected the metal scene in iran is the ability to educate oneself in certain techniques concerning the metal genre. when metal musicians in iran hear a certain technique being employed by one of their favorite bands and they want to learn how to do it they can go on the internet and learn how to play it. all metal musicians in iran learned how to play their instruments in two important ways: through self-teaching and internet instruction. i have an optimistic view that the iranian regime’s interpretation of shi’i islam can find a way to co-exist with metal culture and the future of iranian metal music is bright. i have two main reasons for this viewpoint: first, the musicians that are emerging are extremely talented and they cannot continue to be ignored on the global stage. more and more people are hearing their music everyday on the internet and several bands have been able to leave iran and come to the us and europe and make a name for themselves. second, the sheer determination that drives the metal musicians in iran is astonishing. when you meet people that have such intense passion for what they do and their desire to learn and improve is greater than their will to live, it really makes it difficult to envision them not succeeding, no matter what the obstacles are in their path. the opportunities for future research in this subject matter are overwhelming. there are so many different genres of metal music that iranians are interested in and so many different aspects of metal culture that iranians are grabbing hold of and making their own. there are new bands emerging all the time, every few days i am being invited to “like” a new band on facebook, or i discover one on my own accord. as more bands emerge and musicians become more talented, the scene is going to grow and the religious, political, and cultural conversations are going to change. these changes are very dynamic and are taking place right now. the relationships between these entities need to be continuously re-examined and analyzed because much of what i have wrote about in this thesis not only applies to metal music, but all music in iran. rappers, jazz musicians, pop singers and many others are all in the same position in iran and research into any of these genres is beneficial to understanding that specific genre, as well as the state of music in iran as a whole. appendix a band profiles arsames arsames is a persian death metal band from mashhad, iran. arsames was a king of persia during the achaemenid dynasty, but relinquished the throne to swear loyalty to cyrus the great. the theme of the band and the subject matter for all of their songs is the ancient persian empire and persian mythology. the band has great pride in their persian heritage and educate people about the great kings, battles, and history of the ancient persian empire. arsames is the only iranian metal band that has been able to tour internationally without any major problems from the iranian government. arsames are the metal gods of iran and every metalhead in iran has the utmost respect for them. discography: immortal identity ( ) links: https://www.facebook.com/metalarsames https://twitter.com/arsamesmetal https://myspace.com/arsamesmetal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/arsames_(band) http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/arsames/ http://www.reverbnation.com/arsames http://www.metalstorm.net/bands/band.php?band_id= videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fghnnwa zva http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_ rmbknjqa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t y v ctsi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= -lq gk-nl mordab mordab is a progressive death metal band from tehran, iran. mordab in persian means “swamp,” but mordab is also a very small town on the caspian sea. mordab is a band dedicated to exposing the social problems that many iranians struggle with and their lyrics deliver stark and startling imagery. the band has released several albums over the last decade but as of they have officially disbanded. this is unfortunate because mordab was one of the most talented bands in iran. discography: into the mordab ( ) darker than grave ( ) room no. x ( ) links: https://www.facebook.com/mordabband http://www.reverbnation.com/mordab http://www.metalstorm.net/bands/band.php?band_id= http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/mordab/ videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkat m djs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= k va hc a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekvlkvopy-e http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpg daisyoe master of persia master of persia is an eastern folk metal band from mashhad, iran. master of persia focus on the ancient history and mythology of iran as well as the ancient religions and philosophies of iran. some of the members of master of persia were heavily persecuted in mashhad, iran and they were forced to flee the country to armenia. the band has regrouped in yerevan, armenia and began an active campaign to present iranian metal music to the world. they were instrumental in organizing the and persian metal festivals and are currently organizing more festivals so bands from iran can showcase their talents. master of persia also is one of a few iranian bands that features a female vocalist. discography: older than history ( ) links: http://masterofpersia.com/home/ https://www.facebook.com/pages/master-of-persia/ http://www.metal-archives.com/band/view/id/ http://www.reverbnation.com/masterofpersia videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhzc sswxuw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= eqwtv mu http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= ojjirb wc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= wdld yxp avesta avesta is a thrash metal band from tehran, iran. the band was formed in by two best friends that listened to metal music together in high school. avesta is one of the only persian metal bands that sing their lyrics exclusively in persian. avesta also is one of the only bands that persevered through the process of trying to get one of their albums approved by the ministry of culture and islamic guidance (mcig). they worked with the mcig for seven years but the opportunity to release their album legally was eventually denied. discography: yaa marg yaa aazadegi (liberty or death) ( ) goloolehaaye baarooty (gunpowder bullets) ( ) links: https://www.facebook.com/pages/avesta-band/ http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/avesta/ http://www.reverbnation.com/avestaband videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z a-cm azvy death-fuse death-fuse is a metalcore band from tehran, iran. they are one of the only known metalcore bands in iran and have risen in popularity extremely fast because of their superb talent. the lyrics of their music discuss social problems in iran and the tough life many young iranians face. they have had the opportunity to play in a couple different countries, but unfortunately when it came time to travel to yerevan, armenia for the persian metal festival they were arrested at the border of iran and armenia, held for a brief period, and sent back to tehran. this was a devastating blow to the band as well as everyone involved with the festival who was excited about seeing them perform. discography: before the story ends ( ) links: https://www.facebook.com/deathfuse http://www.spirit-of-metal.com/groupe-groupe-death*fuse-l-en.html https://soundcloud.com/death-fuse http://www.reverbnation.com/deathfuse videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi gdv tze http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijolbmzn ow http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zairjprcjuo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge kixy_sjs scox scox is a brutal death metal band from tehran, iran. the lyrics of the band are extremely dark and cryptic and the meaning of these lyrics could be interpreted in any number of ways. scox recently released their first album, psychedelic philosophy, in for free on their website. they are dedicated to the awareness and treatment of leprosy victims in iran, and have set up on their website a way to make donations to the bababaghy hospital in exchange for downloading their album. discography: psychedelic philosophy ( ) links: http://www.scox-band.com/ https://www.facebook.com/scoxband http://www.last.fm/music/scox http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/scox/ videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= cstxu eo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= bt soivkto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= pwtshx_uzs grs grs is a thrash metal band from tehran, iran. they formed in and since their formation have been one of the most active bands playing live shows, legal and underground, in iran. the band focuses its lyrics on inner struggles and social problems in iran, but also is one of the few bands that dabbles in political criticisms. grs also is the only known active metal band living in iran with a female lead vocalist. grs is currently working on a dvd that will feature performances of all of the songs on their upcoming album. discography: access denied ( ) let’s crush ( ) links: http://www. grsband.com/ https://www.facebook.com/ grsmusic http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/ grs/ http://www.reverbnation.com/ grs http://www.last.fm/music/ grs videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= krb-ogecj http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= gtd ia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epwgl fcs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzdssliogjs persian force persian force is a symphonic black metal band from tehran, iran. the band was formed by twin brothers in and is still active today, but under a new name, kmarykan. the reason behind the name change was because the lead guitar player had a tragic accident and fell from a tree while he was building a treehouse. the band felt like they needed to move on and start fresh and memorialize their friend by changing the name of their band. kmarykan is taken from the ancient zoroastrian writing known as the gathas. in the gathas ahura mazda created a paradise for his angels known as amahraspand and ahriman created a place for his demons known as kmarykan. discography: life in pledge ( ) links: http://kmarykanband.wix.com/kmarykan#!music-/c https://www.facebook.com/pages/kmarykan/ https://twitter.com/kmarykan http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/persian_force/ http://www.reverbnation.com/kmarykanband videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l tzy ncmxg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygy b_jjysm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q lwnkmwqto slave mark slave mark is a technical death metal band from tehran, iran. there is not much information on this band to be found. it appears that they disbanded in . slave mark was one of the bands that was arrested at the border of iran and armenia and therefore was unable to participate in the persian metal festival in . discography: volume ii ( ) links: http://www.reverbnation.com/slavemarkband https://www.facebook.com/pages/slave-mark/ videos: none credenc credenc is a thrash metal band from shahsavar, iran. credenc formed in and are known for playing a number of live shows in northern iran and in yerevan, armenia. credenc has not released an album but they are in the process of creating their first album. an interesting fact about credenc is that they do not have lead singer, all of the vocals are performed by the drummer. discography: none links: https://www.facebook.com/credenc http://www.reverbnation.com/credenc videos: none appendix b song lyrics arsames immortal identity ( ) . gate of persia [instrumental] . cyrus the great unsuccessful guys in capturing our land unsuccessful guys in capturing our blood coming with fear and hesitation carrying hill of presents on their shoulders they're staring with protruded eyes looking at the sun but they see nothing unsuccessful folks in capturing our bravery unsuccessful folks in capturing our glory coming with fear and hesitation carrying hill of presents on their shoulders their souls have shrunk in their corpses their minds have been torn in pieces defeating all their aces we had on our feet their kisses our cyrus gave them culture no pain no sigh no torture to live in peace is our nature not killing like a vulture this is the first kingdom of the world (persian empire) the state on the earth as wide as the sun unsuccessful guys in capturing our land unsuccessful guys in capturing our blood coming with fear and hesitation carrying hill of presents on their shoulders they're staring with protruded eyes looking at the sun but they see nothing . dooms day to make a world without the fire and burning to stop the sword that use for human killing to reign the lord who wants just desolation to born and rise against suffocation you earth mother awake swallow your son you earth mother awake swallow you earth mother awake swallow your son you earth mother awake swallow... your son father's pour tears no one sees mother's roar fears no one hears ominous curse tearing apart my chest evil's verse rolling over my nest father's pour tears no one sees mother's roar fears no one hears ominous curse tearing apart my chest evil's verse rolling over my nest we stepped on the world unaware of vicious cycle no hope to leave just feeling reputation no chance to take, i am seeking evolution we found nothing but total devastation to make a world without fire and burning to stop the sword that use for human killing to reign the lord who wants desolation to born and rise against suffocation father's pour tears no one sees mother's roar fears no one hears ominous curse tearing apart my chest evil's verse rolling over my nest . homo sapiens hammering down your head wishing you were be dead suffering infection and violence keeping your mind in silence hatred, sterility, conceited, delict carnality, defiant, sacrilege, covetous trait trait of homo sapiens trait trait trait of homo sapiens the cosmos never ends nobody defends the hell must be you tent welcome to your pent open your blinded eyes all your hopes die your can’t breathe darkness surrounds you by reality death comes to claim you your brain rotten with pain intenerate velocity immersed in pure insanity come onnnnnnnn hammering down your head wishing you were be dead suffering infection and violence keeping your mind in silence hatred, sterility, conceited, delict carnality, defiant, sacrilege... . immortal identity immortal identity immortal identity i am the king of power the chosen one i am the first instructor of human rights i invite all to baptism of love and justice washing away diabolical thoughts of your minds and souls i am looking for my dreams in heart of darkness god will give me forever wings of braveness the world full of honest people of mighty god shedding blood is the thing of the past if you decide but the world is not gonna be as it is expected to be there will be an endless game between the lucifer and me my troopers will never permit demons to get on their seat paradise is in my hands hell will be under my feet . monotheism burn the flame of my inner sight i wanna achieve to lighted life monotheism you shall lead my soul toward the pure thought till i confide monotheism lord leads you to kill passion evil spreads temptation on which side should i believe who's aware it is deceive pervert the creation the death and destruction how would be situation the day of resurrection [repeat st verse] . testament of the king when i bid farewell to the poor life put me in a coffin made of stone place me in my grave do not cover my grave remind yourself that there lies my father and now the great king is dead, and i too shall one day die like him it is human fate, and it makes no difference whether you are a king or a poor wood-gatherer no one remains eternally no one remains eternally no one remains eternally [clean vocal] when i bid farewell to the poor life put me in a coffin made of stone place me in my grave do not cover my grave remind yourself that there is lies my father never forget there is a philosophy justice forgiveness and generosity now leave me alone, as i feel the hour of my death is near leave me alone... . xerxes xerxes comes again to kill persian's pain tyrants call their wages wizard and geomancer demons come to tyrants conspire against the king desperately seek a way to destroy our power rings be ready to die enemies of human rights be ready to die... the thunders of rage will encased you in grave evil incantations dead don’t let them breathe tear them apart they will never rise evil incantations dead ahura mazda hear my pray on your judgment day xerxes army finally decapitate brutality wisdom will be born here nowhere you find insanity my nation will defend their land to last drop of their blood tyranny will be disappeared when my people move like flood . persepolis standing antiquity on the ground with dignity mythic territory that make us proud to be irani kingdom of toleration away from carnage majestic throne our cultural heritage stay tenacious the mountain of courageousness there is no fire to destroy your stone shining place on our land the diamond of persia we never built columns on the blood and genocide the symbol of freedom without lashing the masonry not to instead of lashing people for masonry not for build the columns on the blood and genocide there is no fire to destroy your stone shining palace on our land the diamond of persia mordab room no. x ( ) . mirage [instrumental] . room no. x room number x place of judgment for my friends in evil purge day after day increase of hatred throwing out like a dog better for them to confess their shits like the pigs enjoin their corpse my friends will gain, ominous fates room number x place of remorse room number x revival house for my friends who are unaware disaster days they can't believe they're insane, i'm disappeared . open your eyes, then close em’ when break in your emptiness when you wanna fight with uselessness just open your eyes, listen to me spit the rules, spread the hate when can't fix this craziness when you sink world's turbulence just open your eyes, listen to me disturb the law, gain happiness look at the world, everywhere is dusky no human, but full of monkey no reasoning, no love, no affinity conscience ending, fatality you drown in shit, all of us in shit children slaughter, rampancy of hate you're desperate, i'm desperate just open your eyes, accept the fate beside the wall, someone is dead inside the room a boy is jerked in the garden a girl is rammed stabs her eyes, till be shed bath of blood, houses on fire apocalypse in road, end of desire so, just open your eyes, listen to me spit the rules, jump in fire ignore my word, back to your mind you'll understand that i'm right just open your eyes, listen to me spit the rules, my friend of fright . rebel’s cry rebel's cry is started for mother and father for faded childhood now his lover is dead friends are gone before liberty is not anymore angel's prayer, no result rebek is shutting for faults deny me, i'm suffer punish me, i'm pagan but hold me in your hand virtual world brings down not return to fountain light dreams as dreams become change to nightmares he is right, souls are tainted reconstructs sources rebel is crying for gone years that time he had mercies rebel is yelling for sister his wounded poor sister who is down for a night she had to say yes i'm sorry about time everything may crime touch her skin, you will feel she is warm, he pissed off . suicide and redemption sometimes we wanna look inside sometimes we wanna lose our pride when misery overcomes no war, no choice, but to die now, i'm watching my bloody vein it reminds me vermilion my dropping blood on the bed searching redemption in vain always we wanna start sometimes we wanna be lost riot in my mind, like scar i see the pain my side i relieve my wounds with pain plugged in gore, tide with chain sleeping to die, strain at ceiling such a pretty sense i’m dying now i’m ..... here after i return . cursed palace i don't know where can i start from the pain or my blinded sight bullet and knife in heads n’ hearts destruction which takes me apart i don't know who are you, a killer? or a damn ache distributer such a paralyzed poor chancellor i've been trapped, i'm a failer disaster, hatred ... welcome to death slaughter, torture ... welcome to hate scourge, darkness ... welcome to rape shotgun, rifle.... welcome to hell loneliness is gripping my neck morning breeze take me to deck can't fix me i'm despaired look around, everybody is sick massacre cycle is recycling humble killers, end of feeling i'm dazzled to this chaos to this fuckin' cursed palace welcome to death welcome to hate welcome to rape welcome to hell . the more i… the more i think about universe more i sink in depression the more i look at root of world no more getting passion nonsense eyes staring at sky empty words fills brains n' hearts alone n' sad man's ecstasy inside the hell will die the more i have search in myself more i gain nihilism the more i see other islands more i find imperialism vacant promise spread in air pride n' prejudice are fading fuck this world where we're living fuck it totally believe in me i’m not bullshit mind trust me not be loser if you want to hold dignity come to me, come closer pride will die pride will die pride will die the more i....... . war from first day until the end war has spoken about death innocent hearts, such roses are overturned in the river virtuous spirits in way of home turns in blood they see their doom criminal minds are so glad to confuse social rules stop the war stop the war oh you have to hide let them die look at her eyes, you can see fear of the noise, vagrancy what is her sin? she must be in battlefield, conspiracy brutal countries, as demons have eaten lands, no remorse millionaires rule in earth you have my words, you're like horse stop the war stop the war oh you have to hide let them die . cold infection you are sacrificed, in her arms, no way you are hypnotized, with her eyes, no way cold infection inside you is crawling black cycle is infanticide it's better i wanna be free of my cells, no way it was a mistake, creators, no way straight to death, your present no sense cheers to heaven, good life, its better i'm damaged, you can't stop me i'm gonna die, you can shoot me i'm so tired don't you worry about me, no way scape the words of their eyes no way cold infection inside me, is crawling don't you worry, about me, i'm you.... . years we claimed for more years we have to reign on this shit earth nobody tells us stop your bullshits fuck history, fuck all these years we’re addicted to make up faces we’re intervening to all world's cases nobody tells us stop your acts fuck history, fuck all these years years, i hate years, i fuck it we've been denied all of these years nobody cares about us these years i remember no pure memory shame on this world, shame on these days my beauty left me alone she told me i'm stupid clown for no reason i've been punishing don't write my name on my stone years, i hate it years, i fuck it . empty room [instrumental] mordab darker than grave ( ) . ocean of loneliness like a fire in my soul guts me like a black hole ferocity and conviction i will be crushed like a toad "man rooham ya ghobaar"? my ashes in the wind so far vortex of loneliness this world, in me, in war . darker than grave my... life was a catastrophe scorned... to face the world's strophe succumbed... from the moment of birth to grave chosen... from the ominous life's wave affliction... from the zygotes of amour elusive... from this world-made whores buried... my body's scrapes... every day i don't know why the other people do not come to pay asphyxiation emasculation eradication molestation "man... ye parandam, ye... boofe koor" "leh shode too in... ger... daabe zoor" "harchi khoob kardam... bad deedam man" from the infected sperms of human this world, does not worth... than a shit "gozaran omre maast... mese jet" buried my soul but i... don't know why the other people do not come to don't know why the other people do not come to never ever never wanna pay desolation degeneration tribulation flagellation indoctrination liquidation mutilation demolition pain... collections... i... have borne... in this dark obscene asylum of earth my only anxiety and freeze is my altered state in no one's land of death life... attrition in my brain... exacerbates my pain... vain... insane life... attrition in my brain... exacerbates my pain... vain... insane life... attrition in my brain... exacerbates my pain... vain... insane life... attrition in my brain... exacerbates my pain... vain... insane . psychotic depression from deep inside of my broken heart i move these words... like a shade and light i'm sure i will find you at last far above... the green hill from the past i lived alone... all four seasons loving me was... only reason you'll kiss my soul... will be one, together then we'll kiss the earth... will be none, together i lived alone... all four seasons loving me was... only reason you'll kiss my soul... will be one, together then we'll kiss the earth... will be none, together . world of vacuum all this world... with all its worth from east to west... from south to north with all its seas... uncounted trees lands of marsh... kinfolks of free eternal winds... and infernal sins storm in deserts... for a thousand mins with space omission, in atom orbital planet earth becomes a golf ball who you are, what you do, what you want, go around tiny one, dusty bun, king of none, none of none... none hate and love, sex and drugs, junky nuts, suicide catatonic homicide, king of none, none of none... none world's atom, or vacuum, e=mc digitally ... solar system, quasars, supernovas, milky way every day is getting closer to m ... who am i, what's inside, when i die, hateful life headless shadows, furious space, eyeless face, human race... race deep inside, suicide, nigritude, emptiness, soul of mess "va in safeeh mardome mozheke koore bee hes... hes" "in manam, khasteam, basteam, kooram" "bee taboot tu in keyhan zende be gooram... ram" world's atom, or vacuum, e=mc digitally ... innocents, are six feet under cannibals, breed as thunder inner bride, i used to live with inner cry, deletion with leave . frantic dream of earth now you're in the grave, in my embrace seeping brain is out of your rotten face where's your mania, chronic dysphoria are sucked by soil, are sainted with my grace you feel my waves, from my inner core sounds of whispering, augment it more and more epitome from within, deep from stricken heart stank me with your sins, crimson me with your gore vicious homicide everywhere, vortex of wrath oblivious to conscience and misleading human path why?! polluted my sky with my blood enraged my rivers to flood poisoned my jungles and seas be sure will be frozen on your knees technology digs, your grave by your own (hands) if not my suicide, from the core up to the zone what the hell have you done? just disgraced me to sun but no place to hide, and there is nowhere to run now come through myself, i summon your essence and i will absorb you all, the last where to fence i will forgive you for sins, i will forgive you for lies (you) would come in my soul, so open your eyes . ascension [instrumental] grs let’s crush ( ) . let’s crush it's like a hardware store but everything looks rusty and failed and people are the screws and bolts who shouldn't grow women under the black veils become like ugly crows a thin light flashes i can hear a murmur if i sleep and you sleep the whole town would sleep if i wake and you wake the whole world will shake we are a harmed heap let’s crush the disease let’s crush the weep we can throw the ironclad from our behavior and crush the violence and guile we can grow and fire the veil and live like a free bird women could sing a song again a thin light flashes i can hear a murmur if i sleep and you sleep the whole town would sleep if i wake and you wake the whole world will shake we are a harmed heap let’s crush the disease we are a harmed heap let’s crush the weep some of the friends are lost maybe they are dead some of the friends are battered or raped inside prisons if i sleep and you sleep the whole town would sleep if i wake and you wake the whole world will shake we are a harmed heap let’s crush the disease let’s crush the weep let’s crush let’s crush . the last time it's a cold endless wet night with the town full of grudges i was walking inside pages of the book of revolution when a call waked me up saying a friend was harmed green ribbon on my hand is the green thrill of freedom though spite is tightening my throat like a cold mountain of reasons is this the last time that i can see him alive is this the last time he tastes this pain the hospital pictures a mare when you see punished guys there and the smell of ulcerous blood that floats on demurrer air green ribbon on my hand is the green thrill of freedom though clots are tightening my throat like the cold mountain of reasons is this the last time that i can see him alive is this the last time that he tastes this pain is this the last time that i can see him alive is this the last time that he tastes this pain the sky is bruised and the shadows of thoughts have become black who would win the combat? the green ribbon on my hand is the green thrill of freedom though clots are tightening my throat like the cold mountain of reasons is this the last time that i can see him alive is this the last time that he tastes this pain . winter’s knock whiteness covered the town icy dreams floating by cold feelings crashing now snow is falling fading sun leaves the ground winter knocks on dying life winter knocks on empty talk i am shocked cause winter knocks winter knocks and winter knocks vocal flies through my soul singer fills all my thoughts sad angle freezes me dried emotions rising high and open the door open the door winter knocks on dying life winter knocks on empty talk i am shocked cause winter knocks winter knocks and winter knocks winter knocks on dying life winter knocks on empty talk i am shocked cause winter knocks winter knocks and winter knocks winter knocks on dying life winter knocks on empty talk i am shocked cause winter knocks winter knocks and winter knocks . grs chair when the world respires faster than my soul can keep the pace there are dreams that wait to hold me hold me warmly in their embrace when the street sounds are all muted and the only thing in the air is the breeze of my cigar and the lilt of a metal song then i know that i am home safe and warm in grs' chair i am a tramp of a reign when i am adam in their eden but the king of my dominion when i’m there in grs' chair grs' chair when the world gets spinning faster while the pine boughs bend and sway blue jay, buzzard, cat and others fill the yard and play their parts . he drinks to forget sneaking to the bed drunk as always shivering inside the head digging a deep grave it's how he ends the day as the nightmares come near he drinks to forget he’s an alcoholic guy he drinks to forget the falsehood god he drinks to forget nothing's left to love he drinks to forget he’s an alcoholic guy covering with the smoke his sick mind chokes flash backing, make his spirit old the river of the blood flows through the store as the singer reaches, reaches out the door he drinks to forget he’s an alcoholic guy he drinks to forget the falsehood god he drinks to forget nothing's left to love he drinks to forget he’s an alcoholic guy creep and slip, into the a new life closing his eyes the guy is going to die he drinks to forget he’s an alcoholic guy he drinks to forget the falsehood god he drinks to forget nothing's left to love he drinks to forget his an alcoholic guy he drinks to forget he’s an alcoholic guy he drinks to forget the falsehood god he drinks to forget nothing's left to love he drinks to forget he’s an alcoholic guy he drinks to forget he drinks to forget he drinks to forget he drinks to forget . like a silkworm a full glass and an empty one map of loneliness with a gun hopeless words on a white paper cartridges of the black old pencil memorize of the cold days nothing seems to be ok all of them make me cry i should become a butterfly chorus: like a silkworm i hide inside cocoon like a silkworm this is my doom like a silkworm i hide inside cocoon like a silkworm this is my doom the sound of solitude guitar harmonic sack, dunhill cigar like a wizard inside the smoke mesmerizing stuffs as she pokes her pokes dancing around her magic covers the ground all of them make me cry i should become a butterfly like a silkworm i hide inside cocoon like a silkworm this is my doom like a silkworm i hide inside cocoon like a silkworm this is my doom all of these make me cry i should become a butterfly like a silkworm i hide inside cocoon like a silkworm this is my doom like a silkworm i hide inside cocoon like a silkworm this is my doom . hide yourself out on the streets poor boys and girls trying to find their own ways wearing the veil of government tired of all of the assignments funky inner city suburb mind the way they step off the curb funky inner city suburb mind the way they step off the curb doesn't matter if the sun is up doesn't matter if the day is on wherever you are hide yourself with a guard hide yourself with a guard wherever you are out on the streets i feel a pain poor boys and girls wanna breathe again urban fringe fake gate estate discussing my friend's interest rate doesn't matter if the sun is up doesn't matter if the day's gone wherever you are hide yourself with a guard hide yourself with a guard wherever you are doesn't matter if the sun is up doesn't matter if the day's gone where ever you are hide yourself with a guard hide yourself with a guard wherever you are . leaving my town i keep my city's picture to be sure that i won't homesick i'll write my family letters as you know better i am not coming home anymore time paints the skyline down is not yours and isn't mine i'm leaving my town all have seen the signs have to fly high i'm leaving my town the sun is shining but the light is lying cause darkness is fighting through the clouds i won't forget that cold decembers of my town when people died time paints the skyline down is not yours and isn't mine i'm leaving my town you have seen the signs have to fly high i'm leaving my town i'm leaving my town our life like illusion of regrets sadness and confusion all of the bad luck like a burden has grown in heaviness they only sadden it's time it's time it's time time paints the skyline down is not yours and isn't mine i'm leaving my town you have seen the signs have to fly high i'm leaving my town i'm leaving my town . paint us green yesterday has gone away has gone away, has gone away has gone away little memories are now awake as the steps of summertime walk on grime years walked fast revolution drove the past years walked fast revolution drove the past come and hug the waiting people cause you're the one paint us green color happy face of nights and days cause you are the one paint us green running out from the diary cases that came and made us shrink darkness and sadness that were sync with stars came and swim came and stick years walked fast revolution drove the past years walked fast revolution drove the past come and hug the waiting people cause you're the one paint us green color happy face of nights and days cause you are the one paint us green snow falls, icy dreams and memories like white doves softly shaped with day light years walked fast revolution drove the past years walked fast revolution drove the past come and hug the waiting people cause you're the one paint us green color happy face of nights and days cause you are the one paint us green paint us green paint us green paint us green . it’s time to change father's land is full of cranks thousand walkers at the street against bruised and battered hate the reign blowout rants step by step revolution gleams sound of youngers rise and streams memories of freedom flash to vanished dream open your eyes don't afraid from the guys raise all the lies under truth you're wise listen pistol shots have rung and killed the people's thrill it's time to change government and corps could join common ground it's time to change brothers now it's time to change brothers now it's time to change years are gone we girls have grown en your steer, you all the raven skates time is up it's many years leave this town open your eyes don't afraid from the guys raise all the lies under truth you're wise listen pistol shots have rung and killed the people's thrill it's time to change government and corps could join common ground it's time to change brothers now it's time to change brothers now it's time to change spring knew soon a day would come and dirty lies threw endless dreams will come true pistol shots have rung and killed the people's thrill it's time to change government and corps could join common ground it's time to change brothers now it's time to change brothers now it's time to change pistol shots have rung and killed the people's thrill it's time to change government and corps could join through common ground it's time to change brothers now it's time to change brothers now it's time to change death-fuse before the story ends ( ) . dark passenger within [instrumental] . times of desperation fragile, his dreams are failed again faced another failure, it's time to break the cycle looking for a closure desperation devours any sign of existence vacancy at the corner of his eyes a neglected child calling me again and again calling me lies at the bottom of desperation laid beneath his broken heart sinking like a helpless, he's deeper fallen, broken angel there's no turning back now salvation in his sorrow everything seems more clear to, clear to me now hope is a sweet dream, broken by the weight of the world anger is a child of desperation, claws its way to perfection followed be deceit, brings us down to our knees oh god he will never believe again times of desperation these times of desperation fragile, his dreams are failed again faced another failure, it's time to break the cycle vacancy, in his kingdom, nothingness reigns a neglected child, calling me again lies at the bottom of desperation laid beneath his broken heart sinking like a helpless, he's deeper fallen, broken angel i've been counting out the days hope you not afraid you gave me life i promise to never leave you do you remember me? this whole time it was me, my own fear, my own nightmare i'm the dark passenger within hope is a sweet dream, broken by the weight of the world anger is a child of desperation, claws its way to perfection followed be deceit, brings us down to our knees oh god . buried beneath years of isolation by your sight i've been awakened behind these eyes lies the story of my (restless heart) lived in sorrow for so long i can't recall your warm embrace this distance between us can't wash away all hope inside, hope inside i'm fighting my own war now behold, my story is unlike any you've been told i shall pray, move and fight never felt grief, never felt sorrow suddenly patient has faded into lonely nights come take my hand come break this land (land of darkness, land of distance) haunted by this endless story on this darkest night come take my hand (land of darkness, land of distance) with you by my side every hour, every second of this fight feel the hope rising over my life with you every second of this life filled with endless memories my life, my life is turning to an end all that i ever was is here in this shining eyes, shinning eyes take away my pain heal this broken heart this wounded heart no longer can bear this circumstances feeling striving through my heart buried beneath years of isolation rain upon this endless misery take me out of darkness take away my pain suddenly patient has faded into lonely nights come break this land (land of darkness, land of distance) haunted by this endless story on this darkest night come take my hand with you by my side every hour, every second of this fight feel the hope rising over my life with you every second of this life filled with endless memories by your sight i've been awakened behind these eyes . awake the fallen it's time to awake the fallen world spinning around my head nightmares, nightmares turning to reality dark sky, dusk dismantled, dying sun, dying sun is it the afterlife? the after life i searched my mind to find a shelter for my misery i've been left alone looking around, no one's by my side all these years i've been chained, chained to my grave time to dig out the grave these hollow bones will become, your worst nightmares let me out will become your worst next time remind me to leave this frail world on my own feet all the time taking for granted, i've been given empty promises once i've put my trust in you, let me out of myself out of my shell once i've heard you, you'll be in the hours of darkness once i've put my trust in you, let me out of this prison let me out of this walls when the time comes i’ll burst into flames, burst into flames now you summoned the beast nowhere to run, nowhere to hide i hate to bring you down for what must be a good weaken fishing cry for help, tell me why why did you perish me? why?! why did you take my life? why?! this time i'm coming for your thrown a flaring light before me a passing blindness blood streaming through my fist sweat conceals my dread once i've put my trust in you, let me out of myself out of my shell once i've heard you, you'll be in the hours of darkness once i've put my trust in you, let me out of this prison let me out of this walls when the time comes i'll burst into flames, burst into flames for i was falling and now, and now i have fallen this is the end end of your deceitful world don't hold back . meaningless frame i'm standing here eyes full of tears heart full of hope yearning for a breath to take reminiscing all my life as the future knocks on my door so many brothers to bid farewell so many memorable days to leave behind with every panorama, i traverse from old scars starting to bleed right before my eyes here comes the hemorrhage can't take this any longer, not anymore leaving this homeland is the hardest thing i've ever done putting the brave face on, cause it's no time to cry i'm lost but the time, time will come to march back home home is calling home is calling this heart is falling to home i'll return to take a breath that was once stolen pain, this meaningless frame pain, this endless chain i'll get rid of this meaningless frame i'm a weary soul drawn out of light i've been born to get to this point fighting for a better life, bleeding for another destiny gives me the strength to carry on so many memorable days to leave behind so many brothers to bid farewell with every panorama, i traverse from old scars starting to bleed bleed this heart is falling to home i'll return to take a breath that was once stolen home is calling this heart is falling . frail life what have i done? have i done, again i've done! now i lost the way to turn back home i see them coming to bring me down not now i opened my eyes these memories are hard to forget how it feels to be lost in the middle of this relentless sea in waves all i seek is home memories of another life tearing this heart apart are hunting me again i'm the elder god, whispered in my ears i'm the elder god, i'm your savior whispered in my ears, from this misery all hope is gone deep in the sea, deep in the sorrow all hope is gone, i fear nothing take my hand tired of this, this rotten frail life sinking i am sinking breaking i am breaking all before me, all these memories now i lost the way back what have i done? have i done, again i've done! not now, not this way not now, not by myself, not by myself not now! i opened my eyes these memories are hard to forget how it feels to be lost in the middle of this relentless sea take this hopeless hands take me out of misery into the world of dead save me! . into the light [instrumental] . lacerated soul born in blood sentiments are all gone as he kills he remembers flashes coming through his mind have to put this puzzles together a lone wolf in the middle of the night a monster behind a mask a body free of soul, he kills to save life his last trend to humanity, his last alibi feelings striving to surface this wound is too deep to recover could he find a remedy a cure for his lacerated soul a hope to return return the child that was once gone the question still remains will he be human again? darkness is defined by light there is a light somewhere, i can feel it somewhere along the way, i'm sure of it otherwise we should all pray to hell he's feeling alive again sound of gasping feed upon his soul it's the night of the hunter tools of slaughter calling him like a lullaby to child's ear it's the night, night of the hunter the hunter welcome to my show you can choose the ending sadly it ends the same anyways you're my trophy from this cruel world i have the perfect place for you don't worry you won’t be alone victims will be waiting for you take a look around i'm gonna walk you through this the darkness passing on passing the gates of hell he's feeling alive again sound of gasping feed upon his soul it's the night of the hunter tools of slaughter calling him like a lullaby to child's ear it's the night, night of the hunter the hunter . darkened hearts thus there's no escape i lost my love, my will to live my second chance to reign over me march of madness in my head moving back and force spinning round and round nothing seems right nothing seems wrong why don't i feel paranoid stories in my head are in constant motion one after another dying soul to broken heart all around us no ones to say a word feelings of indifference, crushed our bravery sometimes the best part is falling falling into the sea of nothingness we need the rain to wash away our faults (our vicious minds) to bring us back our stolen innocence we beg the wind to take away our sins (our vicious minds) to bring us back our stolen innocence (our blackened hearts) forsaken hearts memories of another life gives me the strength to carry on unbroken thoughts gives me the strength to return return to the place to the place where i left you behind sometimes the best part is falling falling into the sea of nothingness we need the rain to wash away our faults (our vicious minds) to bring us back our stolen innocence we beg the wind to take away our sins (our vicious minds) to bring us back our stolen innocence (our blackened hearts) . before the story ends before the story ends before this page starts to turn we need to leave our mark, leave our mark on this world it all started with the ride ride of destiny we put our faith in tomorrow with only a sparkle in sight could it be? all those winding roads behind us (moments of doubt) while eyes of failure gazing at us (waiting for us to fall) we stayed true to our dreams to fly high, fly high this brotherhood shall never die and now we stand here with so much upon us we long to search for more knowing there is more to reach but the fire inside keeps us warm on this ending chapter there's still more to tell but it's time for farewell even though you won't be won't be hearing from us our story shall go on our trails on the sands that's what we leave behind lesson learnt in 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( ): - . jstor. web. nov. . ———. “the status of music in the islamic republic of iran.” foundation for iranian studies, n.d. web. aug. . http://www.fis-iran.org/en/irannameh/volxix/iran-status-music. histories of f o r g e t t i n g , g e o g r a p h i e s of r e m e m b e r i n g : exploring p r o c e s s e s . o f witnessing a n d performing in senior s e c o n d a r y humanities c l a s s r o o m ( s ) by • jacyntha england a . , university of victoria, , b . e d . , simon fraser university, a thesis s u b m i t t e d in partial fulfillment of t h e r e q u i r e m e n t s for t h e d e g r e e o f m a s t e r of a r t s in t h e f a c u l t y of g r a d u a t e studies department of education studies w e accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard university of british columbia march (c) copyright by jacyntha england library authorization in presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the university of british columbia, i agree that the library shall make it freely available for reference and study. i further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. it is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. name of" author (plmise print) <x -qt--aoo - date (dd/mm/yyyy) department of savtaaiopca ^wws the university of british columbia vancouver, b c canada this thesis explores the roles oral histories and drama can play in questioning and transforming dominant curricular narratives in senior secondary humanities (social studies, first nations studies, history, geography) education. the project centered on two classes (social studies , first nations studies ) in a secondary school in langley, british columbia. in collaboration with the regular classroom teacher, the author designed two eight week study units, one for each course, that incorporated oral testimonies from canadian marginalized communities into a pedagogical framework of critical analysis and reflective drama processes. the testimonies detailed such experiences as legislated segregation in the city of vancouver, residential schooling and the japanese internment. the author used the theatre of the oppressed techniques of augusto boal (image theatre, cops in the head, forum theatre) to facilitate the students in their responses to the testimonies. students also participated in class discussions and completed written reflections at the end of each lesson and unit. this project created a curricular opening in which students could critically and creatively engage in personal and collective interrogations of "race", racism, colonialism, nation building and memory in both a historical and contemporary national context. for many of the students the material covered in the testimonies was new and disturbing, and the drama processes proved invaluable in allowing them to express their questions, reactions and understandings openly and without judgment. many students developed new insights on themselves as members of a "multicultural" nation, and found strategies to help them question dominant curricular and national narratives. the responses from both the students and the cooperating teacher show overwhelmingly that this teaching approach was both useful to them in their development and should be expanded to other schools, subject areas and grade levels. however, serious systemic and structural obstacles, such as outcomes-based school and curricular expectations, unequal social relations in both schools and society, and teachers' lack of confidence in working with controversial issues need to be examined and overcome to bring this work to full fruition. this thesis uses various narrative styles - academic, autobiography, poetry and travelogue - to witness the project's themes and findings. i i abstract i i table of contents , i i i acknowledgements i v m y manifesto m y invitation p a r t i witnessing(s) . witnessing historical and pedagogical space . mapping the project's location and methodology part ii stop: crisis . a crisis of witnessing becomes the stop . sites of memory in culture(s) and education(s) . navigating "race" with the invisible majority . troubling the national narrative from the shadows o f empire . postscript: breakthrough pain, crisis and pedagogy part iii transformation(s) . performative space(s) . implication(s) . conclusion(s) bibliography appendix i unit plans appendix ii student feedback forms i i i because this is about the conversations and spaces we share, and the words we remember: because deirdre kelly never blinked, never flinched, never shied away because anne bourque has spent a decade teaching me to risk and love it all because leslie roman taught me that the critical and the creative speak the same words because lynn fels gave me the magic of dancing, singing and performing those words because jean barman showed me that practice makes praxis makes a practitioner because graeme chalmers let me be an artist, an activist and a scholar because marketa nykl and david diamond showed me to make my body my instrument because anne souther and stephen osborne helped me take those notes to the page because hartej gill said my words were words of beauty and wisdom and courage because stephanie springgay said my words could be painted, if only she had a brush because lisa okada kept the words alive, in kitchens and cafes and bus stops and parks because yvonne brown laughed and smiled and let her eyes dance me into being because the csci collective welcomed me into conversations of clowning and joking because diane potts taught me that to question is to challenge is to create because kari winters taught me that to listen is to speak is to act because julia and ruth were there, always and regardless because this would not have happened without all of them together, whether they knew each other or not, building the web that has been my learning i v my writings testify to the patience and guidance of two people who taught me to move into, with and beyond the worlds of the academy: my father anthony england, who taught me then and my mentor leslie roman, who teaches me now v my manifesto love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks. stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others . . . and your very flesh shall be a great poem walt whitman, leaves of grass a s an educator, but also as a white, middle class female i carry within and on my body power and privileges both spoken and silent, and i must remain vigilant of how these express themselves when i am working with what delpit ( , p. ) so aptly calls "other people's children." to do this successfully, i must understand myself as not simply a transmitter of information, but as a "transformative cultural worker engaged in the production of ideologies and social practices" (giroux, , p. ). to become this kind of practitioner, i must commit myself to deep and ongoing praxis, or "reflective participation" (freire, , p. ), into the ways in which the grammars of education and social justice have and continue to shape me and my work as a global/local/colonial citizen, teacher, researcher and artist. / agree with giroux ( , p. ) when he says that: a critical pedagogy for democracy is about the intellectual, emotional, and ethical investments we make as part of our attempt to negotiate, accommodate and transform the world in which we find ourselves. the purpose and vision that drives such a pedagogy must be based on a politics and view of authority, that links teaching and learning to forms of self - and social empowerment that argue for forms of community life that extend the principles of liberty, equality, justice, and freedom to the widest possible set of institutional and lived relations. more specifically, perhaps, i see social justice education as: both a process and a g o a l . . . that involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others and the society as a whole. (bell, , p . l ) in practice, then, i and like-minded practitioners: must keep the perspective that people are experts on their own lives . . . that they can be the only authentic chroniclers of their own experience. we must believe that people are rational beings.. . that we may not understand their rationales, but that in no way reduces our responsibility to attempt to apprehend them. and finally, we must learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our consciousness. (delpit, , p. ) so i must understand that: i f the effort to respect and honor the social reality and experiences of groups in this society is to be reflected in a pedagogical process, then as teachers - on all levels, from elementary to university settings - we must acknowledge that our styles of teaching may need to change, (hooks, , p. ) and my vision of change involves: the phenomenon of storytelling . . . a tradition that creates continuities and holds people mysteriously together who might otherwise fall apart. storytelling, in fact, can become a beginning for political action when it focuses on the process of thinking about experience and the conditions for action. (greene, , p. ) which i plan to explore through: theatre - the art of looking at ourselves . . . for the theatrical language is the most essential human language. everything that actors do on stage, we do throughout our lives, always and everywhere. theatre is a form of knowledge; it should and can also be a means of transforming society. theatre can help us build our future, instead of just waiting for it. (boal, , p. - ) and document within a framework of: three separate, distinct levels of witnessing: the level of being a witness to oneself within the experience; the level of being a witness to the testimonies of others; and the level of being a witness to the process of witnessing itself. (laub, (p. ) my invitation to you, the witness and spect-actor think of a time when the word border had no meaning for you. when did you last live beyond the barriers of geography, or the boundaries of knowledge? have you ever been able to go wherever you wanted, speak to whomever you chose, ask for whatever you needed? where was this world, for you? how old were you? who shared it with you? this is my invitation to you to begin thinking metaphorically about the nature and reality of borders, both those that others construct around us, and those we impose on ourselves. in geopolitical terms, metaphorical borders become material borders laid down by victors to claim what they feel they won through physical, cultural or economic violence. walls are built, soldiers hired to guard them, traditions developed to commemorate their founding. in educational terms, borders both metaphorical and material can also defined through victory and even violence: what we learn and how we teach become controlled by the dominant scholars, the dominant polices and the dominant curricula. these borders too are tightly guarded by official, elected and appointed gatekeepers who lock out just as much as they allow in. both geopolitical and educational borders serve to contain the flow of voices, peoples, ideologies and pedagogies in much the same way they operate to restrict the flow of commercial goods and commodities. violating these restrictions can prove dangerous. people get shot at border crossings. opportunities for of students and educators get destroyed by gatekeepers. now think of a time when you were told you couldn't have or do something. couldn't cross the street, couldn't speak a language you loved, couldn't read a poem you had written to your class. not because you weren't capable of such an act, but because someone told you it was inappropriate, unsafe, not allowed. could we call this your first experience of coming up against a border? what did you do? how did you feel? but it is not so much the official reasons for the development and existence of geopolitical and educational borders that i want to explore; it is more our lived experiences of being bordered within these discourses and realities that interest me. how is it to know oneself as privileged or subalterned by history and its imposed borders? what happens to those falsely segregated or united by a nation and its imagined borders? when we look across a border, what do we really see - of the other and of ourselves? how many of us ever actually cross - mean really transgress, in mind and body and soul - a border? what is the difference between a traveler voluntarily crossing a border, safe in the knowledge that this is a trip of exploration that one can leave at anytime, and an economic or political refugee fleeing one set of borders for another, knowing that choice is a luxury long ago abandoned in favour of survival? how can an awareness of these border struggles and privileges, and those murky waters in between them, inform our practice as educators and researchers? i did not understand borders until i was eight years old and my father tried to take me to his home country. i was listed on his passport as a dependent, but security officers still chose to take me aside and question me, asking me why i was travelling, if this man was indeed my father, where i thought he was taking me. the officers kept me so long we missed our flight. this was how i learned that some borders cannot be challenged. this thesis uses the metaphors of borders, maps and travel to uncover some questions that have been hidden by the answers of official state and educational policies and discourses. answers of statehood, citizenship, identity and belonging. answers of displacement, dispossession, invasion and exclusion. answers, yes, of geography and geopolitics. but answers too of other things, of disciplines and boundaries and definitions and pedagogies. answers that, when navigated mindfully, force us to ask questions of who we are and what we do. so let us begin. here, with what we know. to travel, we are often taught to use a map. the first maps human beings followed were the stars, or maybe detailed, precise etchings on sand or carvings on rock. these maps told stories, expressed rather than defined knowledges, allowed boundaries. then came stronger lines, demarcations on pieces of parchment, rules and boundaries enforced by the victors. what we know of borders today comes from maps drawn in times of conquest, by artists and mapmakers under hire to those drunk on the desire to control pieces of land and the peoples they found there. those were the maps we studied at school. today in education the word map means many things. "map the story," we tell students when they learn to read. "map the literature," we tell some of these same students when they reach university. "map your argument", we might tell ourselves as we prepare a paper or a presentation. the process of mapping concepts, ideas and experiences can thus become one of un-making as well as making. a s we map what we want to say or teach, we uncover hidden geographies and landscapes, un- name territories and re-draw the borders of knowledge and language. we become geographers and cartographers so we can re-map the world and our relation to it. this entire document is really just a process in un-mapping. when i was in elementary school, our teachers loved to give us maps to colour. sometimes these maps made sense, as in a map of canada and its provinces and territories. other times they were vague, confusing, like when we were given a blank world map and told to colour in the oriental empire. we were always told to pay close o attention to the borders, for anyone spilling over one of the lines would lose marks. i liked to see what happened when i mixed the colours. but then ifailed the assignment. a key part of this project w i l l be to re-contextualize the blurred, shifting outlines of canada's national and social "imagined community" (anderson, ). we w i l l "decolonize" (hooks, , p. ) these imaginaries until we find, or at least point ourselves in the direction of, what bhaba ( ) calls the "third space" of critical exploration and dialogue, in which "it is legitimate to ask how things might be otherwise" (rizvi, , p. ). only then w i l l we be able to understand and implement "the possibilities for constructing a radically different canada" (bannerji, ) and truly say we are "teaching to transgress" (hooks, ). but maps can only do so much. sometimes we get lost. the compass malfunctions, the maps get torn in two, our visas expire and we are forced to turn inwards, to our intuition, our inner compass. m y inner compass draws me to the arts, for they represent to me "a liberating space where one is moved to action, to voice, to affirm one's presence." (fels, , p. ). here i w i l l allow myself to be guided by augusto boal and his concept of the "spect/actor", and maxine greene and kathleen berry, who claim respectively that "art offers life; it offers hope; it offers the prospect of discovery" ( , p. ) and that "any aspect of modern life is subject to interrogation or scrutiny through the dramatic arts, for they shape and re-shape the world" ( , p. ). i w i l l write down - in narrative, in prose, in poetry and creative non-fiction, in styles yet to be invented or named - everything that happens along the way so that, unlike hansel and gretel who got lost in the woods, we w i l l always have a record, a documentation of our travels. we will find our way home. in grade eight social studies, we studied the formation of the united states as a nation. we learned the details of the land purchases in louisiana, alaska, new mexico and could name all the players, the prices, the new borders this gave america. what we didn't learn, because no teacher or book ever mentioned it, was that citizenship can prove fickle. the residents of these territories were french, russian or mexican when they went to bed; the next day they woke up to find that their language, rights, jobs and land ownership held no further currency. the borders had simply been made to disappear. i did not learn until much later that this practice was not uncommon around the world. a s educators, we live in nations, we work in school districts, we study in departments. these borders - so neat and clear cut on paper - define us, name us, locate us. if there is a mutual agreement on the nature of the border's limits, that neatness can be maintained. but when the borders have been drawn arbitrarily, by a group of powerbrokers in a boardroom, some bod(ies) w i l l get hurt. border crossings become guarded, indisputable territories, life threatening sites of contestation. if one is not careful, a border can become a war zone. but borders also must eventually meet, cross and intersect: it is inevitable that our pedagogical disciplines do the same. what happens then? "this is bullshit. " he shouts. "you are not teaching us anything, with all these theatre exercises. you should be standing up there, lecturing and giving notes. " he, is a medical doctor, an authority trained in the exactness of numbers and science, the proven rationality of the body. there, is an adult education class at a university in vancouver. he is the only man in the class and i am the instructor. i wait, letting the silence fill the room. "would anyone like to respond to this? " i ask. twenty women - nurses, teachers, activists, educators all - eye each other cautiously. then one, the youngest, looks directly at me and says "um, you 're doing the right thing with this work. " the others nod and someone else adds her voice. "i think this is interesting and want to try more. please keep going. " so i do. but he refuses to participate for the rest of the class. o with every border, with every demarcation in the sand and earth, there comes a migration of bodies that shift between and across lands, publicly or in secret, legally or illegally. these areas become known as the borderlands, places authorities say must be scrutinized and patrolled. yet it is here that many people find a place to belong that is neither here nor there, that belongs to no one but themselves. they invent: stories, voices, languages, identities. they refuse to be silenced by the patrols. in graduate school i have walked carefully between my department of record and the campus borderlands in which i and my work feel more at home. this tension is one of the necessary dynamics of this paper, as it seeks both to rupture and merge traditional boundaries - and to create new borderlands - between the arts and critical thinking, between research and inquiry, between academic and creative writing, between theory and practice. where have you stood, my friends? across a river, a trickle of water in a parched desert, watching me, watching us . . . doing, what? i have stood at borders that are mere ditches or gullies that one could cross in a single step - i have never counted a soldier at one of these. but now i watch as you or someone you love, your sister, your father, your child, runs into no man's land; and are shot, or raped, or handcuffed. . . or simply sent back, while somehow i, with my new passport and neat skin, am allowed to cross without harm. but here, if you take my hand, and i take yours, the crossing might be easier - and look, my friends, they have not seen us yet, will not catch us, not today. if only for tonight, amigas, we are safe. and tomorrow we will walk together, past the soldiers and through the barbed wire. tomorrow, my friends, is coming now. the borders i want you to imagine are both those of ancient cartographers and contemporary imperialists, and those that exist in our minds: mine, yours, theirs, ours . . . for at some stage in our lives we have all inherited the mappings of external teachings. what we know of ourselves, our stories, our disciplines and pedagogies we have learned, at least to begin with, through the eyes of somebody else, someone who believed they were doing the right thing by telling us what we should know - and what we should not. we must now continually work to un-make those teachings and mappings. i ask only that you allow the spaces to be empty when necessary and filled when you are ready, that you give yourselves permission to walk down roads you do not know. to lead us out then, i call on maxine greene ( , p. ): there have to be disciplines, yes, and a growing acquaintance with the structures of knowledge, but at the same time, there have to be the kinds of grounded interpretations possible only to those willing to abandon already constituted reason, willing to feel and to imagine, to open the windows and go in search. the search - sometimes rigorous, sometimes gay - ought to be accompanied by the sound of a blue guitar. yes, this project may seem at first to be all over the map, to straddle too many borders, to stretch across too many disciplines. yes, the journey w i l l at times be messy, hot, and uncomfortable. y o u w i l l all, at some point, feel dirty and wish you could go home. but trust me, when we get there (wherever there is) you w i l l be glad you stuck it out. come with me now into the borderlands. there, you will find guitars of whatever colours you need. they are ready to be played, and are just waiting for you to find them. ̂ rt i: chapter i witnessing historical nd pecjggogicaj p ce: a personal and conceptual journey mapping <? moment ofwitnessingcs) the teachers called us savages. i remember that, called us "dirty savage, you'll learn, " stuff like that. ifelt bad, ifelt real dirty. i thought the nuns were so pure and clean. dorothy joseph to question "how spaces come to be, and to trace what they produce as well as what produces them, is to unsettle familiar everyday notions" (razack, , p. ). it requires risk, and time. so i ask: how do we find the space in our practice to build an educational culture of witnessing the spaces that have been constructed around and within us? in the summer of , am driving across canada with four english friends. we 're tired ofpacking and un-packing our camping equipment every second day, tired of squeezing our bodies into a cramped car and driving for hours at a time, tired too, i think, of each other's company. my friends are sick of the rugged landscapes and pioneer museums and no longer bring out their cameras for viewpoints and historical sites. i am beginning to wonder why i even came back to canada, a place that holds so many conflicting memories and emotions for me, when i was so happy overseas. we arrive in kamloops and check into a roadside motel. the clerk behind the desk tells us a new museum has just opened on the other side of town. "supposed to be pretty interesting, all about the school they used to run there, for the indians, you know. " he gives us a free map of the city and draws the directions on it with a red felt pen. we get back in the car and drive over the thompson river, winding around a series of industrial parks and retail outlets until we get to an enormous red brick building. "welcome to the secwepemc cultural education society", a sign at the front gate reads. "all visitors please check in at the museum entrance. " and so the witnessing begins. it was bad, i remember i couldn't keep anything down. the butter was rancid, everything was horrible. we got this white fish soup, and to this day i cannot eat fish. i remember com flakes for easter and i think there was an egg or two or a jellybean for a treat. i don't remember any christmas dinner. mary anderson if "an examination of spatial arrangements is critical to an interrogation of the making of canada as a white nation" (oikawa, , p. ), how should we witness the teachings behind the nation's public spaces, and the buildings, monuments or cities that develop on them? do we witness ourselves as resisting or perpetuating these teachings? we spend hours in the museum, poring over photographs, objects and documents. we read letters from missionary and government organizations that declare the need to civilize and assimilate native children. i touch pieces of a student's uniform, run my fingers along its scratchy woollen surface; this must have hurt to wear against bare skin. my friends watch a video interview with an adult survivor who describes his childhood in the school as one of abuse, fear, hunger and neglect, and speaks of an adult life full of anger and violence. we move through the museum in absolute silence, barely aware that we are its only visitors. the kamloops indian residential school - now home to a band-run museum and education center - is not an innocent arrangement of bricks on land, but a deliberate construction with both material and symbolic meaning. it is what goldberg ( , p. ) calls a "periphractic space, the primary mode by which the space of racial marginality has been articulated and reproduced." constructed to both remove first nations children from their homes, families and languages and to contain them at a safe distance from the clean streets and well-kept homes of the predominantly white settler community across the river, this building embodies both the experiences and legacies of colonialism. it becomes a site of what felman ( ) calls "trauma and testimony", to which the public must "bear witness." the photograph takes up an entire wall of the museum. four children, none of whom can be older than seven or eight, stand in the back of an open cattle cart. the cart seems to be pulling away; the children stare at the lens with confused, frightened expressions. the caption under the photo reads "children being collectedfor the first day of school, circa . " who took that photograph, and why? how much did the children know about what was happening to them? ifind no other written information - no names for these children, their families or communities - just four terrified faces slipping into the past. this photo, and its overwhelming size in relation to me and the rest of this site of colonial legacy, holds me for several minutes. through this photo, and my very act of responding to its presence, i begin to understand something transformative for my teaching. in that moment, the photo becomes a metaphor for how we are often required to teach canadian history in our public schools. "narratives of struggle" (hooks, , p. ) too often become, like the children in the photo, faded historic snapshots fixed against an ongoing backdrop of dominant "white settler mythologies" that promote the "disavowal of conquest, genocide, slavery and the exploitation of the labour of peoples of colour" (razack, , p. ). / remember a truck came to pick us up. it wasn't just us, there were other children from the reserve. it was a flatbed truck with rails around it, like the kind you carry cattle in. i was six years old. we rode all bunched up on wooden benches. i remember it rained and we got wet. there were no rest stops. i recall whispering "that's my brother over there. " it was strange not being able to talk to him. i had my hair cut off the first day of school, and my sister and i were separated and assigned different rooms. naturally, they started us going to church right away. mary anderson i touch the sepia-toned face of one of the children, lay my hand against her cheek as i f checking my own child for signs of fever. and then so many questions: how do we stop the children on the cart from disappearing into a misremembered past? how can our practice bear witness to their experiences in a meaningful way? and how should we witness space as a social construct - both historical and contemporary - within the highly contested physical, epistemological and pedagogical space that is canadian education? the painful part was when my grandmother came to see me. she must have hitchhiked or caught the bus or something. i looked out the window and i saw her, i didn't see her coming in, but i saw her going away and i ran out the door and i managed to get as far as the outside door and then i saw her walking down the road. two nuns grabbed me and told me not to do that, i must have been punished again. anonymous my friends are waiting for me on a bench outside the museum. i join them, and we sit looking out at the city and the hills behind it. our white bodies and european accents implicate us in the evil of this place, yet we can find no vocabulary with which to speak of our selves in this space. "it's kind of like auschwitz, " one of us says. "you know, a place where something horrible happened and you go there because you feel an obligation to try to get a sense of what happened, but you never really do in the end. "yeah, " i say, "except this isn't some distant thing we can explain away to make us feel better. this is us, our ancestors who did this. and this is the country i grew up in. " i want to ask them more questions - are we just tourists here, taking this visit in like any other stop? what will we tell others about this place when we get home, and what even gives us the right to speak of what we saw if we will not also speak of what we felt, or what we are going to do with those feelings? - but their shocked, uncomfortable faces keep me quiet. mapping the spaces we move through: schools and curricula it was an area where immigrants resided because of the direction that somebody placed on them -you didn't want all these people in the west end, right? . . . we never did get away from the east end — we didn't have cars, so we didn't have access to other areas of the city. you just bounced off walls down in the east end. ray culos c j i wish to map the pedagogical spaces of this re/search study by interrogating the physical and official discursive spaces within which it is structurally located. in doing this, i echo berry's assertion that "educators and curriculum, as potential agents of change, through interrogations and disruption of unchallenged cultural constructions, can begin the process of dismantling curricula and themselves." ( , p. ) let's begin by imagining the key elements of secondary education culture - the physical sites of schools and classrooms, the curricula, students and teachers - in terms of what henri lefebvre ( , p. ) calls "perceived space, conceived space and lived space." education has first a perceived social role brought into the public imagination through repeated traditions. the physical plant of a school and the textual materials of its curricula direct the activities of the bodies moving through the building. students and teachers sit at desks, walk through hallways, enter and exit through proscribed points. they teach and work from similarly confined structures of books, papers or computers. in this structured machine, the teachers transmit curricula while the students receive it. this could, in a nutshell, be how secondary education is perceived by the general public. the west end didn't like the east end. they didn't like us. but when they wanted to eat and drink, they always came to the east end. we'd give them everything we had. but you never go asked back to their house. never. violet teti benedetti lefebvre argues that spaces become publicly perceived due to their planned (conceived) representation, or how the physical space is designed and executed. do you ever pass a school, particularly those brick boxes from the middle of the last century, and think how closely they resemble prisons? i do. i mean, what else can the huge, insurmountable walls and the narrow slit-like windows, the long corridors and square classrooms possibly be intended to represent? many school buildings seem less designed as spaces for living than for containment, conveying a message that the bodies of education (teachers, curricula and students) are to be controlled and monitored. this brings me to lefebvre's final concept, that of space as "directly lived through its associated images and symbols" ( , p. ). educational space, through its perceptions and conceptions, then becomes a lived process of containment and control, something the public takes for granted but has little real connection to because most sites and spaces of teaching and learning are boxed and hidden away behind brick walls and closed doors. / was friendly with the boy who was shot, yosh uno . . . his mother was in the store one day, they lived in the back, and four young white kids came in with a gun and they held her up. yosh ran out from the back to protect his mother and they shot him dead. so, then these kids were charged with murder. then the headlines, "four white kids for one jap - is it fair? " and people saying, "japs are killing americans, so what difference does it make if canadian boys shoot jap? " (ivy kaji mcadams) like the physical space of a school, a curriculum is also a perceived, conceived and lived space. it is perceived as intended to teach something. it is conceived by various players, from ministry of education officials to community members to contracted educators. finally, it becomes lived by the teachers and students who must follow its guidelines. the official curricula for social studies and first nations studies present an enticing metaphor within which to explore how experiences of space play out in an educational reality. these two subject areas form the focal points for this study because they represent some of the key perceived, conceived and lived spaces that have dominated much of my development as a secondary school teacher. a s a rookie social studies teacher in the primarily aboriginal community of lytton, i worked and lived in constant tension between the proscribed provincial humanities curricula and the lived experiences of my students and their parents, many of whom had been forced to attend the area's notorious st. george's residential school. in an effort to move beyond the "textbook indian" (francis, , p. ) narratives of the standard social studies curricula and resources, i struggled to find ways of making learning meaningful and empowering for my students and still meet the school district's expectations. some of my efforts paid off while others failed miserably, and in the throes of my working days i never fully had the time nor the energy to grapple with the inherent privilege and power of my position as a white, middle class teacher coming into an impoverished community haunted by the ghosts of other white, middle class "do-gooders" intent on "saving" souls and minds through western education. while i may have thought i was disrupting this flood by shifting how i moved within the community's curricular spaces, by collaborating with community leaders, using local resources and alternative teaching methodologies, i did not realize until years later that my sheer presence in the town and school reproduced rather than challenged hegemonic assumptions of whose knowledge held the most validity, at least in national economic and social capital terms. m y white body as the consistent authority in the front of the o classroom, rather than that of an elder or healer, told the same story as the white bodies in the front of the classrooms of st. george's: my urban, university-trained "knowledge", the one that got me a teaching certificate and thus the job in their town, counted more than anything they had to offer. it was my desire to grapple with these issues of knowledge, invisibility and silencing, and the relationship of teachers to the power structures inherent in both continuing and disentangling the process, that fuelled in large part my interest in pursuing graduate studies. what questions would i be able to ask of myself and my work within the reflective spaces of academia? and, after navigating the twisting halls of theory and inquiry, what answers would i find? before the second world war we could not practice as lawyers, and many other professions we could not get into. many department stores would not hire chinese. government agencies would not hire chinese. because after all, even though we were born here, we didn't have full rights as canadian citizens. harry con the preceding narrative of my naive wanderings through one problematic educational space illustrates the kinds of tensions behind the negotiating and claiming of space - historical, pedagogical and personal - that i want to explore in this thesis. i want this thesis to read as a journey through the many spaces that serve to educate us, so i feel i should begin with a brief interrogation of what is often used to claim space in our practice: the syallabus, or curriculum, or learning outcome so often conceived and transmitted by "experts". i want first to focus my inquiry on how two specific curricular documents, conceived by such experts as the best way to educate students on the cusp of graduating and entering the larger society, create a learning space full of claims and exclusions for those who must live inside or outside of it. the social studies integrated resource package (b.c. ministry of education, ) opens with the following claim: cirl studies ti cootributes to the i tp rtr t sorl, of prepares studeots for their future lives rs crordiro citizeos rod ftjeftjbers of the loterortioorl commuoity. the curriculum! is desi&oed to e sr e studeots criticr'u, reflective i quirv i t the chrlleo&es frci & crordiros rt the be&i i of the st ceotury. these are certainly worthy perceived ideals, but the manner in which those goals have been conceived quickly becomes suspect. in the first section, titled skills and processes, the teacher is told to do the following: "hrve studeots work r ups to brriostorul r list of the effects of immi&rrtioo society" and then to "hrve sotrll groups of studeots crerte chrrts illustrrtios the positive rod oesrtive effects of europero cootrct rod i terrcti ujith rborsiorl peoples", and to assess both projects on criteria that includes whether or not students "pre e t rccurrte ioformrtloo" (pp. - ). in the curriculum's lived space then, i wonder what these directives might feel like to immigrant student forced to see his or her coming to canada as an "effect" on an otherwise happy landscape, or to an aborginal student forced to construct "positive" interpretations of colonialism. how are they going to want to contribute to the exercise that follows these assignments, in which the class is expected to discuss "ujhrt it fderos to be cr rdir " and each student must "complete the seoteoce, r cr rdir is "? and whose answers should the teacher decide are "rccurrte"? / remember some food place where i went in and applied, and the form asked for nationality, so i put down "canadian". he says, "that isn't enough." i says, "well, i'm born here. " and i could see what he was getting at, he could see i was jewish, i had a jewish name. gloria steinberg harris the first nations studies integrated resource package ( ) does offer a more critical approach (at least it asks students to "r e the ijtiprct of europerfl cofltrct" rather than its positive effects, and the document actually uses the term colonialism, a word conspicuously absent from the social studies text), but the program still seems to position aboriginal culture and experience as an exotic other, one to be viewed from the confines of an anthropological gaze. teachers are told, for example, to focus on the "richfsess rfld diversity of first ortions' lro&urses rod cultures" in order to "develop ro rpprecirtion rod respect for the simlrrities rmotss rflo olffereflces betujeefl the diverse cultures of the ujorud" (p. ). in the lived space of the curriculum defined classroom, i can't help but ask i f to teach the course in this way actually perpetuates what lawrence ( , p. ) describes as "history . . . written from outside indigenous perspectives" that means indigenous peoples are not permitted to see "colonization as colonization." becoming accountable: mapping the context for this project just before leaving the secwepemc museum, ifind a book for sale: behind closed doors. stories from the kamloops indian residential school, $ . . i buy it, planning only to read it for personal interest. later in the summer i take a course on augusto boal 's theatre of the oppressed methodology that starts me thinking about possibilities for embodied learning in classrooms. that same fall, i take a graduate course with jean barman on the history of education. . . and boom . . . . i am on a curve of learning and exploration that grows into a thesis research project. funny how things come in threes. both the social studies and first nations studies curricular spaces create an educational and discursive space dominated by "historical narratives" (stanley, , p. ) that create what willinsky ( , p. ) calls a "global backdrop of a world imagined as empire and race". in his exploration of what he terms "the ethics of accountability", willinsky states that the "need to examine education's continuing contributions to what were and continue to be colonizing divisions of the world" can only begin to be met when educators understand that they "owe those they teach some account - i f always partial - of what we have taught them about the world" by "examining what this form of schooling has underwritten and who it has denied" ( , p. ). we put nametags on all the children, in case we got separated, on cloth we wrote it down, and we put a little sum of money on the bigger ones, and the baby i knew i would carry wherever i went. and we all had name tags, in case we got separated, you know, died or something, well then they'd know who we were. nobue minato it was this project's intention to become accountable in this way and "critically engage" (stanley, , p. ) with the perceived, conceived and lived spaces forged by canada's dominant white settler educational discourse. i chose to do this by introducing specific texts of storytelling from two historically silenced and marginalized communities - east vancouver and kamloops's aboriginal population - into a social studies and first nations classroom. further, this project used drama as the mode of response to these texts in an attempt to transform one small piece of classroom and curricular space into "lived space, shared space and public space" in which new pedagogies and ways of knowing come into being and begin "reaching toward each other in safe and unsafe spaces, seeking equity, seeking decency, seeking for a common world" (greene, , p. , p. ). questions o f language: mapping the spaces between telling and. responding just what exactly is storytelling, anyway? the oxford english dictionary defines a story as "hfl rcc u t of imrsiorry or rerl people rod eveots told for eotertrinfoeot" and telling as "hrvios ro iftlportrot or reverlios effect." interestingly, the word telling is listed in this dictionary only as an adjective and not as a verb or noun. is telling, then, not an action, not an experience in itself? something about the very word story feels wrong to me in this context, like a story has a neat, clear beginning, middle and end, when true telling and responding is messy, unfinished and seldom resolved. why should a story only be told for entertainment, and not to provoke or empower? who decides when the story is over . . . and should we even wish such a thing? if we reclaim the active agency involved in the act of sharing stories and call it "truth telling" (ward, , p. ), does the process then facilitate an experience that "addresses the question of how we understand what has happened from the point of view of the present" and open up " a moment between past and future when we can think what we are doing" ( h i l l , , p. )? how do we learn - and teach - listening in such a way that would get us to that place? my brother was the only oriental in the class and he was competing and he was a good swimmer. he came back from the swim meet and my mother asked him how the class made out and he said, "we didn't swim." she said, "why not?" he said, "because in crystal pool they've got a rule, 'no orientals allowed in here.'" they had singled out my brother and said, "he can't swim because we don't have orientals in here. " so the rest of the boys said "well, if he's not swimming, neither are we, " and the class all stepped back. ivy kaji mcadams felman & laub ( ) answer this question with their writings on "testimony and witnessing". a testimony, in their terms, is a narrative of trauma told by one person to another, but a narrative that does not "come into existence, in spite of the overwhelming and compelling nature of the reality of its occurrence" until it "is listened to and heard" (p. ). in this sense, the telling of and listening to an event become a mutually dependent process or contract in which "the knowing of the event is given birth to" and by extension "the listener is a party to the creation of knowledge de novo" (p. ): bearing witness to a trauma is, in fact, a process that includes the listener. testimonies are not monologues; they cannot take place in solitude. the witnesses are talking to somebody: to somebody they have been waiting for for a long time. (p. ) from behind closed doors t o opening doors: mapping spaces for textual tellings / lost my talk, the talk you took away, when i was a little girl at shubenacadie school. you snatched it away: i speak like you i think like you i create like you the scrambled ballad, about my word. two ways i talk both ways i say your way is more powerful so gently i offer my hand and ask, let me find my talk so i can teach you about me - rita joe, i lost my talk, y o u have been reading their testimonies throughout this chapter - but have you been listening? the testimonies offered in behind closed doors: stories from the kamloops indian residential school and in opening doors: vancouver's east end come from "degenerate spaces, established in relation to white bourgeois spaces to produce differing entitlements to power" (oikawa, , p. ). behind closed doors, like haig-brown's resistance and renewal ( ), witnesses the lived colonial experience of the kamloops indian residential school, a holding pen for children dispossessed of their white-appropriated rural territories, while opening doors witnesses the classed and racialized lived experiences behind the social construction of east vancouver as an/other urban space well removed from vancouver's white middle class west side. these texts, then, offer an opportunity to witness how and why certain communities have been "re-cast outside the imagined white collective space of the canadian nation" (oikawa, p. ). the voices in these texts uncover the realities of "the dark side of the nation" (bannerji ): it is essential that we and our students witness their testimonies i f we truly wish to teach and learn in the lived and shared spaces of a "curriculum designed to e gr&e studeots criticru reflective i qujrv i t the chruueo&es frci cr rdir s rt the be i i of the s t ce turv" (social studies irp, , p. ). both texts fit into other conceived curricular spaces of first nations studies and social studies . first nations studies contains a specific unit titled tradition and challenge in education that begins with the statement "first fsrtioos societies ujere drr!tirticrlly altered bv rssimilrtiooist educrtioorl policies" (p. ) and encourages students and teachers to both "rssess the ifdprct of residential schools first nrtioos frmilies rod cornmunities" and to "explrio the resistroce of first ortions people to rssimilrtiooist educrtioorl policies rod prrctice" (p. ) through such strategies as reading haig-brown's book or inviting a guest speaker to the class. likewise, the social studies curriculum's social issues unit encourages students and teachers to "list rersons people immi&rhte to crordr" and "idedtifv itirjor crordiro cirl policies rod pro&rrms rod their iftlprct ofl crdrdirfl societv" by developing "timelioes shoujios the ™ ceoturv eveots thrt hrve beefl .ti t sisoificrflt if) shrpi & crordiro societv" (p. ). what is to stop the testimonies of behind closed doors from " guest speaking" to a first nations studies class? why can't social studies students use the testimonies from opening doors to develop a "spatialized timeline" of provincial and municipal discriminatory housing and employment policies that "makes visible how social relations have been produced through geographic constructions" (oikawa, , p. ) and policy? despite the richness of their tellings, these texts remain in the margins, both physically and pedagogically, and are at risk of becoming testimonies to "events without a witness" (laub, , p. ). opening doors was published by the british columbia archives in , but is now out of print and available only in libraries or the odd used bookstore. in a similar marginalization, behind closed doors is a publication of theytus books, a small independent printing press, and is not sold in any major canadian bookstore. nor does either text appear on any ministry of education list of approved resources. on the surface, the public's access to these tellings remains limited; consequently, our ability to witness and act on what we hear from these testimonies may also be compromised. yet when we de-center the space of communication and pedagogy from the domain of one dominant mainstream, these texts become, through their sheer existence, sites of active resistance. theytus books is the only publishing house in the province both operated by people of first nations background and dedicated to publishing only works by and for first nations communities; it sets an award-winning example of how publishing can be used for social and cultural empowerment. in a similar vein, the opening doors project was financed in the 's by dave barrett's social activist n d p government, and provides an excellent juxtaposition to the current liberal government's ongoing cuts to public education. if we and our students analyze not only the testimonial content of these texts but their material production and location against a larger backdrop of systemic and cultural hegemony, we perform our own act of pedagogical resistance. these texts break through decades of educators and researchers "speaking for others" (alcoff, ) and begin to "translate the sensory" (kristeva, , p. ) lived experiences of being both placed in and resisting marginalized spaces. bringing them into our classrooms and allowing ourselves and our students to listen to them, to witness them, can help begin a dialogue of educational accountability within our learning communities. spect-acting and response-ability: mapping the concepts and the literature according to felman & laub the process of witnessing testimony is a contract between the teller and the listener, one in which the "listener is to be unobtrusively " - physically and mentally, to oneself, the teller and the testimony - "present throughout" (p. ). this kind of presence they call "response - ability", a state that "leaves no hiding place intact" for "as one comes to know the survivor, one really comes to know oneself, and that is no simple task" (p. ). witnessing begins with a traumatic event allowed to happen through unequal and oppressive power relations. we either see this event unfold, or are told about it later. what makes the witnessing process different from mere listening or bystanding is how we respond to the trauma. a witness practicing response - ability is neither bystander nor tourist: they do not slow down as they drive past a traffic accident, they do not visit a famous site only to snap a photo and leave. a witness w i l l stop at the accident, enter the site, do whatever is needed to somehow document the event beyond the eyewitness facts and figures. a witness w i l l speak to others not only about the trauma, but about how they are experiencing it. a witness touches, tastes and smells the its insides, and finds ways to remember those embodied sensations. a witness w i l l admit defeat: he or she w i l l not be afraid to show fatigue, exhaustion or incomprehension. a witness, then, responds to the trauma on multiple levels so they w i l l forever be part of 'it, not just at its telling. another key goal embedded within the process of bearing witness, and the impetus for so much of the autobiographical nature of research on testimony and witnessing, is that bearing witness somehow brings about a fundamental personal transformation. if the witness has made him or herself part of the trauma, they have engaged with the issues and experiences of injustice behind it. the hope is that this engagement leads in turn to a renewed consciousness or awareness of the workings of injustice, and a commitment to act for social justice. we and our students witness testimonies of the japanese internment, for example, in the hopes that we as social actors w i l l fight against such events ever being allowed to repeat themselves in our lifetimes. this process of witnessing trauma, and witnessing oneself in relation to it, needs to be understood in our practice as an ongoing cycle. what we start in one classroom with students in grade ten may have an initial impact in the moment, but may not really take hold in some students' lives and actions until years later. likewise, what we witness in ourselves - both as witnesses to the trauma and as facilitators of our students' witnessing processes - needs to be constantly reflected upon and interrogated. this psychoanalytic approach has been taken up by several education scholars (simon, eppert, britzman, et.al.) who study the role witnessing plays in educational cultures. britzman ( , p. ) for example, argues that witnessing allows educators insights into "what is not learned", and that witnessing is "not about a student's development or identity but about historicity and its relation to the student" (p. ). i agree with this use of witnessing in education, but wonder why research has so far limited itself to discussions of higher education pedagogy. i also agree with the highly autobiographical nature of much research on witnessing, as it is impossible to separate oneself from the process (as roger i. simon so often mentions in his work on the holocaust, in which he witnesses himself as a jewish man witnessing the testimony of survivors), but wonder why little work has been done on asking ourselves to witness the testimonies of survivors of domestic canadian traumas such as residential schooling or the internment. finally, i ask these scholars how we can move from witnessing through the mind, as most academic research does by the very nature of its reliance on written texts, to documenting our witnessing through the body. mapping performance as the site o f witnessing in a social justice approach to senior secondary humanities/social studies education, a subject area whose emphasis on historical data lends itself well to the witnessing process, we must ask ourselves two principal questions i f we want to bring a culture of witnessing into our practice. how can we encourage our students to safely become the event, to enter into it as fully as they can? how can we encourage them to see themselves not only as lifelong learners, but as lifelong witnesses? i argue that the conceived spaces of any traditional sites and structures of learning - with their desks and books and unmoving bodies - do not support a pedagogy of response-ability. to develop an educational process of witnessing we must welcome it as one of embodiment; the listener and teller must be able to interact, even i f the "teller" is a literary text. i believe that response- ability comes when the listener is able to perform their embodied responses to any telling. performance is of course a form of art, and encouraging performance means taking students into the arts education arena. i am of the view that the arts, and drama particularly as my specialty, do not need to remain separate from other curricula, but can be infused into any subject, any space, by any teacher and with any group of students. i also believe that, when one is seeking to engage students in critical thought and reflection, the arts offer the unique opportunity to develop a student's "critical imagination" (rizvi, , p. ). r i z v i goes on to suggest that: we need to teach for those forms of artistic imagination that problematise cultural formation and acknowledge that a politics of difference involves a dialogue with others who speak from different traditions, locations and experiences. (rizvi, , p. ) how do we get where we want this to take us? perhaps: we can confront our inconsistent canadian history of tolerance, and meet the challenges of our canadian diversity, by teaching drama with an acute awareness of how theatrical techniques in the theatre and in the classroom conspire with the social and cultural backgrounds, education, and expectations of audience and students to produce meaning. (zatzman, , p. ), by working with and within a form that invites improvisation, ongoing dialogue and critical and creative response . . . the concept of "letting go" is frightening, but necessary, i f we are to invite students to imagine anew a curriculum that realizes their own presence (fels, , p. ). into this textual and pedagogical landscape of arts as witnessing i bring the theatre methods of augusto boal, who claims not only that "artists are witnesses of their times" but that this witnessing should be explored through the body, "the most important element of theatre" ( , pp. - ). his methods of image theatre, in which participants respond to issues or experiences by making shapes with their bodies, and interior monologues, in which participants speak as the character or emotion created by the images they make, form the backbone to this project. boal's theory of the "spect-actor", that "all human beings are actors (they act) and spectators (they observe)" (boal, , p. j i ) and are constantly shifting between the two positions or subjectivities in real life so they should do the same in the theatre, links directly to the concepts of both accountability and response - ability. in spect-acting "whatever is not expressly forbidden is allowed" (boal, , p. ): we may respond physically, spiritually, or emotionally to what we hear and see. we respond to those speaking to us as well as the voices we discover inside us, becoming fully present in ways that sitting at a desk and thinking only through our heads does not permit. we become more fully able to commit to our responses, and in doing so we become accountable. in becoming accountable, we transform - ourselves, our surroundings and our teachings. chapter ii mapping the project's location and methodology you pull out of your driveway in the west end and head down georgia street onto the viaduct, turning right when you see the sign for main street. you have to stop at the traffic light before you can get to st avenue, which leads to the highway. it's raining, like it always is here; a lone squeegee kid jumps in front of you and begins wiping your car's windshield. she doesn'tfinish before the light changes, but has enough time to notice the loonie on your dashboard, the one you always keep handy for parking emergencies. she puts out her hand, expecting the coin, but you just stare straight ahead and keep driving. "bitch, " she yells after you, so you turn up the volume on your radio. the traffic announcer tells you it's a good day to be heading east on highway number ; the traffic is light and moving quickly. the road takes you through the suburbs of bumaby and coquitlam and over the patullo bridge. pretty soon you start seeing the exit signs, first for surrey and then the place you 're looking for, langley. follow the exit to walnut grove and drive past the line offast food franchises, motels and gas stations until you reach the first set of traffic lights. the houses look nice here, gated two-story townhouses with lush, expansive gardens. on the corner there is a church with a sign asking you to stay strong for your community. turn left here and drive one block - there is the school. at just past : a.m., the school day has officially started. you pass a quartet of senior girls hanging out in the parking lot, cigarettes and purses in their hands (you can tell they 're seniors by the confident way they hold their shoulders back, how they refuse to rush even though they know they are late). they wait around outside the school entrance, finishing their smokes and laughing about homework assignments they haven't done, tests they forgot to study for. a boy walks out of the school, his blonde hair shaved almost to his skull, and swears as he passes the girls. "fucking kicked out, " he tells one of them, a tall girl with long dark hair who seems to know him. the boy walks across the parking lot and gets into a mud-splattered white truck, revs the engine for a minute then peels out across the tarmac and onto the street. smoke spews from his screeching tires; the girls laugh and pump their fists in the air. "way to go dustin!" the tall girl with dark hair cries. she turns to enter the school, and notices you for the first time. she looks you over slowly, deciding whether or not to trust you. she tilts her head to one side, puts a hand on her hip, stubs out her cigarette and raises her icy blue eyes to meet yours. "welcome to hell, " she mouths at you, and then disappears into the building. any map can show you the boundaries: surrey to the west, abbotsford to the east, fraser river to the north, and the world's longest "unguarded" border to the south: a super sized belt of nature, bibles and foreigners wrapped tightly around its ever-growing waist * look at us, the township's website says: a community of (settler) communities * sto:lo means river, means , years: hudson's bay company its discovery; we learn this company town means the birthplace of bc * dates: : the royal proclamation signed here, an (other) empire territory (ten gentlemen ate that night from the manager's table); : gold rush, border disputes, railway (dislocation, separation, dispossession); the territory joins the birthing nation : capital fuels a bedroom community of , (mainly white, mainly middle class) global (colonial) citizens. and their school, how should we map that? almost , (mainly white, mainly middle class) bodies with - hey! - a female principal, and a commitment to: express innate curiosity! skillfully pursue knowledge! value personal well being! so into this map i come! tell me where you 're from, i ask them, and with words on paper they draw the map of their town: tell me it's a place "clean and good", so "picture perfect"; but then the lines grow frayed, words become stronger, grounds shift beneath the surface, and a new geography takes hold until the map of their town becomes the map of their lives, dissecting an "underground world", a "suburban hell-hole" in which survival equals nothing less than "acceptance and approval" 'explode the words they write, to tell me where they 're from: infect escape' this is the map of their town, their school, their lives; this is the map of their space. this project grew out of a telephone conversation i had with anne bourque, a humanities teacher in the langley school district. anne has long been a mentor to me ever since she taught me during my teacher education program at simon fraser university, and as our careers have developed we have often shared conversations of both inspiration and frustration. this time she was frustrated, for she wanted to find new ways to challenge some of the assumptions and silences she felt were shutting down dialogues amongst her students, particularly in her senior humanities courses. she knew i had an interest in anti- oppression pedagogy and its intersections with theatre and mainstream teaching practice, so she offered up two of her classes - social studies and first nations studies - as laboratories for exploration. and explore we did! beginning with the assumption that "knowledge of history helps us trace the patterns that constitute oppression over time and enables us to see the long-standing grievances of different groups in our society" and that it "also offers hope as well as evidence that oppressive circumstances can change through the efforts of human actors" (bell, , p. ), i designed and taught two eight- lesson units, one for social studies and the other for first nations studies . the goal of each unit was to encourage students to begin to examine their own social identities as well as develop an understanding of oppression in british columbia as a historical, genealogical and contemporary lived experience. the lessons used selected tellings from behind closed doors and opening doors to provoke questions around spatialized british columbian experiences of race, gender and class oppression, and incorporated the theatre response techniques of augusto boal to explore the following questions: -> <r j o • how can the study of oral histories in secondary education become a pedagogical intervention to stimulate a new discourse on canadian experiences of class, gender and race oppressions? • how does drama as a mode of educational inquiry facilitate this intervention and discourse? each unit was structured with the following "major elements of social justice education practice" (bell, , p. ) in mind (cited below from b e l l , , p. ): • balance the emotional and cognitive components of the learning process by paying attention to personal safety, classroom norms and guidelines for group behaviour. • acknowledge and support the personal (the individual student's experience) while illuminating the systemic (the interactions among social groups) by calling attention to the here-and-now of the classroom setting and grounding the systemic or abstract in an accumulation of concrete, real-life examples. • attend to social relations within the classroom by helping students understand group process and improve interpersonal communications without blaming or judging each other. • utilize reflection and experience as tools for student-centered learning by using the student's worldview and experience as the starting point for dialogue or problem- posing. • value awareness, personal growth, and change as outcomes of the learning process by balancing different learning styles with lessons organized around goals of social awareness, knowledge and social action. in the hope that by the end of the unit students would share at least the beginnings of a language with which to contextualize their learning, i decided to frame each unit's tellings, drama exercises, discussions and feedback form questions within a larger conceptual umbrella of anti-oppression vocabulary, specifically the terms power, oppression, lived experience and agency. i chose to work with these terms not only because they appear the most frequently across the anti-oppression literature, but also because they represent a continuum or cycle of knowledge and experience. if the students could reach even a limited understanding of how power is produced and constructed in their society, then they could use that knowledge to develop an understanding, or "consciousness" (freire, ) of how oppression affects members of that society. digging deeper, students who could witness the realities of power and oppression could then go on to examine how these phenomena become a lived experience for themselves and others. they could then begin the process of finding and using their agency as social actors, to engage with what tatum ( , p. ) calls "action - the natural antidote to both denial and despair". each term was explored, through discussion, tellings and drama exercises, for two - minute lessons. i began each lesson with a brief explanation of the concept to be explored, and a reading to help illustrate it. i then asked them to relate this concept to their own experience, by means of a free expression question. we then moved into warm- up activities from boal's "arsenal of the theatre of the oppressed" ( ) that were structured to further examine the meanings behind the concept. the remainder of the lesson was spent hearing and responding to, or witnessing, testimonies that took us deeper into the concept. each lesson ended with time for debriefing and questions. a complete unit plan for each course can be found in the appendices. it is also important to note here that boal and practitioners of theatre of the oppressed methodologies follow a certain protocol to ensure the safety of participants within both the classroom and the larger school environment. a key element of this protocol, and one enacted throughout the langley project, is to inform the school counselors of the unit and its sensitivity, and to remind them every day of the time and place in which the lessons are to take place. through this protocol of informing, the counselors were aware of potential issues and ready to offer support to students in case aspects of the lesson became emotionally difficult or traumatic. for a full description of the safety protocols, see david diamond's a joker's guide to theatre for living ( , pp. - ). after each lesson, and at the end of each unit, students were asked to complete written "feedback forms" or questionnaires in which they reflected open-endedly on both the content (the testimonies) and the process (the drama exercises) of the lesson and unit. the lessons were also videotaped. further data was collected in two hour long semi-structured interviews with the co-operating teacher. throughout the process, anne and i maintained an ongoing dialogue by sharing reflective journal writings in person, over the phone and via email. everything collected - the lessons, the feedback forms, the interviews, my notes and journals - became data worth investigating. the feedback forms for each unit, and the teacher interview questions, are included in the appendices. in analyzing the data, i wanted to first assess students' general experiences or understandings of race, class and gender oppression in canada. were they, for example, making assumptions based on such influences as mainstream media, family or community members, or did they have a first hand knowledge of the issues? secondly, i wanted to see if, after witnessing the oral histories from behind closed doors and opening doors, any students went through a personal transformation in how they approached or spoke about experiences of oppression in canada. d i d their views or thinking on the issues - or how they are generally educated to see these issues - shift in any significant way, and how were they able to articulate that shift, either verbally or in writing? did a critical engagement or commitment to social justice work take root amongst any of the students, and how much agency did the students feel they had as social actors in their own lives, compared from the unit's start to end? third, i wanted to analyze the unit's performative moments and the students' reflections on them to explore the role drama as the mode of learning and communication played in the students' political or critical consciousness raising. how did embodying their responses or questions surrounding these issues effect their ability to relate to and grapple with them? what new spaces and opportunities for learning and dialogue did the drama methodologies open up, and could these openings be sustained beyond the unit? what role could this approach play in future senior secondary humanities courses? in my conversations with anne, i wanted to get to the heart not only of her interpretations of how the unit went for her and her students, but also to try to articulate what must happen within secondary education structures and organizations to really foster this nature of pedagogical change. was this unit a mere pipe dream or real possibility? finally, i also wanted to infuse this study with personal interrogations of my own colonial upbringing as a white child of economic privilege in that bastion of last gasp empire, victoria, british columbia, and the influence this background might have on my roles in the classroom. a s the eldest child of a white settler, upper class canadian mother who never quite lost her internalized racist and classist assumptions, and an english working class hero father who became an academic but never quite lost the angry young man chip on his shoulder, my early development as a thinker and citizen was riddled with contradictions and compromises that i am now continually deconstructing as an adult global citizen and educator. i wanted to contrast my own memories of family and school life with those of the langley students to see i f anything has changed or remained the same in a generation - and what needs to be done about this. the writing up of all this varied personal, analytical, performative and reflective data proved quite a challenge. how could i bring you, the reader, into each experience as fully and engagingly as possible? a s a writer who has published in both creative and academic forms or genres, i wanted to access and develop my skills iri both areas. i chose to write certain sections of this thesis in different styles, ranging from narrative to critical analysis to poetry, memoir and travelogue. true to the creative process (see goldberg, ), i a tl allowed each piece of the thesis puzzle to take on a voice and shape of its own and trusted the editing process to bring the text as close to the reader as possible. the key technique i use throughout the writing is that of the juxtaposed or intercutting narrative or snapshot, a technique widely used by such contemporary canadian authors as michael ondaatje and alice munro. in the conclusion, i speak more on the tensions and contradictions i want these narratives to express, but do not want to spoil it for you now! i am in no way saying that a unit of eight lessons and a page master's thesis can do justice to the depth and complexity of the historical and contemporary experiences of oppression in this country, or that every student or educator w i l l share the same understandings of and responses to the study's findings. what i am saying is that within the packed spaces of a senior secondary curriculum and timetable, two units and a thesis created at least a space of exploration in which to tackle these ideas. a n d isn't that better than not tackling them at all? in this spirit of inquiry, response-ability and accountability, the legacies -finding ways to understand how the past influences the present - and literacies -finding ways to communicate and express that understanding - drama education project was born. >top : crisis to ( a momclvl to which ptfsolvnl or cfluwal u i « sta^s ectokc iwo wvtwm pathwavs. otvc ltad flit rtpcinioiv oc flit km)wiv, flit h>itd mimic flit d, flit twmm. n is atc tcdkc a i v d smt. -mt ofll« tivd a rtivtwtd i m p o o m t itv flit (livkivowtv, flit (imjaitttd, flit ivtw, flit park- am) damw (i . tht m o m t m i ptak ot mu c m c t to flit tiv t ot ptwtralivt rta iv wi aiv achoiv flial cuoict flsclt amp oiv. thai aciiom awartivt . awarttyt c m nm flit uivt etlwtttv ttvgagimi to ou g t c o m m pistmiagtp ̂ whal t u w . a i flit stop. tht hop flit flmt ot awartivt . a p p i w a u a n tht flop what do- rem&mher of the/ e*/a<>uxxttim/? 'by joy ko#am) what do i remember of the evacuation? i remember my father telling tim and me about the mountains and the trains and the excitement of going on a trip. what do i remember of the evacuation? i remember my mother wrapping a blanket around me and my pretending to fall asleep so she would be happy although i was so excited i couldn't sleep (i hear there were people herded into the hastings park like cattle. families were made to move in two hours abandoning everything, leaving pets a n d possessions at gun point. i hear families were broken up men were forced to work. i heard it whispered late at night that there was suffering) and i missed my dolls. what do i remember of the evacuation? i remember miss foster and miss tucker who still live in vancouver a n d who did what they could a n d loved the children and who gave me a puzzle to play with on the train. a n d i remember the mountains and i was six years old and i swear i saw a giant gulliver of gulliver's travels scanning the horizon a n d when i told my mother she believed it too a n d i remember how careful my parents were not to bruise us with bitterness a n d i remember the puzzle of lorraine life who said "don't insult me" when i proudly wrote my name in japanese a n d tim flew the union jack when the war was over but lorraine a n d her friends spat on us anyway a n d i prayed to the god who loves a l l the children in his sight that i might be white. chapter iii "tory- hard/ to- bear": the stop is ubiquitous. . . evident in each and every earthbound action we experience. . there is a hinge around which events pivot. (applebaum, p. ) then all hell broke loose. early on in both units, i started to sense resistance from the students, but not the defensive "this is not my problem" kind i had witnessed from fellow students in some of my graduate courses; this resistance was more an overwhelmed, disbelieving silence. when anne and i tried to encourage discussion around issues raised from the tellings, the students remained completely silent. no questions, no comments, not even a shift in body language. they refused to raise their eyes from the floor, kept their arms folded across their chests, dug their heels into the linoleum floor and waited, simply waited until the bell would ring or i would hand out the feedback questionnaires. anne and i knew there was something major going on for these students, but because no one would speak we could not quite put our fingers on it. i began to wonder if we had bitten off more than we could chew, if the sophisticated ideas of the academy were simply too much to put into the minds of secondary students, or if my approach to the unit design had been all wrong. had i lost my teaching touch, after two years in graduate school? had we just unwittingly stumbled into the chasm between academic theory and classroom reality? the answer was not so simple. the answer was all that, and more. the answer, when we found it, implicated the public spaces of our entire educational culture. . . . my re$pov\&e/tcr joy ko^ctwcv. . , what do we remember of the evacuation? i do not know what happened, for i was never there, and it was years before someone told me the story. not your story, for no one in my town read your books, nor your mother's story, for my neighbourhood did not value the words of elders: they could not trust voices coming from the outside. there was an old man who drove our streets, selling fish from the back of his truck. we used to follow him down the road, liked to hide in the bushes and watch him walk, his shoulders stooped as he carried small bundles to each door, bowing as housewives dressed in cocktail dresses told him to keep the change as they shut the door in his face. and we called him mr. nip, because my best friend sammy's dad had once said we shouldn't buy our food from a nip like him. one day the fish truck stopped coming down our street and we moved on to other distractions; the swings at the park, the rocks on the beach at high tide. a n d then ten years later, or thereabouts, my grandfather began to speak. he spoke of farmers on saltspring island who moved in for the k i l l during the winter of ' , or was it ' . . . he can't remember anymore... but what he does remember is that his father brought home a brand new boat, and that his cousins moved onto the orchard that used to belong to . . . them. there were no tears in my grandfather's eyes when he spoke that morning; just a stutter and a drool from a man who once was young. a n d that, my friend, is all i remember of the evacuation. they, these students waiting for me to teach them something, what do they remember? i say the words internment, evacuation, exile and they look at me in confusion, bewildered by a language they cannot share, the silence breaking the room - and my heart - in two. i have pushed them too far, exhausted them: defiance takes over. they fold their arms across their chests and stare at the floor, silent, waiting to escape until one voice in the back, half-choked in the frustrated sobs of adolescence, begs out in a furious whisper: why are you making us talk about this? a n d that, my friend, is when they began to remember the evacuation. an endless automatic movement of thought obscures the stop. . . the stop is acknowledgement of resistance. made conscious, the stop effortfully fills perception with body. (applebaum, p. ) memory, or the lack of it, sent the langley students into crisis. the third lesson for the social studies class focused on understanding and coming to terms with oppression. i had chosen to illustrate this concept with a series of tellings from opening doors that testified to the experience of the japanese internment or evacuation. i had assumed that the students would share at least a general knowledge of why and how the internment played out, but i had assumed incorrectly. as i began reading nobue minato's testimony of name tagging her children, several hands shot up. "what are you talking about?" one student asked. "i don't get it," another added. pretty soon the entire room was a chorus, not of denial but of confusion. these students, sixteen year olds raised for the most part less than an hour from the hastings park detainment center of which joy kogawa writes, had never heard of the internment. it formed no part, whatsoever, of their conscious memory or language. something similar happened in the first nations studies class at the same stage in the unit. i was reading from dorothy joseph's telling, in which she tells of being called a savage by the school nuns, when two male students walked out. they were both white and from strongly christian families (indeed, their parents had almost refused to allow them to participate in the unit), and could not handle how the testimony was making them question their religion. "it's too hard to bear," one of them said, almost in tears. other students in the class responded to the telling with a kind of dumfounded shock, for they had grown up in the colonial shadows of the "birthplace of british columbia", where the depth of abuses and injustices attached to the residential school project had been erased. m y lessons had inadvertently become these students' first exposure to the un-mapping of their country as a beacon of international and domestic goodwill. a n d anne and i had walked straight into one of the biggest crises of our teaching careers. the stop hides in a most hidden place. this is a place that is both near and obvious. . . the stop hides a secret dimension of experience. to stop is to uncover what is in hiding, which is to say, to experience ourselves in hiding. (applebaum, p. , ). felman ( , p. ) writes of a "crisis of witnessing" in one of her university classes in which students watched videotaped testimonies from holocaust survivors, as a moment when the "eloquence of life carried the class beyond a limit that i could foresee and had envisioned." her students, who had a general knowledge of the holocaust, were so overwhelmed when put face to face with a personal telling that they: broke out into crisis . . .they remained, after the screening, inarticulate and speechless. they looked subdued and kept their silence even as they left . . . what was unusual was that the experience did not end in silence, but instead, fermented into endless and relentless talking in the days and weeks to come; a talking which could not take place, however, within the confines of the classroom but which somehow had to break the very framework of the class (and thus emerge outside i t ) . . . i realized that something strange was going on when i started getting phone calls from the students at my home at all odd hours, in a manifest wish to talk about the session, although they did not quite know what to say. (p. ) in many ways, what happened in my classes amounted to precisely such a crisis of witnessing. the crisis began with testimonies that pushed the limits of the students' understandings of themselves and their surroundings. their lack of a language for debriefing their feelings then drove them into silence. finally, the crisis became something that had to be worked through outside the boundaries of the classroom, or even the school building. the students started going home and raising these questions with their families and friends - around the dinner table, in the car on the way to school, at the mall. anne and i knew this was happening because we started getting phone calls from their parents - not complaining but seeking advice. "how should i talk to my daughter about this?" one parent asked me. i stayed quiet a while, thinking of a myriad of responses, none of which seemed right. " b y telling her what you know, and admitting what you don't," i finally answered. she seemed surprised, as i f admitting ignorance was a failing rather than an opening. " i ' l l try," she sighed, "but can't promise she'll get it." get what, exactly? i wanted to ask her. get that she lives in a racist country founded on inequalities, get that it's not her fault no one has taught her about this before, get that not knowing doesn't make her stupid or bad...? but she had already hung up the phone. a conversation was taking hold all around us, and we needed to find a way to have that conversation in the classroom. we did find a way to "break the framework", but not through writing or speaking. we broke the framework by acting and responding through theatre - but more on that later. the stop contains a specific that, acting on awareness and organism alike, opens one to the.source of lighting. (applebaum, p. ) o f course, my units never got finished - at least not in the way i had so carefully theorized and planned and written down. the crisis led us beyond those eight simple lessons to a much deeper awareness. the crisis, in a sense, became the project. c a jv we stopped. we talked. we re-£rouped. we witnessed. and we learned. when anne, her students and i allowed ourselves to witness this initial moment of crisis as an invitation for dialogue, the class was able to "pass through its own answerlessness" (felman, , p. ). the silences evaporated, and what these students wanted to talk about was not so much what had happened in the past, but what was happening to them now as they tried to understand the past. the rest of the project, then, became about working the students through deconstructions of three previously unchallenged epistemological spaces that had been constructed both around and within them. i call each of these a stop, a moment that both disrupts and crystallizes knowledge and the possibilities for actions: they are the stop of memory, the stop of whiteness and the stop of imagined canada. over the next few chapters, i wish to address these stops in detail - not just as research spaces but also as conceived, perceived, lived, public and shared spaces - in the hope that we can draw from them insights and ideas for our own pedagogies and practices. chapter iv cultural memory represents the many shifting histories and shared memories that exist between a sanctioned narrative of history and personal memory (sturken, , p. ) memory a^publccy spacer education/ and/commodity: kobbewltlaynd/, soidfo/afrccas, i am going to this former prison in search of the memory of mandela and apartheid. we leave capetown harbour in a comfortable cruising boat with padded chairs, a bar and washrooms, a video room and sundeck, but the waves and wind pitch the boat so violently that many of us become seasick. about halfway into the trip, i go out onto the deck to get some air, hoping this will reduce my nausea. a striking woman, tall and blonde, leans over a railing and watches the disappearing urban coastline. she nods at me and begins to speak. "i grew up here, almost twenty years ago, " she sighs, "then left to study in england and just never quite made it back. " she grimaces and grips the railing as the boat hits a particularly big wave. "of course, robben island was real back then, not some tourist museum. it was ..." her voice trails off. she coughs and begins again. " a place that was just so horrible, so unspeakable. " they brought the prisoners here in the dead of night, usually. a dozen or so men and women, crammed into rickety, uncovered motorboats. they sat huddled against each other, without lifejackets, often without coats, handcuffed to the wooden benches to stop them from trying to swim away. when boats capsized only the driver survived. the island seems so innocuous from a distance: a small rocky outcrop with a few concrete buildings scattered across it. it reminds me of an island near my house in victoria that we used to row to for family picnics. a tour guide meets us at the dock and ushers us into a mini-van. he is a former prisoner, part of the island's unesco-sponsored public education program. we pass the guards' residences — a neat, tidy row of brick houses with a school, swimming pool, and tennis courts, a community so complete in its banality that it would not be out of place in suburban america - and our guide tells us that some female prisoners got to work in these homes as maids. they would return to their cells each night, but still they were considered lucky because sometimes they would get "old clothes, or food from the guards' wives. " at a limestone pit we stop and get out of the van. this is the infamous forced labour quarry, where male prisoners worked ten hours a day, seven days a week, digging and chipping at endless blocks of limestone. our guide pauses, takes a deep breath. "the guards used to stand just over there, watching us. they had guns, and whips. if they thought we weren't working hard enough they would beat us, maybe with the end of their guns, maybe with the whip. .." he shivers, "or maybe they would just throw rocks at us. but mandela, he was so strong. he would just laugh when they did this. " he points to a cave at the edge of the quarry. "we used to meet there, early in the morning before our work shift, or during our lunch breaks. and we would read to each other from books people had sent us, or tell stories from our childhoods. " they passed a law on this island that no one under the age of eighteen could visit prisoners. that meant sons, daughters, sisters, brothers were meant to be forgotten. it also meant prisoners should forget they ever loved or were loved: the rule was intended to remind prisoners they were no longer human. a woman, she can't possibly be older than thirty, greets us on the prison steps. she smiles and nods at us. " what do you think is the one thing a person might miss most when they are in prison? " she challenges us. we - mainly tourists from the west who do not know what freedom means because we have never had to win it - shuffle our feet and eye each other nervously. "the sky, " someone blurts out. "birds, " tries another. "freedom, " the blonde woman from the boat deck whispers. the guide looks each of us in the eye; we are not used to having our privilege confronted like this, to being poked in all the uncomfortable places. "no, " she begins, "it is the feeling of holding a child. " we fall silent, embarrassed and ashamed in the face of such simple cruelty. and then she begins her testimony: "when i was twenty-one i was brought here after being convicted of terrorism. i hadjust had a baby, she was about eight months old, and i did not see her for the next six years. when apartheid ended i was released, and now i work here to try to share my experiences with you so that something like this will never happen again. " i wonder how many times a day she must tell this story to strangers who only came here to take pictures of themselves in front of mandela's cell. the walls of the prison are painted white, with bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. we file into a long corridor lined on each side with cell after cell, each one no more than five square feet. the cells have been kept as they were during the prison's operation: they house only narrow cots covered by thin grey blankets. on the wall outside each cell is the name of its occupant; above each cot hangs his or her photograph. beside the photo are writings, written after the prisoner's release, in which he or she shares memories of prison life and survival. some are poems, some letters, others essays. we move past each cell in silence, memorizing the names, reading their testimonies. some of us take photos, or write notes in journals. an african-american family has brought a box of votive candles; they light one at each cell. another couple, spanish i think, bows and prays before each cell. the blonde woman from the boatdeck weeps quietly in a corner of the hallway. our guide watches us as we witness her life - her past and her present, her trauma and her testimony. she does not weep with us, just folds her hands across her stomach and waits for us to finish. by the time we reach mandela's cell, it hardly matters that this is what most of us came here to see. we take photos to commemorate his space in the prison and the place he holds in our imaginations. the spanish couple takes a photo of the american children, then one of the family altogether. we do all this humbly, even solemnly; our recordings have none of the celebratory air so often associated with sightseeing and holidays. the return boat ride is smoother; some of us gather at the bar where the spanish couple shows photos from the safari they took last week. we dock and disperse into the summer capetown evening of restaurants and movie theatres and luxury hotels. i want to say goodbye to the blonde woman, but by the time i get off the boat she has disappeared. sctefr ofmemory: perioncii, politicals curxd/ edaacatiovuxl history: the study of past event; the past considered as a whole memory: a person or thing remembered; so as to commemorate (o.e.d., , pp. , ) "do you know what this exhibit is about? " the museum guide asks me before i enter a sideroom in atlanta's martin luther king memorial center. it is her job, somehow, to protect the visitor from witnessing too much, from going too far into the risky territories of memory. she hands me a piece ofpaper to sign. "by going in to this exhibit on lynching you release the museum from any responsibility for injury or trauma you may feel as a result of your viewing, " it reads. i sign and she opens the door for me. the room feels different right away - dark and claustrophobic, with none of the rousing audioclips of king speeches and spiritual music so present in the rest of the museum. the photographs are everywhere, on walls, in books, behind glass cases - men, women and children hanging from trees and bridges, their faces bloodied, their necks limp. they have their impact, but the one that truly stops me and makes the bile rise in my throat is not of a lynching at all, per se. it is of a little white girl, maybe three or four years old, sitting on her daddy's shoulders and eating an ice cream. watching the lynching unfold. do we want the students we teach to study the past, or to remember and respond to it? this is a hugely contested and ongoing debate in the scholarly arena, with the argument creating the equivalent of "running a knife between the tree of memory and the bark of history" (nora, , p. ). the two sides may be summarized with a couple of quotes from two french men who have contributed much to the debate. maurice halbwachs, the key thinker behind the concept of collective memory, believed that "memory distorts the past, whereas the historian's obligation is to correct memory's inaccuracies" (hutton, , p. ). pierre nora, on the other hand, whose interrogations of public spaces and memory in france led to a whole wave of similar interrogations around the world, argued that "the emergence of history as a profession with a body of codified knowledge was a deliberate attempt to obliterate memory" (hamilton, , p. ). / am in the nikkei internment museum in new denver, british columbia. this is the one place left in the entire province where internment spaces - the houses, the gardens, the barbed wire - have been kept as they were during the war. a school group has arrived just before me, their faces bright with anticipation. they rush through the displays in minutes, then gather on the lawn to eat lunch. a woman from the group - a parent, a teacher perhaps? - and i linger in one of the tiny "family dwellings ". "so small, " she says, surprised. "with such thin walls, and just that tiny sink for an entire family. oh well" she laughs, pointing to the snow-capped mountains that circle the town, "at least it was beautiful here! " in many ways, the teaching - both in the conceived space of schooling and curriculum and in the shared, public spaces of monuments, ceremonies and museums - of canadian history as a "linear march of progress through time" (oikawa, , p. ) has erased the "living imagination" (hutton, , p. ) of remembering those whose lives and homes were marched on and through in the name of another group's "progress." this rupture between history and memory led to the langley students' stop of memory - their unknowing of the internment and residential schooling - and how this rupture plays out in canada and other global educational spaces is worth exploring here. h i&t&ri&y of for<ge£tlv\ty: jcvpcvw, south/ africa/ cwxch ccwxculcv a* lavicl&cglp&y of memory avid/ education/ let's return to lefebvre's and greene's concepts of space as perceived, conceived, lived, public and shared. the tension between memory, history and education continually resides within all these spaces, and using japan, south africa and canada as mini case studies can help illustrate the "power relationships in the politics of negotiating memory" (hamilton, , p. ). in japan, for example, the federal government and ministry of education consistently refused to allow negative images of japan's imperial past (such as the nanking massacre, the enslavement of korean comfort women, or the conditions in prisoner of war camps in japanese-controlled territories during the second world war) to be included in the conceived spaces of national textbooks and curricula in order to maintain a post-hiroshima and nagasaki perceived space of japan as victim of western aggression. twenty years after the end of the war, a tokyo education professor named saburo ienaga sued his government for censoring textbooks he had written, arguing that the ministry of education was impeding his right to freedom of expression. prague's jewish quarter on a sunday afternoon is packed with tourists. they smoke and laugh as they wave cameras in each other's faces and haggle over the price of postcards. i fight past the hordes and end up on a deserted sidestreet. there is a synagogue here, hidden away behind a row of bushes. i enter the synagogue cautiously, unsettled by the tourist carnival outside and unsure i even deserve to be a witness here. an old man greets me and takes my hand. "welcome, " he says in stilted english. "come, " he says, leading me to a corner of the dusty room. every wall of the synagogue is covered in names, thousands of them, the dates of their birth, transport and death etched in identical black letters. he runs his fingers down one line of names, peering close to read each one, and stops when he finds the one he wanted. he gestures for me to read, so i do: ave cohen spatzen, b. , transported to bergen-belsen , d. . the man takes his finger off the wall and points to his chest. "my father, " he whispers. it was not until that his court case began to be resolved when the word aggression replaced military advance in materials describing japan's role in asian conflicts. but in , the japanese supreme court rejected ienaga's request to include references to comfort women in a textbook he was writing, thus upholding the rationale that censorship and "feel-good nationalism are preferable to fact" (paris, , p. ). the conflict that "occurs when people insist that others should remember as they do" (hamilton, , p. ) in the shared, public space of education, is reflected in the comments of tokyo professor of education nobukatsu fujioka, who declared that ienaga's textbooks were "not written with japanese people in mind, for they present a history hostile to japan . . . and the impact on our children is such that they write in their essay classes that japan is the worst, most immoral country in the world." (paris, , p. ). the controversy over curriculum in post- war japan reveals the messy borders of perceived and conceived spaces, in that not all members of a community imagine themselves as belonging to that space in the same way and thus w i l l not be able to agree on how to portray that space politically and educationally. in this conflict, though, the real victims are the subjectivities of teachers and students who must find ways to negotiate those spaces. two other post-war nations faced similar struggles and negotiations in putting their violent acts onto paper and into schools. germany did not begin confronting its nazi past and the holocaust in official curricular spaces until the 's, while france did not include references to the vichy regime's collaboration with germany, including the deportation of french jews, in educational texts until the 's. yet it is the post- apartheid south africa that offers more recent and troublesome insights into the ways in which "people in their society know" - and teach - "the past" (hamilton, , p. ). / was watching television yesterday morning, when an ad came on for a new cleaning product. a smiling blonde, white hostess who couldn't stop praising the product spoke directly to the camera. then the ad cut to an image of a hand-just a nameless, disembodied tool of service - scrubbing a dirty cooking pot. the next scene showed the smiling blonde holding a shiny clean pot, so clean it sparkled as much as her teeth. only after the ad had finished did i remember - the hand scrubbing the pot was black. later that afternoon i was walking through capetown's downtown core and stopped at a newsstand to buy a paper. a young african woman approached me, her hands neatly folded behind her back. "excuse me madam, " she asked, smiling. "i was wondering if you might need any help in your house, maybe a maid, or cook, or nanny? " ifumbled an apology, told her i was only a tourist and had no home here in which to employ her. this morning, when i checked out of my guesthouse, the clerk asked me where i was traveling next. "back to tanzania, where i live", i said. "oh," he replied, " black africa. never been one for that, myself. " he laughed, handing me back my credit card. with the official end to apartheid, how to teach the reality of the regime has become a hugely contested issue in which "schools in the new south africa, and the students and teachers inside them, continue to struggle with the disparate messages about who they are and who they ought to be" (soutien, , p. ). in this quote we can see similar tensions between perceived, conceived and lived spaces as in post-war japan. whether south african teachers and students perceive themselves as survivors or perpetrators of apartheid greatly impacts how they perceive their roles in the new nation's education, and likewise for how the nation conceives of and uses the role of schooling and education. these two lived post-apartheid spaces - learning bodies and governing bodies - may share a common vision of working towards a new nation, but how they may see going about it cannot help but differ. when mandela's african national congress took over the country on a platform of peaceful reconciliation, they re-vamped all curricula (which under the regime had portrayed apartheid as a difficult but necessary exercise in segregation and containment, for the good of the nation) to draw attention to the sufferings of apartheid, but did so as "a compromise that didn't show anyone in too bad a light" (nolen, , p. ). this angered many who still felt the depths of apartheid as a lived experience were not sufficiently reflected in the materials and curricula, and angered still others who felt the horrors of apartheid were being exaggerated. "do we simply replace a white afrikaaner co j o nationalist narrative with a black african nationalist narrative, replace great white men with great black men?" the scholar noor nieftagodien asked in a speech shortly after the new curriculum was introduced. "that would be easiest," he continued, "but it's problematic - you are not challenging the approach to history, it's just an ideological shift" (nolan, , p. ). perhaps the effects of this debate are best summed up by the people most directly impacted by it - the students themselves: we're sick and tired of hearing about how our parents suffered. we want to be consumerist, individualist, young blacks - don't burden us with your past. (nolan, , p. ). the comments of the students and dr. nieftagodien reflect memory, history and education in the new south african landscape as a "conversation without closure" (hutton, , p. ) that opens wounds so deep and conflicting that educational structures and materials may "never be able to integrate into a conventional historical narrative" (hutton, , p. ). the big colonial houses of the diamond and gold merchants, and monuments to the boer pioneers are still the landmarks you see from the highway and read about in the guidebooks. the post- apartheid monuments are smaller, and you have to look for them. a small plaque outside the police station in port elizabeth where steven biko was murdered, a map on the floor of a church basement that outlines the streets and homes of a black community razed to make way for government offices. a woman who stands on the steps of a prison and asks you what you think you might miss if you were in her shoes. i think of germany and its aggressive monuments to the victims of the holocaust, and wonder if it is easier for the oppressor to commemorate its work in the form of guilty purging than it is for the oppressed to remember how, once liberated, to heal themselves. i now want to speak of canada and its links between memory, history and education. why include the canadian space in this discussion? i want to explore the ideas of canadian "race" historian constance backhouse ( , p. ), who asks: why is there so much resistance to attributing "racism" to generations of the past, in canada? is it evidence of the lack of sophistication of historians generally about matters of race? is it emblematic of the infancy of canadian race history as a subdiscipline? whatever the rationale, it is simply, in my opinion wrong. individuals and groups from canada's past acted in identifiably "racist" ways, causing actual and substantial damage to those they perceived as racially subordinate. these acts reinforced a wider social structure that was permeated with racism. i believe canadian education is in deep denial, or a state of "unreflective ethnocentrism" (roman, , p. ) about its location in a "white settler society established by europeans on non-european soil" (razack, , p. ). i do not need to revisit the discussion of curriculum opened in the previous section, but choose here to concentrate on a particular community or public education project that has, i think, larger implications for schooling. the museum of anthropology is packed today with tourists and school groups, all admiring the splendid collection of pacific northwest artifacts and totem poles. a young tourguide leads a group of schoolchildren around the great hall and pauses by a series of carved boxes. "these, " she begins, "were given away atpotlatches, which were big feasts hosted by leaders of each village. when the potlatches were banned, these boxes were brought to the university. " "why were the potlatches banned, " a couple of students ask. "you know, i'm not really sure, " she says, ushering the students around the corner. the/ v&mivucm/ n^tctute/: vubuxyfwvxcly, "publco" vn&tnoriefr? the memory project, funded by the nationalist thinktank the dominion institute, is a national project advertised in mainstream media and accessed regularly via the internet by schools across the country. this heritage project is based on collecting and recording memories and artifacts from the first world war. the institute (and let's remember here that the term dominion projects explicit colonial links to canada's days as a member of the british empire) instigated a kind of moral panic by publicizing the fact that only a handful of living veterans of that war were still alive, and the country was in danger of o u losing its memory of their sacrifices. a worthy project, certainly, but in whose memory, and whose name? a visit to the project's website reveals a very white, anglophone narrative of heroics: i searched but could find no mention of the contributions of men and women of colour, or aboriginal and francophone servicemen, when historical record does show that peoples of these backgrounds fought and died in service of their 'country'. the memory project's very use of the term project to define itself is disturbing. in this context the word gives a sense of beginning, middle and end, of much-deserved closure - much how canadian education treats discourses of settlement as a fixed, final project rather than ongoing legacy. in essence, the memory project, like canadian history education, has appropriated the language of a post-traumatic nation and space (survival, heritage, legacy are words that appear frequently throughout project documents and curricula) without actually engaging with the risky business of negotiating how and why, and in whose name that space came to be, whom the creating of that space actually traumatized, and who is implicated in the continued development and success of that space today. i am suddenly aware here that throughout this thesis i have used the term project to describe the work i did with anne's classes in langley. i too am now implicated in the same process of confining the teaching of history to a contained, manageable product that i have just critiqued. have i internalized the very language and structures i seek to change? how can i create new words to define my re/searching? the architects of south africa's apartheid came to canada to research ideas for segregation. it is said they found the canadian system of reserves and native disenfranchisement quite appealing. i remember this as i stand outside pretoria's voortrekker monument, with its sculptures of courageous boers and menacing natives. i can't help but think "there too but for the grace of god. . . "and wonder why we seem so unable to use the word apartheid when speaking of laws and spaces in our own country. this mapping of memory and history in education, both locally and globally, illustrates that "though there is a struggle for memory in all countries, it w i l l emerge at different times" (hamilton, , p. ). what this mapping also shows is a common thread among how these struggles for memory have played out: what gets taught in each country's educational spaces reflects or is dictated by the nation's public and collective understanding of themselves and their history, which means "the social production of memory" is "a collective production in which everyone participates, though not equally" (hamilton, , p. ). in order to reclaim education's power to disrupt or subvert the production of dominant historical narratives, we must then engage with the very real and public space of collective and social remembrance. memory cou&ctime/ i^m^^ttng^ in examining the concept of collective memory, i draw from the theory's originator maurice halbwachs, who defines it as a "record of resemblances, similarities kept alive by continuous reworking and transmission" (hamilton, , p. ), or "continually reshaped by the social contexts into which it is received" (hutton, , p. ). how, why and in what ways or places certain events or people become commemorated while others do not reflects the structure and perspective of larger "group identities" (hamilton, , p. ). how the larger or dominant group perceives itself - its stories, its. tragedies, its heroes - then becomes internalized by all members of the community, dominant or not, creating in •to oz many cases "a tension between local and nationalist traditions" (hamilton, , p. ). veterans of the world wars - the nation's grand struggle and triumph over evil - are remembered with large, elaborate statues in central public spaces, while the victims of the internment - the nation's own dirty laundry - must lobby government officials for years to be granted small patches of land, like street corners or unused parks, on which to commemorate their losses. there is not a single public memorial in the province that speaks to the violence enacted on the country's indigenous peoples. to challenge these "organized structures of forgetting" (hamilton, , p. ) within which we live and work, education and educators need to continually shift the contexts and contours of our collective imaginings. we can begin by asking ourselves and our students the same questions hamilton poses when she writes, "who then, is the "we" of the nation? how do i relate to a "national" memory?" k&~poi^lorua^ the/ ivxa^ie^: memory cvnd/history cv^ cvrt cvnd/ trcw\&{oywic^ixyvx> in the spring of , lam nearing the end of my rookie teaching year in the aboriginal community of lytton (pop. ), a year witnessed as a stranger in a mountain landscape of apartheid and memory. today i walk into the staff room to be told that one of our students is dead. no one knows how he died yet, just that his body has been found beside the railway tracks on the reserve. he is the third student we have lost this year, and we call a crisis meeting to figure out how to handle this. terry, the school counselor, brings sage into the staff room and smudges us all while we cry and hold each other. "how can this keep happening here? " a teacher cries. "what the hell is wrong with us? " terry looks at her, tears running down his face. "st. george's school, that's what's wrong with us, " he whispers. he should know; he went there. i didn't. invitations to begin "conceiving of history in a new way" (hutton, , p. ) have surfaced in recent post-colonial scholarship. hamilton ( , p. ) supports the idea of teaching and studying an "essential interdependence between memory and history", while oikawa ( , p. ) argues for a "spatializing" of the "historical narrative, so that we conceptualize history as not solely about time but also about space" and that this approach enables us to "see the long-term effects of national violence and the multiple ways in which violence is continually being perpetrated against subordinated communities". felman calls these ideas "an inexorable historical transvaluation" ( , p. ) that establishes the "facts of the past through their narrativization and interpretation" (p. ) rather than fixed definition. in this way, the merging of teaching memory and history as one interconnected phenomenon becomes teaching and learning to see, hear and touch "history, as an art of memory" (hutton, , p. ). how do we do this? we take nora's advice that "the less memory is experienced from the inside the more it exists only through its exterior scaffolding and outward signs" (nora, , p. ), and bring our students into the experience of memory and history as a lived, shared and public space. we begin this by interrogating with our students how discourses of memory and history are intertwined in "popular culture" for this "rather than scholarly debate, has become the principal site for the politics of memory" (hamilton, , p. ). we bring films and documentaries into our classrooms that offer new ways to participate in the national collective memory, like ararat, the war between us, or khanesatake. we find novels, poems and plays that speak from silenced communities (the works of joy kogawa, thompson highway and dionne brand come to mind) and study them as literary and cultural texts. we do this not only with our students, but also with their parents, our colleagues, administrators and school boards. we take our students - physically, emotionally and intellectually - to as many sites of memory as we can, and we interrogate the how, why and where of these places' presences and absences. we ask them to visit the memory project's website and ask questions about inclusion and exclusion. we take our class - or assign them a trip as homework - to the memorial outside vancouver's main street bus terminal that remembers the montreal massacre, and while we celebrate the fact that violence against women has any public commemorative space at all, we also ask why in the heart of the downtown eastside there is a memorial to a dozen white, eastern canadian elite women and not to the community's fifty, missing women, most of whom were aboriginal, homeless, drug users and sex trade workers. we find - or ask our students to find - documents and museums that witness the head tax and doukabour legislations. then we talk about global public spaces like robben island, and its transformation into an educational project in danger of becoming a tourist commodity, and brainstorm places in canada that might hold similar educational values and risks. then we ask why they are not as vivid in our imaginations as they should be. if we can, we take them to the secwepemc museum in kamloops or the internment museum in new denver and make the very journey a site of teaching and listening. we use words like apartheid, displacement and dispossession to refer to our own history, not just the histories of distant nations, until they form part of our students' lexicon. we see ourselves as enacting our own transformative historical transvaluations in the realm of the everyday, by accepting that "contestation is at the very heart of the process" (hamilton, , p. ) not only of negotiating memory, but of teaching. and whenever students say they have never "heard" of the trauma or event of which we are speaking, we stop and find ways for them to hear, no, to witness, what happened and why. in allowing ourselves to remember this way, we re/member our classroom and its curricula. we become artists and actors in the art of remembering. memory a^publco'spacer edu<xz£corva*nd> commodity creprc&ej: fort langley, brctuhs columbia/, the actual site of fort langley, a hudson's bay corporation trading post, is now a reconstructed museum under the care of the federal government. on the day that i visit, several school buses fill the parking lot. before i can enter the site, i must pay an admission fee and pass through the gift shop, which sells colourful coffee table books about early pioneers as well as dream catchers and maple leaf key chains. a small exhibit of sto.lo artefacts - bowls, pieces of broken jewelry - lines the wall before the exit, and then i am here, in this reproduction of life from a previous era. a white woman dressed as a fur trader greets me. "would you like to watch the movie about fort langley first, or perhaps try your hand at panning for gold? " she asks, gesturing across the compound. i tell her i just want to explore, and she nods. she looks hot and bored under all her garb. i head over to the gold panning area, intrigued because a group of students is working there. they seem to be about twelve years old, grade seven maybe, and their uniforms (knee length plaid skirts for the girls, navy trousers for the boys, ties and jackets for everyone) give them away as private school students, members of vancouver's new elite. iam drawn particularly to a girl who is working her pan with concentrated diligence. the white sleeves of her blouse are rolled up to her elbows, her hair is pushed back over one shoulder. her fingers work carefully through the wet sand, coming up empty each time. finally she gives up, wipes her forehead with the back ofher hand. "shit," she mutters, "fm not getting anything. i give up. " across the park a group of french immersion students, about the same age as the uniformed gold panners but dressed in the casual jeans and sweatshirts that denote public school, are getting a lesson in hard labour. the guide tells them they will be voyageurs for the day, and must begin by carrying heavy loads on their backs. uphill. and the teachers in these scenarios? they sit huddled in groups, leaning against the whitewashed buildings, leaving college students on summer jobs to do the teaching. "how does it feel, " i ask a guide, "to work here? " "oh it's great, " he answers, adjusting his suspenders, for he is playing the camp manager today. "the people who come here get a real taste of our history. " "does anyone ever ask tough questions, " i ask the he/she fur trader, "about land claims, or why the scots workers had better conditions than the hawaiians, or why workers' wives couldn't live on the compound? " she looks at me blankly, her painted moustache twitching. "what do you mean? " visitors to fort langley become consumers of a colonial memory. the site itselffeels trapped between fantasy and misremembrance, shifting from day to day in one smooth sequence of public space and education, choreographed by the federal government. and another thing: on the day i visited fort langley, all the actors were white. chapter v: "ernbarrawed/by their whitened": \ja^c i%ttn ^ "race/" wcth/they "crwch&les" m&j&rity the whites are, of course, the caucasian race, the reds are the american indian, the blacks are the african or negro, and the yellows are the mongolian (japanese and chinese). but only pure whites w i l l be classed as whites; the children begotten of marriages between whites and any one of the other races w i l l be classed as red, black or yellow, as the case may be, irrespective of the degree of colour. ( dominion census instructions, cited in backhouse, , p. ) the town of chemainus on vancouver island is known as the little town that could. this is a tourist phrase, a narrative of redemption, for the town of chemainus has used art to pull itself from the brink of bankruptcy. a failed mill town in the early i 's, the community decided to resurrect itself by painting a series of murals on the walls of its buildings, large scale paintings depicting the region's history and environment. the idea was to market chemainus as a tourist destination, a project of public education as well as income generation; it has indeed proved a remarkable financial success, if a somewhat more problematic educational or cultural project. i pull my car off the highway and through the lush hills of the duncan valley, following the signs to chemainus. i have never been to this town, but have heard much of its renewal project. gift shops, bed and breakfasts in heritage homes, and a theatre advertising a summer run of an agatha christie play line the road into town. i park my car and spend an hour or so strolling the six square blocks of the town. the first murals i see are fairly humdrum scenes offorests and beaches, seascapes of whales and salmon. a heritage park, complete with artificial totem poles and a replica of a settler's log cabin, is situated on a bluff overlooking kuper island, home to one of the province's most notorious residential schools. there is no sign, no memorial to that space here. i make my way from the park to the town's main avenue and site of its most viewed murals. the first mural shows the town's founders, two balding white men who ran the mill. on the next wall is a rosy-hued portrait of three phases of a woman's life, from birth to adulthood to old age. this at first seems innocent, and it is not until i read the portrait's caption that i understand. this mural celebrates the life of the "first white woman born in chemainus. " i turn the corner, nauseous. i am on a side road, little more than a back alley strewn with broken bottles and cigarette butts. and it is here, pushed to the side, forgotten, that i find the final murals of the town. the one on my left shows a chinese store, circa , filled with birds in cages and men in slippers and pointed hats. a child's memory, "it was a tough life but we were happy" is painted into one corner. the mural on my right shows /co o o members of a first nations community on a beach, shaking hands with an explorer. the explorer is dressed in the fashions of the eighteenth century, ruffled sleeves and buckled shoes and a feathered cap. his ship sits prominently in the harbour, dwarfing the village's canoes. the male villagers are dressed in loincloths, while the women are topless. and everyone, everyone, in this mural is smiling. contact, the caption below the mural explains. and i remember bell hooks telling us that "no one is born a racist, everyone makes a choice " (hooks, , p. ). power "plcyyx symhxyu^i#icf cwui/ qu^tixyyua^ whcte< pvia/de^ey if the content is multicultural, then curriculum, instruction, and assessment choices become even more crucial to the process of knowledge acquisition and attitude changing. the teacher must serve as a role model demonstrating the application of multicultural perspectives in his or her classroom. (brown, , p. ) a sunday drive in the country, a special trip to show off my dad's new car. my mom packs sandwiches for a picnic and lets me sit up front. we leave victoria and head up the saanich peninsula, looking for a place to have lunch. we hit a reserve, though i don 'tyet know what that means, and my mother whispers to me to close and lock my window, "you never can tell in these places ", she sighs. my father slows the car, lost, beside two kids playing on dirt bikes. their clothes are stained and torn, their hair greasy; when they laugh at my dad's questions i see gaps between their teeth. i hold my fingers to my nose and shout to the closed window, "pu, those guys stink. let's get out of here!" my mother leans forward from the back seat, her knuckles white against the headrest. "she's right honey, we shouldn't be here, please do get going", she says. her voice sounds edgy, afraid. my dad just laughs and puts his foot on the gas pedal. i am eight years old and have just made my first racist comment. and no one, no one, has called me on it. at the time, i had no idea of the ugliness of my words; only now lam a teacher do i want to ask my parents why they stayed silent. but they no longer remember that day and only laugh when try to speak of it. if we do not allow ourselves to speak, how do we learn? how do we navigate the murky, treacherous waters of race and racism in the classroom? what is needed for us to effectively bring our students to understanding that "race is a mythical construct but racism is not" (backhouse, , p. ), and that racism runs much deeper than namecalling or stereotyping? how do we develop an understanding that racism is "a system of advantage based on race" (tatum, , p. ) that houses whiteness at its very core? this stop in the project, of understanding race, racism and particularly the unmarked yet constant privileges accorded whiteness in canadian history and society, formed the "hinge around which events pivot" (applebaum, , p. ). the very fact that residential schooling and the internment could take place at all - and then be forgotten - revolves around the fact that this country was, and continues to be, settled and governed within a bastion of white privilege. what the project's crisis of witnessing brought out was that these (mainly white, mainly middle class) students had deeply internalized the mythmaking teachings of canada as a racism free, multicultural community and, as the project progressed, they were forced to grapple with their first experience of unlearning or unmapping the lived experiences behind white privilege. the police car pulls right up behind me, its headlights glaring into my rearview mirror. i pull over and wait while the policeman gets out of his car and walks to my window. "evening maam, " he begins, "just want to let you know i think your insurance has expired, from the dates on your plates. mind if i see your license and registration? " i fumble around in the glove compartment, find the papers and handtpiem over with shaking hands. jesus, fuck, damn - it's a fucking six hundred buck fine for driving uninsured, and the whole thing had just completely slipped my mind. the officer is white, male, clean cut and around my age. "i'm sorry, " i plead, "i've had so much on my mind lately, i must have forgotten to get the insurance renewed. i've never done anything like this before. " the officer tips his hat and smiles at me. "i can see you've made an honest mistake, i'll let it go this time. just make sure you fill out the paperwork as soon as you can - and stay safe, maam. " with that he is gone. i head back out on the road and turn on the radio to calm my nerves. it's a political talk show from victoria, some liberal mla speaking. "well, " he laughs, "that mla jenny kwan, the only thing good about her is that she's pretty and she looks good, an asian face you know, something for the minorities. that's the only reason she's been able to make it in politics, cause she sure doesn't have much upstairs. " he laughs again, and i can almost feel his spit on my face. the next day six vancouver police officers plead guilty to assaulting two homeless men, admitting that they forced them into a police car and drove them to stanley park, where they beat them unconscious and left them unattended on a freezing february night. fcndtng^ a/ definition/ cyfwhcte^ie^ what exactly is whiteness and its attendant privilege? although i am frustrated by the dominance issues of whiteness hold in anti-racist discourse (much of the literature looks at how to raise awareness of skin privilege among white educators and students), i feel it is necessary to examine the langley project and its crises of witnessing through this lens, particularly in relation to the social studies class as it was made up exclusively of white students. whiteness, then, had become their educational, as well as social, cultural and economic location. and this project, in anne's words, made them embarrassed by it. although ruth frankenberg has recently distanced herself from her earlier work on the making of whiteness, i still feel educators can learn from how she has framed whiteness and its privileges (frankenberg, , p. ) because she offers some very clear, practical ideas that we can use to both interrogate our own experiences and share with others: • whiteness is a location of structural advantage in societies structure in racial dominance. • whiteness is a "standpoint", a location from which to see selves, others and national and global orders. • whiteness is a site of elaboration of a range of cultural practices and identities, often unmarked an unnamed, or named as national or "normative" rather than specifiably racial. • whiteness is often renamed or displaced within ethnic or class namings. • inclusion within the category "white" is often a matter of contestation, and in different times and places some kinds of whiteness are boundary markers of the category itself. in the 's, a woman named jacinta married into my very white, very aristocratic, very english family. little is known about her, except that her husband was a colonel in the royal marines, and when he brought his bride back to england she became known as the "toast of the regiment as the pretty little gypsy, " even though they made her change her name to jacyntha to sound more english. i know all this because on my fourteenth birthday my grandmother gave me a collection of stories she had written about the family genealogy of my name. "your first ancestor, " she wrote in the opening sentence, "was a foreign bride, small and dark. " • whiteness as a site of privilege is not absolute but rather crosscut by a range of other axes of relative advantage or subordination; these do not erase or render invisible race privilege, but rather inflect or modify it. • whiteness is a product of history, and is a relational category. like other racial locations, it has no inherent but only socially constructed meanings. a s such, whiteness's meanings are complexly layered and variable locally and translocally; also, whiteness's meanings may appear simultaneously malleable and intractable. • the relationality and socially constructed character of whiteness does not, it must be emphasized, mean that this and other racial locations are unreal in their material and discursive effects. things i have heard said in graduate classes when discussing race and racism: • "why make such a big deal out of it, it's not that important now anyways " • "you know, i've been targeted too. when i moved here from england all the kids made fun of me for my accent. " • "my father came here from greece, he didn't fit in either, couldn't speak any english, so does he get lumped in with the privileged whites? " things i have said in the same classes: • "god, weren't those people just playing the race card, to complain like that? " • "can we really call whites who acted in the past racist - / mean wasn't it a different context back then? " • "my family has been here four generations, surely that counts for something? " frankenberg concludes her definition with the following caveat: i am struck by the extraordinary sense of ease with which white individuals can slide from awareness of whiteness to the lack therof, and related to that slippage, from race- consciousness to unconsciousness and from anti-racism to racism, whether from year to year, situation to situation, or sentence to sentence. m y own history, for example, is marked by a shift from unconsciousness both of my whiteness and of my own enmeshment in racism to an awakening of them . . . but my awakening is never complete. although the initial transformation was one of major earthquake proportions, there is always room for another aftershock, always need for further awakening. ( , p. ) the speaker - a white, female ph.d. candidate - at an academic critical race conference is delivering a paper on an anti-racist course she taught last semester to undergraduate students in the faculty of social work. "non-white students, " she begins, "were in a minority in the class. " immediately, two women in the audience - african-canadian, female professors - stand up. "excuse me, " one of them calls out. the presenter stops, looks up from her paper and squints in their direction. "do you mind, " the professor continues politely, "iffor the rest of your talk you do not use the term "non-white " to refer to us? " the presenter seems perplexed, unsure of what to do or say. "we are people, " the professor answers. "so call us people - people of colour. " " it? y about food/": vonuawwice/ cw edaa&atiovx/ the challenge in the langley school was to engage the students in enough critical explorations and discussions that they could start moving towards an interrogation of whiteness as the norm by which all others are defined, divided and governed. this required facilitating a shift in their thinking on race and racism from what is currently practiced in their school (soft, or celebratory multiculturalism) to a deeper, more questioning critical multiculturalism. to set the scene, i wish to quote at length from a follow-up interview i shared with anne, in which we discussed how issues of race, racism and multiculturalism had been taught in her school before the project began: a: in our school i think we have, maybe kids of indo-canadian background, our school is very homogenous, all the blonde hair, blue eyes. j: and most of your teachers are of that background as well? a- yes, we have one japanese teacher, one indo-canadian teacher on staff, but they're both women, our male teachers are exclusively white, exclusively white males, out of teachers. j: so the kids have very little contact with people from other backgrounds. a yes, i'm always amazed when i take my students out of the district, when they see people in cultural dress, it's like they've never seen anything like that before. we did have one ta who was indo-canadian, and she was a hugely strong influence on the school in terms of multicultural education, but she lost her job last year with the budget cuts. she worked hard to get kids to understand cultural differences, really educated them. j: so what is multicultural education like at your school'? a it's about food. multicultural week at our school boils down to food, a superficial act, a facade so we can say we've met the requirements. sometimes the teachers will bring in costumes, maybe music or dance, but it's still performed, not explored. j: we talk about critical multiculturalism as looking at real experiences of historical contexts, the pain and oppression, but this isn't happening. a no, we only talk about the good stuff, the costumes, the dancing, the stuff that doesn't challenge you. these kids have never been to the home of an indo-canadian family, or friends from different backgrounds. multicultural education at my school feels like a thin coat of paint the administration too, in our case, at our school, we have this superficial multicultural week but that's influenced to be that way by the admin, who wants to keep things safe, we're not going to offend anyone, bring too many questions, or parent complaints. we need to be talking about the komagata mam, but admin would discourage that because it's seen as offensive - not to people of indo-canadian background but to the white families - and they don't want to deal with those kinds of parent complaints. basically, in this high school where we should be doing things that are developing a social consciousness, we keep everything too neat and simple. like this sign that somebody put up outside my classroom the other day, saying the school was a racism free zone - like that is going to solve it all, just put up a sign but don't talk about it. a s explained by bell ( , p. ), "members of dominant or privileged groups internalized systems of oppression and through their collusion with the system operate as •~l a i* agents in perpetuating i t . . . dominants learn to look at themselves, others, and society through a distorted lens in which the structural privileges they enjoy and the cultural practices o f their group are represented as normal and universal". f r o m the administration right through the teachers and to the students, anne's school merely reproduced rather than challenged white dominance. so what happened when harry c o n and gloria steinberg harris and mary anderson and dorothy joseph brought their testimonies right into the faces and bodies o f forty-two o f these students? "it iff polite^ cwxch appropriate/ to- hnow yovw ba^k^roua^d/' (katie/, soccau'll) h o w much does the make-up o f our classroom influence how we can speak about experiences o f racism? reflecting the homogeneous white nature o f langley, both classes were made up o f predominantly white european students, the social studies class exclusively so. in this class, the discussions and reflections centered openly on coming to terms with one's own implications with white privilege and its role in creating and perpetuating systemic racism. in turn, their written reflections on the feedback forms were self-reflective and provocative. m y role as the teacher was also simplified, as i could be read as from their side, as someone who shared their experiences and responses. the first nations studies class, on the other hand, had a slightly more diverse composition. the majority ( ) was still white, but the class also had two students o f aboriginal background (both males, one sto:lo, one biracial white and native) and two o f iranian background (a male born in canada and a female recent immigrant with limited english skills). in this class i needed to find ways to create spaces for the white students to process their responses, and at the same time maintain a safe space for the students of colour to express their experiences. it was a tightrope walk we never quite mastered: the students were often silent and what little discussions arose were often strained, as i f we were all too afraid of hurting each other. written responses on the feedback form reflected this tension: questions were often unanswered, or answered only partially. what happened? how should i account for - or be accountable for - the differences in classroom climates and student engagement? in the social studies class, did i show more empathy in witnessing the testimonies, or more confidence in facilitating student responses? in the first nations studies class, were the aboriginal males made to feel like token speakers for all first nations? was i read by that class's students of colour as ally or enemy? what could i or should i have done differently? i have no answer to these questions, and here i am faced with a difficult choice. i want to use this chapter to interrogate whiteness and its dominance in education, and feel that the written comments from the socials students have a lot to teach us about how white students might be able to interpret and act on an awareness of skin privilege. at the same time, i am aware that by selecting data from only one of the classes i am ignoring questions and insights that could arise from a more comparative analysis. i am also aware that i am perpetuating already abundant stereotypes surrounding first nations studies as what anne called a "non-academic dumping ground" by not including their written comments here. a l l this raises troubling questions about the choices researchers make in order to present a good case, or create a piece of good art, or write a publishable paper. do we include participants' comments because they are articulate, neat and quotable and thus enhance our argument and our work? journalists, artists and documentary filmmakers do this all the time and no one bats an eye. editing is, in the end, a necessary part of good storytelling, and that is what i am trying to do here. i want you to experience the stories behind the project's crises o f witnessing, and for this particular crisis the social studies reflections - for whatever reason, be it time, safety, interest - were more candid and articulate, and do take the reader into the experience more clearly, than the comments from the first nations studies students. the questions i asked earlier about the dynamics of a white teacher doing anti-racist work in homogenous versus diverse classrooms are well worth pursuing in further research but lay beyond the scope of this thesis. i want to keep this chapter's focus on the students' processes for working through the project's crises, and for the purposes o f this chapter only i w i l l depend on the written reflections of the social studies students to explore how they understood whiteness as a construct in their own lives. the depth of their responses to the crisis of witnessing whiteness (and even in this homogenous group skin appearances can be deceiving, for within this group of students was diversity of class, gender, sexuality, ability, language and religion) shows both hope for change and just how much more work needs to be done. i would like to analyze their written responses to the testimonies within a framework of social identity development, because in many ways the students in this class were working through not just a crisis of knowledge but a crisis of identity as who they had grown up believing they were, as individuals and citizens, was being called into question. briefly, hardiman and jackson ( ) conceptualize social identity for whites and peoples of colour as moving messily and even simultaneously through five distinct stages: naive, acceptance, resistance, redefinition and internalization. the naive stage, when individuals are "unaware of the complex codes of appropriate behaviour for members of their social , group" (bell, , p. ) is basically passed through in early childhood, when acceptance, or "some degree of internalization, whether conscious or unconscious, of the dominant culture's logic system" (bell, , p. ) begins to take hold. this acceptance can, when challenged, become resistance, or a state of "increased awareness of the existence of oppression and its impact" (bell, , p. ). with sufficient support, a person can move into a process of redefinition to create "an identity that is independent of an oppressive system based on hierarchical superiority and inferiority" (bell, , p. ). finally, as an individual becomes more fully committed to redefining and reworking him or herself in relation to the dominant culture, internalization, or the goal to "incorporate the identity of redefinition into all aspects of everyday life" (bell, , p. ). how far could, or did, or should, the students go? "i'm/ wot rcvout': acceptance/ avid/ official/ vmaxtumxturali&m/ perhaps one o f the reasons the crisis unfolded as it d i d was because the s o c i a l studies students were already i n a state o f acceptance, enhanced by the school and community culture, that this was simply the way things are. this k i n d o f acceptance is echoed i n a couple o f early reflections from students, when they were asked to write o n their impressions o f the role racism plays i n h o w inequalities w o r k i n the l o w e r m a i n l a n d : / don't really think about racism very often because i am not racist. idon't see racism around me too often because school and my environment are not very racist. (alyssa) here we have a student w a l k i n g and t a l k i n g the party line o f celebratory multiculturalism, the "i/we are not racist" discourse that says because we are polite i n respecting difference, w e are not implicated i n a systemic construction o f power and privilege based o n s k i n . t o her, the system works, so she sees no need to change it. another student, bridget, had a s i m i l a r perspective o n difference and inequality when she wrote "the economic divide still exists, but i doubt that the racial aspect plays such a big role." she was able to make a l i m i t e d class analysis, but unable to l i n k that to racial difference and therefore u n w i l l i n g to believe that race is an issue i n contemporary vancouver. perhaps the most complacent example o f acceptance comes from natalie, who wrote o f east vancouver as "not a place iv want to grow up in and later on, when i have children, i w uldn want them to grow up in it either." she is so secure i n her places and spaces - both her s k i n , class and geographic privileges - that she is unable to imagine her life any other way, nor can she see anything wrong w i t h h o w she lives i n relation to the opportunities o f others. a n interesting comment from megan shows the messy boundaries of understanding one's self and society. just as she declares that "white people held too much power amd it went to their heads, they may hill have too much", a sign she is beginning to move into resistance, she falls back into acceptance when she writes in the next sentence that 'visible minorities, their journey didn't happen in vain. their races are now accepted in societies of "white" backgrounds." her use of the words "races" and "accepted" shows she is still speaking from the position of accepting white dominance as the norm, even though she seems ready to try to work towards change. she finishes her paragraph with "we still have a long way to go, but we're in the right direction", which takes into account the need for change, but acceptance that official routes are still the best vehicle. these reflections were written before we moved into the text. after the first testimonies, those of the discriminatory employment experiences of harry con and gloria steinberg harris, the same students began to shift noticeably. "i understand now that racism occurs closer to home than we think" wrote alyssa, while bridget documented her reaction by saying "/ felt so disgusted that people could treat fellow human beings like that" and natalie felt she was beginning to think about east vancouver "in different ways, i now don! look down to them." are they in resistance yet? not fully, i would say, as they are still in initial stages of processing - but are at least coming into an increased awareness. "the/ e^perbewoefr were/ rea/ouatio-ncory:" cvctvn^ onto- retl&tavice/ the more complex the testimonies became, and the longer we involved ourselves with them, the more the students were able to articulate their resistance in writing. after ivy mcadams's testimony, in which her brother peter is refused entry to the pool, e l i n wrote "just the fact wa t a pool would ha ve such a sign disgusts mf.. .peter's struggle is exactly like modern day discrimination, where the stronger party single out the weaker' one." they were also able to share deeper insights into the workings and dominance of power. ' he more powerful people don! have a reason to be afraid of anything because no one would stand up to them", wrote alyssa, while her classmate ryan "came to the conclusion that white supremacists are afraid of losing their power over minority groups, and if this fear did not exist then i believe racism would not be such a prominent issue." when jennifer writes that hearing the testimonies was "revolutionary, i had never thought of minorities that way before", and katie says that 'vancouver is not as picture perfect as some would believe", they are taking their first steps towards critical thinking, moving through answerless and confusion to concrete ideas and analyses. how these ideas become suggestions for action becomes clear in the following student comments: racism and discrimina tion ha ve happened to more people and people don! always see the truth, they only see what they want to see. (andrea) i never thought about what other people went through, and what they are going through even now. i feel like i understand that they have gone through so much historically, tha t it needs to stop. (kiara) i'm starting to realize that some people separate the citizens into different "classes". why are we hill uving like this? a huge amount of people discriminate against the people in east vancouver, but how do we prove them wrong? (undsay) these three quotes, particularly the words of kiara and lindsay, show these young students seriously grappling with finding and defining their position in a racist society, a move that may lead them into redefinition and internalization. however, for all the hope and inspiration their transformations offer, other students' responses to the same testimony reveal a willingness to listen to the tellings, but an inability to move beyond the fixed link of the us and them mentality of whiteness and official multiculturalism: / realized that vancouver wasn such a good place to be when lots of people were still racist, because they treated all the non-white people so meanly. (whitney) i ha ve more compassion for those people now. i don! exactly know why this happened in vancouver but not other cities in canada. (ron) i have a better understanding of how they must ha ve felt and the devastating injustices that were laid upon them. (bianca) were. non-white. those people. not other cities. have felt. were laid. these quotes show a less reflexive attitude than those of their classmates, one that still sees discrimination as a fixed, historical event that has happened to people other than themselves and is therefore not their concern. ron's inability to relate vancouver's history to the larger picture of systemic racism is also troubling. i see their comments as indicative of what backhouse ( . p. ) the "misleading transparency of whiteness" that "contributes to an erasure of the privileges that attach to membership in the dominant race." this shows us not only, of course, that when we work to deconstruct issues of oppression we must remain mindful that individuals move into their realizations at different paces and in different ways, but also that really breaking through the boundaries of learned patterns and acceptances is a long, arduous process, and that "white antiracism is a stance requiring lifelong vigilance" (frankenberg, , p. ). outoftcme/, o-u£ofplace<: redefonitioyw cwicv (atfe^ntuity^uynfr not only were the social studies students negotiating their understandings of themselves as part of a white identity, they were trying to see this new identity through their already-rocky lens of teenage hood. "using an example close to home (mast vancouver) really makes it easy to see racism as a thing that does in fact exist in our community, and it does! that's what i've learned, it did and it does and we need to change it!" writes jennifer in her final reflection. w she continues, "it makes me wonder what i can even do to help. how can i fight against racism when i can! even walk into a store without being stereotyped as someone who's going to steal something? i want to help and fight but who's going to believe that i truly want to?" this tension between the students' willingness to begin redefining themselves against a backdrop of white privilege and their sense of themselves as not being taken seriously within the larger adult community was a constant thread running through many discussions and reflections. this tension certainly challenged assumptions i held about their social and cultural location, and needs more exploration. in eight lessons, we were able to bring the students to varying degrees of awareness, and in some cases a desire for action, about how white power and privilege operate to oppress people of colour. what we were not able to do was facilitate in them a dissection of their own implication in skin privilege. we can hope that these eight lessons formed the "beginning of an inquiry rather than the end of it" (frederickson, , p. ), and as these students move through other years of schooling, at least a few of them w i l l continue to grapple with the questions we raised in the ways we encouraged them to. i do believe the testimonies began to move them through the "slippery fictions of racial designation" and into an understanding that "the concept of 'race' is undeniably a moving target through time and space" (backhouse, , p. ). last week i emailed the following quote (hooks, , p. ) to some of the students: if we fail to acknowledge the value and significance of individual anti-racist white people we not only diminish the work they have done and do to transform their thinking and behavior, but we prevent other white people from learning by their example. a l l people of color who suffer racial exploitation and oppression know that white supremacy w i l l not end until racist white people change. a n d lindsay, so passionate in her commitment to prove racists wrong, wrote me back to say she had pasted hooks' words in her locker. watch this space. chapter vi "we/ treated/ them/ icke/ poiaeteioyiy": trouhiiru^ the/ natiorwu/ lrnxuftiruzry from/ the/ yhaxiowy of empire unlike the united states, where there is at least an admission of the fact that racism exists and has a history, in this country one is faced with a stupefying innocence. dionne brand, bread out of stone, , p. i was born in the states, when my english father was a doctoral student at yale. we moved to canada when i was two, but i remained a landed immigrant until i was sixteen. for my citizenship ceremony i got to miss a day of school, and my whole family went downtown. my mother and grandmother wore dresses and carried leather purses, while the men (my father, grandfather and brother) wore suits. most of the people at the ceremony were people of colour, except for the presiding judge and mounties. the judge opened his remarks by saying he realized most of the new citizens came from places where they might have been afraid of courts and police, but here, in their new safe country, they had nothing to worry about. after the ceremony my grandfather took us to the fanciest restaurant in victoria, where we ate steaks and drank champagne and raised our glasses in toasts to the nation and the queen. i don't remember anything else. a t my final immigration interview, i was facing an elderly, bald, white man, mustached and blue-eyed - who said he had been to india. i made some polite rejoinder and he asked me - "do you speak hindi?" i replied that i understood it very well and spoke it with mistakes. "can you translate this sentence for me?" he asked, and proceeded to say in hindi what in english amount to "do you want to fuck with me?" his hand was on my passport, the pink slip of my "landing" document lay next to it. steadying my voice i said "i don't know hindi that well." . . . on bloor street in toronto, sitting on the steps of a church - vomited. i was a landed immigrant. himani bannerji, the dark side of the nation ( , p. ) how are we educated to see ourselves as part of the nation, and how do we want our students to think about this place we call home? i think here of a recent article in the globe and mail newspaper to promote the paper's annual nation builder of the year award, a prize voted on by readers, that opened with the headline "canadians who help make country better" (alphonso, , p. ). the article takes up half a page, with photographs of four key contenders: golfer mike weir, kelowna fire chief gerry zimmermann, supreme court judge roy mcmurtry and medical researcher paul goss. four photos of four successful, educated, middle class white men. the list continues: businessmen, politicians, athletes. not a single artist, writer or activist. then, buried deep in paragraph , find the name monia mazigh, the wife of maher arar, whose persistence in keeping her husband's confinement in a syrian prison in the public eye did much to obtain his release. she is the only female or person of colour in the entire piece. how do these kinds of popular culture narratives influence those we teach to define who is and who is not "an insider/outsider to the canadian nation" (bannerji, , p. )? my family have been settlers here since the late 's. we have farmed, mined, logged and run orchards. we have had servants and made money. the women have given birth to alcoholics, whores and gamblers as well as accountants and teachers and scientists. i have a great-great grandfather who designed most of the first grand homes on the gulf islands and even owned a few of the smaller islands until he drank and gambled them away; a great-grandmother who was a founding teacher at havergal college, a private girls' school in ontario; and an uncle who worked the north of vancouver island as a card player and fishing guide until he got involved with the mob and was murdered in vegas. me? - got out while the going was good and spent my adulthood overseas. my mother used to joke that she was the only canadian born female who spoke english like the queen. she grew up in the yukon, raised by a mother who slapped her hand every time she failed to pronounce certain letters (like a, or o) correctly. in this family, correct meant british. my mother never did figure out how to get rid of her accent. benedict anderson's definition of the nation as "an imagined political community - imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign" ( , p. ) can help illuminate not only my own and my mother's educational experiences, but those of the students in the langley project as well. a s i witness my memories of my citizenship ceremony and my colonial genealogy, and as i reflect on the fundamental "crisis of witnessing" (felman, ) that occurred throughout the project, i realize that the link between how our understandings of nationhood and belonging are formed, and what happens when those understandings are challenged, must be read and acted upon as key pedagogical issues. anderson details his definition of the nation by saying it becomes imagined because although the "members of even the smallest nation w i l l never know most of their fellow members . . . in the minds of each lives the image of their communities" (p. ). he states that each nation remains limited because they have "finite, i f elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations" (p. ) and sovereign because "the concept was born in an age in which enlightenment and revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the . . . dynastic realm" (p. ). they can be called communities "because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship" (p. ). what distinguishes these imagined places and spaces, according to anderson, is not their "falsity/genuineness, b u t . . . the style in which they are imagined" (p. ). bannerji ( , p. ) adds to this critique with "we can say, therefore, that there is nothing natural about communities. in fact they are contested ground of socio-cultural definitions and political agencies." hobsbawm ( ) adds to anderson's and bannerji's analyses with his study of what he terms "invented traditions . . .a set of practices . . .which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past" (p. ). in a country such as canada, whose institution as a nation is fairly recent, this past had to be "invented" almost as soon as it was being implemented as a tradition. hobsbawm lists three major innovations as deciding factors in how invented traditions take root in the popular imagination. the first? primary education, of course. in i started elementary school in an upper middle class suburb of victoria called oak bay. our school day had several strict rituals as part of its daily routine. first, we filed into our classrooms in order of our ages, the grade ones in the front, the grade sevens at the back. then under the watchful eyes of queen elizabeth ii, for every classroom had her portrait hanging from the front wall so that it would face us, so that we would have to answer to her every time we allowed our eyes to leave our books, we stood to say the lord's prayer in unison. i don't remember if there was anyone different - a jew, a buddhist, a moslem or an atheist - who had permission to miss this ritual because no one ever spoke of such things, and besides, we all looked and talked alike. white. clean. well fed and clothed. successful children of successful parents. on certain days of the week, all the grades would march down the stairs of our hundred- year-old brick school to the auditorium, where we would gather for an assembly. sometimes there would be entertainment, like a play or a musician, sometimes a talk from a famous person, an author or an astronaut. what i remember most about these assemblies is that a special student, chosen by the principal, always led the other students into the auditorium, and that special student was allowed to carry the flag. i never got chosen; it always seemed to be the boys, particularly the athletic or nerdy ones, like the boy who won a city track race or placed top five in a national science contest, who got to carry the flag. and so we would follow these dynamic young heroes into the auditorium, like the children who followed the piper into the cave, and before we were allowed to sit down we sang god save the queen. not oh canada, not a poem or a drum song or a story or a dance. but god save the queen, once a week, for seven years. and no, this was not a private school. and no, it was not the 's. and yes, we thought at the time that singing this anthem was a good thing. a fine, a very fine thing. this chapter's title quote was written by a first nations studies student named chelsea, but she was not alone. "it made me feel sad amd quite confused why we as a country can! lend a hand to those in need. ..we are all canadians. we are a family, and when a part of tha t family suffers we should be there for them," writes e l i n , a social studies student, after a lesson in which we tackled o o histories of racial segregation in vancouver. "i would never have thought that a place i consider so accepting of diversity would have such a history of racism," adds her classmate bridget. after the same lesson sarah admits, "to think about this makes me shudder. my pride of canada has wa vered", while ryan writes 'this type of racism i often associate with southern united hates, but never in our own homeland. the concept is truly mind-boggling." however, i think megan most clearly sums up the crisis when she says "the stories made me hare it right in the face. i had to rec gni e that canada isn't quite as multiculturallyinclined as we've een told." reflections of this kind show these students being forced to re-negotiate their relation to state-sponsored multiculturalism, or what francis ( ) calls "national dreams" and stanley and roman ( , p. ) identify as the "canada the redeemer discourse". for most of their lives, the langley students internalized the same teachings as me and my mother: canada as a peaceful, multicultural democracy; canada as a rugged landscape tamed by brave mounties and pioneers; canada as not - n o t - the united states. my englcvnd/ go&y to- ottcvwa/: a travelogue/ germaine greer wanted to see the city of oakland, california. so she followed her road map through the tangled streets of san francisco, the endless freeways and traffic jams, the districts both glamorous and dangerous, until she reached the end of one map and the beginning of another. and then, standing on the bridge between the two cities and seeing oakland for the first time, she could only whisper bitterly: "there is no there, there. " / do not want to go to oakland, but i am going to ottawa. "you must make sure you see the leaves, " the woman in the seat beside me says as we lift off from vancouver. "just wonderful this time of year. " i smile, murmuring assent, but do not tell her i have already seen the leaves in the gatineaus in the fall and that lam visiting "the nation's capital", as the pilot so eloquently announced, for a different reason. true, the leaves would be beautiful, the golds and auburns a refreshing change from the deep greens of vancouver's rainforest, but i will not have time for that this visit. this time, on this frequent flyer redeye weekend freebie, i want to find the story of my country. if it is there. and if it will let me in. the downtown core of ottawa this sunday morning is cold and windy, with icy breezes shooting off the rideau canal. i begin my walk at nepean point, where there is a bronze statue ode to the "founder " of the ottawa settlement. he is dressed in fine european garments and stands looking across the river, his hand on his hip and his boot raised on a piece of rock. i walk further, past a statue of a huron chief dressed in feathers and loincloth who, the plaque beneath his bare feet reads, was the "first indian to co-operate with the settlers ". his name is not given. onto the chateau laurier now, a hotel named after a former prime minister and an ode to the fruits of industry. limousines pull up to its entrance, and doormen in long coats fill their arms with stacks of luggage. inside the opulent lobby - marble floors, gold ceilings - a tour guide recites the list of famous guests -presidents and royalty and celebrities -to a group of tourists. i head to the houses of parliament, passing on the way more statues offounding european fathers. the tour guide leads us through various halls and chambers, marble stairways adorned with symbols (wheat for saskatchewan, beavers for quebec) and the flowers (dogwoods for british columbia, wild roses for alberta) of each province. finally we are at the entrance to the house of commons. our guide opens the door with a knowing flourish and we are allowed to stand in the hall, this immense space in which so much has happened to define this nation. the desks are arranged in rows facing each other, all polished wood and deep green velvet surfaces. "here, " the guide begins "is where all the members of parliament sit when the house is in session. " and what strikes me about this space is not the elaborate high ceilings or the golden throne at the centre, but how peculiarly small the desks are, and how suffocatingly close their rows feel. irnd theo it hits roe: this voovo is structured just like the kind of cfessroows we now discourse teachers from creating. it is not until i leave the houses of parliament that i remember i had also wanted to find a newly unveiled memorial to canada's early suffragettes. it takes me a while and i have to ask directions, because the memorial is behind the main buildings and is not visible from the front entrance. when ifinally find the statues i see four women - women who were activists, who became senators, who took the damn government to court, for christ's sake - sitting together in a square. globs of bird dung cover part of the memorial plaque, and a lone crow picks at the grass beside the statues. nellie mclung and emily murphy hold teacups to their lips and cross their legs delicately at the ankles, smiling at each other. and that is all they are doing in this unwanted, neglected space. and i remember making a presentation in my grade seven class that i decided to call "women as leaders in canada. " i stood in an empty space at the front of six rows of desks and told my classmates i wanted to be the first female prime minister of canada. some of them cheered, others laughed. my teacher mr. cowan sat at his desk at the back of the room and took notes on a pad of yellow legal paper. when ifinished, his raised his eyebrows and looked at me. "so tell me, jacyntha, " he began, "why would a woman possibly want to lead the country, and why on earth should we let her? " the sunday night red eye flight to vancouver leaves an hour late. passengers are grumpy and tired: the businessmen and civil servants have meetings scheduled for early the next morning, others have families to leave and return to. and me? i have . . . nothing. kewegotiattng'the' cm^ ottawa, the defining public space o f the national imaginary, follows the same r i g i d narrative o f c o l o n i a l i s m as the country's a u r i c u l a r spaces: european male heroes who tamed the wilderness, co-operative noble savages, genteel w o m e n and invisible minorities. struggles o f race, o f slavery, o f class and marginalization are simply not - to echo the words o f germaine greer - there. it is multicultural week at the langley school, and the social studies class has been called to the library for a presentation by an immigration officer. each student is handed a fake identity card, with a name, country, education and profession. they must follow the immigration points system to see if their 'person' would be allowed into the country. a girl who was given the identity of a yemeni electrician asks the presenter why she failed to be admitted. "well", the presenter begins, "yemen is on the list of suspicious countries for their links with terrorists. besides, there's already plenty of electricians here, and your person could not speak english. he had no chance, which is tough, but to get into our country that's the way it is. " "but, " the student raises her voice, "is that really fair? " the officer pauses, preparing an answer, but the bell rings. as bannerji ( , p. ) makes clear, "depending on one's social location, the canadian landscape . . . can seem near or far, disturbing, threatening or benign." y o u matter, the public space of imagined canada tells us, i f you are male and white and wealthy. y o u have no place here, they tell us, i f you are poor, or indigenous, or of colour. a n d so it goes in our communities, our museums, our national monuments. and so we are educated, and so the education becomes internalized and the imagined nation becomes the system, the structure, in which we live, work and teach. a n d now we have to un-do it. we must find as many ways as possible to interrogate the very concept of nation, community and belonging - not just with our students but within ourselves - much in the way the texts and exercises from this project did. we must find ways of accounting for the nation building project, as both a historical and contemporary process, and ask i f there even is such a thing as a nation builder. for whose nation? and then we ask ourselves i f the canadian landscape is as comfortable and near to our students and us as we might once have thought. pchrucript: i would venture to propose, today, that teaching in i t s e l f . . . takes place precisely only through a crisis: i f teaching does not hit upon some sort of crisis, i f it does not encounter either the vulnerability or the explosiveness of a (explicit or implicit) critical and unpredictable dimension, it has perhaps not truly taught. (felman, , p. ) my mother lies on the hospice bed, wrapped up to her chin in blankets. her skin is paper thin, her hair almost gone. i touch her hand and she opens her eyes and tries to smile. in the age of testimony teaching, i would venture to suggest, must in turn testify, make something happen, and not just transmit a passive knowledge. (felman, , p. ) her brown eyes are empty and hollowed - don't think she recognizes me anymore. a nurse comes in, checks her i.v. and morphine drip, rearranges the sheets on the bed. my mother closes her eyes and winces, a soft moan escaping from her lips. i want my students to be able to receive information that is dissonant, and not just congruent, with everything that they have learned beforehand. testimonial teaching fosters the capacity to witness something that may be surprising. (felman, , p. ) "she's in pain ", the nurse tells me, "but we can't risk increasing her morphine. this is what we call breakthrough pain, pain too strong for any medicines. " teaching must be viewed not merely as transmitting, but as accessing: as accessing the crisis or the critical dimension... the question for the teacher is, then, on the one hand, how to access, how not to foreclose the crisis, and, on the other hand, how to contain it, how much crisis can the class sustain. it is the teacher's task to recontextualize the crisis and to put it back into perspective, to relate the present to the past and to the future and to thus reintegrate the crisis in a transformed frame of meaning. (felman, , p. ) she grips the sheets, twists her wasted body in agony. the nurse holds my mother by the shoulders and sings softly to her, wipes her forehead with a damp cloth. she glances at me. "breakthrough pain usually doesn't last more than a minute or so, just keep holding her hand", she says. i bite my lip to keep from crying: i should be the one holding her, singing to her, cleaning her. i goddamnit, should be her comfort, not this stranger. in working through the crisis which broke the framework of the course, the dynamics of the class and the practice of my teaching exceeded, thus, the mere concept of the testimony as i had initially devised it and set out to teach it. what was first conceived as theory of testimony got unwittingly enacted, had become itself not theory, but an event of life: of life as the perpetual necessity - and the perpetual predicament - of a learning that in fact can never end. (felman, , p. ) the pain seems to have passed; my mother lies still. the nurse takes the top sheet from the bed - stained from my mother's sweat and drool - and throws it into the empty corridor. she pulls a fresh sheet from a shelf and snaps it out across my mother's sleeping body in one quick, efficient movement. iam jealous of her, of her ease with this woman in the bed whom i have spent most of my life hating, of her ability to soothe and love her when i can't. i want to ask the nurse how it feels to know all her patients are going to die under her care, but my mother opens her eyes again. they light up when she sees me. "hello darling", she whispers, beaming. i am not sure if she means it, or if it is the morphine talking, but i stay in the room, holding her hand and singing, until dark. at a public lecture on campus, my colleague yvonne brown, an educator and activist in her own right, asked her audience to think about creating a pedagogy of pain, one that embraces the dark, prickly spaces of memory and suffering in order to push us into new realms of awareness and understanding. i think of the nurse's words {breakthrough pain is too strong for medicine; it only lasts a minute) and wonder how we can extend moments of breakthrough pain into the classroom and beyond. i don't want us to depend on morphine or the quick fix solutions - one day workshops, guest speakers or videos - so often favoured in teaching, to rid or mask what is really going un under our skins. in many ways, the crisis that hit the project was a moment of breakthrough pain, one that could not be hidden away by easy, safe answers. the breakthrough pains of memory, of racism and of nation building forced us to embrace not just our selves, but each other, as we worked through the crisis and re-thought who we were and wanted to be. yes, the pain cut deep and caused hurt, even bleeding and scarring. but, like the moment in the hospice when witnessing my mother's breakthrough pain finally allowed me to love her the way she needed, the project's breakthrough pain jolted me into action, and turned me into a better teacher. as educators we need to witness our tolerance levels of breakthrough emotional and social pain, the areas that for us morphine cannot treat. in my case, these are my memories of my mother's death and my interrogations of my life of white privilege. in making peace with these pains within myself, i become better able to maintain safe spaces for inquiry and expression in my classrooms. in using the phrase breakthrough pain, i need to distinguish here between the kinds of pain caused by collective experiences and memories of oppression, and the more individual pains of personal trauma, abuse or violence. i am not saying we should suddenly try to become therapists to our students in the sense of working through their personal traumas in the public space of the classroom. that is work we are not qualified to do, and would easily prove disastrous. what i am saying is that teaching to an engagement with and critique of collective pain and social crisis allows for students and teachers to experience breakthroughs in their collective and individual understandings of themselves in relation to history and society. such a breakthrough is in itself a therapeutic moment, if we follow the dictionary definition of therapeutic as "having a good effect on the body or mind" (o.e.d., , p. ). i would dare to add that such breakthroughs are necessary in a social justice approach to teaching if we ever hope to facilitate deep and long lasting transformations amongst those we teach. and they only happen when we are willing to risk our emotions and venture into painful territories, at both personal and pedagogical levels. thank you, thank you, thank you shoshana, for making sense of this for me. chapter vii: "y©u g f o d t ml %l< gp cfoidg it": ?gi??©i?i» trtfe sp> c<s(s), ?ei?£©i?i»ftrtfe wopdedt(s) '$>?o[o£ue: this is drama and how it educates: for each of the students, their very acts of discovery and questioning are inherent parts of the theatre they produce when responding to a wide range of historical and personal narratives... students must have the opportunity to make meaning, to write themselves into their and others' generational stories; to discover how performance might be constructed and to explore the possibility of creating memory... drama educates by filling spaces in the struggle to trace history both remembered and not remembered, transmitted and not transmitted. (zatzman, , p. , ) * scene i a rainy monday morning, almost half the class is absent. we move the desks and chairs to the side of the room, and i read them dorothy joseph's testimony from behind closed doors, in which the nuns call her a savage. then i ask the students to create a shape or image with their bodies that shares their response to the testimony. chelsea steps into the center of the space, straightens her back and points her finger to the ground. she freezes her entire body - her face, her neck, her shoulders, even the tip of her pointing finger - into one embodied expression of hate. when i move on to the next exercise, asking them to speak a monologue as that shape, chelsea whispers "you dirty little savage, get over here, i'll show you". i let the exercise continue, to thirty seconds; chelsea is beginning to spit, her face red, the bile spewing from her mouth, "who do you think you are, you little savage "; i am worried about chelsea, she seems close to breaking, so i call out " seconds to go "; her voice pitches into one low, anguished sigh. chelsea sinks to her knees, shaking, tears at the edges of her eyes. "those words, " she tells the class, "were the sickest things i've ever said. " "but, " she writes later, "one of the most amazing things i've ever done, i had no idea i could act to be something i'm not. " * scene ii i read the socials studies class ivy macadams's testimony from opening doors about the shooting and newspaper headline "four whites for one jap - is it fair? ", and tell them we are going to make a group image response to the telling. we are beginning to talk about characters and struggles in the telling, when elin raises her hand. "i don't think we should respond to the telling as it is, just about the boys. i think we should make our image about the bigger picture of racism in the media today. " * scene iii working on this response image, almost half the class joins together on one side of the room, taking shapes to represent the media. they stand on chairs and desks, hold out cameras, and lean their heads together conspiratorially. while they take on these images, a smaller group, all girls, makes shapes of victim hood on the other side of the room: they lay on the floor, crouch together, hide their faces behind their hands, find ways of protecting each other with their bodies. in the center of this tableau stands another girl, defiantly refusing to look at either the media or the victims. she folds her arms across her chest and stares out the window. this image has unfolded — organically, performatively, critically - with no spoken direction from me or the class. * scene iv i ask students in the tableau to speak lines their image might say, lines that begin with "i'm afraid of and "i want". i do not give them much time to think about what they will say, for i want them to be able to speak directly in the moment. i move around the tableau, touching each student on the shoulder in turn, inviting and welcoming his or her words into the space, "i want them out of my country ", "i want to keep my power ", "i am afraid of not getting a good story " echo the voices of the frozen media. "i want to live ", "i am afraid of them ", "i want to be free ", cry the victims. when i get to the center, to the girl choosing to ignore both situations, she whispers, "i am afraid. .. of nothing. " later, she tells the class she was showing what she thought was at the heart of both the testimony and the group response image. she was, she said "representing power, that can choose to see what it wants to see and ignore the rest - and that kind of power has no fear, because they never let anything get too close to them. " * epilogue a l l these embodied, expressive, literate insights. a l l this collective, co-operative action. a l l this art. from students who, when sitting at their desks, would not / could not say a word. ^resktog the pwroeworfc: dvsvos % process of snswertog i want to concentrate in this chapter on how drama as a process allowed the crisis of witnessing to "break the very framework of the class" (felman, , p. ) and "pass through its own answerlessness" (felman, , p. ). i want to simply let the students tell you how this happened: / personally feel that learning in this way is better than doing questions or taking notes from a textbook. it brings people to be more openly involved in the material that is being studied. i think it made me understand the topic more because you ha ve to stop and try to see the connection between the drama and the topic... i wish more lessons were taught in this manner. (nataue, ss ) the drama really made me think about the characters in all the stories. i felt close to them and, at some points, understood their pain as well (chelsea, fn ) in other courses we are told what to think but here, with acting, its all up to you. what i learned most from the theatre games was seeing what everyone else felt about the characters they were portraying. it made me see how different even your closest friend can see something that you see a different way. (jennifer, ss ) learning this way was a completely new experience for me. i am not usually a person who enjoys improvisation or unplanned events of any sort, but this helped me to push my self and put myself in the shoes of another human and to play the role of a racist. i did this in the hope of comprehending the mentality of those who are racist. (bryan, fn ) tt challenged me to step out of my nice, c y shell and take risks. i wanted to really help, to get my ideas out there. we ha ven really been in a racial issue where someone is discriminated against, so this was a good eye opener. (megan, ss ) it felt a lot different to learn this way, but i preferred it. this process got me to put myself in someone else's shoes and consider their thoughts, emotions and perspectives. it challenged me to go deeper than the facts and explore the human impact of our history. i liked the collective experience.. . it gives students a much more profound insight than a textbook would... i would make each unit longer, if possible. (bridget, ss ) / was really nervous and unsure of now it was going to work because it is not something that i have enjoyed in thepast. i don! like putting myself out there in front of my peers. however, once we started and ireau ed that we were all in it together, i really enjoyed it. it really challenged me, but i felt good because i knew there was no wrong answer. i ha ve grown as i learned about both the people of east vancouver and myself. i ha ve never done anything like it before, and it was really worthwhile. (kiara, ss ) the c r i t i c ^ irosgtostion pnd the third spsce: the fascinating thing about these reflections is that, almost to a one, the students are intertwining their personal growth, their learning about the testimonies and their learning about the drama process into one seamless narrative that incorporates with fluidity laub's ( , p. ) three levels of witnessing (witnessing oneself within the experience, witnessing the testimonies, and witnessing the process of witnessing itself). this is exciting, for it shows that they are starting to work and think from a shared point of critical interrogation and imagination, that to them the two domains go hand in hand. i would venture to suggest here that it was the process of embodying and living their responses, of drawing "upon their emotions to unfold their cultural imagination" (rizvi, , p. ) that allowed them to reach moments of critical insight. the process was circular, without a clear beginning and certainly with no end. it was the drama process, and where it led the students into their own personal inquiries of their internal and external boundaries and surroundings, that moved the discourses of race, nation, class and memory from crisis to transformation and action. it was the drama, that educated. is this the fabled "third space" of which bhaba speaks? did incorporating boal's techniques "open up the possibilities for new structures of authority, and for new politics nf\ uu of resistance to be created" (rizvi, , p. )? i would argue that the entire project found and conducted itself, celebrating witnessing at multiple levels, within that space - and beyond. finding the third space was just the beginning for these students. moving into the third space - and here i quibble with the notion that spaces must be numbered sequentially, and that the ultimate destination is a mere third, troisieme, bronze, for surely there must be as many spaces as we have minds and memories? - and beyond to re-articulate the boundaries of what they thought was possible in their minds and bodies became a way for these students to "lay down possible new worlds" (varela, , p. ), spaces and - most importantly - ways of knowing. the third, and fourth and five hundredth spaces inhabited by the project's performative moments became, in and of themselves, literacies. literacy as reading codes, literacy as trickster eisner ( , p. ) defines literacy as "an ability to read, interpret and communicate codes in any medium." how, then, were the students in the project becoming literate? they were not being asked to read any texts in the traditional, alphabetic way; however, they were being asked and encouraged to read themselves, the bodies of their classmates, and the tellings and teachings behind each testimony. they became culturally literate, able to read and communicate their understandings on "the interrelationships between power structures, the hidden and not-so hidden agendas of the oppressed and the oppressor" (fels, , p. ). through their growing comfort with boal's methodology, they developed a performative literacy, not only in that they were able to use the language r n u of boal to express their learning and feeling, but also in that the performative act led them "from the single-dimensionality of dichotomies towards an understanding of the multiplicity of perspective and outcomes possible" (fels, , p. ). this kind of literacy, this ability to read and move through media, codes and meanings in a creative and critical way, is what fernandez ( , p . l ) calls "trickster literacies . . . lush literacies that are in constant motion around us." she goes on to comment "that these literacies often remain invisible is paradoxical. that our impoverished pedagogies cannot learn from these literacies is still more paradoxical." i think of this project as a form of trickster literacy, as it shifted from body to mind to bodymind, from storytelling to performance and back. in the first nations studies class, the academically 'weaker' of the two groups (i.e., students whose success at traditional academics and literacy had been limited), something extraordinary began to take root about midway through the unit. suddenly, at the end of each lesson, students who two weeks previous had had trouble finding their feedback forms were rushing back to their desks to begin scribbling down their ideas. they would write furiously and passionately, often after the bell rang, until they had said all they needed to say. the trickster was moving through them, realizing a voice that had long been silenced by traditional learning structures and assessments. perhaps the greatest trickster was bryan, who after a lesson in which we witnessed a testimony from behind closed doors about two girls who tried to run away from the school, wrote that "hearing this story made me want to try to write a story about those girls, about them running a^ u z away." bryan traveled, in the space of a few minutes, from witnessing to responding to analyzing and then wanting to create his own response in another artistic medium. to further illuminate the impact anne and i felt in the room during these lessons, and the shifts we knew were happening in the students' ability to read the word and the world, i want to share with you another extract from my final interview with anne: j: i think the reason they worked so quickly when we got to the written parts was that the embodied work, the theatre, had touched something inside them, that they felt this huge need to try to write it down, to express it, to tell their story. a they felt they were doing something. j: yes, they were being asked to do something that they felt was somehow relevant to their lives. a and i know you were collecting data from the questions, but you know, all those questions you used in your data could also be used by me as a teacher to get feedback from the kids, to evaluate their learning - just from those forms, i would know what they learned, how they learned it, i would know everything. j: it was a unit taught through performance, which leads us to the concept of performative literacy . . . and so i want to ask you how would you define the term literacy? a: in a simplistic form, the ability to read and understand, to write and make yourself understood, to spectate and observe, to interpret - that to me is literacy. j: and in performative literacy, we believe we can come to be able to read and understand the world, through engaging in drama. a totally, i believe that too. j: and that was what was happening, especially with the first nations studies students, who might not have strong alphabetic skills, but they were responding so strongly in the drama work because it touched something inside them that more traditional ways of teaching couldn't - this validated them, made them literate, perhaps for the first time in several years. and this literacy was moving from their body up into their heads, and then they were wanting to get alphabetically literate, they were wanting to write it down. that was incredible, just scribbling, they had no writer's block no frustration, because it had already been created for them to write down through the work like you said, it's a methodology. a what a valid assessment - because not only am i getting their gut reaction to the work which is the most honest, but i'm also seeing how they're interpreting it; how to take the ideas one step further, it's an exciting way to plan, to ask yourself just how far can we go u j with this'? what links can we make? i mean some of those kids wrote more for you in your few days with them than they wrote for me all year. j: and that writing was coming from a very natural place, they had it right there, and that was what blew me away, seeing the confidence level raise. so it's like we have to reverse how we think about teaching and learning - start with the body, get them feeling and thinking in that way and then let it come into a head intellectual way of knowing. a learning doesn't have to be all dates and names and places. learning can be this, what we did learning can be that, feeling it from the inner self - like i learned something today, yes the kids learned something about residential schools or cast van, but they also learned that they reacted to that knowledge, and they didn't like what they heard trickster, that says it all. writing the tooroent: frustrations of writing about performance how can i write about the performative? do i tell you what happened, lay out the rules of the exercise, who moved where, who stood where, who spoke what? would a diagram h e l p , a m a p , w i t h a r r o w s a n d c i r c l e s a n d footnotes to t e l l y o u h o w it felt? t h e w o r d s y o u j u s t r e a d , w h a t d o they m e a n to y o u ? i f i t e l l y o u that these w o r d s w e r e s p o k e n b y m e m b e r s o f the s o c i a l s t u d i e s c l a s s , a n d that t h e y c r e a t e d one o f the m o s t t r a n s f o r m a t i v e a n d m a g i c a l m o m e n t s o f the u n i t , w o u l d y o u b e l i e v e m e ? b o a l has a n e x e r c i s e c a l l e d s o u n d s c a p e that i l o v e , because it e n c o u r a g e s a different k i n d o f l i s t e n i n g . a f t e r the g r o u p has f o r m e d its r e s p o n s e i m a g e , i ask t h e m to t h i n k i n d i v i d u a l l y o f o n e w o r d to e x p r e s s t h e i r f e e l i n g s as that i m a g e . t h e n i m o v e t h r o u g h the i m a g e , t o u c h i n g p a r t i c i p a n t s o n the s h o u l d e r a n d i n v i t i n g t h e m to share t h e i r w o r d . i m o v e q u i c k l y b e t w e e n s o u n d s , s o m e t i m e s a s k i n g one p e r s o n to repeat theirs, so that the w o r d s b e g i n to b l u r together i n t o a n a u r a l s o u n d s c a p e . n o t o n l y d o p a r t i c i p a n t s n e e d to b e " u n o b t r u s i v e l y p r e s e n t " ( f e l m a n , , p . ) to t h e i r o w n s o u n d , t h e y n e e d to l i s t e n to w h a t the others are s a y i n g , as w e l l as be r e a d y f o r m y i n v i t a t i o n . t h e s o u n d s c a p e t h e n b e c o m e s its o w n e x e r c i s e i n w i t n e s s i n g a t e s t i m o n y o f r e s p o n s e . a f t e r r e a d i n g i v y k a j i m c a d a m s ' s t e s t i m o n y about h e r brother at the s w i m m i n g p o o l , i a s k e d the c l a s s to f o r m t h e i r r e s p o n s e i m a g e o r t a b l e a u as p o s s i b l e " c o p s i n the h e a d " ( b o a l , ) o r v o i c e s that f o r m i n the m i n d o f the p r o t a g o n i s t peter, w h o w a s b e i n g p o r t r a y e d b y a l y s s a . t h e students m o v e d c h a i r s a n d t a b l e s , as w a s b e c o m i n g t h e i r h a b i t , a n d gathered a r o u n d a l y s s a i n different p o s e s , s o m e s u p p o r t i v e , s o m e h o s t i l e . w h e n the s o u n d s c a p e e x e r c i s e b e g a n , those w o r d s c a m e out. i found myself lingering on bridget's "m^vcrc?" and wanting to hear it in contrast to the other voices. bridget spoke her word aggressively, angrily, harshly, for she wanted peter/alyssa to feel, to know, he did not belong. a s i kept welcoming her word into the soundscape, her voice raised in volume and ferocity until it was at a fever pitch, drowning out everything else. why did i stay with that word? it just struck me in the moment as what could be explored; the hatred and fear involved in naming difference. but how do i tell you, now, what power that moment held for all of us in the room? how do i get you to see the image, to hear the edgy scratch, the near hysteria in bridget's voice, the quiet assurance in alyssa's as she kept whispering "fue***the utter pin-drop silence between the words, as the group focused so intently on their spect-acting? how can i bring you into that room, that moment, that space - or should i even try? maybe sharing a piece of conversation w i l l help: a: the scene in socials - the kids were blown away. i liked the fact that they were blown away and at the end they could really sense the power of the work they'd done. j: it was so intense, that last exercise, especially when they'd been so lethargic at the beginning of class. a when the whole thing came together, they told the story of how they felt about it - bridget saying "different". j: i found the soundscape amazing too, all those words. a and how do you put something like that down on paper - it would look like nothing j: yes, and you have to see it in the context of what has happened before, what the shapes were that the kids were making. . how they just came out of themselves and went so deeply into the work a: it was almost like a branching out into this avant garde drama thing - mean, come on, making shapes and soundscapes in the middle of a socials classroom - but it all made sense. i was sitting there watching the work and it made complete sense to me, what they were telling me with those sounds. the performative space is like no other research space. it breathes, it swallows, it moves between, through and around the spaces we thought were already there. it reveals the hidden, silent spaces we never knew we wanted or would be able to find. the performative space is constantly opening and closing itself around us. it folds and stretches the canvas of who we are and what we can do. it belongs to one, it belongs to all - simultaneously - and excludes only those who do not think they want it. yet. now, read the soundscape again, and tell me what you hear: the performative moment, like the stop, is when the performative space becomes its own living, breathing entity, and all boundaries of classroom and knowledge disappear. the performative moment tells its own transformation story, reveals its own aesthetic (a beauty, a moment of being most alive, a choice) just when we most need it. in the heat of a performative moment we forget who we are, where we were, and know only this: the word, the sound, the image, the breath. we cross the threshold of our own preconceived ability, take a leap of faith, jump into the deep water without a lifejacket, take off our shoes and walk through the fire. and we surface on the other side, in our own realm of memory and make believe, still breathing, still swimming, still walking. unscathed and unscarred, waving but never drowning. the performative moment is as simple as a sixteen year old girl whispering "you dirty savage"; it is as powerful as a teenaged boy writing a story; it is as endless and universal as another girl shouting "different" into her classmate's head. the performative moment is us: it belongs to us, speaks to and with us, walks through and around us. we are its recipients but never its captors, and we must learn to hold, celebrate, nurture, share i t . . . and ultimately release it. maybe i should not have tried writing about it after all. or maybe this tension between being and documenting is in itself an aesthetic, performative experience. can i make "the teaching of the aesthetic experience" my "pedagogic creed" (greene, , p. )? chftpte? viii itopliestiods teachers might even be able to think in terms of yet another metaphor - that of the landscaper, someone who endeavors to change the lay of the land. . . but this is unlikely to work well if teachers merely follow the dictates of an architectural landscaper who never gets down into the dirt. it also won't work well if teachers focus only on their own garden plot andfail to see its relation to the larger overall design of the site. at the macro level, our educational systems need to be spaces that are both functional and beautiful. (reynolds, , p. ) "this isn't just some words in s textbook, it's real": student reflections . . . . . . o n story / truth telling: / think learning from this resource was much more effective. instead of being told by a textbook what happened, we learned about the history through the words of the people who lived it. it made a much more personal and insightful process. (bridget, ss ) in my opinion you cannot even compare the effect that listening to these real life memories had on my understanding of the urban experience compared to learning from textbooks or even videos. in reality you never really remember anything from outdated boring textbooks, but hearing those experiences really made me think and take to heart what was being said. (bianca, ss ) the stories were real memories, not just a research page for a textbook. the effect it has had on my understanding of the urban experience is how everyday of their lives people remind them of "what they are". (elin, ss ii) . . . o n spect-acting: at first it was pretty scary and nerve racking because you did not know wha t to expect, but it definitely made you really reflect on wha t you were learning, and inspired you to push yourself to take on each role as if it were really happening to you. (bianca, ss it) it was easier to learn from drama than text because it was more fun, and when people are enjoying themselves and ha ving fun they learn better. (ryan, fn ) at first it was hard but it became easier as the class became more comfortable with the idea. it made me feel like i was the person. i learned to take chances and do something i'm not so into doing. (cory, fn ) learning through drama dared those participating to actually get in the minds of the characters and underhand on a completely different level the games inspired me to reach that level of understanding in my other classes and assignments. (samm, ss ) . . . o n frsnsforrotog . . . other schools snd other students: / think this would be excellent to be taught in schools. it would teach empathy, sympathy, acting and public speaking skills as well as concepts of racism and history. (murray, ss it) it should be taught in other schools because if not they will probably never ha ve the chance to really open their eyes to many things. it was a really powerful experience that all should have the chance to experience. (bianca, ss ) this unit should be taught in other schools because i think it helps students learn more and faster. (todd, fn ) it would be useful to teach this elsewhere because it helps open your mind to thinking about issues most people normally don! spend a lot of time thinking about. (bryan, ss ) . . . svd themselves: all the stereotypes or terrible things i heard about the downtown eastside don!affect me as much. i am notas naive as i was, and i've realized that the way i have acted in the past is only contributing to their suffering. my r\ u beliefs ha ve been altered because i know how wha t these people ha ve to suffer with everyday, and if many others could make the change i did during this unit, that would be great. (eun, ss ll) frsdsferrotog our tesehtog: hsrd-votsd reality cheek what i f teachers . . . • came to expect diversity rather than conformity in their classrooms? • actually worked with one another to solve problems? • felt free enough to admit that they had problems? • were encouraged to be reformers, even rebels, and given the necessary supports for their efforts? • were encouraged to see and deal with the partiality of their own knowledge, the limits of their ability to control behavior and their subjective responses to their students? • had a say in the social polices they were asked to implement? • were treated like professionals rather than children? • were able to choose when and with whom they wished to collaborate? (reynolds, , pp. - ) so, with a unit that created this much impact on one small part of the educational landscape, what are the realistic chances of this kind of work being implemented on a larger scale? how effective is an individual teacher's transformation i f it stops at awareness or consciousness-raising but not does transcend into committed and sustainable action? what are the very real structural barriers that must be overcome to bring risky but transformative pedagogies out into the open - and how w i l l they be received by an educational system and culture that "hold a depoliticized, liberal view of education . . . that does not perceive curriculum content, classroom processes and school organization as the outcome of past and current struggles over what is to be taught, to whom, why and how" (hursh, , pp. - )? how "do we negotiate a safe place for our art within a system that feels monstrous and immutable? do we use our art to help question and change the monstrous system? is there a middle ground" (murray, , p. )? and what good would the middle ground be i f it did not succeed in changing the system? m "h©w teachers talk about teaching .reflects the discourse of the larger society." hurray, iftnne, j-fursh and jacyntha in conversation h: if teachers are to become reflective, to raise questions of what is to be taught, to whom, how and for what purpose, they must treat their classroom practices as problems and analyse how their classrooms are supported or contradicted by the discourses and organizational structures of schooling. education is political in the sense that the organization of the school and the curriculum content practices are outcomes of contested political goals. . . teachers' discourses need to be analysed continually to see which of the competing concepts of society and schooling they reflect and perpetuate (hursh, , p. - ). j: so when you have conversations with other teachers, do you talk much about this stuff - social justice or anti-racism work"? a: no, we talk about budget, and photocopying. people just don't have the time or the energy. this stuff - social justice - is not viewed as a priority. we've talked about how by about year of a teacher's career, they have seen how everything new or innovative gets shut down, and they don't want to bother anymore. they're just coasting waiting for their retirement, and i would say that's true of most teachers. they back off from social justice work because it's just too exhausting, overwhelming, much work training would be a huge issue. what you did in this project, well a lot of teachers just would not be comfortable with that first of all anything that is controversial like racism, that rubs others the wrong way, that emphasizes whiteness, teachers will just stay away from that's wrong, but these kinds of lessons can cause teachers so much grief, with parent and admin complaints, that the teacher might just say "why do it if it's going to cause me so much trouble, i may as well just bypass it and not worry about" and i think because of the way the school system is set up, that's the problem m: how do we recognize and work within the complex and often contradictory messages teachers receive that make them doubt their own artistry and its place in their teaching? (murray, , ) a: for me to do this? i would need a major workshop, like a course. i mean, i have some drama experience but nothing that can give me that kind of ease that you showed in the classes. so i would want to be put in the situation where i could learn how to work like that before i could actually go with it into a classroom of my own. m: is the genuine and lasting presence of drama in any school anything less than an act of reform? (murray, , p. ) a: so many teachers don't have the background in real nitty gritty facilitation that would give them the confidence and skills to take on this kind of work i'm not talking about an afternoon pro-d workshop, but a full interactive course, one that talks not only about facilitation, but also the topics, the issues you're covering, so you can do it right like how do you walk in there and be as confident as you were. i mean you were taking a huge risk because you didn't know these kids, had no idea what kind of a response you'd get for me, i would be taking a risk on something else. i would know the kids, know the potential responses, but at the same time my real risk would be the actual doing, the actual moving of the desks and getting them to start making shapes with their bodies. j: i think that that's the challenge - finding that way of being within yourself and feel confident using that then finding ways to encourage teachers to develop that sense of themselves as facilitators. it's a teaching skill a: yes, and i think it is something that can be taught i could learn it if i'm in the right environment observing you was already a beginning. everything i was watching, like how you set ihe chairs up, how you had them move, where, where you stood, how you went into the crowd. i watched you, which was great - but there has to come a time when i do, myself. i would like to reverse the role, i would like you to watch me. this is what i'm going to do, and i want constructive criticism and collaboration from a colleague, which is another thing that is lacking in the system, we just don't have time to go around doing this kind of stuff in our workday. j: this needs like a year. a i would say a three-month minimum drama program, just to get the essentials of drama. like, a drama for the classroom teacher, to really understand image theatre, the philosophy and approaches. now that i've got those approaches, i need to work on how to present an issue of social justice through this approach to drama in your classroom we need that kind of process to get really comfortable with the work and its potential m: is it realistic to expect deep and thorough support of the arts from all administrative realms? (murray, , p. ) a and sometimes the support - the resources and the courses, just aren't there. j: so if we want to improve our practice, where do we look, who do we turn to'? a in langley's favour, langley has one of the most developed professional development programs for teachers at nominal costs, so it is a good district that j way. so we need to figure out how to use people that we have to help us change we don't have to pay the big bucks to fly someone in from toronto or the states, we can find the support we need in our own communities. we have you, who live down the street fum circle/: the/ t£ud&nt t&cvche-y the/ teycvcher there was a time when i ran to her, desperate, seeking help and assurance - and only her words could soothe me l 'enseignement, cest tenseignement: teaching is teaching -you can do it late at night, sleepless, restless, terrified of failure - i would call her up and whisper my fears across the urban telephone wires and into her years of experience a n d even then - even when she had watched us teach all day, had driven her car across the city to meet with me, had offered ideas, suggestions, books and guides, had sent me emails, had spoken with my supervisor, had eaten lunch in her car so she would not be late for our meeting, had laughed when i tried to tell the class a joke, had said "who cares about the product, look what you were doing in the process" when i screwed it all up yet again - and then she had driven home across two suburbs in rush-hour traffic, to leftovers, phone messages, emails, questions and confusion, hours of prep before she could put her feet up - then i call, just as she was slipping into sleep, slipping into bed beside her husband, slipping into a warm bubble bath, slipping into something more comfortable than being a university instructor to wannabe teachers, wannabe world changers who would not/could not write unit plans the way the faculty wanted them to - then i, the most difficult, unfocussed student of all, the activist, the actress, the traveler, the one who kept wanting to write stories instead of essays, who always seemed within a hair's breadth of dropping out, dropping down, dropping away, dropping like flies, never waving, always drowning, the one she always needed to save, to reel back in from the churning middle waters - i would phone her late at night, and say "je ne peux pas le faire, je ne sais pas quoifaire ": i can't do it, i don't know what to do because i was tired, because books made me nervous, because that day the principal had yelled at me for taking kids into the hallway during class hours and causing a ruckus (i had wanted them to tour the school in french - they were learning the vocab anyway) and she would stop what she was doing - stop eating, stop making love, stop living her life - and listen to me cry and before we said goodnight she would always say l 'enseignement c 'est i 'enseignement. . . et toi, tu es une professeur so now, a decade later, i sit in her newly-remodelled kitchen (they did it themselves, she and her husband, cheaper that way, but took them forever), and she pours me a drink, and presses garlic for the salad, and throws meat on the grill a n d i feel at home, and safe - though i have lived a teaching career on the edge, in places and sites of violence, of conflict, of change and hope - back in her embrace. the tables have turned, this year i have been her teacher - have walked into her world and torn it upside down, told her students to stand on chairs and lay on the floor, have spoken of race, and legacy, and disturbing new memories - and she, she tells me now in her kitchen, on this warm early summer evening, has learned from me. learned that change, and hope, and saving the world is not a crazy, washed out dream - learned that all those calls were not in vain, for they brought us to be here, tonight, again. l 'enseignement c 'est i 'enseignement: teaching is teaching, and we will do it. chspter dc & fctocf of eodciusiod, i guess when i finished this project in june, i spent weeks searching for ways to write about it. every morning i would make a big pot of tea and sit down at my computer - and cry. something about the black and white type, the finality of trying to put all that magic into academic, rational and objective language, trying to fill the voids of the blank pages with quotes and insights that would make sense . . . just shut me down. what happened in this project felt, at that time, too rough, too raw, too sacred to turn into a research product. so i took my time, read some more, went to europe, wrote and published some creative stories, broke up with my boyfriend, grieved and figured out how to move on - and came back to the thesis in the fall. i was still getting nowhere in vancouver, so i packed up my laptop, notes and books and headed to the cariboo, where a friend gave me the keys to her cabin in the backwoods. the cariboo has been my spiritual home since i began my teaching career there a decade ago, and it is where i return to whenever i need healing, or comforting, or wisdom, or renewal. i go there because the air is fresh, the nights are clear and cold, and i can sleep under a blanket of stars and wake up to horses grazing by my window. i go there to remind myself of a world bigger than me; i go there to love and be in love; i go there to teach and be taught, to write and be written. i go there, to be alive. it was almost dark when i arrived at the cabin, after winding my way through several kilometers of mountain backroads. a herd of cattle had kept me company for part of the . u way, and i was pretty sure i had seen a bear running up into the hills at one point. the changing leaves of spruce and alder trees spread carpets of gold, bronze, red and burgundy across the valley, and the stars were just starting to come out. i drove down the pot-holed drive to the cabin, got out and stretched. the air was sharp, noticeably cooler; i took several slow, deep breaths to clear all the cobwebs and confusion from my brain. then i unpacked my laptop, opened up the cabin, got a fire going, made a pot of tea, and sat down to write. and there, under the stars, surrounded by scents of cinnamon and cedar, i wrote the first words of this thesis, the poem that responds to joy kogawa. i have tried, in this writing, to weave together two narratives: the analytic narrative of the research, grounded in theories and literatures and data, and the more creative, autobiographical narrative of my own personal journeys through the data and theories and literatures. m y hope is that the creative narratives need no extra analysis or explanation: i want them to complement, enhance and illuminate the threads of analysis: my hope is that they form their own inquiry, draw you in and give you the freedom to interpret them as you need. they bear witness to my histories of forgetting and re/membering and invite you to witness your stories of social justice teaching, pedagogy, and the arts. in this way, you and i w i l l reach what taylor and saarinen call "interstanding", since "understanding has become impossible because nothing stands under, interstanding has become unavoidable because everything stands in between" (taylor & saarinen, , p. ). in many ways, this project was one big foray into interstanding. we witnessed the spaces in which we live, teach, and learn - the spaces we must find news ways of sharing. we n i / uncovered serious gaps in a curriculum driven by white settler mythologies, and tried to untangle the knots of memory, history, race, place, and nation. we challenged ourselves and our students to work beyond our comfort zones, to take risks, to blur the boundaries of our imaginations. we cried, we swore, we got confused. it hurt, deeply, to recognize our selves and our bodies as implicated in the dual legacies of colonialism and racism. we became literate in a new methodology. the students used words like image theatre, interior monologue, cops in the head and soundscape as they would use words like book, pen, test and essay. they began the unit as learners, then discovered they could be actors - socially and artistically - until they ended the unit as spect-actors in their own right, on a stage full of the tumbling geographies of remembrance. they left the unit with a raised critical awareness not only of their understandings of oppression, history and social change, but of their ability to know and express themselves on these issues. there are obstacles, of course, to seeing this work come to fruition. we wished we had had more time to fully explore our questions and uncertainties in greater depth. i needed, perhaps, more preparation, more context, before going in to teach the unit, so that i would have been more aware of their needs and gaps before we began . . . but then, i f i had known all i know now, would the crisis had happened, would the learning be as rich? the senior secondary curriculum is so full, packed, overflowing - with outcomes, with exams, with university entrances, with the diverse concerns of parents and administrators, with budget cuts and fear. with so much fear - of offending, of wasting time, of not being n o efficient and sufficient - that finding time to implement new approaches is almost impossible. teachers, too, may want to take the risk and time to try new methodologies, but feel unskilled or unsupported. ongoing opportunities for professional training and support, both in anti-oppression and arts education - through public institutions like universities, school boards or grassroots community groups - are vital if "teachers are to think like artists and gain comfort in taking risks" (murray, , p. ). and as murray continues to make clear: true change seems to need more than money; it requires focused, negotiated, community belief towards re-envisioning urban schools. it requires support from the larger administrative body for that systemic reform. if we believe drama is truly a transformative art, we need to be strategic in how and why we share it. we need also to be strategic about how we implement new resources like oral histories. seek them out and use them, trusting that your students will value their truth telling as the langley students did. trust too that the bodies that manage us - our administrators and parents - will respect our work if we present it in an honest, up-front and open manner, if we give clear justifications and explanations of our rationale ahead of time. remember, langley is a conservative, christian space, and - surprisingly - not one parent complained about the work, so why should your learning community be any different? this project ends in hope. community organizations like vancouver status of women and headlines theatre have begun actively offering intensive training workshops for educators on anti-oppression and boal pedagogies respectively. i have been able to share my work and insights in a series of hands-on workshops both for ubc teacher education students and vancouver school board professionals, and the response every time has been r» overwhelmingly positive, with teachers pro-actively choosing to try this work on their own. i have been hired by a national multiliteracies research project co-ordinated at u b c ' s language and literacy education department to develop two projects with vancouver schools that w i l l explore drama as a literacy in its own right. for the next few months, i w i l l work with four teachers who want to use the work of boal to stimulate critical creativity and communication in their classrooms. we w i l l talk, map, plan our mutual visions, and find the spaces for interstanding our selves and our practice. i w i l l offer ideas, they w i l l take the work and make it their own . . . and i f they get stuck, or need encouragement, or someone to laugh and cry with, i w i l l come into their classrooms and work through whatever crises or answerlessness made them stop. later, we w i l l share our findings with other practitioners, through writing, through acting, through speaking - through being. we have started. we are on our way. here. today. whst next?: suggestions for further research the teaching of humanities touches on phenomena fundamental to the human (and humane) experience, and by its very nature deals with issues both sensitive and controversial. in this subject area, anything can be a potential landmine, a trap door leading into the next crisis of witnessing. yes, we are walking straight into landmines anytime we open our mouths to name oppression and its perpetrators, or whenever we stand up against racism, homophobia, sexism, ablism and other forms of discrimination. but we cannot simply keep walking on eggshells hoping we don't get into too much trouble. we as educators must be willing to delve into murky, contested territories, knowing that the work might be difficult and knowing too that it might generate more questions than answers. some unfinished questions i have from this project, and ones requiring further thought and research, include the following: • how do we define the role of the teacher in social justice pedagogies, and how does that role influence classroom dynamics? • how can experienced teachers work with beginning teachers and students in teacher education programs to create and implement innovative approaches to social justice teaching? • the langley project tried to create an analysis that integrated class, race and gender oppressions, a discourse for which the students were not ready. is a social justice pedagogy that attempts to look at oppression as a relational or intersectional experience feasible in the senior secondary curriculum? • what other experiences of oppression or injustice within canada's borders might senior secondary students be unaware of? do oral histories from these groups exist as public documents? how can they be used in ways similar to these units? • how could this research and these two units benefit students in communities with opposite demographics to langley's (e.g. highly diverse, low income schools)? • how can this work be shared, in a meaningful way, with other practitioners, and be supported and sustained beyond token academic research projects? • what would an extended version of this unit - sixteen lessons over a semester, for example - look and play out like in senior secondary curricula? • how can the teaching of drama as a process for understanding and reading the world become a core, integrated curricular practice at the senior secondary level? i z l a dote: witoessidg, public cultures md jomn lsrcot anne: this kind of work can be done, i mean you were only in my classroom a few weeks, but the impact was huge. kids went home and talked about the work, which to me is a perfect indicator that they learned something. they wondered about it, it made them curious. and now, i would bet that i f those kids were in a group where anyone was saying anything about first nations, or residential schooling, or east van or hastings, those kids would give whoever was talking an earful. a n earful. while the kids who haven't had that opportunity may never really get it - what happened in residential schooling, what created the downtown east side. we're trying to promote learning, aren't we, so now what that unit is going to do i ' l l bet is make them curious, take them further, get them to try to start learning on their own, going to a museum, reading a novel set during the time - like, just after we finished the unit with you, the kids in first nations studies were begging me to bring in a speaker who had survived a residential school - they were craving more work on the issue, and after hearing stories wanted to be in the presence of a survivor. suddenly, they were interested. a n d you know what else it brought up for them probably, is that everyone has a story and that it's okay to share them, not to keep things bottled up inside as so many kids do - to tell their own stories of how they feel discriminated against, to see themselves as part of a larger system of discrimination and exploitation - the shortest period of their life, but the most intense. it puts their lives into perspective - like they may have problems, but they have a certain level of safety compared to others, like kids who were put into residential schools. so now when they see something in the news or media, they'll be more critical, more literate. to develop an educational culture of witnessing, we must shift our perceptions of space from within (our classrooms, our desks, our textbooks, our curricula, our school building, our community politics) to without (our bodies, our stage, our re/searching, re/membering and re/presenting, our museums, monuments, parks and media). we must begin to think of and act on education as a public and shared space that travels beyond the conceived walls of our own schools and curricula, and we must make that move with it whenever we can. we must witness our selves not just as educators, activists and artists; we must witness our selves as witnesses to our own processes of teaching, learning and interstanding. in this new space, our work and our visions w i l l cease "to be a thing, and become more than a process. they w i l l become a verb, an action, a social practice, a private meaning, and a public hope . . . not just the sight of our labor but the product of our labor, changing as we are changed by it" (pinar et.al., , p. ). on the day i write this conclusion, a student named jomar lanot has just been killed by a group of teenagers outside an east vancouver secondary school. it is being described as a racial incident, in which a group of male indo-canadian teenagers began shouting racial insults at a group of filipino boys on the school's basketball court. a verbal battle broke out, then the indo-canadian boys gave chase. jomar was caught and hit on the head with what police have described as a blunt object. he was seventeen and had been in this country for just over a year. i watch two c b c reporters, both white men, cover the story. i listen to their subtle intonations on the word "immigrant", "east vancouver", "filipino", "indo-canadian" "race" and "violence", so the themes become strung together in one long melody of othering and objectifying. i watch the white female principal of the school express her regrets and say that although she did not know jomar, she had been told he was a good and helpful student; then i see the white male school district superintendent defend the district's efforts to quell racist behaviour amongst their youth, and the white male police chief deny this is a racial incident. i do not see, or hear, the faces or voices of other students, teachers, parents or activists - not because i am not watching, ready to witness, but because they are not there. the authority in this story remains the authority of the system: white, middle class and (mostly) male. i read two pieces on the death in the toronto globe and m a i l , both written by white men: "students mourn bright light" says one headline, while "vancouver and the violence of babel" cries a column on the op-ed pages. the story and its discourses are quickly becoming positioned as us and them. the incident is a matter between two "ethnic" groups, not whites and people of colour, so the problem lays not with/in us and our system, but with them, over there, the immigrant population in distant east van. this discourse is not so very different from the racist and colonial discourses so present in opening doors - race, class and geographic constructions as an exercise in exclusion. buried in mark hume's opinion piece about the death is a telling quote from ken annandale, a retired principal of van tech, another east vancouver secondary school: we don't have the e s l teachers we used to have, we don't have the councilors we used to have, and we don't have the police liaison officers we used to have. the bottom line is we've got schools full of talented kids and committed teachers, but we are underresourced i n terms of dealing with social responsibility (hume, , p. ). hume then goes on to say: there w i l l be a lot of talk about the need for anti-violence, anti-racism programs in vancouver schools. there w i l l be demands for quick fix responses, when what is needed is a broad, long-term commitment to helping new immigrants and and teaching kids of all racial backgrounds more about social responsibility. but where w i l l the money come from? the provincial government, which is spending $ million to upgrade a highway, can't adequately fund e s l , counseling and other non-core programs... the tragic death reminds us that teaching social justice to kids is a task that's never done. students are not "kids", m r . hume, they are people. and they are not the only ones who need to be "taught" about social responsibility and social justice: underfunding, o v e r c r o w d i n g , exhaustion, confusion, denial silence. invisibility. fear. we must trespass on and move through these educational spaces, navigate them, contest them, interrogate them - constantly - if we are going to hold the spaces around us accountable for what they teach us, and how we teach in them. and by we, i mean us, our "kids", our neighbors, bosses, authorities, governments, monuments, arts and media. are y o u ready? now? the struggles continue. references: adams, m . multiple issues course overview, in adams, bell & griffin, eds. 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( ). the monologue project: drama as a form of witnessing. in gallagher, k . & booth, d., eds. how theatre educates: convergences and counterpoints. toronto: university of toronto press, - . legacies and literacies drama education project: social studies , first nations studies lesson one: locating our selves, understanding and naming key concepts of unit objectives: • to encourage students to begin to express and examine their own social identities • to allow facilitator to gain an understanding of social make-up of classroom • to familiarize students with concepts of power, oppression, lived experience and agency through drama games, group debrief and individual reflection materials: • one small ball that is easy to toss in a group • nametags • "i am from" poem, from linda christensen's reading, writing, and rising up resource book • research feedback forms process: minutes i. introductions, minutes • introduce myself, give out nametags, set ground rules for safety (respect, trust, confidentiality) • game: ball toss in circle; toss ball around group, each person must say the name of another member of the group before they toss it to them. • introduce concept of research feedback forms and pseudonym, hand out feedback forms //. locating our selves, minutes • introduce concept of personal location (race, class, gender etc.) by reading "i am from poem" • ask students to write their own "i am from" poem, paragraph or drawing, as free expression # on feedback form. the piece must include the following: one line about where they were born; one line about where they live now; one line about something important in their family; one line about something important to them. these pieces w i l l not have to be read aloud, but i f a student wants to share a piece welcome them. ///. introducing key concepts of unit, minutes: power, oppression, lived experience and agency through drama * write above terms on board, but do not explain them until after the games: give students time to complete free expression # on feedback form* game # : power struggle in pairs, find a way to push against each other (shoulder to shoulder, back to back) and still keep balanced. experiment with different body parts (arm to arm, leg to leg, etc.) game# : mirror hypnosis change partners. choose a leader and follower. the leader can "hypnotize" the follower with one hand. the follower must focus only on the hand, and must follow it no matter where it leads (up high, on the floor, in circles). a l l o w both partners to experience leading and following. game # : west side story f o r m two equal lines facing each other, at one end o f the room. the first person on the right o f each line is named leader. the leader from the first row makes a challenge, one that is physical and non-verbal (no language), to the opposite row. the members o f the first group must copy the challenge together, as loud and large as possible, moving forward and pushing the opposite line across to the other end o f the room. then the other line's leader issues a challenge to the line that just lead, with the group members copying the action and forcing the first line back to the end o f the room where the game began. if time, continue with new leaders. iv. group debrief: minutes bring students' attention to the terms on board, try to come to a group definition o f each term. possible questions/ideas could include: • h o w can we connect the words to the drama games? what was inside the drama games for you? • what is power? in the games, who had it? h o w did they use it? what did it mean to you to have it or not have it? • what is oppression? in the games, who lived with it? h o w did it feel? • h o w did you experience agency in the games, either through your own actions or those o f others? v. individual reflection (feedback forms): minutes a s k students to complete feedback forms. collect and set the scene for following lesson (understanding historical connections to contemporary oppression, locating concepts o f oppression within a local context) legacies and literacies, first nations studies lesson two: understanding historical contexts of oppression objectives: • to familiarize students with concept of oppression as a historical and genealogical lived experience, through the process of listening and responding to an oral history of a residential school survivor • to encourage students to make links between historical oppression and contemporary realities • to encourage students to reflect on the connection between oppression and lived experience • to introduce students to concepts of embodied memory and feeling through image theatre materials: • mary anderson's recollection of her first day of school, in behind closed doors: stories from the kamloops indian residential school • research feedback forms # • a large, open work area in which students can move freely process: minutes i. warm up blind games ( minutes): a) ask students to spread around the room until they find a space that is comfortable for them. tell them to find a spot on the side of the room across from them and memorize it, then ask them to close their eyes and move towards that spot. arms must be either across the chest or at the sides. students must try not to open their eyes until they think they have reached their spot. b) in pairs, assign one partner to lead and the other to be blind. decide on a sound (no language) that they w i l l use as their guiding signal. the leader moves two steps away from his or her partner and begins to move around the room. the blind partner closes his or her eyes. using only the agreed upon sound, the leader must safely guide the blind partner around the room. c) debrief by asking students what the experience of leading and being blind made them think of, and how they could relate it to concepts of power, oppression, lived experience or agency. //. introducing image theatre ( minutes) a) what do you see?: one person (teacher, to start), stands in middle of room and makes any frozen image with his or her body. hold it for thirty seconds while students call out whatever they see in the image. emphasize that in image theatre any impression or interpretation is valid, as long as it respects the person who is making it. then ask another student to go into the centre and make a shape, and ask him or her to hold i f for thirty seconds while other call out responses. continue for a few minutes, allowing several students to work at making and showing images. b) complete the image: ask a student to make a shape in the centre of the class. ask another person to join the shape, extending it with their body in any way they can. call out "first person go" and ask another person to come join the shape that is left. then call out "first person go" again, and ask for another person to join the new shape. continue until all students have participated. iii. free expression #l(on research feedback form): memories of school ( minutes) a) set the tone for the investigation into mary anderson's story by asking students to remember their earliest memory of school, negative or positive, and to express this memory as a poem, story or illustration. no student should be forced to share, but i f a student wants to share he or she is welcome. b) extend the exercise by asking students to make images to show this memory - asking students to create the images simultaneously creates a gallery effect and also reduces fear for students nervous about sharing. explain that later in the class, we w i l l use images to respond to telling. iv. the telling ( minutes) ask students to find a comfortable place to sit to listen to telling. introduce the telling as one woman's recollection of her first day at school. read the telling twice: the first time, ask students to think about how mary's experience is different or similar to their own school memory; the second time, ask students to see themselves as a character, or an emotion, or a word, or an image in the story. pause between each reading. v. individual image response theatre ( minutes) a) ask students to choose what was for them the most powerful, insightful, or educational moment from the telling. this can be represented as a character, or a word, an image or emotion. ask each student to make an image, using any level or body position, that shows this moment. explain that this image needs to be something they can hold without moving, but make it clear that students can take a break to stretch whenever necessary. explain that the image they start with w i l l become a character. b) ask students to hold their image, and to think of a sound (no language) that expresses what it feels like to be in this shape. the sound can be any volume or emotion. ask students to give the sound simultaneously, when the teacher claps his or her hands. count to three out loud, then clap your hands. then move slowly through the group, touching students lightly on the shoulder (this is the signal for them to give their sound). c) ask students to think of a sentence, beginning with the words "i am afraid o f . . . " that expresses what the character behind this shape might be feeling. follow same process as above. d) ask students to think of a sentence, beginning with "i w a n t . . . " . repeat as above. e) ask students to visualize this character's deepest wish, and to picture an image that shows it. tell them they have three steps (claps) to get from their current l j o image to the image that shows the character's deepest wish. students may only make one movement or step per clap. g o through the three claps; see which students get closest to reaching their wish image. vi. group image response theatre ( minutes) a) a s k one student to show his or her original response image in centre of room. a s k the rest of the class to complete this image, either with their own original images or with a new image that responds to the ones presented. keep going until all students are part o f the image, so that the class has formed a tableau response to mary's telling. b) a s k students to create a sound (non language) that expresses their image. a s k for the sounds to be given simultaneously at first, then create move into the tableau and touch students on shoulders to ask them to give their sound. vary speed and pattern, sometimes going back to the same image, or asking one image to repeat its sound, sometimes moving slowly or quickly between sounds, so that you create a "soundscape" o f responses tied to the image. c) staying in the tableau, ask students to begin a dialogue in the roles their images have created for them. a s k one student to begin with any sentence, then encourage others to respond, filling in the spaces until a conversation takes hold. vii. groupdebrief and individual reflection ( minutes) lead the class in a brief discussion o f the class. possible questions may include: • h o w does hearing mary's story today make you feel? • what does it make you think about school, or childhood? • does it challenge previous conceptions you may have had o f residential schooling? • what links can you draw between residential schooling and contemporary first nations issues? • w h y should we study stories from the past? a s k students to complete and hand in research feedback forms, and set the scene for following lesson (understanding lived experience and developing skills o f empathy) legacies and literacies drama education project lesson three: first nations studies , engaging with empathy objectives: • to encourage students to develop and recognize skills of empathy in understanding the residential school experience • to encourage students to further explore and identify concept of lived experience • to introduce students to theatrical technique of interior monologue materials: • behind closed doors: stories from the kamloops indian residential school (p. , p. , p. , p. , p. , p. , p. ) process: minutes free expression # : introduce concept of empathy ( minutes) read aloud, or write on board, dictionary definition of empathy. brainstorm with class what makes one feel empathy. ask them to complete free expression exercise, writing about a moment in their life when they felt empathy for another person's situation. warm up: fear and protection ( minutes) students secretly choose one other person in the class to be their protector. students move around the room, and each student must stay close to their protector at all times, no matter what their protector does. reverse the game, using fear. students secretly choose someone in the class to be afraid of, and as they move around the room they must stay as far as possible from this person. use this exercise to discuss issues of power, safety, agency. /. group tableaux and interior monologues in small groups ( minutes) a s k students to form pairs or small groups. read short selections from behind closed doors to set scene for lesson. ask each pair or group to form a tableau showing their response to each piece. each time you read a piece, the group has a different leader who has the power to sculpt the group according to his or her own response. move into interior monologues by asking students to hold their shape and speak, stream of consciousness style, as that shape or image for thirty seconds. encourage students to say whatever comes into their head, and to not stop to think about what they want to say. debrief by asking students to share their experiences during the exercise. d i d anyone come close to feeling empathy for his or her character? ii. group tableaux and interior monologues as whole class ( minutes) read stories from p. and p. , asking students to create whole class tableaux in response to the memories. try a soundscape activity before moving into interior monologues. ask students to share key words or lines from their monologues. how does this exercise get us closer to the experience of empathy? ///. debrief, fill out feedback forms ( minutes) legacies and literacies drama education project, first nations studies final lesson: understanding multiple perspectives objectives: • to encourage students to find complexities within individual experiences of residential schooling • to introduce "cops in the head" theatrical technique materials behind closed doors: stories from the kamloops indian residential school, p. (dorothy joseph) process: minutes free expression # , ( minutes): think of a time when you had to make a difficult choice warm up: imitate the oppressor/oppressed ( minutes) choose a character from any of the tellings that you think was an oppressor (i.e., someone who was using power to control the life of another). begin to imagine how they might walk, talk, sit. take on their character for one minute, moving around the room. repeat, in choosing to play an oppressed character. debrief by asking questions about the privilege to move in and out of peoples' experience. /. dorothy joseph's telling. ( minutes) read entire telling once. ask students to identify key points in telling when different characters had to make a choice regarding their actions or words. create group tableaux, interior monologues and soundscapes to depict each scene. ask students to play the conscience, or cops, that might be in the heads of the major characters making choices. improvise scenes with students, in which these cops interact with major characters. do they encourage the action, or lead the characters to make different actions? debrief by discussing the complexities of each character's choice - how do we allow cops to operate in our heads? complete feedback forms, closing debrief ( minutes) legacies and literacies drama education project, social studies lesson two: understanding historical contexts of oppression objectives: • to familiarize students with concept of oppression as a historical and genealogical lived experience • to encourage students to make links between historical oppression and contemporary realities • to encourage students to reflect on the connection between oppression and lived experience • to introduce students to concepts of embodied memory and feeling through image theatre materials: • ray culos's (p. ), george nita's (p. ), gloria steinberg harris's (p. ) and elda battistoni venturato's (p. ) oral histories from opening doors: vancouver's east end • research feedback forms # • a large, open work area in which students can move freely process: minutes • write quote from ray culos on board: "it was an area where immigrants resided because of the direction that somebody placed on them - you didn't want all those people in the west end, right?" read george nita's description of the "dog days of discrimination." • use these quote as an opportunity to discuss issues of race and class in the development of early vancouver. who were the "west enders"? )? how might they have perceived immigrants? why? what power might they have had to control who lived near them? how might they have used this power (economically, legally, socially)? how can we connect some of these questions and answers to the key concepts of the unit, or the drama games from the previous class? ii. free expression # : memories of east vancouver ( minutes) set the tone for the investigation into the oral histories by asking students to remember their earliest memory of either being in or hearing about east vancouver, negative or positive, and to express this memory as a poem, story or illustration. no student should be forced to share, but i f a student wants to share he or she is welcome. iii. warm up blind games ( minutes): d) ask students to spread around the room until they find a space that is comfortable for them. tell them to find a spot on the side of the room across from them and memorize it, then ask them to close their eyes and move towards that spot. arms must be either across the chest or at the sides. students must try not to open their eyes until they think they have reached their spot. e) in pairs, assign one partner to lead and the other to be blind. decide on a sound (no language) that they w i l l use as their guiding signal. the leader moves two steps away from his or her partner and begins to move around the room. the blind partner closes his or her eyes. using only the agreed upon sound, the leader must safely guide the blind partner around the room. f) debrief by asking students what the experience of leading and being blind made them think of, and how they could relate it to concepts of power, oppression, lived experience or agency. iv. introducing image theatre ( minutes) c) what do you see?: one person (teacher, to start), stands in middle of room and makes any frozen image with his or her body. hold it for thirty seconds while students call out whatever they see in the image. emphasize that in image theatre any impression or interpretation is valid, as long as it respects the person who is making it. then ask another student to go into the centre and make a shape, and ask him or her to hold i f for thirty seconds while other call out responses. continue for a few minutes, allowing several students to work at making and showing images. d) complete the image: ask a student to make a shape in the centre of the class. ask another person to join the shape, extending it with their body in any way they can. call out "first person go" and ask another person to come join the shape that is left. then call out "first person go" again, and ask for another person to join the new shape. continue until all students have participated. v. ida's telling ( minutes) ask students to find a comfortable place to sit to listen to telling. introduce the telling as one woman's recollections of living with poverty in east vancouver. read the telling twice: the first time, ask students to think about how the speaker's experience is different or similar to their personal memory of east vancouver; the second time, ask students to see themselves as a character, or an emotion, or a word, or an image in the story. pause between each reading. vi. individual image response theatre ( minutes) f) ask students to choose what was for them the most powerful, insightful, or educational moment from the telling. this can be represented as a character, or a word, an image or emotion. ask each student to make an image, using any level or body position, that shows this moment. explain that this image needs to be something they can hold without moving, but make it clear that students can take a break to stretch whenever necessary. explain that the image they start with w i l l become a character. g) ask students to hold their image, and to think of a sound (no language) that expresses what it feels like to be in this shape. the sound can be any volume or emotion. ask students to give the sound simultaneously, when the teacher claps his or her hands. count to three out loud, then clap your hands. then move slowly through the group, touching students lightly on the shoulder (this is the signal for them to give their sound). h) ask students to think of a sentence, beginning with the words "i am afraid o f . . . " that expresses what the character behind this shape might be feeling. follow same process as above. i) ask students to think of a sentence, beginning with "i w a n t . . . " . repeat as above, j) ask students to visualize this character's deepest wish, and to picture an image that shows it. tell them they have three steps (claps) to get from their current image to the image that shows the character's deepest wish. students may only make one movement or step per clap. go through the three claps; see which students get closest to reaching their wish image. gloria's telling ( minutes): repeat the process as for the first telling vi. group image response theatre ( minutes) d) ask one student to show his or her original response image in centre of room. ask the rest of the class to complete this image, either with their own original images or with a new image that responds to the ones presented. keep going until all students are part of the image, so that the class has formed a tableau response to gloria's telling. e) ask students to create a sound (non language) that expresses their image. ask for the sounds to be given simultaneously at first, then create move into the tableau and touch students on shoulders to ask them to give their sound. vary speed and pattern, sometimes going back to the same image, or asking one image to repeat its sound, sometimes moving slowly or quickly between sounds, so that you create a "soundscape" of responses tied to the image. f) staying in the tableau, ask students to begin a dialogue in the roles their images have created for them. ask one student to begin with any sentence, then encourage others to respond, filling in the spaces until a conversation takes hold. vii. groupdebrief and individual reflection ( minutes) lead the class in a brief discussion of the class. possible questions may include: • how does hearing these stories today make you feel? • what does it make you think about how east vancouver became the place it is today? • does it challenge previous conceptions you may have had of the area? • what links can you draw between the historical development of east vancouver and today? • why should we study stories from the past? • what role did the drama games and exercises have in getting you to think about all this? ask students to complete and hand in research feedback forms, and set the scene for following lesson (understanding lived experience and developing skills of empathy) legacies and literacies drama education project lesson three: social studies , engaging with empathy objectives: • to encourage students to develop and recognize skills of empathy in understanding class and race difference and discrimination in vancouver • to encourage students to further explore and identify concept of lived experience • to introduce students to theatrical technique of interior monologue materials: • opening doors: vancouver's east end process: minutes free expression # : introduce concept of empathy ( minutes) read aloud, or write on board, dictionary definition of empathy. brainstorm with class what makes one feel empathy. ask them to complete free expression exercise, writing about a moment in their life when they felt empathy for another person's situation. * write two quotes from opening doors (p. , harry con & p. , gloria steinberg harris) on board, and read aloud from p. , violet benedetti and p. , tadao wakabayashi; these can serve as starting points for the lesson's investigations of class and race in vancouver.* warm up: fear and protection ( minutes) students secretly choose one other person in the class to be their protector. students move around the room, and each student must stay close to their protector at all times, no matter what their protector does. reverse the game, using fear. students secretly choose someone in the class to be afraid of, and as they move around the room they must stay as far as possible from this person. use this exercise to discuss issues of power, safety, agency. /. group tableaux and interior monologues individually and in small groups ( minutes) read short selections from opening doors (p. , ray culos, p. , violet benedetti, p. , nobue shiga minato, p. , gloria steinberg harris) to set scene for lesson. for the first one or two, ask students to work individually, making shapes to show their response to the telling. ask each pair or group to form a tableau showing their response to each piece. move into interior monologues by asking students to hold their shape and speak, stream of consciousness style, as that shape or image for thirty seconds. encourage students to say whatever comes into their head, and to not stop to think about what they want to say. for the last two pieces, move the class into pairs or small groups and read the tellings. each time you read a piece, the group has a different leader who has the power to sculpt the group according to his or her own response. try a soundscape activity before moving into interior monologues. debrief by asking students to share their experiences during the exercise. d i d anyone come close to feeling empathy for his or her character? ii. group tableaux and interior monologues as whole class ( minutes) read story from p. (ivy kaji mcadams) and p. (george nita - time permitting), asking students to create whole class tableaux and monologues in response to the memories. ask students to share key words or lines from their monologues. how does this exercise get us closer to the experience of empathy? iii. debrief, fill out feedback forms ( minutes) legacies and literacies drama education project, social studies final lesson: understanding multiple perspectives objectives: • to encourage students to find complexities within individual experiences of residential schooling • to introduce "cops in the head" theatrical technique materials opening doors: vancouver's east end, p. (ivy kaji mcadams) process: minutes free expression # , ( minutes): think of a time when you had to make a difficult choice... warm up: imitate the oppressor/oppressed ( minutes) choose a character from any of the tellings that you think was an oppressor (i.e., someone who was using power to control the life of another). begin to imagine how they might walk, talk, sit. take on their character for one minute, moving around the room. repeat, in choosing to play an oppressed character. debrief by asking questions about the privilege to move in and out of peoples' experience. //. ivy mcadams's telling. ( minutes) read entire telling once. ask students to identify key points in telling when different characters had to make a choice regarding their actions or words. create group tableaux, interior monologues and soundscapes to depict each scene. ask students to play the conscience, or cops, that might be in the heads of the major characters making choices. improvise scenes with students, in which these cops interact with major characters. do they encourage the action, or lead the characters to make different actions? debrief by discussing the complexities of each character's choice - how do we allow cops to operate in our heads? complete feedback forms, closing debrief ( minutes) legacies and literacies drama education project: research feedback form # : social studies and first nations studies tell me who you are! n a m e (choose a pen name, and use it each time): free expression # : am from... write a poem, or paragraph, or make an illustration, to show us something about yourself your piece must include: • one line, sentence or image that shows where you were born • one line, sentence or image that shows where you live now • one line, sentence or image that tells us something important about your family • one line, sentence or image that show something that you value, that is important to you free expression # : power, oppression, lived experience and agency write or draw something, anything that you think of when you read these words on the board. what do these words make you see? how do they make you feel? which one can you relate to the most? how? reflection: choose one moment from the drama games when you felt a direct connection to one of the concepts discussed in today's class (power, oppression, lived experience and agency) and write one or two paragraphs about it. which game was it (struggle, hypnosis or west side story)? what were you doing (leading or following)? how did you feel... and how can you connect these feelings to a concept? legacies and literacies drama education project: research feedback form # , first nations studies name: (remember to use the same pen name) free expression # : my first memory of school write a poem, a song, or a story, or create an illustration, that shows or describes the earliest memory you have of going to school. it can be either a good memory or a difficult one . . . it is up to you. try to give as much detail as you can - what you saw, heard, felt, who was with you, who you wished was with you . . . think about what you knew about residential schools before this lesson. do you see the residential school experience differently after participating in the lesson? how? choose one moment from one of the drama activities in today's lesson that was significant for you, perhaps because it challenged or inspired you in some way, or made you feel a powerful emotion. describe that moment and how it made you feel. what do you think you might be able to take from that moment and use in other parts of your life (in school, with friends or family . . . ) ? legacies and literacies drama education project research feedback form # : first nations studies name (don't forget your pen name!) free expression # : empathy means the ability to share and understand the feelings of another person. think about a moment in your life when you felt empathy, and write about or illustrate that moment. who was the person? what happened? how did you feel? did you ever get a chance to tell them your feelings? i free expression # : if you could speak to a residential school survivor today, what would you want to say to them? if you could speak to someone who worked in a residential school, what would you want to say? choose the line from any one of your interior monologues that was the most important to you, and write it here. what were you thinking of when you said that line? what image were you making? why does it stand out for you? how did making that image and saying that line make you feel? legacies and literacies drama education project research feedback form # : first nations studies name (or pen name) free expression # : making difficult choices think of a time when you had to make a difficult choice, one that made you feel some . conflict inside yourself. write about or illustrate that choice. what "voices" did you hear in your conscience - what did they want you to do? if those "voices" could be specific people or characters, who would they be? how did you resolve the conflict? which of the characters in today's telling do you think faced the most difficult choice, and the most complicated internal "voices"? how can you connect this character's struggle to modern discussions of residential schooling? think about today's "cops in the head" exercise. which "cop" did you find the most realistic and convincing? why? write a line or image they made that had an impact on you. what insights does this give you into the kinds of choices people make? legacies and literacies drama education project, first nations studies : final reflections name or pen name: a. thinking back.... this project asked you to take some big personal risks, both in terms of topics and the process used to explore those topics. this form has two pages. the first page asks you to reflect on the content of the unit and the second page asks you to reflect on the process of learning this material through drama. think back to the four key concepts of the unit (power, oppression, lived experience and agency). do you understand any of these concepts better after completing the unit? which ones? how? which concepts would you like to explore iri more detail? which concepts still feel unclear to you? one of the goals of this project was to get you thinking about residential schools in ways you might not have done in previous classes. has this happened for you? how? write about the most important insight you feel you have gained into understanding issues surrounding residential schools. this unit was taught entirely through one resource, a collection of oral histories, or peoples' recollections of going to the kamloops indian residential school. what effect has listening to these real life memories had on your understanding of the residential school experience? how does learning from this resource compare to learning from other resources, such as videos or textbooks? legacies and literacies drama education project, first nations studies : final reflections name or pen name: b. looking forward... one of the goals of this unit was to try to learn about concepts of power, oppression, lived experience and agency through drama games and exercises. describe, in as much detail as possible, what it was like to learn this way. did it make you see or feel things differently? how? how did it challenge or inspire you? which drama exercise do you feel had the strongest impact on you (e.g.: interior monologue, cops in the head, image theatre)? write about the image you made or the line you spoke in this exercise. how did this exercise affect you and your understanding of the unit's concepts or issues? go into detail! do you think this unit should be taught in other schools? why? what changes would you make? do you have any other questions, comments or reflections? feel free to write them here! legacies and literacies drama education project: research feedback form # , social studies name: (remember to use the same pen name) free expression #/: my first memory of east vancouver write a poem, a song, or a story, or create an illustration, that shows or describes the earliest memory you have of either being in or hearing about east vancouver. it can be either a good memory or a difficult one, it is up to you. try to give as much detail as you can - what you saw, heard, felt, who was with you, who you wished was with you . . . think about what you knew about east vancouver before this lesson. do you see the area differently after participating in the lesson? how? choose one moment from one of the drama activities in today's lesson that was significant for you, perhaps because it challenged or inspired you in some way, or made you feel a powerful emotion. describe that moment and how it made you feel. what do you think you might be able to take from that moment and use in other parts of your life (in school, with friends or family . . . ) ? legacies and literacies drama education project research feedback form # : social studies name (don't forget your pen name!) free expression # : empathy means the ability to share and understand the feelings o f another person. think about a moment in your life when you felt empathy, and write about or illustrate that moment. who was the person? what happened? h o w did you feel? d i d you ever get a chance to tell them your feelings? free expression # : imagine you had a chance to meet any character, major or minor, from today's lesson. w h o m would you want to meet? why? what would you want to say to him or her? choose the line from any one o f your interior monologues that was the most important to you, and write it here. what were you thinking of when you said that line? what image were you making? w h y does it stand out for you? h o w did making that image and saying that line make you feel? legacies and literacies drama education project research feedback form # : social studies name (or pen name) free expression # : making difficult choices think of a time when you had to make a difficult choice, one that made you feel some conflict inside yourself. write about or illustrate that choice. what "voices" did you hear in your conscience - what did they want you to do? if those "voices" could be specific people or characters, who would they be? how did you resolve the conflict? which of the characters in today's telling do you think faced the most difficult choice, and the most complicated internal "voices"? how can you connect this character's struggle to modern discussions of oppression or discrimination in vancouver and canada? if you played a "cop" in today's exercise, describe the experience. what did you want your character to do? did you get what you wanted? how did it feel to play someone with intentions other than your own? if you played a character in today's exercise, describe the experience. how easy was it to listen to or block out the cops' voices? d i d any comments surprise you? what made you do what you did, in the end? legacies and literacies drama education project, social studies : final reflections name or pen name: a. thinking back.... this project asked you to take some big personal risks, both in terms of topics and the process used to explore those topics. this form has two pages. the first page asks you to reflect on the content of the unit and the second page asks you to reflect on the process of learning this material through drama. think back to the four key concepts of the unit (power, oppression, lived experience and agency). do you understand any of these concepts better after completing the unit? which ones? how? which concepts would you like to explore in more detail? which concepts still feel unclear to you? one of the goals of this project was to get you thinking about vancouver in ways you might not have done in previous classes. has this happened for you? how? write about the most important insight you feel you have gained into understanding issues surrounding vancouver and discrimination in this city. this unit was taught entirely through one resource, a collection of oral histories, or peoples' recollections of growing up in east vancouver. what effect has listening to these real life memories had on your understanding of the urban experience? how does learning from this resource compare to learning from other resources, such as videos or textbooks? legacies and literacies drama education project, social studies : final reflections name or pen name: b. looking forward.. one of the goals of this unit was to try to learn about concepts of power, oppression, lived experience and agency through drama games and exercises. describe, in as much detail as possible, what it was like to learn this way. did it make you see or feel things differently? how? how did it challenge or inspire you? which drama exercise do you feel had the strongest impact on you (e.g.: interior monologue, cops in the head, image theatre)? write about the image you made or the line you spoke in this exercise. how did this exercise affect you and your understanding of the unit's concepts or issues? go into detail! do you think this unit should be taught in other schools? why? what changes would you make? do you have any other questions, comments or reflections? feel free to write them here! microsoft word - andrew branch article revised july .doc all the young dudes: educational capital, masculinity and the uses of popular music andrew branch andrew branch, school of humanities and social sciences, university of east london abstract since its emergence in the early seventies, glam rock has been theoretically categorised as a moment in british popular culture in which essentialist ideas about male gendered identity were rendered problematic for a popular music audience. drawing on a bourdieusian theoretical framework, the article argues that whilst this reading of glam is valid, insufficient attention has been given to an examination of the relevance of educational capital vis-à-vis the construction of self-identity in relation to glam. it is therefore concerned with raising questions about social class in addition to interrogating questions of gender. the article draws on the ethno-biographies of a sample of glam’s original working-class male fans; original interviews with musicians and writers associated with glam, as well as published biographical accounts. in doing so it contends that glam’s political significance is better understood as a moment in popular culture in which an educationally aspirant section of the male working-class sought to express its difference by identifying with the self-conscious performance of a more feminised masculinity it located in glam. readers familiar with the history of cultural studies will detect an oblique reference to one of its founding scholars, richard hoggart, in the title of this article. this was not arrived at by accident. hoggart’s the uses of literacy ( ) has achieved iconic status and in this respect the argument i set out here cannot help but be influenced by the interdisciplinary approach of cultural studies and by hoggart’s insistence, albeit arguably a romanticised one, on attributing value to working-class cultural practices. hoggart’s legacy is relevant to the argument i wish to make in another sense: his experience as a scholarship boy of the post-war era. in hoggart’s account of his acquisition of educational capital he captures the ambiguities that self-reinvention - often a necessary survival strategy in the educational sphere for working-class boys - gives rise to. to quote hoggart, he [scholarship boy] both wants to go back and yet thinks he has gone beyond his class, feels himself weighted with knowledge of his own and their situation, which hereafter forbids him the simpler pleasures of his father and mother. and this is only one of his temptations to self-dramatisation. (hoggart quoted in segal : ) lynne segal ( ) has read hoggart’s references to self- consciousness as emblematic of the rise of the ‘angry young man’ of the fifties. for segal, the frustrations of these working-class aspirants can be read through the prism of sexual relations. they are young men, often from working or lower middle-class households, who project onto women their frustration at not being able to rise as quickly as they would like through the classed ranks of british society. their repressed rage at the stifling effects of the class structure is displaced onto women. whilst segal’s hypothesis is persuasive, i want to consider the question of the relation between resentment and mobility in a slightly different context but one that still wishes to make sense of social mobility via an engagement with questions of masculinity, education and gender identity. in this article i examine how these categories are negotiated and made sense of via the consumption of popular music. i propose that a particular formation in the history of british popular music – glam rock – can be viewed not only as a moment in which essentialist ideas about male gendered identity were rendered problematic, but also as a moment in which this destabilising of normative codes of masculinity helps explain how social mobility was negotiated by working-class male youth at this historical moment. it is my contention, then, that one of glam’s political legacies is its facilitation of the expression of difference - or a need, as hoggart articulates it, for self-dramatization - by an educationally aspirant section of the male working-class, which identified with the self-conscious performance of a more feminised masculinity it located in this cultural formation. before i explore this reading, it would be apposite to summarise briefly the established reading of glam that i have alluded to. taylor and wall ( ) are the first to deal explicitly with glam and they argued that its commercial packaging was indicative of the decline of counter-cultural politics: a return to the show business values and artifice of the fifties after the radicalism of the sixties. dick hebdige ( ) adopted a contrary view and in doing so anticipated much contemporary analysis of identity politics when he proposed that david bowie, as glam’s chief orchestrator, did incorporate an alternative politics, albeit a nihilistic and obliquely racist one, in his foregrounding of the artificial construction of identity. as he contends, ‘[bowie’s] entire aesthetic was predicated upon a deliberate avoidance of the “real” world and the prosaic language in which that world was habitually described, experienced and reproduced’ (hebdige : ). this reading of glam - as politically subversive in its anti-foundationalist ontology - has been repeated more or less unproblematically ever since. philip auslander’s ( ) recent monograph on glam, for example, suggests that its self-consciously theatrical approach to performance, which challenged the prevailing narrative of authenticity in rock music, was its most interesting feature. one of auslander’s few significant points of departure from hebdige is to contest the latter’s division between the art school end of glam (bowie, roxy music, sparks and cockney rebel) and the more ‘manufactured’ acts such as the sweet, slade, mud and, lying somewhere in between, marc bolan’s t.rex. hebdige categorised this division as one between ‘mainstream glitter bands’ and ‘more esoteric artists’ (hebdige : ) but auslander ( ) has argued that this dichotomy is problematic in that it falls prey to clichéd binary oppositions. he proposes that it would be a critical mistake to identify distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ glam, when none occurred in practice: all glam artists were fundamentally beholden to the commercial demands of the industry they operated within (auslander : ). whilst i would not wish to argue per se against this point in respect of the avaricious drive for popularity by glam artists, the research i undertook for this article regarding the relationship between glam and its working-class fans suggests that the division hebdige identifies does make sense when one shifts the focus away from commercial distinctions onto the competing aesthetic positions taken up by art school glam artists and their fans on the one hand and what i will subsequently refer to as rock-n-roll glam artists and their fans on the other. accepting that this demarcation cannot entirely evade auslander’s charge of binaryism, my research data nonetheless reveals that the appeal of art school glam lay in its rejection of an aesthetic in which the corporeal experience of music is privileged. bourdieu et al’s ( ) mapping of aesthetics in class terms is instructive here. in their work on how a particular aesthetic sensibility historically came to define photography as a middle-brow art form, the authors point to how the application of aesthetic judgement is, in fact, exercised in relation to all practices, even those functional ones that are not accorded artistic status and thus rendered largely invisible in middle-class discourses on art appreciation. thus a working-class aesthetic may be defined as functional rather than aestheticist but isn’t any less complex because of that distinction. as bourdieu argues, the most banal tasks always include actions which owe nothing to the pure and simple quest for efficiency, and the actions most directly geared towards practical ends may elicit aesthetic judgements, inasmuch as the means of attaining desired ends can always be the object of a specific valuation: there are beautiful ways of ploughing or trimming a hedge, just as there are beautiful mathematical solutions or beautiful rugby manoeuvres. thus, most of society can be excluded from the universe of legitimate culture without being excluded from the universe of aesthetics. (bourdieu et al : - ) this conceptual mapping of aesthetics allows us to theorise why the music produced by slade, the sweet and mud, for example, largely failed to appeal to the younger selves of the working-class men in my study. in their youth they rejected this strain of glam because, as i go on to argue below, in their view it lacked artistic merit. further, they equated it with a particular code of masculinity, which they associated with their educationally less privileged, and therefore ‘unmodern’, peers. these fans devalued rock-n-roll glam because it did not aspire to the status they attributed to art school glam, which they read, in aesthetic terms, as promoting complex, creative ideas. bowie and roxy music - as examples of the latter category - were perceived to be more artistically challenging: their output required critical distance in order to be appreciated. and it was this distance which imbued these artists with an artistic self-importance that in turn increased their claims for distinction. in so doing art school glam positioned itself at the summit of the hierarchy of taste that i have attributed to glam rock’s two distinct factions. before i draw on the accounts presented by my interviewees, i will provide a brief textual reading of the music produced by some of glam’s key artists in order to illustrate this argument. glam music: the return of pop? for some writers (hoskyns , savage ), glam has been understood as a reaction against the popular music genres and movements that immediately preceded it: against the seriousness and snobbishness of the album orientated rock artists of the late sixties and against the sincerity and claims for authenticity of the early seventies singer/songwriters. this view of glam, as a youthful antidote to aloofness, distance and introspection, was picked up on by nick logan as early as february , when he noted, lately we’ve had the t.rex, faces and slade mini phenomena…i’ve lumped these three together for other reasons… all three have tapped a considerable hunk of the public that has hitherto either been catered for by the excesses of the -minute album trackers, or, more simply, been at school up to now. in the latter case, these are the kids getting their first influential taste of rock music: the young brothers and sisters of stones, dylan and even zeppelin fans; the kids who haven’t been programmed by the ‘accepted’ norms of snob rock behaviour. (logan : - ) i want to suggest that the music created by the key proponents of glam did, for the most part, capture this sense of immediacy. in this sense glam’s stars were returning to the pop values of the late fifties and early sixties, even if some dressed like galactic androgynes on a mission to free their audiences from the drudgery and monotony of working-class life. therefore, as auslander notes ( : - ), the music of glam was for the most part lacking in innovation. this explains, perhaps, its commercial appeal. artists and artisans: glam factions the following singles all reached either number one or two in the official british music charts between and : slade’s ‘cum on feel the noize’ (polydor, ); t.rex’s ‘metal guru’ (marc, ); the sweet’s ‘blockbuster’ (rca, ); bowie’s ‘the jean genie’ (rca, ); gary glitter’s ‘rock-n-roll parts and ’ (bell, ) and mud’s ‘tiger feet’ (rak, ). there are various music motifs linking these songs, which suggest glam’s penchant for immediacy. the rhythm of each track is dictated by the drums, which are used to create an urgency and sense of excitement, achieved by the use of floor tom-toms in preference to cymbals. the treble on the lead guitar is often pitched high, whilst repetitive handclaps and vocal chanting are incorporated. the overall effect, most evident in ‘cum on feel the noize’ and ‘metal guru’ is a phil spector-like wall of sound in which reverberation is used on backing vocals to create an almost overpowering presence. but if this version of glam revelled in its immediacy and repetitiveness, it wasn’t the only version. at the polar opposite, residing in what might arguably be referred to as the progressive rock end of glam, roxy music, in keeping with the aestheticist aesthetic they had aligned themselves with, nurtured an all together more multi-layered sound in which a vaster range of instruments were made use of. andy mackay’s training as a classical musician meant that the band were able to utilise his expertise, with an oboe part being incorporated in the introduction to ‘ladytron’ (from roxy music, island, ). in the same album’s ‘re-make re-model’ the band’s relative musical virtuosity is both displayed and mocked with each player performing a solo as a kind of affectionate parody of the big band era. what is important here is that band and audience ‘get the joke’ with critical distance being favoured over wall of noise immediacy; knowledge over sensation. the same is true of the instrumental interlude during ‘grey lagoons’ (for your pleasure) in which a treated harmonica solo acts as a bridge between the song’s changing tempos. brian eno’s manipulation of roxy’s music via tape machines and treated synthesisers also meant that roxy’s sound was far from the foot stomping of slade et al. ‘beauty queen’ and ‘in every dream home a heartache', both from roxy’s second album (for your pleasure, island, ), receive brian eno synthesiser treatments that attribute an eerie sonic quality. yet whilst i am seeking to argue that roxy music’s sound was indeed a self-consciously complex one, it would be misleading to suggest that this idea, as a principle of their existence, came ready formed. rather, the idea of distancing themselves from the authoritative musical styles of the day - of which blues derived rock music was the most visible - was as much to do with insecurity, as it was to do with mission statements. as mackay notes when commenting on the creation of roxy’s sound, it was much more a kind of survival thing. i wasn’t a rock musician from my teens. whereas i could see -year olds playing blues guitar in bands. i suppose that made me feel slightly insecure. that’s why we mixed genres … [so] we won’t get accused of not being able to play. we had a lot of ideas to throw in the pot. bryan ferry listened to music i was totally unaware of…jazz…la monte young. (interviewed by the author, ) in between the melodic, rhythmic rock of slade et al and the avant- garde posturing of roxy music, another strain of glam music can be discerned: the music produced by glam-era bowie, sparks, cockney rebel, queen and wizzard steered a middle course in which familiar melodies and conventional verse/chorus structures were utilised alongside stylistic deviations, or what might be identified pejoratively as ‘calculated mutations’, which lay claim to the ‘pretence of individualism’ (adorno and horkheimer : / adorno : ). thus bowie’s ‘starman’ (rca, ) shares melodic similarities with the judy garland standard, ‘over the rainbow’ and cockney rebel’s ‘make me smile (come up and see me)’ (emi, ) includes a vocal refrain that is one of pop’s most familiar, whilst bowie’s track ‘aladdin sane’ (from the album, aladdin sane, rca, ) incorporates a piano part provided by the classically trained avant-garde musician mike garson and sparks dispense with a chorus and incorporate extraneous sounds in their biggest glam hit, ‘this town ain’t big enough for both of us’ (island, ). notwithstanding important areas of overlap, then, the application of contrasting aesthetic sensibilities can be located in glam’s two factions: musical innovation (art school glam) is set against a return to pre-psychedelic, rhythm and blues inspired rock (rock-n-roll glam). in the remainder of this article i explore what appeal these competing aesthetic positions held for divergent sections of british working-class youth in the early seventies. i thus consider how the purchase of educational capital leads to both a desire for social distinction and the embracing of a more feminised masculinity. likely lads and ‘ear’oles’: working-class masculinities perhaps the most influential scholarly study of british working-class male youth in the seventies is paul willis’ account ( ). i do not need to retrace willis’ argument here but i do want to recall the distinction willis’ lads made between themselves and the ‘ear-‘oles’, a division that willis himself hardly refuted at the time of publication. indeed, when invited, some years later, to reflect on his fieldwork with ‘the lads’, willis’ recollections are illuminative in respect of the gendering of educational experience. he describes how as a schoolboy himself he excelled at rugby, a very masculine form of sport. here we might speculate that willis displayed an unconscious desire to reproduce the masculinity of his father, a building inspector by trade, and in willis’ own words, the patriarch of a family unit, which conveyed a ‘very masculine ambience’. a particular version of masculinity is being valued here. and willis is surely right to suggest in learning to labour that this type of masculinity - hard, physical, emotionally restrained - was the predominant form of masculine identity valued in working-class cultures during this period. but as willis’ own success as a ‘scholarship boy’ indicates, other more feminised masculinities were also in play. he observes that whilst he undertook science subjects at a-level, in line with many of his rugby-playing peers, he contemporaneously immersed himself in the arts, particularly poetry. a subject, he goes on to note, that it was ‘definitely sissy to be interested in’ (mills and gibb : ). whilst such labelling of youth is clearly problematic - the complexity of human experience is erased when individuals are categorised as either ‘lads’ or ‘ear-‘oles’ - there is a sense in which the social and cultural experiences of the latter group have been neglected in the sociological imagination. these are, after all, like hoggart and raymond williams before them, studious working-class youths who typically attended either grammar schools or the newly formed comprehensives. in the latter sector they were often streamed in respect of academic achievement after their first year of study. it is the aspirations and values of this category of male working-class youth that i wish to draw attention to in this article. in particular i want to focus on how these youth remodelled their self-identity through an engagement with glam rock and how such engagement was affectively experienced. my contention is that this group resisted the overwhelmingly negative representation of working-class masculinity that they were confronted with. i therefore want to accept leon hunt’s account of how working-class subjects during the early seventies were usually represented in popular culture as essentially unmodern. they are portrayed as either blissfully impervious to the radical discourses of the late sixties or as seeing in the permissive age only opportunities for sexual adventure (hunt ). in order to interrogate this reading of glam in relation to its working- class male audience, i carried out a fieldwork study between and in which i interviewed a number of men who identified themselves as fans in the early seventies. this study was necessary given the paucity of scholarly literature available on glam fandom. the self-narrated accounts it elicited, which i will draw on shortly, suggest that, in contrast to the ‘unmodern’ representation of working-class masculinity alluded to by hunt, a more socially mobile, modern self-identity was valued by my interviewees. first, i will outline the methodological approach i adopted in the study. research methodology: valuing experience the success of my study depended on recruiting a sufficient number of participants and negotiating the conceptual problem of how to make sense of their testimonies concerning their experiences in the early seventies. this meant recognizing, for example, that such accounts always run the risk of both lapsing into an under-theorised romanticism and failing to acknowledge the mediated role memory plays. in order to maximise the number of respondents, i placed an advertisement in record collector, a monthly music periodical available nationwide, which regularly incorporates features on historical popular music formations and attracts a readership whose age is broadly commensurate with that of my interviewees. i also contacted several fan-based websites and secured a number of interviews via a contact at universal records. i interviewed a total of fans in addition to several musicians, writers and artists whose work connects in some way to glam rock. in terms of the means by which glam fans were approached, i made initial contact by phone where possible and in most cases i was able to follow this up with email exchanges and interviews in person. a questionnaire was sent to all respondents in the first instance. 
 i employed an interpretative phenomenological analysis method when conducting the interviews and comprehending the resulting transcripts. this qualitative approach allowed me to account for each interviewee’s testimony as a unique self-reflexive examination of their lived experience, without losing sight of the structuring influences of class and gender. in order to ensure the anonymity of my interviewees i allocated a pseudonym to each of them. finally, in terms of establishing the class status of my interviewees, both in the seventies and now - a task central to the success of my study - the questionnaire i sent them requested information regarding their educational and employment histories, family structure and leisure interests in the seventies as well as the appeal of glam rock itself. upon receipt of the questionnaire, i clarified where necessary the former and current class status during the interview process. of the people interviewed, identified themselves as working class in the seventies and the remaining four as middle class; categorizations which were supported by the data provided in the returned questionnaires. in respect of how my interviewees defined their class status now, the picture is more complex as my subsequent analysis attests: class is read as a contingent category, open to negotiation, depending on the audience being addressed. only of my interviewees during the course of our exchanges described themselves now as unproblematically middle-class. audience reception: glam and its working-class male fans the presentation of my interview data in this section is thematic. i start by exploring the appeal of glam rock for my interviewees and, as a consequence of their responses, examine why they prioritised the visual elements of glam. i then link these findings to glam’s disrupting of gender norms and argue that such analysis must be understood through the filter of social class. here i discuss the emphasis on securing educational capital for my interviewees and assess how they read this as a necessary survival strategy in their dialogic relationship with their less scholastically aspirant peers. at this point i explore how the educational experiences of my interviewees are in many ways echoed in the experiences of glam artists themselves. i then argue how the acquisition of educational capital and the resulting preoccupation with demonstrating it through the display of cultural capital raises important questions about how identities in transition are negotiated and self-regulated. finally, i discuss why my interviewees subordinated their corporeal responses to glam in their accounts. in undertaking this thematic approach i draw primarily on the theories of pierre bourdieu as his work draws attention to the structural inequalities of class and how it is internalised by subjects through learnt dispositions. i also derive inspiration from bourdieu’s insistence on drawing on the strengths of phenomenology in accounting for working-class lives and his attention to the role of social status in motivating cultural preferences offers the most suitable theoretical framework. in this respect my position shares some similarities to the one adopted by sarah thornton ( ) in her groundbreaking critique of club cultures but, unlike her, i wish to retain bourdieu’s emphasis on the stratification of social classes and explore more critically the psychological effects acquiring cultural capital has on working-class subjects. the appeal of glam the initial responses to the early glam hits by the fans i interviewed focus very much on glam’s perceived newness. this is typified by steve’s comment that, ‘when bolan sang ‘hot love’ on totp it was like a thunderbolt. i mean, the colours and everything. it all seemed so bright and modern…like nothing that had happened before i suppose’ (steve, ). glam also marked for them a more self-conscious approach to the making and performing of popular music, as john’s recollection makes clear, ‘bowie was so ‘knowing’ and we knew this even then…especially when he was being interviewed…saying things like he was a plastic pop star and stuff like that…he was so ahead of his time…’ (john, ) indeed, what is especially significant about the recollections of my interviewees is the central focus they place on glam as a visual phenomenon. this point is illustrated by gavin’s comment that, ‘everyone goes on about it now but for me, as a thirteen year old, seeing t.rex on the telly was a major revelation. i’d never seen anything like him in my life. it was just so new and exciting.’ (gavin, ) dandies in the underworld: glam and gender it is the degree to which my interviewees invested emotionally in glam’s attention to self-image, which registered most forcefully during my fieldwork. more specifically, they were attracted to the deconstruction of gender identity by stars such as bowie and bolan. as tom’s account suggests, glam’s visual appeal lay in its rejection of a traditional code of masculine attire, in favour of a more camp visual androgyny; a look which appealed to fans even if they felt unable to emulate it, ‘those totp performances were great: bolan with his glitter and bowie wearing those weird costumes. i loved all that. never would have been seen dead in it myself mind.’ (tom, ) the question of what constitutes masculinity was never directly invoked by any of my interviewees in response to questions about glam’s appeal and yet frequently it became a focal point whereby the androgyny of glam was constantly framed within a broader discussion, in which the parameters of a normative male sexuality were reasserted. tom, for example, read my reference to the visualization of this androgyny by some glam artists as an opportunity to reassert his heterosexuality, thus wrongly conflating the performance of masculinity with sexual orientation, i mean, they [glam stars] looked great but none of us were gay or anything…they [bolan and bowie] had loads of girlfriends so i personally think the whole gay thing was just a marketing scam. (tom, ) children of the revolution: masculinity, class and educational capital in many cases masculinity was referenced obliquely through the filter of class antagonisms: one of the attractions of glam was the idea of ‘glamour’ itself, which was viewed as synonymous with sophistication; as a way of distinguishing oneself from others, me and a couple of friends used to get hassle in the playground…oh, he likes that queer bloke [bowie]…it was always the ones from the cse classes that were doing the name-calling. we had streaming in our school and all the thick kids were weeded out pretty early on…as soon as we reached the sixth form we knew that it would be us that would succeed…at that point liking bowie became really cool. he just seemed really sophisticated…i mean, that photo of him staring down sitting on a pedestal [figure ]. that was just so cool. (adam, ) insert ‘figure ’ here i would argue that social distinctions are being articulated here via the performance of masculinity. academically successful boys define themselves as socially superior - ‘we knew that it would be us that would succeed’ - in relation to the ‘thick kids’ for whom mocking perceived effeminacy in others, and displaying one’s own physical prowess, seemed to be the only way of asserting authority; respect through association with a more traditional notion of working-class masculinity. this sense of social superiority was reinforced in my interviewees’ engagement with the educational curriculum itself. through such engagement they were able to assert their educational capital, which they drew on as a source of pleasure in respect of their enthusiasm for glam. in james’s account of being a glam fan, for example, the sense of scholastic satisfaction and competency he derived from decoding texts and familiarizing himself with canonical authors in his english literature classes finds echoes in the appeal glam held for him, ‘i can’t begin to list all the people i got into through glam…i certainly wouldn’t have read genet or burroughs or known who richard hamilton or andy warhol were if it wasn’t for bowie and ferry.’ (james, ) for james, the idea of reading things on different levels is what appealed to him in his classes and thus he, ‘liked the fact that i understood references and things like that. knowing that jean genie was a pun and who twig the wonder kid was. all that stuff.’ ( ) this sense of fulfilment, achieved as a consequence of ‘getting’ the references, oblique or otherwise, was alluded to by a number of my interviewees, who identified a degree of satisfaction in their younger selves in making sense of the representations offered to them. they had begun the process of acquiring the aesthetic dispositions required to succeed. as james put it, ‘we were part of a club.’ ( ) just like you: glam’s working-class artists this remaking of an authentic masculinity in the light of educational experience was undertaken also by many of glam’s stars and was often negotiated with a similar sense of ambivalence as that experienced by my interviewees. bowie’s negotiation of classed masculinities, for example, is highlighted in a revealing interview he gave following his first commercial success, ‘space oddity’ (mercury, ). whilst being interviewed by chris welch at melody maker, he made the following pronouncements regarding his newly formed ‘arts lab’, i run an arts lab which is my chief occupation… and i think it’s the best in the country. there isn’t one pseud involved. all the people are real – like labourers or bank clerks… we’ve got a few greasers who come and a few skinheads, who are just as enthusiastic. i think a lot of skinheads are better than hippies and the hippie cult is so obviously middle-class and snobbish, which is why the skinheads don’t like them. (bowie quoted in welch : ) bowie’s concerns here - championing the creative potential of a formal arts environment as well as expressing a desire not to appear pretentious and out of touch with ‘real’ people - are entirely in keeping with the subtle shifts in habitus that his ambition necessitated. he is resentful of hippie culture’s elitism but mindful of its cultural capital. this sense of feeling out of place was echoed in many of the comments made by my interviewees. michael, for example, made reference in one exchange to the self-consciousness he felt when negotiating the boundaries of social class in respect of his extended working-class family, …i’m the only one who went to college…my wife’s always telling me that i change my accent depending on whom i’m talking to…you know, dropping my ‘hs’ and adding a few ‘gor-blimeys’ when i’m with…family. my sister really mocked me…she couldn’t believe the airs and graces i was putting on. but the truth is i feel both versions of me are valid. when i’m feeling positive i see this as an asset but it also makes me feel insecure on the occasions when i feel that i don’t quite belong anywhere. mocked from above for my aspirations and despised from below for being aloof. (michael, ) roxy music’s key members ferry, eno and mackay immersed themselves, like bowie, in the counter-culture of the sixties but it should be noted that their engagement with it differed in important respects from bowie’s and his fellow glam rocker, marc bolan’s. whilst all five individuals were from working-class backgrounds, the latter had acquired only limited formal educations - bolan attended a secondary modern and left without qualifications and bowie acquired only one o-level, having attended technical college - the founding members of roxy music all attended their local grammar school having passed their eleven-plus exam. ferry then attended newcastle university to study fine art; mackay read english and music at reading university whilst eno attended both ipswich and winchester art schools. as bracewell’s ( ) cultural biography of roxy notes, this meant that ferry and eno came under the influence of key pop artists such as richard hamilton and mark lancaster (at newcastle) and roy ascott (at ipswich) whilst mackay’s attendance at reading meant that he was invariably mixing with art students studying on one of the few available fine art degree courses in britain at the time which engaged with pop art ideas. as mackay suggests, his journey from the then working-class district of pimlico, london to reading university, via the local grammar school, was symptomatic of the social upheavals of the sixties, the whole art school/liberal arts education side of things: my grammar school would have expected only a handful of us to have gone to university. the majority of people expected to leave with a decent education but go into something like …training in a chain of department stores or become engineers. more respectable jobs. not to be too ambitious. but in the ‘ s …we assumed we would go to university and that we were going to carry on, not particularly learning anything. school didn’t really cope with that. they didn’t even suggest i went to university. (interviewed by the author, ) mackay’s arrival at reading meant that, like ferry and eno, one consequence of his mobility was that he was mixing in more socially diverse circles in which, i would argue, he was able to reshape his habitus during the process of absorbing influences from different class strata. as he states, reading was when i encountered people from public schools. i’d never done before. most of them were in the art department. i was amazed at this sophistication of the people who had been at marlborough [college] or bedales. one learnt quickly. one of the great things about the ‘ s was … [young] people didn’t look different [in class terms]. (interviewed by the author, ) moreover, one medium in which this perceived blurring of social classes was played out was popular music, both in its construction and reception. as mackay contends, rock-n-roll by then [mid-sixties] was something that was coming across. bands like the rolling stones and the who. they were clearly a mixture of working-class boys and grammar school. you suddenly realised that you could move [socially] pretty much where you wanted. whereas five years before or two years before it would have been pretty difficult. and it would have been slightly posey for posh people to be in pop groups. i wasn’t aware of any class distinctions really. (interviewed by the author, ) one of the effects of a grammar school and university education on working-class boys is to instil a sense of perceived social superiority and to encourage a full engagement with the rules of the game, as bourdieu would articulate it, in order to reap the greatest rewards. further, this process necessarily becomes naturalised, in order to render invisible the structures that frame it, so that the ‘rules’ aren’t even acknowledged as such, hence, i would argue, mackay’s blurring of social classes and rejection of the visibility of class distinctions at reading. this naturalization of the acquisition of a new set of aesthetic dispositions is captured in one of my interviewee’s comments when he alludes to his appreciation of music, ‘i always had what you might call good taste. my choices have always been eclectic. it just comes naturally.’ (andy, ) even those who failed to gain access to these institutions were very well aware of their transformative role. as one of the interviewee’s in david robins’ sociological account of disaffected youth, we hate humans ( ), comments, ‘at school i really tried hard to be better than i actually was. i was really disappointed when i failed my eleven-plus. i ended up going to a secondary school, and i felt common and i felt cheap: common and cheap because i was taught that secondary school was no good - all the other kids off our council estate went there’ (robins : ). this sense of perceived failure was alluded to by larry, one of my interviewees, when he spoke of the pressure he felt under to negotiate successfully the hierarchies embedded in supposedly comprehensive schools, at the end of my second year i was identified as one of three kids who might drop down into the lower stream…i managed to avoid the humiliation and after that bucked my ideas up a bit…i just remember thinking that if i went down to the lower class that’d be my life ruined... (larry, ) larry’s candid revelation regarding his fear of educational failure contrasts with the accounts of educational experience proffered by glam’s artists. bryan ferry observations, for example, when recalling his motivations for studying at newcastle university, imply a self-assuredness that belies his class background, i think i have probably always been interested in elites. i remember when i left school very much wanting to go to university rather than art college – and at that time there was quite a difference. there were only about three universities you could go to, to study fine art, and you felt you were going to be with people who were more interested in the thought and theory of it. whereas if you went to art school you’d be with people who were good at drawing rather than good at thinking. that’s how it seemed to be. it was more difficult to get into university, but i suppose that you’d meet ‘a better class of person’. i guess i had a fairly elitist view of what i was interested in. so i suppose i’ve always been a bit stuck up… (ferry quoted in bracewell : ) for the son of a mineworker, these observations are revealing, i think, even if one allows ferry a degree of ironic detachment, itself a form of recuperation. they are illuminating not just in terms of the social aspiration they point to but also the degree to which ferry very early on recognised the different capitals - understood in a bourdieusian sense - that a university education bestows upon individuals. if the accounts proffered by mackay and ferry on how they reworked their social identities in order to acquire mobility imply a seamless transition, my interviewees’ testimonies suggest that the attainment of educational capital and the attendant reshaping of masculinity produced a more pronounced sense of feeling ‘out of place’ during their youth and early adulthood. not quite ‘belonging’, whilst emblematic of all lived experience in late modernity to varying degrees, emerged as a central theme in their accounts, best summed up by michael’s reference to his insecurity vis-à-vis his self-identity that i noted above. aladdin sane: identities in transition it is this sense of negotiating different forms of masculinity and the acquirement of educational capital that i want to explore a little further here. it is clear from my study that different forms of masculinity were being engaged with by my interviewees vis-à-vis the parameters of social class: firstly, in relation to distinctions between working-class and middle-class kids and, secondly, between different fractions within the working class itself. in undertaking this negotiation they tended to attribute essentialised characteristics to particular classed bodies in order to fix them, with the working-class male body signifying physical ‘hardness’ and the middle-class male body signifying physical frailty and, by association, femininity. here i would propose that a cartesian duality between body and mind is invoked unconsciously in order to racialise class fractions: modern working-class aspirants associate themselves with a conception of white identity in which the mind is privileged and this reading is shared, but denigrated, by working- class unmodern youth who are read, and read themselves, as defined by their physical prowess. but it is not clear that this process of reshaping their identities was ever fully resolved by many of my interviewees. thus not all of them shared the sense of self-assuredness that one might expect to flow from a self-identification with this modern, cognitively alert self. indeed, it was invariably the interviewees who’d travelled the furthest in social terms from their original class position who often felt an acute sense of anxiety, with the inscriptions of class never quite being relinquished. this is made clear in william’s extended account, …i do recall going for a social drink with a friend of mine from work and he was one of the few graduates who worked at our place…we were good friends and he took me along to one of his get-togethers with his old university friends. i didn’t tell him this but i was incredibly nervous about meeting them. he was the only graduate i knew well and so they just seemed like such an exotic bunch of people. so self-assured and full of confidence…when we got there [the pub] i just literally froze. i couldn’t speak…it got so bad that when a few of us went to the loo i couldn’t even take a piss! i ended up making an excuse and left the pub. (william, ) in registering the degree of social inferiority william felt, and experienced corporeally, it is possible to recognise how class distinctions operate. and this sense of inferiority is so marked, i would contend, because the desire to fit in, to join the club as it were, is so pronounced. william went on to say that, ‘in hindsight i think i was envious. they were everything i aspired to be ( ).’ in william’s account, the power to make judgements resides solely with the educated graduates he has been introduced to. he projects onto them a degree of cultural capital that is in marked contrast to his own. they are everything he is not. in another telling example of how he felt inferior, he noted, i remember an occasion much later, after i’d completed my own degree, when i met up with friends of friends who’d been to traditional universities, not a poly like me, and once again i was still very self-conscious. so much so that i mispronounced a word and i was immediately picked up on it. perhaps the person who did it didn’t mean to but i felt very embarrassed and humiliated. (william, ) a reading of william’s account, which draws on bourdieu’s work, would have much to say about how working-class subjects - particularly, i would argue, those who aspire to mobility - are, from their earliest experiences of schooling, always seeking to embody, through the acquisition of new forms of language, the dominant discourses of the official culture. as bourdieu ( ) argues, the compulsion to accumulate ‘linguistic capital’ always results in symbolic violence being silently imposed on dominated groups. this violence is at once both ideological, in that it requires a renunciation of one’s working- class habitus, and embodied in the sense that subjects must endeavour to master the physical skills that ‘speaking correctly’ requires. he states, …it [silent violence] is never more manifest than in all the corrections, whether ad hoc or permanent, to which dominated speakers, as they strive desperately for correctness, consciously or unconsciously subject stigmatised aspects of their pronunciation, their diction (involving various forms of euphemism) and their syntax, or in the disarray which leaves them ‘speechless’, ‘tongue- tied’, ‘at a loss for words’, as if they were suddenly dispossessed of their own language.’ (bourdieu : ) for bourdieu, the failure of subjects to register this symbolic violence, a viewpoint he refers to as a ‘doxic attitude’, means that the subject submits to conditions that are misunderstood as being legitimate rather than contingent. in the scenario outlined by william above, we can register the consequences of such violence for the psychic wellbeing of the subject. what i want to capture here is the way in which william’s desire for recognition expresses itself: he clearly ascribes the authority required to pass judgement to those he perceives to be socially superior. his aspirations are defined by the middle- class other. how does it feel? glam’s sonic resonance in concluding my data analysis, i will address the important issue of the sound of glam in relation to my interviewees’ accounts, not least because they were so reluctant to discuss this aspect of their fandom. this is perhaps not surprising given the relative ease with which visual codes can resonate with particular claims for cultural capital and, conversely, the relative difficulty in laying claim to the distinctive value of particular sounds. the framing of my questions too may, of course, have inadvertently emphasised particular themes. the sound of glam is referenced by my interviewees then, but in spite of my prompting, often only in passing. this reticence might also reflect a lack of confidence in respect of mastering a vocabulary with which to adequately describe the sonic resonance of popular music as roland barthes ( : ) proposed. it follows that i do not want to dismiss an account of the sound of glam as illegitimate, or of secondary importance. indeed, one strand of contemporary cultural studies has sought to shift emphasis away from that field’s concern with what might be crudely summarised as the politics of representation, by arguing that a consideration of the materiality of sound, and how this is gendered at particular historical moments, must be central to any analysis which seeks to register the effects music generates in the listener. gilbert and pearson ( ), for example, develop such an argument in their critique of dance music culture, in which they call into question what they regard as phallocentric arguments about the central position meaning-formation holds for particular audiences (invariably white and male) with regard to popular music formations. what these authors favour instead is recognition of how dance music is embodied as a collective experience, whereby rigid categories of sexuality and gender potentially dissolve (gilbert and pearson : - ). here we might acknowledge the work of reynolds and press ( ), from which gilbert and pearson draw. they make a convincing case, taking their lead from frith and mcrobbie ( ), for the need to read rock music as a highly gendered genre: one that is both masculinised (‘cock rock’) and feminised (‘oceanic rock’) at particular historical moments and for particular audiences. it is beyond the scope of this article to pursue this line of thinking in respect of glam, although i have engaged with such an argument elsewhere and have proposed that, in keeping with glam’s preoccupation with androgyny, a gendered account of its sound suggests that it should be coded as masculine and feminine (branch ). for now, i’d like to register how incredibly important the early glam tracks were in terms of their sound and how it contrasted with prevailing trends in contemporaneous rock music. as jon savage’s account of this period makes clear, it [glam] was part of a reaction against the excesses of the hippie era that, at least musically, was reaching a cul-de-sac. there was a stark moment in autumn when i took along records by lou reed, david bowie and the mc along to a student party and played ‘vicious’, ‘queen bitch’ and ‘teenage lust’ back to back to howls of outrage. (interviewed by the author, ) what is important to note for the purpose of this article is why my interviewees rejected the sensual and immediate in favour of the abstract and cultivated. i would suggest this is because in their taking up of the aestheticised, rather than functional, aesthetic they detected in glam, they subordinated their corporeal response to it. it is important to register here that this reading of glam often incorporated an incipient racism, whereby ‘cerebral’ white rock is contrasted with ‘depthless’ black dance music. here dance music, and by implication black culture, is equated with a functional aesthetic because it is not seen to hold currency by my interviewees at this specific juncture. this is evidenced in the following quotes from steve and peter, when discussing bowie’s move from glam to his young americans (rca, ) disco-era soul phase, steve: all that soul and dance stuff just reminded me of school discos and everyone dancing in formation like sheep. all the thickos in my school were into soul. tamla and stax and all that. bowie brought something to it. made it hip. he made you think about things. ( ) peter: bowie was cool because he was so different. black music was all the same. dance music’s never appealed to me. it’s so mindless. all of them doing the same dance.’ ( ; my emphasis) conclusion: th century boys as i noted earlier, the testimonies drawn on this article are not unmediated, irrefutable truth claims. moreover, my interviewees’ status as committed fans of glam raises several issues regarding the question of self-selection, a problem ian maxwell ( ) has addressed. however, as les back ( : ) has persuasively argued, by treating such testimonies as ‘moral tales’ they tell us much about the values of the teller and in this respect i would argue they are an invaluable resource. i should state also at this point that whilst i have been indebted to bourdieu’s particular sociological viewpoint in this article, my interpretation of the data produced in my study suggests that his theoretical framework is not without limitation. thus, unlike bourdieu, i do not wish to undervalue what might be called the politics of pleasure in relation to glam; clearly many of my interviewees drew inspiration from this music formation in respect of reimagining their self-identities and this is a process that cannot be singularly reduced to a quest by them for social status. i am also perhaps more positive than bourdieu was on the capacity for subjects to reflexively rework their habitus and thus become ‘the troublemakers who often make history’ that he speaks of (bourdieu : ). however, as i will argue in a moment, for many of my interviewees this reworking came at the price of subduing their attachment to working-class culture. in evaluating the accounts drawn on in this article, then, i have sought to demonstrate that for a section of the male working-class aspiring to social mobility via educational improvement, glam offered a way of viewing the world which allowed this group to read itself, within an historical context, as modern and progressive in its performance of masculinity. it should not be surprising that calling into question normative assumptions regarding the gendering of identity was so central to glam’s manifesto as many of the musicians who aligned themselves to this popular music formation were working-class artists who had, within the context of the social upheavals of the sixties, aestheticised their own adolescent experiences in order to articulate the difference they felt. they aspired to become members of the new petite bourgeoisie discussed by bourdieu ( : ). in a revealing extract from his study, bourdieu ( : ) draws on his ethnographic data to argue that what is particularly interesting about some of the members of this new class fraction is their ambivalence towards education and how this manifests itself in an attraction to popular cultural forms that test the boundaries of legitimate culture. the appeal of such forms for these individuals is, bourdieu argues, their status as potential bearers of symbolic capital. in short, new, innovative cultural forms - one thinks of glam here - are attributed value by those seeking to extract symbolic and cultural capital from their investments in such forms. what is initially celebrated as marginal and on the periphery of ‘legitimate culture’, that is to say ‘underground,’ is subsequently consecrated as artistically valid and therefore mainstream. in his study bourdieu is referring to those individuals originating from the upper classes but i think his analysis is still broadly applicable, in a british context, to the aspirant, upwardly mobile working-class subjects that have inhabited this article. since their youth, many of my interviewees have aspired to become the new cultural intermediaries identified by bourdieu and have sought to secure their middle-class status by, as featherstone ( ) argues in his analysis of consumer cultures, aestheticizing lived experience. in so doing they have been able to recognise which aspects of their identities hold exchange value. this awareness has led many of them to retain a preoccupation with how difference is embodied, with the body itself utlilised in order to signal a particular sensibility and in this regard glam rock remains a formative influence on them. as one commented when considering glam’s appeal, ‘bowie and ferry were excellent role models because they showed that you could be whoever you wanted to be and change your look accordingly…you just had to have the right attitude’ (james, ). my interviewees remain highly attuned to which forms of cultural knowledge possess currency and here their youthful enthusiasm for the bourgeois individualism embraced by social aspirants like bowie and ferry in particular, has functioned as a source of inspiration. as steve, one of my interviewees, comments, ‘with ferry and bowie and sparks you had artists who valued individuality above everything else. pop stars that weren’t afraid to be different’ (steve, ). in this sense, art school glam’s artists and fans exemplify the ‘calculating hedonists’ that featherstone describes (featherstone : ). there is a national dimension to the identity of this modern self, informed by questions of cultural geography, to consider here too. if this new class fraction was self-reflexively in thrall to the idea of the possibilities that self-reinvention gives rise to, it was also acutely aware of the limitations of realizing this process within a british context. if britain seemed grey, dreary and in economic turmoil in the seventies, america was, by contrast, idealised as the promised land of adventure and opportunity. colin maccabe comments on this opposition in his analysis of the closing scene in performance ( ), the film directed by donald cammell and nicolas roeg at the apex of the british counter-culture’s visibility in the sixties. maccabe notes how in cammell’s preferred ending, rejected by warner brothers, the ‘merged’ subject of chas/turner was originally scripted to flee the confines of stifled england and 'escape' -both physically and psychically - to new york, the fact that the final moment of the liberation breaks national boundaries is no surprise in the film: england and englishness are finished within the world of performance; frozen in a variety of social and personal fetishes. turner's cosmopolitanism needs to break out of the house into the street but he lacks the energy which only chas can give him. (maccabe : - ) insert ‘figure ’ here glam rock's own cosmopolitans, most especially bowie and the key members of roxy music, fixated on america too. bowie, for example, repeatedly referred to his most commercially successful glam-era album - aladdin sane (rca, ) - as 'ziggy goes to america' and he physically relocated there from until . he was also, like roxy’s ferry and eno, heavily indebted to american artists such as warhol, iggy pop and lou reed in respect of their creative influence. the heightened modernity of america, with its vast landscapes and metropolises, offered an allure that britain lacked. although my interviewees’ aspirations for mobility were necessarily more parochial, this did not prevent them from seeking to acquire new forms of cultural knowledge in their reading of glam. they sought to utilise this in order to re-position themselves as socially distinct from their working-class peers, whom they regarded as not possessing or desiring the same commitment to educational attainment. but i have shown also, by retaining a bourdieusian reading of how these fans engaged with glam, that for working- class subjects aestheticising one’s life could be a problematic process. one’s habitus is not so easily shaken off and the affective investment in improving oneself socially can be a painful, anxiety-inducing experience. viewing oneself as set free from the determining structures of the relational categories of social class and gender - and thus able to re-imagine the self as a project to be forever re-made and re-modelled - was experienced as simultaneously liberating and destabilizing. and as richards et al note, for those of us interested in the psychic well being of individuals, this concern with the formation of self-identity in relation to the incessant change and dynamism of late western modernity is a deep rooted one ( : ). if my interviewees demonstrated what bourdieu ( : ) termed illusio - by making investments in the ‘game’ of social mobility and subscribing to its rules - i would argue that such investments were consistently undermined by the ‘plausibility structure’ that framed their actions. this is the phrase skeggs ( : ) uses to identify the self-imposed limits on an agent’s field of vision, on what they are entitled to and, crucially, what they feel they are capable of realizing. here i would recall bourdieu’s ( : ) paradox: when dominated groups resist processes of domination by acts of ressentiment can resistance really be talked of? equally, when the dominated seek to escape domination by appropriating the particularities of the dominant class fraction is this something other than submission? it is for these reasons that glam rock is significant in the history of british popular music cultures. its incubation of oppositional politics, especially in the field of identity, meant that for a male working-class audience seeking social mobility, it offered a utopian vision in which masculinity was re- imagined as a malleable aesthetic identity to be remoulded at will. however, if we recall the testimonies of people like michael and william, who spoke eloquently about the difficulties of becoming middle-class, for many of my interviewees this process of social reinvention required the suppression of their emotional attachment to working-class culture. the attraction of this new identity was its distinctiveness, a quality that allowed for fantasies of uniqueness and moral superiority. as one of my interviewees noted, ‘he [bowie] just made me feel powerful in a way but not physically, more sort of mentally. listening to ziggy made me feel i could conquer the world, that i was above everyone else’ (george ). endnotes see andy medhurst ( ) for an incisive commentary on the centrality of hoggart’s account, flawed as it may be, for academics from working-class backgrounds writing in the social sciences today. for a detailed musicological reading of glam-era tracks, in particular bowie’s, see allan f. moore ( : - ). in its peak year of , acts labelled as glam rock spent a total of weeks at number in the uk singles chart. progressive rock and glam may seem odd bedfellows but there are interesting overlaps: peter gabriel era genesis, for example, shared with roxy and bowie a preoccupation with theatricality and roxy itself was signed to a record label - e.g. - which had hitherto been renowned for its signing of progressive rock acts such as king crimson. roxy and bowie also employed musicians who had been - or would shortly be - members of progressive rock bands (rick wakeman of yes; eddie jobson of curved air; kevin ayers and robert fripp of king crimson). whilst auslander ( ), bracewell ( ), van m. cagle ( ), hebdige ( ) and hoskyns ( ) provide readings of glam, only taylor and wall ( ) incorporate original fieldwork into their account. however, the testimonies of their interviewees are all too brief and seem to function solely to support the authors’ ideological position in relation to the decline of ‘traditional’ working-class leisure activities. fred and judy vermorel’s ( ) collection of fans’ fantasies about rock stars fares better in this respect as it includes a number of references to glam-era artists (bowie in particular) but such a collection, by definition, is devoid of sociological scrutiny. a crucial part of my study was the compiling of summary biographical data for each interviewee, whereby i detailed educational and employment histories. jean genet, the french writer and twiggy, sixties fashion model. see bourdieu’s discussion with eagleton for a fuller account of how the former defined and made use of the concept of doxa (bourdieu and eagleton ). one might recall hebdige’s labelling of glam as ‘albino camp’ in this regard ( : - ). whilst a comprehensive analysis of glam in respect of the politics of race necessitates a separate account, it is worth noting that many of my interviewees commented on their affinity for ‘black’ cultural forms at other moments in their lives. this not only suggests the transmutability of racist discourses, but implies that, for these interviewees, racial groups are at least partly identified in terms of the degree of cultural capital they are perceived to hold rather than because they are seen to possess a set of fixed characteristics. bibliography adorno, t. 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(london, routledge) bourdieu, p. with l. boltanski, r. castel, j.c. chamboredon and d. schnapper. . photography: a middle-brow art (cambridge, polity) bourdieu, p. and wacquant, l. . an invitation to reflexive sociology (cambridge, polity) bourdieu, p. and eagleton, t. . ‘doxa and common life: an interview’, in s. zizek (ed.) mapping ideology (london, verso), pp. - bracewell, m. . re-make/re-model (london, faber and faber) branch, a. . social mobility, masculinity and popular music: the case of glam rock. unpublished phd (university of east london) cagle, van m. . reconstructing pop/subculture art, rock and andy warhol (thousand oaks, california, sage) featherstone, m. . consumer culture and postmodernism (london, sage) frith, s. and mcrobbie, a. . ‘rock and sexuality’ in s. frith and a. goodwin (eds.) rock, pop and the written word (new york, panthean), pp. - gilbert, j. and pearson, e. . discographies: dance music, culture and the politics of sound (london, routledge) hebdige, d. . subculture: the meaning of style (london, routledge) hoggart, r. . the uses of literacy (harmondsworth, penguin) hoskyns, b. . glam! bowie, bolan and the glitter rock revolution (london, faber and faber) hunt, l. . british low culture: from safari suits to sexploitation london, routledge) logan, n. . ‘slade, t.rex and the faces: a mini phenomenon’, in new musical express, february maccabe, c. . performance (london, bfi) maxwell, i. . ‘the curse of fandom: insiders, outsiders and ethnography’, in d. hesmondhalgh, and k. negus (eds.) popular music studies (london, arnold), pp. - medhurst, a. . ‘if anywhere: class identifications and cultural studies academics’, in s. munt (ed.) cultural studies and the working class (london, cassell), pp. - mills, d. and gibb, r. . ‘”centre” and periphery – an interview with paul willis’, in n. dolby and g. dimitriadis, with p. willis ( ) learning to labor in new times (london, routledgefalmer), pp. - moore, a. f. . rock: the primary text (aldershot, ashgate) reynolds, s. and j. press. . the sex revolts: gender, rebellion and rock ‘n’ roll (london, serpent’s tail) richards, b., macrury, i. and botterill, j. . the dynamics of advertising (amsterdam, harwood) robins, d. . we hate humans (harmondsworth, penguin) savage, j. . ‘divine decadence: memories of glam’, in gadfly magazine, october, pp. - and segal, l. . ‘look back in anger: men in the s’, in r. chapman and j. rutherford (eds.) male order unwrapping masculinity (london, lawrence and whishart), pp. - skeggs, b. . class, self, culture (london, routledge) taylor, i. and wall, d. . ‘beyond the skinheads: comments on the emergence and significance of the glamrock cult’, in g. mungham and g. pearson (eds.) working class youth culture (london, routledge and kegan paul), pp. - thornton, s. . club cultures: music, media and subcultural capital (cambridge, polity) vermorel, f. and vermorel, j. . starlust: the secret fantasies of fans (london, comet) welch, c. . ‘a mixture of dali, and the bee gees’, in melody maker, october willis, p. . learning to labour: how working class kids get working class jobs (aldershot, gower) discography david bowie, ‘starman’, ziggy stardust and the spiders from mars. rca sf . david bowie, ‘the jean genie’, aladdin sane, rca rs . gary glitter, ‘rock and roll (parts & )’, bell . steve harley and cockney rebel, ‘make me smile (come up and see me)’, emi . mud, ‘tiger feet’, rak . roxy music, ‘ladytron’, roxy music, island ilps- . roxy music, ‘beauty queen’, ‘grey lagoons’, ‘in every dream home a heartache’, for your pleasure, island ilps- . slade, ‘cum on feel the noize’, polydor - . sparks ‘this town ain’t big enough for both of us’, island wip . the sweet ‘blockbuster!’, rca, . t. rex ‘metal guru’, emi/marc marc . filmography performance (warner bros, ) [pdf] generating guitar solos by integer programming | semantic scholar skip to search formskip to main content> semantic scholar's logo search sign increate free account you are currently offline. some features of the site may not work correctly. 	doi: . / . . corpus id: generating guitar solos by integer programming @article{cunha generatinggs, title={generating guitar solos by integer programming}, author={n. cunha and a. subramanian and dorien herremans}, journal={journal of the operational research society}, year={ }, volume={ }, pages={ - } } 	n. cunha, a. subramanian, dorien herremans 	published 	computer science 	journal of the operational research society in this paper, we present a framework for computer-aided composition (cac) that uses exact combinatorial optimisation methods to generate guitar solos from a newly proposed data-set of licks over an accompaniment based on the -bar blues chord progression. an integer programming formulation, which can be solved to optimality by a branch-and-cut algorithm, was developed for this problem whose objective is to determine an optimal sequence of a set of licks given a matrix of transition costs… expand view on taylor & francis dorienherremans.com save to library create alert cite launch research feed share this paper citations methods citations view all topics from this paper 	integer programming 	algorithm 	branch and cut 	optimization problem 	mathematical optimization 	machine learning 	combinatorial optimization 	markov chain 	text corpus 	algorithmic composition 	bend minimization 	operations research 	user (computing) 	color gradient 	randomness 	structure of observed learning outcome 	common access card citations citation type citation type 	all types 	cites results 	cites methods 	cites background has pdf publication type author more filters more filters filters sort by relevance sort by most influenced papers sort by citation count sort by recency morpheus: generating structured music with constrained patterns and tension 	dorien herremans, e. chew 	computer science, engineering 	ieee transactions on affective computing 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpt save alert research feed computational creativity and music generation systems: an introduction to the state of the art 	filippo carnovalini, a. rodà 	medicine, computer science 	frontiers in artificial intelligence 	 	 	 	view excerpt, cites methods save alert research feed references showing - of references sort byrelevance most influenced papers recency composing fifth species counterpoint music with a variable neighborhood search algorithm 	dorien herremans, k. sörensen 	computer science 	expert syst. appl. 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpts, references background and methods save alert research feed composing first species counterpoint with a variable neighbourhood search algorithm 	dorien herremans, k. sörensen 	mathematics 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpt, references methods save alert research feed integer programming formulation of the problem of generating milton babbitt's all-partition arrays 	t. tanaka, brian bemman, d. meredith 	computer science 	ismir 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpt, references background save alert research feed music composition with interactive evolutionary computation 	nao tokui 	computer science 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpt, references background save alert research feed a genetic algorithm for composing music 	d. matic 	mathematics 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpts, references background save alert research feed generating milton babbitt’s all-partition arrays 	brian bemman, d. meredith 	mathematics 	 	 	view excerpt, references background save alert research feed morpheus: generating structured music with constrained patterns and tension 	dorien herremans, e. chew 	computer science, engineering 	ieee transactions on affective computing 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpt, references methods save alert research feed markov constraints: steerable generation of markov sequences 	f. pachet, p. roy 	mathematics, computer science 	constraints 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpt, references methods save alert research feed describing global musical structures by integer programming on musical patterns 	t. tanaka, k. fujii 	mathematics, computer science 	mcm 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpt, references background save alert research feed autoleadguitar: automatic generation of guitar solo phrases in the tablature space 	matt mcvicar, satoru fukayama, m. goto 	computer science 	 th international conference on signal processing (icsp) 	 	 	pdf 	view excerpts, references background save alert research feed ... ... related papers 	abstract 	topics 	 citations 	 references 	related papers stay connected with semantic scholar sign up about semantic scholar semantic scholar is a free, ai-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the allen institute for ai. learn more → resources datasetssupp.aiapiopen corpus organization about usresearchpublishing partnersdata partners   faqcontact proudly built by ai with the help of our collaborators terms of service•privacy policy the allen institute for ai by clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our privacy policy, terms of service, and dataset license accept & continue a comparative study of visual elements in traditional art images and computer graphics by mia johnson b.ed., simon fraser university, diploma, emily carr college of art and design, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts in the faculty of education department of visual and performing arts we accept this thesis as conforming the university of british columbia september © mia johnson, in presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the university of british columbia, i agree that the library shall make it freely available for reference and study. i further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. it is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. (signature) 'tor\ department of \)^ac , k ), _ the university of british columbia vancouver, canada date /qcevtacoey , kg de- ( / ) abstract this study examines visual elements in two-dimensional art imagery, and compares and contrasts traditional art images with computer graphics. the formalist model of aesthetic response is used as a lens to examine "elements" and "principles" in what has been called the "language of art". formalist orientations to art education and computer graphics are analyzed through a literature search, a domain analysis, and ethnographic data. this study employs qualitative research methodology. data is presented in a comparative taxonomy of elements and principles in art education and computer graphics, and a componential analysis of the visual structure of two- dimensional images. the findings demonstrate that formalist terms and concepts are not explicit enough to describe computer graphics. the formalist tradition in art education must be expanded to include new terminology and concepts about making and responding to art. ii table of contents page abstract^ ii table of contents^ iii list of tables^ x list of figures^ xi acknowledgments^ xii chapter i. introduction to the study^ general statement^ background to the problem^ qualifications for developing this research: a personal ground^ purpose of the study^ research questions^ design and methodology^ procedures^ data analysis and presentation ^ limitations of the design^ ii. review of the literature^ introduction^ formalist orientations to art education^ introduction^ the history of formalism in art education^ the elements and principles of design^ formalist orientations in computer graphics ^ introduction^ the history of computer art^ design in computer art^ issues in computer and traditional art^ introduction^ assumptions about art and artists ^ assumptions about computer graphics^ similarities between art and computer graphics^ differences between art and computer graphics^ computer graphics and art education^ summary^ iii. design of study^ introduction to research design^ domain analysis^ introduction^ iv procedure^ findings^ summary^ focused observations^ procedures^ findings^ summary^ taxonomic analysis^ introduction^ comparative taxonomy of sensory elements^ procedures^ findings^ summary^ comparative taxonomy of formal principles^ procedures^ findings^ summary^ interviews^ introduction^ informants^ stimuli^ interview questions and procedures^ procedure for the analysis of interview data^ iv. interpretation of interview data^ introduction^ similarities^ artmaking as a cognitive process^ elements and principles of design^ artviewing as a cognitive process^ simulation^ summary of similarities^ differences^ evidence of "human touch" in traditional art^ evidence of electronic mechanics in computer graphics^ art as a "lived-through" experience^ correctibility of computer images^ summary of differences^ art as a "language"^ reading art like a book^ reading perceptual cues^ reading art as a process^ vi reading art historical references^ art as a visual game^ summary^ space^ two-dimensional^ three-dimensional^ summary of space^ sensory elements^ summary of elements^ formal principles^ summary of formal principles^ v. componential analysis^ introduction^ design vocabulary^ elements and principles^ image-related issues^ vi. implications for art education^ introduction^ implications for studio practice^ implications for aesthetic response^ implications for art criticism^ implications for art history^ vii conclusion: a personal note^ references^ appendix a: literature used in domain analysis^ appendix b- : sample of terminology in texts^ b- : sample of terminology in glossaries and lists^ b- : sample of terminology found in indexes^ appendix c- : domain analysis of sensory elements in art education^ c- : domain analysis of sensory elements in computer graphics^ appendix d- : domain analysis of formal principles in art education^ d- : domain analysis of formal principles in computer graphics^ appendix e: comparative taxonomy of sensory elements^ appendix f: comparative taxonomy of formal principles^ appendix g: stimuli^ appendix h: description of stimuli^ viii appendix i: interview questions^ appendix j: subject contact letter^ appendix k: subject consent form^ appendix l: sample interview transcript ^ ix list of tables table page sample of comparative taxonomy of sensory elements^ sample of comparative taxonomy of formal principles^ profile of informant expertise^ design vocabulary:^elements^ design vocabulary:^characteristics and properties^ design vocabulary:^imagery^ design vocabulary:^procedures and techniques^ x list of figures page figure sample of domain analysis of elements in art education^ sample of domain analysis of elements in computer graphics^ ^sample description of stimulus^ xi acknowledgments i would like to thank my advisor, dr. ron macgregor, for his dedication and interest in this study, and for his many interventions and suggestions. i would like to thank my committee members, dr. anna kindler and dr. marvin westrom, for their helpful suggestions at critical stages. this study would not have been possible without the assistance of kevin arthur and gary sim, who acted as consultants for computer graphics. i would also like to acknowledge the anonymous contributions of the eight subjects in this study, who volunteered their valuable time and expertise so i may benefit from their knowledge. xi i chapter i introduction to the study general statement the expanding capacities of electronic technology have affected almost every aspect of life in the last decade of the th century. this has forced revision of some ways of thinking, and created opportunities for expansion of others. one of the consequences of considering electronic technology as an active contributor to art production and art criticism has been the need to expand the formalist tradition in art education. formalist terms and concepts, originally conceived to describe or account for the visual structures in traditional art forms such as painting and sculpture, are sometimes not applicable nor explicit enough to describe these new families of visual images. while much recent work in the field has focused on sociocultural issues in art education, issues of visual structure have been equally in need of attention. in an attempt to redress the balance between the study of sociocultural issues and formal elements that underpin art education, this study proposes the investigation of a structural model for art criticism and aesthetics, expanded and enhanced by consideration of technologies for computer graphics. background to the problem art educators talking about visual images and objects are likely to draw upon paradigms based on formalist art criticism and aesthetics. they do so because those paradigms are common in the literature, and generally form the bulk of courses in criticism taught at the undergraduate level. formalist terminology and concepts are well- established and tacitly understood. as feldman points out, "formalism exercises a profound influence on art instruction, in schools, as well as college and university art departments" (feldman, , p. ). traditional art terms and inquiry practices are considered useful for developing mental structures or "lenses" (broudy, ) for understanding all kinds of art and the built environment (greer, ). however, the fit is often uncomfortable and sometimes impossible, even to non-representational forms of art. for example, hobbs questions, "how does one explain away the absence of the principle of 'dominance and subordination' in the prolix linear patterns of a pollock, or the 'balancing of unequal but equivalent oppositions' in the coldly redundant stripes of a riley or the steel boxes of a judd?" (hobbs, , p. ). formalist art philosophy continues to be entrenched in such contemporary philosophies as the getty foundation's popular discipline-based art education, commonly known as dbae (apple, ). however, art educator nancy johnson admonishes that the field should not necessarily accept any inherited paradigm as clear or fixed. from an overview of the history of design, she concludes that "parts of the concept of design are continually in the process of dying, being re-born, transformed or modified" (johnson, , p. ). thus, while many art educators have turned their attention to sociological and cultural issues, a number of art educators are focusing on the reevaluation of formalist art education as an appropriate paradigm for an increasingly technological world (feldman, ; pearse, ; hobbs, ). a number of studies and articles have in turn focused specifically on the impact of computer technology on traditional art education (varro, ; freedman, ). in general, the electronic age and associated technologies for generating and responding to visual images and objects, such as computer graphics, have created not only a new vocabulary but new ways of conceptualizing information about visual structure that permit the description and analysis of fine art images and objects in ways that do not fit the traditional modes of description. the languages of newer media provide understanding about image and object characteristics that may be useful, even crucial, to a more comprehensive mode of response than is possible using the elements and principles of design, or formal modes of art criticism (freedman & relan, ). however, as johnson points out, "art educators proposing an increase in the conceptual content of art instruction need to resolve the unexplored issues which surround design as a basic art concept" ( , p. ). she notes that art educators have taken inconsistent but persistent positions on the concept of design. for example, it is unclear whether principles of art are rules of composition or laws, and whether there are three, five, or six elements of art ( ). lauer concurs, "it seems that no two designers will ever agree on the same list of design elements and principles - or on which are which " ( , p. v). qualifications for developing this research: a personal ground as an art reviewer for the past years, i have occasionally been called upon to review two-dimensional computer art. this has posed two dilemmas for me. these images are static, yet at the same time digital and electronic. in what context should i describe computer art: in the context of other digital, electronic art such as video art and animation, which, however, employ movement and the dynamics of time and change; or in the context of traditional two-dimensional art such as painting and drawing, which, while static, results from analog and hand- crafted techniques? if i choose to review these examples of computer art in the context of traditional art, how does my choice then affect the theories and the language by which i review traditional art? as a professional artist between - , i was unavoidably influenced by the recognition of photography as a visual language in the art world during these years. while photography is not "made-by-hand" in the same direct way that traditional paintings and drawings are created, much photography was based on traditional elements and principles of design such as composition within the format and elements placed to create eye movements between them. i observed photography gradually changing art: legitimizing a documentary bias, underscoring notions about field of view and depth of field, and affecting the way traditional art images were scaled, framed or cropped. i observed language originally unique to photography slip sideways into the public and educational domains. terms and concepts like "selection", "focal point", and "image development" became an accepted part of traditional art discussions and teaching, and were applied to traditional art images. i perceive that students today are being influenced by the emergence of computer graphics as a visual language in much the same way that artists of the 's and 's were influenced by photography. as computer graphics becomes as accessible to the average child or home user as photography now is, there is a definite need to consider how images created by computer graphics might affect traditional theories of art - and vice versa. it would seem useful to research and analyze the terms and concepts used by art educators to teach, criticize and discuss visual images, and to research and analyze those employed by traditional artists as well as by computer artists and educators, in order to explore the possibility of expanding the formalist framework for discussing art images in art education. "by changing the parameters of the discussion," glasser notes, "research generalizations and concepts alter people's understanding of the situation, highlight new issues, change the facets of the problem, help to re-order their priorities, extend the range of alternatives they consider, and allay certain uncertainties and anxieties" (glasser et al, , p. ). purpose of the study the purpose of this study is to describe the state of "what is" by examining and comparing expert theory and practice. the investigation will have five facets: . to examine formal elements and principles of design in art; . to examine terms and concepts in one area of visualization technology: that of computer graphics; . to show how terms and concepts in computer graphics have expanded mental frameworks of understanding and discourse about visual images; . to find out how vocabulary and conceptual categories underlying computer graphics might be integrated with formal art criticism methods of analysis and description, to provide a more adequate description and analysis of the visual structure of images and objects; . to show how the integration of certain vocabulary, concepts and methods used by computer artists might aid art educators, by providing an expanded - or at least a transitional - framework for responding to, or discussing, visual structure in art. research questions . what are the terms and concepts currently employed in the literature of formalist aesthetics and art criticism that lend themselves directly to description and analysis of the visual structure of images and objects? . what are the terms and concepts currently employed by artists and art educators to describe and analyze the visual structure of images and objects? . what are the terms and concepts employed in the literature of computer graphics and computer graphics programs that lend themselves directly to description and analysis of the visual structure of images and objects? . what are the terms and concepts currently employed by computer artists and computer graphics educators to describe and analyze the visual structure of images and objects? . how may existing formalist notions be enhanced or redefined by the analysis of responses to questions - ? design and methodolgy this study was conducted in three stages: a conceptual analysis of terms found in literature and the construction of a comparative taxonomy; interpretation of data from interviews with professionals in art, art education, computer graphics, and computer graphics education; and the componential analysis of conceptual categories for describing and analyzing the visual structure of images and objects. procedures . a domain analysis of visual elements and principles in traditional art images and computer graphics was developed. the domain analysis identified terms and concepts related to describing and analyzing the visual structure of images and objects in both fields, through literature searches of texts, journals, computer program manuals, and art education curriculum materials. . a comparative taxonomy of visual elements and principles in traditional art images and computer graphics was developed. . four stimuli were chosen. each one exemplified different elements and principles of design, as well as the terms and concepts used by computer graphic artists and educators. . eight informants were identified: computer graphics artists, computer graphics educators, traditional artists, and art educators. in order to obtain samples that were information-rich, purposeful sampling strategies were used, with network selection and reputational-case selection. . semi-structured interviews with the eight informants were conducted, in order to contextualize the information in the taxonomies. informants were shown the stimuli and asked to describe and explain the visual structure of each image in their own terms. prompts were used when necessary to direct attention to particular areas or to unifying elements. informants were also asked to comment on connections between the way computer artists and traditional artists (or computer graphics educators and art educators) might talk about the same images. . interview data was analyzed for the use of all terms and concepts that described the visual structure of images. . a componential analysis was developed in three parts: differences and similarities between design vocabularies, concepts about the elements and principles of art, and issues in computer art and traditional art. data analysis and presentation this study used inductive data analysis in order to facilitate discovery of terms and concepts in the fields; to gauge the applicability of the data; and to categorize and order the data. the data is presented as: . a domain analysis of art education and computer graphics literature; . comparative taxonomies of terms and concepts used to describe traditional art images and computer images; . an analysis of terms and concepts found in the interview data; . a componential analysis of design vocabulary, elements and principles, and conceptual issues. limitations of the design this study specifically focused on images which could be described as "art images", "illustrations" or "pictures", rather than on graphics or text. it was also concerned with computer visualization techniques for producing computer art only, not on scientific visualization. this study focused on the formal qualities of visual images, rather than on their expressive or sociological qualities. the study sought to examine the visual structure of completed images, rather than the computer procedures or traditional studio processes used to create them. chapter ii review of the literature introduction it is often pointed out by computer critics that much of what is considered computer art today will one day, due to its imitative nature, be seen only in the context of earlier art traditions, while art made with the computer in the future will be nothing we can yet imagine. commenting on the significance of traditional art to computer graphics, technology educator mihai nadin points out, it is not that, in the age of information processing, tradition or tradition-rooted forms of human practice cease; they are complemented by new forms, some impractical or even impossible in previous paradigms of thinking and creating. two lines - one of continuity that establishes itself as an implicit reference and another of uncompromising revolution/radical change - could represent the topology of the space of artistic or scientific exploration" (nadin, , p. ). conversely, commenting on the significance of the computer to traditional art, edward pope remarks, "since the computer has an unparalleled capacity to generate, transform, store, replicate and disseminate imagery, then there is little doubt that the computer will [continue to] figure preeminently in the image making that goes on in our society" (pope, , p. ). this literature review seeks to address the impact of computer art today on traditional, formalist response to art; first, by examining formalist orientations to art education, then by examining the incorporation of formalist approaches in computer art. this evaluation of formalist orientations in the two different fields of image-making is an important step towards establishing grounds for a comparative taxonomy of visual elements found in images in both fields. this literature review will also examine recent issues in the theories and assumptions underlying both traditional art and computer art of the late 's. issues will be particularly relevant to the componential analysis and the assessment of implications for art educators at the end of this study. "when considering a new medium, and certainly the computer is a new one and can hardly be talked about in historical terms, theory is implicitly an issue, since change is invoked" (pope, p. ). formalist orientations to art education introduction art educator vincent lanier has noted that aesthetics is distinguished from other areas of artistic study in that it focuses on viewers of art ( ). formalism can be understood as one of many aesthetic models which a viewer might adopt or be taught. it is a way to view and appraise art images. formalism "postulates an idea of permanent or residual aesthetic value", thus creating a "search for value within objects" (crozier & greenhalgh, , p. - ). in other words, the form or appearance of art images is believed to generate aesthetic response in the viewer. this occurs through what has been described as "a kind of language, within which symbolic and formal conventions are organized into coherent constructs similar to a grammar" (ackerman, , p. ). for example, such various parts of an image as line, shape or pattern might be perceived as interacting with each other and creating such overall effects as a sense of balance, harmony or rhythm. identifiable parts of an image are often described as sensory elements, while their interactions and relationships are described as formal principles. in the western world, formalist theory treats art images as self-contained designs which generate their own aesthetic. the history of formalism in art education crozier and greenhalgh believe that clive bell's book art, published in london in , can be credited with mapping out much of the territory of the aesthetic concerns of formalist theory. from bell, they note, art critics and educators have inherited the idea of "pure form", or an object-oriented aesthetic (crozier & greenhalgh, , p. ). as a confirmed formalist, bell positioned the aesthetic element inside the object, rather than in its context. art education in north america has not always been concerned with aesthetic response. in the past three decades, american art educator ralph smith has been influential in moving the concerns of american art education away from early industrial and technical orientations, and, later, social and child-centered orientations, towards an aesthetic study. in he wrote, "any work of art in any medium can be examined and evaluated with respect to the following factors: (a) the sensuous materials, (b) the manipulation (technique), (c) the formal design"; as well as its "expressiveness or significance", its "interest" to perception, and any "extra-aesthetic functions it happens to serve" (smith, , p. ). "the important point," he continued, "is that discriminations among the sensory qualities can be made and assertions about them can within reasonable limits be verified. educationally, moreover, such discriminations can be learned". harold broudy, known in art education as the "father of aesthetic scanning", proposed the concept of scanning during the s as a way of learning sensory discrimination. "aesthetic scanning, as discussed by broudy ( ), consists of an examination of the sensory, formal, expressive, and technical aspects of an art object... for example, the abilities to discriminate among design elements, to categorize visual and tactile characteristics, to see underlying structure, and to perceive principles of design are cited as parts of aesthetic perception and aesthetic study" (hamblen, , p. ). formalism is a rationalistic tradition, with a belief in a world that is separate and external to the viewer. beverley jones, an educator with particular interests in art and computers, places formalism in the context of objective realism, which refers to a set of conventions and constructs invented by humans. in the objective realist's view, "reality is structured in such a way that it can be modeled by a set of theoretical models. that is, the world consists of entities, the properties of those entities and the relations holding among those entities" (jones, , p. ). the elements and principles of design the impact of the formalist tradition on art education literature is manifested in the many programs and textbooks which delineate specific properties of artistic entities. the delineation of elements and principles was first popularized by an american art educator named arthur wesley dow (chapman, ), and quickly became a formularized method for teaching aesthetic response in the schools. art educator dorothy malcolm describes design as "the act of arranging things to create a single effect. in design, the elements are the things we work with; the principles are what we do with them" (malcolm, , p. ). she specifies the following design elements: space, line, shape, color, value, and texture; and the following design principles: balance, movement, repetition, emphasis, contrast and unity. she applies these terms to a wide range of two- and three- dimensional art mediums that includes graphic mediums, painting, sculpture, assemblage, printmaking, textiles, and ceramics. in a popular art education text, lauer ( ) notes that while it is customary in art appreciation to present the elements of design first, in a studio course the principles of organization are more fundamental and have a higher priority for practicing students than do particular elements. he focuses on principles of unity, emphasis and focal point, balance, scale and proportion, and on the elements of line, form, texture, illusion of space, illusion of motion, rhythm, and color. he demonstrates the use of these elements and principles with examples of graphic mediums, painting, photography, architecture, assemblage, and sculpture. elements and principles are often described in art education literature as the "language of art". ocvirk, bone, stinson and wigg ( ) describe all works of art as "unique form experiences" we learn to "read" through their "formal roots". the authors believe these roots which compose the language of art give art a "core of universality" (p. ). the formal roots or "visual signs" are line, shape, value, texture and color. two principles of organization are manipulated to give art its form: harmony (involving rhythm/repetition) and variety (involving contrast/elaboration). both harmony and variety employ balance, movement, proportion, dominance, economy and space to produce unity. the authors also apply these terms to a wide range of d and d mediums, including graphic mediums, painting, sculpture, assemblage, printmaking, textiles and ceramics. two ideas are conveyed in these texts by malcolm, lauer, and ocvirk: first, that there are a finite number of elements and principles, and second, that formalism can or should be applicable to all art images regardless of their medium, function, or intent. formalist orientations in computer graphics introduction whether or not computer art eventually changes its entire nature, direction, and contextual referents, it is currently, like photography, what galassi would call "a legitimate child of the western pictorial tradition" (jones, , p. ). computer art to date has been firmly entrenched in the formalist tradition. as jones points out, "artists create self-conscious art", and computer art has been no exception. "appropriations of stylistic conventions or earlier art forms, especially modernist formalism, op art and renaissance perspective, are evident throughout the early history of computer graphics" (p. ). nadin ( ) believes that in the process of appropriating the new technology, "traditional artists, technologists and scientists have acted to preserve modes of expression they believe in, like, or have tried to explain" (nadin, , p. ). for example, even "visualization of highly diversified spaces, d (virtual space) explorations and color explorations are still treated according to the aesthetics of white paper or canvas" (p. ). many artists and educators, like computer educator stephen wilson, believe that history will show that the forms of computer art currently most familiar, such as computer graphics, are actually conservative art forms. "they are attempts to assimilate the new technologies to established art traditions" (wilson, , p. ). the history of computer art early computer art was much more explicitly concerned with formal elements than d computer visualization of the past five years has been. jones points out how many examples of early computer art in the western world bear resemblance to the work of modern formalists, by emphasizing purely formal relations of elements and principles of design. "many works of early computer art may be considered to express a concern for the relations of pure form, possibly ideal forms, generated with a concern for beauty and based in numerical relations... early computer art [may be analyzed in terms of] its appropriation of aesthetic structures and conventions" (jones, p. ). computer graphics of the fifties and sixties were primarily geometric and planar. they were based mainly on ideas drawn from the european constructivist tradition - that of system, precision, geometry and structure - and, as wright pointed out, the rigors of computer programming lent themselves easily to this approach (wright, ). in the s, three-dimensional wireframe graphics were developed, with consequent development of hidden line algorithms, solid modeling, and lighting, texturing and mapping effects. programs for three-dimensional modeling, which incorporate phenomena of biology and physics through routines such as fractals or ray-tracing, derive from a scientific tradition which seeks to invent algorithms for close imitation of the appearance of the external, "real" world. as jones puts it, "a belief that symbolic representations may form an objective, one-to-one, value- free correspondence to reality is the basis for scientific realism. the symbols utilized may be mathematical or graphic" (p. ). algorithms are often described in computer literature in terms of a graphic "language". algorithms are mathematical routines or procedures embedded in programs that cause (or enable) image effects, such as reflections or textures. in essence, by bundling up a number of commands that otherwise would have to be "keyed in" or entered separately, many imaging algorithms can provide useful electronic shortcuts to certain sensory appearances. scientific realism is a form of objective realism. algorithms for visual appearances in d graphics replace elements and principles in the computer art image, but are similarly based on visual response. thus, while the referents of computer art in the past years have shifted from constructivist geometry to bioscience, computer art continues to be concerned with what art educators would call the sensory aspects of image- making. many computer critics believe that, in this century at least, "developments in software algorithmic theory will continue to expand the repertoire of ideas requiring artistic exploration, such as fractals and object-oriented graphics" (wilson, , p. ). whether or not such art could continue to be subsumed to formalist theory, or whether or not it should be, remains to be seen. design in computer art computer educators kerlow and rosebush ( ) describe the incorporation of computer technology into the fields of design and fine arts, and explore the functions and limitations of computers in the creation of images and objects. they agree that while early computer-generated art was predominantly two-dimensional, with a focus on geometric patterns, interpolation, and randomness, the development of interactive paint and illustration systems and three- dimensional techniques has focused attention on the simulation of reality. they clearly explain differences between the visual language of three-dimensional graphics, which treats objects as virtual entities in a continuous environment, and the pixel representation form of discrete picture areas, such as those produced by paint programs. while the former produces "seemingly tangible" imagery that may be similar to realist painting or photography, the latter, pixel matrices, have a long tradition in the graphic arts, including needlepoint, halftones, and weaving. friedhoff and benzon ( ) suggest that to create three-dimensional objects within the computer requires the invention of entirely new kinds of visual schemata, since visual and structural qualities of objects have to be defined mathematically. "in computer graphics", they write, "these mathematical techniques are usually called algorithms but they correspond, in many ways, to the art historian's schemata. as with schemata, a successful algorithm becomes part of an ever-expanding vocabulary among computer graphicists and profoundly influences both the conception and appearance of their images" (friedhoff and benzon, p. ). the purpose of friedhoff and benzon's book is to demonstrate how, since the central issue in d computer graphics today is naturalism or verisimilitude, computer graphic techniques and algorithms are influenced by the analytic structures of the visual system. visual structure is in turn concerned with perceptual or sensory qualities such as three-dimensional modeling, shading, texture, pattern, variant color, and expanded palettes. images tend to be described in this context, creating new algorithms and a recognizable visual language. many critics are concerned that commercial software for computer graphics, with their recognizable algorithms, provide the artist with what can only be a predictable range of image appearances. batty ( ) advocates that for an artist to be in full control of an image, the artist must write the original program as well as make design decisions, and do both at the same time.^batty demonstrates how conventional ideas about writing procedures and algorithms can be complemented at the same time with a wide range of design principles. these include the unifying ideas of hierarchical structure, iteration, randomness and constraint, the creative possibilities of temporal priority, and recursion, which will be discussed in the domain analysis of this study. they are supported with a variety of visual ideas involving points, lines, patterns, texture, d and d shapes, scale, edging, nesting, transformations, color mixing, color balance, and shading. the message conveyed in these three computer art education texts is that formal and sensory aspects of image- making continue to be prominent, even in computer art created with original programming. perhaps, as franke ( ) suggests, "conventions of cultural reality embedded in hardware, software, and mental constructs of human participants may inhibit or preclude development of [new] models" of usage and application (p. ). issues in computer art and traditional art introduction despite the impact of formalist paradigms on the history of computer graphics, it may be argued that computer art has not achieved an equitable status with what some may differentiate as "fine art". the question, is computer art art? actually begs two others: what are the similarities and differences between "art" and "computer art", and what underlying assumptions confound these questions? an examination of prevalent attitudes and assumptions towards both traditional art and computer art is followed by a literature review of similarities and differences. assumptions about art and artists one enduring (and perhaps endearing) myth is that artists are primarily concerned with intuition and spontaneity. for example, franke writes, "those practicing computer graphics are more at home with an exact science of art than artists who confine themselves to intuition and spontaneity (emphasis mine, franke, , p. ). to support his claim that the "extreme rationality" of "sterile" computer calculations has alienated many artists, hickman states, "ever since the romantic literary movement of the nineteenth century which challenged the rationalism of eighteenth-century neoclassicism, creativity has popularly been associated with the intuitive" (hickman, , p. ). since many th century art educators have promoted artmaking as an intuitive, open-ended, spontaneous activity, it is small wonder these kinds of assumptions continue to be made by those outside the field. one legacy of this attitude in art education itself has been studio training which prioritizes experimentation with techniques and materials, rather than cognitive development. this bias has created a belief that in making computer art, as opposed to traditional art, "the act of artistic creativity shifts from the manual to those areas which have been described as cerebral", and that "the usual training by academics, which is confined to manual skills, is made superfluous by the facilitation of artistic production brought about by computers" (emphasis mine, franke, p. ). timothy binkley, a prominent computer art educator, takes a more realistic view of artmaking. he points out that "the thinking activity is absolutely essential in order to construct a picture: the artist figures it out using manual tools, but without the mental process nothing happens". the role of the computer in art can thus be seen as more of an active creative partner than a passive medium (binkley, , p. ). another enduring myth is that artists work on the "edge", testing the limits of the status quo in art. however, artists using traditional elements and principles of design^and students being taught to use them to make art - are also simulating traditional forms of art. gombrich's art and illusion ( ) identified many of the codes and signifiers that artists employ to ensure continuity of communication, or the "readability" of the image. assumptions about computer graphics many practitioners regard the name "computer art" as unfortunate, since it implies that the content of the art is the computer. it is true that computers are bound to media, "but to no particular one, and hence work done with them can project all the different appearances of media currently in use" (binkley, , p. ). alan kay, a computer theorist, points out that the computer is not merely a medium but a metamedium: "with the computer you can create media" (hickman, , p. ). the concept of the computer as metamedium in turn often creates the impression that the computer is some kind of tool. artists in particular appear prone to viewing the computer this way because they are accustomed to using intermediary devices, physically and materially oriented, to do particular things. however, the computer per se does not have the capability to be a tool. the computer organizes and activates tools in the forms of programs with specific capabilities. in other words, the computer is used to apply programs, like tools, to an idea. each program, however, has limited capabilities. "although a computer language is generative (allowing infinite possibilities), a computer program generally is not. for example, most paint programs only allow a fixed number of operations to be performed" (hickman, , p. ). the speed of execution and the fact that traditional manual skills are no longer a precondition for engaging in art further encourages the impression that making images on the computer is "cheap and easy" (franke, , p. ). but, as wright points out, the process of modeling and rendering can be arduous and demanding, both in terms of the mental effort and the basic knowledge required. in summary, it may be said that "[computer] art does not reflect how powerful technology is, but how powerfully it serves the artist's artistic means" (nadin, , p. ). similarities between art and computer graphics the first and most significant similarity between traditional art and computer graphics of this century has been the emphasis on formalist theory and response. when lucas ( ) studied evolving aesthetic criteria for computer-generated art, he found that "traditional criteria remain an integral part of the aesthetic evaluation of this art form" (jones, , p. ). the traditional criteria were formalist elements and principles. for example, five out of eight experts surveyed by lucas agreed that "visual basics of harmony, symmetry and balance were applicable" (p. ). a second similarity is that both traditional art and computer art in hardcopy form are static objects which demand a certain kind of reception by the viewer. pope describes how formalism, with its notion of art as a passive object to be scanned, and computer graphics, with its emphasis on output to a third party, share a bias towards a certain kind of triangulation: the artist, the art, and the viewer. "within a theory of art must be included some explanation of how three essential agents of the art experience interact, that is, an implicit definition of the interrelationship, or mutual roles, of artists, artifact, and audience." in formalist theory, he continues, "interaction has conventionally been restricted to a physically passive role for the audience, a role marked principally by a mental activity and visual contemplation" (pope, , p. ). a third similarity between traditional art and computer graphics is commitment to experimentation, particularly of a conceptual kind. if the computer is attractive to the visual arts, it may be for its "inherent imaging capacity" (pope, , p. ); that is, its ability to simulate the mind. the computer provides the means to implement a major art premise, that of experimentation, for which traditional media have provided relatively limited opportunities. pope writes, "in many instances, the traditional media discourage broad experimentation due to technical limitations. for instance, in just the area of color theory and practice, media such as paint or colored paper result in as much or more time spent in mixing, cutting, drying, and other manipulative aspects than in simply observing and studying color phenomena" (p. ). in terms of capacities for conceptual development, it would appear the computer and art are well married. in addition to similarities concerning issues of visual structure, there is concern in both fields for sociocultural aspects of art. formerly, only programmers in technical institutes had access to computer graphics systems, renewing "the danger of being limited to elitist circles which has threatened modern art from another direction" (franke, p. ). the emergence of personal, portable computers has created an entirely new situation. pope writes, "the impact of this concept, portability, is clear when one reflects back upon the effect that easel painting and tube paints had on the development of the history of painting" (p. ). commercially available programs and user-friendly interfaces allow easy access to computational forms of artistic effects; in many cases, easier access than can be achieved through traditional means. some educators therefore fear that commercially available computer graphics systems will result "in a destruction of the prestige, the aura surrounding art... as well as the concept of art as an object of representation and as the symbol of a privileged class" (adrian, , in franke, p. ). despite these protests, and at the same time as art educators are concerned with the democratization of art and its impact on traditional notions of value in art, computer critics expect a reevaluation of norms that have carried over from mainstream art. "the digital medium is one of instant replication and perfect fidelity; therefore, the notion of the original, the aura of uniqueness, and the attraction of ownership will have to undergo reinterpretation and change" (nadin, p. ). differences between art and computer graphics using the medium of paint as an example, binkley ( ) explored differences between traditional and computer art. the paradigmatic difference he sees between computers and media is that the former usually process information in digital form while the latter store it in analog form. in a traditional painting, the paint as an analog medium is the "repository of pictorial information" (p. ), while the repository of computer art is the conceptual code of a digital format. paint is literal and material; it does not exist in another form. digital art is immaterial; it can be output in many forms. binkley also described traditional painting as a "locus defined by a set of manual tools and images". the artist's hand - via the tool - is responsible for every single mark made in an image. in computer art, using algorithms or pre- written mathematical procedures, the computer carries out or completes many visual effects such as simulations of texture or area fills. "some of the thinking burden carried by the artist using a constructive algorithm is shifted to the computer," binkley writes. "here we see clearly that what the computer does is quite unlike what a medium does. the computer 'thinks' - it calculates. media cannot do this since they are physical and passive; the computer can since it is conceptual and active" (p. ). another significant difference is often noticed by critics who claim that computer art doesn't look like art. they refer, quite literally, to the surface appearance of digital images. wright points out that although current programs provide almost all the graphic techniques one could think of, such as washes or graduated shapes, an electronic image has a synthetic and transitory character. it is almost immediately apparent that a computer image is not hand-crafted, since surfaces tend to be uniform and flawless. to aggravate the situation, many high-resolution computer images are so graphically slick that they carry an assurance of image rightness even beyond what they portray. many have an "insistent, even authoritarian, accuracy that is overwhelming... it is as though the corporate power of the media had joined up with the methodological rigor of the mathematicians and scientists to create some final, definitive and coercive depiction of the visual world" (wright, p. ). despite an increased use of fractals and chaos algorithms to introduce a stochastic or random element into computer art, computer art is still almost flawless and sometimes surprisingly passive for what is often called a dynamic graphic form. "as opposed to works of art that look better the more we look at them, electronic art seems to exhaust itself at the first encounter" (nadin, , p. ). this may be a result of a kind of digital democracy. in the computer, all the materials assume the same status and can be freely mixed and matched. "each element of the image can be processed equivalently with no respect for its semantic or perhaps even formal qualities" (wright, p. ). this downgrade into what wright calls "visual fodder" affects the way we view computer art, resulting in a serious loss of signification (p. ). the value of the artmaking process continues to lie in the experience of the artist. it continues to be important that the artist personally and directly made the artifact. not only is visible evidence of the human hand valued, but a certain degree of order is expected. while computer art is often criticized for appearing too orderly, it actually seeks to do the opposite and this forms the last paradigmatic difference. max bense, a pioneer of simulated aesthetic design, sees the artistic process "as a kind of anti-process of natural phenomena, along the line that nature tends to bring forth chaos, while art permits the emergence of unlikely conditions of order" (in franke, p. ). while traditional art strives to bring order out of chaos, computer art seeks to introduce chaos into order. in computer graphics, the phenomenon of chance, which usually appears as a disturbance, turns out to be a generative principle. "as chance destroys order it creates more complex structures and achieves the unexpected, the unforeseen" (p. ). computer graphics and art education in , artist and art educator craig hickman sadly stated that "it has taken over a hundred years for the history of photography to be recognized and taught in art history courses, and it might take as long for the computer's contribution to be acknowledged" (hickman, , p. ). the language of computer graphics is a major barrier to the acceptance of digital images as art. language allows us to both form and examine concepts. if we can't speak the language, we can't begin to enter into theoretical discussion. "artists who work with computers may study programming and physics, and use an expanded vocabulary (i.e. paint programs, frame grabbers, and digitizers). it is difficult to find computer-generated art in most established art museums and galleries. we don't yet know how to think about it, look at it, talk about it, or categorize it" (ettinger, , p. ). linda ettinger, a prominent computer art educator, points out that "[art] educators often lack an adequate vocabulary and a sense of disciplinary background necessary to begin to study the computer as an artistic medium" (p. ), although it is seen by many art educators as a perfect fit for teaching design elements. this occurs, she suggests, because "...the underlying structure of the computer screen is parallel to traditional atomistic approaches to teaching the art elements as presented during the past fifty years in many art and design texts" (p. ). nadin sees the opposite problem occurring in the field of computer graphics. computer artists meet and "talk about pixels, megabytes, and call-up color tables," he notes. "this language is necessary if we want to understand how we do what we do, but not what we do and why we do it" (nadin, p. ) nadin claims that a theoretical foundation is relevant, despite a tendency on the part of critics, especially those in the united states, to focus on programming and technical discussions when writing about computer graphics. "a professional critic could hardly survive without well-established conceptions, without certain schemas of judgment which he applies to specific situations in forming his point of view. such criteria usually derive from a background knowledge of art history and comprise insights deriving from the established state of art" (franke, , p. ). ettinger concurs: "along with teaching people to use computers comes the responsibility to direct a focus on critical study of the values underlying information-based technology, and simultaneously of the values underlying our field [that of art education] (ettinger, p. ). weitz ( ) described the attempt to define a theory of art as "a fool's errand", because the dynamics of art change according to time and place. "art.. .has no set of necessary and sufficient properties". if this is true, it may be change or transition itself that is most worth studying. there is no question that traditional theories of art are confronted with significant paradigm changes as the impact of technology gathers momentum in the last decade of this century. however, without a comparative study of the languages of technology and art, it is difficult, if not impossible, to explicitly assess the course and extent of theoretical change. summary though couched within a formalist tradition, employing elements similar to those of traditional art, and organized in a rational and objective manner, art made with computer graphics has aspects that are unlike or opposite to formalist theory. in traditional art, the medium itself is a literal, contained, analog repository of information. in computer art, the conceptual code is digital and it can be output to hardcopy in many forms. while an artist's hand must guide every mark made with traditional media, many marks in computer images are "created" by the computer. traditional images appear more hand-crafted than computer images, despite stochastic elements recently introduced in computer software. traditional art and computer art proceed from different intentions: the first to create order and organization, and the latter to generate the unforeseen and unexpected. formalist images are self-referencing; recent d computer graphics are world-referencing. the most significant difference may be malcolm's statement that, in traditional art, "elements are the things we work with; principles are what we do with them" ( , p. ). in computer graphics, principles are the things that are worked with, via procedures and algorithms, and the elements are what is done with them, via selections. other differences expand formalist notions rather than oppose them. the ideas of interactivity and transformability in computer graphics expand the notion of permanent or residual value. techniques for replication and dissemination challenge the formalist notion of uniqueness, as do commercial programs. perceptions of underlying structure and discriminations among sensory elements in formalist response are challenged by computer techniques for hidden element algorithms, cutting and pasting, and image manipulation. while many art educators subsume computer graphics to formalist theory, whether appropriate or not, practitioners and critics in computer graphics eschew computer art theory in favor of technical discussions. ignorance of terminology in both fields is a barrier to articulating common theory. chapter iii design of study introduction to research design spradley ( ) identifies five research stages of ethnographic studies which seek to examine the role and meaning of language within cultural domains. these stages are: domain analysis, focused observations, taxonomic analysis, selected observations, and componential analysis. a cultural domain is an intangible, often implicit area of knowledge, such as the knowledge of the visual analysis of art images. domain analysis involves the identification of basic conceptual areas. in the visual analysis of art images, these may be areas of knowledge that include concepts of "line", "shape", or "balance". further research provides verification and elaboration of basic concepts. enriched detail is added in the form of focused observations, such as "broken" line, "two-dimensional" shapes, or "symmetrical" balance. language representing conceptual areas can then be structured into taxonomies or inclusive lists, and comparative taxonomies of similarities and differences (say, between cultures) can be developed. for example, the use of the term "broken" line in response to an area of a traditional art image might refer to a line which has gaps, or is not continuous, while "broken" line in response to an area of computer art may refer to a line which is angular rather than straight. in the cultural domain of traditional art, the latter may be termed "zigzag". interviews with people who are immersed in a culture allow selected observations to be made about areas which require further analysis. interviews can clarify the contextual use of language, and reveal situational applications. a componential analysis can then be performed of each conceptual area. in a componential analysis, data from the taxonomic analysis can be compared and contrasted with interview data to form a profile of similarities and differences between cultural domains. domain analysis introduction a domain analysis was made of terminology found in both art education and computer graphics literature. the analysis focused on terminology, verbs, and concepts used to describe or identify visual structure. particular attention was paid to vocabulary that described the elements and principles of art, and the visual structure of computer graphics rather than the procedures. procedure art education literature and computer program manuals used in this study (appendix a) were selected on the basis of frequent and popular use. references recommended by art and computer graphics educators were explored, together with references frequently cited in the literature search. the suggested texts and program manuals were found to provide succinct summaries of concepts, and clear definitions of terms. as the domain analysis developed, terminology in both fields was cross-referenced. for example, once the literature of art education was explored for terminology used to describe an element such as "line", the literature of computer graphics was similarly explored for concepts to do with the idea of "line". terminology and descriptive language was variously found in text (appendix b- ), listed in glossaries (appendix b- ), and isolated in indexes (appendix b- ) of both textbooks and program manuals. findings in the art education and design sources examined, many references were made to formalist theory, the elements and principles of design, and terminology describing the visual structure of imagery. the search was terminated as the number of terms and concepts became finite. as noted in the literature review, there appear to be a finite number of elements and principles. however, many discrepancies were noted in the categorization of characteristics, as nancy johnson ( ) had predicted. for example, malcolm ( ) categorized repetition as a design principle on its own, which occurs when common elements are repeated regularly or irregularly to create rhythm (p. ). lauer ( ) classified repetition as one form of the design principle "unity", and described it as a "device" used to relate parts of the design to each other (p. ). he classified rhythm as a design principle on its own, and related it to the movement of the viewer's eyes in terms of speed and smoothness (p. ). ocvirk et al. ( ) equated repetition and rhythm, which they describe as "agents for creating order out of forces that are in opposition" (p. ). they stated that repetition is an essential ingredient of "harmony", which, with "unity", is one of their two major design principles. neither malcolm nor lauer list "harmony" as a principle or element. contradictions occurred not only in classifications of design principles but elements as well. for example, lauer describes pattern as an irregular kind of texture, and thus an element (p. ). malcolm refers to pattern only briefly, as a result of a "system of repeating elements" (p. ). both chapman ( ) and ocvirk et al. categorized "pattern" as a principle rather than an element. ocvirk et al. defined pattern in terms of value, or the "total effect of the relationships of light and dark within the pictorial field". the number of elements and principles referred to in art education literature appeared stable or finite, despite differences in definitions and classifications. however, different terminology for characterizing elements and principles was noted in newer textbooks. for example, while in malcolm used such geometric terms as "cubic" and "volumetric" to describe characteristics of three- dimensional shape and the term "perspective" to describe d space, in chapman used terms more relevant to physics to describe shape and space, such as "solid", "ambiguous", "void", "scale", and "orientation". chapman's terms would suggest the incorporation of different modes of thinking about shape and space after twenty years. chapman ( ), like ocvirk et al. ( ), continued to use associative and expressive terms to characterize elements, such as "dynamic", "active", "passive", "bold", "subtle" and "intense". this anthropomorphic approach to describing elements and principles was also noted in other art and design texts, and may be part of an older tradition of responding to art. two striking differences were noted between art education and computer graphics terms and texts. first, where formalist descriptions often related feelings or reactions, computer graphics terminology provided more specific detail about objective procedures and perceptual structures. for example, ocvirk et al. described pattern as having "intrinsic meaning", or "supporting the emotional characteristics of a mood". the texts and manuals of computer graphics described details of selected patterns (including pen, brush, and area fill patterns), bitmaps, created patterns, and fractals, as well as procedures for duplication, replication and recursion in an objective manner, without conveying emotions. terminology for aesthetic response, such as "bold" or "dynamic", was not apparent in computer graphics. second, art education texts relied heavily on examples of visual images rather than on words to define terms. conversely, computer graphics texts were heavily oriented towards text. it was difficult to formulate equations between formalist elements and principles and computer graphic elements and principles for two reasons. first, the milieu in which computer art takes place is very different from that of traditional art. in order to identify a computer graphics term such as "region" as a type of art education "shape", it was necessary to assess possible comparisons between the environments in which the terms operated. in computer graphics, the elements and principles appear to be "bound" to different types of space. in computer graphics, at least three kinds of "space" appear to exist, and the choice of space determines both the procedures and the effects that may be achieved or selected. further, these spaces may be combined through "windowing", "layering", or "importing". it became apparent that ideas about space were going to require careful analysis and interpretation in subsequent stages of the study. second, it was soon determined that each formalist concept had more than one meaning and often more than one design term. a concept like "shape", for example, had four (and possibly more) very different meanings in traditional art, such as a section of a matrix design compared to an illusionistic projection. in the literature of computer graphics, seven or more different design terms for "shape" were found, including "region", "wireframe", and "solid object", with at least three distinct conceptual differences. sometimes the similarities between concepts (despite differences in vocabulary) were significant. for example, "contour line" in art education and "silhouette line" in computer graphics both refer to an exterior outline of a shape. sometimes there was no existing correlation. for example, there does not appear to be an equivalent in computer graphics for the idea of "color field", and in traditional art there do not appear to be a two-dimensional art equivalents for the computer graphic ideas of solid object properties or procedural modeling. however, despite the immensity of the proposed task, it appeared at this stage of the study that an extensive domain of knowledge about the visual structure of images was readily available and that it would be possible to make comparisons between the two fields. summary both the literature of art education and computer graphics were dense with terms for describing the visual structure of images. art education descriptions tended to be more expressive than objective. computer graphics texts and manuals tended to describe appearances in terms of the procedures used to create them. newer texts incorporated newer terms, in both fields. a great variety of concepts about elements of art appears to exist in art education, and a great variety of procedures exist for working with elements in computer graphics. in conclusion, it would appear that focused observations of elements and principles in the two fields will be fruitful in portraying concepts of visual structure more explicitly. focused observations by virtue of their traditional identity as formalist features, the elements and principles of art were used in this study as a structuring framework for listing terminology found in the domain analysis. the elements of art were: line, shape, space, form, pattern, texture, color and tone. comparable elements were then examined in the literature on computer graphics. no articulated framework of "elements and principles" appears to exist in computer graphics theory. however, the structure of elements in computer graphics was soon determined as depending on one of three forms of graphics: pixel-based systems (paint programs); d object-based systems; or d graphics. therefore, terms such as "line", "shape", "texture" and "tone" were investigated on three domain levels in computer graphics. the principles of art were balance, emphasis/focal point, variety, unity/harmony and repetition. the same concepts were examined in computer graphics. in additional, concepts about the formal image or image as a whole, such as concrete/abstract or discrete/continuous, were explored in both fields. these terms were also derived from the literature in appendix a. procedures all terminology referring to the elements and principles of art in both art education texts and computer graphics texts was listed. four separate lists were created: elements in art education, elements in computer graphics, principles in art education, and principles in computer graphics. all similarities and differences between computer terminology and art terminology were therefore listed. in addition, terminology was listed for computer concepts without an equivalent in traditional art, and vice versa. elements and principles requiring further explication or areas which were unclear from the literature searches were marked in italics for further investigation (figures and ) . a pattern of analysis developed during the focused observations of basic concepts. it became apparent that each basic term such as "line" had one or more meanings or concepts; different ways of formulating dimension or measure; several genres or types; different kinds of surfaces; different orientations or directions; different terms for describing light and dark values; and different types of depth devices. for each element and principle, focused observations were therefore grouped into sub- categories under the headings concepts; measure; type; surface, structure, or edges; orientation, location or direction; value; and depth. all focused observations were included in the final domain analysis (appendices c and d). figure sample of domain analysis: sensory elements in art education line concepts - a mark - a continuous mark, path of movement - a path, mass or edge where length is dominant measure - length - width type - straight - curved - angular - contour - interior, cross-contour - exterior, outlines - continuous - broken - connecting - repeated - rhythmic - simple/consistent (thickness and value remain the same along the length) - complex - geometric - organic - precise - irregular direction - horizontal - vertical - diagonal figure sample of domain analysis: sensory elements in computer graphics line concepts - in draw mode, a linear location with no thickness between available pixels (a mathematical model rather than an actual graphic element on the screen) - in paint mode, a continuum of adjacent pixels ( d lines with x,y coordinates) - in d graphics, vectors ( d lines with x,y,z coordinates between width, height and depth) measure - length - width - location type - straight: horizontal, vertical, diagonal - curved: arcs (have a start, end, and radius); semi-circles; or curves (wander) - "jagged" diagonal curved lines, often as a result of output resolution - silhouette (designate outline) - contour (designate the height of areas, as in contour maps) - hatch patterns (dots, dashes, etc.) - connecting (vectors) direction - horizontal - vertical - diagonal - slope (degree of grade or orientation of line on a plane) findings at this point in the study, the focus was on gathering as much information as possible about concepts of visual structure. the search was directed at terminology describing the elements and principles of design in art education, and terminology in computer graphics that embodied concepts similar to "sensory elements" and "formal principles". no comparable articulated aesthetic framework was found in the analysis of textbooks or manuals for computer graphics, though comparable sensory elements were readily found in computer graphics. in fact, a greater quantity and a more specific delineation of terminology was found in computer graphics for the elements of "line", "shape", and "space". the amount and degree of complexity of data on "texture", "pattern", "color" and "tone" was roughly equivalent. although there is computer graphics output (such as architecture, sculpture, or garment design) which is a counterpart to the physical, dimensional idea of "form" in art education, this concept was not explored further as the emphasis in this study is on two-dimensional output. information on "texture", "pattern", and "color" in art education was largely theoretical or abstract, while the same information in computer graphics was technical and concrete. for example, the element of "texture" in art education was described as a "surface quality" which can appear "even", "uneven", or "smooth". in computer graphics, "uneven" surface quality was described was "block-pixed", "bump-mapped", "texture-mapped", or as evidence of "manipulated intensity values". "smooth" texture was subcategorized in computer graphics as a "blend", a "graduated fill", "polygonal shading" or "continuous shading". art education literature described areas of "pattern" with abstract words like "distorted", "variant", or "localized", while computer graphics literature made such concrete distinctions as "pen patterns" or "area fill patterns". art education literature favored what could be described as "expressive" language. for example, qualitative descriptors such as "receding", "advancing", "cool" or "warm" were frequently used to describe the element of color in art education. quantitative descriptors such as "pixel format resolution" or " bit color" were used to describe color in computer graphics. in comparison with the design elements, formal principles were not readily apparent in computer graphics. there was an abundance of data on the idea of the formal image as a whole and the hierarchy of its assemblage. however, traditional concepts of art education such as "balance", "emphasis", "unity", and "repetition" were much more difficult to discover in computer graphics. they tended to be embedded in such specific procedures as "regularity" (for balance), "windowing" (for emphasis), "low color variety" (for unity), and "recursion" (for repetition). significant additions to the idea of the image as a whole were computer graphic concepts of "resolution", "lighting", and "field of view," which can uniformly affect the whole image in ways not traditionally accounted for in art education analysis. summary a focus on practices in computer graphics rather than principles was the most significant difference between computer graphics and formalist aesthetics. terminology in computer graphics was concrete and often quantitative. an aesthetic framework comparable to a formalist model did not appear to exist in computer graphics. formal principles were embedded in procedures, rather than discussed in terms of effects or aesthetic response. taxonomic analysis introduction a taxonomic analysis of terms and descriptions found in the domain analysis was developed in two parts: a taxonomy of terms used to describe sensory elements in both fields and a taxonomy of formal principles in both fields (appendices e and f). the taxonomy of sensory elements was organized according to traditional individual elements of art; that is, identifiable areas or parts of two- dimensional images such as "line" or "texture". it includes concepts about traditional aspects of two-dimensional image- making such as two- or three-dimensional space. the taxonomy of formal principles lists concepts about the image as a whole, such as "formal balance" or "emphasis". . comparative taxonomy of sensory elements procedure five columns have been used to structure the taxonomy of sensory elements (table ). major terms for elements such as "line" are placed in the left-hand column of the taxonomy and highlighted. major terms are broken down into conceptual areas in the second column for art education and in the fourth column for computer graphics. for example, in the second column, art education concepts about "line" are analyzed as concept, type, measure, depth devices, structure, presence, and character. similar concepts about "line" in computer graphics are analyzed in the fourth column as concept, type, properties (rather than measure), depth cues (rather than depth devices), structure, presence, and regularity (rather than character) in the fourth column. the subdivision into conceptual areas thus reveals similarities in terms, such as "type - type" or "structure - structure", as well as differences in terms, such as "measure - properties", "depth devices - depth cues", or "character - regularity". focused observations and definitions for each conceptual area are placed in the third and fifth columns. the focused observations allow an examination of further differences and similarities between the fields of traditional two-dimensional art and computer graphics. for examine, "line" (column ) in terms of the conceptual area "measure" (column ) in the field of art education reveals three additional sub-categories: "direction", "weight", and "value" (column ). however, "line" evaluated in terms of "properties" (column ) under computer graphics education reveals different terminology for similar concepts: "orientation", "intensity", and "value" (column ). the sub-categories are broken down one more step within the third and fifth columns, with definitions where applicable. for example, while "direction" in traditional art was defined simply as horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, its counterpart in computer graphics, "orientation", was defined as horizontal (x), vertical (y), a d diagonal line or slope (degree of grade on a plane, x+y), or a d vector (x,y,z). table sample of comparative taxonomy: sensory elements elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics line concepts - a mark - a point concepts - a pixel - a dot-per-inch (in hardcopy) a path, mass or edge where length is dominant - a continuum of adjacent pixels - a row a cmtinuous mark - d segments with x,y coordinates (go between width and height or between local coordinates) - d vectors with x,y,z coordinates (go between width, height and depth) a invisible linear location (a mathematical model rather than an actual graphic element on screen) types - freehand - geometric - or ic types follow grid patterns on screen and in hard copy straight - horizontal - vertical - diagonal straight - horizontal (x) - vertical (y) - diagonal/slope (x+y) curved - geometric - freehand curved - arcs (have a start, end and radius) - semi-circles - curves (bezier, quadratic and fournier are equations that describe the mathematics of the curves between the defining points) - freehand in paint mode continuous continuous jagged diagonal and curved lines (a result of output resolution in d graphics) contour lines/ cross-contour lines (exterior outlines) silhouette lines (designate the outline) cross-contour (designate surface changes) contour lines (designate height of areas) connecting - d lines/segments - d vectors the idea of a parallel taxonomy for terminology used to describe visual imagery in both fields was initially developed in order to analytically compare differences and similarities in vocabulary and concepts. however, the taxonomy also provides a unique visual assessment of complex semantic areas in both fields. in many cases, the counterparts can be seen to match one-on-one in terms of quantity or variation. for example, the traditional idea of line as a path, mass or edge where length is dominant was comparable to the idea of line as a continuum of adjacent pixels in computer graphics. in other cases, there is a significant difference in the complexity of concepts and thus a greater number of definitions. for example, the traditional idea of "line" as a "continuous mark" had three counterparts in computer graphics: a) d segments with x,y coordinates that go between width and height or local coordinates; b) d vectors with x,y,and z coordinates that go between width, height, and depth; and c) invisible linear locations or mathematical models, rather than an actual graphic element on screen. all conceptual uses of terms were listed for both art education and computer graphics, whether or not they had a counterpart. if no comparison could be made, a blank space was left. findings the greatest area of confusion in the literature search, the domain analysis, and the development of a taxonomy was in regard to the elements of shape and space. this resulted from, first, contradictory uses of the terms "two- dimensional space", "three-dimensional space", "two- dimensional shape", "three-dimensional shape", and "form" in art education literature, and second, the existence of three unique and distinct kinds of "space" in computer graphics. different mathematically-defined operating environments in computer graphics dictate specific kinds of operations for creating individual elements such as line or shape. these operations in turn create different kinds of visual evidence. in the domain analysis of art education literature, the term "two-dimensional space" was used to describe a two- dimensional working surface, as well as the kinds of spatial activities that occurred there - including illusionistic simulations. the term "three-dimensional space" was used to describe both an illusionistic artistic environment which is simulated on a two-dimensional surface, as well as to describe an actual, physical space in the real world. focused observations revealed further discrepancies in definitions. for example, "two-dimensional shapes" were described in several cases as "plastic" if their contours were biomorphic, even when the shapes were flat planes, and in other cases as "plastic" only if they were three- dimensional simulations. the term "three-dimensional shape" was often used interchangeably with the term "form", and applied to actual three-dimensional objects such as sculptures. in other cases, the term "three-dimensional shape" referred to an illusionistic simulation on a two-dimensional surface. similarly, "form" was used to describe both real-world objects and illusions of them on a two-dimensional surface. there was less confusion about these terms in computer graphics literature, since computer graphics take place in three distinct operating or spatial environments. both pixel-based shapes, and shapes created or selected in d object-based programs, are two-dimensional. they do not have true volume. pixel-based "paint" programs allow the user to create lines and shapes spontaneously, in a freehand manner, by "drawing" with an input device such as a "mouse". a trail of bits of color called "pixels" lights up on the screen to mark the evidence of the user's hand movement. the screen is a rectangular "bitmap" or matrix of invisible lines, and the movement of the mouse actually lights up pixels to the right or below the invisible lines. thus a pixel-based shape is a flat region of lit up pixels on the screen. it is duplicated by means of a flat group of dots of ink when it is printed out in "hardcopy". in both cases, the shape is composed of bits, like an area of a mosaic in traditional art. d object-based systems, known as "draw" modes rather than "paint" modes, also allow the user to create pictures using the invisible screen matrix. the process is spontaneous, but in a different way. points are connected with lines to create "polygons", or sequences of connected lines. the flat, planar polygons can be "filled" with color or texture, by lighting up pixels within them. along with many other procedures which are dependent on the capabilities of different programs, these two-dimensional shapes may be "layered", "resized", or "transformed". since the shapes rely on geometric configurations, many basic shapes in traditional design, such as circles, squares, or rectangles, are pre-created. they are kept in a file for the user to select as needed. most programs also offer "procedures" for altering both selected and created shapes. many recent software programs combine the capabilities of "paint" and "draw" modes, and the user can work back and forth between layers called "windows" to switch modes when desired. d graphics, on the other hand, are to date procedurally less spontaneous than "paint" or "draw" programs. in three- dimensional space, objects behave and are treated more like real-life forms. they have volume as well as area, and some programs allow the user to assign them other physical characteristics like weight or inertia. objects are in geometric relationship to others in a three-dimensional space which is like a "void". although the screen as well as hardcopy show a flat view of the objects, because the screen and hardcopy are flat, the objects are true three- dimensionals which can infinitely recede and which have calculable volume. in this sense, three-dimensional shapes in computer graphics are like real-life "forms", although the term "object" is used in computer graphics rather than "form". in addition to finding a way to sort out confusing and contradictory descriptions of "space", "shape", and "form" in art education, this study sought to develop a taxonomic structure that permitted comparison with terms in computer graphics. while the terminology of art education provided a conceptual framework for organizing language, the structure of the three kinds of space in computer graphics provided a physical framework for the taxonomy that is unlike typical sequences of art education texts. many art education textbook chapters follow a similar sequence in developing concepts about the elements and principles of design. a typical structural order begins with "line" in the first chapter or lesson, followed by "shape", "pattern", "texture", "form", "space", "color" and "tone". both the domain analysis and focused observations in this study followed this sequence because it was so pervasive. however, it soon became apparent that the framework of the comparative taxonomy was to be determined to a large extent by the dictates of different mathematical methods for creating computer graphics. for example, the analysis of vocabulary used to describe and conceptualize an individual element such as "line" in computer graphics quickly became confusing and meaningless without prior identification of the kind of mathematical environment in which an element such as that line was created. different notions about creating images in space result from the capabilities and constraints of the three mathematical environments - pixel-based systems, d systems, and d systems - and thus constrain the kinds of "line", "shape", "pattern" or "texture" activities that can be performed in each. this in turn constrains the kinds of visual evidence of lines, shapes, patterns and textures in the hardcopy or output of computer graphic images. therefore, the comparative taxonomy of elements in art education and computer graphics in this study (see appendix e) begins with three concepts about "two-dimensional space", followed by three concepts about "two-dimensional shape". next, the concept of "three-dimensional space" on a two- dimensional surface is followed with two concepts about "three-dimensional shape" on a two-dimensional surface. the concept of "form" in art education was defined as a / d or actual d object with mass, such as a sculpture or mobile. the art education concept of "form" was not given a taxonomic counterpart in computer graphics, since the term "form" in computer graphics does not exist in the same sense that it does in traditional three-dimensional art such as sculpture. the concept of "line" is thus the sixth element listed in the comparative taxonomy of this study. by this point, a referent such as "x" or "vector" in the third or fifth column of "line" had previously been defined under the elements "two-dimensional shape" or "three-dimensional space". the development of the taxonomy as constrained by different computer graphics environments also afforded a more detailed, specific, and complex analysis of the conceptual area of "line". "line", as the sixth listed element, is followed by a comparison of concepts about "pattern", "texture", "color", and "tone", in that order. a visual assessment of the taxonomic categories for "pattern" reveals an extensive description of procedures for different pattern effects in computer graphics, while art education descriptions are conceptually very general. effects of patterns in art education and computer graphics are both local and global. the term "texture" in traditional art has more extensive applications than in computer graphics. these include "natural", "invented", and "illusory". since texture in computer graphics is illusory only, the descriptions of texture surface in the taxonomy focus on illusory effects in traditional art. as an "illusory" type, texture is local in both traditional art and computer graphics; that is, it appears to be used for areas of shape or space. the significant difference is that texture is a surface quality in traditional art and a choice of rendering in computer graphics. concepts about color are equally well-articulated in art education and computer graphics. texts in both fields carried detailed color theory and distinctions between such properties as "intensities", "hue", and "value". art education theory also incorporated expressive vocabulary for color depth and temperature, such as "receding" or "cool", for which there do not appear to be counterparts in computer graphics. however, it should be noted that some computer programs provide capabilities for color tables based on such variables as natural and artificial light effects or weather. different procedures for tone are explicitly defined in computer graphics. they include several kinds of shading, color mapping, and different shadow effects. these procedures give precise and uniform tonal effects to images since they are applied by the computer during the rendering process rather than by hand. summary in summary, procedures peculiar to computer graphics determined the taxonomic structure of sensory elements to an unexpected degree. however, this results in an analysis of art education concepts in a way that is not readily apparent in the literature. for example, art education literature often applies the same term, such as "line" or "shape", to a wide variety of styles, methods, and mediums. the comparative taxonomy affords a reevaluation of this practice. ideas about "shape", which became particularly important, are not seen in an abstract form nor were they nebulous. "shape" is not only defined as two-dimensional or three-dimensional per se, but is evaluated in terms of its type, position, area or structure, surface, and edges in different kinds of two and three-dimensional space.^thus "two-dimensional shape" can be seen as having quite a different set of intentions depending on the kind of space in which it is created. for example, the computer graphic concept that shapes are intensities of color selected in a bitmap in pixel-based graphics afforded a comparison with the concept of shape in traditional art as a composition of individual stitches, tiles or sections in two-dimensional matrix-based art such as needlepoint, mosaics, or weaving. this concept is quite different from the concept of shape as a flat plane which may be overlapped. in the latter concept, descriptions of manipulation and convergence and the idea of a non-conscious format further underscore significant differences between these two types of two- dimensional art. in both computer graphics and traditional art, ideas about space appear to be a guiding principle for structuring and creating other elements, rather than an individual element of the picture. the elements of pattern, texture and tone in computer graphics are created through specific computer-driven procedures (such as the various kinds of mapping) which ensure a uniformity to flat surfaces and a perceptually- correct perspective to three-dimensional objects. the same elements in traditional art may have variant or uneven characteristics as they are handcrafted. . comparative taxonomy of formal principles procedures the taxonomy of formal principles (table ) was developed following the five-column structure of the taxonomy of sensory elements. eight major conceptual areas were explored: the concept of the formal image as a whole, formal balance, informal balance, variety/contrast, unity/harmony, emphasis, lighting, and format. these eight conceptual areas are subdivided according to different definitions or applications of the major terms. for example, "formal image" is analyzed in terms of "concept", "content", "structure", and "procedures". the third and fifth columns break down these sub-categories one step further, with definitions where applicable. for example, the conceptual area of the principle "emphasis" is analyzed in terms of "concept", "type", and "structure". "concept" is in turn defined as "focal point(s)", "center of interest", or "weight" of the picture. "types" of emphasis are "degree of emphasis", "restraint in emphasis", and "absence of focal points". "structure" is described in terms of "isolation of elements" or "placement of elements". table sample of comparative taxonomy: formal principles principles ^ art education ^ computer graphic formal image concept image viewed as a whole concept - hardcopy image - screen or cyberspace image matrix forms digital medium in paint snd d object-oriented systems analog forms continuous medium in d graphics concrete - concrete in hardcopy only - dynamic m screen image is stable only hardcopy is stable one original three originals - digital data - multiple screen originals coexist in pixel-based, d or d graphics - hardcopy graphics printmaking multiples hardcopy multiples content content is created in a discrete environment called a format content - d bitmap content is created in a discrete (matrix) environment - d object-oriented content is created in a discrete (coordinate) environment - d graphics content is created in a continuous environment contents are passive contents are passive only in hardcopy contents are bound to form contents are bound to hardcopy artworks contain signifiers (the "language" of alt) contain signifiers (evidence of selections and procedures, such as "sweeping" or a partical procedure) several formal principles may operate simultaneously formal principles are applied hierarchically structure formalist images are composed of parts called "elements" of ait sttucture pictures ("universals") are hierarchical asw-yriblages of parts or elements called "primitives" elements of art can be further broken down (ie. motif + repetition = pattern) primitives are often incorporated into procedures or subroutines findings it should be noted that while this study sought to focus on the results of image-making rather than on the procedures used in making images, evidence of procedures was often cited in descriptions of the visual structure of images. procedures therefore played an important part in expanding the notion of signifiers in formal images. traditionally, art has been seen as containing signifiers in terms of an abstract language of elements. a comparative study with the idea of signifiers in computer graphics affords an expanded idea of signifiers, which may include evidence of specific techniques, selections and procedures as much as abstract language. the delineation of the formal image as the first concept in the taxonomy allows an examination of the kinds of conceptual and practical environments in which image-making takes place. in other words, the context for elements of art, including the kind of space used, is made specific and concrete. for example, the content of traditional d art images is seen as created in a discrete environment called a format; with passive contents bound to this format; with the possibility of several formal principles operating simultaneously in the organization of that content in the format; and as having content signifiers. by contrast, to quote from the taxonomy of formal principles (table ), content in computer art is created in a discrete or continuous environment; passive only in hardcopy, with contents bound to the hardcopy only; with formal principles having a hierarchy in the creation of the image; and as showing evidence of selections and procedures. although space has traditionally been viewed as an element of art rather than as a principle, certain similarities were noticed between notions of space and the environment of the formal image. for example, traditional art was often referred to as an analog medium in the literature review and domain analysis. this distinction, while noted in articles by hickman ( ), nadin ( ), and pope ( ), was particularly important in the work of binkley ( , ). however, the content of matrix-based traditional art images is actually discrete, if not, in a sense, digitized. the notion of "one original" has also been an important idea in formalist art theory. however, concepts of printmaking multiples, computer hardcopy, and the replicability of matrix-based imagery beg the definition of "one original". it would be useful to develop a theory of art in which notions of space and the ideas of "originals" or "multiples" are seen as guiding principles for the kinds of aesthetic responses which are generated. a comparative study of the principles of formal and informal balance, variety/contrast, unity/harmony, and emphasis revealed some conceptual similarities between the meanings of these principles in computer graphics and traditional art. however, while these specific vocabulary terms were frequently cited in art education literature, they were seldom used in computer graphics.^generally the terminology was different: symmetry - global regularity; radial balance - rotation; allover pattern - continuous pattern; asymmetry - broken symmetries; clarity of image - graphic form variables; surface - image. in many cases, the sub-categories had no counterparts. for example, there were no counterparts to the traditional art education concepts of approximate symmetry, dominance, subordinance, visual unity, proximity of figure to ground, relationship of format to contents, continuation, conceptual unity, or notions of emphasis such as "focal point", "weight" of the picture, or the "isolation of elements". often a concept in computer graphic imagery was more local than global, and thus could be seen as an element rather than a principle. for example, while "asymmetry" was often cited as a traditional art principle used to structure content in relationship to the format, "broken symmetry" in computer graphics applied to the transformation of specific regions, polygons or objects, or to the randomness of local detail. conversely, two concepts which were viewed as incidental characteristics of specific elements in art education (when they were mentioned at all) were significant unifying structures in computer graphics. first, the concept of "resolution" in computer graphics is very important. the computer art image is affected uniformly by the resolution of the output, both in terms of the kind of printer and in terms of the density of color and dots-per-inch. with dot matrix printers, the computer graphic output is always an even, grid-like series of dots, regardless of content. dye sublimation printers produce images with continuous tones in one layer of ink. conversely, in traditional hand-made art, the density of the media - whether pigment, ink or fibre varies across the surface. the term "resolution" in traditional art texts, when it was applied, referred to the idea of the image as either "successful" or as "finished", rather than to a sense of unity through a balanced distribution of pigment. second, the concept of lighting in computer graphics plays an important part in unifying three-dimensional graphics. several kinds of reflective techniques, ray- tracing, and techniques for transparency or self- illumination can be applied to images. the overall lighting effect can also be altered by colored spotlights in the same way that glazes are applied to oil paintings. summary the terminology of art education provided the structuring framework for a comparative taxonomy of the principles of art. there does not appear to be an articulated theory of comparable principles for computer graphics. terminology in computer graphics regarding symmetry, balance and pattern tended to be locally specific, rather than global. well-articulated global concepts in computer graphics such as resolution and lighting were not well-developed in art education literature. however, concepts about the structure and procedures of the formal image as a whole were markedly similar and well-developed. thus computer graphics appears to be structurally similar but theoretically deficient in terms of art education principles. interviews introduction following the taxonomic analysis of terms, interviews were conducted with eight informants who can be considered experts in the analysis of visual images. the interviews were used to clarify terms and concepts found in the literature of art education and computer graphics, and to identify terms in colloquial use. a second purpose of the interviews was the opportunity to clarify concepts in the context of an ethnographic situation. four stimuli were used in order to provide a concrete base for observations. informants were shown four art images in the form of two-dimensional reproductions (appendix g). they were asked to describe each image in their own terms, and to compare and contrast images. they were also asked to comment on connections between the way computer artists and traditional artists (or computer graphics educators and art educators) might talk about the same images. informants informants were selected on the basis of their verbal fluency and ability to articulate concepts about visual images. all informants were well-established professionals in two or more areas of traditional or computer art. these areas included art education, studio art practice, knowledge of art history, computer art practice, and computer art education (table ). the purpose of the selected observations was to gather interview data on visual analysis from informants with a range of expertise in these areas. the informants were selected to create a balance of expertise. informants are identified throughout the study by numbers - rather than initials. table profile of informant expertise art educator^studio artist^art historian computer artist^computer art (level)^(specialty)^(specialty)^educator (level) secondary, univer. * textiles yes secondary * painting yes college photography yes * college painting, drawing * yes painting, drawing * yes paint and draw graphic design yes paint and draw * public drawing/crafts yes d and d * secondary college *sculpture yes paint, draw, d, d * designates area of specialization stimuli the stimuli were reproductions of two-dimensional images. they were color lasercopied from art and computer textbooks and mounted on / " x " white card both for handling reasons and for a uniformity of scale. a pixel- based image and a three-dimensional graphic were used as examples of computer graphics. an oil painting and a painting which showed characteristics of both drawing and painting were used as examples of traditional art. the images were selected on the basis of clarity of image and were representational rather than abstract, to ensure a base of understanding among subjects. they were also chosen for their appropriateness as examples of different kinds of visual structure, rather than on a value basis of "good" or "exemplary" art. each image was characterizable in formalist terms to accommodate artists and art educators, and characterizable in technological terms to accommodate computer graphics artists and educators. each image demonstrated different concepts of sensory elements, including line, shape, space, pattern, color, texture and tone. each image also exemplified concepts of the image as a whole, or formal principles, including unity, repetition, emphasis, balance, scale or proportion, lighting, uniformity of surface, and field of view (figure ). in choosing the stimuli, an attempt was made to represent as many concepts as possible about each element and each principle. for example, the element "line" was represented in the first image with uneven contour or jagged silhouette lines; vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines; and negative or reversed lines. the second image had broken interior lines with no contour or silhouette lines. the third image had continuous, bold, irregular contour lines, and positive and negative lines. the fourth image had delicate contour or silhouette lines, repeated lines, and perspective or diagonal lines. "repetition" was exemplified in the first image with a regular, repeated pattern. the second image had an irregular, decreasing repeated pattern. the third image had repeated shapes and motifs. the fourth image had repeated lines and technical styles. complete descriptions of all sensory elements and formal principles exemplified in the four stimuli were written following the taxonomic analysis and in advance of the interviews (appendix h). figure sample description of stimulus stimulus : untitled, pixel graphic. tosiyasu l. kunii, tokyo univerity. elements of art line^- uneven contour/silhouette, jagged - vertical, horizontal, diagonal - negative/reversed shape^- two-dimensional - geometric, organic - solid, outline space^- two-dimensional - matrix, bitmap - positive and negative pattern^- localized (dress) - allover/invariant (dress) color^- limited palette - analogous - cool texture^- illusory - even/uniform/invariant (pixel pattern) - localized (figure) tone^- flat - contrast sample description of stimulus principles of art unity^- format to content - unified palette - proximity of figure to ground: separated repetition - regular pattern (on dress) emphasis - isolation of element (pattern on dress) - outline/ silhouette line balance^- horizontal scale/proportion - actual lighting - diffuse reflection uniformity of surface - low resolution "jaggies" - contrast (pixel texture against solid) field of view - almost enclosed (cropped feet) interview questions and procedures interviews were conducted in informal surroundings according to the choice of each informant. most interviews took place in the informant's workspace. meetings began with a casual discussion of our personal interest in the visual arts at this time, followed with a brief description of the purpose of this study, which was to analyze terms and concepts used to describe the structure or appearance of visual images, rather than emotional or narrative response. they were informed that they were considered experts in this ability, and i was interested in their ways of describing an image. the four art images were used as stimuli to discuss elements and principles of art, and also as catalysts for discussion about different aspects of traditional and computer art. each interview lasted - minutes. interview questions and prompts were prepared in advance of the eight interviews. there were five main interview questions for each image, with prompts specific to each image (appendix i). to begin, informants were simply asked to tell me about each picture. their attention was then directed to different areas of each picture, such as foreground shapes, edges, or background areas, and they were asked to describe the different parts of each image. the second question thus focused on sensory elements and the language used to describe sensory elements. third, informants were asked to describe the image as a whole, in terms of "composition" or "arrangement". prompts were used to direct their attention when necessary to such formal principles as color scheme, balance, or lighting. in response to the first three questions, the informants proved extremely loquacious and provided detailed observations about sensory elements and formal principles with very little prompting. therefore the prompts were not needed as much as expected. fourth, informants were asked whether they thought each image was "successful" on the basis of its visual structure. they were asked to clarify their reasons and encouraged to compare and contrast images for "successful" visual structure. this question elicited further comparison of the elements and principles of design, information about procedures in computer graphics and traditional art, and comments relevant to many of the issues raised in the literature search. informants were then asked to comment on any connections between the way people in both fields might talk about visual images. in many interviews, this question elicited more specific terminology and clarification of concepts in both art education and computer graphics, and also provided further data on concepts and issues revealed in the literature search regarding similarities and differences between traditional two-dimensional art and computer graphics. procedure for the analysis of interview data the eight interviews were taped and transcribed verbatim in single space formatting (appendix l). all terms used to describe visual structure were highlighted. highlighted terminology included nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs that referred to evidence of procedures or techniques, as well as to evidence of elements and principles. the following sample from the interview with informant reveals terminology used to describe "resolution" in computer imagery. words describing the visual evidence or signifiers of resolution and the procedures used for resolution are highlighted. they include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. quotes in this study are identified by the informant's number followed by the transcript page number. i would say that the resolution of this image is much higher than the earlier one. the edges are very crisp, and clear, continuous, smooth. the anti-aliasinq would be set quite high to prevent lagged edges, if it was computer-rendered. ( . ) chapter iv interpretation of interview data introduction six theme-groupings emerged from the analysis of interview data. these were similarities between traditional d art and computer graphic output; differences; the idea of art images as a "language" which can be "read"; themes to do with the idea of space, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional; descriptions of classic "sensory" elements; and descriptions of formal principles or unifying devices. chapter iv is structured according to these groupings. similarities four themes emerged in terms of similarities between traditional art and computer art: artmaking as a cognitive process; the elements and principles of design; artviewing as a cognitive process; and simulation. artmaking as a cognitive process. five informants commented on the similarities between traditional artmaking and computer artmaking as a cognitive process. this was often described in terms of "thought". three informants also commented on artmaking "thought" processes in terms of communication with a viewer. it's the final image that is the real thought. it's the thought that someone makes and puts out, and it's the thought you get when you look at it. they may be two different things, but we shouldn't place so much attention on how they get there. that's what so exciting about computers, you can make them do anything you want to. it's your thoughts that are in control, not the computer. ( . ) informants with strong backgrounds in computer graphics studio practice emphasized the role of the computer as an intermediary for thought, rather than a determinant of the appearance of the outcome. dimensions are all approached in a mathematical way in a computer, obviously, but geometry is just a description, you telling the computer what to do, and you're the one who makes the decision about how the space is working. ( . ) there was a clear understanding that the computer is an intermediary for original human thought processes, even when the artmaking process is at its most intense. it absorbs you. you go off into computerland. but it's not computerland, it's your own mind. ( . ) several informants identified the computer with traditional artists' tools, and discussed the way the computer can be used as an aid in developing ideas.^the difference between traditional image development and computer image development was described in terms of the numbers of concrete images generated, rather than questions of quality or appearance. you do numerous "runs" of images, to kind of tune it, so you can get it right. because you don't always know what you're going to get. you might set up some lights, some materials, whatever, so you do it, tweak it, do it again. you end up with as many as twenty or thirty different images. ( . ) elements and principles of design informants who taught computer graphics were on occasion ambivalent about the language they used. sometimes they described teaching the same elements as art educators. at other times, they used terms that were distinctly derived from computer graphics. while the design vocabulary of computer graphics often appeared to differ from that of traditional art, informant responses indicated that conceptually their ideas about elements and principles of design were the same. whether you're using a conte or paintbrush or a ball-point pen or a computer image, the elements and principles of art and design are the same. you know, we talk in texture, line, color, lighting, tone, movement, d, d, juxtaposition. i could go on ad infinitum, and things don't change. and nor should the approach. ( . ) differences between the media were described in practical rather than theoretical terms. if i were using a computer and i would start to discuss an image, i would be using a similar language as i am using here, except that i would be talking about nodes and angles and pixels... but i would still be talking about positive and negative space, i would still be talking about depth of field and composition... ( . ) one informant described computer artists as working solely with visual feedback. i think a lot of people who work on computers have no language; they just do it. now they might run into trouble when they have to describe it to someone later on! but generally, they don't talk about their images the way fine artists might, or the way art critics would talk about paintings. ( . ) however, several informants commented on the difficulty they had in focusing on the elements and principles of art, rather than the techniques, when viewing a piece of computer art. in almost all the computer images i've seen, for me, technique overrides the image. i'm always, "how the hell did they do that?" ( . ) artviewing as a cognitive process at some point in every interview and in response to most stimuli, informants used simple math terms to describe or locate an image. (stimulus ) the lines are radiating. i see very distinctively one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve lines. ( . ) perhaps because all eight informants had a strong background in studio practice, artviewing as a cognitive process entailed frequent discussion and conjecture about techniques and processes. (stimulus ) to me it looks like they would have had some kind of photographic or original things as a reference. but i know that the computer can do things. like for instance the vine looks like it's made out of molten gold, rather than actual wood. but clearly, it has a photographic- looking base.^( . ) informants also used techniques and processes, often in terms of their own experiences with techniques and processes, as cues for identifying the medium in which images were created when viewing an image. (stimulus ) because of the fading of the color and the receding, i doubt if an artist would have painted it. and again, that losing of the color into the kind of the gray throughout, is so masterfully done... i don't think anyone could paint that well. ( . ) as in the following example, techniques were frequently related to discussions of structural elements, such as repetition or negative and positive space. (stimulus ) you can see the same flower or the same leaves in the same arrangement, heading off. you know that the whole structure, if it was a d structure of branches and flowers, had just been copied back again and again. ( . ) simulation seven informants mentioned the similarity between traditional art and computer art in terms of the computer's ability to simulate traditional effects. i don't think there's any difference at all. even in applications... in paint programs, you can apply that brush now in multiple ways. you can make your paint look like you're applying it with a palette knife, on the computer. ( . ) effects of different areas in computer images were often compared to art historical intentions in traditional art. it was pointed out that computer artists may not be aware that what they are doing is an art historical technique, even though their intentions are the same. for instance, in photoshop, you can take a photograph, put it through a filter, and turn it into a pointillist painting. now it may not be called a pointillist filter, it'll just be called an "art effects" filter or something. and somebody new to the computer might only ever know it as the art effects filter # , and not ever realize that this is a painting style. ( . ) informants frequently identified areas of images in terms of both computer techniques and art historical techniques. (stimulus ) only when you look really closely... the table is a whole series of colored dots... it's either pointillism or it's just a computer image, like a paint package. like somebody sprayed a series of multiple colors of paint and tried to simulate another kind of art, possibly. ( . ) in this sense, computer techniques and art historical references were often seen as being equivalent to elements of art. frequently, informants summed up the appearance of an image or area with an art historical term or reference. (stimulus ) i just go a little bit up, and now here's leger, these red and brown tube structures and crosses. ( . ) in one case, a informant summed up a procedure in computer graphics with the name of the computer artist who popularized it. (stimulus ) this ned green effect, you can't do that as a painter, it would take forever. for a computer artist, who just has to make one plane, one field, all he has to do is reduce it and add a little distance cueing. ( . ) summary of similarities informants described making art on the computer and by traditional means as a cognitive process. any differences were practical: first, different terminology was used for the same concepts, and the capability of the artist to generate multiple variations on themes was perceived as easier on the computer. educators in both computer graphics and traditional art fields taught the same elements and principles, with differences only in the "tools" they recommended for creating images. however, computer artists were alleged to be less articulate about describing images, and computer images themselves may less articulately convey a "language" of art. this may be because computer principles are "hidden", leaving the elements visible only as techniques. artviewing, on the other hand, was less a reflection on cognitive process than a discussion of techniques and processes. techniques were equated with compositional effects. recent computer art was perceived as being concerned with simulating traditional art effects and art historical styles. these referents were more obvious to informants than the sensory elements of art. differences two differences between traditional and computer art were described: the evidence of "human touch", and evidence of the conceptual processes of making art. evidence of "human touch" in traditional art evidence of the human touch in traditional art was often cited as an important difference between traditional art and computer art. the "human touch" was described in terms of spontaneity, tradition, physicality, and discontinuities or errors. one informant described the edges of a traditional painting (stimulus ) in detail, and equated "spontaneity" with evidence of mixing, layering, and visible paint strokes. there's no sense of creating a hard edge. all of these edges and all of the quality of paint on the canvas is right there, so that you feel the edge of the brush stroke, you see the mixing of the color, the yellows around the shape of the horse. you see the way the color has been butted up against the background border edges, one color painted directly on top of another. it's very spontaneous, you get a sense of the artist's hand in it.^( . ) the difference was perceived as a property as well as a historical tradition of man-made art. since cave drawings there's always been that idea, the undulation of gesture of the hand, mind, mark-making... which is totally different from what you get in computer graphics. ( . ) while traditional art was perceived as being the result of physical manipulation, computer art was perceived as analytic rather than physical. the physical differences between the mediums created an impression of distinctions between what was possible in terms in aesthetic response. i've never seen a really tough computer image. you know, one that's raw, that's alive, with a passion. it's very analytic. your whole frame of mind is sitting in front of a television set and a keyboard. it's not physical. most art is very physical. it involves a lot of arm movement, sensuous materials, fluidity of paint, even the smell of pastels is a very sensuous thing.^( . ) i asked informants to identify and characterize evidence of the "human touch" in traditional art. human touch was characterized in terms of "messiness", "errors" "irregularities", discontinuities and "mistakes". ...this controlled messiness, which is so difficult to do with the computer... a good example would be [the paintings of] francis bacon. they're loose, and yet there's an incredible amount of control. that mess, dripping, texture... you know, with a computer you can get texture but it's always a multiplication of that texture. ( . ) ...some of the little details that you get. it's very difficult to tell the computer to make a mistake on an edge, or blurred. ( . ) evidence of electronic mechanics in computer graphics informants frequently referred to computer graphics as "mechanical", particularly in response to stimulus . i asked informants to clarify what they meant by "mechanical". one informant cited similarity in repeated form and several informants described the "smoothness" of imagery. unnatural complexity of detail was also mentioned twice. the almost artificial plastic look of the flowers are so smoothly rendered. plus the incredible complexity of the whole image. ( . ) informants also cited unnatural depth of field and arbitrary depiction of objects in space as evidence of mechanical means. the other thing is, in painting and in photography, there tends to be what's in focus and what's out of focus. here everything is in focus. which is very scary. you don't tend to see the world this way. ever. where everything in our depth of field is focused. up to where it disappears into the atmosphere. ( . ) stimulus was a catalyst for thoughts about what makes an image convincing. an image was considered to be convincing if it appeared unique or individualistic, with some degree of abnormality. there's a real difference in my mind between a program image and an artistic image. in the second image, information is fed into another mind, that of a computer, and you arrange it, but you do not need to have the manual abilities nor the artistic knowledge to make a pretty convincing image. one that looks professional. but in fact what you get is something without the life, the wit, the abnormalities.^( . ) throughout the interviews, informants frequently referred to computer graphics as "too perfect". i asked several informants to clarify this description, using stimulus as a catalyst. ...there aren't enough glitches in it. i would like to have seen at least one petal a little bit eaten away by a bug. you know what i mean? or maybe one of the petals dying a bit? ( . ) art as a "lived-through" experience several informants placed computer graphics near the beginning of a kind of scale of consciousness about what art is. at the beginning, many stated, artists are learning techniques and making illustrations. for most people, when you start doing art, your reinforcements is that "it looks so real". that's the first feedback you get. so most people begin as illustrative artists. trying to be as truthful to reality as possible. ( . ) art was perceived as "lived-through" if the artist personally worked through an understanding of the processes of "playing with", "confronting", or "manifesting" images, rather than copying them from the real world. in describing stimulus , one informant commented, call it "magic" or call it mystery... the subject matter has not stood in front of this artist. he had to make this work from the very beginning of that image. he could not rely on a still life or on a tangible world to arrive at this image.... it is a lived-through experience rather than a rendering of an image. ( . ) in response to the two traditional art images (stimuli and ), informants frequently described evidence of artists "playing" with elements of art. images were also frequently discussed with art historical reference to recognized "ways of playing" with images, which referred to the particular perceptions and styles of different artists. there appeared to be a high awareness of different levels of making, comprehending, and responding to art, and the different standards applied to different levels. computer artists were perceived as not understanding enough of the second level of making art. i'd say it's the kind of image that computer graphic artists make. because they have no understanding whatsoever of visual art. ( . ) the inability to "play" or incorporate original perceptions was perceived, in response to other computer art informants had seen, as a result of a lack of personal commitment and struggle necessary to make computer art the medium itself... you circumvent nearly all the struggles, the questions.., it's like cooking with pre-packaged stuff. all you have to do is add water and you're going to get something. but it's not going to be the same as if you went through the process of learning. ( . ) correctibility of computer images by affording image corrections and manipulations that don't show any trace of changes, the computer produces images that appear pristine and "perfect". however, three informants who use a computer to make art pointed out the advantages in terms of challenge and time. i think that's one of the things about the computer: it lets you correct things so easily. it really does become a tool, that is fast, and makes it feasible to try anything difficult.^( . ) computers were perceived as a device which enables an artist to fulfill his or her original intentions, and even to experiment beyond the original intentions. they were also perceived as a device which enabled a greater quantity of work to be done in the same time period. if i had had a computer when i was in art school, i would have done everything i did in art school and a lot more. ( . ) summary of differences uneven technique and even an occasional mistake in applying elements of art, such as a mistake in a sequence of motifs in a border design, were not only tolerated but given high value and significance in traditional art. computer graphics also contain "man-made" errors, such as discontinuities in composition or use of space, but these errors were less well-regarded. artists who "played" with paint and ideas were valued the most. computer graphics which simulate realism are perceived as intending to embody the fine detail of natural or life- like appearances, and are criticized on the basis of "not going far enough" in terms of natural flaws in real life. on the other hand, arbitrary use of space and compositional techniques means that they are not accepted as depictions of real life either, as photographs often are. this is an area of computer graphics which is seriously in need of its own set of theoretical foundations. while traditional artworks were not criticized by the informants according to the criteria of computer graphics, computer graphics were criticized according to the standards of traditional art. yet the technology of the medium makes it impossible to generate the kinds of features which are most highly valued in traditional art. art as a language the third theme that emerged from an analysis of the interview data was the idea that art images could be "read". art was "read" in five contexts: as an object like a book, with specific directional approaches; in terms of perceptual cues; in terms of process or techniques; in terms of art historical references; and as a visual "game". reading art like a book all eight informants made references to the order in which they "read" an art image. one informant mentioned a left-to-right reading order. as a determinant for reading the stimulus , he described the line on the right as emphasizing the order. [the line] gives her a direction. it's having an effect in a forceful way. either she's looking towards it, or it's forcing something towards her... it could be a door that she's going through. it makes a whole left to right reading direction. she's also facing towards the line. ( . ) another informant also mentioned this line in terms of reading the figure image as part of the whole. if the line wasn't there, it would really read as an isolated image, almost as an island. this line brings this negative space, like the black is not so isolated. there's an attempt at making the format. you know, the composition depends always on the format of the piece, reading it from the corner, or from the center. ( . ) all informants turned stimulus upside-down during their analysis, and many experimented with turning other images upside-down as well. i asked informants why they did this. in many cases, particularly in response to the figure of the woman in stimulus and the flowers in stimulus , the responses were based on real-world cues. [stimulus ] because you have a growth pattern that seems to stem from one corner, i would be more comfortable having it this way, upside-down. because in terms of actual space, the growth goes up. well, it works this way too [on its side.]^( . ) several informants discussed stimuli and in terms of their graphic appeal, and felt that the appeal was the same regardless of which direction these images were turned. comparisons were made with logos or emblems, signs, banners, and flags. [stimulus ] because it's like a banner... it's like a flag, or it has that real kind of graphic punch you get with flat colors.^[ . ] turning the image upside-down seemed to afford a sense of objectivity; an opportunity to evaluate elements of design and compositions differently. it also seemed to remove real-world associations in a way that was satisfying to informants. [stimulus ] now, just seeing it [upside-down] as an abstract image i like it. it doesn't matter that there's no face when the image is upside-down. the horizontality of these repeated lines on the texture of legs or stockings, arms or face, aren't as strong... and i lose the fabric association. ( . ) twice informants remarked that, in design terms, art should work "any way". [stimulus ] art works any way. good art. good art you can turn any way and it'll work. ( . ) reading perceptual cues informants frequently looked for cues to identify both content and depth. (stimulus ) the white line that's supposed to infer chin bottom, between the face and the neck, it doesn't work as a shadow, and it doesn't help push the neck back from the face. ( . ) "reading" an image was also described in terms of timing or pacing. in some places he tends to slow down the eye where he works with detail, then he gives it some sort of quiet area where there is less descriptive form. ( . ) for the most part, informants relied on familiar traditions in art to provide cues for depth and space. they expected these cues to be done "correctly", following "formulas" or "institutions". yes, [depth is created by] the contrast. that's the old academic school for illusionism: images that possess contrast will appear that they're coming forward. the reduction of contrast will create the illusion of space. and this is exactly the formula i'm seeing here. ( . ) it gives the illusion of space and depth, but it's not visually correct. an artist who understands this would do it correctly, using renaissance perspective. so it's not even working within the institution. ( . ) several informants commented on the fact that they tend to "read" more than they "see" in a picture. this was described in terms of "imagining", "filling in", and "knowing". it appears that images, as well as parts of images, serve as cues for both memory and associations with real-world experience. that's one thing with high resolution [images.] you often imagine more detail than is really read there. the photo goes halfway, then the brain goes the rest of the way. ( . ) reading art as a process to a lesser extent than expected, images were "read" in terms of technical process. while there were frequent discussions and conjectures about the technical processes that might have been used to create images, technical processes did not play a large part in describing the appearance of an image. in response to stimulus , one informant used evidence of brushwork as a cue that it was painted. this image has irregularity. i can read his handwriting. i call it handwriting, but i mean his brushwork. ( . ) in response to stimulus , another informant referred to a technical process in computer graphics in terms of its impact on the viewer's attention. in terms of the output, the flower, the spiraling one, is a much higher resolution, and therefore will get a person's interest in a way that a basic bitmap like the first one never will.^( . ) "computer language" appeared to have signifiers of its own. informants identified features peculiar to computer graphics. ...this particular one, compared to what computer things can do, is very primitive. all the non-gestural indications of computer language, visual language, are very rough and raw and very crude in this drawing. ( . ) however, five informants identified the pixel graphic of stimulus as a needlepoint or weaving. three of these informants were computer artists or computer art educators. it would appear that there are different kinds of signifiers or indicators of computer graphic techniques and processes, and not all types are recognizable to everyone who works in computer graphics. reading art historical references most of the informants appeared familiar with different kinds of art historical references, although they did not always apply them correctly. art historical references took on a general, synoptic kind of quality in some statements; that is, a name was used to sum up a whole body of techniques and ideas about making and responding to art, like a kind of shorthand code. there are various art forms around that, from a very simple contour line, to very realistic, and impressionistic, to a pointillist representation of a table, through to the cubist representation of a cubist bust in the corner. ( . ) parts of images were often identified directly with styles or artists, particularly in stimulus . that [lattice work] comes out of mondrian, that geometric kind of style. ( . ) i see picasso in the two-nosed woman... a very guernica image. i see piet mondrian in the bright, bright primary colors... ( . ) one informant described knowledge of art historical signifiers as a kind of vocabulary that is passed between artists and thus to the viewer. an artist like david hockney looks at picasso and says, "i share that vision. i want to celebrate that vision". so what he's doing in works like this - and many of his other works - even when he does photography, he does cubist photography. he shares that vision, using something picasso never did, as far as i know. he never did do photography. but if he did, it would look like david hockney. so what's happened is that there's a certain vocabulary that's come through in the th century. ( . ) the same informant pointed out that, "knowing art history, i can read his little games, his puns, and i love them". other informants described this kind of literacy as "art about art" and "statements about making art". they referred to a kind of knowledge about styles that can be "read". although informants were not asked at any time to identify art historical referents or artists, four informants recognized the work of george littlechild, the painter of stimulus ; one informant recognized the work of ned green, the computer artist of stimulus ; and six informants identified referents to picasso and to pointillism in stimulus . three informants identified stimulus as the work of david hockney. in several cases, this knowledge determined the way the images were read. so, knowing that it's david hockney, and knowing his interest in cubism and the breaking down of space, i can see what he's doing. ( . ) knowledge of art historical referents appeared to enrich the viewing experience for most informants. i find it just a lot of fun, because these are all classic styles in art history. there's cubism, there's pointillism, there's the theater. i see this shadow of the modern office chair as the evolution of furniture and design. and the bowl with flowers in it is sort of a classic, almost a cliché in painting. ( . ) art as a visual game the verb "play", in various tenses, was used more than any other verb to describe the intentions of the artists who created stimuli and . there was a consensus of belief that these artists intended to engage the viewer, and to communicate with the viewer on different levels. yes, i think [stimulus ] is a successful image. because it creates a context for the viewer to again get involved with the image. it has linked the visual elements together in a way that causes you to be involved in a search-and-find kind of way, an intellectual game with the image, as well as an appreciation of the way the elements are put together in terms of a design. ( . ) the "play" of the artists was in almost all cases perceived as conceptual. their intentions were described with phrases like "playing with perspective in a joking manner", "playing with issues", "trying to make a point", "bending and molding laws of art". the viewer's response was also described in conceptual terms, such as "figuring out how thing relate to each other", "studying what it represents", and "pondering" the themes. summary informants did not tend to "read" images in terms of elements and principles of art, although composition and elements were described as guiding the movement of the eye. images were examined from the standpoint of how they might reflect visual aspects of the natural physical world. they were also read for artistic traditions such as the use of perspective or contrast for depth cues, and according to art historical referents. most of all, informants "read" images as a kind of mental puzzle, as "shared" knowledge, or as a "game" to be played with the artist. thus informants tended to "read" images conceptually, based on their knowledge of art, as much as perceptually, or based on immediate visual evidence. space since the domain analysis revealed an emphasis on different kinds of "space" in images, particular attention was paid to comments and concepts about space during the interviews. in addition, informants were often prompted to clarify types of space and the use of space in different stimuli. two-dimensional space in descriptions of stimulus , informants freely equated traditional matrix-based art forms such as needlepoint with pixel-based computer graphics. i assume it's a computer-generated image, although it could just as easily have been an image that was produced by stitchery or needlework, given the grid pattern that developed on it. ( . ) a informant who identified stimulus as "some kind of sewn image", rather than a computer graphic, used terminology from computer graphics to describe the image regardless. it would be a fairly low-resolution image, because the colors seem to be in fairly large chunks, simulating a sewn image. ( . ) the terms "flat", "overlap", and "positive" and "negative" were used more than any other terms to describe two-dimensional compositions. there seemed to be a consensus that parts of images could overlap in space if they were "co-planar", or on the same picture plane, without any artistic indication of depth or thickness. however, this concept frequently was in conflict with real-world knowledge, particularly in response to stimulus . the only depth is by overlap. the imposed head or face image over the horse figure against that yellow field. why the horse is in front of this particular border may be to clarify that the horse is standing on the earth. but i can't see any reason for it to be overlapped. unless that's the reason. ( . ) most images were considered to be two-dimensional or "overlapped" if artistic devices were more obvious than real-world references. (stimulus ) we're not dealing with an illusion of space there, we're only reminded of the geometric design of the parallelogram.., but there's no depth of field here. ( . ) the terms negative and positive space were used by five informants to describe areas of design in all images but stimulus . three of the informants discussed negative and positive space in terms of "ambiguity" or "integration". the negative image is important, because without it you can't have a positive.., it's ambiguous, as to the positive and negative. for example, between the horse legs is a negative space, but the color, the space has been treated equally important in terms of color, color-mixing, and intensity. ( . ) informants indicated that it was important for an artist to preserve the sense of flatness by emphasizing a kind of equality among elements in two-dimensional images. areas which shifted in terms of space stood out. (stimulus ) it's a d image with a slight hint of the d in the image of the face on top of the horse. ( ) when this occurred, three informants checked the information against other areas in order to verify whether the image was indeed flat or d. (stimulus ) [the image is] almost d the way the white outline goes around the object. it almost seems raised, to me. but it's basically a flat image. there's no sort of three- dimensional contours or textures relationships there, it's all sort of a flat image ( . ) several informants felt quite strongly about definitions of space and the kinds of images to which they applied. one informant had difficulty with the term "space" applied to a two-dimensional traditional art image, although the same informant talked about space in response to a two- dimensional hardcopy of a three-dimensional computer graphic. (stimulus ) you're talking about a flat painting, or a picture of a flat painting in my hand, and asking me about space in it... and i see no space. it's like a collage, or mosaic of images, just sort of glued one on top of each other, flat.^( . ) there was a definite impression that collage work, needlework, and mosaics are flat or two-dimensional, and are therefore synonymous with two-dimensional space. identification of two-dimensional space therefore seemed dependent to a large extent on identifying specific mediums. three-dimensional space one informant remarked that the term space "conjures up an idea of three dimensions and illusionism, rather than things that are stacked and layered in a two-dimensional way" ( . ). however, in describing three-dimensional space, several informants referred to the idea of multiple "planes" or "grounds". (stimulus ) this is three-dimensional. there's obviously several planes. there's the plane where his feet are resting, there's the plane where the table top is, and there seems to be this plane behind him, defined by this yellow stripe, which gives the impression that there might be another plane there.^( . ) informants perceived images as receding or advancing spatially through the planes. because of the graduated depth, and everything seems to recede spatially in a very regular way. very ordered way. ( . ) informants also used words like "centered", "from the edges", or "to the middle of the picture" to connect the idea of planes to the idea of the format, and composition within the format. it seems like the images that are forward, or the foreground, are collected on the edges of this particular piece. ( . ) the idea of illusionism did not appear to be antithetical to the idea of planes or grounds for informants with strong backgrounds in traditional art. so this is a very illusionistic image. i do get the sense of a foreground, the middle ground, the background. ( . ) however, two informants with expertise in computer art distinguished between the idea of planes and the notion of a "void". in a void, there's nothing there unless you put something there. it's not like a drawing program where you draw on a plane. ( . ) the idea of the "void" was described in terms of working with "objects," and compared to the idea of physical forms in the real world. when you work in the void, you work with objects. you can describe it as assembling these things, like assembling the universe; all these planets and things live in the void and make up the universe as we know it. same thing.^( . ) in order to ascertain whether or not an image was three-dimensional, informants examined the stimuli for specific depth cues. all informants appeared to have extensive knowledge of different kinds of techniques for creating space or illusions of space. three-dimensional space was described both in terms of simulation or techniques for illusionism, as well as real-world depth, and informants were specific in delineating techniques. no, there's no attempt to simulate d, or create d, either by doing a sculpture, or a montage, or making the face recede, or using perspective. everything's right here in one frame, on top of each other but not further back. ( . ) the idea of physical distance played an important part in determining three-dimensionality. i asked informants what clues they would use to determine a sense of distance. "scaling" and "size" were cited most frequently. the reduction of size: the flowers in the foreground are larger, and as we move towards that depth of field the size of these objects is being reduced. ( . ) "aerial perspective" and "depth of field" were also cited as important indicators of depth which are peculiar to three-dimensional images. informants did not tend to identify perspective in terms of one-point, two-point, or three-point perspective. "perspective" or "perspectival views" were used as terms synonymous with the viewpoint of the viewer, rather than applied to structural views of objects or images. five informants used their own bodies as referents for depth; one perceived both depth and height in relation to his own body in response to stimulus . my vanishing point of course is in the very center. my horizon line would go directly through the equator of the picture, if you will. so i'm standing here, and i'm looking straight through. i'm standing on the ground, and i'm not looking up or looking down. ( . ) six informants found combinations of three-dimensional and two-dimensional space disconcerting. in response to stimulus , informants identified mixtures of two- dimensional, three-dimensional and orthographic spatial aspects as "puzzling", "irritating", "confused", and "unlikely". for this reason, three informants perceived it as a "puzzle", a "whimsy", or a "game". it would almost be a whimsy, in a sense. it's very.., almost surrealistic in the way things are visually and spatially jumbled, or not oriented. ( ) another took a harder view. whoever did this, they're all over the place. visually, it just doesn't work. ( . ) summary of space two-dimensional informants equated the matrix-based art forms of pixel graphics and needlework, and freely mixed terminology used to describe both mediums. negative and positive space and overlapping shapes were perceived as co-planar, or as being integrated on the picture plane. informants expected artwork in specific mediums such as fabric art or collage to be two-dimensional. they also expected two-dimensional art to be consistently two-dimensional, and were confused if elements of illusionism were incorporated. therefore, equality among elements in two-dimensional art was most important. while informants were definite in their views about two - dimensionality, there was some confusion in relating the term "two-dimensional" to the term "space". three-dimensional three-dimensional space was equated with the idea of multiple planes or grounds, and with the idea of a "void". informants cited extensive knowledge of techniques for creating space, such as perspective systems, reduction of scale, depth of field, and aerial perspective. "perspective" was equated with "viewpoint" (rather than systems such as three-point perspective), and informants used their own bodies as a referent. again, informants were puzzled if three-dimensional space was not consistent. sensory elements of art two-dimensional shape while the term "two-dimensional" was frequently and voluntarily applied to the term "space" by all informants, the term "two-dimensional" was applied to "shape" by only one informant. if i were to take a petal off a flower, for example, i'd be taking away d triangular shapes.^( . ) generally, shapes were referred to as "spaces", "areas", "regions" or "images". the dress was filled in, in a crude computerish manner. there's no time taken to scale the pattern, or tweak it so it curves around and make it look three-dimensional. in other words, it's totally two-dimensional. it just looks like a space filled in. ( . ) three-dimensional shape only one informant made frequent reference to three- dimensional shapes, but referred to them as "basic" shapes. he also included two-dimensional shapes in his descriptions of basic shapes. it's very basic shapes. in other words, the cylindrical shapes are very, very clearly defined, the circle, the triangular shapes, the cube shapes - so you have all your basic shapes.^( . ) generally, informants referred to three-dimensional shapes as "objects", or by name, such as "flower" or "chair". line lines created by continuums of adjacent pixels in stimulus were compared to "stitches" by three informants. pixels in computer graphics were differentiated from stitches in needlework or weaving by their "regularity", flatness, and spacing.^the weight of the lines did not appear to be a factor in differentiating between them, since it was perceived that computers were capable of generating lines of different widths. an "inconsistency" of line, which was described as variations of pressure or color in line, was highly valued. all eight informants expressed positive responses to lines that were "gestural" or which had "gradients". four informants commented on the gradient properties of the vertical line on the right side of stimulus . it was said by one informant to "fluctuate with tonality", although a informant who had expertise with computers described it in computer terms: there's a dithered line, that's a gradient line, on this side... it's "ping-ponged", so that it starts off, and when it gets to the middle it goes back on itself. so it starts out blue, goes to the red, then goes from red back to the blue again. ( . ) contour lines in stimulus , which evidenced variations that were not systematic or computer-generated, were described at length and in detail by three informants. there's more to line.., every line is different. one line is a sheer color. the next line is supported with a red line on the inside. here it's supported with an orange, he's mixed some of his orange with it... if you just go around, if you start looking at this structure, this is a line he's working on not in a systematic manner.^( . ) all informants appeared aware that there were different kinds of line and styles of line. he's got a watercolor feel, where you get that blobby line that fades off with the touch of the brush - the blue and orange. he's got a very unique pointillist kind of style in the table... and he has a very simple line drawing here of the chair. ( . ) informants expressed dislike for lines that were perceived as "mechanical", "electronic", or "computer- esque", but were unable to give specific rationales or to differentiate between graphic and computer mediums in any way that supported the dislike. all informants were aware of "implied" lines and their importance in both guiding eye movement through the composition and creating illusions. pattern "pattern" was defined in terms of "a multiplication", as "re-ccurring", and as "repeatable". pattern appeared to be most noticeable when it was global, as in the allover repeated flowers of stimulus . five informants were concerned with interpreting the global patterns of stimulus , or "figuring it out". one returned repeatedly to this image throughout the interview until he said he "got it". informants rarely mentioned local pattern voluntarily. most informants did not use the word "pattern" to describe patterned areas in stimulus and , even when prompted to notice and describe these areas in detail. texture six informants distinguished between texture in original art and the appearance of texture in reproduced art. (stimulus ) well, assuming that it's actually texture and not something simulating texture - which is hard to tell because this is not the original - it looks almost like finger-painted on, or with a very solid-ended brush. ( . ) three informants evidenced fine visual acuity when describing parts of images less than a centimeter in reproduction size. (stimulus ) the second thing i notice is that these little circles in the squares look like three-dimensional metallic objects with shiny paint on them. like thumb tacks, or blobs of paint? they have little highlights on their edges. which gives the illusion they're sitting out from the surface. they probably actually are. ( . ) texture was described in terms of an "activity", a "quality", and an "illusion". texture was also equated by three informants with a kind of "pattern". it ranges from a very, very, very soft focus in the center, to an almost bark-like texture pattern of the intertwined branches, to the smooth edges of the petals of the flowers, and the pattern texture on the leaves. ( . ) color in the initial descriptions of images before prompting, only the two art educators used such color terms as "analogous", "complementaries", "primaries", and "secondaries". all informants were prompted to describe color in terms of "palette" or "scheme" and "color theory". four informants were unsure of the meaning of the term "palette" itself. one informant used the term "palette" to describe a color scheme in stimulus - "so that we have a palette that ranges in analogous colors from yellows through greens" ( . ) - and used the same word to describe color in terms of the artist's intention in stimulus two - "the palette seems to deal with color in both naturalistic and more imaginative forms" ( . ). therefore "palette" appeared to have two different meanings. most informants responded to prompts regarding the palette used in images by identifying local colors of specific areas, which created a third meaning. one informant objected to the use of terms like scheme and palette altogether. not a color scheme. i hate that word, anyways. i often run across that word used to talk about color, and by a dictionary it's in use, but "scheme" by definition does not have any relation to the way people use color. "scheme" would be more like a design intention. ( . ) "color" was generally perceived as a kind of artistic vehicle for generating response. color was frequently identified with "excitement", "vibrancy" and "fun". it was also used frequently as a cue that signaled edges or a change of shapes, as well as a depth cue. (stimulus ) the depth is that the color in this figure is colorful, and the background is no color, except for this line on the side. so this appears to be a figure that is flat, against a field. so it's a figure on a ground. ( . ) "cool" and "warm" colors were also used as depth cues by two informants. (stimulus ) because of the use of the color, the warm colors, the cool colors on the face, the cheeks do appear to be three-dimensional. ( . ) two informants in computer graphics emphasized color processing in the reproduced images. printing only has four colors that it can represent... when they do printing, they do it like pointillism. so when you look at it up close, you can see the dot pattern - but when you get far away it's like pointillism, it blends. your eye is made to do the blending.^( . ) these informants emphasized that the human eye is never limited to seeing "color schemes" or even compartments of local color, since any color is made up of many colors. there's way more... there's about a million colors in that, if you really look at the second one. whereas in the first one there's maybe ten. i'm talking about shades of a certain color. that's the way you see in any given time. you might see in millions of colors. ( . ) therefore identification of color depended on the degree to which a color is pure or made up of different color dots. irregardless of how they were made, if you did a color analysis of the range of colors in both of them, they're both there. there's just as much color in here, it's just that the appliqué of the third one is flat color, larger areas. ( . ) tone tone was frequently described in terms of "focus". it was also perceived as a result of lighting, and as a cue for depth. (stimulus ) someone's taken the time to make a tone. from the neck to the head, for instance, there's a tone under the neck to give the illusion that she may actually have a chin protruding outwards. one shoulder is in shadow, and there does seem to be a shade going up one side of the body, like there's a light source over here. ( . ) tone was also identified in terms of color contrast, which again was used as a depth cue. in two-dimensional images, contrast was perceived to create flat layers that enabled the perception of shapes. in three-dimensional imagery, color contrast was related to the integration of spatial "grounds". summary of elements shape the term "shape" itself was rarely used. two- dimensional shapes were called "spaces", "areas" or "regions" in all four stimuli. three-dimensional shapes were referred to as "objects" or "forms" or by their names, such as "flower" or "chair". in both cases, the term "dimensional" was not used in relation to shapes. line lines created by continuums of pixels were compared to "stitches", and differentiated by their regularity, flatness, and spacing. "inconsistency" in terms of "jaggedness" was not a factor in differentiating, but variations of hand pressure were. other than in terms of hand-pressure, informants were unable to rationalize a dislike for mechanical, electronic lines. informants perceived implied lines if they were part of global patterns, or if they contributed to illusions of depth. pattern pattern was most noticeable, and termed "pattern", when it was global. the term pattern was most frequently used in descriptions of stimulus , which had a radiating, receding global pattern. informants described local pattern in terms of repeated elements, but did not tend to use the actual word "pattern". texture informants distinguished between texture as a physical surface and as an illusion. the term texture was most frequently used in descriptions of stimulus , an oil painting. texture was perceived as an "activity" or "quality". informants were particularly aware of nuances in the physical surfaces of pictures, such as "impasto". the word texture was also used to describe or replace "pattern". color most informants did not understand or relate to color as a "scheme" or "palette" in the formalist sense of "analogous" or "complementary" schemes. color was generally described in terms of local color, and used as a cue to discern edges of shapes. color was identified globally with "excitement", "vibrancy", and "fun". it was pointed out that since any one color "contains" all other colors in both visual perception and in four-color printing, the perception of color is a matter of degree on a continuum, rather than a categorization. tone tone was frequently described in terms of "focus". it was perceived to be a result of global lighting, and as a depth cue. in two-dimensional images, changes in tone enabled the perception of shapes. in three-dimensional images, tonal contrasts were related to the integration or the contrast of different planes. thus tone was perceived as a global element, as was pattern. formal principles formal balance the four informants who referred to "balance" used the term in the context of "symmetry". by "symmetry" they meant the centering of space and objects. the idea of centering was related to the picture plane. in terms of the image on the ground that i'm looking at, it's organized in almost a totally symmetrical way, in that it's centered in the picture plane. ( . ) seven informants did not respond to prompts regarding the asymmetrical positioning of the vertical line on the right in stimulus . it's pretty straight forward. she looks as though she's right in the center, very symmetrical. very composed. it's anti-baroque. classically oriented. it's a formal positioning of things. ( . ) informal balance one informant disagreed, and found the asymmetrical line to be an important compositional element. the line really does make a lot of difference. otherwise the pattern-like quality of the form would be entirely isolated from the format. ( . ) "asymmetry" generally was perceived in terms of deliberate manipulations to make images "irregular" by three informants. "asymmetrical" images were also considered as "balanced" by two of these informants. (stimulus ) i'd say it was asymmetrical... it's a type of spiral, but there's a lot of work put in there to make it look asymmetrical. and yet balanced at the same time. ( . ) unity another informant discussed the "unity" of stimulus on the basis of its continuously reducing depth of field. four informants attributed unity to the radiating global pattern. the vines are like the flowers. they're weaving in and out of the foreground. i see more of a circular pattern, a serpentine pattern, whereas the flowers are definitely part of this giant radiation.^( . ) concepts about composition and unity were therefore strongly related to global patterns within the format, especially in response to stimulus . variety variety between elements was perceived by all informants to be a purposeful manipulation by the artist to keep the viewer's interest. variety was discussed in terms of perceptual interest as well as conceptual, although the emphasis was on the conceptual. (stimulus ) the elements work together, in order to create enough diversity, to keep you interested, to keep your eye moving through the space... to give a hint of something more happening than first appears, that keeps your mind working through, and tries to work through what is really going on with it. ( . ) clarity of image clarity of image was the most prevalent theme identified in the interview data. informants were concerned that the techniques, styles, and mediums in all imagery be consistent, and that the composition be symmetrical. five informants found stimulus "cluttered", "too busy", and a "mish-mash of styles and surfaces". one informant had "the urge to run to my paper cutter and cut this up into at least six different areas" ( . ). another informant was visibly distressed. i'm objecting to the mish-mash of styles and surfaces. like, what is this yellow thing? what is that? the elements of this picture drive me nuts. it's like one of those pictures of, "do you make these mistakes in your art?" ( . ) informants were concerned that lighting be uniform, not inconsistent; that edges of shapes were defined; and that expected evidence, such as the detail on leaves in stimulus , be consistent with the detail on flowers. repetition in stimulus , repetition was seen in terms of the replication of a single piece of imagery, rather than a series of alike or similar elements. they look like they've been done on a computer. the way the shapes, once they've been done once, can repeat endlessly off. ( . ) informants described this kind of repetition in terms of "images copied", "recursion", and "duplication". particularly in response to stimuli and , the word "repetition" was used to describe different elements that shared a feature which made them more alike than dissimilar. proximity of elements the "success" of an image was evaluated by one informant in terms of continuity of eye movement in the format. he believed that an implied diagonal line created a sense of proximity of elements in stimulus . it's successful because of its structure, its composition, its color. there's a diagonal line that starts in the lower left by the horse's foot, going up through the head to the top right. good structure, good composition. ( . ) emphasis individual elements were rarely described in terms of emphasis. terms such as "focal point" and "isolation" of elements were not used. "emphasis" in stimulus was equated with the symmetry of the image; in stimulus with the "pervasive" and "merged" pattern of the vines and flowers, as well as the composition of what was described by four informants as the "vortex". in stimulus , emphasis was equated with the narrative aspects of what was described as a "circus" theme by four informants; and in stimulus with the conceptual "game" between the artist and the viewer. therefore, formal principles such as balance and emphasis as well as cognitive themes like "carnival atmosphere" or "art historical game" were perceived to be emphasized, rather than specific elements within compositions. lighting lighting was perceived as something that should be continuous throughout an image; that is, as a global, unifying device that should affect all parts of an image equally. evidence of inconsistent lighting was described as "cosmic", "false", "indeterminate", and "confusing". three informants referred to traditional painting as something that doesn't have lighting, it "just is". other informants perceived the concept of "lighting" as something that an artist does on purpose, and discussed it on the strength of its "naturalness". lighting in both traditional art images and computer art was compared to natural light effects. (stimulus ) there are some things that are missing here that are in reality. and i would say that that is the lack of a light source, overall. if there were any light coming from the side, there would be shadows we would experience in reality. ( . ) lighting was cited as a cue for "perspective" or depth by all informants. informants felt that it was important that lighting be "continuous" if it were used at all, and affect all parts of an image equally in the way that chiaroscuro once did. for example, the old idea of chiaroscuro, of modeling, that would have to be done by going back into it, and playing with each individual one. ( ) the definition of continuous included the ideas that there be only one external light source, and that it cause regular effects such as shadows. there'd also be a spotlight casting light on it... a light source, like the sun behind you, and casting shadows. there's no obvious apparent source of light [in stimulus . ^( . ) three informants were concerned by the lack of shadows in what they otherwise described as a very "realistic" image, stimulus . where these things overlap there's no sense of shading or shadow-casting. they're so strongly lit there are no cast shadows, nor incidental shadows. so that's kind of false. ( ) five informants commented on the irregularity of the light source in stimulus . the irregularity was perceived as a result of procedures that "pasted" or "patched" the image together from one or more sources. the light often seems to be coming from all directions at once. and that's probably caused by the cutting and pasting and rotating of a single image to make an image like this. ( . ) the fact that computer images are created on a screen was perceived by one informant as affecting the way light and color are used in the final image. format the format itself was perceived as a kind of "container" for eye patterns or structural patterns. the composition always does depend on the format, not on the positive space. it happens from the edge of the piece. ( . ) three informants noticed the cropped edges of the image in stimulus . the toes are missing, and the very top of the head is sort of clipped off, like it's either been photocopied or something, as would be the usual thing that would produce that sort of clipping. or looking at an image that's not quite fully displayed on a computer screen. ( . ) two informants commented on the scale of the computer format in terms of its impact on the viewer. the scale is different in these images too. everything's down to magazine size. ( . ) one informant pointed out that the experience of the computer image is different in hardcopy than it is on screen. the colors on the monitor may not match the colors which will be output by various hardcopy devices. he pointed out that the computer artist has to be aware of potential variables that occur during electronic reproduction, while a traditional artist has control over his image from beginning to end. summary of formal principles balance the idea of balance was related to that of global, symmetrical organization. asymmetry was equated by most informants with irregularity, or deliberate manipulations of local areas for particular effects. unity unity was perceived as a global effect resulting from consistency in depth of field, such as consistent reduction of forms or focus, or from global patterns such as a radial composition of elements. variety variety was considered by most informants to include conceptual and perceptual information, though the manipulation of ideas was referred to as a technique to maintain the viewer's interest. clarity of image the importance of clarity of image was the most prevalent theme in all interviews. informants looked for evidence that techniques, styles and mediums were consistent in each image, and compositions symmetrical. repetition the term repetition was used equally as much in two different senses: the replication or copying of a single element, and a series of elements which were more alike than dissimilar. emphasis informants perceived emphasis as a kind of global organization. informants referred to allover "pervasive" or "merged" patterns, as well as unifying cognitive themes like "carnival atmosphere". thus emphasis was equated with notions about each artist's overall intention or purpose, rather than with the idea of emphasized elements. lighting lighting was also perceived as a global, unifying device, and informants looked for consistency. informants distinguished between art styles which stressed decorative effects and therefore ignored conventional light sources, and artworks which sought to transcribe or incorporate natural, illusionistic lighting. effects of lighting were used as depth cues to determine irregularities in the original surface of artworks; to verify consistency in three-dimensional illusions; and to verify the "naturalness" of simulated realism. format format was perceived as a kind of "container" for structural patterns and imagery. format is not only "magazine scale" in computer graphics, but may also be different in hardcopy than on the screen. chapter v componential analysis introduction all of the data from the literature search, domain analysis, comparative taxonomies, and the interpretation of interviews was compared and contrasted. the componential analysis has three parts. first, design vocabulary used in art education and computer graphics is listed. these terms are derived from the literature review and from the interviews. many terms are comparable (tables - ) and significantly expand formalist concepts. they are further discussed. other terms have no counterpart, and appear unique to one field of image-making or the other; these terms are listed following the comparison tables. the second part is a componential analysis of elements and principles in traditional art and in computer graphics. in the third part, many issues raised in the literature search are correlated with problems identified in the domain analysis and by informants during interviews. these include similarities, differences, and dichotomies between formalism and computer graphics. . design vocabulary the componential analysis of design vocabulary is presented in four tables: in table , vocabulary used to designate design elements as well as parts of design elements, such as "corner" in traditional art and "vertex" in computer graphics; in table , vocabulary used to describe characteristics and properties of design elements, such as "organic" shapes and "freehand" polygons; in table , vocabulary used to describe the image as a whole, such as "symmetry" or "global regularity", as well as vocabulary used to describe positions or locations of design elements within the format; in table , terms that describe procedures and techniques for structuring images. the componential analysis of design vocabulary seeks to compare differences in terminology, and in this study, to describe areas where traditional concepts have been expanded to accommodate material derived from data-gathering. each table has two columns so that design vocabulary in the two fields can be compared side-by-side. computer graphics terms are highlighted to represent conceptual areas which appear to expand meanings in formalist theory. an outline of how these terms expand traditional art theories follows each table. table design vocabulary: elements art education ^ computer graphics element primitive mark, point pixel; dot-per-inch line, path,^continuous mark, moving point row; segment; vector contour line silhouette line cross-contour,^interior contour line contour line connecting line segment; vector corner vertex; node, handle edge bounding side pattern default,^selected,^or created patterns;^area fills; hatch patterns allover, continuous pattern (local) fill,^opacity map, texture map surfaces materials plane bitmap; polygon two-dimensional shape polygon three-dimensional shape, d projection solid object; polyhedral illusion simulation projection extrusion; loft plastic shapes extruded polygons area region positive shape region; polygon; polyhedral negative shape, space bitmap; void soft-edge shadow penumbra,^fall-off highlight specular highlight value contrast conceptual expansions of terminology for design elements, table mark, point <^pixel; dot-per-inch the computer graphic terms expand the notion of "mark" to emphasize different forms of output line, path, continuous mark, moving point <^row; segment; vector the computer graphic terms emphasize the result of working in different spatial environments corner <^vertex; node, handle the computer graphic terms indicate the generative potential of shapes.^shapes have no "fixed" corners. pattern <^default, selected or created patterns; area fills allover,^continuous pattern (local)^<^fill,^opacity map, texture map in computer graphics, patterns are ready-made. surface <^material in traditional analog media, the surface of an object in a picture is the same thing as its side or face. ^in computer graphics, the surface, called "material", can be manipulated independently of faces, called "facets" plane <^bitmap; polygon "bitmap" and "polygon" clarify notions of plane as either a surface or a shape three-dimensional shape, d projection <^solid object, polyhedral the computer graphic terms clarify the notion of d shape as a form in an environment table design vocabulary: characteristics and properties art education ^ computer graphics character regularity characteristics properties curve arc,^semi-circle, spline diagonal slope on an angle skewed broken angular dashed or dotted hatched zigzag broken jagged edges jaggies,^steps, staircase effect soft edge dithered, feathered hard edge bounding sides decorative planar organic, biomorphic freehand polygons turned rotated distorted irregular concrete visible symmetrical duplicated and flipped simple regular busy noise mirrored ping-ponged repeated duplicated, copied; swept; replicated; arrayed; instanced actual positive by default negative reverse opaque solid matte flat light glossy shiny,^reflective; illuminated weight intensity, thickness bold thick delicate thin local or objective color selected color optical color spotlight color shade lightness intensity saturation overlapping co-planar conceptual expansions of terminology for characteristics and properties, table characteristics <^properties the notion of "properties" credits characteristics to the element, rather than to the format or the element seen in context diagonal <^slope the term "slope" allows a perception of diagonals as "grades" interacting with each other, rather than with the format hard edge <^bounding sides the term "bounding sides" emphasizes the idea of space around the shape rather than the shape busy <^noise the computer term "noise" expands the perceptual response to include cognitive reaction repeated <^duplicated, copied; swept; arrayed; instanced the computer graphic terms emphasize the notion of exact equivalents copied in a series intensity <^saturation "saturation" indicates the measurable extent, on a scale of - %. , to which a color can be intense in computer graphics. table design vocabulary: imagery art education ^ computer graphics design, graphics two-dimensional graphics picture rendering three-dimensional space; illusionism void format hardcopy;^environment pictorial analysis disaggregation multiples hardcopies; replications surface image picture plane screen; matrix; bitmap grid bitmap; wireframe matrix bitmap mosaic block-pixed bitmap composition structure position location depth devices depth cues lighting ambient lighting axis intersection symmetry global regularity direction orientation radial balance rotation;^mirroring allover pattern (global) continuous pattern density resolution perspective field of view point of view camera placement palette color resolution color scheme color tables conceptual expansions of terminology for imagery, table picture <^rendering in a computer rendering, features of the picture such as point of view, field of view, and lighting can be manipulated independently of the objects in the picture. in traditional analog media, these features are inseparable from the content of the picture. three-dimensional space; illusionism < void the computer term "void" expands the notion of a three- dimensional space from a surface to an environment format <^hardcopy; environment "hardcopy" expands the notion of one unique original, and "environment" expands the notion of the format as a surface plane pictorial analysis <^disaggregation in "disaggregation", elements are perceived in terms of a process of reduction, rather than of integration or addition multiples <^hardcopies; replications the computer terms emphasize the idea of a digital rather than an analog original picture plane <^screen; matrix; bitmap the computer terms refer to the location and orientation of areas rather than to the idea of a "window" matrix <^bitmap mosaic <^block-pixed bitmap the computer terms allow matrix-based traditional art to be seen in a spatial tradition unlike the picture plane composition < structure "structure" emphasizes the notion of building rather than designing or arranging symmetry <^global regularity "global regularity" focuses on the composition of a unit, rather than areas that "match" density <^resolution "resolution" emphasizes the distribution of the medium on the surface rather than the depth perspective <^field of view the computer term places the viewer within the field of view, rather than establishing the viewer as an external observer table design vocabulary: procedures and techniques art education ^ computer graphics techniques procedures mediums program capabilities pigment pixels of light; dots of ink draw use coordinates, geometry freehand paint image development interpolation experimentation generation graphic design interaction perspective systems coordinate systems; geometry chiaroscuro flat shading, polygonal shading modeling continuous shading atmospheric perspective degrees of atmospherics aerial perspective degrees of transparency scaling of pattern or texture procedural modeling scaling resizing outlining framing repetition replication,^copying, duplication; sweeping; iteration; recursion conceptual expansions of terminology for procedures and techniques, table mediums <^program capabilities "program capabilities" afford interaction between mediums which are physically impossible in traditional art pigment <^pixels of light; dots of ink the computer terms indicate expansions in the properties and qualities of color image development <^interpolation "interpolation" emphasizes transitions between images as an averaging process, rather than a hierarchical succession experimentation <^generation "generation" emphasizes the idea of machine intervention in the creative process, using such intermediary devices as conversion to digits and algorithms graphic design <^interaction "interaction" emphasizes the role of the computer in affording a partnership during the creative process perspective systems <^coordinate systems; geometry the computer graphic terms indicate new capabilities of perspective systems in art, such as using a d void to create d output repetition <^replication, duplication, copying; sweeping; iteration; recursion the term "repetition" is not expansive enough to accommodate differences in the meanings of these computer graphics terms. the following art education terms do not appear to have any comparable meanings in computer graphics. motif rhythm calligraphic variety emphasis focal point weight center of interest dominant subordinate approximate symmetry monochromatic color scheme analogous color scheme complementary color scheme triadic color scheme shallow space dynamic passive intuitive expressive color "temperature" advancing or receding color ambiguous organic/biomorphic color field passage harmony proximity balance unity the following computer graphics terms do not appear to have any comparable counterparts in traditional art. iteration recursion fractals mathematically "grown" images transformation morphing digitization randomness stochastic variation mkray tracing self-illuminating effects filters hidden line algorithms . elements and principles a comparison of similarities and differences between elements and principles in traditional art and equivalent elements and principles in computer graphics afforded the following componential analysis of expansions in meaning or usage. .^two-dimensional space procedures for computer graphics are linked to different kinds of two- and three-dimensional space. in two-dimensional object-based systems, the idea of "co- planar" shapes replaces formalist ideas of "overlapping" shapes, and expands formalist ideas about design as an "arrangement" with computer graphic procedures for coordinate systems. bitmap systems in computer graphics may be equated with matrix-based forms of art. . two-dimensional shape formalist ideas about two-dimensional shapes as geometric, "decorative" or planar, with characteristics like "soft" and "hard" edges, are similar to the concept of polygons or planes in computer graphics. the idea of shape in computer graphics also includes spaces, areas, regions, or surfaces. two-dimensional shapes in computer graphics have different intentions, depending on the kind of space in which they are created. . three-dimensional space the idea of three-dimensional space in traditional artwork is constrained by the fact that images are flat areas on a picture plane. in computer graphics, three- dimensional space is a void in which objects are placed, and subsequently manipulated through such techniques as scaling, orientation and lighting. traditional perspective systems involve treating images in d space as d projections from a fixed viewpoint. computer procedures afford the expansion of traditional concepts about perspective through the use of coordinate systems and geometry; interactive points of view and depth of field; and special procedures for transparency and illumination. . three-dimensional shape in computer graphics, three-dimensional shapes are entities or objects which interact in actual geometric relationship to each other. this concept expands the formalist idea of three-dimensional shapes as illusionistic organizations of tone or contrast on a surface. . line line in formalist theory is perceived as an element with expressive characteristics, while in computer graphics line is literal. lines in computer graphics are generated via the computer, using different mathematical systems. a number of perceptual and conceptual characteristics of computer lines, such as aliased lines, lines with precise hatch patterns, or vectors on a z axis, expand the formalist dimensions. .^pattern a wide variety of procedures are used in computer graphics to create local patterns similar to those of traditional art. global, unifying procedures in computer graphics can also organize local elements. global pattern is created in computer graphics with procedures such as recursion or "mirroring". . texture rather than a surface quality, texture in computer graphics is defined as a form of rendering, such as bitmaps or bumpmaps. these procedures simulate reality but are applied uniformly, despite procedural modeling which increases illusionistic effects by "wrapping" texture around three-dimensional objects to give a perceptually-correct perspective. computer-driven procedures give a uniformity to texture that equates it more with formalist ideas of pattern. . color formalist notions of color "schemes" may be replaced with response to color brightness, key or intensity, value contrasts, and color saturation, since four-color separation and computer program palettes emphasize these kinds of qualities rather than schemes. the perception of color appears to be a matter of perceiving degrees on different continuums, rather than a categorization process. color is therefore perceived in relationship to variables of value or purity within each color. . tone the concept of tone in computer graphics is primarily concerned with uniform global effects rather than local contrast. it is determined by such global features as lighting, color intensity and resolution. the use of tone in terms of focus in computer graphics, through such procedures as illumination and transparency, also expands the formalist concept of tone as shading and modeling. local effects are achieved through the application of different kinds of shading procedures, as they are in traditional art. tone was found to serve as an aid to the perception of shapes, edges, and texture. tone also aids in the integration of planes. . formal image procedures play an important part in expanding the idea of an abstract "language". evidence of techniques and selections may be perceived as recognizable elements or "signifiers", whether they are techniques in art or algorithmic procedures in computer graphics. appropriated art historical signifiers also appear to be an important part of artistic language. the formal image can no longer be perceived as referring only to itself, with "permanent or residual aesthetic value". computer graphics demonstrate more precise ideas about "space" in images than have been defined in traditional art. ideas about space may be organizing principles rather than elements, as different kinds of artistic and mathematical spaces determine the kinds of activities which can occur in them. generative and interpolative procedures in computer graphics, as well as the replicability of the same image in different output modes, beg notions of what is original or "unique" in art. . balance ideas expressed by the informants about balance, symmetry and asymmetry in computer graphics tended to be described as local. however, the formalist principle of "balance" is related to that of global pattern in computer graphics. . unity concepts of resolution and lighting in computer graphics expand the number of formalist fundamentals which are believed to contribute to "unity". the computer image is unified by equivalency of color, medium, and resolution, and the degree to which lighting effects are consistent. . variety formalist ideas about variety depend on the dominance or subordination of sensory elements such as color and shape, and on contrasting characteristics of sensory elements such as hard edge/soft edge, matte/glossy, or patterned/solid. variety was not found to be an important principle in computer graphics. this study also found that variety is generally perceived in terms of conceptual theme variety rather than perceptual effects. . clarity of image clarity of image was found to be a significant factor in the perception of the image as a whole, whether traditional art or computer art. procedures in computer graphics afford consistency in techniques, styles and mediums. . repetition the formalist idea of repetition as a series of elements which are more alike than dissimilar is expanded by computer graphics to include the idea of replicating or duplicating a single element. the latter form of repetition creates a kind of fill, iteration, or equivalency of elements in a similar sense to that of modernist and minimalist art structure. . lighting in traditional art, the paint itself (or other media) is used to create the illusion of light. the content (i.e. objects represented in a d artwork) and the effects of lighting (i.e. the modeling) are inseparable. in computer graphics, objects and lighting are created separately and can be manipulated independently. in both traditional art and computer graphics, however, lighting can be a global, unifying device that creates both consistency and regularity between elements. as such, lighting is a compositional element. . format the "magazine" scale of / x " computer graphic hardcopy questions the assignation of formalist values to relationships between the scale of the visual content and the scale of the format, as well as the values assigned to scale in contemporary artworks. traditional concepts of perspective are expanded as the field of view in computer graphics seeks to enclose the image content, while traditional perspective directs attention to diminishing and receding elements. conclusion in conclusion, this conceptual analysis of elements and principles of art indicates that while some elements may be principles, some principles may be global elements. principles do not appear to be laws, criteria, or rules. images are perceived as units, with regular, irregular, consistent, or inconsistent features within those units. global elements such as tone, pattern, resolution or lighting aid in the consistency or regularity of images. the interior consistency or constancy of design elements is unlike formalist notions of harmony, which assume exterior criteria. . componential analysis of image-related issues the componential analysis of issues related to the visual structure of images is organized in three parts. first, conceptual similarities between computer graphic images and formalist images are described. second, differences between them are reviewed. third, conceptual dichotomies are created as a result of certain distinctions between formalist images and computer graphic images as well as distinctions in aesthetic response. similarities . computer graphics and formalist images rely on similar elements of art: line, point, pattern, texture, and shape. . computer graphics and formalist art share rational organization. . "formal roots" give traditional art "universality", while the international use of specific software programs causes a kind of "cultural colonization" (ettinger, ). . traditional art has schematas, or conventions for representation, as does computer graphics. . the idea of "signifiers" in both traditional images and computer images includes concrete evidence of specific techniques, selections, and procedures as much as an "abstract language". . traditional art is concerned with perceptual structures, such as modeling, pattern, or texture. in a similar vein, computer graphics use algorithms for perceptual structures. . in aesthetic study, visual and tactile characteristics (among other properties of artworks) can be discriminated and categorized (broudy, ). in computer graphics, visual and tactile characteristics are recognized and described. differences . in aesthetic study, discriminations among sensory elements are visually perceived (smith, ). in computer graphics, many elements are hidden from view or embedded in such procedures as hidden-line algorithms. . aesthetic study of conventional d images is premised on the fact that the structure is static, and has a typical consistency. the underlying structure in computer graphics is fluid, and may be hidden, manipulated, cut and pasted, or transformed. . formalist images are often described in terms of anthropomorphic qualities of character and personality, while characteristics of computer graphics are literal. . the formalist image is material and fixed. in computer graphics, the digital data is subject to transformation during output reproduction. . formalist art postulates an idea of permanent or residual value, while computer graphics are interactive and transformable. . formalism seeks to integrate, while computer graphics seeks to correlate. . the formalist image is considered to be unique and original, even when it appears as a multiple, as in printmaking. in computer graphics, the image is one of multiple interpolations or modification. it may also be the result of commercial software or public domain shareware. in these cases, the programmer as author has, by writing the program, constrained the user's originality; as hickman and wright pointed out, the programmer may even be seen as the artist, who makes art by offering an array of possibilities to others (hickman, ; wright, ). dichotomies . traditional artworks frequently contain evidence of handcrafted marks and "errors". the surfaces of computer graphics tend to be pristine, regular, and uniform. . in traditional art, elements are worked with, using principles. in computer graphics, principles are worked with, using elements. . traditional formalist theory emphasizes the significance of dominance and subordination, emphasis, and focal point, with elements interacting to create balance, harmony, or rhythm. in computer graphics, elements are downgraded into the kind of "visual fodder" described by wright ( ), which creates an equality and consistency between elements. . computer graphics seek to introduce chaos into order (in the mathematical sense) as a generative process, to circumvent the orderly and mechanical nature of the medium. conversely, formalist design seeks to bring order out of chaos (in the literary sense). . formalist theory postulates subjective external aesthetic references such as "balance", "harmony", or "beauty". computer graphics that simulate scientific referents in the fields of biology or astronomy are externally-directed and have objective criteria against which they can be evaluated. chapter vi implications for art education introduction during the past ten years, the field of art education has been influenced by models which equally emphasize studio practice, response to art, and the art historical context of artworks. the j. paul getty model for discipline-based art education has been particularly influential in north america. studio practice is concerned with the techniques and theories involved in the creation of art. two modes of response to art are encouraged: aesthetic response, particularly "scanning" for sensory elements and principles; and art criticism, or an evaluation of art in the context of aesthetic models and value systems. in art historical analysis, artworks are discussed in the context of chronological, cultural, and personal influences on artists throughout history. the findings of this study reveal implications for art educators in these four areas. implications for studio practice .^space as an integrating principle this study has revealed that the idea of space is very important in determining both the media used in traditional art and the kinds of systems used in computer graphics. ideas about space in computer graphics allow precise and detailed understandings about the construction of elements and the kinds of environments in which they operate. concepts of space in computer graphics may serve as models for the organization of elements and principles when creating artwork, in the same way they served as an organizational framework for the comparative taxonomies of concepts about elements and principles in this study (appendix e and f). in traditional studio courses, it may be useful to encourage students to begin not with emphasis on exploration of a medium, but instead, with the emphasis on investigation of spatial properties and relations. elements in artmaking may be considered as correlated to spatial properties. shapes, for example, can be evaluated not only in terms of type, but position, area or structure, surface, and edges in the context of different kinds of two and three-dimensional space. . cognitive factors formalist theory places great emphasis on affective experiences that result from working with elements. this study has confirmed the degree to which artmaking and artviewing are cognitive experiences, with artworks resulting from generative procedures as much as experimentation. in studio practice, for both groups of informants, expressive intentions were found to be balanced with attention to how and why. for example, techniques and procedures for making "textures" were well-articulated, particularly in computer graphics. reasons for making "textures" were particularly well-articulated in traditional art. the emphasis in both traditional art and computer art was on media as intermediaries for thought. the language used to express formalist theory was also found to be very affective and often anthropomorphic in intent when compared to design vocabulary in computer graphics. this study has investigated the extent to which such non-affective or objective ideas as schematas, "signifiers", and simulations affect both art making and art viewing. . the sequence and significance of elements a great deal of emphasis was placed by both the informants and the literature on the "man-made" mark, and issues surrounding the values implicit in this. many textbooks and course outlines traditionally begin with the element of "line", which reinforces the apparent importance of line, gesture and mark. however, there appears to be no reason, other than habit, why "line" should be the first element of art to be taught and applied in studio courses. the element of "line", as well as other elements, may not even be an important part of many art forms, including traditional two-dimensional art. for example, "line" was found not to be an important component of either matrix- based art or of color fields. based on the number of mentions, in computer graphics the element of line was found to be sixth in frequency in terms of informant reports. it may be fruitful, refreshing and disarming to change the sequence in which elements are taught in studio courses. it may also be appropriate to consider the relative significance of different elements and principles to different art forms. implications for aesthetic response .^the interrelationship of techniques and elements arbitrary separations of "studio techniques", "sensory elements", and "formal principles" in recent aesthetic models encourage the separation of processes or techniques from visual evidence and structure during aesthetic scanning. however, this study determined that not only are processes an important part of elements, but elements are also a vital part of processes. for example, the idea of "signifiers" in both traditional images and computer images includes evidence of specific techniques, selections and procedures as much as "abstract language". computer graphics in particular enable techniques and processes to be read in terms of both elements and principles, since mathematically-defined operations often leave specific kinds of visual evidence. algorithms unique to particular programs may be universally recognizable and form a kind of "cultural colonization" of computer imagery. in this sense, the findings of this study are reminiscent of recent studies which have explored the relationship of aesthetic frameworks to artwork that is bound to cultural and socioanthropological traditions. .^sensory discriminations the "language" of art is often taught as if elements and principles have clear distinctions, and as if discriminations can be made between them. discrimination, however, may be more complex than this. in this study, many sensory elements were found to be operating as formal principles, while formal principles often occurred as elements. for example, space, pattern and tone were found to be organizing and unifying characteristics as much as sensory elements of images. the textural quality of pixel/needlework surfaces was found to be uniformly pervasive, rather than locally isolated. conversely, asymmetry and repetition were often local elements as much as principles. .^standards of response ideas about "space" and "color" are in particular need of reevaluation by educators. renaissance and/or photographic perspective continue to be used as standards for responding to space in artwork. it would be useful to examine other concepts of space with students, including different forms of "artistic" space. ideas about "color schemes" in formalist theory were formulated at a time when the range of both traditional studio pigments and reproductive pigments was relatively limited. color "brilliance" relied on such effects as juxtaposed "complementaries". in teaching color theories, educators should account for the greatly expanded range of colors developed in all mediums (including many new ones) during the past twenty years, as well as the degrees of brilliance and intensity available in contemporary mediums. visualization technologies which exhibit color through light add another new dimension to the standards and terms by which the element of color is discussed. the highly sophisticated use of color in computer technologies further underscores the gap between formalist descriptions of color and contemporary applications. .^the relevance of formalist terms mention has previously been made (p. ) of formalist terms that were found to have no comparable meaning in computer graphics. it may be useful for art educators to evaluate other art forms such as images resulting from visual technology, animated art, site and environment art, performance art, and modernist artworks generally, to determine whether formalist terms are appropriate or relevant in other cases as well. rather than assuming that formalist terms are always applicable to all artwork, as was suggested by malcolm ( ), lauer ( ), and ocvirk et al ( ), regardless of medium, function or intent, aesthetic inquiry might more meaningfully be directed to contextual/situational analysis, in which, as weitz ( ) suggested, each art work is evaluated in terms that are relevant to it. this study emphasizes the fact that formalist theory is only one of many aesthetic models. it appears to be applicable to artwork which has formalism as its intention. it is misleading and confusing for teachers to discuss artwork in paradigmatic terms that are antithetical to the purposes and processes that governed the creation of the work in the first place. a paradigm can be justified only inasfar as it expands and enhances the perceptual and cognitive experiences of the viewer. this study has sought to describe ways in which computer terms and concepts are both similar and dissimilar to formalist terms, and to suggest ways in which the knowledge of concepts unique to computer graphics may expand and enhance an appreciation of traditional art as well as computer graphics. for example, educators might consider discussing traditional art in computer terms. such traditional media as weavings and mosaics have many things in common with pixel graphics (appendix e, p. ). two-dimensional, flat planes in traditional art have much in common, in terms of concept, types, shape structure, surface, and edges, with polygons in two-dimensional graphics (appendix e, p. ). implications for art criticism . aesthetic paradigms computer graphics have traditionally sought to simulate traditional art. early constructivist-oriented computer art emphasized formal relations of elements and principles of design. recent programs prioritize procedures for illustration and simulation, using effects-filters to simulate even the appearances of traditional art mediums such as watercolor or pastel and styles such as pointillism. an "aesthetics" of computer graphics has not been well- articulated. an aesthetic model for computer graphics ideally would account for the constraints and strengths of the medium, the potential of mathematically-based "elements" of art, the "marriage" of geometry and visible evidence, and the values implicit in simulation and appropriation. by teaching the history of computer graphics and focusing on emerging issues that distinguish computer graphics from traditional art, educators can help students to become more discerning consumers and producers of both. . the importance of terminology it is difficult to discuss computer graphics without a knowledge of the terminology. thirteen computer graphic terms (as noted on p. ) were found to have no comparable meanings in traditional art, and art education terms (as noted on p. ) were found to have no comparable application in computer graphics. one hundred and twelve art education terms were found to have meanings that do have a correlative in computer graphics (tables - ). however, of the computer graphic correlatives represent concepts which expand the meaning of traditional art education terms, or change the nature of its application (as noted in conceptual expansions of terminology, tables - ). unlike traditional design vocabulary, language is very specific in computer graphics. educators should encourage art students to learn and apply proper computer terminology to computer images. an evaluation of art education textbooks may be necessary to determine the degree to which they incorporate appropriate terminology. .^judging art this study found that even without knowledge of computer terminology, informants had strong and well- articulated opinions about computer graphics used as stimuli. stimulus , a recent d computer graphic, provoked both the greatest quantity and the highest quality of discussion about visual imagery. this graphic enabled intense and detailed examinations of issues, elements and principles, as well as techniques, in both fields. many issues described in this study, such as the value of the human gesture versus the mechanical mark, can serve as provocative starting points for discussing computer images. implications for art history .^the history of aesthetics this study found that art historical references are an important part of art appreciation, and that most informants could "read" images in terms of traditional art history. however, none of the informants "read" the two computer graphics in a historical context. while relatively short, the history of computer graphics is fascinating and has many correlatives with traditional art. for example, computer graphics have been produced as an art form for more than thirty years. during this time, different approaches have been taken that are linked to traditional art historical styles. pioneer efforts have also been made in simulating pure aesthetics, by computer- generating the characteristics of landmark artworks and pivotal art historical styles. notions about "ideal" aesthetic structures formed an important part of early computer graphics. a historical study of aesthetic explorations in computer graphics would enhance students' understanding of both the field of computer graphics and fine art. .^the history of studio practice as an art form, computer graphics has been led by developments in electronic capabilities. in this sense, the history of computer art could be studied together with traditional art forms such as painting. studio developments in traditional art, such as the development of oil paint, the notion of "portable" easel painting, and the creation of chemical pigments as well as entirely new mediums and grounds, have shaped output in traditional art. similar events in computer graphics are worth studying. the manipulation of color with a computer is subtractive on screen. all colors potentially exist on the screen and the user selects those which are appropriate, by manipulating the default palette. the traditional artist, on the other hand, is constrained to achieving color by aggregation. it would be interesting to examine palette potential in an art historical context. an art historical study could be made of developments in art resulting from artists' reactions to expanded palettes; of different color "schemes" used in fine and applied art during this century; and the development of color palettes and finer resolution in computer graphics. in conclusion: a personal note near the end of this study, i received a press release describing a series of traditional oil paintings as "offering random access to the viewer". the artist described her paintings as "layered information" on a "surface carrying synchronicity" as "elements of text interacted with the visual". it would appear that just as computer artists have appropriated visual art traditions, so traditional visual artists have begun to borrow both terminology and paradigms of thought from computer technology. as an art reviewer, the dilemma of choosing paradigms for discussing art work may be resolved for me by the artists themselves. as an art educator, i feel there is much work to be done. two large areas of concern have barely been articulated to date. the first is the need to develop a theory of art for computer graphics which will delineate its similarities to traditional art forms, while at the same time develop and articulate a philosophy that guides its differences. the second is the need to develop a historical, practical, and theoretical curriculum for art education that embraces visualization technology. art educators currently believe that people should be guided in their approaches to making art, and informed in their responses to art. computers cannot do this job for art educators. computer graphic programs are highly "intuitive". they are menu-driven to teach the user how to use them, and interact with gestural input devices such as trackball or mouse to ease the learning process. however, they do not provide the kinds of structured knowledge about art that art educators themselves can offer, and do not guide the process of aesthetic inquiry. art education can make a valuable contribution to the field of computer graphics. conversely, art education can benefit from the incorporation of this new medium. it is a question of evaluating the degree to which traditional knowledge and theories in art education are a good "fit" with computer technology. this study has evaluated one aspect of that process: a comparison of visual elements in traditional art images and computer graphics. references ackerman, j.s. ( ). the historian as critic. in smith, r.a. (ed.). aesthetics and criticism in art education. chicago: rand mcnally. ackroyd, s. and hughes, j.a. ( ). data collection in context. london: longman. apple, m. ( ). the politics of pedagogy and the building of community. journal of curriculum theorizing. ( ). - . autodesk d studio manual and tutorial. batty, m. ( ). microcomputer graphics. london: chapman hall. binkley, t. ( ). the wizard of ethereal pictures and virtual places. leonardo: computer art in context supplemental issue. - . bixby, r. ( ). corel draw! . new york: wiley and sons. broudy, h.s. ( ). the structure of knowledge in the arts. in smith (ed.). aesthetics and criticism in art. publisher? broudy, h.s. ( ). enlightened cherishing: an essay on aesthetic education. urbana: university of illinois press. chapman, l.h. ( ). art: images and ideas. worcester, mass; davis publications. crozier, w.r. and greenhalgh, p. ( ). beyond relativism and formalism: the empathy principle. leonardo. ^( ). - . csuri, c. ( ). computer graphics and art. in booth, k. (ed.). computer graphics. new york: ieee. elementary fine arts curriculum guide ( ). province of british columbia: ministry of education. ettinger, l.f. ( ). art education and computing: building a perspective. studies in art education. ( ). - . feldman, e.b. ( ). formalism and its discontents. studies in art education. ( ). - . franke, h.w. ( ). theoretical foundations of computer art. computer graphics, computer art.^berlin: springer verlag. - . freedman, k. ( ). possibilities of interactive computer graphics for art instruction: a summary of research. art education. ( ). - . freedman, k. and relan, a. ( ). computer graphics, artistic production, and social processes. studies in art education. ( ). - . friedhoff, r.m. ( ). visualization. new york: abrams. galassi, p. ( ). before photography. new york: museum of modern art. glasser, e.m. abelson, h.h. and garrison, k.n. ( ). putting knowledge to use: facilitating the diffusion of knowledge and the implementation of planned change. san francisco: jossey-bass. gombrich, e.h. ( .) art and illusion ( nd edition). new york: pantheon books. greer, w.d. ( ). developments in discipline-based art education(dbae): from art education to arts education. studies in art education. ( ). - . hamblen, k. ( ). approaches to aesthetics in art education: a critical theory perspective. studies in art education. ( ). -^ . hearn, d. and baker, m.p. ( ). computer graphics. englewood cliffs, n.j.: prentice-hall. hickman, c. ( ). why artists should program. leonardo. ( ). - . hobbs, j. ( ). in defense of a theory of art for art education. studies in art education. ( ). - . inside macintosh, volume i. ( ). addison-wesley: apple computer inc. johnson, n.r. ( ). metaphor and design. studies in art education. ( ). - . jones, b. 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( ). the role of theory in aesthetics. in j. margolis (ed.). philosophy looks at the arts: contemporary readings in aesthetics. new york: charles scribner's sons. - . wilson, s. ( ). technological research and development as a source of ideas and inspiration for artists. leonardo. ( ). - . wright, r. ( ). the image in art and computer art. leonardo: computer art in context supplemental issue. - . appendix a literature used in domain analysis art education chapman, l.h. ( ). art: images and ideas. worcester, mass: davis. elementary fine arts curriculum guide ( ). province of b.c.: ministry of education. lauer, d.a. ( ). design basics. new york: holt, rinehart and winston. malcolm, d. ( ). design: elements and principles. worcester, mass.: davis. ocvirk, ., bone, r., stinson, r. and wigg, p. ( ). art fundamentals: theory and practice ( rd ed). dubuque, ia: william brown. computer graphics education autodesk d studio manual and tutorial manual. batty, m. ( ). microcomputer graphics. london: chapman and hall. bixby, r. corel draw! .( ). new york: john wiley. csuri, c. ( ). computer graphics and art. in booth, k. (ed). computer graphics. new york: ieee. franke, h.w. ( ). theoretical foundations of computer art. computer graphics,computer art. berlin: springer verlag. friedhoff, r.m. and benzon, w.( ). visualization. new york:abrams. hearn, d. and baker, m.p. ( ). computer graphics. englewood cliffs, n.j.: prentice-hall. inside macintosh, volume i ( ). addison-wesley: apple computer inc. kerlow, i.v. and rosebush, j. ( ). computer graphics for designers and artists. new york: van nostrand reinhold. macpaint manual, claris. appendix b- sample of terminology in art education texts line problems problem the artist may combine expressive calligraphy and the representational characteristics of line in the same image (fig. . ). select a few moderately complex subjects. draw these experimentally in a continuous contour line, defining the subject but at the same time allowing the drawing instrument to roam freely, to make sudden changes in direction, and to overlap itself. the line should dwell in some areas, moving steadily, improvising as it moves, and moving directly from one area to another. try drawing quickly as well as slowly. the intention is to pro- duce works that are at the same time definitive and spontaneous, expressive and disciplined. the line should have calligraphic qualities (see cal- ligraphy under "definitions"; see also plate and fig. . ). problem lines may vary according to their physical properties. a. in one or more frame shapes create interesting line arrangements in one medium. vary the mea- sure, type, direction, and location of the lines. b. repeat the line arrangements in several other media and compare the resulting works for dif- ferences in character. from ocvirk et al., ( ). art fundamentals: theory and practice ( rd ed)., page . (emphasis mine). sample of terminology in computer graphics texts floating point numbers. computer graphics employs either integer or floating point numbers depending on whether the data being measured is discrete or continuous. discrete data occurs in ditinct units. in- dividuals, playing cards, and letters of the alphabet must all be represented by dis- crete data, as they cannot be divided and still retain their identity. likewise, the pages of this book come in integer whole num- bers and are not counted in fractional units. data is continuous if the axis or di: mension that is measured has no apparent indivisible unit from which it is composed. examples abound in our space-time-matter environment, such as weight, length, and temperature as well as an intelligence quotient or a readability index; no matter how precise the scale of measurement, a finer resolution always exists. the continuous/discrete dichotomy ap- plies to graphics as well as to cartesian spaces both incorporate an _origin. axes, and equal-interval scales. lithe cartesian space is floating point and continuous, then a location is expressed as a decimal number and called a point, which is an xy number pair lithe cartesian space is discr_e_t_e, a tacaiqn_i_sexw-_e. pair of integers and is called a pixel (fig. - ). pixels cannot be fractional. the distinction between point (line) and pixel representations is analogous' to the distinction between line copy and halftones in traditional graphics. logos, diagrams, and type—objects with sharp edges and no continuous tone—are best represented as line copy, while photographs, paintings, and shaded color areas (benday) are best represented using continuous tone meth- ods. of course, it is possible to represent logos, type, and rules using halftone methods and to represent photographs using line copy techniques, but this cross- over seldom improves visibility and is not recommended except to achieve a partic- ular artistic effect. many aspects of computer graphics can be either discretely or continuously rep- resented—time and color for example. pixels and points are everyday tools that illustrate the fundamental differences be- tween the two. from kerlow and rosebush, ( ). computer graphics for designers and artists, page . (emphasis mine). appendix b- sample of terminology found in glossaries and lists (art education) line path of movement active - passive bold - delicate flowing - light straight - curved thick - thin dark-light broken - continuous geometric - organic implied - actual precise - irregular contour - outline calligraphy from chapman, l.h. ( ). art: images and ideas, p. . sample of terminology found in glossaries and lists (computer graphics) - translation and rotation of pictures and subpictures. - windowing:singling out a window-like area which can then be treated separately, for instance by coloring it or by zooming it. - zooming: the enlargement of subpictures or windowed struc- tures; clipping: the clipping of line segments which extend beyond the window border. - locator operation for locating a point or a line. pick operation:the identification of a graphical element on the basis of spatial coincidence. the so-called choice simulation applies procedures of this kind, for instance when a digitizing table is being overlaid by a menu of light buttons. since the computer using the pick operation is capable of recognizing the light button picked, it can also understand the associated choice. - temporary storage: the stored pictures can be retrieved at any time during a design session. overlay technique: the overlay of storage levels. filling of closed polygons: for instance by coloring, textures, etc. from franke, h.w. ( ). computer graphics, p. sample of terminology found in indexes (art education) scale (proportion), - of art, - within art, - unexpected scale, variations in scale, - confusion, - and focal_point, and the golden mean, and human proportions, - and relative size, serifos, greece, view of, schwartzenegger, arnold, biceps of, , schwitters, kurt, from kate steinitz, sekine, nobuo, phases of nothingness—cone, seurat, georges, ballerina, , ; le chahut, ; the channel at gravelines, petit fort philippe, , ; sunday afternoon on the island of la grande jatte, , severini, gino, dynamic hieroglyphic of the bal tabarin, , shape (form), - abstraction, - curvilinear, - dots as, - naturalism of, - distortion, - _ idealism, - tapies, antoni, great painting, , texture, - and pattern, - tactile, - in collage, - visual, - trompe-l'ceil, - theseum, , tintoretto, jacopo, the crucifixion, , titian, bacchus and ariadne, to the mummies, , tooker, george, the subway, , toulouse-lautrec, henri de, a la mie, , ; monsieur boileau at the cafe, trompe-rceil, trumbull, john, surrender of lord cornwallis, unity, - intellectual, with variety, - in architecture, visual, ways to achieve, - continuation, proximity, repetition, from lauer, d. ( ). design basics, p. . sample of terminology found in indexes (computer graphics) print merge dialog box, print options dialog box, print setup dialog box, , process color, - rapidograph, ray path, ̂ reftangles blend large to small, - drawing of, - , , editing of, - , - fitting text in, - rectangular solids, reduction of, roilncling corners of, snapped to a grid, rectangle tool, - , redo, , refresh window, registration of software, - remove spots, , repeat, , - resolution, xiii-xv roll-ups, - , rotate at- skew dialog box, rotatiop bitunap, scale with image, scattergrams, scissors, screen elements, - , - screen frequency and printing, - scripts, editing of, - select a brush style dialog box, select all, setting up, - setup dialog box, shadow, - shapes blending of, - , - shape tot', , , sharpen paintbrush, sizing in charts, of objects, of rectangles, , of windows, - skewing, bitmaps, of objects, , ̂ slide show creation of, - script editing of, - smear paintbrush, smoothing, - from bixby, r. ( ). corel draw! , page . (emphasis mine) appendix c- domain analysis of sensory elements art education line concepts - a mark - a continuous mark, a path of movement - a path, mass or edge where length is dominant measure - length - width type - straight - curved - angular - contour - interior, cross-contour - exterior, outlines - continuous - broken - connecting - repeated - rhythmic - simple/ consistent (thickness and value remain the same along the length) - complex - geometric - organic - precise - irregular direction - horizontal - vertical - diagonal value - light/distant - dark/ close, near weight - heavy - light - thick - thin, fine line presence - implied - actual - positive - negative location character (refers to medium) - calligraphic, expressive - dynamic, active, passive - subtle, delicate - intense, bold, powerful shape concept - the idea of "plane" distinguishes d shapes from d shapes two-dimensional shapes - d shapes are single planes - also called flat or decorative shapes - have area but not volume - surface may be modeled but without depth three-dimensional shapes (sometimes referred to as "forms" because they simulate actual physical volumes) - d shapes are made up of planes - the edges of planes may not be obvious - also called volumetric or cubic - have area and volume (depth) - may use value gradation/ contrast to indicate planes and/or depth - interact in space but their interaction does not have mathematical precision types - outline/ contour - solid - unclear boundaries - geometric: circle, square, triangle - organic/ plastic/ biomorphic - free-form - concave, convex - hard edge - soft edge - torn edge shape - ambiguous - complete - modeled - opaque - transparent - negative/ ground/ void - positive/ figure/ solid - location - orientation space two-dimensional - flat shapes feel shallow - shapes are against the picture plane - outlines keep shapes closer to the picture plane - depth can be suggested by - overlapping lines - overlapping shapes - converging lines - line weights - multiple views - arrangements of light and dark - a picture plane covered only with patterns eliminates the feeling of space - types - negative/ positive - open/ closed - filled/ empty - actual/ implied - interior/ exterior - warm colors advance to the picture plane - cool colors recede from the picture plane three-dimensional (illusionistic) - picture plane has levels of depth - deep - shallow - perspective systems - one-dimensional - two-dimensional - three-dimensional - aerial perspective (lessening of value space and value contrasts in the "distance" of the picture plane) - atmospheric perspective (background becomes more opaque or bluer) - loss of detail lighting - modeling - chiaroscuro - shadows object relationships - objects in the distance become smaller - objects higher than others appear to be at the front end of the picture plane - overlapped objects appear to be at the front of the picture plane - shapes are solids existing in space - forms and space interact, but are usually not mathematically defined space can dominate form shapes often appear to escape the boundaries of the picture plane form (physical) actual / d (parts or areas of a flat picture plane are physically projected into space) actual d (e.g. sculptures), not illusory mass - volume - opaque - transparent - weight planes - surfaces - surface directions structure - geometric - spheres, cylinders, cones, cubes, pyramids - irregular - solid/ closed - penetrated/ open pattern motif repetition type - border - allover/ continuous organization) - distorted/ variant - localized (systematic texture surface quality - even/ uniform - uneven - smooth type - natural/ actual/ "tactual" - invented/ man-made - engraved - embossed - impasto - relief - / d - illusory/ simulated/ visual/ trompe - modulation of bits or areas - illusion of texture - variable line measure - variable line direction - variable line type - variable brush techniques oeil color balance - distributed - unified luster - matte - shiny - semi-gloss, glossy limited palette - monochromatic - complementary (employing simultaneous contrast of colors that are opposite on the color wheel) unlimited palette color hue (name of color: e.g. yellow). may also be neutral. color interactions and simultaneous contrast are a result of hue. value (lightness or darkness of a color) - tint (a high-value color produced by adding white pigment) - shade (a low-value color produced by adding black pigment) intensity/ chroma/ saturation (brightness of a color) - high key/ low key - bright/ dull theory - primaries (red, yellow, blue) - secondaries (orange, green, purple) - tertiaries (intermediates, e.g. blue-green) harmony (color schemes based on the position of hues on the color wheel) - monochromatic - analogous - complementary - triadic innate qualities - depth - receding - advancing - temperature - cool - warm - description - local/ objective - optical (as affected by light conditions other than "normal" daylight) - arbitrary - symbolic tone flat even contrasting chiaroscuro/ shaded hatching passage appendix c- domain analysis of sensory elements computer graphics line concepts - in draw mode, a linear location with no thickness between available pixels (a mathematical model rather than an actual graphic element on the screen) - in paint mode, a continuum of adjacent pixels ( d lines with x,y coordinates) - in d graphics, vectors ( d lines with x,y,z coordinates between width, height and depth) measure - length - width - location type - straight: horizontal, vertical, diagonal - curved: arcs (have a start, end, and radius); semi-circles; or curves (wander) - "jagged" diagonal curved lines, often as a result of output resolution - silhouette (designate outline) - contour (designate the height of areas, as in contour maps) - hatch patterns (dots, dashes, etc.) - connecting (vectors) direction - horizontal - vertical - diagonal - slope (degree of grade or the orientation of a line on a plane) value - variable line widths - can be zero - can be cued to show depth - result from pen modes line - result from pen sizes - some programs support pressure-sensitive drawing with a stylus on a tablet - variable line intensities - can be cued to show depth - thick and thin lines resulting from time- sensitive tablets presence - positive by default - reverse/ negative location - designated area of a pre-determined format (eg. paint programs) - mathematically defined in space (vector or object-oriented graphics) shape two-dimensional shape - mass of pixels - has area - types of edges - horizontal - vertical - hard-edge - cartesian coordinates x,y - polygon (a closed shape formed by lines; a sequence of connected lines) - two-dimensional/ flat/ planar - has corner points (vertices) - sides (edges) - has surface area - can be filled (with coloring, textures, etc.) - types - freehand - regions (an irregular set of bits) - may be two dimensionally concave - may be two-dimensionally convex - consists of one or more areas - can have "holes" - selected (defined by an arbitrary set of points) shape - rectangles rounded rectangles - ovals - wedges - resized - duplicated - rotated - flipped - distorted - inverted - types of edges - invisible - hard-edge - horizontal - vertical - angled - curves - coordinate systems - cartesian coordinates x,y - local coordinate system - two-coordinate systems, x,y and r,c - geometric - using pre-selected shapes - using pen tool - organic - using freehand tool - positive - filled - transparent - opaque - region (a low-level routine, i.e. a figure as a collection of regions) - negative - location - designated area of a bitmap (predetermined format) three-dimensional shape - wireframe display - has area - has volume, with euclidean x,y,z coordinates - polyhedra (a volumetric solid object, like a cup or tree) - three-dimensional shape - has bounding edges - each face is a facet - has area - has volume, with euclidean x,y,z coordinates - types of edges - hard-edge (solid shapes or wireframe) - blurred or "feathered " edge geometric - using pre-selected shapes - using points and vectors organic - d shapes can be extruded into d positive location - objects in relation to space - objects in relation to other objects in space - opposite of conscious formatting orientation - described by a face normal (not a coordinate or position, but a direction: e.g. how a polygon is angled in space) space two-dimensional space (conscious formatting) - pixel-based graphics (methods analogous to using a traditional brush and paint) - base of a mathematical hierarchy - cartesian coordinates x,y - manipulations occur on the picture plane, by shuffling or replacing intensities or colors in the bitmap) - d object-based systems - above pixel-based graphics in a mathematical hierarchy - depth suggested by: - overlapping lines and shapes - line thickness (not "weights") - size - near/far - shadows - contrast (arrangements of light and dark) space - perspective three-dimensional space ( d graphics or d object- based systems) - concept: although illusory (since it is taking place behind the computer screen), d graphics is more similar to the idea of physical "form" in art than to d space - space is infinite - objects can be located and intersected - objects can be treated as things with physical properties (dependent on the program, objects can be assigned properties such as mass, gravity (weight, inertia), subjected to stress testing, etc. - objects can be subjected to transformations - joined - broken into multiple objects - objects can be subjected to procedural modeling (a mathematical procedure in which the surface texture or pattern, called "image", does not stay relative to itself, but changes in proportion to the object) - lighting - omni (ambient) - spotlights (have a source and focus) - specular highlights (need a viewer: the other end of the "z" in x,y,z) - the automatic creation of - shadows - transparency (usually in degrees of ) - self-illuminated - reflective pattern default selected - pen patterns - brush patterns - area fill patterns created - bitmaps - texture maps pattern - opacity maps - bump maps - fractals texture surface rendering - smooth - blend - graduated fill - detailed (details used to make smooth transitions between areas or objects) - polygonal shading - continuous shading - gouraud - phong - uneven - block-pixed - manipulated intensity values - edges - aliased ("jaggies" or "staircase" effect) - anti-aliased color monochrome (black and white) limited palette - can be dithered to suggest gradations between colors - pseudocolor (limited color palette applied to black and white images) unlimited palette - -bit (each pixel has of simultaneous intensity values or colors, "chosen" from , , ) - -bit (each pixel has of , , possible intensity values; "true color") pixel format resolution (the number wide by the number high) has an equitable volume of intensity values. there is a correlation between quantity of pixels and quantity of colors. generally, the higher the resolution (without extra hardware), the lower the number of colors. hue (position of color on the color wheel) color value/ brightness (amount of black in the color) saturation ( intensity without white) lightness (amount of black or white in the color) theory - primary colors red, green, blue - secondary colors cyan, magenta, yellow - black is the absence of all three primaries - white is all three primaries in full intensity - gray is all three primaries in equal intensity note: program example in d studio - red^hue - - green luminance - - blue^saturation - tone matte surface (flat) chiaroscuro - polygonal shading/ "flat shading" - color graduated surfaces continuous shading - gouraud - phong appendix d- domain analysis of formal principles art education concept image as a whole an artwork is a concrete image, like hardcopy, but without an identical abstract self an original, unique the content is part of a discrete environment passive contents, bound to form artworks contain signifiers the vast majority of works employ several formal methods simultaneously balance horizontal - assumes a central vertical axis in the format - assumes a distribution of visual structure on either side vertical - assumes vertical balance with weight at bottom symmetry - symmetrical - elements are similar - asymmetrical - contrast of - value - shapes - texture - position - approximate symmetry of elements dominance - dominant - subordinate tension - opposition radial balance allover pattern/ crystallographic balance variety visual theme and variation contrast - large against small - light against dark - cool against warm - color against color - defined edges against space scale (size) proportion (relative size) actual/ natural/ realistic/ life-size monumental/ miniature distorted/ exaggerated/ idealized emphasis/ focal point/ center of interest/ weight by size and by contrast of elements - one element differs from others - interrupts an overall pattern by converging lines or elements by isolation of elements placement of elements degree of emphasis - restraint in emphasis - absence of focal point unity/ harmony/ consistency/ integration whole pattern is predominate over the parts distinction between intellectual or conceptual unity and visual unity proximity - of elements - of figure to ground - dividing - separating - organizing - of format to content - of color distribution - of palette - warm - cool surface resolution/ uniformity of surface repetition repetition of characteristics (holds overall design together) rhythm or continuance - regular - irregular/ progressive, through increasing or decreasing elements in a series: - small to large - light to dark - smooth to rough - patterned to solid - alternation continuation dominant path of movement line, edge or direction continues from one form or element to another - vertical - horizontal - diagonal - curving field of view enclosed cropped lighting appendix d- domain analysis of formal principles computer graphics concept image as a whole object-oriented graphics and d graphics have an identical abstract self image may be part of a discrete environment ( d bitmaps) or part of a continuous environment ( d graphics) may not be an original except in hardcopy, contents are dynamic and interactive artworks contain signifiers the vast majority of works employ several formal methods simultaneously, although hierarchically arranged according to mathematics and procedures hierarchical assemblage pictures or systems ("universals") are a hierarchical assemblage composed of parts or elements ("primitives") "primitives" are often incorporated into procedures or sub-routines "universals" can be decomposed or disaggregated into their constituent parts primitives are assembled with additional synthesizing elements; i.e. the sum is greater than the parts balance regularity (relates to the traditional concept of symmetry) - local - global complexity (local and global) - shape variety - color variety - business - noise unity low color variety resolution - image is affected uniformly by the resolution of the output temporal priority - what is written first stays written until it is overwritten: the order of commands is maintained - can be used by the artist to structure his work; e.g. landscapes: one thing leads to another lighting ( d graphics) reflection (the amount of reflected light varies according to the relationship between the angle of incidence and the angle of view) - matte or diffuse (dull, flat light) - shininess - specular (highlights) refraction (uses ray tracing to cause reflections to adapt to a new surface) can reveal transparency atmospherics (such as fog: can be set for near, - far, and color) luminescence (self-illuminating) shadows - hard-edge - transparent - penumbras - blending tools - shadow map resolution emphasis windowing - isolation of regions in d graphics - zooming (enlargement of sub-pictures or windowed structures) repetition recursion/ self-similarity - parts that reflect the whole - detail is produced by the same procedure that produced the overall structure (i.e. fractals) repetition replication/ recursion - one of the greatest strengths of computer graphics ability to replicate detail in great abundance representations are quantitatively rich/ precise both regular and broken symmetries can be manipulated variety randomness - random choices of local details temper repeatability and sameness experimentation - the necessity of improving the quality of programs and picture structure through interactive use appendix e comparative taxonomy of sensory elements elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics two- dimensional space . matrices concept matrix-based forms of art (eg. needlepoint, weaving, mosaics, hard- edge abstract grid paintings) concept pixel-based graphics (eg. paint programs) two-dimensional space bitmap discrete environment discrete environment conscious formatting conscious formatting shapes are composed of individual stitches, tiles, sections, etc. shapes are intensities of color selected in a bitmap each shape is one layer deep bitmap manipulations (changing intensities or colors by replacing them) shapes are areas of a matrix (grid) shapes (called regions) use cartesian coordinates x,y depth devices (generally not applicable) depth cues the illusion of layered lines and areas line thicknesses contrast contrast color gradations color gradations two- dimensional space . designs concept arrangements on a picture plane concept d object-based systems two-dimensional space d graphics discrete environment - not consciously formatted discrete environment - using cartesian coordinates x,y - using a local coordinate system - using a two-coordinate system flat shapes feel shallow shapes are against the picture plane picture plane manipulations selections and procedures types negative or posisitve types positive by default open or closed open or closed elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics d space: designs filled or empty filled or empty actual or implied positive by default interior or exterior measure scale properties scale spacing positioning position location depth devices overlapping flat shapes ("layered" shapes) depth cues layered shapes converging lines perspective line weights line thicknesses/intensities arrangements of light and dark drop shadows color theory - warm colors advance to the picture plane - cool colors recede from the picture plane color coding two- dimensional space . continuous fields concept soft-edge abstracts, photographs, washes, etc. two-dimensional space continuous environment not consciously formatted two- dimensional shape . area of a matrix concept area of the matrix design concept - region of pixels - set of bits types positive/figure types region (a figure is a collection of regions) negative/ground bitmap position not explicit ("upper right", "lower left" etc.) location designated area of a bitmap in a predetermined format not explicit ("to the right" or "left of') mathematic orientation to other shapes area structure positive - regular - irregular region structure positive (irregular only) - may be d concave - may be d convex consists of one or more areas consists of one or more areas positive types may have "negative spaces" may have holes edges hard-edge sides hard-edge by default elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics "staircase"effect; jag,gies two dimensional shape . plane concept flat surface concept a polygon (a sequence of connected lines) essentially two- dimensional two-dimensional "decorative" flat/planar relationships with other shapes give the illusion of a third dimension (eg. overlapping) relationships with other shapes give the illusion of a third dimension (eg. layering) types created types - selected - created may be repeated - may be duplicated - may be swept (a procedure which repeats a shape) inverted inverted turned rotated flipped open or closed closed filled filled empty outline actual shapes implied hidden shapes shape structure geometric (circle, square, triangle) - using tools - freehand polygon structure geometric (circle, ellipse, square, rectangle, triangle, polygon etc.) - using pre-selected d shapes - using pen tool and d line segments organic/plastic/ biomorphic/freeform organic using freehand tool (pixel-based brush in paint layer) sizes are not explicit ("of different proportions") may be resized surface may be modeled (without intending an illusion of depth) fill can be filled with coloring or textures but not modeled may use value gradation may use value gradation may use value contrast may use value contrast opaque/solid opaque/solid transparent transparent elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics d shape: plane outlined/contour framed edges hard-edge sides hard-edge by default corners vertices (corner points) freehand freehand in paint mode only soft-edge may be "feathered" (a procedure which dithers the pixels) n/a invisible two- dimensional shape . formless concept an area of a continuous picture plane (eg. a watercolor wash) two-dimensional types positive/"form" negative/ground position not explicit ("upper right", "lower left" etc.) area structure often called a "form" or "formless shape" edges soft-edge blended three- dimensional space concept picture plane has levels of depth (described as "deep", "shallow") concept d graphics copy laws of physics simulates a continuous environment - continuous environment on screen - discrete environment in hardcopy perspective linear - one-dimensional - two-dimensional - three-dimensional environment space is infinite depth devices atmospheric perspective depth cues degrees of atmospherics aerial perspective degrees of transparency lighting - ambient lighting - spotlights - specular highlights shading/modeling modeling shadows - cast shadows - ray tracing elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics three- dimensional space - objects in the distance are proportionately smaller - higher objects appear farther back - overlapping objects appear to be in front objects are in geometric relationship to others in space space may be used to dominate form cropping framing three- dimensional shape . wireframe concept d art forms such as wire sculpture, rather than d art concept wireframe display actual three-dimensional form - three-dimensional grids in a void - two-dimensional hardcopy non-mathematical has volume, with euclidean x,y and z axes sides hard-edge (lines) structure and sides are the same thing (no surfaces) may be concave may be concave may be convex may be convex three - dimensional shape . illusion concept a d projection concept a polyhedral a volumetric or cubic d shape volumetric ( d) in a void illusion of three dimensions - illusion of three dimensions in hardcopy - solid object in the void has area on the picture plane - has area in hardcopy - has area and volume with x,y and z axes in the void d illusion from a fixed d viewpoint - objects behave and are treated more like actual d forms - fixed viewpoint only in hardcopy elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics d shape: illusion position positioned on a picture plane location objects are in mathematical relation to spare (not consciously formatted on a matrix) orientation described by the direction of face normals (the facets oriented to z, the viewer) depth devices shading/modeling depth devices modeling shadows cast shadows ray tracing image structure made up of planes (surface directions) object structure made up of facets (each face is a facet) planes may be blended facets may be smoothed geometric (sphere, cube, pyramid, cone) - using tools - freehand geometric (sphere, cube, pyramid, cone etc.) - using preselected volumetric shapes - using extrusion or surfaces of revolution - using points and vectors organic/biomorphic ( d) freehand polygons ( d) plastic ( d) organic ( d freehand polygons can be extruded into d) object properties objects may be assigned "mass" and act as if they display space (also gravity, weight, inertia etc., and may be stress-tested) may be subjected to transformations (joined, broken into multiples objects etc.) objects may be intersected objects act as if they have physical surfaces (eg. reflective surfaces) may be subjected to procedural modeling (the surface texture or pattern changes in proportion to the subject) elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics d shape: illusion surface solid image (in d, refers to the surface texture or pattern) bitmapped may be transparent may be self-illuminated may be reflective devices like modeling are used to simulate an appearance of depth has actual volume (z) in the void edges hard-edge sides bounding edges soft-edge dithered, blurred or feathered edge may be open (passage) or closed may be penetrated (interaction between shape and space) form concept / d or actual d (eg. a real object, sculpture, assemblage, mobile, etc.) concept d output object properties mass weight planes (surfaces and surface directions) object structure geometric irregular solid/closed penetrated/open surface opaque transparent line concepts - a mark - a point concepts - a pixel (on screen) - a dot-per-inch (in hardcopy) a path, mass or edge where length is dominant - a continuum of adjacent pixels - a row elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics line a continuous mark - d segments with x,y coordinates (go between width and height or between local coordinates) - d vectors with x,y,z coordinates (go between width, height and depth) a invisible linear location (a mathematical model rather than an actual graphic element on screen) types - freehand - geometric - organic types follow grid patterns on screen and in hard copy straight - horizontal - vertical - diagonal straight - horizontal (x) - vertical (y) - diagonal/slope (x+y) curved - geometric - freehand curved - arcs (have a start, end and radius) - semi-circles - curves (bezier, quadratic and fournier are equations that describe the mathematics of the curves between the defining points) - freehand in paint mode continuous continuous jagged diagonal and curved lines (a result of output resolution in d graphics) contour lines/ cross- contour lines (exterior outlines) silhouette lines (designate the outline) cross-contour (designate surface changes) contour lines (designate height of areas) connecting - d lines/segments - d vectors elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics line repeated iterated measure direction - horizontal - vertical - diagonal properties orientation - horizontal (x) - vertical (y) - d diagonal line or slope (degree of grade on a plane, x+y) - d diagonal vector (z) weight - heavy/ dark/ wide/ thick - light/thin/fine intensity - thick (a result of pen mode or sizes in pixel or d graphics) - thin (a result of pen mode or sizes) value - dark - light value - resulting from pressure or time-sensitive tablets - can be zero (+) depth devices depth cues d or d lines dark or heavy lines appear close/near lines can be cued to show distance by using variable intensities (thick, thin etc.) or colors light lines appear distant lines can be cued to show distance structure - broken - dotted, dashed structure hatch patterns (dots, dashes, etc.) angular broken (ie. silhouette lines) simple/consistent simple/consistent by default complex (eg. sketching) patterned presence - implied - actual selection - invisible - positive positive (dependent on contrast of media to ground) positive by default (dependent on contrast) negative (dependent on contrast) reverse erased character a result of media regularity - variable widths as a result of time- or pressure- sensitive drawing tablets - result of pen patterns elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics line active or passive precise/regular or irregular expressive or dynamic calligraphic subtle/delicate bold/powerful/intense pattern concept a series of repeated elements or motifs concepts -default patterns -selected patterns - pen patterns - brush patterns - area fill patterns - bitmaps (eg. reflection map) - created patterns - fractals types border types border allover/continuous - fill/ opacity map/ texture map - reiterated' duplicated - recursive distorted/variant bump-mapped localized - area fill - image-mapping grid - bitmap texture concept surface quality concept surface rendering may have surface depth or layering single layer output types natural/actual types invented/man-made (engraved, embossed, impasto, relief etc.) illusory/ simulated/ visual/ trompe l'oeil simulated surface even/uniform (distributed or unified) image ( d) - bit-mapped - opacity mapped - uneven modulation of bits or areas - illusory variables: - line measure - line type - line direction - brush techniques uneven d - block-pixed - manipulated intensity values uneven d - texture mapped - bump mapped elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics texture smooth smooth d - blend - graduated fill - polygonal shading smooth d - continuous shading - gouraud - phong luster/sheen - matte - shiny/ semi-gloss/ glossy d effects - luminance - matte - glossy - self-illuminating - reflection mapped edges d - "jaggies" or staircase" effect d - aliased or "jaggies" - anti-aliased color concept made of pigment, dye etc. concept - dots of ink in hardcopy - made of light on screen colors absorb or reflect light - colors absorb or reflect light in hardcopy - colors are luminant on screen types local/objective color types selected color optical color as altered by color spotlights, etc. arbitrary color arbitrary color symbolic colors used to generate aesthetic responses symbolic colors used for coding in technical applications (eg. medical or engineering) palette monochrome (black, white, gray) palette monochrome (black or white/ on or off) tints pseudocolor - limited palette - full palette palette - , , , or bit elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics color palette is limited by the range of chosen or available pigments the number of colors correlates to the pixel format resolution:^the fewer colors, the higher the resolution (the more colors, the lower the resolution) color scheme - monochromatic - analogous - complementary - triadic color design color tables color theory additive color theory - additive in hardcopy - subtractive on screen primaries red, yellow, blue - primaries cyan, magenta and yellow in hardcopy - primaries red, green, blue on screen secondaries purple, green, orange - secondaries purple,green orange in hardcopy - secondaries cyan, magenta, yellow on screen black is the presence of all three primaries black is the absence of all three primaries white is the absence of all three primaries white is the presence of all three primaries in full intensity shade gray results from adding black to any pigment lightness amount of black or white in the color a low-value color produced by adding black pigment amount of black in the color intensity brightness or dullness of a color - bright or dull - high key or low key saturation % intensity without white hue name of the color on the color wheel (eg. yellow- green) hue default name of color (eg. yellow) value lightness or darkness of a color brightness/ contrast gray is all three primaries in equal intensity depth receding color advancing color temperature cool or warm elements ^ art education ^ computer graphics tone concept qualities of light and dark concept shading and shadows types flat, even types matte chiaroscuro (treatment of light and shade) - d chiaroscuro - d flat shading (polygonal shading) modeling (shading in tones of light and dark) continuous shading - gouraud - phong (includes specular highlights) modeling (shading with color gradiants) - color is mapped onto shading - gouraud shading creates gradiants of color hatching passage shadows - cast - hard-edge - soft-edge shadows - cast - hard-edge - penumbras - drop appendix f comparative taxonomy of formal principles principles ^ art education ^ computer graphics formal image concept image viewed as a whole concept - hardcopy image - screen or digital image matrix forms digital medium in paint snd d object-oriented systems analog forms continuous medium in d graphics concrete - concrete in hardcopy only - dynamic on screen image is stable only hardcopy is stable one original three originals - digital data - multiple screen originals coexist in pixel-based, d or d graphics - hardcopy graphics printmaking multiples hardcopy multiples content content is created in a discrete environment called a format content - d bitmap content is created in a discrete (matrix) environment - d object-oriented content is created in a discrete (coordinate) environment - d graphics content is created in a continuous environment contents are passive contents are passive only in hardcopy contents are bound to form contents are bound to hardcopy artworks contain signifiers (the "language" of art) contain signifiers (evidence of selections and procedures, such as "sweeping" or a partical procedure) several formal principles may operate simultaneously formal principles are applied hierarchically structure formalist images are composed of parts called "elements" of art structure pictures ("universals") are hierarchical assemblages of parts or elements called "primitives" elements of art can be further broken down (ie. motif + repetition = pattern) primitives are often incorporated into procedures or subroutines principles ^ art education ^ computer graphics formal image the formalist image can be subjected to "aesthetic scanning" for individual elements of art universals may be decomposed or clisaggregated into their constituent parts the sum is greater than the parts (due to visual and conceptual relationships between elements) the sum is greater than the parts (due to additional synthesizing elements) procedures formal principles result from working spontaneously with media and elements of art procedures formal principles are hierarchically arranged in both mathematics and procedures spontaneity have temporal and mathematical priority dynamic dynamic interactive interactive the image has no identical abstract self (the result of a mental model) the image has an identical abstract self (a mathematical model) formal balance horizontal - assumes a central vertical axis in the format or object - visual structure is distributed to either side horizontal regions, polygons or objects may be subjected to flip horizontal procedure vertical the "weight" of the image is at the bottom vertical regions, polygons or objects may be subjected to flip vertical procedure symmetry balance of the same elements global regularity duplicated and flipped radial balance design elements radiate from a central point rotation objects rotated around a circle allover pattern repeated motifs (eg. lines, geometric or organic shapes) distributed uniformly across the surface continuous pattern a result of procedures for iteration or recursion (eg. fractals) informal balance asymmetry off-balance contrast of - value - shapes - texture - position broken symmetries - regions, polygons or objects may be transformed with rotate, slant, stretch or distort procedures - randomness of local details approximate symmetry symmetry using two or more different elements to intuitively balance the design principles ^ art education ^ computer graphics variety/ contrast shape variety dominant subordinate proportion (relative size) - actual/natural/realistic - distorted/exaggerated/ idealized - miniature - monumental - mannered scale theme variety - perceptual - conceptual tone variety - light against dark - defined edges against space color variety - variety of hue - variety of tint - cool color against warm unity/ harmony . visual unity concept unity of visual elements the whole pattern is predominant over the parts clarity of image complex graphic form variables complexity - local - global simple regularity - local - global busy "busyness" "noise" randomness repetition repetition of characteristics repetition - duplication - replication - iteration rhythm/continuance - regular - irregular/progressive (increasing or decreasing elements in a series, eg. from small to large, light to dark) recursion/self-similarity - details and parts reflect the whole - detail is produced by the same procedure that produced the overall structure (ie. fractals) principles ^ art education ^ computer graphics unity/ harmony: visual proximity of elements continuation (a line, edge or direction continues from one element to another) - vertical - horizontal - diagonal - curving figure to ground - dividing - separating - organizing format to content color distribution color scheme - monochromatic - analogous - complementary - triadic color "look-up" tables gradation - color gradation - texture gradients - perspective gradients - gradients - ping-ponged surface uniform density (image is affected uniformly by reflected light on media) a graphic/ an image uniform resolution (the image is affected uniformly by the resolution of the output) unity/ harmony . conceptual concept intellectual/conceptual unity (resulting from "meanings" of parts of images) emphasis concept focal point(s) center of interest "weight" of the picture types degree of emphasis types restraint in emphasis absence of focal point absence of focal point structure isolation of elements structure isolation of elements placement of elements placement of elements lighting types ( d graphics) reflection (the angle of incidence and the angle of view can be manipulated) - matte or diffuse - shininess - specular refraction (uses ray tracing to cause reflections to adapt to a new surface) principles ^ art education ^ computer graphics lighting transparency of images (can be revealed and adjusted with lighting) luminescence (self-illuminating) shadows format perspective directed field of view enclosed cropped can be - selected (pixel graphics) - windowed ( d graphics) - cropped ( d graphics) scale the scale of the format in relation to the scale of the visual content the scale of the format in relation to conceptual content orientation of format to content horizontal : "earthly" view horizontal by default ("portrait") vertical: "spiritual" vertical may be selected on some programs ("landscape") circular irregular appendix g stimulus untitled, pixel graphic tosiyasu l. kunii, tokyo university stimulus peonies, d graphic ned greene, new york institute of technology stimulus presenting george littlechild and his horse. george littlechild, mixed media on paper, x " stimulus self-portrait with blue guitar david hockney, oil on canvas, . x . cm. appendix h description of stimuli stimulus : untitled, pixel graphic. tosiyasu l. kunii, tokyo university elements of art line^- uneven contour/ silhouette, jagged - vertical, horizontal, diagonal - negative/ reversed shape^- two-dimensional - geometric, organic - solid, outline space^- two-dimensional - matrix, bitmap - positive and negative pattern^- localized (dress) - allover, invariant (dress) color^- limited palette - analogous - cool texture^- illusory - even/ uniform/ invariant (pixel pattern) - localized (figure) tone^- flat - contrast principles of art unity^- format to content - unified palette - proximity of figure to ground: separated repetition - regular pattern (on dress) emphasis - isolation of element (pattern on dress) - outline/ silhouette line balance^- horizontal scale/ proportion - actual lighting - diffuse reflection uniformity of surface - low resolution "jaggies" - contrast (pixel texture against solid) field of view - almost enclosed (cropped feet) stimulus : peonies, d graphic. ned greene, new york institute of technology elements of art line^- broken - interior/ cross-contour (designate changes in surface of bark) shape^- d - organic space^- d - object-based system - one-point perspective - atmospheric perspective - loss of detail pattern^- allover - variant/ irregular - decreasing color^- limited palette - complementary color scheme (red and green) texture^- natural (the bark is an algorithm derived from plaster casts of actual bark) - mapping (flowers and leaves were modeled as grids of fine polygons then colored by texture mapping) - smooth/ even tone^- even - continuous shading (gouraud) principles of art unity^- recursive imagery - proximity of figure to ground: organizing repetition - irregular emphasis - placement and scale of elements - vanishing point balance - approximate symmetry - radial balance scale/ proportion - actual/ natural lighting - diffuse reflection/ no shadows - atmospherics uniformity of surface - high resolution field of view - cropped stimulus : presenting george littlechild and his horse, george littlechild, mixed media on paper, x ". elements line^- bold - continuous - irregular contour - positive and negative shape^- d/ flat - layered - face is semi- d due to contour lines space^- d (overlapping) - d (modeling on face) pattern^- motif/ repetition - allover/ continuous (spots) - border (squares) color^- unlimited palette - tints texture - invented/ man-made - impasto tone^- contrasting principles of art unity^- proximity of figure to ground: dividing - repetition: irregular (decreasing) repetition - repeated shapes - repeated motifs emphasis - contrast (scale) balance - symmetrical and asymmetrical - horizontal and vertical scale/ proportion - distorted/ unnatural lighting - diffuse reflection - no shadows uniformity of surface - even (impasto: brushwork of a similar scale) - low resolution field of view - enclosed stimulus : self-portrait with blue guitar, david hockney, oil on canvas, . x . cm. elements line^- delicate - contour/ silhouette lines - repeated diagonal perspective lines shape space - some d - some d (both outline and modeled) - geometric and organic - d - d projection - isometric projection pattern^- localized - allover/ continuous - distorted/ variant color^- unlimited palette - primary colors texture^- illusory/ simulated - smooth - modulated areas tone^- chiaroscuro/ shading - flat - contrasting principles of art unity^- proximity of figure to ground: organizing - conceptual unity repetition - repeated lines/ angles/ styles/ colors emphasis - isolation of elements - placement of elements - degree of emphasis balance^- symmetrical - horizontal and vertical scale^- actual/ natural lighting - inconsistent uniformity of surface - non-uniform - both flat and impasto - high resolution appendix i interview questions . to begin, could you tell me about this picture? . i would like to know how you would describe the different parts of this image. prompts: stimulus could you describe the different areas of this figure (dress, limbs, face, etc.)? could you describe the edges of this figure? could you describe the background? stimulus could you describe the different areas in this picture (flowers, leaves, vines, etc.)? could you describe the edges of these areas? stimulus could you describe the different areas of this picture (face, horse, background, border design, etc.)? could you describe the edges of these areas? stimulus could you describe the different areas of this image? could you describe the surfaces of different areas and objects? . i would like to know what you think about the image as a whole, in terms of its composition or arrangement in space. prompts: stimulus could you describe the colors or the palette of this picture? could you describe the way the different areas are organized in a composition or in space? stimulus could you describe the colors or the palette of the picture? could you describe the way these different areas are organized in a composition or in space? could you describe the lighting in this picture? stimulus could you describe the colors or the palette of this picture? could you describe the way these different areas are organized in a composition or in space? stimulus could you describe the perspective of different objects? could you describe their location in space? could you describe the colors or the palette of the picture? could you describe the lighting in this picture? . on the basis of its visual structure, do you think this is a successful image? . do you think there are any connections between the way computer artists and traditional artists (or computer graphics educators and art educators) might talk about this image? appendix j subject contact letter the university of british columbia faculty of education main mall vancouver, b.c. canada v z room , scarfe building, department of visual and performing arts, faculty of education, main mall, university of british columbia. may , . dear i am a graduate student in the faculty of education at u.b.c. currently conducting a study for my m.a. i am doing a study of the terms used by computer graphicists, artists and art educators to talk about art images. i will be interviewing eight subjects who work in one or more of these areas. your name has been recommended to me as a person who might be interested in responding verbally to four art images. the interview will take between twenty minutes and one hour, at the location of your choice and at a time convenient to you. the results of the study will be published in a master's thesis. your participation will be anonymous and confidential. i hope to hear from you at your earliest convenience. sincerely, mia johnson - (office) or - (home) faculty advisor: dr. ronald macgregor ( - ) appendix k subject consent form the university of british columbia faculty of education main mall vancouver, b.c. canada v t z consent form: responses to visual images investigator mia johnson visual and performing arts in education, faculty of education, university of british columbia. - or - faculty advisor: dr. ronald macgregor ( - ) purpose of the project to examine the kinds of terms and concepts used by computer artists and educators to describe and discuss the visual structure of art images, and to compare them to terms and concepts used by art educators. an interpretation of the interview data may be used in a master's thesis and in journal articles. procedures subjects of the study will be shown four reproductions of traditional and computer art and asked to describe the images in their own words. subjects will also be asked to comment on connections between the fields of computer and traditional art. the identity of the subjects will be confidential and subjects will be identified by number. the total amount of time required will be no less than twenty minutes and no more than one hour. longer interviews will be dependent on the interest and agreement of the subjects. any inquiries concerning the procedures in order to ensure they are fully understood by the subjects will be answered. the subject has the right to refuse to participate in the study or to withdraw at any time. i understand the purpose and procedures of this study and agree to be a subject under the above conditions. i have received a copy of this consent form. subject name^ date appendix l sample interview transcript subject to begin, could you tell me something about your background as an artist, and in computer graphics? (s ) my background as a visual artist, as a painter, would most likely be the most extensive one. but like yourself, i'm interested in any two-dimensional surface, whether it be a television screen, or a computer printout, or a xerox machine, or a photograph. in that way, i have been expert in looking at the two-dimensional surface, which is a most fascinating surface for me. right now, and in the past couple of years, my interests have been involved in computer graphics. i would still use the computer as a tool.. as an experimental tool. i like experimenting with it... and i would certainly approach my computer work in a similar way i would approach my painting. and the similarity would be that i would let the image lead me into another image, rather than knowing what the image is going to look like in its final stage. so that's where the experiment comes in. it might mean that i would combine the computer image with my own drawing. i would certainly allow that to happen. so sometimes a cooperation of the computer and my own work... or it might be that i translate my own work into the computer. although at times it even takes longer, some of the images that i'm after. but again, it's how familiar you are with the computer. although it's a little bit like painting, you learn the techniques and then you strive for something more - you want to communicate on different levels. so there's this departure from an illustration which describes in a narrative, to something that deals with my emotions. as i explained, i'm interested in your ways of describing visual images, or how you would explain them to someone else. i have four images. i'd like to show you each one in turn, then if you want you could comment on connections. feel free to go back as we go through them. this is the first. (s ) certainly. let's see... nice color print. we're definitely dealing with a figurative image... could you describe the different areas of the figure? (s ) yes. simply by the separation of the color field. there's a dress, there's pattern in the dress, the figure has a flesh tone, which is certainly evocative of the figurative. it's a female. there's a vertical line on one side which tends to fluctuate with tonality. it's lighter in the center and gets cool towards the each end. there isn't much in the negative space of this image except that one line. other than that, i would look at it as a fairly raw image, or at least it's at a fairly raw stage by just simply the linear work. most of the lines that are outlining the shapes have a certain similarity. i know that there that can certainly be a variation of the linear structure. why does the outline of the dress have to be the same as the outline of the legs? i would be a little more sensitive to certain issues of the line itself. why do you think that line looks like that? (s ) well it's the same line that runs through the dress as it does throughout the figure. the only difference in the line is this line here, that vertical line. it's the only one that is quite a bit different from the rest of the image. how do you think those lines were made? (s ) those lines were made... let's see... i'm trying to figure out what kind of program it could have been... do you think it was a computer image? (s ) by the pixels.. .you know, a computer screen is a little bit like a stitch work. like when you're sewing. it has every point. so it could very well be something that has been sutured, or weaved through. you know, computer printouts are always deceiving. it's more, what's reminiscent of this, the head does look very much like a computer image. also this flatness of the negative space... it's so nicely flat. to have this positive space part of that negative space, it seems like a computer image. i could probably draw this image on my computer. but it seems like it been cut off, or shaved off, at the bottom. maybe the printer, or something got in the way. but definitely the pattern, it's definitely a repetitive form. i could figure it out from a quarter of an inch. it's a repetition that tens to multiply itself.^in the legs... it really does look like a material-like fabric. but there's not much difference. it could be an illusion.., you know you can make computer look like fabric or you could make fabric look like the computer. the early stitching, they look like early computer drawings. you know, the early computer writing looks like stitching, like "home sweet home", you know. the lines don't have that roundness though... it's a pretty raw program, because you can certainly get that much finer lines, or that difference between the lines. they could be much more evident. light to dark... it definitely is a color xerox. do you think this is a successful image, on the basis of its visual structure? (s ) yes... it could be successful... successful always depends on how it's utilized, what it's for. i could see it in enlarged in a window display, with some garments. in terms of its composition? (s ) well, there are few elements with which to deal with. i like the simplicity of it. with the computer though i'd be tempted to deal with some other issues as well. what would those be? (s ) they might be dealing with the negative space, so that the negative space somewhat would be part of the positive space of the female figure. there might be some integration. it seems like i could just take scissors and cut out this figure and put it on a green paper. i really like this line. if the line wasn't there, it would really read as an isolated image, almost as an island. the line brings this negative space, like the black is not so isolated. there's an attempt at making the format. you know, the composition depends always on the format of the piece, reading it from the corner, or from the center. the line really does make a lot of difference. otherwise the pattern-like quality of the form would be entirely isolated from the format. and the composition always does depend on the format, not on the positive space. it happens from the edges of the piece. let me show you the second image and see what you think. can you tell me about this? (s ) oh, right... so this is a very illusionistic image. do get the sense of a foreground, the middle ground, the background. it's not a figurative image. that's an excellent print of that... could you describe it to me? what are you looking at right now? (s ) well, without getting really specific, we're dealing with organic imagery of flowers, branches, and certainly that sense of space... it seems like the images that are forward, or the foreground, are collected on the edges of this particular piece. the foreground happens in almost a circular manner. as we move toward the center, as a vortex, it moves through the middle ground into the extreme depths of space in the center. again, i read it as a fairly symmetrical image because the center of the depth of field is so symmetrical.. but i do also get that sense of the spiral. and then there's the flowers, which are done with warm colors, and the leaves, which are done in cool colors. we're really aware of the contrast between the cool and the warm.. and those cool colors of the branches... they serve as a linear form... but they seem like a multiplication of a form.. it seems like somewhere along the line there is some kind of pattern i could figure out... i really do get that strong sense of a spiral coming from the center towards the edges. of course, at the edges the images are far sharper, so in that sense it's creating a sense of the foreground. it gets sharper both in the flowers and the branches. that sense of contrast is being greatly reduced as we move through the middle ground into the background. whether it was black or white, or that mauve color being diluted with the whiteness. there's certainly a gradation. is it a computer image? how do you think it was done? (s ) i was trying to figure out the actual segment which was reproduced... on the edges, it doesn't seem like it was reproduced but turning to a few things i can see some reproduction. it could be collage. i've worked with an image that i have rotated and multiplied, with the computer. because of the softness of some of these colors it also has an airbrush quality or a watercolor quality, but, that can also be done on the computer without too much trouble. but if it is a collage... there is a collage that exists from the early nineteenth century, the dadaists were probably the first people who dealt with the collage in a most extensive way... so whether it's collage done on a two-dimensional surface or collage done on a computer... before computers the xerox machine was a great device. what happened is that it would make six or a dozen xeroxes of that same image, and go through a painstaking process of juxtaposing one against another to create one image from maybe a dozen similar images... why would you want to do that? (s ) well, for us, as visual investigators! you always want to go into the unknown, or somehow deal with your own image. i remember when the xeroxes came out, i remember my dad in , who was the first guy on the block who got a polaroid camera... you would take pictures, you know, instant gratification, then the xerox machine that would also capture an image... inevitably you're going to come up with two or three images. these images that are kicking around in your studio somehow make their way into your work. art, in my vision, is that mystery of art , sort of like the mystery of love... being a surrealist, the attraction is that mystery, that sensation of being alive, that is the reflection of your work without any aesthetical judgment. often when artists get these materials that are new to them, like back then, whether they be tattered pages, or whether they be crumbled pages, whether you bring them out from the ashes and start gluing them, somehow they would make their way into your work. so again, this seems like a multiplication. it doesn't have the flatness like the previous image. and of course you know i'm a sucker for the flatness of an image. i do a lot of "seeing" the flatness, i can relate to the flatness, because of the physical manifestation of that two-dimensional surface. is this second image flat to you? (s ) no, this image does not read flat to me. i certainly do feel a depth. can you describe the things that create that sense of depth? (s ) yes, the contrast... that's the old academic school for illusionism: images that possess contrast will appear that they're coming forward. the reduction of contrast will create the illusion of space. and this is exactly the formula i'm seeing here. is there anything besides contrast? (s ) yes, the size can also create that sense of depth, that is probably the most obvious one. the reduction of size: the flowers in the foreground are larger, and as we move towards that depth of field the size of these objects is being reduced. we're reminded that we're dealing with then same object, the flower that is being reproduced throughout, but it's being reduced in size quite a bit as we move towards the extremity of that depth of field. as i'm looking at this longer, because it's pretty tricky, i've already found the original image, i think. could you describe the lighting in this picture. (s ) well, the lighting. you mean as far as the tint is concerned, of the color? i think if i were to examine this a little longer... i'm already starting to get the sense of the original, which has been twisted around... i feel that all the color that has been painted in this image, the original colors that existed here, the original pigments involved, the pink, the mauves - i doubt if they were just a single color - as you move into the middle ground, and the background, the reduction of contrast has been reduced by a single-color wash, rather than a multiple wash. the images were subject to either a wash, a white color, that makes it appear like a mist. why don't we look at the next one? you've gone into a lot of detail on this one, here. (s ) okay. oh well, yes! i just had a show with this guy, in prague! looking at the visual structure, how would you describe the third image? (s ) in looking at the other images, totally flat... i must say i like this artist, i really do... first of all, he's dealing with the flatness of the shape, he's dealing with the materials.., it doesn't look like a computer drawing. he's dealing with the sensation of color, and brush, shapes, to a certain extent even pattern. i love this controlled messiness, which is so difficult to do with the computer. to get messy with the computer, it's one of the most difficult issues to deal with. controlled messiness.., a good example would be francis bacon. they're loose, and yet there's an incredible amount of control. that mess, dripping, texture... you know, with a computer you can get texture but it's always a multiplication of that texture. this image has irregularity. i can "read" his handwriting. i call it handwriting, but i mean his brushwork. when you say you "read" it, what do you mean by that? what are you reading? (s ) oh! i'm just reading the way you would deal with various planes. i like the way he's sensitive to color. for the computer to actually get that brush stroke, to actually get that sensation of form... because for a brush stroke, you have to go around these shapes. there's a great irregularity. there isn't that regularity that i would see in a lot of computer images. and then there's that whole sense that it's not an image that is perhaps derived from life. it's an image derived from the imagination, although it's still a figurative image. we see a horse, a face with a crown... it reminds me of an old theater it's got lighting, it's got spotlights, it's got curtains, it has a stage. it's isolated, it is almost like a theatrical set. it's got a king, a big-headed king on this horse.... i could certainly say that if this is a computer painting, then i would like to know how this is done. because this really has a sensation that is very evocative of a painterly manner. there's a great order in this as well, there's more to this than just the image. what kind of order are you talking about? (s ) i think, when we were talking about composition a little bit earlier, you know, the way he's taken care of organizing this image... who knows what came first or what came next - although probably you could figure it out - but there's been great care taken in presenting the image that tends to be worked out most in the head. could you describe the color scheme? (s ) yes, it's a pretty good color xerox. there's that repetition, and knowing this is a painter, you tend to work out the problem of the color within the painting itself. you would mix a certain color, like perhaps this thalo green with this thalo blue and some white, which would describe the horse... you would add a little bit of white... the same cool color might be represented in the crown and some of the evidence we have around that image. you're pointing toward the... (s ) i'm pointing toward the border that he's created with these rectangle squares and circles inside.., so if i were to examine it a little bit longer, i would find there might be only five or six colors, and then they're mixed in various ways. and not like the first image, the figure... easily this head could have been dealt with in a symmetrical way. he's not trying to be symmetrical. left doesn't mean that it also has to be right. and then we were discussing the line. there's more to line.., every line is different. one line is a sheer color. the next line is supported with a red line on the inside. here it's supported with an orange, he's mixed some of his orange with it. when orange gets into blue, you're going to get this muddy color. and that muddy color was a result of what happened maybe in the nose. if you just go around, if you start looking at this structure, this is a line he's working on not in a systematic manner... what would you call this line that goes around? (s ) if it's an exterior line that deals with the outer shell only, it could be referred to as a contour line, or it could be referred to as an outer shell.^here the line is weaving in and out of the image. see here it starts out as a red line, it moves into the ear, it's still red, as it moves into the horse the line goes black, into white... there isn't that consistency. he's not working with borders in this image. there's paint involved. and a painterly manner. he's not trying to disguise the paint like we often would with a graphic design, that you have the flatness of the image and you can't really get away from pattern-making. would you say this is a d or a d image? (s ) it's a two-dimensional image. it doesn't want at all to be a d image. of course there's that overlap, we get that sense of a theatrical mask, or a theater, the horse is on top of something, but there's no illusion of space at all. it looks like matisse would deal with that sensation of overlap, or how some people would deal with it in a collage.^but it's a direct painting. do you think this is a successful image, on the basis of its visual structure? (s ) yes, i do. i like this image very much. what makes its structure work? (s ) there are various things, and this may be my personal outlook. some images are really read as... the reason i would feel close to this image... it doesn't look anything like my work, it doesn't reflect what i'm working on. the words i'm going to say may be very abstract... because to say that it's not pretentious is a very abstract term. would feel that this artist is working with images that are not derived from life, that these images are being explored from inside, and then manifested through some mean. call it "magic", or call it mystery... the subject matter has not stood in front of this artist. he had to make this work from the very beginning of that image. he could not rely on a still life or on a tangible world to arrive at this image. i'm interested in that kind of work, whether it's from b.c. or today. those images that come out of our mind, i'm always intrigued by them. some of them tend to work... this could be tragic, or happy... but it is a lived-through experience rather than a rendering of an image. let's look at the last one. again you've given me a lot of information! (s ) right! this is david hockney. are you familiar with his work? (s ) oh yes, of course. can you tell me something about the different areas? (s ) right. you're giving me again work that i can relate to! in my youth, he was my mentor! i liked this stage of hockney, when he was applying various methods. could you describe some of the various methods you see there? (s ) yes. one is simply working with the flatness, and the linear work, and then again, dealing with the illusion of space or texture... a little bit like in a collage, but in the chairs here, he's just dealing with linear structure, he's just dealing with lines. in a way it could have been a homage to picasso. even though it was a very surreal thing to have an artist painting their own work.. so it's a self- portrait, and when you actually draw your self drawing, there's a whole... it's a long discussion! there's an image of an image... dali kind of did it in a cheap way - i'm crazy about dali's work - but he's painted himself several times, holding the brush. do you think that's what going on here? (s ) well, here's david, and he's sitting in front of this table, and he's certainly drawing something... it seems like it may be a guitar. but the thing is, it may be a combination of that flat world, and that dimensional world. we can sense the dimension of that table, we can deal with the perspective, and then we can move on to other areas if we move below the table, we're dealing with the carpet. we're not dealing at all with an illusion of space there, we're only reminded of the geometric design of the parallelogram.., but there's no depth of field here. there are the flat straight lines. he's applying different methods here: you're aware of various sides of the table, you can discuss him as an artist sitting at a table, and we can discuss the source of light... the light looks like it is coming from the top, because his chin has darker shades, and the shadow's a little bit under his hands, and the light is hitting the flatness of the table, but the sides of the table would be dark. moving towards this curtain, you're almost getting into that illusionistic way of working with the material. the way it's created, it seems it's really in the foreground. it seems we are dealing with the material in a way that is totally separate from the way he has handled the chairs. and then that little picasso vignette of a head, it's again has a source of light, it's coming from the same side as it would on him, coming form the left. and there's that inevitable sense of an overlap... but i still don't get that sense of a dimension. in a lot of ways he's working with positive and negative space. i don't get that sense of dimension like i would with the flower image, where i'm really reminded that that image goes a long way back. again it's more a sensation of overlap rather than an illusion of space. it's a very limited space. the only illusion of space in the entire piece is this line that drops behind this flower and starts going back, behind the house here. it's like the flower piece: contrast will look like it's forward, reduction of contrast will look like it's going really far back. the tail of that image certainly looks like it's going further back than the beginning of it, which is right almost under the picasso head. there are kinds of suggestions that are not necessarily being derived from life. the chair sitting on top of a nice green carpet... the shadow of the chair does not correspond to the chair itself... it might be a design of the carpet, but it's still part of the chair. so there's still some cubistic element involved, like the leg dropping or being extended into the carpet. and being more aware of the positive and negative space, and what happens in that area, rather than being true to life. he's also boxing himself in, he wants to be important. he's created a border around himself, he's got to stand out. it's a nice piece... there are various ways of dealing with a pattern. it's an effective component when it's part of that negative space. this is an absolutely marvelous piece as far as negative and positive spaces are concerned, because if we're constantly looking at the image, if we're constantly looking at the colors, or the chair, or the artist himself, well, that's nice. but i'm also looking at various abstract images that are created by the negative space, like between the table, or spaces some people would just consider as white areas. because knowing his work, i know that he was just so conscious of what happens in the whole structure, negative and positive.. in some places he tends to slow down the eye where he works with detail, then he gives it some sort of quiet area where there is less descriptive form. but again there is, talking about the methods, the way he presents himself in a fairly realistic manner, shadows included, and puts himself sitting on a bunch of lines.., the chairs are lines, and the table becomes a very impressionistic structure, sort of like someone like seurat might be drawing on this table. again, it's a totally marvelous piece. well, i'd like to ask you one last question. can you see any connections between the way traditional artists and computer artists might talk about these images? (s ) traditional artists, you mean like artists who paint on canvas and that kind of thing... right. (s ) oh, yes. there would be similarities. if i were to be using a computer, and i would start to discuss an image, i would be using a similar language as i am using here, except that i would be talking about nods and angles and pixels... but i would still be talking about positive and negative space, i would still be talking about depth of field and composition... so you feel you would be referring to the same kinds of things but using a different vocabulary... (s ) right. and i could be referring to such language as photography... or... so you think that the language to describe art could be used for computer graphics? (s ) yes. the english language is very good for that. i like discussing visual arts in english because there is an extensive way of portraying verbally a visual image. do you think that there are any terms or concepts in computer graphics that are useful for talking about traditonal art? (s ) oh yes, in the future i see absolutely no doubt. i mean it's already happening to a certain extent in my work. i can see no doubt that there would be some kind of a merging, or some way of dealing with a computer image. but there's a difference. i don't mean to call it graphic design. graphics often deals with that world we call illustration. and a computer design deals with slightly different issues, because they're not responding to a graphic design... they're just responding to the computer. they don't have to create some thing. and usually when we're dealing with a graphic design, it's usually a logo, or an image, or someone sets up a situation, or it's a narrative. but once the computer design gets into.., the only difference i can see in painting and computer design is the approach to the work. it's the way you would approach your painting... you mean the procedures that you use in making it? (s ) yes, the procedures... but again it's how you extend the program, because just like painting, computers are also limited. the capability of a program is very important. but i still believe you can create something out of nothing. so if i were to be given a program just with a straight line, and maybe a curved line, i could come up with a great image. great, let's stop on that note! 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 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	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page force and presence in the world of medicine healthcare perspective force and presence in the world of medicine alan bleakley plymouth peninsula school of medicine, university of plymouth, plymouth pl bt, uk; alan.bleakley@plymouth.ac.uk; tel.: + - - academic editors: ian walsh and helen noble received: july ; accepted: september ; published: september abstract: medicine can not only be read with a poetic imagination, but also configured as a poetic practice, moving beyond the instrumental. the poet wallace stevens made a distinction between ‘force’ and ‘presence’—the former can be read as combative, the latter as pacific. modern medicine has been shaped historically by the combative metaphor of a ‘war against disease’, turning medicine into a quasi-militaristic culture fond of hierarchy. this is supplemented by the metaphor of the ‘body as machine’, reducing the complex and unpredictable body to a linear, if complicated, apparatus. the two metaphors align medicine with the modern industrial–military complex that is masculine, heroic, and controlling in character. in an era in which medicine is feminising and expected to be patient-centred, collaborative (inter-professional) and transparent to the public as a democratic gesture, the industrial–military metaphor complex should no longer be shaping medicine—yet its influence is still keenly felt, especially in surgery. this continuing dominance of force over presence matters because it is a style running counter to the collaborative, team-based medicine needed for high levels of patient safety. medicine will authentically democratise only as new, pacific shaping metaphors emerge: those of ‘presence’, such as ‘hospitality’. hospitals can once again become places of hospitality. keywords: force; presence; medical metaphors . wallace stevens’ metaphorical frames i was beachcombing this morning in the wake of one of the wildest atlantic swells for many years. the sea was still raging with double overhead waves, each folding over with a crack. as a wave smacked the irritable surface of the pewter grey sea, it rushed up the beach—a white apron—and drained away into the sand to leave a fine mist in which i bathed in gratitude for these gifts of the wild. what struck me was the palpable difference between the force of the incoming tide, capped by those spuming waves unzipping at their crests, and the sudden peace at the high tide strand line as the sand quickly absorbed the spilled contents. force morphed into presence. a tideline necklace of small gifts—shattered shells and small pieces of polished glass: white, green, and brown—crowned the disappearing trace of the receding wave. sea and sky were indivisible, joined by a smoked-oyster haze. the poet wallace stevens, in ‘the man with the blue guitar’, says ‘it is the sea that whitens the roof’. the sea reflects white light from the sky back into the underside of the clouds, re-doubling the effort of light. as i turn to the sea on this stormiest of days, where the natural roof is the sky, the sea’s reflection glazes the sky leaden grey, but also adds a tinge of the natural colour of zinc, a bluish-grey. in that moment of beachcombing, and in a reflection of its mass, the sea brought metals—zinc and lead—to the roof of the sky as it redoubled its efforts at a primary demonstration of force. the sky became a literal roof, as a metallic presence. a house of force was built, within which i made a room of presence. this house was a hospital made for treating aching bodies. within it, you could attack your demons as if on a battlefield, or embrace the failings of the body as if in bed with a tender lover. healthcare , , ; doi: . /healthcare www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare http://www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare http://www.mdpi.com http://dx.doi.org/ . /healthcare http://www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare healthcare , , of one of stevens’ collected proverbs runs: ‘the world is a force not a presence’; however, in the poem ‘st. john and the back-ache’ from the auroras of autumn [ ]. stevens reverses this: ‘the world is presence and not force’. in this poem, stevens’ character st. john goes on to say that ‘presence is not mind’, but ‘ . . . fills the being before the mind can think’, where ‘the effect of the object is beyond the mind’s/extremest pinch and, easily, as in/a sudden color on the sea . . . ’. the mind then is preceded and formed by the senses acutely attuned to the world of objects—the sea’s sudden colour that will surely reflect in the roof of the sky. pattern recognition, the basis of expertise in medical diagnosis, is grounded in sensory cues and not conceptual clues. the physician conan doyle had already taught us this through his character sherlock holmes, who notices first and cogitates after. stevens says that ‘accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.’ presence is a subtle act of discrimination through close noticing in which the environment educates our attention. force is the wielding of the blunt object of opinion without the evidence of the senses. in stevens’ proverb, it is as if force and presence are opposed, but i think he would imagine them more as an enantiodromia, where one position can readily turn into the other. a ‘peace-keeping’ presence becomes a force when conflict erupts and returns to presence when conflict passes. between force and presence, at the strand line, things can, in principle, go either way. however, principles are rejected in our ‘post truth’ world in which the opinions of bullies take centre stage and their forcefulness is normalised. force might be thought of, without stereotyping, as competitive heroic individualism and bullish authority. presence is the exercise of tolerance shaped by love, compassion and care—that the psychoanalyst alfred adler called ‘fellow feeling’ as the exercise of authentic democracy. i am, then, following wallace stevens’ poetic imagination in suggesting that force and presence are two big metaphors that frame our thinking and performance. further, they are not in opposition but liable to enantiodromia, or one turning into the other. again, force has engulfed presence in a post-truth age, where ethically insensitive behaviour is readily normalised. let us see how these framing metaphors flow down to shape one complex system in our lives—medicine: medical culture, practice, education, and healthcare systems. st. john can be taken as the ideal of a fcorceful medicine to cure symptoms (‘back-ache’ is pain). medicine’s martial impulse, the historical emergence, which is considered below, has led to impressive achievements. however, st. john also represents both the arrogance and pieties of medicine. cure must be balanced by care. in the following section, i articulate—following foucauldian principles—the historical conditions of possibility for the emergence of force as a dominant discourse and metaphorical complex in medicine, and ask what this means for contemporary medical practice. . a sea change in medical culture metaphors are not just poetic devices restricted to literature, but part of the fabric of both everyday discourse and of specialist discourse such as medical practice. two leading or didactic metaphors have shaped western medicine: since the th century, ‘the body as machine’, and since the th century, ‘medicine as war’ [ ]. these are metaphors of ‘force’ rather than ‘presence’. i will argue that they have forged a medical culture that is no longer fit for purpose: a heroic, masculine, and hierarchical culture that is failing to adapt to an emergent set of healthcare values—patient-centred and team-based, collaborative rather than competitive. hierarchical, heroic medicine is past its sell-by date. it is time for a medicine in the round that is authentically democratic and embraces the poetic. we need a medicine of hospitality, true to the root of the word ‘hospital’; a medicine of presence and not force, shaped by appropriate metaphors. we have outgrown ‘medicine as war’ and ‘the body as machine’. i recognise that it is important to not demonise didactic metaphors. they are not born ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but rather are employed in ways that encompass a moral spectrum. the ‘medicine as war’ and ‘body as machine’ metaphors have driven vital technological and knowledge advances in medicine. however, their transformative energy is spent, indeed there is now a situation of debit. healthcare , , of . . the body as machine it is easy to see why the metaphor of the ‘body as machine’ has longevity—it is functional, reducing unpredictable complexity to predictable linearity. this is comforting as it reduces uncertainty or ambiguity. once the body is configured as a machine, it becomes potentially fixable and can be engineered. of course, this is extremely helpful in many ways, allowing for a range of interventions from targeted drug therapies to neurosurgery. however, bracketing out the difficult bits such as the mind and emotions–or leaving these to the oddballs, the psychiatrists—reduces the complex and abstracted person first to the literal body, second to the complicated linear machine, and third to its component parts—the liver a chemical factory; the heart a pump. of course the heart is a pump, but it is also a major attractor in a dynamic, adaptive, and complex system that is the human body embedded in a yet more complex environment. poetically and psychosomatically, the heart is the locus of love and courage. the mind is surely more complex than its reduction to the matter of the brain modelled in terms of a computer, or generally as electrical engineering, with sick minds a product of faulty wiring. for example, in pain treatment, machine metaphors are legion and often negative, closing off thinking for patients, where ‘locks’, ‘keys’, ‘wires’, ‘circuitry’, and ‘doorways’ are commonly described [ ]. the ‘body as machine’ can be traced back to vesalius’ fabrica, for three centuries the most influential western anatomy text, where veins, arteries, and nerves are described as hollow tubes ‘like a pipe’. these conduits supposedly worked through pneumatics, where air gives motion to fluid. nearly a century later, rené descartes ( – ) declared that ‘the body is to be regarded as a machine’, explicitly compared the arrangements of the organs in the body with that of ‘automata’ or ‘moving machines’. giorgio baglivi ( – ), an italian physician and scientist famous for distinguishing between smooth and striated muscle, deepened this metaphor. baglivi saw the body as composed of numerous smaller machines: the teeth as scissors, viscera and glands as sieves, the heart and blood vessels as waterworks, and the stomach a flask. through his sermons, the th century methodist minister john wesley ( – )—who had studied medicine at oxford where thomas sydenham was a formative influence—described the body as having ‘a thousand tubes and strainers’, any one of which could get obstructed. such metaphors still linger, where the lungs are thought of as ‘bellows’, the urinary tract as ‘plumbing’, the liver as a ‘factory’, the heart as ‘ticker’, and various electrochemical mechanisms passing sodium or calcium ions across cell membranes, as ‘pumps’. the rise of neurophysiology, as noted above, brought with it notions of ‘circuits’, ‘switches’, and ‘transistors’, and the brain is finally compared with a computer. in contemporary personalised medicine, based on the genome, health is described as a function of genetic ‘engineering’. . . medicine as war and illness as a battle susan sontag ( ) famously railed against the use of martial metaphors such as the ‘war on cancer ’, suggesting that we abandon use of metaphor in medicine altogether [ ]. this, however, throws the baby out with the bathwater. metaphors serve various purposes in medicine. the issue is, rather, to shift away from ‘dead’ and stigmatising metaphors to those that vivify. the war metaphor is so familiar and commonplace in our medical rhetoric that we easily lose sight of its militaristic origins and significance. notions of ‘fighting’ disease entered western medicine primarily through the work of thomas sydenham in england in the mid- th century. prior to that, links between illness and violence metaphors referred to a moral struggle. where medieval medical texts refer to ‘fighting’ metaphors, these are in the context of fighting sin, so that illness may be metaphorically contextualised as a moral problem. ‘holy’ and ‘healing’ stem from the same root, where a holy body is a whole body, balanced and well. sydenham described medical intervention as if he were vigorously using an assault weapon: ‘i attack the enemy within’, where ‘a murderous array of disease has to be fought against, and the battle is not a battle for the sluggard’. the most famous physician of his day, sydenham summed up healthcare , , of his approach as follows: ‘i steadily investigate the disease, i comprehend its character, and i proceed straight ahead, and in full confidence, towards its annihilation’. sydenham may have known the poet john donne’s sermons that included frequent use of ‘illness as violence’ metaphors; and in his writing, such as ‘devotions upon emergent occasions’, donne describes his own illness in as resembling a ‘siege’ and a ‘cannon shot’. donne thought he was dying from a fever ‘that blows up the heart’, also describing an ‘illness that invades’. sydenham’s metaphors did not constitute a dominant discourse at the time. such a discourse was established in modern medicine two centuries later through louis pasteur’s ‘biomilitarism’. while early th century doctors often used passive language such as plagues ‘laying’ upon people, pasteur mobilised an unashamedly active, militaristic language, where diseases ‘attacked’ persons. pasteur’s description of germ theory displaced a previous language of bodily ‘excess of vital forces’ with a language of invading armies laying siege to the body that becomes a battlefield. over a century later, medicine as battle is now a naturalised notion, but once had to be established with militaristic zeal. we know, through computer-assisted corpus linguistic analysis, that violence and war metaphors are common particularly in cancer discourse. yet research tells us that those cancer patients who view their disease as an ‘enemy’ show higher levels of anxiety and depression, a poorer quality of life, higher levels of pain, and less ability to cope overall than those who represent their illness with a more positive meaning. these findings have been replicated for other conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. patients encouraged by their doctors and healthcare workers to ‘fight’ their illnesses report suppressing emotional distress as they put a positive ‘face’ on things in order to not upset both family members and clinicians. a ‘war against cancer’ was first described in a lead article in the british medical journal in . this rhetoric was extended to identify the ‘fight against cancer’ as an issue of imperialist domination, where the disease itself was described as ‘darkest africa’ waiting to be discovered and conquered. later, cancer cells were identified with bolsheviks, as ‘anarchic’, threatening the stability of the body. in , richard nixon, then president of the united states, delivered a famous speech declaring a war on cancer, where science would ‘conquer’ the disease. at this time, bioscience was replete with martial terms such as ‘killer’ cells and ‘invasive’ species. the gross military metaphor was refined through cellular pathology. as knowledge accumulated about the microorganisms that cause illness, they were described as ‘invading’ the body that produces its own ‘defences’. the body in the early th century medicine is configured as a fortress that must be protected from external penetration by germs, or defended from attack. medicine adopts ‘aggressive’ treatments while the patient is in the line of fire. medicine’s hospitality, configured in the hospital, has been forced to adapt to this tough-minded procrustean bed, so that the hospital itself, and its cells (in particular the operating theatre), become general zones of conflict and specific theatres of war. violence perpetrated by patients on hospital staff constitutes about three quarters of all workplace assaults and has almost doubled in north america in particular over the past few years [ ]. hospitals can be considered unsafe and unsavoury places to work if harassment and insult by doctors and surgeons aimed at juniors and other healthcare staff is added to the mix of assaults by patients. medicine’s saturation in war-making discourse comes to normalise language such as combating illness, where invading bugs are the enemy in the battlefield of the patient’s body, that is under siege but might be treated with magic bullets. such metaphors extend to nursing culture that is configured as adversarial, where practitioners use phrases such as becoming ‘fatigued by having to do all these battles’, feeling ‘sabotaged’ ‘taking flak’, and working ‘in the trenches’, while their supervisors have ‘deserted the troops’. the ‘body as machine’ and ‘medicine as war’ metaphors were aligned to produce a powerful frame of reference in the era after the second world war, as part of a wider cultural ‘military–industrial’ complex. many doctors had also fought in wwii, and, in north america, subsequently in the korean and vietnam wars. the medical gaze became equated with the martial gaze, the battlefield changing healthcare , , of through history from the sickroom of the th century to the pathologist’s bench of the th century, to the imaging room of the th century, and to the dna sequencer’s computer screen of today. genome sequencing in particular is used to launch ‘precision attacks’ against different types of cancers, where the old military metaphors of combating disease are back in new guise. the language of war works within its own logic by eradicating its enemies, so it is difficult to spot alternative metaphors. martial metaphors are inherently bullying—masculine, power-based, paternalistic, and violent or violating. however, patients may tire of this. a patient with colon cancer says that others configuring his illness as a battle ‘was less than palatable’ because: ‘i had already experienced real war in vietnam and was not anxious to repeat anything closely resembling that.’ it may be exhausting for already exhausted patients to think that they have a battle on their hands, and the notion of victory may be far from the reality. the patient is stigmatised. another danger of the dominant militaristic metaphor is that it engages medicine in an arms race, where the dominant fantasy is that all health problems will ultimately be solved with sophisticated technologies as explosive innovations. further, this metaphor again encourages militaristic organisational structures such as hierarchies with male dominance linked to the aggressive marketing strategies of big pharma. finally, the militaristic metaphor celebrates control and certainty, where much of medicine is in fact about tolerating ambiguity. by sticking with, and developing or refining, machine and war metaphors, contemporary medicine operates as if driving a car with the brakes on. how will patients of the future benefit from values, descriptions, and practices that potentially objectify, dehumanise, and stigmatise them and place them in a war zone? just as medical students learn ‘communication skills’ only to enter practice and interrupt patients on average within seconds of the clinical encounter as a violation of the principle of ‘patient-centredness’, so imagining the body as a machine needing an oil change or a tune up negates the complexity of the illness experience; and perpetuating war metaphors situates patients in a metaphorical landscape not of their choosing. . alternative metaphors to medicine as war that didactic or leading metaphors change is established from historical evidence as we have seen. as already noted, it was not always the case that medicine’s interests were described martially. for example, in early modern europe, cancer might be associated with impurity and rot, or with a corrosive acid, but not with an invading enemy or a hostile presence that has to be killed. the root meaning of cancer is ‘crab’ or ‘crayfish’, and the disease was imagined as surreptitiously moving sideways into surrounding flesh. a commonly used metaphor was that of a rooting (and not even a rotting) plant that was difficult to eradicate and produced seeds, referring to metastasis (from the greek, meaning ‘a change of position’). cancer again was typified in terms of a ‘shifting’ presence. the disease was shifty, but not aggressive. what then are the historical conditions of possibility for didactic metaphors to emerge? as we move into an era of medicine where there are more women than men doctors, where collaborative or democratic inter-professional teamwork is the norm, and where authentic patient-centredness is realised, will militaristic metaphors fade? yet such metaphors remain stubbornly in place, shaping thinking, and resurfacing, as noted, in the ‘precision attacks’ of personalised medicine. medicine needs to incorporate new images into its thinking, and essential to this process would be new metaphors around which we can reconstruct both our present and our emerging knowledge. metaphors can empower patients by making complex medical conditions more understandable and accessible. if military metaphors in medicine are historically transient, fraught with contradictions, conceptually weak, and fail to capture the patient’s perspective, it is hard to understand why they have gained such a foothold and maintain traction. again, it may be that they fit the historically determined cultural form of medicine as quasi-militaristic in its organisation. further, such metaphors dull the capacity for reflection where their rhetorical style is that of the insistent bully. healthcare , , of there are emergent alternatives, and they may not be ‘big gun’ metaphors but multiple, in combination. in response to the dominant ‘war on cancer’ metaphor, living with cancer has also been described as a chess match, a marathon, a drama, and a dance. three ‘front runner’ emerging alternatives to ‘medicine as war’ are (i) health as balance and imbalance (homeostasis and dystasis), (ii) medicine as collaborative exploration rather than heroic struggle, and (iii) illness as a journey. people suffering in particular from chronic illnesses such as heart disease have characteristically had their identities shaped by the didactic metaphor of ‘illness as a journey’. this metaphor offers rich cross-domain mapping drawing on speed, progress, direction, goals, and pursuit. it is not as aggressive as the martial metaphor and for this reason may be easier to accommodate for patients. certainly it is the key didactic metaphor in self-help books about illness, now a major genre in literature, and such literature—in the key of new age therapy-speak—is in danger of trivialising the journey metaphor, or romanticising it as a new version of the masculine ‘hero’s journey’ with its tired dragonslaying motifs warmed over as fantasy fodder. such metaphorical frames readily attract and absorb ‘alternative’ therapies, too. where heroic, militaristic–industrial complex metaphors can be seen to have shaped dysfunctional healthcare systems, a glaring alternative metaphor is the ‘ecologic’, although this is also prone to being hijacked by new age interests [ , ]. this metaphor complex includes the pacific and the feminine-collaborative. concepts from the ecology movement, incorporating systems thinking, can readily be translated across to medicine, including ‘complexity’, ‘dynamicism’, ‘adaptability’, ‘emergent properties’, ‘holism’, ‘integrity’, ‘balance’, ‘natural’, ‘ethical use of limited resources’, ‘quality of life’, ‘diversity’, ‘renewable’, ‘sustainable’, ‘responsibility for future generations’, ‘community’, and ‘conservation’. thinking with systems challenges the hegemony of ‘body as machine’ metaphors, replacing the linear but complicated (yet fixable) with the complex, unpredictable, and ambiguous. the use of an ecological and pacific metaphor complex may shift medicine’s primary concern with aggressive treatment to co-ordinated and educated prevention, where population medicine becomes primary; also shifting values away from waste to conservation—from maintaining life at all costs to facing death more realistically. we might also temper false hope in technology-led medicine as saviour and restore ‘small is beautiful’ values and habits of fellow feeling, mutuality, and supportive intervention to communities. ecological, pacific, and collaborative metaphors work readily together. this shift—from the linear and brutal ‘body as machine’ and ‘medicine as war’ dominant metaphors to the ecologic and systems-based can be seen, in turn, as a shift from ‘force’ to ‘presence’. . mobilising wallace stevens’ poetics to energise medicine i borrow from wallace stevens to frame, and celebrate, medicine and its critical study as poetic and metaphoric practices. medicine gains by our imagining of it beyond the instrumental to embrace the ethical and aesthetic. the framing of diagnoses and the care of patients have as much to do with form, elegance, beauty, and moral judgement as with function and pragmatism. stevens’ framing of life’s major tension as the human mind meeting nature (or force facing presence) applies readily to medicine. presence—natural life (ancient greek zoe)—can be equated with the inevitability of symptom, bodily suffering, and ageing, while force—cultural life, as the application of the human mind to natural life (ancient greek bios)—is medicine’s response to disease, from planned eradication to management. stevens is a particularly good poet to draw upon for re-imagining medicine because his stock in trade is the complex, problematic, and ambiguous. his poetry is at once sensual and highly intellectual, but stevens wears the intellect lightly, claiming that poetry must ‘resist the intelligence’. it would be easy to see stevens’ work as a canon of force, where the critic describes force as ‘the mind’s violence-from-within’, while presence is ‘nature’s violence-from-without’ [ ]. however, this would be a naive intellectual approach to stevens’ paradoxical intellectualism, where the poems demand sensory and sensual embrace. healthcare , , of this aesthetic runs beyond the poems themselves to the formats in which they are presented. stevens was particular about typefaces and the self-display of books. the writer guy davenport notes: ‘stevens’ books, handsomely printed by alfred knopf, had an authority and finish, a presence’ (my emphasis) [ ]. one of davenport’s own books, every force evolves a form [ ], takes its title from the founder of the shakers, mother ann lee. the shaker aesthetic is a precursor to minimalism, where, like the work of the iconic shaker broom, the mess is brushed away to leave a clean, sanitised space. neither messy medicine, meeting ambiguity and uncertainty at every turn, nor wallace stevens’ complex poetry can be said to outwardly display a minimalist aesthetic, but both stevens’ poetry and medicine are practices built with minimalist scaffolding. medical education stresses that the patient must be compressed to the ‘case’, and the ‘case’ further presented as a collapsed narrative, framing symptom as figure against ground. stevens’ poetry has a similar skeletal structure made evident through the x-ray of exegesis. for example, austin allen shows how stevens’ famous elliptical poem ‘the emperor of ice-cream’ brings together two scenes in one dwelling: ice cream is being whipped up in the kitchen as part of a wake meal prepared for mourners of the woman who lived in the house, recently dead, while her corpse is being prepared to be laid out [ ]. force—culture’s mindful resistance to nature—is exhausted; presence rules. yet regal force re-appears as short-lived, the emperor as whipped ice cream, nature briefly transformed. all such readings of wallace stevens’ work are conditional. despite harold bloom’s confidence in his analysis of the poem ‘st. john and the back-ache’ [ ], the same poem decades on from bloom is described by eleanor cook ( ) as a ‘remarkable debate-poem on the question of pain, still in need of good exegesis’ [ ]. . conclusions modern medicine has been shaped historically by an ‘industrial–military’ complex of metaphors—‘body as machine’ and ‘war against disease’—that i read, borrowing wallace stevens’ metaphors, as the dominance of ‘force’ over ‘presence’. contemporary medicine demands collaborative, patient-centred, inter-professional teamwork. this promises a medicine that is both feminised and democratised, guided by an enlightened medical education. however, for this progressive medicine to gain traction, new shaping metaphors must emerge. likely candidates are ecological metaphors such as holism, and medicine enacted as authentic hospitality. stevens’ ‘presence’ described at the beginning of the essay has morphed into this author’s wider interpretation to embrace democracy, feminisation, collaboration, and tenderness. this creative drift is necessary if we are to make sense of how the metaphor of presence is translated into contemporary clinical teamwork as patient-centred and inter-professional practices. acknowledgments: the author would like to acknowledge financial support from the british academy/leverhulme trust that allowed a period of research for the topic ‘metaphors in medicine’. conflicts of interest: the author declares no conflict of interest. references . stevens, m. the auroras of autumn; aa knopf: new york, ny, usa, . . bleakley, a. thinking with metaphors in medicine: the state of the art; routledge: london, uk, . . neilson, s. pain as metaphor: metaphor and medicine. med. humanit. , , – . [crossref] [pubmed] . sontag, s. illness as a metaphor; allen lane: london, uk, . . marshall, r.; bleakley, a. rejuvenating medical education: how homer can help; cambridge scholars: newcastle, uk, . . annas, g.j. reframing the debate on healthcare reform by replacing our metaphors. n. engl. j. med. , , – . [crossref] [pubmed] . stewart, w.b. deep medicine: harnessing the source of your healing power; new harbinger publications: oakland, ca, usa, . http://dx.doi.org/ . /medhum- - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ http://dx.doi.org/ . /nejm http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ healthcare , , of . bloom, h. wallace stevens: the poems of our climate; cornell university press: ithaca, ny, usa; london, uk, ; p. . . davenport, g. wallace stevens: the presence of his wit, playfulness and grace. chicago tribune, october . . davenport, g. every force evolves a form: twenty essays; north point press: new york, ny, usa, . . allen, a. wallace stevens the emperor of ice cream. poetry foundation. available online: https://www. poetryfoundation.org/articles/ /wallace-stevens-the-emperor-of-ice-cream (accessed on june ). . cook, e.a. reader’s guide to wallace stevens; princeton university press: princeton, nj, usa, . © by the author. licensee mdpi, basel, switzerland. this article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the creative commons attribution (cc by) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . /). https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/ /wallace-stevens-the-emperor-of-ice-cream https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/ /wallace-stevens-the-emperor-of-ice-cream http://creativecommons.org/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . /. 	wallace stevens’ metaphorical frames 	a sea change in medical culture 	the body as machine 	medicine as war and illness as a battle 	alternative metaphors to medicine as war 	mobilising wallace stevens’ poetics to energise medicine 	conclusions frege, hilbert, and structuralism mark burke thesis submitted to the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the ph. d. in philosophy department of philosophy faculty of arts university of ottawa © mark burke, ottawa, canada, ii table of contents abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iii acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv introduction ......................................................................................................................................v chapter : the development of a structural view of geometry ....................................................... chapter : frege and hilbert on axiomatic systems ...................................................................... chapter : problems with frege‘s views ..................................................................................... chapter : benacerraf, abstract structures, and structuralism ...................................................... bibliography ................................................................................................................................ iii abstract the central question of this thesis is: what is mathematics about? the answer arrived at by the thesis is an unsettling and unsatisfying one. by examining two of the most promising contemporary accounts of the nature of mathematics, i conclude that neither is as yet capable of giving us a conclusive answer to our question. the conclusion is arrived at by a combination of historical and conceptual analysis. it begins with the historical fact that, since the middle of the nineteenth century, mathematics has undergone a radical transformation. this transformation occurred in most branches of mathematics, but was perhaps most apparent in geometry. earlier images of geometry understood it as the science of space. in the wake of the emergence of multiple distinct geometries and the realization that non-euclidean geometries might lay claim to the description of physical space, the old picture of euclidean geometry as the sole correct description of physical space was no longer tenable. the first chapter of the dissertation provides an historical account of some of the forces which led to the destabilization of the traditional picture of geometry. the second chapter examines the debate between gottlob frege and david hilbert regarding the nature of geometry and axiomatics, ending with an argument suggesting that hilbert‘s views are ultimately unsatisfying. the third chapter continues to probe the work of frege and, again, finds his explanations of the nature of mathematics troublingly unsatisfying. the end result of the first three chapters is that the frege-hilbert debate leaves us with an impasse: the traditional understanding of mathematics cannot hold, but neither can the two most promising modern accounts. the fourth and final chapter of the thesis investigates mathematical structuralism—a more recent development in the philosophy of mathematics—in order to see whether it can move us beyond the impasse of the frege-hilbert debate. ultimately, it is argued that the contemporary debate between ‗assertoric‘ structuralists and ‗algebraic‘ structuralists recapitulates a form of the frege-hilbert impasse. the ultimate claim of the thesis, then, is that neither of the two most promising contemporary accounts can offer us a satisfying philosophical answer to the question ‗what is mathematics about?‘. iv acknowledgements this thesis represents a radical (and initially daunting) departure from my earlier work in philosophy. during those innumerable dark nights of the soul when i began to question the sanity of both myself and the entire history of mathematics, i have always been fortunate to find myself surrounded by an incredibly supportive and inspiring group of people. first and foremost i would like to thank my partner in life, anna candido, without whom this project would unquestionably have been abandoned long ago. i‘ve relied perhaps too much on anna‘s always kind words and on her willingness to entertain the ludicrous late-night questions of a philosopher at odds with himself and his subject. i cherish every day spent with her. i would also like to thank my loving family—my parents, danny and carol, and my sister kristy. against all reason they have supported my interest in philosophy since the very beginning. i owe to them any strength of character and persistence required for this project—and a lot more besides! philosophically, this thesis has benefitted greatly from my conversations with colleagues and great friends at the university of king‘s college in halifax. though only rarely touching on questions of mathematics, the hours (days, months, years…) spent arguing about general philosophical matters with darren dyck, matthew furlong, christopher rice, and saša stanković have shaped my entire approach to philosophy, as well as some of the specific contents of this thesis. often in these conversations, it has struck me that we are all working on the same problems from different angles. i only hope, in the future, to benefit them as much as they have me. outside of philosophy, my close friendships with george blott, peru dyer, and scott harber have helped me remain (if i have remained) sane while going through the endless ringer of academia. the hours we‘ve spent together producing and destroying art have been some of the finest of my life. finally, i would like to thank my supervisor, the always patient, always critical, always kind paul rusnock. my first encounter with rusnock was in a course he taught on gottlob frege. prior to this encounter, i had intended to write my doctoral dissertation in the area of ethical and political philosophy. afterwards, i became deeply engrossed in the strange forms of rigor and precision found in logic and mathematics. without his willingness to endure my questions (which invariably missed the mark) and to educate me (in metalogic, modal logic, set theory, group theory, even category theory) this project would never have come to fruition. of course none of my own imprecisions, and none of the faults of this thesis, can be attributed to him. v introduction what is mathematics about? this seems a rather straightforward question, but even our naïve first approximations seem to miss the mark. a common response to the question is that mathematics concerns number. but then we have geometry—a venerable old branch of mathematics which needn‘t concern itself with number at all. and, besides, what exactly are numbers, in any case? since its earliest development, mathematics has been a richly varied science, including at different times geometry, arithmetic, algebra, mechanics, analysis, logic, and many other branches besides. and yet, despite this rich variety, most philosophers and mathematicians have tended to treat mathematics as a unified science, sharing, in some sense, a common content. throughout much of its history, mathematics has been seen as a bastion of stability amongst the sciences, many of which change significantly in the wake of a new discovery or mode of thinking. but mathematics, too, has faced its share of instability. throughout the eighteenth century, european mathematicians struggled to understand the exact meaning of the calculus, and devoted a great deal of effort to the taming of the infinitesimal. in the nineteenth century, the very nature of geometry was called into question by the emergence of non-euclidean, projective, and other geometries. the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have witnessed perhaps the most fundamental crises so far in the shape of the set-theoretic paradoxes and gödel‘s incompleteness results. each of these events (among others) has altered our conception of mathematics as a science in significant ways, such that it is highly unlikely that a contemporary mathematician would answer the question ‗what is mathematics about?‘ in the same way that euclid or archimedes might have. my goal in this dissertation is not to canvass all possible views of the nature of mathematics, but to examine a major division amongst these views through the lens of a few privileged exemplars. the division is between what i call the ontologically-fixed conception of mathematics and the relational or free-floating or purely structural conception of mathematics. in the first chapter, i investigate a large scale shift in understanding regarding the nature of geometry from the time of euclid to the publication of david hilbert‘s die grundlagen der geometrie in . my choice in this chapter of geometry, rather than a more obviously abstract mathematical field like algebra, is a deliberate one. the reason for this choice is that geometry, of all the branches of mathematics, has always seemed the most concrete and, therefore, the least likely to give way to an abstract structural approach. unlike algebra, whose exact subject matter is and was a matter for debate, geometry has historically been understood to have an obvious and determinate subject matter (i.e., physical space). thus, when an abstract structural view emerges even in geometry it lends credence to the claim that mathematics as a whole is best construed as the science or study of structures. (as we will see in the fourth chapter of the dissertation, where we examine benacerraf‘s non-uniqueness problem, the other bastion of determinate content within mathematics—basic arithmetic—has come to be understood structurally as well). the direct focus of this first, geometric chapter is the relatively narrower problem of understanding shifting historical attitudes toward the parallel postulate. various attempts to situate this postulate relative to the system of euclid‘s elements are considered until, in the s, we begin to see a radical alteration in the conception of geometry as a science. ultimately, i will argue that, in the wake of the development of mathematically consistent and physically applicable vi models of non-euclidean geometries (among other factors), there was no longer an adequate philosophical account of the exact nature of geometrical science. in the second chapter i turn to a debate that seems to promise such an account. on the one hand, we have the philosopher and logician gottlob frege, who argues that mathematics has a determinate content, that it is a science whose truths are absolute, and that mathematical terms have determinate referents. on the other side of the debate we have david hilbert, one of the most influential mathematicians of modern times, and one of the major forces behind the modern axiomatic approach to the subject. for hilbert, mathematics does not have a determinate content in the sense that frege demands. instead, it concerns uninterpreted formal systems, which can be given content through a procedure called ‗interpretation‘, but which are free-standing when left alone. for hilbert, questions of ontology and of absolute truth and reference miss the point of (modern) mathematics entirely. at the end of the chapter, we consider some rather significant criticisms of hilbert‘s view made by frege. the result is that profound doubts have been cast on hilbert‘s answer to the question ‗what is mathematics about‘. the third chapter proceeds by investigating the chief alternative to hilbert‘s relational view: namely, frege‘s ontologically fixed view. frege‘s interesting logicist programme involved the reduction of basic arithmetic to pure logic. for him, an important part of this project concerned fixing the references of mathematical terms in his unique ontology of functions and objects. the chapter gives an account of the motivations for and contents of frege‘s ontological hierarchy and then moves on to discuss some serious problems with his account of the nature of mathematics. more specifically, the chapter examines two problems pertaining to the fixing of references: the concept horse problem, which seems to leave frege unable to refer to one of the basic elements of his ontology, and the julius caesar problem, which threatens to undermine his capacity to fix the references of mathematical terms as basic as ‗number‘. the conclusion of the chapter shows that, while frege can escape the concept horse problem reasonably well, his program ultimately founders on the julius caesar problem. this leaves us at an impasse: neither hilbert‘s view nor frege‘s view can satisfactorily explain what mathematics is really about. in the fourth and final chapter i continue my investigation of this question by examining some relatively recent attempts to answer (or otherwise dissolve) the caesar problem faced by frege. the focus of the first half of the chapter is on a paper by paul benacerraf which rejects an analogue of the caesar problem insofar as it is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of mathematics. the positive position benacerraf briefly develops after this dissolution of the caesar problem is strikingly reminiscent of hilbert‘s purely relational view. his claim is that mathematics is not about the kind of ontology that frege was interested in but instead about abstract structures. this view has come to be called ‗structuralism‘. in the end, benacerraf‘s particular form of structuralism is shown to be subject to deep difficulties and so we must turn to more recent work in the philosophy of mathematics to answer our question. some of the most promising contemporary work follows in the wake of benacerraf‘s programme and can be called ‗structuralist‘ in much the same way. in the contemporary setting, i shall argue, two main kinds of structuralism may be distinguished. on the one hand we have assertoric structuralism (exemplified in this chapter chiefly by the work of stewart shapiro). assertoric structuralism contends, like frege, that mathematics has a determinate content and that the claims of mathematics are meaningful assertions about this content. unlike frege, however, vii assertoric structuralists claim that this content is comprised of abstract structures. i go on to argue that shapiro‘s brand of assertoric structuralism ends up enmeshed in the same sort of difficulties that troubled frege‘s view. on the other hand, we have algebraic structuralism (exemplified here by steve awodey and john bell). algebraic structuralism, like hilbert‘s earlier position, rejects the idea that mathematics has a single determinate content in favour of a view which relativizes this content to a particular system, framework, or structure. algebraic structuralism in its modern form is often developed using the tools of the branch of abstract algebra called category theory. on the algebraists‘ view, there are multiple different local categories within which mathematics can be done, each with its own ontology and logic. thus, for them, frege‘s dream of absolutely fixing the references of mathematical terms is just that—a dream, and a misleading one. like hilbert, however, the algebraic structuralists are forced to embrace relativized notions of truth, reference, and meaning. in the conclusion to the chapter, i argue that neither assertoric nor algebraic structuralism offer us a significant philosophical advance over the impasse of the frege-hilbert debate, and we are left with no way to adjudicate between competing, and deeply opposed, conceptions of the nature of mathematics. in short, the thesis illustrates an historical and conceptual oscillation between two distinct pictures of mathematics. one in which mathematics is understood as a science having a unique content and clear referents, the other in which both content and reference vary depending upon one‘s local situation, system, or framework. we are left, then, with no clear answer to the question ‗what is mathematics about,‘ but a clearer diagnosis of our dilemma. chapter : the development of a structural view of geometry § . introduction the point of this chapter is to explain why a structural approach to geometry emerged. this can appear to be a purely historical question, but i believe it is crucial for the philosophical project of this thesis as well. the project of the thesis, recall, is to investigate what mathematics is about. since the th century, there have been two broad approaches to this question. the first centers on discovering exactly which objects lie at the basis of all mathematical reasoning. this approach is much older and is found already in the work of euclid. the second approach suggests that mathematics concerns structures and attempts to explain what structures are and how they relate to one another. this approach is new—beginning in the th century—but is dominant in most areas of contemporary mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics. in this chapter, i will explain why this second view emerged at all. it is impossible to evaluate and understand the various forms of mathematical structuralism if we have no idea what problems they were originally intended to address. the success of the structural approach to mathematics since the beginning of the twentieth century has made many of these initial problems difficult even to formulate: the status of euclid‘s parallel postulate, for instance, does not strike us as a pressing problem which cuts to the very heart of geometry. it is now mostly an historical curiosity. the reason why we are not deeply troubled by the parallel postulate is because a new mode of thinking about geometry has emerged which eliminates both the problem of the parallel postulate and the basis for our deep interest in it. this new mode of thinking is not particularly concerned with the specifics of euclidean geometry because it understands this geometry as just one among infinitely many. it is the relations between geometries and other sorts of ‗structures‘ which occupy the new mode of thinking. this approach has been wildly successful. it has been so successful, in fact, that to speak meaningfully about modern mathematics seems to require us to accept the conceptual vocabulary of structuralism. we breathe the air of structuralism almost without notice. but, as frege notes already in his correspondence with hilbert and elsewhere, the ‗modern‘ approach to mathematics is by no means clear itself. i think it is very difficult to see that this approach might be fundamentally incoherent or unclear if we already ask and answer every question by employing its conceptual vocabulary. in this first chapter, then, i want to draw attention to the peculiarity of structuralism by examining the non-structuralist questions which prompted its emergence in the first place. it is difficult to avoid speaking even about the history of mathematics in structural terms. i think a careful and detailed attention to the problems which led to structuralism and the philosophical views which generated these problems is the best approach. the chapter begins with an examination of the conceptual structure of euclid‘s influential text, the elements. after examining euclid‘s work directly, we then turn to a series of criticisms and concerns pertaining to the parallels axiom. this historical account of the troubles engendered by this axiom is intended to illustrate the slow shift away from the object-centered account of geometry we find in euclid towards the structure-focussed views more characteristic of contemporary mathematics. this historical portrait culminates in an examination of the unstable philosophical position of geometry just prior to the publication, in , of hilbert‘s grundlagen der geometrie. the chapter should show that, at the end of the th century, an entirely new way of doing mathematics had emerged, but its philosophical basis had not been clearly articulated. chapter two will consider hilbert‘s work, which, to many, brought a new philosophical and conceptual clarity for modern mathematics. this historical matter is relevant not merely as background information, but as a necessary element for understanding the concerns discussed by frege and hilbert (to be examined in subsequent chapters). without an appreciation of both the traditional picture of geometry and the instability created by its demise, we cannot grasp many of the important subtleties encountered in the frege-hilbert correspondence. in particular, without grasping changes in the common understanding of geometry throughout the nineteenth century, the motivations for and advancements embodied within hilbert‘s work disappear entirely. moreover, without understanding the crucial differences between frege‘s position vis-à-vis axiomatization and the traditional euclidean picture of geometry, we cannot fully appreciate how different even frege‘s supposedly traditional picture of geometry is from that of his predecessors. the ideas of both frege and hilbert have been very influential over the last century. the prominence of their respective views on logic and mathematics has made it easy for many commentators to read their works somewhat anachronistically. for instance, even astute readers of hilbert tend to attribute a fully model-theoretic understanding of axiomatics to his earlier work. but, as we shall see in the second chapter, during the earlier part of his career hilbert had not yet developed clear enough logical and semantic views for this to be the case. by illustrating the links between hilbert‘s work and that of his predecessors (which is partially accomplished in this chapter), such anachronism becomes easier to avoid. in frege‘s case, too, commentators have tended to misconstrue his works based on anachronistic readings. when examining the frege-hilbert correspondence, for instance, many commentators have found frege‘s criticisms to be pedantic or old-fashioned in a way that simply misses the point of ‗modern‘ axiomatics. careful attention to prior developments in geometry and axiomatics, however, helps to illustrate, first, that frege‘s views are not quite as conservative as they appear and, second, that his criticisms of the supposedly model-theoretic work of hilbert are more sophisticated than has usually been assumed. a more general benefit of this thoroughly historical way of proceeding is that it allows us to see that seemingly straightforward mathematical terms mean and have meant different things for different people, and that these differences in meaning have not always been noticed. in my initial attempts to address the problem of structure in mathematics i myself rather naively presupposed that there was some widespread agreement about what ‗structure‘ might mean. as further historical enquiry has shown the meaning of common mathematical terms like ‗axiom‘ and ‗structure‘ is far from settled even today (though there is much less debate about the nature of axioms today, as the question seems to many to have been settled). see, for example, [weyl , - ]. e.g., [torretti ] and [freudenthal ]. § . euclid and the parallel postulate it is chiefly from euclid‘s elements that the traditional understanding of geometry as the science of space and spatial objects derives. and it is chiefly from the geometries which differ from euclid‘s own that we derive the cluster of views which hold that geometry is concerned primarily with spatial structures. at the outset of this chapter, i want to establish as clearly as possible the content of the traditional euclidean picture of geometry. i am not interested in the purely mathematical aspects of euclid‘s geometrical thinking, but in showing the philosophical principles and assumptions which underlie this thinking. as our historical analysis will show, many of these principles remained tacit, vague, and unclear for hundreds and even thousands of years. indeed, one useful way of understanding the structure-focussed view of geometry which dominates the world of mathematics today is to see it as an attempt to avoid the incoherence and limitations of the euclidean picture of geometry. in this chapter, i intend to flesh out what i take to be the central features of this incomplete picture so that we can better understand why alternative views emerged at all. . the origins and importance of euclid‘s elements the thirteen books of euclid‘s elements are one of the marvels of ancient greek mathematics, and, indeed, of rigorous thinking more generally. for nearly two thousand years, they remained a benchmark for certitude and provided an ideal to be lived up to by all other scientific treatises. euclid‘s axiomatic method has also been emulated in a variety of fields, from ethics to economics, in addition to a pervasive and massive influence within almost every sub-discipline of mathematics, from geometry to analysis. it is indeed difficult to overestimate the importance this geometrical textbook has had for the development of scientific thought over the last two and a half millennia. but, despite its singular position within the history of thought, euclid‘s most famous work was not the first of its kind, only the most successful. we know from proclus ( - ), and obliquely from eudemus (c. bc- c. bc) and simplicius (c. - ), that hippocrates of chios (fl. latter half of the th century bc) also wrote a treatise on geometry, entitled the elements, about a century before euclid‘s. we also know from proclus that the two platonists leon and theudius of magnesia (c. th century bc) composed elements, though nothing from either of these works has survived and little else is known of their authors. despite the disappearance of these competitors, it is clear both that euclid‘s elements was part of a tradition of greek mathematical textbook writing and that it was considered by many of his contemporaries to be the pinnacle of that tradition. we can surmise its position at the head of the queue both from the number of favourable references in ancient sources and from the fact that its competitors have not survived. my interest here is not exclusively in the superiority and idiosyncrasy of euclid‘s work. i focus on euclid chiefly because his work has indisputably been the most influential and because his work has been thought by many to represent the central features of the classical greek attitude toward mathematics. this greek attitude, or, rather, the greek methodological and philosophical approach to mathematics, has shaped the history and content of mathematics to such an extent that many of its assumptions remained invisible for centuries. by looking closely at euclid and the problems stemming from his work, we will gain a clearer historical and philosophical understanding of the subsequent attack on the traditional picture of mathematics as a science concerned with certain types of objects. so, let us turn now to the thing itself and discuss the aims, format, and content of euclid‘s best- known work. . the aims of the elements. as noted above, the elements was a member of a literary tradition which likely began in the fifth century b.c. with hippocrates of chios. euclid‘s elements, presumably like the lost members of the tradition, is a compendium of mathematical results—in this case those pertaining to plane geometry, proportions, number theory, incommensurable quantities, and the geometry of solids. as kline notes, ―[t]he elements [...] is as much a mathematical history of the age just brought to a close as it is the logical development of a subject‖. accordingly, it is likely that very few of the theorems in the elements are the original production of euclid himself; rather, euclid is responsible chiefly for the arrangement of the work and, probably, for a few of the proofs as well. while there is still debate as to the exact status of the elements within the mathematical community of euclid‘s time, we can, with proclus (to whom we owe a valuable commentary on euclid), nevertheless discern two principal aims in the work. the first of these is the investigation and development of the theory of the ―cosmic bodies‖ (i.e., the five regular or platonic solids) in the final three books—this aspect of the work likely represented the height of greek geometrical knowledge of the time. the elements presents a clear path to the development of this branch of geometry by way of a rigorous and lucid presentation of the methods and results required for its elaboration. the second aim of the elements is more general and pedagogical in character. of this aim, proclus writes: of the purpose of the work with reference to the student we shall say that it is to lay before him an elementary exposition [...] and a method of perfecting his understanding for the whole of geometry. if we start from the elements, we shall be able to understand the other parts of this science; without the elements we cannot grasp its complexity, and the learning of the rest will be beyond us. the theorems that are simplest and most fundamental and nearest to first principles are assembled here in a suitable order, and the demonstrations of other propositions take them as the most clearly known and proceed from them. [kline , ]. the debate concerns euclid‘s intended audience; i.e., whether he was chiefly interested in communicating to already-sophisticated mathematical peers, or if the book was intended as a sort of catechism for prospective students of mathematics. kline writes of the matter that ―the purpose of euclid‘s elements is in question. it is considered by some as a treatise for learned mathematicians and by others as a text for students. proclus gives some weight to the latter belief‖ [kline , ]. the block quote from proclus on this page is partial evidence for his belief in the pedagogical intent of the elements, though the inclusion of relatively complex work on the platonic solids seems to indicate that euclid may have been writing for already-knowledgeable mathematicians. [proclus , ]. [proclus , ]. thus, proclus thinks, by studying the basic elements of geometry, the aspiring geometer is led by degrees toward ever more complex theorems and a correspondingly deepened understanding of the nature of the subject. ultimately all of these resources are marshalled in the development of the theory of the platonic solids, combining both aims. since the structure of the elements is, in large part, the source of its unique influence, i turn now to a closer examination of that structure. . the format of the elements book i of the elements sets the stage for the austerity and strictness of the rest of the work. it begins abruptly with a list of twenty-three definitions. there is no preamble or explanation, and these definitions are followed by two more lists: the first contains five postulates, while the second contains five ‗common notions‘ or axioms. after these lists euclid proceeds to prove a number of propositions by employing the common notions, postulates, and acceptable modes of reasoning (which are never enumerated within the work itself). the following twelve books are all similar in character; occasionally, new definitions are introduced, though no new postulates or common notions appear. so, in sum, we find within the work five postulates, five common notions, a relatively small number of definitions, and a large number of theorems with accompanying proofs and figures. all of this is remarkably similar to a modern mathematics textbook—deceptively so. . . definitions. euclid‘s definitions can be divided into two distinct types. those of the first type, exemplified by his definition of the circle, are directly employed within proofs. these definitions define key geometrical concepts in terms of simpler ones. thus, the circle is defined in terms of points, straight lines, planes, etc., and is appealed to in the proof of the first theorem of book i. the second sort of definition has a less obvious role to play. these definitions (exemplified by euclid‘s definition of ‗point‘ and ‗line‘), are never directly employed to prove a proposition, nor are they referred to once they have been introduced. what, then, is their function? clearly, one role is that of a propaedeutic—they introduce the reader to the most basic sorts of objects (points, lines, planes, etc.) about which euclid will reason. while modern mathematical definitions tend to be of the abbreviatory sort, euclid‘s second group of definitions might better be aligned with what frege, for instance, called ‗elucidations‘ [erläuterungen]. these are pre-systematic remarks which help guide the reader toward a proper understanding of the basic elements to be treated within the system. once these elements become clearly fixed, the function of the elucidations is achieved and they can simply be ignored. thus, for instance, euclid‘s definitions of a point as ―that which has no part‖ or a line as ―breadthless length‖ help the reader to ―a circle is a plane figure contained by one line such that all the straight lines falling upon it from one point among those lying within the figure are equal to one another‖ [euclid, i, definition ; heath , ]. euclid then defines the centre of a circle as the aforementioned point [euclid, i, definition ; heath , ]. cf., e.g., [frege , ] and [frege , - ]. i discuss frege‘s use of the term erläuterung in more detail in the second and third chapters of the thesis. earlier in the th century bernard bolzano ( - ) employed the term verständigung [understanding] to much the same effect as frege‘s erläuterung; cf. [bolzano , § ] where he lays out the rules for the use of these sorts of explications. [heath , ]. [heath , ]. understand precisely which objects he has in mind, though the definitions themselves play no direct role when he later proves propositions which contain the terms at issue. ian mueller, in a paper which highlights the divergences between modern axiomatic geometry and euclid‘s approach, writes that the definitions should be looked at as attempts to make clear the meanings of the terms to be used before argumentation begins, that is, to make clear the nature of the objects to be studied. that the most fundamental definitions (e.g. of point, line, straight line) succeed only with persons who already have some idea what the objects in question are does not really matter if these definitions are taken to represent preliminary agreements among people of presumably normal intelligence. as mueller suggests, euclid‘s second type of definition should help to focus the reader‘s mind on the appropriate sorts of objects so that official argumentation can begin. the reader may already possess ideas of these objects, in which case the definitions serve the simple function of directing the mind to what it already knows, or of representing this knowledge. in the case where the reader does not possess appropriate ideas, the definitions cannot fix the reference of the terms in question; they serve, again, as helpful hints which can (at best) direct sufficiently capable readers to the sorts of things that euclid has in mind. beyond this preliminary role in establishing the particular sorts of objects about which euclid will reason, definitions of the second type play no direct role within the system itself. importantly, also, these definitions do not insist upon the existence of the objects which they define; the attribution of existence is reserved for the postulates. . . postulates and common notions (axioms). unlike some of euclid‘s most basic definitions, the postulates and common notions are directly employed in order to prove propositions, and their special status relative to the rest of the system is of particular importance for understanding the nature of euclid‘s work. like the use made of definitions, the division of unproved assumptions into the two categories of common notions and postulates is not unique to euclid. there was already by euclid‘s time a robust methodological tradition, headed by aristotle, which made such a division. in general, common notions (aristotle called them ‗common items‘ or ‗common opinions‘) are primitive, unprovable principles which do not contain reference to the specific notions of a given science. assent to these common notions is not demanded because these notions act as constraints on reasoning in general, and, thus, their rejection would be tantamount to the rejection of deductive reasoning as such. axioms, on the contrary, are claims for which assent is demanded and which are specific to the purposes of the particular science at issue. the idea is that we must accept certain facts as basic in order to get the deductive machinery going within a [mueller , ]. this is one of the central elements of the aristotelian conception of definition. aristotle writes, for instance, that ―what the primitives and what the items proceeding from them mean is assumed; but that they are must be assumed for the principles and proved for the rest‖ [aristotle , i. , a - , emphasis mine]. particular area. aristotle writes of the difference between definitions, postulates, and common notions as follows: an immediate deductive principle i call a posit if it cannot be proved but need not be grasped by anyone who is to learn anything. if it must be grasped by anyone who is going to learn anything whatever, i call it an axiom (there are items of this kind); for it is of this sort of item in particular that we normally use this name. a posit which assumes either of the parts of a contradictory pair—what i mean is that something is or that something is not—i call a supposition. a posit which does not i call a definition. definitions are posits (arithmeticians posit that a unit is what is quantitatively indivisible), but they are not suppositions (for what a unit is and that a unit is are not the same). thus, common notions are unprovable principles which guide deductive reasoning in general, which needn‘t be explicitly accepted for that reason. postulates are unprovable principles, assent to which is demanded for the purposes of a particular science. definitions, finally, are postulates which make no existence claims. they inform us what the basic elements of the system are, but leave it open whether or not these elements exist. these divisions are found in euclid‘s work. there the common notions, for example, make no mention of the special geometrical objects defined, but concern only more general concepts like ‗part,‘ ‗whole,‘ and ‗equality‘. euclid‘s five common notions are as follows: . things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another. . if equals be added to equals, the wholes are equal. . if equals be subtracted from equals, the remainders are equal. . things which coincide with one another are equal to one another. . the whole is greater than the part. as we can see, no mention is made here of the objects defined in the first twenty-three definitions (e.g., points, lines, planes, etc.). these are general principles that aristotle and euclid would likely have assumed to be implicitly accepted as constraints upon deductive reasoning by anyone of normal intelligence. the postulates, by contrast, are specifically geometrical in character. they are as follows: let the following be postulated: . to draw a straight line from any point to any point . to produce a finite straight line continuously in a straight line . to describe a circle with any centre and distance . that all right angles are equal to one another [aristotle , i. a - ]. there is some debate as to the historical origin of the common notions in euclid, with the suggestion that some or all of them were added by later commentators. for relevant discussion, see [heath , - ]. [heath , ]. . that if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles. in contrast to the common notions, the postulates make free use of the primitive terms of geometry. their function is to insist that we accept some basic claims from which all other geometrical theorems will be derived. these claims are not proved in the elements. ideally, too, they should not be provable using the resources which euclid makes available there; the postulates are basic claims (accepted as true), which provide the basis for euclid‘s proof system. thus, there should be a sharp separation between the theorems of the system (which are provable using only basic principles and previously proven theorems) and the axioms themselves. in addition to the importance of their unprovability, their truth is crucial as well. for, in contrast to some conceptions of mathematical truth in which truth is only defined relative to the consistency of a given axiomatic scheme (and, hence, undefined for axioms in isolation), the greeks demanded that the axiomatic basis of a science be independently true as well. as we shall see, the common view for the next two millennia was, precisely, that (most of) euclid‘s postulates were not only understood to be true, but necessary and indubitable as well. given the demand for rigor which characterized early greek geometry, it is no surprise that even early readers of the elements had their interest piqued by the fifth postulate, the so called parallel postulate, which is considerably more complex than the previous four. it is by examining the parallel postulate and the philosophical problems which stem from it that we start to see problems with the traditional euclidean picture of geometry. . the parallel postulate despite widespread agreement that the fifth postulate, like the others, was a truth, there was early on a serious debate as to its status as a postulate within the system. despite its status as a postulate, many felt that the parallel postulate should be provable from the other four postulates, a belief which gave rise to a remarkably long and complex history, beginning as early as ptolemy and continuing well into the th century. even in d‘alembert called the status of the parallel postulate the ―the scandal of geometry‖. and as late as gauss—one of the men chiefly responsible for overturning the view of euclidean geometry as the science of space— remarked that ―in the theory of parallels we are still no further along than euclid,‖ and that the theory of parallels was a rather ―shameful part of mathematics‖. [heath , - ]. this is the case for, e.g., hilbert‘s influential conception of mathematical truth. hilbert writes in response to frege‘s somewhat more traditional view of mathematical truth, that ―if the arbitrarily postulated axioms [of geometry] together with all their consequences do not contradict one another, then they are true and the things defined by these axioms exist. for me, this is the criterion of truth and existence‖ [hilbert, in frege , ]. i discuss the differences between these two conceptions of mathematical truth in more detail in the second chapter. ―la définition et les proprietés de la ligne droite, ainsi que des lignes parallèles, sont donc l’écueil, et pour ainsi dire le scandale des élémens de géométrie‖ [d‘alembert - ; reprint , volume , ]. ―in der theorie der parallellinien sind wir jetzt noch nicht weiter als euklid war. diess ist die partie honteuse der mathematik, die früh oder spät eine ganz andere gestalt bekommen muss‖ [gauss, dated april ; in gauss - , band viii, ]. though there was little argument over the status of the first four postulates, the provability of the fifth was, from euclid‘s time onward, a matter of some contention. as heath notes, ―[f]rom the very beginning, as we know from proclus, the postulate was attacked as such, and attempts were made to prove it as a theorem or to get rid of it by adopting some other definition of parallels‖. it is worth quoting the relevant passage from proclus at some length to illustrate the troubling character of the postulate as it was understood relatively early in its history. proclus writes that the fifth postulate [...] ought to be struck from the postulates altogether. for it is a theorem—one that invites many questions, which ptolemy proposed to resolve in one of his books—and requires for its demonstration a number of definitions as well as theorems. and the converse of it is proved by euclid himself as a theorem. but perhaps some persons might mistakenly think that this proposition deserves to be ranked among the postulates on the ground that the angles‘ being less than two right angles makes us at once believe in the convergence and intersection of the straight lines. to them geminus has given the proper answer when he said that we have learned from the very founders of this science not to pay attention to plausible imaginings in determining what propositions are to be accepted in geometry. aristotle likewise says that to accept probable reasoning from a geometer is like demanding proofs from a rhetorician. and simmias is made by plato to say, ―i am aware that those who make proofs out of probabilities are impostors.‖ so here, although the statement that the straight lines converge when the right angles are diminished is true and necessary, yet the conclusion that because they converge more as they are extended farther they will meet at some time is plausible, but not necessary, in the absence of an argument proving that this is true of straight lines. that there are lines that approach each other indefinitely but never meet seems implausible and paradoxical, yet it is nevertheless true and has been ascertained for other species of lines. may not this, then, be possible for straight lines as for those other lines? until we have firmly demonstrated that they meet, what is said about other lines strips our imagination of its plausibility. and although the arguments against the intersection of these lines may contain much that surprises us, should we not all the more refuse to admit into our tradition this unreasoned appeal to probability? [...] these considerations make it clear that we should seek a proof of the theorem that lies before us and that it lacks the special character of a postulate. but how it is to be proved, and with what arguments the objections to this proposition may be met, we can only say when the author of the elements is at the point of mentioning it and using it as obvious. at that time it will be necessary to show that its obvious character does not appear independently of demonstration but is turned by proof into a matter of knowledge. for proclus, then, there are a few concerns weighing against the unprovability of the fifth postulate. primarily, he claims that the postulate is, rather, a theorem—a theorem which ptolemy [heath , ]. [proclus , - ]; in the final sentences here, proclus alludes to what would be a common tactic used in attempts at proving the fifth postulate, namely using only the first four postulates and the first twenty-eight theorems of euclid which occur before the first use of the parallel postulate is required. had already attempted to prove. that it is a theorem seems to be made evident by the fact that euclid proves a proposition which is equivalent to the postulate‘s converse, namely proposition of book i of the elements. this proposition states that ―in any triangle two angles taken together in any manner are less than two right angles‖. euclid proves this proposition by employing the second postulate and the previously proved proposition of book i. accordingly, proclus finds it suspicious that a principle whose converse is provable using only the resources of the first four postulates should not itself be provable from those resources. nevertheless, euclid‘s proof of proposition of book i rests upon the unstated further assumption that two straight lines meet, if they meet at all, in at most one point—an assumption quite as strong as the parallel postulate itself. proclus takes it to be the case that the existence of a proof of the postulate‘s converse speaks in favour of the provability of the postulate itself. this seems a reasonable enough assumption; nevertheless, when we take into consideration the fact that euclid‘s proof requires the assumption of a principle which is equal in complexity and obscurity to the parallel postulate, it is no longer obvious that the existence of this proof can act as evidence either for or against the provability of the parallel postulate itself. in addition to the supposed provability of its converse, proclus also finds fault with the parallel postulate insofar as it seems to have been given the status of a postulate for rather weak epistemological reasons. he rejects the view that our immediate assent to a geometrical claim can justify us in assigning that claim the status of a postulate. for a proposition to be considered a postulate, our immediate assent, based upon its undeniable plausibility, is not enough. beyond the mere fact of the layman‘s acceptance of the proposition as obvious, it must also be deemed necessary in the sense that its opposite cannot be the case. but, as proclus rightly notes, there are species of lines other than straight lines (e.g., hyperbolas and their asymptotes) which do not obey the dictates of the parallel postulate; accordingly, our intuitive acceptance of the postulate seems to be ill-founded or, at the very least, in need of supplementation. thus, proclus thinks, we should expect a proof that straight lines, unlike hyperbolas and their asymptotes, do in fact obey the parallel postulate. for these reasons, then, we find attempts as early as ptolemy to prove the fifth postulate by means of the other four. in what follows, i would like to examine a few of these attempts to prove, reformulate, or resituate the parallel postulate relative to the rest of euclid‘s system. my chief aim here is to illustrate that the unstable position occupied by the parallel postulate slowly led to the rise of a new understanding of the science of geometry in which ‗structure‘ became increasingly prominent. though i mention other figures, i will focus chiefly on ptolemy, proclus, khayyam, and saccheri, as elements of their work were central to the later emergence of non- euclidean geometry and its destructive effect on the traditional conception of geometry as the science of space or spatial objects. [heath , ]. this assumption is provably false within elliptic geometry, for instance, unless the further condition that antipodal points are taken to be equivalent is added. . . ptolemy and proclus as noted above, we know of ptolemy‘s attempted proof of the fifth postulate by way of proclus. ptolemy‘s assault on the parallel postulate was likely the first which attempted to prove the troublesome claim by assuming an equivalent principle. (this would turn out to be a popular tactic over the centuries). in ptolemy‘s case this assumption was that ―through any point only one parallel can be drawn to a given straight line‖. figure : proclus and parallels proclus‘ own proof, too, rests on a disguised equivalent of the very postulate to be proved. in proclus‘ case, this is an axiom taken from aristotle. this axiom is stated as follows: ―if, from a single point two straight lines making an angle are produced indefinitely, the interval between them when produced indefinitely will exceed any finite magnitude‖. from this principle he deduces the proposition that a straight line which meets one of a pair of parallels will also meet the other. he proves this proposition as follows. take two parallels, ab and cd, and another straight line ef which intersects ab at a point g. the distance between a point moving along the line segment gf and the line cd will decrease indefinitely when the distance of the moving [heath , ]. the axiom is taken from aristotle‘s well-known arguments for the finitude of the universe in de caelo (cf. [aristotle , i. , b ff.]). guthrie‘s translation has: ―the following arguments make it plain that every body which revolves in a circle must be finite. if the revolving body be infinite, the straight lines radiating from the centre [of the circular path of the body] will be infinite. but if they are infinite, the intervening space must be infinite. ―intervening space‖ i am defining as space beyond lines. this must be infinite. in the case of finite lines it is always finite, and moreover it is always possible to take more than any given quantity of it, so that this space is infinite in the sense in which we say that number is infinite, because there exists no greatest number. if then it is impossible to traverse an infinite space, and in an infinite body the space between the radii is infinite, the body cannot move in a circle. but we ourselves see the heaven revolving in a circle, and also we established by argument that circular motion is the motion of a real body‖ [aristotle , i. ., b - a ]. [proclus , . ]. point from g is increased indefinitely. but, since the distance between the two parallel lines is finite, the straight line ef must meet cd (see figure ). but this reasoning, too, relies upon a rather strong assumption; namely, the assumption that the distance between any two parallel lines always remains finite. and, again, this assumption is provably equivalent to the parallel postulate itself. this argument would later be criticized by christopher clavius ( - )—whom saccheri read and referred to —on the fairly reasonable grounds that the aristotelian axiom itself requires proof. as heath notes, clavius points out that, just as you cannot assume that two lines which continually approach one another will meet (witness the hyperbola and its asymptote), so you cannot assume that two lines which continually diverge will ultimately be so far apart that a perpendicular from a point on one let fall on the other will be greater than any assigned distance; and he refers to the conchoid of nicomedes which continually approaches its asymptote, and therefore continually gets farther away from the tangent at the vertex; yet the perpendicular from any point on the curve to that tangent will always be less than the distance between the tangent and the asymptote. saccheri supports the objection. subsequent attempts at proof often rested on the assumption of similarly disguised equivalents of the parallel postulate. occasionally mathematicians would explicitly offer reformulations of the postulate in seemingly simpler terms. the english mathematician, john wallis ( - ), for instance, knowingly assumed that transformations which alter only the size of a figure do not affect its angles or the proportions of its sides. somewhat surprisingly, this assumption, too, is equivalent to euclid‘s parallel postulate—an equivalence made apparent in more recent times by the impossibility of constructing similar triangles of different size within some of the more familiar non-euclidean geometries. these attempts to prove the postulate invariably end up reintroducing an equally troublesome (or equivalent) claim in its place. there are innumerable examples of this problem, a few of which are mentioned above. there was a general feeling that the parallel postulate was somehow unsatisfying, but there was no real consensus as to what feature of the postulate was at issue. as yet, there was no significant attempt to alter the euclidean picture of geometry. postulate- tinkerers were not revolutionaries but refiners: they sought to perfect euclid rather than overturn him. but, over time, more and more difficulties with the euclidean picture began to pile up. saccheri discusses clavius at [saccheri , ff.]; incidentally, saccheri corrects an error in clavius‘ attempt to employ the bisection of a circle by its diameter as a means of proving the parallel postulate—unbeknownst to saccheri, he corrects clavius in precisely the same place and manner (see [saccheri , ]) that leibniz had a half century earlier. on this, see [de risi , - , note ]. [heath , ]. to be more precise, wallis assumed that for any triangle abc there exists a triangle def having the same angles and proportions (i.e., a triangle which is similar to abc), but differing in size, or, that there exist two similar but unequal triangles. (see [wallis ]). wallis was influenced in his work on parallels by the th century arab geometer, nasir al-din al-tusi ( - ), so much so that he commissioned a translation of his work, which exploited basic facts about triangles to ‗prove‘ the fifth postulate. [wallis ] contains wallis‘ own proof as well as a rendition of al-tusi‘s results; cf. also [bonola , - ] for a brief resumé of al-tusi‘s attempted proof. . . omar khayyam a rather important addition to the picture begins to emerge with the work of the persian polymath omar khayyam ( - ). the commentary on the difficulties of certain postulates of euclid’s work, khayyam‘s monograph on the parallel postulate, is interestingly different than earlier work insofar as its aim was not to prove the postulate directly, but rather to derive it explicitly from an equivalent claim. in other words, where ptolemy and proclus, for instance, had unknowingly employed equivalent axioms to prove euclid‘s, khayyam knowingly attempted to replace the rather complex version we find in euclid with his own, hopefully simpler and intuitively more acceptable principle. instead of proving that the postulate was straightforwardly a theorem in euclid‘s system, khayyam sought to add a simpler version of the postulate to that system, thereby eliminating questions about the complexity and strangeness of the parallel postulate. he would then, ideally, show that euclid‘s complex postulate could be derived from his simpler, more acceptable reformulation. his reformulation was as follows: two convergent straight lines intersect and it is impossible for two convergent straight lines to diverge in the direction in which they converge. he also noted something which saccheri was later to exploit to great success: namely that, if we choose to leave euclid‘s fifth postulate out of the elements entirely, we are presented with three possible situations. recall that euclid‘s formulation of the parallel postulate runs as follows: that if a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles. so, in the properly euclidean case, if two straight lines, both perpendicular to a third, cross another, fourth, line, then the sum of the internal angles where the two perpendiculars meet the fourth line will be º. khayyam noted two other possibilities made available if we do not accept euclid‘s postulate (both of which saccheri explored in greater detail). he noted, namely, the case in which the sum of the internal angles is greater than º (the obtuse case) and the case where the sum of the internal angles is less than º (the acute case). indeed, it is precisely these replacements for euclid‘s parallel postulate which would later provide the basis for hyperbolic geometry (the acute case) and elliptic geometry (the obtuse case). the three cases can all be represented visually (see figure ) by so-called saccheri quadrilaterals (sometimes called khayyam-saccheri quadrilaterals), i.e., quadrilaterals which possess at least two right angles at their base and whose opposing sides are equal. khayyam would end up dismissing both non-euclidean cases because he believed they led to contradictions, but his reasoning employed certain unstated assumptions provably equivalent to the parallel postulate itself. despite his own misgivings, khayyam‘s work on multiple geometric systems heralded an entirely new approach to the problem of the parallel postulate. over time the misgivings disappeared and multiple geometries came to replace the view of euclid‘s geometry [khayyam, quoted in rosenfeld and youschkevitch , ]. [heath , ]. as the only one possible. but it would take a tremendous amount of time before this could happen. why? why were khayyam‘s successors, too, reticent to embrace these other cases as consistent alternatives to euclid‘s geometry? why didn‘t something like the structural approach to geometry emerge in th century persia? figure : khayyam-saccheri quadrilaterals . . girolamo saccheri the best place to look for an answer to this question is the italian jesuit girolamo saccheri, who seems to have possessed detailed knowledge of elements of (both) hyperbolic and elliptic geometry. and yet, unlike later geometers like gauss, bolyai, and lobachevsky, he fell short of discovering these non-euclidean geometries. an explanation of this near-success is illustrative of the small steps by which the movement away from the traditional euclidean picture of geometry occurred. the details here are important precisely because they help to illustrate the deep hold of the euclidean picture even in the th century. in his work on euclid (euclides ab omni naevo vindicatus [euclid vindicated of every flaw]) saccheri set out to prove the fifth postulate. his approach was similar to that of khayyam in that it attempted, by reductio, to illustrate the impossibility of the two alternatives to the parallel postulate—namely the acute and obtuse cases isolated by his predecessor. his arguments against the obtuse case are rather more convincing than those against the acute. in the first instance he shows that the ‗elliptical‘ version of the parallel postulate leads to a contradiction, namely the conclusion that all straight lines are finite (a claim which, on one reading, directly as stäckel and engel note in their edition of halsted‘s translation of saccheri, there is insufficient precision in saccheri‘s own text to decide between a few possible readings. they write, the proposition on exterior angles (eu. i. ) that is being used here presupposes that the straight line is of infinite length. an alternative assumption, suggested by riemann […] is that the straight line is unbounded. this property is compatible with the hypothesis that the straight line is infinite (open) as well as with the hypothesis that it is finite (closed). if the first of these two contradicts euclid‘s second postulate). in the acute case, however, such a contradiction is not so easy to achieve. saccheri‘s attempt to destroy the acute hypothesis (and, thus, hyperbolic geometry as a real alternative to euclid‘s) is instructive. it shows the deep, and tacit, commitment to the view of geometry as the science of space and the ways in which this commitment acted as a conceptual barrier to the development of a relational or structural approach to geometry. let us turn, briefly, to his conclusions, ignoring for the moment some of the particulars of his reasoning. though very few geometers wrote philosophical treatises outlining their view of the nature of geometry, in arguments like saccheri‘s we can tease out some of the underlying assumptions. after a long and involved chain of theorems derived from the assumption that the acute hypothesis is true, saccheri eventually arrives at the following proposition: proposition xxxiii the hypothesis of acute angle is absolutely false; because repugnant to the nature of the straight line. proof. from the foregoing theorem may be established, that at length the hypothesis of acute angle inimical to the euclidean geometry has as outcome that we must recognize two straights ax, bx, existing in the same plane, which produced in infinitum toward the parts of the points x must run together at length into one and the same straight line, truly receiving, at one and the same infinitely distant point a common perpendicular in the same plane with them. but since i am here to go into the very first principles, i shall diligently take care, that i omit nothing objected almost too scrupulously, which indeed i recognize to be opportune to the most exact demonstration. saccheri here simply abdicates any further investigation of the acute-angled hypothesis. why? because, as he may simply have assumed from the start, this hypothesis is repugnant to the euclidean conception of the straight line. to the modern eye, this is a rather surprising surrender after several pages of technical and sophisticated argumentation. indeed, bonola characterizes this move as an attempt ―to come to a decision,‖ in which we witness saccheri ―trusting to intuition and to faith in the validity of the fifth postulate rather than to logic‖. george halsted, one of saccheri‘s english translators and a great populariser of early works of non-euclidean hypotheses is taken, then, as saccheri shows, the hypothesis of the obtuse angle leads to a contradiction. if the straight line is, on the other hand, taken to be (merely) unbounded, which allows the second possibility – that the straight line is finite (closed) – then the proposition on exterior angles (eu. i. ) cannot be invoked, and saccheri‘s proof becomes insufficient. indeed, if this second possibility is assumed to be a closed line of finite length, then a contradiction can be shown not to occur‖ [saccheri , (editors‘ notes)]. accordingly, modern elliptic geometry rejects both the second and the fifth of euclid‘s postulates. (the third postulate also fails to hold, unless it is slightly modified such that one can construct a circle of radius equal to any given line segment rather than the less restricted claim we find in euclid that one can construct a circle of any radius). for a reasonably brief synopsis of the steps involved in this part of saccheri‘s reasoning, [bonola , - ] is helpful. [saccheri , ]. [bonola , ]. geometry in general, makes the following remarks on this somewhat hasty rejection of the acute angle hypothesis: remember de morgan‘s saying: ―as to writing another work on geometry, the middle ages would as soon have thought of composing another new testament...... [euclid‘s] order of demonstration was thought to be necessary and founded in the nature of our minds;‖ and remember that saccheri‘s book contains not merely ―another work on geometry‖ but another geometry, a thought so tremendous, so unorthodox, that its discovery in his book by these great church dignitaries would have doomed saccheri to death. despite the rather hyperbolic tone, there is some substance to halsted‘s remarks here. the notion that euclid‘s venerable geometry might be wrong—or, worse, that it might simply be one geometry among many—was almost unthinkable in the early eighteenth century. bonola characterizes saccheri‘s rejection here as a matter of faith in the time-tested euclidean view of geometry. i think it is perhaps more accurate to say that saccheri‘s enquiry was undertaken with the fairly reasonable assumption that geometry was the science of space and that there was no room in such a science for two valid but mutually exclusive claims. nevertheless, halsted seems to harbour the suspicion that saccheri, against the spirit and limitations of his time, may very well have been a closet non-euclidean. pursuing this theme, he continues: there exists in the library of modena, italy, a manuscript biography of saccheri. dr. emory mcclintock, the able president of the new york mathematical society, writes of saccheri: ―he confessed to a distracting heretical tendency on his part in favour of the ‗hypothesis anguli acuti,‘ a tendency against which, however, he kept up a perpetual struggle. after yielding so far as to work out an accurate theory anticipating lobatschewsky‘s doctrine of the parallel-angle, he appears to have conquered the internal enemy abruptly, since, to the surprise of his commentator beltrami, he proceeded to announce dogmatically that the specious ‗hypothesis anguli acuti‘ is positively false.‖ of course, no such confession occurs or could have occurred in the book itself; for with it the book could never have been printed. if such a statement occurs in the manuscript biography, that must have been the work of a personal friend written after saccheri‘s death. [...] the sudden dogmatic assertion above mentioned does occur, first on page of the work, a quarto. but this, after seventy quarto pages of rigorous logic and elegant demonstration to establish a non-euclidean geometry, may be looked upon as something like the stucco for the king‘s inspection with which the immortal architect in egypt covered the stone bearing his own name. we may wish, with halsted and mcclintock, to read into saccheri a more tolerant conception of the nature of geometry than is present in his work. however, such tolerance was not merely a [halsted , ]. even early forms of (what would later be called) projective geometry, or lambert‘s startlingly abstract ‗spherical geometry‘, were not considered true alternatives to traditional euclidean geometry, but special cases of it. in the case of projective geometry, its potentially ‗extra-euclidean‘ quality only became exploited in the works of arthur cayley in the mid- th century. [halsted , - ]. matter of submission to euclid as an unquestioned authority. saccheri, like his contemporaries, worked from within a tradition in which the indubitable, intuitive foundation of euclidean geometry was taken as a matter of course. indeed, the very title and intent of the work—to vindicate euclid of all possible blemishes—is illustrative of saccheri‘s acceptance of the traditional view of euclidean geometry as the correct science of physical space. without replacing this belief in the certainty of euclidean geometry as a description of physical space, it is highly unlikely that anyone, even a geometer as astute as saccheri, would have been capable of accepting hyperbolic geometry as anything more than a confusingly resistant collection of falsehoods, or perhaps an amusing formal game. all of this, combined with saccheri‘s text itself, speaks against any hidden affinity for hyperbolic geometry as a real alternative to euclidean geometry. and so it is that, after seventy quarto pages, we find an exasperated saccheri throwing up his hands at the futility of pursuing the acute angle hypothesis any further. nevertheless, halsted is correct when he finds the end of this lengthy and elegant chain of reasoning somewhat abrupt: saccheri simply refuses to accept the possibility that a geometry based on the acute angle hypothesis (what we would call ‗hyperbolic geometry‘) can be taken seriously, and he rejects the acute angle hypothesis out of hand. all of this seems rather puzzling from a modern point of view in which the notion of multiple geometries with numerous different applications is a commonplace. but we must consider the traditional view of geometry as the science of physical space, a science whose absolute certitude was thought to have been unassailable because grounded in our direct experience and intuition of that space. to help explain saccheri‘s rather abrupt rejection of a potential alternative to euclidean geometry, i shall turn in the following section to a more focussed discussion of the philosophical and conceptual background which framed the tacit basis of euclidean geometry as late as the mid-nineteenth century. it is only when the assumptions underlying this picture became visible that they were called into question. and it is only when the philosophical assumptions of euclidean geometry were called into question that the structural approach to geometry began to emerge as a philosophical and mathematical alternative. § . geometric intuition and the emergence of non-euclidean geometry now, as we‘ve just seen, saccheri‘s attempts to prove the parallel postulate brought him extraordinarily close to the discovery of hyperbolic geometry; a discovery which would, a century later, make lobachevsky and bolyai deservedly famous. given his proximity to revolutionary geometric results, it is worth pausing to discuss the source of saccheri‘s ‗failure‘, though we may call it such only in hindsight. what prevented saccheri from exploiting his potential discoveries in the same way that these men would do so well—why did he halt at the cusp of non-euclidean geometry? what was the origin of his ‗faith‘ in the primacy of euclid‘s geometry? there are several answers to these questions here. as we are interested in the emergence of structural thinking in geometry, one is of primary importance. this is that that saccheri, unlike later geometers, had not yet begun to question the nature and role of his own spatial intuition as a guarantor of the validity of geometry, nor of geometry as a unified science of physical space. in other words, saccheri, like his predecessors euclid, proclus, khayyam, and others, never seriously doubted the assumption that euclidean geometry contained a true (if idealized) description of the laws governing the physical space of our world, nor did he question the assumption that the certainty of its axioms was grounded in our immediate intuitive grasp of the properties of that space. taking euclidean geometry as the science of space, it made little sense to inquire after ‗alternative‘ geometries – for to be an alternative was straightforwardly to be false. saccheri, of course, was not alone in these assumptions. indeed, even in gauss, one of the earliest mathematicians to take seriously the possibility of an alternative to euclidean geometry, we find reverence for the intuitive basis of geometry. he writes in an review of a work on parallels, for instance, that: a great part of the text [of schwab] turns on the contention against kant that the certainty of geometry is not based on intuition but on definitions and on the principium identitatis and the principium contradictionis. kant certainly did not wish to deny that use is constantly made in geometry of these logical aids to the presentation and linking of truths: but anybody who is acquainted with the essence of geometry knows that they are able to accomplish nothing by themselves, and that they put forth only sterile blossoms unless the fertilizing living intuition of the object itself prevails everywhere. schwab‘s contradiction seems moreover to rest in part only on a misunderstanding: at any rate, it seems to us that in the sixteenth paragraph of his work (which uses precisely the faculty of intuition from beginning to end, and which claims at the end to prove that ―[the postulates of euclid can be resolved into more general ones, based not on sensation and intuition, but on understanding]‖) schwab must have imagined something else than did the königsberg philosopher in this terminology for two different branches of the faculty of knowledge. the view that the certainty of basic geometrical claims was based on intuition (in contradistinction to the apparently non-intuitive character of, e.g., arithmetical claims) was popular throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. its widespread popularity, however, does not mean that it had a clear or even a consistent meaning. given that (most) mathematicians are not directly interested in the epistemological aspects of mathematics, it is perhaps not surprising that we find very few direct explanations of the notion of intuition in mathematical thinking. nevertheless, it is mentioned almost everywhere in the th and th centuries as an essential part of mathematics. the view that intuition (whatever it might be) was a guarantor of the truth and necessity of euclidean geometry was not spelled out in detail by the mathematicians who held the view. in saccheri, we find only the remark that the acute-angled hypothesis is inimical to the nature of the euclidean straight line. the acute-angled hypothesis was untenable, therefore, only because it opposed euclidean geometry and euclidean geometry was the sole science of space. if euclidean geometry is the only game in town, we cannot recognize the acute-angled hypothesis as true because it contradicts what we already know to be true. but what exactly was the basis of the truth of euclid‘s geometry? saccheri, like most other mathematicians, did not take up this [gauss , in ewald , - ]; gauss‘s conception here of the sterility of any geometrical reasoning not fertilized by intuition clearly echoes kant‘s remark that ―mathematics must first present all its concepts in intuition, and pure mathematics in pure intuition; that is, it must construct them. if it proceeded in any other way, it would be impossible to take a single step; for mathematics proceeds, not analytically by dissection of concepts, but synthetically, and if pure intuition be wanting there is nothing in which the matter for synthetical judgments a priori can be given‖ [kant , ]. question, but an answer was given in much greater philosophical detail in the work of immanuel kant ( - ). subsequently, kant‘s philosophy became, with varying degrees of explicitness, the de facto conceptual framework for many mathematicians, philosophers, and laymen interested in the nature of geometry and geometrical reasoning. even despite kant‘s own lack of mathematical expertise, his account of the intuitive basis of geometry seemed to capture the prevailing view of geometry as a spatial science, and was, accordingly, widely adopted and influential in variously altered forms well into the twentieth century. for instance, we find paul bernays, as late as —well after the development of a seemingly anti-kantian, non-intuitive approach to geometry—writing that: we can separate kant‘s basic idea that mathematical knowledge, and in general the successful application of logical inference, rests on intuitive evidence, from the particular formulation that kant gave to this idea in his theory of space and time. in this way we simultaneously gain the possibility of doing justice to the very elementary character of mathematical evidence and to the level of abstraction of the mathematical attitude. thus kant‘s basic claim—that the intuition of space lies at the basis of geometric knowledge and reasoning—was taken up in forms which kant himself could not possibly have conceived. as we‘ll see below in more detail, the kantian view of geometry was surprisingly flexible in the face of the radically new results and approaches to geometry developed throughout the nineteenth century. before we turn to these results, however, it will be useful to explore kant‘s views on geometry, especially given their influence over the last two centuries or so. . kant‘s philosophy of geometry despite a brief early interest in the possibility of higher-dimensional geometries, kant‘s most important contribution to the philosophy of geometry was in the systematic philosophical form he lent to the traditional belief in the certainty of euclidean geometry. he helped to cement the traditional view in two ways. first, he offered a somewhat plausible (if complex) description of the seemingly contradictory combination of intuition and apriority involved in geometric certainty; and, second, he tacitly worked within the universe of euclidean geometry and its ‗space‘—thus connecting his novel view of the nature of physical space with the familiar particulars of three-dimensional, euclidean space. these views are found at various points throughout his work, though perhaps most prominently in the critique of pure reason, where he writes that geometry is a science which determines the properties of space synthetically and yet a priori. what, then, must be our representation of space, in order that such knowledge of it may be possible? it must in its origin be intuition; for from a mere concept no propositions can be obtained which go beyond the concept—as happens in geometry. [...] further, this intuition must be a priori, that is, it must be found in us prior to any perception of an object [bernays - , in mancosu , ]. these two approaches to geometry (the intuitive and the logical) are even more explicitly outlined and separated in [hilbert and cohn-vossen , iii-v], with the focus of the work being the development of the intuitive approach. cf. [kant , in ewald , - ]. and must therefore be pure, not empirical, intuition. for geometrical propositions are one and all apodeictic, that is, are bound up with the consciousness of their necessity; for instance, that space has only three dimensions. such propositions cannot be empirical or, in other words, judgments of experience, nor can they be derived from any such judgments [...]. how, then, can there exist in the mind an outer intuition which precedes the objects themselves, and in which the concept of these objects can be determined a priori? manifestly, not otherwise than in so far as the intuition has its seat in the subject only, as the formal character of the subject, in virtue of which in being affected by objects, it obtains immediate representation, that is, intuition, of them; and only in so far, therefore, as it is merely the form of outer sense in general. our explanation is thus the only explanation that makes intelligible the possibility of geometry, as a body of a priori synthetic knowledge. here kant makes at least two important claims regarding the nature of geometry. first, he characterizes it as a science of space. and, second, he suggests that this science is both synthetic and a priori—i.e., that its truths can be known prior to all experience and that knowledge of these truths requires some form of intuitive input. this remark would have appeared contradictory to a philosophical public for whom intuition was a type of experience, which meant that it was, by definition, already a posteriori. to avoid this apparent contradiction, kant introduces the concept of a pure intuition, which would become one of the cornerstones of his mature critical philosophy. there are two such pure intuitions (space and time) which are, for kant, the epistemological sources of geometry and arithmetic, respectively. he divides up intuitions and concepts as follows: both intuition and concepts are either pure or empirical. they are empirical if they contain sensation (sensation presupposes the actual presence of the object); they are pure if no sensation is mixed in with the presentation. sensation may be called the matter of sensible cognition. hence pure intuition contains only the form under which something is intuited, and a pure concept contains solely the form of the thought of an object as such. only pure intuitions or concepts are possible a priori; empirical ones are possible only a posteriori. as one of kant‘s main interests is to explain the certainty of geometrical reasoning—by which is meant, tacitly at least, the rigorously developed axiomatic presentation we find in euclid—he begins here by contrasting the source of geometrical knowledge with the error-prone sources of knowledge within the ‗empirical‘ sciences. these other sciences, along with other unscientific areas of human endeavour, are rooted in experience and the empirical—they deal with the specific matter of cognitions. on kant‘s view, the so-called matter of these cognitions, what he called ‗sensations‘, can only be delivered through our contact with the physical world. for kant, this places the truths related to these areas of cognition solely within the realm of the a posteriori. the sciences of pure intuition (e.g., geometry), by contrast, deal exclusively with the form of cognition, and this form is given prior to all possible experience. indeed, kant takes great pains to argue that there must be such a form, prior to experience, for experience to be possible in the first place. so, geometrical intuition differs from empirical intuition in that it does [kant , b - ]. [kant , a - /b - ]. not come into contact with the specific matter or content of sensations, but concerns only their form. another distinction kant is interested in making is that between pure intuitions and pure concepts. this distinction allowed him to distinguish analytic a priori knowledge from the peculiar synthetic a priori knowledge he wished to attribute to geometry and arithmetic. for kant, if geometry were to be construed as having its basis in a pure concept of space, it would be a purely analytic discipline, in which no new truths other than those already contained in its basic concept(s) could be found. a purely conceptual geometry would be very similar, for kant, to the discipline of logic. if it was in fact the case that geometry was merely a formal discipline, this would not be a problem. however, geometry is construed by kant as a science of space, which has experiential import. by introducing the new category of pure intuition, kant attempts to break the close connection he and others had previously thought to exist between analyticity and apriority, and thus to allow geometry formal necessity as well as the capacity to help explain the world of spatial experience. with these more general distinctions in mind, let us now turn to kant‘s remarks on the specific qualities of our pure intuition of space. early on in the transcendental aesthetic, kant writes that space is not an empirical concept that has been abstracted from outer experiences. for the presentation of space must already lie at the basis in order for certain sensations to be referred to something outside me (i.e., referred to something in a location of space other than the location in which i am). and it must similarly already lie at the basis in order for me to be able to present [the objects of] these sensations as outside and alongside one another, and hence to present them not only as different but as being in different locations. accordingly the presentation of space cannot be one that we take from the relations of outer appearance by means of experience; rather, only through the presentation of space is that outer experience possible in the first place. here, kant suggests that in order for us to present the objects of experience as distinct from ourselves (or from each other) we must already possess some notion of space within which these differences can be located and made apparent. thus, this pure intuition is prior to and engenders the possibility of our outer experience. following this line of thought, kant further characterizes space as a necessary a priori presentation that underlies all outer intuitions. we can never have a presentation of there being no space, even though we are quite able to think of there being no objects encountered in it. hence space must be regarded as the condition for the possibility of appearances, and not as a determination dependent on them. space is an a priori presentation that necessarily underlies outer appearances. or, stated more clearly with respect to the notion of intuition, he writes that ―space is nothing but the mere form of all appearances of outer senses; i.e., it is the subjective condition of [kant , a /b ]. [kant , a /b - ]. sensibility under which alone outer intuition is possible for us‖; space is thus conceived as ―a pure intuition in which all objects must be determined‖. in sum, then, for kant space is a pure intuition which determines the form of all outer appearance. because it determines the form of appearances without itself being determined by a further appearance or experience, this intuition is both a priori and necessary for any possible experience. since, for kant and those following the euclidean tradition, geometry was the science of space, all of these claims about the nature of space were intended to support the view that the existing body of geometrical truths was certain, necessary, and knowable a priori. kant writes that on this a priori necessity [i.e., that of the pure intuition of space] rests the apodeictic certainty of all geometric principles and the possibility of geometry‘s constructions. for if this presentation of space were a concept acquired a posteriori, drawn from general outer experience, then the first principles for determining [things] in mathematics would be nothing but perceptions. hence they would have all the contingency that perception has; and it would then precisely not be necessary for there to be only one straight line between two points, but this would be something that experience always teaches us. by the same token, what we take from experience has only comparative universality, viz., through induction. hence all we could say is: as far as we have been able to tell until now, no space has been found that has more than three dimensions. so, the crucial source of our geometrical knowledge is the pure intuition of space. as kant‘s explanations here are intended to show, the concept of a pure intuition is meant to safeguard the necessity of mathematical (i.e., arithmetical and geometrical) reasoning while at the same time making sense of the obviously synthetic character of specifically geometric reasoning. by countenancing an epistemological source other than pure reason and sensory input, kant allows for what he had formerly taken to be a contradictory combination of synthetic knowledge with [kant , a /b ]. [kant , a ]. at this point in the second edition of the critique of pure reason, kant slightly amends this paragraph as follows: ―by the same token, no geometric principles—e.g., the principle that in a triangle two sides together are greater than the third—are ever derived from universal concepts of line and triangle; rather, they are all derived from intuition, and are derived from it moreover a priori with apodeictic certainty‖ [kant , b ]. it is interesting to contrast the first edition quotation with kant‘s remarks, in which he appears to countenance precisely the empirical sort of geometry that he rejects here. one of kant‘s translators, werner s. pluhar, makes the following remark: ―but, as kant has indicated, from this original intuition of space [i.e., the pure intuition of space] concepts can be formed, including such concepts as those of empirical space, relative space, euclidean space, mathematical space‖ [kant , b , translator‘s footnote ]. while there is some truth to pluhar‘s remark here— we can form less general concepts of space from the pure intuition of space, concepts of space limited by, e.g., epistemological, mathematical, or physical criteria—it seems partially misleading with respect to kant‘s own views to suggest that we might develop what appear to be more general conceptions of space, like those we find in the theory of relativity or in other non-euclidean domains of mathematics. the suggestion is misleading because it seems that, for kant‘s critical philosophy at least, our pure intuition of space was necessarily three-dimensional and (very likely) ‗euclidean‘ in other details as well. unfortunately, a detailed discussion of the specific qualities of the pure intuition of space is not forthcoming in kant, and it is not clear if the object of this intuition is identical with euclidean space—though kant‘s offhand remarks regarding certain theorems of euclidean geometry incline one to think as much. this view is perhaps reinforced by kant‘s claim that ―we have no one who has exceeded aristotle or enlarged his pure logic (which is in itself fundamentally impossible) just as no mathematician has exceeded euclid‖ [kant , ]. the a priori. in addition to anchoring the putative necessity of geometrical truths, kant also helped to reaffirm the privileged position of euclid‘s geometry as the true description of the characteristics of (our pure intuition of) space. kant, like most of his contemporaries, was of the opinion that the true science of space had already been given, by and large, in euclid‘s elements. though he was likely aware of the nagging problem of the parallel postulate, this did not hinder his appreciation of euclidean geometry a jot. he insists, as we see above, that it is not mere chance or empirical fact that there can be only one straight line through any two points, or that space is three-dimensional. instead, he provides us with a philosophical basis for understanding how it is that these geometric truths, already present in euclid, are necessary and a priori without being deducible in a purely formal manner. thus, kant provided an appealing attempt to explain the certainty of geometry by rooting it in pure intuition. this move accomplished two things. first, it explained geometrical reasoning‘s separation from the error-ridden arena of everyday experience and, second, it unveiled a realm of certainty distinct from the (apparently empty) realm of analytic truths. thus, geometry was at once creative and assured; a neat epistemological trick. in addition to this explanation of geometry‘s certitude, kant also reinforced the view that this certitude was the exclusive property of the euclidean view of space. for kant, our basic intuition of space could only be understood in one way, and that way was paved by euclid. (as we will see, however, the very general way in which kant characterized his views of geometry—i.e., with very little direct reference to the specific claims of euclidean geometry—provided a certain measure of resilience for those views in the face of seemingly contradictory evidence provided by non-euclidean geometries). kant‘s views on geometry gave many geometers (e.g., gauss) an explicit philosophical basis for their own views. this gave the philosophy of geometry a common language to work with. this resulted, on the one hand, in a firmer entrenchment of the classical euclidean position (as we can see in the remark from gauss quoted at the beginning of § of this chapter). on the other hand, it also gave those unsatisfied with euclidean geometry some specific claims to attack. if geometry while it is commonly held (indeed it was held by kant himself) that he was the discoverer of the synthetic a priori character of mathematical judgments (see [kant , § ]), [rusnock ] prevents a convincing argument that he was preceded in this discovery by (at least) john locke, as evidenced by the following passage from locke‘s essay concerning human understanding: ―we can know then the truth of two sorts of propositions with perfect certainty; the one is, of those trifling propositions, which have a certainty in them, but ‗tis but a verbal certainty, but not instructive. and, secondly, we can know the truth, and so may be certain in propositions, which affirm something of another, which is a necessary consequence of its precise complex idea, but not contained in it. as that the external angle of all triangles is bigger than either of the two opposite internal angles; which relation of the outward angle, to either of the opposite internal angles, making no part of the comple idea, signified by the name triangle, this is a real truth, and conveys with it instructive, real knowledge‖ [locke , book iv, chapter viii, § ]. kant corresponded with lambert, and indeed called him ―the greatest genius in germany‖ [kant to lambert december , ; kant , ]. it seems likely that kant would have been familiar with lambert‘s work on parallels, at least in passing. given the prominence of the problem of parallels for euclidean geometry at the time, it seems unlikely that kant would have been entirely ignorant of the existence of the problem, given his passing familiarity with euclid and his interest in the nature of geometry and its epistemology. these remain, however, speculative remarks, as, to my knowledge, kant provides us with no material on the basis of which we can make more definitive claims about his views. though kant only rarely mentions euclid or his elements by name, he recapitulates euclidean formulae and proofs at several points. see, for instance, his rendition of proposition of book i of the elements at [kant , a - /b - ]. is the science of space, and we know space through pure intuition, perhaps this intuition is not euclidean, or perhaps this intuition does not include the parallel postulate as an essential part. kant‘s philosophy of geometry both solidified the traditional conception of geometry and pinned it in place. . the emergence of non-euclidean geometry: gauss, bolyai, and lobachevsky while geometers from khayyam to saccheri were unable or unwilling to countenance the so- called ‗acute hypothesis‘ as a viable alternative to euclid‘s geometry, a century later we find no less than three brave souls willing to do so. the men in question were carl friedrich gauss, jános bolyai, and nikolai lobachevsky, each of whom arrived at relatively similar conceptions regarding hyperbolic geometry independently of the others. gauss was the first to countenance non-euclidean geometry as a worthwhile scientific endeavour, but, due to his notorious reticence to publish, he was also the last of the three to have his findings published. lobachevsky was the earliest of the three to have published, though his work had very little influence at the time given his isolated position at the university of kazan, far from the centers of nineteenth century mathematical activity. bolyai‘s work appeared in a rather timely manner, but, like that of lobachevsky, it did not have the immediate impact one would have expected, a circumstance likely due to the relative obscurity of the author, the fact that his results were published in an appendix to a work of his father‘s, and the still-formidable status of euclidean geometry with its alleged bedrock of intuitive certainty recently reinforced by kant. in what follows, i will trace some elements of the early development of non-euclidean geometry, beginning with one of its earliest forms in the notebooks and correspondence of gauss. . . carl friedrich gauss it is widely supposed that gauss was the first to seriously consider non-euclidean geometry. due, however, to his unwillingness to publish and his fear of the ―clamour of the boeotians‖ over the suggestion that we ought to take seriously any geometry other than euclid‘s, almost nothing of his work on the subject was known publicly until after his death in . collected, this material is rather thin, comprising scattered remarks in letters, a few notebook sketches, and two papers. from the letters, however, we find suggestions from gauss that he had expended a in this sketch of a rather complex conceptual history i must remain somewhat selective. after saccheri and prior to the publication of lobachevsky‘s results, work of undoubted importance was accomplished in the theory of parallels by several men. of particular note are works by lambert, by the german jurist ferdinand karl schweikart ( - ), and two publications by schweikart‘s nephew, franz adolf taurinus ( - ). gauss is known to have followed the maxim ―pauca sed matura‖ (few, but ripe), which was exemplified in his attitude toward publishing; despite the lateness with which his thoughts on non-euclidean geometry appeared, they nevertheless became rather more influential than those of either bolyai or lobachevsky, due in large part to his reputation. cf. [kline , - ], [ewald , ], [gray , ], and [dunnington , - ]. cf. gauss‘ letter to friedrich bessel ( - ) of the th of january, : ―but i shall not for a long time work up for public consumption my very extensive investigations into these matters [i.e., non-euclidean geometry], and this will possibly not occur in my lifetime, since i fear the clamour of the boeotians if i were to express my opinion completely‖ [gauss - , band viii, ; translated in ewald , ]. his correspondence, beginning at the close of the eighteenth century, with farkas bolyai, gerling, taurinus, and bessel, is of particular note in connection with his researches into non-euclidean geometry. the papers in question considerable amount of mental energy upon the subject of non-euclidean geometry, even if he had not deigned to commit much to paper in any definitive form. gauss was a long-time correspondent with the hungarian mathematician farkas bolyai, the father of jános bolyai. after years of toil, the latter had finally produced a detailed work on non- euclidean geometry. this work, the science absolute of space: independent of the truth or falsity of euclid’s axiom xi (which can never be decided a priori), was published in as an appendix to a work of his father. subsequently, his father forwarded a copy to his friend gauss in . gauss‘ reply, from the th of march , was as follows: if i commenced by saying that i am unable to praise this work (by janos), you would certainly be surprised for a moment. but i cannot say otherwise. to praise it would be to praise myself. indeed the whole contents of the work, the path taken by your son, the results to which he is led, coincide almost entirely with my meditations, which have occupied my mind partly for the last thirty or thirty-five years. so i remain quite stupefied. so far as my own work is concerned, of which up till now i have put little on paper, my attention was not to let it be published during my lifetime. indeed the majority of people have not clear ideas upon the questions of which we are speaking, and i have found very few people who could regard with any special interest what i communicated to them on this subject. to be able to take such an interest it is first of all necessary to have devoted careful thought to the real nature of what is wanted and upon this matter almost all are most uncertain. on the other hand it was my idea to write down all this later so that at least it should not perish with me. it is therefore a pleasant surprise for me that i am spared this trouble, and i am very glad that it is just the son of my old friend, who takes the precedence of me in such a remarkable manner. as is not terribly surprising, jános was rather irked by gauss‘ reply; gray writes that he ―never really forgave the prince of geometers. he was incredulous that gauss should have made his discoveries before him, and became so convinced of plagiarism that he never published again‖. we are perhaps in a better position than bolyai to estimate gauss‘ intellectual honesty on the matter. whether or not the specific findings later contained in bolyai‘s work were known to gauss, it does seem clear that he had begun to take seriously the problems with the traditional conception of euclidean geometry as the only possible science of space. from scattered remarks in his correspondence it is evident that gauss was dissatisfied with the current understanding of geometry, particularly with the belief that the theorems of euclidean geometry were straightforward truths about the physical world. moreover, he was cognizant that whatever new are [gauss ] and [gauss ], both of which were published locally in the göttingensche gelehrten anzeige. both the notebook material and the relevant correspondence can be found in [gauss - , band viii, - ]. farkas bolyai had actually sent gauss a copy of the work in , but due in part to the instability caused by the cholera pandemic then making its way across europe, the book never arrived. [gauss - , band viii, ; translated in gray , ]. [gray , - ]. see, e.g., [gauss - , band viii, , - ; translated in ewald , , ]. approach was developed, it would likely alter radically our conception of geometry as an a priori science grounded in pure intuition, not to mention our understanding of the connection between geometry and the physical world. his distance from accepted tradition is further evidenced in an letter to the german astronomer heinrich wilhelm matthäus olbers ( - ), in which gauss writes: i come more and more to the view that the necessity of our geometry cannot be proved... perhaps we shall come to another insight in another life into the nature of space, which is unattainable for us now. but until then one must not rank geometry with arithmetic, which is truly a priori, but with mechanics. here we see the dual effects of kant‘s philosophy of geometry. gauss speaks, like kant, in the language of the a priori and the a posteriori but he also comes to doubt that traditional geometry is merely an elucidation of the a priori, pure intuition that kant had suggested. given the problems in establishing the parallel postulate, gauss, aware of kant‘s philosophy but considerably more knowledgeable about geometry than kant, is ready to (privately) consider that the application of euclidean geometry to the physical world might be an a posteriori affair after all. there are inklings of the empirical grounding of geometrical axioms which we will later find in the work of gauss‘ student riemann. but, from gauss himself, we do not find much more in his non-euclidean works than isolated theorems and hints toward a new vision of the subject; for more substantial results, we must turn to the work of the two men whose names have since become most closely associated with the birth of non-euclidean geometry, namely, bolyai and lobachevsky. . . bolyai and lobachevsky both bolyai and lobachevsky were isolated from the main mathematical centers of their time, with the result that they and their works were little known until the surge of interest in non- euclidean geometries prompted by the publishing of gauss‘ work after his death. indeed, the two men remained isolated even from each other for many years; gray writes that the work of bolyai and lobachevsky is astonishingly similar, and yet each remained in ignorance of the very existence of the other until some years after their work was published. the hungarian was aware through his father of the western european work on non-euclidean geometry, although he appears to have largely gone his own way. the russian kept apart from the controversy, and his earliest publication on the subject, in the kazan messenger for , passed completely unnoticed. let us turn now to a discussion of some elements of the conceptual content of their work and the ways in which that work diverges from the traditional understanding of geometry as grounded in a basic, euclidean intuition of physical space. here we will begin to see the philosophical vacuum that begins to open up in the wake of the mathematical dismantling of the primacy of [gauss , translated in gray , ; also in gauss - , band viii, ]. [gray , ]. euclidean geometry. it is in this vacuum that the structure-focussed approach to mathematics begins to come into focus. the very title of bolyai‘s work, the science absolute of space: independent of the truth or falsity of euclid’s axiom xi, indicates his belief that he had penetrated more deeply into the nature of space than had euclid or his followers. his own early frustrations— as late as he was convinced ―that the parallel postulate must hold‖ — certainly encouraged his resolve. in a remarkable letter of to his father, he writes: i have now resolved to publish a work on parallels ... i have not yet completed the work, but the road i have followed has made it almost certain that the goal will be attained, if that is at all possible: the goal is not yet reached, but i have made such wonderful discoveries that i have been almost overwhelmed by them, and it would be the cause of continual regret if they were lost. when you see them, you too will recognize them. in the meantime i can say only this: i have created a new universe from nothing. all that i have sent you till now is but a house of cards compared to a tower. i am as fully persuaded that will bring me honour, as if i had already completed the discovery. his researches were not published until , and even then ―passed straight into obscurity,‖ despite this effusive self-praise. only much later was his approach to geometry noticed and properly evaluated by others. one of the key conceptual innovations that bolyai introduced was his clear use of the notion of ‗absolute‘ geometry (often also called neutral geometry, or ‗pangeometry‘ by lobachevsky). he used this term to refer to the collection of geometrical theorems which remain true independently of the parallel postulate, i.e., those which can be proved from euclid‘s other axioms alone. one of the remarkable achievements of his work was the tacit ascription of independent importance to the absolute or neutral perspective from which we can make decisions about the status of the parallel postulate. this perspective had been implicitly employed as early as khayyam‘s discussion of the three possible cases which arise when we suspend judgment regarding the parallel postulate, but neither khayyam nor saccheri had dwelt overmuch on the nature of this neutral geometrical perspective itself. what is novel in bolyai is not solely his discussion of theorems from within this perspective, but also his analysis of which of these theorems remained true when the parallel postulate was denied (or, correspondingly, accepted). thus, he makes a distinction between theorems which are ‗absolutely‘ true—i.e., those which are true whether we accept, reject, or suspend judgment upon the parallel postulate—and those which are true only given the further assumption/denial of the parallel postulate. this is a remarkable change in attitude towards the ‗acute angled hypothesis‘ from that of saccheri, who, recall, thought of this hypothesis as inimical to the nature of the euclidean straight line and, therefore, as absolutely false. from within this neutral perspective, bolyai proves a number of theorems. he also goes on to work within a geometry in which the parallel postulate is denied, namely a hyperbolic geometry developed from the assumption that the acute angled case of saccheri is true. [gray , ]. [j. bolyai to f. bolyai, november ; quoted in gray , ]. [gray , ]. as gray notes, bolyai and lobachevsky produced works which were ‗astonishingly similar‘. several of the theorems proved by bolyai are proved analogously by lobachevsky. lobachevsky‘s ‗imaginary geometry‘ was, like bolyai‘s, based upon the assumption that saccheri‘s hypothesis of the acute angle holds. one of the notable differences between their works is that lobachevsky did not limit his geometry to representations in the plane. he offers, for example, the figure of the horosphere (a sphere of infinite radius with constant negative curvature) as a surface upon which a non-euclidean geometry holds when its basic terms are given appropriate interpretations. such spherical ‗models‘ of hyperbolic and other geometries would later play a role in making non-euclidean geometries acceptable and scientifically useful. lobachevsky, perhaps even more than bolyai, was also quite well aware of the implications which his pan-geometrical perspective had for the traditional, kantian underpinnings of euclidean geometry. he writes: the fruitlessness of the attempts made, since euclid‘s time, for the space of years, aroused in me the suspicion that the truth, which it was desired to prove, was not contained in the data themselves; that to establish it the aid of experiment would be needed, for example of astronomical observations, as in the case of other laws of nature. when i had finally convinced myself of the justice of my conjecture and believed that i had completely solved this difficult question, i wrote, in , a memoir on this subject. here we see that the continual failure of lobachevsky‘s early ( - ) attempts to prove the parallel postulate brought him to the conclusion which gauss had suggested already in . namely, that the basis of the truth of euclidean geometry was not to be found in our a priori intuition of space but, rather, upon empirical considerations. two thousand years of history had shown that establishing the truth of at least some aspects of geometry did require what kant would call the ‗matter‘ of sensation (i.e., astronomical observation). thus, euclidean geometry could not be considered an a priori science. accordingly, lobachevsky‘s work on euclidean geometry ―compelled [it] to take its place again among the experimental sciences‖. with his work on pangeometry, however, lobachevsky yet secured the a priori status of something recognizably geometric: ―... pangeometry becomes a branch of analysis, including and extending the analytical methods of ordinary geometry‖. lobachevsky‘s pangeometric approach detached an important portion of euclidean geometry from the intuitive underpinnings which had previously linked geometry to physical space. this conceptual move partially enabled the shift away from the conception of geometry as the science of physical space towards a more abstract understanding of geometry as the science of a number of possible spaces. from the pangeometric perspective, as from those of gauss‘s astral geometry and bolyai‘s absolute geometry, euclidean geometry is treated as a special case whose applicability to the physical world cannot be proven a priori, but must instead be shown by empirical means. the peculiarity of the parallel postulate in relation to euclid‘s other postulates finally makes sense. unlike the other postulates (whose [lobachevsky, quoted in bonola , ]; the memoir referred to is his exposition succincte des principes de géométrie. [bonola , ]. [lobachevsky, quoted in bonola , ]. apriority and certainty were not yet to be challenged), the parallel postulate‘s truth was connected to some peculiarity about our physical world, a peculiarity which could not be derived from our intuition of space, or from the nature of reason, but instead had to be measured. this initial step, shared in common by gauss, bolyai, and lobachevsky, allowed the dismantling of the kantian dogma of the intuitive basis of geometrical necessity to begin. it also planted the seeds for the emergence of geometrical spaces—plural—conceived abstractly without direct reference to any intuitive or physical manifestations. . challenges to kant with their work, bolyai and lobachevsky performed a key conceptual manoeuvre which would eventually help enable a significant alteration (one might say revolution) in the way that geometry was perceived. their countenancing of alternative geometries was a necessary first step in the dismantling of the traditional picture, but it was not sufficient. it was a necessary step because without presenting a coherent and reasonably consistent alternative to euclid‘s geometry, there could be no question of abandoning the view of geometry as the science of space. if geometry is about space, and there is one true description of space, then any putative alternatives to this description must necessarily be false. but, if it can be shown that a non-euclidean form of geometry is a viable description of space, then the question must be asked: how can we know which alternative is the correct one? prior to the work of gauss, bolyai, and lobachevsky, this question seemed literally nonsensical. but this step was not enough to usher in a completely new understanding of the nature of geometry overnight. many mathematicians remained certain of geometrical truths, and this certainty seemed to require explanation, given the apparent similarity between geometry as a concrete science (the science of space) and the error-prone empirical sciences. kant‘s views seemed to offer an appealing path towards explaining this apparently contradictory combination of certainty with the concrete. though it is a commonplace to insist that the development of consistent non- euclidean geometries overturned the certainty with which the kantian view of geometry was held, this is a somewhat misleading claim. the claim is misleading insofar as it fails to take into account the remarkable resilience which those views possessed in the face of seemingly recalcitrant evidence. and, even more, such a claim can seem to anachronistically mischaracterize the nature of the relevant counter-evidence as understood by proponents of the kantian view. as we‘ve seen, prior to the emergence of non-euclidean geometries, kant had attempted to ground the apriority of geometry (i.e., euclidean geometry) in its intuitive necessity. the basis of geometry was our pure intuition of space, and, i have argued, this intuition itself was at least tacitly assumed to be euclidean in nature. for kant and the legion of geometers who took his view to be a more or less accurate description of their pre-theoretic conception of geometry, our pure intuition of space presented (with certainty and necessity) a space which was three- dimensional, isotropic (i.e., whose geometrical properties and relations are invariant with respect to direction, location, or size), which obeyed the parallel postulate, etc. in other words, the form of our pure intuition of space was taken to be euclidean. thus, while the logical possibility of non-euclidean geometries would likely have been admitted by kant, such geometries would nevertheless have been impossible for us to intuit (as the pure intuition of space already contained specific geometric content) and could therefore not be true in the sense that euclidean geometry was understood to be true. and, given kant‘s popular dictum that thoughts without (intuitive) content are empty, it seems likely that he would have seen non-euclidean geometries as interesting but scientifically vacuous constructions—merely ‗logical‘ constructions which could not be applied to the realm of experience insofar as that realm is always structured and made possible by our pure, euclidean intuition of space. thus, non-euclidean geometries could not be considered sciences at all, at least not in the sense of a theory applicable to some empirical subject matter. far from sciences, these descriptions of alternative ‗spaces‘ would be better understood as arbitrary logical games, with no application to reality. indeed, something like this seems to have been frege‘s view, inspired by kant, as late as the turn of the century: the question at the present time is whether euclidean or non-euclidean geometry should be struck off the role of the sciences and made to line up as a museum piece alongside alchemy and astrology. if one is content to have only phantoms hovering around one, there is no need to take the matter so seriously; but in science we are subject to the necessity of seeking after truth. there it is a case of in or out! well, is it euclidean or non-euclidean geometry that should get the sack? that is the question. do we dare treat euclid‘s elements, which have exercised unquestioned sway for years, as we have treated astrology? it is only if we do not dare to do this that we can put euclid‘s axioms forward as propositions that are neither false nor doubtful. in that case non-euclidean geometry will have to be counted amongst the pseudo-sciences, to the study of which we still attach some slight importance, but only as historical curiosities. frege here puts forward the view that one must inevitably choose between euclidean and non- euclidean geometries—with the heavy bias being in favour of euclid. this view was quite common during the early years of non-euclidean geometries and was based upon two key presuppositions. the first is the (aristotelian) view of distinct sciences differentiated according to classes of truths related to particular domains of entities. geometry, on this view, was the science which studied the class of truths related to spatial objects, whose characteristics are idealized in points, lines, planes, etc. and, second, it is based upon the view that euclidean and the oft-quoted remark is to be found early on in the critique of pure reason, in the introductory preamble to the transcendental logic: ―thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind‖ [kant , a /b ]. kant writes in the prolegomena, for instance, that ―pure mathematics, and especially pure geometry, can have objective reality only on condition that they refer merely to objects of sense‖ [kant , ]. geometry‘s way of fulfilling this requirement is by referring only to the necessary spatial form of the objects of sense. thus, a geometry constructed upon an alternative concept of space (i.e., one which differs from our pure intuition of space) can never connect with objective reality insofar as it fails to refer in any way to the objects of sense, which are determined exclusively by way of our pure intuition of space. so, if our pure intuition of space is euclidean, then any alternative conception of space which hopes to achieve objective reality mustn‘t contradict any of the postulates of euclidean geometry. on such a view, alternate geometries which endeavour to attain the status of sciences can only do so on the condition that they are special cases of euclidean geometry. given these views, we might consider kant a kind of proto-structuralist about geometry, but i think this would be to ignore the fact that for kant such ‗structures‘ would be empty and meaningless (something which all but the most extreme mathematical structuralists would find deeply troubling). [frege c. , ]. non-euclidean theories were both geometries – thus, that they were competing descriptions of the same domain of objects. so, accordingly, if a science is a (true) description of some collection of objects, and if there are two sciences which purport to describe the same aspects of the same collection of objects, it seems to be the case that either the two sciences say the same things in different ways (in which case one will do), or it will be the case that one of the sciences is simply false—as frege implies here. alberto coffa describes the early prevalence of this supposed competition between euclidean and non-euclidean geometries as follows: when non-euclidean geometries first appeared on the scene, they were naturally understood as rivals of euclid, and their primitives were therefore taken to designate the same things as euclid‘s, whatever they might be. presumably, since both euclid‘s and lobachevskii‘s were geometries, they had to be interpreted as attempts to identify the class of truths concerning the very same domain of entities. their points, straight lines, and so on had to be the same in both theories. given the long tradition and apparent intuitive plausibility supporting euclidean geometry, it is not surprising, then, that early work on the legitimation of non-euclidean geometry focussed on connecting it in some way to ‗real‘ geometry, i.e., euclidean geometry. one of the best known, and most influential, examples of such an attempt was eugenio beltrami‘s ( - ) model of hyperbolic geometry constructed within a fragment of euclidean space. somewhat surprisingly, such attempts to connect non-euclidean geometry to the legitimacy of euclidean geometry were instrumental in the (eventual) dismantling of the kantian picture. beltrami‘s model is developed in two separate papers of . these papers were subsequently generalized by felix klein ( - ) in . thus, the resulting model of hyperbolic geometry is usually called the beltrami-klein model. given that the emergence of this model played an important role in challenging the pervasive kantian view of geometry, it will be helpful to discuss some of the key conceptual moves employed in its construction. . . the beltrami-klein model of hyperbolic geometry the beltrami-klein model begins within a two-dimensional euclidean space, upon which we construct an open disc (i.e., all the points contained within the radius of a circle γ, excepting the points which lie on the circumference of the circle). now, we interpret the ‗lines‘ of lobachevsky‘s hyperbolic geometry as the open chords of this open disc (i.e., the chords of γ excluding the endpoints which lie upon the circumference of γ). we then consider two ‗lines‘ (i.e., open chords) a and b to be parallel if they have no point within γ in common. if the euclidean lines which extend the open chords intersect outside γ, the hyperbolic ‗lines‘ are nevertheless called parallel as long as they have no point within γ in common (see figure ). here the open disc represents the hyperbolic plane, the open chords of γ represent hyperbolic lines, and the relation holding between two lines which do not have a point within the hyperbolic plane in common replaces the euclidean parallel relation. other basic euclidean concepts are translated with varying degrees of familiarity: a ‗point‘ is a euclidean point within the open disc; such a point ‗lies on‘ a hyperbolic line in just the same way it would lie on a euclidean line; a [coffa , ]. the references are to [beltrami a], [beltrami b], and [klein ], respectively. hyperbolic point lies ‗between‘ two others in the familiar way, etc. the key difference here is that the points and lines of the hyperbolic plane all lie within the open disc. (hyperbolic congruence and perpendicularity are not as easily defined, as they require some tinkering with rather tricky metrical concepts. i will delay discussion of these difficulties until the following subsection.) figure : parallel lines within the beltrami-klein model essentially, then, this method of modelling shows that we can realize lobachevsky‘s hyperbolic geometry inside the space of traditional euclidean geometry. with this manoeuvre, beltrami illustrated not only that non-euclidean geometry was consistent, but, also, that it was strictly reducible to euclidean geometry—an apparent vindication of the kantian view that all geometry, properly speaking, was euclidean in the final analysis. so, while beltrami had provided a model of non-euclidean geometry, he also reinforced the kantian view insofar as his model was constructed within euclidean geometry. somewhat oddly, then, the first real vindication of non- euclidean geometry as more than a tangle of counter-intuitive propositions at the same time bolstered the confidence of those who believed geometry was ultimately grounded in our euclidean intuition of space. coffa describes the situation as follows: despite appearances, the doctrines put forth could have brought nothing but comfort to kantian souls. for beltrami‘s ultimate goal was not so much to interpret as to reduce hyperbolic geometry to euclidean geometry and to argue that there was no more geometric sense in the former than it could derive from the latter. and, further, that consistent, of course, only relative to the consistency of euclidean geometry – which was not in question at the time given the widely held belief in the supposed epistemological guarantee of spatial intuition (and the assumption that the physical world itself is consistent). [coffa , ]. far from posing any threats to kant‘s philosophy, beltrami‘s work was consistent with and possibly even grounded upon it. kant had never doubted the logical consistency of non- euclidean geometries. he would surely have said of hyperbolic geometry that it is impossible but not logically impossible (since its ―negation,‖ euclidean geometry, is not logically necessary but only intuitionally necessary). so the fact that there is an interpretation of hyperbolic geometry is hardly surprising, nor is it surprising that the interpretation has to be given in terms of euclidean intuitable notions. nor is it surprising that wherever that reduction to euclidean intuition fails, we must abandon the project of giving an interpretation to lobachevski‘s theory. one could hardly find a more appealing package of good news for kantians in a geometric monograph. to the kantian geometer of the time, then, any scientific importance we might wish to lend to new forms of geometry was determined entirely by the possibility of connecting those geometries to euclid‘s intuitively guaranteed geometry. once such a connection was made evident—as in beltrami‘s case—kantian scruples were satisfied and normal geometric business could continue, for a while at least. but, despite the increased assurance lent to the kantian understanding of geometry by beltrami‘s model, subsequent work by felix klein on hyperbolic models, influenced heavily by the british mathematician arthur cayley ( - ), was to prove instrumental in dislodging the kantian view. . . cayley‘s projective concept of distance and klein‘s generalizations let‘s begin our discussion of klein and cayley by first returning to the discussion of the interpretation of hyperbolic congruence and perpendicularity within the beltrami-klein model. now, one might begin by attempting to treat congruence for angles in the normal manner, i.e., by introducing some metric for angles and then calling two angles congruent just in case they possess the same number of degrees according to this metric. the problem with this approach in our case is that we cannot employ a euclidean metric. if we employ a usual euclidean measure of length, for instance, then all our hyperbolic lines will have to be considered finite. this is so because once we import a euclidean metric, the circumference of the circle within which the hyperbolic plane is embedded becomes a measurable part of the hyperbolic universe, whereas in the model it is importantly outside that universe. it seems that the use of any standard euclidean metric will result in the collapsing of the horizon of the non-euclidean world into that world, thus eliminating the very distinction required for the model to function in the first place. if we cannot employ any of the usual euclidean approaches toward measurement, how then do we discuss congruence and perpendicularity within the hyperbolic plane? [coffa , ]. this reading of the import of beltrami‘s work should not suggest that beltrami saw himself as proving the relative consistency of hyperbolic geometry. this is chiefly because the notion of a relative consistency proof was not at all clearly formulated, by beltrami or anyone else, in . if it is misleading, then, to suggest that beltrami intended to prove the consistency of hyperbolic geometry relative to euclidean geometry, it is nevertheless true to state that his work did not immediately call into question the primacy or truth of euclidean geometry. see [gray , - ] for more detailed remarks to this effect. see [kvasz , f.] for a useful discussion of this problem. the standard approach, developed by beltrami and further specified by klein, runs roughly as follows. we say two hyperbolic lines (i.e. open chords of the circle γ) are ‗perpendicular‘ in the following two cases: . if one of the two euclidean chords a and b is a diameter of the circle γ, then the hyperbolic lines a and b (i.e., a and b excluding their endpoints) are said to be hyperbolically perpendicular iff they are perpendicular in the usual euclidean sense. . if neither a nor b is a diameter of the circle γ, then a and b are perpendicular iff the euclidean line which extends a passes through the pole of b, where by ‗pole of b‘ is meant the (euclidean) point of intersection of the tangents of the radius of γ with the endpoints of b (figure ). figure : hyperbolic perpendicularity in the beltrami-klein model now, what is interesting here is that the definition of hyperbolic perpendicularity requires that we extend hyperbolic lines to points at infinity, i.e., ‗euclidean‘ points which do not lie within the hyperbolic plane itself. the use of points at infinity is an important technique of projective geometry, which cayley had examined and generalized in the paper from which klein drew. in contrast to beltrami‘s efforts to legitimate non-euclidean geometry by embedding it within intuitively acceptable euclidean geometry, one of cayley‘s main goals was to eliminate the elevated position occupied by euclidean geometry in favour of a more general standpoint. he famously found such a standpoint within projective geometry, to which we now turn. the paper which was to influence klein‘s approach to geometry was cayley‘s ―sixth memoir upon quantics‖. in that paper, cayley argues that the projective properties of geometrical figures are their most fundamental, and, further, that the whole of geometry can be reconstructed in exclusively projective terms. projective geometry was a burgeoning field of study within cayley‘s time, but it was still generally treated as a sub-field of properly euclidean geometry. historically, it had been developed by gérard desargues ( - ) and others in order to help explain very concrete—hence euclidean—problems of perspective in renaissance painting. in the early nineteenth century there was something of a projective renaissance begun by the french mathematician jean-victor poncelet ( - ), which gathered steam throughout germany, france, and italy. while beltrami himself had used projective techniques in the construction of his model of non- euclidean geometry, his focus was never explicitly upon the medium of projection, or on the nature of the projective plane itself. as we saw above, the beltrami-klein model employs certain points outside the circle γ in order to define the concept of perpendicularity. these points at infinity are not part of the hyperbolic universe, but are nevertheless still situated within the euclidean plane into which the hyperbolic plane is projected. the relationship between these points and the lines of the hyperbolic plane is not describable from within the hyperbolic universe itself, but requires a more general perspective. for beltrami, this perspective was satisfyingly that of traditional, euclidean geometry. cayley, on the contrary, developed a point of view from which euclidean geometry itself appeared to be merely a special case, a specific type of metric geometry. conceptually, the role played by cayley‘s projective geometry is quite similar to that of ‗neutral geometry‘ in the works of bolyai and, more powerfully, lobachevsky. one of the key results of cayley‘s paper is his celebrated treatment of the distance function. this treatment of the concept of distance involves characterizing it solely in projective terms (he writes that ―a chief object of [this paper] is the establishment, upon purely descriptive principles, of the notion of distance‖ ); effectively, cayley elides all the peculiarities of the euclidean plane by mapping it onto the projective plane and back onto the euclidean plane once more. he introduces the distance function relative to a particular figure he called the absolute. the absolute functioned as a yardstick against which distance could be measured irrespective of the specificities of a given space. more precisely, the process of projecting from a given metric plane into the projective plane and back again to the metric plane allowed cayley to define the absolute (and hence distance) by appealing only to projective properties—its non- projective properties were essentially erased by the successive projective transformations. thus, cayley provided a method for characterizing distance as a purely projective concept. by doing so, he successfully illustrated that we can treat euclidean geometry as a particular form of the more general projective geometry, and thus we have his well-known remark that ―metrical geometry is thus a part of descriptive geometry, and descriptive geometry is all geometry‖. poncelet‘s two-volume work, traité des proprieties projectives des figures ([poncelet ]) was the instigator of this trend; throughout the middle third of the nineteenth century, algebraic techniques were fruitfully applied to projective geometry by, e.g., christian von staudt ( - ) and his school in germany, and by the italian geometer luigi cremona ( - ). the algebraic approach to projective geometry was instrumental in the establishment of the school of alfred clebsch ( - ) at göttingen, which would prove to be so influential in the development of geometry towards its more recognizably modern forms in the work of riemann, klein, hilbert, and others. (on the german side of these developments, see [ziegler ]). [cayley , ]. [cayley , ]; cayley uses the term ‗descriptive geometry‘ for what we call projective geometry. cayley restricted his investigation to the properties of a particular type of absolute (he employed a specific degenerate conic section), which limited the applicability of his work considerably. even still, his work allowed him to establish the important result that euclidean metric geometry can be included within projective geometry. though this was already quite a general standpoint, it would become further generalized by felix klein, beginning in the s with his famous erlanger programm. one of the central ideas of klein‘s papers of the early s was to vary the form of the absolute itself in order to investigate other possible metric structures, with other sorts of distance functions, all still characterized solely in terms of their projective properties. in effect, klein combined cayley‘s projective insight into the metric structure of euclidean geometry with an appreciation for the variety of metric geometries made evident in the works of lobachevsky and bolyai. ultimately, this led klein to classify different metric geometries according to the existence of isomorphisms between those geometries and particular projective transformation groups. later, with the help of group-theoretic work by his good friend sophus lie (and perhaps also an increasing appreciation of the geometric insights of riemann), klein extended this program to include transformation groups more generally. from the point of view of someone like gauss, it would likely have seemed impossible for klein‘s view of a group-theoretically classified system of interrelated geometries to have arisen over the brief span of a few decades. and, indeed, it was only because of a remarkable series of profound conceptual mutations combined with seemingly minor shifts of technical emphasis that such alteration was at all possible. from beltrami‘s limited projection of the hyperbolic plane into the euclidean plane we arrive (with klein) at a radically more general understanding of the logical relations amongst a wide variety of geometries. for beltrami, hyperbolic geometry was contained within true, euclidean geometry; for cayley, euclidean geometry was contained within true, projective geometry; for klein, these isolated logical relations between two geometries were replaced altogether by a higher standpoint, from which many different geometries stand in many different logical relations according to a group-theoretic typology. with the development of the full-blown erlanger programm we have a clear example of the klein was well aware that the influence of cayley on his work was decisive. he wrote, well after the development of his programm, that ―this whole manner of viewing the subject [i.e., the viewpoint of the erlanger programm] was given an important turn by the great english geometer a. cayley in . whereas, up to this time, it had seemed that affine and projective geometry were poorer sections of metric geometry, cayley made it possible, on the contrary, to look upon affine geometry as well as metric geometry as special cases of projective geometry‖ [klein , ]. for a clear explanation of the technical details of klein‘s generalization of cayley‘s approach to metric geometry [gray , - ] is helpful. it should be noted here that, despite the central role klein‘s erlanger typology had in re-orienting understanding of the nature of geometry, klein himself still resisted the fully abstract conception of geometries developed purely from postulate sets which is characteristic of the most modern approaches. in contrast to riemann (about whom, more below), klein‘s typology was meant to organize—rather than produce—geometrical knowledge. because klein was most interested in treating projective geometry as the ultimate foundation of all geometry, he was not inclined to include in his typology geometries which could not be easily characterized in projective terms (e.g., elliptic and various differential geometries). after meeting the british mathematician william clifford ( - )—who translated riemann‘s habilitationsvortrag and was very impressed by the possibility of geometries of discontinuous spaces—klein became more tolerant of a wider variety of geometries, though he was still convinced of the fundamental place occupied by the perspective of projective geometry. (for some insightful remarks on klein‘s position and its development, see [corry a, f]). increasing focus on structure as a central, organizing principle within geometry. it is important to note, though, that the initial developments which led to this shift (e.g., cayley‘s and beltrami‘s respective works) were not in the least self-conscious attempts to introduce structural thinking into geometry. beltrami was concerned to illustrate the legitimacy of non-euclidean geometry by connecting it to the intuitively acceptable objects of euclidean geometry, while cayley sought a deeper understanding of the science of space by embedding the objects of euclidean geometry in the more fundamental properties of projective space. and, while klein helped shift the focus away from the competition for the rights to our intuition of space and toward the more interesting (and, eventually, far more influential) problem of determining the relationships between a variety of possible geometries, he too was still concerned that the source of our knowledge of these geometries should be found in intuition. so, while each of the moments addressed in the historical story i give above is crucial to the development of a structural, non-aristotelian conception of geometric science, none of them, not even the highly abstract system of klein, can be said to fully or self-consciously embody such a conception. . . physics and geometry in addition to the challenges posed to kant‘s philosophy of geometry by mathematicians, there was significant trouble raised on the physical front as well. in order to see this, let‘s take a (very brief) detour through the pre-gaussian understanding of the relation between geometry and physics. for many physicists and mathematicians prior to the acceptance of non-euclidean geometry, the mathematical study of geometry was understood to be separate from physics, though whether this separation was a matter of logical priority or a methodology varied from thinker to thinker. thus for instance we find isaac newton ( - ) claiming that, while geometry is, in a sense, a part of (universal) mechanics, it was nevertheless importantly distinguished by its peculiarly perfect method. as he notes in the preface to his principia, to practical mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which mechanics took its name. but as artificers do not work with perfect accuracy, it comes to pass that mechanics is so distinguished from geometry, that what is called perfectly accurate is called geometrical, what is less so is called mechanical. so, while newton‘s geometry was a part of mechanics insofar as it pertained to the study of the mechanical principles which animated the physical world, it was nevertheless that specific part of mechanics which abstracted from the particularity and inaccuracy of our actual measurements of the physical world to consider the exact principles, proportions, and demonstrations which made them possible in the first place. as guicciardini puts it, rather than excluding mechanics from the realm of geometrical exactness, newton proposed to subsume geometry under mechanics. geometry [for newton] is founded upon [newton , lxvii]. mechanics, since the description (or the construction) of geometrical objects appertains to mechanics. the important difference between newton‘s view and the more straightforward (and later) view that physical geometry is subject to the dictates of physics, is that newton held that the object of geometry was the perfectly precise realm of absolute space—a space whose perfection is foreign to the imprecision and relativity of the space we actually experience. as he puts it, absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which is vulgarly taken for immovable space. the imperfect measurement and theorization of this absolute space was the domain of practical mechanics, while the objects of geometry were generated by an appreciation of the perfect or idealized motions which lay beneath our imperfect measurements and observations. in this sense, then, geometry at least partially shared its domain with practical mechanics, and both of them were subsumed under the general heading of rational or universal mechanics. despite the fact that the perfect objects of geometry are, in this loose sense, generated by our imperfect observations of the physical world, they remain methodologically separate from them. now, while newton‘s interest is not otherwise in the elaboration of a complete philosophy of geometry, his general views dovetail (in some respects) with the later kantian philosophy of geometry. newton suggests that geometry is a component of rational (or universal) mechanics, and that its objects are generated by our observations of motion. this is not to say that they are generated by any particular motions or observations, but by the perfect motions which are possible within absolute physical space. an obvious and important distinction between kant‘s account of space and newton‘s understanding of physical space is newton‘s eagerness to attribute the perfection and endurance of physical space to god‘s good graces. kant, by contrast, argues that the nature of physical space is determined by our pure intuition of space. of course, on kant‘s view, for all we know, this pure intuition itself is generated by some noumenal god. for our purposes here, however, this difference in the origins and sustenance of space is not terribly important. what is important is the notion that, for both men (and many others), geometry is, in some respects, prior to any specific physical investigation. we may personally arrive at the investigation of (absolute) space through our empirical considerations. but, as both newton and kant hold, the objects of geometry are not themselves solely empirical in character. this view of geometry as importantly separate (in method or content) from physics endured in various forms for quite some time. it was not really until after the advent of non-euclidean geometries that the question of the empirical investigation of geometry became a live possibility. it was only really when the idea of geometry as connected to empirical investigation became [guicciardini , ]. [newton , ]. though this isn‘t directly stated in this manner in the principia, this view is made implicitly clear throughout, and particularly in the general scholium. possible—as in the (probably apocryphal and very early) tale of gauss‘ mountaineering expeditions aimed at establishing the curvature of space —that the connection between kant‘s pure intuition and space came to be challenged by in earnest by physicists. prior to this conceptual move (or ‗discovery,‘ if we prefer), on kant‘s account, our conception of space was understood to be entirely synthetic a priori and, therefore, not in need of any external input from physics. newton‘s view is not entirely dissimilar: we take the a posteriori deliverances of measurement and empirical physics, and from them we gain access to the geometrically perfect realm of absolute space. afterwards, the ‗pure‘ intuitive grasp of space no longer seems a reasonable option. the properties of space are no longer given to us but instead become a matter for investigation. what this meant for physicists, in particular, was that space might end up being nothing like euclid, kant, and newton imagined. and, given the development of strange new geometries by riemann and others, it might turn out to be stranger than anyone could possibly have imagined. ultimately, the shift towards a conception of the geometry of physical space as a matter for physical investigation prompted both physicians and mathematicians to develop interesting new geometries and interesting ways of testing their applicability to physical space. in the end, then, riemann‘s weird new geometries—which, to kant and those of like mind might have seemed mere flights of fancy or amusing but scientifically inert games—ended up providing mathematical descriptions of physical space in the works of men like einstein and minkowski. so it is that we find einstein remarking in that it is clear that the system of concepts of axiomatic geometry alone cannot make any assertions as to the behaviour of real objects of this kind, which we will call practically- rigid bodies. to be able to make such assertions, geometry must be stripped of its merely logical-formal character by the coordination of real objects of experience with the empty conceptual schemata of axiomatic geometry. to accomplish this, we need only add the proposition: solid bodies are related, with respect to their possible disposition, as are bodies in euclidean geometry of three dimensions. then the propositions of euclid contain affirmations as to the behaviour of practically-rigid bodies. geometry thus completed is evidently a natural science; we may in fact regard it as the most ancient branch of physics. its affirmations rest essentially on indication from experience, but not on logical inferences only. we will call this completed geometry ‗practical geometry,‘ and shall distinguish it in what follows from ‗purely axiomatic geometry.‘ the question whether the practical geometry of the universe is euclidean or not has a clear meaning, and its answer can only be furnished by experience. […] i attach special importance to the view of geometry, which i have just set forth, because without it i should have been unable to formulate the theory of relativity. as the tale goes, gauss measured the angles of the triangle formed between three mountain peaks in order to determine the curvature of physical space. while it is certain that gauss did engage in just such a survey, there is little evidence to support the idea that his aim was such a geometrical test. more serious tests of the geometry of physical space would have to wait until considerably later. [einstein , - ]. as einstein makes clear here, a prerequisite of his own fundamental advances in physical theory was the decoupling of geometry from the moorings of kantian pure intuition. after severing the connection between the a priori certainty of euclidean geometry and the physical investigation of space, physicists like einstein were free to apply (or attempt to apply) a variety of axiomatic geometries to a particular physical problem. and, from the mathematical point of view, geometers like minkowski had a new physical incentive to develop entirely new forms of geometry. the result, particularly throughout the first quarter of the twentieth-century was an incredibly fruitful series of collaborations between physicists and mathematicians. . some philosophical lessons the overall aim of this chapter has been to illustrate the content of the traditional euclidean picture of geometry, and the conceptual steps through which this view of geometry as a science of idealized physical objects was eventually overturned in favour of a picture of geometry as a science interested in a variety of abstract structures whose relations to physical space were not of particular mathematical interest. though we have yet to explore this second picture, with felix klein‘s work, we have arrived at an important threshold between these two conceptions of geometry. i began by describing several aspects of euclid‘s elements. this description is intended to illustrate that his work, and the tradition stemming from his work, exemplified a conception of science which was importantly distinct from the structure-focussed conception of mathematics which emerges just after our historical survey with the work of hilbert and others. rather than the study of formal structures, traditional euclidean geometry was understood by many of its practitioners as a concrete science distinguished by the sort of objects it studied—namely spatial objects. in euclid, we find clear evidence of this object-oriented view: the elements begins with a series of definitions, which are intended to familiarize the reader with the particular objects about which geometers reason (e.g., points, lines, circles, etc.). it then proceeds to the presentation of a number of basic truths or axioms about these objects, truths which must be accepted before geometrical argumentation begins. my own exposition focussed upon one of these axioms, namely, the parallel postulate. this postulate was chosen as a historical focal point largely because the attempts to prove it gave rise to a number of developments that proved central to the emergence of a structural view of geometry. in hindsight, it is certainly true that history could have taken quite a different route, and geometers might have focused more of their energies on proving, e.g., the archimedean axiom, or any other of euclid‘s axioms for that matter. had euclid phrased his axiom of parallels this sort of collaboration is perhaps most evident in the interactions between minkowski and einstein, about which einstein writes the following: ―the generalization of relativity theory has been made much easier through the form given to the special relativity theory by minkowski, which mathematician was the first to recognize clearly the formal equivalence of the space-like and time-like co-ordinates, and who made use of it in the building up of the theory. the mathematical apparatus useful for the general relativity theory, lay already complete in the ‗absolute differential calculus,‘ which were based on the researches of gauss, riemann and christoffel on the non- euclidean manifold, and which have been shaped into a system by ricci and levi-civita, and already applied to the problems of theoretical physics‖ [einstein , ] more simply (imitating wallis‘ formulation, perhaps) the history of geometry would surely have been quite different. despite the fact that the centrality of the parallel postulate for the history of geometry is a mere historical accident, however, it is worthwhile, from a philosophical standpoint, to study attempts at proving the postulate insofar as such a study reveals a number of deep and important conceptual shifts in the understanding of geometry as a science. through this history, we can witness the slow and largely accidental shift away from the traditional understanding of geometry as the science characterized by its study of the genus of spatial objects towards the modern understanding of geometry as a science which studies a variety of abstract structures and relations between those structures. from the array of attempts to prove the postulate, i have focused my attention on a mere handful. we began with those of ptolemy and proclus for two reasons. first, because they are some of the earliest attempts of which we know. and, second, because they are exemplary of a common sort of ‗proof‘ of the parallel postulate, the sort which appeals to a disguised equivalent of that very postulate. the unwitting character of these appeals is in direct contrast to attempts at simplification which show that the postulate is equivalent to some simpler and intuitively more appealing statement. wallis‘ proof that the parallel postulate is equivalent to the claim that space is everywhere homogenous, or that there exist similar triangles which differ in size, is an example of the latter sort of approach. from ptolemy and proclus i turn to the work of omar khayyam. for my purposes, the chief conceptual importance of khayyam‘s work lies in his brief exploration of the logical possibility of geometries in which the parallel postulate does not hold. though khayyam is quick to dismiss these alternative non-euclidean geometries, his suggestion was later exploited in much more detail by girolamo saccheri. with saccheri‘s work, we have an example of the detailed exploration of logically possible geometries which do not obey euclid‘s parallel postulate. one of these possibilities, based upon an ‗acute-angled‘ hypothesis, is explored in particular detail. despite the effort which saccheri devotes to the development of this non-euclidean geometry (as we would understand it today), he abruptly rejects the coherence of this alternative in favour of traditional euclidean geometry. to a modern eye, this rejection is rather surprising—it seems as if he simply decides to stop arguing. this is because we are intimately familiar with the structural approach to geometry which involves dealing with multiple geometries and multiple spaces as a matter of course. so why does saccheri not take the opportunity to describe just this sort of alternative geometry? my claim was that an implicit cluster of assumptions about the nature of geometry as a science guided saccheri away from the implications of his own detailed work and toward a more traditional understanding of the status of logically possible alternative geometries. i discuss the philosophy of geometry of immanuel kant as a particularly influential codification of many of these implicit assumptions about geometry. of central importance among these assumptions are the claims that geometry is the science of space, and that geometrical truths are certain and necessary because they are delivered to us by a special faculty of intuition somehow exempt from empirical doubt. given the widespread acceptance of these sorts of claims, then, saccheri‘s refusal to countenance the coherence of a geometry alternative to euclid‘s is not terribly surprising. in order to do so, saccheri would have had to reject or seriously alter the view that geometry as he understood it was the science of space: for if there is only one science of space, and there are conflicting claims about the nature of that space, one of those claims must necessarily be rejected. given the traditional weight lent to the theorems of euclidean geometry, it is not at all surprising that saccheri would have chosen euclid‘s geometry over his own upstart alternative (a sentiment which was echoed much later by frege). even if he could have rejected the view that there is only one science of space, saccheri would still have had to face the epistemological problem implicit in the view that the truths of geometry were certain, and that this certainty was grounded somehow in our very apprehension of the nature of space. no small challenge, then. it would take another hundred years or so before we find mathematicians capable of overturning or questioning these implicit assumptions. gauss, bolyai, and lobachevsky all began to call into question the view that euclidean geometry was the true description of physical space, and in so doing they slowly opened the door for the view that the applicability of the theorems of geometry to physical space was itself an empirical question which could not be decided on purely a priori grounds. this move required a huge conceptual shift away from the understanding of geometry as the science of space. from the work of these three men, a view developed within which it was possible to explicitly investigate questions pertaining to particular sorts of spaces (e.g., euclidean or hyperbolic space). the development of a ‗neutral‘ geometric perspective from which claims about the structure of a particular kind of space could be decided was a crucial element in the larger story of the emergence of a structure-focused understanding of geometry. with beltrami‘s work on modelling non-euclidean geometry within the euclidean plane, we have a much more explicit instance of the tendency to discuss the properties of particular kinds of geometrical structures. beltrami‘s work is also important from a philosophical standpoint for the fact that it was one of the earliest instances in which relations between what we might anachronistically call ‗geometrical structures‘ were discussed with technical sophistication. beltrami‘s illustration that we can model hyperbolic geometry by embedding hyperbolic space within a fragment of euclidean space is highly suggestive of a more general perspective from which both euclidean and hyperbolic ‗space‘ appear to be special cases. despite beltrami‘s own understanding of his model as an illustration of the conceptual priority of euclidean geometry, his work had the effect of drawing geometric attention to relations between different spaces, or different logically possible spatial structures. in the hands of felix klein, the gestures towards this more general perspective—within which different spaces and relations between those spaces are examined—became far more sophisticated. relying upon earlier work of cayley in projective geometry, klein extended beltrami‘s work by characterizing a whole host of different geometrical structures (different ‗spaces‘) in terms of a limited group of projective properties. all of this helps to illustrate the slow unravelling of an object-oriented approach in favour of a more structure-focussed view within geometry. early attempts to prove the parallel postulate within this traditional object-oriented understanding of geometry were largely unsuccessful. when we arrive at the work of girolamo saccheri, we have the first real hints that progress in the theory of parallels might require overturning one or many of the implicit assumptions which undergirded the traditional view of geometry. with gauss, lobachevsky, and bolyai, these hints are given a more tangible form and the assumption of the applicability of euclidean geometry to physical space is made into an empirical matter. from this questioning of the a priori certainty of the euclidean nature of physical space, the traditional understanding of geometrical research as the exploration of the properties of idealized physical space was slowly supplanted by a view of geometry as the logical development of various abstract structures. with the work of cayley, beltrami, and, eventually, klein, this structure-focussed view became increasingly more explicit. . bernhard riemann‘s n-dimensional manifolds while there was, as we‘ve seen, a lengthy history leading to the eventual development and legitimation of the specific non-euclidean geometries created by bolyai and lobachevsky, and to the subsequent establishment of klein‘s erlanger programm as a partial result of attempts to model those geometries, it is difficult to avoid treating bernhard riemann‘s habilitationsvortrag, ―on the hypotheses which lie at the basis of geometry,‖ as an example of an almost entirely isolated development. in that short lecture, prepared at the behest of his doctoral supervisor gauss, riemann produced a radical re-imagining of the nature of geometrical science and its relationship to physical space. we‘ve seen how difficult it was to achieve even minor headway in the advancement of non-euclidean geometries even up to gauss‘s death in . given these difficulties, the dramatic progress represented by riemann‘s paper is all the more surprising. the first few paragraphs, which set the tone for the rest of the work, are worth quoting at length here: it is known that geometry assumes, as things given, both the notion of space and the first principles of constructions in space. she gives definitions of them which are merely nominal, while the true determinations appear in the form of axioms. the relation of these assumptions remains consequently in darkness; we neither perceive whether and how far their connection is necessary, nor, a priori, whether it is possible. [...] from euclid to legendre (to name the most famous of modern reforming geometers) this darkness was cleared up neither by mathematicians nor by such philosophers as doubtless concerned themselves with it. the reason of this is doubtless that the general notion of multiply extended magnitudes [ausgedehnten grösse] (in which space-magnitudes are included) remained entirely unworked. i have in the first place, therefore, set myself the task of riemann himself refers to some remarks made by gauss in a paper on biquadratic residues (i.e., [gauss ]) and the works of the philosopher johann friedrich herbart ( - ) as his main influences in this respect, though he admits their influence was rather limited. gauss‘s paper presents a rather general approach to the theory of numbers in which relations across various number domains (natural, real, complex, etc.) are treated via the concept of a manifold. the generality implied by the concept of a number manifold is likely the particular element in gauss‘s paper which partially inspired riemann‘s own generalizing manoeuvres in geometry, though there is little there to suggest the specific application to ‗space‘ that we find in riemann. the philosophical views of herbart—who worked at göttingen from until his death in —significantly influenced riemann‘s philosophical view of the world. particularly relevant for us is herbart‘s view that the so-called ‗pure‘ intuitions of kant (i.e., space and time) are not ‗pure‘ in kant‘s sense but are, in fact, based upon the mind‘s own attempt to understand causal experiences. thus, they are not pre-experiential, a priori sources of knowledge, but the result of our attempts to make sense of experience in a coherent fashion. riemann, as we will see, significantly developed herbart‘s philosophical point within a more strictly mathematical setting. (for some of herbart‘s views which influenced riemann, see [herbart, - ]—a work that deals with the problem of kant‘s pure intuition among other things, and a work which riemann is known to have read. for a careful analysis of the specific influences of herbart on riemann‘s work, see [scholz ]). constructing the notion of a multiply extended magnitude out of general notions of magnitude. it will follow from this that a multiply extended magnitude is capable of different measure-relations, and consequently that space is only a particular case of a triply extended magnitude. but hence flows as a necessary consequence that the propositions of geometry cannot be derived from general notions of magnitude, but that the properties which distinguish space from other conceivable triply extended magnitudes are only to be deduced from experience. thus arises the problem, to discover the simplest matters of fact from which the measure-relations of space may be determined; a problem which from the nature of the case is not completely determinate, since there may be several systems of matters of fact which suffice to determine the measure-relations of space—the most important system for our present purpose being that which euclid has laid down as a foundation. these matters of fact are—like all matters of fact—not necessary, but only of empirical certainty; they are hypotheses. we may therefore investigate their probability, which within the limits of observation is of course very great, and inquire about the justice of their extension beyond the limits of observation, on the side of both of the infinitely great and of the infinitely small. in this relatively brief excerpt we have a startlingly clear formulation of what would become the basis of the ‗modern‘ conception of geometry. recalling saccheri‘s exasperation and farkas bolyai‘s desolation, it is mildly scandalous to witness the casual air with which riemann overturns the centuries-old understanding of geometrical science. instead of the study of the idealized elements of an intuitively given, three-dimensional, euclidean space, riemann suggests that we treat geometry as a subfield of the study of multiply extended magnitudes (or, more generally, n-dimensional manifolds [mannigfaltigkeiten]), some of which have properties similar to euclidean space and some of which are radically different. on this view, the link between intuition and euclidean space (if, indeed, there is one) becomes rather beside the point. we do not intuit the truth of the axioms of geometry, but develop them as hypotheses which may or may not turn out to be true of empirical reality. the applicability of these axioms to the physical world (i.e., their empirical truth) is a matter for empirical determination and not of purely formal, pre-experiential necessity delivered by kantian intuition. it is not surprising that riemann‘s work was partly inspired by the philosopher johann friedrich herbart‘s attempts to reform what he perceived to be kant‘s errors (or hyperbole). precisely this sort of philosophical view of the relationship between physical space and geometric theory was lacking in many earlier attempts to explain problems related to euclid‘s parallel postulate. on riemann‘s view, the traditional space of geometry (i.e., three-dimensional euclidean space) becomes one instance of an n-dimensional manifold amongst many others. rather than examining this or that specific manifold, riemann begins by presenting the concept of an n- dimensional manifold in its full generality. in order to fix this concept in its most general form, he proceeds by distinguishing its more specific instantiations. he thus isolates a number of geometric properties by which we might fix particular classes of geometries. some of the crucial properties are: the number of ‗dimensions‘ of a manifold; whether it is discrete or continuous and, if continuous, whether or not it is isotropic; its metric relations; its curvature. we can see the generality of riemann‘s point of view by considering how he comes to understand what had, for [riemann , translated in ewald , - ]. two millennia, been the traditional content of the whole of geometry. three-dimensional euclidean space becomes a specific instance of a three-dimensional, continuous, isotropic manifold of constant curvature, where that curvature is zero, and which possesses a particular distance function. now, each of these adjectival descriptors of euclidean space can be varied, producing a distinct class of geometries, each describing particular sorts of spaces. in riemann‘s very general view, bolyai-lobachevsky hyperbolic space and traditional euclidean space are not terribly different; indeed they are both examples of continuous three-dimensional manifolds of constant curvature—they differ mainly in the fact that hyperbolic space has a constant negative curvature, while euclidean space has a constant curvature of . thus, while we might discuss the emergence of non-euclidean geometry as a troubling development for the intuitively grounded kantian view, it should nevertheless be apparent that the work of bolyai and lobachevsky (though an important first step) was the first step toward a radically different view of geometry which would be made more mathematically explicit in the work of riemann, and more philosophically explicit in the work of hilbert a half century later. with riemann‘s work, even more than with the developments which led to klein‘s erlanger programm, a significant blow seemed to have been dealt to the kantian belief that pure intuition grounds geometrical reasoning, though this was not widely realized until considerably later. riemann begins his lecture by suggesting that the application of our geometrical axioms to the world is not a matter of necessity but one which is established only by empirical investigation. instead of intuitively grounded, necessary truths about the structure of (the only possible) space, we arrive at more-or-less applicable, empirically-testable hypotheses whose truth is not at all certain. in addition, some of these hypotheses (e.g., those lying at the basis of higher- dimensional geometries, or geometries radically different from the more familiar euclidean case) will be difficult if not impossible to ‗intuit‘ at all. in order to salvage the kantian picture in the face of riemann‘s work, it would seem that we require a considerably expanded understanding of the notion of intuition, as well as an alteration in our understanding of the epistemological role which such intuition can play within geometric reasoning. and, beyond even klein, riemann‘s work suggests the systematic development of geometries from various sets of hypotheses and slight alterations in coefficients, leading to a typology of spaces and geometries which is entirely indifferent to the deliverances of intuition, whatever they may be. riemannian geometers might be interested in the connection between a given geometry and physical space, but they certainly needn‘t be, and usually will not be. . a conceptual vacuum the increasingly rich assemblage of new geometrical concepts, as well as the rapid development of highly abstract concepts in other areas of mathematics like group theory, created a situation in which the very nature of geometrical science became unclear. previously, geometry had been seen as a (relatively) concrete science dealing with the laws governing physical space. its rather odd status as an a priori science that, somehow, also applied to the changing world of appearances had been temporarily propped up by kant‘s view of space as a pre-experiential, pure intuition. having undermined kant‘s position and the privileged position of euclidean geometry, geometers became more fully capable of questioning what role, if any, intuition played within the new, generalized science of geometry. as we will see, this loosening of the epistemological connection between pure spatial intuition and the logical development of geometry enabled a rather significant alteration in the way geometry itself was conceived. we‘ve already witnessed the shift from a view of euclidean geometry as the science of space to the view of euclidean geometry as the description of a very particular sort of three-dimensional manifold. indeed, the distance between the traditional conception of geometry and the more ‗structural‘ approach is most evident in the alteration of the concept of space itself. for euclid and those following in his tradition, space was physical space: geometry may have studied its properties by way of idealized objects like points and lines, but geometry nevertheless studied the properties of our physical space. with the advent of klein‘s erlanger programm, we have a variety of geometries, which operate on a variety of different spaces. initially, these spaces are determined by the invariants of particular groups of spatial transformations. in riemann, we have even more such spaces, which are now determined neither by intuition nor by transformation groups, but simply by sets of hypotheses containing varying numerical coefficients. geometers are free to construct such spaces at their pleasure, and investigate their properties without ever imagining how or even if they can have any physical application. thus, geometry moved away from being the science which determines the laws governing physical space to the science which studies the properties of occasionally baffling abstract spaces, conceived as particular sorts of multiply extended magnitudes, and the various relations between them. with these developments in non-euclidean, projective, and riemannian geometry, pure geometrical science became disconnected from the physical world, and it was no longer immediately clear how to understand its results or their purposes. what exactly was geometry? what were the abstract structures which it seemed to be studying? for a dyed in the wool kantian, they might have been seen as logically interesting fictions. but for most late th century mathematicians, they seemed to be something quite different. with hilbert‘s work on the foundations of geometry, a new conception of mathematics as the study of formalized axiomatic systems finally began to emerge. both riemann and helmholtz (who helped to popularize and conceptualize riemann‘s work) had, earlier, offered sophisticated explanations of the nature of the new geometry, but it wasn‘t really until the publication of hilbert‘s grundlagen and its axiomatization of euclidean geometry that the new approach was taken up with gusto by the mathematical community at large. hilbert‘s work shored up the burgeoning axiomatic understanding of the nature of geometry by applying it to the core of the old tradition. by showing that euclidean geometry could be fruitfully axiomatized in the new style, hilbert at once lent credence to the new approach and vindicated the importance of the traditional heart of the science. in the following chapter i will show how hilbert‘s work helped to challenge the prevailing aristotelian conception of science. chapter two: frege and hilbert on axiomatic systems § . introduction in the previous chapter, we examined elements of the historical shift away from a view of geometry as the science of idealized spatial objects. the increasing prominence of the formal structure of and interrelations among geometric theories (as opposed to their content, properly speaking) had a destabilizing effect on the traditional understanding of geometry as the science of space. in place of the traditional view of geometry as a science concerned with the relations amongst ideal objects like points, lines, and planes, we find, toward the end of the nineteenth century, an increasing confusion about the nature of geometry as a science. if geometry was not best understood as the idealized study of physical space, what then was its proper object? in this chapter, we will examine two distinct philosophical attempts to understand the nature of geometry in light of these developments. we will first turn to david hilbert‘s influential views, as developed in his grundlagen der geometrie. hilbert‘s work in geometry focused on the development of the deductive consequences of groups of axioms. his philosophical views of geometry give pride of place to the formal characteristics of these axiomatic systems. after examining hilbert‘s re-imagining of geometry, as well as his philosophical views of the nature of axiomatics, we will turn to the views of frege. frege, in some ways, was a geometric traditionalist. unlike hilbert, he held on to the view of axioms as meaningful truths about the world, and of geometry as a science with a determinate subject matter. in place of uninterpreted formal systems, frege viewed euclidean geometry as the study of a particular collection of objects and concepts. though sympathetic to the idea of higher-level geometric theories (within which, e.g., euclidean geometry might fall), frege was nevertheless harshly critical of what he took to be the logical imperspicuity required for hilbert-style axiomatics. in this chapter, we will first examine hilbert and frege‘s respective views of geometry and axiomatics, then turn to an analysis of frege‘s criticisms of hilbert. the chapter has two chief aims. first, it will call into question the relatively common view that hilbert‘s prescient account of axiomatics simply wins the day when pit against frege‘s old-fashioned, rather curmudgeonly criticisms. this will be accomplished by showing that a) hilbert‘s views are not entirely in line with the more contemporary model-theoretic approach to axiomatics and b) that frege‘s criticisms of hilbert are not based on a simple recapitulation of the traditional euclidean/kantian view of geometry. second, the chapter will show that, despite the widespread acceptance of an altered form of hilbert‘s approach to axiomatics, frege poses deep questions about the clarity and meaningfulness of this approach which hilbert and his defenders leave unanswered. the result of this chapter, when combined with the first, is that the traditional euclidean approach is shown to be incapable of addressing the reality of modern mathematics, while the conceptual clarification of this new reality offered by hilbert and others faces significant philosophical difficulties. as will become clearer in subsequent chapters, hilbert‘s views are, with some exceptions, representative of a larger trend in mathematical thought within which abstract mathematical structures are characterized in purely relational terms (i.e., as ontologically un-fixed). by illustrating the force of frege‘s criticisms of hilbert‘s views, then, i hope also to call into question the viability of this more general method of characterizing mathematical structures in this relational, or free-floating way. we will begin the chapter by differentiating hilbert‘s views of geometry and (mathematical) science from the traditional account stemming from euclid and aristotle. . the euclidean tradition and aristotelian science as we‘ve seen above, in the works of euclid one finds two sorts of definition. definitions of the first type were essentially abbreviations: ‗circle‘ for instance, is defined in terms of the more basic notions of point, line, etc. we could just as well cut out the term ‗circle‘ and replace it everywhere with its definition in terms of points and lines and no essential information would be lost. there were, however, definitions of a different sort, which served as pre-systematic guides to orient the reader towards the most basic objects of geometry (i.e., the points, lines, and planes which form its subject matter). through these definitions, readers were either oriented towards objects with which they were already familiar or introduced to those objects, with varying degrees of success. within this tradition, axioms were construed as truths about a determinate subject matter; in this case, the (idealized) elements of physical space. in many cases, too, the truth of these axioms was thought to have been grounded in our basic intuition of space—a source of knowledge which came to be considered importantly distinct from both experience and pure logic. these specific claims about the nature of geometric science were themselves embedded within a broader aristotelian conception of the nature of science in general. for aristotle and those following this tradition, human knowledge was divisible into distinct sciences, differentiated according to the genus of objects which they study. thus, for instance, we can conceive of biology as a science distinct from geometry insofar as the former studies the genus of living objects, while the latter studies the genus of spatial objects. we can establish certain relations (e.g., relations of inclusion, co-extension, etc.) we find echoes of the traditional aristotelian concept of sciences (differentiated according to the species of objects which they study) within the works of many of the most important thinkers in the history of western thought. we find, for instance, thomas aquinas ( - ) writing in the summa theologica that ―a species is a kind of science‖ [aquinas , . . , objection ; b] and that ―according to the different kinds of knowable matter, there are different habits of scientific knowledge‖ [aquinas , . . , response; a-b]; john duns scotus ( / - ), too, refers specifically to the concept of science outlined in the posterior analytics (at . b - ) early on in the ordinatio (see [duns scotus , - ]); leibniz was undoubtedly heavily influenced by both aristotle and the schoolmen, and his systematic approach to natural philosophy owes much to the aristotelian tradition despite his more general understanding of species and essences; bolzano, a partial follower of leibniz and aristotle, calls ―an aggregate of truths of a certain kind a science‖ [bolzano , § . ] and notes that he ―shall call the class of truths which assert something about the constitution of space the science of space (geometry), because these propositions form a separate species of truths‖ [bolzano . § . ]. bolzano departs from this aristotelian tradition, however, in that he allows for species of truths which are not determined by classes of objects. as we shall see in what follows, frege, too, held a rather aristotelian conception of the nature of science. amongst the sciences themselves by looking to the relations amongst the classes of objects which they study: thus geometry is a more general science than biology because all living objects are, presumably, also spatial objects, while most spatial objects are not alive. accordingly, geometrical truths have wider application than those of biology. on this aristotelian model, some sciences are said to fall within others, in which case the truths of the more general science apply to the objects of the less general, or included, science. in the posterior analytics aristotle makes some remarks to this effect which are specifically relevant to the mathematical sciences. he writes: [y]ou cannot prove anything by crossing from another kind—e.g. something geometrical by arithmetic. there are three things involved in demonstrations: one, what is being demonstrated, or the conclusion (this is what holds of some kind in itself); two, the axioms (axioms are the items from which the demonstrations proceed); third, the underlying kind whose attributes—i.e. the items incidental to it in itself—the demonstrations make plain. now the items from which the demonstrations proceed may be the same; but where the kinds are different, as with arithmetic and geometry, you cannot attach arithmetical demonstrations to what is incidental to magnitudes— unless [the] magnitudes are numbers. [...] arithmetical demonstrations always contain the kind with which the demonstrations are concerned, and so too do all other demonstrations. hence the kind must be the same, either simpliciter or in some respect, if a demonstration is to cross. [...] for this reason you cannot prove by geometry that there is a single science of contraries, nor even that [the product of two cubes makes] a cube. (nor can you prove by any other science what pertains to a different science, except when they are so related to one another that the one falls under the other—as e.g. optics is related to geometry and harmonics to arithmetic.) nor indeed anything that holds of lines not as lines and as depending on the principles proper to them—e.g. whether straight lines are the most beautiful of lines, or whether they are contrarily related to curved lines; for these things hold of lines not in virtue of their proper kind but rather in virtue of something common. from aristotle‘s remarks here we can gather some understanding of the traditional model of science which was, by and large, the tacit background for geometers working with the traditional, euclidean view of geometry. sciences are delineated by the genus of objects about which they provide demonstrations. the logical relations amongst distinct sciences are determined by the relations between the classes of objects studied by those sciences; if the classes of objects are entirely disjoint (i.e., if there is no object which is treated in both sciences), then there will be no noteworthy relations amongst the sciences which study those objects, other than mutual exclusion. various other relations are possible when there is overlap or inclusion amongst the classes of objects studied. further, the demonstrations of distinct sciences cannot be applied to one another, except under the aforementioned condition, because any given science, qua science, may only contain reasoning pertaining to its proper objects—to ‗cross to a different kind‘ is, in essence, to fail to reason scientifically. [aristotle , book i, chapter , a - b ; translation slightly altered]. the emergence of consistent non-euclidean geometries and the development of sophisticated methods of classifying those geometries (e.g., klein‘s erlanger programm and riemann‘s differential approach) considerably loosened the link between spatial intuition and geometrical truth. along with the slackened connection between intuition and geometrical demonstration came a general uncertainty about the objects of geometry itself. traditionally, geometry had been construed as the science of the (idealized) elements of physical space. so, when the intuition which was the putative source of our knowledge of this space and its elements fell into disrepute, and the concept of space mutated into something considerably more general, it should be no surprise that there arose some confusion over the very nature of the science of geometry itself. if geometry could not be characterized as the science of spatial objects, then what sort of a science was it? what genus of objects did it study? what was geometry about? as we will see, the new approach to geometry offered by hilbert and others—an approach which contained an alternative understanding of the nature of definitions and axioms—required a rather different understanding of the nature of (at least ‗formal‘) science than was available within the aristotelian tradition. § . hilbert’s grundlagen formally at least, hilbert‘s grundlagen der geometrie bears some similarity to euclid‘s elements. within its pages we find a number of definitions and a collection of unproved propositions employed to prove theorems, many of which are familiar (at least in name) from the history of geometry. like many mathematicians before him, hilbert does away with euclid‘s distinction between common notions and postulates and instead speaks of all non- definitional, unproved propositions simply as axioms. in addition to individual axioms hilbert also speaks of ‗axiom groups‘, which are collections of axioms grouped together according to their specific subject matter. in the grundlagen, there are five such groups, which deal with incidence, order, congruence, parallels, and continuity, respectively. but, despite these formal resemblances between hilbert‘s work and that of euclid, a rather wide conceptual gulf separates their respective uses of terms like ‗point,‘ ‗line,‘ ‗plane,‘ ‗between,‘ ‗definition‘ and ‗postulate‘ (or ‗axiom‘). . definitions in order to see exactly how wide this divergence is, it is instructive to compare euclid‘s definition of ‗point‘ with that of hilbert. recall that euclid defines a point as ―that which has no part‖. hilbert, like euclid, presents a number of definitions, some more in line with traditional euclidean definitions, and some which seem quite different. this is partially due to the novelty of his axiomatic approach and partly due to confusions regarding the nature of definitions. take his first attempt at a definition of the term ‗point‘ for instance: definition. consider three distinct sets of objects. let the objects of the first set be called points and be denoted by a, b, c, ...; let the objects of the second set be called lines and be denoted by a, b, c, ...; let the objects of the third set be called planes and [heath , ]. be denoted by α, β, γ, .... the points are also called the elements of line geometry; the points and the lines are called the elements of plane geometry; and the points, the lines and the planes are called the elements of space geometry or the elements of space. now, postponing for the moment the question whether or not this paragraph forms hilbert‘s complete definition of ‗point‘, ‗line‘, or ‗plane‘, it is already apparent that his approach is quite different from that of euclid. rather than an attempt to fix our attention definitively upon a certain type of object (e.g., partless wholes), hilbert begins his definition by situating points, lines, and planes within three geometric systems. there is no real attempt at reference-fixing here; instead what we have is a very loose indication of the relations in which the basic items of the system stand, or, perhaps more accurately, the bare indication that these items stand in some relations to certain systems and to each other. the pre- systematic, introductory role of the definition seems to have disappeared entirely. this is the case for hilbert‘s definitions of other basic concepts and relations as well. he defines ‗betweenness‘ for example, as follows: ―the points of a line stand in a certain relation to each other and for its description the word ―between‖ will be specifically used‖. now, taken on its own, this definition is hardly satisfactory. and, indeed, hilbert does not seem to have wanted it, or any of his definitions, to be taken in isolation. instead, he suggests that these concepts and their relations are to be further explicated by means of his axiom groups. thus after (provisionally) defining ‗point‘, ‗line‘, and ‗plane‘ by vague reference to the geometric systems which they form together, he suggests that his broad initial account will be narrowed through the axiomatic characterization of the relations in which these primitive concepts stand to each other: the points, lines and planes are considered to have certain mutual relations and these relations are denoted by words like ―lie,‖ ―between,‖ ―congruent.‖ the precise and mathematically complete description of these relations follows from the axioms of geometry. here, again, we can see the difference between the traditional, euclidean view of geometry (as a collection of intuitively grounded truths about idealized elements of physical space) and hilbert‘s view. rather than unprovable truths about the basic objects of geometry, the axioms in hilbert‘s sense play a quasi-definitional role in which they help to determine the relations amongst the basic elements of certain geometrical systems; the nature of those elements beyond the relations in which they stand to each other seems to be a matter of no intrinsic geometric interest. as we‘ve seen, within the traditional euclidean dispensation, one type of definition played a reference-fixing role prior to the introduction of the axioms, and these axioms were understood to be unprovable truths about the objects toward which the definitions guided the reader. within hilbert‘s work, by contrast, the initial definitions of ‗line‘, ‗point‘, and ‗plane‘ do not fix (or even attempt to fix) the references of these terms. rather, they serve to indicate, in an extremely general way, that the objects stand in certain relations to each other. neither do these initial definitions themselves determine specifically [hilbert , ]; [hilbert , ]. [hilbert , ]; [hilbert , ] . [hilbert , ]; [hilbert , ]. which relations these are. it is instead left up to the subsequent axiom groups to ‗fix‘ the reference of these terms and the relations in which their referents stand more definitively— though, as we will see, it is precisely the free-floating character of hilbert‘s points, lines, planes, etc. which represents his biggest departure from the traditional view, so that, even later in the work, he is not terribly interested in pinning them down. it is for these reasons that hilbert‘s approach is remarkably different than the traditional euclidean approach. while many traditional geometers considered the intention of their work to be the elaboration of a science of space and spatial objects, it is very difficult to construe hilbert‘s work in this way. instead of an emphasis on the objects of geometry, which are intuitively graspable according to the traditional view, hilbert emphasizes the relations in which these objects might stand (though, as we will see, speaking of a determinate group of objects is, perhaps, not an ideal description of hilbert‘s intention). this shift in emphasis had quite radical implications for the conception of geometry as a science. . axioms and intuition despite this divergence from tradition regarding the definition of the primitive, intuitively given objects of geometry, hilbert held on to some aspects of the euclidean tradition. for instance, he still believed that a proper set of geometrical axioms (like his own) ought to be developed on the basis of our intuition of space. in this he resembled his colleague klein, as both men favoured a highly abstract approach to geometry but remained insistent that, at bottom, geometry was the science of space (however expansive their notion of space), and that the ultimate properties of space were graspable by way of intuition. indeed, more than having their certainty grounded in our intuition, hilbert insisted on several occasions that any worthwhile mathematical investigations should have their origin in empirical concerns. at the outset of the grundlagen he writes, for instance, that geometry, like arithmetic, requires only a few and simple principles for its logical development. these principles are called the axioms of geometry. the establishment of the axioms of geometry and the investigation of their relationships is a problem which has been treated in many excellent works of the mathematical literature since the time of euclid. this problem is equivalent to the logical analysis of our intuition of space. thus, for hilbert the basic material of geometry, given in its axioms, has its origin in our intuition of space. the remainder (i.e., the collection of theorems which are not axioms) stems from the logical analysis of this intuition, particularly, we may assume, from the analysis of the different aspects of this intuition given in hilbert‘s axiom groups. he writes that ―[e]ach of these groups expresses certain related facts basic to our intuition‖. the axioms, then, are not arbitrarily chosen, with indifference to our intuition. instead, they were intended by hilbert to capture important features of spatial intuition with an eye toward the [hilbert , ]; [hilbert , ]. [hilbert , ]; [hilbert , ]. development of a geometry which ought to be capable of delivering the appropriate set of deductive consequences implied by that intuition. it is only at the stage of logical analysis— after intuition has been crystallized within the axiom groups—that the purely deductive, non- intuitive work so characteristic of ‗modern‘ mathematics begins. hilbert quite clearly outlines his intention to capture the important implications of our geometrical intuition of space in an letter to frege: it was of necessity that i had to set up my axiomatic system: i wanted to make it possible to understand those geometrical propositions that i regard as the most important results of geometrical inquiries: that the parallel axiom is not a consequence of the other axioms, and similarly archimedes‘ axiom, etc. i wanted to answer the question whether it is possible to prove the proposition that in two identical rectangles with an identical base line the sides must also be identical, or whether as in euclid this proposition is a new postulate. i wanted to make it possible to understand and answer such questions as why the sum of the angles in a triangle is equal to two right angles and how this fact is connected with the parallel axiom. that my system of axioms allows one to answer such questions in a very definite manner, and that the answers to many of these questions are very surprising and even quite unexpected, is shown, i believe, by my festschrift as well as by the writings of my students who have followed it up. we can see here that, instead of taking the content of euclidean geometry as somehow originating in a set of arbitrary postulates, hilbert views his axiom groups themselves as the components of a successful attempt to capture some pre-systematic intuitive content. in this case, the content is delivered by a history stemming from two millennia of geometric research, itself grounded (or at least thought to have been grounded) in our intuitive apprehension of space. the most novel elements of hilbert‘s approach to the axiomatization of geometry had important precursors at least as far back as lambert. one element of the grundlagen which separates it from most prior work in geometry is hilbert‘s insistence that the deductive hilbert remarks, for instance, that ―axiom i, expresses the fact that space has no more than three dimensions, whereas axiom i, expresses the fact that space has no less than three dimensions‖ [hilbert , ]. note that hilbert writes simply ‗space‘ and not ‗euclidean space‘. [hilbert to frege, december ; excerpt by frege in frege , - ]; the final sentence refers, particularly, to the dissertation of hilbert‘s student max dehn ( - ) on legendre‘s theorem, subsequently published as [dehn ]. an illuminating account of hilbert‘s understanding of the ‗life cycle‘ of mathematical theories is given in [corry a]; corry writes there that hilbert distinguishes ―three clearly separated stages that, in his view, mathematical theories usually undergo in the course of their development: the naive, the formal, and the critical‖ and that ―for hilbert, the need to introduce this method [i.e., the axiomatic method] arises precisely as a means to analyze already established theories, to criticize their basic assumptions, and to elucidate their logical deductive structure‖ [corry a, ]. given this view of the evolution of mathematical theories, it seems likely that hilbert saw his own axiomatic endeavours as attempts to likewise clarify already-going concerns, rather than as efforts to investigate arbitrary domains of inquiry freshly sprung from the head of a mathematical zeus. (corry seems to suggest as much at [corry a, - ]). this approach to mathematical axiomatics is, accordingly, continuous with hilbert‘s later attempts to axiomatize physics. structure developed on the basis of intuitively given axiom groups does not require any further input from intuition once these groups are established. but as early as we find a remarkably similar view expressed by lambert in a work on the theory of parallels. there he writes the following rather prescient paragraph: the difficulties concerning euclid's th axiom [i.e., the parallel postulate] have essentially to do only with the following question: can this axiom be derived correctly from euclid's postulates and the remaining axioms? or, if these premises are not sufficient, can we produce other postulates or axioms, no less evident than euclid's, from which his th axiom can be derived? in dealing with the first part of this question we may wholly ignore what i have called the representation of the subject- matter. since euclid's postulates and remaining axioms are stated in words, we can and should demand that no appeal be made anywhere in the proof to the matter itself, but that the proof be carried out—if it is at all possible—in a thoroughly symbolic fashion. in this respect, euclid's postulates are, so to speak, like so many given algebraic equations, from which we must obtain x, y, z, etc. without ever looking back to the matter in discussion. since the postulates are not quite such formulae, we can allow the drawing of a figure as a guiding thread to direct the proof. on the other hand, it would be preposterous to forbid consideration and representation of the subject-matter in the second part of the question, and to require that the new postulates and axioms be found without reflecting on their subject-matter, off the cuff, so to speak. as we can see here, lambert, like hilbert, paid due homage to the understanding of geometry as founded upon some specific content (e.g., the deliverances of spatial intuition). he also insisted that much of our subsequent reasoning about geometrical relations can and should be divorced from any intuitive or specifically geometrical content. we should think entirely abstractly, without reference to intuition, about, e.g., relations of independence between euclid‘s axioms. lambert suggests we can treat these axioms as mere symbolic formulae to be manipulated using acceptable techniques, just as we manipulate algebraic equations by performing allowable operations upon them, very often with indifference to the possible references of their terms. this view is, in germinal form, quite similar to hilbert‘s later treatment of proofs as mathematical objects in their own right. for lambert, intuition plays an important role in the development of basic geometrical axioms. once these axioms are established on the basis of intuition, however, geometry can and should be treated as an entirely abstract science, decoupled from reference to spatial intuition except at its basis. a little over a century later, we find a more direct influence on hilbert in the views of moritz pasch ( - ), particularly as expressed in his vorlesungen über neuere though completed by , the work was only published in . [lambert , quoted in torretti , ]. geometrie. pasch, like lambert before him, held that geometry‘s ―foundational concepts and propositions should be derived immediately from experience,‖ but made the slightly different claim that ―all other concepts and results must be reducible to these alone. ... [g]eometry should thus proceed from the beginning as a descriptive science of the world of appearances and even in its most complex conceptions it should retain this character.‖ thus, while lambert was content to treat axioms as the intuitive basis for a kind of symbolic geometric calculus which itself needn‘t be geometrically meaningful, pasch sought a firmer experiential basis for geometry by insisting on the meaningfulness of both axioms and each step in any chain of geometric reasoning. this does not, however, mean that pasch eschewed the abstract algebraic techniques hinted at by lambert. he writes, for instance that if geometry is to be truly deductive, the process of inference must be independent in all its parts from the meaning of the geometrical concepts, just as it must be independent of the diagrams; only the relations specified in the propositions and definitions may legitimately be taken into account. during the deduction it is useful and legitimate, but in no way necessary, to think of the meanings of the terms; in fact, if it is necessary to do so, the inadequacy of the proof is made manifest. if, however, a theorem is rigorously derived from a set of propositions [...] the deduction has value which goes beyond its original purpose. for if, on replacing the geometric terms in the basic set of propositions by certain other terms true propositions are obtained, then corresponding replacements may be made in the theorem; in this way we obtain new theorems ... without having to repeat the proof. here pasch develops a conception of the deductive structure of geometric reasoning which is quite similar to hilbert‘s later view. he suggests that, while we may employ intuitive thinking and diagrams when working our way through a geometric proof, if such devices are necessary the proof is insufficiently rigorous. pasch‘s full view, then, is that the axioms of geometry must be grounded in our intuition of space, and that each subsequent argumentative step towards a given proof must itself be meaningfully construed on the basis of these axioms. but, despite this stepwise connection to intuition, the fully rigorous expression of geometric proof—if it is to be deductively valid—should not rely in any necessary way on intuitive reasoning or diagrammatic representation. so, while the meaningfulness of geometric formulae is guaranteed by their connection to intuitively given axioms, the deductive manipulation of those formulae ought to be performed in an algebraic manner with complete indifference to meaning. thus, for both lambert and pasch, the deductive element of geometric reasoning is in important respects separable from the intuitive element required to establish a proper axiom set. hilbert‘s view—developed after the advent of differential and various non-euclidean geometries—is almost identical with pasch‘s and lambert‘s in these respects. for hilbert, for accounts of pasch‘s work and its influence on subsequent work in geometry, see [torretti , - ] and [corry b, ff.]. for pasch‘s influence specifically on hilbert, [corry b, - ] and [toepell ] are useful. [pasch , ; translation in rowe , ]. [pasch , ]. too, once the intuitive basis is given, the theorems of geometry can be deductively unfurled without ever returning to their intuitive ground. his proofs are all conducted (he would argue) using purely logical, non-intuitive means. none of these proofs should rely essentially upon a feature of a diagram or upon our accepting intuitions other than those formulated in the axiom groups. this view, exemplified in the grundlagen, is more explicitly and generally stated in his well-known lecture on the most important mathematical problems for the twentieth century. there he states the following: to new concepts correspond, necessarily, new signs. these we choose in such a way that they remind us of the phenomena which were the occasion for the formation of the new concepts. so the geometrical figures are signs or mnemonic symbols of space intuition and are used as such by all mathematicians. who does not always use along with the double inequality a > b > c the picture of three points following one another on a straight line as the geometrical picture of the idea ‗between‘? who does not make use of drawings of segments and rectangles enclosed in one another, when it is required to prove with perfect rigour a difficult theorem on the continuity of functions or the existence of points of condensation? [...] the arithmetical symbols are written diagrams and the geometrical figures are graphic formulae; and no mathematician could spare these graphic formulae, any more than in calculation the insertion and removal of parentheses or the use of other analytical signs. the use of geometrical signs as a means of strict proof presupposes the exact knowledge and complete mastery of the axioms which underlie those figures and in order that these geometrical figures may be incorporated in the general treasure of the mathematical signs, there is necessary a rigorous axiomatic investigation of their conceptual content. just as in adding two numbers, one must place the digits under each other in the right order, so that only the rules of calculation, i.e., the axioms of arithmetic, determine the correct use of the digits, so the use of geometrical signs is determined by the axioms of geometrical concepts and their combinations. beyond the clear similarity to pasch‘s views expressed here, it is illuminating that hilbert does not restrict himself to geometric examples. this is because he does not make any strict distinction between the type of work involved in geometric reasoning and that involved in, e.g., arithmetic or algebraic reasoning. there is for hilbert a basic mathematical unity which is best expressed by the wide applicability of the axiomatic method to branches of mathematics which are, from the point of view of the ‗objects‘ studied, quite distinct. we can establish euclidean geometry axiomatically and prove its theorems purely deductively. here it is made clear by hilbert that, while we may employ aids such as diagrams and pictures, even in absolutely strict proofs, our use of these sorts of aids must be licensed by the axiomatic presentation of the mathematical system in question. thus, for instance, we may employ a picture of three points on a straight line to represent the notion of ‗betweenness‘ in a strict proof only insofar as the intended conceptual content of the picture can be explicated in terms of the axioms of the system. the meaning of a specific theorem, proposition, or diagram formulated from within an axiomatized system is guaranteed by the [hilbert a, excerpt translated in ewald , - ]. intuitively grounded axioms themselves. but, just as with pasch, the actual deductive linkage of propositions in geometric and other proofs should be treated with indifference to the epistemologically useful meanings of the propositions at issue. for hilbert, it is only once we have established a given theory on an axiomatic basis that we can begin to speak of truly rigorous proof; in the case of non-axiomatic theories, our use of intuitive reasoning or diagrammatic representation cannot be guaranteed by an axiomatic basis, and can only very rarely be dispensed with. without the exact knowledge engendered by the process of axiomatization, we cannot engage in the purely symbolic form of deductive reasoning because the meaningfulness of the steps in this formal reasoning cannot be guaranteed, and we may very well stray into absurdity or imprecision. though it seems clear from what we have just seen that hilbert himself never held the purely postulational view of mathematics as the investigation of deductive structures derived from arbitrarily selected postulate sets, the way in which he developed his axiomatic approach to geometry was (largely) consistent with such an approach. some of his remarks, particularly in his correspondence with frege, certainly lead one in this direction, so that it is no surprise that such a strong opponent of this sort of project as frege would have reacted accordingly. but it was not only his critic frege who read hilbert in this manner; many of hilbert‘s admirers within the mathematical community (e.g., felix hausdorff, and the school of american mathematicians surrounding e. h. moore in chicago and edward huntington at harvard) developed their own approaches to axiomatics inspired by hilbert‘s work, approaches which were avowedly ‗arbitrary‘ in a way that hilbert himself continued to resist throughout his career. hausdorff, inspired in large part by hilbert, came very close to a purely arbitrary understanding of the nature of axiomatics. in the context of hilbert‘s approach to geometry, hausdorff wrote that in all philosophical debates since kant, mathematics, or at least geometry, has always been treated as heteronomous, as dependent on some external instance of what we would call, for want of a better term, intuition, be it empirical, subjective or scientifically amended, innate or acquired. the most fundamental task of modern mathematics has been to set itself free from this dependence, to fight its way through from heteronomy to autonomy. the importance of completely detaching mathematics from intuition is further emphasized by hausdorff in course notes from the same period: ―mathematics totally disregards the actual significance conveyed to its concepts, the actual validity that one can accord to its theorems. its indefinable concepts are arbitrarily chosen objects of thought and its axioms are arbitrarily, albeit consistently, chosen relations among these objects. mathematics is a science of pure thought, exactly like logic‖. so, here we have hausdorff, inspired by the grundlagen, extending hilbert‘s own view of deduction as indifferent to meaning to include the axiomatic basis of a theory as well. hausdorff attempts to break entirely from the see, e.g., [huntington ] and [moore b]. [hausdorff c. , quoted in corry a, ]. [hausdorff - , quoted in corry a, ]. kantian understanding of ‗heteronomous‘ mathematics tethered to pure intuitions of space and time by suggesting we examine arbitrarily developed postulate sets with no connection to intuition whatsoever. on this view, geometry, for instance, would cease to be coupled to spatial intuition and, instead, become the systematic exploration of a wide variety of structures of a certain type—perhaps those suggested by riemann‘s coefficient-determined classificatory scheme. (though it is not possible here, a more detailed examination of hausdorff‘s influence on topology and measure theory would illustrate how powerful and widespread this view would later become in important branches of geometry). while hausdorff‘s views seem at least partially opposed to the intuitively-grounded view developed by lambert, pasch, and hilbert, some of hilbert‘s own remarks (particularly those made in correspondence to frege) directly support this purely postulational approach to mathematics. indeed, in one of the better known paragraphs of their correspondence, hilbert writes to frege that ―if the arbitrarily given axioms do not contradict one another with all their consequences, then they are true and the things defined by the axioms exist. this is for me the criterion of truth and existence‖. yet, elsewhere, hilbert seems committed to the view that his axioms are anything but arbitrary—for to investigate arbitrarily postulated axioms without being guided by a pre-theoretic, pre-axiomatic intuition was, for hilbert, a pointless exercise, and mathematics was certainly not meaningless for him, even in the later stages of his career when he began developing his well-known formalist programme. he writes later, for instance, that ―we are not speaking here of arbitrariness in any sense. mathematics is not like a game whose tasks are determined by arbitrarily stipulated rules. rather, it is a conceptual system possessing internal necessity that can only be so and by no means otherwise.‖ for hilbert, mathematics is different from a merely formal game insofar as the rules of mathematics cannot be altered in the way that we might alter the rules of a game. for, in constructing a game, we can alter the rules however we like, even altering the nature of the ‗logical‘ relations amongst the rules and components of the game. but, for hilbert, once we have established some elements of a conceptual system (the axioms), the unfolding of the rest (the theorems) is a matter of necessity, not happenstance. though by the time of the publication of the grundlagen hilbert had not yet developed a sophisticated picture of the nature of logic and its relation to mathematical reasoning, it is clear that he did not understand logic as a merely formal enterprise, but instead as an important and meaningful constraint to which mathematical thinking must answer. . axioms, truth, and existence within the traditional understanding of euclidean geometry, euclid‘s axioms (barring, perhaps, the troublesome parallel postulate) were thought to be basic, unprovable truths about physical space. as we‘ve just seen, hilbert‘s understanding of the role of his axioms was partly traditional and partly novel. as within the traditional view, the content of hilbert‘s axiom groups was thought to be given by spatial intuition. hilbert‘s axioms, too, are unproven expressions of intuition on the basis of which a whole deductive structure is [hilbert to frege, december ; excerpt by frege in frege , - ]. [hilbert - [ ], ; quoted in corry , ]. developed. but, in contrast to the tradition, the truth of his axioms is not guaranteed by the nature of physical space (though the content of the axioms is suggested by our intuition of physical space). instead, their truth is held to result from their consistency with each other. while on the traditional dispensation the truth of axioms was not relativized to a particular axiomatic system, on hilbert‘s view, we cannot speak of the truth of mathematical axioms except by reference to their mutual consistency. in addition to the truth of the axioms, consistency also establishes for hilbert the existence of the objects to which the axioms refer. thus, for instance, a geometric point is said to exist if the axioms which describe points (and the relations between points and other elements of the axiomatic system) are consistent. this, perhaps even more than hilbert‘s relativized conception of mathematical truth, is a radical claim. it shows that hilbert, at this time, was willing to countenance the existence of an almost bewildering array of mathematical objects, with the only condition being the possibility of providing a consistent axiomatization describing the objects. thus, for hilbert, the realm of the mathematically existent is coextensive with the realm of the logically possible. the exact relationship between mathematical existence and the consistency of axiom sets was not fully worked out in hilbert‘s work of this time—a fact which became clearer in hilbert‘s own later work on direct consistency proofs, and in frege‘s criticisms of the grundlagen der geometrie. hilbert‘s views on mathematical existence and truth have a wide range of consequences. one of the most important is that the proof of the consistency of a set of axioms becomes a crucial question in the development of an acceptable axiomatic system. within the traditional dispensation, the consistency of euclid‘s axioms (again, excluding the parallel postulate) was, for the most part, not a matter for intensive geometric research. since the axioms were understood to be truths based upon spatial intuition, the idea that the consistency of the axioms might require any special investigation simply did not occur. it didn‘t make much sense to ask whether a collection of obvious truths could all be true together—their being independently true of the world was a tacit guarantee that they were true when taken together, too. on hilbert‘s view, however, the grounding role of intuition was more heuristic in character: our intuition suggests certain axioms, but their truth is not at all grounded in that intuition. instead, once we have established some collection of axioms using our intuitive heuristic, we must investigate and, ideally, prove their consistency to justify their truth. intuition on its own is insufficiently rigorous and requires precise and careful axiomatization, followed by the deductive elaboration of consequences. this alteration in the concept of mathematical truth goes hand in hand with hilbert‘s shift away from an object-oriented approach to geometry. in contrast to geometrical truth understood as a pre-structural, absolute property determined by the nature of space and certain idealized bolzano, in a seemingly offhand remark, offers a remarkably similar view as early as . in § of the wissenschaftslehre, while discussing how we might tell if an idea is objectual or not (i.e., whether any objects fall under it), he writes that ―in order to determine [if an idea is objectual], we must also decide whether the attributes that the idea would ascribe to its object presuppose actual existence or not. if not, the idea is to be declared objectual. for if its object need not be something existing, it is obvious that such an object could only be lacking if the assumption that there were such an object contradicted a purely conceptual truth‖ [bolzano , § ]. in effect, bolzano claims here that particular abstract objects ‗exist‘ (in a restricted sense) just in case their existence is not contrary to a conceptual truth. spatial objects, hilbert turns to a notion of truth relative to a given axiomatization, determined by relations of consistency. this interest in questions of consistency was part of a larger shift in interest towards certain structural properties of axiomatic systems. in addition to consistency, hilbert began to focus on other properties of axiomatic systems, particularly their simplicity, completeness, and the mutual independence of their axioms. . desirable properties of axiomatic systems one of the more innovative elements of hilbert‘s axiomatic approach was his specific focus on relations amongst the axioms themselves. within the euclidean tradition, as we saw, there were some concerns about the independence of the axioms relative to each other. in particular, the potential dependence of the parallel postulate on the other axioms was a matter of intensive investigation. with hilbert, this concern for the independence of his axiom groups became a matter for rigorous logical investigation. alongside independence and consistency, hilbert was also concerned that a suitable axiomatization be complete, simple, and (if possible) categorical. he writes at the outset of the grundlagen, for instance, that ―this present investigation is a new attempt to establish for geometry a complete, and as simple as possible, system of axioms and to deduce from them the most important theorems in such a way that the significance of the various groups of axioms, as well as the scope of the conclusions that can be drawn from the individual axioms, become as clear as possible‖. though these properties have since become the object of intense study throughout mathematics, formal semantics, and logic, at hilbert‘s time the precise formulation of criteria for consistency, independence, completeness, categoricity, and simplicity had not yet been given. i will now turn to an examination of hilbert‘s understanding of these notions around the time of the publication of the grundlagen der geometrie. . . consistency as we‘ve seen, for hilbert the consistency of a set of axioms (or axiom groups) was of central importance for the establishment of the truth of a set of axioms, as well as the existence of the objects referred to by the axioms. accordingly, proving the consistency of a set of axioms becomes a matter for direct mathematical investigation. the consistency of a collection of axioms, for hilbert, amounts to the impossibility of deriving a contradiction from the consequences of those axioms taken together. although his conception of [hilbert , ]; ―die vorliegende untersuchung ist ein neuer versuch, für die geometrie ein vollständiges und möglichst einfaches system von axiomen aufzustellen und aus denselben die wichtigsten geometrischen sätze in der weise abzuleiten, daß dabei die bedeutung der verschiedenen axiomgruppen und die tragweite der aus den einzelnen axiomen zu ziehenden folgerungen möglichst klar zu tage tritt‖ [hilbert , ]. though hilbert was instrumental in the subsequent development of proof theory and mathematical logic throughout the s and s, i limit my discussion here to his early work insofar as my interest is in highlighting the differences between hilbert‘s early position and that of frege. in his later work, hilbert in fact took a number of frege‘s criticisms to heart, so that the gap between hilbert‘s highly structure-focussed position and frege‘s point of view narrowed considerably. ―the necessary task then arises of showing the consistency and completeness of these axioms, i.e. it must be proved that the application of the given axioms can never lead to contradictions, and, further that the system of consistency is clearly proof-theoretic, his method of proving this sort of consistency is quite similar to the modern model-theoretic approach: an interpretation in which all the axioms hold (i.e., a model of those axioms) is constructed and this construction is taken to directly show the consistency of the axioms. let us take a brief look at the interpretation hilbert employs to prove the consistency of his particular set of axioms for euclidean geometry. hilbert begins by interpreting his axioms within ―the field Ω of all algebraic numbers that arise from the number and the application of a finite number of times of the four arithmetical operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and the fifth operation √ , where ω denotes a number that results from these five operations‖. points are interpreted as pairs of numbers (x, y) within this field; lines are interpreted as ―the ratios (u : v : w) of any three numbers from Ω [...] provided u, v are not both zero.‖ now, having thus interpreted the basic notions of his formalization of euclidean geometry within the algebraic number field Ω, hilbert proceeds to suggest that his axioms up to and including axiom v, are satisfied. the remaining axiom, the so-called completeness axiom v, is satisfied, he claims, only if we employ the specific field of the real numbers in our interpretation in place of the subfield Ω. having thus interpreted the basic notions of euclidean geometry within the domain of the real numbers (and, initially, within the field Ω), hilbert goes on to suggest that each of his axioms, thus interpreted, still holds. the first model of his axiomatization interpreted within the field Ω illustrates that his axioms from i- iv and including v, are consistent with each other precisely because ―every contradiction in the consequences of [these axioms] would therefore have to be detectable in the arithmetic of the field Ω.‖ it is assumed, at this point, that no contradictions arise within the arithmetic of this field; likewise, it is assumed that no contradictions can arise within the axioms thus modelled. when hilbert extends his model to the field of all real numbers, the claim is similar: his axioms for euclidean geometry are shown to be consistent upon the assumption that no contradiction arises within the arithmetic of the real numbers. today we see this immediately as an example of a relative consistency proof: the consistency of euclidean geometry is proved only relative to the consistency of the real numbers. by the turn of the century, however, the forbidding difficulties of providing direct consistency proofs for axioms is adequate to prove all geometrical propositions. we shall call this procedure of investigation the axiomatic method‖ [hilbert b, in ewald , ]. [hilbert , ]. [hilbert , ]. this axiom was not included in hilbert‘s festschrift version of the grundlagen, nor in the first edition, but appeared only in the first french edition and second german edition. subsequent to those editions it was further narrowed and renamed the axiom of line completeness, and altered to read as follows: ―an extension of a set of points on a line with its order and congruence relations that would preserve the relations existing among the original elements as well as the fundamental properties of line order and congruence that follows from axioms i-iii, and from v, is impossible‖ [hilbert , ]; in the edition it is phrased as follows: ―die elemente (punkte, geraden, ebenen) der geometrie bilden ein system von dingen, welches bei aufrechterhaltung sämtlicher genannten axiome keiner erweiterung mehr fähig ist, d.h.: zu dem system der punkte, geraden, ebenen ist es nicht möglich, ein anderes system von dingen hinzuzufügen, so daß in dem durch zusammensetzung entstehenden system sämtliche aufgeführten axiome i-iv, v erfüllt sind‖ [hilbert , ]. we will have occasion to return to this axiom in the sections on completeness and categoricity below. [hilbert , ]. axiomatized versions of arithmetic were not yet apparent to hilbert, as is evident in his statement that he was ―convinced that it must be possible to find a direct proof for the consistency of the arithmetical axioms, by means of a careful study and suitable modification of the known methods of reasoning in the theory of the real numbers‖. the relativity of hilbert‘s consistency proofs would, as we shall see, form one of the focal points of frege‘s criticism, and would also become one of the chief motivators for hilbert‘s formalist program of the s. . . independence after establishing the consistency of his axioms to his satisfaction, hilbert moves on in the grundlagen to prove the independence of some of those axioms from the others. he begins, unsurprisingly, with an illustration of the independence of his parallel axiom group. he opens this section of the work as follows: ―having seen the [consistency] of the axioms it is of interest to investigate whether they are all independent of each other. in fact it can be shown that no essential part of any one of these groups of axioms can be deduced from the others by logical inference‖. at this time in his career, hilbert (like most mathematicians of the time) had not expended much energy attempting to flesh out any systematic conception of basic logical notions like inference or consequence. he had, however, taken at least some interest in the quasi-logical work in elementary set-theory undertaken by cantor and dedekind. one thing that is quite clear about his conception of logic at the time, though, is that he, like frege, took it to flow from a source of knowledge distinct from intuition. when we find the early hilbert discussing things in a ‗purely logical‘ manner, it is in order to draw an epistemological contrast between knowledge derived from (usually spatial) intuition and knowledge given without reference either to intuition or experience. it is only given this epistemological distinction that hilbert can speak of the logical analysis of our intuition of space, and maintain the distinction between the intuitions which inform our choice of axioms and the subsequent logical work which gives us the deductive structure erected on the basis of those axioms. thus, the independence of axioms from one another ought to be provable without reference to spatial intuition, or other forms of experiential knowledge, as suggested by both lambert and pasch. let‘s take a brief look at the way in which hilbert goes about proving the independence of his parallel axiom group from the remaining groups. his procedure again seems to involve what we would now understand to be model-theoretic techniques. having already provided a model in which all of his axioms excepting the completeness axiom hold (by interpreting his axioms and basic notions in terms of the field Ω, or in the field of the real numbers), hilbert now constructs a model in which all of his axioms except the parallel axiom are satisfied. for our purposes here, the details of this [hilbert b, in ewald , ]. in another paper of the same year on the concept of number, hilbert writes, again optimistically, that ―to prove the consistency of the above axioms [for arithmetic] one needs only a suitable modification of familiar methods of inference. in this proof i also see the proof of the existence of the totality of real numbers, or—in the terminology of g. cantor—the proof that the system of real numbers is a consistent (finished) set‖ [hilbert a, in ewald , ]. a suitable modification and the resulting proof were both to remain elusive and, perhaps, impossible after gödel‘s incompleteness results. [hilbert , ]. model are unimportant. what is important is the relativity of hilbert‘s proofs. in order to prove that the uninterpreted axioms of geometry are independent of one another, hilbert employs the following procedure. first, he interprets the primitive terms of his axiomatic system in such a way that a model of his axioms is produced, i.e., an interpretation in which all the axioms are satisfied. (this was his way of proving their consistency). he then proceeds to construct a different interpretation on which only some of the axioms are satisfied, while the axiom to be proven independent is not (or, within which all the axioms and the negation of the axiom to be proven independent are satisfied). this procedure is meant to illustrate that there are certain structures within which the axioms as a whole are satisfied and other structures within which the axiom to be proven independent is not satisfied. hence, the axiom to be proven independent is not a purely logical consequence of the remaining axioms insofar as both it and its negation are consistent with those axioms. that an axiom and its negation are both consistent with a set of axioms illustrates, for hilbert, that it is not a deductive, logical consequence of those axioms and, thus, that it is independent of them. as we will see, frege would criticize this approach to independence proofs as incoherent, given what he takes to be a proper understanding of the nature of logical inference and model-theoretic techniques. hilbert, for his part, offers no discussion about what logic is or how it operates with indifference to intuitive content. . . completeness in addition to independence and consistency, hilbert also suggests that any decent axiom system should possess the property of completeness. given the close resemblance between hilbert‘s concepts of consistency and independence with their modern model-theoretic equivalents, we may be tempted to align his notion of completeness, too, with its model- theoretic cousin. but, as leo corry correctly notes, the ―completeness‖ that hilbert demanded for his systems of axioms should not be confused with the later, model-theoretical notion that bears the same name, a notion that is totally foreign to hilbert‘s axiomatic approach at this early stage. rather it is an idea that runs parallel to [physicist heinrich] hertz‘s demand for ―correctness‖. thus, hilbert demanded from any adequate axiomatization that it should allow for a derivation of all the known theorems of the discipline in question. the axioms formulated in [grundlagen], hilbert claimed, would indeed yield all the known results of euclidean geometry or of the so-called absolute geometry, namely that [geometry which is] valid independently of the parallel postulate, if the corresponding group of axioms is ignored. thus, reconstructing the very ideas that had given rise to his own conception, hilbert discussed in great detail the role of each of the groups of axioms in hilbert‘s interprets the axioms of his geometry, aside from the parallel axioms, in much the same manner as beltrami had prior to him: he limits the points, lines, and planes to the interior of a sphere and suggests we ―define the congruences of this geometry by aid of such linear transformations of the ordinary geometry as transform the fixed sphere into itself‖ [hilbert , ]. ―by suitable conventions, we can make this ―non-euclidean geometry‖ obey all the axioms of our system except the axiom of euclid (group iii). since the possibility of the ordinary geometry has already been established [by hilbert‘s consistency proof], that of the non-euclidean geometry is now an immediate consequence of the above considerations‖ [hilbert , ]. the proofs of two crucial results: the theorem of desargues and the theorem of pappus [...]. unlike independence, however, the completeness of the system of axioms is not a property that hilbert knew how to verify formally, except to the extent that, starting from the given axioms, he could prove all the theorems he was interested in. in contrast, then, to the modern understanding of model-theoretic completeness, hilbert‘s view of the concept was a rather more informal, historical one. in his view, guided no doubt by his understanding of the non-arbitrary, intuitive basis of any interesting axiom system (in our case, guided by his view that the axioms of geometry are based upon our intuition of space), an axiom system is complete just in case it captures the theorems one would have liked it to capture and no anti-theorems. even if hilbert‘s axioms for euclidean geometry were consistent and mutually independent, they would still be unsatisfying if they did not, for instance, include pascal‘s theorem among their consequences. completeness in hilbert‘s sense is guided by a pre-systematic understanding of the nature and extent of the mathematical field one aims to describe via a particular axiomatization. if some interesting or important element of this field is not deducible from a particular axiomatization, that is good reason to prefer another axiomatization. a complete axiom system is one that captures all the theorems that it is (at least tacitly) intended to capture. which theorems are intended is a matter determined largely by the historical trajectory of the field in question up to that point. . . categoricity the explicit model-theoretic notion of categoricity was not yet developed at the time of the publication of the grundlagen. nevertheless, hilbert‘s addition, in the french translation of the grundlagen (and all subsequent editions) of a further axiom, the axiom of completeness, seems to reveal that he intended his geometrical axiom system to be something like ‗categorical‘ in our modern sense. but, again, there are important differences between hilbert‘s view and the standard model-theoretic view of today. hilbert introduces the early version of this axiom as follows: remark. to the preceding five groups of axioms, we may add the following one, which, although not of a purely geometrical nature, merits particular attention from a theoretical point of view. it may be expressed in the following form: axiom of completeness [vollständigkeit]. to a system of points, straight lines, and planes, it is impossible to add other elements in such a manner that the system thus generalized shall form a new geometry obeying all of the five groups of axioms. in other words, the elements of geometry form a system which is not susceptible of extension, if we regard the five groups of axioms as valid. [corry a, - ]. in model-theoretic terms, an uninterpreted theory is said to be categorical iff there exists an isomorphism between any two models of the theory. [hilbert , ]. unlike the other axioms, each of which states some property of or relation among the elements of the system (e.g., lines, points, or planes), this axiom states something about the axiomatized system itself, namely that no further elements can be added to the system while still maintaining consistency. this axiom, in contrast to the others, has the appearance of what we would now call a metatheoretic claim. what is its function here? hilbert‘s system was intended, as we‘ve seen, to present a simple and complete axiomatization of the known results of euclidean geometry, all of which seems perfectly accomplished prior to the addition of this further axiom of completeness, so what purpose does it serve? the name itself sheds light on hilbert‘s own conception of completeness, which, as we‘ve seen, was not obviously identical with any modern concept of deductive or semantic completeness. hilbert‘s intent was to capture all the theorems of geometry, but, further, to do so in a way which accurately corresponded to the intuitive understanding of those theorems throughout the history of geometry. we can understand hilbert‘s goal as one of systematization: he attempts to clear away irrelevant features of mathematical history in order to uncover the underlying logical and mathematical structure—the really interesting parts. to do so in a purely abstract manner, as postulation theorists like huntington, veblen, hausdorff, and others would later do, was not hilbert‘s goal at all; his interest was to formalize the properly mathematical part of geometrical history, and this history included analytic geometry and its concomitant connection between the real numbers and the line. what hilbert‘s axiom attempts to formalize is the (often tacitly) accepted isomorphism between the real numbers and the points on a line. by rejecting models of his axioms which are not isomorphic to the real numbers (e.g., the ‗incomplete‘ model within the field Ω of algebraic numbers outlined above), hilbert illustrates that his intention is not simply to capture the abstract formal structure of euclid‘s geometry—which is perfectly well accomplished within the subfield Ω, and without the completeness axiom—but, also, to capture the precise way in which that structure was actually understood and employed by the mathematical community since at least the time of descartes. without the axiom, we might add historically and geometrically irrelevant bits to an ‗incomplete‘ model like the subfield Ω. by adding the completeness axiom, hilbert explicitly forbids such extension, deliberately pushing his reader toward for historical and intuitive reasons. here again we can see hilbert‘s divergence from the contemporary notion of categoricity: his intent here is not to ensure that all models of the axioms are isomorphic with one another, but, instead, to insist as carefully as possible that we employ the historically established interpretation of analytic geometry. thus, though hilbert‘s axiom of completeness might push his axiomatization toward categoricity, this was clearly not his own intention. cf., e.g., [huntington ], where a ―purely mathematical or abstract point of view‖ is employed in order to ―consider the construction of a purely deductive theory, without regard to its possible applications‖ [huntington , ]. he then speaks of his postulates (for an ‗algebra of logic‘) as ―simply conditions arbitrarily imposed on the fundamental concepts‖ of the theory [huntington , ]. [awodey and reck , - ] gives a more thorough account of hilbert‘s views in relation to the modern notion of categoricity. the axiom of completeness is different in kind from the other axioms and axiom groups. while the remaining axioms formalize properties and relations related to the elements of the geometrical system, the axiom of completeness dictates that the system itself should obey a certain criterion, namely, that any interpretation of the system must have the property of being non-extendible. as we will see in detail when we turn to the correspondence between frege and hilbert, hilbert‘s use of this isolated metatheoretic statement within his axiomatic system is illustrative of a general lack of precision regarding logical and model-theoretic concepts. it is precisely this sort of precision that frege, with his penetrating analyses of basic logical concepts, would bring to the table. . . simplicity unlike consistency, independence, and completeness, the property of simplicity has only rarely been formalized, even today. though no clear criterion for simplicity has won the day even in the contemporary mathematical world, the american postulation theorist e. h. moore came close to providing one. in a paper on the definition of abstract groups, moore wrote that from the standpoint of abstract logic the canons of relative simplicity of equivalent definitions by sets of postulates are not well established. perhaps the only established canon is this, that a definition is simplified by the omission of a group of postulates logically deducible from the remaining postulates. one is tempted to add this, that every postulate of a desirably simple definition shall be a simple statement, that is, a single and not a multiple statement. the difficulty here would arise in the precise formulation of the terms of this second canon, especially in view of the fact that the same statement may be made in various forms. at least, a definition is simplified by the substitution, for a postulate consisting of an aggregate of independent statements, of those statements as distinct postulates. further, one may add as a third canon this, that of two definitions one with the smaller number of postulates is the simpler. as to this canon the case now in question [i.e., the definition of the abstract group concept] seems to show that the definition with the larger number of independent postulates may reveal more immediately the fundamental properties of the object of definition. it is, of course, evident that the task of proving the independence of the postulates presumably increases with the number of postulates. the sort of precision sought by moore here was not much pursued by other mathematicians, and simplicity has since remained a largely informal matter within mathematics. despite the general lack of precision regarding the notion of simplicity, most mathematicians, hilbert included, take simplicity to be an extremely desirable property of a theory or axiomatization. simplicity, in this respect, is largely an aesthetic notion, though one still capable of directing research and methodology. recall, for instance, that the relative complexity of the parallel postulate when compared to euclid‘s remaining axioms was the [moore b, - ]. e.v. huntington makes similar, though less detailed remarks at [huntington , ]. chief reason that a proof of that postulate was so ardently sought; there is something aesthetically displeasing to the mathematical temperament about an unnecessarily complicated theory or technique. leo corry is again helpful in understanding hilbert‘s particular view of this notion (which agrees broadly with huntington‘s account). he writes that the [...] requirement [of] simplicity [...] complements that of independence. it means, roughly, that an axiom should contain ―no more than a single idea.‖ [...] nevertheless, it was neither formally defined nor otherwise realized in any clearly identifiable way within [grundlagen der geometrie]. the ideal of formulating ―simple‖ axioms as part of this system was present implicitly as an aesthetic desideratum that was not transformed into a mathematically controllable feature. one way of reading this view of simplicity into hilbert‘s grundlagen is to take each of his axioms as the expression of a single facet of spatial intuition, while the axiom groups are collections of axioms which express facets of spatial intuition related to some one more general concept (e.g., incidence or order). thus, the axioms of hilbert‘s third axiom group all express distinct aspects of space related to the concept of congruence. for instance, axiom iii, states that ―if a, b are two points on a line a, and a′ is a point on the same or on another line a′ then it is always possible to find a point b′ on a given side of the line a′ through a′ such that the segment ab is congruent or equal to the segment a′b′.‖ and hilbert himself writes that ―this axiom requires the possibility of constructing segments. its uniqueness will be proved later.‖ so, while we have here a single aspect of spatial congruence (i.e., that it is possible to construct congruent line segments in space), it is a further and separate matter to prove the uniqueness of segment construction. similarly, hilbert presents the additivity of segments and the transitivity of congruence in separate axioms. taken together, these axioms represent the presentation of the single concept of spatial congruence, while taken singly they each represent a single aspect (a ‗characteristic mark,‘ as frege might say) of that concept. assuming that our axiom system is complete in hilbert‘s sense (i.e., it captures all the theorems we want it to and no anti-theorems), this criterion of simplicity ought to ensure that the axiomatization possesses only as many axioms as are required. for, if each axiom is required to clearly represent a single idea, it will (ideally) be clear when two axioms express the same idea, thus enabling the easy removal of redundant axioms. the result of such a complete and simple system should be a minimal collection of axioms from which the maximum number of theorems may be derived. in hilbert‘s work we can see very clearly the shift away from a geometry which was oriented towards the properties of particular sorts of geometrical objects (points, lines, planes, etc.) and towards an examination of the structure of axiomatic systems. hilbert‘s view is an interesting hybrid of these two approaches: he maintains the utility of intuition as a heuristic [corry a, ]. [hilbert , ]. [hilbert , ]. bolzano offers a similar view at [bolzano , § . , note]. for determining which axiom sets are worthy of mathematical analysis, while eschewing any appeal to intuition in his attempt to provide satisfactory axiomatic characterizations for various geometric structures. the main focus of his work, however, was to prove theorems about certain geometric structures rather than proving theorems within them. hilbert‘s main interest is not in triangles, for example, but with the relationship between theorems pertaining to triangles and the postulates of a particular axiomatization. similarly, he is not focussed upon the content of archimedes‘ axiom as much as its relation to the other axioms of euclidean geometry. as we will see in more detail below, this shift from an object-oriented approach toward a structure-oriented one was not without its difficulties. from hilbert‘s views i would now like to turn to those of frege. both men had complex relationships with prior mathematical and philosophical traditions: hilbert took on some of the intuitive elements of geometry with his understanding of the nature of axioms, but insisted upon the purely deductive character of geometric proofs and theorems. for his part, frege held more conservative views about the nature of elementary geometry, but was a radical innovator when it came to logical precision and mathematical rigor. § . frege . frege‘s work in context frege had, as early as the late s, become very interested in presenting complex mathematical concepts and proofs in a more perspicuous and rigorous manner. as we‘ve seen, hilbert‘s work in geometry attempted to provide a coherent axiomatic framework capable of representing a whole host of new and old geometrical results; hilbert‘s work rather successfully eliminated (or, at least limited) geometry‘s reliance upon the intuition of space. this work was an evacuation of geometry‘s logically impertinent trappings, resulting in a pared-down version of the age-old truths of euclid. frege, for his part, had focussed more heavily on clarifying the nature and logical structure of certain basic mathematical concepts and modes of reasoning (e.g., the concept of number and mathematical induction). while frege was quite familiar with the revolutions taking place throughout geometry—he wrote a dissertation at göttingen about geometry in the early s, as well as a few short reviews and a paper dealing with geometrical issues —his views were for the most part those of a staunch geometric conservative. he was, for instance, convinced very late in his career of the intuitive basis of the truth of the axioms of euclid‘s geometry, and he [frege ], supervised by ernst schering ( - ) who, incidentally, was the editor of gauss‘ collected works. frege was also quite familiar with the work of the innovative algebraic geometer alfred clebsch ( - ), having attended his lectures on analytic geometry. the reviews are: [frege ] (reviewing a work on linear geometry and its applications) and [frege ], which reviews a textbook in analytic geometry; the paper is [frege ], which discusses the possibility of conceiving of triangles as complex quantities. prior to his exchanges with hilbert and korselt, we find frege returning only briefly to geometrical matters in [frege a], the text of an lecture on plane geometry; though he did teach geometry, which likely kept him abreast of developments in projective geometry (in which he showed interest throughout his career). characterized these axioms as necessary truths about the physical world. the following fragment on euclidean geometry, which remained unpublished during his lifetime, is illustrative of his general approach to geometric questions: ―in euclidean geometry certain truths have traditionally been accorded the status of axioms. no thought that is held to be false can be accepted as an axiom, for an axiom is a truth. furthermore, it is part of the concept of an axiom that it can be recognized as true independently of other truths.‖ elsewhere, he offered some rather unconvincing arguments about the indispensability of euclidean geometry for getting around in the world: space, according to kant, belongs to appearance. it would be possible for it to be differently represented by another rationality entirely different from us. true, we cannot even know whether it appears the same to one person as to another; for we cannot lay one intuition of space next to another in order to compare them. there is nevertheless something objective contained therein; everyone recognizes the same geometrical axioms even if only by the fact that he must do so in order to find his way in the world. what is objective in it is what is law-governed, conceivable, and capable of being judged, what is expressible. that frege‘s claims for the experiential or pragmatic necessity of euclidean geometry here miss their mark is shown by the fact that even his contemporaries (e.g., poincaré and helmholtz) were quite capable of illustrating the compatibility of everyday experience with geometries other than euclid‘s. in addition to this pragmatic consideration in favour of the traditional view of euclidean geometry, frege also conceived of physical space as euclidean in nature and he believed we were able to grasp basic truths pertaining to that space (i.e., euclid‘s axioms) a priori by way of pure intuition. thus, in most respects, he was an orthodox kantian when it came to the philosophy of geometry. frege‘s fairly traditional views might partially explain his initial reaction to hilbert‘s work on the foundations of geometry, but neither that reaction nor its continuation throughout his correspondence with hilbert (and the subsequent series of articles written in response to korselt) can be fully explained simply in light of those views. indeed, the most interesting and far-reaching of frege‘s criticisms of hilbert‘s work have very little to do with his own geometrical views and quite a lot to do with his more impressive re-imagining of the nature of logic and the relations between mathematics and logic. before we turn to frege‘s criticisms of hilbert i will discuss some elements of one of the main mathematical traditions which preceded and informed frege‘s own work in logic and the foundations of mathematics. as we will see, it is the trajectory partially determined by this tradition, rather than frege‘s own views of the nature of geometry, which informed many of the most important of his responses to hilbert. [frege c. , ]. [frege b, § ]. cf., e.g., [helmholtz ]. see [rusnock ] for a more detailed argument along these lines. . . the rigorization of mathematics alongside the structure-focussed, axiomatic approach to geometry which had developed from the late th century and throughout the th century, there was another equally radical and influential movement within analysis and number theory which focussed on tightening up mathematical argumentation and providing stricter definitions of basic concepts. many elements of frege‘s work on the foundations of mathematics and logic belong squarely within this tradition and it is worthwhile to outline, at least briefly, some of the aims and methods which characterize it. this discussion should help to illustrate that frege‘s criticisms of hilbert on the foundations of geometry were not merely the result of his own somewhat outmoded, kantian view of geometry but, rather, that they developed mainly as a result of his preoccupation with the central themes of a nineteenth century tradition of mathematical rigor. the modern project of injecting rigor into mathematics began in earnest at the close of the th century, and was developed, for the most part, in response to the conceptual morass introduced into mathematics by the (then) obscure notions of the infinitesimal calculus. from the time of newton and leibniz, there had been an uneasy feeling surrounding the use of unclear notions like fluxions, derivatives, second and third differentials, vanishing quantities, etc. one of the better known (and certainly the most amusing) of the polemics deployed against these concepts can be found in bishop george berkeley‘s the analyst. there berkeley famously derides the use of fluxions in the calculus: ―and what are these fluxions? the velocities of evanescent increments? and what are these same evanescent increments? they are neither finite quantities nor quantities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. may we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities?‖ in conjunction with his mocking tone, berkeley also offered a detailed critique of several of the central notions of the calculus. while he dismissed extant attempts to provide a conceptual basis for the successes of the calculus, he did not dismiss those successes themselves. instead he explained them as the felicitous result of two competing errors. while considering the obscure solutions to several problems related to the determination of tangents for parabolas, berkeley writes that ―the two errors being equal and contrary destroy each other; the first error of defect being corrected by a second error of excess,‖ and, further, that if you [i.e., the mathematician employing the methods of the calculus] had committed only one error, you would not have come at a true solution of the problem. but by virtue of a twofold mistake you arrive, though not at science, yet at truth. for science it cannot be called, when you proceed blindfold, and arrive at the truth not knowing how or by what means. [berkeley , paragraph xxxv]. [berkeley , paragraph xxi]. [berkeley , paragraph xxii]. despite the fact that the results of the calculus were quite often correct, berkeley resisted treating the methods of fluxions and vanishing quantities as scientific ones for the simple reason that no one could explain how these methods managed to arrive at truth. without some form of conceptual clarification, the success of the calculus appeared to result only from an obscure and inexplicable fumbling toward the truth, a kind of mathematical water- dowsing. accordingly, its results could not be called scientific, as it was not at all clear how or even if those results could be grounded in scientific reason. while many mathematicians were more than willing to employ the notions of the calculus as long as they delivered results, the scathing criticisms offered by berkeley and others eventually began to weigh on the more philosophically inclined members of the mathematical community. throughout the latter half of the th century, there was a great push to remedy the situation. two general approaches were taken: one which attempted to deliver the same results as the calculus without employing its more troublesome concepts, and one which sought to clarify those concepts and place them on a sounder philosophical and scientific footing. joseph louis lagrange ( - ), one of the foremost representatives of the former method, published an influential text on the theory of functions, whose subtitle boasted that it was ―redeemed from all considerations of the infinitely small, from vanishing quantities, from limits and from fluxions, and reduced to the algebraic analysis of finite quantities.‖ lagrange, as many others, characterized the new demand for rigor as a return to the spirit of precision exemplified by the ancients, and was so concerned with the incoherent conceptual foundations of the calculus that, while serving as the director of the mathematical section of the berlin academy, he set the following prize problem for the year : it is widely known that advanced geometry regularly employs the infinitely great and the infinitely small ... the academy, therefore, desires an explanation of how it is that so many correct theorems have been deduced from a contradictory supposition, together with... a truly mathematical principle that may be substituted for that of the infinite. the feeling evidenced here and throughout the mathematical works and correspondence of the second half of the th century was that there had to be some explanation for the great successes, both mathematical and physical, of the calculus. the concepts of the calculus, however murkily understood, indisputably led to valid results, and no one could convincingly explain how or why. the attempts to avoid the issue by founding the calculus without the use of its most troublesome concepts ultimately had less appeal than those attempts based on conceptual clarification (it is indeed a rare case where mathematicians give up even shoddy tools if they produce beautiful results). it is largely to this work of clarification, begun in the late eighteenth century, that we owe the advances in mathematical [lagrange, quoted in grattan-guiness , ]. ―l‘objet de cet ouvrage est de donner la théorie des fonctions, considérées comme primitives et dérivées, de résoudre par cette théorie les principaux problèmes d‘analyse, de géométrie et de mécanique, qu‘on fait dépendre du calcul différential, et de donner par là à la solution de ces problemes toute la rigueur des démonstrations des anciens‖ [lagrange , tome , ] [lagrange , quoted in grattan-guiness , ]. rigor made in the following century by cauchy, gauss, abel, dirichlet, bolzano, and others. these mathematicians achieved a much stricter understanding of the demands to be met by any piece of rigorous mathematical reasoning, one that even berkeley would likely have found unexceptionable. bolzano, whose work remained largely unknown during the period, nevertheless provides us with an exemplary philosophical account of proper mathematical reasoning in his essay on the mathematical method. bolzano, like frege later, was interested in eliminating the psychological elements of mathematics in favour of a focus on the objective logical relations which held amongst its propositions (sätze an sich), irrespective of their historical epistemological status. thus, in the works of bolzano and the other rigorizers, we find an insistence upon proving even obvious theorems —a tradition which had slackened considerably since the time of the greeks, perhaps because of the rapid advances in mathematical applications after the emergence of the integral and differential techniques of newton, leibniz, and the bernoullis. bolzano was critical of the lax treatment of definition within contemporary mathematical reasoning, and constructed a much stricter theory of definition than the relatively informal approach that had become popular by the early th century. inferential gaps, too, were to be filled by the newly rigorized approach: hidden assumptions were to be uncovered and made explicit, superfluous appeals to intuition were to be dispensed with, and any propositions susceptible of proof (obvious or not) were to be proved. if a proposition was assumed but not proved, it was to be expected that its unprovability was to be demonstrated or, at least, that this would remain an open problem for research. the appreciation for strict forms of definition and gapless chains of inference exhibited by bolzano and others in the early part of the th century was extended considerably in the latter half of that century by karl weierstrass ( - ) and the talented circle of mathematicians which formed around him in berlin. the members of the school were instrumental in the so-called arithmetization of analysis, a process which involved reconstructing many of the theorems and concepts of analysis in terms of a group of acceptable techniques which avoided as much as possible any appeal to (geometric) intuition and the murkier concepts of the early calculus. weierstrass and his school developed and popularized rigorous definitions of a number of basic mathematical concepts, chief among them were the (ε, δ) definition of a limit, of uniform convergence, and of the uniform continuity of a function. [bolzano b]. bolzano‘s ‗purely analytic‘ proof of the intermediate value theorem (i.e., [bolzano ]) is an excellent example of the application of rigorous forms of reasoning and definition to a seemingly obvious theorem. though cauchy was the first to offer this form of the definition of a limit (see [cauchy , ]), weierstrass and his circle employed it frequently and in a variety of contexts, with the effect that it was disseminated more widely; for the weierstrassian definition of uniform convergence (in a region), see [weierstrass , article ]; for that of the uniform continuity of a function, see [heine , ]. (interestingly, an earlier, almost equally rigorous definition of uniform continuity was implicitly given by bolzano in the s in his functionenlehre ([bolzano , § ; english translation available in [bolzano a]—some relevant emendations can be found in a manuscript, also available in translation in [bolzano a, - ]). for a discussion of bolzano‘s priority in the matter, see [rusnock , - ] and [rusnock and kerr-lawson ]. during the period of the weierstrass school‘s influence at berlin, a rival tradition arose at göttingen centered around bernhard riemann. the göttingers were noted less for their strictness and more for their mathematical creativity. like the early workers in the calculus, those following in riemann‘s wake were less interested in shoring up the rigor of their new topological and functional investigations than in extending as far as possible new mathematical vistas. göttingen, in contrast to weierstrass‘s berlin, was noted for its more liberal use of geometrical and other forms of intuition as a fruitful generator of mathematical material. much of german mathematics at the time was divided between the two schools, to the point that very little cross-pollination by way of publications, correspondence, or colloquia occurred. only towards the end of the nineteenth century, when klein and hilbert were in ascendency at göttingen did the two traditions begin to run together—though even then there were firm distinctions of style and method. by all appearances, frege was well-disposed to become a card-carrying member of the riemann school. he completed his doctoral work on geometry in göttingen, he was quite familiar with the work of clebsch (a highly influential göttinger), and later worked on the geometric representation of complex quantities, a topic which combined two key elements of the göttingen tradition. despite these connections, however, frege‘s more mature work focussed almost exclusively on the foundations of arithmetic and elementary number theory, topics considerably more weierstrassian than riemannian. even while frege was clearly inspired by the weierstrassian project of rigor, he brought a peculiarly logic-centred approach to this project which was absent in the berlin school. while the weierstrassians were concerned to provide analysis with rigorous conceptual foundations, frege was interested in going further by providing strict definitions which would reduce complex mathematical notions to purely logical ones. thus we find, for instance, his attempt to define number in terms of the extensions of certain concepts, which he understood to be properly logical objects. while the details of frege‘s efforts to clarify the nature of particular mathematical results are not directly relevant to our concerns here, his broad conception of the proper nature of mathematical reasoning and definition are. many of his criticisms of hilbert‘s views in the foundations of geometry, for instance, have to do with what frege perceived as failures to observe the proper distinctions between definitions, axioms, and explanations, as well as hilbert‘s improper understanding of the nature of definition more generally. accordingly, let‘s take a look at what frege has to say about the nature of logic, and, following that, what he has to say about hilbert‘s allegedly inadequate understanding thereof. for an account of the göttingen school with particular emphasis on klein and hilbert, see [rowe ]; for the berliners, see [biermann ]. though frege‘s earliest work (e.g., his dissertation of ) dealt with geometrical issues, and he taught several courses relating to various geometrical topics, it is apparent that the bulk of his own mental energy was expended on his project of rigorizing arithmetic by providing it with solid foundations in logic. this project was clearly related to (though frege was highly critical of) similar efforts by the weierstrassians. for a view which emphasizes frege‘s connection to the riemannian tradition at göttingen, where frege did his graduate work, (rather than the weierstrass-berlin tradition), see [tappenden ]. . frege on the nature of logic in a fragment from what appears to have been intended as a logic textbook, frege writes that logic is concerned only with those grounds of judgement which are truths. to make a judgement because we are cognisant of other truths as providing a justification for it is known as inferring. there are laws governing this kind of justification, and to set up these laws of valid inference is the goal of logic. thus logic is a science which considers the laws of inference in their relation to truths. in the modern period, many logicians took this to involve distinguishing various types of judgments and the possible inferential relations between them. for frege, by contrast, the aspects of inference in which logic is interested are not at all psychological, or even empirical, and hence logic proper is not concerned with the peculiarities of human judgment. (at which temperature humans best infer or with which mental images were not, for frege, matters for logic to decide). in the same fragment, he writes the following: the subject-matter of logic is therefore such as cannot be perceived by the senses and in this respect it compares with that of psychology and contrasts with that of the natural sciences. instincts, ideas, etc. are also neither visible nor tangible. all the same there is a sharp divide between these disciplines [i.e., logic and psychology], and it is marked by the word ‗true‘. psychology is only concerned with truth in the way every other science is, in that its goal is to extend the domain of truths; but in the field it investigates it does not study the property ‗true‘ as, in its field, physics focuses on the properties ‗heavy‘, ‗warm‘, etc. this is what logic does. it would not perhaps be beside the mark to say that the laws of logic are nothing other than an unfolding of the content of the word ‗true‘. anyone who has failed to grasp the meaning of this word—what marks it off from others—cannot attain to any clear idea of what the task of logic is. the references to psychology here are not incidental, as a variety of psychologistic views of both logic and mathematics were popular during frege‘s time, and a considerable portion of his work was dedicated to undermining these views and building up his own alternative conception. psychologism in logic, as the name suggests, is the view that logical laws are subject to, deducible from, or in some way reducible to psychological laws, and that logic itself studies the particular ways in which human beings infer and make judgments. instead of the laws regulating ideas and the association of ideas found at the heart of psychologistic accounts of logic, however, frege turned to the study of the laws of truth itself. instead of [frege ? - , ]. [frege ? - , ]. psychologism in logic has been popular in a variety of forms throughout the history of the discipline; in frege‘s time, the logic of john stuart mill ([mill ]) was one of the major sources of the view. in addition to mill, a number of german logicians held psychologistic views, notable among them were christian von sigwart ( - ) and benno erdmann ( - ). one of the better-known disputes regarding psychologism in mathematics can be found in edmund husserl‘s psychologistic views on arithmetic in [husserl ] and frege‘s highly critical review of husserl [frege ]. studying how humans actually infer (which is, more often than not, erroneously) frege endeavoured to study the nature of correct inference and the relations between inference and truth. since logic, properly construed, is ―the science of the most general laws of truth,‖ and since truth is not, for frege, a subjective, mental property, logic in its proper form cannot be concerned with the subjective, mental realm. frege‘s own view of logic involved a shift away from the subjective ideas of psychologism towards what he (rather unfortunately) calls ‗thoughts‘. we will have occasion in the following chapter to return in more detail to frege‘s ‗thoughts‘; here it is sufficient to characterize thoughts as those things which are true or false. for frege, truth was not at all a subjective property, nor, somewhat confusingly, were thoughts mental entities. since logic deals with truth and the relation between thoughts and truth (neither of which are psychological or subjective in nature), it cannot be a subjective science. nevertheless, frege admits that our interaction with logic has to occur within the spatiotemporal world we inhabit and, thus, that any thoughts which we endeavour to study scientifically must be cloaked in something tangible, e.g., some language or mental process. because of its public character, language is invariably the means by which scientific results are communicated and formulated. unfortunately for science, however, the relationship between thoughts and their linguistic garb is not always a clear or helpful one. ordinary language can obscure the logical structure of thoughts; indeed, it often systematically misleads the unwary away from the true nature of proper inference. completely different phrases may express thoughts which are, from a logical point of view, identical. similarly, identical phrases, uttered or written in different contexts, may express different thoughts. in many cases, too, ordinary language is insufficiently precise to pin down a single meaning for a particular phrase, such that it may seem to express several different thoughts at once. frege sought to remedy this situation through the creation of a logically perspicuous language. the result was his begriffsschrift, or concept-script. frege‘s formal language was based upon a cluster of rigorously circumscribed logical concepts and rules of inference. from this basic stock, frege held that the logical structure of thoughts and their relations to each other could be clearly presented while most logically irrelevant properties (i.e., those which do not affect the truth or falsity of thoughts or the validity of inferences) could be ignored. in addition to the purely symbolic work, the construction of this language also required a significant amount of conceptual work: frege had to isolate the logical concepts from those alien to logic, he also had to avoid the ambiguity and obscurity which prevented logical perspicuity [frege , ]. ―i mean by ‗a thought‘ something for which the question of truth can arise at all‖ [frege , ]. though frege‘s idiosyncratic use of the word ‗thought‘ to represent the objective content of a judgment has not caught on, the basic idea has persisted within contemporary philosophy under the heading ‗proposition‘. frege reserves the german term ‗satz‘ for what are now often referred to in english as sentences, i.e., verbal or written expressions of objective propositions (or fregean thoughts). [frege ]. the basic symbols of frege‘s first system, which express his basic concepts, are: the judgment or assertion stroke (§ ), the conditional stroke (§ ), the negation stroke (§ ), the identity symbol (§ ), letters which serve as variables (§§ - ), and the symbol for generality (§ ). in addition to the specific notions expressed by these symbols, frege also discusses the metatheoretic concepts of ‗function‘ and ‗argument‘ (§ ). within ordinary language. to this end, he developed some rather strict ideas concerning the relations between language and logic, and carefully distinguished between thoughts and their various possible expressions. . the role of a scientific language in an interesting paper defending and elaborating upon the role of his begriffsschrift, frege opens with the following paragraph: time and again, in the more abstract regions of science, the lack of a means of avoiding misunderstandings on the part of others, and also errors in one‘s own thought, makes itself felt. both [shortcomings] have their origin in the imperfection of language, for we do have to use sensible symbols to think. thus we find ourselves in something of a quandary. logic, as noted, studies relations, objects, and properties which are not at all sensible. but, nevertheless, given that we are experientially bound to our spatiotemporal world, we must employ spatiotemporal means in our study of logic. that this is possible, frege does not doubt, but neither does he explain the possibility of interaction between an objective, intangible, non-physical realm and our physical world. despite the lack of any detailed metaphysical or ontological speculation on the nature of this relation, frege does discuss in some detail specific ways in which slippage between the two realms can occur and lead us into error. ordinary language, for instance, is very often ambiguous: sentences or individual words can possess multiple meanings, some of which can be determined from context, some of which cannot. in addition to being ambiguous, words and sentences may also be vague, such that it is not at all clear which thoughts (if any) they make tangible. in ordinary, everyday speech ambiguity and vagueness are mostly harmless. however, when it comes to scientific uses, where precision and the pursuit of truth are paramount, the situation becomes intolerable. since ordinary language drives us away from the clarity and precision required to investigate the realm of thoughts and to communicate our findings to others, science must either put language aside or construct linguistic tools which minimize as much as possible the slippage between thoughts and their expressions. and, since frege admits that (at least for humanity) language is a necessary accompaniment of our apprehension of thoughts, science is in need of a logically precise language. indeed, frege notes that, even despite the obvious difficulties of employing the sensible to represent the non-sensible, the use of symbols allows us [...] to penetrate step by step into the inner world of our ideas and move about there at will, using the realm of the sensible itself to free ourselves from its constraint. symbols have the same importance for thought that discovering how to use the wind to sail against the wind had for navigation. thus let no one despise symbols! [frege , ]. for an interesting analysis of frege‘s views on vagueness in light of the modern differentiation between semantic, epistemological, and ontological vagueness, see [ruffino ]. [frege , ]. the importance accorded to symbols here is impaired by the imprecision in ordinary language. in order to better avoid this sort of imprecision in his begriffsschrift, frege developed a sophisticated account of the relations between language and the realm of thought. most relevant for our purposes here are his views on the nature of definitions, axioms, and what he called ‗elucidations,‘ to which i now turn. . definitions for frege, within a regimented language suitable for science, the occurrence of a sign within a sentence should indicate that the sense of that sign plays a role within the sense of the sentence (i.e., within the thought that the sentence expresses). thus, a sentence ―is put together in such a way that parts of the thought correspond to parts of the sentence‖. thus, in an ideal scientific language, the structure of thought is perfectly mirrored by the structure of the language itself. of course, with the increasingly complex concepts and thoughts of modern science, such a goal is difficult (not to mention irritating) to maintain. to remedy the potential annoyance of perfect rigor, frege allows for definitions as a kind of shorthand, though he does so in a way which he believes can maintain the intended correspondence between thought and language. he does this by treating definitions as arbitrary stipulations which give a simple sign a sense identical to the sense of a complex sign or group of signs. moreover, the sense of the complex sign must already be known. this apparently simple understanding of definition has a number of important consequences, particularly when framed in relation to frege‘s other views concerning the nature of logic. frege‘s definitions are, for instance, tautologous; given that a definition stipulates that the sense of a previously-senseless, simple sign is to be equivalent to that of an already-known complex sign, and given that the sense of this complex sign can be ‗read off‘ from the senses of its parts in a regimented language, there can be no doubt as to the truth of a definition. nor can such a definition be informative in any positive sense. for all a definition says, on this view, is that a sign possesses its own sense, i.e. the sense that we have decided to give it. once we accept a definition, it becomes a tautology. another important consequence of frege‘s understanding of the role of definition is that definitions are, at least logically speaking, superfluous. as we‘ve seen, frege‘s definitions stipulate for some sign that it possesses a sense identical to the sense of another sign or group of signs. definition thus occurs on a linguistic level, and definitions amount to linguistic conventions by which we agree to equate the senses of two distinct signs (or sign- complexes). now, for frege, any two expressions which express identical senses are logically equivalent; indeed, he calls definitions ‗identities‘ or ‗logical identities‘ on several occasions. thus, in any instance where we might employ one side of a definitional identity we could, without any change in truth conditions, employ the other. from a logical point of view, then, definition is a mere superfluity. of course, psychologically or pragmatically, [frege , in pw ]. cf. [frege , § ], [frege , in pw ]. at, e.g., [frege , § ], [frege , in pw ], and [frege , pw ]. definitions are often indispensible aids to the continued progress of a given science. this is particularly true in mathematics and physics, where linguistically simple terms like ‗limit‘ or ‗tensor‘ allow scientists access to the mental shortcuts required to produce results in the hyper-specialized fields of modern science. without the ease of operation enabled by definitions and their linguistic condensation of complex concepts, the smooth functioning and forward progress of science would be greatly stunted. this is nowhere more evident than in contemporary mathematics and physics, where whole axiomatic systems are often condensed into a few words. without the conceptual shorthand provided by well-defined terms for basic mathematical structures like groups or rings, it would be very difficult for mathematicians to work with more complex structures built up from these simpler constituents—e.g., cohomology groups or topological rings. even at the level of group theory itself, it would be rather difficult, from both the typesetter‘s and the mathematician‘s point of view, to prove theorems pertaining to groups if one were forced to restate the group axioms at each occurrence of the term ‗group‘. while frege might take definitions to be logically inert, he does not deny their necessity from a pragmatic point of view. an important corollary of the logical inertness of fregean definition is that no such definition can be used to prove a proposition which would otherwise remain unprovable. consider again that, for frege, a definition is mere shorthand which should always be eliminable, however tedious such elimination might be in practice. on this view, in any instance where we employ a definition within a proof we could just as well employ the complex sign or group of signs the definition is intended to abbreviate. this view also tells against the informativeness of proper definitions, and against the use of ‗creative‘ definitions within mathematics. on this score, frege writes the following: in the development of science it can indeed happen that one has used a word, a sign, an expression, over a long period under the impression that its sense is simple until one succeeds in analysing it into simpler logical constituents. by means of such an analysis, we may hope to reduce the number of axioms; for it may not be possible to prove a truth containing a complex constituent so long as that constituent remains unanalysed; but it may be possible, given an analysis, to prove it from truths in which the elements of the analysis occur. this is why it seems that a proof may be possible by means of a definition, if it provides an analysis, which would not be possible without this analysis, and this seems to contradict what we said earlier. thus what seemed to be an axiom before the analysis can appear as a theorem after the analysis. but how does one judge whether a logical analysis is correct? we cannot prove it to be so. the most one can be certain of is that as far as the form of words goes we have the same sentence after the analysis as before. but that the thought itself also remains the same is problematic. when we think that we have given a logical analysis of a word or sign that has been in use over a long period, what we have is a complex expression the sense of whose parts is known to us. the sense of the complex expression must be yielded by that of its parts. but does it coincide with the sense of the word with the long established use? i believe that we shall only be able to assert that it does when this is self-evident. and then what we have is an axiom. but that the simple sign that has been in use over a long period coincides in sense with that of the complex expression that we have formed, is just what the definition was meant to stipulate. frege‘s worry here is the apparent contradiction between his view that a definition cannot occur essentially in a proof and the claim that ―it may not be possible to prove a truth containing a complex constituent so long as that constituent remains unanalysed‖. frege‘s explanation here, as i read it, is that, while certain definitions seem to perform an essential function within proofs, this is illusory, an after-effect of the mistaken belief that the complex sign expresses some simple sense. for, on frege‘s view, either we grasp the sense of the complex sign—in which case the logical analysis of that sign‘s meaning only tells us what we already know and is thus superfluous—or we do not. if we do not grasp the sense of the sign, then we have strayed from frege‘s vision of a perfectly scientific language in which every sign and sentence possesses a clear meaning. we might read berkeley‘s attack on the ‗unscientific‘ methods of the early calculus as an example of the sort of thing frege wishes to highlight here: we may appear to be able to prove theorems with the modern definition of a limit that we might not have been able to prove while employing newtonian fluxions, and yet we might view fluxions as somehow definable in terms of more precise modern notions. the problem, as berkeley points out, is that the concept of a fluxion (among others) was insufficiently precise, such that we cannot really view the definition of integrals and derivatives in terms of more rigorous modern concepts to be the kind of ‗logical analysis‘ which frege discusses in this passage. thus, we do not gain access to new theorems purely by means of logical analysis, as the concepts purported to be analysed in this case were, in a sense, not full-fledged concepts at all, and, therefore, incapable of being analysed in a purely logical manner. none of this, of course, tells against the historical or epistemological usefulness of these sorts of definitions, nor against the epistemological connection between vague ‗concepts‘ like those of the early calculus and their more precise modern cousins. but, even granting that we understand the sense of the complex sign without already grasping its identity with the sense of a simpler sign given by a logical analysis, frege notes potential problems. if we fail to grasp immediately that two senses are identical, we either have a vague apprehension of the sense (which is a psychological or physiological problem, and not a logical one), the sense itself is vague (in which case it is no ‗sense‘ at all in frege‘s view), or we have mistakenly shifted the meanings of our terms, such that we take now one and now another sense to be the object of our logical analysis. if we are working within a scientific language constructed along fregean lines, in none of these three cases does the definition, in its role as a definition, provide us with information that we could not otherwise have gained. for frege, then, the appearance that a definition is essential or otherwise informative is an historical accident related to our misapprehension of a particular sense, which has nothing to do with the definition in its proper role. on the face of it, this view seems rather puzzling: for, surely, we can employ a sign properly without grasping all the finer characteristics of its sense. on this frege writes [frege , pw - ]. the fact is that if we really do have a clear grasp of the sense of the simple sign, then it cannot be doubtful whether it agrees with the sense of the complex expression. if this is open to question although we can clearly recognize the sense of the complex expression from the way it is put together, then the reason must lie in the fact that we do not have a clear grasp of the sense of the simple sign, but that its outlines are confused as if we saw it through a mist. the effect of the logical analysis of which we spoke will then be precisely this—to articulate the sense clearly. work of this kind is very useful; it does not, however, form part of the construction of the system, but must take place beforehand. frege admits, then, that occasionally the use of a simple sign—a sign which really represents, indeed is defined as identical in sense with, some complex expression—becomes so entrenched that we can lose sight of the fact that it is identical in sense to some complex sign or group of signs. in effect, we fail to grasp the sense of the simple sign fully, and grasp only enough of this sense to employ it correctly in certain contexts. still working under this veil, we then perform a logical analysis (i.e., we construct a definitional equality) which illustrates that the simple sign has the same sense as a complex sign whose sense is already known. but, for frege, the correctness of the thought which establishes this identity is not and cannot be a positive discovery relative to the science at issue. for we can be neither correct nor incorrect in our logical analysis until both terms already possess some sense, and it is precisely the provision of the simple term with a sense that is performed by a definition. if we grasp the sense of the simple term clearly, then we will know immediately whether or not it is identical with the sense of the complex sign, which is already known. so, without a clear sense already in mind, the so-called logical analysis of the sense of a simple sign by means of a definition into a complex sense is entirely impossible—something like this kind of analysis is only made possible by our vague, unclear grasp of a sense which is, in itself, perfectly precise. the discovery of logically efficacious definitions already presupposes a prior assumption about the equivalence of the senses of the two expressions. such logical analyses, then, simply establish clearly the sense of the signs to be used within the system—they clarify what must already be known if we are to work and think scientifically, i.e., precisely. such work is undoubtedly important, and many of the most fruitful mathematical definitions perform this kind of clarificatory work. though not at all in accordance with frege‘s particular vision of the nature of definition, the early history of group theory developed along these lines. the group concept was first employed in the very specific context of attempting to illustrate the general insolubility of quintic equations. it was only through great mathematical excavation and rigorization that the abstract concept of the group fully emerged, such that the factor groups employed by galois and others in their search for an answer regarding quintics were seen to be specific instances of a more general mathematical phenomenon. the eventual definition of the group concept, by way of the now well-known group axioms, occurred only after the concept had been sufficiently clearly grasped to be [frege , pw ]. a more extensive discussion of the ways in which frege deals with this apparent ‗paradox of analysis‘ can be found in [horty , ff.] and [resnik , - ; - ]. employed in a number of seemingly unrelated contexts. so it is that many mathematical concepts are grasped only partially, or ‗seen through a mist‘, and, with this tenuous grasp, come to be clarified through what appears to be purely logical analysis. frege‘s point is that this is epistemological, historical, or psychological analysis, and not the sort of systematic logical activity it may on occasion appear to be. for frege, then, this is not really logical work insofar as it has no real correlate within the objective realm of thoughts, nor, correspondingly, within a perfectly scientific language. another important quality of fregean definitions is their ‗completeness‘. as a result of his views on the nature of sense (and the nature of regimented languages suitable for science), frege requires that definitions of concepts must be ‗complete‘ in the following sense: a definition of a concept (of a possible predicate) must [...] unambiguously determine, as regards any object, whether or not it falls under the concept (whether or not the predicate is truly assertible of it). thus there must not be any object as regards which the definition leaves in doubt whether it falls under the concept; though for us men, with our defective knowledge, the question may not always be decidable. we may express this metaphorically as follows: the concept must have a sharp boundary. if we represent concepts in extension by areas on a plane, this is admittedly a picture that may be used only with caution, but here it can do us good service. to a concept without a sharp boundary there would correspond an area that had not a sharp boundary-line all round, but in places just vaguely faded away into the background. this would not really be an area at all; and likewise a concept that is not sharply defined is wrongly termed a concept. such quasi-conceptual constructions cannot be recognized as concepts by logic; it is impossible to lay down precise laws for them. the law of excluded middle is really just another form of the requirement that the concept should have a sharp boundary. any object Δ that you choose to take either falls under the concept Φ or does not fall under it; tertium non datur. e.g. would the sentence ‗any square root of is odd‘ have a comprehensible sense at all if square root of were not a concept with a sharp boundary? has the question ‗are we still christians?‘ really got a sense, if it is indeterminate whom the predicate ‗christian‘ can truly be asserted of, and who must be refused it? as we‘ve seen, a large part of frege‘s reconstruction of scientific discourse via his work in logic and logical notation involves removing ambiguity and vagueness, and insisting upon strict divisions among distinct concepts. remember, too, that, for frege, definitions establish a logical equality between the senses of signs, i.e., they establish that the sense of a simple sign is to be identical with the sense of a complex sign. if the sense of the complex sign were indeterminate or ambiguous, we would be unable to determine whether or not we were associating the proper sense with the simple sign. thus, the simple sign could not properly see [wussing ] for an excellent account of the various historical sources leading to the emergence of the abstract group concept. frege extends these considerations on the definition of concepts to the definition of relations in § of [frege ]. [frege , § ]; [frege , ]. function as an abbreviation for the complex sign and the definition would be entirely useless for the purposes of science. the requirement that definitions of concepts be complete in this sense also leads frege to reject the relatively common mathematical practice of ‗piecemeal‘ definition. piecemeal definitions, within mathematics, are those which (partially) define a concept for some limited domain and then employ this limited, partially defined concept to extend the definition to other domains. thus for instance, we might define addition for the natural numbers and employ this definition to extend the ‗same‘ concept of addition to the rational, irrational, real, and complex numbers. in a continuation of the train of thought quoted above, frege attacks this form of definition: now from [the requirement that definitions be complete] it follows that the mathematicians‘ favourite procedure, piecemeal definition, is inadmissible. [...] such piecemeal definition is a procedure comparable to drawing the boundary of a part of a surface in bits, perhaps without making them join up. but the chief mistake is that they are already using the symbol or word for theorems before it has been completely defined—often, indeed, with a view to further development of the definition itself. so long as it is not completely defined, or known in some other way, what a word or symbol stands for, it may not be used in an exact science—least of all with a view to further development of its own definition. thus, the practice of defining a term only for the natural numbers and, subsequently, extending it bit by bit to other number domains is forbidden by frege insofar as, strictly speaking, the initial ‗partial definition‘ of a concept is senseless. a definition is a stipulation that the sense of one sign is to be equated with the sense of another; senses are unambiguous entities which populate a realm distinct from the logical imperspicuity of everyday speech and thought. hence a definition which purports to provide a sign with an ambiguous or incompletely determined ‗sense‘ is no definition at all, because there can be no such senses. if all senses are determinate, as frege holds, and all definitions are mere assignations of already-known senses to previously unused signs, then the ascription of an indeterminate or incomplete sense is simply nonsense and not a form of definition at all. in addition to logical superfluity and completeness, frege‘s stipulative conception of definition also commits him to the view that there can only be a single definition for any given sign. for consider the two possible consequences of a contrary view. in the first case there might arise two distinct definitions of the same sign, i.e., a single sign would be assigned two distinct senses. the use of such a sign would be ambiguous. but, according to frege‘s conception of a properly scientific language, which is his only concern when discussing definition, such ambiguity must at all costs be avoided. indeed, one of the [frege , § ]; [frege , - ]. on the possibility of ontologically vague or ambiguous entities in frege‘s thought, see [ruffino , - ]. frege notes other problems with piecemeal definition which i shall not discuss here (e.g., their effect on the validity of alleged theorems employing the term thus defined); cf. [frege , § ]. primary reasons for constructing a regimented language at all is to eliminate the ambiguity present in both ordinary language and contemporary scientific discourse. accordingly, we cannot allow multiple senses for a single sign. in the second case, two distinct definitions might assign the same sense to a single sign. in this case, we have not ambiguity but redundancy. even more than redundancy, we are forcing upon ourselves a duty which otherwise would not present itself, namely the duty of proving that the two supposedly consistent definitions are in fact consistent—or in the case of equivalence, that they are equivalent. for these reasons, then, frege‘s views allow for at most one definition of any given term. . elucidations it is by stipulating, arbitrarily, that the sense of the new simple sign is identical to the sense of a complex sign or group of signs that fregean definitions provide signs with senses. such definitions give new signs the same sense as complex signs whose senses are already known. now, it can happen that the sense of such a complex sign was itself given by means of a definition, in which case we can ask after the meanings of the simpler signs in terms of which it, too, is defined. but, on frege‘s view, such a chain of definitions must eventually come to an end. a science must start with some primitive signs whose senses cannot be given in terms of definitions because, in the initial stages of system-construction, there just are no simpler signs in terms of which the primitives can be defined. given that frege is interested in creating a scientific language in which every sentence and every sign is meaningful, it follows that even the primitives of the system must already possess senses. the role of elucidations [erläuterungen] is to guide the reader toward a grasp of the senses which the system-builder intends to express by the primitive signs of the system. it is to be assumed that the system-builders themselves are always able to grasp the senses of their system-primitives, and that these senses do not fluctuate. as frege‘s translator kluge notes, however, ―even [elucidations] presuppose the intelligibility of at least some of the terms involved in giving them; hence not even here can we escape the necessity of simply presupposing [the senses of] some terms as known.‖ for frege, elucidations cannot play a role within the system itself. instead, like euclid‘s second type of definition (e.g., his definition of ‗point‘), they are relegated to the propaedeutic, which clears the way for systematic thinking by preparing the materials out of which the system is to be built. once these elucidations have achieved their function (i.e., once they have managed to guide the reader toward the senses intended to be expressed by the primitive signs of the system) they can be safely discarded and the construction of the system from its primitive building blocks can begin. ―...the same thing may never be defined twice, because it would then remain in doubt whether these definitions were consistent with each other‖ [frege , § . ]. [kluge , xxvii-xxviii]. . axioms frege held a traditional view of axioms as unprovable truths which lie at the foundation of a particular deductive edifice. axioms, unlike definitions, offer indispensible support when attempting to prove theorems, for different sets of axioms will generally speaking lead to different deductive consequences. on frege‘s view, the axioms of geometry present us with a small group of unprovable truths about space which, when combined with suitable modes of inference and a grasp of some primitive geometric concepts, allow us to elaborate the entire edifice of euclidean geometry. in a more general attack on the notion of a purely formal mathematical system, frege writes the following of specifically geometrical science: to be sure, that on which we base our definitions may itself have been defined previously; however, when we retrace our steps further, we shall always come upon something which, being a simple, is indefinable, and must be admitted to be incapable of further analysis. and the properties belonging to these ultimate building blocks of a discipline contain, as it were in nuce, its whole contents. in geometry, these properties are expressed in the axioms insofar as they are independent of one another. now it is clear that the boundaries of a discipline are determined by the nature of its ultimate building blocks. here we see frege‘s view of the purpose of axioms in relation to his understanding of deductive theories in general. we begin with a stock of basic concepts and objects (which we have, ideally, grasped via elucidations), and the properties/characteristics of these are given to us by way of a cluster of axioms, which are truths about those basic concepts and objects. in contrast with hilbert, for whom the truth of geometric axioms was intimately connected to their consistency relative to a particular axiomatic system, frege saw the truth of the axioms of geometry as truth simpliciter. these axioms, if true, were true in just the same way that any other everyday thought was true. here we find one of frege‘s most fundamental disagreements with the geometric trends of the th century. for hilbert and others like him, the truth of euclidean geometry was not at all incompatible with the truth of various other non-euclidean geometries. this is because the truth of an axiomatic system simply results from its internal consistency. insofar as euclidean, non-euclidean, archimedean, non-archimedean, and many other forms of geometry are all internally consistent, then, they are all equally ‗true‘. frege, in stark contrast, takes euclidean geometry to be the science of space, so that its axioms are truths about space, truths which directly contradict the axioms of other candidate geometries like the hyperbolic geometry investigated by bolyai and lobachevsky. insofar as frege construed euclidean geometry to be a theory about space, then, its truth is in direct contradiction with the claims of the various non-euclidean geometries. [frege , ]. § . the frege-hilbert correspondence now that we have established some of the context and content of the views of both hilbert and frege, we can turn more profitably to their correspondence. the correspondence and subsequent articles by frege are an interesting focal point for examining differing conceptions of the nature of mathematical structures. hilbert, for his part, offers a more strictly relational point of view regarding axiomatics than he does elsewhere in his own work. the viewpoint developed there is similar in many respects to the modern postulational point of view, and (some of) frege‘s criticisms are illustrative of larger problems within the more general postulational point of view as well. frege‘s viewpoint, too, despite its idiosyncrasies shares general features with many modern accounts of the notion of structure which seek to embed the purely relational concept of structure within a fixed hierarchy of some sort (e.g., logic, set theory, category theory, some form of axiomatized structure theory, etc.). it is against hilbert‘s position that frege‘s own views come into sharpest relief, and it is in direct contrast with hilbert‘s quasi-relational views that we can best understand the problems related to the concept of mathematical structure which will interest us in subsequent chapters. let us now turn to the debate. . the course of the dispute after having met hilbert at a scientific convention in lübeck in , frege instigated a brief exchange regarding the uses and abuses of formalization in mathematics, a topic in which hilbert had apparently expressed some interest when they met. this initial exchange quickly petered out, and it wasn‘t until december of that frege wrote to hilbert again, having recently received and worked through a copy of the latter‘s festschrift on the foundations of geometry. having found much confusion in the work, frege wrote to hilbert for clarification (particularly regarding his use of the terms ‗definition,‘ ‗explanation,‘ and ‗axiom‘), he also took the opportunity to acquaint hilbert with his own views on these matters. hilbert‘s response was prompt—dated just two days after frege‘s letter—and contained several attempts to respond to frege‘s request for clarification. he restated in more detail his own understanding of the nature and purpose of axiomatic systems and, towards the close of the letter, attempted to illustrate the advantages of his own (loosely model- theoretic) understanding over the traditional picture he believed to be held by frege. frege replied on the sixth of january, thanking hilbert for his letter, and beginning by rephrasing his newly clarified understanding of hilbert‘s approach to axiomatization in general, and geometry in particular. after agreeing, in broad terms, with hilbert‘s dismissal of earlier forms of ‗genetic‘ or piecemeal approaches to axiomatization, frege turns once more to the perceived lack of clarity in the specifics of hilbert‘s approach. his criticisms here again pertain to hilbert‘s use of definitions, explanations, and axioms. the tone of the letter is admonitory, and frege describes at length his view of the proper approach to the subject at hand. after this point, there were a few more exchanges between mid-january and november , but hilbert seems to have lost interest in the correspondence, much to frege‘s chagrin. frege, who was not at all satisfied with the results of their exchanges, suggested that their correspondence be published—a suggestion which hilbert apparently rejected, as his views had changed and his focus had shifted in the meantime. undeterred, frege published a series of articles relating to their dispute; alwin korselt, a proponent of hilbert-style axiomatics, took up the gauntlet and frege‘s final two papers in the series are directed at both korselt and hilbert. i will now turn to frege‘s criticisms of the views proposed, first by hilbert, and then by korselt. . frege‘s criticisms of hilbert . . definitions and ‗explanations‘ one of frege‘s central complaints against hilbert pertains to the way in which he employs the terms definition and erklärung. as we‘ve seen, frege‘s work in logic and the foundations of arithmetic had led him to erect a strict boundary between pre-systematic elucidations and definitions properly speaking. a fregean elucidation is similar in kind to euclid‘s definition of the term ‗point‘: it is a pre-systematic signpost toward the proper meaning of the basic elements of the system. once we have grasped these basic elements and begun to work within the system (of logic, arithmetic, geometry, etc.) we can dispense with elucidations altogether. definitions, for frege, are a rather different matter. a definition only makes sense within a particular system, insofar as it is a proposition which declares that a simple term (e.g., ‗continuous‘) is to have the same meaning as a more complicated term, proposition, or conjunction of propositions. in this sense, definitions too are dispensable for frege, as we could just as well employ the complex expression in each case—nevertheless the role of a definition only makes sense within a particular system, whereas the role of an elucidation is fulfilled in the anteroom through which we must pass before entering the system. given the precision with which frege employed the term ‗definition‘, it is not entirely surprising that he found hilbert‘s treatment of geometrical definitions somewhat unclear. his initial criticism is that hilbert does not adequately distinguish between his own use of the terms ‗definition‘ and ‗explanation‘—some explanations seem, to frege, to be identical in character to definitions properly speaking, while at other times the two seem to diverge significantly. in connection with this confusion, he refers to hilbert‘s axioms of order (found in hilbert‘s axiom group ii). frege writes to hilbert that ―i [..] cannot take your [definition of the concept ‗between‘ via the axioms of order] for a definition, but you also do not call it a definition but an explanation [erklärung]‖. indeed, hilbert does employ both definition and erklärung throughout, and frege notes that it is difficult to establish the precise it is useful to note that the german term ‗erklärung‘ is very often used as a synonym of ‗definition‘. the point frege makes against hilbert is not that he uses the term ‗erklärung‘ incorrectly, but that his use of the term seems to fluctuate, such that frege is unsure whether hilbert‘s erklärungen are (what frege himself would call) elucidations or if they are definitions properly speaking. at several points throughout the grundlagen, it appears as though hilbert‘s erklärungen are different in kind from his more usual definitions, so that frege‘s confusion regarding hilbert‘s use of the term is not surprising, nor as pedantic as it might seem at first glance. (in what follows i will occasionally employ the english term ‗explanation‘ in place of the german ‗erklärung‘). [frege , ]. difference between the meanings of the two terms, if indeed one is to be found. to this end, frege highlights the many different ways in which the terms are employed in hilbert‘s text. he points, for example, to hilbert‘s explanations in § (‗consequences of the axioms of connection and order‘) as instances where the term ‗erklärung‘ seems to be employed as a synonym for ‗definition‘. here is the first of these explanations: erklärung. es seien a, a′, o, b vier punkte einer geraden a, so daβ o zwischen a und b, aber nicht zwischen a und a′ liegt; dann sagen wir: die punkte a, a′ liegen in der geraden a auf ein und derselben seite vom punkte o, und die punkte a, b liegen in der geraden a auf verschiedenen seiten vom punkte o. die sämtlichen auf ein und derselben seite von o gelegenen punkte der geraden a heiβen auch ein von o ausgehender halbstrahl; somit teilt jeder punkt einer geraden diese in zwei halbstrahlen. now, to see frege‘s point here, contrast this explanation with the following, from the previous section: erklärung. die punkte einer geraden stehen in gewissen beziehungen zueinander, zu deren beschreibung uns insbesondere das wort ‗zwischen‘ dient. explanation. the points of a line stand in a certain relation to one another, which can be described by the word ‗between‘. in the first instance, we witness hilbert providing a precise statement of the conditions under which we are licensed to say that a specific relation holds; in the second instance, however, we are given a very broad, almost vacuous, statement which indicates only that we can use the word ‗between‘ to describe some relation in which points of a line may stand to one another, though what this relation is, precisely, is not given by the explanation. frege writes of the latter sort of explanations that they ―are apparently of a very different kind [from the explanations of § ], for here the meanings of the words ‗point‘, ‗line‘ ‗between‘ are not given, but are assumed to be known in advance. at least it seems so. but it is left unclear what you call a point‖. so, if we are to understand some of hilbert‘s explanations on the model of definitions, then they are by frege‘s standards quite bad definitions and, really, no definitions at all, insofar as they fail to clearly fix the references of the terms which are supposed to be defined. recall that, for frege, the role of a definition, properly speaking, is to stipulate that the meaning of a complex term or proposition is the same as the meaning of a newly introduced, simple term. thus, for example, if frege‘s work on the concept of number had panned out, in place of a host of complex statements about equivalence classes and courses of values, we would [hilbert , ]. [hilbert , ]. [frege , ]. have been able to plug in the much simpler term ‗number‘ while still preserving the precise meaning of statements which employed the more complex combination of terms. recall, too, that for frege ‗meaning‘ is understood in terms of his basic distinction between functions (or concepts) and objects, and that only sentences which express ‗fully saturated‘ thoughts (in his sense) can be considered meaningful or possess a truth value. if the references of hilbert‘s terms are not fixed by way of elucidations or definitions, then the sentences which contain those terms cannot express complete thoughts, and hence cannot be true or false by frege‘s lights. in stark contrast to frege‘s aims, one of the key features of hilbert‘s approach to axiomatic systems is to be found in the fact that the terms of those systems are not given a definitive, fixed interpretation. at most, an axiom system should be ‗categorical‘ in the sense that any model of the system will be isomorphic to any other—thus, even a categorical axiom system should only ever determine a class of isomorphic models. for hilbert, there appeared to be no point in moving beyond this class of models to a single, uniquely determined model, with a particular fixed set of objects (i.e., the euclidean points, lines, etc.). precisely the point of formalizing geometry was to escape the vagaries required by the elucidatory definitions of, e.g., lines as breadthless length—precision and generality were gained by escaping the demand for unique, fixed reference and examining the more important structural relations determined by a particular axiomatization. for frege, however, the indeterminacy of reference here makes hilbert‘s definitions useless. frege asks ‗what do you mean by point?‘ and by this question he means ‗to what does your term ‗point‘ refer?‘. hilbert, on the other hand, can only answer frege‘s question by directing him toward the relations determined by the axioms of his system. the further requirement that he precisely fix the reference of his basic terms once and for all directly contradicts the very purpose of his axiomatization of geometry, as he saw it. fixing the reference of the terms in more than a merely relational way would restrict the system to one particular interpretation, and, accordingly, greatly limit the applicability of that system to areas of inquiry not already intended by the developers of that interpretation. he writes in response to frege that: [...] it is surely obvious that every theory is only a scaffolding or schema of concepts together with their necessary relations to one another, and that the basic elements can be thought of in any way one likes. if in speaking of my points i think of some system of things, e.g., the system: love, law, chimney-sweep... and then assume all my axioms as relations between these things, then my propositions, e.g. pythagoras‘ theorem, are also valid for these things. in other words: any theory can always be applied to infinitely many systems of basic elements. one only needs to apply a reversible one- one transformation and lay it down that the axioms shall be correspondingly the same for the transformed things. this circumstance is in fact frequently made use of, e.g. in the principle of duality, etc., and i have made use of it in my independence proofs. we can see here that the idea of fixing the reference of his terms any more determinately than up to isomorphism seemed mathematically uninteresting to hilbert. as we saw above, hilbert‘s interest in geometry was not at all in the properties of a specific collection of [hilbert to frege, in frege , - ]. objects, but in the structural properties (consistency, simplicity, categoricity, etc.) of axiomatic systems themselves. he took a mathematical theory to be a schema which can be exemplified in a variety of different concrete systems. for instance, because there exists an isomorphism between the basic entities and relations of euclidean geometry and those of the set of ordered triples of real numbers, the consistency of euclidean geometry follows from the (tacitly assumed) consistency of the theory of ℝ . but this model-theoretic, structure- focussed view of hilbert‘s is predicated upon the belief that the axiomatic structure of euclidean geometry can be discussed with complete indifference to any of its particular interpretations, be they number-theoretic or more traditionally geometric in nature. to demand to know which things were picked out by his axioms prior to interpretation seemed to him almost nonsensical and, at the very least, beside the point. from hilbert‘s point of view, then, frege‘s remarks seemed, first, to have missed the point of axiomatizing geometry entirely and, second, to have demanded a massive step backwards in mathematical thinking. the conflict between two demands—frege‘s for rigor based upon a precise understanding of certain logical concepts, and hilbert‘s for mathematical fruitfulness based on generality and applicability—was sharpened considerably by hilbert‘s reply to frege‘s initial criticisms. in his very direct response, hilbert writes: i do not want to presuppose anything as known. i think that with my explanation in § i give the definitions of the concepts point, straight line, and plane if one again adds to these all the axioms of axiom-groups i-v as characteristics. if someone is looking for other definitions of ―point,‖ etc., perhaps by means of circumscriptions like extensionless, then of course i would most decidedly have to oppose such an enterprise. one is then looking for something that can never be found because there is nothing there, and everything gets lost, becomes confused and vague, and degenerates into a game of hide-and-seek. if you prefer to call my axioms characteristics of the concept that are posited in the ―explanations‖ and consequently exist, i should have no objections to this except, perhaps, that it contradicts the custom of mathematicians and physicists. of course i must also be able to do as i please in the matter of positing characteristics; for as soon as i have posited an axiom, it will exist and be ―true‖. here hilbert attempts to defuse frege‘s objections regarding his apparently unclear concept of definition in two ways. first, he suggests that if frege is looking for something like euclid‘s definitions of ‗point‘ and ‗line‘, then he is barking up the wrong tree—such definitions play no real mathematical role and have, to hilbert‘s mind, been rightly dispensed with in most modern mathematical works. their obsolescence is due to their lack of clarity, the seeming impossibility of scientifically providing a pre-mathematical definition of point, and, most importantly, to the lack of intrinsic mathematical interest in uniquely fixing geometric concepts beyond the limits imposed by a categorical formalization. hilbert‘s interest here is in the structure determined by the axioms of euclidean geometry, and not in the nature of the entities which might serve as the reference for the basic terms of the axiomatization on one particular interpretation, traditional though it might be. second, either ℝ or ℝ , for the cases of plane and solid geometry respectively. [hilbert to frege, in frege , - ]. hilbert argues that if frege still has problems with his understanding of definition, he can look to the axiom groups for answers: the full meaning of the concept of point, for example, is not given solely through the explanations and definitions of that term which are given by hilbert. instead, this meaning is given when those definitions and explanations are taken in conjunction with the axiom groups. if frege is still unsatisfied by this characterization of the concept of a euclidean point, then, to hilbert‘s mind, he is simply asking for something which cannot (and, really, should not) be given. . . defining axioms as we‘ve just seen, in his attempt to respond to frege‘s criticisms of his definitions, hilbert suggested that, in addition to those propositions marked off by the headings ‗definition‘ and ‗explanation,‘ frege should consider his axiom groups themselves as part of the definition of basic concepts like point, line, etc. even more strongly, he writes that ―[...] it is impossible to give a definition of a point in lines, since it is only the whole axiom-structure that gives the complete definition, and therefore each new axiom alters the concept. ‗point‘ is always something different in euclidean, non-euclidean, archimedean and non-archimedean geometry respectively‖. two things are worth noting in this remark. first is hilbert‘s view—dramatically different from frege‘s—that axioms can play a role in the definition of the basic terms of a particular system. second, is hilbert‘s admission that different collections of axioms result in different basic concepts, such that the term ‗point‘ is employed within different axiomatizations to designate quite different objects (i.e., euclidean, non-euclidean, archimedean, and non-archimedean ‗points‘). both of these aspects of hilbert‘s view have become a mainstay of the model-theoretic conception of axiomatics. in any introductory text in group theory or abstract algebra, for instance, the term ‗group‘ is defined by the group axioms, and different types of group (abelian, non- abelian, galois, cyclic, etc.) are given by altering the axiom set in various ways. this procedure is now common throughout other branches of mathematics, various forms of geometry included. frege, however, found hilbert‘s particular version of this view logically imprecise at best, and an example of meaningless formalism at worst. frege himself viewed axioms as unprovable truths, and definitions as a kind of logical shorthand which helped to fix the meaning of new signs in relation to already established signs. axioms and definitions thus play very different logical roles, and have quite different relations to the inferential systems of which they are parts. fregean definitions are true by virtue of stipulation: we simply decree that a new sign is to have the sense of some other sign or combination of signs. an axiom, by contrast, was thought by frege to be true in virtue of the way that the world is—in the case of geometry, by virtue of the nature of space itself. in his first essay dealing with the foundations of geometry, frege writes of hilbert‘s understanding of axioms that: once the explanation [of the meaning of the term ‗rectangle‘] including the two axioms has been posited, the latter may be asserted as true; however, their truth [i.e., [hilbert to frege, in frege , - ]. [scott , ff.] and [deskins , ff.] are representative. the truth of the axioms] will not be founded on an intuition, but on the definition. and it is precisely because of this that no real knowledge is contained in [hilbert‘s axioms]—something which undoubtedly is the case with axioms in the traditional sense of the word. the truth of hilbert‘s axioms, as well as their meaningfulness, depends essentially upon the complex definitions of which they are a part. because the supposed truth of hilbert‘s axioms is not determined by an external check (like our intuition of space, some objective conceptual structure, or the very nature of physical space itself), frege argues that the entire edifice constructed upon these axioms is empty and ill-founded. furthermore, since for frege definitions are, at least in principle, always eliminable from any chain of logical inferences, they therefore ought not to serve as premises in a proof. nor can they make possible proofs which are otherwise impossible. axioms, by contrast, must, at some point, serve as the premises of some proofs within a system, as they are the foundation upon which the entire deductive structure of a particular system is based. given that the axioms of a system must play some inferential role, it is important (for frege at least) that they express complete thoughts. but, if the sense of a term occurring within a sentence expressing an axiom is not fixed, then the axiom itself is not a complete thought, and thus can be neither true nor false. thus, if each axiom or axiom group adds some new element in the definition of the basic terms of the system, it is only with an extraordinarily complex conjunction of all the axioms, explanations, and definitions that we get a complete thought. the result, frege suggests, is a ―logical edifice [which is] puzzling and opaque in the highest degree‖. in ―on the foundations of geometry‖ frege remarks that insight into the logical nature of a mathematical theory is frequently made more difficult by the fact that what really ought to be represented as a unitary propositional complex is torn apart into apparently independent grammatical propositions. this often happens for stylistic reasons, in order to avoid a propositional monstrosity; but this cannot be permitted to obstruct one‘s insight into the nature of the case. it seems clear that frege believed hilbert‘s stylistic choices to have greatly obstructed logical insight in this case. so, taken individually, frege suggests that hilbert‘s axioms do not possess a meaning, nor are they true or false, hence they can play no inferential role in the subsequent development of the science of geometry. [frege , ]. moreover, the axioms must express true thoughts as frege maintained that proper inferences can only be drawn from truths. in a posthumously published fragment, he writes: ―now if a is the concept of a right-angled equilateral pentagon, ‗this a‘ is an inadmissible—a meaningless—proper name, and nothing whatever can be inferred either from the sentence ‗this a has the property b‘ or from ‗this a does not have the property b; for, strictly, we do not infer from sentences at all, but from thoughts. and only true thoughts are admissible as premises of inferences‖ [frege a, in pw, ]. [frege to hilbert, in frege , ]. [frege , ]. . . equivocations in hilbert‘s independence and consistency proofs hilbert happily accepts that different collections of axioms help to define different basic concepts. thus, despite the similarity between the euclidean and non-euclidean concepts of ‗point‘, because these different geometrical structures are given by different collections of axioms, their basic notions are also different. hence, theorems proven for non-euclidean points are not the same as theorems proven for euclidean points. hilbert insists that the removal or addition of a single (independent) axiom results in a completely new system of basic concepts, a system which will have its own set of deductive consequences. in his replies to this aspect of hilbert‘s view, frege notes two difficulties, both of which involve dangerous equivocations. the first sort of equivocation is most apparent in hilbert‘s independence proofs. recall that hilbert‘s method of proving the independence of a particular axiom from a collection of other axioms involved modelling two distinct sets of axioms: one in which all the axioms including the independent axiom hold true, and one in which all the axioms save the independent one hold true. this is intended to prove something about a particular axiom as well as a particular set of axioms. but, notes frege, using hilbert‘s own reasoning, such proofs simply cannot achieve this goal. for, in the two separate models we are not working with the same basic concepts at all. by removing an axiom (as is required for the independence proof to go through) we are altering the meaning of the basic terms, if indeed they possess a meaning in frege‘s sense at all. for example, if our intent is to prove the independence of the parallel postulate from the other axioms of euclidean geometry, when we remove the parallel postulate from the larger set, the meaning of the basic terms occurring in the axioms (e.g., point, line, etc.) changes. but hilbert‘s proof seems to require that the meanings of these terms remain stable throughout the proof, otherwise we are simply constructing two completely unrelated models. it seems, then, that hilbert‘s own construal of his methods directly thwarts his aim of providing independence proofs. from frege‘s point of view, addressing this problem requires either that hilbert alter his methods such that different systems are not treated as one, or he must alter his goal of providing an independence proof of the euclidean version of the parallel postulate from the remainder of the euclidean axioms. the second, more subtle, form of equivocation is best illustrated by hilbert‘s consistency proofs. here hilbert constructs a single model of his axioms, i.e., an interpretation in which each axiom holds. the existence of a model is meant to show that the axioms can be true together, and are thus consistent. since hilbert takes his axioms to be a mere scaffolding whose basic terms do not refer to specific objects, from his point of view there appears to be no problem with this procedure. to see where the equivocation lies here, we must turn to frege‘s idea of concepts of different levels. a first-level concept is one under which objects fall. for instance, all cows fall under the first-level concept ‗x is a cow‘ and all euclidean points fall under the first-level concept ‗x is a euclidean point‘. of first-level concepts, frege writes that [...] between objects and (first-level) concepts there obtains a relation of subsumption: an object falls under a concept. for example, jena is a university town. concepts are generally composed of component-concepts—the characteristics. black silken cloth has the characteristics black, silken, and cloth. an object falling under this concept has these characteristics as its properties. what is a characteristic with respect to a concept is a property of an object falling under that concept. analogous to (though still distinct from) the relation of subsumption which obtains between first-level concepts and objects is the relation between second- and first-level concepts. frege writes that in this case [...] one could speak of subsumption; but this relation, although indeed similar, nevertheless is not the same as that of the subsumption of an object under a first-level concept. i shall say that a first-level concept falls (not under, but) within a second-level concept. the distinction between concepts of the first and second levels is just as sharp as that between objects and concepts of the first level; for objects can never substitute for concepts. therefore an object can never fall under a second-level concept; such would be not false but nonsensical. if one tried something like this linguistically, one would get neither a true nor a false thought, but no thought at all. [...] a different feature of first-level concepts is expressed by the proposition that if an object falls under such a concept, another object distinct from the preceding one also falls under it. here we have a second concept of the second level. from both, as second-level characteristics, we can form a third second-level concept within which fall all those first-level concepts under which fall at least two distinct objects. the concepts prime number, planet, and human being would be such as fall within this second-level concept. frege notes here that the meaningfulness of our language depends upon our subsuming entities of appropriate type under concepts of appropriate type. thus, we can meaningfully state that a certain entity falls under a certain concept only if the first entity is one level lower in frege‘s ontological hierarchy. any confusion in this regard results in nonsense, which is neither true nor false. the second equivocation which frege examines in hilbert‘s work results from just this sort of confusion between concepts of different levels. hilbert‘s proof that euclidean geometry is consistent, for instance, involves constructing an interpretation of the axioms of euclidean geometry. to frege‘s mind, this process of constructing a model already requires an equivocation between first- and second-level concepts. for instance, euclid‘s first axiom—taken in the traditional sense—is a claim which pertains to objects (i.e., euclidean points and straight lines). similarly, hilbert‘s model (constructed, either in the field Ω or within the real numbers) requires a discussion of objects, insofar as hilbert treats ‗points‘ in this interpretation as pairs of numbers. by illustrating that the real numbers can serve, given an appropriate interpretation, as a model of [frege to liebmann, in frege , ]. [frege to liebmann, in frege , ]. euclidean geometry, hilbert intends to show that euclidean geometry is consistent, under the reasonable assumption that the real numbers themselves are consistent. what frege takes hilbert to have shown, however, is that both the euclidean concept of ‗point‘ and the concept of ‗point‘ understood in terms of the real numbers or the field Ω fall under a distinct, second-level concept (which hilbert also calls ‗point‘). more generally, frege believes that hilbert‘s consistency proofs pertain, not to euclidean geometry and its first-level concepts, but to a system of second-level concepts which is entirely distinct from euclidean geometry, but within which euclidean geometry and hilbert‘s interpretation of euclidean geometry both fall. frege‘s reasoning runs as follows. hilbert presents us with two systems of objects and first- level concepts: one in which we deal with points, lines, and planes, and the other in which we deal with numbers and sets of numbers. from the mere presentation of two systems of objects, we cannot reach the conclusion hilbert wishes to make. frege rightly notes that we must, at the very least, ascend to a higher level from which both the system of euclidean geometry and the system of the real numbers appear as particular cases of a more general system. what frege takes hilbert to have shown with his consistency proof, then, is not the consistency of euclidean geometry, but the consistency of a second-level system under which euclidean geometry falls. and, most importantly for frege, from the consistency of this more general theory, we cannot derive the consistency of euclidean geometry itself. in one of his replies to hilbert, frege writes of this problem as it relates to the more limited case of individual propositions: if a general proposition contains a contradiction, then every particular proposition included under it will do likewise. therefore, from the consistency of the latter, we can infer that of the general [proposition], but not vice versa. suppose we proved that in a right triangle with two equal sides, the square on the hypotenuse is twice as large as that on one of the other two sides—which is easier than proving the general pythagorean theorem. from this we can now infer that the proposition contains no contradiction; that the square on the hypotenuse of a right triangle having two [equal] sides is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. from this we can deduce further that the general pythagorean theorem contains no contradiction. but can we conclude still further that the pythagorean theorem is therefore true? i cannot admit such an inference from consistency to truth. frege‘s claims here hold more generally for systems of propositions as well. let‘s see how this applies in the present case. there are three distinct systems at issue here. first is the system of euclidean geometry itself, second is the ‗model‘ of euclidean geometry interpreted within the real numbers, and third is the more general system of propositions within which are included both traditional euclidean geometry and hilbert‘s model. for ease of reference, i will call this more general system l. now, from the consistency of hilbert‘s model, it does indeed follow that the system l does not contain a contradiction. it does not, however, follow that all of the particular systems which fall within l are consistent. [hilbert to frege, in frege , ]. more specifically, it does not follow that euclidean geometry itself is consistent. for frege, hilbert‘s mistake is to tacitly assume that his claims about l also apply directly to the euclidean system. to frege‘s mind, the claims made about ‗points‘ in l have nothing whatsoever to do with euclidean points, other than the unfortunate use of the same word to describe them. the dangerous equivocation, then, is found in hilbert‘s fluctuation between the general system l and the specific system of euclidean geometry which falls within l. by frege‘s lights, it is only via this equivocation that hilbert is able to ‗prove‘ the consistency of euclidean geometry. what he in fact proves is that l is consistent, given that the system of the real numbers is consistent. a further criticism stems from frege‘s non-relativized conception of truth, in which truth does not directly follow from consistency as it seems to for hilbert. hilbert takes his consistency proof for euclidean geometry to be a sufficient proof of the truth of euclidean geometry, whereas frege, who views consistency as merely possible truth, does not at all authorize the inference from the merely possible to the actual. here the crucial difference between hilbert‘s point of view and frege‘s is that hilbert does not understand euclidean geometry in frege‘s more traditional sense. instead, he views the axioms of euclidean geometry as an uninterpreted conceptual schema which determines a formal structure. this structure (or scaffolding) can then be applied to a variety of different systems by way of the process of interpretation. both hilbert and his defender korselt insist upon this. korselt, for his part, emphasizes the potential emptiness of the uninterpreted concepts of a given formal theory. to this effect he writes: a purely formal system is noteworthy as long as the propositions that might occur in it do not lead to contradiction; indeed, it remains interesting even as a contradictory formal system, as long as this contradiction becomes apparent only at the end of a long sequence of inferences about the objects of the formal system. therefore certain concepts of a ―purely formal system‖ may even show themselves to be ―empty‖. but on the other hand, a formal system may be ―applied‖ to a given domain only after we have assured ourselves of the validity of the principles for that domain. here korselt expresses a key element of the postulational point of view: namely, that axiomatized mathematical theories are objects of investigation in their own right, and not simply tools employed to study their potential interpretations. to make contact with a concrete system, an application is required, and this application lies outside the mathematical theory properly speaking. this emphasis on the abstractness of formal theories is intended to illustrate that frege‘s insistence upon fixing precise references for basic terms is not at all mathematically important, and that it is in a sense also misguided. for korselt and hilbert, a more precise characterization of the objects of a theory is only possible once we descend from the high generality of the axiomatic theory itself to one of its possible interpretations. within a particular interpretation we can certainly ask after the precise reference of a given term, but from the more general formal perspective, this sort of question makes no sense. [korselt , in frege , - ]. from frege‘s point of view, however, this formal stance requires a great degree of logical perspicuity which is not at all evident in either hilbert‘s or korselt‘s responses. from his own point of view, it appears impossible to claim (as hilbert does), that we can prove the independence of, e.g., the euclidean parallel postulate by means of these model-theoretic or ‗formal techniques‘. it is difficult for frege to see, that is, how a proof pertaining to one system of objects and first-level concepts can show anything whatsoever about a completely distinct system of objects and first-level concepts without a clear understanding or presentation of the higher-level system which acts as their intermediary. moreover, if hilbert or korselt wish to highlight some of the features of a more general conceptual system (e.g., the system l), under which euclidean and other systems might fall, their method of doing so is both misleading and unclear. in response to korselt (who defends the apparent indeterminacy and ambiguity of hilbert‘s presentation as a feature resulting from a formal point of view), frege writes that, when referring to the increased generality of hilbert‘s conception of a point, korselt seems to have [...] in mind a second-level concept within which, aside from the euclidean point- concept still other concepts fall. of course this second-level concept must also be a completely determinate one; but it behaves toward the first-level concepts falling within it in a way similar to that in which a first-level concept behaves towards the objects falling under it. when we consider the multiplicity of these concepts of the first level (point-concepts), we get the notion that we are faced with an indeterminacy or ambiguity. this need not be the case here any more than it is in the case of the first- level concept prime number, where not only but also falls under the latter. in other words, if korselt and hilbert wish to discuss concepts from this higher point of view, that does not exempt them from making sure the reference of their basic terms is precisely fixed. a second-level concept is just as determinate and precise as a first-level concept. for frege, rigor is lost, not gained, by the logical fiction of ambiguous or indeterminate concepts. what frege objects to here is not the very idea of a higher level geometry—to which he is occasionally quite sympathetic —but to the ‗free-floating‘ character of that geometry as presented by hilbert and defended by korselt. frege‘s logical view of the world involves (as we will discover in more detail in the following chapter) an ontological hierarchy within which each entity belongs to a distinct ontological level. hilbert‘s work attempts to avoid this hierarchy by characterizing a structure which is not determinately linked to any particular ontological level. to be sure, hilbert does not intend his formal characterization to describe a concrete system of objects and first-level concepts. but neither does he intend his work to outline a system of second-level concepts. instead, [frege , - ]. he writes to hilbert, for instance, that ―at any rate, your idea of considering euclidean geometry as a special case of a more inclusive theory is valuable even without [successful independence proofs]‖ [frege to hilbert, in frege , - ]. before our more detailed discussion in the following chapter it might be helpful to note that frege‘s hierarchy begins with all objects at the lowest level, and then ascends to first-level concepts and functions, second-level functions, etc. hilbert‘s work describes a structure which is itself free from the fixed references of any one interpretation, but which may thus be applied to systems of a variety of levels. the usefulness of such a free-floating picture of mathematical structures is apparent in the many applications of, e.g., abstract group theory, which range from the study of the symmetry groups of various particles in quantum physics to the use of groups as a tool to understand other abstract algebraic structures (e.g., polynomial rings). as frege would surely note, however, this apparent usefulness does not preclude the emptiness, vagueness, or even the inconsistency of the concepts at issue. . . blanchette on frege‘s conception of analysis many commentators on the frege-hilbert correspondence have sided against frege in his estimation of hilbert‘s project as an almost complete failure. a common thread has been that frege was short-sighted, too conservative, and blind to the obvious advances evidenced in hilbert‘s work. patricia blanchette, in an illuminating paper on frege, hilbert, and consistency, outlines the reasons why this evaluation of their correspondence has seemed attractive: frege was clearly of the view that principles of logic can be expressed as syntactic transformation rules; his own formal system used precisely the kinds of topic-neutral, syntactically specified rules [that hilbert employed in his grundlagen]. given a set of sentences in frege‘s begriffsschrift notation, a hilbert-style consistency proof will demonstrate that no contradiction is derivable from that set via frege‘s own rules of logic. hilbert-style independence proofs, similarly, would successfully demonstrate the nonderivability in frege‘s system of one of frege‘s sentences from a set thereof. it looks, therefore, as if frege‘s assessment of hilbert‘s demonstrations as ―failures‖ is simply wrong. on this view, frege‘s own work had set out to achieve the same goals as hilbert‘s and by the same means, so that his rejection of hilbert‘s views seems simply to have missed their point. but, as blanchette notes, one crucial difference between hilbert‘s approach to consistency and frege‘s is that frege takes it to be the case that thoughts (and not sentences) are the things which are proven or disproven, and it is the capacity of sentences to represent the logical structure of thoughts which is the subject of analysis. thus, the derivability or non- derivability of a sentence from a collection of other sentences is by no means the whole story see, for instance [freudenthal ] and [torretti ]. freudenthal writes that ―frege, rebuking hilbert like a schoolboy, also joins the boeotians. (i have never understood why he is so highly esteemed today‖ [freudenthal , ]; torretti writes that ―to demand like frege that the meaning of [hilbert‘s basic, uninterpreted concepts] be intuitively elucidated shows a lack of understanding of the nature of logical consequence that is indeed astonishing in the founder of modern logic [torretti , ] and that ―frege‘s failure to understand abstract axiomatics comes out very clearly in his criticism of hilbert‘s independence proofs‖ [torretti , ]. more recently, stewart shapiro suggests of hilbert‘s view that ―frege did not get it, or did not want to‖ [shapiro , ]. ―clever and inventive as [hilbert‘s grundlagen] is in many points, i think that it is on the whole a failure and in any case that it can be used only after thorough criticism‖ [frege to liebmann, in frege , ]. [blanchette , ]. [blanchette , - ]. for frege. if we ignore this difference, then several of frege‘s criticisms seem considerably weaker, pedantic, or even absurd. keeping this difference in mind, however, we get quite a different picture. let‘s take a closer look at exactly what is going on here, beginning with an examination of frege‘s understanding of logical analysis. as blanchette points out in her recent book, frege’s conception of logic, the idea of analysis is central to frege‘s overall logicist project. so what exactly is analysis for frege, why is it important for his logicist project, and why is it relevant for our present purpose of understanding his opposition to hilbert? while frege‘s views of analysis shift in relation to his broader philosophical and logical development, it seems clear that for him analysis is never merely a linguistic affair, but essentially involves the realm of thoughts (or conceptual contents). analysis often involves the reduction (in some way) of a complex concept to simpler concepts. often, such analysis is made quite easy by language. thus, for instance, we might wish to analyze the concept ‗x is an orange house‘. in this case, our language makes it very clear that the concept is likely not a simple one, and therefore an appropriate subject for continued analysis. part of the reason the concept strikes us as complex is because of our use of the two terms ‗orange‘ and ‗house‘ in the expression above. a straightforward analysis of this complex concept would be to treat it as a concept under which fall all and only those entities which fall under both the concept ‗x is orange‘ and the concept ‗x is a house‘. here the underlying logical complexity is obviously represented by the linguistic complexity of our expression. but language is not always so cooperative, and we can (and often do) represent complex concepts with linguistically simple terms. mathematics, in particular, is filled with this sort of thing: the definition of the linguistically simple term ‗group,‘ for instance, involves at least four logically complex axioms. this isn‘t a problem if the complexity is recognized by those employing the term (as is certainly the case for group theorists using the term ‗group‘). but we can also be misled into thinking that linguistic simplicity mirrors logical simplicity. thus, for example, we might think that the basic notions of arithmetic or euclidean geometry are logically simple when they might be ‗simple‘ only relative to a given linguistic rendering of those theories. as blanchette points out, a significant portion of frege‘s work involves illustrating that some of the apparently simple mathematical concepts of arithmetic are in fact complex. she gives a useful example of this phenomenon in relation to frege‘s analysis of the successor function. she suggests that, for frege, the relatively simple statement that ―one is the successor of zero‖ ought to be analyzed into the obviously far more complex claim that this is the key theme of [blanchette , chapter ]. see [blanchette , - ] for an examination of the role of analysis in frege‘s works from the begriffsschrift to the grundgesetze. (a) for some concept f and some object a falling under f, the extension of the concept equinumerous with the concept identical with the extension of the concept (equinumerous with the concept (not self-identical)) is the extension of the concept equinumerous with the concept f, and the extension of the concept equinumerous with the concept not self-identical is the extension of the concept equinumerous with the concept falling under f, but not identical with a. the point of frege‘s analysis is to show that these two markedly different statements ultimately express the same thought. the real logical structure of the thought that one is the successor of zero is actually better represented by the more complex statement. as blanchette points out, this kind of analysis is crucially important for frege‘s project of showing that arithmetic can be developed on the basis of logic alone. for much of frege‘s project involves illuminating the hidden logical structure beneath the linguistic surface of arithmetic. but, as anyone familiar with frege‘s technical work can attest, such analyses are rarely obvious, easy, or even intuitive. now, this again prompts a certain question: why should we take the result of frege‘s analysis (i.e., the statement (a)) to be a better representation of the actual logical situation we are interested in when we speak of the successor function? why should we accept his analysis at all? given their importance for his project, one would imagine that frege would provide a thoroughgoing account of the nature of his analyses and give us reasons for accepting the accuracy of their results. but, as blanchette notes, notoriously […] he offers nothing of the sort. though he repeatedly affirms the central importance of analysis, frege never defines this notion, and—most importantly— never gives an account of the necessary and sufficient conditions for successful analysis. we are left to look at the details of the analyses he gives, and at his various scattered remarks about the nature of analysis, to determine what he took himself to be providing under the heading of ―analysis‖ or ―elucidation‖ and to assess the plausibility of his general approach. in the present context, our goal is not to provide a general account of frege‘s notion of analysis. what is relevant for us here is how frege‘s conception of analysis bears on his criticisms of hilbert. there are two areas in his critique which seem to directly involve his broad conception of analysis. the first is in relation to hilbert‘s consistency proofs, the second in relation to his independence proofs. (in the following section, we will also see that frege‘s capacity to provide logically accurate analyses plays a significant role in his suggested emendations of hilbert‘s system). . . blanchette on derivability and provability frege‘s claim is that if hilbert wishes to employ a purely uninterpreted system (i.e., one with no semantics) then he may discuss relations of derivability between the sentences of his [blanchette , ; emphasis removed]. [blanchette , ]. system, but not between thoughts. for uninterpreted sentences do not possess any determinate reference and are thus incapable of expressing thoughts for frege. now, none of this would matter if hilbert‘s syntactic brand of consistency always exactly overlapped with frege-consistency, i.e., if the relations between the sentences of his formal language perfectly mirrored those between thoughts. but, as blanchette notes, this is not at all the case, and, for frege, simply cannot be the case. indeed, she writes that ―the inconsistency of a set of thoughts despite the syntactic consistency [i.e., hilbert-consistency] of a set of sentences expressing those thoughts is not simply a farfetched possibility for frege. it is of the very essence of his views on analysis and thoughts that such cases are to be expected.‖ even supposing that hilbert‘s sentences somehow express thoughts—which, for frege, was already quite a dubious supposition—the problem of equivocating between consistency at the level of sentences and consistency at the level of fregean thoughts would have remained. the problem stems from the fact that sentences which are syntactically different can yet express the same thought (as we‘ve just seen in relation to frege‘s analysis of the successor function). blanchette explains that because each thought is generally expressible by a number of different sentences, there is much more to the relation of provability [which holds between thoughts] than is evidenced by the relation of derivability [which holds between sentences]. where p is a thought and s a sentence expressing it, Π a set of thoughts and Σ a set of sentences expressing Π: the derivability of s from Σ guarantees that p is a consequence of Π, but the fact that s is not derivable from Σ is no guarantee that p is not a consequence of Π. for s‘s nonderivability from Σ is entirely compatible with the existence of some sꞌ and some Σꞌ expressing p and Π, respectively, such that sꞌ is derivable from Σꞌ. relations between sentences of a well-designed formal system can always, for frege, provide a positive test of provability and consequence, but never a negative test. (blanchette‘s terminological distinction here between the relation of provability between thoughts and the relation of derivability between sentences is a useful one, which we shall employ in what follows). the key point here is that multiple different sentences can express the same thought. this is an essential component of frege‘s philosophy of language and (allowing for differences of opinion regarding the nature of ‗thoughts‘) a presupposition shared by many philosophers and non-philosophers alike. simply put: there is, in general, more than one way to say the same thing. but, importantly, the relation of derivability can only hold between particular groups of sentences. in the case at hand, derivability claims will pertain to the sentences of hilbert‘s axiomatization in the grundlagen. at best, for frege, what hilbert is capable of showing is that a given sentence s is derivable from a sentence or collection of sentences within his formal theory, using the allowable syntactic transformations. but, given the fact that the same thought can be expressed in different ways, we can very easily imagine a different sentence, sº, which expresses the same thought as hilbert‘s s but which is not derivable [blanchette , ]. [blanchette , ]. from the same sentence or collection of sentences. for example, in the absence of definitions of the terms ‗sine‘, ‗continuous‘ etc. the sentence ‗the sine function is continuous at zero‘ is not derivable from the sentence ‗the sine function is differentiable at zero‘; with appropriate definitions (i.e., ones that adequately express the usual conceptual content), however, the derivation will go through. what this shows is that derivability and provability are different relations, and, subsequently, if hilbert wishes to equivocate between the two, he will have claimed more than he has actually proved. frege‘s criticism, then, is not simply that hilbert‘s sentences fail to refer for a whole host of reasons, but that, even if they did manage to express thoughts, still hilbert would be incapable of proving what he believes he has proved. for hilbert has not paid sufficient attention to the differences between derivability of sentences and the provability of thoughts. ultimately, as blanchette notes frege was right to hold that the method of interpretations holds no promise for demonstrating what he took to be consistency and independence results. the point here is not merely terminological: frege takes it that the consistency of a set of thoughts, and the independence of thoughts from one another, have important philosophical ramifications, none of which is demonstrable via hilbert‘s method. . . independence and logical simplicity we‘ve seen why frege‘s views of analysis and provability led him to reject hilbert‘s interpretation of his consistency proofs (or, better, his derivations of consistency within his particular formal system). let‘s now turn our attention to blanchette‘s suggestion (in the above quotation) that there are important implications for frege‘s understanding of hilbert‘s independence proofs as well. as we saw above in frege‘s example of the successor function, relatively simple expressions can go along with considerable logical complexity. thus, we may very often be incorrect when we take linguistically simple expressions to straightforwardly represent logical or conceptual simplicity. the goal of many of frege‘s analyses is to bring out exactly this hidden logical complexity, so that its role in inferences can be directly examined. and, in fact, one of the chief goals of frege‘s logicist project is to unearth the hidden logical complexity of mathematics in order to prove that basic arithmetic can be founded on pure logic alone. ultimately, this view has two implications. the first is that we can be wrong about logical simplicity: we may, for example, take a linguistically simple term like ‗number‘ to express true logical simplicity, when in fact (at least according to frege) it contains hidden logical complexity. and, second, the revelation of this logical complexity can allow us to prove things which we otherwise might not have been able to prove. this view has direct implications for hilbert‘s independence proofs. these proofs, recall, have the aim of showing that ―no essential part of any of these groups of axioms can be [blanchette , ]. deduced from the others by logical inference.‖ recall, too, that each of the axioms contains ‗primitive‘ or (putatively) logically simple terms, e.g., ‗point‘. we can see the difficulty posed for these proofs by frege‘s views on simplicity: if the putative logical simples of hilbert‘s system are not in fact simple, but (upon further analysis) have additional logical structure, then it may in fact be the case that we can deduce some of the supposedly independent axiom groups from one another. thus, for instance, if, as frege later suggests, the putatively simple term ‗point‘ in hilbert‘s axiomatization actually refers—if it is to refer to anything at all— then it refers to a second- level concept ranging over all first-level point concepts. though he does not go through with the attempt, the implication is that such hidden complexity may very well allow us to prove the dependence of some of hilbert‘s putatively independent axioms. here, in the end, it seems that frege‘s criticism ultimately amounts to the claim that he offers a better analysis of the actual logical situation than hilbert does. as blanchette has shown us, however, the success of this and other of frege‘s criticisms relies on the actual superiority of his analyses—and frege himself provides no systematic means of establishing this superiority. in any case, as blanchette‘s work helps us to see very clearly, frege‘s criticism is not simply that hilbert‘s sentences fail to refer for a whole host of reasons, but that, even if they did manage to express thoughts, still hilbert would be incapable of proving what he believes he has proved (at least by frege‘s lights). for hilbert has not paid sufficient attention to the relations between derivability from sentences vs. provability from thoughts, nor of the linguistic relativity of his own notion of logical simplicity. against torretti‘s view of frege as astonishingly blind to the nature of logical consequence, then, frege‘s criticisms of hilbert seem to indicate an extremely subtle appreciation of the logical relations between sentences and what they are meant to represent (i.e., thoughts in frege‘s case)—one which even modern commentators have failed to notice. and it is just this kind of appreciation which frege lambastes hilbert for lacking when he claims more than frege believes he is capable of proving. . frege‘s proposed emendations of hilbert‘s project by frege had already expended considerable effort developing his logical and semantic concepts: he had re-organized and formalized logic by way of his begriffsschrift and had developed a detailed theory of meaning in a series of papers, most notably Über sinn und bedeutung. the result of his logical and linguistic work was a theory of meaning based upon the notion of a complete thought. for frege, sensible discourse was only possible when our words manage to express what he called complete thoughts, which are those objective entities which can be either true or false. if geometry and mathematics are to be understood as sciences, then, frege argued, they must aim at truth. since truths are a particular kind of complete thought, the mathematical sciences (like all the others) must be composed of complete thoughts. complete thoughts result only from the saturation or completion of a [hilbert , ]. concept by an entity of an appropriate level (i.e., an object if the concept is a first-level concept, or a first-level concept if the concept is of the second-level, etc.). for frege, then, the very conditions of meaningfulness hinge upon carefully distinguishing between entities of different ontological levels. this is particularly evident in modern mathematical discourse, which deals with relations between entities of different levels more frequently than most other areas of human enquiry. both hilbert and korselt insisted upon the free-floating, schematic aspect of the uninterpreted axiomatic system of geometry presented in the grundlagen. for frege, with his careful semantic and logical distinctions, this system and its lack of fixed references could only result in meaningless discourse. since meaning attaches only to complete thoughts, and complete thoughts require the combination of entities of appropriate ontological types, any system of sentences which ignores distinctions between entities of different ontological types must fail to deliver meaningful claims. since hilbert‘s suggested reading of his system of geometry as a mere scaffolding ignores precisely these kinds of distinctions, it must be meaningless in its current form, according to frege. again, however, this is not to say that frege rejected the notion that a higher-level system of geometry was possible at all. on the contrary, the idea that hilbert‘s geometry might describe a higher level structure was perfectly acceptable for frege, and he even expended a considerable amount of effort attempting to provide a clear logical foundation for just such a structure. his key objection to hilbert, for our purposes, was that hilbert‘s free-floating view required the description of a structure which was completely indifferent to any ontological level. such a system would be meaningless for frege. more importantly, without fixing the references of even ‗structural‘ terms, frege took it to be the case that hilbert‘s geometric work (e.g., his independence and consistency proofs) ultimately relied on a kind of logical sleight of hand whereby claims pertaining to a determinate system of second-level concepts were substituted for those pertaining to an equally determinate first-level system, all under the guise of an uninterpreted structure which was supposedly free from any particular ontological level whatsoever. though frege was dubious of the possibility (and usefulness) of successfully altering hilbert‘s picture of geometry to answer his criticisms, he nevertheless attempted to provide a reformulation of this picture in terms that he himself could accept. this reformulation entailed embedding hilbert‘s supposedly free-floating mathematical structures within his ontological hierarchy. this embedding first required, however, a method of giving a determinate sense to hilbert‘s axioms, definitions, and theorems. in order to overcome this rather serious stumbling block, frege suggested a way in which hilbert‘s ‗pseudo- propositions‘ could be reformulated to express complete thoughts, and thereby attain the truth values required of a proper science. let us examine how he believed this could be done. more generally, complete thoughts result from the saturation of a function of a certain kind by one or more entities of the appropriate type(s); frege viewed (first-level) concepts as functions which take objects as arguments and deliver truth values as outputs. i will discuss frege‘s ontological hierarchy in more detail in the following chapter. for frege, pseudo-propositions result from the tendency to break up conditional propositions into antecedent and consequent parts, neither of which expresses a complete thought. take the following conditional proposition, for instance: if a is a whole number, then (a x (a – )) is an even number. this propositional complex expresses a complete thought, and utilizes the dummy letter ‗a‘ as a means of indicating generality. now, we can—and often do—split up such conditional propositions for stylistic, pedagogical, or other reasons. for example, the above statement can be split up into two pseudo-propositions as follows: a is a whole number. (a x (a – )) is an even number. in the complete conditional propositional complex above, we express the thought that if a whole number is of the form (a x (a – ), then it falls under the concept of being even. here the sign ‗a‘ does not refer to a specific number, but serves only to lend generality to the proposition; it allows us to claim that any whole number of the appropriate form possesses the property of being even. (frege says that such signs indicate but do not refer). it is important that, without the stipulation that a is a whole number, the phrase ‗(a x (a – )) is an even number‘ does not express the same thought, or, indeed, any thought at all. without carrying over the antecedent condition that a is a whole number into the consequent claim that (a x (a – ) is an even number, we fail to express a complete thought. for in both isolated pseudo-propositions, the apparent function of the dummy letter ‗a‘ is not to lend generality to the thought expressed. in the consequent pseudo-proposition, for instance, its function (or at least its purported function) is to refer to an object and predicate of that object that it possesses the property of being an even number. but the expression ‗(a x (a – ))‘ does not refer to any specific object and so the truth or falsity of the pseudo-proposition remains indeterminate for frege. the result of splitting up a conditional proposition into separate expressions of its antecedent and consequent components is not two propositions, each possessing a truth value, but two pseudo-propositions, neither of which is a complete thought and neither of which can be true or false. frege writes that [...] we must not let ourselves be deceived by the fact that for stylistic reasons, an antecedent pseudo-proposition occasionally occurs in such a form that upon cursory examination it appears to be an explanation of one or more letters. for in fact neither these putative explanations nor the proposition in which the conclusion is asserted are real propositions. rather, being antecedent and consequent pseudo-propositions, they belong inseparably together, so that only the whole constituted of them is a real proposition. it would greatly facilitate insight into logical structure if what is a single real proposition according to its subject matter were also a unitary propositional complex according to its grammar and did not break down into independent propositions. to be sure, in our word-languages such propositional complex[es] would this example is found in [frege , ]. sometimes attain a monstrous length, whereas, because of its perspicuous nature, the begriffsschrift is better suited to the representation of the logical fabric. frege came to the conclusion that something like the confusion between real and pseudo- propositions occurs in hilbert‘s (and korselt‘s) attempt to outline a formal axiomatic system for geometry. the logical structure of hilbert‘s axiomatic system is greatly obscured by his use of the familiar terms ‗point,‘ ‗line,‘ ‗lies on,‘ ‗between,‘ etc. by employing these familiar terms, frege argues that hilbert unwittingly engages in a dangerous equivocation. at one moment these basic terms are to be understood as referring to specific entities (the concepts and objects of traditional euclidean geometry, or their correlates within hilbert‘s model of euclidean geometry within the real numbers). at another moment, however, these same terms are intended to function as purely uninterpreted dummy signs, meant only to lend generality to the propositions in which they occur. through this confusion the fact that hilbert‘s claims are either meaningless or possess quite different meanings than he intended is simply glazed over, and the real logical situation quite obscured. frege, though clearly critical of hilbert‘s endeavour, attempts to clarify the logical situation by employing the notion of a pseudo-proposition. instead of hilbert‘s ‗defining axioms‘— which, by frege‘s lights, do not define at all, as they do not fix the references of their respective definienda—we have a system of antecedent pseudo-propositions, none of which expresses a complete thought. similarly, in place of the theorems hilbert proves on the basis of his axioms and definitions, we have a system of consequent pseudo-propositions, none of which, again, expresses a complete thought. a theorem or axiom, taken in isolation, does not express any thought insofar as it contains signs which do not have a fixed reference. moreover, taken in isolation, these empty signs do not lend generality to the pseudo- propositions within which they occur any more than did the sign ‗(a x (a – )‘ in our previous pseudo-proposition. frege‘s method for salvaging hilbert‘s work from this type of meaninglessness involved combining his axioms and theorems into appropriate propositional wholes which expressed complete thoughts, and whose terms properly indicated or referred. unfortunately, in the case of hilbert‘s work, these wholes are exceedingly complex: for in order to give sense to a particular theorem (consequent pseudo-proposition) we must combine it with an antecedent pseudo-proposition which contains all the relevant ‗axioms‘ for the system we are interested in. in other words, each actually meaningful theorem will contain, as an inseparable part, an entire collection of ‗definitions‘ and axioms connected together via conjunction. of course, expressing this complex logical edifice in ordinary language would be extremely unwieldy— hence frege‘s recommendation of his own, more perspicuous, logical formalism in the quotation above. for any theorem of hilbert‘s, reformulated according to frege‘s specifications, we will have a conjunction of conditions (the axioms) followed by the statement of the appropriate theorem. ideally, once we‘ve done this, the appearance of a purely relational, or referentially indeterminate system should disappear. [frege , - ]. let‘s examine how this would work in the case of the first ‗theorem‘ (really three theorems) of hilbert‘s grundlagen. these are stated as follows: theorem . two straight lines of a plane have either one point or no point in common; two planes have no point in common or a straight line in common; a plane and a straight line not lying in it have no point or one in common. now, in the traditional euclidean context, these theorems are perfectly meaningful and require no further interpretation. they describe first-level relations amongst objects, and the claims they express are inferred directly from the (ostensibly true) axioms. importantly, too, the basic terms of traditional euclidean geometry are supposed to refer to particular objects and concepts: we grasp the reference of a particular term by means of definitions or (what frege would call) elucidations. hilbert‘s view is quite different, as is korselt‘s; for both, the theorem does not pertain (or at least does not solely pertain) to particular objects or concepts. instead of referring, the basic terms of hilbert‘s system are intended to lend generality to the propositions in which they occur, such that these propositions can (by means of a suitably outlined interpretation) hold true of a variety of domains. until such an interpretation is outlined, however, these theorems are of a purely formal character, having no determinate reference and no need of one. frege was quite opposed to the notion that purely formal, or completely uninterpreted signs could be of any use in science—as science concerns itself with truth, and truth adheres only to complete thoughts. moreover, he argued that the appearance that these terms are actually completely uninterpreted in hilbert‘s work was simply an after-effect of poor terminological choices. more specifically, frege argued that the use of the traditional euclidean terminology (e.g., ‗point,‘ ‗lies on,‘ etc.) in the place of proper variables for the purely formal system had the effect of obscuring the true logical status of hilbert‘s claims. by replacing this misleading euclidean terminology in the first of the above theorems with appropriately differentiated variables (‗x,‘ ‗y,‘ and ‗z‘ are variables for objects; ‗p,‘ and ‗r,‘ variables for relations between objects), we get something like the following: (h ) two x standing in relation p to y either stand in relation r to one z or to no z. here it becomes quite apparent that, without further clarification of the references of the terms at issue, we not only do not have a theorem, we have no thought at all. when the purported theorem is more perspicuously laid out to illustrate its generality, it becomes quite clear (as hilbert would accept) that, unlike euclidean geometry, the basic terms of hilbert‘s system do not seem to have fixed references. but neither is it clear exactly how (or if) they serve to lend generality to the theorem. frege writes that ―here, unless we are to understand the words in the euclidean sense, just about everything is unknown‖. frege‘s contention is that, either we make the euclidean claim and hilbert‘s work does not have the import it is supposed to, or we accept that the basic terms are intended to lend generality, in which case the result is at best an incomplete or partial thought, and at worst no thought at all. [hilbert , ]. [frege , ]. clearly hilbert‘s intention is not to make the traditional claim that two straight euclidean lines which lie in the same euclidean plane either have one euclidean point or none in common. rather, his intention seems to be to claim that for any specific system which satisfies his axioms on a particular interpretation, the theorem (whose terms will have references tailored to the interpretation) will come out true. frege‘s ultimate point is that statements like this do not require—and indeed are not possible on the basis of— indeterminate reference. instead, they are statements which (when suitably reworked along his lines) make very clear and fixed reference to second-level concepts and the first-level concepts which fall within them. his re-imagining of hilbert‘s work involves construing the supposedly purely formal system as one containing clusters of pseudo-propositions, themselves meaningless, which can be made to express genuine thoughts by proper combination. once this has been achieved, the resulting propositions do not contain indeterminately referring terms but, instead, terms that refer to second-level concepts and the first-level concepts which fall within them. thus, for instance, supposedly ‗uninterpreted‘ statements about points, lines, etc. are taken to express determinate claims about second- level ‗point-‘ and ‗line-‘ concepts, i.e., concepts within which fall first-level concepts like those of traditional euclidean geometry or hilbert‘s interpretation of the real numbers. in place of hilbert‘s own statement of his first theorem, then, we obtain a lengthy conjunction of axioms and definitions as antecedent pseudo-propositions combined with the re- configured statement (h ). by characterizing hilbert‘s axioms as conditions pertaining to a system of second-level concepts, frege gives them a fixed reference. by including these conditions as the antecedent portion of every theorem, he also makes it possible for the variables in (h ), for instance, to properly lend generality to the complete second-level proposition. finally, in place of interpretations, inferences are made from these general propositions to particular propositions, e.g., from second-level claims about all point- concepts to claims about particular first-level point concepts. in hilbert‘s work (and others like it), many geometers believed they had found the answer to their questions about the nature of geometry. geometry was a science which studied the deductive elaboration of particular types of axiomatic structures, irrespective of their relationships to physical space. one underappreciated effect of frege‘s criticisms of hilbert (and korselt) was to draw in sharper relief the shortcomings of the purely relational or free- floating understanding of geometrical structures. in frege‘s opinion, the answers offered by hilbert were merely chimerical, and relied upon various logical confusions in order to maintain the appearance of working properly. in place of this relational view, frege offered a picture wherein various mathematical structures are embedded within a single ontological hierarchy. one key benefit of such a view was an increase in the precision of claims regarding the various relations between different structures. thus, for instance, by careful attention to distinctions between hilbert‘s axiomatic theory and its different possible ‗interpretations‘, frege is able to draw out the logical connections (or lack thereof) between the second- and first-level propositions of these respective theories. of course hilbert would not agree with frege‘s view that his independence proofs were useless, but (as his later work would show) the logical perspicuity frege brought to the table was an early indicator to hilbert that understanding the logical relations between structures required a careful and attentive eye. in the following chapter, i will begin to examine problems with frege‘s own attempt to characterize his ontological hierarchy and employ it as a means of explaining the nature of (certain elements of) mathematics. chapter : problems with frege’s views § . introduction in the previous chapter we examined a number of problems pertaining to hilbert‘s understanding of the nature of mathematics and mathematical structures. hilbert‘s account of axiomatics was predicated on the view that we needn‘t fix the references of the basic terms of an axiomatic system in order to prove theorems in that system. as we saw, however, frege raised a number of difficult philosophical questions for hilbert. these chiefly pertained to hilbert‘s purported inability to make it clear precisely what he is talking about in his discussions of mathematical structures like those required for his independence proofs. as we saw in that chapter, frege‘s criticisms are themselves predicated on the view that mathematics (and, indeed, any meaningful speech whatsoever) is about something in particular, i.e., that it have a determinate content. while hilbert‘s views took it for granted that we could speak about a purely uninterpreted system (or ‗scaffolding of concepts,‘ in hilbert‘s words), the basis of frege‘s attack was his understanding of the importance of fixity of reference and determinately circumscribed concepts. these criticisms of hilbert seem to require that frege himself have a clear and defensible understanding of how it is that we can fix the references of (at least) mathematical terms. in this chapter we will examine problems relating to frege‘s own attempts to fix the reference of mathematical and logical terms within his ontological hierarchy. the first such problem is the so- called concept ‗horse‘ problem. while this problem can be solved using resources available to frege, the solution depends entirely upon his ability to clearly pin down the references of basic terms within his ontological hierarchy. the second problem, the julius caesar problem, is rather more difficult, and (i will argue) frege never provides an adequate solution to it. this problem cuts to the heart of frege‘s fixed-reference theory of mathematical structures, and, as we shall see, his inability to solve this obscure difficulty makes many of his criticisms of hilbert fall flat. in the end, despite frege‘s best efforts, i will argue that his account fails to explain how we can pin mathematical structures down within his ontological hierarchy of objects and functions. moreover, in the final sections of the chapter, i will argue that the inability of frege to fix the reference of certain mathematical concepts is illustrative of a more widespread difficulty still facing the philosophy of mathematics today. while the specific forms of the problems faced by frege are not necessarily faced by the contemporary philosophy of mathematics, the general problem of fixing the references of mathematical terms (or explaining why we don‘t need fixed reference) is shared by all. the upshot of this chapter, when combined with my analysis of hilbert‘s views, is that neither the free-floating account of structures nor the general view of structures as embedded within a single ontological hierarchy is satisfying, and that neither picture is capable of satisfactorily explaining what mathematics is about. let‘s begin with an examination of frege‘s ontological hierarchy. § . frege’s ontology for frege, the entities proper to logic have a special ontological status, and are not reducible to (or otherwise eliminable in terms of) linguistic, mental, or physical entities. in particular, frege takes the semantic content of meaningful speech and thought to possess independent ontological status, such that the things which are true or false (what he calls ‗thoughts‘) are not dependent upon the human mind or even the empirical world. this is a central aspect of his logical views, and one of the key theses of early analytic philosophy. though frege often insisted upon the strict separation of the science of logic from psychological concerns, his fundamental ontology is, by and large, indifferent to the distinctions between the mental, physical, and logical realms. numbers, chairs, and ideas, for example, all occupy the same basic ontological niche: they are all objects. while frege‘s ontology is not in this sense ultimately divided into the physical, mental, and the logical, it is not therefore unstructured. in fact, it is hierarchically organized into an infinite number of strictly separate levels. in what follows i will examine the organization of this hierarchy. . objects at the most basic level of frege‘s hierarchy, there are objects. in addition to the everyday entities we are used to calling objects (e.g., tables, dogs, windows, etc.) frege includes a number of less familiar entities under this heading. for example the extensions of concepts, the true, the false, numbers, thoughts, ideas, etc. are all taken to be objects. despite the extreme generality of the category, there are some characteristics that all objects have in common which distinguish them from other types of entity. on the linguistic level, for instance, objects are referred to by way of proper names or declarative sentences; this distinguishes them from functions and concepts, which are only (properly) referred to via a grammatical predicate or function-name. another important (if somewhat metaphorical) way in which frege distinguishes objects from other entities is through their completeness, self-subsistence, or ‗saturation‘. in contrast to other entities (i.e., functions), objects do not require and, indeed, do not accept any supplementation or saturation from other entities. they are already complete entities. in a slightly less metaphorical sense, objects have the property that they can only combine with other entities (objects or functions) if there is some function serving as combinator or tie. frege writes, for instance, that ―an object—e.g., the number —cannot logically adhere to another object—e.g., julius a terminological note: here, and throughout the thesis, i employ the term ‗entity‘ to indicate only the barest ontological status. all entities possess being, in some sense, but not all entities are ‗things‘ or ‗objects‘. i reserve these latter terms to refer to a specific type of entity. thus, i take functions or concepts (as frege construes them) to be entities but not objects. in his earlier wissenschaftslehre [bolzano ], bolzano presents a very similar view. there bolzano employs the term ‗proposition in itself‘ [satz an sich] for the objective content of our spoken, written, or thought propositions. bolzano also held that, though there are such propositions in themselves, they are not actual, and, further, that the being of these propositions did not depend at all upon their being thought, or even upon their being thinkable. for a comparison of frege‘s ‗thoughts‘ with bolzano‘s ‗propositions in themselves‘, see [künne ]. g. e. moore and bertrand russell, too, dealt with entities similar in some respects to fregean thoughts (see, e.g., [moore ] and [russell ]). [wells , ] gives a succinct table which partially articulates the structure of this hierarchy, though it fails to include functions of more than two variables. [mendelsohn , chapter ] also develops a type-system for frege‘s ontology. caesar—without a binding agent. but that may not be an object, but must be something unsaturated. a logical combination can only become a whole by having an unsaturated part saturated or supplemented by one or more parts‖. though slightly misleading, we might picture objects as the bricks required to build a logical edifice (a thought), and functions as the mortar binding them together—without both components, we end up with something less than the building we sought. . thoughts, subjective and objective for frege, a very important distinction amongst objects is that between thoughts [gedanken] and what we might call subjective thoughts. the latter, which most of us would call simply ‗thoughts‘, are possessed by individual thinkers. we have subjective thoughts, and they, like us, come into and pass out of being. these thoughts are more like ordinary objects (mice, rugs, etc.) than the abstract entities frege calls thoughts. depending upon one‘s theory of mind, such subjective thoughts may or may not be physical in character. for frege, in any case, it does seem to be the case that the subjective element of thinking is limited (in humans at least) to the mind of an individual thinker, such that no one other than myself can have direct access to my subjective thoughts, for example. to understand why frege posits the existence of non-subjective thoughts, we need only recall that it often seems to be the case that two individuals share the same thought—perhaps we both think that + = or that it is a beautiful day. though our internal picture or subjective grasp of these thoughts may differ significantly—i may, for instance, imagine four oranges arranged in a certain pattern, while you may imagine a sequence of squares when thinking that + = —there is in these claims some content that we seem to share. the possibility of sharing thoughts (or at least part of their content) is central to human communication in general, and crucial to the progress of science more specifically. frege‘s belief was that the objectivity of scientific and mathematical truth (which he did not question) required that there be something over and above our individual, subjective thoughts which guaranteed the possibility of communication. in his many arguments against psychologism in logic, for instance, frege contends that, if we restrict thoughts to the minds of individuals, then there can be no rational adjudication between seemingly contradictory claims. if, for example, you hold that + = and i hold that + = , the appearance of contradiction between our views evaporates if our understanding of the meaning of terms like ‗ ‘ and ‗=‘ is limited to our own minds. there will be your and my , each possessing its own distinct properties, and there will be no possibility of our deciding which of our statements is true, simpliciter. yours will be ‗true for you‘ while mine will be ‗true for me‘. as a succinct statement of frege‘s objections against this type of psychologism, take the following two sentences: ―a criterion for whether a mode of connection constitutes a thought is that it makes sense to ask whether it is true or untrue. associations of ideas are neither true nor untrue‖. [frege , ]. for a clear exposition of frege‘s position against psychologism, as well as a fair presentation of the doctrine itself, see [resnik , - ]. the first nine chapters of [husserl ] also contain an extremely detailed account and refutation of the works of the psychological logicians frege inveighed against in his own work. [frege c. b, ]. it is worth noting that frege does not think that judgments are simply associations of ideas. because frege believed in the objectivity of scientific truths, he argued in favour of a realm of objective, non-empirical, atemporal entities which are represented or grasped by individual thinkers with the aid of various tangible devices like spoken and written language or mental processes. in one of the most unfortunate terminological decisions in philosophical history, frege chose to call these entities ‗thoughts‘ [gedanken]. these objective thoughts differ markedly from their subjective cousins. for one, no one ‗thinks‘ a fregean thought—instead, as he says, we apprehend or grasp them. these thoughts are not the possessions of the individuals who apprehend them, nor do they come into or pass out of being. for frege, objective thoughts do not even require the possibility of being grasped by a thinker in order to possess being. they are, in the strictest sense, independent entities, with properties quite distinct from those of subjective thoughts. now, such remote entities would be entirely useless for the purposes of science if humans, as the limited beings we are, could not somehow encounter them. frege‘s claim is that we grasp these entities and, through various media (e.g., mental processes and languages) we are able to represent and communicate their structure to ourselves and others. the nature of the process of apprehension is never satisfactorily clarified by frege and at one point he refers to it as ―perhaps the most mysterious of all‖ . nevertheless, after grasping a thought we are, somehow, capable of representing or expressing aspects of its structure by way of language or subjective thinking. the idea seems to be that certain tangible objects (e.g., written inscriptions or mental ideas) represent or express these intangible, causally inert thoughts, which are then apprehended. natural languages like german and english help us to grasp thoughts by mimicking their logical structure as well as the inferential relations between them. but often they do so only imperfectly, such that language is as much a barrier to the representation of thoughts as it is a facilitator. the intention of frege‘s begriffsschrift was to construct a formal language which would help eliminate the logically extraneous elements of natural language so that only the inferentially important elements of the realm of thoughts were represented. unfortunately, the relation of rather, by the s, at least, frege understands judgment to be a mode of connection which does involve truth. he thinks of judgments as the admission or acknowledgement [anerkennung] of the truth of a thought, and also as an advance ―from a thought to a truth-value‖ [frege b, ; in beaney , ]. but, importantly here, the judgment itself is not true, it is only a mental act whereby the truth-value (a non-mental entity) of a thought (also a non-mental entity) is admitted. i will occasionally refer to fregean thoughts as ‗objective thoughts‘ when the distinction between thoughts and their subjective, mental counterparts is at issue or in cases where the term ‗thought‘ seems especially misleading. [frege ; in beaney , ]. though frege insists upon the non-empirical nature of his ‗thoughts‘, in a later paper he seems inclined to attribute them at least some form of causal efficacy. frege himself was troubled (as are many contemporary philosophers of mathematics) by the deep epistemological problems posed by purely abstract entities, as can be seen in the following passage: ―a thought, admittedly, is not the sort of thing to which it is usual to apply the term ‗actual‘ [‗wirklich‘]. the world of actuality is a world in which this acts [wirkt] on that and changes it again and undergoes reactions itself and is changed by them. all this is a process in time. […] and yet what value could there be for us in the eternally unchangeable, which could neither be acted upon nor act on us? something entirely and in every respect inactive would be quite unactual, and so far as we are concerned it would not be there [nicht vorhanden]. […] thoughts are not wholly unactual but their actuality is quite different from the actuality of things. and their action is brought about by a performance of the thinker; without this they would be inactive, at least as far as we can see. and yet the thinker does not create them but must take them as they are‖ [frege , - ; in beaney , - ]. (see [dummett ] for a thorough analysis of frege‘s use of the term ‗wirklich’). representation or expression between the causal realm of written and spoken inscriptions and the causally inert logical realm, though central to frege‘s project of developing a logically perspicuous language, is very little explored or explained by him. what we do get from frege‘s remarks on the topic is that language can help us to clarify the logical structure of the realm of thoughts, but that it is rarely, if ever, a perfect mirror of that structure. despite the flaws in language, it can be a useful logical tool. all thoughts are structured, and frege seems to think that their structure is best represented by declarative sentences (perhaps because these sentences seem to express truths and falsehoods most directly). frege‘s interest is in logic, and hence in the logical structure represented by declarative sentences. this is not to say that thoughts do not possess non-logical structure; simply that, in his work, frege is only interested in thoughts construed as logical entities. for him logic is that science which is concerned primarily with the most general laws of truth. hence, he is interested not in the emotional or aesthetic qualities of thoughts, but primarily with their relationship to truth. in his logical work, frege characterizes thoughts specifically as those entities which are either true or false; whether or not a particular thought is true or false depends largely upon its internal structure, i.e. upon the particular way in which its elements are combined. frege‘s analysis of the structure of thoughts is intimately connected to his ontological hierarchy: each thought is decomposable into at least two parts: one which is unsaturated, and one which saturates the unsaturated part. this latter part may itself be either saturated (i.e., an object) or unsaturated (i.e., a function, concept, or relation of appropriate level), depending upon the nature of the argument places of the unsaturated component. the unsaturated component of a thought must be a function or a concept. the bulk of frege‘s ontological work is spent clarifying the ways in which various entities can or cannot combine to form the saturated wholes he calls thoughts. as we will see below, it is frege‘s attempt to develop mathematics on the basis of this ontological work which leads him into trouble. . truth and truth values as noted, for frege thoughts are those things which can be true or false. but how does he understand the notions of truth and falsity? like many of his modern descendants, he treats truth and falsity as values taken by certain types of functions (e.g., concepts) when entities of appropriate type are input as arguments, and these values are themselves objects. there are, as one might expect, two such values, namely the true and the false. the concept ‗x is a bottle,‘ for example, maps all and only those objects which are bottles onto the true, while all objects which ―[l]ogic is the science of the most general laws of truth‖ [frege , ; in beaney , ]. though only objects are themselves saturated, functions can complete or saturate other functions if they are of the appropriate level. the result of such saturation is, again, an object—often a thought. thus, both objects and functions can saturate or complete other functions. perhaps the most direct attack on the coherence of frege‘s basic distinction between complete and incomplete entities can be found in [resnik ]. there resnik‘s aim is to illustrate that it is frege‘s metaphysical assumptions which lead to the difficulties of his logicist program. in many ways, the present chapter aims to arrive at the same claim by different means. unlike resnik‘s paper, however, my aim is to extend these metaphysical troubles to include post-fregean work in the philosophy of mathematics (including resnik‘s own account (s) of structures in [resnik ] and [resnik ]). are not bottles are mapped onto the false. though we are not primarily interested in frege‘s linguistic views here, it is interesting to note that he takes the role of declarative sentences to be logically identical to (what we would normally call) proper names, and the objects which they name or refer to are the true (if the sentence is true) and the false (if the sentence is false). fixing precisely which objects the true and the false are is something of a thorny issue for frege and his commentators, but he does seem willing to treat the true and the false as courses- of-values of functions. in § of grundgesetze, for example, he presents an elaborate argument supporting the claim that ―it is always possible to stipulate that an arbitrary course-of-values is to be the true and another the false‖. aside from these arbitrary stipulations (which are themselves quite problematic), frege says little about the properties of either truth value, or even his reasons for construing truth and falsity in terms of objects (i.e., courses-of-values). this is not entirely surprising, as he notes in several places that he takes the concept of truth itself to be something indefinable. he writes, for instance: [...] it would be futile to employ a definition in order to make it clearer what is to be understood by ‗true‘. if, for example, we wished to say ‗an idea is true if it agrees with reality‘ nothing would have been achieved, since in order to apply this definition we should have to decide whether some idea or other did agree with reality. thus we should have to presuppose the very thing that is being defined. the same would hold of any definition of the form ‗a is true if and only if it has such-and-such properties or stands in such-and-such relation to such-and-such a thing‘. in each case in hand it would always come back to the question whether it is true that a has such-and-such properties, or stands in such-and-such a relation to such-and-such a thing. truth is obviously something so primitive and simple that it is not possible to reduce it to anything simpler. embedded in this paragraph are the beginnings of two distinct arguments in favour of the claim that truth is indefinable. these are developed further in one of frege‘s last works, a essay entitled ―the thought‖. the first argument is rather limited in scope, addressing as it does only a very narrow form of the correspondence theory of truth. both wolfgang künne and michael dummett have suggested for different reasons that the apparent narrowness of this first argument for frege, entities which are not objects (i.e., functions) take neither the true nor the false as a value when input as argument into a (first-level) concept like ‗x is a bottle‘; instead, they fail to produce a logical whole at all, resulting in nonsense. see [diamond , chapter ] and [goldfarb ] for competing accounts of exactly what is meant by nonsense here. as can be imagined, the view of sentences as names of truth values is a fairly controversial one which has given rise to considerable debate. [heck ] gives a fairly reasonable explanation of this peculiar view, suggesting that this move expedites frege‘s treatment of relations in terms of double courses-of-values. [frege , § ]. below, in our discussion of the julius caesar objection, we will treat in more detail problems pertaining to the association of a function with a unique course-of-values, as well as problems directly related to frege‘s arguments in grundgesetze § . [frege , - ]. should not be taken to undermine frege‘s broader claims about the indefinability of truth. let‘s take a look at this first argument and then see how it connects up with his larger claims about the indefinability of truth. this first argument is pitted against what künne calls the ―traditional object-based correspondence theory‖ of truth. on such a view, a statement is true if it corresponds to the object which it is about. thus if i claim that my hat is yellow, the claim is true if it (somehow or other) corresponds with the object in question (viz. my hat). but what is meant here by correspondence, and how can such a correspondence give us truth? frege writes now a correspondence is a relation. but this goes against the use of the word ‗true‘, which is not a relative term and contains no indication of anything else to which something is to correspond. if i do not know that a picture is meant to represent cologne cathedral then i do not know what to compare the picture with in order to decide on its truth. a correspondence, moreover, can only be perfect if the corresponding things coincide and so just are not different things. […] it would only be possible to compare an idea with a thing if the thing were an idea too. and then, if the first did correspond perfectly with the second, they would coincide. but this is not at all what people intend when they define truth as the correspondence of an idea with something real. for in this case it is essential precisely that the reality shall be distinct from the idea. but then there can be no complete correspondence, no complete truth. here frege suggests that the very idea of a correspondence contains a kind of imperfection which is foreign to the nature of truth. one of frege‘s guiding assumptions throughout his work is that truth is not a matter of degrees, nor is it relative to a given context, situation, or theory. truth is an unchanging feature of thoughts. thus, if we suggest that the only means of getting at perfect truth is via a correspondence between our claims and reality, then we are doomed to failure from the very start. for a picture is, by its very nature, something other than what it pictures. but this argument is only really effective against a fairly naïve form of the correspondence theory. frege uses this naïve view as the starting point for a broader criticism of correspondence as a means of defining truth. immediately following the above-quoted passage he writes: but could we not maintain that there is truth when there is correspondence in a certain respect? but which respect? for in that case what ought we to do so as to decide whether something is true? we should have to inquire whether it is true that an idea and a reality, say, correspond in the specified respect. and then we should be confronted by a question cf. [dummett , ] and [künne , § ]. dummett holds that, while frege‘s arguments do not convince us of his ultimate claim, they do provide us with sharp new limitations on any attempted definition of truth. künne suggests that frege‘s arguments about truth are subtler than many commentators have noted, a fact owing, perhaps to their enthymematic character. [künne , ]. [frege , - ; beaney , - ]. of the same kind, and the game could begin again. so the attempted explanation of truth as correspondence breaks down. this is the crux of his first argument against the definability of truth in terms of correspondence. the claim here is that any attempt at defining truth in terms of correspondence leaves us no better off than when we started. for in order to apply any definition of this form (say, ‗x is true iff x corresponds in respect y with reality‘) in the first place, we would have to know whether it was true that our idea corresponded with reality in the relevant respect. but to establish that our idea corresponds to reality in the relevant respect, we can supply another claim or give another idea (the idea of my idea corresponding to reality in the relevant respect), and so on down the line. the problem here is not that we encounter an infinite regress, but that our attempts to apply the definition never actually succeed; we are always left with the same demand to apply the definition again. we find ourselves unable to get anywhere with the definition. but this narrower argument only attacks certain features of correspondence theories of truth, which are far from the only game in town. following this focussed attack, frege generalizes the argument to include any attempt at defining truth as a property or relation of any kind. he writes: and any other attempt to define truth also breaks down. for in a definition certain characteristics would have to be specified. and in the application to any particular case the question would always arise whether it were true that the characteristics were present. so we should be going round in a circle. so it seems likely that the content of the word ‗true‘ is sui generis and indefinable. in this more general argument, nothing hinges upon the particularities of correspondence relations. instead, the general nature of definitions is brought into play. a definition involves isolating a particular notion by providing characteristics which only that notion possesses. on frege‘s view, when providing such characteristics for ‗true‘, we would have to ask again whether it was true that these general characteristics were present in the particular case at hand. but then we would have to apply our definition again, resulting in the same question once more. and round and round we go. as künne points out, this isn‘t exactly a vicious infinite regress, but a kind of vicious circle objection. this does not mean that [frege] condemns all definitions of ‗true‘ as circular definitions a definition is circular if the concept expressed by the definiendum is […] expressed by a proper part of the alleged definiens. […] the circle frege is complaining about is not of this kind. rather, it is a circle one gets into as soon as one tries to apply the alleged definiens of ‗true‘. the success of this argument, then, seems to hinge at least in some part on the capacities of those who would attempt to apply it. more specifically, as künne notes, it hinges on the general [frege , ; beaney , ]. the german term here is ‗merkmale‘ which can also be translated ‗marks‘. below we will have occasion to discuss frege‘s technical understanding of these characteristics or marks in more detail. [künne , ] gives good reasons for thinking that frege is not using ‗merkmale‘ here in his technical sense. [frege , ; beaney , ]. [künne , ]. principle ―one cannot decide whether things are thus and so without deciding whether it is true that things are thus and so‖, which, he claims, ―frege seems to regard as self-evident‖. ultimately, frege does not claim that these arguments are apodeictically certain or even terribly convincing, he only holds that given these considerations ―it seems likely‖ that we cannot define truth at all. despite his acceptance of the impossibility of a proper definition of the concept, he goes on to suggest that we can ―bring out the peculiarity of our predicate [i.e., ‗is true‘] by comparing it with others‖ and that ―what, in the first place, distinguishes it from all other predicates is that predicating it is always included in predicating anything whatever‖. it would seem, then, that frege‘s many remarks about truth and the predicate ‗is true‘ are to be taken as pre-systematic elucidations of the concept. none of these elucidations are particularly helpful in deciding upon the relationship between frege‘s primitive concept of truth and the two objects which serve as truth values. presumably, the extension of the concept of truth is identical with the object frege calls the true, but this assumption is never made explicit and there remains confusion as to the relations between the true, and the predicate ‗x is true‘. . functions in addition to the saturated entities frege calls objects, he also discusses unsaturated entities. these he calls functions. frege‘s view of functions is closely related to the informal mathematical notion of a numerical function. a function in this sense is a rule for, or way of, determining one quantity (the value of the function) by means of another quantity (the argument, or input). within most areas of mathematics functions are only defined for a particular domain, e.g., on the natural, real, or complex numbers. each entity within the domain of a function determines a specific value for that function. the range of the function is composed of the collection of entities which act as its values. the range and domain may be disjoint, co-extensive, or partially overlap with each other. the successor function on the natural numbers, for instance, takes natural numbers as inputs and delivers natural numbers as outputs. the square root function defined on the natural numbers as arguments, however, takes natural numbers as inputs but includes real numbers amongst its outputs. though, historically, many mathematical domains have been defined by the types of objects of which they are composed (e.g., euclidean space as the collection of euclidean points, the natural number domain as the collection of all natural [künne , ]. [frege , ]. [künne , § ] discusses the arguments in favour of a version of this claim in more detail. for more detailed examination of frege‘s views on the indefinability of truth and their development, see the remainder of [künne ] as well as [sluga ]; for an account of the relationship between frege‘s anti- empiricist epistemology and his conception of truth, see [ricketts ] and [levine ]. it should be noted here that the ontological or metaphysical characterization of functions which i outline in this section was not always present in frege‘s work. as [heck and may ] convincingly shows, in the begriffsschrift of , frege‘s distinction between functions and objects was (at least tacitly) a linguistic one. later, in the grundgesetze of , frege is very explicit about the ontological character of this distinction. my remarks here concern only this later period in frege‘s thinking, which he took to be an improvement upon his earlier position (see, again, [heck and may ] for detailed argumentation to this effect). numbers), some mathematical domains have been partially characterized in terms of closure under certain types of functions. for a domain to remain closed under a given function the range must be a subset of the domain. thus, for instance, an important part of the definition of a group is that a group is closed under the binary group operation. similarly, the natural numbers are closed under addition, but if we include the operation of subtraction, we must extend the domain to include all the integers to maintain closure. historically, many new mathematical domains—perhaps most notably within number theory— have been investigated in an effort to understand what type of domain is required to maintain closure under a particular operation or type of function. this is one way in which the concept of a function has been extended. beginning with the birth of analysis during the time of leibniz and newton, the concept of a function has been almost continuously expanded, such that it has come to include functions defined for wider and wider number domains, as well as functions which employ a much wider array of allowable operations. frege saw his work as contributing to both these ways of extending the notion of a function. first, he extended functions to include a much greater variety of possible inputs. instead of simply the natural, real, or complex numbers, frege viewed functions as accepting any objects whatsoever as arguments and values. in effect, frege demanded that functions be defined exclusively within the single domain of his ontological hierarchy. second, he extended the allowable operations which were taken to define mathematical functions. just as the irish mathematician william hamilton‘s development of quaternions required him to countenance non-commutative forms of multiplication, frege, similarly, sought to expand the domain of allowable mathematical functions by including, e.g., the symbol for equality in the construction of function-expressions. alongside his two-fold extension of the mathematical notion of a function, frege also attempted, in both his formal and informal works, to deepen our understanding of the nature of functions and their relations to objects. on the linguistic level, there is the obvious difference between symbols which refer to functions and those which refer to objects that function-symbols tend to indicate, in one way or another, the need for completion by object-symbols, often of a particular type. frege believed that this orthographic feature of mathematical discourse represented a deeper, ontological difference between functions and objects. one key aspect of this difference is that, for him, functions possess argument places. frege writes that he ―is concerned to show that the argument does not belong with a function, but goes together with the function to make up a complete whole; for a function by itself must be incomplete, in need of supplementation, or unsaturated. and in this respect functions differ fundamentally from numbers‖. though frege is specifically concerned here with differentiating functions from numbers, his remarks are guided by the more general view that functions differ fundamentally from all objects. the argument places of functions dictate which form or forms of supplementation a particular after frege introduces concepts as functions whose values are always truth-values (at [frege , ]), he writes that ―we must go further and admit objects without restriction as values of functions‖ [frege , ]. though frege‘s remarks on the nature of functions always presume an extremely liberal understanding of the allowable types of functions, in practice he rarely refers to the stranger types of function which were gaining in mathematical popularity during his career. [burgess ] presents an interesting examination of frege‘s actual use and treatment of specifically mathematical functions throughout his work against the backdrop of broader developments in the concept of function of the time. [frege , ]. function will accept. there are different levels and degrees of function determined by the nature and number of argument places. each of these levels is entirely distinct from all others, such that a function of one level is (according to frege) as ontologically separate from every other type of function as it is from objects. for frege, the most basic functions are first-level functions of one argument place. such functions possess a single argument place which can be supplemented or saturated only by an object. the result of a first-level function with an object saturating its argument place is another object. thus, for instance, we might have the square function x (where ‗x‘ indicates an argument place). this function takes objects as arguments and delivers objects in turn: if we input the number as argument, the value returned by the function is the number , another object. there are, similarly, functions of the first level with multiple argument places, each of which can take any object as an argument. second-level functions take first-level functions as arguments, and can possess one or more argument places. third-level functions take second-level functions as arguments, and so on. perhaps one of frege‘s most lasting contributions to modern thought was his understanding of concepts as particular types of functions, namely those of one argument place whose values are always truth-values. similarly, he viewed relations of all types as functions of two or more arguments whose values are always truth-values. thus, for instance, the concept of a natural number is a function which takes objects as arguments and gives truth values as outputs. all objects which are indeed natural numbers give the true as value when input into the function, while any objects which are not natural numbers give the false as value. concepts, like other functions, can be of different levels. thus, the concept ‗x is a horse‘ is of the first-level because it takes objects as arguments, while the concept ‗f is a concept easily attained‘ is a second-level concept insofar as it takes first-level concepts as arguments (we will discuss this in more detail below in the section on the concept horse problem). in order to completely specify what type of function we are dealing with, frege believes that we must carefully indicate the nature and number of its argument places. we may, for instance, have two second-level functions which, despite this similarity, are nevertheless fundamentally different insofar as they possess a different number of argument-places. for frege, a second- level function of two argument places is, despite certain similarities, as ontologically distinct from a second-level function of three argument places as it is from an object. because this hierarchy of functions is (at least in principle) infinitely extendible, and each level of function is ontologically separate from every other, frege‘s ontology ends up being quite rich despite the relative simplicity of the general notions involved. we have both an infinite number of levels of function and, at each level, an infinite number of different types of functions determined by the number of argument places they possess. to further add to this ontological panoply, there are also various functions of mixed level which possess two or more argument places of different levels. thus, for instance, we might have a function which possesses one argument place which e.g., x + y, x = x, ((x + ) – x)/ , etc. where ‗x‘ and ‗y‘ represent argument places for objects. i have found warren goldfarb‘s description (at [goldfarb , ] ) of these distinctions in terms of different types of velcro particularly useful. takes objects as arguments and another argument place which takes first-level functions as arguments. this does not mean, however, that there are single argument places which accept entities of different level, only that a function may possess argument places of multiple different levels. as we‘ve seen, frege describes objects as saturated and self-standing or self-subsistent. we‘ve also seen that for him a key feature of concepts (and functions more generally) is their unsaturatedness. in this they differ fundamentally from objects. but are concepts also self- subsistent for frege? that is, do concepts possess independent existence in the same way that fregean objects do? given the centrality of functions for frege‘s ontology, the somewhat surprising answer is that they do not. in , in a letter to the swiss philosopher anton marty ( - ) outlining his logical views, frege writes a concept is unsaturated in that it requires something to fall under it; hence it cannot exist on its own. […] now i do not believe that concept formation can precede judgement, because this would presuppose the independent existence of concepts, but i think of a concept as having arisen by decomposition from a judgeable content. and later, in one of his articles on the foundations of geometry, he states the view again: it is clear that we cannot put a concept forward as self-subsisting like an object. rather a concept can only occur in a combination. it can be said that the concept can be distinguished in the combination, but cannot be separated out of the combination. this is in some ways a puzzling view. for frege certainly does not want to deny that concepts and functions have a kind of ontological status. they are not in any sense reducible to objects, though it does seem, as thomas ricketts convincingly argues, that objects are, in a certain sense, logically prior to concepts. but, as the metaphor of unsaturatedness is meant to elucidate, it is of the essence of concepts that they are isolable only in the context of the analysis of the logical wholes frege calls ‗thoughts‘. to treat them as self-standing entities, as already-completed wholes, would be to misconstrue them as yet another type of object. and, as we will see in greater detail below, one of frege‘s three guiding principles in his logical and mathematical work was ―never to lose sight of the distinction between concept and object‖. . relations between functions and objects e.g., the functions ∫ ( ) and [ ( )] , both of which take objects and functions as arguments. [frege to marty, august , ; in beaney , ]. [frege , , note ]. cf. [ricketts , - ]. ricketts argues that this sort of priority is a self-conscious (if complex) aspect of frege‘s view; [bergmann ] suggests that, self-conscious or not, it leads frege away from the sort of platonic realism about functions with which he is often associated and towards a ‗hidden nominalism‘ about functions. [frege b, xxii]. in addition to outlining the properties of functions and objects, frege also discusses various relationships between these ontological categories. one of the most important logical relationships between objects and concepts, as noted in frege‘s letter to marty, is that of an object ‗falling under‘ a concept. frege says that an object falls under a concept just in case it produces the value the true when input into the concept as argument. as a human being, i fall under a number of concepts. for instance, i fall under the concept ―x is a corporeal being‖. frege‘s understanding of properties is directly connected to this relationship between concepts and the entities which fall under them. the properties (eigenschaften) of an entity are, for frege, just the concepts under which that entity falls. in his attempt to understand the nature of number, frege found it useful to note a distinction between the properties of an entity and the marks or characteristics (merkmale) of the concept under which that object falls. let‘s take a look at what he says, and follow it up with a few examples. in §§ - of the foundations of arithmetic, frege writes: […] our ordinary language does assign number not to concepts but to objects: we speak of ―the number of the bales‖ just as we do of ―the weight of the bales‖. thus on the face of it we are talking about objects, whereas really we are intending to assert something of a concept. this usage is confusing. the construction in ―four thoroughbred horses‖ fosters the illusion that ―four‖ modifies the concept ―thoroughbred horse‖ in just the same way as ―thoroughbred‖ modifies the concept ―horse.‖ whereas in fact only ―thoroughbred‖ is a characteristic [merkmal] used in this way; the word ―four‖ is used to assert something of a concept. […] by properties which are asserted of a concept i naturally do not mean the characteristics [merkmale] which make up the concept. these latter are properties of the things which fall under the concept, not of the concept. thus, ―rectangular‖ is not a property of the concept ―rectangular triangle‖; but the proposition that there exists no rectangular equilateral rectilinear triangle does state a property of the concept ―rectangular equilateral rectilinear triangle‖; it assigns to it the number nought. we can see here that the distinction between a mark and a concept is quite a useful one for frege‘s dual project of disambiguating natural language and garnering a proper understanding of the nature of number. natural languages like german and english tend to blur the distinction, particularly when it comes to number, and frege believes that this can (and does) lead us to incorrect accounts of the actual nature of number. by mistaking the properties of a concept for the properties of the object or objects which fall under that concept, we are led to a misunderstanding about the role concepts play in numerical applications like counting. but the distinction is not only useful in the specific context of frege‘s logicist program in the grundlagen. eight years later, in his attempt to overcome benno kerry‘s criticisms of his distinction between concepts and objects, he returns to the vocabulary of marks and properties. in ‗on concept and object‘ he writes: [frege a, ; in beaney , ]. [frege b, §§ - ]. the words [‗eigenschaft‘ and ‗merkmal‘] serve to signify relations, in sentences like ‗Φ is a property of Γ‘ and ‗Φ is a mark of Ω‘. in my way of speaking, a thing can be at once a property and a mark, but not of the same thing. i call the concepts under which an object falls its properties; thus ‗to be Φ is a property of Γ‘ is just another way of saying ‗Γ falls under the concept of a Φ‘. if the object Γ has the properties Φ, Χ and Ψ, i may combine them into Ω; so that it is the same thing if i say that Γ has the property Ω, or, that Γ has the properties Φ, Χ and Ψ. i then call Φ, Χ and Ψ marks of the concept Ω, and, at the same time, properties of Γ. it is clear that the relations of Φ to Γ and to Ω are quite different, and that consequently different terms are required. Γ falls under the concept Φ; but Ω, which is itself a concept, cannot fall under the first-level concept Φ; only to a second-level concept could it stand in a similar relation. Ω is, on the other hand, subordinate to Φ. here we see the distinction laid out more explicitly. frege employs the term ‗mark‘ when encountering what we might call a conjunctive or a complex concept. a complex concept, in this sense, is one composed of a number of component concepts. thus we might think of the complex concept ‗x is a large orange cat‘ as a conjunction of three component concepts, ‗x is large,‘ ‗x is orange,‘ and ‗x is a cat‘. such complex concepts needn‘t be given in such an obviously conjunctive form. we might, for instance, have previously defined the phrase ‗x is a garfield‘ to mean ‗x is a large orange cat,‘ in which case we can still think of ‗x is large,‘ ‗x is orange,‘ and ‗x is a cat‘ as component concepts of the complex concept ‗x is a garfield‘. let‘s take another example and work through the relationship between the properties of an entity and the marks of a concept under which that entity falls. blue guitars—objects in frege‘s dispensation—fall under two distinct component concepts: ‗x is blue‘ and ‗x is a guitar‘. for frege, this is another (and perhaps a more accurate) way of saying that these objects possess the properties of being blue and of being a guitar. just as guitars have properties, so too do the concepts under which they fall. importantly, and perhaps obviously, the properties of concepts are usually quite different from the properties of the objects which fall under them. for instance, it is not a property of the concept ‗x is a blue guitar‘ that it is blue. one property of our complex concept would be that it is not an empty one; there have in fact been objects in the world which have been both blue and a guitar. frege uses the term ‗mark‘ or ‗characteristic‘ to refer to a quite different relationship between concepts and the objects which fall under them. for frege, some of the properties of the objects which fall under a complex concept are to be understood as the marks of that concept. take a [frege a, - ; in beaney , - ]. particular blue guitar as an example. such an object falls under a plethora of concepts, not all of which will count as marks of the complex concept (‗x is a blue guitar‘) we are interested in here. for instance, it might fall under the concept ‗x is destructible‘. now, it is in fact the case that all the objects which fall under our complex concept ‗x is a blue guitar‘ also happen to be destructible. but for properties to count as marks of a given concept, they have to be component concepts of that concept, and ‗x is destructible‘ is not one of the concepts conjoined to form our complex concept. the notion of a mark has much more to do with the parts or components of the concept than it has to do with the objects which fall under the concept. let‘s see how this plays out. we have an object (say, rollie fingers), a complex concept (‗x is a moustachioed baseball player), and two component concepts (‗x is a baseball player‘ and ‗x is moustachioed‘). our object, rollie fingers, has the following three properties: . he is a cy young award winner. . he is a baseball player. . he is moustachioed. none of these are properties of the concept ‗x is a moustachioed baseball player‘, which is to say that the concept ‗x is a moustachioed baseball player‘ does not fall under (indeed, cannot fall under) any of the concepts underlying these three properties. the latter two of these properties are, however, marks of the complex concept ‗x is a moustachioed baseball player‘. they are marks of this complex concept because they are the components or parts out of which it was constructed. the first property and many other properties of rollie fingers are not components of the complex concept and are not, therefore, marks of that concept. all of this might seem obvious enough (even pedantic), but when it comes to complex concepts of higher levels, or highly abstract ones like those we find in mathematics, it becomes more difficult to distinguish between properties and marks without such a clearly defined vocabulary. the distinction between a property and a mark is not exactly an ontological one, as a single concept can serve as both a mark and a property, though it cannot be a mark and a property of the same entity. it is nevertheless a useful terminological distinction. another relation that emerges in frege‘s discussion of properties and marks is that of subordination (unterordnung). for frege, a concept f is subordinate to a concept g, when the extension of f is contained within the extension of g. note that this relation need not be asymmetrical: co-extensive concepts can be said to be mutually subordinate. a complex concept is subordinate to its component concepts. thus, for instance, the concept ‗x is a positive even whole number greater than ‘ is subordinate to the component concepts ‗x is a positive number‘, ‗x is a whole number‘ ‗x is an even number‘ and ‗x is greater than ‘. the relation of subordination, however, needn‘t be restricted to complex concepts (i.e., concepts which are given as conjunctions of simpler concepts). cf. [frege a, ; in beaney , ]. in contrast to the relations between concepts and marks, the relation of subordination is concerned more directly with the entities which fall under the concept than with the components of the concept itself. let‘s take two first-level concepts as an example, say ‗x is a banjo‘ and ‗x is a physical object‘. the former is subordinate to the latter not because being a physical object is part of a conjunction of concepts which make up the concept ‗x is a banjo‘ but because of certain facts about the objects which fall under these two concepts. all the objects which fall under the concept ‗x is a banjo‘ also fall under the concept ‗x is a physical object‘, but the converse is not true. it is this relation between the objects which fall under the concepts which determines subordination. frege stresses at a number of points that this relationship of subordination which holds only between concepts of the same level is not to be confused with similar relations between entities of different levels. we‘ve already seen the relation of falling under which holds between objects and first-level concepts. but frege also distinguishes a similar relationship between first- and second-level concepts which he calls ‗falling within‘. the distinctions between ‗subordination,‘ ‗falling under,‘ and ‗falling within‘ are of particular importance for understanding his remarks regarding hilbert‘s work on euclidean geometry. he writes that second-level concepts, which [first-level] concepts fall under, are essentially different from first-level concepts, which objects fall under. the relation of an object to a first-level concept that it falls under is different from the (admittedly similar) relation of a first-level to a second-level concept. to do justice at once to the distinction and to the similarity, we might perhaps say: an object falls under a first level concept; a concept falls within a second-level concept. the distinction of concept and object thus still holds, with all its sharpness. so, for instance, the object jumbo falls under the first-level concept ‗x is an elephant‘. the first- level concept ‗x is an elephant‘ falls within the second-level concept ‗f is not an empty concept‘. and the first-level concept ‗x is an elephant‘ is subordinate to the first-level concept ‗x is a mammal‘. in case of hilbert‘s geometric researches, frege would say that euclidean lines are objects which fall under the first-level concept ‗x is a euclidean line‘, while hilbert‘s supposedly uninterpreted notion of a line is better understood as a second-level concept within which fall various first-level concepts, including the concept of a euclidean line. this is different from the relation of subordination which holds between, e.g., the first-level concepts ‗x is a euclidean line‘ and ‗x is a euclidean parabola‘. thus, from frege‘s point of view, much of the confusion in hilbert‘s work stems from the fact that hilbert confuses the properties of euclidean points with the marks of his second-level concept of point. though frege does not often remark upon concepts of levels higher than the second, it is presumably the case that the difference between falling under and falling within can be analogously extended to each ontological level. thus the relationship between second- and third-level concepts (falling into?) will be similar, though ontologically distinct, from that which holds between second- and first-level concepts. the [frege ; in beaney , ]. e.g., at [frege b, § ], [frege a, ; in beaney , ]. difficulty of making such distinctions in ordinary language can of course be surmounted through various formal devices (e.g., subscripts). . courses-of-values and extensions frege believed that each function was associated with a (unique) object. these objects are called courses-of-values (wertverläufe) or, if the function happens to be a concept, extensions. let‘s look at the special case of extensions first. though frege assumes that it is known what the extension of a concept is, there are, i think, at least two ways of understanding this notion. the first is to take as the extension of a concept simply the collection of all entities which produce the value ‗the true‘ when input into the concept as arguments, i.e., the collection of all those objects which fall under the concept at issue. the second would be to take the extension as a set of ordered pairs, where the first term of each pair is any object whatever, and the second either the true or the false, depending on whether the object falls under the given concept. for the concept ‗x is a natural number‘, accordingly, the extension would thus be either: { , , , , …} or (using the usual notation for ordered pairs): {...<scipio africanus, the false>, < , the true>, < , the true>, ...} the first way of understanding extensions of concepts is a fairly common one. but it will not do as an account of the nature of courses-of-values in general. this first option cannot help us explain courses-of-values for functions which are not concepts, as in such functions there is no pairing between the arguments of a function and the true and thus no obvious way to generate a list of entities. in the general case, if we are to attempt to pick out a unique course-of-values, we need to know which arguments produce which values, a task which can be accomplished if we model courses-of-values on the second approach using ordered. since frege claimed that no entity can stand in the relation of identity to any entity of a different ontological level, he did not identify functions with their courses of values (as is often done, for example, in most versions of contemporary set theory). given the loose characterization of functions as rules for determining quantities by means of other quantities, this refusal seems plausible; for a rule is not identical to the pairings it determines. for frege, too, this makes sense, as his ontological hierarchy is built largely upon the fundamental distinction between functions and objects. this understanding of the notion of function has the consequence that distinct functions might have the same course of values, or distinct concepts the same extension. thus, for instance, the square function will possess the same course of values as the function x + . similarly, when programming a computer we might have three distinct programs which achieve the same goal (i.e., deliver the same output given the same inputs) though at wildly different computational speeds and levels of complexity. there are also well-known examples of co- extensive concepts which seem ‗intensionally‘ quite different (a standard example is the pair of [frege b, § , note ]. frege admits as much in the specific case of concepts at [frege b, § note ]. concepts ‗x is a creature with kidneys‘ and ‗x is creature with a heart‘). below we will discuss in greater detail the way in which frege believes the course of values of a given function (or the extension of a particular concept) is determined—we will also see that this seemingly simple concern posed a major problem for his entire philosophical program. now that we have a clearer understanding of frege‘s ontological hierarchy, let‘s begin our examination of problems pertaining to that hierarchy. § . the concept horse problem the first problem with frege‘s philosophy we will examine is the so called concept horse problem. this problem relates directly to frege‘s basic distinction between objects and functions. as we‘ve seen above, frege took it to be the case that the world was exhaustively divided into objects and functions, and that no object could be identical to a function. the concept horse problem, first raised by benno kerry ( - ), seems to attack the possibility of maintaining this absolute distinction. in a series of eight articles published between and , kerry examined the role of intuition within reasoning. at several points in these articles, kerry mentions frege‘s works, sometimes favourably, sometimes critically. kerry agreed with frege, for instance, that the relationship between concepts and the objects which fall under them is likely irreducible, but argued that ―this [is] in no way bound up with the view that the properties of being a concept and of being an object are mutually exclusive‖. further, he argued that, on frege‘s own account, we can construct meaningful sentences expressing thoughts which sensibly treat concepts as objects, and, thus, that the distinction between the two types of entity is not absolute. his arguments against frege‘s claim that the world is exhaustively divided into these two disjoint categories center upon the following putative counterexample: the concept horse is a concept easily attained. this relatively simple example seemed, to kerry, to illustrate a serious problem with frege‘s distinction. for, by frege‘s own lights, the use of the definite article generally indicates that we are speaking of an object. thus, if the phrase ―the concept horse‖ refers to anything, it would seem to refer to an object and not a concept. hence, kerry‘s sentence seems to express a thought in which an entity that is obviously a concept (namely, the concept horse) is treated as an object. so, following kerry‘s reasoning, frege must either drop his insistence that concepts and objects are mutually exclusive, or admit that his system contains a contradictory element. ―[a]n object is anything that is not a function‖ [frege ; in beaney , ]. [kerry, quoted in frege a, ; in beaney , ]. frege notes of kerry‘s claim that ―the concept ‗horse‘‖ refers to an object that it is quite correct, and that it ―is in full accord with the criterion i gave—that the singular definite article always indicates an object, whereas the indefinite article accompanies a concept-word‖ [frege a, ; in beaney , ]. this criterion is also discussed in die grundlagen der arithmetik, where frege writes, for instance, that ―a general concept word just designates a concept. only with the definite article or a demonstrative pronoun does it function as a proper name of a thing, but it then ceases to function as a concept word‖ [frege b, § ; in beaney , ]. a third rather easy way out of the problem for frege would be to alter his views so that they allow for instances where the use of the definite article does not accurately reflect the logical structure of the thought expressed. frege might then treat kerry‘s putative counter-example as an exception to a rule which is applicable only in most cases. frege does admit as much, and provides a few such examples of his own. but he subsequently dismisses these rare exceptions as unimportant and irrelevant to kerry‘s main point. as we will see when we begin to analyze frege‘s response to the problem, this refusal to alter his views of the logical function of the definite article is one of the most puzzling aspects of this episode. before we get to frege‘s response, however, let‘s take a closer look at the exact sources of the problem in frege‘s philosophy. the first and most fundamental is his refusal to allow any identification of concepts/functions with objects, and vice versa. this means that no function can be an object, and no object can be a function. and, since frege‘s ontological distinctions are intended to cut deeper than mere psychological, linguistic, or temporal considerations, there is no sense to claims that the very same entity can be considered an object from one point of view and a function from another. putative counterexamples to the contrary are, on frege‘s view, simply the result of confusion or equivocation. this insistence that ontological distinctions are absolute is essential both to his own project of reducing arithmetic to logic and to his criticisms of hilbert‘s views. the second, related, source of the problem lies in the fact that frege takes his ontological distinction to be exhaustive. every entity is either an object or a function with a determinate number of argument places of determinate types. there is no third type of hybrid entity able to partially fulfill the roles of both saturated and unsaturated entities. hence the option of placing troublesome entities somewhere in the middle of the function/object distinction is simply not available to frege. third, the problem arises because of certain features in frege‘s theory of language, notably his view that proper names of any kind (including those indicated via the use of the definite article) can only refer to objects if they refer at all. . mendelsohn‘s analysis of the problem we can understand, i think, frege not wanting to alter his views regarding the fundamental distinction at the heart of his entire theory, so it makes sense that he does not simply invent an ad an example of such an instance might be the statement ‗the concept unicorn is empty‘. here the surface grammar suggests that we are attributing a property (emptiness) to an object (the concept unicorn), but it seems relatively uncontroversial to symbolize the actual logical structure of this sentence, in modern notation, as follows: x~ux, i.e., as a straightforward claim that nothing falls under the concept unicorn. frege admits that there are certain difficulties pertaining to the plural usage of the definite article, as well as rare cases of the singular. he writes: ―in the singular, so far as i can see, the matter is doubtful only when a singular takes the place of a plural, as in the sentences ‗the turk besieged vienna,‘ ‗the horse is a four-legged animal‘. these cases are so easily recognizable as special ones that the value of our rule is hardly impaired by their occurrence. it is clear that in the first sentence ‗the turk‘ is a proper name of a people. the second sentence is probably best regarded as expressing a universal judgement, say ‗all horses are four-legged animals‘ or ‗all properly constituted horses are four-legged animals‘‖ [frege a, ; in beaney , - ]. hoc third ontological category or relax the strictness of the distinction. but it does seem rather puzzling that he is so steadfast in his merely linguistic doctrine regarding the definite article. what reasons can he possibly have for sticking to his guns here? frege himself is of very little help in answering this question. in a rather infamous passage from ―on concept and object,‖ for instance, he writes that by a kind of necessity of language, my expressions, taken literally, sometimes miss my thought; i mention an object, when what i intend is a concept. i fully realize that in such cases i was relying upon a reader who would be ready to meet me half-way—who does not begrudge a pinch of salt as richard mendelsohn (among others) notes, this appeal to readers to simply accept the prima facie preposterous claim that the concept horse is not a concept is ―much too dogmatic: a reasonable doubt about the theory remains as long as frege is unable to dispel the puzzle.‖ one way of doing so would be to explain exactly what is meant by ‗a kind of necessity of language‘ here. he does briefly try to explain this necessity in a footnote, but the explanation itself is confusing and quite misleading. in the footnote, frege writes: a similar thing happens when we say as regards the sentence ‗this rose is red‘: the grammatical predicate ‗is red‘ belongs to the subject ‗this rose‘. here the words ―the grammatical predicate ‗is red‘‖ are not a grammatical predicate but a subject. by the very act of explicitly calling it a predicate, we deprive it of this property. now presumably what frege is trying to show here is that we encounter exactly the same difficulty with phrases like ‗the concept η‘ as we do with phrases like ‗the predicate x‘. as his wording indicates, he takes this difficulty to stem from the subject/predicate structure of (some) natural languages. but, as richard mendelsohn points out, frege is just wrong here. and, as a result, the analogy that he wishes to construct as a means of explanation here is actually rather misleading and unhelpful. mendelsohn writes that ―contrary to what frege says, we don‘t, simply by calling a given expression a grammatical predicate, deprive it of the property of being a grammatical predicate‖. to see why, consider the following two sentences from mendelsohn: (a) the grammatical predicate ‗is red‘ is not a grammatical predicate. (b) ‗the grammatical predicate ―is red‖‘ is not a grammatical predicate. [frege a, ; in beaney , ]. see, for instance, crispin wright‘s aptly titled chapter ―why frege does not deserve his grain of salt‖ in [hale and wright ]. [mendelsohn , ]. [frege a, note h; in beaney , note h]. [mendelsohn , ]. [mendelsohn , ]. here and below i‘ve replaced mendelsohn‘s sequential numeration of these sentences. [mendelsohn , ]. mendelsohn rightly suggests that (a) is straightforwardly false: ‗is red‘ is indeed a grammatical predicate, and (a) falsely states that it is not. there seems to be no problem at all in holding that ‗is red‘ is indeed a grammatical predicate. now, (b) is, according to mendelsohn, equally straightforwardly true: the words ―the grammatical predicate ‗is red‘‖ do not form a grammatical predicate at all. as frege points out in his footnote, grammatically, these words form a subject not a predicate. and, again, we have no trouble at all seeing this. the problem in the footnote is that frege seems to hold that (b) is helpfully and illuminatingly analogous to the troublesome claim that ‗the concept horse is not a concept‘. but, given the straightforward falsity of (a), this analogy gets us nowhere. mendelsohn writes: but, in the first place, it is not clear why we should regard (b) rather than (a) as the proper analogue to [‗the concept horse is not a concept‘]. in the second place, there is no awkwardness about (a), and whatever awkwardness accrues to (b) is readily explained. in the third place, since (a) is false, we are able to speak about grammatical predicates, whereas on frege‘s view, we do not seem to be able to say anything intelligible about concepts. so, frege does not explain why the subject/predicate structure of natural languages necessarily leads us astray when speaking about either concepts or predicates. after this attempt at explanation, then, we are no closer to an understanding of the exact nature of the problem. unfortunately, frege himself does not give us much else to go on, and we have to do a bit of digging to see exactly which aspects of frege‘s philosophy are at issue in the problem. mendelsohn, for his part, does not try to root the concept horse problem in the infelicities of language. he holds, rather, that ―frege‘s claim that the problems with [‗the concept horse is not a concept‘] are the result of a mere awkwardness of language just does not seem to be able to capture the depths of his difficulties.‖ so, where are we to look for the real root of the problem? clearly the problem first arises when frege commits himself to the truth of the thought expressed by the sentence: (horse) the concept horse is not a concept. so, if we are to understand the source of the problem, we must first understand what sort of reasons frege could possibly have had for holding that (horse) is true. frege himself does not give us any compelling argument for his support of this claim. however, mendelsohn provides a reasonable reconstruction of an argument that one might make on the basis of frege‘s statements in ―on concept and object‖. let‘s take a look at mendelsohn‘s reconstruction. he begins with the claim that (horse) is a consequence of the principle: [mendelsohn , ]. [mendelsohn , ]. (c) η is a predicate if, and only if, η stands for a concept. for frege, this is a fundamental principle of his philosophy of language. a predicate is just an expression which stands for a concept, and something stands for a concept only if it is a predicate. this seems a fairly straightforward claim, and uncontroversial given frege‘s other views. so where do we get into trouble and confusion? mendelsohn takes it to be the case that frege fairly obviously holds that (d) ‗the concept horse‘ is not a predicate if he did not hold this, then the problem of ‗the concept horse‘ would not have arisen in the first place. so, by (c), this also commits him to the claim that (e) ‗the concept horse‘ does not stand for a concept since only predicates are able to stand for concepts, and ‗the concept horse‘ is not a predicate, it cannot stand for a concept. clear enough. then we also have (f) that which ‗the concept horse‘ stands for is not a concept but we also have the obvious identity: (g) that which ‗the concept horse‘ stands for = the concept horse and then finally we get (horse) by substituting ‗the concept horse‘ for ‗that which ‗the concept horse‘ stands for‖ in (f). but, following this reasoning, we can easily show that there are in fact no predicates at all. nothing here depends upon the peculiarity of ‗the concept horse,‘ so we can simply reiterate the argument for any ostensible predicate we like, with the same result. nothing, then, can be said to stand for a concept. this result is one with which frege – who speaks of predicates and concepts quite happily throughout his work – ought to have been deeply unsatisfied. so, what exactly is wrong with this picture? according to mendelsohn, something is wrong with the very first step in the above argument, with (c). first, mendelsohn suggests that throughout ―on concept and object‖ everything frege says shows that he treats ‗η is a concept‘ as the name of a first-level function. this means that frege assumes that ‗η is a concept‘ (or, after kerry‘s example, ‗η is a concept easily attained‘) refers to a function which accepts only objects as values. this assumption is evident when, for instance, he simultaneously suggests that the sentence ‗the concept horse is a concept‘ is well-formed (i.e., has a truth value) and that ‗the concept horse‘ is a proper name. if ‗the concept horse‘ is a proper name, then it can only sensibly be combined with first-level function names (or perhaps [mendelsohn , ]. the names of functions of mixed level) to form a proposition which expresses a complete thought bearing a truth value. since ‗η is a concept‘ is obviously not a name of a mixed level function, it must, therefore, be a first-level function name. the result of all this is that the function denoted by ‗η denotes a concept‘ can only accept objects as arguments and, therefore, must always be false, as no object is a concept. so, we can never truthfully say of anything that it denotes a concept. let‘s look again at (c). in order for the biconditional to be true, either both of the following conditions must be met or both must fail to be met: . η must be a predicate . η must stand for a concept frege would certainly like to hold that there are predicates, as he‘s spent quite a bit of time discussing them elsewhere in his work (hence his plea for a pinch of salt). but, by the argument we‘ve just seen, the second condition can never be met. so, despite the fact that there are predicates (or so frege‘s body of work seems to assume), (c) tells us that there can be no predicates because nothing can really stand for a concept. since all of this is intolerable, we must throw away one or more of the assumptions. given mendelsohn‘s reconstruction, the most obvious solution is to reject the claim that ‗η is a concept‘ is the name of a first-level function. we have, then, to look at the reasons why frege might have held this view in the first place. there is, again, a paucity of evidence from frege himself. mendelsohn notes that ―the only reason he offers, as far as we can tell, is that ‗η is a concept‘ can be sensefully completed by an eigenname [a proper name].‖ but, as mendelsohn notes, this isn‘t terribly convincing. for, elsewhere, frege is more than happy to construe sentences of very similar form as representing completely different logical structures. more important than specific examples, however, is the fact that frege‘s lifelong project of crafting a logically perspicuous language is predicated on the belief that natural language is rife with ambiguity, polysemy, and vagueness of all kinds. in many other places in frege‘s work, we find him rejecting the typical analysis of the logical structure of a particular sentence in surprising ways. so, as mendelsohn writes, it is rather surprising that [in ―on concept and object‖ frege] should so staunchly maintain that the singular definite article invariably signals an eigenname, for, as we see, he had adopted a more flexible attitude elsewhere, and moreover, his general rule of thumb was that the superficial grammar of a sentence was not always an accurate reflection of its logical structure. in order to establish that ‗η is a concept‘ is a first-level funktionsname, [mendelsohn , ]. [mendelsohn , - ] presents a clear comparison between frege‘s account of the logical structure of (h) and his account (in the grundlagen and elsewhere) of the logical structure of sentences like ‗the number exists‘. see, for instance, [frege b, § ], or the preface to the begriffsschrift, where frege states the view about as clearly as possible: ―if it is a task of philosophy to break the power of words over the human mind, by uncovering illusions that through the use of language often almost unavoidably arise concerning the relations of concepts, by freeing thought from the taint of ordinary linguistic means of expression, then my begriffsschrift, further developed for these purposes, can become a useful tool for philosophers‖ [frege , v-vi; translated in beaney , - ]. then, it is not enough merely to point to the fact that it can be sensefully completed by an eigenname – especially when the interpretation creates such enormous logical difficulties. one must also show that the expression filling the blank space is operating as an eigenname in that context. but, of course, frege does not show this, and so there is no real reason to grant him his paradoxical grain of salt. so, taking into account frege‘s wider philosophical views, his explanation of linguistic necessity as the source of the concept horse problem simply makes no sense. so now we have to ask: can we solve or avoid the problem in a way which is consonant with frege‘s views, or is kerry‘s objection disastrous for frege‘s ontological distinction? . frege‘s proxy-object solution frege himself offers an ontologically grounded account of the semantic situation presented by kerry. this account involves the introduction of two new types of entity into frege‘s ontology. he writes in logical discussions one quite often needs to say something about a concept, and to express this in the form usual for such predications – viz. to make what is said about the concept into the content of the grammatical predicate. consequently, one would expect that the reference [bedeutung] of the grammatical subject would be the concept; but the concept as such cannot play this part, in view of its predicative nature; it must first be converted into an object, or, more precisely, an object must go proxy for it. we designate this object by prefixing the words ‗the concept‘, e.g.: ‗the concept man is not empty‘. here the first three words are to be regarded as a proper name, which can no more be used predicatively than ‗berlin‘ or ‗vesuvius‘. the solution here involves describing the linguistic situation in ontological terms. if we take the surface grammar here as an indicator of the actual logical structure, then, frege suggests, we are forced to treat ‗the concept man‘ as a phrase which designates an object. but we desperately want this phrase to stand in some relation to a concept. since frege‘s linguistic views seemed to him to forbid from allowing the phrase of the form ‗the concept x‘ to refer to a concept, he suggests a different relation entirely. the suggestion is that phrases of the form ‗the concept x‘ refer to a new type of entity, not found elsewhere in frege‘s works, a special sort of proxy object. to fully explicate the semantic situation here also requires the introduction of a new relation, the relation of ‗representing‘ [vertreten], which differs from the relation of reference. thus frege has considerably expanded his ontology in order to explain the nature of this linguistic confusion. but this also commits him (or so the reader would hope) to a more explicit account of the nature of the entities (proxy objects, the relation of representing) which he has just [mendelsohn , ]. [frege a, - ; in beaney , - ]. here geach translates the german ‗vertreten‘ using the phrase ‗go proxy for‘. this term would more usually be translated ‗represents‘. introduced. given the difficulties which frege has already encountered in relation to his ontological hierarchy, it seems that a solution which could avoid introducing new and poorly explained entities would be preferable. . a salt-free solution to the problem how might we arrive at such a solution? well, the first step will be to reject the surface grammar as a useful indicator of the logical structure of the thought expressed here. as frege elsewhere has shown no hesitation to rehabilitate natural language, it seems entirely reasonable and consistent with his practice to suggest that kerry is simply pointing out an ambiguity or vagueness in natural language which needs to be corrected. the question thus arises: how are we to construe a sentence like ‗η is a concept‘? ultimately, frege‘s best response seems to be not to grant kerry his claim in the first place. without further information about what exactly is meant, sentences of the forms ‗η is a concept‘ or ‗η is a concept easily attained‘ are ambiguous. we need to know more specifically which level of concept is intended. for, as we‘ve seen, frege is keen to insist that concepts of different level and number of argument places are as ontologically distinct from one another as they are from objects. the english word ‗concept‘ and the german word ‗begriff‘ are both insufficiently precise to pin down exactly what is meant and, so, without further information or context, we have no way of deciding which level of concept is meant. this is a merely linguistic problem, akin in many ways to specifying the surname of each member of a group of men named ‗gregory‘ for clarity‘s sake. this sort of confusion might be obviated with subscripts or more explicit wording, e.g., st level concept: ‗η is a first-level concept‘ or ‗η is a concept ‘ nd level concept: ‗n is a second-level concept‘ or ‗n is a concept ‘ etc. by use of similar devices we can avoid vagueness when confronted with seemingly identical uses of words like ‗exist‘ in relation to entities of different ontological level (e.g., ‗the moon exists ,‘ ‗the concept horse exists ,‘ etc.). on this reading, the concept horse problem arises largely because our natural languages fail to make the appropriate logical distinctions between an object‘s falling under a first-level concept and a first-level concept‘s falling within a second- level concept. on the linguistic level, both are captured by way of the same subject-predicate form, and by use of the catch-all term ‗concept‘. this coarse-grained separation of entities simply cannot do justice to the logical subtleties of the realm of thoughts. again, though, simply adding appropriate terminology to the language obviates this form of the problem. even without adding to the natural language, frege‘s begriffsschrift is fully capable of stating things like ‗first-level concepts exist‘. if we employed this more logically perspicuous approach, it would become immediately apparent that kerry has provided no evidence whatsoever that one and the same entity (viz. the concept horse) is simultaneously treated as both an object and a concept. as mendelsohn notes, kerry simply cannot provide this kind of evidence in a way which ought to convince (a more self-consistent version of) frege: for somewhere along the line kerry would have to claim that there is an object x and a function f such that x = f; and, on frege‘s view, placing the identity sign thus between an object variable and a function variable is incoherent. actually, it would seem best in this situation simply to deny that [‗the concept horse is an object‘] is meaningful at all. it is entirely consistent with our interpretation that we adopt a suggestion of geach‘s that ‗the concept horse‘ is never serving as an eigenname in the sense that ‗the president‘ does. if a sentence containing such an expression is genuinely about a concept, then this would be captured in the symbolization by our use of funktionsnamen and second-order quantifiers, and the singular term would thus be eliminated. alternatively, if the term is ineliminable, the sentence containing it would be deemed to be nonsense. in short, frege himself developed the logical tools to make syntactic distinctions which seem to have no previous corollary in natural languages like german and english. in responding to kerry, rather than simply granting him the meaningfulness of sentences which treat objects as concepts, he should have referred him to precisely these syntactic distinctions. his unwillingness to alter his views of the definite article is both confusing (given his general attitude toward language) and detrimental to his own cause (as it renders his chief ontological distinction ineffable). as mendelsohn notes, the superior response would simply have been to reject the meaningfulness of claims which identify objects with concepts in the first place and, instead, to present a more perspicuous account of the logical structure of the claim that ‗the concept horse is a concept easily attained‘. having shown, then, that frege‘s own philosophy contains the resources to address the concept horse problem, let‘s move on to a much more difficult problem with his attempts to fix the references of mathematical terms. § . the julius caesar objection this second problem pertaining to frege‘s ontological approach to reference-fixing is the so- called julius caesar objection. this objection directly concerns frege‘s attempt to construe the natural numbers in terms of his ontological framework. more generally, it is relevant to his understanding of mathematical structures (like hilbert‘s ostensibly uninterpreted axiomatization of geometry) as non-relational, fixed entities embedded within that framework. the first instance of this objection is formulated by frege in § of his grundlagen der arithmetik. in the previous section, frege gives the following tentative definitions of the numbers and , as well as the successor function: it is tempting to define by saying that the number belongs to a concept if no object falls under it. but this seems to amount to replacing by ―no‖, which means the same. the following formulation is therefore preferable: the number belongs to a concept, if the proposition that a does not fall under that concept is true universally, whatever a may be. similarly we could say: the number belongs to a concept f, if the proposition that a does not fall under f is not true universally, whatever a may be, and if from the propositions ―a [mendelsohn , ]. falls under f‖ and ―b falls under f‖ it follows universally that a and b are the same. it remains still to give a general definition of the step from any given number to the next. let us try the following formulation: the number (n + ) belongs to a concept f, if there is an object a falling under f and such that the number n belongs to the concept ―falling under f, but not a‖. the chief aim of frege‘s grundlagen is to illustrate that arithmetic is a part of pure logic, and that its basic objects, concepts, and modes of reasoning are all purely logical in character. a crucial component of these logicist theses is frege‘s attempt to define the natural numbers in logical terms. after having argued against a variety of rival conceptions of the natural numbers, frege has begun in § to construct his own position. one of the key results of his analysis of the grammatical characteristics of statements involving number terms was the view that numbers can only be understood to be particular objects. hence, given his understanding of the ontological difference between functions and objects, numbers cannot be construed as functions or concepts. nevertheless, frege admits that they do have a peculiar relation to concepts. this becomes clear in the tentative definitions above: there numbers are construed as ‗belonging‘ to concepts. the number ‗belongs‘ to all those concepts under which no objects fall, i.e., concepts whose extensions are empty. the number and the successor function are defined in similar fashion by reference to concepts with extensions of a particular type. now, before we examine the julius caesar objection, which frege raises immediately after stating these tentative definitions, let us recall a few fundamental facts about his understanding of definitions. recall that fregean definitions are, ostensibly, mere logical shorthand: they are stipulations that the sense of a previously senseless sign is to be identical with the sense of an already given sign. essentially, definitions are identity statements whose truth is based upon stipulation. such a view requires that the previously given sign in a definition (the definiens) must possess a determinate meaning in order for the definition to function properly. this is a somewhat obvious point: if a new sign is to possess the same sense as a previously given sign, then that previously given sign must have some sense to give. now, with this in mind, let us turn to the caesar problem. in § of grundlagen, frege writes that the most likely [of the three definitions] to cause misgivings is the last; for strictly speaking we do not know the sense of the expression ―the number n belongs to the concept g‖ any more than we do that of the expression ―the number (n + ) belongs to the concept f‖. we can, of course, by using the last two definitions together, say what is meant by ―the number + belongs to the concept f‖ and then, using this, give the sense of the expression ―the number + + belongs to the concept f‖ [frege b, § ]. and so on; but we can never—to take a crude example—decide by means of our definitions whether any concept has the number julius caesar belonging to it, or whether that same familiar conqueror of gaul is a number or is not. moreover we cannot by the aid of our suggested definitions prove that, if the number a belongs to the concept f and the number b belongs to the same concept, then necessarily a = b. thus we should be unable to justify the expression ―the number which belongs to the concept f‖, and therefore should find it impossible in general to prove a numerical identity, since we should be quite unable to achieve a determinate number. here frege rejects these tentative definitions for the reason that they do not determine, for each object in the universe, whether or not it falls within the scope of the definition. more specifically, the last definition (that of the phrase ‗the number (n + ) belongs to a concept f‘) is unsatisfactory because it contains a phrase whose meaning is as unknown as the phrase it is intended to define. at best, frege argues, we can employ the last two definitions together to construct a system of subsequent definitions, none of which will possess a determinate sense until we clarify what it means for a number n to belong to a concept f in general. this problem arises for frege because he believes that proper definitions should determine generally whether or not an object falls within the scope of the definition. this is entailed by his view that properly meaningful statements pertain always to a single universe of discourse, namely the universe, which is characterized by frege as an ontological hierarchy of objects and functions of various levels. since definitions are intended to fix the references of new terms, and reference-fixing involves connecting symbols and specific elements of the ontological hierarchy, any definition which fails to determine exactly which entities fall within its scope is no definition at all. hence, any use of the terms supposedly defined in this manner will, ultimately, be meaningless or rely upon prior assumptions for their meaning. as frege‘s goal is to define the concepts of arithmetic using only logical concepts, he cannot rely upon any prior assumptions; the whole premise of his work is that an analysis of the logical structure of arithmetic vitiates the need for any special non-logical assumptions. so the julius caesar objection cannot be answered simply with a shrug of the shoulders. while it might seem ludicrous to worry that we cannot tell by means of a definition that julius caesar is not the number , or that he is not a number at all, the objection is a serious one for frege. frege of course does not doubt that caesar is not a number; his objection is not the epistemological one that, without a proper definition, we do not know that caesar is not a number. instead, his objection is semantic (or ontological) in nature: without a proper definition, the words we ostensibly use to refer to numbers do not clearly refer to any particular object, and hence statements employing those words will fail to be properly meaningful. the objection, understood in these terms, is directly relevant to frege‘s logicist project, a crucial component of which hinges upon his ability to fix the reference of number terms in an unexceptionable way. [frege b, § ]. this semantic objection has an epistemological correlate, however. frege‘s interest in the grundlagen and elsewhere is to show that arithmetic is reducible to logic by showing, contra kant, that we can gain arithmetical knowledge without resorting to any form of intuition. he argues in favour of this view by showing that the meanings of arithmetical statements are actually purely logical in character, and, thus, that we ought to be able to grasp those meanings by purely logical means. more to the point, for our purposes, many of frege‘s objections to the free-floating, relational view of geometric structures proposed by hilbert are based upon his contention that hilbert fails to properly fix the references of his terms. so, it is imperative that frege avoid problems related to reference-fixing if he is interested in the success of his own work, as well as that of his critical attack on hilbert-style mathematics. essentially, then, the problem amounts to giving a determinate sense to propositions which contain number words. as number-words can pop up in a huge variety of contexts, this is a rather large problem. frege‘s approach at the outset is to make the problem more manageable by beginning with a particular class of propositions, ones which he knows must have a sense in order for his project to get off the ground. given that he has already determined that numbers are objects, he believes that propositions which ―express our recognition of a number as the same again,‖ i.e., statements of identity, must be given a determinate sense. whether or not it is practicable in every case, if numbers are objects then it must always be possible (at least in principle) to determine if a given number is identical to or different from any other object. in other words, if number terms have fixed reference we should—if we properly grasp that reference in a particular case—be able to determine whether or not the reference of a sign possessing a different sense nevertheless has the same reference as the number term in question. this won‘t necessarily solve the problem of determining the sense of all propositions containing number terms, but it is at least a necessary first step in the process. frege states the whole predicament as follows: in our present case, we have to define the sense of the proposition ‗the number which belongs to the concept f is the same as that which belongs to the concept g‘; that is to say, we must reproduce the content of this proposition in other terms, avoiding the use of the expression ‗the number which belongs to the concept f‘. in doing this, we shall be giving a general criterion for the identity of numbers. when we have thus acquired a means of arriving at a determinate number and of recognizing it again as the same, we can assign it a number word as its proper name. thus, to solve his problem, frege must figure out some method of explaining the general notion of a number belonging to a particular concept without explaining that notion in terms of the truth-value of identity statements which already employ the (as yet referentially unfixed) phrase ‗the number which belongs to the concept‘. until this last condition is met, however, the julius caesar problem remains, and frege‘s attempt to characterize arithmetic in terms of his ontological hierarchy is in danger. what we need, then, is a non-circular way of recognizing an [frege b, § ]. even if frege‘s view that we apprehend logical truths in a purely rational manner ends up being true, it is presumably the case that, whatever our rational faculty of apprehension happens to be, it has certain empirical limits related to, e.g., the structure of the human brain. while in principle we ought to be able to determine the truth value of identity statements pertaining to extremely large numbers which are defined by repeated application of the successor function, we might in fact be physically incapable of such determinations. this, though, would be no evidence against frege‘s logicist programme, any more than would be the fact that we tend to learn arithmetic through its simplistic physical applications. [frege b, § ]. object (in our case, a number) as the same again, even if the way in which the object is given (i.e., the sense of the term used to refer to the object) is quite different in separate cases. after assigning himself this task, in § , frege attempts to fulfill it in §§ - of die grundlagen der arithmetik. he begins by constructing a geometric example which is exactly analogous to the numerical examples we have examined above. in his examination of this example—where the direction of a line is analogous to the number belonging to a concept— frege elaborates on the nature of his problem. he writes that: in the proposition ‗the direction of a is identical with the direction of b‘ the direction of a plays the part of an object, and our definition affords us a means of recognizing this object as the same again, in case it should happen to crop up in some other guise, say as the direction of b. but this means does not provide for all cases. it will not, for instance, decide for us whether england is the same as the direction of the earth‘s axis—if i may be forgiven an example which looks nonsensical. naturally no one is going to confuse england with the direction of the earth‘s axis; but that is no thanks to our definition of direction. that says nothing as to whether the proposition ―the direction of a is identical with q‖ should be affirmed or denied, except for the one case where q is given in the form of ―the direction of b‖. what we lack is the concept of direction; for if we had that, then we could lay it down that, if q is not a direction, our proposition is to be denied, while if it is a direction, our original definition will decide whether it is to be denied or affirmed. so the temptation is to give as our definition: q is a direction, if there is a line b whose direction is q. but then we have obviously come round in a circle. for in order to make use of this definition, we should have to know already in every case whether the proposition ―q is identical with the direction of b‖ was to be affirmed or denied. this reformulation of the problem cuts to the heart of the matter. here frege insists that the way in which an object is given to us (e.g., the sense of the particular term we employ to refer to the object) is not a property of the object itself. the problem with defining the direction of a line by reference to the direction of another line is that, without an explicit understanding of the notion of direction, our definition requires that the object in question be given to us in a particular form in order for us to recognize it once again as the same. so, if our definition of ‗the direction of a‘ is given by the proposition ‗the direction of a is identical with the direction of b‘, then, unless the direction of a is given as the direction of b, we simply have no means of re-identifying the object in question. our definition, then, is only useful within contexts where the relevant object is given as a direction and proves no help in grasping the general concept of the direction of a line. the situation when it comes to frege‘s attempted contextual definitions of , , and the successor function is exactly parallel: using frege‘s definitions we can, e.g., grasp what it means to say that the number + belongs to a concept if we already understand what it means generally for a number to belong to a concept. but, using these sorts of definitions, we get no closer to this goal insofar as they require the objects in question to be given in a particular way (i.e., already as numbers which belong to particular concepts). when confronted with objects not given in the proper way, these definitions—and, frege suggests, contextual definitions in general—simply fail to fulfill their role. if we ask whether england is the same as the direction [frege b, § ]. of a particular line, or if julius caesar is identical to the natural number , these contextual definitions are of no help. and, again, the problem here is not epistemological for frege: he readily admits that, presumably, we already know that caesar isn‘t a number, and that england isn‘t the direction of a line. the problem is a semantic one. the semantic function of a definition is to lay it down that a given sign is to possess the same sense as another already-understood sign whose reference is clear. the problem with contextual definitions like those in frege‘s examples is that they fail to completely fix the reference of the new sign because there are cases where it is unclear if the definition applies or does not apply. this is because an epistemological relationship between ourselves and an object (i.e., the way in which a sign is given to us) goes proxy for direct reference to the object itself. because the sense of a term is not a feature of the object to which that term refers, there are many cases in which the definition will be inapplicable because we use a term with a different sense to refer to the same object. in cases like this—not all of which will be as absurd as the caesar or england examples—these purported definitions cannot help us recognize an object as the same again and, more importantly, from a semantic point of view they simply do not determine the truth conditions for (most) identity statements involving the term in question. frege‘s goal, then, is to provide definitions whose strict application does not require that objects be given in a particular way. in § frege begins to outline his response to this problem. after admitting that he cannot get ―any concept of direction with sharp limits to its application, nor therefore […] any satisfactory concept of number‖ using the methods of contextual definition, he suggests the following: if line a is parallel to line b, then the extension of the concept ―line parallel to line a‖ is identical with the extension of the concept ―line parallel to line b‖; and conversely, if the extensions of the two concepts just named are identical, then a is parallel to b. let us try, therefore, the following type of definition: the direction of line a is the extension of the concept ―parallel to line a‖; the shape of triangle t is the extension of the concept ―similar to triangle t‖. to apply this to our own case of number, we must substitute for lines or triangles concepts, and for parallelism or similarity the possibility of correlating one to one the objects which fall under the one concept with those which fall under the other. for brevity, i shall, when this condition is satisfied speak of the concept f being equinumerous [gleichzahlig] to the concept g; but i must ask that this word be treated as an arbitrarily selected symbol, whose meaning is to be gathered, not from its etymology, but from what is here laid down. my definition is therefore as follows: the number which belongs to the concept f is the extension of the concept ―[equinumerous] to the concept f‖. [frege b, § ]. [frege b, § ]. austin‘s translation has ‗equal‘ for ‗gleichzahlig‘. despite frege‘s insistence that we ought not pay attention to the etymology of his neologism, it does seem slightly misleading to render it ‗equal‘, ignoring entirely the occurrence of ‗-zahlig‘ in frege‘s term, as well as the difference between ‗gleichheit‘ (general equality) and frege‘s ‗gleichzahlig’. accordingly, where it seems appropriate i have employed the term ‗equinumerous‘. frege‘s strategy here is to get rid of the context-dependence of his previous attempts at definition and replace it by direct reference to specific objects: namely the extensions of particular concepts. in the case of directions, the relevant extensions are determined by the concept of parallelism (which is, presumably, a clearly fixed concept). in the case of numbers, the relevant extensions are determined by the concept of one-to-one correlation (which, again, ought to be a concept with a clearly defined boundary). by determining explicitly when a number belongs to a particular concept, frege may now use his previous method of characterizing , , and the successor function to explicitly define each of the natural numbers. ideally, we ought to be able to answer the caesar objection directly now. armed with this new definition, are we able to definitively rule out julius caesar as a member of the set of natural numbers? certainly, frege seems to think so. but the case is not so clear. for what frege has done here is to require either that we have a clear understanding of the concept of an extension, or else that objects must be given as extensions for us to recognize them as numbers. clearly, the latter option is not ideal, as it simply recapitulates the caesar problem. but neither is it clear that the former is a viable solution to frege‘s woes. he himself seems not to have been entirely unaware that his proposed solution was not ideal, for in a footnote to § , he writes: ―i believe that for ‗extension of the concept‘ we could write simply ‗concept‘‖. frege‘s earlier definition of the concept of number, namely: the number which belongs to the concept f is the extension of the concept ―[equinumerous] to the concept f,‖ would then become: the number which belongs to the concept f is the concept ―equinumerous to the concept f‖. in light of frege‘s other views, the idea that we can simply switch concepts for objects seems a rather shocking claim. frege seems aware of the fact and notes that his suggestion [...] would be open to the two objections: . that this contradicts my earlier statement that the individual numbers are objects, as is indicated by the use of the definite article in expressions like ―the number two‖ and by the impossibility of speaking of ones, twos, etc. in the plural, as also by the fact that the number constitutes only an element in the predicate of a statement of number; . that concepts can have identical extensions without themselves coinciding. i am, as it happens, convinced that both these objections can be met; but to do this would take us too far afield for present purposes. i assume that it is known what the extension of a concept is. [frege b, § note ]. [frege b, § note ]. first, frege notes the obvious objection that this would contradict the entire drift of his work up to this point: his criticisms of rival views and his analysis of the grammar of statements concerning number terms have both led him to the view that numbers are particular objects and not concepts at all. the entire caesar problem itself is phrased by frege as that of figuring out specifically which objects number terms refer to. if he could simply have shrugged off the crucial difference between objects and concepts from the start, then why bother doing the work in the first place, and why formulate the question in terms of identity statements pertaining to objects? it seems that taking this route would suggest that we have at least two competing ways to fix the reference of number terms: one on which these terms refer to objects (i.e., extensions) and another on which they refer to concepts. but, the whole point of frege‘s ferretting out a response to the caesar problem as to definitively pin down references in the first place! this seems like a serious objection one way or another, either to frege‘s claim here or to the relevance of his previous work supporting the claim that numbers are objects. in any case, it is not clear how frege‘s suggestion here could work given his deep commitment to the division between concepts and objects. the second objection, that different concepts may possess the same extension, seems to suggest that, by switching extensions for concepts, we will lose the specificity frege had gained in his response to the caesar problem. in frege‘s original definition, particular numbers are identified with particular extensions. despite the fact that different concepts can pick out the same extension, the extension itself is a specific object, so the fact that multiple concepts have the same extension does not call into question the determinacy given to number terms by reference to specific extensions. now, when we begin to treat numbers as concepts, no further indeterminacy seeps in unless we wish to claim that the two accounts are equivalent. concepts are, for frege, perfectly determinate (if incomplete) entities, so that, once we identify numbers with particular concepts, there should be no difficulty determining the truth-value of statements concerning numbers. if, however, we wish the two proposed accounts (i.e., the first account involving extensions of concepts, and the second involving just concepts) to be equivalent, then a further indeterminacy does in fact arise. and this is what frege notes in his second objection. because different concepts may have the same extension, there will be many different concepts which could just as well serve for each of the natural numbers, with no particular reason to decide which ones really are those numbers, if any. this is the crucial point. if more than one concept can be identified with a particular number, then it is illegitimate to speak of the number n on our second account, and hence frege will have lost the specificity he had been seeking. presumably it is frege‘s intention to claim that his extension-based account and his unspecified concept-based account are both equally serviceable, so that he will indeed have to figure out a solution to this second objection as well as the first. regardless of frege‘s ability to answer these two particular objections (which we will not examine here), the fact remains that he recognizes a problem. this is evident, first, in his willingness to entertain the obviously problematic idea that we might switch extensions for concepts and, second, in his acknowledgement of the assumption that it is known what extensions of concepts are. frege is generally wary (and rightly so) of the use of extensions throughout his work; in a later section he writes that his ―way of getting over the difficulty cannot be expected to meet with universal approval, and many will prefer other methods of removing the doubt in question. i attach no decisive importance even to bringing in the extensions of concepts at all‖. the assumption that it is known what extensions are (without them being given as such) would return to haunt frege when a problem very similar to the initial julius caesar objection arose in his later attempt, in grundgesetze der arithmetik, to produce a formally precise version of the logicist programme discussed in the grundlagen. at this point, however, it seems clear that frege‘s first attempt at a solution to the caesar objection is something of a stopgap measure, one which depends upon our recognition of extensions of concepts without them being given as such. it does not take much effort to recognize the caesar objection lurking in a different guise here; for the problem arose, initially, when frege could not pick out numbers unless they were given in a particular way. here, he has simply shifted the burden onto extensions and required of us the capacity to recognize extensions no matter how they may be given. . an analogue of the caesar problem in grundgesetze der arithmetik let us now turn to an examination of the caesar problem (or, at least, its close analogue) as it arises within § of grundgesetze der arithmetik. up to this point in the grundgesetze, frege has attempted to familiarize the reader with his ontological scheme, as well as some of the peculiarities of his notation. as far as the formal system, he has so far only introduced the two truth-values as objects, and the functions ξ = δ, —ξ, and ┬ ξ. in § , frege introduces the smooth breathing notation for courses-of-values: the course-of-values of the function Φ(ε) is represented as ἐΦ(ε). he ends that section by noting that ―the introduction of a notation for courses-of- values seems to me to be one of the most important supplementations that i have made of my begriffsschrift since my first publication on this subject‖. so, while frege was obviously quite unsatisfied with his use of extensions of concepts in his earlier work, here he seems to stand firmly behind the usefulness of the more general notion of a course-of-values. in the section immediately following this introduction of the notation for courses-of-values, frege raises the analogue of the caesar problem and attempts to solve it. this stretch of the grundgesetze, entitled ‗the course-of-values of a function more exactly specified,‘ contains frege‘s attempt to answer the nagging questions about extensions left unanswered by his proposed solution to the caesar problem in the grundlagen. he begins by stating a version of that familiar problem, this time applied to expressions for courses-of-values rather than directions or numbers. in this case, the particular expression is that for the course-of- values of an arbitrary function Φ(ε). frege writes: although we have laid it down that the combination of signs ‗έΦ(ε) = άΨ(α)‘ has the same denotation as [frege b, § ]. note that, due to a seemingly insurmountable typesetting problem, my representation of the smooth breathing notation (here and throughout) does not exactly match frege‘s own. [frege , § ]. ‗α(Φ(α) = Ψ(α)),‘ this by no means fixes completely the denotation of a name like ‗έΦ(ε)‘. we have only a means of recognizing a course-of-values if it is designated by a name like ‗έΦ(ε)‘, by which it is already recognizable as a course-of-values. but we can neither decide, so far, whether an object is a course-of-values that is not given us as such, and to what function it may correspond, nor decide in general whether a given course-of-values has a given property unless we know that this property is connected with a property of the corresponding function. here, again, we encounter a problem very similar to the caesar objection: we have the tools to recognize the course-of-values of a particular function, but only if that course-of-values is given in a particular way. in this case, we are licensed to recognize two courses-of-values, έΦ(ε) and άΨ(α), as one and the same only if they are given as courses-of-values (i.e., if they are referred to using frege‘s smooth-breathing notation). in cases where these same entities are given differently, frege‘s contextual definition affords us no means of recognizing their identity. the problem however is deeper than the epistemological one of our recognizing the entities as the same again: for, if we are given only the contextual definition to characterize courses-of-values, statements like ‗έΦ(ε) = julius caesar‘ will not possess a truth-value. note, too, that not all cases of this sort will be as absurd as the caesar example: for, if numbers are identified with extensions (as frege suggests), then statements of the form ‗έΦ(ε) = ‘ will be of crucial importance for establishing the foundations of arithmetic. using frege‘s contextual definition, such statements are neither true nor false—indeed, they are, by frege‘s lights, completely senseless until we determine more carefully the meaning of terms of the form ‗έΦ(ε)‘. frege‘s goal, then, is to provide a general criterion for determining whether an object is a course- of-values or not. as before, frege has reduced this problem to one of fixing the reference of particular types of identity statements. ostensibly, if we can determine the truth or falsity of an identity statement containing terms which refer to courses-of-values without the condition that those terms be of a particular form, then we will have provided a general criterion for recognizing courses-of-values. the contextual definition above allows one to determine the truth of identity statements concerning entities which are given to us already as courses-of-values by stipulating that the reference of these statements (i.e., their truth value) is to be the same as a statement whose sense is already grasped (e.g., the statement that the two functions in question always take the same value for the same argument). but, crucially, this contextual definition does not and cannot determine the truth-value of identity-statements concerning entities which are not already given as courses-of-values. we cannot, for instance, determine whether or not julius caesar is identical to any course-of-values simply by using the definition above. frege‘s overall point in raising these objections is to insist that, without a solution to this sort of problem, the terms at issue here are actually senseless, and sentences containing them will therefore fail to refer to a truth-value. hence we are not licensed to (and, by frege‘s lights—are actually for ease of typesetting, here and throughout, i use the common modern notation for the universal quantifier (i.e., ‗‘) in place of frege‘s idiosyncratic symbolization. [frege , § ]. incapable of) making inferences which employ the purported ‗thoughts‘ about courses-of-values as premises. as we‘ve seen, when using courses-of-values to solve the caesar problem in the grundlagen, frege had simply assumed that it was known what the extension of a concept was (and, perhaps too, what the course-of-values of a function was). his remarks there, and elsewhere, seem to indicate that he was not entirely comfortable with this situation. now, in what was to be the culmination of his life‘s work, frege appears ready to face the problem head on. whereas previously he attempted to shrug off the caesar objection via reference to the extensions of concepts, here he raises the problem for courses-of-values, and hence for extensions as well. his earlier remedy will thus not work here, and so a new tactic is required. frege‘s method for avoiding the problem of contextual definition when it comes to courses-of- values is to pin them down more precisely by clarifying their relationship to functions. more specifically, his suggestion is that, for each function, when it is introduced, we ought to determine what value it takes for courses-of-values as arguments. doing so will clarify the truth value of any statement containing a course-of-values term, eliminating any indeterminacy left unsettled by his previous solution to the caesar problem. let‘s examine how this is supposed to work. since, up to this point in the grundgesetze, frege has only introduced three functions, the required determinations are relatively brief. the three functions frege has discussed up to this point are: ξ = δ, —ξ, ┬ ξ; i.e., identity, the horizontal, and negation. essentially, frege‘s concern here is to determine for each of these functions what value it will take when a course-of-values is input as argument. the negation function can be discounted from consideration immediately, for, on frege‘s dispensation, the function ―can be considered always to take a truth-value as argument‖. this is because frege defines negation as follows: ―the value of the function ┬ ξ shall be the false for every argument for which the value of the function —ξ is the true; and shall be the true for all other arguments‖. further, the function —ξ is defined as follows: ―—Δ is the true if Δ is the true; on the other hand it is the false if Δ is not the true‖. so, since the argument for the function ┬ ξ is defined in terms of the values taken by the function —ξ (which are, by stipulation, always truth values), any argument taken by the function ┬ ξ, even if it is an object other than a truth value, can nevertheless be treated as a truth-value. the function —ξ, too, can be eliminated from consideration here insofar as it can be reduced to the function ξ = δ. frege writes that ―by our stipulations the function —ξ has for every argument the same value as the function ξ = (ξ = ξ); for the value of the function ξ = ξ is the true for every argument. from this it follows that the value of the function ξ = (ξ = ξ) is the true only for the true as argument, and that it is the false for all other arguments, exactly as with the function —ξ.‖ so, then, we are left only with the function ξ = δ to consider. frege‘s problem, again, is to determine what value this function gives for courses-of-values taken as arguments. [frege , § ]. [frege , § ]. [frege , § ]. [frege , § ]. . the restriction problem at this point in his argument, frege makes some remarks which are rather difficult to interpret, given certain key commitments of his philosophy. he writes: since in this way everything reduces to consideration of the function ξ = δ, we ask what value this has if a course-of-values occurs as argument. since up to now we have introduced only the truth-values and courses-of-values as objects, it can only be a question of whether one of the truth-values can perhaps be a course-of-values. if not, then it is thereby also decided that the value of the function ξ = δ is always the false if a truth-value is taken as one of its arguments and a course-of-values as the other. if on the other hand the true is at the same time the course-of-values of some function Φ(ξ), then it is thereby also decided what the value of the function ξ = δ is in all cases in which the true is taken as one of the arguments, and likewise if the false is at the same time the course-of-values of a certain function. here frege has reduced his problem to the determination of the value taken by the function ξ = δ for courses-of-values. his first concern is to determine whether the only two objects hitherto introduced in his formal system (i.e., the two truth-values) are themselves courses-of-values. his reasoning regarding the values taken by the function ξ = δ if either of these objects is or is not a course-of-values is unexceptionable: if neither truth-value is a course-of-values, then the function gives the false as value when a course-of-values is taken as one argument and a truth-value as the other. but if either truth-value is in fact a course-of-values of some function, then we also have a determinate value for the function when one of the truth-values is taken as an argument; this value will be the true when both argument places are filled by names for one of the truth- values (be they referred to by terms of the form ‗έΦ(ε)‘ or otherwise), and the false in all other case. this of course requires that we have picked out precisely which courses-of-values the two truth-values are. all this is fine, as far as it goes. the problematic portion of the above quotation is frege‘s restriction of his consideration to just these two objects. his suggestion seems to be that, because he has only introduced the two truth- values as objects thus far, he need only decide whether either of these is itself a course-of-values to determine the value taken by the function ξ = δ for courses-of-values, and thereby, also, to fix the reference of the term ‗έΦ(ε)‘ completely. this seems to imply that the functions so far introduced only take as arguments the objects which have been introduced by frege at this point in the grundgesetze; i.e., that frege‘s functions have a highly restricted domain. taken at face- value, this seems to directly contradict frege‘s views that functions have an ontological status which is not dependent upon their being given in a particular way (e.g., in frege‘s begriffsschrift). here he seems to be restricting the domain of functions in a way which depends upon the status of his formal system. more than this, the restriction also seems to conflict with his demand that functions be defined for every object in the universe—a demand which seems to be one of the sources of the caesar problem in the first place. while frege‘s views allow for the [frege , § ]. ‗restriction‘ of functions in a certain sense, such restrictions do not involve the exclusion as arguments of objects without names in a particular formal system. moreover, it seems to imply that the problem carried over to the grundgesetze (because of frege‘s inability to provide a general solution to the caesar objection in the grundlagen) is in fact a pseudo-problem. for, if a particular formalization determines which objects a function takes as arguments, then we ought not be concerned with the fact that our definitions cannot determine for an arbitrarily given object—not just those which have been introduced into the system or given names—whether or not they fall under the definition. if caesar isn‘t part of the system, or if there is no name for caesar in frege‘s formalization of number theory, for instance, then there simply is no problem in determining the value of the function ξ = for caesar as an argument. in the terms of the grundgesetze, we may just as well have avoided the problem of fixing the reference of terms of the form ‗έΦ(ε)‘ by never introducing such terms in the first place. so what exactly is going on here? some commentators have suggested that the best way to understand this restriction is to characterize it in what we would now call meta-linguistic terms. that is, they suggest that the restriction is a meta-linguistic statement concerning which names have thus far been introduced into the system. but it seems clear from what frege explicitly states that it is not merely a matter of names: since up to now we have introduced only the truth-values and courses-of-values as objects, it can only be a question of whether one of the truth-values can perhaps be a course-of- values. taken on its own, this fairly clearly shows that frege is not concerned with which names have been introduced into the system up to this point, but with which objects have been introduced. moreover, if we keep in mind that this restriction is undertaken within the context of the caesar problem, then we have good reason to suspect that the meta-linguistic reading misses the mark. if frege was merely interested in the linguistic features of his formal language, the caesar problem could never have arisen in the first place, as it is fundamentally not a linguistic problem concerned with which sorts of statements are formulable within the confines of begriffsschrift. the problem is rather concerned with our relation to the references of such statements. or, as richard heck puts it, one way in which a fregean function might be ‗restricted‘ to, e.g., the natural numbers is by defining the function in the intended manner for the natural numbers as arguments (presuming we have a rigorously circumscribed concept of natural number to work with), while the function takes on the value the false (or some dummy value) for objects which are not natural numbers. the key here is that the function remains defined for all objects in the universe, and that the so-called restriction requires a referentially fixed concept of natural number (or whatever) to get off the ground. cf., e.g., [moore and rein ]. [frege , § ]. the introduction of objects (rather than names) is equally clear in the german: ―da wir bisher nur die wahrheitswerthe und werthverläufe als gegenstände eingeführt haben, so kann es sich nur darum handeln, ob einer der wahrheitswerthe etwa ein werthverlauf sei‖ [frege , § , emphasis mine]. what the caesar problem suggests is that we have no understanding of what numbers are that supports the idea that they are independent of how they are given to us, that is independent of our capacity for thought about them. as heck‘s remarks here help to show, the julius caesar problem is not merely a bug arising from frege‘s particular choice of formal system. it is instead an essential problem which cuts to the core of his attempt to understand the nature of mathematics. if he is avoid the kind of free- floating, purely formal understanding of mathematics which he sought to combat in his engagements with hilbert, frege must be able to show that mathematical terms refer to something in particular. the caesar problem arises precisely because frege is unwilling to allow contextual definitions (which do rely on the peculiarities of a particular context, language, or formalism) as a means of fixing the references of mathematical terms. thus, it would be incredibly odd for frege, right at the point when he begins to solve the problem, to restrict his solution to the merely linguistic peculiarities of a particular stage of his formal system. but, even if we reject the meta-linguistic reading, we are still presented with a problem. for, while frege does not restrict his solution to the linguistic realm, he does nevertheless restrict himself to considering only the objects which are introduced to his formal system at a given stage. given frege‘s methodological scruples, such a restriction seems fundamentally at odds with his goal of solving the caesar problem once and for all. how, then, are we to understand frege‘s move here? . heck‘s argument against frege‘s ‗universalism‘ let‘s try to reconstruct the situation we seem to be presented with here. if caesar is in the domain of the functions frege considers here, then of course these functions have to be defined for caesar as an argument. on the reading of frege i have presented thus far in this dissertation, he holds that a function must be defined for every object in the universe. so, straightforwardly, caesar must be in the domain of the functions frege is about to consider. but the restriction of his attention to the few objects he has already introduced seems to indicate that, for frege, caesar is not in fact in the domain of these functions. this situation leaves us with at least two options. . something is wrong in the above reconstruction of the situation. . frege has (knowingly or otherwise) committed himself to an inconsistent position. before we leap to either conclusion, let‘s try to re-evaluate our reconstruction of the situation. richard heck, in a paper examining § of the grundgesetze offers an alternative account of the restriction which involves re-evaluating the ‗universalist‘ component of our reconstruction. that is to say, heck wants to call into question the view that frege holds that a function always has to be defined for every object in the universe. if heck‘s argument is correct, then frege‘s restriction is an unproblematic one. how, then, does heck think that we can deny frege‘s universalism? rather straightforwardly, he states: [heck , , note ]. when [frege] says that we have ‗introduced only the truth-values and value-ranges as objects‘, he means to tell us that the quantifiers in his formal language are, at this point, to be taken as ranging only over such objects. for a modern logician, mathematician, or model theorist this sort of restriction of the domain of quantification is a matter of course. for frege, however, this seems difficult, as every ‗model‘ must ultimately be embedded within a single ontological hierarchy. so in what sense can the domain of quantification be restricted for frege? well, let‘s look at what heck has to say about the motivations for frege‘s ‗universalism‘. he writes: frege understood some of the logicians of his time to be proposing to deal with restricted quantification by making use of what the booleans called ‗universes of discourse‘. frege objected vehemently to this practice. he insisted, firstly, that sentences involving restricted quantification—e.g., ‗every real number is f‘—can be interpreted as generalized conditionals, in now familiar fashion: that is, he argues that there is no need to invoke a restricted domain, containing only the reals, for this purpose. he argues, secondly, that such sentences should be interpreted as generalized conditionals. treating restricted quantification in terms of universes of discourse makes it difficult to represent the validity of certain sorts of inferences: for example, ‗every real number has a non-negative square‘ implies ‗any number which has a negative square is non-real‘. at the very least, then, some way needs to be provided for the ‗universe of discourse‘ to be represented in the logical forms of such sentences. as the italics indicate here, heck‘s suggestion is that frege‘s opposition to restricted quantification is not fundamental but, instead, relative to particular examples where this sort of quantification seems to obscure logical relations rather than clarify them. heck‘s argument for this reading, it seems to me, involves imputing a significant amount of modern, model- theoretically sophisticated logic into frege‘s work. while heck himself admits that this reading requires ―only a dollop of anachronism‖ , the dollop seems rather a large one. let‘s look a bit closer. [heck , - ]. boole himself introduces the notion of a universe of discourse in the laws of thought. there he writes ―in every discourse, whether of the mind conversing with its own thoughts, or of the individual in his intercourse with others, there is an assumed or expressed limit within which the subjects of its operation are confined. the most unfettered discourse is that in which the words we use are understood in the widest possible application, and for them the limits of discourse are co-extensive with those of the universe itself. but more usually we confine ourselves to a less spacious field. […] now, whatever may be the extent of the field within which all the objects of our discourse are found, that field may properly be termed the universe of discourse‖ [boole , chapter iii, § ]. as will be made clearer below, frege‘s point is that the restriction of quantification is only undertaken within the universe (i.e., within his ontological hierarchy), and, since logic is concerned with the most general laws of truth, such restrictions, too, have to be cemented clearly within that universe. [heck , ]. [heck , ]. the view is that frege does not object to all uses of restricted quantification, but only to those which involve the confusion of domains of quantification with universes of discourse. let‘s look at what heck says about universes of discourse. the logical form of ‗every number is f‘ is therefore much more nearly: ‗x(nx;fx). the first argument of the quantifier specifies the ‗universe of discourse‘, in the sense relevant to the analysis of restricted quantification. his suggestion here is that the logical role of ‗nx‘ is to specify a universe of discourse. on this view, presumably, the naked quantifier ‗x‘ indicates the bare universe, while nx‘ is meant to whittle this immense totality down to those entities which fall under the concept n, whatever that might be. thus the universe of discourse, on this view, is always a subset of the universe properly speaking. in mathematics and logic, of course, the universe of discourse understood in this way is almost never indicated explicitly. universes of discourse, understood in this way, are superfluous on heck‘s reading of frege. for, in our example, if the concept n is well-defined, then any statement about the predicate-restricted universe of discourse can simply be rephrased in terms of a generalized conditional (in a manner similar to that of frege‘s proposed emendations of hilbert‘s views). so, heck admits that frege has good reasons to eschew the use of ‗universes of discourse‘ understood in the sense of predicate-restrictions placed on the universal quantifier. we are left, then, to consider the availability of variable ‗domains of quantification‘ to frege. heck writes that obviously, though, even if we make it explicit, in the syntax, that the quantifier can be […] ‗restricted‘ by some predicate, that does not make domains of quantification, in the sense relevant to model-theory, superfluous: one can—indeed, must—still allow for varying domains of quantification when defining validity, implication, and the like, for the usual sorts of reasons. this, it seems to me, is where heck‘s argument requires more than his suggested dollop of anachronism, for he has not attempted to show that variation in the domain of quantification (in this sense) is required for frege’s understanding of validity, implication, and the like. this is the crucial point in the argument, and it rests on the reader‘s accepting that frege‘s notions of ‗validity, implication, and the like‘ are sufficiently similar to their modern model-theoretic cousins that they will require varying the domain of quantification ―for the usual sorts of reasons‖. but, as i hope to have shown at several points in this thesis, there are good reasons not to assume that frege‘s logical notions are primitive versions of contemporary notions. on the face of it, then, it seems suspect to simply import the modern model-theoretic conceptions of these notions into frege‘s view, which elsewhere (e.g., in his correspondence with hilbert) seems highly critical of the philosophical underpinnings of an enterprise quite like model theory in important respects. [heck , ]. [heck , ]. so, it seems, neither the meta-linguistic reading of the restriction nor the anti-universalist reading suggested by heck offer a clear explanation of our problem. without good reasons for thinking otherwise, then, we are left with the suspicion that frege‘s restriction here is simply in conflict with his established views. . frege‘s attempted solution to the caesar problem in the grundgesetze regardless of the status of this restriction relative to the rest of frege‘s philosophy, he does employ it in his attempted solution to the caesar problem. let‘s return to our examination of the rest of this solution, with the caveat that it may hinge in part on this inconsistency. after further reducing his problem via the restriction, frege sets about determining whether or not either of the truth-values is a course-of-values. he notes that he cannot decide whether or not either of the truth-values is a course-of-values by appeal to his stipulation that ―‗έΦ(ε) = άΨ(α)‘ is to have the same denotation as ‗α(Φ(α) = Ψ(α))‘. frege then engages in a technical argument intended to illustrate that ―it is always possible to stipulate that an arbitrary course-of-values is to be the true and another the false‖ and, hence, that the answer to his question is that the truth-values themselves are (or, rather, can be taken to be) courses-of-values. let‘s examine his argument supporting this claim. he writes that: it is possible to stipulate generally that ‗ῆΦ(ε) = ᾶΨ(α)‘ shall denote the same thing as ‗α(Φ(α) = Ψ(α))‘ without the identity of έΦ(ε) and ῆΦ(ε) being derivable from this. we should then have a class of objects with names of the form ‗ῆΦ(ε)‘, and for whose differentiation and recognition the same distinguishing mark held good as for courses-of- values. this first step is simply a generalization of our earlier problem: instead of considering the singular case, frege moves to consider an entire class of objects with names of the form ‗ῆΦ(ε)‘. after having determined such a class, he defines a function x(ξ) as follows: x(ῆΛ(ε)) = the true x(the true) = ῆΛ(ε) x(ῆm(ε)) = the false x(the false) = ῆm(ε) for all other arguments, the value of the function is simply the argument itself. now, the functions Λ(ξ) and m(ξ) can either take the same value for every argument or they can differ in value for some arguments. in the case where they differ in value for at least one object, then the [frege , § ]. [frege , § ]. [frege , § ]. [...] function x(ξ) never has the same value for different arguments, hence ‗x(ῆΦ(ε)) = x(ᾶΨ(α))‘ also always has the same denotation as ‗α(Φ(α) = Ψ(α))‘. the objects whose names were of the form ‗x(ῆΦ(ε))‘ would then be recognized by the same means as the courses-of-values, and x(ῆΛ(ε)) would be the true and x(ῆm(ε)) the false. essentially, what frege has done here is to construct a function which licenses him to give the truth-values names of the same form as those for courses-of-values, and thus to treat the truth- values as courses-of-values. but this license does not uniquely pick out which course-of-values the truth-values are, for we could very well have defined a function xˈ(ξ) such that the roles of ῆΛ(ε) and ῆm(ε) are reversed, thereby identifying the truth-values with different courses-of- values. in other words, frege‘s argument shows only that we can identify the truth-values with particular courses-of-values, it doesn‘t allow us to take the further step of picking out precisely which courses-of-values these might be, other than arbitrarily. accordingly, he writes that: thus without contradicting our setting ‗έΦ(ε) = έΨ(ε)‘ equal to ‗α(Φ(α) = Ψ(α))‘ it is always possible to stipulate that an arbitrary course-of-values is to be the true and another the false. accordingly let us lay it down that έ(—ε) is to be the true and έ(ε = (┬α(α = α)) is to be the false. έ(—ε) is the course-of-values of the function —ξ, whose value is the true only if the argument is the true, and whose value for all other arguments is the false. all functions for which this holds, have the same course-of-values, and this is by our stipulation the true. accordingly —έΦ(ε) is the true only if the function Φ(ξ) is a concept under which falls only the true; in all other cases —έΦ(ε) is the false. further, έ(ε = ┬α (α = α)) is the course-of-values of the function ξ = ┬α (α = α), whose value is the true only if the argument is the false, and whose value for all other arguments is the false. all functions for which this holds have the same course-of-values, and this is by our stipulation the false. thus every concept under which falls the false and only the false, has as its extension the false. here frege stipulates precisely which courses-of-values he wishes to identify with the true and the false. his earlier argument was designed to illustrate that it is always possible to identify the true and the false with an arbitrary course-of-values, so that is precisely what he does. ostensibly, then, the grundgesetze version of the caesar problem is solved, and frege writes that ―with this we have determined the courses-of-values so far as is here possible‖. let‘s review frege‘s reasoning thus far. in order to precisely fix the reference of terms of the form ‗έΦ(ε)‘, frege argues that we must determine the value taken by all functions for such terms taken as arguments. now, up to this point frege has introduced only three functions, and consideration of these can, in fact be reduced to the consideration of a single function, namely the identity function ξ = δ. frege‘s problem, then, is to figure out what value this function takes for courses-of-values as arguments. just as he has only introduced a few functions thus far in the grundgesetze, so too he has only introduced a few objects: the true and the false. frege‘s problem, if we allow him his restriction, thus ultimately reduces to figuring out two things: first, [frege , § ]. [frege , § ]. [frege , § ]. whether or not the truth-values are themselves courses-of-values and, second, what values the function ξ = δ takes for the truth-values as arguments if they are courses-of-values. to solve his problem, then, frege constructs a function designed to licence him to identify the truth-values with arbitrary courses-of-values. with this license, he then stipulates precisely which courses-of- values they are, thus allowing us to decide the values the function ξ = δ takes for courses-of- values. at the end of this chain of reasoning, frege believes he has fixed the reference of terms of the form ‗έΦ(ε)‘ as precisely as is possible, and thus that he has solved the caesar problem as it applies to courses-of-values for his system as elaborated up to this point. by stipulating the values taken by functions for courses-of-values as arguments whenever new functions are introduced, the solution should hold for further elaborations of the system as well. . an insoluble problem but, with historical hindsight, we now know that there is trouble yet lurking in frege‘s project in the form of russell‘s paradox. it is something of a commonplace to suggest that the ultimate failure of frege‘s project rests on the inconsistency which results from this paradox. and, to be sure, the discovery of a contradiction in his formal system was a significant blow to frege‘s life‘s work. but, i will argue (in substantial agreement with richard heck) that the contradiction is merely an effect of the real failure, which is frege‘s inability to satisfactorily solve the caesar problem and, hence, his inability to fix the references of mathematical terms. the proximal source of russell‘s paradox in frege‘s work is his use of basic law v. this axiom can be stated as follows: έf(ε) = έg(ε) ≡ ∀x(fx ≡ gx) or, in plain english, the course-of-values of a function f is identical to the course of values of a function g if, and only if, the functions f and g take the same values for every object. frege employs this axiom in a number of places throughout the grundgesetze, but there are only two which are ineliminable, and these are the source of the problem. the two uses of basic law v which cannot be eliminated, i.e., which are not merely uses of convenience, are connected to frege‘s attempted derivation of hume‘s principle. thus it is only in his attempt to prove this principle that frege‘s system is threatened by russell‘s paradox. the term ‗hume‘s principle‘ was coined by george boolos, but the principle itself does have its source in hume. in his treatise, hume gives the following definition of equality between numbers: when two numbers are so combin‘d, as that the one has always an unite answering to every unite of the other, we pronounce them equal. cf. [heck ]; [boolos , ] also clearly establishes the importance of the caesar problem for understanding the collapse of frege‘s work. [boolos a, ]. [hume , book i, part iii, § ]. frege in fact cites this passage from hume in § of the grundlagen. hume‘s formulation of the principle is less relevant to us than its analogue in the philosophy of frege. put in frege‘s language of concepts and objects, this principle holds that the number of objects falling under a concept f is the same as the number of objects falling under a concept g if, and only if, the fs can be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the gs. as noted by charles parsons and others, the bulk of frege‘s system of arithmetic is derived from hume‘s principle and the axioms other than basic law v. moreover, if we drop basic law v, there are a number of different consistent fragments to be found in frege‘s system. so, if the source of frege‘s problems is basic law v, and this axiom is only used essentially in a very few cases, why not simply drop it and replace it with hume‘s seemingly very similar principle? the answer is that, by using only hume‘s principle in his definition of number, frege simply cannot solve the caesar problem. let‘s see why not. in frege‘s work, hume‘s principle first arises in connection with his attempts to fix the meaning of identity-statements between numerical terms. as we‘ve seen, fixing the meaning of such statements is a crucial step in frege‘s larger attempt to fix the references of mathematical terms. and, at first glance at least, hume‘s principle seems like an ideal candidate for a solution to this problem. ―but,‖ frege writes, ―it raises at once certain logical doubts and difficulties.‖ the chief difficulty, as he sees it, is that hume‘s principle seeks a special definition of numerical identity, or ‗equinumerosity‘. in some well-known passages from the grundlagen, frege attempts to define the notion of the direction of a line using the sort of limited, contextual definition suggested by hume‘s principle. he writes of his proposed definition that if […] we were to adopt this way out, we should have to be presupposing that an object can only be given one way [i.e., as a direction for directions, or as a number for numbers]; for otherwise it would not follow, from the fact that q was not introduced by means of our definition, that it could not have been introduced by means of it. all identities would then amount to this, that whatever is given to us in the same way is to be reckoned as the same. this, however, is a principle so obvious and so sterile as not to be worth stating. we could not, in fact, draw from it any conclusion which was not the same as one of our premisses. such definitions, then, require objects to be given in a particular way, thus making them relative to a given system, language, or formalization. but this is exactly what frege is seeking to avoid (as is evident from his rejection of the formalism suggested by hilbert and korselt). in order to cf. [c. parsons , ff]; [boolos and heck ] gives a bit more detail. cf., e.g., [boolos a], [boolos b], [t. parsons ], [heck ] and [wehmeier ]. [heck ] argues convincingly that frege himself knew that almost all of his uses of basic law v were matters of mere convenience. [frege b, § ]. [frege b, § ]. truly solve the caesar problem, then, hume‘s principle is insufficient and an explicit definition must be given. and so it is that frege is put in an impossible position. he must either employ an explicit definition at some point in his derivation of hume‘s principle or he must abandon his search for a context-independent way of fixing the references of mathematical terms. he chose the first route which famously leads to russell‘s paradox and the inconsistency of his system. by rejecting basic law v in favour of hume‘s principle, however, we are no closer to solving the caesar problem. thus, without basic law v, frege saw no way of actually fixing the references of mathematical terms, other than relative to a given system. we are, therefore, left again at an impasse in our attempt to understand what mathematics is about. the free-floating, structure-focussed road taken by hilbert seems to lead to the threat of meaninglessness (without a background ontology) and the relativisation of truth; the fixed-reference path taken by frege leads either to contradiction and incoherence or back once more to the meaninglessness of hilbert‘s position. § . deadlock now, how does the ultimate failure of frege‘s attempt to solve the julius caesar problem affect the outcome of his debate with hilbert over the nature of axiomatics and mathematics more generally? as we‘ve seen above, many of frege‘s criticisms of hilbert focus on the fact that hilbert is unable (and unwilling) to pin down the references of the terms of an axiomatic system, prior to the process of interpretation. hilbert‘s view, in fact, was based on the (now widely-held) belief that the schematic or uninterpreted character of formal mathematical systems was one of the chief benefits of axiomatization. given the fact that frege‘s own best efforts were unable to fix the references of the key terms of even his modest fragment of mathematics, his criticisms of hilbert might seem to lose much of their persuasiveness. if frege himself is unable to do what he demands of hilbert, and hilbert‘s method appeared incredibly productive to the mathematical community at large, what is there left to recommend frege‘s view? why shouldn‘t we simply adopt hilbert‘s view? but i believe we are left with a more profound difficulty in the wake of frege‘s inability to solve the caesar problem. one lesson to be learned from a detailed examination of the frege-hilbert correspondence is that the difficulties faced by frege here are much more obviously present in hilbert‘s work. the fact that neither frege nor hilbert seem capable of fixing the references of the terms of their axiomatic systems does not mean that the uninterpreted, purely formal point of view simply wins the day—quite the contrary! we are left, instead, with a much more carefully specified problem lying at the heart of both approaches to mathematics. what frege‘s caesar problem shows us, then, is a problem which remains open in the philosophy of mathematics. namely, the problem of specifying exactly what mathematics is about. frege‘s approach to this problem was to suggest that, ultimately, mathematics (or, at least a crucial and potentially foundational component of mathematics) was reducible to logic. since his view of logic was an ontological one, mathematics, too, had a clear ontological basis: it was about some of the more general features of the world. but, as we have just seen, this view is not tenable; the caesar problem shows us that frege, too, is incapable of pointing out exactly which entities mathematics deals with, and it remains unclear what exactly mathematics is about. hilbert, by contrast, held the view that (at least in its more mature forms) mathematics is ultimately concerned with certain formal structures and their inter-relations. through our examination of the frege-hilbert correspondence, however, we have seen that this view is plagued with difficulties quite similar to those faced by frege in his own work. when trying to become clear about exactly what a formal structure is, frege noted several dangerous equivocations that he attempted to solve by situating such structures within his logical/ontological hierarchy. but, as his inability to solve the caesar problem shows, this route is simply incapable of shoring up hilbert‘s account of mathematics. hilbert‘s work throughout the s was similarly focussed on the attempt to provide a clear referential basis for higher forms of mathematics, though his formalist/proof-theoretic programme, too, faced insurmountable difficulties. just as frege‘s best efforts led to what he himself saw as a dead-end, so too hilbert‘s own approach came to seem mathematically and philosophically unsatisfying. in the following chapter, we will examine some of the ways in which more recent work in mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics has tended to repeat (rather than solve) this dichotomy. chapter : benacerraf, abstract structures, and structuralism § . introduction in previous chapters, we have examined two distinct views of mathematics offered by hilbert and frege in their correspondence and other works. frege‘s view entails that mathematics deals with a specific content, and that the meaningfulness of mathematical statements relies in part on reference to an ontological hierarchy of functions and objects. hilbert‘s view, by contrast, resists frege‘s attempt to fix the references of mathematical terms and treats mathematics as the study of the properties of and relations between formal axiomatic structures which cannot (or should not) be referentially fixed. as we saw in these chapters, both hilbert‘s relational view and frege‘s ontologically-grounded view face profound difficulties related to meaning and reference. the primary difficulty facing hilbert‘s view was the threat of meaninglessness and mathematics as a contentless science. as frege pointed out in their correspondence, without references for their terms, statements within an axiomatic theory would appear to be meaningless and incapable of possessing an absolute truth value. while both hilbert and his defender korselt argued in favour of a view of axiomatic systems as uninterpreted formal structures, frege countered by demanding that even statements within such formal structures require a determinate meaning if they are to become relevant for scientific inquiry. on frege‘s view, the applicability and scientific pedigree of mathematics required that it be more than a complex game of symbols. frege‘s suggestion was to embed the referentially unfixed statements of hilbert‘s uninterpreted systems within his ontological hierarchy. but, as we saw, hilbert resisted this move, viewing it as contrary to the very point of axiomatizing a theory in the first place (namely, providing a flexible structure applicable in multiple distinct situations). thus hilbert‘s view is faced with a dilemma. axiomatic theories are either purely formal systems and, hence, meaningless prior to being given an interpretation, or they possess some specific content and require at least some of their terms to have fixed references, thus eliminating their flexibility. frege saw no way out of the first horn of the dilemma, and instead dedicated his attention to the second. it is worth noting here that, despite his initial hesitance to accept frege‘s demand for fixed reference, hilbert‘s later work attempted to achieve something quite similar. throughout the s and early s hilbert and his collaborator paul bernays sought to embed higher mathematics (particularly any mathematics which required the use of infinites) in a ‗contentual‘ (inhaltlich) system of stroke-symbols which, it was presumed, were epistemologically and semantically accessible. the guiding idea of hilbert‘s program (as it has come to be called) was that, even if the statements of higher mathematics are meaningless or unverifiable, given a properly constructed syntactic theory of proof we can ensure that the allowable moves in the formal system always lead us from contentual truths, through a formal game, and back again to contentual truths. by grounding mathematics within his system of stroke symbols, hilbert sought to ensure that any detour through the infinite would always loop back to some verifiable, cf. [frege , - ]. the most important papers by hilbert and paul bernays which develop proof theory and the formalist programme are collected (in english translation) in [mancosu ], with insightful commentary by mancosu. see [hilbert - , chapter ] as well. meaningful claim in the realm of the finite. just as frege sought to give meaning to hilbert‘s purely formal conception of axiomatics by embedding his supposedly uninterpreted statements within an ontological hierarchy, so hilbert‘s later work in proof theory attempted to ground all higher mathematics on a fixed foundation of straightforward reference. unfortunately, this interesting programme suffered a fate rather similar to that of frege‘s own work on the foundations of mathematics. whereas the inability to solve the caesar problem had destroyed frege‘s hope of embedding mathematics within his ontological hierarchy, hilbert‘s program was undermined in fundamental ways when kurt gödel—who, somewhat ironically, had been a great contributor to proof theory—announced his incompleteness results in the autumn of . what gödel had shown (with some help from john von neumann) was that a consistency proof of the system of finitary reasoning (i.e., the system of ‗contentual‘ mathematics) was impossible without already appealing to transfinite, ‗non-contentual‘ modes of reasoning. this effectively reduced hilbert‘s program to another dead end in the search for mathematical foundations. but, just as hilbert‘s later program faces serious difficulties, so too frege‘s view (which grounded his suggested emendations of hilbert‘s axiomatization of geometry) is subject to deep difficulties. frege encountered seemingly intractable problems in his effort to fix the references of the terms employed in his logicist reduction of basic arithmetic. as we saw in the previous chapter, his attempts to solve various forms of the julius caesar problem eventually required the use of his basic law v, leading directly to the inconsistency of his logical system. as a result, frege ultimately abandoned his life‘s work, and published very little in his remaining years. in post-paradox work, there were many attempts to avoid the paradoxes implied by the ‗naïve‘ understanding of set theory and logic. this is one of the chief aims of russell and whitehead‘s principia mathematica and an important part of hilbert‘s program, too. but as we‘ve just seen, these projects, too, ran against the insoluble difficulty of gödel‘s incompleteness results, which of course relate directly to principia. note that my gloss of hilbert‘s program here ignores the important epistemological aspect of the project. in addition to seeking consistency and completeness proofs, hilbert also claimed that his system of stroke symbols was ―surveyable‖ [cf. hilbert ], so that the age-old question of epistemological access to the abstract entities of mathematics disappeared. [kitcher ] presents a fair account of the epistemological side of the project, as well as an account of some of its failings. see [gödel ] for the initial publication of these results. von neumann‘s help first appears in letters written to gödel between november of and january of . these are available in [von neumann , - ]. gerhard gentzen‘s celebrated proof of the consistency of first-order peano arithmetic, for instance, employs transfinite induction. hilbert‘s collaborator bernays almost immediately recognized the destructive significance of the results. for a thorough examination of gödel‘s effects on hilbert and bernays‘ programme, see [tait , § and § ]; for a broader look at bernays and gödel‘s correspondence regarding finitary mathematics and the formalist programme, see [feferman ]. despite the widespread acceptance of the failure of hilbert and bernays‘ particular program, there have been a number of interesting attempts to develop the program in a more satisfactory form (e.g., [feferman ] and [simpson ]). of course the success of the broader idea of a formalized proof theory within logic, mathematics, and computer science can hardly be overstated. ―a very large part of the labour involved in writing the present work has been expended on the contradictions and paradoxes which have infected logic and the theory of aggregates‖ [russell and whitehead , vii]. we are left, then, at something of an impasse. it turns out that both the relational view of hilbert and the ontologically grounded view of frege face tremendous difficulties, particularly in relation to meaning and reference-fixing. we‘ve traced the emergence of a structure-focussed view of mathematics and examined two of the most influential ways of explaining what mathematical structures might be, but both views face great problems. without significant alteration, neither frege‘s fixed ontological view nor hilbert‘s uninterpreted view are capable of satisfactorily explaining what much of modern mathematics is about. throughout the s and s there was a pervasive feeling that the foundations of mathematics had been seriously undermined. this deepening sense of crisis was brought about by a variety of factors: the emergence of non-euclidean geometries, the prominence of the ill- understood technique of axiomatization, the set-theoretic paradoxes, and, finally, gödel‘s incompleteness results of the s. but, even despite the widespread belief in a foundational crisis, mathematics continued to develop at a rapid pace. though problems with set theory continued to be raised by both philosophers and mathematicians, it was, for the most part, employed as an acceptable, if philosophically troublesome, foundation for mathematics. set theory had been axiomatized by ernst zermelo between and , and subsequently altered by abraham fraenkel and thoralf skolem in . the resulting system, zermelo- fraenkel set theory (zf) acted as the de facto basis for mathematics for three quarters of a century, and still figures prominently in foundational work and philosophical debates today. between the s and the s general foundational questions about mathematics were, for the most part, formulated in set-theoretic terms. most mathematicians and philosophers interested in foundational questions during this period tended to concern themselves with the specific problems of set theory and its basic concepts. all of this set-theoretic work was undertaken despite the many unresolved conceptual problems with set theory (many of which were quite similar to those faced by frege‘s logical system). solutions to these problems moved away from the so-called naïve set theory of the late th century and towards more explicit axiomatic treatments like zf, or the less widely used von neumann-bernays-gödel axiomatization (nbg) developed between the mid- s and the s, though even in these systems many conceptual problems remained. the general view among those concerned was that ‗higher‘ mathematics was ultimately reducible to the basic concepts of set theory, and that while it is a historical commonplace to note that there was a foundational crisis in mathematics in the s (see, e.g., [weyl ] for one of the earlier and best-known expressions of this view), relatively fewer accounts focus on the continuity between the factors mentioned above. an interesting exception is [ferreirós ]. as earlier chapters in this thesis attest, i hold that the conceptual crisis in mathematics was in full swing already by the time of the frege-hilbert correspondence, and well before the public debate surrounding the set-theoretic paradoxes. this sort of attitude (―we‘ll figure out why it works later‖) is remarkably similar to the rapid expansion in the application of the calculus prior to its rigorization in the s. most mathematicians in both periods remained unconcerned with what we might call the ‗philosophical‘ underpinnings of their mathematical tools and were instead content to extend their successes as far as possible. in contrast to the calculus, however, it seems to me that we have yet to achieve a satisfactory philosophical foundation for modern axiomatics. the chief reference here is [zermelo ]; almost all of the key papers surrounding the early axiomatization of set theory are available in [van heijenoort ]. for an illuminating history of the development of set theory, see [ferreirós ]. for example, stewart shapiro‘s theory of structures is self-consciously modelled on zf (cf., [shapiro , - ]), though he departs from the usual philosophical understanding of zf as a foundation. problems with this reduction were simply a matter of finding the correct axiomatization of set theory or the proper understanding of the relevant concepts. throughout the first half of the twentieth century (and perhaps a few decades beyond), the philosophy of mathematics was dominated by an intense interest in set-theoretic reductionism as a means of putting mathematics on a solid foundation. when people (or, at least, philosophers) asked ―what is mathematics really about?‖ the answer was, invariably, ―sets!‖. . set-theoretic reductionism and set-theoretic foundationalism but what does this mean? what exactly is set-theoretic reductionism and how does it relate to the desire to properly found mathematics? we‘ll need to answer a few sets of general questions about the nature of reduction and foundations in mathematics to understand the role of set theory in the post-fregean world. first question: what does it mean to reduce one part of mathematics to another? to answer this question, let‘s look at the most often discussed reduction: the reduction of the natural numbers and their arithmetic to set theory. how is this reduction accomplished? the basic idea is that for every arithmetical object, property, or relation of the natural number system, there is a corresponding object, property, or relation in the universe of whichever set theory we are working with. thus, the entire sequence of numbers itself has to be replaced by or reduced to some collection of sets which bears properties and relations that (somehow) mirror those of the natural numbers. in essence, a set-theoretic reduction of the natural numbers and their basic arithmetic involves modelling the natural number structure within some particular universe of sets. this of course poses a number of questions we‘ve been examining throughout this thesis (i.e., what is the natural number structure, how do we figure out the ‗somehow‘ in the previous sentence, what are models, etc.). we‘ll return to these concerns below. of course there were exceptions to this general tendency. [putnam ] attempts to eschew the search for foundations in mathematics entirely. an earlier and more focussed rejection of specifically set-theoretic foundations can be found in [skolem ], where skolem first introduces his eponymous ‗paradox‘. not really a paradox at all, skolem‘s theorem illustrates the startling relativity of set-theoretic notions. for him, this relativity introduced a profound and confusing complexity into set theory which was directly at odds with most set theorists‘ dreams of reducing all of mathematics to the notions of set theory. of foundations, skolem writes that ―our only concern, then, should be that the initial foundations be something immediately clear, natural, and not open to question. this condition is satisfied by the notion of integer and by inductive inferences, but it is decidedly not satisfied by set- theoretic axioms of the type of zermelo‘s or anything else of that kind; if we were to accept the reduction of the former notions to the latter, the set-theoretic notion would have to be simpler than mathematical induction, and reasoning with them less open to question, but this runs entirely counter to the actual state of affairs‖ [skolem, in van heijenoort , , my emphasis]. unsurprisingly, zermelo was not thrilled with skolem‘s work, initially believing it to contain a mistake [cf., van dalen and ebbinghaus , - ]. wilson makes a similar claim which includes at least the th century: ―set theory has become the canonical backdrop to which questions of structural existence are referred. so when we go beyond napkins and set up a structure […] formally, we need both: (a) to mark the ‗intrinsic‘ elements proper to the internal workings of the structure, without extraneous fat; (b) to provide sufficient extrinsic links to set theory so that the existence of our structure can be established‖ [wilson , ]. shapiro seems to extend the dominance of set theory even to the st century: ―within the community of professional mathematicians, if not philosophers, a set-theoretic proof of satisfiability resolves any legitimate questions of existence‖ [shapiro , ]. second question: what is the point of reducing one part of mathematics to another? there are at least three related answers to this question which are relevant here. we might call them the epistemological, the pragmatic/heuristic, and the ontological answers, respectively. i‘ll isolate them here for clarity, but it should be noted that they are really rather difficult to separate (as frege‘s work very clearly shows). the epistemological answer to the question suggests that reducing one area of mathematics to another can help to clarify, simplify, or solve epistemological problems. frege‘s work is probably the best example of reductionism undertaken for the sake of epistemology; we might also think of parts of hilbert‘s program in this way. one of the central aims of frege‘s work prior to the emergence of russell‘s paradox was precisely to prove an epistemological point via the reduction of arithmetic to logic. by showing that arithmetic can be understood in purely logical terms, frege hoped to show that arithmetic is not a synthetic a priori science, as kant famously argued, but that it is instead a purely analytic discipline. to use the kantian vocabulary, his reduction of arithmetic to logic would have shown that arithmetic had no intrinsic connection to the pure intuition of time. so, at least part of his goal was to overturn an error he saw in kant‘s influential understanding of the epistemology of mathematics, with all the implications this might have for the philosophy of mathematics. we might also reduce one part of mathematics to another for pragmatic or heuristic reasons. there are numerous instances in the history of mathematics where a concept or technique from one branch or sub-discipline has proven essential to the advancement of seemingly unrelated work in another branch or sub-discipline of mathematics. such cross-pollination is crucial for mathematics. but, at least since the early s, mathematics has become a field of increasingly isolated specialization, such that someone working in one branch of mathematics might be unable even to understand (let alone use) results in another – despite the fact that these results may be of dramatic importance for their particular problem. this poses a pragmatic problem: how can mathematicians from disparate fields speak to one another? one solution to this problem is to recast these disparate fields in a common language which could provide the common ground required for fertile cross-disciplinary collaboration. as the category-theorist and philosopher f. william lawvere puts it, ―unification and simplification are necessary not only for the dissemination of results, but also for the coherent advance of research in the diverse branches of mathematics.‖ thus, if mathematicians can cash out their higher-level mathematical discussions in terms of a single theory or way of speaking, then the recognition of similarities between seemingly disparate parts of mathematics will be made considerably easier. by reducing all of mathematics to a single theory (e.g., set theory or category theory), the pragmatic reductionist gives all mathematicians a basic vocabulary to communicate with one another. a related benefit of this form of reductionism is that, when a surprising connection between fields is in fact discovered, it ought to be explicable in the uniform and universal language developed by the reduction (e.g., one might explain the powerful connections between the application of techniques for solving equations to geometric problems via descartes‘ coordinate system is a particularly well-known example of this phenomenon; another fruitful example is the deep connection between permutation groups and the roots of polynomial equations which forms the basis of galois theory. [lawvere , ]. algebra and geometry of analytic geometry by showing how both equations and spaces can be understood in set-theoretic terms). so pragmatic/heuristic reductionism can help to explain connections, and, the better explained such connections are, the better exploited, and the more productive the cross-pollination becomes. reductionism can also be ontological in character. this sort of reduction aims to show that our discussions of higher-level mathematical entities are really and ultimately about something simpler (things like sets or categories or numbers). so when we do mathematics what we are really doing is engaging with and speaking about this most fundamental ontological layer. ontological reductions in this sense aim to show us that everything other than set theory or category theory or (in frege‘s case) logic is merely a façon de parler, a historically entrenched, partially misleading linguistic fiction. only the final level of the reduction touches reality. one clear benefit of this sort of view is ontological parsimony: in place of the bewildering array of abstract objects and structures developed by mathematics (abelian categories, fuzzy sets, hausdorff spaces, fermat primes, grothendieck universes, blotto games, etc., etc.) we have one or two sorts of things (e.g., sets, objects and arrows, objects and functions, numbers, etc.). this parsimony itself has the added benefit of simplifying semantic and epistemological concerns: instead of working things out on a case by case basis, we can solve these sorts of problems in a uniform way. perhaps the chief philosophical benefit, though, is that this kind of ontological reduction promises to tell us what mathematics is really about. third set of questions: what do we mean when we speak of the foundations of mathematics? what are such foundations meant to provide? how do the various forms of reductionism act as foundations? in some ways we have given answers to these questions already. epistemological reductions are meant to provide (unsurprisingly) epistemological foundations for mathematics. let‘s again take frege as an example. part of frege‘s worry was that mathematicians actually have no idea what they are talking about when they engage in proofs. indeed, much of the first half of frege‘s grundlagen der arithmetik is taken up with showing that extant views of the concept of number are nonsensical. as a result, proofs based upon these views don‘t really prove anything because they are meaningless concatenations of symbols. if we can show that important parts of mathematics are reducible to logic, and that logic is epistemologically accessible, then we can show that it is possible to make mathematics more epistemologically secure. if we know what numbers are, and follow rigorous and gapless proof procedures, then we can ensure that mathematicians aren‘t engaging in flights of fancy. we can really prove things now. this is how frege‘s reduction was meant provide an epistemological foundation for mathematics. pragmatic reductions can provide pragmatic foundation for mathematics. by showing that we can, if we so choose, cash out our higher level talk in terms of set- or category-theoretic talk, when we collaborate with others we have a firm basis for thinking that this collaboration is adding to the stock of mathematical knowledge in general, rather than just the stock of our particular nook or cranny of mathematics. this pragmatic reduction guarantees that mathematics is not, in fact, splintering apart into a thousand dissonant voices like an abstract tower of babel. many of the proponents of category theory as a foundation for mathematics have emphasized its pragmatic use as a kind of lingua franca for the mathematics. a pragmatic foundation of this sort is meant to give a foundation for the working unity of the science. this won‘t necessarily guarantee that the tower is stable, nor that it touches reality, but it can help guarantee that we are engaged, in some sense, in the same global project. finally, ontological reductions can give us ontological foundations. when we show that a new mathematical concept or object can be reduced to the single ongoing ontology of our particular reduction, we know that our utterances about these novelties actually refer to something real and that they are therefore meaningful and capable of truth and falsity. ontological reduction aims to show that the abstract claims of mathematics have a foundation in reality, in much the same way that the claims of physics and zoology have. by showing it is possible to reduce higher-level mathematical entities to an acceptable ontology, we provide a means for connecting mathematics to the world that we inhabit. such reductions help to answer the question ―what is mathematics about?‖ by answering ―reality‖. in this simplified view of the nature of mathematical foundations, we already have three distinct approaches. part of the problem in the philosophy of mathematics over at least the last century and a half has been that these approaches often intermingle to form a confusing tangle, so that ontological questions are posed in pragmatic terms, epistemological questions have ontological implications, and so on. in this dissertation thus far, i have focussed on the question: what is mathematics really about? i have meant this question to be taken ontologically, i.e., i have meant to ask which features of reality (if any) does mathematics concern itself with? if we think of the debate between hilbert and frege as chiefly an ontological one—and i suggest that we should— then we have already seen a few answers to this question. frege‘s answer is that the ontology of mathematics (or at least that part of mathematics derivable from basic arithmetic) is just the ontological hierarchy of objects and functions. hilbert‘s suggestion is that mathematics, taken on its own, has no ontology—indeed, that this lack of ontology is its chief feature. we‘ve seen, too, that both of these answers are deeply problematic. so, again, we‘ve returned to our impasse. § . benacerraf on the natural numbers in the next few sections i would like to see whether the more recent history of the philosophy of mathematics can offer us plausible new ways of answering the ontological question. i‘ve chosen as a starting point an influential paper by the american philosopher of mathematics paul benacerraf. the paper, ―what numbers could not be‖ has been cited over eight hundred mac lane‘s well-known textbook ―categories for the working mathematician‖ is perhaps the best known application of this view. there mac lane ―aims to present those ideas and methods that can now be effectively used by mathematicians working in a variety of other fields of mathematical research. […] [c]ategories provide a convenient conceptual language, based on the notions of category, functor, natural transformation, contravariance, and functor category‖ [mac lane , vii]. in an appendix to the text, mac lane also attempts to show that categories ―can be used as a possible foundation for all of mathematics, thus replacing the use in such a foundation of the usual zermelo-fraenkel axioms for set theory‖ [mac lane , ]. the view of category theory as a conceptual language or organizational tool for large parts of mathematics is also developed in a more philosophical vocabulary in [landry ] and [mac lane ]. of course such reductions often entail a fairly expansive notion of ‗reality‘ – thus, for instance, an ontological account of the traditional set-theoretic reduction will include as part of ‗reality‘ the entire set-theoretic universe v. times (something of a feat in the rather cloistered world of the philosophy of mathematics) and it seems to have heralded a new way of understanding the problem of foundations in mathematics. at the height of the popularity of set-theoretic reductionism, benacerraf raised a significant conceptual problem with the usual set-theoretic reduction of the natural numbers. he noted what was already common knowledge: that, even within zermelo-fraenkel set theory, there can exist multiple different, equally valid ways in which to define the natural numbers as sets. benacerraf proceeded to argue that the existence of multiple different reductions poses a problem for the naïve view of set-theoretic foundationalism, namely the view that there is some unique correlate in the set-theoretic hierarchy corresponding to each higher level mathematical domain, in this case the natural numbers. if natural numbers are sets, benacerraf asked, well, just which sets are they? in many ways his is a very charitable approach to the problem. at the outset benacerraf concedes almost everything to reductionism. sets are real? fine. numbers are sets? fine. all that he wishes to know is which particular sets they are. if there is no principled reason for picking out particular sets as the real correlates for particular numbers, then there seems to be no reason to accept set theory as the final ontological foundation for mathematics in the first place. this, in broad strokes, is what has come to be called the non-uniqueness problem. its effect is to call into question the post-fregean, post-paradox attempts by set theorists and philosophers to explain just what it is that mathematics is about. in the following section, i will investigate benacerraf‘s account of this problem in more detail, and also look at his admittedly tentative ‗structuralist‘ suggestions toward its solution. the point of looking so closely at benacerraf‘s paper is to see whether his work offers us any clear alternative to the impasse we encountered in the frege- hilbert debate. . benacerraf‘s non-uniqueness problem the focus of benacerraf‘s paper is a single, relatively straightforward question: if numbers are reducible to sets, then which sets are they? in one sense, this question is as easily answered as it is asked, since in any reduction of the natural numbers to the universe of set theory, it is a simple matter to make explicit which numbers are identified with which sets. this is indeed the chief point of such reductions. the real problem for benacerraf begins when multiple adequate though extensionally distinct set- theoretic reductions are available. benacerraf examines two fairly common approaches, one attributed to ernst zermelo, the other to john von neumann. on the zermelo reduction, we have the following identifications: Ø = {Ø} = one of the chief contemporary proponents of structuralism, stewart shapiro, suggests that benacerraf‘s paper ―provides the standard motivation for structuralism‖ [shapiro , ]. {{Ø}} = {{{Ø}}} = whereas on the von neumann account, we have: Ø = {Ø} = {Ø, {Ø}} = {Ø, {Ø}, {Ø, {Ø}}} = we needn‘t get into great detail about the particulars in each reduction, but it is worth noting two general facts here. first, each reduction is entirely adequate in the sense that all the (set-theoretic correlates of the) relations and properties of the natural numbers can be deduced in either reduction. and, second, many of the ‗same‘ elements in each reduction possess quite different properties. for instance, on the von neumann account, the number has three members, one of which is the set {Ø, {Ø}}. on the zermelo account, the number has a single member, {{Ø}}, which is not a member of the von neumann reduction‘s . in short, then, we possess supposedly equivalent arithmetic reductions which are both extensionally and intensionally different in many respects. beyond these two reductions, which benacerraf employs mainly for illustrative purposes, there are of course an infinite number of other equally valid set-theoretic reductions of the natural numbers. moreover, we needn‘t restrict ourselves to set theory; we might employ category theory, lattice theory, or even a physical structure of spacetime points to explain just what the natural numbers are. the question, then, is this: if there are multiple equally valid but radically different reductions of the natural numbers, which of these is the correct one? which sets are the natural numbers really? benacerraf writes we are left in a quandary. we have two (infinitely many, really) accounts of the meaning of certain words (―number,‖ ―one,‖ ―seventeen,‖ and so forth) each of which satisfies what appear to be necessary and sufficient conditions for a correct account. although there are differences between the two accounts, it appears that both are correct in virtue of satisfying common conditions. if so, then the differences are incidental and do not affect correctness. furthermore, in fregean terminology, each account fixes the sense of the words whose analysis it provides. each account must also, therefore, fix the reference of these there are several ways to define the natural numbers in terms of many general algebraic structures, not just set theory. since category theory, for example, can model set theory (cf. [osius ]), one could simply employ the category-theoretic correlate of, say, the von neumann reduction in a definition of the natural numbers. alternatively, one can define the natural numbers directly in terms of a category containing a terminal object, a global element, and arrows with the requisite properties. similarly, one can define the natural numbers (including zero) in lattice - theoretic terms as a semi-lattice under the operations ‗min‘ and ‗max‘, with as the ‗bottom‘. cf. [field ]. field likely would not treat his use of this spacetime structure as an attempt to explain what the natural numbers are (given that the title of the book is science without numbers), though this structure is intended to fulfill the duties the (real) numbers generally perform within the physical sciences. someone with less interest in nominalizing science could certainly employ field‘s structure in ways very similar to the set-theoretic reductions we refer to here. expressions. yet, as we have seen, one way in which these accounts differ is in the referents assigned to each of the terms under analysis. at this stage benacerraf points out that, on the assumption that numbers just are sets (or that they are ultimately reducible to sets), we are left with only two possible options. either both (or all) of these accounts are correct or it is not the case that both (or all) are correct. at the outset he rejects the idea that multiple referentially-fixed accounts of the natural numbers can be correct in the required sense. this is because the point of the ontological reduction is to pick out the exact objects which the numbers are, not a group of objects which share certain similarities—unless of course that group is a specific set which uniquely fulfills the relevant criteria, but benacerraf‘s point is that this is not in fact possible in the first place. if the numbers are sets, then they must be particular sets. benacerraf‘s position here is straightforwardly ontological in character. since no two distinct entities can also be identical—at least by a plausible and fairly common metaphysical assumption —it simply cannot be the case that the number is both the set {{{Ø}}} and the set {Ø, {Ø}, {Ø, {Ø}}}, [f]or if the number is in fact some particular set b, it cannot be that two correct accounts of the meaning of ― ‖—and therefore also its reference—assign two different sets to . for if it is true that for some set b, = b, then it cannot be true that for some set c, different from b, = c. so, bypassing the first option of rejecting the indiscernibility of identicals, benacerraf examines the second. if numbers just are sets, and it is not the case that there are multiple, equally correct accounts of which sets exactly they are, then there must be a single correct account. if this is the case, benacerraf suggests that there ought to be some reason for preferring this account over all the others, which all suffice equally well for the purposes of arithmetic. he writes we are now faced with a crucial problem: if there exists such a ―correct‖ account, do there also exist arguments which will show it to be the correct one? or does there exist a particular set of sets b, which is really the numbers, but such that there exists no argument one can give to establish that it, and not, say, [the von neumann reduction], is really the numbers? it seems altogether too obvious that this latter possibility borders on the absurd. if the numbers constitute one particular set of sets, and not another, then there must be arguments to indicate which. [benacerraf , - ]. though, in the philosophy of mathematics, not a universally held assumption. cf., e.g., [macbride ], [ketland ], [leitgeb and ladyman ], and [shapiro ]. [benacerraf , ]. [benacerraf , - ]. it seems to me that a more reasonable claim (or at least one which is more agnostic about the relation between human capacity and the world of mathematics) would suggest that if we are to believe that the numbers constitute one particular set of sets, and not another, then there must be arguments or at least evidence to indicate which. in a later appraisal of the argument of the paper, benacerraf himself notes ―no red - blooded realist […] should accept the bald statement that if there isn‘t some a priori proof that some particular candidate reduction is the correct one, there can‘t be a ‗correct‘ one‖ [benacerraf b, ]. as this remark shows, benacerraf‘s dilemma is remarkably similar to frege‘s caesar problem. frege, in his attempt to embed the natural numbers within his logical/ontological hierarchy, was compelled to provide completely determinate identity statements for each number, such that it was clear for every entity in his hierarchy whether or not it was identical with the number in question. his problem was to ensure that he picked out exactly which entities he wished to talk about, not simply a cluster of entities having some selection of shared properties sufficient to satisfy a collection of axioms. he wanted to show, for instance, which exact entity the number was, not give us a list of different possible entities which sufficed to play the role of the number up to isomorphism. given his logical scruples, this desire for strictly fixed reference required that his definitions of the numbers exhaustively determined not only which entities they were, but also which entities they were not. benacerraf‘s aim here is quite similar. he wants to be able to show that, among the many arithmetically equivalent reductions of the natural numbers, one and only one is the correct reduction—the one which actually tells us which sets the natural numbers are (or, if we prefer, what we really refer to when we use number words). benacerraf, again following frege, is not interested in privileging a particular reduction for purely aesthetic or idiosyncratic reasons, or out of convenience; he demands principled argumentation illustrating the superiority of one reduction over all others. since the set-theoretic differences between, e.g., the von neumann and zermelo reductions are irrelevant from a purely arithmetical point of view they cannot be used to militate in favour of either reduction as the superior account. how then can we distinguish between the two in anything other than an ad hoc or idiosyncratic fashion? as we saw in the last chapter, frege‘s attempts to solve his version of this problem led him into difficulties which he eventually viewed to be insurmountable. though benacerraf is not bound to the particularities of frege‘s ontological view of logic, nor to frege‘s logicist program, his problem here is nevertheless almost identical in structure to frege‘s. so what is benacerraf‘s strategy for avoiding the dead end of frege‘s approach without falling into the meaninglessness of a purely formal approach like hilbert‘s? how can we determine precisely which sets the natural numbers are? . restricted identity benacerraf outlines a few ways we might deal with the non-uniqueness problem. he begins, again in a familiar fregean mode, to investigate exactly which question it is that we are asking here. an important part of what we really want to know is the truth value of certain identity statements of the form ‗n = …‘ where n is some number. there are, benacerraf suggests, at least three different types of identity statement we might wish to investigate here. first are the more commonplace identities between obviously arithmetical entities, i.e., statements like ‗ + = ,‘ where each component of the statement is presented in recognizably arithmetical form. second, we have more circuitous but ultimately similar claims, like ‗ = the number of shoes currently on my feet,‘ where we have obvious reference to a numerical entity without the use of a numeral or strictly arithmetic term. neither of these statement-types is particular troubling; in a given reduction, the (relative) truth value of these statements will be uncontroversial. the third sort of identity statement is rather more problematic. these statements, e.g., ‗ = julius caesar‘, or ‗ + = {Ø, {Ø, {Ø}}}‘ are familiar from frege‘s caesar problem. indeed, benacerraf explicitly refers to frege‘s problem in his discussion of these identities: to speak from frege's standpoint, there is a world of objects—that is, the designata or referents of names, descriptions, and so forth—in which the identity relation had free reign. it made sense for frege to ask of any two names (or descriptions) whether they named the same object or different ones. hence the complaint at one point in his argument that, thus far, one could not tell from his definitions whether julius caesar was a number. benacerraf‘s first move in responding to the non-uniqueness problem is to distance himself precisely from frege‘s requirement that every identity statement is meaningful (and, relatedly, that each such statement has a determinate truth value). benacerraf suggests that identity statements of the third type are ‗unsemantical‘ for the reason that there is no context in which there are determinate truth-conditions for such statements. he writes that if an expression of the form ―x = y‖ is to have a sense, it can be only in contexts where it is clear that both x and y are of some kind or category c, and that it is the conditions which individuate things as the same c which are operative and determine its truth value. and, further, that what determines that something is a particular lamppost could not individuate it as a particular number. i am arguing that questions of the identity of a particular ―entity‖ do not make sense. ―entity‖ is too broad. for such questions to make sense, there must be a well-entrenched predicate c, in terms of which one then asks about the identity of a particular c, and the conditions associated with identifying c‘s as the same c will be the deciding ones. here again we see benacerraf attempting to break free of frege‘s constraint that every identity statement must be meaningful. he does so by suggesting that, in order for there to be an identity relation between two entities, there must be some context in which it is made clear that there is a semantically acceptable category under which both entities fall. in the case where there is no such category available, we cannot make sense of the identity relation, and identity statements can‘t be given a truth value. presumably, a statement like ‗ = julius caesar‘ will be neither true nor false on this view, but, instead, ‗unsemantical‘. this demand for a uniform semantic category within which to subsume the terms of a meaningful identity statement is broadly similar to frege‘s insistence that functions have specific types of argument places which cannot be satisfied by the wrong sort of entity. thus, for instance, we saw frege engaged in a great deal of fancy footwork to avoid the implication (of the concept horse problem) that his view allowed meaningful identity statements between objects and concepts. frege, for his part, attempted to explicate as best he could the ontological reasons for these formal conditions. benacerraf, likewise, is presented with the difficulty of specifying (in a uniform way) exactly which [benacerraf , ]. note that by ‗unsemantical‘ benacerraf does not mean strictly nonsensical, for, as he notes, ―we grasp enough of [the] sense [of unsemantical claims] to explain why they are senseless‖ [benacerraf , ]. he doesn‘t further define this notion, unfortunately. we will return to this difficulty below. [benacerraf , - ]. [benacerraf , ]. categories are semantically acceptable and which are ‗unsemantical‘. unlike frege, benacerraf does not give us any detailed story about how this might be accomplished, though his use of the phrase ‗well-entrenched predicate‘ is suggestive that his account would differ significantly from frege‘s. to avoid this problem entirely, one might simply define a disjunctive category or predicate (e.g., ‗x is an f just in case x is either a roman general or a number‘) which includes whichever entities we wish to make identity claims about. benacerraf, however, wishes to reject this possibility as well, despite his admitted inability to give a precise account of what he means by ‗uniform conditions‘ sufficient to prevent such ad hoc counterexamples. . . problems with benacerraf‘s restriction of identity the restriction of statements of identity to properly semantical contexts promises to solve the non-uniqueness problem, at least in part, by allowing us to ignore thornier questions about mathematical objects like frege‘s caesar problem. what the caesar problem and others like it show is that we cannot straightforwardly pick out mathematical entities like numbers precisely enough to pin them down in an absolute ontological sense. benacerraf‘s suggestion that we restrict the relation of identity to semantical contexts allows us to say, ‗there really isn‘t an answer to the question ―is julius caesar a number?‖ because we are dealing here with an ill- defined, unsemantical context within which the (or an) identity relation can gain no purchase‘. the problem, then, simply dissolves and we are free to discuss the truth or falsity of identity claims within various well-defined contexts like the zermelo and von neumann reductions. but there are clear difficulties in this line of thinking. let‘s take a look at a few of these before we proceed to benacerraf‘s next attempt to address the non-uniqueness problem. as we‘ve seen, benacerraf‘s restriction of identity leans heavily on ‗uniform semantic conditions‘ and ‗unsemanticality‘. the notion of uniform semantic conditions for the meaningfulness of identity statements is meant to protect his account from the introduction of ad hoc solutions to the problem. such solutions would simply dictate by fiat which sorts of identity claim are allowed and which are not. but, on this view, anything which was deemed to be unsemantical (e.g., ‗julius caesar = ‘) could simply be made meaningful by the introduction of an appropriately defined context. to avoid all this, benacerraf demands semantic conditions which would be applied across the board. but how are we to know which contexts are meaningful? certainly we would not want to reject all disjunctive categories. one might think of a perfectly acceptable category like ‗resident of canada or resident of the united states‘. what, then, would be the basis for rejecting some disjunctive categories over others? something like ‗naturalness‘ might be such a basis: we find it natural to think of ‗residency in the united states‘ and [benacerraf , note ]. a purely postulational view of mathematics, like that of hausdorff, would presumably have no trouble with this sort of view. but such a view, of course, would have little trouble with any questions pertaining to the uniqueness of mathematical entities. its difficulties lie elsewhere. ‗residency in canada‘ as falling under the more general notion of ‗residency‘—after all, we already have a word for this category and could likely tell a convincing story about why and how this concept emerged in the first place. but perhaps a category under which roman generals and natural numbers both fall is an unnatural one. this, of course, simply pushes the question back further by requiring some account of naturalness which, it seems to me, would be equally difficult to produce. benacerraf‘s use of the phrase ‗well-entrenched predicate‘ might very well indicate that his definition of ‗uniform conditions‘ (and, relatedly, of ‗naturalness‘) would be largely historical in character: we find it natural to think of categories like ‗mammal‘, ‗residency‘, ‗cat‘, or ‗temperature‘ but unnatural to think of ‗general or number‘, ‗hairpiece or firing range‘, etc. this may be the case simply because we have found it prudent over the course of our history to think and speak in terms of various separate entities as mammals, residents, cats, or temperatures but have never been called upon or found it helpful to think or speak about hairpieces and firing ranges at one time. on this suggested view, the uniform conditions for determining which predicates and categories are acceptable or natural or well-entrenched would be given relative to a personal, historical, or cultural trajectory. perhaps, then, the category which would allow us to decide whether ‗ = julius caesar‘ is true or false is one which has not yet become (or will never become) relevant enough to become well-entrenched. though at this point, after a century of arguing about caesar‘s numerical status, it seems likely that we have dug a deep enough trench. benacerraf, for his part, doesn‘t elaborate on this aspect of his view here, so we can only offer conjecture as to how we might capture just the categories he has in mind. clearly, though, there will be significant difficulties in such a project. . . empty generality as we‘ve seen, frege‘s own solution to this problem (or his version of it) was to restrict meaningful statements to those whose terms referred to the elements of his ontological hierarchy and which obeyed the combinatoric logic of that hierarchy. this required him to employ very general notions like ‗object‘ and ‗function‘. benacerraf finds the extremely general notions at the basis of frege‘s ontological hierarchy so broad as to be useless—for him they simply do not form categories capable of providing the context for individuation between such radically disparate entities as, e.g., the number and a particular radish. such notions are not ad hoc in the way that custom-built predicates like ‗is a number or a general‘ are, and they seem to be rather ‗well-entrenched‘ on any charitable account of that phrase. so what, then, is the problem with these notions? benacerraf is fairly brief in this objection, writing that to say that they are both ―entities‖ is to make no presuppositions at all—for everything purports to be at least that. ―entity,‖ ―thing,‖ ―object‖ are words having a role in the language; they are place fillers whose function is analogous to that of pronouns (and, in more formalized contexts, to variables of quantification). in some ways, the requirement of historical naturalness would mirror hilbert‘s suggestion (cf. [corry a, ]) that we ought only to axiomatize those parts of mathematics which have suitable historical pedigree. [benacerraf , - ]. interestingly, a key component of benacerraf‘s own structuralist view of the natural numbers is that they are not objects. benacerraf suggests here that we cannot employ general notions like entity and object as appropriate categories enabling us to determine the truth value of identity claims because they are, in a sense, without real content. it is not that they are not well-entrenched notions—surely few notions have the historical pedigree of ‗object‘ and ‗entity‘—but, instead, that they offer no meaningful contrast through which a clear meaning can be assigned to an identity claim. they are ‗presuppositionless‘ insofar as we must already speak of entities or things if we are to speak logically about anything whatsoever. part of frege‘s problem, on this view, is that his ontological hierarchy was too general to capture benacerraf‘s more restricted notion of semanticality. indeed, for benacerraf, it is precisely this generality which leads us into absurdities like dividing by caesar. but here, too, we seem to run into significant difficulties with benacerraf‘s attempt to side-step frege‘s point of view and its related troubles. is it true that there is no real content to notions like entity, object, and thing? in the brief passage just quoted, it seems that benacerraf equates the roles of the words ‗entity‘ and ‗object,‘ while also holding that everything purports to be an entity. if the equation is to hold, then, whatever we mean when we use the word ‗entity‘ is what we mean when we use the word ‗object‘. on this view, neither of these terms is terribly useful because they don‘t pick out any particular category. anything at all is an object or an entity or a thing. indeed, the use of the term ‗anything‘ in the previous sentence seems to presuppose this fact. so, if we are trying to develop a category which delimits the semantical from the unsemantical, these notions will be powerless in their generality. they simply do not provide a meaningful contrast. but is this in fact the case? there are, i think, reasonable grounds for thinking otherwise. for one, it does seem that many mathematicians and philosophers assume some particular content for the notion of ‗object‘, at the very least, and probably ‗entity‘ as well. even without the technical ontological notion of object possessed by frege, it seems clear that most mathematicians (excluding, perhaps, set theorists) would differentiate between the objects of a given system and, say, the relations between the objects of that same system—this is particularly true of most branches of abstract algebra. on what basis is this distinction made if not on some presupposition about the nature of object-hood? benacerraf‘s response to this query would likely be: indeed the category- or number-theorist does make a distinction between objects and relations, but this distinction is only made on the basis of a narrower, theory-specific notion of object-hood. on this view, orthographic devices could be developed to help maintain logical perspicuity (i.e., differentiation between objects of various types by use of subscripts: ‗objectcategory-theoretic,‘ ‗objectset-theoretic,‘ ‗objectfrege,‘ etc.). but the fact that zf set theory a) was widely accepted as the best candidate for a foundation for mathematics when benacerraf‘s paper was written and b) is purely extensional, containing no real differentiation between, e.g., objects and relations or concepts, might help to explain the origin of benacerraf‘s view here. category theory, by contrast, operates on a basic distinction between the objects and the arrows (or morphisms) of a given category. we might also compare various axiomatizations of set theory to give some sense of the content of the notion of object; while zf set theory deals exclusively with sets, [von neumann ] contains an interesting axiomatized ‗set‘ theory in which functions are logically prior to sets. to attribute the content of the notion of object within various branches of mathematics exclusively to narrower theory-dependent decisions is a move which seems to me to avoid the fact that, prima facie, objects seem to play the same sort of role in many different mathematical domains. indeed, frege‘s distinction between objects and functions was meant to capture exactly this general feature of mathematical thinking. without further argumentation, there is no obvious reason to reject the reasonable view that what can count as an object for a particular theory in the first place is dictated by a more general notion of object-hood, a notion which is often left tacit. . . the content of logic there also seems to be a conflict here between benacerraf‘s claim that these notions are presuppositionless and other aspects of his own view. note that benacerraf shares with frege and many others the belief that logic is a science of extraordinary generality, one which is applicable anywhere. even with his demand that meaningful identity statements require a well- defined category to gain purchase, he writes that logic can then still be seen as the most general of disciplines, applicable in the same way to and within any given theory. it remains the tool applicable to all disciplines and theories, the difference being only that it is left to the discipline or theory to determine what shall count as an ―object‖ or ―individual.‖ now, we‘ve seen in previous chapters why frege was able to hold that logic was pan- theoretically applicable. for him, it was the most general science of truth. but this did not at all mean that logic itself was in any way presuppositionless. one might even reasonably say that a large part of frege‘s life‘s work was to bring the tacit presuppositions of logic into the light of day. this generality rested on logic‘s capacity to deal directly with those entities which were capable of being true or false, i.e., fregean thoughts. crucial to frege‘s understanding of thoughts was his ontological hierarchy of objects and functions. though frege was quite aware that he could not define ‗function‘ and ‗object‘ in a purely precise manner, he nevertheless attempted to provide elucidations which were meant to guide the reader toward the content of these basic notions. the reason, then, why frege believed logic to be universally applicable to any endeavour concerned with truth was because it dealt with the most general laws of truth, and truth itself is (partially) understood in terms of the ontological connections between entities in frege‘s hierarchy. so, while frege might have been willing to allow for narrower, theory- specific notions of ‗object‘, ‗entity,‘ or ‗individual‘ he would likely have suggested that if these notions are going to be scientifically useful at all (i.e., if they are going to be employed in the search for truths), then they must already have built into them the more general assumptions of logic. for an individual theory to treat some class of entity as an object would, for frege, already involve the assumption that such entities were self-standing, could act as arguments for first- level functions, etc. while others might not share frege‘s own assumptions about the nature of [benacerraf , ]. this statement seems a particularly difficult one to maintain without argumentation in , well after the advent of intuitionism in the work of brouwer and heyting. for an interesting argument that at least some intuitionistic mathematics simply cannot share the same internal logic as classical mathematics, see [shapiro ]. indeed, one of the three main guidelines frege gives himself in the grundlagen is ―never to lose sight of the distinction between concept and object‖ [frege b, xxii]. objects or logic, it does seem clear that when the category or number theorist suggests that a given entity is an object rather than a function, they are tacitly employing a general notion of object which is not strictly determined by the definitions of category or number theory. one very basic assumption made by most forms of contemporary logic, for example, might be that the world is (at least partially) structured into entities at all, i.e., things which are particular, individuatable, and capable of possessing properties, et cetera. even if this assumption turns out to be true—assuming that we can think of truth without already employing these notions—it is certainly not the case that everyone shares or has always shared this view. in philosophy and theology, for example, other ways of structuring the world have been developed extensively. so, while the presuppositions implied by accepting a ‗world of objects‘ (or, using rudolf carnap‘s phrase, a ‗thing language‘) are extremely general in character, they are indeed presuppositions, and ones which not everyone might share. certainly they seem necessary for many forms of contemporary scientific thinking, but this, it seems to me, is just another way of saying ‗we must employ the notions of logic to think logically‘. the language of logic and science is certainly not the only one possible. . . which logic? but part of benacerraf‘s goal in this paper is to distance himself from the rigidity of frege‘s ontological hierarchy and its concomitant problems with fixed reference. so it would seem that his account of the pan-theoretic applicability of logic must resist this answer. so what is its basis for benacerraf? i think part of the problem in answering this question for benacerraf is that it is rather difficult to establish what is meant by ‗logic‘ here. what exactly is it that we are applying, what is this ‗most general of disciplines‘? again, accepting frege‘s detailed answer to this question would commit us to exactly the sort of profound difficulties with reference that benacerraf is trying to avoid. but, while frege‘s position is off-limits, it doesn‘t seem that there is a clearly superior alternative. even more, while a few modern philosophers have argued in favour of the primacy of one form of logic over another—frege and quine being notable examples —this has become an increasingly untenable position. the multiplicity of mutually incompatible logics developed throughout the th and st centuries is fairly good evidence that a conception of logic as the elaboration of a single intuitive notion of logical consequence might be outmoded or at least a fairly obvious example from twentieth-century philosophy can be found in the works of martin heidegger ( - ). in ―the question concerning technology‖ (i.e., [heidegger ]), for example, heidegger suggests that the division of the world into objects occurs in the course of historical time, that the world need not be divided into objects, and that this division in fact obscures crucially important features of the world. a more ancient, though related rejection of the division of the world into objects occurs in the mysticism of the neo-platonist plotinus (c. / – ), who writes ―our way takes us beyond knowing; there may be no wandering from unity; knowing and knowable must all be left aside, every object of thought, even the highest, we must pass by, for all that is good is later than this and derives from this as from the sun all the light of the day‖ [plotinus , vi. . ]. [carnap ]. see, for example [quine ], particularly chapter . incapable of capturing much of what most of us would now happily call ‗logic‘. examined in light of these developments, the history of logic from frege to the present is similar in many respects to the confusion in geometry after the emergence of non-euclidean geometry in the th century which we examined in the first chapter. we have moved from the informal investigation of a single consequence relation, to tinkering with its formal definition, to the realization that there are many (perhaps infinitely many) such relations. instead of a single logic, we now have a huge variety of logics, all describing different consequence relations and with different possible applications. so, just as we have moved from geometry to geometries, we have (with less fanfare, perhaps) moved from logic to logics. given the multiplicity of logics, then, the monolithic claim that logic is always and everywhere applicable must be slightly misleading or at least imprecise. just as physical space might be describable in terms of a variety of quite different geometries, so too we can imagine a particular theory exhibiting many different logical structures, each with different consequence relations and (perhaps too) different assumptions about the nature of objects. given these considerations, then, it seems that the uncritical acceptance of the pan-theoretic applicability of logic obscures the use of particular logical assumptions behind a veil of contentless generality which no seems longer tenable. . . mathematical truth another fairly serious difficulty arising from benacerraf‘s attempt to restrict the meaningfulness of identity statements to specific contents lies in the area of mathematical truth. assuming we have somehow overcome the foregoing difficulties in determining, in a uniform way, which contexts are semantically acceptable and which are not, it will become immediately obvious, given such a context, which identity statements are true, which are false, and which are unsemantical. it will be clearly true, for example, that within the context of zf and the zermelo reduction (assuming these can be made semantically acceptable), the statement ‗ = {Ø, {Ø}}‘ is false. by contrast, if our context is the von neumann account of the natural numbers, then this statement will be true. by changing the context we change the category which determines the content of the identity relation and the truth value of the relevant statements. for benacerraf, there simply is no theory-independent account of the meaning or truth of these sorts of identity statements. as we saw in the second chapter of this thesis, frege‘s emendations of hilbert‘s view were similar in spirit to benacerraf‘s demand for context, though they were intended to avoid precisely the sort of relativization of truth benacerraf seems to suggest here. frege‘s idea was to note that this conception of logic as the elaboration of an intuitive notion of consequence, while common, is not shared by all philosophers. as thomas ricketts makes clear (in both [ricketts ] and [ricketts ]), it is rather difficult to characterize frege in this manner, for instance. (for a contrasting opinion, see [dummett , ], which suggests that a consequence-centered view of logic is implicit even in frege‘s work). the locus classicus for logical pluralism is the work rudolf carnap (cf., [carnap ] for one of the more provocative formulations of this view). more recently there has been renewed interest in the profound philosophical implications of the multiplicity of logics (see, e.g., [beall and restall ] and [beall and restall ]). indeed, some very interesting work has been done on the possibility of different sorts of objects within mathematics and logic. an early example can be found in the works of the austrian philosopher and psychologist alexius meinong ( - ) (e.g., [meinong ]). in more recent years, a number of philosophers of mathematics have entertained the possibility of ontologically ‗strange‘ objects, (e.g., [akiba ] and [balaguer ]). make explicit (what he thought to be) the implicitly conditional nature of hilbert‘s uninterpreted statements. thus, in place of stating that a claim like ‗ = {{Ø}}‘ is true only within or relative to the zermelo reduction of the natural numbers to the universe of zf, we instead say something like: ―if the zermelo reduction is true, and if the zf axioms are true, then = {{Ø}}‖. but, for frege‘s conditionalization approach to work, some rigidly fixed ontological content has to be given to the background theory (in this case zf and the zermelo reduction)—something which benacerraf is keen to avoid. thus, we are again presented with a dilemma. on the one hand we can have fixed reference and a non-relative account of truth. with this choice, however, we also run into the problems associated with absolutely fixed reference (e.g., the caesar problem and its modern cousin the non-uniqueness problem). on the other hand, we can relativize reference to a particular theoretical framework. this leads us again to two formidable problems. first: how are we to understand the relation of scientific truth to the world if that truth is relative to particular frameworks which are not always mutually compatible? second: do these frameworks themselves have any connection to ontology or must they be free-floating in hilbert‘s sense, mere scaffoldings of concepts? if the latter is the case, then we are back at the problems of meaninglessness faced by hilbert in his correspondence with frege. if these frameworks do have ontological implications, however, we need something more than hilbert gave us. . structures for benacerraf, as for hilbert, the attempt to isolate some fixed collection of particular objects which are meant to serve as the natural numbers (or, in hilbert‘s case, the elements of euclidean geometry) is a fool‘s errand based on a serious philosophical misunderstanding of the nature of mathematical structures. this misunderstanding hinges, for benacerraf, on the view that mathematics deals with various collections of objects (numbers, sets, points, groups, etc.) which can be picked out and which bear properties in the same way that objects like tables and chairs do. benacerraf‘s view entails that mathematics isn‘t really about such objects at all, or, slightly more cautiously, that it only deals with isolable objects insofar as they are related to a given structure. the mathematically relevant aspect of an object is not one which can be discussed with indifference to the particular structure of which it is a part. this is a large part of the reason why questions like ‗is pompey magnus identical to the number ?‘ just don‘t make any sense. on this structure-focussed view, the typical set-theoretic reductionist‘s claim that the natural numbers just are sets is a mistaken one. in order to make all of this a bit more precise, benacerraf makes a distinction between the ontological activity of (unrestricted) identification (‗x is y‘) and the ontologically neutral activities of reduction and explication (‗within context c, x can be treated as y‘). if we are to identify the natural numbers with some collection of sets, in the strong ontological sense, we mean quite literally that, when we speak about the natural numbers, we are really referring to recall hilbert‘s view that asking for referentially fixed terms prior to the application or interpretation of an axiomatic theory involves ― one […] looking for something that can never be found because there is nothing there, and everything gets lost, becomes confused and vague, and degenerates into a game of hide-and-seek‖ [hilbert to frege, in frege , - ]. this particular collection of sets. thus, if the set we identify with the number has members, then the number has members, regardless of the context within which we are speaking. but, as the non-uniqueness problem is meant to point out, we have been unable to provide any good reason for choosing one such reduction over another, as all of the distinguishing properties of individual reductions (set-theoretic or otherwise) will be arithmetically irrelevant. and, if the failure of frege‘s best efforts is any indication, we are not likely to stumble on such reasons in the future. the activities of reduction and explication, by contrast, carry no such ontological commitment according to benacerraf. if on a given reduction of the natural numbers to a collection of sets the number has members, we are not committed to the view that every single time we speak about the number we are speaking about this particular -membered object. rather, we are meant to understand that the number is identified with an -membered set on this reduction and might very well be reduced to or explicated by a set possessing completely different non- arithmetic properties on another reduction, or even with an object that isn‘t a set at all on some other reduction. identification, in the strong sense, is, for benacerraf, theory-independent, while reduction and explication are only possible within the context of some particular theory. keeping these distinctions in mind, benacerraf tries to overcome the dangers of hilbert‘s relational view of structures by giving a more robust account of how abstract structures differ from the object-oriented accounts like those of frege and the set-theoretic reductionists. the most obvious difference between benacerraf‘s view and frege‘s is that benacerraf explicitly denies frege‘s central claim that numbers are objects. indeed, the central lesson that benacerraf draws from the non-uniqueness problem is that, contra frege, numbers simply cannot be objects (as the title of the paper is meant to suggest). the advantage he gains is fairly obvious at this point: he no longer has to address the julius caesar problem and others like it. by rejecting the broad claim that numbers are objects, benacerraf can now look at ―the question of whether a particular ‗object‘ […] would do as a replacement for the number ‖ as ―pointless in the extreme‖. in place of the object-oriented picture of (at least) the natural numbers, benacerraf suggests a structure-oriented view. the explanatory burden, then, is shifted. he no longer needs to explain how we pick out which particular objects the natural numbers are, but he must explain what the natural number structure is, and how its elements (the numbers) differ from objects. in frege‘s attempted emendations of hilbert‘s free-floating view, he sought to characterize hilbert‘s uninterpreted formal systems by pinning them down within his ontological hierarchy of objects and functions. for frege, then, the direction of best mathematical explanation was from the concrete world of objects and functions to the world of abstract formal structures built out of these entities. benacerraf‘s central idea is to reverse this order of explanation, and suggest that mathematics is in fact about abstract structures, and that it only secondarily studies their concrete representations (e.g., representations within frege‘s ontological hierarchy, or more familiar representations within the universe of set theory). [benacerraf , ]. frege‘s objection, when hilbert tried to make a similar explanatory shift, was that this seemed to leave mathematics contentless. in order to address this objection, and therefore to move beyond the frege-hilbert impasse, benacerraf needs a more robust account of the relationship between ontology and the abstract structures which he supposes are the subject matter of mathematics. . . concrete vs. abstract structures so, what exactly does benacerraf mean when he speaks of structures? given the tentative character of the paper‘s final few pages, it is perhaps not surprising that benacerraf does not give us a thoroughgoing definition of the term ‗structure‘. nevertheless, we can surmise that, for benacerraf, at the very least a structure is composed of elements arranged under a certain relation (or relations). so far as this goes, this account of structure is compatible with frege‘s views or those of the set- theoretic reductionist. on frege‘s account, both the elements of and the relations which define a structure are entities with a fixed position in his ontological hierarchy, similarly for the set- theorist and the universe of set theory, where everything (relations included) is a set. but benacerraf wants to make a sharp distinction between concrete structures and abstract structures which will allow more careful differentiation between the ‗structuralism‘ which he wishes to espouse and the referentially-fixed reductionism of frege and the set theorists. let‘s look first at what this distinction says about the elements of each sort of structure. a concrete structure‘s elements will be entities which possess properties or stand in relations which are not solely determined simply by their being elements of that structure. for benacerraf, that a system of objects exhibits the structure of the integers implies that the elements of that system have some properties not dependent on structure. it must be possible to individuate those objects independently of the role they play in that structure. cf. [benacerraf , - ], where he speaks repeatedly of the elements of the natural number structure, and also of structures as systems of relations. some later structuralists, e.g., stewart shapiro, countenance structures which are composed of elements but no relations (cf., [shapiro , ] and [shapiro ] which discuss cardinal structures which have elements but no relations). even further, shapiro considers the degenerate case of the ― pattern‖ which has neither elements nor relations [shapiro , ]. benacerraf seems to assume in this paper that the elements of a concrete structure will be objects, though it is not exactly clear what he means by ‗object‘ or even, as noted above, whether he thinks the term is a meaningful one at all outside of a well-defined theoretical context. [benacerraf , ; emphasis mine]. here benacerraf seems to tacitly view objects as independently existing entities. it should be noted here that a number of subsequent authors have suggested that there may indeed be objects (not merely ‗elements‘ or ‗roles‘) whose strange nature allows them to be elements of abstract structures in benacerraf‘s sense. see, for instance, [akiba ], which defends the position ―that mathematical objects, along with some others, neither definitely possess nor definitely lack certain properties‖ [akiba , ]; [mclarty ] suggests that ―the structuralist program [of benacerraf] is already fulfilled or obviated, depending on how you look at it, by categorical set theory […]. sets and functions in this theory have only structural properties. there is no need and no further place for a further theory of abstract structures‖ [mclarty , ]. depending upon how we read the situation, these objections may amount to quibbles regarding the meaning of the term ‗object‘ as benacerraf uses it. thus, for instance, even if julius caesar is to be an element of the natural number structure (i.e., if he is arranged with other elements under an appropriate relation of recursion) he will have many properties which are not determined simply by his being an element of this structure. simply being an element of such a structure will not tell us anything about the content of his commentarii de bello gallico or which sort of olive he may have preferred, for instance. these latter properties are structure-independent (in relation to the natural number structure, at least). but, if we are to hold that he is an element of the natural number structure, then he will also have structure-dependent properties, like being prime or being the square root of and so on. so, the elements of concrete structures will have both structure-dependent and structure-independent properties. it is specifically the possibility of extra-structural individuation (of the kind which might have solved the caesar problem) and the possession of structure-independent properties which characterize concrete structures. the structure-independence of their elements is also the feature which, according to benacerraf, disqualifies them as the main focus of mathematical interest. for benacerraf, the chief reason why mathematicians and philosophers have gotten into muddles like the caesar problem or the non-uniqueness problem is because they mistake concrete structures for abstract ones, and they ignore the fact that what they are actually most interested in is abstract structures. the trouble is in understanding exactly what these abstract structures are—or, more pointedly, in distinguishing abstract structures from empty formal games. benacerraf‘s abstract structures, like their concrete cousins, are composed of elements arranged under a relation (or relations). in contrast to concrete structures, however, the elements of abstract structures do not possess any structure-independent properties. given what appears to be benacerraf‘s tacitly fregean notion of object, this means that the elements of abstract structures cannot be objects at all. what, then, are they? there are at least two ways to read this question. on the first, it asks us: what sorts of entities (other than objects) are abstract structures composed of? on benacerraf‘s view, reading the question this way would simply be to recapitulate the object-oriented misunderstanding of mathematics. his point is that looking for the building blocks of structures, those isolable individuals which we might put together and eventually obtain a structure, is only ever going to get us concrete structures. there is, however, another way of reading this question which might help to shed some light on benacerraf‘s view. instead of asking ‗out of which sorts of things are structures composed‘ we can ask ‗what is the relationship between an abstract structure and its elements‘? and to this question we might give a very different answer. here is how benacerraf puts it: so what matters, really, is not any condition on the objects […] but rather a condition on the relation under which they form a progression. to put the point differently—and this is as we will see in what follows, for benacerraf an object like julius caesar cannot be a member of the natural number structure (which is, for benacerraf, an abstract structure) but only of a concrete structure which represents the natural number structure. the crux of the matter—that any recursive sequence would do suggests that what is important is not the individuality of each element but the structure which they jointly exhibit. this is an extremely striking feature. one would be led to expect from this fact alone that the question of whether a particular ―object‖ […] would do as a replacement for the number would be pointless in the extreme, as indeed it is. ―objects‖ do not do the job of numbers singly; the whole system performs the job or nothing does. i therefore argue, extending the argument that led to the conclusion that numbers could not be sets, that numbers could not be objects at all; for there is no more reason to identify any individual number with any one particular object than with any other (not already known to be a member). the relationship between the elements (which, again, are not objects for benacerraf) of an abstract structure cannot be made sense of on a case by case basis. an entity is an element of a particular structure not because it possesses unique properties which are ideally suited to playing a peculiar role. no—benacerraf‘s point is that while ―any object can play the role of ‖ no object is the role of . and it is the role played by which is the element of the abstract structure, or, perhaps, the third place in the abstract natural number structure. certainly this role can be represented by a particular object, or this place occupied by a particular object—indeed, any particular object, according to benacerraf. but such representation can only occur within a concrete structure, i.e., a structure whose elements will have structure-independent properties like those of the set-theoretic representation of the natural numbers. so, for benacerraf, the number is not an object with a kind of structure-independent reality (as frege suggested), out of which a structure is built, but is instead a role which can only be defined relative to the abstract structure of which it is an element. he writes that ―what is peculiar to is that it defines that role – not by being a paradigm of any object which plays it, but by representing the relation that any third member of a progression bears to the rest of the progression.‖ on this view, the elements of a structure are not prior to the structure. what is essential is the abstract structure itself, and this is defined by a particular relation or relations on elements. the relations which these elements stand in, and the properties which they might possess, are only those determined by the simple fact of their being elements of the structure. thus, their nature is structure-dependent, or as stewart shapiro puts it, ―the essence of a natural number is its relations to other natural numbers.‖ this view, suggestive as it is, poses a number of difficult questions related to our central aim of clarifying what mathematics is about. if mathematics is chiefly concerned with these abstract structures, we‘ll want to know how (and perhaps which) relations define or otherwise relate to [benacerraf , ]. [benacerraf , ]. [benacerraf , ]. [shapiro , ]. benacerraf himself is fairly limited in the scope of his claims in [benacerraf ], sticking for the most part to a description of the arithmetic of the natural numbers. as we will see in the following section, it is later thinkers who sought to extend benacerraf‘s ‗structuralist‘ suggestions about the natural numbers to the wider world of mathematics as a whole. nevertheless, it does seem clear that, even for benacerraf in , his limited suggestions abstract structures. we‘ll also want to know what ontological status—if any—such structures are meant to possess. in our pursuit of these questions, it is best to depart from the specificities of benacerraf‘s account and begin an examination of more recent structuralist literature in the philosophy of mathematics. as benacerraf himself notes, the positive conclusions of his paper are exploratory in character. he does not pretend to develop a fully fleshed-out account of the nature of abstract structures, but, instead, draws our attention away from the fool‘s errand of naïve set-theoretic reductionism toward the structural meat of mathematics. § . contemporary structuralism . from sets to structures historically, benacerraf‘s paper was part of the impetus for a substantial reorientation in the philosophy of mathematics. as i‘ve mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the philosophy of mathematics in the decades preceding benacerraf‘s paper was dominated (with few exceptions) by the problems of set-theoretic reductionism. while set theory still figures prominently in the philosophy of mathematics even today, benacerraf‘s paper helped to popularize a structuralist approach to all forms of reductionism, even set-theoretic ones. by the mid- s, to be sure, the philosophy of mathematics was dominated with questions concerning the viability of structuralism as a solution to some of the important foundational questions in mathematics. this philosophical movement toward structuralism was preceded by an increased focus on structure within mathematics itself. this focus is evident already in the work of hilbert and others around the turn of the nineteenth century, but became increasingly more explicit and well- defined in the work of the group of french mathematicians calling themselves nicholas bourbaki and in the (related) rise of abstract algebra from the s onward. bourbaki wrote and published an incredibly influential series of texts called the Éléments de mathematique. the series involved the hierarchical and rigorous axiomatic development of mathematics from the ground up, ostensibly under the notion of structure. while bourbaki‘s technical definition of the term ‗structure‘ was not terribly influential, their axiomatic-structural approach was immensely so. as usual, much of the philosophy of mathematics had lagged behind the actual development of mathematics for a few decades by the time benacerraf‘s paper appeared. but, as is also often the case, very few mathematicians had a deep enough interest in the philosophical aspects of their discipline to develop a thorough-going account of these new structural developments and the nature of contemporary mathematics. implicitly contain much broader implications—for very little in the paper hinges on the peculiarities of the natural numbers or their set-theoretic representations. [corry b] is the finest available historical account of these developments; [wussing ] is an illuminating account of the ‗pre-history‘ of modern abstract algebra as found in the development of group theory; [dieudonné ] presents an insider‘s look at the somewhat more specific field of algebraic geometry. their technical definition is first advanced in [bourbaki ]. its lack of popularity is evident in the fact that it is rarely employed, neither by the members of bourbaki nor those they influenced. in a survey of the notion of structure in mathematics, mac lane writes that ―as best i can determine [bourbaki] never really made actual use of his definition, and i will not make any use here of my variant‖ [mac lane , ]. this is not to say that mathematicians involved in these developments were disinterested in the philosophy of mathematics, only that there were (and continue to be) very few mathematicians whose interest extends beyond the publication of one or two brief papers on the subject; mac lane is a notable exception (cf. [mac lane ]). . benacerraf‘s legacy in the paper, benacerraf confines himself for the most part to a discussion of the arithmetic of the natural numbers. since this paper, a more general position in the philosophy of mathematics called ‗structuralism‘ has emerged which extends these claims to include a much larger portion of mathematics. as benacerraf himself puts it in a later paper, ―the structuralist‘s cri de guerre‖ is ―that mathematics is the study of (abstract) structures‖. my aim here is not to give a complete account of contemporary forms of structuralism which follow in the wake of benacerraf‘s work, but to see whether they are capable of addressing the problems present in benacerraf‘s account. as we saw, benacerraf attempted to develop structuralism as a means of addressing both the julius caesar problem and its more contemporary manifestation, the non-uniqueness problem. his way of doing so involved denying frege‘s claim that all identity statements must be meaningful. in effect, he sought to restrict meaningful identity claims to well-defined contexts. one way of reading his view is that, in mathematics at least, abstract structures serve to furnish these well-defined contexts. thus, when we speak of identity, we speak of identity between the entities of a given structure, say the natural number structure. the benefit of this view is that we can eliminate the julius caesar problem by suggesting that, without further contextualization, there is no obvious structure which contains both caesar and the natural number , so the question ‗is caesar identical to the number ?‘ is rendered meaningless. when such a context is provided (say in a structure where components of the physical universe are employed as representatives of the elements of the natural number structure) the statement gains a truth-value. but there are clear difficulties with his attempt. first, benacerraf has what appear to be inconsistent views of the role that objects play (or do not play) in this whole story. he famously denies that the natural numbers are objects – and, by extension, that the elements of any abstract mathematical structure are objects. he does so, it seems, because he takes ‗object‘ to mean ‗theory- or structure-independent entity‘, which is exactly what the natural numbers are not on his account. but he also maintains, in the same paper, that we can speak of theory-dependent objects and that the notion of ‗object‘ is too general to have any content whatsoever. intermingled with these concerns are questions about the exact nature of the elements of abstract structures. as quite a bit seems to rely on how we understand his claims about objects and elements, these equivocations need to be addressed. second, benacerraf does not give us a thorough-going account of the exact nature of the abstract structures which he believes are the subject matter of mathematics. this is not terribly surprising, as his paper is intended to be (for the most part) diagnostic in character. if we are to accept his claim that arithmetic and mathematics concern these abstract structures, though, we need to develop a more precise understanding of these entities. particularly pressing, from our point of view, are questions pertaining to the ontological status of such structures: do they exist or not? if they exist, are they to be understood as permanent, independent features of reality, or are they, [benacerraf a, ]. like their elements, dependent upon a particular context or theory for their existence? if they do not exist, does this leave us to treat mathematics as a contentless enterprise? third, a great deal in benacerraf‘s account seems to hinge on the status of logic within mathematics. recall that a chief aim of his paper is to undermine the hold that set-theoretic reductionism has on the philosophy of mathematics. he does this by showing that what we are really interested in is not the ontological universe of set theory, but instead the abstract structures, most or all of which can be modelled or exemplified in this universe. his paper is meant to show that our representations of these structures within a single ontological universe are of secondary concern. but he also claims that logic (singular) is pan-theoretically applicable, and that it will operate the same in relation to any given abstract structure we might wish to study. the question we have to ask, especially given the almost universal understanding of logic in terms of the background ontology of model and set theory, is whether or not this ends up being circular. does benacerraf‘s view of the universality of logic commit him to the background ontology of set theory that the paper seeks to avoid? in order to further address these concerns let‘s turn to an examination of some more contemporary forms of structuralism. . two types of structuralism there are quite a number of distinct philosophical positions which can be placed under the heading ‗mathematical structuralism‘. indeed, there are even a number of quite distinct typologies of such views. in what follows, i would like to provide a very general typology of my own, one which contains precisely two forms of structuralism. these i will call (loosely following a similar division made by shapiro and hellman) ‗assertoric structuralism‘ and ‗algebraic structuralism‘. very schematically, assertoric forms of structuralism hold that mathematics contains assertions about a particular content. usually, but not always, this content is fleshed out in terms of some theory of abstract structures. algebraic structuralism, by contrast, contends that mathematics does not have a single well-defined content, and that, to the extent that it contains assertions at all, these are always relative to a particular theory, framework, language, or structure. in the first, assertoric, case we might speak of a global content for mathematics, while in the latter, algebraic, case if mathematics is said to have content at all, it is only in a local sense. my intention is to investigate whether either of these forms of structuralism is capable of satisfactorily addressing the problems with benacerraf‘s view and, thus, helping us to explain what it is that mathematics is about. [hellman ] presents a typology containing four versions of structuralism (the model- or set-theoretic account, the category-theoretic account, the sui generis account, and his own modal account). five years later, in [hellman ], the typology is reduced to three versions (set-theoretic, ante rem, modal). there are others besides (e.g., [dummett , chapter ], [horstein ]). cf., [shapiro ]. for shapiro, the division concerns the status of sentences within a given account – an account is assertory if its sentences ―are meant to express propositions with fixed truth values. algebraic sentences are schematic, applying to any system of objects that meets certain conditions‖ [shapiro , ]. while shapiro‘s division is my inspiration here, my own may diverge from his in what follows. both of these forms of structuralism insist that mathematics is chiefly concerned with the study of abstract structures. they differ, however, in their understanding of the ontological status of these structures. for the assertoric structuralist, there is (or ought to be) what we might call a ‗final theory‘ of structures, one in which the intricate network of relationships between structures (e.g., the sort of hierarchy of algebraic structures we find in bourbaki‘s Éléments) is ultimately cashed out in terms of a theory which makes assertions about the world directly. the difference between this form of structuralism and the more straightforward, naïve version of set-theoretic reductionism, is that the assertoric structuralist is always concerned with abstract structures, in benacerraf‘s sense, whereas the set-theoretic reductionist (or frege) thinks in terms of a single concrete structure (the set-theoretic universe v, frege‘s ontological hierarchy, etc.). the category ‗assertoric structuralism‘ is a very broad one, and it includes the work of structuralists who are, in many other respects, opposed. thus, the (putatively) nominalist structuralism of geoffrey hellman and the realist structuralism of stewart shapiro both count as forms of assertoric structuralism. they differ markedly in what exactly they assert, of course. for shapiro, structures are ante rem universals—about as far as one can get from nominalism. for hellman, structures are ‗eliminated‘ ―in favor of sentences with modal operators‖. these in turn are cashed out in terms of ―a modal second-order logic with a restricted (extensional) comprehension scheme,‖ with the end result being that hellman makes assertions about possibilities, rather than actual universals. aside from shapiro and hellman, there are a number of assertoric forms of structuralism which employ unique background ontologies to account for abstract structures for different reasons. what ties them together is that they claim that mathematics is best understood as making assertions whose truth value is ‗absolute‘ in the sense that there is a final theory of structures (or whatever) within which the relative truths of specific mathematical theories are embedded. algebraic structuralism is so named because of its connections (conceptual and historical) to abstract algebra. a key component of abstract algebra involves detailed work on relations between various well-defined algebraic structures (e.g., rings, groups, monoids, etc.). prior to the development of category theory in the s and s, these algebraic structures were ultimately cashed out in the background ontology of set-theory (usually zf). but, in many ways, algebraists found—and still find—this connection to set theory and its ontology an encumbrance. algebra has, historically, been concerned with operations at least as much as it has been concerned with particular objects (in most cases, much more so). to try to ‗pin down‘ algebraic work in the purely object-based ontology of set theory is, in many ways, foreign to the operation- focussed character of abstract algebra. if, for example, your interest is in discussing certain homomorphisms between two rings, doing everything in set theory is both time-consuming and, for the most part, beside the point. in set theory, both morphisms and structures (as well as the elements of structures) will be understood in terms of sets. but, as many algebraists will note, cf., e.g., [hellman ], [hellman ], and [hellman ]. cf., e.g., [shapiro ] and [shapiro ]. [hellman , ]. [hellman , ]. one influential such view is that of michael resnik, who has developed an account of structures based on the notion of patterns (cf. [resnik ], [resnik ], and [resnik ]). or, possibly, urelements. morphisms behave nothing like sets—so why understand them in these terms in the first place? since its inception, category theory has been treated by many algebraists as a more ‗natural‘ mathematical language (or setting) for speaking about these structural interrelations. this is perhaps not surprising, given that the earliest incarnations of category theory, in collaborations between saunders mac lane and samuel eilenberg, involved research into the surprising and profound morphisms between algebraic and topological structures, which were, at that time, pursued more or less independently. the impetus of category theory, then, was to make work on morphisms between structures easier, more flexible. to this end, category theory—which can be modelled in the universe of sets, but which need not be —begins with a class of structures (i.e., categories) which are defined in terms of morphisms and objects. the emergence of category theory in the s and s thus pointed to a new direction for abstract algebra, where the idea of set theory having the last word no longer seemed necessary or even plausible. as john bell eloquently puts it, because the practice of mathematics has, for the past century, been officially founded on set theory, the objects of a category […] are normally constructed as sets of a certain kind, synthesized, as it were, from pure discreteness. as sets, these objects manifest set-theoretic relationships—memberships, inclusions, etc. however, these relationships are irrelevant— and in many cases are actually undetectable—when the objects are considered as embodiments of a form, i.e., viewed through the lens of category theory. […] this fact constitutes one of the ‗philosophical‘ reasons why certain category theorists have felt set theory to be an unsatisfactory basis on which to build category theory—and mathematics generally. for categorists, set theory provides a kind of ladder leading from pure discreteness to the category-theoretic depiction of the real mathematical landscape. categorists are no different from artists in finding the landscape (or its depiction, at least) more interesting than the ladder, which should, following wittgenstein‘s advice, be jettisoned after ascent. this is not to say that algebraists abandoned set theory, nor that category theory itself has not often been treated as a new ‗last word‘ in cashing out claims about relations between structures. but, for at least some algebraists, and some philosophers of mathematics as well, the emergence of category theory as a means of describing morphisms between structures has illustrated not only that set theory is not the privileged resting place of all structures, but also that we do not need such a privileged resting place and that, anyway, there can be none. this is the central claim of algebraic forms of structuralism: mathematical assertions can only be made relative to a particular background, and there can be only local reasons (reasons pertaining to one‘s particular problem, to a particular class of morphisms, etc.) for preferring one background or framework to another. thus, for example, one might study the natural number structure in relation to the background ontology of set theory or category theory, or with indifference to both. the dream of cf., [mac lane and alexanderson , ] for a discussion of mac lane‘s initial collaboration with eilenberg. cf., e.g., [mac lane ], though here mac lane is keen to point out that categories need not rely on set theory. cf., e.g., [lawvere ], . [bell , ]. [awodey ] contains one of the most convincing defenses of this position. a single universe within which all mathematical claims operate is, to the algebraic structuralist, just that: a dream. it is neither followed in practice (especially not in most algebraic practice), nor does it make sense philosophically (as benacerraf‘s non-uniqueness problem can be said to show, at least partially). to make the move of the assertoric structuralist is, for the algebraic structuralist, to slip back into the game of hide-and-seek that hilbert already saw to be impossible at the turn of the nineteenth century. in contrast to assertoric structuralism, the algebraic form of structuralism holds that there is not (and, often, there could not possibly be) any final background theory which rules over all of mathematics. for the algebraic structuralist, claims about relations between structures are themselves best thought of as embedded within a particular structure, or point of view. for different purposes, we might switch between a background theory of set theory or category theory or something else besides. the assertoric structuralist might suggest that switching between these theories implies that there is some sort of equivalence between the two, and, thus, that there is some broader, final abstract structure which encompasses both. the algebraic structuralist will hold that there may be such a structure, but that it, too, is subject to revision as a momentary background ontology, and not at all a final arbiter of what is. though there are important differences, i hope the reader is struck by the similarity between the assertoric/algebraic divide and the debate between frege and hilbert. frege, like the assertoric structuralist, sought to secure a determinate content for all of mathematics. in contrast to the assertoric structuralist, however, frege‘s work endeavoured to embed mathematics within a single concrete structure. similarly, the algebraic structuralist‘s unwillingness to pin mathematical claims down within a single ontological frame is strikingly similar to hilbert‘s free-floating view. neither the algebraic structuralist nor hilbert believed that mathematical claims required extra-theoretical or extra-structural grounding. the question we must ask ourselves now is whether the divide between assertoric and algebraic structuralists holds more promise than the impasse of the frege-hilbert debate. . assertoric structuralism let‘s begin our investigation of contemporary structuralism by examining the capacity of assertoric structuralism to address the problems left by benacerraf‘s account. in this section i‘ve chosen to focus chiefly on the work of stewart shapiro. though the choice is partially arbitrary, there are a few motivating factors. first and foremost is the fact that shapiro often frames his structuralism in direct response to benacerraf, frege, and hilbert. this makes the task of situating his work in relation to our driving concerns much easier. shapiro‘s work is also more directly and frequently engaged in the ontological aspects of structuralism with which i am chiefly interested here. shapiro himself also provides a compelling argument which suggests that some of the key forms of assertoric structuralism are intertranslatable. so while the choice this is not to suggest that other structuralists are not interested in ontological questions, only that shapiro‘s ontological focus is more often front-and-center. michael resnik‘s work on a pattern-theoretic account of structures strikes me as focussed on epistemological concerns to the same degree that shapiro focuses on ontological ones. cf., [shapiro , - ]. there he writes that ―anything that can be rendered in the modal structural system […] can be rendered in either the set language or [shapiro‘s own] structure language‖ [shapiro , ] and, further, that ―when all is said and done, the different accounts are equivalent‖ [shapiro , ]. the modal structural system he refers to here is hellman‘s, as developed in [hellman ] and [hellman ]. is at least partially idiosyncratic, there are (i think) plausible reasons for engaging chiefly with shapiro‘s form of structuralism. . . shapiro on the nature of mathematical objects for benacerraf, the elements of at least abstract structures (the chief focus of mathematics) cannot be objects. as we saw, his reasons for holding this belief are rather puzzling. on the one hand, he suggests that there is no real content to be given to any theory-independent notion of object, and, on the other hand, he presumes precisely that to be an object is to possess properties and stand in relations independently of any given theory, language, or structure. in any case, his view leads him to claim that whatever numbers might be, they simply cannot be objects (at least in the sense of entities possessing properties or standing in relations independent of theory or structure). as a result, the unrestricted form of identity which frege employed, one which ranges over all objects, must be replaced. thus, benacerraf‘s strange account of objects is at least partially intertwined with his rejection of unrestricted identity. shapiro finds this view as puzzling as we have. he writes that in mathematics, at least, the notions of ‗object‘ and ‗identity‘ are unequivocal but thoroughly relative. objects are tied to the structures that contain them. it is thus strange that benacerraf should eventually conclude that natural numbers are not objects. arithmetic is surely a coherent theory, ‗natural number‘ is surely a legitimate category, and numbers are its objects. here i think we have a slightly more careful statement of what benacerraf himself was trying to get at in his paper. the strangeness of benacerraf‘s claim stems from the fact that there are two competing conceptions of ‗object‘ at work in his paper. the first is frege‘s: objects— mathematical or otherwise—are self-standing, independently existing entities. they exist prior to and irrespective of the relations they might stand in. this notion, both benacerraf and shapiro suggest, is not at all helpful when discussing the elements of abstract mathematical structures. to construe the elements of structures in terms of frege-style objects is to become ensnared once again by the caesar and non-uniqueness problems which structuralism seeks to avoid in the first place. but, in contrast with benacerraf, shapiro is not ready to abandon mathematical objects tout court. there is a second notion of object at work here, one which is dimly present in benacerraf‘s paper, but which gets lost or muddled in his later equivocations. this notion gets rid of the theory-independence and self-standing character of the fregean object and, instead, suggests that mathematical objects, at least, are essentially related to the structures of which they are components. or, more simply put, shapiro writes that ―mathematical objects are tied to the structures that constitute them‖. this can seem somewhat arcane if we limit ourselves to mathematics, but shapiro marshals several down-to-earth examples to help explicate the position. most of us are, presumably, quite happy saying that the game of chess exists, in some [shapiro , ]. [shapiro , ]. sense. now, whatever metaphysical spin we want to give to this claim, it seems reasonable to admit that, if the game of chess did not exist, then the white queen‘s bishop could not exist either. equally, most of us would probably agree that it doesn’t make any sense to say that the white queen‘s bishop exists unless we already accept that the game of chess exists. none of this, according to shapiro, ought to convince us that the white queen‘s bishop is not an object. for him, it is indeed an object, but one whose existence depends upon the existence of a structure we call ‗the game of chess‘. so, in contrast to benacerraf, shapiro is quite happy to hold that the elements of even abstract structures can be understood as objects—only they are objects whose existence is dependent upon the structures which they constitute. but how exactly are objects related to the structures of which they are the elements? what does shapiro mean when he uses the term ‗constitute‘? shapiro‘s own position on this question has been refined in the last two decades. in his best-known work—his book philosophy of mathematics: structure and ontology—shapiro gives some of the metaphysics behind his use of the language of constitution to describe the relationship between mathematical objects and abstract structures. there he writes that each mathematical object is a place in a particular structure. there is thus a certain priority in the status of mathematical objects. the structure is prior to the mathematical objects it contains, just as any organization is prior to the offices that constitute it. the natural- number structure is prior to the offices that constitute it [i.e., the natural numbers]. here we see the core of his view. mathematical objects are places in structures, and they depend for their existence on the prior existence of the structure. it is in this sense that they ‗constitute‘ the structure, while also being dependent upon it for their existence. the chess analogy is again helpful: while the chess-independent existence of the white queen‘s bishop makes no sense, similarly, the game of chess is constituted in part by the place of the white queen‘s bishop. without this place, we have a significantly different structure (or, perhaps, no structure at all). here we are reminded of frege‘s criticisms of hilbert‘s independence and consistency proofs. for hilbert, these proofs involved the provision of models of the ‗same‘ content. for frege, such proofs involved the equivocation between distinct contents. here we see that this feature of frege‘s critique has an analogue in shapiro‘s system. structures are constituted by their places and relations. if we change either of these, we do not alter the structure but begin speaking about a different structure. this seems to contradict the everyday intuition that we can still speak of the game of chess or baseball despite the significant alterations in their rules over time. to what extent this intuition can be recaptured by shapiro via descriptions of interrelations among distinct structures is an open question. in a paper from , shapiro refines his understanding of the relation of constitution which holds between structures and their objects. he writes: places are components of universals. each ante rem structure consists of some places and some relations. if this makes metaphysical sense […] then the dependence relation in the [shapiro , ]. slogans for ante rem structuralism is that of constitution. a structure is constituted by its places and its relations, in the same way that any organization is constituted by its offices and the relations between them. the constitution is not that of mereology. it is not the case that a structure is just the sum of its places, since in general the places have to be related to each other via the relations of the structure. i think of an ante rem structure as a whole consisting of, or constituted by, its places and its relations. and, further, that the metaphysical view is that a structure is constituted by its places and its relations. neither the places nor the relations are prior to the other. again the slogan that the objects depend on the structure can be understood in that spirit. the dependence is constitution. here we get a fuller sense of the view. a structure as a whole is constituted by both relations and places. the relations are not metaphysically prior to the places, nor are the places metaphysically prior to the relations (in fact we can‘t really understand either in isolation: what is the white queen‘s bishop without its allowable moves, what are the moves without the object?). it is only both together which constitute a complete structure, and, according to the last-quoted sentence, both are dependent for their existence on the structure which they constitute. so, abstract and not just concrete structures contain objects as their elements. we must now ask: for shapiro, what is the relationship between the objects of an abstract structure a and the objects of a system b which exemplifies a? this is a fairly difficult question and requires an examination of some of shapiro‘s terminology. . . places, positions, offices, and objects in the above quotations, we‘ve seen shapiro refer to the elements of abstract structures by a number of terms: ‗places,‘ ‗offices,‘ and ‗objects‘. elsewhere he also uses the term ‗position‘. for shapiro, all these terms are, in a sense, inter-translatable. nevertheless, there are some subtleties which will help us understand the relationship between the objects of abstract and concrete structures. shapiro uses ‗place‘ and ‗position‘ as catchall terms which refer in general to components of abstract structures which are not themselves relations. he does not give precise definitions of these terms but, instead, provides elucidations through a wide variety of mathematical and non-mathematical examples. much as frege employs the primitive notion ‗object‘ shapiro suggests that ―‗places‘ are indeed simple, or atomic, in the sense that they do not themselves have places or other components. ‗place‘ is a primitive of structure theory.‖ we‘ve already established that, for shapiro, places are objects. there are a few other characteristics of places which are important. first, we must understand places both as objects (in [shapiro , ] [shapiro , ]. though, again, note that [shapiro ] countenances degenerate cases of structures which contain no relations (his ‗cardinal structures‘) or no elements (his ‗ pattern‘). [shapiro , ]. the above sense) and as ‗offices‘. what does it mean for a place to be understood as an office? shapiro writes: the structures studied in mathematics are what i call free-standing. anything at all can occupy their places. so perhaps it is not amiss to think of a place in an ante rem structure as itself a universal, albeit a rather trivial one. each place of each structure can be instantiated by anything at all, in a system that exemplifies the structure. perhaps a place in a structure is just the universal ‗thing‘ or ‗object‘ or ‗particular‘. the language here deliberately echoes that of hilbert: shapiro begins by highlighting the fact that abstract structures are like mobile bits of scaffolding which can be laid over other parts of reality via exemplification, modelling, or instantiation. here, too, shapiro suggests, without using the term, exactly what it means for a place to be an office. if we are discussing the abstract natural number structure directly, then we can treat the number ‗ ‘ as a structure-dependent object. this is the places-as-objects perspective, and it is the one that shapiro believes is employed most often in pure mathematics. but the chief characteristic of abstract, versus concrete structures, is that their places possess no extra-structural properties, which allows these abstract structures, in turn, to be instantiated in or exemplified by other structures—hilbert‘s ‗scaffolding of concepts‘. when we note, for example, that caesar, my right index finger, the set {{Ø}}, or any other object at all can represent the number within a suitably defined concrete structure, we are treating the places of the abstract natural number structure as offices. that is to say, we recognize that the very character of the object we call ‗the number ‘ involves the capacity to be represented or exemplified by any object whatsoever. this is fairly straightforward if we think of offices in the more familiar sense: the office of the registrar is a position with determinate relations to other positions within the university‘s administrative structure – in this sense it is a structure-dependent object. but it is of the essence of any bureaucratic office that it can be occupied or exemplified or represented by different people at different times. the chief insight of shapiro‘s position here is that places are always both offices and objects, though different perspectives may highlight one or the other aspect of their nature. from the [shapiro , ]. in reading this passage, recall from above shapiro‘s statement that ―in mathematics, at least, the notions of ‗object‘ and ‗identity‘ are unequivocal but thoroughly relative‖ [shapiro , ]. [shapiro ] speaks of places in structures as being capable of exemplification or representation by any object whatsoever (as long as the object is arranged in a suitable concrete structure, i.e., a system). it seems to me that shapiro‘s remark here that we might treat places simply as the universal ‗object‘ implies a notion of object which is not in fact relative, but which encompasses all objects from whatever system we like. despite the hilbert-style approach to structures, this notion of places that accept any objects as occupants is strikingly reminiscent of frege‘s understanding of first-level functions. as we will see in what follows, this similarity perhaps runs deeper than is obvious here. of course the office of registrar, unlike the office of the natural number , cannot be occupied by any object whatsoever. an air conditioner, for instance, cannot fulfill the duties of registrar, though it might very well act as a perfectly adequate number . shapiro also attempts (at [shapiro , - ]) to distinguish between abstract and concrete structures on the basis of the sort of relations they contain. he does so using a version of alfred tarski‘s (cf., [tarski ]) interesting distinction between the logical and the nonlogical. for shapiro, the reason why an air conditioner or ‗any old object‘ is incapable of acting as a registrar is that there are implicit non-logical (or non- formal) constraints on the allowable relations (e.g., the registrar must be a sentient, physical being). perspective of a mathematician studying an abstract structure directly, the places of the structure appear to be (and are, according to shapiro) bona fide objects. from the perspective of someone modelling an abstract structure, or applying it, the elements of the structure are best understood as offices, which can be occupied by any object whatsoever. the key thing to keep in mind is that the relationship of occupation or exemplification here is not the same as identity, even though a place might be said to exemplify itself. when i occupy or exemplify the number , i do so relative to a particular concrete structure. the difference between myself as an occupant of the -place in this structure and the number of the abstract natural number structure is that i still possess extra-structural properties even when i exemplify the number . to be sure, we ignore these properties when i occupy the position, but, in the case of the actual number , the - place of the abstract natural number structure, there are simply no properties to ignore. . . cross-structural identity part of benacerraf‘s reason for rejecting the view that numbers can be objects is that he found claims which sought to identify wildly different types of objects to be ‗unsemantical‘. thus he claimed that if we want to identify a particular number with a particular set, we must first provide a well-defined context within which to do so. the general (i.e., non-relative) notion of ‗object‘ does not provide such a context, so we cannot discuss identity relations between entities on this basis alone. if we read benacerraf as a progenitor of structuralism, we can understand well-defined structures as a means of providing the relevant context for identifying (structure- dependent) objects with one another. on this view, then, benacerraf‘s rejection of caesar-type questions as unsemantical amounts to the claim that we cannot make cross-structural identity claims like those apparently made between the natural number structure and the set-theoretic structure unless the objects of these structures are (perhaps tacitly) understood to be elements of a single structure, a single well-defined context. but of course the traditional way of providing this single structure has been to reduce one structure (the natural number structure) to another (the set-theoretic hierarchy). it seems that shapiro follows benacerraf in much of this. he writes, for instance that ―a philosophy of mathematics should show why these questions [i.e., ‗does julius caesar = ?‘] need no answers, even if the questions are intelligible‖ and that ―identity between natural numbers is determinate; identity between numbers and other sorts of objects is not, and neither is identity between numbers and the positions of other structures‖. and, as we‘ve already seen, he holds that ―in mathematics, at least, the notions of ‗object‘ and ‗identity‘ are unequivocal but thoroughly relative‖. given these views, one would expect that shapiro would follow benacerraf‘s conclusion as well, namely that we cannot make cross-structural identity claims. for, without a determinate context ―when we switch back to the places-are-objects perspective—and construe the places of a given structure as objects—we see that each structure exemplifies itself. that is, the relations of the structure hold of its places—when the latter are construed as objects‖ [shapiro , ]. [shapiro , ]. [shapiro , ]. [shapiro , ]. (i.e., a well-defined structure), it does not make any sense to speak of objects or an identity relation in the first place. but he does not follow benacerraf‘s conclusion. instead, he writes: i do not wish to go as far as benacerraf in holding that identifying positions in different structures (or positions in a structure with other objects) is always meaningless. on the contrary, mathematicians sometimes find it convenient, and even compelling, to identify the positions of different structures. […] for [example], it is surely wise to identify the positions in the natural-number structure with their counterparts in the integer-, rational-, real-, and complex-number structures. […] the point here is that cross-identifications like these are matters of decision, based on convenience, not matters of discovery. so, shapiro wants to allow that we can make meaningful claims about identity between objects in distinct structures but that this is, in some sense, a product of a decision. i‘m not entirely sure what he can mean here, and what the contrast with benacerraf‘s position is. perhaps the ‗decision‘ is to combine our distinct theory-bound notions of identity and object into another, by defining (at least tacitly) a more inclusive structure. for, if the claim of identity is to be a meaningful one, then it will have to be unequivocal and relative to a particular structure (on shapiro‘s view). whether or not we decide this to be the case seems to be beside the point, for irrespective of the question of decision or discovery, the identity claim will require relativization to a particular structure. note, too, that shapiro is committed to the independent existence of structures (i.e., to their existence regardless of our decisions about them). without further elaboration on shapiro‘s part, then, it seems slightly misleading to suggest that the objects of different structures can be identified with one another, as such identification requires a kind of equivocation between distinct notions of object and identity. i think shapiro‘s refusal to accept the impossibility of cross-structural identification in fact belies a deeper commitment, on his part, to precisely the kind of absolute, universal background ontology which structuralism is (at least putatively) concerned to avoid. i think we can make this point most clearly if we turn now to an examination of shapiro‘s account of abstract structures themselves. . . shapiro on structures so, what are structures for shapiro, exactly? in our discussion of objects, we‘ve already gotten a bit of insight into the nature of structures for shapiro. they are, as we‘ve seen, constituted by their elements, i.e., their places, and relations on those objects. as far as abstract structures go, the nature of these objects does not matter at all, only that they stand in the appropriate relations with one another. shapiro gives a slightly more formal definition of structure along these lines: a structure has a collection of places and a finite collection of functions and relations on those places. the isomorphism relation among structures and the satisfaction relation [shapiro , ]. he writes, for example, that ―structuralists hold that a nonalgebraic field like arithmetic is about a realm of objects—numbers—that exist independently of the mathematician‖ [shapiro , ] and, in a later paper, that ―the structure itself is a chunk of reality‖ [shapiro , ]. between structures and formulas of an appropriate formal language are defined in the standard way. we could stipulate that the places of different structures are disjoint, but there is no reason to do so. in relation to our earlier discussion of the possibility of cross-structural identity claims, the last sentence of the above quotation is quite revelatory. he claims that we could, if we so desired, stipulate that the places of each structure are distinct from the places of any other structure. this, of course, would be in keeping with benacerraf‘s dictum that there can be no cross-structural identity claims. for benacerraf, then, there is a very good reason to stipulate (or at least recognize) that the places of different structures are disjoint. but, as we see here, shapiro holds that there is no reason to do so. why? though it is not made explicit here, i suggest (and will argue in what follows) that, for shapiro, the reason that we need not explicitly state that the places of different structures are disjoint is because they are not in fact disjoint on shapiro’s account. he has suggested that the notion of ‗object‘ (and, thus, that of ‗place‘ as well) is relative to a particular structure. or, more broadly, he argues that ontology is relative to a given structure. but here he seems to implicitly ignore this relativization by suggesting that places can be ‗shared‘ between distinct structures. how is this possible, given his previous account? it is possible, i will argue, because there is, ultimately, only one ontology for shapiro, and the function of his structure theory is to describe this ontology. indeed, the only point in having a theory of structures at all is to provide this background ontology. . . the ontology of structures as we‘ve seen, structuralism in the broadest terms involves the attempt to move beyond the uniquely fixed ontology of set-theoretic foundationalism, and, instead, to suggest that mathematics is the science of structure. thus, it would be rather surprising if a dyed-in-the-wool structuralist like shapiro simply recapitulated the traditional set- and model-theoretic foundations of mathematics. yet, shapiro takes his own axiomatic theory of structures to be loosely imitative of second-order zermelo fraenkel set theory, while also thinking of it as ―an axiomatization of the central framework of model theory‖. and, indeed, his few axioms mimic very clearly traditional formulations of axiomatic set theory. so, if shapiro‘s theory is to differ significantly from the traditional set-theoretic foundationalism he wishes to combat, the difference cannot be solely in the form and content of his axioms. the difference will be in his philosophical account of the [shapiro , ]. presumably the ‗standard way‘ referred to here is that of model theory. in what follows, we will see that this implicit reliance on the model-theoretic approach is widespread in shapiro‘s structure theory, as well as problematic for his goals. [shapiro , ]. [shapiro , ]. for instance, in place of the usual set-theoretic axiom of infinite, which holds that there exists a set with an infinite number of members,, shapiro‘s axiom of infinity holds ―there is at least on structure that has an infinite number of places‖ [shapiro , ], in the place of the usual power set axiom, he has a power structure axiom, etc., etc. point of these axioms, or of the nature of the items about which the axioms speak (e.g., structures). like the traditional set-theoretic foundationalist, shapiro accepts the necessity of a background ontology. in the traditional case, this ontology was the universe of set theory (and usually that of zfc – zermelo-fraenkel set theory with the axiom of choice). on the traditional picture, this ontology is importantly non-structural: claims made about the ontology of zfc are understood to be claims about absolute features of the world. this means that the fundamental notions of the ontology (notions like membership, for instance) are not ‗relative‘ but, instead, possess non- structural properties just like an everyday object like my keyboard. this absolute ontology is exactly the sort of thing that structuralism is designed to oppose—as evidenced by the origins (of some forms) of structuralism in benacerraf‘s critique of the viability of set-theoretic foundationalism. benacerraf wanted to show that it was nonsensical to pin down mathematical structures like the natural number structure within the set-theoretic hierarchy. and, moreover, skolem, gödel, and paul cohen (among others) had by surely already shown that the very notions of set theory had to be relative themselves. so in thinking about shapiro‘s background ontology, we have a few questions to answer. (i) why does shapiro think it is necessary to presuppose a background ontology for structuralism? (ii) how does his background ontology differ from the absolute ontology of traditional set-theoretic foundationalism? let‘s tackle these in order . . the necessity of a background ontology so, why do we need a background ontology in the first place? why not eschew the universality so characteristic of set theory and instead allow for multiple distinct, disjoint ontologies? to answer this, we have to examine once more the role that the elements of structures play in shapiro‘s account. recall that shapiro outlines two different (though ultimately inseparable) ways of understanding the places of structures: the places-as-objects view and the places-as-offices view. he suggests that, on the places-as-offices view, we must have enough objects to actually fill the offices of the structure. the structure, especially if it is to be ‗real‘ in shapiro‘s sense, must be constituted by its objects and its relations. so we need objects to have a structure, and (for abstract structures at least) vice versa. this is why, in our discussion of any given structure, we need an ontology, however far in the background it might be when we actually get down to our mathematical work on the structure. cf., [skolem ], where the implications of skolem‘s ‗paradox‘ are very clearly drawn. in two papers ([cohen ], [cohen ]) paul cohen further dismantled the absolute picture of the set-theoretic hierarchy by producing models of zfc within which the continuum hypothesis fails, alongside gödel‘s models of zfc wherein the continuum hypothesis is true. we need a background ontology but, importantly, when we are dealing with mathematical (i.e., abstract) structures, this background ontology can contain any objects we please. recall that the distinguishing feature of abstract structures is that the nature of their elements is a matter of indifference – any object at all can exemplify an element of the natural number structure (i.e., a number) as long as it stands in the appropriate relations to the other exemplars of the elements of the structure. so, the nature of the contents of the background ontology should not and does not matter for shapiro‘s theory. whether the objects are sets or hats or chimneysweeps or whatever, none of this matters for the background ontology. what does matter is that there are sufficiently many objects to fill all the places. and, since many of the interesting structures within mathematics are not only infinite but uncountably infinite, shapiro‘s theory requires a background ontology which contains (at least) an uncountable infinity of objects as well. now, as we‘ve seen, for shapiro, the places of an abstract structure are also objects in their own right. this fact is embodied in what he calls the places-as-objects perspective. this means that we can simply populate the requisite background ontology of any given structure by the places of that very structure. the offices of the structure can be occupied by the objects of the structure (though, of course, they could be anything else as well). so far so good. we should now examine how this (necessary) background ontology differs from that of the traditional set-theoretic account which shapiro‘s structuralism is meant to oppose. on the traditional set-theoretic view, the background ontology is populated by objects whose properties are not solely dependent upon a given structure. these can be either sets or urelements or both. in set theory (as in structure theory) we are interested in examining structures with infinitely many elements. often, we are interested in structures with an uncountable infinity of elements. thus, on this approach, our background ontology requires infinitely many structure- independent objects. and so, in set theory, we have axioms which posit such entities. for shapiro, since the elements of structures are not ‗structure-independent‘ in the way that sets and urelements are, this set-theoretic approach to the background ontology will not do. but, like the traditional set-theoretic foundationalist, shapiro still wants to examine structures with infinitely many elements. again, recall that, for shapiro, structures are prior to their elements, and these elements are entirely dependent upon the structures they constitute. so, if we want structures with infinitely many elements, we cannot begin by postulating infinitely many objects to act as the elements of the structure. instead, shapiro suggests, we begin by postulating structures with infinitely many places. the ‗background ontology‘ is thus not filled with structure-independent objects like sets or urelements but with structures themselves. and, since the places of structures can occupy themselves, the existence of infinite structures guarantees the existence of infinite systems which exemplify those structures. on the traditional dispensation, set theory itself is not a structural theory, insofar at least some of its elements are understood to be ‗concrete‘. shapiro‘s view ostensibly allows for a more thoroughly structural approach by insisting that the elements of his ontology (i.e., structures) are themselves understood in structural terms. this approach to the background ontology is meant to improve not only on the traditional set- theoretic approach to structures, but also to solve a problem to which eliminative forms of structuralism are prone. the problem, as shapiro sees it, is one of infinite oscillation or regress between systems and structures. the eliminative structuralist qua structuralist wishes to study structures. in order to do so, a background ontology is employed which is itself non-structural. but, given the eliminative structuralist‘s general structural views, this background ontology itself exhibits a structure. this structure again requires a background ontology, which again will exhibit another structure, and on and on. shapiro‘s solution aims to ―stop the regress of system and structure at a universe of structures‖. shapiro‘s putative solution to this regress is to identify structure and system one with the other. but does his solution actually stop the regress? there is good evidence that, in the final analysis, it does not. let‘s take a look. . . stop the regress i want to get off a good way into the problem is to examine shapiro‘s criticisms of the views which he believes are subject to this regress. of a set-theoretic approach to structuralism, he writes that the crucial feature of this version of eliminative structuralism is that the background ontology is not understood in structuralist terms. if the iterative hierarchy is the background, then set theory is not, after all, the theory of a particular structure. in short, this approach is not a structural one, because it ends up being founded upon a theory whose very basis is ‗concrete‘, i.e., one whose elements have non-structural properties. the structural aspect of mathematics is actually founded upon a system. he makes much the same argument about the modal form of structuralism which is developed by geoffrey hellman. for hellman, structures are not the final item on the ontological menu, but are instead eliminated in favour of the consideration of possible systems. the problem, as shapiro sees it, is that the usual way of dealing with logical possibilities (particularly in the kind of modal language that hellman employs) is to characterize them in terms of the set-theoretic hierarchy as employed in model theory. shapiro writes that hellman accepts this straightforward point, and so he demurs from the standard, model- theoretic accounts of the logical modalities. instead, he takes the logical notions as primitive, not to be reduced to set theory. the term ‗eliminative structuralism,‘ as shapiro characterizes it, covers any form of structuralism which ‗eliminates‘ structures in favour of some background ontology which does not itself contain structures. thus, for instance, hellman‘s modal eliminative structuralism employs a background ontology of possible systems. [shapiro , ]. the details of this regress are not made clear by shapiro, nor does he give a clear account of why the eliminativist can‘t simply model the structure of the background ontological system in that system itself. [shapiro , ]. shapiro calls any version of structuralism which eschews direct quantification over structures in favour of some other ontology ‗eliminative‘. both the traditional set-theoretic approach to structures and geoffrey hellman‘s modal account of structures fall under this heading for him. [shapiro , ]. but, shapiro continues later in the work, because hellman is out to drop the realist perspective, it is not clear why he is entitled to the traditional model-theoretic explications of the modal operators of logical necessity and logical possibility. for example, the usual way of establishing that a sentence is possible is to show that it has a model. for hellman, presumably, a sentence is possible if it might have a model (or if, possibly, it has a model). it is not clear what this move brings us. on the readings shapiro offers here, his chief criticism of ‗eliminative‘ forms of structuralism is that they inevitably end up relying on a non-structural ontology of some kind. in the case of the set-theoretic approach to structuralism, this is very straightforwardly the ontology of set theory. in hellman‘s case, rather more circuitously, he ends up relying (says shapiro) on the very same ontology simply by his unexplained reliance on the usual model-theoretic semantics for modality. in response to these views, he writes that a structuralist might be tempted to step back from this competition of background theories and wonder if there is a structure common to all of them. however, on the ontological option, this temptation needs to be resisted. the structures studied in two theories can be compared only in terms of a more inclusive theory. the ‗ontological option‘ here is the option of embedding abstract structures within a particular, determinate ontology. but, again, if the goal is to understand structures, and multiple available ontologies seem to ‗model‘ these structures equally well, we have no reason to choose between one or the other. and, moreover, since our interest is in the structures themselves, the use of an ontology whose elements possess non-structural properties is ultimately opposed to the structuralist programme. all of this simply recapitulates, perhaps on a grander scale, the non- uniqueness problem we began with. so shapiro needs an ontology which stops the regress, but which does not involve the reduction of structures to a concrete or non-structural background ontology. the obvious solution, and the one which we‘ve already mentioned, is to treat structures themselves as the background ontology by developing a theory of structures. the difficult part here will be in developing an account of structures which does not itself rely on non-structural notions. . . shapiro‘s structure theory so shapiro sets out to develop just such a theory. note that he is quite happy to claim (and he gives compelling arguments supporting this claim) that his structure theory is intertranslatable [shapiro , ]. [shapiro , ]. with both the set-theoretic picture and hellman‘s modal/eliminative approach. so what is the difference? well, what he means by intertranslatable is not that they say the exact same thing (for he doesn‘t want to make any claims about non-structural entities like the traditional set-theorist‘s non- structural sets). he writes there are several ways to render structuralism in a rigorous, carefully developed background theory, and there is very little to choose among the options. in a sense, they all say the same thing, using different primitives. the situation with structuralism is analogous to that of geometry. points can be primitive, or lines can be primitive. it does not matter because, in either case, the same structure is delivered. the same goes for structuralism itself. set theory and structure theory are equivalent in the sense defined above. to speak loosely, the same ‗structure of structures‘ is delivered. modal structuralism also fits, once the notion of ‗equivalence‘ is modified for the modal language. so, it isn‘t that they make exactly the same claims, but that they, ultimately, say the same things about structures. the key difference between them, according to shapiro, is that his ontology never bothers to make the detour through a concrete system of sets or possible systems: it stays with structures the whole time. . . quasi-concreteness but, near the close of this chapter on ontology, we find shapiro making some rather remarkable claims about the relationship between his theory of structures and ‗concreteness‘ (or, what amounts to the same thing for our purposes, ‗quasi-concreteness‘). the term ‗quasi-concrete‘ shapiro borrows from a paper by charles parsons. in that paper, parsons presents a sustained argument against the viability of a purely structural account of mathematics like the one ostensibly offered here by shapiro. on the basis of the importance he accords to the role of quasi-concrete objects and concepts within mathematics, parsons concludes finally that if the structuralist view of mathematical objects is taken to mean that all mathematical objects are only structurally determined, it has to rest on legislation about what counts as a mathematical object. the explanatory and justificatory role of more concrete models implies, in my view, that it is not the right legislation even for the interpretation of modern mathematics. given this conclusion, it is somewhat surprising (as will be shown presently) that shapiro seems to endorse much of parsons‘ argument here, recognizing, in particular, that his own ante rem structuralism relies inescapably on the quasi-concrete. for parsons, an entity is quasi-concrete if it is [shapiro , ]. [c. parsons , ]. directly ‗represented‘ or ‗instantiated‘ in the concrete. examples might be geometric figures (as traditionally conceived), symbols whose tokens are physical utterances or inscriptions, and perhaps sets or sequences of concrete objects. the ‗concrete objects‘ that david hilbert talked about in his accounts of intuitive, finitist mathematics are in my terminology quasi-concrete. a purely structuralist account does not seem appropriate for quasi-concrete objects, because the representation relation is something additional to intrastructural relations. because they have a claim to be the most elementary mathematical objects, and also for other reasons, quasi-concrete objects are important in the foundation of mathematics. this notion of the quasi-concrete is perhaps more widespread within mathematics than it might appear at first glance, for any proof or theorem which refers to or quantifies over, e.g., the formulas of a formal language will, on this dispensation, be quasi-concrete. in any case, the precise extension of the notion is not important for us here. what are important are the conclusions that shapiro draws about his own theory, under the influence of parsons‘ notion. after his discussion of parsons, shapiro gives three distinct reasons why his own theory of structures cannot but be understood, at least partially, in quasi-concrete terms. these reasons are: (i) his (crucial) account of the concept of coherence for structures is implicitly motivated/justified by quasi-concrete systems. (ii) his definition of ‗structure‘ itself entails reference to quasi-concrete entities/procedures. (iii) his use of a second-order language involves the use of quasi-concrete notions. rather than enter into an examination of shapiro‘s (admittedly problematic) notion of coherence for structures, i will examine the implications of the quasi-concreteness pertaining to the definition of ‗structure‘ and his use of a second-order language. regarding his definition of ‗structure,‘ he writes another reason to think that the quasi-concrete cannot be eliminated is that i have appealed to quasi-concrete items in order to define the very notion of a structure. recall that a structure is the form of a system, and a system is a collection of objects under various relations. the notion of ‗collection‘ is an intuitive one. there is something fishy about appealing to the set-theoretic hierarchy, a freestanding ante rem structure, in order to explicate the notion of ‗collection‘ in the characterization of ‗system‘ and thus ‗structure‘. where did we get on this merry-go-round, and how do we get off? here we see that the problem of the quasi-concrete ultimately puts him back into the regress he sought to escape. his way of escaping the regress was to put structures directly into his ontology. but in his definition of structure, he employs the notion of ‗collection‘. this, according to his own rendering here, is a quasi-concrete notion which relies directly on our intuitive understanding of collecting (concrete) items together. so it seems that his attempt to characterize [c. parsons , ]. [shapiro , ]. the set-theoretic hierarchy as a ‗freestanding ante rem structure‘ actually involves the more usual, intuitive notion of sets as concrete collections. thus, the mechanism of his escape from the concrete account of mathematics itself involves an inescapable reference to the concrete. this, on its own, seems deeply troubling for his purely structuralist account. but he also notes that his use of a second order language involves the quasi-concrete. he writes a related point concerns the practice of characterizing specific structures using a second- order language. such languages make literal use of intuitive notions like ‗predication‘ or ‗collection‘. a crucial step in the defense of second-order languages is that we have a serviceable, intuitive grasp of notions like ‗all subsets‘. this notion is also quasi- concrete. thus, another deep problem emerges in the very language and logic used to describe his structuralist programme. in the face of the problem of ineliminable reference to quasi-concrete objects and notions, shapiro writes in all cases, then, the conclusion is the same. we can try to hide the quasi-concrete, but there is no running away from it. […] however, the caveat does not undermine the main ontological thesis of ante rem structuralism, the idea that the subject matter of a branch of pure mathematics is well construed as a class of freestanding structures with formal relations. the role of concrete and quasi-concrete structures is the motivation of structures and the justification that structures with certain properties exist. the history of mathematics shows a trend from concrete and quasi-concrete systems to more formal, freestanding structures. there is no contradiction in the idea of a system of quasi-concrete objects‘ exemplifying a freestanding ante rem structure. what are we to make of all this? it strikes me that shapiro‘s final claim here, that there is no contradiction in his use of quasi- concrete objects and freestanding systems might very well be true. but so what? the truth is that he has not given us freestanding structures, precisely because his definition of ‗structure,‘ as well as the language used to construct the theory of structures, both necessarily involve the use of quasi-concrete notions. thus, the resulting structures are themselves quasi-concrete. if the whole endeavour of his particular form of structuralism was to avoid the pitfalls of an absolute ontology, and, instead, to develop an ontology of structures which contains no non-structural entities of any kind, then these admissions indicate that he has, rather straightforwardly, failed. i know of no other way to read them. if shapiro was content to sweep the essential ontological role of these quasi-concrete objects under the rug, then the detour into ‗pure‘ structuralism was ill-motivated in the first place: we might just as well have ignored benacerraf‘s qualms and stuck with traditional set-theoretic foundationalism from the beginning, ignoring ontological concerns along the way. [shapiro , ]. [shapiro , - ]. in the end, then, what shapiro‘s admission of the concreteness of his system shows is that the assertoric form of structuralism (exemplified in, at least, the work of shapiro and hellman) is, ultimately, another form of reductionism, which proposes to give us a new array of ontologies, but no good reason to choose between them. after all, they are intertranslatable on shapiro‘s reading. if our statements must be about some particular non-structural ontology, but we can‘t choose which one, it seems as though we are not capable of picking out what mathematics is really about. at best, we have a variety of things that it might be about, and this, surely, is an insufficient response to benacerraf‘s challenge. if we take the assertoric approach to structuralism, then, we still have no clear answer to the sort of non-uniqueness problems faced by frege and the set-theoretic reductionists. . algebraic structuralism . . categories before we get to the philosophical content of algebraic structuralism, let‘s begin by briefly examining some of its mathematical underpinnings in category theory. what exactly is a category? in a moment i will provide a formal definition of the concept. before this however, it will be useful to explain what categories are meant to do. or, perhaps better, what sorts of mathematical activity they are intended to facilitate. in some ways, the notion of a category itself is a secondary matter in category theory. the chief aim of category theory is to provide a means of ‗translating‘ between different mathematical structures. the emphasis is often on the translations themselves, rather than on the categories (which can themselves be understood as object-like or morphism-like as we see fit). the point of category theory, at least in its initial incarnations, was to provide a theory of transformations between different types of structures. these transformations are called ‗functors‘ and category theory might have been better named ‗functor theory‘. in one of the founding documents of category theory—eilenberg and mac lane‘s paper, ―general theory of natural equivalences‖—the authors have this to say about the relative priority of categories and functors: the whole concept of a category is essentially an auxiliary one; our basic concepts are essentially those of a functor and of natural transformation […]. the idea of a category is required only by the precept that every function should have a definite class as domain and a definite class as range, for the categories are provided as the domains and ranges of functors. thus one could drop the category concept altogether and adopt an even more intuitive standpoint, in which a functor such as ‗hom‘ is not defined over the category of ‗all‘ groups, but for each particular pair of groups which may be given. and, further, that perhaps the simplest precise device would be to speak not of the category of groups, but of a category of groups (meaning, any legitimate such category). a functor such as ‗hom‘ is then a functor which can be defined for any two suitable categories of groups […]. its [eilenberg and mac lane , ]. values lie in a third category of groups, which will in general include groups in neither [of the first two categories i doubt that today many category-theorists would like to entirely dispense with the notion of category, but the emphasis of the above remarks is nevertheless illustrative of the general character of category theory today: the nature of the categories and their objects doesn‘t matter, it‘s the transformations between them (and the transformations between transformations, and so on) which reveal new and interesting mathematical structure. so, despite the importance of the notion of category, keep in mind in relation to the following definition that categories are best understood in relation to certain types of transformations. with that stage-setting out of the way, we can now ask again: what exactly is a category? i will give a definition of the term presented by steve awodey. others could have been used, but awodey‘s is concise and manageable in that it does not involve any dependence on other mathematical terminology. he writes: a category by definition […] consists of objects a, b, c, … and morphisms f, g, h, … such that: (i) every f has a unique domain a and a unique codomain b, written f: a→b; (ii) given any g: b→c there is a unique composite g ∘ f: a→c, with composition being associative; (iii) each b has an identity b: b→b which is a unit for composition, i.e., b ∘ f = f and g ∘ b for any f and g as stated. a category is anything satisfying these axioms. for our purposes here, there are two relevant features of awodey‘s characterization. first: a category contains both objects and morphisms (which are also called maps, mappings, or arrows). this already differentiates it immediately from the traditional account of set theory, which contains only objects, i.e., sets (or, possibly urelements as well) as basic elements. the second thing to note is that a category is anything at all that satisfies these axioms. implicitly, for instance, a category might contain frege‘s functions as its objects, much to his horror. since these axioms give very few constraints on what can count as morphisms and no direct constraints at all on objects, category theory begins with a fairly indeterminate ‗ontology‘ if it begins with one at all. the resulting generality means that category theory can describe an incredible array of structures. a few characteristic examples will help illustrate this point. . the category set, whose objects are sets and whose morphisms are functions between sets. . the category cat, whose objects are categories and whose morphisms are functors between categories. . the category top, whose objects are topological spaces and whose morphisms are continuous maps. . the category k-vect whose objects are vector spaces over a fixed field k and whose morphisms are k-linear transformations [eilenberg and mac lane , ]. e.g., [mac lane , ff.] or [lawvere and schanuel , ]. [awodey , - ]. these are some of the better known examples of categories. we can also think of categories in relation to what we would normally call logical structures. thus, for instance, any given deductive system can be understood as a category whose objects are the formulas of the system and whose morphisms are derivations or proofs of those formulas. taken on their own, this definition and these examples don‘t yet tell us very much about what makes categories interesting. to see why many have thought of category theory as a new way of doing mathematics, we have to see categories in action. and for this, we need the crucial notion of a functor. . . functors the term ‗functor‘ was taken by eilenberg and mac lane from the linguistic work of rudolf carnap. though carnap‘s philosophical views seem (in some respects) in line with the pluralist approach of many category-theoretically minded philosophers of mathematics, his conception of a functor is somewhat different than the category-theoretic notion. in category theory, a functor is a homomorphism, or structure-preserving morphism, between two categories. more formally, a functor f: a → b has the following properties: . to each object x of the category a it associates an object fx of the category b . to each morphism f of the category a it associates a morphism ff of the category b . for each object x of category a, f x = fx . for any maps f and g of the category a such that f: x→y and g: y→z, we have f(f ∘ g) = ff ∘ fg in other words, the functor is defined for all the objects and morphisms of the categories in question, and it preserves identity, composition, and the domain/codomain structure. note here that the categories a and b needn‘t be distinct. thus for instance we have ‗endofunctors‘ which simply map a category to itself—a specific example of which are identity functors, which associate every object with itself and every morphism with itself. identity functors are usually not of much interest, but there are other functors from categories to themselves which are of mathematical interest. for instance, if we take the category set, we can define a ‗power set functor‘ p: set→set which maps each set to its power set and each function to its image. in fact, some of the most interesting functors are morphisms from a category into or onto itself. so, what is philosophically interesting about functors? intuitively, functors provide us the means to ‗move between‘ different categories while examining what we might call their ‗shared structure‘. in a certain sense, they might be said to transform categories back and forth into one another. we might also say that they allow us to examine bits of shared mathematical structure without getting bogged down in conceptual concerns about the ‗nature‘ of a given category –that this basic insight lies at the heart of the field of categorical logic, first developed in [lawvere ] and [lawvere ]. though similar in many respects, carnap‘s functors are defined only for linguistic expressions. see [carnap , ]. is, they allow us a kind of indifference to the particular sorts of things which count as objects and morphisms in our categories. understood in this way, functors can be a useful conceptual tool for a structuralist approach to mathematics. in addition to their capacity to isolate shared structure, functors can also be employed to reveal or construct new structure. this feature is perhaps best understood via the notion of a functor category, a concept which exhibits quite well the tendency towards algebraic abstraction so characteristic of category theory. recall that a category consists of objects, morphisms, a domain/codomain structure, identity, and composition. the collection of all functors between two categories can themselves be thought of as the objects of another category, i.e., a functor category. in order to see how we might define such a category, we first need another crucial category-theoretic concept: that of the natural transformation. intuitively, a natural transformation is a way of transforming one functor into another such that the compositionality of the morphisms of the underlying categories is respected. now, with this notion of natural transformation in hand, we can give a clearer idea of what a functor category is. we start out with two categories, a and b. we can then define a category of functors from a to b (often written ‗funct(a, b)‘). the objects of this category are the functors f: a→b. the morphisms of this category are the natural transformations between these functors. i‘ve mentioned functor categories here not because they are particularly useful (though they certainly are useful) but because they represent exactly the sort of algebraic abstraction which is characteristic of the category-theoretic approach. i‘ll try to explain what i mean. let‘s place ourselves in frege‘s shoes for a moment. perhaps the most essential core of frege‘s ‗background ontology‘ is the division between objects and functions. on his view, this is not a relative distinction but an absolute one. any formal violation of this distinction would have disastrous results for his attempt to found mathematics. let‘s see how the (linguistically similar) distinction between objects and morphisms plays out in the category-theoretic world. we might begin with frege‘s universe as a category, let‘s call it frege. the objects of frege are just frege‘s objects (i.e., thoughts, dogs, numbers, etc.) while the morphisms of this category are frege‘s functions. we might be interested in some of the structure of this category, so we seek to define some functors from frege to frege. thus, for instance, we might define the functor f: frege→frege which maps every object onto itself, and every function onto itself. we might then bundle together all such functors into a functor category funct(frege, frege), whose objects are the functors between frege and frege and whose morphisms are the natural transformations between these functors. then, if we are so inclined, we might define functors between the categories frege and funct(frege, frege), then another functor category, and so on, ad infinitum. this example isn‘t meant to be exciting or revelatory of any interesting mathematical content (and surely it isn‘t). what it shows is that the kind of absolute distinction that frege wants to make between objects and functions just doesn‘t make any sense in the category-theoretic world. nor does it make for a more precise technical definition, see [mac lane , ]. much sense to ask which categories are the real ones, the ones out of which all other categories are ‗built‘. instead, what the category-theoretic language of functors, functor categories, and natural transformation shows is that the questions of structure have no ‗final‘ or absolute answer: they must be given relative to a particular mathematical situation. on this model, to think of categories in the static terms of set theory might be possible but it certainly seems to miss the point. new structures can be built quite easily, and what might be a morphism of one category is an object of another category, or it may yet play the role of a functor between categories in another context. the question of the exact nature of the entities at issue is beside the point: what matters is the structure which is revealed by particular sorts of transformations. . . the philosophical aspects of algebraic structuralism with this rough conception of category theory, we will now have an easier time understanding the philosophical commitments of algebraic structuralists. let‘s look at these now and see if this form of structuralism can move us in any significant way beyond the positions dictated by the frege-hilbert debate. algebraic structuralism, inspired in large part by the methodology of category theory, holds that mathematics possesses no final or absolute ontology. on some dispensations, if it is meant to provide foundations at all, it is in a rather different sense than the ontological foundations we‘ve examined thus far. take, for instance, the following comment by f. william lawvere, one of the key proponents of the foundational importance of category theory: in my own education i was fortunate to have two teachers who used the term ‗foundations‘ in a common-sense way (rather than in the speculative way of the bolzano-frege-peano- russell tradition). […] the orientation of [the works of his two teachers samuel eilenberg and clifford truesdell] seemed to be ‗concentrate the essence of practice and in turn use the result to guide practice‘. i propose to apply the tool of categorical logic to further develop this inspiration. of course lawvere‘s remarks here are personal and idiosyncratic, but the inclination to oppose the traditional approaches to foundations as ‗speculative‘ and replace them with something more amenable to mathematical practice is a common theme amongst algebraic structuralists influenced by category theory and categorical logic. like other forms of structuralism, algebraic structuralism holds that mathematics is, in the main, concerned with structures. in contrast to assertoric structuralism, however, algebraic structuralism does not seek a single theory of structures to account for the content of mathematics. indeed, one way to describe algebraic structuralism is by highlighting its opposition to the idea that mathematics has a single determinate content, or that mathematics concerns itself with a global ontological background or framework. so, if mathematics is not about a single universe, either of sets or even of abstract structures, what is it about? there are a variety of different technical proposals in response to this question, [lawvere , ]. cf., e.g., [awodey ,]. though most are framed, in some way, in category-theoretic terms. thus, for instance, john bell writes that the fundamental idea is to abandon the unique absolute universe of sets central to the orthodox set-theoretic account of the foundations of mathematics, replacing it by a plurality of local mathematical frameworks – elementary toposes – defined in category- theoretic terms. such frameworks will serve as local surrogates for the classical universe of sets. here we see the emphasis on local frameworks versus global foundations which is characteristic of the algebraic approach to structuralism. in place of a single theory of structures, the idea is to investigate a variety of different sorts of connections between different structures. there is not meant to be a final theory of structures, nor of the connections between them, but, instead, several distinct (perhaps incompatible, perhaps complementary) frameworks, each of which will highlight different sorts of connections, transformations, objects, etc. on bell‘s particular view, the most natural way of organizing these frameworks is in terms of category-theoretically defined ‗elementary toposes‘. my interest here is not in the analysis of the precise details of topos and category theory which make them amenable to the structuralist programme, but instead in the general philosophical attitude towards foundations which is exhibited by those who suggest category theory can act as the basis for algebraic structuralism. for bell, these elementary toposes are not meant to function as a kind of universal background ontology, in the manner of hellman‘s modal theory of possible systems or shapiro‘s structure- theory. no, for bell, these toposes themselves are ‗ambient‘ and variable, in the sense that neither their mutual interrelations nor their internal compositions (including their governing logic) are fixed outside of a given mathematical situation. an even more radical statement of the algebraic approach to structuralism can be found in a paper by steve awodey. there awodey writes (in response to some of hellman‘s criticisms of the category-theoretic approach to structuralism) that as opposed to this one-universe, ‗global foundational‘ view, the ‗categorical-structural‘ one we advocate is based instead on the idea of specifying, for a given theorem or theory only the required or relevant degree of information or structure, the essential features of a given situation, for the purpose at hand, without assuming some ultimate knowledge, specification, or determination of the ‗objects‘ involved. the laws, rules, and axioms involved in a particular piece of reasoning, or a field of mathematics, may vary from one to the next, or even from one mathematician or epoch to another. the statement of the inferential machinery involved thus becomes a (tacit) part of the mathematics; functional analysis makes heavy use of abstract functions and the axiom of choice, some theorems in algebra rely on the continuum hypothesis; many arguments in homology theory are purely [bell , ]. bell gives a formal definition of ‗ topos‘ at [bell , - ]. for a semi-technical elaboration on some of the interesting relations between toposes (or topoi), category theory, and set theory, see [bell ]. this is already accomplished in [awodey ] and [mclarty ]. algebraic, once given the non-algebraic objects that they deal with; theorems in constructive analysis avoid impredicative constructions; nineteenth-century analysis employed other methods than modern-day analysis, and so on. the methods of reasoning involved in different parts of mathematics are not ‗global‘ and uniform across fields or even between different theorems, but are themselves ‗local‘ or relative. thus according to our view, there is neither a once-and-for-all universe of all mathematical objects, nor a once-and-for-all system of all mathematical inferences. are there, then, various and changing universes and systems? how are they determined, and how are they related? here i would rather say that there are no such universes or systems; or rather, that the question itself is still based on a ‗foundationalist‘ preconception about the nature of mathematical statements. let‘s try to unpack this a bit. for awodey, the algebraic (or categorical) approach to mathematics involves accepting (embracing, really) certain limitations on one‘s mathematical activity. instead of presuming to grasp the nature of the set-theoretic universe when proving a theorem about abelian groups, for instance, his view suggests that in any given mathematical situation, we ought only to consider those ‗objects‘ and bits of ‗inferential machinery‘ which have actually been employed. on this view, we might say, a particular ‗structure‘ is not defined against anything other than the present mathematical situation: we form the structure out of the objects, properties, relations, and logic which we actually employ in the situation at hand and that is the end of the matter as far as ontology and reference-fixing goes. we state as much (and only as much) as we need to about the structures we are presently studying. from this point of view, the problem with the foundationalist approach to mathematics (within which both awodey and myself would include shapiro‘s and hellman‘s assertoric forms of structuralism) is that its metaphysical principles require there to be some unifying element which collects together all forms of mathematical reasoning in a single universe (with its own particular collection of objects, relations, properties, and its own governing logic). the assertoric structuralist‘s complaint is that ―these constructions have to take place somewhere! they require some collection principles‖ and some logic governing these principles. ultimately, for awodey, the assertoric structuralist‘s idea that one is ‗going up‘ in a hierarchy, and that this requires stronger and stronger collection principles and existence assumptions rests on the ‗foundationalist‘ conception that the ‗objects‘ involved are fixed and determinate. from a categorical perspective, one is rather ‗going down‘ by specifying more of the ambient structure to be taken into account […]. this contrast presented here gets at the heart of the algebraic structuralist view. central to this view is the contrast between determinate collections and ambient categories or structures. what is the difference, exactly? . . bottom-up vs. top-down [awodey , ]. [awodey , ]. [awodey , ]. the bottom-up approach is common in the set-theoretic construction of various number domains or algebraic structures. you begin with a very limited ontology—say the empty set or a finite collection of ur-elemente. from here, by applications of various ‗collection principles‘ (e.g., the power set axiom, the axiom schema of separation, etc.) you gain access to larger and larger collections, within which you can define more and more structures. this intuitive process is the reason why the set-theoretic universe is often called the iterative or cumulative hierarchy. importantly, on this view, one‘s access to a particular structure is dependent upon there being some correlate to that structure in this cumulative hierarchy. so, if we are interested in investigating groups, we must first ‗build‘ them from the bottom up using the elements of the set-theoretic hierarchy in some way. everything thus remains within the absolute ontology of set theory itself. nothing in this is necessarily peculiar to set theory: we can approach other aspects of mathematics using this foundational attitude as well. indeed, as we saw, shapiro‘s approach to structure theory is bottom-up in exactly this way: he believes that, for his theory to get off the ground, he needs the basic building blocks which will guarantee that the more complex structures exist. if we wish to speak of categories, the category of sets, as understood by a traditional set-theoretic foundationalist, must be fixed, i.e., made non-algebraic, remaining the same for everyone in every situation. in this sense it is anything but ambient. from this determinate category, all the rest are built up. this is the ‗bottom-up‘ approach. awodey and bell, by contrast, wish to take a ‗top down‘ approach which does not even begin with a basic, universal ontology. and, in fact, the more usual approach to category theory is non- foundational in precisely the required sense. technical definitions of ‗category‘ (of which there are many) are not terribly important in the present context, what is important is the attitude taken towards such definitions. thus, after giving his version of the category axioms, awodey writes a category is anything satisfying these axioms. the objects need not have ‗elements‘, nor need the morphisms be ‗functions‘ although this is the case in some motivating examples [i.e., in the category set]. but also, for example, associated with any formal system of logic is a category, the objects of which are formulas and the morphisms of which are deductions from premises. we do not really care what non-categorical properties the objects and morphisms of a given category may have; that is to say, we view it ‗abstractly‘ by restricting to the language of objects and morphisms, domains and codomains, composition, and identity morphisms. now, fairly obviously, this sort of language of abstraction closely mirrors shapiro‘s (initial) approximation of the structuralist position. the difference between the two—and it is a crucial difference—is that, for the category-theoretic structuralist, such a language does not and should not be embedded within a single universe of discourse, a single logic, or a single ontology. or, to this, in broad outline, is precisely the sort of claim that hellman makes about category-theoretic approaches to structuralism: ―as its proponents have maintained, category theory does offer an interesting structuralist perspective on most mathematics as we know it. but it needs to be supplemented and set within a yet wider framework. […] [c]ategory theory—with its non-assertory, algebraico-structural axioms—depends on prior notions of structure (collection with relations) and satisfaction by structures to make sense of the very notions of ‗category‘ and ‗topos‘‖ [hellman , - ]. the objection clearly mirrors the problem of quasi-concreteness in relation to shapiro‘s views. similar claims are made in an earlier paper by solomon feferman (i.e., [feferman ]). [awodey , ]. put it in terms familiar from the preceding section, the algebraic structuralist is not at all convinced of the necessity of a background ontology. the above examples of a category of sets and functions vs. a category codifying a system of formal logic are themselves illustrative of a key difference between the algebraic approach and the assertoric approach. on shapiro‘s assertoric approach, he became embroiled in the problem of the quasi-concrete because his (non-structuralist) understanding of the logic animating his project seemed to commit him to sets. for the category theorist, this troubling situation might be easily resolved. on the one hand we have a category (let‘s just assume, for the sake of our example) that it is the category set. the objects of this category are sets, and the morphisms are functions on those sets. the problem shapiro has is that his logic seems to be understandable only in terms of this category of sets. but, from the category-theoretic perspective, here we have an interesting example of morphisms between categories. in addition to set we can define another category, let‘s say shlog (for shapiro-logic), whose objects are the formulas of shapiro‘s structure theory and whose morphisms are the allowable deductions among them. on this view, we needn‘t conflate the elements of set and shlog, but can instead describe the morphisms between them (perhaps there is a relation of isomorphism, as shapiro seems to worry) as the elements of yet another category with a distinct structure. but we needn‘t take this to be revelatory of some secret or hidden quasi-concrete ontology in our original approach. instead, it reveals new and interesting structure which emerges in this particular situation, or within this particular local framework. perhaps the best way of characterizing the difference between this bottom-up approach and the top-down approach recommended by awodey is to look at the components of each view which are allowed to vary. on the bottom-up approach, there are at least some parts which do not (and cannot) vary. these are the background ontology (usually some universe of sets) and the logic which governs the theory (whatever this might be). no matter what context you work in, if you build your structures out of a foundationally understood theory, then its ontology and logic remain static in every context. the key, on this approach, is to craft a subtle enough theory so that it covers all the desired instances without committing you to anything ‗extra‘. on the algebraic perspective, by contrast, both of these universally invariant things are allowed to vary; indeed, in bell‘s proposal, their variability is an essential component of the notion of an elementary topos. . . no background ontology? no problem. as we saw in our examination of shapiro‘s work, assertoric structuralism requires some background ontology in order to get off the ground. this background ontology was required in order to ensure that there were structures big enough to satisfy the usual mathematical demands. we also saw that commitment to such a background ontology involved shapiro (and others) in an ultimately non-structural account of mathematics—exactly the thing he sought to avoid. the question we have to ask now is whether or not algebraic structuralism can really do without a commitment to such a background ontology. here is awodey‘s statement on this question: the structural perspective [of topos theory] is at odds with the idea that all mathematical objects exist in a single, comprehensive universe of sets. the methods of topoi make it more natural to study the ‗local‘ logic of various kinds of structure than to force all kinds of structure into a ‗global‘ logic, say of the category of sets. moreover, the very idea of ‗foundations of mathematics‘ becomes less significant from a categorical perspective than, say, organizing and unifying the language and methods of mathematics. such unification often points up related structural phenomena in disparate fields, suggesting fruitful directions for further research. so the clear answer to the question ‗does algebraic structuralism require a single background ontology‘ is, for awodey, a straightforward and emphatic ‗no‘. the point of the approach is to examine structures in situ, not to displace them and characterize them in the (usually) foreign terms of object-oriented set theory. moreover, awodey‘s remarks here suggest that, on topos- theoretic approach to ‗foundations,‘ the troublesome connection to a non-structural account of logic (which shapiro himself struggled with in relation to his ‗quasi-concrete‘ second order language) simply disappears. logic itself is understood as a potentially variable component of a given topos. it is not pan-theoretically applicable, but a matter of specification in each case. the position as a whole is summarized by awodey as follows: the structural perspective on mathematics codified by categorical methods might be summarized in the slogan: the subject matter of pure mathematics is invariant form, not a universe of mathematical objects consisting of logical atoms. this trivialization points to what may ultimately be an insight into the nature of mathematics. the important point here, the point which shapiro himself tried to get at in his form of structuralism, is that, for the algebraic structuralist, there is not and need not be any final accounting of ‗invariant form‘. the property of invariance is itself defined relative to a particular structure (i.e., a particular local framework or topos). there may be interesting relationships between different frameworks, which lead to the discussion of new and interesting sorts of invariant form (as happened, for instance, in the birth of category theory). neither do these emergent forms of invariance require any final theory or background ontology. for the topos- theoretic structuralist, ontology really is relative to a given framework. if we wish to remain ‗foundationalists‘ we can seek to axiomatize a category of all categories, one which will encompass every other category. category theory certainly allows for this possibility, but it is, in a fairly obvious sense, counter to the spirit of the algebraic structuralists endeavour. even if we do construct such a category of all categories, there is no reason we can‘t treat this category (and [awodey , ]. [awodey , ]. category theory, in its earliest incarnations, arose from the recognition that there were shared bits of invariant form between algebra and topology. see, e.g., [eilenberg and mac lane, ] and [eilenberg and mac lane ]. cf., e.g., [lawvere ]. a concomitant logical structure) as one more local framework among others. the aim of category theory is to allow us to move between frameworks, while making it as easy as possible to highlight intrastructural morphisms (functors) which allow us to discern new forms of invariance and to construct new and interesting local frameworks all over again. . . algebraic reference and truth of course this shift from an absolute perspective to a radically relativized one does not come without a cost. as we‘ve seen in our examination of frege, one of the key reasons why he sought fixed references for mathematical terms in the first place was to avoid the obvious relativization of truth which seemed to lie at the basis of hilbert‘s view. frege was deeply committed to the view that mathematics was a science, and that sciences had something to say about the world— i.e., the single world shared by logic, mathematics, physics, chemistry, sociology, and all the rest. for him, the notion that there could be relative truths was simply a non-starter, and resulted in a meaningless, subjective morass from which no scientific findings could emerge. this is, at least partially, an explanation for his somewhat surprising (and perhaps misguided) rejection of the possibility that both euclidean and non-euclidean geometry could be ‗true‘. we saw, too, that hilbert, in his later proof-theoretic years, was heavily invested in the production of direct consistency proofs, proofs which would stake direct claims about the world, and whose truth would be absolute. so it should be no surprise then that the only way to maintain the fully algebraic version of structuralism is to relativize not only truth but meaning and reference as well. these implications were already present in frege‘s debate with hilbert and korselt, but are spelled out more thoroughly by bell in a paper entitled ―from absolute to local mathematics‖. there he writes with the relinquishment of the absolute universe of sets, mathematical concepts will in general no longer possess absolute meaning, nor mathematical assertions absolute truth values, but will instead possess such meanings or truth values only locally, i.e., relative to local frameworks. and that category theory […] suggests that mathematical concepts and assertions should be regarded as possessing meaning only in relation to a variety of more or less local frameworks. these, framed in positive terms, are exactly the effects that frege foresaw in hilbert‘s turn of the century views on axiomatics. we are left, then, with the question of whether any significant advance has been made by algebraic structuralism toward answering our question ‗what is mathematics about?‘. certainly great technical strides have been made since the frege-hilbert cf. [frege c. , ]. [bell , ]. [bell , ]. correspondence, such that the variability of both ‗structure‘ and ‗logic‘ in a topos is possible in ways which were not even imagined at the close of the nineteenth century. . conclusion so, in the end, where do these two forms of structuralism leave us? are we better off in our general understanding of the content of mathematics now than we were after the frege-hilbert debate? the goal of both the assertoric and algebraic forms of structuralism, as i have presented them here, is to present a clear and persuasive account of mathematical structures. given such an account, we would be able to generate a satisfactory answer to our guiding question, ‗what is mathematics about?‘. the answer would be that mathematics is about structures and these are to be understood in the way dictated by this particular account. i think it is clear that there is no victor in the competition between the assertoric and algebraic forms of structuralism in terms of their respective accounts of structure. if we accept the assertoric account, we are pushed into a frege-style dilemma which forces us to pick out our structures from a single background ontology. while the problems of assertoric structuralism are not identical to frege‘s caesar problem, and certainly need not lead to russell-style contradictions, from a general philosophical point of view, they are unsatisfying in precisely the same way. assertoric structuralism, like frege, claims that mathematics has a specific content (in this case, some theory of structure) but it cannot give us good reasons for picking out this specific content from a variety of equally plausible options. nor, contra shapiro, can it rest satisfied with the possibility of a ‗shared structure‘ between these accounts because account of structure given is itself bound to a specific ontology. none of this ought to suggest that the assertoric form of structuralism is a fruitless endeavour —only that it cannot provide an ultimately satisfactory answer to our particular question. does algebraic structuralism fare any better? like the assertoric structuralist, the algebraic structuralist also holds that mathematics is chiefly concerned with structure. unlike the assertoric structuralist, however, the algebraic structuralist does not attempt to provide a single or final theory which pins down the nature of structures. instead, following the lead of category theory, such structures are only ever determined locally. this has the benefit that the non-uniqueness problems which plagued frege, set-theoretic foundationalism, and even assertoric structuralism are rather understood to be ‗features‘ of the view. but it also has the disquieting effect of introducing (or, perhaps, accepting an already-present) radical relativity into mathematics. the idea of a single ontology for mathematics is of course replaced with multiple distinct ontologies, defined relative to a given local framework or topos. this sort of view is already implicit in benacerraf‘s work, and is accepted as a starting point for the algebraic approach. alongside the relativization of ontology, however, we also have the more troubling relativization a feature of assertoric structuralism which has not at all been stressed in this chapter is its capacity to address the deep epistemological question in the philosophy of mathematics. resnik, in particular, has made significant advances in these areas (cf., e.g., [resnik ]). of meaning, reference, and truth. claims made within a local framework have no direct relationship with ‗the world‘ understood as a unified, final, or absolute ontological horizon. frege, already in his correspondence with hilbert, worried that the disconnection of axiomatics from any ontological background would have the effect of relativizing truth. the algebraic structuralist simply accepts this fact as an essential feature of mathematical discourse. similarly, the idea that mathematical statements can be made meaningful only by their reference to a universal background ontology is rejected in favour of the view that both reference and meaning are relative to a given local framework. this fact is both supported by and helps to explain things like the existence of models of set theory within which the axiom of choice holds alongside models within which it does not hold. the implications of this kind of view are wide-reaching and essentially undermine any attempt to understand mathematics as a unified investigation of a single universe. does the position of the algebraic structuralist offer us a significant advance beyond the impasse of the frege-hilbert debate? it seems that here, too, we have a recapitulation of an already- familiar position. in the assertoric structuralist‘s case, the position was similar in the relevant respects to frege‘s fixed-ontology view. in the algebraic case, the position closely resembles that of hilbert (at least the hilbert around the time of the publication of his festschrift). for, recall hilbert‘s position in his correspondence with frege. his account of mathematical existence seems to be not much different than the ontological relativity presented by the algebraic structuralist. he writes that ―if the arbitrarily given axioms do not contradict one another with all their consequences, then they are true and the things defined by the axioms exist. this is for me the criterion of truth and existence.‖ of course hilbert would later back away from this kind of relativity in his demand for absolute consistency proofs, but in this period he was for the most part happy to understand existence in terms of the consistency of a particular theory, and consistency in (admittedly) vague but not clearly absolutist terms. certainly the category-theoretic/algebraic structuralist approach no longer relies uncritically on a theory-independent notion of consistency for its ontological relativity. but it seems reasonable to consider the newer position a technical refinement and expansion of hilbert‘s attitude. here, too, we see that, already at the close of the nineteenth century, hilbert has accepted the fact that his purely relational (we might now say algebraic) approach to axiomatics commits him to the relativity of truth to a given formal theory. without the definition or context provided by a given theory, there simply is no criterion for truth. the provision of the axiomatic theory (or the description of a structure) gives you the relative ontology, and it is only on the basis of this relative ontology that one can make (relatively) meaningful and truthful claims. without such a context, there is no obvious way for hilbert or the algebraic structuralist to speak of meaning, reference, or truth. in sum, then, it seems that the contemporary algebraic structuralist has been engaged in a project of refinement and increasing precision: the notions of category theory and categorical logic make more perspicuous the relativity of truth and reference, and they allow us to treat relations [hilbert to frege, december ; excerpted by frege in frege , - ]. between various frameworks of truth and reference in a variety of systematic ways. these procedures were in their infancy in hilbert‘s day, and it was, somewhat ironically, only through the development of formal logic (with the resources of model- and set-theory) which allowed them their fully algebraic form in contemporary approaches to structuralism. in any case, it seems that we are again left at a kind of impasse. or, rather, we are left with two possible choices, both of which have significant implications for our understanding of the nature of mathematics. on the one hand, we can demand with frege and the assertoric structuralists that mathematics possesses a unified content, and that we give a unique account of this content. this view faces the seemingly intractable non-uniqueness problem, but it has the benefit of maintaining non-relative conceptions of ontology, reference, and truth. on the other hand, we can insist that there is no final accounting of the content of mathematics, that there are different forms of mathematics with interesting relations with one another, but there is no final box within which they all live and breathe. this has the benefit of avoiding the non-uniqueness problem, but has the profound and far-reaching implication that mathematics does not speak directly about a single world, and that the truths of mathematics (and perhaps the rest of science as well) are merely relative to a given situation. how are we to choose between the two options? as i hope to have shown, neither view straightforwardly wins the day, as each position requires the acceptance of something which the other side imagines to be an obvious compromise or even a failing (e.g., ontological fixity, the relativity of truth). there seems to be no ultimately convincing argument to sway us either way. either we believe in the non-relativity of truth, and reference, or we do not. the arguments that each side gives have most often been met with a shrug of the shoulders: either you demand a foundation for mathematics or you do not. a good example of this new impasse between forms of structuralism occurs in a debate between hellman and awodey regarding the possible usefulness of category theory for structuralism. hellman suggests, following his assertoric scruples, that category theory requires ―a background logic of relations and substantive assumptions addressing mathematical existence of categories themselves‖ that is, whatever approach is taken, there must be a final reckoning regarding the single logic (and, relatedly, the background ontology) which is taken up by the category-theoretic structuralist. awodey, the arch-algebraist, responds to this ―problem of the home address‖ by suggesting that it asks for something that only seems reasonable from a foundational perspective. this requirement exemplifies a general pattern in the discussion: hellman sympathizes with the structural viewpoint […] but he thinks that there is still something missing in the overall category-theoretical position. the something is to be provided by his modal-structuralism. but i contend that what is missing is only a correct understanding of the categorical approach. 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( ). ―Über eine weise, die gestalt eines dreiecks als komplexe grösse aufzufassen‖, jenaische zeitschrift für naturwissenschft (supplement): xviii; translated into english by h. kaal as ―on a way of conceiving the shape of a triangle as a complex quantity,‖ in brian mcguinness, editor, collected papers on mathematics, logic, and philosophy (oxford: basil blackwell, ): - . frege, gottlob. ( ). begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete formelsprache des reinen denkens (halle: louis nebert); translated by terrell ward bynum into english as “conceptual notation,” in conceptual notation and related articles (oxford: oxford university press, ): - . frege, gottlob. (? - ). ―logic,‖ in posthumous writings, edited by hans hermes, friedrich kambartel, and friedrich kaulbach; translated by peter long and roger white with the assistance of raymond hargreaves (oxford: basil blackwell, ): - . frege, gottlob. ( ). ―rezension von: hoppe, lehrbuch der analytischen geometrie i,‖ deutsche literaturzeitung ( ): – ; translated by h. kaal into english as ―review of hoppe, textbook of analytic geometry i,‖ in brian mcguinness, editor, collected papers on mathematics, logic, and philosophy (oxford: basil blackwell, ): - . frege. gottlob. ( ). ―Über die wissenschaftliche berechtigung einer begriffsschrift,‖ zeitschrift für philosophie und philosophische kritik : - ; translated into english by terrell ward bynum as ―on the scientific justification of a conceptual notation,‖ in conceptual notation and related articles (oxford: oxford university press, ): - . frege, gottlob. ( a). ―geometrie der punktpaare in der ebene,‖ jenaische zeitschrift für naturwissenschaft, (supplement); translated into english by h. kaal as ―geometry of pairs of points in the plane‖ in brian mcguinness, editor, collected papers on mathematics, logic, and philosophy (oxford: basil blackwell, ): – . frege, gottlob. ( b). die grundlagen der arithmetik: eine logisch-mathematische untersuchung über den begriff der zahl (breslau: w. koehner); translated into english by dale jacquette as the foundations of arithmetic: a logical-mathematical investigation into the concept of number (new york: pearson education, inc., ). frege, gottlob. ( ). funktion und begriff (jena: hermann pohle), translated into english by peter geach as ―function and concept,‖ in michael beaney, editor, the frege reader (oxford: blackwell, ): - . frege. gottlob. ( a). ―ueber begriff und gegenstand,‖ vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche philosophie, : - , translated into english by peter geach as ―on concept and object,‖ in michael beaney, editor, the frege reader (oxford: blackwell, ): - . frege, gottlob. 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( ). ―untersuchungen über die grundlagen der mengenlehre i,‖ mathematische annalen : - ; english translation in [van heijenoort , - ]. mississippi stories mississippi stories joe wilkins the missouri review, volume , number , summer , pp. - (article) published by university of missouri doi: for additional information about this article [ this content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the covid- pandemic. ] https://doi.org/ . /mis. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ https://doi.org/ . /mis. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ mississippi stories joe wilkins ( e s s a y ) s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w � e past isn’t dead. it’s not even past. —faulkner in the mississippi delta it goes like this: memphis with its blue lights; highway a lonesome road of cypress swamps and tuesday-night juke joints; the river, in all kinds of brown and foaming glory, stepping gracefully down to meet you somewhere south of vicksburg. � e steel girders of the bridge whip past my open window. below, a fat brown snake of water twists through shaggy oaks, kudzu vines and dirt- walled levees. � e sky is warm and hazy. liz smiles at me from across the bench seat of our chevy pick- up. we’ve seen a lot of country already—dakota dust rising to the sky, a thousand photograph by alex knighton t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r acres of tall grass rocking in nebraska wind and that back road in kansas where fi refl ies licked the inky dark with their quick light—but now we’ve crossed the helena bridge out of arkansas and have our nose pointed due south, toward clarksdale, mississippi. fields of cotton and soybean stretch to far horizons of cane swamp and river trees. an old man, shovel slung across his shoulders, stands on a ditch bank. he watches us watching him. � at night we stay at a place called the shack-up inn out on highway , where a plump guy in shorts and t-shirt, who calls himself “the shackmeister,” rents out refurnished and air-conditioned shotgun shacks for forty dollars a night. he hands us the key, tells us there are moon pies on the pillows, beer in the fridge, and to come see him in the commissary for dinner. so we haul our bags inside, have a cigarette on the porch, then head over for something to eat. after a plate of what they call barbecue pork, but which tastes like a little bit of pit-smoked and shredded heaven, we sit and sip beer and talk with the shackmeister and the few other locals in for an evening drink. � ey pry our story from us: just graduated from college, road-tripping to our placements in sunfl ower as public school teachers with teach for america, thinking about hitting the louisiana coast before we have to start teaching. and we learn that the building we’re sitting in really is an old plantation commissary, where just forty years ago black tenant farmers came for groceries bought with company scrip. � ey shake their heads at this, lament that the commissary was aban- doned, that the shacks they’ve lined up for us in a neat row no longer house anyone but tourists. we study their faces, which, like ours, are fl ushed with heat and alcohol. and then the shackmeister leans in toward us. he says it’s a good thing we’re here and all, but don’t expect anything to change: “what we got here is the genetic dregs. all the good ones made it to chicago or detroit or somewhere up north. � e ones left ain’t worth a damn dime.” as the seventh-period bell rings, i rush to order the stack of class expectation sheets by the pencil sharpener, erase the board, straighten the desks. it’s the fi rst day of school, and i’m running ragged—my voice is nearly gone, i haven’t sat down in hours, and i don’t know anyone’s name. it all feels so harried, so close to the edge of chaos, or worse. i grab my clipboard and turn to go greet my seventh-period students at the door as they come in. but i see a student already in the room, his back to me, ri- fl ing through the stacks of papers by the pencil sharpener. � e yellow polo shirt of his uniform is untucked, and for being in the ninth grade he has very broad shoulders. his shaved head gleams in the fl uorescent lights. he’s not supposed s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w to be in here. � ere’s a sign outside the door that says all students are to wait for me in the hallway. i say, “excuse me, are you in seventh-period pre-algebra?” without even looking at me, he grunts something that sounds like an affi r- mative and says, “name’s corey.” � en, in one sure motion, he shoves the entire stack of expectation sheets off the table; hundreds of papers twist through the air and scatter across the fl oor. i’m shocked. i don’t know what to say. now corey’s staring right at me, grinning. i get home before liz, so i leave her a note and walk the gravel road toward the sunfl ower river. from the bridge i stare down at the muddy, slow-moving water. since we started school a month ago, we’ve done nothing but work. we’re up at : in the morning and off to work forty-fi ve minutes later. students ar- rive somewhere around seven. we teach until : .. � at’s eight hours a day of face time with students, whether in class, at lunch, on hall duty, tutoring dur- ing prep period or whatever else. � e majority of my students are two to three grade levels behind, so i hold study sessions monday, tuesday and � ursday until : in the evening, and liz stays and plans or has meetings until about the same time. i grew up in the high desert of eastern montana, putting in twelve- and fourteen-hour days bucking bales and branding cattle; i graduated magna cum laude in engineering; i worked as a software engineer for a multi- million-dollar corporation, and none of it was nearly as demanding as teaching. i plunge into the tall grass and hike along the river. � ough every day is still a stew of humidity, it hasn’t rained in the month and a half we’ve been here, and the water has dropped, slowly revealing all manner of things sunk in the steep banks: an old television, a spool of inch-thick wire, dozens of shoes, the wet and rotting carcass of a dog. one of our mutual friends, who has traveled halfway across the globe, told us on the phone the other day he wasn’t sure he could visit us in mississippi. “too foreign,” he said. and he’s right: liz and i are both thoroughly confused. we don’t know this place, these people. we get home from work exhausted, often frustrated and angry, and immediately begin get- ting ready to do it all again the next day. finally winded, i squat down between two oak trees and watch a turtle make his way down the banked wall of mud and disappear into the black water. sweat rolls down my neck. blackberry and kudzu twine up and around the river trees. to the west, the sun is a white ache in the darkening sky. t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r � e toothless old woman sits on her wide porch in a wheelchair. every day she eyes us as we walk the streets of sunfl ower after dinner, but today she calls to us and waves. i don’t catch what she’s saying. a middle-aged black woman, who looks to be the old woman’s caretaker, sees our confusion and calls out, “mrs. towle just wants to talk to y’all. come on up and i’ll grab you a chair.” she disappears inside the huge house for a moment and reappears with two straight- backed wooden chairs. we slowly step up onto the porch, and mrs. towle mo- tions for us to sit. we introduce ourselves to both mrs. towle and miriam, but miriam just smiles and steps to the other side of the porch to smoke. mrs. towle’s pallid face has fallen in on itself. her old lips fl ap without sound. each breath wracks her body. with much labor, she asks where we live here in town. we tell her, and she slowly turns her old head to us and says, “well, y’all sound like yankees.” she pauses, then, as she faces the road once more, adds, “lord, but i been tryin’ to forget about ’em.” i drive over the old train tracks and turn down church street, my student’s address on the dash in front of me. � e blacktop is grooved and worn nearly down to gravel. cypress-wood churches line either side of the road. some look to be abandoned; others are clean and neat and newly painted. i’ve been to st. benedict the moor, one of the churches on the left and one of the two catholic churches in town. in the ’ s the church hall at st. benedict was a meeting place for civil rights workers, but the fi rst time liz and i attended, the white priest sidled up to me at the end of mass—after the mostly black and elderly parish- ioners had all shook our hands and wished us well and told us it was so nice to have some young blood around—and whispered that we should try the service on the other side of town. he explained, “it’s nicer over there.” t h e r e a r e m o m e n t s i n yo u r l i f e a s a t e a c h e r, e s p e c i a l l y i f yo u wo r k w i t h s t u d e n t s w h o s u f f e r e ve r y d ay t h e b r u t a l , l i f e- s t u n t i n g b l ow s o f p ove r t y, r a c i s m a n d l ow e x p e c t a t i o n s , w h e n yo u s u d d e n l y r e a l i z e t h a t t h e r e a r e m o r e o f t h e m t h a n t h e r e a r e o f yo u . s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w at the end of the second block, a group of shirtless young men horse around with a football. � ey go silent as i drive by. i recognize a few of them from school, but they don’t wave or smile. neither do i. when i turn at the end of the block, one of the boys hollers something. freeman road is lined with shotgun shacks, some stacked up on cinder blocks, some sagging here and there, some missing large hunks of roof. i assume they’re empty, but then i notice laundry draped across porch railings, dogs wandering up and down the street. and the children: a boy, maybe six or seven, swings a stick at clouds of mosquitoes; a teenaged girl sings along with the radio, her eyes tightly closed in mock passion; a toddler throws dust into the air, laughing as it rains across his dark face. i drive to the middle of the block and pull up in front of one of the shacks. a broken chair is overturned in the dirt, car batteries stacked up against the front steps. � ere’s no railing around the porch. a woman with her back to me bounces a baby on her hip. but now the woman turns, and her face suddenly becomes nina’s face—fourteen years old, always happy, incredibly intelligent, my second-period student of the quarter who has earned a party at the local pizza hut tonight with the fi ve other students of the quarter already waiting for us there—and i realize i’m shaking. i’m no stranger to poverty. after my father died, my mother raised her three children and paid the debts on the farm with a part-time teacher’s salary of around thirteen thousand dollars. but this is something else altogether. nina hands the baby to one of the perhaps half-dozen other children on the porch, says something to them all, then turns and smiles at me as she jumps down the steps and rushes across the bare dirt yard. you see, you all up north and out west think integration and civil rights happened here and now it’s done. mr. wilkins, i’m telling you right now it ain’t so. you been seein’ it since you been down here. we don’t live together. we don’t care about one another. i’m most of sixty years old. i was born and raised in the delta. i remember what that cotton felt like in your fi ngers. i went to the freedom meetings. i marched and got loud. and when they rounded us up for it, i sat in my cell in parchman and sang. but now, thirty years later, white folks still white folks, and black folks still black folks. in the mississippi delta it goes like this: you wake to thunder, the crash of rain on tin, gunshots, the thin cries of faraway dogs; still tired, you dress and t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r stumble through the old house in the half-light; you drive south down highway and smoke a cigarette; fog closes the whole wet world behind you. my seventh-period students pour out the door; i lean against an unused locker in the hallway. � e rock and chug of diesel engines rumbles over the hys- terical laughter of children. marshall feldway junior high is the old white high school, so it’s on the white side of town; when the last bell rings, nearly all of my students—the school is percent black—have to be bused back to the other side of the tracks. it wasn’t a good day. for the last week i’ve had an uneasy truce with my sev- enth period, but today bradford said something to diamond about fi ve minutes into class—what, i don’t know—and she swore at him, then me as i tried to get her to come talk to me in the hall. as she continued to yell, bradford jumped up and pushed her over her desk. i sent both diamond and bradford to the principal’s offi ce, but it was too late. � e whole class was on edge, all thirty-four of them looking up at me: corey twitching and leering, octavia just hoping things would calm down, lamarcus gazing apathetically at it all. � ere are moments in your life as a teacher, especially if you work with stu- dents who suff er every day the brutal, life-stunting blows of poverty, racism and low expectations, when you suddenly realize that there are more of them than there are of you. in that moment the equation resolves itself far too simply, right down to the basics of physical survival, and for an instant you recognize life through the mean and frightened eyes of your students. even in my short tenure as an educator, i’ve discovered most teachers quit when this happens. � en a string of subs is called. � e students learn next to nothing for a few weeks until someone new can be found, if they can be found, and if they stay. otherwise, students sit in, say, a biology lab with no biology teacher for weeks. other times they’ll go through fi ve, six, seven teachers in a year, a semester. and it’s not just the delta. � e national fi rst-year teacher retention rate is startlingly low, somewhat less than percent. fast-forward a few years, and it drops to less than percent. public educators today, unlike even thirty years ago, are being asked to single-handedly fulfi ll the promise of this nation’s ideals by educating everyone. and this is what we must do. but it’s hard. and many teachers quit because it’s so hard. � ey also quit because they aren’t given the re- sources to do the job well or because they can’t see that they’re making any kind of diff erence or because they’re frightened. but mostly they quit because every day they not only have to teach students how to add and subtract integers but s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w also put their shoulders to that great iron wheel of history—rusted lock-tight with institutionalized inequality, deception and violence—and heave. i keep telling myself i’m not going to quit, but as the last of the students skip and kick their way out of the fetid air of the hallway, i wonder what, if anything, i’m teaching them. all weekend we’ve slept and read and rocked on the pinewood porch at a guest home up in the mississippi hill country. � e hills are the eastern border of the teardrop of fl ood plain that runs from memphis to vicksburg, the mississippi delta. and though as the crow fl ies we are maybe an hour from our house in sunfl ower, it feels like another world. we walk the old town square of oxford, where union soldiers refused to fi re on the fi ne white bricks of the courthouse, where faulkner ran the post offi ce, where thousands marched against the integration of ole miss. � e buildings are stone and tall and stately. � ere’s a sushi bar and a gourmet catfi sh house back-to-back. � ere are boutique shops and bookstores and espresso. we spend hours walking and shopping and counting the marble columns on old planta- tion houses. � is is our fi rst trip out of the delta since we moved to mississippi nearly six months ago; we’ve worked hard and somehow feel we’re owed this weekend of luxury. on sunday we wind our way out of the hills and just before noon drop down into the delta. vast fi elds of rice and soybean shake and waver in the midday sun. � e air is heavy. i smell the rot of earth and wood and still water. we cut south through the swamp town of marks, mississippi, where main street is six blocks of crumbling brick false-fronts and a shiny new liquor store. on the outskirts of town, shotgun shacks line either side of the road; there’s a grandmother with one eye talking to stray dogs. i slow as we pass the quitman county school. it looks like all schools here: grounds ringed with razor wire, single-wide trailer houses that serve as overfl ow classrooms squatting out back, the glass front doors patched with masking tape. as we look away, liz stares down the highway and says, “i’d almost forgotten. we were just an hour out, and i’d almost forgotten.” i don’t say anything. i’m thinking of all the white faces milling up and down the streets of oxford. i’m thinking about how good and easy it felt to be one of them. liz starts crying. i drive south toward sunfl ower. she stands near the front of my classroom, her cinnamon-colored hair pulled tightly back, eyes down, hands fi ddling with the hem of her shirt. she has a cof- t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r fee-and-milk complexion and is big for a fi fteen-year-old girl. � ough she does not look at me—she stares shyly at the fl oor—i can tell she’s smiling. she has a wonderful smile. � e school counselor stands behind her: “� is is jameshia davis, mr. wilkins. from now on she’ll be in your homeroom and your seventh- period pre-algebra class as well.” i nod and say thanks and show jameshia where to sit before turning back to my homeroom class. i’m telling them that last year here at marshall feldway nearly percent of the students failed to pass on to the tenth grade. i’m tell- ing them how important it is that this semester we set a goal as homeroom that every single one of us move on. i’m telling them i know they can do it, but only half of them are listening: donovan, seventeen and still in the ninth grade, sleeps in the back, his angular face gone strangely soft and slack. travis sits in the windowsill, fl exing his immense biceps for no one in particular; he has seri- ous problems with aggression and has been in and out of trouble with the police all year. nakeita and rose talk loudly about something that went on last week- end. shatara has her ear to beverly’s very pregnant belly. it’s january, the beginning of the second semester, and now i see jameshia looking up at me. i’m saying something about goals again, and she’s nodding her head, still smiling. driving south of greenwood, we stop at what looks like a small café. a few black men sit on stumps outside; they pass a bottle of liquor stuff ed in a paper bag. � e door is wide open, and the smell of slow-smoked pork and buttered greens is unmistakable and mouth-watering. we smile and walk up to the men and ask if they’re still serving lunch inside. no one answers. no one says or does anything for a moment. � en a tall, middle-aged black man appears in the open doorway. he stares at us, shakes his head, says, we ain’t got nothin’ for y’all to eat around here, and disappears back inside. on the way out of town, just before we cross the tracks, a cop pulls us over. he too is tall, though younger and lighter skinned, what delta folks call “high yellow.” he checks our ids and tells us we were driving too fast. he asks us what we’re doing over here. he tells us we’re on the wrong side of town. tells us to leave. now, i ain’t saying it wasn’t worth it. it changed a few things, mr. wilkins. gave me some hope. and for about a year, around , i believe, we all went to school to- gether. white girls sitting alongside black boys, and black girls sitting alongside white boys, and all of them listening to white teachers and black teachers. s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w but then the county passed a law saying property taxes outside the city limits could be used for nonreligious private schools, and all the whites around here set up their academies, and now you the only white man in this school, mr. wilkins. what do you think of that? you the only one after thirty years! jameshia has made friends easily, and right now, as the students change classes, i hear her deep, rolling laugh all the way down the hallway. i clutch my clipboard and brace myself. i have more or less established control in my other fi ve classes. some days are better than others, but most of the time we make our learning goals, and the scores on the weekly friday benchmark tests are good and getting better. but there’s been little improvement in seventh period: more than three-quarters are failing; the assistant principal, always packing his thick wooden paddle, visits two or three times a week; and six students have even been kicked out and sent to the district’s alternative school. if jameshia starts acting out now, my seventh period may be beyond me. she walks up to me with a group of her friends. she’s all smiles and is call- ing my name over and over: a slow rendition of something akin to “mistuh willkuhns.” her yellow polo shirt is untucked and splotched with a lunch stain. i see she doesn’t have her handouts (i don’t have a textbook; when school started my principal told me, “maybe next year”), but before i can say anything she starts in: “mr. wilkins, i know a woman be perfect for you! she real pretty and can cook you some chicken and rice, mm-hmm! you know who she is, mr. wilkins?” i try to protest, tell her i’m already engaged, change the subject to her hand- outs, but, the playful, laughing tone has left her voice, and she continues: “she my momma, mr. wilkins. and she need a good man like you. you got a job, and you ain’t too bad a lookin’ for a white man. mr. wilkins, i ain’t kiddin’ you. you just what she needs.” h e c h e c k s o u r i d ’s a n d t e l l s u s we we r e d r i v i n g t o o f a s t . h e a s k s u s w h a t we ’r e d o i n g ove r h e r e . h e t e l l s u s we ’r e o n t h e w r o n g s i d e o f t ow n . te l l s u s t o l e ave . t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r it’s saturday, and we’re browsing small-town antique stores. on our way out of belzoni, the catfi sh capital of the world, we pull over at what looks like an old railroad building or a small crop warehouse. � e cypress wood sign out front says, “bill’s bargain barn.” every letter but the isays, “bill’s bargain barn.” every letter but the isays, “bill’s bargain barn.” every letter but the in “bill’s” is capitalized, and all are drawn in red paint. we pull open the wooden door and walk in. � e interior is dark. somewhere a fan turns slowly. � ere’s detritus everywhere: rusting signs hung from the ceiling, dusty newspapers in boxes, an old gumball machine, dark lamps, dis- membered mannequins on sofas. only a twenty-inch-wide trail snakes its way through the mess. we don’t see anyone. we call out into the gloom, and a short, round man steps out from behind some boxes. he’s maybe thirty or thirty-fi ve, slightly balding. he keeps his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans and stares at the fl oor. his right foot trembles. as he begins to speak, he jerks his head up and then back down. up and back down again. he says his name is tommy. he says it again. he tells us to go ahead and look around. we thank him and walk by as he steps into a crevice between pieces of old furniture. we pretend interest in a few items. tommy follows us: “where y’all from? where y’all from? you got yankee accents, so where y’all from?” for simplicity’s sake, i tell him spokane, washington, where liz and i both went to college. tommy’s eyes instantly light up and he shouts, “gonzaga university! john stockton! john stockton! john stockton!” before liz or i can respond, a much older man pushes by tommy, who is still chanting “john stockton,” and stops in front of us. � e old man is small as well, but barrel chested and tightly muscled. he has dozens of scars across his arms, and one loud, white one that runs up from his chin and disappears under his black baseball cap that is stitched with all kinds of golden-threaded military insignia. he doesn’t introduce himself. he just starts talking. i have trouble following his monologue. it skips and jumps: for awhile we’re in the navy; then we’re cursing the county politicians; now we’re talking tires, and i’m beginning to get a little bit uncomfortable. � e man has slowly limped his way closer. he’s less than a foot away. he keeps touching my shoulder. liz takes my other arm. i feel her silently urging me to make for the door, but now the old man is waiting for me to say something. tommy chants and mumbles behind him. “teachers,” i say, hoping i’m answering the right question. “we’re teachers in the public schools.” � e old man’s face breaks into a knife-like smile. he starts talking again about all the black men he served with in korea, about what fi ne soldiers and honest friends they were. he goes on about how most of his business here in town is s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w black because the other secondhand stores around make it a point to keep their atmosphere unwelcome to them. tommy chimes in with something about how poor the public schools are, and without even glancing back at tommy the man switches to the schools. he hates—really hates, he says, as his broken teeth snap together—how all the white folks send their kids off to private schools. he’s proud to say he sent his boy to the public schools, but he knows all the white politicians, down in jackson and up in d.c., think public education is a goddamned joke. a bit stunned, we nod and agree but continue to pick our way over boxes and end tables toward the exit. � e old man keeps talking. i push open the door; the late winter sunshine is blinding after the dark of the barn. we quickly cross the gravel lot and get into our pickup. � e old man follows us out. tommy does as well and, seeing that our license plates aren’t from washington state but montana, immediately goes ballistic. he shakes his bright red face back and forth. he shuffl es from the passenger-side window to the front of the truck and back again, chanting, “but what about john stockton?” � e old man doesn’t even seem to hear tommy. as i turn the key and the engine fi res, the old man leans in my open window, grabs my wrist, looks me in the face, says, “you know, some folks say a nigger is a nigger and a nigger steals. but it ain’t so. i treat ’em like men, and they don’t steal from me.” on hall duty, the third-period bell just ringing, i watch the school principal, mr. briggs, in his shiny suit and tie, chase down derrius lee. derrius is wiry, athletic and boyishly handsome, but he’s also failing nearly all his classes and perpetually in trouble. he talks back and swears. he doesn’t do his work. he bullies other students, particularly ricardo, the only openly gay student in the school. and derrius will fi ght at the drop of a hat. you’ll hear a roar go up down the hall and push through the ring of students to see two boys swinging and slamming each other up against the lockers. too often derrius is one of those boys. and derrius’s violence doesn’t stop with his peers; he’s physically threat- ened a couple of teachers, myself included. but now mr. briggs football-tackles derrius in the hall. with derrius pinned beneath him, mr. briggs throws off his suit coat and raises his strap, a thick but fl exible three-foot hunk of leather, and brings it down hard again and again on derrius’s legs and thighs and buttocks. derrius howls and struggles. he reaches around and grabs for the strap. mr. briggs just drops it and starts in on derrius’s ribs with his fi sts. derrius is crying, still screaming when he can get his breath, pleading unintelligibly. mr. briggs continues to beat him. t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r finally, sweat rings blooming under the arms and around the neck of his daisy-yellow shirt, mr. briggs lifts himself off the boy, says something about being on time to class, scoops up his coat and strap, and walks back toward the offi ce. derrius rolls over and stands and stumbles down the hall in my direction. i slowly turn away and close my classroom door; as my students get started on their do now entry task, derrius limps past. we pile hunks of cypress and oak and old boards in an earthen pit. we step back, and a teacher friend of ours sloshes gasoline over it all; the chemical stink of it is instantly thick in my nostrils. someone passes me a bottle of bourbon. i tip my head back and bubble it one, two, three times. i pass the bottle to liz. i hear the twang and ring of a blues guitar. our friend strikes a wooden match and tosses it, and fl ames lick fi fteen feet into the dark mississippi sky. in the blazing light and shadow, i look around at all the cheering faces. it’s friday night, and we’re all schoolteachers looking to burn off a little steam. for most of us, it’s our fi rst year here in mississippi. each week, each day and hour, is hard. a few that started with us last august have already quit. not many— maybe four or fi ve out of nearly ninety in teach for america. yet some have quit. but the bottle is in my hands again. it’s time to drink bourbon and laugh with friends by a cypress fi re. � e magnolias have begun to blossom, and i’m still here. i tell him to stop, but corey just keeps beating some rhythm on his desktop. his eyes are shot with red streaks; he snorts and grins and nods in time to the song inside his skull. i can tell he’s strung out and decide to leave him alone. i turn back to the board and my lesson. but before i can get started, jameshia, who sits next to corey, says, quietly, “mr. wilkins, why don’t you do something about him? you supposed to be the teacher. with him makin’ all that noise, i ain’t gonna learn nothin’ up in here.” i l o o k u p f r o m t h e r u i n . a h a l f-b l o c k aw ay i c a n s e e t h e o l d r a i l r o a d t r a c k s . t h e h o u s e w a s j u s t b a r e l y ove r t h e l i n e , j u s t b a r e l y o n t h i s s i d e o f t h e t r a c k s , b u t t h e y b u r n e d i t a ny w ay. s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w i tell jameshia to raise her hand if she has something to say, that corey’s going to be written up for this already, that she should mind her own business. jameisha purses her lips and shakes her head. she says, loudly this time, “written up don’t mean nothin’ to him. you got to do somethin’, mr. wilkins!” as i move to my desk to get a disciplinary form, i tell jameshia to step into the hall. she looks at her friends, at corey, at me. she doesn’t go anywhere. but it’s just the same up north, mr. wilkins. white folks move out of the city, leave the black folks behind. � en they all go and blame the crime and drugs and bad schools on those that can’t aff ord to get out in the fi rst place. yeah, i been to chicago, been to new york, and i been to those suburbs too. i seen those eyes on those boys on the corner. i know what that’s all about. but y’all don’t know. ’cause we don’t live together nowhere, mr. wilkins. in the mississippi delta it goes like this: if you graduate, you get out— indianola, greenville, memphis; otherwise, you cut fi sh on a fourteen-hour shift at delta pride, sell cigarettes and mountain dew at the double kwik, or sit on a cypress stump down by the train tracks and suck cheap wine from a paper sack. she slumps in her desk, chin mashed down to her chest. i ask her again if she has her homework. she doesn’t say anything. i tell her she’ll miss her homework stamp for the day, but if she gets to work on the do now, she can still get her other two stamps. she still doesn’t say anything. i walk to the next desk, but behind me i hear her mumble. i turn back to her and calmly tell her to step into the hall. jameshia raises her head and stands up. she pushes her desk to the fl oor and says it again: “fuck you.” we stand in the dirt and gravel of the street and watch smoke curl up around the blackened foundation. ash scatters in the breeze. we heard about it last night from our neighbors, two calls and a visit: miss clarice, her makeup still impeccable at ten o’clock in the evening, wide-eyed, breathless, excited: “did you all hear? � at house those black folks moved into is on fi re! near burnt down already, i guess. i hope no one was hurt and all, but i don’t believe i know the family? did you all know them?” i look up from the ruin. a half-block away i can see the old railroad tracks. � e house was just barely over the line, just barely on this side of the tracks, but t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r they burned it anyway. of course we know the family: their niece is in liz’s kindergarten class. i swallow. i taste ash. after sunset liz and i open our windows and climb into bed and hold one another as the night sounds come slowly on. first there are the shuffl ing growls and yips of stray dogs rooting through garbage cans. � en, as the dogs too settle down to take their sleep, ten thousand crickets begin to whir and thrum. now we hear the rattling call of the cicadas, and in the strange green light thrown by our alarm clock a praying mantis steps carefully across the window screen. and fi nally the frogs: quick chirps in the trees, wild screams up from the river, and down in the cypress swamp, the dull bass thump of the bullfrog. � ese sounds carry us to sleep, and in my dreams we hold one another and are held above the cotton fi elds and cypress trees, above the big white houses and shotgun shacks, above the river by these beautiful, terrifying songs. during prep period, i hike across campus to the alternative building. i knock on the door and someone keys me inside. i’m again shocked that there’s no air conditioning and no windows, that the walls are naked brick and the exposed plumbing in the corner incessantly drips and, every few minutes, screeches with a charge of water. jameshia sits right up front. she’s not doing anything. none of the perhaps two dozen students are doing anything. i go to her desk and squat down and set the latest assignments in front of her. i talk to her about what she’ll have to do to keep up. i stop for a moment. she turns her head away from me. she’s crying. her whole body begins to shake and pitch. i leave the work on her desk and go visit with my other students in the alter- native building. some are going through the motions of completing their work, but most have given up. it’s april, and they know they’ll fail the ninth grade. � ey know that in the sunfl ower school district about half of the students who start will never graduate from high school, and they know now which half they’ll be in. when i come to work with them, they laugh or swear or just stare at the wall. i collect what homework there is to collect, talk to a few about problems they’re having and leave. � e sun is brilliant in the sky. i’m sweating. i’m crying. it’s too hard, ms. lloyd. some of them are too far gone. some days i’m so afraid of heartbreak and humiliation and anger that i don’t know how i stand in front of s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w them. i’m going to have to fail jameshia. she’s sixteen years old, and i don’t know what will happen to her. i mean, the best she can hope for is work at the double kwik or something like that. ms. lloyd, some days i look into corey’s dark eyes and i see an animal. i have dreams where i beat him. i should leave. i’m no good here. � is has all been a waste. i been teaching high school math for thirty-fi ve years, mr. wilkins. it’s been hard, but i’ve seen some mighty good things in that time. you only been at this one year, and i know you already seen a few good things, one or two at least. i ain’t sayin’ it ain’t bad, but i got hope, mr. wilkins. you got to have that hope too. hard don’t matter. easy don’t matter. and where you from don’t matter now. we don’t do this for us. we do it for those girls and boys, whether they black as me or white as you, and those good things they going to do. at least we together in this, mr. wilkins. in the mississippi delta it goes like this: dark snakes rock through the slow water of the sunfl ower river; stray dogs sun their matted bellies in the methodist church yard; always a turtle in the middle of that gravel road that bends off into the cypress trees; cardinals stream like drops of bright blood through the sky. � ere’s smothered chicken and fried catfi sh and two racks of gleaming pork ribs, cheese grits and garlic mashed potatoes, turnip greens afl oat in vinegar and butter, pinto beans and butter beans and black-eyed peas, great sheets of corn- bread and half a dozen jugs of sweet tea spread across the library table. � is is the annual planning-week faculty potluck, and i’m starving. i pile my plate high, then higher. last year i brought some kind of vegetarian dish with cilantro and broccoli fl orets. save a few polite spoonfuls, no one touched it. but this year i’m ready; i’ve brought red beans and rice with hunks of andouille sausage. i’ve been working on the recipe all summer, and i’ve been planning my classes as well. seventh period was my fault. jameshia was my fault. � is year i’m going to do better. we sit down to eat, and all the talk is about the food: who brought what, who made that, and oh, my gracious, but try a bite of this. i hear ms. james—the librarian who once told me not to go to any juke joints unless i took her along because a skinny white man like me needs a big black woman like her to watch out for him—hear her say, “now, ms. lloyd, you try a bite of these red beans and rice and tell me who made ’em.” i don’t say anything, but i’m sure they can hear my heart thumping in my chest. out of the corner of my eye, i watch ms. lloyd try a bite, then another, t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r and another. she makes a couple of guesses as to the cook. ms. james shakes her head and begins to laugh. and then ms. lloyd looks right at me: “mr. wilkins, you make these beans?” i nod. she stares at me for a moment, then leans back in her chair, smiles and says, “well, mr. wilkins, you ain’t foolin’!” i remind them of their homework assignment—two paragraphs about what our class motto, math = power math = power math = power , means in their lives—and dismiss them. � ey fi le out, the boys nodding at me, the girls smiling. and now jameshia’s standing in front of me. she’s been held back, and you can tell. she looks older, tired and discouraged, out of place next to all these bright-eyed fourteen-year-olds. but at least she’s here, i tell myself. she shifts on her feet, stares at the fl oor. she mumbles something about last year and says, “sorry.” i assure her that this is the very fi rst period of a new year, that class is going to be a lot diff erent, a lot better, and that if she works hard, i know she can succeed. and in that moment jameshia looks up at me. she doesn’t smile. she says, “mr. wilkins, i’m gonna promise you two things this year: fi rst, i’m gonna make the honor roll and be your best student. and second, i ain’t gonna swear in class no more.” she stops for a moment, thinks, and as she steps into the hallway, adds, “unless i have to.” � e little rust-colored puppy from down the street follows us back to his house. i tell him to sit, then pet him as liz knocks on the door. a woman an- swers; a little blond girl, not more than four, peeks from between the woman’s knees. liz tells them both that their dog was out, playing in the street, and we thought we’d bring him back. � e woman thanks us and pulls the puppy into the house by his collar and pauses before asking about our accents. liz tells her we’re from out west, down here teaching. she looks me over and says, “at the academy, right?” “no,” i say. “at the public schools.” she nods and thinks for a moment, says, “well, that must be real hard. i know how they don’t have the same work ethic and all over there. � e blacks, i mean. � ey’re so diff erent. it’s like another world and all. � at’s why i prefer to be with my own race. it’s just better that way.” � e little girl stares out at us from behind the bars of her mother’s legs. i think about just walking away, but i hear liz breathe and say, “i disagree. � e teachers i work with are amazing. and my students are very hardworking. even for the poverty many of them deal with every day, i’m sure my students s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w will do as well or better than students at the academy on the state tests. in my experience, when it comes to hard work, we can all get it done.” � e woman blinks quickly and puts her hand to her chest. she’s confused; her words pile out quickly, nearly on top of one another: “well, i mean, i do know the woman who runs lewis’s grocery here in town, and she operates a fi ne store, clean and nice and all. and the new black sheriff is a smart man, and the two fellows who work with my husband do a good job. i mean, i’m not a racist or anything.” she pauses, looks off over my shoulder, and continues, “come to think of it, all the black people i know—i mean, really know, by meeting them person to person—are good people. i don’t think, i mean, i’m not a racist.” terell wilson leans into the lockers to my left, folds his arms across his chest and looks soberly at the mass of students making their way out the back doors and onto the buses. terell is a class clown, always joking and fl ashing his toothy smile, but right now he’s trying to act serious, going on about how much home- work he has, and i know he’s angling for an extension on one of his assignments. i turn and look right at him: “it’s not going to happen, terell. we’ve got our second-quarter test coming up soon, and you have to be ready.” terell, who is very much sold on the idea of achieving but not necessarily sold on the work of achieving, nods and thinks for a moment. i’m sure he’s planning a new strategy, but then a friend of his who has another math teacher walks up to terell and, glancing at me, asks under his breath, “hey terell, what y’all be doin’ up in that mr. wilkins’s classroom?” terell’s eyes and mouth fl atten further into this uncharacteristically serious line, and he slowly shakes his head and says, “we be workin’ all the time. mr. wilkins got us gettin’ ready for that state test and doin’ next year’s algebra and everything else. man, i got me some homework tonight, but i’m going to get it done, sure enough. ’cause, like mr. wilkins says, i’m gettin’ the power for it.” and then, shouldering his book bag and waving to me, terell heads down the hallway toward the buses. crystal walks into mr. briggs’s offi ce and slumps into the empty chair. she glances nervously at her older sister. i begin: “mr. briggs, ms. travis, crystal, i wanted to talk to you all today because i’m worried about crystal. she is an amazing young woman—very intelligent, one of my hardest-working students— but lately her work hasn’t been meeting expectations. i’ve even had to talk to her t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r about being respectful of other students. i know she can do better, and i’d like to ask for some help or some ideas to make sure crystal can succeed.” � ere’s silence for a moment. crystal’s eyes slick with tears. mr. briggs nods at me, and i go on: “ms. travis, i sure appreciate you coming in on crystal’s behalf, but is there any chance i might be able to speak to your mother at some point as well?” crystal’s crying now, silently, head down, tears wetting her skirt. mr. briggs hands me a box of tissues, and i hand it to crystal. crystal’s sister swallows, says, “mr. wilkins, i been hearin’ about how you keep these children workin’ hard and doin’ their best and all, and i’ll work with you to do whatever we can ’cause i know crystal’s smart as all get-out, but . . .” and she pauses to look at her sister, “momma left for memphis three weeks ago and hasn’t come back.” it’s the middle of sixth period, and my students are paired up and hunched over their desks, intently working out the shortest distance between sunfl ower and itta bena using the pythagorean � eorem, when i hear the roar go up. i tell my class to stay right where they are, and i rush out the door. it’s coming from mrs. washington’s room. i cross the hall and swing the door open to see two boys going at each other. � eir shirts are off , one’s nose is pushed to the left of his face; the other sluices blood between his gritted teeth. mrs. washington and the rest of the students are circled around the perimeter of the room in a storm of papers and overturned desks. directly across the fi ght from me, i see jameshia, and she sees me. she sets her jaw, and nods. we both dive in. before i can get jamal wrapped up, jameshia has michael’s arms pinned behind his back, and she’s yelling at him: “michael, you are so goddamn stupid! � at was just stupid! you think you all tough and whatnot, gangster this and gangster that, but you just stupid!” i fi nally bear-hug jamal and carry him into a corner. i talk to him slowly and calmly. i hold his shoulders against the cool stone wall. he quits struggling and goes quiet. as the roar gives way to silence, i tell jameshia to take michael into the hall and keep him there. i say, “� anks, jameshia.” � e other students, now coming back to themselves, start grinning and hooting and applauding. in the mississippi delta it goes like this: w. c. handy woke from a mid- night dream at the tutwiler train depot to a man playing spooky music on a banged-up guitar with a butter knife. son house disappeared into memphis and christianity for thirty years because whatever got charlie, tommy and s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w robert wasn’t going to get him. you drive hours of dusty back roads as the sun goes down, drinking whiskey and listening to howling wolf. chip mccarty, our next-door neighbor, hooks his cigarette in the corner of his mouth and slowly rolls up his shirt sleeves. he traces the scars that ribbon his forearms. � ough chip is a catfi sh farmer, he still enjoys catching wild fi sh by grabbing: sinking a cored-out stump in the river, diving down to it, sticking your bare arm into the hollow of the stump for a river fi sh to bite down on, then swimming to the surface with the fi sh still trying to eat your arm. of course, when the fi sh bite, they leave scars. “� is one here,” chip continues, running his thick fi ngers along a particularly nasty-looking ridge of scar, “was nearly a hundred pounds. damn near took my arm off at the shoulder.” we laugh and share another beer and a few more stories, and as we walk away, chip points the toe of his boot at the dozen or so puppies suckling his old bitch dog and calls after us, “before y’all leave out this spring, you get you one of these puppies. i call them my boys, and i’m gonna give you one of my boys to take with you. he’ll be a little bit of the south for y’all to remember us by when you’re up in yankee country again.” we’re solving two-step equations together in an activity called “rally check.” � e students pass the whiteboard from team member to team member, each completing their part. � e timer rings, and they hold up their solutions. i give all thumbs up. � ey smile at one another and give high-fi ves and knock knuck- les and wait for the next equation. � is year my students have already advanced more than three grade levels. � ough i keep setting the bar higher and higher, they keep reaching it; their hunger and want of learning is humbling: they’ll be into the algebra i curriculum by the end of the year. and today, being up here this yea r my st udents have a lready adva nced more t ha n t hree g rade level s. though i kee p se t t ing t he ba r highe r a nd highe r, t hey kee p reaching it; t heir hu nge r a nd wa nt of lea r ning is humbl ing : t hey ’ l l be into t he a lgebra i c ur r ic u lum by t he end of t he yea r. t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w / s u m m e r in the front of my classroom feels like one of those dreams of fl ight, where the air is delicious and vital, where every small tilt and lean of your arms sends you careening above the blue earth, where it all matters more than anything you’ve ever known. before i can get the next equation on the board, there’s a knock at the door. mr. briggs pokes his head in and motions for me to step into the hallway. he hands me a folded sheet of paper and walks off , saying, “mr. wilkins, i been watching through your window here, and i like what i’m seeing. we’re gonna pass those state tests, sure enough!” i unfold the paper. it’s a note: mr. wilkins, i am just writing to tell you hi. i know you remember me from last year. i was one of your worst students, but now i am in alternative school. i miss your class. you may not believe it, but i learned a lot from you. well, i have to go. see you later. corey. it’s hot, the whole place smells of sweat and varnish and bleach. we’ve got a lot of parents tonight, though. i’ve been part of the committee that’s been trying to increase attendance at parent-teacher nights. we’ve off ered refreshments and door prizes and have asked local ministers to stress the importance of parental involvement at the schools. and it looks like it’s working. mr. briggs starts us off with school news. � en we sing “we shall overcome,” and the teachers take up their positions behind folding tables, while mr. briggs and the assistant principal haul in sheets of cookies and jugs of sweet tea for afterward. � e line of parents at my table is long. i greet each of them and hand out grade reports and tell them how much their child has accomplished and what each one can work on to get ready for the end-of-year, benchmark test. and the fathers and grandfathers and brothers and uncles shake my hand, and the mothers and grandmothers and sisters and aunts smile and fan themselves, and they all say things like, “mr. wilkins, i do appreciate your time. mr. wilkins, i will keep asking her about that homework. mr. wilkins, you keep on ’em, keep ’em working hard.” and now mrs. freeman, brian freeman’s grandmother, shuffl es up to me. she is old and bent and feisty. i once called her to talk about brian’s poor per- formance on a quiz, and she had me listen on the phone as she lectured brian up and down and grounded him until his grades improved: brian had an a by the end of the month. mrs. freeman puts a hand on the table to steady herself. she leans towards me, says, “mr. wilkins, i got my last grandson comin’ up into the ninth grade s u m m e r / t h e m i s s o u r i r e v i e w next year, and i want you here to teach him. you gonna be here again next year or not, mr. wilkins?” � ey’ve just announced the third-quarter honor roll over the loudspeaker, and jameshia’s chubby face is a mess of tears. she’s crying and hugging me and saying, “mr. wilkins, i made it. i made the honor roll! i knew i could do it, and you didn’t let me quit, and now i’m going on to high school next year, and i’m gonna miss you and all, but mr. wilkins i’m gonna to graduate!” she holds on to me for a moment longer and then steps back, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her hands. i tell her how proud of her i am. i tell her she needs to remember this, to remember the hard work she’s done and how good it feels to get where you want to go. she smiles that spectacular smile. in the spring the herons fl y north again, following the geese and songbirds, and they all follow the serpentine wanderings of the river. i hear them today, outside my open classroom window: wingbeats throbbing through the still day, their cries that ring and swell and fade. my students have gone for the summer. i showed them how they met the class goals and then some, how their hard work paid off . and i told them how proud of them i was, how they had to keep working to earn the place and power they deserved in this world, how very much i believed in each one of them. � en i let them go. � ey’re ready for high school algebra; they’re on track to get their diplomas and to have enough math credits for college. whatever it is they want to do, i hope it for them. i’ll probably never see any of them again. my second year of teaching is done, my contract commitment is up, and i’m leaving mississippi. some of the other teachers i started with in teach for america are signing on for another year, and i respect the hell out of them for it. but i’m going back to the northwest; i’ll teach there, try to follow ms. lloyd’s example: thirty-six years and counting in the place she has always called home. � e past follows us wherever we go and the world is hard all over. but it took mississippi for me to see it. mississippi has given me a good, hard kind of hope. i hear liz drive up. i gather my things, lock my classroom and walk out the back door. liz is waiting for me. � e sun trembles in the white sky. a lone heron arcs over the far trees, and i get in and we leave. troubles with reality and order through the imagination in a world of disbelief and disorder: wallace stevens and supreme fiction © . amal mohan m. s. & prof. a. khaleel rahuman. this is a research/review paper, distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution-noncommercial . unported license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/ . /), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. troubles with reality and order through the imagination in a world of disbelief and disorder: wallace stevens and supreme fiction by amal mohan m. s. & prof. a. khaleel rahuman abstract- the voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.” - sigmund freud there have been a lot of writers throughout history who praised or criticized the world’s beauty and ways. they all had their ideas and advice for humanity. but america’s most celebrated twentieth- century poet wallace stevens did not just rain down his ideas in his writings but took them as his motto for life. and he called the sum of his ideas ‘supreme fiction’. this supreme fiction, according to stevens, is a supreme level of poetry that cleanses the mind and soul of its readers and reduces the hardships they have to face in real life. in other words, supreme fiction is stevens’ replacement for the idea of god. deeply influenced by the nietzschean idea of the ‘death of god’, stevens wants to create a replacement for god for people to find comfort in a world of disbelief and disorder in the twentieth century. keywords: stevens, supreme fiction, reality, the imagination, nietzsche, death of god, world, disorder, poetry, order. gjhss-g classification: for code: troubleswithrealityandorderthroughtheimaginationinaworldofdisbeliefanddisorderwallacestevensandsupremefiction strictly as per the compliance and regulations of: global journal of human-social science: g linguistics & education volume issue version . year type: double blind peer reviewed international research journal publisher: global journals online issn: - x & print issn: - x troubles with reality and order through the imagination in a world of disbelief and disorder: wallace stevens and supreme fiction amal mohan m. s. α & prof. a. khaleel rahuman σ abstract- “the voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.” - sigmund freud there have been a lot of writers throughout history who praised or criticized the world’s beauty and ways. they all had their ideas and advice for humanity. but america’s most celebrated twentieth-century poet wallace stevens did not just rain down his ideas in his writings but took them as his motto for life. and he called the sum of his ideas ‘supreme fiction’. this supreme fiction, according to stevens, is a supreme level of poetry that cleanses the mind and soul of its readers and reduces the hardships they have to face in real life. in other words, supreme fiction is stevens’ replacement for the idea of god. deeply influenced by the nietzschean idea of the ‘death of god’, stevens wants to create a replacement for god for people to find comfort in a world of disbelief and disorder in the twentieth century. why did stevens think the world was out of order with the man-proclaimed ‘death of god’? what was wrong with the world? and why did he believe it is all because of god’s death and only a supreme fiction can save humanity out of all disorder in the absence of god? this paper attempts to focus mainly on what stevens was trying to say through his poetry and how he was striving to save the people from disbelief and disorder with his creation of supreme fiction. the article examines his troubles with reality and the order of the world bereft of an order-giving god. it is a journey through stevens’ mind to find whether we need a supreme belief in our world to live in harmony with reality. i. introduction ven from the very beginning of stevens’ literary career, he was very much fascinated by the difference and relation between reality and the imagination. he is one of the poets, as with coleridge, who could bring something to reality with his poetic imagination. his fascination has led him not only to examine the works of his present-day writers but even those from the early ages such as plato too. he was led through the philosophies of plato, kant, goethe, nietzsche, freud, and a host of others. he studied them and arrived at conclusions for himself. he respected them and took them as motivation for his writings. what stevens learned from his exploration into the writers is that the writers in the past and their writings felt more unreal and were devoid of the imagination that would change the reality of the perceptible world. the perceptible world was a constantly changing wonder to the young mind of stevens. no matter what, we can never totally rely on the past to find meanings for our present life. this is the same with writings too. some of the writings of plato may seem absurd to the present-day readers, and they will accept them only up to the extent their imagination allows it. and this imagination is linked to reality. as reality changes, so does the imagination. stevens is more than addicted to his search for the relation between reality and the imagination in his writings. surprisingly enough, there is no theory for a relation between reality and the imagination to be found in the whole of stevens’ writings. as reality is constantly changing, stevens sees the contemporary americans leaping into fancy, an inferior faculty of the mind. he is so disappointed that his people are running away from the reality of the e v ol um e x x i ss ue x i v er si on i ( g ) g lo ba l jo ur na l of h um an s oc ia l sc ie nc e - y ea r © global journals author α: m.a. english, noorul islam centre for higher education, kumaracoil, tamil nadu, india. e-mail: amalmohanacr@gmail.com author σ: head, department of english, noorul islam centre for higher education, kumaracoil, tamil nadu, india. e-mail: khaleelniu@gmail.com keywords: stevens, supreme fiction, reality, the imagination, nietzsche, death of god, world, disorder, poetry, order fascinated by all kinds of philosophical and imaginative ideas found in the world, stevens considered the idea of god as a supreme creation of the human mind. it is the supreme poetic qualities of the human mind that helped and shaped the creation of the idea of god, he believed. now the man-created god is dead, why cannot the humans replace him with something new, a new fiction? nietzsche’s famous dictum, “gott ist tot” - “god is dead”, created a huge vacuum in the heart of humanity in the nineteenth century. nietzsche examined the terror of mankind that had arisen from a world forsaken by god. nietzsche also proffered ideas for bringing back the order of the world by replacing god with another idea. and for him, the replacing idea was art. art can replace the absent god. but he never said how or discussed anything as a solution to the death of god. stevens saw this problem as an opportunity for all the poets to take the seat of the almighty now dead. stevens believed that the death of one god was the death of all gods. he firmly believed that it is now the duty of poets to bring order and peace back to the heart of humanity bereft of belief and bounded by disorder. and for that, he makes an effort to differentiate his conception of god’s death and the role of poets in a frustrated world. he creates his own re-imagining of an orderly world through a mode of enchantment called the ‘supreme fiction’. in a constantly changing world, people experience new kinds of mythological, political, economic, or poetical aspects in their life. people are being connected more than the past ever saw, and the connection will only increase irrespective of any prior acquaintance in time and space. “we lie in bed and listen to a broadcast from cairo, and so on. there is no distance. we are intimate with people we have never seen and, unhappily, they are intimate with us” (necessary angel ). stevens thinks that the desperate intimacy of his time is a threat to poetic imagination. the more the people are connected to each other, the more they would want to be accepted. and stevens believes that this connectivity of huge masses influences little learning about everything in the world and people will always fail to see what is in front of them in reality. the calmness in one’s life is directed by something far away, and this leads to the tormenting of the mind and a life of chaos and disorder. it is a great pressure of reality on society, and in turn, society is always directed by such pressure. a kind of pressure from the news in the present times can make ordinary people lose hope in humanity. pressure has been stormed into human lives for years, whether it is about the corruption of the country or news of a new world. this pressure gives us more confusion about life itself. for an american, there comes a need to know more news about england, germany, or russia, and the news just spreads to every nook and corner of the country without any contact in reality. and for many years, these events or news have made the ordinary movement of life more complicated. the present becomes a time for repenting. and this is a matter of seriousness for the artists and the poets. during the napoleonic era, the news of the present world had little or no effect on the artists or the poets. coleridge and wordsworth and sir walter scott and jane austen did not have to cope with the events of their day as much as the people of the twentieth or twenty-first century should know about the interior bombings of china or london or montreal or the destruction of the twin towers. © global journals v ol um e x x i ss ue x i v er si on i ( g ) g lo ba l jo ur na l of h um an s oc ia l sc ie nc e - y ea r troubles with reality and order through the imagination in a world of disbelief and disorder: wallace stevens and supreme fiction stevens explains that the relation of reality to the imagination will always vary. this variation may exist between the works of one age and the works of another. what exists today was never there before and will never be after. and in the present day, this relation has diminished and degenerated much from its state of being noble. the prime reason for that, stevens adds, is the “pressure of reality”. this variation happens because of the pressure of reality that binds us. it always differs in each era of human life or history. stevens makes a very easy example of this pressure of reality by noting the changes in the language of writing through the ages. there was a period of mathematical language, scientific language, the language of poetry etc. in the reality of this world. all these are the products shaped by the changes in the reality of the world at different times. in the period of the english language of and the language of wordsworth or joyce, these changes are clearly visible. this is the same pressure that leads freud to write the future of an illusion. the object of freud’s essay is to suggest a surrender to reality. he speaks of how the promise of religion has become less credible to people and an unreality in the twentieth century. he notes that there is no need for religion for men to cope with the ‘cruelty of reality’ and he supports the decline of religious belief. his advice is that accepting reality is a better way of living a healthy life, and without that, there is no hope for humanity with its simple dependence on art or god. if it is not possible to assert that the napoleonic era was the end of one era in the history of imagination and the beginning of another, one comes closer to the truth by making that assertion in respect to the french revolution. the defeat or triumph of hitler is part of a war-like whole but the fate of an individual is different from the fate of a society. rightly or wrongly, we feel that the fate of a society is involved in the orderly disorders of the present time. we are confronting, therefore, a set of events, not only beyond our power to tranquilize them in mind, beyond our power to reduce them or metamorphose them, but events that stir the emotions to violence, that engage us in what is direct and immediate and real, and events that involve the concepts and sanctions that are order of our lives and may involve our very lives; and these events are occurring persistently with increasing omen, in what may be called our presence. (necessary angel ) this is what stevens means by the pressure of reality, “a pressure great enough and prolonged enough to bring about the end of one era in the history of the imagination and, if so, then great enough to bring about the beginning of another” (necessary angel ). it is the pressure that demands the role of the imagination in human affairs in a world of disorder. perceptible world, especially, of the godless world of the twentieth century. stevens agrees with coleridge that fancy is not the same as the imagination but more of an activity of the mind, which puts things together by choice and not by will, as a principle of the human mind to strive towards realizing itself by knowing itself. without having the imagination, americans of his time are easily pulled to satisfy themselves with anything that never shows who they are. the american morals and codes in the post-nietzschean godless world are only for their self-satisfaction. this leads to the creation of unreal works that include poems, paintings, or anything in which no imagination or reality is present. but for stevens, these two factors – reality and the imagination – are the most important mediums to sustain life in this godless human world in the ‘post-death-of-god’ scenario. in such turbulent times, the imagination, stevens argues, is our most strong survival mechanism; those with a significant magnitude of it are better able to endure the crippling pressure of reality: that it is often at the end of an era is one of the peculiarities of the imagination. what happens is that it often binds itself to, and adheres to, a new reality. it is not that a new imagination emerges, but that a new reality is present. of course, the pressure of reality might be less than the general pressure. it occurs to people in tune with the conditions of their lives or according to the features of their minds. to sum up according to stevens, the pressure of reality is the determining factor in an era’s artistic disposition and also the determining factor in an individual’s artistic character. it is the imagination that is pushing back against reality’s pressure. for stevens, a poet is a well-developed individual, the “master of life”. he searches for a high order man to give that which the society needs. and this requires a man who could control the imagination and reality so easily. he should commit himself to reality. stevens speaks of the way of a poet as the “way of reality”, as the way of truth. “in all his poems with all their enchantments for the poet himself, there is the final enchantment that they are true,” says stevens in his bard college address (collection of prose and poems ). truth in poetry is created by an agreement with reality, by a powerful wave of the imagination. as the “orator of the imagination” (collection of prose and poems ), the poet should give people a faith in an era of disbelief, and he should provide the satisfactions of life that only the imagination can supply by holding onto reality. people are struggling to live their lives and becoming more careless about the world’s problems caused by man. these are the times of confusions in the present and the confusions are still increasing. people face a huge pressure of reality to push life forward, and in that race, everything they must feel, everything they must notice, is completely ignored. thus, they lose the balance of nature. here is where the role of the poet comes in, and that role is of paramount importance. people’s imagination should be provoked. stevens declares that “reality is life and life is society and the imagination and reality; that is to say imagination and society are inseparable” (necessary angel ). no politician can command the imagination. it requires a genius, a poet. poetry should be the home for the sick. it should eradicate the dirt of life and make it purified. a poet should be more concerned with social obligations than moral obligations. he should use whatever imagination and senses he could find in the world for that purpose, because it is always the imagination pressing backward the pressure of reality. but this cannot be done if the poet names himself an elite. certainly it is not to lead the people out of their confusion as moses led the israelites out of egypt, but to comfort them. he has to make his imagination theirs and thus igniting the light in their minds and their lives. only then a poet fulfills himself as a poet. a world of poetry indistinguishable from the world in which we live, or… from the world in which we shall come to live since what makes poet the potent figure that he is, or was, or ought to be, is that he creates the world to which we turn incessantly and without knowing it and that he gives to life the supreme fictions without which we are unable to conceive of it. (necessary angel ) while philosophy tries to satisfy our reason by truth, poetry uses imaginative ideas to satisfy the imagination, according to stevens. there can be no imagination in philosophy but there can be truth in poetry. so if the poet, in order to fulfill himself, should accomplish a poetry, that satisfies both reason and the imagination, to achieve something philosophy could never. this idea could even compare with the idea of god. stevens writes “…if it happened, for instance, to be an idea of god, would establish a divine beginning and end for us which, at the moment, the reason, singly, at best proposes and on which, at the moment, the imagination, singly, merely meditates” (necessary angel ). philosophy in despair, the poet finds a sanction of life in poetry that satisfies the imagination and reason. thus it makes poetry not equal to philosophy but superior to it. yet there is no definition for poetry because, according to stevens, not that it has not been found, but that there is none. v ol um e x x i ss ue x i v er si on i ( g ) g lo ba l jo ur na l of h um an s oc ia l sc ie nc e - y ea r © global journals troubles with reality and order through the imagination in a world of disbelief and disorder: wallace stevens and supreme fiction according to stevens, the subject matter of poetry is not that “collection of solid, static objects extended in space but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes; and so reality is not that external scene but the life that is lived in it. reality is the things that are” (necessary angel ). and in reality, there is pressure from everywhere in the forms of violence, especially, physical and spiritual violence. they are projected onto the world problems. by confronting all such events from the world, life becomes more anesthetized and the mind is left with no imagination. by the end of imagination, stevens means that we are attaching ourselves to a new reality that is not created by our reality. but stevens believes that this can vary from individual to individual because whatever happens, it is in our hands to carry on with life. it depends on the circumstances of our lives and the characteristics of our minds. so to be clear, the artistic character of each individual depends on this pressure of reality and how one confronts it. this is where stevens sees the possibility for the poets and the purpose of their works. so it is the “pressure of reality” that controls the poetry and thus the poets are asked to take the colossal part in bringing order to the world in disorder. poetry is universal. aristotle once cited “in relation to the point that poetry is a process of the © global journals v ol um e x x i ss ue x i v er si on i ( g ) g lo ba l jo ur na l of h um an s oc ia l sc ie nc e - y ea r troubles with reality and order through the imagination in a world of disbelief and disorder: wallace stevens and supreme fiction stevens believes that this imagination could be his supreme force; a remedy for all the chaos and disorder created by the ‘death of god’, but recognizes that it needs more reachable and strong demonstration, one that poetry provides: the idea of pure poetry, essential imagination, as the highest objective of the poet, appears to be, at least potentially, as great as the idea of god, and, for that matter, greater, if the idea of god is only one of the things of the imagination...logically, i ought to believe in essential imagination, but that has its difficulties. it is easier to believe in a thing created by the imagination. a good deal of my poetry recently has concerned an identity for that thing. (letters - ) stevens raises pure poetry beyond the spiritual, to an ultimate value and entraps himself to this only task of defining the essential of poetry. he takes this task throughout the rest of his career and calls it the ‘supreme fiction’. through a journey through the poems of stevens, we can really understand his need for replacing the idea of god with a ‘supreme fiction’. to him, poetry and god are equal fictions of the human mind. as god is a supreme fiction of the human mind, poetry is the supreme fiction of the poetic imagination. poetry is the supreme fiction of wallace stevens. personality of poet. this is the element, the force that keeps poetry a living thing, the modernizing and ever- modern influence” (necessary angel ). everything that makes a poet an individual, all external and internal factors depend on the creative process of poetry. there is both aspiration and inspiration which lead to liberation of the poet’s life by himself writing poetry that accomplishes the purpose of his life. stevens speaks here of an experience that is liberating. these feelings of the experience are a kind of purification of the soul and establishing a self, and stevens says these experiences are not different from the degree of experiences of saints, a kind of a mystic one. stevens is clearly not trying to make a saint out of poets or poet out of saints. but this idea is common place knowledge for aesthetic satisfaction. stevens questions the beliefs of paradise offered by the gods and religions and criticizes them as false and unrealistic. he disagrees with the beliefs brought in along with god. he also stands against the human thoughts on death. he asks humanity to see death as a positive thing and to accept it. to him, it is only the end of life, a normal and inevitable occurrence. rather than running hard on life or trying to conquer every height of life, stevens advises to stand still and enjoy life as simple as one can. life is this simple to stevens. he explains that in a world without god or faith or reason, the imagination is the door, and modern poetry or supreme fiction is the key to an interesting and satisfying life. unlike god, poetry, through its artistic imagination, helps humanity see the beauty of life and on the other hand, if we say that the idea of god is merely a poetic idea, even if the supreme poetic idea, and that our notions of heaven and hell are merely poetry not so called, even if poetry that involves us vitally, the feeling of deliverance, of a release, of a perfection touched, of a vocation so that all men may know the truth and that the truth may set them free - if we say these things and if we are able to see the poet who achieved god and placed him in his seat in heaven in all his glory, the poet himself, still in the ecstasy of the poem that completely accomplished his purpose, would have seemed, whether young or old, whether in rags or ceremonial robe, a man who needed what he had created, uttering the hymns of joy that followed his creation. this may be a gross exaggeration of a very simple matter. but perhaps that remark is true of many of the more prodigious things of life and death. (necessary angel ) why does stevens believe that “god is dead” as nietzsche declares? why does he want a replacement for the idea of god instead of anything in the world, or what is the trouble in believing in a god and things coming with him? the main reason is, to stevens, god was a lie or a great artistic creation of compassion, made for humanity and by humanity. so with the death of god, stevens felt the void left in the mind of humanity for leading a life in harmony. it is here where the poet comes in with his artistic qualities. stevens writes, “...in an age of disbelief, when the gods have come to an end, when we think of them as the aesthetic projections of a time that has passed, men turn to a fundamental glory of their own and from that create a style of bearing themselves in reality. they create a new style of bearing in a new reality” (collection of prose and poems ). he turns to art for defining this new style of bearing, specifically poetry, to investigate its role in a godless society. and it is here where he turns to the role of poetry and the purpose of a poet. “the poetry that created the idea of god will either adapt it to our different intelligence, or create a substitute for it, or make it unnecessary” (letters ). the substitute hinted at here later becomes stevens’ ‘supreme fiction’. stevens believes that with the death of god, there comes a time when people will believe that god is a fictive idea or a being, and humanity will search for a new replacement idea. he thinks that the responsibility of finding such an idea rests in the hands of the poets. but to believe it requires a great inspiration. and it is that inspiration stevens is trying to provide to humanity through his poems. he was very much attached to this idea. everything we believed so far is just an imagination created by man with all his poetic qualities. and stevens thought of a replacement that could change the future of humanity and him. this is the beginning of stevens’ idea of ‘supreme fiction’. v ol um e x x i ss ue x i v er si on i ( g ) g lo ba l jo ur na l of h um an s oc ia l sc ie nc e - y ea r © global journals troubles with reality and order through the imagination in a world of disbelief and disorder: wallace stevens and supreme fiction brings order to a disorderly life. it reassures faith and hope in oneself and the world around inhabited by human beings. stevens’ poems never define what his supreme fiction is, but one can find the remains of his supreme fiction in them. in the poem to a high-toned old christian woman, he compares poetry and god as equal fictions of the human mind and explains the powers of poetry, which is what supreme fiction also demands. poetry’s dominance as a means of expression and enjoyment, and also as a means of sublime experience is important to stevens. and in sunday morning, he shatters the traditional beliefs of paradise offered by the religions and criticizes the false hopes and ideas provided by the religions and myths, and calls them unrealistic. he asks humanity to see death as a good thing like life and advises to accept it as it is. in of modern poetry, stevens discusses poetry as an idea of supreme fiction by explaining that the essence of poetry is change and the essence of change is that it gives pleasure. a poetry that reconciles and satisfies the people who lost all the beliefs and faiths in troubled times and brings order to the reality of their life is ‘supreme fiction’. through this poem, stevens gives a clarion call to the poets to create a ‘supreme fiction’. and in the poems disillusionment of ten o’ clock and the idea of order at key west, stevens explains that in a world without god or faith or reason, imagination is the door and modern poetry or supreme fiction is the key to life. anecdote of the jar explains the supremacy of nature’s beauty and creativity of the imagination and how the imagination can act on reality and be used to bring beauty and order to life. the poem the snow man explains the way of poetry in bringing order to the life of humanity, and the poem the man with the blue guitar gives hope and reassures faith in the mind of humanity through stevens’ incredible talent and work of genius manifesting through his poetry. ii. conclusion wallace stevens calls upon his fellow poets, and this new responsibility makes him charged, with the creation of new values, and with the inputting of a new faith. the disenchanted and gloomy tone in a world generated by the death of god can be recreated by the unique capabilities of the poet. he can reproduce the world’s mysteries and illusions it once held. he should create ‘the necessary angel’, the illusory faith, which is the only kind of belief that could hold a modern society in order. in a letter to henry church, stevens writes, “i said that i thought that we had reached a point at which we could no longer really believe in anything unless we recognized that it was a fiction” (letters ). this is the very kind of fiction that the poet can supply. this is the very kind of fiction that stevens, as a poet, supplies. but stevens repeatedly emphasizes that this is an exceptional skill the poet has to instill in himself. in the adagia, stevens writes, “after one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption” (wallace stevens: notes toward a supreme fiction really opens up the way for ‘supreme fiction’ with a more philosophical tone and at a critical level where stevens talks a lot about its idea, essence and possibility. this is the supreme fiction, the new experiment by stevens with poetry that brings back a much-needed order to a society that suffers from a lack of focus and a total lack of belief but still possessing a fervent need for both. poetry is supreme in that it is light, life-affirming, earth- affirming, enchanting, mysterious, and, above all, conscious of its fictional nature. and further, the poem is something so effortless and pleasant to believe in. stevens proclaims that poetry is no less a fiction than god. this is the basis of stevens’ conception of the poem’s redemptive essence. it is what flows out of the friction between reality and imagination while embodying both. at a philosophical level, the debate on man’s rational thought against the beliefs and the faiths in a supreme being dawned on humanity only during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries with the advent of nietzsche, and it still continues through the veins of the twenty-first century. nietzsche and kant are such examples of philosophers who dared men to know, to think for themselves, and then depend on any other way of life other than the way of god or a religion. to them, faith has caused a lot of problems historically. therefore, they tended to choose reason instead of faith. they started to believe in science and evidence rather than in faiths and beliefs. a life without faith cannot be in order, cannot be in harmony. the world cannot fully understand the scientific findings through rationality alone. human existence is full of paradoxes, and it requires irrationality to live it. we cannot write a book on how to live. we only have to live it. and life is a mixture of rational and irrational beliefs. to live in harmony with oneself and the surroundings, a ‘supreme belief’ is required. when god is declared dead in human history, people’s faiths and beliefs are to be put somewhere else other than science. that is why humanity requires a ‘supreme being’ as god. but when people become more rational and start to think by themselves, harmony is more in conflict and disorder is the result. and it is here where stevens wants to save humanity. when everyone started to lose belief and when the twentieth century god-free world stood still with chaos, stevens stood up, tried to create something magnificent and beautiful as a new order through the power of the imagination, through the avatar of ‘supreme fiction’. © global journals v ol um e x x i ss ue x i v er si on i ( g ) g lo ba l jo ur na l of h um an s oc ia l sc ie nc e - y ea r troubles with reality and order through the imagination in a world of disbelief and disorder: wallace stevens and supreme fiction stevens believes that language is important, that poetics would overcome nihilism in the wake of a departed god. but stevens does not see this as a question of sickness and moral value, but merely as a desperate need for order, for rework and revival of the world through the poetry supplied by the “benign illusion” of the imagination. stevens sets tirelessly to satisfy this need, to find a poetic theory and practice, to find the ‘supreme fiction’, a poetics of freshness and a poetics that “rejects trash” (wallace stevens: collected poetry and prose ). and stevens’ idea of ‘supreme fiction’ shares some important points with nietzsche, especially, in how they both choose art to deal with the death of god, which takes on an almost celestial importance, but which carries a crucial element of scepticism and lightness. each confers praise on abstract art that changes and gives pleasure. the art both emphasized carries key world affirmations, the order in a disorderly world of no gods. nietzsche just delivered an important message: “god is dead,” and disappeared behind it. stevens is embodying that message a step beyond. his poetry is, in fact, the embodiment of a completely reverent, metaphorical, and necessarily redemptive new kind of faith. poetry is the fundamental creative creed nietzsche refers to. the nietzschean guideline to a deified art is eventually realized in wallace stevens, in his poetry, in his ‘supreme fiction’. references références referencias i. primary sources: . stevens, w. ( ). the necessary angel: essays on reality and the imagination (unabridged edition). vintage. . stevens, w., kermode, f., & richardson, j. ( ). wallace stevens: collected poetry and prose (library of america) (reprint ed.). library of america. collected poetry and prose ). poetry becomes the ultimate value after god because of the curative and cleansing myths it is capable of spinning. miller rightly points out that “in defining poetry as a substitute for religion, stevens is joining himself to a tradition extending from the romantics through matthew arnold down to our own day” (miller poets of reality ). arnold predicted in that “...most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry” (essays in criticism ). stevens’ conception of the poem and its redemptive qualities is much the same, but less of a hypothesis than of a fact, one which stevens expresses and explores simultaneously in his poetry. . stevens, h. (ed.).( ). letters of wallace stevens. new york: alfred a knopf ii. secondary sources: . arnold, m. ( ). essays in criticism: the study of poetry; john keats; wordsworth. united states: allyn and bacon. . brazeal, g. ( ). the supreme fiction: fiction or fact? journal of modern literature, ( ), - . retrieved september , , from http://www. jstor.org/stable/ . bates, milton j. ( ): "major man and overman: wallace stevens' use of nietzsche." southern review - . web. apr. . . bloom, h. ( ). the anxiety of influence: a theory of poetry ( nd ed.). oxford university press. . leggett, b. j. ( ). early stevens: the nietzschean intertext. durham: duke university press, print. . nichols, l. ( , december ). >talk with mr. stevens. nytimes. https://archive.nytimes.com/www. nytimes.com/books/ / / /home/stevens-talk. html . miller, j. hillis. ( ). "wallace stevens." poets of reality: six twentieth-century writers. new york: athenaeum, - . print. . maeder, b. ( ). the wallace stevens journal, ( ), - . retrieved october , , from http://www.jstor.org/stable/ . vendler, helen. ( ). wallace stevens: words chosen out of desire. knoxville: u of tennessee p, print. iii. tertiary sources: . course hero. ( , january ). poetry of wallace stevens study guide. in course hero. retrieved september , , from https://www.coursehero. com/lit/ poetry-of-wallace-stevens/ . wallace stevens. (n.d.). poetry foundation. retrieved september , , from https://www. poetryfoundation.org/poets/wallace-stevens for stevens, god has been a fiction, and to poetry he is no less a fiction than reality. supreme being gone, supreme fiction is born. stevens writes, “by supreme fiction, of course, i mean poetry” (letters ). stevens’ development of this new kind of poetry, that replaces god from his throne, reaffirms order in the society and needs a much greater reparative work. in his great poem, ‘notes toward a supreme fiction,’ stevens tries to describe how the poem weaves the magic. as stevens writes, “it is implicit in the title that there can be such a thing as a supreme fiction,” (letters ) and in “notes,” he sets out to show us how. 	troubles with reality and order through the imagination in a world of disbelief and disorder: wallace stevens and supreme fiction 	author 	keywords 	i. introduction 	ii. conclusion 	references références referencias "where / do i begin and end?": circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats "where / do i begin and end?": circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats hannah simpson wallace stevens journal, volume , number , spring , pp. - (article) published by johns hopkins university press doi: for additional information about this article [ access provided at apr : gmt from carnegie mellon university ] https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ the wallace stevens journal . (spring ): – . © johns hopkins university press. “where / do i begin and end?”: circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats hannah simpson the “fascination with geometric forms,” miranda b. hickman observes, “provided many modern writers with a lan-guage through which to imagine and articulate their ideals” (xiii). this article investigates the circular imagery in wallace stevens’s and w. b. yeats’s poetry, arguing that both men’s use of the circle as a recurring image can be read as reflective of their opposing political ideologies. examining yeats’s “the second coming,” “nineteen hundred and nineteen,” and a vision, and stevens’s “connoisseur of chaos,” “the sail of ulysses,” “the man with the blue guitar,” and “notes toward a supreme fiction” reveals stevens’s modification of yeats’s universally subsuming circle into his own pluralistic and localized device. both yeats and stevens turn to the circle as an ordering structure when faced with the political crises of modernity, including the chaos provoked by anglo-irish conflict and two world wars. joseph frank explains this shared move by arguing that when “the external world is an incompre- hensible chaos” and its artists feel unable to “take pleasure in depicting this world in their art,” they might instead turn to “linear-geometric forms” that “have the stability, the harmony” for which they yearn ( ). whether we read yeats’s and stevens’s turn to the circle as part of the psychological response that frank propounds, or as stevens’s conscious reworking of yeats’s established high modernist move, an exploration of yeats’s and stevens’s use of the circle image reveals a fascinating coun- terpointed relationship between their respective political beliefs. caroline levine instructively laments that literary critics have “typically treated aesthetic and political arrangements as separate,” despite the fact that in “sorting out what goes where, the work of political power often involves enforcing restrictive containers and boundaries. . . . in other words, poli- tics involves activities of ordering, patterning, and shaping” ( ). similarly, yeats’s fondness for and stevens’s resistance to the universalizing circular structure mirrors their differing early political ideals. yeats offers a universalizing circle that encompasses and structures all of history’s chaos and change, replicating his early faith in a single order that governs all beings. his well-documented flirtation with irish and circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats european fascism in his youth demonstrates his interest in the totalizing, monocratic power structure, similar to that embodied by his all-inclusive circular forms. the individual will is given up to the collective in the fas- cist state; the individual is absorbed into the universal circle structure in yeats’s poetry. stevens, like yeats, invokes the circle as an ordering struc- ture that acts in opposition to the confusion that he saw in the political conflicts around him, and more broadly in the ceaseless flux of the exter- nal world. crucially, however, while stevens follows yeats in seeking in geometric form a redemptive or restorative order, the circles in his poetry behave very differently, being part of “the renovation of the image” that bonnie costello cites as the “most significant project of modernist poetry” ( ). although stevens’s circles do attempt to order the fragmented chaos of modern life, they are multiple, imaginative constructions with a more personal reach, rather than the single, universalizing structure that yeats envisions. stevens resists the absorption of the individual into the mass structure, and this is reflected in his mistrust of any all-encompassing politics, whether right- or left-wing—what bart eeckhout identifies in stevens’s early poetry as a “radical individualism at a time of overbearing collective and monolithic ideologies” ( ). stevens’s circular structures consistently embody his rejection of any totalizing political view, vaunt- ing instead the imaginative, personal ordering of existence. scholars have recurrently read stevens as politically apathetic or unengaged; while this view has been productively challenged elsewhere, reading stevens’s sus- picion of political identification through his circle imagery offers another means of countering these apolitical readings, answering alan filreis’s incredulous question as to “why a poet as shrewd as stevens could . . . have had such a poor sense of how his poetry situated itself politically” (modernism ). stevens’s circle imagery is in part his way of articulating his conscious resistance to any totalizing political allegiance, rather than a symptom of his retreat into an ivory tower of apolitical poetry. eugene paul nassar and david laguardia have both touched on the importance of the circle in stevens’s poetic work, but neither accords the image extensive treatment. laguardia somewhat obliquely and perhaps even unconsciously links the rejection of historical and poetic tradition with the circle: “stevens wishes to purge the old structures—destroy them by imaginative acts—so that history cannot inhibit the mind’s perception of ‘the gorgeous wheel’ of reality that follows the paths of the imagina- tion’s flux” ( ). nassar more explicitly observes that “the usual figure to sum up stevens’ attitude towards all these various ‘curvings’ of reality is the circle,” but nevertheless reads this circle as a wholly negative im- age for stevens, claiming that “this obvious culminating of all curves and arcs is something to be avoided. . . . to live too long within an imagi- native mundo is to be locked in a closed circle” ( ). nassar misses the relationship between stevens’s circles and the high modernist circle, and how stevens keeps his own circles constantly turning within his poetry to the wallace stevens journal render them a symbol of the individual’s poetic power. moreover, neither nassar nor laguardia makes a connection between stevens’s aesthetics of the circle and his political ideology. *** possibly yeats’s most famous use of circle imagery appears in “the second coming,” in the oft-quoted line “turning and turning in the widening gyre” (cpy ). the gyres in yeats’s cosmology and poetry, as described in a vision, are formed of two spirals structured from the apex of their respective cones round their sides, increasing to fullest expansion at the base of the cones. these gyres revolve constantly and when a narrowing and a widening gyre reach their limit, the one the utmost contraction the other the utmost expansion, they change places, point to circle, circle to point . . . and continue as before, one always narrowing, one always expanding, and yet bound for ever to one another. (critical edition – ) the circular motion of the gyres represents the trajectories taken by indi- vidual beings as they move through phases of life, and also the histori- cal trajectory of civilizations as they develop and decline. the gyres thus contain “every possible movement of thought and of life,” yeats claims (a vision ). in a note to “the second coming,” yeats observed that “all our scientific, democratic, fast-accumulating, heterogeneous civiliza- tion belongs to the outward gyre” (cpy ); as “heterogeneous” as that civilization might be, it “all” belongs, is “all” encompassed, within the movement of the gyre. in a vision, yeats also describes the individual’s journey through life’s changes and reincarnations by way of two other circular structures: the “great wheel” and the phases of the moon. every individual can be lo- cated on these structures, and their disposition extrapolated from that position. this circle structure is, as graham hough puts it, “a vast design, so intricate that all experience could find its place within it, and yet be part of the same pattern” ( ). both the individual’s and history’s cyclical progress are contained within yeats’s circle images; these circles are so expansive as to contain every conceivable element of existence. there is room even for chaos in this circular order, as evoked in both “the second coming” and “nineteen hundred and nineteen.” such chaos becomes part of a greater order: the predictable and inevitable chaos that marks the switch from one gyre to another, which will end as inevita- bly as it began. the “whirl” of the “platonic year” in “nineteen hundred and nineteen” (cpy ) is, as michael wood notes, “an order that can circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats subsume all disorders, contain any amount of violence and turbulence” ( ). the circular figure and movement accords an all-encompassing shape and order to what otherwise threatens to be an overwhelming chaos “that pitches common things about” (cpy ). the “whirl” that might otherwise act as another ruinous, disordering force is rendered an agent of order by its circular direction. the formal circular qualities of “the second coming” replicate the ordering and unifying potential of the cir- cular form: the repetition of certain words—“turning,” “loosed,” “surely,” “at hand,” “second coming,” “out”—mimic the circling return that the “second coming” itself enacts, and provides a similarly unifying, ordering structure for the poem (cpy – ). yeats’s circles allow him to perceive a reassuring order in the modern pandemonium around him. there is, however, a darker side to this system of ordering individuals and history: the determinism and the de-individualization of the beings caught within it. every individual and every civilization move inexorably about these circular structures. the gyre, the great wheel, and the moon offer various circular forms that not only contain all humanity but also control their movement in an inescapable order. as is evoked in “nineteen hundred and nineteen,” individuals are “whirled” within this system, “their tread” regulated by the rhythm of the presumably circular gong (cpy ); however “wearied running round and round in their courses” they may be (cpy ), their free will is given up to the monocratic col- lective form. intensifying this sense of determinism, yeats presents his circular struc- tures as preexisting and discoverable by the insightful poet, rather than being imaginative or poetically created structures. these circular forms are discovered or intuited rather than constructed by the individual. significantly, yeats credits the revelation of the circular structures of a vision to the spirits that spoke to him through his wife georgie’s auto- matic writing, rather than claiming to have constructed them himself. likewise, in “the second coming,” the revelation of the circular form of history is greeted with the speaker’s acknowledgement “now i know,” combining with the sudden quality of the “revelation” of the poem to demonstrate how the circular structure is revealed to rather than created by the individual, something that preexists, and will continue to exist after, the individual who perceives it (cpy ). correspondingly, in “nineteen hundred and nineteen,” yeats mocks those who think they can impose their own ordering structure on the world, those who “planned to bring the world under a rule / who are but weasels fighting in a hole” (cpy ). those who seek to foist their own order on the chaos around them are in fact caught within the universalizing circular structure, the “hole” that entraps them. the individual, even the gifted poet, can only “read the signs” rather than impose structures (cpy ); the ordering circular structure preexists and subsumes the individual. the wallace stevens journal yeats’s all-encompassing, strictly ordering circle imagery links to his fascist-inflected politics. although elizabeth cullingford has tried to distance yeats from fascism, most scholars from louis macneice in onwards agree that, as conor cruise o’brien puts it, yeats “was as near to being a fascist as the conditions of his country permitted” ( ). reed way dasenbrock, for example, observes that yeats “consistently had com- plimentary things to say about fascist regimes from until his death” and “was intimately involved in the abortive irish fascist movement, the blueshirts” ( ), including composing a series of marching songs for them in the early s. yeats himself described his developing system in april as “fascism modified by religion” (lwby ). fascist italy offered him a model: after the blackshirts’ successful march on rome in october , he wrote to h. j. c. grierson that “the ireland that reacts from the present disorder is turning its eyes towards” mussolini’s italy (lwby ). his attraction to italian and irish fascism was stimulated in part by what he called his “deep gloom” concerning this “present disor- der” in ireland (lwby , ). this disorder called for, he thought, a “re- turn to conservative politics” (lwby ) that would satiate his “rancor against all who, except under the most dire necessity, disturb public or- der” (cpy ). here we can see how yeats’s sense of politics was closely bound to the ideas of order and disorder that would stimulate his use of circle imagery in his poetry. just as the circle in yeats’s poetry and cosmol- ogy subsumes and orders all existence into one united, precisely regulated being, so too the fascist political order that yeats envisions would unite ireland in a single, orderly entity. yeats makes an implicit link between the circle structure and his fas- cist leanings in his comments on meeting general eoin o’duffy, leader of the irish blueshirts: “i was ready, for i had just re-written for the seventh time the part of a vision that deals with the future” (lwby ). given that a vision is the text in which yeats most explicitly lays out his use of gyre, wheel, and moon imagery, his association of the text with his politi- cal activities—and, specifically, with his engagement with the irish fascist movement—offers a connection between his circular structures and his desire for an ordered, unified state. similarly, “the great wheel” section of the version of a vision is littered with footnotes citing the work of giovanni gentile, the philosopher “spokesman” of the italian fascist regime who would “give public expression to what was to become the doctrine of fascism” as the ghostwriter of mussolini’s a doctrine of fascism (gregor , ), and of benedetto croce, an early (though later disillusioned) sup- porter of mussolini’s fascist government. while yeats too eventually be- came dissatisfied with fascist violence, even withdrawing his permission for the irish blueshirts to use his marching songs, nevertheless his all- encompassing, monocratically ordering circular structures in his poetic and cosmological writings reflect his continued faith in a similarly all- encompassing, monocratically ordering political structure. circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats stevens likewise invokes the circle as an ordering structure in the face of the “orderless flux of reality,” as laguardia characterizes stevens’s vision of the world around him ( ). the essay “the shaper” implies that the necessary shape the poet makes out of chaos is circular. stevens calls paul rosenfeld, the literary, art, and music critic, “a shaper” or “schöpfer, who lived for the sake of schöpfung”; the word schöpfung itself is drawn from the german verb schöpfen, which means both “to create” and “to scoop.” the german term, presumably deliberately employed by the anglophone stevens, brings together the concept of artistic creation and circularity. the artist’s task is to turn experience into a circular form, the essay reiter- ates; the “world composed of music,” for example, will “whirl round in music alone” (cpp )—the word “whirl” deriving from the old norse hvirfla, meaning “to turn around,” or hiverfill, meaning “circle.” stevens follows yeats, then, in offering a circular form as the appropriate ordering structure for the modern individual. however, stevens’s ordering circles differ from yeats’s circles in two key ways. first, they have an individual rather than universal compass; second, they are imaginatively created rather than revealed as a preexisting structure. in stevens’s poetry, the individual’s reality is productively “curved” by the poetic imagination, rather than the all-encompassing circular forms of universal reality being revealed to the privileged poet. as yeats’s circular structures embody his political leanings, so too do stevens’s circles reflect his own ambivalent attitude toward political identification. scholars have long debated the degree of political engagement that can be traced in stevens’s poetry, with costello perhaps best summarizing the current cautious consensus: “stevens’s ‘ideas of order,’ while they are not social and political ideas, nevertheless arise within a world stirred up by the changes in these spheres of experience” ( ). one of the most clearly recorded instances of the allegedly politically unengaged stevens’s early involvement with the american political sphere is his covering of the mckinley-bryan presidential race in , as a freshly graduated reporter for the new york tribune. stevens’s position as a political reporter ensured that he was acutely engaged with the presidential race and the two dis- tinct visions of the country’s future that each candidate offered. william jennings bryan, the democratic and populist candidate, envisioned “an isolated, agrarian united states” (longenbach – ) that would be anti- corporate, anti-military, and anti-imperialist. government, to bryan’s mind, touched only “a part” of the “small arc of that circle which we spend on earth,” rather than “the infinite circle of existence,” and should not presume to do further (bryan ). william mckinley, the incumbent republican candidate and ultimate victor, championed “an imperialist, in- dustrial nation” with a resoundingly international presence (longenbach ), continuing what philip s. golub has termed the late-nineteenth and twentieth-century american government’s “imperial cosmology, that is, a belief system about the ordering of the world” that privileged american the wallace stevens journal authority and led to “nearly continuous [american] territorial and eco- nomic expansion” ( ). we might summarize, then, by saying that bryan focused on the local and the domestic, american individualism and self- sustaining self-reliance, whereas mckinley offered a nation with a broader scope of ambition, a “pervasive culture of expansion and force” (golub ), encouraging the large institutions of business, industry, and the military, and determinedly expanding america’s international sphere of influ- ence on the global stage. that stevens took the trouble to return home to reading, pennsylvania, to vote for bryan in november demon- strates his early inclination toward the localized and the individualized. throughout his life, stevens would continue to favor these narrower, more individualized spheres in matters political and beyond, and it is precisely this ideology that i suggest can be traced in the differences between his circular imagery and the grand yeatsian circle. indeed, even a vote for bryan in was in many ways a vote for something still less concretely defined than the traditional political party, as james longenbach has suggested. although ostensibly a collective movement of the common people struggling against a privileged elite, bryan’s “neo-populism” is characterized by longenbach as an “uneasy populist alliance of ideologies culled from the political right and left” ( ). this sense of uneasy alliance, oscillating between two political stances while warily refusing to commit wholeheartedly to identification with ei- ther one, would come to characterize stevens’s own later politics. by , for example, when he was asked by new verse, “do you take your stand with any political or politico-economic party or creed?” he responded, “i am afraid that i don’t” (cpp ). he refused identification with the po- litical right and the “so-called social revolutionists” with whom hi simons tried to align him, but also told ronald lane latimer in , “i hope i am headed left, but there are lefts and lefts, and certainly i am not headed for the ghastly left of masses” (qtd. in longenbach , ), punningly aligning the american marxist publication new masses with the common masses. stevens, then, refused the absorption of the individual into the mass of either left- or right-wing politics. stevens’s concern with the relation of the individual to the mass ex- tended to his querying the relation between the poet and the general pub- lic. he evidences recurrent anxiety concerning the possibility of being sub- sumed into the general populace, mirroring yeats’s own disillusionment with his early attempts to engage the public masses via the abbey theatre. longenbach records that stevens copied out several excerpts dealing with this question early in his career, including sully-prudhomme’s suggestion that the ideal artist “draws into himself, encloses himself in his pride and individualism. he disdains the crowd. . . . he places himself above it” (qtd. on ). the influence of these early reflections is evident in stevens’s own later writings on the relationship between poet and public. he resented the pressure for poetry to express a set political dogma or order: “i might circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats be expected to speak of the social, that is to say sociological or political, obligation of the poet. he has none,” he declared in “the noble rider and the sound of words” (cpp ). his concern with the individual’s absorp- tion into the universal mass in modern existence—“there is no distance. we are intimate with people we have never seen and, unhappily, they are intimate with us” (cpp )—was allied with his suspicion of the poet’s risk of becoming subsumed by the political masses: the poet absorbs the general life: the public life. the politi- cian is absorbed by it. the poet is individual. the politician is general. . . . [the poet] must remain individual. as individual he must remain free. the politician expects everyone to be ab- sorbed as he himself is absorbed. (cpp ) poetry thus became for stevens a field of tension between the poetic self and the wider public, the abstractly artistic and the explicitly political. in either dogmatically ordered politics or politically dogmatic poetry, the self risks being lost, absorbed within a fixedly prescribed poetic and political order, the individual submerged within the de-individualized, shaped, and aestheticized mass. in stevens’s employment of the circle in his poetry, then, we see his attempts to establish an alternative comprehensible order that is, crucially, distinct from the overdetermined structure that would rob the individual of free will and of productive, imaginative engagement with the surround- ing world. “connoisseur of chaos,” published in , expresses the sense that modern existence has lost this unified whole: “these opposite things partake of one, / at least that was the theory, when bishops’ books / resolved the world. we cannot go back to that” (cpp ). the attempt to enforce too prescriptive an order on the chaotic modern world produces more inhibiting confusion instead of any kind of resolution, since “a vio- lent order is disorder,” the poem tells us (cpp ). rather than attempting to encompass the universe in a stable, predetermined structure, as yeats’s gyres do, stevens’s reader is urged to accept that “chaos” is the new “or- der” of modern existence, that “a great disorder is an order” (cpp ). stevens’s expression of these two recognitions—“a violent order is dis- order” and “a great disorder is an order”—paradoxically forms a unified whole, a form of “essential unity”: “these / two things are one” (cpp , ). importantly, however, this unity is not a “fixed,” stable one: now, a and b are not like statuary, posed for a vista in the louvre. they are things chalked on the sidewalk so that the pensive man may see. (cpp ) the wallace stevens journal the unified whole is not fixed “like statuary,” but rather part of the cease- lessly changing “immense disorder of truths.” the circular tendency here is not explicit, but subtly suggested; the poem describes unity in terms that are circular by implication. stevens specifies that the unified whole is not statically linear, “a vista in the louvre” (cpp ). a vista is typi- cally seen through a long, narrow opening, and the jardin des tuileries onto which the louvre looks is laid out in the orderly jardin à la française style created by andré le nôtre, typified by its long, narrow, symmetrical avenues enclosed by meticulously ordered lines of trees. the interior of the sully, richelieu, and denon wings of the musée du louvre in their modern form replicate this same long, straight, narrow architecture, pre- senting a linear vista view to its inhabitants. this is also the fixed, linear shape that stevens decries in “the noble rider and the sound of words”: “the subject-matter of poetry is not that ‘collection of solid, static objects extended in space’” (cpp ). by contrast, the “chalked” a and b whole is impermanent, ready to be erased and redrawn at any moment as the individual sees fit, and the phonetic value of the long “a” /ɔ:/ phoneme in “chalked” sets up the circle motif that stevens will use throughout his poetry to embody this vaunting of a new impermanent ordering structure. the labializing nature of this open-mid back rounded vowel rounds the lips into a circular shape, a protruded rounding that makes the speaker’s mouth into the circular shape itself. the shape of the relation between modern existence’s elements is a circular one, and the circular shape is as- sociated with the inconstancy and disordered order of stevens’s radically altered, individually unified whole. “the man with the blue guitar,” published in , and “the sail of ulysses,” written in and published posthumously, demonstrate more explicitly stevens’s interrogation of the circular structure and its relation to politically inflected ideas of ordering the individual and the masses. “the man with the blue guitar” aligns the political ordering of the indi- vidual with the aesthetic shaping undertaken by the artist. longenbach identifies in this stevens’s “keen awareness of the dangers of aestheticiz- ing experience” (vii), which the song of the blue guitar at first threatens to do: “a million people on one string? / and all their manner in the thing” (cpp ). gathering the mass of individuals together in one artistic unit—here the linear guitar string that, even combined with other linear strings, can produce only “the chord that falsifies” (cpp )—distorts and disorders rather than ordering and unifying, provoking the “buzz- ing” and “chattering” of the mass rather than a unified melody (cpp , ). the speaker’s cry evoking the never-beginning-never-ending circu- lar form—“where / do i begin and end?”—thus expresses not the joy of union within artistic form, but rather the unpleasant experience of being melded with the mass of others, the fear and confusion when faced with “that which momentously declares // itself not to be i and yet / must be” (cpp ). here is what jacqueline vaught brogan calls “the frightening circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats potential of the impulse toward unity: annihilation of individuality in the ‘one-ness’” encouraged by forcefully unifying political and poetic order (stevens and simile ). the ordering and shaping in “the man with the blue guitar” threatens to become the all-encompassing yeatsian circle, or even the distorting linear guitar string, melding the individual into the mass. yet there is still a need for some kind of ordering structure in the wake of this rejection of the grand, totalizing form, as stevens again confronts the high modernist concern with how to negotiate modern chaos. as in yeats’s “the second coming,” “the man with the blue guitar” presents the ravaged, fragmented landscape of modern existence. invoking a fel- low artist of the modern destruction of order and belief—and figuring an ironic incursion of cubism into the tension between the linear and the circular—stevens demands, is this picture of picasso’s, this “hoard of destructions,” a picture of ourselves, now, an image of our society? do i sit, deformed . . . ? (cpp ) stevens’s individual refuses to be contained within the grand, general- izing structures, rejecting such “universal delusions of universal gran- deurs” (cpp ). detached from the great unifying constructions of the past, the individuals once encompassed there now find themselves unsure whether they too have been “deformed” along with their beliefs and their societies: “things as they are have been destroyed. / have i?” (cpp ). following the modernist demolition of the past’s structures, there remains the necessity of some kind of form or order to navigate existence, and to position oneself as an individual in relation to the rest of the world. “the sail of ulysses” likewise testifies to the impulse to shape the in- comprehensible elements of existence, citing the “joy of meaning in design / wrenched out of chaos” (cpp ). shaping is necessary so that a “litter of truths” can become a “whole” (cpp ) rather than a “thing fumbling for its form” (cpp ). at least some ordering structure is necessary— “need makes / the right to use,” the poet’s speaker reminds us (cpp ), evoking both the need for some form for comprehension and stevens’s own appropriation of the poetic circle motif—and the shape of that order is, like the unified whole in “connoisseur of chaos,” circular. this “cre- ator” of order is “of an unknown sphere” (cpp ), and his mind presents the world and in his mind the world revolves. the revolutions through day and night, the wallace stevens journal through wild spaces of other suns and moons, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . are matched by other revolutions in which the world goes round and round . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the world goes round in the climates of the mind . . . (cpp ) the interconnected series of revolutions here, augmented by the circu- lar repetition of the language, recalls yeats’s complex system of wheels within wheels within wheels in a vision. indeed, much like a vision for many readers, it may not seem to render the whole very much more com- prehensible. crucially, however, the circular forms of “the sail of ulysses,” while seemingly of an incomprehensibly universal reach, are in fact limited in scope to the individual. the apparently universal revolutions of “suns and moons” and rotation of day and night are restricted to the individual’s perception, revolved by and in the individual’s mind: “his mind presents the world / and in his mind the world revolves,” section vi tells us (cpp ), rendering explicit the essentially solipsistic nature of the relation be- tween revolving mind and revolving world. the “unknown sphere” is the “center of the self,” the note to stanza iv informs the reader (cpp ), and the earlier references to how ulysses “read his own mind” (cpp ) and the “human loneliness” and “solitude” in which knowledge is attained (cpp ) reinforce this sense of the fundamentally individual reach of the ordering circle. “[f]ew people realize that they are looking at the world of their own thoughts and the world of their own feelings,” stevens declares in “the figure of the youth as virile poet” (cpp ), and we can thus understand the “other revolutions / in which the world goes round and round” with which this revolution is “matched” as the subjective vision of other individual minds that order the world in their own manner (cpp ). to be “master of the world and of himself” is tautological, since the only world that one can access and master is the world as one perceives it (cpp ). in a slippage that is common in stevens’s poetry, and that he ar- ticulates in “extracts from addresses to the academy of fine ideas” ( ) as “that difference between the and an” (cpp ), the “the” of “the true creator” and “the world” of which he is master (cpp , ) is belied by an implied “a” or “an,” the universalizing yeatsian circle replaced by the local, non-hierarchical, equally weighted individual circle of stevens. likewise, in “the man with the blue guitar” stevens individualizes the grand cosmological circle. here, the star as the new cosmological order- ing and creative imagery in place of the sun is made explicitly circular, being “both star and orb.” unlike the monocratic sun, however, there are a “thousand” of these orbs (cpp ). stevens breaks up yeats’s universal- circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats izing circular form; now there are multiple individual circles, each with an individual scope. he declares, “nothing must stand // between you and the shapes you take / when the crust of shape has been destroyed” (cpp ). when the restricting “crust” of the old universalizing, dictating yeatsian circle—“the old shape / worn and leaning to nothingness,” as “the sail of ulysses” has it (cpp )—has been broken down, then the individual is free to take on his or her own “shape.” “shape,” some kind of form, is still necessary to comprehend and navigate modern existence, but it is the personal circle that permits this to the individual: “you as you are? you are yourself” (cpp ). “i cannot bring a world quite round, / although i patch it as i can,” the speaker admits at the poem’s opening (cpp ): we can no longer structure the entire world and all civiliza- tion in an all-encompassing circular form, as yeats tried to do, but we can achieve a productive vision in the circle of individual scope. that this emphasis on the strictly individual scope of such ordering has a political valence is underlined by eeckhout’s observation that “stevens was at pains to get across, even on a philosophical level, that his ‘rage for order’ was anything but totalitarian” ( ). longenbach draws a parallel here with yeats’s practice in the aftermath of world war i: yeats said explicitly in the first version of a vision ( ) that he was charting the heavens to replace a worldview that “german bombs” had destroyed: “why should we complain, things move by mathematical necessity, all changes can be dated by gyre and cone.” in his own way, stevens was doing the same thing. . . . yet stevens was careful not to do exactly what yeats did in his postwar work—create a new totalizing mythology in place of an older one. ( ) yeats would also, in the same decade during which he published “the second coming,” “nineteen hundred and nineteen,” and the first ver- sion of a vision, come to envision a smaller, more selective circle in matters aesthetic. in , disillusioned by public reaction to the abbey theatre and its financial difficulties, he admitted that “the dream of my early man- hood, that a modern nation can return to unity of culture, is false; though it may be we can achieve it for some small circle of men and women, and there leave it till the moon bring round its century” (autobiographies ; emphasis added). however, where yeats envisions a select elite group of artistic culture (which is still a notably larger circle than stevens’s indi- vidual “orbs”), he retains the all-encompassing cosmological circle. the very “small circle of men and women” is still subsumed by the grand circular “moon” that will “bring round” the century along the gyres’ uni- versalizing circular motion. stevens recognizes the need for a comforting form to give order to modernist chaos, but both “the sail of ulysses” and “the man with the blue guitar” refuse to subsume the group of individu- the wallace stevens journal als forcefully into its ordering forms. stevens’s circles, in both their poetic and political contexts, order existence into a comprehensible form, but at a local level: the individual’s concept of existence is ordered, in his or her own subjective circle, rather than all civilization’s existence. the final qualification that stevens places on his circular structures in “the man with the blue guitar” is their temporary, ever-changing nature. “[t]he balance does not quite rest,” the speaker declares (cpp ); while the poet may hold his “world upon his nose,” he must keep “twirl[ing] the thing” in order to keep it in constant motion (cpp ). stevens character- izes his circles as endlessly rotating, following his sense of the ceaselessly renewed interaction between the individual’s imagination and his or her surrounding reality, since that reality itself is in constant flux: “the only possible order of life is one in which all order is incessantly changing” (l – ). other critics have noted that stevens seeks to “endorse . . . a sense of reality constantly changing” (filreis, modernism ) and thus to “extol the virtue of not maintaining fixed thoughts about the nature of poetry or politics” (longenbach ). the ceaselessly turning circle offers a poetic image to convey this. “notes toward a supreme fiction,” published in , likewise enacts this resistance to the static form. whereas the moving circle is vaunted— especially in “the going round // and round and round, . . . / until mere- ly going round is a final good” (cpp )—the static circle is a different matter. lucy beckett rightly characterizes the poem’s close as “amused and a little sad, at the possible end” of the ceaselessly turning circle ( ): “they will get it straight one day at the sorbonne. . . . / you will have stopped revolving except in crystal” (cpp ). significantly, stevens links this end of constant circular movement to the political in cantos ii and iii of “it must change.” “the president ordains” immortality, and orders his surroundings “to a metaphysical t” (cpp ), but this results only in the “immobile” and ultimately “absurd” statue of the general (cpp ). recalling the “statuary, posed” of “connoisseur of chaos,” the geometri- cally “fixed” here becomes linked to the politically “fixed,” the narrow- minded autocracy that seeks to stabilize the world as it desires. the image provides a poetic version of stevens’s statement in “the noble rider and the sound of words” that only “if a social movement moved one deeply enough, [then] its moving poems would follow. no politician can com- mand the imagination” (cpp ). the politician’s “command” is set in opposition to “movement” in several implied forms: physical motion, committed political engagement, to be emotionally moved, to be moved to poetic expression. in contrast to this “movement,” or to the ceaseless movement of the turning circle structure, in canto iii “the music halted and the horse stood still” (cpp ). the political “orator” or “spokesman” exists at the “barriers” to movement rather than its circular continuation (cpp ); he imposes static order rather than moving creativity, and thus freezes the ceaseless turning of the circle that acts, as costello notes, as circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats “a defence against complacency and rhetorical platitude that would turn poetry into a vehicle for dogma” ( ). thus, alan perlis summarizes, “stevens rejects all notions of a fixed, stable reality. the external world is in a state of constant flux. since we are part of this world, we can only affirm our orientation to it by flowing with its cyclical motions” ( ). the cyclical structure that the individual discovers or creates for him- or herself can alone do that. again, stevens’s poetic and political systems align here, given the poem’s meta-reflection and its political imagery. stevens declared, “i don’t have ideas that are permanently fixed. my conception of what i think a poet should be and do changes, and i hope, constantly grows” (l ). likewise, proudly pro- claimed political identification tends to be too fixed, too static, to allow for this constant flexibility needed to engage properly with the world. it is only the individual subjective vision, rather than that conditioned and constructed by group allegiance, that can accommodate this necessarily flexible shaping. only the ceaselessly working and individual imagination can guarantee a fresh, non-repetitive, productively “curved” imaginative vision of the otherwise incomprehensible modern world—and so only the ever-turning circle of a purely individual scope is acceptable within stevens’s poetry. in conclusion, then, yeats and stevens both turn to the circle image as an ordering device in their poetic work, but conceive and render it dif- ferently following their diverging political ideologies. stevens modifies yeats’s high modernist circle. he does not reject order or structure entirely, recognizing the necessary reassurance against the chaotic changes of the modern world, and he employs the constant motion of the turning circle as the embodiment of this ordering structure throughout much of his poetry. order, political and otherwise, is not inherently negative in stevens’s work, but certain forms of it are fatal. consequently, we find politically inflected distinctions between stevens’s and yeats’s circular forms. stevens resists the universal imposi- tion of the high modernist circle, the manner in which all individuals are subsumed into the singular mass, with or without their consent, caught in a generalizing structure that preexists and will postdate their own ex- istence. stevens’s readers must be active “natives of a dwindled sphere” instead (cpp ), constructing their own individual, idiosyncratic, im- permanent circles through which to perceive and negotiate a now-com- prehensible imaginatively curved and shaped reality—a step, as eeckhout puts it, “from homogeneity to heterogeneity, from monolithic identity to pluralistic difference, from the unified to the diversified” ( ). moreover, stevens rejects the high modernist circle because to reuse the same structure that we “had seen long since” and now “see again” would in itself constitute a cessation of the constant motion embodied by his own circular ideal (cpp ). the yeatsian circle “has not changed enough” to properly represent a world in flux in stevens’s poetry (cpp ). it is only the wallace stevens journal the idiosyncratic circular structure of a localized scope that can guarantee productive interaction with the continual flux of the external world. in place of the yeatsian circle, then, stevens offers the personal, imagina- tively constructed and sustained circle, which embodies the localized and reassuring ordering of the external world and the potential for meaningful interaction between individual beings. university of oxford united kingdom notes i am grateful to bonnie costello, james brophy, and the oxford university work in progress seminar for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. see, for example, chadwick; cullingford; freyer; hickman; o’brien. for the turn toward political readings of stevens, see filreis, wallace stevens; longenbach; brogan, the violence within. all references to the collected poems of w. b. yeats will be systematically abbreviated as cpy. all references to the letters of w. b. yeats will be systematically abbreviated as lwby. this article by necessity offers only one exemplary instance of stevens’s political ideology. for a fuller treatment of the poet’s political engagement, see filreis, wallace stevens, and longenbach. although mckinley would be assassinated shortly after the presidential election, his successor, theodore roosevelt, would continue his expansionist policies, and woodrow wilson would likewise instigate a “project for a new american-centred world order” (golub ), with the result that during world war ii walter lippmann would write approvingly that america’s international expansion had achieved territo- rial control stretching “over an immense section of the surface of the globe,” including “the defense of territory from alaska to luzon, from greenland to brazil, from canada to the argentine” ( ). works cited beckett, lucy. wallace stevens. cambridge up, . brogan, jacqueline vaught. stevens and simile: a theory of language. princeton up, . ———. the violence within / the violence without: wallace stevens and the emergence of a revolutionary poetics. u of georgia p, . bryan, william jennings. speeches of william jennings bryan, revised and arranged by himself. vol. ii, funk and wagnalls, . chadwick, joseph. “violence in yeats’s later politics and poetry.” elh, vol. , no. , winter , pp. – . costello, bonnie. “us modernism i: moore, stevens and the modernist lyric.” the cam- bridge companion to modernist poetry, edited by alan davis and lee m. jenkins, cambridge up, , pp. – . cullingford, elizabeth. yeats, ireland and fascism. macmillan, . dasenbrock, reed way. review of yeats, ireland and fascism, by elizabeth cullingford. mln, vol. , no. , dec. , pp. – . eeckhout, bart. wallace stevens and the limits of reading and writing. u of missouri p, . circular imagery in the revolutionary poetics of stevens and yeats filreis, alan. modernism from right to left: wallace stevens, the thirties, and literary radi- calism. cambridge up, . ———. wallace stevens and the actual world. princeton up, . frank, joseph. the widening gyre: crisis and mastery in modern literature. rutgers up, . freyer, grattan. w. b. yeats and the anti-democratic tradition. gill and macmillan, . golub, philip s. profit, power and prestige: a history of american imperial expansion. pluto p, . gregor, a. james. giovanni gentile: philosopher of fascism. transaction publishers, . hickman, miranda b. geometry of modernism: the vorticist idiom in lewis, pound, h.d. and yeats. u of texas p, . hough, graham. the mystery religion of w. b. yeats. harvester p, . laguardia, david m. advance on chaos: the sanctifying imagination of wallace stevens. brown up, . levine, caroline. forms: whole, rhythm, hierarchy, network. princeton up, . lippmann, walter. u.s. foreign policy: shield of the republic. atlantic little and brown, . longenbach, james. wallace stevens: the plain sense of things. oxford up, . nassar, eugene paul. wallace stevens: an anatomy of figuration. u of pennsylvania p, . o’brien, conor cruise. “passion and cunning: an essay on the politics of w. b. yeats.” passion and cunning and other essays. weidenfeld and nicholson, , pp. – . perlis, alan. wallace stevens: a world of transforming shapes. associated up, . stevens, wallace. letters of wallace stevens. edited by holly stevens, alfred a. knopf, . ———. wallace stevens: collected poetry and prose. edited by frank kermode and joan richardson, library of america, . wood, michael. yeats and violence. oxford up, . yeats, w. b. autobiographies. edited by william h. o’donnell and douglas n. archibald, scribner, . ———. the collected poems of w. b. yeats: a new edition. edited by richard j. finneran, macmillan, . ———. a critical edition of yeats’s “a vision” ( ). edited by george mills harper and walter kelly hood, macmillan, . ———. the letters of w. b. yeats. edited by allan wade, hart-davis, . ———. a vision. rev. ed., macmillan, . educating without bannisters: hannah arendt on thinking, willing, and judging by jill michelle jensen b.ed., the university of alberta, m. ed., the university of victoria, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of education in the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies (educational leadership and policy) the university of british columbia (vancouver) january © jill michelle jensen, ii the following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: educating without bannisters: hannah arendt on thinking, willing, and judging submitted by jill michelle jensen in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of education in educational leadership and policy examining committee: david coulter supervisor deirdre kelly supervisory committee member anne phelan supervisory committee member michelle stack university examiner karen meyer university examiner additional supervisory committee members: bendina miller supervisory committee member iii abstract as a school principal i make explicit and tacit judgments that affect (often vulnerable) other people each day, a responsibility for which i have little preparation or institutional encouragement. indeed, exercising judgment has become especially difficult in modernity because of the absence of secure traditions for guidance. here i draw on hannah arendt’s ideas about judging developed in response to the holocaust that—while not consistent, congruent, or even complete—point to powerful ways to think and judge in a world that lacks ethical bannisters. i begin by outlining arendt’s efforts to reimagine the ancient athenian vita activa for a modern pluralistic democratic society. in the human condition arendt describes its destruction and begins to develop democratic remedies based on reconceiving the relationship between public and private spaces—an effort that was severely challenged by the trial of adolph eichmann. particularly alarming to arendt was the nazis’ success at destroying the public and private realms, eliminating the conditions she deemed essential for ethical-political judging. in response, arendt begins to reimagine the vita comtemplativa based on her iconoclastic interpretations of aristotle and kant. she drafts the first two sections of the life of the mind, thinking and willing, before succumbing to a heart attack in . instead of thinking as searching for answers, she understands thinking as continuous questioning or wondering and as introspectively searching for meaning. instead of willing as implementing self-sovereignty (as in will-power), she develops the idea of a non-sovereign will that exercises freedom understood as responsible autonomy in a plural, contingent world. while arendt never wrote the final section on judging, she did leave various pieces that point to important considerations involved in making ethical-political judgments in “dark times,” iv that is, when the required private and public spaces for democratic action are absent. some considerations include: seeing the individual person; judging as a spectator; choosing our company carefully; finding suitable examples; and imagining possible appraisals. throughout my thesis i use arendt’s ideas to understand my own experience and point to implications for my practice. v lay summary as a school principal i make judgments that affect (often vulnerable) other people each day, a responsibility for which i have little preparation. indeed, exercising ethical-political judgment has become especially difficult in modernity because of the absence of secure traditions for guidance. here i draw on hannah arendt’s ideas about thinking, willing and judging in her unfinished life of the mind. instead of thinking as searching for answers, arendt understands thinking as wondering and searching for meaning. instead of willing as in will-power, she argues for willing as exercising responsible autonomy. while arendt never wrote the final section on judging, she did leave work that points to important considerations including: seeing the individual person; judging as a spectator; choosing our company carefully; finding suitable examples; and imagining possible appraisals. throughout my thesis i use arendt’s ideas to understand my own experience and point to implications for my practice. vi preface this dissertation is original intellectual work by jill jensen. vii table of contents abstract………….…………………………………………………………………………...….iii lay summary……………….……………………………………………………………………v preface……………………………………………………………………………………….…...vi table of contents……………………………………………………………………………….vii acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………...xi dedication………………………………………………………………………………….…....xii chapter : (re)thinking what we are doing………………………………………….……... educating without bannisters………………………………….……………………….….….. in search of bannisters………………………………………………………………………. hannah arendt: judging in dark times…………………………………………………..…. the vita activa…………………...……………….………………………….…………. the wind of thinking…………………………………………………………………... unanchoring the will………………………………………………………………..….. judging in dark times……………………………….……………………………..…… pearls of illumination……………………………………………….………………….... chapter : the vita activa………………………………………….…………………….…… fulfilling our roles………………………….…………………………………….……. the human condition………………………….……………………………………….……. labour………………………………………………………………………………...…. work…………………………………………………………………………………….. action…………………………………………………………………………………… reversals and realignments……………………………………………………………...….. viii consequences for understanding schooling as labour………….……………………..……. fostering action in schools……………………………………………………………..….... in irons……………………………………………………………………………………….. an efficient administrator…………………………………………………………….... an unprecedented crime……………………………………………………………….. eichmann’s evil…………………………………………….…………………………… arendt’s response…………………………………….………………………………… chapter : the wind of thinking……………………..……………………………………… thinking as wondering……………………………………..……………………………....... the storm of thought…………………….…………………………………………….. thinking as searching for meaning…………………………….………………………........ two-in-one dialogue………...……………………………….……………………..…. supports for thinking…………………….……………………………………….………… privacy…………………………………………….……………………………………. language…………………………………………….………………………………….. two-in-two dialogue………………………………………………………………….. thinking in schools…………………………………………………...…………………….. chapter : unanchoring the will…………….………….…..………………………………. conceptions of the will…………………………………………………………………….. a history of the western will ………………………….…………………………………. the classical union of knowing and acting ………...……………………………….. the supremacy of the christian faith………………………..………………………. the development of the christian will…………..……………………………………. ix a return to the authority of reason………….……………………………………….. modernity and the sovereign will………….………………………………………….. arendt’s non-sovereign will…………………………………………………………………... willing in schools………….…………………………………………………………………... nurturing educational willing in schools……..………………………………………. chapter : judging in dark times………………………………………………………… seeing the person………………………………………………………….…………… accepting the responsibility to be a judging spectator…………..…………………… choosing company…………………………………………………………….............. aristotle’s common sense…………..………………………………………… kant’s sensus communis………………………………………………………. arendt’s sensus communis…………………………………………………….. diving for lost pearls…………..……………………………………………………… appraising pearls………….....………………………………………………… pearl diving…………..………………………………………………………... imagining an appraisal…………...……………………………………………………. the artist and the critic…………..…………………………………………… aporias of ethical-political appraisal…………..……………………………... the discerning spectator…………...………………………………………….. judging in schools…………..…………………………………………………………. chapter : pearls of illumination…………….………………………………..…………….. hood up…………...…………………………………………………………………… the single story…………..…………………………………………………………… x disenthralling ourselves from the single story………….……………………………. i cannot bring the world quite round…………...…………………………………… when loaded balances come to grief…………..……………………………………. references………….………………………………………………………………………...... xi acknowledgements there are people who enter our lives and help us to live more fully, people who listen and whose presence enriches, awakens, and inspires us. there are those who engage in dialogue for the sake of dialogue and who encourage depth of thought, questioning, and wonder at what is. there are those who illuminate what is good, what is worth knowing, and what might be. i would like to thank dr. david coulter for his generosity of spirit, for his patience and support, for allowing me to make mistakes, take my time, and find my voice. i am a different, and better, person than when i started this journey. i would like to express my enduring gratitude to my committee members anne phelan, deirdre kelly, and bendina miller. i truly appreciate their wisdom and insight, their willingness to read and reflect on my writing, their ability to draw on both practical experience and research, and their tireless commitment to and care for education. they are exemplary teachers with whom it has been a privilege to work. i would also like to extend heartfelt thanks to colleagues and friends (stacy and mark in particular), who were willing to read my work, listen, engage in discussion, and allow me to test my thinking as i tried to make sense of why arendt’s life of the mind—thinking, willing, and judging—matters for education. and finally, thank you to hannah arendt herself, for her never-ending love of the world, and her ongoing ability to incite perplexity, curiosity, and wonder; good company indeed. xii dedication for those who struggle to make good appearances and too often remain invisible. for those who have challenged me, forced me to question and doubt, and ultimately enabled me to look for the good, to care deeply, to consider what it means to act wisely, and to find joy in educating…every day. for my students, my children, toni and george, and mark. chapter : (re)thinking what we are doing nor is wisdom only concerned with universals: to be wise, one must also be familiar with the particular, since wisdom has to do with action, and the sphere of action is constituted by particulars. this is why sometimes people who lack universal knowledge are more effective in action than others who have it— something that holds especially of experienced people. —aristotle, nicomachean ethics judgment in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal. if the universal (the rule, principle or law) is given, then the judgment which subsumes the particular under it is determinate…. if, however, only the particular is given and the universal has to be found for it, the judgment is simply reflective. —kant, the critique of judgment the crumpled piece of paper sat accusingly on my desk, demanding attention. i smoothed it and read it again, both scribbled sides; i knew it had been written by melanie and joelle , two girls in my grade seven class. i was suddenly part of this story and knew that i needed to act. it was : pm. i contemplated writing suspension letters before going home—it would save me time in the morning. i considered calling the parents and setting up appointments for the morning, but decided to talk with the girls first. the only information i had was the note. i had learned from experience it is best to know as much as possible before jumping to conclusions. the stories that begin chapters , , and are fictional, composites based on my own experience as a school administrator; they are intended as ongoing illustrations of the conceptual resources i try to develop. (though at this point i could not imagine any way this situation might improve with more information.) i called and left a message for the youth drug and addiction counselor, eliza, asking her to meet me at school in the morning, and hoped that she would be available. i read the note again. i sat for several minutes and then went home. this appeared to be a straightforward case, but i learned long ago that “straightforward” is almost always an illusion. i was preoccupied throughout the evening, as i knew i would be, thinking about the girls and how i would manage the encounters the following morning. the consequences were clear— drugs were never acceptable in schools and students using, buying or selling, were not welcome. suspensions would be necessary. my experience with our school board had shown me their commitment to “safe” and “drug-free” schools. i agree. we cannot have children exposed to drugs at school; it would be irresponsible and negligent. how many days should they be suspended? for some reason, my thinking and my questions began to change at this point, and i started to consider what the girls might learn from this experience? what if i did not suspend them? (i should.) what were the alternatives? suspension does not change behaviour, it only sends a message about what behaviours will not be tolerated and that those who engage in those behaviours will not be tolerated. they will be removed. we know that suspension does not work, and yet we continue to suspend, and so i struggled to see how exiling the girls would be useful or helpful in any way. how could i, and other adults, support them if we simply pushed them away? who is suspension really for? i needed to make a decision. i did not feel good about following the expected course of action, but what was the “right” thing to do? my evening (and i believe even my sleep) was spent in internal-conversation and debate. i woke the next morning feeling irritated and without answers. i knew that melanie would find me. she often came into the office in the morning to “check in.” she has a lot going on—her life is beyond fiction, a story few would believe—and we spend a lot of time together. she came in, sat down, and i handed her the note. she looked at me, and i told her i was not mad. she furrowed her brow. i sat across from her and told her that i was concerned and we needed to talk. melanie started talking. (it is one of her gifts!) she poured out her heart, telling me far more than i wanted or needed to know, including that she was buying for a girl from out of town. we talked about trafficking. she had only “kind of” used once; she had not inhaled much; she just wanted to fit in. i did not believe her about the girl from out of town, but she needed the story she was telling not to be all about her. she told me about anne, another student in our class who was involved, and i struggled to maintain my impassivity even though i was surprised. i should have known better. there is always more. i talked with anne. she is new to our school this year, and while she also has a complex life outside of school, she seems (or so i thought) to manage well. she sat nervously on the edge of a chair, her hands clasped and her eyes moist. as with melanie, i told her that i was not angry, but i needed to know. she gave me a quizzical look, and began to talk. she also, told me everything. she knew it was wrong to buy and use drugs, and had never done it before, but her sister had just moved in with them and asked her to get some marijuana. apparently her sister ( years old) had struggled with drugs and that was why she had come to live with anne, her father (who was away working for weeks at a time) and her stepmother. she was worried about her sister and wanted her sister to accept her. anne’s story was far less tangential and more fact-centered than melanie’s, but the stories matched. eliza, our drug and addiction counselor, arrived. she already had a relationship with joelle as they had been meeting for several weeks to discuss joelle’s concerns about alcoholism and addiction in her family. her mother had recently asked her step-father to choose between the family and the bottle. he chose the bottle. (mom had come in to let me know about this a few weeks earlier.) joelle’s family was perpetually in crisis and so was joelle. she was struggling, wanting to do and be different (good/more/better), but did not know how. i showed eliza the note, and we brought joelle in to talk with both of us. it was a long conversation and more difficult in many ways than the other two. joelle volleyed between anger and denial, defiance and acceptance. it was a conversation filled with a range of emotions, and it was difficult for joelle to understand that there was no anger from the adults, only concern and care. her story fit, more or less, with melanie’s and anne’s, though she admitted to less, a form of self- preservation. i made arrangements to meet with the parents. joelle’s mom does not have a phone so kathy (our support worker) went to find her. i had still not decided what to do. i had as much information as i needed, and i knew i had to act. instead, i sat. i drank tea. i indulged in some more time to think. i did not suspend the girls. i could not bring myself to exile them from our school. how would i know they were okay, if they were not here? how can i exercise responsibility for others if i (r)eject them? i remembered suspending joelle’s brother john in grade seven at the end of the year. i’m not sure that was the right thing for me to do; he did not return to our school before starting high school. looking back, i wish i had found an alternative that kept him with us rather than turning away and excluding him. i met with melanie, her mother, and eliza. melanie’s mother nodded frequently and agreed with everything eliza and i said. yes, the consequences were reasonable. i met with melanie’s dad two weeks later. kathy arrived with joelle’s mom and aunt and sat in on the meeting. joelle told her mom she needed to step up and be a mother, standing up to what she saw as hypocrisy. joelle continued to turn the conversation toward her mother, effectively diverting attention away from her own responsibility and the situation we needed to discuss. kathy and i gave them some time alone. emotions continued to escalate. eventually, we were able to discuss joelle’s connection to drugs, the consequences for her actions, and the expectations we had for her at school. anne’s stepmother and sister came in the following morning. her step-mother was angry that i had not suspended anne from school: she wanted more serious (and traditional) consequences. we talked through what anne had been asked to do, with support from home. she needed to meet weekly with eliza, check in with me every morning, she would not participate in certain year end activities, and she needed to be at school every day. while not happy with my decision, anne’s step-mother agreed. kathy thanked me for not sending joelle home. so, it was done and the girls stayed at school. i waited to hear from someone (other than anne’s mom) telling me that i had exercised poor judgment, violated common practice, and not done my job. i felt uneasy but was willing to stand behind my judgment. educating without bannisters whether or not i made the “right” decision with respect to the girls is open to challenge. indeed, i am unlikely to ever know with certainty if i made the right judgment in this particular situation—or in my practice generally. i have come to appreciate that as a school principal, and as a teacher, i make explicit and tacit judgments that affect (often vulnerable) other people each day. even before i truly recognized the depth and obligation of my responsibility in educating, i, like every educator that i know, wanted to do the right thing. i have always wanted to be a good teacher and principal, to make a difference for children and inspire hope for our world. i have, however, come to understand that a desire to educate is not so simple. what we do, what we say, and how we interact with others matters. judging is ubiquitous in the lives of educators and our judgments affect students and staff, as well as parents and community—including judgments not to act, that is, to be selectively ignorant (stack, coulter, grosjean, mazawi & smith, , pp. - ). moreover, [n]early everything that a teacher [or principal] does while in contact with students carries moral weight. every response to a question, every assignment handed out, every discussion on issues, every resolution of a dispute, every grade given to a student, carries with it the moral [judgment] of the teacher. (fenstermacher, , p. ) though charged with making numerous daily, minute-to-minute judgments that affect others, little attention is given to how we might render sound educational judgments that include epistemological (knowledge), ethical (how people treat one another), and political (how people live alongside one another) dimensions. in a society that aims to be pluralist and democratic, all of these dimensions are open to debate: what counts as knowledge? what is worthwhile knowledge? what does it mean to do the right thing? how much scope do we provide for people to determine their own lives? who decides? on what basis? though there is little (if any) consensus on either the questions or the answers, educators are generally expected to know what it means to judge well and then act accordingly. based on my experience working in schools over two decades, most teachers and administrators fall back on the “bannisters” of schooling: the conventional rules, policies, and practices that aim to make judging educationally unnecessary. the consequence is that judging, and the thinking it requires, are often discouraged in schools in such a way that many of us continue to believe that we are doing the right thing, rather than actually “thinking what we are doing” (arendt, , p. ). our attention is focused on sustaining a narrative of schooling that includes delivering curriculum to students using “best practices”, “managing student behaviour”, and attaining “high assessment results”—indicators of “successful” classrooms and schools. in striving to be “effective,” we become mechanical and functional, caught up in following prescriptions, accepting a singular vision of what counts as “good” teaching and learning, and trying to emulate it. as we passionately search for answers and seek to execute these practices, we indulge in the dangerous belief that we might succeed. though we want to be good teachers and to do what is best for students, we can get distracted by the endless answers to what we feel we ought to become. we keep ourselves safe and comfortable within our “educational” discourse, frequently working ourselves to distraction as we search for what is best, expect perpetual progress, and anticipate a holy grail that will proffer our success. our accepted narratives of what it means to teach and to learn are so impressively entrenched that we can (and do) become purposely inattentive to anything other than existing ideologies, lost within them, and consequently mistaking what we do in schools for educating. crucially, education is often conflated with schooling, that is, what happens within specifically and deliberately structured organizations. this is understandable since “education” in english has both normative and descriptive definitions: education involves the kinds of valued learning that might help someone lead a good and worthwhile life (coulter &wiens, ) and education is also the institutionalization of some view of education as schooling. here i focus on the normative meaning of education and use schooling for the descriptive meaning. education so understood is a complex, contested notion of what it means to understand our world and to live well in it with diverse other people. schooling is about achieving a particular end—graduation— and contributing to society—getting a job. the narrative of schooling with its need for “progress” and its steady focus on “accountability” increasingly prevails and overpowers education and, as a result, the ends of school are largely taken for granted and rarely questioned; only the means to achieving those ends are debated, leaving teachers, principals, and others who work in schools, playing a role in the perpetuation of a less than educational schooling system. maxine greene ( ) recognizes the inadequacies of schooling, explaining that it has become “far too easy for teachers, like other people, to play their roles and do their jobs without serious consideration of the good and the right” (p. ). greene ( ) calls for attentiveness to the ethical-political dimensions of schooling, insisting that wide-awakeness “accompany every effort made to initiate people into any form of life or academic discipline” (p. ). the reality within our schools, our districts, and our province, however, is that the continued acceptance and entrenchment of a narrative of accountability keeps the primary focus of schooling on economic matters rather than on ethical-political concerns. biesta ( ) contends that the economic language of accountability has eroded relationships and made it more difficult to be “responsible for our responsibility,” allowing us to lose sight of education for the common good, as well as corresponding democratic ideals. the british columbia school act reflects the ongoing struggle between schooling as a means for economic prosperity and schooling as essential to sustaining democratic ideals, as the mission of and vision for schools shifts depending on who is running government. presently, the school act claims a central goal for schools is to educate for democracy in a pluralistic society—a significant challenge when “efficiency, competence, and stability used as standards seem to have eaten away the ideal of citizenship” (greene, , p. ). while we give lip service to the importance of the educated citizen and the need to safeguard democracy, practice and the reality in schools (often) reflects a different story, one of socialization, credentialing, and commitment to sustaining government: osborne ( ) explains: as historians of education have shown us, the creation of compulsory public schooling in which students followed an officially prescribed curriculum, using officially authorized textbooks, taught by officially licensed teachers, and supervised by officially appointed inspectors, had little to do with the education in any real sense of that word, but much to do with the socialization and training of the young. (p. ) accountability and commodification are central features of the “educational” agenda in british columbia. additionally, nussbaum ( ) points out that “education systems all over the world are moving closer and closer to the growth model without much thought about how ill- suited it is to the goals of democracy” (p. ). biesta ( ) adds: “the culture of accountability makes it very difficult for the relations between parents/students and educators/institutions to develop into mutual, reciprocal, and democratic relationships, relationships based on a shared concern for the common educational good (or goods)” (p. ). instead, the economic language of accountability positions the government as provider and parents and students as consumers (biesta, , p. ). yet, even as schooling becomes accepted as a commodity, we somehow still believe that our schools are educational, doing and teaching the “right” things. today we still maintain that we like democracy and self-governance, and we also think that we like freedom of speech, respect for difference, and understanding of others. we give these values lip service, but we think far too little about what we need to do in order to transmit them to the next generation and ensure their survival. distracted by the pursuit of wealth, we increasingly ask our schools to turn out useful profit-makers rather than thoughtful citizens. (nussbaum, , p. ) as nussbaum and biesta suggest, there is little evidence that democracy, which depends on ethical and political ideals, “counts” in our schools. what we find instead is a quest for quality, efficiency, and effectiveness, revealed in an incessant and cyclical pursuit of progress and success. “the ‘promise’ of the school is understood to be the promise of credentialing and the gaining of some kind of status as a result” (greene, , p. ). with this promise much is lost, and the opportunity to educate founders. if it is acknowledged that education “entails a willingness to tune into the never-ending conversation about what it means to be human” (osborne, , p. ), the “educational-ness” of schooling cannot be taken for granted. as it so often seems to be. one of the unfortunate consequences of the supposition that schooling is educational, is a reliance on judgments that are determinant, that is, judgments that apply “accepted standards and given rules to a particular circumstance” (fine, , p. ). because such judgments are logical and cognitive, they simplify decision-making, but they also make it difficult to see anything new; zerilli ( ) explains, “armed with rules and their correct application, we tend to take refuge in our own criteria, ‘denying that we saw anything new at all…pretending that something similar is already known to us’” (p. ). as human beings, we take comfort in predictability, certainty, and answers, and try to bind and contain the world, to place parameters and exert “control” over our environment. determinant judgments provide us with a sense of control, allowing us to feel that the world is as anticipated and that we have no alternative but to act in expected ways. we convince ourselves that this is how things need to be. unfortunately, this grasping for stability and assurance too often prevents us from considering other possibilities and can prevents us from truly seeing and engaging with each other. much of the discourse about judging focuses on determinant judgments, that is, assessing and deciding which rule, principle or process applies to a particular case confronting us. some of the rules are explicit: boards of education and the ministry of education create legislation and codes of conduct that aim to prescribe practice. the standards for the education, competence and professional conduct of educators in bc, for example, includes the exhortation that educators “value and care for all students and act in their best interests” and be a “role model who act[s] ethically and honestly.” in daily interactions with actual students, educators make judgments about what to do with the students in front of them, how to teach them, and how to treat them. what is in the “best interests” of the hypothetical and imagined students of the standards, however, is usually far removed from a particular student in a particular classroom in a particular school in a particular situation. the gap between the general “student” and the individual child is wide and fails to recognize the complexity of what is being asked. to begin with, how might educators even be sure about what a child’s “best interests” might be? who gets to decide what is “best”? on what basis? every day in my work as an educator, i strive to act “ethically and honestly,” but there are times i find myself struggling to determine what would count as ethical action in these circumstances with these people. other rules are implicit, often stemming from common practice. informal policies and routines become taken for granted ways of thinking about good or accepted practice in a school, department, or grade. “this is how we do things here” is a claim to goodness that is seldom interrogated. in schools, common practice often determines what will count as appropriate action and to do otherwise would be a violation of what is deemed acceptable. student discipline is a common example: if a child behaves in a certain way, predictable consequences follow. if you call out without raising your hand, you get a tick beside your name; after three ticks, you spend time in at recess; if you use drugs or are under the influence while at school, you are sent home and suspended. in my experience, ethical-political judging is rarely, if ever, discussed in any explicit way and is not an expected component of teacher or leadership training. ethics may be mentioned or included in masters level training and conversations about ethical practice may arise in our work, but certainly not frequently. politics has generally come to mean organized partisan politics or the informal politics of gaining some kind of advantage. ironically, judgment seems to play a trifling role in educational discourse, yet educators are called on to exercise “good” judgment in all of their interactions with students, colleagues and parents. when we neglect developing the ability to judge independently and to think for ourselves, we live what baumann ( ), terms an “adiaphorized existence” that “renders social action…neither good nor evil, measurable against technical (purpose-oriented or procedural) but not moral values (p. ). when we exist adiaphorically, our lives lose meaning and significance. eighty-five years ago, t.s. eliot captured the essence of the problem of judgment that i wish to explore: where is the life we have lost in living? where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? where is the knowledge we have lost in information? —t.s. eliot, “the rock” in search of bannisters eliot’s interest in wisdom or judgment is prescient. the problems of understanding, developing, and exercising good judgment are endemic to the human condition, but have become critical in modernity; secure resources for making ethical-political judgments have been lost, and the consequences of making poor or evil judgments have been dire for humanity. the precipitating phenomenon is the holocaust, the most horrifying failure of ethical-political judgment of the twentieth century. it is difficult to comprehend how one of the most “advanced” western societies with deep cultural, ethical, and political resources was so vulnerable to nazi ideology, a weakness that led to the systematic murder of millions of innocent people. the resources available were considerable, yet they proved inadequate to explain how the holocaust happened or suggest how it could have been prevented. crucially, for the last years, the dominant approach to making ethical judgments in western thought has emphasized determinant judgment, specifically kant’s deontology, a model that is concerned with the duty to adhere to certain ethical principles or rules and is judged by actors’ intentions, and not the consequences of their actions. following kant, the goodness of one’s actions must be judged by how consistent they are with one of the three versions of his categorical imperative, chiefly: "act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction" (kant, / , . ). as an enlightenment thinker, suspicious of the external authority of the state and of the church, kant contends that autonomy and morality are connected: with the acceptance of human freedom to choose our own actions comes the responsibility to choose well; conversely, moral action depends on the possibility of acting autonomously. kant explains that a person judges neither word captures precisely what i mean—both lack the obligation to act on one’s understanding. other languages include this requirement (e.g. the cree word yipwakawatisiwin means “wisdom in action”). “that he can do something because he knows that he ought, and he recognizes that he is free—a fact that without the moral law, would have remained unknown to him” (kant, , p. ). kant answers his own central question, “what ought i do?” by explaining that a “pure morality … is not grounded on any anthropology, no empirical condition” (a /b ), but instead focuses on intentions unencumbered by considerations of particular people or circumstances. kant aims to respect human autonomy by advocating the use of practical reason to respect the autonomy of others and the categorical imperative becomes an ideal against which to assess our intentions and actions. kant fails, however, to envision an empirical condition where people would choose to reject their own freedom and deny that some people are indeed human beings. concerned about kantian abstraction many scholars have returned to the approach that dominated western ethical-political thinking before kant: aristotle’s teleology. aristotle, in an effort to respond to plato’s privileging of the bios theoretikos over the bios praktikos, reconceived the relationship between theory and practice by reimagining the relationship between intellectual virtues and moral virtues. his intellectual virtues (none of which have exact english equivalents) included basic understanding (nous), skill or art (techne), systematic knowledge or science (episteme), theoretical wisdom or intellectual accomplishment (sophia) and practical wisdom, or practical judgment (phronesis). his list of the moral virtues valued in ancient athenian society included courage (andreia), moderation (sōphorosunē) and open- handedness (eleutheriotēs). the opening quote of this chapter captures aristotle’s central claim that learned people (sophos) with universal knowledge (episteme) can often fail to act wisely (i.e., be phronemoi) because they lack the requisite experience needed to develop both the moral virtues and phronesis. much of the nicomachean ethics details his argument. according to aristotle, in order to act well, the phronemoi or wise person is able to select and exercise the appropriate moral virtues depending on the specific time, situation and people involved, that is, she does the right thing the right way in the right context for the right reasons. phronesis is therefore an executive or “architectonic” virtue ( b ) that is, it attends to various particulars and then selects the requisite moral and intellectual virtues. beiner ( ) explains: without phronesis one cannot properly be said to possess any of the virtues, and to possess phronesis, conversely, is to possess all the virtues, for phronesis is knowledge of which virtue is appropriate in particular circumstances, and the ability to act on that knowledge. (p. ) aristotle has much to say about the development of virtue and the movement from natural virtue (the qualities we inherit), to habituated virtue (those qualities we learn from our family and friends), to full virtue (phronetic action guided by reason). he believes that some of us have a propensity to be “just, moderate in our appetites, courageous, and the rest from the moment we are born” ( b - ); however, these excellences must be cultivated by learning to recognize situations as inherently ethical, and by seeing others model the appropriate virtues in context. learning to do the right thing requires spending time around others who model the intellectual and moral virtues. aristotelian explanations for people lacking phronesis includes people who may have natural inclinations to be generous or courageous, but have had those dispositions stifled by a life spent in the company of people who lack these excellences of character. given such surroundings, people might not even be able to see the moral character of their experience. such explanations are still incomplete, though, because people with natural virtue can have rich and diverse experience living alongside others who model wise behaviour and still be unable to act well themselves, lacking full virtue. aristotle explains that “excellence [of character] makes the goal correct, while [phronesis] makes what leads to it correct” ( a - ), pointing to a central concern for his modern critics: aristotle assumes a society that pursues some kind of ethical telos. what happens when that society is nazi germany and virtue centres on loyalty to the führer? in sum, what resources help determine the goodness of a community? over the last fifty years, many scholars have recognized the inadequacies of relying on either deontological or teleological approaches to judgment. their diagnosis of the problem of ethical-political judgment in modernity is consistent: they lament the lack of secure and reliable universals or generals in plural, democratic societies that can be used to assess a broad range of particulars in order to make justifiable ethical-political judgments. neo-kantians appropriate kant’s work to develop critical spectators who develop and use defensible ethical principles to assess possible action (e.g., o’neill, ; korsgaard, ). neo-aristotelians attempt to reconceive phronesis and its concern for developing ethical-political actors who are able to accurately discern particular people and situations (e.g., gadamer, ; nussbaum, ), acquire and practice a range of and virtues (e.g., macinytre, ) and connect to other people in communities (e.g., taylor, ). the divide between neo-aristotelians and neo-kantians is not as glaring as it might appear, and many scholars consider both perspectives (e.g., beiner, , ; dunne, ; phelan, , ). one scholar, however, explores both perspectives in such depth that she is often accused of advocating antithetical conceptions of judgment privileging first the political actor and then the political spectator (e.g., beiner, , p. ): hannah arendt. in subsequent chapters i examine arendt’s iconoclastic interpretations of aristotle and kant and argue that arendt’s ideas about judging—while not consistent, congruent, or even complete—point to a complementary relationship: acting well depends partly on the ability to see the world as a spectator; testing the goodness and rightness of the spectator’s appraisal depends on acting in some form of public arena. hannah arendt: judging in dark times arendt’s ( – ) youth was exceptional. born in konisberg, hannah arendt lived through years of political unrest, crises, and war. despite political instability in europe, arendt experienced a somewhat traditional german-jewish upbringing where she found herself initiated into intellectual culture, supported in academic pursuits by her mother who encouraged hannah to always think for herself. despite difficulties and disenchantment with school, arendt’s intellectual force was evident; she was well read in german, french, and greek and enjoyed poetry and philosophy. considering where to pursue her university studies, arendt was drawn to rumours about a professor in marburg, martin heidegger, who was revitalizing the idea of thinking: “thinking has come to life again…. people followed heidegger in order to learn thinking” (young-bruehl, , p. ). arendt found her way to marburg, immersed in the realm of thinking and philosophy, her ‘first amour’. when hannah arendt encountered martin heidegger everything changed. he was a figure out of a romance—gifted to the point of genius, poetic, aloof from both professional thinkers and adulatory students, severely handsome, simply dressed in peasant clothes, an avid skier who enjoyed giving lessons. hannah arendt was much more ‘taken aback’ than her retrospective account reveals by this union of aliveness and thinking. (young-bruehl, , pp. - ) speculation persists around arendt’s relationship with heidegger, which lasted in various iterations throughout her life. that the relationship affected her personally and intellectually is evident in her work where heidegger’s influence is omnipresent. whether heidegger or philosophy was her ‘first amour’ however, is a conclusion left unresolved. perhaps philosophy was arendt’s first amour and heidegger was philosophy embodied, philosophy in the flesh/personified. for arendt, the two are knotted, entangled together. arendt seemed on course to a comfortable life as a philosopher herself; she wrote a dissertation on saint augustine’s concept of love with karl jaspers at heidelberg and prepared to settle into a career as a professional academic. when the reichstag burned in , however, arendt found herself stilled and unable to manoeuvre. she “was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander” (arendt, , p. ). she needed to act. arendt fled germany, moving through prague, geneva, and eventually paris, and after spending time in an internment camp at gurs, france in , she escaped europe for the united states, where she lived for the rest of her life. stateless for eighteen years, arendt became an american citizen in and focused her efforts on the challenges of expressing human freedom in all dimensions. the touchstone for her work was always the holocaust. arendt began by dedicating herself to understanding the rise of totalitarian governments and the corresponding disintegration (in every sense) that occurred in europe, striving to make sense of how such a collapse had been possible amongst a “civilized” people. in the origins of totalitarianism ( ), she describes the emergence of a new and unprecedented evil that targeted the very conditions that made it possible to live and think together with others in a common world, threatening what it meant to be a human being. her efforts to develop strategies to address totalitarianism led to efforts to reconceive aristotelian deontology for modern pluralistic democratic societies by recovering and rethinking the athenian vita activa. in the human condition ( ) she describes how we might protect and sustain the political realm and its requisite conditions; arendt continued to develop her ideas on political action in essays such as “the crisis in education” ( ), “what is authority” ( ), “reflections on little rock” ( ), and “society and culture” ( ), most of which were revised for between past and future ( ). arendt did not claim to offer answers, but simply (though never simply) to offer possibilities. she was always searching for new ways to understand, often questioning and clearing out ossified concepts, recognizing that too often “human beings live by simplified ideas and distorted reductions” (kateb, , p. ). the arrest and trial of adolf eichmann disrupted arendt’s thinking much like the burning of the reichstag had, and she soon found herself revisiting her understanding of the world, particularly how we understand evil. prior to the eichmann trial, arendt saw judging as a way to link what she understands by acting in the world (being an aristotelian actor); after the trial, she recognizes that judging also involves retreating from the world and from action in order to understand and to see what is good and right (being a kantian spectator) (coulter & wiens, ). the texts that most powerfully capture arendtian views on judging are the human condition ( ), with its division of the vita activa into labour, work and action, and the life of the mind ( ), with its division of the vita contemplativa into thinking, willing, and judging. arendt never finished writing the life of the mind so a complete exegesis of her thinking on judgment is impossible, but i believe that enough of her preliminary writing is available to point to important relationships between the actor and spectator that can help me in my own efforts to become a better educational judge. below i sketch my argument in subsequent chapters. chapter : the vita activa in this chapter i focus on arendt’s efforts to reimagine the ancient athenian vita activa for a modern pluralistic democratic society. arendt was well aware of the challenges of adapting a year old model, but she believed in the democratic ideal of a polis as an arena where equal and distinct people could exercise their political judgment together, an activity she calls “action.” in the human condition arendt tells the story of the loss of the political in the west largely by describing the destruction of the vita activa as a valued form of life alongside the vita contemplativa. private and public spaces are gradually replaced with an amorphous “social” space where people behave rather than act. “the real danger in contemporary societies is that the bureaucratic, technocratic and depoliticized structures of modern life…[make people] less capable of critical thinking and less inclined to assume responsibility” (beiner, , p. ). arendt’s response is to develop remedies based on her understanding of the democratic norms of plurality and natality that, in turn, rely on rethinking public and private spaces as required and interdependent conditions of communication. six years after publishing the human condition her thinking was challenged when she covered the trial of adolf eichmann for the new yorker. arendt ( ) was confronted by someone who seemed to challenge the usual conceptions of evil: while his “deeds were monstrous, [eichmann]…was quite ordinary, commonplace and neither demonic nor monstrous” (p. ); indeed, “it was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity— that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of the period” (p. ). while eichmann certainly demonstrated a refusal to think what he was doing, even more startling to arendt was the nazis’ overwhelming success at systematically destroying “the public realm as a common world of values, beliefs, orientations” (benhabib, , p. ). if the public and private worlds can be so thoroughly repressed, the conditions required for plurality and natality—and for democracy, action and freedom—can be destroyed. chapter : the wind of thinking prompted by the eichmann trial, which revealed the vulnerability of the public and private realms to totalitarianism, arendt returns to another form of life valued in ancient athens: the vita comtemplativa, that is, “the life of the philosopher devoted to inquiry into, and contemplation of, things eternal” (arendt, , p. ). she begins to reimagine this form of life as the beginning of a pathway to “think what we are doing” (arendt, , p. ) and drafts the first two sections of the life of the mind—thinking ( a) and willing ( b)—before succumbing to a heart attack in december . arendt identifies “thinking” as something notably different from common usage; however, what she does mean is far from clear or consistent. kateb ( ), for example, identifies at least eight different ways that arendt employs “thinking” in her work; ironically one of the most common usages of thinking, as the process of using the mind to solve problems (research) is not included. in the life of the mind, however, two meanings are crucial: thinking as continuous questioning or wondering and thinking as introspectively searching for meaning. chapter : unanchoring the will if, as arendt ( a) suggests, “the wind of thinking…has shaken you from your sleep and made you fully awake and alive, then you will see that you have nothing in your grasp but perplexities” (p. ); addressing the resulting chaos becomes her next challenge. arendt reimagines the will, a concept that was originally developed in christian theology to achieve faith and is now used to describe the effort to control the self, i.e., self-sovereignty. simply put, we accept that human beings should be held responsible for their actions because they are capable of making judgments about what is good and are then able to act accordingly. in willing, arendt traces the history of the development of the sovereign will as an instrument of control from st. augustine to nietzsche with particular attention to its unanchoring from ethical-political foundations. arendt, however, also discovers resources in her historical research that she uses in her efforts to re-anchor the will: from augustine she finds a conception of freedom as the expression of natality, that is, the capacity to begin anew; from duns scotus, she recovers links between the will and freedom in a plural, contingent world. it is important to note that arendt does not understand freedom as the absence of constraint (“freedom from”), but as the capacity to begin something new and unforeseen (“freedom to”); however, while individuals may be able to begin something new and unprecedented, they are always one of many, and so true freedom involves other people. chapter : judging in dark times when arendt died suddenly of a heart attack in december , she had just finished drafting thinking and willing and was preparing to write the final section about another form of thinking distinct from thinking as wondering or thinking as two-in-one dialogue: thinking as political judging or appraising. while arendt left some evidence of her possible direction for “judging”— e.g., her lectures on kant’s political philosophy and several essays such as “thinking and moral considerations” ( )—projecting a coherent conception of ethical-political judging is not feasible. instead, i search her writings to find significant considerations involved in making ethical-political judgments under conditions of worldlessness, that is, when the required private and public spaces for action are absent. my efforts draw on a source often neglected, men in dark times, arendt’s profiles of early th century figures who struggled to provide illumination under the most hostile conditions. i refer to arendt’s profiles of karl jaspers, walter benjamin, and bertolt brecht as portraits of people attempting to exercise the kind of ethical- political judgment that arendt seeks to understand. some considerations that i explore include: seeing the individual person; judging as a spectator; choosing our company carefully; finding suitable examples; and imagining possible appraisals. chapter : pearls of illumination throughout my thesis i test my understanding of arendt’s ideas against my own practice as someone aspiring to educate in schools; i use her work to see and appraise my experience, some of which is captured in the stories i create from my practice. in my concluding chapter i argue that despite having little to say about schooling or educating, arendt’s admonishment to think what we are doing stands as a summons to enter into an unending quest to understand and love the world as it is, knowing that there are no answers, but only imperfect, unique, and miraculous human beings living in a world we create together. arendt provides conceptual resources along with powerful examples or “pearls”—including how she lived her own life—of what it means to accept our freedom to think and to judge in a plural and contingent world. “arendt was not only of the world, but for the world…actively engaging with the uncertainty and contingency of the world in all its plurality” (nixon, , p. ). although i understand that there are no simple “answers” or solutions to the problem of schooling’s commanding and singular narrative, i persist in my efforts to educate and am inspired to do so by noticing and discerning lost pearls—those examples, those stories that illuminate the educational. as arendt ( ) reminds us, even during the darkest times there are always bursts “of light in the midst of impenetrable, unfathomable darkness” (p. ). chapter : the vita activa thought…is still possible, and no doubt actual, wherever men live under conditions of political freedom. unfortunately…no other human capacity is so vulnerable, and it is in fact far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think. (arendt, , p. ) i entered the quiet sterility of the board office and found a seat in the reception area. the administrative assistant walked in carrying a bundle of mail. “ms. finn, hello. mrs. jones will be right with you. she is just on a phone call,” the assistant cheerily informed me. the hearing had ended only three hours ago and mrs. jones had asked me to come to the board office to discuss it, saying only that it went well. i still felt anxious. as i waited, i could not keep a particular encounter with chris from my mind. he had not been in school this week because of the impending hearing, but we ran into each other on the street one afternoon and the unexpectedness of his eyes drew my attention. he was wearing mismatched contact lenses—one an eight ball and one a devilish red—making his eyes impossible to ignore. we looked at each other, but the interaction ended quickly as i nodded and walked away, unable to sustain the connection. the image of chris’ eyes however, lingered. i gazed around the reception room, hoping for distraction. the school district motto— “excellence in education”—hung with authority on the wall behind the assistant’s desk; the other walls held paintings of local landscapes. a handful of children’s books were scattered on a side table, along with the district newsletter, a compilation of school activities and teacher practices, that celebrated our accomplishments. i picked it up and stared at the students and teacher beaming happily across the front page as they enjoyed an outdoor learning experience. the caption said something about students and staff feeling safe and valued, connected within their learning community, one of our district goals. it certainly appeared to be that way. my contemplation was interrupted as mrs. jones entered the room and warmly welcomed me to her office. i took a seat in one of four standard, blue covered, armchairs as mrs. jones sank into her high-backed, black leather desk chair, swirling to face me. the room was lined with bookshelves of policy-filled binders and the wall with degrees, certificates, and awards. a smile spread across mrs. jones’ face as she informed me that the hearing had gone as anticipated, chris was expelled. she expressed her gratitude and thanked me on behalf of the board for my professional conduct and management of the situation. (as a beginning principal this was reassuring, i regularly questioned my ability to do the job, knowing i was lacking in both experience and qualification—i was in the process of completing my masters degree. i made a mental note to find achievement-focused wall hangings of my own.) i first came to mrs. jones for advice on how to handle this unusual disciplinary situation the week before, filling her in on the content of the message that chris (a high school student) had left on mr. and mrs. brown’s (both teachers in my school) voicemail late one evening. she sat calmly, looked at me with genuine interest and concern, and listened carefully. the phone message was sexually explicit and threatening, to such an extent that both teachers felt uncomfortable being at work. the message attested to a number of other boys (four of them) laughing and cheering in the background while chris spoke. nearly every staff member had somehow become aware of this situation and had spoken to me about it, sharing opinions, anxiety, and concerns. that something needed to be done, and that i needed to do it, was clear. the parents and the boys involved were likewise anxious as they awaited my decision about consequences (which i had been slow deciding). mrs. jones took in the details as i explained them and agreed that the situation was complex, one about which i was right to seek guidance. how i chose to “resolve” it would, in many ways, influence how staff, students, parents, and community perceived me as a principal, and what they could expect from me in this role. could i act swiftly and resolutely, making “good” and just decisions? could i speak to and defend those decisions publicly, explaining what had happened to the boys and why? what mrs. jones said made sense to me. i wanted to serve my school community well and i wanted to be a good principal. mrs. jones outlined the support she and the school board could offer, as well as the support that was available through our established policies. in referencing the school act, the district’s student conduct policy, and our school’s code of conduct, i would have more than enough information to direct my decisions. we discussed the powers of a principal to suspend students for up to five days or recommend expulsion to the school board. we discussed chris’ direct participation versus the other boys’ bystander status, merely being present when the wrong occurred. we discussed incidents that happen off school property and outside of the school day and the importance of schools being safe places for staff and students. mrs. jones talked and i did my best to absorb all she said. there was much i needed to learn. she knew how the system worked and seemed well versed in managing educational problems/situations like this; it made me feel better knowing that she had answers and was confident and assured in those answers. in the end, mrs. jones offered suggestions about what i should do, which, with relief, i happily accepted. the four boys who were bystanders ought not to be punished too harshly simply because they were present—an apology to the teachers and a two or three day suspension would suffice. the length of the suspensions was left to my discretion as i knew the boys and was aware of previous infractions, attendance, academic achievement, and usual behaviour patterns that might warrant consideration. chris, however, required more serious consequences because he had directly threatened two staff members, negatively affecting the school’s learning environment. removal from school indefinitely seemed sensible. thanks to mrs. jones, i had a clear understanding of what i needed to do. armed with long-established templates, i wrote suspension letters (three days) for the bystander boys, followed by a letter to chris and his parents recommending expulsion and explaining the process for the hearing. with the decided consequences communicated, i began to compile information about chris that would be required for the hearing, including his attendance (not great), academic achievement (low), and previous behaviour incidents (few). the hearing was held at the school with members of the board sitting mid-room as a panel. at the front of the room there was an empty chair for whoever was being questioned (mostly me), and opposite that chair sat mrs. jones’ assistant who busily kept notes. mrs. jones and the assistant superintendents sat along the side wall between the empty chair and the school board. behind the board, chairs were set up for the rest of us. as chris and his parents entered they were directed to their seats, clearly the least comfortable people in the room, sitting quietly, heads bowed. members of the school board reviewed the details of chris’ school record and asked me questions about his academic performance, attendance, and behaviour. they asked about mr. and mrs. brown and how they were managing. they did not ask my opinion, but relied only on the evidence presented. they asked chris’ parents questions about chris’ goals, his interest in school, his involvement in extracurricular activities, and his peers. when chris’ parents were asked if they had any questions, they said they wanted chris to graduate and asked when they would know the board’s decision. the board chair explained that they would deliberate until a decision was reached, at which point, the superintendent and parents would be contacted. (the superintendent would then inform me.) chris and his parents thanked everyone for their time and walked out. chris never returned to our school or district, though arrangements were made for him to attend school in a neighbouring community where he stayed until he quit high school sometime in grade eleven. the school staff relayed their relief and gratitude, expressing confidence in my capacity to lead our school. i felt reassured and also more knowledgeable about my role as principal, believing that the next time i was faced with a difficult and unusual situation i would know what to do. i had no idea how helpful policy and process could be in guiding my decisions. i returned to school after my meeting with mrs. jones feeling for the first time, like a principal, the unsettling image of chris’ eyes gone. fulfilling our roles my respite from seeing chris’ eyes with their mismatched contact lenses was short-lived. in fact, chris regularly interrupts my thoughts, often when i’m walking to or from school and anticipating or reliving my day. i still remember looking away from chris—and not from anyone else and am struck by the irony that my first major public “success” as a school principal was linked so tightly to the end of chris’ school career. i relive each of the events in the process, wondering if i missed something or should have done things differently. the universal praise i received did not prevent me from seeing chris’ eyes or lessen my ongoing unease with what happened, but it was not until i began my doctoral studies that i was able to find a way to articulate the source of my disquiet: consistent with my new role in the schooling bureaucracy, i had shifted from educating chris to adiaphorizing him. “adiaphorization” is a term created by the sociologist zygmunt bauman—based on his reading of hannah arendt--to describe how western organizations manage behaviour that threatens the consistency and predictability that are vital to modern bureaucracies—and most especially ethical action. bauman contends that “from the organization’s point of view morally inspired conduct is utterly useless, nay subversive: it cannot be harnessed to any purpose (bauman, , p. ). in response, rather than provide scope for individual actors to make ethical judgments, organizations employ networks of law and policy to limit permissible action to that which is in harmony with instrumental and procedural rationality: “actions that fail to meet the criteria of goal-pursuit or procedural discipline are declared non-social, irrational” (bauman, , p. ) and all subsequent action is rendered “adiaphoric” (from adiaphoron, that is, something rendered neutral—neither good or evil—by the church). mrs. jones, the trustees and i were all fulfilling our roles within the schooling system: we were following school board policy and school law and no one could fault us for how we met our responsibilities. we were certainly doing things right; i am not sure we were doing the right thing. conspicuously absent from my story was its central character. after making the offending call, chris largely disappears and bauman helped me understand why: bauman explains that adiaphorization depends on three complementary arrangements that he labels: effacing the face, the dissembling of the person, and disconnecting action and consequence. the first step required defining chris so that all involved would know the focus and scope of the relationship: chris was not a fourteen year old boy who left an obscene telephone message on the voicemail of two adult community members; chris was a grade ten student who called two teachers at home, making it a concern for the school principal, the district superintendent, and trustees. once chris was defined, we knew what aspects of his background were relevant: his attendance, his grades and his disciplinary record. then, with a clear understanding of both our relationship and the subject matter, the people who knew the least about chris were in a position to objectively determine what was to happen. we succeeded in “neutralizing the disruptive and deregulating impact or moral behavior” (bauman, , p. ), but what happened to chris was never discussed by us again—except, of course, by me with myself. chris’s story embodies what i take to be the central educational challenge of those who work in schools: schooling too often gets in the way of educating. if education entails helping other people learn what they need to live well in the world in the various dimensions of the human condition, then what counts as education can only be determined with others. deciding what counts as education is therefore fundamentally an ethical- political problem—understood in a democracy as people determining how they will treat other people and live alongside others. as bauman describes—and chris’ story demonstrates—modern organizations often elide ethical- political questions in efforts to efficiently accomplish their ostensible purposes without regard for either the legitimacy of those purposes or the impact of that effort on particular people. the legitimation crisis in modernity is hardly a new problem for western scholars (e.g., habermas, , ), but i believe some resources that speak to the problems of education have been neglected and i hope to recover some of those ideas here. in particular, i am interested in following bauman’s example and using hannah arendt’s work to recover the political for education. the human condition in the human condition arendt tells the tragic story of the loss of the political in the western tradition. she begins by describing the vita activa of ancient athens with its hierarchy of sustaining human life by ‘labour’, securing fame or immortality via ‘work’ (both created in the private of the household) and action, the exercise of human freedom by thinking with others in public. she then traces the decline of the vita activa and its replacement by versions of the vita contemplativa after the death of socrates—only to be revived under conditions of modernity in misshapen form: public and private spaces disappear into an amorphous worldless ‘social’ and labour with its concern for survival rises to the apex of the vita activa. labour, work, and action become “equally subject to the necessity of present life” (arendt, , p. ). what emerges is worldlessness, an “occluding of the political by the social and the transformation of the public space of politics into a psuedospace of social interaction, in which individuals no longer ‘act’ but ‘merely behave’” (benhabib, , p. ). worldlessness is reinforced through the bureaucratic, hierarchical structures of contemporary organizations, which demand conformity, compliance, and accountability, all normalizing behaviours that support the ideals of the institution (invariably tied to economic ends). beiner ( ) suggests: “the real danger in contemporary societies is that the bureaucratic, technocratic, and depoliticized structures of modern life encourage indifference and increasingly render men less discriminating, less capable of critical thinking, and less inclined to assume responsibility” (p. ). everything becomes “enframed—ordered, organized, arranged, and accounted for—by technical, productive, and instrumental knowing” (harvey, , p. ). we begin to see society as if it could not be other than it is. ideologies further enclose us in habit and routine, shutting down our ability to question what is. “as long as we live only by habit or tradition, unaware that they mask an implicit choice, there is something about ourselves as actors in the world that we are not seeing and for which we are not acknowledging our responsibility” (pitkin, , p. ). mass society/culture has an anaesthetizing effect on our lives. we find ourselves moving through the world holding tightly to the guiderails—established practices, policies and rules—that guide our actions. thinking becomes unnecessary except as it supports the means necessary to achieve uncontested ends. the implication for education is a dedication to schooling and the means-focused thinking it encourages. the consequences are often distressing and disturbing, as demonstrated in chris’ story where mrs. jones, the browns, members of the school board, and even chris’ parents, comply with expectations and fulfill their roles in the disciplinary cycle. those with the most power—mrs. jones, the school board, and i—made the decisions about what would happen, trusting policy, practice, and established rules, and focusing on the needs of adults (the browns and teachers). there was no space for anyone to appear, no space for dialogue. certainly, there was conversation, but it was concentrated on presenting information about chris’ attendance (decent), academic achievement (low), and previous behaviour incidents (some). everyone did her/his job. no one questioned the process or the outcome. no one thought to do so. the end was determined (more or less) before the process began. (chris’ voice was neglected. unsought. silent. he had no power.) when thinking is focused on achieving unchallenged pre-determined ends, like chris’ expulsion, everything we do becomes targeted toward those ends; anything outside of or beyond them becomes increasingly difficult to imagine. “it is in the nature of ends that they justify the means necessary to achieve them” (arendt, , p. ) regardless of the devastation. “as long as we believe that we deal with ends and means in the political realm, we shall not be able to prevent anybody’s using all means to pursue recognized ends” (arendt, , p. ). politics and thinking, understood in this means-ends way is non-political and the consequences are dire. we are left worldless—disconnected from each other, so busy in the frenzy of doing our jobs that we fail to think about what we are doing and why we are doing it. we lack space to engage in dialogue, to think and debate together. though, even if the space were available, we might find ourselves at a loss, grasping for meaningful topics so comfortable are we with focusing on the functional and the mundane. arendt hopes to remedy worldlessness and recover the political, human freedom understood as acting and thinking together with equal and distinct others in public. she returns to ancient resources, the vita activa of athens with its three forms of human activity—labour, work, and action—to begin her reclamation. labour labour is “an activity in which man is neither together with the world nor with other people, but alone with his body, facing the naked necessity to keep himself alive” (arendt, , p. ). labour confronts human mortality by aiming to secure our physical survival as individuals and as a species by, for example, providing nourishment, shelter, protection. focused on our biological needs, labour must continue as long as we live: meals are consumed almost as quickly as they are prepared, leaving nothing behind and the process repeats indefinitely. “laboring always moves in the same circle, which is prescribed by the biological process of the living organism and the end of its ‘toil and trouble’ comes only with the death of this organism” (arendt, , p. ). because labour is “unending, progressing automatically in accordance with life itself and outside the range of willful decisions or humanly meaningful purposes” (arendt, , p. ) the thinking it requires is likewise automatic, functional, and means- focused, resulting in routine, predictable, and repeated behaviour. labour addresses only the necessity of sustaining life and life’s processes and consequently has nothing to contribute to the political (public) realm. indeed, in ancient athens, labour took place in the privacy and protection of the household, or oikos. the success of labour was easily determined: people survived. though labour is a necessary activity in the vita activa, independently, it is not sufficient. labour is manifest in many ways in our schools today. ask any teacher about ‘survival’ in the classroom and she will provide examples of management, organization, engagement, and planning. “indeed, learning to teach is largely an activity of learning to labour and organize the labour of children, that is, a continuous effort to keep them engaged” (coulter & wiens, , p. ). in addition to the labour of “teaching” and “learning”, teachers often find themselves mired in routines of domesticity, or labour, where they care for and sustain the emotional and physical lives of others (grumet, , p. ). to focus on the expectations of learning, children must be fed, rested, and well. while this sustenance and care is (or should be) primarily generated in the home, it continues, in varying degrees, in the classroom. if a child has not eaten breakfast, we feed him; teachers regularly attend to the basic needs of children and though this responsibility lessens with the age and maturity of the child, it is never absent. maintaining the physical settings of schools is a further form of laboring. classrooms need to be suitable environments for students and school staff to work; this involves daily cleaning, tidying, and attention to ensure that the environment is clean, warm, dry, and safe. when our classrooms and schools become almost exclusively labour-focused, we find ourselves lost in the busy-ness, overwhelmed by the daily demands, always feeling pressed for time (there never seems to be enough) and feeling pressure to complete tasks, such as covering the curriculum. we each perform our role in the organization (ie. teacher, student, parent, principal) and come to know each other in this flat way, disappearing as unique individuals. work work, unlike labour, is about the creation and fabrication of objects that endure and serve humans in either usefulness or beauty. because these objects are not consumed they contribute to stability, permanence, and durability in human life: the reality and reliability of the human world rest primarily on the fact that we are surrounded by things more permanent than the activity by which they were produced, and potentially even more permanent than the lives of their authors. (arendt, , p. ) these objects—houses, furniture, vehicles, books, works of art, etc.—make our lives more secure because they are always there. we may no longer remember the sculptors who created the works on the parthenon’s frieze more than years ago, but we live alongside their creations. homo faber uses tools and earth’s resources to create these use objects, often relying on a plan or model to guide the work. making, or fabrication, like labour, takes place in the private realm, even though its products are made for the public world. when the process of creation is accomplished and a new thing exists “with enough durability to remain in the world as an independent entity” (arendt, , p. ), work is complete and its end achieved—a new object has been added to human artifice. the thinking demanded of work is means-ends thinking with a focus on the ends. because the ends of work are never in doubt, their legitimacy is never questioned. multiple examples of work are present in contemporary schools and the ends are largely uncontested. work, in the sense of producing a product for further use, is no stranger to schools and school systems. school buildings themselves are a product of work, as are the furniture, books, equipment and other physical resources that inhabit them. (pamer, , p. ) apart from the many physical structures (buildings, desks, chairs, textbooks, pens, pencils, and notebooks) that contribute to our classroom and school spaces, teachers create products for use, always with a definite end in mind. we use these creations to support teaching and to meet the various demands of our jobs. artifacts, which remain and can be passed on after we leave, include such items as curriculum documents, text books, unit plans, lesson plans, and projects. that these artifacts are “good” is simply assumed and rarely challenged. for instance, in generating a unit plan, teachers will refer to curriculum objectives for the concepts and learning outcomes that should be included. in daily practice, curriculum, like the use of textbooks, is taken for granted as an acceptable and appropriate guide to instruction. the work we produce in schools is created in private with the intent of inserting and using it in the school and classroom. action action, in contrast to labour (which aims at securing human survival), or work (which focuses on the fabrication of enduring objects), is arendt’s third form of human activity in the vita activa and aims at the intangible: the exercise of human freedom. athenians recognized that a human life involves living alongside and with other people, creating meaning together (though who counted as equal other people was severely limited). arendt explains that, for the greeks, a truly flourishing human life (eudaimonia) was primarily a political concern, that is, a concern for legitimacy in determining how people ought to live together. the expression of political freedom could occur only through a form of collective activity that arendt labels “action.” obviously, what arendt means by “action” is not simply “doing something” such as preparing meals (arendtian labour) or erecting a building (work). instead, she is interested in ethical-political action, an expression of human freedom that is integral to leading a “good” and flourishing life. “men are free…as long as they act, neither before or after; for to be free and to act are the same” (arendt, , p. ). action so understood is not a product of a means-ends activity as are labour and work. in fact, action’s ends and means are enmeshed; they “lie outside action and have an existence independent of whatever action is taken” (arendt, , p. ). while action always has a goal or aim, because it occurs within the complexity of life lived amongst others, each of whom is capable of acting in unique and unexpected ways, action rarely achieves its goal. indeed, action’s end may never come, but emanate outward indefinitely as threads of its consequences are picked up and acted upon by others. in many ways, action is more like a kind of public political performance (much like improvisational theatre) involving the integration of acting and thinking, or as arendt characterizes it in her intellectual journal, “wakeful thinking” (denktagebuch, i, ). maxine greene ( ) interprets ‘wakeful thinking’ as “wide- awakeness”, an attentiveness and interest in things that “is the direct opposite of the attitude of bland conventionality and indifference so characteristic of our time” (p. ) and extends arendt’s understanding of action to education. both education and action can perhaps be best understood as a kind of thinking with other people about how to live well together, exercising our freedom and creating meaning, recognizing that our goals and the ends we pursue may never be reached. two features of the athenian public made action as the expression of freedom possible. first, the polis was a common world that “gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other, so to speak” (arendt, , p. ). through speech and language (and especially through stories) citizens could engage one another and create a common reality, a shared world. arendt ( ) explains that, “the presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves” (p. ). second, the polis was “a space of appearance where [men] could act, a kind of theatre where freedom could appear” (arendt, , p. ). people belonged to a collectivity, yet retained their autonomy, their individual freedom. identity could be developed only when people were able to come together politically and reveal ‘who’ they were. arendt’s descriptions of the public as a common world and a space of appearance point to the two features of the public that make democratic legitimacy possible: plurality and natality. political life requires living alongside different other people and by “plurality” arendt signals the importance of others in both making our lives together and understanding ourselves. she explains, “no man can be sovereign because not one man, but men, inhabit the earth” (arendt, , p. ). political life is therefore contingent on taking other people into account: “men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves” (arendt, , p. ). “natality” embodies arendt’s ( ) conception of freedom; she explains that with the creation of humans, “the principle of beginning came into the world itself, which, of course, is only another way of saying that the principle of freedom was created” (p. ). each person has the potential to make a unique appearance in the public world: the fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. and this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. (arendt, , p. ) action in the polis with concerns for respecting plurality and natality is not a “thing” or even an “action” in the usual sense. arendtian action is better understood as intangible connections among people, a “web of human relationships” that “is no less real than the world of things we visibly have in common” (arendt, , p. ). living politically alongside others in a complex web of relations allows us to show “faith in and hope for the world” (arendt, , p. ), for ourselves, and for others, despite action’s irreversibility. “it is because of this already existing web of human relationships, with its innumerable, conflicting wills and intentions, that action almost never achieves its purpose” (arendt, , p. ). unpredictable and boundless, action offers no security or reliability. however, it is only in and through action that we can be free, that we can know our selves, others, and the world. if, then, we understand the political in the sense of the polis, its end or raison d’etre would be to establish and keep in existence a space where freedom as virtuosity can appear. this is the realm where freedom is a worldly reality, tangible in words which can be heard, in deeds which can be seen, and in events which are talked about, remembered, and turned into stories. (arendt, , p. ) action, as the exercise of freedom, contributes to the creation of meaning and significance in our lives and demonstrates our care for the world. education, with its political and ethical dimensions, is, like action, outside the realm of means-ends thinking; it is about freedom, how we choose to live in the world together, what stories we choose to tell, and the webs of relationships that result. like action, education relies on plurality and the coming together of equal and distinct others. it is, primarily, i believe, about protecting the possibility of the new which is only conceivable if, and when, people have the space to appear to each other, where “anyone through their appearance is capable of changing ‘the game’…. out of the blue” (knott, , p. ). chris’ story is an example of how schooling reduces education. there was no space for anyone to appear, to be seen and heard, to tell her story, or to ‘change the game’. there were no ‘conflicting wills’ or ‘intentions’. the end, and the means to accomplish it, were uncontested. unfortunately, chris’ story serves as evidence of education and freedom lost. chris was silenced and his fate determined by non-thinking adults. for the sake of the children in our schools we need to be more aware, more cognizant, more attentive and awake to what education is and ought to be. education, as the exercise of freedom, involves the creation of meaning and significance in our lives, and demonstrates our care for the world and for our children. one of the primary responsibilities of canadian schooling is to prepare people for democratic citizenship, living together with other people, an aim that aligns well with action. almost all teachers, schools, and districts claim to educate for democracy, but evidence of sustained effort is minimal, and what is meant by democracy remains unclear. “if we remain vague in our definition of democracy and are, therefore, unclear about our strategies for working toward it, then we render the ideal of democracy itself more vulnerable to evisceration and neglect” (kelly, , pp. - ). examples that might be offered are generally contrived, “or glossed as self-governance, inclusion or belongingness, participation, accountability, fairness, or social equality” (kelly, , p. ), such as allowing children to vote on the game they will play in gym, or more significantly, establishing practices like the disciplinary hearing chris experienced, that seem to allow for due process and participation, but essentially suppress the potential for the unknown to emerge. chris was expelled from school, but he was also expelled from the larger world. he did not count. democracy, and the public space it requires, is not a ready fit for the mandate of schooling despite the fact that the bc school act ( / ) claims— whereas it is the goal of a democratic society to ensure that all its members receive an education that enables them to become literate, personally fulfilled and publicly useful, thereby increasing the strength and contributions to the health and stability of that society; and whereas the purpose of the british columbia school system is to enable all learners to become literate, to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy… though the notion of democratic responsibility might be present in schools, and though examples and stories of inspiration exist, in practice, its strength is exhausted. chris’ story serves as an example of this exhaustion, an example of the lack of attention and opportunity for appearance and dialogue. what seems to matter more is accountability to the system, rather than responsibility to each other. documents that guide practice, such as the bc education service plan ( ) and the bc education plan ( ), fail to recognize democracy as a priority of any kind and instead focus on developing “individual potential” and contributing “to a prosperous and sustainable economy”. british columbia’s quest to be competitive within the global economy is clear; it requires moulding “learners” (children) to meet desired ends. the thinking behind such goals, and the subsequent planning that goes into achieving them, is utilitarian and procedural, resulting in prescriptive accountability measures and a constant urge toward efficiency, effectiveness, and continual progress and improvement. the language we use offers further evidence of the primacy of place held by the economy—high standards, improved achievement, quality, choice, accountability, outcomes, and flexibility are “ideals” that recur in government documents and drive schooling. both the practices and language of schools are evidence of labouring. ends are assumed and the focus is entirely on means—how we might create and produce citizens (students) who are able to contribute to our economy and keep bc globally competitive. our schools and the people in them become adiaphorized, as bauman ( ) suggests, always subject “to either instrumental or procedural criteria of evaluation” (p. ). reversals and realignments there is little evidence of arendt’s concern for the vita activa in contemporary schools. that our schools have emerged as paragons of labour, reflections of our labouring society, captures the essence of the problem that arendt responds to in the human condition: the absence of strategies to decide goodness or legitimacy in modern western societies, a crisis that she contends contributed to the holocaust. some people in schools are clearly more powerful than others, a feature of most western hierarchical organizations. arendt is certainly not so naïve as to argue for perfect equality, but she does argue that the resources both to allow people to think together in public (action) and to judge the goodness of that thinking have been lost to western ethical-political thought and need to be reclaimed through historical artifacts, an exercise she calls “pearl diving”. this practice, the search for fragments from our past that might help us live better in the present, involves freeing concepts, ideas, and stories “from their historical moorings and traditional environments” (knott, , p. ). examining ideas outside of their accepted and conventional context allowed arendt to see and understand them in new ways. in the human condition, arendt tells the story of the western intellectual tradition over the last years, a tale that begins with two viable approaches to leading a good human life— the vita activa (the life of acting and thinking in the world with other people) and the vita contemplativa (the philosophical life of the mind, thinking in solitude)—and shows that one or the other became preferred at various times under certain conditions. we have inherited deformed and inferior versions of each in modernity. the twists and turns of her plot with various heroes and villains are fascinating (and largely beyond my purposes here), but important aspects of the story can perhaps be captured by focusing on arendt’s first hero, socrates, and her first villain, plato. socrates has the deserved reputation as the archetypal western philosopher and practitioner of the vita contemplativa. both socrates’ student, plato, and plato’s student, aristotle, follow socrates in understanding that all philosophy begins with “thaumazein, or shocked wonder at the miracle of being” (arendt, , p. ). plato describes what this looked like for socrates who would suddenly be “overcome by his thoughts and thrown into a state of absorption to the point of perfect motionlessness for many hours” (arendt, , p. ). often missing from descriptions of socrates, however, was his insistence on living the vita activa. the son of a stone mason and a midwife, socrates was traditionally educated, took his turn in athenian civic government, and made a comfortable living as a stone mason himself until a modest inheritance allowed him to devote himself entirely to teaching. unlike plato and aristotle, however, socrates founded no school, but wandered the agora, or city marketplace, engaging all who were interested in what he believed were the serious issues of the day. his very insistence on remaining in the public world precipitated his downfall. socrates was eventually accused of disrespecting the gods of the city and corrupting the youth of athens. he went on trial before a jury of where he was, of course, found guilty and sentenced to death. rather than attempting escape and accepting exile, socrates drank hemlock, becoming the best-known educational martyr in the west. in the seventh letter, plato describes his reaction to the trial of his mentor, “the most upright man of that day.” deeply disturbed, plato determines not to follow his teacher into martyrdom. he writes: finally, it became clear to me, with regard to all existing communities, that they were one and all misgoverned…. there will be no cessation of evils…till either those who are pursuing a right and true philosophy receives sovereign power…or those in power…become true philosophers. with plato, the schism between knowing and doing—between the vita contemplativa and the vita activa—opened wide, and has stayed so ever since. arendt ( ) explains: “by sheer force of conceptualization and philosophical clarification, the platonic identification of knowledge with command and rulership and of action with obedience and execution overruled all earlier experiences and articulations” (p. ). philosophy quickly became the realm of the few and relied upon a turning away from the world, avoiding the “nonsense” and distractions of life amongst others and withdrawing from the “reality” of the world of men, in order to become enlightened, to know truth. with the rise of the vita contemplativa to a place of near reverence, entirely removed from and above the base ordinariness of daily existence and human affairs, came the descent of the vita activa. the vita contemplativa replaced the vita activa in esteem in such a way that it never recovered. with action transformed into simply doing, “into ruling and being ruled—that is, into those who command and those who execute commands” (arendt, , p. )—the hierarchy within the vita activa was altered and work replaced action. moreover, with the rise of christianity, glory, that had once been attainable only through action between persons, was now part of a spiritual, otherworldly realm. life, rather than the world (or the body politic) became the greatest or highest good and politics essentially became government rule. eudaimonia, or what it meant to live a “good” life became equivalent to living in accordance with, or obeying, religious maxims. eternal life was guaranteed and desirable if one lived in compliance with the teachings of the church. not living in obedience to the church was cause for imminent concern as the eternal life guaranteed would be eternally miserable. either way, eternal life was a given, and the individual was left to choose eternal happiness or eternal misery. the rise of modernity further changed how we understand the natural world and our place in it in significant ways, leading to another reversal between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. arendt ( ) identified three distinct world-changing events, which “are still happening in unbroken continuity” (p. ) that marked the beginning of modernity: the “discovery” and exploration of the world, the reformation, and the invention of the telescope. the exploration and mapping of the world was revelatory. precisely when the immensity of available space on earth was discovered, the famous shrinking of the globe began until eventually in our world…each man is as much an inhabitant of the earth as he is an inhabitant of his country. (arendt, , p. ) people were no longer destined to remain in the place they were born, but were able to travel anywhere on earth within a matter of days; the digital age further increased our access to information and to other people. more than ever before, the world and its people are available to us, and vast amounts of knowledge are at our fingertips. the world has shrunk. the reformation led humans to doubt and question religion, authority, and tradition, giving rise to secularity and the disappearance of moral bannisters to guide decisions. no longer able to rely on conventional precepts for guidance, humans are left ungrounded. “without the sanction of religious belief, neither authority nor tradition is secure. without the support of customary tools of understanding and judgment, both religion and authority are bound to falter” (arendt, , p. ). the loss of tradition, authority and religion, and the rise of secularity left humans not thrown back on the world, but upon self. subsequently, life, though mortal once again, remained the highest good. the development of the telescope created the realization that the tools humans built could generate a new kind of knowledge—empirical, scientific knowledge—independent of moral considerations. as human’s horizons expanded across and beyond the earth, we sought to know and command this space through the use of tools and instruments (technology), which appeared to confirm and demonstrate truth. trusting in means-end conclusions and processes established confidence in the “empirical evidence” of science. “[t]he deductive but disastrous tendency to identify thinking with the insatiable quest for scientific knowledge” (bernstein, , p. ) led humans to trust doing rather than contemplation as invented tools helped us “prove” and be certain about the world. truth was accepted only as a result of testing, experimenting and “proving”, rather than from and through contemplation, “the reading of an instrument seemed to have won a victory over both the mind and the senses” (arendt, , p. ). the purpose of work shifted from the product, to how and through what means and processes, it had come to be and could be reproduced. with doing understood as the only way to truth and knowledge, largely removed from ethical or normative concerns, the vita contemplativa lost its authority. the vita activa once again rose to dominance, but now with labour at the apex, leaving a society that demands of its members a sheer automatic functioning, as though individual life had actually been submerged in the over-all life process of the species and the only active decision still required of the individual were to let go, so to speak, to abandon his individuality, the still individually sensed pain and trouble of living, and acquiesce in a dazed, tranquilized, functional type of behavior. (arendt, , p. ) thinking remained important, but only in the service of doing; it narrowed and focused on means and ends. “contemplation itself became altogether meaningless” (arendt, , p. ). the thinking we are left with is non-thinking: we live automatically, behaving and doing what we are expected and required to do; our thinking is understood to be relevant only as (and if) it serves doing, knowing, and sustaining the “needs” of society. as thinking becomes more means-focused (and ends always assumed), thinking with others outside the framework of ends and means becomes less viable, and public and private spaces, in many cases, disappear. without space to think together we rely on standards and rules to guide our decisions. we want to know what past practice has been, what policies exist, what the guide or manual suggests, or what “research” tells us. villa ( ) recognizes that there is a broad-based decline in our capacity to ‘think without rules’…. with this decline comes an increasing reliance on the various ‘bannisters’ (ready-to-hand principles and value judgments) that enable us to navigate everyday life without having to stop and think. (p. ) as we fail to exercise our capacity to think, we distance ourselves from the possibility of determining the legitimacy with which we live our lives and instead behave as members of mass society. we acquiesce. “society is also the realm of behavior, and excludes the possibility of action…imposing innumerable and various rules, all of which tend to normalize its members, to make them behave” (pitkin, , p. ). the loss of public-political space means the loss of thinking with others, the loss of action. we are left with sameness and conformity. this state of non-thinking functioning and acquiescence is the cornerstone of worldlessness, the problem arendt seeks to contest. consequences for understanding schooling as labour in many ways schools are worldless institutions, reflecting the worldlessness inherent in modern society. not unlike other bureaucratic, hierarchical contemporary organizations, schools pursue assumed ends, focusing on the means necessary to achieve those ends. schooling in british columbia, as already mentioned, is focused, with very little resistance or contention, on continual progress and student success in service of economic ends. our education ministry’s ultimate aim is “a healthy society and a prosperous and sustainable economy” (service plan ; bc education plan ; rocky mountain school district purpose statement) which we attempt to achieve through system-wide accountability and data driven decision-making. success is determined through a variety of evidence-based measures, such as graduation rates, grade-to- grade transitions, course completion, and report card grades. as we regularly review data (information), we adjust practice and strategies in an attempt to become more efficient and successful in achieving our goals. at a glance this may seem sufficient. however, contributing to a “democratic and pluralistic society” (bc school act) is conveniently and consistently omitted from planning and reporting documents at the school, district, and ministry level. for example, the superintendent’s report on achievement ( ) includes the following purpose: - ensure transparency and accountability for each school district in terms of its responsibility for improving student achievement; and - provide information that will facilitate subsequent planning for continuing improvement of student achievement at the school and school district levels consequently, when we talk about how (and what) we are doing as a school, a district, or a system, we talk about what we can assess and measure; there is little space to talk about democratic citizenship—how we believe we ought to live and be together. even asking questions becomes difficult and is commonly discouraged. a colleague was recently directed by his supervisor not to ask any questions during meetings. should he not understand something, he was to go to his supervisor privately to seek clarification. asking questions in front of others could be interpreted as an affront to the supervisor’s power, and as “the captain of the ship” she needs to know that everyone is “on board”. apparently, being “on board” means unquestioning compliance. this silencing speaks to the power of systems thinking and the impenetrability of hierarchical organizations; it is also reflective of a labouring society. when questions are not permitted or we can no longer even think of questions to ask, we are caught in the cycle of labour and come to understand our classrooms and schools, and the people who are part of them, as things we can control and manage, assess and measure. when we start defining what matters in education only by what we can measure, we are in serious trouble. when that happens, we tend to forget that schools are responsible for shaping character, developing sound minds in healthy bodies…and forming citizens for our democracy…. we even forget to reflect on what we mean when we speak of good education. (ravitch, , pp. - ) alignment of accountability measures and system expectations from ministry to districts to schools to classrooms creates a system that is nearly impregnable. the means-focused thinking required to achieve “success” leaves teachers and principals always busy—planning, assigning, assessing, reporting, managing, organizing, preparing materials, tidying up and then starting all over the next day, the next week, the next term, and eventually the next year, replacing one set of students with another—a form of batch processing. the cyclical busy-ness and constant doing of teaching, combined with almost exclusive attention to means, is indicative of labouring. it is easy to get caught up in the expectations of schooling and not notice how education is overlooked. teachers spend their days striving to achieve the goals put before them, searching for ways to help students “grow”, “develop” and become “better learners”—to be “successful,” seldom questioning the ends of their labour. the thinking required for schooling, and for teaching as labour, is limited at best, relying on set parameters and guidelines—detailed curriculum guides, assessment practices, ministry mandates, district policies, and school rules. students, teachers, and principals learn to conform, to accept ideas and behaviour patterns as “good” or “right,” in order to fit in and to seek personal success. for students this includes the obvious end of schooling: graduation and its credential. schooling and its efforts are rarely questioned, but rather taken as self-evidently “good” and desirable. the bannisters of precedence, policy and practices are firmly anchored. if the data shows improvement, we are doing well and moving in the “right” direction. there is little space for reflective thought or contemplation because we are too busy complying with schooling’s expectations. subsequently, we lack tools to question the legitimacy and goodness of what we are doing. we lack a world where we can think together. instead we rely on data and empirical evidence to guide us. we fail to recognize that we are following empty, meaningless ideals that become placeholders in creating goals, mission statements, and visions around schooling’s purpose. most importantly, we lose each other and may not even realize it. teachers and students become less visible, appearing to each other only in their roles, not in their unique human-ness. we cannot expect schools to be educational if there is no space for appearance, no space for knowing each other and thinking together, no space for solitude (thinking with myself) and where the focus is on narrowly defined success and the expectation of continual progress. when the structures of classrooms and schools limit both public and private space, failing to allow people to appear, it can only ever be a space devoted to schooling. education is exiled, as was chris. chris was fifteen when he was removed from my school and from the community in which he had grown up. he travelled to school in another community for more than a year, but did not complete high school. no one who participated in his discipline acknowledged or recognized chris (except his parents). rather, he appeared only as a problem to be solved. there were many factors contributing to chris’ behaviour that no one even attempted to understand at the time. those factors were exacerbated by chris’ expulsion. eventually (quite quickly), the disciplinary incident was largely forgotten, except by chris and his family, who continue, many years later to deal with the consequences. had there been space for chris, and everyone else who was involved to appear, this story may have had a very different ending (though it is not yet ended). nixon ( ) offers insight into the problem of dis-appearance and its consequence for identity and action. if there is no one to recognize us we remain unrecognized, and— in remaining unrecognized—we lack the conditions necessary for individual freedom and self- realization: we may be part of the visual field that constitutes the world of appearances, but remain undifferentiated within it. our value—insofar as we are deemed to have any – is a function of the category that we are perceived to represent. (p. ) in chris’ case, he was simply seen as the “problem” to be solved; everyone involved was seen in their roles, rather than in their individuality. fostering action in schools despite action’s improbability, arendt ( ) does not completely despair, nor should we. while she describes “the modern growth of worldlessness, the withering away of everything between us…as the spread of a desert” (p. ), she also points to spaces of freedom that are oases, “life-giving sources that let us live in the desert without becoming reconciled to it” (arendt, , p. ) and cites examples of how action can erupt: the american revolution, the paris commune of , the creation of soviets during the russian revolution, the french resistance to hitler in the second world war, and the hungarian revolt of . more recent examples might include greenpeace, the feminist movement, the orange revolution, the arab spring and the peoples climate movement—all of which began at the periphery of society (coulter, , p. ). in education, an example would be the lobby for the inclusion of special needs students in schools that originated with parents. while public schools are labouring systems that foster economic ends and priorities, they also have an explicit democratic mandate (even if largely ignored). all are welcome and children must learn to live with very different other people. though action, thinking with others, is not necessarily welcome in the realm of schooling, it is possible, albeit temporarily, for educators who intentionally and consciously create spaces of freedom by stepping away/back from schooling. action in schools is invariably about finding ways to see each other in our human- ness, seeing who rather than simply what we are, and this can happen in seemingly insignificant or minor ways. teachers who include children in creating and organizing classroom space and encouraging dialogue around how they will be together in that space are aware of power imbalances and are deliberate in finding ways to minimize the effects. teachers who believe that children are able to contribute (and teachers are not the all-knowing leaders) understand action. they understand they can learn from children as much (perhaps more) than children learn from them. administrators with concern for action will find ways to open up space for dialogue among adults (staff and parents), which is more difficult than simply providing time or bringing people together. trust and respect are preconditions of this space; there needs to be a sense of safety if people are going to speak freely and openly, knowing that there will be disparate ideas and opinions and often disagreement. educators can create public and private spaces and promote action in schools in various ways: narrative, story-telling; the development and examination of language; opportunities to engage in aesthetic experiences; fostering a sense of wonder, imagination, and questioning. ultimately, all of these strategies can nurture “democratic eruptions” (wiens & coulter, ) to contest what we might assume is given. they can provide “new perspectives on the lived world,” and can “lead to a startling defamiliarization of the ordinary” (greene, , p. ). stories and art can disrupt and cause us to wonder. once we are able to see differently, in new ways, and from other perspectives, the possibility of action arises. though there are possibilities for peripheral disturbances in schools and sparks of these disturbances exist, examples are too few. in my own experience i can think of few instances where i have participated in a political public space or witnessed it in schools. hierarchy counters action, and there seems to be frustratingly little interest in resisting power structures or in having conversations about what we are doing and what might count as “good” and worthwhile in schools. it seems that those who attempt to disrupt the certainty of schooling are either ignored or silenced, as was my inquisitive, question-asking colleague. any attempt to open space, and to engage in dialogue that is not simply “professed consultation,” with already determined outcomes, is often expeditiously dismissed. children, teachers, principals, and parents become trapped within the system and its expectations, accepting, for the most part, that this is “just how it is.” it is clear that for too many of us “there is a feeling of being dominated and [these] feelings of powerlessness are almost inescapable” (greene, , p. ). in the human condition arendt provides her diagnosis of the problem of the loss of the political and consequences of the loss of ethical bannisters, and even points to a few islands of freedom in the desert of worldlessness, but doesn’t supply the resources to get to those islands. any possible efforts in that direction were waylaid, however, by an event that helped her realize that the task would be far more daunting than she understood: the problem of worldlessness was much more severe than she realized: she learned the requisite resources for exercising both political freedom and ethical action can be destroyed. the event was the arrest and trail of adolf eichmann. in irons in argentina on may , , adolf eichmann was captured and extradited to israel to be tried for crimes against the jewish people. arendt offered her services as a reporter to the new yorker and went to jerusalem to attend the trial. she felt that to attend this trial was an obligation she owed her past. she was interested in understanding eichmann’s mind and, through the testimonies at the trial, to explore ‘the totality of the moral collapse the nazis caused in respectable european society’. (arendt, , p. xii) the report arendt wrote was eventually published as eichmann in jerusalem: a report a term in sailing that signifies a loss of maneuverability—when a sail boat is bow headed into the wind and stalled, trapped and unable to maneuver or steer. on the banality of evil, an unconventional and still contested contribution to our understanding of evil and the holocaust. arendt was “primarily concerned with characterizing eichmann’s criminality” (bernstein, , p. ), a focus that put her at odds with the prosecutor, gideon hausner, who concentrated on “what the jews had suffered, not what eichmann had done” (arendt, , p. ). certainly, arendt recognized the highly emotional and complex content and context, but condemned any diversion from the obligation of the court to judge eichmann’s actual deeds. both the approach arendt used and the conclusions she offered were offensive to many. her tone was often acerbically sarcastic and her words insensitive, as if she was deliberately provoking her audience, was unaware of who they might be, or simply did not care. arendt could have presented the report with more sensitivity, but did not and as a result eichmann in jerusalem was highly criticized and widely rejected. many of the criticisms were connected to errors in historical research on the holocaust, documentation of which was still emerging when arendt wrote her report, and continues to emerge today. jacob robinson, an influential critic, identified many of arendt’s factual errors in the crooked shall be made straight (young-bruehl, , p. ). the inconsistencies, tensions, and factual errors combined with her tone resulted in outrage against arendt and her views: “no book within living memory had elicited similar passions. a kind of excommunication seemed to have been imposed on the author by the jewish establishment in america” (arendt, , p. vii). arendt’s most contentious and provocative claims involved both the character of the criminal and the nature of his crimes. an efficient administrator sitting in a glass box, built for his protection, eichmann seemed ordinary; indeed, “half a dozen psychiatrists had certified him as ‘normal’” (arendt, , p. )— a man who fulfilled his duty, obeyed the law, and had done nothing directly to harm the jews. eichmann claimed that “he ‘personally’ never had anything whatever against jews; on the contrary, he had plenty of ‘private reasons’ for not being a jew hater” (arendt, , p. ). repeatedly he avowed that he never killed anyone: “with the killing of jews i had nothing to do. i never killed a jew, or a non- jew, for that matter—i never killed any human being. i never gave an order to kill either a jew or a non-jew; i just did not do it” (arendt, , p. ). arendt, unlike most others, “took seriously eichmann’s own understanding of himself as a man without base motives, a man who had conscientiously done his duty” (young-bruehl, , p. ); she did not accept that he was simply lying (which was of course a possibility) and believed that there seemed to be some truth in how he saw himself, reporting that he was perfectly sure that he was not what he called an innerer schweinehund, a dirty bastard in the depths of his heart; and as for his conscience, he remembered perfectly well that he would have had a bad conscience only if he had not done what he had been ordered to do—to ship millions of men, women, and children to their death with great zeal and the most meticulous care. (arendt, , p. ) for eichmann, living according to conscience was about living according to established and accepted rules, obeying german law, following orders, and sustaining his fidelity to the fuhrer. he had always been a law-abiding citizen who was not alone in failing to see how nazi germany had turned the law on its head. “since the whole of respectable society had in one way or another succumbed to hitler, the moral maxims which determine social behaviour and the religious commandments—‘thou shalt not kill!’—which guide conscience had virtually vanished” (arendt, , p. ). to eichmann, it appeared that everyone supported the third reich; he witnessed no opposition, which seemed sufficient justification for participation. eichmann’s “conscience was indeed set at rest when he saw the zeal and eagerness with which ‘good society’ everywhere reacted as he did” (arendt, , p. ) and followed the fuhrer. it was simply impossible for eichmann to believe that “respectable” society might be wrong. repeatedly during the trial, eichmann showed “his utter ignorance of everything that was not directly, technically and bureaucratically, connected with his job” (arendt, , p. ). organizational efficiency and administrative effectiveness were eichmann’s strengths. he was successful in his role, responsible for the transportation and deportation of jews (likely the first time in his life he had ever felt success). he was not only good at organizing transportation to ensure the greatest efficiency, but also at negotiating the means necessary to make transportation possible. knowing exactly what was expected of him and understanding his function within the nazi bureaucracy, offered security and comfort. his conscience was connected to a sense of duty and loyalty, to being a “good citizen.” arendt concluded that eichmann, except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement…had no motives at all. and his diligence in itself was in no way criminal; he certainly would not have murdered his superior in order to inherit his post. he merely, to put the matter colloquially, never realized what he was doing. (arendt, , p. ) not that eichmann was unaware of what was happening in the nazi government or that he was not responsible for sending millions to their death. in principle he knew quite well what it was all about, and in his final statement to the court he spoke of the ‘revaluation of values prescribed by the government.’ he was not stupid. it was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of the period. (arendt, , pp. - ) arendt concluded that eichmann refused to think for himself, that is, he had no evil motives and simply did not know what he was doing, a determination that in no way absolved him of responsibility for his heinous crimes. arendt rejects the excuse that eichmann was simply a ‘cog’ in the nazi bureaucracy with the possibility of exoneration due to ignorant compliance—as did the israeli court that judged him guilty and sentenced him to death. eichmann was hanged may , for crimes against the jewish people—the price he paid for choosing to participate in the nazi bureaucracy. eichmann appeared to be disappointingly and problematically unexceptional to arendt, representing many hundreds of thousands of bureaucratic types who implemented policies of atrocity or otherwise. it was startling that “so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal” (arendt, , p. ), leaving arendt to conclude that eichmann was not a “villain” in the traditional sense: “the deeds were monstrous, but the doer…was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous” (arendt, a, p. ). eichmann “was not iago and not macbeth, and nothing would have been farther from his mind than to determine with richard iii ‘to prove a villain’” (arendt, , p. ). what startled arendt ( ) was that eichmann was so “banal”; indeed he “had no motives at all” (p. ). he had ceased to be a thinking human being. an unprecedented crime while the character of the criminal seemed mundane, even banal, arendt believed that the nature of his crime was unique in human history. bernstein ( ) explains: torture, humiliation, massacres, pogroms, sadistic orgies, even genocide, have a long history. [however], arendt singles out something that was unprecedented— the systematic attempt to transform human beings so that they no longer exhibit the characteristics of a distinctively human life. (p. ) arendt struggles to capture this new crime: it seems to me that it has something to do with the following phenomenon: making human beings superfluous (not using them as means to an end, which leaves their essence as humans untouched…; rather, making them superfluous as human beings). this happens as soon as all unpredictability…is eliminated. (kohler & saner, , p. ) eliminating human beings as distinct individuals was accomplished in stages: “the camps show, first, that the juridicial person in humans had to be killed; second, that the moral person had to be destroyed; and, finally, that the individuality of the self had to be crushed” (benhabib, , p. ). the systematic attack on human beings by the removal of the conditions that made them human was startling for arendt as she considered eichmann’s role in the holocaust. the nazis had very nearly destroyed the jewish people by stripping away the conditions foundational to living as a human being—natality, plurality, spontaneity and action. the systematic elimination of human beings as human beings was unprecedented. moreover, the denial of the requisite conditions to live a full human life not only made the administrative murder of thousands of “superfluous” people possible, but also promoted the dispositions needed to become a criminal functionary. no one under the nazi regime, jewish or not, had the requisite public space to think with others, or the corresponding private space to think independently. there were no alternatives for eichmann because the public and private realms had been effectively shut down. the only public identity available to him was as an ss colonel, a compliant party member, with its accompanying norms and rules; the nazi party became the only viable community available to him. like everyone else, eichmann became a ‘what’ rather than a ‘who’; he had a singular identity defined by his role within the system. as such, there was no need or space to think and to make moral judgments, to consider the perspectives of others. the nazis used the legal system to destroy the public world, dominating and controlling the terms and conditions of living, leaving no spaces to appear, no common world in which people could gather together yet remain distinct. action—the form of public thinking with other people that arendt advocated in the human condition—was impossible. eichmann’s crimes were, of course, legal under german law. arendt ( ) contends that the holocaust—and in particular the eichmann trial—demonstrated “the inadequacy of the prevailing legal system and of current juridical concepts to deal with the facts of administrative massacres organized by the state apparatus” (p. ). the facts of the case were beyond doubt well before the trial began, as was eichmann’s guilt; identifying precisely what his crimes were, however, was challenging since eichmann acted on orders that were consistent with the relevant jurisprudence. as arendt ( ) points out, he acted in accordance with the rule, examined the order issued to him for its ‘manifest’ legality, namely regularity; he did not have to fall back upon his ‘conscience,’ since he was not one of those who were unfamiliar with the laws of his country. the exact opposite was the case. (p. ) most countries agree that criminal orders ought not to be followed, a mandate that fails to take into account states or countries that are manifestly criminal like nazi germany. the nazis had managed to turn the law—and its ethical and political foundations—upside down. generally, “the law expresses only what every man’s conscience would tell him” (arendt, , p. ) and all of eichmann’s peers, those who he considered to be part of good german society, were following the law and abiding by the same prevailing norms as he was. eichmann was well- aware of the law and had always prided himself, not only on following orders, but on being a law-abiding citizen; his conscience was clear, and perfectly aligned with the law and the moral order. the problem was that the law reflected a deformed—and firmly entrenched—moral order. eichmann’s evil ironically, eichmann actually appealed to the prevailing western ethical-political framework to defend his actions in israel. before the trial, eichmann explained to his police interrogator that he had always aimed to abide by kant’s categorical imperative, that is, “the demand that by kant i long assumed as my guiding principle” (bernstein, , p. ). later, when challenged by one of the judges at his trial, he replied: “i was referring to the time when i was my own master, with a will…of my own, and not when i was under the domination of a supreme force” (silber, , p. ). eichmann distorted the categorical imperative to the point that all that is left of kant’s spirit is the demand that a man do more than obey the law, that he go beyond the mere call of obedience and identify his own will with the principle behind the law…. in kant’s philosophy, that source was practical reason; in eichmann’s household use of him, it was the will of the fuhrer. (arendt, , pp. - ) while arendt ( ) recognizes this deformation of kant’s thought, she largely focuses on eichmann’s ordinariness, his lack of any motives except self-advancement and the “sheer thoughtlessness… that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of all time” (pp. - ). the banality of eichmann’s motives, however, belied their impact—a paradox that arendt named, but did not analyze. indeed, eichmann in jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil ( ) is not a “theoretical treatise on the nature of evil” (p. ), but “only one example among many to demonstrate the inadequacy of the prevailing legal system and of current juridical concepts to deal with the facts of administrative massacres organized by the state apparatus” (arendt, , p. ). having named the new phenomenon, arendt spends the remainder of her life speculating on a remedy, one that does not depend so much on the availability of the kind of public and private spaces that she described in the human condition: the exercise of thinking that might contribute to making autonomous ethical-political judgments. she explains: what we have demanded in [all the postwar]…trials where the defendants had committed ‘legal” crimes is that human beings be capable of telling right from wrong even when all they have to guide them is their own judgment, which, moreover, happens to be completely at odds with…the unanimous opinion of all those around them. (arendt. , pp. - ) arendt’s response in responding to the holocaust, arendt, despite her admiration for kant, rejects any notion of evil that depends on individual rational autonomy. for arendt, far more concerning than distorting or disobeying the categorical imperative, was the nazi’s success at making human beings superfluous. in describing her own reaction when she learned what happened in the death camps she writes: it was really as if an abyss had opened…. this ought not to have happened. and i don’t mean just the number of victims. i mean the method, the fabrication of corpses and so on—i don’t need to go into that. this should not have happened. something happened there, to which we cannot reconcile ourselves. none of us ever can. (arendt, , p. ) arendt subsequently focused her efforts on understanding evil and marshalling resources to confront evil when—as the eichmann trial revealed so powerfully—the private and public spaces needed for the ethical-political action that she described in the human condition can so effectively be foreclosed. ironically, in her efforts to rescue the vita activa, arendt turns to the other viable form of life pursued in ancient athens: the vita contemplativa, that is, the life of the mind. chapter : the wind of thinking thinking inevitably has a destructive undermining effect on all established criteria, values, measurements of good and evil, in short, on those customs and rules of conduct we treat of in morals and ethics. these frozen thoughts…come so handily that you can use them in your sleep; but if the wind of thinking…has shaken you from your sleep and made you fully awake and alive, then you will see that you have nothing in your grasp but perplexities, and the best we can do with them is share them with each other. (arendt, a, p. ) the result of understanding is meaning, which we originate in the very process of living insofar as we try to reconcile ourselves to what we do and what we suffer. (arendt, , p. ) as human beings we organize our experience with the aim of making sense of our lives and living well with other people; moreover, living well with others requires the ability to know what counts as good or right action. to mediate the inherent complexity, we often attempt to codify what we ought to do by developing ethical standards, laws and rules which appeal to our need for organization and predictability. we rely on rules to maintain order, structure, and safety in order to live alongside one another in complex communities, trusting that our standards will ensure good decisions. indeed, we could not live together without having some degree of agreed upon practices and rules—both overt and tacit—to govern how we co-exist day-to-day. however, rules can fall short and right action can be difficult to determine. as i faced the responsibility of delivering penalties for the girls’ drug behaviour and started looking at their individual circumstances, deciding the ‘right’ course of action proved challenging; i found little clarity, answers were elusive, and any surety dissipated. had i looked only at the facts, consequences would have been evident, but once particulars and individuals were considered, i was left to rely on my own imperfect judgment, wondering about the many ways established policy might fail these girls. following rules and complying with expectations is important in maintaining structure and order, but it makes ‘thinking what we do’ dangerously unnecessary. with the collapse of the need to think, as eichmann demonstrated, we face critical and potentially tragic outcomes as morality is too easily turned on its head; in consequence our guiding practices, policies, and precepts need to be continually questioned so that we do not become enclosed in our understanding of the world, too dependent on singular, frames. the holocaust offers a limit example of the frailty of codified ideals and the dangers of conformity and compliance, most obviously the nazi reversal of the commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’ to “thou shalt kill.’ how do we come to forfeit our responsibility to think for ourselves in favour of conformity and obedience? for arendt, the forfeiture is connected to an inability to think. she admits that thinking itself does not guarantee good or right action, but she does suggest that it may prevent evil doing. if there is any possibility that independent thinking might act as a check on evil, we must demand it from every sane human being. “that horrendous evil can be done by a banal conformist raises up thinking, fragile and of breathtakingly slight effect, as infinite in value” (deutscher, , p. ). arendt recognized the complexity inherent in ethical action, the limitations and fallibility in judging right and wrong, good and evil, and yet she turned to thinking in all its fragility as a way to resist evil-doing. she understood that most of us, most of the time, behave automatically, following established patterns, creating measures of predictability in our lives. our systematized lives can become so comfortable that we live rather blindly, as if asleep, failing to question how we organize our experience. when everything we do is based on established rules or policies, we look outside of ourselves for direction, neglecting our responsibility to question the world. most of the time, this somnambulistic existence is sufficient, but there are times when complacency and conformity prove inadequate—and sometimes catastrophic. eichmann, for example, lost the world and any sense of his place in it among other human beings: his perspective was restricted to the nazi created reality that guided his behaviour. for many of us, it is only when established criteria, norms and rules become inadequate for making sense of the world—when our givens are shaken and what had previously seemed beyond question no longer makes sense, when we find ourselves ‘in irons’ and unable to maneuver as before—that we begin to reimagine or create new ways of understanding, or like eichmann, we close our eyes and retreat into blind delusion. any collapse of our taken for granted ideals sets us adrift until and unless, we are able to adjust the sails of our understanding so that we might once again be at home in the world. only when we intentionally challenge the limited perspectives we have developed, the closed ways we see the world, and the “reality” we accept and assume, can we see differently and in new ways. the inability to ‘see’ and to think beyond apparent givens troubled arendt deeply and inspired her speculations around thinking and the life of the mind. she hoped thinking might guard against the self-certainty, complacency and moral blindness she witnessed in eichmann. an inability to think, arendt contends, is somehow connected to a loss of the conditions that make action and freedom possible—plurality and natality, public and private space—as evidenced in totalitarian states. in the human condition, arendt was concerned with recovering and reimagining these conditions, but the eichmann trial exposed their fragility and their vulnerability to the worldlessness precipitated by new forms of totalitarianism. in the life of the mind arendt turns to the mental faculties of thinking, willing, and judging as possible bulwarks against worldlessness and begins to reimagine the relationship between the vita contemplativa and the vita activa. a meaningful and worthwhile life depends upon an active, balanced, and healthy interior life of the mind. conversely, arendt recognized that a “world devoid of thinking, willing and judging would…[be] characterized...by ‘thoughtlessness’ and inhabited by automatons such as eichmann, who lacked freedom of will and any capacity for independent judgment” (nixon, , p. ). in the unfinished the life of the mind, arendt examines the faculties individually, a strategy similar to the one she used in the human condition with labour, work, and action, examining each faculty in order to understand it while insisting on the relatedness and interdependence of the faculties. “thinking, willing and judging are all autonomous, both in the sense that they follow only the rules inherent in their activities and in the sense that they are not all derived from some single source” (young-bruehl, , p. ). thinking involves questioning taken-for-granted assumptions including what is true, good, worthwhile and moral; willing entails accepting the responsibility to exercise our freedom to construct meaning in our lives; judging requires the construction of careful appraisals of what we know and what we should do. in “thinking” arendt is not a friend to her readers; she was not interested in generating a comprehensive or coherent theory or a system that would contain and categorize her ideas, nor was she concerned with her audience’s response. “the motive behind her work was her own desire to understand, and writing was part of the process of understanding” (canovan, , p. ); it was not uncommon for arendt to veer off on ‘thought trains’ as she wrote. all thought, arendt believed, arises from living experiences and is tied to it. “[a]lthough thinking soars away from the incident that sets it off, it remains bound to its source, orbiting in a circle around it” (canovan, , p. ). as such, her thinking spreads out in ‘thought-trains’ from the experiences of her life. “these ‘thought-trains,’ provoked by incidents of living experience, crisscross and interweave. sometimes they reinforce each other. but sometimes they also clash with one another, and cannot be easily reconciled” (bernstein, , p. ). many have grappled with arendt’s inconsistencies and though they may prove frustrating, her work should not be dismissed because of them. kateb ( ) for example, identifies several types of thinking that are at stake in arendt’s work: thinking as confirmation of human existence; thinking as a way to understand the perspective and standpoints of others; thinking as a way to create meaningful systems of knowledge; and thinking a way to destroy, deconstruct, or disturb existing knowledge systems. here i divide arendtian thinking into two over-arching approaches derived from socrates and kant respectively: thinking as wondering and thinking as searching for meaning. arendt believed that facing facts was essential to confronting reality, a process which involved “resensitizing, becoming more open and more responsive to the world, including the most difficult realities of a tragic century” (nelson, , p. ). being attentive to and cognizant of reality involves not only organizing experience in order to generate knowledge and to explain the world, but also challenging that knowledge in order to better and more thoroughly understand the world of plural appearances and plural people. as we confront reality and our experience in the world with openness we can hope to find meaning and freedom, though never easily or without challenges. arendt’s dedication to facts and reality resulted in a willingness to be altered, to renew understanding, and to accept unpredictability. like penelope and the spider, arendt was willing to reweave and to rethink based on experience as it was factually given, her own unique perspective, and the reality of the day. spinning her web, the spider is of necessity realistic, anchoring her threads to the world as it is given. but in spite of the random conformations of twigs and stones which determine the outer boundaries of her web, its form is of her own design, and the closer to the centre one looks, the less it reflects its surroundings. as we investigate arendt’s work, we shall find in its intricate thought trains a continual tension between her profound commitment to political realism and the withdrawal from the world into the centre of her own web that (as she was so well aware) was the prerequisite for the life of the mind. (canovan, , p. ) the political relevance of thinking was arendt’s focus and her hope for a healthy, well- functioning political realm. if we can pick up a thread or follow a thought-train that might help us regain, understand, and preserve plurality, we owe it to ourselves and to the many others with whom we share our world, to do so. embarking on this journey begins with revisiting our generally accepted understanding of what it means to think. thinking as wondering every act of creation is first an act of destruction. —picasso when arendt speaks of thinking she is talking about a particular kind of thinking, far- removed and different than the idea of thinking generally accepted and used. the oxford english dictionary defines thinking as the process of considering or reasoning about something; using thought or rational judgment, indicating that for the most part, we tend to understand thinking as revealing knowledge or truth, existing within a means/ends framework where “our desire to know…can be fulfilled when it reaches its prescribed goal” (arendt, a, p. ). thinking is about finding out, discovering, and asking questions to which there are potential answers: “the questions raised by the desire to know are in principle all answerable by common sense experience and common-sense reasoning” (arendt, a, p. ). most of our pursuits— academic, economic, scientific, work and daily living—are founded in this type of means/ends thinking. thinking does play “an enormous role in scientific enterprise, but it is the role of a means to [the end of] knowledge which…belongs to the world of appearances” (arendt, a, p. ). knowledge and truth are produced based on evidence we glean through our senses, that is, what we can know by means of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. “cognition, whose highest criterion is truth, derives that criterion from the world of appearances in which we take our bearings through sense perceptions, whose testimony is self-evident, that is, unshakeable by argument and replaceable only by other evidence” (arendt, a, p. ). in other words, our senses (supported by our intellect) guide what we know and what we accept as true. while our senses allow us to know the world, we rely on language to share our experiences, check our perception, and reach common understandings about what is and how we might live well together with others. we use language to label or name the various objects and ideas that we agree constitute our space, creating structure, security, and predictability in knowing the world. language links us to others and to our shared understanding of the world, but it is imprecise and open to (mis)interpretation. because we have developed categories of understanding, we are usually able to link our particular experiences within those general categories. a simple example: if i mention that i am writing at my desk, you know what i mean and immediately an image of a person writing at a desk emerges; it makes sense to you even though i have not offered details about the white desk with two cupboards and one drawer, positioned under the window with a view of the mountains, the purple velvet chair, or the old silver laptop. we know our world through categories, theories, and concepts that we have constructed in language based on our shared sensory experience. when we encounter a particular situation that does not fit into an existing category, we search for a way to make it fit, construct a new category, or dismiss the situation altogether because we cannot make sense of it. while language can communicate our unique perspectives, when those perspectives lack common sense, communication fails and language loses its relevance, e.g., when what i perceive does not match what you perceive we risk not reaching an understanding. totalitarian governments, businesses, social media, and advertisers are especially skilled at controlling the messages they communicate to affect what and how people think, that is, their reality. when people hear or see something often enough without hearing alternatives, they can begin to believe it is true—which makes ideologies so powerful: “as instruments of total explanation, ideologies emancipate their believers from experience by violently reducing reality to an ‘inner logic’ at work behind multifarious appearances” (villa, , p. ). once a premise is established “the tyranny of logicality prevents ideological thinking from ever being disturbed by experience or instructed by reality” (villa, , p. ). we fail to see the error or deception at play in ideology because it seems to be beyond question, it seems “proven”. we forget that we have created our ideologies. all disciplines that seek truth and knowledge, and especially modern science, exist in the realm of common sense and are subject to “corrigible error and deception” (arendt, a, p. ). generally, we accept a thing as true until new evidence is revealed and a new truth emerges. we believed the world was flat until it was proven otherwise. “truth is what we are compelled to admit by the nature either of our senses or of our brain” (arendt, a, p. ). we have come, in modernity, to a place of devotion to empirical and scientific processes where conclusions and ideas are accepted only when they can be proven statistically or quantitatively. “what science and the quest for knowledge are after is irrefutable truth, that is, propositions human beings are not free to reject” (arendt, a, p. ) because the evidence speaks for itself. we have come to expect quantifiable, empirical evidence if we are to believe anything. we allow science, numbers, and statistics to define reality but as “a science of prediction and aggregates, statistical reality cannot represent the anomalous, which resides in the particular” (nelson, , p. ). the primacy of empirical knowledge narrows our world and pervades our lives and our work, including schooling. schooling relies on governing rules and compliance, as do all organizations. decisions about operation and instruction are made in accordance with school acts, legislation, mandated curriculum, approved resources, school board policy, school rules and expectations, and service plans based on generated evidence or data. from ministry to classroom there is alignment in philosophy and practice. “teachers are often encouraged to be compliant laborers, delivering curriculum using best practice strategies and having their work checked by quality control testing tied to objective standards” (coulter & weins, , p. ). schools are well-established institutions and those of us who work in schools recognize that there is much we accept simply because it is “how we do things” and how we have always done things. for many years as a teacher and principal, i accepted what was given in curriculum, policy, and established practice. as noted in my story about chris, i followed policy and did what was expected, safeguarding process and delivering consequences. i did not question my practice as a principal or as a teacher; i trusted (blindly and ignorantly) what was accepted and available at the time. as a classroom teacher, i did not recognize the eurocentric foundation of my schooling, nor the ways it shaped me as a teacher and as a person. it was only after many years that i realized the strength of these perceptions and how they restricted other ways of knowing the world. established policy and practice groomed my oblivion as i contributed to the perpetuation of an unjust, unethical, uncritical schooling system that has failed to honour, recognize, and respect ways of knowing that are other than eurocentric. most troubling to me is that i had no idea how much i did not know. i did not understand the depth of my ignorance. we are what we know. we are, however, also what we do not know. if what we know about ourselves—our history, our culture, our national identity—is deformed by absences, denials, and incompleteness then our identity—both as individuals and as [canadians]—is fragmented. (davis, , p. ) if education is about living well in the world with others, about developing the ability to challenge assumptions, about recognizing what we know and what we do not, we need to find ways to see beyond what appears to be given. if the “task of education is to turn around the ‘eye of the soul’ so that undeceived, one is opened to” (dunne, , p. ) the new and moved beyond complacent self-certainty, we need to question the very structures of our schools. we need to recognize how thoroughly a focus on ends and answers, knowledge and truth, roots and controls so much of what we do. arendt encourages us to move beyond those firmly knotted certainties and consider a thinking that has no end and offers no answers, a thinking that is like the susurrations of the wind, that can be felt, but can never be seen, a thinking that cannot ever be quantified or measured, a thinking that can destroy and unsettle, a thinking that will undo its own creations, a thinking that confronts reality. the storm of thought thinking’s power, its ability to generate meaning, lies in its destructive capacity (dunne, ), its ability to erect obstacles (berkowitz, ), and free us from established rules (deutscher, ); it is this capacity that arendt respects and values. through its destruction, thinking “prepares for judgment by purging us of ‘fixed habits of thought’, ‘ossified rules and standards’ and ‘conventional…codes of expression’; it creates an ‘open space of moral or aesthetic discrimination and discernment’” (fine, , p. ), it “opens up space that enables us to appreciate the novelty of a particular event” (villa, , p. ), it allows us to see new possibilities, and it loosens the grip of the universal over the particular (d’entreves, , beiner, ). wondering, or challenging what seems to be, requires making space for the new. the creation of space in the midst of our busy day-to-day lives needs to be intentional and artists are among the few who make their work out of deliberately re-examining and manipulating our constructions of the world. they devote themselves to looking at the world from alternate, other- than-accepted and expected perspectives, as they strive to startle and unsettle us into new ways of seeing and understanding, disturbing our established biases and perceptions. picasso claimed that, “every act of creation is first an act of destruction”. the ability of art to challenge the world of appearance, to purge us of fixed habits of thought, to dissolve, to dismantle, to create doubt, to oppose ideology, to undo systems, and to expose errors, is the same destructive power arendt recognizes in thinking. art is not the only vehicle for understanding the world in new ways, but it is often the aim of art to do so. artists, using language, images, sound, smell, movement, and texture deliberately disrupt our comfort, vision, and understanding of the world, as they push us to see and to understand in new ways. “aesthetic experience engages our perception, awakening not only our curiosity but also a sense of pleasure or displeasure, attraction or horror. works of art expose us to complex experiences by rupturing the veil of our measuring grid” (sjoholm, , p. ). artists leave us feeling unsure of what seemed beyond doubt and we begin to think in a destructive way that allows us to re-conceive a concept, idea, or belief, what knott ( ) calls “unlearning, the work of clearing away and reimagining” (p. ). arendt “emphasized what it means to see differently, to form a different picture” (zerilli, , p. ), that we might continually create space for the new and resist complacency. schools, perhaps more than any other institution, shape and perpetuate our understanding of the world, holding fast to what is prescribed, demanding conformity and compliance, while at the same time professing aims of critical and creative thinking and democratic citizenship. in reality, there is little space or encouragement for the kind of destructive thinking arendt suggests is required in a plural, democratic world. instead schools reward answers and the achievement of predetermined ends and outcomes, focusing on accountability and efficient operation. “accountability is an apolitical and antidemocratic strategy that redefines all significant relationships in economic terms and hence conceives of them as formal rather than substantial relationships” (biesta, , p. ), which further alienates the possibility of plural ideas and opinions. when ends and means remain the focus in schools, education is marginalized and the ideals of schooling rule. clearly, arendt’s thinking does not fit well with the organizational efficiency of our schools where what can be measured is valued. creativity, like critical thinking, often exists within established parameters. the bureaucracy of schooling, through curriculum, policy, teacher training, and administration, communicates what is important in a particular society, controls the discussion, and leaves little space for children (or adults for that matter) to contribute to or disagree with that discussion. educators need to be aware of the foreclosure of thinking that schools sustain and remember that we created our schools. rather than accept “educational” discourse as given, we need to step back and more accurately and thoroughly assess our system. we need to know its espoused and actual purpose (often quite different), questioning whose stories are included and whose are not, who garners power and who is marginalized, whose voices are heard and whose are silenced. we need to consider “how power shapes what any true story could possibly be” (lear, , p. ) and re-consider what stories we are telling in schools and why we are telling them. without space for thinking and dialogue, we cannot know that we do not know. we shut down all space for appearing to each other in our plurality and teach children that conformity and compliance are rewarded. when faced with chris’ indiscretion, i was unable to question or consider alternatives because there was no space to do so—teachers and principals were expected to do things in a certain way and i did. the consequence of that doing was a loss of space to appear. each of the individual human beings who were part of that story became absorbed by established process, lost in policy and practice. thinking’s ‘destructive and undermining effect,’ its ability to disorient and disturb so that ‘unlearning’ might happen, is necessarily relevant to education. if we hope for our schools to be educational, we need to find space for thinking’s destruction. the artistic process, as well as objects of art, challenges appearances, encourages rethinking givens, and clears space for creation while stimulating individuality and freedom. even though fine arts in schools, as in society, are increasingly considered supplemental and on the margins, of less importance than academics and athletics, something to be done after “real” learning is managed, they are still part of most curricula. the margin of the arts “is the place for those feelings and intuitions which daily life doesn’t have a place for and mostly seems to suppress…. with the arts, people can make space for themselves and fill it with intimations of freedom and presences” (donoghue, , p. ). by protecting fine arts, we protect artistic thinking and processes, knowing that “the shocks of awareness to which the arts give rise leave us (should leave us) less immersed in the everyday and more impelled to wonder and to question” (greene, , p. ). the arts offer much more than an indulgence for our free time. the arts and artistic thinking are essential to freedom and renewal, creating opportunities for us to use our freedom. [t]he creative act aims at a total renewal of the world. each painting, each book, is a recovery of the totality of being. each of them presents this totality to the freedom of the spectator. for this is quite the final goal of art: to recover this world by giving it to be seen as it is, but as if it had its source in human freedom. (sartre, , p. ) art is integral to the exercise of autonomy, reflecting our individual perceptions and judgments as they fit into a plural world. teaching done well encourages artistic-looking and thinking, and demands awareness beyond the practice of instruction, allowing us to create space for the new. “to be an artist is perpetually to negotiate the boundary that separates aesthetic from mundane practice” (grumet, , p. ), questioning and searching for new possibilities, refreshing perspectives, and renewing our vision. artistic thinking (and teaching) is about process and is much broader than the conventional conception of art as limited to the fine arts or its creations. for arendt, socrates served as an ideal thinker and teacher, comparable to artists in his desire to help people ‘unlearn’, divesting them of opinions in which they felt sure and confident, pushing them to think beyond established beliefs and disrupting their givens. he spent his days in dialogue with others, understanding that “[t]hinking enables us to examine each situation we encounter. it carries with it the dangerous yet essential side effect of destroying the opinions we hold about it” (meade, , p. ). without fail, socrates left his companions with questions and uncertainty, slowing them down to stop and think. he sought to unfreeze opinions and destroy assumptions through questioning and in doing so he hoped to clear space for new ideas and new understanding. three metaphors describe the effect socrates had on those with whom he engaged in conversation: the gadfly who was able to rouse people from their sleep, the midwife who delivered people of opinions and prejudices that they sometimes did not even realize they held, and the electric ray who paralyzed, forcing people to stop and think (arendt, a, pp. - ). embracing thinking’s circularity and lack of an end proved challenging for socrates’ colleagues; it seemed a pointless waste of time. how could anything relevant come from such aporetic thinking? for socrates the space of appearance was worth dying for because it is in this space that we create our identity, share ideas and opinions, and test our understanding of the world and of our reality. it is in the space of appearance that we come to know ourselves and to know others, by our actions, by the words we speak, by what we do and how we act. socrates was willing to “lay down his life…simply for the right to go about examining the opinions of other people, thinking about them and asking his interlocutors to do the same” (arendt, a, p. ). arendt admired socrates’ aporetic style, his insistence on being present in the public world, and thinking with others, demonstrating the relevance philosophy (contemplation) held for political life. both socrates and arendt have taught us that thinking offers resistance to becoming enclosed within ideologies, perspectives, and worldviews, allowing us to see things as other than they seem, never accepting that “it’s just the way it is”, or forgetting that we create our world and have a responsibility to question our creations. i failed to recognize my responsibility to think about chris, his family, and the consequences i imposed. i did not think what i was doing, but rather accepted what was given as an appropriate process to follow. arendt’s “work is directed at making sense of those who, because they act, are too busy to think, or who are enslaved to fictions and cannot think and judge, or who in the mass are prone to incuriosity” (kateb, , p. ). i was ‘enslaved’ to the fictions of schooling’s practices and did not question or challenge them. socrates and arendt understood that we create our world together through conversation, thinking, listening, and sharing ideas, all absent from chris’ story. they understood that thinking is essential to a healthy public realm, but we cannot rely on thinking for answers about how we ought to be and act, or for what counts as good or evil. if kant is right and the faculty of thought has a ‘natural aversion’ against accepting its own results as ‘solid axioms,’ then we cannot expect any moral propositions or commandments, no final code of conduct, from the thinking activity, least of all a new and now allegedly final definition of what is good and what is evil. (arendt, , p. ) despite thinking’s fragility and lack of result, arendt recognized the possibility of inner plurality that might shore up plurality in the world and prepare us to enter into and act in public where we are known by our words and actions, by the ways we appear to others. because, under conditions of modernity, the vita activa and the public world have been diminished, lost to the point that plurality is threatened, recovering hope for plurality in any iteration seemed redemptive. “socratic thinking, in its encounter with the difference ‘inherent’ within identity, discovers a duality that is analogous to, that ‘points to,’ the plurality of the outer world that is experienced by common sense and with which understanding attempts to come to terms” (mcgowan, , p. ). preparing to appear in public requires solitude and the space to engage in dialogue with self. socrates recognized the important connection between inner plurality and the plurality of the public realm. “indeed, it is solitude that nurtures and fosters thoughtfulness and thus prepares individuals for the possibility of political action” (berkowitz, , p. ). without space to think, we cannot possibly know what we think and will have nothing thoughtful to share with others. thinking in solitude allows us to generate meaning in our lives, beyond knowledge and truth, meaning that arises from our experiences in a plural world. to better understand the difference between thinking as a way to challenge appearances and thinking that searches for meaning and allows us to exercise our freedom, arendt turns to kant. thinking as searching for meaning all thought arises out of experience, but no experience yields any meaning or even coherence without undergoing the operations of imagining and thinking. (arendt, a, p. ) following socrates, arendtian thinking allows for the challenging of appearances, questioning the world we have created, that is, looking at a plural world in other than accepted, established ways, but arendtian thinking also provides a way to exercise human freedom, to acknowledge the contingency of our lives and to embrace a search for meaning, to live wide- awake to possibility, and resist complacent self-certainty. arendt bases this second conception of thinking on kant’s distinction between two related and sometimes overlapping concepts, verstand and vernunft. kant’s verstand is the faculty of the mind that organizes sensory perception into concepts using logical rules that allow humans to generate and justify knowledge claims in a spatiotemporal world and is usually translated as the faculty of “understanding” (arendt, however, translates verstand as the “intellect”). vernunft, in contrast, is a broad conception of reason that allows humans to develop a coherent and systematic conception of the natural world based on the necessarily incomplete resources provided by verstand: since our knowledge of the natural world will always be imperfect, we must therefore project totality. the goal of vernunft is unity and kant explains that “[w]e simply have to presuppose the systematic unity of nature as objectively valid and necessary (a /b ). vernunft can be used to posit a “systematic unity” which is a “projected unity” (a /b ). objective truth, for kant, is never absolute truth, but always our best estimate subject to the reason of others. hence kant’s stress on the fallibility of human judgment—including our judgments about the statues or validity of knowledge claims—is a reminder not to hold onto our knowledge claims too tightly—and the need to take responsibility for the exercise of our judgment. arendtian thinking in this second sense acknowledges the uncertainty and contingency of human existence and therefore does not aim to discover knowledge or truth but rather to create meaning and significance. arendt turns to the process of thinking (rather than its ends), an activity that is withdrawn from and never appears in the world, occurring silently within, and leaving nothing tangible behind. arendt ( a) explains: “the quest for meaning produces no end result that will survive the activity, that will make sense after the activity has come to its end” (p. ). such thinking offers the opportunity to be awake to our freedom and to construct meaning in our lives in and across various dimensions of human experience. however, it is a thinking far removed from our general conception which is connected to knowing and cognition, comparable to kant’s verstand. arendt hoped to disrupt this rarely challenged construction of thinking in order to extend and expand our understanding. although thinking must be employed in the attempt to know, a division between truth and meaning goes hand in hand with knowing and thinking. truth is what can be known; what has meaning is what can be thought. truth can be attained; it is a matter of thought. questions of meaning have responses but not definitive answers. thinking about meaning has no result beyond its own production. (deutscher, . p. ) thinking, arendt claims, can be understood as “the quest for meaning, for the sense and significance of our experience of belonging in the world” (gray, , p. ), a world of plural appearances and plural people, a world that is often not easy to understand. thinking (as vernunft) does not seek truth or knowledge and “does not ask what something is or whether it exists at all…but what it means for it to be” (arendt, a, p. ). thinking’s emphasis on meaning and significance keeps it outside of the means/ends framework, dealing instead with ideas, concepts, and questions that “are all unanswerable by common sense and the refinement of it we call science” (arendt, a, pp. - ). while science can explain the world, how things work, and what they are, determining what is worthwhile knowing cannot be scientific (arendt, a, p. ); it is a values question that needs to be decided and debated together with other people. in contrast, what we understand as knowledge or truth (verstand) is evidence-based and exists within a means/ends framework in the world of appearance. “cognition, whose highest criterion is truth, derives that criterion from the world of appearances in which we take our bearings through sense perceptions, whose testimony is self-evident, that is, unshakeable by argument and replaceable only by other evidence” (arendt, a, p. ). while thinking is distinct and can (and must) be distinguished from knowing, there is an inseparable connection and reciprocity. thinking is the a priori condition of the intellect and of cognition; it is because [thinking] and [knowing] are so connected, despite utter difference in mood and purpose, that the philosophers have always been tempted to accept the criterion of truth…as applicable to their own rather extraordinary business as well. (arendt, a, p. ) however, “[t]o expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know. thinking can and must be employed in the attempt to know, but in the exercise of this function it is never itself (arendt, a, p. ). we need to think in order to discover knowledge and truth (verstand), but the process, the activity of thinking is quite different than any potential result. the reason we think, arendt argues, is to “satisfy a hunger for sense and significance” (gray, , p. ), that is, to find meaning (vernunft). thinking finds its purpose in its own ceaseless activity; it is “occupied with nothing but itself” (arendt, a, p. ). just as there can be no answer to the question, ‘why do we live?’ so there can be no answer to the question, ‘why do we think?’ the need to think is as much a part of human life as the need to breathe. this is why ‘to think and to be fully alive are the same’; or to put the matter the other way, ‘a life without thinking is not merely meaningless; it is not fully alive. unthinking men are like sleepwalkers. (yarbrough & stern, , p. ) without thinking, arendt would argue, there is no life, or at least not a life truly lived or worth living. it is engaging in the activity of thinking that gives life meaning. the distinction between verstand and vernunft, while familiar to arendt (she first read the critique of pure reason when she was sixteen), is less known now, as is kant’s work in general, although ironically, it provides the background for much of western philosophy. it seems that arendt takes for granted that those reading her work are as well read as she, able to keep up with her often unusual use of language (she knew six languages, including greek and latin), allusions, and literary and academic references. in her determination to articulate and clarify ideas, she often creates confusion and complexity. for instance, as she explains the difference between truth (constructions that appear in the world) and thinking (a process that does not appear in the world), arendt ends up using thinking in multiple ways, generating some perplexity for readers. bernstein ( ) suggests that the very nature of the thinking activity— restless and resultless—breeds challenges. “if there is an inherent restlessness in the thinking activity itself, if the quest for meaning is an endless task, then arendt’s legacy consists of making us acutely aware of those perplexities and aporias which she did not resolve” (p. ). arendt does not offer any insight or provide us with any justification for the various meanings she has for thinking: “the veil that she weaves and reweaves has many loose threads” (bernstein, , p. ). though we cannot follow the trains of her innermost thinking, we can seek pearls of insight from the sources she turned to, and the thought-trains she followed and explored, imperfect and partial as they may be. the thought-train quest may provoke perplexity, but if we are willing to loosen our grip on knowing we might discover new meanings, perspectives, and understandings. thinking, for arendt, is essential to living a responsible, wide-awake life. without thinking, life becomes automatic and [i]f individuals act automatically or conventionally, if they do only what is expected of them (or because they feel they have no right to speak for themselves), if they do only what they are told to do, they are not living moral lives. (greene, , p. ) the predictable, repetitive behaviour of our lives can contribute to the neglect of thinking, creating a sense of meaninglessness that breeds moral blindness, complacency, and an inability to see others. we become so focused on doing, achieving, and succeeding, that we fail to recognize the many ways we live mechanically, identifying others as means to ends rather than as unique, independent individuals. when faced with the situation with the girls i began to question the recommended outcomes given in policy and practice. i began to realize that those answers might not be ideal, that perhaps there was no “right” consequence, but rather only possibilities of what might be right in that particular circumstance, revealing moral responsibility and the need to be awake that is inherent in this type of thinking. somehow, i found space for the solitude that was necessary to think what i was doing. arendt explores the inherent dangers and problems of a means/ends, behaviour-driven existence while surfacing the need and importance of thinking, “an unending activity that deals with coming to terms with and reconciling ourselves to reality, and trying to be at home in the world” (beiner, , p. ). it is our moral and political responsibility to be attentive and questioning, to live wide-awake, to think and re-think, to question what is, to dissolve and destroy what seems certain and inalienable. as we do so, we test various actions, respecting and maintaining our capacity for freedom and autonomy, deciding what we ought to do, what is worthwhile and meaningful. “the winds themselves are invisible, yet what they do is manifest to us and we somehow feel their approach” (arendt, , p. ); the winds of thinking keep us awake and fully alive, able to engage thoughtfully and critically with others—and with ourselves. two-in-one dialogue i am the solitude that asks and promises nothing. —w. h. auden, “in praise of limestone” thinking requires temporary withdrawal into solitude, away from the world, that we might engage in uninterrupted dialogue with self (the two-in-one) in order to find meaning in our lives and to stir conscience. two attributes—inner plurality and the ability to incite conscience— provide thinking the potential ethical-political relevance that is so important to arendt: when we withdraw we allow ourselves opportunity to internally debate perspectives and possibilities to prepare ourselves for the larger public and we decide whether we can remain friends with our self. our ability to enter into dialogue with ourselves, arendt suggests, also enables the exercise of conscience, the capacity to recognize right and wrong, to act thoughtfully and independently. inner plurality parallels plurality in and of the world, revealing potential political relevance. when we engage in the two-in-one dialogue of solitude, we are able to debate issues and ideas and consider alternate viewpoints internally. “to be in solitude means to be with one’s self, and thinking, therefore, though it may be the most solitary of all activities, is never altogether without a partner and without company” (arendt, , p. ); it is never lonely. thinking helps me ‘keep myself company,’ which means that i maintain my bond of friendship with the common sense that i share and that insinuates itself in dialogue in the form of a ‘self’ opposed to a ‘thinking ego.’ loneliness is experienced only when the dialogue of the two-in-one comes to an end (kristeva, , p. ) and we return to a world lived amongst others. inner plurality allows me to talk with and to know myself. socrates recognized the power of solitude in preparing for public appearance. engaging in two-in-one dialogue developed the inner plurality that prepared him to question and to test ideas in public. the relationship he fostered with self could withstand challenge and controversy; he could question his own understanding and speculate about why he believed as and what he did. the two-in-one requires that the two have a relationship that made difficult conversations safe. “to socrates, the duality of the two-in-one meant no more than that if you want to think, you must see to it that the two who carry on the dialogue be in good shape, that the partners be friends” (arendt, a, pp. - ). friendship with self allowed socrates to enjoy the contests he put to himself as well as to enjoy the aporias he posed to others. “thinking means only that when we ‘descend’ to the world of affairs, what we declare will not be thoughtlessly conformist” (deutscher, , p. ). being at ease in both solitude and public discussion, allowed socrates to understand and move between inner plurality and the world of plural people and plural appearances, and to know and express his ideas thoughtfully. the potential of conscience is the second reason arendt finds hope in the two-in-one of thinking. conscience arises only when we are conscious of the difference within our identity— when thinking reveals consciousness: “[c]onscience seems to be the only potential means we have for exposing (without any guarantee of success) the immorality of both codified morality and the norms of the majority” (biesta, , p. ). conscience, which we assume (perhaps too readily) is found in every person, can only exist within the two-in-one dialogue when the two who are in dialogue are friends. building and sustaining any friendship requires effort and consistency. socrates made two claims that suggest the kind of integrity required of inner plurality if friendship is to be maintained: “it is better to be wronged than to do wrong” (arendt, a, p. ), and: it would be better for me that my lyre or a chorus i directed should be out of tune and loud with discord, and that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that i, being one, should be out of harmony with myself and contradict me. (arendt, a, p. ) the idea that socrates and arendt explore is that we cannot risk being out of harmony with our self: “you always need at least two tones to produce a harmonious sound” (arendt, a, p. ) and friendship demands congruence. arendt explains that “the only criterion of socratic thinking is agreement, to be consistent with oneself” (arendt, a, p. ). arendt argues that conscience deters wrong-doing because it erects barriers that make it impossible for a person to live with the self, destroying inner harmony. “no matter what thought- trains the thinking ego thinks through, the self that we all are must take care not to do anything that would make it impossible for the two-in-one to be friends and live in harmony” (arendt, a, p. ). what leads some to value and develop inner plurality and conscience while others rely on external rules and maxims to guide their behaviour? what makes some follow without question while others are ‘filled with obstacles’? according to arendt, the lesson of socrates is that where thinking is absent (whether due to unquestioning commitment or everyday thoughtlessness), there can be no effective conscience, no active faculty that makes clear the simple virtue of nonparticipation in moments of widespread, but unrecognized, moral corruption. (villa, , p. ) we have a responsibility to exercise our inner plurality and develop conscience, as well as to foster thinking in others as socrates modeled and encouraged. if thinking is, as arendt and socrates suggest, connected to morality and conscience, we need to protect the conditions that make it possible: private space for solitude, language, and plurality. supports for thinking the two forms of thinking that arendt advocates—thinking as wondering and thinking as two-in-one dialogue in search of meaning—are largely missing from our contemporary vocabulary and would require significant supports given the conditions of worldlessness described at the end of chapter two. however, if our capacities to resist wrong-doing and to exercise conscience rely on thinking then recovering thinking must be a priority. at a minimum, arendt recommends creating the possibility of safe, private places to withdraw from the world, increased attention to our language, and the nurturing of certain kinds of relationships with trusted others. privacy in order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion. —albert camus, the myth of sisyphus and other essays private space requires withdrawal from the public and social world where we are always busy, active, and confronted with other people. privacy provides space to stop ceaseless doing and activity so that we can find the solitude necessary to think. socrates believed that private space could be created by posing questions and, like an electric ray he was able, “[t]hrough his questioning…to infect his listeners with his own perplexities, interrupting their everyday activities and paralyzing them with thought” (villa, , p. ). the interruption socrates created allowed his colleagues to stop and think, to remove themselves from the world of appearance. anytime we stop and think, the world recedes and we are left with only ourselves and our thoughts. even amidst crowds it is possible to retreat to the extent that we become unaware of what is happening around us. socrates identified opportunities to temporarily paralyze others that they might learn to question the “frozen thoughts” they rely on such as rules, customs, and codes. he often left people wondering and attempting to reorient themselves to the world they thought they knew. hence, the paralysis of thought is two-fold: it is inherent in the stop and think, the interruption of all other activities, and it may have a paralyzing effect when you come out of it, no longer sure of what had seemed to you beyond doubt while you were unthinkingly engaged in whatever you were doing. if your action consisted in applying general rules of conduct to particular cases as they arise in ordinary life, then you will find yourself paralyzed because no such rules can withstand the wind of thought. (arendt, , p. ) working through the unsettling effects of thinking’s paralysis is difficult because we are left uncertain and insecure in understanding the world when our taken-for-granted perceptions are challenged. arendt ( ) suggests in the human condition that “the four walls of one’s private property offer the only reliable hiding place from the common public world, from its very publicity, from being seen and heard” (p. ). it is here, in the private space of our homes that we can reflect and think without fear of criticism or shame, where we can comfortably, freely, and safely be ourselves. the “ideal private might be understood as a sanctuary where people are hidden from view and safe from interference” (coulter, , p. ), where people are accepted and free to develop ideas. when reflecting on the disciplinary situation i faced with the three girls, i created space as i sat quietly in my office, uninterrupted, sipped tea and mulled over possibilities. at home later that night, i did more thinking, moving beyond and questioning the language of policy and discipline that generally guided my practice. private space for retreat allows us to refresh and rejuvenate ourselves as we prepare to enter the public world. most of us have private space where we can relax, but having the physical space available to enjoy solitude does not guarantee that we will. even in the quiet retreat of our homes there are multiple draws on our attention, distractions that can overwhelm our space and make it difficult to think in a socratic way. we have created a world where solitude, peace, and quiet are increasingly elusive, targeted by a multitude of alternatives that encourage losing ourselves in mindless activity, escaping to netflix, google, facebook, instagram (endless social media options and apps), various online games, etc. these pursuits are certainly not bad or wrong, but they do keep us from ourselves and can contribute to feelings of loneliness and detachment as we strive to find refuge in what is essentially meaningless nothing. our attention is successfully and consistently arrested from thinking, exacerbated by expectations that we always have activities to do and people with whom to interact. other people and the connections we make with them are essential, but we also need private space to step back from the world as “a life spent entirely in public, in the presence of others, becomes…shallow” (arendt, , p. ). it is only in privacy and solitude that we can develop our own ideas and independent thoughts. without opportunity to develop depth of opinion we will never interrupt the complacent self-certainty of our life in the world amongst others; we quit questioning beyond fleeting moments of discomfort or momentary wondering. we give in to activity and doing that we have come to believe is necessary for personal and professional fulfillment, rather than engaging in two-in-one dialogue that allows us to question givens, exercise our freedom, and generate meaning and significance. we need to protect private space if we value thinking, freedom, and autonomy, if we hope to participate in, contribute to, and find meaning in the world. “the importance of thinking, and hence of solitude, is that thinking interrupts the oneness, certainty, and confidence that allows ideology to overwhelm thought” (berkowitz, , p. ). private space to think and enjoy solitude is necessary to resist conformity, to question our constructions of the world, to know our selves and our thoughts. in solitude we are able to engage in two-in-one dialogue with ourselves, questioning and thinking. it is through language in dialogue that we are able to arouse our selves and others, as socrates’ gadfly, “to thinking, to examining matters, an activity without which life…was not only not worth much, but not fully alive” (arendt, , p. ). language the limits of my language mean the limits of my world. —wittgenstein thinking’s solitude allows us to prepare to appear in the world, to know our thoughts, develop opinions, and rehearse in preparation for sharing our perspectives with others. however, thinking is invisible, a private activity that happens within us, removed from the world and impossible for others to know. “[t]hinking does not have a real goal, and unless thinking finds its meaning in itself, it has no meaning at all” (arendt, , p. ). because the wind of thought leaves nothing tangible behind, thinking is potentially and practically useless. as arendt ( a) acknowledges, “thinking as such does society little good, much less than the thirst for knowledge, which uses thinking as an instrument for other purposes” (p. ). however, if thinking is transformed it can be made manifest, not as it is, but as something representative. if we want our thoughts and ideas to appear, we need language to prepare them, to link the invisible world of thinking with the visible world of appearance. “[t]hinking is rescued from inaccessibility only by language” (deutscher, , p. ) which offers a tenuous bridge between thinking and appearing, transforming thoughts into words that we are able to communicate. language is a tool we have created (and continue to create) that allows us to make sense of, structure, and explain how we experience the world. we use language as our primary form of communication to profess knowledge, delineate what is agreed to be true, categorize, catalogue and define, differentiate professions, cultures, and communities, to entertain and explain; language is used for all manner of communication in our common and shared world. we rely on language not only to survive but also to enhance and enrich our lives. over time language has evolved from being primarily concrete and literal to abstract and imaginative. the creative and productive capacity of language has allowed us to “transmit information about things that do not exist at all…to talk about entire kinds of entities that [we] have never seen, touched or smelled” (harari, , p. ). we have constructed systems and institutions (fictions) founded on rules, procedures and laws we have created that allow us to maintain order amongst many diverse and various other people. our ability to imagine things collectively has enabled us to “weave common myths [that] give [us] the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers” (harari, , p. ), to live together cooperatively in community. “any large-scale human cooperation—whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe—is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination” (harari, , p. ). language is a tool that we rely on to mutually manage ourselves; metaphor is a foundational device that allows us to explain, share, and realize ideas, opening space for new understanding as well as enclosing and protecting already accepted ideas. language shapes our thoughts. as wittgenstein explains, “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. we think within the confines of our language and communicate using the words we have available. it is easy to become bounded by our fictions (forgetting that we created them), taking language for granted, seeing words and language as given. while we necessarily rely on language to make sense of the world and conceptualize our experience, language can also blind us to possibility by confining us within ideology, discourse, and cultural constructs. “ideology is the means by which human beings are stripped of the primary source of their freedom and spontaneity. they are rendered calculable and docile through their internalization of the ‘logical necessity’ of the...idea and its consequences” (villa, , pp. - ). the very structures we rely on to organize and systematize our world can overwhelm and limit us, removing us from questions and from seeing other people and situations clearly. the result is a sterility and thoughtless use of language that reflects thoughtless acts. remoteness from effects, owing to a failure of imagination, indicates remoteness from the meaning of what one does and hence from the very meaning of the words one uses in speaking about what one is doing. one doesn’t know what one is saying: the abstractions cut the speaker off from reality. (kateb, , pp. - ) we can become so comfortable with language that we fail to think about what it means, how it shapes our perspectives and the way we see the world, fosters particular ideals and creates beliefs, controlling how and what we think in powerful ways. for example, the nazis were purposeful about the language they used to communicate their plans for the jewish people, speaking of relocation and the final solution rather than deportation and genocide. the words we choose affect the message we send and the way it is interpreted. as we change our words, we change our thinking. we rely on metaphor almost exclusively to extend our understanding of the world by connecting what we already know or understand to something we do not, comparing dissimilar objects or ideas. the notion of language as a bridge between thinking and the world itself is a metaphor that “achieves the carrying over…the transition from one existential state, that of thinking, to another, that of being and appearance among appearances, and this can be done only by analogies” (arendt, a, p. ). we use metaphor to create, destroy, reassure, confuse, control, to serve any number of purposes. arendt was particularly interested in metaphor’s capacity to interrupt established givens and poise us to see in alternate, sometimes uncomfortable ways, to disrupt our surety and change or open up our thinking. metaphor, so closely connected to thinking, can “subvert our thoughtlessness and complacencies, our certainties” (greene, , p. ) and allow us to understand otherwise; like socrates’ gadfly, metaphor can rouse us, disturbing our comfortable somnambulistic existence. “the socratic thinker is a gadfly who stings citizens and also himself and thus arouses them from the satin sleep of conformity to the activity of thinking” (berkowitz, , p. ). the gadfly is “a persistent irritant whose questioning and reproaches aim at preventing the citizens…from sleeping till the end of their days, from living and acting without genuine moral reflection or self-examination” (villa, , p. ). the powerful creative and destructive capacity of metaphor is a friend to thinking, able to overturn self-certainty and call into question what seems unquestionable. those who use words as their medium for art, playing with language and experimenting with its effects, are like gadflies, inspiring speculation and wonder, opening us up to alternative ways of seeing the world. literature destabilizes thought by breaking open language and smuggling in sound, rhythm, and image—an invasion of aesthetics. …poetry can emancipate itself from the standard definitions of words, enabling a breakthrough to new meaning, which can then develop after the fact—different at each new reading. (knott, , p. ) through literature we experience varied and other perspectives and voices, realities different than our own that can reveal new insights with each reading and each reader. writers use language to sustain and extend discourses, ideologies and theories, as well as to interrupt them. the pen has the power to create, transforming the writer’s thoughts and imaginings. as shakespeare writes: and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. — a midsummer night’s dream,v, i the writer’s words enter the world in anticipation of a reader, someone who will interact with the text and begin a dialogue, bringing reader and writer together. as the writer’s ideas are interpreted by the reader they will reinforce reality and sustain a sense of comfort or force the reader to step back in wonder as reality is overturned and unsettled. while the writer may have a particular intent or message in mind, once her words become print, their interpretation lies at the mercy of the reader. two-in-two dialogue thinking, and the language that fuels it, anticipates communication. without someone with whom to share our ideas, thinking is nothing; it comes to nothing. “part of the meaning of thinking, as of life itself, lies in the disclosures that association with other minds, living and dead, affords us” (gray, , p. ). when we are able to communicate with others, sharing ideas, opinions, and thoughts, we disclose who we are and discover who others are. speech and language facilitate communication, allowing us to distinguish our selves from others, to confirm and criticize ideas and develop perspectives, to generate meaning. without others our thoughts and ideas are meaningless, but moving directly from inner dialogue to public debate is challenging and risky. fortunately, friendship offers private publics, spaces of transition that are based on trust, care, and commitment. amongst friends that we can test opinions and beliefs, we can speculate and wonder, listen and consider possibilities without fear of recrimination or ridicule. within the “private public” of friendship we find space to appear and safety in developing an understanding the common world. “we move between the two-in-one and the two-in-two as we develop our sense of selfhood, thereby gaining on the way the capabilities necessary to operate discursively and thoughtfully within and across a wide range of contexts” (nixon, , p. ). friendship creates space “between the public and the private, incorporating elements of both but in different combinations with different friends: robust argumentation and the sharing of intimacies; working together and holidaying together; cooking for others and being entertained” (nixon, , p. ). amongst friends we revel in a sort of ‘oases’ where we are free to relax, recover, and be ourselves, openly expressing ideas and exploring the pressures and demands of a less caring and impersonal public world where we necessarily confront and negotiate multiple perspectives. the private public of friendship allows us to indulge in emotion and feeling, and recognize our biases and prejudices, which must be set aside when we enter the public realm. critical dialogue with friends allows us to share ideas we are developing or thinking through and to have these ideas questioned and challenged, revealing inadequate, misplaced, or false understandings without (usually) damaging the relationship. “socratic dialectic was a ‘talking something through with somebody,’ a conversation among friends which aimed at elucidating the truth of an individual’s doxa or perspective on the world” (villa, , p. ). in this way, a friend acts as midwife, “whose dissolution of the prejudices and prejudgments of his [friends] helps them toward the revelation of their own thoughts” (villa, , p. ). friends are often able to deliver us of ideas we did not realize we had, pursue difficult questions, or lead us to re-examine what we too easily accept, helping us to clarify and improve our opinions. “in this way, [we] become aware of the truth in [our] opinion” (villa, , p. ). the plurality implicit among friends allows for different perspectives on the world and creates space for opinions to develop and grow. the process of ‘talking things over’ and of ‘give and take’—of seeking win-win outcomes over win-lose outcomes—is, as [arendt] saw it, indispensable to both the sustainability of the democratic state and the continuity of the state of friendship. (nixon, , p. ) socratic dialectic amongst friends makes us more aware of the world’s richness and variety and establishes conversational partners, “friends who gain increased appreciation of what they have in common as they talk things through outside the press of daily business” (villa, , p. ). we need only have a few friends to bring variety and perspective to our lives. most of us develop friendships that serve different purposes, each helping us to cultivate and understand ourselves and our opinions in various ways. “opinion formation is not a private activity performed by a solitary thinker. opinions can only be tested and enlarged when there is a genuine encounter with different opinions” (bernstein, , p. ). the sanctuary of friendship offers a way to protect plurality, beyond the inner plurality of the two-in-one, and reflects on a much smaller scale, the plurality of the common world. in this way, friendship is an essential condition of politics—of safeguarding plurality in the common world. “each friend recognizes and respects the equality and distinctiveness in the other—friendship becomes a microcosm of a pluralistic world based on the equal worth of each unique individual” (nixon, , p. ). friendship is the space where we begin to recognize all that is ‘between us’ and the complexity of the world we share; the hope for the “renewal of everything between us—the flourishing of relationality, mutuality and reciprocity—[is] the prime end and purpose of politics” (nixon, , p. ). we rely on friends for many things and appreciate the meaning and significance they lend to our lives. as we think together with friends, we prepare for life in public, building courage to experience the new and the unknown, assured and comforted in knowing that when we struggle, we have support. friendship readies the stage for thinking in public and for reflective judgment. thinking in schools the hand the teacher asks a question. you know the answer, you suspect you are the only one in the classroom who knows the answer, because the person in question is yourself, and on that you are the greatest living authority, but you don’t raise your hand. you raise the top of your desk and take out an apple. you look out the window. you don’t raise your hand and there is some essential beauty in your fingers, which aren’t even drumming, but lie flat and peaceful. the teacher repeats the question. outside the window, on an overhanging branch, a robin is ruffling its feathers and spring is in the air. —mary ruefle ( ) if we accept that thinking is necessary both for challenging the taken for granted and for the exercise of conscience, our current discourse of schooling proves woefully inadequate. the necessary conditions to promote the kinds of thinking that arendt advocates are missing. indeed, schools seem to be organized to prevent such thinking. children, for the most part, enter school full of curiosity, eager to learn, anxious to be part of and contribute to a seemingly more “grown up” world. teachers strive to preserve the openness and speculative wonder that is innate in children as they learn to make sense of the world and yet somehow, we fall short. we hope to inspire children to think critically and independently, to see the world in its diversity, “to open themselves to vistas of possibility—and to summon up visions of human agency, their own agency, that transcend correctness and the passing grade or the mere mastery of skill” (greene, , p. ). unfortunately, schools are trapped in operational functionality—out of necessity to some extent, but also because of a need to perpetuate particular societal values in conjunction with the power of market discourse, effectively limiting critical, aporetic, socratic thinking. though our school systems claim democratic citizenship as a goal, the thinking it requires, is mostly absent and rarely demonstrated in practice. democratic citizenship may be acknowledged as an admirable goal, but because it does not reflect the direction or actions of society, it is not a goal that drives practice in schools. accepted practice is more concerned with non-thinking conformity—docile compliance and self-certain complacency. “eichmannism” is not only acceptable, but alive and well as preferred practice in many classrooms and schools. while this may seem a dramatic conclusion, the supporting evidence is vast (though certainly not varied). the way children approach their work, accepting the given curriculum, submitting to the rules, is one symptom of how unquestioned the whole process of schooling has become. it also means that children do not necessarily go to school with a sense of personal fulfillment, or individual curiosity. (cullingford, , p. ) much of what we do in schools is connected to performance and management, which has become “ubiquitous, inescapable—part of and embedded in everything we do” (ball, , p. ). teachers and principals may not even realize how “the continual busy-ness and the act of doing has come to constitute the bureaucratic notion of what constitutes good work” (smits et al., , p. ). schools have been caught within the confines of market-driven ideology, as the language of schooling affirms, demanding efficiency and effectiveness, continual system improvement, productivity, results, data, competency, achievement, improved outcomes, excellence, compliance, knowledge production, rationality, targets, rates of completion and transition, a constant focus on doing and activity that can be measured and quantified. teachers very rarely have an opportunity to discuss the purpose of schools with each other or with the children. the time is taken up with the tasks of teaching, keeping up with the constant demands of the curriculum in what is one of the most demanding jobs in the world. (cullingford, , p. ) a consequence is the loss of educational purpose and the sacrifice of thinking. if you were to ask students and parents about the purpose of education, the answer, almost without exception, will be about the purpose of schooling and future employability, getting a good job. teachers’ roles in such a system is that of “technicians of behaviour, their task to produce bodies that are docile and capable” (foucault cited in ball, , p. ). although there may be vestiges of a more ethical and democratic emphasis in schools, the common practices and emerging mandates do not promote and may even actively discourage them. schools, generally, are hostile to alternative ways of seeing and knowing the world because we rely on policy and accountability, outcomes and results, rather than “civic courage, leadership and social responsibility” (giroux, , p ). we seem to have forgotten that education is a human endeavor, that it needs to include concerns for helping people learn to live with and alongside other people and create meaning together. economic and market pressures have permeated schools, driving what is valued and what is understood as important. knowledge has become a commodity, as has schooling and its credentials. choice is upheld as a virtue to be safeguarded, even as it camouflages its consumerist core, an ideal inimical to freedom. schools operate within a singular discourse focused on doing and activity, productivity and outcomes. as the growth model gains global momentum, democracy wanes and the purpose of schooling is taken for granted and thus, lost. the formula we have accepted in schools is that teachers teach and students learn. teachers prepare and present lessons; students listen, participate, and demonstrate their learning. repeat ad infinitum. in this environment, thinking exists within a means/ends framework; we “think” to acquire knowledge, to solve problems, to find solutions, to succeed. it does not take long for children to figure out that school is about having the “right” answers and knowing the “right” way to do things. once determined, school becomes a predictable, often deadening, activity. “when habit swathes everything, one day follows another identical day and predictability swallows any hint of an opening possibility” (greene, , p. ). schools are places where there is little time for activity that does not produce results, eliminating public and private space because they become superfluous—gratuitous and unnecessary. as teachers we feel that our time and efforts cannot be wasted on anything not connected to learning outcomes and student achievement, and the pressure to maintain this focus in order to be successful teachers is omnipresent. the result is that we “become ontologically insecure: unsure whether we are doing enough, doing the right thing, doing as much as others, or as well as others, constantly looking to improve, to be better, to be excellent” (ball, , p. ). we are regularly reminded that our success is measured by our students’ results and we re-ignite our efforts. sadly, our persistent doing and activity promote worldlessness, which emerges as the norm, and thoughtlessness becomes accepted and expected. we need to ask ourselves more frequently, “are we doing this because it is important, because we believe in it, because it is worthwhile? or is it being done ultimately because it will be measured or compared? it will make us look good” (ball, , p. )! certainly, the labour and activity of schooling cannot be eliminated. “much of teaching involves labour. indeed, learning to teach is largely an activity of learning to labour and organize the labour of children, that is, a continuous effort to keep them engaged” (coulter, , p. ). however, teachers need to resist the pressure to be captivated by schooling’s expectations, having students engaged only and incessantly in activity that prevents us from educating. conceding that schooling as labour dominates our practice, how do we find space for education? there are those teachers and principals who find ways to educate, who persist in finding cracks of possibility and resistance. i suggest that these educators intentionally find private space to think, that they have protected and preserved a sense of wonder and curiosity that allows them to critically question and to live consciously. educators committed to thinking are aware of and open to altogether new visions, to unsuspected experiential possibilities. [they are] personally engaged in looking, from an altered standpoint, on the materials of one’s own lived life, and in imaginatively transmuting (from the fresh standpoint) the fragments of the presented world. (greene, , p. ) they act, in a sense, as artists, encouraging others to see the world from alternate perspectives, to open possibility, to question and to wonder. (ironically, teacher-artists aim to create other artists, rather than works of art.) “art is committed to that perception of the world which alienates individuals from their functional existence…it is committed to an emancipation of sensibility, imagination, and reason” (marcuse, , p. ) much like thinking. it seems to me that without thinking, indeed, without the arts and without teachers who are able to think like artists, we cannot educate, and “we are interested in education here, not in schooling. we are interested in openings, in unexplored possibilities, not in the predictable or the quantifiable” (greene, , p. ). if we hope to foster critical, thoughtful democratic citizenship—individuals who recognize their freedom and will question the way we do things, recognizing that we live in the world with other people and have a responsibility to each other—we need to follow greene and generate interest in education, even as we critique schooling. educative spaces exist in our schools, but they are far too uncommon. a favourite and simple example: a teacher drives to school reviewing her plans for the day and anticipating her students’ accomplishments. as she arrives at school she notices something striking and decides to share her discovery with her students. the day begins as the teacher quietly leads the children outside where the air is chilly and frost still clings. they follow their teacher’s upward gaze and see a frosty spider web glistening in the morning sun. it’s beautiful and they stand in wonder for several quiet minutes. and then the questions begin. what do you see? how was it created? how long will it last? how do spiders know to make that pattern? where is the spider? what kind of spider built it? was the web here yesterday and we did not notice it? the children study the web, then go inside to recreate it in a sketch, remembering as much as they can. a few students go to take another look. the class continues asking questions and discussing possible answers; suddenly it is recess. for the rest of the day, the class focuses on the web, figuring out how to find answers to often unanswerable questions and talking about what else they would like to know. they consider web patterns and construction, how long a web takes to build, what the material of the web is and how a spider produces it, arachnid species, language, and anatomy, the spider’s place in the insect world, what spiders eat, what eats them, what our responsibility is to spiders—the questions persist. at the end of the day students take home their spider web sketch and talk with their families about spiders. the plan in the teacher’s daybook did not include spiders. her unit and year plans did not include spiders because the curriculum did not. however, this was not a day of learning lost at the whim of a thoughtless teacher. i would argue it was in fact the opposite—a day of memorable and meaningful learning together. the teacher learned along with the children because she was open and awake to possibilities, willing to think independently, and to courageously exercise judgment for the sake of education. it was an opportunity to appear to each other, to share perspectives and to experience the power of thinking and learning together. “children want to be reminded of the important questions” (cullingford, , p. ); they want opportunities to think, to be curious and to wonder, they deserve teachers who are committed to “the expansion of the ‘individual, human part’ of those [they] teach” (greene, , p. ), to enhancing awareness, imagination and thoughtfulness, enabling children “to break through the cotton wool of daily life and to live more consciously” (greene, , p. ). developing the ability to think is of utmost educational importance if we hope to live well together and inspire democratic citizenship. although the idea of socratic/arendtian thinking in schools runs counter to accepted and expected practice it is possible when educators make space for and embrace it. thinking will be reflected in practice; the ethical and political dimensions of education will emerge, as conscience and judgment are exercised, and potentially immoral practice will hopefully be exposed. “[c]onscience seems to be the only potential means we have for exposing (without any guarantee of success) the immorality of both codified morality and the norms of the majority” (biesta, , p. ). educators need to recognize their responsibility to think, to find ways to develop a pedagogy that embraces the mindset of artists who “are not reliable servants of any ideology” (nussbaum, , p. ) but rather look at the world from alternate perspectives straining to see what is and what might be in an effort to live wide-awake. we must accept that “although we may know in part we are also part of what we know” (i corinthians : ). we are responsible for transforming our givens, imagining alternatives, and generating meaning in our lives; we are responsible for ‘thinking what we do’. the motive for metaphor desiring the exhilaration of changes: the motive for metaphor, shrinking from the weight of primary noon, the a b c of being, the ruddy temper, the hammer of red and blue, the hard sound – steel against intimation – the sharp flash, the vital arrogant, fatal, dominant x. —wallace stevens ( ) chapter : unanchoring the will they said, "you have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are." the man replied, "things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar." and they said then, "but play, you must, a tune beyond us, yet ourselves, a tune upon the blue guitar of things exactly as they are." —wallace stevens, “the man with the blue guitar” narratives make us appear, but how we appear is a matter of contingency. (sjoholm, , p. ). arendt’s exploration of thinking unsettles our historical and accepted understanding of what it means to think, leaving us adrift, lost in uncertainty, wondering and questioning our reality and our world. through her work arendt shows us how the wind of thinking challenges the bannisters we rely upon to make judgments about appearances, how thinking stirs us from complacency, shakes our surety and moves us to see the world in new ways. if, as arendt ( a) suggests, “the wind of thinking…has shaken you from your sleep and made you fully awake and alive, then you will see that you have nothing in your grasp but perplexities” (p. ). following arendt’s practice, i capitalize will in my thesis when i’m using it in in arendt’s (and kant’s) meaning for ease of reading. how do we manage these perplexities? what then do we do with them? what prompts us to act when our bannisters have collapsed or failed? we cannot (or at least ought not to) stay paralyzed by thinking’s destruction and its power to dismantle comfortable assumptions; we need to move through and beyond thinking’s damage and discomfort. in willing, arendt attempts to find a way out of thinking’s ‘irons’ by once again unsettling what we know and arguing that our western understanding of the will is problematic. the problems arendt discovers in the will are not easily accessible; they demand time, patience, and a desire to understand. arendt’s theorizing is generally acknowledged (and particularly so in willing) as a challenge to follow—she focuses on her own understanding, in her own unique style, and seems ignorant of the difficulties her style presents for her readers. schwartz ( ) explains that: arendt’s style of theorizing was quite idiosyncratic, verging on eccentric, and she seemed to gravitate much more to the genealogical process of what she called ‘pearl diving,’ of digging deeper and deeper into the origins of our historical world, than to the process of attempting to tie up all the loose ends of her explorations. (p. ) arendt was not predominately concerned with offering definitive answers or proving a political theory. rather, she investigated with rapacious intent as she excavated a genealogy of ideas, learning from others, delving into the past, and pushing forward with new understanding. she wanted us to think for ourselves, to work for wisdom and ‘good’ judgment in ethical-political action. it has been helpful for me to acknowledge the density, obscurity, and inconsistencies of arendt’s style and to try to see the ‘pearls’ of ideas she uncovers that might help me better understand and re-vision my work as an educator. the commonly accepted concepts arendt calls out, re-views, and re-develops prompt me to shift my thinking and begin to see the world in new ways, to see possibilities where before there were accepted givens. like the man with the blue guitar, arendt encourages us to see beyond “things as they are” and to test the narrative(s) of our reality. conceptions of the will we have inherited particular understandings of the will in the western tradition that have evolved over time, leaving us with deeply rooted biases which seem beyond refute. regular, daily use of “willing”, and its many compounds, is unquestioned. we know that “to will” is to plan to do; it is “not yet” but reflects an intent to act. today we tend to understand the will in relation to being willing, being willful, and related concepts such as a strong-willed, will power, free will, and good will. we take these concepts for granted and use them without reflection, rarely interrogating what they mean or where they have come from; we simply accept that they exist as we understand them. being willing, for example, speaks to our willingness to engage in particular activities, to do certain things. what we are willing to do is connected to what is important to us, what we value and how we set priorities. being willful is somewhat different and speaks to a stubbornness, a confrontational demeanor that is often in unreasonable contention with others, non-compliant, and closed to listening. being strong-willed seems slightly more reasonable, suggesting a determination and commitment to succeed, to strive, to achieve, to put in effort and try to the best of our abilities. while being strong-willed is invariably associated with stubbornness, it has a more positive bent than being willful. similarly, will power implies a kind of strength and steadfastness similar to having a strong will, but with a very deliberate motivation and target. will power implies that we have some control over ourselves and our choices, implying that our will is free, that we make choices and exercise control over our lives. we feel and believe that we possess a free will. for example, i have power over my decisions and the freedom to decide whether i will write or not write today, whether i will go for a walk to the lake or stay home. as arendt ( b) states, “[t]he touchstone of a free act…is always that we know that we could also have left undone what we actually did” (p. ). we all seem to know and accept that we have the power to determine what we do or do not do. goodwill is different again and is tied to the idea of charity, care, and helping others; in contrast to the other types of will which are focused on the individual, goodwill has a pronounced and intentional focus on turning the will toward others. the various extrapolations of the will include the “freedom” to do what i want. however, there are limits to what i can will, founded in my cognitive and physical capacity, the world as it exists around me, and the wills of the various, multiple others with whom i live and who have wills of their own. the exercise of the will, as we understand it in each of its iterations, is ultimately an exercise of control over self (self-sovereignty), calling attention to our freedom, our ability to do or do not, to act or not act. our conception of a will over which we have control lies behind established rules and “serves…as a necessary postulate of every ethics and every system of laws” (arendt, b, pp. - ). simply put, we accept that human beings are responsible and should be held accountable for their actions because they are capable of making judgments about what counts as ethical-political action. as human beings, we believe that we ought to know how to act well, though we can also choose to act in opposition to what we know is right or good. however, after the rise of totalitarian systems and the eichmann trial in particular, arendt began to see the problem differently. it seemed no longer a matter of knowing what was right and acting against this knowledge. the capacity to commit evil acts appeared to be possible by those who were “normal” and did not even recognize the immorality of their action, leading arendt to question evil’s radical villainy and see it instead as banal. the trouble with eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terrifyingly normal. from the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied…that this new type of criminal…commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong. (arendt, , p. ) what lies behind the banality of evil and the corresponding problem of ethical-political action, leads arendt to the faculties of the mind—thinking, willing, and judging. in willing, arendt confronts and contests our understanding of freedom, challenging current understandings and accepted definitions of the will, reviving lost meanings, and seeking to reconceive freedom as non-sovereign, in an effort to defend and sustain plurality in a common and contingent world. a history of the western will the classical union of knowing and acting the faculty of the will, arendt argues is a relatively new discovery in the western tradition, emerging not in philosophy, but in christian theology. one reason for the emergence of the will is connected to a change in our notion of time. the ancient greeks understood time cyclically, identifying the cycles of life—days, seasons, rotations of the earth, cycles of the moon—where there is no future or progression of events, just recurrence. the belief was that there is a cyclical movement in which everything that is alive swings—where indeed every end is a beginning and every beginning an end…not only events but even opinions ‘as they occur among men, revolve not only once or a few times but infinitely often’. (arendt, b, pp. - ) a cyclical notion of time contrasts the idea of perpetual progress and constant improvement which is entrenched in western modernity, notably in the sciences. arendt ( b) recognizes that the “concept of unlimited progress is the dominant inspiring principle of modern science” (p. ), reinforcing a will that anticipates a future act or occurrence, something that is yet to be or yet to come, and is therefore incompatible with a cyclical time concept. arendt identified the anticipated acts of the will as projects, or future acts. the “will, if it exists at all…is as obviously our mental organ for the future as memory is our mental organ for the past” (arendt, b, p. ). our understanding of time is directly linked to our understanding of what it means to be and to live well in the world. if we understand time as cyclical rather than rectilinear it changes how we conceptualize being. moreover, arendt recognized that for socrates and plato, knowing and doing were tightly linked. if you knew something, you acted upon it. knowledge and meaning were one and the same and it made no sense to act in opposition to what you understood as right. the concern was primarily epistemological (though within a very different epistemological framework than we use now), that is, ethical knowing and acting were integrated in the platonic forms (reliable truths that exist apart from the unreliable world of appearances) which determined what would count as ethical-political action. aristotle, however, recognized that knowing alone was insufficient to guide action; there were times that a person knew what was right and yet acted in opposition to this knowledge, a problem he identified as akrasia, that is, a lack of self-control. “the incontinent man…follows his desires regardless of the commands of reason” (arendt, b, p. ). conceding that we can know what is good or right, but still act otherwise, following desire rather than reason, aristotle attempted to address the problem of akrasia through a combination of proairesis (choice) and phronesis, or practical wisdom, where a distinct intellectual virtue (one of five) selects the appropriate intellectual and moral virtues in order to act well in particular circumstances. aristotle fails to fully explain what phronesis entails, but claims it to be “a kind of insight and understanding of matters that are good or bad for men, a sort of sagacity…needed for human affairs” (arendt, b, p. ). phronesis depends largely on a conception of reason (to which we will see future philosophers return) to select and activate the requisite virtue for the particular situation. aristotle believed that we are all born with virtues and we continue to learn and develop these virtues throughout our lives, guided by reason and cultivated as we learn to recognize what is inherently ethical, usually through examples of excellence or virtuosity. the supremacy of christian faith with the birth of christianity, arendt notes that our current rectilinear concept of time replaced the ancient cyclical time concept. “the story that begins with adam’s expulsion from paradise and ends with christ’s death and resurrection is a story of unique, unrepeatable events” (arendt, b, p. ) with a well-defined sequence. a rectilinear notion of time offered a past, present, and future along with a new construction of freedom, which made space for a new mental faculty, the will, as the “organ for the future” (arendt, b, p. ). willing has the capacity to deal with matters of imagination, that is, “with matters that never were, that are not yet, and that may well never be” (arendt, b, p. ). christianity, along with the idea of a future over which we feel we have some control, brought new ideas about ethical-political action and what it meant to live a good life among others. arendt argues that reason—central in antiquity’s answer to ethical action—was supplanted by faith: “[w]ith the rise of christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality” (arendt, b, p. ). ethical-political action became tied to the dictates of the church and obedience became the foundation for christian ethics. glory that had previously been attainable through action in concert with other people was removed from the world and became part of the spiritual, heavenly realm. the world of appearance (the body politic) which had provided the space for glory to be revealed and appreciated, became government (and church) rule, and life, rather than the common public world, became the highest good. as arendt ( ) claimed, “[o]nly with the rise of christianity did life on earth also become the highest good of man” (p. ). as such, eudaimonia, or the pursuit of a good and worthwhile life came to be understood in relation to obedience and devotion to religious rules and commandments with eternal life as one’s reward. glory became associated with the afterlife rather than the esteem generated through action amongst peers and equals. with the apostle paul, there was a shift “from doing to believing, from the outward man living in a world of appearance…to an inwardness which by definition never unequivocally manifests itself and can be scrutinized only by a god” (arendt, b, p. ). stepping back from the world of action into the realm of the spiritual and the eternal, propelled man to look inward and to realize an inner contest that came to be known as the will. “when we deal with experiences relevant to the will, we are dealing with experiences that men have not only with themselves, but also inside themselves” (arendt, b, p. ); our inner world began to supersede the common world. the apostle paul “discovered” an inner tension and struggle in his efforts to do right, recognizing that there is a faculty in man by virtue of which, regardless of necessity and compulsion he can say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ agree or disagree with what is factually given, including his own self and his existence, and that this faculty may determine what he is going to do. (arendt, b, p. ) with christianity, our understanding of ethical-political action shifted from public to private where faith rather than reason became the motivating factor. the development of the christian will like the apostle paul, st. augustine was interested in the will, recognizing its inner (private) sovereignty and power of self-command and obedience. both paul and augustine acknowledged the freedom of the will, its ability to accept or reject, say yes or no, to will or to nill, its power to create dissonance in the soul. “in every act of the will, there is an i-will and i- nill involved. these are the two wills whose ‘discord’ augustine said ‘undid [his] soul’” (arendt, b, p. ). the will can affirm or negate reality, reason, or desire, reflecting its power, but what motivates the will remains a mystery. as arendt ( b) questions: “what is it then that causes the will to will? what sets the will in motion” (p. )? augustine approached the problem of the will and its freedom, which paralleled the interest human beings had in an “inner self” or “i” (consciousness), through the lens of his faith and christian philosophy. augustine looked for answers by examining the will in isolation from other mental faculties and made four determinations. first, the will is divided or split and in perpetual conflict while engaged in the activity of willing regardless of will’s focus; both good and evil wills are split. second, the contest of the will is a mental activity where both the will and counter-will (nill) are equally in play. third, because the will issues commands and expects obedience, it can also be resisted. finally, augustine “finds no solution to the riddle of this ‘monstrous’ faculty is given; how the will, divided against itself, finally reaches the moment when it becomes ‘entire’ remains a mystery” (arendt, b, p. ). to redeem and unify the will, augustine turns to love. in order for love to work as an answer to the will’s division and conflict, augustine “undertakes to investigate the will not in isolation from other mental faculties but in its interconnectedness with them” (arendt, b, p. ). like the holy trinity, which augustine uses as a model of a three-in-one, the mental faculties work together as inseparable but distinct parts of one mind. memory, intellect, and the will work in harmony. “these three faculties are equal in rank, but their oneness is due to the will. the will tells the memory what to retain and what to forget; it tells the intellect what to choose for its understanding” (arendt, b, p. ). it seems that the will in this triad is the faculty “that makes them function and eventually ‘binds them together’” (arendt, b, p, ). augustine turns to love to redeem the will for what love is able to do—bind and unify. love is “the ‘weight of the soul,’ its gravitation, that which brings the soul’s movement to its rest” (arendt, b, p. ), affirms who we are, and brings peace and comfort. “the soul’s gravity, the essence of who somebody is, and which as such is inscrutable to human eyes, becomes manifest in this love” (arendt, b, p. ) and can still the discord of the soul. arendt ( b) explains, “the love that stills the will’s turmoil and restlessness is not a love of tangible things but of the ‘footprints’ ‘sensible things’ have left on the inwardness of the mind” (p. ). it is the will that attends to and brings concepts and sense objects to the mind—to the intellect and to memory. when and where we love, there lies our attention. the ability to attend to the world of appearance is in the will’s power and the will exercises this power as it identifies and determines what warrants attention. each of us can identify certain things, people, and ideas to which we give our attention and others which we do not. there are times when we might look at something yet not see it, listen yet not hear (i am regularly guilty of both). augustine argued that it is the will that allows us to identify what we pay attention to, what we perceive through the senses and then bring into our inner world (mind) to make sense of, or to discard and ignore. in other words, the will, by virtue of attention, first unites our sense organs with the real world in a meaningful way, and then drags, as it were, this outside world into ourselves and prepares it for further mental operations: to be remembered, to be understood, to be asserted or denied. (arendt, b, p. ) what augustine saves in looking at the will as one part of a greater whole in the life of the mind, is the will’s power to attend to the world as it appears to us and to identify what is important. we cannot underestimate “the will’s power of assertion and denial; there is no greater assertion of something or somebody than to love it, that is, to say: i will that you be—amo: volo ut sis” (arendt, b, p. ). in willing another to be as they are we affirm and share our attention with her/him. when we recognize and attend to any object, idea, or person, we offer affirmation. attention, for augustine, is one of the major functions of the will, the great unifier…the ‘distention of the mind’ [that] binds together the tenses of time into the mind’s present. ‘attention abides and through it what will be present proceeds to become something absent’, namely the past. (arendt, b, p. ) the concept of time and its relationship to the will creates unique challenges for christian philosophy, for how could an eternal god (without beginning or end), omnipotent and good, create temporal beings? how does the concept of time even come to be? how can something that is eternal create “new” things when all that is has always been? novelty and the “new” cannot occur in cycles. augustine’s answer is to differentiate between an absolute beginning, principium (without/beyond time), and a relative beginning initium (with a beginning and an end). man is a relative beginning “put into a world of change and movement as a new beginning because he knows that he has a beginning and will have an end” (arendt, b, p. ). each human being born into the world is a new being, a novelty, one of a kind, with the ability to interrupt the flow of “what is” when he/she arrives. our “individuality manifests itself in the will” (arendt, b, p. ) and the will’s attention. who we are is revealed in word and deed (actions), as matthew : states, “ye shall know them by their fruits.” we are in the world with other people and it is only by virtue of being with others that we know ourselves and reveal who we are in our uniqueness. each of us are judged by our words and actions which in turn reveal our identity. ethical-political action came to be a matter of aligning one’s self with the sovereign christian will. if one followed the precepts and rules of the church and relied on the teachings, commandments, and scriptures to lead the way to a good life, one was “saved” and could expect glory in the afterlife. one was seen by others as pious, charitable, and good if obedient to christian ethics, the guiding will and philosophy of the church. a return to the authority of reason st. augustine believed that the will was central to ethical-political action because the will unified the faculties and had primacy in the mind, revealing individual identity through our attention and action (words and deeds). the will was tempered and unified by love. eight- hundred years later, at the height of the church’s power in the middle ages, st. thomas aquinas ( - ce), sought to tie augustine’s teaching of the will more directly to established doctrine and to integrate the teachings of aristotle to create a new understanding of the role of the will in fostering ethical-political action. aquinas grafts aristotelian teleology onto augustine’s model of the mind, transforming both. aquinas accepts aristotle’s teleology in which he defines an end as “that for the sake of which a thing is done” (physics, ii, , a ) and explains that “every creature strives for immortality by way of reproducing itself (generation of animals . . b - b ). aquinas concurs: “every agent, of necessity, acts for an end” (st, i-ii, q. , a. ) and for humans, that end is being. what separates aquinas from aristotle, however, is the origin of being: for aristotle, the cosmos is timeless, cyclical with neither beginning nor end; for aquinas, the ultimate source of all being must be god and the creation of the world is god’s gift ex nihilo (oliver, , p. ). aquinas contends that humanity’s ultimate goal must be the “final and perfect beatitude [which] can consist in nothing less than the vision of the divine essence” (st - , q. , a ): one should aspire both to know and appreciate the infinite goodness of god. such a telos requires a congruent model of the human mind that aquinas, unsurprisingly, finds in augustine. aquinas agrees with augustine that the intellect and the will are prime mental capacities for humans (but includes memory as a feature of the intellect) and explains that each faculty focuses on a complementary aspect of being: the intellect aspires to universal truth and the will strives for the universal good. in contrast to augustine’s claim that the will is dominant, aquinas argues that the two powers have equal weight, they “include one another in their acts, because the intellect understands what the will wills, and the will wills the intellect to understand” (de generatione, i, , b - ). further, aquinas recognizes that each capacity for understanding truth or goodness in general must be supplemented by a strategy to determine what is true or good in particular contingent circumstances. he explains that the intellect deals with self-evident, uncontested general truths needing no support; when we “need to come from one thing to the knowledge of another…, we reason about conclusions that are known from the principles” (de civitte dei, i-ii, qu. , a. ) and therefore require the faculty of reasoning which he calls prudentia (adopted from aristotelian phronesis). the change in vocabulary signals a dramatic shift in meaning: while aristotelian phronesis aims at integrating moral and intellectual virtues—means and ends—in efforts to do the right thing, aquinas’ prudentia, in contrast, aims at finding appropriate means for ends determined by either the intellect or the will (miner, , p. ). arendt outlines all of the above in willing and then challenges aquinas’ characterization of the symmetrical relationship between the intellect and the will by pointing to a feature that augustine recognized but aquinas neglects—the initial selection of first principles or self- evident truths frames the subsequent interaction between the intellect and the will. arendt ( b) explains that for aquinas ‘every movement of the will [is] preceded by apprehension [of the intellect]’—no one can will what he does not know—‘whereas…apprehension is not preceded by an act of the will.’ here, of course, [aquinas] parts company with augustine, who maintained the primacy of the will qua attention even for the sake of sense perception. (p. ) the intellect initially frames experience and provokes subsequent responses, a priority that arendt ( b) contends contributes to the valorization of certain forms of human life. for thomas—as for nearly all of his successors in philosophy…—it was a matter of course, actually the very touchstone of philosophy as a separate discipline, that the universal is ‘nobler and higher in rank’ than the particular and the only proof this needed was and remained the old aristotelian statement that the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. (p. ) in sum, arendt ( b) contends that augustine and aquinas have different answers to the central question that preoccupied medieval thinkers: in what does ‘man’s last end and happiness consist? augustine’s answer was to love god; aquinas’ response was to know god. aquinas explains: “it is one thing to possess the good which is our end, and another to love it; for love was imperfect before we possessed the end, and perfect after we obtained possession” (pegis, , p. ). arendt argues that aquinas’ subordination of the will to the intellect is part of a process that returns the will to the status of the means to accomplish ends determined by the intellect. not all of the scholastics followed aquinas however. john duns scotus ( - ce), a philosopher and theologian who was nearly a contemporary of aquinas’, believed that the intellect served the will, placing the will in a position of primacy. scotus trusts that human beings are rational and knowledge of the world is founded on what is understood in common. “the test for the countless facts whose trustworthiness we constantly take for granted is that they must make sense for men as they are constituted” (arendt, b, p. ). we share language that allows for common knowledge of things given and things imagined that are beyond us, such as the idea of god. “the miracle of the human mind is that by virtue of the will it can transcend everything” (arendt, b, p. ). that man is able to transcend his own limitations, scotus attributes to the will. arendt ( b) explains: [w]hatever the intellect proposes to him, man is forced to accept, compelled by the evidence of the object…. it is different with the will. the will may find it difficult not to accept what reason dictates, but the thing is not impossible, just as it is not impossible for the will to resist strong natural appetites. (p. ) desire and intellect can both be resisted by the will. “it is the possibility of resistance to the needs of desire, on the one hand, and the dictates of intellect and reason, on the other, that constitutes human freedom” (arendt, b, p. ). scotus recognized the will as undetermined and nearly unlimited, challenging causality by claiming that what has happened could also not have happened, “only the willing ego knows that ‘a decision actually taken need not have been taken and a choice other than the one actually made might have been otherwise’” (arendt, b, p. ). as human beings, the ability to will or nill is within our power and in this sense the will is free. “[h]uman beings, whether or not they know it, as long as they can act, are capable of achieving, and constantly do achieve, the improbable and unpredictable” (arendt, , p. ). once words and deeds are enacted, their effects extend outward and it is impossible to know (with any surety or finality) their outcome. words and deeds enter the world, coinciding with the plurality of wills and the webs of relationships that appear there. individual wills exist amidst multiple other diverse wills that are also free to will and nill, leaving the world of human affairs open to unpredictability and surprise. modernity and the sovereign will though scotus and aquinas differ in respect to their conclusions about the primacy of the will or the intellect in the life of the mind, both understood that the will plays a major role in human action: the will possesses the power of command and control, obedience and resistance. arendt recognized that the reformation challenged both scotus and aquinas by questioning the religious maxims and traditions that had been relied on for centuries, engendering uncertainty about ethical-political action and what counted as good and worthwhile. as secularity spread, it brought not only the loss of religion, but also “a world that is neither structured by authority nor held together by tradition” (arendt, , p. ). the vita activa, arendt claimed, now dominated society with labour rising to the apex, firmly placing necessity and the force of life processes in control of behaviour where automatic functioning seemed sufficient and human life continued to be upheld as the highest good. our unabashed focus on the self has become ubiquitous, a sign of worldlessness. thinking narrowed, its purpose known only within the service of doing. the result was that individuals were thrown back upon the self without reliable bannisters to guide action. the vita contemplativa was devalued as a path to understanding, truth, and knowledge, and society came to rely on “evidence,” as discovered and proven in doing, to inform action. our ability to create tools as a means to demonstrate and prove our world to ourselves quickly overwhelmed and narrowed our ways of knowing. what we do and what we know became tied to determined or projected ends and the will became even more powerfully bound to ideas of rationality and sovereignty unencumbered by ethical-political action. simultaneously action, rather than finding its genesis in faith or morality, found it in science and numbers, which employed “factual” evidence to generate empirical truth. doing was effectively removed from ethical or normative concerns, and worldlessness, a concentration on the compulsory aspects of life, took hold. arendt recognized that our need for scientific, empirical “proof” and predictability overwhelmed what counted as knowledge and truth, leaving us to understand the world in limited ways that focus almost exclusively on means and ends. we are left seeking and believing in a predictability that is an illusion. our reliance on quantifiable information to inform action is constantly reinforced. the sovereign will remains private, never a public concern because it is deeply rooted in a given, “predictable” world, organized by science and all things empirical where reason is held in high esteem. nietzsche might say we have inherited the worst of both the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, critiquing the sovereign will because everything is left to the individual. arendt ( b) claims that nietzsche’s last word “clearly spells a repudiation of the will and the willing ego, whose internal experiences have misled thinking men into assuming that there are such things as cause and effect, intention and goal, in reality” (p. ). with nietzsche, arendt argues that what we think we know may not be accurate. “clearly what is needful is not to change the world or men but to change their way of ‘evaluating’ it, their way, in other words, of thinking and reflecting about it” (arendt, b, p. ). dissatisfied with the understanding we have of the will, arendt seeks some pearl of an idea that might shift our understanding, allowing us to see the will differently and redeem ethical-political action. arendt’s non-sovereign will in her exegesis and critique of willing, arendt breaks “with the entire modern philosophy of the will in which the twin ideas of power as rule/force and freedom as sovereignty have been housed” (zerilli, , p. ). arendt endeavours to re-form our traditional understanding of the will, offering a perspective so at odds with what is that it is difficult to accept without a seismic shift and release of what we know. arendt argues that we have inherited a misshapen and dysfunctional society where we have forgotten what it means to think, will, and judge, to actively create (and question) our world rather than simply accept it. in reconceiving the will, arendt works from an essential underpinning of plurality, a belief that we live and participate in a common world shared with other people where we acknowledge our responsibility to each other as the basis for ethical-political action. arendt’s re-conception of the will attempts to explain what non-sovereign freedom might look like in a world we create together amidst multiple, unique individuals who each bring their own story into a web of countless already existing stories. willing is “based on the ability of every human being to initiate a sequence, to forge a new chain” (arendt, , p. ), to begin something new, to share a new story. within a plurality of individuals pursuing various causes, we find endless sequences and initiations or new beginnings that connect and interconnect, weaving together our common human world, creating webs of stories and relationships. arendt’s excavation of the history of the will, yields two important pearls: from augustine she finds a conception of freedom as the expression of natality, that is, the capacity to begin anew; from duns scotus, she recovers the idea of the link between the will and freedom in a plural, contingent world. freedom as the capacity to begin something new is the essence of natality. “every man, being created in the singular, is a new beginning by virtue of his birth” (arendt, b, p. ), entering the world as a unique and original human being with a unique and original story. levinson ( ) recognizes that “[t]o arendt, natality signifies both our newness in relation to the world and the possibility that we might bring about something new in relation to it” (p. ). though each of us is an original and separate beginning, able to insert ourselves and our ideas, opinions, and creations into an existing world, our uniqueness “is not an inert quality. it is brought into being—enacted—by speaking, acting subjects who do what they do in order to individuate themselves, to become distinctive selves” (levinson, , p. ). between birth and death, we find ourselves in a world filled with others, all of whom have the ability to act. the multiplicity and polytonality of action cannot be escaped (unless of course one were able to live in isolation); my freedom to act/do/choose might be unique to me, but my actions fall into a plural world to be judged. for this reason, as arendt ( b) aptly notes, “[n]o man can be sovereign because not one man, but men, inhabit the earth” (p. ). individuals may be able to achieve something new and unprecedented, but we are always one of many and so true freedom, at least for arendt, is the freedom to begin something with other people. plurality is non-negotiable and inescapable if we hope to have meaningful lives of any significance. living in a common world amongst other human beings who are independent and unique, with diverse and distinct perspectives, leaves us open to the unexpected and the unpredictable. we cannot, with any surety, have any conception of how things will play out, of how our actions (our words and deeds) will fall into the world and affect others. we are all bound to be taken by surprise on occasion. indeed, as arendt ( ) affirms [h]uman action, projected into a web of relationships where many and opposing ends are pursued, almost never fulfills its original intention…. whoever begins to act must know that he has started something whose end he can never foretell, if only because his own deed has already changed everything and made it even more unpredictable. (pp. - ) the contingency of our existence is inescapable and the ends of our actions are beyond what we can anticipate or know. “the freedom of spontaneity is part and parcel of the human condition” (arendt, b, p. ), part of living in a plural world. for duns scotus contingency meant that “everything that is might possibly not have been” (arendt, b, p. ). innumerable intersections of action from multiple unique individuals acting independently within the web of human relationships lead to potentially infinite and unpredictable outcomes. our world then, is not a singular world, but multiple worlds, or stories/narratives, that layer, overlap, connect and weave together in various ways, created by individuals who add their perspectives and understandings to the complexity, messiness and wonder of the common world. despite the evident contingency of our plural world, once a thing has happened, it cannot be undone and we see it as necessary, something we can explain, justify, and understand. our ability to will, leads us to feel/believe we are the cause of particular outcomes. we are always searching for and trying to determine why a thing happens. “why?— what is the cause?—is suggested by the will because the will experiences itself as a causative agent. [whatever was willed] has become the necessary condition for my own existence” (arendt, b, p. ) and i believe that i caused it, that i made it happen through my actions. the event no longer seems contingent. our rectilinear concept of time (past, present, future) reinforces our belief in causality. once a thing has happened (and only after it has happened), we can attribute reasons for it having happened (though these reasons are invariably multiple). arendt ( b) offers the example of the first and second world wars and the volumes and volumes of books devoted to explaining what caused these wars to start. there is no final answer as to the cause, but rather a “coincidence of causes” (p. ) collided. following scotus, arendt ( b) argues that “all change occurs because a plurality of causes happen to coincide, and the coincidence engenders the texture of reality in human affairs” (p. ), while simultaneously challenging causality. there is enough we hold in common (though this can easily be threatened and lost, as with worldlessness) to make our worlds cohesive and comprehensive to each other despite our differences. all men live together on the solid foundation of an…acquired faith they have in common. the test for the countless facts whose trustworthiness we constantly take for granted is that they must make sense for men as they are constituted. (arendt, b, p. ) within our common world, we are conditioned and limited creatures generally believing that we are “free.” however, “that the will is free, undetermined and unlimited by either an exterior or an internally given object, does not signify that man qua man enjoys unlimited freedom” (arendt, b, p. ); we are free only in our plurality, in our living with many diverse other people. in this way, freedom, for arendt is non-sovereign, connected, not to an individual, but to people; freedom is founded in plurality. “the conditions of the world as it is are given, but the world is also as it is made. as such, it is in need of constant care and upkeep” (levinson, , p. ), constant re-making and re-imagining. willing in schools …humans are constantly born into the world and are continually in need of introduction to the world and one another. this is what makes natality the ‘essence of education’ (levinson, , p. ). the sovereign will is about rulership and it overshadows modern western society and dominates schooling. though we do not refer to the will when we think about or discuss schooling (an understanding of the will is entirely absent from “educational” discourse and research), its effects are pervasive, most easily identified as standards of conformity, functional behaviour, and compliance that can be understood as a form of rule (or rulership). schools are firmly rooted institutions that mirror and reflect society’s values, predictable establishments where children (and adults) expect and rely on consistent organization, rules, and routines. rulership is apparent in the structure and bureaucracy of schooling, the imbalance of power and the clearly established expectations around what it means to be a teacher and what it means to be a student. the roles we have created in schools regulate the functioning and behaviour of teachers and students. we assume that what we do in schools, and how and why we do it, is necessary and appropriate, rarely examining our traditions or our compliance. an unquestioning acceptance of the ends of schooling—“success” and “achievement”—measured by graduation and ultimately one’s ability to be gainfully employed, parallels the acceptance of our roles within the institution. the roles and rules we accept within schools establish a way to insert people into mass society. as an instrument of society, school acts as a means to sort children, to influence and affect identity, to lead children to see themselves in particular ways and as particular kinds of people with particular (and predictable) options about how they will live life. evidence of rulership in schools is ubiquitous, so much a part of what we do and how we operate in schools, that it can seem nearly impossible and endlessly frustrating to counter. the result and impact of rulership is worldlessness (or world-alienation), where the social realm dominates, labour reigns supreme, and we focus singularly on the self. a prevailing attitude of determinism, where cause and effect are valorized beyond refutation, further substantiates an ethos of worldlessness where people are assigned their roles and stations (levinson, ), an additional impact of rulership, emerges as a way of being. as we strive to fit people into mass society, identities are “belated” (levinson, ) and we become blind to alternatives, to other perspectives and voices—often even blind to ourselves, where we accept dominant narratives and embrace a single story as reality. we focus on getting children ready for a world that is immune to action and it becomes increasingly difficult to see how our world might be, as hamlet recognizes, “out of joint”. our ability to act and appear in the world amongst others is jeopardized. the school is a singular, predictable institution ostensibly governed by cause and effect where worldlessness proliferates. an almost exclusive focus on finding means to meet unquestioned ends—ultimately student “achievement” and “success”, is entrenched through a persistent and intractable “common script” (metz, ), an idea of what school ought to be. as we prepare students for the “real world” (metz, ), the work force, and the ability to contribute to the economy, we focus on “real school” (metz, ) a variety of predetermined and prescribed ends that we have come to believe are essential. these givens of schooling that constitute metz’s ( ) common script include such essentials as prompt and punctual attendance, a common curriculum, approved textbooks and resources, timetables, assessment and reporting, assigning students to a teacher and a classroom, assignments and projects, transition from one grade to the next (grade-levels), and an abiding commitment to imposed policy, rules, and expectations. we (teachers and students) “work within larger organizations, [schools and districts within a provincial ministry], that mandate much of the common script in non- negotiable terms” (metz, , p. ). we have deep-seated ideas about what schools, teaching, and student learning look like and so continue to support and enforce them, creating an intractable cycle. as a beginning principal, i was aware of the expectations surrounding my role and what i believed it ought to be. chris and his expulsion from school, act as an example of the roles we assume when we engage in the play of “real school”. chris was no different than any student who had committed a misdemeanour; decisions were made about him based on policy, past- practice, and an accepted understanding of how disciplinary practice should proceed. our focus was on applying the rules without bias, without attempting to understand or listen to chris, who became more or less irrelevant. “in most conventional schools, students are not often included in deliberations about their fate when faced with having violated a school rule” (kelly, , p ). chris represents students in general, who attend school every day and, though we know them, we may not grant them space to appear and to show who they are. instead, we allow them to show us what they can do and how they can succeed in meeting the goals we determine. everyone involved in chris’ story, performed their roles with precision according to the play “real school,” implementing protocols, policy, and practice as expected. adherence to the script felt unavoidable. not only was there no resistance, there was no thought of resistance, so deeply ritualized were our roles. we tend to understand “real school as a ritual, rich with symbols of participation in cultured society and in access to opportunity” (metz, , p. ). the structure of the play requires elements of the common script that create reassurance that what we are doing is what we should be doing. “participating in the classroom actions that were part of this ritual…assured teachers as well as students that they were doing real teaching and real learning” (metz, , p. ), and, in the case of operating a school or school district, real administrating. the idea of a “common script” for schooling is further reinforced through a cycle of continual improvement and ongoing progress in schools that parallels the ideal of progress in modern western society and is congruent with the continuing quest for increased efficiency and productivity. we focus on achieving measurable results (numbers/statistics) and we turn to the means we might implement to improve “student achievement.” as we strive to improve results, people are often seen as means to achieving desired ends. a focus on efficiency, productivity, and economic growth tends to stifle ethical-political conscience, relying on “people who do not recognize the individual, who speak group-speak, who behave, and see the world, like docile bureaucrats” (nussbaum, , p. ). unfortunately, it has become too easy for teachers and principals to become ‘docile,’ caught in the “crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness” (dewey, , p. ) where we teach a prescribed curriculum to bored children. we teach, test, report, and repeat, encouraging children, our students, to embrace conformity, to believe that an “a” or any other descriptor of achievement equals success for which they should all be striving. somehow, we exist and persist “in institutional settings with the spectres of measurement always around us and a uniform standard that discourages difference” (greene, , p. ). when we make decisions based on numbers (enrolment, designations, achievement scores), averages, expected outcomes, and/or past practice, we minimize difference and too easily miss the particular circumstances and particular persons with whom we are working; our work becomes the management of resources (children) rather than education. individuals become invisible, lost in a sea of sameness, undistinguished in any meaningful way from others, as schools (and society) create and promote distance from the world. when opportunities for active engagement in shaping our world fail to exist, plurality is lost and worldlessness, or world-alienation, becomes the norm. we lose not only the world, but ourselves. focusing on narrow outcomes as evidence of “success” generates a particular understanding of our relationship with other people. the result is a loss of connection with the world as we become increasingly caught up in the process of life’s necessity and meeting our personal needs. [a]s arendt understands it, the world is that which comes into being and is sustained by the active participation of citizens. worldliness is thus not simply a kind of awareness; it is a mode of engagement. we become worldly by acting in the world. (levinson, , p. ) schools offer limited and often contrived opportunities for students to know and act in the world, to engage with others in creating, questioning, and renewing the world. instead, [k]nowledge is now instrumentalized, and the awe, magic, and insight it might provide are rendered banal as it is redefined through the mindless logic of quantification and measurement that now grips the culture of schooling and drive the larger matrix of efficiency, productivity, and consumerism shaping broader society. (giroux, , p. ) with worldlessness (world-alienation) comes the added weight of our social positioning and the ways we are constituted and conditioned by the world into which we are born. levinson ( ) identifies this as the challenge of “belatedness”. “[t]he world does not simply precede us but effectively constitutes us as particular kinds of people” (levinson, , p. ) in relation to each other, history, and the future, “putting us in the difficult position of being simultaneously heirs to a specific history and new to it. as a result, we experience ourselves as ‘belated’ even though we are newcomers” (levinson, , p. ). each of us can recognize the ways we are conditioned by what has come before us and by what seems to be the reality of our existence. while each of us is new to the world with the ability to interrupt processes and insert ourselves into the world in new ways, we may feel “so weighted down by [our] social positioning that [we] see no point in attempting to transform the meanings and implications that attach to [our] positioning” (levinson, , p. ); it is tempting to feel overwhelmed or paralyzed by what is or what seems to be the condition of our lives that we fail to engage in the world with others and acquiesce to our conditioning. we often allow ourselves to be constituted by accepting and executing our roles in schools, forfeiting our autonomy and as a result “[d]eterministic ideologies have further contributed to world-alienation by promoting the idea that the world—and indeed human nature itself—is defined by immutable laws and driven by irresistible forces” (levinson, , p. ). once we believe that the world and our behaviour are determined, we have eliminated the new. the ways we have structured schools supports a deterministic view of human beings with its common script of explicit rules and procedures. the british columbia requirement for school codes of conduct is a powerful example of teaching people to follow the rules and adhere to the common script, rather than learning to treat other people with respect, to recognize and appreciate plurality and difference which is critical to any democratic society. chris again emerges as an example of a child made invisible and at the mercy of the common script. had there been any resistance to chris’ fate, i expect the process for appeal would have been followed and the outcome the same. chris’ identity, as well as my own and the identities of others involved, were partly constituted by performing and fulfilling our roles within the narrative of “real school.” it is not a stretch to understand how we might feel powerless or paralyzed in the midst of well-established institutions, such as schools, and how agency and natality are overwhelmed. institutions, including and perhaps especially schools, affect who we are and who we become, they shape our world and our identities. too readily we credit institutions with power over us. however, we must remember that institutions are created and operated by people. “in fact, institutions are us” (palmer, , p. ) and, as such, we have the capacity to shape them. “if we are even partly responsible for creating institutional dynamics, we possess some degree of power to alter them” (palmer, , p. ). each of us has the ability to resist conformity, to question why we do what we do. we have the capacity to push against the “answers” that are given to us (through “research” or statistical results) about the best way to teach, the best practices for assessment, the most effective way to discipline, the steps necessary for successful school leadership, the ways to increase student graduation rates. the trouble with statistics, then, is not that they are wrong, but that they miss what really matters. and in the process, they reinforce the idea that the best that we can expect of human beings is that they conform to these laws of nature. (levinson, , p. ) when we view ourselves as determined in a determined world, we are unable to recognize the ways that the world might be “out of joint” and consequently we are unable to “set it right”. we cannot care for, renew, or protect, what we cannot see needs care, renewal, or protection. the inability to see what needs attention is a consequence of living in a labour- focused society that targets necessity and self-preservation at the expense of plurality, thrives on means/end goals, fosters world-alienation, conformity and complacency, and honours deterministic ideologies. “[t]he simple fact of one’s existence in a given reality makes it difficult to recognize in what is anything other than what was meant to be” (zerilli, , p. ). natality, however, provides for newness and beginning. as arendt ( b) suggests “[t]he very capacity for beginning is rooted in natality…in the fact that human beings…again and again appear in the world by virtue of birth” (p. ) and it is the fact that each of us is new, unique and different from others that we carry the possibility of renewing and re-visioning the world, of setting it right. nurturing educational willing in schools the new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle. the fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. and this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. (arendt, , p. ) while we cannot escape the feeling that our institutions/our schools “seem to have a life of their own” (zerilli, , p. ) that controls and determines what we do and how we do it, they are fashioned and formed by human beings. what and who we are “is always conditioned, but in no way determined” (zerilli, , p. ); we are able to interrupt processes and practice, alter history, change institutions, and change the narratives we live by. we need to recognize that wherever there are narratives, there are counter-narratives; “every tradition contains within its master narrative a series of counter-narratives that are a source of tremendous insight into the shortcomings of the predominant narrative” (levinson, , p. ). the way things are, is not the only way for things to be (for better or for worse). as each of us act in the world, our actions ripple outward affecting those around us, though how each action, each word, and each deed affect others, can never finally be known. once we act, we cannot control the outcome. “whoever begins to act knows that he has started something that he can never fore-tell, if only because his own deed has already changed everything and made it even more unpredictable” (arendt, , pp. - ). arendt understood contingency as an unavoidable aspect of living in the world with others; the unexpected and the surprising is always possible. our world can change in an instant and accepting contingency allows us to recognize the fragility of human affairs and our common world, even as we see the need for renewal and ethical-political action. “the conditions of the world as it is are given, but the world is also as it is made. as such, it is in need of constant care and upkeep” (levinson, , p. ). fostering a commitment to care, attention, and renewal of the common world is quite different, and often directly opposes, a focus on self-sufficiency and “success”, which includes schooling that is focused on “living life”. our classrooms and schools exist in a position of tension where too often we “actively, if unwittingly, help young people to circumvent the world” (levinson, , p. ) rather than encouraging them to know it and engage with it. our challenge then, if we hope to foster natality as the expression of human freedom in a plural world, is to confront this tension and support children in caring for themselves, and finding ways to renew and care for the world by cultivating an enduring and genuine love for it. educating for a love of the world, for natality and renewal, requires teachers to nurture agency, political responsibility, an understanding of our belatedness and respect for the space ‘in-between,’ the space that both holds us together and separates us. examples certainly exist in our schools, but they are not the norm. rather they represent teachers resisting many of the entrenched and established expectations of “real school,” such as management and use of time. my friend who spent the day with her class in wonder over the spider and its web, allowing children to question, learn, and share together, was willing to let go of her plans and attend to the opportunity that presented itself, as well as to the children and their responses. she identified a thread of curiosity and allowed herself and her students to follow that thread without knowing where it would lead, creating space for wonder, exploration, and the emergence of the new. this may seem like a simple example, but i believe that most examples of nurturing natality in school are (seemingly) simple. they do, however, require that the teacher understand the world as it is, be able to question what is, and understand her responsibility in educating, in creating space for children to appear and to find their own understanding. it requires a different attitude toward teaching and children—and a different understanding of education than our school systems generally promote and encourage. what we need to protect and promote is plurality and natality, respect, diversity, openness, and wonder. “discipline” and “behaviour management” are foreign concepts in educational classrooms because there is a culture of respect and care. creating space where children can exercise non-sovereign agency relies upon having space for them to appear and engage with one another. children need to already know they have a voice, that their opinions and ideas will be heard, respected, and challenged by others, and that they have a responsibility to contribute and to appear. i recently entered a multi-age classroom where a math lesson was underway. students were working in groups on a number of white boards around the classroom where they were clearly attempting to solve a mathematical problem. one student was beginning to explain the equation he had contributed to the group. i could see that the answer he had was wrong, as i am sure, could several of his classmates and teacher. however, we all listened patiently as the teacher asked him to explain his thinking. as he worked through the equation, it became evident that his “answer” was not wrong at all, but reflected his current understanding of mathematical processes. he had not yet learned about order of operations or division beyond simple remainders. his work was based on his current knowledge, and explaining his thinking allowed the teacher to understand exactly what he understood and how he could further develop his skills. the teacher acknowledged that the work was correct based on the process used and then queried the class about how the answer might be more accurate, which lead to an explanation by another student (with contributions from a few others) about order of operations. the discussion continued amongst the students with obvious excitement and enthusiasm about this new learning. it was evident that the students in this classroom respected each other, respected the importance of “mistakes”, and felt empowered to contribute. in other words, this was an example of a classroom where students had agency, had space to appear, were able to use their voice to share ideas, and to challenge each other and to learn together. “they understood that it takes courage to appear in the company of equals who can ‘talk back’” (levinson, , p. ), but they also understood that this meant they could learn from each person in their classroom and in turn challenge their ideas. certainly, the teacher was teaching and leading the class, but in a way that allowed the children to appear and to be seen as thinking participants. she was able to pay attention to what was happening with the children’s thinking and to move learning forward, able to accept surprises and to approach what seemed unusual with a desire to understand and to learn herself. clearly, she had been intentional about creating a culture where children felt safe appearing amongst their peers and accepted responsibility for participating. classrooms and schools are, in many ways, microcosms of the larger world and society, places where children learn about and begin to practice politics and political responsibility (or lack thereof). schools have the potential to offer safe spaces where plurality and natality can be nurtured, resisting the constant pressure of schooling’s common script. although it is true that “the world does not simply precede us but effectively constitutes us as particular kinds of people” (levinson, , p. ), if we are aware of how we are constituted, we can insert ourselves into the world with intention rather than passivity. when we acknowledge “the ways our very being is conditioned by what has come before us” (levinson, , p. ) we can begin to make a difference in our world, rather than feeling powerless to initiate anything new. in schools, as in mass society, political responsibility and respect for natality are generally usurped by conformity and complacency, by entrenched ideas about what the “real world” is, especially when we allow our belatedness to define and determine us. we readily label and identify students in various ways: academic, bright, cognitively challenged, socially awkward, kind and helpful, difficult, athletic, artistic, logical, impulsive, quirky, and out labeling contributes to the ways students perceive themselves and what they believe they are capable (or not) of doing. meanwhile, teachers focus on the predetermined outcomes, tasks, policies, procedures, practices, and expectations of “real school” and “the faculties of thought and imagination that make us human and make our relationships rich human relationships, rather than relationships of mere use and manipulation” (nussbaum, , p. ) are nowhere to be found. metz’s ( ) “real school” and the “common script” reinforce rationality, sovereignty, and the dominance of economic concerns, leaving little space for education or ethical-political action, unless there is intentional resistance, and even then it is anomalous. teachers have an obligation to protect “the conditions of plurality and natality that make it possible for us to build a shared world” (levinson, , p. ) rather than simply reinforcing the world as it seems to be given. “to ‘preserve newness’ is to teach such that students acquire an understanding of themselves in relation to the world in a way that holds open the possibility that the world and one’s position in it might be changed” (levinson, , p. ). natality, as levinson ( ) further explains, “stands for those moments in our lives in which we take responsibility for our situation by refusing to become passive vectors of social forces” (p. ) and instead recognize that we are (or at least can be) social actors with the capacity to initiate the unexpected and open up new ways of being. our world is made up of a wealth of diverse and unique individuals and this difference is critical to any plural, democratic society, and hence, to any educational space. helping students understand and value plurality and natality is an educational responsibility. education “requires an appreciation for the complexity and interconnectedness of people and other living things, if we have any hope of maintaining both the planet and our democratic institutions” (meier, , p. ); it is not about jobs and possessions but about expanding the soul, about becoming who we are, developing and attending to the parts of ourselves that make us human, which can only be done together with other people. “[e]ach of us has the capacity to renew a world that seems to each generation, ‘out of joint,’ yet this process is never completed. the world is never set right once and for all” (levinson, , p. ), yet we each have a responsibility to try and to make a contribution towards setting things right. setting the world right requires particular classroom conditions and teachers who are able “to assume joint responsibility for the world and the child in relation to it” (levinson, , p. ), where the world is taught as it is with the opportunity to explore possibility rather than feeling doomed to accept the world as “impervious to change or already transformed and thus no longer in need of alteration,” (levinson, , p. ) determined and beyond their reach. we need to help children understand how each of them is a new beginning bringing the possibility of renewal and hope, as well as fostering a love of the world that will protect and preserve natality. the problem of the new is a political question about how we, members of democratic communities, can affirm human freedom as a political reality in a world of objects and events whose causes and effects we can neither control nor predict with certainty. (zerilli, , p. ) educators are responsible for “introducing the young to a world that precedes them and that they will be responsible for sustaining and occasionally setting to rights” (levinson, , p. ). a substantial challenge, but certainly not impossible. if we consider once again the math classroom, each student understood that there are certain mathematical principles to be learned; they also knew that how each of them came to know and understand those principles varied. these students were aware that different ways of seeing a math problem as well as “errors” in solving it, were opportunities that, when shared, deepened everyone’s understanding. this class, because of respect for plurality and the space created for appearance, was able to confront more challenging and sensitive issues as well. they were able to begin to understand social positioning and perspective, how our various and unique backgrounds and stories differ from one another and affect how we know the world. they were able to listen to opinions and ideas that were different than their own, challenge them and work to understand them. they were essentially provided a space where they could test the fact of their belatedness and experiment with enough safety to begin to generate meaning and significance for themselves. we cannot expect this understanding to be easy, and need to be patient and persistent, repeatedly allowing children the opportunity to search, to speak, to think, and to listen, to let their meanings emerge over time. the space ‘in-between’ past and future is critical to preserving the new and necessitates that we recognize and know the world we have entered, understand how the world that is shapes who we are and who we become. we are born into a world that existed long before our arrival and is the culmination of years and millennia of others creating and contributing to it. educators can help children appreciate this, teaching what is, what possibilities exist for renewal, and helping students understand their space ‘in-between.’ patiently protecting the space to generate meaning and potentially interrupt apparent givens can seem thankless, tireless, repetitive, ineffective, frustrating, and unproductive, but “[t]he possibility that these students might do something unexpected, disrupting the fatefulness of identities and unsettling the social processes to which they give rise, is what redeems teaching and offers hope” (levinson, , p. ). the possibility of disrupting what is and thereby preserving the new is at the heart of education. education is not about the predictable, but the possible. living in the world with others means that we confront multiple, diverse and unpredictable wills that we need to acknowledge and work with rather than working to control. as educators, we have a responsibility to help children “break with the taken-for-granted, what some call the ‘natural attitude,’ and look through the lenses of various ways of knowing, seeing, and feeling in a conscious endeavour to impose different orders upon experience” (greene, , p. ). we need to find ways to help children find their voice in the midst of diverse and various voices, create space for them to attend to the world in new ways, and to take a stand for (and know) what they believe. “it is this freedom of the will mentally to take a position that sets man apart from the rest of creation” (arendt, b, p. ) and that schools ought to encourage. thinking destroys givens and what is taken-for-granted. willing allows us to direct our attention and begin to put the world back together after thinking’s destruction, to re-construct, re-create, and renew. teachers and children need occasions to create educational spaces where natality is protected. “i think what we want to make possible is the living of lyrical moments, moments at which human beings (freed to feel, to know and to imagine) suddenly understand their own lives in relation to all that surrounds” (greene, , p. ). moments where we can prepare to make judgments. moments where we recognize that [e]ducation is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. and education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world. (arendt, , p. ). chapter : judging in dark times the victorious cause pleased the gods, but the vanquished [cause] pleases cato. —lucan’s pharsalia if i could remove the magic from my path and utterly forget all the enchanted spells nature, i would stand before you, a man alone then would be worth the effort of being a man. —goethe’s faust, ii, v, - when arendt died suddenly of a heart attack in december , she had just finished drafting the first two sections of the life of the mind and was preparing to write the final section about another form of thinking distinct from thinking as wondering and thinking as -in- dialogue: thinking as ethical-political judging. on her typewriter was a blank page with the heading “judging” and the above two epigraphs. while arendt left some evidence of her possible direction for “judging”—e.g., her lectures on kant’s political philosophy (beiner, ) and several essays such as “thinking and moral considerations”—projecting a coherent conception of ethical political judging would be foolhardy. instead, i search her writings to find significant considerations involved in making ethical-political judgments under conditions of worldlessness, that is, when the required private and public spaces for action are absent. my efforts sometimes draw on a source often neglected: arendt’s profiles of early th century figures who struggled to provide illumination under the most hostile conditions: men in dark times. arendt ( ) explains: even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that illumination may come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and works, will kindle under almost all circumstances. (p. ix) i read arendt’s profiles as studies of people attempting to make ethical-political judgments. i am especially interested in how they see particular other people; adopt a spectator stance in order to appraise possibilities; carefully choose their judging company; discover, assess, and select relevant examples or models; and imagine and structure their judgments to woo the consent of other spectators. seeing the person the first epigraph in judging refers to those narratives or stories of the vanquished who have been defeated and then quickly ignored or forgotten in consequence. as human beings we have a “ferocious human proclivity to become enclosed in ideologies or fictions” (kateb, , p. ) that become the narratives of the victors, and these narratives often fail to recognize the plural and contingent nature of a complex world. eichmann embodied this proclivity, relying exclusively on the false bannisters and fictions entrenched in the nazi regime. however, against all odds, some people did not comply with nazi ideology and their stories of resistance stood in stark contrast to eichmann’s obedience. arendt ( ) sought out these little-known stories because she believed that narratives of lost causes can demonstrate “that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not” (p. ). such people were able to, for whatever reason and despite critical consequence to themselves, defy authority and law and rely on their own judgment. arendt wanted to understand how they came to exercise this kind of autonomy in making ethical-political judgments. arendt’s research into political judgment begins by looking for stories of those who were defeated, and largely excluded, during dark times. too often when the stories of the victors define history, other stories disappear. she searches for meaning and truth through “a kind of disruptive faithfulness to factual reality, one that interrupts efforts to derive practical conclusions, as if automatically, from…simplified facts” (markell, , p. ). an ability to distinguish particular narratives, perspectives, and voices that disrupt the dominant or victorious narratives, is essential if we wish to live meaningfully and understand the world as it is. defeated causes may carry pearls of wisdom or insight that can illuminate and remind us what it means to be human. the product of arendt’s research, men in dark times ( ), is a series of portraits of the defeated, but not destroyed, including such figures of the pre-nazi and nazi era such as rosa luxemburg, isak dinesen, pope john xxiii, karl jaspers, walter benjamin and bertolt brecht. arguably the hero of the book is karl jaspers, arendt’s teacher and lifelong mentor. jaspers ( - ) began his professional life as a psychiatrist, but soon began to study psychology and then philosophy, becoming chair of philosophy at the university of heidelberg in where arendt moved after studying with heidegger at marburg. jaspers and heidegger were key figures in the development of existential philosophy in germany, but soon became bitter rivals largely because of heidegger’s support for the nazis. jaspers, married to a jewish woman, refused to cooperate with the new regime and was soon dismissed from his professorship and subjected to a publication ban. indeed, he and his wife were only saved from being sent to a concentration camp by the arrival of american troops in april . postwar, jaspers was appointed rector of the university of heidelberg and focused largely on the development of a democratic civic culture in west germany. jaspers was a man who was not tempted to do evil, he was the opposite of eichmann, who was not tempted not to do evil—and [arendt] attributed this inviolability, this independence of judgment to ‘a secret trust in men, in the humanitas of the human race.’ such a trust is the precondition for judging freely. (young-bruehl, , pp. - ) while arendt bases her conception of politics on the ancient polis and is often accused of romanticizing ancient athenian democracy, she was well aware of the elitism of a system in which only native adult males could participate in political life, excluding women, slaves, foreigners (people from other greek cities), and barbarians (people from outside greece). she contrasts athenian with roman citizenship in which people from widely different economic, educational, and ethnic backgrounds had to determine how they would share the common world (arendt, , p. )—an ideal of human plurality best captured by the roman notion of humanitas in which people demonstrated “their trust in the love [that humans] have for meaning, the love they have for the existence of things and people, and the communicative pleasure they take in reflecting on those things and people” (young-bruehl, , p. ). jaspers demonstrated his understanding of humanitas and of democratic citizenship by exercising his incomparable faculty for dialogue, the splendid precision of his way of listening, the constant readiness to give a candid account of himself, the patience to linger over a matter under discussion, and above all the ability to lure what is otherwise passed over in silence into the area of discourse, to make it worth talking about. thus in speaking and listening, he succeeds in changing, widening, sharpening—or, as he himself would beautifully put it, in illuminating. (arendt, , pp. - ) in contrast, eichmann was completely incapable of seeing other people in their particularity. instead he relied on the laws, rules, and expectations—the false bannisters—that surrounded him and was unable to take responsibility for his actions. dedication to the nazi narrative and an inability to think for himself was repeatedly and consistently evident in eichmann’s thoughtless use of language (clichés) and reliance on established categories to understand and explain the world and himself. eichmann’s “banality was a phenomenon that really couldn’t be overlooked. the phenomenon expressed itself in those unimaginable clichés and turns of phrase that [were] heard over and over again” (arendt, , p. ) during the trial. there was no evidence of independent thinking. eichmann was both a criminal and a “clown”. accepting the responsibility to be a judging spectator the second epigraph that arendt intended to use in introducing judging identifies the need to be willing to accept responsibility to think and to judge; indeed, only the individual—the story-teller, the observer and spectator—can generate meaning from the events of history. she can bring her own unique perspective, interpretation, and understanding to events, with the potential of generating new understanding and new possibility. arendt was “more interested in those defeated causes in which action and the revolutionary spirit became manifest and tangible than in the claims to ‘human progress’ and the ‘success of history.’” (bernstein, , p. - ). too often, arendt warns, we allow grand theories to take on universal authority rather than recognizing our individual responsibility to create our world and its history. in sum, life does not just happen to us, we make our lives: if judgment is our faculty for dealing with the past, the historian is the inquiring man who by relating it sits in judgment over it. if that is so, we may reclaim our human dignity, win it back, as it were, from the pseudo-divinity named history…without denying history’s importance but denying its right to being the ultimate judge. (arendt, a, p. ) because only individuals can judge, arendt argues that history diminishes human dignity by assuming comprehensiveness, greatness, and truth. humanity as a collective does not judge history; individuals do: as beiner ( ) suggests, “judgment is rendered not by the collective destiny of mankind but by the ‘man alone,’ the judging spectator who stands before nature unencumbered” (p. ). the idea of progress, like history, looms as a given and seemingly irrefutable truth. always future-oriented, progress assumes ongoing growth and improvement which arendt views as antithetical to human dignity because it “means that the story has no end. the end of the story itself is infinity. there is no point at which we might stand still and look back” (beiner, , p. ), reflect and judge what has happened. the willingness and ability to stand still long enough to withdraw temporarily from the world into safety and privacy that we might think, reflect, and remember is necessary for generating meaning and significance in our lives. “what sense there is can be detected only by the wisdom of hindsight, when men no longer act but begin to tell the story of what has happened” (arendt, b, p. ). to tell the story requires knowing and judging what has happened and mentally preparing to share it. judging, for arendt, includes being willing to step back and observe, to remove ourselves and become a spectator of people, events, things and ideas, so that we might be able and prepared to make appraisals. in arendt’s denktagebuch or intellectual diary, marshall ( ) discovers a distinction that arendt only briefly mentions in her kant lectures. arendt translates the greek concept of krinein (judgment) into two different german words—urteilen and entscheiden. urteilen is “judgment as a passive, consensual capacity to discern” (marshall, , p. ) or appraise a particular situation; entscheiden, in contrast, is “judgment as an active, agonal capacity to decide” how to act (marshall, , p. ) consistent with aristotelian phronesis or arendtian action. krinein is the general “rhetorical capacity” (marshall, , p. ) exercised by socrates to challenge the unfounded beliefs and ideas of those with whom he engaged in dialogue, essentially making public, in discourse, the thinking process. socratic dialogue never left people with answers, but only perplexities, compelling them to re-think their opinions and perspectives. urteilen is judging (understood as appraisal) from the standpoint of a spectator removed from the action and in a position to accurately discern and appraise the particular (person, event, thing, idea) that is under consideration’. entscheiden, in contrast, is judging from an actor’s perspective in order to determine the best course of action in particular circumstances to further some larger good. in observing, the judging spectator is able to see more clearly and to set aside much of what conditions her. being able to detach from the demands of the world and our own interests and personal agendas, allows the particular to which we are attending to be seen as it is. removal and distance promote objectivity and require privacy, a stepping back and away from the public realm. the perspective of the spectator, because it is from a distance, has the potential to be disinterested in a way impossible for the actor who is always ‘in the thick of things’, is committed to this or that cause, is in pursuit of a particular end, desires a particular outcome, is motivated by particular reasons, is interested in objects, events and actions because he/she deems them to be right or wrong, good or bad. the disinterested standpoint…is the standpoint of the spectator. (yar, , p. ) arendt ( ) makes it clear that “judgment must liberate itself from ‘subjective private conditions’…from the idiosyncrasies which naturally determine the outlook of each individual in his privacy” (p. ). if judging is not to be self-serving and if it is valid, it must be disinterested, autonomous, and free. what “endows it with these qualities of disinterestedness, autonomy, and freedom is the ability of the…spectator to rise above everyday interests by claiming an experience…to which all men can (in principle) give their assent” (beiner, , p. ). whatever judgment is reached, if it is shared with others, it must be reasonable, understandable, and significant. for example, we can talk of the holocaust in general or we can talk of an individual’s experience of the holocaust. the individual experience —the particular—is likely to be more meaningful than the general. it is through particulars that we are able to begin to understand, to realize, and to connect. judging is neither private opinion (with its irresolvable dissensus), nor the coercive universality of cognitive reason or truth; ‘it is a mode of thinking which is capable of dealing with the particular in its particularity but which nevertheless makes the claim to communal validity’. (yar, , p. ) when we share a story or narrative, we release the meaning of the particular (the story) and those with whom we share it are able to more fully understand. nonetheless, arendt ( ) explains that “judgment is endowed with a certain specific validity but is never universally valid” (p. ). for arendt, accepting the responsibility to create meaning from human experience is often best modeled by poets. she began writing poetry as a teenager and continued throughout her life (although keeping most of her work private). she often quotes poetry in her public work and was close to two of the major poets of the th century, bertolt brecht ( - ) and w. h. auden ( - ). indeed, she takes the title of men in dark times from the first line of brecht’s poem “an die nachgeborenen” [to those born after us]: “truly i live in dark times!” in her portrait of brecht, she focuses on certain key lines from the poem including: in the cities i arrived at the time of disorder when hunger ruled. among men, i came at the time of upheaval, and i rebelled with them. thus the time passed which was given me on earth. (arendt, , p. ) she writes of brecht: “this, then was the man: gifted with penetrating, non-theoretical, non- contemplative intelligence that went to the heart of the matter” (arendt, , pp. - ). arendt writes that at its best brecht’s poetry was able to display a “passionate longing for a world in which all can be seen and heard, the passionate wrath against history that remembered a few and forgot so many, a history that under the pretense of remembering caused us to forget” (arendt, , pp. - ). brecht’s remoteness allowed him to keep his eye fixed on ‘the catastrophes of the time in the world’ and not on ‘anything that concerned him,’ ensuring that he had the distance from reality necessary to capture and present the larger meanings of particular events—to practice the ‘precise generality of the literary art’. (markell, , p. ) eichmann, of course, embodied all that brecht eschewed, beginning with his worship of success and his refusal to accept his responsibility to see and judge for himself. eichmann “failed by not judging at all, by not being able to see himself from the spectator’s vantage point, and by not creating within himself the plurality and capaciousness that judging-spectatorship needs” (garsten, , p. ). eichmann represents many who are “plagued by a disinclination to judge [and]…an overly comfortable, settled identity too at home with itself and too little provoked to see and judge itself from the outside” (garsten, , p. ). choosing company in order to judge at all, we need to situate ourselves in the physical, social, and political world with other people, that is, to employ our common sense—a singularly contentious topic. in her lectures on kant’s political philosophy, arendt begins to interpret kant’s work on judgments of taste and his understanding of common sense or sensus communis. arendt claims that “common sense, the faculty of judgment and discriminating between right and wrong, [is] based on the sense of taste” (beiner, , p. ), a silent sense that is private, personal, and which gives rise to “immediate and overwhelming” (beiner, , p. ) impressions of liking or disliking. referencing cicero’s claims that “everybody discriminates, distinguishes between right and wrong in matters of art and proportion by some silent sense without any knowledge of art or proportion” (beiner, , p. ), arendt draws attention to the fact that human beings are capable of making claims about preference whether knowledgeable or not; these claims “are rooted in common sense, and of such things nature has willed that no one should be altogether unable to sense and experience them” (beiner, , p. ). arendt draws on aristotle and kant to argue that taste and common sense allow us to be anchored “in a world that would otherwise be without meaning and existential reality: a world unjudged would have no human import for us” (beiner, , p. ). judging allows us to make sense of our physical and social world, making it possible to bear the responsibility of our freedom. arendt ( b) explains: “we are doomed to be free by virtue of being born, no matter whether we like freedom or abhor its arbitrariness, are ‘pleased’ with it or prefer to escape its awesome responsibility by electing some form of fatalism” (p. ). our freedom, according to arendt, might only be mediated by appealing to the faculty of judgment because it is judgment that “keeps one from being crushed by the opposing forces of past and future while standing in ‘this gateway, moment’” (beiner, , p. ). in judging the people, events, concepts, and ideas of the world, we exercise our freedom and establish meaning—“judging almost becomes a kind of vicarious action, a way of recouping our citizenship in default of a genuine public realm” (beiner, , p. ). when there is little prospect for genuine action and freedom, exercising common sense allows us, at a minimum, to position ourselves in the world. aristotle’s common sense aristotle’s nous (understanding what is real and true) aims at identifying the first principles or starting places for human reasoning based on our shared human sensory experience, that is, our common sense. aristotle recognizes that shared senses give “us the objects we have in common with all living things that have the same sensory equipment” (beiner, , pp. - ). what makes human beings different from animals who also understand the world through their senses, however, is humans’ ability to use reason to create our world and our reality. the only character of the world by which to gauge its reality is its being common to us all, and common sense occupies such a high rank in the hierarchy of political qualities because it is the one sense that fits into reality as a whole our five strictly individual senses and the strictly particular data they perceive. it is by virtue of common sense that the other sense perceptions are known to disclose reality. (arendt, , p. ) common sense “deserves credit for the fact that our private and ‘subjective’ five senses and their data are fitted to a nonsubjective, ‘objectively’ common world that we may share and evaluate together with others” (arendt, , p. ). common sense is a kind of sixth sense that fits the five other senses together and allows us to reflect on the representations of our sensory experience. moreover, we can remember the objects we have sensed long after they are no longer present and reflect on them if we choose. our imagination “transforms the objects of the objective senses into ‘sensed’ objects…by reflecting not on an object but on its representation. the represented object now arouses one’s pleasure or displeasure, not direct perception of the object” (beiner, , p. ). kant’s sensus communis in contrast, kant transforms common sense, “a sense like our other senses” (beiner, , p. ), into the sensus communis, “an extra sense…that fits us into a community” (beiner, , p. ). as a community sense, sensus communis depends on an awareness of others and their perspectives and judgments that kant calls an ‘enlarged mentality.’ such thinking necessarily relies on the ability to disregard “the subjective personal conditions of [my] own judgment, by which so many others confined, and reflects upon it from a general standpoint (which [i] can only determine by placing [my]self at the standpoint of others)” (kant cited in beiner, , p. ). kant then develops three maxims for sensus communis consistent with his idea of human freedom: to think for oneself, to put oneself in the place of everyone else (enlarged mentality), and to be in agreement with oneself. when we are able to distance ourselves from what conditions and shapes our outlook on the world, we are better able to think impartially and to develop convincing, well-founded positions and arguments to support our opinions. kant’s maxims stipulate that we not only need to agree with ourselves, but we also potentially, need to agree with others. community sense makes it possible to enlarge one’s mentality and to think from the standpoint of others. doing so involves the ability to limit private, personal conditions and circumstances in order to include other perspectives. “private conditions condition us; imagination and reflection enable us to liberate ourselves from them and to attain that relative impartiality that is the specific virtue of judgment” (beiner, , p. ). the ability to set our own prejudices aside in order to consider how others perceive the world, what opinions they might hold and why, is necessary for the development of an enlarged mentality and for impartial or ‘disinterested’ judgment. so long as we hold tight to our personal conditions, we will not be able to exercise our community sense; our “sensus communis is what judgment appeals to in everyone.… in other words, when one judges, one judges as a member of a community” (beiner, , p. ) and it is this ‘appeal’ that gives judgment its validity. our judgments are never guaranteed or certain (like cognitive truths), but are always open to argument and debate. as we attempt to convince others of the correctness of our views, others will also work to convince us, and in doing so, if we respect kant’s maxims, we enlarge our thinking and accept our freedom. arendt’s sensus communis the reason i believe so much in kant’s critique of judgment is not because i am interested in aesthetics but because i believe that the way in which we say ‘this is right, this is wrong,’ is not very different from the way in which we say ‘this is beautiful, this is ugly.’ that is, we are now prepared to meet the phenomena, so to speak, head-on without any preconceived system. (arendt, , pp. - ) arendt’s interpretation of the critique of judgment is certainly original; indeed, she sometimes even claims to know kant’s thinking better than he did himself (beiner, , p. ). most crucially for arendt, the sensus communis does not involve simply projecting an abstract world community, but actually engaging others (practicing the virtue of humanitas). she emphasizes “that at least one of our mental faculties, the faculty of judgment, presupposes the presence of others” (beiner, , p. ). arendt contends that we always judge as members of a community, guided by what we have in common, but we are also world citizens and it is as world citizens that we must judge political matters. we must enlarge our thinking as widely as possible, taking the perspective of a world spectator. following arendt, both art (culture) and politics depend on a public world; “both are concerned with how the world looks, how it appears to those who share it, and both attend to the quality of the worldly dwelling that envelops us” (beiner, , p. ). arendt argues that judgments concerning culture and politics therefore depend on discussion and persuasion: culture and politics…belong together because it is not knowledge or truth which is at stake, but rather judgment and decision, the judicious exchange of opinion about the sphere of public life and the common world, and the decision what manner of action is to be taken in it, as well as to how it is to look henceforth, what kinds of things are to appear in it. (arendt, , pp. - ) the implication is that “in matters of ‘taste’ i never judge only for myself, for the act of judging always implies a commitment to communicate my judgment: that is, judgment is rendered with a view to persuade others of its validity” (beiner, , pp. - ). in judging, one must consider with “disinterested reflection” the various opinions of the judging community, as well as one’s own opinion “in order to satisfy oneself and an imagined community of potential collocutors that a particular has been adequately appraised” (beiner, , p. ). our ability to make ethical-political judgments is, in part, a public concern because our decisions about right and wrong will depend upon our choice of company, of those with whom we wish to spend our lives…. out of the unwillingness or inability to choose one’s examples and one’s company, and out of the unwillingness or inability to relate to others through judgment, arise the real…stumbling-blocks which human powers cannot remove because they were not caused by human and humanly understandable motives. therein lies the horror and, at the same time, the banality of evil. (beiner, , p. ) the willingness and ability to choose one’s company, arendt iterates, is something we must intentionally do. indifference to the composition of our company leads to indifference in judging, for which eichmann specifically, and the holocaust in general, proved tragic. again, jaspers is arendt’s model. jaspers may have been an accomplished scholar, but he was firm in his protection of public space and in his belief that “both philosophy and politics concern everyone” (arendt, , p. ). jaspers’ commitment to the public realm was evident throughout his life. he wrote for both the general public and for academics, reflecting his belief that philosophy and politics are everyone’s responsibility. arendt ( ), admired how jaspers “more than once left the academic sphere and its conceptual language to address the general reading public” (p. ). for jaspers “responsibility is not a burden…. rather, it flows naturally out of an innate pleasure in making manifest, in clarifying the obscure, in illuminating the darkness. his affirmation of the public realm is in the final analysis only the result of his loving light and clarity” (arendt, , p. ). jaspers served as an example of how we might strive to become guardians of a common world where humanitas is an ideal: this realm, in which jaspers is at home and to which he has opened the way for us, does not lie in the beyond and is not utopian; it is not of yesterday nor of tomorrow; it is of the present and of this world. reason has created it and freedom reigns in it. …it is the realm of humanitas, which everyone can come to out of his own origins. those who enter it recognize one another, for they are ‘like sparks, brightening to a more luminous glow, dwindling to invisibility, alternating and in constant motion. the sparks see one another, and each flames more brightly because it sees others’ and can hope to be seen by them. (arendt, , p. ) the practice of thinking, therefore, is something that happens between people (though it begins within) and is essential for preparing to engage with others to test their various perspectives on a shared world. jaspers, because of his commitment to ‘limitless communication’ and truth that ‘binds us together’, because of his unwavering sense of responsibility for the world, was able to venture into the public and encourage others to join him there. not surprisingly, eichmann’s refusal to see others was reinforced by his choice of company, which seemed to be less a choice than a default based on his need to obey. the nazi party superiors and commanding officers that eichmann admired and tried to emulate were his “judging” community. “it would be idle to try to figure out which was stronger in him, his admiration for hitler or his determination to remain a law-abiding citizen of the third reich when germany was already in ruins” (arendt, , p. ). the possibility of connecting with those who socially and professionally outranked him motivated eichmann, and those moments when he found himself in their company were memorable for him. one notable and disturbing example from his trial was his description of a trip to bratslavia to meet with the minister of the interior about “the wholesale deportation of slovak jewry” (arendt, , p. ). while there, he had the opportunity to bowl with the minister and he bragged about this social outing in court as if trying to elevate his status for the judges, jury, and audience. when forced back to the questions at hand about the “‘evacuation action against jews from slovakia…[h]e admitted his error at once: “‘clear, clear, that was an order from berlin, they did not send me there to go bowling’” (arendt, , p. ). even on trial for crimes against humanity, eichmann wanted people to understand his near success, his elevation in status. the result though, at least for arendt, was that she saw in eichmann, no monster, but a fool. diving for lost pearls full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made, those are pearls that were his eyes. nothing of him that doth fade but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange. —shakespeare, the tempest, i, ii excavating the past, searching for what is of value in any cultural tradition, involves discovering and cutting out the ‘rich and strange’ from what has been passed down. writing and literature can offer a rich tapestry of cultural artifacts and quotations. taken from their context, quotations, for example, can convey new meanings, sometimes entirely at odds with the original intent. the power of quotations is “not the strength to preserve but to cleanse, to tear out of context, to destroy” (arendt, , p. ) and in the destruction create space for new understandings, new meanings. arendt often used quotations in her writing, recognizing that “[t]here is no more effective way to break the spell of tradition than to cut out the ‘rich and strange,’ coral and pearls, from what had been handed down in one solid piece” (arendt, , p. ). discerning the lost pearls, recovering the fragments of what is of value within cultural traditions, arendt compares to pearl diving—quest for treasures worth preserving, the search for particular stories that might serve as examples of ethical-political action. the ability to interpret particulars requires attunement to the possible and various particular actions and stories that surround us in order to appraise which are worth our attention. as in the case of texts, good judgment concerning the meaning of an action is a matter of managing to include as many particulars as possible within a unitary framework, of grasping as much as possible of the coherence underlying details…. (ferrara, , p. ) as we begin to interpret a text, a story, an action, we determine whether or not there is enough depth in our chosen example to have it stand as exemplary. “arendt invokes kant’s idea of exemplary validity, where the example discloses generality without surrendering particularity” (beiner, , p. ). examples assist us in learning and understanding concepts, in extending what we know and how we know it. an “exemplar is and remains a particular that in its very particularity reveals the generality that otherwise could not be defined. courage is like achilles. etc” (beiner, , p. ). examples have power. “the force of the example is the force of what exerts appeal on us in all walks of life—in art as in politics” (ferrara, , p. ). according to ferrara ( ), exemplarity appears in two ways: “sometimes what is exemplary embeds and reflects a normativity of which we are fully aware: we already know of what the example is an example” (p. ). for instance, if someone refers to courage and bravery, we are able to conjure examples that exemplify courage and bravery, such as a grandparent serving in the war, a child standing up to her friend who is encouraging her to lie, or more broadly, an example like achilles, the courageous greek hero of the trojan war. a second kind of exemplarity presents us with something entirely new and unique where the exemplariness of the example is so pure and innovative that we first vaguely sense it by drawing on the analogy with past experiences and only subsequently do we succeed in identifying the normative moment so forcefully reflected in the object or action at hand. fully grasping exemplarity in this case requires that we formulate ad hoc the principle of which it constitutes an instantiation. (ferrara, , p. ) in her lectures on kant’s political philosophy, arendt explains that “kant accords to examples the same role in judgments that the intuitions called schemata have for experience and cognition” (beiner, , p. ). if someone talks about a table, we have an image of what a table is, but not necessarily of the particular table to which the person is referring. thus, the example helps one in the same way in which the schema helped one to recognize the table as a table. the examples lead and guide us, and the judgment thus acquires ‘exemplary validity’. the example is the particular that contains in itself…a concept or a general rule. (beiner, , p. ) what makes an example compelling and universal ferrara ( ) suggests, is its appeal to sensus communis and an “intuitive sense of what it means to enhance and further or constrain and stifle, our life” (ferrara, , p. ). a sense of “authenticity or integrity of an identity, what is best for its flourishing, is the regulative idea that makes judgment function” (ferrara, , p. ). kant’s understanding of aesthetic judgment confirms that the awareness that the representation of a certain object is accompanied by a ‘sensation of delight.’ such representation, continues kant, ‘is related entirely to the subject, indeed to its feeling of life—under the name of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure—which grounds an entirely special faculty for discriminating and judging that contributes nothing to cognition’. (ferrara, , p. ) here the ‘feeling of life’ and ‘sensation of delight’ align with the idea or “feeling of the promotion of life”, and “though we all express it differently, we all have a sense of what it means for our own identities to flourish or to stagnate” (ferrara, , p. ). good judgment then is intimately tied to “congruency of an identity with itself” (ferrara, , p. ) and the idea of what it means to “flourish or attain authenticity” as a human being. believing that the desire to flourish and live a fulfilled life is relevant for all individuals living in the human condition enables us to make sense of how a judgment that invokes no principles or concepts and addresses the potential, inherent in a given object of interpretation, for enhancing or furthering our lives, can claim universality after all. (ferrara, , p. ) appraising pearls by attending to the particular qua particular, in the form of an ‘example,’ the judging spectator is able to illuminate the universal without thereby reducing the particular to universals. the example is able to take on universal meaning while retaining its particularity, which is not the case when the particular serves merely to indicate a historical ‘trend.’ only in this way can human dignity be upheld. (beiner, , p. ) judging exemplarily is about choosing, interpreting, and appraising particulars that illuminate universals and help us understand and see the world more accurately. using a particular to embody a universal however, is somewhat problematic because judging is “‘the faculty of thinking the particular,’ but—adds arendt—‘to think means to generalize,’ hence judgment is ‘the faculty of mysteriously combining the particular and the general.’” (ferrara, , p. ). arendt is well aware of the challenge and, using kant, attempts to address it. she argues that the sense of taste is uniquely positioned to reflect judging, though she readily admits it is extraordinary that our most personal, subjective, noncommunicable, inner sense, ends up being used. “the most surprising aspect of this business is that common sense, the faculty of judgment and of discriminating between right and wrong, should be based on the sense of taste” (beiner, , p. ). she goes on to explain that of our five senses, three—sight, sound, and touch—deal directly and objectively with objects. they “clearly give us objects of the external world and therefore are easily communicable (beiner, , p. ). however, “[s]mell and taste give inner sensations that are entirely private and incommunicable; what i taste and what i smell cannot be expressed in words at all. they seem to be private senses by definition” (beiner, , p. ). taste is more internal (literally) and discriminating by nature, inciting pleasure and displeasure in a much more personal and immediate way than sight, sound, or touch. sight, sound, and touch can more readily be re-viewed and re-presented than smell or taste. “why then should taste…be elevated to and become the vehicle of the mental faculty of judgment? and judgment, in turn—that is not simply cognitive…but judgment between right and wrong—why should this be based on this private sense” (beiner, , p. ? the answer, or solution, arendt identifies is imagination. it is the reproductive imagination that allows us to “make present what is absent, transforms the objects of the objective senses into ‘sensed’ objects, as though they were objects of an inner sense. this happens by reflecting not on an object, but on its representation” (beiner, , p. ) and as we reflect on the represented object, it “arouses one’s pleasure or displeasure” (beiner, , p. ). imagination allows us to revisit what we have previously sensed and experienced; it is the faculty of having present what is absent, transforms an object into something i do not have to be directly confronted with but that i have in some sense internalized, so that i now can be affected by it as though it were given to me by a nonobjective sense. (beiner, , pp. - ) those objects or experiences that i recall provide me with things to be “judged as right or wrong, important or irrelevant, beautiful or ugly, or something in between” (beiner, , p. ); they serve to support the opinions i develop. the opinions of spectators become the foundation or the basis of the import, meaning, or significance of any event. arendt explains that “the opinions, the enthusiastic approbation [or disapprobation], of spectators, of persons whom themselves were not involved” (beiner, , p. ) make an event the phenomenon that it is. she also emphasizes that spectators do not judge by themselves, but alongside other spectators who are “involved with one another” (beiner, , p. ). spectators decide what is worthy of attention; they choose examples that are remembered. judging spectators, in turn, are involved with each other in a community of judges exercising sensus communis, reflecting and preparing to share opinions, to share examples that resonate as exemplary. the quality of examples depends on the quality of the judges and their ability to identify, choose, and interpret what is exemplary and compelling. examples become exemplary…by virtue of their ability to realize, within the horizon of an action or of a life course, an optimal congruity between the deed and a certain inspiring motive underlying it—a congruity that in turn resonates with us by tapping the same intuitions that works of art…are capable of tapping. examples orient us in our appraisal of the meaning of action not as schemata, but as well- formed works of art do: namely, as outstanding instances of congruity capable of educating our discernment by way of exposing us to selective instances of the feeling of the furtherance of our life. (ferrara, , p. ) examples that contribute to a feeling of the promotion of life, the flourishing of human beings, and the upholding of human dignity, are exemplary. ‘educating our discernment’ becomes manifest as we pursue lost pearls and appraise exemplarity. pearl diving anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate…but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor. —kafka, diaries, entry of october , those who seek lost pearls educate their discernment through intentional focus and attunement to reality. sometimes those with great difficulty in life have the distance, impartiality, and perception to see the world with pronounced clarity. in walter benjamin, arendt found an expert diver who was able to use language in a way that challenged tradition and provoked thinking. he was able to communicate his experience in ways that incited others to see in new and unique ways. “what seems paradoxical about everything that is justly called beautiful is the fact that it appears, and this paradox—or, more simply, the wonder of appearance—was always at the center of all his concerns” (arendt, , p. ). the wonder and beauty of his writing remains incomparable. “the trouble with everything benjamin wrote was that it always turned out to be sui generis” (arendt, , p. ), original and completely different—exemplary. benjamin had a gift for challenging what appears to be true or real by finding correlations between seemingly disparate and unconnected things or actions, offering a “wide-eyed presentation of actualities” (arendt, , p. ). quotations were an important component of all his writing. he used these bits of text taken, out of context, to startle complacency and to disrupt entrenched ways of seeing the world. he explains: “‘quotations in my work are like robbers by the roadside who make an armed attack and relieve an idler of his convictions’” (arendt, p. ), much like socrates. he understood that the power of quotations was “not the strength to preserve but to cleanse, to tear out of context, to destroy”’ (arendt, , p. ), to clear space for judging. “the destructive power of quotations was ‘the only one which still contains the hope that something from this period will survive—for no other reason that than it was torn out of it’” (arendt, , p. ). because benjamin saw reality with such acuity, he was compelled to confront and challenge tradition. benjamin “knew that the break in tradition and the loss of authority which occurred in his lifetime, were irreparable, and he concluded that he had to discover new ways of dealing with the past” (arendt, , p. ). he believed that “there is no more effective way to break the spell of tradition than to cut out the ‘rich and strange,’…from what has been handed own in one solid piece” (arendt, , p. ). by pulling out pieces—quotations and thought fragments—benjamin found a way to expose reality, challenge tradition, and transmit truth. tradition transforms truth into wisdom, and wisdom is the consistence of transmissible truth. in other words, even if truth should appear in our world, it could not lead to wisdom, because it would no longer have the characteristics which it could acquire only through universal recognition of its validity. (arendt, , p. ) the only possible way of dealing with the past without the aid of tradition is through a focus on language: for in [language] the past is contained ineradicably, thwarting all attempts to get rid of it once and for all. the greek polis will continue to exist at the bottom of our political existence—that is, at the bottom of the sea—for as long as we use the word ‘politics’. (arendt, , p. ) collecting thought fragments was benjamin’s passion and nothing was more characteristic of him “than the little notebooks with black covers which he always carried with him and in which he tirelessly entered in the form of quotations what daily living and reading netted him in the way of ‘pearls’ and ‘coral.’” (arendt, , p. ). he was open to all texts, genres, and sources, and “it was easy to find next to an obscure love poem…the latest newspaper item” (arendt, , p. ). an example arendt found striking was an item in a vienna newspaper in september : the local gas company had stopped supplying gas to the jews. the gas consumption of the jewish population involved a loss for the gas company since the biggest consumers were the ones who did not pay their bills. the jews used the gas especially for committing suicide. (arendt, , p. ) while benjamin was a pearl diver seeking to name and reveal truth, adolf eichmann served as an example of someone who remained at the surface of life. eichmann’s inability to think was directly connected to his blind obedience and refusal to challenge ideas, authority, tradition, or laws, his poor choice in company, and his inability to use language in any meaningful way. he displayed a degree of shallowness that was astonishing to arendt and that compelled her to rethink traditional understandings of evil. eichmann’s unfailing inclination to obedience, resulted in a refusal to challenge and a commitment to do and to act as expected regardless of the circumstances. he saw in the nazi party a way to make something of himself and dedicated himself to following the fuhrer. in the trial it was evident that eichmann believed that “he and the world he lived in had once been in perfect harmony” (arendt, , p. ). he had a job, followed the rules, and lived according to expectations; he was completely ignorant “of everything that was not directly, technically and bureaucratically, connected with his job” (arendt, , p. ). as such, eichmann was troubled by no questions of conscience. his thoughts were entirely taken up with the staggering job of organization and administration in the midst not only of a world war but, more important for him, of innumerable intrigues and fights over spheres of authority among the various state and party offices that were busy ‘solving the jewish question’. (arendt, , p. ) eichmann had such a strong commitment to his own advancement that he was blind to any problems his subservience created, claiming “with great pride that he had always ‘done his duty,’ and "obeyed all orders as his oath demanded’” (arendt, , p. ). it was also clear that eichmann “never made a decision on his own…was extremely careful always to be ‘covered’ by orders…did not like to volunteer suggestions and always required ‘directives’” (arendt, , p. ). his sense of duty, respect for obedience, and doing what his superiors expected of him, were what mattered most to eichmann. arendt concluded that “eichmann’s inability to speak coherently in court was connected with his incapacity to think, or to think from another person’s perspective” (arendt, , p. xiii). in the case of eichmann, “it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think” (arendt, , p. ). he relied on language only as it was given to him in the form of clichés and stock phrases, explaining that “‘officialese’ is my only language’…because he was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché” (arendt, , p. ). the nazi ‘language rules’ suited eichmann; indeed, “he functioned in his role of prominent war criminal as well as he had under the nazi regime; he had not the slightest difficulty in accepting an entirely new set of rules” (arendt, , p. ) like others in the nazi organization, eichmann “was quite capable of sending millions of people to their death, but he was not capable of talking about it in the appropriate manner without being given his ‘language rule’” (arendt, , p. ). imagining an appraisal when pearls have been discovered, the spectator, as storyteller or historian, then needs to make an appraisal of their value or worth and prepare to communicate that appraisal. in doing so, the storyteller must integrate imagination (the possible reactions of others to her appraisal) and rhetoric (how to communicate and persuade others that her perspective is accurate and worthwhile). in order to convince others of the validity of our judgments, we need to recognize and attempt to understand the perspectives of various and diverse others, who may or may not agree with us. the ability to consider other opinions relies on imagination, on “the capacity to imagine oneself as something other than oneself, and yet still oneself, the capacity to re-present oneself” (garsten, , p. ). imagination allows us to think from the standpoint of others and consider their perspectives. as sjoholm ( ) explains: only imagination makes it possible to judge ‘in the place of others.’ of course, the imagination used in judgment cannot be an activity in which we are attempting to formulate the standpoint of each and every person we encounter. rather, the existence of other viewpoints is something that informs our perspective in such a way that we become disturbed and moved…, we are also impinged upon, coerced, forced to try to take new standpoints and attempt new points of view. (p. ) when we are able to imagine various viewpoints that are not our own, we become open to new points of view that may influence and alter our point of view. arendt, following kant, identifies two types of imagination: reproductive which allows us to recall our experience and productive which allows us to create new opinions and ideas. the categories are not dichotomous. beiner ( ) explains that while productive imagination prompts what is new and novel, the “new” is always, in some way, connected to what already exists. further, the new is never wholly new because “productive imagination [genius] is never entirely productive. it produces, for example, the centaur out of the given: the horse and the man” (beiner, , p. ). productive imagination takes what is in the world already and reconceives or creates something new and different. the role that imagination plays for the faculty of judgment therefore is not simply one of making present that which is absent by reproducing it in representation. in addition to that, imagination gathers the comparable in such a way that the distinctive, the new, the unprecedented can appear. (marshall, , p. ) imagination is essential to judging. once we have a tentative opinion, we need to determine how to persuade others that our judgments are valid by articulating and defending our position. choosing examples and making “good” judgments consistent with those examples, make arguments more compelling and when we engage in debate we always do so with others in mind. rhetoric assumes plurality, that is, the need to appeal to others’ judgments about matters that never have final answers, but are always open to debate and discussion. marshall ( ) explains “if it is not possible to describe something in at least two different ways (both of them plausible), then there is no question of making a judgment or holding an examination” (p. ); judgment only comes into play when there is no answer. “judgment deals with the possible, not with the necessary” (marshall, , p. ), for there is no reason to debate the necessary. opinions are not held on matters of truth or matters of fact because there is nothing worthy of discussion or debate. matters of truth and fact can be agreed upon and accepted. matters of judgment, however, are always open to contention and controversy, and judging always “requires making decisions about the affairs that one shares with others” (marshall, , p, ). to engage in debate requires the ability to share opinions and understand the standpoints of others. judging matters of politics and matters of taste depends on a commitment to communicate judgment, to persuade. “judgment is the mental process by which one projects oneself into a counterfactual situation of disinterested reflection in order to satisfy oneself and an imagined community of potential collocutors that a particular has been adequately appraised” (beiner, , ). i need to be willing and sufficiently confident that my examples and my opinions will be persuasive. “the ability to persuade depends upon the capacity to elicit criteria that speak to the particular case at hand and in relation to particular interlocutors. it is a rhetorical ability, fundamentally creative and imaginative” (zerilli, , p. ). when we are able to persuade, “people are brought to see something new, a different way of framing their response to certain object and events” (zerilli, , p. ) and this new way of seeing contributes to the development of an opinion that will always be open to deliberation. any “discussion taking place after an example has been put forward as ‘beautiful’ can never be a matter of absolute proof and must always be a matter of persuasion or ‘wooing’” (marshall, , p. ). we must know our audience in order to prepare and defend our opinions; we must consider how to convince our community by being willing to listen, understand, and speak compellingly. the artist and the critic ethical-political judgment is aesthetic in a second sense—like politics, works of art need public space in order to appear. “[a]rt and politics are closely intertwined since they both have to do with the world” (arendt in sjoholm, , p. ); both rely on multiple opinions that are debated and shared in order to make decisions about the value or worth of a piece of artwork, or actions in politics. the plurality required to appraise art parallels the plurality required to appraise politics, both are contingent and constructed and the more perspectives that are represented the more valid the opinions. critics and spectators make judgment about what appears, and in doing so contribute to creating our reality. experience with art “engages our perception, awakening not only our curiosity but also a sense of pleasure or displeasure, attraction or horror. works of art expose us to complex experiences by rupturing the veil of our measuring grid” (sjoholm, , p. ), disturbing what we think we know, and creating space for us to see in new ways. art exposes us to the world in ways that can expand our understanding and challenge our perceptions, creating space for us to see the world from new perspectives. the arts allow people to become aware of the ways they construct their realities as they live together—how they grasp the appearances of things, how and when they interrogate their lived worlds, how they acknowledge the multiple perspectives that exist for making sense of the commonsense world. (greene, , p. ) because art is about the world as it appears, about what is and how we live together in the world with other people, art is always potentially ethical and always open to discussion and debate. works of art are things in and of themselves, appearing in the world and open to interpretation and perception. for example, when i read a poem or view a play, i bring my personal experience to my reading or viewing which makes my interpretation different from someone else’s reading or viewing. when there are many people who share their opinion and interpretation of a text or a work of art, agreement may emerge, but it is never absolute. there will always be those who argue that hamlet is not a great play, but there are stronger arguments in favour of its greatness, thus it has endured and deliberations about its meaning persist. critics and spectators sit in judgment, making and debating appraisals, ultimately determining what is “good”. it is the spectator—critic, historian, storyteller, poet—who judges, who determines the validity of particular examples; it is the spectator who appraises which works of art, which texts, which events from history, are worthy of our attention and which contribute to the dignity of mankind. “judgment is rendered not by the collective destiny of mankind but by the ‘man alone,’ the judging spectator who stands before nature unencumbered by metaphysical dreams and illusions. …the historian [the storyteller], is the ultimate judge” (beiner, , p. ). there are stories from the past, like texts and works of art, that merit attention, that provide us with opportunities to see and understand events more clearly because they offer another standpoint. the warsaw ghetto resistance was such an example for arendt, and she cited its relevance as a story of resistance during the holocaust. “art and politics both serve the hard and conflict-ridden path toward a construction of realness that allows for new experiences to come into being, and for ideology to lose its grip on how we see things” (sjoholm, , p. ). the examples that we choose reflect our attunement to reality and what we apprehend as important. thinking and imagining provide judging with its objects and thinking’s reflectiveness adds depth to judgment. however, “[b]ecause there is potentially no end to our ability to reflect, the activity of thinking tends to leave the thinker in a state of paralysis” (schwartz, , p. ), unable to decide, or to form an opinion. arendt concluded that what was needed was a faculty that can, in a sense, refreeze the concepts and meanings thinking has unfrozen in reflection, by giving them a decisive form again after they have been reflected on, so they can again serve the same function in common sense that the previously frozen concepts and meanings served. (schwartz, , p. ) it is judgment that redeems and realizes thinking by allowing “the thinker to come to a conclusion on his potentially endless reflections” (schwartz, , p. ). judging provides “a decision—an ability of the storyteller, historian, judge, politician, or citizen to conclusively decide about which narrative most fully and authentically captures the meaning of the deeds [or work of art] that he or she has observed” (schwartz, , pp. - ). the meaning of an event, a text, or a work of art can be determined only after the object or event enters the public realm for appraisal, that is, only when it has been submitted to the taste of the critic. according to kant, “the full prerogative of judgment is granted to the spectator who stands back from the work of art, or stands back from political action, and reflects disinterestedly” (beiner, , p. ). arendt agrees with kant that judgment “is retrospective and is pronounced by the bystander or onlooker, not by the artist himself” (beiner, , p. ). the artist creates the work, but she is not the one who judges the work or actions. the artist and the actor are too busy doing to step back and to judge. our reality is a compilation of narratives—stories, events and objects—that need to be appraised by judges who are attuned to a plural reality and careful in their judgments. “arendt believed that without the depth and meaning that thought provides, political judgment…will remain superficial and only pay attention to the surface of things” (schwartz, , p. ). spectators, through reflection and attunement to reality, are able to carefully and thoughtfully attend to the world, observe, and listen. the political question that thought must always pose has to do with the fact that our own individual stories are not the only stories in the world; there are a multitude of other stories, all of which must find their place in the common world. in essence, by making reference to a cultivated sensus communis, judgment allows us to bring our stories together into the common world. (schwartz, , p. ). without judgment, thinking and willing are never realized. the way we create “reality” is always political as it is the result of multiple, diverse narratives that exist together. “accounts of reality are always already deeply politicized, and no form of political judgment can afford to ignore the way in which narratives surrounding events are construed” (sjoholm, , p. ). aporias of ethical-political appraisal there are certain seeming inherent contradictions or paradoxes in ethical-political appraisal. for instance, to accurately make appraisals requires the ability to be both objective and subjective. we need to judge from our own standpoint or perspective, yet we also need to consider the perspectives of as many others as possible. arendt ( ) writes: the more people’s standpoints i have present in my mind while pondering a given issue, and the better i can imagine how i would feel and think if i were in their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative thinking and the more valid my final conclusions, my opinions. (p. ) the ability to step outside of ourselves to understand others’ opinions and yet still protect the responsibility to judge for ourselves is how we exercise our freedom. developing an intersubjective point of view arises from imagining ourselves in the place of others and seeking judgments that these imagined others could accept. and it estimates that acceptability by referring not to concepts or rules or abstract forms, but to particular examples, drawn either from history or from literature. (garsten, , p. ) the ability to step away from the subjectivity and narrowness of our personal perspective to consider other perspectives and exercise representative thinking is indispensable as it allows us to remove ourselves from accepted “norms through the use of imagination, creating a different, broader community whose common sense can inform and ground judgments that depart from those supported by one’s actual community” (garsten, , p. ). arendt is clear that “the more perspectives one imagines and consults or woos, the more valid one’s judgments will be” (garsten, , p. ). the broadening of perspectives should finally result in a perspective that takes humanity in general into account. “at stake is the difference between understanding another person and understanding the world, the world is not an object we cognize but ‘the space in which things become public’” (zerilli, , p. ). a second aporia or seeming contradiction with judging involves thinking the particular. the chief difficulty in judgment is that it is ‘the faculty of thinking the particular’; but to think means to generalize, hence it is the faculty of mysteriously combining the particular and the general. this is relatively easy if the general is given—as a rule, a principle, a law —so that the judgment merely subsumes the particular under it. the difficulty becomes great ‘if only the particular be given for which the general has to be found’. (beiner, , p. ) arendt suggests that kant found solutions to this difficulty: the notions of humanity, purposiveness, and exemplary validity. kant’s view that humanity is “what actually constitutes the humanness of human beings, living and dying in this world…which they inhabit in common, share in common, in successive generations” (beiner, , p. ) generates the perspective of a global community that all human beings share, the idea of global citizenship and mankind as a whole. secondly, kant (following aristotle), recognizes the idea of purposiveness. “every object…as a particular, needing and containing the ground of its actuality in itself, has a purpose. the only objects that seem purposeless are aesthetic objects” (beiner, , p. ) which exist for the sole purpose of making us “feel at home in the world” (beiner, , p. ). arendt believes that one possible way to address the problem of thinking the particular is kant’s understanding of exemplary validity. when we find an example, a particular person or narrative that exemplifies a general concept, such as courage, we are able to better understand the concept, yet the example remains a particular. the “exemplar is and remains a particular that in its particularity reveals the generality that otherwise could not be defined. courage is like achilles” (beiner, , p. ). a final aporia of ethical-political judging is the idea of judging both as an actor and as a spectator. the two perspectives seem wholly incompatible, an antinomy that cannot be resolved. for if the spectator judges as an actor, he/she loses the standpoint which grants him breadth of vision; and if the actor judges as a spectator, he/she forsakes the capacity to be in the world with others as an agent. (yar, , p. ) however, arendt finds a possibility for reconciliation in the notion that each human being is representative of humankind in general: it is by virtue of this idea of mankind, present in every single man, that men are human, and they can be called civilized or humane to the extent that this idea becomes the principle not only of their judgments but of their actions. it is at this point that actor and spectator become united; the maxim of the actor and the maxim, the ‘standard,’ according to which the spectator judges the spectacle of the world become one. (beiner, , p. ) unfortunately, this reconciliation is not entirely satisfactory and “confronts us like parallel lines which seem to converge at some point beyond the horizon, in some remotely possible future or other world” (yar, , p. ). the discerning spectator ironically arendt ( ) begins her portrait of brecht in men in dark times with a poem: you hope, yes, your books will excuse you, save you from hell: nevertheless, without looking sad, without in any way seeming to blame (he doesn’t need to, knowing well what a lover of art like yourself pays heed to), god may reduce you on judgment day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good. —w. h. auden, “had your life been good” in her study, arendt focuses on brecht the poet instead of brecht the man, investigating the question: what does it mean to be a great poet? her answer is succinct: “someone who must say the unsayable, who must not remain silent on occasions when all are silent, and who must therefore be careful not too talk too much about things that all talk about” (arendt, , p. ), a description congruent with her conception of an ideal judging spectator. consistently attaining such an ideal is difficult, if not impossible and arendt’s portrait of brecht depicts his struggles to navigate the aporias of ethical-political judging—general/particular, subjective/objective and actor/spectator—and the consequences for his poetry. from arendt’s ( ) perspective, brecht’s most obvious struggles involved ideology: brecht became a communist in his early s, but still managed to maintain a degree of “poetic distance…from communist politics” (p. ) throughout most of his career. while he was generally faithful to communist ideology during the moscow trials, the spanish civil war, and the hitler-stalin pact, he was still capable of writing plays such as measure taken that were critical of stalinism. “he had done what poets will always do if they are left alone: he had announced the truth…that innocent people were killed and that the communists…had begun to kill their friends” (arendt, , p. ). however, when brecht was enticed back to east germany in with the promise of his own theatre company, he was “in infinitely closer contact with a totalitarian state than he had ever been in his life before…[and saw] the sufferings of his own people with his own eyes” (arendt, , p. ). his ideological blinders had been removed and he saw the world differently: “reality overwhelmed him to the point that he could no longer be its voice” (arendt, , p. ). arendt contends that “the consequence was that not a single play and not a single great poem was produced in those seven years” (arendt, , p. ). the compassion that was “the fiercest and most fundamental of brecht’s passions” (arendt, , p. ) betrayed him: not only did it initially lead him to the “answers” of communism, but when those “answers” were revealed as illusory, brecht was lured from his role as discerning spectator to becoming another political actor. arendt ( ) writes: to be the voice of what he thought was reality had carried him away from the real; wasn’t he on his way to becoming what he liked least, one more solitary great poet in the german tradition, instead of what he wanted most to be, a bard of the people? and yet when he went into the thick of things, his remoteness as a poet was what he carried. (p. ) arendt’s portrait of brecht reveals a degree of integration and dependency among the various dispositions that contribute to ethical-political judging: brecht may have had a powerful imagination and remarkable, unique rhetorical skill, but he ceased to be a poet when he lost his poetic distance. eichmann faced no such dilemma. he had none of the dispositions necessary to be either a political actor or discerning spectator, but neither did he have the dispositions characteristic of a monster or even a criminal. indeed, his very ordinariness is perhaps what is most frightening. to dismiss eichmann as a “‘tiny cog’ in the machinery of the final solution” (arendt, , p. ) ignores the implications for a democratic society—and those aiming to educate for democratic citizenship—when “so many were like him” (arendt, , p. ). arendt ( ) captured what is at stake for any democratic society—and any educational system that aims to prepare people for democratic citizenship: there remains one fundamental problem…[that] touches upon one of the central moral questions of all time, namely the nature and functions of human judgment. [how do we demand] that human beings be capable of telling right from wrong even when all they have to guide them is their own judgment? (p. ) judging in schools as eichmann focused diligently on his operational duties, the horror of the holocaust and what was being done to millions of people, was distanced, beyond his purview. the primary draw on his attention was the train transport of the greatest number of people as efficiently as possible. many individuals working in modern bureaucracies are similarly engrossed in their responsibilities and the expectations of their position. schools, are no different. the main draw on the attention of teachers and principals is meeting the daily demands of the job. diligently intent on our duties, we may not think to question the ends of what we are doing, easily falling captive to the fiction of school and becoming enclosed in its ideology. we are all susceptible to “the attractiveness of mental constructions—especially ideologies—that reduce reality to an all- encompassing story or picture” (kateb, , p. ). the story of schooling is commanding and influences much of our policy and practice, leaving little room to consider other ways we might operate, other ways we might choose to be live together in schools. chris’ story exemplifies how schooling can be adiaphorizing, employing objective policy and rules (tacit and overt) to determine right action. indeed, every participant—student, principal, parents, district staff and elected officials—had an assigned role in the process. chris was the student offender. i was prosecutor responsible for describing chris’s transgressions and his school record to the judges. chris’ parents—the people who knew chris the best and were unversed in the structures and procedures of the process—were there to support chris. the judges were the people who knew the least about chris and the most about the process—not considered a problem since chris as a complex person was largely irrelevant to the exercise. i now recognize that i was so focused on doing my job that i was unaware of my role in the play real school. i did not question my assigned role or lines; i aimed to be seen as “the good—that is successful—principal.” metaphorically, i was focused on maintaining the train schedule, and ignored where the train was going. my attention was misplaced and the train with chris onboard hurtled onward. the well-established schedules, rules, and policies that underpin schooling’s focus on productivity, using whatever markers we have chosen—graduation, grade promotion, proficiency in x (fill-in-the-blank)—will dominate for as long as we continue to be too busy, too distracted, too self-involved to begin to think in such a way that we might clear space for judging. while the narrative of schooling may seem overwhelming and the hope for education in schooling faint, i do not believe the effort is doomed. following arendt, we can begin with the most obvious step: seeing other people. chris was swallowed up by the narrative of schooling and the stories my colleagues were telling about him. joelle, melanie, and anne were not. though i was still largely preoccupied with doing my job, i had come to question what that entailed and to wonder why i was doing it as i was. when i began to query what was best for each of these girls, and to consider that they might each need something different, i found myself uncertain. perhaps what seemed like a roadmap solution was not the best. as the girls confronted me with their personhood, i started to understand that the implications of my decisions would have effects well beyond me and my “job.” i began to accept my responsibility to be a judging spectator—someone who both knew the girls and was capable of stepping back from that familiarity to appraise what might be educational for each. choosing to step back from what i felt i was expected to do allowed me to interrogate some of my taken-for-granted assumptions. as i did so, i needed to talk with other people, but the only responses i received were empty, reinforcing what was expected. it seemed there was no one willing to challenge the common script of real school. when thinking and judging company is severely restricted, we can only turn inward, depending on the friendship we have cultivated with ourselves. that my two-in-one dialogue prompted me to re-think my practice, i find encouraging. i was also able to consider what the conversation might have been if the girls were present and able to talk with me. with chris, there was no thinking; there was simply the sterility of applying the pertinent policy and practice. in my role as prosecutor, i had many eager and supportive associates. i certainly was not thinking about arendt when i was fumbling for ideas about what to do with the girls. and though arendt would not have had answers, i believe she would have asked provoking questions. she wondered how to combat systems thinking and our eagerness to be defined by the circumstances we encounter, how we might safeguard plurality and respect human dignity, how we might identify examples that reflect what it means to be human, to care about each other and our world. somehow i knew i needed to act differently. the way i reacted to chris reflects the entrenchment of schooling and my poor judgment which was “based on applying received stereotypes to stereotyped reading of doings” (ferrara, , p. ); my response to the girls was more reflective of what it means to educate. i was able to exercise better judgment and imagine possibilities outside the realm of schooling, interpreting the situation with the girls much differently than i had interpreted the situation with chris. every day in schools, we have the opportunity to judge the educational-ness of what we are doing. our “judgment is bound up with the interpretation of action, and consequently good judgment is linked with the question concerning which interpretation is better” (ferrara, , p. ). the more perspectives we encounter, the more dialogue in which we engage, the better and more complete will be our interpretation. what i have learned is that our examples are sparse and alternatives few. humanitas in schooling is fragile which is especially disheartening when we realize that chris, like other children, are rarely seen “as individuals with enormous capacities to be critical, knowledgeable, imaginative, and informed citizens, workers, and social agents” (giroux, , p. ). “teachers provide for many if not most students their only model of what it means to be an educated person” (noddings, , ). if teachers themselves have not thought carefully about what this means, they will likely continue to focus on doing their jobs rather than educating; children, in turn, will come to believe that an educated person is one who has been credentialed in school. humanitas is disconnected with school, yet has everything to do with education, learning with and from others, with letting go of control and being open to alternatives, thinking beyond inevitability. it seems that in order to find examples of exemplarity, of humanitas, and to imagine possibilities and appraise the worth of our examples, we need to listen and attend to each other. what does it mean to listen to a voice before it is spoken? it means making space for the other, being aware of the other, paying attention to the other, honouring the other. it means not rushing to fill…silences with…the things we want to hear. (palmer, , p. ) with joelle, melanie, and anne, i started to listen. i started to complicate my “givens,” what i saw as my experience, knowledge, and standpoint. i stepped away and considered where the train was headed. as i thought about joelle, melanie, and anne, i thought about who they each were and how i might support them in making good appearances in our school and our community; i knew suspending them would not help. i became aware “that it is always the individual, acting voluntarily in a particular situation at a particular moment, who does the deciding” (greene, , p. ) about what the right thing to do is. to be moral involves taking a position against the matrix, thinking critically about what is taken for granted. it involves taking a principled position of one’s own (choosing certain principles by which to live)…so as to set oneself on the right track. (greene, , p. ) my unease with following disciplinary expectations allowed me to question what i took for granted and adjust my thinking in order to set myself on the right track, or at least on a track i felt i could honour and defend. “people tend to weave their images of the world out of the yarn of their experience” (bauman, , p. ). i have no doubt that the way i handled the situation with chris was wrong. i failed to listen, to see, to think. arendt’s understanding of judging and thinking, has helped me to understand the ways that compliance and complacency can captivate attention and result in wrongdoing. if nothing else, hannah arendt has shown us that the possibility for changing the world and making it something truly human has not yet departed from among the fundamental human capacities; perhaps it only awaits our willingness to take responsibility for our world again. (schwartz, , p. ) arendt uncovers important resources that i need to consider in making the myriad of judgments that i make each day. i need to remind myself to try to see each person, accept my responsibility to be a judging spectator, choose my company and examples carefully and take the time to imagine alternative appraisals. of course she offers no five, six, or seven step process to guarantee successful ethical political judging, but she does provide support for people who aim to educate in their efforts to seek light in the darkness. “the darkness around us is deep. but our great calling, opportunity, and power as educators is to shed light in dark places” (palmer, , p. ). chapter : pearls of illumination turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. —william butler yeats, “the second coming” hood up lynn, a colleague of mine, was teaching a challenging grade eight class; one boy in particular, freddy, proved especially difficult for everyone. freddy is a student who scares most people—children and adults. he is mean, threatening, and aggressive and does not care about consequences or how his actions affect others. he is highly intelligent, carries a great deal of pain, hurt, and loneliness, resists connections with others, does not trust, and yet there is a hopefulness and a joyfulness about him (if you care to look for it). lynn had looked forward to having freddy in her class, believing she could “reach” him and support him. freddy’s previous teachers had not felt as lynn did. they seemed only to see freddy as a problem to be avoided; he was not what teachers wanted in a student and therefore teachers had repeatedly cast him out—academically, physically, socially—often unfairly. for example, one day during grade six, freddy and his classmates were listening to the teacher read aloud. three separate students got up quietly at different times to fill their water bottles as the teacher read. clearly, it was acceptable for students to move around the room at this time. freddy rose and went to fill his water bottle (as quietly as the others), but as soon as he approached the water cooler, he was reprimanded and sent from the room. this was what school was like for freddy and what he came to expect from adults at school. lynn was determined things would be different for her and freddy; as an experienced teacher she believed that she could connect with freddy and build a relationship because she had always (almost) been able to do so. she sincerely cared about children and in time was able to know them. however, the year started with significant obstacles. freddy was somehow able to challenge nearly every expectation lynn set, no matter how simple. one day he rode a classmate’s skateboard around the classroom and when caught argued quite convincingly that there was no explicit classroom rule about riding a skateboard. he didn’t hurt anyone or interfere with instructional time. this was a typical daily example and no matter what the behaviour, freddy always had an explanation. lynn was exceedingly patient, and with the assistance of administration and other support workers, repeatedly talked through these situations with freddy until they reached an agreement about what was acceptable and what was not. for instance, freddy resisted writing. whenever there was a written assignment, freddy had an empty page. when asked for his thoughts, he was able to talk about the topic in question, often quite insightfully. he was capable of writing, but did not like it or see the point. lynn allowed freddy to complete many of his assignments orally or to show his knowledge in other ways, but she did also expect that on occasion, he would provide written responses. he produced some beautiful poetry, engaging stories, and thoughtful reflections, but the majority of the time he demonstrated his understanding and learning orally. in time, lynn and freddy were able to establish expectations around completion of work, behaviour, and participation in class. however, freddy refused to remove his hood during class, a minor, but persistent infraction. lynn had to remind him every day. it did not make sense to her that he continued, day after day to wear his hood, and day after day, she asked him to take it off. he always did, and was only occasionally resistant and argumentative about it. lynn talked with him more than once about why it mattered to her that his hood was removed—she wanted to see him, to be able to make eye contact, to “read” how he was doing, it was respectful. she explained all of this to freddy and repeatedly he said he understood and agreed to remove his hood. yet, he continued to enter the classroom each morning with his hood up. lynn and freddy developed a respectful relationship, but the hood persisted. lynn continued to ask freddy to remove the hood and he did, often with a bit of a smirk. this became part of their daily routine. i have rarely seen lynn so confused or frustrated with a student’s behaviour. sometime in early november, lynn and i were talking about freddy and his hood. there had continued to be numerous (daily/weekly) incidents involving freddy, but we had been able to work through them and learn from them each time. the hood, however, remained elusive. it did not make sense. freddy received lots of positive attention from lynn, from school support staff, from me. we knew we had to be explicit about what we asked freddy to do or not do, he had clearly and repeatedly demonstrated his expertise at discovering ways around expectations and agreements. there was something about the hood however that he was holding on to and as we talked about it, we realized that the hood interaction each morning was about lynn seeing and connecting with freddy. if he walked in with his hood off, it would only be a matter of time before freddy would blend in with everyone else. the hood was freddy’s way of testing lynn’s level of care. did she actually care about him or was she just doing her job? did she care enough to continue asking him to remove his hood or would she eventually give in (up) and let him wear it? or would she get so frustrated that she would impose punitive consequences (as freddy would expect)? or would she understand that freddy needed to have that interaction with her each morning? of course, lynn understood and the morning “hood off” conversation became an important ritual for both her and freddy, one they both came to appreciate and value. freddy represents some of the problems of schooling and lynn was one of the few teachers who actually saw freddy for who he was, rather than simply what he represented. freddy moved away from our school at the end of the year; we shared information with the receiving school, hoping they would continue to work with and understand him. unfortunately, freddy proved to be too much work. teachers continued to see him as a problem, a hinderance to the learning of others, a hinderance to what needed to be done at school, and all too quickly cast him out. certainly no one asked him to take his hood off; he had permission (and was encouraged) to disappear. the single story in many ways, freddy exemplifies the single story of school. it is a story that confidently carries on, city to city, province to province, country to country, deflecting other possible stories. there are very few schools that operate in a way that opposes the single story, and the result is that we have come to understand school as an established institution that is largely beyond any significant structural change. there have been changes over the years to curriculum, reporting, research, professional development, and the inclusion of special needs students, but nothing that has notably altered school’s basic structure as an establishment where children go to be taught by qualified teachers and eventually come out as certified graduates ready for the world of work. in many ways, the single story has enchanted and captivated children, teachers, parents, and governments, leaving little room for questioning (other than those questions directed at how schools might be more effective by, for example, increasing test scores or graduation rates) because the ends of schooling remain largely uncontested. the aim of the single story is essentially about preparing people for their economic roles in society and though there are other goals, such as citizenship, they are peripheral and only cursorily acknowledged (“lip service” goals). “the assumption is made that education…is undertaken to fulfill the requirements of the economic system, no matter what the requirements of idiosyncratic, personal growth” (greene, , p. ). in freddy’s case, there were practices and processes in place to assist with managing the many problems that he presented. however, lynn refused to accept the structures that demeaned freddy, and for the time he was with her, she was able to support him. in chris’ story, there was no lynn. he was quickly removed and the problem he posed was eliminated. there were no questions asked, other than procedural ones, demonstrating how schooling questions are ends- focused, system-oriented, and system-preserving. rarely (if ever) do we question why we do what we do or if it is the right thing to do; rarely do we consider the moral and ethical implications, as lynn did, and if we do, it is within the confines of the applicable rules. the single story endures. neither chris nor freddy were in a position to resist. as a hierarchy, schooling’s participants each are assigned a role—teacher, student, parent, principal, superintendent—and each participant is defined by the assigned role and shaped by its expectations. the system’s hierarchical structure supports schooling’s commitment to effectiveness and efficiency, market values, and commodification. as giroux ( ) warns: increasingly, students are being subjected to a stripped-down notion of schooling, making it more difficult for them not just to think critically but also to imagine a world beyond the gospel of competition and profit and the economic calculus of financial gain and loss. shaped by a pedagogy of containment, security, and conformity that undermines critical thought, teaching, and dialogue, the discourse of public schooling now emphasizes market values. (p. ) regardless of their role, children and adults understand what they are to do; there is little need for them to think. we are expected to “get along” (play nicely with each other) and “follow along” by complying with established expectations, standards, and rules. freddy refused to get along or follow along (though i am certain he clearly understood these expectations) and as a result was easily dismissed. a clear, vertical chain of command, or rulership, has become a tacit component of schooling. freddy was at the bottom of the chain. the model of sovereign rulership in schools feeds the promise of effectiveness and efficiency. in aspiring to be the “best”—teachers, schools, school districts, ministries—we have become competent at “batch processing,” scripted and utilitarian ways of grouping students and pushing them through the system to reach the desired outcome: graduation and the ability to “contribute to a healthy society and a prosperous and sustainable economy” (british columbia ministry of education). as we fulfill our duties, however, we diminish the individual: “it is easier to treat people as objects to be manipulated if you have never learned any other way to see them” (nussbaum, , p. ). batch processing in schools is evinced in the way we group students in grade-levels and follow curricula with grade-level outcomes, all consistent with “measuring success to ensure accountability.” such accepted practices “blunt the moral conscience, so it needs people who do not recognize the individual, who speak group-speak, who behave, and see the world, like docile bureaucrats” (nussbaum, , p. ). adults—teachers and principals—hold the authority to rule a space, and are generally quite skilful at completing the tasks they are assigned—managing behaviour and overseeing a well-managed high-achieving group of students. we seldom recognize how our docility contributes to uniformity and banality. the desire for predictability and sameness in schools is evident in the common script— the many ways teachers and administrators carry out the daily work of schools. labouring in the bureaucracy of schools, “individuals find it harder and harder to take initiative. they guide themselves by vaguely perceived expectations; they allow themselves to be programmed by organizations and official schedules or forms” (greene, , p. ). teachers, principals, and other school staff “work within larger organizations that mandate much of the common script in non-negotiable terms” (metz, , p. ), as laid out in curriculum, the school act, reporting orders, and board policies. additionally, there are certain ways teachers are expected to structure and manage a classroom, organize the school day (and year), write report cards, plan lessons, complete assignments, hold parent/student conferences. the list is long. the point is that there is a script for the actors in the play “real school”, directing them what is to be done, by whom, to whom, and when. the play is “reinforced by an interacting set of influences that overdetermine a conformist outcome. broad societal support for these standardized patterns is frozen into bricks and mortar and into legal language” (metz, , p. ). freddy resisted many of these “standardized patterns” and as a result, he was no longer allowed in the play, no longer tolerated in school. parents, community, and government all follow the script. there is little space for anything other than adherence to the common script and the single story—questioning is minimal (though some children like freddy, and teachers like lynn, try) and faithfulness to the story is expected. failure to comply generates severe penalties. the consequences tend to be most severe for children, but also exist for adults. those attempting to ask critical questions are routinely either ignored or overtly told not to ask questions. most players however, seem quite comfortable with their roles in real school and have little inclination to challenge it. the script is apparent in the language we use to talk about what we do in schools and the “educational research” that is available to support it. the language of schooling is penurious and thin, further reducing the chances of moving beyond or outside of the script. it has become too easy to miss the role that the language of clarity plays in a dominant culture that cleverly and powerfully uses clear and simplistic language to systematically undermine and prevent those conditions necessary for a general public to engage in at least rudimentary forms of critical thinking. (giroux, , p. ) when language is standardized and controlled, thinking is limited and we are offered answers and “the kinds of knowledge and ideologies cleansed of complex thought or oppositional insight” (giroux, , p. ), as eichmann clearly demonstrated. and as i demonstrated with chris. almost all the resources we use in school provide information targeted at answers and “how-to”: how to teach, plan, discipline, assess, engage, lead, inspire—whatever the catchwords and jargon of the day are. “the ‘promise’ of the school is understood to be the promise of credentialing and the gaining of some kind of status as a result” (greene, , p. ), keeping the single story at the forefront. the industry of “educational research” does little to move us beyond the single story or cultivate the language of schooling because it works within the story where the ends of what we are doing are largely taken for granted and only the means are discussed. a quick scan through current “educational” books reveals titles such as: teach like a champion: techniques that put students on the path to college, teach like a pirate: increase student engagement, boost your creativity, and transform your life as an educator, or hacking school discipline: ways to create a culture of empathy and responsibility using restorative justice. journal articles concede a similar focus such as: “what is the potential for applying cost-utility analysis to facilitate evidence-based decision making in schools?” or “understanding a vicious cycle: the relationship between student discipline and student academic outcomes”, both from education researcher (june/july ). much “research” suggests that there are “answers” for how to teach successfully, how to discipline and manage the behaviour of students, how to measure student and teacher achievement, and how to effectively lead both children and adults—all consistent with the rulership of schooling and the performance of real school. such resources do not encourage independent thinking or advocate for the private and public space required to think, rather they seem to restrict themselves to utilitarian, functional, means/ends-focused thinking that relies on determinate judgments connected to rules, standards, and expected practices. these resources rarely address particularity and the unpredictability inherent in educating, largely because this way of understanding education is inconsistent with how we have organized schooling. [a]s significant as the numbers are, and boundaries, and necessary rules—there are times when we must move beyond. to think of the creative spirit is to think of moving beyond into spaces where we can live now and then in total freedom. (greene, , p. ) in such spaces we might create stories that defy the dominant narrative of schooling. freddy’s story is one that reinforces that single story. with the exception of his relationship with lynn, freddy was a victim of the common script of schooling and the hierarchy of rulership. freddy needed to be managed because he was unable to fulfill his role; he did not fit. like freddy’s, our stories will remain tied to the authority of schooling and fail to generate any educational meaning or significance if we rely solely on determinate judgments and “how-to” resources, if we carry on with a common script that honours effectiveness, efficiency, and batch processing, that is, in turn, sustained by a language that discourages thinking. disenthralling ourselves from the single story transcendental etude but there come times—perhaps this is one of them— when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die; when we have to pull back from the incantations, rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly, and disenthrall ourselves, bestow ourselves to silence, or a severer listening, cleansed of oratory, formulas, choruses, laments, static crowding the wires. —adrienne rich ( ) the conflation of schooling (single story) and education (the possibility of a plurality of stories) is laughable in its irony. arendt recognized and called out these kinds of incongruencies, by physically laughing at them. “arendt’s laughter was the laughter of incongruence, the laughter that erupts when facing absurdity, a pause to catch one’s intellectual breath. we happen upon something that makes no sense, we laugh” (knott, , p. ) and then try to understand. that schooling has subsumed educating in common usage to the point that both concepts are used interchangeably further diminishes the space to educate while sanctioning the single story. schooling has become the “static crowding the wires”, drowning out education. in educating, plurality is respected, while schooling promotes sameness and invisibility. plurality defies answers while schooling relies on them. lynn, in her resolve to see and understand freddy, exhibited the ability to educate, to think independently, to ‘disenthrall’ herself, to listen, and to ‘pull back from the incantations,/rhythms we’ve moved to thoughtlessly’. without being conscious of it, lynn was using arendt’s conceptual resources and engaging in the process of withdrawing herself from the common script and the busy-ness of functioning within the classroom/school world in order to find the space to wonder about her circumstances and freddy’s, and to search for something better, something that made more sense than what typical schooling solutions could provide. in this sense lynn was ‘frei wie ein blatt im wind’, as free as a leaf in the wind, willing to let go, accept freddy in his particularity and try to understand him, granting that “the experience of being human—can only be understood in its irreducible specificity” (nixon, , p. ). lynn wanted to do the right thing and could see more in freddy than schooling ever could; she noticed his intelligence, his anger, his struggle, and lynn refused to let him disappear. educating includes teaching children to wonder, to question what is, to see beyond givens, and to become independent thinkers/judges—all things that schooling claims to strive for, yet actively dissuades. greene ( ) queries: is not learning, authentic learning, a matter of going beyond? is it not an exploration generated by wonder, curiosity, open questions? is there not always a drive to reach beyond what is deliberately taught? is it not the case that learning really begins when people begin teaching themselves? and is there not a special pleasure, a delight found in the discovery, in the sometimes startling realization, that what is being learned affects the manner in which we make sense of the world? (p. ) however, if children (and adults) were to actually wonder, question, and think as greene suggests, the institution, constructs, and norms of schooling would be threatened. we would begin to see beyond the single story and open ourselves to the possibility of something more. while arendt had limited experience in schools, no experience with teaching children, and wrote little about education, her resources provide a different way to think what we are doing in schools, to open ourselves to possibilities and various perspectives, allowing other stories to emerge, and in doing so, challenge the single story. i cannot bring the world quite round i cannot bring a world quite round, although i patch it as i can. i sing a hero’s head, large eye and bearded bronze, but not a man. although i patch him as i can and reach through him to almost man. if to serenade to almost man is to miss, by that, things as they are say that it is the serenade of a man that plays the blue guitar. —wallace stevens, “the man with the blue guitar” in order to see the world in new ways, we need to be willing to let ourselves be shaken and to lose our footing for a time, as arendt did when she encountered eichmann. when arendt revealed the pervasiveness and dangers of non-thinking, she modeled how we might begin to think what we do by challenging assumptions and bringing new concepts to light where they can be tested and debated. the withdrawal of the mental faculties offers space to stop—to reflect and think—to be willing to become spectators of our own practice so that we might wonder at what is, direct our attention to what matters, attend to experiences in new ways, and begin to consider ways to create meaning and accept our responsibility to think and to judge. the space to stop and think is surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly) limited. unless we decide to withdraw, however, trying to think will often prove futile—the reason the non-sovereign will is so crucial. we must be awake to the world and choose to find the space to think. on occasion we need to refuse to live automatically so that we might “be enabled to crack the codes, to enter in, to uncouple—if only for a while—from the ordinary, commonsensible reality” (greene, , p. ). arendt’s life of the mind is about uncoupling from the ordinary in order to think about alternatives; in reconceiving thinking, willing, and judging, she identifies a way to address thoughtlessness and protect plurality, thereby creating space for educating, for appearing to one another, for humanitas. when lynn encountered freddy, she wanted to do what was right, but was uncertain what that might be, especially because the conventional ways of “managing” freddy felt wrong. she lost her balance and had to think what she was doing, trying in her own way to ‘bring the world quite round’. wondering about what was happening and why freddy was acting and resisting as he did, lynn began to question much of what she had accepted about how to “manage” a classroom and work with children. the time lynn spent absorbed in two-in-one thinking resulted in her challenging her own practices, re-thinking what she believed. eventually, because she found no answer, her thinking led her to a thinking partner (two-in-two) who was able to talk through the perplexities and query possibilities with her. as lynn persisted in her thinking and in her dialogue, she was able to generate meaning, better understand freddy, and to foster a relationship with him that allowed him to make good appearances in her classroom. it was only in withdrawing from the frantic, busy-ness of school that lynn was able to find the space to think, will, and judge as a spectator to her own practice in order to consider how she might know and understand freddy and include him in her classroom. her willingness to try, and keep trying, in spite of repeated failure, reflects her commitment to educate, that is, her acceptance of her educational responsibility, rather than simply assenting to the single story of school. lynn’s willingness to be open to alternatives reveals a resistance to “real school” and the common script, her refusal to simply get along and follow along, and her refusal to be determined by her role or allow freddy to be determined by his. generally, we do not attend to or recognize the ways we are determined because we see ourselves as unique individuals, unique teachers, students, parents, and yet we “are particularly astonished when we find ourselves approached not as unique and distinctive beings but as members of a social group. most of us resent the idea that we are interchangeable with others and yet, we approach others similarly” (levinson, , p. ). the roles we play in school tend to eliminate individuality and promote uniformity, students being the most obvious ‘interchangeable’ group as the products of batch processing. freddy struggled against his role of being a ‘student,’ recognized his social positioning as ‘other’, and fought to develop a sense of identity that was true to who he was and that allowed him to appear to others. the many ways we are shaped and limited by the world in which we find ourselves, our belatedness, is often easier to endure than to confront or defy, as freddy showed. as he pushed back against what people thought he should be—a ‘good’ student—few people paid attention and instead continued to try to help him understand how to play his role. freddy refused and was written out of the play. very few teachers acknowledged freddy as lynn did. she had the courage to interrupt the predictability of expectations in ‘real school,’ see beyond her social positioning, and not allow herself to be entirely determined by it. there was nothing available to provide guidance about what lynn ought to do; there were no “answers.” in her willingness to do the right thing and her commitment to educate, lynn accepted the unknown and opened herself to it, exercising her agency. “to judge, to depart from the safety of rules, codes, and principles, to insist on one’s own personal stake in one’s evaluations, requires a bold spirit” (garsten, , p. ). lynn was able to educate in the midst of the single story of schooling, to stand as a spark of light, a quiet and barely visible story of resistance. yet hers was another defeated cause. understanding the relational aspect of teaching, of allowing ourselves to be human and entangled with each other, made it possible for lynn to see freddy as an individual rather than simply another “student.” she innately understood that [t]he proper way to encounter another person is to be open to them, to be ready to see new dimensions, new facets of the other, to recognize the possibility of some fresh perception or understanding, so you may know the other better, appreciate that person more variously. (greene, , p. ) lynn’s ability to see freddy in his particularity, combined with her “precision in listening”, made it possible for her to judge and reflects a faith in and desire for humanitas, creating space in a plural world where human beings can appear to each, freely exchanging and debating opinions, thoughts, and ideas. through his words and actions, freddy was able to show lynn what he needed because she was able to pay attention and be awake to what was happening—acting as a discerning spectator of her classroom and her practice. accepting that she did not know, that there was no certainty in what to do, demonstrates lynn’s understanding of what it means to educate. finding some distance from existing bannisters, expected behaviours, and established standards in order to judge independently, to recognize what is, rather than accede to the fiction of the single story is no simple feat and is strongly discouraged. that lynn detached herself from her practice in order to think is something of a miracle. with space to think as an outsider to her practice, lynn recognized a problem, but also recognized she had no idea what to do about it. there seemed nowhere to turn, no company, past or present, that might offer solutions, so she sought out a thinking partner, someone who supported her in her thinking and in talking through possible alternatives. lynn’s thinking partner also had no answers, but together they were able to search for examples in practice that might make sense for freddy. ultimately, there were no examples, nothing to hold on to or to ground practice, so lynn had to decide for herself what to do. in the end, lynn knew that there was no guarantee that what she did would be right and as a result of her letting go, she and freddy were able to create educational space together. lynn was able to imagine possible ways to appraise the situation, to think of options for freddy, and to contemplate how she might frame her thinking so it would make sense to her thinking partner. she had to bridge unfounded existing beliefs about how she ought to work with children and communicate her thoughts to her thinking partner, hoping that her partner would share her interest in challenging what seemed given. persuading her thinking partner that her perspective was worth considering required lynn’s willingness to speak to and defend her ideas even though she realized how unconventional they were. without a trusted thinking partner, lynn may not have been able to move beyond what was expected. lynn and freddy’s story has, for me, become an example of both the possibility of defying the single story and also its tragedy. when loaded balances come to grief wind shakes the big poplar, quicksilvering the whole tree in a single sweep. what bright scale fell and left this needle quivering? what loaded balances have come to grief? —seamus heaney, “the poplar” despite arendt having little to say about schooling or education, her resources and her modeling help me understand the problem of the single story of school and what might be done about it. unfortunately, it becomes increasingly clear that this is a problem i cannot solve; ‘the centre cannot hold’, and this is in many ways a defeated cause. however, there are pinholes of hope, examples of those who look for other possibilities, such as contact, an alternate school in toronto, which “aims to foster political agency…[through] informal opportunities to learn democracy, organized through and reflected upon in their oral english (oe) class” (kelly, , p. ). here students develop skills, awareness, and the opportunity to participate critically and thoughtfully in their own learning, creating educational space together. unfortunately, such schools are scarce, but they “illustrate the potential of alternate education as both embodiments of a more participatory democratic society, as well as forums where counter-hegemonic narratives can be voiced, debated, and publicized” (kelly, , p. ). in recognizing the efforts made to find other ways to be together in schools, and in turning to stories like lynn and freddy’s, i am inspired to fuel my efforts to continue searching for lost pearls, those moments of illumination that transcend the predictable. working in a profession where we engage with other people all day every day, we need to realize/accept that there will be times when ‘things fall apart’, when the given rules, standards, and practices make no sense, and we will need to think for ourselves and exercise our judgment. identifying these moments, these pearls, rests on our ability to think. how do we create space in schools for the wind of thinking? understanding the power of the single story and the ways in which “the worst are full of passionate intensity” that roots and sustains the story, allows me to look at what we do in schools differently, to consider where there are cracks to let in the light and pierce the impenetrable darkness. it is evident that [p]edagogy is never innocent. but if is it to be understood and made problematic as a moral and political practice, educators must critically question and register their own subjective involvement in how and what they teach. they must also resist calls to transform pedagogy into the mere application of standardized practical methods and techniques. otherwise, teachers [and principals] become indifferent to the ethical and political dimensions of their own practice. (giroux, , p. ) when i found myself confronted with chris years ago, i lacked this understanding, trusting entirely my supervisors and the other adults with whom i worked. i wanted to do what was right and do my job well, but i was consumed by real school and what i thought it meant to be a real teacher and a real principal, what my role needed to be. reflecting on my inability to recognize other perspectives is fascinating and terrifying to me, mostly because i know my thoughtlessness was not an anomaly. unfortunately, as i have become more aware of how few answers there truly are in so many of the circumstances we encounter in schools, i am witness to far too many refusals to think about what we are doing. not thinking what we do is expected and those who dare to think enter dangerous territory, especially if they choose to share the results of their thinking, their judgments, publicly. the risks cannot be minimized. whenever there is questioning and resistance to what is established and seems indestructible, there is upheaval. enchantment with the single story is ubiquitous and it is true that most of what we do fits within its parameters. when and if we can create space for other stories to appear, we can, in the oases of our classrooms and schools, begin to see each other as more than the roles we play. [w]hen persons open themselves to one another, there is always a sense of new profiles to be experienced, new aspects to be understood. if we attend from our own centers, if we are present as living, perceiving beings, there is always, always more. (greene, , p. ) there are examples that reveal humanitas and allow us to appear to each other as persons, as freddy was able to appear to lynn. getting to a place where this is possible requires us to be vulnerable, willing to let ourselves be shaken and surprised rather than determined. breaking free from the single story and the way it shapes and conditions what we do requires us to begin to think. as we do so we can cultivate an openness to what is and begin to see the world differently. as we learn to enter our classrooms and our schools with a sense of wonder and possibility, accepting that there is much we do not know, perspectives we do not understand, and how the persons we encounter each day will choose to be and respond to each other, we will be better prepared to think, will, and judge. noticing what there is to notice by paying attention and practicing attunement requires commitment, thoughtful effort, and the exercise of judgment, all of which are suppressed by school. confronting and changing the single story is clearly a defeated cause. school is not going to go away or change in any significant way. ironically, there is too much at stake politically and economically for governments and ministries around the world to think about what it means to live well together in the world, as individual persons across difference; world citizenship belongs to us all, yet there is so much self-interest, what we hold in common, what is most important, becomes lost. it seems and feels quite hopeless. how can we find hope in the midst of such hopelessness? perhaps we can find hope in the stories that speak to what is right and good. finding such examples involves a willingness to accept our responsibility to think without bannisters, and to give account, to share and to speak to our judgments. doing this does not just happen; it requires practice—wondering, questioning—and sharing our thoughts with someone we respect and trust, as i tried to do when thinking about the girls and as lynn did when she encountered freddy. with the girls, i was left with my own company, since those i reached out to were only able to think within the single story, caught in their own roles and unable to see beyond. lynn had her own company and the company of a trusted thinking partner with whom she could consider alternatives. seeking out good company and finding examples allows us to engage and debate the taken for granted. when we can move beyond two-in-one and two-in-two dialogue and include more perspectives, we begin to think more carefully about why we hold the opinions and beliefs that we do. when we are able to move beyond the superficial singularity of school and begin to see alternatives, to see other stories and perspectives, to see individual people in their specificity, we create space to appear to each other where we can think together about what we are doing and why we are doing it. we can share our opinions, listen with precision, and begin to interrogate what is right and good. we can question what seems beyond question. we can examine the language we use and how language both enhances and limits our understanding. we can seek encounters with the arts, knowing that the arts offer perspectives that often startle and challenge our reality. the arts, because they exist in an in-between, a space in the margins—coming from a place of distance, and yet, are also of the world—can reveal new views: “art is the great enemy of obtuseness” (nussbaum, , p. ). we owe it to ourselves and to our students to infuse the arts in our teaching and to provide diverse encounters with the arts. developing the ability and skill to create and appreciate the arts requires tremendous dedication and thoughtful effort. we are able to teach the fundamental foundational skills required to dance, paint, draw, write, perform, play an instrument, and compose, but those skills can only be honed and mastered by intentional and consistent practice. artists spend endless hours becoming artists, and the devotion to practicing, developing skills, and creating, is substantial. it seems to me that artists are able to reflect on their experience and use it to create. for me there is a close tie between thinking without bannisters and creating, engaging in, experiencing, and opening ourselves to the arts. to become an expert, someone who is masterful at thinking, is not something that happens quickly or easily, but takes patience and time. i cannot decide i want to be a concert pianist, a painter, or a novelist and simply become one. to do so takes years of dedicated effort, and even with all of my hard work, i may become a very good pianist (better than i was) yet never masterful. the same is true of thinking and judging. as i thoughtfully make the effort, i improve. i become better at making judgments about what is right and wrong, but it is something i will never master. it cannot be so because there will always be more, there will always be new standpoints, new experiences, new interactions. thinking that clears the way for judging, like the arts, is endless and ongoing, keeping us awake and attuned to what is. all thinking comes from experience. i am slowly waking up and recognizing that i have a responsibility every day to think what i am doing, to reflect on what i have done and what i experience in schools. i am willing to try to imagine other perspectives, to contemplate alternatives to the language we use and practices we so readily adopt. i am becoming more aware of the single story and its enchantment and consequently, increasingly frustrated with those who “lack all conviction” and complacently and obediently carry on, refusing to accept responsibility. i am more conscious of the importance of carving out space for thinking and engaging with thinking partners who offer other ways of seeing the world, who are dedicated to understanding and loving the world as it is. arendt and greene have proven to be reliable and worthy companions, as have a few trusted friends. other thinkers and writers, novelists, poets, playwrights, artists of all kinds offer objects and ideas for reflection—thought-things that i can carry with me and engage with, wonder about, when i am able to find solitude and let the wind of thinking rage through, unbalance, and change me. most importantly, the children i work with every day teach me what it means to live together with other people, how often we make mistakes and misjudge people and circumstances, how limited our perspectives can be; they help me understand what it means to listen with precision, to respect various standpoints, and to find ways for each of them to make good appearances in the world. it is these interactions, these tangled relationships, that make it possible for me to exist, to live in the midst of the single story of school, and to find small and simple ways to resist that honour the people with whom i work and create spaces of humanitas where plurality, even fleetingly, exists. arendt’s admonishment to think what we are doing, stands as a summons to enter into an unending endeavour to understand and love the world as it is, including ourselves and others, knowing that there is no answer. there are only flawed and imperfect individually unique and miraculous human beings living together in a world we have created. arendt presents a conceptual framework along with examples, her own life and work included, of what it looks like and what it means, to think and judge in a plural and contingent world. “arendt was not only of the world, but for the world…actively engaging with the uncertainty and contingency of the world in all its plurality” (nixon, , p. ). she wanted to comprehend the world as it actually presented itself instead of limiting herself to what could be understood, in the sense of ‘deduced,’ from preconceived ideas, existing worldviews, or all the precious small and large lies we cling to. (knott, , p ) the message to live wide awake—to recognize, engage with, and listen to each other, to search for stories of exemplarity—lost pearls and defeated causes—and to accept our responsibility as human beings—reverberates through arendt’s work and her life’s story. in many respects, for me, she has become an example and a thinking partner, who enriches who i am, forces me to think about what is right, how i know. and how i strive to be and to educate. although i know there is no answer to the problem of school, and changing the single story is seemingly hopeless, i will continue to try because i know there are pinholes of hope. as arendt ( ) reminds us, even during the darkest times there are always bursts “of light in the midst of impenetrable, unfathomable darkness” (p. )—particular stories of courage and possibility that allow us to think anew, particular stories that can silence, for a time, the ‘static crowding the wires’. i will do what i can to disenthrall myself and others from the static, from the fictions that enchant. i will be intentional about finding and creating space to spectate and think what i am doing, i will find more opportunities for myself, for children, and for educators to engage with the arts. i will share my stories and listen carefully to the stories of others in hope that the wind of thinking might bring what seems to be in balance ‘to grief’, startle and disrupt, make me stop temporarily and wonder. for there is nothing sure, nothing predictable or certain in the realm of humanitas where educating is possible. references aquinas, t. 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( ). a democratic theory of judgment. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. s jra .. dance, sexuality, and utopian subversion under the argentine dictatorship of the s: the case of oscar aráiz’s the rite of spring and ana itelman’s phaedra juan ignacio vallejos t his article is part of a larger investigation into the relationship between dance and politics in argentina during the s and s. as victoria fortuna ( , – ) points out, most of the historical studies of modern and contemporary dance in argentina have fo- cussed on describing the process of modernizing artistic practices. accordingly, certain studies have organized their historical discourse by taking as their starting point a description of the influence that given foreign artists exerted on the aesthetic development of stage dance. the follow- ing study aims to give an account of the specific character of the argentine case by viewing its re- lationship with cultural metropolises as an important variable, but not as its main angle of study. to be more specific, i believe that a feature that defines how dance practices evolved in argentina in this period was the fact that “actors” in the field were constantly compelled to deal with the polit- ical. dance practices had to adapt to a context of institutional instability that was linked to a fragile democratic order and successive coups d’état. they were also subject to control: the two works i intend to study suffered attempts by the dictatorial government to censor them. nevertheless, dance played an active role in the political space. by studying the impact caused between and by two contemporary dance works presented by the san martín theater ballet, oscar aráiz’s the rite of spring and ana itelman’s phaedra, i shall attempt to analyze the position these practices occupied in a context of widespread social contestation. ultimately, this article will seek to reflect on the politicality of these works (vujanovic ), that is to say, on their capacity to act politically in a specific historical context. dictatorship and utopian subversion on june , a coup led by general juan carlos onganía overthrew the democratically elected president arturo illia. this was the fourth coup against a constitutional government since . the new dictatorship called itself revolución argentina (argentine revolution) and aimed to install itself juan ignacio vallejos (jvallejos@unsam.edu.ar) received his doctorate in history from the school for advanced studies in social sciences (ehess) in paris. he has taught at the university of buenos aires (uba), at nancy university, the ehess, and the centre nationale de la danse (cnd) in france. he is cofounder of the atelier d’histoire culturelle de la danse (cral-ehess). he has re- ceived research grants from the getty foundation at the national institute of art history in paris and from the alban program. he worked with dominique brun on the recreation of nijinsky’s ballet the rite of spring with support from the program aide à la recherche et au patrimoine en danse of the french ministry of culture. his articles have been published in the journals eadem utraque europa, repères – cahier de danse, musicorum and cuadernos dieciochistas, among others. he is currently a researcher at the consejo nacional de investigaciones científicas y técnicas (conicet) in argentina. drj / • august copyright © congress on research in dance doi: . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at mailto:jvallejos@unsam.edu.ar https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core in power for a prolonged period in order to fundamentally modify economic, social, and cultural conditions. the coup arose under the influence of what is known as the “doctrine of national security” linked to various us foreign policy actions aimed at preventing the advance of commu- nism in latin america in the context of the cold war and after the cuban revolution. accordingly, the new dictatorship was characterized by a strongly anticommunist ideology. the control and repression practiced by the onganía dictatorship were resisted from various spaces, by the workers’ movement and political militants as well as by the universities and the cultural sec- tor. three years after the coup, in may , there was a popular uprising in the city of córdoba, known as the cordobazo, which weakened onganía’s leadership within the military elite. in the course of the following years a progressive radicalization of political militants took place; in other words, some militants started to view armed struggle as the only option for achieving a return to democracy and profoundly changing society. a triumphalist atmosphere reigned among wide sec- tors of militants, who claimed that a revolution was imminent or genuinely close to happening, some- thing that represented at the time the sensation of living through “an abrupt and imminent change in all fields of life” (longoni , ). in the guerrilla organizations started to act openly, throwing the authoritarian government into crisis. in june of that year, onganía was replaced by roberto marcelo levingston, another military man. the early years of the s constitute one of the most politically ex- plosive phases in thewhole of argentine history. sociologically speaking, this historical moment tendsto be defined as one of widespread social contestation that produces a situation of social ungovernability. in response to this extreme situation, the authoritarian government decided to call a democratic election, and the decision was taken to lift the ban on peronism. as a result juan domingo perón returned to the country in . in this connection, tortti ( ) maintains that perón’s return to power with a reform- istprogramdidnotrepresentatriumphfortherevolutionbutrathertheonlywaytherulingclasses could find to keep a truly revolutionary process from developing. it is against this backdrop of widespread contestation that the first civil rights movements started to emerge. for example, saw the birth of the unión feminista argentina (argentine feminist union). then, in the movimiento de liberación femenina (women’s liberation movement) was founded (calvera ; andújar et al. ). in parallel, the frente de liberación homosexual (homosexual liberation front) was created in . as the poet and sociologist nestor perlongher, an active member of the frente de liberación homosexual, explained, the organization embodied the desire of a minority of homosexuals “to take part in a supposedly revolutionary process, from a place in which their own sexual and living conditions could be addressed” (perlongher , ). thus, it can be argued that the socially explosive moment that characterized the first few years of the s went beyond the realm of party politics. the movements mentioned emerged from the fer- tile soil of a youth culture in search of greater personal freedom that took up sex as a tool to bring about a change in morals. political radicalization also found direct expression in the arts. longoni and mestman ( ) describe the journey made by a group of artists who in the course of broke with the artistic institutions they had previously been involved with—basically, with the di tella institute—and adopted an attitude of direct opposition to the military government. the best-known expression of this movement was the collective work tucumán arde (“tucumán is burning”), which took place at the end of that year (longoni and mestman , ). according to longoni, there was a first period in which certain visual artists sought to achieve a direct effect in the political sphere with their works. however, in the new period beginning in , the acceptance of revolutionary vi- olence as the only route to transformation led them to question the place of art (longoni , ). as a result, many of these artists gave up practicing their art to join the armed struggle. the process of political contestation thus led to certain groups questioning the very meaning of art as a practice. this is the context in which the works analyzed in this article are presented: a context of widespread contestation and redefinition of social, cultural, and political practices. nevertheless, it is necessary drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core to point out that oscar aráiz and ana itelman were not part of this radicalized youth. unlike the artists studied by longoni and mestman, aráiz and itelman did not sever their ties with arts insti- tutions for ideological reasons. nor did they explicitly adopt a discourse of opposition to the dic- tatorship, and neither did they actively participate in political militancy. nevertheless, as i shall attempt to demonstrate, their works were a political intervention of a very special kind. as mark franko maintains, “politics are not located directly ‘in’ dance, but in the way dance manages to oc- cupy (cultural) space” ( , ). in that regard, my analysis will seek to study artistic representation as action, that is to say, the staging of a work understood as a social act whose meaning is not de- termined solely by the explicit will of its creator but instead emerges from the way it is received. the presentation of a work understood as a social act acquires meaning from the effects of its interven- tion in the network of power relations in which it acts. in this sense, my work implies a redefinition of the role of the author. as we shall see, it is not choreographers alone who are responsible for giving their work a political content. unlike the art- ists studied by longoni and mestman, who explicitly adopt a political position in a personal man- ner, in the case of the rite and phaedra the political content emerges as an effect of the action. the theater authorities with their links to the dictatorship that tries to censor them as well as the jour- nalism that vindicates them are cultural actors who give political content to the work above and beyond the choreographers’ explicit intentions. thus, i take as my starting point a deregulation of the role of the author and consider the social network of the works’ reception as a producer of meaning. in the historical period under study, the gaze of the authoritarian power occupies a central role that, in some ways, determines the political character of the works created. thus, it is essential to give an account of the categories the dictatorship used to interpret political acts against the regime. in their study of censorship, invernizzi and gociol ( ) summarize the conceptual distinction drawn by the dictatorship between marxism and subversion. in order to define something as marxist, the an- alysts of the intelligence services looked for direct references in published material to “class struggle,” “dialectical materialism,” or for the presence of key names, such as marx, engels, che guevara, lenin, trotsky, or even marcuse or antonio gramsci. to define something as subversive, however, they made use of much broader and more heterogeneous categories, such as “questioning the estab- lished order,” “unionization,” “abortion,” “sexual freedom,” or “liberation theology” (invernizzi and gociol , ). in this way, while the category marxist pointed to the existence of a defined the- oretical political program, the category subversion was applied to a fuzzy range of ideas and practices that were, nevertheless, viewed as questioning the social and cultural order. given the way in which the concept of subversion is used by authoritarian power, it presupposes the existence of nonideolog- ical types of political intervention. in this way, a dance piece could clearly be considered subversive, that is to say, as an act tending to alter the established order. in short, i believe that in the rite and phaedra there is an element that might provide the key to interpretation. both works implicitly mobilize the figure of the utopian, of the a-topos (no- where), of a nonexistent space from which are projected images, bodies, and discourses capable of challenging fundamental mechanisms of power such as patriarchal domination or catholic morality. thus, i aim in this study to affirm the figure of a utopian subversion. paul ricoeur ar- gues that it is through utopia that fundamental social questions such as the family, consumption, authority, and religion can be radically rethought ( , ). in that regard, he says that imag- ining another society possesses an undeniable capacity for questioning reality (ricoeur , ). using the concepts developed by jill dolan ( ) and josé esteban muñoz ( ), my aim is to analyze the utopian content of the dance works mentioned, considering them in their turn as forms of political action. throughout my analysis, i will provide basic historical data about the development of dance in argentina that can give an account of its specific qualities and the working conditions of its drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core interpreters and choreographers. for that reason, before embarking on a study of the works using the hypothesis i put forward, i will present two topics that i consider play a central role in under- standing artistic output in the period under review. the first relates to the place occupied by dance practice in the context of youth culture. as we will see, the dance creations studied developed under a double tension: with regard to the authoritarian regime on the one hand and to political militancy on the other. the second topic refers to how censorship operated under the onganía government. aside from its staunch anticommunism and its respect for catholic morality, the argentine dicta- torship did not articulate a carefully thought-out ideology. in that sense, it can be differentiated clearly from what is considered a totalitarian regime. the lack of clear rules as regards the applica- tion of censorship led to a cultural scene with many instances of negotiation, one in which contra- dictory phenomena coexisted. in my view, the existence of this unregulated space was one of the conditions for the emergence of utopian subversion in dance. the san martín ballet (el ballet del san martín) the year was a foundational moment in the history of contemporary dance in argentina. this was the year that saw the creation, under the direction of oscar aráiz, of the ballet del teatro san martín (san martín theater ballet), the country’s first contemporary dance company to be sup- ported institutionally and financially by the state. until then, contemporary dance had developed through private initiatives and through the work of a nongovernmental organization, la asociación amigos de la danza (the friends of the dance association; kaehler ). according to aráiz’s account ( , ), in a text that describes this first experience, the san martín theater ballet inherited an identity linked to the works that had been launched by the friends of the dance association, whose main feature was their aesthetic heterogeneity and the juxtaposition of classical and modern techniques. in the mid- s, dance in argentina was still at an embryonic stage. the dancers who made up the ballet in had received different kinds of training. one group, linked to the ballet del teatro argentino de la plata (ballet of the argentine theater of la plata), with ballerinas such as irma baz or norma binaghi, had been classically trained; another group including susana ibañez, doris petroni, and ana maría stekelman, among others, had a solid background in contemporary dance. a third group, which included mauricio wainrot and josé carlos campitelli, consisted of young people who did not have a great deal of experience. all these dancers are today major per- sonalities on the argentine contemporary dance scene, which shows how important this ballet company was in the development of artistic activity in argentina (tambutti , ). nevertheless, the fate of the san martín theater ballet during those years depended to a great extent on the discretion of the municipal authorities. in , césar magrini was appointed director of the theater, with the support of roberto vernengo, municipal secretary of culture, and manuel ircibar, governor of the city of buenos aires. magrini was a writer and journalist and the musical corre- spondent for the daily newspaper el cronista comercial. in that paper he had frequently written highly complimentary reviews of the choreographer oscar aráiz’s dance compositions. as aráiz re- counted in an interview, the plan to create the ballet was his own initiative. magrini commissioned him to organize a series of dance performances and the choreographer suggested to him that a com- pany should be set up that would work in the theater permanently and be associated with the lan- guage of contemporary choreography (isse moyano , ). after some initial hesitation, magrini agreed to the plan. in the years leading up to that, the success of two works had propelled aráiz to the position of director of the ballet company despite his youth (he was twenty-seven in .) one was the rite of spring, premiered in with the support of the friends of the dance association, and the other was crash, presented in the instituto di tella (di tella institute) in . the latter drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core was an unprecedented success for contemporary dance in argentina. in and it was per- formed over one hundred times to an average audience of one hundred fifty, according to the ac- counts of the di tella institute. the work, defined as “a divertimento in one act and twenty-two scenes without a curtain,” was described by the critics as provocative, humorous, and a “creative experiment.” crash, which had a highly eclectic sound track ranging from the chant of a group of soccer fans to beatles songs, was the expression of an emerging youth culture. in a magazine ar- ticle, aráiz said: i do things, i’m always doing things, i never stand still because standing still is dying. i adore miniskirts and long hair. money doesn’t excite me at all: i have a flat in belgrano, a bed, a dog—ron—and three pictures. that’s it. at the di tella i wanted to do an entertaining collage, to get away a bit from the ballet stereotype, to show something new. aráiz’s words—possibly “touched up” by the reviewer—chimed perfectly with the basic ideas of hippie culture and pop as artistic movements, both of which were a novelty in argentine society of the time. two years earlier, the magazine primera plana (front page), at that time the most influential and most widely read weekly in argentina, published a piece with the title “pop, ¿una nueva manera de vivir?” (pop: a new way of life?) in which an attempt was made to define this artistic style using the di tella institute and the artist marta minujín as points of reference nationally. the piece pre- sented a phrase by the artist susana salgado as a summary of pop’s imaginary: “we don’t do theory, we simply live in a fairy tale.” pop as a cultural movement supposedly expressed a posture that was simultaneously nonconformist and naive regarding political and social reality. as an example of pop dance, the primera plana piece mentioned a work by the choreographers marilú marini and ana kamien called dance bouquet, which was presented at the di tella institute in and can be seen as an aesthetic forerunner of crash. marini and kamien’s work included visual artists, mu- sicians, and actors as well as ballerinas, and it was inspired by popular culture: comics, hollywood movies, and music hall. in fact, in many cases the ballerinas’ gestures were taken from fashion pho- tographs (herrera , – ). one could say that, artistically speaking, at the time of the creation of the san martín ballet, oscar aráiz occupied an intermediate, and in some sense strained, posi- tion between the pop movement, hippie culture, and official high culture represented nationally by the teatro colón. nevertheless, from the point of view of the relationship between art and politics, aráiz found him- self in a different position. within the space of youth culture at that time, pujol identifies a tension between two currents: that of young people who were politically committed and that of counter- culture young people who were associated with rock music, pop, and the hippie movement (pujol , ). in his view, there was an ideological incompatibility at that time between the popular anti-imperialist nationalism of the juventud peronista (peronist youth) and the artistic practices of the counterculture, which were seen politically as an expression of cultural imperialism (pujol , ). artists linked to the counterculture thus faced a double rejection: first, on the part of the onganía government, which associated their practices with subversion, and second, on the part of political militants from the left, who considered them superficial and imperialist. the piece in the magazine siete días ilustrados that portrayed aráiz as a hippie was in reality quite critical about crash. it interpreted the work as a concession by the choreographer to commercialism after the fiasco that was the censoring of his rite of spring: when this year the censors objected to the performance of igor stravinsky’s the rite of spring at the teatro colón because they considered that the work and the chore- ography were an affront to public decency, aráiz did not only lose part of his drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core audience. basically, he was left out of the framework of official prestige that sur- rounds the old building on calle libertad [the teatro colón]. he then decided to put on a performance in another, less prestigious and less official, cultural building, . . . the di tella institute. in the eyes of the writer of the article, crash was a desperate attempt to “fit in” or “adjust” to the new medium after aráiz’s earlier rejection by “official culture.” the article, which in some ways blamed aráiz for his work being censored, was disingenuous. in reality, the implicit aim was to le- gitimize the cultural control being exercised by onganía’s authoritarian government. censorship as buch states ( , – ), from the time of the coup on june , , on, the authoritarian government waged a campaign to raise the country’s moral standards by censoring people’s actions, such as wearing long hair, kissing in public squares, having extramarital affairs, or being homosex- ual. in addition to the banning of political parties, there was also constant intervention in argentina’s cultural life, such as the censoring of many forms of expression: graphic, artistic, cin- ematographic, theatrical, musical, and dance-related. the policy of censorship was a central part of government thinking, encouraged in part by the dictator’s wife, maría green de onganía. she was the one who walked out on the performance at the teatro colón because she was scandalized by the supposedly extreme erotic charge of araíz’s rite of spring. it was may , , and the choreog- raphy was being presented as part of a musical evening in honor of prince akihito of japan. the reaction of onganía’s wife meant that the piece was immediately removed from the theater’s pro- gram of performances. two months later, on june , and with the “scandalous” precedent of aráiz’s work in mind, onganía categorically demanded the banning of alberto ginastera and manuel mujica láinez’s opera bomarzo, for which aráiz had provided the choreography. the bomarzo case, studied by buch ( ), highlighted the inconsistencies in the military government’s cultural policy and caused a strong press reaction. the opera had its first performance at the lisner auditorium in washington on may that same year in front of an audience that included the vice president of the united states and the argentine ambassador. in an official decree in april, the government had announced that the opera’s premiere was an important event for argentine culture. it was un- believable, said a magazine article, that the same work should be censored due to its “obsessive ref- erences to sex, violence and hallucination.” the censoring of the opera bomarzo, like the censoring of aráiz’s rite, exposed the internal tensions besetting the dictatorial government. as sidicaro says ( , ), the coup coalition that swept onganía to power in was like no other in that it brought together actors who were so different and had such divergent interests and views of society. the government’s policy of raising moral standards was a response to the influence of the catholic church; at the same time that policy was in opposition to a certain section of the culturally sophisticated bourgeoisie who were equally close to the government and saw works like bomarzo or the rite of spring as expressions of cultural modernization. this lack of consistency in the evaluation of artistic practices went hand in hand with an unclear and, to some extent, perverse way of applying censorship. unlike in other paradigmatic cases, for example, in francoist spain, in argentina there was never a centralized censorship office with established ways of working and a visible administrative organi- zation (avellaneda , – ). nor, with the exception of cinema and radio, did the discourse of censorship lay down a precise code of practice aside from some general moral guidelines opposing communist ideology. this lack of specification aimed at establishing self-censorship mechanisms both for artists and for the cultural institutions that were responsible for the works they presented. drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core the piece in the magazine primera plana “la censura va por dentro” (censorship comes from within) was a report on this situation. the authoritiesin their turn useda double standard that undermined theiracts of censorship.in a recent interview, oscar aráiz stated that, in effect, no decree was ever published prohibiting his rite of spring. it was banned from the teatro colón, but there was no ban on its being performed in other theaters. a similar procedure occurred with bomarzo, as buch states ( , ). nevertheless the fear of a new ban discouraged producers from showing the works in a private theater. in her study of argentine theater under the last dictatorship, graham-jones ( , – ) identifies the practice of countercensorship asaformofopposition tocensorshipandself-censorship.countercensorshipinvolvesartists using strat- egies designedto geta potentially censorablemessagethroughtothe publicby theuse ofsharedcodes.as we shall see later on, thinking of the rite and phaedra in those terms is problematic since their authors denied, or were not aware of, the political character of their works. nevertheless, we can consider their utopian component as an element that functioned as a countercensorship strategy. the rite of spring as fortuna argues ( , ), reference to cultural metropolises in the case of dance functioned historically as a way of legitimizing local artistic production. oscar aráiz’s rite of spring replicated this rationale. the fact that an argentine choreographer was capable of producing a version of this work raised—or at least sought to raise—argentina symbolically to the cultural level of europe or the united states. the piece published in the magazine panorama about the premiere of the work, entitled “the consecration of stravinsky and his choreographers,” confirms this interpre- tation. the article pointed out with pride that aráiz was the sixth choreographer, after vaslav nijinsky, leonide massine, boris romanoff, maurice béjart, and kenneth macmillan, to create a ballet based on stravinsky’s music. bearing this interpretation in mind makes it possible to un- derstand why the argentine minister of foreign affairs decided to offer a performance of this work to the japanese prince in order to demonstrate the country’s high cultural standing. nevertheless, the magazine critic simultaneously pointed to the great influence that maurice béjart had presumably had on aráiz’s version. this french choreographer had presented his rite in the teatro colón in to great public acclaim. the article insinuated that aráiz’s version was lacking in originality. the incomplete nature of the process of modernizing argentine dance (fortuna ; garcía canclini ) was revealed in aráiz’s rite through its supposed lack of orig- inality. this raises the question whether this criticism tells us more about aráiz’s need to have a foreign point of reference to legitimize his aesthetic ideas or about the critics’ need to belittle aráiz’s project in order to meekly confirm the peripheral nature of local culture. oscar aráiz was twenty-six at the time of the first performance of his rite. in an interview (falcoff , ), he stated that his interest in stravinsky’s music went back to his early childhood and to the beginning of his dance studies with elide locardi, one of the pioneers of modern dance in argentina (osswald , ). the opening tableau of the work, entitled “germination”, was the one that made the greatest impact on newspaper critics at the time; one of those critics, césar magrini, two years later was to make the creation of the san martín theater ballet possible. in an interview, aráiz describes that opening tableau as follows: it is the spirit of the earth awakening. there’s a woman, or it could be a man, who covers the whole of the stage with their skirt, all the material is very taut, and this woman is squatting, she’s like a shoot, something that is beginning to germinate, that is coming out of the earth, a stalk. underneath, the earth begins to curl up and becomes a monstrous placenta, the dancers underneath make ripples in the ma- terial with their breath and everything begins to come to life. bit by bit this whole society is being born, this tribe that will create the ritual. drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core the work represented the idea of regeneration, the birth of a new society, a longing that manifestly existed at the time, especially among the young. over the years, aráiz has made several statements about the piece, which, in his view, profoundly changed its meaning in accordance with the differ- ent versions in which it was performed. brigitte kehrer ( , ) describes the version that the choreographer put on in geneva during the falklands war in , a version he made aggressive and military, partly changing the staging as a way of expressing his anguish at the confrontation between argentina and great britain. in hindsight, aráiz defines the s version of the rite as a “dionysian festival” that led to his being contracted to choreograph all the operatic bacchanals at the teatro colón in those years, such as samson and delilah, bomarzo, moses and aaron, and padmavati (isse moyano , ). the erotic charge was not something unconnected with its creator’s wishes, and, in a certain sense, it was part and parcel of his aesthetic project. the year before the creation of the san martín theater ballet, the suicide of german choreographer dore hoyer occurred. in , oscar aráiz had been a member of a company led by hoyer in the teatro argentino de la plata (argentine theater of la plata), in the province of buenos aires. this choreographer’s influence imparted an expressionist stamp to aráiz’s training, something he trans- mitted to his pupils (dorin , ). as a tribute, aráiz recreated cadena de fugas, which was performed in the first season of the ballet in . equally, as a contrast with the introspective at- mosphere of hoyer’s work, aráiz put on beat suite at the same time, a divertimento that was a con- tinuation of the pop aesthetic of crash. on the whole, was a positive year for the san martín ballet, but it ended with a change of personnel in the municipality of buenos aires. alberto obligado was appointed culture secretary and the following year the general management of the theater was taken over by fernando lanús. the change was not necessarily a disadvantage for the group: the company’s first european tour, which included paris, london, and madrid, was made possible by both officials. however, the third year was set to be rather difficult for the ballet. in aráiz’s words: “ would be the last of those three significant years for the san martín theater ballet: even though the personnel did not change much, a cloud was cast over almost the entire season by threats, foreboding, fears, rumors, censorship and, still worse, self-censorship” (aráiz , ). that same year of , the san martín theater ballet put on the rite of spring again—the work that had been censored by onganía three years earlier. that dictator had been replaced in the mean- time by roberto marcelo levingston, but the tension over the revival of the work continued. aráiz claims to have had to stage a dress rehearsal in front of the theater authorities before the perfor- mance in order to obtain their approval for the opening night (aráiz , ). in an article in photo . doris petroni, the rite of spring, . choreography by oscar aráiz, photo by alicia sanguinetti. drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core primera plana entitled “consagraciones y brujerías,” and published two years later in , the anonymous writer gave a sort of historical description of the vicissitudes of the work. he or she started with an account of the scandal caused during the special entertainment for the japanese prince in and then stated that in it had been possible to revive the work thanks to aráiz’s promise to make major changes to the choreography and the costumes. according to the writer of the article, despite these promises the work had been performed in the same way as on previous occasions. the only fundamental change was the replacement of the male principal dancer, who in was freddy romero. in this regard, the rite of spring can be interpreted, at least as far as the press was concerned, as a disruptive work, and its revival can be seen as a form of resistance to power in the cultural sphere. the program notes for the version of the rite included quotes from georges gusdorf’s ( , – ) mito y metafísica (myth and metaphysics): the festival appears as a global liturgy, as a total phenomenon . . . the whole of ex- istence is transfigured. the festival is the great social game of transcendence, the beginning-again of the great beginning. the universe is in the process of being born and . . . it restores to humankind immense lost possibilities. . . . the festival re- establishes the extreme situation where order has been born out of disorder, where chaos and cosmos still touch. . . . individualities lose their distance and tend to merge. . . . the festival is a performance without an audience. everyone is perform- ing for everyone else. the festival celebrates humankind’s joy, the springtime of the world and the springtime of humankind. several ideas from this text find an echo in aráiz’s work, in which the festival represents a utopia of change and regeneration. as far as i have been able to establish through interviews with aráiz him- self, with several members of the audiences, and with dancers, the structure of the choreography stayed the same over time. in the absence of any recordings of the , , and perfor- mances, my reference points are the interviews already mentioned and the only film version avail- able in the centro de documentación de teatro y danza del complejo teatral de buenos aires photo . freddy romero, the rite of spring, . choreography by oscar aráiz, photo by alicia sanguinetti. drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core (theater and dance documentation center of the buenos aires theater complex), which dates from the s. aráiz’s rite respects the basic outline of nijinsky’s original: the existence of a tribal group, the separation of the dancers by gender, and the central role of the chosen one toward the end of the work. as the work unfolds, several scenes with highly erotically charged male-female duets are presented. bodies brush against each other, they writhe, they submit to one another, and they reproduce movements that refer to coupling. a certain fusion of the human body with nature is also expressed, united by a basic instinct linked to sexual reproduction. however, the two moments i consider to have the greatest impact are the beginning and the finale of the work. in the first scene, “germination,” a character covers the whole stage with a skirt and that figure’s body emerges like the stalk of a plant coming out of the earth. this earth is represented by a mass of human bodies that intertwine and merge, behaving like a single, universal body. the flesh- colored leotard costumes in their turn convey the impression of a nude, neuter body. in the final scene of the “death of the chosen one,” this structure of a shapeless mass of bodies is repeat- ed. instead of dancing herself to death, as in nijinsky’s version, the chosen one clambers onto a mountain of bodies formed by the dancers and raises herself above the group. in the s version, the chosen one is left hanging in the air, with the support of a rope hanging from the flies, but in the version, according to josé carlos campitelli, who was one of the performers, the character of the chosen one, performed by ana maría stekelman, climbs to the top and then falls backward toward the audience. the idea of festival suggested by gusdorf and quoted by aráiz is brought out in this shapeless mass of bodies that open the performance and are its culmination. this is the utopian manifestation of a total revolution. josé esteban muñoz ( ) reflects on the utopian, based on ernst bloch’s philos- ophy. from a blochian perspective, art is capable of expressing an “anticipatory illumination” that, according to muñoz ( , ), helps us to see “the not-yet-conscious” in the guise of a “utopian feeling.” in the same connection, muñoz refers to the distinction made by agamben ( ) be- tween possibility and potentiality: “unlike a possibility, a thing that simply might happen, a poten- tiality is a certain mode of nonbeing that is eminent, a thing that is present but not actually existing in the present tense” (muñoz , ). in the scenes previously mentioned, the rite presents a photo . “the death of the chosen one,” the rite of spring, . choreography by oscar aráiz, photo by alicia sanguinetti. drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core fusion of seminaked bodies of indeterminate sex that project a utopian feeling of fraternity. the work announces the potentiality of a refoundation of society by returning to a state of deindividua- tion, of mechanical identification with one another. the mass of people that appears in aráiz’s work can be linked to the accounts of group sex practices written by samuel delany and quoted by josé esteban muñoz in which “the men . . . took care of one another not only by offering flesh but by performing a care for the self that encompassed a vast care for others—a delicate and loving ‘being for others’” (muñoz , ). it is this “being for others” that represents the primordial link of the utopian revolution suggested by the rite. aráiz’s work points to a future collectivity, to the potentiality of an orgiastic society as a horizon. this is a utopian feeling that, so we intuit, haunts the imaginary of argentine youth culture of the time. as jill dolan ( , ) points out, art constitutes a space in which “another world” can be expressed, not in a descriptive or didactic way, but rather by communicating an alternative experience. the work presents the viewer with the experience of utopian fraternity, and that fact constitutes, in its own way, a subversive act in the face of authoritarian power. phaedra some months before the revival of the rite, there was a performance of another piece that had led to attempts by the theater authorities to censor it. this was the choreographer ana itelman’s phaedra, based on texts by euripides, racine, and unamuno. despite the fact that her work has not received the official recognition that aráiz’s has, to this day ana itelman is an important ref- erence point for several generations of argentine dancers and choreographers. she was a teacher at the taller de danza del teatro san martín (san martín theater dance workshop), which began to operate in , and she was in permanent contact with the theater ballet until her tragic death in . itelman had belonged to the modern dance company set up by miriam winslow in argentina in . her contact with american dance was strengthened in the years that followed when she took classes with martha graham, louis horst, hanya holm, and josé limón. in the s, she came back to argentina, and after suffering from an illness that prevented her from carrying on as a ballerina, she created a school of modern dance and worked as a choreographer. in she returned to the united states and for twelve years worked as associate professor and then head of the dance department at bard college in new york. in those years, she presented pieces such as house of doors, jove and io, three rivers, there is a dead horse in the bathtub and other perplexities, the girl in the black raincoat and the man with the blue guitar (szuchmacher , – ). apart from her intense activity in the united states, itelman regularly returned to argentina to put on works with the support of the friends of the dance association and the san martín theater ballet. she settled back in buenos aires in and founded a café estudio of dance theater that was later donated to the theater. the san martín theater dance workshop still operates on that site to this day. her most celebrated works presented in argentina include casa de puertas, ciudad nuestra buenos aires, odi et amo, dobletres, las casas de colomba, historia del soldado (the soldier’s tale), suite de percal, x + fuga, y ella lo visitaba and el capote. itelman is a leading point of reference in the field of dance theater, a genre that has a major presence in argentina (tambutti , ). the year that marked the high point in the tension between the ballet company and the san martín theater authorities was . the attempt to censor phaedra undoubtedly intensified the confron- tation. the reason for the censorship, according to what ruben szuchmacher ( , ) says, was that after the preview for critics and the authorities, the wife of a high-ranking official had been outraged and had asked her husband to ban the work because of the obscenity of certain scenes. yet again, the supposed immorality of dance was being exposed. regarding the content of the work, for which there is no archive film, the program, written by ana itelman, said this: “phaedra: stage production to be filmed. phaedra lives in an implacable society that forces her to drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core live and die precariously. the tale is simple; it tells the story of a mature woman’s love for her step- son hippolytus.” according to what josé carlos campitelli, who performed the role of hippolytus, has said in in- terviews, the process of creating the piece was very difficult. rehearsals lasted eight months and called on dancers to develop acting skills in which they had had no training. in the program for the work, ana itelman included the following text explaining the process of creation: the members of the san martín ballet who made up the cast of phaedra began re- hearsals in november . in principle, the approach required the author to have a framework and to direct. later on, the piece was worked up by using themes that were suggested [by the performers], and directing turned into observing and captur- ing the material that came out of the improvisations. as the group grew in confi- dence and internalized the deep meaning of phaedra, they were progressively able to do without a director. this final phase is, in my view, the most important result of this cumulative experience. the group is able to interpret the work to the extent that it lives it out on stage, because everyone in the group gets inside their character through their own individuality. the actor-dancers come onto a set where scenes from phaedra are being filmed. the work has no beginning and no ending. they are unconnected scenes that can be put together as the viewer sees fit. phaedra was conceived as a “photonovel” ( fotonovela); it did not include dance scenes or choreog- raphy and was based fundamentally on improvisations. on the basis of archive photographs and the invaluable eyewitness accounts of josé carlos campitelli and doris petroni, which i obtained in interviews, it is clear that the piece had numerous scenes of physical contact between the perform- ers. there was a scene, mentioned by doris petroni, who played phaedra, in which she sat on hippolytus’ lap, caressed him, and tried to kiss him, in front of her husband enrique, played by enrique zabala, who pretended not to notice anything that was going on. josé carlos campitelli also remembers a scene in which he was having a bath while seminaked, which caused him great embarrassment. it was a piece that, according to what campitelli says, had a profound effect on the performers. the atmosphere during rehearsals was very intense, because ana itelman had become extremely obsessive about the staging. from his position as director of the ballet company, aráiz said that the process of creating the work was “unsettling, dark, with novel suggestions and [that], as in any true adventure, anxiety kept [them] in suspense” (aráiz , ). from an artistic point of view, the work was an avant-garde experiment for argentine dance. photo . josé carlos campitelli, virginia martinez, and cristina barnils, phaedra, . choreography by ana itelman, photo by norberto lavecchia, courtesy of josé carlos campitelli. drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core regarding the supposed obscenity used to justify censoring the piece, one possible interpretation is that it consisted basically in the portrayal on stage of a mature woman’s desire for a young man, which challenged patriarchal culture. the myth represented a story in which the role dynamics of courtship were reversed, and it counterposed feminine desire to the maternal role. phaedra brought to the stage a novel type of femininity that in some ways expressed the advancement of women in an argentine society still tied to a way of life that was conservative and imbued with catholic morality, above and beyond political convictions. as felitti ( , ) points out, privileg- ing procreation and a woman’s maternal character over her individual freedom is an idea that at the time was upheld both by conservatives and by groups linked to left-wing political militancy. nevertheless, the changes to feminine subjectivity were part of the process of widespread social con- testation that was brewing. in , the argentine sociologist julio mafud published a book of sociological research under the title la revolución sexual argentina (the argentine sexual revolu- tion), which described changes in female sexuality and the appearance of new sexual practices fol- lowing the introduction of the contraceptive pill and the entry of women in the labor market. mafud defined this phenomenon as a “sexual revolution” that pointed to “the most profound chan- ge that [has] happened in modern argentinian society” (mafud , ). phaedra subverts the figure of the dominant male, which, according to taylor ( , ), is a cen- tral pillar in the construction of the argentine nation-state. it is undeniable that itelman’s work photo . doris petroni and josé carlos campitelli, phaedra, . choreography by ana itelman, photo by hector boetto, courtesy of josé carlos campitelli. drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core touches a raw nerve and destabilizes the figure of masculine virility clearly associated with the ar- chetype of the military man as leader ( ). in this sense, the work openly challenges the “femini- zation of the enemy” ( ) and the construction of national identity on the basis of the “destruction of the feminine” ( ) studied by taylor. dolan uses the concept of “utopian performatives” and defines it as “small but profound moments in which performance calls the attention of the audience in a way that lifts everyone slightly above the present, into a hopeful feeling of what the world might be like if every moment of our lives were as emotionally voluminous, generous, aesthetically striking, and intersubjectively intense” ( , ). this concept, according to dolan, is connected with bertolt brecht’s notion of gestus, a notion de- fined as “actions in performance that crystallize social relations and offer them to spectators for critical contemplation” ( ). itelman, in her staging of female desire as a desire that overwhelms the institutions of marriage and the family, presents a crystallizing view of political and social re- ality. the scenes of phaedra represent the utopia of female domination guided by desire and plea- sure in the context of a society clearly dominated by the masculine. in a text, the poet and sociologist néstor perlongher ( , – ) reminds us of the munic- ipal ordinances under the dictatorship to control the female body, for example, regarding the use of miniskirts or interaction with people of the opposite or the same sex in public spaces. phaedra goes beyond suggesting the feminist demands of the era. it is not just a question of affirming a woman’s power over her own body: phaedra affirms the quasi-perverse desire of an oppressed woman. in this sense, its approach is connected with perlongher’s radical politico-sexual ideas expressed in his phrase: we homosexuals “do not want to be tolerated, nor do we want to be understood: what we want is for people to desire us” ( , ). in the same way as homosexuals, according to perlongher, want to be desired, the women represented by phaedra want to desire; they want to play an active role; they want to dominate. we are talking about a gesture of utopian subversion that destabilizes masculine domination. the work was performed on june , , in a preview for “officials, the authorities, and members of the artistic community” (szuchmacher , ). according to aráiz, “audience and press greeted phaedra with icy astonishment and the theater authorities made it clear that it was unde- sirable to carry on with the performances” ( , ). an attempt was then made to censor the piece, which caused a strongly worded response from the choreographer. according to the message they transmitted to ana itelman via oscar aráiz, the authorities had decided the piece could not be photo . josé carlos campitelli and cristina barnils, phaedra, . choreography by ana itelman, photo by norberto lavecchia, courtesy of josé carlos campitelli. drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core performed because of its “lack of decency,” “lack of good taste,” and “lack of artistic value” (szuchmacher , ). in reply, the choreographer penned a letter dated july , , to the board and the advisory commission of the theater in defense of her creation. in hindsight, itelman’s reply is striking in its audaciousness. after countering the accusations against her work, the choreographer turned the affront on its head, and herself accused those who were trying to censor her. she wrote: the decision of the authorities involves a restriction on theatrical freedom. . . . by taking on the responsibility they have announced, the authorities have put the theater in a very delicate position: that of turning it into a censored, stifled, limited theater. the municipal general san martín theater was carrying out a fundamental task when it offered to the argentine public works by artists of different movements, ungrudgingly and without prior evaluation, without prejudices and without precon- ceived aesthetic judgments. it is regrettable that the authorities reserve the right to wrest this privilege away from argentine citizens, who, in the first and in the final analysis, pay for the theater that its current authorities manage. . . . the authorities have added a new element to the running of the theater: authoritarianism. (szuchmacher , ) after these words, itelman suggested holding another dress rehearsal in front of the authorities and specialist journalists to decide collectively what should happen to the piece; she requested a reply within five days of receiving the letter. itelman’s letter seems to implicitly deny the political context from which it emerged. her reference to the figure of the “citizen” and her surprise when faced with “authoritarianism” presuppose a democratic context when, in reality, argentina had been living under a dictatorship for four years. we have to bear in mind that the dictatorship of the s did not reach the same levels of repression and violence as the proceso de reorganización nacional (process of national reorganization) in . in the s, nothing suggested that in the following decade argentina was going to experience one of the bloodiest dictatorships in the whole of latin america and that it was going to be the victim of state terrorism that would lead to the forced dis- appearance of , citizens. nevertheless, itelman’s intervention was a gesture of great courage. in the same way, her letter is not innocent. her response operates intentionally in that ill-defined territory in which censorship, as a repressive practice of the authoritarian state, attempts to extend itself to the individual level in the form of self-censorship in order to avoid accepting the political cost of its actions. itelman’s intervention strategy also includes the appeal to a sort of utopia. the ideological substratum of her intervention is the conception of art as a practice separated from the rest of society, the idea of l’art pour l’art. as far as itelman is concerned, authoritarianism has only just come into the theater with the censoring of phaedra. her claim is obviously mistaken, since artists are, above all, subjects immersed in a social reality, and under a dictatorship freedom is cur- tailed. artists were not really free, and itelman was not unaware of that reality. her intervention is fascinating not because of its pseudonaive affirmation of a neutral and apolitical art, but rather because of her aim in this discourse to reclaim a space of freedom from which to act politically. her letter is simultaneously a utopian gesture and a concrete political act. the idea of conceiving of access to the theater as a right of citizens defines art as a space constitutive of democratic practice. the finale at the end of , the san martín ballet received an invitation from norman singer, director of the city center in new york, to perform in the united states. the us embassy invited oscar aráiz to visit the new york city in january , and it is during this trip that he got the news that the members of the san martín ballet would not have their contracts renewed. there had been a drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core change of personnel: the municipal secretary of culture, alberto obligado, had resigned to take up a unesco post, and his replacement, francisco carcavallo, a former theatrical impresario, had appointed the veteran actress iris marga as the theater’s artistic director. those newly in control favored a more traditional and commercial type of theater, and they took the decision to cut short the experiment of the san martín ballet, using budgetary problems as their justification. the company managed to obtain new contracts as late as june under the auspices of the directorate-general of culture in the teatro nacional cervantes (cervantes national theater), thanks to the support it had received from ricardo freixá, an official. however, those contracts expired in january and were not renewed. it would only be in , thanks to the creation of the grupo de danza contemporánea (contemporary dance group) at the instigation of kive staiff, director of the san martín theater at the time, that this genre of dance once again had in- stitutional backing. there can be no doubt that political and administrative conditions determined the development of contemporary dance in argentina by placing constraints on dance practice, but also by creating constant institutional instability that interrupted extremely valuable creative processes. whether it was because of the explicit or subtle censorship to which they were exposed or because of their championing by the print media that condemned their banning, the rite of spring and phaedra became political beyond their creators’ intentions. according to my analysis, the political emerges in these works from a struggle over sexuality and, in this sense, for “the constitution of individuality, of subjectivity,” that is to say, “of the manner in which we behave and in which we become conscious of ourselves” (foucault , ). for foucault, the relationship between sexuality and politics expresses itself in the way that power produces bodies. since the beginning of the modern era, the human body has been constructed as a labor force integrated into a system of production. this construction of the body began to be questioned during the s. in this way, as foucault maintains, “c’est cette lutte pour le corps qui fait que la sexualité est un problème politique [is this struggle for the body that makes sexuality a political problem]” ( , ). sexuality as a topic of investigation in both works is a mechanism for calling into question the production of subjectivity that was typical of that historical moment. the dictatorship aimed to construct a disciplined, moral body, a submissive worker. the strug- gle to liberate desire and pleasure undertaken by these works is part and parcel of a global strategy to subvert dictatorial power and to recover the body. in this way, above and beyond the fact that these artistic productions had a troubled relationship with left-wing anti-imperialist militants, utopian subversion operated in favor of the revolutionary process people were at- tempting to develop, given that, as muñoz states, “utopian feelings” are “indispensable to the act of imaging transformation” ( , ). notes . editor’s note: see the article by victoria fortuna in this issue. . the revolución argentina, which lasted from to , did not manage to deploy the same level of repressive violence as the last argentine dictatorship, known as proceso de reorganización nacional (process of national reorganization), which happened between and . this latter period is characterized by the exercise of state terrorism, wrongly called “dirty war,” which led to the unlawful disappearance of , citizens. the idea of a “dirty war” matches the discourse used by the conservative right to justify the state terrorism employed by the last dictatorship. it is presented as an acceptable combat strategy in the context of an “in- ternal war” against subversion. as was shown by means of the juicio a las juntas (trial of the juntas), the trial of the military leadership in charge of the proceso de reorganización nacional, held in during the democratic government of raúl alfonsín, the military had at its disposal all the apparatus of the state and its resources to prosecute and imprison those they called “subversives” without the need to resort to the illicit use of torture, kidnapping, and clandestine drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core detention of citizens. it is through the demonstration of these facts that the military leaders of the proceso were condemned and sent to prison by a civilian court. thus, to conceive of state terrorism in terms of a “dirty war” implies a discoursal endorsement of the illicit actions of the dictatorship. . after the coup against perón in , a decree was enacted banning the mention of perón and evita’s names and the emblems of the justicialist party. this ban ended in . . criterio, april , . . siete días ilustrados, december , , . . the di tella institute was a charitable center for cultural research that was in operation in buenos aires between and . during the s it was considered an icon of the argentine artistic avant-garde and counterculture. its relations with the de facto government of juan carlos onganía were extremely tense. the dance performances took place essentially in the context of its centro de experimentación audiovisual (cea, center for audiovisual experimentation); see king ( ). . marta minujín is to this day one of the country’s most celebrated plastic artists. she became known through avant-garde works—conceptual, pop, and performance art—from the s to the s. . primera plana, no. , august , , – . . ibid., . . ana kamien is a choreographer with an intense artistic activity in the field of experimental dance from the s to the s. along with marilú marini, she was an important presence at the cea attached to the di tella institute; see isse moyano ( , – ). . siete días ilustrados, december , , . . the composer alberto ginastera was director of the centro latinoamericano de altos estudios musicales (claem, latin american center for advanced music studies) attached to the di tella institute. the censoring of bomarzo made it difficult for him to obtain the grants need- ed to keep the center going. . criterio, no. , august , , . . primera plana, no. , may , , . in fact, the magazine primera plana was also censored between november and september . during that period, its journalists pub- lished a weekly magazine called periscopio. . author interview with oscar aráiz, march , . . translator’s note: the spanish title of the article contains a pun based on the spanish title of the rite of spring, the first word of which also means “consecration.” . panorama, no. , august , . . interview with oscar aráiz by beatriz kriger and francisco josé garcía in for an un- published work that is in the centro de documentación de teatro y danza del complejo teatral de buenos aires. . primera plana, no. , june , , . . after itelman’s death, her archive, which contains notebooks with annotations, drawings, and different notes referring to her works, was given to the centro de documentación de teatro y danza del complejo teatral de buenos aires. . ruben szuchmacher is a major argentine theater director and regisseur who has been in- tensely active artistically from the s up to the present day. his connection with ana itelman began when he was one of her students, and he ended up as her collaborator in her later years. in , he was awarded a grant from the antorchas foundation to do research into the life and work of choreographer that became the book archivo itelman (szuchmacher ). . author interview with josé carlos campitelli, august , . . this account emerged from an interview by the author with doris petroni on september , . . buenos aires herald, february , . drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core works cited agamben, giorgio. . potentialities: collected essays in philosophy. stanford, ca: stanford university press. andújar, andrea, débora d’antonio, fernanda gil lozano, karin grammático, and maría laura rosa (comp.). . de minifaldas, militancias y revoluciones. buenos aires: ediciones luxemburg. aráiz, oscar. . “el comienzo.” in ballet contemporáneo: años en el san martín, edited by eduardo rovner, – . buenos aires: teatro municipal general san martín. avellaneda, andrés. . censura, autoritarismo y cultura: argentina, – , buenos aires: centro editor de américa latina. buch, esteban. . “el caso bomarzo: Ópera y dictadura en los años sesenta.” boletín del instituto de historia argentina y americana “dr. emilio ravignani” : – . ———. . the bomarzo affair: Ópera, perversión y dictadura, buenos aires: adriana hidalgo editora. calvera, leonor. . mujeres y feminismo en la argentina. buenos aires: grupo editor latinoamericano. dolan, jill. . utopia in performance: finding hope at the theater. michigan: university of michigan press. dorin, patricia. . “legados y continuidades: derivaciones de una danza de expresión en argentina.” in pensar con la danza, edited by carlos e. sanabria bohórquez and ana c. Ávila pérez, – . bogotá: universidad jorge tadeo lozano-ministerio de cultura de colombia. falcoff, laura. . “la danza moderna y contemporánea.” in historia general de la danza en la argentina, edited by beatriz durante, – . buenos aires: fondo nacional de las artes. felitti, karina. . la revolución de la píldora: sexualidad y política en los sesenta. buenos aires: edhasa. fortuna, victoria. . “poner el cuerpo: buenos aires contemporary dance and the politics of movement.” phd diss., northwestern university. foucault, michel. . “sexuality and power.” in religion and culture edited by j. carrette, – . manchester, england: manchester university press. ———. . “sexualité et politique.” in michel foucault, dits et écrits i, – . paris: gallimard. franko, mark. . “dance and the political: states of exception.” dance research journal, ( & ): – . garcía canclini, néstor. . hybrid cultures: strategies for entering and leaving modernity. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. graham-jones, jean. . exorcising history: argentine theater under dictatorship. london: associated university presses. gusdorf, georges. . mito y metafísica: introducción a la filosofía, buenos aires: nova. herrera, maria josé. . pop! la consagración de la primavera, buenos aires: fund. osde. invernizzi, hernán, and judith gociol. . un golpe a los libros: represión a la cultura durante la última dictadura military. buenos aires: eudeba. isse moyano, marcelo. . la danza moderna argentina cuenta su historia: historias de vida. buenos aires: artes del sur. kaehler, silvia. . asociación amigos de la danza. – . buenos aires: libros del rojas. kehrer, brigitte. . “promenade au pays d’araiz.” in oscar araiz: carnets de danse, genève – , edited by serge buffat, – . geneva: favre. king, john. . el di tella y el desarrollo cultural argentino en la década del sesenta. buenos aires: asunto impreso. longoni, ana. . vanguardia y revolución: arte e izquierdas en la argentina de los sesenta-setenta. buenos aires: ariel. longoni, ana, and mariano mestman. . del di tella a “tucuman arde”: vanguardia artística y política en el argentino. buenos aires: eudeba. mafud, julio. . la revolución sexual argentina, buenos aires: americalee. drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core muñoz, josé esteban. . cruising utopia: the then and there of queer futurity, new york: new york university press. osswald, denise. . “las narrativas de ‘las pioneras’: cuestiones de género y moralidades en el desarrollo de la danza moderna en la argentina ( – ).” revista latinoamericana de estudios sobre cuerpos, emociones y sociedad : – . perlongher, néstor. . prosa plebeya: ensayos – . buenos aires: colihue. pujol, sergio. . “rebeldes y modernos: una cultura de los jóvenes.” in nueva historia argentina: violencia, proscripción y autoritarismo ( – ), edited by daniel james, – . buenos aires: editorial sudamericana. ricoeur, paul. . lectures on ideology and utopia. new york: columbia university press. sidicaro, ricardo. . “coaliciones golpistas y dictaduras militares: el ‘proceso’ en perspectiva comparada.” in empresarios, tecnócratas y militares: la trama corporativa de la última dictadura, edited by alfredo pucciarelli, – . buenos aires: siglo xxi. szuchmacher, rubén. . archivo itelman: textos de ana itelman. buenos aires: eudeba. tambutti, susana. . “entre el riesgo y la esperanza.” in aa. vv., siglo xx argentino: arte y cultura, – . buenos aires: centro cultural recoleta. taylor, diana. . disappearing acts: spectacles of gender and nationalism in argentina’s “dirty war.” durham and london: duke university press. tortti, cristina. . “protesta social y nueva izquierda en la argentina del gran acuerdo nacional.” in la primacía de la política, edited by alfredo pucciarelli, – . buenos aires: eudeba. vujanović, ana. . “notes on the politicality of contemporary dance.” in dance, politics & co-immunity, edited by gerald siegmund and stefan hölscher, – . zurich and berlin: diaphanes. , drj / • august https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core 	dance, sexuality, and utopian subversion under the argentine dictatorship of the s: the case of oscar aráiz's the rite of spring and ana itelman's phaedra 	dictatorship and utopian subversion 	the san martín ballet (el ballet del san martín) 	censorship 	the rite of spring 	phaedra 	the finale 	notes 	works cited pianola paper b w this is a pre-publication version of tim armstrong, ‘player piano: poetry and sonic modernity’, modernism-modernity : ( ): - . player piano: poetry and sonic modernity tim armstrong the problem addressed in this essay is that of the poetic impact of recorded sound; and more specifically the connection between recorded sound, music and poetry. this is not, according to one way of thinking an inevitable connection, for in the gramophone and its successor devices the modern world has a way of recording not just the discrete tones of music but all sounds, the messy glissandi and dissonances of the natural world. in douglas kahn’s account of the move towards sonic transcription – and this is also implicit in the work of richard leppert, friedrich kittler and other recent media theorists – devices like the gramophone and edouard léon scott’s earlier phonautograph ( ) means that the musical model for sonic reception which runs from aristotle to helmholtz must be rejected in order to open up the regime of sonic modernity, characterized by what kahn calls ‘all sound’ including noise: beginning in the late eighteenth and pervading the nineteenth century, three new inscriptive practices as applied to sound – graphic techniques in general, visible sound techniques, and automatic recording instruments as represented by the phonautograph and phonography – contributed to a loosening up of the reliance of acoustics on music. a plethora of lines made sound tangible and textual by making the invisible visible and holding the time of sound still. for kittler, in a parallel fashion, this is the shift from the note to the frequency; from the arts to media. but that seems to me a premature judgement, or at least one which ignores the possibility that music itself already carries the notion of redeemed time later attached to the gramophone. this essay aims to examine that possibility – in which music is already a technology – and its metaphoric location in the player piano, a device which might be approached in the spirit of walter benjamin’s suggestion that technologies become most interesting at the point of their obsolescence. we can begin with three moments. our first stop is a study in wandsworth, south london, in the summer of . a man suddenly rises from his desk and dashes out. as he describes it, in a sentence which comes as a mechanical rush of syllables: he had heard a street barrel-organ of the kind that used to be called a ‘harmoniflute’, playing somewhere near at hand the very quadrille over which the jaunty young man who had reached the end of his time at hicks’s had spread such a bewitching halo more than twenty years earlier by describing the glories of dancing round to its beats on the cremorne platform or at the argyle rooms, and which hardy had never been able to identify. thomas hardy, for it is he, goes on to describe how that haunting dance tune was brought down to dorset around by the ‘jaunty young man’; when hardy moved to london he searched for the music, without success. now here it is outside his door, albeit in a flattened guise – the organ- grinder has little english and can only point at the marking on the organ: ‘quadrille’. our second stop is again in london, the silenus beer-hall, that hangout of suspicious characters – two of whom, a small shabby man and a younger yellow-haired man, are plotting over their ale. in the corner an ‘upright semi-grand piano’ suddenly lurches into life, its playerless keys moving up and down to a variety of popular tunes – mazurkas, airs. this is the player piano of conrad’s the secret agent ( ), an obscurely potent symbol for evacuated meanings and automaticity which returns at the novel’s end as a suitable chorus for ossipon’s derangement of memory, his obsessive repetition of that journalistic phrase about the ‘impenetrable mystery’ surrounding winnie’s suicide. our third stop is an old poet, meditating in his study in hartford, connecticut in the dark days of the second world war on those ‘times of inherent excellence’ when the world collects itself. this is the formula he arrived at incalculable balances, at which a kind of swiss perfection comes and a familiar music of the machine sets up its schwärmerei, not balances that we achieve but balances that happen this is wallace stevens, who would declare that ‘the leaves were falling like notes from a piano’ – a declaration which, as we will see, evokes a history of thinking about sonic transcription. all these passages allude to the history of mechanical music which comes to fruition in the player piano, developed in the s and entering many bourgeois homes in the period from to the mid s. at that point sales collapsed; many instruments used in popular post-war ‘piano- smashing’ charity events were pianolas. the player piano, and especially the self-powered ‘reproducing piano’ launched by edwin welte in , occupies an important place in the history of technology: a place between the formal sonority of music epitomized by the piano, on the one hand, and the possibilities of storing sound offered by the phonograph, gramophone, and optical soundtrack on the other. when shellac was in its scratchy, dim and shortwinded infancy, the perforated rolls of the reproducing piano offered, within the constraints of the instrument, the actual keyboarding of rachmaninoff or paderewski, a ghostly virtuoso performance, including ‘not only the correct pitches and rhythms, but also those elements which comprise the expressive rendering of the piece’. leopold godowsky could be depicted listening to his ghostly doppleganger at a ‘companion concert’ (first the artist; then his performance on a roll). ‘the performance of a master becomes the possession of the centuries’, as one pianola advert put it. like the gramophone, this offered a real-time transcription of a sonic world, though one (and this is its mediatory characteristic) still tied to the discrete notes of the musical scale and to a human inputting – tied to the human hand. no wonder that adorno was fascinated by the barrel-organ as the harbinger of modernity; no wonder that modernist composers like stravinsky and nancarrow were attracted to the pianola; or that the american ‘systems’ novelist william gaddis collected thousands of pages of notes on its history, condensed in his posthumous novella, agapē agape ( ), a bitter tirade on the mechanization of cultural production. the sarcasm of pound’s ‘mauberley’ – ‘the pianola “replaces” / sappho’s barbitos’ – is one point of reference; though pound also suggests some of the tensions in this field, later praising the avant-garde, technology-laden music of george antheil for its sonic modernity, included low frequencies that ‘are merely noises that have not been considered as sonority’. why is the recording of sound such an important issue? we need to remember that in the nineteenth century, sound offers a paradigmatic image of the dispersal of energy and the thematics of decline which flowed from understandings of the second law of thermodynamics. the stone dropped in the pond; the cry which echoes and fades; the absent voices of the dead – emblems of entropy, of the heat-death applied to social life more generally in texts like the secret agent. for conrad’s professor this takes on a sonic edge: ‘the sound of exploding bombs’ is his attempt to punctuate a world; he fears that these too are ‘lost in their immensity of passive grains [mankind] without an echo’ (ch. ). at the same time, the dream of recuperating those losses, and the related dream of binding the energies of sound into a permanent form, has a long history. kahn cites charles babbage’s ninth bridgewater treatise ( ), which depicts sounds forever circling the earth, the atoms of the air carrying the minute trace of every human cry – there to be heard if only one had the means. this is echoed a century later by the professor in djuna barnes’s last-published story, ‘the perfect murder’ ( ): … after all, his mistress was sound, that great band of sound that had escaped the human throat for over two thousand years. could in be re-captured (as marconi thought it might) what would come to the ear? no theories for or against; no words of praise or of blame, only a vast terrible lamentation which would echo like the ‘baum!’ of the malabar caves. for after all what does man say when it comes right down to it? ‘i love, i fear, i hunger, i die.’ in order to see why the development of recorded music offered by the historically specific transcription technology of the player piano is relevant to this dream, we need to trace a pre-history of sound, beginning with schopenhauer. schopenhauer and music schopenhauer was the first philosopher to place embodied experience – and thus energetics – at the centre of any analysis of thinking; and to see thought in terms of the uncertainties of physiology and temporality, an uneven flow modulated by body’s rhythms and contingencies. rationality, for schopenhauer, is subordinated to the desire which is the will. as jonathan crary points out, in his theory of consciousness ‘time .. has none of its kantian characteristics: there is no longer any guarantee of the contents of consciousness’. instead of the kantian synthesis there is a chaotic struggle to deal with the thronging world of sensation, emotion and thought, and to rise into the world of the ideal. at the same time, it is the body which offers the best route to understanding the will which underlies appearance: the body is the aspect of the will given to us as an immediate perception. so while schopenhauer follows kant in linking the aesthetic to notions of detachment; and while he seems an idealist, in fact his work contains a powerfully opposed impulse: the suggestion that all perception is physiologically determined, and that the body’s drives are the truth of human life. this also makes him the first philosopher of limitation; of perspectivism in nietzsche’s sense. for schopenhauer music is the greatest of the arts, because it is music which conveys the struggles of the embodied will. music is independent of the world of ideas; of representation. it offers ‘the copy of the will itself, whose objectivity the ideas are’. which is to say that music presents rather than represents the travails of the will: ‘the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself’. or rather, since music can have an allegorical relation to the world of idea, it is music which enables him to forge a bridge between the embodiment of perception and intellectual self- consciousness, between being (will) and representation (idea). in this scheme, music cannot provide a representation of an actual moment; what it transmits is the human struggle to make sense of time: all possible efforts, excitements, and manifestations of will, all that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling, may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universal, in the mere form, without the material, always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon, the inmost soul, as it were, of the phenomenon, without the body. (wwi ) this sounds fine, but clearly it is music’s relation to the body, and its reception by the body, which enables it to transmit the pulsations of the will. as schopenhauer makes clear in his supplementary remarks, music mimics the interplay between dissatisfaction or longing and satisfaction which characterizes the individual will. he writes that in our alienation from the natural world the will is aroused and energised, allowing us to become ‘the trembling thing that is stretched and twanged’ (wwi : ); and it is this painful struggle which music manages to objectify via a kind of twanging resonance in the listener. the relation between music and temporality is thus a problematic one: music cannot in theory convey the specifics of a particular moment; indeed schopenhauer describes it as the universalia ante rem; a predictive template that can be attached to later occasions, like mozart used for a film. for that reason, schopenhauer’s conception of music is resolutely undialectical: he has little to say about musical development, outside the notion of a rising upwards towards the ideal. but at the same time music does convey the human struggle to structure temporality. and when schopenhauer discusses melody, he does so it a way which does – despite strictures against representation and program music – firmly suggest a transmission of embodied existence: as he [man] alone, because endowed with reason, constantly looks before and after on the path of his actual life and its innumerable possibilities, and so achieves a course of life which is intellectual, and therefore connected as a whole; corresponding to this, i say, the melody has significant intentional connection from beginning to end. it records, therefore, the history of the intellectually enlightened will. this will expresses itself in the actual world as the series of its deeds; but melody says more, it records the most secret history of his intellectually-enlightened will, pictures every excitement, every effort, every movement of it, all that which the reason collects under the wide and negative concept of feeling, and which it cannot apprehend further through its abstract concepts. (wwi ) the terms used here – ‘record’, ‘pictures’ and ‘expresses’ – have alternative renderings: schopenhauer’s most recent translator uses ‘tells the story of’, ‘depicts’ and ‘imprints itself on’. nevertheless they suggest an embodied ‘copying’. schopenhauer’s insistence that musical genius does its work in a state which he describes as akin to the mesmerized subject, ‘far from all reflection and conscious intention’ (wwi ), reinforces this, since mesmerism itself is linked to notions of transmission and the exchange of bodies. schopenhauer thus bequeaths a series of topics – music as emotion; music as mediation; music as temporal struggle – to the tradition which follows, as well as a series of questions: in what sense is music historical? what does it transmit? what is the relationship between its formal inscription (the idea) vs. performance (the will; the body)? helmholtz’s pianistic ear if one asks ‘what is the instrument was which enables the transmission of embodied experience hinted at by schopenhauer?’, one answer is ‘the human piano’. or at least, that is the image that structures hermann von helmholtz’s hugely influential investigations of hearing in on the sensations of tone ( ) and related lectures. sound-recognition in helmholtz’s view involves a complex analysis in which complex and compound wave forms are recognized by the ear and rendered in terms of their constituent waves – ‘upper partials’ and ‘harmonic overtones’ – an analysis expressed mathematically in fourier’s theorem, which states that any complex periodic wave-form can be analysed into a series of sinusoidal components. the ear is different from the eye in this respect: the eye cannot ‘see’ the underlying wave-forms as the ear can; it has no equivalent to the sense of harmony produced by the ear’s recognition of mathematically related pitches. that sense of harmony is fundamental to helmholtz: he has no interest in noise, in a-musical tone. it is this focus on the tone which informs helmholtz’s description of the ear as a fourier analyser, which centres on the piano both as analytic device and model. in ‘the physiological causes of harmony in music’ helmholtz describes his experiments with the undamped piano used as a resonator, alongside the amplifying glass ball known as the ‘helmholtz resonator’ and the human voice. when he comes to describe the operation of the ear, the piano is employed to describe both its architecture and its workings. the ear is likened to a huge and complex set of resonating piano keys, ‘tuned to a certain tone like the strings of a piano’. the , -odd arches of the cochlea – corti’s arches – are described as ‘lying orderly beside each other, like the keys of a piano in the whole length of the partition of the cochlea’ (see fig ). this is a description of the pianistic ear taken up by subsequent english commentators like james sully and john broadhouse: like a piano, the sensitive human apparatus resonates to the music of existence . the notion of mechanical resonance is what allows the idealistic, indeed in some respects schopenhauerian, view of music as the transmission of emotional experience which helmholtz elsewhere expresses, for example in concluding ‘the physiological causes’: now gently gliding, now gracefully leaping, now violently stirred, penetrated or laboriously contending with the natural expression of passion, the stream of sound, in primitive vivacity, bears over into the hearer’s soul unimagined moods which the artist has overheard from his own, and finally raises him up to that repose of everlasting beauty of which god has allowed but few of his elect favourites to be the heralds. helholtz seems to intend this as a trans-historical contact; a counter to time’s arrow (he was never keen on kelvin’s theory of entropy). to see this notion of historical resonance at work, one has only to turn to his lecture ‘on the conservation of force’, where helmholtz distinguishes the physicist’s ‘conformity with law’ from the human energy carried by art and music: every great deed of which history tells us, every mighty passion which art can represent, every picture of manners, of civic arrangements, of the cultures of peoples of distant lands, or of remote times, seizes and interests us, even if there is no exact scientific connection among them. we continually find points of contact and comparison in our own conceptions and feelings; we get to know the hidden capacities and desires of the mind, which in the ordinary peaceful course of civilized life remain unawakened. music carries the secret history of the self. helmholtz thus has a conception of music, i would argue – and i am aware that this is simplifying a complex body of thought – in which the mechanical and ideal interlock around the notion of resonance and tone: tone is embodied music; feeling can be carried across time by music. if the interlocking of these ideas can appear forced, it is into the gap between them – between recording and production – that the pianola might be inserted. the player piano is important because the piano provides, as we have already seen, a way of thinking about tone and resonance which is tuned to the human apparatus; and because it is a device which offers to store a transcription of the human response to the world of the kind suggested by schopenhauer. the instrument with a memory let us continue with hardy. as i suggested earlier, sound is a dubious vehicle for incarnating memory, since it the late nineteenth century it is persistently linked to entropic fade. at the same time, music is persistently linked to memory in hardy’s work; to the ‘storage’ of impulses and their transport across personal and collective history. hardy’s poem ‘in a museum’ expresses this problem, comparing a fossil trace with music in the memory: i here’s the mould of a musical bird long passed from light, which over the earth before man came was winging; there’s a contralto voice i heard last night, that lodges in me still with its sweet singing. ii such a dream is time that the coo of this ancient bird has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that i heard, in the full-fugued song of the universe unending. the passage here is uneasy: the fossil serves as a vehicle of a metaphor in which all sound might be recovered. it moves from individual sonic memory to sonic radiation and universal sonic survival in the manner of babbage. but what hardy is imagining is, i would suggest, the realm of musical storage suggested by his barrel-organ story; that is of memory which might be carried outside the human frame. another way in which the status of recorded sound is implicit in hardy is in a series of poems about music with a memory: poems in which he evokes the instruments themselves; instruments which remember the fingering of their players and occasions they played at. in an essay entitled ‘magic rattle and human harp’, the weimar critic ernst bloch, describes the progress of music from the primitive and sensual to the rational and abstract. in origin, he argues, the musical instrument is not dissociated from the music which it produces: ‘sound is a property of the instrument and is objectively bound to it’. the primitive instrument so conceived has magical powers: it can cure the sick and drive away spirits; like the totem it speaks to its audience. subsequently, as he puts it, music becomes formalized and ‘the sound climbs out of the instrument, so to speak, treating it merely as a means to an end; the musical notes break loose from the chiming bells and ringing bronze’. music replaces the ‘magical substance consisting of sound’, creating an abstract world. bloch adds, ‘no one has ventured to “re-enchant” musical instruments’. but that is something like what hardy does in poems like ‘haunting fingers’, subtitled ‘a phantasy in a museum of musical instruments’. the poem dwells on the memory of the fingers which played over their surfaces: and they felt past handlers clutch them, though none was in the room, old player’s dead fingers touch them, shrunk in the tomb. (cp ) one could place alongside this a cancelled stanza from hardy’s great poem on the traces of the past in objects, ‘old furniture’ (cp ). they follow a stanza in which dancing fingers on an ‘old viol’ are again invoked, and here too music as language is involved. he is thinking of his father’s violin: from each curled eff-hole the ghosts of ditties incanted there by his skill in his prime quaver in whispers the pangs and pities they once could language, and in their time would daily chime. in such poems on the instrument-with-a-memory, and in other fictional and autobiographical stories, hardy imagines the ontological realm of recorded music: music detached from its producer. at times such music can seem mechanical and abstract, as it is in conrad and to some extent in hardy’s harmoniflute story – in which the origins of the music are lost; indeed in which it threatens to represent a commodified mass culture, like the mechanical organ which replaces the church choir in one of his stories. but elsewhere it is a kind of impersonal memory which is involved; an inscription which in some senses fulfils the promise of storage offered by the fossil bird, while also preserving the schopenhaurian trace of the will’s struggle, the language of ‘pangs and pities’. it is interesting in this respect to turn to adorno, whose critiques of the culture industry are better know than his more sympathetic accounts of recorded music. in his essay ‘the form of the phonograph record’ ( ) he argues that the phonograph record ‘petrifies’ the actuality of the performance it records; that it, it turns it into a speaking monument or an impression like hardy’s fossilized bird. but at the same time, adorno sees something else in this dead storage: recorded music saves the past, returning it to the status of text: there is no doubt that, as music is removed by the phonograph record from the realm of live production and from the imperative of artistic activity and becomes petrified, it absorbs into itself, in this process of petrification, the very life that would otherwise vanish. the dead art rescues the ephemeral and perishing art as the only one alive. therein may lie the phonograph record’s most profound justification, which can not be impugned by any aesthetic objection to its reification. for this justification re-establishes by the very means of reification an age-old, submerged and yet warranted relationship: that between music and writing. musical notation is not what adorno has in mind here; rather, both the actual direct transcription of sound – the trace of the needle on the record – and something fuller and more experiential, open to constant re- interpretation. implicitly, i think, adorno is using the metaphor of writing to hand music back to the listener. in terms of historicity, recorded music saves the past; but in providing an indexical trace of a passage of time, a snapshot of the reified moment in which the musical text is realized and written into the medium within a specific acoustic environment, it also challenges the listener to open up the past and inhabit it as an objectified phenomena. if we ask ‘where is the stored music in hardy?’, the answer is ‘potentially everywhere that is human’: in music which floats through occasions; which haunts, in-habits, anticipates and echoes, structuring time for its makers and listeners. the most general version is the twanging or vibrating of being itself. at the end of the description of the dying in the walcheren marshes in the dynasts part second, the chorus of the pities offers a lament. the spirit of the years replies (as it always does) in lofty cadences, telling the chorus of pities to stop recording (storing, repeating, writing down) this human music: spirit of the years why must ye echo as mechanic mimes these mortal minions’ bootless cadences, played on the stops of their anatomy as is the mewling music on the strings of yonder ship-masts by the unweeting wind, or the frail tune upon this withering sedge that holds its papery blades against the gale? the spirit of the years insist that all passes away, ‘whether ye sigh their sighs with them or no!’ the ‘mechanic mime’ here is the sound of a recorded music; and to open himself to this sound, the sound of human experience, is among hardy’s most fundamental aims – an aim which places him on the cusp of modernity. twanging resonance to illustrate more fully the way in which a schopenhauerian understanding of music, for all its problems, might be connected to notions of pianistic inscription and memory, i want to turn to wallace stevens. stevens is a poet whose frequent use of musical tropes owes a good deal to schopenhauer (as, arguably, do some of his other figures – crystal, clouds). the connection is acknowledged: stevens describes reading schopenhauer in a journal entry, and praises him over years later in his essay ‘a collect of philosophy’ (cp ). what we see in stevens is a movement from a focus on the musician in the earlier poetry, as in ‘peter quince at the clavier’, to a preoccupation with both what he calls the ‘fire’ of music – music rendered visible energy – and with forms of natural music. in his earlier work in particular, stevens often describes music in schopenhauerian terms: music is consolation, ‘the voice of this besieging pain’, that ‘by which sorrow is released, / dismissed, absolved / in a starry placating’ (‘mozart, ’, cp ); it is connected to pure sensation, as in ‘the man with the blue guitar’. the guitar after long strumming on certain nights gives the touch of the senses, not of the hand, but the very senses as they touch the wind-gloss. (cp ) the banging and striking; the tock of the instrument; the ‘buzzing’ which is life might be taken as representing the will in its animal state; before it climbs into abstraction. if for schopenhauer music is connected to the unconscious, in ‘notes’ music is ‘like a sense, / a passion that we feel, not understand’ (cp ). schopenhauer had written of the individual will as ‘the trembling thing that is stretched and twanged’. in ‘of modern poetry’ stevens writes that the actor is a metaphysician in the dark, twanging an instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly containing the mind, below which it cannot descend, beyond which is has no will to rise. (cp ) in ‘the owl in the sarcophagus’ this is ‘a likeness of the earth, / that by resemblance twanged him through and through’ (cp ). this is a twanging which is adequate to existence, mediating the world ‘below’ – the phenomenal world – and the world ‘above’, the ideal. in this poem, and indeed throughout stevens’s mature poetry, music serves an integrative function. the fact that ‘of modern poetry’ moves from the musical figure above to a resolving set of images – ‘a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman / combing’ – is characteristic of his use of music. indeed the movement between the three worlds suggested by ‘of modern poetry’ suggests a tripartite scheme repeated throughout stevens’s poetry, which i would describe in these terms: natural sound; music; and the inscribed music-image which pushes us towards the ontological realm of recorded sound. it is made explicit in the three sections of ‘certain phenomena of sound’. the first section describes the cycle of natural music – ‘the beating of the locust’s wings’ – with the comment that ‘it is safe to sleep to a sound that time brings back’. section ii describes the ‘slick sonata’ which is musical narrative, the story of a character called redwood roamer, which ‘makes music seem / to be a nature, a place in which itself / is that which produces everything else’ (cp ). but the third section seems to veer away into the visual, in that mysterious evocation of semiramide, rossini’s operatic heroine, and the euphonious eulalia, for whom naming is being – ‘there is no life except in the word of it’. this three-part scheme responds, i think, to a temporal predicament. in nineteenth-century psychophysics, the world is in an important sense a retrospective construction, seen under the sign of loss: sundered from us by the mechanisms of perception, with their processing-speeds, reaction-times; and constrained by the limits of perception. stevens, familiar with these ideas from william james and others, makes the point in ‘a collect of philosophy’ ( ), as it happens in the middle of his discussion of schopenhauer: according to the traditional views of sensory perception, we do not see the world immediately but only as the result of a process of seeing and after the completion of that process, that is to say, we never see the world except the moment after. thus, we are constantly observing the past. (cp ) stevens meditates in this manner for some pages, citing (from jean paulhan) a version of ernst mach’s radical descriptionism: the belief that science makes rather than reflects a world. poetic perception is in this view necessarily characterized by two things: a temporal disjunction; and the synthetic creation rather than the reception of an image. thus the declaration of ‘an ordinary evening’ that the leaves in the wind – and his own poem, since that is the parallel offered – are ‘the mobile and immobile flickering / in the area between is and was’. this formula suggest the space of the perceptive apparatus, of the mind; the processing which turns the ‘is’ of existence into the ‘was’ of representation and memory. this is also, in stevens as in schopenhauer, a space which music structures as an interplay of expectation and fulfillment. that is to say, music is a way of understanding the process in which the past of raw experience and the present of apprehension are bound together, rhythmicized, spatialized and stored in the mind. in describing schopenhauer’s account of perception, stevens cites from the crib he is using (roger’s a student’s history of philosophy) a striking metaphor: ‘the will is thus far deeper seated than the intellect; it is the blind man carrying on his shoulders the lame man who can see’ (cp ). the venerable metaphor of the blind man is picked up in a poem which had, some six years before ‘a collect’, taken up the issue of the disjunction of perception and the ‘real’ – ‘description without place’, his phi beta kappa poem at harvard. stevens wrote in a letter: ‘i am about to settle down to my subject: description without place … it seems to me to be an interesting idea: that is to say, the idea that we live in the description of a place and not the place itself, and in every vital sense we do.’ ‘description without place’ has often been interpreted as signalling a break with the real, inaugurating an idealism in which poetic description is privileged over actuality; even a flight from history. but it seems to me that stevens’s purpose is an analysis of the problem of perception as temporally mediated. he writes of the lesser seeming original in the blind forward of the eye that, in its backward, sees the greater seeming of the major mind. (cp ) this is to say that ‘blind’ perception, or what he calls ‘flat appearance’ – looking sundered from actuality by the processes of perception itself – might be integrated, knitted with retrospection into in some total vision in which the temporal deficit of perception is overcome. in section iii of the poem, stevens expands on that vision in terms which refer us both to music and light: there are potential seemings, arrogant to be, as on the youngest poet’s page, or in the dark musician, listening to hear more brightly the contriving chords. there are potential seemings turbulent in the death of a soldier, like the utmost will, the more than human commonplace of blood, the breath that gushes upward and is gone, and another breath emerging out of death, that speaks for him such seemings as death gives. there might be, too, a change immenser than a poet’s metaphors in which being would come true, a point in the fire of music where dazzle yields to a clarity and we observe, and observing is completing and we are content, in a world that shrinks to an immediate whole, that we do not need to understand, complete without secret arrangements of it in the mind. (cp ) why might ‘the fire of music’ offer a completion of ‘observing’? firstly, because music, as in schopenhauer, carries the vital heat of being (‘the will is warmth, the intellect is light’); and secondly because, in the manner depicted by schopenhauer, it offers a an image of temporal integration, a melodic totality which binds together the far of the ideal and the near of the body. in ‘the owl in the sarcophagus’, stevens’s elegy for henry church, and therefore a poem concerned with remembrance and decay, the re-integration of perception is again figured in terms of music, memory and spatialized time. canto ostensibly describes church, conceiving his passage as into a time that of itself stood still, perennial, less time than place, less place than thought of place and if of substance, a likeness of the earth, that by resemblance twanged him through and through, releasing an abysmal melody, a meeting, and emerging in the light, a dazzle of remembrance and of sight. (cp ) i’ve already noted ‘twanged’ in this passage. harold bloom suggests that ‘“dazzle” is the key word in the canto – and indeed it repeats the ‘dazzle leads to clarity .. and observing is completed’ of ‘description without place’. ‘dazzle’ is a word which seems to describe the moment where music – signalling the temporal disconnections of perception and the integrations of memory – achieves an imagistic solidity, integrating the phenomenal and the world of mind as a presentation of being. in ‘the whole man: perspectives, horizons’ ( ), stevens would write that ‘the principle of music would be an addition to humanity if it were not humanity itself, in other than human form’ (cp ). in ‘the whole man: perspectives, horizons’ ( ), stevens would write that ‘the principle of music would be an addition to humanity if it were not humanity itself, in other than human form’ (cp ). inscription and storage we can, in a final step, move these images of music back towards notions of inscription, and to the overcoming of what ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’ describes as ‘the wasted figurations of the wastes / of night, time and the imagination’ (cp ), a correlative of hardy’s gramophonic record of being. to be sure, it is not that easy to find technological images for music in stevens – despite the fact that he was an avid record collector whose letters often reveal his listening habits: schönberg in ; mahler and berlioz a decade later. if we wanted to know what ‘pure’ storage is for stevens, we might turn to the ‘gramaphone’ [sic] of a typically cryptic poem ‘the search for sound free from motion’, which ‘parl-parled the west indian weather’. in contrast, you, you used the word, your self its honor. all afternoon the gramaphoon, all afternoon the gramaphoon, the world as word, parl-parled the west-indian hurricane. the world lives as you live, speaks as you speak, a creature that repeats its vital words, yet balances the syllable of a syllable. (cp - ) the irregular prefix shifts the instrument away from the line or trace of a stylus (gramo) to the letter (grama); from the dynamics of sound to writing. but this instrument, at once typhoon and technology, can only repeat the weather in a phonemically hollow and empty fashion; it is the human speaker who brings those words into balance and relation; into temporal difference. one name for that difference, i would suggest, is music. section xx of ‘an ordinary evening’ describes a transcription of being imbued with human feeling: the imaginative transcripts were like clouds today; and the transcripts of feeling, impossible to distinguish. the town was a residuum, a neuter shedding shapes in an absolute. yet the transcripts of when it was blue remain; and the shapes that it took in feeling …. (cp ) the cloud, for schopenhauer, represent the inconsequential world of phenomena, used in book of the world as will and idea to exemplify the distinction between the contingent and the essential: when the clouds move, the figures which they form are not essential, but indifferent to them; but that as elastic vapour they are pressed together, drifted along, spread out, or torn asunder by the force of the wind: this is their nature, the essence of the forces which objectify themselves in them, the idea; their actual forms are only for the individual observer. (wwi ) clouds as stochastic phenomena are like the life of mind – a confluence of atomic theory and psychology recently explored by daniel tiffany; they scatter, disperse, forever change. if the transcripts of mind are clouds, the transcripts of feeling are also men or actors – the point of interchange between these the air which is the ‘bare boards’ of ‘notes’ and ‘theatre floating through the clouds’ of ‘the auroras of autumn’ (cp ). or again in the late poem ‘artificial populations’, weather, the ‘weather’s appropriate people’ (an ‘artificial population’), and finally ‘music that last long and lives the more’ (cp ) – a triad of existence, humanity and integration again resolved in music. stevens’s late poems thus offer the hope that in music – the music of poetry – ‘the wasted figurations’ might be ‘saved and beholden’ (cp ); that we might convert the noise of weather into music: ‘the leaves were falling like notes from a piano’ (cp ). an ordinary evening’ culminates in the celebration of the less legible meanings of sounds, the little reds not often realized, the lighter words in the heavy drum of speech, the inner men behind the outer shields, the sheets of music in the strokes of thunder, dead candles at the window when day comes, fire-foams in the motions of the sea … (cp ) in a final section which both evokes either end of the electromagnetic spectrum – the little reds, the ‘spectrum of violet’ (like the ‘vanishing- vanished violet’ of ‘the own in the sarcophagus’) – and describes ‘a philosopher practicing scales on his piano’ ( ), what is wasted and what is saved is held in a delicate tension. the conclusion has often been depicted in terms of the buzzing new world of sub-atomic particles – of ‘a shade that traverses / a dust, a force that traverses a shade’, as the poem’s final lines describe reality – but the emphasis is on inscription; on written music rather than noise; or rather music as ‘noise emancipated’, to borrow benjamin’s description of jazz; noise taken up into composition, with ‘the process of production’ allowed to fall away. the notion of inscription is further explored in the poem which follows ‘notes’ in the auroras of autumn, ‘things of august’. in ‘things of august’ the possibility that the buzz of existence might be saved is implicit in the ‘instruments’ of poetry, a technology in which body and language are equated – in the sex of a spirit, or a spirit’s voices: nothing is lost, loud locusts. no note fails. these sounds are long in the living of the ear. the honkey-tonk out of the somnolent grasses is a memorizing, a trying out, to keep. (cp ) honkey-tonk ‘memorizing’ and keeping is, i like to think, close to the player-piano in its mechanics – a suggestion i don’t mean in a trivial sense; since it is at once a return and a recovery of being. the world is held still in the poem. in the late stevens we find a poet for whom the music of existence – the natural music of the red robin, weedy wren, loud locust as much as human song – can be repeated, for whom as he puts it near the end of ‘notes’, ‘the going round / and round and round, the merely going round’ is a measure of existence. and while the point about repetition is in essence a philosophical one, a point about the pleasure of the quotidian, it is also worth asking whether it also involves, as it does in hardy, a kind of musical technology inscribed within the poem. i began with the player piano – the instrument which stands on the brink of sonic modernity; which records sound but not ‘all sound’, retaining its link to the world of human music-making and helmholtz’s depicting sonic reception in terms of music and the piano. with schopenhauer’s description of music as the transcript of the temporal struggle of the will in mind, i considered what i called the ‘instrument with a memory’ in hardy, the music of being. finally, i looked at the binding function of music in stevens, its ability to integrate a world in which perception is afflicted with a splintered temporality; and looked at the notion of an inscription of natural music. in such cases, the dream that entropy may be overcome is sustained via notions of resonance and storage which draws us towards the notion of recorded music – the story whose first stop is the player piano, the instrument with a memory. this is, of course, rather different from the flat storage offered by the gramophone, which, to be sure, seems to offer in its inscription of sound into the groove a fuller realization of stevens’s title ‘the search for sound free from motion’ – kahn’s phrase was ‘holding the time of sound still’. but none of the authors i have considered wishes to evacuate the human producer or listener, the twanging resonator, from the circuit; which is to say that they conceive of sonic storage within what is at once a psychology of memory and a technopoesis, rather than an independent technology. the passage from stevens’s ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’ that i cited at the beginning, about ‘swiss perfection’ and ‘not balances / that we achieve but balances that happen’ is, i think, ultimately a description of a kind of serio- comic surrender to the machinery. readers may have detected a muted critique of the technological determinism and historical isolationism running through the work of kittler, kahn and other media theorists – muted because i think there is much of interest in their work and its reconceptualization of writing as media. but kittler’s final dream often appears to be that of machine talking to machine; indeed, the systems theorist niklas luhman goes so far as to claim that human beings do not communicate, only communication systems communicate – a version of the behaviorist critique of the ‘inner man’ explaining the workings of mind. despite the persuasiveness of this at the level of the system, the indifference of such thinking to the origins of any message in human beings suggests an evacuation of experience to which neither helmholtz, the great materialist himself, nor these two poets would have subscribed. for both, music is already a technology for the storage of experience, prior to the gramophone; offering the possibility that being might be formalized. ‘these sounds are long in the living of the ear’ writes stevens; and for the poetic tradition he perpetuates, it is the life which his lines carry. notes douglas kahn, ‘concerning the line’, from energy to information: representation in science and technology, art, and literature, ed. bruce clarke & linda dalrymple henderson (stanford: stanford university press, ), . friedrich a. kittler, gramophone, film, typewriter, trans. geoffrey winthrop-young and michael wutz (stanford: stanford university press, ), . examples of recent work inflected by this approach include lisa giltelman, scripts, groooves, and writing machines: representing technology in the edison era (stanford: stanford university press, ) and sara danius, the senses of modernism: technology, perception and aesthetics (ithaca: cornell university press, ). thomas hardy, the life and work of thomas hardy, ed. michael millgate (london: macmillan, ), . the material on hardy included here reworks part of an essay included in thomas hardy and contemporary literary studies, ed. tim dolin and peter widdowson (basingstoke: palgrave, ). joseph conrad, the secret agent: a simple tale, ed. john lyon (oxford: oxford university press, ), - , - . wallace stevens, collected poetry and plays, eds. frank kermode and joan richardson (new york: library of america, ), , . hereafter referred to as cp. see arthur w. j. g. ord-hume, pianola: the history of the self-player piano (london: george allen & unwin, ), esp. pp. - ; and kent a. holliday, reproducing pianos past and present (lampeter: mellen, ). holliday, reproducing pianos, , (the latter page reproduces godowsky in the first issue of the ampico magazine, ). cited in arthur w. j. g. ord-hume, clockwork music: an illustrated history of mechanical musical instruments from the musical box to the pianola (london: george allen & unwin, ), . william gaddis, agapē agape (london: atlantic books, ). ezra pound, ‘hugh selwyn mauberley’, personae: the shorter poems of ezra pound, rev. edn., ed. lea baechler & a walton litz. (new york: new directions, ), ; ezra pound machine art and other writings: the lost thought of the italian years. ed. maria luisa ardizzone (durham: duke university press, ), . douglas kahn, noise, water, meat: a history of sound in the arts (cambridge, ma: mit press, ), - . djuna barnes, ‘the perfect murder’, collected stories, ed. phillip herring (los angeles: sun & moon, ), . jonathan crary, suspensions of perception: attention, spectacle and modern culture (cambridge, ma: mit press, ), . arthur schopenhauer, the world as will and idea, vols., trans r. b. haldane and j. kemp (london: trübner, ), : . subsequently referred to in text as wwi (vol. unless indicated). hermann helmholtz, ‘the physiological causes of harmony in music’ ( ), in science and culture: popular and philosophical essays, ed. david cahan (chicago: university of chicago press, ), - ; cf. on the sensations of tone, rev. ed., trans. alexander j. ellis (london: longmans, green, ). ‘the physiological causes’, . this illustration appears both in ‘the physiological causes’, (fig. ), and on the sensations of tone, (fig. ); in the latter cf. also (fig. ) and . see e.g. john broadhouse, musical acoustics, or the phenomena of sound as connected with music (london: reeves, ). ‘the physiological causes’, . helmholtz, ‘on the conservation of force’ ( ), science and culture, . thomas hardy, collected poems, ed. james gibson (london: macmillan, ), . herafter referred to as cp, in text. ernst bloch, ‘magic rattle and human harp’, literary essays, trans. andrew joron et al. (stanford: stanford university press, ), . on hardy, schopenhauer and music, see mark asquith, thomas hardy, metaphysics and music (basingstoke: palgrave, ). theodor adorno, ‘the form of the phonograph record’ [ ], trans. thomas y. levin, october ( ), - ( cited). also in essays on music, ed. richard leppert, trans. susan h. gillespie et al. (berkeley: university of california press, ), - . this is clearer in his later essay on opera, in which he argues that the record allows a kitsch and stylised form to be objectified and re-interpreted: see essays on music, - . thomas hardy, the dynasts, ed. harold orel (london: macmillan, ), part second, iv viii, - . since frank doggett’s stevens’ poetry of thought ( ), stevens’s relation to schopenhauer has received little attention; a partial exception is bart eeckout, wallace sevens and the limits of reading and writing (colombia: university of missouri press, ), - . on mach’s influence on modernism generally, see michael h. whitworth, einstein’s wake: relativity, metaphor and modernist literature (oxford: oxford university press). letters of wallace stevens, ed. holly stevens (new york: knopf, ), . see alan filreis, wallace stevens and the actual world (princeton: princeton university press, ), - . harold bloom, wallace stevens: the poems of our climate (ithaca: cornell university press, ), . collected poems ( and subsequent printings) has ‘gramophone’ in the opening line; collected poetry and prose ‘corrects’ this to ‘gramaphone’ without editorial explanation. daniel tiffany, toy medium: materialism and modern lyric (berkeley: university of california press, ). walter benjamin, the arcades project, trans howard eiland and kevin mclaughlin (cambridge, ma: belknap press, ), . niklas luhmann, ‘how can the mind participate in communication?’ in materialities of communication, ed. hans ulrich gumbrecht and ludwig k. pfeiffer (stanford: stanford university press, ), - . crossbreeding atheism with spirituality: notes on soviet and western attempts introduction today, bookstores offer a multitude of books about spirituality and other self-help guides that are intended to help in finding meaning and fulfilment in life. most of these leave an impression of belonging to some sort of (quasi-)religion, but some of them – such as atheist spir- ituality, rediscovering spirituality in a material world, or a guide to spirituality without religion – seem to be just a materialized cognitive dissonance. taira’s ( ) state- ment, “it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the function of putting two catch-words in the title – atheism and spirituality – is to make it a more tempting choice in the bookshop,” seems like an adequate reaction. yet, along with the increasing visibility of the so-called “new” athe- ism and rise of the “nones” (voas ; woodhead ), there has also been a rise in visibility of secular “existential cultures” (lee ) that combine seemingly contradic- tory elements. for instance, since , under the head- ing of sunday assembly (bullock ), a group of atheists have gathered on sundays to hear spiritually uplifting speeches and sing together, something that seems much like a church-related practice. is it also a form of cognitive dissonance or does it point to a different understanding of spirituality – or of atheism? the tension lies in the fact that in western thought atheism is often accompanied by materialism, (ontologi- cal) naturalism, rationalism and other lines of thought that typically oppose religion and/or deny the possibil- ity of otherworldly existence. spirituality, on the other hand, is typically associated with religion, something oth- erworldly or transcendent, therefore “the entire line of ‘spiritual’ thinking” in association with secularity is often perceived “as nothing more than a metaphor run amok” (eller ). perhaps this is the reason why atheism in combination with spirituality has been largely neglected in academic research (exceptions include baggett ; caldwell-harris et al. ; schnell & keenan ; ; taira ). yet both atheism and spirituality serve as umbrella terms for a wide variety of attitudes, values, goals, beliefs, and ways of acting. for instance, in contemporary research literature, over different definitions of spirituality have been identified (skrzypińska : ), divided between two main understandings: “a watered down religion that has benefit only to the practitioner” or “providing a way to connect with the transcendent without the confinement of organized religion” (ecklund & long ). the understanding of atheism is perhaps even more complicated. many of its definitions bear “no straightfor- ward relationship to its strict etymology” (bullivant ), since atheism is culturally constructed (baggett ), and always rejecting a particular, culturally rooted concept of the divine (armstrong : xv–xiv). therefore, there is no uniform atheism; rather we can talk about different atheisms that vary in time and place. so far the study of atheism from a historical point of view has mostly focussed on how religion has been opposed. yet, is it possible that somewhere in the hotchpotch of ideas and traditions, “atheism” and “spirituality” are not at odds; where their combination is not only a metaphor and the two can have some sort of meaningful positive rela- tionship? a particular case from recent history attracted our attention: “spirituality” and “atheism” appear together in the case of late soviet atheism (cf. smolkin-rothrock ). this flooded us with many questions, and since it has been recently asked, “are there are some elements of scientific atheism that scholars in western europe remmel, a and sillfors, m. . crossbreeding atheism with spirituality: notes on soviet and western attempts. secularism and nonreligion, :  , pp.  – . doi: https://doi.org/ . /snr. * university of tartu, ee † university of helsinki, fi corresponding author: atko remmel (atko.remmel@ut.ee) research article crossbreeding atheism with spirituality: notes on soviet and western attempts atko remmel* and mikko sillfors† the recent “nonreligious turn” in studies of secularity has changed the focus from what secularity lacks in comparison to religion to what it offers as an alternative. various forms of nonreligion have been studied extensively in recent years, yet mostly in the contemporary western societies. this article shifts the context more to the east and also towards the history by comparing two instances when meaning-making gained a central position within an atheist tradition. for our first example, we examine the appeal to spirituality in the period of late soviet atheism; the second comes from contemporary western “atheist spirituality”. by studying the publications by relevant authors, the article explores what can be learned about atheism and spirituality from this comparison, how atheism and spirituality are understood and combined, and the reasons for the sudden emphasis on existential questions within an atheist tradition. https://doi.org/ . /snr. mailto:atko.remmel@ut.ee remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of and north america might actually learn from?” (alles ), we took on the endeavor of comparing contempo- rary atheist spirituality to the “spiritual turn” in the late soviet atheism and chose “what can be learned from that comparison?” for our main research question. in particu- lar, we are interested in how “spirituality” and ”atheism” are understood, what is their mutual relationship, what caused the sudden emergence of this combination and, finally, what does it tell us about the patterns of develop- ment of atheist traditions? our comparison is based on the analysis of relevant books. the “spiritual turn” in soviet atheism is addressed according to literature printed in soviet estonia, which offers a possibility of narrowing down the material and assessing the atheist propaganda in a particular cultural context. five books were analyzed: lutheranism earlier and now ( ) and indifference – is it good or bad ( ) by kuulo vimmsaare, and believers and communists ( ) by lembit raid, both prominent figures of athe- ism in the soviet estonia; and two collections of articles, both translated from russian: atheism, religion, morality ( ) and individual approach in atheist explanatory work ( ). all books belong to a certain version of “sci- entific atheism”, an almost unreadable genre of popular- scientific propaganda, meant for both common readers and propagandists. although there are minor differences, the books represent more or less similar understanding of both atheism and spirituality, and were selected because they were almost the only representatives of the soviet spiritual atheism in estonian context. this material is sup- ported by findings from soviet era archives in estonia. from the contemporary atheist spirituality, we examine three books written by atheists with a focus on spiritual- ity: the book of atheist spirituality: an elegant argument for spirituality without god ( ) by french philoso- pher andré comte-sponville; going godless: rediscovering spirituality in a material world ( ) by american com- puter programmer j. k. fausnight; and waking up: a guide to spirituality without religion ( ) by american neuroscientist and new atheist sam harris. the selection criteria were that the authors consider themselves as athe- ists, the word “spirituality” is included in the books’ titles, and the focus of the books is on aspects of spirituality. since we are interested in how different concepts are described and tied together, our attention is on argumen- tation. we do not assess the lived experiences of spiritual atheism or the success of either tradition since life is too multi-layered and the impact of the texts can be much more complicated than one might expect from ideologi- cal texts of the past empire or from the contemporary self- help genre. so, without any further ado, we now jump to our case studies and discuss our findings later. soviet atheism à la estonia atheism in the soviet context did not have a uniform meaning; the use of the word depended on the context. in communist party materials, atheism implied a militant attitude toward religion, as well as the propaganda of athe- ism, often in a form of secular rituals. in other contexts, the term was used for state policy that originated from atheist ideology. thus, atheism also implied an action deriving from a philosophical position. in common usage atheism was understood as a mere lack of religion (rem- mel ). “scientific atheism” referred to a semi-scien- tific discipline for studying religion and atheism, with the goal of assisting the disappearance of religion (kääriäinen : ), also described as a conviction about the nonex- istence of god that is based on three pillars: science, mate- rialist philosophy, and personal experience (vimmsaare : – ). although the banner of atheism flew above the soviet union from its beginning until its end, the attitude towards religion and the effort the state expended in athe- ist propaganda was dependent on time, place, and indi- viduals who were in charge at the local level. therefore, despite the centralized system, the situation across the soviet union varied to some extent. in this article we focus on atheism in the estonian soviet socialist republic. as a non-russian speaking and historically lutheran part of the empire, atheist propaganda in estonia was somewhat isolated and entirely dependent on the activity of local activists of atheism, and translations from russian. yet, the situation was still influenced by the same currents that influenced the soviet union in general; however, what is said here about soviet atheism is just one reflection of the overall trends, and its reverse engineering into the general soviet religious situation should be done with care. estonia was occupied by the soviet union during – and then again in – , thus eluding the experience of soviet militant atheism of the s and s (see husband ; peris ). after the second world war, until the end of stalin’s reign in , athe- ist propaganda was secondary, so estonia only became acquainted with “scientific atheism” (discussed below) when khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign started in the late s (anderson ). in order to create a “new soviet man”, the remnants of “bourgeois ideology” – including religion – needed to be overcome. during the atheist campaign, many methods were implemented: from more hidden ones, such as administrative and eco- nomic measures, to more visible ones, such as intensified propaganda through printed media, atheist lectures and soviet secular rituals (remmel ). the campaign ended in – religion no longer posed an institutional threat (luehrmann : ) – but it was evident that creating an atheist society in one fell swoop was impossible and other tactics were needed. at the same time, soviet atheism had its own problems. despite being called “scientific”, atheist propaganda was characterized by low level argumentation, a militant atti- tude and monotonous messages (cf. smolkin-rothrock ), consisting mostly of mocking clerics, ridiculing reli- gion through contrasting it to science, and so on, result- ing in atheist propaganda acquiring a bad reputation. for instance, a lecture held in the stalin kolkhoz in orissaare, estonia, was delivered so poorly that “of the peo- ple who attended the lecture, only two stayed until the end—the local chairman and his deputy” (mets ). this example should not be overgeneralized, but “the need to remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spirituality art.  , page  of raise the scientific-ideological level of atheism” remained a constant topic in the discussions among leading propa- gandists of atheism (remmel : – ). an even bigger problem was the apparent success of the anti-religious campaign. religion was banished to the periphery, but without a visible enemy, atheist propa- ganda was considered an “empty and pointless struggle” (efa ), not only among common people but also among party officials (smolkin : ), and even ridiculed (valton ). by the end of the s, estonian propa- gandists of atheism admitted “a stagnation in atheist thinking”, proposing ironically that “perhaps atheists have nothing more to laugh at” (era ). concurrently, it became evident to soviet scholars that not all nonbelievers were atheists as was previ- ously thought. many cared neither about religion nor atheism, and the extent of this attitude was shocking. surveys conducted in different parts of the soviet union in indicated that more than half of the respondents were “indifferent” towards both religion and atheism (vimmsaare : ). to remain relevant in the changing soviet society, atheism had to readjust, a process smolkin- rothrock ( ) has called “the spiritual crisis of late soviet atheism”. the target group of atheist propaganda changed significantly, since it became necessary to jus- tify atheism both to believers and nonbelievers, and the struggle against religion, at least partly, changed into (dis- guised) apologetics. the change was presented as deriv- ing from the necessity to respond to developments within religion resulting from the “deep moral crisis in capitalist countries” (vimmsaare : ), explicitly assuring that “the changes do not reflect current tactical needs” (raid : ). this was clearly untrue. soviet atheism and the appeal to the spiritual the problems of the late soviet atheism sprang mostly from the understanding that atheism was perceived as something “against,” not something “for”. the lack of a clearly defined positive message may be attributed to marxist atheism as formulated by its founding fathers: “atheism is a rejection of god and affirms the humanity of man just by the same rejection” (marx & engels : ). thus, atheism was understood as having a dual nature: one of destroying and one of building up. by the late sixties it became clear that the connection between the rejection of god and the affirmation of humanity was not so self-evident. while rejection had been communi- cated quite forcefully, the other half remained obscure and when the retreat of religion from the public sphere rendered a militant attitude irrelevant, something had to change. an occasional self-criticism within atheist propaganda reveals what was seen as weaknesses of the “old” approach of khruschev’s anti-religious campaign: the latter was critically assessed for only criticizing religious ethics or theologians, for being too scientific or too militantly anti- religious, for harping on truisms about religion, its nature and history, or criticizing religious morality based on quotes from the bible taken out of their context (gubakov : ; oja ; salo : ). to justify its relevance to soviet society, atheism had to offer something positive – the answers to “life questions”, such as morality, death, suffering, or the meaning of life, with an aim to under- score the “life-affirming attitude, ethical content and positive problems of atheism that shape the scientific worldview” (era ). central to this worldview was the concept of “conscious- ness” or “awareness”, an inherent element of the soviet way of life, which allegedly distinguished soviet society from earlier societal orders through being constantly aware of one’s life goal: “for the first time in history, the whole society works together in the name of a common big goal. soviet society consciously builds up communist society” (vimmsaare : ). due to this, marxist atheism con- sidered itself the highest form of atheism, differing from the pre-marxist forms of atheism that had appeared in history as well as atheism in capitalist countries (“bour- geois atheism”). the “new” approach, therefore, was not a new form of atheism, just a change of focus – the earlier soviet atheist ideal, the “militant attitude”, was reforged into “awareness”. awareness gave atheism an “active character, the most distinctive feature of marxist atheism” (dontsov : ). but what exactly was the “active character of athe- ism”? raid’s ( : ) account of the function of athe- ism describes both the previously mentioned idea of the dual nature of atheism as well as its active charac- ter: “for marxists, atheism is not only the rejection of god(s). … scientific atheism includes the system of posi- tive knowledge that drives off religious views, at the same time functioning as a worldview.” thus, atheism was not a mere lack of beliefs (a position sometimes called nega- tive or weak atheism), but a constantly present rejection of god (strong or positive atheism) based on a scientific worldview, which influenced a person’s actions, goals, identity, practices, beliefs, and so on. therefore, the late soviet atheism tried to establish itself by fighting for “con- scious atheism” within the soviet way of life. the change was also reflected in the usage of technical terms: in the s, “antireligious propaganda” was replaced by “atheist propaganda” or “atheist explanatory work”. the importance of atheism sprang from its inher- ent relationship to the scientific worldview of marxism- leninism which, according to ideologists, tied together all aspects of soviet life. through atheism, people received “scientific knowledge about nature, society, man, and mor- als” (raid : ). science had to replace religion in the spheres that had previously been under the control of religion (e.g., using medicine rather than prayer in order to receive healing), for which atheism was the first step; atheism was also the result of the scientific worldview. in this way, atheism was simultaneously a cause and an out- come which, through being “conscious”, inevitably led to spiritual development. the term “spirituality” in estonian (and russian) often has a religious meaning, but it also encompasses moral- ity, courage, wisdom, social responsibility, cultural and intellectual interests, creativity, and so on – all of which can be understood without religious connotations, as was the case during the soviet period. for instance, a person remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of has “spiritual interests” when he reads a lot, goes to the theatre, studies at the university or reflects over existen- tial questions – as opposed to being concerned only over “materialistic” things like money or having a car (which in the soviet union gave a person a somewhat semi-godly status). this aspect of spirituality became increasingly impor- tant after the nd congress of the communist party of the soviet union in , when the moral code of the builder of communism was adopted. morality was seen as “universal to mankind in general, its content not essen- tially religious, but the church seized it a long time ago and started to interpret it religiously” (vimmsaare : ) – the importance of morality derived from its direct connection to collectivistic values, which were reflected in work ethics and the meaning of life (see also peris : – ). springing from a marxist understanding of religion as opium of the people that “implants passiv- ity, feebleness and humiliation” (vimmsaare : ), a common stereotype presented believers as not participat- ing “actively” in life (for instance, going to the theater, or playing sports), preferring to stay at home, praying, and staring the icons on the wall instead (sheinin ). this was in direct opposition to what soviet society needed: “brave, energetic and cheerful people, who are not only dreaming of a better future, but who are also prepared to fight for it” (vimmsaare : ). therefore, believ- ers were considered individualistic, working only in order to save their soul (molchanova : ) as opposed to “making one’s contribution to the progress of society” (vimmsaare : ; see also figure ), the ultimate goal of a “normal” soviet citizen. it was even claimed that by trying to save one’s soul “the believer declares indif- ference toward the fate of other people” (duluman & romenets, : ); others argued that “a person cannot be moral and harmonious when one’s activity is not asso- ciated with the needs of societal progress” (dontsov : ). “atheists’ high morality” however, was considered a “socially conditioned fact”, and these social conditions had “an irrefutable effect on everyone who is in touch with the reality of socialist society” (kitchanova : ). spiritual development in this context means that “in the moral consciousness of a soviet citizen religious ideals are replaced by the ideals of building up the soviet society” (kononenko : ) and atheist propaganda had much to do here, in helping believers to become interested in “actual life” (vimmsaare : ). therefore, the goals of atheism were threefold: differentiating religious spir- ituality and morality from atheist spirituality and moral- ity; detaching religion from spirituality and morality; and finally, associating spirituality and morality with atheism. in the end it all formed a more or less circular system: the rejection of god is a beginning that leads to a scientific worldview that leads to personal spiritual development that leads to better understanding of the soviet society and high morality, all of which lead to collective work in the name of the communist future that, through societal conditions (the social roots of religion are cut), produces atheism. in this respect, atheism was a prerequisite for building a soviet society. however, rather than answering the actual “life’s ques- tions”, soviet atheist authors chose to focus on ideological justification by trying to offer a “wholesome and mean- ingful worldview” (smolkin-rothrock ), presented figure : all-union scientific-practical conference in , dedicated to the actual questions of the ideological work of the communist party of the soviet union. the banner reads (translation from russian): “religion will disappear in accordance with the development of socialism; its disappearance must happen as a result of the development of the society, in which upbringing plays a major role. k. marx.” source: era . remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spirituality art.  , page  of through a maze of hollow slogans which, despite a some- what milder tone when compared to propaganda of khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign ten years earlier, mostly consisted of direct oppositions to religion. despite having the underlying positive program of science pro- viding answers for secular life, values, and practices – an alternative cosmology, as smolkin ( : ) calls it – “sci- entific atheism” was unable to deliver its message in a positive form: “we provide either statistics or philosophy, and other than that we give nothing” (smolkin-rothrock ). alles ( ) asks: “what specific views and theories did scholars espouse and defend in the name of scientific atheism, besides just the obvious?” but the vast majority of the literature does indeed represent “just the obvious”. considering the fact that most of the atheism lectures (the main form of soviet atheist propaganda) took the form of verbatim recitations of texts sent by knowledge society (which promoted soviet ideology through public lectures) central organs, it was not surprising that it all led to the “decrease of the reputation of atheism” (era ) as soviet atheism propagandists complained that “people seem to be afraid of atheist lectures” (era ) while indifference toward atheism and religion took hold (remmel ). the combination of atheism and spirituality in the st century west in western culture, atheism has become a major subject of public discussion in the st century – partly because of the high visibility of new atheism, and partly because the numbers of the non-religious and atheists has grown rather fast, even in the united states (zuckerman : ). also, different combinations of atheism and spiritual- ity have gained popularity to an increasing extent for a variety of reasons. first, in broad terms, after world war ii, the growth of atheism and secular spirituality was probably enabled by several interrelated sociocultural factors, including increased wealth and security, greater freedom of religion, globalization and the presence of ‘foreign’ religions (such as buddhism and hinduism), secularization, the growing support for science and education, and the rise of indi- vidualistic values (as opposed to tradition and conformity) along with a cultural awareness of naturalism, atheism, and the critique of religion (see norris & inglehart ; zuckerman ; taylor ; helkama ; frisk , casanova ; norenzayan & gervais ; sillfors ). as a result, seeking answers to spiritual needs have moved, as frisk ( ) has crystallized, from a particular to an eclectic religion, from dogma to experience, from collective to personal, from hierarchical to egalitarian, from theological to anthropological, and from after-death to this-worldliness. these approaches are typical also in present day secular (and atheist) spirituality and reflected as well in the increasingly popular self-identification, “spiritual, but not religious” (huss ). second, from the outset of the movement dubbed “new atheism” (here dated from sam harris’s book, the end of faith, ) the debate over atheism and religion has become highly polarized. however, some atheists have argued that the new atheism has gone too far with its harsh criticism and want to show that atheism can be “softer” and focus on the “good things” of religions like communality, arts, practical (meditative) methods, and rit- ual structures. these “bridge-builders”, for example alain de botton’s religion for atheists ( ), j. k. fausnight’s going godless ( ), and greg m. epstein’s good without god ( ), apply an eclectic “pick and mix” style which is nowadays typical: let’s take the best bits from different religions and philosophies, while rejecting the gods and other supernatural elements. third, for centuries spirituality has been more or less synonymous with religion and therefore it has been the general view that atheists cannot feel awe, or be moral or spiritual. this attitude is still strong, for example in the united states (see caldwell-harris et al. ; cherry ; gervais ; gervais & norenzayan ; cook et al. ; franks & scherr ) in response, some athe- ists – for example, andré comte-sponville in the book of atheist spirituality ( ) or eric maisel in the atheist’s way ( ) – have tried to argue that atheists can feel awe, and be as moral and ‘spiritual’ as any religious person. even the new atheists, sam harris ( ) and richard dawkins (discover magazine ), have publicly expressed their support for spirituality – as long as it does not involve belief in the supernatural. the appeal to individual spirituality all three western authors – fausnight, comte-sponville, (see figure ) and harris – are avowed atheists. fausnight defines atheism as “lacking belief in a god”, but he admits that he himself is one of the ‘hard’ atheists, who believes that “there is no god, rather than one lacking belief in god” (fausnight : , italics original). similarly, comte- sponville defines atheism as a negative belief, “without god”, but he considers himself as a “nondogmatic atheist” (comte-sponville : ). harris does not define athe- ism explicitly, but he too openly reveals, “i am an atheist” whose “mind is open” (harris : ). all three are also explicitly or implicitly represent- ing a naturalistic or materialistic worldview. fausnight ( : ) openly confesses that he is a materialist: “i am a materialist. i do not believe in the existence of [a] supernatural realm.” similarly, comte-sponville ( : ) admits that he is a naturalist: “to my mind, nature is the totality of reality (the supernatural does not exist).” harris ( : , , italics original) implicitly refers to the naturalistic worldview, for example by stating that “we know, of course, that human minds are the product of human brains” and that everything seems to arise from the physical world. all these authors promote science as well. comte-sponville ( : ) asserts that individual experimental evidence of gods or ghosts is inadequate, because “[…] evidence that is not shared by all and that other people can neither verify nor repeat remains frag- ile evidence indeed.” fausnight ( : ) highlights his respect for science in almost poetic phrases: “science is our sacred domain, and its integrity must be protected at all cost. it is the shining beacon that raises us above the muck and mire of ignorance.” science also allows people to gain “an appreciation and a sense of awe for this universe” remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of (fausnight : ). harris’s ( : ) project relocates spirituality within the boundaries of science: “if spiritual- ity is to become part of science, however, it must integrate with the rest of what we know about the world.” although promoting naturalism and science, all three agree that life or reality contains some magical or mys- terious elements beyond human knowledge. fausnight ( : – ) says that human experience will never be fully explained by science and that “there is something that i can only describe as magical […] that happens on a warm summer evening on the back porch while sip- ping a good wine and listening to b. b. king playing the blues guitar.” harris ( : ) sees the emergence of con- sciousness from material as a “mysterious” phenomenon. to comte-sponville ( : , italics original) the whole “being is mysterious – everything is mysterious!” such descriptions reveal an experience of awe, an overwhelm- ing feeling of reverence and wonder at simply being alive in the universe. overall, these three authors view spirituality as some- thing very experiential and personal. to harris ( : – ) the word spirituality encompasses mainly trans- cendent experiences and finding deeper well-being. the human mind is the key concept in harris’s book, because “our mind is all we have. … every experience you have ever had has been shaped by your mind” (harris : ). harris highlights the role of introspection of con- sciousness and understanding of mind in the case of the definition of spirituality: “rigorous introspection – ‘spir- ituality’ in the widest sense of the term – is an indispen- sable part of understanding the nature of mind” (harris : ). similarly fausnight defines spirituality as a construct of the human mind: “when i speak of spiritual- ity, … i am speaking of that … virtual reality we construct in our minds. … it is our mind that means everything to us” (fausnight : – ). fausnight ( : – ) crystallizes his ten principles most important to spiritu- ality, such as finding meaning, inner peace, mindfulness, self-respect, oneness, health, beauty, wonder, and awe. moreover, comte-sponville says ( : ) that in the broadest sense of the word, “spirituality can be said to include virtually all aspects of human life and spiritual is more or less the synonymous with ‘mental’ or ‘psychic’.” he is speaking about spirituality as a “part of our inner life … the part that involves the absolute, the infinite and the eternal” (comte-sponville : ). just like for harris and fausnight, for comte-sponville the key dimension of spirituality is individual experience: “metaphysics means thinking about these things; spirituality means experienc- ing them, exercising them, living them” (comte-sponville : ). so, fausnight, harris, and comte-sponville all rep- resent a highly individualistic approach to spirituality, emphasizing personal freedom and achievement. they seek meaning of life and happiness from within, rather than from outside. this connects strongly to aspirations of self-transcendence – the pursuit of losing self-centered egoism – and emphasis on positive feelings, such as love, compassion, and joy. fausnight regards meaning as the most important aspect of (atheist) spirituality, and the first of his top ten spiritual principles is: “give yourself purpose and create meaning … it is inside you” (fausnight : , italics original). several of his other spiritual principles also deal with meaning, like, “find beauty eve- rywhere” and “live in wonder and awe” (fausnight : – ). meaning equates to happiness and the goal of spirituality is inner peace and mental balance. these can be attained by a selfless attitude and meditation practice: “there is a ‘transcendental’ state that can be achieved through meditation” (fausnight : , – .) fausnight also highlights the principle of agape, a univer- sal, unconditional love: “agape is so important because it figure : andré comte-sponville lecturing at paris (january ). source: wikimedia. remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spirituality art.  , page  of is one of the ways we bring meaning into life” (fausnight : , italics original). similarly, for harris, the human mind is the only tool for seeking meaning (harris : ). the key is medita- tion, which helps to break the illusion of permanent ‘self’ that causes a lot of human suffering. meditation allows people to step into the present moment and experience the pure consciousness itself which, “prior to self-repre- sentation, is intrinsically ‘blissful’” (harris : ). by self-transcendence harris means this direct experi- ence of consciousness, which does not suffer like the illusional, conventional, and egocentric ‘self’ does: “[s] elf-transcendence is possible. … every present moment of consciousness is profound. … experiencing this directly … is the true beginning of spiritual life” (harris : ). harris too emphasizes the pursuit of unconditional love, detailing his own experiences of transcendence, which first occurred in his youth when he took mdma (a type of drug, also known as “ecstasy”): “i was no longer anxious … i was feeling boundless love … it was simply obvious that love, compassion, and joy in the joy of others extended without limit”. he relays that he has had several similar experiences, achieved through regular meditation exer- cises, which he also instructs about in his book (harris : – ; ). comte-sponville ( : ) too emphasizes meaning and happiness in the present moment: “happiness is not something to be hoped for but something to be experi- enced here and now!” he praises love ( : – ) as a central meaning-maker of human life: “[t]hings do not matter in and of themselves, but only through the attention we bring to them and the love we bear them. […] love is the supreme value.” he describes at length his own mystical experiences and their nuances, including dissolv- ing the ego, plenitude, simplicity, unity, silence, eternity, serenity, acceptance, liberation, and independence (see comte-sponville : – ); for instance: “and then, all of a sudden […] the ego had vanished: no more sepa- ration or representation, only the silent presentation of everything. […] no more time, only present. […] perfection. plenitude. bliss. such joy! such happiness! such inten- sity!” (comte-sponville : – , italics original.) all these writers also represent autonomous morality – morality is seen to be based mostly on natural empathy and altruism. harris sees a connection between medita- tion, self-transcendence, and living ethically, and asserts that some mental states, such as “boundless love”, are “intrinsically ethical” (harris : ). for fausnight the highest form of morality is purely altruistic, it comes “from within”, and is free from religion: “the morally altruistic base their morals on compassion for others. … [a] truly altruistic person does not act to please god or society […] to become whole and good, we need to break free at each level of self-centeredness and view ourselves as members of the community of mankind” (fausnight : – ). similarly, comte-sponville ( : – , ) writes about the autonomy of morality, and asserts that morals are the basis of religion, not vice versa. this individual meaning-making partly explains why eastern religions play a fairly important role in these books. harris says: “buddhism in particular possesses a literature on the nature of mind that has no peer in western religion or western science” (harris : ). like harris, fausnight says that there is little that athe- ists can learn from western religions about happiness, but eastern religions like buddhism are much more focused on it, and they hold that “happiness is found within you. … from a buddhist perspective, it is gained by letting go. it is found with inner peace. no one can get you there but yourself” (fausnight : ). also, comte-sponville sees eastern religions as being more useful for atheists than monotheistic ones, and he does not even count them as religions, but “a mixture of spirituality, ethics and philosophy rather than a religion … they are less about god than they are about human beings and nature. they have to do less with faith than with meditation” (comte- sponville : , italics original). these examples also point out their eclecticism – all three are drawing from both western and oriental influences and practices such as science, buddhism, and meditation. what is noteworthy is that the main focus of all three books is not atheism, but spirituality. harris says that it is a problem that many atheists conceive of the talk of spirituality as a kind of mental illness in a situation where people ought to find a rational approach to spirituality: “a rational approach to spirituality seems to be what is missing from secularism and from the lives of most of the people i meet” (harris : , ). fausnight ( : ) considers that the point of his book is spirituality “within the confines of the materialist and scientific viewpoint”. according to comte-sponville, spiritual life is more important than atheism or anything else, because “it is our noblest part, or rather, our highest function … man is a … spiritual animal” (comte-sponville : ). one difference between these three authors is that harris is more critical towards monotheistic religion than comte- sponville or fausnight. however, harris’s criticism has clearly softened since the early years of new atheism, and even he seems inclined towards bridge-building, stating: “for many years, i have been a vocal critic of religion, and i won’t ride the same hobbyhorse here” (harris : ). thus, one can find a pattern from these three books: there is no other reality than this-worldly material real- ity, which is perceived by the human mind in the pre- sent moment. therefore the focus of spirituality is in the human mind and how to cultivate things/states like happiness, meaningfulness, morality, positive feelings, and transcendent experiences through, for example, prac- tices like meditation. religious influences are taken, but mostly from oriental religions, especially buddhism. this turn towards buddhism is quite understandable since it is commonly seen as a nontheistic religion while it denies the idea of the creator-god and focuses on human hap- piness attained by practical methods such as ethics and meditation. discussion so, what can be learned from the comparison between the two approaches to spirituality? let’s start with the ques- tion of how spirituality and atheism can be understood remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of and combined. the examples provided here highlight that the possibility of their positive mutual entanglement depends, firstly, on the position and function of atheism in a worldview, and secondly, on the understanding of spirituality as something universal. the soviet atheists argued that by being “conscious”, soviet atheism differs essentially from “bourgeois” athe- ism, which was a secondary result, a mere outcome of materialism, rationalism, and so on, while the soviet ideol- ogists considered atheism primary, a “conscious” starting point, which leads to a scientific worldview. the ques- tion – which is primary, which is secondary, atheism or its accompanying phenomena – inevitably resembles the famous chicken-egg controversy, but also points to how atheism and spirituality can be combined. in its minimal philosophical definition – the absence of believing in god(s) – atheism is a result of the underlying premises that depend on a particular time and place, such as the lack of the concept of god in a particular culture or the lack of religious socialization, or naturalism, or the science-religion opposition. concurrently, atheism as a conviction can lead to further elements that define athe- ism in a particular cultural context, such as naturalism, science-religion opposition, rationalism or anti-religious activity. thus, we can postulate that atheism is a “meet- ing point” of different ideas, practices, and attitudes that somehow revolve around the absence of belief in god(s). this position offers a possibility to associate atheism with the elements that also constitute spirituality, thus con- necting atheism with its surrounding context, be it a uto- pian future or personal self-development. some of these elements can be preconditions of atheism, while some of them can be results – here, atheism functions as a media- tor between them. for instance, scientific knowledge can be both – a reason for atheism, or a result of atheist con- viction, just as the soviet atheists hoped. as for the understanding of spirituality, huss ( ) has distinguished between two approaches: for some scholars it is a universal entity, common to all people regardless of their religiosity or secularity, while the others regard it as a newly constituted cultural category that challenges the modern era’s division between religious and secular. from the emic point of view, our two “spiritual atheisms” clearly support the understanding of spirituality as something universally human: in their approach, ‘“spiritual” atti- tudes, values and commitments are distanced from reli- gious worldviews and the supernatural, and established in an immanentist context’ (schnell and keenan ; ). blurring the lines between the secular and religious is clearly a question of power relations; thus spirituality becomes a battleground that can be ‘hijacked’ either for religious or secular purposes. yet, the aims for doing so can be entirely different. in contemporary atheist spirituality, spirituality is understood pretty much on the lines of “alternative spirit- uality”, as a lived experience of existential questions, with the goal of subjective well-being and self-development, similarly to “self-spirituality” (heelas ). here, spiritu- ality stands for finding the meaning of life, inner peace, mindfulness, morality, wonder, and awe. in the context where spirituality is strongly associated with religiosity and the majority of the population is “institutionally” religious, the connection between atheism and spiritual- ity offers a possibility to show that atheists are “normal”, have similar feelings, morality, compassion, and so on, but it just comes from a different source. still, they also use the concept in huss’s ( ) other meaning to challenge the division between religious and secular. the fact that spiritual atheists are prone to borrowing from eastern reli- gions and openly admit it, also indicates that their goal is bridge-building. in the soviet context, spirituality was also regarded as universal; “life’s questions” were the same for both reli- gion and atheism, and self-development was of utmost importance. yet, as luehrmann ( ) has argued, the soviet atheists tried to locate the meaning of human existence in the relationships between the individual and society. here, personal spiritual development – a grow- ing awareness of the relationship between individual and society – is only a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of building the communist society. spirituality in this setting does not only imply an interest in existential questions, but is also a process of conscious realization of these interests through living “the soviet way of life”, that is, primarily through the means of “culture”, which is by definition secular: like studying the piano, reading books to be smarter and acquiring a better understanding of existential questions and meaning of life, or attending concerts in order to feel solemnity, and practicing sports in order to be healthy and develop one’s willpower. therefore, in the soviet context the main question was about the purpose of spirituality. one can have tremen- dous willpower because of religious convictions, or work well in the factory because of the fear of god, but as soviet ideologists claimed, believers’ inner reasoning is just plain wrong – projecting their ideals into the imaginary world does not help to develop “real life”. thus, despite the similarities, our two “spiritual cul- tures” (smolkin : ) have entirely different tactics. both regard spirituality as something universally human, but while the conclusion of contemporary western atheist spirituality is “therefore we are like you, believers”, which can be seen as “bridge-building”, their soviet counterparts concluded “therefore you don’t have a monopoly here – given the circumstances of the advancements of science and soviet reality, we do”, which rather leaves an impres- sion of “bridge-breaking” (see table ). but what can be said about the sudden emergence of such “chimeras” like spiritual atheism, and what does it tell us about the development of atheist traditions? finding deeper meaning is a psychological core character of human beings (paloutzian & park ), and atheists are no exceptions. therefore, the combination of ‘spir- ituality’ and non-theism/naturalism is not anything new. for instance, in ancient greece, epicureanism was a fully naturalistic and hedonistic spiritual school (stróżyński ); in the th century, french positivist auguste comte founded the naturalistic religion of humanity (spencer ). yet there seem to be a number of fac- tors that precede the sudden desire to crossbreed these remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spirituality art.  , page  of species publicly. in addition to the two theoretical factors discussed above, the understanding of spirituality as a “contested space” and atheism as an outcome or founda- tion, there is a third major aspect that is connected with the social sphere – that it is a reaction to something. seen from that angle, despite the huge differences in socio-political background, both cases arise from a fairly similar context. “spiritual atheism” can be seen as a reac- tion to the decline of “traditional” ways of meaning-mak- ing, where religion had considerable authority. whether it is due to the “forced” (froese ) or “normal” secu- larization – or other reasons that have been constantly discussed in the sociology of religion over the past years – the situation is similar: lack of existential guidance in the context where the number of unbelievers has sig- nificantly increased. thus, spiritual atheism can be seen as one part of a larger cultural phenomenon: alternative meaning-making, which emerges when the tradition- ally dominant factors of the scene begin to deteriorate. in the soviet union the process was directed more “from above” by state ideology, while in the individualist west it is more “organic” (see zuckerman ), arising from the people’s personal needs, and everyone is allowed to seek their eclectic “own way”. perhaps it is justified to make a distinction between “atheist spirituality” and “spir- itual atheism” – although these two concepts overlap to a great extent: in “atheist spirituality”, spirituality is the main subject, and this emphasis seems to describe better the combination of atheism and spirituality in the con- temporary west, whereas “spiritual atheism” refers to a phenomenon where atheism is primary and spirituality is secondary, which better describes their combination in the late soviet union. another similarity is that both spiritual cultures were preceded by a very aggressive strand of atheism: in the soviet case, khrushchev-era atheist propaganda, in the contemporary western case, the “new atheism”. both aggressive versions seemed to miss something essential – not particularly in their teachings but in human psychol- ogy: that opposition to something or even factors that are often associated with atheism (such as rationality, natural- ism, science, criticism of religion) do not necessarily pro- vide a deeper meaningfulness or purpose in life. instead, failing to produce a positive alternative for religion in combination with the aggressive rhetoric results in a bad reputation for atheism. of course, in the us, the reputa- tion of atheism has always been bad, but it is remarkable that the aggressiveness and intolerance of new atheism has resulted in strong criticism even among the secular and atheist community, and they are seen as the main reasons for the loss of their support (amarasingam & brewster ). the pattern is similar in both instances: after an initial period of aggressiveness (that lasts less than years) a new, more moderate wave emerges that tries (more or less) to distance itself from its predecessor or offer an alternative, where “scientific” and “rational” argu- ments are complemented with existential questions. the goal in both cases is similar: to prove that atheism is not just negative, but also offers something positive, encour- aging emotions, aspirations, and other things considered part of normal life. therefore, the turn towards spirituality can be also seen as a pr-tactic, as an attempt to improve the reputation of atheism. we know that rebranding of the existing current of atheism through the top-down method in the soviet case was not successful and the result can be described table : a comparison of two combinations of atheism and spirituality. late soviet union st century west atheism coercive organic science orientated science orientated part of scientific-materialist worldview often part of naturalistic worldview critical towards religion not necessarily critical towards religion essential for the right type of spirituality not essential for spirituality change within the same atheist tradition alternative current to other atheist traditions spirituality individualistic in the name of communal activeness individualistic universally human universally human non-eclectic eclectic secular or “cultural” alternative to religion oriental influences (buddhism, meditation etc.) self-transcendence (pursuit for egoless unity with the community) self-transcendence (pursuit for transcendent experiences, feeling of awe, or oneness with the universe) meaning of life meaning of life morality (autonomous) morality (autonomous) function a reaction to earlier militant attitude, the only alternative a reaction to earlier militant attitude, one of the alternatives bridge-breaker, spirituality as necessarily secular bridge-builder, spirituality as a unifying secular and religious sphere pr-tactics, to show that atheism is still relevant pr tactics, to show that atheists are like everyone else remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of through the expression attributed to the late russian politician viktor chernomyrdin: “we wanted to do bet- ter, but it turned out as always.” as for the success of the grassroots-method of the contemporary atheist spiritual- ity that presents itself as a different current, it is hard to say anything concrete since it is still a work in progress. yet it is quite evident that the patterns described here reveal more about human psychology rather than inher- ent developments of atheist traditions. in conclusion, our comparison highlights the variety of configurations of atheism(s), and their accompanying phe- nomena, functions, and goals, which always depend on social situations and the individuals affecting it. it brings forth the need to emphasize that atheism and criticism of religion are two different things: not all atheists are critical towards religions, and also that atheists can view religion as having positive and useful aspects. moreover, there has been a growing criticism among scholars of religion towards the unhelpful dichotomy between the ‘secular’ and the ‘religious’ and it is surprising to find that even some strands of atheism are interested in a blurring of these boundaries – although their final goals can be exactly opposite. the “rise of the nones” demonstrates that a growing population of people is willing to fulfill their spiritual abilities and needs without traditional monotheistic reli- gions (taylor ) and there are multitudes of possibili- ties how that can be done. here, the soviet experience of “forced” atheism provides an interesting case study. for some reason (a language barrier?), comparative studies of soviet atheism with contemporary western atheism have been neglected, yet they can offer interesting insights and have “comparative and theoretical importance for studies of religion and modernity” (luehrmann : ). notes originally in french l’esprit de l’athéisme: introduc- tion à une spiritualité sans dieu ( ). translated by nancy huston. for an overview of the discussions among soviet aca- demics and party officials that led to the emergence of “life’s questions” within the soviet atheism, see smolkin ( , ) and luehrmann ( , ). although russian and estonian languages are entirely different, the meaning of “spirituality” (dukhovnost’ or vaimsus, respectively) largely overlaps, especially in the meaning discussed here. the connotations of spirituality and its place in soviet ideology are dis- cussed, for instance, in luehrmann ( : – ), smolkin ( ) and halstead ( ). still, for some reason, in estonian language atheist literature, “spir- itual development” as a technical term was almost absent and the expression “life’s questions” was used instead. for the development of communist morality see field ( ). it is interesting to note that despite estonia having a reputation of being “the most atheistic country in the world”, the reviews in response to the translations of the new atheists’ books have been rather critical on the grounds of their resemblance to the soviet era atheism. acknowledgements this article is written with a support from the baltic sea foundation grant “the relocation of transcendence: the sacred of the seculars around the baltic sea“, base funding of national sciences of the university of tartu, grant no. phvus and templeton foundation grant “understanding unbelief in estonia”. the authors are indebted to patrick corbeil, elliot hanowski, and anony- mous reviewers for their critical insights and constructive suggestions. competing interests the authors have no competing interests to declare. references alles, gd. . studying religions with the iron cur- tain closed and open: the 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crossbreeding atheism with spirituality art.  , page  of how to cite this article: remmel, a and sillfors, m. . crossbreeding atheism with spirituality: notes on soviet and western attempts. secularism and nonreligion, : , pp.  – . doi: https://doi.org/ . /snr. submitted: august accepted: september published: october copyright: © the author(s). this is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution . international license (cc-by . ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . /. open access secularism and nonreligion is a peer-reviewed open access journal published by ubiquity press. https://doi.org/ . /snr. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . / 	introduction 	soviet atheism à la estonia 	soviet atheism and the appeal to the spiritual 	the combination of atheism and spirituality in the st century west 	the appeal to individual spirituality 	discussion 	notes 	acknowledgements 	competing interests 	references 	figure 	figure 	table edinburgh research explorer leadership, leadership development and all that jazz citation for published version: harrison, rt , 'leadership, leadership development and all that jazz', leadership, vol. , no. , pp. - . https://doi.org/ . / digital object identifier (doi): . / link: link to publication record in edinburgh research explorer document version: peer reviewed version published in: leadership general rights copyright for the publications made accessible via the edinburgh research explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. take down policy the university of edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that edinburgh research explorer content complies with uk legislation. if you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. download date: . apr. https://doi.org/ . / https://doi.org/ . / https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/leadership-leadership-development-and-all-that-jazz( bf c a- ce- -bcb - b a ).html forthcoming in leadership ( ), february leadership, leadership development and all that jazz richard t harrison university of edinburgh business school buccleuch place edinburgh eh js r.harrison@ed.ac.uk this paper draws in part on ideas originally presented in rt harrison ( ) “playing the spaces between the notes: from competence to creativity in executive development”, in re purser and a montuori (eds) social creativity volume . hampton press: creskill, nj, pp. - . mailto:r.harrison@ed.ac.uk leadership, leadership development and all that jazz the notes i handle no better than many pianists. but the spaces between the notes—ah, that is where the art lies. artur schnabel (austrian pianist and composer, - ) research without an actively selective point of view becomes the ditty bag of an idiot, filled with bits of pebbles, straws, feathers and other random hoardings. robert s lynd ( , ) abstract this paper critiques key elements of contemporary leadership theory and practice, notably the persistent modernist emphasis on heroic individualism in models of the leader and leadership and the highly instrumental and performative nature of the competence approach to leadership development. against this, the paper draws on the history of jazz as an improvisational art form to develop a view of leadership based on fluidity and adaptability, commitment, creativity and change, community and team enabling and the idea of mastery and wisdom. leadership-as-practice, in this view, is ‘collective coherent thinking’ based on a lifetime of preparation for exploring the spaces between the notes where creative interpretation meets and responds to uncertainty and unpredictability. key words leadership-as-practice; jazz; improvisation; heroic and post-heroic leadership; leadership development; mastery; wisdom introduction in a world of change leadership and leadership development is an ongoing process rather than a set of outcomes. it is, to adapt a musical analogy that will be developed later, part of the music of organizations. the jazz musician sidney bechet ( ) described how the improvisational dynamic between an individual performer's skill and the community created a musical road: the music, it’s that road. there's good things alongside it, and there's miseries. you stop by the way and you can't ever be sure what you're going to find waiting. but the music itself, the road itself—there's no stopping that. it goes on all the time. it's the thing that brings you to everything else. you have to trust that. for ogren ( , ), "improvisational music promises no sure passages, rather it captures the inevitability of mobility and change". however, much contemporary thinking about leaders and leadership remains firmly rooted in a relentlessly performative approach to systematic training and development, in which the key aim is, misguidedly, to find, explore, chart, and publish those apparently sure passages. leadership, development and performance the often highly instrumental nature of leader/leadership development, archetypically represented in the debate over leadership competencies but more widely reflected in leadership development practices, including those rooted in post-heroic leadership theories, is important for three reasons. first, this reflects an all-pervasive mindset without which the contemporary leadership debate, it seems, cannot occur. to illustrate, a google scholar search for leadership competence/competencies/competency throws up around , items, of which , have been published since . despite claims (aspirations?) of its demise, the competence mindset is alive and well in leadership studies. that this is even more so in leadership practice is reflected in a similar google search, which throws up some , items. second, the concept of competence in particular claims to unlock, in a way few other concepts and ideas have, the fundamental determinants of exceptional performance, itself increasingly highly prized in a world of turbulent change. third, more than any other concept or arena of debate, the limitations and often undiscussed assumptions of this instrumentalism provide a basis for an enlarged and enriched view of leadership development and organizational transformation (bolden and gosling ; carroll et al ). this performative mindset has arisen out of the attempt to answer three instrumentally driven questions: what do leaders really do? how do they acquire the knowledge, skills and competence to do what they do? what can educators and trainers do to improve the process by which leaders acquire this knowledge, skill and competence? the key concern, therefore, has been to provide a framework for the assessment and development of leadership capability, through that to identify and develop effective leader behavior, and thus improve leadership, and by implication organizational, performance. despite the enormous amount of effort that has been and is currently being devoted to this, however, there have been relatively few attempts, with the notable exception of the critical leadership tradition, to address the fundamental question of the extent to which the model of leadership and the organization assumed in this approach is consistent with that required for effective response to the challenge of unpredictable change. one problem is that much of the debate has been rhetorical rather than substantive: precise meaning is of less importance and advocacy has tended to dominate discourse to the exclusion of careful definitions, objective criteria, and reasoned analysis (fagan , p. ). this is important because it raises the possibility that the instrumental leadership development debate may well have a language but lacks a clear concept. indeed, given the nature of leadership development practice, the absence of a clear concept to be accessed through the conventional methodological assumptions of the canonical neopositivist research paradigm may be inevitable: as sternberg ( ) concluded in his study of practical intelligence (which included a sample of business executives), "underlying successful performance in many real-world tasks is tacit knowledge of a kind that is never explicitly taught and in many instances never even verbalised" (p. ). the essence of this tacit knowledge has been captured in polanyi's ( ) distinction between subsidiary awareness and focal awareness. in the everyday context of, for example, striking a nail with a hammer, subsidiary awareness refers to the sensation of the hammer handle on the palm of a gripping hand as the hammer strikes the nail; this contrasts with the focal awareness of actually driving in the nail. it is important to grasp the difference between these two levels of awareness: subsidiary awareness and focal awareness are mutually exclusive. if a pianist shifts his attention from the piece he is playing to the observation of what he is doing with his fingers while playing it, he gets confused and may have to stop. this happens generally if we switch our focal attention to particulars of which we had previously been aware only in their subsidiary role. (p. ) following this, concern with the emphasis on performativity can be expressed at two levels. first, it is possible to accept that this emphasis is fair, acceptable, and desirable, but that current procedures to measure and develop leadership skills, competence and capabilities are inadequate. this is reminiscent of the german theologian dietrich bonhoeffer’s observation that if the train is heading in the wrong direction, no matter how fast you run in the opposite direction you will never reach your destination. second, and more significantly, an examination of some of the fundamental assumptions underlying performative leadership development suggests that in important respects the approach itself is fundamentally flawed and cannot therefore adequately deliver all that is expected of it. specifically, common to all manifestations of this performative instrumentalism, including much of the post-heroic leadership schools, is an approach that can best be described as a factorial, dimensional or even trait based. the question, "what do leaders do?" has been turned into the question, "what are the main factors in a leader’s role?” researchers have differentiated, and subjected to validity testing to their own satisfaction, lists of factors out of the job wholes of samples of subjects, on which the entire performative approach rests. this, however, raises a fundamental question: do leaders in fact experience their roles as lists? if they do, which is unlikely, then methodologically the reductionist proliferation of mediating and moderating variables in the literature on charismatic and transformational leadership may be justified (van knippenberg and sitkin ). however, if they do not, and if sternberg ( ) is correct in identifying tacit knowledge as critical to the development of practical intelligence, then leaders' perception of what it takes to be effective may be affective or intuitive—soaked up through the soles of their feet—rather than formally cognitive. what is important, therefore, is an understanding of what has variously been referred to as theory-in-use or practice theory. this comprises models of situations and relations to them that an actor develops in his or her mind and uses to guide their practice, bearing some relation to public, objective theories about organizational situations, but in no sense identical with them. analysis that reduces the whole into its constituent parts, and assumes that the whole is merely an aggregate of the parts, can be subject to extensive criticism on epistemological and methodological grounds, not the least of which is the danger of falling victim to polanyi's ( ) strictures about the danger of elevating matters of subsidiary awareness to the realm of focal awareness. for this instrumental performative approach to be effective, a number of propositions, assumed implicitly or explicitly, must hold, and there are strong grounds for arguing, on the basis of polanyi’s fundamental distinction between subsidiary and focal awareness, that each of these propositions is flawed in some way. independence of leadership competencies. this proposition arises from the epistemological and methodological reductionism inherent in the canonical "list of factors" approach. increasingly, however, it is acknowledged that skills, attributes and competencies do cluster or group (or at least that such groupings can be imposed on them). this, in turn, leads to attempts to separately distinguish these from, on the one hand, the metacompetencies necessary to develop/acquire other competencies (the ‘learning how to learn’ challenge) and, on the other, the elements and constituents of individual competencies. although this proliferation of levels of analysis, reminiscent of the physicists' parallel search for both the fundamental subatomic building blocks of matter and the grand unified theory of everything (barrow ), reflects the much more complex, clustered, world of leadership-in-practice, it does make more questionable the identification of discrete competencies and the development of teaching and development strategies to produce them. again, this is not a new phenomenon, nor one restricted to leadership. the conflict between particularist and reductionist explanations, on the one hand, and comprehensive integrative insight on the other, has been a long-standing area of debate in physics: we spoke of the "properties of things", and of the degree to which these properties could be investigated. as an extreme thought, the following question was proposed: supposing it was possible to discover all the properties of a grain of sand, would we then have gained a complete knowledge of the whole universe? would there then remain no unsolved component of our comprehension of the universe? (moszkowski, quoted in barrow, , p. ; emphasis added). identifiable outputs. there is a fundamental assumption of a causal relation between the presumed intra-individual entities described as skills, attributes and competencies and overt behaviour, and between their underlying characteristics and leadership, and by extension, organizational performance. if performativity is the capacity to produce an intended identifiable consequence, and leadership is (as we will go on to consider later) more like an interactive flowing process than a cause-effect structure, can the atomistic concept of competency-based performativity have any relevance at all? furthermore, despite extensive research the implied causal relation involved here has proved difficult if not impossible to establish in practice, and we are left with relationships that are at best associational and arguments that are concerned more with advocacy than analysis. the shift from associational relationships to the assumption of causality in terms of the linearity of post- aristotelian logic ignores the asymmetry in many cause-effect situations, particularly those involving a probabilistic element: to take an example from elementary logic classes, if i see that it is raining, i can predict that i will see people with umbrellas; but if i see people with umbrellas, i cannot predict with equal probability that it will rain. possession equals use. it is assumed that exercise of a leadership attribute is relatively unaffected by the real-time here-and-now perceptions of the leader. however, perceiving is not an act but a process occurring continuously in conjunction with, not before or after, an action in a situation. my perception of what i am doing and what is happening are inextricably intertwined with what i am doing and what is happening. following polanyi, the exercise of my competencies and the understanding of their effects are, therefore, perceptions which are of a different order to, and perhaps are more deeply rooted in, character and personality on the one hand and experience-based tacit knowledge on the other, than competencies as conventionally identified. there is little awareness to date in the performative leadership development literature of the implications of this deeper phenomenon for the acquisition and application of particular characteristics (save for the inclusion of "self-awareness" in some leadership characteristics lists, which as a discrete competence has all the power-in-action of the instruction to "force yourself to relax"). transferability and context independence. there is a tension between the assumed transferability of leadership characteristics across a wide range of action contexts and their often context-dependent demonstration. this decontextualization assumes that skills, attributes and competence are intrinsic and can be exercised (or at least identified in outcomes) independent of the specific intercontextual or interpersonal situation. however, in social behavior there are always at least two purposeful consciousnesses at work, each choosing actions in light of itself and the other in real time. if skills, attributes and competence, therefore, can be demonstrated only to the extent to which the context permits them to be demonstrated, they are situationally constrained and fail to provide the basis for the transformation of that situation. limitations of the performative view there are, therefore, fundamental problems in relying on the competence approach to provide an adequate basis for leadership development. first, the proposition "if we find effective leaders, we can discover what attributes and characteristics they possess and what skills and competencies they use" makes the fundamental assumption that, first, these actually exist, and second, that it is possible to measure them. however, in every case, these are constructs and not something we can observe directly. in seeking to "support an inferential leap from an observed consistency (in the evidence) to a construct that accounts for that consistency" (messick, , p. ) there is a very real danger of committing what the philosopher alfred north whitehead ( / ) described as the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, in which exclusive attention is paid to a group of abstractions which, by the nature of the case, are abstracted from the remainder of things. if, as in the performative leadership development movement’s separation of action from consciousness, the excluded things are important in your experience, your modes of thought are not fitted to deal with them. the problems this creates have been well captured, albeit in a slightly different context, by the science fiction writer, philip k dick ( ): but the problem [of defining reality] is a real one, not a mere intellectual game. because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver those pseudo-worlds right into the hearts of the reader, the viewer, the listener . . . the matter of defining what is real—that is a serious topic, even a vital topic. and in there somewhere is the other topic, the definition of the authentic human. because the bombardment of pseudo-realities begins to produce inauthentic humans very quickly, spurious humans as fake as the data pressing at them from all sides. . . fake realities will produce fake humans. or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves . . . what kind of person would write about something he knows doesn't exist, and how can something that doesn't exist have aspects? (pp. - ) second, there is some equivocation, even growing concern, even among those sympathetic to the performative approach, that it cannot be applied at all levels of the organization. this reflects two particular concerns. on the one hand, there is the heroic assertion that this approach does in fact have salience at senior levels, and that the top leaders in organisations will increasingly divide their time between a number of discrete but interrelated sets of activities that draw significantly on their key competencies. archetypically, this is represented in a recent hbr feature (giles ) which asks “what makes an effective leader?” and answers, for the community of organizational scientists, executive coaches, and leadership development consultants, by identifying (!) leadership competencies grouped into five major themes that suggest a set of priorities for leaders and leadership development programmes. on the other hand is the view that as one moves from a management to a leadership perspective the competence and standards-based approach becomes less and less relevant, both because the mechanistic and prescriptive nature of the approaches being developed does not recognize the diversity and qualitative nature of leader's tasks and roles, and because such a focus is inward looking rather than being outward looking, reflective, and aware of the changing organisational and business environment. as a result there is a very real danger that these inward looking approaches will produce clones, unable to open their minds to new markets, ideas and technologies – dick’s ‘fake humans’ – and that instrumental and mechanistic approaches to leadership development will not and cannot produce the leaders of tomorrow. third, competencies tend to be oriented to those necessary to allow the organization to continue to do what it is already doing well. this is necessary and useful but taken alone will tend to fix or reinforce current or historical ways of doing things in a company. it places greatest emphasis on the role of the leader-manager as creator and restorer of order. if, however, leaders are increasingly required to be innovators, inspirers, or creators of disorder, then it seems likely that the characteristics that go with creating change and stimulating transformation might be even less unit-like and easily understood than those which go with the maintenance of equilibrium. gareth morgan has made the point effectively (albeit with respect to managers rather than leaders, reflecting the fact that he was writing before the current hagiography of leaders and leadership): it is not enough to look at what excellent organizations and managers are already doing. it is also necessary to be proactive in relation to the future: to anticipate some of the changes that are likely to occur and to position organizations and their members to address these new challenges effectively . . . it rests in the development of attitudes, values and "mind sets" that allow managers to confront, understand and deal with a wide range of forces within and outside their organizations. (morgan , p. ) put another way, and to reinforce morgan's point, any specification of requisite leadership skills, attributes and competencies assumes that we know the future and what it will require. that this is not, in fact, the case is clear from the extent to which we are speculating about a world of radical transformation in which the most strategic competency of all may be the capacity to "shelve one's competence in favour of an openness to the new " (vaill, , p. ). more specifically, the performativity debate is at root a debate about procedures, pursued on the argument that exceptional performance is a role-bound activity. however, on closer scrutiny, organizational, role-bound, procedure-driven activities are rarely adhered to in practice. an example of this is given by john seely brown of the xerox palo alto research center: there has been a lot of talk about procedures and routines. . . . let me go back to some office studies originally done by lucy suchman, an ethnomethodologist... lucy went into one of the most routinized offices in our operation, the accounting office, and started looking at how clerks were using accounting procedures. the interesting thing is, if you had actually asked the clerks for a description of what they were doing, they'd come up with descriptions which were very close to what the manuals prescribed the procedures to be. they thought they were following the procedures. although the procedures were acting as the major resource, they were, in fact, not being followed. you know what they were doing? the clerks were improvising left, right and sideways to get the job done. but by the end of the day they had created a set of files that looked like they would have, had they been produced by an agent following the procedure. the procedures were acting as a resource indirectly specifying properties and constraints of final state, but they were not using these procedures to get to this final state. the procedures provided an indirect specification of about where they were heading. they were improvising off an aspect of the procedures, but not in the obvious ways most of us would have thought. it was an interesting discovery when we saw how these procedures were actually being used as a resource but not as a recipe. (brown , pp. - ) the key lesson to emerge from this organizational story is the emphasis on improvisation in practice: as wenger ( ) has pointed out in similar terms, organizations are best viewed as communities of practice, and the ability of any individual to learn and perform his or her job "depends on their community—its shared memories, routines, improvisations, innovations and connections to the world. this community functions within and without— and sometimes in spite of—the company's official organizational and procedural frameworks" (p. ). understanding organizations and understanding the leadership of organizations, therefore, is best viewed from the perspective of how that improvisation takes place. in so doing, to borrow another musical reference, it is important to remember that improvisation is not a completely role-absent phenomenon: music can never be an abstraction, however thoughtful and objectless—for its object is the living man [sic] in time—nor can it be accidental, however improvised . . because improvisation is not the expression of accident but rather of the accumulated yearnings, dreams and wisdom of our very soul. (menuhin, , p. ) the focus of performative leadership development, the emphasis on procedures and rules, is on the playing of the notes. the response to an ever-changing future is improvisation, redirecting emphasis to the spaces between the notes, to see music-as-performance as more than just the sequence of notes on the score. it is, rather, a dynamic, interpretative, creative process that engages both performer and audience, "the inexplicably but beautifully controlled sympathy between the artist and his audience" (davies, , p. ).it is our argument that underlying creativity and leadership as providing a platform for an orientation to the future and the creation and communication of vision, is the concept of improvisation, which represents the framework for understanding life-in-organization and leadership-as- practice in a turbulent changing world. creativity one simple illustration will demonstrate the manner in which creativity transcends competence and paves the way for improvisation. our starting point is data as the fundamental elemental building block (the molecular analysis of a cake, for example), of little direct meaning or utility on its own. information is data with context (the list of ingredients for the cake), capable of elucidation, intelligence, and transmittable directly between people or via different media. knowledge represents the ‘how to’ interpretation of information (using explicit and tacit knowledge to make the cake), presupposes the storing of information (in human or artificial memories) and is built up in a process in which new information is linked with previous experience. but knowledge alone is not sufficient for effective action. competence, in its widest sense of capacity, aptitude, skills, attitude and ability, is a relative (not an absolute) concept, defined in comparison to others or to a task; it requires that knowledge must be relevant and employable in an activity with a definable aim and purpose; and it presupposes a link with an environment, necessary for the identification of relevance. to return to bonhoeffer’s metaphor of the train, however, none of these address the ‘know why’ question. this remains the domain of wisdom, the integral and relational process that addresses the ambiguous functional stupidity of organisational leadership, the unwillingness or inability to use reflective capacities in anything other than circumspect ways (alvesson and spicer ; küpers and pauleen ). the shift from competent knowledge to wisdom, requires creativity, a kind of synergism in which the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts. it requires the capacity for sifting information and combining knowledge and pieces of information in such a manner that something new is created. in so doing, it is imperative to recognize that competence alone is not enough. for example, in the early th century, gutenberg confronted the problem of duplicating books in a context in which existing printing techniques were slow and costly, relying on individual hand-carved wooden plates for each page over which single sheets of paper were rubbed by hand (koestler, ). for gutenberg, competence in the domain of th century printing was a prerequisite for transformation, but it was not sufficient. in his letters he makes clear that the idea of casting lead types and manufacturing the first printing press was born not out of his experience of and competence in contemporary printing techniques but out of his observations of local wine farmers pressing juice from grapes with great force: in short, neither bounded by the past, nor fixed to the limits of the present, "the creative person realizes new facets of individuality by continuing to respond to life in unique ways" (moustakas, , p. ). this emphasis on creativity is fundamental to an understanding of leadership, future orientation, and envisioning, which are the requirements for contemporary individual and organizational transformation. it has been recognized, implicitly at least, in many previous accounts of the management task. for example, chester barnard, the rationalist supreme who probably did more than any other writer to establish management as a discipline on "sound theoretical foundations," clearly set out the scientific systematic approach (barnard, ): the executive functions, which have been distinguished for purposes of exposition and which are the basis of functional specialization in organizations, have no separate concrete existence. they are parts or aspects of a process of organisation as a whole. this process in the more complex organisations, and usually even in simple unit organisations, is made the special responsibility of executives or leaders. the means utilized are to a considerable extent concrete acts logically determined (p. ) but bernard did not stop there, although many who followed him appear to have done so. he continued directly: but the essential aspect of the process is the sensing of the organisation as a whole and the total situation relevant to it. it transcends the capacity of merely intellectual methods, and the techniques of discriminating the factors of the situation. the terms pertinent to it are "feeling", "judgement", "sense", "proportion", "balance", "appropriateness". it is a matter of art rather than science, and is aesthetic rather than logical. for this reason, it is recognised rather than described and is known by its effects rather than by analysis, (p. ) this, of course, if it is to be followed, requires something of a paradigm shift in our analysis of and discourse about leadership practice, which goes beyond the discipline of leadership alone: you can think and you can learn. you do these things like an educated modern man. but you cannot feel, except like a primitive. your plight is quite a common one, especially in our day when thinking and learning have been given such absurd prominence, and we have thought and learned our way into world-wide messes. we must educate your feeling and persuade you to experience it like a man and not like a maimed, dull child . . . understanding is not the point. feeling is the point. understanding and experimenting are not interchangeable . any theologian understands martyrdom, but only the martyr experience the fire. (davies, , p. ) to respond to barnard's challenge, leadership developers will have to become more martyr than theologian. in so doing, the nature of and basis for leadership in organizations requires reconsideration. improvisation what then can we say of the role of the leader in this new world we live in? to start with, it is helpful to remember peter drucker's analogy between leadership and the conductor of an orchestra: the conductor draws together the individual players and their instruments, draws the best out of each member, and welds that into an inspirational whole which is, at its best, more than the sum of the parts. but in a number of key respects the symphony orchestra metaphor is limited. first, it reinforces the stereotype of the "leader as hero," a theme common to both the contemporary leadership and entrepreneurship discourses. the elevation of the leader/entrepreneur to demigod status is, perhaps, a reaction to the turbulence and change in the socioinstitutional framework of late- th century advanced industrial economics, an attempt to return to past certainties before they are swept away completely for our current intellectual predicament springs not, as it has been fashionable to say, from the death of god, but from the demise of nineteenth century god-surrogates. we are facing a new situation in which the old polarities of thought can no longer apply or at the very least require scrutiny. this clearly will be the cultural task of social thought during the coming years. (gellner, , p. ) in hindsight, the resurgence of the messianic heroic individualism, with its overweening emphasis on over-attribution and the romanticising of traditional leadership behaviours (spector ), once characteristic of th century liberalism will be seen as one more reaction to fin de siecle uncertainty (mestrovic, ). the alternative emerging view is to emphasize the "team as hero," and the role of community. the role shift is from leader to enabler; as the saxophonist joe henderson put it, speaking of his time playing with miles davis, "miles wouldn't have appreciated us going in there and being a clone of what he had been. i couldn't do that anyway, neither could any of the others. he was known as the enabler, and he would choose material that would enable musicians to launch into directions that developed them as individuals." (henderson, quoted in fordham, ). second, the orchestral analogy places primary emphasis on organizationally constrained order rather than on freedom and enterprise. regardless of the interpretative skills of the conductor, the orchestra and its constituent members play exactly the same notes in the same order as they are set down in the score, performance after performance. however, the orchestral analogy does serve to emphasize one important discussion of creativity which has a significant role to play in developing an understanding of life-in-organization and leadership-as-practice. one participant in a swedish seminar on creativity in the human sciences, for example, stated in passing, i have toyed with the idea of studying the beneficial effects upon 'creativity' of different kinds of music. after all, they do this sort of thing with cows and it would be nice to know that bach, for example, is conductive in logical thinking, or bruckner to transcendental insight!" (hans aldskogius, in buttimer, , p. ). more generally, as part of the wider postmodernist interest in cultural and social rather than technological and economic change (harvey, ; rosenau, ), the link between leadership and organization theory and art has become a legitimate subject for debate. in particular, the analysis of organizational themes, such as the formal properties of organizations (which bears strong similarities to synthesizer programming) or the thematic analysis of leadership (which draws on the analogy with "theme" as a recurrent melody in music), can be facilitated by adopting a musical metaphor. more specifically, in application to the understanding of the practice of leadership as and within a community of practice, the jazz ensemble provides a useful metaphor for not only understanding, developing and enhancing team learning. jazz, and the earlier now-parallel musical form, blues, represents an alternative and richer image of what leadership-as-practice entails, or what playing the spaces between the notes actually means, built as it is on the practice of improvisation and the improvisations of practice. alan lomax, in his oral history of the blues in the mississippi delta, summarizes the difference between the formal orchestral style and the expressive improvisational style of the blues or jazz musician in the words of a trumpeter from a new orleans marching band. "i can read notes all right, and i do that when i have to, but when i'm really playing, the notes get in the way of what i'm hearing in my head." . . . you've defined the difference between the folk tradition—the improvisatory, head tradition—and the scored, written-down tradition. in the latter, the performer is tied down to the score; in the former he can add his own feeling to every note, to every phrase. (lomax, , p. ) from this blues tradition comes the recognition that fixed forms may not be adequate for new realities and modes of expression and that progress and the creation of the new require the creation of new forms and the dissolution of old categories. it is no accident that the early development of the blues was based on the harmonica and the guitar. both instruments were easily transportable by a largely itinerant blues playing population and both lent themselves to a particular style of playing, particularly with the popularity of slide playing, one of the oldest blues guitar techniques: by sliding the knife along the guitar strings . . . he provided a silvery, crying tone that followed the gliding notes of his song. . . . it was just a one-phrase melody, but had to put down in notes. it had intervals that did not match the piano scale, little quavers that changed with each repetition and often the voice stopped and the guitar filled the space with strange sounds that no guitar handy knew had made before. but this was , the first time anyone had heard a blues holler set to guitar. (lomax, , p. ) only with the growing popularity of the blues in the honky tonks and barrelhouses of labour camps and southern towns did the piano become prominent in blues music. for this to happen, accepted playing styles had to change, and the physical and musical constraints of the instrument had to be overcome. as the notes of the piano were fixed, blues pianists had to achieve the flattened or bent "blue notes," so easily achieved in slide guitar playing and much loved by blues performers, by striking adjacent notes almost simultaneously to give the illusion of passing notes. they had, literally, to play the spaces between the notes, and in so doing advanced a new musical form. more generally, lomax ( ), among others, sets the improvisatory blues style—in music, dance, and singing—in a wider cultural context. based on a comparative cross-cultural analysis of performance style, he argues that black african performance swerves on velocity and changefulness were the highest recorded, making the most use of many shifts of level, direction, limb use, facing and energy in dance, and of changes in voice quality, tempo, register, ensemble, mood, metre, harmony and melody in music, "along with the greatest facility in shifting style collectively in close coordination. black style is outstandingly accelerative, collectively accelerative." (lomax , p. ). the key emphasis here is on the collective nature of this improvisation: spontaneous but coordinated. however, the key development of this musical metaphor for leadership as a community of practice occurs in consideration of the jazz tradition and practice. from this comes the realization that the relationship between the members of a group, unlike that in a symphony orchestra, can be fluid and changing. to quote the jazz musician ornette coleman, "jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time." improvisation is not only accepted but encouraged by other members of the group, and the overall performance is created anew on each occasion. the outcome is the antithesis of the view of the leader as hero, but the identification of the leader as team member: as in a jazz band, in which individual improvisation and virtuosity supports and is supported by the group performance. the "severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician” to quote bill evans ( , p. ), pianist with the miles davis sextet in the late s is based on the conviction that “direct deed is the most meaningful reflection”. however, group improvisation is a further challenge. aside from the technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result (evans, , p. ). this capability to have and give free rein to individual virtuosity without losing the coherence of and commitment to the integrity and unity of the group, and without in practice abdicating the title/position of ‘leader’, contrasts with the conventional orchestral situation: as edward deming, one of the gurus of quality put it, the best players don't join orchestras. this emphasis on collective coherent thinking, team learning in the patois of the leadership development industry, rather than on unbridled individualism or formal structured group processes, is important. the jazz metaphor is particularly apposite for this purpose, partly because, as the music of america's "lost generation" in the s, jazz reflected and responded to a "period of composed transition from values already fixed to values that had to be created" (cowley, , p. ). it is also, more significantly in the present context, the embodiment of a tradition that is the antithesis of late th century liberal individualism: as ogren ( ) variously expresses it, jazz is the embodiment of "participating performance" (p. ), "participatory culture" (p. ), or, most closely echoing the community of practice construct, the "practice of communal creation" (p. ). ogren ( ) further draws on turner's ( , ) use of social drama analysis to argue that jazz played a role in "public reflexivity" in which a group communicates itself to itself. in particular, of course, the communication was not restricted to the group which originated it "since it was a music most closely identified with blacks and entertainers—two social groups often labelled marginal—yet it helped white americans with diverse social background explain their world" (p. ). this emphasis on the symbolic meaning of performance—for jazz is in essence a performance musical form—and the emphasis on collective performance not individual performance (see turner's [ ] discussion of the contrast between the jazz artist and traditional american success values), form the basis of the metaphorical analogy between jazz and, in particular, leadership in organizations . what is important for organizations as communities of practice, therefore, is not so much the process of leading (that is, the development of team work and collective coherent thinking) but the purpose of leadership embodied in the symbolism of performance in organizations. this communicative power of jazz has been captured in its description as a destructive "language" (nanry & berger, ). as a "language," there is a further parallel to develop between the symbolic analysis of performance and the view of organization as collective storytellings (e.g., attali, ; bauman, ; schechner, ). it is through this process of collective performance and storytelling that the "essential organizational aspect of the process [of organization]" (barnard, , p. ) is developed, communicated, and transmitted. this exploration of the metaphor of jazz and its potential prompts the recognition of two very different views of the leader and the identification of a very different orientation to the future. to change the metaphor, and to borrow an illustration from schumacher ( ), a leader is more like the balloon man at a fun fair than the star at the top of the christmas tree. schumacher describes the christmas tree: the improvisation metaphor, of course, is not restricted to north american jazz (frost and yarrow ; siddall and waterman ). in the theatrical domain, for example, there is a long tradition of improvisation traceable to the european commedia dell’arte in the sixteenth century (crossan and sorrenti ) and reflected in contemporary improvisational comedy. us actor tina fey ( ), for example, has identified the core requirements for improvisational comedy as agreement on a given set of circumstances (collective coherent thinking), adding to the discussion (contributing to and extending the performance), making statements with confidence (based on one’s mastery) and recognising that there are no mistakes (miscommunication as a stimulus to creativity). internationally, improvisation as represented in other musical traditions, such as the brazilian choro (flach and antonello ), has been represented as a learning process. with a star at the top and all sorts of nuts underneath, more or less nourishing and useful nuts . . . one normally looks to the star at the top for the initiative because all the rest are executors of the policy. one man's initiative, no matter how able, and then a diminishing scale downwards of initiative is just not good enough to keep the thing alive (p. ) this contrasts with the metaphor of organization captured in the notion of the improvising jazz group or the balloon seller: at a fun fair, who in one hand holds hundreds of strings, and at the end of each string a balloon. each balloon has its own buoyancy, a nice round thing . . . of course you need someone to hold it all together, but it is not a star at the top, it is a man underneath and each balloon has its own buoyancy. each balloon is somehow a limited thing, and thus, in a manner of speaking, the more the merrier (p. ) future, vision and commitment this second view of leadership, as collective improvisation (collective coherent thinking in evans' phrase) not individual heroism within a community of practice held together and given meaning though symbolically important performance and collective organization storytelling, clearly establishes the importance of linking, conceptually and practically, the development of leadership (often considered exclusively and incompletely in the personal domain) with the evolution of organizations. this is not a simple or straightforward task, and development, change and (dare we say it) transformation in individuals and companies (as in a jazz ensemble) requires space, time and proper support. it is not something that happens overnight, nor does it happen without the necessary thinking through before, during and after, nor without the necessary community-building skills of supporting, challenging and developing. to change the analogy, the task is akin to that of an actor preparing for a role— studying and establishing the life of a role necessarily precedes putting it into physical form: "the preparatory work on a role can be divided into three great periods: studying it; establishing the life of the role; putting it into physical form" (stanislavski, , p. ). it is no accident that in all its manifestations the new leadership literature has placed prominent attention on the role of vision in individual and organizational development. and vision, of course, implies an orientation to and awareness of the future—without an image of the future there is no good reason for changing what we do now. why change or learn when we have nowhere we want to go? however, for organizations caught in the culture of entitlement, there is no internal or intrinsic pressure to learn, to change, or develop. however illusory, the status quo is something to manage, to be preserved. in bardwick's ( ) analysis, the culture of entitlement is the result of too much generosity: people are given what they expect, are not held responsible for meeting criteria of excellence, and have so much security that they do not have to earn their rewards. in this environment, "the future" is a concept that constrains rather than liberates, frightens rather than enriches. for those comfortable with themselves and in their organizations, any prospect of change to the here and now either from within through the establishment and dissemination of a new vision for the organization or from outside in response to unpredictable and largely uncontrollable forces, the culture of entitlement (stability and certainty) almost inevitably yields under pressure of change (instability and uncertainty) to a culture of fear. to quote the playwright tennessee williams ( ), "the future is called 'perhaps', which is the only possible thing to call the future. and the important thing is not to allow that to scare you." but the task of the leader is to create, communicate, and build commitment to a vision—an image of the future for the organization—to manage the dream. this requires a different attitude to and stance toward the future. conventional strategic planning and envisioning, as with the conventional approach to forecasting in economic and business decision models, works from the present and recent past to establish a basis for deciding what the future may be. this approach is fundamentally flawed. as eliasson’s ( ) work confirms, forecasts are most likely to be accurate when they are least needed, in circumstances in which the near future is the same as the recent past. but where there are major destabilizations of context, either in the changing interrelationships of key variables which have not been captured in the model or in the environment itself, forecasting rapidly proves difficult, if not impossible, and the subject of ridicule. as such, the key challenge for leadership is the development of the skills of reading the future, of identifying the emerging fracture lines or discontinuities in the social and economic system and of effectively building the ensemble to respond to these. this, of course, has its precedent in literature. as the novelist antoine de saint-exupery's ( ) expressed it, "as for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it" (p. ). this perspective is not a new one and can be traced back, taking a cue from emphasis on the magical elements in leadership, to the instruction given to the young king-to-be arthur by merlyn the magician, as reported in t.h. white's ( ) novel, the sword in the stone: "ah yes", said merlyn. "now ordinary people are born forwards in time, if you understand what i mean, and nearly everything in the world goes forward too. this makes it quite easy for the ordinary people to live. . . . but unfortunately i was born at the wrong end of time, and i have to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people living forwards from behind, (p. ) this perspective changes how the present is viewed. no longer an accumulation of the past, the present is an enactment of the future, and the significance of present events and decisions is determined in the light of future states. the magician merlyn had a strange laugh, and it was heard when nobody else was laughing. he laughed at the beggar who was bewailing his fate as he lay stretched on a dunghill; he laughed at the foppish young man who was making a great fuss about choosing a pair of shoes. he laughed because he knew that deep in a dunghill was a golden cup that would have made the beggar a rich man; he laughed because he knew that the pernickety young man would be stabbed in a quarrel before the soles of his new shoes were soiled. he laughed because he knew what was coming next (davies, , pp. - ; emphasis in original). in other words, the merlin principle suggests that strategy as a vehicle for the exercise of leadership in organisations works backwards. instead of a decision tree bifurcating outward from the present, representing one present and multiple futures, we see the establishment of a vision, an arena of possibilities (sidney bechet’s ‘road’), with a strategy to reach that vision constructed backward in time. because at each stage there are likely to be a number of alternative points from which the next stage is a possibility, we can envisage a single future with multiple presents. it is within this framework that karl weick’s arguments that corporate strategies are the post facto rationalisations of past decision events rather than the template for future actions assume significance for our understanding of organizational life. to do this successfully requires communication and the building of commitment - persuasion. the challenge is that facing the actor before every performance: "if someone asked me to put in one sentence what acting was, i should say that acting is the art of persuasion. the actor persuades himself, first, and through himself, the audience" (sir lawrence olivier, quoted in cole & chinoy, , p. ). the leader must first persuade her- or himself and through that, and only through that, the other members of the organization. and, as with the actor, every successive audience must feel that it is witnessing the enactment for the very first time: "each successive audience before which [the performance] is given must feel, not think or reason about, but feel—that it is witnessing, not one of a thousand weary repetitions, but a life episode that is being lived just across the magic barrier of the footlights" (william hooker gillete, quoted in cole& chinoy, , p. ). this emphasis on the applicability of artistic performance as a metaphor for leadership activity reinforces our earlier references to the role of practice theory or theory- in-use and the metaphor of jazz as symbolic performance to provide a deeper appreciation of leadership as neither art nor science, but as practice. in the metaphor of leadership as performance, organizations become in part creative fictions, the structured stories we create to impose order on and create meaning in the world. accordingly, a few words must be said here on the sort of imaginative meaning achieved by actions . . . on the meaning of an actor's performance on the stage. a play does not speak of real persons or of actual events: the actor's part is to represent persons and actions imagined by the writer. he must respond by his own imagination to that of the author, and, thus guided, he must embody the part assigned to him. (polanyi & prosch, ,p. ) in so doing, it is important to understand the precise role of rules, explicit and explicable, in this process of achieving imaginative meaning: "rules of art can be useful, but they do not determine the practice of an art; they are maxims, which can serve as a guide to an art only if they can be integrated into the practical knowledge of the art. they cannot replace this knowledge" (polanyi, , p. ). more specifically, although made in the context of a discussion of scientific research method rather than leadership practice, method cannot always be avoided—a singer, for example, must sing a certain way, or he will get hoarse. quite true! but such a "certain way" cannot be caught in fixed and stable rules which is why there are various schools of singing and why a singer who violates basic rules shared by almost all schools may still sing better than his rule-bound colleagues. (feyerabend, , p. ) given, therefore, that as in these examples, leadership-as-practice is indeed a practice that cannot be specified in rule-bound detail, it follows that it cannot be transmitted by prescription because no prescription for it exists. it can be passed on only by example from master to apprentice. in so doing, and only in so doing, the new leader will begin to engage the process of organizational change and development. as with the improvising jazz band, as indeed in the case of artistic expression on the stage, the new leader will have to emphasize the importance of paying attention to the non-rule-bound, non-rational, intuitive, mythical side of life in companies, for no other reason than that the planned, reasoned, systematic approaches to leadership development are not sufficient. as individuals, we cannot transform ourselves by logic alone; we need to make some intuitive leap, to play a wild card, to inject some random element, to introduce new and unexpected variety. so it is with leadership in organizations. increasingly the process of envisioning will be grounded in the tales, rumours, legends, myths and dreams people use in organisations to describe their experiences. in so doing, fundamental human values become more important and prominent in organizational life. to quote john keating, the robin williams character in the film dead poets society, "no matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world". increasingly those ideas and words have their roots not in the "concrete acts logically determined" view of organizational life which has been barnard's ( ) legacy to organizational studies, but in the aesthetic, supra-analytic perspective: we don't read and write poetry because it's cute. we read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion. medicine, law, business, engineering—these are noble pursuits, necessary to sustain life. but poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for. ("john keating") the task of a leader is to restore these higher values to the life of people in organizations, to build a connection between the noble pursuit of business and the values we stay alive for. conclusion it has been fundamental to the argument in this paper that many current approaches to leadership development, including particularly the competence approach, are flawed in resting on unsustainable propositions and in being grounded in an inadequate view of the organization and organizational membership. this approach does not provide an adequate basis for the development and redevelopment of organizations in a world of change. an alternative approach, moving beyond competence, has been presented which is based on four fundamental positions: an acceptance of creativity, a restoration of leadership, an orientation to the future, and the creation and communication of vision. these collectively arise out of a metaphorical view of leadership as practice which is anchored in the metaphor of jazz improvisation as artistic performance. two points are made in conclusion. first, it is necessary for both those leading and working in organizations and those thinking about organizations to recognize that organizational transformation is dependent on a very different set of characteristics than those with which we have become familiar. the ideal of the organization as a smoothly running machine, clean and austerely effective, becomes dangerous. rather, from a postmodern perspective, organizational survival depends ultimately on the insinuation of polyglot, immersion in metaphor, and the prevalence of creative confusion. rather than autonomous, self-directing leaders, thoroughgoing interdependence and the quality of relatedness replaces the character of the individual as the centre of concern. second, for the individual as leader, at whatever level that leadership is exercised, whatever the instrument played in the jazz band, the image of the leader as broker of the dream is a powerful one. the visionary as dreamer (and a vision is, in a real sense, a waking dream) is often taken pejoratively, the dream viewed as the antithesis of action. however, as the irish playwright and poet w.b. yeats reminds us, "in dreams begins responsibility". the challenge is to accept that responsibility and to act on it. in so doing, henry david thoreau's words serve as a call to action: if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success in common hours. . . . if you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. it is where they should be. now put the foundation under them. references alvesson m and spicer a ( ) a stupidity-based theory of organizations, journal of management studies, , - attali, j. 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( ) the past, present and perhaps. in orpheus descending. the blue guitar published on poetry in voice (https://www.poetryinvoice.com) the blue guitar p. k. page they said, ‘you have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are.’ the man replied, ‘things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar.’ — “the blue guitar” by wallace stevens i do my best to tell it true a thing exceeding hard to do or tell it slant as emily advises in her poetry, and, colour blind, how can i know if green is blue or cinnabar. find me a colour chart that i can check against a summer sky. my eye is on a distant star. they said, ‘ you have a blue guitar. ’ ‘i have,’ the man replied, ‘it’s true. the instrument i strum is blue i strum my joy, i strum my pain i strum the sun, i strum the rain. https://www.poetryinvoice.com but tell me, what is that to you? you see things as you think they are. remove the mote within your ear then talk to me of what you hear.’ they said, ‘go smoke a blue cigar! you do not play things as they are. ’ ‘things as they are? above? below? in hell or heaven? fast or slow…?’ they silenced him. ‘it’s not about philosophy, so cut it out. we want the truth and not what you are playing on the blue guitar. so start again and play it straight don’t improvise, prevaricate. just play things as they really are.’ the man replied, ‘ things as they are are not the same as things that were or will be in another year. the literal is rarely true for truth is old and truth is new and faceted — a metaphor for something higher than we are. i play the truth of everyman i play the truth as best i can. the things i play are better far when changed upon the blue guitar. ’ reprinted from coal and roses by p. k. page by permission of the porcupine’s quill. copyright © by the estate of p.k. page. dive in: . “the blue guitar” is filled with vivid sensory images. which image do you find most memorable? . there are many noteworthy structural patterns throughout this poem. for example, how many lines are in each stanza? what is the rhythm of each line? which lines rhyme with one another? why has the poet italicized the last line of each stanza? . in the poem, the man who plays his blue guitar has a fairly philosophical discussion with his audience. the audience states that they “want the truth and not what you / are playing on the blue guitar.” what do you think this poem is saying about the different ways that people perceive the world? about the way that artists transform what they see in their lives? about the challenges and rewards of staying true to their artistic visions? . as a glosa poem (see link below for more details), “the blue guitar” directly engages with an older poem by wallace stevens titled “the man with the blue guitar” ( ); in turn, wallace stevens’s poem was at least partly influenced by pablo picasso’s painting “the old guitarist” ( ). how can engaging with other works of art, literature, music, or film help you write your own poetry? what artists, writers, singers, or filmmakers inspire your own creative ideas? . “the blue guitar” includes a few different voices/characters in dialogue. if you were to recite this poem, what subtle nuances in your performance could help convey to your audience the switch between perspectives? . think about one of your favourite songs, paintings/pictures, books, or movies. write a poem of your own that draws on that artwork for inspiration. which personal experiences, memories, and feelings do you associate with that artwork? write all of these associations down in your draft. if you really want to challenge yourself, pick a four-line verse from your favourite lyric or poem and try writing your own glosa! useful links: learn about the structural conventions of the glosa in this clearly written blog post: http://www.johnwheway.com/?p= read an except from the wallace stevens poem that inspired p.k. http://www.johnwheway.com/?p= page’s “the blue guitar” here: https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/ v/blueguitar.html see pablo picasso’s painting “the old guitarist” here: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/ /the-old-guitarist in this video, learn about p.k. page’s final book of poetry, coal and roses, and watch dionne brand read “the blue guitar”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzyy-ujkhj .dive in written by: david barrick .... https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/ v/blueguitar.html https://www.artic.edu/artworks/ /the-old-guitarist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzyy-ujkhj https://www.poetryinvoice.com/poems/poets/david-barrick diss final version for ubc library common ground and the city assumed community in vancouver fiction and theatre by sarah lynn banting b.a., queen’s university, m.a., ubc, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in the faculty of graduate studies (english) the university of british columbia (vancouver) october © sarah lynn banting, ii abstract this dissertation offers a new approach to an enduring question in literary studies: how do certain genres mediate an experience of “imagined community”? in studies of canadian literature, texts are frequently analyzed for how they represent place—and how they evoke national, regional, local, or transnational communities by depicting characters’ lives in place. this project shares that interest in place, but rather than asking how place is represented, it asks what audiences are addressed when fiction and theatre performances refer to specific places. shifting focus onto these works’ address to particular imagined audiences allows me to consider how they mediate their actual audiences’ relationships to specific places and to other local and non-local populations. taking novels, short stories, and plays set in metropolitan vancouver as a case study, i analyze narrative address using the tools of linguistic pragmatics, in particular theories of audience design, relevance, and common ground. i then adapt these ideas to the analysis of live performance in conventional theatres. i find a variety of different modes of address implicit in how these works style their references to the city and its landmarks. all of the plays and some of the narratives address audiences who share their knowledge of certain parts of the city. they offer insight into what parts of a city residents imagine sharing with their anonymous fellow city-dwellers, on what social basis they share these extended neighbourhoods, and what are the limits of this “common ground.” other narrators address audiences for whom the city is unfamiliar territory. their narratives illuminate the social contexts that connect people across spatial divides and the various interests that, in the narrators’ opinion, distant audiences might have in being introduced to vancouver. while the written iii narratives address audiences who have a specific amount of knowledge of vancouver but might themselves be anywhere, the plays potentially produce a “strong” form of common ground by bringing their audience together at a particular site. i argue that this experience constructs what arjun appadurai calls “locality,” thus offering insight into what locality might feel like in a modern canadian city. iv table of contents abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii table of contents ............................................................................................................... iv list of tables ...................................................................................................................... v list of figures .................................................................................................................... vi acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... vii dedication .......................................................................................................................... ix introduction: common ground and the city ..................................................................... critical contexts for this work ...................................................................................................... vancouver and its audiences ...................................................................................................... my approach to setting and audience: introducing “common ground”..................................... chapter one: tracing address in narrative language.................................................... an approach to narrative language............................................................................................. my analytic vocabulary .............................................................................................................. self-absorbed speech: the example of cat’s eye ...................................................................... dissolving the text / context boundary ....................................................................................... recognizable landmarks and audience design: the example of obasan ................................... chapter two: vancouver common grounds and the edges of fiction .......................... cities and narrative................................................................................................................... place-sharing narratives............................................................................................................ edge-setting narratives ............................................................................................................. city-building narratives............................................................................................................ chapter three: theatre and locality ............................................................................. the ecstasy of rita joe: national neighbourhood ................................................................... the komagata maru incident: an absorbing performance space............................................ : local jokes...................................................................................................................... the unnatural and accidental women: urgent local investment............................................ concluding observations .......................................................................................................... conclusion ...................................................................................................................... notes ............................................................................................................................... works cited .................................................................................................................... appendix: prince’s “familiarity scale”......................................................................... v list of tables table . prince's “familiarity scale” with examples ...................................................... 	
   vi list of figures figure . the jade peony's extended neighbourhood in regional context..................... 	
   figure . the jade peony's extended neighbourhood (detail) ....................................... 	
   vii acknowledgements it is a sincere pleasure to acknowledge the many people who have supported me during my work on this project: many of its best ideas and efforts are theirs. i have been fortunate in having the guidance of an exceptional supervisory committee. i would like to thank professor sherrill grace for her energy, critical generosity, and excellent advice. without her supervision i could hardly imagine having gotten all my ducks in a row, let alone my ‘i’s dotted and my ‘t’s crossed. i owe to professor grace as well the idea of embarking on the study of vancouver theatre that now makes up such an important dimension of the work. professor laurie ricou first introduced me to the pacific northwest region and has all along inspired my interest in the thoughtful close reading of place; i am deeply grateful for his wise comments and probing questions. to professor janet giltrow i owe my introduction to—and just about everything i have since come to know about—the powerful and sensitive analytical lenses of linguistic pragmatics. her work is in many respects the model for my own. my dear friend and admired colleague maia joseph has been my companion in the study of vancouver literature and in the challenges of learning to write and teach. her insightful responses have helped me untangle many a critical knot. i would say the same of the wonderful group of friends and scholars at ubc from whose work in rhetorical studies i have learned much and taken encouragement—perhaps especially drs. katja thieme and kathryn grafton. thanks too to my other friends and colleagues at ubc, who made graduate study there a pleasure, and to the faculty and staff of the department of english, who were so generous with their time and resources. dr. stephen ney helped viii out in a pinch. professors barbara dancygier and jerry wasserman especially have offered me valuable guidance and support. this project was made possible in part by the financial support of a canada graduate scholarship, granted by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. i hope that its findings will prove to be of some value to the people of canada (and vancouver), especially the writers, playwrights, theatre companies, and their audiences. finally, i must acknowledge my family and friends outside of ubc, whose love and encouragement kept me going. my roommates past and present, tasha riley, kathryn furlong, judith steiner, and clare mcgovern, preserved my sanity and helped me think about how to be a neighbour in a city. jen, grandma, kathy and robert, keith and marilyn and the rest of my family in ontario supported my work on this project (even when they wondered why it was taking me so long). with my parents, ruth and gerald banting, and my sister monica i have experienced what it feels like to be very close though far away; i have longed throughout this work to share with them the vancouver ground i have grown to know and love. ix dedication to my families, in ontario and on the west coast introduction: common ground and the city one of the defining features of the current moment of modernity, as anthropologist arjun appadurai describes it, is the magnitude of the flow of texts, images and other information away from the places where they are composed: across space, across borders, and even around the globe, into the hands of audiences elsewhere. but, as appadurai points out, only the extraordinary velocity and volume of this flow, as mediated by electronic technologies, is new ( ). indeed, written texts’ ability to travel, and thus the likelihood of their being read at a distance from their places of composition, has surely influenced how they have been received and interpreted ever since the media by which they were transmitted became portable. likewise, our considerable contemporary knowledge and imaginative awareness of places elsewhere—even of places that we have never experienced firsthand—is not new. today, the frequent movement of people away from their familiar localities, for the sake of refuge or work or leisure or war, combines with the distribution of images and texts about places elsewhere across electronic as well as physical-trade networks. our complicated awareness of places near and far currently “impel[s] (and sometimes compel[s]) the work of the imagination,” as we work to map our localities and to orient ourselves within them and in relation to more distant places (appadurai ). (appadurai published his book on cultural difference in the era of globalization at the close of the twentieth century; the moment he describes is still current, i believe, at the beginning of the twenty-first.) but it has also long been true that “neither images nor viewers”—nor texts nor readers—“fit into circuits or audiences that are easily bound within local, national, or regional spaces” ( ). taking the history of settlement in vancouver as a temporal gauge for this movement of texts and readers across spatial boundaries, i note, for example, that the coast salish peoples circulated and exchanged geographical knowledge and local stories in their movements up and down the pacific coast and along the fraser river valley for centuries before european contact. in the eighteenth century, captain george vancouver and other explorers and traders returned from salish territory to europe with maps, information, and (no doubt) tall tales about the west coast landscape, climate, and aboriginal peoples. in the nineteenth century, those chinese railway labourers and gold- rush prospectors fortunate enough to return safely to china after living and working in british columbia took with them knowledge and stories of the province and its early cities, adding to the information they had already written into letters home. recently, these early migrations, and these early varieties of traveling texts about vancouver, have been remembered and re-imagined in certain twentieth- and twenty-first century novels written and set in vancouver—texts that are themselves widely circulated beyond the city because they are published, sold, and taught across canada and sometimes abroad (for example, george bowering’s burning water and sky lee’s disappearing moon café). i am evoking the mobility of story, and audiences encountering unfamiliar places through text and performance, because the imaginative work that audiences do in this circumstance is no less remarkable for being commonplace. depending on where we live and what geographies we know, we may have the occasional experience of reading or watching something set in places with which we are very familiar. but for many of us this experience is rare. as readers and as theatre-goers, we tend to be practiced in an impressive art: the art of imaginatively accommodating references to countries, counties, rivers and mountains, towns and cities, streets and landmarks, parks, buildings, institutions, bridges, transportation lines and neighbourhoods, all of which are unfamiliar or only known to us only through representations. willingly, even unconsciously, going along with (cf. searle speech ) references to places that are just a little beyond us, so to speak, we sketch imaginative new maps for ourselves, only bothering to consult authoritative sources to confirm the accuracy of our imagined maps if we wish to. it may be a defining feature of fictional genres that they offer themselves “universally” to anyone who can read them, by virtue of being “fictions” and thus one step outside of immediate social reality, and by being published texts, indiscriminately available for consumption. likewise, it may be a defining feature of mainstream, commercial theatre performance that anyone who can afford a ticket may join its audience (although the “universality” of access to theatre performance is in practice more limited). amy devitt describes “a common quality” of many literary texts: they are “read by multiple audiences at different times and places, apart from” their moments and places of composition and first reception ( ). one “function of at least some literary genres,” she writes ( ), is “to universalize” ( ): “to be used beyond their composer’s space and time” ( ). but i think that such a generic universality does not make any less remarkable readers’ and theatre audiences’ feeling of being licensed to make imaginative sense of what they read, any more than does our long history of practice at doing so. this sense of license is remarkable because novels, short stories and plays are not indiscriminate in their address. to start with, they are not published, marketed, distributed, or performed everywhere or in every language. they do not all remain perpetually in print or in performance. furthermore, the paratextual material that frames these literary texts and performances and offers them to the public at large prepares a “threshold” (genette , ) that, in practice, is more inviting to some than others of those who happen upon it. when texts travel across borders or linger in libraries and archives after they disappear from bookstore shelves, they retain the traces of their response to an initial situation of composition and address (cf. bakhtin “speech genres” )—an initial situation that may seem to exclude some readers. plays in performance, of course, do not travel or linger the same way that printed material does. a play is re-created anew, with each production. producing companies sometimes adapt play scripts to their own local and temporal circumstances, in some cases changing the setting from a distant to a nearby location, so that traces of the distance between their performance and the play’s first place and time of production are obscured. and theatre audiences are co-creators of the performances they attend (s bennett ). thus, even when a producing company has not adapted the setting to the performance locale, the audience-members’ interpretive work may allow them to imaginatively re-make the play’s address, inserting themselves into the position of intended audience. indeed, reader-response criticism has claimed the same thing of readers’ interpretive work, arguing that individual readers “write” texts (e.g. barthes , fish , iser xii), thus, perhaps, re-creating for themselves the circumstances of each text’s address. i argue, however, that in the case of both texts and performances, traces of an address to a particular audience are stubbornly persistent. even plays may “translate” poorly for audiences with different horizons of cultural expectations than those for whom the performance was designed, as susan bennett points out ( ). if novels, short stories, and plays are among the literary genres that offer themselves “universally,” in devitt’s terms, in that they permit audiences anywhere, at any time, to make sense of them as they will, they nevertheless do not offer themselves equivalently to all audiences. novels, short stories, and plays are “filled with dialogic overtones” that link them responsively to the social languages of the place, time, and socio-cultural circumstances of their composition, as mikhail m. bakhtin argued of all utterances (“speech genres” , emphasis in original). moreover, their paratextual frames are designed to appeal more to certain potential audiences than to others. and finally—here i arrive at the point that is most central to the argument of this dissertation—the narrative style in a novel or a short story implies a specific address to a particular audience. likewise, the dynamic presentation of a play in live performance implicitly specifies an audience to whom the play is primarily addressed, although the circumstances of this address are certainly different in live performance than they are in a novel or short story. this point, that the address in texts and performances is necessarily specific rather than universal, has been made elsewhere. i re-introduce it here, in the context of the modern circumstance outlined by appadurai, where texts and play scripts are among the other media circulating well beyond their initial contexts of composition, publication, and performance, because i want to consider the implications of this specificity of address for our senses of place, as these are mediated by literary texts and by plays in performance. in particular, i want to consider how this specificity of address affects our experience of place as a social terrain: we relate to places near and far not just as solitary individuals but as subjects drawn into relationship with other people, by means of our relation to the places we share and do not share with them. novels, short stories, and plays all contribute to shaping our awareness of these relationships. one of the contributions i make, in this dissertation, is to direct attention to specific address in texts and performances recognizably set in a particular place. i show that not only are such texts set somewhere that few of their eventual readers and audience-members may be likely to be familiar with, but they narrate and perform that place in ways that address (and thereby construct) a specific audience’s relationship to it. what travels with these texts and performances, then, are not simple representations of place but representations of place that are addressed. in other words, readers and theatre- audiences must somehow imaginatively accommodate not only references to countries, counties, rivers and mountains, towns and cities, streets and landmarks that are perhaps unfamiliar to them or only known only through other representations, but references that come stamped with an address to an audience that has a particular relation to that place. in this dissertation, i analyze references to sites within the metropolitan region of vancouver, british columbia. while this city offers a valuable case study, my analytical method could be applied effectively to urban or rural places anywhere. critical contexts for this work by directing attention to specific address in texts and performances recognizably set in particular places, i offer a new way of assessing how literary texts and theatre performances are involved in constructing and negotiating social relations established on the basis of place. novels and plays are often theorized as being among the media (or, in benedict anderson’s words, the “forms of imagining” [ ]) that afford audiences an imaginative awareness of their relationships with other people either nearby or far away. we might think of readers and theatre audiences as coming into awareness of these relationships via literature in one of three general ways. i consider these general ways of thinking to be three basic theoretical frameworks that support much early and contemporary critical thinking about literature and theatre as the media of these relationships. in this section of the introduction i outline these general theories in more detail, in order to highlight what i think is an important difference between what i am doing here and what has been done so far. as i do so, i touch primarily on ideas that have been important in scholarly conversations about urban canadian literature and theatre. vancouver fiction and theatre being my case study, theories of how texts and plays with urban settings mediate relations between fellow citizens and more far-flung communities are self-evidently relevant. theories of nation—and particularly of how novels and plays construct national community—are perhaps less so. indeed, as i show in chapters two and three, novels, short stories and plays set in vancouver rarely assume a specifically national audience, so “canadian literature” is not an unproblematic frame for this case study. traditional discussions of canadian literature have not selected urban settings as the ground for specifically national experiences, preferring rural settings as tropes for a canadian ethos and communal life (cf. edwards and ivison ). this perception has finally shifted, as justin d. edwards and douglas ivison argue in downtown canada: writing canadian cities ( ), but at the same time much recent literary criticism has shifted attention away from the nation, to emphasize diasporic, transnational, and cosmopolitan “imagined communities” (edwards and ivison ). nevertheless, i situate my work in relation to criticism of urban canadian literature and theatre. since vancouver is canada’s third-largest city, it does claim attention as a national population centre of some political weight. also, although the idea of a nation-wide reading audience/publishing market is a fiction, it has historically influenced the ways books are marketed and talked about in canada, as the example of mcclelland and stewart’s new canadian library series illustrates. (the series evidently sought a nation-wide academic audience [friskney , , ]; schools and universities across the country may indeed be one of the sites where a nation-wide audience is best approximated.) and the idea of a canadian readership for a canadian literature continues to propel discussion in the popular media (cf. cbc’s “canada reads” and noah richler’s this is my country, what’s yours?) as well as in academic teaching and writing. the idea of a national audience for canadian work may be even more tenuous for theatre, given a historical emphasis on dispersed regional theatres. but some important vancouver-based plays do get produced across the country (or at least in toronto) with the idea that they make a strong claim on national audiences. meanwhile, canadian literary criticism has emphasized place as the grounds of canadian national identity “[e]ver since northrop frye posed his metaphysical question ‘where is here?’” (edwards and ivison ). thus any text set within national borders may be received as responsive to canadian experiences, given canadian literary criticism’s longstanding interest in discovering “the canadian-ness of the literature written in this country” (surette ). despite that i rarely observe vancouver literature and theatre addressing a national audience, then, the idea of national reception is worth bearing in mind. recognizing the possibility of a self-consciously national reception for these texts and performances highlights their tendency not to address it. i mentioned three general frameworks for thinking about how literary texts and theatre performances allow their audiences to imagine relationships with others on the basis of place. the first of these frameworks is based on the idea that readers or audience-members might identify with a community constructed in the novel or play and thus imagine themselves connected by social bonds of similarity or shared circumstances to people who inhabit the novel or play’s setting. prototypical examples of this idea are early twentieth-century theories of how literature might mediate national senses of community. early anthologists of canadian literature may not have emphasized setting per se, but, according to dermot mccarthy in “early canadian literary histories and the function of a canon,” they insisted on literature’s power to communicate the collective “spirit” of the nation’s people. and in the anthologists’ view, this spirit was principally inspired by canadian place: “the ‘spirit of place’ or ‘spirit of the people [were] for all intents and purposes, one and the same” (mccarthy ; cf. also surette ). by communicating this national spirit “to the people, for the people” (mccarthy ), the literary works would bring together canadians from across the country. the readers whom the anthologists imagined identifying with this spirit were apparently supposed to recognize the national “place,” in the singular, as being coherent and unified. from later perspectives, literary texts would have to encourage identification despite actual geographical diversity, in order to unite a national community. nation would be constructed by readers who could identify with characters living in distant places. thus, for example, morton l. ross commented in that an idea of national identification had great bearing on whether a novel would find a “place within a canadian canon”: if the novel succeeds in conveying what it was to live in a significant section of the country at a significant time in the nation’s history, however gritty the sensation, then [goes the argument] it will contribute to that common, although vicarious experience which creates a group, in this case a canadian, identity. (ross ) so long as a novel is set in a “significant” section of the country, distant readers’ vicarious identifications with characters living there will contribute to a collective identity. recent critical writing on nation has resisted the notion that audiences might identify with a spatialized national community in any simple way. but it seems to me that these ideas remain current—even if they are frequently assigned the role of outmoded theories that continue to provoke debate. for example, in framing canadian writing set in urban centres as representative of “the lived experience of most canadians,” ivison and edwards challenge tendencies in the public mythology of canada and critical production on canadian literature and culture, which has, until recently, largely focused on rural and wilderness spaces and small towns. ( ) canadians from across the country were once supposed to identify with representations of rural life and hence with a national cultural community, ivison and edwards suggest, however distant and different those presumedly “significant” rural settings (and their wider regional contexts) were from their individual lived realities. a similar critique of earlier theories of spatial identification is offered by other contributors to edwards and ivison’s book. paul milton recounts, for example, that so far as he can recall, none of the “canadian literature” he read in high school in the s or later as an undergraduate student depicted experiences (or a community) with which he could identify—because, with their rural or urban-centre settings, the novels he read offered no resemblance to the suburbs he had grown up in: i came to the conclusion that i hadn’t grown up in canada after all. my suburban life was not a factor in canadian literature, contemporary or otherwise. ‘where is here,’ you ask? ‘someplace else,’ i would respond. ( ) even in this account of how literature set in canada did not allow him to identify with the nation—because, to start with, teachable canons of national literature are not diverse enough to depict all the different experiences of a diverse nation’s citizens—milton implies that if the novels he read had represented suburban settings and lifestyles with which he could identify, those texts might have been capable of mediating for him a sense of national community. in quoting frye’s famous question (“where is here?”) and thus following frye in diverting the question of collective identity towards a question of collective place (frye ), milton makes what ivison and edwards identify as a consistent theoretical move in studies of canadian literature. critics have focused on place as an important coordinate of identity in canada, they argue, even when recent work “has shown that using canadian literature to connect ‘a sense of place’ to a ‘sense of self’ is not an easy project” ( ). “as readers and writers in canada,” they write, “we are obsessed by this idea” of place (edwards and ivison ). i would emphasize that place has not just been an important, if complicated, coordinate of individual identity, in canadian literary criticism. representations of place have also been studied for their (in)ability to unite dispersed citizens in national community. region has frequently been proposed as an alternate frame to nation, one more likely to inspire communal identification in canada (cf. fiamengo , ricou “region” , wylie et al. ix): an idea that literary texts could allow citizens to identify with their fellow-nationals far removed from them, thus stretching their sense of shared national community across “vast distances, natural barriers, diverse patterns of settlement, and locally specific histories” (fiamengo ) was bound to be problematic and unsatisfying, in a canadian context, in part precisely because of the geographic distances and diversity janice fiamengo identifies. the general idea of how literature might serve as a medium for identification with a regional community underpinning regionalist proposals is similar to the idea of national identification i outlined in the previous paragraphs. in this case, presumably, regional readers are supposed to recognize the setting of the novel or play as part of the same regional space they inhabit and hence come to identify with the people depicted (cf. fiamengo , wylie et al. ix). as critical writing such as edwards and ivison’s has begun to recognize cities and metropolitan regions as sites of “the lived experience of most canadians,” novels with urban settings have in turn come to be interrogated for their potential ability to mediate social relationships between fellow citizens. cities, like nations and broader ecological and topographical regions, are internally diverse and divided spaces with multi-layered histories and hazy, permeable boundaries; they are places shared by all of their citizens only by way of generalizing sweeps of the imagination (cf. ash and thrift , fiamengo , pile - ). but critics seem more willing to consider the possibility that reading could allow one to recognize one’s relations to other citizens in the case of cities than in the case of regions or nations, perhaps because even large metropolitan areas in canada are nonetheless smaller and denser than regions. peter dickinson, for instance, writes about a pedagogical experiment in what he calls “resident reading,” where he and a class of university of british columbia students in vancouver read texts set in the city in which they were residents. they approached the texts as portraits of the collective self, of how the individual gradually comes to terms with—and by no means happily or easily—his or her affiliation with and participation in a larger community (be that community structured around ethnicity, race, gender, family, work/artistry, sexuality, etc.). ( ) but while reading these texts as depicting the uneasy affiliations of community, dickinson and his students also attempted to consider their own affiliations with the various localized communities depicted. dickinson theorizes these relationships between the resident readers and their fellow citizens as facilitated by the specifically urban environment of vancouver, whose overlapping spatial configurations (geographical, historical, architectural) insist on proximity rather than distance and compel an interrelationship rather than a disconnection between the bodies that inhabit the city. ( - , emphasis in original) here it is the city’s density that might compel interrelationship. but in dickinson’s notion of resident reading, literary texts also work to mediate these affiliations: “the texts under consideration thus became the means of this interface, […] unpacking the complex social, political, and cultural relations between the overlapping groups and communities that occupy this environment” ( ). dickinson does not propose that resident readers simply identify with other residents because they share a setting: he reads these texts precisely as preventing simplistic identifications by elaborating the complexities of social relations in shared urban space. but nonetheless his theory of reading resembles the first of what i called three general frameworks for thinking about how literary texts allow their audiences to imagine their relationships with others on the basis of place. if this first general framework has been part of how theatre scholars have considered plays in performance to mediate their audiences’ national or regional or local- urban identifications, it has apparently not been a big part. in some respects the terms of this thinking have been different in scholarship about canadian theatre than in canadian literature criticism because, in the former, those debating the idea of a national theatre in canada have been less concerned with the possibility of audiences in one part of the country identifying with characters in distant settings. a national theatre was understood to entail a critical mass and a necessary quality of canadian-based theatrical production (salter): enough canadian playwrights writing good plays earning enough professional productions on canadian stages. in practice, as jerry wasserman describes it, this canadian theatre took clearest shape in the “decentralized” form of a cross-country chain of flagship “regional” theatres, all of which were supposed to be responsive to “the distinctive needs of their [respective] communities” (“introduction” , ). theatre production is in some ways such a decidedly localized practice that, when plays are written that represent specific settings, they are most likely to be produced first in the regional vicinity of that setting. in such circumstances they are perhaps more likely to produce local or regional rather than national-scale identifications. when these plays tour or receive later productions elsewhere, the opportunity perhaps arises for audiences to identify as fellow-nationals with the characters in their distant settings, but the possibility of this identification depends on how the play’s setting is staged. local rather than national identifications remain most likely, i presume, if the new production company adapts the play’s original setting to represent instead the new vicinity of performance, as playwrights such as sky gilbert ( ) and brad fraser have encouraged companies to do with their scripts. edwards and ivison suggest that urban settings are particularly transferable, at least when they are framed as modern or postmodern spaces of disorientation and emotional “blankness” ( ); fraser’s unidentified human remains and the true nature of love is set in edmonton but “could be set in any north american city, a fact that denys arcand recognized when he set the film version of fraser’s play in montreal.” an off-broadway production recognized this transferability when they set it in new york city (edwards and ivison ); so did a recent production by twenty-something theatre when they set it in vancouver. to continue the play with frye’s formula, we might say that there is here, in these instances, but it is no longer there. if the later production does not change the play’s setting to its own locale, but brings one setting to another the way novels do when they travel, several possibilities exist. the ecstasy of rita joe exemplifies one possibility: when this play got its second and most famous production in ottawa, it was received as showing canadians to themselves: although the there depicted was distant, it was apparently received as continuous with here, precisely because it was part of canada. the play’s setting in “the city,” which may faintly be discerned to be based on vancouver, was easily enough imagined as contiguous with ottawa. but ecstasy seems to me to have been somewhat unusual in its ability to suggest the continuity of otherwise distant spaces with each other within a national frame. another possibility is that the play’s distant setting be perceived as a distant elsewhere, as not here. joan macleod’s plays amigo’s blue guitar and are both set on the british columbia coast, just outside or inside the vancouver city limits, but both premiered in ontario. from macleod’s perspective, ontario audiences for these plays found these west coast settings “exotic” (qtd. in l johnson ): somewhere distinctly other and fascinating because different. macleod’s sense of the in-canada exotic brings me to the second general idea about how literary texts and plays set in a specific place might allow their audiences to imagine their social relationship to people living in that place: the idea that, by apprehending their difference from people depicted as living in the text or play’s setting, readers and theatre audiences perceive themselves as divided from those others in a way that spatializes their difference: those people’s place is distant from my own, they decide. this idea of spatialized difference recalls edward said’s analysis of european perceptions of the orient, although the perceptions said analyzed have a longer history and greater ramifications than those i gesture to. orientalism is a spatialized field of dubious and imaginatively projected cultural “knowledge” (said ), a western idea of the oriental other predicated on the “imaginative geography” of a “line […] drawn between two continents” ( ). if some ontario audiences of macleod’s plays seem to receive the represented west coast as exotic, they may be said to perceive themselves as socially divided from the characters in these plays because of their sense of their local geographical difference and distance from the gulf islands and the coast mountains. in this understanding, social disconnection is coupled with geographical distance. this general idea underpins some understandings of regional literatures in canada and regionalist literary criticism. according to w. h. new, the regional rhetorical position is the voice of the nation’s internal margins, a position of relative disempowerment that need not necessarily be geographically distant from the centre. “in this sense the truly regional voice is one that declares an internal political alternative,” new argues (“beyond” ). but geographical otherness has nonetheless been important to both serious theories of regional literature and regional identifications in canada and saucy repartee in the mainstream media. depending on the regional theory, in literary studies, focus may be on either the reception or the production of this difference. on the one hand, readers from elsewhere in canada read the region’s geography, and therefore its society, as distant and socially distinct (cf. wyile ; wyile and lynes ); on the other, regional writers construct their hitherto overlooked regions for outside readers as distinct but present and newly visible (cf. ricou “region” )—or even as consumable commodities (davey - ). meanwhile, this idea of spatialized social division underpins the longstanding regional grumble that canadians elsewhere (especially powerful publishers, prize-givers, and critics located in so-called central canada) under- appreciate literature set somewhere distinctly other, such as the maritimes or the prairies or the west coast, because these adjudicators therefore receive their stories as irrelevant, perceiving their own social difference from the people of those far regions (chong). writers in central canada, meanwhile, have been heard to claim the reverse (marchand). i turn now to the third framework, the one within which my own approach most obviously belongs, and the one that returns me to appadurai’s insight about how much we know and how many images we have seen of places distant from wherever we are now, in our mobile, media-barraged lives. the central idea here is that readers and theatre audience-members join the various “discursive communities” of a certain setting. in my use of the term here, discursive communities are imagined groups of people whose shared, partial knowledges of the setting, interpretive perspectives on it, and degrees of access to and personal intimacy with it position them together; what they share also differentiates their position from that of other discursive communities surrounding that same setting. the first two general ideas understood readers and theatre audiences as identifying with or differentiating themselves from communities depicted as living in particular settings. by default, they pictured readers, audiences, and the communities depicted in the text or play as all situated in particular places. readers/audiences over here; setting of the text or play over there: even when the reader or theatre audience- member decides that those two places are identical or continuous with one another, the text or play still travels between setting and audience, intermediating between them and drawing them into a relationship of identity or difference. while reading a text and attending a play worked relatively similarly within those first two frameworks, in this third framework there is an important difference between them. in this case, readers of novels or short stories are not necessarily situated anywhere: they are not rooted in a particular place. they may not necessarily have ever set foot there. but readers may know something about the place in question, in the very loosest sense of “know”—that is, they may be aware of it, have some more or less limited knowledge of it, harbour some ideas or guesses about it, or have some associations with it. (or they may not!) and this sense of knowing (or not knowing) the place is compounded with a sense of how they came to know it or know of it—whether from long, personal, physical intimacy with it, from repeated hearsay, from deep reading or fervent movie-watching, or, perhaps, from a haze of brief, scattered encounters with it in the media or other discourse, pointillist-dot experiences that over time arrange themselves into a sketchy outline. each reader’s personalized “encyclopedia” (clark and marshall ) of what i’ve called “knowledge,” then, may be said to be felt as rather a sense of relative familiarity (as in prince ). readers are not locals or even located, in this framework; they might be reading from anywhere. but they are people with eclectic, personalized senses of familiarity with all sorts of places. i think of theatre audiences as the same as these readers, in most respects. but theatre audiences in attendance at a play are located for that moment of attendance, however briefly. they may not be locals, although it is more likely than not that they are, in certain theatres. but they have arrived at the theatre for the event of the play and therefore can be counted on to have some immediate, sensory and personalized familiarity with the location of the theatre. this matters when the play is set in the vicinity of the theatre, as i discuss in chapter three. encountering the setting of the literary text or the play as it is represented on the page or the stage, the individual reader or the individual theatre audience-member may have a solitary experience of comparing the setting as it appears there with his or her own memory file for that setting. ah! i know the very street, one might muse; another, mmm i believe i’ve heard of this town. in a song lyric, perhaps? but this is never only a solitary experience. it comes with the pressing awareness that one’s own particular relationship to the setting differentiates one from others who relate to it rather differently: people who are in other discursive communities, with respect to the place in question. these others, brought into view by the text or the play, may perhaps take the imagined shape of the author, the real-life counterparts of the characters depicted, other readers, the playwright and producing company, or other members of the theatre audience. but those others don’t know the street as i do!, one realizes. and meanwhile this experience of recognizing one’s own particular relationship to the setting represented also situates one in yet another discursive community (or, perhaps more accurately, at the point of conjunction of several overlapping discursive communities [cf. hutcheon ]). now they, on the other hand, would know the street too!, one realizes, although this sense of what is shared may be fainter and less certain than one’s recognition of what is not. when reading or theatre-going makes us aware of our own interpretive positions with respect to a certain place, it also makes us aware of our positions relative to others; this is the important insight that this framework allows. many of the various, carefully delineated theories of diaspora, transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism that underpin recent analyses of novels and plays set in canadian cities might be understood as working within this general framework. as they relate to my project, these are theories that try to understand the complicated sociality of city- dwellers’ relationships to places in and outside canada. if they are not in general especially concerned with how literary texts and plays mediate the sociality of those relationships for their audiences, they are nonetheless interested in how texts and plays represent such relationships, thus offering their reading or theatre-going audiences vocabularies for understanding their own relations. the literary criticism in this vein, in particular, is usually not directly interested in readers’ self-recognition as belonging to certain discourse communities about a certain place and not belonging to certain others. this criticism considers how diasporic, transnational, or cosmopolitan subjects—usually the characters depicted in novels, but often, implicitly, the writers as well—compose new discourses of spatial relations such as “belonging in” and “(un)familiarity with” a particular place. a brief review of two articles about novels set in toronto will have to suffice, here, to illustrate this criticism. in “‘streets are the dwelling place of the collective’: public space and cosmopolitan citizenship in dionne brand’s what we all long for,” emily johansen discusses how the “second-generation characters” in brand’s novel, children of “migrating diasporic characters” ( ) who moved to toronto from vietnam, nova scotia, and jamaica, use various media to articulate discourses that assert their own belonging in the public spaces of toronto. they perform bicycle flânneries that inscribe their presence onto public attention (johansen ), paint graffiti art that “resist[s] the colonizing hegemony of the city’s white bourgeois élite” ( ), and express “exuberant cosmopolitan citizenship” by at least temporarily embracing national allegiances that they have not inherited in celebrating korea’s world cup win together in the streets ( ). quite rightly, i think, johansen treats these characters’ discourses as at least partly addressed to an audience of hegemonic white torontonians—their performances “force” white élites to “recogni[ze] their experience of toronto” ( )—although, as she points out, most of the novel’s second-generation characters are not interested in entering into relationship with white torontonians themselves. they want instead to claim their relationships to the white city’s spaces ( ). in my terms, this resistance is nonetheless a kind of social relationship, a relation of mutual rejection perhaps, and the performances and discourses these characters articulate are the media that assert the triangulation of this alienated relationship between themselves, white, affluent torontonians, and the spaces they differently inhabit together. elsewhere, i discuss how brand’s novel itself works as a medium of comparable but slightly different relationships, its general address to an audience who apparently knows the city’s geography well occasionally shifting gear and rejecting their knowing purchase on it, speaking suddenly as if the narrator and her addressees are from quite different toronto discourse communities (banting “social”). brand’s novel uses a vocabulary denoting national identities to indicate the cultural differences complicating social life in toronto—“in this city there are bulgarian mechanics, there are eritrean accountants, colombian café owners, latvian book publishers […]” (brand ), for example. but the social geography of primary interest to both the novel and its central characters is the bounded urban space of “this city.” when johansen identifies the second-generation characters’ friendships and allegiances as expressing what she calls “‘territorialized cosmopolitan’ subjectivities,” she is not invoking a trans-spatial idea of cosmopolitanism, such as that theorized by kwame anthony appiah (“cosmopolitan reading”). instead, she is stressing that their relationships-across-difference are located and performed in a single place: they express subjectivities with multiple affiliations and across axes of gender, ethnicity, class and sexuality which are not uprooted or free-floating but are principally and firmly located in the physicality of [in this case] toronto. (johansen ) but if toronto and other major metropolitan centres are cosmopolitan places because the world’s cultures commingle there (cf. ball ), they are also frequently theorized, rather differently, as the sites of cosmopolitan identifications because their residents are involved in social relationships with people in other places, too. in “duelling and dwelling in toronto and london: transnational urbanism in catherine bush’s the rules of engagement,” john clement ball suggests that london, england, is precisely such a site, although he uses a vocabulary of transnationalism rather than cosmopolitanism. while living as an expatriate in london, the canadian protagonist of bush’s novel comes to recognize her own social and political relations to people elsewhere, including toronto, her abandoned home, by means of an accumulated “imaginative awareness and understanding” (ball ). having traveled, done historical research, and fallen in love “with a racial and national ‘other’” ( ), the protagonist develops for herself a personalized discourse, or a “mental map” ( ), that “figures [london] most importantly as an international contact zone” ( )—a space, in other words, by way of which she is brought into relationship with people elsewhere ( ). ball does not comment on how bush’s novel might serve to mediate a similar sort of mental mapping for its readers. perhaps because audiences are so conspicuously present in the theatre, scholarship on canadian transnational or diasporic theatre is somewhat more interested in how plays prompt audiences’ self-recognition as belonging to certain discourse communities surrounding a place than literary critics are in how novels do the same. once again, i will just touch on two recent articles as examples. in “diaspora and the theatre of the nation,” aparna dharwadker compares the work of the montréal-based, south asian canadian theatre company teesri duniya to that of the largely india-based theatre companies that tour plays in the united states. she argues that teesri duniya’s plays construct a diasporic indian-canadian subjectivity, one that complicates “a foundational ‘indianness’ by the fact of distance” and by engaging “the unique cultural-political and discursive contexts of canadian multiculturalism” ( ). set in montréal and examining “the pervasive ‘experience of minority’” shared by many different groups in canada ( ), teesri duniya’s resident plays are different from those of the traveling “theatre of non-residence,” as she terms the indian touring plays in the united states ( ), because the latter, as “imports immersed in the culture of home, […] affirm the ‘indianness’ of audiences in the diaspora” ( ). dharwadker does not directly address the question of what discursive communities the audiences of teesri duniya’s plays might inhabit. but her discussion of the touring plays suggests that they rely on and “affirm” their audiences’ belonging to communities that are deeply familiar with and attached to india, even while not residing there. these audiences relate to the characters in india as their fellow-nationals; the plays mediate a relationship of affiliation that draws across international space. by implication, perhaps, then, teesri duniya’s plays articulate discourses of complicated belonging that mediate relationships specifically located in montréal, since these plays “deal with ‘here’ canada, and not with ‘there,’ halfway across the world” (uma parameswaran qtd. in dharwadker ). dharwadker reads these different kinds of diasporic theatre as primarily engaging audiences whose foremost attachments are to each play’s specific geographical setting and locally-embedded societies (montreal, in the case of teesri duniya, and india, in the case of the touring companies). in “globalisation’s marginalia: anglo-canadian identity and the plays of brad fraser,” roberta mock examines a different scenario: plays set in canada that engage different discursive communities when they are staged in different locations. “[brad] fraser’s mature plays tend to be set in specific canadian urban environments and all contain references that will only be understood by canadians (or those who have lived in canada),” mock asserts ( ). but they have “international appeal” ( ), despite that audiences elsewhere are left outside one of the play’s discursive communities, living outside of canada and therefore having missed canadian television ( ) and remaining unfamiliar with details such as canadian postal codes ( ). fraser’s plays address other discursive communities, to which these non-canadian audiences do belong, by using “transnational strategies of subversion [and] drawing on international postmodern vocabularies of queer and feminist cultural politics” ( ). obscure canadian references “d[o not] need subtitles on non-canadian stages, because […] the meaning of the words are of less importance here than the parodic strategy of their performance” ( ). the central difference between the plays and audiences dharwadker and mock discuss may be the different degrees of geographical embeddedness of the cultures represented and critiqued onstage: the indian-diaspora plays engage political problematics that are embedded in national frameworks and hence geographies (respectively canadian and indian); fraser’s plays engage queer politics and parody in a globalized urban modernity (mock ) that is not necessarily located in a canadian geography. accordingly, dharwadker’s and mock’s analyses respectively treat and do not treat audiences as drawn into specifically spatialized relationships with the other members of the discursive communities they join while they are watching the play. my own work, in this dissertation, introduces to literary criticism an attention, of the kind exemplified by theatre scholars such as dharwadker and mock, to how novels, short stories and plays might serve to mediate the sociality of relationships to place. rather than focusing on how the complicated social relations of cross-spatial affiliation or territorialized cosmopolitanism are represented in texts and plays set in vancouver, i look at how these and other relationships are mediated by those texts and plays. i am therefore not immediately interested in whether readers and theatre-audiences might identify with characters or perceive them as other, or even whether readers might recognize the settings constructed on the page as continuous with their own locations or not. (in the case of theatre, however, i do investigate in how audience-members might be brought to recognize similar continuities.) generally, i am interested in how readers and audiences might perceive their position inside or outside discursive communities that know the setting well. more crucially, the move i make is to consider how readers’ and audiences’ recognition of their own insider/outsider positioning might be affected by the fact that references to specific places in these texts come “stamped,” as i put it earlier, with an address to a particular audience with a specific relationship to that place. this move is my contribution. vancouver and its audiences one of my motivations in pursuing this project has been to remind us of the remarkable feat that i described above, of readers and theatre-goers easily accommodating references to places they do not know, despite the fact that these texts do not always address them or give them much help in doing so. i cannot do much more here than simply acknowledge this feat and how frequently we perform it. my project does, however, take up some of its implications by way of considering as a special case the circumstance where a reader does recognize places he or she knows well when they are referred to in a novel, short story, or play. another motivation has been my awareness that some places are more extensively depicted and written about than others. literary settings, then, are not all created equal. cities are more likely to be represented as specific, recognizable sites than are rural towns or counties, for instance. cities are dense with people who might choose to represent them, and they host the offices of major media companies that may broadcast their stories, news, and images widely. hence, to some degree, the larger and older the city, and the more pronounced its investments in media and cultural industries, the greater will be its footprint on the map of internationally recognizable literary settings, so to speak. but other factors may influence a city’s literary footprint as well. for instance, the narrator of michael slade’s novel headhunter ranks the “physical setting” of vancouver among the world’s six most impressive city sites, implying as he does so a correspondence between impressive physical geography and impact as a literary setting: it is common knowledge […] that for physical setting there are only six great cities in the world. rio de janeiro, sydney, cape town, hong kong and san francisco: these are five of them. vancouver is the sixth one. ( ) slade’s declaration here, however, turns on a joke about “common knowledge” that coyly admits that vancouver, among others its equal in topographical greatness, is not widely known or widely remembered—even though its site makes it so potentially great a setting. a capital city’s centralization of political activity and decisive power also establishes it on certain maps. in his influential book, imagined communities, anderson discusses references to “a house on anloague street,” in manila, the capital city of the philippines, in josé rizal’s noli me tangere (anderson ). anderson implies that filipino-national readers are precisely the audience presumed to recognize the house referred to in rizal’s novel, thus suggesting a link between the preeminence and centralizing force of a capital city in national citizens’ imaginations and the likelihood of that city’s geography being represented as recognizable in nationalist literature. but one of the factors that influences the size of any city’s literary footprint is its particular national context. in canada the national capital is less populous and therefore, perhaps, apparently less storied as a specific geography than the industrial and financial centres toronto, montreal, and even vancouver. in canada, moreover, even the larger cities were for a while overlooked as literary settings that might invite a national readership’s recognition and identification, despite these cities’ relatively prominent footprints in media coverage and their relative power, as centres of publishing and the academic production of knowledge, to influence what representations of canadian life are disseminated, discussed and canonized (edwards and ivison ). they are no longer ignored, as settings, thanks to the work of scholars such as edwards and ivison and the contributors to their book, downtown canada. but we cannot fall back on assumptions, like the one anderson implies, about texts and plays set in these cities appealing to a specifically national audience. michael turner, a vancouver-based writer who has set several of his works deliberately in vancouver (e.g. kingsway, the pornographer’s poem), has decided to make the setting of his most recent novel indefinite. “none of the subjects are named, and neither is the city where they live,” writes journalist alexander varty about turner’s new book. he quotes turner as explaining, “i wanted my book to make sense if it were being read in vancouver or cape town or karachi or buenos aires.” turner implies that particularlized settings make sense only, or especially, to particular audiences. it is hard not to read in turner’s comment a desire to escape the perceived parochialism of vancouver as a setting. another vancouver-based novelist, kevin chong, has complained about such limitations in the popular vancouver newsmagazine the georgia straight: “living in a city that’s neither big nor small, vancouver writers, in some respects, have the worst of both worlds,” chong writes. in chong’s opinion, vancouver is at once too big to live in affordably and too small and insignificant to provide its writers with powerful publishing contacts or a setting that whets readers’ appetites. vancouver writers, he claims, cannot “write about our hometown in the same way a london or paris writer can casually name-drop neighbourhoods to a cosmopolitan (or at least aspirational) readership” (chong “writers”). chong’s argument is no longer entirely true, in my estimation. in chapter two i discuss novels that appear to presume a worldly appetite for a vancouver setting and take the liberty of “name-dropping” certain landmarks as if they are indeed widely recognizable to an international audience. but vancouver is a productive site for my investigation precisely because it is even yet in an uncertain position between those “world cities” which are widely mediated and well enough established as literary settings to command international name-recognition, and those “provincial” centres that might be presumed to resonate with only regional audiences. vancouver is currently balanced at what david whitson calls “the periphery of the centre,” as a site for the settings of novels, short stories or plays. it is a big, diverse city, internationally known in some skiing, urban planning, and tourism circles, but not equally as widely known or as rich in cultural cachet as are london or paris, as chong complains, or even toronto or montreal. and it is a canadian city. hence vancouver’s local writing and theatre has to compete for the attention even of canadian audiences against the more established culture industries and literary settings of the united states and england, as has long and famously been the case in canada, even while it has the advantage of association with a national literature that has been notably successful recently in international literary prize competitions (sugars ). whitson’s phrase, “the periphery of the centre,” actually refers to canada ( ), not vancouver, and to canadian cities’ relative international prominence as possible hosts for major sporting events, rather than their appeal as possible settings for novels or plays. canada is not a peripheral country by most standards. however, since the s, canadian cities have sought to change the somewhat provincial image they have historically had, and they have used mega-events such as the olympic games […] to reposition themselves on the world stage. (whitson ) vancouver’s peripheral relation to the centre of the “world stage” resembles canada’s own as described here. i drafted this introduction on the eve of the olympic games in vancouver, an event which organizers and city officials hoped would attract international attention to the city and register its major landmarks firmly on an affluent, consumer consciousness worldwide. (whether or not it succeeded in any lasting way is, i believe, still a matter of some debate.) the recent vancouver novels whose narrators confidently assume for themselves an international audience have already taken a similar step of producing a receptive position for an audience that recognizes this city as an appealing, plausible, somewhat familiar setting for a novel. they have done so without the powerful financial and political machinery behind an olympic event; indeed, the force of their narrative assumptions is no more powerful than an attempted speech act awaiting receptive uptake. when these novels’ references to recognizable vancouver landmarks reach actual readers, they contend with those readers’ diverse, idiosyncratic amounts of knowledge of the city. poised now on the periphery of the centre and becoming more readily available as a certain kind of literary setting, in some writers’ and publishers’ minds, the city has nevertheless had its history of being read as too unknown for an author to use certain rhetorical moves to establish a setting. for example, reading the following review of an early vancouver novel in a issue of the canadian bookman, it is hard to imagine that its criticisms would be put quite the same way, if the setting were established in the same manner but the references were to a higher-profile city. it is worth quoting at length from this review: english bay, vancouver, is beyond all doubt the world’s ideal spot for love- making in a canoe; but the reader who has not seen it will hardly imagine it from robert allison hood’s description of its charms at sundown: the shimmering tints of crimson and violet and yellow and gold; the opalescent splendors as the radiance gradually dies away, the dark blues and purples of the hills outlined against the sky; the flickering lights of the fishing boats away out near the horizon; and then, landward, the beach full of people, and behind, the town all cheery with its street lamps and its countless gleaming windows. all of these things are common to several thousand other bays on the world’s surface, and strangely fail to evoke the characteristic quality of english bay. nor does the enumeration of such names as ‘second beach,’ ‘ferguson point,’ ‘stanley park,’ ‘point atkinson’ do any more for us, though to the writer those terms are doubtless loaded with poetic significance, derived from his personal experiences. (“a vancouver novel”) no doubt hood’s novel is “amateur[ishly]” written, as the review concludes; in the quoted passage, the narrator’s jubilant impressionism does evoke a generalized (and colour-saturated) bay landscape rather than an unmistakably characteristic representation of english bay. but the reviewer’s assumptions seem to indicate an understanding of how literary settings relate to reading audiences that would require novels set in unknown cities to perform a careful introduction. the reviewer assumes the modern circumstance in which readers who do not know a setting from “personal experience” are an important constituency, a group for whom the narrative ought to “do” things, including reveal to them the setting’s characteristic qualities. and he assumes, rightly, i think, that place names may be replete with significance, for those who know the landmarks they refer to, but empty of this evocative power for those who do not. a novel of the same amateur quality might be set in london, england, and use overly general nouns (like “hills and “bay” here) and uncommunicative proper nouns to the same effect as in this passage, but i suspect that a reviewer for the canadian bookman would not have complained with the same confidence about their failure to evoke the setting in that case. he might presume that his reading audience would already know enough about london to accommodate the landmarks’ proper names; indeed, he might feel that to admit his own lack of knowledge would be embarrassing. vancouver has been one of those settings that would seem to place the burden on narrators to explain and describe, to introduce it to audiences who, more likely than not, have never heard much about it and have no previously-whetted appetite for more stories from its (hitherto) unheralded avenues. to some degree it still is such a setting, despite its pretensions to the world stage. what is remarkable, however, is that while certain novels and short stories set in vancouver do introduce the city carefully to their audiences, others do not. perhaps even more remarkably, none of the plays do. this is the writers’ and playwrights’ feat, complementary to readers’ impressive imaginative accommodations: they compose texts and playscripts that play inventively with setting and address, imagining as they do so new audiences and new social relationships to the city that vary widely in their gradations of proximity, intimacy, and sharedness. while most of these creatively imagined audiences and relations might be roughly matched to ideas like neighbourhood, city, region, diasporic or transnational community, or even, in rare cases, nation, they exceed and complicate each of these as well. to further appreciate how different cities’ more and less prominent footprints “on the map” of internationally recognizable literary settings may be experienced by readers—and how they may be playfully acknowledged by texts set in canada—consider bestselling author william gibson’s novel spook country. both the publishing context and the content of this lively, clever novel illustrate the contemporary realities that appadurai identifies as widespread circulation of texts and audiences. gibson’s novel was published simultaneously in the united states and in canada. he was born in south carolina but has lived in vancouver for many years. he has evidently traveled widely, and his novels have “been set in “san francisco, tokyo, london, los angeles and the eastern seaboard of the u.s” (link ). two of the central characters in spook country are american, but another is a cuban-chinese illegal migrant who speaks russian, and one of the americans is a free-lance journalist on assignment for a mysterious transnational magazine called node, a “european version of wired,” which is produced by “belgian money, via dublin” and staff in london, england (gibson ). spook country is set mostly in los angeles and new york city. i have never been to l.a., and my memories of a single trip to new york are distant and fuzzy, but i know enough about these cities from other novels, as well as from songs, movies, television shows, and the news, to feel a certain sense of recognition when i come across references to the sunset strip, tower records, fifth avenue, canal street, or the east village. (edward w. soja argues that “los angeles broadcasts its self-imagery so widely” that countless people who have never been there know the city in precisely the way i do [ ]; indeed, because l.a. is so thoroughly mediated as well as so spatially decentred and complicated, the city can hardly be “known” except through such mediations [soja - ].) i have admittedly never heard of the new york city locations mentioned in passages like the following: coming back from the sunrise market on broome, just before they closed, tito stopped to look in the windows of yohji yamamoto, on grand street. ( ) but even here i feel free to improvise for myself a sense of these locations and what they might signify, drawing on the words’ connotations and my growing knowledge of this novel’s setting. nevertheless, this passage’s multiple and interlinked references to places i do not know make me strain a little to accommodate the unfamiliar without supportive explanation, even as they give me the pleasurable experience of encountering something exotically unknown. what would tito be seeing, in the windows of this enterprise called yohji yamamoto, i wonder? spook country deliberately plays with the reality that some settings are not so well known to certain audiences as others. the “spook country” of the title is the united states of america, presumably, for most of the novel’s characters are spies, illegal immigrants, members of underground organizations, and black-market profiteers, most of them living in the united states. but towards the end of the novel a group of them escapes pursuit by crossing the border to canada, and they take pleasurable refuge in a newly secure anonymity here that seems to frame canada as a perfect new “underground” world—another spook country. when the characters arrive in vancouver, gibson’s narrator describes the city from the perspective of people completely unfamiliar with it and seeing it for the first time. the characters perceive it through lenses shaped by media and by their knowledge of other places. the city had been very quiet, as they drove in. deserted. scarcely a pedestrian. strangely clean, lacking in texture, like video games before they’d learned to dirty up the corners. ( ) this place [was… c]loser to costa mesa than san bernardino, say, at least in this part of town. it did remind him more of california than he would have expected it to, though maybe that was this sunshine, more san francisco than los angeles. […] he looked back and saw an island or peninsula, nothing there but trees, out of which emerged a tall suspension bridge, like the oakland bay. ( - ) in the latter passage, a character named milgrim registers his first impressions of vancouver, and gibson’s narrative frames two of the most famous and frequently referenced landmarks in the city’s literature—stanley park and the lion’s gate bridge— as unfamiliar and vaguely perceived new territory. milgrim cannot see, and does not know, whether the park is “an island or peninsula.” the city’s apparent emptiness of people and detail, from these outsiders’ perspective, constructs it as a docile wilderness on the far side of a forty-ninth parallel frontier. my reading perspective is that of someone who knows vancouver well enough to take pleasure in my superior local knowledge when i see that milgrim has no familiar bearings here. to me, it feels like gibson is making an inside joke for the benefit of a knowing vancouverite audience, one who would enjoy overhearing the outsider characters’ naïve perceptions of the city and receive the indirect compliment of having parts of their city likened to california, as here, or to copenhagen ( ). but i am also aware of myself as in a minority, among those widely-distributed readers among whom spook country will circulate. los angeles and new york city are common knowledge to a majority of the novel’s readers to a degree that vancouver is not, i presume. and gibson’s novel seems to make the same presumption, using the city’s status as relatively unknown territory it to introduce the novel’s primary audience as a docile wilderness. vancouver is named, in the novel, so gibson’s use of his city of residence as a literary setting does not efface it the way that the american film industry often does. (“vancouver is north america’s third-largest film and tv production centre after los angeles and new york,” and, as douglas coupland puts it, “to be blunt, many vancouverites feel damn pimpy about the fact that we never get to be our own city in any of these movies” [ ].) in general, cities may be more likely than less populated areas to be named as themselves when they are framed as literary settings, but some cities are perhaps more likely than others to be named as if they are already well-known, in certain international contexts of publishing and distribution. if the global map of literary settings is thus differentiated, so is the experience of being a reading audience for representations of specific places. reading spook country, i am aware of being an “insider,” in one respect, because i have the advantage of superior local knowledge over the border-crossing characters and the novel’s more distant reading audiences. but in the meantime i am also aware of my less secure knowledge of l.a. and new york city, the geographies of which are so comfortably taken for granted in this novel. i am aware, too, of my position outside of communities with the particular geographic consciousness demonstrated by milgrim and the novel’s other american characters—an audience that the novel’s narrator seems to be addressing primarily. in addition, paratextual information that the novel’s publisher is american and its author has an international reputation makes me especially aware of reading audiences whose limited geographical knowledge of vancouver contrasts with my own relatively intimate knowledge of the city; because of this information, i think of the international border as the line separating me from that novel’s other audiences. but my description of apprehending my inter-national difference from american readers, in the case of spook country, does not account for the potential complexity of how knowledge about city settings is distributed, or of how awareness of this informs our experiences of any given novel set in a particular city. perhaps no pair of readers ever quite shares precisely the same geographical knowledge and perspective, let alone any set of national citizens. and some new yorkers know vancouver more intimately than i do, no doubt. a specifically inter-national differentiation of readerships is only an important context for a small sub-set of the novels and short stories set in vancouver. in part, this complexity arises from the social composition of the modern city, whose spaces and citizens are multiply and diversely linked to other localities, regions, and nations as much as to their neighbours and to the nation in which they are embedded, as urban theorists and literary critics alike have argued (cf. amin and thrift ). it also derives, of course, from the movement and mediation appadurai identifies. and it reflects the complicated social geography of canada: a nation that, with its population dispersed in pockets and across multiple time zones, illuminates the problems both with anderson’s implied argument that (all) national citizens would be likely to know the nation’s cities well and his construction of the nation as a field of “homogenous, empty time” ( ). indeed, in the case of certain vancouver texts and plays, intra-national differences between specifically canadian readers more and less familiar with vancouver form a more important context than inter-national ones. yet others address audiences who have no particular relation to the nation at all, either as insiders or outsiders. my approach to setting and audience: introducing “common ground” in this dissertation, i discuss how novels, short stories and plays each address a divided audience. the primary dividing line in question is usually not an inter- or intra- national dividing line but one much more unique to the social geography imagined by the particular text or play. i identify how the narrative address in novels and short stories and the dynamics of performance in live theatre specify which audiences are included (and which others are excluded) by the narrator or the performance. i introduce a method for reading the specific inclusions and exclusions of narrative address in novels and short stories in chapter one, and i modify and extend that method for the purposes of interpreting live theatre performance in chapter three. these specificities of address complicate what otherwise might have been a simple differentiation of a given text or performance’s actual readers and audiences into those who are familiar with the setting and those who are not. both those who are familiar with it and those who are not encounter a third audience, one imagined by the text or performance’s expectations and address. this third group is an audience that has precisely the degree of familiarity with the setting that the text or performance is addressing. sometimes that address will, marvelously, seem to be designed for just the very person who is reading or attending the theatre: it will introduce the setting as if to someone who has as little (or as much) familiarity with it as the reader or audience- member actually does. but most often the text or the play will address itself to an audience from which the actual reader or theatre audience-member feels, consciously or not, his or her own slight or great difference. in our colloquial uses of the term, “common ground” is a metaphor: it means a domain of knowledge, experience, or perspective that people share with one another, not an actual expanse of terrain that people occupy together. common ground means essentially the same thing in linguistic pragmatics, the discipline from which i draw the definition i work with here. as herbert h. clark defines it, common ground is “the sum of [the] mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and mutual suppositions” held by a particular pair or group of people ( ). while an investigation of literary or theatre pragmatics might explore a wide variety of domains of mutual knowledge, i am taking up the literal implications of the metaphor “common ground,” in this dissertation, by focusing on references to specific places in narrative language in fiction and in theatrical performance. how much of the particular vancouver geographies that the narrators or performances know do they assume their audiences know too? how much or what part of vancouver is common ground for this narrator or performance and its intended audience, and what sort of relationship is that portion of vancouver thus implicated in? what can this tell us about the city as a social space, as it is mediated by these texts and plays? technical definitions of common ground, such as clark’s, differ from our colloquial understanding of the term in just how reciprocally aware they understand the pair of people who share common ground to be of one another and their shared knowledge. when clark defines common ground as the sum of two people’s “mutual” knowledge, he means something like the sum of things that both of these two people are certain they both know. clark and marshall offer an image of two people simultaneously, attentively, looking at a candle and looking at one another as an “example par excellence” of people sharing mutual knowledge of a particular candle ( ): they are supremely aware, together, of their knowledge of one another and the candle. this mutuality of awareness is more rarified than simple “shared” knowledge of the candle, because it is reflexive and fully reciprocal. clark and marshall’s image of the couple with the candle illustrates mutual knowledge as a triangulated relationship, and in this respect it serves as the model for the particular three-way relationships between texts or performances, their assumed audiences, and the places they establish as their settings that i explore in my own discussion of common ground. (other critical projects might use clark and marshall’s image of a triangulated relationship to investigate how texts and performances and their audiences are positioned in relation to particular histories, for example, or cultural knowledges, rather than settings.) the circumstance of narrative language in novels and short stories is quite different than a face-to-face conversation between two embodied, individual people. as i outline in chapter , when narrators assume that they share mutual knowledge of a specific landmark with the particular audience they are addressing, they generally do so on the basis of an assumption of “community membership” (clark and marshall - ). that is, narrators assume that they and their intended audiences mutually belong to the community of people who know that landmark. or, more properly, the ways narrators refer to landmarks in these instances, and the kinds of relationship we might imagine existing between the narrators and the audiences they address, recall the way that people speak to one another when they mutually acknowledge each other to be part of the same community. even in the case of the theatre i discuss in chapter , where the live performance and its audience do face each other in physical space, the circumstances of reference are not as simple as those described in clark and marshall’s example of physical copresence. the “candle,” so to speak, is not exactly present in the theatre along with the performers and the audience, in these plays, since i discuss conventional rather than site-specific theatre. there, too, community membership is the basis on which common ground is presumed shared. what makes the results of my analysis interesting, i believe, is that the “communities” in question in the case of these novels, short stories and plays, are at once so various and so difficult to describe using terms such as nation, region, locality, city, or neighbourhood, or even transnational, diasporic, or cosmopolitan—let alone “universal.” in pursuing this research, i am investigating one of the implications of an argument that all language is essentially social. that argument has been convincingly made by bakhtin, who wrote in “the problem of speech genres” that all utterances, from the simplest rejoinder in spoken conversation to the most sophisticated novel ( ), are constituted by their shared “quality of being directed to someone, [their] addressivity” ( , emphasis in original). the same argument is also a central tenet of linguistic pragmatics. in literary texts and in the theatre, as in all other circumstances, language and performance are social: they mediate between parties, constructing and negotiating their relationships to each other. the style of narrative address, in fiction, constructs a certain relationship between the narrating subject position and its implied audience (cf. sperber and wilson ); likewise, the dynamics of performance in plays implies a certain relationship between the play’s producers and performers and its audience. this implicit address is additional to the “dialogic overtones” that link narrative language responsively to other utterances in circulation at the place, time, and socio-cultural circumstance of its composition. it is social in the sense of being inter-personal— “directed to someone,” or some audience, that is, as well as other utterances (emphasis added). plays are performed more directly for whoever is in attendance, we might say, than novels or short stories are narrated for whoever happens to finally read them. nonetheless those theatre audiences actually in attendance at a given performance do encounter the play’s implicit assumptions about who they are. the play assumes a certain relationship to its audience, and the individual people in attendance at the play privately negotiate that assumption, accommodating it to themselves or refusing it, as the case may be. investigating the implications of this language-is-social argument, i observe that when texts and performances refer to specific places in establishing their settings, they construct and negotiate what amounts to a triangulated relationship between themselves, their assumed audiences, and these places. perhaps a narrator is very familiar with a certain setting but his audience is not, for instance. or perhaps they are both quite close to and intimately familiar with it, their relative positions with respect to it overlapping to some uncertain degree. in each case, the narrative language establishes a social relationship based on the difference or similarity of two positions relative to a given place. from the argument that language and performance are social emerges an argument that language and performance about place are social: we negotiate our relationships with one another in part through our claims to relative familiarity and unfamiliarity with certain places. common ground, in my literal sense, is where our social lives intersect with place: it is the demarcation of what places, near and far, we consider ourselves to share with a particular person or community. and its limits mark out the edges of this relationship: the boundaries, in other words, of the terrain we can jointly claim knowledge of, recognize, or speak about. crucially for my work here, linguistics pragmatics points out that our assumptions about the extent and limits of the various “grounds” we share with one another show up in our spoken and written language. we do not speak or write without making decisions about who our audience is and, more particularly, how much they know about our subject matter. as sperber and wilson ( ) and others have shown, decisions about mutual knowledge inform our spoken or written style. thus, when we speak about place, our spoken and written language mediates our relationship to our audiences, and this relationship is indexed to local and distant geographies. pragmatics theorists do disagree about whether people interacting face to face can really achieve the near-perfect coordination of meaning and near-total awareness of each other suggested by ideas like mutual knowledge. at best, perhaps, people in conversation have the potential to mutually recognize their common ground (cf. sperber and wilson ), and its precise boundaries are almost unknowable. this uncertainty makes all the more wonderful people’s everyday ability to make workable sense of each other’s utterances. that people achieve such coordination, estimating on the fly what cognitive grounds they hold mutually with one another, is attributable to people’s impressive social attunement and (in pragmatics theory) to the chemistry of intimate, real-time, co-present interaction. while i recognize that true mutuality is a rarefied experience, then, especially when we move away from candlelit face-to-face copresence into the realms of reading and theatre-going, i nonetheless find the idea of mutually assured, fully reciprocal common ground a useful one to keep in mind. it suggests something about the social stakes of what readers and theatre audiences do when they imaginatively accommodate references to places far outside of any grounds they might reasonably expect to share—let alone mutually know—with the narrator or performance. as readers and theatre audiences in such cases, we are audaciously, sometimes wonderfully, inserting ourselves into a particular misfit relationship with those places and those people. chapter one: tracing address in narrative language this city hovers above the forty-third parallel; that’s illusory of course. winters on the other hand, there’s nothing vague about them. winters here are inevitable, sometimes unforgiving. two years ago, they had to bring the army in to dig the city out from under the snow. […] spring this year couldn’t come too soon—and it didn’t. it took its time—melting at its own pace, over running ice-blocked sewer drains, swelling the humber river and the don river stretching to the lake. the sound of the city was of trickling water. have you ever smelled this city at the beginning of spring? (brand ) an approach to narrative language throughout this chapter i use the metaphor of a circle of narrative address to illustrate what i understand to be the sociality of narrative language in novels and short stories. “circle of address” recalls a small audience grouped around a storyteller, present with her in the moment of her telling; it evokes the embrace of a story recounted for you, personally, in tones and in a style calibrated precisely to your relationship with the teller and your knowledge of and interest in the subject matter. for me, the idea of a circle of address has come to indicate, as well, the envelope of reciprocal attention that we create around ourselves when we are in rapt private conversation in the middle of a crowded place. in person, the embrace of inclusion in an address can be constricting or hurtful if its calibrations are off; one can feel spoken down to, shamed, ignored, secretly superior. the circle no longer fits properly, so to speak, and we slip from it—or are expelled. meanwhile, when the story is told in public, there are always other audiences outside the circle; if they are attending to the story their experience of its telling may have social effects for them, too. translating the social situation of live storytelling or conversation to an analysis of address in novels or short stories, over the course of this chapter, i begin with the circle itself and then move out to consider those standing outside. it is there that i place readers. my analytical vocabulary allows me to identify the specific audience addressed by a given narrative. or, rather, it allows me to identify the particular relationship to the narrative subject matter assumed by the narrator for her audience. the audience addressed by a novel or short story is rarely identifiable as an easily labeled social group. instead, the audience is whoever relates to the narrator’s subject matter in precisely the way she anticipates: this audience’s social position is uniquely contingent on the narrator’s address. when the subject matter in question is a particular place, as it is in my epigraph for instance, the style of the narrator’s language implies certain things about how she supposes her audience relates to that place: how much or how little they know about it, from what socio-economic position they approach it, what attitudes they hold towards it. when the narrator of dionne brand’s novel what we all long for, which was excerpted as my epigraph to this chapter, asks whether “you” have ever smelled this city at the beginning of spring, she leaves open multiple possibilities: the audience she is addressing might have smelled this city; it might not have; she has not decided. but her narrative language elsewhere in this passage presumes, at least, that her audience is receptive to being told things about this city that she knows so well. winters here are unforgiving. the sound of the city, this spring, was of trickling water. consciously or not, any individual reader of this narrative encounters his difference from her implied audience in the slight (or great) difference between his own relationship to the place described and the one assumed for her audience by her narrative. my approach reveals in narrative language about place a set of relationships, some of them implicit in the narrative style, others potentially imaginatively projected by the individual reader. as philosophers dan sperber and deirdre wilson observe, all aspects of style indicate a speaker’s assumptions about his or her addressee and about the relationship between them. “style is the relationship,” they write. much of what they argue of spoken language holds for narrative language in novels and short stories as well. from the style of a communication it is possible to infer such things as what the speaker [or narrator] takes to be the hearer’s cognitive capacities and level of attention, how much help or guidance she is prepared to give him in processing her utterance, the degree of complicity between them, their emotional closeness or distance. ( ) as sperber and wilson’s observations indicate, the relations projected by narrative language and imagined by readers are social, in the sense of being inter-personal. to expand on sperber and wilson’s point, these relations are characterized by degrees of intimacy, inclusiveness, attitude, power differentials, spatial/temporal distance, and precisely delimited terrains of common ground. narrative language does not just imply the audience’s relation to the setting of her story; it implies things about the relative positions, with respect to that setting, of both narrator and audience. hence, narrative language implies their relationship to each other, vis-à-vis that setting: who is closer to, or more intimate with, the setting; how much of it they share as common ground; where their shared knowledge ends. narrative “address,” to paraphrase m. m. bakhtin, is a social-seeming orientation to another subject’s responsive understanding (“discourse” ). meanwhile, the individual reader may become aware of his own relationship to both the narrator and her implied audience. depending on his respective knowledge of toronto, the city brand’s narrator refers to, and his imaginative ability to accommodate himself to the narrative style, the individual reader may feel himself almost enveloped by the narrative address—or he may feel that he has been overlooked or left out, as if he were standing outside the circle. he may even imagine other audiences of readers looking on, from their respective positions in the shadows. as i mentioned in my introduction, my approach and my analytical vocabulary are principally drawn from linguistic pragmatics. paradigmatically, pragmatics attends to how speakers a) index their language to the physical and temporal context of their speaking and b) design their language to manage their relationships to their particular intended addressees and to their subject matter. in pragmatics theory, spoken language is analyzed as being meaningful within the single and unique physical, social, and cognitive context—the single “arena of language use,” to use herbert h. clark’s phrase (xi)—in which it is produced. the classic pragmatics arena, face-to-face interaction, is immediate, in-the-moment, and intimately personal (even when the interacting people are strangers). spoken language is “anchored” not only in the ongoing physical and social context (goffman ) but in the particular bodies, memories, and personalities of the people present at the conversation. it involves meaningful eye contact (clark ) and body language (sperber and wilson ). it responds to the preceding language of its immediate addressees and anticipates their reactions in thought and language (clark and marshall ; bakhtin “problem” ). and it reflects speakers’ senses of their relationship to the people facing them. the verbal text of a conversation would be meaningless if it were removed from its original context of speech and reception, according to some pragmatics-oriented theorists (e.g. toolan). the verbal and stylistic indices that originally anchored such a text to its context (such as pronouns, temporal markers, or signs of empathy, motive, or response) would be cut off from their moorings and set meaninglessly adrift. but pragmatics notes that even in these verbal signs’ severed and aimless attempts to point at contextual features that are no longer present, they gesture to the fact that they had once been part of a physical, temporal, and social context of speech. like spoken, conversational language, narrative language in novels and short stories seems to gesture at a social context and a temporal moment of address. but it has not been cut off from an original context. rather, it projects its own context, where narrator and audience are copresent in the time and sometimes the space of what gérard genette calls the “narrating instance” ( ). roland barthes wrote: “it is well known that in linguistic communication i and you are absolutely presupposed one by the other; likewise, there can be no story without a narrator and without an audience” (qtd. in banfield ). narrator and implied audience appear, inseparably, as the coupled subjectivities in a storytelling relationship projected by the single line of the narrative text. the qualities of address and sociality decipherable in narrative language may be complicated, indirect, ambiguous, or multiple, and hence in some texts narrative language may be interpreted more easily as unpinned from any unique, bounded subjectivity than as articulated by a personified narrator. as they appear in literary texts, narrating and addressed subjectivities sometimes resolve into sharply differentiated “personalities,” but sometimes they are diffuse or shifting positions, too complicated and disembodied to be properly called persons. nevertheless, i find it productive to continue to discuss them in terms suggestive of bounded subjecthood (as “narrator” and “audience”) because doing so allows me to emphasize the inter-subjective, relational qualities of narrative language’s address and sociality. the complicated subjectivity of narrative modes such as free indirect narration only adds to the richness of literary address and fuels my interest in analyzing the sociality of descriptions of setting. narrative language’s ability to register complicated blends of subjectivities, in ways that spoken conversational language ordinarily cannot, inspires theories of narrative language that present important challenges to my treating such language as addressed (cf. banfield). but the stylistic similarities between narrative language in novels and short stories and spoken conversational language enable my crossover analysis. accommodating pragmatics techniques to textual analysis, i position myself among narratological debates which on one side support genette’s theorization of a narrative “voice” speaking within a “narrative instance” of storytelling (narrative discourse etc) and on the other oppose it, arguing that narrative language in literature must, to quote ann banfield, be admitted to be “unspeakable” (unspeakable sentences.) i agree with banfield that certain modes of narrative address in novels and short stories may be far removed from the kind of language that speakers might address to each other in conversation. but i consider pragmatics tools of spoken language analysis to be applicable to written narrative language, despite this difference, because i assume that readers can and do interpret the social stylistics of narrative language in literature in ways comparable to how they interpret everyday spoken language—even when things get complicated. among other social aspects of language, readers distinguish degrees of known-ness and sharedness in narrative language according to the same “familiarity scale” that they use in face-to-face conversation (prince ). i proceed from the assumption, then, that when readers read the inflections of relationship in narrative language, they construct them as if they are marks of address—inflections that indicate that the language is being directed by a narrator to a particular audience. my analytic vocabulary i here introduce the analytical vocabularies i draw from pragmatics theory, and indicate how i use them to analyze degrees of sharedness, familiarity, formality, intimacy, distance, and power in the relationship between the narrator of a given novel or short story and his implied audience. in this section of the chapter, i will use the term “audience” to mean that particular audience implied by the style of the narrative language: the specific audience embraced in the circle of the narrative address. assumed familiarity central to my analysis are stylistic indices of shared or unshared knowledge. when narrators describe a city, for instance, how much knowledge of that city do they assume their audience shares with them? the coarsest index of sharedness is the amount of explanation required: the more knowledge narrator and audience have in common, the less explanation the narrator needs to offer her audience (cf. sperber and wilson on “lightness” versus “heaviness” of style ). ellen prince’s taxonomy of given and new information is my primary resource for analyzing stylistic marks of sharedness, because prince distinguishes in spoken and written language finely differentiated degrees of what she calls “assumed familiarity.” while prince uses these strictly to describe speakers’ and writers’ assumptions about how familiar their audiences are with certain objects, i use her terms to describe narrators’ assertions of an assumed degree of sharedness. according to prince, speakers treat objects they refer to in a number of ways, depending on whether they assume them to be more or less familiar to their hearer. at one end of the range are items treated as “evoked”—very familiar because already present in the ongoing discourse (“textually evoked”) or the salient physical and social context (“situationally evoked”) ( ). at the other end are items, treated as “brand- new,” which are assumed to be entirely unfamiliar ( ). between these poles ranges a “familiarity scale” of descending order: after evoked comes “unused,” a designator that identifies items already known to the hearer but not yet introduced in the conversation ( ), followed by “inferable,” which identifies items whose identity might be inferred from things already evoked ( ), and “brand-new anchored,” which identifies items assumed to be brand new but anchored linguistically to some given item ( ). (see appendix.) prince is skeptical of arguments about sharedness, because she sees how difficult it is for speakers and addressees in practice to be certain of what in fact they do and don’t share with each other. she also points out that the term “shared” connotes that speakers’ and addressees’ knowledge bases are symmetrical ( - ). i use prince’s familiarity scale to trace narrators’ assertions that certain knowledge is asymmetrically shared between themselves and their audiences. as i interpret them, narrators’ treatments of certain objects as more familiar or less familiar make for relational, socially-oriented narrative speech. narrators usually address their audiences from positions of knowledge. their telling styles indicate how close to home their tales are intended to fall; that is, their styles indicate how much knowledge their audiences already share with them about the objects of the story (the place where the story happened or the people and things involved, for example). if they pitch their speech high on the familiarity scale, they are asserting that their audiences already share with them plenty of familiarity with the objects they refer to. if they pitch low, they are clearly asserting an asymmetry between their domain of knowledge and that of their audiences: a lack of common ground. for example, the narrator in the passage from what we all long for treats very few of the things she mentions as brand-new to her audience; indeed, she pitches her language reasonably high on the familiarity scale, referring to things that are already evoked for her audience or are, she judges, at least inferable from her audience’s general knowledge of cities like this one. her assumption of shared familiarity helps to account for an apparent warmth and closeness in this narrator’s relationship to her audience that persists despite her expansive, explanatory posture’s indication that her audience does not know toronto. her style suggests, perhaps, a diasporic address back from toronto to a homeland audience elsewhere, with whom the narrator shares plenty of world knowledge. applying prince’s taxonomy to narrative language in novels and short stories, i find that it cannot quite account for one set of references. these are referring phrases, typically composed of a definite article and a common noun, that treat the identity of their referents as inferable—except that they are not actually inferable from anything the audience has been introduced to so far. for example, the opening sentence of malcolm lowry’s short story “the bravest boat,” which i discuss at length in chapter two, reads, “it was a day of spindrift and blowing sea-foam, with black clouds presaging rain driven over the mountains from the sea by a wild march wind” ( , my italics). whereas “the sea” is inferable from the narrator’s earlier reference to “sea-foam,” “the mountains” are not inferable from anything yet introduced. generally, when referring phrases like this turn up, they contribute to the projection of an implied audience that already knows the referent well. the referring phrases function almost like proper nouns, signaling landmarks that have not yet been mentioned in the narrative but are reliably familiar to the audience nonetheless. read in its entirety, lowry’s story projects a rather different scenario: its implied audience is quite unfamiliar with the setting. but the narrator judges them to be nimbly capable of accommodating the sudden appearance of mountains. i think of references like “the mountains” as a special category of inferables particularly suited to and characteristic of narrative in fiction, since such inferables require their audiences to quickly invent mountains and other elements of the storyworld. grounds for mutual knowledge i supplement prince’s familiarity scale with clark and catherine r. marshall’s vocabulary of “grounds” for mutual knowledge. according to clark and marshall, the sources of what prince calls familiarity are always social. narrators’ assumptions about their audiences’ familiarity with a given referent always take into account how much exposure to the referent the narrators believe they share with their audiences. in clark and marshall’s analysis, speakers treat the referents as either “mutually known” or not. speakers use definite referring expressions—for example, noun phrases beginning with definite or demonstrative articles (the, that), proper nouns, pronouns, or indexicals—to refer to those objects which they judge to be mutually known to themselves and their addressees, and they use indefinite referring expressions for things not mutually known. this either/or distinction is not as fine a gauge as prince’s multi- level familiarity scale, but it explicitly offers the social dimension of sharedness that i interpret as implicit in prince’s taxonomy. more importantly, clark and marshall distinguish between three different sources of mutual knowledge. they also point out that the particular form of a definite reference—pronoun, deictic adverb, definite or demonstrative article, or proper noun—indicates the speaker’s sense of the source, or the “grounds,” of their mutual knowledge ( , - ). i cross prince’s vocabulary with clark and marshall’s: if prince’s familiarity scale is a vertical grade indicating narrator and addressee’s degree of (shared) familiarity with something, clark and marshall’s “grounds” are a horizontal index of the social source of their degree of shared familiarity. i consider really mutually shared knowledge of the kind clark and marshall imagine to be a new high point on prince’s scale: a referent utterly familiar to narrator and addressee because they mutually share it. clark and marshall’s three grounds for mutual knowledge are “linguistic copresence,” “physical copresence,” and “community membership”. linguistic copresence may be grounds for speakers’ assumption that they can use a pronoun to refer to a given object—a landmark, for example. in this case, speakers assume that the landmark is recognizable as the referent of a pronoun because the topic of this landmark is already alive and salient in the ongoing text of the narrative language, and hence mutually known. for instance, when, in the second sentence of my epigraph, the narrator says, “winters on the other hand, there’s nothing vague about them” (my emphasis), she is assuming that her audience will recognize that her pronoun “them” indicates “winters,” her salient topic. other sorts of definite reference may indicate an assumption of linguistic copresence too. many of the definite references in narrative language seem to assume linguistic copresence. in the storytelling scenario where a narrator gradually introduces his audience to the setting of his tale, elements of the setting landscape will often be introduced at first as new but, thereafter, be referred to as mutually known on the grounds of linguistic copresence. prince would ascribe these references to the speaker’s assumption that the referent will be familiar to the addressee because it was evoked previously somewhere in the text’s language; clark and marshall argue that that previous reference might need to still be humming with the importance and salience that the chemistry of copresence can give in order to be jointly memorable and familiar to both parties (cf. also chafe ). physical copresence is less likely to be assumed as grounds for mutual knowledge of a referent in narrative language, since narrator and addressee are rarely personified and depicted as present together with each other in a physical context. where they surface, deictic adverbs and some demonstrative articles indicate narrators’ assumptions that physical copresence with the referent is grounds for mutual knowledge of it. although my epigraph opens with the phrase “this city hovers above the forty-third parallel” (my emphasis), the narrator generally seems to be speaking to a distant audience, not one who is standing there with her in the city. however, in a sense made possible by the disembodied metaphysics of storytelling in novels and short stories, the narrator and her audiences are nonetheless immediately present to each other in the moment of telling (genette’s “narrating instance”). the speaker seems to expect her audience to be able to identify which city she is speaking about because they well know where she is. finally, community membership may be grounds for speakers’ assumption that they can use a proper noun to refer to a given landmark. proper nouns indicate speakers’ assertions that their audience shares mutual knowledge of the city with them because they know each other to be members together of a given community. when the narrator goes on in the epigraph to mention that the spring runoff swelled “the humber river and the don river,” she assumes that her audience shares membership with her in a community that knows toronto’s major rivers by name. clark and marshall’s “community membership” is an important idea for my project, since i am interested in how different vancouver sub-communities might be imagined around different sets of shared vancouver landmarks. a proper-noun reference to the lion’s gate bridge assumes that narrator and audience are members of a community of people who know vancouver—or at least a community of people who know this particular feature of vancouver. proper-noun references to the balmoral inn (a landmark of vancouver’s downtown eastside) or the yaohan (a richmond shopping mall selling asian goods) might, in certain contexts, assume rather different knowledge communities. as i use the term, clark and marshall’s “community” of those in the know ought to be thought of as open-ended and ad-hoc. it is the set of people assumed to know the particular references at hand, although such knowing may well be imagined to involve and imply other related knowledge as well. this “community,” so-called, need not exist in any sense of being self-aware—organized and labeled with its membership notified—before it is called into being by a narrator’s reference. clark and marshall argue that “in ordinary conversation people go to some trouble to establish the communities of which they are members just so that their definite references will succeed” ( ), presuming that people make references only after establishing membership (“do you know vancouver? ah, well then you know the lion’s gate bridge and the ovaltine café…”). but it also happens that people make assumptions of membership without elaborate establishing moves, as for example tourists do when they approach passers-by on a city street to ask directions to “the art gallery” or “the sea bus.” in such cases the tourists assume that the passer-by is a citizen in the know, and that their use of definite references will do the work of establishing them as members with the passer-by of a community who knows that such institutions exist. their reference seeks to create ad-hoc community on the spot and on the fly. literary texts have the creative capacity to re-invent parts of the city as a common ground for a particular community of knowing insiders (for example, the suburban west van playground of douglas coupland’s gaggles of teenage buddies or the secret stanley park settlement of timothy taylor’s homeless community). and they may include their audiences in such a community by means of proper nouns and other definite references which assume mutual knowledge. i adopt clark and marshall’s distinctions between the different grounds of mutual knowledge and the forms of definite reference that indicate them. but, depending on the context of the reference in the literary text, i tend to take the forms of definite reference as indications of something less than certainty of mutual knowledge—as guesses at, or hopes of, a shared familiarity and a somewhat reciprocal social awareness. ostension and relevance style is determined both by what narrators do say and what they do not. i focus my analysis primarily on the narrative language that does appear on the page, but sperber and wilson offer me an analytical concept—“ostension”—which applies equally to what is left unsaid. in their theory, ostensive behaviour is overtly noticeable behaviour ( - ). overt noticeability flags for the intended audience the speaker’s deliberate intention that the audience will notice his behaviour. this ostension, sperber and wilson argue, assures the audience that the speaker is trying to communicate something, and it offers the speaker’s implicit guarantee that what he is trying to communicate will be relevant to that audience ( ). while fictional narrators do not have intentions, marked stylistic features, like tone, diction, or poetic devices, may seem to imply an intentional address. sperber and wilson discuss the guarantee of relevance implicit in the ostensive style of “all the figures of style identified by classical rhetoric” ( ). and not just positive figures, but ellipsis and other omissions may appear ostensive as well. unspoken assumptions pragmatics theory offers several powerful analytical tools for indicating assumptions that are implied though not directly said; these tools are important for my project, because common ground is often located precisely in what is left implicit, not needing to be explained. janet giltrow’s analysis of anita brookner’s novel hotel du lac identifies three sets of linguistic features which ostensively signal certain unspoken assumptions. these are: a) presupposing expressions, which assume rather than assert; b) agentless expressions, which suppress mentions of actors; and c) modality and projection, which assign statements as issuing from contingent conditions. (“ironies” ) giltrow explains that all three types of expression may be read as signaling that the narrator assumes certain tacit knowledge to be common ground between narrator and addressee ( , ). she adds that the novel’s use of these expressions demonstrates how their ostensive signaling of common ground may be used to other social effects than the happy securing of mutual knowledge. depending on how they exploit differentials of knowledge between narrator and addressee, they may be used equally effectively to assert relative power. speakers who sustain this way of talking can dominate others with calculated assumptions, presuming common ground to be taken for granted. at the same time as talk of this kind shields propositions from contradiction [by presupposing rather than asserting them to be true], it can intimidate listeners into compliance or pretense or silence them in fear of betraying their lack of privileged experience. ( ) similarly, the epistemic modal expression “of course” is, in certain contexts, a “compelling signal” that “registers the speaker’s perception of potential resistance and dominates or disarms that resistance, imposing constraints on the listener to profit the speaker” (giltrow “ironies” ). i incorporate giltrow’s explanations of tacitness, domination and disarmament into my analytic vocabulary, along with the pragmatics concepts of politeness (brown and levinson) and presupposition (levinson) she is working from. they especially help identify the potential social effects felt by reading audiences that notice their exclusion from the circle of narrative address or feel themselves almost welcomed into it. since, in my work, narrator and implied audience are both understood to be projections of the same stylistic turns of phrase, an i and a you “absolutely presupposed one by the other,” as barthes put it, i do not find examples of narrators who aggressively or otherwise insincerely address themselves to audiences for whom their style is not generously and politely calibrated. however, the difference between what the implied audience apparently knows and what certain readers could possibly know makes room for the social effects giltrow identifies, and i return to these later in this chapter. orientations of address: inter-personality versus a-sociality i take the word “orientation” from two sources. one of these is michael toolan’s discussion of basic human sociality, which he calls “orientedness to other.” toolan argues that this social orientation inclines people to trust that “others are as concerned as we are to resist and overcome the separateness from others that physical and mental separateness—individuality—entails” ( ). without this orientation, people could not have developed language. indeed, toolan points out that, as isolated individuals, we cannot achieve truly mutual certainty of anything: not the meaning of words, nor even the intention of the person facing us in conversation to communicate something to us. using language, and cooperating in any other way, always involves a leap of faith—that is, a spirit of ‘orientedness to other’: a faith that, because of and in spite of the impossibility of certain knowledge of another’s thoughts and feelings, each community member is foundationally concerned to surmount that barrier and to assert and act out a sharedness that can never be proved. ( ) adopting the vocabulary of social “orientedness” from toolan, i adopt with it his position that mutual knowledge is impossible, but people nevertheless guess at and hope for a shared familiarity and a somewhat reciprocal social awareness. i want to make clear, though, that while with toolan i think of this orientation as “faith,” i acknowledge that this orientedness to other is as much a feature of “ruthlessly authoritarian social system[s]” as cooperative and nurturing ones (toolan )—an inclination to sociality is not a virtue but merely a pattern of attention. while the central arguments of this dissertation are based on the assumption that narrative language can be (and likely often is) read as address—read, that is, as inter- personal orientation—some narrative language reads instead as relatively a-social. indeed, some narrative language declines to project a markedly social address at the very site where i am most interested in reading and analyzing social orientation: at the site of reference to objects in the storyworld, including elements of the setting. my analytical tools prepare me to interpret references pitched high or low on prince’s familiarity scale as indices of how familiar the narrator judges the audience to be with the referents, but some narrative language seems to pitch its references high or low according to how familiar these objects are to the story’s protagonist, not to the audience. wallace chafe calls this pitch a “protagonist-oriented identifiability, as contrasted with the listener-oriented identifiability that is operative in conversational language” ( , his italics). chafe’s terminology here is the second source of my word, “orientation.” discussing, for example, the narrative language in ernest hemingway’s story “big two-hearted river,” chafe points out references to objects in the setting of the storyworld that are phrased as if they are “identifiable,” although they could not in fact be identifiable to any addressee. chafe records that at the beginning of the story the narrator says, “the train went on up the track out of sight.” chafe comments, there is evidently no point in asking with whom the knowledge of the train or track was judged to be shared, or who would judge the sharing. what determined [the] identifiability [of these references, and hence their definite expression] was the fact that these ideas were already part of [the protagonist] nick’s knowledge. ( ) chafe’s “identifiability” is intended as one measure of how speakers’ inter- personal orientation manifests itself in the design of their speech. his definition of identifiability is drawn from an analysis of obviously social, conversational language use, like prince’s “familiarity”—and, in developing a definition for the term, he includes the speaker’s estimate of shared knowledge. but when chafe goes on to analyze narrative language, he proposes that some of its references are not inflected according to a social context of narration. he considers that the inflections of “identifiability” in this language (definite references, for example) have no social significance. they are not calibrated to the speaker’s relationship with his/her addressee, and cannot be read as indications about their relative amounts of knowledge; instead, they represent the protagonist’s developing knowledge of his environment. in the next section, i will discuss the narrative language of margaret atwood’s cat’s eye, a novel that narrates all of its references to toronto in language that apparently represents the protagonist’s knowledge of the city instead of accommodating an audience’s knowledge of it. thus in some instances of narrative language, the very inflections that elsewhere suggest an inter-personal orientation suggest instead that the narrator is absorbed in representing the protagonist’s consciousness. i say absorbed, here, because in such examples as hemingway’s story the speaking personality is diluted by—absorbed into— representation of the protagonist’s consciousness. narrators’ personalities are most sharply evident, in narrative language, when they are overtly addressing themselves to audiences who do not share all their knowledge with them: their personality emerges out of differential, inter-personal dynamics of address. free indirect narration, like that of hemingway’s narrator in the story chafe analyzes, turns the narrator’s attention inward to the storyworld and thus away from the audience. other techniques of fictional storytelling may likewise read as a-social rather than overtly inter-personal in their protagonist-oriented patterns of reference. indeed, in his book imagined cities: urban experience and the language of the novel, robert alter argues that the narrative techniques developed by early twentieth-century novelists, for the purpose of representing new realities of human experience in big, modern cities, were intended to represent individual subjective experience. they are not, in other words, explicitly socially-inflected discursive styles. alter focuses primarily on free indirect narration (which he calls “narrated monologue” [ ], thus underlining its a-sociality); he also places implicit emphasis on stream of consciousness narration. these narrative modes, he argues, were designed to express the private, limited, and ultimately quite unshareable subjectivity of the individual ( , , ; but see also ). they were thus able to capture, among other aspects of modern urban experience, the sense of personal solitariness amidst a crowd ( ), and the awareness of being extraordinarily close to strangers, whose respective subjective experiences are likewise private and solitary. my methodology is designed to analyze explicit and implicit “marks” of social orientedness in narrative language; if i were to encounter a narrative that read as especially a-social, because its stylistic patterns were so protagonist-oriented as to seem oblivious to any audience, i would tend to leave it alone. but i understand novels and short stories to be types of language use that are social, in the sense of being used inter- personally as well as in the sense of being genres worked in and recognized by a particular society. by virtue of being put into circulation, printed, published works are designed to address readers. free indirect narration may seem to be absorbed in representing a character’s consciousness, but in doing so it presents that consciousness to someone. as i will argue of obasan later in this chapter, even the most a-social of narrative styles may yet be evidently designed to address a reading audience. chafe’s example of protagonist-oriented identifiability is drawn from a story that is not narrated by the protagonist himself, but by a separate narrator. this narrator is so absorbed by his protagonist’s consciousness that he does not have a distinct personality, but is simply a narrating instance. in other fictional narratives, including cat’s eye, the protagonists are themselves narrators. in such narrative, protagonist-orientation reads like self-absorption. self-absorbed speech: the example of cat’s eye in margaret atwood’s cat’s eye, the first-person narrator is protagonist elaine risley, a narrator whose address reads as at once social and a-social. her narrative language is particularly a-social in the protagonist-oriented design of its references to elements of the novel’s toronto setting. elaine inflects her speech to reflect her own degree of familiarity with the toronto landmarks she talks about, rather than pitching it to a familiarity scale that would accommodate anyone else. yet her narration also has qualities of orientation to another. all told, elaine’s narration, a revelation of bruised, watchful subjectivity, is oriented to an audience, but one more proximate than another person could possibly be. her narrative is like speech addressed to elaine herself—hence it is a performance of split subjectivity suitable for a character alienated from herself by the self-hatred bullies have taught her. its self-absorptive intimacy seems to suffocate any possibility of direct communion with others. elaine shifts between representing her childhood experiences and her adult ones; she narrates each in the present tense, as if they are both happening presently. when elaine represents her adult consciousness, her narrative speech describes her experience of exploring toronto, the city where she grew up, after years in vancouver. the way she speaks about toronto demonstrates her changed relationship to it: her alienation from the city’s present glitzy, expanded incarnation and her knowing familiarity with its more subdued past form. her feelings toward the city have not altered—she declares that she hates toronto and always has ( )—and nor has her sense of its essential personality changed. but her degree of knowledge of its surface forms has lessened. the pattern of her references to features of the toronto landscape shows her shifting between a recital or rehearsal for herself of her remembered knowledge of the city and an on-the-spot appraisal of its new features, spoken as if she is learning about them for the first time. her reciting style suggests a powerful, acquired certainty about the toronto landscape she remembers. and even her on-the-spot appraisal, although it demonstrates her lack of knowledge of the new city, is confidently assertive: i’ve been walking for hours it seems, down the hill to the downtown, where the streetcars no longer run. it’s evening, one of those gray watercolour washes, like liquid dust, the city comes up with in the fall. the weather at any rate is still familiar. now i’ve reached the place where we used to get off the streetcar, stepping into the curbside mounds of january slush, into the grating wind that cut up from the lake between the flat-roofed dowdy buildings that were for us the closest things to urbanity. but this part of the city is no longer flat, dowdy, shabby-genteel. tubular neon in cursive script decorates the restored brick facades, and there’s a lot of brass trim, a lot of real estate, a lot of money. up ahead there are huge oblong towers, all of glass, lit up, like enormous gravestones of cold light. ( - , my italics) here elaine seems to speak to herself. in the first half of the passage, her references are pitched high on the familiarity scale—they consistently introduce features of the city as unused (that is, not yet mentioned but presumably well known nonetheless), marking this treatment with the series of definite articles i have italicized. the chain of restrictive relative clauses linking the wind to the lake, and these in turn to the buildings, anchors an unused reference in other unused references, compounding the sense that elaine’s knowledge of these toronto places is part of a personalized web of associations. besides elaine herself, perhaps only cordelia, with whom she acquired this particular geography, would recognize the very place she means. (elaine’s “we,” in the fourth sentence of the passage, refers to herself and cordelia. but she is not directly addressing cordelia here.) elaine generously layers descriptive attributes onto each object she references, in effect making it possible for someone other than herself or cordelia to get something out of the passage. but this bystanding outsider, listening in, is not addressed; he or she would not be able to locate the place where elaine is standing “now,” and his or her inability to do so is not accommodated. meanwhile, while “the place where we used to get off the streetcar” is a feature of a private geography, downtown toronto towers are not. if anyone were standing with elaine now on the street corner, looking up ahead towards the towers, he or she would share with elaine an ability to identify them—they would be situationally evoked, in prince’s terms, or physically copresent, in clark and marshall’s—and elaine would say something more like, “look at those huge oblong towers up ahead…” but they are strange new objects to elaine, and she shares this view of them with no-one. her intimate self-addressed speech about them demonstrates her estranged relationship to them, introducing the towers and other features of the new toronto into her speech as new items. in chafe’s terms, this is protagonist-oriented narrative language. but in elaine’s case, a protagonist-oriented familiarity scale combines with a style of address that seems to tell her story—although she tells it with such a self-absorbed intimacy of perspective that she often seems to talk to herself. her narrative style reads as social, as oriented to an other, because elaine tells of her unfolding experiences in an expository manner, equal parts intimate, informative confiding and schoolish, docile reciting. lately i’ve caught myself humming out loud, or walking along the street with my mouth slightly open, drooling a little. […] there is no one i would ever tell this to, except cordelia. but which cordelia? the one i have conjured up, the one with the rolltop boots and the turned up collar, or the one before, or the one after? there is never only one, of anyone. ( ) even when her sentences are interrogative, as in but which cordelia?, elaine expands on them explanatorily. in other sentences, her expository phrasing seems overtly social and communicative; it extends knowledge to an audience. many of her sentences begin, as some of these do, with an existential there, a grammatical place-filler that shifts the substance of her sentences into the position where we ordinarily expect new information. thus, elaine’s narrative is structured according to a grammar of telling, a grammar tailored to reveal things that an audience does not yet know. the larger patterns of her narrative, too, are set for story-telling: she discloses some details and explains certain facts but deliberately withholds certain others. apparently, she withholds things for the sake of building suspense, and for the thematic purpose of demonstrating at the expense of her audience what it is like to be the one left out of insider knowledge. considered by itself, elaine’s narrative language, with its mixture of protagonist- oriented reference and storytelling exposition, reads like self-absorbed, self-addressed speech. references to toronto are demonstrations of elaine’s idiosyncratic perspective on the city. however, the novel’s narration does seem conscious of another audience, a set of reading others, for whose information elaine’s self-address is performed. as a whole, the novel’s narrative address insinuates that this other audience, for whom its assumptions of familiarity are not accommodatingly keyed, is intended to recognize itself as identifying more with elaine, seeing things more from her perspective, than this audience might have thought possible. to my mind, the references to toronto in the novel also present the caustic tenor of her opinions about the city to a reading audience expected to have its own opinions about the place. while these demonstrations are, in their protagonist-orientation, apparently careless of outside perspectives, they seem ultimately to assume that certain readers will recognize their own view of the city in elaine’s. these readers’ resentment of, or delight in, recognizing their own accord with elaine’s view of toronto is part of the reception this novel aims to address. dissolving the text / context boundary up to this point i have been representing address in novels and short stories as a matter of fictional narrators addressing fictional audiences in a fictional social context of narration. but now readers have entered the arena. in this case they enter precisely because of references to real places: it is because elaine is speaking about toronto that i imagine the novel looking out the corner of its eye at readers who already have a relationship to the city. in studies of the pragmatics of literature, references to actual locations have long been central to debates about who is addressed by fictional discourse. at least since philosopher john r. searle declared that “along with the pretended references to sherlock holmes and watson, there are in sherlock holmes real references to london and baker street and paddington station” (expression , my italics), pragmatics theorists have been divided on whether proper nouns like “baker street” in fiction do indeed refer to the actual locations. their respective answers to this question differ according to whether they think that authors address fictional discourse to their readers and therefore refer directly to real places (martinich and stroll - ; searle) or whether they think that fictional narrators address their discourse to equally fictional addressees, articulating discourse that cannot refer to real places because it is spoken entirely in a fictional context of address (j adams; pagnini; martinez-bonati). taking the latter view in their book-length studies of the pragmatics of fiction and literature, for example, both jon-k adams and marcello pagnini posit a boundary that envelops a fictional communicative context—a boundary segregating what i call the circle of address from any other audience. adams argues that the sherlock holmes narrator refers to fictional places, not real ones. “sherlock holmes could not have walked in the same baker street that we can walk in today,” he claims ( ). i take philosophers a. p. martinich and avrum stroll’s opposing view that references in fiction may indeed refer to the real world, if readers perceive them to do so. as martinich and stroll insist, theory ought to be consistent with the fact that most readers “think that sherlock holmes lived on baker street in london, and that this street and city are the same ones they can visit” ( ). in agreeing with this statement, i am arguing against the idea that there is an impermeable boundary separating fictional contexts of narration from the real world. i am denying what, in the pragmatics of literature, marcello pagnini calls “the autonomy of literature” ( ). “even when the work proposes to ‘mirror’ or ‘imitate’ a real object—let us say ‘describe’ it,” pagnini argues, that description is part of the “complex of relationed signs” that is the discursive system of the work ( ). i do not disagree with pagnini that the reference to a landmark in a fictional work is also read as part of the system of the work, as an element in a fictional geography; nor would i deny that references to landmarks in “ordinary” conversations are likewise part of a discursive “complex of relationed signs.” but i think that at the moment when readers identify the fictional reference as indicating a landmark they recognize from the real world, they integrate what pagnini calls “the referential plane of literature” with the plane of “ordinary experience” ( ), if only momentarily. readers may re-experience the landmarks of their ordinary worlds by encountering them as part of a fictional geography. but i assume that they perceive no more distinction between the landmarks being spoken about by a fictional narrator and the landmarks of their real world than they would if they overheard the same landmarks being spoken about by strangers sitting beside them on a public bus. narratologist david herman argues that in certain instances the pronoun you in fictional discourse “exceeds the frame (or ontological threshold) of a fiction to reach its [reading] audience” ( ), thus breaking the boundary between a fictional context of address and extending narrative address to the real readers. but this boundary is not strict to begin with, at least when novels are recognizably set in the real world. in my introduction i wrote about the variety of people, near and far, who may have a relationship with any given public place, whether they know it from long personal acquaintance or from a distance via mediated representations. i also wrote about novels, short stories, and plays as the sort of public texts that selectively address a particular audience even as they circulate widely, likely reaching audiences who are quite different from the one addressed. in such circumstances, the narrator’s address to a particular audience in a novel like cat’s eye may be read as articulated in the potential presence of other audiences than its primary audience because the novel puts this address into public circulation. among these other audiences are people who hold the whole range of possible relationships to the places described in the novel. i claimed earlier that cat’s eye seems to be conscious of another audience than its primary audience: its descriptions of toronto are so ostensively, caustically irreverent that i cannot help but read it as casting a tart, saucy sideways glance at the community of those who might be used to thinking about toronto differently. i might now say the same thing differently: as a reader who recognizes toronto, i apprehend the potential presence of an audience other than elaine’s primary, implied audience: a possible reading audience who might find her comments about toronto personally relevant. the novel’s very move of setting the narrative in toronto prompts me to imagine this audience’s presence listening in on the circle of elaine’s narrative address, because toronto is a city i recognize as a public site that many others know and relate to. in some novels, i apprehend the potential presence of another audience who might find the narrative personally relevant when the social pattern of the narrative address changes (cf. banting forthcoming). address is subtle, complicated, and shifting in novels and short stories; it feints and hints, taking knowledge for granted one moment and then turning aside to explain it the next. shifts often seem to imply that the narrator is pitching his address to other audiences beyond his primary audience, and i attempt to analyze the complicated audience designs suggested by these shifts using the same analytical tools i use for primary address: mutuality and/or assumed familiarity; formality; intimacy; distance; power; relationality. however little the written address acknowledges it, at least one audience always exists besides the implied audience—that is, the audience of actual readers—and address in literary writing is complicated and playful, perhaps, precisely because it is destined for reception by someone it can never quite address. audience design clark and thomas b. carlson’s pragmatics-oriented theory of “audience design” offers vocabulary that neatly describes the complicated relations between a narrator and his several audiences. clark and carlson argue that, in complicated social situations, speakers design their utterances to simultaneously “say” different things to different people. by so doing, speakers also ultimately design audiences by means of their language: they divide the set of people present in the arena of language use into audiences of addressees, side-participants, bystanders, and eavesdroppers ( ; clark and schaefer ). as clark and carlson theorize audience design, each audience is in part distinguished from the others by the relative degree to which audience and speaker mutually recognize how the speaker intends to position that audience ( ). addressees are those to whom the speaker is ostensively directing her utterance, and the speaker intends that they will mutually recognize this position with her. in the circle of narrative address at work in novels and short stories, the addressees are the primary audience implied by narrative style. side-participants are likewise intended to mutually recognize, with the speaker, that they are to participate directly and immediately in the speaker’s address, but they are also to recognize that they are not the designated addressees. the mutuality—the intensely shared reciprocal awareness of self and other—with which these immediate audiences are intended to recognize their positions with respect to the speaker and his/her address makes audience design an extraordinarily powerful social lever. by overtly differentiating between addressees and side-participants, speakers might make their addressees feel positively or negatively singled-out: politely privileged, for example, as in the case where the speaker defers to their special knowledge, or rudely condescended to, as in the case where the speaker turns aside to offer them knowledge she wrongly supposes they lack. likewise, by having side-participants recognize that they are not the designated addressees, speakers may make them feel either colluded with or brushed aside. in my research for this project i have not encountered narrative language that manages to bifurcate its primary audience into positions of addressee and side-participant, although certain narratives do shift between different primary audiences. i explain clark and carlson’s theory of audience design at length, here, because it provides such scope for analyzing the social effects of exclusion and inclusion that do arise when we imagine reading audiences attending to the narrative from just outside the circle of address. clark and schaefer argue that common ground is a resource for audience design ( ): while speakers intend both addressees and side-participants to fully understand their utterances, speakers may differentiate between the two audiences by assuming themselves to share different grounds in common with the two groups. for example, depending on how speakers manage the subtle social politics of their address, they might make side-participants feel either colluded with or brushed aside by explaining something to an addressee which they feel the side-participants already know—the subtext of the explanation being, for the side-participants, either a winking poor addressee hasn’t a clue what’s going on or a dismissive it’s not important to me that this is all old news to you. the social dynamics of address work differently between speaker and bystanders or eavesdroppers than between speaker and addressees or side-participants (clark and carlson ). both bystanders and eavesdroppers fit under the umbrella category of “overhearers”; the difference is that the speaker is aware of bystanders but not of eavesdroppers. these latter two audiences are outside of the circle of mutual awareness and knowledge: even if speakers intend bystanders to understand what they are saying, they do not offer bystanders the certainty of a mutual acknowledgement that they are being included in the address. (thus bystanders cannot insist, for example, that a speaker intended to insult or flatter them, if he manages to do so; the most they can claim is that he did so indirectly and by accident.) clark and schaefer point out that speakers may hold attitudes of disclosure, indifference, or concealment toward overhearers ( ). these attitudes call for complicated audience designs accommodating addressees’ and side-participants’ degrees of knowledge while managing to inform, or conceal information from, bystanders and/or possible eavesdroppers. the social dynamics between speaker and overhearers are more indirect and diffuse than those between speakers and addressees, because the former dynamics lack the eye-to-eye reciprocal awareness of mutual recognition. but they are potentially powerful nonetheless. side- participants who are pushed so far to the “side” of a speaker’s address as to verge on being treated as ignored bystanders may feel vaguely excluded from a (possibly) warm circle of copresence and mutual awareness; bystanders who are extensively disclosed to might begin to feel eerily as if they have been interpolated as addressees. and eavesdroppers who hear themselves blithely talked about are not directly addressed, but they feel the social force of their relationship to the speaker nonetheless! thinking of fictional narrative in novels and short stories as designing its audiences, i come again to adams’s and pagnini’s idea of a boundary around fictional storyworlds. mutual recognition, as clark and carlson theorize it, is impossible for narrators and actual readers. thus readers permanently occupy the position of “overhearers” with respect to fictional narrators’ audiences, and the social effects the narrative may have on its readers are not directly personal. novels and short stories may cast different sets of readers as bystanders or eavesdroppers, and as disclosed to, treated indifferently, or concealed from, but they cannot cast them as their primary audience. indeed, fictional addressees crop up because of the inevitable difference, however slight it might be, between the audience projected by the narrator’s address and the actual person reading that address. a reader imagines the fictional audience just the way a person will look over her shoulder, expecting to find someone else there, when a stranger who has mistaken her for someone else addresses her out of the blue. nevertheless, the boundary proposed by adams and pagnini blurs as readers identify themselves and/or other communities in their social world as among the bystanding or eavesdropping overhearers potentially present in the receptive arena they imagine surrounding the circle of address. perhaps the social force of mutuality is, anyway, most sharply felt at the edge of its circle. like the side-participant who is edged out or the bystander who is pulled in, readers may be overtaken by a sharp sense of social relationship—exclusion or inclusion, or something in between. they may feel that their shared knowledge is pointedly not being recognized (when it ought to be), that they are positioned as eavesdroppers when the writer ought to have known that they would be listening in, or even that they are somehow, impossibly, being directly addressed by the narrator. the pragmatics of reading literature is the realm of nearly and/or remotely mutual relationships, so to speak—the spine-prickling realm of uncertain, guessed-at, glancing, sidelong connection. for even if actual readers may not technically be identical to fictional narrators’ audiences and side-participants, narrators may make very proximate bystanders or very self-conscious eavesdroppers of them. and literary texts’ references to recognizable landmarks are sites where readers may feel copresence and common ground to be almost possible in their relationships to other personalities in and around the text, including narrator, audience, and the other potential audiences imaginable at the periphery of narrative address. since novels and short stories usually name their writers, as well as seeming to project a narrating persona, we might say that literary texts can prompt readers to imaginatively close the gap between the context in which the writer wrote the text and the distant, separate contexts of their reading. indeed, when readers decide that a text is making reference to elements in their own, lived worlds—such as landmarks in a place they know—they establish a point of identity between three contexts: their own, the fictional storytelling context inscribed in the text, and the writer’s context. deciding to recognize the words “lion’s gate bridge” in a literary text as referring to the very bridge they know in vancouver, for instance, readers construe both fictional narrator and actual writer as referring to that bridge. at this point of linkage between the three contexts, these readers apprehend the storytelling address inscribed in the text as articulated in their own respective lived worlds. for them the social context of literary storytelling overflows the boundaries of the fictional storyworld. it comes to include not only the narrator, the fictional audience, and the reader herself, but also the writer, who composed the narrator’s narrative reference to the landmark. the reader now knows that the landmark is part of the writer’s lived world. thus, because of the newly imagined connection between the reader’s social, geographical context and the writer’s, writer and reader are put indirectly into social relationship with each other by means of the text-as-utterance. the text’s address may come to seem newly, sharply, personally relevant to the reader, as if the writer had designed its effects, whatever these might be (education, entertainment, social commentary, the establishing or foreclosing of common ground…), to hinge on their personal relevance to the reader. for some torontonians or people who know toronto well, for example, elaine’s irreverence in cat’s eye may read as if atwood had composed it especially to gall them or to make them laugh. the text’s address becomes a “social action” not in the sense of the performance of a classic speech act—like informing, asking, commenting, etc.—but in the sense of an inter-personal social “move” made by the writer, between herself and the reader. this move may have multiple dimensions of precisely the kind i attempt to trace at the level of details of the text’s language, such as, for example, an assertion of relative power; an inclusive enfolding into a group of “insiders” or an exclusion from it; an assumption of intimacy or estrangement; of identity or difference; and/or an acknowledgement, denial, or delimiting of common ground. in chapter two, where i review the variety of different primary audiences addressed by novels and short stories ostensively set in vancouver, i will not take the step of commenting on the possibility of readers imagining writers making social moves with their texts, partly because i can only ever speculate about what readers might imagine. in the final section of this chapter, however, i offer a reading of the powerful social moves that might be attributed to the writer of a particular novel. the moves i describe depend, in this case, on the individual reader recognizing the canadian institutions and the vancouver landmarks referred to in the text as part of his own social world. exactly where we might locate the writer of a novel or short story in the increasingly complicated social scene of a circle of narrative address depends on the rhetorical maneuvers of the particular text: perhaps in some cases the narrator glances up suddenly, in the person of the writer as it were, to look the bystanding readers in the eye. in the case of a novel like joy kogawa’s obasan, i imagine the figure of the writer suddenly appearing behind the scene of the circle as a conductor animating the storytelling, rather like the “implied author” described by wayne booth “as stage manager [or] as puppeteer.” she is not like booth’s third image for this figure, “an indifferent god” ( ), because her appearance on the scene is as one directly engaged in the sociality of her audience design. recognizable landmarks and audience design: the example of obasan joy kogawa’s obasan challenges my interpretive approach. the narrative is absorbed in the protagonist’s consciousness, but its style occasionally sends a flickering glance outwards; meanwhile, kogawa presents a narrator’s pose of private self-reflection while ultimately composing a public appeal to a particular readership. i argue that style and narrative address vitally affect how a novel or short story presents itself to its reading audiences, but this novel illustrates how complicated a narrative’s interface with its readers may be. nevertheless, analyzing the audience-designing effects of place references does allow me to sort out some of the novel’s complex rhetoric. obasan’s primary social move is to present itself publicly to non-japanese canadians, asking them to admit the injustice of internment and to recognize that japanese-canadians “come from” canada just as they do (kogawa ); a secondary social move is to make self- conscious overhearers of non-japanese vancouverites. but this rhetorical purpose hinges on a primary address to quite a different audience. the primary narrative address is itself difficult to characterize. like that in cat’s eye, obasan’s narrative style is at once other-oriented and private: at once addressed to someone “other” than the self, an outsider, and seemingly addressed to the self, or addressed within a circle of familial and perhaps racial identifications. considering the novel’s status as a public text that offers itself to readers, i think that the tension between these two simultaneous qualities finally may be resolved by deciding that the novel reads as an authorial staging, for certain reading “others,” of a woman’s private self-address. but the tension in the narrative language’s fictional address subtly complicates even this account of audience design. what follows is my description of the narrative address and its complicated interaction with the whole novel’s self-presentation to readers. (in referring here to the “whole text,” i am thinking of bakhtin’s concept of “addressivity,” in which the literary text enters the social world as one entire utterance, oriented to a particular audience as managed by its genre as well as its style [“problem” ; see footnote ].) i comment in particular on how certain social effects of the novel’s audience design come into effect if readers recognize the novel’s references to canadian institutions and specific vancouver landmarks as part of their social world. the complicated character of narrative address in obasan matches the novel’s thematic tension between silent acceptance and public outcry. most of the fictional narrator, naomi’s, family members have chosen to be silent about the pain of internment—naomi’s uncle declares it “not very japanese-like” to speak out (kogawa ). however, her aunt emily is determined to speak publicly about their history of suffering: “all her life,” naomi tells her audience, “aunt emily toiled to tell of the lives of the nisei in canada in her effort to make familiar, to make knowable, the treacherous yellow peril that lived in the minds of the racially prejudiced” ( ). naomi is torn between the two impulses (to be silent, to tell); she recalls with gratitude her mother’s “japanese” unwillingness to probe and expose her childhood experiences of pain and confusion ( ), but she is gradually convinced by emily’s insistence on drawing pain out into expression. when she can bear to recall it, fictional narrator naomi tells the story of her family’s internment, speaking as if to an audience who does not already know the story. she patterns given and new information in a way that projects an address to someone unfamiliar with her life experiences. her “telling” style pins new attributes onto given items in familiar, informative phrase structures, leading her audience gently into knowledge, as in “the house was large and beautiful,” for example, in the following passage: all right, aunt emily, all right! the house then—the house, if i must remember it today, was large and beautiful. it’s still there on west th avenue in vancouver. […] i looked it up once […] it used to have a hedge and rose bushes and flowers and cactus plants lining the sidewalk […] if i search the caverns of my mind, i come to a collage of images—sombre paintings, a fireplace and a mantel clock with a heavy key like a small metal bird that fits into my palm. the living room is the darkest room, the walls of dark wood lit with dim lights. on the floor is a deep blue indian rug with a complex border of multi- coloured designs and a ribbon of rectangles and roads that can be traversed like a maze by stephen’s toy train. ( , my italics) in this passage, where she begins to think back to her childhood and recall the losses her family suffered, naomi introduces intimately-known features of her childhood home (indicated in italics) as if they are new to her audience. but her narration is nevertheless privately spoken. when it addresses someone explicitly, it apostrophizes an absent family member—as it does emily here (cf. also ), or her mother ( - ). naomi’s desire for peace and privacy makes her resist the compulsion to tell, and her narrative process is tortured by the pain of recollection; for these reasons, perhaps, naomi’s narrative language suggests an audience who is, as in cat’s eye, so close to the narrator that she could hardly be an “other,” and is instead like a version of the narrator’s self. as laurie ricou points out, “we might read” the fictional narrator’s narrative “as a woman’s journal” (arbutus ); indeed, her first chapter begins with a diary-like record of the time and date of writing. also, naomi embeds into her narrative a thirty-page excerpt from her aunt emily’s journal—an excerpt which is formally a series of informative letters to her sister (naomi’s mother), letters that will never be delivered. these undelivered letters, whose declared address to naomi’s mother gradually dissolves into a series of diary entries (cf. - ), model a style of confessional, informative address that ultimately tells (no-one but) the narrator herself what she already knows. naomi’s narration reads like another such layer of informative, explanatory, private speech. so where her account of her childhood household’s furnishings takes the narrative form of explanatory telling, it poses as a recital for a private audience: a tiny circle of address arranged only for one. private telling is thematically asserted by the intensely personal focus of naomi’s narration and stylistically underlined by her use of the present tense to narrate both her childhood experiences and her adult ones. she slips quietly between times, for example, at the paragraph break in the passage quoted earlier. like elaine in cat’s eye, naomi narrates a personal process of remembering and re-learning. she gradually revisits her own buried past and re-learns her family’s history, reconsidering it in the light of what emily teaches her about their involvement in a collective japanese-canadian history of internment, acceptance, and finally resistance. she narrates both her childhood experiences and her adult ones in the present tense, as if she is (re-)experiencing the two times in tandem. the present-tense narration suggests a narrator absorbed in her own ongoing experience, not in a public address. and the explicit purpose of this narration, the painful, deliberate remembering of things she otherwise cannot bear to recall, frames this fictional address as a private one—especially when its purpose is declared as an apostrophe to an absent family member. private address is particularly evident, but also particularly complicated, in naomi’s references to public vancouver landmarks. naomi’s remembering, re-learning mode requires that she retrace her life experience, and when she comes to vancouver landmarks she narrates them in such a way that things that were familiar to her at the remembered time are phrased as givens, and things that were then unfamiliar to her are phrased as new. (this is different than her stylistic treatment of the furnishings of her childhood home, such as somber paintings and a mantle clock; those she referred to with indefinite references, phrasing them as new information, although she herself knew them intimately as a child.) naomi’s general pattern of referring to the vancouver landmarks she remembers implies that the landmarks are also perfectly well known to her audience—and, in the context of the dominant style of the narration, this pattern suggests a private address. i am tempted to claim, instead, that it suggests an address to other people who share exactly naomi’s knowledge of vancouver geography: this interpretation would be most consistent with my pragmatics assumptions of other- orientation. but while it may sometimes feel eerily like an address to people with exactly overlapping knowledge for readers who do happen to share that vancouver geography with her, i cannot think that these samples of narrative language clearly project such an address, given that they are embedded in the context of naomi’s intimate, self-absorbed narration. in general, naomi’s narrative style does not indicate common ground shared with unfamiliar others; it rather seems to recall to herself her own knowledge of familial ground. naomi has not been back to vancouver since being relocated, as a child, to the british columbia interior and then again to alberta, although she has since learned from emily about vancouver sites in the political geography of japanese-canadian internment. her narrative language reflects her personal knowledge of the city, which is combined from her circumscribed, childhood experience of urban space—a domestic interior, a backyard and neighbouring house, and a disconnected set of public locations (familiar oases she remembers having enjoyed with family members)—and her learned adult knowledge. the narration in which naomi re-experiences her childhood reads like a recital (to herself) of the things she knew at the time; among these givens familiar to her childhood self are several vancouver neighbourhoods, streets, and landmarks: ) stephen is in grade three at david lloyd george school. ( ) ) when grandpa nakane walks, […] his right arm dangles loose […] close to his knees like some of the monkeys at stanley park. ( ) ) grandpa nakane at sick bay? where, i wonder, is that? and why is it a cause of distress? is sick bay near english bay or horseshoe bay? when we go to stanley park we sometimes drive by english bay. past english bay are other beaches, second and third beach where i once went to buy potato chips and got lost. grandpa nakane came ambling out of the crowd that day and took my hand in his strong one without saying a word and i fed him my potato chips one by one as if he were one of the animals at the zoo. if grandpa nakane is at the beach now, could he be lost the way i was? should we not go to find him? ( ) ) obasan told me grandma and grandpa went to visit friends and their old boat shop on saltspring island as they do every year. they have still not come back to their house in new westminster. ( ) in these excerpts, naomi does not seem to be informing an outsider audience. she names places (the school, stanley park, english bay, etc.) using their proper names without further introduction, as if indicating that her audience—that is, herself—shares these places with her as common ground. her phrasing is explanatory and informative (“past english bay are other beaches, second and third beach”). but especially in excerpt ( ) it reads like a recital—a child’s repetition, to herself, of the things she knows—and a retracing of known, familiar geography in her silent mental search for a place to put the unknown place, “sick bay.” naomi narrates this passage as a re-articulation of what she was thinking silently as she eavesdropped on her adult family members talking; it did not then and does not now get said aloud. my interpretation of these passages as recollected experiences narrated by naomi to herself is also informed by how they compare to passages from another segment of the book: the embedded passage from emily’s journal of letters to naomi’s mother. the following excerpts are from naomi’s sample of emily’s journal. they are not narrative—that is, they are not addressed by the novel’s narrator—so they help establish naomi as absorbed, as introverted, by her re-learning process rather than as extroverted into speech by it. according to naomi, she reads the journal language rather than speaking it. the embedded journal passage also serves as another example of language which inflects its references to vancouver to indicate the narrator’s assumption that they are common ground for narrator and audience and does so as part of a private address. i have added all of the following emphases. they indicate marks of assumed sharedness: mentions of streets and buildings by proper name and definite reference. ) a torch was thrown into a rooming-house and some plate-glass windows were broken in the west end—things like that. ( ) ) business on powell street is up slightly since most of us who usually go to the big department stores like woodwards don’t any more. ( ) ) the government has requisitioned the livestock building at hastings park, and the women’s building, to house , ‘japs pending removal.’ ( ) ) […] the confinees in the hastings park pool […] we’ll all be chucked into hastings park […] i’m afraid that those kept in the hastings park will be held as hostages […] this morning dad got out of bed and went to the pool bunkhouse for men (the former women’s building). ( - ) ) the bulletins posted on powell street aren’t available to most people. ( ) ) the other day there were a lot of people lined up on heather street to register at the rcmp headquarters and so frightened by what was going on […]( ) ) [“the kids,” naomi and her brother, are] spending the night in the church hall at kitsilano. i’m going over there too […] ( ) when naomi opens emily’s journal, she is confronted by the sense of eavesdropping on a private conversation: “i feel like a burglar as i read,” she says, “breaking into a private house” ( ). but she reminds herself that emily has now sent the journal to her, re- directing its original address. in effect, as emily educates her niece, she extends her diary to a wider readership. by contrast to emily’s other efforts at making public the wrongs suffered by japanese-canadians, however, this extension of the diary’s address still keeps emily’s personal history within the family, so to speak. in this respect it reinforces the general privacy of language use in this novel. however, emily’s journal is also one of the places in obasan where the fiction of a private, personal address wears thin. the text’s language seems to respond here to the writer’s designs for the presentation of her whole novel to readers, as well as to the designs of emily’s intimate address. while the fiction of an epistolary diary is maintained by emily’s familiarly-styled reference to places she knows to be common ground shared with her sister, it is weakened by these references’ occasional slips into over-explanation. “the big department stores like woodwards,” for example, is unnecessarily specific for a sister who knows the city well and even more so for the self who is the diary’s primary audience. it suggests that the narrative has designs on another audience; an audience, say, of overhearing readers who know woodwards, to whom kogawa wants to disclose the information that “most of us” patronize that particular department store. emily’s reference to woodwards in excerpt ( ) might be read as indicating the writer’s intention to introduce the news that vancouver’s japanese frequented stores beyond of powell street’s “japantown.” “the church hall at kitsilano” has a similar effect. if, by re-directing her diary’s address to naomi, emily intends to teach her niece how, as japanese-canadians, their acquaintances were forced into a terribly constricted geography, then by staging this address kogawa seems to intend to teach readers who recognize woodwards’s and kitsilano’s places in the social geography of vancouver just how settled and widely distributed japanese families were in the city. like emily’s diary, naomi’s narration swerves occasionally into over-explanation of vancouver place references. excerpts ( ) to ( ) tempted me, earlier, to interpret them as other-oriented precisely because their familiarity-assuming proper nouns were so formally and completely set forward. “stephen is in grade three at david lloyd george school” is stylistically appropriate to a child’s recital to herself of what things she knows, but, for those bystanding audiences who recognize that school, its deliberateness also ostensively invites their recognition. naomi narrates perhaps half of the novel from her adult perspective, the other half as if she is re-experiencing her young life. when speaking as an adult she occasionally styles her references as if deliberately for an audience outside her intimate circle. in this case, the outsider is someone who does not recognize vancouver landmarks. of the following excerpts, only ( ) suggests an assumption that the places referred to—parts of vancouver naomi knew as a child—are known to her audience: ) i can imagine that my grandmother said much the same thing [“too old”] those dark days in , as she rocked in her stall at the vancouver hastings park prison. ( ) ) there were all the picnics at kitsilano, and the concerts at stanley park. and the christmas concert in the church at third avenue when tiny stephen sang a solo. ( ) ) the house in which we live is in marpole, a comfortable residential district of vancouver. it is more splendid than any house i have lived in since. ( ) ) sick bay, i learned eventually, was not a beach at all. and the place they called the pool was not a pool of water, but a prison at the exhibition grounds called hastings park in vancouver. men, women, and children outside vancouver, from the ‘protected area’—a hundred-mile strip along the coast— were herded into the grounds and kept there like animals until they were shipped off to road-work camps and concentration camps in the interior of the province. ( ) excerpt ( ) stretches an apparent assumption of vancouver common ground (a definite reference and a proper name) into a more explanatory phrase. compared to the shorthand references to “hastings park” and “the pool” in excerpt ( ) from emily’s journal, the lengthy, formal precision of naomi’s reference here to “the vancouver hastings park prison” belies its design for an audience who shares her knowledge of a particular geography of vancouver. and excerpts ( ) and ( ) are plainly explanatory, glossing familiar references (“marpole,” “the place they called the pool,” “the ‘protected area’”) with indefinite references (a district, a prison, a strip of coastline) that gently introduce the audience to new knowledge. swerves into explanation tend to reflect naomi’s process of re-learning, and may be read still as a recital to herself of learned knowledge. but these glosses pick up the narrative rhythm of other glosses in naomi’s narration (childhood and adult), which are usually translations into english of japanese words: ) ‘kawaiso,’ she says under her breath. the word is used whenever there is hurt and a need for tenderness. […] ‘kawai,’ i whisper to obasan, meaning that the baby is cute. ( ) glosses indicate design for two audiences: a primary one, who will not be alienated by the narrator’s immediate treatment of something (a vancouver landmark or a japanese word) as well known, and a secondary one, whose lesser knowledge needs to be accommodated after the fact with a follow-up explanation. these unconcealed nods to a secondary audience that does not know hastings park’s prison and does not speak japanese complicate naomi’s address, puncturing the apparent privacy of its speech with moments of obvious orientation to an other. i read the explanatory glossing in passages like ( ) as showing kogawa’s awareness that there are others beyond naomi herself for whom this revelation about “sick bay” is relevant and engaging (horrifying!) information. unusually, obasan includes details that suggest that its intended, secondary audience of bystanding readers has a particular political profile. non-japanese canadian readers are deliberately disclosed to and ushered towards the circle of address by kogawa’s audience design. (i specify “non-japanese” because of the narrative glossing of japanese words.) this set of details includes naomi’s references to canadian institutions and policies and the dialogism established between kogawa’s novel and the government documents, official letters, news reports, and popular slogans that are woven into the text. readers may perceive obasan as responding to public statements precisely when they recognize elements of their own social contexts so pointedly being referred to in the novel. that is, if an individual canadian reader decides to identify the storyworld in obasan with his own lived world, he galvanizes what bakhtin would call the novel’s addressivity. he imaginatively draws himself so close to the circle of address that he becomes a recognized part of its rhetorical situation. he constructs kogawa as deliberately disclosing to him, no longer just as an anonymous reader free to engage with the story or not, but as a canadian for whom the history of internment is indeed personally relevant. the novel’s references to vancouver landmarks, in turn, offer additional relevance for readers who recognize them. like the canada references, when readers recognize these vancouver landmarks as part of their social world, these references bring to life a particular social dimension of the text’s audience design. but the vancouver references do so differently. they do not design “vancouverites” as a sub-set particularly disclosed to among canadian audiences. rather, the novel’s references to vancouver landmarks make self-conscious eavesdroppers of people who identify its landmarks as part of their lived reality (perhaps especially those among them without japanese heritage). it makes them eavesdroppers by not addressing them as an audience that shares these landmarks with naomi and kogawa, all the while staging the landmarks as a common ground for naomi and her private audience. the majority of naomi’s references to vancouver locations make readers who know vancouver aware that naomi’s fictional audience is someone close to her, with whom she shares parts of the city as a common ground. this address demands nothing of them personally. naomi will never know that they know vancouver too. but they may nevertheless feel an eavesdropper’s sense of coming undetected upon a private conversation that is personally relevant to them. (to dramatize: naomi and her close- knit family share memories of time spent together in kitsilano, in stanley park ( ). i know those places too, i share them with these characters, but of course they couldn’t know that…) meanwhile, considering that kogawa would know that, among her audience of canadian readers, some readers would have a specially close knowledge of the city, i think that these readers’ knowledge of vancouver landmarks may then make them especially self-conscious as eavesdroppers. the conversation they have secretly happened upon is relevant to them personally; it is almost as if kogawa must in fact know that they are there, listening in, even if she gives no sign of awareness. an explanatory passage like ( ) exemplifies vancouverites’ position as especially self-conscious eavesdroppers. here is ( ) again: ) sick bay, i learned eventually, was not a beach at all. and the place they called the pool was not a pool of water, but a prison at the exhibition grounds called hastings park in vancouver. men, women, and children outside vancouver, from the ‘protected area’—a hundred-mile strip along the coast— were herded into the grounds and kept there like animals until they were shipped off to road-work camps and concentration camps in the interior of the province. ( ) this passage urges canadian readers to construct a geography of internment that did exist during the war, and offers them landmarks that continue to exist as reference points for that construction. the reference-point landmarks are “vancouver,” “the coast,” and “the province”—not points that require an intimate familiarity with the city of the kind, for example, that emily’s journal demonstrates with its unglossed references to “powell street” and “hastings park.” recognizing those landmarks as indeed parts of their lived experience (even if only as points on a map), canadian readers recognize that the narrative address has conjoined with their reality, and kogawa is addressing them as canadian readers with a certain knowledge of place, for whom the story has become personally relevant, rather than anonymously as readers. but readers who know vancouver well recognize those landmarks as more intimately part of their respective lived experience than that of canadians in general; thus they note that kogawa is not addressing them as a special group. their eavesdropping position is a self-conscious one, however, because she might have addressed them—and what if she actually knows they are there, listening in? the landscape she is referring to is far more personally relevant to them than to the general canadian audience she is addressing. perhaps these readers feel rather like naomi does when she begins reading emily’s journal. it is not addressed to her, but it is personally relevant nonetheless: should i be reading this? why not? why else would she send it here? […] i feel like a burglar as i read, breaking into a private house only to discover it’s my childhood house filled with corners and rooms i’ve never seen. ( ) the effect of this social move of non-acknowledgement is a gentle exclusion, of those who identify with the vancouver she refers to, from any group of people with special proximity to the events. meanwhile, naomi’s fictional address to her private audience assumes certain very central and popular vancouver locations—stanley park, english bay, kitsilano, powell street—as a common ground shared between them. positioned outside of this private sharing of spaces they know, and excluded from any special shared proximity to the characters and events of the novel, readers who recognize kogawa’s vancouver are spared the sense of being accused of any extra guilt inherent in their proximity. but they are also denied the sense that they share with the characters this terrain of childhood innocence and adult pain. chapter two: vancouver common grounds and the edges of fiction in the park of the seaport the giant trees swayed, and taller than any were the tragic seven sisters, a constellation of seven noble red cedars that had grown there for hundreds of years, but were now dying, blasted, with bare peeled tops and stricken boughs. (they were dying rather than live longer near civilization. yet though everyone had forgotten they were called after the pleiades and thought they were named with civic pride after the seven daughters of a butcher, who seventy years before when the growing city was named gaspool had all danced together in a shop window, nobody had the heart to cut them down.) (lowry ) in malcolm lowry’s short story “the bravest boat,” vancouver is not common ground. lowry’s narrator assumes a primary audience for whom vancouver—or enochvilleport, as he names his fictional version of the city—is unknown territory, a place off the map of specific and shared place-knowledge. he introduces his audience to the city, building it for them as a vivid place, as fresh and as-yet-unimagined to them as it is thoroughly known to him. he positions it relative to landmarks and geographies they know, gradually placing it in the pacific northwest ( ), near the american border ( , ), and north of cape flattery ( ), and hypothesizing that his audience might have thought its park “quite like some american parks […] save for the union jack” flying there and the appearance of a posse of the rcmp ( ). in the passage quoted here the narrator starts building the city by describing the park, introducing his audience to the seven sisters and to the legendary butcher from the city’s early history. although he begins by phrasing his references to features of the park as if they were inferable from knowledge already shared with his audience—general knowledge about parks and seaports and giant trees— his narrative language gradually reveals that the specific identities of these trees, this park and this growing seaport city are unknown to them. he treats these features’ identities as new information. he continues to do so with other vancouver landmarks throughout the story, as he builds the setting outward from the trees to the city downtown and its surrounds, introducing his audience to new items—to “the stretch of water below known as lost lagoon” ( ), to “dilapidated half-skyscrapers” and other buildings populating the city centre ( ), and to “a harbour more spectacular than rio de janeiro and san francisco put together” ( ). lowry’s narrator and his audience do share some general knowledge about the world outside of vancouver, and their shared knowledge partly constitutes their relationship to one another. they both know of rio de janeiro and san francisco as spectacular sites, for example. and the narrator assumes enough concordance in their world-views and sensibilities to allow him occasionally to use an abstracted second- person pronoun to focalize the narrative perceptions—a “you” that hypothetically unites speaker and audience. describing the city centre with rage and distaste, mentioning the religious buildings, he narrates the appearance of dwarfed spires belonging to frame facades with blackened rose windows, queer grimed onion-shaped domes, and even chinese pagodas, so that first you thought you were in the orient, then turkey or russia, though finally, but for the fact that some of these were churches, you would be sure you were in hell […] ( ) the narrator presumes the intimacy and shared general knowledge of community membership in his relationship with his audience, but their common ground stops at the american border. the brave boat in the story makes a twelve-year-long and wandering journey to travel the distance between fearnought bay, u.s.a. and enochvilleport, canada—“that voyage of only some three score miles as the crow flies” ( - )—and that same distance represents a gap in the common ground shared by lowry’s narrator and his audience. when the narrator addresses them from the far side of this borderland divide, he speaks to them from unknown territory. the limits of narrator and audience’s shared world-view, and the audience’s lack of knowledge about vancouver, make up the social context in which the narrator tells his story. (the dramatic difference between this narrator’s geographical knowledge and his audience’s characterizes lowry’s story as what i will be calling a city-building narrative, in contrast to a place-sharing or edge-setting narrative.) in “the bravest boat,” the lack of common ground is part of this narrator’s motivation to tell his audience a story that builds for them such a vivid and allegorized setting. enochvilleport’s position beyond the far edge of his audience’s knowledge makes it for them an open field of as-yet- unimagined possibilities. the narrator’s own deep knowledge of the place and his fully developed feelings about it motivate him as well. and his storytelling about this unknown place claims relevance for his audience, in sperber and wilson’s sense, when he links the new information he offers them to the knowledge they already share in common. the narrator and his audience’s already shared appreciation for the moral and aesthetic contrast between park and city allows him to sustain the scene-setting description for pages, positioning his sympathetic central characters deliberately on the side of goodness (“for nearly all people are good who walk in parks” [ ]) within a charged scene. he implies to his audience that even in distant enochvilleport—even, that is, in canada, where the mixed influences of britain and america make a laughable picture out of “the posse of royal canadian mounted policemen mounted royally upon the cushions of an american chevrolet” ( )—the ugly forces of modernization and international cultural exchange threaten goodness. but here goodness is to be found, albeit barely, on the very verges of a city park that in “its beauty [is] probably unique” ( ). storytelling that builds the city out of unknown space, for an audience that is not already familiar with it, is just one of the narrative modes in which novels and short stories set in vancouver handle their references to the city. i refer to this mode as city building. later in this chapter i will discuss city building in other texts, including writing by ethel wilson and timothy taylor, which also introduce vancouver to an audience from elsewhere: wilson’s to an english audience and taylor’s to a north american one. the vancouvers built in these other texts are not, like lowry’s enochvilleport, explicitly fictional places, although they are all versions in fiction of the real vancouver that these writers knew, respectively, in the early s and s and at the turn of the twentieth century. of the several ways in which narratives handle references to a real city, city building is perhaps the one most congruent with the qualities of fiction telling. fictions are what storytellers create when they recount worlds and events removed from the real world (cf. herman on the distinct space-time coordinates of the “storyworld” ) or when their accounts are not responsible to reality (cf. j adams ). (such a definition of fiction remains current even despite fiction’s longstanding freedom to reference recognizable real-world locations or historical characters.) narrators of city-building narratives develop settings that are new to their audience. thus the writers seem to offer their stories to the reader-from-elsewhere, instead of especially trying to reach an audience with more particular, local knowledge. reading audiences who really do know the city are positioned as eavesdroppers. like obasan, these narratives tend to ignore these knowing audiences (except when, as in stanley park, they omit to explain a reserved few landmarks, or otherwise acknowledge that there are some things about the setting that cannot be explained to an outsider, thus preserving some privilege for the knowing locals listening in). in this narrative mode, a setting’s prior obscurity (as construed by the narrator) confers authority on the storyteller, giving her room to make a story of the city without being crowded or held accountable for faithful representation. as lowry’s construction of enochvilleport exemplifies, as well, this narrative mode allows a writer to confer a particular value on the city, presenting it as newsworthy and relevant even for those with no prior relationship to it. “the bravest boat” incorporates vancouver into lowry’s exploration of moral and aesthetic opposites and showcases it as a prime example of their vivid contrast; other city-building narratives set up the city as a frontier space allowing one to consider new social alignments or a metropolitan centre providing a classy new vocabulary of taste. before discussing city-building in other vancouver texts, i will discuss two other major ways in which narrators handle references to the city. i refer to the first of these as place-sharing. place-sharing narrators, who appear in shani mootoo’s “out on main street,” wayson choy’s the jade peony, and douglas coupland’s girlfriend in a coma, among other works, refer to their vancouver settings as if the city, or at least the particular terrain within it where their narrative takes place, is common ground shared with their audience and a basis for community membership with them. in the second mode, which i refer to as edge-setting, narrators share a certain extent of city terrain with their audience but markedly not all of it. in bowering’s short story “two glasses of remy” and william gibson’s “the winter market,” for example, narrative demarcates an edge between shared and unshared ground. narration in these stories is motivated by a desire to invite the audience to venture over that edge, to meet the narrators in a part of the shared city that the audience had not yet imagined. in place-sharing and edge-setting narratives, narrator and audience already share some literal ground in common when the storytelling begins: they jointly know at least part of the story’s setting. by referring to that ground, the narrative language indicates their located social relationship, emphasizing that the storytelling context is defined in part by a shared experience of place in these cases. in city-building narratives, narrator and audience likely share some more general worldview or wider knowledge—such as their cosmopolitan familiarity with rio de janeiro and san francisco in “the bravest boat”—but the narrative focus steps them off their shared map, when it takes them to vancouver. indeed, the principal differences between these three narrative modes arise at the point where the narrative steps off the shared map. in all three of these modes, fiction-telling mixes with reference to and reconstructions of a recognizable social world: starting from known territory, each story reveals new characters, histories, and places that overhearing readers may receive as freely invented. but city-building narratives unfurl their vancouver settings as part of the story to be told. edge-setting narratives are similar, although they start from closer to home, so to speak; they excavate hitherto unknown places within the larger frame of the shared city, and reveal their stories in the process. place-sharing narratives tell a story about what happened here, on already common ground; typically, they pointedly reveal private lives, domestic spaces, and personal histories otherwise invisible in the anonymously shared public spaces of a city. these modes differ, then, in the pragmatics of their work with setting and, accordingly, in how they position themselves socially with respect to reading audiences who are less and more familiar with the setting. for the remainder of this chapter, i focus on what place-sharing, edge-setting, and city-building narratives set in vancouver can show us about how a city is experienced as social space and how novels and short stories mediate that experience for their readerships. when i mentioned earlier these narrative modes’ difference from a basic social context of fiction telling—in which narrators unfurl an unknown setting removed from the real social world known by their audiences—i did so not because novels and short stories set in vancouver are much different from texts set elsewhere in their handling of references to recognizable place (although vancouver’s situation at “the periphery of the centre” puts certain pressures on these texts’ setting-work). rather, i mentioned it because of the question these texts’ departure from the basic “fiction” paradigm seems to pose: what real-life social relationship to the settings of these stories are the narrators claiming for their audiences? the implied audience’s relation to the setting, and how this relationship affects narration, has not been much discussed in scholarly or popular analyses of novels and short stories. by contrast, reviewers have noticed temporally-specific storytelling contexts in some fiction. coupland’s novels, for instance, make many references to of- the-moment icons of western popular culture. his novels have been repeatedly read as written out of an international and specifically contemporary moment (cf. t adams, daley, jefferson), despite their decidedly local setting. i contend that it is worth noting that novels and short stories’ circles of address usually are positioned somewhere with respect to the stories’ settings—even if only vaguely, as in the “bravest boat” narrator’s address to an audience across the border. existing theories of narrative address in fiction are not designed to notice this positioning, influenced as they are by the idea that an un- locatable reader is the primary audience of any written narrative. cities and narrative urban theorists and cultural critics have long emphasized anonymity and alienation as the defining experiences of modern social life in cities. confronted by the size and diversity of the modern metropolis, the solitary citizen feels alone and separate in the anonymous crowd. in the country and the city, raymond williams identifies in a wordsworth poem the first expression of what has since become a dominant experience of the city. […] wordsworth saw strangeness, a loss of connection, not at first in social but in perceptual ways: a failure of identity in the crowd of others which worked back to a loss of identity in the self, and then, in these ways, to a loss of society itself, its overcoming and replacement by a procession of images [...] no experience has been more central in the subsequent literature of the city. ( , my emphasis) as richard lehan observes in the city in literature: an intellectual and cultural history, intellectuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries “on both sides of the atlantic saw the city give rise to a radical individualism” (xv) and anonymity replace community ( ). accordingly, in imagined cities: urban experience and the language of the novel, robert alter argues that the great late nineteenth- and early twentieth- century urban novelists (from flaubert to dickens, woolf and joyce) developed new narrative techniques capable of expressing the new experiences of modern urban life, and alter characterizes these as increasingly enclosed in the individual’s solitary subjective perspective. in alter’s view, the “distinctive character of urban existence” came to be found in “anonymous individuals, their real nature disguised, encountering one another in a noisy crowd, appetites sharpened and nerves frayed in a dense swirl of provocative and dischordant stimuli” ( ). the individual’s experience of the city, as that experience is embodied by the experimental prose style of a writer like flaubert, is too private and too fragmented to be communicated to another mind, alter argues. hence he reads flaubert’s prose style, especially the writer’s development of a free indirect style of narration, as illustrating “the isolation of person from person and individual from community” in the modernist metropolis ( ). as i have explained in chapter , i persist in reading even free indirect narration as addressed, as uttered in the social context of a narrator-audience relationship. in my view, narrative is an attempt to relate, and to relate something, to an other. hence narrative is a medium by which the isolated urbanite can attempt to make social connection out of his or her experiences of city life. one conception of city living does frame individual city-dwellers as sharing place. in this view, the individual subject anonymously and impersonally shares a physically unspecific public realm with an indefinite population of others. in imagined cities, alter sees in virginia woolf’s mrs. dalloway an image of this sort of imaginative, unspecific experience of sharedness. although he maintains, based on his reading of canonical city fictions, that “the great modern city […] is not a place of community” ( ), he argues that for clarissa the pulsating presence of the world—‘this, here, now, in front of her’—has the power to break through the barriers of private consciousness that constantly registers and constructs the world […] so she entertains the idea, straddling fantasy and existential revelation, of being part of everything around her, even ‘part of people she had never met.’ ( - ) alter reads in mrs. dalloway an experience not of shared place but of shared presence. woolf’s narrative language, he says, manages to convey that for clarissa, private empathetic consciousness may serve as medium for her, as a city-dweller, to imagine herself sharing presence with the diverse people around her. but i would offer that city-dwellers may also imagine this shared presence as located—as precisely an experience of shared space—in part by perceiving themselves surrounded by an open set of citizens who also make their lives within the boundaries of the city. meanwhile, some urban theorists have argued that city-dwellers imagine a kind of vaguely located community membership thanks to the mediating power not of consciousness but of texts. as david henkin explains in city reading: written words and public spaces in antebellum new york, when living in a city began to involve reading all sorts of different texts—street names, advertisements, public announcements, signs of rules and directions—posted on the city’s every physical surface, a new sense emerged of being an anonymous member of a collective population located in those specific streets. in contrast to the lone, alienated urban subject that many theorists and critics see represented in the urban writing, the various narrative voices in vancouver fiction instantiate distinctly social experiences of the city. while they range from assuming common ground to introducing unknown territory, these short stories and novels imply social contexts for their narration. they make references to specific parts of the city in such a way as to manifest social relationships of storytelling and address that position both narrator and audience with respect to the physical terrain of the city. thus they offer instances of located, urban social relationships which range from intimate and proximal to alienated and distant, but which are certainly not solitary. place-sharing narratives the conception of the individual as an anonymous member of the urban community offers one interesting context for my reading of place-sharing narratives in vancouver stories. usually place-sharing narratives assume common ground without assuming at the same time a personal relationship to the audience: mutually shared place (and, often, a certain mutually shared worldview as well) allows a real degree of social intimacy between narrator and audience that is nonetheless impersonal. this impersonal intimacy is, we might say, an urban condition, comparable to city-dwellers’ ability to imagine themselves part of an urban public sphere. place-sharing narratives set in vancouver show us a variety of urban common grounds, which tend to take the shape of extended neighbourhoods: sizeable areas of the city that are shared by narrator and audience. while several of these grounds loosely correspond to official vancouver neighbourhoods, such as chinatown, or to smaller cities within the metropolitan region, such as north vancouver, they usually also include high streets and major landmarks from the city’s downtown, which lies beyond those official neighbourhoods’ borders, and from other outlying parts of the city as well. place-sharers also tend to share a wide swath of the city’s grid of streets at its coarser resolutions, mutually knowing the city’s major bridges, streets and intersections by name and relative location if not more intimately. and place-sharing narratives set in vancouver almost always assume that the dramatic topography of the city’s north-western coastal edge—the high-relief horseshoe formed around burrard inlet by the north shore mountains and the vancouver peninsula—is mutually well known to the narrator and the audience. for example, alice munro’s narrator, in the story “what is remembered,” assumes few details of the city to be common ground but instead assumes her audience’s knowledge of a broad, regional overview of the city and its surrounding municipalities. the focalizing character in this story lives on vancouver island, and the narrator assumes that what knowledge this character has of metropolitan vancouver is equally well known to her audience. farther-flung municipalities like horseshoe bay and white rock aside, the well-known neighbourhoods and landmarks in this story cluster tidily around the burrard inlet: bowen island, west vancouver, dundarave, hollyburn mountain, lynn valley, the lion’s gate bridge, prospect point, stanley park, kitsilano, ubc. (even narrators who assume that very little about vancouver is known to their audience will frequently make exception for the more famous features of this picturesque horseshoe view: the north shore mountains, the inlet, stanley park, and the lion’s gate bridge.) a study of the common grounds assumed in literary texts adds to our understanding of how city- dwellers experience their city as shared space by describing urban common grounds as territories larger than neighbourhoods, territories that are experienced as shared on some other basis than that the sharing community members simply live nearby one another. by assuming mutual knowledge of certain vancouver grounds, place-sharing narrators make such knowledge part of the social context of their respective circles of address. if place-sharing narratives offer a survey of some of the kinds of larger-than- neighbourhood urban territories that city-dwellers experience as shared, they also offer information about relationships that people experience as forming the social basis for such common grounds. in other words, if (as i observe to be the case) clark and marshall’s “community membership” is the assumed basis for most narrators’ assertions of common ground (cf. chapter one), these narratives illustrate instances of the kinds of community that city-dwellers experience, as well as instances of the sorts of common ground. assumed community and in-common terrain both vary from narrative to narrative (and, in some cases, from one point to another in a given novel). in most cases, however, the narrators are apparently motivated by the following assumption: that the stories they tell will engage their audience because they share a sympathy of locality, and a sense of personal relevance, invoked by references to their common ground. as members of a community that shares such grounds, their audience will care to hear where the story’s events happen. they will care to hear what happened there because they know the place too. outside of the narrator-implied audience relationship, it may be true, as chong asserts, that worldly reading audiences are bound to dismiss these texts, not knowing for themselves the vancouver territory they see treated as common ground in them (chong “writers”). but i would prefer to keep open the question of whether, when encountering these narratives, such readers would recognize themselves as lacking in the very sympathy and sense of personal relevance that they witness being assumed as the social context of the storytelling, and whether they experience that lack with displeasure, indifference, boredom, confusion, curiosity, or, perhaps, yearning. shani mootoo’s short story “out on main street” reveals that urban common grounds may be diffuse and geographically uneven. in this story the protagonist-narrator and her audience’s mutual knowledge gathers together dispersed patches of vancouver’s terrain. their shared ground covers the punjabi market on south main street; downtown vancouver, several kilometres away from the market; and the unspecified storytelling location, which i read as possibly suburban and certainly ex-centric—that is, as somewhat distant from both of these centres. (it also includes, apparently, some knowledge gleaned from similar life-experiences in distant elsewheres. although the narrator does not assume that her audience knows trinidad as she does, her figures of speech assume caribbean knowledge. for example, commenting that men never notice her when her girlfriend is with her, she says, “with janet at mih side, i doh have the chance of a penny shave-ice in de hot sun” [ ].) the narrator and audience’s shared map of these dispersed vancouver places is also unevenly intimate and fine-grained. in fact, neither of the specific vancouver locations that the narrator mentions is known mutually in any closeness of detail to the narrator and audience, although they jointly know of those places. for instance, they share knowledge of the punjabi market area of main street as a significant location. the story’s opening lines imply that main street is a deeply relevant place for this narrator and her audience. the question of going there or not is an obvious and important topic between them, one that motivates the telling of this story. the narrator begins as follows, taking main street’s relevance and specific identity for granted as well known: janet and me? we does go main street to see pretty pretty sari and bangle, and to eat we belly full a burfi and gulub jamoon, but we doh go too often because, yuh see, is dem sweets self what does give people like we a presupposition for untameable hip and thigh. ( ) the rest of her story explains the other reasons she is “real reluctant” to visit main street ( ). it is an uncomfortable place for her, a kind of touchstone of ethnic and sexual identity. there she experiences with shame her “watered-down indian” heritage when faced with the “good grade a indians” who work and shop there ( ), and there she feels her lesbian sexuality scorned and threatened. her audience apparently knows well the character of her “main street,” for the narrator does not need to explain which part of the long, diverse vancouver high street she is referring to. the narrator judges that her audience will recognize the punjabi market stretch of main street as obviously her referent, given their common ground; it is the hub of indian culture in vancouver. however, despite their mutual knowledge of this particular “main street,” the narrator assumes that her audience needs an introduction to one of its prominent restaurants. accordingly, she describes the restaurant, offering the details as new information: in large deep-orange sanscrit-style letters, de sign on de saffron-colour awning above de door read kush valley sweets. underneath it in smaller red letters it had desserts fit for the gods. it was a corner building. the front and side was one big glass wall. inside was big. big like a gymnasium. ( ) having been there—having experienced there the ambivalent desires and the complicated shifting allegiances and alienations around ethnic identity and sexual orientation that are the point of her story—the narrator now knows kush valley sweets in intimate detail. her audience does not know the place, so she must accommodate their lack of knowledge by offering scene-setting information. mootoo’s place-sharing narrative suggests that urban common grounds can be generalized, coarse-grained understandings of different parts of a city. people may share knowledge of a place and speak about it as common ground without knowing it intimately. in “out on main street,” the narrator’s one brief reference to vancouver’s downtown suggests that she and her audience do not know it intimately either, although they both know of it. in this case, the narrator treats the downtown as if it were known to herself and her audience, but she does not refer to it with the specificity that would indicate close, detailed knowledge. i read her as referring to it with a sense of its distance from herself and her audience—personal, felt distance as well as, perhaps, physical distance. i tuck mih elbows in as close to mih sides as i could so i wouldn’t look like a strong man next to [janet], and over to de l-o-n-g glass case jam up with sweets i jiggle and wiggle in mih best imitation a some a dem gay fellas dat i see in downtown vancouver, de ones who more femme dan even janet. ( ) overt performances of markedly gay male sexuality are not as common in some parts of downtown vancouver as in others. if mootoo’s narrator wanted to evoke a shared intimacy of downtown place-knowledge, to summon that feeling into her conversation with her audience, she might have said, “some a dem gay fellas dat i see down on davie,” referring specifically (and in familiar shorthand) to the west end street where men’s performances of gay identity are most at home. but she chooses to generalize distantly instead. this story’s narration implies for the narrator-audience relationship a close overlap of world knowledge and a diffuse, generalized vancouver common ground. it also implies a mutual comfort with indo-trinidadian-canadian english and a shared conversational interest in confessing personal experiences and views (the story ends with, “so tell me, what yuh think ’bout dis nah, girl?” [ ]). and this story about an outing on main street is relevant, in the social context of this relationship, because the narrator and her audience together find its particular ambivalences and anxieties of ethnic and sexual identity personally compelling. these sympathies are more extensively foregrounded in this narrative than is a sympathy of specific locality: despite the title’s spotlight on a particular place, this narrative is not as interested in the geography of queer experience as “the bravest boat” was in a geography of moral and aesthetic contrast. but the few references to the narrator and her audience’s vancouver common ground do serve to show the sympathy of their orientation towards the vancouver places, main street and downtown, and to map the complexities of identity onto the space of the city. narrator and audience’s sense of mutual distance from these known places suggests for them, as i have said, a location ex-centric to both centres. in my mind, their location is somewhere to the east of main, towards the suburbs, where i imaginatively locate large immigrant populations. but in fact it is impossible to place their location on a map of vancouver. george bowering’s short story “standing on richards” implies a common ground that precisely maps part of downtown vancouver. the protagonist-narrator of “standing on richards,” whose name is aubrey, tells his story to an audience who also knows those parts of the city, but he tells them things about a nighttime street life there that he assumes they do not know. because he shares with his audience a map of this part of the city—although they share no street-level knowledge of its nightlife—bowering’s narrator’s reference to this common ground invokes a place-based sympathy of interests. for aubrey and his audience, sharing a common ground interests them in the difference between their experiences of that place. by comparison, mootoo’s narrator and her audience’s primary sympathies are based on their shared interest in personal experiences of racial and sexual identity, not on their shared knowledge of main street and downtown vancouver. in “standing on richards,” common ground is a small segment of the city’s downtown, extending along richards street from its intersections with drake, davie, helmcken, and nelson to georgia street, and stretching from howe street on one side of richards down to false creek on the other. it is neighbourhood-sized, perhaps, but not known as a neighbourhood in any residential, next-door sense. aubrey knows this terrain as a network of sidewalks, and by spending time there he has come to know the other people who work those sidewalks: i don’t look like anyone else standing on corners along richards. you go down to richards and nelson, and you get your tall young women in high heels. in the summer you can see the cheeks of their asses […] a couple blocks in the other direction you’ll see the boys and the young men trying to look like boys, around richards and whatever that street is on the other side of davie. […] i do not look in any way like a boy. ( ) while explaining about these groups of people, aubrey takes the street names for granted as well known by his audience. even the reference to a street whose name slips his mind assumes common ground, in its casual reliance on his audience to be able to supply the identity of “that street.” his audiences know this terrain well too, but not by having been there with aubrey. he relies on them knowing this ground from walking it in the daytime, perhaps, or from driving these streets. those who stand on corners in this story rely on customers who flow through this area as part of a steady stream of car traffic, and while both street workers and their clients can thus presume shared knowledge of the street grid, they do not have equivalent relationships to the place. common ground for them would be an acknowledged local field of contact between two quite different social positions and experiences of urban place. i am tempted to read the social context of this story’s narration as just such a street-worker/client encounter, but aubrey’s narration is not designed for face-to-face address to a client. (face-to-face with his audience, he would not have needed to describe his own physical appearance.) and while aubrey and his audience’s common ground is precisely an acknowledged local field of contact between different experiences of place, their relationship is marked by a class-based sympathy, as well as a place-based one. the narrative’s social context is a substantial similarity of perspectives on and experiences of the world, a similarity that stops at the exceptional fact that aubrey now stands on street corners. the narrator-audience relationship in this story is not based on prior personal acquaintance, nor on extensive shared world-knowledge—aubrey introduces himself in full, and explains at length things he knows about, including the histories of various vancouver street names and of harris tweed—but their relationship is apparently informal, sympathetic, and between equals. explaining why he quit being a professor, aubrey assumes his audience’s sympathy, saying “so you can imagine how i felt […]” ( ). several turns of phrase suggest that he assumes his audience’s inside knowledge of universities ( - ); his tone of address might be called collegial. more generally, a shared knowledge of the mainstream, middle-class map of vancouver is an important part of the social context of this narrative. bowering’s narrator is an odd-ball, a failed former university professor in out-of-date clothing trying to sell his mind on a street corner, but he is not as ex-centric in his relationship to vancouver’s centres of mainstream culture as is mootoo’s narrator. he knows, for example, about daily life in vancouver’s genteel, middle-class territories. while he is spending time with his first client he asserts that, meanwhile, “on the south side of false creek young marrieds put their white plastic bags of fresh farm vegetables on the floor and began to consume three- dollar cups of coffee” ( ). nevertheless, aubrey has ventured, so to speak, away from the mainstream, middle-class experience of the city into social territory unknown to his former university peers. and his audience apparently belongs to that middle-class world; they are unfamiliar with the dark parking lot his first client takes him to. for their sake he refers to it as new: “a lot down by the north side of false creek” ( , my emphasis). aubrey’s narration is motivated by a sense that the new detail and colour he can add to the downtown street grid that is their common ground will be relevant, interesting information. while “out on main street” and “standing on richards” imply contexts of narration defined by sympathies of social position (involving ethnicity, class, gender, and mobility within the city) as well as sympathies of locality, the jade peony does not: rather, it draws on place-based sympathies to compell attention despite social difference. choy’s novel assumes a common ground that extends substantially beyond the borders of chinatown and neighbouring strathcona to take in downtown and east-central vancouver landmarks—gastown, granville street, st. paul’s hospital, stanley park, the north shore mountains, king edward high school, the ocean view cemetery, the intersection of fourth avenue and alberta street, and hastings park. (see figures and . images courtesy of google maps.) none of the novel’s three protagonist-narrators establishes edges for this vancouver ground. the wider city is apparently so well known to these narrators and their audience that perhaps any part of vancouver might have been mentioned off-handedly, without introduction. but the common ground that their narration establishes is, more narrowly, an extended neighbourhood, a corridor of central and east vancouver that dwindles as it stretches northward and eastward, as spoken-of landmarks get thinner on the ground at those extremities. figure . the jade peony's extended neighbourhood in regional context figure . the jade peony's extended neighbourhood (detail) this novel’s neighbourhood is densest, most detailed as a closely knit-together urban terrain, in the area that the three narrators define as the chinatown where they grew up. (the density and detail of known territory is, in part, a function of how mobile a person is in the city; unlike some other vancouver narrators, these three are confined to a small area by their youth and lack of access to automobiles as well as, especially, by the social pressures of white racism.) their chinatown covers the area stretching between main street to the west and maclean park to the east, and between hastings street to the north and union street to the south. false creek’s fringes, which at that time verged on the corner of main and georgia streets, are included at its outermost corner. jook-liang and sek-lung’s narratives, especially, repeat again and again the prominent street names of this neighbourhood for their audience. the narrators recollect repeatedly, and block by block, the pathways of their habitual on-foot movement through chinatown. they treat the specific streets as pointedly relevant. jook-liang, for example, recites in order all the primary east-west streets of her neighbourhood while she describes the look of the houses in that area: “those damp shacks decaying on their wooden scaffolding, whose doors you reached only by negotiating rickety ramps—all the one- and two-story houses parallel along pender and keefer, georgia and union” ( ). the narrators announce the streets by their proper names, as if casually treating them as well-known information. for example, jook-liang says of the path of her walks with an elder friend, wong suk: wong suk and i were, as usual, going to have a lunch of leftovers, then walk two blocks down pender, across main, down to hastings near carrall, to the lux movie house. hastings street, outside of chinatown, was where people always stared at the two of us—stared at this bent-down agile old man with the funny face […], at this almost nine-year-old girl with her moon face—but we didn’t care. ( ) and sek-lung, whose attention to geographical detail prompts him to record the length of his “five-block sprint [home] from strathcona” elementary school ( ), also recites as if with casual precision the pathways he traveled with his friend meiying: instead of turning south on jackson, over the cobblestone roadway towards maclean park, meiying turned north and walked even faster […] towards hastings street […] she double-timed over the tracks […] meiying turned down a side street. […] she pointed towards the end of the block […] ( - ) identifying the major chinatown streets by their proper names, these narrators deliberately mark their assumption that their audience shares these places as a common ground. indeed, their apparently casual certainty that each street and landmark is reliably familiar begins to seem ostensive as the proper nouns accumulate and repeat. the jade peony’s place references almost command recognition; but in their generous abundance they also leave room for laggard audience-members, who might not have quite recognized yet the chinatown geography they reference, to catch up. tracing and re-tracing the geography of the narrators’ childhood experiences, this novel’s narration offers its audience a homegrown chinatown perspective on the street grid. on the first page of her narrative, for example, jook-liang notes that during her stepmother’s pregnancy, her “grandmother, or poh-poh, was going regularly to our family tong association on pender street to pray for a boy” ( ). this account places her poh-poh’s “old china” customs, including a desire for grandsons, firmly within a vancouver neighbourhood. jook-liang’s generously informative narrative style assumes that the tong association she mentions is not entirely unknown to her audience—that is, she treats it as inferable when anchored to the known entities “our family” and “pender street”—but her manner of speaking works to build up, as if from scratch, a textured impression of a lived chinese-canadian experience in this neighbourhood. the three narrators are consistently, generously explanatory, addressing themselves to a specifically contemporary audience, an audience that does not know anything about the historical experiences of chinese-canadians living in vancouver. they consistently gloss chinese words, explain “old-china” customs and chinese-canadian experience and points of view. and they explain things about pre- s vancouver. “during the depression and the opening of the war years, you could only buy such a classic coat on granville street,” offers jung-sum, for example ( ). amidst all this explanation, the assumptions of common ground implied by proper names such as “granville street” stand out: as i have argued, these narrators deliberately assert that their audience shares with them extensive knowledge of present-day vancouver geography. as part of the social context of narration in the jade peony, this common ground is the basis for invoking a strong local sympathy, and a shared sense among narrator and audience of the place-based personal relevance of the war-time experiences the novel’s three narratives relate. the audience here has no chinese heritage, no historical memory of chinatown, and does not speak mandarin, but is presumed to share with the narrators a mutual interest in the events related precisely because the events took place on their shared ground. importantly, then, the common ground assumed in the narrators’ address differs from the racialized geography that they describe having experienced as children. they describe distinctly defined neighbourhood borders, outside of which they encountered the stares and rudeness of a white, english-speaking, middle-class vancouver. jook-liang recalls being stared at on hastings street. sek-lung recalls that outside of the safety of chinatown’s borders, “on streetcars or in shops where only english was spoken,” he and his classmates encountered “the humiliation and the mockery” of anglo-canadian racism ( ). and jung-sum recalls the up-market men’s clothing stores on granville street, west of chinatown, as places where salesmen in “black suit[s] sniffed at chinamen” ( ). one of their friends, liang reports, believes that all young chinese-canadians should “have real english names. when we’re outside of chinatown,” she thinks, “we should try not to be so different” ( ). evidently, white, anglophone, middle-class canadians were only to be encountered outside of chinatown, in the experience of these three narrators. and yet their own audience, which is anglophone and presumably not chinese-canadian, shares the neighbourhood streets with them. while the novel’s primary audience is people familiar with vancouver, its references to vancouver landmarks are so generously phrased and so often repeated that the narrators seem to adopt a disclosing attitude towards a secondary audience of bystanding readers whose grasp of the geography is imperfect. the narrators repeatedly refer to certain places and institutions using their full proper names—“the vancouver health inspection board” ( ), “st. paul’s hospital” ( , ), “the north shore mountains” ( , , , ; sek-lung only finally shortens his reference to “the mountains,” on page , after twice speaking of them more formally), and “the anglican vancouver chinese mission” ( ) for example—which thus give those bystanders who do not actually recognize these places a few extra, descriptive words to help them accommodate the reference. at the same time, however, these repeated proper nouns emphatically call upon their primary audience to recognize their vancouver specificity. as an important example, one of the sites that is referred to with repeated formality is the former carnegie library. jung-sum mentions it first, treating its identity as inferable and in fact phrasing his reference less than formally, by saying, “the library at main and hastings” ( ). but sek-lung later elaborates more formally, referring first to “the carnegie library at hastings and main just off chinatown” ( ) and then to “the carnegie library at hastings and main, between the boundaries of chinatown and little tokyo” ( - ). by waiving his narratorial right to treat the carnegie, on its second mention, as already textually evoked within his storytelling address, sek-lung refuses to let the library become simply a textualized referent for his audience. he insists on their recognizing it as a specific vancouver landmark they already knew. he thus calls on them to recognize it as people for whom this library and its hastings and main location are especially and mutually relevant because of the landmark’s intense visibility in a contemporary vancouver landscape. (by rehearsing this landmark’s importance as a boundary-marker, sek-lung also reframes the well-known site within his description of a specifically chinese-canadian experience of the place.) what the narration of the jade peony expects to summon, in its audience, is a shared sense of the personal relevance for them—as well as for the narrators—of what growing up in this neighbourhood felt like. other novels that reconstruct a historical experience of vancouver chinatown life—notably sky lee’s disappearing moon café and jen sookfong lee’s the end of east—are not so consistent in their patterns of reference to vancouver locations and landmarks as choy’s the jade peony. their narrators tend to shift unpredictably between assuming local knowledge shared with their audience and introducing local neighbourhoods and landmarks as if they were unknown. the social contexts of their narration are less clearly defined by an extent of physical common ground than by a shared fascination with the juicy and “intricate complexities of a family with chinese roots” (s lee ), in disappearing moon café, and a shared interest in the aesthetics and emotional tensions of the narrator’s attempt to reconcile herself to her own inherited, complex, chinese-canadian family history, in the end of east. however, it is worth pointing out that these two novels construct maps of a known vancouver that are distinctly similar to the jade peony’s map. in each of these two novels, the accumulated points of local reference that the narrator does assume to be common ground overlap substantially with the extended neighbourhood outlined in choy’s novel. each of them assumes knowledge of a very similar corridor of central and east vancouver, a corridor densest in chinatown but stretching northward to stanley park and southward to landmarks in central residential vancouver—oak street and the connaught (cambie street) bridge in disappearing moon café, and south cambie street in the end of east. despite their differences, all three suggest that city-dwellers may assume common grounds that extend beyond conventional neighbourhood boundaries. they also suggest that, as un-textured grids of streets and sparse assortments of landmarks, these grounds may be assumed shared even despite very different, differentially racialized, experiences of the place. the extended neighbourhood featuring in coupland’s girlfriend in a coma, like that in the jade peony, is well known as a densely coherent terrain at its centre and more sparsely known at its outer fringes. unlike choy’s narrators in the jade peony, these narrators really are casual about their assumptions of local familiarity; in their nostalgic and fated attachment to their childhood neighbourhood, they seem to have imaginatively insulated themselves from the differences of perspective that mark a diverse urban modernity. coupland’s protagonist-narrators, jared and richard, share with their audience a nearly perfectly mutual knowledge of the conjoined suburb cities of north and west vancouver. in particular, they share both fine-grained details of certain parts of this north-shore urban area and a coarse-grained overview of the rest of it: they mutually know the streets and back alleyways of several small, tucked-away residential neighbourhoods; major and minor features of the conjoined cities’ topography (grouse mountain and the runs and chairlifts of its ski hill, the capilano river, the cleveland dam, a golf course, the capilano canyon forest and the pathways of that forest); its major highways, central city streets, and bridges; and its city-central public spaces, such as park royal shopping centre and the lonsdale quay. at its sparser fringes, this common ground terrain stretches out southward to include a few major landmarks (but not street names) from vancouver proper: the famous aquarium at stanley park, the landmark hotel vancouver, and, “off […] across town,” the university of british columbia ( ). it even extends southward from there across the international border, to the small american weekend-trip destination towns bellingham and birch bay. it does not, however, extend northward past the ski runs: grouse mountain’s slope climbs steeply up behind their suburb, cutting off their knowledge of the terrain behind them. jared and richard share their knowledge of this extended neighbourhood with their audience in just as much intimate detail, and just as casually, as the group of lifelong friends who are the novel’s central characters share it with each other—and the latter grew up side by side, exploring the place together. for example, when he and his friend linus take a shortcut together from one part of the suburb to another, richard narrates their route to his audience as offhandedly as if he had been mentioning it to another of their friends. “we decided to walk up the hill to pam’s [movie] shoot while hamilton drove,” he says. “we shortcutted through the golf course and […] arrived at the location on southborough drive be- mucked” ( ). the suburban neighbourhood terrain of common ground assumed by coupland’s narrators supports two new observations about how city-dwellers experience urban terrain as a shared place. for one, several of coupland’s works of fiction, girlfriend in a coma included, are collectively remarkable among other vancouver fictions for the position they take with respect to the city. whereas most narrators look out from the central vancouver neighbourhoods of the point grey peninsula or downtown, across the burrard inlet, towards the north shore mountains, coupland’s narrators look down from the north shore slopes at the central city. their ex-centric perspective suggests that even city-dwellers who live at the fringes of a city, at a remove from the majority of the population and the city’s most public spaces, easily conceive of their neighbourhood as a common ground shared with unknown others. even the quiet back-streets of jared and richard’s suburban home neighbourhood are as well known to their audience as the central chinatown streets are known to jook-liang and sek-lung’s audience. another new perspective is offered by this place-sharing narrative’s example of urban common grounds that include both official and unofficial pathways through parkland and scrub- land. north vancouver’s residential neighbourhoods are tucked in among forested folds in the mountainside, and jared and richard’s audience share with them an intimate knowledge of the off-grid byways into and through these folds as well as of the street grid. the social context of narrative address is layered in this novel. hence it suggests two rather contradictory things about the community assumed to know the narrators’ north vancouver. on one hand, richard and jared’s style of address suggests that their primary audience grew up with them in north vancouver. how else do people come to know quiet suburban neighbourhoods so well, except through long residence there (and especially childhood exploration and visiting)? neither this novel nor the analyses of urban life i have read offer any other explanation. unlike the numerous landmarks the narrators refer to, which are visible, public spaces likely well known to most north vancouver residents if not to a wider vancouver community, most of the many street names they assume to be equally well known are not busy public thoroughfares but quiet drives. for richard especially, lifelong intimacy with the extended neighbourhood prompts a nostalgic, cherishing attention to the specific place, and he assumes that his audience will indulge if not share in his nostalgia about the place. richard names backstreets and other landmarks with an insistence on their inherent relevance and mutually shared importance as specific places. he does not recite places’ full proper names with the same deliberate ostension of choy’s narrators, but he returns repeatedly to certain landmarks’ names. for example, he mentions park royal mall five times during his narrative, calling it “park royal mall” or “park royal” ( , , , , ), and other characters refer to it in their reported speech an additional three times. his references seem to replicate local habits of speech: vancouverites in my acquaintance confirm that “park royal” is not markedly informative phrasing but rather the colloquial name for this particular mall. he also narrates specific and extensive sequences of street names and pathways, offering his audience a careful charting of the characters’ movements through their neighbourhood. for example, he narrates at length the exact route one character takes when she needs a roundabout long cut: she hops onto [her motorcycle] and guns it up delbrook road, through edgemont and across the cleveland dam. by now it’s fully dark. she takes the utility road up to glenmore and then bombs down stevens and into rabbit lane. ( ) on the other hand, while their patterns of reference to north vancouver streets and landmarks seem to assume primary audience who are longtime residents, even nostalgic fellow-neighbours, other elements of jared and richard’s style of address suggest a second, much wider audience. like the narrators of coupland’s other works of fiction, jared and richard’s narration is saturated with the big brand names of international capitalism and american popular culture, and their brand name-dropping is carefully dated. when describing the events of the characters’ teenage lives, in s north vancouver, these narrators refer with equal casualness and assumed familiarity to pebbles flintstone, charlie’s angels, tab, and la-z-boy as they do to now-obsolete features of a s-era north vancouver, such as grouse mountain’s old blueberry chairlift ( ). and describing the year when the world ends (“just before dawn, november , ” [ ]), the narrators call on their audience to recognize range rovers, nutrasweet, and shoppers drug mart. this signature of coupland’s style has been widely read as speaking from a pointedly trans-local cultural moment, capturing the spirit and vocabulary of a particular international generation. (see, for example, blencoe and cowley’s argument that coupland “is careful to set all of his novels in the year they are written, so that his oeuvre provides a history of the changes in [trans-local] contemporary culture” [my emphasis].) in my view, girlfriend in a coma is an exception among coupland’s other works of vancouver fiction, because its fixed focus on a local common ground addresses a primary audience of local people who know the international brand names simply because these brands have been part of their north vancouver lives. jpod, by comparison, addresses itself primarily to an international audience who by default does not know north vancouver. nevertheless, in every respect except for the style of their references to local common ground, even girlfriend in a coma’s jared and richard would seem to be addressing a broadly international audience of white, middle-class, north american suburbanites. their corporate and pop-culture frame of reference is reinforced by their steady attention to the material artifacts of s and contemporary middle-class suburban life, and the nostalgic attitude expressed in their references to these items assumes that their audience recognizes their own nostalgic and cherishing investments in the same lifestyle. jared and richard open their narrative by framing the city of vancouver, and their north vancouver suburb within it, in explanatory ways that abstract it from its local specificity and make it a symbol of the promise and possibility of (white, middle-class, western) human culture. richard opens his narrative by first affirming that his audience shares local knowledge with him, and then re-framing and introducing the well-known city as “a city” with a certain special abstract quality: karen and i deflowered each other atop grouse mountain, among the cedars beside a ski slope […] here is where i go back to the first small crack in the shell of time, to when i was happiest. myself and the others, empty pagan teenagers lusting atop a black mountain overlooking a shimmering city below, a city so new that it dreamed only of what the embryo knows, a shimmering light of civil peace and hope for the future. ( ) he is looking at “the lights of vancouver before the s had its way with the city” ( ), and although he sees a specific city here, he and jared frame the loss of its innocence as integrally part of a world-wide cultural shift. the s ended, they explain, and “with them left a sweetness, a gentleness. no longer could modern citizens pretend to be naïve” ( , my emphasis). when “the world” resumes its progress again for the novels’ characters, jared frames its re-genesis as happening simultaneously across the globe: in london the supermodels wear prada and the photographers snap their photos. the young princes read their guinness book of world records. in california, meetings are held and salad is picked at. […] the world indeed wakens: the ginza throbs and businessmen vomit into suntory whiskey boxes to the giggles of siberian party girls […] cities shine: cities of gold and tin and lead and birch and teflon, molybdenum, and diamonds that gleam and gleam and gleam. ( ) when combined with the narrators’ casual assumption of their audience’s knowledge of international popular culture, their framing of local events as part of a world-wide apocalypse seems to address itself to a broadly-based audience. the contradiction between these two layers of address—jared’s and richard’s primary address to nostalgic fellow-neighbours and their simultaneous framing of events for a secondary, apparently international, audience, who would likely never have heard of rabbit lane or the capilano canyon pathways—can only be finally resolved in individual readers’ accommodating imaginations. for me the combination of these two tendencies in the novel’s address does two things. for one, as i mentioned, it reminds me that even the most neighbourly and locally-based contemporary community shares a frame of reference shaped at least as much by international corporate brands and popular culture as by physical common ground. for another, it suggests to me a more unexpected conclusion: that coupland is offering the city’s suburban pathways as common ground to an international audience as if they know it—as if they would somehow recognize this quiet north vancouver neighbourhood, inhabited by “the middlest of middle classes” ( ), in all its specificity, as home. this latter conclusion recalls the notion that suburbs are the same everywhere, that the experience of living in a north american suburb is removed from any sense of local specificity. but coupland’s nostalgia for a specific suburb denies that notion, strangely implying instead that international audiences have inherent knowledge of his north vancouver home. collected together, these place-sharing narratives—mootoo’s “out on main street,” bowering’s “standing on richards,” choy’s the jade peony, and coupland’s girlfriend in a coma—suggest a few useful points about how city-dwellers experience parts of their city as shared places. mootoo’s and coupland’s narratives indicate that city-central landmarks and downtown street culture may be part of many city-dwellers’ relationships to one another even if these downtown sites are held as distant grounds. bowering’s and choy’s narratives suggest that people assume common grounds that are no less thoroughly shared for being very differently experienced. people’s relative positions with respect to certain grounds, and therefore the different textures and degrees of their intimacy with these places, may be based on radical differences in their racial and class identities, their freedom of movement, their access to personal and professional legitimacy (as judged by mainstream national and municipal society), and/or their historical memories. but they nonetheless recognize themselves as sharing these grounds. what i have been calling the sympathy of locality, the shared sense of the narrative’s personal relevance implied for narrator-audience relationships by the narrators’ reference to such territories, is not, then, necessarily an easy, happy experience of civic equality based on the sharedness of place. common ground is not necessarily either comfortable or politically neutral. it is an experience of contact mediated by narrative address, and it may evoke awareness of reciprocal alienation or differentials of power even while acknowledging shared territory. these place-sharing narratives suggest as well that narrators may assert common ground precisely in order to claim sympathies of locality. choy’s narrative—and coupland’s too, to an extent—make their references to common ground deliberately ostensive, lavishly repeating and sequencing local place names, so as to claim the shared personal relevance of these places. the jade peony asserts the shared personal relevance of common ground in the context of a racial divide between narrators and audience, and girlfriend in a coma suggests it in the context of race and class identity, but both claim it to assert the importance of events which happen right here, on shared ground. edge-setting narratives edge-setting narratives in vancouver fiction show us a complementary picture to the one illuminated by place-sharing narratives. they show the areas of the city that are off shared maps: distant zones at the city’s fringes, fine-scale details of the residential neighbourhoods that fall between the coarse lines of the city grid, specific little restaurants and pubs known by name only to their locals, and neighbourhoods marked off as the territory of other classes or ethnic others. among other things, they reveal the city to be a terrain that can be known to a range of different degrees of resolution; or, to use a non-visual metaphor, a terrain that can be sensed at a range of different textural grains. theories and analyses of urban life offer one context for understanding the edges set in these narratives. this context is a widely-shared concern with the socio-political pressures that limit or even prevent experiences of collective membership of urban place. i think of these pressures as setting limits on common ground in certain circumstances. as urban theorists doreen massey, john allen and steve pile argue in their book city worlds, city-dwellers experience their cities as divided into multitudes of different worlds, some mutually exclusive and some overlapping. no one person can access all of the different worlds being lived in a single city. and, importantly, while few people would feel comfortable in or even be able to find many of the city’s worlds, some people are radically restricted (by their marginalized class status, ethnicity, gender, age, literacy, or physical ability, etc.) in what worlds they are allowed or enabled to access comfortably. when different worlds collide, as people move about the city or make their homes next to each other, there are several possible outcomes, according to steve pile: one outcome […] is that people reject difference and draw ‘walls’ around themselves and their communities, either to defend themselves or, more commonly, to protect their advantages. this is the point at which physical boundary lines are drawn across a city in an attempt to fix its spaces. another, more fluid possibility, however, is for people to remain indifferent to the close proximity of others, remote in their ways despite their nearness to everyone. ( ) in both of the cases pile describes, people react to others’ difference from themselves by instituting boundaries between themselves and their fellow city-dwellers. in neither case is the outcome positive, because they both indicate people’s refusal to recognize the equal worth and mutual responsibility, the basic human commonality, implied by their physical nearness to one another. however, only one of these cases—the former—indicates a complete refusal of the commonality i am discussing. common ground in my sense requires no personal relationship at all. the most reciprocally indifferent (or even hostile) pair of city-dwelling strangers might still recognize that they share knowledge of a certain place. but by barring others from “their” urban terrain, people establish physical limits on shared place. they may do so by actively building physical walls (like those around the gated communities pile discusses) or hiding behind barriers (such as freeways dividing areas of a city), by policing areas (formally, or, as in neighbourhood watch programs [ahmed ], informally), by gentrifying neighbourhoods to the point where some people do not feel comfortable in and cannot afford to frequent them, or by removing neighbourhoods to distant areas accessible only by car (cf. white flight [m bennett ]; cf. the reported anxiety of former richmond city councilor kiichi kumagai that the canada line will bring drug-users into his city from central vancouver [pablo]). concerned with these barriers to place-sharing, and recognizing that differentials of power and access mean that some groups of people suffer from the limits of common ground in ways that other groups do not, urban cultural critics have emphasized urban experiences of strangeness (ahmed, sennett, simmel) and segregation (m bennett), rather than mutual recognition and sharedness. as a context for my reading of edge-setting narratives, these concerns remind me to investigate what dynamics of power and exclusion are at work at the particular edges defined by these narratives. they urge me to examine where authority and power of access are located: do they rest with the narrators, who know enough to tell about areas of the city beyond the limits of their common ground, or with their audience, for whom those areas have, until the storytelling moment, remained mysteriously or invisibly beyond the pale? they prompt me to consider how storytelling authority holds up against other kinds of empowerment or disempowerment, as the case may be. as i have argued, my reading of place-sharing narratives like choy’s the jade peony showed that some narrators conceive of themselves as sharing common ground with their audience despite differentials of power and exclusive access. their narratives relied on a sympathy of locality to claim their stories’ personal relevance to their readers. in these cases, claims of common ground were a source of authority for narrators whose inheritance of a racially marginalized social position had historically stripped them of claims to social power, belonging, and community-membership. edge-setting narratives may handle narrative claims to power differently, strategically setting limits on common ground rather than strategically asserting its sharedness. as it happens, i do not find many strong examples of this sort of strategic edge- setting in vancouver fiction, although bowering’s story “two glasses of remy” establishes an edge that is distinctly class-based. the two texts that i will discuss as examples of edge-setting narratives, “two glasses of remy” and william gibson’s “the winter market,” illustrate the limits to common ground exerted by what might be better called city-structural pressures, rather than socio-political pressures. structurally speaking, a city is just too big in both physical expanse and population for the individual city-dweller to know every part of it or every person moving within it. the open domain of public space that city-dwellers like woolf’s clarissa dalloway might imagine sharing, and the open set of citizens with whom they might imagine sharing it, are imaginative extrapolations from everyday experience. city- dwellers’ sense of potential access to all the public spaces and all the other people in the city is balanced by their recognition that one could never access them all. and, meanwhile, cities collect together vastly different places and vastly diverse populations of people, as urban analysts emphasize. parts of the city differ from one another according to, among other things, location with respect to the city centre; function for residential versus commercial versus recreation uses; age, economic value, style, and state of repair of the built environment; and the demographic of the people who live there. the sorts of walls and boundaries i have listed as established by socio-political pressures curtailing experiences of shared place—gated community walls, freeways, policed zones, differentials of gentrification, un-walkable distances—certainly also count as structural pressures delimiting experiences of common ground by separating one part of a city from another. a city’s diversity of parts is widely acknowledged. but i have not found a theoretical account for which parts of a city might be more likely to be treated as zones beyond the pale of common ground, versus which are likely to be treated as shared. i perceive that parts of a city differ in relative degree of apparent privacy or publicness, as well as in all the ways listed in the previous paragraph. i assume, accordingly, that city- dwellers who imagine themselves sharing the city’s spaces with an indefinite group of fellow citizens are likeliest to be imagining the city’s public spaces as shared. there must be some correlation between relative publicness and the likelihood of a sense of sharedness. (on the flip side, there must be some correlation between relative privacy and sharedness, too. we are most certain of sharing place with a particular set of people—as opposed to a generalized, indefinite group of other citizens—when we share exclusive access to a certain private place.) my own list of the parts of cities that seem especially public (and therefore especially likely to be shared with unknown others) includes busy high streets with wide sidewalks, centrally-located open squares and parks, green spaces, transit stations, and open-air markets. it also includes highly visible and distinctive buildings and monuments. the sheer visibility of a distinctive landmark makes its existence widely knowable, i suggest, even when a building’s interior is barred to public access. in vancouver, the strict gridlines of the street network prevent citizens from getting a sense of their city’s landscape, lance berelowitz has argued, except in the moments when, traveling over bridges or taking scenic routes along the city’s ridges and the peninsula edges, citizens break free of the grid ( - ) and see vancouver’s city- and waterscape unfold as a panorama around them ( - ). (where the grid’s orientation skews at the hinge-point between the bulk of residential vancouver and the downtown peninsula, the grid does briefly acknowledge topography.) in this city, then, the landmarks that might be most easily assumed to be widely shared are precisely those landmarks that are strikingly visible in the panoramic views—among them the mountains, the downtown skyscrapers, the oddly shaped entertainment venues on false creek’s shores (bc place and science world), and the bridges themselves. on my list, more private-seeming areas include walled homes and policed areas, of course, but also quiet residential streets, out- of-the-way parks, and smaller, less-visible shops and restaurants. my own experience of living in vancouver suggests that the physical environment’s gradations of visibility and apparent publicness or privacy offer some context for understanding fictional placements of the edges of common ground. george bowering’s short story “two glasses of remy” establishes the outer reaches of point grey as territory off the edge of the common ground shared by the narrator and his audience. in this case, differences of class and lifestyle apparently are part of what sets the limits on common ground. as in bowering’s “standing on richards,” the narrator-audience relationship in this story is characterized by a familiar, among-equals tone of masculine camaraderie that is calibrated, in this case, to a shared working-class identity. references to their vancouver common ground help establish this social position by means of both a shorthand, colloquial mode of reference and an assumption of shared affinity to parts of vancouver that contrast with wealthy, suburban point grey. for example, at a moment when, in the middle of telling his audience about his brief, enchanted encounter with a wealth and class he had never before experienced, the narrator feels that his story might be stretching his audience’s credulity, he reaffirms his own comfortable, working-class identifications by saying, i’m not a gold digger, i’m not a gigolo, i’m a recently separated man with a taste for beer parlours and movies. willy had been driving me home from the soccer game and a meatball sandwich on the drive. well, here i was, a short climb from the fourth avenue bus. ( ) here the narrator positions himself socially by indicating his own familiarity with commercial drive, which is a mixed-income east vancouver neighbourhood with relatively low real estate prices and a history of immigrant settlement (or at least it was such a neighbourhood in , when bowering’s story was first published). he assumes his audience shares in his familiarity with that neighbourhood; they both know what soccer game he means, and together they can refer to the street as “the drive.” the narrator assumes they also both know fourth avenue, which runs westward to point grey. he uses their shared knowledge of the street to help express himself efficiently and communicate implications, as he exclaims (“well, here i was”) over the distance he travels from that familiar neighbourhood in his story. and even in his reference to this street he positions himself as socially separate from the point grey resident he meets in his story: he knows the street best by its public bus-line, whereas she takes taxis and drives a cadillac. as i mentioned, the class difference between this mysterious, wealthy woman on one hand and the narrator and his audience on the other partially determines the limits of common ground in this story. having followed her into her quiet residential neighbourhood and driven with her to the point grey lookout, the narrator now knows them and can report back about them to his audience, for whom, he assumes, these places are unknown territory. narrating his journey into this woman’s world, he reports, the taxi had been turning right and left. now it turned left off blanca, i guess, and into belmont. these were all million dollar houses when a million dollar house was still something. the taxi turned into a circular drive in front of a big white mansion, i guess you’d say. now what, i thought. ( ) here the major street grid and substantial landmarks of the area are still within the bounds of common ground for narrator and audience, but their details—the texture of the neighbourhood and its specific houses—are not mutually known to them, these details being known, by implication, only to those who live a certain lifestyle. likewise, although the route to the lookout is well-known to both the narrator and his audience, the lookout is not. driving the woman’s cadillac, a new experience for this narrator (“i’d never driven a cadillac before, and i’d never driven any kind of car during the year it was first bought” [ ]), the narrator reports, i took two rights and headed out the drive to the university. […] we went past the japanese garden and south along the ring road, the ocean to our right, beyond some trees that were made to look like a forest in a book […] she motioned toward the lookout. this is a little parking space for about four cars. you can point the nose of your toyota or cadillac toward the edge of the cliff overlooking the strait, and catch a glimpse of the log booms below. if you’re in a cadillac, your back bumper isn’t all that far off the road. ( - ) landmarks along the road out to the lookout are familiar to his audience, the narrator assumes, but perhaps not intimately enough known for him to presume to use proper names for them. he expresses them instead as inferable (speaking of “the university” and “the japanese garden” instead of “ubc” and “nitobe garden”), placing them lower on prince’s familiarity scale (cf. chapter one) than he otherwise might have done. having first phrased the lookout as inferable as well, he then immediately treats it as new, offering full explanation (“this is a little parking space…”). the point grey fairy-land this narrator tells his audiences about, with its richness and its storybook forests, are beyond the pale of their common ground, in part because of the limiting pressures of class. but the luxurious places of point grey may in part also be off the edge of common ground, in this story, simply because they are so distant from the city-central locations the narrator assumes to be mutually known. the social context of the narrator- audience relationship is grounded in places like the drive and cambie street, which are busy commercial high streets near downtown vancouver. the mysterious woman’s residence is on a curving suburban cul-de-sac in a steeply-graded, treed, hillside neighbourhood distant from the city centre. the lookout is even farther west, at the very tip of point grey, and thus it is separated from the downtown by a steep hill and a broad belt of forest. (the neighbourhoods surrounding the university, at this tip of point grey, are not counted as part of municipal vancouver.) the lookout is small, too, having space only for four cars, and it looks away from the city, over the ocean. by contrast to commercial drive and cambie street these places are not very public, in my sense. they are not central, or popularly frequented, or highly visible; from the cadillac the characters do not look out over the iconic, postcard view of the mountains but in the opposite direction. the narrator in “two glasses of remy” is willing to assume that his audience knows the general area of the story’s events—hence he phrases as inferable rather than new his references to other landmarks—but these tucked-away spots are not so likely to be known to fellow city-dwellers, he assumes. the gradations of publicness and privacy play a part in establishing the edges of common ground, and, in this story, they complement the differentials of class. in william gibson’s story “the winter market,” common ground has edges because the city is simply too big and too various for the narrator and his audience to know all of the same terrain. the protagonist-narrator’s style of address suggests that he has a prior acquaintance with his audience: they already share knowledge of someone named barry, for example ( ). the narrator speaks with casual familiarity to an audience with whom he shares very similar cultural and professional frames of reference, an audience with whom he is on an equal class footing and who, he assumes, relate easily to his aesthetic and value system. certain parts of vancouver are common ground he shares with this audience, but they do not hang out in the same places, and he has the advantage over his audience when it comes to detailed knowledge of his home neighbourhood and the areas he frequents socially. by mentioning their mutually-known geographical reference points, in the process of narrating a story that involves his own rambling movements through the city, he acknowledges this common ground, by paying friendly, polite tribute to the overlap in their respective vancouver terrains. he uses short forms for certain place names, for example, to indicate his awareness that they share knowledge of fourth avenue (“fourth,” he says) or to indicate his certainty that they both know which market is the relevant one to his story (“the market”). but to convey properly the emotional texture of the setting and events of his story, he has to explain the places his audience does not know in any detail. “trash fires gutter in steel canisters around the market,” he offers, treating the steel canisters as items new to the audience’s awareness. or he adds aesthetic and social texture to a neighbourhood otherwise known to his audience only from a distance: “up in fairview’s arty slum-tumble, someone’s laundry has frozen solid on the line” ( ). his audience share a coarse map of his neighbourhood with him—he can name his home intersection casually to them, calling it “fourth and macdonald”—but they know none of its specific buildings or the small businesses, and he treats all of these as unknown: “i have two rooms in an old condo rack at the corner of fourth and macdonald, tenth floor” ( ), or “we eat samosas in a narrow shop on fourth that has a single plastic table wedged between the counter and the door to the can” ( ). later in the story, when he wanders away from his well-known neighbourhood to an area of the city he does not know well, he assumes his audience will not know the bar he finds there, either: he winds up in a west end club that looked as if it hadn’t been redecorated since the nineties. a lot of peeling chrome over plastic, blurry holograms that gave you a headache if you tried to make them out. i think barry had told me about the place, but i can’t imagine why. ( ) “the winter market” shows us that the limits of common ground may be imposed by the sheer size and variousness of a city: even people who move in very similar cultural circles, and who share the same generalized map, are bound to delineate edges for their shared space, addressing themselves to acquaintances who live across the city. the pattern of address i describe characterizes most of the narrator’s references to vancouver places and establishes the story’s primary layer address. but there is a second audience design built into the story: a sideways, tongue-in-cheek wink at bystanding local readers. gibson wrote “the winter market” on commission for vancouver magazine in . in accordance with its mission to inform and entertain “people who engage with the city” (“about us”), the monthly magazine wanted a story set in vancouver (wiebe d ). because the story is science fiction set in a high-tech and dystopic vancouver sometime in the not-too-distant future, the street-level texture of the city that the narrator takes for granted as ordinary is as yet unimagined for the vancouverite audience to whom the story was intended to circulate. while gibson wrote a narrative that addresses people who are the narrator’s contemporaries in the future, he was always aware of the bystanding vancouver readership. the story plays with their familiarity and unfamiliarity with the city it refers to; it assumes that the local reading audience will take interest and perhaps pleasure in reading offhand narrative references to places they know well but do not know as having the textures assumed for them by the narrator. for example, in there was no “condo rack” at the corner of fourth avenue and macdonald street (there is none there still), and gibson relies on his reading audience to know that fact, even while he has his narrator claim to live on the tenth floor of an old condo rack there. likewise, while gibson might have imagined that readers of vancouver magazine could see potential, in elements of the fairview neighbourhood they knew, for it to eventually develop into the “arty-slum tumble” gibson’s future narrator describes, they would not likely have known it as such at the time. this audience design for bystanding local readers in “the winter market” suggests more about city-dwellers’ experience of reading fiction set in their city, perhaps, than about city-dwellers’ experience of the city as a shared place. but part of their experience of reading a story like this is a dawning awareness of a writer who lives nearby and whose writing involves his fellow citizens in a shared joke about their city. and perhaps it is not incidental that gibson’s story, which clothes the city in the high- tech, dystopic trappings of an as-yet-unimagined future, should also exploit in its primary narrative address the city-dweller’s experience of not sharing certain neighbourhoods at any level of detail. perhaps there is something productive and convenient for fiction- spinning in the everyday urban experience of the city as a differentiated terrain, an uneven map of well-known and unknown areas. bowering’s story seems to hinge on the same everyday experience of city life: while both stories refer very faithfully to the major lines and landmarks of a recognizable contemporary vancouver, both of them also give that recognizable city a fictional twist just where they slip off the edges of common ground. at the hidden fringes of the mutually known city live mysterious women and storybook trees, in “two glasses of remy”—and things happen there to the questing everyman that are worth returning home to tell about! and in “the winter market,” the telling of a sci-fi story about a future vancouver to contemporary local readers hinges on the same turns of phrase that, in the social context implied by the actual narration, fill in the blanks in the future audience’s rough-grained knowledge of certain areas of the city. city-building narratives living in a city that’s neither big nor small, vancouver writers, in some respects, have the worst of both worlds. we’re not in a publishing centre like toronto or new york city […] nor can we write about our hometown in the same way a london or paris writer can casually name-drop neighbourhoods to a cosmopolitan (or at least aspirational) readership. (chong “writers”) as i mentioned in my introduction, novelist and journalist chong asserts that vancouver is just too small to be common ground shared with a sophisticated international reading audience. and indeed chong’s own novel baroque-a-nova ( ) is not a place-sharing narrative—chong’s narrator-protagonist saul introduces his audience to a place he does not expect them to know (an unnamed version, if i read it right, of ladner, bc): i lived in a flat, drained municipality thirty minutes south of vancouver whose outskirts were populated by faded barns and electrical towers. […] from the overpass i could see the traffic wash in from the city along highway past the intersection, the hockey and curling rink, the cow pastures where new housing developments were planned, the highway stretching toward tsawassen and the ferry to vancouver island. we were right by the ocean. ( ) saul begins this description of his hometown with an indefinite article (“a flat, drained municipality”), setting a tone of introduction from the beginning. he reinforces the indefinite article’s implication that his audience do not know the town by following it with mention of “faded barns and electrical towers,” elements of the place which he treats as new information. his story hinges on the strangeness of a turn of events that brings “the world” to little ladner ( ): the body of his internationally famous late mother is returned from thailand, a german documentary crew comes to film the spectacle, and his suburban home is suddenly globally networked. saul’s narration, accordingly, is designed to introduce his unknown little town to a cosmopolitan pop-culture audience. but even chong’s saul takes certain elements of his local place for granted as being recognizable to this distant audience. in the passage quoted here he treats vancouver, tsawassen and vancouver island as already known—at least by name—to his audience. later in the novel, when he is recounting events that take place in vancouver proper, saul assumes his audience knows of kitsilano and of jericho beach ( - ). in baroque-a-nova, ladner may be just too small to be an international common ground, but vancouver has a fighting chance. the bigger centre wins. the place-sharing and edge-setting narratives that i have already discussed show chong to be wrong about vancouver, at least in part. their narrators go ahead and assume various parts of vancouver to be well known to their audiences. the writers of these novels and short stories decided that their fictions would emerge in a circle of narrative address involving vancouver common ground and an attendant vancouver- based sympathy of location, a mutual sense of the personal relevance of local events to both narrator and audience. and they decided to circulate these narrative instances of address, in the form of short stories and novels, to as wide a reading audience as their published distribution could reach. (by contrast, william gibson’s “the winter market,” with its vancouver magazine publishing venue, relies on the general map of vancouver to which it refers being well known to its readers, as well as its implied audiences.) the writers’ respective decisions may have been motivated, in some cases, by a desire to transpose into a fictional narrator-audience relationship their own affinities to and knowledge of the city. jen sookfong lee, for example, says that it does not “come off right” when she tries to write fiction set anywhere else (wiebe d ), and douglas coupland apparently writes out of a personal sense of nostalgic connection to and intimate knowledge of his city: i notice striking resonances between his narrators’ perceptions of the city, in fictional texts like girlfriend, life after god, everything’s gone green (a feature-length film), and even jpod, and coupland’s own non-fiction persona’s sentiments about the city, as expressed in essays (cf. the vancouver stories) and his book, city of glass: douglas coupland’s vancouver. other writers’ decisions to treat vancouver as common ground in their fictions might have been driven by a desire to speak, however indirectly, to a specifically local reading audience. we might say of choy’s work, for example, that it seeks to set up a receptive position for a potential readership that is personally invested enough in the city as a social space to respond with fully local sympathies. the jade peony’s uptake by the vancouver public library’s one book, one vancouver promotion suggests that it has been received as especially addressed to such an audience (cf. grafton)—indeed, as able to include diverse local readerships in its scene of address. the city-building narratives i discuss in this section emerge out of fictional social contexts in which vancouver is not common ground. the city (or part of it) is well- known to the narrator, but not to his or her audience, and something about this difference in their knowledge of and intimacy with the city motivates the narrators’ storytelling. lowry’s narrator and the other city-builders show us instances of city-dwellers self- styling as knowledgeable insiders with a personal (and sometimes a specifically aesthetic) relationship to the city, insiders who express their relationship to it by means of an address to people they position as relative outsiders—a more or less distant audience for whom vancouver is unknown territory. the social context of the storytelling address involves in each case, then, a gap in physical common ground, a gap in mutual knowledge of place. the boundary dividing the outside audience from insider knowledge is usually a more or less spatialized boundary of some kind. these narratives offer examples of the boundary spaces that are relevant to vancouver narrators: a borderland, such as the borderland crossed in lowry’s “the bravest boat,” for example, or the span from centre to fringe of a colonial space, or the distance between opposite poles of a diasporic trajectory. but in these city-building narratives, narrators and audience usually share other-than-spatial domains of mutual knowledge: they are not foreign to one another. the city-building narratives thus offer instances of the kinds of physically distanced social relationships that motivate narrators to bridge gaps in common ground by introducing their audience to vancouver. meanwhile, by speaking across those gaps in common ground, these narratives bring dispersed, distantly located subjectivities into relationship, establishing relative spatial positions within a cross-spatial address. theories and analyses of urban life offer an important context for my reading of city-building narratives. as i have claimed, the city is theorized as a space experienced as shared only by an imaginative leap facilitated by texts, and then only shared anonymously with an indefinite set of other citizens. when it comes to urban subjects’ experiences of more directly personal and specific relationships, such relationships are increasingly theorized as not located in a shared place. an often-repeated understanding of spatialized social relations is that shared local place is no longer a relevant experience in contemporary urban life, since, thanks to high-speed transportation, freeway networks, electronic communications, globalized systems of media distribution, and global capitalism, people rarely develop personal relationships and a sense of social context that are anchored in specific, shared place. as influential geographer doreen massey puts it, the contemporary world is a place of “stretched-out” social relations ( ), not localized ones. according to massey, many important social ties stretch outwards, away from the place where people find themselves, rather than exclusively binding people together in and to a specific place. therefore, she argues, local places are best understood not as bounded grounds but as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings, […] where a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself, whether that be a street, or a region or even a continent. ( ) in other words, the particular character of any place you might name is determined at least as much by its multiple links to people and places elsewhere as by the proximal elements of the place itself. (vancouver’s punjabi market, for instance, is defined as much by its links to the “social relations and understandings” of the broader indian diaspora as it is by the relations between neighbours and properties along those few blocks of main street.) hence, in their book cities: reimagining the urban, ash amin and nigel thrift argue that accurate and responsible theories of urban life ought no longer to emphasize propinquity, proximity, or spatial intimacy as keys to social experience. they propose instead a vision of the city as spatially stretched patterns of communication, bringing distant sites into contact (maybe through visits to family and friends), but also separating adjacent spaces (as with neighbours with little in common with each other). ( ) what these theories offer my reading of city-building narratives is a way of contextualizing the narratives’ address outwards to a distant audience, one with whom the narrator shares some social relationship that is not located in shared physical place but rather stretched out across a gap in common ground. these theories suggest that relationships with distant audiences are part of contemporary city-dwellers’ everyday experiences. in this context, city building narratives show storytelling in novels and short stories to be one medium among others by which city-dwellers connect across space to distant audiences. the medium of their narration acknowledges differences in knowledge of place and recognizes gaps in common ground. social relationship is stretched out, but not ignorant of relative place. and these theories of urban social relations as stretched out suggest the sort of social bonds that we might expect would draw audiences into the circle of address in these narratives, if novels and short stories are indeed comparable to other media of relationship: perhaps they resemble the bonds that amin and thrift imagine connecting people to their distant family and friends? the identifications of people who have interests and orientations “in common”? or the tastes and desires that drive consumer capitalism? recalling as well the kinds of discursive community i reviewed in my introduction, i am prompted to ask whether the bonds connecting narrator and distant audience resemble the imaginative affiliations of diasporic nationality or the ethical allegiances of transnational political awareness, both of which bonds critics have seen depicted in urban canadian novels. each narrative offers a different version of such relationship, and hence each implies different motivations for narrating a story that builds a vancouver for its audience. generally, shared tastes and ethical orientations are not pinned to any easily specified geo-political allegiances, and storytelling scenarios do not match neatly with the theorized social bonds that i listed in the previous paragraph. in ethel wilson’s stories, however, values, sympathies, and aesthetic sensibilities are so closely aligned, despite what seems to be the substantial geographical distance separating the members of the circle of address, that i find myself reading her stories as narrated in the stretched-out social context of empire, as if by a voice writing home from the imperial outskirts. lowry’s “the bravest boat” conjures its enochvilleport for an audience whose geographical orientation we might specify as american, because it approaches the canadian border from the south. yet in other respects he does not assume a specifically american audience but more precisely an audience whose moral compass matches his own and who is his equal and in worldly acquaintance with exotic and beautiful locations. timothy taylor’s novel stanley park speaks about vancouver as if engaging an international connoisseur consumer’s appetite, appraising eye, and slight regional preference—appropriately so, perhaps, since stanley park is in part a novel about classy cooking. appadurai’s theory of the production of locality in the modern world offers one additional theoretical context for the city-builders’ motivations. in appadurai’s view, people work daily, by means of quotidian ritual and cultural practices, to produce the structure of feeling that is locality ( ). in order to define their neighbourhoods, they must define as well the elsewheres, the “contexts against which their [neighbourhoods’] own intelligibility takes shape” ( ). they are motivated to do so by the need for places within which they can be recognized as belonging and “empowered to act socially” ( ). as appadurai acknowledges, neighbourhoods cannot be considered closed to the outside world, and locality is now produced within a globally “engaged cultural and political literacy” ( ). in my view, city-building narratives are engaged in trans-local “flows” of cultural and political information of the kind appadurai identifies, but the motivated direction of their information-flow is the opposite of the one he describes. he points out that people draw information from the wider world in to their neighbourhoods and use it to produce a globally-engaged sense of locality: in his words, “global flows add to the intense, and implosive, forces under which spatial neighbourhoods are produced” ( ). and indeed such a globally-literate production of locality, incorporating information (knowledge, ideas, images, aesthetic dispositions, sensibilities) drawn in from various elsewheres, characterizes many of the vancouver narrators’ implied senses of their local places. choy’s definition of chinatown involves immigrant attachments to “old china” and his narrators incorporate chinese ideas of person-hood into their senses of their local, social selves; malcolm lowry’s vancouver-based narrators (in “ghostkeeper,” for example) combine british and american national influences, and various european literary influences, in their local identities; douglas coupland’s narrators locate themselves in an international corporate culture; timothy taylor’s narrators (in his novels stanley park and story house) incorporate various european and asian aesthetics into their perceptions of locality. but if they draw influences in while constructing their vancouver neighbourhoods, these narrators also direct influence outward: they work in the opposite direction to appadurai’s “implosive forces.” their address is directed outwards to more or less spatially distant audiences. by means of this address, city-building narrators offer their portraits of vancouver to outsiders, extending to these audiences a relationship with vancouver and hence a new set of vancouver-specific information that these audience might now use in constructing their own respective senses of locality, elsewhere. as i have mentioned, the city-building narrators i discuss are each apparently motivated by different storytelling impulses. some narrators seem to speak out of a desire for self- expression, offering their own aesthetic responses to vancouver as inherently interesting to outsiders because they reveal the narrators’ inherently interesting personalities (bowering’s narrators in burning water and “ebbe and hattie,” or coupland’s persona in city of glass, for example). others, however, seem to consider the city itself, in the various vivid incarnations they give it, to be relevant for their distant audiences’ respective senses of “cosmopolitan” knowledge (in chong’s sense), or global literacy, so to speak. their motivation may be a desire to expand their own connections to distant audiences by expanding the mutual cognitive environment they share with them, offering vancouver as a relevant extension to that environment; or they may simply aspire to locate their city on distant people’s maps. and these narrators also construct vancouver as a relevant and fascinating source of images and of information ripe for distant others to incorporate in producing their respective localities. if this last point seems unexpected, it may be because much of the literature of this city has not, i believe, been widely included within canons of relevant contemporary literature elsewhere. (and in the world of movie-making, douglas coupland is fond of reminding readers, vancouver is far more often filmed as a stand-in for settings elsewhere than as a setting in itself [city of glass ].) hence kevin chong’s frustration: there may not yet be a ready-made, cosmopolitan appetite for vancouver-specific cultural wisdom and aesthetics. but city-building narratives seek to cultivate such an appetite, in part by assuming that it already exists and treating vancouver as relevant new information. and chong can take heart, if not simply by reveling in the courageous example these narratives set, then by enjoying the fact that as a city (if not yet as a literary setting), vancouver is reportedly being observed and mimicked by city-planners worldwide. as urban analyst lance berelowitz writes, vancouver has emerged as the poster child of urbanism in north america. in recent years, through a series of locally grown strategies, vancouver has consciously willed itself into becoming a model of contemporary city-making. […] places such as shanghai, san francisco and even toronto [are] now hiring vancouver architects and planners to fix their cities. ( ) city-building narrators, too, have something to say about how dwelling in vancouver is an experience worth sharing. well before vancouver’s urban form began to attract the attention of international city planners, ethel wilson was deliberately and attentively setting her stories in the city. in her novels the innocent traveller and swamp angel and her short story “the window” in particular, the narrators position themselves as addressing english audiences from vancouver, speaking back across the span of distance between colonial centre and fringe with its attendant gaps in knowledge. i say an english audience, and would add a friendly and interested one, although the audience’s nationality is not specified. these narrators have such confidence in a complete sympathy with their listeners as to suggest that they mutually share a national culture and perhaps a class background as well. but they must nonetheless introduce vancouver to this distant and unknowing audience, setting out the city in its surrounding landscape for them, as in this passage from the innocent traveller: if you arrive in vancouver on a fine day and go up into a high place, to little mountain perhaps or even to the top of some high office building, you will come under the immediate spell of the mountains to the north of you, and of dark coniferous forests. you will see high headlands sloping westward into the pacific ocean, and islands beyond. and then you will turn again and look at the mountains which in their turn look down upon the grace and strength of the lion’s gate bridge, upon the powerful flow of the narrows, upon english bay, upon the harbour, and upon the large city of vancouver. ( ) this passage is typical of wilson’s narrators in its characteristic introductory and assuming mixture of new referring statements, inferables, and proper nouns—a mixture that i will shortly discuss—and in its slow, step-wise unfolding of vancouver as one continuous panoramic view. there are distinctly similar passages in swamp angel ( ), “a drink with adolphus” ( ), and “the window” ( ). a deep affection for the place and its people motivates these narrators’ storytelling, just as it motivated wilson herself (cf. giltrow and stouck ). these narrators know and love vancouver, and the stories they tell are not only about the subtle twists and shifts, flows and ebbs of affection and alienation in the mental and social lives of the characters (the “currents of disturbance, […] vulnerability or precariousness” [ ] that janet giltrow and david stouck convincingly identify as thematically and stylistically central in swamp angel). wilson sets her characters’ consciousness and experiences firmly into the specific landscapes of vancouver, telling stories that are also about the characters’ and narrators’ perceptions of the city. thus, for example, in swamp angel the narrator suspends the plot, at the point when maggie leaves the city of vancouver, to comment on the different characteristics of the several roads leading from vancouver to new westminster. her commentary plays a teasing game with her audience, which is led to assume as she introduces each new road that she is now telling them about the one maggie takes, and that its character reveals something about maggie’s destination and destiny. will she take the first road, “a highway bright with motor hotels, large motorcar parks, small shops, factories of various sizes,” whose development gradually obliterates the graceful remnants of a rural past (angel ), or will she take the second way, “called the river road,” where there remains yet “the agreeable illusion that the few pleasant and small rustic houses that stand alone amongst the trees […] are really permanent in their aloneness” ( )? when finally the narrator reveals that maggie’s taxi takes the third of these roads, one which “had no special characteristics” ( ), the narrator also reveals that she had stepped aside from the plot of the story on purpose to incorporate discussion of vancouver’s expansion and development into her story. “the landscape is being despoiled, as it must” ( ), she concludes, establishing an urban/rural contrast, and thus the expanding modern civilization’s threat to old values, as part of the thematic point of her story. and her use of proper nouns (vancouver, new westminster, the fraser river) and precisely observed local details indicates that it is an urban/rural edge specific to vancouver that generates her analysis: it is specifically “the city of vancouver [that] is crawling on” ( ). apparently, where they are concerned with perceptions of the city, wilson’s narrators are motivated to tell these stories to their distant audience by two impulses. one is a desire to share, with an audience whose worldview and aesthetic/sentimental value systems overlap extensively with the narrator’s, the effusions and the subtly cutting critical edges of the narrator’s feelings about the place. this impulse motivates the narration of the innocent traveller especially. sperber and wilson might explain that these narrators share with their audiences such an extensive mutual cognitive environment—an environment defined by a shared aesthetic as well as shared world knowledge—that they assume with certainty that their audience will feel the personal relevance of their observations and feelings, even about a place so far from the audience’s daily experience. because they share so much mutual knowledge and aesthetic perspective, but so little vancouver common ground, wilson’s narrators introduce the city to their audiences with their distinctive and unusual mixture of referring expressions. while their descriptions of the city are phrased as introductory, and they mark their assumption that their audience does not know the city by setting up information about it as news, they also use proper nouns liberally (in a special, wilsonian way). and they frequently express things as inferable, as if their audiences, who know so much of what the narrators themselves know, could infer the identity of landmarks and place-names in a city they have never themselves seen. the opening page of swamp angel offers a good example (and it echoes passages from wilson’s other stories): she looked out over the small green garden which would soon grow dark in the evening. this garden led down a few steps to the wooden sidewalk; then there was the road, dusty in fine weather; next came the neighbours’ houses across the road, not on a level with her but lower, as the hill declined, so that she was able to look over the roofs of these houses to burrard inlet far below, to the dark green promontory of stanley park, to the elegant curve of the lion’s gate bridge which springs from the park to the northern shore which is the base of the mountains; and to the mountains. the mountains seemed, in this light, to form an escarpment along the whole length of the northern sky. ( ) the narrator’s pattern in the references in this passage is to refer to each feature of this panorama as if it were either inferable from general knowledge of cities and landscape or as if it were unused—that is, already known uniquely, as implied by use of a proper noun—but meanwhile to attach richly descriptive modifying phrases to each reference. thus, for example, “the […] garden” is helpfully described as small and green, as about to grow dark, and as leading down “a few steps” (which steps are themselves treated as new). more pertinently, burrard inlet is “far below,” stanley park is a “dark green promontory,” and the lion’s gate bridge curves elegantly and “springs from the park to the northern shore” (which shore is itself “the base of the mountains”). the narrator builds the panorama outward from where her character stands, by linking one feature of it to the next, so that each landmark is knit textually to the ones around it. the pattern of inference that the narrator requires of her audience here urges them to draw on the general world knowledge and on the aesthetic sensibilities they share with the narrator to infer the unique identity even of things that she introduces as well known but which they do not know (that is, the inlet, the park, and the bridge). she relies on the accuracy of their imaginative inference, assuming that—with the help of her own generous descriptions—they will be able to conjure up accurately resonant connotations for the names “stanley park” and “the lion’s gate bridge.” perhaps, even at their distance, this narrator’s audience has heard of these few iconic vancouver landmarks: in their letters home to england, the characters in the innocent traveller exclaim to their audience, “you should see stanley park” ( , , emphasis in original), apparently quite assured that they have heard of the place. but the narrators in both stories generally assume an introductory posture, setting vancouver out for unknowing audiences. their proper nouns, in this context, ask from their audiences the imaginative inference i described in the previous paragraph, expecting that audiences who share such an extensive worldview with them will infer accurately. consequently, the narrator of the innocent traveller can use proper nouns for street names and landmarks that her audience has presumably never heard of, as she does when, in one chapter, she repeats the name “barclay street”: so rose and her great-aunt started off down barclay street in very good spirits on a sunny july afternoon. ( ) so great-aunt and great-niece proceeded down barclay street towards english bay, rose bowling her hoop […] ( ) she pranced up barclay street, carrying her minutes […] ( ) the narrator repeats the street name here out of a sort of cherishing pleasure she takes in casting this street in her account of a wonderful day. in its repetition, the street name becomes a mild joke about topaz’s silly buoyancy, but it also becomes an incantation: abstracted from its deictic value, the proper noun comes to evoke the narrator and audience’s growing joint understanding of the happy connotations of this street. ethel wilson’s narrators are motivated by a desire to share this kind of aesthetic and sentimental accord with their audience, by introducing their audience to the vancouver that has become so resonant for them. the other impulse motivating wilson’s narrators to introduce vancouver to their distant audiences is an impulse to bring home, so to speak, a narratorial perspective on english and anglo-canadian society, and on individual characters, sensibilities and patterns of consciousness within this society—a perspective that has been sharpened and clarified by the narrators’ exposure to the frontier. in this sense, wilson’s narrators consider their perceptions of their characters’ social and mental lives in the city to be relevant for their distant audiences’ sense of local subjectivity. as a city of beauty, as a new city taking shape right at the edges of wild natural landscapes, as a city that harbours english society at a great distance from england, and yet as a city where different social classes, religions, and ethnicities mix with some freedom (cf. innocent ), vancouver and the perceptions it evokes offer a source of images and social analysis relevant to the english audience’s respective production of its own located subjectivity. that is, the narrators introduce vancouver to their implied audiences as an elsewhere, a distant context, that sheds new light on their english here, by force of contrast. to paraphrase appadurai, vancouver and its environs offer their audiences a context against which their own home neighbourhoods’ intelligibility takes shape. this implicit motive is evident in the treatment of vancouver in “the window” and, less pointedly, in swamp angel, but it is most clearly marked in the narration of the innocent traveller. (see endnote .) the latter novel also provides a model for the narrator’s address back to england in the letters written home by the family newly settled in vancouver. the letter-writers’ enthusiasm for vancouver’s beauty is summed up in their repeated, written exclamations of “you should see stanley park…” (innocent - )—exclamations that seek to explain and describe for their unknowing audience the aesthetic and sentimental texture of this city, but which resort to using proper names to refer to unique landmarks, as if the names alone might almost explain the rapture one feels experiencing these places firsthand. the narrators of wilson’s vancouver fictions construct the city for their audience as, variously, a place where modern time and frontier space combine to emancipate the englishperson settling here (innocent, “window”), as a beautiful object of contemplation which inspires introspective spiritual questing (“window”), and as a multicultural urban centre where one who is seeking emancipation from normative social bonds formed within “white” society (cf. angel ) can find avenues of both imaginative ( ) and actual ( ) escape with the help of racialized strangers. offering these images and constructions of the city to their english audiences, these narrators provide them with new imaginative materials for the production of their own relationships to local place. assuming that their audiences share with them extensive mutual world-knowledge and a sympathy of aesthetic/sentimental perspective, wilson’s narrators assert that the images they offer and stories they tell about experiences of self, society, and place (in vancouver) will be relevant to them. and introducing them to the unknown little city in the west, where the perceptions and experiences they tell about take place, the narrators offer their audience a sense of their own distance from the frontier-like elsewhere whence these images and stories come—a sense of otherness to be incorporated into their own locality. timothy taylor’s novel stanley park is the final city-building narrative, and indeed the final text, i will discuss in this chapter. in some respects it brings me full circle from lowry’s “the bravest boat,” since like this story it introduces its audience to a vancouver that it builds carefully for them, slowly expanding their knowledge of the city outwards from a lost lagoon location where the narrative begins. like lowry’s story too, stanley park constructs a vivid vancouver, a densely-built modern city so rich in moral and aesthetic contrasts that it verges on becoming an allegorical space polarized between park and city. taylor does not explicitly declare his story’s vancouver a fictional space, as lowry did by naming it enochvilleport—indeed, taylor’s “author’s note,” which announces that “one strand of [his] novel is based in fact,” expressly links the vancouver named and described in the novel to the existing city. but stanley park, like “the bravest boat,” fictionalizes the city in the process of introducing it to its audience. that is, even while the novel, like the story, refers very extensively and attentively to the specific geographies of the real city, it also lifts its vancouver off the real map, allegorizing the places referred to, layering their mundane surfaces with luscious textures, and inventing new spaces within it. taylor’s narrator, unlike lowry’s, seems to recognize the bystanding presence of a local audience. vancouver has grown, since lowry and wilson were writing, and taylor and certain other contemporary, locally-based writers frame their city with (what seems to me) a luxuriant assurance that an in-the-know local audience exists to appreciate the implicit resonances of their setting-work. perhaps, indeed, this assurance is the mirror twin of their greater confidence in the city’s national and international cultural salience. two passages from the first chapter of stanley park show the narrator addressing what i discern to be a wide audience in a style that integrates an address to knowing locals. like the narrators of ethel wilson’s stories, this narrator mixes references high on the familiarity scale with references assuming no familiarity; like wilson’s narrators, too, this narrator often treats parts of vancouver as inferable, even if the audience generally implied by his audience design is not likely able to identify those places in fact. the novel opens like this, shuttling its audience straight into the midst of an unfolding storyline, as novels often do (giltrow “ironies” ): they arranged to meet at lost lagoon. it was an in-between place, the city on one side, stanley park on the other. […] now the professor was late. jeremy papier found a bench up the hill from the lagoon and opened a section of newspaper across the wet boards. the bench was between two cherry trees, the pink blossoms of which met high over his head forming an arch, a doorway. it wasn’t precisely the spot they’d discussed—the professor had suggested the boathouse—but it was within eyesight, within shouting distance. it was close enough. (taylor ) in this passage, stylistic markers of assumed audience familiarity—including proper nouns (lost lagoon, stanley park) and inferable references (the city, the hill, the boathouse)—mix with references that introduce more minor details of the unfolding setting (a bench, two cherry trees). proper nouns are prominent indicators that these places are well known to a certain community. generally i would read such proper nouns as, therefore, primarily addressing that knowing audience, especially if the place names were presented immediately in opening sentences, as they are here. however, in taylor’s novel, proper nouns seem to signal instead a textured, resonant, close knowledge that— other stylistic features suggest—the implied audience does not yet possess. interpretive glosses explain the symbolic value of these named elements of the setting, managing both the supposedly given and the new information: as in, for example, an in-between place, the city on one side, stanley park on the other and the pink blossoms […] forming an arch, a doorway. the indefinite articles introducing both arch and in-between place designate these readings of place as authoritative narrative property only now being unveiled for the audience. the narrator gradually supplies details that enrich the spare knowledge supplied by a name like stanley park, noting the park’s four-hundred-hectare size ( ) and its thousands of visitors a day ( ). meanwhile, however, the proper nouns hospitably reserve a privileged ring-side seat for the bystanding readers who already have that knowledge. a few pages on, when jeremy has been led into a disorientingly unfamiliar part of the park, the narrator comments, a map and a global positioning system would have revealed to him that he was not far from things that he knew. just a couple of hundred yards off the park drive, near prospect point, in fact. here a densely forested slope fell from the road, down to the top of a cliff that towered a hundred feet above the seawall and the ocean below. […] at the bottom of the cliffs and to the left stood siwash rock, which pillared fifty feet out of the water near the shore. a rock that was once a bather, legend had it, a bather honoured by the gods with this permanent place at the lip of the forest that had been home. ( ) here, again, the setting narrative begins with proper nouns, but this passage moves more directly from them into introductory language that describes a slope and a cliff. the seawall and the ocean, treated as familiar here, have already been established in the novel’s landscape ( , ). the distinction between what is treated as familiar and what is not is partly protagonist-oriented, as the passage depicts the minimal distance between jeremy’s familiar landmarks and the strange territory he has now entered. (the style of the novel’s opening paragraphs might also be read as partly reflecting jeremy’s knowledge.) but the narrator is not absorbed by jeremy’s consciousness here, so the style continues to present itself as pitching its references for an audience: the narrator turns to tell his audience what the character would have realized if he had access to an authoritative overview of the topography. introducing the locally well-known landmark siwash rock, he is informing a presumedly distant audience about a site that will eventually host an important plot episode. the passage thematically foregrounds a globe- wide system of orientation, with its references to cartography and gps; but, characteristically, it makes the character’s on-the-ground experiential knowledge a necessary and desirable complement to such abstractions. as taylor’s narrator gradually supplies knowledge of the written city to his primary audience, he uses proper nouns and other assumptions of familiarity to remind this audience of the things they cannot fully know at their remove. meanwhile, the city he builds gleams with the extra richness of an imagined, though closely observed, version. one example of this attentive invention is the novel’s framing of “crosstown,” the vancouver neighbourhood where jeremy’s restaurant the monkey’s paw is meant to be found. the novel’s crosstown is as closely responsive to the existing vancouver cityscape as is its lost lagoon (or lowry’s). the street names, landmarks, topography and street culture the narrator ascribes to the neighbourhood are recognizably referential to the city as it was in about the year , when taylor would have been writing stanley park. but the place name “crosstown,” around which the narrator builds his treatment of the city, and which he handles as if it reliably and authoritatively indicates that neighbourhood, apparently had very little purchase in actual residents’ awareness of and daily practical knowledge of vancouver. although taylor did not invent the neighbourhood name—a group of local artists claim to have invented it in (thomas, laurence)—it was not in , and is still not, now, a neighbourhood name with anything like the local currency of the “west end,” the “downtown east side,” or “gastown” and “yaletown” for that matter. thus, “crosstown” is ground for invention, more than common-ground recognition, as taylor uses the name. the narrator’s references to it offer taylor fiction-making leverage, and they imply an address to an audience whose relationship to vancouver is not in any simple way grounded in knowledge of the real city readers might recognize. likewise, taylor’s insertion of a fictional restaurant into otherwise recognizable cityscape, and his allegorizing of the starbucks coffee chain as the “inferno international” coffee houses, opens fictional ground within the recognizable city. so indeed does his re-framing of the downtown eastside as “the middle east” in his second novel, story house ( ). the passage in which the stanley park narrator introduces “crosstown” is characteristic of stanley park’s narrative address: it tightly combines marks of mutual place-knowledge with marks of introductory, explanatory framing of a place; it offers both unused proper nouns (cambie street, hastings street) that specify shared territory, and lists of generic nouns (film school kids, architects, software developers) which describe rather than specify. in this passage, importantly, taylor’s narrator treats the downtown east side as inferable rather than unused, foregoing the proper noun treatment he uses for “crosstown,” with its attendant assumption that the audience can identify it uniquely, and phrasing his reference to it instead as a descriptive, inferable phrase—“the downtown east side.” […] that spring, the monkey’s paw did open. a narrow fifty-seater on cambie street in vancouver’s crosstown neighbourhood, edgy but with cheap rents. […] the neighbourhood offered a shifting multicultural client base that nobody could consciously target. film school kids in the mid-morning […] business lunches for the kind of businesses that embraced neighbourhoods in the earliest stages of gentrification: architects, designers, software developers. after work they had a bike-courier scene. and in the evening, a tantalizing trickle of those foodies and reviewers adventurous enough to dine out deep on the downtown east side, pushing up against the hastings street heroin trade. it was a colourful, kaleidoscopic place. very crosstown, very x-town. ( - ) although this passage is relatively dense with apparent assumptions of shared local knowledge, it is organized as an introduction. the narrator frames his crosstown as a new place—or he re-frames the place anew, for those in the audience who happen to have rather more knowledge of it already—and builds up its colour and texture out of descriptive phrases. “crosstown,” he tells his audience, is edgy, cheap, shifting and multicultural, colourful, kaleidoscopic. (his remark “very crosstown” extends this process of describing rather than referring, making of “crosstown” a flavour rather than a specific place-name.) knit closely together by stanley park’s narrative language, the references that assume vancouver common ground and the introductory, framing descriptions that assume that the city is unknown territory combine in an address designed for a broadly- based north american audience. vancouverites who know the city well are among this audience, and they will perceive more richness of texture in the novel’s descriptions than the other north americans. for those of them already “in the know,” the connotations of certain place names will be stronger than for others—the name “hastings street,” for example, adds extra resonance to the descriptive phrase “the hastings street heroin trade,” only for those who know about that street already. and the effort of inference and accommodation required by the narrator’s frequent use of inferable references will be considerably less strenuous for those among the audience who in fact already know the unique referents of those phrases. for example, the narrator’s treatment of a finely differentiated lost lagoon geography in the following passage offers the unknowing outsiders among its audience plenty of descriptive help in making the inferences required, but it simultaneously offers more knowing vancouverites the pleasurable spark of easy recognition. i have italicized the decisive inferables in this passage: he […] walked the rest of the way down the sidewalk, to that point where the city abruptly ends and the park begins. that spot on the curb above the tennis courts, above the short stretch of grass. ( ) i suggest a broadly based north-american audience rather tentatively. like douglas coupland’s narrators, stanley park’s narrator assumes a number of international brand names to be part of the frame of reference he shares with his audience, although the brands he refers to connote a more rarefied, hip or expensive taste than the mainstream pop-culture icons of coupland’s books. stanley park’s big brand names are from europe (aga, gucci) as often as america (wolfgang puck, planet hollywood). but while the narrator sets vancouver into a network of cosmopolitan cultural influences strongly connected with european tastes, when he sets the city’s daily urban culture in relation to places elsewhere he frames the city as a north american one. he explains that the s murder of the babes in the woods represented, for vancouver, the first of the self-inflicted wounds north americans would come to associate with late th-century urban life. [other major crimes] would follow. but the murder of those two children ushered this unsettling aspect of modernity onto the stage of canada’s third city, quiet at that time in its west coast rain forest. ( ) meanwhile, the novel’s treatment of vancouver as part of a west-coast ecosystem and fault-line topography calls on its audience to recognize portland as well as vancouver, although it offers formal introduction of “the pacific rim’s cascadia subduction zone, where popular science would have it that everything from portland to vancouver was spectacularly overdue for obliteration” ( ). perhaps the novel’s thematic focus on region-local food production influences me, as i identify the audience as north american (instead of even more broadly international): i notice the narrator assuming that his audience will recognize as relevant-because-local the points of origin of “saltspring island chevre” or “fraser valley foie gras” ( ). more pertinent for my discussion of the novel as a city-building narrative is the novel’s thematic treatment of the audience for jeremy’s cooking performance. as a city- building narrative, i am arguing, stanley park broadcasts images and information about the experience of life in vancouver so that others may imaginatively incorporate them into their respective production of local subjecthood, elsewhere. “elsewhere,” in this novel’s case, is elsewhere in cosmopolitan north america (or beyond?)—including in non-fictional vancouver. the novel constructs its fictionalized vancouver as self- sufficiently a centre of radiant cultural influence. this vancouver, which is centred on crosstown and jeremy’s locally-inspired culinary innovation, generates taste—taste with enough cachet to capture the investment of inferno international and the attention of gud tayste, “the millennial food magazine of choice for foodie-scenesters on both sides of the atlantic” ( ). meanwhile, however, jeremy also generates taste intended to attract and appeal only to immediate friends and personal contacts, when he cooks for homeless friends in the park or for his underground circle of friendly patrons in his off-grid final restaurant. his affinity for local materials and his desire to perform for a local audience are part of the home-grown code of “taste” that the novel, ultimately, offers its wideflung audience: be as hip in your own homeplace as we are here, in vancouver. on one hand, stanley park’s mixture of reference and invention in its narrative treatment of vancouver suggests that in creatively re-framing a real city, overlaying it with extraordinary texture and inserting fictional spaces within it, writers set aside the chance for social contact involving common ground’s mutual recognition. city-building narratives are not anyway very likely to make bystanding local readers feel as if they are being invited into the intimacy of address, because such narratives’ address does not presume an audience with a prior relationship to the city. and narratives that re-invent the city with added fictional elements introduce dimensions for it that local readers could never have known yet, making their familiar city new to them. such narratives position local audiences amidst broad audiences of outsiders, and they show off to all the assembled on-lookers the city’s extraordinary dimensions, suggesting its relevance to all of them on the basis not of how proximate but rather of how engaging and desirable it is as a setting for urban life. they seek to evoke in their audiences a sympathy of taste, perhaps, rather than a sympathy of locality. (we might say something similar of ethel wilson’s narrators.) on the other hand, however, stanley park’s references to a recognizable vancouver are so invested in and attentive to the city that an audience that happens to live here will find the narrative’s ideas and imagery especially attractive as materials for their production of local subjectivity. the novel does not mediate for them an experience of urban common ground, but an experience of their home ground that frames it as being just as cosmopolitan, exciting, and culturally influential as other, more frequently fictionalized cities elsewhere. and because the novel’s vancouver is recognizably modeled on the city they know very well, it is all the more easily adopted as their own. chapter three: theatre and locality how does theatre performance offer its audiences an experience of what i have been calling common ground? and how does it do so differently than novels and short stories? just about all of the references made to vancouver landmarks by the scripts of plays set in the city assume audiences’ ready familiarity with those landmarks (even, to my surprise, when the plays were performed first or subsequently for audiences elsewhere, in ottawa or toronto). the question then becomes what sort of places these plays share with their audiences: how do these grounds compare to the extended neighbourhoods addressed in novels and short stories? and, especially, how are these grounds positioned in relation to the physical space of the theatres where the plays were actually performed—and in relation to the actual audiences who assembled in those theatres? in this chapter i think through these questions by discussing four important plays as they were first performed on vancouver stages: george ryga’s the ecstasy of rita joe, sharon pollock’s the komagata maru incident, joan macleod’s , and marie clements’s the unnatural and accidental women. in an effort to make clear that i am considering these plays not as published texts but as historical events, i use the past tense when discussing the details of the performances. before turning to the plays, i comment briefly on the pragmatics approach i take to theatre. journalist richard eder offers a useful point of departure for this approach in his book chapter “theatre and cities”: if it were only a matter of words or ideas, books would do it better. the theatre is action as well; the message is not merely asserted or represented but acted out. the action may be a facsimile, but it is real action in real time by real people up on that stage. and the impact is not received in privacy, as with a book or the cocoon of a movie theatre. we receive it as a group; it is shared by the audience as well as the actors. we do not simply react; we are seen to react, and we see or feel others react. ( ) eder is referring to theatre’s special capacity to engage people in recognizing social problems. but his observations apply to an investigation of how live performance handles common ground, in my sense: how it engages people in recognizing that certain geographical grounds are mutually known to them. if books do something better, they construct more vivid, extended, coherent swaths of urban landscape than conventional theatre performances. the terrains indexed by most plays are dispersed and thin on the ground, so to speak. but—speaking generally for the moment, and considering the theatre in its most basic pragmatic structure, removed from any specific locale—a theatre is precisely a ground for an immediate social encounter between actors and audiences of the kind that eder describes (cf. marvin carlson ): it is a space of copresence and mutual response. actors and audience share with each other what i will be calling the performance space of a play. and the images, speech, and gesture presented onstage are all ultimately addressed to the assembled audience and received “as a group,” as eder remarks, by everyone present. in these respects, the theatre encounter is an experience of both physical and linguistic copresence that is more immediately personal than the indirect, disembodied brush with narrative sociality experienced by readers of novels and short stories. most members of the audience remain strangers to one another and to the people producing the play, of course, so they cannot be certain of sharing many domains of background knowledge with one another. having assembled in the theatre, however, they make up a temporary community sharing mutual knowledge of at least the theatre site itself and the performance space they are producing. the performance space includes the storyworld of the play, so to speak—the site of the play’s imagined action, produced inside the auditorium over the course of a play by the joint imaginative work of everyone in the theatre. it also includes the audience and the auditorium itself. in thus defining a space not divided by a “fourth wall,” i am deliberately collapsing a distinction between what karen gaylord has called the two simultaneous “levels of ‘reality’” in a theatrical event (qtd. in s bennett ): the reality of the actors-audience encounter and the reality of the world constructed onstage. taking a pragmatics approach to live theatre, i see no distinction between the storyworld and the actors’ performance of it for the assembled audience: the gestures that embody character and produce setting are performed for the sake of the audience’s uptake. performance spaces are hybrid realities, we might say, where the social dynamics of the actors and audience’s collective presence and imaginative work are inseparable from the world they produce together (cf. also s bennett ). the plays i examine in this chapter support such an approach. even the most conventionally naturalist among them, macleod’s , deliberately included direct address to the audience: the performance space of this play was a domestic interior, but one offered to, and thus in a sense extended to include, the silently appreciative and appraising audience. the other three plays each quite clearly sought to map the space within the theatre auditorium in a way that incorporated the audience into the social geography of that space, as i will show. thinking of the dynamics of address as inseparably part of the performance space also supports my investigation of how these plays offer an experience of the city of vancouver as common ground. i write here that the images, speech, and gestures presented onstage are addressed ultimately to the assembled audience. indeed, in the discussion of specific productions that follows, i have attempted to take into account any aspect of each production that claimed audience attention as being part of the play’s design, including press releases, advertisements, house programs, and lobby displays. these materials were all offered to the audience by the ensembles of people who produced these plays; as aspects of the production, their ostensive claims to attention asserted their relevance to anyone attending. however, a problem of audience design remains, precisely because, in theory, anyone might attend: the spoken references to vancouver landmarks, and indeed all other aspects of the plays’ framing, are styled in such a way as to presume a specific audience. plays are not custom-designed for whoever is in attendance any more than novels or short stories are for whoever reads them. consciously or not, the individual audience-member at each of these plays would have confronted her own difference from the primary audience imagined by ensemble. yet because the encounter between actors and audience is so immediately embodied and copresent, and because whatever is staged is so overtly staged for the very people in attendance, i would argue that the theatre organizes its audiences rather differently than written works do. the primary audience implied by the play’s language and gestures remains a role that no actual audience- member could exactly fill, except by an imaginative leap of identification. but the theatre positions the actual audience, including everyone in attendance, as “side- participants” in its circle of address, rather than overhearers standing outside that circle. (side-participants, as i explained in chapter one, are those members of a conversation circle who are given deliberate assurance that the speaker intends them to hear and understand what he is saying to his immediate addressee; his address to the addressee is offered to them, too [clark and carlson - ].) celeste derksen’s analysis of theatre monologues fits nicely with the audience design i am proposing here: she explains that monologue may be spoken to the character’s self or an absent addressee, but it is ultimately spoken “for,” if not “to,” the audience ( ). i would argue that what derksen says of monologue may be extended to all staged dialogue and performance. generally, then, these plays seem to assume that their language, gestures, and imagery are framed to accommodate the actual audience-members in attendance. the ensembles thus may be seen to make assumptions about the sort of people who might be drawn to a particular production and come to a certain theatre, and what background knowledge such people are equipped with. discerning these assumptions can tell us a lot about what sort of communities, in clark and marshall’s sense, are imagined by the theatre (see my discussion of “community membership” in chapter one); the plays i discuss imagine audiences who relate to the city as, variously, national citizens, locals, and members of an invested neighbourhood community, and the plays presume their audiences’ identification with a variety of different ethnic, gender, and class positions. an ensemble’s assumption about its audience exerts some social pressure on any audience-member who differs substantially or uncomfortably from the side-participants anticipated by the play. if an audience-member recognizes herself as so different from the social profile of the presupposed audience that she decidedly does not fit into it—if she lacks so much of the assumed knowledge, for example, or possesses such different background knowledge than the ensemble imagined—she may find herself placed in the role of eavesdropper, rather than side-participant. although she may feel extremely conscious of her difference, this audience-member has the option to keep that difference private and invisible, in the plays i discuss. common ground of the kind i have hitherto been interested in, which depends on a mutual recognition of certain real-world place knowledge, would not require that the landmarks indexed in the performance space of a play be anywhere near the theatre. the original ottawa audiences of ’s premiere production were addressed as if they shared knowledge of vancouver’s second narrows bridge, pacific coliseum, and other landmarks with the ensemble; whether or not the actual audience-members possessed the prior knowledge of those landmarks that the play presupposed, in effect they left the theatre sharing mutual knowledge of these landmarks’ names. theatre can certainly construct distant grounds as a shared discourse. i investigate the vancouver productions of the four plays in this chapter, however, because theatre can also produce a stronger, spatially immersive version of common ground. i argue here that the theatre event may create this stronger experience to the extent that the geographies that actors and audience produce together in the performance space are ostensively connected to the audience’s social lives outside the theatre. while there is no fourth wall dividing stage from seats, in my understanding, the enclosing walls of the conventional auditorium potentially divide the imagined geographies of the performance space from the world outside the theatre. accordingly, plays that want to spotlight collective local knowledge must overtly connect the immediate social relations and the imagined geographies produced inside the performance space to the cityscape outside. otherwise the world outside the theatre may fade to a distal background once the performance begins to absorb the audience’s attention. the ensembles who produced the four plays discussed here managed the correspondences between spaces inside and outside the theatres in a variety of ways. but their plays suggest that the absorbing social intensity of the actors-audience encounter relies somewhat on the enclosure of the auditorium walls. hence the absorbing social encounter potentially competes with the deictic thrust of references and icons that direct attention away from the immediate room towards the city outside. the theatre itself is quite circumscribed, as a literal “ground” on which to base citizens’ reciprocal awareness of one another (cf. clark and marshall - ): beyond the auditorium and lobby of the theatre venue, and beyond the sidewalks, lawns or plazas immediately outside the theatre doors, the space of the city is less evidently shared by those in attendance the farther it gets away from the theatre. and after the show is over, the performance’s electric social immediacy may seem to dissipate as the audience disperses. an ensemble needs to keep the indexical connections between performance space and city alive if the theatre site itself is not to stand as the limit of the potential common ground that a play can offer. if the ensemble succeeds, audience-members may be brought to feel that they are part of a local community that is self-aware: connected to other members of that community not by incidental parallels in their relationships to the city but by a theatrical moment that spot-lights their communal local knowledge. while the theories of modern urban alienation i reviewed in chapter two suggest that city-dwellers rarely experience moments of communal self-recognition explicitly indexed to local geographies, it seems to me that daily social life in the city is actually full of small, private moments where people draw on their presumed common ground, recounting stories about their outings for friends or providing directions to strangers. and the narrative voices in place-sharing and edge-setting novels and short stories echo the tones of those conversations. but the theatre, i think, is one of only a few sites where sizeable groups of strangers are collectively addressed in such a way as to conjure parts of the city as their communal locale. these plays compellingly suggest theatre’s potential to imagine what locality could feel like in the modern canadian city—and even to produce locality with its audiences. i use appadurai’s term locality, because it corresponds to the strong form of common ground i have been developing. experiencing certain landmarks as part of a shared locality, people do not simply hold mutual knowledge of those landmarks (as in “common ground”); they see themselves as jointly immersed in an immediately proximal landscape defined by those landmarks, and as sharing patterns of social identification and deictic orientations within that landscape. for appadurai, locality is a “structure of feeling” ( ) produced by the combination of several phenomena. one is a “sense of social immediacy” ( ). eder and others, including myself, suggest that this sense is distinctly available in the theatre, and i am arguing that the audience’s feeling of social immediacy in the performance space can be linked effectively to their presence as locals. another phenomenon that contributes to producing locality is a set of “technologies of interactivity” that community members employ to produce local subjects, including techniques such as “ceremonies of naming and tonsure, scarification and segregation, circumcision and deprivation” that “inscri[be] locality onto bodies” (appadurai - ) as well as “techniques for the spatial production of locality” such as the building of houses, the organization of paths and passages, the making and remaking of fields and gardens, the mapping and negotiation of transhuman spaces and hunter-gatherer terrains [that constitute] the incessant, often humdrum preoccupation of many small communities studied by anthropologists. ( ) in modern vancouver, the most powerful techniques for naming, clothing, schooling and assimilating children and immigrants into acceptable citizenship are generally performed with reference to much wider contexts than the local, the nation being foremost among them. the “making and remaking” of urban space, likewise, is largely governed by broadly municipal, provincial, and international corporate interests. but people also work to produce and police distinctly neighbourhood-based identities, by imaginatively performing them (through clothing style, street culture, niche marketing, official and unofficial public art works, and neighbourhood conventions for house and lawn presentation, for instance) or ascribing them to other neighbourhood residents in online commentary and the local media. and small groups of citizens do actively shape and re-shape parts of the city in ways that produce neighbourhoods oriented to their own needs and preferences, thus abiding by their own senses of locality. in these everyday activities, people develop physical neighbourhoods and/or inscribe the stamp of local belonging onto themselves or others. they might be understood as producing or performing local citizenship; their respective abilities to produce senses of locality that take hold and get reproduced by other performances depend on their relative social power. like these other activities, i see people’s claims to common ground with one another in everyday speech as being a grass-roots “technology of interactivity” that produces local subjects, because these claims routinely presuppose the existence of a community that is familiar with the city in the particular way presumed by the speaker: such claims invite, or force, the addressee to recognize the extent and limits of their belonging in this community. and the theatre, as a powerful technology of interactivity, may make similar claims even more strongly. plays may create new geographies out of real-world landmarks or reproduce existing maps; they may assert these geographies as common ground shared collectively by a sizeable group of people; and they may do so while highlighting the group’s immediate location in the very landscape being constructed as a neighbourhood. the third phenomenon appadurai lists as contributing to the production of locality is “the relativity of contexts” ( ), which i discussed in chapter two: that is, locals’ shared perception of places beyond the bounds of their neighbourhood as a distinguishable context or background “against which their own intelligibility takes shape” ( ). this aspect of locality—indeed locality-production in general—is currently fragile, appadurai admits, given the powers of nations to subsume and control localities and given contemporary mobility and media-driven global interconnectivity ( - ). reciting appadurai’s argument that locality is fragile ( ), i am not suggesting that the globally interlinked social relations that now define any local place (as in massey - ) are bad. nor am i suggesting that locality is necessarily a progressive structure of feeling. but i am interested in examining what motivates the ensembles who ask their audiences to recognize themselves as part of a located, local community—a community with a proximal terrain of its own—as the plays do to varying degrees. several of them attempt to use these social differentiations to inspire or reinforce a sense of locally-based political and social responsibility. the “relativity of contexts” produced by these plays offers us some insight into what appadurai’s “neighbourhood” feels like in a modern north american city, by contrast to the landscape settled by a tribal community. the plays tend to assume that their audiences share with them a spatial orientation that focuses collective attention and detailed street-level knowledge on a particular central area of the city. shared geographical knowledge stretches out to the official limits of metropolitan vancouver, and beyond the city to other regional centres, but the farther away these other places are, the more generally and vaguely they are jointly known. the plays do not clearly produce an external context, an elsewhere divided from the local neighbourhood. rather, the plays’ localities have neighbourhood-internal contexts: sets of others who do not relate to the city the same way the community assumed in the theatre does (cf. ahmed). strikingly, however, most of these plays do not overtly acknowledge those internal contexts, which are otherwise left as the implicit obverse of the social and geographical orientations presumed shared by the play. different localities potentially overlap each other, where audience-members from various different parts of the city and with different experiences in it may sit side by side. but even then it is clear only to those individual audience-members who notice, self-consciously, that they do not share the locality assumed by the play. in the four performances i discuss here, the ensembles drew on their audiences’ local knowledge as they worked to produce localities indexed to vancouver social geographies contemporary with the production of the play. but their relative emphases on the local dimension of their relationships with their audiences varied greatly. the ecstasy of rita joe, for instance, barely referenced an overtly specific vancouver landscape, even in its premiere vancouver production. yet to emphasize the potentially potent rhetorical effects even of ecstasy’s rather abstracted connections between the social geography imagined in the performance space and the surrounding city, let me offer a brief example of a production that did not engage locality at all. the bard on the beach production of shakespeare’s othello was set, as scripted, in renaissance- era italy and cyprus. distant in both place and time from the audience’s everyday social world, that setting registered in the language, costumes and set design of the performance, separating the characters and the emphases of the play from the daily life of the audience-members (myself included). by bringing us together to vanier park and into the open-windowed mainstage tent where the play was staged, othello did make evident to me and my fellow audience-members our copresence with each other and the ensemble in a certain segment of the city, at the particular social event of that afternoon performance. but the performance did not overtly engage us as vancouverites or even, more specifically, as frequenters of vanier park. the performance space we produced together in that tent did not ostensively bring together the two social worlds immanent to the theatrical event—othello’s venetian empire and bard on the beach’s fenced, open- air festival compound. in other words, the ensemble did not stage our vancouver common ground as part of the social event of the play. i now turn to the plays themselves, considering them in chronological order. the earlier two plays seem to have been stunningly successful at foregrounding the actors- audience encounter. the ensembles staged them as social events implicating their audiences both personally and politically in the stories imagined onstage, as members of the contemporary society. and, like the later plays, these first two productions connected the geographies of their performance spaces to the city outside the theatre. interestingly, however, the appaduraian senses of locality they produced by doing so were broadly national, rather than condensed and proximal. they thus complicate the emphasis on strictly nearby space that seems implicit in the notion of locality; to put it differently, they illustrate how particular nearby landmarks may be imagined as part of a much wider appaduraian neighbourhood. these two plays also serve to highlight the more emphatically proximal neighbourhoods constructed by and the unnatural and accidental women. the ecstasy of rita joe: national neighbourhood reviewers and critics alike have suggested that the playhouse theatre company’s premiere production of the ecstasy of rita joe at the vancouver playhouse in november, , was deeply involving for its audiences (barber , hoffman “george” , innes ). one cbc reviewer referred to ecstasy “not as a play, but more as an act of communion in which our own participation is inescapable” (qtd. in innes ), and james barber reported in the vancouver province that even the cast was caught off guard by “the undeniably electric atmosphere of the [opening night] production and the mystery of little, naked emotions running around the playhouse” ( ). set design and staging importantly helped generate the play’s exhausting “emotional experience” (barber ) of communion, by emphatically drawing attention to the audience’s presence in the performance space and incorporating them into the play. this resulting sense of social immediacy helped to produce a sense of locality, albeit one primarily linked to national space. charles evans’s set design was abstract and minimalist, its sweeping ramp and bare spaces shaping a social space unique to the play rather than a naturalistic space iconically or indexically representative of recognizable places outside the theatre. it was an expressionist theatrical space where characters and audience were collectively immersed into a dreamlike montage of scenes from the life of the central character, rita joe (cf. innes - and grace “expressionist” ). the characters’ changing actions and dialogue presented shadowy reconstructions of a shifting set of places—a rural reserve, a residential school, a generalized urban landscape called “the city”—but only the surreal courtroom scene that framed the play’s events was represented as presently taking place onstage, so to speak. and the characters’ dialogue, which was frequently spoken directly to the audience to help them construct the world of the play, tended to generalize these represented spaces rather than indexing them to a specific geography. hence, for example, the magistrate, who represented the institutional forces trying to make rita fit into accepted patterns of urban canadian social life, spoke not of a city- wide social order but of a national one and a national scale of law enforcement (ryga ms , ). through the characters’ language and their manner of address, ecstasy established a single strong social divide in its performance space: a racial distinction between white canadians and indians. the play aligned the audience with the white characters and apart from the indian ones, drawing on the dynamics of western theatre conventions to enforce the audience’s passivity in this alignment. the audience sat silently in darkness while the magistrate gestured towards them (ryga ), constructing them as white canadian “civilization” (ryga ms ) and reminding them that, like him but unlike rita joe, they were freed and protected by the laws of canadian society—enabled by those laws to move freely through the city (ryga ms ). they likewise had to accept in silence the defiance of david joe, who constructed them (cf. ryga ) as white urban “animals […] who sleep with sore stomachs because they eat too much” (ryga ms ). at the close of the play, eileen joe and the other indian characters turned outward to face the audience with defiant resistance (ryga ). eileen addressed the play’s final spoken line to the audience with a “deadly intensity”; her line, “when rita joe first came to the city she told me the concrete made her feet sore!,” reinforced the distinction already drawn between those members of society, including the audience, who move easily in the city and the indians who do not (ryga ms ). thus the playhouse audience was incorporated directly into the play’s social dynamics. the set design and staging drew attention to the play as theatre. but they also refused to separate the performance space from the everyday world. the backdrops were only lowered into place to conceal the “back wall of the stage, exit doors, etc.” (ryga ) after the cast had already entered the auditorium and stood onstage to confront and acknowledge the audience. ryga suggests that this lowering of backdrops would create “a sense of compression of stage into the auditorium” ( ), directing the audience- members’ attention both to the artifice of theatrical setting and to their claustrophobic incorporation into the performance space. the actors made their “workmanlike and untheatrical” entrance into the auditorium through the same doors the audience used. this entrance of the actors as themselves, as citizens and the immediate social peers of their audience, has been called “one of the greatest moments in british columbia theatre” (hoffman “george” ). the actors’ entrance staged the ensemble’s intention that the play be received as a social and political event. so did efforts to invite important politicians and civil servants to the opening night performance—efforts finally rewarded when, having been recognized as an “instant classic” and an important piece of canadian political theatre (innes ), ecstasy opened in ottawa in with prime minister pierre trudeau, minister of indian affairs and northern development jean chrétien, and other politicians in attendance. but christopher innes observes that by the time of its re-mount in ottawa, ecstasy had become so successful that audiences received it as theatre rather than as a challenging social event: in ottawa the opening night received a five minute standing ovation that paid tribute to the actors’ skill and the play’s status, in place of the silent stillness that had acknowledge their intensity and its passion [at the vancouver premiere]. ( - ) innes quotes the playhouse’s then-artistic director, joy coghill, speaking about how the original vancouver audiences had felt too “beaten” (barber ) by the experience of the play to respond to it as a piece of conventional theatre by applauding its conclusion: it wasn’t taken as a sort of dramatic event that you applauded afterwards. it was such a moving experience that people didn’t want to clap. they simply were stunned in some very basic way. the performance ended with all the actors appearing from nowhere, coming out to stand looking at the audience. and as they walked away the audience always just sat there. (coghill qtd. in innes ) that the playhouse audiences did not receive ecstasy as simply a performance of appraisable quality suggests that, as a technology of interactivity, the theatre’s potential to implicate its audiences in the social geography it constructs depends on it refusing to commodify its productions as neatly bound “plays” that are capped with concluding applause. “there is a third part to the ecstasy of rita joe that is being written daily by all of us. you and i,” director george bloomfield urged in his program notes. ecstasy continues to be read as set in vancouver. but the playhouse production of the play treated vancouver as an incidental part of a wider whole: the playhouse theatre venue itself, the house program, and the play’s scripted references to its setting worked to produce a national neighbourhood. ryga wanted his audiences to recognize their membership in a canada-wide society that alienates and persecutes indigenous people. the play engaged them in imaginative construction of an urban setting intended to figure symbolically as a national territory, despite that this urban setting was recognizably based on vancouver. the playhouse, which opened in , is part of vancouver’s flagship civic performing arts complex. according to archival city maps, its location put it on the edge of the commercial downtown core of the city, near the post office and a bus depot, at the time of ecstasy’s performance. as a civic theatre, the playhouse signified for its patrons an intention to serve local artists and audiences. but as a major downtown theatre with over seats, surrounded by the offices of communications, transit, and commerce, and situated in a complex of other performance venues near the granville street “theatre row,” the playhouse also signified an entrance into a modern and “world-class” (marvin carlson ) urban culture, positioned among other world cities even while proudly sited in vancouver. because of its location downtown, then, the vancouver playhouse was not simply enmeshed in a local “urban text” (marvin carlson ) but also in a broader context of international high-brow culture. (a mid- s advertising brochure for the playhouse claimed that it was “designed particularly for legitimate theatre productions” [my emphasis].) meanwhile, celebrated as one of “a network of regional theatres” being built across canada in the s, the playhouse was conceived as participant in “a canadian national theatre that would be decentralized and regional—a professional theatre version of the ostensible canadian mosaic” (wasserman “introduction” ). precisely as a centre-piece of municipal and regional professional theatre culture, then, the vancouver playhouse was intended to be a major platform for the development of a national theatre culture. its stage offered vancouver audiences of the ecstasy of rita joe a venue intended to connect them with canadian society. the house program for ecstasy likewise connected the play and its vancouver audiences to a national project of self-examination. the program acknowledged in small print the “generous assistance of the centennial commission” in producing the play. and it reproduced the text of chief dan george’s “a lament for confederation” on the page facing ryga’s own program notes. titling chief george as “of the burrard indian reserve,” the program claimed him as a national figure of local origin. meanwhile, bloomfield’s program notes similarly framed ecstasy as a national story of vancouver origin. the primary field of place-references in the play is a place that the characters all call “the city.” in the opening lines of the play, the magistrate establishes that the city is a geography fully ordered and “protected” by the laws of the society occupied by everyone in the performance space. and the laws of society are those of the state (ryga ms ). the magistrate says “to the audience,” the quality of the law under which you lived and functioned today is the real quality of the freedom that was yours today. […] your home and your well-being was protected. the roads of the city are open to us. so are the galleries, libraries, the administrative and public buildings. there are busses, trains—going out and coming in. nobody is a prisoner here. (ms ) the nation is condensed and abstracted in ecstasy’s symbolic geography, so that “the city” is a general home to white, mainstream canadian “society” (cf. also gygli ). throughout the play, the characters linked the performance space to the social world outside the theatre through their references to “the city,” but for the most part they did so without framing this city as a specifically local place. for the playhouse audiences, the magistrate’s references to an unnamed city and its “galleries, libraries, […] public buildings” might well have seemed to point specifically to vancouver and its civic institutions. because he spoke to them (“you”) personally about their well-being in the city, these audiences might have interpreted his assumption that the city’s institutions are well-known to them as a gesture towards the actual institutions that were part of their daily lives. and occasional references throughout the play to other parts of the city would have supported interpreting “the city” as vancouver, as in jaimie paul’s description of city sites, for example: i seen a guy on top of a bridge, talkin’ to himself…an’ lots of people on the beach watchin’ harbour seals…kids feed popcorn to pigeons… an’ i think to myself— boy! pigeons eat pretty good here! (ms ) in this instance, the playhouse audiences would likely have found it easy to identify “the city” as their city. (the ottawa audiences would have found it comparatively difficult to do the same!) but these references to city landmarks did not overtly stage their proximity and local specificity. as definite references (“the administrative and public buildings,” “the beach”) they assumed the audience could identify their referents. but because they employ common nouns rather than proper nouns, which assertively specify unique entities, their indexical force may be weakened by the context of their use: these references could expand and disperse their referential power to take in generic elements of an urban canadian social space. given the non-realist, non-referential performance space, the premiere audiences likely interpreted “the city” as primarily nonspecific. the play’s simplified opposition of “the reserve” to “the city” (e.g. ryga ms , ) registers its field of reference as especially abstract. recalling appadurai’s “relativity of contexts,” i suggest that ecstasy constructed the reserve as the national neighbourhood’s internal context: an opposing space against which the city defines itself to make its own “intelligibility take shape” (appadurai ). thus, when it staged the indian characters as speaking defiantly to the audience, casting them as representatives of the city, it gave the margin radical power to re-define how the centre understood itself. the komagata maru incident: an absorbing performance space like ecstasy, the komagata maru incident spotlit the actors-audience encounter when it was premiered by a short-lived second stage troupe of the vancouver playhouse, called the new company, at the vancouver east cultural centre (vecc) in january, . and the sense of locality the performance sought to produce with its audience tended towards national breadth, like ecstasy’s. but the neighbourhood terrain it imagined was a more compactly proximal one. the vecc theatre site suggested a local community event more than a metropolitan one, and incident more obviously claimed nearby locations as common ground than the earlier play. we might best approximate the compound character of the local population constructed by this play, then, by calling it “vancouverite-canadian”: a community whose intelligibility as a group is most clearly defined by their participation in the nation, but who nonetheless reliably possess an easy command of vancouver geography. pollock and the new company/playhouse staged incident as a “theatrical impression” of a real historical event, as pollock put it in the production’s house program. this event was the racial persecution of the steamer komagata maru’s sikh passengers, who, having journeyed from india to vancouver in may, , were confined to the ship by canadian officials. imprisoned for two months in vancouver’s inner harbour and denied contact with their waiting relatives and friends onshore, most of the passengers were finally refused entry to canada and sent back to india, despite that they held british passports. as erica kelly argues, incident re-staged the events in vancouver harbour as a “moment of national boundary marking” ( ). most of the written material surrounding the play asserted a national social context. and some of the important lines of the magican-like master of ceremonies character, named t.s., tended to telescope vancouver into national space. (t.s. may have been named for “the system” [grace and helms , hoffman “local” ].) for example, t.s. constructed the komagata maru’s arrival in vancouver harbour as an attempted entrance into canada: the komagata maru. a japanese steamer chock-full of brown-skin hindus headed for a predominantly pale vancouver, and entry into whitish canada. the komagata maru in blue canadian waters. ( ) it may well be that borders are precisely the sites where specific topographies do matter to the nation. in any case, i would argue that vancouver harbour’s capacity to be construed as a point of entry into canada allowed the play to produce a sense of national locality grounded in a vancouver neighbourhood. the vecc’s website currently claims that the building “has always been a gathering place” (“our story”). in , the theatre’s medium- sized, -seat capacity, its open stage and wrap-around balcony, and the relative closeness of all of its seats to the stage meant that when the actors looked at and addressed the audience during performances of incident, everyone in the performance space would have been aware of the event of the play as a social encounter. it is difficult to say whether this social encounter would have felt precisely like a community gathering of the kind housed by the building, for example, when it was a well-attended church in the s (arnott ; “our story”). certainly, compared to the vancouver playhouse, the vecc is relatively intimate, non-central, and embedded in a densely populated and ethnically diverse residential neighbourhood. in , the building’s exterior suggested a modest, wood- frame church on an octagonal plan; even the small steeple remained intact. (the vecc has since received a comprehensive renovation.) while approaching it along residential streets, audience-members may have experienced the event of the play as embedded in their daily routines in a way that they would not have done, approaching the grander and more urban and commercial space of the playhouse. but i suspect that the interior design of the vecc offered its audiences something of the removal from daily reality into a specifically theatrical space that marvin carlson identifies as a function of theatre architecture ( ; cf. also garner jr. ), for the interior reflected its purpose as a cultural centre rather than a church or community centre. for some audience-members, its auditorium may have recalled the building’s former church function, since its interior had not been renovated beyond the replacement of “church items (pulpit, organ, etc)” with a stage (legassicke ). but, to one approving critic at least, the auditorium without those items was nevertheless theatre-like enough to recall “a miniature european opera house” (max wyman qtd. in “our story”). approaching the vecc, some of incident’s audience-members may have noticed the north shore mountains on the skyline or even caught a glimpse of vancouver’s inner harbour. they may thus have had in mind their spatial relationship to the harbour referred to in the play when they entered the theatre. but the vecc site itself does not offer much access to harbour views. and upon entering the theatre, audiences were met with a play that emphasized the interiority of its performance space. stanton b. garner jr. has suggested that one reason comparatively little critical attention has been paid to “the functioning of theatre within the urban landscape” is that “theatrical performance tends to suspend, render invisible, the fields (spatial, temporal) of actual location.” he continues: “[e]ven in most avant-garde theatre dramatic performance is constituted, to varying degrees, through the suspension of [the very urban context that frames it]” ( ). incident used the enclosure of the performance space to compress and intensify the actors-audience encounter in a way that may have diminished its references’ indexical force to the city beyond. insofar as some of the references did effectively connect the performance space to vancouver, the play produced a nearby neighbourhood for its audiences. perhaps, however, the enclosed performance space helped suspend the vecc audience’s awareness of the immediate geographical location of the theatre itself, for the neighbourhood construed by the characters’ spoken references to vancouver was centred a few kilometers away, where downtown vancouver meets coal harbour. i wonder as well if the play’s tendency to weaken its own indexical force might not have helped it connect the play’s social concerns to the wider geography of nation. at incident’s centre-stage was a naturalistically presented brothel drawing room. a brothel is already a necessarily closed-off interior space, and the mise en scène emphasized its enclosure. an arc-shaped ramp symbolically kept the characters who occupied centre stage within the brothel even when they spoke of having left it. above the stage, caged behind a grillework of bars, a character called the woman represented the komagata maru’s sikh passengers in confinement on the ship. while the characters’ and audience’s respective abilities to look—through bars, out windows, and into the open playing space of the stage—allowed both parties to see beyond the confines of their respective spaces, incident repeatedly emphasized that they could ultimately look no further than each other. the play confronted the audience with their own gaze returned to them. thus the audience was kept conscious of their captive presence in the performance space. director larry lillo (in consultation with pollock) had the actors remain onstage throughout the play, a staging decision that presented incident’s single act as a social encounter of unvarying and inescapable intensity. and the actors set up an exchange of gazes with the vecc audience meant to make the audience uncomfortably aware of their spectatorship. foregrounding copresence, the actors’ gaze also placed the audience in a position similar to that of the vancouverites, who stood onshore to stare out at the racialized spectacle of the komagata maru at anchor and who gathered in tens of thousands to watch it finally being bullied out of the harbour by a canadian warship (kelly ). as grace and helms have pointed out, the mise en scène opened to the audience’s eyes the private space of the brothel and the historically distant and enclosed space of the ship, positioning the audience uncomfortably “as voyeurs spying on the brothel and as fairgoers observing the spectacle of one group of people treating another group as if they were caged animals on display” ( ). as if to emphasize the immediacy and enclosure of the performance space, t. s. spoke directly to the audience. unlike the other characters, who represented historical personages, t.s. presented himself as a theatrical figure existing in the performance space for the moment of the play. he introduced the events of the play to the audience, animated those events for them like a puppet-master, and cajoled them into uncomfortable consciousness of their position as spectators (cf. grace and helms ). he was the only character who could range freely around onstage, displaying his power to start and stop the brothel plot’s naturalistic action. t.s. played his scenes, then, in what sherrill grace and gabrielle helms have called a non-realist “presentational” style ( ). when the audience entered the performance space before the play began, he was already there with them, observing them (pollock ). thus, even while t.s. explicitly addressed the audience as if they were in the historical moment of the actual events in lines like the following, in his master of ceremonies function he claimed his copresence with the audience in the present-day space and time of the theatre and invited the audience to construct imaginatively the events of the play with him. hurry! hurry! hurry! right this way, ladies and gentlemen! first chance to view the komagata maru! at this very moment steaming towards picturesque vancouver harbour […] carrying […] three hundred and seventy-six asians, to be precise, all of them bound for oh canada, we stand on guard for thee! ( ) lines like these were deictically split. temporally, they pointed to both the immediate presentational moment of the performance (“this very moment”) and to the historic moment that the play was imaginatively representing: the komagata maru’s actual arrival. “this is vancouver, ladies and gentlemen, the st day of may, nineteen hundred and fourteen” ( ), he offered at one point. and because of that temporal doubling, his references were spatially split as well. they referred to both the actual inner harbour and to the immediate space of the performance inside the theatre. one could argue that the deictic doubling in this play knit together the two moments and hence the two versions of vancouver space. the ensemble’s stated purpose was to draw together the social worlds embedded in these two chronotopic points: pollock commented in the house program that “the attitudes expressed by the general populace of that time [ ], and paraphrased throughout my play, are still around today and, until we face this fact, we can never change it” (my italics) (cf. also grace making - , on how incident and pollock herself were part of concurrent discussions about racism in contemporary vancouver). placing the audience in the social position of the harbour crowds achieved this purpose, i believe, but these staging maneuvers also depended for emphasis on the theatre’s containing walls. similarly, because t.s.’s and the other characters’ lines asked the audience to participate imaginatively in constructing a historical vancouver right in the performance space—a vancouver where “at this very moment” the komagata maru was afloat in the harbour—these lines did not so forcefully indicate the present-day harbour. the play purposefully denied the audience any view of the grotesque spectacle of the historical ship and its racialized passengers, replacing spacious vistas of “picturesque vancouver harbour” with the intimate and enclosed space of the theatre. these elements of the performance did not directly stage the audience’s collective local knowledge of the contemporary city. : local jokes macleod’s script for has substantial potential to be developed into a play that would root itself firmly in a vancouver geography, engaging its audiences as specifically, knowingly, local residents. reading the script, i find it hard not to think that, overall, its rhetorical effects so pointedly engage local community membership that roots itself here and would wither in performance elsewhere. but it has evidently transplanted successfully. its apparently successful premiere production in ottawa was commissioned by that city’s great canadian theatre company. and the script does contain elements that allow that the play could be set or staged elsewhere without failing to have some of its potential meanings and effects. macleod’s setting notes, for instance, frame the domestic interior setting of the play in terms that abstract it from local referentiality, making of it a symbolic space where wilderness meets civilization. these notes, which were excerpted in the vancouver playhouse’s house program for the production, set the play in a suburb of vancouver built up against the mountains. this house is very much on the edge of a forest that is barely kept out. and in a similar sense this house is very much on the edge of a city… (my italics) these indefinite articles frame the setting as not yet known. likewise, the play’s millennial title indicates an international temporal moment; several commentators, previewing or reviewing one of the play’s first three productions in ottawa, toronto, and vancouver, framed the play for their readers precisely as engaging that widely-shared millennium moment (kennedy c , wagner d , armstrong b ). a production that aimed to develop the play as a local social event would frame it differently, suggesting that the play is set at a particular millennial edge between wilderness and civilization, one unique to north vancouver and uniquely known to a local audience, and that the play purposes to engage that audience as locals. ’s potential, from my perspective, lies in its far more extensive use of vancouver references than either ecstasy’s or incident’s. as in all three of the other plays, in the local references are phrased familiarly, rather than introduced—and, since they are spoken in this manner to the audience, they stage an assumption that the audience is just as familiar as the characters with the vancouver landmarks being named. in an extended monologue that opens the play, a character named wyn describes a cougar running over the second narrows bridge from the north shore into vancouver proper: he runs over the swell of the bridge, doesn’t bother looking west toward the city made headless by fog. he has no knowledge of how the first bridge collapsed, knows only that this one is solid and enough. he is aware of whirlpools beneath him and that the train bridge to the east is shuddering with freight. he runs past the grain elevators, past a korean freighter that is lit and trembling beside the dock. our cougar crosses mcgill street, miraculously, with the pedestrian signal. […] he bounds through the empty parking lots of the pne, past the twin poles of the loggers exhibit, the platform that will soon become teen town, the agrodome and on to his destiny, the pacific coliseum. (macleod ) here, wyn assumes community membership by using proper nouns for a number of landmarks along the cougar’s path, and she presupposes her audience’s knowledge (though not the cougar’s) of a “first bridge” that collapsed before the second narrows was built. the other characters in speak about the city frequently, in similar detail, and with equally casual familiarity. the playhouse theatre company ensemble performing in vancouver had a less political motivation for compelling their audiences to recognize their locality than had either the ecstasy of rita joe or the komagata maru incident, but their production did assume local community membership with its audience. and, to a degree, they developed the play’s potential, by presenting it as ostensively staging a local social event: a funny and moving collective examination of a particular vancouver brand of millennial angst. but nonetheless an archival videotape of one evening’s performance shows that the production did not emphasize the locality of its storytelling as much as it emphasized the emotional dynamics of the characters’ relationships to each other. the characters were wyn and sean, a childless couple of urban planners; nanny, wyn’s kooky -year old grandmother; janine, their stirring young boarder from nanaimo; and the “man,” their strange, homeless neighbour. the balance of emphases depended on the extent to which the ensemble opted to perform the majority of the local references with presentational ostension or not. as a script, macleod’s is a relatively naturalistic domestic comedy/drama. and under the direction of patrick mcdonald, the playhouse theatre company actors played the majority of their scenes “representational[ly]” (as in grace and helms ), acknowledging the audience only indirectly, and acting as if the characters believed they were going about their daily lives in their home on the north shore. local details were subsumed into a generalized domestic realism. the characters’ references to nearby landmarks seem to have been intended primarily to make their lives appear recognizably quotidian. for example, when janine was coaxing nanny to take a day-trip with her, she said, “why don’t you and i take the sea bus and then the bus-bus and have an afternoon in stanley park?” (macleod ). the practicality and casualness of janine’s line grounded her character in a middle-class north vancouver life, where people talk through their transit options and are easily familiar with the identity and routes of the local buses. according to the theatre pragmatics of this scene’s language, janine addresses herself to nanny but offers her line equally to the audience, who stand by as acknowledged side-participants; thus the style of her reference to “the sea bus” indicates an assumption of joint common ground and potentially might be spoken to highlight this flagging of ground shared with the audience. but the scene played instead as primarily a touchingly emotional interaction between janine and nanny; leslie jones, who played janine, delivered the line as a throw-away, staging it as simply mimetic of domestic patterns of speech, as janine tried to console and distract nanny. thus the especially naturalistic dynamics onstage did not foreground the play’s local niche. (in macleod’s own opinion the play’s central dynamics did not depend on audiences’ local knowledge; these moments of domestic drama frame a sort of “truth” likely to resonate for audiences across the country, allowing to “cross regional lines,” according to macleod [qtd. in johnson ].) but at certain moments in the performance, the playhouse audiences must have been made especially aware that the actors were playing the characters for them. these moments had the most potential to stage locality. wyn’s cougar monologue is an important example. the archival videotape suggests that hogan and the audience performed the cougar scene as spoken between them, in one of ’s most “presentational” moments. as derksen points out, monologues are moments where characters “develop a direct, often intimate relationship with the audience” ( ). hogan faced the audience and spoke animatedly. she paced wyn’s monologue to allow for— even orchestrate—audience engagement, speeding through certain segments to build momentum and pausing skillfully for moments of emotion. the audience laughed warmly with wyn at numerous points, and she waited with them for their laughter to subside. like t.s.’s direct address to the audience in the komagata maru incident, wyn’s monologue used the theatre at its fullest capacity as a technology of interactivity to connect with the audience. wyn’s monologue had even greater power to produce locality, because it came closer to recognizing the audience’s actual location relative to the landmarks it named. when t.s. claimed that vancouver existed right inside the performance space, his lines lost some of their referential purchase: they threatened to make the theatre auditorium itself the limit of common ground. wyn’s lines pointed outside the shared space of the theatre auditorium to the landscape beyond, connecting the two spaces rather than replacing one with the other. a number of the play’s jokes, as well, pointed to the geography outside the theatre in a way that generated a north shore neighbourhood mutually shared by audience and ensemble. janine in particular was characterized and made humourous for the audience by calling up the audience’s (and the characters’) associations with nanaimo, janine’s hometown. the place-name “nanaimo” stood as shorthand for janine’s brassy toughness and for her closer, less glassed-in relationship to west coast forests, beaches and wildlife than wyn and sean’s. the ensemble assumed that “nanaimo” would call up for their vancouver audience what they left unspoken: a relatively complete social context for janine that could knit together her sexy clothing, appreciation of beach-cooked bannock and raw oysters (macleod ), and suspicion of urbane tastes ( ). they also assumed that their vancouver audience would have just enough distance from nanaimo to accept a caricature (albeit a nuanced one) of an “island girl.” janine was an outsider to the north shore neighbourhood being produced in the performance space. when nanny wanted to talk with her about nature boy, a mount seymour hermit whom nanny and wyn both remembered from their younger lives in north vancouver (macleod ), janine had to remind nanny that she was “not from around here” ( ). the ensemble assumed that nanaimo was close enough to vancouver audiences for them to reliably know about it with the generalizing, lofty assurance of in-jokers. but it was far enough from the north shore for janine and the other characters to lack certain common ground. establishing local community membership with these jokes, then, enabled setting and characterization—and it must have been part of the play’s rhetorical effect: here we are together, the ensemble was suggesting to the audience, laughing at and feeling anxious about our own local millennial moment. in-jokes are pointedly engaged with the local: they depend for their snappy efficiency and their pleasurable inclusiveness (or their unpleasant exclusivity) on unspoken, already-known background information. if an audience were too unfamiliar with nanaimo to “get” the jokes about janine’s hometown, the lines referring to that hometown would lose their in-joke dimension and their richness. wyn’s amused, mocking comment to sean, “island girl. janine of nanaimo. she’s a purebred, that’s for sure” (macleod ), or janine’s declaration, “and i’m not from the retire-and-play-golf nanaimo. i am from pure and old nanaimo” ( ), would be only as full of information and associations as the words themselves and the actors’ performances would supply. in these lines, the words themselves are relatively information-poor: janine is “pure” nanaimo, but what does that mean? the playhouse audience of the videotaped performance laughed knowingly when janine said of nanaimo that, “granted, [it] does have its fair share of problems” (macleod ). leaving background information unspoken (or “tacit” as in giltrow ), as janine does here, signals assumed mutual understanding (sperber and wilson ). since an unknowing audience does not already have enough background information about nanaimo to form much of a context for the uninformative nanaimo references, lines about the city’s purity or problems would not trigger for them an immediate landslide of comic inferences. and an unknowing audience would be conscious of not sharing background knowledge. according to macleod, the play had a special chemistry with audiences at the playhouse production. “it was fun bringing the play home to a vancouver audience, because it’s such a vancouver play. they get the nanaimo jokes,” she commented to the globe and mail’s chris dafoe (c ). perhaps one of the playhouse ensemble’s most elegant moves towards framing as being performed specifically for local audiences was in an advertising brochure for its -’ season. the blurb about called it a “contemporary fable of vancouver life”: local playwright joan macleod takes us to the north shore at the dawn of the new millennium where the myth and mystery of the mountains force an ordinary vancouver family to question the quality of their urban existence. this blurb manages very adeptly to construct the rhetorical situation of the play as a local social event, because it registers the distance between the position of audiences at the playhouse’s downtown vancouver location and the north shore setting of the play. according to the blurb, the play will allow a knowing local playwright to take “us” to the mountainous edge of the city. the playhouse’s self-presentation as the city’s flagship theatre and its relatively expensive ticket prices likely meant that the “we” in question (that is, those who would assemble in the theatre) did not themselves represent the “ordinary vancouver family.” but the blurb uses “ordinary” to set up an effective contrast between central vancouver as a site of everyday urban reality and the north shore mountains, which it treats as inherently mysterious and mythic. the mountains will force the vancouver audience to ask questions of themselves, the blurb suggests. in other words, the play’s story is necessarily set on the north shore and necessarily speaks to an audience of vancouverites gathered downtown. i have been tracking shifts between a naturalistic representational style and a more theatrical, presentational address to the audience in this play because these have seemed, respectively, to have placed less and more emphasis on mutual recognition in the performance space. as the advertising brochure blurb hints, the playhouse production shifted away from realism in another respect as well. indeed, in two other respects: some of the printed paratextual material surrounding the play and the scenography both tended away from mimetic realism in their framing of the play’s setting. the paratextual material, especially the house program and newspaper articles about the play, sustained the possibility that a non-realist representation of the north shore setting could evoke audience recognition. however the set design seems to have operated almost independently of the rest of the play, and it does not fit with my alignment of theatricality and emphatic locality. the house program opened with a message from the playhouse’s artistic director, susan cox, who wrote that “the strange longings and the chronic uneasiness” expressed by the play are indigenous to vancouver and its natural setting. these feelings seem “ever-present in this extraordinary environment,” she wrote. the play’s setting in an elegant home poised on the very edge between forested mount seymour wilderness and the rapidly developing city of vancouver was intended to register both an everyday realism and a symbolic liminality (wasserman “joan” ). along with macleod’s setting notes, which i cited earlier, the rest of the playhouse’s house program also framed the play as combining realism with symbolism. patrick mcdonald remarked in his director’s notes, for instance, that macleod’s script is “poetic, whimsical and startlingly real at the same time.” and vancouver reviewers of the production noted both registers: remarking that was “billed as a modern vancouver fable,” the province’s renee doruyter nevertheless described it as a “slice-of-life reflection of who, what and where we are at the edge of the wilderness on the eve of the millennium” (b ). “north vancouver is the perfect setting for this clash of urban and rural,” wrote tim carlson (e ). designer ken macdonald’s set clearly staged the play’s symbolic register. the mise en scène represented the interior of wyn and sean’s home. while macdonald supplied elements of a realist household set, the designer also employed a visual symbolism to figure the wilderness as penetrating wyn and sean’s home. macdonald made the upstage wall of the house transparent and indefinite, exaggerating the effect of the glass walls characteristic of west coast modernist architectural styles, which seek to open houses out into their natural surroundings. at that edge of the playing space, smooth columns reached from floor to ceiling, suggesting both structural elements of the house and tree trunks outside of it. amongst them, two pillared, conical shapes strongly suggested evergreen trees, but they were such static and abstracted forms that they appeared at the same time somehow integrated into the house’s structure. a square frame hovered in front of one of them, suggesting a window in the invisible wall and thus seeming to put the tree outside, in its natural place, so to speak. but it framed the tree- shape so neatly as also to seem to invite it into the house as an artwork. in macdonald’s words, “when defined by a red picture frame [the tree] signaled an interior and when surrounded by large sono-tube trees [it] became part of the forest” (qtd. in rewa ). similarly, a pair of large rocks sitting upstage centre might have been either outside or inside of the house. at one point, without apparently having gone outside, nanny sat down on those rocks for a rest, preferring them to the couch, and janine leapt up onto the rocks when seeking a defensible position during the man’s attack. but wyn and sean never acknowledged the rocks as furniture. both reid gilbert ( ) and natalie rewa ( ) have argued that macdonald’s set design offered interpretations that supplemented and extended macleod’s scripted narrative. in this case, the rocks emphasized the scripted distinction between wyn and sean, the sterile, urbane couple, and nanny and janine, who were supposedly closer to nature, in their respective aged wisdom and earthy unpretentiousness. the performance space that the ensemble and their audiences collaboratively imagined in the playhouse theatre was less overtly interactive than those of ecstasy or incident. however, the set presented a kind of counterpoint to the actors’ realist play. according to the actors’ speech and gestures, the performance space was fully focused on wyn and sean’s household: while the actors acknowledged the audience’s audible responses in the timing of their lines, they otherwise usually ignored the audience’s presence. meanwhile, however, the darkened space of the playhouse’s sizeable auditorium added to the visual effect of the household’s elegant spaciousness. and the non-realist abstraction and visual symbolism of macdonald’s set design contrasted with the actors’ naturalism and established an interactive dimension for the play. the set invited the audience to interpret the onstage space for themselves, to decide where household ended and forest began—or, put another way, to decide whether to take the upstage forms as natural rocks and trees or as always representing artificial design (cf. gilbert ) in their abstraction and minimalism. indeed, the set left open to their interpretation the question of whether wyn and sean’s household, as staged, offered the audience an imaginative window on a north shore wilderness where cougars roam—or whether it offered the audience instead a gorgeous and expensive image of nature as artwork. the mise en scène positioned wyn and sean’s household between the audience and the upstage edge of the trees. looking out their window, the characters apparently saw a back yard—complete with birdfeeder and compost heap—edging on mount seymour forest (macleod , ). by contrast, looking through the frame offered by wyn and sean’s furniture and the invisible rear wall of their house, the audience saw a sequence of tree-like shapes and a beautiful, abstracted backdrop of pillowy cloud- or tree-frond-like shapes strongly reminiscent in style of a lawren harris painting. gilbert indicates ( n. ) that the playhouse’s house program included an inserted page on which macdonald noted his allusion to harris; whether guided by this authority or their own familiarity with the group of seven painter’s famous style, the play’s reviewers recognized harris as an artistic intertext (e.g. tim carlson e ). if the play was indeed offering to usher ordinary vancouverites towards an edge-line in their daily experience, to “take us” to a liminal space that would force us to question our urban existence (playhouse brochure), macdonald’s set design offered a counterpoint to the naturalistic characterization of this edge-line as “the north shore at the dawn of the new millennium.” the set seemed instead to usher its audiences to look past the domestic tension and existential anxiousness of the characters’ lives towards a beautiful modernist artistry, as if, perhaps, even the human drama could not blot out the beauty of the elegant north shore home. thus, the visual semiotics of macdonald’s set design only equivocally claimed the playhouse audience’s west coast community membership. for some audience- members the mise en scène might have seemed to assume their recognition of specifically local artistic and architectural references. for others, its gorgeousness, its abstraction, and its visual echoes of a group of seven style might have seemed to engage them not as local residents but as canadian or more broadly modern citizens. despite my sense that the playhouse production of did not capitalize as fully as it might have on the script’s potential, it clearly had the effect of neighbourhood- production for at least some audience members. in a talk-back session after the videotaped playhouse performance, the first person to ask a question indicated that he knew the play had been produced elsewhere, including toronto. he went on to say, i was just wondering if you had to change any of the text [for those performances], because the geography may not mean that much to people in toronto; they may not get the allusions; they may not understand. leslie jones, who had also played janine in the premiere production for ottawa’s great canadian theatre company in , remarked that they did not change any of the script’s references to vancouver geography, “but people still got the idea.” another actor joked that “the references to nanaimo” and other local places might not have been received precisely the same way by audiences in toronto, “as you can imagine.” at this comment, the talk-back session audience laughed heartily. and several minutes after the first question’s discussion subsided, another audience-member asked how the play had been received in toronto. apparently, this self-identifiedly local audience recognized as overtly engaging their local community membership, and the experience was sharpened by their sense that torontonians would not get the play. as i explain elsewhere (banting “social”), audiences’ awareness of other, less local audiences make them especially aware of their privileged position as addressees. the unnatural and accidental women: urgent local investment unnatural premiered at the firehall arts centre in november, , under the co- direction of clements and the firehall’s artistic director, donna spencer. unnatural treated a particular sense of locality as already established in a proximal neighbourhood immediately surrounding the theatre, and the play addressed itself selectively to an audience that was already acceptably spatially oriented and politically invested. that is, the play’s primary addressees were those among its audience with neighbourhood knowledge and investment already intact. (any audience-members without this expected background were positioned as side-participants—that is, as people in attendance, they were still deliberately offered the play’s address—but the play’s attitude toward their responsive understanding seems to have been a benign indifference, an attitude which clark and schaeffer would understand as only being suitable for bystanders in ordinary conversations.) ostensively addressing a neighbourhod audience, the play contributed to an ongoing history of community development by artists, activists, educators and politicians who have worked to produce the downtown eastside as a neighbourhood. but unnatural’s social orientation combined a feminist concern for women’s security and happiness with anti-racist indigenous community values, selecting a particular angle of interest among the multiple dimensions of that wider project. thus, while the play drew on an ongoing project of locality it also refined and re-organized that work; the play’s treatment of a certain locality as already established functioned creatively, inducting the audience into a new social role, as much as it functioned to reinforce an actually existing role. this production offers an appropriate culminating point for this chapter’s sequence, because it drew on all available resources to connect the performance space it constructed to the area of the city outside the theatre. whereas the other three plays were set at some remove from the specific landmarks referred to in the performance space, unnatural capitalized on the firehall’s location in the immediate vicinity of its focal landmarks. the unnatural and accidental women recreated a version of certain real events in its performance space, re-envisioning the deaths and imagining the afterlives of ten women who had died, in the company of a predatory man, in hotel rooms around the downtown eastside. the firehall arts centre is located immediately around the block from several of these hotels. in her “producer’s note,” on the second page of the house program, donna spencer emphasized the firehall’s location “in the [very] neighbourhood in which [the play] is set.” and audiences did not miss the connection: in a newspaper article published the day unnatural opened, reporter kathleen oliver claimed: when audiences take their seats at the firehall […], they can abandon the comfortable illusion that theatre takes place at a distant remove from reality. in fact, they will be sitting steps away from the scene of the horrific events that inspired clements’s script. (oliver ) oliver’s image of “sitting steps away from the scene” clearly imagines the performance space inside the firehall as physically continuous with the neighbourhood outside. the ensemble emphasized this continuity of spaces by displaying a series of vancouver sun articles prominently in the firehall lobby. the newspaper pages reminded audiences of the real events that had inspired clements to write unnatural. while marvin carlson argues that the lobby spaces of theatres are “intermediate spaces” where audiences shed the associations and preoccupations of their daily reality as they pass into the performance space ( ), audience-members’ bodies are still situated in continuous physical relation to the everyday spaces outside, and the same associations and preoccupations continue to be available to them inside as outside. some theatre- going experiences attenuate the continuity between performance space and everyday world in order to play up the theatricality of the social event for its own sake or to offer their audiences a transporting fiction. unnatural foregrounded that continuity instead. in sperber and wilson’s terms, this production made the context of the outside world “manifest” inside the theatre—that is, readily perceived or recalled to mind. not only did the newspapers refer to the city outside the firehall’s doors, but precisely as the pages of a widely-circulated local daily newspaper they overtly brought everyday local discourse and citizenly routines into the theatre. i have shown elsewhere that unnatural subtly complicated and rendered uncertain the precise correlation between both its women characters and its staged citations of newspaper text and their respective real-life analogues (banting “being” ). but despite this indirectness, the lobby newspapers reminded audiences of the world outside the theatre, claiming a relationship between that exterior world and the spaces imagined inside the performance space. the earlier three plays invited their audiences to produce with them spaces that had no evidently precise analogue outside the theatre: an abstracted montage of real and remembered spaces in ecstasy, a brothel embedded in a theatrical space in incident, and a domestic interior in . audiences’ copresence in those performance spaces offered them the experience of collectively participating in imagined creation of a new national and/or local space—but one that in some respects would remain contained by the theatre, since it had no concrete counterpart elsewhere. by contrast, unnatural represented versions of east hastings street and the very eastside hotels where the real women had died in its performance space. asserting the spatial continuity of theatre and neighbourhood and, at the same time, reproducing the neighbourhood in the performance space, the play multiply reinforced its own capacity to organize local space and effect common ground. the play’s manner of staging indicates that unnatural assumed its audience arrived with intact knowledge of east hastings and the hotels—perhaps even with a daily acquaintance with them as landmarks. the ensemble projected a sequence of the eastside hotels’ names onto onstage screens while the actors played a sequence of hotel- room scenes. these title slides paired poetic scene titles with hotel names: falling back – beacon hotel room , when you’re – clifton hotel four days, day – glenaird hotel thus staged for the audience, these place-names labeled the different hotel-room spaces represented onstage and helped distinguish them from one another as the onstage action cycled through the different scenes. the labels constructed a space that existed only inside the theatre. but, significantly, they also indicated the real hotels in the neighbourhood surrounding the theatre. for the play’s primary intended audience, local audience-members who did recognize these hotels, the projected names must have taken on the rhetorical significance of a chilling reminder and call to witness: these deaths happened just “steps away”; they are our local inheritance. in representing specific vancouver sites on its stage, unnatural re-imagined the represented sites, creatively re-presenting them. it thereby framed new versions of those sites, staging the new versions as spaces that everyone assembled in the performance space shared anew on the basis of their copresence together there and their collective work imaginatively creating those versions. thus, while it drew upon what it assumed to be its audience’s local community membership, it gradually created with its audience an experience of copresence together in creative, theatrical versions of local places. while familiar references to distal vancouver locations assume local community membership, no one could ever be quite sure how many individual members of a given audience do recognize the landmarks referred to. but, by the end of a play, the ensemble and the audience alike can be reasonably certain that everyone present has now experienced together the scenes represented in the performance space. combining theatrically mediated copresence in local spaces with membership in a located community, the play made the audiences’ sense of sharing local common ground especially vivid and evident. in staging its assumption that the downtown eastside setting was familiar to its audience, the play aimed to honour and engage a sympathetic and invested neighbourhood-based community. a model of the kind of investment in the downtown eastside that i write about here is rebecca, the central character. although she now lives in kitsilano, rebecca goes to hastings street and the eastside bars to think and drink “in quiet without some suit coming up and trying to dazzle [her]” (clements unnatural ), and to search there for her long-lost mother. she knows the neighbourhood’s social history ( - ), recognizes the pain and degradation of its trade in alcohol and sex work ( ), and recalls her own connections to the place. she recounts for herself and the play’s listening audience her memories of growing up there, dancing happily in “pigeon square” as a young girl ( ) and longing to be given new shoes from the army and navy instead of castoffs from the salvation army ( ). despite staging rebecca’s investment in the neighbourhood as stemming from her childhood there, unnatural implied that its audiences need not have lived in the neighbourhood to be personally invested in its community. as rebecca teaches the policeman named ron, investment means recognizing one’s vulnerability to the same accidents that isolate and depress those who drink in the downtown eastside. these accidents, she explains, do not just happen to distant others—those who are “indian” or “mentally ill or brown or addicted to one thing or another”—but to people, “period” ( ). similarly, the play allows that even white audience-members might sympathetically invest in the struggles of its mostly indigenous characters, despite that it defines “white people” as those capable of looking blindly at native people as if they are not worthy of being seen: “white is a blindness— it has nothing to do with the colour of your skin,” declares aunt shadie ( ). by addressing audiences who were already invested in the downtown eastside primarily, rather than introducing outsiders to the neighbourhood and its various concerns, unnatural staged itself as a community event: an event intended to bring together people for whom the neighbourhood is a common ground. and it treated the shared physical ground of streets and landmark buildings as inextricably part of a particular shared social history. participating in this experience of locality involved taking part in a supportive and accepting local community, responding warmly to feminist and indigenous perspectives, and witnessing the neighbourhood’s painful histories of wider social neglect, poverty, addiction, racism, misogyny, and murder of women. unnatural encouraged the community to a collective strength of historical recollection and present purpose. it was inextricably about convening a local community. and it built itself upon an exclusively local investment. clements reacted to a lack of just such sympathetic identification with the lives of aboriginal women residents of the downtown eastside when she wrote the play—a lack that she and others perceived in the police and civic authorities, who ought to have investigated the women’s serial deaths long before they did, and in the vancouver sun’s sensationalist reporting of their deaths, which tended to reduce the women to grim lists of vital statistics and fixate on the life of the barber who killed them (clements “in the end” ). clements later wrote skeptically about the firehall audiences, assuming that they came to the play with less sensitively aligned perspectives than i am describing. i’m sure the audiences came in for a good old-fashioned native woman victim story and came out a little afraid, not because the women were frightful but because the native women were just women, just like you and me, and had had ‘enough’ […] (clements “in the end” ) here clements imagines audiences eager to consume the sensational pathos of a certain kind of “native woman victim story.” the poster and newspaper advertisements for unnatural may have offered some attraction to such appetites, for they featured a reclining—or collapsed—woman smiling knowingly and perhaps somewhat drunkenly at the camera. the ads were framed with excerpts from an official b.c. coroner’s service form and stamped with the words “apparent cause of death,” which leant them a true-crime feel. but it seems to me, as to clements, that such audience-members would have been confronted with a play that expected a more sympathetic and partisan investment, once they entered the firehall’s performance space. as staged at the firehall, clements’s play appeared to suggest what her later reflection does not: that she and the rest of the unnatural ensemble trusted their audiences to come to the play with informed local perspectives and sympathetic investment already intact. the play’s many subtle, punning jokes assumed that its audiences would appreciate a native perspective and sense of humour, for instance: that they would laugh with the native characters as they punned off of rose’s royalist, anglo- canadian, earnest prudery (e.g. clements unnatural , ), for example. indeed, the ensemble did not acknowledge any other receptive attitude. (considering the strength of the play’s overt feminism and anti-racist commitments, i would argue that the ensemble’s attitude to any side-participants among the audience who did not share those commitments was less benign than its attitude towards anyone who did not come equipped with the necessary local knowledge: any such audience-members might have felt themselves to be so indifferently treated—or even unwelcome—as to be bystanders indeed.) likely a good number of the actual audience-members in attendance at the firehall arts centre did come equipped with the expected knowledge and investments. archival materials at the firehall arts centre indicate that the producing ensemble planned to “bring downtown eastside women into the world of theatre, many for the first time, to see their stories reflected onstage in a dignified and respectful manner.” making a special effort to invite women from the neighbourhood to attend unnatural was consistent with the firehall’s commitment to outreach programs. the venue regularly provide[s] opportunities for low income residents to attend performances through our pay-what-u-can and free ticket program while allowing social service organizations to access free or minimally priced tickets for their clients. (spencer “support us”) the firehall’s strong mandate and deserved reputation in the early s for consistently programming shows reflective of the interests of its own ethnically and culturally diverse neighbourhood likely means that it tended to draw audiences with sympathetic perspectives. and the house program for unnatural staged spencer’s expectation that the audiences would indeed be locally invested. in her program note, spencer refers to “those whose lives were used as a source” for the play as “our lost women” (my emphasis). the program advises its audience that some of the content of this performance is disturbing and may be personally involving. should you wish to discuss your experience this evening, following the performance please contact the house manager in the lobby to be connected with on-site support or a number to call for counseling services. many audience-members evidently did feel that the play was relevant to them personally: “audience members phoned, mailed, and faxed the playwright, the administration, and the acting and technical crews; talk-back sessions were instituted; and the comment book placed in the company’s lounge was well used” (ratsoy ). the pragmatic dimensions of mediated common ground are potentially rich and multiple, but they are also dependent on the individual audience-member’s reception. the semiotic links between the play’s onstage versions of vancouver sites and the sites themselves are of two kinds identified by charles s. peirce (as summarized in theatre as sign-system by aston and savona [ ]): index and icon. and the apparent strength and obviousness of these links depend on the individual, perceiving audience-member’s awareness of the real sites. phrased as proper nouns, place-names asked to be recognized as doubly indexical signs. (in peirce’s terms, an indexical sign points to its object.) but only if audience- members recognize them as pointing both to the onstage scene and a location outside the theatre will these place-names be received as “doubly deictic” (herman ): that is, as anchored in two contexts at once—the imagined geography of the performance space and the remembered urban geography outside the theatre. the hotel names projected onto onstage screens in unnatural are one example. for those among the vancouver audience of unnatural who did not have prior knowledge of the real places being represented onstage, these references’ intended doubleness would still have been evident, since the house program emphasized the play’s setting in real places. but for these unknowing audiences, who inferred, for instance, that there is a real “balmoral hotel” somewhere outside the theatre walls, without knowing how near or far away it might be and without having any personal experience or prior associations with it, the place-name indicated the offstage hotel less forcefully. iconic signs were also doubly deictic in unnatural, for those audience-members who recognized their originals. (in peirce’s terms, again, an icon is a “sign linked by similarity to its object” [aston and savona ]; a photograph is an example of an iconic sign.) imagery was projected onto a backdrop screen and otherwise transparent scrims, which interposed between the characters and the audience. clements’s script calls for shifting images to backdrop, surround, and sometimes partially obscure the characters at different points in her published script, as the following passages of stage directions demonstrate: throughout [this scene] – a blizzard of sawdust chips swarms the backdrop, covering aunt shadie and tree parts. one by one, the trees have been carved into a row of hotels. and, shortly afterwards: the woodchip blizzard clears, and crudely made stumps that look like bar stools remain behind her and deepen the look of the bar – the empress hotel. aunt shadie walks across the bar but is also covered by it, in it. (clements unnatural ) the empress hotel is on hastings near main, around the block from the firehall arts centre. like the nearby balmoral, which also featured in unnatural’s series of hotels, the empress, with its own distinctive neon sign, is a neighbourhood landmark. donna spencer tells me that the firehall production projected photographic and video images of the actual downtown eastside hotels the characters were meant to be living and dying in—including, presumably, the empress (personal communication). the projected images in the play often accompanied and complemented the projected words of scene titles. thus, for example, the character named verna’s scenes were backdropped by a slide saying, “the wrong room – balmoral hotel,” and, presumably, by an image of the actual balmoral as well, and the title slide “keep on walking – hastings street” was paired with photographic or video imagery shot on hastings. for those audience-members who did indeed recognize them, these projected photographs must have unmistakably indicated the neighbourhood landmarks outside of the theatre. (even those audience-members who were unfamiliar with the sight of the hotels would likely have seen the photographs as claiming to indicate existing buildings; framing information offered by the house program, the play’s advertisements, and other aspects of staging would have assured them that these buildings were part of the surrounding neighbourhood.) meanwhile, the onstage projections also brought these hotel names and photographic images into the theatre. thus the projected iconography in unnatural pointed both to the neighbourhood outside, with which the play assumed its audiences had a prior relationship, and to the performance space being imaginatively created by the ensemble and the audience during the theatrical event. the photographs’ double-indexicality allowed the ensemble to construct new experiences of the hotel landmarks, to be shared with the audience in the performance space. the play staged the hastings street streetscape and the hotels as a newly mediated common ground: a collaboratively imagined geography where women’s lives and deaths were now newly visible and shared, although once they had been isolated and concealed behind hotel walls. in this performance space, the women characters moved through a shifting montage of projected images, so that they came very visibly to inhabit the pictured hotels and bars. according to clements’s stage directions, for example, when aunt shadie walked across the empress hotel bar, onstage, she was “also covered by it, in it.” and when rebecca walked along hastings, the projection screens showed a “backdrop of hastings street [with] signs in windows advertising for help [and] aunt shadie’s face appear[ing] in the images” (clements unnatural ). the characters were visually integrated into the play’s images of the downtown eastside. and they enacted scenes from their lives before and after death. the first act, in particular, showed the characters alone in their hotel rooms, privately dreaming of their lovers, friends, and children while they struggled with alcoholism and loneliness. by staging the women’s private lives and lonely deaths, these scenes offered the audience a chance to imagine (indeed, to see enacted) what had formerly been invisible to public perception: the interiors of the hotel rooms and their inhabitants’ imaginative worlds. the unnatural and accidental women thus drew upon its invested neighbourhood audiences’ prior local knowledge and invited them to imagine a new version of their existing common ground. it offered its community the collective imaginative resources of theatre and, as i put it earlier, the play mediated for its audiences an experience of immediate copresence together in a re-imagined version of the downtown eastside. as a community event, the play allowed audience and ensemble to react emotionally together to historical events that were relevant to them because of the events’ very proximal locality and to then to imagine versions of their present lives together in which conditions improve in their shared neighbourhood. grief and frustration were given vent, women’s bodies and identities were re-inscribed onto the city, and the murdering forces of misogyny and racism were vanquished, onstage, when the spirits of dead women helped rebecca finally kill the predatory barber (clements unnatural - ). (meanwhile, as a vancouver sun interview with gilbert paul jordan made clear shortly after unnatural opened at the firehall, the actual killer was still alive and newly out of jail [beatty a ].) how exactly the newly imagined downtown eastside common grounds mediated by the play were supposed to relate to the grounds outside the firehall arts centre remained up to the individual audience-members to decide. even icons may fail to signal the connection between an image and its object, depending on their audiences’ background knowledge and the manner in which they are handled. a later film adaptation of clements’s play, titled unnatural and accidental (dir. carl bessai, ), was shot on location in the downtown eastside. while recognizable landmarks—the cecil hotel on granville street, the astoria hotel on east hastings—do appear in the film, they are generally not positioned at the centre of the frame and they are not often the objects of sustained focus. (clements is credited with the screenplay for the film.) characters do walk down hastings street, but a shallow depth of field ensures that the street is not represented in such a way as to make its specificity as vancouver’s hastings street the point of the shot. the film does not often overtly invite recognition or overtly engage a local audience who might share hastings street with the filmmakers as a common ground. in other words, it uses its iconography quite differently than clements’s play, where i imagine the photographic imagery overtly staged community engagement. confronted with the paired images and names of the downtown eastside hotels, even audience-members who had no prior experience of those landmarks would leave the theatre having been invited to share them with the ensemble and the other audience members as a mediated common ground. the manner of staging icons affects how audiences take up these representations. staged elsewhere, the specifically local potency of unnatural’s call to witness would diminish. native earth performing arts, the company which produced this play in toronto in , did project the specific downtown eastside hotel-names as scene titles, as called for in clements’s script, and they presumably kept the scripted local references intact in the characters’ speech. but audience-members attending native earth’s toronto performance would be less likely to recognize the real landmarks referred to, and the actual hotels indicated by the scene titles would be so very distal to the performance space as to weaken the indexical strength of their projected names. the hotel names might appear to toronto audiences to point vaguely to real places somewhere over in vancouver, rather than to an imminently nearby landscape demanding recognition and engagement. other potent dimensions of the play’s rhetoric would fill the performance space instead: the play would claim the staged deaths and their real counterparts as a shared social inheritance of a broader and more diffuse kind than a local one. a toronto production might implicitly call its audiences to witness the staged deaths as their national inheritance, perhaps, since canada is a territory that incorporates both the play’s imaginative origins and setting in vancouver and the audience and ensemble’s location in toronto. i do not think that its overall power would be reduced by its production elsewhere than vancouver: the play is richly theatrical and its language is poetically open to interpretation, association, and investments of many kinds. indeed, although susan walker commented in the toronto star that the vancouver women’s serial deaths were “not a well-known story in eastern canada” (walker “demon” g ), she called the native earth performing arts production “a bold, ambitious requiem” and a “fitting obituary” for their deaths (walker “bold” c ), which suggests that she felt herself enough part of the community convened by the play to judge the relation of the performance to the real women’s deaths. the play has traveled successfully. but surely it must be a radically different event in each place it is produced. concluding observations it may not be a coincidence that in vancouver, at least, plays set in the city should have come gradually in recent years to engage more overtly and more specifically with local audiences. the majority of new scripts being developed and performed in contemporary vancouver are not set here. but those that are set here, these days, do not tend to address their audiences as canadians first, as did the ecstasy of rita joe in . since the centennial moment, and the associated phase in the s and ’ s of focused governmental support for and critical interest in representing and examining national identities, the nation as a whole and specifically national communities have receded somewhat from the canadian literary spotlight (cf. new history , nischik - , )—in vancouver as elsewhere. (that said, recent revivals of ecstasy, like that at the firehall in , continue to be marketed and received as, sadly, still relevant today [e.g. wasserman “here’s”].) as wasserman remarks in modern canadian plays, “unlike canadian drama from the late s and ’ s that very often responds overtly to the countercultural and nationalist agenda of that period, the plays of the late s and ’ s suggest nothing resembling a master narrative” (“introduction” ). by the mid- s, he writes, “nationalism”—and, i would add, the notion in canada of a national audience— “had pretty much gone out of vogue” ( ). since then, the local has not come uniquely into vogue for vancouverites as an investment or subject for representation any more than it has for theatre ensembles and audiences elsewhere in canada or the rest of the globalizing world. “neither images nor viewers [now] fit into circuits or audiences that are easily bound within local, national, or regional spaces,” writes appaduari. in the contemporary global moment, therefore, even the necessary activity of making sense of daily life in one’s immediate surroundings must imaginatively reconcile images of and encounters with other people and places (appadurai ). accordingly, other contemporary interests than just local community motivate the production and creative reception of plays set in this city, as even the plays i discuss demonstrate. but proximal grounds and immediate relationships remain urgently involving, even despite “the geographical stretching-out of social relations” that implicates distant communities and places in one’s daily life (massey ). perhaps local territory and relationships are especially urgently involving for those vancouverites whose survival, security, mobility, and freedom—let alone comfort—are threatened by poverty, poor health, and systemic oppression. it is not a coincidence that the most locally-engaged play i discuss was set and staged in the downtown eastside. but even for those with the relative luxury to create and consume theatre, as well as to participate otherwise in cultural economies, the local is not totally obscured by “multicentred” cultural life (lippard). (at one basic level, for example, both public and private property is a serious investment and concern for vancouverites of all incomes [cf. blomley]; the figure of the real estate agent turns up in numerous vancouver plays.) american writer lucy lippard describes herself as “lured to the subject of the local” by a sense of “the [very] absence of value attached to specific place in contemporary cultural life” ( ), and perhaps some contemporary theatre ensembles and audiences feel the same absence and longing. but theatre-going—like shopping, commuting to work, or going out for coffee—remains a social event that brings local citizens together to a particular neighbourhood, streetscape, building, and room, despite stretched-out social geographies. the playhouse’s current artistic managing director max reimer claims that theatre “audiences in a lot of places, but especially vancouver, really enjoy the experience of going out in lovely surroundings” (qtd. in birnie f ). i agree with him, at least, that the local remains one potentially important context among others for the creative production of meaning by audiences of contemporary theatre in this city. meanwhile, while the imagined community of nation has “gone out of vogue” in recent years, cities have entered the canadian spotlight, as edwards and ivison note ( ). by the middle of the current decade, with toronto’s mayor arguing that “cities—big cities—matter more than any other order of community in the country” (gillis), cities have “suddenly [become] a hot topic in canadian politics” (wells). as for vancouver, in particular, this city has become increasingly conscious of itself as attracting international attention since its world exhibition, expo ’ (cf. for example berelowitz ). this sense of the city’s increasing prominence on “the world stage” may help to explain how playwrights and ensembles in vancouver have come to think of their local landmarks and familiar neighbourhoods as audience-worthy. meanwhile, however, the plays i discuss imagine that audience as a local one, which seems to indicate that vancouver’s increasing size and density, and the accumulating history and complexity of its neighbourhoods, have convinced at least some of its resident theatre-makers and audiences that the city is worth performing—to itself. the trajectory of my discussion may have seemed to suggest that plays need to be performed in the very neighbourhood of their setting to powerfully link the mediated common ground produced inside the theatre with the actual shared territory of the city outside. it would be a shame to be so prescriptive. however, the examples i discuss do suggest that a performance might most persuasively construct the play’s setting as common ground if it provided an imaginative bridge between the vicinity of the theatre and the grounds represented in the performance space. the playhouse brochure, which advertised as “taking us” from downtown vancouver to the north shore, offers a suggestion of how such a bridge might be built, by acknowledging the distance between the playhouse and the play’s setting. the play itself did not lead its audience to the door of wyn and sean’s house along a fully detailed route—indeed, from the landmark of the second narrows bridge, which connects north vancouver to vancouver proper, wyn’s opening monologue sent the cougar (and, with it, audience’s imaginative map of the setting) back into the city, and most of the specific places referenced in the play were on the playhouse side of the burrard inlet. but overtly invited its audience into a north shore household and let them look out its windows. certainly, however, these plays’ demonstrated portability indicates that audiences are capable of producing their own imaginative bridges, however geographically vague. distant audiences are marvelously able to accommodate locally engaged references’ poverty of information and demanding expectations of co-knowledge. perhaps theatre performance as a genre licenses audiences to treat the rhetorical demands that attach to reference in ordinary, face-to-face conversation as unfixed and mutable in the theatre. to pursue the example of : in toronto, unknowing audiences may take up a staged reference to “the pacific coliseum” as if an ensemble had said to them, “a hockey arena.” indeed, reporters and reviewers for ottawa- and toronto-based newspapers, summarizing the play for their respective reading audiences, translated its specific, familiarly-named landmarks into generalized sites. the ottawa citizen’s janice kennedy translated ’s “pacific coliseum” ( ) into “a hockey rink” and “a vancouver arena.” the toronto star’s vit wagner referred to the coliseum as “a hockey arena in downtown vancouver” and set wyn and sean’s home “in a middle-class vancouver neighbourhood” (d ). a play is an entirely different rhetorical event when staged in a different location: the toronto and vancouver productions of were different plays in their respective relationships to their audiences. despite the potential vagueness or incompleteness of a geographical bridge between a place of performance and a play’s setting, other dimensions of the play may bring audience and play neatly into contact. audiences unfamiliar with the setting are perhaps especially able to unfix and translate references like those in when they do share some other substantial background knowledge with the characters. i have represented ’s nanaimo jokes as locally engaged—and i continue to read them as such—but i allow that nanaimo is not the exclusive cognitive property of west coast residents. even janine reminds me that images and ideas about nanaimo circulate nationally (and likely cross borders as well). of a story about a young nanaimo girl selling heroin, janine says, “it was on the national, that story. that and the bath tub races and red neck loggers” ( ). and janine’s character, as staged at the playhouse, was legible enough through other frames of reference that she might have swiftly taught unknowing audiences what the ensemble meant by “nanaimo.” her short- skirted wardrobe, rough language, big hair, cackling laughter, familiarity with loggers and guns, and crass but warm-hearted frankness recall, even for me, other, widely- circulated stereotypes that roughly map to ’s “nanaimo”—the trailer-park girl, the kid from the tough suburb—especially because they replicate the contrast between urbane, middle-class centre and rough-edged, working-class fringe that establishes between vancouver and nanaimo. (i attended university in kingston, ontario, where the relatively transient, and snobbish, student population used to derisively refer to more permanently local residents as “townies.” calling janine a townie on student stages there would have readily generated in-joke laughter.) confronted with the playhouse janine, and recognizing in her elements of types they know from elsewhere, unknowing audience members could infer enough about nanaimo from janine’s declaration “i’m from pure and old nanaimo” or her reference to the city’s “problems” to eventually let them chuckle along with the jokes about “island girl.” writing about reading world literature at a distance from its local situation—his example is europeans and americans reading zimbabwean tsitsi dangarembga’s novel nervous conditions—kwame anthony appiah argues that novels from elsewhere engage our moral attentions and sympathies not because we share basic principles or broad understandings with their authors or protagonists but rather because we find specific “points of agreement” (appiah ), discrete “moments,” and “particular cases” ( ) that we recognize and share. the particularities of local knowledge are precisely what may have been least easy to recognize and share for theatre audiences of in ottawa or toronto. but the play evidently offered them plenty to recognize and empathize with, in its emotional “truth[s]” and its resonant character types, as macleod put it. and skilled theatre audiences, with their marvelous abilities to unfix and imaginatively accommodate even local particularities, may perceive agreement between otherwise distant frames of reference even in locally specific details. kate taylor, reviewing the toronto production of for the globe and mail’s metro (toronto) edition in , translated the play’s references to its mountain-side setting and janine’s nanaimo origin into terms tailored especially to her toronto audience’s frame of reference. wyn and sean “share their ravine-side house with wyn’s grandmother,” she explained, and janine is “a street-smart college student who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks” (c , my emphasis). a ravine is a toronto topography, different in its tucked-away wildness from north vancouver’s towering, forested mountainsides, but a ravine man might offer toronto audiences many of the same dramatic possibilities as mountain man does audiences on the west coast. and while “the wrong side of the tracks” does not capture all of the nuances of a sexy, bannock-eating island girl persona, it might allow toronto audiences, in leslie jones’s words, to “get the idea.” conclusion “where are you?” “i’m in north van.” […] “where are you specifically?” “in the denny’s on marine drive.” (coupland jpod - ) the voices addressing us from the pages of novels and short stories and from theatre stages echo the conversations we have, via other media, in our daily lives. cellphone conversations like this one from jpod can tell us a lot about how people create and refine personalized geographies by speaking to one another. these are geographies tailored not to our solitary experiences of the places we move through but to the particular ways our experiences overlap with and diverge from one another’s. narrative language and theatre performance can tell us a lot about this too. the novels, short stories and plays i analyze show us some of the physical territories on which city-dwellers ground their social relations—the personalized, urban common grounds, to use my phrase a final time. read as conversations held in public, these works demonstrate that these territories are not the externally recognized, internally consistent, bounded terrains of conventional neighbourhoods. but neither are they disengaged from physical space or abstracted from pedestrian scales of near and far. they are scatter-plots of jointly known street names, landmarks, neighbourhoods and institutions stretching out to the city limits and often beyond. in novels and short stories, these dispersed points are often connected by the characters’ movement along the pathways of daily routine and the novel routes of adventure. characters in novels and short stories mostly travel through the city on foot, preserving the flâneur’s longstanding position at the intersection of narrative and urban motion, but they also use bicycles, taxis, buses, sky trains, sea buses, hitched rides and private cars to get around. all of this movement partly explains why streets in particular are so frequently assumed to be shared landmarks, when the audience is local: streets funnel people together, and they usher people from one destination point to the next. and as lengthy landmarks, stretching through sometimes disparate parts of the city, high streets are likely to be recognized by a broad audience. they allow people who come from different parts of the city to approach shared territory, even if their versions of the same street never quite meet. meanwhile, the scattered points of shared urban space are connected in these stories not just by characters’ experiences but in the flow of narrative language, by plot sequencing and the shifting associations of narrative thought: these neighbourhoods are made coherent as knowable landscapes by the storytelling. sometimes these physically dispersed, extended neighbourhoods have a centre of gravity, so to speak: an area of greatest density where familiar streets and landmarks are tightly contiguous and known in detail. this centre provides spatial orientation to the setting, establishing what is near and what is far. it establishes a social orientation too, a class and sometimes racialized and political position from which the focalizing characters or the free-floating narrative voice perceive other residents of their city. writers and playwrights setting their work in vancouver draw deeply from established understandings of who is to be found where, in this city: poorer, off-beat, and ethnically marked characters make room for themselves in east vancouver (in blood sports, the end of east, the jade peony, half-world, “a map of the city,” and “two glasses of remy,” for example); young artists create colourful spaces around one stretch of main street (the dissemblers) while south asian businesses establish the punjabi market around another (“out on main street”); one sort of young, white, liberal, middle-class up- and-comer lives in apartments or co-op housing in kitsilano (jpod, “dougal disincarnate,” “city of my dreams”), another sort owns property on the north shore (girlfriend in a coma; ), and yet a third, with more money, owns condominiums in yaletown (stanley park). the very poor live in the downtown eastside (unnatural and accidental women, bruce—the musical). by drawing on these understandings of neighbourhoods as social categories, these writers and playwrights also reproduce and re- shape those categories themselves. in some cases these centres of gravity are multiple, drawing newly tight connections between otherwise loosely related parts of the city. stanley park, where jeremy strides back and forth between crosstown and the city/park edge, has at least two social poles influencing its social perspective; jeremy’s close friends in their yaletown apartment erect a weaker but substantial third. by contrast, in jpod, the narrative perspective is so spatially scattered and mobile as to seem altogether decentred. the narrator and protagonist, ethan, drives around the city, alighting only briefly in north vancouver, in chinatown, in suburban maple ridge, in residential kitsilano, at costco. he sleeps more soundly in his work cubicle than anywhere else, but his burnaby workplace is so barely grounded that ethan’s only explanation for its location relative to his other destinations is his remark that, through a rare and cheerful accident of freeway planning, i can get from the campus [of his workplace] to my parents’ place by making two left turns and two right turns, even though they live . miles away in the gloomy evergreen cocoon of the british properties. i find this elegant and pleasing. ( ) when people’s neighbourhoods are especially physically decentred, as ethan’s is in jpod, class and taste supply the orientation that organizes the characters’ social lives, while cars and cellphones connect them to one another. but ethan’s car-driving, cell- phoning lifestyle is rare in vancouver literature. in novels and short stories, the space of social encounter and address where the narrating happens (which in chapter one i called the implied circle of address), floats unmoored from the actual terrains of the city. even in the performance space of a play, the social insularity of the theatre auditorium, the interiority of the mise en scène, and the theatre site’s removal from the particular geographies referred to onstage can seem to detach the immediate social encounter from the terrain of the city outside. but the windows that the narratives and plays open onto the city are spatially and socially oriented in the ways i reviewed in the previous paragraphs. they allow particular lines of sight. they foreground particular geographies and invest interest in characters who are drawn to particular centres of gravity. and crucially, these are not lonely windows peeped through by the secluded reader or the isolated theatre audience-member, as my work here has shown. however invisible and/or actually solitary this reader or theatre- goer might feel herself to be, she peers through these windows onto the city over the shoulders of a primary audience for whom the host narrator or theatre ensemble has deliberately opened the shutters. considering the effects and importance of this populated scene returns me to the idea of the structure of feeling that appadurai calls “locality,” an actively produced feeling that one’s social persona(s) make sense in a particular place and that the place and its co-inhabitants reflect one’s fit there. as readers or theatre audience-members, we do not fit precisely with the localities imagined by the stories and plays we attend to, and our awareness of this mis-fit may be painful. we may encounter perspectives on the city that are antagonistic to our own; we may witness being shared out among a select circle of addressees certain claims to knowledge that deny our own attempts to know and make sense in the places referred to. at the very least, we must be unsettled by our encounter with perspectives that do not fit our own, even when we deftly accommodate ourselves to their sightlines without pain or self-consciousness: these encounters invite us to recognize centres of gravity other than those we construct with our familiar acquaintances, thus opening to us new perspectives. or rather, of course, these encounters invite another audience to recognition. we are made aware that other communities are forming in the city around us when we recognize our mis-fit at the fringes of the narrative circle of address or in the middle of a theatre audience. these unsettling brushes with other localities may do socially positive civilizing work, so to speak. in producing a sense of locality in dense, diverse urban areas, it seems to me to be ethically necessary to recognize that one stands outside of others’ neighbourhood even when occupying the same physical locations. novels, short stories, and plays can make us feel the complexity of our social lives in place. the selective inclusion and exclusions of shared local knowledge have especially ugly effects when the local knowledges ignored and marginalized are those of an area’s indigenous residents or settler groups who are not white or of western backgrounds. i am very aware that among the writers and playwrights i have discussed so far, only marie clements claims aboriginal inheritance. and on the composite map of extended neighbourhoods that my work accumulates, large segments of vancouver are left silent and un-illuminated: these include most of the suburb cities and all the south vancouver neighbourhoods, as well as the musqueam, capilano, tseil-waltuth and tsawwassen first nations’ territories. also, because i have been interested in the ways that published writing dislocates the reader from the scene of address and the ways that conventional theatres may dislocate their audiences from the cityscape, i have not discussed oral storytelling or site-specific performances; these practices would have offered a new set of perspectives. my project has left a number of important windows shuttered. as well as showing us the sorts of urban ground imagined by writers and theatre ensembles as shared and unshared, the geographies created and refined in narrative language and theatre performance can also show us how writers and ensembles use locality-constructing address creatively, imagining new communities and making space within pedestrian public terrain for fictional magic. thus wayson choy imagines a sympathetic audience that is close to and knowledgeable about the layout and landmarks of contemporary chinatown but has not seen it yet from the perspective of historical chinese experiences. choy’s narrative convenes a meeting of this new community to encourage emotional investment in those historical experiences, and his narrators deliberately, generously, coaxingly assume that this audience is even more oriented to a chinatown locality than they likely actually are. joan macleod and the playhouse theatre company assume an upper-middle-class vancouver in need of a laugh at its own particular millennial and ecological edginess. sharon pollock and the new company construct vancouverites willing to become self-aware as the canadians who inherit responsibility for the komagata maru’s treatment. malcolm lowry, ethel wilson and timothy taylor imagine distal but mutually sympathetic communities of aesthetic taste and political sympathies whose unfamiliarity with vancouver only whets their interest in stories that unfold here. and george bowering and william gibson open up strange new spaces within the well-known city, for the sake of those who might enjoy stepping off the nearby edge of the familiar. the eclectic diversity of the social relations imagined by these works—and the impossibility of fitting them neatly into the usual categories for spatialized community—suggest how rich, complicated, and malleable are modern senses of relationality. the spectre of uncommon ground may well have haunted some of my readers, and i would like to address here a few apparitions that have hovered just beyond my purview. in doing so i reflect on my own social position and self-consciousness as a reader and student of vancouver writing. uncommon might describe what is strange and unheard-of, when it rears its head in the middle of one’s comfortable everyday world. the sweet-tempered spies and cosmopolitan criminals that william gibson imports into vancouver in spook country are rather thrilling imagined company for me as a reader, although for gibson himself their arrival was at first unnerving. gibson says in interview that he was “anxious” about writing speculative fiction set in his city of residence: “i had no compunctions about what i might do to a future tokyo or a future new york, but with vancouver, i never wanted to have that going on while i walked around in the city where i lived,” he recalls. “but when [the characters] did arrive,” gibson continues, i was enormously relieved to realize that each of them, in being a stranger to the city, was seeing their own distinct and different place. what they were seeing isn't what i see, so it turned into this very pleasant and kind of eerie experience of seeing the city for a while through these multiple imaginary points of view. (qtd. in wiebe “writing vancouver”) for gibson, the estranging effect of seeing the city skewed to someone else’s perspective was a welcome dislocation, preferable to discovering that his characters’ world overlapped too much with his own. but his stories’ estranging overlap with my everyday vancouver is part of their pleasure, for me. spook country’s narrator offers readers familiar with vancouver the additional eerie experience of overhearing that their well-known city has been tagged with a kind of virtual graffiti called “locative art” by one of the novel’s technologically-savvy artists. with a special visor and a link to the internet, one could see artists’ visions layered over the city landscape. as the novel closes, one of the characters enjoys the view of a “giant cartoon rendition of the mongolian death worm, its tail wound through the various windows” of a yaletown condominium tower “like an eel through the skull of a cow, waving imperially, tall and scarlet, in the night” (gibson ). the spook country narrator speaks about this virtual monster as if it is already installed, just as gibson’s narrator in “the winter market” mentions the “old condo rack” at an intersection where there has never yet been such a building. these renderings are enjoyable surprises, and overhearing them casually spoken about gives them the added appeal of a private discovery. but, more urgently, uncommon might mean instead not shared. my reading of language and performance as always pitched responsively to an attendant audience’s specific knowledge has meant that even narrative treatments of ground as not shared presented themselves as relatively generous introductions to the city: narrators’ beckoning welcome to outsiders. but i have also found a few narratives that refuse to mark and honour sharedness, even when they seem to anticipate an audience that actually knows the place too. taylor’s stanley park is a commodious example; it dresses up the vancouver i know, adding glamour and a hint of magic realism even to scenes of poverty, thus moving its many references to recognizable landmarks out of reach of mutual recognition. lee maracle, who is of salish and cree ancestry, has written a number of works set in vancouver; in her important short story, “polka partners, uptown indians and white folks,” maracle offers a different and more challenging example of how narrative might stake out uncommon ground. the style of narrative references to vancouver in “polka partners,” like that in a few other vancouver narratives, is somewhat difficult to characterize, using my method of analysis. i turn to maracle’s story shortly, to offer a preliminary reading of a pragmatics of the uncommon. mobile, mainstream, middle-class urbanites like myself may have difficulty remembering that even the public spaces of a city forbid certain behaviours and discriminate against certain persons (cf. cresswell - ). the dispersed neighbourhood enjoyed by jpod’s ethan is available to him because of his privilege. as a young, car- owning, white man he can make his home in a “disheveled but lovable three-story dump in chinatown” (coupland ) and not be punished for crossing racialized borders. like the jade peony and other novels more thoughtfully set in chinatown, maracle’s story reminds me that racism and poverty confine people within the supposedly open city. and unlike the ecstasy of rita joe, which offered white vancouverites a similar reminder, “polka partners” does so without focusing on the institutions and dominant civic culture that persecute people who do not conform. the narrator-protagonist of this story, an indigenous woman named stace whose ancestral home is in the coast mountains (maracle ), reflects on the generative work she and her friends do as they struggle to produce and maintain a neighbourhood and sense of locality “in the middle of the tired old grey buildings of the downtown periphery” ( ) in vancouver. “when i was a petulant youth,” stace recalls at the opening of her narrative, it never ceased to amaze me how we could turn the largest cities into small towns. wherever we went we seemed to take the country with us. downtown—the skids for white folks—was for us just another village, not really part of vancouver. we never saw the myriads of saturday shoppers battling for bargains, and the traffic went by largely unnoticed except that we had to watch out not to get hit when crossing against the light. drunk or sober, we amble along the three square blocks that make up the area as though it were a village stuck in the middle of nowhere. ( ) this neighbourhood is tightly circumscribed, occupying just “three square blocks,” and it supports only a “sorry,” meager, feeling of local belonging ( ) because of the larger city’s systematic attack on native ways of life. but stace does not acknowledge the wider system directly, even while she foregrounds the meagerness of her resources for maintaining locality. instead, she recalls her amazement at native people’s ability to re- make urban space to suit their traditional practices of locality. their neighbourhood- producing work cuts across the routes and routines of the rest of vancouver, as they cross the street “against the light”; living as a local in this urban village involves not taking notice of the rest of the city unless forced to do so. the story revolves around stace’s gradual winning-over by an “uptown indian,” a wealthier outsider to the downtown neighbourhood, who convinces some of the locals to start an official community centre. i extend my brief summary of the story’s themes, here, in order to give some context for the uncommon ground established by the narrative address. initially stace is excited by the community centre idea, but still reluctant and wary: my imagination ran on about the reality of it, arguing with the impossibility of it surviving. i saw the street, its frail dark citizenry rushing pell-mell towards this dream and imploding at the end of the dream’s arrest. for arrest it would. no one would allow the total transformation of this end of town into a real community. its attraction, its magic, lay in remaining a perpetual half-village that could accommodate sentinels—not people, but sentinels, alone on a bridge, guarding nothing. ( ) one of the lessons for me in maracle’s short story is in this image of a half-village and the suspended, liminal life it supports. despite the impressive neighbourhood-producing work stace describes, she and her friends are forcibly stretched between their urban lives and their ancestral lives in a “country” to which they cannot comfortably return ( ). their attempts at community are beset by the alienating and oppressive forces of a racist, colonial society. at the story’s close, stace’s fears are realized. her eventual commitment to the idea of a fully recognized community separates her from some of her friends and exposes her to crushing disappointment when the centre moves uptown. she feels deeply ambivalent about her only profit from the experience: having been introduced to some white women who do alienating work in offices uptown, she has come to feel that “a common bond of survival was replacing her former hostility” towards them ( ). stace’s relationships to her fellow locals in the urban village might have offered her one social context in which to tell her story. in that case, her narrative language likely would have been styled for place-sharing. alternatively, her ambivalent social bond with the women office workers, which forms tentatively across a racial divide when stace crosses her neighbourhood boundary into the uptown world, might have offered a context for an edge-setting narrative—or even a city-building one, that introduced the downtown village as entirely new territory to uptown vancouverites. maracle’s subtle narrative handling of vancouver references does not fit neatly into any of these scenarios. a second powerful lesson this story offers me is to be found in how it stylistically claims uncommon ground. stace’s narration is generously self- revelatory and explanatory; her opening sentence, which extends a welcome to anyone interested in hearing about her perceptions as a “petulant youth,” establishes her characteristically inviting stance. yet her narrating does not quite settle into a mode of address that would clearly define for her a circle of primary audience. her pronoun use in the story’s opening paragraph, part of which i quoted above, offers an example of what i mean. she uses “we” and “us” immediately to indicate a set of people she has not yet named; because of the story title and maracle’s own indigeneity, i interpret the pronouns as referring in general to native people. framed by stace’s explanatory stance, these pronouns seem to suggest that she is describing urban native experiences to a non-native outsider. on the following page she remarks informatively, “every urban reserve has its café” ( ). but then again, almost as immediately as she says “we” in the opening paragraph, she mentions “white folks,” which sets a white audience at a distance, outside of her immediate circle of address. (the pronoun “you” would have had a very different effect.) stace’s address seems to poise undecided between two audiences: like the downtown natives she describes, it is suspended between two possibilities. similarly, her references to vancouver hold a delicately balance. they seem to anticipate her audience’s familiarity with vancouver’s downtown geography, but they do not directly acknowledge that familiarity or admit to the overlap of that knowledge with her own. stace manages this withdrawal from mutual knowledge by using what prince calls “inferable” referring expressions almost exclusively. proper nouns like the downtown eastside, hastings street, or the lion’s gate bridge would have acknowledged a broad audience’s recognition. stace sets aside these names, perhaps in part because to use them would mean adopting the dominant culture’s geographical language. her inferable phrases—“the three square blocks that make up the area” ( ), “the tired old grey buildings of the downtown periphery,” “the mountains of my home,” “the bridge” ( ), “the park across from the café” ( )—are anchored by common nouns that would easily allow an audience unfamiliar with the city to accommodate her references. but meanwhile they indicate very specific locations within a neighbourhood that is the focus of intense public scrutiny in the local and national media, as well as in academic and artistic circles. the opening paragraph ostensively allows that “polka partners” is set in vancouver, and i think i recognize the downtown eastside in the “downtown” area that stace names so generally. her gloss—“the skids for white folks” ( )—confirms my hunch. but she has made me recognize that i am encountering a perspective on this part of my city of residence that is oriented very differently than my own: her phrase, “downtown,” which names her neighbourhood centre of gravity, has meant for me the place she calls “uptown.” the narrative handling of references to this neighbourhood in “polka partners” subtly refuses to meet its audience on shared ground: stace neither quite frames these downtown grounds as already shared with her audience nor quite extends to them an introduction to those grounds. i mentioned enjoyable surprises earlier, which suggests that i have no repressed familiarity with mongolian death worms to fear. but fearful encounters do crop up in my reading of vancouver literature and theatre precisely at the point where the common and uncommon collide. sigmund freud’s assessment of the uncanny as being a particular expression of that collision—uncanniness being a feeling evoked by the unexpected re-appearance of “something that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it only through being repressed” (freud )—has influenced recent critical discourse on cities (and cf. garner jr. , edwards and ivison on uncanny apparitions of the city in theatre and fiction). richard lehan observes, for instance, that in “romantic, modern, and postmodern thought,” a sense of being at home in the city was replaced by its opposite—the ‘unhomely,’ expressed as the uncanny and often expressed by the outsider, the other, the mysterious stranger, or the lonely man in the crowd. (xv) within the analytical framework of this dissertation, the lonely figure in the crowd is the suddenly self-conscious reader or theatre audience-member who recognizes her own position outside the circle of address. in my own reading and theatre-going experience, the returning repressed has often been my own middle-class whiteness and relative privilege: a position that i have desired to ignore in favour of the vicarious pleasures of identifying with characters and narrators in positions different from my own. i have described elsewhere, for example, my desire to fit in with one jovial, responsive, invested neighbourhood audience at the downtown eastside performance of an unpublished play called “bruce—the musical” in november, (banting “courting” ). the play re- enacted the neighbourhood’s historic fight for recognition as a legitimate civic community. in a moment of protest and frustration, one activist character onstage jeered at a miserly alderman who wanted to prevent city council from funding a downtown eastside community centre. “go back to dunbar!,” the activist shouted, resigning the alderman to a middle-class neighbourhood on the west side of the city—a location distant from his eastside residence but not far from my own home. many people around me in the audience laughed in immediate delight at this line. as i caught myself not laughing, i was forced to register my own misfit amidst my friendly fellow audience-members. similar discomforts have coloured my reading of eden robinson’s novel blood sports. (in this case, the experience has been more private; the theatre’s extraordinary copresence gives it exceptional power for evoking social self-consciousness, as richard eder helped me explain in chapter three.) here, unlike in “polka partners,” the principal uncanny discomforts are perhaps dependent on my personal response to what the novel depicts, rather than set up by its narrative style. but blood sports’s references to vancouver help bring my discomfort home, so to speak. the novel is frightening because its lovable central character tom is manipulated, incriminated, and finally kidnapped and tortured by his violent, covetous, drugged cousin, jer. robinson makes the story even more nightmarish by handling her narrator’s focalization through tom’s perspective in such a way that i cannot finally decide whether tom is victimized in part because of his own lame passiveness and stupid inertia or entirely because of jer’s cruel cunning. freud has linked experiences of the uncanny to “the helplessness we experience in certain dream-states” ( ), and robinson manages dread masterfully here. but the discomfiting return i catch myself reacting to is my own suspicion that tom is complicit in jer’s violence: i wonder if i recognize in my suspicion a prejudiced set of assumptions about poor addicts (tom smokes pot) and about the children of women who drink for drunkenness’s sake in the downtown eastside (as tom’s mother does) (robinson - ). cycle of violence. why doesn’t he stop himself? assumptions about strangers who live in one’s own city are often linked to our sense of social geography—what i referred to earlier as our established understandings of who is to be found where, in the city—and, for the local reader, stories such as blood sports recall those assumptions, possibly opening them to examination and challenge. i find myself suddenly seeing familiar territory from an unfamiliar perspective when i realize that i am experiencing through tom’s eyes what it is like to make a phone call from “the pay phone under the carnegie stairwell” ( ). the carnegie centre is the community centre that activists finally won for the downtown eastside, and the sidewalk beneath the building’s front steps is a popular congregating spot for members of a neighbourhood community. i know the corner well, and have spied this pay phone before, although i have never stopped longer there than is necessary to catch a bus; it is one of the sites in the city where uncommon ground is a sharp experience, as i feel how differently fellow city-dwellers occupy their shared ground. narrative style foregrounds these experiences, by invoking a primary audience’s relationship to this particular site and prompting me to consider my position outside but not far from the edges of the circle of address. the narrator’s use of an inferable referring phrase, which assumes that this particular pay phone will be immediately familiar to his audience when anchored to a shorthand mention of “the carnegie,” happens to fit closely enough to my own background knowledge of that part of the city that i feel myself drawn close to the set of those for whom this story is personally relevant. but because this closeness contrasts with my distance from the focalizing character’s experiences of life in this place, i am unsettled: sharing local knowledge makes differential ways of knowing a place especially striking. robinson’s narrator describes vancouver in a style that shifts between taking-for- granted familiarity, as in the phrasing of “the pay phone under the carnegie stairwell,” and introductory description; these shifts too are unsettling. as an example of introduction, an early passage frames part of tom’s neighbourhood of residence (an east vancouver neighbourhood removed from the downtown eastside) for a distant audience, offering a somewhat surprising comparison: grandview park was on the side of a gently sloping hill, and from the top had a postcard view of downtown and grouse mountain. houses crept up the distant blue of the mountains on the north shore. unlike toronto, which could sprawl in all directions on the relative flatness of southern ontario, vancouver was hemmed in by the mountains and the ocean. with space so squashed, downtown vancouver glittered with skyscrapers and mushroom-like clusters of condos. grandview park had a playground shaded by tall trees, a wide stretch of grass near the local high school […]. ( ) for me, the dominant experience of reading blood sports is the ambivalent one of recognizing how close the narrator has allowed me to approach certain landmarks—like the carnegie phone—that i already know well, from a very unfamiliar perspective. the novel’s tendency to treat landmarks as well known lets me draw near to the circle of address, only to be unnerved by how different those landmarks look from tom’s terrifyingly precarious position. but in the midst of that reading experience i am also abruptly unsettled by the sweeping gestures of this introduction to grandview park. why compare vancouver to toronto? why nod to an audience unfamiliar with either city? “the novel,” writes appiah, “is always a message in a bottle from some other position, even if it was written and published last week in your hometown” ( ). appiah attends, as i have tried to do, to the properties of the novel as a medium. he recognizes that novels travel between writer and reader along usually untraceable pathways—picturing a message afloat in a wandering bottle i am reminded of lowry’s “the bravest boat”—and that a novel’s arrival thus provides only markedly indirect and faceless contact between its writers and its reader. what i have added to appiah’s metaphor is the quality of specific address that characterizes narrative language in novels and in short stories as well, so that they wash up on their readers’ shores sounding more like private messages intended for a lover or an enemy (or, to be more accurately descriptive, a friendly acquaintance) than words broadcast to whomever might happen along. pictured as messages, or as conversations held in public, as i described them earlier, these narratives are not matters of personal identity but of interpersonal relationship. hence i have been occupied with what is common rather than explicitly with difference, although the gradations of relative familiarity that mark the presumed limits of sharedness mean that differentials of local knowledge are denoted just as ostensively as areas of overlap, in narrative language and in theatre performance. receiving a message in a bottle we may be unnerved by how close the words come to addressing us personally or given pause by how the address looks past us at someone else, but in either case we recognize our difference as a quality of our relations with the unseen writer and addressee. the similarly unsettling encounter with a social circle that positions us on the outside, however accommodatingly, is what characterizes novels, short stories and plays as particular media of connection and relationship. but these media are also characterized by their audiences’ frequent eagerness to imagine their way across the differentials of uncommon ground. that eagerness is precisely what appiah is interested in. considering the cosmopolitan case, where we read something set at a great distance from where we live, appiah writes, “what is necessary to read novels across gaps of space, time, and experience is the capacity to follow a narrative and conjure a world: and that, it turns out, there are people everywhere more than willing to do” ( - ). appiah’s message in a bottle metaphor makes me reflect, finally, on a frustration i often encountered as a child. casting hopeful bottles into stiller waters than “the bravest boat”’s stormy ocean, i would find them returning to me within an hour, never having made it out of the immediate bay. writing and plays set in vancouver do make their way to distant audiences, and at those points of reception the indexical force of their vancouver references and icons loosens from its moorings and becomes compliant with those audiences’ creative revisions. closer to home, however, they are more compellingly and stubbornly social. the project of engaging with the proximal everyday may still sound for some writers and readers like provincialism, a pedestrian curtailing of fiction’s leap into the unknown, or like isolation from the wider ethics of cosmopolitan sympathies. but locality does not feel like either provincialism or isolation, in vancouver literature and theatre. it feels crowded but accommodating, uncannily strange and familiar, globally stretched and walking-distance nearby. and it sounds like a rich, extensive, naked, and vicariously thrilling conversation to overhear on public transit. notes here, as elsewhere in this dissertation, i follow janet giltrow in using the term “accommodate” in a technical way. as giltrow explains, “in a pragmatic sense, language users accommodate presuppositions which inaccurately estimate their actual knowledge of the world” (“democratic” ). some of the texts that circulate representations of vancouver, for example, seem designed to receive hospitably the readership of people who are unfamiliar with the place: they introduce the city at generous length, taking care of these audiences’ need for orientation and overview. other texts require audiences unfamiliar with the place to “accommodate” references that do not offer such necessary explanation. such imaginative accommodations are not necessarily unproblematic, as edward said’s work on orientalism has shown. said evokes, as i do, the situation of audiences in one place reading about another place, which they situate across an imagined geographical divide ( ). while he emphasizes reading about distant cultures rather than distant physical geographies specifically, he exposes “the oriental” as a western idea of cultural otherness that depends upon a perceived geographical difference. said’s point, that our frequently “very unrigorous” ideas of distant social geographies allow “[a]ll kinds of suppositions, associations, and fictions [to] appear to crowd the unfamiliar space outside one’s own” ( ), is similar to the point i am making here. said seems to feel, as i do, that “there is nothing especially controversial or reprehensible about such domesticizations of the exotic; they take place between all cultures, certainly, and between all men” ( ). however, his larger argument is an important reminder that these imaginative accommodations are performed in ignorance and thus possibly in problematic or hurtful ways, based as they are on “suppositions, associations, and fictions” that may well be exploitative or prejudiced. susan bennett argues, in fact, that “the compromises and conciliations” that the meaning of an intercultural performance is forced to undergo when translated “need to find a language in performance—to draw attention to themselves, as it were” ( , my emphasis). otherwise, the receiving audience-members may be allowed to make meanings of the performance in ways that un-ethically exoticize the other or elide cultural distinctiveness. real differences persist between the meaning of a given play in different performance contexts, then, and an ethical intercultural theatre must not allow these differences to be rendered invisible. i here purposefully attribute to short stories and plays the same dialogic relation to the language and concerns of their contemporary reality that bakhtin attributed to the novel uniquely in “epic and novel.” in my view these genres are not linguistically and symbolically closed to the present world the way epics are, according to bakhtin. perhaps most memorably, for literary critics, this point has been made by bakhtin, by reader-response theorists such as peter j. rabinowitz (and, less directly, wolfgang iser), by wayne booth in his book the rhetoric of fiction, and by narratologists such as gérard genette and, more skeptically, monika fludernick (cf. )—in slightly different terms, in each case. reading these texts as selectively addressing particular audiences because of the way they represent a specific setting, i do not mean that a text or performance would have to be set nowhere in particular to be “universally” readable, in devitt’s sense. since i believe that readers imaginatively make sense even of unfamiliar settings, i do not think that an indefinite setting is necessary for readers worldwide to relate to a novel. rather, my point is that a specific setting ensures that readers worldwide will each relate to it differently, aware as they are of their own relative knowledge of and proximity to that setting. in chapter three i discuss the example of sharon pollock’s set-in-vancouver play, the komagata maru incident, which received a production in toronto in . it was received in toronto, by certain ontario- based politicians at least, as presenting a story that held some claim on the canadian imagination. joseph r. roach has argued of that the idea of a national theatre audience had a hold on the imagination of theatre scholars, at least, throughout the twentieth century ( ). he is not speaking about scholars of canadian theatre in particular, but, assuming some large degree of continuity between the theory inspiring canadian- and other-theatre scholarship, the same observation seems likely to hold true in the case of canada. and scholarly ideas have in turn some effect on the general population’s sense of things, presumably; hence the lingering fiction of a national audience for canadian-based theatre. setting my work in relation to criticism of canadian literature, even while pointing out that these texts and plays do not often acknowledge the nation as a social context of any importance for their rhetorical work, i echo a move that diana brydon makes in her introduction to a special issue of studies in canadian literature ( . [ ]) on “poetics and popular culture in canada”: “we are of necessity situating our discussions within a bounded national purview while showing the ways in which contemporary poetics practices strain at or ignore such boundaries. what does ‘canada’ really mean when transnational communicative networks cross national boundaries?” ( ). having grown up in ontario, i was introduced to vancouver as a social geography by douglas coupland’s novel girlfriend in a coma when taking my first and only canadian literature course as an undergraduate student. i came close to rejecting the novel altogether, before i had read beyond the first few chapters, because its portrait of suburban teenagers who could go downhill skiing after school and still have plenty of time to go to an evening house party afterwards seemed to me utterly unbelievable. it seems to me, now, that i almost rejected it precisely because it did not fit into what was then my sense of canadian contemporary reality. i was confronting for perhaps the first time the real challenges a dispersed canadian social geography presents to literary texts’ ability to mediate cross-national identification. glenn deer, too, has written about reading vancouver literature with university of british columbia students; i was co-instructor, with him, of the “reading and writing vancouver” course he discusses. in deer’s account of what dickinson calls resident reading, the city is a semiotic field to be read beside and against the written texts. but even in such comparative and counter- readings, deer implies that resident readers may recognize themselves in social relationship with other citizens, if only with the writers. “students were asked to visit a vancouver location represented in coupland’s city of glass,” deer writes, and “then to write their own versions of the visual, spatial, and architectural dynamics of the place, and to discuss how coupland compelled forms of spectatorship that could be at odds with what they subjectively experienced themselves” ( ). this experience of comparing perspectives with coupland is, in one sense, a social one, mediated by text: the reader/spectator sees herself and coupland standing “at odds” with respect to each other in relation to a particular local sight/site. canadian theatre scholars have been occupied with slightly different concerns than canadian literature critics, in confronting questions of how the theatre might mediate a sense of national or regional community: they do not seem to have been so preoccupied with setting. scholarship critiquing the formation of national canons of plays bears out this suggestion: chris johnson does not mention setting at all as one of the criteria on which canons have been either constructed by canadian play anthologies or deconstructed by the anthologies’ critics ( ). the crucial criteria are, instead, gender, ethnic background, language, and biases towards naturalistic, script-based, single-authored, “mainstream” plays ( - ). alan filewod argues that a theatre that could enact, codify, scrutinize and monumentalize the nation as a whole ( ) has only ever been “imagined” in canada ( ). of those plays that wasserman collects in his two-volume anthology, modern canadian plays, which are recognizably set in a specific place, many were created and first performed in a theatre near that place. the parallel with said’s orientalism has decided limits, as i mentioned. macleod was remembering her own years growing up on the west coast as she wrote (dafoe): macleod’s work was not in any simple or blameworthy respect an exoticizing projection. in her case, as indeed in any case where canadian writers or theatre artists represent places and characters in canada to other canadians, the sense of sharing a national culture and space limits the applicability of said’s theory—even when that sense of shared national culture is felt to be faint or suspicious. but since joan macleod was living in toronto when she wrote amigo’s blue guitar and , and since it was ontario theatre companies that first produced these plays, orientalism offers in some respects a nice analogy for canadian perceptions of nation-internal exoticism. one of said’s central arguments is that orientalist “knowledge” was an invention and product of the west, a set of home-grown ideas about the distant other that its proponents had to work hard to sustain against the contradictions apparent in lived cultural practice in eastern societies, whenever they actually traveled abroad (said , ). my notion of “discursive communities” here is largely based on linda hutcheon’s. hutcheon is interested in how ironists and their interpreters may share enough general cognitive and cultural territory to “make irony happen” ( ); according to her definition, the discursive communities we belong to are extended ( ) groups of people defined by their “complex configuration of shared knowledge, beliefs, values, and communicative strategies” ( ). even though “diversity and mobility will inevitably characterize that sharing,” since no two people ever have precisely the same knowledges and beliefs, and “even though the sharing will inevitably always be partial, incomplete, fragmentary; nevertheless, something does manage to get shared—enough” for them to share certain interpretations ( ) of certain texts, performances, or utterances. the discursive communities i consider, unlike those theorized by hutcheon, are specifically based on familiarity with places. these communities are imagined by the reader or theatre audience-member as sharing certain knowledge about, perspectives on, degrees of access to and/or intimacy with a certain place. they come to mind for individual readers or audience-members as groups of people to which they do or do not belong, because of the similarities or differences between their relationships with the setting of the text or the play. the theory of common ground that i draw upon in this dissertation is based on precisely this loose sense of “knowing.” herbert h. clark’s term “common ground,” and hence my own, “explicitly covers mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, mutual assumptions, and other mutual attitudes” ( ). clark and marshall elaborate: “which propositional attitude is appropriate—knowledge, belief, assumption, supposition, or even some other term—depends on the evidence [the person in question] possesses and other factors. for simplicity, we will use know as the general term, but we could replace it with believe or certain other terms without affecting our argument” ( ). one of the things i appreciate about this loose sense of “to know” is its allowance that one may hold wrong-headed and ignorant convictions, while believing them to be firmly grounded knowledge, as said’s discussion of orientalism importantly points out ( ). i draw this idea of remembered knowledge that is “compounded” with a memory of how one came to know it in part from clark and marshall’s discussion of how memory works as if from the cross-referenced pairing of a “diary and an encyclopedia” ( ). clark and marshall’s point is that we must cross-reference our store of knowledge (our encyclopedia entries) to a log (our diary) of the social circumstances in which we have gathered this knowledge, so that we can estimate whether or not an item from our encyclopedia is common ground shared with a particular person. if ann and bob once talked about a man in a red shirt, for example, bob’s encyclopedia entry for that man must be linked to the diary entry that tells him he spoke about him with ann, or else he will not later recall that this man is part of his common ground with ann (cf. clark and marshall ). i am not yet concerning myself here with this social dimension of our diary- tagging of remembered information, but eventually it will be important. i am thinking, for instance, of aparna dharwadker’s discussion of montreal’s teesri duniya theatre in her essay “diaspora and the theatre of the nation,” john clement ball’s reading of “transnational urbanism” in catherine bush’s novel the rules of engagement, which is set in toronto and london, england, jerry wasserman’s discussion of the set-in-vancouver play ali and ali and the axes of evil as “transnational agitprop,” emily johansen’s work on “‘territorialized cosmopolitan’ subjectivities” in dionne brand’s set-in-toronto novel, what we all long for (johansen ), and diana brydon, manina jones, jessica schagerl, and kristen warder’s focus on “transnational circuits of relation, as well as […] more localized constituencies” ( ) in their introduction to a collection of work on “poetics and public culture in canada.” all three of these terms—diaspora, transnationalism, cosmopolitanism—involve what robin cohen identifies as an aspect of globalization: “a deterritorialization of social identity challenging the hegemonizing nation-states’ claim to make an exclusive citizenship a defining focus of allegiance and fidelity in favour of overlapping, permeable and multiple forms of identification” ( , italics in original). they involve, in other words, complicated social identifications that stretch across space (and more specifically across national borders) rather than rooting in one single, bounded spot. while their spatial stretch means that, by comparison to being confined within national territory, these identifications are “deterretorialized,” there is ample room for considering diasporic, transnational, and cosmopolitan affiliations as nonetheless definitely involving relationships to places near and far. for instance: borrowing from paul gilroy, james clifford argues that diasporas are “alternate public spheres, forms of community consciousness and solidarity that maintain identifications outside the national time/space in order to live inside, with a difference” ( ); this outside/inside spatial arrangement might well take the form of there/here and involve imaginative connections to places near and far. kwame anthony appiah, likewise, theorizes cosmopolitanism in spatial terms of here and elsewhere, in order to avoid repeating the idea of “‘culture’ as the name of the gap between us here and them there” ( ). cosmopolitan reading, he argues, involves “we readers in our settings […] find[ing] many moments where we share with novels from different settings a sense that something has gone right or gone wrong,” for example ( ). these are not the same things, as currently theorized. but ball’s discussion of “transnationalism” in bush’s novel focuses on the central character’s coming into a greater engagement with “a sphere of worldly activity—of incipient realpolitik” (ball ). current theories of “cosmopolitanism” emphasize such ethical sympathies and political investments with people at a remove from one’s own situation as being foundational to a properly cosmopolitan sensibility (e.g. robbins ). susan bennett’s important book, theatre audiences: a theory of production and reception, includes in its second edition a discussion of “intercultural theatre” that offers an excellent theoretical foundation for thinking about how not only performance but also the audience’s “horizons of expectations” ( ) and “strategies of viewing” ( ) combine to mediate social relations between the (distant) culture out of which the performance emerges and the (local) culture where it is received. the expectations and strategies bennett discusses are equivalent to the knowledges, interpretive perspectives, and degrees of access and personal intimacy that characterize discursive communities of place. but bennett focuses on culture- specific ways of making sense of performance rather than place-knowledge per se: spatialized relations like ‘distant’ and ‘local’ are not a focus of her discussion. and she does not draw on examples from canadian theatre. some of the traveling plays dharwadker discusses also intend to engage “mainstream american audiences” ( ) as well as immigrant indians in the united states; they are “highbrow, élite, metropolitan, complex, [and…] an occasion for collective critical reflection on indian ideas” ( ). she maintains, nonetheless, that these remain “imports immersed in the culture of home, […] affirm[ing] the ‘indianness’ of audiences in the diaspora” ( ). mock does indicate that fraser takes care to gloss the canadian references for international readers of his script, and other commentators have observed that fraser’s plays are frequently re-set to the locations of their performance, as i mentioned earlier (cf. edwards and ivison ). meanwhile, mock suggests, the canadian references are legible even to audiences who cannot recognize their referents because, as specifically canadian indices, they serve as analogies for other sites of marginalization and are thus recognizable to those international communities. “[fraser] highlights the marginalisation of individuals by setting his plays in globalized canadian cities,” she writes ( - ). mock reinforces this point in her conclusion: “fraser’s characters are enacting the tensions between homogeneity and heterogeneity, the particular and the universal, the marginal and the dominant; in other words, the very confrontations at the heart of constructing both an anglo-canadian identity and a sense of place in the globalised world” ( ). glenn willmott’s argument that rural canada and its inhabitants might be seen as “living in an invisible city, with its modern modes of production and class-social structure” (qtd. in ivison and edwards ) is based in part on the modernizing effects that print genres, radio broadcasts and other media transmissions from the big cities has on rural subjectivities. if a do-it-yourself media culture is currently emerging with internet culture on the world wide web, where bloggers and youtube posters from anywhere may broadcast the events of their own lives for potentially international audiences, the most powerful media producers are still based in major cities. events taking place in cities like vancouver continue to be allotted disproportionate space in news media coverage, according to some rural perspectives, because the numbers of potential audience-members are so concentrated in such cities. see, for example, one reader’s comment on the canadian broadcasting corporation’s online coverage of a november, fire that destroyed several small businesses in central vancouver. difficultcurmudgeon wrote “an early morning fire in vancouver and we get a full report before i'm out of bed. on saturday and sunday, friday's bc news headlines stick around all weekend. […] a large fire in downtown vancouver is newsworthy. yes. it should be covered. but why is it the very top priority of all bc news, i wonder” (“story comments”). i owe my awareness of headhunter and this passage in particular to laurie ricou’s article on vancouver literature, “vancouver—rim of the park.” i say that anderson “implied” a link between the representation of capital-city geography in a novel and the designation of “we-filipino-readers” as an audience because i am conscious that this link introduces a slippage in anderson’s argument. anderson seems primarily to be arguing that novels were among the media that allowed readers to imagine a community analogous to a national one (anderson ; cf. also culler ). the secondary argument, which is clearly implied in the passage i am citing, is that recognizing their nation represented on the pages of a novel would allow readers to imagine themselves united with a national community of readers. jonathan culler has argued, and i agree, that this secondary argument is a weaker one ( , ) and that anderson is best valued by attending especially to the insights of his primary argument ( ). in citing anderson as influential, i am not forgetting that his argument about nation and novels have also been the subject of important critique (cf. bhabha - ; cf. also the implied warning in said’s “the novel as beginning intention” [ ]). i say so deliberately, conscious that with this generalization i may be repeating the same “erroneous conclusion” about ottawa’s literary status that steven artelle identifies in w. j. keith’s book literary images of ontario, which observes that “ottawa remains among ‘the smaller ontarian cities [that] have not for the most part attracted the sustained interest of literary artists’” (artelle ). artelle convincingly argues for a strong post-confederation literary culture in ottawa; perhaps it has indeed had a stronger history of interesting literary artists than the other cities i name. my point is that we make these conclusions, correctly or not: our respective maps of world literary settings and their prominence are affected by prejudice, the accidents of canonization, and our eclectic reading lists as much as by actual literary output. friends continue to ask me if there really is enough writing set in vancouver to base a dissertation on, and literary journalists (cf. chong, wiebe, marchand) continue to bemoan the lack of a vital literature set in certain canadian cities, despite its ever-accumulating quantity. chong’s complaint recalls to mind hugh maclennan’s rueful anecdote about the american publisher who suggested he set his books elsewhere than in canada, in order for them to be saleable. “a boy meets girl in paris, one thing leads to another and they—well, it’s interesting,” offered the publisher. “but a boy meets a girl in winnipeg and they swing into the same routine and who cares? […] for the american public you’ve got to see it’s a fact that winnipeg kills interest in the whole thing” (maclennan ). i am grateful to katja thieme for bringing this review to my attention. stylish clothing, as it turns out, and his own reflection (gibson ). as a science fiction novel set in the present time, spook country deliberately constructs for its readers an unfamiliar new perspective on a presumably recognizable reality. tito and the novel’s other spooks move about in recognizable everyday geographies, but they are involved in an underground culture that is ordinarily invisible to mainstream readers. the novel’s use of setting is an important part of its play on the recognizable world. seeing his home valley on television, filmed as if it were somewhere else, david mazel writes about the unnerving “realization that i was watching ‘my’ environment perform, that for perhaps millions of viewers it would have a greater reality as something other than itself” ( , his italics). in this group i would include malcolm lowry’s short story “the bravest boat,” which was first published in the united states and which, like spook country, addresses itself to an audience whose otherwise broad geographical knowledge stops short at the canadian border. this argument about lowry’s “the bravest boat” was the subject of a paper i presented at the malcolm lowry centennial conference at the university of british columbia. linguistic pragmatics is the discipline, within the philosophy, psychology, and history of language, which understands language to be meaningful only in the social contexts of its actual use by speakers and their audiences. to the pragmatics analyst, a sentence is not meaningful until it is uttered by a language user, and then its unique meaning is determined not by grammar and lexicon exclusively but rather by how these and other factors contribute to the whole utterance’s interaction with its context. some analysts focus on speakers’ intended meanings in context (e.g. clark, prince); others, like me, focus on audiences’ interpretive reception. clark and marshall, who defend the possibility of mutual knowledge, argue that people take certain kinds of evidence as guarantees of mutual knowledge, that checking this evidence can be done quickly enough to make real-time language processing possible ( ), and that people rely on assurance of mutual knowledge every time they (sincerely) make definite reference to something in conversation ( ). sperber and wilson ( ) and toolan ( ), argue that actual mutuality of knowledge is impossible to ensure. however, they too argue that communication relies on a kind of social contract of cooperation (which they call, respectively, a guarantee of relevance and a guarantee of orientedness to the other) and on people’s remarkable attunement to each other’s signals. notes for chapter one for example, janet giltrow’s analyses of the stylistics of narrative language in certain texts suggest that the “subjectivity” that registers in narrative language need not be assigned to any individual, personified figure (such as writer, narrator, or character). rather, she construes narrative language as a storytelling medium textured by the shifting (“mischief”), multiple (“democratic”), and social (“mischief,” “ironies”) qualities of its subjective style. she sees subjectivity unanchored from specific subjects in narrative language. giltrow demonstrates, for example, how narrative language may replicate ( ) polite ways of speaking that exert a social power to include or exclude (“ironies”), but she does not attribute these politeness moves to an (individual, personified) narrator-figure. where she does point to authors or narrators, her emphasis is on how they compose or “manage” narrative language “for the benefit of the addressee” (“mischief ), not on how they express themselves to particular addressees. likewise, when giltrow analyzes how narrative language “materialize[s] the flow of consciousness” ( ), she does not attribute this “consciousness” to an individual, experiencing subjectivity. giltrow’s approach to what she calls the “stylistics of subjectivity” (“democratic” ) offers me an excellent model of how to trace pragmatics dynamics in narrative language without forcing narrative language to conform to pragmatics models of a linguistic encounter between embodied, unitary, personified subjectivities. by “free indirect narration” i mean what has elsewhere been called “free indirect discourse,” a “free indirect style” (genette narrative ), or “represented speech and thought” (banfield ). it is narration in which a third-person character’s thoughts, feelings, expressive idiom, and physical and temporal orientation in the world (as represented by deictics such as here and now) are presented in the narrative language so immediately as to suggest that the character’s expressive language is being directly quoted, except that no quotation marks distinguish this discourse from the surrounding narration, the character continues to be referred to in the third person, and verb tenses are consistent with the temporal position from which the surrounding narration is spoken rather than consistent with the character’s experience. depending on how it manifests in the specific text, i read this narrative mode as a complicated layering of the narrator’s and the character’s subjectivities. the slim margin of difference retained between their subject positions by the pronouns and tense suggests that the narrator is empathetically or ironically representing the character’s subjectivity to his/her audience. i am not alone in observing that this is plausible. narratologist monika fludernick agrees with ann banfield that certain literary language is grammatically “unspeakable,” but she concedes that, nevertheless, readers interpret literary language using “schemes” and “scripts” of communication in particular contexts: “narrative ‘instances’ (narrators, narratees, etc.),” she writes, can “be regarded as a product of the reader’s interpretive strategies which are in turn determined by […] communicative scripts (for narratological discourse)” ( ). cf. also joan mulholland ( - ). as ellen prince explains, language is marked not only with large distinctions (like the difference of definiteness marked by the use of “the” instead of “a”) but also with fine gradations of familiarity. readers of written language, like listeners to spoken language, can distinguish whether writers or speakers assume that something is totally unknown (“brand new”) to their audiences, known but not yet “on the table” of their shared discourse (“unused”), or known because it has been implied or evoked by previous language by the surrounding situation (“inferable” or “textually/situationally evoked”) ( - ). one further distinction is that between inferables and what prince calls “containing inferables,” which are referred to in noun phrases that contain reference to the entity from which they may be inferred. a speaker who refers to something with a containing inferable has judged that the reference is not quite familiar enough to be identifiable without being clearly tied to the entity which makes it inferable, and offers her hearer a little extra help. “copresence” is clark and marshall’s answer to prince’s “evocation”. prince notes speakers’ assumptions that their addressees will recognize their referents as “evoked”—that is, already salient and stand-out—in the textual or situational context. clark and marshall theorize that speakers take an extra step. trying to assure themselves that their references are adequately worded to help their addressees recognize their referents, speakers calculate whether they and their addressees were mutually present together with the object of their reference: were they mutually aware of the object’s previous mention in the ongoing text of their conversation, and was that moment of mutual awareness recent enough and memorable enough to identify the new reference? are they mutually aware of the object’s presence in their physical situation? in this analysis, giltrow does not interpret the novel’s narrative language as projecting a fictional narrator addressing a specific audience. rather, she focuses on how these sets of expressions work symbolically as linguistic demonstrations of the social climate of the novel’s “very polite” genteel world ( ). and she discusses how the narrative language’s ostensive signals of tacit knowledge organize the reader’s experience: these polite expressions [constrain] readers, at their most extreme in the withholding of the wedding story [that is central to the plot], leaving readers with the unmistakable sensation of not knowing what edith did but having to go on as if they do know. ( ) giltrow is discussing readers’ knowledge as what they can know and/or infer about the world of the novel based on its own language. she discusses how readers consult “common knowledge,” about things like “travel,” to be able to infer for example that a cluster of references to a “brochure,” “tourists,” and “rates” implicitly indicate the setting to be a hotel. but these are not cases of narrative language referring to specific things (a specific vancouver hotel, for instance), hence making readers conscious that they know precisely the identity of the thing referred to. my project examines the latter sort of reference; hence i differentiate between implied audience and reader, where giltrow does not. bakhtin’s term addressivity also points to the inter-personal orientation of utterances. but while my approach to narrative language is deeply influenced by bakhtin, i do not use this term to analyze the social inflections of narrative language, for two reasons. the first is that, for bakhtin, “addressivity,” or the “quality of being directed to someone” (“problem” ), characterizes texts as whole utterances. generic and stylistic indices of addressivity must be interpreted together at the level of the whole text, especially since it is as wholes that literary texts enter into public circulation ( , ). addressivity is thus more useful for discussing how novels or short stories in their entirety greet particular audiences of readers than for characterizing a narrator’s particular address, especially since address often fluctuates along the narrative line of the text. my second reason for not using bakhtin’s term addressivity is that bakhtin is less obviously interested in the social, interpersonal qualities of the relationship between author and addressee (the intimacy, inclusiveness, attitude, extent of common ground, and differential power of this relationship) than the specifically linguistic intertextuality of the author’s utterance with other statements. bakhtin’s concept of dialogism, like addressivity, points to an author’s “orientation towards the listener and his [anticipated] answer” (“discourse” ). but dialogism is a feature of the word—the word’s quality of interwovenness with the utterances and anticipated responses of other speakers and writers ( )—not a feature of the social relationship between the author and his interlocutors. bakhtin’s discussion of dialogism in “discourse in the novel” might otherwise have usefully suggested a solution to my first problem with addressivity. since not only whole utterances but passages, phrases, and even individual words within the utterance may be remarked to be dialogic (cf. ), those individual words might also have been argued, by the same logic, to bear traces of addressivity. but bakhtin’s reasoning in “the problem of speech genres” is right, i think; addressivity—in the sense of a directedness to reading others—is better located at the interface between the whole text and the social world than in isolable details of the text. despite our differences, bakhtin’s addressivity remains the nearest term i have yet found to one that would indicate the quality of oriented-ness to another in narrative language. as j. douglas kneale points out, no term for address exists in classical rhetoric, since forensic rhetoric, which he claims the classical terms were designed to describe, is “intrinsically vocative” and was thus taken for granted as being addressed (kneale ). note that chafe’s argument, that knowledge of the train and the track cannot be shared with any addressee, implies that the addressees of narrative language do not share any knowledge with the speaker except that which they acquire through linguistic copresence. that is, addressees only “know” things that the speaker has already told them; since the reference to the train comes at the beginning of hemingway’s story, the addressees can have no prior knowledge of it. at least in theory it is possible, however, for narrative language to construct a scenario where speaker and addressee stand side-by-side, in physical copresence. if that were the case in the story chafe discusses, “the train” would be potentially well-known by the addressee despite its never having yet been spoken about; but then the story would have to be narrated in the present tense. (narrating about ongoing events to an audience copresent with the events is unusual in fiction; it is more common in authoritative sports commentary or animal documentaries, which offer informative glosses on scenes that may otherwise be difficult for the audience to parse.) and it happens frequently that speakers refer with proper nouns to elements of setting that have never yet been spoken of in the course of the story; in these cases, they seem to assume that their addressees share these elements of setting with them because of community membership. chafe only considers linguistic copresence because, unlike me, he is not interested in analyzing audience design for addressees other than the reader. “familiarity” and “identifiability” do not quite mean the same thing; in fact, chafe’s identifiability involves the dimension of sharedness that prince wants to set aside and that i contrarily add back into her analytical vocabulary. an “identifiable” referent is one that, among other things, a speaker’s assumes “to be already shared” by speaker and listener. but identifiability could be roughly equated to familiarity: prince writes of speakers’ assumption that a specific referent will be “familiar to the hearer” (prince - ), and chafe of speakers’ assumption that the listener will be able to “identify” that specific referent (chafe ) (on the basis, chafe adds, of it not only being (a) shared with the speaker, but also (b) “verbalized in a sufficiently identifying way,” and (c) “contextually salient” [ ]). chafe also discusses “reader-oriented narration,” where the speaker’s references are pitched according to the readers’ familiarity with the referents according to their linguistic copresence with the ongoing narration. he notes moments in the hemingway story where the speaker interrupts his protagonist- orientation, in a move to accommodate readers. hemingway’s speaker suddenly opts to use indefinite references to refer to storyworld objects that the protagonist is already be familiar with, when he introduces to the story a surprising object that readers might have found disorienting, if the narrative hadn’t acknowledge its newness to them. chafe comments that even when an author has established a narrative representation of a protagonist’s consciousness, the author “does not, or need not, consistently follow a purely protagonist-oriented strategy.” he may shift to “an alternative strategy,” which is “concerned with identifiability for the unacknowledged reader” ( ). “writers,” chafe concludes, “have creative license in the manner in which they choose to balance these two alternatives” ( ). cordelia haunts elaine throughout the novel, and elaine looks for her everywhere in toronto. although at one point ( ) elaine apostrophizes cordelia, turning from self-address to address her absent, long-lost nemesis and friend, elaine tends to speak about her rather than to her. secret-keeping is rare for this speaker, but it occasionally punctuates her otherwise explanatory style, suggesting a latent power to exclude as well as establishing suspense. (suspense-building, like narrating generally, is social!) very early in the novel she hints uninformatively, “i am a believer in […] sensible names for children, because look what happened to cordelia” ( ). this phrase, “because look what happened…,” presupposes tacit knowledge which no addressee could yet in fact know, if he were relying for her information on what elaine has told her so far. if he were relying instead on community membership with elaine—mutual membership in the community who knows what happened to cordelia, in the case of this reference—he would be an inappropriate addressee, already knowing the story’s punch line. moments like these emphasize the novel’s portrait of girls who spellbind and control each other by speaking—by powerfully withholding information from each other, by confidentially disclosing select information as secrets, by taunting, or by performing authoritative roles. “subtext” is a rather loose way of explaining the social dynamics of utterances which are directly addressed to some but not all of the audiences involved. there is no actual “text” to such subtexts; putting the social force of utterances into a verbal form is simply an easy way for me to illustrate it in this written paper. a more traditional way of specifying the social force that utterances may have for side-participants is to use “speech act” terminology, and describe my “subtexts” in terms of “indirect illocutionary acts,” as clark and carlson do ( ). (indirect illocutionary acts are indirect because they act towards the side- participants rather than the direct addressees, and they are illocutionary acts because speakers accomplished them by making their utterances.) however, unlike clark and carlson’s examples, which are of indirect informing, requesting, and accusing ( - ), it is sometimes difficult to describe adequately the complicated indirect social force of an utterance using a vocabulary of speech acts. i hope that “subtext” is a suggestive interpretive tool, despite its imprecision. giltrow and stouck’s “the mischief of language in swamp angel” argues that the shifting, mischievous narrative style of ethel wilson’s novel creates, for its readers, an experience of the “precariousness of knowledge” and the fault-lines of authority that the novel reveals to be part of a modern, postcolonial epistemology ( ). giltrow and stouck highlight the shock that readers feel when a narrator, who has been adeptly accommodating and acknowledging their knowledge of the storyworld, suddenly betrays their confidence and—by saying something unexpected or assuming knowledge they do not in fact have— speaks as if to someone else. giltrow and stouck’s analysis indicates that readers’ experiences of relationship to the text are sharpest precisely where they are shunted unexpectedly from knowingness to uncertainty. in my terms, that is, they are sharpest when they meet the edge of the “circle” of mutuality. i read timothy taylor’s stanley park my first year in vancouver, shortly after the novel’s publication and just as i was learning the names of streets in my new city’s downtown. reading it gave me a special sense of contact with another person’s imaginative version of the city, and the novel’s version coloured my own emerging city map. taylor’s language wove itself into my reading context. eventually, i was reminded of how completely timothy taylor and i remained strangers to each other when i spied him walking his dog through a park nearby my home. but the novel had invited me to share some ground with the segment of his language and creative vision that wrote the novel, and although that language and creative vision is marshaled by a fictional speaker in the novel i continued to loosely identify the speaker with taylor. using the words “social action” here, i am stepping somewhat outside of linguistics pragmatics to greet new rhetorical theories of genre. “social action” is carolyn r. miller’s term for the move that an utterance makes—a move that its recipients will recognize if they perceive it as fitting into a particular genre. genres are types of social action (miller ). i expect that a genre analysis of the types of social action literary texts and plays achieve by recognizably handling their references to real-world settings in particular ways would be an illuminating extension of the research i do in this dissertation. this excerpt is in fact spoken from naomi’s childhood perspective. as a child she lived in the marpole house; she can no longer recall it without the pain of loss. but she is shifting out of that childhood perspective at precisely this moment in the narration, because of the pain. hence i interpret the explanatory gloss (“a comfortable residential neighbourhood”) as appended by her adult narration, despite that the tense markers still index the telling to the time of her childhood. bakhtin identified this kind of dialogic incorporation of and response to contemporary public statements as being the defining characteristic of the novel as a unique literary genre (“epic” - , ; “discourse” ). these reference points are treated as “given” information, and used to elaborate and identify other more specific place-references. some of the other references are also phrase as givens, but their givenness is assumed to stem not from an intimate knowledge of vancouver but from other more general kinds of world knowledge. for example, in the reference “the exhibition grounds called hastings park in vancouver,” the definite article indicates that kogawa is designing her language for an audience for whom these exhibition grounds are not an unknown. however, the modifying phrase “called hastings park in vancouver” suggests that the identity of “the exhibition grounds” is designed to be inferable based on a general familiarity with large cities—they tend to have exhibition grounds—rather than already familiar from prior knowledge of these particular grounds. similarly, if kogawa were designing her language for an audience who knows vancouver well, she might have simply written “the interior,” rather than adding the modifying phrase “of the province.” notes for chapter two the definite references that i identify, using ellen prince’s taxonomy, as “inferable” phrasings include “the park of the seaport,” “the giant trees,” and “everyone.” these references fall into what i described in chapter one as a special category of inferables characteristically used in fiction: they treat items that the audience could not actually have encountered yet as given information, as if confident that the audience will be able to “infer” the existence of those items by imaginatively supplying them. by beginning with these inferables, the narrator of “the bravest boat” plunges his audience into a vancouver scene that is essentially unknown to that audience—as the general pattern of his references to the details of the scene eventually reveals. predominantly, he refers his audience to objects that are at the focus of his narrative perspective as if these objects were all new to his audience: he uses indefinite references to introduce “a constellation of seven noble red cedars,” “a butcher,” and “a shop window,” for instance. early inferables, such as “the park of the seaport,” imply that he assumes his audience will be able to imaginatively accommodate the sudden appearance of the story’s topography—he trusts their general sense of what parks and seaports look like—but perhaps also that he wants them to sense their own disorientation in this place. lost lagoon is a real landmark in vancouver’s stanley park. like references to san francisco and rio de janeiro, the narrator’s reference to it points to a real place, for those readers who recognize it, as much as it points to a landmark in of lowry’s fictional enochvilleport. strictly speaking, lowry’s decision to explicitly fictionalize his vancouver prevents readers who would recognize the city from feeling the social effects of their comparative familiarity with it. but lowry’s enochvilleport is very clearly based on his close observation of vancouver, and his gaspool is obviously a stand-in for gastown. along with references like the one to lost lagoon, which tether his explicitly fictional city firmly to the really existing one, i suggest that this story’s clear basis in the author’s relationship to the real city invites readers who recognize vancouver in it to feel the social effects of their lives’ overlap with lowry’s. a reader’s potential identification of enochvilleport with lowry’s experience of vancouver, and hence her potential impulse to compare her own vancouver with lowry’s by way of her reading of “the bravest boat,” would be supported as well by the story’s intertextual links with other lowry stories. in “ghostkeeper,” for example, another affectionate husband and wife couple takes a blustery springtime walk around the city park, and in this story the park is specifically located in the real world: it is “stanley park, in vancouver, british columbia” ( ). “ghostkeeper” also links the characters and the narration of the story quite directly to lowry’s own life, as the narrator addresses a “margie dear,” presumably a version of lowry’s wife margerie, telling her that the wife character in the story must be dressed in an outfit of margie’s ( ). for readers who know about lowry’s years spent living with margerie in a sea-side shack down and across the inlet from vancouver, those biographical details might suggest that the author’s deep feelings about the city and its surrounds make their way detectably into the narrator’s perspective when the narrator comments that “nearly the only human dwellings visible on this side of the water that had any air of belonging, or in which their inhabitants could be said any longer to participate were, paradoxically, a few lonely little self-built shacks and floathouses, that might have been driven out of the city altogether, down to the water’s edge into the sea itself […] and all standing, even the most somber, with their fluted tin chimneys smoking here and there like toy tramp steamers, as though in defiance of the town, before eternity” (“boat” ). ethel wilson plays with this quality of removal from the known world when she begins a new chapter in the innocent traveller with “once upon a time there was a negro who lived in vancouver and his name was joe fortes” ( ). joe fortes really lived in vancouver and is remembered as a minor local celebrity; wilson uses the fiction formula once upon a time to conjure up a new idea in the mind of her distant, unknowing readers, as well as to parody the buoyantly superficial and fanciful mind of her innocent protagonist, topaz edgeworth. graham huggan’s work on mapping and narration in canadian and australian fiction reminds me that, as city building stakes out its claims for the authority of its storyteller and the social value of its represented space, it “brings with it obvious opportunities for political manipulation,” just as maps do ( ). lowry, wilson, and taylor control how vancouver and its diverse population are represented in their stories, admitting their implied audiences access to (their fictional versions of) the city only by way of their own selective, political perspectives on it. these perspectives may be subject to political critique. indeed, arnold itwaru has critiqued wilson’s depiction of chinese canadians living in vancouver, arguing that their portrayal in innocent traveller naturalizes their position as servants and as racial types ( ), thus exerting a “conformist authoritarian” control over them ( ). (in response to itwaru, giltrow and stouck have argued that in swamp angel the narrator’s style undermines her own authority and the presumption of knowing narrative control, foregrounding the sense of “both knowing and not knowing the other” [ ].) burke cullen and w. h. new have discussed the passage in swamp angel where maggie examines a map of british columbia in terms that complement huggan’s. both focus on the map as taking part in a system of imaginative control over landscape, but as exposing the limits of that system as well (cullen - , new land sliding ) admittedly, storytelling always begins with an assumption of some sort of common ground (cf. clark and brennan [ - ] on how speakers cannot simply “send” their messages without taking account of their relationship to their audience and the mutual knowledge they possess together). but in the simplest case of “fiction” storytelling this ground is not literally a physical ground, a setting shared by narrator and audience—especially when the storytelling is written and destined for print publication and widespread commercial distribution, in which case the audience might be from anywhere. (chafe points out that the social and cognitive basis of storytelling is imaginative displacement of attention from the physical place in which speaker and hearer are co-present together into another place and time remembered or imagined by the speaker. written narrative language reflects this basis in its widespread use of a telling pattern he calls “displaced immediacy” [ ].) someone once suggested to me at a conference that perhaps vancouver remains unknown enough as a setting for fiction to be a special case. possibly those readers who do recognize vancouver landmarks as places with which they themselves have some sort of lived relationship find the experience of reading fiction set here so remarkable that they may interpret the narrative voice as especially addressed to a local audience when, if it were set elsewhere, they would not notice nearly the same specialization of address. influential theories of the rhetoric of fiction and of reader response conceive of the primary audience of a written narrative as an anonymous, un-locatable reader, although they acknowledge that the generalized reader assumed by the text is necessarily different from any specific individual reader. cf. booth, iser, rabinowitz. this experience of disconnection from one’s fellow citizens has been argued to be the result of certain characteristics of urban space and the street culture that accommodates them. the sheer size of an urban population reminds you that you cannot know everyone, and the necessity of sharing public spaces of commerce, leisure, and transit with strangers reminds you that in fact you know barely anyone. in the conscience of the eye: the design and social life of cities, richard sennett laments, as well, the phenomenon that georg simmel influentially identified in “the metropolis and mental life”: that modern urban citizens seek to protect themselves from exposure to the potentially painful provocation of people different from themselves. sennett argues that urban plans based on a grid pattern, which presuppose that city space could expand outward indefinitely, “neutralize” urban space, evacuating it of any power to organize the social lives of people moving through it and to bring them into engaged social contact with one another. “as they confronted these texts,” henkin writes, “city dwellers became public subjects stripped of their particular identities” ( ). this was true as well of readers of published texts more generally, newspapers and novels included. but the street reader of signs was, importantly, situated in a specific location while reading (henkin )—a situation that would make him or her aware of the locatedness of this community membership, i would argue. because these signs might be written and read by anyone who passed by, henkin argues that “city readers were subjects in a far more inclusive and democratic public” than the “public sphere” imagined by habermas, a public group “in which remarkable numbers of ordinary people consumed and composed written messages in the public space of the metropolis […] a broader-based, more boisterous, and more populous public centred in the streets” ( ). while reading for this chapter, i compiled a rough database of references in fiction to parts of vancouver. of all the parts of vancouver to be treated as if they were to some degree known to the audience—that is, as if they were already evoked or inferable, if not unused, in prince’s taxonomy (cf. chapter )—here are those that turned up most frequently, in ranked order. the top five are part of what i have called the view horseshoe: stanley park; burrard inlet; the lion’s gate bridge; the mountains; english bay; granville street; chinatown; false creek; ubc (usually as “the university”); main street. in sperber and wilson’s terms, this sense of personal relevance might be explained as follows: narrators assume that the terrain they are treating as common ground is a cognitive environment that is mutually manifest to themselves and their audience. a story that makes changes to or offers new information about their cognitive environment will be compelling (and comprehensible) to their audience because it is relevant to them. vancouver’s main street is over eighty blocks long, and runs through chinatown as well as a variety of other neighbourhoods. the punjabi market spans a few blocks’ length around th avenue. kush valley sweets does not exist on vancouver’s main street anymore, if it ever did. whereas it is real to the narrator and audience, readers who seek to recognize themselves as sharing ground with these personae are forced to confront the indirectness of fiction as a medium of place-sharing. most of aubrey’s references to specific streets, like the reference to nelson in this quotation, treat them as unused information—that is, as well known (cf. chapter ). but he gives the merest of orienting explanations for richards street at the start of his narrative, opening with “richards street in downtown vancouver is pretty interesting or pretty boring, depending on your point of view” ( ). this opening takes recognition of vancouver for granted, while anchoring richards street in the city’s downtown for aubrey’s audience. given the rest of the story’s casual assumptions of local knowledge, however, i read even this introductory gesture as claiming richards as common ground—if ground at first somewhat outside of the audience’s immediate purview. according to a wikipedia entry on high school football championship winners in the s- s, “king edward high school no longer exists and was demolished to make room for the expansion of vancouver general hospital. the school was located on th avenue and oak street in vancouver, bc, from to .” jook-liang is more discreet than her brothers about the relevance of her stories to her audience, quietly assuming its relevance in references to mutually known places instead of explicitly claiming it. jung-sum occasionally breaks into a colloquial, oral narrative style, one which emphasizes the inter-personal sociality of his address, as he recounts an intimate story of his own budding gay sexuality. he is personable: “some of my friends got to meet him, too, but frank tended to have a temper and a mixed-up kind of english and chinese, so that there were misunderstandings, i guess” ( , my emphasis). sek-lung, the youngest of the narrators and the one most assimilated into an english-speaking world, addresses his audience directly, locating them in the vancouver he knows. speaking of his wind-chimes his grandmama used to make (not being master of chinese terms of relationship, sek-lung refers to their poh-poh as grandmama), he says, “hers were not ordinary, carelessly made chimes, such as those you now find in our chinatown stores, whose rattling noises drive you mad” ( ). later he describes a blue notebook meiying gives him by saying that it is “the kind you can still buy at the five and dime” ( ). gender, relative age, and degree of assimilation seem to inform the different degrees of these characters’ forthrightness: if, as i conclude, the jade peony’s narrators address an apparently non-chinese audience, or at least an audience which does not know the history of life in chinatown, it is perhaps fitting that sek-lung’s gestures of address are most overt. in their recollections of their neighbourhood, the children indicate that people of a variety of ethnicities lived together in chinatown. their neighbours in the “damp shacks” jook-liang described, whom she imagined struggling for survival alongside her own family, were jewish, polish and italian as well as chinese ( ). and sek-lung’s classmates at strathcona elementary were, in his words, “an unruly, untidy mixed bunch of immigrants and displaced persons” ( ) whose “dialects and accents conflicted” and “skin colours and backgrounds clashed” outside the classroom, although their scots-canadian teacher united them as new canadians inside it ( ). while the jade peony’s narrators’ chinatown was not a racially homogenous neighbourhood, though, it was uniformly a neighbourhood of immigrants and immigrants’ children—people who felt that their degree of belonging to an english-speaking, white canada (in vancouver) was painfully in question. these narrators frame the world outside of chinatown as being the rest of canada, not just the rest of vancouver. whether chinatown and its inhabitants were properly considered part of canada or not was a matter of debate between jook-liang and her immigrant grandmother ( , ). interestingly, a similar stylistics of deliberately, generously padding otherwise knowledge-presuming proper nouns turns up in the oral histories transcribed in a project called opening doors: vancouver’s east end. in the late s, daphne marlatt and carol itter, two young, white artists and writers who lived in the area, collected life stories and neighbourhood histories as told by residents of strathcona, the mostly low-income, immigrant, downtown vancouver neighbourhood that subsumes chinatown and the downtown eastside. the edited interview transcripts published in opening doors show frequent examples of speakers using full, formal proper nouns introduced by definite articles when referencing landmarks that, i presume, they were not sure their interviewers would recognize. these novels extend the jade peony’s map of known territory even further, however, stretching it— however thinly—southward to shaughnessy in both novels, substantially westward to point grey and kerrisdale in disappearing moon café, and deep into the west end of downtown vancouver in the end of east. the larger size of the territory assumed known in these novels owes to the narrators’ accounts of their contemporary experiences of vancouver in the s and s: their narrators kae and sammy are the grandchildren of immigrants and apparently experience greater comfort, moving around vancouver, than the jade peony’s second-generation children. in the end of east, sammy’s grandfather does not dare to enter stanley park, “where he stands and stares at the white families strolling along the water” ( ); her father plunges into it but is soon pushed out by racist white people ( ); but sammy walks comfortably along the stanley park seawall, which she likes because it makes her forget her east vancouver roots ( ). park royal, which stands at the commercial hub of west vancouver, on a prominent corner of the highway leading through the conjoined suburb cities from downtown vancouver proper, is a recurrent feature of the common grounds assumed by almost every fictional narrative set in north-shore vancouver— many of which were written by coupland. douglas coupland’s conception of vancouver consistently extends the city southwards across the american border. “bellingham & the border” gets a page’s worth of attention in coupland’s non-fiction introduction to vancouver, city of glass, as a twice-yearly shopping destination for “vancouver mothers” ( ). knowledge of a rather different trade route makes vancouver’s harbour part of a regional common ground that includes points along the juan de fuca strait and the american seaboard in bertrand w. sinclair’s story “the golden fleece.” the shipping-minded narrator in this story assumes that the marquesas, the aleutian archipelago, the california coast and ensenada, mexico are all common ground along with vancouver’s coal harbour, burrard inlet, brockton point, narrows, point atkinson, and capilano mountain range. daphne marlatt’s writer-narrator figure in ana historic also looks down at vancouver from a north vancouver household. she looks down “from the frame [of] her bedroom window, past the dark conifers at night, the quiet blocks of houses closed for sleep, dreaming [her] future overtown in lights, city-brilliant across the harbour” ( - ). from there she imagines the mental life and perspective of a historical vancouver resident, mrs. richards, who herself looks up across early industrial vancouver at the mountains ( ). marlatt’s text, however, is so much more concerned with the processes of writing and imagining history than coupland’s, so much more private in address, and so much less interested in specific north vancouver locations for their own names’ sake, that her use of a north shore perspective on the city is not as remarkable as coupland’s for the purposes of my discussion. meanwhile, the list of fictions whose narrators or characters look up across the inlet at the mountains from vancouver proper includes, for a start, bertrand sinclair’s “the golden fleece,” all of ethel wilson’s vancouver fictions, disappearing moon café, the jade peony, lee maracle’s “polka partners,” the end of east, and zsuzsi gartner’s “city of my dreams.” in their ability to see s-era vancouver as embryo-new, innocent, and full of potential for peace, coupland’s narrators betray their own privilege and—i would argue—their white, middle-class naïveté. no vancouverite who identified him or herself with aboriginal or otherwise racialized and marginalized local populations could so easily frame the city as innocently dreaming of peace. as the jade peony attests, long before the s (indeed, from the first moments of its colonial birth), vancouver had already established its capacity for “civil” violence. meanwhile, and not incidentally, the narrators betray their own suburban peripheral position with respect to the city centre: the city’s darkness is invisible behind its twinkling lights from the perspective of their distant mountain slopes. in thinking here of texture, i am influenced by eve kosofsky sedgewick’s work, which defines texture as a level of organization just below the level of structure ( ) and, more importantly, an intrinsically interactive sensual property; she uses texture to think about relationality in a way that attends to the density, sensuality, and ongoing historical specificity of relations between bodies—and between bodies and things ( - ). as i have noted, robert alter maintains throughout imagined cities that “the notion of an urban community with a coherent collective purpose dissolves” ( ) in the canonical urban novels he discusses. of charles dickens’s writing, he does allow that “the coziness and cheeriness of the dickensian world are quite genuine, and he [dickens] continues to imagine in novel after novel a small sustaining community of the kindhearted within the urban wasteland” ( ). but, he implies, dickens’s characters experience london as a place where there are definite edges to the small worlds of common ground: “one should also note that his representation of human solidarity characteristically sequesters in protected little enclaves within the larger urban scene” ( ). for example, one argument against the gentrification of vancouver’s downtown eastside is that many residents say they would not feel comfortable living either in a spruced-up version of the neighbourhood or in any other part of vancouver, either. although many of the neighbourhood’s affordable housing options have not been properly and humanely maintained, quality of life is, in one respect, better there for some of the residents than it would be in upper-middle-class neighbourhoods like kerrisdale or kitsilano: at least as part of the caring and unpretentious community of the existing downtown eastside, they can live among others who share their struggles with poverty and marginalization (wendy pedersen and jean swanson, gentrification walking tour, heart of the city festival, nov , ). indeed, the first outcome can be given an even more strongly negative cast. as analysts such as michael bennett argue, powerful mainstream society can build walls around others, as well as themselves: discrimination has lead to a “spatialization of race” in american cities, constructing the “overwhelming social barriers” segregating racialized and impoverished city-dwellers in inner-city “ghettos” ( - ). as for the second outcome, georg simmel influentially argued that city-dwellers’ indifference to others was a necessary coping strategy in the face of an overwhelmingly various and populated urban world ( ). but many analysts have lamented this indifference as a sign of social breakdown and a medium of marginalization (cf. sennett’s search for a way to arouse conscience [ ] and sympathy [ ] among strangers). considering tim cresswell’s arguments in in place/out of place about the power dynamics deciding rights to space, and nicholas blomley’s arguments in unsettling the city about conceptions of public and private property, i might alternatively have decided on my list of especially public spaces by reviewing parts of the city where homeless people stake themselves out, temporarily, to solicit donations. in vancouver, closed-roof shopping centres have not been managed as public spaces, in this sense. in cresswell’s discussion of homelessness, in fact, he makes a slightly different point. he recounts a new york city mayor’s efforts to prevent homeless people from sleeping, defecating, or staking out shelter in public spaces such as “parks like tompkin’s square, […] the sidewalks of fifth avenue, and […] the floor of grand central station” ( ). these behaviours, cresswell points out, were considered private acts and therefore inappropriate in public spaces. (implicit in cresswell’s argument, too, is the argument that homeless people are themselves considered inappropriate in places like fifth avenue or grand central station because they are not successful participants in a capitalist civil system.) while cresswell’s specific example reminds me that homeless people are often expelled from precisely the kinds of places that i am listing as relatively “public,” his argument in general supports my assertion that especially “public” places might be identified by the presence of homeless people in vancouver. their presence is only barely and briefly tolerated in these places, but it is definitely not tolerated elsewhere. the dominant ideology in our society, and its powers of enforcement, would hustle a panhandler out of a private bedroom, a quiet residential street, or a park in an exclusive neighbourhood much more quickly than they would urge him away from the curb of a downtown boulevard. the homeless are never comfortably “in place,” in cresswell’s sense, but we consider them more in place in more public spaces than more private ones.— while pursuing indices of publicness, i am of course primarily aiming for a theory of the qualities that would prompt city-dwellers to imagine a particular feature or space within the city as widely shared. the barely-tolerated presence of homeless people offers only a slippery index of likely-shared ground, i acknowledge, because they live on the margins of mainstream society. but common ground, as i am theorizing it, may at its limits be experienced precisely as a spatialized encounter with one radically other than oneself, with whom one admits no other social bond. as readers who know vancouver well have pointed out to me, this narrator and his audience’s relation to the street name “belmont” is odd: this street, apparently so comfortably known to them by name, is a small, residential side street, not likely to be well known by residents who live at some distance from it. here bowering rather freely employs the gesture of local referencing, incorporating into the story’s circle of narrative address the social texture that comes with common ground, without bothering to make the references themselves persuasively accurate to his vancouver readers’ experience of the city. the oddity of this detail would be inaccessible to a reader who does not know vancouver, i presume; for me, it feels like a signal that bowering is not interested in cultivating a special place for bystanding vancouverite readers. the truncated noun phrase (“the market” for “granville island public market”) is an effectively precise reference, despite its semantic minimalism, precisely because it conveys a strong expression of the narrator’s certainty that the landmarks are mutually shared. the short noun phrase implies that this market is the only market the speaker could possibly mean, because it is the only one so thoroughly mutually shared as to be referred to by a short form by this narrator to this audience. chafe argues that a referent is judged “identifiable” if it is ) shared by speaker and listener, ) “verbalized in a sufficiently identifying way,” and ) salient in the context of speech ( ). clark and marshall would add that the speaker and listener’s common ground is crucially important to what can be judged identifiable: even if a referent is shared in effect, speaker and listener cannot treat it as shared unless they have mutual assurance of this sharedness ( ). the particular relationship between speaker and listener is an important factor in determining identifiability, then: in one circle of address, “the market” might not be sufficiently verbal; in another, anything more verbose would be a confusing (or rude) denial of how very mutually known that particular market is. in , vancouver readers would have known fairview as a place that had gone through a period of “dramatic change” in recent decades (city of vancouver). “from the early s to the early s, fairview slopes was zoned for storey apartments,” reports the city’s website, and one character in sky lee’s disappearing moon café reports that during the s it was “a white, working-class neighbourhood,” to which one young couple moves to escape chinatown ( ). but during the s the neighbourhood underwent substantial city planning and was rezoned for residential and commercial use, on its eventual way to becoming the dense middle class neighbourhood of today. meanwhile, during the s the city began redeveloping granville island, and the public market that is re-envisioned in gibson’s “the winter market” opened in , “soon followed by the maritime market, emily carr college of art, theatres, artists’ studios, craft galleries and restaurants” (city of vancouver). so gibson’s short story was written in the wake of changes to the area that refreshed its residential landscape, retaining density and planning for “a social mix that reflected the city’s income and social composition” (city of vancouver)—changes that also introduced to it an emphasis on professional studio arts. the urban density and arts practice in fairview circa were thus newly visible elements of the neighbourhood, and might have offered vancouverite readers of gibson’s story a way of seeing how, in an eventual future, the neighbourhood could become an “arty-slum tumble.” interestingly, saul assumes at least as intimate a knowledge of the city of toronto, on the part of his audience, as of vancouver. he expects that his audience will immediately recognize and relate to the major toronto streets yonge, gerrard, and avenue road, and to the toronto neighbourhood yorkville. it is difficult to say whether this means that, in practice, chong imagines that a cosmopolitan audience would recognize major canadian city neighbourhoods, despite his theory of vancouver’s smallness, or whether it means that as first-time novelist he resigned himself to writing for a (less than cosmopolitan?) broadly canadian audience. meanwhile, william gibson says that his own relationship to vancouver—and to fiction-writing—also affected his willingness to set fiction in vancouver, but in his case it made him reluctant to do so (weibe d ). perhaps because the address in each case is structured as a novel or short story, i have not found examples that address themselves across nearer, narrower gaps, such as a city boundary-line for example. fiction-telling for public circulation may depend on a sense of mass audience, thus making an address to people in the fields or hills beyond the city less likely than an address to people in centres elsewhere. neighbourhood has been one focus of analysts’ discussions of located urban social relationships. avery m. guest and susan k. wierzbicki begin their article on “social ties at the neighbourhood level” with the statement, “the degree of social interaction among neighbours is a key indicator of the strength of localized communities in urban society” ( ). but guest and wierzbicki find that while the strength of neighbourhood social ties is not declining over time as speedily as some theorists have predicted, and while neighbourhood-based social ties remain important for certain demographics, there is nevertheless indeed an overall decline ( ) in the kinds of neighbourly relations that might have exemplified relationships of common ground. they point out that this decline is readily understood as happening because “developments in high-speed motor transportation and indirect electronic communications have enhanced the possibility of social ties over long distances” ( ). giltrow and stouck, who note that the narrator of swamp angel addresses herself with local authority to an audience who is “unfamiliar” ( ) with vancouver (and the rest of british columbia), consider the possibility that the narration of this novel is motivated by a colonial concern to refresh england’s imperial awareness of these places. the speaker is motivated to seize readers’ attention on behalf of hope, and vancouver itself, places liable to slip into oblivion, so far are they from the centre […] this may be a colonial motivation, one sensitive to the limits of the metropolitan scope, suspecting that the village and even the small city have slipped beyond its range, or that the scope itself has shrunk, with the disappearance of the empire and its intelligence of its peripheries. ( ) giltrow and stouck also note that the disrupted, uncertain flow of narratorial consciousness expresses a “colonial experience” in its record of “the shock of not-knowing—a decentring on a smaller scale, amongst the materials of self and other” ( - ). further, they identify a shift toward “postcolonial” expression ( ) in the narrator’s undermining of her audience’s certainty, arguing that each change of [narratorial] focal length shocks the presumption that the world is managed and contained—the kind of presumption prevailing amidst a small colonial elite, a class thoroughly indemnified in its isolation, yet paradoxically undone as well in that remoteness from the imperial centre. ( ) according to david stouck in ethel wilson: a critical biography, wilson’s actual reading audiences were certainly less narrowly circumscribed than the implied audience i identify. her novels and short stories were published in canada and the united states, as well as england. they were translated into european languages and reviewed in india. stouck records that wilson regarded a positive review in the times of india as “reveal[ing] a common humanity” ( )—a globe- (or at least commonwealth- ) -wide cultural community, not a strictly english one. and he reports that she abhorred calculated novelistic addresses to a particular audience, quoting her as saying, in response to arguments for a particularly national address, “i feel very strongly that the writing of canadians should and must be canadian in aspect, but not deliberately so, with a dreadful conscious eye on the potential reader, canadian or otherwise” ( ). but stouck also notes that wilson was especially excited when her writing was well received “at home,” in england ( ). “wilson,” he writes, “began to feel increasingly that her real audience was in england, where an appreciation of language and style was so much stronger than in north america” ( ). another example of wilson’s precision, in setting her characters’ consciousness and experiences in specifically vancouver landscapes, is in “the window.” the window in question, which is mr. willy’s “emancipation” from the staid, trivial society of his wife in england ( ), which reveals his vancouver guests as participant in the same trivial society he had tried to abandon, and which is his own spiritual testing-point, looks out onto a specifically vancouver view. the mountains that appear to mr. willy beautiful, wild, and empty of people, and the sparkling extension of the city on the north shore, visible at a distance from his waterfront home in kitsilano, are visible to him because of vancouver’s location and topography. the demand for a view of precisely this landscape has shaped vancouver’s built environment, berelowitz argues, skewing the shape of skyscrapers and orienting residence and office windows north, like mr. willy’s, against the southward-facing preferences more typical to buildings in the northern hemisphere ( - ). i am using the terms “colony” and “frontier” loosely, for the canada that ethel wilson’s narrators speak about had become a nation by the time of their narration, and most of the characters in her stories experience vancouver as a “quickly growing city” (“window” ). in swamp angel the expanding city is a centre in its own right, and maggie travels outward from its capitol hill (angel ), into the blank, wild spaces on its maps ( ) and into a back-country “hinterland” ( ) perhaps more accurately described as frontier-like. indeed, giltrow and stouck observe a “postcolonial” consciousness (giltrow and stouck ) articulating the narration in this novel, and they distinguish this mentality from the colonial one ( - ). but the innocent traveller, which was wilson’s second novel and the one with the strongest autobiographical echoes suggesting her own family’s experience of arrival in vancouver, brings characters to canada from england. upon their arrival in “the west” (innocent ), vancouver seems to them a “new little frontier town” ( ). for these characters, even a love of their adopted home does not displace a devotion to the english royal family, and they continue faithful correspondence across the “six thousand miles” dividing them from their friends in europe ( ). the narrator, moreover, offers her audience an early image of vancouver that aligns its discovery and literate civilization with the birth and colonizing arrival of her central character, topaz. when topaz is growing up in an english boarding school, the narrator tells them that “the wind was blowing, too, among the great undiscovered pine trees in the yet unnamed place far away where some day topaz edgeworth would live and die. in this place topaz would some day write and receive many letters, but no one could yet send letters there. this place was still silent and almost unknown” ( - ). david whitson, whose account of canada’s position “at the periphery of the centre” i cited in my introduction, argues that the organizing committees of major sporting events need to convince citizens of the proposed host city to see their city differently—to see it as a player on the world stage—as part of their wider project of re-framing the site for international attention ( - ). whitson’s account suggests, then, that local and international perceptions of a given setting are reciprocally linked. the edge-space between city and park is mapped in detail in both stanley park and “the bravest boat,” as i have said, and is thoroughly allegorized as a hinge-point (between the powers of money, sophisticated tastes, and corporate culture on one hand and the refuge of poverty, earthiness, and spirituality on the other, in the novel, and between the powers of corrupt, hellish banality on one hand and the solace of beauty and natural, human goodness on the other, in the story). taylor’s novel closely notes the various slopes of the lost lagoon terrain, its various features both organic and man-made, and the precise sequence of the different segments of this area as it shades from city to park—street, gutter, curb, grassy slope, trees, bench, stretch of water, pathway, bridge, park roadway, forest edge, forest. as a resident of vancouver, faced with this novel’s record of close local observation, i find it tempting (and almost possible) to pinpoint the very bench jeremy sat on at lost lagoon, and the very street façade where the monkey’s paw ought to be. as a vancouver neighbourhood name, crosstown first appeared in major vancouver newspapers in (laurence d ), where it was used—once—to refer to a group of artists who dubbed the victoria square neighbourhood where they lived “crosstown” (or “x-town”) in (cf. also thomas). to date, it has appeared six times more in the vancouver sun and province newspapers, once with reference to timothy taylor’s novels’ settings, and all but one of these appearances date to , the year when a major residential building re-development, the bowman lofts, was completed in the neighbourhood. (by comparison, the neighbourhood name “west end” appears times in those papers during the same time span.) moreover, when journalists use the name “crosstown,” they offer their readers extra orienting detail about the neighbourhood, as if uncertain whether their readerships would recognize its referent. for example, in , tony wanless wrote in the province: neglected by the city, ignored by most shoppers, overrun by drug dealers and users, the ‘crosstown’ area of downtown vancouver is once again in revival mode. the commercial area— officially known as the victory square area—roughly encompasses hastings, pender, and cordova streets and cross-streets west of chinatown. […] it’s not exactly gastown or [toronto’s] yorkville of old, or old montreal, but it could be, many merchants feel. (a ) vancouver developer robert fung used similar language and imagery in his opinion piece in the sun, and he too located the neighbourhood for his audience by referring to it as “crosstown, the victory square neighbourhood” (l ). the name “crosstown” is not, i believe, currently much more widely used than these examples indicate. it turns up very rarely in major vancouver blogs—appearing in only one post on rebecca bollwitt’s miss blog, for example, while the same blog refers much more frequently to the “west end.” in a recent . -month timespan, the location “crosstown” was referred to times in real estate listings on popular buy/sell website craigslist vancouver (often combined with the word downtown), while “gastown” was used times in a similar timespan and the “west end” times. even the “downtown eastside”, which has unfavourable connotations in the real estate market, was referred to on the same website twice as often as was “crosstown." notes for chapter three i reconstruct these performances from the documents that remain in archives and in the memories and published accounts of people involved. i have consulted, among other things, production photographs and videotapes (where these exist), set designs, archived posters, press releases, and other promotional materials, newspaper reviews, histories of the theatres, brochures advertising the theatres, maps of the city space surrounding the theatres at the time of the plays’ performance, and members of the producing company in informal interview. individual spectators are present to the actors only as members of the collected audience, not as individuals, in all but the most intimate of performance spaces. nevertheless, as a group, audiences are not only present together in the theatre with the actors but “mutually co-present” in clark and marshall’s terms: they are reciprocally aware that they recognize their presence together in the room. this mutually recognized copresence, so much more directly implicating and engaging than anonymous and distanced reading of a book, allows theatre audiences the certainty, which readers of fiction lack, that the ensemble producing the play is searching for common ground with them. perhaps among those twentieth-century theoreticians who advocated for abandoning the idea of a divided reality it is most famously bertolt brecht who argued that “the conception of a fourth wall which invisibly separates stage and audience, thus creating the illusion that what happens on stage is really happening, without any audience, must of course be dropped” (qtd. in brownstein and daubert ). some theatre productions would continue to support an analysis such as gaylord’s, to an extent. but if theatre audiences ever experienced the performance space as absolutely divided into two realities (which i doubt), i am convinced by susan bennett’s argument that western theatre practice has come increasingly since the mid-twentieth century to acknowledge and experiment with the interconnection of these two worlds ( ). as audiences are aware, actors make up only part of an ensemble of people who design a play and decide how it will approach its audiences: the producing ensemble may also include playwright, director, production company, and stage crew; set, costume, sound and lighting designers; and, perhaps, an artistic director who commissioned the play or some major sponsors who made its production possible. but the actors are metonymic representatives of this entire production ensemble; they embody and enact the performance it collectively designed. i recognize that “ensemble” has other meanings in theatre discourse, including the group of repertory actors employed by a theatre company for a given season. my use of the term ensemble here is meant to recall that, from the perspective of the audience, everyone involved in producing a play works with a single, collective intention. accounting for theatrical audience design in this way requires me to modify clark’s theory of audience roles (as co-written with carlson and with schaefer), which is based on the paradigm of face-to-face conversation. whereas clark and schaefer argue that a speaker bears certain responsibilities towards all participants in a conversation, including the responsibility to ensure that the side-participants can understand everything that is being said ( - ), producing ensembles cannot be held responsible for ensuring that every audience-member of a play understands everything—or “gets” all of the local references, for example. an ensemble’s evident intention that the play is for the actual audience over-rides the audience design implicit in the styling of their references (and other pragmatic cues), so that even if the audience-members are not individually accommodated exactly, they will still be positioned as side- participants. i use the term “local knowledge” here, where i have not in other chapters, because the theatre encounter anchors the social dynamics of common ground so firmly in proximal physical space that ideas of locality become important. clifford geertz’s anthropological notion of “local knowledge” is a contrastive term, designating the things that insiders know, in a bounded community that produces its own meanings, but outsiders do not (e.g. ). i am using the same term rather differently, here, using the word local to point to proximal location; i will deal somewhat later with the question of where “local” place fades off into something more distant. but, as my correspondence with arjun appadurai’s concept of locality will shortly reveal, when people realize that their local knowledge is actually common ground it takes on some of the potentially exclusionary and contrastive qualities of geertz’s notion. another important example would be municipal political events: platform speeches, public meetings, rallies, protests, and marches may very effectively construct local ground as at once common and contested, when the speeches and gestures involved index parts of the city. school and university classrooms (such as peter dickinson’s [cf. “cities and classrooms”] or glenn deer’s [cf. “reading differently”]) and public forums (such as the vancouver public space network’s “where’s the square?” meetings in - ) are likewise sites for the imagination and critique of existing and possible common grounds. in “in whose interest? transnational capital and the production of multiculturalism in canada,” katharyne mitchell offers one of many examples of the ways distant and corporate interests shape vancouver’s social geography by managing urban property. among other instances of debates over “foreign” uses of private property in vancouver, mitchell discusses the conflict between the interests of international capitalism and local housing advocates when a particular condominium block was marketed (and sold) solely to people in hong kong ( ). local comedian, actor and playwright jason bryden’s play the dissemblers (co-produced by playwrights theatre centre and touchstone theatre at the ptc studio theatre in may, ) lampooned one such neighbourhood-based local identity: the hip, design- and fashion-conscious vancouverites who live, work and spend time along a certain segment of main street, according to popular wisdom. twenty blocks of main street, from just north of broadway ( th) to perhaps th avenue, have developed in recent years into a trendy commercial area, and this span of main street has been produced as a “hipster” hangout: a place to buy, and wear, certain styles of (usually expensive) off-beat, locally-designed or vintage clothing, to eat trendy or vegetarian foods in well-designed minimalist, retro, or kitschy restaurants, to listen to or perform indie music, and to otherwise participate in consuming and creating a hipster culture that, despite its international influences, is locally grounded in main street. this hipster culture, which is perhaps as often ascribed to neighbourhood residents by critics claiming not to be hipsters themselves as it is appropriated by any self-proclaimed hipster, has indefinite boundaries—both in its cultural and its geographical provinces. it is sometimes perceived as mixing to some degree with a local artists’ scene that is also associated with main street, partly because of hipsters’ evident interest and investment in avant- garde and independent creators of style and design and partly—perhaps—because of geographical coincidence. however little or great is the actual overlap between the hipster culture, which, in its attachment to the commercial establishments along main, is to some degree a culture of consumption, and its neighbouring eastside artists’ community, popular perceptions often imagine a link between the two groups. writing less than a year before the date of the dissemblers’s setting, for example, commentator tara henley compounded participation in the art scene with hipster style in her description of the young people crowding a show at one artist’s studio: she called them “main street art-nerd/geek-chic scenesters.” in his discussion of urban practices that “unsettle” distinctions between private and public property, nicholas blomley offers multiple examples of (mostly grass-roots) activities that re-make city spaces, orienting them to suit the production of locality. to name only two examples, he points to the “localism” of surfers who claim certain beaches for locals (blomley ) and to the creators and users of community gardens, who “argue that community gardening produces truly public spaces,” but ones “predicated on localized community, democratization and interaction” ( ). an important historic example of a community’s sense of locality motivating changes to urban form is the strathcona property owners and tenants association (spota)’s successful fight in the late s to change municipal policy and influence plans for the renewal of their inner-city urban neighbourhood. according to writer daphne marlatt, who interviewed spota members, “the executive of this association, supported by the whole neighbourhood, threw off all the old images of immigrant powerlessness, unconsciousness, ignorance (many of them were second and third generation canadians), took the mandate to act for their neighbourhood into their own hands and, working inside the structure of canadian politics, approached both federal and provincial governments with a sophisticated political strategy. they formed a working relationship with city hall in order to govern the rehabilitation of their own neighbourhood, and on the federal level they changed policy about urban renewal […] strathcona, as a neighbourhood of immigrants, has tended to conduct its daily life on the basis of collective action (mutual help) and self-reliance in the face of government ‘aid’” (“afterwards” ). strathcona’s grass-roots production of locality continues to inspire critics of top-down urban planning: in common ground in a liquid city: essays in defense of an urban future, east vancouver-based urban critic matt hern argues that a vital, sustainable way of living must be driven by small groups of citizens working together to shape their neighbourhoods. among other examples, hern cites the strathcona community gardens as a diverse, accessible public place of a kind that could only have emerged organically, through the slow accretion and compromise of a variety of individual initiatives. “the task of producing locality (as a structure of feeling, a property of social life, and an ideology of situated community) is increasingly a struggle,” appadurai writes. “there are many dimensions to this struggle, [including]: ( ) the steady increase in the efforts of the modern nation-state to define all neighbourhoods under the sign of its forms of allegiance and affiliation; ( ) the growing disjuncture between territory, subjectivity, and collective social movement; and ( ) the steady erosion, principally due to the force and form of electronic mediation, of the relationship between spatial and virtual neighbourhoods. to make things yet more complex, these three dimensions are themselves interactive” ( ). in each of these vancouver plays, shared geographical knowledge is assumed to extend at least to the city limits—a broader expanse than the extended neighbourhoods which novels and short stories often assume (cf. chapter two). some of the “local” knowledge claimed by these plays is of sites well outside the city—the “cariboo country” in the ecstasy of rita joe (ryga ms , ) or the regional cities nanaimo and victoria in , for example. meanwhile, however, local knowledge is always focused on landmarks clustering, however sparsely, around a central setting. in general, the farthest-flung places referred to are occasionally if not frequently traveled to by vancouverites, and the references to these far-off places generalize large areas with single names rather than indicating even coarsely-differentiated streets and landmarks. susan bennett’s discussion of tourist audiences for site-specific theatre argues convincingly that the distinctions between insider and outsider audience sub-groups are more evidently performed in site-specific pieces that allow audible, mobile responses from the audiences (“peripatetic” - ). “conventions of spectatorship,” she writes, “are much more tangible in this kind of performance reception [which is] a very long way from the passive behaviours of audiences hailed by the fourth-wall removed realist theatre” ( ). according to christopher innes, the stage directions in ryga’s published script call for elements of setting, stage choreography and characterization that were originally designed by members of the playhouse ensemble, in collaboration with ryga ( ). many of the elements of staging that so emphasized the ensemble-meets-audience social encounter are therefore already familiar to readers of the script and critical writing about it. i recite, however, a few of the elements of the performance which bear especially on the play’s production of a “neighbourhood” not explicitly localized in vancouver. as ryga’s published script records, the backdrop was a “mountain cyclorama” overlaid with “a darker maze curtain [suggestive of] gloom and confusion, and a cityscape” (ryga ). i cannot be certain that the cyclorama’s mountain imagery was not overtly iconic of a vancouver horizon, and for playhouse audiences the combination of even a vaguely depicted mountain range and cityscape may have evoked the specific geography of their lives outside of the theatre. but the legacy of this original stage set suggests that it did not obviously represent vancouver: ryga’s stage directions do not note any local specificity; surviving photographs of the performance do not feature the backdrop at all, showing instead the characters dramatically spot-lit on a dark stage; and later vancouver re-mounts, like the fortieth-anniversary production at the firehall arts centre in december, , have opted for abstracted backdrop imagery. some of these scenes returned rita and the audience to her remembered childhood in a rural reserve, some of them recollected her increasingly painful and alienated experiences in the urban landscape of “the city,” and some of them drew her repeatedly into a courtroom, where she was interrogated by a magistrate. the set was not decorated, although one reviewer observed that the stage floor was symbolically “painted to resemble the ‘butt of a cut tree’” (richards qtd. in gygli ). the performance space was precisely a symbolic one, with a circular ramp, running around the outside of the stage, trapping rita at its centre to underscore how impossible it proves for her to find her way out of the city and back to her family home. i base my discussion of ecstasy’s scripted lines on the original production rehearsal script (cited here as a manuscript), viewed courtesy of the george ryga fonds, special collections, archives & special collections, libraries and cultural resources, university of calgary library. this script contains fewer stage directions than the published version, and i base my analysis of staging and setting largely on the published script, presuming that important setting and staging decisions were consistent between them. these two scripts suggest that the vancouver and ottawa productions of the play were largely the same, although there are a few significant differences. critics such as pell assert that the audience was white and middle-class [ ], and the play has habitually been celebrated for having made white audiences newly aware of their privilege and complicity (cf. drew hayden taylor quoted in pell ). whether the playhouse audiences in were entirely white is hard to say, although i assume that there must have been at least a few people of other ethnicities in attendance. but in any case, ryga’s play does powerfully “cast” the audience as white. according to the published script, the ottawa production apparently added a moment of direct confrontation that does not appear in the vancouver rehearsal script: jamie paul singles out an audience member to say, “you think i’m a dirty indian, eh? get outta my way!” (ryga ). for some audience-members their incorporation into the play might have felt claustrophobic and upsetting, since the performance foreclosed their ability to protest their construction as homogenously, guiltily, white and free—even while it invited them to see rita sympathetically and her persecutors with aversion. the audience-members were incorporated into the play as white canadians, not as individuals. this, perhaps, was one of the sources of the play’s troubling power for its premiere audiences, that they experienced the coercive power of a social system (here the theatre) to lock them into a role without regard for their individual politics and personalities. and they were made to recognize, meanwhile, that outside of the theatre they were the ones enabled and protected by a system that forces indians into the roles of misfit, criminal, victim, and martyr. barbara pell, for example, writes that the play depicts “the martyrdom of a young native girl on the streets of vancouver” ( ). pell goes on, however, to discuss the play in terms that generalize this setting: “white society,” “the native peoples,” “the reserves,” “the modern city” ( ). ecstasy became an “instant classic” (innis ) of canadian theatre after its playhouse premiere because it so successfully compelled its original audiences to recognize themselves as part of the nation-wide social system whose faults it condemned. it is not surprising that the original production managed to compel audiences in vancouver to recognize themselves as canadians, given that it took place during the canadian centennial year: national institutions had had a century to train citizens from all regions to recognize themselves as national citizens, and the centennial celebrations emphatically promoted this national self- recognition. as jamie portman puts it, referring to the playhouse premiere, “rita joe happened during centennial year when canadians were anxious to look at themselves”—that is, to look at themselves as canadians (qtd. in wasserman “introduction” ). an early advertising brochure for the “queen elizabeth theatre and the queen elizabeth playhouse”— which staff at the ubc library archives estimate to have been published in the mid- s—declares that the purpose of the queen elizabeth theatre (“with the smaller playhouse attached to it”) is to be “the prime focal point of the community”: to be, in other words, “the showcase—and the meeting place—for today’s society.” while this declaration suggests that the theatre’s primary service was to a specifically vancouver-based civic community, there are hints even here of ambitions beyond the local. the word “showcase” implies that vancouver cultural productions will be shown off to an audience beyond the city boundaries. and “today’s society” suggests a metropolitan, or even national, reach. bloomfield explaining that the play’s first act “document[ed] the environment white people have created for the original citizens of our country.” although here bloomfield kept consistent with the play’s construction of an abstracted, urban canadian landscape—a generalized national “environment”—he also hinted that a specific vancouver reality inspired ryga’s thinking. “statistics inform us vancouver has an average of rita joe’s [sic] a year,” he wrote, at once framing the character rita as an abstracted type and the play as illustrating a locally-observed statistical reality this line about “ rita joe’s” stuck with subsequent productions of the play: it also appears in director david gardner’s program notes for the playhouse’s remount in ottawa. in asserting ecstasy’s inspiration from a specifically vancouver reality, bloomfield was perhaps recalling that the playhouse’s artistic director malcolm black had commissioned the play to be “based on a newspaper item about a native woman found dead in a skid row rooming house” (hoffman and ratsoy ). one uniquivocally vancouver-specific reference in ecstasy is recited by the magistrate when rita joe is charged with prostitution: “special constable eric wilson has submitted a statement to the effect that on june th last he and special constable schneider approached you on fourth avenue at nine-forty in the evening” (ryga ms ). when recognized as locally specific by members of the playhouse premiere audience, the reference to vancouver’s “fourth avenue” would have tightened for them “the city’s” fit to vancouver and made a brief point of local community membership in the theatre. indeed, in the s, fourth avenue was a local reference likely to trigger associations that would probably be inaccessible to audiences elsewhere, because certain segments of west fourth avenue were widely known as gathering places for young hippies. the street was associated with a drug-experimenting, drop-out culture, to the alarm of fourth avenue business owners and “square,” middle-class vancouver (cf. “what happened”; “great bus stop bust”; “hippie runaways”). importantly, when the police locate rita joe on fourth avenue, the vancouver audience’s knowledge of this context would have been called into play, and the density and vividness of this set of associations might have drawn extra attention to the specific localness of this reference and their community membership. however, the policeman’s purpose in referring to the specific street is not primarily to gesture at community but to claim his own authority, rationality, and correctness. the “fourth avenue” reference aligns local knowledge with white authority’s sense of freedom and belonging in the city. and it highlights rita joe’s powerlessness in her own lack of orientation. rita is not local to the city, despite her long stay here, just like jaimie paul, for whom the bridge he mentions is new and nameless (he calls it “a bridge”). the vancouver premiere production tended to produce an even more abstract social geography. especially in the first act, the place where rita joe has ended up upon leaving the reserve is more vaguely established than in the ottawa production. but ryga’s handwritten changes on the vancouver production script suggest that the developing play was gradually refining a city versus reserve geography, and the second act of the play sets up the city/reserve divide quite clearly. this example makes particularly clear the similarity between the idea of neighbourhoods with internal, rather than external, contexts and w. h. new’s formulation of “region” as the nation’s internal margin (“beyond” ). in her playwright’s comment in the house program, pollock spoke of “our attitudes towards the non- white peoples of the world and of canada,” implying that she understood the play’s audience to be white canadians. and her note in a study guide to incident (presumably offered to teachers who would bring their students to see the play) asserted that problematic racial tensions of the komagata maru’s history continued to exist “in canada” at the time of the play. meanwhile, the playhouse staff’s background note in the program shifted easily from framing the komagata maru as a british columbian incident (“the problem of asian immigration to british columbia had its origins in the gold rush […]”) to framing it as canadian (“gurdit singh […] chartered the komagata maru, a japanese ship, to bring some of his oppressed east indian country men to the promised land of canada”). reviews of the new company production tended to take up the play’s concerns as canadian or, more rarely, british columbian, depending on the reviewing publication’s respective audience. bob allen’s review in the province, which at one point claimed that the play said “things of particular importance to vancouverites,” opened with a reflection on specifically canadian racism ( ); apparently allen did not see conflict between the two domains. meanwhile the province photograph’s caption referred to the incident as “one of the most shameful events in b. c. history” ( , my emphasis). much of the scholarly writing about this play interprets it as addressing its audience as canadians, rather than especially as vancouverites (cf. kelly - , grace and helms , and belliveau’s discussion of knowles and nunn ), although ginny ratsoy and james hoffman’s introduction to the play for their anthology of british columbia plays unsurprisingly takes it up as addressing british columbians. a document composed by christopher wooten, then-director of the vecc, indicates that the vecc agreed to place seats in the theatre for the run of incident, of them on the main floor of the auditorium (christopher wooten’s summary of a production meeting, dated december , . in the city of vancouver archives). this suggests that audience-members in the back row of the floor seats would likely have been no more than rows back from the stage. it is located several residential blocks off of commerical drive in east vancouver. in the mid-twentieth century, the mixed-income grandview/woodlands neighbourhood centred on the drive became home to successive waves of immigrants from italy, eastern europe and asia. and “grandview's first east indian residents […] made the community home” in the late s (“history & heritage”), a few years before incident premiered. if, in , before the emergence in canada of official multiculturalism, the vecc was not yet known specifically for staging plays and concerts reflective of local cultural diversity, it was at least known for hosting new and experimental work. by selecting the vecc as the venue for the new company performance of incident, the playhouse contributed to the vecc’s reputation for experimental theatre. a pamphlet, advertising the playhouse’s - season, referred to the new company’s offerings as “new plays…odd plays… and extraordinary plays!!!” in contrast to the mainstage’s “great classics, modern classics, contemporary plays.” like the vancouver playhouse, the vecc was supported by national and provincial as well as municipal governments (“our story”). but in its grandview/woodlands location and in its experimental reputation it may have presented itself to audiences of incident as more likely to engage local audiences as local community members than a “civic” or “regional” theatre such as the playhouse. as sherrill grace and gabrielle helms put it, the play’s audience was “constructed as spectators in a work that presents the very act of spectatorship as an objectification of others that facilitates their dehumanization and mistreatment” ( ). and, like the audiences of the ecstasy of rita joe, who were confined to sitting silently while david joe constructed them as “animals,” incident’s audiences were compelled to recognize their construction by the woman as those people (“they”) who “rejoice[d] on the shore” when the komagata maru was dispatched to return to india. by framing their social position as spectators in the performance space in this way, incident addressed its vecc audiences as symbolic inheritors of the legacy of white vancouver’s racism. one reviewer commented that “the real action of the play is happening elsewhere” than onstage (green ). i would argue that the “real action” of the play was rather the claustrophobic inter-action and exchange of gazes between ensemble and audience-members. one part of incident did evoke a shared neighbourhood rather straightforwardly. this was the brothel setting at centre stage, a carefully delimited representational space, where actors played out a naturalistic scene representing the historical figure william hopkinson, a vancouver-based official in the canadian department of immigration, and several companions imagined for him by pollock. these characters occasionally discussed their daily lives in vancouver, and by doing so they made numerous references to specific landmarks. apart from helping to construct these characters realistically, their references were often expressly designed to convey the historical events. this part of the komagata maru incident seemed to anticipate that its vecc audience shared fairly extensive ground on the basis of community membership with the ensemble and the characters. a prostitute named evy recounted to the other characters having taken a tram ride through the city: coming “round by the creek” she had seen a sikh man beaten in a lineup for employment; she had noticed hostile-looking white men standing “staring out at that ship” from “the end of burrard” (pollock ). her references and other gestures towards the city were performed casually, as if the ensemble expected the audience to know the city already and to easily infer the geography of the komagata maru’s siege from those few references. (indeed, the references are so casual that i find myself wondering whether i have inferred the geography right, when i guess that evy’s references likely indicated false creek and the northern end of burrard street, downtown, where it abuts the inner harbour.) the new company ensemble seems to have hoped that naming the places would therefore help to guarantee the immediate relevance of this history for their audiences: assuming a “sympathy of locality” rather like that i discussed in chapter two, these references assumed that the audience would be interested in the events that had occurred in the harbour, burrard street, and the reserve because they had a prior relationship to those places (if only one of name-recognition) and because they were so nearby. accordingly, the vancouver province reviewer, bob allen, claimed that the play said “things of particular importance to vancouverites” ( ). evidently, for allen at least, the play asserted that history of the komagata maru was especially important to them because of their locality. however, allen also opened his review with a reflection on specifically canadian racism ( ); this was not an exclusively proximal locality. these naturalistic scenes were contained by the more presentational frame of pollock’s play and their localism diminished accordingly, it seems to me. also, as i will explain in my discussion of , naturalistic staging has only limited power to command mutual recognition in the theatre. i am grateful to the playhouse theatre company for giving me permission to view this archival tape. indeed, while we might see the characters as developing and maintaining their own senses of locality as part of their daily routines, but they do not do so deliberately or, more importantly, ostensively. in an audience talk-back session following the videotaped performance, audience-members asked the cast what janine got out of her relationship to her boyfriend, congratulated margaret barton on her portrait of nanny (she “reminded me of three or four people i know,” said one), confessed to not having understood the ending, and declared themselves profoundly moved by susan hogan’s performance; such comments, which made for the majority of the audience’s contributions to discussion, engaged with the play in non- local ways. (torontonian audiences of the same performance might have conceivably have made the same comments; their lack of local knowledge would have had no bearing on these parts of the play.) which of the play’s rhetorical emphases will register for each individual audience-member seems to depend largely on what elements of the performance most resonate for him or her. for some of the playhouse audience- members, the production’s attempts to engage them as knowing locals was evidently striking; for others, those attempts were perhaps not important or even pointedly noticeable in personal communication, director patrick mcdonald tells me that when morris panych directed at toronto’s tarragon theatre the year before its vancouver premiere, panych had the actress playing wyn address the audience directly from the front of the stage, stand-up comic style. dean paul gibson, director of a production at the vancouver playhouse of macleod’s toronto, mississippi, likewise had that play’s central character jhana deliver her closing monologue directly to the audience, from the front of the stage. staging decisions like panych’s and gibson’s capitalize on what i consider an overtly social style in the characteristic narrative flow of macleod’s monologues. i owe to reid gilbert’s review of two set designs by macdonald the germ of this idea, that the set could be taken as pointedly representing artificial (that is, human-made) designs based on natural objects, rather than as representing those natural objects themselves, albeit in an abstracted, stylized way. gilbert writes that the “idealized tree forms” of macdonald’s set offer “a more satisfactory conclusion than the undefined, native eco-spirituality offered by the play itself: the old lady escapes into the idea of the forest […] rather than leaving sterile domesticity for the undergrowth […] she leaves a forced minimalism for the embracing simplicity of an universal design” (gilbert ). the set was intended to be recognizably local in its design. macdonald recalls that for “the vancouver production the director patrick mcdonald wanted the location on stage to look very west coast. i combined the concept of abstract images as in paintings by lawren harris with the clarity and simplicity of japanese design by using geometric shapes and dividing the stage space architecturally into two levels” (qtd. in rewa ). perhaps, for some of the audience-members attending the show, macdonald’s design would have seemed to quietly imply an expectation of local community membership: as vancouverites, you will recognize these references to west coast architecture. one of the reviewers saw “emily carr clouds” as well as “group of seven geometric pines” (armstrong b ) in the stage set, which indicates his perception of a locally-developed style in the backdrop, since carr lived much of her life in victoria, british columbia and, famously, painted scenes from the pacific northwest. the paintings of lawren harris and other members of the group of seven are not so firmly associated with west coast imagery, however. harris moved to vancouver in his s and became an important figure in the city’s artistic circles, encouraging among others carr, arthur erikson, and b. c. binning (the latter two of whom would go on to design houses that are considered definitive examples of west coast modernism). but harris’s most famous landscape paintings are not of the west coast; they feature images from northern ontario and the rocky mountains. especially as staged in combination with the playhouse house program’s “notes about the play and playwright,” which offered a more broadly national frame for performance space than the local one suggested by much of the rest of the production—they note, for example, that “throughout canadian history, the wilderness has provided a profound influence on our art and our literature”—the stage set’s abstract backdrop may not have produced such a pointedly recognizable icon of the west coast as the director intended. in november, , a theatre company called theatre in the raw produced a play called bruce—the musical in a community centre not far from the firehall. bruce sought to remind local residents of one important historical effort to frame the downtown eastside as a neighbourhood, by telling the life story of bruce erikson, an activist and politician who had fought for official municipal neighbourhood status and a community centre. theatre in the raw shared with the playwright, bob sarti, a concern that people were forgetting that history (see banting “courting”). as appadurai points out, locality is a construction that requires constant maintenance. in , a man named gilbert paul jordan was tried and convicted of manslaughter in the death of vanessa buckner, and a connection was established between him and the serial deaths of a number of other women. the vancouver sun dedicated several full-page spreads to splashy and sensational coverage of the man and his deeds. (it dedicated substantially less space to listing facts about his female victims’ deaths, and clements was inspired to write by her fury over newspaper’s imbalance of attention.) by the time unnatural opened, jordan was out of jail on parole, and on november , , the day of the play’s official opening, the sun ran an extensive interview and large photograph of him (beatty a ). the firehall’s archives do not record which pages of newspaper coverage were posted on the lobby walls for playgoers to browse before entering the performance space, but i presume that the full-page spreads from were posted, as well as the contemporary interview. clements did extensive newspaper research while writing the play, and unnatural closely paraphrases the text of some of the articles. simply by arriving at the firehall arts centre to watch the plays, the audiences moved through the very neighbourhoods featured onstage. in this respect at least, the ensemble could actually rely on their audience having some familiarity with the neighbourhoods, for their journeys to the theatres would have summoned to mind their respective prior experiences of those neighbourhoods and offered them the additional experience of a theatre-going evening there. where some of the audience-members might have nevertheless arrived at the plays with only the passer-through’s limited and personally un-invested awareness of those neighbourhoods, however, unnatural assumed a more extensive and invested local knowledge. in , the “about us” page of the firehall arts centre’s website asserted that the firehall’s programming was intended to reflect the diverse neighbourhood population’s interests, as well as those of “canada’s diverse and dynamic cultural mosaic.” in , the firehall no longer emphasizes a local programming mandate—the “about us” page now advertises a season celebrating “the richness of canadian and global culture” (www.firehallartscentre.ca/aboutus.html, accessed aug , )—although spencer’s address to potential sponsors still emphasizes local community outreach. financial pressures may have forced this change of marketing strategy. spencer writes that “it is increasingly difficult to encourage audiences to attend our many and varied high quality productions and presentations,” implying that this is because of the “continued deterioration of the [downtown eastside] neighbourhood” (spencer “support us”). notes for conclusion city-building narratives have the most scope to re-work what i am calling received ideas about neighbourhoods: timothy taylor’s creative production of crosstown is an important example. other narrative modes position themselves as offering touchstones for their audience’s recognition, so they tend to adopt ways of speaking about landmarks and neighbourhoods that seem keyed to received understandings. their narrative objects are dialogically interpenetrated, bakhtin might say, with the discourse of others (cf. “discourse in the novel” ). but certainly even their dialogue with current maps of the city’s social geography is creative, their re-inscriptions of neighbourhood character influencing (rather than slavishly reproducing) the very discourses they engage. my own sense of this city as a differentiated social space has been influenced strongly by my reading and theatre going. stace does use a few proper nouns. for a reader like me, they keep the cityscape described by the story pinned tightly to a recognizable vancouver. she uses all but one of them to name places outside the three square blocks of her neighbourhood: vancouver itself, prince george ( ), false creek ( ), “uptown granville” street ( ). re-reading now my published narrative of that experience of self-recognition, i am struck by how i unconsciously structured the narrative around an uncanny projection of a double for my own sense of unbelonging (cf. freud ). i recount overhearing an audience-member behind me in an intermission line- up prejudicially discounting the large audience actually in attendance at the play, wondering aloud to his companion, “the music is so good and the show is so well put together, but the topic is so regional. i mean, who is the audience for this?” (banting “courting” ). i describe looking around for the speaker, hoping to find that his clothing or comportment “would mark him as an outsider to the eastside” ( ), only to later realize that “i wanted to see the man standing sorely and snobbishly apart from the crowd so that i could see myself standing comfortably within it” ( ). unlike some of the other works i have discussed, the narrator in blood sports is not discernably gendered. i use masculine pronouns in my discussion here because the story at this point is so closely focalized by tom’s perspective. influenced as i am by pragmatics theory, integrational linguistics, and the work of my colleagues in language studies at the university of british columbia (among them janet giltrow and shurli makmillan), i am not interested 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( ): - . academic search complete, ebscohost. web. jun. . appendix: prince’s “familiarity scale” this table represents prince’s “familiarity scale.” prince’s terms are in the left-hand column; i gloss them in the centre column. examples, in the right-hand column, are intended to suggest some of the ways that these varying degrees of assumed audience familiarity can be marked stylistically. they are drawn from atwood’s cat’s eye (a) and kogawa’s obasan (k). when the example includes extra words for the sake of clarity, i have underlined the relevant referring phrases. table . prince's “familiarity scale” with examples (table continues on following page) in descending order of assumed familiarity textually evoked & situationally evoked familiar because already present in discourse familiar because already present in context pronouns: it, he, she, they, that, which repeat occurrences of salient place names references to the narrator or situation of telling “this is where eaton’s used to be, here on this corner” (a ) unused already known but new to discourse “due south is the cn tower” (a ) “the vancouver hastings park prison” (k ) “kitsilano […] stanley park […] third avenue” (k ) (table continues on following page) in descending order of assumed familiarity (continued) inferable inferable from something already evoked “‘what a beauty,’ the rcmp officer said in , when he saw it” (k ) [inferable from context of japanese evacuation, evoked on the same page] containing inferable refers to a noun phrase containing the entity from which it is inferable “the corner of king and spadina” (a ) “the church at third avenue” (k ) “the grating wind that cut up from the lake between the flat-roofed dowdy buildings that were for us the closest thing to urbanity” (a - ) brand-new anchored unfamiliar, but referred to in a noun phrase con- taining a known entity “a street corner in vancouver” (k ) “marpole, a comfortable residential district of vancouver” (k ) “the place they called the pool was not a pool of water, but a prison at the exhibition grounds called hastings park in vancouver” (k ) in descending order of assumed familiarity (continued) brand-new unfamiliar “ghost towns such as slocan – those old mining settlements, sometimes abandoned, sometimes with a remnant community” (k ) “past a cemetery, across a ravine, along a wide curving street lined with older houses” (a ) “some copper-green statues of men on horses” (a ) “chinese emporia, wicker furniture, cutwork tablecloths, bamboo wind chimes” (a ) - on the experience of encountering art in museum spaces: an inquiry with gilles deleuze's concepts of desire and assemblage by marie-france berard b.a., the university of montreal, m.a., the university of montreal, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in the faculty of graduate and postdoctoral studies (curriculum studies) the university of british columbia (vancouver) november © marie-france berard, ii abstract framed by the theoretical concepts of assemblage and desire from philosopher gilles deleuze, and his collaborative writings with psychoanalyst félix guattari (deleuze and guattari, , ), this study inquires into the qualities and productive potential of the art encounter in a gallery setting. the study brings together my practice in the field of art museum education, and my interest in the art encounter to inquire what the art encounter does. thinking with deleuzian concepts enacts a view of the art encounter as a milieu of experimentation where affects move a body to create assemblages, connections with things, human and non-human bodies, expressions, qualities, ideas, spaces. assemblages allow desire (as a force) to circulate; desiring-assemblages move bodies to produce connections with other human or non-human entities, thoughts, they produce subjectivation as a mode of existence. for deleuze, one does not 'have' an experience of an artwork or exhibition detached against the background of life; experience is a milieu which contributes to actually making life. my study inquires how working within a philosophy conceived in terms of relationality, connections, flows and multiplicity (rather than fixed identities) enact a view of the art encounter as a milieu of immanent ethics. by immanent ethics, deleuze means that encountering increases the potential for new connections, it can actualize the possibilities already in life. the experience of encountering art is inviting one into experiences of living. this post-qualitative study followed a process of research as assemblage formed by: the research site at the vancouver art gallery, and the dynamic constellation of interconnected objects, bodies, ideas such as my field notes, photographs, the writing of personal narratives of my encounterings in the gallery space, and scholarly texts. throughout iii the research process, two guiding questions remained present: ) with the production of data in autobiographical fieldnotes, how does deleuze’s concepts of desire and assemblage help me inquire about my art encounters, and what insights can i bring forth on the art encounter? ) in what ways does thinking with deleuzian concepts enlarge received discourses in art education and museum education about the art encounter within the art museum? iv lay summary this research is about the experience of encountering art in a gallery setting. it brings together my practice in the field of art museum education and my interest to understand what the art encounter does, alongside the concepts of desire and assemblage from philosopher gilles deleuze. to deleuze, experience is a milieu providing various opportunities to be affected, and allows for encounters to happen. thinking with the deleuzian concepts of desire and assemblage was generative to consider the experience of encountering art as a complex milieu where affects produced in the encounter with art move a body to create assemblages allowing the flow of desire (as a force), the production of ideas, and subjectivation as a mode of existence. an implication arising from this study is that encountering art invites us into experiences of living because we never know how we will be affected, and what possibilities will be actualized. v preface this dissertation is original work by the author, marie-france berard. i conceptualized and crafted this research following the guidance of my supervisor, dr. dónal o'donoghue and my committee members dr. rita irwin and dr. william pinar, and building on the support of the vancouver art gallery and many other peers and classmates recognized in the acknowledgements. this research received a certificate of approval from the university of british columbia in vancouver, office of research services on september , , and with the ubc behaviour research board certificate number h - . an earlier and modified version of the narrative encounter "eight hundred and eighty- six wooden stools" has previously been published in: higgins, m., madden, b., berard, m.-f., lenz kothe, e., nordstrom, s. n. ( ). de/signing research in education: patchwork(ing) methodologies with theory, educational studies, ( ), - . vi table of contents abstract..............................................................................................................................ii lay summary..................................................................................................................... iv preface................................................................................................................................v table of contents...............................................................................................................vi list of works………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………ix glossary..............................................................................................................................x acknowledgments..........................................................................................................xvii dedication.......................................................................................................................xix prologue - scenes of an encounter in moscow's state tretyakov gallery......................... introduction- three background moments to the study................................................. purpose and focus of the study............................................................................................ first moment - my academic studies in art history and professional career in art museum ducation.................................................................................................................. second moment - a visit at moscow's state tretyakov gallery........................................ third moment- an impromptu reading; view of delft by timothy brook........................ opening a line of flight - the study..................................................................................... site of the study.................................................................................................................... some preliminary words on the structure of the study...................................................... encounter - eight hundred and eighty-six wooden stools............................................... chapter - on the experience of encountering art: an inquiry with gilles deleuze concepts of encounter, desire and assemblage............................................................... why deleuze?...................................................................................................................... on deleuze's concepts of encounter, assemblage and desire.......................................... so why deleuze?.................................................................................................................. vii the research as assemblage ................................................................................................ encounter - ripped plastic bags, dry yellow corn shavings and chinese landscape painting............................................................................................................................ chapter - art experience............................................................................................... overview concerning the notion of art experience........................................................... the concept of experience in the writings of gilles deleuze............................................ revisiting john dewey's understanding of art experience................................................ thoughts on art experience following a deleuze-dewey conceptual encounter............ encounter - stepping into shan shui................................................................................ chapter - encounter....................................................................................................... the concept of encounter in the writings of gilles deleuze.............................................. revisiting maurice merleau-ponty's notion of "the tutelage of perception"................... thoughts on art experience following a deleuze-merleau-ponty conceptual encounter ....................................................................................................... encounter - of ghost st ries and things.......................................................................... chapter - assemblage.................................................................................................... the concept of assemblage in the writings of gilles deleuze and félix guattari............. revisiting hans georg gadamer's concept of play........................................................... thoughts on art experience following a deleuze-gadamer conceptual encounter........ encounter - silent words, visualizing time...................................................................... chapter - desire............................................................................................................. the concept of desire in the writings of gilles deleuze and félix guattari..................... revisiting maxine greene's concept of imagination......................................................... viii thoughts on art experience following a deleuze-greene conceptual encounter.......... encounter - tic-toc, barking dog, sound of ringing bell and three hundred and sixty-five puppet figurines.............................................................................................................. chapter - mediators.................................................................................................................. on deleuze's concept of mediators and curricular considerations for art museum education............................................................................................................................ considerations for research in art museum education.................................................... encounter - closing time: frank zappa and lingering thoughts of an art museum educator.......................................................................................................................... references...................................................................................................................... appendix a. oral consent script..................................................................................... ix list of works ai, w. ( - ). bang. [sculptural installation, dimensions variable]. partial views, vancouver, b.c.: vancouver art gallery. photos marie-france berard with permission from the vancouver art gallery. pp. , , , ma, j. w. ( ). black beauty: a living totem. [sculpture]. partial views, vancouver, b.c.: vancouver art gallery. photos marie- france berard with permission from the vancouver art gallery. pp. - xu, b. ( ). background story: ten thousand li of mountains and rivers. [installation]. partial views, vancouver, b.c.: vancouver art gallery. photos marie-france berard with permission from the vancouver art gallery. pp. , - sun, x. ( ). shan-shui ― cosmos. [multimedia installation. site specific arrangement]. partial views, vancouver, b.c.: vancouver art gallery. photos marie-france berard with permission from the vancouver art gallery. pp. - farmer, g. ( ). four frankensteins. [site specific installation]. partial views, vancouver, b.c.: vancouver art gallery. photos marie-france berard with permission from the vancouver art gallery. pp. , farmer, g. ( ). storeroom overture. [site specific installation]. partial views, vancouver, b.c.: vancouver art gallery. photos marie-france berard with permission from the vancouver art gallery. pp. , farmer, g. ( ). the last two million years. [installation, dimensions variable]. partial views vancouver, b.c.: vancouver art gallery. photos marie-france berard with permission from the vancouver art gallery. pp. - farmer, g. ( - ). the surgeon and the photographer. [installation, dimensions variable]. partial views, vancouver, b.c.: vancouver art gallery. photos marie-france berard with permission from the vancouver art gallery. pp. , , , farmer, g. ( - ). let’s make the water turn black. [installation, dimensions variable]. partial views, vancouver, b.c.: vancouver art gallery. photos marie-france berard with permission from the vancouver art gallery. pp. - x glossary affect the sensation of coming against a monumental sculptural installation, the unspeakable sudden loss of control when slipping on ice, a bodily reaction to a caress or sudden cut, affects are those indescribable moments before one reacts or responds. affect is an experiential force, a transitory thought or that something which occurs before an idea or perception, before being conceptualized and put into language. developed throughout his entire oeuvre, for deleuze affect is not an emotion or a feeling, rather it is the result of the interaction of bodies and it can yield actions, changes. (deleuze & guattari, ) assemblage developed by deleuze and guattari, most notably, in a thousand plateaus. capitalism and schizophrenia ( ), the concept of assemblage refers to complex relations and connections of bodies, objects, modes of expressions coming together over different periods of time and space. for instance, the authors use the example of the feudal knight as one such machinic assemblage. more than the simply addition of a human body, a horse, weapons, a saddle and stirrups, the knight does not pre-exist the "intermingling of bodies" (p. ) and the complex interaction of all those elements together. there is no transcendent law, finality or meaning outside of any assemblage as a whole; the law of any assemblage results from its connections. (colebrook, b) xi becoming contrary to the predominant western philosophical tradition since plato, deleuze is not interested in origins and in being, but rather in difference and becoming. the common understanding of becoming is that of an organism, human or non-human body, moving between identitary positions; for instance, myself as an undergraduate student eventually becoming doctoral candidate. this is a view of becoming as a variation between two fixed states, but this is not how deleuze and guattari use the concept. in fact, as explained in a thousand plateaus ( ), for deleuze and guattari becoming doesn't have anything to do with origin and progressions towards a destination or an end point. becoming is "always in the middle" and in-between (p. ). becoming is the dynamism of change itself, but a change not related to the fixed concept of identity. desire/desiring-assemblage in anti-Œdipus. capitalism and schizophrenia, deleuze and guattari ( ) develop a view of desire unrelated to lack, or residing inside a subject who wants something she or he does not have. desire is not related to intrinsic motivation―in psychological terminology, or acquisition. they have also tried to shift the concept of desire from the sole focus on sexuality. for them, desire is viewed as productive; desire produces reality and thus, it is a social force. desire is a process, an affect, an event, it is not in a person or a thing. desire is about connections and thus, one important aspect is that desire only exists within the creation of assemblages. a desiring-assemblage provides connections of forces, flows and it produces something: whether it is a new idea, an event of becoming (of any kind depending on the assemblage), or a revolution. xii deterritorialization deleuze and guattari apply the concept of deterritorialization in different theoretical contexts such as music, literature, philosophy, politics, and the arts. deterritorialization is a process, it "is the movement by which "one" leaves the territory. it is the operation of the line of flight" (deleuze & guattari, , p. ). the concept of territory is complex because it is more than a fixed space with defined boundaries; a territory can be marked and created by the song calls of birds, modes of occupying the land by living organisms, a home, the signature of an artist on an artwork. a territory is an assemblage and thus malleable and always in a state of movement (message, ). as an example, the tree could be seen as an assemblage and a territory. what happens to a fallen branch or leaf? the fallen leaf or branch have been deterritorialized, they keep some of their characteristics (such as their molecular composition) but they no longer function within the tree as assemblage. and yet, the fallen branch or leaf can now become reterritorialized in a bird's nest, if used as building material. in a different context, contemporary artists often explore a process of deterritorialization when they chose to remove objects, language, or practices from their everyday use or context. but when inserted in the space of the artwork, objects or practices then become reterritorialized because they enter the assemblage of the artwork, and other larger assemblages including the art museum, the artist's practice, the art market. difference as elaborated in deleuze's ( ) major work difference and repetition originally published in , the concept of difference is used to challenge western philosophy on two counts: the primacy accorded to being and the representational image of thought. difference is usually taken as a change between two states; by comparing two states, a difference or resemblance xiii from the same is noted or observed. but for deleuze, this view implies that difference is subordinated to sameness and, thus to the concept of identity, to being and to representation. instead, for deleuze ( ), difference should be conceived in terms of 'difference in itself' (p. ). stagoll ( b) explains that to deleuze, there is no pre-existing unity and there is a "particularity or 'singularity' of each individual thing, moment , perception or conception" (p. ) and that this difference is internal to the thing or event, it is not subordinated to something outside of it, such as the notion of identity. immanence gilles deleuze was a philosopher of immanence. this means that for him, everything is to be thought in terms of relations in something. life is a plane of immanence, there is nothing outside of it. for deleuze, western thought made the error of focussing on a philosophy of transcendence where any term, situation, problem is questioned or seen in relation to an outside, such as the concepts of god, subjectivity, being. deleuze contends that relations of transcendence have implicit negative founding assumptions, for instance that the mind is separate from the body (williams, ), and these in turn have become the ground for negative valuation―the transcendent realm being considered dominant. line of flight called "lignes de fuite" in french, the line of flight is in literal translation a line of escape or a "path of mutation" (lorraine, , p. ) in a connection, assemblage or multiplicity. the deleuzian term "lines of flight" is a way to tell how in an assemblage, sometimes a diversion, mutation, or new connection emerge. for example, it could be because encountering an artwork sparked a new idea, it could be a genetic mutation in an organism, or a few individuals breaking away from the habits of a political or social group and deciding to form a xiv new group out of the previous one. lines of flight have the power to deterritorialize, meaning that something breaks away from an assemblage. and thus, for deleuze lines of flight are a becoming event, they are the dynamics of change, and they are creative because they produce something new. but deleuze and guattari ( ) also warn that lines of flight can be "very dangerous for societies" (p. ), because no one can tell in advance what is going to be produced. according to parr ( c), this may be a reason why the arts are most often a primary target when political repression is applied. multiplicity a concept at the basis of deleuze's understanding of the rhizome and assemblage. put simply, a multiplicity is a complex structure which is not dependent on size or numbers and it does not reference a prior whole or unity which has been fragmented. as he wrote in difference and repetition ( ), " everything is a multiplicity in so far as it incarnates an idea" (p. ). ideas are multiplicities, an art gallery, a reading group, a house are multiplicities. in each case we can list their various components but it is impossible to determine what the essence of the house, for instance, is; it is a patchwork of connections in-between a structure, usages, things, habits (roffe, ). multiplicities are complex, often fluctuating, structures. we are ourselves multiplicities, always in flux, always already both part of and actors within the world as we interact with other multiplicities. rhizome/rhizomatic developed at length in a thousand plateaus ( ), deleuze and guattari derive the concept from the biological term of 'rhizome' used to describe a form of plant that can grow and extend itself with a horizontal root system that shoots off new plants from its nodes. in their work, the rhizome becomes a way to describe the connections in assemblages or xv multiplicities, and importantly, a mode of thought. instead of the metaphor of the dominant tree-like structure which "plots a point, fixes an order" (p. ), the rhizome has no center, no genealogy and it does away with hierarchies. the rhizome is about connections, it maps without tracing (tracing is about copying or tracing over the lines which are already there). singularity/singularities the concept of singularity is pivotal in the work of gilles deleuze but if finds various inflections throughout his writings. in this glossary, i will focus more specifically on a view of singularity pertaining to my use of the term for this study. as bryant ( ) explains, singularities are immanent to things, meaning that they are intrinsically part of things, but they cannot be represented, they can only be actualized. singularities manifest qualities and take shape when things come into contact or encounter other things in a constellation of forces, for instance the particular molecular composition of clay will make it solidify in contact with air. in the logic of sense, deleuze ( ) asks what is an ideal event; an event, he writes, is a singularity, or more precisely an ensemble of singularities which are "turning points and points of inflection; bottlenecks, knots, foyers, and centers; points of fusion and condensation, and boiling; points of tear and joy, sickness and health, hope and anxiety, sensitive points" (p. ). so, for example, the boiling point of water is the materiality of water encountering the singularities of various forces such as heat. themselves informed by the work of french philosopher gilbert simondon, deleuze and guattari ( ) develop a view of matter "as a conveyor of singularities and traits of expression" (p. ). and so. singularities are related to a process of individuation and of forming, but they cannot be identified before the encounter. for instance, a painter can know about the viscosity of a given oil paint, the texture of the chosen canvas, and the softness of the paintbrush, but it is the encounter or xvi assemblage of hand-brush-paint-canvas that will manifest all the singularities of the materiality; of the hand holding the brush, in turn responding to the thickness of the paint in contact with the texture of a canvas. virtual in this study, the virtual is not related to simulated reality created by a computer software. informed by the work of henri bergson, in deleuze's ontology the virtual is real but it is not actualised. deleuze does not oppose the virtual and the actual; while the actual is concrete, the virtual is not, but it is still real. the virtual is the mode of reality involved with potentiality; for instance, through experimentation, one can actualize what was, until then, virtual. deleuze calls differenciation the process of actualizing the virtual (parr, b). xvii acknowledgements this doctoral journey would never have been completed without the keen insights, the rigorous theoretical support, intellectual challenge, and generous guidance by my supervisor dr. dónal o'donoghue. i still remember the day when i first met with him and introduced my barely formed doctoral project. i cannot thank him enough for sharing his remarkable scholarship, for modelling how to unpack a question, and for prompting me to think further always. and most of all, i thank him for believing in my work, and in my capacity to complete my doctoral dissertation. i feel blessed for having had the opportunity to work, research, present and study with him through these years. to my committee members, dr. rita l. irwin and dr. william pinar i also want to express my heartfelt and sincere gratitude. about dr. irwin, i will treasure forever the seminar on arts-based research where i first thought about desire in relation to the art experience and she encouraged me to explore further. i am thankful for the experiences to learn from her rich artistic approach to research in various academic settings. about dr. pinar, i will always cherish his vast scholarship, the stimulating class discussions and the intellectual pleasure of attending his seminars on curriculum theory, the works of dwayne huebner or ted aoki. and i already miss the animated exchanges about our differing views on deleuze. i am thankful to both for their astute questions and generous feedback regarding my work; their comments have pushed me to thought and have helped me to improve the articulation of my ideas. much love goes to my wonderful brothers jean-françois and louis-philippe, and all the extended family members of the clans berard and milette. thank you, thank you for your unwavering support. sorry for not being with you longer or more often. xviii i also want to acknowledge my classmates at the university of british columbia. in particular, from my "thinking with theory" reading group: marc, brooke, heather, sam, and my incredible, amazingly supportive friend elsa; kirsty and blake who always have an encouraging word; everyone in the post-qualitative reading group; and my cohort. to florence, catherine, christine and bryan, to old and new friends, i am so grateful to have met you. although i was often missing an event, i thank you for your smiles and walking with me on this journey. such a long, and at times intense writing project would not have been possible without the incredible support from my colleagues at the vancouver art gallery: my supervisors susan and laura, and colleagues maureen, christina, jessa, fiona, patrick, erika, celia, jennifer, lynn, dong, tatiana, sarvenaz, caroline, and jody. thank you all for your patience with me, your kind words and covering my shifts when i needed the extra time. my deepest thanks also go to the vancouver art gallery, in particular kathleen bartels (director), daina augaitis (chief curator and associate director), and paul larocque (former assistant director) for easing the research process and allowing me the great privilege and pleasure to do my fieldwork at the gallery. i would like to express my sincere gratitude to the university of british columbia and the faculty of graduate and post-graduate studies for the generous financial support i received in the form of the four years fellowship. it was an honor to receive this fellowship and the support was extremely beneficial. and most importantly, i want to recognize and acknowledge that since , i am thankful to live, work and learn on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (musqueam), sḵwx̱wú mesh (squamish), and sel ̓íl̓witulh (tsleil-waututh) peoples. xix dedication to my mother rolande bérard, for always being at the other end of the phone when i needed her, for her heartwarming and unflinching moral support. and in loving memory of my father, françois bérard who was so proud to see his daughter embark on her doctoral journey. merci pour tout. prologue to this day, i remember deserting valentina’s art gallery tour. in moscow, valentina was assigned as the official cultural guide to our group of travelers from montreal. i still feel the weight of her gaze as she noticed me, deliberately making the wrong turn and silently abandoning the group and her gallery tour. i still sense her disappointment. not through words but in my visible signs, she interpreted my gesture as a lack of interest; i made a dent in her joy. she felt pride in the beauty and the mystical presence of her beloved russian icons. highly knowledgeable too; for years she had studied the artists’ techniques and the historical context. how could i turn my back on such a unique opportunity to learn and discover? our group had paused for a short visit of the state tretyakov gallery. i did not have enough time. not enough minutes and hours to see everything. valentina rushed the group through the gallery entrance, walked up the stairs and went straight into the historical galleries. rublev’s the holy trinity, our lady of vladimir; precious century-old wooden icons surrounded me. like a proud and loving sibling valentina wanted to introduce every member of the family, carefully pointing out characteristics and sharing individual stories. her tour was informative, yet after forty minutes i could still see the long row of icons we were yet to meet. they were beautiful and fascinating but i wouldn’t have time to wander the rooms of the tretyakov. all the while, i could hear the enticing call of the art gallery waiting to be explored. not enough time to experience the sheer physicality of the building. not enough time to tell her about my intense longing to walk the spaces of the gallery; she took her role of the good guide seriously, she kept talking, answering. i deserted valentina and the gallery tour. she noticed. to this day, i still feel the weight of her gaze. no gallery floor-plan. i left the dark solemn rooms of the golden icons and wandered, jumped into the flow of corridors, rooms and stairways. like veins and arteries, the various hallways propelled me to vital spaces in the tretyakov. i recall the bright, rectangular marble floor rooms displaying the malevich, larionov and other modernists. meandering through the works, i would slow down here and there caught by the sight of a familiar painting or captivated by the unknown. so little time left to get a sense of centuries of russian and soviet art. i plundered through, it was exhilarating. still wandering, i emerged in the original th century architecture of the tretyakov gallery. the smell of old musty wood, the sight of low benches covered with deep burgundy velvet now tattered at the edges. there, time, space, history and my own fantasies of russia intersected as i let my eyes caress the surfaces of paintings by nesterov, serov, korin and brodsky. only twenty minutes left before returning to the bus and meeting point; a dreadful constraint but i got into trouble before for not abiding. i kept moving into the flow of passages and ended up on the tretyakov’s top floor. i remember the thrill of entering the large expanse of the high wall gallery, with dim rays of pale yellow sunlight coming through the glass roof, gentle specks of dust dancing in the air. and emerging in the shadows, the sight of chekhov and tolstoy strolling casually while deep in discussion, absently gazing at the paintings. around me russian painters fascinated by impressionism and the symbolism yet creating their own new vocabulary to tell of the land, the orthodox priests, the peasant revolts, the datchas and a young girl at the kitchen table. i read a few labels, the names have faded away but affects remain present. i turned a corner...and there he was; mikhail vrubel’s seated daemon. to this day, i remember standing there, frozen yet intensely alive. i recall being transfixed by the luscious colors, the vibrant paint handling. i still feel the unspeakable and sensuous presence of the male daemon with the intense gaze, yet peacefully resting until another desire for him to rise. him, so beautiful, so oblivious of my own existence. introduction three background moments to the study purpose and focus of the study my research topic is the experience of encountering art in a gallery setting while taking into consideration the artwork, the visitor or public but also the multiplicity of material forces (human, non-human, discursive, spatial) and the fluid connections weaved in- between. the study took shape in the entanglements of a multitude of events, ideas, doubts, experiences, questioning and desire to understand, not so much what the art encounter is or how it functions for the visitor, since these questions are already being explored in museum research but rather, i am interested to inquire what the art encounter produces. such a question is relevant in today's scholarship because in terms of an event, encountering art circulates throughout my practice and my journey as art museum educator ; in particular when i am involved in aesthetic education providing gallery tours, lectures, artist talks or developing interpretation strategies, or creating particular situations or invitations for encountering art. the study also aims to expand the terminology frequently used in museum philosopher maxine greene ( ) establishes a distinction between "aesthetic education” and "art education". aesthetic education is about facilitating an "appreciative, reflective, cultural, participatory engagements with the arts (p. ). the focus is on bringing individuals to notice and see the various characteristics in a particular work of art, and through experiencing the artworks, for the artworks to become meaningful in one's life because new connections are made, new ideas and ways of seeing emerge. art education is mostly concerned with learning and exploring the various artistic techniques and media through direct experience. greene encourages connections between the two disciplines since the physical exploration of an artistic medium opens one to ask aesthetic questions about artworks. following greene's distinction, my practice and role at the art gallery encompass both aesthetic and art education. in this dissertation, i will use the term 'art education' as an umbrella term which includes both the 'aesthetic' looking and perceiving and the hands-on exploration, since i understand them as closely interrelated. education to describe the experience of encountering art. while the vocabulary provided by educational psychology to interpret and explain the cognitive, emotional, physical, social experience of the visitor remains significant and useful, for my theoretical framework i decided to work with the concepts of encounter, assemblage and desire from philosopher gilles deleuze, and in his collaborative writings with psychoanalyst félix guattari . thinking with deleuze implies a view of the subject as an assemblage of a multiplicity of elements, and always in a process of becoming due to encounters and experimentation. since it was imperative for me to think with a deleuzian framework, a number of methodological commitments followed. in particular, this is an empirical study of a different kind, one in line with post-qualitative research and the new empiricisms (st. pierre, ) or new materialism (coole & frost, ); that is, research methodologies more attuned to the importance of matter and processes of materialization or how research enacts its object of study. in my for a comprehensive and polyvocal biography the collaboration between gilles deleuze and félix guattari, consult, françois dosse ( ). gilles deleuze and félix guattari: intersecting lives. here are some notes on the collaboration between gilles deleuze and felix guattari: in may , the streets of paris were the theatre for student manifestations and class struggles that will deeply shake the foundations of french society. during that time, philosopher gilles deleuze (b. -d. ) was at an important turn in his professional life. he had been working previously on the history of philosophy – hume, kant, spinoza and nietzsche - and was then finishing difference and repetition ( / ), a post-structural critique about the concept of identity, and logique du sens ( ) where he develops his view on the event and becoming. félix guattari (b. -d. ) was a militant psychoanalyst, the director of the la borde psychiatric clinic, and a social scientist. deleuze and guattari met in ; they were introduced by a mutual friend also working at la borde and to whom deleuze had expressed his interest on the topics of madness yet knew he missed disciplinary knowledge in psychoanalysis. guattari had been up to that point a faithful disciple of psychoanalyst jacques lacan, but lacan did not return the favor and distanced guattari from his close circle of followers. during his first meeting with deleuze, guattari shared an outline of a paper entitled “machines and structures” which he planned to present at the freudian school of paris. stimulated by some of deleuze’s ideas elaborated in difference and repetition ( / ), the conversation encouraged guattari to dare an official attack and criticism of lacan’s focus on the Œdipal triangulation of mother/father/child, and his thesis resting on the importance of the signifier- the system of signs. as foucault notes in his preface to anti-Œdipus, this act of subversion against lacan was shocking for the french intelligentsia. indeed until , every intellectual had to become familiar with marx, remain faithful to freud’s ideas and treat the system of signs with “the greatest respect" (p.xi). but deleuze and guattari went on to elaborate their critique of freudian and lacanian psychoanalysis, afterwards they embarked in a fruitful collaboration lasting until with the publication of what is philosophy? ( ). study, this implies that the research design does not follow the usual structure of, for instance, interview-transcription of data-coding-analysis. instead, the research closely adheres to the theoretical framework and i have crafted the research as a deleuzian assemblage, a dynamic constellation of interconnected objects, bodies, ideas such as: field notes, the writing in/of personal narratives of my encounters, photographs, the lived inquiry of embodied encounterings in the gallery space, and scholarly texts. throughout the research process, two guiding questions remained present: ) with the production of data in autobiographical fieldnotes, how does deleuze’s concepts of encounter, desire and assemblage help me to think and inquire about my art encounters? what insights can i bring forth on the art encounter? ) in what ways does thinking with deleuzian concepts enlarge received discourses in art education and museum education about the art encounter within the art museum? the guiding questions for this study came together over time, like a constellation of tiny forces in the water and environment that build up and coalesce at some point to become forceful waves rising, turning, folding and unfurling into one another; the outside of waves rolling in, eventually becoming an inside. both inner and outer surfaces connecting, and merging with it the potential to produce another wave. the folding of events and ideas as a wave is an idea which i borrow from deleuze ( ) who in his book on michel foucault, proposes that to think is "to fold, to double the outside with a coextensive inside" (p. ). it would serve little purpose for me in trying to locate a beginning to this study but there are situations, moments, acting as a multitude of folds coming together and prompting me to inquire about the experience of encountering art in my ever fluid roles as an art historian and art museum educator. these various moments or background stories are very different, yet all are connected to encounters with art, impacting me or others and, they have built up to form this powerful wave. a wave that gathered momentum, and as it rolled, all the various moments and situations started to connect. the outside of the wave now forming the inside and in my case producing questions and the desire to further inquire experience as a milieu which provides opportunities for encounters with art, and the production or the actualization of affects and ideas. in the next three sections, i will introduce the reader to the three background moments that are significant in this research as assemblage. the chapter comes to a close by describing the site of the study and i also provide some words on the structure of the dissertation. first moment - my studies in art history and professional work as art museum educator a first background moment resides in my training as an art historian and subsequent position at the musée d'art contemporain de montréal where i worked for fifteen years. i began as a gallery-interpreter providing tours to both children and adults, and a few years in this study, i use the terms gallery-interpreter, museum educator, museum interpreter to describe my work inside the art gallery. in canada, each museum institution has a different set of designation and division of roles that vary according to the history of the institution, and set of organizational practices. in most instances, the museum educator will be responsible for coordination, conceptualization and implementation of educational programs, as opposed to the gallery-interpreter or tour-guide who mostly facilitates gallery tours. a museum educator works specifically in the education department (this denomination can also vary, such as education services, museum learning, direction artistique et éducative) or in public programs. drawing from welsh ( ), the function of interpretation is broader, for it includes: (...) all of the means and media – including effective application of emerging technologies – by which the museum conveys its messages, principally through exhibits and programming – and extends to exhibition design and docent training. interpretation also involves assessments of the museum’s effectiveness in delivering its messages. (p. ) hence, i understand museum interpreters to encompass museum educators but i also conceive of curators, exhibition designers, even the marketing and communication department to be involved in later i became responsable des visites . my responsibility was to develop the in-gallery educational programs; by being involved in the everyday work of coordinating and facilitating gallery tours, but also collaborating with artists and curators for public talks, and facilitating modes of engagement for the museum public. and for the past eight years, i now occupy a position of gallery-interpreter at the vancouver art gallery where i was granted permission to do my field work in two exhibitions between the months of march to early september . as i made my entry into the educational realm of art museums in the early s, a persistent sense of lack emerged for me, for i questioned if i was fully prepared in my pedagogical approaches with the art museum's visitors. i started to wonder what it even meant to experience art, and what was my role as a museum educator. at university, my learning was focused in art theory and the history of art, and thus mostly on the art object which i could analyze from every socio-political, cultural, historical and theoretical perspective. but i learned to trouble the simplistic and elitist view of my role as teaching the skills of the expert art historian. for one, many other art museum educators at the time turned to what has been called the 'new art history' . emerging and proliferating in the s interpretation for the public. it must also be noted that in larger institutions, professional roles are usually very distinct, but in smaller institutions the same person can occupy numerous roles, such as planning an exhibition, while at the same time devising a public program of activities to enrich and facilitate the visitors' experience. more specifically, from to , i was responsible for conceptualizing and implementing numerous interpretive strategies such as gallery tours, audioguides, specific extended labels and texts, small didactic exhibitions, lectures and artists’ talks. in my early days, my work was informed by art historical discourse, theories of contemporary art and the new museology concerned with politics of display, discourse, power, interpretation (see barker, ; duncan, ; greenberg, ferguson, & nairne, ; karp & lavine, ; preziosi, ; serota, ; sherman & rogoff, ; vergo, ). my pedagogical interventions would also draw extensively from readings in teaching methods and communication skills, museum research and educational psychology on visitors’ experience and learning styles (dufresne-tassé, sauvé, banna, lepage, & weltzl fairchild, ; falk & dierking, , ; gardner, ; hein, ; hooper-greenhill, ; lachapelle, ), on cognitive stages (housen, ; housen & yenawine, ) and various texts on the museum as discourse and curricular space (duncan, ; hooper-greenhill, ; roberts, ; vallance, ). writing on the intellectual history of art museum education, melinda mayer ( , ) examined the emergence in the s of new approaches to the study of art and art history, these practices were and onwards, the feminist and post-colonial critiques concerning the complex racial, gendered, cultural power structures of art historical discourse and inside the art museum, shifted the way art museum educators (and curators) viewed and theorized the visitor's experience. in a nutshell, art museum educators became interested in the new art histories because the scholarship provided concepts and theoretical tools to: interrogate the complex racial, gendered, cultural, social power structures inside the gallery (duncan, ; hooper- greenhill, ), challenge a monolithic and top-down transmission view of knowledge (hooper-greenhill, ), and complicate the nature of meaning and interpretation by accepting that meaning is not embedded in the object but rather, it is a process derived from the encounter by a perceiver within a cultural context. (bal & bryson, ; muhlberger, ; roberts, ). spending so much time in the gallery space with other visitors also made me realize that i had perhaps failed to, or not fully, considered the constellation of forces in the entangled and material experience of the viewer. interestingly, david ebitz ( ) found out, in his research on the theories used in/by art museum education, that professionals traditionally trained in art history or the visual arts turned to visitor-centered learning no longer concerned solely with attribution, style, taste, and iconography. loosely grouped under the term 'new art history', these new approaches were informed by feminist, cultural, post-colonial, critical and ecological theories. more specifically, for a historiography of the term 'new art history', see harris ( ), rees and bordello ( ) the literature in feminist theory and postcolonial critique of art history and by extension art museums is too numerous for me to do it justice here, but i will mention key texts significant for my own learning. in feminist theory and the challenge of the canon of western art, figure the influential articles by nochlin ( ) "why have there been no great women artists?", duncan's ( ) "the moma's hot mamas", and tickner ( )"the body politics: female sexuality and women artists since ". also important moments in the articulation of feminist theory are: broude & garrard ( ), feminisn and art history; lippard ( ), from center: feminist essays in women's art; parker & pollock ( [ ]), old mistresses; and pollock ( ), vision and difference: feminity, feminism and the histories of art. as part of the fields of postcolonial and cultural studies are: bhabha ( ), the location of culture; hall ( ), "cultural studies: two paradigms"; said's orientalism ( ), culture and imperialism ( ); and finally spivak ( ), in other worlds. approaches in the s and s. more specifically, art museum educators started to adapt to the gallery context, learning theories drawn from psychology of the individual . this was also my strategy, and i turned to educational literature, and studies specifically in art museum education, to learn about the viewer's emotional, perceptual and cognitive processes when experiencing art (see footnote four in this chapter for a list of titles). much of museum educational research is premised on what falk and dierking ( ) consider to be the key role of museums as "public institutions for personal learning" (p.xii). as hooper-greenhill ( ) points out, the public museums of the nineteenth century had education as their core function, the ideal museum was meant to be an "advanced school of self-instruction" (p. ). this aim was embedded in complex ideological representations of wealth, power, colonialism, knowledge, nonetheless via exhibition displays and especially education as teaching and learning, museums sought to participate in public instruction. historians of museum and gallery education have examined the important shifts that occurred in the teaching/learning dynamics. as i made my way into the art museum, the image of the museum of the enlightenment where the favorite model of teaching as the transmission of knowledge provided by the curator as expert, was definitely being challenged. instead, i learned about constructivist conceptions of learning with a focus on museum david ebitz ( , ) asked museum educators attending an annual convention of the national art education association (naea) to list the theories which inform their practice. at the top of the list, most cited howard gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, abigail housen and philip yenawine's visual thinking strategies, followed by john dewey's ( ) experience and education, csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow or the psychology of optimal experience, piaget's theory of cognitive development, vygotsky's theory of cognitive development and constructivism. further down the list, a few art museum educators were drawing from maxine greene's ( ) releasing the imagination, paolo freire's critical pedagogy, and hans georg gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. postcolonial theory came last. i need to point out that ebitz's surveys date from or so, and we do not know the provenance of the museum educators. nonetheless, this list follows very closely my own reading list as i progressed in the field of canadian art museum education. to my knowledge, a similar but more recent survey has not been done. it is georges e. hein ( , ) who, in the early s, heralded and brought constructivist ideas into the field of museum education. with its core ideas already expressed in john dewey, visitors' meaning-making process; via exhibitions but also their culture, previous knowledge and experiences, and the conditions of their visit (hein, , ; hooper-greenhill, ). with current economic pressures for public art museum to justify their role in the social fabric, learning is one of the keyword to promote the museum educational experience. i suggest that the naturalized description of the art museum as a space of learning needs to be complicated and de-centered in order to allow for a new vocabulary, thus adding to the vocabulary already in use from art history or educational psychology, that is generative to think about the art experience. to put it succinctly, i do not deny that through experience learning happens, or wish to critique learning per se. i came to question what are the limitations, what shadows are cast, if art museum educators think of the experience of encountering―not exclusively of course, but predominantly―with concepts from theories of learning, where experience is viewed in terms of the construction of meaning. to be clear, i am not implying that learning theories should be put aside, on the contrary. simply, as a museum educator, i am curious to inquiry what view of the art encounter would be enacted, or how i could think, the experience in terms of inter-connections happening in the complex assemblage of viewer, artwork, context of display, museum spaces, ideas, discourse, other non-human materialities, and so on. this questioning manifested itself as i entered the field of art museum education but it continued until the doctoral studies, and even now but today with the vocabulary of gilles constructivism is a theory of learning and knowledge in which learners individually and socio-culturally construct knowledge for themselves. according to hein, constructivism was important for museum education because instead of seeing knowledge as 'out there' or residing in the object itself or the topic of a display, in constructivism the focus is on the museum visitor, prior knowledge and that learning is active, it happens through/in/with experiences. hein's view of the constructivist museum ( ) are still important and influential in today's museum education, in science museums in particular, but also for art museum education (see de backer et al., ). deleuze. nonetheless, this first moment overlaps with another prompt framed by my decision to join a tour offered at the université de montréal and traveling along the trans-siberian railways. still charmed and haunted years after my reading of michel strogoff a novel published in by french author jules verne, i could not resist the call of this journey and the thoughts of encountering the city of moscow. second moment - a visit at moscow's state tretyakov gallery i described earlier in the prologue to this study what emerged for me as another prompt or moment; a narrative recounting my visit to moscow's state tretyakov gallery. the text was produced for a doctoral seminar, one for which i decided to experiment with laurel richardson's practice of writing as a method of inquiry ( ). in choosing words and moments to relate and somehow re-present my visit in the art museum, i wondered if i would see, understand differently how i heard the call of the tretyakov's spaces, how i withdrew from valentina's excellent gallery tour of masters in icon painting in order to go and explore the dark galleries filled with paintings telling the history of old russia. as richardson ( b) shared about her process of writing in research; “i write because i want to find out something. i write in order to learn something that i didn’t know before i wrote it” ( b, p. ). fascinated by the generative act of writing, i decided to embark in writing as a mode of inquiry, to examine how, even when visitors are engaged in an educational program or a situation of mediation , they can suddenly decide to leave an activity, slip through the cracks, in a nutshell, the term mediation refers to the full range of strategies, tools and resources put in place by a museum to facilitate the relationship between the visitor and a work of art. this includes the exhibitions, catalogues and the work of curators, but also the guided tours, workshops and various public programs meant to inform and enhance the visitor's encounter with art. see, desvallées & mairesse ( ). transform the educational offering or even refuse the invitation. i revisited this narrative during the writing of my comprehensive exams and, interestingly, the initial question that prompted me to write this piece shifted. by then informed by alecia y. jackson and lisa mazzei's ( , ) method of thinking with theory, i became interested to unpack my account, without coding, but instead by putting it to work with theoretical concepts in order to see what knowledge could be produced for myself and other art museum educators and curators who will read this study. following jackson and mazzei, this means that instead of looking at my narrative as data to be coded in order to find larger themes, using a concept such as affect or assemblage necessarily frames and make possible certain analytical questions. and thus, reading the narratives with philosopher gilles deleuze's concepts such as affect (a non-verbal experiential force or intensity and the result of the interaction of bodies), desire (an experimental and productive force), and assemblage (an assemblage establishes connections between complex physical, conceptual, material structures) produced something i had not noticed before. for instance, it prompted me to realize how the pale light seeping through the old gallery's glass rooftop, the faint smell of wood, the muted sounds in the gallery unspeakably affected my body. how i created my own desiring-assemblage , my connections with the rich gallery space, walking without a purpose but discovering at every turn, like a flâneur strolling without any attempt to remember artist names or notice stylistic periods, simply strolling until happened the suspended moment of coming against the large, jewel toned painting of the demon seated by mikhail vrubel . neither did i know about the artist or the painting, and i am not sure why this painting stopped me in my path. for the reader, a glossary of terms for the work of gilles deleuze and félix guattari can be consulted on page x. here is a link to a visual of demon seated painted in by mikhail aleksandrovich vrubel: https://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/ retrieved june , . https://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/en/collection/_show/image/_id/ psychologists could certainly suggest interpretations to explain my behavior, but i am interested in what this encounter produced, how twenty years later i re-live the moment, do internet research on vrubel and revisit this little event in my dissertation. perhaps, this is why i became intrigued when i read a short passage by historian timothy brook in which he describes his own experience of strolling in the gallery space and he came upon a painting he knew from reproductions, but turned out to be "a fundamental encounter" (deleuze, , p. ), one that produces and creates thinking. third moment - a reading, view of delft by timothy brook and so, my third background event was another chance encounter. it is a written passage by historian timothy brook ( ) in which he describes his experience with view of delft by seventeenth century dutch painter johannes vermeer: i encountered the painting for the first time on a visit to the maurithuis thirty-five years after i landed in delft. i went there to see girl with a pearl earring and i did. i knew that there were other vermeers on display as well, though i did not know which ones until i turned into the corner room on the top floor and found myself facing his view of delft. the painting was larger than i expected, busier and far more complex in its modulation of light and shade than reproductions revealed. as i was trying to decipher the buildings in the painting based on what i knew from seventeenth-century maps, it dawned on me that delft was ten minutes away by train. why not compare vermeer's rendition with real life, especially if the seventeenth century were still as present as i suspected? i rushed downstairs to the gift shop, bought a postcard of the painting, and hurried to the station. the train pulled out four minutes later, and in no time i was back in delft. (pp. - ) i came upon this narrative of an experience with art completely by chance, while preparing to tour a new exhibition at the vancouver art gallery, one focused on precious objects and artworks belonging to the imperial museum in beijing. timothy brook, a sinologist and ming scholar, collaborated with the curatorial team both in terms of layout and interpretive material. wanting to learn more about chinese history, i bought a copy of vermeer's hat. the seventeenth century and the dawn of the global world and soon brook's engaging prose grabbed my attention as a reader. in part, this passage caught my attention due to the author's choice of words and vivid descriptors to share his moment of recognition, and yet surprise, of seeing the painting view of delft, a famous painting he obviously knew from photographic reproductions. perhaps due to my training as an art historian and art museum educator, i also noticed that in telling his meeting with the artwork, brook chose to provide the reader with a summary description of the painting's formal properties ― such as the composition and the effects of light and shade (the painter's use of color and values), common to most description in the field of art history or art criticism. interestingly though, he also finds it worthy to share an embodied aesthetic property such as the scale of the painting which surprised him and defied his expectation because the painting is larger than he had thought. furthermore, drawing from previous knowledge and his memory of old maps, brook attempts to read the in the disciplines of art history and art education, the formal description consists of identifying the visual elements (also called elements of design) seen in the artwork such as: the composition, colors, forms and shapes, textures, lines and the space. the formal description should then lead to an analysis which examines how the visual elements affect, contribute to the representation. see: barnett ( ). a short guide to writing about art and feldman ( , , ) on art criticism in the context of art education. various painted motifs as signs in order to reconstruct seventeenth century delft. i could continue to unpack brook's description but suffice to say that this short passage points to his experience with some references to his bodily perception of an art object, and he described some formal qualities which he sees as attributes of the art object. he decided to keep under silence the gallery setting, ambient lighting, sounds, and other sensorial characteristics of the maurithuis. why my interest in this passage? admittedly, so far brook's account remains close to a kantian conception of the aesthetic experience as, "[...] the full exercise of all our sensory, cognitive and affective capacities in the appreciation of works of art" (goldman, , p. ). but the passage reveals so much more. and by reveal, i do not imply any desire in the text to 'reflect' his experience, but i read it for what brook chose to tell the reader. for as michel foucault ( ) reminds us, "[...] an experience is neither true nor false: it is always a fiction, something constructed, which exists only after it has been made, not before; it isn't something that is "true", but it has been a reality" (p. ). and thus, i particularly became captive of the text when brook embarked on a line of thought, a wonderful line of flight made of connections and relations of 'and', 'and', 'and. brook was looking and engaging with vermeer's painting, and then he realized that the actual city of delft was nearby; that's the little line of flight, a little opening in his assemblage with the painting, and the larger assemblage of the maurithuis. and this little line of flight produces an idea; he buys a postcard and leaves the gallery to jump on a train so he could re-visit delft, and discover for himself vermeer's point of view. my doctoral study aims to inquire into the qualities and productive potential of the art encounter and i remember that reading brook's brief description of an encounter triggered a number of questions to the art experience as educational and one way to augment one's capacity to act in the world. i will share some of my first thoughts, and early questioning, as a way to show precisely that my theoretical and research interest is in shifting away from the viewer/artwork binary towards, as foucault ( ) proposes, finding the means "for thinking about everything that is happening" (p. ). hence, i remember playfully unpacking brook's narrative prose by asking myself: how would one describe brook's encounter with view of delft? should one write only about the moment when the historian finds himself in front of - or against, contra- to use the etymology of encounter- the painting? or perhaps, the encounter began the moment brook entered the maurithuis, already open to an experience, attentive and intrinsically motivated , since brook already knew that the gallery displayed famous works by vermeer. how can one inquire both about brook's strolling around the gallery, his contingent meeting with view of delft, and the knowledge gained from this encounter? does the encounter and experience of the view of delft end the moment he turns away and decide to hop on a train? playing with these speculative ideas allowed me to start articulating my interest in the concept of encounter as developed by deleuze. of course, timothy brook's prose describing his encounter is mediated by a choice of relevant artistic terminology, carefully selected words, literary effects to grab the reader's attention and move forward his narrative. albeit i will not rehearse the argument here, philosopher jacques derrida ( ) has elaborated in his book of grammatology about language as being both necessary yet inadequate to convey the complexity and richness of what words attempt to refer to (dimitridiadis & kamberelis, ). knowing this, i am most while my work is not grounded in psychology of the subject and constructivist theories, i certainly do not reject these theoretical lenses and, in the field of museum studies, i recommend the following seminal, and still influential, work grounded in cognitive psychology by: hein ( ), hooper-greenhill ( , ), falk and dierking ( , , ). intrigued by brook's choice of words and what he shares with the reader as he recollects and perhaps, partially recreates a new encounter with view of delft. i see something being produced in the encounter, for as soon as brook establishes a connection, according to his narrative, between his visual observations and his knowledge that he might visit in person the city of delft. of course, the reader will never know what this encounter produced for brook, besides his growing scholarly interest in trade routes, perhaps the historian does not know himself. yet i am curious about the words brook chose to share what followed the meeting with view of delft. how he wanted to stand at the exact spot vermeer stood when he drafted his study for the painting. being in presence of the artwork and as connections between knowledge and ideas were made, a little space opened for something to leak, to unfold, it opened up a path, in deleuze's terminology a 'line of flight' producing a new idea and the power to respond. these three background moments also opened a line of flight, which after many twists and turns, became the starting points for this study. opening a line of flight - the study the three moments i have described folded onto each other, and by connecting served to produce new thoughts and questions about the messy, fluid, complex, multi-dimensional experience of encountering artworks in exhibitions spaces. educated in art history, i have learned to frame and think the experience of art with aesthetic categories, feminist theory, cultural studies, and sociology of art. having worked in art museum education for twenty years, i have come to know about the cognitive, emotional, perceptual and other psychological processes at play in the art experience. these knowings and practices have informed my practice as a museum educator, and in different ways continue to do so, but they will not be explicitly framing my study. for as my professional background folded onto my encounters in the tretyakov or brook's encounter with view of delft, these knowings somehow did not help me think about my body being affected by the pulsating historical and physical pull of an art gallery, about the material connections being made in the encounter, or about what the encounter produces. this study aims to contribute to existing scholarship in the visual arts focused on the art experience and art museum education, and also the emerging scholarship interested to inquire art and art education alongside deleuzian concepts . situated at the intersection of art museum education, the art experience, with the thinking and writing of french philosopher gilles deleuze (and his work done in collaboration with french psychoanalyst félix guattari), this study will inquire with the concepts of encounter, desire, assemblage because deleuzian philosophy is about connections, about experimentation; not so much about the 'what is' but rather about how does it work and what does encountering art do? in other words, i wish to open a line of flight by taking the concept of art experience i have come to know― through studies in aesthetics, critical pedagogy, educational psychology, hermeneutics, phenomenology- and both connect and enter it into a deleuzian territory, this one informed by recent scholarship thinking art with deleuzian concepts, see the scholars in footnote number fourteen, and the work of simon o'sullivan ( , , ) who is especially useful because of his interest in contemporary art. this, i contend, will enable new understandings about the experience of encountering art because many concepts are used differently. for instance, i have long been concerned to complicate and move away from the in recent years, the number of titles with the keywords art and deleuze has grown exponentially. here i will briefly mention a list of scholars who are studying art education from, or an engagement with, a deleuzian perspective: beier ( ), garoian ( , , ), irwin ( ), irwin and springgay ( ), jagodzinski ( , ), lemaire ( ), richardson ( , ), schulte ( ), springgay ( a, ), sweeny ( ), wallin( ). binary perceiver and the perceived. for, as stagoll ( c) explains, for deleuze the dichotomy of perceiver and perceived is without ground because one never simply gaze upon an object because there's always numerous and a multiplicity of interactions (at macro or micro level, material or immaterial) being involved. and there's always a complex set of forces at play; from the imperceptible movements of the body responding to affects, the materiality of the artworks in my path, the noises in the gallery, if one is hungry or tired, people passing by, the sense of time, the moisture of coldness in the air, or the sense perception of the artworks qualities. yet, it is important to add that to deleuze, forces are not defined as pressure or something aggressive but as "any capacity to produce a change" (stagoll, , p. ). and thus, what would it mean to consider the art experience, not as a starting point on a path that leads, or should lead, to a learning about or an ideal of transformation, but rather as a complex assemblage which produces more connections, ideas, flows, and as a milieu for emerging subjectivities, affects and new thoughts? and so, how do i inquire the messy, relational experience of encountering art? how to proceed in order to map out and inquire, without tracing and without trying to contain into one tidy narrative, these complex set of forces at play in an encounter? deleuze ( ) suggested that "theory is an inquiry, which is to say, a practice [...]" (p. ), therefore thinking with deleuze calls for my study to make certain empirical and methodological commitments; in particular regarding the question of subjectivity and the de-centering of the researcher, and the research process as assemblage. although deleuze's view of subjectivity shifts slightly between his early and later works it is never, boundas ( a) explains, defined as the image of the pre-existent, fixed and unified individual. instead, a person or subject is "an assemblage of heterogeneous elements" (p. ) and is in a constant process of subjectivation, meaning that "subjectivity is not given; it is always under construction" (p. ). and thus, engaging with deleuze was an invitation to shape my research process as an assemblage, which is a co- functioning multiplicity "made up of many heterogeneous terms and which establishes liaisons, relations between them" (deleuze & parnet, , p. ). as a research-assemblage, this study is made up of heterogeneous terms such as; my personal narratives based on my encounters with specific artworks, some photographs of the artworks simply taken with my cellular phone, my "writing as a method of inquiry" (richardson, , p. ), the writings of gilles deleuze, and the background moments which i have just shared and are always actual and co-functioning in this little machine which is the research. although i am the hand taking the pictures and the narrative are written in the first person, the photographs are other terms in the assemblage, they are not to be seen as central nodes, they are not captioned nor numbered. the images are not to be seen as documenting the fixed, central position of the researcher, but rather act as lines connecting various experiences in the gallery space, theory, knowledge, past experiences and future projections. dispersed throughout the study, the personal narratives and the photographs serve as encounters for the reader. furthermore, informed by the methodology of a/r/tography; the juxtaposition of text and photographic renderings of the artworks, enact my own encounters and the emergence of my un-thought concerning the experience of encountering art. site of the study the study was conducted at the vancouver art gallery in vancouver, canada. founded in , the vancouver art gallery is the largest public art museum in western canada, it houses a permanent collection of more than , artworks with a focus on historical and contemporary art from british columbia, as well as first nations artists. located in downtown vancouver in the renovated neo-classical building of what was originally the provincial courthouse, today the gallery includes four floors of exhibition spaces, and an extensive offer of public events and educational programs . permission to do my fieldwork in two large exhibitions presented in winter and summer of , was granted by the chief curator daina augaitis and the vancouver art gallery director kathleen bartels . during a period spanning over six months and most often after my workday as a museum educator touring school groups or adults, i would grab my oral consent scripts and walk, stroll, read, photograph, observe, engage in a conversation, take notes and linger in a section of the exhibition for an hour or so. there, i would write down observations and thoughts, as a way to generate data, embark already in the process of "writing as a method of inquiry" (richardson, , p. ) and attempt an ever so fragmented yet enjoyable act of giving a written form to experiences of encountering the installations. as i mentioned, the artworks were displayed in two exhibitions of contemporary art on show while i was doing my fieldwork: four large installations were displayed in unscrolled. reframing tradition in contemporary chinese art , these were, bang by ai weiwei ( - ), background story: ten thousand li of mountains and rivers by xu bing ( ), shan shui – cosmos by sun xun ( ), and black beauty: a living totem by jennifer wen ma ( ) . and five artworks were part of how do i fit this ghost in my mouth. an exhibition by this information about the vancouver art gallery was retrieved from the website of the institution at: http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/about-us/about-us.html. retrieved june , . see appendix a for a copy of the approved oral consent script i would hand-out every time i engaged in conversation with a visitor, and would use to contextualize my study. the exhibition was organized by the vancouver art gallery, co-curated by diana freundl, assistant curator, and carol liu, beijing art critic. it was shown from november , to april , . see: https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_unscrolled.html retrieved june , . see also the exhibition catalogue unscrolled. reframing tradition in chinese contemporary art (freundl & lu, ). see the list of works on page ix for the full reference. http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/about-us/about-us.html https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_unscrolled.html geoffrey farmer , these were: four frankensteins ( ), storeroom overture ( ), the last two million years ( ), the surgeon and the photographer ( - ), let’s make the water turn black ( ) . the vancouver art gallery was presenting other exhibitions at the time but these two exhibitions of contemporary art were so compelling that my fieldwork also emerged because of the presence of certain artworks within these exhibitions. i do not know exactly how i came to choose the works by ai weiwei, jennifer wen ma, xu bing, sun xun, or the larger installations from vancouver artist geoffrey farmer. perhaps they chose me. mostly, i still remember the intensity of affects when i encountered these artworks for the first time. in a deleuzian framework, affects are not emotions as in the everyday sense of the word. affect is an intensity, it's an "experiential force" (colman, , ), it is the change or variation that occurs when bodies, things events come into contact. affect is also pre-conceptual, so the naming of that change, however subtle or impactful, happens after. from the first moment i stepped into the exhibition, i remember the powerful visual impact of seeing ai weiwei's monumental assemblage of eight hundred and eighty-six stools inside the high wall gallery, and then the playful joy of strolling in and through the work, sensing the precarious balance of the assemblage resting on old wooden stools. xu bing's sculptural installation was sheer beauty at the sight of peaceful mountain landscape, but also a site of fascination when it turned out to be constructed out of mundane materials. and the work by vancouver artist geoffrey farmer was also sheer intellectual and experiential delight, the artist having staged the exhibition was organized by the vancouver art gallery and curated by daina augaitis, chief curator/associate director with diana freundl, assistant curator. it was shown may to september , . https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_farmer.html retrieved june , . see the list of works on page ix for the full reference. https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_farmer.html for the visitor particular invitations to move and discover his past and current artistic practice. for this study, my in-gallery research activities occurred sometimes on the weekend but, most often, after a busy day of tours and art workshops with students. i would spend an hour or two with an installation. often at random, i would gravitate towards a piece such as shan shui ― cosmos by sun xun ( ), simply sitting in the middle of the room, admiring the colorful rendering of birds in flight moving across the projection of an old scroll landscape from the song dynasty, or the hand drawn animation of sea monsters’ ferocious fighting. sense impressions, thoughts, observations of other visitors moving in the space were written down. i would take a few random pictures, what would be the use or purpose of these images, i was not yet certain. at times, another visitor would open a conversation; these moments were contingent but i consider them also constitutive of my experiences of encountering art. the reader will be introduced to e. in a later chapter, she was simply a visitor who noticed me diligently writing notes and she opened up the conversation. from then on, my notes were not about her experience but rather how our conversation expanded my web of connections with the artwork. the scratch notes, the photographs, or the comments and observations of other visitors are not to be seen as ways to excavate what an experience of encountering art is; they are not to be taken as ways to trace the unfolding of stages or psychological processes as one experiences an artwork. rather, the narratives and photographs are both mappings and enactments of my experiences of encountering art. some preliminary words on the structure of the study in-between and inter-connecting the various chapters where i examine the concepts of experience, encounter, assemblage, desire and, as closing thoughts, the concept of mediators, the reader is invited into encounters. it was my intention to open a narrative space inviting the reader into creating their own experience of encountering written text and photographs of an artwork. there is no particular or required reading sequence between each narrative section but i did follow a chronological order in terms of the exhibitions. at the vancouver art gallery, first opened the exhibition unscrolled: unframing contemporary chinese art and, after closing, a few weeks later was presented the solo exhibition geoffrey farmer. how do i fit this ghost in my mouth? i wrote the narratives in the sequence presented and my photographs weaved through or placed alongside, also follow the movements of my body. the point of view in the photograph is one captured by the camera, but it does not necessarily follow the path of my gaze at that specific instant. the materiality of the recording device also had a form of agency since it partially blocked my view every time i took a picture, and somehow, i adjusted or interacted myself in response. that moment made me i think about the pioneering work by richard lachapelle ( ) who for his doctoral dissertation made the methodologically innovative decision of providing in addition to the participants' interviews, video cameras to his participants so they could film the dynamic path of their gaze upon the artworks. more recently, some research teams (troendle & tschacher, ) provide museum visitors with specially designed monitoring gloves to measure the physiological impact of artworks, or with visual tracking glasses to support the study of cognitive processes (heidenreich & turano, ). yet, since recording devices have ontological implications (see law, ) because they enact realities about the object of study, for art museum researchers the question remains; the question of generating data and whether a more technologically advanced recording device can provide better information or knowledge about the art encounter. in this study, the reader is invited to connect with the research through the narratives and my photographs, neither one relying on nor serving as illustrations to the text. both text and image work in dynamic juxtapositions; neither voice nor image existing as 'objective' data to faithfully reflect an experience but as many lines in the research as a deleuzian assemblage, the assemblage being a constellation of various connections. as researcher i am always already enfolded, intertwined in this research-assemblage, nevertheless writing the narratives as various moments of a storyline became a privileged moment for me to linger with the textual and visual 'data' without asking them to 're-present' the art experience and yet, as a way to generate meaning about the event of encountering. in the understandings gained from this study, i realized how reading through my personal narrative of art experiences and thinking with deleuzian concepts produces an art encounter as desiring-assemblage; that is, the encounter with art is about connections, hence the formation of an assemblage; one which may be temporary, but still an assemblage allowing desire, as movement and productive flow to circulate. i cannot tell in advance how the reader will encounter the narratives and the photographs or what productive flow of affects, ideas will circulate. but it is now time to step into the art gallery. encounter - eight hundred and eighty-six wooden stools already three o'clock in the afternoon, the end point of my working shift as a museum educator. today, i have toured and facilitated art workshops for elementary school students visiting the exhibition unscrolled. reframing contemporary chinese art presented at the vancouver art gallery. move along, it's now fieldwork time. time to generate data for my research, a thinking and inquiry about the art encounter with deleuze and guattari's ( ) concepts of desire and assemblage. but first, i need to replace two aching feet, pull out an inflamed muscle, oil a knee joint swelled up from walking all day, turn the switch from museum educator mode to the differently rigorous, objective art historian and doctoral candidate. yet, no...i cannot disentangle myself for, attuned to deleuzian philosophy, i think the subject in term of rhizome and multiplicity, i am part of the world's social and material agencies and i gently rub the inflamed muscle and cherish the myriad of daily experiences. indeed, i am connections: this body of mine always already produces and is being produced by the assemblage with other affects, knowledge, events, bodies, spaces. i grab my notebook, my oral consent scripts for visitor interactions and head upstairs towards the installation piece bang by the contemporary chinese artist ai weiwei ( - ). no interview questionnaires, no audio recordings of visitor's comments such as with the recognized talk aloud method (see dufresne-tassé & lefebvre, ; Émond, ) or video solicitation (see lachapelle, ) well studied and much in use research methods for the field of art museum education and museum studies. for now, only the calm space of the gallery rotunda matters as it envelops me. i carry no desire for a museum as a quiet temple for contemplation; on the contrary, the vibrant murmur of conversations is part of the pulsating life in the gallery. but after a whirlwind day, i soak up the temporary silence, feel the cold reassuring presence of the iron railing and slowing make my way up the marble staircase. the intricate landscape of xu bing's installation welcomes me but i decline the invitation, for now. my gaze floats and lingers gently on qui shihua's evanescent and barely readable paintings. and here i am. after a turn, i suddenly encounter a monumental web made of three- legged wooden stools; worn out by years of domestic use, scratched and chipped at the edges, hand-crafted and sturdy, silently inviting me to step into the work. i immerse myself in ai wei wei's ( - ) installation; without a predetermined path i stroll amongst a maze of stools expertly designed and assembled without the use of nails or screws. around, over and beside me, swirls a giant organism or rhizome in frozen expansion yet seemingly desiring to burst open the high ceiling of the gallery. my body feels the warm presence of the tattered, worn-out wooden seats dating back from the qing dynasty to recent times, each passed down from one family to the next, one generation after another, each one expertly hand-crafted, each one beholding a myriad of secrets and stories to tell. foreign yet visibly a trace of the making process, tall and sturdy wooden rods replace some of the legs in the tripod and act as a structuring frame. i hear the ventilation humming in the gallery, cool air brush my cheeks, listen to the mumble of voices, witness the children excited to twist their body under and through the maze, and visitors eagerly taking selfies. tucked in a corner of ai weiwei's installation piece, i comfortably sit underneath this construction of wooden stools, a precarious entanglement surprisingly still and in equilibrium. the writing creates a particular space/place for me to map out with words, sketches, photographs the (im)possible to represent; the grain of the dry wood, the scratches and markings occurred over decades, the beauty and ingenuity of the craftsmanship, the intricate play of shadows on the walls and the carpet of the gallery. i have relinquished the vain desire to write in details the structure of my seeing, as if it assured the telling of my experience. rather i prefer to let the writing guide my thoughts, like a stream of consciousness as my body relates to the installation. ah, the temptation of touching... albeit i am self- regulated by years of museum work and the kind but assertive gaze of the security guard stops my gesture. it is almost closing time. for over the past hour, i am verbs such as walking through, being affected, sitting under, reminiscing and lingering into the ai weiwei installation. can one still be 'encountering' after recurring visits and, like today, being enveloped for more than an hour in/with the artwork? some would deny this. and yet. if to encounter is to 'come against', even after an hour my body still discovers new ways and sensations of being met by or coming against the antique wooden objects. my body must spontaneously respond and negotiate ways of moving around a stool's leg so i avoid hitting it with my shoulder, thus pushing and challenging the balance of the whole structure towering over me. i know the rules of the art gallery, but i enjoy the thought of my hand caressing the splintered and cracked wood, a finger rubbing against some characters engraved with a sharp knife by a bored child, a rebellious soul, a yearning lover. i feel observed by the quiet presence of mundane three-legged chairs expertly build of interlocked pieces with such simple but elegant and beautiful craftsmanship. it is moving to think that most were silent witness of the joy and sorrows of domestic life during the end of the qing dynasty and into president mao's cultural revolution. today, i noticed for the first time, hand painted in black ink, a few chinese characters underneath a seat, i do not know what they mean but am touched by the power of linguistic marks to transcend space and time. either a private message, a poetic line or perhaps is it the signature of the maker. i begin to see how each stool, albeit generic in size and model, is slightly different from the other, due to small variations in the interlocking system, the curve of a seat or the texture and color of the wood. the stools are calling for my body to sit down and rest. i wish that a simple touch could unlock cinematic images and sounds of their past lives. ai weiwei decided to create the installation so that some stools stood with three legs solidly placed on the floor, and while they are still part of the supporting structure, the empty seat invites us to make good use of the everyday object. over there, a man spontaneously answered this call and sat down comfortably on one of the empty stool. a woman companion quickly said to him: "i think you are not allowed to sit there!" she glanced at me with a concerned look. he got up slowly and looked around: "that's great!" he said, still smiling, his head turning left and right, his body playfully moving about, following the lines of the installation. a child creates a game and imaginatively organizes and names the various spaces created by the various clusters of stools the rhizomatic structure. she enjoys walking through, crawling underneath, bending down, moving her arms as if she was feeling the space. she explains to her adult companion: "this is the hallway, this is the living-room, this..." the woman actively tries to follow and she gently bumps her head -or is it her shoulder- on a group of stools hanging over her head; part of the installation shifts gently revealing the fragile and precariousness of the assemblage. i feel rather cozy and paradoxically safe under this towering swirl of interlocked objects. with the act of simply removing a few rods, and the entire structure would collapse and begin to fall apart. fifteen minutes before closure, it's time to leave. two adult visitors are standing close by and observe quietly as i scribble away, i raise my head, they turn towards me, smiling as they enthusiastically open up conversation about the piece. as i inform them about my research and hand out the oral consent form they exclaim: "but we are preventing you from working and writing your observations". oh, absolutely not, on the contrary... we share thoughts about the work and i still learn to see anew; one is a photographer, he elaborates on the exquisite play and intricate abstract forms drawn by the shadows on the walls and floor. jumping from one comment to another, i inquire about their perception of the xu bing ( ) installation piece background story: ten thousand li of mountains and rivers. "what do you mean?" they reply. the gallery is about to close and much of the exhibition unscrolled, further remains for them to see. and yet they are now piqued by curiosity. eagerly, they answer my invitation to walk back and experience differently. "but it's not written anywhere that you must look at the back!". as i leave them, i keep the memory of their smiles, the sounds of exclamations as their bodies engage in exploring the entire installation; that is by looking at every side of the wood frame, by moving back and forth the piece, by stepping closer or further away to notice a detail, and make visual or mental connections, and perhaps reflect on xu bing's artistic process. chapter on the experience of encountering art: an inquiry with gilles deleuze's concepts of encounter, assemblage, desire this chapter conveys in more detail the purpose of theoretically grounding this study in deleuzian ideas, i introduce my coming to work with the concepts of encounter, assemblage and desire. the last section of the chapter serves to outline how this study evolved into a methodology of research as assemblage informed by a/r/tographic insights. why gilles deleuze? one might ask, why gilles deleuze? gilles deleuze was a name i knew from citations and many reference lists, yet i am at a loss to explain why i took so little interest in his work during my bachelor degree in art history. he remained but a vague acquaintance during my graduate studies at the master's level and the first years upon starting my career as art museum educator. nonetheless, while working at the musée d'art contemporain de montréal, i vividly remember sitting in the gallery's dark projection room on the ground floor, fascinated yet puzzled and positively baffled by the video program showing deleuze's eight hours video-interview recorded with claire parnet ( ) in - . i had by then read a few texts by the philosopher but without grasping them, simply put, i didn't know what 'to do' with his complex philosophical ideas. interestingly though, today strong affects remain; in the video-interview, here was a scholar so vivid in his thinking, yet i remember distinctly hearing and being affected by the sounds of his frail body struggling for air with every breath. it was a first encounter and i was pushed to thought. i was fascinated, i felt provoked in a generative way, entering a space of ideas unrecognizable to me at the time, but i wasn't sure what to make of these. not back then anyway. ten years later, there i am sitting at the university of british columbia in vancouver in a research seminar with professor rita irwin; we were reading “a/r/tography as practice based research” (irwin & springgay, ) and discussing a/r/tography; a mode of inquiry in the world through an entangled process of art production, writing/teaching, it is "a research methodology that entangles and performs what gilles deleuze and félix guattari ( ) refer to as a rhizome" (p.xx). a botanical term, the rhizome refers to plants with roots extending outward, growing horizontally in underground systems. there is no central plant out of which all others originate, no hierarchy, the root system expands in all directions to produce new plants. in class, i recognized the term rhizome, a recognition that was not stifling in a representational way such that i am satisfied to pin it down to the known. on the contrary, a connection was made. new lines of thought started to open up, and that moment became an event, and further readings started to produce something. in the opening chapter of a thousand plateaus, the botanical rhizome becomes for deleuze and guattari ( ) a fascinating metaphor of heterogeneity, connectivity, multiplicity and asignifying structure in opposition to the tree model of thinking, the tree becoming an image of binary logic since it is vertical, centralized, unified and fixed . well, i had entered the rhizome of deleuzian ideas, jumped in, right in the middle and got caught in the flow. as they mention, the rhizome is about outgrowth, the and…and…and: as pointed out by stivale ( ), the apparent irony of working with the binary structure of rhizome versus tree metaphor was not lost on deleuze. in dialogues, deleuze and parnet (deleuze & parnet, ) comment that we are inexorably locked into the structure of language and its dualisms. however replies deleuze, dualism is not defined by the number of terms in a proposition, neither do you get out of dualisms by adding other terms. deleuze is interested in looking at the multiplicity of terms in- between the binary, hence looking for assemblages of enunciations. once a rhizome has been obstructed, arborified, it’s all over, no desire stirs; for it is always by rhizome that desire moves and produces. whenever desire climbs a tree, internal repercussions trip it up and it falls to its death; the rhizome, on the other hand acts on desire by external, productive outgrowth. (deleuze & guattari, , p. ) learning about the deleuzian concept rhizome prompted and nudged me to further reflect on my random affective, conceptual, sensitive connections with artworks when they grabbed my attention, mapping the space of the gallery as i created my own narrative. i returned to deleuze's writings but i was not at a beginning and neither did i have a fixed end point of arrival, i did not know where i was going with this encounter, nonetheless i had jumped in the middle of a process. for deleuze and guattari ( ) , "a rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo" (p. ). from one reading to another, one conversation leading to more questions, my own theoretical rhizome started to expand. it required a few years of careful reading, before i began to entertain some confidence in my understanding of deleuzian concepts. and yet, despite the fact that i was often perplexed, trying to make sense of what i was reading, i was immediately drawn into deleuze and guattari's use of language, intrigued to see how they employ a well-known word such as 'desire', usually taken to mean a desire for something that i do not have, and they shift its common meaning to connote other ideas, such as being about the production of connections and flows. or, when they take a vernacular term such as assemblage or 'agencement' in french, in order to develop a complex set of philosophical and political ideas. as alecia jackson and lisa mazzei ( ) observe, deleuze (and guattari) "stretch language and its possibilities as a way to interrupt and rupture our ways of thinking" (p. ). so why gilles deleuze? because of deleuze's ( )―and in his collaborative work with félix guattari― interest in the concept of encounter, which is a key concept found throughout his work. in his view, encounters "are what forces us to think" (p. ), and for these encounters to happen is through experimentation and experience (as a verb and process). what's more, in his interviews and writings deleuze (boutang, ; deleuze, ;) affirmed the arts as a "bloc of sensations" (deleuze & guattari, , p. ), and thus they consider the arts a fertile milieu of experimentation and thus potential encounters. why deleuze? also because deleuze troubles and rejects the notion of fixed and stable structures, such as the subject or being , in favor of a subject as an assemblage , a of course, it is important to mention that during his time deleuze was not the only thinker to reject the structuralist views that language and life could be scientifically examined according to its structures, or the humanist views of the subject. this was shared also by other philosophers loosely gathered under the label of poststructuralism. put succinctly, poststructuralism is an umbrella term coined to regroup a number of european scholars of the may generation who came from different disciplines and did not form a homogeneous group. the scholars often regrouped under the label of 'poststructuralism' such as jacques derrida, michel foucault, jean-françois lyotard and gilles deleuze have fiercely critiqued western humanism's values and principles which ascribe a fixed, universal essence to being human, and affirm the centeredness and superiority of human life over other forms of existence. in her book the posthuman, rosi braidotti ( ) explains how, based in classical antiquity and the renaissance, one major strand of humanism will become a doctrine with a belief in rational progress and "in the unique, self-regulating and intrinsically moral powers of human reason" (p. ). braidotti further details how humanism will turn into a "civilizational ideal" (p. ) feeding eurocentric discourse and imperialism rooted in a binary logic of difference. within this logic, the concept of subjectivity will be considered the superior pole, and be associated with consciousness and universal rationality, thus implicating that "otherness is defined as its negative and specular counterpart" (p. ). in summary, sedgwick ( ) points out that, whilst the genealogy of humanism is ambiguous and complex, in the twentieth-century, the term comes to define a view of the human subject as centered, autonomous of full individual agency, and adhering to the view that; [...] human subjectivity is the source of meaning in language use. a humanist, on this view, is someone who presupposes that there are essential properties (e.g. autonomy, freedom, intentionality, the ability to use language for the purpose of producing meaningful propositions, rationality) which define what it is to be human. (p. ) bringing together of heterogeneous elements and the "outcome of a process of subjectivation" (boundas, a, p. ). to write about subjectivity, deleuze choose the figure of folds and folding , so that instead of the image of the unified subject, subjectivation is being this constant foldings (as noun) and enfolding (as verb) of outside (experimentations, thoughts) becoming an inside. as conley( ) explains, "subjectivity becomes an ongoing negotiation of things perceived, both consciously and unconsciously, within and outside the body" (p. ). thinking with deleuze is an invitation to see life as a creative milieu of “proliferating connections” (colebrook, a, p. ). by this he means, that life is not about structures and the logic that regiments it, albeit they exist of course in the war-machine, the state. at the core of deleuze and guattari's ( ) political analysis in anti-Œdipus, is a critique of structures created by psychoanalytic discourses. and thus, to counter these constraining structures, the authors elaborate on the desiring-assemblage as a flow, a force always creating and generating more connection. and thus, more capacities to act in the world. often described as the philosopher of immanence, with deleuze this means that if transcendence is a relation ‘to’ something (hence external), then immanence is a relation ‘in’ something; immanence values connections and embodiment (williams, ). thus, for instance, with deleuze, i do not 'have' an experience of an artwork or exhibition detached against the background of life; experience is a milieu which contributes to actually making philosophers adhering to a non-humanist stance will object to the ideological, political abuses of power perpetrated under the banner of humanist ideals. gilles deleuze moved away, and firmly opposed, humanist views based on dichotomies―such as mind/body, self/other ―, the centering of the individual which reinforces hierarchies, the unified notion of subjectivity, and the predominance of meaning and representation for they implying an 'outside' or world of transcendent ideas. deleuze's own development of his ideas on the fold and subjectivation is to be found in the last chapter of his book foucault ( ) entitled "foldings, or the inside of thought (subjectivation)". the text is a complex and difficult to grapple in terms of my comprehension, i turned to tom conley ( ) for my own understanding. life. my study is thus inquiring how working within a philosophy conceived in terms of relationality, connections, assemblages, non-representation (there is no original), flows and multiplicity (rather than fixed identities) enact a view of the art encounter as a milieu of immanent ethics. by immanent ethics, deleuze means that encountering increases the potential for new connections, and thus the experience of encountering (artworks, music, dance, literature, and...and...and...) is inviting one into experiences of living. tamsin lorraine ( ) explains that deleuze and guattari’s view of immanent ethics requires us to attend to the complex, textured and embodied situations in our lives and to be open to find responses that go beyond familiar automatic responses in order to “access creative solutions to what are always unique problems” (p. ). a key aspect for me, is that throughout his work deleuze asks the question, as todd may ( ) puts it; "how might one live?" (p. ). as well as being a philosopher of immanence, deleuze is a philosopher of experience, connection and of the encounter. furthermore, he challenges representation and the hegemony of signifier/signified―or the 'what does it mean?'― in favor of 'what does it do?' or "how does it function" (deleuze and guattari, , p. ). it is my understanding, that deleuze does not seek to instrumentalize experience and turn it into a linear fordist model of production. when i encounter art, rather than trying to seek the meaning and fix the artwork in a representation, it is an invitation for me to ask and explore how the work functions, what sort of connections and flows are activated in the encounter, and what affects, sensations and concepts emerge. moreover, and this happens at the same time, these affective flows (with their affective qualities of curiosity, disgust, enjoyment, etc.) also activate the way i create sense of the artwork. thinking about how the work functions can potentially produce learning and different knowledge but it is something that happens in the experimentation as interaction, rather than being an objective or a goal to the experimentation. i am reminded of kaustuv roy ( ) who so aptly wrote; “the use of deleuzian concepts is to help pry open reified boundaries that exists not just in thought, but as affective investments that secure those territorialities” (p. ). over my twenty years of practice as an art historian and art museum educator, i have certainly reified some boundaries and, although it is troubling to admit it, roy is correct in saying that one (can) build a sense of professional identity and comfort in that knowing. i certainly had...for a time until i encountered deleuze's work. in the next section, i proceed to introduce, the concepts of encounter, assemblage and desire separately but this is not meant to be a form of scaffolding in my use of the concepts; with deleuze, the concepts are always already interrelated and entangled. on gilles deleuze's concepts of encounter, desire and assemblage if the concepts of encounter, desire and assemblage are interrelated, this entanglement is, i contend, especially relevant when it comes to experiences of encountering whatever forms the art museum as a little machine with myriads flows and connections: the gallery spaces, the artworks, the curatorial choices, the lighting and benches, the museum lobby and staircases, the textual interpretation, the sounds and smells, the temperature, and the visiting public. “but when one writes, the only question is which other machine the literary machine can be plugged into in order to work, must be plugged into in order to work.” said deleuze and guattari ( , p. ). the terminology and figure of the machine was put forward in deleuze and guattari's first collaborative book anti-Œdipus. capitalism and schizophrenia published in . in that book, the authors advance ideas that critique, interrogate, learn from, yet move away from the influence of freudian psychiatry and marxist materialism predominant in the french intellectual landscape of the time (foucault, ). the terminology of the machine and machinic (the term, and nuance, is important because it is very different from the closed system of the mechanism) will be helpful to deleuze and guattari to write, among others topics, about politics, life and the unconscious. for instance, life for them is about the flowing production of more connections, and they reject the freudian view of the unconscious as a theatre, preferring instead, to think of the unconscious as a "'factory" (p. ). the machine does not have a center, it is more like a "hub of connections and productions" (jackson and mazzei, , p. ). deleuze and guattari will eventually cease to use the terminology of the machine and the machinic during the writing of their second book a thousand plateaus published in ; their favored terminology will become that of assemblage , a term also referring to a constellation of connections. and so, in deleuze and guattari's view ( ) a book is a little machine, a complex assemblage formed by the various flows and connections of a writer, the world of the writer, how the book is made, the reader, and what reading the book produces for the reader. and i appreciated the above quote because i see this dissertation research also as an assemblage; one formed by the active flows circulating in-between the constellations of my readings, museum practices, thoughts, uncertainties, questionings, experimentations, etc. in order to think with theory, the other literary machine i selected was found in the work of deleuze and guattari and the concepts of encounter, assemblage and desire. cultural theorist mieke bal in the secondary literature, were particularly helpful for me to understand the concept of the machine, desiring-machine and the machinic were the works of claire colebrook ( a) and todd may ( ). (bal, ) explains the "conceptualizing force" (p. ) of the concept as a, "capacity to distinguish and thereby to make understandable in its specificity; hence to 'theorize' the object, which would thus further knowledge, insight, and understanding" (p. ). hence it is not so much about the word in itself; concepts are not fixed and univocal, they generate more ideas than what their common usage may presume. therefore, drawing from bal ( ), what interests me is not to establish the genealogy of a concept, but rather to "gain insights into what it can do" (p. ). i do not suggest, neither does bal i would think, that the concepts have a fixed essence making them operate in stable ways no matter the context; of course, inquiring the 'what it can do' requires attending to the conditions of a given place, time, set of connections involved. this is a commitment not to solve, but to add on to current scholarship, to open up other avenues of research. it is a commitment to provoke, inform, complicate, and contribute to knowledge for the work and curricular thinking of art museum educators and curatorial professionals, on inviting others in how to live in the company of art. in the coming pages, i will briefly introduce three key deleuzian concepts in this study; encounter, assemblage and desire. i have already provided a glossary in the opening pages of this dissertation but i do not think this doubles-up, or at least, i find it important to bring them here also in the body of the text and in the flow of reading. what about the encounter? since i am interested in the experience of encountering art, looking at the concept of encounter in deleuze was an obvious choice. yet, i was surprised to read that he defines encounter beyond the simple act of 'coming against'. indeed, for deleuze ( ) an encounter happens when one meets something, someone, an idea, a concept, anything that is not an object of recognition, and this "something in the world forces us to think" (p. ). an object of encounter can be met with a range of "affective tones: wonder, love, hatred, suffering" (p. ). it is important to mention that, in deleuze, when he mentions that something forces us to think, by no mean does 'force' imply something controlling or aggressive. for instance, a force can be as subtle and gentle as an unconscious nudge to stay a moment longer in front of an artwork, or suddenly to turn left or move closer because a patch of bright red caught my sight. a force is anything that can move one toward producing a change whether it is physical, social, conceptual, artistic, not in order to find, to interpret, to discover a meaning, just to think and see what other ideas or manifests that which until then had remained virtual. the virtual, in deleuze's philosophy, does not mean the simulated, artificial world of the computer image, but rather to his interest in the idea of the virtual found in the work of french philosopher henry bergson. for deleuze, the virtual is something real and, through experimentation and encounter, one can "bring about actualisation" of something which until then was virtual (boundas, b, p. ). what about assemblage? in my study i turn to the concept of assemblage as developed by deleuze in his collaborative writing with guattari in a thousand plateaus ( ). the concept of assemblage refers to complex relations and connections of bodies, objects, modes of expressions coming together over different periods of time and space. it is important to note that an assemblage is not simply a sum of parts, the adding up of separate elements. as livesey ( ) explains, and assemblage "emerges from the arranging of heterogeneous elements into a productive (or machinic) entity that can be diagrammed" (p. ). assemblages can be microscopic like cells, human and non-human scale if we think of the notion of artwork, a home or a habitat, but it can also be extremely large and complex such as a school, the art world, the state apparatus. the assemblage is not simply the adding up of elements, but the relations and various forces connecting them, and what it produces. in chapter , i will examine the various characteristics of an assemblage, these are: what is part of the assemblage and their expression (the potential for movements), and the territory marked by whatever is part of the assemblage, and thus the "cutting edges" (p. ) that open up potential of change. and what about desire? the concept of desire was another obvious choice for me. i can still re-live that intense longing to stroll in the state tretyakov gallery and explore to get a physical sense of russian painting through time. my own desire to connect to the artworks; because i could feel that ai weiwei's installation was also looking at me, that the artwork knew that my body was there present. i am not so sure if artworks desire to be interpreted (pollock, ), but artworks do look back at us, and that's part of the play of desire. appearing throughout deleuze's philosophical work, the concept was particularly explored in anti-Œdipus written in collaboration with guattari. in the deleuzian sense, desire is a force not related to motivation, or intentionality, neither is it about wanting, hoping, wishing, desiring for something one does not have, something 'out there'. as mentioned previously, deleuze is a philosopher of immanence, there is no transcendent reality. desire exists and circulates in assemblages, which is why they often use the term desiring-machine or desiring-assemblage. desire is not a thing and it cannot be located as pre-existing in a subject, it becomes possible in relationality, desire is all about connectivity and the and...and...and. as goodchild ( ) reminds us; “desire becomes a drive to live a life of relations, creation and intensity” (p. ). deleuze does use the term 'drive' in relations to affect and the unconscious; what desire does or produces are more connections. so why deleuze? why deleuze? to answer this question, i return once again to the background moments i shared in the opening chapter of this study. regarding my experiences of encountering art in moscow's state tretyakov gallery, my interest is not in seeking to investigate my emotional responses, cognitive processes when looking at vrubel's painting or even to examine how or why an art museum educator could lack so much intrinsic motivation as to leave in the middle of a highly interesting gallery tour. the significant body of qualitative research in art museum education using empirical data, and mostly rooted in interpretivism , is too numerous to share here, yet i do recognize the significant contributions made regarding the art experience from the point of view of the visitor. to provide a brief overview of the range of research topics regarding the experience of the visitor with art, i will mention a few notable studies which examine, for instance: the cognitive processes and the aesthetic development (dufresne-tassé, o’neill, sauvé, & marin-robitaille, ; housen, ), the art experience and self-consciousness (weltzl fairchild & gumpert, ), the emotional response to the art experience (Émond, ; Émond, eick de lima, & marin, ), the implications of the viewing duration on the art experience (lachapelle, douesnard, & keenlyside, ), the impact of knowledge and the non-expert art viewing experience (lachapelle, ), and also measuring the physiological impact of aesthetic perception (tschacher et al., ). according to schwandt ( ), interpretivism is an epistemological stance that focus on the process by which meanings and understandings are created, negotiated, articulated and manifested. inquirers want to understand the world of lived experience from the perspective of the participants who undergo the experience. in interpretive traditions, the researcher does value the subjective human experience, but the interpretation makes claim to objective science. even though i have greatly benefitted from these studies, my interest and research project lie elsewhere. what understanding of the art encounter is enacted when i use the deleuzian terminology of affect, desire and assemblage to inquire my experience of wandering the beautiful galleries of the tretyakov? returning to the background moments of this study, what art experience emerges if one were to use the deleuzian concepts of encounter and assemblage to think brook's encounter with view of delft? to deleuze, experience is a milieu favorable to making new connections and assemblages and produce thought. brook's encounter with view of delft triggered an affect and produced a new idea, as a line of escape from his usual way of thinking. the encounter produced a curiosity to visit delft in order to see for himself where vermeer once stood when planning his composition for the painting. of course, this is but one of the lines of flight triggered by the encounter. i am drawn to deleuze because the concepts of encounter, desire and assemblage are integral to his philosophical project of increasing one's capacity to act in the world. granted that a capacity to act is also political, and it can't be said in advance what will emerge, according to one's own assemblages and one's social assemblages. desiring-assemblage are powerful, they can become detrimental and potentially lead to negative, foul consequences. there are no promises of salvation or transcendental goals of transformation in deleuze, for he is a philosopher of immanence, there is only one plane of existence; life itself. so, then the wider contribution of my study is to examine the experience of encountering art as a milieu to potentially make connections, and perhaps actualize what until then, was virtual. this is a claim to think the art encounter as important in and for itself, but also as educational in the larger sense of increasing one's capacity to act in the world. the research as assemblage before elaborating on the methodological perspective for my doctoral research, it is important to mention that, on the topic of the art experience or art museum experience, there is to date an increasing body of studies also referring to, exploring in various ways, or drawing from deleuzian ideas such as the mode of relationality and connections of the rhizome, the importance of materiality and the other-than-human in living-knowing-researching, but also affects, as the sensations preceding verbalization, some of which i will consider in the following paragraph. while the list of works is growing exponentially and, due to limitation of space, i will focus on readings that became particularly stimulating encounters with some deleuzian approaches or use of concepts. key texts i often return to, have been art encounters by simon o'sullivan ( ) and his article "from aesthetics to the abstract machine: deleuze, guattari and contemporary art practice" ( ) where he makes the case for a return to an aesthetics of affects in relation to the reception of contemporary art. elizabeth grosz ( ) examines the material and conceptual structures of art with various concepts from deleuze and guattari. perhaps not surprisingly, affects are at the core of many research projects focused on the arts: janice baker ( , ) suggests the idea of the deleuzian museum operating affectively not only as a text needing to be read but as an assemblage of non-linear time; diane mulcahy ( , ) investigates the potentialities of affective learning at the museum; stephanie springgay (springgay, , b, ) wants to reclaim the affective, the body and movement to emphasize the importance of sensation in knowledge production; emma waterton and jason for supplementary readings on affect theory, mostly framed by the work of deleuze and guattari, please see, for example the edited book by melissa gregg and gregory seigworth, the affect theory reader ( ). dittmer ( ) propose an interesting view of the war museum as assemblage and the role of affect in the museum. closely related to art education and the art museum, i discovered the work of charles garoian ( , ) who, among others, uses the concept of the rhizome to inquire an embodied pedagogy and performativity in the museum. jessie beier ( ) argues in favor of thinking the art encounter in terms of what it does, rather than working along the objective of visual literacy. an finally there is the recent doctoral dissertation of marie-hélène lemaire ( ) who turned to deleuze, among other theorists, to inquire the gallery tour and animation as a space formed by lines of flight and as a thinking in movement. to this literature at the intersection of art and art museum education, my study is most aligned with the work of o'sullivan and garoian who are also, albeit in different ways, articulating the art encounter in terms of affect and/or productive assemblage. i also aim to contribute towards the affective, embodied, relational experience of encountering art as a productive assemblage but from my (non-essentialized, not fixed) position of art museum educator. hearing the call of post-qualitative research that rejects the scientific belief in the possibility of representation and seeks to displace the researcher away from a central, objective and controlling position in order to flatten the hierarchies. another important concern in post-qualitative research is to recognize the importance and our constant intra- action with matter, hence the need in research to better attend to materiality and the relationships between human/non-human (barad, ; lather, ; maclure, ; st. pierre, , ), i was looking for a method not to excavate the what is? but rather explore “how to document becoming” (richardson, , p. ). becoming in this deleuzian sense refers to the non-linear process of change itself, as mentioned in the glossary, becoming is not directed towards an arrival or end point. i realized very soon in the research process that, to work with deleuzian theory would be a commitment made for research methodologies seeking to limit “the will to power inscribed in sense-making efforts that aspire to totalizing explanatory frameworks” (lather, , p. ). in other words, thinking with deleuze means that i am not in the central position of the observer-researcher aiming for control over a unified explanation of what the art encounter is. inquiring with deleuzian concepts means that i want to attend to the messy, the movement, the fluid boundaries, the flow of connections, the human/non-human materialities. then if research is not about a secure knowing, what then? as coleman and ringrose ( ) point out, methodologies are "descriptive and generative" but they are also "performative" (p. ), embarking in the research as an evolving process, rather than following a set of procedures, enacts an ontological view of the world. so how to proceed? according to sociologist john law, one of the important aspects of the new methodologies―also called post-qualitative by scholar elizabeth st.pierre ( ), in terms of the research process is to trouble my desire for secure knowledge of how the research will develop, to trouble my desire to know in advance how i will proceed. law writes, [...] we will need to unmake many of our methodological habits, including: the desire for certainty; the expectation that we can usually arrive at more or less stable conclusions about the way things really are; the belief that as social scientists we have special insights that allow us to see further than others into certain parts of social reality; [...] but, first of all we need to unmake our desire and expectation for security. (law, , p. ) post-qualitative inquiry is not about developing a new and improved methodological model. it is in my view, more akin to an ethos, a way of thinking and one's approach to research. and thus, i have chosen the metaphor of the deleuzian assemblage as the methodology for this study for i am interested to do research which is not so much a knowing about as a knowing that emerges when "relating to" (coleman and ringrose, , p. ) the world. it is important again to remark that assemblages are "complex constellations of objects, bodies, expressions, qualities, and territories that come together for varying periods of time to ideally create new ways of functioning" (livesey, , p. ). this study and dissertation on the experience of encountering art is such a constellation, not a passive putting together of parts, rather a constant coming together of experimentations and thinking, employing deleuzian concepts enable me to take this approach; my study as a research-assemblage aims to inquire the knowing that emerges in the relating, to study the knowing that is produced in the lines moving and shifting in-between my notes, my personal narrative of encountering artworks, the museum spaces, conversations with other visitors, my researcher's thinking through the writing, the philosophical work of gilles deleuze, and to some extent, other scholars such as dewey, merleau-ponty, gadamer and greene who were already part of my art-museum-educator-assemblage. during the process of coming up, of realizing and articulating the close interrelation of theory/methodology for this dissertation study, i was informed by the work of susan nordstrom ( ) on data assemblage and, more specifically, the arts-based research methodology named a/r/tography (irwin, ; ). i will succinctly introduce them both. even though nordstorm's ( ) topic of study is family history genealogists and not the arts, it is very interesting to read how she worked with, and came to think her study was a folding of assembled data such as objects-interviews, media but also "dream and response data, weather data, spectral data, books written by participants, books recommended by [...] participants [...]". rejecting the fixed idea of data as evidence, the author engaged with data as, not simply an accumulation of blocks of concrete information, but as "as motley crew that infinitely folds, differentiates, emerges, moves, and morphs in a weblike fashion" (p. ). and this forever interacting constellation of lines, including the researcher, is the productive study as data assemblage. nordstrom's thinking about data assemblage was generative for my own articulation and use of narratives, photographs, conversations in the gallery, the thinking with deleuzian concepts and scholarship, and the constant shifts in the entire assemblage that keep happening because of one new idea, one new question or observation. furthermore, i gathered insights from a/r/tography, a practice-based research methodology. according to irwin ( ), "a/r/tography is a research methodology, a creative practice, and a performative pedagogy that lives in the rhizomatic practices of the in- between" (p. ). i was informed by a/r/tography because of the methodology's weaving together, and the ever moving and inter-relating practices of artistry, researching and teaching. my study is not a/r/tographic per se since i do not consider my personal narratives or the photographs as part of an artistic practice, nonetheless reading and learning about a/r/tography became a prompt for me to re-consider the theoretical impact that the physical, embodied movement, such as my walking in/through the various installations, have on the inquiry as process . in my view, one of the insightful ways that a/r/tography theorizes movement and living inquiry is by drawing from deleuze and guattari's ( ) concept of the rhizome. in a similar way to the expanding lateral root system of the strawberry plant, the rhizome "is an assemblage that moves and flows in dynamic momentum" (irwin & springgay, , p. x). this perhaps, better explains the reference to the rhizome in irwin's quote mentioned in the opening of this paragraph; the rhizome, like the assemblage, is not about for more readings focused on walking and embodiment in arts-based living inquiry, see also (irwin, ; irwin & o’donoghue, ; springgay, a, ). the nodes that constitute it, it depends on the lines in-between the various elements. a knowing about will focus on the nodes, but a knowing in relation to, is concerned about the in-between, the movement, the connections. informed by a/r/tographic insights, for the study i chose to engage with the narrative writing and the photographs as ways to, ever so imperfectly, share an experience of encountering artworks but also, the act of writing became part of my art experiences, and another way of creating otherwise my art experiences. informed by richardson ( ), i wanted to consider, “how we are expected to write affects what we can write about” (p. ). by this i mean that if i craft and write my study as an assemblage, this will affect how i can think the research. for instance, rather than occupying the center as in the binary subject/object of conventional humanist qualitative research (st. pierre, ), i see that i already am but one node in a constantly interacting and changing rhizomatic network. and so, the art encounter is a process which i can map and make intelligible, but without tracing and imposing a deterministic meaning upon it. nevertheless, i keep writing about de-centering myself as a researcher but i still say 'i'. is there a contradiction, since i still appear as occupying an outsider perspective? indeed, the 'i' made of multiplicities that i am, is writing and, even st.pierre ( ) admits that "it is indeed difficult to escape the "i"" (p. ), but while i may seem to retain an distant perspective, my text aims to move away from the "mastery and victory narratives"(lather, , p. ) on another note, i consider the words and my writing as already interacting with the materiality of the desiring-assemblage composed of the narratives, the re-creation of the experience through memory, looking at the low-resolution and sometimes blurry photographs taken on my cellular phone, i thoroughly enjoyed scribbling scratch notes and random observations while sitting underneath ai weiwei' ( - ) canopy of wooden stools or surrounded with geoffrey farmer's ( -) crowd of puppet figurines. in this study, the words scribbled during the fieldwork and in my narratives are my allies and, as i choose and select them in my personal narratives of past or recent art encounters, already co- productive of my thinking and analyses. the personal narratives of art encounters as writings drawn from observational fieldnotes and journal entries does not claim to reflect or "capture the real out there" (britzman, , p. ). as a side note i would like to clarify that, although i work with personal narratives, my study is not an auto-ethnography, which as both process and product, is an approach to writing and research aiming to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) as a way to know and understand cultural experience (ethno) (ellis, adams, & bochner, , ¶ ). indeed, my aim is not to explain the use or function of the art experience in a larger social or cultural context. but neither is my methodology autobiographical in the sense defined by the method of currere devised by william pinar ( ), a strategy seeking "to study the relations between academic knowledge and life history in the interests of self-understanding and social reconstruction" (p. ). informed by psychoanalysis, the method of currere entails a view of the self that is very different from the deleuzian subject as assemblage, just to name one distinction between them. and yet, i assume it will become clear for the reader that the entire research process leading to the study you are now reading has become for me a project in line with pinar’s view on "subjective reconstruction" (p. ), if in a rhizomatic way. in the study as process, i do wish to better understand my role of educator in the public sphere. therefore, neither auto-ethnographic nor strictly autobiographic, the personal narratives embrace writing as a generative and analytic practice with the effect that it can destabilize me and allow me to think differently the art experience. for, as laurel richardson ( ) asserts, "i write in order to learn something that i did not know before i wrote it" (p. ). the writing is always already enfolded in the materiality of my body hearing the mumble of voices around me, sensing the moisture in the air, moving closer, or bending and being careful not to touch the art. the writing was also enfolded in the materiality of the writing itself, of the resistance of my pencil scratching the surface of my notebook; unable as i was to follow the rhythm of my thoughts. somehow this materiality already allowed the writing as thinking, i am not certain why; perhaps because the material agency of paper- pencil-hand assemblage pencil became some kind of an encountering moment. somehow, i dropped an habitual way of writing for the sake of writing down information and ideas formed and were articulated differently during this short writing-encounter. this kind of writing did not happen every time i was in the galleries, but overall the complex assemblage of hand writing-sounds of the pencil on the paper-looking-artwork-body-notebook-gallery spaces enacted my encounters with the art installations. each narrative writing in conversation with the photographs, becomes an opportunity to revisit my scratch notes, to re- visit the experience from memory and also to re-create the event of the installations in language. i did not code or look for patterns in the narratives, and thus, the narratives have excesses that are not fully fixed, interpreted, or contained when i read them in relation to a this may beg the question; is there agency in deleuze? although the question is much debated in the space of secondary literature, my position is that there is indeed agency in deleuze. yet, contrary to the humanist understanding of a subject acting upon the world, deleuzian agency is distributed since we are assemblages. see also bowden ( ), braidotti ( ). deleuzian concept. but neither is the text supporting the photographs placed in juxtaposition, and inserted either in the body of the text or to the side, but without descriptions and explanatory captions. here text and image have equal status in that neither one explains or illustrates the other. i have used the word 'juxtapose', which implies the idea of bringing close together for contrasting effects, but drawing from a/r/t graphy this coming together, or doubling, of the visual and the text is called: contiguity (see irwin & springgay, ; springgay, irwin, & wilson kind, ). in a/r/tography, contiguity is a methodological concept that serves to destabilize, trouble, and complicate the conventional hierarchies of the text as provider of knowledge regarding the visual. in contiguity, the meaning making process resides precisely in the relation, the line, in-between the visual and textual. hence, a contiguity is not simply a static positioning of two comparable realities but in a different medium. as a methodological strategy the contiguity of textual and visual, explains springgay et al. ( ), performs because of the "contiguous interaction and the movement between art and graphy" and thus the reading/research "becomes a lived endeavor" (p. ). i began taking photographs with my cellular phone while scribbling away in the first artwork of my 'fieldwork'; that is, the monumental sculptural installation bang by the chinese artist ai weiwei. there is no specific theoretical or methodological reason why this piece became the first one in the narrative thread of this study; although it was an installation about which the students and adult visitors expressed vocally their enthusiasm, excitement in feeling the tension between the delicate balance of the wood construction, and the monumentality surrounding them. even though many of the photographs appear quite blurry, they create another line in the mapping of my encounters, and add another fold in the enactment of the artwork. juxtaposed and in constant conversation and inter-relation with the narratives, the visuals operate as rich but partial fragments missing in sounds, embodied presence and other physical sensations, and yet, they ontologically produce my art encounter. i have realized two aspects of my working with them. first, instead of considering my researcher-singularity looking out at the artwork, in the mode of a binary viewer/object, i have become interested to notice in the photograph the agency of both my body and that of the thingness of the sculptural installation; more specifically that my viewing-body emerged in my interaction with the materiality of the artwork. to articulate my thinking, i was informed by the work of political theorist and philosopher jane bennett who writes about the “vitality of matter” ( , p. ), and who states that even non-human entities or things “perform actions, produce effects and alter situations" ( , p. ). and secondly, the photographs become one node as part of the research as desiring-assemblage, by this i mean the network of connections in-between researcher-text-artwork-images-gallery space through which my questions, desire to generate new insights on the art encounter flow and circulate. my narratives were written a few months after my embodied engagement in/with the artworks at the vancouver art gallery, the narratives further enact another way of experiencing the installations after they were dismantled. placed in juxtaposition to the narratives but without strictly corresponding or being an illustration to the text, the photographs also bring a material impact on how i remember, re-live my art encounters. in light of deleuzian philosophy, this re-living is not about summoning old perceptions as a repetition of the same. as stagoll ( d) suggests, deleuze was absolutely not interested in that model of memory because it denied life all creative principles. for deleuze, instead for re-tracing the past, memory should be seen as constituting "the past as a new present relative to present interests and circumstances" (p. ). indeed, as i was writing the narratives, i would 'project' myself back with the installations but the images and affects were also renewed in relation to my dissertation topic and finally, to close this section i need to explain that, while this dissertation is framed by deleuzian theory, other scholars have also been significant and have informed my intellectual and professional rhizome as an art historian and art museum educator. john dewey, maurice merleau-ponty, hans georg gadamer and maxine greene hail from different intellectual traditions and connections to art and aesthetic experience; yet all have written expansively of the arts. why bring them in conversation? it is well known that deleuze and my selected group of scholars have opposing philosophical positions; for instance, deleuze has a view of the subject as always already the "provisional outcome of a process of subjectivation" (boundas, , p. ) which is opposite to the humanist image of the subject with a core substance and foundation which is a position endorsed by the selected scholars. but this apparent incommensurability will not prevent me from bringing dewey, merleau- ponty, gadamer and greene in momentary conversations with deleuze. my aim is not to iron out their philosophical differences, but since dewey, merleau-ponty, gadamer and greene are part of my intellectual-academic-art museum educator-assemblage, i want to revisit the concepts of experience, the tutelage of perception, play, and imagination through my understanding of deleuze. my selection of one scholar and a concept at the core of their work emerged rhizomatically. philosopher john dewey was key for his influential writing on the concept of experience and of art as experience. maurice merleau-ponty has long been a philosopher i appreciate for his critique, in phenoménologie de la perception published in , of cartesian dualism in favor of an embodied mind. deleuze critiqued phenomenology because it assumed the existence of a subject conscious of something outside of itself, and yet he was interested in phenomenology because it provides the grounds to define important concepts in his work, such as immanence. i discovered hans georg gadamer's concept of play as part of the dialogical process of interpretation early on in my career as an art museum educator and i aimed to trouble perhaps my own set ways of thinking differently about the concept. bringing philosopher maxine greene into the conversation was an obvious choice for her take on dewey's ideas, but also for my desire to engage with her work and the concept of imagination. imagination is a term which i find too often co-opted by neoliberalism and marketing, for instance as the disguised pressure to produce new product for the consumers. but greene's work gave it a more generative connotation for me. indeed, greene's understanding of imagination prompted me to see the art encounter as a space of the possible, an idea also expressed in deleuze, but differently, as i will examine in another chapter. encounter - ripped newspaper, dry yellow corn shavings and mist earthiness. moisture. a pleasant mineral, earthy scent of wet soil invades my senses as i walk into the rotunda. petrichor; a recently created noun derived from the greek and a combination of the word 'petra' for stone and the special fluid that flows in the veins of the gods. petrichor, what a beautiful word to describe the particular scent of dry soil in interaction with the rain. in the center of the rotunda, rising vertically as high as the second floor, the exuberant, luscious landscape by jennifer wen ma is the source of the delicate, soothing smell. the plants have just been watered. dipped or painted in the deepest, blackest traditional chinese ink a few weeks before, the potted plants show foliage the color of night but some are struggling, they appear wrinkled and dried up. yet, how wonderful... here and there i am excited to see the bright green of delicate new leaves emerging in this dark forest. i recall the day the education team had the opportunity to meet with wen ma during the installation of the piece; she shared her interest for black beauty: a living totem ( ) to be an invitation to reflect on life and death; on social constraints. for her, the work further enacts a conversation with centuries of traditional chinese landscape painting. and yet for me, the work has an ineffable presence that cannot be exhausted in relation to the various references and signifiers. in my gallery tours, although it is engaging to talk about this work, for words come easily to describe the materials and process, or share some of wen ma' ideas, the difficulty is to talk with the work. beyond the formal or material descriptions and pointing out specific natural or artistic processes, i would enjoy remaining speechless. at the risk of pinning down black beauty: a living totem in a fixed representation, how can words speak the excess of the constant transformation, be attentive to the slow metamorphosis, share the pulsating life force which now gently impacts on the art gallery, a historical building and formerly a courthouse. as peter de bolla ( ) suggests in art matters, being or becoming speechless, such as in a state of muteness because one cannot verbalize, is the sign of an affective response and something he also calls being in a state of wonderment. de bolla thinks of the aesthetic experience as an affective response to the specificity of the art object through our encounter with it―he looks at experience not as something that we 'have' but as something "lived through" (p. ). for gilles deleuze, affective response is not reduced to the realm of feelings or the inarticulate emotional response―although emotions felt within me are present in the affective response―but these emerge in my encounter with particular features of the artwork. i lean more towards deleuze ( ) who considered how some encounters force us to thought; these encounters may be grasped in a range of affective tones but the characteristic is that it can only be sensed. mulling over these thoughts, i walk towards the second floor for the unscrolled. reframing tradition in contemporary chinese art exhibition. at the top of the stairs, someone reads the didactic panel and explains to a companion how the wen ma sculpture is comprised of live potted plants, most native from british columbia. i do not know what this information and encountering the sculpture will produce for them, tomorrow, next week or, next year. nevertheless, i am reminded of o'donoghue's ( ) suggestion that contemporary art has the potential to create both learning and being opportunities that "amplify the practice of paying attention; that engage in effortful observation; that embrace uncertainty and court ambiguity; that are open to chance encounters" (p. ) and perhaps were these two visitors living and being in the encounter. then i turn and gaze upon the mesmerizing landscape background story: ten thousand li of mountains and rivers by artist xu bing ( ); i have seen it countless times but forever and always, it leaves me speechless for its sheer beauty and mysterious presence. at twenty feet wide, it resembles a large scale ink scroll painting showing and xu bing took as its subject a detail from the influential scroll ten thousand li of mountains and rivers by the painter zhao fu (active - ) from the southern song dynasty. in the vancouver art gallery, xu placed a reproduction of the original scroll in a nearby vitrine. revealing jagged edged mountains, a twisted path unfolding alongside steep slopes and a thick line of trees, fog covered valleys with a few barren hilltops emerging timidly in the distance, crouched figures walking towards the coast where boats are ready to sail. from afar, the work looks like a traditional chinese landscape painted with ink on rice paper, then placed against clear glass so it could be lit up from the back. the subtle washes and fluid brush strokes invite my gaze to float deep into the mountains and the grey clouds heavy with rain. words come easily to describe the subject matter but there is an excess in the work's happening which is beyond words; for when i bring my body close to the glass pane, what a moment ago was a tree or a rocky mountain side, now is revealed to be dry twigs, straw and pine needles. repeating a gesture done so often, my gaze and body follow a line made of straw or hemps or i-do-not-know-what-material and i end up by the side of the large casing or wooden frame enclosing the piece. discretely placed but visible against the frame, just a few inches from the floor, xu has installed a frail tree branch peeking beyond the frame as if to say "come this way". interestingly, some people walking pass me do not seem to notice this small yet intriguing detail, nor are they curious to follow the intense source of light coming from the back of the picture. but many people are curious. and like me they walk around the sculptural installation, as i have done countless times before. i have no idea if this placement is intentional on the part of the artist or accidental, for art historian de bolla ( ), the aesthetic experience matters, the 'art' in the artwork matters since, "the artwork itself teaches us how to approach it: the image, to some extent, teaches us how to look (...)" (p. ). i wonder why this little branch sticks out of the frame, it could very well have been removed, cut or trimmed, thus it is clearly an artistic decision, a frail detail part of the art-ness of the work. the materiality of this branch―not simply the material, the what-it-is-made of-, calls for me to look and see closer. noticing the branch, i feel invited to leave the usual semi-static position of a spectator looking at a painting, in order to move and walk around to look behind the image. i follow the invitation and i am stunned once more. the scene leaves me speechless. xu bing and his assistants have literally made a three- dimensional drawing with repurposed, recycled, found materials gathered around vancouver. i see what at first appears to be a confusing jumble of ripped pieces of the vancouver sun, ripped plastic bags, dry leaves, woody twigs, short branches from a pine tree, dull yellow corn shavings, soft hemp fibers, large or small fragments of heavy white paper, also in suspension float a plastic bottle and a cardboard tubing. at the base of the frame, it seems as if the artist is away on a coffee break, just about to resume work; he left a small ladder ready for use, bundles of dry leaves placed against the frame seem awaiting to be transformed into 'art', a large sheet of plastic appears forgotten there, not knowing its purpose. and all around the frame are mundane, snow white neon tubes to light up the entire scene. i hear the elevator doors open and two visitors stumble onto the apparent chaos of everyday materials, "what is this?", they laugh, barely slow down or glance at the work and they leave. i so wish to interrupt their path, be a trigger for another kind of experience but no, they do not acknowledge my gaze as an invitation to converse. they walk pass me. there is no opening and i choose to respect this. i name, describe their apparent mockery, or lack of interest to engage with the work, as a refusal and yet something happened. both individuals did notice and had to physically negotiate around xu bing's installation. there was a physical encounter with the piece but a response to affects caused by an artwork cannot be planned, programmed, triggered, instrumentalized, or measured. i will never know what will be generated or remain from this experience an hour from now, in two days or two years. behind me, other voices can be heard, my body senses movement occurring nearby; a child and adult keep looking and moving back and forth, from the front and the back of the installation. the child, perhaps six or seven years of age bursts with a "this is so cool!", and when in front of the landscape he asks, "but how was it painted?" let's try again. smiling, the adult shows him patiently by playing a game. as they walk back and forth around the wooden frame of the installation, they try to discover how the yellow corn shavings, the soft hemp fibers, the small twigs of broken branches and the short pine tree needles seem to transform into a mountain, there a gentle sea waves or here, some rugged trees, when seen through the rice paper and the frosted sheet of plexiglass. what am i witnessing? do i observe a willingness to be curious, a human interaction, the behavioral signs of living out wonderment, a play with the work, the unfolding of an encounter? as i was watching the adult and the curious child, and today as write this narrative, i still tend to project myself in that beautiful moment, and i shall call it a state of wonderment. indeed, what i have learned about background story is inextricably entangled with my experience of/through the looking, thinking, comparing, moving back and forth, observing other visitors, reading the text panel, etc. it is time to leave but i know i will be back tomorrow and still be in a state of wonderment each time i pass by; knowing that what appears like an exquisite, evocative large scale traditional chinese painting with brush and ink, is actually an assemblage of contemporary urban materials transformed by the artistic process. whether i think about the slippage of meaning, the play of signs or contemporary practices in dialogue with the past, wonderment becomes a rich in-between of ideas and perceptions, a place to play. chapter art experience this chapter opens with an overview concerning the notion of art experience in the literature, then follows some comments on the concepts of experience and experimentation as written in the work of gilles deleuze. i further revisit john dewey's ( ) commitment to thinking art as experience, and in the last section i see what knowledge is produced on the art encounter following a deleuze-dewey encounter around the concept of experience. overview concerning the notion of art experience in this study, i use the term 'art experience' as an umbrella term to talk about one's experience when involved with the creating, making, conceptual or material configuring, or the performance of art, but also the aesthetic experience of being in the company of art. while the terms have different meanings, i noticed that in the art museum parlance, but also in various professional writings in art education, both terms are found to be interchangeable. writing about art experience or art as experience (dewey, ) still begs the question; "what is experience?". different meanings of experience abound, so much so that german philosopher hans georg gadamer ( ) considered the term " one of the most obscure that we have" (p. ). but covering the terms 'art' as related to experience still begs the question of defining 'experience'. as martin jay ( ) points out, turning to etymology is not necessarily a desire to "recapture a true point of linguistic origin" (p. ), especially since greek and latin were themselves preceded by earlier languages. nonetheless etymology does shed some light on the sedimentation of senses the words have acquired. jay ( ) explains that the english term 'experience' derives from the latin experientia that stands for trial, proof or experiment; in french for instance, mener une expérience clearly suggests a controlled scientific experimentation. the greek antecedent is empeiria and later will become the word 'empirical'. in ancient greece, there were three schools -and competing factions- of medicine: the dogmatiki, the methodiki and the empiriki.; the empiriki drew on observation and were skeptical of dogmatic authority and theoretical explanations. over time, sense experience became associated with the un-reflected observation of the empiriki, as opposed to the theoretical approach and rationality of the dogmatiki. because it became associated with the body and the sense, experience thus gained a strong derogatory meaning which extended also to include concepts such as ignorance and imposture (see also williams, ). for dewey, this denigration of experience which emerged in greek classical thought until the end of the seventeenth-century is connected to an imposed hierarchy concerning the superiority of ideas, mind and intellect over the messiness of everyday life , for as he claimed: "opposition of mind and body, soul and matter, spirit and flesh all have their origins, fundamentally, in fear of what life may bring forth" (dewey, , p. ). as detailed in songs of experience, according to jay ( ) it is the seventeenth-century british empiricist philosophers who will first attempt a critique of the rationalists philosophical positions represented by plato and rené descartes' doctrine of innate ideas, or the belief that ideas and cognitive capacities are inborn and already present in the mind. in his essay concerning the human understanding of , john locke advances the argument that the mind was a tabula rasa on which all the materials for reason and knowledge, hence ideas, are imprinted from sensory experience. contrary to rationalists doctrines, ideas do not pre-exist in the mind, we are not born with ideas writes locke ( ), the mind needs access to the things themselves via experience: "how comes it to be furnished? whence comes it by that vast store (...) when has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? to this i answer, in one word, from experience"(p. ). although locke's empiricism maintains a view of the mind as a passive receptacle of impressions, it marked a significant philosophical turn because it sought to re-inscribe experience as the source of justifiable beliefs and human knowledge. but what has been said about experience in relation to art and the aesthetic? according to philosopher jean-marie schaeffer ( ), if the terms 'aesthetic' and 'artistic' are often used as synonyms, nonetheless they refer to two different activities. the term 'artistic' refers to an act of making and the result of that making, such as an artwork. on the other hand, the term 'aesthetic' refers to both, in its etymology and by eighteenth century german philosophers alexander g. baumgarten who has introduced the term in philosophical thinking, to a modality of sensual perception and a particular attention and judgment into the act of looking and perceiving. later on, german philosopher immanuel kant will take up the term and discuss aesthetic experience and judgment in relation to questions of beauty and he sense of the sublime. first used by baumgarten ( [ ]) in his treatise aesthetica , philosopher alan goldman ( ) explains that the term 'aesthetic' opened up new discursive explorations; it referred to cognition achieved by means of knowledge derived by the senses. baumgarten brought aesthetic to refer to the subjective and sensuous perception, especially in the arts; the arts were a source of sensuous knowledge but this did not translate to an interest in the artistic object per se. in his critique of judgment kant ( [ ]) will later apply the term 'aesthetics' to making contemplative, disinterested and reflective judgments of beauty regarding arts and nature. in the twentieth century, the influential aesthetician and analytic philosopher monroe beardsley ( ) will introduce a broader view of the aesthetic in experience, which for him is a "species of hedonic quality" (p. . he provided a set of five criteria. in summary, for beardsley ( , p. ) the aesthetic character of experience can be determined by; ) the "object directness", or the undivided attention and the willingness to surrender to the artwork, ) a sense of felt freedom, a sense of release from everyday concerns (although beardsley admits this can be unrealistic with difficult or puzzling artworks), ) a certain detachment of affect, ) the cognitive discovery, experiencing artworks is a state "amounting to exhilaration in seeing connections between percepts and between meanings" (p. ), and ) the sense of wholeness, contentment that it provides, even if the artwork provokes difficult emotions. admittedly gilles deleuze's philosophy differs from beardsley's; for instance, deleuze is not involved in the evaluative or interpretive aspect of experience, nonetheless, i do find beardsley's criteria interesting in that they round up ideas from kant-experience as being disinterested, they also relate to cognition, phenomenology and dewey's ( ) notion that there is sense of unity in the aesthetic experience. an important read when i entered the field of art museum education was the seminal book the art of seeing. an interpretation of the aesthetic encounter, a study conducted for the getty education institute for the arts by psychologists mihaly csikszentmilhalyi and rick e. robinson ( ). in order to gain information on the processes, the reception and understanding of art by experts, csikzentmihalyi and robinson generated data by interviewing art museum professionals, thus participants with highly developed literacy skills in viewing art. as a result of the study, a key finding was that the meaningful aesthetic experience consists in an "intense involvement of attention in response to a visual stimulus, for no other reason than to sustain the interaction" (p. ) which is similar to a state of flow a concept developed by csikszentmihalyi ( ). the main purpose of their study was to "construct a model of the ideal experience based on the highest form in which it can be expressed" (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, , p. xv), hence the decision to work with a concept developed by m. csikszentmihalyi ( , ; nakamura & csikszentmihalyi, ), flow is an autotelic experience- a self-contained activity without needing a goal because it is satisfying in itself. flow is considered an optimal experience, it is a heightened state of consciousness; concentration is intense, self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time is distorted. flow is an activity that produces joy and a gratification that does not need rewards. museum knowledge holders in both historical and contemporary art. the research further defines the art experience as something occurring when; [the] information coming from the artwork interacts with the information already stored in the viewer's mind. the result of this conjunction might be a sudden expansion, recombination or ordering of previously accumulated information, which in turn produces a variety of emotions such as delight, joy, or awe. the information in the work of art fuses with information in the viewer's memory and followed by the expansion of the viewer's consciousness, and the attendant emotional consequences. this process of fusion we will refer to as the structure of the aesthetic experience. (p. ) thus, according to the authors, a successful art encounter depends on the interrelation, what they call a 'fusion', between the information gained by the person's observational skills, such as noting the artwork's specificities, and the production of a variety of subjective emotions (behavioral consequences) such as a sense of clarity, wholeness of the experience, felt freedom, and one’s own cognitive functioning. according to csikszentmihalyi and robinson, art experiences all have a similar structure with four dimensions: emotional, communicational, intellectual and perceptual, but what is most important in their view of a successful art experience is achieving this fusion between the four dimensions. this fusion or being " [...] the merging of action and awareness" (csikszentmihalyi, , p. ) is the sense of flow. in terms of research, the art of seeing was generative for scholars and art museum educators looking to develop models fostering rich art experiences, or to understand the implication of cognition and a flow state of consciousness in the art experience (see kirchberg & troendle, ; lachapelle, , ; latham, ). admittedly, i have summarized the complexity of csikszentmihalyi and robinson's findings yet, writing this section of my dissertation allowed me to revisit the above quote and i was struck by the word 'fusion' as a merging of whatever one is doing/thinking/feeling/perceiving in the art experience, and deleuze and guattari's concept of assemblage. indeed, for deleuze and guattari ( ), the assemblage "groups together an infinity of particles entering into an infinity of more or less interconnected relations" (p. ). but i am not the first to entertain the thought of similarities, and differences, between the concept of fusion as flow and the concept of assemblage; indeed these have been pointed out by zink ( ). albeit zink's research interest is not related to the arts, the author remarked how some assemblages are similar to csikszentmihalyi's concept of flow because of the idea of the "heightened awareness that merge with action and a loss of ego, as these are also about relating to the world" (p. ). nonetheless, in my view one of the crucial difference between the concepts of flow and the deleuzian assemblage is that, in csikszentmihalyi's model, there is a self-contained view of a subject which precedes the experience, while the subject in a deleuzian assemblage comes into being in the relationship. echoing zink ( ), this is also one of the reasons why i find the deleuzian concept of assemblage so generative, because it allows me to think and imagine the art gallery/body/artworks/art discourse/spaces/movements with "more flexible boundaries" (p. ). in recent years, after his study of beardsley and other writers in aesthetics, philosopher richard shusterman ( ) noted that, while the concept of aesthetic experience remains elusive, it is mostly written alongside four dimensions: evaluative (the sense of pleasure or not, qualities of the experience), phenomenological (the embodied nature of art experience, sense perceptions), semantic (meaning and interpretation), and demarcational- definitional (definitions of art). albeit these categories are extremely broad, the exercise proves interesting and useful to keep in mind as a conceptual frame. here are the four dimensions used to define the art experience according to shusterman's review of the literature: first, aesthetic experience is essentially valuable and enjoyable; call this its evaluative dimension. second, it is something vividly felt and subjectively savored, affectively absorbing us and focusing our attention on its immediate presence and thus standing out from the ordinary flow of routine experience; call this its phenomenological dimension. third, it is meaningful experience, not mere sensation; call this its semantic dimension. [...] fourth, it is a distinctive experience closely identified with the distinction of fine art and representing art's essential aim; call this is demarcational-definitional . (p. ) i think that shusterman has left out as a dimension, which is in my view, the productive potential of every art encounter . nonetheless, his summary invites one to consider how, while difficult to describe, explain or even speak of, the art experience is mostly understood as related to pre-conceptual affects, to subjective emotional or cognitive processes, to an embodied response to the physicality and materiality of an object defined as art, or, following dewey ( ), defined as art through one's aesthetic experience of an object. of course, in most authors, definitions of the aesthetic experience touch on more than one dimension. yet, there are other ways to look at aesthetic experience. for instance, there is this rather, perhaps unconventional but in my view insightful, definition by philosopher david fenner ( ) reminding that aesthetic experiences are first of all experiences and these are; in this instance by the term encounter i mean the experience of coming upon and being in the bodily presence of artworks. (...) complex things, having to do with things as tidy as the formal qualities of the object under consideration and with things as messy as whether one had enough sleep the night before, whether one just had a fight with his roommate, whether on is carrying psychological baggage that is brought to consciousness by this particular aesthetic object. (p. ) complex, messy, embodied, relational, affective; these are some of the characteristics that can be said about the event of encountering art. as martin jay ( ) reminds us, "no consensus has been reached about what an aesthetic experience is or should be" (p. ), or what the art experience produces. the range of viewpoints vary considerably, and some even appear to be contradictory. here lies in my opinion, the beauty and fascinating character of being with art. there were according to jay ( ), considerable fluctuations regarding the use, signification or importance of art experience. many of the shifts took place between a focus on the experience as objective, related to cognitive faculties or, possible only through and in the embodied subjective experience. by implication, the art or aesthetic experience could be valuable if seen as an "object of discursive exploration" (p. ), if one could obtain knowledge through the senses yet, on the other hand, it could be perceived as unreliable since embodied and difficult to communicate. the art experience has been, and often still is, circumscribed and spoken of in binary terms such as viewer/artwork, mind/body, learning/feeling. scholars still argue whether the experience of art is autonomous, and thus should be thought and treated differently, or if it overlaps with the regular concept of experience. furthermore, contemporary artists are constantly troubling this possibility of ontological boundaries of art by the development, exploration and creation of new types of art implicating film, video, sound, the viewer's own body, space, social practices and situations, educational strategies and more. drawing from these considerations, one might question if the concept of art experience is still relevant or perhaps is it more relevant than ever, especially with regards to contemporary art practices and propositions, many of these now renouncing even the notion of object since they exist only as interactions between people. the american philosopher and influential art critic arthur danto ( ) indirectly asked this same question after his encounter with andy warhol's brillo boxes when first shown in . the boxes were hand printed but they imitated (almost) perfectly the banal cleaning product one could buy at the supermarket. danto was troubled and he started to reflect on the contemporary relevance of aesthetic experience as a particular category of experience. how can these brillo looking boxes be considered art, and indirectly: did aesthetic experience still exist? he doubted it. according to his views, aesthetic experience had lost its definitional function ever since artists, such as marcel duchamp, had started to exhibit ready-mades, or industrially fabricated everyday objects selected by the artist and displayed in a gallery . how can one have an art experience or call it an art experience, danto inquired, if the object appears to be simply an ordinary object, and therefore non-art? his question was provocative. it is interesting to note how his encounter with warhol's brillo boxes brought danto to articulate his views concerning the importance of art theories and art institutions as definitional devices when looking at dewey, beardsley, goodman, and danto, the philosopher richard shusterman ( , ) wrote an interesting case about what he perceives to be the increasing demise, by philosophers, of the concept of aesthetic experience. i am not implying that an aesthetic experience is solely in the perception of material and formal qualities in the object. i think art/aesthetic experience in terms of relationality and other dimensions such as: the size or context of a gallery space, notions of proximity, sounds, smells, bodily sensations, how one body is affected by, responds or can circulate around/in the work constitutes the art experience. traditional criteria of art appear absent, or too far removed from the known. but artistic theories and institutions, such as the art museum or gallery, function as more than definitional devices; in various ways they also support and frame one's experience by: putting in place possibilities for new encounters, providing information that can foster thinking and meaning making. to dónal o'donoghue ( ), the concept of art experience is more relevant than ever considering the experiential impulse of many contemporary projects and the different ways many artists invite viewers to collaborate or participate in some manner for the artwork to exist as art. more specifically, o'donoghue suggests that beyond the claim for participation, many recent works of relational aesthetics , are concerned, he writes, "with the promise and potentiality of experience; that is with what experience does and how it is and can be agentic in itself" (p. ). this brings forward the importance and continued relevance of thinking about the concept of art experience, especially if it means thinking about what experience produces, to what it does. arthur danto passed away in , the year chinese artist ai weiwei presented the monumental installation bang for the first time in the german pavilion at the venice biennale. the reader of this dissertation has already encountered the piece in my narrative titled “eight hundred and eighty-six wooden stools”, the words and photographs enacting for the reader a new instantiation of the artwork displayed at the vancouver art gallery. i am simply curious and i wonder, but i can only speculate on danto's possible choice of words to write about bang, a precarious and swirly assemblage of second-hand, tattered, modest, and common three-legged stools. danto's assumption seemed to be that the experience is derived the term relational art or relational aesthetics was coined by french curator nicolas bourriaud ( ) in the s. solely from the object but i think this is problematic because he overlooked the inter- connections. artworks are multiplicities and inter-connections. for instance, when ai weiwei developed bang for the biennale of , the chinese government was still preventing ai from travelling outside of the country since his arrest. hence, due to social- media and newspapers, the socio-cultural and political aspects of the installation were part of the public's experience. i did not attend the venice biennale but i had read about it and, in vancouver, through the gallery text panel and the media frenzy surrounding the artist, visitors were likely to learn of ai's tense political situation. i knew the stools had been collected by the artist and hence were discarded, ripped from their histories. perhaps, it is this singular context and the space created by the artist that made me notice the simple wooden furniture in a different way; i feel the presence of the old tattered three-legged stools so expertly crafted by hand; some covered in paint appear quite recent but most carry deep gouges, half erased characters, deep marks and the texture of dry, tattered wood. as i revisit the narrative telling but also a re-enactment in my "experience of encountering" (o’donoghue, , p. ) with ai weiwei's installation, i wish to inquire the messy spaces of being with art not by analyzing recurring themes in a block of narrative data or looking for psychological processes, but rather seeing what knowledge is produced on the art encounter when thinking with the theory of deleuze and in his co-authored work with guattari. the concept of experience in the writings of gilles deleuze the concepts of experience (as a noun and a verb) and experimentation are very important for deleuze. more precisely, i should have written that both concepts are weaved throughout his philosophical work. for this reason, if this section appears quite succinct, it is because since the concept overlaps with encounter and assemblage―and desire, becoming, lines of flight, difference, and more― to avoid the risk of repetition, i isolate the concepts here as a way to introduce some key ideas. but again, since for deleuze, life is creation, everything has to do with experimentation. it is important to mention that his interest in experience differs from the psychological view of a unified subject experiencing the world out there, this preserving a dualistic separation between the inside and outside. as inna semetsky ( ) explains, deleuze considered experience as a "milieu which provides the capacity to affect and be affected" (p. ). since experience is not grounded or perceived internally by the 'ego', this milieu is a non-topographic environment that makes possible affects, the transitory thoughts or sensations prior to conceptualization. experience is also a-subjective since it is not 'had' by an individual; instead one is constituted through and within the process of experimentation. i look again at my photographs of bang and i remember, or more precisely, i create a new experience through the image and feel surrounded by the assembled stools, the warmth of the old wood, the scratches made by the years of domestic use; it is an interesting conceptual shift to think that 'i' did not have an experience for me to describe and write down. instead, 'i' as a viewer, was constituted by my interaction/experimentation with the artwork. an interaction residing in my body moving around and under the wood canopy, looking, thinking about the artist gathering his material, imagining the former people who lived with the small furniture. the experimentation is embodied and lived, yet also quite subtle, i did not get to touch the wood, escalade the structure or test the solidity of the assemblage. on this, semetsky ( ) points out something very interesting and i think important in the context of experiencing artworks: experience is "not limited to what is immediately perceived" (p. ). to deleuze, a movement of change (becoming), something new happening as a result of experimentation can be real even if it is not manifest, even if it has been imperceptible. and so, what is then 'experimentation'? ‘‘never interpret; experience, experiment’’ wrote deleuze ( , p. ). experience as a noun and as a verb, or a process; between the two, deleuze and guattari seemed most interested by the verb and the generative process. experimentation is something they explore in anti-Œdipus and a thousand plateaus; it implies to try something new, different methods or approaches without knowing what the result will be. but what does one experiment with? bruce baugh ( ) further explains that we experiment with "desires, forces, powers and their combinations, not only to 'see what happens', but to determine what different entities (bodies, languages, social groupings, environments and so on) are capable of" (p. ). there was no possibility for me to know in advance how my body would move or what it would do as i walked through the constellation of stools. there has to be the meeting of bodies (human and non-human), this interaction and experimentation of the installation, for me to see what my body would do. and through experimentation, discovering what the different entities do or produce in their arrangements will lead to knowledge. certainly, my repeated visits with xu bing's ( ) installation background story enabled me to make connections between the discarded or ripped piece of newspaper on one side and the different sign it became when seen through the plexiglass and rice paper. i knew how my body would move, i created my path. and yet, every time, i would always notice something new, and my body would shift and react to it differently. i saw that i could move and interact with the work in unexpected ways. furthermore, the concept of experience is crucially important to deleuze because "the object of philosophy is to create concepts that are always new" (deleuze & guattari, , p. ) . as mentioned previously, deleuze is a philosopher of immanence and therefore insists that concepts are "not waiting for us ready-made, like heavenly bodies. [...] they must be invented, fabricated, or rather created and would be nothing without their creator's signature" (p. ). this serves to show the importance of experimentation for deleuze. since concepts are not given, one has to be pushed to thought. yet how can this happen? deleuze ( ) explored this question in his major work difference and repetition first published in ; thoughts are formed in the context of experiences and encounters. as semetsky ( ) points out, contrary to analytical philosophy, experience is not about what is immediately perceived. being pushed to thought does not have to be forceful, violent, controlling since affects can be imperceptible and can operate without us being aware. eight hundred and eighty-six three legged wooden stools. rice paper, plexiglass, dried corn shaving, newspaper, plastic bags and pine needles. these may or may not carry much impact when looked as signs; i see mundane objects and detritus of everyday life, and yet when the things are brought into the assemblage of an artwork such as bang by ai weiwei or xu bing's background story, something else happens. i deliberately kept the term 'something' vague; something happens. what happened the moment i turned a corner and saw the monumental structure of stools? or when i actually started to walk in/through the installation. deleuze is not interested in the what is, and i can see why the question of being for a comprehensive study on the concept of experience in the work of gilles deleuze, see the philosophical dissertation by charles bolduc ( ). can stultify, the 'what does it do' is much more generative. deleuze repeated this idea in many books: "experiment, don't signify and interpret!" (deleuze & guattari, , p. ). "to think is to experiment, but experimentation is always that which is in the process of coming about (...)" wrote deleuze and guattari ( , p. ), hence we make sense of experience not by connecting sense perceptions to universal categories but by experimentation itself. this idea of the coming about has further implications; deleuze is not interested in the question of what is possible in relation to what is real. the important question for deleuze is the relation between the actual and the virtual ; if the virtual is real yet not actualized, how does one make it actual? through experimentation. for deleuze it is only experimentation which can reveal or actualize something which, until one experiences, had remained a potential, or in deleuzian terms, virtual. while he did not address the question of the virtual, the next section will turn to revisit pragmatist philosopher and progressive educational theorist john dewey's understanding of experience―and art experience, for dewey continually emphasized experience in his conception of progressive education. revisiting john dewey's concept of art experience although developed almost sixty years earlier than deleuze, also present in the work of dewey, is this idea of experience as both responding and undergoing. indeed, dewey ( ) carefully examines in art as experience, the notion of experience as the very process of as mentioned in the glossary, for deleuze, the virtual is real but it is not actualized. the concept of the virtual has nothing to do with the simulated reality of video games, for instance. living and he defines it as; "the result, the sign, and the reward of that interaction of organism and environment which, when it is carried to the full is a transformation of interaction into participation and communication" (p. ). throughout the book, dewey ( ) further explores and defines experience as, [...] a matter of the interaction of organism with its environment, an environment that is human as well as physical, that includes the materials of tradition and institutions as well as local surroundings. the organism brings with it through its own structure, native and acquired, forces that play a part in the interaction. the self acts as well as undergoes, and its undergoings are not impression stamped upon an inert wax but depend upon the way the organism reacts and responds. (p. ) in this quote, the major characteristics of experience are; ) the inter-relation between the "living organism" (p. ) or the self (as an assemblage with "its own structure, native and acquired" (dewey, , p. ) and the environment, ) the change that occurs in the living organism due to this interaction. contrary to locke's empiricist model, dewey rejects the view of a mind passively receiving the sense impressions, since experience is a constant interaction and a transformation of that interaction since for each being/organism experience is an active internal (mental) and external process. also important for dewey, experience has a unity, a sense of wholeness and "self- sufficiency. it is an experience" (p. ). these qualifiers or categories are used after the moment, when we reflect or talk about the experience of attending this concert, or visiting that exhibition. furthermore, dewey ( ) explains how in experience there is no division such as a mind closed onto itself and looking out at what is being experienced; experience signals an "active and alert commerce with the world; at its height it signifies complete interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events (p. ). according to him, it is western rational philosophy which has created false dichotomies since, he explains, the opposition of mind and body, soul and matter, find their origin in the "fear of what life may bring forth" (p. ). here is a profound resonance in dewey's words for art museum educators; when i started to read his work, i for one have become more attentive to my vocabulary and in thinking more about the constant interaction between the museum public and artworks. nevertheless, it must be mentioned that for dewey, not all experiences are valuable for this depends on the quality of the experience. as developed in experience and education, dewey ( ) believes it is not the absence of experiences which is the problem in educational situations, but rather when experiences are, "wrong and defective from the standpoint of connection with further experience" (p. ), some experiences can also be mis-educative when they have the effect of preventing the emergence of further experiences. thus, an experience has quality when it has an aspect of agreeableness or disagreeableness (i call this the affective aspect of experience), and it has an influence upon later experiences (experience produces an effect of continuity). while in this study, the concept of art experience will not be examined along a sliding and evaluative scale in terms of quality, i think dewey provides art museums with a relevant question: how to foster and choose the types of experiences, he writes, "that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences" (p. ). yet, at the same time, i am reticent if this implies a desire, due to institutional pressures and neoliberal requirements for validity, to instrumentalize and design models of "best practices". although experience happens continuously in our daily lives, all do not constitute an experience according to dewey; some are random activities which we forget and exhaust themselves during the day, without leaving traces or carrying over ideas, knowledge, memories, emotions which are brought forward in/to other experiences. unity and a sense of completeness are important characteristics to the deweyian experience. first of all, an experience can be named or, in a way, circumscribed in time and space, for "it has a unity that gives it its name, that meal, that storm, that rupture of friendship" writes dewey ( , p. ). but it is not enough for an experience to be circumscribed in time and space; it must provide a sense of achievement or completeness, […] we have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment. then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experience from other experiences. a piece of work is finished in a way that is satisfactory; a problem receives a solution; a game is played through; a situation, whether that of eating a meal, playing a game of chess, carrying on a conversation, writing a book, or talking part in a political campaign, is so rounded out that its close is a consummation and not a cessation. such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency. it is an experience. (dewey, , p. ) with all due respect to dewey's definition of experience, it is regarding the characteristics of unity and fulfillment that i will state my concerns. as noël carroll ( ) teased, dewey can be a "slippery writer" (p. ) hence, i may be over-interpreting or misreading his saying. i will close this section with thoughts on unity and fulfillment in experience. by introducing the notions of unity and fulfillment, dewey wants to establish some distinctions between various actions, activities, everyday experiences. i understand and see the qualitative difference between an automatic gesture such as running up the main staircase of the gallery, absently walking past bang because i am late to a meeting, and a rich -my expression- art experience such as the sense of suspended time i felt while sitting underneath the delicate assemblage of wooden stools, almost hearing the silent voices of generations who used these objects as everyday furniture, or the magical moment of watching a child playfully creating a new setting and story inside the installation space. while i would prefer another word than 'unity' to describe an experience, simply because unity implies a notion of boundary and does not adequately speak how experiences overlap, and build over time a complex web of images, memories, affects, ideas and interactions with other visitors, or new impressions about the physicality of the piece. nonetheless, i also understand that for dewey the word 'unity' is certainly not implying the end of experience, rather it marks, i would say, a moment of transition since as dewey ( ) acknowledges, intellectual meanings or emotions can be "carried over from past experiences" (p. ). in the following section, informed by a/r/tography, i want to see what emerges when bringing ideas from deleuze and dewey in contiguity. what can happen in the in-between, in the relation between the two? thoughts on art experience following a deleuze-dewey encounter: i certainly am not the first one to see rich parallels between deleuze and dewey; for instance inna semetsky ( ; ) looking at education, and john j. stuhr ( ) concerned with pragmatism, have more or less brought them together since experience and experimentation are central concepts for both deleuze and dewey. deleuze wrote extensively on the arts albeit he did not, to my knowledge, offer an extended reflection on the art museum although we know he frequently visited art galleries. nevertheless, i contend that a deleuze-dewey encounter is a rich opportunity to think the aesthetic experience in the museum in relation to dewey's critique that the museum compartmentalizes art and life, that both authors critique the stifling effects that recognition has upon experience and thus, of the importance of being worthy of the encounter. a friend and close advisor to albert barnes who established an art education department at the barnes foundation in , dewey ( ) charted, in his series of lectures the school and society, the model of his ideal school in which prominently figured a museum space at the intersection of areas for art, music and scientific laboratories. nonetheless, while he championed a special role for the museum, he disapproved of any discourse or institutional structure separating or compartmentalizing art and life. the museum experience was valuable but it was not, as hein ( ) mentions, a complete life- experience for it had to connect to and extend everyday experience. dewey also offered a severe warning to art museum education because, according to him, a guided tour in a gallery cannot be a genuine aesthetic experience since "attention is called here and there to some high point" (p. ) and this is not to perceive. for to perceive, "a beholder must create his own experience" (p. ) otherwise, continues dewey, expressions of admiration or emotional excitations are no more than a "mixture of scraps of learning with conformity" (p. ). the comment is scathing, dewey did not mince his words. i understand that for dewey, distraction and dispersion of one's interaction with the world did not lead to a fulfilling experience. hence, a key question for dewey is to find ways of living aesthetic experiences as a continuation of a normal processes of living; it is an intensification of significance in common experience, and one which should not be set apart from "any other mode of experience" (p. ). dewey became influential in art museum education for his position regarding experience as the basis for meaning making and his celebration of the art experience as an "intensified development of traits that belong to every normally complete experience" (p. ). more so, there has to be a continuous interaction―as engaged perception―between the fullness of a person and the art object. this is an interesting reminder: a perceiver who is to idle will not see, hear or fully create her/his/their aesthetic experience since perceiving is not about resting in the already known, it requires an active going toward in order to allow further experiences. dewey explains that; [...] receptivity is not passivity. it, too, is a process consisting of a series of responsive acts that accumulate toward objective fulfillment. otherwise, there is not perception but recognition. the difference between the two is immense. recognition is perception arrested before it has a chance to develop freely. in recognition there is a beginning of an act of perception. but this beginning is not allowed to serve the development of a full perception of the thing recognized. [...] in recognition we fall back, as upon a stereotype, upon some previously formed scheme. [...] the esthetic or undergoing phase of experience is receptive. it involves surrender. [...] perception is an act of the going-out of energy in order to receive, not a withholding of energy. to steep ourselves in a subject-matter we have first to plunge into it. (pp. - ) this rich and complex quote seems to announce some ideas present in deleuze's ( ) for whom recognition kills any possibility for a real encounter since recognition is about representation, reproduction, resemblance. when engaging with artworks, dewey explicitly warns against staying in too easy state of recognition, of fixating on the known thus preventing further discoveries offered by/in the artwork. mine is not an attempt to contradict or tame dewey's comments concerning the museum, indeed by their definition museums do de-contextualize historical art, although many contemporary art practices conceptualize and create artworks specifically to be displayed in a museum or gallery. for instance, this is certainly the case for the installations bang by ai weiwei, or background story by xu bing which refers to an important scroll painting kept in the collections of the palace museum in beijing. if i think with deleuze, since life is a plane of immanence, there is no outside, to relation to something, such as a museum experience in relation to a real one. in terms of an experience of encountering art, i would claim that the museum experience is a complete life-experience. what is important is to enter into an assemblage and attend to that particular object. the other point, this is one that deleuze and dewey have in common, is their critique of recognition. i recall being amused and pleasantly comforted when i first stepped into ai weiwei's ( - ) monumental installation and recognized the presence of the humble wooden stool as building material. recognition is only the beginning in the act of perception says dewey, but the most important follows in the active movement of back-and-forth (my terms) between the perceiver and the art object. certainly, recognizing the hand-made wooden stools is significant but a quality experience requires me to perceive also the choices made by the artist, the "how it is said" (p. ). "the work of art is complete only as it works in the experience of others" wrote dewey ( , p. ); it is in aesthetic experience that the materiality of what we perceive becomes art. in a similar way, for deleuze, experience becomes meaningful in and because of the process of experimentation. encounter - stepping into shan shui my pencil moved swiftly on the page, words flowed, words not to describe or fix the tracing of my gaze but rather as a form of playful conversation with xu bing's ( ) exquisite background story. ten thousand li of mountains and rivers. can one extend or stretch the pleasure of the encounter over time, over repeated viewings? for me, each new word scribbled on the page, or sometimes a photographic detail allows the encountering to continue nowhere and everywhere. a continuation without destination, a conversation which cannot be exhausted. but something else grabs my attention; i hear a friendly voice talking to me. i lift my nose from my notebook. she stands beside me, and with a nod, asks about my focused writing; a term paper? she has noticed the presence of quite a few students equipped with notepad or sketchbook. yes, this is field work for my dissertation. i explain briefly my topic and hand out an oral consent form. she was happy to chat. "on the art encounter? how interesting". she loves encountering artworks but she feels that sometimes things happen after, that ideas linger and then come back much later. "i like to come and visit on my own" she adds, "it's easier that way to interact with other visitors. and i love to share my enthusiasm. my name is e.". she attended the opening of unscrolled. reframing tradition in contemporary chinese art and visited the exhibition, but she desired to see it again. "especially for sun xun's film and painting installation. i just love it!" so do i. superlatives words of appreciation and some "did you notice" form the basis of our dialogue for a moment. and the birds..."what do think of those beautiful animated birds in flight?" they are exquisitely drawn but did you notice the background, i add. "what do you mean?" she replies and makes a move towards sun xun's ( ) gallery space. i follow her and we step into the installation shan shui - cosmos. inside, the white cube of the gallery is transformed, we step into another world. a world of deep muffled sounds―perhaps water curling at the bottom of a waterfall or the roaring of a powerful river, and on every wall large fluid brushstrokes of black, green and some red evoke the topography of southern china with curvy mountains and steep valleys. but when i step closer to the wall paintings, they seem so abstract, more like graffiti marks because of the paint freely dripping, the brushstroke fluid and energetic. the gallery space is transformed, it is now a magical world of the moving image with three different projections; some of a fighting sea serpent, abstract dots evolving into constellations and fantastic creatures, exotic colorful birds flying into a traditional black ink landscape painting. sun xun plays with superposition, overlap, the contamination of signs and artistic tradition by his juxtaposition of traditional calligraphic techniques with digital animation. his large scale animated films are projected directly onto the painted landscape plus a third layer of hanging reproductions of landscape or paintings of exquisite birds, dating back from the song dynasty, or his own ink drawings of a monstrous water serpent (or perhaps a sea dragon) fighting what seems like a giant turtle. my senses are overwhelmed; there's the impossibility of grasping the entirety of an ever changing visual spectacle, the presence of the deep roaring sounds of rumbling waves, the background noise coming from the museum ventilation system and, perhaps in my imagination, even the moisture in the air. spontaneously, e. and i engage and start playing with the work; she points out and makes me notice the quality and the manifest skill of his brushstrokes. "i love this section of the mural painting...", she said. from afar, the paint work evokes a vague mountainous landscape but from close-up, the signs are purely abstract, fluid, gestural strokes but e. recognizes the quality and acknowledges sun xun's training and skills in traditional chinese calligraphy. we exchange some more about sun xun's grand-father who experienced sustained hardships during the cultural revolution and sun's layered conversations with china's political and artistic history. i thought i knew the installation quite well due to repeated visits because of my gallery tours but e. makes me notice unseen details, visual textures and new connections such as; at some point, the traditional ink landscape in the animation with majestic birds in flight perfectly joins with the painted mural in the gallery space thus creating the illusion of a transformation, a passage in-between two realities. history and present flow, connect and dialogue in and through the work of art. how did i miss that? "but what did you mean, when you asked if i had noticed about the background?" says e. we had been playing with the work, noticing how the copies of old scroll paintings suspended in the installation were similar and perhaps the historical source for the motifs of the colorful birds flying in the digital animation. sun xun plunges the viewer into the maelstrom of his mind, the apparent confusion, juxtaposition, layering of images and references is a wonderful metaphor of an artistic process. "notice the small garden scene and the waterfall behind the birds...now look around the space...", i said. still she did not understand. i pointed to the reproduction of a landscape from the period of the song dynasty that was suspended on the opposite wall and partially into the light projected by the film animation showing the fighting water serpent. she moves closer and gasps, "yes, i have seen this but i did not make the connection!" there in full view, yet easy to overlook, is the view sun xun reproduced for the background of his birds in flight. e. is fascinated, partly because she had seen the reproduction during an earlier visit yet without actually noticing the relationship. but also, she and i realized how the artist sets up an invitation; hearing the call of the work, our experiencing and engaging in a playful conversation with the piece made us enter into some of the ways the work thinks and makes manifest. chapter encounter in the oxford english dictionary, encounter as a verb means to meet a person or thing or come across especially unexpectedly, to meet as an adversary or to go counter to and oppose. as a noun, it refers to the meeting with a person or thing by chance or a confrontation, the encounter can also define a style of address, an exposure to something such as an information or idea that suddenly presents itself. contrary to the concept of experience which is in use since greek (as empeiria) and roman times (as experiri), the word 'encounter' both as verb and noun does not exhibit a similarly prestigious philosophical pedigree. put simply the word encounter, deriving from the late latin incontrare, in- and contra or against, is a common romanic word found in texts only since c. in terms of vernacular language, the word encounter is commonly synonymous of 'a meeting with' and is often found interchangeable with the word experience, however for gilles deleuze, while they are closely interconnected, there are distinctions between experience and the contingent character of encounters. this chapter will examine the concept of encounter in the deleuze's writings. following this, i turn to merleau-ponty and his statement about the tutelage of perception. in the final section of this chapter, i discuss what knowledge can be produced on the notion of art experience following an improbable meeting between deleuze, who distanced himself from phenomenology, and merleau-ponty. the concept of encounter in the writings of gilles deleuze for deleuze ( ), ideas do not exist out there waiting the right moment to enter a person. thinking is a creative process and he considers encounters as the necessary events to actualize what until then, had remained virtual: do not count upon thought to ensure the relative necessity of what it thinks. rather, count upon the contingency of an encounter with that which forces thought to raise up and educate the absolute necessity of an act of thought or a passion to think. (p. ) still i wanted to make sense of the forces moving through my interconnectedness with the art and the gallery context but also time, not only as clock-time, for both through my work as museum educator and in my fieldwork, i re-visited the same artworks. i am also interested by duration in the sense of an "immediate awareness of the flow of changes that simultaneously constitutes differences and relationships between particulars" (stagoll, , p. ). deleuze seems to imply that an encounter is only possible, or happening if the event is unplanned, contingent. and yet, if i follow deleuze's understanding of repetition and difference, repetition is never the repetition of the same (because deleuze does not define in terms of identity), a repetition is always something different. and thus yes, i revisit artworks many times but if i attend to the particulars of my encounter, then each new visit is an experimentation and possibly another encounter. informed by deleuze, one can say that to encounter is an experience since, as we have seen in chapter one, he understands experience as a milieu where one creates or allows opportunities for encounters. similarly to the standard definition of the term, in difference and repetition, deleuze ( ) describes the encounter as something unplanned and a shock. a significant particularity of the encounter is the element of chance or contingency, he writes, [...] even the point of departure - namely, sensibility in the encounter with that which forces sensation - presupposes neither affinity not predestination. on the contrary, it is the fortuitousness or the contingency of the encounter which guarantees the necessity of that which it forces to be thought. (p. ) we understand from this how, for deleuze, if experimentation is to constitute or become an encounter, then it must contain an element of the unexpected, an affective event which acts as a force to push someone into a signifying unknown and possibly to thought. then a question arises; can it be claimed that all experiences are milieus enabling encounters? while deleuze did not elaborate on this specific question, one might say that according to the standard definition of encounter, for the experience to be or become an encounter both as noun and process, the element of contingency is required. this is not a rhetorical question, for as i have suggested repeatedly in my narrative, the art experience―and, i would claim, the art encounter― implies a sense of time. if the encounter is something unplanned, a coming against which cannot be predicted; then how do i consider the repeated visits in art installations i have become familiar with? deleuze seems to favor the contingent experience as encounter, but i need to push this idea further to think of the micro encounters possible in frequent visits of the same artwork. beside deleuze's desire to experience encounters with paintings or cinema, it should be said that he did not argue in favor of specific modes of experiencing art. and neither am i suggesting that there is a better way of experiencing artwork; whether one meets an artwork or artistic situation by surprise or for the first time, or if it is similar to my repeated and prolonged experiences of ai weiwei's bang or farmer's ( ) storeroom overture , described soon. nevertheless, what i do claim is that encountering an artwork can happen during a first unplanned encounter or over repeated visits. i remember standing by the large landscape by xu bing ( ) and e. telling me how she felt that encounters happen after seeing the works because things or impressions linger, and questions or ideas come back later. i remember how each of my visits into storeroom overture became opportunities for various encounters because there was always something different to be discovered, heard, felt, or observed such as the unobtrusive little note by the artist telling me that art experience is of my own making. i realize every time when i stepped into the surgeon and the photographer (farmer, ), that my body would take another path in-between the puppet figurines and i would make new discoveries and acquaintances each time. it is relevant to note also, how to maxine greene ( ) encounters with the same work of art will be different on each occasion, "because we are different at different times of our lives" (p. ). as we will see, it is important to point out how deleuze ( ) complicates the standard definition of the encounter as a coming-against and a shock by adding a completely different set of questions: these are the issues of recognition and representation, and thought/thinking. he writes, what is encountered may be socrates, a temple, or a demon. it may be grasped in a range of affective tones: wonder, love, hatred, suffering. in whichever tone, its primary characteristic is that it can only be sensed. in this sense it is opposed to recognition. in on the topic of viewing duration, i wish to mention the rich and interesting study conducted by lachapelle, douesnard and keenlyside ( ) with non-expert viewers responding to public contemporary art. in their conclusion, the researchers have noted a positive correlation between prolonged viewing time and better art appreciation. recognition, the sensible is not at all that which can only be sensed, but that which bears directly upon the senses in an object which can be recalled, imagined or conceived. (p. ) a first characteristic of the encounter then is being distinct from recognition or representation. for deleuze ( ), the world of representation is defined by "the primacy of identity, however conceived" (p.xix), but it also entails the notion of common sense, of presuppositions in the what-everybody-knows. there can't be an encounter when "our knowledges, beliefs and values are reconfirmed" writes simon o'sullivan ( , p. ); indeed, recognizing something implies that an image or idea is already thought, seen, solidified. only when nothing is recognized or pinned down as a representation can there be destabilization, a being troubled by the unexpected encounter. o'sullivan calls this the "creative moment of the encounter" (p. ) because it forces us to thought, and creates a space for us to trouble our habitual views. i think the implications of deleuze's ideas about an encounter resonate with maxine greene's ( ) view that even if one has seen, read or heard an artwork previously, making a deliberate attempt to bring a quality of "presentness, attentiveness" (p. ) makes us "discern more" (p. ) and differently. examining further the concept of encounter, deleuze ( ) adds a second characteristic: [...] the object of encounter, on the other hand, really gives rise to sensibility with regards to a given sense. [...] that which can only be sensed (the sentiendum or the being of the sensible) moves the soul, 'perplexes' it - in other words, forces it to pose a problem: as though the object of encounter, the sign, were the bearer of a problem - as though it were a problem. (p. ) thus, for deleuze the encounter requires some sort of meeting with an 'object' of encounter-as idea, material thing- but the object of encounter is not required to be identified as 'the' object of encounter because it can only be sensed and be experienced through a range of affects such as joy, fear, anger. importantly, the 'what-was-encountered' does not give rise to an already fixed chain of signification, such as would happen in a process of recognition and representation. deleuze does not consider encounters as a method to do philosophy, more importantly it is a practice of living (mccoy, ; stivale, ). in his filmed interview l'abécédaire with claire parnet (boutang, ), deleuze relates his regular practice of going to the cinema or visiting art galleries on the weekend; allowing the possibility for an encounter to happen. and how does he know if he's had an encounter? deleuze asks himself the simple question: "est-ce que ça me trouble?" [does it trouble me?] . an encounter is always a risk to be taken, in the sense that it is an un-known. the encounter is a risk in the sense that i never know what can happen if/when i experiment―stepping inside an art gallery, walking by a piece of public art, opening a novel, attending a play, joining a chorus. for deleuze, when the soul is moved and troubled by a pre-linguistic sense of the object, body or idea encountered, that which can only be sensed forces it to pose a question, or be pushed to thought. in summary, i entertain the thought of the art experience as a milieu where encounters are possible, encounters which provoke one to think, to notice something new about the artwork, to make connections with an idea or object of knowledge, to reflect on my own translation. drawing from his studies on baruch spinoza ( - ),for deleuze; "the soul is neither above nor inside, it is "with", it is on the road, exposed to all contacts, encounters, in the company of those who follow the same way, "feel with them, seize the vibration of their soul and their body as they pass", the opposite of a morality of salvation, teaching the soul to live its life, not to save it" (deleuze & parnet, / , p. ). oneself or large social concerns, or to ask new questions. as i strolled into farmer's installation the surgeon and the photographer and as i read over my narrative (on page ), i reflect on the micro encounters which occurred. i did not feel constantly troubled but there was the little shocks of the first surprise when i stepped into an imposing and, at first, seemingly menacing crowd of silent puppets staring at me, the sight of figurines with cut-out photographs from a s life magazine sparked reflections about social inequalities, racial struggles, and ideologies re-produced through the printed medium. informed by both gilles deleuze ( ) i understand the art encounter as something contingent, an event one cannot plan in advance―even if i had previously seen, repeatedly visited or already was informed about the artwork. revisiting merleau-ponty's notion of "the tutelage of perception" if friedrich nietzsche brought attention to the body after centuries of western philosophy dominated by the mind and rationalism, it is french philosopher maurice merleau-ponty who fully makes the body a central theme of his philosophical program. in , with the publication of phénoménologie de la perception, merleau-ponty argues that we think, see, and perceive the world in/through our body. i do not see a world distinct out there for me to describe, rather, the world is my embodied perception. in this way, merleau-ponty seeks to critique the predominance of rationality, especially rené descartes' mind-body dualism, but also the view of science as an objective, self-sufficient understanding of the world. no claims are made that scientific research and experimentation should be abandoned, rather for merleau-ponty ( ), "we can no longer flatter ourselves with the idea that, in science, the exercise of a pure and unsituated intellect can allow us to gain access to an object free of all human traces" (p. ). this is an attack on the arrogance of scientific thought believing it can attain absolute and complete knowledge while disregarding the role of the body, because as merleau-ponty claimed, " the body is our general medium for having a world" ( , p. ). drawing and expanding from the phenomenology of edmund husserl , merleau- ponty suggested that the world is not an object separate from us; we are intertwined with the world, as he wrote: "our body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system" ( , p. ). in the lecture series commissioned by the french national radio, he stated his philosophy of the lived experience; here, for the first time, we come across the idea that rather than a mind and a body, man is a mind with a body, a being who can only get to the truth of things because its body is, as it were, embedded in those things. (merleau-ponty, , p. ) while my study is not phenomenological, this research is not about excavating an essence to the art experience, no phenomenon to isolate in order for a subject to focus on what is internally perceived, however i am drawn to merleau-ponty's focus on the flesh and on one's embodied enactment in/of the world. i remember sitting under/in/amongst/as part of ai edmund husserl ( - ) promoted a conception of experience as the basis of consciousness, especially in his work on phenomenology, a philosophical movement and method he inaugurated. while it was never a fixed system with principles set into stone, husserl saw phenomenology as a new way of doing philosophy since it emphasized, an attempt to get to the things themselves, to describe phenomena as it manifests itself to the consciousness of the experiencer. derived from the greek phainesthai (phenomenon) meaning 'to appear' or 'to manifest itself", thus phenomenology is a desire to capture and describe the subjective (as in first-person), lived-experience by bracketing out or suspend beliefs about the phenomenon. for a succinct introduction to husserl's phenomenology see merleau-ponty, m. ( ). "preface" in the phenomenology of perception, pp.xvii-xxiv. for studies on phenomenology see; moran ( ), van manen ( ). weiwei's installation bang, leaning my back against the cool wall, feeling protected under the canopy of this elaborate wood structure, admiring the intricate shadow designs, the corner of my eye just catching glimpses of people strolling by. language at the same time attempting to describe, yet too limited and leaving gaps, but paradoxically language is somehow generative and already creating another way of being with the work. i need to be careful in my choice of words; there is no essence to an 'art experience' of bang as a phenomenon which is out there for me to excavate through careful description. albeit the description precisely allows me to think and attend seriously to merleau-ponty's view of the body and mind as inextricably enmeshed; as the thinking body/embodied thinking. i notice my tendency to write about my experience of ai weiwei's ( - ) piece or sun xun's ( ) video installation, this 'aboutness' that corresponds to husserl's notion of intentionality (see moran, ). intentionality in philosophy means that we are always conscious of something. as i enter the gallery space and face a monumental sculptural installation, i am of course aware of this imposing structure that both seems to confront me, push against me and yet also entice and invite me. my scratch notes are just a few words on paper, yet thinking with merleau-ponty is a challenge for me to reflect on the being- enmeshed of experience which is so difficult to articulate and think through. ai weiwei selected a mundane object - the domestic wooden stool - passed down from generation to generation, but whose fabrication is becoming obsolete in china due to the introduction of industrial materials. the tattered three-legged stools found obsolescence, yet now actively purchased and collected by the artist, take a new life; they become essential components in a contemporary art installation. despite them being interlocked, turned upside down, or partially transformed by the insertion of special rods for solidity, i do not perceive the work a simple stack of wood pieces. the artist might have chosen to break apart the wooden stool in order to reassemble in a completely different set of connections. dismantling the functional stool could possibly have made it difficult for the viewer to notice their original function. on the contrary, ai weiwei aligns himself with the strategies of the readymade and allows viewers to recognize the stool as a stool, hence a useful domestic object calling for the body. but in what way is this important? during his lectures pronounced on the french radio, merleau-ponty explains the importance and implications of direct experience in this passage on the 'tutelage' of perception as instruction and guidance; no detail is insignificant: the grain, the shape of the feet, the colour and age of the wood, as well as the scratches and graffiti which show that age. the meaning, 'table', will only interest me insofar as it arises out of the 'details which embody its present mode of being. if i accept the tutelage of perception, i find i am ready to understand the work of art. for it too is a totality of flesh in which meaning is not free, so to speak, but bound, a prisoner of all the signs or details, which reveal it for me. thus the work of art resembles the object of perception: its nature is to be seen or heard and no attempt to define or analyse it, however valuable that may be afterwards as a way of taking stock of this experience, can ever stand in place of the direct perceptual experience." ( , pp. - ) merleau-ponty sends us an invitation to 'accept' the tutelage of perception. the english word tutelage carries the meaning of protection or authority over someone or something; it also refers to the notion of instruction. in the french original text, merleau- ponty ( ) wrote about "l'école de la perception" (chap. , ¶ ), or as a direct translation 'the school of perception', and i see why the translator chose the term 'tutelage' as instruction. but what could it mean to "accept the tutelage of perception" as asked by merleau-ponty ( , p. )? thus expressed, perception is a mode of instruction or teaching, but although he did not elaborate on this, one that should, i believe, remain open to experience rather than be a prescriptive method. hence, although i am concerned about the risks of seeing the 'tutelage' as a structure or procedure, i do see how my meaning making of bang is grounded in my embodied experience. one could argue that my numerous photographs of the installation taken from different points of view provide the same information, yet as merleau-ponty suggested, while this analysis of the work (as mediated by the visual) could be valuable, it cannot replace direct perceptual experience. thoughts on the art experience following a deleuze-merleau-ponty conceptual encounter as stated by alain beaulieu ( ), to deleuze, “phenomenology is neither a trusted friend nor a hated enemy” (p. ); deleuze treats phenomenology as an enemy because “it presents an intelligibility of meaning that lends a sort of religious coherence to an ideal world of meaning and signification” (p. ), and yet deleuze will remain interested by phenomenology because it provides the grounds to define important concepts in his work (on immanence, ontology, the event). despite their differing philosophical views, i find it very interesting to bring together deleuze's elaboration on the concept of recognition and its opposite the encounter, with merleau-ponty's expression of "the tutelage of perception". my aim is not to find patterns of homogeneity between them, but to see where they could connect as part of a larger, if fragile and temporary, assemblage. in ai weiwei's installation bang, my gaze catches sight of the wood and distinguishes a form that resonates with familiarity; my body recalls a particular way of behaving when i see the three legs and a round seat. abiding by the museum rules, i will not use my sense of touch but due to previous experiences, yet i imagine the heaviness of the object, the soft texture of the worn-out edges. some seats are scratched and the wood is splitting from old age, i feel like sitting down to repeat the gesture so often performed with them, i imagine individuals resting after a long day. i can almost hear the chatter of voices engraved in the wood's own memory. how is it that simple pieces of wood can now carry the weight of the past? of course, this is only a metaphor, and yet the body knows, beyond seeing, beyond rationalizing, the body feels the complex layers of memories, stories and cultural history. and yet, the artist interrupts and complicates my desire to sit down or think of the object as useful. i cannot touch but not simply because i am in an art gallery. the artistic process asked for the seats to be intricately interlocked so that the entire equilibrium of the sculptural installation relies and needs the weight, resistance and counter-weight of each stool . this perception of how the ensemble relies on individual parts is not something simply 'visible' or of the order of opticality-albeit it can be deduced- however these are forces my body understands only upon encountering. lying beside me on the carpet are images, i look down and i can gaze upon printed imaged of sun xun's ( ) piece shan shui - cosmos. i recognize the immersive film installation, the semi-abstract mountains painted on the wall, the colourful birds flying across the reproduction of a landscape form the song dynasty, images overlapping. i am in a space of recognition while simultaneously encountering the photographs for what they are, as as a precautionary measure, a number of discrete safety metallic cables were also attached between the ceiling in high wall gallery to various supporting sections of the wood structure. objects. and they surprise me for i notice the emptiness of the space, as the researcher, a deliberate choice on my part. somehow, much of the life is in the text. i read about e. and myself exploring the work, noticing, pointing out. in my mind i re-live, rewind, replay, the moment when, intrigued by the painterly mountain landscape on the walls, i decided to come closer for a look. and that's when i noticed the traces of the brush, the excess of paint that dripped down towards the floor and the graffiti effects. as explained in difference and repetition ( ), recognition functions with "common sense" (p. ). for instance, in ai weiwei's bang, one can recognize each individual object as a common stool, something to sit on. if i remain content with recognition and common sense, i am not in a space of encounter, because recognition poxon and stivale ( ) suggest, "domesticates difference by dismissing as inconsequential all of the details about this particular [object]" (p. ). the deleuze-merleau-ponty encounter, brings to the fore how encounter might also be a way to accept the tutelage of perception. accepting the shock of the encounter (o'sullivan, ) with art, without going for the more comfortable (my term) image of thought, is already accepting the tutelage of perception. once the tutelage of perception is accepted, then what? i certainly do not want to imply a sequence of events of steps in the art encounter; i experience here a limitation of language. but thinking with deleuze, i would claim that accepting the tutelage of perception is to enter into an assemblage, to form a partial and temporary assemblage with the artwork. this will be the topic of the next chapter. encounter - of ghost stories and things another busy shift of school tours and workshops is over. my body resonates from conversations sparked by the art, learning something new from a child's comment, negotiating the gentle chaos of wrestling with a tight schedule, listening to one, laughing with another, thinking about creating a space for the students to imagine and experiment; this body feels the fullness of a day as art museum educator. exhausted but content, i need to sit down for a while, gently massage a swollen knee and sip my coffee while i savour the soothing silence now enveloping the studio space. time to go home but i remain, i remain at the art gallery for my research. golden rays of a late afternoon sun ripple on the studio floor. my shoes feel one size too small due to swollen feet but i long to get into the gallery. i grab my notebook, my cellular-phone as camera and the oral consent scripts and walk toward the recently opened show how do i put this ghost in my mouth, a survey exhibition by vancouver artist geoffrey farmer. even after hours spent in the previous unscrolled exhibition of contemporary chinese art with pages of notes, hundreds of photographs, worries about generating enough 'rich data' for rigorous research creep into my consciousness. yet, how do i speak differently and produce different knowledge on something as elusive as encountering and experiencing art. how do i problematize my own position as an historian and art museum educator with social and white privilege? all i know is: i need to write the listening, the seeing what happens when this body moves through artworks and spaces. i swallow my doctoral researcher doubts and the fear subsides as i jump into the flow of the art gallery. in the forecourt, two heavy wooden doors mark a visual and physical barrier. made of dark, textured wood, they are masterfully crafted and assembled to evoke the work of artist louise nevelson. their presence is both imposing and subtly seductive. dangling from the ceiling just in front of the doors, three shining blue neon rods and a bell signal an invitation to open the gates; the sparkling sound of the bell rings gently when i pull the door and peek on the other side. i walk into farmer's in situ work but step into another world; the warm and silky voice of a male tenor bursts into a love song and envelops me. in the back of the rotunda hangs a tattered theatre backdrop painted on canvas; the colors are slightly faded, the design that of an academic library with heavy bookshelves. on a low plinth rests a black chair with a man's suit and a man's shoe and an empty frame. close by stand two vertical figures simply built of draped cloth with a few accessories. one figure consists of a woman's hat from the s that spins around from time to time while a yellow light bulb shines and a prop knife silently, yet menacingly appears. the other tall figure shows a man's oversized foot and a hammer with a red lightbulb also marking time as it moves slowly up and down. i linger for a moment with these characters connected to the early history of the building formerly the bc law courts, as farmer explains in the extended label. farmer creates a stage into which viewers are invited to roam and witness glimpses of the unfolding drama, i imagine the sordid end of francis rattenbury; the architect of the building i am standing in right now, and who was stabbed to death by his wife's lover. a love triangle gone tragically sour, tension rises and a murder unfolds in/for my imagination. eerie, strange. i've been working at the vancouver art gallery since and i did not know of the terrible fate of the master architect. how many other storylines is the building trying to tell me, but i am not listening? like me, other visitors walk back and forth between the figures, the four frankensteins and the wall text. farmer has set up the stage; i am pushed to think about the un-noticed of place, the events that have unfolded in these walls and the sometimes, dark underbelly of time. in the rotunda, the air seems of a different texture; heavier with moisture, sounds are muffled yet punctured by the melodramatic vibrato of the male voice. a curator rushes through the entrance and notices the sign "elevator" stuck to the side of the staircase and with the signage of a pointing arrow, a later addition i presume meant to help visitors and alleviate the disruption of the space. but she removes it hastily and moves it to the back wall below the staircase, the sign remains present but it is now barely noticeable. she does have a point; the sign was a visual interruption in the already porous boundaries of the installation yet apparently, the 'elevator' sign had too much agency; it infiltrated reality in the imaginary space of the installation, and thus needed to be removed. my hands rest on the cool and refreshing iron railing of the stairs, slowly i make my up to the second floor. visitors walk pass me, some smiling others with a quizzical look as they stare at the old filing boxes, a sign ' no eating here", a black and white photograph of a librarian, black rods and a broom lining up the staircase; geoffrey farmer has already invited us into the staging of his survey exhibition; a mise-en- scène of his work, a looking back at his own artistic practice entangled with the history of the vancouver art gallery. at the top of the staircase, the white cube of the exhibition entrance now resembles a storage room or the basement of an art gallery filled with odd fragments of art projects, a video performance of the artist walking blindly with a basket over his head, a sculpture of staked coffee cups as if done by a bored employee, old wooden gavels, library metallic shelving, dusty faded art books, laminated photographs, architectural fragments, archival photographs, fake rocks, props from theatrical sets. on a shelf, next to a traditional attorney's court attire is a police photograph of rattenbury’s former lover alma who committed suicide and whose body was found on a river bed, things related to the previous function of the gallery as a courthouse and the script of an english play based on the rattenbury murder case. as the interpretive text panel explains, farmer suggests here the space of a storeroom, or a theatre's backstage where categories between randomly placed objects collapse. in here, material traces of the vancouver art gallery's history as a courthouse where farmer's own father worked an attorney but also its archival role, and of exhibition, and projects from the artist's early art practice intertwine. here and there i see labels indicating the presence of an art project, but often i have to read the list of materials to discover all the elements of a piece amongst the jumble of things. an old wooden door from the courthouse stands close to props from an early performance, his collection of delicate aluminum foil sculptures made during a project seem to speak with a collection of the museum's old art books resting nearby on a shelf. i can't help but imagine other possible storylines beyond farmer's own projects; between the artists as performer, the museum as producer of exhibitions, and exhibitions as stages for the telling of art. a profusion of props, fragments of art projects surround me and my sense are overloaded with the desire to touch, grapple, feel a texture, explore the weight of matter. by installing objects in carefully curated juxtapositions, i can't help but imagine connections and stories emerging or needing to be spoken. i am overwhelmed by the narrative possibilities. i overhear muffled voices coming from the ceiling. is it a recording? i look up and notice two white, long and thin serpentine ventilation tubes curving down from the ceiling. out from their opening ends above my head, i hear sounds and the faint mumble of conversations coming all the way from the conservation work-spaces in the museum's basement. i probably would not have been able to hear this on a busy day, but this late afternoon there are fewer visitors and, because of the sounds coming in real-time from the basement, i am suddenly reminded of the unseen, of the complex life inside an institution. what a beautiful metaphor. farmer's choices of ordinary or founds materials, of seemingly low-skilled artistic processes can certainly be disconcerting, humorous or strange at first, even for me and i have been working with contemporary art for over twenty years. however, as an encounter and proposition, the installation makes me think of the gallery differently; i am pushed out of my routine of way of being in the space. as if for the first time, or is it a different way, the work allows me to experience the architectural structure of the gallery as a vibrant organism. for me, storeroom overture operates as an enfolded metaphor of museum work and artistic practice; hearing people working in the basement of the gallery evokes the memory of place and the role of the museum as keeper of artistic memories, but walking amongst farmer's art becomes a labyrinth of neuronal connections connecting stories of past works in relation to, and activating other possible relations to the vancouver art gallery as a site of exhibition making. mostly, i experience this as a space where i can imagine; i am invited to imagine new stories or connections. "for what you experience is of your own making, whether speaking to a friend or involved in the activity of baking. let it be a reminder of this; when the light is on, consider it a kiss". these words are typed on an unobtrusive x sheet of paper pinned on the back wall. i caught sight of it from the corner of my eye and it intrigued me. i nearly missed this discrete intervention; like a beautiful secret whispered to those who cared to stop and read. i have walked and strolled so many times before in storeroom overture, why did i notice it only today? 'what you experience is of your own making' says farmer, this echoes john dewey's ( ) belief that one can't be lazy or idle to perceive. indeed, and yet there is no model or best strategy to do so. reading the note extended a line of poetry in my experience of the piece, something i was not expecting. curious about the little treasures i may have missed, i wander amongst props, a giant vase with photos moving in and out and an old filing cabinet probably found in the museum's basement. i found it, next to the elevator entrance. another opening for the imagination: it reads; "now you are standing at the declaration of a beginning, in a storeroom that is the backstage of an overture of a remembering". chapter assemblage assemblage is the english term chosen by brian massumi for the word 'agencement' in his translation from the french of a thousand plateaus by deleuze and guattari ( ). phillips ( ) and buchanan ( ) are prompt to remind the reader that, while this translation is now widely accepted by deleuzian scholars, there is an analytical and theoretical difference between the ideas of "un agencement" and "un assemblage". albeit i will not follow up the thread of this fascinating linguistic distinction, suffice to say that both words imply "processes of arranging, organizing, and fitting together" (livesey, , p. ), but the word agencement implies more of a dynamic process (buchanan, ), which is why it has been favored by deleuze and guattari. interestingly, in their writings deleuze and guattari did not use the french term assemblage as often, and never in a philosophical sense (phillips, ). this chapter will open with summary comments about the concept of assemblage as developed by deleuze and guattari. the second part of the chapter turns to the concept of play in gadamer, and the last section puts forward thoughts on the experience of art following deleuze and gadamer's conceptual encounter. the concept of assemblage in the writings of deleuze and guattari notwithstanding these disputatio concerning the translation of a term, what are the characteristics of an assemblage for deleuze and guattari? here is their definition as stated in a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia ( ), on a first, horizontal, axis, an assemblage comprises two segments, one of content, the other of expression. on the one hand it is a machinic assemblage of bodies, of actions and passions, an intermingling of bodies reacting to one another; on the other hand it is a collective assemblage of enunciation, of acts and statements, of incorporeal transformations attributed to bodies. then on a vertical axis, the assemblage had both territorial sides, or reterritorialized sides, which stabilize it, and cutting edges of deterritorialization, which carry it away. (p. ) in this passage, the authors put to work various metaphors, the notion of territory, of forces and expressions, the cartesian coordinate system of horizontal and vertical axis, and marxist references to the machine as a mode of producing something, in explaining the concept of assemblage. but when i use the word metaphor, in no way was it a desire on the authors’ part to 'represent' and fix a concept. as noted in the previous section on the encounter, deleuze was a fierce anti-representationalist, claiming that representation could not help us see the world in the flow of time, because either representation is a reductive moral view of the world, or it implies a hierarchy between an original (the real one) and a simulacrum (marks, ). in stating the characteristics of an assemblage, deleuze and guattari's machinic metaphor supports our understanding of the assemblage as a dynamic process, it is, as livesey ( ) explains, "a constellation of objects, bodies, expressions, qualities, and territories that come together for varying periods of time to ideally create new ways of functioning" (p. ). it is important to note that one can be part of a multitude of different assemblages some at a very micro level and temporary such as becoming a cyclist for a short duration, but others consist of larger and more complex structures such as the home or work environment albeit not seemingly connected to the arts, but i think a rich metaphor, i chose the word 'ocean' to serve as a useful example to better explain and understand the concept of assemblage as described by deleuze and guattari. what constitutes an ocean? a basic definition might be that of a body of saline water partially surrounded by land, but a closer look reveals its complexity. an ocean is a dynamic assemblage of saline water certainly but also of rocky shores and sandy beaches, of tidal movements, of rich marine life, of quiet surfaces and crushing waves, of deep currents, of sounds and smells, of various connections to peoples, economic and political forces and to lifestyles. the water, salt or the tides are not in themselves the ocean, but they become so when placed in a productive arrangement (or machinic arrangement) of heterogeneous elements, or when as deleuze and guattari describe, they form an "intermingling of bodies reacting to one another" (p. ). and what produces difference in the ocean? what i have described is the content but the other element on this same axis is expression, the various forces and qualities of expression in the speed of a wind, the pull of a tide, the sudden storm. this system of things, forces, expressions form what deleuze and guattari call an assemblage of enunciations, it becomes a "semiotic system, a regime of signs [...] an assemblage of enunciation" (p. ). on the other axis, an assemblage is about marking a territory, not solely in a topographical sense, as wise ( ) points out, "territories are more than just spaces; they stake a claim, they express" (p. ). certainly, the pacific ocean, for instance, marks a certain territory but the effects of the ocean impacts communities and ecologies all along its coasts. economic forces and states can also distort, reshape the physical or socio-economic boundaries and thus re-territorialize the ocean-assemblage. furthermore, the ocean can possibly transform and shift, let's say after an earthquake, into a narrow strait, a series of rivers, an interior sea, or eventually into a desert if some parts of the assemblage are cut-off. hence territories are temporary for they can be made and un-made. so whether the assemblage is at the individual level of the cyclist, an artwork, visit to the art gallery, the life of a living organism, a day, or else at the larger socio-political level of the state assemblage, the war machine or global economic forces, wise ( ) reminds us that an assemblage can certainly be destructive and break down, but in most cases it can be productive of "a new reality, by making numerous, often unexpected connections" (p. ). of course, deleuze and guattari's conception of assemblage engages more complex philosophical and political territory than suggested by my example of the ocean as assemblage. but to summarize, deleuze and guattari specify clearly in the glossary at the conclusion of a thousand plateaus. capitalism and schizophrenia ( ) that an assemblage consists of four dimensions: states of things or beings (contents), modes of expression or utterance, territories and movements of de-terriorializations. by revisiting these four dimensions, i now turn to the concept of assemblage in order to examine what using this vocabulary produces as i inquire on the art experience. in deleuze and guattari, references to the concept of assemblage are scattered throughout a thousand plateaus ( , original french publication in ), with a special entry in the glossary included as the final chapter. for secondary literature, see buchanan, ; livesey, ; marcus & saka, ; phillips, ; wise, . drawing from deleuze and guattari, the concept of assemblage has sparked much interest in the social sciences and humanities, extensions can be found in actor network theory with a focus on complexity and undecidability (latour, ; law, ), and the new field of assemblage theory developed by m. delanda ( , ) - for some reserves expressed against the simplified views of assemblage in ant or assemblage theory see (buchanan, ; marcus & saka, ; wise, ). finally, for some strong research examples i suggest: (mazzei & jackson, ; nordstrom, ; waterton & dittmer, ; webb, ). the state of things or state of beings of an assemblage corresponds to its content. an attempt to describe the various human and non-human components of an art experience already points to its complex dynamic and relational nature because assemblages are always changing, shifting. what is the content or the state of things in my encounter with farmer's ( ) storeroom overture? one of course would start with listing the archival bookshelves, farmer's early aluminium foil sculptures formed with the use of his toes, the museum's exhibition catalogues, the fake plants and rocks, the props, a lawyer's tail coat, references to a play about the murder of the building's architect francis rattenbury, various artworks by the artist, the physical space of the gallery, and the sounds coming from the basement of the gallery. then there is also my own body interacting with the materiality of the work, but also already bringing in what i have previously read or seen about the work in various media. furthermore, i am also taking in with me former experiences of contemporary art which, as dewey ( ) pointed out in his writings on the concept of experience, already inform and give shape to this one. but this description would be too reductive if it did not mention the content of farmer's work also consisting of the public (social, cultural, political) sphere conveyed by the printed media, questions of artistic practice, and the museum discourse. and to this already lengthy list of content in my experience of the installations, i need to add the path and exploration of farmer's exhibition since my entrance into the vancouver art gallery and, as i have pointed out in my narrative, i would also include the point of view as i approached storeroom overture from the staircase and could visually peek into the installation. moreover, as part of the 'state of things' in this encounter, one must account for the joint curatorial choices made by the gallery and the artist regarding the works on display, the presence of labels and interpretive material, the negotiation of space which have created conditions of reception to my embodied experience. the list could be extended as each element of the art experience could be further dissected, but i will stop here. suffice to say that even the simple exercise of describing the content or state of things/beings of an art encounter illustrates quite convincingly the rhizomatic structure of the event and how coming into the artwork one adds other parts and assemblages to the one that was formerly produced. this new assemblage produced by the encounter is one that is difficult to circumscribe with boundaries, in my view more complex than the conventional binary structure of visitor/artwork. another dimension of the art experience as assemblage is expression. a form of enunciation, experience is an intensity and a movement; it can be understood claire colebrook explains as the "power of life to unfold itself differently" ( , p. ). albeit closely related to content, deleuze and guattari ( ) nonetheless insist repeatedly that expression should never be seen as determined by causal action, even if sometimes a form of content and a form of expression can indeed seem to coincide partially. "one can never", they write, "assign the form of expression the function of simply representing, describing, or averring a corresponding content: there is neither correspondence nor conformity" (p. ). the relation of content to expression is not another way to talk about signified and signifier, and neither should expression be conceived as communicating a pre-existing content since the expressed does not exist outside of the expression. this is complex and i will provide another example. in a video interview with claire parnet recorded in - (boutang, ), deleuze explains the concept of expression, by setting it in the context of a coffee shop. why do i like to go into this coffee shop and not into that other one? it may be because of the people i know, the decor, the ambiance, this is the state of things or the content. one loves being in a particular coffee shop because with friends we talk in a particular mode, each cafe has a style and mode of expression and enunciation; one not imposed from the outside but dependent on complex set of relations mutually affecting each other. again, thinking alongside the deleuzian assemblage, the content of my experience in storeroom overture is the gallery space and display, the artworks, the ambience and sounds, my body moving, various sense impressions, etc. but what might be the form of expression? that would be the singularity of each event; my slowness or speed as i move in the room, bend and turn, observe, compare, reflect, stop here to linger and think, or walk absent- mindedly past another plinth, or fragments of previous pieces by the artist. but it is also the resistance of things stopping me, the way farmer's installation engulfs the body in a swarm of props, bookshelves, found objects, surreal assemblages and prevents me from having a totalizing gaze, or compels me to twist and turn in order to examine, or how the soundscape influences my perception of the various storylines. content and expression are inseparable. there is no essential substance, meaning or content of the artwork being expressed. although written in a different context, brian massumi's ( ) brings forward how a body, as he writes, "fresh in the throes of expression, incarnates not an already-formed system but a modification―a change" (p.xvii). hence this carries the notion of art experience where expression is an event, rather than a purely internal and subjective psychological enunciation. lastly, i will now address the concepts of territory and deterritorialisation, two important dimensions in an assemblage. "every assemblage is basically territorial" (p. ) declare deleuze and guattari ( ) thus to understand someone's assemblage―whether human or animal―one must first determine its territory. if both terms avoid being easily categorized, in the concluding chapter of a thousand plateaus, the authors put forward a definition of territory as a system of any kind; it might be conceptual, affective, cultural, political, or social, but it can also be a favorite bench, a table at a cafe, a home. as i revisit the narratives of my art encounters, it is interesting to examine the territories i established, at times unconsciously and sometimes derived from a prolonged habit of visiting museums. in ai weiwei's sculptural installation bang, i recall and still feel my body sitting crossed-legs on the carpet with my back discretely leaning against the wall, a precarious canopy of assembled wooden stools enveloping me. this was my favorite place, always the same little alcove, my secret territory to scribble notes, and to observe other visitors interacting with/in/amongst the artwork. in complement to this spatial territory, i was also occupying a cultural, artistic, and even social in terms of my privileged access being familiar with the exhibition as discursive space, knowing the system of linguistic signs belonging to art theory, and having learned the ways of being with contemporary art. nonetheless, occupying these territories are not, i claim, necessary nor will they ensure a better art experience; for to enhance a life, one must, according to deleuze, create or discover assemblages favorable to oneself. and the best way to find out is in experimentation. necessarily related to the concept of territory, deterritorialisation, "is the movement by which "one" leaves the territory. it is the operation of the line of flight" explain deleuze and guattari ( , p. ). it is important to note, according to adrian parr ( a), that for the authors territory and deterritorialisation are not binary opposites in terms of movement or process. indeed, territory always/already contains vectors of deterritorialisation working it from the inside; hence there is always the possibility for a system or territory to change, open up onto something else. granted that change is not always positive, and the line of flight leading outside of a given assemblage or system may become obstructed, broken, destroyed or be found unsatisfactory. deterritorialisation always carries a risk for it is impossible to predict in advance whether opening up and leaving one's conceptual, social, linguistic territory will be generative or not. i revisit and re-enact in my mind that late afternoon of note taking in the company of xu bing's sculptural installation background story and i map out some lines of a deleuzian territory. there's of course the spatial territory of my body moving back and forth around the work as i establish relations between the view of a traditional chinese landscape and the materiality of the piece. my art experience as an assemblage also included: the information in the text panels, previous readings from art theorists and an interview with artist xu bing, the facsimile scroll from the song dynasty displayed nearby and which served as a source image for the mountainous landscape in background story, the taking of photographs for my own research, random thoughts about a gallery tour i animated the day before, and, and, and. much can be said about my temporary and singular assemblage with background story. but what about the vectors of deterritorialisation already part of the territory? were there elements of escape or departure from my current assemblage towards other connections? i remember watching two individuals coming out of the elevator and who scoffed at the sight of the strange assemblage of repurposed materials; i approached trying to share a word but to no avail, we were not to become part of each other's assemblage. this line of flight was stunted―at least this was my perception at the time. yet the moment resonates today, one i often revisit, and so the line of flight continues, as i wonder about the assemblages that these two created in the gallery. there was also my encounter with e. who was here to re-visit xu bing's background story; some conversation led to wonder, and then to more interrogations about the video installation by sun xun ( ) in the next gallery. leaving xu bing's piece, we thus created a line of flight; we departed one territory, one assemblage, walked into the video installation, embarked in dialogic play according to gadamer's sense of the word, and started to recombine elements for a new assemblage. in summary, based on and as a potential contribution of my study, using deleuze and guattari's concept of assemblage produces significant understandings about the art experience, that is, i contend that the art experience is not to be understood as the relation between person-artwork-gallery space, but as a 'function' in the complex coming together of a constellation of elements. and ideally, as livesey ( ) reminds us, "the result of an assemblage is a new means of expression, a new territorial/spatial organisation, a new institution, a new behaviour, or a new realisation" (p. ). in the work of deleuze and guattari, the concept of assemblage occupies an essential role in relation to the emergence and the flow of desire. indeed, as deleuze and guattari asserted, an assemblage has to be made for desire to circulate. on the question of how does one 'make' an assemblage, i think it is important to remember that, assemblages are always already present. wise ( ) suggests that, "we can enter an assemblage through a process of taking up or taking on the particular relation of speed, slowness, effectivity and language that makes it up" (p. ). and in terms of intentionality, one must keep in mind that we are made of multiple assemblages and they are always moving and fluctuating. and one of the reasons why assemblages always fluctuate, is desire. deleuze and guattari ( ) explained that: assemblages are passional, they are composed of desire. desire has nothing to do with a natural or spontaneous determination; there is no desire but assembling, assembled desire. the rationality, the efficiency, of an assemblage does not exist without the passions the assemblage brings into play, without the desires that constitute it as much as it constitutes them. (p. ) but then, if desire has nothing to do with internal motivation or subjective intentionality, my question in this section turns to desire as a plane of experimentation and how an assemblage must be created for desire to circulate. to support my understanding of the art experience as desiring-assemblage, in the following chapter, i will examine deleuze and guattari's major characteristics of the concept. desire is non-subjective, it is relational―and it needs connections and the creation of assemblages to flow, and lastly desire is positive and productive. revisiting hans georg gadamer's concept of play the details escape me but it was in the late s; i was introduced to german philosopher hans georg gadamer's notion of the hermeneutic circle of interpretation and the concept of play through the influential work of eilean hooper-greenhill ( , ), a scholar whose writings are widely read in the field of museum education. i remember being drawn to her writings for she juxtaposed constructivist learning theory , with critical theory, feminist theory and cultural studies in order to examine the changing values transforming the way museums perceive their role. since the british museum opened its doors to the public in drawing from the work of martin heidegger, gadamer ( ) describes the hermeneutic circle of interpretation as such: a person who is trying to understand a text is always projecting. he projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. again, the initial meaning emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning. working out this fore-projection, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there. (p. ) albeit not the only theoretical model for museum learning, my formative years as a museum educator were steeped into the influential work by george e. hein ( ) on constructivist theory. drawing from his readings of dewey ( ), piaget ( ) and vygotsky ( ), hein invited museum curators, exhibition developers and educators to acknowledge that the meaning making started with the visitor, how it was individually/socially constructed, and how it involved combining prior knowledge with their lived experience in the museum. , the modern museum had perceived knowledge as "objective, singular and value-free" (hooper-greenhill, , p. ), museum curators and educators considered their role as one of transmitting disciplinary information about art history (as a linear mode of top-down communication and yet without challenging the discursive nature of art history). hooper- greenhill highlighted how, with the pressures from feminist art history and post-colonial studies, museums embarked in a critique of disciplinary discourses and the structures of power(s) at play―whether in the absence of women in the canon of art, in the exhibition display, the curatorial choices, the sharing of knowledge. thus, since the s while curatorial knowledge still takes precedence in the gallery space, there is a significant turn away from the conventional transmission model towards a cultural model which recognizes the engagement of the public, and how meanings are not singular and value-free but rather negotiated (historically, culturally, individually). of particular interest for me was hooper- greenhill's choice to reflect on the new discourses in museum interpretation through her reading of gadamer's ( , ) hermeneutics circle, a methodology of interpretation in which meanings are made through a dialogical process with the artwork by (rather than for) the visitor. as mentioned in the introduction, there were various moments in my intellectual history and references to gadamer's work resonated at a time when i was searching for other modes of mediating and talking with/about artworks, ones different from the tools provided by my discipline as an art historian and focussed in the formal description as analysis, the artistic intention and the use of theoretical lenses whether it was semiology, feminism, post- colonialism or the social history of art. and while in the late s i also remained caught up with/in the language of educational psychology, i sought another set of concepts, a different way of thinking my work in the gallery space. gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is complex and my foray into his work was and still remains selective and therefore partial; i have focussed on the concept of play because it is a concept i've been drawn to since my early days at the musée d'art contemporain de montréal. i worked with the concept of play as an entry into a process of interpretation, one not focused on an end point or meaning outside of the work, but interpretation as part of the experience of encountering. in other words, gadamer's concept of play; provided me new understandings on the experience of being with art and the question of interpretation (which i see as a form of knowing-in-the-making rather than the discovery of a core 'meaning' in the artwork). for gadamer, hermeneutics should not be considered as a method or a procedure for understanding visual or language based texts but rather, he writes, a way "to clarify the conditions in which understanding takes place" ( , p. ). among these conditions are the prejudices or presuppositions and fore-meanings already in the consciousness of the interpreter (related to tradition, cultural knowledge, past experiences), and which can be challenged, confirmed, and revised during the hermeneutic circle of interpretation or the inter-play with the text (whether visual, auditory or written). as gadamerian scholars (di cesare, ; grondin, ; vilhauer, , ) point out, the concept of 'play' is an integral part of the hermeneutic experience of understanding: because understanding is dynamic, it is a movement, a back and forth in-between the players. playful yet, for gadamer ( ) play is not recreation since it, "contains its own, even sacred, seriousness" (p. ). of course, the player knows herself that she is playing, that the play is play, but to play means that the player accepts to lose herself in the play which happens in truth and method, gadamer ( ) insists that understanding is not only a reproductive activity but mostly a productive activity; not in the sense of producing a better understanding but as understanding in a different way. he also explains that, "not just occasionally but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. that is why understanding is not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity as well" (p. ). "without goal or purpose" (p. ). even outsiders observing the players can embark in the play. as gadamer explains, the act of playing always requires a "playing along with." even the onlooker watching the child at play cannot possibly do otherwise. if he really does "go along with it", that is nothing but a participatio, an inner sharing in this repetitive movement. this is often very clear in more developed forms of play: for example, we have only to observe on television the spectators at a tennis match cricking their necks. [...] the spectator is manifestly more than just an observer who sees what is happening in front of him, but rather one who is part of it insofar as he literally "takes part." (pp. - ) hence the players (but i think the quote could also be valid for a museum spectator) are not the subjects of play, adds gadamer ( ) but simply that play moves into a space of representation through those who play. to 'play along with': i recall e. and i in sun xun's ( ) mixed-media film installation shan shui - cosmos as we played with the work. or more precisely, we played with a work in emergence, constantly changing through our play of interpretation as we made connections between a painted motif and its translation in digital media, between brush strokes on the wall and our knowledge of traditional chinese landscape paintings, between the ink paintings and the film animation, and, and, and. deeply inscribed in gadamer's ( ) thinking, is that the challenge requiring play exists because of the structure of the work. the identity of the work does not reside in the formal description but it is, he writes, "secured by the way in which we take the construction of the work upon ourselves as a task" (p. ). i am reluctant nevertheless to follow gadamer humanist view in seeing the "hermeneutic movement guided by the anticipation of the whole, and finally fulfilled by the individual in the realization of the total sense" ( , p. ). there seems to be a paradox, even a contradiction, in gadamer's position between the dialogical movement of play when experiencing an artwork of the art without seeking a goal or purpose, and the idea of a fulfillment of the work where as a participant reaches the full meaning or essence of a work. i recall the two visitors who disdained xu bing's ( ) background story and were not intent in looking at it. for some unconscious reason, i was hoping that by my pointing to some elements of the structure as a way to enter the play, might entice them into also becoming participants. the two visitors, it seemed, refused to engage in the movement of play, nonetheless they may have done so it their own way, or perhaps they did later in their visit but differently. furthermore, i need to think how art experience is not only with 'one' specific artwork but rather as the playful moments throughout the exhibition space, the art gallery, but also how the art experience extends beyond the walls of the gallery space. and i am not talking about the cognitive processes of what remains in the consciousness of the spectator/visitor after encountering art. i think rather alongside deleuze's concept of assemblage and even dewey, about the productive lines expanding and extending the art experience in time and space. the example of brook leaving the maurithuis to ride a train towards delft certainly comes to mind. i also remember standing by xu bing's background story and hearing e. telling how for her things and ideas happened after coming to the gallery and seeing the artworks. in truth and method originally published in , the relevance of the beautiful (a lecture delivered in ) and the later essay the play of art ( ), gadamer attributes to the concept of play an essential role in hermeneutics philosophy and, in particular, as an ontological explanation of art. art becomes art, and it manifests as art, when the work is played with, played along with the work's becoming (as a dynamic of change) in interpretation; we create representation and understandings through this hermeneutic play. he writes, when we speak of play in reference to the experience of art, this means neither the orientation nor even the state of mind of the creator or of those enjoying the work of art, nor the freedom of a subjectivity engaged in play, but the mode of being of the work of art itself. ( , p. ) gadamer uses the concept of play also as a way to claim that the art experience is not reduced to a subjective understanding and internal response; rather we are drawn into the space of the artwork. as grondin ( ) points out, employing the concept of play enables gadamer to critique subjective views of aesthetics in favor of the art experience as an event in which the viewer is intertwined, and in which previous experiences and expectations play a role. hence, are interwoven in the art experience: the play with the artwork, and the playing of art. and the play of art, reminds grondin, does not reside inside the artwork we are looking at, hearing or reading, it lies rather, "in the fact that one is touched by a proposition, an address, an experience, which so captures us that we can play along" (p. ). thoughts on art experience following a deleuze-gadamer conceptual encounter playfulness, playful, play; these words bring to mind the world of the child. i remember the child joyfully moving under and around clusters of stools in ai wei wei's ( - ) installation, i relive the situation and i imagine my own body following her movements, but mostly responding and trying to engage with the architecture of the sculptural installation by twisting and turning, bending to avoid destabilizing the delicate structure. i think of the mother and child exploring xu bing's ( ) background story who engaged in discovery by walking back and forth from one side of the work to the other, as they observe the transformations of a mundane material into a cloud, tree or mountain. if the word play also carries ideas of amusement or entertainment, one needs to remember that for gadamer, play is serious for it makes one enter the world of the artwork. this idea of entering the world of brings to mind deleuze and guattari's concept of assemblage. as i indicated earlier in this study, my purpose is not to conflate the very different philosophical perspectives of deleuze and gadamer. uninterested by hermeneutics, in a thousand plateaus, deleuze and guattari ( ) take a definite position against interpretation because interpretation implies something transcendent, a meaning 'out there'. deleuze and guattari even created a term 'interpretosis' which, added to the concept of significance, is a disease " in other words, humankind's fundamental neurosis" (p. ). hence, i am not suggesting that the concepts of gadamerian play and deleuzian assemblage are equivalent but they do resonate in harmony within the context of the art experience. and so gadamerian play, takes a life of its own if one respond to and embarks in the hermeneutic movement without goal, the play of seeing the parts and the whole, of moving beyond the obvious subject matter or formal recognition while daring to examine one's own prejudices in light of what the work brings forth. the deleuzian assemblage with the artwork also takes a life of its own, but since we are constituted with a multiplicity of lines connecting us to ideas, people, experiences, things, social norms, aren't these also participating in the kinds of assemblages one enters? after visiting and walking through an art museum, claims gadamer ( ) in the relevance of the beautiful, we do not leave it the same way we came in and "with exactly the same feeling about life" (p. ) because the experience somewhat changed us. assemblages are also generative and, in the context of an encounter, can produce change. how was e. impacted, moved or changed emotionally, intellectually, in her relationship to art or the gallery, her being in the world due to our play with/in sun xun's ( ) film installation? this i will most likely never know because meeting her in the gallery was a chance encounter between two strangers. yet, memory lines linger like the rhizomatic roots of a strawberry plant. sun xun's video installation now resonates for me as an experience, somewhat in the deweyian ( ) sense of having achieved a sense of unity, but certainly the playing and the assemblage i have entered by connecting in/to the work have enlarged my perceptions of it. gadamer claimed that an art experience would leave one with a different feeling about life, a deleuzian encounter can also provoke change and difference, even if the changes are subtle and beyond the threshold of language to describe them. what i do relive today as i read my narrative, is i remember telling e. about the connection between the reproduction of a song painting as a source for sun xun's projected landscape. we both entered the video and mixed-media installation with the desire to walk e. up to the reproduction hanging from the wall. for a moment, i was performing as the museum educator. but somehow another movement, a different flow overcame us as we stepped into the installation. was it due to e.'s love of chinese ink painting, my own fascination with the juxtapositions and layering of images and mediums? i am not sure but we certainly got caught up in the play of the artwork itself; noticing parts and whole, comparing the semi-abstract painted shapes of the mountains and the detailed projected landscape. we lost track of time, all the while involved in revisiting a motif in relation to another one in the room, or commenting on the information from the extended text panel. i do not wish to imply that there is a sequence in the interaction with art yet, it is important to remember that there is a sacred seriousness to playing for "the game itself is a risk for the players" ( , p. ) since all play is also accepting to be played by the artwork and in the game (or event of art) the work asks to be understood in what it 'says'. the work, gadamer ( ) writes, issues a challenge which expects to be met. it requires an answer - an answer that can only be given by someone who accepts the challenge. (p. ) did i accept the challenge of the artwork calling to me? i did and put in deleuzian terms, i claim that play is like entering an assemblage. of course, this is play distinct from the project of hermeneutic philosophy. overtaken and interwoven in a movement of back and forth with sun xun's film installation, e. and i lost track of time but it was an active reading of the piece. we did accept, if for a moment, the risk of playing, of entering the assemblage of shan-shui- cosmos, as a letting go to the play of the work as assemblage. because an assemblage is also a dynamic flow and interaction, we responded to the work with movement of to-and-fro without any goal or purpose but the play-as-assemblage itself. encounter - silent words, visualizing time calling upon my learned skills as an art historian, right from the moment i enter geoffrey farmer's ( ) installation the last two million years i am drawn to notice the formal and material characteristics of things such as: the delicate cut-out paper images standing up with the help of folded paper, the spatial distribution, plexiglass framed images on the walls, a torn book cover, cold white neon lights, precarious plinths fabricated of white foamcore. these things easily call for names and words so i can formally describe their 'objectness' and identify them as signs. but something else is at play here, or needs to be at play. farmer refuses to allow me the possibility of a totalizing gaze, and even if i could see, look at and identity every figurine, there is an excess that vision cannot contain. something else is at play. and i imagine farmer's curatorial choices as an invitation for the public to move around and to physically explore the complex spatial and discursive materiality of the piece. glaring white neon tubes draw perpendicular lines on the ceiling, a multitude of white bases in various sizes and heights create a strange topography in the center of the room. white walls and the grey cement floor make the gallery space feel clinical, cold, objective. in contrast, the seemingly playful, minuscule and delicate paper figurines welcome me into the installation space. farmer installed the figurines turned towards the entrance, as a mesmerizing confrontation about to swallow the visitor or as a solemn march performed for the incoming public. the first tiny figurine, merely a centimeter high, stands strong as she opens the procession. carefully and wondering if only the force of my breathing could make the figure fall down her pedestal, i bend and kneel down to enjoy a closer look. all the figurines are cut-out from old printed material: image in black and white, some in faded colors. each cut-out image is supported in the back by a small piece of folded paper, printed words are visible, the artist having used the actual printed pages where the images were inserted. egyptian pharaohs, a fragment from watteau's painting of pierrot, sculptures from ancient greece; a thin line marching time. but no, this is a folding of times; i feel hit in the stomach when i recognize the photograph by nick ut of phan thi kim phuc, the young girl tragically burnt with napalm in the vietnam war, running in atrocious pain and terror. with no apparent chronology or logic, she stands in between a caryathide from the erechtheion and a figure, perhaps, from the medieval period but unknown to me. as i followed and slowly let my body be guided up the thin line drawn by the plinth, my first thought was to interpret this eclectic march of figures in terms of chronological time, a tale of technological progress. but then my understanding of history, as learned in textbooks, became disrupted, challenged, troubled; there are no labels or names, some of the figures i vaguely recognize but cannot identify because the artist has precisely only cut-out the image and used the text, that is language, as a mean to support the visual. in the printed media, and in particular history books, the photograph is always subordinate to the text, which is deemed more significant and the carrier of knowledge. i find this extremely interesting because, in a witty sculptural manner, farmer's installation operates a reversal, it introduces a slippage in the conventional relationship between text and image; here there is no text to read and the hundred images of artefacts or people stand as the main players in a new reshuffled historical stage set-up by the artist and the vancouver art gallery. around me people smile, point with a finger, bend forward, crouch down to get a better view, snap a picture, stroll from one group of figures to another. standing close by, a visitor nods and makes me notice a clever grouping of heads of states, over here is the theme of music, and over there i notice jacques-louis david's painting of marat but without the head....strange, i wonder where geoffrey farmer displaced it, what other narrative he created by introducing the head somewhere else. i spend some time looking for it but i lost interest and simply forgot about it. a plethora of other groupings exert a fascinating pull. printed images from material culture, photographs, archival documents, monuments, historical figures have been reshuffled, configured differently from the western canon of a linear, chronological historical narrative. on the wall next to the entrance, encased under glass is the table of content of a history book written in english. the narrative for the western world numbers more than one hundred and fifty pages, conversely i notice that the history of india and china, both spanning thousands of years of history, seemed glossed over since each empire's history is told in less than ten pages. a printed book can be, or is best, read sitting down comfortably; a story of cultures, geographies and times i can hold in my hands, and engaging in as i turn the crisp pages one by one. but in geoffrey farmer's installation, my body has to negotiate carefully through, around and in-between the plinths to see a grouping of images on the other side. sometimes a high plinth blocks a view or a passage and forces me to turn my body sideways, thus twisting and turning i am pushed to see the work from an unexpected angle. in the narrow passages formed between the bases and standing plinths, now and then i come face to face with another visitor. we must look at each other to gently negotiate who will go first; if the exchange of gazes is denied, we both turn sideways, and thus obliged to look from a different point of view, i often make an exciting discovery as i notice other thematic assemblages of cut-out images. calmly overlooking those two million years of historical narrative, the photograph of a sculpted buddha looms at the top if a thin column almost reaching the ceiling. the buddha, which turns out to be one of the largest pictures in terms of size, is the apex and from there the plinths drawn a gentle cascade, all the way down to the floor. on a low plinth, almost level with the gallery floor farmer displays the empty shell of a book titled the last two million years and a sculptural version of it in pristine white marble. farmer found the book published by reader's digest in the s while strolling in his neighborhood. after purchasing a second copy, the artist eventually embarked on the delicate task of cutting out all of the images from the book, created the figurines and liberated them from the grips of one historical discourse into another one; fluid, open ended, calling for the body to move through. moving about, i feel, i become, i am entangled in the materiality of the work which consists of the heights of plinths, the numerous angles and corners, the narrow passages making bodies move in certain ways in-between the (re)staging of a mainstream historical narrative circulated via the s printed media, then something called an "art experience" emerges. or rather, rather the experience emerges as my being intertwined and performed with/in the materiality of the work. differently from the root-thinking of conventional historical writing, farmer asserted creative license to critique, reshuffle, reconfigure and complicate history as discourse. the last two million years invites bodies to manifest an experience of art as a rhizomatic mode of telling, only by experiencing can i imagine different conceptual threads, different connections between people and events. the installation proposes another narrative of western history, one which is open and fluid, one which is enacted because of the agency of the work itself: the narrow passages, the imposition of empty spaces and turns, the fragile, the minuscule inviting the body to crouch and bend down or stare up, the bumping into plinths, the juxtapositions and possibilities for new narratives, the floating gazes. chapter desire desire is a key term in deleuze's philosophical work. in his first writing collaboration with guattari, deleuze introduces and elaborates in anti-Œdipus. capitalism and schizophrenia ( ) a view of desire both encompassing yet also much distinct from the common meaning of the term; that of a strong wish or wanting to have something, or a strong sexual feeling . in this chapter, i will first examine the concept of desire in the work of deleuze and guattari. in the second part of the chapter, the focus will turn to maxine greene's concept of imagination as a cognitive faculty but mostly as a capacity to create new experiences, the closing section is about thinking the art experience following a deleuze and greene encounter. the concept of desire in the writings of gilles deleuze and félix guattari the etymology of the word desire goes back to the latin desiderare, which means one ceases to see, to regret the absence of, and hence to seek (partridge, ). in contrast, throughout his work and his collaboration with félix guattari, gilles deleuze develops a complex definition of desire as: de-individualized, not reduced to sexuality, related to the construction of reality and acting in the social sphere, and as positive and productive (see(deleuze, a; deleuze & guattari, ; deleuze & parnet, ). as stated in their collaborative work anti-Œdipus. capitalism and schizopherenia, deleuze and guattari ( ) position themselves against the platonic logic of desire and a lacanian psychoanalytic view which are forcing us to take, they write, in "making us choose online oxford living dictionaries: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/desire retrieved on june , . https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/desire between production and acquisition" (p. ). more precisely, for deleuze and guattari, desire is not about wanting something outside of itself and it does not emerge from a place of lack, of missing in something. locating desire on the side of acquisition implies that desire becomes "an idealistic (dialectical, nihilistic) conception" (p. ) and this goes against deleuze's philosophy of immanence, where relation is thought of relation 'in', but not as a relation 'to' something outside. what might be the reasons or interest for the authors to make this bold conceptual move in the early s when, in france, marxist materialism and the psychoanalysis of freud and lacan were the pillars of intellectual life? in his rich preface, michel foucault ( ) warns the reader that anti-Œdipus is “less concerned with why this or that than with how to proceed” (p.xii). from his perspective anti-Œdipus is a book of ethics, a book provoking one to inquire how to live. and we must remember that for deleuze and guattari desire is not only at the micro, personal level, since its realm is also that of the political. foucault will come to asks: “how can and must desire deploy its thought within the political domain and grow more intense in the process of overturning the established order?” (p.xii). may ( ) also agrees that the question of how to live is key in deleuze’s conception of philosophy , and the ways he wonders “what other possibilities life holds open to us” and how we might think about “things in ways that would open up new regions for living” (p. ). it is important to remind ourselves how, among other things, deleuze saw the arts (visual arts, cinema, music, literature) as a milieu for experiences and encounters, and thus possibly as a milieu that could open up new regions or possibilities for living. i will return to this idea in the final chapter of my dissertation. for now, i mention this because i am aware that my dissertation chose not to address many other important questions in museum education such as access for all and what that means, or the problem of "what knowledge is of most worth?". my interest and focus on the art experience could be judged as elitist and reproducing a (my) socio-economic, racial and cultural privilege. nonetheless, as i have alluded in the introduction, my fascination for the experience of art and focus on deleuze's thought on the desiring-assemblage makes the art experience not simply, about experiencing the art's materiality, embodiment, wonderment, knowledge, play, imagination, and possibilities albeit they are crucial; i also think and consider the art encounter as a mode of experimentation and a way to increase one's capacity to live and act in the world. deleuze and guattari’s conception of ethics takes as its premise an immanent quality rather than transcendent ideals. what does this mean, and what are the implications? deleuze firmly rejects descartes’ view of the body as separated from the mind, and the implied hierarchy viewing the mind as superior to the body. this has important implications when thinking about desire within the frame of immanence. lorraine ( ) explains that deleuze and guattari’s view of immanent ethics requires us to attend to the complex, textured and embodied situations in our lives and to be open to find responses that go beyond familiar automatic responses in order to “access creative solutions to what are always unique problems” (p. ). this ties in well with the concept of encounter i covered previously. an immanent ethics of the art encounter requires me to attend to the embodied experience and the complexities of each artwork in their singularity, without the desire to stay in a space of recognition and seeking to impose a signifier. it means: to see the three-legged stools and know they are useful to sit on, but wonder what they produce when ai weiwei ( - ) interlocks and balances hundreds of them over my head in a gigantic rhizomatic structure. it means surely to see and know that geoffrey farmer's ( ) figurines in the last two million years are simply made from cut-out images and rolled-up text from a s copy of a reader's digest encyclopedia, yet be open to play with new insights made possible by the anachronistic juxtapositions of fragments extracted from the printed media, the disposition of the plinths imposing on the viewer's body a different way to move in and through the installation. as a philosopher of immanence, who is emphasizing connections over separation, in anti-Œdipus deleuze adopts guattari's interest in the machinic model and develops a materialist conception of desire by first describing the human body as an organic machine; (...) at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. it breathes, it heats, it eats. it shits and it fucks. what a mistake to have ever said the id. everywhere it is machines – real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. (p. ) through this deliberately crude metaphor, the body is described as an organ-machine made of partial objects, partial machines―such as the mouth, eye, hand―always seeking to connect to another machine because there is “always a flow-producing machine, and another machine connected to it that interrupts or draws off part of this flow” (deleuze & guattari, , p. ). and the most important is desire: desire is what causes the current to flow. desire itself is a machine, a synthesis of machines, a desiring machine producing the unconscious. it is important to point out that, while anti-Œdipus displays a provocative tone and does not hesitate to confront major tenets of freudian psychoanalysis, it does acknowledge the significant discovery made by freud that was the creation of the concepts of desire and the unconscious. nevertheless, what they do critique is psychoanalysis's decision to turn the unconscious into a theatre only capable of expressing itself in dreams, fantasies and myths. deleuze and guattari ( ) contend that freud never stopped “trying to limit the discovery of a subjective or vital essence of desire as libido” (p. ). for deleuze and guattari, the unconscious is not a theatre, it does not need to be interpreted, it poses no problems of meaning. on the contrary, the unconscious is like a factory, it is productive and is always seeking more connections. in terms of immanent ethics, by that i mean the questions of "how might one live?" (may, , p. ) is, in part, by creating more connections; for deleuze life is movement and change, forever avoiding the fixated, stable and unified position. these ideas are important and significant in my study because, the arts are milieus of potential experimentation and thus of more connections. to define desire as the desire of the other according to jacques lacan ( ), places desire on the side of acquisition (desire as a way to fill something missing in one's life or consciousness) and thus it implies that one desires what one does not have. again, i must point out that, while in anti-oedipus ( ) deleuze and guattari engage critically with the psychoanalytic field of their time―they do not always mention which school of psychoanalysis they refer to―but in particular jacques lacan's conception of desire, they do write an important note recognizing lacan's nuanced view of desire as both lacking and productive. in a note written in the chapter "the desiring-machines", deleuze and guattari discern an ambivalence in lacan's theory of desire since it appears to have two poles; one related, they write "to a desiring-machine, which defines desire in terms of a real production, thus going beyond both any idea of need and any idea of fantasy", and the other "to a signifier, which reintroduces a certain notions of lack" (p. ). for my study, i return to an important characteristics of desire in deleuze and guattari’s ( ) work which is that desire, “does not lack anything; it does not lack its object. it is, rather, the subject that is missing in desire (...) desire and its object are one and the same thing: the machine, as a machine of machine” (p. ). i mention this quote for it contains two important ideas: ) there is no desire for an object outside of desire, and ) it is the person that is missing in desire; if i do not enter as assemblage or make connections then it is obvious that no desire can circulate. i will return to this after introducing another important characteristic of desire as assemblage, and moreover, a producing assemblage. the mechanistic vocabulary of flows, plugging-in and connections used to describe desire in anti-Œdipus will eventually be abandoned. in the follow-up volume a thousand plateaus. capitalism and schizophrenia ( ), deleuze and guattari replaced the term ‘assemblage’, with the concept of desiring-assemblage. “désirer c’est construire un agencement, c’est construire un ensemble. [to desire is to construct an assemblage, to construct a whole.]” explained deleuze in the eight hours interview l'abécédaire (boutang, ). desire is about connection, about constructing an assemblage, it is relational, a line; not a fixed point. as we have seen so far, deleuze and guattari’s conception of desire has nothing to do with filling a void, with or by something external to the individual. indeed, they refuse to subjugate the multiplicity of desire, explains foucault ( ); "[...] to the old categories of the negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna) [...] prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems” (p.xiii). but there are certain conditions to be put in place for desire to start flowing, to circulate and that is: the assemblage. an assemblage must be created and that is why for deleuze, it is not desire that lacks something, but the subject who lacks in desire. as i walked through the spaces and installations, i have had to create my own assemblages and connections with partial things, bits of information or people. in creating my assemblage with ai weiwei's bang, i connected to a tattered and old wooden stool into which i saw traces of a hand, the visual memory of a person who carved characters into the seat. i connected with the little branch sticking out from the sides of xu bing's ( ) background story and calling me into playing with the work's materiality, and an information read on extended labels that nudged me into noticing aspects of a work i had overlooked. by a chance encounter, i connected with another visitor such as e. and we went on connecting through play with sun xun's ( ) video installation shan-shui―cosmos. my art encounters both are and emerge in those assemblages of desire, existing as flow, curiosity and desire for more connections. with no assemblage, no desire can circulate; the equation seems quite simple yet it has many implications for me, as a viewer/visitor in the art gallery. there must be a willingness to take risks, to accept and be open to encounters. but one could also wonder about the conditions external or internal that could enhance, block or prevent the construction of an assemblage. as deleuze ( ) explained: [...] desire only exists when assembled or machined. you cannot grasp or conceive of a desire outside a determinate assemblage, on a plane which is not pre-existent but which must itself be constructed. all that is important is that each group or individual should construct the plane of immanence on which they lead their life and carry on their business. without these conditions you obviously do lack something, but you lack precisely the conditions which make a desire possible. (p. ) this passage reassured me that deleuze did not hold blind faith and utopian ideas concerning the possibilities of desire and assemblage. he recognized that many individuals do not have the conditions to create assemblages where desire circulates; because of constricting external situations of repressive power, but also due to stultifying internalized ways of thinking/being. this is a complex question for me; i often wonder why the two gentlemen coming out of the elevators, sneered at the sight of the scavenged materials in the installation by xu bing, yet why did they not connect to the intriguing materiality of the piece? at least, just enough for desire to start circulating? my pedagogical hope for them to be transformed is another question, but i think this last point brings us back to the concept of encounter and deleuze's philosophy of immanent ethics. one recalls how a real encounter with ideas, things, people, situations, is a contingent event without recognition or desire to affix a signifier on what is experienced. this shock experience created partial and temporary assemblages, but someone might not want to connect, or refuse to be open to the encounter because of habits. as i write this line, i still see the two gentlemen stepping out of the elevator and who scoffed at the sight of the seemingly random assemblage of old papers and twigs in xu bing's background story. for some obscure reason, i wanted them to connect and construct their assemblage with that singular piece, but they did not. thus, as a museum educator, i reckon the question begs to be asked in terms of the conditions to put in place, yet without instrumentalizing the desiring-assemblage. therefore, it appears that not only do certain conditions prevent the creation of a desiring-assemblage, but equally, we must realize that some connections and assemblages will break, abort or turn out to be life reducing instead of augmenting one's power to affect and be affected. for instance, i relive my experience of walking in-between the plinths of the last two million years, my pace coming to a stop here and there at a paper figurine i notice for the first time, twisting my body so i can better see the fragmented image, and hope to find somewhere else the missing fragment from the hokusai print, for instance. i strolled around the installation for almost one hour without locating it, granted that i was not being very systematic since i enjoyed going with the flow of being drawn to one image, color, or visually intriguing element, and these focus for the gaze all leading/connecting me to others. but at some point, my body became hungry and tired, the body's call was decisive and the desiring- assemblage i had created with this singular space/artwork suddenly broke and i moved on. is there a ‘self’ as agent of desire? this question raises the complex notion of subjectivity in deleuzian thought. throughout his writings, deleuze abandons the humanist view of the subject as possessing a fixed, stable, essential identity. on the contrary, subjectivity is never a given, it is always in construction, always in becoming. as boundas ( a) points out, “the deleuzian subject is an assemblage of heterogeneous elements whose source is not the interiority of the traditional image of thought” (p. ). in the same way that subjectivity is always in construction; desire is only possible with the deployment of a plane of connections, it cannot be reduced or located to a point of origin. deleuze asserts that, desire is therefore not internal to a subject, any more than it tends towards an object: it is strictly immanent to a plane which it does not pre-exist, to a plane which must be constructed, where particles are emitted and fluxes combine. there is only desire in so far as there is deployment of a particular field, propagation of particular fluxes, emission of particular particles. far from presupposing a subject, desire cannot be attained except at the point where someone is deprived of the power of saying ‘i’. (deleuze & parnet, , p. ) being relational and a process, desire is not internal to a subject, it is not something which pre-exists and afterwards gets manifested by the subject. it doesn’t even need the prompt of an internal drive. not even pleasure? questioned by parnet, during his filmed interview, deleuze addressed the many misunderstandings concerning anti-Œdipus since its publication in , especially in relation to the philosophy of desire. many individuals – mostly students at paris-vincennes, saw deleuze and guattari’s new position on desire as an invitation for absolute spontaneism and a quest for forbidden pleasures. but desire “does not have pleasure as its norm” (deleuze, , p. ) and he considered it a false alternative to see desire as the opposite of law. deleuze’s position on pleasure is extremely interesting. i think about the art experience and the oft-repeated conversations around the pleasure(s) gained by a satisfying art experience, how there is a ‘lack’ of pleasure when visitors feel they don’t understand the meaning of a complex work. of course, deleuze does not deny, for instance, the pleasure of being with loved ones, or that enjoying good company is agreeable. he makes a philosophical distinction between desire and pleasure since he considers the word ‘pleasure’ to be inscribed within the logic of lack; to say that desire is the attainment of, or that it leads to pleasure, necessarily implies that desire is lacking in something. on the contrary; desire is an assemblage, it is relationality, connections and process. one of the most important questions posed by desire, write deleuze and guattari ( ) is not "what does it mean?" but rather "how does it work?" (p. ). to think desire and the unconscious are merely producing fantasies or a psychic reality is very reductive, and promotes idealist principles according to them. the desiring-machine is not a metaphor, and if desire produces, then what it produces is real. desire produces reality. one might ask: what is the relationship between my study on the art experience and desire as a producer of reality? i contend that the educational implications of thinking the art experience as a desiring- assemblage extend beyond the museum and the perceived elitist appreciation of an artwork; for it touches on a mode of living in the world. the desiring-assemblage with artworks produces my own subjectivity as a viewer. it is that process which makes me realize the relationality of the art experience. the desiring-assemblage produces affects, insights, ideas, questions, new ways of seeing something. furthermore, i have stopped wondering about the meaning, now preferring to ask about the artwork: "how does it work if i connect with the piece?" deleuze and guattari’s notion of ‘how to live?’ involves the never fixed concept of subjectivity, the openness to embrace change and to experiment in order to discover satisfactory assemblages where our desire can flow. in the following section, i turn to the writings of philosopher of education maxine greene, in particular her understanding of the concept of imagination. greene's work is informed by phenomenology and existentialism, and she frequently quotes authors such as maurice merleau-ponty, albert camus, simone de beauvoir and jean-paul sartre, just to name a few. this, of course, places greene as a contrasting figure to deleuze. nonetheless, i find an interesting and rich resonance between deleuze's view of the desiring-assemblage as productive and greene's concept of imagination. revisiting maxine greene's concept of imagination to teachers gathered at the new york lincoln center institute where she lectured for twenty-five years, greene ( ) explained that artworks only "emerge as an aesthetic object or event in encounters with some human consciousness" (p. ). drawing from dewey's ( , ) view that one's subjectivity must be fully involved in the act of perception, greene reminds them how artworks "do not reveal themselves automatically" (p. ), and furthermore viewers must take time in being/looking―whether it be reading a poem, watching a dance performance, painting or sculpture― to enter into conversation with artworks. and although she returned often to the importance of "informing awareness" ( , p. ), this educated understanding is not the same as accumulating information about an artwork or practice. more importantly, she reminds teachers that modes of attending to art cannot be translated "into statements of competencies or quantifiable skills" ( , p. ). i encountered greene's writings later in my studies, as far as i am aware, her work did not circulate in the literature i turned to during my years as a museum educator in montreal. in my case, the discovery happened during the doctoral program following conversations and seminar readings . grounded in existentialism and phenomenology, greene's work and eloquent writing style always richly woven with quotes from poetry and literature, is seductive for its appeal, as janet miller ( ) suggests, to notions of personal freedom, ethical choices, and the emergence of more just social spaces. throughout her lengthy career, greene remained a formidable advocate for the arts; in her view encounters with the arts enable human beings to, as she wrote, "break through the horizons of the ordinary, of the taken-for- granted, to visions of the possible, of "what-is-not"" ( , p. ). aesthetic experiences have the potential to bring transformation of the self, and a self-acting in the public sphere. indeed, due to perception and the cognitive processes involved in the experience, encountering the arts can open up new directions in one's life. reading greene's emphatic prose is always inspiring for her passionate plea against passivity and convention in favor of a renewed capacity to be authentically present to an experience. greene ( ) admits her interest for a mode of utopian thinking but, while she warns that educators cannot predict what will happen in aesthetic encounters, there remains at the core of her project, and in this i agree with william pinar ( ), a quest to bring about something. as pinar points out while it is all lovely ideas she wants to bring forth, yet "even a lovely objective is an objective nonetheless" (p. ) and such approach may unintentionally risk to instrumentalize the aesthetic experience― even for noble ends. that being said i deeply respect and appreciate greene's acute sensitivity to the art experience as "opening windows on alternative realities" in particular, thanks to dr. dònal o'donoghue, dr. rita irwin and dr. william pinar. in this dissertation i use the terms art experience and aesthetic experience interchangeably. inscribing herself within a kantian lineage, philosopher maxine greene uses predominantly the term ( , p. ). in this section, i wish to pay attention and think with/about her sustained interest in the concept of imagination. throughout her writings, and in particular her book releasing the imagination ( ) and the article "imagination and learning. a reply to kieran egan" ( ), greene's understanding of imagination is not simply an ability to come up with abstract images or concepts such as the fantastical―and not as the conventional 'being creative' in the sense of coming up with original propositions, but as a "capacity to create new orders in experience, to open up new possibilities, and to disclose alternative realities" ( , p. ). in other words, imagination "opens windows in the actual and the taken-for-granted toward what might be and is not yet" ( , p. ). this idea of imagination as a doorway, a cognitive faculty, and a perceptual process; making possible the looking at things differently and "as if they could be otherwise" ( , p. ). i do not wish to think of imagination as the magic concept or irrefutable keyword for successful educational programs. indeed, as greene ( ) herself mentioned, it is undeniable that imagination "is not always benevolent" (p. ) referring to the columbine massacre and other horrendous acts of violence, fascism and racism perpetrated under the call for another reality. and neither, greene adds, does exercising imagination or active encounters with the arts promise to make people morally better, or make them more critically conscious about their capacity to impact on the world. i keep in mind those concerns and, following pinar ( ), both "respect and fear" the concept of imagination. for greene ( ), the way to break with static and fixed perceptions is to "tap into imagination" (p. ). i find her choice of metaphor intriguing; imagination as a separate aesthetic experience; she defines as 'aesthetic'; "what we come to know directly and at first hand in an aesthetic experience, when we enter in a kind of dialogue with a given work of art" (greene, , p. ). enclosed faculty locked inside a person and one needs to tap into it to let it flow. i tend to see imagination not as something one taps into but as emerging in the process of being/sensing/making connections as one is with the work. but for the moment, i want to follow greene in thinking about imagination as the seeing of what might be, especially since i have repeatedly been in geoffrey farmer's storeroom overture. the works of art―whether it's a poem, a dance performance, a play or visual art― do not reveal themselves automatically suggested greene. one needs, she writes; " [...] to attend, to be present, to wonder, to explore" in order to be drawn "into the open-ended process of noticing, paying heed trying to see and to hear" ( , p. ). i am not so inclined to think that a work needs to 'reveal' itself, thus implying that an essence of the work is hidden and that a deeper meaning to the artworks should be discovered, yet i value greene's insistence on qualitative characteristics such as being present - albeit she does not further define this quality - for one must be drawn into an open-ended process of noticing and making connections. i am reminded of the discrete little note written by farmer ( ) and whispering; "(...) what you experience is of your own making (...)". in many ways, i think of this note as the key to tap into the imaginary of the installation. even if it was my second or nth time stepping into geoffrey farmer's storeroom overture, the column of taped styrofoam coffee cups, the aluminum foil sculptures, the museum shelves displaying architectural fragments retained their thing-ness as mundane objects. however, farmer's choices in staging the conditions to enable, facilitate, question, invite, destabilize my experience, the information provided, others visitors who made me notice new parts created an invitation to see relations between things, and these relations brought forward ideas and possible knowings, or seeing differently. informed by greene, i want to see the working of imagination when i see, hear, get an embodied sense of; theatrical props, fragments of early performances, museum shelving's, books and photos of storeroom overture as both retaining their object-ness and operating as an artistic space for thinking, among other things, about time and memory, archives and collections, the workings of a museum, artistic process, exploration and narration. imagination is what makes me conscious of the connections would say greene; and yet, i wonder if we could put it differently. what if it is actually in making a connection, let's say between hearing the sounds coming from the basement of the gallery and the role of a museum, which then activates or triggers imagination to make further connections? this is not i believe how greene would see it, since she adopts an internal view of imagination, but i appreciate how she thinks of imagination as a move towards, hence as a movement or process. on another note, it could be objected that little imagination was needed to make the connections or see the relations between the various art projects and objects in the installation, because one has the choice to read (or not) the information provided by the artist and the gallery in the extended labels and text panel for storeroom overture. informed by the writings of sociologist pierre bourdieu ( ), one could also argue that, as an art historian and art educator, my eye is the product of those disciplinary fields and thus, what i see and experience is already endowed with meaning and value, my body already knows ways to be with contemporary art even if the work troubles or destabilizes me. a key point for greene ( ), as she advises teachers attending the lincoln institute, is to remember that "[t]he more we know, the more we are likely to see and hear" (p. ), but never does she value disciplinary knowledge for the sake of knowledge. to think with maxine greene and the concept of imagination puts forward the importance of making or seeing the ordinary in a less familiar way, of not falling into habits of seeing, of the need to trouble the taken-for-granted, in contrast one must constantly be able to accept and embrace the unknown. and thus while greene values informed encounters―and i agree that contextual, formal, theoretical information does provide entry points into an artwork―, nonetheless to work within imagination and truly experience the art, as an art historian and educator, i must also defamiliarize myself from art concepts and theories which have become my ordinary, my taken-for-granted. for instance, walking in storeroom overture, i recognized without a doubt farmer's video piece, hand drawing and various props used in his early career performance actor, dancer, carver ( ) which i had seen some year ago at the musée d'art contemporain de montréal. yet, this particular display of actor, dancer, carver at the vancouver art gallery was different, farmer staged it as part of the larger complex installation storeroom overture, furthermore the various fragments composing the video installation were now scattered and mingled with other film props, plinths, items from the old building, etc. according to greene, one would assume i had an informed encounter that could enhance my experience, and yet i claim that to activate imagination, i also had to defamiliarize myself and be open to the new set of possibilities. indeed, farmer clearly staged the work differently, and i was invited to encounter actor, dancer, carver within another context, establish new narrative or conceptual connections with/between that particular piece and the surrounding objects in this particular space. according to greene, one can say that being open to uncertainty and enjoying ambiguity as opportunities created by the artist/artwork/exhibition space has to do with a willingness to bring full attentiveness to the art encounter. she further mentions the importance of time as a being present to the work; but it is a time she never seeks to empirically quantify in order to pin it to optimal conditions . i also find important to in the article the spaces of aesthetic education, greene ( ) wishes the encounter with works of art to be "personal and preferably wordless" (p. ) aiming to achieve a "rapt absorption" (p. ) which mention her interest in the repetition of an encounter. one might wonder how i can write fieldnotes with/in artworks my body already knows because i see them daily. can my experience of encountering, to borrow o'donoghue's ( ) term, still be relevant in terms of research and to whom? yes, i have been in this installation previously and yet, as greene suggests in variations on a blue guitar ( ) the idea of having repeated meetings with a work is beneficial because a "second or third encounter with a complex work...(allows us to) discern more, we begin to see differently." (p. ) indeed, every time i (re)visit a new sound is heard, every time i watch a visitor curious about something or stopping to get a closer look at an object makes me notice something, somewhat differently. every time i establish new connections between what previously seemed disparate objects or fragments of a past performance or installation, and notions of time, artistic practice, narration, experimentation, metaphors of space as memory. extending from this, greene brings the idea of renewed changes and possibilities, as she writes: because we are different at different moments of our lives, the works that we encounter can never be precisely the same. viewed as open possibilities each time we come to them, they will begin to appear as events in the ongoing human career, not objects, or sediments, or things. ( , p. ) it appears therefore that having repeated meetings with a work is beneficial, since with every encounter we (possibly) discover something new, we might see differently. reading my scratch notes, i re-experience my first visit of the geoffrey farmer exhibition; i shadowed a museum colleague who was touring with an adult group. in my notes, i read about surprise, bewilderment, curiosity but i do not see any grand or profound statement. i echoes a desire for the romantic sublime moment of the suspension of time. i do not subscribe to greene's interest in the rapt absorption. was enjoying being with the group, actively listening and engaging in the conversations and did not have time to write down my thoughts. nonetheless, i distinctly re-live my amazement of walking into a rhizomatic web of connections in storeroom overture; how farmer has entangled his personal and artistic history into/with the space and building of the vancouver art gallery as a space of accumulated histories and metaphor for memory. although repeated, my art encounters opened spaces of possibilities as impressions, desires to connect, new information activated differently every time i walked into the exhibition. but what brings together: the art experience, open possibilities, a sense of the not-yet, the going beyond the known, of weaving parts into a whole, the question of time and being present and the seeing differently? for maxine greene this would be, imagination. drawing from dewey, greene ( ) considers imagination as a way to bring new alternatives, of embarking on uncharted territories. she relates imagination to authenticity, empathy, an ability to structure chaos and to retrieve (new) meanings from encounters with art works. thus, i understand greene's definition of imagination as both singular and multiple. if seen as singular, imagination is a cognitive capacity (greene, ) that needs to be fostered and developed. as a multiple, imagination is a process, it connects and produces. in closing, i wish to focus on the important role greene concedes to the arts in education since artists and art institutions create spaces and pedagogical situations to foster imagination. from variations on a blue guitar ( ), i share this important quote, one that encapsulates many of greene's ideas on the aesthetic experience, education and the role of imagination; what has been encountered, becomes an event within personal consciousness; it may begin shining toward the lived world. clearly we cannot make that happen; nor can we intrude when people are becoming aware of this way. we cannot grade them on whether or not such a phenomenon does occur. all we can do is to try to invent situations that make it more likely―allowing for time, for privacy, for silences. we have to try to move persons to think about alternative ways of being alive, possible ways of inhabiting the world. and then we may be able to help them realize the sense in which an active imagination involves transactions between inner and outer vision. and, indeed, all sorts of relationships may be created between the world of the work at hand and the worldhood of the one who attends. (p. - ) because i am critical of the way the term 'imagination' has been taken up by neo- liberalism and marketing with the trope of "imagine = be creative", imagination is not a concept i use frequently or lightly. yet the event of being in the geoffrey farmer ( ) installations still inhabit me; i wish to hear the old recording of the melodramatic love song, i remember the armless clock, the theatre backdrop, i visually recall a knife slowly moving up and down. as a visitor, stepping into the gallery's rotunda, i entered the stage of a sordid historical drama involving the building's famous architect. moving further into the exhibition, i entered the curated space of farmer's own artistic practice en-folded with moments in the history of the gallery -from past to present. playing with fragmentation, the uncanny, sound and space, the artist succeeded in destabilizing the visitor, around me i did hear laughs and manifest expressions of interrogations such as "where is the art?" stepping into storeroom overture, even i was surprised and destabilized by the overwhelming assemblage of everyday objects and materials. one might claim that i already carried expectations of making meaning, of creating a sense of artness of whatever i was seeing because of the art gallery's discursive framing. i had to let go of the taken-for-granted, my encounter and bodily experience became for me an event through the working of imagination as a capacity to see structures and create images which then "begin shining toward the lived world" ( , p. ). the art experience lives on ―or not― if imagination is activated, yet as greene reminds us, we cannot control it or force it to happen, nonetheless spaces and situations can be put in place. and, for maxine greene the arts are a privileged space for experiences and thus imagination to be activated. thoughts on the art experience following a deleuze-greene encounter greene ( ) insisted that the more we are informed, the more we can perceive what is meaningful in a work; and the more we perceive, the more we can imagine and connect what is perceived to an alternative reality (whether artistic, social, ethical); both ways of thinking about and considering imagination are important for our role as educators. because if greene ( ) considered informed art experiences as more satisfactory, i think that art museum educators do have a role in opening a 'milieu' and affordances for visitors to enter other desiring-assemblages. although the conditions of this milieu of experimentation are always allowed to emerge during the experience and the specifics of the gallery space, the artworks, the audience. as i read my narrative, i feel propelled back into the farmer's exhibition space and re- create the experience. i step into the last two million years ( ), and my gaze swiftly scans the installation. i see almost everything, to the exception of what extend beyond a wall blocking my view. i kneel down and crouch to examine the tiny paper-cut figurines and already i guess that the rest of the installation is probably made of the same type of images. i can make the choice to move on and visit the other room. some visitors passing by are doing just that; they slow down for a moment to look at one or two figurines and they traverse into the next room of the exhibition. but i remain and read to the extended label found close to the entrance. i had read it before but a few details had escaped me. now i want to learn more about historiography and historic narratives written in the usa around . i have been in farmer's installation countless times, but it leaves me speechless always. i return to my walk and continue to follow the thin line of white foamcore crowned with its procession of paper figures. a sudden desire to see from the other side, but since the thin line is getting higher and blocks me, it is impossible for me to step over. walk back or continue. the work―via the curatorial and artistic choices in terms of display―is somewhat guiding, or inviting me into a particular mode of experimentation. the plinth widens, i see cut-up images of kings and queens, heads of states, means of transportation, ancient tools, works of art. without apparent chronological order, i move from one large plinth to another and play at discovering the various possible narratives. i imagine farmer art making process in cutting up the book from reader's digest, and then of spending days delicately spacing out and reworking history for us. a narrow passage opens up in-between rows of white columns, i walk towards a few images looming above me. i stretch my neck but i still can't see them very well because of their small size. but here the passage is a dead end, and my body swivels with the troubling discovery of the dead marat from jean-louis david. i follow a passage between plinths, bend over to see better, negotiate a turn so i can see the front of the images and feel the excitement of walking inside a revised history. in light of the deleuzian concepts of desire and assemblage, greene's focus on the importance of having an informed experience brings into focus how information provided by an extended label, a museum educator, or other pedagogical strategy can potentially invite visitors to enter the assemblage of the artwork. although it is manifested in different ways, even below the threshold of visibility, there is a flow that circulates; a desiring-assemblage imagining new realities. this is where i find the greatest cleavage between greene's existentialist philosophy and deleuze's philosophy of immanence. i have noted previously how greene's project is one of subjective and social transformation, indeed an important and noble project. yet, there is an objective and a goal the person or educator aims toward. in contrast, for deleuze, experience and the desiring-assemblage hold potentials: the potential to actualize something that had remained virtual until the experience of encountering. encounter - tic-toc, barking dog, bells ringing and three hundred sixty-five puppet figurines with his subtle architectural intervention, geoffrey farmer ( -) chose again to play with the gallery space. this time he created a special entryway for the installation the surgeon and the photographer; just a narrow opening, just a one person at a time sort of entrance, just a slit in a huge expanse of wall. for such a large gallery space, it's a peeping tom of an entrance. i try to remember what the gallery educator said during a guided tour of the exhibition, for i recall him mentioning and explaining the reason for this choice but i cannot remember what is behind this artistic and curatorial decision. i can't remember the 'why' but today it does not matter, i am not trying to figure out what it means, yet i am really fascinated to see what this choice of a narrow entrance produces. simply put, the narrow entrance creates a beautiful point of view; the two white walls of the gallery framing what appears to be a colorful crowd of delicate figurines. but it also makes me slow down upon entering, my body feels a change, i am moving into a different space, different from the space i am now. in what way, i do not know yet, i have to walk to the other side. as i approach, a few steps before passing through the entrance, a dash of red color catches the corner of my eye and i turn my gaze upward. above the entrance, placed on a small ledge just below the ceiling, i glimpse soft cylinder shape covers sown out of plain pieces of fabric, like faceless figurines large enough to cover an adult hand. albeit unseen from my low vantage point, i suppose them each supported by a stand of some sort. strange, why placed so high? there, yet hiding in plain sight. i wonder if all visitors notice them. in my scratch notes, there is no mention of these silent objects, they are like props calling forth the staging, the play of the exhibition. because of my photograph, i feel physically brought back into the gallery and my encounter with them. i take a moment to read the extended label written about the surgeon and the photographer about the interesting references to sigmund freud and walter benjamin, and i move across the narrow entrance. the sheer vision and physical impression of being swallowed by a sea of mysterious puppets are overwhelming. the totalizing gaze is impossible, and i need to surrender to time, to fragmented points of view, to the demands of close meetings with each figurine. how can i meet them all? farmer places a beautiful but exacting demand on the public if one wishes to discover each character. i have been in this installation more than once, yet the bodily affect is always renewed, always a mix of delight and sense of the uncanny. all standing on elegant white plinths of various heights, the puppets or figurines are assembled with sewn pieces of cloth and cut-out images from old second- hand books, each fragment of image held by double-sided tape. thus, farmer has introduced a three-dimensional effect into the use of the photograph and each fragment, each cut-out detail remains autonomous, recognizable. each fragment remains a trace of a person, body or thing in time, yet no longer within the logic of origin. most of the figurines reveal at least two personalities, stories and sometimes more. at the base, all show a number. upon entering, i am met by figurine number one and i wonder if number two is nearby, but it is not, it is nowhere in sight. i was wondering if farmer had displayed the figurines with a specific pattern, if there was an order, perhaps chronological but no, there is no apparent order in the numbering. or is there? the tombstone label indicated that the installation was composed of three hundred and sixty-five figurines. why should my expectations of a numerical order dictate the orchestration of such a chorus of historical voices? perhaps soft and diffused lighting, expertly oriented so as to avoid creating harsh shadows, envelops the wide expanse of the gallery space. suddenly, i become aware of another presence in the room: sound. bells ring, a clock ticking, the brushing of teeth, gurgling, tic toc tic toc, radio noise, busy voices, dring dring, a dog barking, more bells ringing, more ticking of the clock. rhythm and the flow of time, three hundred and sixty-five figurines, a different way of presenting time since each figurine retells history differently in the juxtaposition of photographic fragments from old printed media. quizzical, hilarious, coy or frightening, i feel their stare: the figurines exude a silent yet eloquent and powerful presence. i'm not sure why; perhaps it resides in the hilarious or witty juxtapositions of cut-out body parts from different magazines, the formal strategies to suggest volume and an embodied presence, the rich mix of gender, the conflation of cultures, the disregard for social stratifications and decorum, the politics of gender identity, the critique of racism, the deliberate anachronisms or the posthuman hybridity of the cyborg. "hey, that's a good one!" i hear beside me. most people grab snapshots of the puppet figurines, some enjoy strolling with farmer's book written specifically for this installation. each figurine has a number and an entry in the catalogue. i saw a few of the books on a low plinth, easy to find for the entering public. watching other visitors read make me curious. my body must weave, zig zag and gently swing beside and around the plinths in order to walk back to the entrance and grab a copy. let's see what number , the large eyes and a red flower which i just photographed, is saying: "a number of important exhibitions have been presented by the society over the years, the latest being our golden anniversary exhibition held at the powerhouse museum in , entitled fired with enthusiasm." and just below, another entry numbered (v), "bringing a flower to my husband's grave". being familiar with the strategies of contemporary art, i was not expecting an 'explanation' of the figurines but these words can leave one frustrated for being left if the dark concerning the artist's choice or absolutely delighted with the added layer of narrative possibilities in the piece. i smile, delighted. the information about the exhibition in question may come from the article where one of the images was cut-out, however it may also refer to something utterly different. it does not matter; the imagining is better than receiving an answer. but then farmer also wrote a more narrative and poetic sentence about a husband, a flower and a grave. perhaps it is a personal reference to the artist's life or a sad and touching event imagined for the puppet figurine. i shall never know. instead of having the text inscribing a fixed meaning to the image, language opens up narrative vistas, fabulous or sordid stories, provocative juxtapositions and new ideas. as mediated in these coffee-table books bought second-hand in vancouver, history now becomes reshuffled and reconfigured in different narratives. intrigued, i keep reading. no is about " ) active kidney stone problem; ) high blood pressure; ) critical mass of paperwork driving me nuts; ) general mental fatigue from overextending, workaholic and sedentary labours" curious to see what this might look like, or seeing the third space created by the strange meeting between these words and the visual, i go on a search for number . tic-toc, a dog barking, a bell ring; all markers of time passing. i stroll between the figurines and search for ; but i get lost in- between looking, being, trying not to knock over a puppet figurine. the work itself feels like a web gently catching me and pushing me here and there. i look for and then sometimes, i'm not sure if i already examined a particular grouping or not; the identity of each figurine becomes a blur. i need to be more systematic in my search. i recognize some features, henry kissinger here, the intense dark eyes of pablo picasso there, an old brand of cigarettes, the curve of a dior skirt, famous sculptures; what does this say about the printed media in relation to the digital image? in the middle of this silent crowd, i lose track of time and even sporadically forget that i am looking for number . my search for becomes a game but it is not so important for me to find the right answer. i enjoy the play for itself; for new encounters are at every turn. as i move around and swing gently to avoid hitting a figurine, i discover another one, another narrative, another rich juxtaposition, another memory or curiosity, another deleuzian line of flight. after an hour, my body now thirsty and starving pushes me towards the other narrow opening, or exit, situated at the far side of the gallery space, in a line opposite the entrance i came in. i finally meet number . on a black bodice, at eye level is glued the cut-out in color of a beautiful, perfectly toned, naked male posterior. exquisite sense of humor mr. farmer. the artist did provide a narrative, albeit a fluid one; one which we have to experience but, first, accept getting lost into. chapter mediators my doctoral work does not aim to provide a unified perspective or definition of what an art encounter really 'is' or should look like. nonetheless, one could claim that my argument in favor of thinking the art encounter as a desiring-assemblage is already suggesting a view of what an art encounter 'should be like'. but to this i would reply that deleuzian thought does not have to do with points of origin or destination. on the contrary, concepts are thought in terms of flows, processes and connections. and thus my study does not aim to provide any "best model" of practice, nor research tools claiming to identify and establish, "de minute en minute l'expérience d'un visiteur adulte [from minute to minute the experience of an adult visitor]" (dufresne-tassé et al., , p. ) in order to systematize and categorize desirable learning and affective art experiences. differently, with a focus on inquiry with gilles deleuze's philosophical concepts, this study aims to create a milieu inviting other museum practitioners or other scholars concerned with the experience of encountering art, to establish connections relevant to various social, cultural, geographical, historical, institutional, and educational contexts. my study was conducted in a public art museum but one can encounter art in an office lobby, a public park, a back-alley covered in graffiti, the local community centre, a cozy cafe or an artist run gallery. whatever the situation, what can be studied and followed are the fluid desiring-assemblages in their singularity, that is, what makes the art encounter as assemblage both a unique event yet general at the same time; what are the ramifications, the sudden cuts, the connections and flows, and what do they produce? over the course of writing this dissertation, the work by french philosopher gilles deleuze has become progressively mingled with my thoughts and conversations. it has evolved in such a way that i benefit from the occasional gentle tease by close colleagues at the vancouver art gallery, since i often bring deleuzian concepts into our professional conversations. interestingly, i see that as i engaged with a few deleuzian concepts, these new connections have slowly and subtly produced changes, not only my own practice as a gallery educator, but also that of my colleagues. during our team meetings, i recently noticed there were fewer quizzical looks if, as we talk over and discuss a new exhibition display or a specific artwork, i bring forward deleuze and guattari's ( ) desire never to ask "what a book means" (p. ), but rather―and i claim this goes for artworks also― that "there is no difference between "what a book talks about and how it is made" (p. ). furthermore, they also suggest that we should ask; [...] how it [the book] functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not transmit intensities, in which other multiplicities its own are inserted and metamorphosed [...]. (p. ) this is but one instance, among many others, to give an example of a major shift in my own thinking as art museum educator. over time my rhizome will keep expanding; of course, embracing deleuzian ideas and moving away from 'essence' or 'interpretation', does not necessarily imply that i deny the cognitive, perceptual, social and emotional aspects of experiencing art, neither does it imply a rejection of art historical/theoretical knowledge about an artwork or exhibition theme. i contend that it is the role of museum education and exhibition curators to bring about those milieus of experiences, thus allowing encounters and assemblages―with ideas, information, memories, affects, other bodies, places, etc.― to happen and produce further connections. as scholars (baugh, ; boundas, a; semetsky, ) have clearly explained, while for deleuze, experience is a-subjective , qualitative, complex, affective and sensorial, it is important to remember that it is only experimentation which can reveal "what a body or mind can do, in a given encounter" (deleuze, , p. ). this last point makes me think of the privileged spaces of experience made possible, facilitated, challenged, stimulated, questioned, renewed by the arts and contemporary artistic practices, many artists today exploring beyond art as 'object' towards art as dialogue and as social practice (see birchall, ; bishop, ; bourriaud, ; helguera, ; o’neill & wilson, ; wang, ). while deleuze passed away in and, it is well known that he and guattari were not keen on conceptual art―which they sharply critiqued in what is philosophy? ( ), i still consider their ideas as extremely generative to challenge the view that being with the arts is an affair of reaching a meaning, or understanding what the work 'communicates'. indeed for deleuze ( ) art opens a way for life to emerge: creating isn't communicating but resisting. there's a profound link between signs, events, life, and vitalism: the power of nonorganic life that can be found in a line that's drawn, a line of writing, a line of music. [...] any work of art points a way through for life, finds a way through the cracks. (p. ) hence art, like a book, is not about representing the world, it is "not an image of the world" wrote deleuze and guattari in a thousand plateaus but "it forms a rhizome with the world" (p. ). this dissertation posits that, if the artwork forms a rhizome with the world, as a reminder, for deleuze, experience is a-subjective, because it is not about the internalized, psychological process of a fixed subject pre-existing before the experience; rather, the process of subjectivation emerge within the experience itself (baugh, ; boundas, a; semetsky, ). through one's encounter with the art (as object and what is produced by the encounter, which interestingly is also an idea found in maxine greene), one expands the rhizome and opens more cracks for life to emerge. knowledge about/of the artwork is still important but not as an objective or a destination. the materials, aesthetics choices, the artist's intentions and engagement with themes and ideas do not mark an ontological point of origin but constitute some of the rhizomatic lines that connect the artwork with the world. put simply, drawing from deleuze, the experience of encountering art is not simply a method to allow new encounters and provoke thought, it constitute a mode of living (mccoy, ; stivale, ). following these notes, there will be two brief sections in this chapter. first, i turn to deleuze's ( ) concept of the intercesseur, or the mediator as a springboard to think my role an art/aesthetic educator in light of the new knowledge produced by this study. second, i will consider how a research informed by deleuzian concepts may be generative for research in art museum education, curatorial work, and i contend also useful for museum practices or in the larger field of museum studies interested in visitor's experience. on deleuze's concept of mediators and curricular considerations for art museum education it was the consequence of a fortuitous encounter while screening down some results from an internet search on deleuze. i forgot what my keyword was at the time. albeit also referred to as museology, the term museum studies is the term favored by anglo-american universities and etymologically speaking means the study of the museum (mairesse and desvallées, ). the international council of museums (icom) defines museology as "museum science" and explains it as; [...] the study of the history and background of museums, their role in society, specific systems for research, conservation, education and organization, relationship with the physical environment, and the classification of different kinds of museums" (carbonell, , p. ). unrelated to the context of museums, gilles deleuze's ( ) comment on mediators discovered in an interview translated in negotiations, resonated for me. and yet again, it provoked me to thought but some time went by before i could play and work with the concept. the interview in question was a general conversation with deleuze, loosely covering subjects such as the interplay between philosophy, art and science, and the act of creation, deleuze asserted: mediators are fundamental. creation's all about mediators. without them nothing happens. they can be people―for a philosopher, artists, scientists; for a scientist, philosophers or artists― but things too, even plants or animals, as in castaneda. whether they're real or imaginary, animate or inanimate, you have to form your mediators. it's a series. if you're not in some series, even a completely imaginary one, you're lost. i need my mediators to express myself, and they'd never express themselves without me: you're always working in a group, even when you seem to be on your own. (p. ) on this deleuze is very clear, to produce and create―whether new ideas, visual forms, musical lines, or anything―we need to form our mediators, that is become part, create or embark in a series―however multiple, temporary, unstable and imaginary is the assemblage. again, for me it is important to underline this; one has to form one's mediators; mediators are not assigned 'out there', awaiting to transmit, share, communicate a pre-existing idea. deleuze did not develop or define further the concept of mediators―which, in the text, is only found in its plural form―, if only to mention how michel foucault and félix guattari became his "intercesseurs" allowing him to create and to say what he had to say. neither did he elaborate specifically on the context of museum practice; yet i contend that his views on mediators are generative, if provocative, to produce a new perception of the art museum educator. i see the value in deleuze's way of thinking about mediators because i realize that i have been forming my own mediators―some humans and some non-humans. forming my mediators has enabled, or should i say created the movement of thought, and thus allowing further assemblages with the artwork―thoughts about my inquiry and work as museum educator, new connections and meanings. as i return to my research and pose on it a retrospective gaze, i share what i think have been some of my mediators; mediators which were formed during the experience, not before it. for instance, in ai weiwei's ( - ) sculptural installation bang, the sheer materiality of the delicate yet expertly balanced wood structure towering above and around me was key and especially the moment when a visitor sat on one of the stools. of course, i knew already about ai weiwei and had read various articles on the installation but seeing that man answering the call of an empty, old, hand- crafted chinese wooden stool triggered an entire series of ideas around notions of the individual and the group, labor, traditions, the fragile equilibrium of modernity and change. with background story by xu bing ( ), this may seem anecdotal but the small tree branch coming out to the side of the large frame became my mediator especially when i embarked in the movement of thought as i wrote my narrative. the reader may also remember e., whom i met while looking xu bing's installation, but our conversation soon prompted us to move into another gallery space, and we embarked into a dynamic moment of play―in gadamer's ( ) sense―with sun xun's ( ) video installation. another significant mediator turned out to be a guided tour taken in the early days of the geoffrey farmer's exhibition. as i write these lines, of course i am reminded of john dewey's ( ) critique of the gallery tours that were not conducive, in his view, to quality aesthetic experiences. although i will not open a line of argument against his position, isn't it interesting to note that while being part of a large gallery tour may not be conducive to art encounters-and yet, we never know- a gallery tour, and i would suggest other educational strategies such as text panels, artist talks, printed or digital support, can prompt a visitor to form its own mediators. and, according to deleuze ( ) creation is all about mediators, without them nothing happens. i now take up another challenge raised by this dissertation. albeit without the desire to produce a fix set of prescriptions, i will entertain potential avenues of practice and research for/in art museum education. as i bring into play gilles deleuze's ( ) concept of mediators, all the while looking to understand how the concept of mediators functions, i further aim to "gain insight into what it can do" (bal, , p. ) to tease out what deleuze's use of the term can mean for my role as a museum educator and approaches to curriculum. more precisely, of interest are the concepts of curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived proposed by curriculum scholar ted aoki ( ) and how these could potentially inform one's approaches regarding the educational in the gallery, for instance via the gallery tours, public programs, artist talks, gallery interpretation, or exhibition display. in the next pages, i will cover these points but it is important to remember that, while i enumerated them previously in a linear fashion, working within a deleuzian frame calls for me to address my interests in the art experience, my role as educator and ethics as a way of living, as entangled and connected. instead of the image of the tree imposing, write deleuze and guattari ( ), the verb "to be" (p. ), they prefer the horizontality and type of connectivity of the rhizome whose "fabric [...] is the conjunction, "and...and...and..."" (p. ). i did not choose to focus on the term 'mediator' lightly, especially since the concept has many different and contested definition and uses. these understandings range from being a general term to describe or name the function of the museum, museum exhibition and/or museum educator as interpreter, intercessor or intermediary between the exhibition content or artworks, and the museum public; to indicating someone's role in conflict management, organizational development or restorative justice (andreasen & bang larsen, ). in desvallées and mairesse's ( ) institutional definition for the international council of museums (icom), museum or cultural mediation refers to a wide range of activities carried out in "order to build bridges between that which is exhibited (seeing) and the meanings that these objects and sites may carry (knowledge)" (p. ), the definition also recognizes the subjective quest for self-discovery through the act of mediation. this metaphor of the mediator/museum educator as a bridge or as providing means and opportunities to bridge one side to the other over a gap, is a powerful metaphor which has fueled my work for many years. but working with deleuzian concepts is inviting me to shift away from the metaphor of the bridge, towards perceiving my role as one who puts in place 'milieus' as sites of experiences where visitors can form their own desiring-assemblages with artworks, knowledge, ideas, other beings and place. we as persons are a set of connections, and throughout this dissertation journey i was never alone, being always already connected to other interlocutors; first of all, with the immediate circle of my doctoral committee, but i further engaged in written-but also imaginary- conversations with philosophers john dewey, maurice merleau-ponty, hans georg gadamer, maxine greene, and of course gilles deleuze and felix guattari. these have been, and still remain as i write these lines, the mediators populating my series, my research- assemblage, and thus allowing me to create a movement of thought, produce new knowledge and the art encounter and my role as a museum educator. as mentioned previously, mediators can be people, material or imaginary, animate or inanimate. over time, i have formed a mediator out of my own art encounter and the myriad of human, non-human, conceptual materialities, such as my research notebook, not only because of what it contains in terms of data, observations and thoughts but browsing through, and reading through my notes has prompted the movement of thought. i formed inanimate but forceful mediators, as i strolled into geoffrey farmer's work the last two million years, responding to the materiality of the work which called for my body bend down, twist and turn while carefully stretching my neck in order to get a closer look at the delicate cut-out paper figurines. lastly on this point, i agree with deleuze that one needs to form one's mediators to create the movement of thought. but, my finding is that i cannot determine in advance what mediator i will form, or put another way, what mediator an art experience can allow me to encounter. before closing this chapter, i return to my role as an art museum educator and flowing thoughts on curriculum. not curriculum in the conventional understanding of a course of study but rather, the way pinar ( ) contends how "through the curriculum and our experience of it, we choose what to remember about the past, what to believe about the present, what to hope for and fear about the future" (p. ). each artwork i encountered in this study encompasses a multiplicity of complex knowledge- related to politics, culture, history, art practices, identity, technology and the environment, etc.- brought forward in the material/conceptual choices made by the artists. furthermore, each experience as a desiring- encounter produced the work as art, produced new connections and ideas i never thought before experiencing the artwork. thinking the art encounter as desiring-assemblage produced my subjectivation as difference and becoming, but this was a process which happened without me noticing it because things/ideas can emerge much later in time. the specific assemblage i momentarily created with/in the artwork may break but some lines in the encounter as desiring-assemblage pursue their course, and create new lines of thought. deleuze's ( ) concept of mediators caught my attention because, drawing from this study, i consider it the most important role for art museum educators (and curators). but again, not mediators as the metaphors of the bridge linking two fixed entities, but the mediator needing to be formed. this brings me back to aoki's ( ) notion of the curriculum-as-planned and the curriculum-as-lived. an equivalent in museum education of the curriculum-as-planned in aoki would be, for instance the various steps for an arts based workshop or a gallery tour outline. the curriculum-as-lived are the lines of escape made, pokes, created, opened inside the tour outline of the planned steps in the studio because a participant wants to experiment something different, a visitor makes a comment of question during the tour and the entire group moves along to discuss another topic, explore another work not previously in the outline. in the context of my study, my main point is to claim that while our role as museum educators is to create that milieu of experimentation for our visitors, yet in terms of the curriculum-as-lived, we will never know what mediators the visitors will form. we will never know what, when or how encounters will happen, and what desiring-assemblages have been formed. addressing teachers at the lincoln center institute, greene ( ) explained it well as she reminded everyone that there is no guarantee that their students will value the artwork, "anymore than there is any guarantee that they will have an aesthetic experience with it" (p. ). but mostly, engaging with the arts is to foster increased attentiveness, open-mindedness and "a sense of exploration" (p. ) and, with the help of imagination, "open windows on the actual and disclose visions of what might be" (p. ). this brings me to my last point; what i see as the ethical dimension of being and experimenting with the arts and my interest in deleuze's project of immanent ethics. as outlined by marks ( ), while deleuze is not interested in morals which are a way of judging life in terms of what it should be, he is strongly committed to ethics which asks how to live in this world. for deleuze, ethics is related to becoming―as the very dynamism of change moving towards no specific goal (stagoll, a). so becoming is not about changing from one state of being towards another, becoming is always in the middle because there is no arrival point, no destination. most important to remember is that deleuze embraces a philosophy of immanence; a philosophy of connection and relations in and not to something (j. williams, ). what does this imply? this is how it should be done according to deleuze and guattari ( ): [...] lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times. (...) connect, conjugate, continue: a whole “diagram” as opposed to still signifying and subjective programs. (p. ) becoming therefore, is not about moving towards transcendent values―such as hoping or moving towards becoming a view of the self as we should or hope to be. for deleuze, this view of becoming prevents us from actualizing the potentials that are already in life. and how do we actualize those potentials? through experimentation, because only in experimentation can we have encounters. throughout this study, i have aimed to bring the reader into this inquiry process and created an invitation to study the visual arts as a privileged milieu of experimentation and encounter. as gilles deleuze and félix guattari ( ) have suggested; "we will ask what it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not transmit intensities" (p. ). in this quote, the 'it' i want to see and think as the artwork, the space of the gallery, the exhibition display. in closing this section, i wish to bring forward again the connections between life as formed by virtualities (not possibilities because the term implies a goal outside of), and through/in experiences and experimentations or encounter, one actualizes something―yet one can never tell in advance what the body will do. deleuze ( b) condenses all these ideas in the last text written shortly before his death in . he writes; we will say of pure immanence that it is a life, and nothing more. it is not immanent to life, but the immanence that is in nothing else is itself a life. [...] a life contains only virtuals. it is composed of virtualities, event, singularities. what i am calling virtual is not something that lacks reality. rather, the virtual becomes engaged in a process of actualization as it follows the place which gives it its proper reality. the immanent event is actualized in a state of things and in a state of lived experience. (pp. - ) this quote could become a motto for art museum educators; it is important to consider and value the art experience, simply to live an experience of encountering for one never knows what it can connect with, that will depend on each person's political, social, cultural, or personal assemblage, and what virtual potentialities will be actualized. furthermore, educators will also recognize the educational in terms of what the art encounter produces; whether different knowledge, learning, meaning-making or self-expression. and even perhaps, new avenues for research. this will be examined in the next section. considerations for research in art museum education this study began by posing a question; what particular reality of the art encounter ―not in terms of being or the essence of what something 'is', but as process― emerge or is generated when using the concepts of encounter, desire and assemblage (deleuze and guattari, )? in order to proceed, i first accepted lather and st.pierre's ( ) call to consider the ethical responsibility regarding one's work as inquirer, i accepted to "question our attachments that keep us from thinking and living differently" (p. ). as described in the introduction and chapter one, in my work as a museum educator, i had long relied upon late twentieth century empirical research on the art museum experience, inquiries rooted in representational logic and binaries such as subject/object, mind/body, discourse/matter, self/other. but, from the beginning of this study i was determined to adopt a philosophical and methodological approach that embraced connections and multiplicities, rather than one reproducing the humanist binary logic of dichotomies invested with hierarchy and power. and thus, i decided to think the un-thought and explore a different path, somehow not the one already cut out by the inquiry methods well respected and frequently used in my professional and academic circle of art museum educational research, such as: process of data generation from interviews or the thinking aloud method, coding and extracting themes and then proceeding to the analysis. instead i turned to research as assemblage and found insights, such as working with the methodological concepts of contiguity and living inquiry, in the arts-based research methodology of a/r/tography. the research-assemblage was a constellation of scratch notes, sounds, artworks, fleeting images of visitors walking by, a computer screen where the embodied act of reading my notes and typing also re-create anew an encounter yet differently for my purpose, of looking closer at one of my photograph and noticing a detail which had escaped me in xu bing's( ) installation background story, remembering e. telling me how things happen after, grappling with deleuzian thought by my side, thinking of brook who might never have stood at the exact spot where vermeer framed his composition had he not, by chance, encountered view of delft. but the summing up of all this is not the research-assemblage, it is in the connections and how each aspect of research impacts on the other, at different speeds, time or mode of expression. yet, how to account for the importance in this study of walking in/among the artworks, a walking necessary to encounter the artworks but also, the walking translated or re-enacted in textual and visual language? a/r/tography (irwin, ; irwin & springgay, ; springgay et al., ) provided insights, and i found particularly generative the methodological concepts, called renderings ( , p. xxviii), of living inquiry and contiguity. this study on the experience of encountering art could not have been done without the performative walking and being in the gallery space but, the living inquiry can also be, springgay et al. ( ) explains, "an embodied encounter constituted through visual and textual understandings and experiences" (p. ). to deleuze, experience is a milieu that provides the potential and the capacity to be affected. in this research, the walking, being in the gallery, the text and the photographs are not simply modes of representing (although they are this as well), brought together in contiguity is performing the knowing in relations. hence, knowing does not reside in either one of those three nodes (walking, text, visual), but in-between them when they are brought in relation. it is important to mention that even though it has been difficult not to mention the 'i' in relation to 'my' experience, informed by postqualitative research, i do not presume experience as "a stable source of knowledge but as an event that needs to be constantly reinterpreted again and again" (jackson and mazzei, , p. ). but rather, as richardson and st.pierre suggest ( ), i write in order to think and inquire, but also i would add, to mindfully map some desiring assemblage created in the art encounter. the art encounter is not a phenomenon with a fixed, all-knowing viewer (in my case also researcher) internalizing the experience of something 'out-there', an experience which can be isolated and traced in order to fix and essentialize boundaries of course, some enactment of boundaries is necessary and impossible to avoid (law, ); i could mention for instance, my choices of artworks where i decided to linger, the impact of my body and the richness or 'quality' of fieldnotes whether i was more or less tired or hungry, and my linguistic representations for this dissertation are just a few examples of the cuts and boundaries i establish. what is important, reminds john law in after method: mess in social science research ( ), is that conventional methods of the normative kind precisely strive to control and determine fixed boundaries, but what he claims is important if we want to attend to complexity and multiplicity, is to find methods where we "might imagine more flexible boundaries" (p. ). this is what i aimed to demonstrate in working with deleuzian concepts to inquire into the art encounter in an art museum setting. in the introduction and chapter three, i shared my interest in the generative potential of gilles deleuze's philosophical ideas (and his collaborative writings with félix guattari), to see a different art encounter emerge because i put to work a set of concepts such as encounter, rhizome, assemblage and desire. more specifically, the entire dissertation writing process became a desiring-assemblage, echoing what brian massumi ( ) described provocatively in parables of the virtual; "if you know where you will end up when you begin, nothing has happened in the meantime. and that you have to be willing to surprise yourself "writing things you didn't think you thought" (p. ). as discussed in chapter two to five, drawing from a number of theoretical concepts, i engaged deleuze and guattari's thinking about desire as a force circulating and producing of the assemblage, to support my study for an understanding of the art encounter as a multiplicity and a dynamic assemblage emerging in/through the meeting, relationality and intra-acting of bodies, spaces, discourses, and various materialities. an assemblage through which desire circulates and acts as a flow producing new ideas and subjectivity. albeit i recognize the benefits i gained as a museum educator from the knowledge put forward in empirical and qualitative studies of visitors' experiences, i remain cautious about researcher's quest for more exacting methods of recording and coding but i also wonder what art museum educational research is thus shadowing and how we can collaborate so as to give due place to the materiality and fluid complexity of encountering artworks in a gallery space. thinking with deleuze made me consider the fieldnotes and my narratives not as a way to capture with words the art encounter as presence. on the contrary, i see fieldnotes and the narratives as operating on the deleuzian mode of the and, and, and,... hence as a process (a desiring-assemblage) thus adding multiple connections to the space of possibilities. my point is not that conventional qualitative methods should be abandoned in art museum educational research, absolutely not. nonetheless, i agree with social scientist john law ( ) who suggests that inquirers―and i think this applies well to my topic and my own work― should 'unmake' many, [...] methodological habits including: the desire for certainty; the expectation that we can usually arrive at more or less stable conclusions about the way things really are; the belief that as social scientists we have special insights that allow us to see further than others into certain parts of social reality; and the expectations of generality that are wrapped up in what is often called 'universalism'. but, first of all we need to unmake our desire and expectation for security. (p. ) on a similar note, rebecca coleman and jessica ringrose ( ) also make a stand, in their edited book deleuze and research methodologies, for research methodologies interested and capable of addressing "the issue of multiplicity [which] is currently central within the social sciences" (p. ). the crafting of his study along deleuzian ideas enabled a folding both a research methodology, as a multiplicity which is a complex structure not part of something larger or with any prior unity (roffe, ), and the enactment of my object of study; the experience of encountering art as a desiring-assemblage. encounter - closing time: frank zappa and lingering thoughts of an art museum educator closing time. it was the last day, the last hour of the geoffrey farmer exhibition how do i fit this ghost in my mouth? at the vancouver art gallery. the idea, metaphor, representation of time is a recurrent theme and compositional motif in farmer's exhibition: institutional time, personal history, history as discourse, traces of time in the found object, passage of time, the time of artistic labor, clocks marking time, my own body experiencing the time it takes to move in/through the artworks. farmer is able to somehow poetically materialize and visualize time, yet how i wish he could slow down the movement of time. how i wanted to turn what felt like time as crystalline water running through my fingers into a viscous substance, resisting the flow and embracing slow time so i could dwell longer, and continue to be affected and be surprised by the works. but this wasn't going to happen. and now here i am over a year and a half later, sitting at my computer, pouring over my field notes, looking at visual traces of my walks through the exhibition, and ready to embark in writing the last chapter of my doctoral dissertation. in this closing section, i return to the questions which prompted this study yet, my theoretical stance implies that i do not address my research questions as problems needing to be fixed or taken one step closer to being resolved, but rather as ways of developing a different theoretical and conceptual vocabulary, and mapping a new territory to develop and expand research on the art encounter. by no means, does this study discount the significant body of research addressing the cognitive, emotional and social components of the art experience. but instead of trying to find the meaning of what an art encounter 'is' or can be, this study is interested in the "onflow...of everyday life" (thrift, , p. ), and aiming to inquire the affective, embodied, relational experience of encountering art in a gallery context. while the desire to write my conclusion in the form of a narrative writing was not part of the original plan, somehow now i long to push back the moment of inscribing the final period, and wish to continue dwelling with/in the last artwork i visited during my research-assemblage at the vancouver art gallery. and so here i am, sitting at my computer with my field notes and glancing at the visual traces of my art encounter as a moment in time. i enjoyed scribbling notes and words in the same way that roland barthes ( ) wrote about "language is a skin. [...] it is as if", he said, "i had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words" (p. ). even though as bruno latour ( ) reminds us, any mode of inscription invariably flattens our experience of the world, during my field work, the writing and taking pictures was a way to linger with the works, lovingly touch them with my gaze. resisting the predominance of data-driven research in our time of accountability, post-qualitative scholars such as jackson ( ), maclure ( ), mazzei ( ), nordstrom ( ), st.pierre ( , ) have started to trouble and complicate the conventional methods which treat data as a reflection of reality, data as ready to be coded and categorized. throughout this study, i do not consider the data generated in the field notes, the photographs as "speaking for itself by stabilising the essential 'being-ness'" (jackson, , p. ) of an art encounter, instead i see the field notes and photographs them as intricate and dynamic parts both producing the encounter and as part of the research-assemblage. the material documents are important because our mutual 'intra-action', to borrow barad's ( ) terminology, enacts and constitutes my art encounters and my thinking as a researcher. the clock is ticking, it's now time to move along. only one hour left to linger in let's make the water turn black, the last installation piece in the exhibition. i walk through the narrow opening separating the room where the surgeon and the photographer is displayed into the low-lit corridor and liminal space leading to, a projection room on my left, and a banal set of closed doors with the sign "theatre entrance" on my right. the marquee style light box grabs my attention. i have passed by it frequently, sometimes only glancing because i was touring a group and would stop to point it out, or then i quickly read the first paragraphs in my impatience to move into the installation. like the synopsis of a theatrical play, the poster explains: "this is a work in progress...it is not a rock and roll biography. here everything becomes melody or sculpture play." i learn about some excerpts included in the installation's soundtrack, such as; a talking doll recorded by edison in , an excerpt from k. schwitters, a piece by john cage from . there are also beautiful quotes allowing me to understand again how this piece will inquire time; the quotes alluding to the relation between time and sound- the soundtrack being chronologically organized to parallel frank zappa's life span, and time conceivable as an image. the door gently responds to the pull of my hand and soon my body feels swallowed into a world of collaged sounds and fluctuating jewel-like colors created by the lights. i am always surprised by the spectacle of the low stage crowded with 'characters' made of salvaged props from movie sets or the theatre, and an eclectic selection of found, quirky, bizarre and often hilarious objects. some of the props are animated sporadically, other objects are adorned with light bulbs switching on and off with different rhythms. the room is mesmerizing, a theatrical performance with non- human actors is underway. no matter how often i have entered this space, i always feel that words -even visual or audio recordings for that matter- can't do justice to the piece, and neither be exacting enough to enact my encountering. what's going on? this performance appears to be an organized and well-orchestrated chaos, but i think it is preferable to let the body accept to be carried away by the momentum of the piece. accepting just to see, sense, and hear what will happen next. in art matters, philosopher peter de bolla ( ) wrote about the affective experience of being in "breathless wonder" (p. ), but furthermore, the state of wonderment "requires us to acknowledge what we do not now or may never know [...] it is, then, a different species of knowledge [..] " (p. ). this is a crucial point; "the real is a closely woven fabric" (p. xi) wrote merleau-ponty ( ), and this is precisely the metaphor which i find generative to think my experience of encountering farmer's installation; not as the fixed perceiver outside 'of' but as part of a woven (relational) fabric made of sounds, my own affects in response to the materiality of the artwork, images, ambiances, other bodies walking by, the theatricality of the display, and the curatorial discourse. in farmer's exhibition design, a particular attention was brought to the flow of visitors, of one's movement through the spaces, like a storyline or thematic thread weaving one's experience in/of the exhibition as narrative discourse. as i turn my head, i notice right next to the doorway, neatly placed on the wall, a didactic panel explaining that the title of the installation let's make the water turn black ( - ) refers to a composition by the american musician frank zappa. rich in information, the text details geoffrey's farmer's interest in experimental musical structures and interest towards composers such as pierre schaeffer and edgar varèse, zappa's own experimentation with recorded sounds and various cut-up techniques employed by writers kathy acker and william s. burroughs. like every person entering the art gallery, i come to the artworks with always already a considerable amount of personal, cultural, educational, psychological baggage. what's more, in my case as an art historian and museum educator, i have also been long immersed and become familiar with the language of contemporary art. nonetheless today i am quite-pleasantly perplexed and dumbfounded by the complexity of farmer's installation and the information provided by the art gallery about farmer's installation is extremely relevant and welcome. relevant for what, one might ask? throughout her book variations on a blue guitar, maxine greene ( ) repeatedly insists that it is "best to have informed encounters" (p. ) in order to have richer and "more vivid, more consequential" (p. ) experiences with the arts. by 'consequential', i think greene alludes and is in accord with john dewey's ( / ), admonition that to be of quality, an experience must lead to growth (p. ) but also, in terms of its effects, that it lives "fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences" (p. ). as william pinar ( ) remarks, by knowing more, greene is not so much interested in academic knowledge or information, as with the lived experience "providing a passage to imaginary worlds" (p. ). nonetheless, greene ( ) does acknowledge that teachers do have a role in empowering “individuals to notice what there is to be noticed in the works of art" (p. ). who gets to decide what is important to notice opens up an entire set of questions already addressed in critical museology (see hooper-greenhill, ; karp & lavine, ; mcclellan, ; sherman & rogoff, ). with this in mind, i do think it is the role of art museum curators and educators to provide and offer, among other practical/intellectual/physical considerations, situated information which can help critically frame one's understanding, interpretation and encounter with an artwork (bal, ). and more specifically, drawing from the work of deleuze and guattari ( ), i suggest that an important role for curator and educator is to create and offer various conditions to engage with art, and these may perhaps be for some visitors a milieu of experimentation. a milieu where visitors can possibly make encounters and be pushed to thought. and one can be pushed to thought, or create an assemblage leading to new ideas and becomings, not only in relation to the artworks (as object or situation), but also in relation to a gallery space, other visitors or, a new element of information read on a panel. as i stroll along and linger in let's make the water turn black, i realize how the information panel has become one more line in my encounter as assemblage. for instance, the panel explains that farmer has structured the soundtrack which is part of the multimedia installation, in relation to the opening hours of the gallery. when the art gallery opens to the public at am until closing time, the artist and his collaborator created a soundtrack corresponding to frank zappa's life cycle, and significant events in american history. knowing this made me listen with renewed attentiveness. yet the assemblage also produces new ideas/questions which did not exist, or would not have presented themselves before my art encounter-as i wish to make clear, composed of the objects of display but also the gallery space, the sounds and lights, the other visitors, the information provided. i have become fascinated how an artwork spatializes and visualizes time, and how farmer has explored, in my view, the biographical and produced a fabulously rich portrait of frank zappa, in a non-representational way. a bench by the side of the gallery is gently inviting me to sit down, all for the privilege of a different point of view. other visitors around me are doing the same. in terms of physical experience, this installation is very different from storeroom overture or the last two million years where my body had to constantly move around and negotiate that space to be able to see. there is definitely a theatrical quality in let's make the water turn black. a security guard who recognizes me approaches, he tells me of a woman who stayed a long time in this work and upon hearing a parody of the blue danube waltz spontaneously embarked in an improvised dance around the space. she received a warm hand of applause. what a fabulous art encounter and rich assemblage she created, one that produced a line of flight expressing itself as a dance. this is precisely why i wish to argue in favor of exploring methodological approaches regarding the experience of encountering art to expand on the well-rehearsed techniques of tracking or the 'thinking aloud method' or exit surveys. people around me are chatting and pointing now and then towards a prop acting as a pendulum, a visual pun, the poetry of a moment. i notice some people stepping closer to the low-raised platform, one person bends down to get a better look at something. the eloquent body gesture makes me curious; this is intriguing, what secret of the work might i be missing as i sit here comfortably? letting myself be taken over by the fragmented but mesmerizing soundtrack, and swallowed by the colored lights, i make a mental note to go and have a look a well, in a moment, not yet. as i write these notes a year and a half later, i realize that i cannot remember all the props and objects in the installation, and yet i did experience a vivid encounter. but my body does relive, recreate the suspended moment of watching the other visitors also engaged with the installation. except that i will never know what their assemblage will produce. at the time, i still had no idea what my desiring-assemblage with farmer's installation let's make the water turn black would produce.... yesterday while i was writing this narrative, a visual of the marquee style light box at the entrance of farmer's installation was on my computer and i glanced at it again. suddenly a sentence in the poster jumped out for me. in her materially informed post-qualitative research, maclure ( ) aims to show that data is not simply to be seen as "inert and indifferent mass waiting to be in/formed and calibrated by our analytic acumen" (p. ), because a piece of data can affect the researcher, data can "glow"(p. ). the piece of data that glowed for me was constituted by the following words: "[...] time has transfixed itself within the sound. there is still movement, but it has become nothing more than the breathing of the sound itself." i wasn't sure if the words were from geoffrey farmer or the list of names written at the bottom of the poster; such as edgar varèse, frank zappa, morton fieldman. i am in a race against the clock to finish writing my conclusion, but i was too curious, i just had to know. thus, i reactivated the desiring-assemblage previously established with farmer's piece and needed to find out who had spoken so beautifully the idea of time as the breathing of sound. it was : am but i started to explore, and after an internet research i discovered that the quote was from new york musician morton feldman ( ), a pioneer of experimental music defined as 'indeterminate', friend of composer john cage and abstract expressionist painter jackson pollock (diggory, ). i became mesmerized by the slow sounds of his composition rothko chapel. yet, my dissertation was calling and, after some wonderful and luxuriously suspended time, i decided to cut the assemblage and stop listening. still too much work to do, but i know i will someday return to study feldman's musical pieces. why do i mention what may appear as a banal anecdote or a trivial bifurcation in the narrative about my experience of encountering let's make the water turn black? briefly put, there are two reasons; one relates to contributions brought forward in this study of the art encounter with the deleuzian concepts of desiring-assemblage, the other concerns research in art museum education. indeed, i want to pause for a moment and return to what was for me an unexpected encounter with a poetic quote chosen by the artist geoffrey farmer for his installation. an encounter perhaps aided by the dissertation research as a milieu that prompted a possible encounter, but a contingent encounter nonetheless which pushed me to thought: i want to know more about the relationship between time and sound, i want to read more about farmer's fascination with time and interest in experimental music, etc. what does it do or in what way is it generative to think of the art encounter with the concept of desiring-assemblage? my seemingly trivial anecdote might be considered irrelevant, not interesting or difficult to account for with regards to empirical and socio- constructivist research since these focus, and not surprisingly so, on the visitor's experience inside the art gallery. as i have attempted to show in this study, thinking with deleuzian concepts enacts a view of the art encounter as one where affects move a body to create assemblages (some more generative than others, however of long or short duration with things, ideas, spaces, sounds. creating an assemblage allows desire to circulate, thus producing the artwork as art, new thoughts, ideas, subjectivation. thinking with deleuze means thinking in terms of rhizome, mutiplicities and assemblages, rather than the dichotomy intellectual knowledge/embodied experience. but most important in this research, is that as framed by deleuzian theory, but also in conversation with dewey, merleau-ponty, gadamer, greene, the emerging contribution is that all, in their own ways, have proposed a view of the arts as a privileged space for a different kind of knowing in being. albeit written for a different context, the following quote by rita irwin ( ) brings together well this idea of an aesthetic knowing in being: an aesthetic awareness open to wonder and surrender, while being attuned to what is unfolding. rather than relying on structures or routines to form final products, surrendering to the unknown often brings disruption and surprise that in turn allows aesthetic knowing to emerge. (p. ) as examined in this study, the experience of encountering art can be a shock to thought (deleuze), a need to submit to the tutelage of perception (merleau-ponty), or daring to shake the familiar and the known. this knowing in being i see as creating openings towards questions of deleuzian ethics and “how to be in the world’. there's a knowing in being and yet, as an art museum educator most certainly i can and will never know what the art encounter produced, or when a line of flight as thought or process will end or, via a seemingly banal experience, be activated again. "the art gallery is now closed marie-france. it's time to go.", gently said j. the security guard. somehow farmer’s multimedia installation still evades me, but that's fine. i remember that for deleuze ( ), being with art is not about interpretation and ascribing meaning. on the contrary, the work of art is: "a theatre where nothing is fixed, a labyrinth without a thread (ariadne has hung herself). the work of art leaves the domain of representation in order to become 'experience' [...] " (p. ). i glanced around the room once more, trying to swallow in the installation through my skin, breathe in the sounds and colors, slow down time. this desiring- assemblage in the gallery space may be physically terminating, but lines of flight as ideas and desires are always already creating new ones. references aoki, t. t. ( ). curriculum in a new key. the collected works of ted t. aoki. (w. f. pinar & r. l. irwin, eds.). new york & london: routledge. baker, j. 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( ). sailing accross the cook strait. in m. brown & b. humberstone (eds.), seascapes: shaped by the sea. embodied narratives and fluid geographies (pp. – ). london & new york: routledge. appendix a - oral consent script department of curriculum and pedagogy faculty of education university of british columbia main mall vancouver, b.c. canada v t z telephone ( ) - fax ( ) - oral consent script on the art encounter in museum spaces: thinking with deleuze and guattari’s concept of desire version august , study team principal investigator: dr. dònal o’donoghue, department of curriculum & pedagogy, ubc faculty of education. co-investigator: marie-france berard, phd candidate, department of curriculum & pedagogy, ubc faculty of education. this research is being conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for marie-france berard’s doctorate of philosophy program of study. data from this study will be made public in her dissertation and any associated publications. purpose of the study this dissertation research is an investigation into the art encounter; what does it mean to encounter art? is encountering art simply about looking, experiencing, being in the physical proximity of the artwork, getting to know an artwork or seeing it for the first time? can the art encounter resonate in time, days or weeks after experiencing a work, can casually strolling in the gallery also be an encounter with art? what does the art encounter produce? through the researcher’s autobiographical and phenomenological writings, this study examines how the art encounter functions in terms of the complex and intertwined play of affects, looking and being in the presence of artworks, the display, but also memory and time, the materiality of the gallery space, the wall texts provided by the museum or the social aspect of other visitors present in the gallery. you are invited to participate in this study because you have directly interacted with the researcher to talk about your art experience. study procedures if you accept to participate in this research, you will encounter the following procedure: the researcher will take written field notes of the conversation. there is no time commitment; your participation is voluntary, you may refuse to participate, and you may end the conversation and withdraw at any time. study results the results of this study will be reported in a graduate doctoral dissertation, at academic conferences, and published in academic journal articles and books. potential benefits of this study participating in this study may offer some benefits to you in terms of enriching your social experience at the vancouver art gallery and being an opportunity to learn about art. confidentiality the researcher will take written notes of the conversation but it will not be audio or video recorded. you will not be asked to provide your identity or sign a form and your identity will remain anonymous. only the study team has access to the written field notes, which will be stored on a secure computer or a locked filing cabinet on the ubc campus. until it is no longer deemed necessary, data may be selectively circulated through publications and conferences. contact for information about the study if you have any questions or concerns about this study, please contact marie-france berard or dr. dònal o’donoghue. their names and telephone numbers and emails are listed at the top of the first page of this form. contact for complaints if you have any concerns about your experience while participating in this study, you may contact the research subject information line in the ubc office of research services at - - or if long distance email rsil@ors.ubc.ca or call toll free - - - . &# ;let's make a list&# ;: james schuyler's taxonomic autobiography journal of american studies,  (), , – #  cambridge university press doi : .}s printed in the united kingdom ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography w i l l i a m w a t k i n august ��, ���� a few sound[s] are embedded in the fog – a gull mewing, different far off fog horns – like unset polished stones laid out in cotton wool. tuesday, march �, ���� at six  the heavy gray burns a heavier blue. rain, water drops clinging to the balcony. there is an ethical consideration in james schuyler’s diary. while we have spent the last fifty years grappling with the aesthetic problems of how to represent the unrepresentable, how to present the unpresentable, and how to signify the significant, little time has been spent considering the status of representations of the unremarkable. there is a whole history in american poetry and literature of validating the everyday, making it special, but schuyler never really does that. are things special just because we say so, or rather because we note them down ? do we name things into being, at least linguistic or literary being ? the diary asks these questions and in doing so it broaches the kind of postmodern ethical questions that one finds in the recent work of lyotard, derrida, and nancy." these questions are significant not in the normal sense of the reasons for such interrogations or the answers expected, but rather because they represent william watkin teaches in the english department of brunel university, faculty of arts and social sciences, uxbridge,  . " i am referring in particular to jean-franc: ois lyotard, the differend : phrases in dispute, trans. george van den abbeele (minneapolis : university of minnesota press, ), a diversity of texts by jacques derrida including politics of friendship, trans. george collins (london : verso, ), and the gift of death, trans. david wills (chicago : university of chicago press, ), and jean luc nancy, the inoperative community, trans. peter connor, lisa garbus, michael holland, and simona sawhney (minnea- polis : university of minnesota press, ).  william watkin a desire on the part of schuyler to ask after otherness, to try to elicit a response from the other while respecting that such a response may not be comprehensible even if it is forthcoming. i would like here to posit a desire to ask after the other first before one asks after oneself, to enquire without any hope of a satisfactory answer as such as the postmodern ethical position, and to suggest that the autobiographical slant of schuyler’s work is, paradoxically considering the nature of autobiography, just such a positioning of his self in relation to the world. despite critics’ attempts to the contrary, it has to be said that the overall feeling one gets from the diary is that of the mundanity of ordinary existence. the two excerpts above are a case in point. the details noted are notable because they are noted ; they have been denominated, which is not a simple thing after all. the ‘‘ few sounds ’’ start out vague. their number is unknown, more than one less than many, and they are lost in fog. sounds cannot be lost in fog, so the things in question have been reduced to their aural synecdoches : a gull’s voice stands in for the gull proper, horns stand in for an uncertain number of boats. nor can sounds be ‘‘ embedded ’’ in fog. however hard schuyler tries to get at these things and name them, he can’t. there are no ideas but in things ; things as they are changed ‘‘ upon my blue guitar, ’’ yes certainly, but there are no things in writing. so when he tries to render the sounds more physically for us, he has to compare them to unpolished stones, perhaps semi-precious, but this seemingly objectivist gesture is nothing of the sort. they are stones because these sounds were embedded like stones. they are like stones because they are unlike themselves. they are more like stones, in fact, than they are like themselves. they once were set but now they are not, were once a part of the fog’s blanching continuum, now they rest on top like exhibits or samples. they seem nude and vulnerable these things. what things ? there are no things, only words, motifs, tropes, and half-hearted aspirations after something that never even existed. was it worth it ? the second, later entry begins the day in the realm of the object and of everyday specifics, and gets no further. we have time, and we have date. the place, by way of interest, is schuyler’s room in the chelsea hotel on new york’s rd street. the poet is assiduous in his attempt to render the actual colour of the sky at this time of day and how it is changing, but he succeeds no more than turner or monet, and they had the right materials to hand. in fact one might wonder whether any artist has ever been able to render even the nature of an actual atmosphere, let alone those liminal times when light and humidity are at their most evanescent, lustrous, and strange. speaking personally, i have never seen ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  or read a convincing representation of the subtle modifications that are inherent within our climate. all climate is change and people talk of the current climate because that’s the only climate there is, this one. art has no chance of presenting the unpresentable or the actually present, nor does it have any chance of presenting the not very presentable, such as the tatty gray edges of another polluted early march manhattan morning. perhaps less chance, for there is no motivation. the rain is rendered, but it isn’t rain’ raising questions like what do you call rain after it has, and are these grounded drops really rain ? anyway, they don’t touch the ground as something has intervened on the descent of these other things, again we don’t know how many exactly, so the drops are suspended in mid air. they cling to the balcony, midway between the noun ‘‘ rain ’’ and the absent noun ‘‘ puddle, ’’ both strangely singular and collective nouns. it is not clear if they cling there to stop being rain anymore, or to stop them becoming nothing as some dirty puddle subsumes their very being. perhaps i was wrong to say these entries are mundane, it could be that these diary entries are the most gentle, the most profound, the most ethical, and so the most human of all documents. who cares what the sound does to the thing proper when the thing is withheld from sight ? who worries about the specificity of gray versus dark blue at six .. ? who dares speak out on behalf of the status of individual raindrops encountered at the very limits of their hardly-even-being ? james schuyler is one of the few modern poets who ever bothered to do this, let alone who could. he cares about objects not because he valorises the banal or hokey, he loves faberge! eggs just as much as dirty rain, nor to make a point about objects in general : that they are important, or that they are not subjects. i don’t think he is ever really depressed about the passing of things, but then he need not be because he did the right thing by them. he dealt with them when they were there, in their current climate. schuyler cares about things as they are, even if they are hardly anything. his diary, along with his poetry, explores the ethics of the presentation of the hardly remarkable thing, and in doing so he never makes it more remarkable than it actually is. which really is remarkable. this article sets out simply to remark on how the objectivist poetry of james schuyler is conveyed through the forms of selfish subjectivity, such as the diary. not so much how he deals with the object, which i don’t think he really does because he realises that he can’t as language cannot directly treat the thing, but how he deals with his own sense of self through discourse with the object ; any and every object. the poet as maker and namer, of making through naming, a process of naming things as a form of making space  william watkin for a certain sort of self-effacing poetic subjectivity, this is what i mean by schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography. the taxonomic aspect of james schuyler’s work from the fifties on, seems to present this already modest poet at his most minimal agency, relinquishing his subjectivity in favour of the material of signification, and reducing his modes of interposing with empathy on the real world in favour of the novelty of naming. in contrast to this, the diaristic tendency of another strain of schuyler’s work, culminating in the diary of ,# seems to operate in a manner of maximum agency. a tendency much more apparent in the later pieces, wayne koestenbaum speaks for a number of critics in noting the similarity between the famous schuyler diary and his poetry : it is possible that schuyler considered his prose diaries to be mildly broken into poetic lines but lacked the energy to decide about all the breaks so left the entries in prose paragraphs whose arrangement on his typed page was nonetheless fastidious. evidently he perceived continuity between his prose and poetry …$ and indeed schuyler notes the poems tend themselves to appear chronologically in his various collections, which gives them a diaristic continuity as one reads through them.% the diary, the journal, the almanac, and the home book ; all these are forms of autobiographical writing used in the schuyler œuvre, and seem to contravene the apparent objectivist aspect of his poetry, as well as producing a very basic tension between the process of naming and the process of being. in fact the two tendencies develop in a parallel fashion as the two extremes of the more integrated poems, tending either to be removed from the published canon in the case of the more extreme list poems,& or relegated to the diary in # schuyler died  apr. . the last diary entry is  jan. . $ wayne koestenbaum, ‘‘ epitaph on rd street : the poetics of james schuyler, ’’ parnassus,  (), . % responding to mark hillringhouse’s comment that his poems are arranged seasonally schuyler notes : ‘‘ i tend to arrange them … in the order in which they were written as best i can just because there is a sequence of time. i also divide them up into the various places where they were written ’’ mark hillringhouse, ‘‘ james schuyler : an interview, ’’ american poetry review (mar}april ), . & the best example of this is the unpublished ‘‘ catalog ’’ which begins : ‘‘ blood-root and shy hepatica } ball violets } in thin grass } at the edge of a wood … } what other flowers are there ? ’’ (james schuyler, mandeville special collection, ucsd, san diego ms. ). however, there are actually a number of unpublished pieces in the mandeville special collection archive at ucsd, which indicate that perhaps schuyler experimented very consciously with taxonomy as a major poetic practice, only to later relegate it to being an aspect of a more integrated approach. for further reference see poems such as ‘‘ nozema sensodyne, ’’ ‘‘ marbelize, thru-way, orlon, howdy, musculature, pinkie, } troglodyte, petting, asonal, snipe, muck, crimp ’’ ; ‘‘ mr. honey’s cuff notes, ’’ ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  the case of diaristic tendencies. both return back into the canon in numerous forms, but they are generally seen as lesser poetic modes of expression. a median position in this little history of taxonomy and autobiography is a poem like schuyler’s ‘‘ an east window on elizabeth street. ’’ the poem manages to be both taxonomic and diaristic, establishing a sense of how the object and subject can be given equal emphasis in what one might call a taxonomic autobiography : the self as list. the poem opens in detailing the external world : among the silvery, the dulled sparkling mica lights of tar roofs lie rhizomes of wet under an iris from a bargain nursery sky : a feeble blue with skim milk blotched on the falls …' it should be immediately apparent, however, that this is much more an attempt to represent the observed real thing than to simply name it, favouring connotation over denotation. in contrast to this we also get a number of small lists within the fabric of the ‘‘ painted ’’ scene : ‘‘ trucks, cabs, cars, ’’( ‘‘ mutable, delicate, expendable, ugly, mysterious, ’’) and ‘‘ stacks, pipes, ventilators, tensile antennae. ’’* if, in schuyler, we have two forms of rendering the real in language, representation and taxonomy, we also have in this poem a strong diaristic aspect, as the poem consists of what the poet sees out of his window. nathan kernan notes this interrelationship in his introduction to schuyler’s diary : ‘‘ schuyler’s remark that he was ‘ more of a reader than a writer ’ is true, then, in the largest sense. his writing, his transcribing, is simultaneous with and inseparable from his ‘ reading ’ of what is around him and becomes part of the process of thought. ’’"! ‘‘ an east window on elizabeth street ’’ is not dated, but within the chronological order of the collection it can be placed in late spring. of course its physical location is specified in the title, and as a whole it is really a line-broken version of numerous diary entries in ‘‘ some } surprise, and apples, cinnamon, } nutmeg and a nutmeg grater. whisky, } two very small mice, tinted china } mice ’’ ; ‘‘ somebody lovely has just passed by, ’’ ‘‘ raspberry ; puce ; ocher ; blu ; mutation ’’ ; ‘‘ all hearts grow warmer, ’’ ‘‘ the world is full } parkling } a arden } the shape } ancing ’’ ; and ‘‘ petty’s fog light, ’’ where in fact the lines are numbered like a list (all in schuyler, mandeville special collection, ms. ). ' james schuyler, collected poems (new york : farrar, straus, giroux, ), . ( ibid., . ) ibid., . * ibid., . "! nathan kernan, ‘‘ introduction, ’’ in the diary of james schuyler, ed. nathan kernan (santa rosa : black sparrow press, ), .  william watkin keeping with koestenbaum’s suspicions. this raises questions as to what kind of subject these autobiographical poems deal with. certainly it is a visual subject, or one actively involved in watching, but also one that interposes on the real thing with language, by rendering things in his poems and journal entries. the conclusion of the poem, for example, shows this, ‘‘ the furthest off people are tiny as fine seed } but not at all bug like. a pinprick of blue } plainly is a child running, ’’"" with schuyler again being meticulous in his comparisons. people here are hard to ‘‘ see ’’ through the representational or taxonomic powers of language, but the child is easy to ‘‘ see ’’ even though it is theoretically smaller and on the move. it is as if the observing subject develops its agency and sense of self both in what it cannot ‘‘ see ’’ into words, and what it can. but more than this it seems there is an element of choosing here, as he seems really to prefer to see the single child rather than the ‘‘ people. ’’ this is borne out, i believe, in schuyler’s love of single people over groups, and especially children, a fact noticeable in his poetry and the diary ;"# while his ambivalent agency in language, at times actively interposing to prove his own inability to render the actual thing, at other times seeming just a receptacle for the visual impressions he is receiving and yet subtly choosing which to record as they ‘‘ happen, ’’ is conveyed by a number of titles, in particular ‘‘ shopping and waiting, ’’ an unusual playlet in the home book. the title seems to convey a double aspect of the home book generally, another diaristic form of course, that of the active agency of choosing and economy, and the passive agency of simply being there. yet other titles, such as the infamous ‘‘ things to do ’’ or ‘‘ sorting, wrapping, packing, stuffing, ’’ demonstrate that this active agency is, to a degree, again, the passivity of the cataloguer. the title ‘‘ things to do ’’ seems to be mainly a joyful expression of the ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ impetus,"$ always "" schuyler, collected poems, . "# the porter’s children feature strongly in the diaries as do pets. the groups of adults are limited to a ‘‘ family ’’ circle of familiar figures and lovers, nearly always dealt with in small groups as opposed to the larger circle of people in party situations that one gets in o’hara. "$ the phrase ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ is used in ‘‘ hymn to life. ’’ worth noting also are the famous shopping lists of ‘‘ morning of the poem ’’ and references to lists in the diary. one entry in particular seems pertinent to the issues i am raising when read in conjunction with kernan’s explanatory note : ‘‘ in the early light the privet hedge outside my north window looks pitted like bronze that has been in the earth a long time. sometimes i mean to keep track (‘‘ make a list ’’) of what i read. what for ? to amuse me when i’ve forgotten ’’ schuyler, diary, . ‘‘ ‘ make a list ’ ’’ was a frequent refrain in the porter household. anne porter writes, ‘‘ if i asked f to pick up something when he was going out (like bread) & then said oh yes and some butter, he would say (a little wearily) ‘ make a list ’, ’’ kernan’s note to above passage in diary, . ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  being things he should do, not things he has done. what he has actually done is make a list of actions or reduce the event to a representation of its optative desirability – things one ought to do. in contrast to this, the passive side of merely observing things through the window, or on one’s desk, is, as critics note, a kind of passive– aggressive mode of subject forming. schuyler’s own response to the peculiar choosiness of the diary}poem is challenging : ‘‘ since i’ve been writing here i’ve mostly written one poem … and some of my diary, though not much. i think i told you that people never get into it. ’’"% kernan’s gloss on this letter further emphasises this unpopulated landscape of the typical schuyler diary entry : certainly there is not much that could be called gossip in schuyler’s diary, not really any searching character- or self-analysis, and if his statement that ‘‘ people never get into it ’’ isn’t literally true, most of the diary is descriptive : of weather, of ‘‘ nature ’’ … and of small daily events. nothing ‘‘ happens ’’ in schuyler’s diary."& the critics, however, are in direct conflict with schuyler’s own view that ‘‘ everything happens as i write. ’’"' coming in a section where he notes he does not work from journals, it seems he is arguing for the journal and the poem as being part of the more general process of ‘‘ everything happening, ’’ sometimes suitable for prose, sometimes for poetry, and sometimes perhaps unrecorded. everything can happen in three ways i would argue : in language through description and taxonomy ; in the subject through the processes of observation, interposition, and record- ing ; and through the objective world with its combination of radical specificity and general rhythmic repetition, both spatially and tem- porally."( therefore, schuyler’s persona becomes the full working out of "% quoted from an unpublished letter in kernan, . "& ibid., . "' carl little, ‘‘ an interview with james schuyler, ’’ agni,  (), . "( these qualities are noted but rarely developed by a whole flurry of critics. donald revell considers how schuyler, ‘‘ reconfirms the dignity of particularity, of the small, habitable sites of clarity in which phenomena and events may receive and return our human affections, ’’ and how ‘‘ james schuyler is the most necessary, material witness i can imagine, ’’ donald revell, ‘‘ editor’s preface, ’’ denver quarterly, : (), , . ann lauterbach develops this in relation to the postmodern ‘‘ event, ’’ defining in the poetry a situation ‘‘ where the ‘ event ’ is almost anything available to the mind’s eye, ’’ and also developing the relationship between the visual (spatial) and the temporal : ‘‘ he tropes time : the time of the poem and the time in the poem, especially in the majestic longer works, seem to be the same. to put it another way : schuyler undergoes the life of the poem as he is writing it : it witnesses him, he is its object, ’’ anne lauterbach, ‘‘ fifth season, ’’ denver quarterly, : (), , . lauterbach shows then how the act of witnessing or the trope of ‘‘ waiting, ’’ is less than passive, involving not only the vital act of witnessing which brings about the possibility of the differend, but also how  william watkin what he means when he says ‘‘ everything happens when i write, ’’ and is what i have called the process of taxonomic autobiography, or of being through the act of naming, or remembering a recording of the act of naming, the real things one encounters in the real world. i now want to go on to look at the way this has developed over the early and middle periods of schuyler’s work, through a number of main stages which develop simultaneously a theory of taxonomy and autobiography. of all forms of autobiography the diary is the one which most highlights the taxonomic aspect of the trope, which is in essence a listing and counting out of your being in days, and is also in accord with both foucault’s and le! vi-strauss’s sense of taxonomia. taxonomia, while theoretically a mode of naming the world in a categorical and classificatory manner, is in fact the means provided for structure to name itself, as le! vi- strauss makes clear : ‘‘ classifications do not constitute separate domains but form an integral part of an all embracing dynamic taxonomy the unity of which is assured by the perfect homogeneity of its structure, consisting as it does of successive dichotomies. ’’") the structural aporia here is how a pre-established system can be the hypostatised precondition for its own establishment ; how does structure happen ? foucault historicises this process but in doing so comes across a second aporia of homogeneity combined with succession, in particular the succession of dichotomies. in witnessing both intervenes on the real as well as on the self by seeing the self as an object within the real world. which is in essence how taxonomic autobiography could work, a process of witnessing which names the subject into objective being. within this the nature of time, the days of the diaries or day books of schuyler’s life of self- witnessing, also become things. as mark rudman notes in relation to the temporally specific titles of numerous poems, ‘‘ they chronicle time parcelled out, ’’ mark rudman, ‘‘ james schuyler’s changing skies, ’’ denver quarterly, : (), . a fact which appears to be confirmed by barbara guest’s impressions : ‘‘ his poems invite time : they play with it … in each passage time exerts a passion … where a moment’s minutiae become aggrandized and we believe their shifting is a permanent whole. i am always delighted when his poems catch the ‘‘ unevenness ’’ of the flow of day. because that is how time flows ’’ barbara guest, ‘‘ the vuillard of us, ’’ denver quarterly, : (), . guest calls this the ‘‘ vagaries of inhabitancy ’’ guest , in relation to schuyler’s use of place, but in the schuyler poem surely place, time, language, and self are all translated into the uneven continuum of interrupting the ‘‘ going on ’’ of endless interruption, that typifies the object of enunciation. revell again expresses this : ‘‘ schuyler’s persona is one that rejoices in transience, in the differences between one hour and the next. it is a persona that likes to engage life by moments as they arrive and which does not care to urge its loving attention into any one final version of them all, ’’ donald revell, ‘‘ ballads of the provisional city, ’’ denver quarterly, – (), . ") claude le! vi-strauss, the savage mind (london : weidenfield and nicolson, ), . ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  noting the onset of taxonomia in the modern period, as one of its three crucial structures along with grammar and economics, … the sixteenth century superimposed hermeneutics and semiology in the form of similitude. to search for a meaning is to bring to light a resemblance. to search for the law governing signs is to discover the things that are alike. the grammar of beings is an exegesis of these things. and what the language they speak has to tell us is quite simply what the syntax is that binds them together."* as this reliance on resemblance of the motivation of signs is overhauled by the onset of modernist discourse, the process of a system of naming that merely names itself as a system of naming becomes accentuated, so that foucault notes in relation to the post-renaissance science of taxonomia : ‘‘ the process of naming will be based, not upon what one sees, but upon elements that have been introduced into discourse by structure. it is a matter of constructing a secondary language based upon that primary, but certain and universal, language. ’’#! a language designed to name language ; it sounds as far from schuyler’s objectivist urges as it is possible to be, and seems also to bear little direct relevance to autobiography. yet in a poem such as ‘‘ sorting, wrapping, packing, stuffing, ’’ we find an early example of how schuyler establishes his agency through an autobiography of naming. the poet seems on the brink of a major journey, but here the autobiographical interest is less involved in where he is or might be going, than what he must do with things before he goes there. as i have already mentioned, the title, itself a list of classificatory actions, provides a syntax of taxonomic action : of organising (sorting), of preservation (wrapping), of spatialising (packing), and of forcing (stuffing). here schuyler plays out his agency through the actions of what foucault calls the naturalist, a sub- species of the more general figure of the bricoleur in le! vi-strauss. his job is to preserve the real. to save nature however, ‘‘ the naturalist is the man concerned with the structure of the visible world and its denomination according to characters. not with life. ’’#" in his title schuyler concedes this, his job being not so much the preservation of life in language, an impossible project in any case best avoided, as the preservation of a means of preserving the real thing. in effect his poetry is an ongoing archive of the thing, with the proviso that language and the self are also things. his poetry must organise visual experience, coat it in a protective layer of words and personal observation and commentary, put this compound bundle in a pre-conceived structure of some sort, and at times demand the "* michel foucault, the order of things (london : routledge, ), . #! ibid., . #" ibid., .  william watkin poet enforce his will on the thing so it will fit into the structure. the roles of the naturalist and the bricoleur thus assume the preservation of the structure against the continuum of time and change. it is poetry as structural prophylactic. what is remarkable is how schuyler establishes his subjectivity through this process, conveyed in an image of mundane justice and domestic specificity in the first stanza : when the great bronze bell sounds its great bronze bong it will find a lifetime jar of yuban instant in my right hand, in my left, coleman’s mustard.## here schuyler is a self-styled preserver of the radical specificity of every thing. however, immediately this is problematised for, while the trade names of everyday and perhaps irrelevant things seem the epitome of specificity, and feature throughout his collected poems, of course these names are not species names, but genus names. they enforce a synecdochic violence by suggesting one jar of yuban instant coffee is enough to stand in for all jars, in this way being truly a ‘‘ lifetime jar, ’’ (see my comments on synecdoche in the diary, pp. –) but this is not in keeping with the poet as adjudicator who should mediate in the case of every jar based on its own idiom, to use lyotard’s term in the differend, rather than deal in such generalities. what we find is that the poet is incapable of fulfilling any role except that of the naturalist, that he cannot preserve the ‘‘ life of things ’’ by looking at them, any more than wordsworth was able to by trying to look into them.#$ in both instances the poets are constructing the science of taxonomia, of naming an all-embracing discourse of naming, which becomes even more apparent in stanza three : better we should slip into this ice age remnant granite boulder and grab a snooze it is too much like packing on saturn where they have poison ivy like we have himalayas poisonous only to planets give us a gingham smile red white and checkered help the blue fire escape ! it’s coming unpacked all over the floor like a milky way lighting the north ## schuyler, collected poems, . #$ for more on schuyler and wordsworth see rudman, –. ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  and aurora borealis of neckties knize sulka au chardon d’ecosse stuff wrap cram snap#% the narrative of packing is itself a classification of different means of classifying the same experience of packing. the time}space shift from the ice age to saturn continues a discourse of temporal shifts matching the spatial movement begun in stanza two, giving way to the use of synaesthesia in the ‘‘ gingham smile, ’’ gingham also being a direct reference to the grid of linguistic structure. the gingham draws attention to the clothes being packed but also forms the basis for the slip from the thing at hand to the poetic process of metaphor-making, so that packing and poetry approach synthesis in the same manner as time and space. the reference to the ‘‘ blue fire escape ’’ is a direct intervention by the two tropes of autobiographical enunciation : imagination, which foucault also sees as instrumental in the leap of taxonomic language from similitude to discourse ; and the ‘‘ memory ’’ of reiteration which is the memory of language, the image having been already used, again in stanza two. the end of this small grid of the ordering of experience is, then, the final line list of packing, which comes after a three-line exercise in the defami- liarisation of language. these strange words, ‘‘ knize, ’’ ‘‘ sulka, ’’ etc., can be made to fit into the poem through the process of taxonomy, perhaps with violence and maybe even by breaking them, ‘‘ stuff wrap cram snap. ’’ which is again demonstration that taxonomy does not name the real thing, as here the real thing is inaccessible to the reader, at least initially,#& and this stanza is a simple but effective example of how taxonomic autobiography works ; naming the subject into the agency of naming, by naming the very discourse of naming itself. and while the real is the trope or mythic concept upon which the whole process is founded, it really has very little to do with the fabric of the poem as a whole. towards the end schuyler summarises this process of the production of the agent of classifying, ‘‘ cut down the books } to fit an oshkosh nutshell. ’’#' he returns back to the thing, as he is always trying to do, first #% schuyler, collected poems, –. #& in fact ‘‘ knize ’’ and ‘‘ sulka ’’ couldn’t be more accessible at least to a certain generation of american readers as they are makes of ties. knize is especially pertinent as it is supposed to be pronounced ‘‘ nice ’’ with the ‘‘ kn ’’ recalling that of ‘‘ knot, ’’ as in a knotted tie. the word then conveys a certain defamiliarisation and musical}material motivation at the heart of the post-war american commercial idiom. in this vein one supposes ‘‘ sulka ’’ is a bastardisation of ‘‘ a silky. ’’ #' ibid., .  william watkin by making language a thing also to be violently made to fit into the taxonomic discourse of language.#( further, the books must be cut to fit into a strange hybridity of trade names, oshkosh, and a natural means of packing. the nutshell is a tree packed up, but it is also the autobiography of the tree, the kernel of its being and the central trope for the idea of autobiography as a significant summation of a life : the seeds and kernel with all the dead wood cut away. the idea of autobiography, like that of taxonomy, is, as paul de man notes, one of naming the system of naming through the interposition of the proper name into the process of day-to-day being. it is surprising that this link has not been made more forcefully before, that the auto- biographical being, the deep subject inherited from freudian psycho- analysis, is itself a taxonomy consisting however of only one name, your own. in analysing proust’s a la recherche du temps perdu, de man highlights the moment of deconstruction of the sense of a unified self that could name itself in full by returning itself back to every moment of its historical being. he concludes : everything in this novel suggests something other than what it represents … it can be shown that the most adequate term to designate this ‘‘ something else ’’ is reading. but one must at the same time ‘‘ understand ’’ that this word bars access, once and forever, to a meaning that yet can never cease to call out for understanding … the allegory of reading narrates the impossibility of reading. but this impossibility necessarily extends to the word ‘‘ reading ’’ which is thus deprived of any referential meaning whatsoever.#) derrida calls this self-devouring logic of called prosopopeia, ‘‘ memoires- from-beyond-the-grave, ’’#* a process by which the subject reads itself by naming itself, but in doing so names not only the death of a unified sense of self which could never be read in full, but also the death of language. what use is a language that cannot be read ? these problems come directly from the logic of taxonomy, for autobiography is nothing more than an obsessive process of sorting, wrapping, packing, and stuffing the vast diversity of things and words about things, into the proper name ‘‘ marcel #( ‘‘ oshkosh ’’ clothing is american ‘‘ one size fits all ’’ industrial}casual wear which adds a curious resonance to both my point about forcing language to fit, and also the paradox of the looseness of oshkosh clothing, originally overalls, and the compactness of a nutshell. schuyler is always reminding us of the humour at the heart of the postmodern condition and the ease with which the new york school negotiate their often confounding world is nothing short of heroic at times. #) paul de man, allegories of reading (new haven : yale university press, ), . #* jacques derrida, memoires for paul de man, revised edition, the wellek library lectures, trans. eduardo cadava, jonathan culler, peggy kampf, and cecile lindsay (new york : columbia university press, ), . ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  proust, ’’ or in this case ‘‘ james schuyler. ’’$! this is the role of denomination central to all autobiography : denomination could never exist by itself although it is a constitutive part of all linguistic events. all language is language about denomination, that is a conceptual, figural, metaphorical metalanguage … a narrative endlessly tells the story of its own denominational aberration and it can only repeat this aberration on various levels of rhetorical complexity. texts engender texts as a result of their necessarily aberrant semantic structure ; hence the fact that they consist of a series of repetitive reversals that engenders the semblance of a temporal sequence.$" denomination is taxonomy, at least it is the dark aporetic machine at the heart of taxonomy, whose irresolvable paradoxes produce a spiralling logic of necessity and impossibility, from which the already complete structure of language somehow springs, complete in its permanent incompleteness. for if language cannot even name one thing sufficiently to be read in full, one person in the case of autobiography, the ‘‘ i ’’ has little chance of ever naming fully its own inadequacies. in schuyler, the proliferation of texts about texts and of naming processes of naming, in other words of a self-conscious taxonomy, finds full expression in the home book. less interesting in the content than the means of ordering the content of day-to-day existence, the collection presents an example of the double process of de manian denomination : a proliferation of texts about texts, coupled with a series of repetitions which ape the structure of a temporal succession. the title itself is a form of diary or narrative of self which is the mask of reading, prosopopeia, that autobiographical form always must assume. it presents the self in a ‘‘ nutshell, ’’ both in its limited domestic setting, and in the self-conscious naming of one’s being-at-home as a narrative worthy of being read. the book then presents, in miniature, a number of repetitions of the same masking. ‘‘ voyage au tour de mes cartes postales, ’’ reduces the subject to the missives it sends out to the world and receives in return. through this trope the subject is mutilated by summary, introduced into an economy of intersubjective desire, and reduced to the impossible logic of allegorical reading. in ‘‘ things to do, ’’ the list is interestingly modified from naming things in the world, to naming the self through an inversion of autobiography, which would, of course, consist not of things to do, but of things done. this becomes a virtual or prospective autobiography with such injunctions of banality as ‘‘ write maxine, ’’ balanced by the $! kernan makes a link between the two : ‘‘ although schuyler never wrote his own memoirs, one of the characteristics of the diary, as of schuyler’s poetry, is the way memories seem to rise abruptly out of the fabric of whatever else is going on, like proust’s ‘‘ involuntary memories, ’’ kernan, diary, . $" de man, –.  william watkin grandiose overall project : ‘‘ remember } ‘‘ to write three-act play ’’ } and lead ‘‘ a full and active life. ’’$# at first an ironic comment, perhaps on autobiography, the prospective structure implied by ‘‘ things to do ’’ is in actual fact the essence of the denominative narrative act, for hovering above the home book and the diary is the injunction to write an autobiography which is a prospective casting of a future possible self into a masked linguistic structure of the archival self. the diary section of the home book does not, as one might assume, fit into this logic of self-denomination quite so easily. with opening entries like ‘‘ the air is like crist-o-mint, ’’ ‘‘ still : bright blue, white, and the scatter of leaves, ’’ ‘‘ easter snow and bad temper, ’’$$ and concluding with a paean to darwin’s autobiography, ‘‘ a little dumb perhaps … but only in the gloriously innocent way of a man whose concerns are on the largest and most detailed scale. he often sounds so surprised that he turned out to be him, ’’$% the project of this kernel of the whole diary is clearly that of a kind of self-abnegation. the treatment of natural details and trade names aside, his final comments on darwin’s autobiographical techniques are instructive in the manner in which he sees darwin’s innocence as matching his own attempts to liberate his subjectivity from egotistical agency. innocence here is a kind of total worldliness so vast it disallows any space for the subject except to render up these things in words. it is no wonder such a figure might be surprised to be himself, for the troping of the self in autobiography proper is elided in favour of that equally abused and abusive construct, the world. an alternative to the diary is the prose piece ‘‘ current events, ’’ which combines the active self-to-be of ‘‘ things to do, ’’ with the day-to-day self of the diary’s main conceit recording each day with the minimum of retrospection. ‘‘ current events ’’ comprise the things done of the diary format, but with the temporal gap removed, stressing the event and its irreducible current- ness. the fact that the real event is writing the event is not dealt with here in the manner of more sophisticated later work like ‘‘ hymn to life, ’’ but the piece completes a stable of alternative means of autobiographical denomination, that avoids obsessively saying ‘‘ i am ’’ in a number of aberrant tropic reiterations. rather it names the subject into being by establishing a subject of minimal agency. it is an agency whose denomination is not that of someone who names itself increasingly into otherness, but who names itself through a commitment to naming the realm of the other. postcards which send the subject to the other, lists $# james schuyler, the home book : prose and poems (calais vermont : z press, ), , . $$ ibid., . $% ibid., . ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  which promise to actuate the thing in the future through direct action, the taxonomy of the self in time through the ongoing inscriptions in a diary, and finally a diary so close to ‘‘ current events ’’ it becomes almost an itinerary of minutes ; these are all structures of taxonomic autobiography conveyed in the double trope of ‘‘ shopping and waiting ’’ which can now be fully formulated. shopping is an intervention on behalf of the object by choosing it, and is really nothing more than making a list out of things. while waiting holds the subject within the continuum of time, or the day to day, passive but endlessly receptive to the other, and willing to interpose on its behalf.$& both le! vi-strauss and foucault concede that taxonomy is a means of coming to terms with the proper name, in light of a diversity of things in the world which then could be deemed to be improper. in a sense schuyler’s work is an attempted contravention of the modern predicament of denomination, as le! vi-strauss stresses : ‘‘ everything takes place as if in our civilisation every individual’s own personality were his totem : it is the signifier of his signified being. ’’$' rather than give in to this, schuyler moves in an opposite direction, to try to resolve the disjunction between the general and proper noun key to the development of taxonomia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. during this time a conceptual leap from language as a process of representing the world by naming it, to naming as a means by which the visible world could be manifested in such a way as to fit into language, was brought about : natural history can be a well-constructed language only if the amount of play in it is enclosed : if its descriptive exactitude makes every proposition into an invariable pattern of reality (if one can always attribute to the representation what is articulated in it) and if the designation of each being indicates clearly the place it occupies in the general arrangement of the whole. in language, the function of the verb is universal and void ; it merely prescribes the most general form of the proposition ; and it is within the latter that the names bring their system of articulation into play … $( in this structure, which actually is the archetype of structure, identity and being or the proposition ‘‘ this is this, ’’ which is the deictic function of the noun, comes from articulation in the system. and so naming denominates $& shopping is basically michel de certeau’s active model of the consumer subject in the practice of everyday life (berkeley : university of california press, ), while waiting is the more passive model one finds in walter benjamin’s work or, in a more extreme version, henri lefebvre’s. schuyler is involved, then, in a mode of developing a double sense of consumption-as-being which, to my mind, is a far more sophisticated analysis of the category of the everyday than has yet been attempted within critical theory generally. $' le! vi-strauss, . $( foucault, .  william watkin not by magically recalling the absented thing named, but through the means by which this process of naming allows for a system of mediation, by which the thing can reappear in language as the named thing making it available to discourse. in the old system of naming, the idea of the noun was that it was irreducibly linked to the thing it was denominating, which told you everything about the thing but nothing about how the thing could fit into the whole structure. thus it remains, what foucault calls, a proper noun leaving the thing ‘‘ its strict individuality, ’’ with the project of taxonomy being the transformation of the proper noun into the status of a common noun. this requires removing the named thing from its privileged location of specificity, and replacing it in a new ‘‘ tabular ’’ space of juxtaposition, which is the essence of the taxoneme.$) again schuyler rejects this construction. he neither wants to be centre of his own limited totemic system of taxonomy, where each denomination he makes in verse merely denominates himself, nor does he want a system of taxonomic denomination that downgrades proposition to articulation, which would mean however many names of roses he as a poet might know,$* each denomination would be doubly unable to name the specific thing. instead, it would name his ability to denominate, along with the structure of taxonomy that allows such denomination to happen in language. in this fashion schuyler utilises a form of autobiographical ‘‘ slippage ’’ in a manner akin to lyn hejinian’s postmodern formulation of autobiography in my life, and more especially writing is an aid to memory : i am always conscious of the disquieting runs of life slipping by, that the message remains undelivered, opposed to me. memory cannot, through the future return, and proffer raw conclusions … abridgement is foolish, like lopping off among miracles ; yet times is not enough. necessity is the limit with forgetfulness, but it remains undefined. memory is the girth, or again.%! the preconditions for the totalising structures of denomination schuyler attempt to free his poetry from, are the discursive practices we name language and subjectivity. the essence of hejinian’s approach to this is $) the taxoneme is what i conceive as being the minimal semantic unit within taxonomy, operating at the same semantic level as the noun but, as i hope i have shown thus far, in a very different fashion. $* as john ashbery notes, schuyler’s attention to the names of thing is an important part of his contribution to the new york school aesthetic : ‘‘ i give you a poet who knows the names for things, and whose knowing proves something ’’ john ashbery, ‘‘ introduction to a reading given by james schuyler, ’’ denver quarterly, : (), . %! lyn hejinian, writing is an aid to memory (los angeles : sun & moon, ), preface. ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  essentially deconstructive : to take these two opposed discourses and look for the slippage in each, which allows the autobiographical to slip through the blind-spots of totality, back into a realm of being within a process. life is enunciated only through language and language through life, and the poet’s role is, as in the case of schuyler, that of a mediator who operates by direct denomination : ‘‘ abridgement is foolish. ’’ such a view is apparent in a poem like ‘‘ an east window on elizabeth street, ’’ as well as pieces such as ‘‘ alice faye at ruby foo’s, ’’ and ‘‘ buildings, ’’ (all in the crystal lithium) which take a mediated view of the relation between words and the world. in particular we have seen the important tension between the general and the specific in these more taxonomically sophisticated works, and the three titles convey different approaches to this in their use of proper versus common nouns. ‘‘ an east window on elizabeth street ’’ plays with specificity by seeming, with each word, to convey a sense of honing in on the specific scene, and yet the indefinite article begins a certain sense of generality where one could presuppose any number of east facing windows on this particular street. ‘‘ alice fay at ruby foo’s ’’ operates in an opposite fashion. apparently incredibly specific with its use of two proper nouns, the poem seems itself mainly concerned with direct denotation :  from  is  and  from  is  k’  a black green and white catalog from germany%" however, the proper names are so specific that interviewers have since had to ask who ruby foo is,%# which introduces another sense of slippage into a realm of such heightened specificity, that the words effectively become general common nouns denoting specificity. ‘‘ buildings, ’’ the most general title, forms a bracket out of the specificity of generality : buildings embankment parkway grass and river all those cars all those windows … all those cars all those millions of windows%$ these opening and closing comments are not so much the rendering of the totality of diversity, that typifies one’s experience of the real world into %" schuyler, collected poems, . %# see little, ‘‘ an interview, ’’  for more about these figures. %$ schuyler, collected poems, , .  william watkin either a total motivation of personal totemism or total discourse, but are more like an attempt to render in language the specificity of the experience of generality. the opening manages to be specific about a general scene consisting of all those common and everyday nouns, and although schuyler does then descend into generality proper, the use of ‘‘ those ’’ seems to distance the common nouns from the propriety of his taxonomic agency, while the use of ‘‘ millions ’’ at the end of the poem seems to be reaching for further definition. it is incorrect to accuse schuyler of being a renaissance taxonomist or a result of proper tribal totemism, the two sides of the structural history of taxonomy presented by foucault and le! vi-strauss respectively. he isn’t, however, a taxonomist of the modern period, because he resolutely refuses to name the system of naming as much as he denies the fetishisation of his own self into an all consuming poetic totem. the autobiographical tone of his work, coupled with the diaristic formats he regularly uses, means he does try to come to terms with the taxonomy of the self that is inherent to the denominative aporias of autobiography one finds in de man. but his sophisticated sense of how language works, means he is not restricted to exploring these blind-spots. language, in the taxonomic poetry of schuyler’s total output, has a threefold being as indeed it should with all postmodern poets. it has its representational or denotational function, it has a sense of its own thing-ness, and finally it has the material aspect of words as such. in the taxonomic structure the materiality is not merely reducible to the mark and the phoneme however, for the taxonomist is as much aware of the structure of the name as he is of the mark of its character, to paraphrase foucault. and so in the later schuyler we have such poems as ‘‘ eyes at the window, ’’ which uses specificity not to denote specific things, but to denote the general structure of specificity within taxonomy : ‘‘ the veiled lady is burr’s daughter } under the grapes is alexandria, virginia. } robert schuyler, the great defaulter. ’’%% his abuse of proper naming in this instance, typical of a new york school poet, takes taxonomy as the totem of its own structure of naming, reducing the proper nouns into a basic material of generality. in ‘‘ gray, intermittently blue, eyed hero, ’’ the impetus towards taxonomic materiality works in the other direction, with one common noun, ‘‘ fog, ’’ used as a ‘‘ poetry idea ’’ through the poem,%& to such a degree that the poet %% ibid., . %& the concept of poetry ideas is taken from kenneth koch’s work on teaching poetry to children. he says of poetry ideas : ‘‘ i taught reading poetry and writing poetry as one subject. i brought them together by means of ‘ poetry ideas, ’ which were suggestions ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  accuses : ‘‘ fog, } you stand, sit and lie } accused of an overwhelming list- making thoroughness. ’’%' the fog is, of course, the lover made highly specific in the title, although the emphasis on the eyes is a metonymic reduction, and the fog a metaphoric reduction, allowing the poem to seem to register an inability on the part of the poet to see the real person through the process of language. a final poem from this collection, (hymn to life) ‘‘ greenwich avenue, ’’ presents a materiality of representation in its attempts to render, absolutely accurately, the shifting effects of evening light on brick : in the evening of a brightly unsunny day to watch back-lighted building through the slits between vertical strips of blinds and how red brick, brick painted red, a flaky white, gray or those of no color at all take the light though it seems only above and behind them so what shows below has a slight evening ‘‘ the day – sob – dies ’’ sadness and the sun marches on.%( the poem seems to occupy a curious space between denotation and representation, through which slips accuracy and beauty. the beauty of the piece seems to be the two values of attention and affection which critics have come to see as central to his work. the poet wants to be accurate in his naming, but not so that he ends up merely reproducing the process of naming in a lazy and pre-established fashion. he wants to be attentive, but not so much so that his concentration negates any space for i would give to children for writing poems of their own in some way like the poems they were studying … for the wish poem, starting every line with ‘ i wish ’ ; to help them think about the difference between the present and the past, i suggested alternating lines-beginnings of ‘ i used to ’ and ‘ but now ’, ’’ kenneth koch, the art of poetry : poems, parodies, interviews, essays, and other work (ann arbor : the university of michigan press, ), –. and further : ‘‘ as for trying difficult forms, this was all pulverized into one form or variations of one form : repetition. i would say, ‘ start every line with ‘ i wish ’ ’ ‘ put your favorite color in every line, ’ ‘ start the first line with ‘ i used to ’ and the second line with ‘ but now ’ ’ and so on. it was a children’s version of what i had done with adults … when you write a poem, it’s as if you are saying how you feel on a grid, and you are hanging flowers everywhere on it, ’’ ibid., –. in this instance schuyler has set himself the task of repeating the word ‘‘ fog. ’’ examples of such ‘‘ artificial ’’ or predetermined composition techniques abound in new york school poetry. %' schuyler, collected poems, . %( ibid., .  william watkin the real thing to slip into the poem. it is an attentiveness, to a degree, of built-in inattentiveness. also he wants to establish an empathic relation with the scene. it moves him to sadness after all, but not so that this reduces the specificity of the real event to a trope of his own emotionality. which is why he undermines his authentic emotion with the ‘‘ inauthen- ticity ’’ of the camp prose of the citation. thus between denoting the world, which is closest to foucault’s structural naming of structure, and representing the world, which inevitably increases the degree of agency to the point where the subject can become its own totem, schuyler attempts to work out, in the many taxonomic and autobiographical poetic forms i have considered here, a midway status. taxonomic autobiography is not just a way of creating a subjectivity out of naming, but a means of building in slippage, as in hejinian’s theory of postmodern autobiography. which allows the poet to slip from the real and current world into the autobiographical and memorialised subject, not through the aggressive denominational power of language, but by utilising, quite openly, language’s failure to really name anything at all properly. the poet names himself into being by negating his ‘‘ name, ’’ the denominator of enunciation, in favour of naming the things around him and the days he occupies in observing them. the result is his diary. in a sense, then, the mask of prosopopeia is allowed to slip on purpose.%) however, the relinquishing of agency and the relegation of language to a process of denomination, in fact the giving up of self-denomination in favour of objective denomination, is really just another mask, that of the naturalist. to conclude, the apparent paradox at the heart of taxonomic autobiography, as i have adumbrated it, is fully developed in the games schuyler plays with the thing in language, and language as a thing, in a poem such as ‘‘ buttered greens. ’’ on the surface this seems to be a poem about a banal and everyday thing.%* however, the title is modified in the poem body into ‘‘ buttered } green, ’’&! so that the sign ceases to refer directly to the food image, and is rather a modification of colour, in this case of leaves : %) again kernan is instructive : ‘‘ the day itself is often the subject, or as david bergman has pointed out, the object of the poem … schuyler’s poems often draw our attention to the idea of the day as the infinitely varied yet unchanging, inexorable unit of passing time, ’’ (kernan, diary, ). schuyler is using an alternative to the normal masking trope of autobiography i am going on to investigate, choosing a system of taxonomic denomination, naming the days of being, over the denomination of self-enunciation. %* paul hoover stresses the use of the everyday or non-essential in schuyler : ‘‘ a book jacket mentions his use of the ‘ non-essential, ’ but jimmy’s a part of redefining that, ’’ paul hoover, ‘‘ a fictional memoir, ’’ denver quarterly, : (), . &! schuyler, collected poems, . ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  free leaves fall and the will stirs and turns out from it- self, housed in disposable rib cages (the heart thumps) in disposable houses, wood ribbed and glazed to flash back buttered green, what it means :&" what we have here is a kind of augustan ‘‘ nature modified. ’’ schuyler seems to be making a bid for a continuum of objective details, which the tension between greens, cooked vegetables, and green sets up. in and of themselves ‘‘ buttered greens ’’ demonstrate, as a trope, the modification of nature to our own tastes in terms of food, but also poetically by its titular status and its semi-aphoristic nature in modern american idiomatic discourse. however, in the second use the verb becomes a metaphor for the smearing of colour, presaged by the verb ‘‘ glazed. ’’ in the end we have three tropes. the leaves turning as they fall from the tree and down the page become, in an act of associative synaesthesia, the house which is the domestic setting of the typical schuyler poem and also of the original meaning of ‘‘ buttered greens, ’’ which in turn becomes the body housing the heart. the heart is doubly associated with the tree, both because the house seems to be wooden and because of the cliche! of the wooden heart, which again reflects back onto the home. home is where the heart is. the leaves, the buttered green, become the words and pages of the poem, due to an age-old association of leaves to pages, expressing the marking of the thin, ‘‘ falling, ’’ word stanza, and because the act of glazing words in this manner is that of poetry. the initial aim of the poem, therefore, seems to suggest a subjectivity, a social}domestic subjectivity not just an orphic}poetic subject, based on objects’ complicity with the subject : &" ibid., .  william watkin all done not by us or for us but with us.&# at the heart of the piece, therefore, is a dynamic between the manner in which language changes the thing observed, and the way things themselves allow this to happen. the ‘‘ greens ’’ of the title become buttered simply by the removal of the ‘‘ s, ’’ just as the lines of this poem have become truncated by schuyler deciding to cut them up this way, which is how poetry works on language and how language works on the thing observed. yet this agency, limited as it is to one simple action of cutting into poetry – the cutting off of an ‘‘ s ’’ and the cutting up of lines – does not really reside in the subject but with the object, which does this ‘‘ with ’’ us and ‘‘ for ’’ us. without things, subjective agency, of even a most limited kind, cannot occur, as it is the primary scission of subject from object that is the onset of subjectivity as a discourse.&$ this is especially true when one concedes that language is also a thing, so the scission here is not just the cutting off of the subject from the real thing by the removal of the ‘‘ s, ’’ but also the cutting off of the subject from language and of language from the thing. to lose the ‘‘ s ’’ is to see how much taxonomy is a structure of differentials – words are different to the things they name – that operates as a thing unto itself away from the agency of subject or object. the fact that it does this for us and with us is predicated on the trauma of the realisation that it is not truly for us or with us. it is for and with itself. the paradox of a concourse between subject and object predicated on a traumatic division, is established in the poem from the opening trope of change and the disposability of the leaves : &# ibid., . &$ for more on this see variously the work of emile benveniste, jacques lacan, julia kristeva, and jacques derrida. basically one finds that the trauma of the subject’s realisation that it is separate from those objects around it, which also means it has become an object for other subjects, is the same trauma as that of a society that realises that signifier and signified are also separate. the word no longer refers to the thing, as the thing is only apprehensible as a concept through language. objects have no cognition of their object status. benveniste deals with this through the concept of the ‘‘ subject of enunciation, ’’ lacan through the ‘‘ subject of uncertainty. ’’ kristeva refines both theories in her conception of the sujet en proce[ s (subject on trial}in the process), while derrida comes from a metaphysical tradition, in considering the effect iterability has on full subjective presence. the last point ties the subject and object together, for the subject becomes the object which language cannot touch, name, or refer to in a manner by which it might fully be known. ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  they fell first blown under a big plane tree&% but the empathy the poet has for the leaves sets up the structure of the agency of the object as other, by establishing difference in terms of free will : leaves which have not free will : have you ? ’’&& yet not only is the poet himself an advocate of relinquishing up will, but the synaesthesia he sets up in the poem between the leaves and the house suggests that this difference, or act of specificity, between the leaves and the house is not so clear cut. in fact, it is the fall of the leaves down the page that allows the idea of will to come about : free leaves fall and the will stirs&' this occurs primarily due to poetic language. the breaking of the linearity of syntax allows moments of movement into a sensibility of the materiality of the words, as in the phrase, all is not con- tent, yet the chance of it is there&( the breaking of ‘‘ con-tent ’’ also allows, structurally, a double semantic charge, as it could also mean all this is not the content of the poem}person. and so the break sets up a dialogue between what is held inside of us and what is held outside, which could be a bid for an excess of subjectivity that cannot be held inside. the ‘‘ chance of it, ’’ in this way, becomes almost self-reflexive, referring to the chance of this semantic reading, as well as the chance of becoming content, and becoming the contents of your own work. the ‘‘ fall ’’ is also the fall of the versification which allows for such combinations, and this then becomes the precondition for the central &% ibid., . && ibid., . &' ibid., . &( ibid., .  william watkin synaesthesia. the heart turns, as do the leaves, out from itself, to itself, as that which is also outside of itself. not just as self-object, but self defined by relation to the outside world. thus the house}heart}leaf motif, turns chiasmatically in the narrow vortex of the restricted typography, while the flash of the buttered green is ‘‘ what it means, ’’ ‘‘ it ’’ being, in this context, the will itself. taxonomic autobiography is the subject’s return back into a language not only subject to the poet’s agency, but which names the subject into agency. again it is the ability to return to the linguistic denomination of the self as other to oneself through an appreciation of language’s inherent difference to itself, that disallows this from falling into the aporias of totally determinant systems. instead, the subject gets back to itself through the slippages of the denominational inadequacies of language ; taxonomy’s inability to name the system of naming in full. the marking of radical poetic language is the material condition for this. in breaking syntax, one removes the need for a structural table to interpose between the subjective and objective world so as to erase their difference. so, in a sense, what schuyler does in the radical line-breaks of ‘‘ buttered greens ’’ is give things their difference back, by establishing a mode of sympathy between the dual force of subjectivity and language, and the singularity of the objective, based on the radical dissimilarity to each other and themselves they all share. as children we are hyper-aware of the aesthetics of the tatty and inconsequential, the myth of the ugly, saggy, unremarkable thing which we can still love. somewhere along the way, the glamour of everyday shoddiness is lost to all but a few of us. schuyler is the prophet of a sect of the bland and uninteresting thing. the last entry in the diary, dated tuesday, january ,  reads : sooty tatters of cloud in a warm blue sky (although the day is cold), coasting low almost among the building that reach up to be glided by the sun resting on the horizon before it sets. a fresh and beautiful new year day. and now to change and go to the hazan’s party.&) his death in april of that year, the passage’s hermeneutic status as the last entry, the date of the entry, and the sublime imagery, undermine what is otherwise a powerfully banal instance of taxonomic autobiography. when we ask what we learn of the poetic subject through the objects he chooses to remark upon and the remarks he makes, we must now come to the conclusion that schuyler was an ethical and sincere man, a poet of the &) schuyler, diary, . ‘‘ let’s make a list ’’ : james schuyler’s taxonomic autobiography  encounter. peter nicholls, writing about the ethical status of george oppen’s objectivist poetry, argues that ethical poetry or poetry of the ‘‘ encounter, ’’ ‘‘ will assume that the domain of the ethical is also the domain of the ordinary and the everyday, ’’ adding that, ‘‘ the ethical subject is not only open, but vulnerable and in question. ’’&* levinas calls this ‘‘ sincerity ’’, meaning, as nicholls explains, ‘‘ not so much the true account of one’s inner feelings … as an acceptance of what exceeds the self. ’’'! schuyler seems to easily accept matter in excess of the self in his poetry and diaries, thrives on it even, but it would be a mistake to think this negates or somehow liberates the self from the arrogant meta- narrative claims for subjectivity that have been in place in poetry since romanticism. in his last entry he certainly encounters the everyday and ordinary, except it is a new year’s day, which is, therefore, not everyday or ordinary. however, a nominated day is no less ordinary than an ordinary day, not really. he also places his subjectivity in question, in two ways. first through the agency of taxonomic autobiography that exists throughout the diary, where he opts for a narrative of self based on the process of naming the other thing. second by the phrase ‘‘ and now to change. ’’ however, in some ways he is more sincere about sincerity than the neo-modernist objectivity of a poet such as oppen, because he is aware of the double logic of excess : there is nothing in excess of the self, while in a sense everything is in excess of the self, especially the self. taxonomy names the system of naming, autobiography tells the story of being, and these linguistic forms are really what is in excess of the self. this is why schuyler’s favoured thing is post-lapsarian and irredeemable. it sees the object as something degraded by language, language as itself an object and so self-degrading, and subjectivity as something that can only be expressed by its being undermined by the objective world around it. in taxonomic autobiography, language mediates ethically between subject and object, but only to point out the faults and inconsistencies in both, and only on the condition that subject and object do the same for it. in this sense, to make a list is really to be ethical, to be sincere about the inability of any poet to encounter the everyday object as in excess of the self, and to make a detailed list of all occasions when this was discovered to be the case. and yet it also shows a desire to deal with the object as other, through a poetic process of sympathy. language, by virtue of taxonomy, is other to itself, and subjectivity, because of the trope of autobiography, is equally as other to itself. if the list is life, it is only &* peter nicholls, ‘‘ of being ethical : reflections on george oppen, ’’ journal of american studies,  : (), . '! ibid., .  william watkin because it ethically shows life as other to itself three times over : once in language, once in the subject, and once in reference to the object. language is, therefore, central to this, and it is schuyler’s sense of language’s radical insincerity that is the precondition for his diffident, sincere, objectivist poetic practice. microsoft word - how blue can you get_.docx how blue can you get? b.b. king, planetary humanism and the blues behind bars les back goldsmiths, university of london abstract this article honours the memory of blues musician b.b. king, who died on may , through focusing on his work and historical performances in prisons. the article situates his concerts inside cook county jail and sing sing within the wider political crisis during the s surrounding issues of race and class in the american prison system. it suggests the historical resonance of these events can be interpreted through using paul gilroy’s notion of planetary humanism. the tone of b.b. king’s guitar carries both the historical trace of african american experience while at the same time voicing a humanistic sensibility beyond the brutalities of racism and incarceration. keywords african american music, blues, paul gilroy, b.b. king, planetary humanism, prisons part i: ‘there’s something about being in prison’ amongst the tributes celebrating the life of b.b. king – who died on may , aged – it was rarely pointed out that this giant of blues guitar gave his most sublime performances behind bars. over a -year period, b.b. king per- formed in different jails across america. as he reflected in his autobiography, ‘there’s something about being in prison’. never char- ging a fee, he played the blues inside the prison walls only for the satisfaction of what he called ‘touching souls that needed to be touched’. in remembering b.b. king’s music and his extraordinary life, i want to foreground this because the ineffable ‘something’ he indexes, i argue, is a humanist sensibility in his music. in the feel, touch and tone of his guitar we can hear the trace of what paul gilroy has called a planetary humanism (see gilroy, , ). he was born riley b. king on september on a cotton plan- tation called berclair, near the town of itta bena, mississippi. the son of sharecroppers albert and nora ella king, the young riley was raised by his grand- mother from the age of four. during much of his early life he had to fend for himself. he wrote in his autobiography that this early experience of estrangement and loneliness formed him as a person: ‘my friendliness might fool you . . . but few if any really know me . . . words are not my friends. music is. sounds, notes, rhythms.’ while in memphis, working as a singer and disc jockey at wdia, he picked up the nickname ‘beale street blues boy’, later shortened to ‘blues boy’ and then finally to b.b. during the s, b.b. king emerged as a key figure in the elec- tric blues, scoring hits with ‘ o’ clock blues’, ‘woke up this morning,’ ‘you upset me baby’ and ‘every day i have the blues’. in , b.b. king named his guitar ‘lucille’ after he nearly lost his life rescuing it from a burning dancehall in twist, arkansas. it’s a story that bears repeating. two men got into a fight and knocked over a vat of burning kerosene being used for heating. when b.b. emerged from the burning building holding his guitar he was told that the men were fighting over a woman named ‘lucille’. why do blues guitarists name their guitars? personalizing an instrument makes it individual and perhaps more human. for many players the guitar is their most constant companion. but a blues musician’s life is precarious and always on the move. many guitars have been stolen on the road or pawned when cash is tight. there is something meaning- ful in the act of naming the guitar, and most bluesmen choose female names. baptising a guitar is not just about giving it an identity, making it a ‘significant other’ and the object of love and devotion. the relationship between musician and instrument is two-way. hands and fingers wear themselves into the instrument’s body. the soul of the player seeps into the fret- board and the guitar also becomes part of the musician. lucille has taken the shape of many different kinds of guitar. the first lucille was a gibson l archtop. this guitar was stolen and b.b. replaced it with a gibson es , like his hero t bone walker. however, since the late ’ s, lucille has taken the form of the gibson . ‘i’ve turned to lucille – and there have been seventeen different lucilles – for comfort and relief. just to pick her up and stroke her settled me down. i put her on my lap and wait until some happy combin- ation of notes falls from her mouth’ (king and ritz, : ). the es became the medium through which b.b. achieved his unique tone. as a young man he loved the sound of the hillbilly steel guitars he heard on the radio. the trace of that fascination, and also the sound of delta slide guitar players like his cousin booker white, echoes in b.b.’s style of vibrato and string bending. you only need to hear one note of b.b. king playing to identify his unique sonic fingerprint. by the time b.b. king was doing his prison performances in the s, blues was thought to be out of step with black popular taste. b.b.’s manager – sid seidenberg – tried to broaden b.b.’s appeal, and this was not just with white rock audiences that embraced him. seidenberg also booked b.b. to play at mr kelly’s, chicago’s pres- tigious jazz club on rush street, a place where sarah vaughn, com- edian bill cosby and a young barbara streisand had performed. this lounge jazz venue would pro- vide the unlikely steppingstone for his history-making performance at cook county jail. live	at	cook	county	 in the late ’ s and early ’ s, a crisis was unfolding in america’s prisons. it was driven in part by a shortage of resources, but also pris- ons had become inequality fac- tories. they both produced and processed divisions of race and class. at cook county, the prison population was per cent black, while the prison guards and war- dens in control of them remained largely white. facing limited resources, the then deputy warden of cook county set up the ‘barn boss’ system, which effectively handed over the internal running of the prison to the inmates. once the bars on the prison doors were locked, the tiers of the jail were run by whoever was the toughest and most physically intimidating inmate. for the prison authorities, all that mattered was that the pris- oners didn’t escape. c richard english, who played a central role in bringing b.b. king to cook county, remembered: ‘there was a very serious level of rapes, and i think the straw that broke the camel’s back and caused the admin- istration to change was when a white young man was hanged. they say he hanged himself but they believed the inmates hung him. they abused him so bad that he was probably going to tell.’ in march , black psycholo- gist winston moore was appointed warden of cook county; in fact he was the first black prison warden in the united states. c richard english was his chief jail officer, respon- sible for the internal running of the prison. english came to cook county from the illinois state correctional department for youth in joliet. he was an ex- ranger, paratrooper and retired professional fighter and kickboxer. he immediately recruited a team of over a dozen officers from chicago’s black neighbourhoods, including his boxing team. many of the members bore names as memorable as any gangster, like ‘smitty’ or ‘iron man’ wallace (english, ). he remembered: ‘the sheriff at the time, i mean, he had nothing to lose, he had the worst jail in the world. i mean what did he have to lose? it was like do or die.’ the tiers of the prison run by the ‘barn bosses’ and ‘tier clerks’ had to be taken back by ‘cracking heads’ and through physical force. english’s team cleaned out stashes of weapons and confiscated drugs as well as refrigerators full of food. c richard english reflected: ‘you can’t do what i did now. half of that stuff we had to do probably got us put in jail.’ paradoxically, inside the prison, black prison guards had to ‘take care of the white guys first. it was like a reversed segregation type situation in the jail because white guys were so outnumbered they were at the mercy of the other prisoners.’ however, english said, ‘the black guys knew what i was doing’, and it was widely recognized that the level of prisoner-on-prisoner vio- lence under the ‘barn boss’ system was out of control. i asked him if the hiring of black prison guards made a difference to the dynamics with the prisoners. ‘yes sir, it did make a big differ- ence. one of my finest officers was the first cousin of one of the worst inmates. i hired him and he told me his father was looking for a job. being a correctional officer was a good job in chicago – still is. so i hired his father and his brother.’ the black officers were not only tough but they also brought with them the sensibilities of the neigh- bourhood. english said: ‘although you have to be heavy handed you also have to know when to stand down and make sure the inmates got what they need to survive.’ what is interesting amongst the black leadership of cook county was their awareness that taking back physical control of the prison was only part of the answer. music was central to the strat- egy for pacifying cook county. c richard english was a jazz fan, his favourite artist being the blind english pianist george shearing. his mother was a school teacher specializing in english and music. english developed a sophisticated classification system that kept most prisoners away from the ‘hard core tough group’. he also put all the inmates who could play music together in a tier of the prison, and in this section jail bands formed, including rock’n’- roll, spirituals, and jazz, with something between to musi- cians. english brought street enter- tainers into the prison too, for concerts, and, prior to b.b. king’s historic show, jazz singer ester phillips performed at cook county (english, : – ). english had met b.b. king in memphis several years before the bluesman came to chicago to play at mr kelly’s jazz club. by this point winston moore was warden of cook county. english brought king and moore together and they hatched a plan to play a concert at cook county and also record it. it would not be the first time that b.b. king’s music would be recorded live in chicago. in he recorded live at the regal, which captured his performance in a black theatre in chicago and is widely regarded as a classic blues recording amongst critics and blues aficionados. in his autobiog- raphy, king himself is more cir- cumspect, commenting: ‘even though the live album was cool, i’ve probably played hundreds of better concerts than the one taped at the regal’ (king and ritz, : ). the recording made at cook county on september in front of inmates was truly exceptional. in front of the con- crete block used as a stage, wooden benches were set out for female prisoners to sit on while the men stood or sat behind them. it was a hot day by september standards. c richard english remembers: ‘he walked through the crowd and shook hands with the inmates and he gave them autographs. he allowed the inmate band to play with him, including female inmate singers – an hour and a half show non- stop.’ twenty-five members of staff volunteered to come in for free on their ‘off day’ and a hun- dred officers were on duty. once the prison band finished playing, the tapes started to roll. at the beginning of the record- ing, jewel lafontant, a chicago lawyer, offered a few words of credit to sheriff joseph woods and chief judge power for appointing winston moore and for the changes at cook county. the chorus of boos and jailhouse jeers made the prisoners’ feelings clear. b.b. king stepped forward and gave an astonishing perform- ance. it combined the intensity of a baptist sermon and the comedy of a vaudeville comedian. the intensity of his guitar play- ing is what left a lasting impression on c richard english. ‘i talked to b.b. a couple of times about that music and he felt a closeness and sympathy for the guys that were locked up and he wanted to really relate to ‘em and tell ‘em a story . . . especially that song he did – the thrill is gone. he really got into it with that guitar – not so much with the words but with the guitar music. looking at the audi- ence, they are feeling the same thing he is feeling.’ live at cook county captured the soaring intensity of his playing, the eloquent string bending in his solos that tell a story in musical phrases like the electric trace of a human voice. in his autobiog- raphy, blues all around me, he reflected: maybe it’s the stone walls, maybe the electric fences or the guard towers or the sound of those huge iron doors slamming behind you. there’s something final and scary and rock-hard about being inside of a prison. i was a guest performer at the cook county jail, i’d come to entertain the men, and i couldn’t help but feel the oppression. my heart was heavy with feeling for the guys behind bars. it didn’t matter that i’d never been in criminal trouble myself. i’d known men who’d gone to prison and understood how the circumstances of their lives led them there. it’s not that i don’t feel for the vic- tims and it’s not that i don’t believe in personal responsi- bility. i do. but i worry about the correctional facil- ities and their capacity to help rebuild souls, rather than destroy them. (king and ritz, : ) c richard english said that a month after the recording was made, b.b. king returned to the prison. this time it was not to per- form but just to catch up with the inmates. the chief let him roam wherever he wanted to go. b.b. king spent two or three hours in the yard, talking to prisoners and catching up with the musicians in the prison band. king’s concert was not the last at cook county. they hosted monthly shows into the ’ s, including blues giants like bobby ‘blue’ bland, along with soul singers like aretha franklin, isaac hayes, the chi- lites and the pointer sisters. english’s own favourite, the blind jazz pianist george shearing, per- formed in the jail twice, and even liza minnelli performed for the inmates, choosing a ‘more bluesy repertoire especially for the occasion’. ‘music is powerful stuff. when you listen to music and you locked up – music kinda put a spell on you in a way’, concluded english. ‘music soothes the soul and sends a message.’ he continued: ‘you take a guy like marvin gaye’s music what’s going on, singing about that vietnam stuff. you could stop fights with that type of music. i had a [music] box made for myself so i could be part of the inmate situation and i’d go around and play music for the guys in different places and i’d play marvin gaye’s what’s going on, and guys would stop arguing and slow down and start dancing.’ part ii: after attica elsewhere in the united states, the crisis in the penal system remained. by the early ’ s american prisons were filling up with activists from a range of politically radical move- ments. on september , two weeks after the killing of george jackson at san quentin, prisoners at attica prison in upstate new york seized control of part of the prison, also taking hostages. in d-yard, they set up democratic structures to define and voice their concerns, which included the racism from the guards, poor food, and limits on religious freedom and political organization. by the order of state governor nelson rockefeller, the state police and the national guard took back the prison in a bloody and murderous operation. as tear gas was dropped, law enforcement officers opened fire indiscrimin- ately in a six-minute fusillade where rounds were fired, including illegal ‘dum dum’ bullets that exploded on impact. the hail of gun fire killed prisoners. it was falsely reported that the inmates had slit the throats of the hostages. however, the autopsy later showed that hostages had been killed – not by the prisoners’ makeshift weapons but by the same bullets fired by the law enforcement officers that killed the convicts. in the days that followed there were reprisals and beatings of pris- oners by guards. after attica, the issue of prisons and prison life was put squarely on the public agenda. over years later, the injustices of attica are still an open wound. photographer and filmmaker bruce jackson has studied the photographic evidence – some of which was suppressed in the subse- quent law suits – and found that some of the convicts were killed at close quarters and not by the rooftop riflemen (jackson, ). one of them – kenneth molloy – had his eyes blown out with a . magnum hand gun after he was dead or while he was dying. film footage now available of the after- math shows a white law enforce- ment officer holding his clenched fist aloft, saying boldly: ‘that’s white power’ (kunstler and kunstler, ). the significance of the attica revolt is hard to overstate. these events played out on national tele- vision, much of it dis-information or just plain lies. john lennon rec- orded a song called attica state that denounced rockefeller and appeared on the album some time in new york city. in december , he performed the song at a benefit concert that took place at the apollo theatre in new york for the families of those killed. this was the context in which b.b. king’s prison performances were taking place: their edginess – as a well as their joy – is charged by the historical and social forces that coalesced around the prison. as avery gordon ( ) has pointed out, it is often forgotten that slav- ery is still legal in the united states when it comes to prisoners. legal enslavement is enshrined in the us constitution’s thirteenth amendment, pointing to the sig- nificance of the history of planta- tion slavery and the politics of prisons. the prisoners of attica seem to reference this in the five demands they issued to the people of america during the revolt; they wrote: ‘we are men! we are not beasts and do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. the entire prison populace has set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the united states. what has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed’ (http://theory culturesociety.org/les-back-how- blue-can-you-get-b.b.-king-plane- tary-humanism-and-the-blues- behind-bars-part-two/ - _ftn ; quoted in wicker, : ). no wonder then that b.b. king felt drawn to perform for prisoners and why his performances are loaded with such intensity and his- toric weight – his guitar is the same sound that was given a name so aptly in the statement made by the prisoners of attica. it cries out for a sense of humanity – even, or per- haps particularly, in the midst of the confinements of the prison. thanksgiving,	sing	sing	 	 the experience of b.b. king chimes with paul gilroy’s argu- ment for the usefulness of the idea of ‘planetarity’ to convey a different sense of human experi- ence (gilroy, : xi). this qual- ity of experience involves both movement and contingency. for gilroy, the art and lives of musi- cians – from curtis mayfield to bob marley – offer clues about ways to think about the link between human life and inhuma- nities of racism. his sense of planetary humanism aims to link the two and develop an ethics and politics ‘capable of compre- hending the universality of our elemental vulnerability to the wrong we visit upon each other’ (gilroy, : ). life on the road for b.b. king meant coming into routine con- frontation with the limitations of the colour bar manifest in the ‘whites only’ restaurants and hotels. he toured relentlessly, and in he played a staggering one-nighters (taylor, ). it was for this reason that b.b. was so proud of his tour bus, the first bought in . the tour bus served as his home from home and shelter from jim crow racism. between gigs there were routine reminders for a travelling musician that, for white society, black people were less than fully human. on november – thanksgiving day – b.b. king’s tour bus rolled into the small vil- lage of ossining on the hudson river, miles from new york, and the location of ossining correctional facility, known more commonly as sing sing. the prison was notorious for elec- tric chair ‘old sparky’; it was where high-profile executions took place, including julius and ethel rosenberg – for alleged cold war espionage – on june . the last person executed in new york state was african american eddie lee mays, for murder, on august . b.b. king was there to perform as part of a project developed by david hoffman and harry wiland. david hoffman explained from his home in santa cruz, california: ‘attica changed every- thing – it was like a war inside a prison. prior to that nobody was really paying attention to prisons around new york state that had real reputations for being notori- ous, but no-one knew anything about prisons at all.’ he lived close to sing sing in westchester, and with his colleague decided to teach a class on filmmaking and theatre. the culmination of this year-long prison arts project was a concert that would be filmed. this included not only b.b. king but also joan baez, the voices of east harlem, and jazz comedian jimmy walker. the film b.b. king and joan baez live in sing sing is an extraordinary document of this ‘happening’ (hoffman, ). filmed over two days and with seven camera crews, the film takes the viewer inside the prison from the prisoners’ point of view. david hoffman told me that the star of the film is tony pabone, who introduces the film and acts as the concert stage manager. at sing sing he was head of the young lords, a famous puerto rican gang. hoffman referred to him as ‘a spectacular talker and great thinker’. hoffman explained that part of what made the performances spe- cial was the quality of the sound system and the stage, purpose- built and well lit: ‘b.b. said it was his best performance to date. i don’t think he ever beat it’, hoffman remembered. an excerpt from the film was watched , times on youtube in the days after b.b. king’s death. b.b.’s guitar playing is nothing short of sublime. the film also cap- tures small moments of human rec- ognition between the performers and the inmates. before joan baez sings a spine-chilling rendition of bob dylan’s i shall be released, she kisses her convict compere on the cheek. the prisoners are raptur- ous in their response. then b.b., needing to fill some time while the band changes over, raps with the audience about the difficulties of getting into the prison. he makes light of the fact that one of his band members ‘you seem to know very well’, implying that he’d done a spell in sing sing. a member of the audience asks how that makes him feel. without missing a beat b.b. replied: ‘makes me feel good because he works with me’. the crowd cheers loudly in response. the film also records the edgi- ness of the guards and the volatile joy of the occasion, as the voices of east harlem sang young, gifted and black, or when joan baez calls out for the ‘prisons to be raised to the ground’. the performance is punctuated repeatedly by the num- bers of prisoners being read out and ordered to report themselves on the public address system, as if serving as a reminder of the authority of prison. at one point b.b. hands the slip to the compere to read out the number and says in jest: ‘i know i am joan baez and i ain’t gonna kiss yer.’ the high point is b.b.’s perform- ance of how blue can you get, a song that is ostensibly a tale of an unappreciative lover. the blues has always been able to speak to the lonely midnight of human emotion, including loss, disenfranchisement, dependency, violence and even death. we learn that the unappre- ciative lover minimizes and dispar- ages every attempt by the male protagonist to offer and provide things of value. in this stop-time blues, b.b. sings: i gave you a brand new ford, she said i want a cadillac i bought you a $ dinner, she said thanks for the snack i let you live in my penthouse, you said it was just a shack i gave you seven children, now you wanna give ‘em back the affective power of the song is not only to be found in its sexist surface; beneath it too is a cry against a world that also injures and disparages men like the inmates of sing sing. a world in which value cannot be bought, like a $ dinner or even a penthouse, and this is what gives the final line such a charge. the fugitive power of the blues touches the feeling that, whatever they offer and what- ever they do, it will be returned unwanted. during the finale of his show, b.b. reached out to the audience as he sang ‘someone really loves you, guess who?’, and as he deliv- ered that final line his index fingers point to his own chest. turning back to the audience, the camera catches a prisoner wiping tears from his eyes. ‘b.b. king wasn’t exactly pro- inmate, he just wanted them to be treated as human beings’, remem- bered david hoffman. he said b.b. king ‘was not anything but a musician, but there was one thing that he loved to do and that was perform in prison. it is pure humanity. . . . there is a jewish word for it – it’s called a mensch. he was that . . . he always put the people ahead of himself. he was a truly beautiful guy.’ conclusion: prison blues as we remember b.b. king we should hear the sound of his guitar’s soaring human tone. it is a sound that carries a promise of a different sense of human experi- ence, that contains, as paul gilroy writes, the possibility that ‘the alienated humanity that was associated with racial divisions could be replaced by a non-racial alternative that suffers, loves, acts, and exercises its will, in reshaping the broken world we have inher- ited’ (http://theoryculturesociety. org/les-back-how-blue-can-you-get- b.b.-king-planetary-humanism- and-the-blues-behind-bars-part- two/ - _ftn ; gilroy, : ). i asked david hoffman if he felt it was still possible to do the kind of prison work he did. ‘no, i don’t think it would be possible today’, he said. ‘prisons have become dis- tant from the american people again. we have a much more harsh image of the criminal.’ this is why it is important to think again about the place of the prison in society in a time where the us prison population is over . million (gottschalk, ). at stuart hall’s memorial bea campbell recalled a conversation she had about the blues with the great post-colonial theorist and writer. she said that stuart com- mented that the ‘blues takes you there but doesn’t leave you there’. for in this music there is a reckon- ing with a midnight of the soul and the legacy of exploitation and slav- ery, but equally the blues contains a joy that speaks out against it. to end, i have argued that remembering b.b. king’s prison performances puts a different inflection on his legacy and its cultural significance. music in prison, during the tempestuous decade of the s, could be a way to pacify prisoners and reward them for good behaviour. it also brought into focus the social and historical forces that were unfolding within the wider society. inside the walls of the prison, the sound of b.b. king’s guitar worked against that sense of being devalued or of having no value. that’s how blue you can get. more than this, a sense of humanity was alive in these extra- ordinary performances, expressed wordlessly in sound and tone that refused the de-basements of racism and that pointed beyond it towards a planetary humanistic sensibility. notes . all quotations in what follows taken from a telephone interview with the author on may . . all quotations in what follows taken from a telephone interview with the author on may . references english cr ( ) cook county jail barn boss: memoir of a former jail warden. cr english. gilroy p ( ) after empire: melancholia or convivial culture. london: routledge. gilroy p ( ) darker than blue: on the moral economies of black atlantic culture. cambridge, ma: the belknap press of harvard university press. gordon a ( ) the prisoner’s curse. in: gray h and gomez-barris m (eds) toward a sociology of the trace. minneapolis: university of minnesota press, pp. – . gottschalk m ( ) caught: the prison state and the lockdown of american politics. princeton: princeton university press. hoffman d (dir.) ( ) b.b. king and joan baez live in sing sing. varied directions. jackson b ( ) attica at . counterpunch, september. king bb with ritz d ( ) blues all around me: the autobiography of b.b. king. new york: it books/ harpercollins. kunstler e and kunstler s (dir.) ( ) william kunstler: disturbing the universe. arthouse films. taylor m ( ) the man who would be king. guitarist magazine (july): – . wicker t ( ) a time to die: the attica prison revolt. chicago, il: haymarket books. les back is professor of sociology at goldsmiths, university of london. conceptual tools for legislators part : pathways through the world of law jaap hage* abstract the main purpose of this article is to show a number of implications if legislation is seen as a way of building the world of law. the focus in this connection is on the ways in which the world of law relates to the rest of the world. the paper is structured as follows. it starts with distinguishing between two perspectives on legal rules, the ‘world of law’ perspective that is central in this paper, and the perspective according to which rules are tools in legal argumentation. second the idea of a more or less separate world of law is elaborated by distinguishing between kinds of facts, by comparing the roles of causal laws and legal rules in structuring the world, and by studying how the different kinds of facts can influence each other. this leads to the third topic of this article, namely the issue how the world of law interfaces with the rest of the world, the ‘outside world’. the basic idea in this connection is that facts in the outside world are transformed by counts as rules into facts inside the world of law (‘input facts’) and that these input facts lead to other facts in the world of law, ending with so-called ‘output facts’ which lead human beings to bringing about changes in the outside world. the chain of facts within the world of law from input facts to output facts is called a ‘pathway through the world of law’. the conclusion formulates and briefly argues for the recommendation to legislators to pay attention to the ‘pathways through the world of law’ which they build by maintaining the set of legal rules. keywords world of law, legal rule, dynamic rule, static rule, rule-based fact, counts-as rule, input fact, output fact, intermediate fact, sanction, power, competence, duty, obligation, permission, prohibition, legal status, claim right, property right, human rights, pathways * jaap hage holds the chair of jurisprudence at the university of maastricht. he can be reached on e-mail-address jaap.hage@maastrichtuniversity.nl. hage j legisprudence vol , no x a. introduction although legislation can also be used for different purposes, the creation, modification and abrogation of legal rules is still the legislator’s main task. legislation may therefore be aptly described as the maintenance of a set of legal rules. rules can be used in arguments about the content of the law, and from this perspective, the output of legislation is a tool in the hands of legal reasoners and the study of legislation is an important branch of the theory of legal reasoning. the function of rules can also be seen as independent: legal rules attach consequences to fact situations and they do so ‘by themselves’. from this perspective legal rules can be seen as elements of a part of the world which these rules structure. this part of the world may be denoted by the expression ‘world of law’. from this second perspective, the task of the legislator is to build this world of law and to give it structure by means of the body of rules over which the legislator has command. this article adopts the second perspective. its main purpose is to show a number of implications of seeing legislation as a way of building the world of law, and the emphasis in this connection is on the ways in which the world of law relates to the rest of the world. the argument is structured as follows. first the difference between the two perspectives on legal rules will be developed in order to clarify both that the world of law perspective is not the only possible one, and how it differs from the rules as argument tools perspective. second the idea of a more or less separate world of law is elaborated by distinguishing between kinds of facts, by comparing the roles of causal laws and legal rules in structuring the world, and by studying how the different kinds of facts can influence each other. this leads to the third topic of this article, namely the issue how the world of law interfaces with the rest of the world, the ‘outside world’. the basic idea in this connection is that facts in the outside world are transformed by counts as rules into facts within the world of law (‘input facts’) and that these input facts lead to other facts in the world of law, ending with so-called ‘output facts’ which lead human beings to bringing about changes in the outside world. the chain of facts within the world of law from input facts to output facts is called a ‘pathway through the world of law’. the conclusion formulates and briefly argues for the the author wants to express his gratitude to pauline westerman and an anonymous reviewer for the legisprudence journal. they commented on two draft versions of this paper in a way that allowed the author to make substantive changes which the author considers to be improvements. of course, the author takes all responsibility for remaining errors. jc hage, “building the world of law”, ( ) legisprudence, - . other aspects have been discussed in jc hage, “building the world of law” (fn. ) and in jc hage, “conceptual tools for legislators part : rules and norms”, ( ) legisprudence, - . rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x recommendation to legislators to pay attention to these ‘pathways through the world of law’ which they build by maintaining the set of legal rules. b. two perspectives on legal rules on a winter’s day, the rich but somewhat eccentric spinster harriet stapleton died at the blessed age of years in her cabin on the moor. in her last will she bequeathed all her worldly goods to her niece deniece stapleton, of whom harriet was very fond. deniece, however, was not even aware of the existence of harriet. moreover, not any family member of harriet did even know whether harriet was still alive and where she might live. the inhabitants of the little village where harriet did her exceptional shopping had not seen harriet for quite a while, but that was not unusual. under these circumstances it was not surprising that the passing away of harriet was only discovered many weeks after it occurred. this brief story raises the question to whom the possessions of harriet belonged during the period after she died and before her death was discovered. the answer that seems obvious is that they belonged to harriet’s niece deniece, even though neither deniece, nor anybody else in the world was aware of harriet’s death and of the transition of ownership of harriet’s possessions. the rules of inheritance operate even if nobody is aware of it, and through them deniece became the owner of harriet’s belongings at the moment that harriet died. this idea, that legal rules can operate ‘by themselves’, even if nobody is aware of it, illustrates the perspective on legal rules according to which they are part of a world of law which is to some extent autonomous. the other perspective, according to which rules are tools in the hands of legal reasoners, is illustrated by a different story. in the dutch politician geert wilders was prosecuted for hate speech against muslims. the issues at stake were both legal-technical and fundamental. the legal-technical issue was whether hate speech against the islam counts as hate speech against muslims. the fundamental issue was whether some members of society and in particular politicians should be allowed to express their opinion about other members of this society, or their religion, even if they do so in a manner that may be considered as insulting and this example, and the following one, have been adapted from jc hage, “legal reasoning and the construction of law”, ( ) i-lex issue , - , http://www.i-lex.it/us/previous-issues/volume- /issue- / -legal-reasoning-and-the- construction-of-law.html i assume here that the law of inheritance which governs this case does not require acceptance of the inheritance. hage j legisprudence vol , no x may very well evoke hatred. neither one of these issues has an easy answer and the case might well be considered to be a hard one. several arguments were adduced, pleading in different directions and the court of first instance discharged geert wilders (rechtbank amsterdam - - ). in this second case, it is unlikely that the legal rules applied themselves and that the court only discovered the already existing fact that geert wilders was not punishable. that does not mean that legal rules did not play a role in this case, but only that their operation cannot well be characterised as autonomous. the legal rules only indicate what are good reasons in a discussion about the punishability of wilders, but they do not generate the outcome of the case by themselves. both perspectives on rules play a role in legal practice. in easy cases and also in basic legal education, the world of law perspective plays an important role. in hard cases, like the wilders case, this world of law perspective becomes unrealistic and the rules as tools perspective becomes more attractive. elsewhere i have argued that in last instance the tools perspective is the more fundamental one, but that conclusion was drawn in the context of finding the law. if the context is law making, the world of law perspective seems the more attractive one, because legislators aim to determine the content of the law, ad not merely to provide legal reasoners with tools that they can use to their own purposes. c. the outside world and the world of law . terminology following wittgenstein , we may define the world as the set of all facts. since there is only one set that contains all facts, there is only one world. there is no separate world of law. however, it makes sense to distinguish within the world (with a capital ‘w’ from now on) a subset of facts which are the result of applying legal rules. tis subset will be called the world of law. the rest of the world, all facts that do not belong to the world of law, will be called the ‘outside world’. in jc hage, “construction or reconstruction? on the function of argumentation in the law”, in c dahlman and e feteris (eds.), legal argumentation theory: cross-disciplinary perspectives (dordrecht, ), - and in jc hage, “legal reasoning and the construction of law” (fn. ). l wittgenstein, tractatus logico-philosophicus (frankfurt a/m, ), . . rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x . kinds of facts the world consists of all facts, but not all facts are of the same type. we often take some form of ontological realism for granted when it comes to facts. ontological realism is the view that facts and things exist independent of the mind, and more in particular independent of our beliefs about them. for many facts this is not adequate. think for instance of the fact that the united nations has its seat in new york city, and the fact that tortfeasors are liable for damages. even though all facts have in common that they correspond to true declarative sentences, the direction of this correspondence differs from one type of fact to m devitt, realism and truth, nd ed. (oxford, ), - . world outside world world of law figure : the world hage j legisprudence vol , no x another type of fact. in this connection it is useful to distinguish between four or five kinds of facts. objective facts the first category consists of facts of which we assume that they are mind- independent. these facts exist, no matter whether anybody is aware of them, knows what they are, or believes in their existence. they include that the highest mountain on earth is mount everest, that computers were invented after ad, that there are higgs particles and that the amount of solar systems in the universe equals some as yet unknown number. we will call them ‘objective facts’. social facts facts in social reality are those facts which exist because they are recognised or accepted by sufficiently many and sufficiently relevant members of some social group. the precise conditions of existence of these facts are still object of discussion , but typical examples from the netherlands are that sunny weather is good weather, that there is nothing wrong with gay marriages, and that legislation is a source of law. rule-based facts many facts are facts because they are the result of the application of some rule, or principle, or the outcome of a real or the best possible argument. these more details on the double direction of correspondence in jc hage, “the deontic furniture of the world. an analysis of the basic concepts that embody normativity”, in j stellmach e.a. (eds.), the many faces of normativity (krákow, ), - . the usefulness reflects the fact that we humans tend to distinguish between different ways in which something can be a fact. however, in particular with regard to rule-based and subjective ‘facts’ one may doubt whether there is an objective basis for distinguishing them. and yet, large parts of our discourse on facts only make sense if rule-based facts are recognised as facts rather than as mere figments of our minds. this distinction was inspired by a distinction made by leiter between different kinds of objectivity. see b leiter, “law and objectivity”, in j coleman and s shapiro (eds.), the oxford handbook of jurisprudence and philosophy of law (oxford, ), - . notice that all facts, including objective facts, are of the type ‘the fact that …’, where the dots stand for some declarative sentence. for this reason, all facts are language-dependent. cf pf strawson, “truth”, proceedings of the aristotelian society, supplementary volume, . also in pf strawson, logico-linguistic papers (london, ), - . see for instance r tuomela, the philosophy of sociality. the shared point of view, (oxford, ) and jr searle, making the social world, oxford, ). rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x seemingly different categories of facts are taken together because arguments are based on inference rules, while rules and principles need to be applied in arguments. examples of rule-based facts would be that in chess the person who has check-mated his opponent’s king has won the game, that nobody can chair the hockey club for more than two subsequent periods, that + equals , and that in the eu, states are in general not allowed to subsidize local industries. in connection with rule-based facts we can make a subdivision based on the issue how the rules that generate the rule-based facts exist. there are two possibilities. either the rules exist as a matter of social fact, that is by being accepted. this is the case with rules of customary law. or the rules exist because their existence is the result of the application of some other rule. this is the case for all rules that were made by means of legislation. facts that are directly or indirectly based on rules that exist as a matter of social fact seem to be more ‘solid’ than rules based on rules, which are based on rules, which … etc. such facts are without foundation, and they are easily confused with the subjective ‘facts’ soon to be discussed. facts of critical morality seem to belong to this category, and because they do, some might argue that there are no such facts at all. to give the two kinds of rule-based facts different names, we will call the facts which are directly or indirectly based on rules that exist as a matter of social fact ‘founded rule-based facts’, and the rule-based facts that lack such a foundation ‘unfounded rule-based facts’. subjective ‘facts’ the final category consists of facts which are purely subjective, such as the fact that spinach tastes better than brussels sprouts, and the fact that peter green is a better blues guitar player than joe bonamassa. arguably, these ‘facts’ are not facts at all, but merely personal preferences. a common mistake in normative and evaluative theorising is to identify unfounded rule-based facts and subjective facts. that this is a mistake is clear from the phenomenon that we consider it as rational to argue about unfounded rule-based facts, and not to argue about purely subjective facts. the identification of the two categories only makes sense if we consider arguments in both cases as equally unreasonable. it lies beyond the scope of this paper to discuss these unfounded rule-based facts extensively. arguably they exist if the sentences describing them are true, and these sentences are true if and only if they belong to a comprehensive coherent set of sentences. details can be found in jc hage, “three kinds of coherentism”, to appear in m araszkiewicz and j savelka (eds.), coherence: insights from philosophy, jurisprudence and artificial intelligence (dordrecht, ). hage j legisprudence vol , no x . interrelations the facts in the world are often interrelated. for a good understanding of the relation between the world of law and the outside world, it is important to have some insight in these relations between kinds of facts. these relations are either based on causal laws, or on rules. causal interrelations causal interrelations exist first and foremost between objective facts. for instance, there can be a causal relation between the fact that something ( a piece of metal) is heated, and the fact that it expands, or there can be a causal connection between the fact that a window is hit by a stone and the fact that it breaks. it may seem that there can also be a causal connection from objective facts to social facts. for instance, there may be an event which makes that most people start to accept a particular rule. but this case is more complicated than the previous ones, because there are two steps involved. first the purely causal one between the event and the acceptance of the rule, and second the conceptual step between this acceptance and the existence of the rule. arguably this conceptual step is based on the convention (rule) that social rules exist by being accepted and then the social fact is not caused by the objective fact. no matter how the step from objective facts to social facts is seen, the causal direction goes at most one way only; the existence of a social fact cannot directly cause an objective fact to exist. this impossibility deserves some attention, because it has direct implications for the interface between the world of law and the outside world which is a central theme of this article. it may seem possible that a social fact causes an objective one. a seeming example would be that the fact that somebody is the chair of a society for charitable purposes causes her to be proud. this appearance is deceptive, however, because it is not being the chair that makes her proud, but believing (knowing) to be the chair which has this effect. at least two objections can be made against this last argument. one objection is that there is at least an indirect link between being the chair and being proud: the fact that she is the chair makes her believe that she is the chair, which in turn makes her proud. it should be doubted, though, that being the chair, an immaterial fact , causes her to believe that she is the chair. it is other beliefs, such as the belief that she was elected as chair, which cause her to believe that she is the chair, not the fact itself. arguably, objective facts which are material can cause beliefs by causing the brain state on which the belief supervenes. this possibility will not be explored here any further. rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x but that brings us to the second objection: how can beliefs, which are immaterial, cause other beliefs? one belief may be a reason for having some other belief, but being a reason in this connection is not being a cause. how can immaterial beliefs have causal effects? as immaterial beliefs, i would say that they cannot. but arguably the mental state of believing something supervenes on a brain state, and this brain state may cause another brain state on which the second belief supervenes. in this sense one belief may cause another belief, and still the ‘real’ causal connection is between objective facts about brain states. since rule-based facts are by definition brought about by rules, there cannot be a direct causal connection between objective facts and rule-based facts. an indirect connection is possible if the last step in the chain is rule-based. for instance, a car accident causes damage to a car, and a rule attaches an obligation to compensate damages to the presence of this damage. but then the rule-based fact is directly based on the operation of a rule, and only indirectly on a causal relation. moreover, this causal relation holds between two objective facts. purely subjective ‘facts’ cannot be brought about by anything, causal law or rule. the fact that somebody likes spinach can be caused, but this fact is not the same as the ‘fact’ that spinach tastes good. moreover, these subjective ‘facts’ cannot cause anything either. the fact that john likes spinach may cause him to eat it, but the ‘fact’ that spinach tastes good does not cause anything, not even the belief that spinach tastes good. rule-based interrelations only rule-based facts of both kinds can be brought about by rules. they must be brought about by rules, because otherwise they cannot exist. moreover, on the world of law perspective on rules, rule-based facts are brought about by rules without any human intervention. if the facts that match the rule conditions exist and if the rule exists, the consequences of the rule also exist. most kinds of facts can trigger rules to make them generate rule-based facts. for instance, the fact that it rains may obligate taxi drivers to take along passengers for free (if there is a rule to that effect). social facts can also trigger rules, such as the fact that somebody chairs a charitable society can give her the this argument step presupposes a supervenience view of mental states. this is not the place to argue for such supervenience, but the interested reader can find more information in the lemmas on “epiphenomenalism” and on “supervenience” of s guttenplan (ed.), a companion to the philosophy of mind (oxford, ), written by respectively bp mclaughlin ( - ) and j kim ( - ). for the sake of exposition, the possibility of exceptions to rules is ignored. in jc hage, “rule consistency” in jc hage, studies in legal logic (dordrecht, ), - , it is shown how the world of law perspective on rules can be combined with exceptions to rules (and with conflicting rules, for that matter). hage j legisprudence vol , no x right to open the annual ball of the society. and the law contains an endless list of illustrations of the fact that rule-based facts can trigger rules and in that way lead to new rule-based facts. it is this very possibility which makes the idea of a world of law interesting. it is not clear whether subjective ‘facts’ can trigger rules. at first sight it may seem possible that a rule would attach a consequence to the ‘fact’ that spinach tastes good. on second thought, however, it is unclear how such a fact might lead to something if it is not a real fact. the temptation is strong to assume that if a fact that seemed to be subjective can trigger a rule, it really must have been an unfounded rule-based fact. dynamic and static rules the rules the application of which leads to rule-based facts can be subdivided into dynamic and static rules. dynamic rules attach new facts, or modify or take away existing facts as the consequence of an event. for example, the event that john promised richard to give him € has the consequence that from the moment of the promise on john is under an obligation to pay richard € . in general, rules which lead to the existence of obligations are dynamic rules. whereas dynamic rules govern the development of the world of law in time, static rules constrain the facts that can go together at the same moment in time. there are at least two kinds of them. fact-to-fact rules attach a fact to the presence of some other fact. an example is the rule which makes that if p is an inhabitant of the netherlands, then p has the duty to pay dutch income tax. another example is that the mayor of a city has the competence to make emergency regulations for this city. in general, duty imposing rules and competence conferring rules are fact-to-fact rules. counts-as rules make that some ‘things’, often events, count in the law also as something else. for instance, under particular circumstances, causing a car accident counts as committing a tort, or offering money to another person counts as attempting to bribe an official. counts-as rules are particularly important to transform ‘ordinary’ facts into facts in the world of law, because the rules that structure the world of law tend to have typical ‘legal’ facts as their conditions. for example, the main dutch rule for tortuous liability attaches the obligation to compensate damage to the event that there was ‘unlawful behaviour’, not to the occurrence of a car accident. see jc hage, “conceptual tools for legislators part : rules and norms” (fn. ). rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x d. the structure of the world of law . rule-based facts as intermediaries the world of law consists of rule-based facts. most of these rule-based facts derive their relevance from legal rules which attach additional consequences to them. for instance, the fact that somebody acted unlawfully derives its legal relevance from a rule that attaches the legal consequence that this person ought to compensate the damage resulting from the tort. the fact that somebody is a suspect under criminal law has as consequence that the public prosecutor is allowed to take compulsory measures against this person which would otherwise not have been allowed. inspired by alf ross i can depict the function of these rule-based facts, often denoted by legal status words , by the following figure: a. e. the squares on the left stand for different sets of facts which suffice for the presence of the rule-based fact. for instance, there are two different ways in which a person can be a suspect under criminal law: either there are good reasons to assume that this person committed a crime, or criminal prosecution against this person has commenced. the squares on the right indicate the legal consequences which the attaches to the rule-based fact, for instance the different compulsory measures which the public prosecutor is allowed to take against the suspect. a ross. ‘tû-tû’, ( ) harvard law review, - . see jc hage, “the meaning of legal status words”, in jc hage and d von der pfordten (eds.), concepts in law (springer, ), - . rule-based fact figure : intermediate facts hage j legisprudence vol , no x . transfer of real estate: an elaborated example often the legal consequences of some legal status are (parts of) the conditions for other rule-based facts. the transfer of ownership in real estate, which makes that the original owner loses the permission to destroy a house while the new owner obtains this permission, illustrates this well. let us have a closer look at an example case in which a sells her house to b. we assume that the sale takes place in the netherlands, a jurisdiction that works with a tradition system, where a notarial deed is required to transfer the ownership of real estate. then the following will occur. a and b draw up a document which they both undersign. under some assumptions concerning the content of this document, the document counts as a sales contract and the event of signing the document counts as entering into a sales agreement. both the facts that the document counts as a sales contract and that the signing counts as entering into an agreement are rule-based facts. the rules which make that the document counts as a contract and that the signing counts as entering into an agreement are counts-as rules, rules which make that something legally also counts as something else. the facts that result as consequence of the application of a counts-as rule are rule-based facts. the event that a and b entered into a sales agreement leads to two new facts. one is that a is from that moment on under an obligation to transfer the ownership of the house to b, and the other is that b is under an obligation to pay a the price of the house. both legal consequences are the result of a dynamic rule which attaches new facts to the occurrence of an event. the existence of both obligations is a rule-based fact. in order to fulfil a’s obligation to transfer the ownership of the house to b, a and b visit a notary who makes up a deed according to which a declares to transfer the ownership and b declares to accept the ownership. this event counts, on the basis of a counts-as rule, as the delivery of the ownership. moreover, this delivery in its turn counts as the transfer of the ownership. the delivery can, according to dutch law, only count as a valid transfer of ownership because of a’s obligation to make the transfer, which counts as the title for the transfer. there is another precondition for the delivery to count as a valid transfer and that is that a had the competence to transfer ownership of the house. this competence is attached to a’s ownership of the house by a fact-to-fact rule. for an exposition of the difference between consensual and tradition systems, see lars van vliet, “transfer of movable property” in jm. smits (ed.), elgar encyclopedia of comparative law, nd ed (cheltenham, ), - . rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x if the transfer of ownership is valid, a dynamic rule attaches to this event the consequences that a has lost the ownership of the house and that b has become the new owner. a fact-to-fact rule attaches to this latter fact that b has permission to destroy the house if he wants to. the above figure pictures the described events and their consequences. horizontal arrows represent the operation of dynamic rules. solid vertical arrows represent fact-to-fact rules, and dotted vertical arrows represent counts-as rules. the facts within the dotted box are rule-based. notarial event sales contract obligation title ownership compe- tence delivery deed transfer ownership permission to destroy signing document figure : transfer of real estate hage j legisprudence vol , no x f. interfacing the world of law and the outside world . the world of law and the outside world the world of law is not a toy world for legislators which they can manipulate by creating rules and by events which trigger the operation of these rules. it is meant to have impact on the ‘outside world’, the world that consists of facts which are not the result of the operation of legal rules. in very broad lines, the operation of the world of law can be sketched as follows : some facts in the outside world count, on the basis of legal rules, as facts in the world of law. in that quality, they play a role in the world of law, usually by leading to other facts in the world of law. for example, taking away a car may, under certain circumstances, count as theft, and lead to the power of a judge to impose a penalty. at the end of the chain the facts in the world of law should impact the outside world again. as we will see, it is far from obvious how this impact of the world of law on the outside world operates. to make the picture easier to understand, the input facts and the output facts have been positioned outside the world of law. since both categories of facts are defined in the next subsection as parts of the world of law, be it on the border with the outside world, the picture is not fully accurate. figure will be more precise in this respect. world of law outside world input facts output facts figure : interfaces with the world of law rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x . input, intermediate, and output facts the facts in the world of law are interconnected by rules, while the existence of those rules is a fact in the world. together the facts and the rules form a network of interrelated rules and facts. to answer the question how elements of this network can impact the outside world it is useful to have a closer look at the facts in the world of law and more in particular to distinguish between input facts, intermediate facts and output facts. input facts are facts in the world of law which also exist in the outside world, be it under a different name. in the world of law they have a special status that is specified by fact-to-fact and dynamic rules. in our example about the sale of a property right in real estate, the signing of a document is a fact in the outside world. this same fact counts in the world of law as the entering into a sales agreement. what happened at the notarial office counts as the delivery of the sold house. the facts that a and b entered into a sales agreement and that a delivered the house to b are input facts in the world of law. they are entry points in the network of the world of law. output facts are those facts in the world of law which impact the outside world. one example is the duty – or is it a permission? – of the public prosecution to take away the money that constitutes a fine, or to imprison a criminal convict. another example is the permission for the owner of a good to use it. in the following subsections we will take a closer look at these output facts and then it will become clear that there are only a few kinds of them. every fact in the world of law that is not an input or an output fact is an intermediate fact. most of the world of law consists of intermediate facts. examples from private law are the facts that somebody has a claim on somebody else, is liable for damages, is married, has a particular name, is the chief executive officer of a company, is competent to transfer a particular property right, has the capacity to make a last will, and many other facts. examples from public law are that some entity is a state, that a political party got so many votes in the elections, that a judge is competent to review laws against the constitution, that a public it is not necessary that the existence of the rules that connect facts in the world of law is itself a rule-based fact in the world of law, although this will hold true for by far most legal rules. rules of customary law would be a counter-example. the idea that facts in the outside world are interpreted as facts in the world of law can already been found in the first ( ) edition of the reine rechtslehre. see h kelsen, introduction to the problems of legal theory, (clarendon press, ), . basically the same idea can also be found in the work of john searle. see jr searle, the construction of social reality (the free press, ), - . an output fact may at the same time function as an intermediate fact. for instance, a legal duty may lead to behaviour of the person under this duty, but it may also be a precondition for the existence of another intermediate fact, such as the unlawfulness of the behaviour which violates this duty. this possibility is also indicated in figure . hage j legisprudence vol , no x officer has the competence to grant building permits, that individuals have the right to freedom of expression, and that some particular intergovernmental organisation exists. the intermediate facts can be subdivided into facts which lead to new facts through the application of dynamic rules and facts which only fulfil a role in argument chains concerning facts which are connected in an a-temporal fashion. examples of the former are the facts that somebody was granted a subsidy, caused a car accident, or that a bill was adopted. examples of the latter are the facts that somebody is the mayor of a city, is under a contractual obligation, or has a particular name. some facts are on the borderline. an example is the fact that somebody has a competence to perform some juridical act such as enter into a contract, pass a bill, or pronounce a verdict. the fact that someone has a competence does not lead to anything new, but it is a kind of fact which is a necessary precondition for some other events to lead to new legal consequences. for instance, having the competence to transfer ownership in some good is a necessary precondition for a delivery to lead to a transfer of ownership. the competence to legislate is a necessary precondition for a vote to lead to new legislation and therefore to new rules. figure depicts the relation between input, intermediate and output facts in the world of law. for reasons that will become clear later, there are no arrows from the output facts to the outside word. figure : input, intermediate and output facts input facts output facts intermediate facts rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x . kelsen on sanctions the rule-based facts in the world of law are immaterial, because otherwise they could not have been created through the application of a rule. consequently they cannot impact the outside world in a causal way. moreover, since the facts in the outside world are not rule-based , they cannot be brought about by the application of a rule. so it seems that the facts in the world of law cannot impact the outside world, purely for logical reasons. however, the world of law would not make much sense if it could not impact the outside world impact at all. the question is how this crucial relation from the world of law to the outside world is brought about. although this way of phrasing it may be new, the question itself is far from novel. in fact, it played an important role in the way in which hans kelsen characterised the law. a legal system (rechtsordnung) is according to kelsen a system of norms based on the same basic norm (grundnorm). these norms regulate human behaviour by prescribing, prohibiting, permitting or empowering (ermächtigen) it. all of this is still compatible with the view that the world of law is completely confined to itself, without any links to the outside world. however, there is according to kelsen another characteristic of legal systems which gives an indication of how the world of law may be linked to the outside world. this characteristic is that legal systems consists of rules that should be or are enforced (zwangsordnung). the nature of this enforcement is that the law attaches a sanction to illegal behaviour. or rather, behaviour counts as illegal if and only if the law attaches a sanction to it. sanctions are mostly physical events, such as taking away somebody’s money, or imprisoning a person. as such they cannot be attached to the violation of a legal duty by means of a rule. that is why kelsen writes that legal rules create legal duties by determining that some sanction ought to be applied in case of violation of these duties. this time, the duty rests on the officials who have the execution of sanctions as their task. the duty of these officials is still a legal ought, though, which has to be backed up by a sanction. since this sanction is still a sanction that ought to be applied, which seems to lead to an infinite regress of sanctions that ought to be applied backed up by sanctions that ought to be applied, etc. …. nowhere does this chain end in sanctions that are actually applied, in the physical reality; all that happens on the basis of legal rules is that duties to enforce duties to enforce duties … etc. are created. the rules by this is not completely true: a fact in the outside world may be rule-based, be it not based on a legal rule. for the argument in this paper, this theoretical possibility can be ignored, however. the following discussion of kelsen’s views is based on hans kelsen, reine rechtslehre, nd ed. (franz deuticke, ), chapter i. hage j legisprudence vol , no x themselves cannot enforce anything.. kelsen is aware of this complication and writes therefore that the final element of the chain is not a sanction that ought to be applied, but a sanction that an official is empowered (ermächtigt) to apply. since empowerments cannot be violated, there is no need for sanctions to back them up. kelsen’s solution for the threatening infinite regress faces two objections. the first objection can be dealt with right away. it is that an empowerment is only necessary for juridical acts (rechtsgeschäfte), and that an empowerment for physical behaviour does not make much sense. for example, a bailiff who is to take away some goods from an insolvent creditor needs a legal permission to do so, and this permission is given in a judicial verdict. however, the bailiff does not need to be empowered to take the goods away, since taking something away is a physical act for which no competence is needed. the first objection that kelsen’s solution does not work because the execution of a sanction does not require empowerment, but ‘only’ a permission can be overcome by replacing the empowerment which kelsen proposed by a permission. officials are allowed to apply a sanction in case a legal duty was violated. permissions can exist without being backed up by a sanction, and this takes away the threat of an infinite regress of sanctions requiring duties requiring sanctions, …etc. therefore the replacement of duties to apply sanctions by permissions to apply sanctions seems to solve kelsen’s problem. . the transition from the world of law to the outside world the second and more serious objection to kelsen’s solution for the problem of a threatening infinite regress of duties to apply sanctions is that a permission, just like a competence, is still a mere legal status, and that nothing happens if the officials do not exercise their permissions or competences. the existence of this complication is not something that should cause surprise. legal consequences are brought about by legal rules and legal rules can only have effect in the world of law. counts-as rules can bridge from the outside world to the world of law, but only in the direction of the world of law, because the facts in the world of law are, in contrast to those in the outside world, rule-based. legal rules cannot bring about that facts or events in the world of law count as facts or events in the outside world. in a sense, therefore, the problem is insolvable. does this mean that the world of law does not impact the outside world at all? clearly not, but the impact can only be indirect, namely by motivating people to act by changing their legal status. there are at first sight four kinds of status which are candidates for bringing about changes in the outside world, that is legal hans kelsen, reine rechtslehre (fn. ), . rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x duties, prohibitions, permissions and powers. we will discuss these four in turn and will then consider the possibility of other legal positions being similarly connected to the outside world. legal powers legal powers can be taken in a broad and in a narrow sense. somebody has a legal power in a broad sense if he can perform some kind of act to which a dynamic legal rule attaches a legal consequence. an example would be that somebody can bring about that she has to pay less municipality taxes by moving to another municipality. another example is that somebody can make himself liable for damages by committing contractual default. although legal powers in a broad sense include the power to bring about legal consequences by means of so-called juridical acts (e.g. entering into a contract), juridical acts are not necessarily involved in legal powers in this broad sense. this is different for legal powers in the narrow sense: they can by definition only be exercised by means of juridical acts. in this connection juridical acts may be defined as acts performed with the intention to bring about legal consequences, to which the law attaches these consequences for the reasons that they were intended. both legal powers in the broad and in the narrow sense require the existence of dynamic rules which are triggered by the behaviour of the power exercising person. for the exercise of legal powers in the narrow sense an additional requirement exists, namely that the acting person has the competence to perform the juridical act by means of which he intends to bring about the legal consequences. this may be the competence to make a last will, to found a company with limited liability, to create legislation, or to pronounce a judicial verdict. although the existence of a legal power may be a precondition for the performance of some acts, these acts will by definition not be acts which directly impact the outside world. the reason is that legal powers are powers to create legal consequences with the help of dynamic legal rules. these legal consequences are by definition consequences in the world of law, rule-based facts. therefore legal powers do not provide the bridge from the world of law to the outside world that we are looking for. more elaborate on the nature of juridical acts is jaap hage, “a model of juridical acts: part : the world of law”, ( ) artificial intelligence and law, - . here i distinguish between powers and competences, which are seen as different phenomena which exist next to each other. the terms ‘power’ and ‘competence’ are sometimes seen as alternative ways of designating the same phenomenon. see for instance t spaak, the concept of legal competence. an essay in conceptual analysis (aldershot, ), . hage j legisprudence vol , no x legal duties and obligations the point of legal duties and obligations is that the persons who are under such duties or obligations comply with them. a legal system can only exist if its participants by and large voluntarily comply with the duties and obligations they are under. so, if the world of law contains a duty or obligation for somebody to do something, this embodies at least the beginnings of a bridge to the outside world. the connection is not necessarily strong, though, because there is no guarantee that the obligated person will transform this requirement into actual behaviour. for instance, if somebody acted unlawfully and caused damage, he will normally be under an obligation to pay damages. if she violates this obligation by doing nothing, there is still no change in the outside world. of course there is the threat of the sanction in case of non-compliance, but this sanction only impacts the outside world if some legal official applies it. the bridge to the outside world should then be looked for in the rule that obligates or permits the official to apply this sanction, rather than in the duty or obligation which is backed up by the sanction. the bridge from a duty to behaviour in the outside world may become stronger if it is the duty of a legal official. judges are, we may take it, under a duty to apply the law. moreover, as a matter of fact, they normally comply with this duty and actually apply the law. if they do not, the reason is most likely that they are mistaken about what the law demands from them. downright refusal to apply the law is highly exceptional. so if a judge must decide a case the probability is high that her verdict will be in agreement with the law. however, a judicial verdict is a juridical act, and has consequences attached to it by a dynamic rule. these consequences are still facts in the world of law. if duties and obligations are to bridge the world of law to the outside world, it is better to look at the duties of sanction applying public officers. bailiffs provide a good example. they may be assumed to comply with the legal rules that impose the duty upon them to apply legal sanctions. so if a judge has convicted a tortfeasor to pay damages and the person entitled to the compensation hires a bailiff to enforce this legal requirement, the bailiff is under a duty to take the money away from the convicted person. most likely he will comply with this duty this is the seemingly obvious point that kelsen made by his demand that legal systems must be effective because otherwise the presupposition of the basic norm would not make much sense. see hans kelsen, reine rechtslehre, nd ed (franz deuticke, ), . hart made a similar point by claiming that participants in a legal system should by and large take the internal point of view towards the rules of the system. see hla hart, the concept of law, rd ed (oxford university press, ), / . rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x and this compliance bridges the gap between the world of law and the outside world. legal prohibitions a prohibition is nothing else than a duty not to do something. compliance with a prohibition means that nothing happens. it may therefore seem unlikely that legal prohibitions constitute bridges to the outside world. and yet it is possible, namely in case something would likely happen if the prohibition were lacking. for instance, if people normally, that is if there were no prohibition, would walk on the lawn, the existence of the prohibition might impact the outside world by making that fewer people tread on the lawn. legal permissions legal permissions are only likely to impact the outside world in case the permitted behaviour would otherwise be prohibited and if this prohibition would mostly be effective in the sense that it is complied with for the reason that the behaviour was prohibited. the lawn example can also illustrate this point: if people would not set foot on the lawn for the reason that it is prohibited, then a permission to walk on the lawn may lead more people to tread on the lawn. legal status legal rules, whether they be dynamic or static, often attach the presence of some legal status to an event or a fact in the world of law. examples of such statuses are being the president of the us, being the mayor of a city, being a criminal suspect, being the head of police, being a vehicle in the sense of the traffic law, being the owner of blackacre, having the capacity to make last wills, land, and so on … arguable, even such deontic facts as being under a duty or not being allowed to do something are examples of legal statuses. it is not doable to run through the list of all kinds of legal status, but a superficial inspection of the examples mentioned above already indicates that the possession of most of these statuses by itself does not lead to any changes in the outside world. that does not mean that the possession of the status of, for instance, criminal suspect has no impact at all, but the impact is indirect. for instance, if p is the suspect of having committed a serious crime, police officers may have the permission to search the body of this person on weapons. it is not unlikely that the officers will perform such a search when p has incurred the in the end, the question whether duties on officials are more effective than duties and obligations on ‘ordinary’ legal subjects is an empirical one. hage j legisprudence vol , no x status of suspect, where they would not have done so if p would not have incurred this status. however, it is not the status of criminal suspect in itself that changes the behaviour of the police officers, but the permission attached to this status. in general, the presence of most legal statuses is either an entry or an intermediate fact in the world of law. it may be important for the impact of the world of law on the outside world, but if so, only in an indirect fashion. general observations for purely logical reasons, there cannot be direct bridges from the world of law to the outside world on the basis of causal laws or legal rules. what is possible is that the awareness of a fact in the world of law influences (on the basis of a causal law) the behaviour of human beings. on the world of law model of rules, legal rules autonomously attach legal consequences to facts. human reasoners can mentally reconstruct this constitution of new facts, and if they do so they will know which new facts are present in the world of law. this knowledge has a counterpart in the outside world in the shape of brain states, and the facts about brain states are objective and can stand in causal relations to other objective facts. the ‘bridge’ from the world of law to the outside world is made if such a causal relation exists. as argued above, this is most likely with regard to ‘deontic’ facts such as duties, obligations, prohibitions and permissions, in particular but not exclusively if these deontic facts address legal officials. where there is no knowledge of facts in the world of law, the world of law cannot impact the outside world. g. legal rights having a legal right, such as the claim to be paid € , the title to some real estate such as blackacre, the copyright to a song text, the right to vote, the right not to be wounded, and the right to education, is a special case of possessing a legal status. for these statuses holds what holds for most legal statuses: they function as intermediate facts in the world of law, and do not have immediate impact on the outside world. since rights take a special place in law and legal thinking this general point will be elaborated in a short discussion of the nature of different kinds of rights. rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x . claims claims are rights in private law which one person holds against another person. if a holds a claim against b, then b is under an obligation towards a to do something, or to refrain from doing something. typical examples are that somebody has a claim to the payment of some amount of money, to the delivery of some good, or to the performance of some service. the use of the term ‘obligation’ in connection with claims is telling, because claims are the result of an event which brought about the relation between two parties according to which the one party has a claim against the other and the other is under an obligation towards the one. typical examples of such events are contracts and torts. hohfeldian claims claims as defined here differ in several aspects from claim rights as defined by hohfeld. a hohfeldian claim right is the counterpart of a duty, and nothing else. if a has a claim right against b that b will do x, this means the same as that b is under a hohfeldian duty towards a to do x. the first difference to be noticed is that hohfeld does not use the word ‘duty’ to express a way of being obligated because of some status, but rather for (more or less) the same purpose as the word ‘obligation’ is used in the present article. that is merely a terminological difference and does not have to have any practical implications. a more important difference is that a hohfeldian claim right is exhausted by the hohfeldian duty of the person against whom the claim is held. a claim in tort law or in contract law involves more than merely the mirror side of a hohfeldian duty. normally the holder of the claim can enforce the performance of the corresponding obligation, can waive the obligation and thereby end the existence of the claim, and can transfer and pledge the claim and thereby change the content of the corresponding obligation. (if a transfers her claim on b for the payment of € to p, then b is from then on under an obligation towards p to pay him € .) claims on the interface? a person who holds a claim against somebody else has a set of powers which allow him to bring about intentional changes in the world of law. if these powers to keep the exposition relatively simple, the possibilities that claims are held by more than one person or organisation, or against two or more persons or organisations, are ignored. for the main argument line these possibilities hardly make a difference. wn hohfeld, fundamental legal conceptions as applied in judicial reasoning; and other legal essays (new haven, ). hage j legisprudence vol , no x are exercised, the only changes that are brought about involve the world of law. to this extent, claims have no direct impact on the outside world. this is different for the obligations that necessarily go together with claims. if the law is by and large effective in the sense that legal obligations and duties tend to motivate people to act in accordance with them, the obligation of a person b, or rather the awareness thereof, will normally motivate this person to fulfil this obligation. moreover, obligations tend to be enforceable, which means that if the appropriate steps have been taken, legal officials have the duty the apply sanctions. obligations are on the interface between the world of law and the outside world. but these obligations are not identical to the claims, although they necessarily go together with them. . property rights claims are rights against some other person. the other main category of rights in private law consists of right on some ‘good’. the good can be material, such as land or something movable. it can also be immaterial such as a claim, an invention or the result of artistic creativity. since these rights are not directed towards one or more concrete persons, they are called ‘absolute rights’, where ‘absolute’ does not mean ‘unlimited’, but ‘non-directed’. to keep the discussion relatively straightforward, it will be confined to property rights on material goods, with the right of ownership to a movable good as the prime example. suppose that a owns a book. this implies that a is permitted to damage the book and even to destroy it. other persons, who do not own the book, are not permitted to damage or destroy the book. in other words, they have the legal duty not to damage or destroy the book. notice that the counterpart of ownership is a duty, not an obligation. this duty rests on non-owners because of their quality of being a non-owner. a can make an exception to this duty by giving permission to damage or destroy the book. moreover, a has the powers to forbid any non-owner to use the book and to transfer the ownership of the book to somebody else. more in general, if a has the ownership of a material good g, amongst others the following legal consequences hold: the following analysis is based on pw brouwer and jc hage, “basic concepts of european private law”, in ( ) european review of private law, - , but deviates from it in a number of details. more on the difference between duties and obligations in jc hage, “the deontic furniture of the world” (fn. ) and also in jc hage, “conceptual tools for legislators part : rules and norms” (fn. ). the basic idea is that obligations are constituted by a dynamic rule as relation to an event such as a contract or a tort, while duties are attached to persons by a fact to fact rule because of their status of being, for example, a criminal suspect, the mayor of a city, or a car driver. rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x all other persons have prima facie the legal duty not to damage or destroy g, or to interfere with a’s use and enjoyment of g; a is permitted to damage or destroy g; a has the power to grant other persons the permission to damage or destroy g and to forbid them to use g; a has the power to transfer the ownership of g to somebody else. property rights on the interface? a person who holds a property right on some good has a set of powers which allow him to bring about intentional changes in the world of law. in the case of ownership of movables, these include the power to alienate the good, to forbid others to use the good, and to grant them permission to damage or even destroy the good. if these powers are exercised, the only changes that are brought about involve the world of law. to this extent, property rights have no direct impact on the outside world. however, if permissions are granted, the existence of these permissions may lead to behaviour which would not have taken place otherwise. for instance, if somebody was given permission to take the bell of a bicycle owned by somebody else, the person may exercise this permission by taking away the bell. property rights do not lead to obligations, but the existence of property rights as a legal institution presupposes a background of general legal duties not to damage or destroy an owned good and not to interfere with the owner’s use and enjoyment of the good. if somebody becomes the holder of a property right, this does not create the legal duties, but it gives the pre-existing duties a focus which they did not have before. for example, an arbitrary person p is under the general duty not to destroy goods that have a different person as owner. if a particular car belongs to sheryl, this duty becomes more focused because it now includes the duty not to destroy sheryl’s car. by giving pre-existing duties focus, the existence of property rights may impact the outside world. if somebody catches a bird that was previously free, other persons may be withheld from catching the bird themselves, because that would now amount to interference with the existing ownership of the bird. in this respect, duties differ considerably from obligations, because obligations are new when they originate, while duties already existed when they receive their focus. this difference is exploited to argue how it is possible in connection with obligation-generating events to ‘derive ought from is’ in jc hage, “legal transactions and the legal ought” in jerzy stellmach and bartosz brozek (eds.), the normativity of law (krakow, ), - . hage j legisprudence vol , no x . human rights in the sphere of public law, there exists a range of rights which are taken to adhere to human beings for the very reason that they are human beings. these human rights are quite diverse by nature. many of them, including the freedoms of religion, expression, and association, involve permissions. many of them imply duties for states, or even private persons and organisations, such as the rights to education, housing and health care, and the prohibition of discrimination. others involve powers (right to vote) and limitations on powers (freedom of expression). most rights exhibit several of these aspects. . two theories about the nature of rights as the brief discussion above has illustrated, the law employs the notion of a right in diverse ways. maybe for that reason very different theories about the nature of legal rights are in circulation. two of those theories, which are historically taken to be each other’s opponents, are the will (or choice) theory and the interest theory. briefly stated, the will theory holds that somebody has a right if the right holder can enforce and waive the duty corresponding to the right at will. the interest theory holds that a legal right is an interest protected by the law. this is not the place to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both views on the nature of rights. it is interesting, however, to notice that the will theory emphasises the power of right holders to bring about changes in the world of law by making the duty holder liable to sanctions in case of non-compliance, or by taking away the duty that corresponds to the right. the interest theory, on the contrary, emphasises the legal protection of an interest by the imposition of duties and prohibitions on others than the right holder and by granting permissions to the right holder. since duties, prohibitions and permissions tend to be on the interface between the world of law and the outside world, the interest theory of rights has a stronger focus on the relation between the world of law and the outside world than the will theory which mainly pays attention to powers, which play their roles in the world of law itself. no matter which general theory about the nature of rights one adopts, the general picture is that rights impact the outside world mainly by imposing duties and prohibitions and by granting permissions. powers and limitations thereof ‘merely’ concern the changes that can be brought about in the world of law itself. good overviews can be found in ne simmonds, central issues in jurisprudence, rd ed, (london, ), - , and wa edmundson, an introduction to rights (cambridge, ). rule-based facts j legisprudence vol , no x h. pathways through the world of law arguably it is the main function of law to guide human conduct by providing mandatory rules. and yet, by far most of the law does not consist of mandatory rules, and most legal rules have not as their primary function to guide conduct. legal rules are the cement of the world of law, just like causal laws may be seen as the cement of the physical universe. legislators should not see it as their primary task to guide human conduct by means of mandatory rules, but rather to build the world of law and to provide this world with structure by means of rules. and yet, this world of law has a purpose outside itself, and this purpose is to impact the outside world by influencing human behaviour. to make the world of law fulfil its purpose, legislators should not only pay attention to the internal structure of the world of law; they should also have eye for the interface of the world of law with the outside world. neither self-defined legal statuses, such as that of legal suspect, or of mayor, nor legal rights, powers or competences will normally provide the necessary direct interface from the world of law to the outside world. this interface is mainly given by deontic facts such as the facts that somebody is under a duty or obligation to do something, or to refrain from doing something. permissions which make exceptions to duties or obligations can also fulfil this function of interface. it is these deontic facts that are the main ‘output facts’ of the world of law. the world of law can itself be treated as a kind of black box, which takes in facts of the outside world, transforms them by means of counts-as rules into ‘input facts’, processes them, and provides them with legal consequences in the form of ‘output facts’. in order to do so, there must be ‘pathways’ through the world of law, consisting of facts which are linked by means of rules, either cotemporary, or through a development in time, which connect the input facts to the output facts. the example about the transfer of a house from a to b in section c illustrates not only the structure of the world of law, but also such a pathway from the signing of a document and a transaction at the office of the notary to the permission for b to destroy the house of which he became the owner. if the world of law is to fulfil its function, there must be pathways through the world of law from every input fact to some output fact. input that does not lead to any output could just as well be disregarded by the world of law. output which cannot be reached by any input makes little sense. this may seem obvious, but nevertheless legal practice shows that this guideline to safeguard pathways from the input facts to the output facts is not always observed. human rights law is a case in point. human rights treaties impose duties on the participating states to ‘respect, protect, and fulfil’ the rights to which the states have committed cf. the title of jl mackie, the cement of the universe (oxford, ). hage j legisprudence vol , no x themselves. however, apart from some special settings such as the one provided by the european convention on human rights, the possibilities for right holders to enforce their rights are limited. possibly this is the reason why the steps from the existence of a human right and the state duties that are attached to them, via the recognition that these duties actually exist, to the compliance with these duties and actual behaviour in the outside world, are far from obvious. arguably, the human rights legislators – that is the states who engaged in the human rights treaties – did not take care to ensure that the path through the world of law, human rights law in this case, ended with output facts which could fulfil their function of impacting the outside world. to speak of the world of law and of pathways through it is only a metaphor. but it is a metaphor which provides the legislator with a useful perspective on his tasks: he must create a well-structured world, and one aspect of a good structure is that there are rule-defined pathways through the world of law from every input fact and to every output fact. moreover, as the human rights example illustrates, the legislator must pay attention to it that output facts can only function as such if the awareness thereof motivates human beings, or collective actors such as states, to adapt their behaviour to these facts. f mégret, “nature of obligations”, in d moeckli, s shah and s sivakumaran, international human rights law (oxford, ), - 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[w]e paid for it ourselves.” many acts from ohio and throughout the tristate area were able to ascend to regional stardom. the area was ripe with indepen- dent record labels and disc jockeys at stations like wdao (dayton) who fre- quently aired singles by local bands. numerous artists who would never acquire deals with major record labels had scored local hits that were played on the radio and could be purchased at neighborhood record stores. the early, pre- synthesizer roger sound had the steadiness of a james brown–inspired groove with an unwavering natural electric bass line, choppy rhythm guitar licks and conga patterns. the only hint of the forthcoming electronic roger and zapp brand was a short guitar solo connected to a talk box, which sounded more like a distant effect than anything that could ever materialize as a principal instru- mental voice. “freedom” has the gritty quality of a live recording from one of the in- numerable performances of the band in the midwestern “chitlin’ circuit.” the live music scene out of which roger and zapp emerged underscores a period in which music forged connections between businesses, schools, families, and other black community institutions. as the troutman brothers secured their big break with a record deal with warner bros.—after a brief and contentious stint the blues/funk futurism of roger troutman with george clinton’s uncle jam records—a new decade was initiating sweep- ing changes in popular music. by the mid- s, horns, bass guitars, congas, and timbales were displaced by the dominance of the synthesizer and drum machine. only a relatively small number of funk groups successfully adapted: roger and zapp, cameo, midnight star, lakeside, the dazz band, mtume, klymaax, and a handful of others. roger’s early interest in new sounds best prepared him for the coming musical age. unlike his predecessors—sun ra, parliament-funkadelic, and bootsy’s rubberband—roger did not link his high-tech funk sound to a science fiction or surreal story line (such as the epic battle between starchild and sir nose d’void of funk in the song “flash light”). instead, roger “played” with notions of linear “progress,” conjoining futuristic sounds with stories about down-to-earth or time-honored lyrical themes—such as the need for commit- ment, love, money, and setting aside time to party and enjoy life in the midst of its constant challenges. in , “more bounce to the ounce,” the first single released from zapp’s eponymous debut lp, stood as a declaration of sonic prog- ress—obviously, the fattened minimoog bass line offered much more bounce than the standard four-string bass guitar. however, when interviewed two years later, roger offered another dimension to the lyrics: “more bounce . . . deals with checks that bounce and i mean what else do you do when your checks bounce but just forget them and have a good time until you can make them good.” troutman used instrumentation to tamper with ways of thinking about the essence of time itself, employing the talk box and synthesizer alongside instru- ments associated with older music genres—blues, jazz, and doo-wop. roger’s solo album the many facets of roger is a musical place where jazz and blues guitar licks meet up with synthesizers to create nothing short of a mas- terpiece. a literal fusion of the two is best conveyed in the song “max axxe,” roger’s ode to and brilliant display of a new instrument, the guitar synthesizer. he also played the harmonica as the lead instrument on the song “do wa did- dy” and used the talk box as the voice for doo-wop–styled vocal arrangements. on the same lp, roger continued to obliterate future/past distinctions with his funky robotic voice singing a remake of the motown classic “i heard it through the grapevine.” additionally, roger’s meditations on the processes by which digital technologies were transforming social relations had a prophetic qual- ity. when zapp’s single “computer love” was released in , the internet did not exist in mass communications, and the idea of real-time face-to-face encounters on a visual monitor were more likely seen on reruns of the jetsons than anything approximating reality. “computer love” contemplated the im- pact of new technologies on the age-old search for love. roger once described his music as the “blues for the eighties.” this char- acterization would bespeak not only his guitar chops but also concern about the widespread loss of jobs in urban areas throughout the united states. anxieties about these hard times appear in a number of troutman’s songs: “so ruff, so scot brown tuff” ( ), “playin’ kinda ruff” ( ), “we need the buck” ( ), and “jesse jackson” ( ). roger was not satisfied, however, with music as a lone response to these problems. the troutman family made dayton, ohio, the lo- cale of its residence and entrepreneurial activities. using contemporary lingo, troutman enterprises, founded in , would be called a “social enterprise”— a company that situates solutions to social problems as part of its primary mis- sion. it was made up of numerous businesses—recording studio, construction company, and limousine service—committed to training and employing dis- placed african american workers and youth in dayton. in , roger described the troutman construction business in terms sim- ulating the reciprocal pleasures exchanged between musicians, audiences and listeners in performance and recording: stating that i noticed, when we would do live shows that people would feel good, but they would only feel good until that night. i mean i couldn’t prolong that feeling. so, “then we” started making records and i noticed that people could pick the re- cord up and prolong the feeling a little longer and then we started doing things with our construction company, getting people into different neighborhoods and refurbishing homes and turning debilitated houses into beautiful [ones] and then reinstating those tenants back into that property and then to see the look on their face and see how happy they are. it’s the same sensation, but the difference between the records and the shows and doing something for somebody’s home is that every time, they are always in their home and the feeling is just almost a lifetime. though roger was a part of a community that had once generated its own local music celebrities, he was troubled by the limits in opportunity structures for black youth. “i hate to see,” roger lamented, “black kids wanting to play ball or wanting to be musicians. there is nothing wrong with it,” he continued, “but we need doctors, we need lawyers, we need builders, we need carpenters.” the objectives of troutman enterprises were eventually overtaken by the eco- nomic difficulties of the era as the company folded during the early s. the overlapping sound research and social activism of roger and the troutman family, nevertheless, is a powerful metaphor for the challenges presented for the black experience in postindustrial america. the downsizing of big bands in black music mirrored the economic calam- ity of deindustrialization that downsized jobs and wages of workers in cities like dayton across the country. factors beyond the turn of events in dayton would, nevertheless, keep roger’s brand of funk—and funk music at large— very much alive in american popular music. the funk of the s and s was reintroduced to latter-day audiences through the frequent use of sampling the blues/funk futurism of roger troutman in hip hop, especially during the s and coming new millennium. young producers found the bass lines and talk box of roger an irresistible funk land- scape—zapp’s ( ) “more bounce to the ounce,” and “dance floor” were sampled in epmd’s “you gots to chill” ( ) and also by notorious b.i.g. in “going back to cali” ( ) and “be alright” ( ) and in pac’s “keep ya head up” ( ), among many others. beyond sampling, roger’s collabora- tions with younger artists helped to bridge the generational divide between in- strumentally trained musicians of the s and the dj and turntablist-inspired artists of the hip-hop generation, working directly with pac, dr. dre, snoop dogg, h-town, dj quik, and many others. undoubtedly, roger troutman’s funk legacy will continue to alter the future of music. notes . zapp (roger troutman), karen shearer papers, archives of african american music and culture, indiana university, august , , . . ibid., . . ibid., . . rickey vincent, funk: the music, the people and the rhythm of the one (new york: st. martin’s press, ), . . zapp (roger troutman), karen shearer papers, archives of african american music and culture, indiana university, august , , . . zapp (roger troutman), karen shearer papers, archives of african american music and culture, indiana university, november , , . . thompson, funk. scot brown 'the pleasures of merely circulating — the interpetive anthropology of clifford geertz and the 'postmodern anthropology of james clifford: a deconstructive reading by k. joanne richardson b.a. ( e n g l i s h ) , the u n i v e r s i t y of b r i t i s h columbia, m.a. (anthropology), the u n i v e r s i t y of b r i s t i s h columbia, a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy i n the faculty of graduate studies (department of anthropology and s o c i o l o g y ) t we accept t h i s t h e s i s as conforming to the r e q u i r e d standard the university of british columbia august © k. joanne richardson, in presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the university of british columbia, i agree that the library shall make it freely available for reference and study. i further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. it is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. department of ftuthugpouhy fiuo iocxolocy the university of british columbia vancouver, canada date au& de- ( / ) abstract in t h i s d i s s e r t a t i o n i attempt to e x p l i c a t e jacques d e r r i d a ' s s t r a t e g y of d e c o n s t r u c t i o n and, through a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e r e a d i n g of c l i f f o r d geertz's i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology and james c l i f f o r d ' s 'postmodern' anthropology r e s p e c t i v e l y , to show i t s relevance to the d i s c i p l i n e of anthropology i n g e n e r a l . the f o l l o w i n g i s a s k e l e t a l o u t l i n e of how i s e t about t h i s endeavour. in my i n t r o d u c t o r y chapter, i attempt to i n d i c a t e the way i n which the n o t i o n of logos or presence has dominated western p h i l o s o p h y from i t s i n c e p t i o n i n a n c i e n t greece up to and i n c l u d i n g the present day. as d e r r l d a u t i l i z e s i t , the term •presence' has to do with the assumption of and d e s i r e f o r the e x i s t e n c e of a s e l f - c e r t a i n and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l b a s i s f o r a l l extant phenomena and i s manifested i n such n o t i o n s as t r u t h , meaning, god, s e l f , concept and so on. because i t i s always d e f i n e d as s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l , wherever i t operates, presence e n t a i l s the s u p p r e s s i o n of d i f f e r e n c e and otherness. in chapter two, i o f f e r an e x p l i c a t i o n of d e r r i d a ' s s t r a t e g y f o r exposing and d e l i m i t i n g presence as i t manifests i t s e l f through and throughout western c o n c e p t u a l i t y , paying p a r t i c u l a r a t t e n t i o n to h i s work on u n d e c i d a b i l i t y . b r i e f l y , t h i s has to do with arguing t h a t concepts, as such, are always a l r e a d y o r i g i n a r l l y doubled and hence, a r i s t o t e l i a n l o g i c notwithstanding, are both p o s s i b l e (as e f f e c t s of u n d e c i d a b l l i t y ) and impossible (as s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l i d e a s ) . t h i s c a l l s r a d i c a l l y i n t o q u e s t i o n our assumptions about the nature of c o n c e p t u a l i t y and i n d i c a t e s the way i n which these assumptions ensure the r e p r e s s i o n of d i f f e r e n c e and otherness. in chapter three, i look a t the phenomenological (husserl) and hermeneutic (esp. heidegger, gadamer, ricoeur) background of contemporary i n t e r p r e t i v e and •postmodern' anthropology and, i n so doing, attempt to show t h a t i t i s premised upon an assumption of presence. in chapter four, i o f f e r a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e r e a d i n g of c e r t a i n works by c l i f f o r d geertz and by james c l i f f o r d r e s p e c t i v e l y , and attempt to show t h a t t h e i r unrecognized d e d i c a t i o n to an assumed n o t i o n of presence prevents them from s e e i n g the r e p r e s s i v e / o p p r e s s i v e nature of t h e i r chosen c o n c e p t u a l i t y . and, f i n a l l y , i n my c o n c l u d i n g chapter, i argue t h a t g e e r t z i a n i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology and c l i f f o r d i a n 'postmodern' anthropology are two s i d e s of the same o l d c o i n and t h a t , with r e s p e c t to the l a t t e r ' s work, the term 'postmodern' i s a misnomer. i f u r t h e r argue t h a t western c o n c e p t u a l i t y i s , by d e f i n i t i o n and i n p r i n c i p l e , both r e p r e s s i v e and oppressive and t h a t , t h i s being the case, anthropology must e i t h e r r e - examine and r e - e v a l u a t e i t s most b a s i c assumptions or, f a i l i n g t h a t , r e s i g n i t s e l f to p e r p e t u a t i n g the i n h e r i t e d l e g a c y of a r u t h l e s s metaphysics. i i i table of contents a b s t r a c t i i acknowledgements i v i. i n t r o d u c t o r y comments: p h i l o s o p h i c a l background and statement o£ ijp&sf}t i i . an e x p l i c a t i o n of derridean d e c o n s t r u c t i o n i i i . p h i l o s o p h i c a l background of i n t e r p r e t i v e and •postmodern' anthropology: phenomenology and hermeneutics iv. c l i f f o r d geertz and james c l i f f o r d : a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e reading v. concluding assessments b i b l i o g r a p h y i v ah the o l d q u e s t i o n s , the o l d answers, t h e r e ' s nothing l i k e them! (samuel beckett, endgame) . . . t h a t t h i n g s go round and a g a i n go round has r a t h e r a c l a s s i c a l sound. (wallace stevens, "the p l e a s u r e s o£ merely c i r c u l a t i n g " ) what c o n n e c t i o n i s t h e r e b e t w e e n t h e s a r t o r i a l splendours of the educated man and the photograph of r u i n e d houses and dead bodies? ( v i r g i n i a woolf, three guineas) daddy, daddy, you b a s t a r d , i'm through. ( s y l v i a p l a t h , "daddy") v acknowledgements i would l i k e to thank my a d v i s o r , dr. e l v i whittaker, and my committee members, dr. kenelm burridge and dr. marie- f r a n c o i s e guidon, f o r r e a d i n g and commenting on t h i s d i s s e r t a t i o n . i would l i k e to thank dianne t l e f e n s e e f o r her love and support and f o r g u i d i n g me through the treacherous world of computer technology. i would l i k e to thank my many f r i e n d s f o r t h e i r a f f e c t i o n and camaraderie. i would l i k e to thank my parents, jean and fred richardson, f o r t h e i r constant love and d e v o t i o n . v i chapter one i n t r o d u c t o r y comments: p h i l o s o p h i c a l background and statement of i j a ^ a t ) p h i l o s o p h i c a l background in h i s h i s t o r i c a l l e x i c o n of greek p h i l o s o p h i c a l terms f.e. p e t e r s o f f e r s the f o l l o w i n g e n t r y concerning logos: logos: speech, account, reason, d e f i n i t i o n , r a t i o n a l f a c u l t y , p r o p o r t i o n . . . . . [for] h e r a c l i t u s logos i s ah u n d e r l y i n g o r g a n i z a t i o n a l p r i n c i p l e of the u n i v e r s e . . . . and t h i s harmony, which i s r e a l l y a t e n s i o n of o p p o s i t e s , i s not to be understood i n the sense of a c y c l i c r e t u r n , but as a s t a b l e s t a t e ( f r s . , ). t h i s logos p r i n c i p l e , i n t e r e s t i n g l y , a c c o r d i n g to k i r k , raven and s c h o f i e l d , the common n o t i o n t h a t h e r a c l i t u s was predominantly, i f not e n t i r e l y , concerned with f l u x and change as opposed to s t a b i l i t y and order has to do with h i s having been misread by p l a t o and a r i s t o t l e : as f o r p l a t o and a r i s t o t l e , there i s l i t t l e verbatim q u o t a t i o n of h e r a c l i t u s i n e i t h e r , nor were they r e a l l y i n t e r e s t e d i n the a c c u r a t e o b j e c t i v e assessment of e a r l y p r e d e c e s s o r s . p l a t o o c c a s i o n a l l y mentions him, mainly i n a humorous or i r o n i c a l way and with emphasis on a view f r e e l y a t t r i b u t e d to him i n the d i a l o g u e s , t h a t ' a l l t h i n g s are i n f l u x ' . . . . according to a r i s t o t l e a t met. a , a , p l a t o was i n f l u e n c e d i n youth by the emphasis l a i d by c r a t y l u s on t h i s k i n d of view. but a l l p r e s o c r a t i c t h i n k e r s were s t r u c k by the dominance of change i n the world of our experience. h e r a c l i t u s was o b v i o u s l y no e x c e p t i o n , indeed he probably expressed the u n i v e r s a l i t y of change more c l e a r l y and more d r a m a t i c a l l y than h i s predecessors; but f o r him i t was the complementary idea of the measure i n h e r i n g i n change, the s t a b i l i t y t h a t p e r s i s t s through i t and c o n t r o l s i t , t h a t was of v i t a l importance. p l a t o may have been g e n u i n e l y m i s l e d , e s p e c i a l l y by f i f t h - c e n t u r y s o p h i s t i c though i t i s hidden and p e r c e p t i b l e o n l y to the i n t e l l i g e n c e ( f r s . , . . . ), i s s t i l l m a t e r i a l , as can be seen from the i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of the h e r a c l i t a n logos with cosmic f i r e . . . . . p l a t o . . . used the term logos i n a v a r i e t y of ways, i n c l u d i n g the o p p o s i t i o n between mythos and logos . . . , where the l a t t e r s i g n i f i e s a t r u e , a n a l y t i c a l account. t h i s i s common usage, but i t leads o f f i n t o an e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l theory. in phaedo p l a t o marks as a c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of t r u e knowledge (eplsteme) the a b i l i t y to g i v e an account (logos) of what one knows. in theat. c-d t h i s aspect of logos i s i n c o r p o r a t e d i n t o the d e f i n i t i o n of eplsteme: t r u e o p i n i o n (doxa) accompanied by an account. socrates d i s c u s s e s what logos would mean i n t h i s context ( i b i d . c- ), and from h i s a n a l y s i s emerges a d e s c r i p t i o n of logos as the statement of a d i s t i n g u i s h i n g c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of a t h i n g ( i b i d . ). the v a l i d i t y of t h i s i s denied on the ground of i t s being of no value i n the case of s e n s i b l e , i n d i v i d u a l beings (compare a r i s t o t l e , meta. b). . but when t h i s c o n c e p t i o n of logos i s moved higher up the p l a t o n i c s c a l e of being i t o b v i o u s l y does have a r o l e to p l a y ; i n rep. b p l a t o d e s c r i b e s the exaggerations, i n h i s d i s t o r t i o n of h e r a c l i t u s ' emphasis here; and a r i s t o t l e accepted the p l a t o n i c f l u x - i n t e r p r e t a t i o n and c a r r i e d i t s t i l l f u r t h e r . other r e f e r e n c e s to h e r a c l i t u s i n a r i s t o t l e a t t a c k him f o r denying the law of c o n t r a d i c t i o n i n h i s a s s e r t i o n t h a t o p p o s i t e s are 'the same.' again t h i s i s a m i s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n by a r i s t o t l e , who a p p l i e d h i s own t i g h t l o g i c a l standards a n a c h r o n i s t i c a l l y ; by the 'same' h e r a c l i t u s e v i d e n t l y meant not ' i d e n t i c a l ' so much as 'not e s s e n t i a l l y d i s t i n c t . ' [in any case, h e r a c l i t u s was] l e s s concerned with the mechanics of development and change than with the u n i f y i n g r e a l i t y t h a t underlay them. ( k i r k , raven and s c h o f i e l d , : - ) d i a l e c t i c i a n . . . as one who can give an account (logos) of the t r u e being (or essence, ousla) of something, i . e . the term of the process of d i v i s i o n ( d l a l r e s i s ) d e s c r i b e d i n the s o p h i s t , the a r i s t o t e l i a n d e f i n i t i o n (. . . horos) by genera and s p e c i e s ; indeed, a r i s t o t l e f r e q u e n t l y uses logos as a synonym f o r [ d e f i n i t i o n ] . a n o t h e r t y p i c a l a r i s t o t e l i a n use i s logos as reason, r a t i o n a l i t y , p a r t i c u l a r l y i n an e t h i c a l context, e.g. p o l . a, e t h . nlch. v. a, and f r e q u e n t l y in the combination " r i g h t reason" (orthos logos, the s t o i c r e c t a r a t i o ) . . . . he a l s o understands logos as mathematical p r o p o r t i o n , r a t i o (meta, b), a usage probably going back to the pythagoreans, even though i t i s u n a t t e s t e d i n t h e i r fragments. . . . . the s t o i c p o i n t of departure on logos i s h e r a c l i t u s ' d o c t r i n e of an a l l - p e r v a s i v e formula of o r g a n i z a t i o n , which the s t o i c s c o n s i d e r e d d i v i n e . logos i s the a c t i v e . . . f o r c e i n the u n i v e r s e (d^l. v i i , ), c r e a t i v e i n the f a s h i o n of sperm (svf i, ;a d.l. v i i , ; see l o g o ! s p e r m a t l k o l ) . as i n a diogenes l a e r t i u s , l i v e s of the eminent p h i l o s o p h e r s , ed. and t r a n s . r.d. h i c k s , loeb c l a s s i c a l l i b r a r y , london, . j . von arnim, stolcorum veterum fragmenta, v o l s . , l e i p z i g , - . according to p e t e r s : the s t o i c l o g o ! s p e r m a t l k o l , which are designed to e x p l a i n both p l u r a l i t y and t e l e o l o g y i n a m o n i s t i c system, appear to be p a t t e r n e d a f t e r the a r i s t o t e l i a n e i d o s . . . i n i t s r o l e as p h y s l s [ n a t u r e ] . the logos c o n s i d e r e d as a u n i f i e d e n t i t y c o n t a i n s w i t h i n i t s e l f , on the analogy of animal sperm, the growth powers of exemplars of a l l the i n d i v i d u a l s (svf i i , ; d^l. v i i , ). these i n d i v i d u a l l o g o ! are imperishable (svf i i , ), i . e . they s u r v i v e the c y c l i c a l c o n f l a g r a t i o n ( e k p y r o s l s ) t h a t consumes the kosmos and are the s e e d l i n g s of the next kosmos ( i b i d . i, ). despite t h e i r paradigmatic c h a r a c t e r they are more h e r a c l i t u s i t i s m a t e r i a l and i d e n t i f i e d with f i r e . . . . i t i s a l s o i d e n t i c a l with nature (physls . . .) and zeus (see cleanthes, hymn to zeus; svf i, ). t h i s p e r v a s i v e presence i n the u n i v e r s e develops i n s e v e r a l d i r e c t i o n s : s i n c e i t i s a u n i t y i t grounds the theory of cosmic sympathy . . . and of n a t u r a l law and the e t h i c a l imperative "to l i v e a c c o r d i n g to nature". . . . s t o i c l i n g u i s t i c t h e o r y f u r t h e r d i s t i n g u i s h e d i n t e r i o r logos (=thought) and e x t e r i o r logos (=speech) (svf i i , ; sextus emplricus, adv. math. v i i i , " . . . ) , a d i s t i n c t i o n t h a t c l e a r l y i n f l u e n c e d p h i l o ' s n o t o r i o u s l y d i f f i c u l t v i s i o n of l o g o s . . p h i l o knew the d i s t i n c t i o n between i n t e r i o r and e x t e r i o r logos and c o u l d a p p l y i t i n an orthodox s t o i c f a s h i o n (de v i t a mos. i i , s ), and i t was perhaps t h i s d i s t i n c t i o n , together with the jewish s c r i p t u r a l t r a d i t i o n about the "word of god," t h a t l e d to h i s new treatment of l o g o s . in the f i r s t i n s t a n c e logos i s the d i v i n e reason t h a t embraces the a r c h e t y p a l complex of elde t h a t w i l l serve as the models of c r e a t i o n . . . . next, t h i s logos t h a t i s god's mind i s e x t e r n a l i z e d i n the form of the kosmos noetos . . ., the u n i v e r s e a r i s t o t e l i a n than p l a t o n i c i n t h a t they are immanent i n matter ( i b i d . i i , ). they a l s o p l a y a major r o l e i n p l o t i n u s : they r e s i d e i n the psyche (enn. i i , , ; iv, , ) where they are the cause of i t s movement ( i b i d . iv, , ), the l o g o l c o n t a i n a l l the d e t a i l s of the being ( i b i d . i l l , , ) and are the reasons why i n d i v i d u a l s d i f f e r ( i b i d . iv, , ); unextended themselves, they are i n d i v i d u a l i z e d o n l y by the matter i n which they inhere ( i b i d . iv, , ). ( p e t e r s , : ) sextus e m p i r i c u s , adversus mathematicos, v o l s . , ed. and t r a n s . r.g. bury,loeb c l a s s i c a l l i b r a r y , london. - . p h i l o , works, ed. and t r a n s . f.h. colson e t a l . , v o l s . , loeb c l a s s i c a l l i b r a r y , london, to date. a p p r e h e n s i b l e o n l y to the i n t e l l i g e n c e ( i b i d . , ). i t i s transcendent . . . and i t i s god, although not the god . . ., but r a t h e r the " e l d e r son of god". . . . with the c r e a t i o n of the v i s i b l e world (kosmos a l s t h e t o s ) the logos begins to p l a y an immanent r o l e as the " s e a l " of c r e a t i o n (de fuga , ), the s t o i c "bond of the u n i v e r s e " . . . and helmarmene t f a t e ] . p h i l o d i f f e r s from the s t o i c s i n denying t h a t t h i s immanent logos i s god (de mlgre. abr. , - ); f o r the p r o v i d e n t i a l r o l e of f h i l o ' s logos, see p r o n o l a . p h i l o g i v e s h i s logos a according to p e t e r s , pronola means 'forethought' providence': . the e a r l i e r h i s t o r y of the concept of providence i s to be seen i n the emergence, from diogenes to a r i s t o t l e , of a n o t i o n of an i n t e l l i g e n t purpose ( t e l o s . . .) o p e r a t i n g i n the u n i v e r s e . in a l l of these t h i n k e r s i t i s c l e a r l y a s s o c i a t e d with the i n t e l l i g e n t god whose f e a t u r e s begin to appear i n the l a t e r p l a t o (see laws where the d e n i a l of pronola i s reckoned blasphemy) and i n a r i s t o t l e . for the s t o i c s the immanent logos governs a l l by nous and pronola (d.l. v i i , ; svf i, ). i t i s given a new t u r n i n the d i r e c t i o n of anthropocentrism by chrysippus where the r e s t of the kosmos i s s u b j e c t e d to the good of man. s t o i c p r o n o l a , i d e n t i f i e d as i t was with p h y s i s , was e s s e n t i a l l y immanent. . l a t e r platonism, l i k e the newly appeared s e m i t i c t r a d i t i o n , was transcendent and b e l i e v e d i n a s e r i e s of intermediate d e i t i e s . . ., with the r e s u l t t h a t p r o n o l a began to be d i s t r i b u t e d through the e n t i r e range of d e i t i e s ( p l u t a r c h , de f a c t o f- b; a p u l e i u s , de platone i, ). as the supreme p r i n c i p l e grows more remote, i t s d i r e c t involvement i n p r o n o l a becomes markedly l e s s . so i n p h i l o , de fuga , the logos e x e r c i s e s providence through the immanent dynamels, j u s t as i n p l o t i n u s (enn. iv, , ) the world soul has a g e n e r a l providence and the i n d i v i d u a l s o u l s a p a r t i c u l a r providence d i s t i n c t r o l e i n c r e a t i o n : i t i s the i n s t r u m e n t a l cause (de_ cher. , - ); i t i s a l s o an a r c h e t y p a l l i g h t . . ., t h i s l a t t e r image reappearing i n p l o t i n u s , enn. i l l , , . but there i s a d i f f e r e n c e between the two t h i n k e r s ; what was i n p h i l o both logos and nous [ i n t e l l i g e n c e , i n t e l l e c t , mind] i s d i v i d e d i n p l o t i n u s who uses the l o g o l concept i n a f a s h i o n a k i n to the s t o i c l o g o i s p e r m a t i k o i . . . . ( p e t e r s , : - ) from the f o r e g o i n g extended q u o t a t i o n i t may be seen t h a t throughout a n c i e n t greek p h i l o s o p h y , up to and i n c l u d i n g the f i r s t i n t i m a t i o n s of c h r i s t i a n i t y , the concept of logos i s always, e i t h e r d i r e c t l y or i n d i r e c t l y , a s s o c i a t e d with some n o t i o n of the e x i s t e n c e of an a b s o l u t e — of a changeless e n t i t y a g a i n s t which a l l e l s e may be measured. however, i t i s the p r e s o c r a t i c n o t i o n of logos as 'the u n d e r l y i n g o r g a n i z a t i o n a l p r i n c i p l e of the u n i v e r s e ' , a p r i n c i p l e which, i n v a r i o u s forms, p e r s i s t s through to the present day, t h a t i n s p i r e d jacques d e r r i d a to c o i n the term 'logocentrism.' logocentrism r e f e r s to western p h i l o s o p h y ' s assumption of f o r the bodies they i n h a b i t ; the one, of course, i s beyond providence. i m p l i c i t i n t h i s d i s t i n c t i o n between g e n e r a l and p a r t i c u l a r providence, i . e . , between command and e x e c u t i o n , i s the r e c o n c i l i a t i o n of the necessary transcendence of god and the necessary immanence of p r o v i d e n t i a l a c t i v i t y . . . ( p e t e r s , : p. ) p l o t i n u s , enneads, v o l s . , ed. e. b r e h i e r , p a r i s , - ; t r a n s . s. mackenna, nd ed., london, . presence, t h a t i s , i t s assumption of an essence, an a b s o l u t e , a p l e n i t u d e , e t c . which, i n the process of grounding and a c c o u n t i n g f o r a l l extant phenomena, subsumes d i f f e r e n c e w i t h i n i d e n t i t y and/or the other w i t h i n the s e l f . thus, f o r example, p l a t o n i c and a r i s t o t e l i a n n o t i o n s of eidos (idea) presuppose a d i v i s i o n between what i s a b s o l u t e and what i s t r a n s i e n t . for p l a t o the changing world of mortal e x i s t e n t s i s a r e f l e c t i o n of the unchanging realm of the eide or i d e a s . as p e t e r s expresses i t , the r e l a t i o n s h i p between the i n d i v i s i b l e , e t e r n a l eide and t r a n s i e n t , s e n s i b l e phenomena ( a l s t h e t a ) i s d e s c r i b e d i n a number of d i f f e r e n t ways. the eide are the cause . . . of the a i s t h e t a (phaedo l o o b - l o l c ) , and the l a t t e r are s a i d t o p a r t i c i p a t e . . . i n the eide.. in an e l a b o r a t e metaphor, p e r v a s i v e i n p l a t o , the a l s t h e t o n i s s a i d to be a copy (eikon . . .) of the e t e r n a l model (paradelgma), the e i d o s . t h i s a c t of a r t i s t i c c r e a t i o n (mimesis . . .) i s the work of a supreme craftsman (demiourgos . . . ) . . . . . [where] i s one to l o c a t e the eide? here analogy comes i n t o p l a y . j u s t as the a l s t h e t a are c o n t a i n e d i n some s o r t of o r g a n i c u n i t y t h a t i s the kosmos, so the eide e x i s t i n some " i n t e l l i g i b l e p l a c e " (topos noetos. rep. c, b . . . ) l o c a t e d "beyond the heavens" (phaedrus c). ( p e t e r s , : ) thus p l a t o p o s i t s a transcendent realm capable of grounding and a c c o u n t i n g f o r the e a r t h l y realm. as f o r a r i s t o t l e , the c h i e f d i f f e r e n c e between the p l a t o n i c and a r i s t o t e l i a n view of the e i d e i s t h a t f o r the l a t t e r the eidos i s not (except i n the cases of the f i r s t mover and/or movers, and t h a t of the nous [mind, i n t e l l e c t , i n t e l l i g e n c e ] " t h a t comes from o u t s i d e " . . .) a separate s u b s i s t e n t . . ., but a p r i n c i p l e of complete substances. i t i s the formal cause of t h i n g s (phys. i i , ), a c o r r e l a t i v e of matter i n composite beings ( i b i d . i, b), and the i n t e l l i g i b l e essence (ousla) of an e x i s t e n t (meta. a . . . ) . in knowing t h i n g s we know t h e i r e i d o s (meta. a), i . e . , the a p p r o p r i a t e f a c u l t y (nous or a i s t h e s l s ) becomes the t h i n g i t knows by reason of the e i d o s of the known o b j e c t e n t e r i n g the s o u l (de_ an. i l l , b- a). e i d o s i s , i n b r i e f , an a c t u a l i z a t i o n ( e n e r g e l a , e n t e l e c h l a . . .; de an. i i , a). ( p e t e r s , : - ) in other words, a r i s t o t l e takes the p l a t o n i c n o t i o n of e i d o s and views i t not o n l y as transcendent (e.g. f i r s t mover), but a l s o as immanent (e.g. 'the i n t e l l i g i b l e essence (ousla) of an e x i s t e n t ' ) . but the p o s i t i o n of the e i d o s as a b s o l u t e and unmoving remains c o n s t a n t . given a r i s t o t l e ' s acceptance of e i d o s as a b s o l u t e and complete in and of i t s e l f , i t i s a s h o r t s t e p to h i s p o s i t i n g of the founding p r i n c i p l e of the l o g i c of i d e n t i t y — the p r i n c i p l e of n o n - c o n t r a d i c t i o n : for the same t h i n g to h o l d good and not t o hold good s i m u l t a n e o u s l y of the same t h i n g and i n the same r e s p e c t i s i m p o s s i b l e . . . . t h i s , then, i s the f i r m e s t of a l l p r i n c i p l e s . . . . for i t i s impossible f o r anyone t o b e l i e v e t h a t the same t h i n g i s and i s not. . . . but i f i t i s not p o s s i b l e f o r c o n t r a r i e s to hold good of the same t h i n g s i m u l t a n e o u s l y . . ., and the o p i n i o n c o n t r a r y to an o p i n i o n i s t h a t of the c o n t r a d i c t o r y , then o b v i o u s l y i t i s impossible f o r the same person t o b e l i e v e s i m u l t a n e o u s l y t h a t the same t h i n g i s and i s not; f o r anyone who made t h a t e r r o r would be h o l d i n g c o n t r a r y o p i n i o n s s i m u l t a n e o u s l y . that i s why a l l those who demonstrate go back to t h i s o p i n i o n i n the end: i t i s , jln the nature of t h i n g s , the p r i n c i p l e of a l l the other axioms a l s o . ( a r i s t o t l e , : ) (emphasis a r i s t o t l e ' s and mine) t h i s p r i n c i p l e of n o n - c o n t r a d i c t i o n and i t s concomitant l o g i c of i d e n t i t y , premised as they are on an assumption of eidos as a b s o l u t e and e s s e n t i a l , have never ceased haunting western p h i l o s o p h y and/or theology.* the two main branches of p o s t - p l a t o n i c and p o s t - a r i s t o t e l i a n p h i l o s o p h y are e m p i r i c i s m and r a t i o n a l i s m . g e n e r a l l y speaking, the seventeenth c e n t u r y and e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y e m p i r i c i s t p h i l o s o p h e r s (e.g. bacon, locke, berkeley, hume) h e l d t h a t knowledge d e r i v e s not from innate or a p r i o r i ideas but from the accumulation of concrete sensory with r e s p e c t to c h r i s t i a n theology, whether the emphasis i s on god as transcendent (and hence the need f o r a c h a i n of i n t e r m e d i a r i e s schooled i n t r a n s l a t i n g his ways to humanity (e.g. roman c a t h o l i c i s m ) ) or on god as immanent (and hence the need o n l y f o r an 'open heart and r e c e p t i v e mind' (e.g. p r o t e s t a n t i s m ) ) the important p o i n t i s t h a t god i s i n v a r i a b l y viewed as omnipotent and omnipresent ( a l s o , i n t e r e s t i n g l y , as male — metaphorics n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g ) . in other words, whatever p a r t i c u l a r aspect of the concept of god one chooses, f o r whatever reasons, to s t r e s s , god, as such, i s assumed to be a b s o l u t e , unchanging and e t e r n a l — t h a t which both accounts f o r and c o n t a i n s a l l known (and, by e x t e n s i o n , unknown) phenomena. e x p e r i e n c e s . here, of course, we see the glimmerings of an i n d u c t i v e ' s c i e n t i f i c method' premised on the n o t i o n t h a t c e r t a i n t y i s determinable through d i r e c t o b s e r v a t i o n and e x p e r i e n c e . however, l i k e the r a t i o n a l i s t s (and p l a t o and a r i s t o t l e before them), what is of primary concern to the e m p i r i c i s t s i s s t i l l c e r t a i n t y , and, l i k e the r a t i o n a l i s t s , they assume t h a t c e r t a i n p r o p o s i t i o n s a r e , by d e f i n i t i o n , i n d u b i t a b l e . thus the e m p i r i c i s t s r a r e l y questioned the e x i s t e n c e of god and, i n any case, never questioned the e x i s t e n c e of necessary t r u t h s — they merely h e l d t h a t the former was not s u b j e c t to concrete o b s e r v a t i o n and t h e r e f o r e not the business of s c i e n c e and t h a t the l a t t e r , being l o g i c a l l y necessary, c o u l d not be questioned without r e s u l t i n g i n a b s u r d i t y . for example, bacon b e l i e v e d i n the s e p a r a t i o n of reason and r e v e l a t i o n ; locke b e l i e v e d t h a t there was n o n e m p l r i c a l a p r i o r i knowledge of n o n s e n s l b l e phenomena; berkeley b e l i e v e d t h a t knowledge of god was a g i v e n ; hume, u n l i k e the o t h e r s , questioned the e x i s t e n c e of god, but, l i k e the o t h e r s , b e l i e v e d t h a t c e r t a i n r e l a t i o n s of ideas (e.g. a n a l y t i c p r o p o s i t i o n s and mathematics) c o n s t i t u t e d necessary t r u t h s , and so on. the e m p i r i c i s t t r a d i t i o n , i n s p i t e of i t s s t a t e d o p p o s i t i o n to the p l a t o n i c dualism of unchanging transcendent i d e a s / t r a n s i e n t e a r t h l y phenomena and the g e n e r a l r a t i o n a l i s t dualism of a p r i o r i / a p o s t e r i o r i i d e a s , i t s e l f remains e s s e n t i a l l y d u a l l s t i c i n t h a t i t assumes the v a l i d i t y of the d i s t i n c t i o n between necessary and c o n t i n g e n t t r u t h s — an assumption which, except i n so f a r as i t l o c a t e s necessary t r u t h s w i t h i n the t e n e t s of u n i v e r s a l l o g i c r a t h e r than i n the human mind, does not d i f f e r i n any fundamental r e s p e c t from the aforementioned r a t i o n a l i s t assumption of the d i s t i n c t i o n between a p r i o r i / a p o s t e r i o r i i d e a s . hence, methodological d i f f e r e n c e s a s i d e , the e m p i r i c i s t t r a d i t i o n , every b i t as much as the r a t i o n a l i s t t r a d i t i o n , assumes the e x i s t e n c e of s e l f - c e r t a i n and s e l f - e v i d e n t t r u t h s which are p r e d i c a t e d upon an acceptance of the i n d u b l t a b l l i t y of the l o g i c of i d e n t i t y (as evinced i n the a r i s t o t e l i a n p r i n c i p l e of n o n - c o n t r a d i c t i o n ) and a g a i n s t which a l l c o n c r e t e l y observed and/or experienced phenomena must be measured. thus, f o r example, both t r a d i t i o n s assume concepts, as such, to be, by d e f i n i t i o n and i n p r i n c i p l e , s e l f - i d e n t i c a l and i n d i v i s i b l e because, f o l l o w i n g the l o g i c of non- c o n t r a d i c t i o n , a concept, being t h a t which i s d e f i n i t i v e of the essence or meaning of a c a t e g o r y or c l a s s of phenomena, cannot be what i t i s not: i . e . i t cannot, s i m u l t a n e o u s l y , be both p o s s i b l e and i m p o s s i b l e . t h i s being the case, both t r a d i t i o n s , e i t h e r i m p l i c i t l y or e x p l i c i t l y , assume the p r i o r i t y of i d e n t i t y over d i f f e r e n c e and, as w i l l become i t should be noted t h a t , n o t i o n s of 'good' and 'bad' t h e o r i z i n g about c o n c e p t u a l i t y n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g , t h i s i s the standard d e f i n i t i o n of 'concept* as i t f u n c t i o n s throughout the western p h i l o s o p h i c a l t r a d i t i o n . (the reader may c o n s u l t the oxford e n g l i s h d i c t i o n a r y or any r e p u t a b l e d i c t i o n a r y of p h i l o s o p h i c a l terms.) c l e a r in the f o l l o w i n g s e c t i o n on r a t i o n a l i s m , s e l f over o t h e r . of the three l e a d i n g seventeenth c e n t u r y and e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y r a t i o n a l i s t p h i l o s o p h e r s , descartes, l e i b n i z and spinoza, i t i s descartes who has had by f a r the most i n f l u e n c e on l a t e r p h i l o s o p h y . i t i s g e n e r a l l y acknowledged t h a t modern p h i l o s o p h y begins with descartes's demonstration t h a t c e r t i t u d e i s grounded i n the t h i n k i n g i n d i v i d u a l ' s i n d u b i t a b l e awareness of her own thought processes — the famous c o g l t o ergo sum. in other words, one may doubt e v e r y t h i n g but the f a c t of one's own t h i n k i n g / d o u b t i n g s e l f . thus f o r the f i r s t time i n western p h i l o s o p h y knowledge i s grounded i n the p e r c e i v i n g s u b j e c t r a t h e r than i n an assumed transcendent form(s) or i n a world t h a t is presumed to e x i s t o u t s i d e of one's own c o n s c i o u s n e s s . t h i s i s not to say t h a t descartes dispensed with a n o t i o n of god — on the c o n t r a r y , he undertook to prove the l o g i c a l n e c e s s i t y of god's e x i s t e n c e . " moreover, descartes b e l i e v e d i n the e x i s t e n c e of innate or a p r i o r i i d e a s , such as the p r i n c i p l e s of knowledge and s c i e n c e (e.g. the p r i n c i p l e of n o n - c o n t r a d i c t i o n ) which " descartes argued t h a t to know was a g r e a t e r p e r f e c t i o n than to doubt, and t h a t t h e r e f o r e , he h i m s e l f must be an imperfect being who, nonetheless, was capable of having an idea of p e r f e c t i o n . t h i s idea of p e r f e c t i o n c o u l d o n l y have come from a p e r f e c t being, i . e . god. f u r t h e r to t h i s , descartes argued t h a t e x i s t e n c e , being a p e r f e c t i o n , c o u l d no more be separated from the n o t i o n of a supremely p e r f e c t being than having three angles c o u l d be separated from the n o t i o n of a t r i a n g l e . are present i n the human mind from b i r t h and which, being e v i d e n t to the ' n a t u r a l l i g h t of reason,' are immune from doubt. however, descartes's importance f o r l a t e r p h i l o s o p h y c e n t r e s on h i s l i n k i n g of c e r t i t u d e with the t h i n k i n g s e l f and the concomitant n o t i o n of the mind/body s p l i t . as he reasons i n the f o u r t h d i s c o u r s e , . . . examining a t t e n t i v e l y what i was, and s e e i n g t h a t i c o u l d pretend t h a t i had no body and t h a t there was no world or p l a c e t h a t i was i n , but t h a t i c o u l d not, f o r a l l t h a t , pretend t h a t i d i d not e x i s t , and t h a t , on the c o n t r a r y , from the v e r y f a c t t h a t i thought of doubting the t r u t h of other t h i n g s , i t f o l l o w e d v e r y e v i d e n t l y and v e r y c e r t a i n l y t h a t i e x i s t e d ; while on the other hand, i f i had o n l y ceased to t h i n k , although a l l the r e s t of what i had ever imagined had been t r u e , i would have no reason to b e l i e v e t h a t i e x i s t e d ; i thereby concluded t h a t i was a substance, of which the whole essence or nature c o n s i s t s i n t h i n k i n g , and which, i n order to e x i s t , needs no p l a c e and depends on no m a t e r i a l t h i n g ; so t h a t t h i s ' i ' , t h a t i s to say, the mind, by which i am what i am, i s e n t i r e l y d i s t i n c t from the body, and even t h a t i t i s e a s i e r to know than the body, and moreover, t h a t even i f the body were not, i t would not cease to be a l l t h a t i t i s . (descartes, : ) descartes reasoned t h a t the mind or s e l f (res c o g l t a n s ) was unextended and i n d i v i s i b l e and hence t o t a l l y d i s t i n c t from the body or matter (res extensa) which was extended and d i v i s i b l e . and because c e r t i t u d e can o n l y be achieved by and through the thought processes of the t h i n k i n g s u b j e c t , f o r descartes, knowledge of otherness (res extensa) must, by d e f i n i t i o n , be d e r i v e d from and determined by the s e l f (res c o g i t a n s ) . the seventeenth c e n t u r y and e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y e m p i r i c i s t t r a d i t i o n , with i t s n o t i o n s of l o g i c a l i n d u c t i o n and necessary t r u t h s and i t s emphasis on sensory experience as the barometer of c e r t i t u d e , c a r r i e d on through auguste comte up through bertrand r u s s e l l , the e a r l y w i t t g e n s t e i n and the l o g i c a l p o s i t i v i s m of hempel, carnap e t a l . , and i n f l u e n c e d much of n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y and t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y anthropology (e.g. t y l o r , f r a s e r , boas, r a d c l i f f e - b r o w n , murdock, stewart, white, l v l - s t r a u s s , e t c . ) . the hallmarks of t h i s t r a d i t i o n i n c l u d e a r e l i a n c e on t e s t a b i l i t y , r e p l i c a b i l i t y , o b j e c t i v i t y , q u a n t i t a t i v e a n a l y s i s , f a c t s , c a u s a l or d e t e r m i n i s t i c e x p l a n a t i o n , a fundamental s e p a r a t i o n between the observer and the observed, and the p o s s i b i l i t y of e s t a b l i s h i n g laws based on c o n c l u s i o n s drawn from observable d a t a . the seventeenth c e n t u r y and e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y r a t i o n a l i s t t r a d i t i o n , with i t s n o t i o n of l o g i c a l deduction from a p r i o r i ideas and i t s emphasis on the t h i n k i n g / p e r c e i v i n g s u b j e c t as the barometer of c e r t i t u d e , c a r r i e d on through kant, hegel, the phenomenology of h u s s e r l and the hermeneutics of schleiermacher, d i l t h e y , heidegger, gadamer and ricoeur and p a r t i c u l a r l y i n f l u e n c e d t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology (e.g. geertz, sperber, rabinow, boon, hymes, e t c . ) and 'postmodern' anthropology (e.g. c l i f f o r d , t y l e r , marcus, f i s c h e r , e t c . ) . the hallmarks of t h i s t r a d i t i o n i n c l u d e an emphasis on s u b j e c t i v i t y , a b e l i e f i n the i n t e r s u b j e c t i v e s o c i a l c o n s t r u c t i o n of an always mediated ' r e a l i t y ' and the importance of i n t e r p r e t e d meanings as opposed to analyzed f a c t s . however, both t r a d i t i o n s , i n t h a t they whole-heartedly embrace the l o g i c of i d e n t i t y ( i . e . l o g i c premised on the v a l i d i t y of the p r i n c i p l e of n o n - c o n t r a d i c t i o n ) and i n t h a t they both a s p i r e to the attainment of c e r t i t u d e , remain p r o f o u n d l y m e t a p h y s i c a l . that i s to say, they both assume and r e l y on a n o t i o n of presence, i . e . a guarantee of s e l f - e v i d e n t and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l c e r t a i n t y which expresses i t s e l f i n such n o t i o n s as essence, i d e a , t r u t h , s e l f , d i a l e c t i c , c o n s c i o u s n e s s , concept, and so on. t h i s n o t i o n of presence, through p h e n o m e n o l o g l c a l / e x l s t e n t i a l i s t / h e r m e n e u t l c a l ideas concerning s e l f and/or d i a l e c t i c i t y and through s e m i o l o g i c a l / s t r u c t u r a l i s t ideas concerning b i n a r y o p p o s i t i o n a l i t y , dominates t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y thought every b i t as much as i t dominated p l a t o and a r i s t o t l e . i t i s t h i s i m p l i c i t or e x p l i c i t n o t i o n of presence which jacques derrida's d e c o n s t r u c t i o n seeks to expose and to d e l i m i t w i t h i n the works of western p h i l o s o p h y and, i n so doing, to i n d i c a t e the way i n which, due to the v e r y nature of our most c h e r i s h e d concepts, indeed, due to the v e r y nature of concepts as such, we, a l b e i t unknowingly, c o n s t a n t l y r e p r e s s otherness and d i f f e r e n c e . i i ) statement of jjfrfcgjtt in t h i s d i s s e r t a t i o n i attempt to accomplish three g o a l s : ( ) to provide an e x p l i c a t i o n of derridean thought and to demonstrate the r e l e v a n c e of i t s a p p l i c a t i o n t o anthropology, ( ) to d e l i n e a t e the p h i l o s o p h i c a l background and p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s of i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology (as evinced i n the w r i t i n g s of c l i f f o r d geertz) and 'postmodern anthropology (as evinced i n the w r i t i n g s of james c l i f f o r d ) and to s u b j e c t them to a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e r e a d i n g and ( ) to show t h a t western c o n c e p t u a l i t y , by d e f i n i t i o n and i n p r i n c i p l e , i s both r e p r e s s i v e and o p p r e s s i v e and t h a t , t h i s being the case, anthropology must begin to engage i n a fundamental r e - e v a l u a t i o n of i t s most b a s i c assumptions. i choose to c o n c e n t r a t e on the work of jacques d e r r i d a because, n i e t z s c h e and heidegger n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g , , a the o n l y f r i e d r i c h n i e t z s c h e ( - ) i s of g r e a t i n t e r e s t to d e r r i d a i n t h a t the former d e d i c a t e d h i s l i f e ' s work to a r a d i c a l c r i t i q u e of the t r u t h c l a i m s of western p h i l o s o p h y . in a d d r e s s i n g the concept of t r u t h n i e t z s c h e expresses h i m s e l f as f o l l o w s : what, then, i s t r u t h ? a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms — i n s h o r t , a sum of human r e l a t i o n s , which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished p o e t i c a l l y and r h e t o r i c a l l y , and which a f t e r long use seem f i r m , c a n o n i c a l , and o b l i g a t o r y to a people: t r u t h s are i l l u s i o n s about which one has f o r g o t t e n t h a t t h i s i s what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; c o i n s which have l o s t t h e i r p i c t u r e s and now matter o n l y as metal, no longer as c o i n s . we s t i l l do not know where the urge f o r t r u t h comes from; f o r as yet we have heard o n l y of the o b l i g a t i o n imposed by s o c i e t y t h a t i t should e x i s t : to be t r u t h f u l means u s i n g the customary metaphors — i n moral terms: the o b l i g a t i o n to l i e a c c o r d i n g to a f i x e d convention, to l i e h e r d - l i k e i n a s t y l e o b l i g a t o r y f o r a l l . . . . (nietzsche i n t a y l o r , a: ) in other words, a c c o r d i n g to n i e t z s c h e , western metaphysics, from p l a t o on, has engaged i n a prolonged process of m i s t a k i n g r h e t o r i c a l convention f o r i n d i s p u t a b l e t r u t h . he f u r t h e r argues t h a t human consciousness i s an e f f e c t of the i n t e r p l a y of d i f f e r e n t i a l f o r c e s and t h a t f o r c e i s , by d e f i n i t i o n , r e l a t i o n a l - - i . e . t h a t f o r c e , as such, cannot e x i s t as a s i n g u l a r u n i t y but must always e x i s t i n r e l a t i o n to another f o r c e . in t h i s way n i e t z s c h e c h a l l e n g e s the g e n e r a l p h i l o s o p h i c a l assumption of s e l f - i d e n t i c a l , s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t u n i t y . for n i e t z s c h e , . . . every t h i n g i s f i s s u r e d and every consciousness d u p l i c i t o u s . [he] b e l i e v e s t h a t the search f o r t r u t h i s a c t u a l l y an e x e r c i s e of "the w i l l to power" through which one t r i e s to master the u n c e r t a i n t i e s of the human c o n d i t i o n by r e p r e s s i n g the i n e v i t a b i l i t y of fragmentation and d i s c l o c a t i o n . . . . n i e t z s c h e ' s "gay wisdom" j o y f u l l y a f f i r m s the i n e s c a p a b i l i t y of i n c o m p l e t i o n and the i m p o s s i b i l i t y of knowledge. ( t a y l o r , a: ) despite n i e t z s c h e ' s attempt to u n s e t t l e the s e l f - a s s u r e d assumptions of western metaphysics, m a r t i n heidegger ( - ) c o n s i d e r e d him to be v e r y much a proponent of t h a t which he sought to d i s c r e d i t . (indeed, heidegger r e f e r s to n i e t z s c h e as the l a s t g r e a t metaphysician.) as f a r as heidegger was concerned, n i e t z s c h e , l i k e a l l those who preceded him back to and i n c l u d i n g p l a t o , was mired i n a concern with knowledge which precluded any s e r i o u s a t t e n t i o n to the q u e s t i o n of the meaning of being. a c c o r d i n g to heidegger, n e i t h e r n i e t z s c h e nor any t h i n k e r before him . . . come to the commencing beginning, r a t h e r they see the b e g i n n i n g a l r e a d y and o n l y i n the l i g h t of what i s a l r e a d y a f a l l i n g o f f from the beginning and a q u i e t e n i n g of t h a t b e g i n n i n g : i n the l i g h t of p l a t o n i c p h i l o s o p h y . . . n i e t z s c h e h i m s e l f a l r e a d y e a r l y on d e s i g n a t e s h i s p h i l o s o p h y as r e v e r s e d p l a t o n i s m . the r e v e r s a l does not e l i m i n a t e the p l a t o n i c premise, but r a t h e r s o l i d i f i e s i t e x a c t l y through the appearance of e l i m i n a t i o n . (heidegger i n spivak i n d e r r i d a , e: xxxiv) in other words, because n i e t z s c h e does not go f a r enough, because he does not q u e s t i o n the meaning of being ( i . e . the p o s s i b i l i t y of presence as such), he i s l e f t with no c h o i c e but to operate by a method of simple r e v e r s a l (e.g. a n t i - c h r i s t as opposed to c h r i s t , d i o n y s l a n as opposed to a p p o l l o n i a n e t c . ) which, heidegger argues (and d e r r i d a would a g r e e ) , leaves the p h i l o s o p h i c a l f i e l d e s s e n t i a l l y untouched. heidegger s e t s out to address the p o s s i b i l i t y of presence through attempting to t h i n k d i f f e r e n c e as d i f f e r e n c e . he r e f e r s to d i f f e r e n c e as 'the same' which, f o r heidegger, i s t h a t which s i m u l t a n e o u s l y j o i n s and s e p a r a t e s . in other words, heidegger attempts to move away from the standard western p h i l o s o p h i c a l n o t i o n of presence as, by d e f i n i t i o n , u n d i f f e r e n t i a t e d , and attempts to t h i n k presence as the 'luminous s e l f - c o n c e a l i n g ' of the •same.' however, as mark t a y l o r p o i n t s out, i t is c l e a r t h a t i n s t r u g g l i n g to t h i n k the unthought, heidegger t r i e s to t h i n k p h i l o s o p h y ' s o t h e r . yet does he s t i l l t h i n k t h i s other p h i l o s o p h i c a l l y or even m e t a p h y s i c a l l y , and, thus, not t h i n k i t as other? i n s o f a r as heidegger continues to value u n i t y over p l u r a l i t y , he remains t r u e t o the most important assumption of western p h i l o s o p h y . though intended to overcome metaphysical n o t i o n s of i d e n t i t y , heidegger's concept of the same approaches the n o t i o n of i d e n t i t y - i n - d i f f e r e n c e t h a t hegel develops i n response to what he regards as s c h e l l i n g ' s inadequate " p h i l o s o p h y of i d e n t i t y . " the logos t h a t a r t i c u l a t e s heidegger's same i s , l i k e the hegelian logos, a "primal phenomenon," t h a t "draws and j o i n s together what i s h e l d a p a r t i n s e p a r a t i o n . " by attempting to t h i n k d i f f e r e n c e as same, heidegger seems to extend the p h i l o s o p h i c a l search f o r o r i g i n s . in e x p l o r i n g the d i f f e r e n c e l e f t unthought by p h i l o s o p h y , heidegger seeks what he e x p l i c i t l y l a b e l s an " e s s e n t i a l o r i g i n . " from t h i s p o i n t of view, the problem with the t r a d i t i o n a l n o t i o n of being, as w e l l as i t s modern m a n i f e s t a t i o n i n phenomenology's " p r i n c i p l e of p r i n c i p l e s " ( i . e . t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t i v i t y ) , i s t h a t both being and s u b j e c t i v i t y are i n s u f f i c i e n t l y p r i m o r d i a l , and, hence, cannot provide a proper f o u n d a t i o n f o r t h i n k i n g . as a more o r i g i n a l o r i g i n , d i f f e r e n c e can answer the q u e s t i o n of how presence becomes present. ( t a y l o r , a: - ) as w i l l become c l e a r i n the course of t h i s d i s s e r t a t i o n , d e r r i d a has a g r e a t d e a l of sympathy with p a r t s of the nietzschean and heideggerian e f f o r t s — much of h i s work being concerned with m a i n t a i n i n g and d e v e l o p i n g many of t h e i r i n s i g h t s while a v o i d i n g t h e i r e s s e n t i a l acceptance of presence. for, although both n i e t z s c h e and heidegger a t t a c k the p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s of western metaphysics, both, u l t i m a t e l y , remain d e d i c a t e d to t h a t metaphysics — n i e t z s c h e through the r e t e n t i o n of a metaphorics which i s t h i n k e r of whom i am aware who manages, through h i s use of such •psuedo-concepts as o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g and u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , , a to i n d i c a t e the way i n which western metaphysics r e p r e s s e s otherness and d i f f e r e n c e without, h i m s e l f , succumbing to such r e p r e s s i o n . i choose to c o n c e n t r a t e on i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology because i t i s w i d e l y p e r c e i v e d to be a r e a c t i o n t o , and more r i g o r o u s l y comprehensive than, t r a d i t i o n a l i s t p o s i t i v i s t l c approaches to anthropology ( s c h o l t e , ; hymes ed., ; watson-franke and watson, ; rabinow and s u l l i v a n eds., ; ruby ed., ; geertz, , , ; boon, ; whittaker, ; c l i f f o r d , ). as has been s a i d , p o s i t i v l s t approaches to anthropology modelled themselves on e m p i r i c i s t n o t i o n s of f a c t , o b j e c t i v i t y , the s e p a r a t i o n between observer and observed and so on. in o p p o s i t i o n to t h i s view, i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology argues t h a t • o b j e c t i v i t y ' i s an e p i s t e m o l o g l c a l c o n s t r u c t which e n t a i l s the unwarranted and unacceptable assumption t h a t the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t can e x i s t as an u n p r e j u d i c e d observer who i s capable of w r i t i n g up a d i s p a s s i o n a t e , ' f a c t u a l * account of whatever she observes. i n t e r p r e t i v e a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s introduce phenomenological/ steeped i n p l a t o n i c / c a r t e s i a n dualism (e.g. t r u t h / e r r o r , appearance/ r e a l i t y e t c . ) and heidegger through a n o s t a l g i a f o r r e c o v e r i n g the moment of the meaning of being. , a why these are not t r a d i t i o n a l concepts i s e x p l a i n e d i n chapter two. hermeneutical n o t i o n s of i n t e r u b j e c t l v i t y , i n t e r p r e t a t i o n and d i a l e c t i c i t y i n t o t h e i r d i s c i p l i n e and maintain t h a t whatever the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t produces, so f a r from being an u n p r e j u d i c e d , d i s p a s s i o n a t e account, i s always a t h o r o u g h l y mediated s o c i a l c o n s t r u c t i o n which d e a l s not with analyzed f a c t s but with i n t e r p r e t e d meanings — hence doing away with any n o t i o n of the v a l i d i t y of o b j e c t i v e , s c l e n t l s t l c p r i v i l e g e on the p a r t of the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t . i choose to c o n c e n t r a t e on 'postmodern' anthropology because i t s e t s i t s e l f up as an improvement over i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology and as embodying what i s au courant w i t h i n the d i s c i p l i n e as a whole (marcus and f i s h e r eds., ; c l i f f o r d and marcus eds., ; rabinow, ; t y l o r , ; c l i f f o r d , ; sangren, ; geertz, ; k a p f e r e r , ; whittaker, ). 'postmodern' anthropology argues t h a t i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology, i t s improvement over p o s l t i v i s t anthropology n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g , merely i n t e r p r e t s , r a t h e r than a c t i v e l y engaging with, other c u l t u r e s . thus, while a c c e p t i n g the i n t e r p r e t i v e a n t h r o p o l o g i s t ' s emphasis on t h e phenomenological n o t i o n of i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y , 'postmodern' anthropology p l a c e s an emphasis on the gadamerian hermeneutics of d i a l o g u e r a t h e r than on the d i l t h e y a n or ricoeurean hermeneutics of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . in t h i s way, •postmodern' anthropology seeks to ensure t h a t whatever the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t produces w i l l be in the form of a 'negotiated r e a l i t y ' and, as such, u n l i k e i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology, w i l l d i s a l l o w any p o s s i b i l i t y of being skewed i n favour of the remnants of a p r i v i l e g e d p o i n t of view. i choose to c o n c e n t r a t e on c l i f f o r d geertz as r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology and on james c l i f f o r d as r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of 'postmodern* anthropology because t h a t i s how they are c h a r a c t e r i z e d i n the c u r r e n t a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l l i t e r a t u r e ( r e . geertz: rabinow and s u l l i v a n eds., ; ruby ed., ; boon, ; webster, , ; parker, ; marcus and f i s c h e r eds., ; s c h o l t e , ; c l i f f o r d , . r e : c l i f f o r d : marcus and cushman, ; marcus and f i s c h e r eds., ; rabinow, ; geertz, ; sangren, ; k a p f e r e r , ; whittaker, ). i argue t h a t both g e e r t z i a n i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology and c l i f f o r d i a n 'postmodern' anthropology are f i r m l y embedded w i t h i n an unexamined c o n c e p t u a l i t y which ensures t h a t they continue to perpetuate the l e g a c y of western metaphysics through the unacknowledged and, indeed, unrecognized r e p r e s s i o n of d i f f e r e n c e and otherness. chapter two an e x p l i c a t i o n of derrldean d e c o n s t r u c t l o n jacques d e r r i d a maintains t h a t the e n t i r e h i s t o r y of western metaphysics, from i t s i n c e p t i o n i n a n c i e n t greece to i t s e x p r e s s i o n i n modern day hermeneutics, grounds i t s e l f i n a concept of presence; t h a t i s , i n the assumption of and d e s i r e f o r a ' t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s i g n i f i e d ' — an a b s o l u t e l y c e r t a i n because s e l f - i d e n t i c a l and s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t source of being and knowledge which manifests i t s e l f i n such concepts as t r u t h , essence, substance, meaning, god, and so on. whether presence i s expressed as a p r e s o c r a t i c n o t i o n of l o g o s , as a p l a t o n i c or a r i s t o t e l i a n n o t i o n of e i d o s , as a c h r i s t i a n n o t i o n of god, as a c a r t e s i a n n o t i o n of c o g i t o , as a k a n t i a n n o t i o n of s y n t h e t i c a p r i o r i , as a hegelian n o t i o n of absolute s p i r i t , as a rousseauian n o t i o n of nature, as a husserlean n o t i o n of t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t i v i t y , as a saussurian n o t i o n of the inner system of language or as a heideggerian n o t i o n of the meaning of being as a l e t h e l a , i t always expresses both the p o s s i b i l i t y and the n e c e s s i t y of an a b s o l u t e and s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t ground f o r a l l human experience. and because presence must be assumed to account f o r any and the reader should be aware t h a t , throughout t h i s work, i t i s d e r r l d a ' s view of western metaphysics with which i am concerned. i t should not be assumed t h a t t h i s i s a view which i s commonly shared by a l l p h i l o s o p h e r s . a l l d i s c r e t e phenomena, because nothing must be allowed to f a l l o u t s i d e i t s purview ( f o r , i f t h i s were to happen, the unquestionable would have to be questioned and chaos would t h r e a t e n logos) i t i s p e r c e i v e d to be homogeneous — to be the u l t i m a t e u n i t y which c o n t a i n s and allows f o r a l l m u l t i p l i c i t y but which i s not i n i t s e l f m u l t i p l e . a c o r o l l a r y of the f o r e g o i n g view of presence i s t h a t western c o n c e p t u a l i t y abounds with innumerable h i e r a r c h i c a l l y s t r u c t u r e d o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r s such as s p e e c h / w r i t i n g , t r u t h / e r r o r , c e r t a i n t y / u n c e r t a i n t y , r e f e r e n t / s i g n , s i g n i f i e d / s i g n i f i e r , i d e n t i t y / d i f f e r e n c e , meaning/absurdity, s e l f / o t h e r , wherein the l a t t e r term of each p a i r i s viewed as a c o r r u p t i o n of the former. thus, to use the s p e e c h / w r i t i n g o p p o s i t i o n as an example, d e r r i d a a s s e r t s t h a t : .phonocentrism merges with the h i s t o r i c a l d e t e r m i n a t i o n of the meaning of being i n g e n e r a l as presence, with a l l the subdeterminations which depend on t h i s g e n e r a l form and which organize w i t h i n i t t h e i r system and t h e i r h i s t o r i c a l sequence (presence of the t h i n g to s i g h t as e i d o s , presence as substance/essence/existence [ o u s i a ] , temporal presence as p o i n t [stlgm ] of the now or of the moment [nun], the s e l f - presence of the c o g i t o , c o n s c i o u s n e s s , s u b j e c t i v i t y , the co-presence of the other and of the s e l f , i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y as the i n t e n t i o n a l phenomenon of the ego, and so f o r t h ) . logocentrism [supports] the d e t e r m i n a t i o n of the being of the e n t i t y as presence [and the] epoch of the logos thus debases w r i t i n g c o n s i d e r e d as mediation of mediation and as a f a l l i n t o the e x t e r i o r i t y of meaning. ( d e r r i d a , e: - ) in other words, speech i s e x a l t e d because i t i s c o n s i d e r e d to be c l o s e to an o r i g i n a r y presence, t r u t h or meaning, while w r i t i n g i s scorned because i t i s a •mediation of mediation' and consequently twice removed from t h a t which i t attempts to approximate. d e r r i d a contends t h a t , so f a r from being a secondary or d e r i v a t i v e form of speech, w r i t i n g i s a c t u a l l y a p r e c o n d i t i o n of language and t h a t speech has always a l r e a d y been w r i t t e n . c l e a r l y , d e r r i d a i s not r e f e r r i n g to w r i t i n g i n the standard sense of symbols r e p r e s e n t i n g words: as d e r r i d a deploys i t , the term [ w r i t i n g ! i s c l o s e l y r e l a t e d to t h a t element of s i g n i f y i n g d i f f e r e n c e which saussure thought e s s e n t i a l to the workings of language. w r i t i n g , f o r d e r r i d a , i s the 'free p l a y ' or element of 'undecid- a b i l i t y ' w i t h i n every system of communication. i t s o p e r a t i o n s are p r e c i s e l y those which escape the s e l f - consciousness of speech and i t s deluded sense of the mastery of concept over language. w r i t i n g i s the endless displacement of meaning which both governs language and p l a c e s i t f o r e v e r beyond the reach of a s t a b l e , s e l f - at t h i s p o i n t i t should be noted t h a t , throughout t h i s study, i have c o n s u l t e d e n g l i s h t r a n s l a t i o n s of derrida's works. i have not read d e r r i d a i n french and i do not c l a i m to account f o r the french v e r s i o n s of d e r r i d a . my s o l e concern i s with the e n g l i s h t r a n s l a t i o n s . a u t h e n t i c a t i n g knowledge. ( n o r r i s , : - ) d e r r i d a ' s b a s i c endeavour is to demonstrate t h a t the key n o t i o n s of western metaphysics are rooted i n , and determined by, the concept of presence, a concept which cannot h e l p but c o n t a i n i t s own absence — i t s own o r i g i n a r y d i f f e r e n c e from i t s e l f as such — and t h a t i t i s the d e n i a l or, more a p p r o p r i a t e l y , the r e p r e s s i o n of t h i s d i f f e r e n c e which has ensured t h a t our predominant modes of thought have so f a r remained u n s a t i s f a c t o r y . d e r r i d a ' s s t r a t e g y f o r c a l l i n g i n t o q u e s t i o n the concept of presence i n v o l v e s a c l o s e and r i g o r o u s examination of s p e c i f i c t e x t s with the i n t e n t i o n of d e c o n s t r u c t i n g t h e i r fundamental premises through exposing the p o i n t beyond which, f o l l o w i n g and because of t h e i r own l o g i c , they i n e v i t a b l y lapse i n t o a p o r i a — i n t o an i n s o l u b l e problem f o r which western metaphysics, due to i t s own b a s i c assumptions, simply cannot account. d e r r i d a ' s assessment of saussure's course in general l i n g u i s t i c s may serve as an i l l u s t r a t i o n of how he (derrida) goes about d e c o n s t r u c t i n g unexamined n o t i o n s of presence w i t h i n western thought. with r e s p e c t to t h i s p a r t i c u l a r t e x t , d e r r i d a a p p r o v i n g l y notes how saussure maintains t h a t , s as d e r r i d a u t i l i z e s i t , ' w r i t i n g ' i s a s s o c i a t e d with an open-ended c h a i n of terms which he r e f e r s to as 'undecldables.' these w i l l be d i s c u s s e d i n a l a t e r p o r t i o n of t h i s chapter. language i s a system o£ s i g n s and t h a t s i g n s are a r b i t r a r y - - t h a t they are not d e f i n e d i n r e l a t i o n to an unchangeable essence or presence but by the d i f f e r e n c e s which d i s t i n g u i s h them from other s i g n s . d e r r i d a sees t h i s as a r a d i c a l f o r m u l a t i o n which, had i t been followed through, would have r e s u l t e d i n the r e c o g n i t i o n of a n o t i o n of w r i t i n g wherein: the p l a y of d i f f e r e n c e supposes, i n e f f e c t , syntheses and r e f e r r a l s which f o r b i d at any moment, or i n any sense, t h a t a simple element be present i n and of i t s e l f , r e f e r r i n g o n l y to i t s e l f . whether i n the order of spoken or w r i t t e n d i s c o u r s e , no element can f u n c t i o n as a s i g n without r e f e r r i n g to another element which i t s e l f i s not simply p r e s e n t . t h i s interweaving r e s u l t s i n each 'element* - phoneme or grapheme — being c o n s t i t u t e d on the b a s i s of the t r a c e w i t h i n i t of the other elements of the c h a i n or system. t h i s interweaving, t h i s t e x t i l e , i s the t e x t produced o n l y i n the t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of another t e x t . nothing, n e i t h e r among the elements nor w i t h i n the system, i s anywhere ever simply present or absent. there are only, everywhere, d i f f e r e n c e s and t r a c e s of t r a c e s . ( d e r r i d a , g: ) however, saussure remains d e d i c a t e d to a n o t i o n of p h o n e t i c w r i t i n g and thus views "[language] and w r i t i n g [as] two d i s t i n c t systems of s i g n s [with] the second [ e x i s t i n g ] f o r the s o l e purpose of r e p r e s e n t i n g the f i r s t " (saussure i n d e r r i d a , e: ). through t h i s l i m i t a t i o n he r e i n f o r c e s the t r a d i t i o n a l s p e e c h / w r i t i n g dichotomy and f u r t h e r contends t h a t : "the l i n g u i s t i c o b j e c t i s not d e f i n e d by the combination of the w r i t t e n and the spoken word: the spoken word alone c o n s t i t u t e s the o b j e c t " (saussure i n d e r r i d a , e: ). in saussurian l i n g u i s t i c s w r i t i n g i s " u n r e l a t e d to the inner system of language" (saussure i n d e r r i d a , e: ) and i s doomed to wander the misty f l a t s of e x t e r i o r i t y . a c c o r d i n g to d e r r i d a , the b a s i c f u n c t i o n a l p r i n c i p l e of phonetic w r i t i n g i s p r e c i s e l y to r e s p e c t and p r o t e c t the i n t e g r i t y of the • i n t e r n a l system* of the language, even i f i n f a c t i t does not succeed i n doing so. the s a u s s u r i a n l i m i t a t i o n does not respond, by a mere happy convenience, to the s c i e n t i f i c exigency of the ' i n t e r n a l system.* that exigency i s i t s e l f c o n s t i t u t e d , as the e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l exigency i n g e n e r a l , by the v e r y p o s s i b i l i t y of phonetic w r i t i n g and by the e x t e r i o r i t y of the ' n o t a t i o n ' to i n t e r n a l l o g i c . ( d e r r i d a , e: - ) in other words, the e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l concept of presence n e c e s s i t a t e s the concept of i t s own absence i n order to underscore i t s always assumed but never r e a l i z e d e x i s t e n c e . the inside can o n l y be i n f e r r e d from the o u t s i d e . so w r i t i n g (the o u t s i d e ) , whose s o l e purpose i s to r e p r e s e n t language (the i n s i d e ) , r e p r e s e n t s presence by p r e s e n t i n g i t s absence. there i s here a danger to the e n t i r e e d i f i c e of the metaphysics of presence which d e r r i d a maintains i t i s c r u c i a l to develop. saussure h i m s e l f i s not unaware of t h i s danger: "writing, though unrelated to i t s inner system, i s used continually to represent language. we cannot simply disregard i t . we must be acquainted with i t s usefulness, shortcomings, and dangers" (saussure in derrida, e: ). to develop t h i s further, consider some of saussure's comments concerning writing: writing v e i l s the appearance of language; i t is not a guise for language but a disguise. (saussure in derrida, e: ) the graphic form [image] manages to force i t s e l f upon [people] at the expense of sound . . . and the natural sequence i s reversed. (saussure in derrida, e: ) . . . the graphic form [image] of words s t r i k e s us as being something permanent and stable, better suited than sound to constitute the unity of language throughout time. though i t creates a purely f i c t i t i o u s unity, the s u p e r f i c i a l bond of writing i s much easier to grasp than the natural bond, the only true bond, the bond of sound . . . . but the spoken word i s so intimately bound to i t s written image that the l a t t e r manages to usurp the main r o l e . (saussure in derrida, e: - ) (emphasis derrida's) derrida points out that saussure*s castigatlon of writing i s fundamentally m o r a l i s t i c in tone. writing forces i t s e l f on speech, i t usurps the p r i v i l e g e d position of speech, i t reverses a natural sequence — i t i s , in i t s essence, a p e r v e r s i o n . and w r i t i n g i s a dangerous p e r v e r s i o n p r e c i s e l y because i t t h r e a t e n s the n a t u r a l p r i o r i t y accorded to speech by v i r t u e o£ i t s i n t i m a t e a s s o c i a t i o n with an assumed, i n t u i t e d presence: the a f f i r m a t i o n of the e s s e n t i a l and ' n a t u r a l ' bond between the phon and the sense, the p r i v i l e g e accorded to an order of s i g n i f i e r (which then becomes the major s i g n i f i e d of a l l other s i g n i f i e r s ) depends e x p r e s s l y , and iin c o n t r a d i c t i o n to the other l e v e l s of the s a u s s u r i a n d i s c o u r s e , upon a psychology of c o n s c i o u s n e s s and of i n t u i t i v e c o n s c i o u s n e s s . what saussure does not q u e s t i o n here i s the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of n o n l n t u l t l o n . ( d e r r i d a , e: ) (emphasis mine) that i s , what saussure does not q u e s t i o n i s the e x i s t e n c e of a determining presence. the v e r y p o s s i b i l i t y of the phenomenon of w r i t i n g , because i t i s d e f i n e d as both e x t e r i o r t o , yet r e p r e s e n t a t i v e o f , language, c a r r i e s w i t h i n i t the t h r e a t of the absence of presence — of presence as absence. i f saussure d i d not d e r i d e w r i t i n g , i f he took i t s r a m i f i c a t i o n s s e r i o u s l y , he would soon be dangerously c l o s e to d e r r i d a ' s v i s i o n of there being "only, everywhere, d i f f e r e n c e s and t r a c e s of t r a c e s . " i n t e r e s t i n g l y , d e r r i d a p o i n t s out t h a t : . . . i t i s when he i s not e x p r e s s l y d e a l i n g with w r i t i n g , when he f e e l s he has c l o s e d the parentheses on t h a t s u b j e c t , t h a t saussure opens the f i e l d of a g e n e r a l grammatology. which would no longer be excluded from g e n e r a l l i n g u i s t i c s , but would dominate i t and c o n t a i n i t w i t h i n i t s e l f . then one r e a l i z e s t h a t what was chased o f f l i m i t s , the wandering o u t c a s t of l i n g u i s t i c s , has indeed never ceased to haunt language as i t s most i n t i m a t e p o s s i b i l i t y . then something which was never spoken and which i s nothing other than w r i t i n g i t s e l f as the o r i g i n of language w r i t e s i t s e l f w i t h i n saussure's d i s c o u r s e . ( d e r r i d a , e: - ) saussure s t a t e s t h a t : i t i s impossible f o r sound alone, a n a t u r a l element, to belong to language. i t i s o n l y a secondary t h i n g , substance to be put to use. a l l our c o n v e n t i o n a l v a l u e s have the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of not being confused with the t a n g i b l e element which supports them. . . . the l i n g u i s t i c s i g n i f i e r . . . i s not [ i n essence] phonic but i n c o r p o r e a l -- c o n s t i t u t e d not by the m a t e r i a l substance but by the d i f f e r e n c e s t h a t separate the sound-image from a l l o t h e r s . . . .the idea or phonic substance t h a t the s i g n c o n t a i n s i s of l e s s importance than the other s i g n s t h a t surround i t . (saussure i n d e r r i d a , e: ) thus, i r o n i c a l l y , when saussure i s not d e a l i n g with speech i n r e l a t i o n to w r i t i n g , he opens up the v e r y p o s s i b i l i t y of w r i t i n g which, e a r l i e r , he i s a t such pains to r e p r e s s . he has gone from "the spoken word alone c o n s t i t u t e s the in d e r r i d a ' s usage 'grammatology' (which comes from l i t t r : "a t r e a t i s e upon l e t t e r s , upon the alphabet, s y l l a b a t i o n , r e a d i n g , and w r i t i n g " ( d e r r i d a , e: )) i s used i n t e r c h a n g e a b l y with ' w r i t i n g ' i n the undecidable sense. l i n g u i s t i c o b j e c t " (saussure in d e r r i d a , e: ) to "the l i n g u i s t i c s i g n i f i e r . . . i s not . . . phonic but i n c o r p o r e a l " (saussure i n d e r r i d a , e: ). and, to emphasize the c o n t r a d i c t i o n w i t h i n saussure's work, d e r r i d a p o i n t s out t h a t : by d e f i n i t i o n , d i f f e r e n c e i s never i n i t s e l f a s e n s i b l e p l e n i t u d e . t h e r e f o r e , i t s n e c e s s i t y c o n t r a d i c t s the a l l e g a t i o n of a n a t u r a l l y phonic essence of language. i t c o n t e s t s by the same token the p r o f e s s e d n a t u r a l dependence of the g r a p h i c s i g n i f i e r . ( d e r r i d a , e: ) d e r r i d a contends t h a t i t i s saussure's d e d i c a t i o n to a metaphysics of presence t h a t n e c e s s i t a t e s the s e l f - c o n t r a d i c t o r y nature of the course i n general l i n g u i s t i c s : the i n t e n t i o n t h a t i n s t i t u t e s g e n e r a l l i n g u i s t i c s as a s c i e n c e remains w i t h i n a c o n t r a d i c t i o n . i t s d e c l a r e d purpose indeed c o n f i r m s , s a y i n g what goes without s a y i n g , the s u b o r d i n a t i o n of grammatology, the h i s t o r i c o - m e t a p h y s i c a l r e d u c t i o n of w r i t i n g to the rank of an instrument enslaved to a f u l l and o r i g i n a r i l y spoken language. but another gesture (not another statement of purpose, f o r here what does not go without s a y i n g i s done without being s a i d , w r i t t e n without being u t t e r e d ) l i b e r a t e s the f u t u r e of a g e n e r a l grammatology of which l i n g u i s t i c s - p h o n o l o g y would be o n l y a dependent and c i r c u m s c r i b e d a r e a . ( d e r r i d a , e: - ) in m a i n t a i n i n g t h a t "nothing . . . i s anywhere ever simply present or absent" d e r r i d a i s proposing t h a t concepts such as presence, essence, meaning e t c . , are always a l r e a d y doubled — t h a t i s , t h a t they are always a l r e a d y i n s c r i b e d with the p o s s i b i l i t y of t h e i r own otherness — t h a t they are heterogeneous as opposed to homogeneous from t h e i r v e r y i n c e p t i o n . in d i s c u s s i n g d e r r i d a ' s *psuedo-concept' of i t e r a b i l i t y , rodolphe gasch puts i t t h i s way: . . . what i s i n q u e s t i o n here i s not i t e r a t i o n or r e p e t i t i o n but o n l y t h e i r p o s s i b i l i t y , or i t e r a b i l i t y , which can occur as a p o s s i b i l i t y to any u n i t and i s , consequently, a necessary p o s s i b i l i t y t h a t must be i n s c r i b e d i n the essence of t h a t u n i t i t s e l f . a p r i o r i , then, the p o s s i b i l i t y of i t e r a t i o n d i v i d e s the i d e n t i t y of a l l u n i t s ; i t e r a b i l i t y i s the i m p u r i t y of an absence t h a t , from the s t a r t , p r o h i b i t s the f u l l and r i g o r o u s attainment of the p l e n i t u d e of a u n i t , and t h a t i n p r i n c i p l e subverts i t s s e l f - i d e n t i t y . (gasch , : ) as d e r r i d a says, . the being-present (on) i n i t s t r u t h , i n the presence of i t s i d e n t i t y and i n the i d e n t i t y of i t s presence, i s doubled as soon as i t appears, as soon as i t presents i t s e l f . it_ appears. in i t s essence, as the p o s s i b i l i t y of i t s own most proper non-truth, of i t s psuedo- t r u t h r e f l e c t e d i n the i c o n , the phantasm, or the simulacrum. what i s i s not what i t i s , i d e n t i c a l and i d e n t i c a l to i t s e l f , unique, unless i t adds to • i t e r a b i l i t y ' i s another derridean 'undecidable.' i t s e l f the p o s s i b i l i t y of being repeated as such. and i t s i d e n t i t y i s hollowed out by t h a t a d d i t i o n , withdraws i t s e l f i n the supplement t h a t presents i t . ( d e r r i d a , a: ) thus, f o r example, to r e f e r back to the e x p l i c a t i o n of saussure's t e x t , the supposed o r i g i n a r y presence of the spoken word i s , because of i t s e s s e n t i a l l t e r a b i l i t y , always a l r e a d y w r i t t e n with the p o s s i b i l i t y of i t s own absence, i t s own non-presence, and, as such, with i t s own i m p o s s i b i l i t y as a s e l f - i d e n t i c a l concept. i t i s important to r e a l i z e t h a t d e r r i d a i s concerned n e i t h e r with a simple r e v e r s a l of o p p o s i t i o n a l concepts (e.g. w r i t i n g / s p e e c h i n s t e a d of speech/writing) nor with t h e i r n e u t r a l i z a t i o n : "[a g e n e r a l s t r a t e g y of d e c o n s t r u c t i o n ] i s to a v o i d both simply n e u t r a l i z i n g the b i n a r y o p p o s i t i o n s of metaphysics and simply r e s i d i n g w i t h i n the c l o s e d f i e l d of these o p p o s i t i o n s , thereby c o n f i r m i n g i t " ( d e r r i d a , g: ). a r e v e r s a l of these o p p o s i t i o n s would merely l e a d to a y e a t s i a n v i s i o n of r e v o l u t i o n wherein " t t l h e beggars have changed p l a c e s , but the l a s h goes on" (yeats, : ) whereas a n e u t r a l i z a t i o n of these o p p o s i t i o n s would preclude any p o s s i b i l i t y of d i f f e r e n c e and hence r e s u l t i n a s p e e c h l e s s homogeneity. d e r r i d a does not attempt to do away with p h i l o s o p h i c a l o p p o s i t i o n — he attempts to address the p o s s i b i l i t y of o p p o s i t i o n a l i t y as such, and, i n so doing, to c a l l i n t o q u e s t i o n the e x i s t e n c e of presence as an o r i g i n a r l l y s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t e n t i t y capable of grounding and hence of accounting f o r a seemingly endless c h a i n of h i e r a r c h i c a l l y s t r u c t u r e d conceptual p a i r s . in other words, the purpose of d e c o n s t r u c t i o n i s not simply to i s o l a t e i n s t a n c e s of c o n t r a d i c t i o n w i t h i n any g i v e n t e x t or oeuvre and to say t h a t these c o n t r a d i c t i o n s are the l o g i c a l r e s u l t of western p h i l o s o p h y ' s s u b s c r i b i n g to the v a l i d i t y of p a i r e d h i e r a r c h i c a l o p p o s i t i o n s which are both premised on and r e s o l v e d by a concept of presence, but tp_ show the c o n t i n g e n t nature of t h i s e n t i r e view and to t r y to u n s e t t l e or d i s p l a c e i t by i n d i c a t i n g other p o s s i b i l i t i e s . as gasch p o i n t s out: d e c o n s t r u c t i o n i s . . . the attempt to a c c o u n t f o r t h e h e t e r o g e n e i t y c o n s t i t u t i v e of the p h i l o s o p h i c a l d i s c o u r s e , not by t r y i n g to overcome i t s inner d i f f e r e n c e s but by m a i n t a i n i n g them. . . . . . . d e c o n s t r u c t i o n s t a r t s with a s y s t e m a t i c e l u c i d a t i o n of c o n t r a d i c t i o n , paradoxes, i n c o n s i s t e n c i e s , and a p o r i a s c o n s t i t u t i v e o f c o n c e p t u a i t y , argumentation, and the d i s c u r s i v e n e s s of p h i l o s o p h y . yet these d i s c r e p a n c i e s are not l o g i c a l c o n t r a d i c t i o n s , the o n l y d i s c r e p a n c i e s f o r which the p h i l o s o p h i c a l d i s c o u r s e can account. eluded by the l o g i c of i d e n t i t y , they are consequently not c o n t r a d i c t i o n s p r o p e r l y speaking. nor are these necessary i n c o n s i s t e n c i e s the r e s u l t of i n e q u a l i t y between form and content. t h e i r e x c l u s i o n from the canon of p h i l o s o p h i c a l themes i s p r e c i s e l y what makes i t p o s s i b l e to d i s t i n g u i s h between form and content, a d i s t i n c t i o n t h a t takes p l a c e s o l e l y a g a i n s t the h o r i z o n of the p o s s i b i l i t y of t h e i r homogeneous r e u n i f i c a t i o n . (gasch , : ) i f one q u e s t i o n s the p o s s i b i l i t y of the 'homogeneous r e u n i f i c a t i o n ' of o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r s then one has to r e - t h i n k the nature of p h i l o s o p h i c a l c o n t r a d i c t i o n . rather than viewing c o n t r a d i c t i o n as something which i s a c t u a l l y r e s o l v a b l e , because, a c c o r d i n g to western thought, both terms of o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r s such as s i g n i f i e d / s l g n i f i e r are premised upon and contained w i t h i n a n o t i o n of o r i g i n a r y presence, the o n l y d i v i s i o n between them being t h a t the former i s c l o s e r to the o r g a n i z i n g source than the l a t t e r , one must view presence i t s e l f as o r i g i n a r l l y d i f f e r e n t i a t e d , i . e . as i t s e l f always a l r e a d y d i v i d e d by c o n t r a d i c t i o n . thus c o n t r a d i c t i o n becomes something t h a t not o n l y cannot be r e s o l v e d i n an o r i g i n a r y and transcendent u n i t y , but must be viewed as t h a t which a l l o w s the thought of u n i t y to be p o s s i b l e a t a l l . hence, the concept of a u n i f y i n g presence i s o n l y p o s s i b l e due to i t s i m p o s s i b i l i t y as a s e l f - i d e n t i c a l e n t i t y , and c o n t r a d i c t i o n , which i s , of course, an e x p r e s s i o n of d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n or h e t e r o g e n e i t y , so f a r from being a p h i l o s o p h i c a l dead end — something which must be e i t h e r overcome ( i . e . transcended) or abandoned — i s a c t u a l l y t h a t which a l l o w s f o r the p o s s i b i l i t y of p h i l o s o p h y i n the f i r s t p l a c e (pace a r i s t o t l e ) . again, to r e f e r to gasch , . . . d e c o n s t r u c t i o n . . . presupposes a c o n c r e t e l y developed demonstration of the f a c t t h a t concepts and d i s c u r s i v e t o t a l i t i e s are a l r e a d y cracked and f i s s u r e d by necessary c o n t r a d i c t i o n s and h e t e r o g e n e i t i e s t h a t the d i s c o u r s e of p h i l o s o p h y f a l l s to take into account, e i t h e r because they are not, r i g o r o u s l y speaking, l o g i c a l c o n t r a d i c t i o n s , or because a r e g u l a t e d (conceptual) economy must a v o i d them i n order to safeguard the e t h i c o - t h e o r e t i c a l d e c i s i o n s t h a t o r i e n t i t s d i s c o u r s e . these f i s s u r e s become apparent when we f o l l o w to i t s l o g i c a l end t h a t which i n the process of c o n c e p t u a l i z a t i o n or argumentation i s o n l y i n a c e r t a i n manner s a i d . d e c o n s t r u c t i o n thus begins by t a k i n g up broached but d i s c o n t i n u e d i m p l i c a t i o n s - - d i s c o n t i n u e d because they would have c o n t r a d i c t e d the i n t e n t i o n s of philosophy. (gasch , : ) we have a l r e a d y seen how t h i s works i n saussure -- how saussure, i n s p i t e of a s s e r t i n g t h a t "the l i n g u i s t i c s i g n i f i e r . . . i s not . . . phonic but i n c o r p o r e a l — c o n s t i t u t e d not by the m a t e r i a l substance but by the d i f f e r e n c e s t h a t separate the sound image from a l l o t h e r s " (saussure i n d e r r i d a , e: ), yet maintains, i n d i r e c t c o n t r a d i c t i o n to t h i s p o i n t , t h a t " . . . the spoken word alone c o n s t i t u t e s the [ l i n g u i s t i c ] o b j e c t " (saussure i n d e r r i d a , e: ). and t h a t he maintains t h i s , not because i t i s supported by what he i s 'almosting' i n h i s work, but because of an e t h i c o - t h e o r e t i c a l d e d i c a t i o n to a n o t i o n of presence: "what saussure does not q u e s t i o n here i s the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of n o n i n t u i t i o n " ( d e r r i d a , e: ). d e r r i d a ' s work on rousseau p r o v i d e s another of numerous examples of how the r e f u s a l to l e t go of the western metaphysical concept of presence prevents a w r i t e r from s e e i n g the i m p l i c a t i o n s o£ h i s own work. l i k e saussure, rousseau p r i v i l e g e s speech over w r i t i n g : languages are made to be spoken, w r i t i n g serves o n l y as a supplement to speech. . speech r e p r e s e n t s thought by c o n v e n t i o n a l s i g n s , and w r i t i n g r e p r e s e n t s the same with regard to speech. thus the a r t of w r i t i n g i s nothing but a mediated r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of thought. (rousseau i n d e r r i d a , e: ) what i s i n t e r e s t i n g here i s rousseau's use of the term •supplement,' f o r , as d e r r i d a p o i n t s out, i t "harbours w i t h i n i t s e l f two s i g n i f i c a t i o n s whose c o h a b i t a t i o n i s as strange as i t i s necessary" ( d e r r i d a , e: ). on the one hand, a supplement i s added to something which i s supposedly complete i n i t s e l f — i t i s , i n t h i s sense, an a d d i t i o n , an i n e s s e n t i a l e x t r a ; on the other hand, the v e r y e x i s t e n c e of a supplement i m p l i e s an incompleteness i n t h a t which i t not o n l y supplements but e f f e c t i v e l y r e p l a c e s . a c c o r d i n g to rousseau a supplement i s dangerous p r e c i s e l y because i t leads to a p r e f e r e n c e f o r a r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of the phenomenon r a t h e r than f o r the phenomenon i t s e l f . and although he scorns w r i t i n g as a supplement of speech, "as d e s t r u c t i o n of presence and as d i s e a s e of speech" ( d e r r i d a , e: ), he f i n d s h i m s e l f attempting to supplement, 'supplement' a l s o belongs to the open-ended company of d e r r i d e a n 'undecidables.' through the absence o£ w r i t i n g , a presence t h a t i s absent from speech: i would love s o c i e t y as others do i f i were not sure of showing myself not j u s t at a disadvantage but as completely d i f f e r e n t from what i am. the d e c i s i o n i have taken to w r i t e and to hide myself away i s p r e c i s e l y the one t h a t s u i t s me. i f i were present people would never have known what i was worth. (rousseau in d e r r i d a , e: ) what does t h i s p o i n t to but the i n t i m a t i o n t h a t speech i s always a l r e a d y r i d d l e d with absence -- t h a t i t , too, i s a supplement and t h a t l i k e a l l supplements i t , too, may be supplemented? the phenomenon, as such, as the s e l f - i d e n t i c a l and s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t e n t i t y with which rousseau so concerns h i m s e l f , does not and has never e x i s t e d : the i n d e f i n i t e process of s u p p l e m e n t a r i t y has always a l r e a d y i n f i l t r a t e d presence, always a l r e a d y i n s c r i b e d there the space of r e p e t i t i o n and the s p l i t t i n g of the s e l f . r e p r e s e n t a t i o n iri the abyss [en abyme] a o of presence i s not an a c c i d e n t of presence; the d e s i r e of presence i s , on the c o n t r a r y , born from the abyss (the i n d e f i n i t e m u l t i p l i c a t i o n ) o f r e p r e s e n t a t i o n , from the r e p r e s e n t a t i o n a c c o r d i n g to barbara johnson, t r a n s l a t o r of d e r r i d a ' s d i s s e m i n a t i o n : "the e x p r e s s i o n en abyme, p o p u l a r i z e d by gide, was o r i g i n a l l y used i n h e r a l d r y to designate the s t a t u s of the f i g u r e of a s m a l l s h i e l d used to decorate a s h i e l d . now used whenever some p a r t of a whole can be seen as a r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of t h a t whole . . . ad i n f i n i t u m , as i n the quaker oats box on which a man holds up a quaker oats box on which a man...etc." (johnson i n d e r r i d a , a: ) / o£ r e p r e s e n t a t i o n , e t c . ( d e r r i d a , e: ) in other words, presence, so f a r from being the p r i m o r d i a l r a l s o n d ' e t r e of the supplement, i s i t s e l f merely an e f f e c t of s u p p l e m e n t a r i t y . throughout rousseau's work, d e r r i d a underscores i n s t a n c e s of s u p p l e m e n t a r i t y : c u l t u r e i s a supplement of nature, masturbation i s a supplement of s o - c a l l e d 'normal s e x u a l i t y , ' th rdse i s a supplement of a ' r e a l mother,' w r i t i n g i s a supplement of speech, speech i s a supplement of thought and e v e r y t h i n g i s a supplement of presence — which i s i t s e l f always and everywhere o n l y approximated through i t s absence. i t i s rousseau's commitment to a concept of presence t h a t leads him i n t o the t o r t u o u s by-ways of a complex s u p p l e m e n t a r i t y which, a c c o r d i n g to him, i s by d e f i n i t i o n never good enough but which i s always a l l there i s . what d e r r i d a attempts to show i n d e c o n s t r u c t i n g rousseau's use of the supplement i s t h a t : . . . i n what one c a l l s the r e a l l i f e of these e x i s t e n c e s of " f l e s h and bone," beyond and behind what one b e l i e v e s can be c i r c u m s c r i b e d as rousseau's t e x t , there has never been anything but w r i t i n g ; there have never been anything b u t s u p p l e m e n t s , s u b s t i t u t i v e s i g n i f i c a t i o n s which c o u l d o n l y come f o r t h i n a c h a i n of d i f f e r e n t i a l r e f e r e n c e s , the " r e a l " supervening and being added o n l y while t a k i n g on meaning from a t r a c e and from an i n v o c a t i o n of the supplement, e t c . and thus to i n f i n i t y , f o r we have read, iri the t e x t , t h a t the a b s o l u t e present, nature, t h a t which words l i k e " r e a l mother" name, have always a l r e a d y escaped, have never e x i s t e d ; t h a t what opens meaning and language i s w r i t i n g as the disappearance of n a t u r a l presence. ( d e r r i d a , e: - ) although w r i t t e n e x p l i c i t l y about rousseau, the f o l l o w i n g may be a p p l i e d to any w r i t e r o p e r a t i n g w i t h i n western metaphysics: rousseau's t e x t must c o n s t a n t l y be c o n s i d e r e d as a complex and many-leveled s t r u c t u r e ; in i t , c e r t a i n p r o p o s i t i o n s may be read as i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s of other p r o p o s i t i o n s t h a t we a r e , up to a c e r t a i n p o i n t and with c e r t a i n p r e c a u t i o n s , f r e e to read otherwise. rousseau says a, then f o r reasons t h a t we must determine, he i n t e r p r e t s a i n t o b. a, which was a l r e a d y an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , i s r e i n t e r p r e t e d i n t o b. a f t e r t a k i n g cognizance of i t , we may, without l e a v i n g rousseau's t e x t , i s o l a t e a from i t s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i n t o b, and d i s c o v e r p o s s i b i l i t i e s and resources there t h a t indeed belong to rousseau's t e x t , but were not e x p l o i t e d by him, which, f o r e q u a l l y l e g i b l e motives, he p r e f e r r e d to cut s h o r t . ( d e r r i d a e: ) what t r a d i t i o n a l metaphysics c o n s i s t e n t l y p r e f e r s to cut s h o r t (and, as d e r r i d a p o i n t s out, i t i s d i f f i c u l t not to surmise t h a t , whether conscious or not, t h i s i s an e t h i c o - t h e o r e t i c a l d e c i s i o n ) i s any e x p l o r a t i o n t h a t t h r e a t e n s to l e a d to a r a d i c a l q u e s t i o n i n g of presence. thus, f o r example, in the case o£ rousseau, he does not e x p l o r e the p o s s i b i l i t i e s of s u p p l e m e n t a r i t y t h a t l i e untouched w i t h i n h i s t e x t . being committed to presence as a s e l f - i d e n t i c a l , s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t e n t i t y , rousseau c o u l d not t h i n k t h i s w r i t i n g [supplementarity] t h a t takes p l a c e before and w i t h i n speech. to the extent t h a t he belonged to the metaphysics of presence, he dreamed of the simple e x t e r i o r i t y of death to l i f e , e v i l to good, r e p r e s e n t a t i o n to presence, s i g n i f i e r to s i g n i f i e d , r e p r e s e n t e r to r e p r e s e n t e d , mask to f a c e , w r i t i n g to speech. but a l l such o p p o s i t i o n s are i r r e d u c i b l y rooted i n t h a t metaphysics. using them, one can o n l y operate by r e v e r s a l s , t h a t i s to say by c o n f i r m a t i o n s . the supplement i s none of these terms. i t i s e s p e c i a l l y not more a s i g n i f i e r than a s i g n i f i e d , a r e p r e s e n t e r than a presence, a w r i t i n g than a speech. none of the terms of t h i s s e r i e s can, being comprehended w i t h i n i t , dominate the economy of d l f f r a n c e a > or s u p p l e m e n t a r i t y . rousseau's dream c o n s i s t e d of making the supplement enter metaphysics by f o r c e . ( d e r r i d a , e: ) (emphasis d e r r i d a ' s and mine) a look a t d e r r i d a ' s 'undecidables' is indispensable to f u r t h e r c l a r i f y i n g d e c o n s t r u c t i o n ' s displacement of presence. in attempting to account f o r an always a l r e a d y o c c u r r i n g process of d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n which a l l o w s , s i m u l t a n e o u s l y , f o r both the p o s s i b i l i t y of presence (as an e f f e c t ) and the ' d i f f ^ r a n c e ' i s an 'undecidable. ' i m p o s s i b i l i t y of presence (as a s e l f - i d e n t i c a l e n t i t y ) , d e r r i d a p o s i t s a s e r i e s of terms such as t r a c e , l t e r a b l l l t y , d l f f f r a n c e , supplement, pharmakon, mark e t c . , which cannot be reduced to any s i n g l e , s e l f - i d e n t i c a l meaning. thus, f o r example, t r a c e combines the senses of both the mark and the effacement of the mark, i t e r a b i l i t y combines the senses of both t h a t which i s repeated and t h a t which i s other ( i t e r coming from the s a n s k r i t i t a r a : o t h e r ) , d i f f f r a n c e combines the senses of both to d i f f e r and to d e f e r , supplement combines the senses of both t h a t which i s added to and t h a t which takes the p l a c e of, pharmakon combines the senses of both poison and remedy, mark combines the senses of both the t r a c e and the effacement of the t r a c e , and so on. these •undecldables, as d e r r i d a r e f e r s to them, "can no longer be i n c l u d e d w i t h i n p h i l o s o p h i c a l ( b i n a r y ) o p p o s i t i o n but, r a t h e r , they i n h a b i t p h i l o s o p h i c a l o p p o s i t i o n , r e s i s t i n g and d i s o r g a n i z i n g i t , without ever c o n s t i t u t i n g a t h i r d term, without ever l e a v i n g room f o r a s o l u t i o n i n the form of s p e c u l a t i v e d i a l e c t i c s " ( d e r r i d a , g: ). v i n c e n t l e i t c h suggests a s i m i l a r i t y between gell-mann's and zweig's quark and d e r r i d a ' s u n d e c l d a b l e s : l i k e the quark i n p h y s i c s , the [undecidable] i s a t h e o r e t i c a l u n i t . . . t h a t , though i m p e r c e p t i b l e — more nothing than something derridean thought and quantum p h y s i c s are explored i n f l o y d m e r r e l l ' s d e c o n s t r u c t i o n reframed, west l a f a y e t t e (indiana: purdue u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s , ). — operates amidst the innermost reaches o£ [ t e x t u a l i t y ] , permeating and e n e r g i z i n g i t s e n t i r e a c t i v i t y , a f f e c t i n g omnipresence, yet remaining out of hand. j u s t as the quark, p o s i t e d by gell-mann and zweig d u r i n g the e a r l y 's, accounted f o r the strange a c t i v i t i e s of p a r t i c l e s w i t h i n sub-atomic spheres, so d e r r i d a ' s [undecidable] e x p l a i n s the p e c u l i a r e f f e c t s of t e x t u a l i t y d e t e c t e d a t m i c r o l e v e l s of the s i g n . neither a f r e e quark nor a pure [undecidable] can be d i s l o d g e d or i s o l a t e d because they are f u n c t i o n s of r e l a t i o n s — mirage ' e f f e c t s ' of p r i m o r d i a l d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n i n p r o c e s s . ( l e i t c h , : ) and, p r e c i s e l y because they cannot be d i s l o d g e d or i s o l a t e d , undecldables cannot be p e r c e i v e d as concepts per se — t h a t i s , they cannot be reabsorbed i n t o a d i a l e c t i c a l system of h i e r a r c h i c a l o p p o s i t i o n s as c l e a r cut ' t h i r d terms' or, indeed, as s e l f - i d e n t i c a l terms a t a l l . as d e r r i d a says with r e s p e c t to d i f f f r a n c e , "every concept i s i n s c r i b e d i n a c h a i n or i n a system w i t h i n which i t r e f e r s to the o t h e r s , to other concepts, by means of the s y s t e m a t i c p l a y of d i f f e r e n c e s . such a p l a y , d l f f f r a n c e , i s thus no longer simply a concept, but r a t h e r the p o s s i b i l i t y of c o n c e p t u a l i t y , of a conceptual process and system i n g e n e r a l " ( d e r r i d a , a: ). as gasch p o i n t s out: because the [undecldables] are not atoms, because they have no i d e n t i t y i n themselves, . . . they cannot be gathered once and f o r a l l upon themselves i n some i d e a l p u r i t y . let us not f o r g e t t h a t the undecldables are the c o n d i t i o n s of p o s s i b i l i t y (and i m p o s s i b i l i t y ) of the conceptual d i f f e r e n c e s as w e l l as of d i s c u r s i v e i n e q u a l i t i e s ; thus, they are what makes the p r o j e c t of s y s t e m a t i z a t i o n p o s s i b l e , without, however, being s y s t e m a t i z a b l e themselves. yet t h i s i s not to say t h a t a c e r t a i n s y s t e m a t i z a t i o n cannot a p p l y to them; i t simply means t h a t t h e i r system cannot be c l o s e d upon i t s e l f by means of some dominating c e n t e r . . . . the system of the [undecidables] cannot be f o r m a l i z e d , i d e a l i z e d , or systematized because i t i s p r e c i s e l y i t s p l a y t h a t makes those p r o j e c t s p o s s i b l e . (gasch , - ) d e r r i d a takes care to p o i n t out t h a t , because undecidables "block every r e l a t i o n s h i p to t h e o l o g y , " every r e l a t i o n s h i p to a ' t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s i g n i f i e d ' or r e f e r e n t of whatever form, none of them may be e l e v a t e d to the p o s i t i o n of "a master-word or a master-concept" ( d e r r i d a , g: ) and, consequently, t h e i r number i s open -- t h e i r c r e a t i o n depending not on any p o s s i b i l i t y of a b s o l u t e c l o s u r e (as i s the case with philosophemes such as t r u t h , meaning, d i a l e c t i c e t c . which are grounded i n and contained by a n o t i o n of presence) but on the nuances and p l a y of whatever p i e c e of t e x t u a l i t y may be under one's c o n s i d e r a t i o n . as i w i l l now attempt to show, i t i s important to understand how d e r r i d a views language and t e x t u a l i t y . in of grammatology d e r r i d a s t a t e s : "there i s nothing o u t s i d e of the t e x t [there i s no o u t s i d e - t e x t ; i _ l n'y a pas de hors t e x t e ] " ( d e r r i d a , e: ). t h i s statement, almost i n v a r i a b l y taken out of context, has l e d to enormous c o n f u s i o n and to the b e l i e f , expressed by c r i t i c s as d i v e r g e n t from one another as edward s a i d and e.d. h i r s c h , t h a t d e c o n s t r u c t i o n maintains t h a t nothing e x i s t s o u t s i d e of language. in a i n t e r v i e w with r i c h a r d kearney d e r r i d a expresses h i s i r r i t a t i o n with such mlsreadings: i never cease to be s u r p r i s e d by c r i t i c s who see my work as a d e c l a r a t i o n t h a t there i s nothing beyond language, t h a t we are imprisoned i n language; i t i s , i n f a c t , s a y i n g the exact o p p o s i t e . the c r i t i q u e of l o g o c e n t r i s m i s above a l l e l s e the search f o r the 'other' and the 'other' of language. every week i r e c e i v e c r i t i c a l commentaries and s t u d i e s on d e c o n s t r u c t i o n which operate on the assumption t h a t what they c a l l 'post- s t r u c t u r a l i s m ' amounts to s a y i n g t h a t there i s nothing beyond language, t h a t we are submerged i n words — and other s t u p i d i t i e s of t h a t s o r t . c e r t a i n l y , d e c o n s t r u c t i o n t r i e s to show t h a t the q u e s t i o n of r e f e r e n c e i s much more complex and p r o b l e m a t i c than t r a d i t i o n a l t h e o r i e s supposed. i t even asks whether our term ' r e f e r e n c e ' i s e n t i r e l y adequate f o r d e s i g n a t i n g the 'other'. the other, which i s beyond language and which summons language, i s perhaps not a ' r e f e r e n t ' i n the normal sense which l i n g u i s t s have a t t a c h e d to t h i s term. but to d i s t a n c e o n e s e l f thus from the h a b i t u a l s t r u c t u r e of r e f e r e n c e , to c h a l l e n g e or complicate our common assumptions about i t , does not amount to s a y i n g t h a t there i s nothing beyond language. ( d e r r i d a i n kearney ed., : - ) when d e r r i d a says t h a t " [ t l h e r e i s nothing o u t s i d e of the t e x t , " t h a t there i s no * o u t s l d e - t e x t , ' no ' e x t r a - t e x t , ' he i s s a y i n g t h a t there i s no ' t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s i g n i f i e d ' or s e l f - i d e n t i c a l presence capable of grounding and accounting f o r any given p i e c e of w r i t i n g or, indeed, f o r any i s o l a t e d or 'framed' s i t u a t i o n whatsoever. for d e r r i d a , language, as such, i s an e f f e c t of the t e x t taken i n i t s g e n e r a l i z e d or 'undecidable' sense, f o r , as gasch i n d i c a t e s , a c c o r d i n g to d e r r i d a the g e n e r a l i z e d concept of t e x t is p r e c i s e l y t h a t which exceeds the t r a d i t i o n a l d e t e r m i n a t i o n of t e x t as a t o t a l i t y . in whatever terms — e m p i r i c a l , i d e a l i s t , or d i a l e c t i c a l — t e x t i s d e f i n e d , i t always i m p l i e s a c l o s u r e upon i t s e l f with a c l e a r i n s i d e and o u t s i d e , whether i t i s the e m p i r i c a l c l o s u r e of the u n i t y of a corpus, the i n t e l l i g i b l e u n i t y of a work, or the d i a l e c t i c a l t o t a l i t y of i t s formal or thematic meanings. yet i f the g e n e r a l t e x t d e l i m i t s the t r a d i t i o n a l t o t a l i z i n g concepts of what has been c a l l e d t e x t , i t a l s o i m p l i e s t h a t the e n t i r e l y d i f f e r e n t t e x t , because i t i s no longer a t o t a l i t y , has no i n s i d e or o u t s i d e . the g e n e r a l i z e d t e x t i s not something t h a t i s c l o s e d upon i t s e l f i n such a manner t h a t i t s l i m i t s would demarcate an i n s i d e from an o u t s i d e . . . . the g e n e r a l t e x t i s r a t h e r t h a t border i t s e l f , from which the assignment of i n s l d e s and o u t s l d e s takes p l a c e , as w e l l as where t h i s d i s t i n c t i o n u l t i m a t e l y c o l l a p s e s . . . . "there i s no e x t r a - t e x t " means j u s t t h i s : nothing o u t s i d e the t e x t can, l i k e a l a s t reason, assume a f u l f i l l i n g f u n c t i o n . . . of the t e x t u a l r e f e r r a l s . i t c e r t a i n l y does not permit the c o n c l u s i o n t h a t there i s nothing e l s e but t e x t s , or f o r t h a t matter, t h a t a l l i s language. (gaschs, - ) i t may, of course, be argued, and, indeed, o f t e n i s , t h a t d e r r i d a i s maddeningly a b s t r u s e , t h a t he uses o r d i n a r y words i n an e x t r a o r d i n a r y f a s h i o n and then complains because people take e x c e p t i o n or get confused or both. such comments as: "there i s nothing o u t s i d e the t e x t " ( d e r r i d a , e: ); "i don't b e l i e v e t h a t there i s any p e r c e p t i o n " ( d e r r i d a i n macksey and donato eds., : ); "immediacy i s d e r i v e d " ( d e r r i d a , e: ); "speech . . . i s a l r e a d y i n i t s e l f a w r i t i n g " ( d e r r i d a , e: ); "wherever i t operates, thought' means n o t h i n g " ( d e r r i d a , g: ), and so on, tend to be p i c k e d up (again, almost i n v a r i a b l y out of context) and bandied about as though they are merely o f f the c u f f comments and t h a t they, i n and of themselves, preclude any n e c e s s i t y f o r one's t a k i n g t h e i r author s e r i o u s l y . no l e s s an e s t a b l i s h e d and r e s p e c t e d c r i t i c than ren wellek has i n c u r r e d a contemptuous response from d e r r i d a f o r engaging i n p r e c i s e l y t h i s s o r t of d i s m i s s i v e and embarrassingly u n p r o f e s s i o n a l behaviour: i t does not s u f f i c e , i n order to know how to read, simply to own a l i b r a r y and to know how to t a l k . in s a y i n g t h i s i am r e f e r r i n g to what can be i n f e r r e d about non-reading from an a s s e r t i o n by wellek, a c c o r d i n g to which i supposedly advanced "the preposterous theory t h a t w r i t i n g precedes speaking, a c l a i m r e f u t e d by every c h i l d and by the thousand spoken languages t h a t have no w r i t t e n r e c o r d s . " i quote t h i s " c h i l d " argument . because i t demonstrates t h a t the condemned t e x t s have not even been opened. ( d e r r i d a , d: ) the p o i n t i s , of course, t h a t derrida's comments are most e m p h a t i c a l l y not o f f the c u f f and to p o r t r a y them as such i s to do a d i s s e r v i c e not o n l y to him but to s c h o l a r s h i p i n g e n e r a l . one of the s t r a t e g i e s which d e r r i d a employs i n attempting to d e l i m i t western metaphysics, which, i t must always be remembered, i s dependent upon the n o t i o n of presence as a s e l f - i d e n t i c a l and s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t e n t i t y , i s to demonstrate the unstable and v o l a t i l e nature of concepts such as t e x t , w r i t i n g , meaning, s i g n , and so on, which we commonly tend to view as d e f i n i t i v e l y c l o s e d s i g n i f i e d s . by i n d i c a t i n g the s l i p p a g e w i t h i n these concepts, by d i s p l a c i n g the s e l f - a u t h e n t i c a t i n g n o t i o n of presence, d e r r i d a i s attempting to open western metaphysics to the p o s s i b i l i t y of i t s 'other,' to the p o s s i b i l i t y of an o r i g i n a r i l y and always, everywhere, a l r e a d y o c c u r r i n g process of d i f f e r e n t i a t i o n . with r e s p e c t to d e r r i d a ' s use of n o t i o n s and concepts which appear to be t r a d i t i o n a l to western metaphysics one i s reminded of wallace stevens's the man with the blue g u i t a r : they s a i d , "you have a blue g u i t a r , you do not p l a y t h i n g s as they a r e . " the man r e p l i e d , "things as they are are changed upon the blue g u i t a r . " and they s a i d then, "but p l a y , you must, a tune beyond us, yet o u r s e l v e s , a tune upon the blue g u i t a r of t h i n g s e x a c t l y as they a r e . " (stevens, c: ) in other words, although d e r r i d a uses t r a d i t i o n a l concepts they are not to be read as ' t r a d i t i o n a l concepts' pure and simple -- they are always a l r e a d y 'under e r a s u r e ' a — always a l r e a d y changed upon the blue g u i t a r of d e c o n s t r u c t i o n . as d e r r i d a says: since these concepts are i n d i s p e n s a b l e f o r u n s e t t l i n g the h e r i t a g e to which they belong, we should [not] renounce them. within the c l o s u r e , by an o b l i q u e and always p e r i l o u s movement, c o n s t a n t l y r i s k i n g f a l l i n g back w i t h i n what i s being d e c o n s t r u c t e d , i t i s necessary to surround the c r i t i c a l concepts with a c a r e f u l and thorough d i s c o u r s e — to mark the c o n d i t i o n , the medium, and the l i m i t s of t h e i r e f f e c t i v e n e s s and to designate r i g o r o u s l y the i n t i m a t e r e l a t i o n s h i p to the machine whose d e c o n s t r u c t i o n they permit; and, i n the same process, designate the c r e v i c e through which the yet unnameable glimmer beyond the c l o s u r e can be glimpsed. ( d e r r i d a , e: ) t h i s 'unnameable glimmer' i s teased out of the t e x t s of western metaphysics i n the formless shape of 'undecldables' which, i n t u r n , are teased out by the ' s p l i t w r i t i n g ' or 'double g e s t u r e ' of d e c o n s t r u c t i o n . v i n c e n t l e i t c h o f f e r s a c o n c i s e and u s e f u l summary of t h i s p r o c e s s : the p l a c e where a reader n o t i c e s a displacement or r e v e r s a l i n a t e x t u a l concepts, which, having been d e c o n s t r u c t e d , are r e v e a l e d as being n o n - s e l f - i d e n t i c a l yet i n d i s p e n s a b l e , are sometimes w r i t t e n : t^a^h. c h a i n or system o f t e n c o n s t i t u t e s the s i t e of p h i l o s o p h i c a l or thematic o p p o s i t i o n . d i s c l o s i n g such a c r e v i c e , the d e c o n s t r u c t o r s y s t e m a t i c a l l y and t e n a c i o u s l y i n v e r t s the o p p o s i t i o n s to r e v e a l the a c t u a l h i e r a r c h i c a l r e l a t i o n of the dichotomous terms. at t h i s p o i n t she s t e a d f a s t l y d i s a l l o w s any r e c o n s t i t u t l o n , s u b l i m a t i o n , or s y n t h e s i s (any hegelian aufhebung) of opposing terms. t h i s s t r a t e g i c i n v e r s i o n and stubborn expos produce an unexpected gap, f o r c i n g the emergence of a new ['concept'], which nameless mark n e i t h e r n e u t r a l i z e s nor reforms the o l d o p p o s i t i o n . rather, i t f u n c t i o n s as a d i s o r g a n i z i n g s t r u c t u r a l f o r c e t h a t i n v i s i b l y i n h a b i t s and t r a n s g r e s s e s the o p p o s i t i o n . . . . the purpose of the d e c o n s t r u c t o r i s to produce such undecidables and to t r a c k t h e i r i n s i s t e n t o p e r a t i o n throughout the t e x t . . . . the s p l i t w r i t i n g of d e c o n s t r u c t i o n . . . c o n s i s t s of d e l i b e r a t e l y i n v e r t i n g t r a d i t i o n a l o p p o s i t i o n s and marking the mysterious and d i s o r i e n t i n g p l a y of h i t h e r t o i n v i s i b l e ['concepts' i . e . undecidables] t h a t r e s i d e , unnamed, i n the gap between opposing terms. (between "nature" and " c u l t u r e , " f o r example, dwells the supplement.) in t h i s double gesture, d e c o n s t r u c t i o n avoids simply d e f u s i n g o p p o s i t i o n s or reforming them; i n other words, d e c o n s t r u c t i o n a c t i v e l y r e s i s t s the i n c l u s i o n of the new ['concept'] i n t o the o l d dichotomy. ( l e i t c h , : ) j u s t as d e c o n s t r u c t i o n , with i t s i n s i s t e n c e on o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g , does away with the n o t i o n of a pure o r i g i n , b e g i n n i n g or arche, so i t a l s o does away with the c o r r e l a t i v e n o t i o n of a pure f i n a l i t y , ending or t e l o s . t h i s being the case, the western n o t i o n of l i n e a r i t y , and of h i s t o r y as a l i n e a r sequence, i s c a l l e d r a d i c a l l y i n t o q u e s t i o n , f o r , as d e r r i d a p o i n t s out, " h i s t o r y has no doubt always been a s s o c i a t e d with a l i n e a r scheme of the u n f o l d i n g of presence, where the l i n e r e l a t e s the f i n a l presence to the o r i g i n a r y presence a c c o r d i n g to the s t r a i g h t l i n e or the c i r c l e " ( d e r r i d a , e: ). although, as mark t a y l o r i n d i c a t e s , we o f t e n tend to draw a sharp d i s t i n c t i o n between e a s t e r n and western, or, indeed, ' p r i m i t i v e ' and ' c i v i l i z e d ' n o t i o n s of time wherein the former i s c o n s i d e r e d to be c y c l i c a l and s t a t i c , with the end c o i n c i d i n g with the beginning, and the l a t t e r i s c o n s i d e r e d to be l i n e a r and p r o g r e s s i v e , with the end s u r p a s s i n g the beginning, i t i s important to r e a l i z e t h a t , " t b l o t h c i r c l e and l i n e are forms of c l o s u r e and f i g u r e s of p l e n i t u d e t h a t serve as t o t a l i z i n g metaphors" ( t a y l o r , c: ). in other words, both the l i n e and the c i r c l e are dominated and determined by the n o t i o n of presence. a c c o r d i n g to j . h i l l i s m i l l e r , the model of the l i n e i s a powerful p a r t of the t r a d i t i o n a l language of o c c i d e n t a l metaphysics. . . . the end of the s t o r y i s the r e t r o s p e c t i v e r e v e l a t i o n of the law of the whole. that law i s an u n d e r l y i n g ' t r u t h ' which t i e s a l l together i n an i n e v i t a b l e sequence r e v e a l i n g a h i t h e r t o hidden f i g u r e i n the c a r p e t . the image of the l i n e tends always to imply the norm of a s i n g l e continuous u n i f i e d s t r u c t u r e determined by one e x t e r n a l o r g a n i z i n g p r i n c i p l e . t h i s p r i n c i p l e holds the l i n e t o g e t h e r , g i v e s i t i t s law, c o n t r o l s i t s p r o g r e s s i v e e x t e n s i o n , c u r v i n g or s t r a i g h t , with some arche, t e l o s , or ground. o r i g i n , g o a l , or base: a l l three come together i n the g a t h e r i n g movement of [ p r e s e n c e ] . ( m i l l e r i n t a y l o r , c: ) along with t h i s , of course, goes a severe c r i t i q u e of the n o t i o n of the book and i t s i m p l i c i t or e x p l i c i t assumption of the l i n e a r i t y of beginning, middle and end. again i t must be emphasized t h a t , o b v i o u s l y , d e r r i d a does not d i s p u t e the e x i s t e n c e of books as t a n g i b l e o b j e c t s — what he does d i s p u t e i s the e x i s t e n c e of books as comprehensive wholes dependent on a n o t i o n of p r e - e s t a b l i s h e d s e l f - c o n t a i n e d harmony or order, i . e . presence. and t h i s c r i t i q u e holds whether the book i n q u e s t i o n happens to be a n o v e l , a h i s t o r y , an ethnography, or whatever. a c c o r d i n g to d e r r i d a , the idea of the book i s the idea of a t o t a l i t y , f i n i t e or i n f i n i t e , of the s i g n i f i e r ; t h i s t o t a l i t y of the s i g n i f i e r cannot be a t o t a l i t y , u n l e s s a t o t a l i t y c o n s t i t u t e d by the s i g n i f i e d p r e e x i s t s i t , s u p e r v i s e s i t s i n s c r i p t i o n s and i t s s i g n s , and i s independent of i t i n i t s i d e a l i t y . the idea of the book, which always r e f e r s to a . . . t o t a l i t y , i s p r o f o u n d l y a l i e n to the sense of w r i t i n g . i t i s the e n c y c l o p e d i c p r o t e c t i o n of t h e o l o g y and of l o g o c e n t r l s m a g a i n s t the d i s r u p t i o n of w r i t i n g , a g a i n s t i t s a p h o r i s t i c energy, and . . . a g a i n s t d i f f e r e n c e i n g e n e r a l . i f i d i s t i n g u i s h the t e x t from the book, i s h a l l say t h a t the d e s t r u c t i o n of the book, as i t i s now underway i n a l l domains, denudes the s u r f a c e of the t e x t . ( d e r r i d a , e: ) not s u r p r i s i n g l y , d e r r i d a ' s n o t i o n o£ o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g , of i t e r a b i l i t y , a l s o p r o v i d e s a r a d i c a l c r i t i q u e of our concept of s e l f , and, by e x t e n s i o n , of our concept of the author as such. the oxford e n g l i s h d i c t i o n a r y d e f i n e s ' s e l f as: "person's . . . own i n d i v i d u a l i t y or essence." as d e r r i d a has shown, the idea of essence i s o n l y made p o s s i b l e by t h a t which renders i t impossible as an independent and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l concept. and so with the n o t i o n of s e l f : i n order to appear as what i t portends to be -- a unique and independent essence -- i t must, to r e i t e r a t e , "[add] to i t s e l f the p o s s i b i l i t y of being repeated as such. and i t s i d e n t i t y i s hollowed out by t h a t a d d i t i o n , withdraws i t s e l f i n the supplement t h a t presents i t " ( d e r r i d a , a: ). thus, as t a y l o r p o i n t s out, "[the] search f o r s e l f - p r e s e n c e i n s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s leads to the d i s c o v e r y of the absence of the s e l f " ( t a y l o r , c: ). and t h i s because, by d e f i n i t i o n , consciousness of s e l f i s dependent on the p o s s i b i l i t y of the s e p a r a t i o n of s e l f from s e l f — on an o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g which p r e c l u d e s the p o s s i b i l i t y of s e l f as a unique, impenetrable essence. as d e r r i d a says, "the s e l f of the l i v i n g present i s p r i m o r d i a l l y a t r a c e " ( d e r r i d a , b: ). the oxford e n g l i s h d i c t i o n a r y d e f i n e s 'author' as: " o r i g i n a t o r . . .; w r i t e r of book, t r e a t i s e , e t c . " we t h i n k of an author as a person (a s e l f ) who produces a book which c o n t a i n s what she means to say and which stands as a completed m a n i f e s t a t i o n of her expressed i n t e n t i o n s . bearing i n mind the derridean c r i t i q u e of o r i g i n , book and s e l f , c o n s i d e r the f o l l o w i n g : . . . i t e r a b i l i t y . . . excludes the hypothesis of i d e a l i z a t i o n , t h a t i s , the adequation of a meaning to i t s e l f , of a s a y i n g to i t s e l f , of understanding to a sentence, whether w r i t t e n or o r a l , or to a mark i n g e n e r a l . once a g a i n , i t e r a b i l i t y makes p o s s i b l e i d e a l i z a t i o n — and thus, a c e r t a i n i d e n t i t y i n r e p e t i t i o n t h a t i s independent of the m u l t i p l i c i t y of f a c t u a l events — while at the same time l i m i t i n g the i d e a l i z a t i o n i t makes p o s s i b l e : broaching and breaching i t a t once t e l l e . 'entame j. to put i t more simply and more c o n c r e t e l y : a t the v e r y moment (assuming t h a t t h i s moment i t s e l f might be f u l l and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l , i d e n t i f i a b l e -- f o r the problem of i d e a l i z a t i o n and i t e r a b i l i t y i s a l r e a d y posed here, i n the s t r u c t u r e of t e m p o r a l i z a t i o n ) , a t the v e r y moment when someone would l i k e to say or w r i t e , "on the t w e n t i e t h . . . e t c . , " the v e r y f a c t o r t h a t w i l l permit the mark (be i t p s y c h i c , o r a l , g r a p h i c ) to f u n c t i o n beyond t h i s moment — namely the p o s s i b i l i t y of i t s being repeated another time — breaches, d i v i d e s , e x p r o p r i a t e s the " i d e a l " p l e n i t u d e or s e l f - p r e s e n c e of of course, f o r d e r r i d a , the 'moment' can never be ' f u l l and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l ' because the s t r u c t u r e of t e m p o r a l i t y , being premised on the e s s e n t i a l l y a r i s t o t e l i a n n o t i o n of the non-temporal now, of presence as non-temporal because immediate and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l , i s always a l r e a d y f i s s u r e d by i t s own i m p o s s i b i l i t y --by i t s 'other.' to put i t another way, because time i s d e f i n e d as a l i n e a r (or c i r c u l a r ) number of past-nows and future-nows ("it i s the now t h a t measures time, c o n s i d e r e d as before and a f t e r " ( a r i s t o t l e , : )) and because the now as such cannot be r e a l i z e d i n i t s supposed s e l f - p r e s e n c e (always being a l r e a d y past or a l r e a d y f u t u r e ) the p o s s i b i l i t y of a f u l l and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l moment i s p r e c l u d e d by the v e r y t e m p o r a l i t y f o r which i t seeks to account. i n t e n t i o n , of meaning (to say) and, a f o r t i o r i , of a l l adequation between meaning and s a y i n g . i t e r a b i l i t y a l t e r s , contaminating p a r a s l t l c a l l y what i t i d e n t i f i e s and enables to repeat " i t s e l f " ; i t leaves us no c h o i c e but to mean (to say) something t h a t i s ( a l r e a d y , always, a l s o ) other than what we say and would have wanted to say, to understand something other than . . . e t c . in c l a s s i c a l terms, the a c c i d e n t i s never an a c c i d e n t . ( d e r r i d a , b: - ) in other words, n e i t h e r the 'author' nor the 'book' i s p o s s i b l e i n so f a r as e i t h e r presumes to present c l o s e d and/or d e f i n i t i v e accounts of anything whatsoever. and there can be no c l o s e d d e f i n i t i v e accounts not, as with the hermeneutlc n o t i o n of polysemy, because the number of p o s s i b l e meanings exceeds the p o s s i b i l i t y of adequate r e p r e s e n t a t i o n , but because meaning i s always a l r e a d y f i s s u r e d — is always a l r e a d y marked with i t s own e s s e n t i a l non-essence. as d e r r i d a says, " i t i s t h i s hermeneutlc concept of polysemy t h a t must be r e p l a c e d by d i s s e m i n a t i o n " ( d e r r i d a , a: ). in p o s i t i o n s , d e r r i d a o f f e r s one of h i s c l e a r e s t statements on the problem of polysemy and d i s s e m i n a t i o n : i f d i s s e m i n a t i o n , seminal d l f f f r a n c e , cannot be summarized i n t o an exact conceptual t e n o r , i t i s because the f o r c e and form of i t s d i s r u p t i o n explode the semantic h o r i z o n . the a t t e n t i o n brought to bear on polysemia or polythematism d o u b t l e s s r e p r e s e n t s progress i n r e l a - t i o n s h i p to the l i n e a r i t y of the monothematlc w r i t i n g or r e a d i n g t h a t i s always anxious to anchor i t s e l f to the t u t e l a r y meaning, the p r i n c i p a l s i g n i f i e d of a t e x t , t h a t i s , i t s major r e f e r e n t . n e v e r t h e l e s s , polysemia, as such, i s organized w i t h i n the i m p l i c i t h o r i z o n of a u n i t a r y resumption of meaning, t h a t i s , w i t h i n the h o r i z o n of a d i a l e c t i c s . . . a t e l e o l o g i c a l and t o t a l i z i n g d i a l e c t i c s t h a t a t a g i v e n moment, however f a r o f f , must permit the reassemblage of the t o t a l i t y of a t e x t i n t o the t r u t h of i t s meaning, c o n s t i t u t i n g the t e x t as e x p r e s s i o n , as i l l u s t r a t i o n , and a n n u l - l i n g the open and p r o d u c t i v e displacement of the t e x t u a l c h a i n . d i s s e m i n a t i o n , on the c o n t r a r y , although producing a n o n f i n i t e number of semantic e f f e c t s , can be l e d back n e i t h e r to a present of simple o r i g i n . . . nor t o an e s c h a t a l o g i c a l presence. i t marks an i r r e d u c i b l e and g e n e r a t i v e m u l t i p l i c i t y . the supplement and the t u r b u l e n c e of a c e r t a i n lack f r a c t u r e the l i m i t of the t e x t , f o r b i d d i n g an exhaustive and c l o s e d f o r m a l i z a t i o n of i t , or a t l e a s t a s a t u r a t i n g taxonomy of i t s themes, i t s s i g n i f i e d , i t s meaning. ( d e r r i d a , g: ) d i s s e m i n a t i o n , l i k e other derridean 'undecidables,' i n d i c a t e s the o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g , the o r i g i n a r y s l i p p a g e and displacement, t h a t accounts f o r both the p o s s i b i l i t y and i m p o s s i b i l i t y of a c o n c e p t u a l i t y premised upon the n o t i o n of presence and i t s concomitant l o g i c of i d e n t i t y ( i . e . the p r i n c i p l e of n o n - c o n t r a d i c t i o n ) . polysemy, i t s improvement over monosemic accountings n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g , s t i l l remains dependent upon a concept of f r a y e d but u l t i m a t e l y to be fused u n i t y . as gasch puts i t : d i s s e m i n a t i o n i s the name by which the in-advance always a l r e a d y d i v i d e d u n i t y i s a f f i r m e d . t h i s in-advance d i v i d e d u n i t y of the undecldables i s not the polysemic d i s p e r s i o n of a once u n i t a r y meaning but . . . an always open ensemble of s t r u c t u r e s , presupposed by the p r o j e c t of u n i t y and t o t a l i t y and a f f i r m e d by r e f l e c t i o n and s p e c u l a t i o n , without t h e i r knowledge, as the l i m i t of t h e i r p o s s i - b i l i t y . the g e n e r a l theory of d u p l i - c a t i o n or r e d u p l i c a t i o n [ i t e r a b i l i t y ] o u t l i n e s . . . the l i m i t s of the p h i l o s o p h i c a l p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s of the p h i l o s o p h y of r e f l e x i v i t y — p r e s u p p o s i - t i o n s of an o r i g i n a l s p o n t a n e i t y , of p r o d u c t i v e i m a g i n a t i o n , of i n t e l l e c t u a l i n t u i t i o n , and so on. . . . no v i r g i n substance or homogeneous and o r g a n i c u n i t y precedes or superintends the o r i g i n a r y d u p l i c a t i o n and the 'system' of the [ u n d e c l d a b l e s ] . the myth of a u n i t y i s o n l y an e f f e c t made p o s s i b l e and i r r e v o c a b l y undercut by r e f l e c t i o n i t s e l f , i n s o f a r as i t must r e l y , i n order to take p l a c e i n the f i r s t p l a c e , on what i t cannot hope to r e f l e c t . what l i e s beyond the m i r r o r , on the other s i d e of the speculum, i n the beyond of the p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s of the p h i l o s o p h y of r e f l e c t i o n -- t h a t i s to say, the 'system' of the [undecldables] — cannot be understood i n terms of u n i t y , s y n t h e s i s , t o t a l i t y , and the l i k e . (gaschs, : ) d i s s e m i n a t i o n , the c o n s t a n t l y r e p r e s s e d 'other' of western metaphysics, i s the l i m i t l e s s p l a y of o r i g i n a r y d i f f e r e n c e which a l l o w s f o r the p o s s i b i l i t y of presence not as a s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t grounding t o t a l i t y but as an e f f e c t — as a by-product of the d i s s e m i n a t i n g p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , i . e . w r i t i n g , t r a c e , d l f f r a n c e , supplement e t c . and, as by now w i l l come as no s u r p r i s e , f o r d e r r i d a , p l a y is the d i s r u p t i o n o£ presence. the presence of an element i s always a s i g n i f y i n g and s u b s t i t u t i v e r e f e r e n c e i n s c r i b e d i n a system of d i f f e r e n c e s and the movement of a c h a i n . p l a y i s always p l a y of absence and presence, but i f i t i s to be thought r a d i c a l l y , p l a y must be conceived of before the a l t e r n a t i v e of presence and absence. being must be conceived as presence or absence on the b a s i s of the p o s s i b i l i t y of p l a y and not the other way around. ( d e r r i d a , : ) i n other words, what is of i n t e r e s t i s not s p e c i f i c concepts, themes or philosophemes per se, but the p l a y of the cracks and f i s s u r e s w i t h i n them which p r o h i b i t them from ever being s e l f - i d e n t i c a l and which ensure, from the o u t s e t , t h a t they w i l l always a l r e a d y be i n v o l v e d with s l i p p a g e and displacement. as d e r r i d a says, from the v e r y beginnings of greek p h i l o s o p h y the s e l f - i d e n t i t y of the logos i s a l r e a d y f i s s u r e d and d i v i d e d . i t h i n k one can d i s c e r n s i g n s of such f i s s u r e s of ' d i f f f r a n c e ' i n every great p h i l o s o p h e r : the 'good beyond being' (epekelna t e s ouslas) of p l a t o ' s r e p u b l i c , f o r example, or the c o n f r o n t a t i o n with the 'stranger' i n the s o p h i s t are a l r e a d y t r a c e s of an a l t e r l t y which r e f u s e s to be t o t a l l y domesticated. moreover, the r a p p o r t of s e l f - i d e n t i t y i s i t s e l f always a r a p p o r t of v i o l e n c e with the other; so t h a t the n o t i o n s of p r o p e r t y , a p p r o p r i a t i o n and s e l f - p r e s e n c e , so c e n t r a l to l o g o c e n t r i c metaphysics, are e s s e n t i a l l y dependent on an o p p o s i t i o n a l r e l a t i o n with otherness. in t h i s sense, i d e n t i t y presupposes a l t e r i t y . ( d e r r i d a i n kearney, ed., : ) rather than emphasizing presence and i t s concomitant n o t i o n s of homogeneity, the l o g i c of i d e n t i t y , non- c o n t r a d i c t i o n , the l i n e a r t e l e o l o g y of beginning, middle and ending, polysemy and so on, d e r r i d a s t r e s s e s o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g , h e t e r o g e n e i t y , displacement, and the d i s s e m i n a t i n g p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l l t y . the f o l l o w i n g chapters concern themselves with what the derridean e x p l o r a t i o n of the r e p r e s s e d 'other' of western metaphysics has to say to an i n t e r p r e t i v e and/or 'postmodern' anthropology rooted i n phenomenological/hermeneutical notions of i n t e r s u b j e c t l v i t y , i n t e n t i o n a l l t y , meaning e t c . , and, by e x t e n s i o n , what i t portends f o r the p o s s i b l e f u t u r e of the d i s c i p l i n e of anthropology i n g e n e r a l . chapter three p h i l o s o p h i c a l background of i n t e r p r e t i v e and 'postmodern' anthropology: phenomenology and hermeneutlcs in order to adequately comprehend the s t a t u s of contemporary i n t e r p r e t i v e and/or 'postmodern' anthropology i t is necessary to be acquainted with t h e i r rootedness i n c e r t a i n modes of c o n t i n e n t a l thought. consequently, i n t h i s chapter i w i l l attempt to demonstrate t h a t the phenomenology of h u s s e r l and the hermeneutlcs of heidegger, gadamer and ricoeur r e s p e c t i v e l y , are a l l based on such m a n i f e s t a t i o n s of the concept of presence as consciousness, u n i t y , t o t a l i t y , p l e n i t u d e , d i a l e c t i c , and so on and t h a t , as such, they (and, by e x t e n s i o n , t h e i r a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l i n h e r i t o r s ) are open to a r a d i c a l d e c o n s t r u c t i o n . obviously, i make no c l a i m to coming c l o s e to a d d r e s s i n g a l l the c o m p l e x i t i e s inherent w i t h i n the works of any of the aforementioned authors — c o n s t a n t l y expanding l i b r a r y s h e l v e s a t t e s t to the i m p o s s i b i l i t y of such an endeavour. with r e s p e c t to h u s s e r l , heidegger e t a l . , my concern i s simply to show t h a t s p e c i f i c threads of t h e i r r e a s o n i n g , which have woven and continue to weave t h e i r way i n t o the f a b r i c of i n t e r p r e t i v e and/or 'postmodern' anthropology, are prime fodder f o r a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e r e a d i n g . in t h i s chapter i w i l l not o f f e r any f u l l s c a l e d e c o n s t r u c t i v e readings but, r a t h e r , w i l l d e l i n e a t e c e r t a i n f e a t u r e s of c o n t i n e n t a l thought t h a t w i l l reappear i n my chapter on geertz and c l i f f o r d and w i l l there be d e a l t with i n d e t a i l . i phenomenology ( ) h u s s e r l in h i s l a s t work, the c r i s i s of european sciences and transcendental phenomenology, h u s s e r l makes an impassioned statement concerning the then c u r r e n t s t a t u s ( 's) of the n a t u r a l and human s c i e n c e s : the e x c l u s i v e n e s s with which the t o t a l world-view of modern [humanity], i n the second h a l f of the n i n e t e e n t h century, l e t i t s e l f be determined by the p o s i t i v e s c i e n c e s and be b l i n d e d by the ' p r o s p e r i t y ' they produced, meant an i n d i f f e r e n t turning-away from the q u e s t i o n s which are d e c i s i v e f o r a genuine humanity. merely fact-minded s c i e n c e s make merely fact-minded people. . . . in our v i t a l need — so we are t o l d — t h i s s c i e n c e has nothing to say to us. i t excludes i n p r i n c i p l e p r e c i s e l y the q u e s t i o n s which [humanity], given over i n our unhappy times to the most portentous upheavals, f i n d s the most burning: q u e s t i o n s of the meaning or meaninglessness of the whole of t h i s human e x i s t e n c e . do not these q u e s t i o n s , u n i v e r s a l and necessary f o r a l l [humanity], demand u n i v e r s a l r e f l e c t i o n s and answers based on r a t i o n a l i n s i g h t ? . . . . what does s c i e n c e have to say about reason and unreason or about us [human beings] as s u b j e c t s of t h i s freedom? the mere s c i e n c e of bodies c l e a r l y has nothing to say; i t a b s t r a c t s from e v e r y t h i n g s u b j e c t i v e . as f o r the humanistic s c i e n c e s , on the other hand, a l l the s p e c i a l and g e n e r a l d i s c i p l i n e s of which t r e a t of [humanity's] s p i r i t u a l e x i s t e n c e , t h a t i s , w i t h i n the h o r i z o n of [ i t s ] h i s t o r i c i t y ; t h e i r r i g o r o u s s c i e n t i f i c c h a r a c t e r r e q u i r e s , we are t o l d , t h a t the s c h o l a r c a r e f u l l y exclude a l l v a l u a t i v e p o s i t i o n s , a l l q u e s t i o n s of reason or unreason of t h e i r human s u b j e c t matter and i t s c u l t u r a l c o n f i g u r a t i o n s . s c i e n t i f i c o b j e c t i v e t r u t h i s e x c l u s i v e l y a matter of e s t a b l i s h i n g what the world, the p h y s i c a l as w e l l as the s p i r i t u a l world, i s i n f a c t . but can the world, and human e x i s t e n c e i n i t , t r u t h f u l l y have a meaning i f the s c i e n c e s r e c o g n i z e as t r u e o n l y what i s o b j e c t i v e l y e s t a b l i s h e d in t h i s f a s h i o n , and i f h i s t o r y has nothing more to teach us than t h a t a l l the shapes of the s p i r i t u a l world, a l l the c o n d i t i o n s of l i f e , i d e a l s , norms upon which [humanity] r e l i e s , form and d i s s o l v e themselves l i k e f l e e t i n g waves, t h a t i t always was and ever w i l l be so, t h a t again and a g a i n reason must t u r n i n t o nonsense, and w e l l being i n t o misery? can we console o u r s e l v e s with t h a t ? can we l i v e i n t h i s world, where h i s t o r i c a l occurrence i s nothing but an unending c o n c a t e n a t i o n of i l l u s o r y p r o g r e s s and b i t t e r disappointment? ( h u s s e r l , : - ) h u s s e r l b e l i e v e s t h a t the s c i e n c e s have become so c a r r i e d away with t h e i r methodologies and t h e i r f a s c i n a t i o n with ' f a c t s ' t h a t they have f o r g o t t e n t h e i r s u b j e c t i v e o r i g i n s . t h i s f o r g e t t i n g has i n t u r n l e d to the c r e a t i o n of an ever widening gap between t e c h n i c a l s o p h i s t i c a t i o n and a c t u a l human needs. as a s o l u t i o n to t h i s ' c r i s i s ' h u s s e r l o f f e r s t r a n s c e n d e n t a l phenomenology. h u s s e r l ' s phenomenology i s meant to provide an a b s o l u t e l y sound, because a b s o l u t e l y i n d u b i t a b l e , o n t o l o g i c a l foundation f o r eplstemology. h u s s e r l b e l i e v e s t h a t what he terms the ' n a t u r a l a t t i t u d e , • the unexamined every-day world of taken f o r granted assumptions wherein o b j e c t s appear to e x i s t p r i o r to and to impinge upon the p e r c e i v i n g consciousness from without, must be s u b j e c t e d to a phenomenological epoch or r e d u c t i o n . in other words, the n a t u r a l a t t i t u d e must be 'bracketed' or suspended and the phenomenologist must d e s c r i b e o n l y what appears to her consciousness as, and o n l y i n so f a r as, i t appears to her c o n s c i o u s n e s s . the p o s s i b i l i t y of a t t a i n i n g to t h i s 'pure' form of d e s c r i p t i o n , a d e s c r i p t i o n which i s supposedly u n a d u l t e r a t e d by any i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , is premised on the c o n v i c t i o n t h a t consciousness i s i n t e n t i o n a l — t h a t i s , t h a t a l l consciousness intends some o b j e c t , t h a t a l l consciousness i s , by d e f i n i t i o n , consciousness o|_ something. as h u s s e r l says, "the b a s i c c h a r a c t e r of being as consciousness, as consciousness of something, i s i n t e n t i o n a l i t y " ( h u s s e r l i n t a y l o r , a: ). another way of p u t t i n g t h i s i s to say t h a t consciousness i s c o n s t i t u t i v e , i . e . , t h a t , so f a r from being a p a s s i v e r e c e p t a c l e (or, & l a locke, a t a b u l a rasa) w a i t i n g to r e c e i v e e x t e r i o r o b j e c t i v e s e n s a t i o n s , consciousness a c t u a l l y produces o b j e c t i v e s e n s a t i o n s . in other words, o b j e c t i v i t y , as such, i s a s u b j e c t i v e c o n s t r u c t . t h i s being the case, the phenomenologlcally reduced consciousness i s immediately and unmediatedly present to i t s i n t e n t i o n a l phenomena, thus a l l o w i n g f o r p r i s t i n e d e s c r i p t i o n . i n t e r e s t i n g l y , f o r a l l h i s r a d i c a l i z i n g of c a r t e s i a n doubt (e.g. h i s emphasis on the i n t e n t i o n a l or c o n s t i t u t i v e nature of consciousness with the attendant c o l l a p s i n g of the res c o g l t a n s / r e s extensa d i s t i n c t i o n ) , h u s s e r l never attempts to doubt or bracket the phenomenologically reduced consciousness or what he a l t e r n a t e l y r e f e r s to as the 'transcendental s u b j e c t ' and/or ' p r i m o r d i a l i n t u i t i o n ' : no theory we can conceive can mislead us in regard to the p r i n c i p l e of a l l p r i n c i p l e s : t h a t every p r i m o r d i a l dator i n t u i t i o n i s a source of a u t h o r i t y ( r e c h t s q u e l l e ) f o r knowledge, t h a t whatever p r e s e n t s i t s e l f i n ' i n t u i t i o n ' [consciousness] i n p r i m o r d i a l form (as i t were i n i t s b o d i l y r e a l i t y ) , is. simply to be accepted as i t g i v e s i t s e l f out to be, though o n l y w i t h i n the l i m i t s i n which i t then presents i t s e l f . ( h u s s e r l i n d e r r i d a , b: ) taking the t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t as the o n l y i n d u b i t a b l e g i v e n , h u s s e r l proceeds to show how i t i s r e s p o n s i b l e f o r c o n s t i t u t i n g ' r e a l i t y ' as we know and accept i t i n the common sense world of the n a t u r a l a t t i t u d e . i t i s important to in order to a v o i d c o n f u s i o n , f o r the d u r a t i o n of t h i s s e c t i o n on h u s s e r l , i w i l l use the term 'transcendental s u b j e c t ' r a t h e r than ' p r i m o r d i a l i n t u i t i o n ' or 'phenomenologically reduced c o n s c i o u s n e s s . ' however, the reader should bear i n mind t h a t these terms are i n t e r c h a n g e a b l e . understand t h a t h u s s e r l b e l i e v e s t h a t the c o n s t i t u t i v e nature o£ the t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t r e s u l t s i n the emergence of ' i n v a r i a n t e s s e n t i a l forms' which a l l o w f o r the p o s s i b i l i t y of knowledge and which i t i s the purpose of phenomenological r e d u c t i o n to r e v e a l : . . . the phenomenology of p e r c e p t i o n of bodies w i l l not be (simply) a r e p o r t on the f a c t u a l l y o c c u r r i n g ' p e r c e p t i o n s or those to be expected; r a t h e r i t w i l l be the p r e s e n t a t i o n of i n v a r i a n t s t r u c t u r a l systems without which p e r c e p t i o n of a body and a s y n t h e t i c a l l y concordant m u l t i p l i c i t y of p e r c e p t i o n s of one and the same body as such would be u n t h i n k a b l e . i f the phenomenological r e d u c t i o n c o n t r i v e d a means of access to the phenomenon of r e a l and a l s o p o t e n t i a l inner experience, the method founded i n i t of " e i d e t i c r e d u c t i o n " p r o v i d e s the means of access to the i n v a r i a n t e s s e n t i a l s t r u c t u r e s of the t o t a l sphere of pure mental p r o c e s s . ( h u s s e r l i n t a y l o r , a: - ) in other words, through b r a c k e t i n g out the taken f o r granted world and by r e d u c i n g supposedly c o n c r e t e l y e x i s t i n g s e n s a t i o n s and/or o b j e c t s to i n t e n t i o n a l phenomena — to t h a t which i s a product of the i n t e n t i o n a l a c t i v i t y of a t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t , h u s s e r l i s able to p o s i t the a p r i o r i e x i s t e n c e of i n v a r i a n t e s s e n t i a l forms or s t r u c t u r e s which, as such, c o n s t i t u t e an i d e a l o b j e c t i v i t y and which a l l o w f o r the p o s s i b i l i t y of the everyday l i f e of the n a t u r a l a t t i t u d e . however, one must never f o r g e t t h a t t h i s seeming o b j e c t i v i t y is f i r s t and foremost a s u b j e c t i v i t y as i t can, by d e f i n i t i o n , have no e x i s t e n c e a p a r t from the c o n s t i t u t i n g a c t i v i t y of the t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t . h u s s e r l i s not unaware t h a t he o f t e n appears to run the r i s k of becoming mired i n s o l i p s i s m . i f e v e r y t h i n g i s the consequence of the c o n s t i t u t i n g work of t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t i v i t y , i f i n order to know anything one must reduce, the world to the workings of one's own consciousness, how can one ever be c e r t a i n of the a c t u a l e x i s t e n c e of anything o u t s i d e of one's own mind? ' h u s s e r l attempts to d e a l with t h i s problem through the n o t i o n of i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y : the r e d u c t i v e method i s t r a n s f e r r e d from s e l f - e x p e r i e n c e to the experience of other i n s o f a r as there can be a p p l i e d to the envisaged . . . mental l i f e of the other the corresponding b r a c k e t i n g and d e s c r i p t i o n a c c o r d i n g to the s u b j e c t i v e "how" of i t s appearance and what is appearing. . . . as a f u r t h e r conse- quence, the community t h a t i s experienced i n community experience i s reduced not o n l y to the m e n t a l l y p a r t i c u l a r i z e d i n t e n t i o n a l f i e l d s but a l s o to the u n i t y of the community l i f e t h a t connects them a l l t o g e t h e r , the community l i f e i n i t s phenomenological p u r i t y ( i n t e r s u b j e c t i v e r e d u c t i o n ) . . . . at t h i s p o i n t i t does not hurt to r e c a l l t h a t , f o r h u s s e r l , pure e x p r e s s i o n — pure meaning as such, can o n l y occur w i t h i n ' s o l i t a r y mental l i f e ' ( h u s s e r l i n m u e l l e r - v o l l m e r ed., : ). a c c o r d i n g to h u s s e r l , o u t s i d e of the inner workings of consciousness, 'expression' i s always interwoven with ' i n d i c a t i o n ' and hence 'meaning' can o n l y be intimated - - i t cannot be experienced i n i t s pure form. (in speech and phenomena d e r r i d a p r o v i d e s an extended d e c o n s t r u c t i v e reading of h u s s e r l ' s use of 'expression* and ' i n d i c a t i o n . ' ) to every mind there belongs not o n l y the u n i t y of i t s m u l t i p l e i n t e n t i o n a l l i f e - p r o c e s s . . . with a l l i t s i n s e p a r a b l e u n i t i e s of sense d i r e c t e d towards the " o b j e c t . " there i s a l s o , i n s e p a r a b l e from t h i s l i f e - p r o c e s s , the e x p e r i e n c i n g i - s u b j e c t as the i d e n t i c a l i-pole g i v i n g a center f o r a l l s p e c i f i c i n t e n t i o n a l i t i e s , and as the c a r r i e r of a l l h a b i t u a l i t i e s growing out of t h i s l i f e - p r o c e s s . l i k e w i s e , then, the reduced i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y , i n pure form and c o n c r e t e l y grasped, i s a community of pure "persons" a c t i n g i n the i n t e r s u b j e c t i v e realm of the pure l i f e of consciousness. ( h u s s e r l i n t a y l o r , a: - ) yet a l l of the above must, by h u s s e r l ' s own ' p r i n c i p l e of p r i n c i p l e s , ' s t i l l be premised upon, and hence merely a p r o j e c t i o n of, the i n d i v i d u a l t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t or c o n s c i o u s n e s s . for h u s s e r l , the other must remain an e x t e n s i o n and r e f l e c t i o n of the s e l f . as a p h i l o s o p h y of t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t i v i t y , husserlean phenomenology can no more bequeath o b j e c t i v e e x i s t e n c e to other s u b j e c t i v i t i e s than i t can bequeath o b j e c t i v e e x i s t e n c e to any f e a t u r e of the taken f o r granted world. a b r i e f look a t d e r r i d a ' s d e c o n s t r u c t i o n of h u s s e r l * s n o t i o n of inner time consciousness p r o v i d e s c o n s i d e r a b l e i n s i g h t i n t o phenomenology's i n a b i l i t y to remain t r u e to i t s own g u i d i n g p r i n c i p l e s . according to h u s s e r l , "the a c t u a l now i s n e c e s s a r i l y something punctual ( e i n p u n k t u e l l e s ) and remains so, a form t h a t p e r s i s t s through continuous change of matter" (husserl i n d e r r i d a , b: ). in order to account f o r the seeming c o n t i n u i t y of events as p e r c e i v e d by consciousness h u s s e r l p o s i t s the idea of r e t e n t i o n and p r o t e n t i o n — t h a t i s , past nows and f u t u r e nows. however, h u s s e r l i s a t pains to underscore the necessary and e s s e n t i a l p r i o r i t y of the ' a c t u a l ' or present now: "[the a c t u a l ] now- apprehension i s , as i t were, the nucleus of a comet's t a i l of r e t e n t i o n s [and] a punctual phase i s a c t u a l l y present as now a t any g i v e n moment, while the others are connected as a r e t e n t i o n a l t r a i n " ( h u s s e r l i n d e r r i d a , b: ) (emphasis mine). remembering t h a t the e n t i r e s t r u c t u r e of phenomenology r e s t s on a n o t i o n of the o r i g i n a r y and i n d u b i t a b l e s e l f - p r e s e n c e of the c o n s t i t u t i v e consciousness which, by d e f i n i t i o n , can o n l y e x i s t i n an immediate and unmediated present, one can see t h a t h u s s e r l ' s concept of r e t e n t i o n a l and p r o t e n t i o n a l components of the now shakes h i s whole e d i f i c e of thought. as d e r r i d a says, . . . we cannot a v o i d n o t i c i n g t h a t a . . . concept of the "now," of the present as p u n c t u a l i t y of the i n s t a n t , d e c i s i v e l y s a n c t i o n s [ h u s s e r l ' s ] whole system. . . . i f the p u n c t u a l i t y of the i n s t a n t i s a myth, a s p a t i a l or mechanical metaphor, an i n h e r i t e d metaphysical concept, or a l l t h a t a t once, and i f the present of s e l f - p r e s e n c e i s not simple, i f i t i s c o n s t i t u t e d i n a p r i m o r d i a l and i r r e d u c i b l e s y n t h e s i s , then the whole of h u s s e r l ' s argumentation i s threatened i n i t s very p r i n c i p l e . ( d e r r i d a , b: ) l£ the present now must be supplemented by a past now in order to be known as such, then the present now i s not and cannot be a b s o l u t e — i t s p o s s i b i l i t y i s c o n s t i t u t e d by i t s i m p o s s i b i l i t y as a pure s e l f - i d e n t i c a l concept. i d e n t i t y , as such, i s always a l r e a d y contaminated by d i f f e r e n c e . as d e r r i d a puts i t , . . . d i f f e r e n c e , which c o n s t i t u t e s the s e l f - p r e s e n c e of the l i v i n g present, i n t r o d u c e s i n t o s e l f - p r e s e n c e from the beginning a l l the i m p u r i t y p u t a t i v e l y excluded from i t . the l i v i n g present s p r i n g s f o r t h out of i t s n o n i d e n t i t y with i t s e l f and from the p o s s i b i l i t y of a r e t e n t i o n a l t r a c e . i t i s always a l r e a d y a t r a c e . t h i s t r a c e cannot be thought out on the b a s i s of a simple present whose l i f e would be w i t h i n i t s e l f ; the s e l f of the l i v i n g present i s p r l m o r d i a l l y a t r a c e . ( d e r r i d a , b: ) in the form of a b e l i e f i n p r i m o r d i a l i n t u i t i o n / t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t i v i t y / c o n s t i t u t i v e consciousness h u s s e r l ' s t r a n s c e n d e n t a l phenomenology expresses i t s e l f as a p h i l o s o p h y of presence. as d e r r i d a says, what i s s i g n i f i e d by p h e n o m e n o l o g y ' s " p r i n c i p l e o f p r i n c i p l e s " ? what does the value of p r i m o r d i a l presence to i n t u i t i o n as source of sense and evidence, as the a p r i o r i of a p r l o r i s , s i g n i f y ? f i r s t of a l l i t s i g n i f i e s the c e r t a i n t y , i t s e l f i d e a l and a b s o l u t e , t h a t the u n i v e r s a l form of a l l experience ( e r l i b n i s ) , and t h e r e f o r e of a l l l i f e , has always been and w i l l always be the p r e s e n t . the present alone is and ever w i l l be. being i s presence or the m o d i f i c a t i o n of presence. ( d e r r i d a , b: ) as with a l l p h i l o s o p h i e s of presence, phenomenology cannot be e x t r i c a t e d from n o t i o n s of the a b s o l u t e , of a r e t u r n to a p r i s t i n e o r i g i n , of essence, of t e l e o l o g y and so on. as h u s s e r l says, in phenomenology a l l r a t i o n a l problems have t h e i r p l a c e . . . . for out of the a b s o l u t e sources of t r a n s c e n d e n t a l experience . . . they f i r s t [are a b l e to] o b t a i n t h e i r genuine f o r m u l a t i o n and f e a s i b l e means f o r t h e i r s o l u t i o n . . . . [phenomenology] r e c o g n i z e s the a b s o l u t e norms which are to be p i c k e d out i n t u i t i v e l y . . . and a l s o i t s p r i m o r d i a l t e l e o l o g l c a l - t e n d e n t l a l s t r u c t u r e i n a d i r e c t e d n e s s towards d i s c l o s u r e of these norms and t h e i r conscious p r a c t i c a l o p e r a t i o n s . . . . the t r a c i n g back of a l l being to the t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t i v i t y and i t s c o n s t i t u t i v e i n t e n t i o n a l f u n c t i o n s leaves open . . . no other way of contemplating the world than the t e l e o l o g i c a l . ( h u s s e r l i n t a y l o r , a: - ) (emphasis h u s s e r l ' s and mine) and, a g a i n , as with a l l p h i l o s o p h i e s of presence, phenomenology n e c e s s i t a t e s and r e i n f o r c e s a whole s e r i e s of h i e r a r c h i c a l l y s t r u c t u r e d o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r s such as s u b j e c t / o b j e c t , s e l f / o t h e r , essence/contingence, i d e n t i t y / d i f f e r e n c e , e t c . wherein the l a t t e r term of each p a i r i s viewed as a c o r r u p t i o n of the former, thus e n s u r i n g the s u p p r e s s i o n of d i f f e r e n c e and/or otherness. as t a y l o r says, the a b s o l u t e knowledge made p o s s i b l e by the phenomenological r e d u c t i o n of d i f f e r e n c e to i d e n t i t y i n s u b j e c t i v i t y ' s f u l l knowledge of i t s e l f r e a l i z e s western p h i l o s o p h y ' s dream of e n j o y i n g a t o t a l presence t h a t i s undisturbed by absence or l a c k . ( t a y l o r , b: ) ii hermeneutics ( i ) background the term 'hermeneutics' comes from the greek words •hermeneuein,' u s u a l l y t r a n s l a t e d as 'to i n t e r p r e t , ' and 'hermeneia,' u s u a l l y t r a n s l a t e d as ' i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . ' as r i c h a r d palmer p o i n t s out, 'hermeneuein' and 'hermeneia' taken together with 'hermeios' (the p r i e s t at the d e l p h i c o r a c l e ) r e f e r s back t o , the wing-footed messenger-god hermes, from whose name the words are a p p a r e n t l y d e r i v e d (or v i c e v e r s a ? ) . s i g n i f i c a n t l y , hermes i s a s s o c i a t e d with the f u n c t i o n of t r a n s m i t t i n g what i s beyond human understanding i n t o a form t h a t human i n t e l l i g e n c e can grasp. the v a r i o u s forms of t h i s word suggest the process of b r i n g i n g a t h i n g or s i t u a t i o n from u n l n t e l l i g i b i l i t y to understanding. (palmer, : ) hermeneutlcs, as such, is u s u a l l y t r a c e d to the seventeenth century, a t which time i t was p e r c e i v e d to be a form of b i b l i c a l e x e g e s i s . in the l a t e e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y and e a r l y n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y hermeneutlcs was focussed upon the p h i l o l o g i c a l researches of wolf and ast and in the n i n e t e e n t h century schleiermacher attempted to e l e v a t e hermeneutlcs to the s t a t u s of a s c i e n c e of understanding through p r o v i d i n g a method by which the reader could comprehend the meaning of a g i v e n t e x t through an empathetlc understanding of i t s author's i n t e n t i o n s . however, i t was wilhelm d i l t h e y who f i r s t attempted to ground the human s c i e n c e s on a n o t i o n of hermeneutical understanding. d i l t h e y b e l i e v e d t h a t , whereas the n a t u r a l s c i e n c e s may ground themselves on an e x p l a n a t i o n of f a c t , the human s c i e n c e s must ground themselves on an understanding of meaning. l i k e schleiermacher, d i l t h e y b e l i e v e d t h a t i t was p o s s i b l e to r e c o n s t r u c t and hence to r e - e x p e r i e n c e another person's inner c o n s c i o u s n e s s . as palmer says, " i t was d l l t h e y ' s aim to develop methods of g a i n i n g ' o b j e c t i v e l y v a l i d ' i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s of 'expressions of inner l i f e ' " (palmer, : ). for d i l t h e y , 'understanding' i s an e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l n o t i o n which has to do with the k n o w a b i l i t y of the products of one human mind through "a mysterious process of mental t r a n s f e r " (palmer, : ) to another human mind. t h i s mental t r a n s f e r takes p l a c e through the p o s s i b i l i t y of an i n t u i t i v e understanding of human p r o d u c t i o n s , be they t e x t s or v i s u a l a r t s or whatever. thus palmer quotes d i l t h e y as f o l l o w s : "above a l l . . . the g r a s p i n g of the s t r u c t u r e of the inner l i f e i s based on the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of works, works i n which the t e x t u r e of inner l i f e comes f u l l y to e x p r e s s i o n " ( d i l t h e y i n palmer, : ). and, a c c o r d i n g to d i l t h e y , such an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n would be ' o b j e c t i v e l y v a l i d ' because these 'works' are as o b j e c t i v e l y e x i s t i n g as i s anything e l s e — t h e r e f o r e i t i s j u s t as p o s s i b l e f o r a hermeneutlc i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of a w r i t t e n t e x t to 'get i t r i g h t ' as i t i s f o r a s c i e n t i f i c e x p l a n a t i o n of a g e o l o g i c a l formation. the d i f f e r e n c e l i e s i n the o b j e c t s under study r a t h e r than i n the o b j e c t i v e v a l i d i t y of the r e s u l t s of the i n q u i r y . l i k e wolf, ast and schleiermacher before him, d i l t h e y makes use of the 'hermeneutlc c i r c l e ' wherein the p a r t s are understood i n r e l a t i o n to the whole and the whole i s understood i n r e l a t i o n to i t s p a r t s . i t i s a t a c k i n g back and f o r t h between whole and p a r t s t h a t allows understanding to determine the s p e c i f i c meaning of any g i v e n work: . the sentence f u r n i s h e s a c l e a r example of the i n t e r a c t i o n of the whole and p a r t s and the need f o r both: out of the meaning of i n d i v i d u a l p a r t s i s y i e l d e d an understanding of the sense of the whole, which i n t u r n changes the indeterminateness of the words i n t o a f i x e d and meaningful p a t t e r n . d i l t h e y c i t e s t h i s example and then a s s e r t s t h a t the same r e l a t i o n s h i p e x i s t s between the p a r t s and the whole of one's l i f e . the meaning of the whole i s a 'sense' d e r i v e d from the meaning of i n d i v i d u a l p a r t s . an event or experience can so a l t e r our l i v e s t h a t what was f o r m e r l y meaningful becomes meaningless and an a p p a r e n t l y unimportant past experience may take on meaning i n r e t r o s p e c t . the sense of the whole determines the f u n c t i o n and the meaning of the p a r t s . and meaning i s something h i s t o r i c a l ; i t i s a r e l a t i o n s h i p of whole to p a r t s seen by us from a g i v e n s t a n d p o i n t , at a given time, f o r a g i v e n combination of p a r t s . i t i s not something above or o u t s i d e h i s t o r y but a p a r t of a hermeneutlc c i r c l e always h i s t o r i c a l l y d e f i n e d . (palmer, : ) d i l t h e y ' s hermeneutics i s premised on a p h i l o s o p h y of consciousness — on the idea t h a t the 'inner l i f e ' of the human mind e x i s t s as a knowable e n t i t y and i s understandable as such. his n o t i o n of ' o b j e c t i v e l y v a l i d ' knowledge i s a d i r e c t r e s u l t of h i s b e l i e f t h a t human works can be c o n t e x t u a l i z e d i n t o c o n c r e t e l y d e f i n a b l e p a r t s and wholes whose r e c i p r o c a l i n t e r a c t i o n accounts f o r the a t t a i n a b i l i t y of h i s t o r i c a l l y s p e c i f i c meanings. his concern i s fundamentally e p i s t e m o l o g l c a l , i . e . to provide a method whereby the s c i e n c e s may a s p i r e to the achievement of o b j e c t i v e l y v a l i d knowledge. i t i s m a r t i n heidegger who f i r s t attempts to provide an o n t o l o g i c a l grounding f o r the hermeneutlc p r o j e c t . ( i i ) heidegger heidegger had been a student of edmund h u s s e r l and, indeed, a t one time the l a t t e r e n t e r t a i n e d the hope t h a t the former would c a r r y on h i s work. however, as i s o f t e n the case, the student proved to be a major disappointment to the t e a c h e r . heidegger c o u l d accept n e i t h e r h u s s e r l ' s n o t i o n of t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t i v i t y with i t s r o o t s i n human consciousness nor h i s hope f o r the development of phenomenology as a 'rigorous s c i e n c e . ' a c c o r d i n g to heidegger, western metaphysics took a wrong t u r n when i t ceased to take the p r e s o c r a t i c q u e s t i o n i n g of 'being' s e r i o u s l y . t h i s q u e s t i o n has today been f o r g o t t e n - - although our time c o n s i d e r s i t s e l f p r o g r e s s i v e i n a g a i n a f f i r m i n g 'metaphysics.' . . . . and what then was wrested from phenomena by the h i g h e s t e x e r t i o n of t h i n k i n g , a l b e i t i n fragments and f i r s t - b e g i n n i n g s , has long s i n c e been t r i v i a l i z e d . not o n l y t h a t . on the foundation of the greek p o i n t of departure f o r the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of being a dogmatic a t t i t u d e has taken shape which not o n l y d e c l a r e s the q u e s t i o n of the meaning of being to be s u p e r f l u o u s but s a n c t i o n s i t s n e g l e c t . i t i s s a i d t h a t "being" i s the most u n i v e r s a l and the emptiest concept. as such i t r e s i s t s every attempt a t d e f i n i t i o n . nor does t h i s most u n i v e r s a l and thus i n d e f i n a b l e concept need any d e f i n i t i o n . everybody uses i t c o n s t a n t l y and a l s o a l r e a d y understands what he means by i t . thus what made a n c i e n t p h i l o s o p h i z i n g uneasy and kept i t so by v i r t u e of i t s o b s c u r i t y has become obvious, c l e a r as day; and t h i s to the p o i n t t h a t whoever pursues i t i s accused of an e r r o r of'method. (heidegger, : ) heidegger maintains t h a t western metaphysics has an e s s e n t i a l l y e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l programme and t h a t , consequently, i t ' f o r g e t s ' to ask the fundamentally o n t o l o g i c a l q u e s t i o n of the meaning of being, of the d i f f e r e n c e between being and b e i n g . he d i s a g r e e s with h u s s e r l ' s p r e s u p p o s i t i o n of the e x i s t e n c e of p r i m o r d i a l i n t u i t i o n and maintains t h a t , so f a r from being a c o n s t i t u t i v e s u b j e c t i v i t y , daseln ( l i t e r a l l y 'there-being,' o f t e n l o o s e l y t r a n s l a t e d as 'human being') i s 'thrown' i n t o a world t h a t i s always a l r e a d y t h e r e . knowledge, as such, i s a secondary phenomenon — what i s primary i s dasein's i n t r i n s i c involvement with 'being i n the world, ' an involvement which heidegger c h a r a c t e r i z e s as •concern' and/or 'care.' i t i s t h i s p r i m o r d i a l involvement with the world (world being d e f i n e d as the whole i n which dasein i s always a l r e a d y i n v o l v e d and always a l r e a d y preunderstands) t h a t metaphysics, i n i t s concern with •knowledge,' f o r g e t s . in being and time heidegger attempts to get to the q u e s t i o n of the meaning of being through an a n a l y s i s of dasein — t h a t being whose s p e c i a l o n t o l o g i c a l s t a t u s i s c o n s t i t u t e d by i t s awareness of being. t h i s mindfulness of the problem of being i s a f e a t u r e of dasein's temporal nature, i . e . i t s awareness of past, present and f u t u r e as very roughly, 'being' r e f e r s to the c o n c r e t e l y e x i s t i n g i n d i v i d u a l whereas 'being' r e f e r s to the mystery of the ' i s n e s s ' of e x i s t e n c e . ( s t e i n e r , : ) c o i n c i d e n t a l with i t s heidegger emphasizes examination of dasein: awareness of i t s own the hermeneutic nature f i n i t u d e . of h i s in e x p l a i n i n g the tasks of ontology we found i t necessary t h a t there should be a fundamental ontology t a k i n g as i t s theme t h a t e n t i t y which i s o n t o l o g i c o - o n t i c a l l y d i s t i n c t i v e , dasein, i n order to c o n f r o n t the c a r d i n a l problem -- the q u e s t i o n of the meaning of being i n g e n e r a l . our i n v e s t i g a t i o n i t s e l f w i l l show t h a t the meaning of phenomenological d e s c r i p t i o n as a method l i e s i n i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . the logos of the phenomenology of dasein has the c h a r a c t e r of hermeneuein, through which the a u t h e n t i c meaning of being, and a l s o those b a s i c s t r u c t u r e s of being which dasein i t s e l f possesses, are made known to dasein's understanding of being. the phenomenology of dasein i s a hermeneutlc in the p r i m o r d i a l s i g n i f i c a t i o n of the word, where i t d e s i g n a t e s t h i s business of i n t e r p r e t i n g . (heidegger, : - ) before l o o k i n g at heidegger's v e r s i o n of the hermeneutic c i r c l e i t i s necessary to grasp what he has to say about understanding and i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . for heidegger, understanding i s an e q u i p r l m o r d l a l f e a t u r e of dasein's b e i n g - i n - t h e - w o r l d and, f u r t h e r , "understanding has i n i t s e l f the e x i s t e n t i a l s t r u c t u r e which we c a l l ' p r o j e c t i o n ' (heidegger, : - ). in other words, dasein, by d e f i n i t i o n , always has a pre-understanding of any given s i t u a t i o n and, as p r o j e c t i o n r e f e r s to p o t e n t i a l , "dasein always has understood i t s e l f and always w i l l understand i t s e l f i n terms of p o s s i b i l i t i e s " (heidegger, : ). i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s the development and a r t i c u l a t i o n of the p o s s i b i l i t i e s p r o j e c t e d by understanding. as heidegger says, the p r o j e c t i n g of the understanding we c a l l " i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . " in i t the u n d e r s t a n d i n g a p p r o p r i a t e s u n d e r s t a n d i n g l y t h a t which i s understood by i t . in i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , understanding does not become something d i f f e r e n t . i t becomes i t s e l f . such i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s grounded e x i s t e n t l a l l y in understanding; the l a t t e r does not a r i s e from the former. nor i s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n the a c q u i r i n g of i n f o r m a t i o n about what i s understood; i t i s r a t h e r the working-out of p o s s i b i l i t i e s p r o j e c t e d i n understanding. (heidegger, : - ) for heidegger, an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s not a framework which we superimpose upon an o b j e c t i v e l y e x i s t i n g world but a d i s c l o s u r e or r e t r i e v a l of dasein's pre-understanding of i t s always a l r e a d y o c c u r r i n g involvement with the world. as heidegger puts i t , in i n t e r p r e t i n g , we do not, so to speak, throw a ' s i g n i f i c a t i o n ' over some naked t h i n g which i s present-at-hand, we do not s t i c k a value on i t ; but when something w i t h i n - t h e - w o r l d i s encountered as such, the t h i n g i n q u e s t i o n a l r e a d y has an involvement which i s d i s c l o s e d i n our understanding of the world, and t h i s involvement i s one which gets l a i d out by the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . (heidegger, : - ) i n t e r p r e t a t i o n enables us to view the ready-to-hand' world o£ the understanding as. c o n s t i t u t e d by v a r i o u s o b j e c t s such as t a b l e s , c h a i r s e t c . heidegger r e f e r s to t h i s as the 'as s t r u c t u r e ' o£ i n t e r p r e t a t i o n which, as w i l l p r e s e n t l y become c l e a r , i s i n t i m a t e l y i n v o l v e d with the f o r e - s t r u c t u r e s of understanding. heidegger p o s i t s three f o r e s t r u c t u r e s which belong to the realm of understanding and which a l l o w f o r i t s development i n i n t e r p r e t a t i o n — f o r e - h a v i n g , f o r e - s i g h t and f o r e - c o n c e p t i o n . as these are c r u c i a l concepts with r e s p e c t to heidegger's n o t i o n of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i w i l l quote him at l e n g t h . the ready-to-hand i s always understood i n terms of a t o t a l i t y of involvements. t h i s t o t a l i t y need not be grasped e x p l i c i t l y by a thematic i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . even i f i t has undergone such an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , i t recedes i n t o an understanding which does not stand out from the background. and t h i s i s the v e r y mode i n which i t i s the e s s e n t i a l foundation f o r everyday c i r c u m s p e c t i v e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . in every case t h i s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s grounded i n something we have i n advance — i n a f o r e - h a v i n g . as the a p p r o p r i a t i o n of understanding, the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n operates i n being towards a t o t a l i t y of involvements which i s a l r e a d y understood — a being which understands. when something i s understood but s t i l l v e i l e d , i t becomes u n v e i l e d by an a c t of a p p r o p r i a t i o n , and t h i s i s always done under the guidance of a p o i n t of view, which f i x e s t h a t with regard to which what i s understood i s i n t e r p r e t e d . in e v e r y c a s e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s grounded in something ve see in advance — i n a f o r e - s i g h t . t h i s f o r e - s i g h t 'takes the f i r s t c u t ' out of what has been taken i n t o our f o r e - having, and i t does so with a view to a d e f i n i t e way i n which t h i s can be i n t e r p r e t e d . anything understood which i s held i n our f o r e - h a v i n g and towards which we s e t our s i g h t s ' f o r e s i g h t e d l y , ' becomes c o n c e p t u a l i z a b l e through the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . in s u c h an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , the way i n which the e n t i t y we are i n t e r p r e t i n g i s to be conceived can be drawn from the e n t i t y i t s e l f , or the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n can f o r c e the e n t i t y i n t o concepts to which i t i s opposed in i t s manner of being. in e i t h e r case, the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n has a l r e a d y decided f o r a d e f i n i t e way of c o n c e i v i n g i t , e i t h e r with f i n a l i t y or with r e s e r v a t i o n ; i t i s grounded i n something we grasp i n advance — i n a f o r e - c o n c e p t i o n . (heidegger, : ) thus the ' a s - s t r u c t u r e ' of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s the working out of the p r o j e c t e d ' f o r e - s t r u c t u r e s ' of understanding which, i n t u r n , a l l o w f o r heidegger's n o t i o n of meaning as "the 'upon which' of a p r o j e c t i o n i n terms of which something becomes i n t e l l i g i b l e as something; i t gets i t s s t r u c t u r e from a f o r e - having, and a f o r e - c o n c e p t i o n . in so f a r as understanding and i n t e r p r e t a t i o n make up the e x i s t e n t i a l s t a t e of being of the 'there,' 'meaning' must be conceived as the f o r m a l - e x i s t e n t i a l framework of the d i s c l o s e d n e s s which belongs to understanding" (heidegger, : ). in other words, 'meaning' i s not something which e x i s t s i n some form o u t s i d e of dasein — i t i s , by d e f i n i t i o n , c o n s t i t u t e d by and r e s t r i c t e d to the h i s t o r i c a l h o r i z o n of daseln's p r o j e c t e d understanding i n the form of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . by now i t should be c l e a r t h a t the being of dasein, along with being fundamentally temporal, i s e s s e n t i a l l y c i r c u l a r . as heidegger says, the ' c i r c l e ' in understanding belongs to the s t r u c t u r e of meaning, and the l a t t e r phenomenon i s rooted i n the e x i s t e n t i a l c o n s t i t u t i o n of dasein — t h a t i s , i n the understanding which i n t e r p r e t s . an e n t i t y f o r which, as b e i n g - i n - t h e - w o r l d , i t s being i s i t s e l f an i s s u e , has, o n t o l o g i c a l l y , a c i r c u l a r s t r u c t u r e . (heidegger, : ) thus the always a l r e a d y e x i s t i n g pre-understanding of dasein p r o j e c t s i t s e l f toward f u t u r a l p o s s i b i l i t i e s which can o n l y be a u t h e n t i c a l l y r e a l i z e d by d i s c l o s i n g the always a l r e a d y having been of p r i m o r d i a l understanding. l i k e t.s. e l i o t , we go forward i n order to come back p r o p e r l y : we s h a l l not cease from e x p l o r a t i o n and the end of a l l our e x p l o r i n g w i l l be to a r r i v e where we s t a r t e d and know the p l a c e f o r the f i r s t time. ( e l i o t , : ) john caputo p r o v i d e s a s u c c i n c t synopsis of the c i r c u l a r i t y of dasein: in heidegger ' a u t h e n t i c i t y ' has to do with daseln's r e c o g n i t i o n of, and being i n harmony with, being whereas ' l n a u t h e n t i c l t y ' has to do with daseln's f o r g e t t i n g of being. as an ' e x i s t i n g ' being ( i n the k l e r k e g a a r d i a n sense), the meaning of dasein i s to move forward, to press ahead toward i t s a u t h e n t i c f u t u r e . but t h i s forward movement i s taken by heidegger to be at one and the same time a movement back to the being t h a t dasein a l l along has been. the movement forward i s thus a l s o a movement of r e c o v e r y or r e t r i e v a l . . . . heidegger . . . g i v e s a s p e c i a l p l a y to the ' c i r c u l a r ' movement of dasein's being i n being and time l i n k i n g i n an o n t o l o g i c a l loop dasein's forward and backward movement, i t s f u t u r a l p r o j e c t i o n and i t s a l r e a d y having been. wlederholung i n being and time means a r e p e t i t i o n / r e t r i e v a l , a p r e s s i n g forward which r e c o v e r s something h i t h e r t o l a t e n t , i n p o t e n t l a , harboured i n the p o s s i b i l i t y - t o - b e (seinskonnen), of dasein. dasein's own being ' c i r c u l a t e s ' between i t s ' f u t u r i t y ' ( z u k u n f t l g k e l t ) and i t s 'having been' (gewesenhelt). the being of dasein i s c o n s t a n t l y p r o j e c t e d ahead, never i n a f r e e - f l o a t i n g and a b s o l u t e way, but always toward p o s s i b i l i t i e s i n t o which i t has a l l along been i n s e r t e d . whence heidegger speaks of "the c i r c u l a r being of dasein." (caputo, b: ) heidegger's s h i f t i n g of the hermeneutic c i r c l e from e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l to o n t o l o g i c a l ground p o r t r a y s h i s deep concern with o r i g i n s ("in the [hermeneutic] c i r c l e is hidden a p o s i t i v e p o s s i b i l i t y of the most p r i m o r d i a l kind of knowing" (heidegger, : )), u n i t y and t o t a l i t y — i n a word, with holism. as robert solomon comments, "being and time i s almost unique i n western p h i l o s o p h y i n i t s u n r e s t r i c t e d emphasis on holism, i t s v i s i o n of our b e i n g - i n - the-world as a seamless whole even more than i n hegel (who sees the whole as a r e s u l t r a t h e r than a s t a r t i n g p o i n t " ) (solomon, : ). in h i s l a t e r w r i t i n g heidegger moves away from attempting to determine the meaning of being through an a n a l y s i s of dasein and c o n c e n t r a t e s on e l u c i d a t i n g / o b f u s c a t i n g the meaning of being as a l e t h e i a — as "luminous s e l f - c o n c e a l i n g " (heidegger, : ). however, h i s n o s t a l g i a f o r o r i g i n s and h i s e s c h a t o - t e l e o - l o g l c a l d e s i r e f o r the u n i f y i n g h o r i z o n of the c i r c l e never abates. hence, i n commenting on the "anaximander fragment," heidegger expresses h i m s e l f as f o l l o w s : but what i f t h a t which i s e a r l y o u t d i s t a n c e d e v e r y t h i n g l a t e ; i f the v e r y e a r l i e s t f a r surpassed the v e r y l a t e s t ? what once occurred i n the dawn of our d e s t i n y would then come, as what once occurred, a t the l a s t . . ., t h a t i s , at the departure of the long-hidden d e s t i n y of being. the being of beings i s gathered . . . i n the u l t i m a c y of i t s d e s t i n y . the essence of being h i t h e r t o d i s a p p e a r s , i t s t r u t h s t i l l v e i l e d . the h i s t o r y of being i s gathered in t h i s departure. the g a t h e r i n g i n t h i s departure, as the g a t h e r i n g . . . a t the outermost p o i n t . . . of i t s essence h i t h e r t o , i s the e s c h a t o l o g y of being. as something f a t e f u l , being i t s e l f i s i n h e r e n t l y e s c h a t o l o g i c a l . . . . we t h i n k of the e s c h a t o l o g y of being i n a way c o r r e s p o n d i n g to the way the phenomenology of s p i r i t i s to be thought, i . e . from w i t h i n the h i s t o r y of being. the phenomenology of s p i r i t i t s e l f c o n s t i t u t e s a phase i n the e s c h a t o l o g y of being, when being gathers i t s e l f in the u l t i m a c y of i t s essence. . . . i f we t h i n k the e s c h a t o l o g y of being, then we must someday a n t i c i p a t e the former dawn i n the day to come; today we must l e a r n to ponder t h i s former dawn through what i s imminent. (heidegger, : ) ( i l l ) gadamer gadamer does not f o l l o w h i s teacher, heidegger, i n t o the mysticism surrounding the l a t t e r ' s concern with the meaning of being as a l e t h e i a but, i n s t e a d , takes h i s mentor's o n t o l o g i c a l n o t i o n of understanding and attempts to develop i t i n t o a f u l l blown ' p h i l o s o p h i c a l hermeneutlcs, ' the purpose of which i s to show "not what we do or what we ought to do, but what happens to us over and above our wanting and d o i n g " (gadamer i n baynes et a l . , : ). for gadamer, t h i s means working out a system which accounts f o r understanding as the fundamental u n i v e r s a l o n t o l o g i c a l process of being human: "how i s understanding (verstehen) p o s s i b l e ? " t h i s q u e s t i o n i s p r i o r to any a c t i v i t y of understanding on the p a r t of s u b j e c t i v i t y , i n c l u d i n g the methodical a c t i v i t y of the verstehenden s c i e n c e s , t h e i r norms and r u l e s . in my view, heidegger's temporal a n a l y s i s of human dasein has c o n v i n c i n g l y shown t h a t understanding i s not one of many modes of a c t i o n on the p a r t of the s u b j e c t but r a t h e r dasein's v e r y mode of being. i t i s i n t h i s sense t h a t [i employ] the concept of hermeneutlcs. . . . i t designates the fundamental movement of dasein, which c o n s t i t u t e s i t s f i n l t u d e and h i s t o r i c i t y and thus encompasses the whole of i t s experience of the world. to say t h a t the movement of understanding i s comprehensive and u n i v e r s a l i s n e i t h e r a r b i t r a r y nor a c o n s t r u c t i v e e x a g g e r a t i o n of a s i n g l e aspect; i t l i e s r a t h e r i n the v e r y nature of t h i n g s . (gadamer i n baynes et a l . , : ) because gadamer b e l i e v e s t h a t understanding i s e s s e n t i a l to the temporal beingness of dasein he opposes schleiermacher's and d i l t h e y ' s n o t i o n of the p o s s i b i l i t y of s l i p p i n g out of one's immediate h i s t o r i c a l context i n order to comprehend the a u t h o r i a l i n t e n t i o n w i t h i n a t e x t w r i t t e n i n another e r a . a c c o r d i n g to gadamer, t h i s r e s u l t s i n an impossible s e p a r a t i o n and hence r e i f i c a t i o n of both the past and the present whereas what i s r e q u i r e d i s a r e c o g n i t i o n t h a t , on the heideggerian model, past, present and f u t u r e are i n s e p a r a b l e ( i . e . dasein i s 'thrown' i n t o a present which i s c o n s t i t u t e d by a pre-understanding of the past and i s p r o j e c t e d i n t o the p o s s i b i l i t y of the f u t u r e ) . in working out h i s ' p h i l o s o p h i c a l hermeneutics' gadamer ' r e h a b i l i t a t e s ' three n o t i o n s t h a t he maintains f e l l i n t o unwarranted d i s r e p u t e d u r i n g the enlightenment — p r e j u d i c e , t r a d i t i o n and a u t h o r i t y . with r e s p e c t to p r e j u d i c e , gadamer argues t h a t i t i s a c t u a l l y n e i t h e r more nor l e s s than the heideggerian concept of pre-understanding, which e f f e c t i v e l y shows t h a t one i s , by d e f i n i t i o n , never without always a l r e a d y e x i s t i n g p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s . to deny these p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s is to be unaware of one's own involvement with beingness and hence to ensure t h a t one w i l l be incapable of ever g r a s p i n g the a u t h e n t i c nature of understanding. as f o r t r a d i t i o n , [in] our c o n t i n u a l l y manifested a t t i t u d e to the past, the main f e a t u r e i s not . . . a d i s t a n c i n g and f r e e i n g of o u r s e l v e s from what has been t r a n s m i t t e d . rather, we stand always w i t h i n t r a d i t i o n , and t h i s i s no o b j e c t i f y i n g process, i . e . we do not conceive of what t r a d i t i o n says as something other, a model or exemplar, a r e c o g n i t i o n of o u r s e l v e s which our l a t e r h i s t o r i c a l judgement would h a r d l y see as a kind of knowledge, but as the s i m p l e s t p r e s e r v a t i o n of t r a d i t i o n . (gadamer, : ) in other words, as palmer s u c c i n c t l y expresses i t , " t r a d i t i o n does not stand over a g a i n s t our t h i n k i n g as an o b j e c t of thought but i s the f a b r i c of r e l a t i o n s , the h o r i z o n , w i t h i n which we do our t h i n k i n g " (palmer, : ). the r e c o g n i t i o n of t r a d i t i o n as an i n t e g r a l p a r t of dasein's b e l n g - l n - t h e - w o r l d leads d i r e c t l y to the acknowledgement of i t s a u t h o r i t y . as gadamer says, that which has been s a n c t i o n e d by t r a d i t i o n . . . has an a u t h o r i t y t h a t i s nameless, and our f i n i t e h i s t o r i c a l being i s marked by the f a c t t h a t always the a u t h o r i t y of what has been t r a n s m i t t e d - - and not o n l y what i s c l e a r l y grounded - has power over our a t t i t u d e s and behaviour. (gadamer, : ) b a s i c a l l y , gadamer takes e x c e p t i o n to what he p e r c e i v e s to be the enlightenment's s u p e r f i c i a l view t h a t p r e j u d i c e , t r a d i t i o n and a u t h o r i t y are the enemies of c r e a t i v e thought - - i t s n o t i o n t h a t somehow i t i s p o s s i b l e to transcend the muck of the world and to have recourse to a p r i s t i n e realm of pure reason. such an a t t i t u d e precludes the p o s s i b i l i t y of r e c o g n i z i n g the o n t o l o g i c a l nature of understanding and determines a world view premised upon unacknowledged second order c o n s t r u c t s . as f a r as gadamer is concerned, p r e j u d i c e and the a u t h o r i t y of t r a d i t i o n are simply p a r t of the nature of t h i n g s and, whether or not t h i s f a c t i s c o n s c i o u s l y acknowledged, i t nonetheless e x e r t s i t s e f f e c t on a l l human thought -- enlightenment or no enlightenment: "there i s one p r e j u d i c e of the enlightenment t h a t i s e s s e n t i a l to i t : the fundamental p r e j u d i c e of the enlightenment i s the p r e j u d i c e a g a i n s t p r e j u d i c e i t s e l f , which d e p r i v e s t r a d i t i o n of i t s power" (gadamer, : - ) again emphasizing heidegger's n o t i o n of the e s s e n t i a l h i s t o r i c i t y of dasein, gadamer p o s i t s what he terms the ' p r i n c i p l e of e f f e c t i v e h i s t o r y . ' by t h i s he means t h a t dasein must be aware t h a t i t s e x i s t e n c e as a h i s t o r i c a l being i s d e f i n i t i v e , i . e . i t cannot be. and be without p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s . thus, i f we are t r y i n g to understand a h i s t o r i c a l phenomenon from the h i s t o r i c a l d i s t a n c e t h a t i s c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of our hermeneutical s i t u a t i o n , we are always s u b j e c t to the e f f e c t s of e f f e c t i v e - h i s t o r y . i t determines i n advance both what seems to us worth e n q u i r i n g about and what w i l l appear as an o b j e c t of i n v e s t i g a t i o n , and we more or l e s s f o r g e t h a l f of what i s r e a l l y there -- i n f a c t , we miss the whole t r u t h of the phenomenon when we take i t s immediate appearance as the whole t r u t h . (gadamer, : - ) taking the h i s t o r i c i t y of dasein as a g i v e n , gadamer f u r t h e r argues t h a t i n l o o k i n g a t any p a r t i c u l a r t e x t or t e x t analogue one must i n i t i a l l y engage i n 'the a n t i c i p a t i o n of completion.' in other words, one must assume t h a t the t e x t presents a ' u n i t y of meaning.' in a t t e s t i n g to h i s agreement with heidegger concerning the s t r u c t u r e of the understanding gadamer goes on to d i s c u s s the importance of the n o t i o n of completion: the s i g n i f i c a n c e of t t h e hermeneutic] c i r c l e , which i s fundamental to a l l understanding, has a f u r t h e r hermeneutic consequence which i may c a l l the ' f o r e - c o n c e p t i o n of completion.' but t h i s , too, i s o b v i o u s l y a formal c o n d i t i o n of a l l understanding. i t s t a t e s t h a t o n l y what r e a l l y c o n s t i t u t e s a u n i t y of meaning i s i n t e l l i g i b l e . so when we read a t e x t we always f o l l o w t h i s complete p r e s u p p o s i t i o n of completion, and o n l y when i t proves inadequate, i . e . the t e x t i s not i n t e l l i g i b l e , do we s t a r t to doubt the t r a n s m i t t e d t e x t and seek to d i s c o v e r i n what way i t can be remedied. the a n t i c i p a t i o n of completion t h a t guides a l l our understanding i s , then, always s p e c i f i c i n content. not o n l y i s an immanent u n i t y of meaning g u i d i n g the reader assumed, but h i s understanding is l i k e w i s e guided by the constant transcendent e x p e c t a t i o n s of meaning which proceed from the r e l a t i o n to the t r u t h of what i s being s a i d . . . . the a n t i c i p a t i o n of completion, then, c o n t a i n s not o n l y t h i s formal element t h a t a t e x t should f u l l y express i t s meaning, but a l s o t h a t what i t says should be the whole t r u t h . [ u n d e r s t a n d i n g means, p r i m a r i l y , to understand the content of what i s s a i d , and o n l y s e c o n d a r i l y to i s o l a t e and understand another's meaning as such. hence the f i r s t of a l l hermeneutlc requirements remains one's own f o r e - understanding, which proceeds from being concerned with the same s u b j e c t [matter as expressed i n the t e x t ] . i t i s t h i s t h a t determines what u n i f i e d meaning can be r e a l i s e d and hence the a p p l i c a t i o n of the a n t i c i p a t i o n of completion. (gadamer, : - ) (emphasis mine) the l a s t paragraph of the preceding q u o t a t i o n makes i t c l e a r t h a t what gadamer concerns h i m s e l f with are the o n t o l o g i c a l c o n d i t i o n s of understanding i t s e l f r a t h e r than the e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l s t r u c t u r e of what i s presumed to be understood. for gadamer, the primary area of herraeneutical i n t e r e s t l i e s i n the misty f l a t s between the given h i s t o r i c a l p o s i t i o n of a p a r t i c u l a r t e x t and the g i v e n h i s t o r i c a l p o s i t i o n of a p a r t i c u l a r reader. i t i s the seeming p o l a r i t y between the strangeness of what i s d i s t a n t and the f a m i l i a r i t y of what i s near t h a t hermeneutics attempts to mediate: "the p l a c e between strangeness and f a m i l i a r i t y t h a t a t r a n s m i t t e d -text has f o r us i s t h a t intermediate p l a c e between being an h i s t o r i c a l l y intended separate o b j e c t and being p a r t of a t r a d i t i o n . the t r u e home of hermeneutics i s i n t h i s intermediate a r e a " (gadamer, : - ). in attempting to mediate between t e x t and reader gadamer r e l i e s on a d i a l e c t i c t h a t i s p a r t p l a t o n i c and p a r t hegelian and which r e s u l t s i n what he terms a ' f u s i o n of h o r i z o n s . ' gadamer*s p l a t o n i c i n f l u e n c e i s e v i d e n t i n h i s b e l i e f t h a t a d i a l o g i c s t r u c t u r e of understanding is e s s e n t i a l to mediating between the assumed u n i f i e d meaning of any g i v e n t e x t ( ' a n t i c i p a t i o n of completion') and i t s a p p l i c a t i o n to one's immediate h i s t o r i c a l s i t u a t e d n e s s . for gadamer, p l a t o p r o v i d e s the i d e a l model of d i a l o g i c q u e s t i o n i n g : the a r t of q u e s t i o n i n g i s t h a t of being able to go on a s k i n g q u e s t i o n s , i . e . the a r t of t h i n k i n g . i t i s c a l l e d ' d i a l e c t i c , • f o r i t i s the a r t of conducting a r e a l c o n v e r s a t i o n . . . . to conduct a c o n v e r s a t i o n means to a l l o w o n e s e l f to be conducted by the o b j e c t to which the p a r t n e r s i n the c o n v e r s a t i o n are d i r e c t e d . i t r e q u i r e s t h a t one does not t r y to out-argue the other person, but t h a t one r e a l l y c o n s i d e r s the weight of the other's o p i n i o n . hence i t i s an a r t of t e s t i n g . but the a r t of t e s t i n g i s the a r t of q u e s t i o n i n g . for . . . t o q u e s t i o n means to l a y open, to p l a c e i n the open. as a g a i n s t the s o l i d i t y of o p i n i o n , q u e s t i o n i n g makes the o b j e c t and a l l i t s p o s s i b i l i t i e s f l u i d . d i a l e c t i c c o n s i s t s not i n t r y i n g to d i s c o v e r the weakness of what i s s a i d , but i n b r i n g i n g out i t s r e a l s t r e n g t h . the unique and c o n t i n u i n g r e l e v a n c e of the p l a t o n i c d i a l o g u e s i s due to t h i s a r t of s t r e n g t h e n i n g , f o r i n t h i s process what i s s a i d i s c o n t i n u a l l y transformed i n t o the uttermost p o s s i b i l i t i e s of i t s r i g h t n e s s and t r u t h and overcomes a l l opposing argument which seeks to l i m i t i t s v a l i d i t y . . . . what emerges in_ i t s t r u t h [ i n the p l a t o n i c d i a l o g u e s ] is_ the logos, which i s n e i t h e r mine nor yours gadamer d e f i n e s h o r i z o n as "the range of v i s i o n t h a t i n c l u d e s e v e r y t h i n g t h a t can be seen from a p a r t i c u l a r vantage p o i n t " (gadamer, : ). and hence so f a r transcends the s u b j e c t i v e o p i n i o n s of the p a r t n e r s to the d i a l o g u e t h a t even the person l e a d i n g the c o n v e r s a t i o n i s always i g n o r a n t . d i a l e c t i c as the a r t of conducting a c o n v e r s a t i o n i s a l s o the a r t of s e e i n g t h i n g s i n the u n i t y of an aspect (sunoran e i s hen e i d o s ) i . e . i t i s the a r t of the formation of concepts as the working out of the common meaning. (gadamer, : - ) (emphasis mine) gadamer f o l l o w s t h i s panegyric to the p l a t o n i c d i a l o g u e by s t a t i n g t h a t " i t i s more than a metaphor, i t i s a memory of what o r i g i n a l l y was the case, to d e s c r i b e the work of hermeneutics as a c o n v e r s a t i o n with the t e x t " (gadamer, : ) (emphasis mine). t h i s c o n v e r s a t i o n with the t e x t i s concerned not with any p o s s i b l e a u t h o r i a l i n t e n t i o n but with the s u b j e c t matter of the t e x t , which transcends any i n d i v i d u a l i n t e n t i o n a l i t y and which emerges as the f u s i o n of the h o r i z o n of the t e x t with the h o r i z o n of the reader. as gadamer says, i t i s p a r t of any genuine c o n v e r s a t i o n t h a t one submits to the other, a l l o w s h i s viewpoint r e a l l y to count and gets i n s i d e the other f a r enough to understand not him, to be sure, as t h i s i n d i v i d u a l i t y but r a t h e r what he says. that which has to be grasped i s the s u b s t a n t i v e v a l i d i t y of h i s o p i n i o n so t h a t we can be u n i t e d with one another on the s u b j e c t - m a t t e r . (gadamer i n warnke, : ) gadamer's n o t i o n of the f u s i o n of h o r i z o n s bears a s t r i k i n g resemblance to hegel's n o t i o n of aufhebung — of the s y n t h e s i s of t h e s i s and a n t i t h e s i s which transcends both while yet m a i n t a i n i n g both. gadamer's c o n t e n t i o n t h a t he d i f f e r s markedly from hegel i n so f a r as he has no n o t i o n of absolute s p i r i t or knowledge i n which the d i a l e c t i c a l process f i n d s u l t i m a t e completion cannot b e l i e the f a c t t h a t h i s v e r s i o n of the f u s i o n of h o r i z o n s reads very much l i k e a s e c u l a r i z a t i o n of hegel. thus, . . . the h o r i z o n of the present i s being c o n t i n u a l l y formed, i n t h a t we have c o n t i n u a l l y to t e s t a l l our p r e j u d i c e s . an important p a r t of t h i s t e s t i n g i s the encounter with the past and the understanding of the t r a d i t i o n from which we come. hence the h o r i z o n of the present cannot be formed without the past. there i s no more an i s o l a t e d h o r i z o n of the present than there are h i s t o r i c a l h o r i z o n s . understanding, r a t h e r , i s always the f u s i o n of these h o r i z o n s which we imagine to e x i s t by themselves. . . . in . . . t r a d i t i o n t h i s process of f u s i o n i s c o n t i n u a l l y going on, f o r there o l d and new c o n t i n u a l l y grow together to make something of l i v i n g v a l u e , without e i t h e r being e x p l i c i t l y d i s t i n g u i s h e d from the other. (gadamer, : ) john caputo n i c e l y captures gadamer's r e l i a n c e on p l a t o and hegel: in the end . . . gadamer remains a t t a c h e d to t r a d i t i o n as the bearer of e t e r n a l t r u t h s , which i n a way does nothing more than modify p l a t o and hegel from a heideggerian s t a n d p o i n t . gadamer's hermeneutics i s t r a d i t i o n a l i s m and the p h i l o s o p h y of e t e r n a l t r u t h pushed to i t s h i s t o r i c a l l i m i t s . he o f f e r s us the most l i b e r a l form of t r a d i t i o n a l i s m p o s s i b l e . he i n t r o d u c e s as much change as p o s s i b l e i n t o the p h i l o s o p h y of unchanging t r u t h , as much movement as p o s s i b l e i n t o immobile v e r i t y . p l a t o s a i d t h a t t r u t h i s e t e r n a l and t h a t we r e q u i r e a d i a l o g u e among o u r s e l v e s in order to make the ascent to the forms. hegel put the forms i n t o time and r e q u i r e d t h a t they pass through d i a l e c t i c a l development, t h a t they prove t h e i r e t e r n a l worth i n time, i n the hard work and n e g a t i v i t y of h i s t o r i c a l becoming. gadamer d e l i m i t s the hegelian p r o j e c t of s e t t i n g the t r u t h into time, not by denying e t e r n a l t r u t h but by p r o t e s t i n g t h a t there i s no one f i n a l f o r m u l a t i o n of i t . he i n s i s t s t h a t there i s always a p l u r a l i t y of a r t i c u l a t i o n of the same t r u t h , t h a t the selfsame i s capable of an i n d e f i n i t e number of h i s t o r i c a l e x p r e s s i o n s . but t h a t i s another way of r e a s s u r i n g us t h a t no matter how great the t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of . . . t r a d i t i o n may be, i t s deep u n i t y i s always s a f e . gadamer's whole argument turns on an i m p l i c i t acceptance of the metaphysical d i s t i n c t i o n between a more or l e s s s t a b l e and o b j e c t i v e meaning and i t s c e a s e l e s s l y changing e x p r e s s i o n . for gadamer, the o n l y r e a l q u e s t i o n i s how meaning and t r u t h get passed along and handed down (trans-dare) . that i s why the p l a t o n i c c o n c e p t i o n of d i a l o g u e and the hegelian d o c t r i n e of d i a l e c t i c a l mediation are so important to him. these are the p r i n c i p l e means of the t r a n s m i s s i o n of meaning and t r u t h . (caputo, b: ) thus gadamer's p h i l o s o p h i c a l hermeneutics, i t s c r i t i q u e of the e p i s t e m o l o g l c a l bases of p r e v i o u s forms of hermeneutlcs n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g , remains embedded i n t r a d i t i o n a l western metaphysical n o t i o n s o£ u n i t y , completion, t r u t h and so on. in l i g h t o£ t h i s i t i s not s u r p r i s i n g t h a t he p r e f a c e s h i s magnum opus, t r u t h and method, with the f o l l o w i n g l a u d a t o r y address to the s u p p r e s s i o n of otherness: catch o n l y what you've thrown y o u r s e l f , a l l is mere s k i l l and l i t t l e g a i n ; but when you're suddenly the catcher of a b a l l thrown by an e t e r n a l partner with accurate and measured swing towards you, to your c e n t r e , i n an arch from the g r e a t b r i d g e b u i l d i n g of god: why c a t c h i n g then becomes a power — not yours, a world's. ( r l l k e i n gadamer, : n.p.) ( i v ) rlcoeur l i k e heidegger and gadamer, ricoeur b e l i e v e s t h a t hermeneutics must grasp the o n t o l o g i c a l s i g n i f i c a n c e of understanding as p r e d i c a t e d upon an awareness of human f i n i t u d e and h i s t o r i c i t y . however, u n l i k e heidegger and gadamer, ricoeur concerns h i m s e l f with attempting a r e c o n c i l i a t i o n between ontology and epistemology through a study of the r e l a t i o n s h i p between understanding and e x p l a n a t i o n . according to ricoeur: "understanding precedes, accompanies, c l o s e s , and thus envelops e x p l a n a t i o n . in r e t u r n , e x p l a n a t i o n develops understanding a n a l y t i c a l l y " (ricoeur i n baynes et a l . , : ). as ricoeur says, i f there i s a f e a t u r e which d i s t i n g u i s h e s me not o n l y from the hermeneutlc p h i l o s o p h y of schleiermacher and d i l t h e y , but a l s o from t h a t of heidegger and even gadamer ( d e s p i t e my great p r o x i m i t y to the work of the l a t t e r ) , i t i s indeed my concern to a v o i d the p i t f a l l of an o p p o s i t i o n between an 'understanding* which would be r e s e r v e d f o r the 'human s c i e n c e s ' and an ' e x p l a n a t i o n ' which would be common to the l a t t e r and to the nomological s c i e n c e s , p r i m a r i l y the p h y s i c a l s c i e n c e s . [i am concerned with the] search f o r a f l e x i b l e a r t i c u l a t i o n and a c o n t i n u a l to and f r o between the i n v e s t i g a t o r ' s p e r s o n a l engagement with the matter of the t e x t , and the disengagement which the o b j e c t i v e e x p l a n a t i o n by causes, laws, f u n c t i o n s or s t r u c t u r e s demands. . . . (ricoeur, : ) in attempting to mediate between e x p l a n a t i o n ( e r k l a r e n ) and understanding (verstehen) ricoeur r e l i e s upon the model of the w r i t t e n t e x t . a c c o r d i n g to ricoeur, the t e x t i s " c h a r a c t e r i z e d by ( ) the f i x a t i o n of meaning, ( ) i t s d i s s o c i a t i o n from the mental i n t e n t i o n of the author, ( ) the d i s p l a y of non-ostensive r e f e r e n c e s , ( ) the u n i v e r s a l range of i t s addressees" (ricoeur, e: ). the combination of the preceding four t r a i t s c o n s t i t u t e s the t e x t as an o b j e c t s u s c e p t i b l e to e x p l a n a t i o n — e x p l a n a t i o n being, as ricoeur i s a t pains to p o i n t out, not an import from the n a t u r a l s c i e n c e s (pace d i l t h e y ) but a p o s s i b i l i t y which i s i n h e r e n t w i t h i n the l i n g u i s t i c a l i t y o£ any g i v e n t e x t as such : "there i s no t r a n s f e r from one r e g i o n of r e a l i t y to another — l e t us say, from the sphere of f a c t s to the sphere of s i g n s . i t i s w i t h i n the same sphere of s i g n s t h a t the process of o b j e c t i f i c a t i o n takes p l a c e and g i v e s r i s e to e x p l a n a t o r y procedures" (ricoeur, e: ). ricoeur begins h i s d i s c u s s i o n of the nature of t e x t i n t e r p r e t a t i o n by p o s i t i n g a movement from understanding to e x p l a n a t i o n . borrowing from e.d. h i r s c h , rlcoeur maintains t h a t t e x t i n t e r p r e t a t i o n has to do with the d i a l e c t i c between guessing and v a l i d a t i n g , the former corresponding to understanding and the l a t t e r corresponding to e x p l a n a t i o n . the d i a l e c t i c of guess and v a l i d a t i o n i s n e c e s s i t a t e d by the h o l i s t i c nature of the t e x t . as ricoeur says, why do we need an a r t of guessing? why do we have to 'construe' the meaning? . . . a t e x t has to be construed because i t i s not a mere sequence of sentences, a l l on an equal f o o t i n g and s e p a r a t e l y understandable. a t e x t i s a whole, a t o t a l i t y . . . . c o r r e c t l y , the whole appears as a h i e r a r c h y of t o p i c s , or primary and subordinate t o p i c s . the r e c o n s t r u c t i o n of the t e x t as a whole i s i m p l i e d i n the r e c o g n i t i o n of the p a r t s . and r e c i p r o c a l l y , i t i s i n c o n s t r u i n g the d e t a i l s t h a t we construe the whole. there i s no n e c e s s i t y and no evidence concerning what i s important and what i s ricoeur d i s t i n g u i s h e s between language-systems or l i n g u i s t i c codes and language-event or l i n g u i s t i c usage. the former i s s y n c h r o n i c and unchanging (e.g. saussure's langue) and hence amenable to e x p l a n a t i o n whereas the l a t t e r i s d i a c h r o n i c and dynamic (e.g. saussure's p a r o l e ) . unimportant, what i s e s s e n t i a l and what i s u n e s s e n t i a l . the judgement of importance is a guess. (ricoeur, e: ) thus, a c c o r d i n g to ricoeur, our i n i t i a l response to the p l u r i v o c a l t o t a l i t y of any given t e x t i s to guess a t i t s meaning. bearing i n mind t h a t "the t e x t i s a l i m i t e d f i e l d of p o s s i b l e c o n s t r u c t i o n s " (ricoeur, e: ), a f t e r making one's 'guess' one then s u b j e c t s i t to a process of v a l i d a t i o n . t h i s process of v a l i d a t i o n , which manifests i t s e l f as a l o g i c of p r o b a b i l i t y , weighs the v a l i d i t y claims of any p a r t i c u l a r guess a g a i n s t what i s presumed to be known about the t e x t and eventuates i n the d e t e r m i n a t i o n of the most probable meaning: "such i s the balance between the genius of guessing and the s c i e n t i f i c c h a r a c t e r of v a l i d a t i o n which c o n s t i t u t e s the modern complement of the d i a l e c t i c between verstehen and e r k l a r e n " (ricoeur, e: ). at t h i s p o i n t i n h i s a n a l y s i s of t e x t i n t e r p r e t a t i o n ricoeur r e v e r s e s the order of the movement from understanding to e x p l a n a t i o n . working now from e x p l a n a t i o n to understanding, he s t r e s s e s the importance of the " r e f e r e n t i a l f u n c t i o n of the t e x t . " t h i s r e f e r e n t i a l f u n c t i o n . . . exceeds the mere o s t e n s i v e d e s i g n a t i o n of the s i t u a t i o n common to both speaker and hearer i n the d l a l o g i c a l s i t u a t i o n . t h i s a b s t r a c t i o n from the surrounding world g i v e s r i s e to two opposite a t t i t u d e s . as r e a d e r s , we may e i t h e r remain i n a kind o£ s t a t e o£ suspense as regards any kind o£ re£erred-to world, or we may a c t u a l i z e the p o t e n t i a l non-ostensive r e f e r e n c e s of the t e x t i n a new s i t u a t i o n , t h a t of the reader. in the f i r s t case, we t r e a t the t e x t as a w o r l d l e s s e n t i t y ; i n the second, we c r e a t e a new o s t e n s i v e r e f e r e n c e through the kind of ' e x e c u t i o n which the a r t of r e a d i n g i m p l i e s . these two p o s s i b i l i t i e s are e q u a l l y e n t a i l e d by the a c t of r e a d i n g , conceived as t h e i r d i a l e c t i c a l i n t e r p l a y . (ricoeur, e: - ) looking a t the t e x t as a s e l f - e n c l o s e d , s e l f - r e f e r e n t i a l system of s i g n s e n t a i l s the use of e x p l a n a t i o n as s t r u c t u r a l e x p l i c a t i o n . c o n t r a s t i n g t h i s mode of e x p l a n a t i o n to d i l t h e y ' s a t t i t u d e toward e x p l a n a t i o n , ricoeur says, . . . a new k i n d of e x p l a n a t o r y a t t i t u d e may be extended to the [ t e x t ] , which, c o n t r a r y to the e x p e c t a t i o n of d i l t h e y , i s no longer borrowed from the n a t u r a l s c i e n c e s , i . e . from an area of knowledge a l i e n to language i t s e l f . the o p p o s i t i o n between natur and g e l s t i s no longer o p e r a t i v e here. i f some model i s borrowed, i t comes from . . . the s e m i o l o g i c a l f i e l d . . . . we have learned from the geneva s c h o o l , the prague s c h o o l , and the danish s c h o o l t h a t i t i s always p o s s i b l e to a b s t r a c t systems from processes and to r e l a t e these systems — whether p h o n o l o g i c a l , l e x i c a l , or s y n t a c t i c a l — to u n i t s which are merely d e f i n e d by t h e i r o p p o s i t i o n to other u n i t s of the same system. t h i s i n t e r p l a y of merely d i s t i n c t i v e e n t i t i e s w i t h i n f i n i t e s e t s of such u n i t s d e f i n e s the n o t i o n of s t r u c t u r e i n l i n g u i s t i c s . (ricoeur, e: ) ricoeur uses l v i - s t r a u s s s a n a l y s i s o£ myth as an example of the a p p r o p r i a t e a p p l i c a t i o n of e x p l a n a t i o n . in t h i s case the numerous sentences which c o n s t i t u t e the n a r r a t i v e of the myth are reduced to 'mythemes' or 'bundles of r e l a t i o n s ' the i n t e r a c t i o n of which makes up the s t r u c t u r e of the myth as such. s t r u c t u r a l a n a l y s i s a l l o w s us to "say t h a t we have e x p l a i n e d a myth, but not t h a t we have i n t e r p r e t e d i t . we can, by means of s t r u c t u r a l a n a l y s i s , b r i n g out the l o g i c of i t , the o p e r a t i o n s which r e l a t e the •bundles of r e l a t i o n s ' among themselves. t h i s l o g i c c o n s t i t u t e s the s t r u c t u r a l law of the myth under c o n s i d e r a t i o n " (ricoeur, e: - ). to t h i s s t r u c t u r a l e x p l a n a t i o n of a myth or t e x t must be added an understanding of what the t e x t t a l k s about, i . e . i t s meaning. ricoeur argues t h a t t h i s understanding does not do v i o l e n c e to the i n t e g r i t y of s t r u c t u r a l a n a l y s i s but, r a t h e r , develops i t , f o r : " s t r u c t u r a l a n a l y s i s does not exclude, but presupposes . . . the . . . hypothesis [ t h a t ] the myth . . . has a meaning as a n a r r a t i v e of o r i g i n s . s t r u c t u r a l a n a l y s i s merely r e p r e s s e s t h i s f u n c t i o n . but i t cannot suppress i t " (ricoeur, e: ). ricoeur maintains t h a t the purpose of s t r u c t u r a l a n a l y s i s i s to go from s u r f a c e semantics (the myth or t e x t as n a r r a t i v e ) to depth semantics (the mediation of fundamental o p p o s i t i o n s ) , the l a t t e r c o n s t i t u t i n g "the u l t i m a t e ' r e f e r e n t ' of the myth" (ricoeur, e: ). thus rlcoeur suggests t h a t , i f . . . we c o n s i d e r s t r u c t u r a l a n a l y s i s as a stage -- and a necessary one -- between a naive i n t e r p r e t a t i o n and a c r i t i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , between a s u r f a c e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n and a depth i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , then i t would be p o s s i b l e to l o c a t e e x p l a n a t i o n and understanding a t two d i f f e r e n t stages of a unique hermeneutlcal a r c . i t i s t h i s depth semantics which c o n s t i t u t e s the genuine o b j e c t of understanding and which r e q u i r e s a s p e c i f i c a f f i n i t y between the reader and the kind of t h i n g s the t e x t i s about. (ricoeur, e: ) thus, as opposed to being concerned with a u t h o r i a l i n t e n t i o n or what the t e x t o s t e n s i v e l y says, one must be concerned with what the t e x t i s about, i . e . with i t s 'non-ostensive r e f e r e n c e s . ' i t i s these non-ostensive r e f e r e n c e s which a l l o w the reader to blend e x p l a n a t i o n with understanding, and, consequently, to e x e r c i s e her 'productive i m a g i n a t i o n ' i n the r e a l i z a t i o n of p o s s i b l e worlds. as ricoeur says, the non-ostensive r e f e r e n c e of the t e x t i s the kind of world opened up by the depth semantics of the t e x t . therefore what we want to understand i s not something hidden behind the t e x t , but something d i s c l o s e d i n f r o n t of i t . what has to be understood i s not the i n i t i a l s i t u a t i o n of d i s c o u r s e , but what p o i n t s to a p o s s i b l e world. understanding . . . wants to grasp the proposed worlds opened up by the r e f e r e n c e s of the t e x t . to understand a t e x t i s to f o l l o w i t s movement from sense to r e f e r e n c e , from what i t says to what i t t a l k s about. in t h i s process the mediating r o l e played by s t r u c t u r a l a n a l y s i s c o n s t i t u t e s both the j u s t i f i c a t i o n of t h i s o b j e c t i v e approach and the r e c t i f i c a t i o n of the s u b j e c t i v e approach. (ricoeur, e: ) thus, whether the movement i s from understanding to e x p l a n a t i o n v i s a v i s guessing and v a l i d a t i n g or from e x p l a n a t i o n to understanding v i s a v i s o s t e n s i v e and non- o s t e n s i v e r e f e r e n c e s , a c c o r d i n g to ricoeur: "understanding i s e n t i r e l y mediated by the whole of e x p l a n a t o r y procedures which precede i t and accompany i t " (ricoeur, e: ). and, not s u r p r i s i n g l y , t h i s e n t i r e d i a l e c t i c a l process always takes p l a c e w i t h i n the hermeneutlc c i r c l e : " u l t i m a t e l y , the c o r r e l a t i o n between e x p l a n a t i o n and understanding, between understanding and e x p l a n a t i o n , i s the 'hermeneutical c i r c l e ' " (ricoeur, e: ). with r e s p e c t to h i s work on n a r r a t i v e , ricoeur maintains t h a t " i t i s the same debate between understanding and e x p l a n a t i o n which i s pursued here; f o r the c a p a c i t y to f o l l o w a s t o r y expresses the i r r e d u c i b l e component of understanding i n the a c t of n a r r a t i n g , whereas the i n v e s t i g a t i o n of laws i n h i s t o r y , and of n a r r a t i v e s t r u c t u r e s i n f o l k t a l e s , p l a y s , novels and f i c t i o n a l l i t e r a t u r e i n g e n e r a l , corresponds to the e x p l a n a t o r y phase of the nomological s c i e n c e s " (ricoeur, h: ). very b r i e f l y , ricoeur contends t h a t f i c t i o n a l and h i s t o r i c a l n a r r a t i v e s have a common n a r r a t i v e s t r u c t u r e and t h a t t h i s s t r u c t u r e i s an i n d i s p e n s a b l e f e a t u r e of the h i s t o r i c i t y of the human s i t u a t i o n . i do not wish to get i n v o l v e d i n a major d i s c u s s i o n of ricoeur's theory of n a r r a t i v e as much of i t would merely repeat what has a l r e a d y been s a i d concerning t e x t a n a l y s i s (e.g. the n e c e s s i t y of a s t r u c t u r a l phase of a n a l y s i s , the importance of non-ostensive r e f e r e n t i a l i t y and so on). s u f f i c e i t to say t h a t ricoeur maintains t h a t : . . . any n a r r a t i v e combines, i n v a r y i n g p r o p o r t i o n s , two d i m e n s i o n s : a c h r o n o l o g i c a l dimension and a non- c h r o n o l o g i c a l dimension. the f i r s t may be c a l l e d the ' e p i s o d i c dimension' of the n a r r a t i v e . w i t h i n the a r t of f o l l o w i n g a s t o r y , t h i s dimension i s expressed i n the e x p e c t a t i o n of c o n t i n g e n c i e s which a f f e c t the s t o r y ' s development; hence i t g i v e s r i s e to q u e s t i o n s such as: and so? and then? what happened next? what was the outcome? e t c . but the a c t i v i t y of n a r r a t i n g does not c o n s i s t simply i n a d d r e s s i n g episodes to one another; i t a l s o c o n s t r u c t s meaningful t o t a l i t i e s out of s c a t t e r e d events. t h i s aspect of the a r t of n a r r a t i n g i s r e f l e c t e d , on the s i d e of f o l l o w i n g a s t o r y , i n the attempt to 'grasp t o g e t h e r ' s u c c e s s i v e events. the a r t of n a r r a t i n g , as w e l l as the corresponding a r t of f o l l o w i n g a s t o r y , t h e r e f o r e r e q u i r e t h a t we are able to e x t r a c t a c o n f i g u r a t i o n from a s u c c e s s i o n . t h i s ' c o n f i g u r a t i o n a l ' o p e r a t i o n . . . c o n s t i t u t e s the second dimension of the n a r r a t i v e a c t i v i t y . (ricoeur, f: ) in other words, a l l n a r r a t i v e i s both t e l e o l o g i c a l ( c h r o n o l o g i c a l e p i s o d i c sequence tending to f i n a l r e s o l u t i o n ) and e s c h a t o l o g i c a l ( n o n - c h r o n o l o g i c a l meaningful t o t a l i t y — the a l l encompassing s t r u c t u r e of f i n a l r e s o l u t i o n ) the proper i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of which r e q u i r e s a d i a l e c t i c between understanding and e x p l a n a t i o n . thus, although ricoeur, l i k e gadamer, maintains t h a t the t e x t or n a r r a t i v e d i s c l o s e s no a b s o l u t e meaning, t h a t the p o l y s e m i c / p l u r i v o c a l nature of l i n g u i s t i c a l i t y p r e c l u d e s t h i s p o s s i b i l i t y , he nonetheless p e r s i s t s i n viewing the t e x t / n a r r a t i v e as a u n i f i e d , meaningful t o t a l i t y — t h a t i s , m u l t i p l i c i t y / d i f f e r e n c e i s always contained w i t h i n , and dominated by, u n i t y / i d e n t i t y . as caputo says, i n c o n t r a s t i n g ricoeur and gadamer to d e r r i d a : d i s s e m i n a t i o n e f f e c t s a d i s r u p t i o n of semantics, even when semantics t r i e s to p r o t e c t i t s e l f , when i t t r i e s to make c o n c e s s i o n s , with a theory of polysemy, such as those of ricoeur and contemporary hermeneutical t h e o r i s t s . the r e a d i n g of l i t e r a t u r e has been dominated by the r u l e of the semantic. i t has assumed, f o r fundamentally metaphysical reasons, t h a t there i s a r u l i n g "thematic" u n i t y to a t e x t , a s i n g l e , u n i f y i n g meaning by which the e n t i r e c h a i n of s i g n i f i e r s i s organized and to which i t is subordinated. in the o l d e r v e r s i o n , t h i s semantic u n i t y was a t t r i b u t e d to the u n i f y i n g i n t e n t i o n of the author. in i t s more modern form, i n the "new c r i t i c i s m " and i n the hermeneutics of gadamer and ricoeur, i t i s a t t r i b u t e d to a system of meaning which operates i n the t e x t i t s e l f , which t h e r e f o r e exceeds and o u t l a s t s the o r i g i n a l author and h i s o r i g i n a l audience. for d e r r i d a , t h i s amounts to a retrenchment of semanticism which has the e f f e c t of a l l o w i n g i t to d i g i n even deeper. in e i t h e r v e r s i o n , the task of semantic c r i t i c i s m i s to f i n g e r t h i s golden thread, to f i n d the animating, u n i f y i n g c e n t r e . (caputo, b: ) to summarize, i n v a r i o u s ways a l l of the preceding modes of thought manifest t h e i r r e l i a n c e on a concept of presence - - on the e x i s t e n c e of an a b s o l u t e and unquestionable ground capable of a c c o u n t i n g f o r a l l human e x p e r i e n c e . thus, f o r example, h u s s e r l i n s i s t s upon the e x i s t e n c e of ' i n v a r i a n t e s s e n t i a l s t r u c t u r e s ' as the product of a c o n s t i t u t i v e t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s u b j e c t i v i t y , heidegger i n s i s t s upon the o n t o l o g i c a l p r i o r i t y of the meaning of being and on the c i r c u l a r nature of dasein, gadamer i n s i s t s upon the v a l i d i t y of understanding as a d i a l o g i c a l process r e s u l t i n g i n a f u s i o n of h o r i z o n s which maintains yet e l e v a t e s d i s c r e t e viewpoints through a d i a l e c t i c a l process of transcendence and ricoeur i n s i s t s upon i n t e r p r e t a t i o n as the product of the d i a l e c t i c a l i n t e r p l a y of e x p l a n a t i o n and understanding w i t h i n the u n i t y of meaning which i s the t e x t . in the f o l l o w i n g chapter i w i l l attempt to show t h a t a number of concepts common to i n t e r p r e t i v e and/or 'postmodern' anthropology (e.g. i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , d i a l o g i c , meaning and so on) are drawn d i r e c t l y from the aforementioned phenomeno- l o g i c a l / hermeneutical t r a d i t i o n s and t h a t , t h i s being the case, a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e r e a d i n g of these concepts (and, indeed, of c o n c e p t u a l i t y as such) i s e s s e n t i a l to anthropology's r e c o g n i t i o n of i t s e l f as an i n h e r i t o r and perpetuator of the v a l u e s of western metaphysics. chapter four c l i f f o r d geertz and james c l i f f o r d : a d e c o n s t r u c t l v e reading in t h i s chapter, i w i l l look a t c e r t a i n works by c l i f f o r d geertz and by james c l i f f o r d r e s p e c t i v e l y , with the purpose of i s o l a t i n g a number of t h e i r key concepts ( p a r t i c u l a r l y , i n geertz's case, •meaning,' 'concept,' ' i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , ' •context,' ' t r a n s l a t i o n ' and ' t e x t ' and, i n c l i f f o r d ' s case, ' m e t a p h o r / a l l e g o r y , ' ' s u b j e c t i v i t y , ' ' d i a l o g i s m , ' ' d i s c u r s i v i t y , ' ' r e p r e s e n t a t i o n ' and 'speech') and s u b j e c t i n g them to a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e r e a d i n g . in order, as much as p o s s i b l e , to a l l o w geertz and c l i f f o r d to speak f o r themselves, i w i l l provide an extended s e r i e s of quotations a t the beginning of each of t h e i r r e s p e c t i v e s e c t i o n s . although t h i s format n e c e s s a r i l y e n t a i l s a c e r t a i n amount of o v e r l a p , i t e f f e c t i v e l y i l l u s t r a t e s the s i g n i f i c a n c e of s p e c i f i c r e c u r r i n g concepts. i geertz ( i ) c u l t u r e b e l i e v i n g , with max weber, t h a t man i s an animal suspended i n webs of s i g n i f i c a n c e he h i m s e l f has spun, i take c u l t u r e to be those webs, and the a n a l y s i s of i t to be t h e r e f o r e not an experimental s c i e n c e i n search of law but an i n t e r p r e t i v e one i n search of meaning. i t i s e x p l i c a t i o n i am a f t e r , c o n s t r u i n g s o c i a l e x p r e s s i o n s on t h e i r s u r f a c e e n i g m a t i c a l . (geertz, : ) (emphasis mine) [assuming t h a t ] the aim of anthropology i s the enlargement of the u n i v e r s e of human d i s c o u r s e . . . . i t i s an aim to which a s e m l o t l c concept of c u l t u r e i s p e c u l i a r l y w e l l adapted. as interworked systems of c o n s t r u a b l e s i g n s (what, i g n o r i n g p r o v i n c i a l usages i would c a l l symbols), c u l t u r e i s not a power, something to which s o c i a l events, behaviours, i n s t i t u t i o n s , or processes can be c a u s a l l y a t t r i b u t e d ; i t i s a c o n t e x t , something w i t h i n which they can be i n t e l l i g i b l y — t h a t i s , t h i c k l y — d e s c r i b e d . (geertz, : ) (emphasis mine) to g e n e r a l i z e w i t h i n cases i s u s u a l l y c a l l e d , at l e a s t i n medicine and depth psychology, c l i n i c a l i n f e r e n c e . rather than beginning with a s e t of o b s e r v a t i o n s and attempting to subsume them under a governing law, such i n f e r e n c e begins with a s e t of (presumptive) s i g n i f i e r s and attempts to p l a c e them w i t h i n an i n t e l l i g i b l e frame. measures are matched to t h e o r e t i c a l p r e d i c t i o n s , but symptoms are scanned f o r t h e o r e t i c a l p e c u l i a r i t i e s — t h a t i s , they are diagnosed. in the study of c u l t u r e the s i g n i f i e r s are not symptoms or c l u s t e r s of symptoms, but symbolic a c t s , and the aim i s not therapy but the a n a l y s i s of s o c i a l d i s c o u r s e . but the way in which t h e o r y i s used — to_ f e r r e t out the unapparent import of t h i n g s — i s the same. (geertz, : ) (emphasis mine) c u l t u r e is best seen not as complexes of concrete behaviour p a t t e r n s — customs, usages, t r a d i t i o n s , h a b i t c l u s t e r s — as has, by and l a r g e , been the case up to now, but as a s e t of c o n t r o l mechanisms — p l a n s , r e c i p e s , r u l e s , i n s t r u c t i o n s (what computer engineers c a l l "programs") -- f o r the governing of behaviour. (geertz, f: ) (emphasis mine) . . . the c u l t u r e concept to which i adhere has n e i t h e r m u l t i p l e r e f e r e n t s nor, so f a r as i can see, any unusual a m b i g u i t i e s : i t denotes an h i s t o r i c a l l y t r a n s m i t t e d p a t t e r n of meanings embodied i n symbols, a system of i n h e r i t e d conceptions expressed i n symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop t h e i r knowledge about and a t t i t u d e s toward l i f e . (geertz, g: ) (emphasis mine) [to view a symbolic system as a "metasocial commentary" i s to engage i n a b i t of metaphorical r e f o c u s s i n g of one's own, f o r i t s h i f t s the a n a l y s i s of c u l t u r a l forms from an endeavour i n g e n e r a l p a r a l l e l to d i s s e c t i n g an organism, d i a g n o s i n g a symptom, d e c i p h e r i n g a code, or o r d e r i n g a system — the dominant a n a l o g i e s i n contemporary anthropology — to one i n g e n e r a l p a r a l l e l with p e n e t r a t i n g a l i t e r a r y t e x t . i f one takes the [ b a l i n e s e ] c o c k f i g h t , or any other c o l l e c t i v e l y s u s t a i n e d symbolic s t r u c t u r e , as a means of "saying something of something" (to invoke a famous a r i s t o t e l i a n t a g ) , then one i s faced with a problem not i n s o c i a l mechanics but s o c i a l semantics. for the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t , whose concern i s with f o r m u l a t i n g s o c i o l o g i c a l p r i n c i p l e s . . . the q u e s t i o n i s , what does one l e a r n about such p r i n c i p l e s from examining c u l t u r e as an assemblage of t e x t s ? (geertz, c: ) (emphasis mine) ( i i ) i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . . . there are three c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of ethnographic d e s c r i p t i o n : i t i s i n t e r p r e t i v e ; what i t i s i n t e r p r e t i v e of i s the flow of s o c i a l d i s c o u r s e ; and the i n t e r p r e t i n g i n v o l v e d c o n s i s t s i n t r y i n g to rescue the " s a i d " of such d i s c o u r s e from i t s p e r i s h i n g occasions and f i x i t i n perusable terms. (geertz, : ) (emphasis mine) i f a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s c o n s t r u c t i n g a r e a d i n g of what happens, then to d i v o r c e i t from what happens — from what, i n t h i s time or t h a t p l a c e , s p e c i f i c people say, what they do, what i s done to them, from the whole v a s t business of the world -- i s to d i v o r c e i t from i t s a p p l i c a t i o n and render i t vacant. a good i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of anything — a poem, a person, a h i s t o r y , a r i t u a l , an i n s t i t u t i o n , a s o c i e t y — takes us i n t o the heart of t h a t of which i t i s an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . (geertz, : ) (emphasis mine) . . . from whatever l e v e l a t which one operates, and however i n t r i c a t e l y , the g u i d i n g p r i n c i p l e i s the same: s o c i e t i e s , l i k e l i v e s , c o n t a i n t h e i r own i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s . one has o n l y to l e a r n how to g a i n access to them. (geertz, c: ) (emphasis mine) are we, i n d e s c r i b i n g symbol uses, d e s c r i b i n g p e r c e p t i o n s , sentiments, o u t l o o k s , experiences? and i n what sense? what do we c l a i m when we c l a i m t h a t we understand the s e m i o t i c means by which . . . persons are d e f i n e d to one another? that we know words or t h a t we know minds? in answering t h i s q u e s t i o n , i t i s necessary, i t h i n k , f i r s t to n o t i c e the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c i n t e l l e c t u a l movement, the inward conceptual rhythm . . . in. a l l . . . analyses . . . namely, a continuous d i a l e c t i c a l t a c k i n g between the most l o c a l of l o c a l d e t a i l and the most g l o b a l of g l o b a l s t r u c t u r e i n such a way as to b r i n g them i n t o simultaneous view. . . . hopping back and f o r t h between the whole conceived through the p a r t s t h a t a c t u a l i z e i t and the p a r t s conceived through the whole t h a t motivates them, we seek to t u r n them, by a s o r t of i n t e l l e c t u a l p e r p e t u a l motion, i n t o e x p l i c a t i o n s of one another. a l l t h i s i s . . . but the now f a m i l i a r t r a j e c t o r y of what d i l t h e y c a l l e d the hermeneutlc c i r c l e , and my argument here i s merely t h a t i t ^ is. as c e n t r a l to ethnographic i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , and thus to the p e n e t r a t i o n of other peoples' modes of thought, as i t i s to l i t e r a r y , h i s t o r i c a l , p h i l o l o g i c a l , p s y c h o a n a l y t i c , or b i b l i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s . . . . (geertz, b: ) (emphasis mine) ( i l l ) anthropology a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l w r i t i n g s are themselves i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s , and second and t h i r d order ones to boot. (by d e f i n i t i o n , o n l y a " n a t i v e " makes f i r s t order ones: i t s h i s c u l t u r e . ) they a r e , thus, f i c t i o n s ; f i c t i o n s i n the sense t h a t they are "something made," "something f a s h i o n e d " — the o r i g i n a l meaning of f i c t i o — not t h a t they are f a l s e , u n f a c t u a l , or merely "as i f " thought experiments. (geertz, : ) (emphasis geertz's and mine) the ethnographer " i n s c r i b e s " s o c i a l d i s c o u r s e : he w r i t e s i t down. in so doing, he turns i t from a p a s s i n g event, which e x i s t s o n l y i n i t s own moment of occurrence, i n t o an account, which e x i s t s i n i t s i n s c r i p t i o n s and can be r e c o n s u l t e d . . . . "what," paul ricoeur, from whom t h i s whole idea of i n s c r i p t i o n of a c t i o n i s borrowed . . . asks, "what does w r i t i n g f i x ? not the event of speaking, but the " s a i d " of speaking, where we understand by the " s a i d " of speaking t h a t i n t e n t i o n a l e x t e r i o r i z a t i o n c o n s t i t u t i v e of the aim of d i s c o u r s e thanks to which the sagen -- the s a y i n g - wants to become aus-sage -- the e n u n c i a t i o n , the enunciated. in s h o r t , what we w r i t e i s the noema ["thought," "content," " g i s t " ] of the speaking. i t i s the meaning of the speech event, not the event as event." . . . c u l t u r a l a n a l y s i s i s (or should be) guessing a t meanings, a s s e s s i n g the guesses, and drawing e x p l a n a t o r y c o n c l u s i o n s from the b e t t e r guesses. . . . (geertz, : - ) (emphasis geertz's and mine) we must, i n s h o r t , descend i n t o d e t a i l , past the m i s l e a d i n g tags, past the metaphysical types, past the empty s i m i l a r i t i e s to grasp f i r m l y the e s s e n t i a l c h a r a c t e r of not o n l y the v a r i o u s c u l t u r e s but the v a r i o u s s o r t s of i n d i v i d u a l s w i t h i n c u l t u r e , i f we wish to encounter humanity face to f a c e . (geertz, g: ) (emphasis mine) [the] i s s u e s are m u l t i p l e , i n v o l v i n g questions of d e f i n i t i o n s , v e r i f i c a t i o n s , c a u s a l i t y , r e p r e s e n t a t i v e n e s s , o b j e c t i v i t y , measurement, communication. but a t base they a l l b o l l down to one q u e s t i o n : how to frame an a n a l y s i s of meaning -- the conceptual s t r u c t u r e s i n d i v i d u a l s use to construe experience - - which w i l l be a t once c i r c u m s t a n t i a l enough to c a r r y c o n v i c t i o n and a b s t r a c t enough to forward theory. these are equal n e c e s s i t i e s . . . . but they a l s o . . . p u l l i n opposite d i r e c t i o n s , f o r the more one invokes d e t a i l s the more he i s bound to the p e c u l i a r i t i e s of the immediate case, the more one omits them the more he l o s e s touch with the ground on which h i s arguments r e s t . d i s c o v e r i n g how to escape t h i s paradox — or more e x a c t l y , f o r one never r e a l l y escapes i t , how to keep i t a t bay — i s what, m e t h o d o l o g i c a l l y , thematic a n a l y s i s i s a l l about. (geertz, : ) (emphasis mine) what i s needed i s some s y s t e m a t i c , r a t h e r than merely l i t e r a r y or i m p r e s s i o n i s t i c , way to d i s c o v e r what is. g i v e n , what the conceptual s t r u c t u r e embodied i n the symbolic forms through which persons are p e r c e i v e d a c t u a l l y i s . what we want . . . i s a developed method of d e s c r i b i n g and a n a l y z i n g the meaningful s t r u c t u r e of experience . . . as i t i s apprehended by r e p r e s e n t a t i v e members of a p a r t i c u l a r s o c i e t y a t a p a r t i c u l a r p o i n t i n time -- i n a word, a s c i e n t i f i c phenomenology of c u l t u r e . (geertz, h: ) (emphasis mine) . . . i t i s from the . . . d i f f i c u l t achievement of s e e i n g o u r s e l v e s amongst o t h e r s , as a l o c a l example of the forms human l i f e has l o c a l l y taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, t h a t the largeness of mind, without which o b j e c t i v i t y i s s e l f - c o n g r a t u l a t i o n and t o l e r a n c e a sham, comes. i f i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology has any general o f f i c e i n the world i t i s to keep r e t e a c h i n g t h i s f i g u r a t i v e t r u t h . (geertz, f: ) (emphasis mine) the q u e s t i o n of s i g n a t u r e , the establishment of an a u t h o r i a l presence w i t h i n a t e x t , has haunted ethnography from very e a r l y on, though f o r the most p a r t i t has done so i n a d i s g u i s e d form. d i s g u i s e d , because i t has been g e n e r a l l y c a s t not as a n a r r a t o l o g l c a l issue, a matter of how best to get an honest s t o r y h o n e s t l y t o l d , but as an e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l one, a matter of how to prevent s u b j e c t i v e views from c o l o r i n g o b j e c t i v e f a c t s . (geertz, b: ) (emphasis mine) from the preceding q u o t a t i o n s , which, i b e l i e v e , c o n s t i t u t e a f a i r l y r e p r e s e n t a t i v e sampling of g e e r t z i a n anthropology, i t may be seen t h a t , 'a b i t of metaphorical r e f o c u s s i n g ' n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g , throughout h i s c a r e e r geertz's views have remained q u i t e c o n s i s t e n t . geertz o f t e n r e f e r s to h i m s e l f as a 'meanlngs-and-symbols' a n t h r o p o l o g i s t whose purpose i s to assess ever more p r e c i s e d e s c r i p t i o n s of v a r y i n g c u l t u r a l c o n t e x t s i n order to a r r i v e a t ever more a c c u r a t e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s of "what the d e v i l [the people under s c r u t i n y ] t h i n k they are up t o " (geertz, d: ). a c c o r d i n g to geertz, meaning can be t r a n s f e r r e d from one c u l t u r a l context to another through the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of symbolic s t r u c t u r e s , thus e n a b l i n g 'the enlargement of the u n i v e r s e o£ human d i s c o u r s e . ' in a p a r t i c u l a r l y romantic moment geertz opines t h a t f o r the seeker of a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l knowledge "the road l i e s , l i k e any genuine quest, through a t e r r i f y i n g complexity" (geertz, f: ). throughout h i s work, geertz maintains t h a t an a p p l i c a t i o n of phenomenological ('some s y s t e m a t i c . . . way to d i s c o v e r what i s given') and hermeneutical ('a continuous d i a l e c t i c a l . . .[hjopping back and f o r t h between the whole conceived through the p a r t s t h a t a c t u a l i z e i t and the p a r t s conceived through the whole t h a t motivates them') p r i n c i p l e s to whatever c u l t u r a l context may be a t hand i s the method most a p p r o p r i a t e to those who would embark upon the a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l 'quest.' time and again geertz makes use of such phrases as ' f i g u r a t i v e t r u t h , ' 'the heart of the matter,' ' e s s e n t i a l c h a r a c t e r , ' 'genuine quest,' 'the f i x a t i o n of meaning' and so on. he i n s i s t s t h a t , the meanings t h a t symbols, the m a t e r i a l v e h i c l e s of thought, embody are o f t e n e l u s i v e , vague, f l u c t u a t i n g , and convoluted, but they are, i n p r i n c i p l e , as capable of being d i s c o v e r e d through s y s t e m a t i c e m p i r i c a l i n v e s t i g a t i o n e s p e c i a l l y i f the people who p e r c e i v e them w i l l cooperate a l i t t l e — as the atomic weight of hydrogen or the f u n c t i o n of the a d r e n a l glands. (geertz, h: - ) for geertz, c u l t u r e s , l i k e the l i t e r a r y t e x t s examined by c r i t i c s such as leo s p i t z e r and l i o n e l t r i l l i n g , are, i n p r i n c i p l e , s u s c e p t i b l e to thematic a n a l y s i s , i . e . t h e i r meaning i s d i s c o v e r a b l e i f o n l y they are p r o p e r l y approached. i n t e r e s t i n g l y , i n s p i t e of geertz's constant c o n t e n t i o n t h a t meaning i s , i n p r i n c i p l e , both d i s c o v e r a b l e and t r a n s f e r a b l e , and i n s p i t e of the f a c t t h a t "a r e c u r r i n g c y c l e of terms — symbol, meaning, c o n c e p t i o n , form, t e x t . . . c u l t u r e — care] designed to suggest there i s system i n p e r s i s t e n c e , t h a t a l l [my] so v a r i o u s l y aimed i n q u i r i e s are d r i v e n by a s u b t l e view of how one should go about c o n s t r u c t i n g an account of the imaginative make-up of a s o c i e t y " (geertz, f: ), h i s work i s haunted by a n a g g i n g l y p e r s i s t e n t uneasiness. thus, f o r example, the s t u t t e r i n g q u a l i t y of . . . my own e f f o r t s . . . i s a r e s u l t . . . . of not knowing, i n so u n c e r t a i n an undertaking, q u i t e where to begin, or, having anyhow begun, which way to move. argument grows o b l i q u e , and language with i t , because the more o r d e r l y and s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d a p a r t i c u l a r course looks the more i t seems i l l a d v i s e d . (geertz, f: ) f i n d i n g our f e e t , an unnerving business which never more than d i s t a n t l y succeeds, i s what ethnographic r e s e a r c h c o n s i s t s of as a p e r s o n a l experience; t r y i n g to formulate the b a s i s on which one imagines, always e x c e s s i v e l y , one has found them i s what a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l w r i t i n g c o n s i s t s of as a s c i e n t i f i c endeavour. (geertz, : ) el have never] gotten anywhere near to the bottom of anything i have ever w r i t t e n about. . . . c u l t u r a l a n a l y s i s i s i n t r i n s i c a l l y incomplete. and, worse than t h a t , the more deeply i t goes the l e s s complete i t i s . i t i s a strange s c i e n c e whose most t e l l i n g a s s e r t i o n s are i t s most t r e m u l o u s l y based, i n which to get somewhere with the matter a t hand i s to i n t e n s i f y the s u s p i c i o n , both your own and t h a t of o t h e r s , t h a t you are not q u i t e g e t t i n g i t r i g h t . (geertz, : ) meaning, t h a t e l u s i v e and i l l - d e f i n e d p s e u d o - e n t i t y we were once more than content to leave p h i l o s o p h e r s and l i t e r a r y c r i t i c s to fumble with, has now come back i n t o the heart of our d i s c i p l i n e . (geertz, : ) t h i s e f f o r t , h a l f - q u i x o t i c , h a l f - sisyphean . . . to render anomalous t h i n g s i n not too anomalous words. . . . (geertz, e: ) i t i s not t h a t we no longer have conventions of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n ; we have more than ever, b u i l t — o f t e n enough j e r r y - b u i l t — to accommodate a s i t u a t i o n a t once f l u i d , p l u r a l , uncentered, and i n e r a d i c a b l y u n t i d y . (geertz, a: ) these examples c o u l d be m u l t i p l i e d , but what i have quoted should be s u f f i c i e n t to i n d i c a t e t h a t behind geertz's more s e l f - a s s u r e d pronouncements there l u r k s an uneasiness f o r which the t e n e t s of h i s chosen c o n c e p t u a l i t y do not a l l o w him adequately to account. i t i s with t h i s i n mind t h a t i would now l i k e to show what a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e r e a d i n g t e l l s us about geertz's use of, and r e l i a n c e upon, such n o t i o n s as 'meaning,' 'concept,' ' i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , ' 'context,' ' t r a n s l a t i o n ' and ' t e x t . ' as w i l l be r e c a l l e d , d e r r i d a maintains t h a t concepts are always a l r e a d y doubled, t h a t the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of t h e i r i t e r a b i l i t y p r e c l u d e s them from ever being homogeneous and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l . t h i s being the case, geertz's assumption (which i s the assumption of western metaphysics i n general) t h a t a ' f i x a t i o n of meaning' i s both p o s s i b l e and d e s i r a b l e i s c a l l e d r a d i c a l l y into q u e s t i o n . as geertz r e f e r s to h i m s e l f as a 'meanings-and-symbols' a n t h r o p o l o g i s t i t i s u s e f u l to look at how he d e f i n e s these two terms: . . . s i g n i f i c a n t symbols [include] words f o r the most p a r t but a l s o g e s t u r e s , drawings, musical sounds, mechanical d e v i c e s l i k e c l o c k s , or n a t u r a l o b j e c t s l i k e jewels — a n y t h i n g , i n f a c t , t h a t i s disengaged from i t s mere a c t u a l i t y and used to impose meaning on e x p e r i e n c e . (geertz, g: ) (emphasis mine) [a symbol] i s . any o b j e c t , a c t , event, q u a l i t y , or r e l a t i o n which serves as a v e h i c l e f o r a conception -- the conception i s the symbol's "meaning." (geertz, j: ) (emphasis mine) so f o r geertz, symbols are 'construable s i g n s * and what they are s i g n i f i c a t i v e of i s meanings or concepts. now, a c c o r d i n g to d e r r i d a , n o t i o n s such as •symbol,' ' s i g n , 'meaning' and 'concept' are premised upon a d e d i c a t i o n to presence — to a b e l i e f i n the e x i s t e n c e of a " ' t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s i g n i f i e d ' which i n and of i t s e l f , i n i t s essence, would r e f e r to no s i g n i f i e r , would exceed the c h a i n of s i g n s , and would no longer i t s e l f f u n c t i o n as a s i g n i f i e r " ( d e r r i d a , g: - ). in other words, presence i s the u l t i m a t e u n i t y which both exceeds and c o n t a i n s m u l t i p l i c i t y , the u l t i m a t e s e l f - i d e n t i t y which both exceeds and c o n t a i n s d i f f e r e n c e -- i t i s the t h e o l o g i c a l moment par e x c e l l e n c e ("the name of god . . . is the name of i n d i f f e r e n c e i t s e l f " ( d e r r i d a , e: )), f o r , being p e r f e c t i n and of i t s e l f , i t f u n c t i o n s as an a b s o l u t e r e f e r e n t which, by d e f i n i t i o n , does not i t s e l f r e f e r . t h i s d e d i c a t i o n to presence, whether i t be i n the form of a b e l i e f i n god, a b e l i e f i n meaning or a b e l i e f i n c o n c e p t u a l i t y as such, p r e c l u d e s the p o s s i b i l i t y of acknowledging d i f f e r e n c e as d i f f e r e n c e or the other as_ other f o r d i f f e r e n c e must always be viewed as a c o r r u p t i o n of and/or i n f e r i o r to i d e n t i t y and the other must always be viewed as a c o r r u p t i o n of and/or i n f e r i o r to the s e l f . hence western metaphysics abounds with p h i l o s o p h i e s which subsume d i f f e r e n c e w i t h i n i d e n t i t y (e.g. the hegelian aufhebung and d i a l e c t i c s i n general) and the other w i t h i n the s e l f (e.g. the c a r t e s i a n c o g l t o and i t s development i n husserlean thought and phenomenology i n g e n e r a l ) . thus the uneasiness which i s apparent i n geertz's work may be seen to be due to the f a c t t h a t h i s metaphysical assumptions imprison him w i t h i n a t h e o r e t i c a l and methodological framework which f u n c t i o n s to r e p r e s s the d i f f e r e n c e / o t h e r n e s s / d i v e r s i t y t h a t he i s a b l e to intimate but f o r which he i s unable to account. even though geertz acknowledges t h a t ' c u l t u r a l a n a l y s i s i s i n t r i n s i c a l l y incomplete' t h a t meaning i s an ' e l u s i v e and i l l - d e f i n e d p s e u d o - e n t i t y ' he never a r r i v e s a t the p o i n t where he q u e s t i o n s the n o t i o n of concept or c o n c e p t u a l i t y as such. and, as d e r r i d a says, every concept t h a t l a y s c l a i m to any r i g o u r whatsoever i m p l i e s the a l t e r n a t i v e of " a l l or n o t h i n g . " even i f i n " r e a l i t y " or i n "experience" everyone b e l i e v e s he knows t h a t there i s never " a l l or n o t h i n g , " a concept determines i t s e l f o n l y a c c o r d i n g to " a l l or n o t h i n g . " even the concept of " d i f f e r e n c e of degree," the concept of r e l a t i v i t y i s , qua concept, determined a c c o r d i n g to the l o g i c of a l l or nothing, of yes or no: d i f f e r e n c e s of degree or. n o n d l f f e r e n c e s of degree. i t i s impossible . . . to form a p h i l o s o p h i c a l concept o u t s i d e of t h i s l o g i c of a l l or nothing. ( d e r r i d a , a: - ) thus, g i v e n t h a t concepts are d e f i n e d as s e l f - i d e n t i c a l ( e i t h e r there i s meaning or there i s not, e i t h e r there i s essence or there i s not e t c . ) and given t h a t geertz does not q u e s t i o n the a p p r o p r i a t e n e s s and/or adequacy of c o n c e p t u a l i t y as such, i t is not s u r p r i s i n g t h a t he c o n s t a n t l y f i n d s h i m s e l f 'unnerved' by what he p e r c e i v e s to be the • i n e r a d i c a b l e u n t i d i n e s s ' of c u l t u r a l phenomena. c u l t u r a l phenomena are not e i t h e r ( t i d y ) or. (untidy) -- they are both ( t i d y / u n t i d y ) and ( i n v o l v e d with i r r e d u c i b l e u n d e c l d a b i l i t y ) . and t h i s because no c u l t u r a l phenomenon, be i t a r i t u a l , a book or a p h i l o s o p h i c a l concept, e x i s t s i n and of i t s e l f , r e f e r r i n g o n l y to i t s e l f — i t i s always a l r e a d y doubled, always a l r e a d y p a r t of a s i g n i f y i n g c h a i n , and thus always a l r e a d y r i d d l e d with otherness. i t i s t h i s u n d e c l d a b i l i t y , t h i s p l a y of i t e r a b i l i t y , d i f f r a n c e , t r a c e e t c . , which i s not r e d u c i b l e to e i t h e r / o r l o g i c , the l o g i c of i d e n t i t y , and yet which allows f o r both the p o s s i b i l i t y (as e f f e c t ) and the i m p o s s i b i l i t y (as s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t cause) of t h a t l o g i c , t h a t must be taken i n t o account. geertz's n o t i o n of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n p r o v i d e s another example of the way i n which h i s t h e o r e t i c a l / p h i l o s o p h i c a l assumptions prevent him from r e c o g n i z i n g and d e v e l o p i n g c e r t a i n p o s s i b i l i t i e s which are nonetheless i n s c r i b e d w i t h i n h i s work. for geertz, as f o r western metaphysics i n g e n e r a l , i n t e r p r e t a t i o n c o n s i s t s in the d e t e r m i n a t i o n of meaning. i t i s important to r e a l i z e t h a t , however i t i s expressed, whether as a d i l t h e y a n t a c k i n g back and f o r t h between p a r t and whole, as a heideggerian p r o j e c t i o n and r e t r i e v a l , as a gadamerian f u s i o n of h o r i z o n s , as a r i c o e u r i a n working out of understanding and e x p l a n a t i o n , or as a g e e r t z i a n combination of d i l t h e y and ricoeur, the d i a l e c t i c a l movement of the hermeneutic c i r c l e (or s p i r a l , or arc) always presupposes an o v e r - r i d i n g u n i t y upon which the p o s s i b i l i t y of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n as the c o n s t r u i n g of meaning i s based. a d i a l e c t i c a l s t r u c t u r e , whether i t be i n the garb of p l a t o n i c d i a l o g u e , hegelian s p e c u l a t i o n , gadamerian hermeneutlcs, or g e e r t z l a n i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology, i s , by d e f i n i t i o n and i n p r i n c i p l e , d e d i c a t e d to the t e l e o l o g i c a l r e s o l u t i o n of o p p o s i t l o n a l i t y . as wallace stevens says, "a law of inherent o p p o s l t e s , / of e s s e n t i a l u n i t y , i s as p l e a s a n t as p o r t " (stevens, b: ). and whether the d i a l e c t i c a l process is deemed capable of completion (e.g. hegel's absolute s p i r i t ) or whether i t i s deemed endless (e.g. ricoeur's polysemy) i t i s nonetheless always c a r r i e d out w i t h i n a n o t i o n of u n i t y . thus even though geertz, i n l i k e n i n g the a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l task of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n to t h a t of the l i t e r a r y c r i t i c , views c u l t u r e as an 'assemblage of t e x t s ' which are by nature polysemous and p o l y t h e m a t i c , he s t i l l cannot escape the i n e v i t a b l y homogeneous s t r i c t u r e s of h i s t h e o r e t i c a l paradigm, f o r , as d e r r i d a says, polysemy always puts out i t s m u l t i p l i c i t i e s and v a r i a t i o n s w i t h i n the hor i z o n , a t l e a s t , of some i n t e g r a l r e a d i n g which c o n t a i n s no a b s o l u t e r i f t , no s e n s e l e s s d e v i a t i o n — the h o r i z o n of the f i n a l p a r o u s i a of a meaning a t l a s t deciphered, r e v e a l e d , made present i n the r i c h c o l l e c t i o n of i t s d e t e r m i n a t i o n s . whatever i n t e r e s t one might f i n d i n them, whatever d i g n i t y one might grant them, p l u r l v o c i t y , the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i t c a l l s f o r , and the h i s t o r y t h a t is p r e c i p i t a t e d out around i t remain l i v e d as the e n r i c h i n g , temporary detours of some p a s s i o n , some s i g n i f y i n g martyrdom t h a t t e s t i f i e s to a t r u t h past or a t r u t h to come, to a meaning whose presence i s announced by enigma. a l l the moments of polysemy a r e , as the word i m p l i e s , moments of meaning. ( d e r r i d a , a: ) thus, even though geertz attempts to defend d i v e r s i t y by p r o c l a i m i n g an ' a n t l - a n t i - r e l a t i v i s t ' stance a g a i n s t the u n i f y i n g notions of 'human nature' (e.g. v a r i o u s forms of b i o l o g i c a l determinism) on the one hand and of 'human mind' (e.g. v a r i o u s forms of p s y c h o l o g i c o - l i n g u i s t i c determinism) on the other, both of which d i s p l a y "the same tendency to see d i v e r s i t y as s u r f a c e and u n i v e r s a l i t y as depth" (geertz, : ), he nonetheless, i r o n i c a l l y and i n s p i t e of h i s own most strenuous e f f o r t s , cannot help but end up as h i m s e l f a promoter of u n i t y . and t h i s because he does not q u e s t i o n the r e p r e s s i v e , homogeneous i m p l i c a t i o n s of h i s own c o n c e p t u a l i t y . geertz's n o t i o n of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , besides e n t a i l i n g a d i a l e c t i c a l working out of meaning, a l s o e n t a i l s a n o t i o n of the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of the t r a n s m i s s i b l l i t y of meaning from one c u l t u r a l context or frame to another. as geertz says, he i s concerned with what he p e r c e i v e s to be a problem of " t r a n s l a t i o n , [of] how meaning gets moved, or does not, r e a s o n a b l y i n t a c t from one s o r t of d i s c o u r s e to the next" (geertz, g: ). and ' t r a n s l a t i o n , ' a c c o r d i n g to geertz, " i s not a simple r e c a s t i n g of o t h e r s ' ways of p u t t i n g t h i n g s i n terms of our own ways of p u t t i n g them . . . but [of] d i s p l a y i n g the l o g i c of t h e i r ways of p u t t i n g them i n the l o c u t i o n s of ours. . . . [ i t i s a] c a t c h i n g of ' t h e i r ' views i n 'our' v o c a b u l a r i e s " (geertz, f: ). in other words, geertz i s concerned with the t r a n s m i s s i o n of meaning ( i . e . t r a n s l a t i o n ) between c u l t u r e s v i a a thematic or i n t e r p r e t i v e r e a d i n g of symbols which a l l o w s him . . . to penetrate somewhat [the] t a n g l e of hermeneutlcal involvements, to l o c a t e with some p r e c i s i o n the i n s t a b i l i t i e s of thought and sentiment i t generates and s e t them i n a s o c i a l frame. such an e f f o r t h a r d l y d i s s o l v e s the t a n g l e or removes the i n s t a b i l i t i e s . indeed . . . i t r a t h e r b r i n g s them more d i s t u r b i n g l y to n o t i c e . but i t does at l e a s t (or can) p l a c e them i n an i n t e l l i g i b l e context, and u n t i l some c l i o m e t r i c i a n , s o c i o b i o l o g i s t , or deep l i n g u i s t i c i s t r e a l l y does c o n t r i v e to s o l v e the r i d d l e of the sphinx, t h a t w i l l have to do. (geertz, c: ) (emphasis mine) from the preceding q u o t a t i o n i t i s e v i d e n t t h a t , a g a i n , geertz i s t r o u b l e d by the amorphous nature of h i s 'data' and t h a t , a g a i n , he attempts to account f o r i t through the use of an unexamined c o n c e p t u a l i t y . in order to begin d e c o n s t r u c t i n g t h i s l e t us f i r s t look a t the n o t i o n of • c o n t e x t . ' the oxford e n g l i s h d i c t i o n a r y d e f i n e s 'context* as, " p a r t s t h a t precede or f o l l o w a passage or word and f i x i t s meaning (out of -, without these and hence m i s l e a d i n g ) ; ambient c o n d i t i o n s . " in terms of a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n geertz p e r c e i v e s a context to be those c o n d i t i o n s which surround and determine a p a r t i c u l a r phenomenon ( i . e . symbol or symbolic c l u s t e r ) hence r e n d e r i n g i t capable of being r e c o g n i z e d as a v e h i c l e of e s s e n t i a l l y t r a n s l a t a b l e meaning. in other words, symbols or symbolic c l u s t e r s are p e r c e i v e d to be a t the c e n t r e of any given context (at 'the heart of the matter,' as geertz would say) and thus, by usage and by d e f i n i t i o n , the n o t i o n of context as such, as i t f u n c t i o n s in geertz's work, is, i n p r i n c i p l e , a u n i f i c concept c o n s t i t u t e d d i a l e c t i c a l l y by the 'meaning' which i t surrounds and i n surrounding both d e f i n e s and i s d e f i n e d by and i n d e f i n i n g i t both s a t u r a t e s and i s s a t u r a t e d by. what geertz ends up with i s a n o t i o n of c u l t u r a l context which, f o r purposes of comparison and/or c o n t r a s t , i s i s o l a b l e and hence t r a n s m i s s i b l e and/or t r a n s l a t a b l e as a d e f i n a b l e e n t i t y . with r e s p e c t to t h i s n o t i o n of context d e r r i d a comments, but are the c o n d i t i o n s . . . of a context ever a b s o l u t e l y determinable. . . . is there a r i g o r o u s and s c i e n t i f i c concept of context? or does the n o t i o n of context c o n c e a l , behind a c e r t a i n c o n f u s i o n , p h i l o s o p h i c a l p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s of a v e r y determinate nature? . . . [i] t r y to demonstrate why a context i s never a b s o l u t e l y determinable, or r a t h e r , why i t s d e t e r m i n a t i o n can never be e n t i r e l y c e r t a i n or s a t u r a t e d . t h i s s t r u c t u r a l n o n - s a t u r a t i o n would have a double e f f e c t : ) i t would mark the t h e o r e t i c a l inadequacy o|_ the c u r r e n t concept of context ( l i n g u i s t i c or n o n - l i n g u i s t i c ) , as i t i s accepted by numerous domains of r e s e a r c h , i n c l u d i n g a l l the concepts with which i t i s s y s t e m a t i c a l l y a s s o c i a t e d ; ) i t would n e c e s s i t a t e a c e r t a i n g e n e r a l i z a t i o n and a c e r t a i n displacement of the concept of w r i t i n g . t h i s concept would no longer be comprehensible i n terms of communication, a t l e a s t i n the l i m i t e d sense of a t r a n s m i s s i o n of meaning. i n v e r s e l y , i t is w i t h i n the g e n e r a l domain of w r i t i n g , d e f i n e d i n t h i s way, t h a t the e f f e c t s of semantic communication can be determined as e f f e c t s t h a t are p a r t i c u l a r , secondary, i n s c r i b e d , and supplementary. ( d e r r i d a , a: - ) as w i l l be r e c a l l e d , w r i t i n g , i n the sense by which d e r r i d a r e f e r s to i t above, i s an 'undecidable' -- i t i s , to r e i t e r a t e n o r r i s , "the endless displacement of meaning which both governs language and p l a c e s i t f o r e v e r beyond the reach of a s t a b l e , s e l f - a u t h e n t i c a t i n g knowledge" ( n o r r i s , : ). as i argued i n chapter two, i t i s the p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y which, premised as i t i s upon a n o t i o n of o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g , allows f o r both the p o s s i b i l i t y of p h i l o s o p h i c a l concepts (as e f f e c t s ) and t h e i r i m p o s s i b i l i t y (as s e l f - i d e n t i c a l e n t i t i e s ) . w i t h r e s p e c t to geertz's n o t i o n of context, i t i s p r e c i s e l y t h i s p r i m o r d i a l p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y which he f a i l s to take i n t o account. for geertz, context f u n c t i o n s as an i s o l a b l e framework which surrounds and determines an e q u a l l y i s o l a b l e meaning. however, as d e r r i d a says, "context i s always, and always has been, a t work w i t h i n the p l a c e , and not o n l y around i t " ( d e r r i d a , a: ). in other words, c o n t e x t u a l i t y as such, as t h a t which frames or f i x e s a meaning, i s always a l r e a d y i t s e l f c o n t e x t u a l i z e d , t h a t i s , i t i s always a l r e a d y i t s e l f an e f f e c t of the p l a y of u n d e c l d a b i l i t y — i t nowhere e x i s t s as an a b s o l u t e , i s o l a b l e e n t i t y . and, as d e r r i d a p o i n t s out, "this does not imply t h a t [a gesture, a word, an a c t i o n e t c . ] i s v a l i d o u t s i d e of a c o n t e x t , but on the c o n t r a r y t h a t there are o n l y contexts without any c e n t r e or a b s o l u t e anchorage" ( d e r r i d a , a: ). and whether geertz acknowledges the a r t i f i c i a l , imposed nature of h i s c o n t e x t u a l frames or not (and, q u i t e o b v i o u s l y , he does), u n l e s s and u n t i l he acknowledges the u n d e c l d a b i l i t y t h a t i s always a l r e a d y at work (or play) w i t h i n h i s chosen c o n c e p t u a l i t y he w i l l c o n t i n u e , c o n t r a r y to h i s r e p e a t e d l y p r o f e s s e d i n t e n t i o n s , to subordinate d i v e r s i t y to u n i t y , d i f f e r e n c e to i d e n t i t y , the other to the s e l f . before d i s c u s s i n g geertz's n o t i o n of t r a n s l a t i o n or the t r a n s m i s s i b i l i t y of meaning, i t i s important to be c l e a r t h a t , f o r him, meaning i s i n t e n t i o n a l , t h a t i s , meaning, being t h a t which i s contained w i t h i n 'symbols or symbolic c l u s t e r s , ' i s t h a t which people 'think [ i t i s ] they are up t o ' — i . e . i t is t h a t which they intend. i t must be remembered t h a t i n t e n t i o n a l i t y , as such, i s p r e d i c a t e d upon a phenomenological n o t i o n of i n t e n t i o n a l consciousness which, i n t u r n , i s p r e d i c a t e d upon a n o t i o n of p r i m o r d i a l i n t u i t i o n , "where 'consciousness' means nothing other than the p o s s i b i l i t y of the s e l f - p r e s e n c e of the present i n the l i v i n g p r e s e n t " ( d e r r i d a , b: ) . in other words, i n t e n t i o n a l i t y i s an i n t e g r a l f e a t u r e of a p h i l o s o p h y of consciousness which p o s i t s the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of i n t u i t i o n — of an immediately s e l f - p r e s e n t and unmediated "source of a u t h o r i t y . f o r knowledge" (husserl i n d e r r i d a , b: ). i n t e n t i o n a l i t y , as d e f i n e d i n the t r a d i t i o n of husserlean phenomenology and as manifested i n g e e r t z i a n i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology, i s fundamentally and i r r e m e d i a b l y t e l e o l o g i c a l — t h a t is, i t e n t a i l s , i n p r i n c i p l e , f u l f i l m e n t i n the s e l f - present r e a l i z a t i o n of t h a t which i t i n t e n d s . and, whether or not geertz r e c o g n i z e s i t (and, a p p a r e n t l y , he does n o t ) , t h i s t e l o s of " f u l f i l l m e n t " is c o n s t i t u t i v e of i n t e n t i o n a l i t y ; i t i s p a r t of i t s concept. i n t e n t i o n a l movement tends toward t h i s f u l f i l l m e n t . t h i s i s the o r i g i n or the f a t a l i t y of t h a t " l o n g i n g f o r metaphysical p l e n i t u d e " which, however, can a l s o be presupposed, d e s c r i b e d , or l i v e d without the romantic, even m y s t i c a l pathos sometimes a s s o c i a t e d with those words. . . . n e v e r t h e l e s s , i f one wishes to speak r i g o r o u s l y of an i n t e n t i o n a l s t r u c t u r e one should take i n t o account, with or without " l o n g i n g , " the t e l o s of p l e n i t u d e t h a t c o n s t i t u t e s i t . . . . t h i s p l e n i t u d e ( t h i s " f u l f i l l m e n t " ) , f o r reasons i have a l r e a d y s t a t e d ( i t e r a b i l i t y , s t r u c t u r e of the t r a c e and of the mark i n g e n e r a l [ i . e . the p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y ] ) , i s a l r e a d y i n a c c e s s i b l e i n p e r c e p t i o n or i n i n t u i t i o n i n g e n e r a l as the experience of a present content. ( d e r r i d a , a: ) now a g a i n , as with the n o t i o n of context, i t i s important to r e a l i z e t h a t d e r r i d a i s not arguing t h a t there i s no i n t e n t i o n a l i t y — he i s arguing t h a t i n t e n t i o n a l i t y as such, as a p h i l o s o p h i c a l concept premised on a t e l e o l o g i c a l n o t i o n of u l t i m a t e p l e n i t u d e , does not and has never e x i s t e d . as d e r r i d a says, "what i s l i m i t e d by i t e r a b i l i t y [ u n d e c l d a b i l i t y ] i s not i n t e n t i o n a l i t y i n g e n e r a l , but i t s c h a r a c t e r of being conscious or present to i t s e l f ( a c t u a l i z e d , f u l f i l l e d , and adequate), the s i m p l i c i t y of i t s f e a t u r e s , i t s undlvldedness. . . . the i t e r a t i o n s t r u c t u r i n g i t a p r i o r i i n t r o d u c e s i n t o i t a dehiscence and a c l e f t . . . which are e s s e n t i a l " ( d e r r i d a , a: ). in other words, the concept of i n t e n t i o n a l i t y , l i k e a l l undeconstructed conceptual c a t e g o r i e s , f u n c t i o n s as a u n i f y i n g s t r u c t u r e which r e p r e s s e s i t s own e s s e n t i a l u n d e c l d a b i l i t y . and t h i s u n d e c l d a b i l i t y i s e s s e n t i a l because i n t e n t i o n a l i t y , as such, i s p r e d i c a t e d upon the impossible • p o s s i b i l i t y of the s e l f - p r e s e n c e of the present in the l i v i n g present' — impossible because, as s t a t e d i n chapter two but worth r e p e a t i n g here, . the being-present (on) i n i t s t r u t h , i n the presence of i t s i d e n t i t y and i n the i d e n t i t y of i t s presence, i s doubled as soon as i t appears, as soon as i t presents i t s e l f . r t appears, i n i t s essence, as the p o s s i b i l i t y of i t s own most proper non-truth, of i t s psuedo- t r u t h r e f l e c t e d i n the i c o n , the phantasm, or the simulacrum. what i s i s not what i t i s , i d e n t i c a l and i d e n t i c a l to i t s e l f , unless i t adds to i t s e l f the p o s s i b i l i t y of being repeated as such. and i t s i d e n t i t y i s hollowed out by t h a t a d d i t i o n , withdraws i t s e l f i n the supplement t h a t presents i t . ( d e r r i d a , a: ) thus i n t e n t i o n a l i t y , as a concept p r e d i c a t e d upon i t s r e a l i z a t i o n or f u l f i l m e n t i n the p l e n i t u d e of an intended and s e l f - p r e s e n t meaning, i s , due to o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g and the e s s e n t i a l p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , i t s e l f always a l r e a d y f i s s u r e d with i t s own i m p o s s i b i l i t y . and a g a i n , as geertz does not examine the i m p l i c a t i o n s of h i s conceptual framework, he i s l e f t with no a l t e r a t i v e but to f o l l o w the d i c t a t e s of t h a t framework, thus e n s u r i n g t h a t h e t e r o g e n e i t y i s i n e v i t a b l y subsumed w i t h i n homogeneity. with r e s p e c t to geertz's n o t i o n of t r a n s l a t i o n , of the t r a n s m i s s i b i l i t y of meaning from one c u l t u r a l context to another, i t should by now be c l e a r t h a t i t i s premised upon a whole s t r a i n of p h i l o s o p h i c a l thought which, among other t h i n g s , presumes a t e l e o l o g i c a l n o t i o n of d i a l e c t i c a l process and of i n t e n t i o n a l i t y as w e l l as the s e l f - i d e n t i c a l nature of c o n c e p t u a l i t y . thus i t should not be s u r p r i s i n g t h a t geertz p o s i t s the p o s s i b i l i t y of "meaning g e t t t i n g ] moved, or . . . not, r e a s o n a b l y i n t a c t from one s o r t of d i s c o u r s e to the n e x t . " i t w i l l be remembered t h a t g e e r t z contends t h a t meaning i s c o n t a i n e d w i t h i n symbols or s y m b o l i c c l u s t e r s and t h a t he d e f i n e s symbols as s i g n s . and, of c o u r s e , a c c o r d i n g t o g e e r t z ' s c o n c e p t u a l i t y , s i g n s must be s i g n s of_ something, and what t h e y a r e s i g n s of i s meaning. however, as d e r r i d a s a y s , "but what i s a s i g n as such? there i s no s i g n as s u c h . e i t h e r the s i g n is c o n s i d e r e d a t h i n g , and i t i s not a s i g n . or i t i s a r e f e r e n c e , and t h u s not i t s e l f " ( d e r r i d a , e: ). f u r t h e r , is i t not e v i d e n t t h a t no s i g n i f i e r , whatever i t s substance and form, has a "unique and s i n g u l a r r e a l i t y ? " a s i g n i f i e r i s from the very beginning the p o s s i b i l i t y of i t s own r e p e t i t i o n , of i t s own image or resemblance. i t i s the c o n d i t i o n of i t s i d e a l i t y , what i d e n t i f i e s i t as s i g n i f i e r , and makes i t f u n c t i o n as such, r e l a t i n g i t to a s i g n i f i e d which, f o r the same reasons, c o u l d never be a "unique and s i n g u l a r r e a l i t y . " from the moment t h a t the s i g n appears, t h a t i s to say from the v e r y beginning, there i s no chance of encountering anywhere the p u r i t y of " r e a l i t y , " " u n i c i t y , " " s i n g u l a r i t y . " ( d e r r i d a , e: ) nonetheless, the concept of ' s i g n , ' as i t f u n c t i o n s w i t h i n western metaphysics i n g e n e r a l and w i t h i n g e e r t z l a n anthropology i n p a r t i c u l a r , i n d i c a t e s the e x i s t e n c e of a meaning which i s by d e f i n i t i o n s e l f - i d e n t i c a l and which i s i n p r i n c i p l e i s o l a b l e and hence t r a n s p o r t a b l e ( i . e . t r a n s l a t a b l e ) from one c u l t u r a l context to another. as d e r r i d a says, . . . the model of the s i g n . . . marks the " s e m i o l o g i c a l " p r o j e c t i t s e l f and the o r g a n i c t o t a l i t y of i t s concepts, i n p a r t i c u l a r t h a t of communication, which i n e f f e c t i m p l i e s a t r a n s m i s s i o n charged with making pass, from one s u b j e c t to another, the i d e n t i t y of a s i g n i f i e d o b j e c t , of a meaning or of a concept r i g h t f u l l y separable from the process of passage and from the s i g n i f y i n g o p e r a t i o n . communication presupposes s u b j e c t s (whose i d e n t i t y and presence are c o n s t i t u t e d before the s i g n i f y i n g operation) and o b j e c t s ( s i g n i f i e d concepts, a thought meaning t h a t the passage of communication w i l l have n e i t h e r to c o n s t i t u t e , nor, by a l l r i g h t s , to t r a n s f o r m ) . a communicates b to c. ( d e r r i d a , g: ) thus geertz's n o t i o n of t r a n s l a t i o n may be seen to be the i n e v i t a b l e outcome of h i s embeddedness w i t h i n an undeconstructed system of c o n c e p t u a l i t y . and whether or not one argues t h a t geertz i s , a f t e r a l l , by and l a r g e u s i n g 'everyday language' and t h a t to make so much out of h i s usage i s to put f a r too f i n e a p o i n t on t h i n g s , i t cannot be denied t h a t , . . ."everyday language" i s not innocent or n e u t r a l . i t i s the language of western metaphysics, and i t c a r r i e s with i t not o n l y a c o n s i d e r a b l e number of p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s of a l l types, but a l s o p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s i n s e p a r a b l e from metaphysics, which, although l i t t l e attended t o , are knotted i n t o a system. ( d e r r i d a , g: ) thus, f o r example, the concept ' s i g n , ' which c a r r i e s with i t the n o t i o n of an e s s e n t i a l d i s t i n c t i o n between s i g n i f i e r and s i g n i f i e d , between the s i g n and what i t s i g n s , i n h e r e n t l y leaves open the p o s s i b i l i t y of t h i n k i n g a concept s i g n i f i e d i n and of i t s e l f , a concept simply present f o r thought, independent . . . of a r e l a t i o n s h i p to a system of s i g n i f i e r s [ i . e . a ' t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s i g n i f i e d ' ] . . . . [however] from the moment t h a t one q u e s t i o n s the p o s s i b i l i t y of . . . a t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s i g n i f i e d , and t h a t one r e c o g n i z e s t h a t every s i g n i f i e d i s a l s o in the p o s i t i o n of a s i g n i f i e r , the d i s t i n c t i o n between s i g n i f i e d and s i g n i f i e r becomes p r o b l e m a t i c a l a t i t s r o o t . . . . in e f f e c t , the theme of a t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s i g n i f i e d took shape w i t h i n the h o r i z o n of an a b s o l u t e l y pure, t r a n s p a r e n t , a n d u n e q u i v o c a l t r a n s l a t a b i l i t y . in the l i m i t s to which i t i s p o s s i b l e , or a t l e a s t appears p o s s i b l e , t r a n s l a t i o n p r a c t i c e s the d i f f e r e n c e between s i g n i f i e d and s i g n i f i e r . but i f t h i s d i f f e r e n c e i s never pure, no more so i s t r a n s l a t i o n , and f o r the n o t i o n of t r a n s l a t i o n we would have to s u b s t i t u t e a n o t i o n of t r a n s f o r m a t i o n ; a r e g u l a t e d t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of one language by another, of one t e x t by another. ( d e r r i d a , g: - ) in other words, the p o i n t i s n e i t h e r to n e u t r a l i z e the d i s t i n c t i o n between s i g n i f i e r and s i g n i f i e d nor simply to r e v e r s e t h e i r l e v e l s of importance, but to show t h a t t h e i r d i s t i n c t i o n i s not and never has been a b s o l u t e — t h a t i t i s an e f f e c t of an e s s e n t i a l u n d e c l d a b i l i t y which both allows f o r and d e l i m i t s the n o t i o n of c o n c e p t u a l i t y i n g e n e r a l . i t i s t h i s e s s e n t i a l u n d e c l d a b i l i t y which ensures t h a t any n o t i o n of t r a n s l a t i o n as the simple t r a n s m i s s i o n of meaning from one context to another i s fundamentally inadequate, and i t i s t h i s e s s e n t i a l u n d e c l d a b i l i t y t h a t geertz does not take i n t o account. before going on to the work of james c l i f f o r d , i would l i k e to look at geertz's f a v o u r i t e analogue f o r c u l t u r e , t h a t of the t e x t : the key to the t r a n s i t i o n from t e x t to t e x t analogue, from w r i t i n g as d i s c o u r s e to a c t i o n as d i s c o u r s e , i s , as paul ricoeur has p o i n t e d out, the concept of " i n s c r i p t i o n " : the f i x a t i o n of meaning. when we speak, our u t t e r a n c e s f l y by as events l i k e any other behaviour; unless what we say i s i n s c r i b e d i n w r i t i n g (or some other e s t a b l i s h e d r e c o r d i n g p r o c e s s ) , i t i s as evanescent as what we do. i f i t i s so i n s c r i b e d , i t of course passes, l i k e dorian gray's youth, anyway; but a t l e a s t i t s meaning, the s a i d , not the s a y i n g -- to a degree and f o r a while remains. t h i s too i s not d i f f e r e n t f o r a c t i o n i n g e n e r a l : i t s meaning can p e r s i s t i n a way i t s a c t u a l i t y cannot. the g r e a t v i r t u e of the e x t e n s i o n of the n o t i o n of t e x t beyond t h i n g s w r i t t e n on paper or carved i n t o stone i s t h a t i t t r a i n s a t t e n t i o n on p r e c i s e l y t h i s phenomenon: on how the i n s c r i p t i o n of a c t i o n i s brought about, what i t s v e h i c l e s are and how they work, and on what the f i x a t i o n of meaning from the flow of events -- h i s t o r y from what happened, thought from t h i n k i n g , c u l t u r e from behaviour — i m p l i e s f o r s o c i o l o g i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . (geertz, a: ) geertz, l i k e rlcoeur, views the t e x t as a p l u r l v o c a l t o t a l i t y which, as such and i n p r i n c i p l e , enables the i n t e r p r e t e r to i s o l a t e and to account f o r s p e c i f i c meanings — the process of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n c o n s i s t i n g of a d i a l e c t i c between guessing a t and v a l i d a t i n g s a i d meanings. whereas the meanings of w r i t t e n d i s c o u r s e are embodied w i t h i n given l i n g u i s t i c or v e r b a l s t r u c t u r e s , the meanings of s o c i a l d i s c o u r s e are embodied w i t h i n a c t i o n s or c l u s t e r s of a c t i o n s p e r c e i v e d as symbolic s t r u c t u r e s — but the p r i n c i p l e upon which i n t e r p r e t a t i o n is based remains the same, i . e . the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of the f i x a t i o n of meaning or meanings which i s a necessary f e a t u r e of the s e l f - c o n t a i n e d t o t a l i z i n g s t r u c t u r e of the t e x t or t e x t analogue. i t is p r e c i s e l y t h i s assumed t o t a l i z i n g s t r u c t u r e , which i s a f e a t u r e of c o n c e p t u a l i t y i n g e n e r a l , which must be questioned, f o r , u n t i l i t i s , a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , along with i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i n g e n e r a l , w i l l remain d e d i c a t e d to a n o t i o n of p l e n i t u d e which d i s a l l o w s not o n l y a r i g o r o u s accounting o f , but, indeed, any r e c o g n i t i o n of, the r a d i c a l h e t e r o g e n e i t y of t h i n g s . geertz's penchant f o r viewing anthropology as a kind of t e x t u a l commentary leads him to p o s i t , i n h i s most r e c e n t work, t h a t the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t may be most c o n s t r u c t i v e l y viewed as being concerned with "a n a r r a t o l o g i c a l i s s u e , a matter of how best to get an honest s t o r y h o n e s t l y t o l d " (geertz, b: ). now both n a r r a t i o n and s t o r y e n t a i l , by d e f i n i t i o n , the r e c o u n t i n g of a l i n e a r sequence of events or episodes which are contained w i t h i n an o v e r a r c h i n g p l o t s t r u c t u r e , i . e . they are both t e l e o l o g i c a l and e s c h a t o l o g l c a l . (see ricoeur on n a r r a t i v e , chapter three.) as such, they f u n c t i o n to c o n t a i n h e t e r o g e n e i t y ( i . e . the p e r c e i v e d ' i n e r a d i c a b l e u n t i d i n e s s ' of t h i n g s ) w i t h i n homogeneity ( i . e . the p l e n i t u d e of a s e l f - c o n t a i n e d and a l l encompassing paradigm). the s t o r y or n a r r a t i v e as such, as d e f i n e d w i t h i n the conceptual l i m i t s of western metaphysics, do not and have never e x i s t e d f o r they are always a l r e a d y f i s s u r e d by an e s s e n t i a l u n d e c i d a b i l i t y which prevents them from ever being, at any given moment, pure or s e l f - c o n t a i n e d . t h i s being the case, the unexamined use of n a r r a t i v e or s t o r y as an analogue or model f o r the a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l e n t e r p r i s e ensures t h a t the l a t t e r w i l l remain premised upon and d e d i c a t e d to a n o t i o n of p l e n i t u d e . as one of v i r g i n i a woolf's c h a r a c t e r s comments, i have made up thousands of s t o r i e s ; i have f i l l e d innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when i have found the t r u e s t o r y , the one s t o r y to which a l l these phrases r e f e r . but i have never yet found t h a t s t o r y . and i begin to ask, are there s t o r i e s ? (woolf, : ) geertz c o u l d do worse than to begin to ask as w e l l . ii clifford ( ) discourse discourse . . . i s a mode o£ communication i n which the presence of the speaking s u b j e c t and of the immediate s i t u a t i o n of communication are i n t r i n s i c . . . . discourse does not transcend the s p e c i f i c o c c a s i o n i n which a s u b j e c t a p p r o p r i a t e s the resources of language in order to communicate d l a l o g l c a l l y . ricoeur argues t h a t d i s c o u r s e cannot be i n t e r p r e t e d in the open-ended p o t e n t i a l l y p u b l i c way i n which a t e x t i s "read." to understand d i s c o u r s e "you had to have been t h e r e , " i n the presence of the d i s c o u r s i n g s u b j e c t . for d i s c o u r s e to become a t e x t i t must become "autonomous," i n ricoeur's terms, separated from a s p e c i f i c u t t e r a n c e and a u t h o r i a l i n t e n t i o n . i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s not i n t e r l o c u t i o n . i t does not depend on being i n the presence of a speaker. ( c l i f f o r d , f: ) (emphasis mine) an i n t e r e s t i n the d i s c u r s i v e aspects of c u l t u r a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n draws a t t e n t i o n not to the i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of c u l t u r a l " t e x t s " but to t h e i r r e l a t i o n s of p r o d u c t i o n . divergent s t y l e s of w r i t i n g are, with v a r y i n g degrees of success, g r a p p l i n g with these new orders of complexity — d i f f e r e n t r u l e s and p o s s i b i l i t i e s w i t h i n the h o r i z o n of a h i s t o r i c a l moment. . . . [there i s a] general t r e n d toward a s p e c i f i c a t i o n of d i s c o u r s e s i n ethnography: who speaks? who w r i t e s ? when and where? with or to whom? under what i n s t i t u t i o n a l and h i s t o r i c a l r e s t r a i n t s ? ( c l i f f o r d , a: ) (emphasis c l i f f o r d ' s and mine) a d i s c u r s i v e model o£ ethnographic p r a c t i c e b r i n g s i n t o prominence the i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y of speech, along with i t s immediate performative c o n t e x t . ( c l i f f o r d , f: ) (emphasis mine) once c u l t u r e s are no longer p r e f i g u r e d v i s u a l l y — as o b j e c t s , t h e a t e r s , t e x t s - - i t becomes p o s s i b l e to t h i n k of a c u l t u r a l p o e t i c s t h a t i s an i n t e r p l a y of v o i c e s , of p o s i t i o n e d u t t e r a n c e s . in a d i s c u r s i v e r a t h e r than a v i s u a l paradigm, the dominant metaphors f o r ethnography s h i f t away from the observing eye and toward e x p r e s s i v e speech. . . . and the c r u c i a l p o e t i c problem f o r a d i s c u r s i v e ethnography becomes how "to achieve by w r i t t e n means what speech c r e a t e s . " ( c l i f f o r d , a: ) (emphasis mine) i i ) dialogue . . . d i a l o g i c a l processes p r o l i f e r a t e i n any complexly represented d i s c u r s i v e space. . . . many v o i c e s clamor f o r e x p r e s s i o n . p o l y v o c a l i t y was r e s t r a i n e d and o r c h e s t r a t e d i n t r a d i t i o n a l ethnographies by g i v i n g to one v o i c e a p e r v a s i v e a u t h o r i a l f u n c t i o n and to others the r o l e of sources, "informants," to be quoted or paraphrased. once d l a l o g l s m and polyphony are r e c o g n i z e d as modes of t e x t u a l p r o d u c t i o n , monophonic a u t h o r i t y i s questioned, r e v e a l e d to be c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of a s c i e n c e t h a t has claimed to r e p r e s e n t c u l t u r e s . ( c l i f f o r d , a: ) (emphasis c l i f f o r d ' s and mine) to the extent t h a t the ethnographic process i s seen as i n s c r i p t i o n ( r a t h e r than, f o r example, as t r a n s c r i p t i o n , or d i a l o g u e ) the r e p r e s e n t a t i o n w i l l continue to enact a potent, and q u e s t i o n a b l e , a l l e g o r i c a l s t r u c t u r e . ( c l i f f o r d , b: ) (emphasis mine) the model of d i a l o g u e b r i n g s to prominence p r e c i s e l y those d i s c u r s i v e — c i r c u m s t a n t i a l and i n t e r s u b j e c t l v e — elements t h a t ricoeur had to exclude from h i s model of the t e x t . . . . i f i t i s d i f f i c u l t f o r d l a l o g l c a l p o r t r a y a l s to escape t y p i f y i n g procedures, they can, to a s i g n i f i c a n t degree, r e s i s t the p u l l toward a u t h o r i t a t i v e r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of the other. t h i s depends on t h e i r a b i l i t y f i c t i o n a l l y to maintain the strangeness of the other v o i c e and to h o l d i n view the s p e c i f i c c o n t i n g e n c i e s of the exchange. ( c l i f f o r d , f: - ) (emphasis mine) the f i c t i o n a l d i a l o g u e i s i n f a c t a condensation, a s i m p l i f i e d r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of complex m u l t i v o c a l p r o c e s s e s . an a l t e r n a t i v e way of r e p r e s e n t i n g t h i s d i s c u r s i v e complexity i s to understand the o v e r a l l course of the r e s e a r c h as an ongoing n e g o t i a t i o n . ( c l i f f o r d , f: ) (emphasis mine) ethnography [should be] a d l a l o g l c a l e n t e r p r i s e i n which both r e s e a r c h e r s and n a t i v e s are a c t i v e c r e a t o r s or, to s t r e t c h a term, authors of c u l t u r a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s . d i a l o g i c a l , c o n s t r u c t i v i s t paradigms tend to d i s p e r s e or share out ethnographic a u t h o r i t y . ( c l i f f o r d , : ) (emphasis mine) [fleldwork] must . . . be seen as a h i s t o r i c a l l y c o n t i n g e n t , u n r u l y d i a l o g i c a l encounter i n v o l v i n g to some degree both c o n f l i c t and c o l l a b o r a t i o n i n the p r o d u c t i o n of t e x t s . ( c l i f f o r d , : ) (emphasis mine) ( i i i ) anthropology/ethnography . . . i t r e a t ethnography i t s e l f as a performance emplotted by powerful s t o r i e s . embodied i n w r i t t e n r e p o r t s , these s t o r i e s s i m u l t a n e o u s l y d e s c r i b e r e a l c u l t u r a l events and make a d d i t i o n a l , moral, i d e o l o g i c a l , and even c o s m o l o g i c a l statements. ethnographic w r i t i n g i s a l l e g o r i c a l a t the l e v e l both of i t s content (what i t says about c u l t u r e s and t h e i r h i s t o r i e s ) and of i t s form (what i s i m p l i e d by i t s mode of t e x t u a l l z a t i o n ) . ( c l i f f o r d , b: ) (emphasis mine) . . . t r a n s c e n d e n t a l meanings are not a b s t r a c t i o n s or i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s "added" to the o r i g i n a l "simple" account. rather, they are the c o n d i t i o n s of i t s meaningfulness. ethnographic t e x t s are i n e s c a p a b l y a l l e g o r i c a l , and a s e r i o u s acceptance of t h i s f a c t changes the ways they can be w r i t t e n and read. . . . i [applaud] a r e c e n t tendency to d i s t i n g u i s h a l l e g o r i c a l l e v e l s as s p e c i f i c " v o i c e s " w i t h i n the t e x t . i argue . . . t h a t the very a c t i v i t y of ethnographic w r i t i n g — seen as i n s c r i p t i o n or t e x t u a l i z a t i o n -- enacts a redemptive western a l l e g o r y . t h i s p e r v a s i v e s t r u c t u r e needs to be p e r c e i v e d and weighed a g a i n s t other p o s s i b l e emplotments f o r the performance of ethnography. ( c l i f f o r d , b: ) (emphasis c l i f f o r d ' s and mine) a r e c o g n i t i o n of a l l e g o r y complicates the w r i t i n g and r e a d i n g of ethnographies i n p o t e n t i a l l y f r u i t f u l ways. a tendency emerges to s p e c i f y and separate d i f f e r e n t a l l e g o r i c a l r e g i s t e r s w i t h i n the t e x t . the marking o f f of extended indigenous d i s c o u r s e s shows the ethnography to be a h i e r a r c h i c a l s t r u c t u r e of powerful s t o r i e s t h a t t r a n s l a t e , encounter, and r e c o n t e x t u a l i z e other powerful s t o r i e s . i t i s a p a l i m p s e s t . . . . moreover, an awareness of a l l e g o r y heightens awareness of the n a r r a t i v e , and other temporal setups, i m p l i c i t l y or e x p l i c i t l y a t work. is the redemptive s t r u c t u r e of s a l v a g e - t e x t u a l i z a t i o n being r e p l a c e d ? by what new a l l e g o r i e s ? of c o n f l i c t ? of emergence? of syncretism? ( c l i f f o r d , b: - ) (emphasis mine) i n t e r p r e t i v e anthropology, by viewing c u l t u r e s as assemblages of t e x t s , l o o s e l y and sometimes c o n t r a d i c t o r a l l y [ s i c ] u n i t e d , and by h i g h l i g h t i n g the i n v e n t i v e p o e i s i s a t work i n a l l c o l l e c t i v e r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s , has c o n t r i b u t e d s i g n i f i c a n t l y to the d e f a m i l i a r i z a t i o n of ethnographic a u t h o r i t y . in i t s mainstream r e a l i s t s t r a n d s , however, i t does not escape the general s t r i c t u r e s of t h o s e c r i t i c s of " c o l o n i a l " r e p r e s e n t a t i o n who, s i n c e , have r e j e c t e d d i s c o u r s e s t h a t p o r t r a y the c u l t u r a l r e a l i t y of other peoples without p l a c i n g t h e i r own r e a l i t y i n jeopardy. . . . henceforth n e i t h e r the experience nor the i n t e r p r e t i v e a c t i v i t y of the s c i e n t i f i c r e s e a r c h e r can be c o n s i d e r e d innocent. i t becomes necessary to conceive of ethnography not as the experience and i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of a c i r c u m s c r i b e d " o t h e r " r e a l i t y , but r a t h e r as a c o n s t r u c t i v e n e g o t i a t i o n i n v o l v i n g at l e a s t two, and u s u a l l y more, c o n s c i o u s , p o l i t i c a l l y s i g n i f i c a n t s u b j e c t s . paradigms of experience and i n t e r p r e t a t i o n are y i e l d i n g to d i s c u r s i v e paradigms of d i a l o g u e and polyphony. ( c l i f f o r d , f: ) (emphasis mine) although c l i f f o r d c o n s t a n t l y r e i t e r a t e s t h a t h i s d e s i r e i s "to d i s p l a c e any transcendent regime of a u t h e n t i c i t y " ( c l i f f o r d , c: ), to q u e s t i o n and c r i t i q u e a l l modes of t o t a l i z a t i o n ("there is no whole p i c t u r e t h a t can be ' f i l l e d i n ' " ( c l i f f o r d , a: ) "there i s no longer any p l a c e of overview . . . no archimedean p o i n t from which to r e p r e s e n t the world" ( c l i f f o r d , a: )), i t i s e v i d e n t t h a t h i s f a i l u r e to s e r i o u s l y q u e s t i o n the components of h i s own p r e f e r r e d 'paradigm' p r e c l u d e s any p o s s i b i l i t y of the f u l f i l m e n t of t h i s d e s i r e . u n f o r t u n a t e l y , c l i f f o r d ' s approach to t h e o r e t i c a l problems tends to be r a t h e r s u p e r f i c i a l . as kapferer comments ( i n a review with which, the f o l l o w i n g o b s e r v a t i o n a s i d e , i am f a r from being i n agreement), [in r e a d i n g c l i f f o r d ' s work] i c o u l d not escape a sense of s u p e r f i c i a l i t y . c l i f f o r d a l i g h t s , l i k e some gorgeous b u t t e r f l y , i n the great garden of human p o s s i b i l i t y which i s the f i e l d of anthropology. but he passes from flower to flower, seldom s t a y i n g f o r long to examine t h o r o u g h l y t h e i r p o s s i b i l i t y . t h i s i found f r u s t r a t i n g . (kapferer, : ) s i m i l a r l y , sangren c a l l s a t t e n t i o n to " c l i f f o r d ' s ( a: ) i n v o c a t i o n of academic l u m i n a r i e s to no apparent purpose other than to a u t h o r i z e and l o c a t e h i s t e x t w i t h i n t h e i r aura" (sangren, : ). what i s most annoying about c l i f f o r d i s not simply t h a t he does not do what he says he is going to do, i . e . d i s p l a c e transcendent, t o t a l i z i n g regimes of a u t h e n t i c i t y , but t h a t he i n f a c t f u r t h e r r e i n f o r c e s those regimes by c o n s i s t e n t l y o v e r l o o k i n g the t o t a l i z i n g nature of h i s own conceptual framework. for example, he does not q u e s t i o n metaphor/allegory, s u b j e c t i v i t y , d l a l o g l s m , d i s c u r s i v i t y , r e p r e s e n t a t i o n or speech as such. a c c o r d i n g l y , i w i l l begin my d e c o n s t r u c t i v e r e a d i n g of c l i f f o r d by l o o k i n g a t h i s use of metaphor and a l l e g o r y . in an essay e n t i t l e d "on ethnographic a l l e g o r y " c l i f f o r d adopts the webster's new twentieth century d i c t i o n a r y d e f i n i t i o n s of • a l l e g o r y : " . a s t o r y i n which people, t h i n g s and happenings have another meaning, as i n a f a b l e or p a r a b l e : a l l e g o r i e s are used f o r t e a c h i n g or e x p l a i n i n g . . the p r e s e n t a t i o n of ideas by means of such s t o r i e s " ( c l i f f o r d b: ). he argues t h a t ethnographies are i r r e m e d i a b l y a l l e g o r i c a l and t h a t t h i s f a c t should be accepted as the b a s i s upon which ethnographic l i t e r a t u r e i s approached. according to c l i f f o r d , a s c i e n t i f i c ethnography normally e s t a b l i s h e s a p r i v i l e g e d a l l e g o r i c a l r e g i s t e r i t i d e n t i f i e s as "theory," " i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , " or " e x p l a n a t i o n . " but once a l l meaningful l e v e l s i n a t e x t , i n c l u d i n g t h e o r i e s and i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s , are r e c o g n i z e d as a l l e g o r i c a l , i t becomes d i f f i c u l t to view one of them as p r i v i l e g e d , a c c o u n t i n g f o r the r e s t . once t h i s anchor i s d i s l o d g e d , the s t a g i n g and v a l u i n g of m u l t i p l e a l l e g o r i c a l r e g i s t e r s , or " v o i c e s , " becomes an important area of concern f o r ethnographic w r i t e r s . r e c e n t l y t h i s has sometimes meant g i v i n g indigenous d i s c o u r s e a semi-independent s t a t u s i n the t e x t u a l whole, i n t e r r u p t i n g the p r i v i l e g e d monotone of " s c i e n t i f i c " r e p r e s e n t a t i o n . much of ethnography, t a k i n g i t s d i s t a n c e from t o t a l i z i n g anthropology, seeks to evoke m u l t i p l e (but not l i m i t l e s s ) a l l e g o r i e s . ( c l i f f o r d , b: ) in other words, c l i f f o r d seems to t h i n k t h a t i f ethnographies are viewed as c o l l e c t i o n s of m u l t i p l e a l l e g o r i e s , t h i s f a c t , i n and of i t s e l f , prevents them from being t o t a l i z i n g c o n s t r u c t s c o n t r i b u t i n g to a ' t o t a l i z i n g anthropology.' t h i s , however, i s f a r from the case, f o r the concept of a l l e g o r y , i n and of i t s e l f , i s a t o t a l i z i n g concept par e x c e l l e n c e . and t h i s , c l i f f o r d seems not to n o t i c e . c l i f f o r d agrees with q u i n t l l i a n t h a t a l l e g o r y i s , e s s e n t i a l l y , a form of metaphor, t h a t "any continuous or extended metaphor develops i n t o a l l e g o r y " ( c l i f f o r d , b: ). a r i s t o t l e p r o v i d e s the c l a s s i c d e f i n i t i o n of metaphor: metaphor (metaphora) c o n s i s t s i n g i v i n g (epiphora) the t h i n g a name (onomatos) t h a t belongs to something e l s e ( a l l o t r l o r e ) . the t r a n s f e r e n c e being e i t h e r from genus to s p e c i e s . . ., or from s p e c i e s to genus . . ., or from s p e c i e s to s p e c i e s . . ., or on the grounds of analogy. ( a r i s t o t l e i n d e r r i d a , m: ) in d i s c u s s i n g the preceding d e f i n i t i o n d e r r i d a emphasizes the r e l a t i o n s h i p between metaphor and t h a t which i s n o m i n a l i z a b l e : i t is under [the] heading of [the nominal, the noun] t h a t [ a r i s t o t l e ] t r e a t s metaphor (epiphora onomatos). onoma c e r t a i n l y has two v a l u e s i n t h i s context. sometimes i t i s opposed to the verb (rhema), which i m p l i e s the idea of time. sometimes i t covers the f i e l d of verbs, s i n c e metaphor, the displacement of nouns, a l s o , i n the examples g i v e n i n the p o e t i c s , p l a y s upon verbs. t h i s c o n f u s i o n i s p o s s i b l e by v i r t u e of the profound i d e n t i t y of the noun and the verb: what they have i n common i s t h a t they are i n t e l l i g i b l e i n and of themselves, have an immediate r e l a t i o n to an o b j e c t or r a t h e r to a u n i t y of meaning. they c o n s t i t u t e the order of the phon& semantike from which are excluded . . . a r t i c l e s , c o n j u n c t i o n s , p r e p o s i t i o n s , and i n general a l l the elements of language which, a c c o r d i n g to a r i s t o t l e , have no meaning i n themselves; i n other words, which do not of themselves designate something. the a d j e c t i v e i s capable of becoming s u b s t a n t i v e and nominal. to t h i s extent i t may belong to the semantic order. therefore i t seems t h a t the f i e l d of onoma -- and consequently t h a t of metaphor, as the t r a n s p o r t of names — i s l e s s t h a t of the noun i n the s t r i c t sense, (which i t a c q u i r e d v e r y l a t e i n r h e t o r i c ) , t h a n t h a t of the n o m i n a l i z a b l e . every word which r e s i s t s t h i s n o m i n a l i z a t i o n would remain f o r e i g n to metaphor. now, o n l y t h a t which c l a i m s , or h e n c e f o r t h claims — to have a complete and independent s i g n i f i c a t i o n , t h a t which i s i n t e l l i g i b l e by i t s e l f , o u t s i d e any s y n t a c t i c r e l a t i o n , can be nominalized. to take up a t r a d i t i o n a l o p p o s i t i o n t h a t s t i l l w i l l be i n use i n h u s s e r l , metaphor would be a t r a n s p o r t of categorematic and not syncategorematic words as. such. ( d e r r i d a , m: ) in other words, metaphor, and a l l concepts which are t r a c e a b l e to i t (e.g. a l l e g o r y , analogy, s i m i l e e t c . ) , i s rooted i n a n o t i o n o£ s e l f - i d e n t i c a l essence or presence. metaphor, and, by e x t e n s i o n , a l l e g o r y , has to do not with the displacement o£ meaning as such but with the replacement o£ one meaning by another, and , hence, with the r e a f f i r m a t i o n of meaning as an a l l - i n c l u s i v e , s e l f - i d e n t i c a l concept. as gasch p o i n t s out, d e r r i d a has never l e f t the s l i g h t e s t doubt t h a t metaphor i s by nature a metaphysical concept. in s p i t e , or r a t h e r because of i t s n e g a t i v i t y , i t belongs to the v e r y order and movement of meaning: the p r o v i s o r y l o s s of meaning t h a t metaphor i m p l i e s i s subordinated to the t e l e o l o g y of meaning as one moment i n the process of the s e l f - m a n i f e s t a t i o n of meaning i n a l l i t s p r o p r i e t y . the p h i l o s o p h i c a l concept of metaphor (and there i s no other) makes metaphor depend on the a b s o l u t e p a r o u s l a of meaning. (gasch<§, : ) indeed, d e r r i d a i s v e r y c l e a r in i n d i c a t i n g the p h i l o s o p h i c a l nature of metaphor and the metaphoric nature of p h i l o s o p h y : metaphor remains, i n a l l i t s e s s e n t i a l c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s , a c l a s s i c a l philosopheme, a metaphysical concept. . . . metaphor has been i s s u e d from a network of philosophemes which themselves correspond to t r o p e s or to f i g u r e s , and these philosophemes are contemporaneous to or i n s y s t e m a t i c s o l i d a r i t y with these t r o p e s or f i g u r e s . t h i s stratum of " t u t e l a r y " t r o p e s , the l a y e r of "primary" phllosophemes (assuming t h a t the q u o t a t i o n marks w i l l serve as a s u f f i c i e n t p r e c a u t i o n h e r e ) , cannot be dominated. i t cannot dominate i t s e l f , cannot be dominated by what i t i t s e l f has engendered, has made to grow on i t s own s o i l , supported on i t s own base. t h e r e f o r e , i t gets " c a r r i e d away" each time t h a t one of i t s products — here, the concept of metaphor -- attempts i n v a i n to i n c l u d e under i t s own law the t o t a l i t y of the f i e l d to which the product belongs. i f one wished to conceive and to c l a s s a l l the metaphorical p o s s i b i l i t i e s of p h i l o s o p h y , one metaphor, at l e a s t , always would remain excluded, o u t s i d e the system: the metaphor, a t the v e r y l e a s t , without which the concept of metaphor c o u l d not be c o n s t r u c t e d , . . . the metaphor of metaphor. t h i s e x t r a metaphor, remaining o u t s i d e the f i e l d t h a t i t a l l o w s to be c i r c u m s c r i b e d , e x t r a c t s or a b s t r a c t s i t s e l f from t h i s f i e l d , thus s u b t r a c t i n g i t s e l f as a metaphor l e s s . by v i r t u e of [a] t r o p i c s u p p l e m e n t a r i t y , s i n c e the e x t r a t u r n of speech becomes the m i s s i n g term of speech, the taxonomy or h i s t o r y of p h i l o s o p h i c a l metaphors [can] never [be] s a t u r a t e d . ( d e r r i d a , m: - ) in other words, what i s r a d i c a l i s not the d i s c o v e r y or r e a l i z a t i o n t h a t p h i l o s o p h i c a l works (which, of course, i n c l u d e s anthropology) are r e p l e t e with metaphors or a l l e g o r i e s -- they are so by d e f i n i t i o n (as rabinow remarks, "the i n s i g h t that a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s w r i t e employing l i t e r a r y conventions, although i n t e r e s t i n g , i s not i n h e r e n t l y c r i s i s provoking" (rabinow i n c l i f f o r d and marcus eds., c: )) but the r e c o g n i t i o n t h a t metaphor, as such, i s i n a symbiotic r e l a t i o n s h i p with p h i l o s o p h y and t h a t they must both be d e c o n s t r u c t e d . what has to be r e c o g n i z e d i s not the e x i s t e n c e o£ metaphor as such but the p o s s i b i l i t y of m e t a p h o r i c l t y i n g e n e r a l — which i s h a r d l y the same t h i n g . and t h i s comes back to the n o t i o n of o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g . i f p h i l o s o p h y i s always a l r e a d y i n v o l v e d with metaphor as a means by which to r e p r e s e n t or r e f e r to i t s e l f , and i f metaphor i s always a l r e a d y p r e d i c a t e d upon and r e f e r r i n g to p h i l o s o p h y , then we are l e f t with both a more and a l e s s f o r which n e i t h e r p h i l o s o p h y nor metaphor, as such, can account. the i d e a l of t o t a l i z a t i o n i s f i s s u r e d from the outset by the i m p o s s i b i l i t y of the e x i s t e n c e of an unmediated presence, an i m p o s s i b i l i t y which, from the o u t s e t , i n v o l v e s a ' t r o p i c s u p p l e m e n t a r i t y ' whereby the e x t r a metaphor ( i . e . the p o s s i b i l i t y of m e t a p h o r i c l t y — the metaphor of metaphor) becomes the m i s s i n g metaphor ( i . e . t h a t which escapes the t o t a l i z i n g f i e l d of p h i l o s o p h y ) . i t i s m e t a p h o r i c l t y as the p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , as s u p p l e m e n t a r i t y , i t e r a b i l i t y , d i f f r a n c e , t r a c e and so on t h a t may harbour r a d i c a l i m p l i c a t i o n s f o r p h i l o s o p h y and, by e x t e n s i o n , f o r anthropology, not metaphor or a l l e g o r y as such. c l i f f o r d never q u e s t i o n s the n o t i o n s of a l l e g o r y or metaphor as p h i l o s o p h i c a l concepts. the r e c o g n i t i o n and, i n c l i f f o r d ' s case, the c e l e b r a t i o n of ethnographic works as c o n t a i n i n g m u l t i p l e a l l e g o r i c a l r e g i s t e r s does not f r e e them from a t o t a l i z i n g metaphysics — on the c o n t r a r y , i t binds them ever more t i g h t l y to n o t i o n s of essence, presence and so on. take, f o r example, c l i f f o r d ' s e f f u s i v e p r a i s e of one of the a l l e g o r i c a l s t r a n d s of m a r j o r i e shostak's n i s a : the l i f e and words of a !kung woman: the s t o r y [of nisa's g i v i n g b i r t h ] has great immediacy. nisa's v o i c e i s unmistakable, the experience s h a r p l y evoked: "she l a y t h e r e , moving her arms about, t r y i n g to suck her f i n g e r s . " but as readers we do more than r e g i s t e r a unique event. the s t o r y ' s u n f o l d i n g r e q u i r e s us, f i r s t , to imagine a d i f f e r e n t c u l t u r a l norm (jkung b i r t h , alone i n the bush) and then to r e c o g n i z e a common human experience (the q u i e t heroism of c h i l d b i r t h , f e e l i n g s of postpartum wonder and doubt). the s t o r y of an occurrence somewhere i n the k a l a h a r i d e s e r t cannot remain j u s t t h a t . i t i m p l i e s both l o c a l c u l t u r a l meanings and a g e n e r a l s t o r y of b i r t h . a d i f f e r e n c e i s p o s i t e d and transcended. moreover, nisa's s t o r y t e l l s us (how c o u l d i t not?) something b a s i c about woman's e x p e r i e n c e . shostak's l i f e of a jkung i n d i v i d u a l i n e v i t a b l y becomes an a l l e g o r y of (female) humanity. ( c l i f f o r d , b: ) not o n l y does t h i s passage s i n g the p r a i s e s of a t o t a l i z i n g , d i a l e c t i c a l homogeneity ('a d i f f e r e n c e i s p o s i t e d and transcended' 'an a l l e g o r y of (female) humanity' e t c . ) , but i t does so i n a p a r t i c u l a r l y o f f e n s i v e manner. who i s james c l i f f o r d to d e f i n e c h i l d b i r t h as r e v e a l i n g 'something b a s i c about woman's experience'? what about the m i l l i o n s of women, myself numbered among them, to whom the experience of c h i l d b i r t h i s about as b a s i c as i s f l a p p i n g our arms and f l y i n g to the moon? what about the m i l l i o n s of women to whom c h i l d b i r t h i s a sorrow and a burden, evoking not 'wonder and doubt' but d e p r e s s i o n and d e s p a i r ? aside from the f a c t t h a t t h e r e are few t h i n g s q u i t e so o f f - p u t t i n g as some man gushing over 'the q u i e t heroism of c h i l d b i r t h ' i t seems to me t h a t c l i f f o r d here presents a c l a s s i c example of the way i n which the r e p r e s s i v e / o p p r e s s i v e nature of t o t a l i z a t i o n excludes and debases d i f f e r e n c e by subsuming i t w i t h i n a transcendent homogeneity. because he never q u e s t i o n s the nature of metaphorical and/or a l l e g o r i c a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n , c l i f f o r d never grasps the p o i n t t h a t , no matter how many a l l e g o r i c a l l e v e l s he may d e l i n e a t e or produce i n any given ethnography, so f a r from engaging i n the c o n s t r u c t i o n of a n o n - t o t a l i z i n g work, he i s merely j u g g l i n g v a r i o u s s t r a t a of meaning without ever q u e s t i o n i n g meaning as such. c l i f f o r d leaves the p h i l o s o p h i c a l f i e l d u t t e r l y i n t a c t — allegory/metaphor and p h i l o s o p h y e n d l e s s l y r e f l e c t i n g and r e f e r r i n g to each other w i t h i n a c l o s e d c i r c u l a r i t y . thus, f o r example, i n r e f e r r i n g to a passage of shostak's work wherein she d e p i c t s her banter with a twelve year o l d !kung g i r l whom she f i n d s admiring h e r s e l f i n a m i r r o r , c l i f f o r d comments ( a p p r o v i n g l y ) as f o l l o w s : a great d e a l of the book i s here: an o l d v o i c e , a young v o i c e , a m i r r o r . . . t a l k of s e l f - p o s s e s s i o n . n a r c i s s i s m , a term of deviance a p p l i e d to women of the west, i s t r a n s f i g u r e d . we n o t i c e , too, t h a t i t is the ethnographer, assuming a v o i c e of age, who has brought a m i r r o r , j u s t as nisa p r o v i d e s an a l l e g o r i c a l m i r r o r when shostak takes the r o l e of youth. ethnography gains s u b j e c t i v e "depth" through the s o r t s of r o l e s , r e f l e c t i o n s , and r e v e r s a l s dramatized here. the w r i t e r , and her readers, can be both young ( l e a r n i n g ) and o l d (knowing). they can s i m u l t a n e o u s l y l i s t e n , and "give v o i c e t o , " the other. nisa's readers f o l l o w — and prolong — the p l a y of a d e s i r e . they imagine, i n the m i r r o r of the other, a g u i l e l e s s s e l f - p o s s e s s i o n , an u n c o m p l i c a t e d f e e l i n g of " a t t r a c t i v e n e s s . " ( c l i f f o r d , b: - ) for c l i f f o r d , the other i s a m i r r o r which r e f l e c t s the s e l f and v i c e v e r s a — t h i s c i r c u l a r i t y i s s e l f - p e r p e t u a t i n g and c o n s t i t u t e s a homogeneity wherein the other as_ other has no p l a c e . in order to t h i n k a r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y one must f i r s t p e r c e i v e the cracks w i t h i n the r e f l e x i v e c i r c u l a r i t y of western c o n c e p t u a l i t y . as d e r r i d a says, the breakthrough toward r a d i c a l otherness (with r e s p e c t to the p h i l o s o p h i c a l concept — of the concept) always takes, w i t h i n p h i l o s o p h y , the form of an a p o s t e r l o r i t y or an e m p i r i c i s m . but t h i s i s an e f f e c t of the s p e c u l a r nature of p h i l o s o p h i c a l r e f l e c t i o n , p h i l o s o p h y b e i n g i n c a p a b l e of i n s c r i b i n g (comprehending) what i s o u t s i d e i t otherwise than through the a p p r o p r i a t i n g negative image of i t , and d i s s e m i n a t i o n i s w r i t t e n on the back — the t a i n — of t h a t m i r r o r . not on i t s i n v e r t e d s p e c t r e . nor i n the t r i a d l c symbolic order of i t s s u b l i m a t i o n . ( d e r r i d a , a: ) i c l i f f o r d s t a t e s t h a t , "in the human s c i e n c e s the r e l a t i o n of f a c t to a l l e g o r y i s a domain of s t r u g g l e and i n s t i t u t i o n a l d i s c i p l i n e " ( c l i f f o r d , b: ). and t h i s may, indeed, be t r u e . however, what he c o n s i s t e n t l y f a i l s to comprehend i s t h a t f a c t and a l l e g o r y are both p r e d i c a t e d upon and d e d i c a t e d to a n o t i o n of presence, of s e l f - i d e n t i c a l and unquestionable essence. to emphasize a l l e g o r y r a t h e r than f a c t i s not, as c l i f f o r d seems to t h i n k , to d i s c o v e r "a t r o u b l e d , i n v e n t i v e moment i n the h i s t o r y of c r o s s - c u l t u r a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n " ( c l i f f o r d , b: ), but merely, as the o l d s a y i n g goes, to rob peter to pay p a u l . as d e r r i d a says concerning metaphor (and, i t w i l l be remembered, t h i s a l s o a p p l i e s to a l l e g o r y ) , metaphor . . . i s determined by p h i l o s o p h y as a p r o v i s i o n a l l o s s of meaning, an economy of the proper without i r r e p a r a b l e damage, a c e r t a i n l y i n e v i t a b l e detour, but a l s o a h i s t o r y with i t s s i g h t s s e t on, and w i t h i n the h o r i z o n of, the c i r c u l a r r e a p p r o p r i a t i o n of l i t e r a l , proper meaning. t h i s i s why the p h i l o s o p h i c a l e v a l u a t i o n of metaphor always has been ambiguous: metaphor i s dangerous and f o r e i g n as concerns i n t u i t i o n ( v i s i o n or c o n t a c t ) , concept (the g r a s p i n g or proper presence of the s i g n i f i e d ) , and consciousness ( p r o x i m i t y or s e l f presence); but i t i s i n c o m p l i c i t y with what i t endangers, i s necessary to i t i n the extent to which the de-tour i s a r e - t u r n guided by the f u n c t i o n of resemblance (mimesis or h o m o i o s i s ) . under the law of the same. the o p p o s i t i o n of i n t u i t i o n , the concept, and consciousness a t t h i s p o i n t no longer has any p e r t i n e n c e . these three v a l u e s belong to the order and to the movement of meaning. l i k e metaphor. henceforth the e n t i r e t e l e o l o g y of meaning, which c o n s t r u c t s the p h i l o s o p h i c a l concept of metaphor, c o o r d i n a t e s metaphor w i t h the m a n i f e s t a t i o n of t r u t h , with the p r o d u c t i o n of t r u t h as presence without v e i l , of the r e a p p r o p r i a t i o n of a f u l l language without syntax, with the v o c a t i o n of a pure nomination: without d i f f e r e n t i a l syntax, or i n any case without a p r o p e r l y unnamable a r t i c u l a t i o n t h a t i s i r r e d u c i b l e . . . to d i a l e c t i c a l i n t e r i o r i z a t i o n . [what i s needed i s a d e c o n s t r u c t i o n of metaphor which] i s no longer a [matter] of extending and c o n f i r m i n g a philosopheme, but r a t h e r , of u n f o l d i n g i t without l i m i t , and w r e s t i n g i t s borders of p r o p r i e t y from i t . and consequently [exploding] the r e a s s u r i n g o p p o s i t i o n of the metaphoric and the proper, the o p p o s i t i o n i n which the one and the other have never done anything but r e f l e c t and r e f e r to each other i n t h e i r r a d i a n c e . ( d e r r i d a , m: - ) i would l i k e now to look a t c l i f f o r d ' s use of d i s c o u r s e , d i a l o g u e , speech and v o i c e . c l i f f o r d c o n s t a n t l y urges t h a t a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s / e t h n o g r a p h e r s u t i l i z e d i s c u r s i v e / d i a l o g i c a l r a t h e r than t e x t u a l / i n t e r p r e t i v e models or paradigms i n t h e i r accountings of other c u l t u r e s . c l i f f o r d b e l i e v e s t h a t f o c u s s i n g on attempting to capture the immediacy of the d i s c u r s i v e / d i a l o g i c a l context of speech events a l l o w s f o r the e v o c a t i o n of m u l t i p l e v o i c e s and hence f o r the d i s r u p t i o n and d i s p e r s i o n of monophonic a u t h o r i t y w i t h i n a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l / ethnographic w r i t i n g s . aside from the obvious problem of who f i n a l l y determines what ends up i n any given w r i t t e n account and what i t s format w i l l be, and, indeed, who (or what) d e c i d e s upon what i s worth w r i t i n g up i n the f i r s t place (a problem which, to be sure, c l i f f o r d does appear to r e c o g n i z e ) , there remains a major problem which c l i f f o r d does not appear to r e c o g n i z e , and t h a t i s t h a t the concepts of d i s c o u r s e , speech, v o i c e , d i a l o g u e and so on are a l l premised upon and d e d i c a t e d to an unexamined n o t i o n of presence — a n o t i o n whose a u t h o r i t a t i v e sway i s c o n s t a n t l y r e i n f o r c e d i n h i s work by i t s s t a t u s as taken f o r granted assumption. as i argue throughout t h i s d i s s e r t a t i o n , the assumption of presence i s , by d e f i n i t i o n and i n p r i n c i p l e , r e p r e s s i v e / o p p r e s s i v e and, by e x t e n s i o n , so are the working concepts of western thought which remain f i r m l y w i t h i n i t s aura. as has been s t a t e d , c l i f f o r d a s s e r t s t h a t , "a d i s c u r s i v e model of ethnographic p r a c t i c e b r i n g s i n t o prominence the i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y of speech along with i t s immediate p e r f o r m a t i v e c o n t e x t . " and he concurs with stephen t y l e r t h a t the "problem f o r a d i s c u r s i v e ethnography i s how 'to achieve by w r i t t e n means what speech c r e a t e s . ' " c l e a r l y , c l i f f o r d ' s primary focus i s on the presumed immediacy of speech and how best to d e p i c t t h a t immediacy i n ethnographic form. at t h i s p o i n t i t i s h e l p f u l to quote d e r r i d a at l e n g t h : within [the] logos, the o r i g i n a l and e s s e n t i a l l i n k to the phon& has never been broken. . . . [the] essence of the phon& [ i s p e r c e i v e d to be] immediately proximate to t h a t which w i t h i n "thought" as logos r e l a t e s to "meaning," produces i t , r e c e i v e s i t , speaks i t , "composes" i t . i f , f o r a r i s t o t l e , f o r example, "spoken words (ta_ en te phon&) are the symbols of mental experience (pathemata t e s psyches) and w r i t t e n words are the symbols of spoken words" (de i n t e r p r e t a t i o n e , , a, ) i t i s because the v o i c e , producer of the f i r s t symbols, has a r e l a t i o n s h i p of e s s e n t i a l and immediate p r o x i m i t y with the mind. . . . the f e e l i n g s of the mind, e x p r e s s i n g t h i n g s n a t u r a l l y , c o n s t i t u t e s a s o r t of u n i v e r s a l language which can then e f f a c e i t s e l f . . . . in every case, the v o i c e i s c l o s e s t to the s i g n i f i e d , whether i t i s determined s t r i c t l y as sense (thought or l i v e d ) or more l o o s e l y as t h i n g . a l l s i g n i f l e r s . . . are d e r i v a t i v e with regard to what would wed the v o i c e i n d i s s o l u b l y to the mind or to the thought of the s i g n i f i e d sense, indeed to the t h i n g i t s e l f , (whether i t i s done i n the a r i s t o t e l i a n manner we have j u s t i n d i c a t e d or in the manner of medieval theology, determining the res as a t h i n g c r e a t e d from i t s e i d o s , from i t s sense thought in the logos or i n the i n f i n i t e understanding of god). the w r i t t e n s i g n i f i e r i s always t e c h n i c a l and r e p r e s e n t a t i v e . i t has no c o n s t i t u t i v e meaning. t h i s d e r i v a t i o n i s the very o r i g i n of the n o t i o n of the " s i g n i f i e r . " the n o t i o n of the s i g n always i m p l i e s w i t h i n i t s e l f the d i s t i n c t i o n between s i g n i f i e r and s i g n i f i e d , even i f , as saussure argues, they are d i s t i n g u i s h e d simply as the two faces of one and the same l e a f . t h i s n o t i o n remains t h e r e f o r e w i t h i n the h e r i t a g e of t h a t l o g o c e n t r i s m which i s a l s o a phonocentrism: a b s o l u t e p r o x i m i t y of v o i c e and being, of v o i c e and the meaning of being, of v o i c e and the i d e a l i t y of meaning. . . . what i s s a i d of sound i n g e n e r a l i s a f o r t i o r i v a l i d f o r the phond by which, by v i r t u e of h e a r i n g (understanding)-oneself-speak — an l n d i s s o c i a b l e system — the s u b j e c t e f f e c t s i t s e l f and i s r e l a t e d to i t s e l f i n the element of i d e a l i t y . ( d e r r i d a , e: - ) and, as s t a t e d at the beginning of chapter two and worth r e - emphasizing here, phonocentrism merges with the h i s t o r i c a l d e t e r m i n a t i o n of the meaning of being i n g e n e r a l as presence, with a l l the sub-determinations which depend on t h i s g e n e r a l form and which organize w i t h i n i t t h e i r system and t h e i r h i s t o r i c a l sequence (presence of the t h i n g to s i g h t as e i d o s , presence as substance/essence/existence ( o u s l a ) , temporal presence as p o i n t (stigm ) of the now or of the moment (nun), the s e l f - presence of the c o g l t o , consciousness, s u b j e c t i v i t y , the co-presence of the other and of the s e l f , i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y as the i n t e n t i o n a l phenomenon of the ego, and so f o r t h ) . ( d e r r i d a , e: ) c l i f f o r d ' s emphasis on d i s c u r s i v i t y , the immediacy and i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y of speech, p l a c e s him s q u a r e l y w i t h i n a phenomenological p h i l o s o p h y of consciousness and/or s u b j e c t i v i t y . l i k e h u s s e r l before him, c l i f f o r d assumes the e x i s t e n c e of an i n t e n t i o n a l or c o n s t i t u t i v e consciousness and the problem i s not t h i s supposed consciousness as such but, r a t h e r , how best to d e p i c t the l n t e r s u b j e c t i v e r e l a t i o n s between such c o n s c i o u s n e s s e s . thus, i n e x t o l l i n g a d i a l o g i c a l approach to anthropology, c l i f f o r d s t a t e s , f i c t i o n s of d i a l o g u e have the e f f e c t of t r a n s f o r m i n g the " c u l t u r a l " t e x t (a r i t u a l , an i n s t i t u t i o n , a l i f e h i s t o r y , or any u n i t of t y p i c a l behavior to be d e s c r i b e d or i n t e r p r e t e d ) i n t o a speaking s u b j e c t , who sees as w e l l as i s seen, who evades, argues, probes back. in t h i s view of ethnography the proper r e f e r e n t of any account i s not a represented "world"; now i t i s s p e c i f i c i n s t a n c e s of d i s c o u r s e . but the p r i n c i p l e of d l a l o g l c a l t e x t u a l p r o d u c t i o n goes w e l l beyond the more or l e s s a r t f u l p r e s e n t a t i o n of " a c t u a l " encounters. i t l o c a t e s c u l t u r a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i n many s o r t s of r e c i p r o c a l c o n t e x t s , and i t o b l i g e s w r i t e r s to f i n d d i v e r s e ways of r e n d e r i n g n e g o t i a t e d r e a l i t i e s as m u l t i s u b j e c t i v e , power-laden, and incongruent. in t h i s view, " c u l t u r e " i s always r e l a t i o n a l , an i n s c r i p t i o n of communicative processes t h a t e x i s t , h i s t o r i c a l l y , between s u b j e c t s i n r e l a t i o n s of power. ( c l i f f o r d , a: - ) (emphasis c l i f f o r d ' s and mine) c l i f f o r d then goes on to argue t h a t , i n order to d i s p e r s e monovocal a u t h o r i t y , ethnographies must be viewed and c o n s t r u c t e d as p o l y v o c a l . but 'voice' or 'speech' as such are never questioned. i t i s t h i s r e s o l u t e non-questioning of speech which allows c l i f f o r d ( i n agreement with bakhtin) to a r r i v e a t the b i z a r r e c o n c l u s i o n t h a t the works of c h a r l e s dickens, no l e s s , "tend to r e s i s t t o t a l i t y " p r e c i s e l y because they are p l u r i v o c a l ( c l i f f o r d , f: - ). now i t does not take much more than a nodding acquaintance with dickens's work to r e a l i z e t h a t there are very few n o v e l i s t s who are more concerned with e n s u r i n g t h a t there are no loose ends, t h a t e v e r y t h i n g f i t s together i n a seamless whole, which, although i t may indeed s t r e t c h c o i n c i d e n c e to alarming i f not laughable extremes, nonetheless provides an adamantine s t r u c t u r e c o n t a i n i n g and accounting f o r any and a l l events. and so with ethnography — i t i s not the number of v o i c e s which w i l l lead to a n o n - t o t a l i z i n g product, but a re-working of the v e r y n o t i o n of speech or v o i c e as such. as d e r r i d a has shown, throughout western metaphysics speech i s presumed to be i n immediate p r o x i m i t y with being or consciousness and thus i s p e r c e i v e d to be the p r i v i l e g e d v e h i c l e of meaning. however, speech, as such, as pure and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l , does not and cannot e x i s t f o r i t i s always a l r e a d y f i s s u r e d by the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of i t s own i t e r a b i l i t y — i t s own otherness. in other words, speech's i n t e g r i t y as a s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t concept i s compromised from the outset by i t s own other because i t cannot be what i t i s unless i t adds to i t s e l f the p o s s i b i l i t y of i t s own r e p e t i t i o n — and t h i s necessary a d d i t i o n a b s o l u t e l y d i s a l l o w s i t s e x i s t e n c e as a unique, s e l f - i d e n t i c a l e n t i t y . what we have, from the o u t s e t , i s the t r a c e , d i f f r a n c e , the supplement, i . e . u n d e c i d a b i l i t y and the concomitant e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of d i s s e m i n a t i o n . what we do not have i s a s e l f - i d e n t i c a l concept and the concomitant i n e v i t a b i l i t y of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n and/or d i a l o g i c a l t o t a l i z i n g as such. because c l i f f o r d does not r a d i c a l l y q u e s t i o n h i s b a s i c concepts, i . e . speech, immediacy, d i s c o u r s e , d i a l o g u e , i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y and so on, even though he claims to be concerned with espousing a n o n - t o t a l i z i n g anthropology he i n e f f e c t does j u s t the o p p o s i t e . so f a r from i n v e n t i n g non- t o t a l i z i n g c o n s t r u c t s , c l i f f o r d merely adds h i s name to the long l i s t o£ t h i n k e r s who p r e d i c a t e t h e i r work upon a primary n o t i o n o£ s u b j e c t i v i t y — a n o t i o n which, i n t u r n , i s t i e d to a p r i v i l e g i n g of speech, d i s c o u r s e , d i a l o g u e e t c . j u s t as c l i f f o r d seems content to p o s i t t h a t p o l y v o c a l i t y ensures the n o n - p r i v i l e g i n g of the s i n g u l a r v o i c e , so he seems content to p o s i t t h a t i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y ensures the n o n - p r i v i l e g i n g of the s i n g u l a r s u b j e c t or s e l f . but t h i s i s a v e r y s u p e r f i c i a l view. numerous v o i c e s s t i l l come back to p r i v i l e g i n g v o i c e or speech as such j u s t as numerous s u b j e c t i v i t i e s s t i l l come back to p r i v i l e g i n g s u b j e c t i v i t y or consciousness as such. the m o t i v a t i n g concepts remain untouched. c l i f f o r d maintains t h a t " i d e n t i t y , c o n s i d e r e d e t h n o g r a p h i c a l l y , must always be mixed, r e l a t i o n a l , and i n v e n t i v e [ i . e . i n t e r s u b j e c t i v e ] " ( c l i f f o r d , c: ) and t h a t , ethnographic t e x t s are o r c h e s t r a t i o n s of m u l t i v o c a l exchanges o c c u r r i n g i n p o l i t i c a l l y charged s i t u a t i o n s . the s u b j e c t i v i t i e s produced i n these o f t e n unequal exchanges — whether of " n a t i v e s " or of v i s i t i n g p a r t i c i p a n t observers, are c o n s t r u c t e d domains of t r u t h , s e r i o u s f i c t i o n s . once t h i s i s r e c o g n i z e d , d i v e r s e i n v e n t i v e p o s s i b i l i t i e s f o r p o s t c o l o n i a l ethnographic r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s emerge. ( c l i f f o r d , c: ) but how does t h i s ' r e c o g n i t i o n ' d i f f e r i n any s i g n i f i c a n t way from h u s s e r l * s o b s e r v a t i o n t h a t s u b j e c t i v i t y i s c o n s t i t u t i v e ? r e f e r r i n g to s u b j e c t i v i t y or s u b j e c t i v i t i e s as 'constructed domains o£ t r u t h , s e r i o u s f i c t i o n s ' i n no way addresses the problem of s u b j e c t i v i t y as such, i . e . as, e s s e n t i a l l y , the product of a c o n s t i t u t i v e consciousness. c l i f f o r d merely p o i n t s out t h a t any given s e l f or s u b j e c t i v i t y i s 'fashioned' from numerous fragments — of language, of c u l t u r e , of i n t e r - p e r s o n a l r e l a t i o n s and so on, but even tennyson (a c o n s e r v a t i v e , t o t a l i z i n g poet i f ever t h e r e was one) c o u l d acknowledge as much: "i am a p a r t of a l l t h a t i have met" (tennyson, : ). i t i s the o l d husserlean t r i c k of t r a n s f o r m i n g s u b j e c t i v i t y i n t o i n t e r s u b j e c t l v i t y i n a desperate b i d to a v o i d s o l i p s i s m , and i t works f o r c l i f f o r d about as w e l l as i t worked f o r h u s s e r l . as d e r r i d a says, a c c o r d i n g to h u s s e r l . . . the s u b j e c t [ i s ] designated i n terms of the c l a s s i c a l metaphysical schema which d i s t i n g u i s h e s substance (present being) from i t s a t t r i b u t e s . another schema t h a t keeps the . . . a n a l y s i s w i t h i n the c l o s u r e of the metaphysics of presence i s the s u b j e c t - o b j e c t o p p o s i t i o n . t h i s being whose "absolute p r o p e r t i e s " are i n d e s c r i b a b l e i s present as a b s o l u t e s u b j e c t i v i t y , i s an a b s o l u t e l y present and a b s o l u t e l y s e l f - p r e s e n t being, o n l y i n o p p o s i t i o n to the o b j e c t . the o b j e c t i s r e l a t i v e ; what i s a b s o l u t e i s the s u b j e c t . . . . t h i s d e t e r m i n a t i o n of "absolute s u b j e c t i v i t y " would . . . have to be c r o s s e d out as soon as we conceive the present on the b a s i s of d i f f e r e n c e , and not the r e v e r s e . the concept of s u b j e c t i v i t y belongs a p r i o r i and i n g e n e r a l to the order of the c o n s t i t u t e d . t h i s holds a f o r t i o r i f o r the a n a l o g i c a l a p p r e s e n t a t i o n t h a t c o n s t i t u t e s i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y . ( d e r r i d a , b: - ) in other words, i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y is as much a product of the n o t i o n of c o n s t i t u t i v e or i n t e n t i o n a l consciousness as i s s u b j e c t i v i t y per se. but i f , as we have seen, consciousness i s not and cannot be an a b s o l u t e l y s e l f - p r e s e n t and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l e n t i t y , then not o n l y the n o t i o n of consciousness, but the n o t i o n s of i n t e n t i o n a l i t y , the s e l f , s u b j e c t i v i t y , i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y and so on must be rethought as w e l l . t h i s c l i f f o r d does not r e c o g n i z e . j u s t as c l i f f o r d ' s n o t i o n of s u b j e c t i v i t y may be seen to have i t s r o o t s i n h u s s e r l , so h i s n o t i o n of d i a l o g u e may be seen to have i t s r o o t s i n gadamer. as was shown i n chapter three, gadamer r e l i e s on a p l a t o n i c n o t i o n of d i a l o g u e i n order to achieve h i s hermeneutlc ' f u s i o n of h o r i z o n s ' and the concomitant attainment of 'the common meaning.' in the same way, c l i f f o r d ' s n o t i o n of 'negotiated r e a l i t i e s ' r e l i e s on an e s s e n t i a l l y p l a t o n i c cum gadamerlan n o t i o n of d i a l o g u e wherein the ' t r u t h * ( p a r t i a l or otherwise) of any g i v e n s i t u a t i o n i s determined by the ' f u s i o n ' of the views of the n e g o t i a t i n g p a r t i e s . again, the f a c t t h a t c l i f f o r d i n s i s t s upon the non-absolute ( i . e . the ' p a r t i a l ' nature of 'truth') i n no way d i s c o u n t s the f a c t t h a t h i s e n t i r e conceptual system remains p r e d i c a t e d upon and d e d i c a t e d to an unexamined n o t i o n of presence which, by d e f i n i t i o n , i m p l i e s the e x i s t e n c e of the v e r y a b s o l u t e s he i s a t pains to deny. in other words, i t i s no use denying the p o s s i b i l i t y of a t t a i n i n g absolute t r u t h i f one's e n t i r e conceptual frame assumes t h a t p o s s i b i l i t y — one must f i r s t look to one's taken f o r granted n o t i o n s f o r , to paraphrase a r i s t o t l e , the unexamined concept i s not worth having. so with speech and d i a l o g u e , f o r , as d e r r i d a p o i n t s out, [the system of speech] r e q u i r e s t h a t i t be heard and understood immediately by whoever emits i t . i t produces a s i g n i f i e r which seems not to f a l l i n t o the world, o u t s i d e the i d e a l i t y of the s i g n i f i e d , but to remain s h e l t e r e d — even a t the moment t h a t i t a t t a i n s the audiophonic system of the other -- w i t h i n the pure i n t e r i o r i t y of a u t o - a f f e c t i o n . i t does not f a l l i n t o the e x t e r i o r i t y of space, i n t o what one c a l l s the world, which i s nothing but the o u t s i d e of speech. within s o - c a l l e d " l i v i n g " speech, the s p a t i a l e x t e r i o r i t y of the s i g n i f i e r seems a b s o l u t e l y reduced. . . c o n v e r s a t i o n [dialogue] i s , then, a communication between two a b s o l u t e o r i g i n s t h a t , i f one may venture the formula, a u t o - a f f e c t r e c i p r o c a l l y , r e p e a t i n g as immediate echo the auto- a f f e c t i o n produced by the other. immediacy i s here the myth of consciousness. speech and consciousness of speech — t h a t i s to say consciousness simply as s e l f - p r e s e n c e — are the phenomenon of an a u t o - a f f e c t i o n l i v e d as s u p p r e s s i o n of d l f f f r a n c e . that phenomenon, the presumed s u p p r e s s i o n of d i f f r a n c e , t h a t l i v e d r e d u c t i o n of the o p a c i t y of the s i g n i f i e r , are the o r i g i n s of what i s c a l l e d presence. ( d e r r i d a , e: ) and, indeed, c l i f f o r d v e r y much s u b s c r i b e s to t h i s system of speech and d i a l o g u e as i n d i c a t i v e of immediate and unmediated i n s t a n c e s of presence — "the proper r e f e r e n t of any account i s not a represented 'world,' . . . i t i s s p e c i f i c i n s t a n c e s of d i s c o u r s e " ( c l i f f o r d , a: ). these 'instances of d i s c o u r s e ' are composed of d l a l o g l c a l s i t u a t i o n s , the i n t e r s u b j e c t i v e nature of which i t i s the task of the ethnographer to n e g o t i a t e . but t h i s e n t i r e procedure takes p l a c e w i t h i n the unquestioned domain of speech as presence, of speech as immediate and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l and, as we have seen, speech, being s u b j e c t to i t e r a b i l i t y , i s always a l r e a d y r i d d l e d with i t s own i m p o s s i b i l i t y as such — with i t s own i m p o s s i b i l i t y as an unmedlated, s e l f - i d e n t i c a l concept. again, the r a m i f i c a t i o n s of t h i s must be c o n s i d e r e d . f i n a l l y , although c l i f f o r d c r i t i c i z e s an anthropology t h a t , monophonically, 'has claimed to r e p r e s e n t c u l t u r e s ' (emphasis c l i f f o r d ' s ) he has no d i f f i c u l t y i n p e r c e i v i n g anthropology as 'a d l a l o g l c a l e n t e r p r i s e i n which both r e s e a r c h e r s and n a t i v e s are . . . authors of c u l t u r a l r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s ' (emphasis mine). in other words, he never q u e s t i o n s the nature of r e p r e s e n t a t i o n as such. the oxford e n g l i s h d i c t i o n a r y d e f i n e s the verb 'to r e p r e s e n t ' as f o l l o w s : "place l i k e n e s s of before mind or senses, serve or be meant as l i k e n e s s of . . .symbolize, a c t as embodiment of, stand f o r , correspond t o . " thus, r e p r e s e n t a t i o n may be seen to be p a r t of the order of the s i g n i n g e n e r a l (n.b. the oed d e f i n e s ' s i g n ' as " t h i n g used as r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of something") — t h a t i s to say, i t assumes the p o s s i b i l i t y of r e - p r e s e n t i n g an idea or phenomenon which p r e - e x i s t s s a i d r e p r e s e n t a t i o n as a s e l f - c o n t a i n e d p l e n i t u d e . as d e r r i d a p o i n t s out, between the overture and the p h i l o s o p h i c a l a c c o m p l i s h m e n t of phonologism (or l o g o c e n t r i s m ) , the motif of presence was d e c i s i v e l y a r t i c u l a t e d . i t underwent an i n t e r n a l m o d i f i c a t i o n whose most conspicuous index was the moment of c e r t i t u d e i n the c a r t e s i a n c o g i t o . before t h a t , the i d e n t i t y of presence o f f e r e d to the mastery of r e p e t i t i o n was c o n s t i t u t e d under the " o b j e c t i v e " form of the i d e a l i t y of the eidos or the s u b s t a n t i a l i t y of o u s i a . t h e r e a f t e r , t h i s o b j e c t i v i t y takes the form of r e p r e s e n t a t i o n , of the idea as the m o d i f i c a t i o n of a s e l f - p r e s e n t substance, conscious and c e r t a i n of i t s e l f a t the moment of i t s r e l a t i o n s h i p to i t s e l f . within i t s most g e n e r a l form, the mastery of presence a c q u i r e s a s o r t of i n f i n i t e assurance. the power of r e p e t i t i o n t h a t the eidos and o u s i a made a v a i l a b l e seems to a c q u i r e an a b s o l u t e i n d e p e n d e n c e . i d e a l i t y and s u b s t a n t i a l i t y r e l a t e to themselves, i n the element of the res c o g l t a n s , by a movement of pure a u t o - a f f e c t i o n . consciousness i s the experience of pure a u t o - a f f e c t i o n . ( d e r r i d a , e: - ) in other words, i n p o s t - c a r t e s i a n p h i l o s o p h y the concept of r e p r e s e n t a t i o n i s i n d i s s o c i a b l e from the concept of consciousness as pure a u t o - a f f e c t i o n — as pure s e l f - presence. we have a l r e a d y seen how the c a r t e s i a n n o t i o n of consciousness i s developed and extended by h u s s e r l and how husserlean phenomenology i s assumed by both ' i n t e r p r e t i v e ' anthropology v i s & v i s geertz and 'postmodern* anthropology v i s & v i s c l i f f o r d . the n o t i o n of r e p r e s e n t a t i o n as such assumes a p h i l o s o p h y of s u b j e c t i v i t y which takes as i t s moment of i n d u b i t a b i l i t y the moment of consciousness as pure s e l f - p r e s e n c e . to repeat, r e p r e s e n t a t i o n i s what r e - p r e s e n t s an assumed o r i g i n a r y s e l f - p r e s e n c e . however, i f the concept of presence, i n a l l i t s v a r i e d m a n i f e s t a t i o n s (e.g. speech, consciousness, metaphor e t c . ) , i s c a l l e d i n t o q u e s t i o n , so, too, i s the concept of r e p r e s e n t a t i o n . i f presence i s always a l r e a d y d i v i d e d , always a l r e a d y r i d d l e d with i t s own absence, then r e p r e s e n t a t i o n as such i s no longer a v i a b l e concept f o r i t can no longer r e - p r e s e n t a unique, s e l f - c o n t a i n e d phenomenon — which i s to say t h a t i t cannot r e - p r e s e n t , as such, a t a l l . c l i f f o r d , l i k e geertz, and, indeed, l i k e a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s i n g e n e r a l , must become more aware of the i m p l i c a t i o n s of western c o n c e p t u a l i t y . unless and u n t i l t h i s happens c l i f f o r d , and a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s i n g e n e r a l , w i l l continue, w i t t i n g l y or u n w i t t i n g l y , to r e i n f o r c e and to perpetuate the r e p r e s s i o n / o p p r e s s i o n which comes with an unexamined acceptance of t o t a l i z a t i o n and homogeneity. chapter f i v e concluding assessments in t h i s f i n a l chapter i w i l l begin by a s s e s s i n g what i have a l r e a d y s a i d about geertz and c l i f f o r d r e s p e c t i v e l y , and, i n so doing, w i l l attempt to show t h a t i n t e r p r e t i v e and 'postmodern' anthropology are two s i d e s of the same o l d c o i n . having done t h a t , i w i l l then go on to suggest why a s e r i o u s c o n s i d e r a t i o n of derridean d e c o n s t r u c t i o n i s of c r u c i a l importance to the d i s c i p l i n e of anthropology. both geertz and c l i f f o r d have t h e i r r o o t s i n phenomenology and hermeneutlcs and both p r o f e s s to be concerned with r e s c u i n g c u l t u r a l d i v e r s i t y from an o v e r a r c h i n g u n i t y or t o t a l i t y . t h e i r main d i f f e r e n c e seems to be m e t h o d o l o g i c a l , i n t h a t geertz p r e f e r s the r i c o e u r i a n model of the t e x t whereas c l i f f o r d p r e f e r s the gadamerlan model of the d i a l o g u e . thus geertz lauds the p o s s i b i l i t y of a • f i x a t i o n of meaning' through e s t a b l i s h i n g a " c o n s u l t a b l e r e c o r d of what man has s a i d " (geertz, : ) while c l i f f o r d lauds the p o s s i b i l i t y of a ' s p e c i f i c a t i o n of d i s c o u r s e s ' through emphasizing "the i n t e r s u b j e c t i v i t y of i n t e r e s t i n g l y , rabinow comments t h a t i n c l i f f o r d ' s a r t i c l e , "on ethnographic a u t h o r i t y " (representations , no. , : - ), he p r a i s e s gadamer f o r a s p i r i n g to ' r a d i c a l d i a l o g i s m . however, i n the r e p r i n t of t h i s a r t i c l e i n c l i f f o r d ' s the predicament of c u l t u r e , a l l r e f e r e n c e to gadamer has been d e l e t e d , one wonders why. speech, along with i t s immediate p e r f o r m a t i v e c o n t e x t " ( c l i f f o r d , f: ). in other words, geertz a b s t r a c t s from the d l a l o g l c a l s i t u a t i o n ( s ) through a process of guess and v a l i d a t i o n whereby he a r r i v e s at the ' p a r t i a l t r u t h ' of an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n whereas c l i f f o r d attempts to r e p r e s e n t the d i a l o g i c a l s i t u a t i o n ( s ) as such whereby he a r r i v e s a t the ' p a r t i a l t r u t h ' of a n e g o t i a t e d ' r e a l i t y . ' but both authors p e r c e i v e the doing of anthropology to be i n v o l v e d with a hermeneutlc idea of process (geertz through h i s n o t i o n of d i a l e c t i c and c l i f f o r d through h i s n o t i o n of d i a l o g u e ) and both authors p r i v i l e g e a phenomenological idea of the c o n s t i t u t i v e or i n t e n t i o n a l nature of consciousness (geertz through h i s n o t i o n of meaning and c l i f f o r d through h i s n o t i o n of speech). f u r t h e r to t h i s , both authors emphasize the importance of n a r r a t i v e and/or s t o r i e s with r e s p e c t to ethnography (e.g. geertz: "[ethnography should be] c a s t . . . as a n a r r a t o l o g i c a l i s s u e , a matter of how best to get an honest s t o r y h o n e s t l y t o l d " (geertz, b: ) and c l i f f o r d : "[a r e c o g n i t i o n of a l l e g o r y ] shows the ethnography t o be a h i e r a r c h i c a l s t r u c t u r e of powerful s t o r i e s [and] heightens awareness of the n a r r a t i v e . . . i m p l i c i t y or e x p l i c i t l y a t work" ( c l i f f o r d , b: - )). ( i t w i l l , of course, be remembered t h a t n a r r a t i v i t y as such i s , by d e f i n i t i o n , a t e l e o l o g i c a l / t o t a l i z i n g concept.) thus geertz and c l i f f o r d , t h e i r r e s p e c t i v e emphases on t e x t and i n t e r p r e t a t i o n on the one hand and speech and d i a l o g u e on the other n o t w i t h s t a n d i n g , may be seen to be both i n h e r i t o r s and, more i m p o r t a n t l y , p e r p e t u a t o r s of a p h i l o s o p h i c a l c o n c e p t u a l i t y which m i t i g a t e s a g a i n s t t h e i r p r o f e s s e d d e s i r e to emphasize d i v e r s i t y / h e t e r o g e n e i t y over unity/homogeneity. at t h i s p o i n t i t i s necessary to take a b r i e f look at the term 'postmodern' and attempt both to s i t u a t e i t and to assess i t s a p p r o p r i a t e n e s s as a d e s c r i p t i v e tag f o r the work of james c l i f f o r d . mark t a y l o r p r o v i d e s the c l e a r e s t account of postmodernism and i t s r e l a t i o n s h i p to modernism t h a t i have yet encountered and so i w i l l quote him a t some l e n g t h : the search f o r i r r e d u c i b l e d i f f e r e n c e and r a d i c a l otherness obsesses many of our most i m a g i n a t i v e and c r e a t i v e a r t i s t s , w r i t e r s , p h i l o s o p h e r s , p s y c h o l o g i s t s , and t h e o l o g i a n s . although i t r e c u r s throughout the century, concern with d i f f e r e n c e and otherness i s a d i s t i n g u i s h i n g t r a i t of t h i n k e r s who can be d e s c r i b e d as "postmodern." "postmodernism" i s a n o t o r i o u s l y vague term. the o b s c u r i t y of postmodernism r e f l e c t s , i n p a r t , the c o n t i n u i n g c o n f u s i o n surrounding the n o t i o n of the modern. . . . while i t i s impossible to d e f i n e and d e l i m i t modernity with any degree of p r e c i s i o n , there seems to be a consensus t h a t modern p h i l o s o p h y begins with descartes's inward t u r n to the s u b j e c t . plagued by u n c e r t a i n t y and doubt, descartes seeks c e r t a i n t y through doubt. he doubts e v e r y t h i n g u n t i l he reaches what he regards as i n d u b i t a b l e - - h i s own doubting s e l f . descartes for an i n t e r e s t i n g account of the v a r i o u s s t r a n d s of postmodernist thought, the reader may wish to c o n s u l t e. ann kaplan, ed. postmodernism and i t s d i s c o n t e n t s : t h e o r i e s , p r a c t i c e s (london: verso, ). l a b e l s t h i s s e l f - c e r t a i n s u b j e c t res c o g l t a n s , which he d i s t i n g u i s h e s from a l l e l s e , d e s c r i b e d as res extensa. having r a d i c a l l y d i f f e r e n t i a t e d res c o g l t a n s from res extensa, descartes faces the problem of e s t a b l i s h i n g the r e l a t i o n s h i p between s u b j e c t i v i t y and o b j e c t i v i t y . in a move t h a t becomes d e c i s i v e f o r many l a t e r t h i n k e r s , descartes i n s i s t s t h a t the s u b j e c t ' s r e l a t i o n to otherness i s mediated by and r e d u c i b l e to i t s r e l a t i o n s h i p to i t s e l f . in the wake of descartes's m e d i t a t i o n s , modern p h i l o s o p h y becomes a p h i l o s o p h y of the s u b j e c t . as the l o c u s of c e r t a i n t y and t r u t h , s u b j e c t i v i t y i s the f i r s t p r i n c i p l e from which e v e r y t h i n g a r i s e s and to which a l l must be r e t u r n e d . with the movement from descartes, through the enlightenment to i d e a l i s m and romanticism, a t t r i b u t e s t r a d i t i o n a l l y p r e d i c a t e d of the d i v i n e s u b j e c t are g r a d u a l l y d i s p l a c e d onto the human s u b j e c t . through a d i a l e c t i c a l r e v e r s a l , the c r e a t o r god d i e s and i s r e s u r r e c t e d i n the c r e a t i v e s u b j e c t . as god c r e a t e d the world through the logos, so man c r e a t e s a "world" through conscious and unconscious p r o j e c t i o n . in d i f f e r e n t terms, the modern s u b j e c t d e f i n e s i t s e l f by i t s c o n s t r u c t i v e a c t i v i t y . l i k e god, the s o v e r e i g n s u b j e c t r e l a t e s o n l y to what i t c o n s t r u c t s and t h e r e f o r e i s u n a f f e c t e d by anything other than i t s e l f . what appears to be a r e l a t i o n s h i p to otherness -- be t h a t other god, nature, o b j e c t s , s u b j e c t , c u l t u r e or h i s t o r y — always turns out to be an aspect of mediate s e l f - r e l a t i o n t h a t i s necessary f o r complete s e l f - r e a l i z a t i o n i n t r a n s p a r e n t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s . absolute knowledge a c t u a l i z e d i n the f u l l s e l f - consciousness of the s u b j e c t seems to r e a l i z e western philosophy's dream of e n j o y i n g a t o t a l presence t h a t i s n e i t h e r d i s t u r b e d by i r r e d u c i b l e d i f f e r e n c e nor i n t e r r u p t e d by the r e t u r n of an a b s o l u t e other. ( t a y l o r , a: x x i - x x l i ) thus modernism has to do with n o t i o n s o£ s e l f - i d e n t i c a l / s e l f - c e r t a i n knowledge and t o t a l i t y ( i . e . presence), whereas postmodernism has to do with i r r e d u c i b l e d i f f e r e n c e and r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y ( i . e . u n d e c i d a b i l i t y ) . in these terms, c l i f f o r d f a l l s as much i n t o the modernist camp as does geertz f o r , as has been seen, both he and geertz r e l y on a c o n c e p t u a l i t y t h a t i s phenomenological/hermeneutical — i . e . a c o n c e p t u a l i t y t h a t i s rooted i n assumptions of s u b j e c t i v i t y (and hence t o t a l i t y ) on the one hand and assumptions of d i a l e c t i c l t y (and hence t o t a l i t y ) on the other. t h i s being the case, the term 'postmodernism' i s a misnomer as a p p l i e d to c l i f f o r d and i t i s e x c e e d i n g l y unfortunate t h a t t h i s a p p l i c a t i o n has gained c u r r e n c y i n r e c e n t a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l l i t e r a t u r e f o r i t can do nothing but spawn c o n f u s i o n . (in one r e c e n t a r t i c l e (kapferer, ) even geertz i s r e f e r r e d to as postmodernist!) i t does not s u f f i c e merely to s t a t e t h a t one i s n o n - t o t a l i z i n g i n order a c t u a l l y to be so -- i f one's c o n c e p t u a l i t y does not f o l l o w s u i t one ends up being merely c o n t r a d i c t o r y . and i f t h i s c o n t r a d i c t i o n i s not r e c o g n i z e d and i t s r a m i f i c a t i o n s pursued (as i t i s not and they are not i n c l i f f o r d ' s work) then one submits to t o t a l i t y by d e f a u l t , f o r one's i n t e n t i o n s w i l l always remain prey to the assumptions i m p l i c i t w i t h i n one's conceptual frame. as v i n c e n t descombes remarks, "we must be wary of m i s t a k i n g the wish to reach the promised land f o r having a l r e a d y a r r i v e d t h e r e " (descombes, : ). in any case, g i v e n t h a t what holds f o r geertz and c l i f f o r d a l s o holds f o r anthropology i n g e n e r a l , i . e . t h a t i t s conceptual frames are embedded i n an assumed n o t i o n of presence which always subsumes d i f f e r e n c e w i t h i n i d e n t i t y , d i v e r s i t y w i t h i n u n i t y , the problem becomes how to a v o i d doing t h i s while s t i l l remaining coherent. and i t i s c r u c i a l to a v o i d t h i s assumption of presence because such an assumption, r e q u i r i n g , as i t does, a s e r i e s of h i e r a r c h i c a l o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r s wherein one term i s always seen as s u b s e r v i e n t to and/or as a f a l l i n g away from the favoured term (which i s always c l o s e r to an assumed presence than i s i t s p a r t n e r ) , cannot h e l p but be both r e p r e s s i v e and o p p r e s s i v e . indeed, the assumption of presence is the very essence of r e p r e s s i v i t y and o p p r e s s i v i t y f o r i t r e q u i r e s , by d e f i n i t i o n and i n p r i n c i p l e , t h a t there be an a b s o l u t e , a ' t r a n s c e n d e n t a l s i g n i f i e d , ' which e x i s t s as an u l t i m a t e , u t t e r l y dominant, s e l f - c e r t a i n p l e n i t u d e . i t f o l l o w s t h a t d i f f e r e n c e and otherness are given credence o n l y i n so f a r as they have the s t a t u s of mere v a r i a t i o n s on a theme (the theme, of course, being a b s o l u t e presence) -- they are not viewed as i n any way t h r e a t e n i n g to the fundamental assumption of o v e r - a r c h i n g p l e n i t u d e . t h i s being the case, the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of u n d e c l d a b i l i t y , of r a d i c a l otherness, of r a d i c a l d i f f e r e n c e -- an otherness and a d i f f e r e n c e t h a t a c t u a l l y d i s r u p t s and d i s p l a c e s a s e l f - c e r t a i n , s e l f - i d e n t i c a l presence — i s never s e r i o u s l y c o n s i d e r e d because such a p o s s i b i l i t y i s presumed, from the o u t s e t , to be u t t e r l y i m p o s s i b l e . now i t i s not d i f f i c u l t to see how the p r e s u p p o s i t i o n of presence works i t s e l f out in p r a c t i c e — i t is the v e r y c h a r t e r f o r sexism, r a c i s m and god-is-on-our-side p o l i t i c s of every d e s c r i p t i o n . and, indeed, how c o u l d i t not be? for i f e v e r y t h i n g is presumed, i n the ' f i n a l a n a l y s i s , ' to r e f e r to an u l t i m a t e , s e l f - c e r t a i n and s e l f - c o n t a i n e d presence, then there cannot help but be corresponding n o t i o n s as to which e x i s t i n g phenomena most c l o s e l y approximate to t h a t presence. thus those phenomena which are p e r c e i v e d to be nearer to presence ( i n the guise of god, the good, t r u t h , the proper or whatever) are favoured while those which are p e r c e i v e d to be f u r t h e r from presence are d e r i d e d . to take an obvious example, western european c u l t u r e was (and, make no mistake, s t i l l i s ) presumed to be s u p e r i o r to non-western european c u l t u r e s because the former was considered to be c l o s e r to god, the r l g h t n e s s and i n e v i t a b i l i t y of 'progress and c i v i l i z a t i o n ' and so on. thus the 'white man's burden* was p e r c e i v e d to c o n s i s t of b r i n g i n g out the human essence of s u b j e c t peoples by t r a n s f o r m i n g them i n t o minor v e r s i o n s of western europeans. what i s t h i s but the r e p r e s s i o n / o p p r e s s i o n of d i f f e r e n c e i n the name of e s s e n t i a l i d e n t i t y ? and, of course, i t is no s e c r e t as to who gets to d e f i n e what i s e s s e n t i a l and what should be developed, what d i s c o u r a g e d . a l l t h i s i s , of course, w e l l documented and need not be dwelt upon here, what concerns me is t h a t t h i s same d e d i c a t i o n to presence remains f u l l y o p e r a t i v e today and continues to foment r e p r e s s i o n and o p p r e s s i o n . the p o i n t i s , i b e l i e v e , with d e r r i d a , t h a t so long as our c o n c e p t u a l i t y remains premised upon and d e d i c a t e d to an unexamined n o t i o n of presence, so long w i l l r e p r e s s i o n / oppression be, by d e f i n i t i o n and i n p r i n c i p l e , i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d and i n e v i t a b l e . i do not pretend to know e x a c t l y how to d e a l with t h i s s i t u a t i o n , but i do not t h i n k t h a t i t i s p o s s i b l e to over-emphasize the importance of, a t the very l e a s t , r e c o g n i z i n g and acknowledging i t . and along with r e c o g n i t i o n and acknowledgement comes the o b l i g a t i o n not to shy away from the e f f o r t i n v o l v e d i n t r y i n g to get out of the mire of 'the o l d q u e s t i o n s , the o l d answers* (as t.s, e l i o t says, i n a r a t h e r d i f f e r e n t context, " a f t e r such knowledge, what f o r g i v e n e s s ? " ( e l i o t , b: )) but, r a t h e r , to take the advice of the l a t e j a n i s j o p l i n : "you know what you b e t t e r do baby — you b e t t e r t r y harder" ( j o p l i n , ). so, i n t h i s e f f o r t of t r y i n g , t h i s t r y i n g e f f o r t , i t i s time to take a c l o s e r look at u n d e c l d a b i l i t y . as w i l l be remembered from chapter two, the d i s s e m i n a t i v e p l a y of u n d e c l d a b i l i t y i s an always a l r e a d y o c c u r r i n g process which prevents any given concept from ever being c l o s e d and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l ( i t s i m p o s s i b i l i t y ) while s i m u l t a n e o u s l y a l l o w i n g f o r the e x i s t e n c e of the concept as an e f f e c t ( i t s p o s s i b i l i t y ) , once concepts are seen as e f f e c t s of a p r i m o r d i a l d i s s e m i n a t i v e u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , they are precluded from occupying any p o s i t i o n of absolute dominance because they are recognized as being always a l r e a d y f i s s u r e d by a p l a y which determines both t h e i r p o s s i b i l i t y and t h e i r i m p o s s i b i l i t y -- a p l a y which prevents them from ever a b s o l u t e l y accounting f o r any given s i t u a t i o n whatsoever. again, i must emphasize t h a t t h i s i s not to say t h a t concepts w i l l cease to f u n c t i o n -- o n l y t h a t they w i l l cease to f u n c t i o n as a l l - d e t e r m i n i n g e n t i t l e s or essences, i . e . as concepts as such. as henry staten puts i t , d e r r i d a . . . denies what we c o u l d c a l l the i m p e r m e a b i l i t y of the as-such, the t r a n s c e n d e n t a i t y o r l o g i c a l superhardness of the b a r r i e r t h a t marks o f f the conceptual p u r i t y of x from e v e r y t h i n g t h a t i s not-x. i t i s not t h a t i d e n t i t y i s drowned i n otherness, but t h a t i t i s n e c e s s a r i l y open to i t , contaminated by i t . yet the n e c e s s i t y or e s s e n t i a l c h a r a c t e r of t h i s contamination cannot be named unless we f i r s t grasp the concept or essence or form as p u r i t y , as pure p o s i t i v e s e l f - i d e n t i t y . otherwise e i t h e r there i s nothing to contaminate, or the f o r c e of the contamination i s not f e l t . furthermore, the claims of p o s i t i v e s e l f - i d e n t i t y are undeniable. i t should be noted t h a t t h i s holds f o r the concept of d i f f e r e n c e every b i t as much as i t holds f o r the concept of i d e n t i t y . the reader must take care not to confuse ' d i f f e r e n c e , ' a p h i l o s o p h i c a l concept which presupposes u l t i m a t e r e s o l u t i o n w i t h i n a u n i f i c , s e l f - i d e n t i c a l presence, with d l f f f r a n c e , the always a l r e a d y o c c u r r i n g process of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , which i s n e i t h e r d i f f e r e n c e nor i d e n t i t y but which a l l o w s f o r the p o s s i b i l i t y of both as an e f f e c t of i t s d i s s e m i n a t i v e p l a y . the now cannot be reduced to the not-now. i t s e s s e n t i a l l i n k a g e with the not-now compromises the p u r i t y of i t s p o s i t i v e i d e n t i t y without d e s t r o y i n g i t . the p o i n t of departure of d e c o n s t r u c t i o n from p h i l o s o p h y i s thus q u i t e s u b t l e . the value and n e c e s s i t y of pure concepts and c a t e g o r i e s are not denied, but they are no longer the l a s t word. we no longer simply note and then s e t a s i d e the f a c t u a l or e m p i r i c a l contamination of our u n i t i e s , but see t h a t they are impure always and in p r i n c i p l e , and pursue the i m p l i c a t i o n s of t h i s e s s e n t i a l law of i m p u r i t y . (staten, : - ) now i f concepts, as such, can no longer be seen to t o t a l l y dominate any given f i e l d , can no longer be seen to have 'the l a s t word,' then i t becomes necessary to r e - t h i n k c o n c e p t u a l i t y as such and to take account of i t s e s s e n t i a l openness to r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y . and t h i s r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y , t h i s otherness which cannot be homogenized w i t h i n the s e l f - same of c l a s s i c a l c o n c e p t u a l i t y , i s the d i s s e m i n a t i v e p l a y of u n d e c l d a b i l i t y . i t i s important to r e a l i z e t h a t the d e c o n s t r u c t i v e concern with u n d e c l d a b i l i t y i s n e i t h e r negative nor n i h i l i s t i c . as d e r r i d a says, d e c o n s t r u c t i o n always presupposes a f f i r m a t i o n , as i have f r e q u e n t l y attempted to p o i n t out. . . . i do not mean that the d e c o n s t r u c t i n g s u b j e c t or s e l f a f f i r m s . i mean t h a t d e c o n s t r u c t i o n i s , i n i t s e l f , a p o s i t i v e response to an a l t e r i t y which n e c e s s a r i l y c a l l s , summons or motivates i t . . . . the other, as the other than s e l f , the other t h a t opposes s e l f - i d e n t i t y , i s not something t h a t can be d e t e c t e d and d i s c l o s e d w i t h i n a p h i l o s o p h i c a l space and with the a i d of a p h i l o s o p h i c a l lamp. the other precedes p h i l o s o p h y and n e c e s s a r i l y invokes and provokes the s u b j e c t before any genuine q u e s t i o n i n g can begin. i t i s i n t h i s rapport with the other t h a t a f f i r m a t i o n expresses i t s e l f . ( d e r r i d a i n kearney, ed., : ) in other words, d e c o n s t r u c t i o n , u n l i k e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n or e x p l a n a t i o n as such (which, being p r e d i c a t e d upon notions of presence, presuppose the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of c l o s u r e , e.g. an u l t i m a t e r e f e r e n t i n the guise of an i n t e r p r e t e d theme(s) on the one hand or an e x p l a i n e d s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t r e s u l t on the other) c o n c e n t r a t e s on the p l a y of a n o n - f i n i t e d i s s e m i n a t i o n (which, being p r e d i c a t e d on o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g and u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , presupposes the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of openness). t h i s d i s s e m i n a t i v e p l a y c o n s t a n t l y a f f i r m s an u n d e c i d a b i l i t y which, i n a l l o w i n g f o r both the p o s s i b i l i t y and i m p o s s i b i l i t y of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n / e x p l a n a t i o n as such, i n s i s t s on a r e c o g n i t i o n of r a d i c a l openness which c a l l s i n t o q u e s t i o n the c l a s s i c a l n o t i o n of the concept along with the e n t i r e t r a d i t i o n of western thought which presupposes i t s a u t h o r i t y . to put i t another way, d e r r i d a ' s concern with u n d e c i d a b i l i t y does not negate western p h i l o s o p h y — . i t s i t u a t e s i t . that i s to say, r a t h e r than being seen as s e l f - c o n t a i n e d and i n e v i t a b l e , western thought i s seen as merely one p o s s i b l e o f f s h o o t of an o r i g i n a r y u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , and, as such, i t i s always a l r e a d y r i d d l e d with the p o s s i b i l i t y of what i t d e f i n e s i t s e l f as most p r o p e r l y not being, i . e . i t s other. and t h i s e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y p r o h i b i t s western thought from ever a t t a i n i n g a c l o s u r e and a dominance which i t nonetheless presumes. s i m i l a r l y , with r e s p e c t to u n d e c i d a b i l i t y e n t a i l i n g n i h i l i s m or a b s o l u t e indeterminacy, d e r r i d a comments as f o l l o w s : d l f f f r a n c e i s not indeterminacy. i t renders determinacy both p o s s i b l e and necessary. someone might say: but i f i t renders determinacy p o s s i b l e , i t i s because i t i t s e l f i s "indeterminacy." p r e c i s e l y not, s i n c e f i r s t of a l l i t " i s " i n i t s e l f nothing o u t s i d e of d i f f e r e n t d e t e r m i n a t i o n s ; second, and consequently, i t never comes to a f u l l stop anywhere, a b s o l u t e l y t e l l e ne s ' a r r e t e n u l l e p a r t ], and is n e i t h e r n e g a t i v i t y nor nothingness (as indeterminacy would be). ( d e r r i d a , a: ) in other words, the p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , because i t accounts f o r both determined e f f e c t s and the i m p o s s i b i l i t y of the a b s o l u t e nature of those e f f e c t s , cannot be p e r c e i v e d as a simple indeterminacy, a simple n e g a t i v i t y , or, indeed, a simple ( i n the sense of c o n s i s t i n g of one pure and s e l f - contained element or essence) anything. i t i s f o r t h i s reason t h a t d e c o n s t r u c t i o n and i t s i n s i s t e n c e upon the c r u c i a l importance of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y cannot be viewed as c o n s t i t u t i n g a form of r e l a t i v i s m . r e l a t i v i s m presumes a n o t i o n o£ context or contexts as s e l f - c o n t a i n e d and s e l f - v a l i d a t i n g . i f , however, contexts as such are seen to be always a l r e a d y i n s c r i b e d with what they are not, i . e . with the p o s s i b i l i t y of t h e i r own o t h e r n e s s , then the concept of r e l a t i v i s m , l i k e a l l p h i l o s o p h i c a l concepts, must be d e c o n s t r u c t e d — i t must give way to the d i s s e m i n a t i v e p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y . as w i l l be r e c a l l e d , dissemination . . . although producing a n o n f i n i t e number of semantic e f f e c t s , can be l e d back n e i t h e r to a present of simple o r i g i n . . . nor to an e s c h a t o l o g i c a l presence. i t marks an i r r e d u c i b l e and g e n e r a t i v e m u l t i p l i c i t y . the supplement and the t u r b u l e n c e of a c e r t a i n lack f r a c t u r e the l i m i t of the t e x t , f o r b i d d i n g an exhaustive and c l o s e d f o r m a l i z a t i o n of i t , or a t l e a s t a s a t u r a t i n g taxonomy of i t s themes, i t s s i g n i f i e d , i t s meaning. ( d e r r i d a , g: ) the p o i n t i s , i f we can no longer t h i n k i n terms of concepts which are i n p r i n c i p l e a b s o l u t e and s e l f - c o n t a i n e d , i f we must acknowledge an o r i g i n a r y d o u b l i n g , an e s s e n t i a l u n d e c i d a b i l i t y which p r e c l u d e s any p o s s i b i l i t y of u l t i m a t e u n i t y or c l o s u r e , then we must f o l l o w up on geertz's i n t i m a t i o n t h a t "something i s happening to the way we t h i n k about the way we t h i n k " (geertz, a: ). and what i s see my d i s c u s s i o n of the concept of context i n chapter four. happening is t h a t we can no longer 'think' as such — t h a t is to say, we can no longer assume the e x i s t e n c e o£ a s i n g u l a r , s e l f - i d e n t i c a l consciousness or mind which intends s i n g u l a r and s e l f - i d e n t i c a l thoughts. (the oxford e n g l i s h d i c t i o n a r y d e f i n e s the verb 'to t h i n k ' as: " i n t e n d , expect. . . . form c o n c e p t i o n o f . . . . independent mind.") rather, we must be a t t e n t i v e to an e s s e n t i a l openness, a p r i m o r d i a l and g e n e r a t i v e h e t e r o g e n e i t y , a d i s s e m i n a t i v e p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y . and what might t h i s look l i k e f o r anthropology i n general? well, to begin with, i t looks l i k e what i have attempted to do throughout t h i s d i s s e r t a t i o n . that i s , i t i n v o l v e s an extremely c l o s e examination and d e c o n s t r u c t i o n of what anthropology has done up to t h i s p o i n t — author by author and concept by concept. an a t t e n t i v e n e s s to u n d e c i d a b i l i t y i n v o l v e s a r e c o g n i t i o n t h a t none of our concepts, none of our assumptions, are a b s o l u t e and homogeneous and t h a t we must c o n s t a n t l y be on guard a g a i n s t l e t t i n g n o t i o n s of p l e n i t u d e , t o t a l i t y and other such m a n i f e s t a t i o n s of presence i n by the back door. and t h i s guarding a g a i n s t c o n s c i o u s l y or u n c o n s c i o u s l y r e l y i n g on v a r i o u s concepts which are rooted i n assumptions of presence i s of fundamental importance to anthropology because such concepts are, by d e f i n i t i o n and i n p r i n c i p l e , both r e p r e s s i v e and o p p r e s s i v e . they are r e p r e s s i v e because they a b s o l u t e l y deny the p o s s i b i l i t y of an a l t e r i t y or otherness t h a t i s not subsumed w i t h i n n o t i o n s of u n i t y and s e l f - i d e n t i t y — and t h i s a b s t r a c t r e p r e s s i o n t r a n s l a t e s i n t o a v e r y concrete o p p r e s s i o n . thus throughout western ' h i s t o r y ' women have been (and are) viewed as i n f e r i o r to and hence p r o p e r l y s u b s e r v i e n t to men, ' p r i m i t i v e ' c u l t u r e s have been (and are) viewed as i n f e r i o r to and hence p r o p e r l y s u b s e r v i e n t to ' c i v i l i z e d ' c u l t u r e s , people of c o l o u r have been (and are) viewed as i n f e r i o r to and hence p r o p e r l y s u b s e r v i e n t to white people (and here t r a d i t i o n a l western notions of white s y m b o l i z i n g good and p u r i t y and black s y m b o l i z i n g e v i l and i m p u r i t y s u r e l y cannot be c o n s i d e r e d c o i n c i d e n t a l ) , non-human l i f e - f o r m s have been (and are) viewed as i n f e r i o r to and hence p r o p e r l y s u b s e r v i e n t to human l i f e - f o r m s and so on. in other words, the h i e r a r c h i c a l o p p o s i t i o n a l i t y which i s a product of v a r i o u s m a n i f e s t a t i o n s of the concept of presence i s s t r u c t u r e d in such a way t h a t the h a l f of an o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r which i s c o n s i d e r e d c l o s e s t to an o r i g i n a r y and a l l - encompassing presence i s p r i v i l e g e d over the other h a l f . the n o n - p r i v i l e g e d h a l f of a h i e r a r c h i c a l l y s t r u c t u r e d o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r i s c o n s i d e r e d to be a c o r r u p t v e r s i o n of the p r i v i l e g e d h a l f and, t h e r e f o r e , to have no s t a n d i n g i n and of i t s e l f . that is to say, because the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y , of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , i s not taken i n t o c o n s i d e r a t i o n , the n o n - p r i v i l e g e d h a l f i s deemed to be o n l y an impure form of i t s partner and hence serves merely to underscore the e s s e n t i a l u n i t y of a dominating presence — a dominating presence which i s always skewed in favour of t h a t which i s p e r c e i v e d to be c l o s e s t to i t . thus, f o r example, i n c h r i s t i a n theology, satan, the embodiment of e v i l , i s c o n s i d e r e d to be a f a l l e n a n g e l ; women are c o n s i d e r e d to be f u r t h e r from god than are men ("hee f o r god only, shee f o r god i n him" ( m i l t o n , : )); ' p r i m i t i v e ' peoples are c o n s i d e r e d to partake of the essence of humanity but i t i s ' c i v i l i z e d ' peoples who most p r o p e r l y express and d e f i n e t h a t essence; non-human l i f e - f o r m s are c o n s i d e r e d to be f u r t h e r from god than are human l i f e - f o r m s (" . so god c r e a t e d man i n h i s own image, i n the image of god c r e a t e d he him; male and female c r e a t e d he them. . and god b l e s s e d them, and god s a i d unto them, be f r u i t f u l and m u l t i p l y , and r e p l e n i s h the e a r t h , and subdue i t : and have dominion over the f i s h of the sea, and over the fowl of the a i r , and over every l i v i n g t h i n g t h a t moveth upon the e a r t h " (genesis, ch.i, v. - )); and so on. the p o i n t i s , the non- p r i v i l e g e d term i n such o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r s i s always seen as being an i n f e r i o r form of the p r i v i l e g e d term and, as such, i s s u b j e c t to abuse and s c o r n . i f the kinds of concrete o p p r e s s i o n t h a t i have mentioned can be seen to be l o g i c a l and i n e v i t a b l e extensions of a c o n c e p t u a l i t y t h a t i s i t s e l f d e d i c a t e d to r e p r e s s i o n , then the importance of d e c o n s t r u c t i n g and r e s i t u a t i n g t h a t c o n c e p t u a l i t y should be c o n s i d e r e d paramount not o n l y by a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s , but by a l l those who have been brought up w i t h i n the domain of western thought. again, i must emphasize t h a t t h i s i s not to say t h a t western concepts must be destroyed a b s o l u t e l y — o n l y t h a t they must be destroyed i n t h e i r absolute form. and t h i s d e c o n s t r u c t i o n , t h i s displacement and r e s i t u a t l n g of c o n c e p t u a l i t y as such, e n t a i l i n g , as i t does, the acknowledgement of a s i t u a t i o n i n which i t i s no longer p o s s i b l e f o r a n o t i o n of presence to c o n t a i n and account f o r a l l phenomena, a s i t u a t i o n i n which i t i s no longer l e g i t i m a t e f o r one term of an o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r to be contained w i t h i n and dominated by i t s p a r t n e r , leads to a r e c o g n i t i o n of p r i m o r d i a l or r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y and a l l t h a t such a r e c o g n i t i o n i m p l i e s . as i hope has been s u f f i c i e n t l y c l e a r , r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y i s another name f o r u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , i . e . i t i s t h a t which cannot be contained and accounted f o r by the l o g i c of b i n a r y o p p o s i t i o n or t r i n l t a r i a n u n i t y (which i s the l o g i c of a western p h i l o s o p h y rooted i n the presumption of presence) but which nonetheless a l l o w s f o r the p o s s i b i l i t y of a c e r t a i n c o n c e p t u a l i t y . i say a ' c e r t a i n ' c o n c e p t u a l i t y because a c o n c e p t u a l i t y which i s seen to be the product of an o r i g i n a r y p l a y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , u n l i k e a c o n c e p t u a l i t y which i s seen to be the product of an assumption of presence, i s , by d e f i n i t i o n and i n p r i n c i p l e , incapable of absolute domination. in other words, what we are d e a l i n g with i s the d i f f e r e n c e between a fundamental h e t e r o g e n e i t y and a fundamental homogeneity -- the l a t t e r l e a d i n g to a c o n c e p t u a l i t y which is by d e f i n i t i o n c l o s e d and s e l f - c o n t a i n e d and the former l e a d i n g to a c o n c e p t u a l i t y which i s by d e f i n i t i o n open and always a l r e a d y other than what i t i s . what a r e c o g n i t i o n of r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y or u n d e c i d a b i l i t y i m p l i e s f o r anthropology (and, indeed, f o r western thought i n general) i s nothing l e s s than the f a c t t h a t r e p r e s s i o n / o p p r e s s i o n can never a g a i n be j u s t i f i e d on e i t h e r p u r e l y l o g i c a l or p u r e l y moral grounds. in other words, i f c o n c e p t u a l i t y i s seen to be the product of an e s s e n t i a l u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , then l o g i c and m o r a l i t y as such must be seen to be 'impure' by d e f i n i t i o n -- to be always a l r e a d y contaminated by t h e i r other and hence to be incapable of grounding and v a l i d a t i n g a s e r i e s of h i e r a r c h i c a l l y s t r u c t u r e d o p p o s i t i o n a l p a i r s which presuppose u l t i m a t e r e s o l u t i o n w i t h i n a u n i f i c , all-encompassing presence. what t h i s means i s t h a t a r e p r e s s i o n / o p p r e s s i o n which has h e r e t o f o r e been the i n e v i t a b l e l o g i c a l and moral outcome of a c o n c e p t u a l i t y p r e d i c a t e d upon a n o t i o n of presence and i t s concomitant skewed b i n a r i s m i s , q u i t e simply, no longer a c c e p t a b l e . obviously, i am not s a y i n g t h a t a r e a l i z a t i o n of the fundamentally r e p r e s s i v e / o p p r e s s i v e nature of western c o n c e p t u a l i t y w i l l r e s u l t i n an end to r e p r e s s i o n and o p p r e s s i o n . but i am s a y i n g t h a t such a r e a l i z a t i o n c o u l d , or, a t l e a s t , should r e s u l t i n an end to the unconscious and presumptuous m a n u f a c t u r e and p e r p e t u a t i o n of r e p r e s s i o n / o p p r e s s i o n through the mindless assumption of an unexamined c o n c e p t u a l i t y . i b e l i e v e t h a t i t i s incumbent upon a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s (and, of course, hot o n l y upon a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s ) to be hyper- aware of the dangers of assuming such an unexamined c o n c e p t u a l i t y (and, as i hope my examination of geertz and c l i f f o r d has shown, i t i s no easy task to a v o i d f a l l i n g back on o l d assumptions) and to work c o n s t a n t l y to tease out and to develop the p o s s i b i l i t i e s inherent w i t h i n i t s cracks and f i s s u r e s . what t h i s t e a s i n g out and d e v e l o p i n g might look l i k e i n concrete f i e l d s i t u a t i o n s i t i s not p o s s i b l e f o r me to say, f o r , as d e r r i d a p o i n t s out, d e c o n s t r u c t i o n , i n the s i n g u l a r , i s not " i n h e r e n t l y " anything at a l l t h a t might be determinable on the b a s i s of [logocentrism] and of i t s c r i t e r i a . i t i s " i n h e r e n t l y " nothing a t a l l ; the l o g i c of essence (by o p p o s i t i o n to a c c i d e n t ) , of the proper (by o p p o s i t i o n to the improper), hence of the " i n h e r e n t " by o p p o s i t i o n to the e x t r i n s i c , i s p r e c i s e l y what a l l d e c o n s t r u c t i o n has from the s t a r t c a l l e d i n t o q u e s t i o n . d e c o n s t r u c t i o n does not e x i s t somewhere, pure, proper, s e l f - i d e n t i c a l , o u t s i d e of i t s i n s c r i p t i o n s i n c o n f l i c t u a l and d i f f e r e n t i a t e d c o n t e x t s ; i t " i s " o n l y what i t does and what i s done with i t , there where i t takes p l a c e . i t i s [not p o s s i b l e ] to give a u n i v o c a l d e f i n i t i o n or an adequate d e s c r i p t i o n of t h i s " t a k i n g p l a c e . " ( d e r r i d a , a: ) in other words, the a p p l i c a t i o n of d e c o n s t r u c t i o n , what i t w i l l look l i k e , what t r a c e s i t w i l l f o l l o w , depends upon the p a r t i c u l a r context to which i t i s a p p l i e d , and t h i s not because of a b u i l t - i n obscurantism, but because of a fundamental and i n t e n s e r e s p e c t f u l n e s s f o r the r a d i c a l l y heterogeneous nature of any given s i t u a t i o n . thus while i t i s p o s s i b l e f o r me to a p p l y a d e c o n s t r u c t l v e r e a d i n g to the t e x t s of c l i f f o r d geertz and james c l i f f o r d r e s p e c t i v e l y , and to d e l i n e a t e the p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s and i m p l i c a t i o n s of t h e i r chosen c o n c e p t u a l i t y , i cannot say what they might have found i n any g i v e n f i e l d s i t u a t i o n had they u t i l i z e d a d e c o n s t r u c t i v e s t r a t e g y because t h a t would depend e n t i r e l y on the p a r t i c u l a r f i e l d s i t u a t i o n i n q u e s t i o n . and i cannot take t h e i r word f o r what they found because, as i have t r i e d to show, i t i s a l r e a d y e n t i r e l y imbued with the p r e s u p p o s i t i o n s of western c o n c e p t u a l i t y . although the i n a b i l i t y to p r o j e c t the r e s u l t s of a p o t e n t i a l d e c o n s t r u c t l v e r e a d i n g of as yet undeconstructed s i t u a t i o n s may indeed be i r r i t a t i n g , i b e l i e v e t h a t i t i s v e r y much a s t r e n g t h r a t h e r than a weakness of the d e c o n s t r u c t i v e approach. and t h i s because i t m i t i g a t e s a g a i n s t the a l l too a p p e a l i n g temptation to r e s t on assumption. i f each and every s i t u a t i o n i s always a l r e a d y r i d d l e d with m u l t i p l e p o s s i b i l i t i e s due to an e s s e n t i a l u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , an e s s e n t i a l h e t e r o g e n e i t y , then each and every s i t u a t i o n must be approached with an openness which p r e c l u d e s the p o s s i b i l i t y , or, perhaps i should say, the v a l i d i t y of a b s t r a c t p r o j e c t i o n . again, t h i s i s n e i t h e r e v a s i o n nor obscurantism -- i t i s the necessary and i n e v i t a b l e c o r o l l a r y of emphasizing an e s s e n t i a l and r a d i c a l h e t e r o g e n e i t y r a t h e r than an e s s e n t i a l and r a d i c a l homogeneity. what d e c o n s t r u c t i o n , the r e c o g n i t i o n of r a d i c a l a l t e r i t y , e s s e n t i a l u n d e c i d a b i l i t y , c a l l s f o r is nothing l e s s than a r e - r e a d i n g and r e s i t u a t i n g of the e n t i r e a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l canon along with, of course, an approach to f i e l d w o r k which takes t h i s r e s i t u a t i n g i n t o a c c o u n t . " we with r e s p e c t to f i e l d w o r k , i t i s c r u c i a l to look a t the way i n which f i e l d w o r k e r s are now t r a i n e d . at the undergraduate l e v e l the anthropology student takes a s e r i e s of courses which emphasize the h i s t o r y of the d i s c i p l i n e , two or three c u l t u r e areas (which are c o n s t i t u t e d by the w r i t i n g s of 'big name' a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s ) , methods and t h e o r i e s . at the graduate l e v e l the student engages in more of the same and then s e t s to conduct her f i e l d w o r k -- a f t e r which she r e t u r n s , w r i t e s up her experiences ( c a t e g o r i z i n g them w i t h i n the framework of any one of a number of methods and/or t h e o r i e s ) and is accepted by the ' s c h o l a r l y community' ( i n the form of a d i s s e r t a t i o n committee) on the b a s i s of how w e l l she c a r r i e s out t h i s e n t e r p r i s e . now, a l l of t h i s t r a i n i n g , and the f i n a l judgement of the student's work, a c c e p t s , without q u e s t i o n , the fundamental c o r r e c t n e s s of the western metaphysical n o t i o n of presence and a l l t h a t flows therefrom. so, whether v a r i a t i o n s on the theme of presence come i n the form of t y l o r i a n e v o l u t i o n i s m , r a d c l i f f e - b r o w n i a n s t r u c t u r e - f u n c t i o n a l i s m , malinowskinian b i o - p s y c h o l o g i c a l f u n c t i o n a l i s m , l v i - s t r a u s s i a n s t r u c t u r a l i s m , g e e r t z i a n i n t e r p r e t i s m or c l l f f o r d i a n 'postmodernism,' throughout her c a r e e r , the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t , so f a r from being encouraged to examine the consequences of her p r e s u p p o s i t i o n of presence, never even becomes aware t h a t she has i t . as a r e s u l t of t h i s s t u d i e d lack of awareness, the d i s c i p l i n e of anthropology p r o j e c t s the r e p r e s s i o n i n h e r e n t i n western c o n c e p t u a l i t y onto other peoples and other c u l t u r e s through i t s agent, the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t . and so i t goes, anthropology and the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t c o n s t a n t l y r e p l i c a t i n g and r e i n f o r c i n g each other through the t h o u g h t l e s s acceptance of a c o n c e p t u a l i t y which f u n c t i o n s to r e p r e s s the 'other.' in order to begin to r e d r e s s t h i s s i t u a t i o n , d e c o n s t r u c t l v e s t r a t e g i e s must be o f f e r e d as p a r t of the core c u r r i c u l a of a l l departments of anthropology. i f t h i s were to be accomplished, must become aware of the sometimes ever so s u b t l e (e.g. geertz and c l i f f o r d ) sometimes ever so b l a t a n t (e.g. f r a z e r and t y l o r ) ways i n which anthropology f o i s t s an assumed c o n c e p t u a l i t y , with a l l of i t s r e p r e s s i v e / o p p r e s s i v e i m p l i c a t i o n s and consequences, onto non-western c u l t u r e s . t h i s alone makes d e c o n s t r u c t i o n i n d i s p e n s a b l e to an anthropology t h a t e n t e r t a i n s any n o t i o n s of i t s e l f as p o t e n t i a l l y non-oppressive, l i b e r a t i n g , g e n u i n e l y concerned with the other and so on. what does the e s s e n t i a l p o s s i b i l i t y of u n d e c i d a b i l i t y t e l l us about a l l we have w r i t t e n concerning the s o - c a l l e d ' p r i m i t i v e ' and h e r / h i s lack of l o g i c and consequent i n a b i l i t y to p e r c e i v e l o g i c a l c o n t r a d i c t i o n ? what i f she/he simply put the emphasis on h e t e r o g e n e i t y as opposed to homogeneity? is i t p o s s i b l e t h a t l vy-bruhl stumbled onto the t r a c e of something which, i n our d e s i r e to view other peoples as, f o r whatever reasons, underdeveloped v e r s i o n s of o u r s e l v e s , we too e a s i l y and too smugly dismissed? i f our a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l fore-mothers and f o r e - f a t h e r s had presumed an e s s e n t i a l h e t e r o g e n e i t y / u n d e c i d a b i l i t y r a t h e r than an e s s e n t i a l homogeneity/presence, what might they have found? what might we s t i l l f i n d ? and so on and so on. is anthropology, a f t e r a l l these years of c r e a t i n g and d e f i n i n g i t s e l f as a d i s c i p l i n e which i s perhaps the a n t h r o p o l o g i s t ' s p r o f e s s i o n a l t r a i n i n g c o u l d be a help r a t h e r than a hindrance with r e s p e c t to e n a b l i n g her to approach the f i e l d w o r k s i t u a t i o n with a s e n s i t i v i t y to otherness which has, h i t h e r t o , been d i s c e r n i b l e o n l y as a l a c k . supposedly d e d i c a t e d to d e s c r i b i n g and comprehending the other, l e f t i n the p o s i t i o n of an aged, half-mad, once-but- no-longer and never-again-to-be k i n g who can o n l y wander a i m l e s s l y amid a wretchedness of h i s own c r e a t i n g and p a t h e t i c a l l y intone, " , i have ta'en too l i t t l e care of t h i s " (shakespeare, : )? the answer, a l l too c l e a r l y , i s yes. the q u e s t i o n remains as to whether or not we, as a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s , w i l l recognize t h i s p o s i t i o n and, i f so, what we w i l l do about i t . i f we dp_ r e c o g n i z e i t , then a hard look a t derridean d e c o n s t r u c t i o n may o f f e r us the p o t e n t i a l to begin re-working and r e s i t u a t i n g what we have done and provide a way to begin a p p r e c i a t i n g the otherness of others r a t h e r than c o n s t a n t l y r e d u c i n g them to simple r e f l e c t i o n s and r e p l i c a t i o n s of o u r s e l v e s . i f we do not r e c o g n i z e i t , then we w i l l simply go on c r e a t i n g and p e r p e t u a t i n g the same o l d h o r r o r s — t h i s time, a p p a r e n t l y , under the banner of •postmodernism.' v bibliography adams, r i c h a r d . . 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" in silverman and welton, b, - . b e r n a r d m a n d e v i l l e : t h e importance of w o m e n in t h e d e v e l o p m e n t of civil societies by c a r o l j e a n gibson b.a., the university of british columbia, a thesis submitted in partial f u l f i l l m e n t o f t h e requirements for t h e degree o f master of arts i n t h e f a c u l t y o f g r a d u a t e studies department of history we accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard t h e university o f british c o l u m b i a january © carol jean gibson, in presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an a d v a n c e d degree at the university of british c o l u m b i a , i agree that the library shall make it freely available for reference and study. i further agree that permission for extensive c o p y i n g of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. it is u n d e r s t o o d that c o p y i n g or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be a l l o w e d without my written permission. department of the university of british c o l u m b i a vancouver, c a n a d a de- ( / ) ii a b s t r a c t this study examines a relatively unacknowledged feature of bernard mandeville's writing - his discussion of women and women's issues and the significance of this discussion to his larger thesis. the work is intended to demonstrate that the essential elements in mandeville's developed thinking, fully argued by him in the fable, were first discussed in his earlier reflections on women. by examining some of mandeville's earlier, less well-known writing, in particular the virgin unmask'd and the female tatler, the study attempts to demonstrate that in them mandeville lays out the essence of his argument, which is only later developed fully in the fable of the bees. the study, by concentrating on the role of women in the civilizing process, is intended to bring to the fore a number of neglected features in mandeville's writing. by closely scrutinizing mandeville's theory of the psychological basis of all social relations, and the role of the passions, particularly pride, in the development of materially prosperous societies, the study attempts to demonstrate that the ideas and arguments that provoked mandeville to develop his own comprehensive theory of the genesis and development of economically advanced societies were first articulated in the context of a discussion of female roles and feminine psychology. further, that the formulation of mandeville's ideas concerning the basis of society and social improvement did not originate as a ridicule of richard steele's priggish squire bickerstaff, his persona in the tatler, as m . m . goldsmith claims, but rather that these conceptions were present as early as the virgin unmask'd, written, it is argued, before steele's tatler was published. iii the introduction surveys the current scholarship on mandeville and his significance as a social and economic theorist, and reviews scholarly opinion about the motives which may have prompted him to develop his controversial theories. chapter one discusses the elements and significance of mandeville's social theory. the chapter begins with a review of mandeville's life, sketches out the development of the ideas presented in his writing, the effects these ideas had on his contemporaries, and his importance within a broad range of speculation in the early eighteenth century about the impulses which propel individuals to seek private gain. because the passions, particularly pride, play a dominant role in mandeville's theorizing, chapter two is an examination of mandeville's theory of pride and its role in the civilizing process. mandeville's intellectual predecessors and his place within a long line of moral argument concerning the role of the passions in the development of society are examined. the argument proper begins in chapter three with a discussion of the intellectual inheritance about women. special attention is given to two elements of mandeville's argument concerning the establishment of civil societies, the creation of chastity as a moral virtue and the development of marriage as a civil institution. mandeville's own attitude towards women and his ideas concerning sexuality and marriage and the significance of both to his theorizing are reviewed at some length. the chapter concludes with an analysis of mandeville's economic theory and the importance of women to it. the conclusion reached is that mandeville's speculations on women are an important, but neglected, feature of his social thinking, without which his fable would not be the powerful book it is. iv t a b l e of c o n t e n t s page no. abstract ii table of contents iv introduction chapter i. the elements and significance of mandeville's social theory chapter n. pride and the civilizing process chapter hi. the role of women in mandeville's work . ui.l the inheritance ii. passions, sexuality and marriage in. women and the critique of 'virtue' tji. female chastity jti. fashion and improvement conclusion bibliography i n t r o d u c t i o n in spite of the furor that surrounded the publication of his fable, and his considerable eighteenth-century notoriety, bernard mandeville was a relatively obscure figure in the scholarly literature until f.b. kaye's edition of the fable of the bees in . mandeville's work, traditionally studied in departments of english, nevertheless exerted a powerful, yet often subterranean, influence on social theorizing, particularly in economics and sociology. more recently, "mandeville has come to enjoy widespread scholarly recognition as a theorist, a precursor of thorstein veblen and robert merton, of friedrich hayek as well as keynes." students of mandeville have described him as a thinker primarily concerned with the description and analysis of society. yet the nature of these concerns is still contested. mandeville was, it has been claimed, "a psychologist interested in giving a naturalistic account of ethical phenomena"by scrutinizing human motives, a compulsive debunker of human pride and received opinion, and a "thoroughgoing antiheroic utilitarian" interested in economic growth. mandeville's technique has produced similar scholarly disagreement, being seen as satire, mock satire, satire underpined with paradox or not satire at all. bernard mandeville, the fable of the bees: or. private vices, publick benefits, f.b. kaye, ed., vols., (oxford: clarendon press, ). references will be cited parenthetically in the text by volume and page number. e. j. hundert, "bernard mandeville and the rhetoric of social science," journal of the history of behavioral sciences, vol. , (october, ), p. . richard i. cook, "the great leviathan of lechery: mandeville's modest defense of public stews ( )", mandeville studies: new explorations in the art and thought of dr. bernard mandeville ( - ). irwin primer, ed., (the hague: m. nijhoff, ),p. . m.r. jack, "religion and ethics in mandeville", mandeville studies, primer, ed., p. . robert adolph, "what pierces or strikes: prose styles in the fable of the bees," mandeville studies, primer, ed., pp. / . ibid^ pp. / . cook, "the great leviathan of lechery," p. . m . m . goldsmith, private vices, public benefits: bernard mandeville's social and political thought, (new york: cambridge university press, ), p. . goldsmith claims that mandeville's ironic exposure of the intellectual folly of the proponents of public and christian the almost universal reliance upon kaye's edition of the fable makes his views an appropriate place to start in reviewing mandeville scholarship. kaye argues that mandeville's thought revolves around a paradox which turns on his definition of virtue. kaye identifies two major contemporary currents of thought concerning virtue, one ascetic or theological, the other rational. in the ascetic or theological tradition, virtue denoted a transcending of the demands of corrupt human nature, a conquest of self. in the rational tradition, it suggested conduct ruled by reason, which was held to be the distinctly human property making moral life possible (i: xlvii). mandeville's own definition of virtue melded these two strands of argument. virtuous acts, he claims, could only be those "by which man, contrary to the impulse of nature, should endeavour the benefit of others, or the conquest of his own passions out of a rational ambition of being good." kaye points to this definition as the crucial element in what he calls mandeville's "rigourism" (i: xlvii). when mandeville applies this definition of virtue to human behaviour, kaye argues, he can find no virtuous conduct in the world (i: xlviii). by judging men's actions not by their consequences but by their motives, only acts springing from rational impulses virtue is a k i n d of mock satire. satire as a genre, he argues, ridicules i n d i v i d u a l s or social types for failing to adhere to k n o w n standards. m a n d e v i l l e ridicules this standard. satire exposes men's follies so that they can be corrected a n d assumes that m e n can act differently; m a n d e v i l l e assumes that they can not. ibid., p. . a d o l p h , "what pierces of strikes," p. . p h i l i p p i n k u s , "mandeville's paradox," m a n d e v i l l e studies, primer, ed., p . . m o s t of what is k n o w n about m a n d e v i l l e derives from kaye's "excellent a n d exhaustive edition of t h e fable." m . r . jack, "progress a n d c o r r u p t i o n i n the eighteenth c e n t u r y : mandeville's •private vices, public benefits' ", l o u m a l of the h i s t o r y of ideas, v o l . , ( ), p. . see also j . c . m a x w e l l , "ethics a n d politics i n mandeville," p h i l o s o p h y , xxvi, ; t h o m a s h o m e , t h e social t h o u g h t of b e r n a r d m a n d e v i l l e - v i r t u e a n d c o m m e r c e i n e a r l y eighteenth c e n t u r y e n g l a n d , ( n e w y o r k : c o l u m b i a university press, ), p. xi. e v e n scholars w h o d o not accept kaye's interpretation feel compelled to base a considerable part of their w o r k o n it. t h e f a b l e i, p. x l v i i . k a y e quotes mandeville's o w n definition f r o m t h e fable i, p p . - . later, m a n d e v i l l e argues that "real v i r t u e requires a conquest over untaught nature." t h e fable ii, p. . both definitions require a rational conquest of h u m a n nature before an act can be deemed to be virtuous. could be judged virtuous, and mandeville discovers no actions dictated entirely by reason, free from self-regarding passions (i: xlviiipdix). central to kaye's thesis is his argument that, although ostensibly holding up an ideal of virtuous conduct, mandeville was adamant that such conduct was impossible to attain. he really advised men to abandon the attempt to be virtuous and instead rest content to achieve socially useful goals (i: ). a n d this, kaye argues, makes mandeville "a thoroughgoing utilitarian." malcolm jack criticizes kaye for his conclusion that mandeville applied two common contemporary standards in his assessment of the morality of actions, the rigouristic and the utilitarian, and, by holding to both, designed a paradox that led to a "reductio ad absurdum" of rigourism as a literary device introduced for satirical purposes. this interpretation of mandeville's ethical position, he argues, is based on a misunderstanding of his intentions, which were to satirize the position of those who retain these two contrary ethical criteria. jack claims instead that mandeville's writing should be understood as an early and sophisticated attempt to explain moral phenomena solely in terms of human psychology. the fable i, p. lviii. kaye defines utilitarianism as an ethic whose moral touchstone is results and not abstract principle. (i, xlix, n.l) while not a modern definition of utilitarianism, kaye says, it reflects the condition of ethical thought of the day. (ibid.) the rigoristic as a criterion for judging the motives of individuals' behaviour; the utilitarian as a criterion for judging the social consequences. jack, "progress and corruption in the eighteenth century," p. . ibid., pp. / / . m . m . goldsmith sees a similar importance in mandeville's work. he argues that, despite the ironic and mocking tone of the fable, it is a serious examination of social interaction, following the philosophical pattern of an analysis of human nature and the genesis of society from a state of nature. mandeville's theory of the development of society differs from a lockean or machiavellian one because he sees no possibility of a social contract or a founder- legislator forming humans into a society. mandeville's theory requires a long gestation period during which change is gradual and incremental. for him, goldsmith says, "the mechanism by which humans are socialized is society itself." although he does "not believe mandeville was an economic theorist at all," goldsmith joins an associated debate over mandeville's economic principles, arguing that he was a precursor of capitalism. it is difficult to discover any writers of the early eighteenth century, he argues, who warmly embraced the new commercial capitalism. by his "full-fledged acceptance of commercial modernity", mandeville can be singled out as the great exception. m. m. goldsmith, "public virtue and private vices: bernard mandeville and english political ideologies in the early eighteenth century," eighteenth-century studies, vol. ix, ( ), pp. - ; "bernard mandeville and the spirit of capitalism," pp. - , journal of british studies, vol. , ( ); private vices. public benefits: bernard mandeville's social and political thought; "the treacherous arts of mankind: bernard mandeville and female virtue," history of political thought, vol. vii, no. , (spring, ), pp. - . goldsmith, private vices, public benefits, p. . ibid., p. . ibid., pp. / . ibid., p. . goldsmith, "mandeville and the spirit,of capitalism", pp. - . similarly, but for different reasons than goldsmith, nathan rosenberg argues that, except when he is dealing with foreign trade, mandeville presents a conception of the role of government in economic and social affairs which encourages a self-regulating economy. n. rosenberg, "mandeville and laissez-faire," journal of the history of ideas, vol. xxiv, no. , (april-june, ),pp. - . a different interpretation of mandeville's economics comes from jacob viner who argues that mandeville advocates state intervention in economic matters. jacob viner, the long view and the short: studies in economic theory and policy, (glencoe: the free press, ), pp. - . goldsmith, "mandeville and the spirit of capitalism," p. . "the man who takes delight in continuous business and piling up wealth was invented by bernard mandeville", goldsmith continues, to expose and to ridicule the shallow, narrow-minded self- righteousness of the prevalent ideology of early eighteenth-century england, especially as that ideology was expressed in richard steele's tatler; to oppose those who would "prescribe rules of happiness to every body else", mandeville, living in a society which was becoming capitalist, invented the 'spirit of capitalism'. a different view of mandeville's significance comes from thomas home, who provides a valuable guide to mandeville's social and economic ideas. like goldsmith, home believes that mandeville alone in the early eighteenth century openly argued that traditional moral and social assumptions are inconsistent with the goals of the wealth-generating state. but home differs from goldsmith's interpretation of mandeville as a capitalist theorist, arguing instead that "in mandeville the psychological analysis of self-love is explicitly joined to a social and economic theory which is similar to what has been called the mercantilist conception of society." it is mandeville's provocative, even scandalous, economic arguments that demanded the attention of his contemporaries, home claims. his attack on frugality and his defense of luxury forced him to consider and then reject the basic analogy used by those who feared widespread luxury consumption: the comparison of the economy of the individual or family with the economy of the state. like goldsmith, home recognizes mandeville's sensitivity to the long and slow process by which political and economic institutions evolve as central to his argument. society ibid., p. . home, the social thought of bernard mandeville, p. . home argues that one of the strongest, most persistent, themes in mandeville's economic thought is his refusal to equate the state with the individual. ibid., p. . does not depend upon the genius of individual men to make good laws, but on the cumulative experience of many generations. in mandeville, horne claims, the great streams of mercantilism and of the seventeenth-century tradition of french moral discourse come together. with their strong emphasis on the importance of self-interest, these two traditions provided marideville with a method of psychological investigation that uncovered the operation of self-love in all human actions, a method which permitted him to expose the delusions which allow men to damn vices in others, while ignoring the same vices in themselves. mercantilist theory provided mandeville with specific doctrines about the poor and the balance of trade and luxury; but more important, it provided him with a model of society based on the spending of the wealthy and the labour of the poor, held together by the power of the state. by debunking the arguments of public-spiritedness upon which the tradition of civic humanism rested, a tradition central to those who argued that england needed a moral revival, mandeville's work constitutes one of the most important criticisms of that tradition. mandeville's dislike of hypocritical cant is recognized by many scholars as one of the strongest motives behind his work. horne, malcolm jack and jacob v i n e r see this as providing a powerful incentive for mandeville, whose aim ibid., p. ibid., p. . ibid. jack, "progress and corruption in the eighteenth century", p. . jacob viner, "satire and economics in the augustan age of satire", the augustan milieu, ed. by henry k. miller, eric rothstein, g.s. rousseau, (oxford university press, ), p. . viner argues that mandeville parodied the pretensions of those who flourished under the social structure, and believed that they and it operated from moral principles. he attacked both the principles and those who, from sentimental albeit genuine attachment to them, advocated ""even minor changes in existing institutions to bring them nearer to what those principles demanded." was not to parody the social structure itself, but to expose to ridicule the inconsistency of his contemporaries, who at once decried material progress because it brought in its train a corruption of moral and ascetic values, while fully enjoying the fruits of this development. mandeville's real interest was the psychology of moral behaviour. jack argues that the development of mandeville's arguments constitute an early and sophisticated attempt at explaining moral phenomena in terms of human motivations alone. like home, jack credits the moralists of the french tradition with providing mandeville with an intellectual framework within which to work out his ideas. one aspect of mandeville's thought has, however, received little attention in this midst of this considerable recent revival of interest, the role of women in his work, a peculiar omission in light of the large body of his writing directed to them, the number of times they act as his spokesmen, and the frequency with which he specifically discusses women's behaviour. only four works on mandeville attend to the role of women at any length. paul bunyan anderson, gordon vichert, richard cook and m . m . goldsmith have discussed mandeville's treatment of women, but none has seen women as of any particular significance to his larger theory of society. in his consideration of the virgin u n m a s k ' d , vichert argues that this work, "a moral dialogue devoted largely to a defense of feminism," is part of a large body of contemporary and controversial writing about the role of women. mandeville's concern is to show the facts of marriage from a woman's point of view and to destroy male illusions about the real life of women. "it is this anxiety to give the truth, to show what jack, "progress and corruption in the eighteenth century," p. . ibid- p. . ibid., pp. / . gordon s. vichert, "bernard mandeville's the virgin unmask'd," mandeville studies. primer, ed., pi. the condition of women is really like, in contrast to the various popular representations of them, that remains the most important aspect" of this seminal discussion of female virtue. cook, on the other hand, claims that lucinda, mandeville's spokesman in the virgin unmask'd, is the foil he uses to point out the absurdity in arguing that reason prevails over human nature in social and moral matters. by her austere and uncompromising attitude towards marriage, lucinda forces the reader to "choose between a bleakly unworkable rigourism on the one hand and a human and hence imperfect reality on the other." cook claims that the title, the virgin unmask'd, refers to the unmasking of lucinda's rigid position, by which she "has reasoned herself into a life of literal and figurative sterility." goldsmith argues that mandeville uses women as a literary tactic to increase his ironic tone and to tweak the civic humanist tradition by subverting the prevalent hierarchy of values which excluded women from the pursuit of virtues appropriate to landed gentlemen and of aristocratic ideals of honour. in a recent article, he discusses mandeville's concept of virtue from this perspective. goldsmith analyzes mandeville's treatment of female honour, discussed in several issues of the female tatler, and concludes that what is significant about mandeville's discussion is his views about female virtue and roles. what is significant for him about mandeville's definition of virtue is that, in opposition to traditional views, it applies equally to both men and women. to qualify as virtuous, one's motives must be pure and one's actions ibid., p. . richard i. cook, bernard mandeville, (boston: twayne publishers, ), p. . ibid. goldsmith, private vices, public benefits, p. . goldsmith, "the treacherous arts of mankind," p. . goldsmith's point here, as it is in all his work, is that mandeville was motivated to develop his argument by his desire to satirize and mock richard steele's issac bickerstaff who, in the brave. mandeville set out to demonstrate that women are as capable of the classical, cardinal virtues like courage, magnanimity, and strength of soul as m e n . mandeville's sole purpose in doing so, goldsmith continues, was his dislike of hypocrisy and pretension, and his desire to undermine civic humanism through ridicule and to suggest that there are goals worth pursuing other than virtue and glory, namely happiness. goldsmith pays no attention to mandeville's psychological probing into the motives behind the argument for different virtues for different sexes, except to argue that mandeville was particularly opposed to the civic humanist conceptions of courage and honour. although goldsmith agrees with vichert that mandeville's design is to let young ladies know whatever is dreadful in marriage, and concludes that he was prepared to argue a case for women, he is essentially content to limit mandeville's purpose in discussing women so often and at such length to his desire to satirize the arguments of his opponents. unlike goldsmith, paul bunyan anderson makes a grand claim for the loftiness of mandeville's thought. he identifies the problem of women as next to that of war and brute force in fascination and difficulty in mandeville's work. but anderson draws no conclusions about women's importance in this work, except to note that tatler, advocated a sentimental and romantic ideal of women, one in which they were limited to domestic and excluded from civic virtues. ibid. ibid., p. . ibid. ibid- p. . ibid., p. . paul bunyan anderson, "splendor out of scandal: the lucinda-artesia papers in the female tatler," philological quarterly, ( ), p. . anderson compares mandeville's "splendid intellectual and spiritual vision of the possibilities in imperfect material", to shakespeare's mind as he was writing measure for measure and christ's insight into human nature as recorded in the new testament. ibid- p. . some of mandeville's writing is "brimming over with a humourous and eminently sane feminism." is mandeville's discussion of women and women's issues integral to his larger thesis or, is it, as goldsmith claims, merely a satirical device used to ridicule civic humanism and expose the hypocrisy of those who would cling to one set of moral standards while practicing another? this work is intended to demonstrate that the essential elements in mandeville's developed thinking, fully argued by him in parts one and two of the fable, were first expounded in his early reflections upon women and their unusual, and sometimes privileged, conceptual status. i will argue that a concentration upon the role of women in the civilizing process brings to the fore a number of neglected features of his argument. further, not only does mandeville use women to satirize the civic humanist tradition of virtue, as goldsmith claims; more important, and overlooked by goldsmith, vichert and other scholars who have studied mandeville's work and his discussions concerning women, he addresses conceptions of femininity in ways that are integral to his entire project. by examining some of mandeville's earlier, less famous writing, particularly the virgin unmask'd and the female tatler, two works either addressed to women or women's issues or "written" by women, i will demonstrate that in them mandeville lays out the essence of his argument, which will only later be developed fully in the fable of the bees. a close scrutiny of mandeville's theory of the psychological basis of all social relations, and the role of the passions, particularly pride, in the development of rich and prosperous civil societies, will demonstrate that the ibid., p. . ideas and arguments that provoked his attention, stimulated his interest and challenged him to develop his own comprehensive theory of the genesis and development of these societies, were first articulated in the context of a discussion of female roles and feminine psychology. i will argue that mandeville's five months as contributor to the female tatler, together with the virgin unmask'd, provide valuable information about his thoughts on women, and that, in them, he discusses women and women's issues in a way that is central, both to his theory of society and the development of moral virtues and to his discussion of economic life. equally as important, i will also attempt to demonstrate that mandeville's early formulation of his ideas concerning the basis of society and social improvement did not originate as a ridicule of richard steele's priggish squire bickerstaff, his persona in the tatler, as goldsmith claims, but rather that these conceptions were present as early as the virgin u n m a s k ' d . since this is a work of some pages, and was published just shortly after the tatler began, it is reasonable to assume that mandeville wrote his book well before steele's tatler was first published. i will begin by analyzing the elements and significance of mandeville's social theory, tracing the genesis of his ideas to show the consistency between his mature thinking and his earlier writing, and the traditions from which his ideas both emerged and diverged. because mandeville's satirical style sometimes makes it difficult to know when he is serious, i have tried to identify common themes throughout his work. it is impossible to appreciate mandeville and the innovative nature of his ideas without an awareness of the social climate and circumstances within which he wrote. therefore, a considerable portion of the first chapter is devoted to a review of the assumptions and conditions prevalent at the time and the reactions mandeville's notions provoked amongst his contemporaries. the second chapter is devoted to a discussion of the major tenent of mandeville's social theory: mankind's egoism and the dominance of the passions, particularly pride, in all human interactions and endeavours. the third and final chapter begins with a review of the intellectual inheritance about women, and contemporary attitudes towards them, and then develops the major arguments of the thesis. m y purpose in examining mandeville's attitudes towards women and women's issues is to demonstrate that his reflections on women are an important and neglected feature of his theorizing; one without which we miss a central element of his importance. through his discussion of women, mandeville reveals something important about his social and economic thought and gives us a valuable insight into early eighteenth-century moral, social and economic arguments. c h a p t e r i t h e e l e m e n t s a n d significance of mandeville's social theory bernard de mandeville ( - ) was born in holland and studied philosophy and medicine at the university of leyden. graduating with the degree of doctor of medicine in , he practiced as a specialist in nerve and stomach disorders, the "hypochondriack and hysterick passions" or "diseases". mandeville's admiration for thomas sydenham ( - ), "the english hippocrates," may have influenced his decision to visit england. after travelling on the continent, mandeville moved to london "to learn the language" and "happen'd to take great delight" in it. although he continued to practice medicine, writing occupied much of his life from then on. not a great deal is known about mandeville's adult life. in one of two known contemporary comments, benjamin franklin wrote that mandeville was "a most facetious, entertaining companion." although an entertaining companion and, in his own words, "a great lover of company," he appears to have valued his solitude, where, surrounded by his books, he could lose himself in "study and contemplation." these brief glimpses of mandeville as witty and charming, learned and thoughtful, are born out by his obituary. published in k berington's evening post. january , and applebee's original weekly the fable i, p xix, quoting from mandeville's medical treatise. bernard mandeville, the virgin unmask'd : or. female dialogues betwixt an elderly maiden lady, and her niece, on several diverting discourses on love. marriage. memoirs, and morals, etc.. (london, ), with an introduction by stephen h. good, ed., (new york: scholars' facsimiles & reprints, ), p. iii. page references in the text are to good's edition. the fable i, p. xix, quoting mandeville's treatise ( ), p. xiii. thomas home says that the most complete account of mandeville's life can be found in kaye's introduction to the fable. home, the social thought of bernard mandeville. p. xi. the fable i, p. xxix. ibid. kaye quotes from a comment by philopirio, mandeville's spokesman in the fable i, p. . the female tatler, november , . tournal, january , the notice extolled him as a man of "an extensive genius, uncommon wit, and strong judgment" who was "well skill'd in many parts of philosophy, and a curious search into human nature; which accomplishments rendered him a valuable and entertaining companion."l "one of the most successful authors and widely famed men of his day, (whose) works were selling not only by editions but literally by dozens of editions," mandeville wrote over a dozen works in english between and . his literary career began quietly with a translation of some fables after the easie and familiar method of monsieur de la fontaine ( ). the following year, he published ten additional verse fables as aesop dress'd; or, a collection of fables writ in familiar verse. the first book-length translation into english of la fontaine's fables, this collection contained two of mandeville's own verses, "the carp" and "the nightingal and the owl." following aesopic tradition, each fable is followed by a short moral which sums up its message. the style is similar to that of another of mandeville's works published anonymously the the fable i, pp. xxix/xxx. ibid., p. xxv. mandeville had published three works prior to leaving holland: bernardia mandeville di medicina oratio scholastica. rotterdam, ( ): disputatio philosophica de brutorum operationibus, leyden, ( ); disputatio medica inauguralis de chylosi vitaita, leyden, ( ). the fable i, p. xxx. goldsmith claims that mandeville's first published work appears to have been the pamphleteers: a satyr (london, ), "a clearly whig work". goldsmith, private vices, public benefits, pp. & . bernard mandeville, aesop dress'd: or, a collection of fables writ in familiar verse. (london, ). there is some disagreement over whether or not this fable is mandeville's own. paul bunyan anderson claims that "the carp" was published earlier in some fables after the easie and familiar method of monsieur de la fontaine. anderson, "splendor out of scandal," p. . horne, the social thought of bernard mandeville, p. . there is also some disagreement about whether or not this is mandeville's own fable. anderson claims that "the nightingal and the owl" was also published in some fables. anderson, "splendor.out of scandal" p. , n. . however, when mandeville presented the fable in the female tatler, (wed. feb. , ), he called it "a fable of english growth." but in his next contribution he printed another fable, "the wolves and sheep," not credited as his own, which, he says, came from the same collection as "the carp." following year, "a sixpenny quarto" (i: xxxiii) of twenty-six pages, the grumbling hive: or. knaves turn'd honest. the grumbling hive, a "short bit of doggerel, written in hudibrastic verse, was a satirical attack upon the ideas and efforts then associated with the societies for the reformation of manners," which had sprung up in england in the s. it was also, issac kramnick says, "a complex catalogue of all the corrupt individuals necessary for a flourishing society." this "general defense of corruption," kramnick argues, answers a group of poets of the preceding fifteen years who had attacked luxury. the grumbling hive introduces themes that occupied mandeville for the rest of his life, principally, his insistence on showing that it was their own egoism that tricked men into believing that moral virtues, such as honour, chastity and love for one's fellow man, were theirs by nature, not art and, further, that the kinds of behaviour they decried as being destructive to the body politic, prodigality, "that noble sin," luxury, vanity, pride and all other things they labelled vices, were those which gave them "what they lov'd": a rich and flourishing society. the grumbling hive now lay fallow for almost a decade until, in , it reappeared as part of an anonymous book called the fable of the bees: or. private vices, publick benefits. the fable was published separately in two parts. the first edition, published twice in , consisted of the poem "the grumbling bernard mandeville, the grumbling hive: or. knaves turn'd honest. (london, ). home, social thought of bernard mandeville. p, . issac kramnick, bolingbroke and his circle: the politics of nostalgia in the age of walpole, (cambridge: harvard university press, ), p. . kramnick writes that these "second rate poets" had produced a series of long moral poems between and arguing the corrupting power of money on all classes of society. robert hopkins argues that kramnick has suggested the only really plausible motive for mandeville's writing the grumbling hive. robert hopkins, "the cant of social compromise : some observations on mandeville's satire", mandeville studies, primer, ed., p. . ibid. the fable i, p. , quoted from "the grumbling hive: or, knaves turn'd honest." ibid., p. , quoted from "the grumbling hive: or, knaves turn'd honest". ibid., p. xxxiii. hive: or, knaves turn'd honest" ( ), followed by a prose commentary, "an enquiry into the origin of moral virtue," the work's most radical and influential part, and twenty "remarks" expanding on the themes in the poem. in a second edition was published, expanding the "remarks" and adding "an essay on charity & charity schools" and "a search into the nature of society." further editions appeared in , , , and . in the fable of the bees, part ii, was issued, amplifying and defending the first part. in the first of its six dialogues, cleomenes, mandeville's spokesman, recommends the fable to his antagonistic friend, horatio, and entreats him to "yield something to our friendship, and condescend for once to read 'the fable of the bees'...it's a handsome volume" (ii: ). at the very end of the last dialogue, his friend, now won over, confesses, "i am your convert, and shall henceforth look upon 'the fable of the bees' very differently from what i did; for...there is certainly more truth, and nature is more faithfully copied in it almost every where" (ii: ). the fable lays out mandeville's larger thesis. if social virtue forms the basis of civil societies , the "great ends" of which are mutual happiness and more comfortable conditions of life , then, ironically, this virtue must be founded, not on selflessness, benevolence or natural affection for one another, but on self-interest or "pride", "the hidden spring, that gives life and motion to all [men's] actions." the fable expands on the metaphor of a bee-hive. hundert, "the thread of language and the web of dominion: mandeville to rousseau and back," eighteenth-century studies, vol. , no. , (winter / ), p. . the fable ii, p. . ibid., p. . ibid., p. . mandeville insists that "this pretended love of our species, and natural affection we are said to have for one another...is neither instrumental to the erecting of societies, nor ever trusted to in our prudent commerce with one another." mandeville argues that self-interest is composed of two passions, self-liking and self-love. all actions, he claims, are motivated by self-interest. the fable ii, pp. - . the fable ii., p. . mandeville lists some of the many inventions, activities and talents found in a prosperous kingdom, "engines, labourers, ships, castles, arms, artificers, craft, science, shop or instrument" (i: ), and shows how all are the result of prodigality and luxury. a l l citizens, rounder or respectable, who make up that kingdom, are "knaves," not only "sharpers, parasites, pimps, players, pick- pockets, coiners, quacks, south-sayers," (i: ) but also "the grave industrious were the same" (i: ). lawyers, physicians, government ministers, priests and soldiers are as worthy of the name "knave" as the rest, for "all trades and places knew some cheat, no calling was without deceit" (i: ). unlike many of his contemporaries who similarly described this state of affairs and pronounced it evil, mandeville knew it and pronounced it good: "thus every part was full of vice, yet the whole mass a paradise" (i: ). between the publication of the grumbling hive and the fable, mandeville published other important works, both for an understanding of his developed thinking and of his arguments about women in particular. mandeville's first prose work in english, the virgin unmask'd: or. female dialogues betwixt an elderly maiden lady, and her niece, o n several diverting discourses on love, marriage, memoirs, and morals, etc., was published in and reprinted in . the virgin unmask'd is an insightful commentary on english society and politics at the turn of the eighteenth century in which mandeville discusses a variety of topics ranging from fashions (v., - ), marriage portions (v., - ), jointures (v., ) and childbirth (v., - ), to politics (v., , ), government finance (v., ), the class structure (v., - ) and the aesthetic merits of different languages (v., - ). . in dialogue form, lucinda, good argues that this work, mandeville's "most racy", is and "early and experimental work in which may be seen the seeds of much that was to develop in later works." the virgin unmask'd, intro., p. iii. an older, wiser woman, instructs her niece, antonia, in the arts of the world. mandeville may have deliberately chosen the title as "a sucker trap" to lure unsuspecting buyers into assuming it was a pornographic work, since it bears a close resemblance to an earlier erotic work, a dialogue between a married lady and a maid, published in . indeed, a prospective buyer, browsing through the book's first few pages, finds lucinda chastising her niece for "going bare- ass'd" (v., ) and telling her, knowingly, that "tis the heat of your blood, your wantonness, and lascivious thoughts, 'tis they, that are the cause of all your immoderate behaviour" (v., ). the virgin u n m a s k ' d is not in fact a pornographic titillator, but an exposition of the themes first seen in the grumbling hive and expanded later in the fable. mandeville's distinctive approach is evident throughout the book. always the diagnostician of secular society, he is concerned to show the futility as well as the difficulty of judging the results of our actions by the motives which prompt them. lucinda, mandeville's spokesman, demonstrates this dilemma. after describing in detail the life of a nobleman of ancient family and the benefits the many dependant on him received because of his largesse, the following exchange takes place: david foxon, "libertine literature in england, - ", the book collector, vol , no. , (autumn, ), p. . see vichert, "bernard mandeville's the virgin unmask'd"; goldsmith, private vices, public benefits, p. . goldsmith refers to vichert's discussion of this tradition. david foxon also discusses this tradition. foxon's work, in three parts, traces the history of pornographic writing. foxon says that the ragionamenti of aretino. a realistic and satirical view of the lives of women in different occupations, printed in and and first collected in a london edition of , established the form - a dialogue between an older and younger woman - which remained the norm for at least years. foxon, "libertine literature in england, - ," p. . vichert argues that by "an initial mandevillian irony the unsuspecting male book-buyer is tricked into anticipating a work of pornography. vichert, "bernard mandeville's the virgin unmask'd," p. . mandeville's intended audience for this work was not limited to males. lucinda: and don't you think now niece, that this noble-man had a tolerably good relish? antonia: i think so well of him, that i wish you could help me to such a husband. lucinda: take care you don't repent....the bottom of all this was pride! antonia: yet it was commendable, as long as so many receiv'd the benefit of it (v., ). brutally cutting away antonia's illusions and social delusions, lucinda forces her to see herself and others, not as they appear or would want to be seen, but as they really are. throughout the work, mandeville repeatedly shows that "all is not gold that glitters" (v., ) : actions which may be judged as virtuous proceed from base motives, while actions conventionally judged as vile have consequences beneficial to society. the virgin unmask'd does not seem to have made much of a stir when it was published. indeed, it was not until , the year after the fable was reprinted in an enlarged edition and really began to attract attention, that it was even reprinted. in the same year in which the virgin unmask'd was first published, a new periodical, the female tatler, printed its first issue on july, . the popular periodicals which proliferated at the beginning of the eighteenth century, "the newest and most original form of literary publishing," perhaps best illustrate the prevalent ideas of the period. inspired by a similar periodical, the tatler. first published on april, by richard steele, the mandeville repeats this homily in part ii of the fable, writing "all is not gold that glisters." p. . the fable i, p. xxxiv. goldsmith, "mandeville and the spirit of capitalism", p. ; anderson 'splendor out of scandal", p. . according to anderson, periodicals were "most fruitful in bringing new experience into manageable shape." female tatler satirizes and closely parallels steele's publication. just as the first edition of the tatler promises, "whatever men do, or say, or think, or dream, our medley paper seizes for its theme" (tatler, april, ), so the supposed author of the female tatler, a mrs. crackenthorpe, promises in the first number that she too is "a lady that knows everything" (f.t., july, ). unlike steele's publication, which ridicules and chastises people publicly for transgressions that steele deems improper, mrs. crackenthorpe vows to be "very careful, unjustly or ungenteely, not to reflect upon any person whatsoever." nonetheless, she parodies steele, promising "gently to correct the vices and vanities which some of distinction as well as others, wilfully commit" (f.t. july, ). the first editions of the female tatler, alternating days with the tatler, were published every monday, wednesday and friday by mrs. crackenthorpe; but on november, , she retired from the scene, and the remaining issues were "written by a society of ladies": lucinda, emilia, araballa, rosella, artesia and sopronia. richmond p. bond, the tatler: the making of a literary journal, (cambridge: harvard university press, ), pp. - . bond claims that "from the first paper to the last the derivative character of the periodical was obvious." anderson established that the "ladies", lucinda and artesia, were, in fact, mandeville, and argues eloquently that the female tatler presents mandeville's "characteristic thinking on the topics with which he continued to be concerned for the rest of his life." although he found no "external evidence to connect dr. bernard mandeville with the female tatler," he argues that the internal evidence is inescapable. "the lucinda-artesia papers are of one piece throughout: four or five years earlier than the prose remarks of the fable of the bees-.they present mandeville's characteristic thinking." anderson, "splendor out of scandal", p. . thirty years later, gordon vichert, in an attempt to spare future scholars the labour of checking anderson's work, published an article in the quarterly verifying anderson's claim . vichert writes that anderson's argument is devoted to pointing out the similarity in thought between the lucinda-artesia papers and mandeville's acknowledged works. while this "internal evidence...is overwhelming," vichert claims "there is external evidence as well." he refers to the reprinting of three of mandeville's verse fables in the papers, and the printing of the poem "on honour" two years before its appearance in mandeville's miscellany collection, wishes to a godson. gordon vichert, "some recent mandeville attributions," philological quarterly, xiv, ii, april , pp. - . in the first edition of the tatler, steele explained that his periodical was designed to entertain 'the fair sex', in whose honour he has invented the title. but steele's paper has another and ultimately, to mandeville, more disturbing objective than just entertaining the ladies. through example, public ridicule and exposure of those whose behaviour he finds offensive, steele seeks to enforce norms of conduct which mandeville finds both hypocritical and harmful. steele warns his readers that, from time to time, he intends to "print bills of mortality," and "all such who are named therin, if they...are good for nothing shall find themselves in the number of the deceased." having thus given fair warning to all "good for nothing[s]" in the first issue, in later numbers steele, in the guise of the priggish squire bickerstaff, aligns himself with his "friends and fellow-labourers," members "of the society for reformation of manners." the purpose of the society, begun in , was to suppress profaneness and debauchery, "abominable impieties [which] had overspread the nation." in the forty years after its inception, the society calculated that it prosecuted about , persons in or near london. both the society and steele's tatler were favourite targets of mandeville's, and both have been credited with providing him with the incentive for writing the lucinda-artesia papers. the tatler. in three volumes, vol. , edinburgh, robert martin, mdcccxlv, no. . see dario castiglione, "considering things minutely: reflections on mandeville and the eighteenth-century science of man," history of political thought vii, (winter, ), pp. - . ibid. the tatler, no. , note, p. . horne, the social thought of bernard mandeville, quoting from edward stephens, the beginning, and progress of.reformation ( ). p. . the tatler, no. , p. . horne comments that it seems appropriate for mandeville to use the tatler as a foil because it symbolized much of the effort to convert england to more polite manners. horne, the social thought of bernard mandeville, p. . horne also points out that many of the later editions of the female tatler were directed against the reform movement. ibid., p. . anderson credits steele's "superficial thought" with stimulating mandeville's interest in using the female tatler to compel his readers to examine both themselves and human nature. anderson "splendor out of scandal," pp. / . other catalysts which might have prompted mandeville to become one of "the society of ladies" have been suggested, including his concern with the political and religious tension created by dr. henry sacheverell's notorious sermon on passive obedience delivered in saint paul's cathedral on november, . the most fully developed thesis about mandeville's motives for writing the lucinda-artesia papers, and their subsequent importance to the development of his theories on society and politics, however, comes from goldsmith. mandeville's original formulation of his views, goldsmith argues, was inspired by and directed against squire bickerstaff, steele's persona in the tatler. like anderson, goldsmith argues that mandeville's theory of society was first presented in the satirical attack on bickerstaff put forward by the the female tatler's oxford gentleman. it is these ideas, he claims, reworked into a single social theory, that are propounded in the fable of the bees. another, very important influence on mandeville was anthony ashley cooper, third earl of shaftesbury. although not mentioned directly by mandeville until his essay "a search into the nature of society" (i: ), h.j. dickinson, "the politics of bernard mandeville," mandeville studies, primer, ed., p. . unless mandeville was prescient, sacheverell's speech, delivered three days after mandeville's first contribution, could not have prompted him to join the female tatler. a month later however, mandeville wrote a satirical announcement in the paper advertising a soon to be published sermon, the case of passive obedience, preached in the "chief mosque of constantinople in the christian times, call'd st. sophia...by sache-ali-verello, a seditious priest, that having no other merits, would fain have dy'd a martyr for the cause, but was preserved by the lenity of th/successors. translated by a non juror". the female tatler, december, . goldsmith, private vices. public benefits, p. . like goldsmith, anderson also believes steele to be mandeville's opponent. anderson claims that in the female tatler, mandeville is practicing periodical journalism rather than philosophical controversy and that his natural opposite is not shaftesbury, but steele. anderson, 'splendor out of scandal," p. . anderson claims that the fullest expression of mandeville's social vision is found in issues no. and of the female tatler. anderson, "splendor out of scandal," p. . goldsmith, private vices, public benefits, p. & . ibid., pp. & . shaftesbury's "lovely system" (ii: ) draws mandeville's scorn both here and in part n, where he satirizes shaftesbury's "system" of social virtues in the first dialogue and rejects his account of morality and social virtue as innate and originating in the other-regarding sentiments mankind has for one another. mandeville's criticism of shaftesbury centered on the latter's insistence on calling "every action perform'd with regard to the publick good, virtuous; and all selfishness, wholly excluding such a regard, vice" (i: ). this scheme, and shaftesbury's moral absolutism, are diametrically opposed to mandeville's moral relativism. unlike mandeville, who argues that morality, like artistic standards and fashions, is culturally determined, shaftesbury "looks upon virtue and vice as permanent realities that must ever be the same in all countries and all ages" (i: ). mandeville uses suicide to illustrate his argument that morality is not the same everywhere for everyone. although self-murder is a "heinous crime" to a christian, he argues "it ought not to be considered so to a heathen who has been taught it by his most venerated philosophers" (f.t., feb., ). mandeville contrasts shaftesbury's argument to his own and criticizes his naivety in imagining that a man of sound understanding, by following the rules of good sense, may not only find out the pulchrum & honestum, both in morality and the works of art and nature, but likewise govern him-self by his reason with as much ease and readiness as a good rider manages a well-taught horse by the bridle (i: ). mandeville is very clear about their incompatibility, commenting that two systems "cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and mine" (i: ). with the fable i. p. . see kaye's note. home, the social thought of bernard mandeville. p. . horne points out the intimate connection in shaftesbury's own mind between a moral and an esthetic sense, his siding with those who argued that art has a moral purpose. it is an argument mandeville rejected. the fable ii, p. . tongue-in-cheek praise of shaftesbury's "generous and refined" notions (i: ), mandeville concludes, "what pity it is that they are not true...that the solidity of them is inconsistent with our daily experience" (i: ). there are a number of similarities between mandeville's attack on shaftesbury's moral and aesthetic absolutism in the fable, published in , where he argues that "what is called beautiful...varies according to the different tastes of nations and ages," (i: ) and his argument in the virgin unmask'd that there are no absolute aesthetic criteria because "fashions and customs...have alter'd with the times" (v., ). the close parallel between this and his statement in the fable that "what is admired or approved of will change, as modes and fashions alter and men vary in their tastes and humours" (i: ), demonstrates that at least some of the ideas behind his criticism of shaftesbury, put forward after , were integral to his arguments long before that. in addition to the virgin unmask'd, the female tatlers and the fable, mandeville wrote one other work important to this paper. in he published an anonymous essay, modest defense of publick stews: or. a n essay upon whoring, as it is now practis'd in these kingdom's. "written by a layman," it expands on "remark h" from part i of the fable and, with mandeville's characteristic sarcasm, is addressed to the "gentlemen of the societies," whose "endeavours to suppress lewdness, have only serv'd to promote it" (m.d. ii). the treatise, designed "to promote the general welfare and happiness of mankind" (m.d. ), proposes the establishment of a chain of whorehouses throughout the kingdom, stocked with just enough women to satisfy the sexual home argues that shaftesbury did not become mandeville's adversary until the s. home, the social thought of bernard mandeville. p. . needs of the male population. these public stews would not only prevent the seduction of young virgins (m.d. ) and preserve the chastity of many women (m.d. , / ), they would also keep men free from venereal disease and benefit the economy by allowing men to satisfy their sexual urges without wasting precious time and energy, better spent on business, wooing and seducing virtuous women into moral sin and economic and social ruin (m.d. - ). like the grumbling hive and the virgin unmask'd, modest defence of publick stews illustrates mandeville's penchant for exposing men's pretences. as he explains in the introduction to part of the fable, "most writers are always teaching men what they should be, and hardly ever trouble their heads with telling them what they really are" (i: ). sometimes brutally, sometimes gently, but always wittily, mandeville persists in stripping away illusions, demonstrating that morality, like fashion, depends on the mores of a particular society, and that many practices, such as whoring, considered moral offences, are in reality only social ones. virtues and vices are nothing more than those acts which society deems to be either beneficial or harmful. but herein lies the paradox of the grumbling hive and the fable: for if the qualities identified as virtues are to be encouraged and those identified as vices discouraged, then the flourishing society all enjoy will wither and die. mandeville's portrayal of the bee-hive as a microcosm of human society, where "these insects liv'd like men, and all our actions they perform'd in small" (i: ), was not original. the roman fabulist phaedrus, who translated bernard mandeville, modest defence of publick stews: or, an essay upon whoring as it is now practis'd in these kingdoms. -ondon, ), p. . for example. sir humphrey mackworth, in england's glory, (london ) wrote "the more the merrier....like bees in a hive, and better cheer, too." pp. - . quoted in joyce appleby, "ideology and theory: the tension between political and economic liberalism in seventeenth- century england," the american historical review, vol. , no. , oune, ), p. . see also and imitated the fables of aesop, wrote a fable of the bees that may be the source of a number of la fontaine's fables which mandeville employed, including that of the wasps and the bees. yet mandeville's use of the bee-hive as a metaphor for society is remarkable "for the new [and, to his own generation, startling] pattern he made out of [these] old materials." the orthodox view in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was that without vice the world would be a better place. virtuous societies were believed to be those where benevolence and love for one's fellow-man flourished and vices such as sloth, lust, avarice, pride and prodigality were vigorously policed. mandeville insists that this view of human nature and society is an elaborate fiction. he persistently points out that if men will examine themselves and "think on the cause" (v., ) of their actions, they will find that "when people are too lazy, or fearful to undertake anything, they are praised for being contented, and the effects of avarice are often called temperance and sobriety" (v., ). not content to have men examine their motives and "judge of every thing according to the merits" (v., ), he declares that there can be no merit in their motives, only self-interest. mandeville insists that societies as we know them need vice and, moreover, that not only are all actions in these societies the result of base motives, but "that the public benefits existed not in spite of, but because of, the private vices." roseann runte, "from la fontaine to porchat: the bee in the french fable," studies in eighteenth-century culture, ,ed., j.w. yolton and l.e. brown, pp. - , for a useful discussion of the bee as metaphor and image in early-modern europe. j.a.w. gunn, "mandeville and wither: individualism and the workings of providence", mandeville studies, primer, ed., p. . gunn claims that phaedrus was probably mandeville's source of inspiration for writing his fable. english examples of other works that draw social conclusions from the life of bees can be found in w.h. greenleaf, order, empiricism and politics (london, ), p. . basil willey, the eighteenth century background, (london: chatto & windus, ), p. . ibid. mandeville's fable received spectacular attention in recently altered social circumstances. j.g.a. pocock argues that the period after the revolution of was one of change and development in some ways more radical and significant than even those of the civil war and interregnum. the arrival of william iii, with his continental interests, meant that english troops and money were committed to a series of major continental wars. the problem of raising money to support this quasi-permanent enlargement of the standing army forced the government to develop new financial institutions, particularly the stock market, the national debt and the bank of england, which revolutionized not only the government and the way it could conduct its affairs, but the shape of english society itself. in , the first english loan was floated, and in , "the great engines we had then to move (our trade and our war) under a great scarcity of money, to keep them agoing" gave rise to the establishment of the bank of england. by the end of the seventeenth century, england was a leading trading nation, and the wealth generated by trade provided a ready source of revenue that government was able to tap through these new institutions. the creation of new forms of wealth through the expansion of commerce into the west indies and north america, and technical innovation among the merchants and traders of london, resulted in a significant redistribution of wealth to new groups. london lawyers, government officials, and particularly merchants who had made their fortunes in commerce, had money to invest in these new institutions, which "were essentially a series of devices for encouraging the large j. g. a. pocock, the machiavellian moment. (princeton: princeton university press, ), p. . j. broughton, the vindication and advancement of our national constitution and credit- attempted in several tracts, ( ), [goldsmith, kress collection], p. . p.g. m . dickson, the financial revolution in england: a study in the development of public credit, - , (toronto: the macmillan company, ). p. . h.j. habakkuk, "english landownership, - ", the economic history review, vol. x, no. , (feb., ), p. . or small investor to lend capital to the state, investing in its future political stability and strengthening this by the act of investment itself, while deriving a guaranteed income from the return on the sum invested." this new "monied interest", overwhelmingly london-based, became increasingly powerful as the government became more and more dependant on its members for the capital needed to wage war. wealth did not just stoke the engines of war, however. the marketing strategy of the east india company managers, "equal to macy's in the twentieth century," stimulated a fashion craze that created a "revolutionary force". by demonstrating the elasticity of demand, the east india company provided domestic defenders of spending with a new paradigm, the citizen as consumer, driven by what joyce appleby calls the "propulsive power of envy, emulation, love of luxury, vanity and vaulting ambition." although benefiting the government and its investors, these new financial institutions and consumer demands nonetheless caused deep anxiety and concern. the financial institutions, not relying on land, the traditional source of wealth and power, created a new and threatening form of wealth, public credit. more and more, money came to be obtained on the security of pocock, machiavellian moment, p. . w.a. speck, "conflict in society," britain after the glorious revolution: - . geoffery holmes, ed., (london: macmillan & co., ), p. . speck says it is at this time that the term "the city" began to be used to describe the business section of the capital. ibid., p. . war was expensive. geoffrey holmes calculates that the cost of conducting the wars against france during the reigns of william ul and anne was million pounds. geoffrey holmes, 'introduction: post-revolution britain and the historian," geoffrey holmes, ed., britain after the glorious revolution. - . p. . appleby, "ideology and theory,"pp. / . ibid., p. . see also the birth of a consumer society: the commercialization of eighteenth- century england, neil mckendrick, john brewer, j. h. plumb, eds., (bloomington: indiana university press, ). remote revenues and ultimately on confidence alone. although many of the large investors were the peers of the realm, a group that roy porter characterizes as being, by , "collectively fabulously wealthy," these peers were a very small group. below the peers in the social order, the squires, far from being rich, were caught in a vicious squeeze of land taxes, poor crops and the cost of emulating the peers who indulged in "an orgy of consumption." with their income derived almost solely from their land, squires had little money to invest and were thus unable to take advantage of the new financial devices and opportunities. frozen out by "the great landlords who maintained their pre- eminence by means of an unshakeable grip on political power," many of the squires were left behind, becoming relatively poor and politically disaffected. by , the conflict between the "landed interest," who derived their revenues almost solely from rents and land, and the "monied interest," whose income came from "the new machinery of public credit," trade, government spending and the new financial institutions, had reached critical proportions. to understand mandeville's effect on his contemporaries, and the intensity of feeling generated by the conflict, it will help to reconstruct pocock's speck, "conflict in society," p. . roy porter, english society in the eighteenth century. (london: penguin books, ), p. . it is calculated that something in the order of % of the national income was in the hands of only . % of the population, composed of the aristocracy and gentry, lawyers, civil servants, merchants and sea-traders. w.a. speck, "mandeville and the utopia seated in the brain," mandeville studies, primer, ed., p. . porter, english society in the eighteenth century, pp. - . joyce appleby argues that the rich landowners spent rather than invested their income. appleby, "ideology and theory", p. . the burden of taxation, which fell most heavily on landowners, meant that they lacked capital. this was compounded from the s to by the disastrous frequency with which poor harvests occurred. saw the biggest crop failure of the period. this cycle of crop failure, taxation and lack of revenue meant that land-owners did not have capital to invest. speck, "conflict in society," pp. - ; porter, english society in the eighteenth century, pp. / . porter, english society in the eighteenth century, p. . speck, "conflict in society," p. . argument in the machiavillian moment about the relationship between the notion of civic virtue and the polity. pocock argues there was a historical progression from a morality founded on real property to one founded on mobile forms of wealth. at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, the archetypical landed gentleman, living exclusively on his rents, independent of any outside agency and therefore immune to venal corruption, was still the ideal of the virtuous citizen. practicing frugality because he was anxious to improve his estate for inheritance, it was thought that he would engage in civic actions for public rather than private interest. to a society equating civic or public good with private virtue, and both with careful financial management, a revived "ethic of frugality" took on added significance. the citizen, corrupted by luxury, would be distracted from seeking the public good. the only way the nation's liberty could be preserved, and its decline into moral corruption, despotism and barbarity prevented, it was argued, was by promoting both public and private virtue. once public credit entered the political arena, and it became possible to increase wealth through means other than ownership of real property, the entire concept of public virtue was threatened. although the agrarian values of landed independence and rural stability remained constants in the social perceptions of the period, the reality was that ownership of land came to depend more and more on trade and credit. but, as often happens in times of rapid change, there was a lag between what was deemed acceptable moral behaviour and social and economic realities. the great debate between the "landed" and the "monied" pocock, machiavellian moment, p. . ibid., p. . ibid., p. . goldsmith, "mandeville and the spirit of capitalism", p. . interests in the early eighteenth century was conducted by the journalists and publicists of the day. although champions of the monied interests, court writers like addison and steele were pitted against the landed interests or country ideologists. pocock argues that even they never dreamed of denying that land was substantially what its partisans said it was: the foundation of civil virtue and society. nor, he continues, did they challenge the concept that private virtue and frugality were necessary to ensure a strong 'body politick'. . to his contemporaries, mandeville's doctrines seemed to threaten both the secular and the religious assumptions from which virtuous citizens were held to be a prerequisite for virtuous states. by his insistence that "nothing is more beneficial to the publick than the prodigal, or more immediately detrimental than the miser, yet both are vices, without which the society could not subsist" (f.t., nov., ), mandeville drew the wrath of his contemporaries who believed that vice, particularly prodigality, threatened the very existence of the nation. mandeville alone in this period openly argues that conventional moral and social thought are inconsistent with the contemporary economic goals of the state. championing "the ethic of self-interest" over the ethic of private virtue and frugality, put forward by men like steele and addison, and those in the societies who sought to enforce traditional norms of conduct, pocock, machiavellian moment, p. . goldsmith claims that "for augustans, public virtue and private virtue were connected; private vices were not the sole concern of private men for they were causally linked with civic corruption." goldsmith, "public virtue and private vices," p. . the fable i, . mandeville says that "by society i understand a body politick, in which man either subdued by superior force, or by persuasion drawn from his savage state, is become a disciplin'd creature that can find his own ends in labouring for others, and where...each member is render'd subservient to the whole, and all of them by cunning management are made to act as one." pocock, machiavellian moment, pp. - . home. the social thought of bernard mandeville. p. . pocock, machiavellian moment, p. . mandeville not only insists that some vices "are so necessary to the state, that no nation can be great without them," but also claims "that to wish for a flourishing trade, and the decrease of pride and luxury is as great an absurdity, as to pray for rain and dry weather at the same time" (f.t., nov., ). mandeville argues that no private action, however odious, which contributes to the public good, can be considered a vice; it must on the contrary be regarded as a virtue precisely because of its beneficent effects. in his modest defence of public stews, he argues at great length that "if a publick act, taking in all its consequences really produces a greater quantity of good, it must, and ought to be term'd a good act; altho' the bare act, considered in itself, without the consequent good, should be in the highest degree wicked and unjust" (m. / ). not only must individual acts be considered good if their social effects are positive, but even "wicked" laws, if they produce public benefits, must also to be deemed good: "we may in confidence affirm," he writes, that "no beneficial laws can be sinful" (m. / ). although his female tatlers were only speaking of moral virtues, not christian ones, "as it is not the business of tatlers to meddle with religious matters" (f.t., feb., ) , in the fable mandeville draws on mandeville was not alone in recognizing the close relationship between rich and powerful nations and pride and luxury. others, including defoe, reached the same conclusion before him. lovejoy claims that in the thought of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century writers, approbativeness or love of praise, the desire to be well thought of, came to be widely accepted as "the sole subjective prompting of good conduct, the motive of virtually all the modes of behaviour necessary for the good order of society and the progress of mankind." arthur o. lovejoy, reflections on human nature. (baltimore: joseph hopkins press, ), p. . both dudley north, who, in , wrote that "the main spur to trade, or rather to industry and ingenuity, is the exorbitant appetites of men," and john houghton, who, ten years earlier, had written that "our high-living, so far from prejudicing the nation,...enriches it," recognized the economic advantages that accrue to a nation from pride and vanity. sir dudley north, discourses upon trade ( ), quoted in mckendrick, p. ; john houghton, a collection of letters for the improvement of husbandry and trade ( ), quoted in mckendrick, "commercialization and the economy," the birth of a consumer society, p. . mandeville may have been deliberately distancing himself from "religious matters" to ensure that the ecclesiastical courts could have no jurisdiction over the female tatler. foxon points the authority of religion to support his position that whatever produces good must be deemed to be good. "god, in his infinite wisdom, could not make errors or mistakes," he argues, "and therefore, every human scheme or act must be part of god's design; and if they are part of god's design, as it follows they must be, and god is all good, then all the actions committed by his design must be good" (u: ). mandeville's importance within a broad range of speculation in the early eighteenth century about the impulses which propel individuals to seek private gain is that he was one of the first to offer a thorough-going psychological analysis of the difficulty of self-knowledge and the stratagems employed by individuals in heightened commercial societies to hide these passions from themselves. his claim that virtue and public spiritedness are incompatible with a rich and flourishing nation and that passion, in the form of pride, must be encouraged rather than combatted (ii: ) in order to promote wealth, is a lesson mandeville probably learned from la rochefoucauld, pierre nicole, la fontaine, jacques esprit and, most of all, pierre bayle. like them, he rejects the idea that society derives from anything other than the actions of self-interested individuals, and finds absurd the belief that communities cohere either because of men's natural sociability or because of their ability to act in strict accordance with moral rules. out that "a general offence against morals...was a matter for the ecclesiastical courts." foxon, "libertine literature", p. . kaye says that nicole, fontenelle, abbadie, and j.f. bernard were writers who announced the pains of introspection somewhat in mandeville's spirit. the fable ii, p. , n. . mandeville refers directly to nicole in his discussion of courage in remark r of the fable, p. . home, the social thought of bernard mandeville. pp. . - . malcolm jack credits l'abbadie, laplacette, rochefoucauld and bayle as mandeville's french antecedents. jack, "progress and corruption in the eighteenth century," p. . home, the social thought of bernard mandeville, pp. / . mandeville's insistence that all publicly-beneficial acts derive from egoism and self-interest, and that "if the most publick spirited man in the universe will be pleased strictly to examine himself, he will find that he has never committed any action deliberately but for his own sake" (f.t.# .), is similar to ideas expressed by bayle, to whom he admitted a particular debt. bayle, a huguenot who fled france for holland, stressed the importance of egoism in the analysis of human action and provided mandeville with a full-bodied approach to moral relativism and a social justification for luxury. bayle taught in rotterdam at the same time as mandeville was attending the erasmian school there and may have been his teacher. bayle's pensees diverses sur la compte ( ), originally published when mandeville was in his teens, was translated into english in , the year before mandeville published the virgin unmask'd. it is possible that mandeville read bayle's continuation des pensees diverses ( ), which explicitly propounds the principle of the utility of luxury. indeed, there is a striking similarity between mandeville's ideas about the social origins of moral values and bayle's, and a similarity of both to epicurus, an explicit source of bayle's arguments. like mandeville, bayle argues that moral values are culturally determined. car s'il est vrai que les persuasions generales de l'esprit ne sont pas le ressort de nos actions, et que c'est le temperament, la coutume, mandeville refers directly to bayle at different times in his work. for example, the fable i, p. . home, the social thought of bernard mandeville. p. . popkin speculates that bayle was mandeville's teacher at the erasmian school. richard h. popkin, "isaac de pinto's criticism of mandeville and hume on luxury," studies on voltaire and the eighteenth century, ed. by theodore besterman, vol , ( ), p. , n. . j.e. labrouose, bayle, (the hague: m . nijhoff, ), vol. ii, p. , n. . e.d. james and home claim there is no evidence that mandeville and bayle ever met. e.d. james, "faith, sincerity and morality: mandeville and bayle," mandeville studies, p. ; home, the social thought of bernard mandeville. p. . s x f pierre bayle, pensees diverses sur la comete. edition critique avec une introduction & des notes, a. prat., vol. i & ii, (paris: librairie & droz, ). see bayle's pensees sur la comete. ii, pp. / . on quelque passion particuliere qui nous determine, il peut y avoir une disproportion norme entre ce que ton croit, et ce que ton fait.i moreover, both credit the fear of worldly reproach as the greatest "bulwark of morality" (m.d., ) and honour "qu'il y a d'hommes qui surmontent la crainte de la mort, la plus violente de toutes les passions, par la crainte de l'infamie." both bayle and- mandeville lay special stress on pride and vanity in the process of social interaction. like mandeville, bayle not only suggested that vices can motivate the same acts as virtues, but also concluded that a society, in order to prosper, must rely on vices alone. ii faut done dire, que c'est l'amour propre, cette passion inseparable de notre nature, qui nous rend avares. car cette maudite passion nous faisant trouver du plaisir a tout ce qui flatte nrjtre vanife, a tout ce qui nous distingue des autres hommes, a tout ce qui nous peut procurer l'accomplissement de nos desirs, a tout ce qui nous peut servir de rempart contre les maux que nous craignons, nous porte a desirer ardemment d'avour du bien, parce que nous esperons de trouver tous ces avantages-la dans la possession des richesses. mandeville employed bayle's central arguments about human motivation in the service of a wholesale critique of conventional moral assumptions within advanced economies. it was in this way that his "economic rationalism and moral cynicism" posed a threat to contemporary self- understanding. by insisting on a direct relationship between vice (or "evil both natural and moral") and "a populous, rich and flourishing nation," (i: ) and on the relativity of moral virtues, mandeville was "held to rival machiavelli ibid., p. . ibid- p. . ibid-pp. / . mckendrick, "commercialization and the economy," p. . for an example of his argument on this see the fable i, pp. - . and hobbes as the father of lies." his economic and social theory, fully developed in the fable of the bees, was found morally intolerable by the majority of his contemporaries, who saw codes of moral behaviour as essential elements of the workings of the social scheme. as kaye remarks in his introduction to the fable, the most considerable thing about mandeville's adversaries is their numbers (ii: ). his book was criticized by contemporaries as ill-written and incoherent, the style as mean and pitiful, the language as barbarous and the humour as low (ii: ). it was declared a public nuisance by the grand jury of middlesex and burned by the public hangman in paris. unlike defoe and others among his contemporaries who justified vice in trade as an economic but not a moral virtue, mandeville contended that what was commonly understood as vice was both. by seeking non-moral explanations for the evolution of society and its ability to provide individuals with goods and services, he "banished virtue from our consideration of government," and sought to transform "private vices" into "publick virtues." it was this doctrine that earned mandeville the enmity of his contemporaries. his insistence that emulative spending was not only necessary to the economic well-being of the nation, but instinctive in mankind's nature, was held to threaten the social order, draining the estates of the aristocracy, whose bills for luxuriant living would even further outstrip their incomes, and blur class distinctions with every james redwood, reason, ridicule and religion: the age of enlightenment in england, - , (london: thames & hudson, ), p. ; see also pocock, the machiavellian moment, p. ; and mckendrick, "commercialization and the economy," p. . fable i, introduction, xxxiv. hundert, "mandeville to rousseau and back," p. . the fable was bumed by the public hangman in . on july, , an abusive letter addressed to lord c appeared in the london journal, to which mandeville replied two weeks later. this reply, together with the letter and the grand jury's presentiments, was reprinted in all subsequent editions of the fable. the fable, p. xxxiv. horne, the social thought of bernard mandeville, p. . level of society seeking to emulate the one above it. orthodox christian social assumptions ensured that the search for wealth and luxury, qualities long held to be vices by the christian churches, would be vociferously denounced. mandeville, while acknowledging the traditional christian virtues, at the same time championed the traditional christian vices, arguing that these virtues were incompatible with a rich and flourishing society. why would men act virtuously, he asked, if all they would receive is the pleasure of doing it, "which most people reckon but poor pay" (i. ). dorante, mandeville's villain in the virgin unmask'd, a thoroughly despicable character, jibes at the moralists who would own that "bare virtue" is worth nothing, "for telling us that it is its own reward, is as much as they would say be virtuous as long as you live and you'll get nothing but your labour for your pains" (v., ). similarly, in the female tatler, mandeville's oxford gentleman, admitting that "the certainty of a future state, makes it the interest of every individual person to be virtuous," argues contrarily that "humility, temperance, contentedness, frugality, and several other virtues, are very insignificant as to the publick, and so far from making a country flourish, that no nation ever yet enjoy'd the mosts ordinary comforts of life, if they were not counter-ballanc'd by the opposite vices" (f.t. nov., ). this is the counter-balance that mandeville proclaimed as his paradox of "private vices, publick benefits." national prosperity depended on what orthodox opinion viewed as individual depravity. in this way, mandeville extended a paradox previously identified by la rochefoucauld: "thus in the same way that poisons, properly mixed, can help make up medicine, the vices of porter, english society in the eighteenth century, p. . men can help make up their virtues." mandeville's contemporaries were neither ready nor willing to swallow the medicine he prescribed for them. while the increased trade and commerce brought about by the consumption of luxury goods conspicuously benefited the state by increasing its power, and everyone from the king to the clergy, tradesmen to soldiers, revelled in their own display of finery and equipment, popular opinion still denounced luxury as evil in itself and corrupting in its effects. maxime no. , quoted in home, the social thought of bernard mandeville. p. . see also lovejoy's transl. of maxim # in reflections on human nature, p. . hirschman argues that la rochefoucauld dissolved the passions and almost all virtues into self-interest. hirschman, the passions and the interests, p. and p. . the fable i, pp. xcvi/vii. c h a p t e r ii pride a n d t h e civilizing process the study of the passions is central to mandeville's analysis of mankind and society. for mandeville, the well-spring for men's actions and, indeed, society itself can be traced directly to what lovejoy calls men's emotive and appetitive, as distinct from their intellectual and cognitive, side. mandeville argues, a posteriori, that from self-liking, the primary passion, all of the other passions may be accounted for (u: / ). distinguishing between self-liking, the primary passion, and self-love, the passion in which all other passions are centered, he claims that the latter is given to all for self-preservation, while the former, since one cannot love what one does not like, ensures it (ii: - ). together, these two passions lead one to act always from self-interest. self-love is "the law of nature" (i: ); self-liking, innate in "human nature" (ii: p. ), is the source of pride (u: ). in his analysis of the passions, mandeville concentrates upon a commonly-addressed theme. his rejection of the traditional christian view that a good society requires morally virtuous individuals, and his acceptance of approbativeness or pride as the primary cause, not only of materially wealthy societies, but of society itself, is similar to that of his acknowledged intellectual predecessors, the french 'moralists' of the seventeenth century, who questioned the belief that society resulted from anything other than the manipulation of lovejoy, reflections on human nature, p. . the quality identified as self-love by mandeville in part i of the fable acts o n u s because "we are all lovers of self preservation and would naturally avoid whatever we think troublesome or hurtful." self-liking, identified in part ii of the fable acts as a balance to self-love. because we are all great admirers of praise and desire to be thought well of by others, we temper our otherwise socially harmful tendencies. the female tatler, jan., . men's passions. almost obsessively, these analysts of human nature tried "to reduce most of the other 'passions' to one or another of the forms of 'pride' to show it to be the true explanation of actions which those who performed them supposed to spring from quite other motives, to trace its workings in the most various situations of social life, and to exhibit it as the force which keeps every vocation going, except those which serve the primary physical needs of food and shelter." the desire for praise, that craving for admiration or applause, came widely to be accepted as men's primary motive in social conduct, and the only prompt for behaviour necessary for the good order of society and the progress of mankind. a keen observer of the stratagems employed by men, "not only to deny the high value they have for themselves, but likewise, to pretend that they had greater value for others, than they have for themselves" (ii: , ), mandeville suspected their sincerity (ii: ). he was intent on showing that benevolence, humanity and other "social virtues" at the heart of orthodox moral reasoning in fact are the products of 'pride' or 'vain-glory' (ii: ), rather than any innate, other-regarding sentiments of mankind for one another. mandeville delights in pointing out what he calls men's "contrarieties" (ii: ), and demonstrating that everything attributed to virtue can in fact be reduced to the workings of 'pride', "that one predominant passion" (ii: ). it is 'pride', innate and unalterable in "human nature" (ii: / ), that fosters rich and flourishing societies (v., ; f.t., nov. ). increased and influenced by a home, the social thought of bernard mandeville, pp. / . lovejoy, reflections on human nature, p. . see lovejoy, ibid., p. . mandeville illustrates how pride simulates "love of our species, and natural affections": the fable ii, p. . he satirizes shaftesbury's 'lovely system' of social virtues in the first dialogue of part ii of the fable, p. . "refin'd education" (ii: ), managed and concealed by an "artful" one (ii: ), pride is the means whereby men are taught to "play the passion against itself" (ii: ), thus appearing to place public good over private interests. in the virgin unmask'd. the female tatler and the fable of the bees, mandeville illustrates, in increasingly detailed ways, how pride, "a passion, that is not to be gratify'd without being conceal'd, and never enjoy'd with greater ecstasy than when we are most fully persuaded, that it is well hid" (ii: ), fosters society by its very contrarieness. posing the question of whether rich and flourishing societies can arise from "that instinct of real affection...without ambition or the love of glory," rather than from "a staunch principle of pride and selfishness, acting under pretence to, and assuming the resemblance of, that affection" (ii: ), he argues that they can not. if genuine affection existed in the world, it would destroy pride and selfishness, and thus have "prevented the very existence of that pomp and glory, to which human societies have been, and are still raised by worldly wisdom" (ii: ). in the female tatler, the oxford gentleman, mandeville's spokesman, explains his position on the development of society. as to the saying, that 'man is a sociable creature', it is very true, but generally misunderstood, for it means not that human creatures by some good quality or innate virtue peculiar to themselves, esteem their own kind and love one another's company more than other animals; for in that sense it is utterly false, but it signifies, that by multiplicity of their wants as well as appetites...the vast love every one of them has for himself...they are of all animals the only species, of which even the greatest numbers may be made mandeville gives a detailed description of pride's contrarieness and the ways in which it benefits society. mandeville, the virgin unmask'd, pp. - . in his first contribution to the female tatler. he discusses the necessity for pride and honour in civil society. the female tatler. nov., . mandeville argues that man pretends to act from "principles of social virtue." the fable ii, / . subservient to one another, and by skilful management, compose a lasting society (f.t., november, ). not only are private virtues the result of sheer self-interest, but so too are civic virtues such as honour and courage, selflessness and love of country. honour, beholden to our frailties, is"the tye of society" (i: ). mandeville argues that there is no virtue, at least that he is acquainted with, "that has been half so instrument to the civilizing of mankind" as honour (i: ). together with wisdom and fortitude, sublime qualities of man, honour, "separated by art from the dregs of nature," has been "exhalt'd and refin'd into a spiritual essence" by "the fire of glory" (i: ). in the female tatler. mandeville, using a technique he often employs to demolish an argument, has the brave colonel worthy, "newly return'd from flanders...a man of undaunted courage," (f.t., nov., ) lay out the civic humanist position on the need for virtuous citizens in a state (f.t., jan., ). worthy commends himself to the company in the room as "a m a n of honour," who says nothing but "what is of an unquestionable truth." he holds forth about the glory of martial men and states with the conviction that nowhere can a man distinguish himself better than in the service of his country, where "his maintaining himself there voluntarily upon his own charge, bespeakes him to be brave, to hate idleness and to love his own country" (f.t., jan., ). with characteristic mandevillian irony, the brave worthy, not wanting to hear his adversary's counter argument, flees the mandeville used this metaphor previously in the female tatler. referring to honour as "the tie of civility." the female tatler. nov., . hirschman argues that spokesmen for the chivalric, aristocratic ideal made this striving for glory and honour into the touchstone of men's glory and greatness. during the renaissance, he claims, the striving for honour achieved the status of a dominant ideology. la rochefoucauld challenged this ideology and showed all the heroic virtues to be forms of self-love. albert o. hirschman, the passions and the interests: political arguments for capitalism before its triumph, (princeton: princeton university press, ), pp. / . goldsmith points out that courage is a virtue particularly appropriate to landed gentlemen. goldsmith, private vices, public benefits, p. . scene before the oxford gentleman can reply with a succinct summary of mandeville's theory of the role of the passions as socializing agents. "mankind is a strange compound," he explains, "made up of qualities that contradict each other" (f.t., jan., ). the need for praise and the desire to be well thought of by others counterbalances the harmful effects of mindlessly pursuing one's own self-interest to the detriment of society. by showing that it is not selflessness or concern for public welfare that is innate to man, but rather self-interest, mandeville here begins the construction of a theory of civil society whose motor force is the desired ends of self-interested individuals. how can self-interested individuals, who, like planets, are little worlds unto themselves, concerned only with their own happiness and with avoiding whatever they think troublesome or hurtful (i: ), be made to subdue their own self-interest? how can men who, of all species of animals, "without the curb of government" are "less capable of agreeing long together in multitudes" (i: ), be brought together in societies, where they need to substitute for their own self-interested acts those beneficial to the community? as lovejoy frames the question, "how, by means of what political device, could you bring creatures whose wills were always moved by irrational and "depraved" passions to behave in ways which would not be inconsistent with common good?" the device mandeville selected to account for self-interested individuals cooperating for the good of society, lovejoy argues, was "counterpoise", the balancing of one passion by another, while albert o. hirschman argues instead that mandeville spoke of hundert argues that for mandeville, the "motives of purely self-interested actors are a necessary feature of any satisfactory account of social organization." hundert, "bernard mandeville and the rhetoric of social science," p. . lovejoy, reflections on human nature, p. . "harnessing" the passions, transforming them through the civilizing medium of "society". regardless of whether we understand mandeville's solution to the problem of controlling the passions to be the notion of "counterpoise" or that of "harnessing", for at different times he argues each view, mandeville's conception of this dilemma directly bears upon a long line of moral argument. the notion of one passion counteracting another derives from augustine ( - a.d), who denounced three principal sins of fallen man: lust for money and possessions, lust for power, and sexual lust. the only one of the three for which augustine found any extenuating circumstances was lust for power. augustine cautiously endorses the possibility that lust for power, combined with a strong desire for praise and glory, could create "civil virtue", and here he conceives "of the possibility that one vice may check another." lovejoy has shown that the general revival of augustinian theology, particularly in seventeenth-century france, and importantly in bayle's work, was hirschman, the passions and the interests,, p. . hirschman identifies three different solutions which emerged for restraining men's destructive passions in the interests of the state: repressing and harnessing the passions were two solutions suggested; the third, the concept of the countervailing passions, anticipated utilizing one set of comparatively innocuous passions to countervail another more dangerous and destructive set or, perhaps, to weaken and tame the passions in internecine fights. ibid., pp. - . in the virgin unmask'd. mandeville uses the countervailing solution, arguing that only a stronger passion can counteract another. the virgin unmask'd, p. . however, i would agree with hirschman that his theory of how men can be brought to subdue their self-interest in the interest of society did not so rely on the passions being pitted one against another, thus neutralizing them, as on their being transformed or channeled into something else. hirschman, the passions and the interests, pp. - . for examples, see mandeville, the fable ii, p. ; and i, p. - ; - ; . lovejoy, reflections on human nature, p. . lovejoy argues that the framers of the american constitution believed that one could use the method of counterpoise as a political device to bring creatures whose wills were always moved by irrational and "depraved" passions to behave in ways which would not be inconsistent with the "common good". hirschman, the passions and the interests, p. . ibid., p. . ibid. mandeville's point of entry into this tradition, whose most influential eighteenth-century exponent he became. like bayle, mandeville argues that neither the might of government nor the fear of the hereafter are sufficient to cause men to restrain their destructive passions for the benefit of society. this is the crucial insight upon which mandeville develops his argument. in his introduction to part i of the fable, mandeville explains that he believes "man...to be a compound of various passions, [and] that all of them, as they are provoked and come uppermost, govern him by turns, whether he will or no" (i: ). later, he gives an example of how this works in his discussion of the transformation of "the passion...call'd fear" (i: ), "the only useful passion.that man is possess'd of toward the peace and quiet of a society" (i: ), into courage, when displaced by anger (i: ). mankind, mandeville argues, brings nothing with him into this world but his passions. just as his courage derives from fear, so too does his "tendency to religion" (i: ). "fear" is the passion that first gives men an inkling of an invisible power (i: ). in the same way that men are taught by governors to harness their passions to counterfeit social and civic virtues, so too are they taught to counterfeit moral and religious virtues: hypocrisy passes for religion; avarice for frugality; pity for charity (i: / ). mandeville uses the example of that "darling passion, lust" (i: ), to illustrate how politicians, "the artful moralists", by flattering men's pride and increasing their self-esteem on the one hand, and inspiring them "with a superlative dread and mortal aversion against shame" one the other, contribute to the civilizing see lovejoy, reflections on human nature, pp. & ; and e.d. james, "faith, sincerity and morality: mandeville and bayle," mandeville studies, primer, ed., pp. - . the social virtues are the only ones mandeville categorizes specifically. the lines of division between the others are fuzzy. bayle argues, in pensees sur la comete that a society of atheists can be just as moral as a society of christians. process by teaching men the arts of concealment and disguise. neither religion nor superstition, traditionally held to be the bulwarks of moral behaviour, put man upon crossing his appetites and subduing his dearest inclination, but the skilful management of wary politicians; and the nearer we search into human nature, the more we shall be convinced, that the moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride (i: ). if men, proud, lustful and self-seeking by nature, do not cohere from "some good quality, or innate virtue peculiar to themselves," ( nov., ) and yet are able to live together in civil societies, then there needs to be some means of channeling their behaviour to society's "great ends" (jj: ): mutual happiness and a more comfortable condition of life. mandeville's moral relativism is at the heart of his theory of civil society, a term he is one of the first to use. he argues that men are taught to value certain characteristics, labelled and lauded as virtues: selflessness, self-sacrifice and love for fellow-men, honour, courage and fortitude; and to condemn others, labelled and reviled as vices: selfishness, self-interest, pride, lust, and prodigality. mandeville employs the ancient lucretian device of the skilful politician or "lawgiver" to illustrate the means whereby men might have come, by slow degrees, from a state of nature, where "it is inconsistent with the nature of human creatures that any number of them should live together in tolerable concord without laws or government" (ii: ), to their present, civilized state. the use of the metaphor of the skilful politician or lawgiver enables mandeville to animate a theory which explains how "that marvelous the whole thrust of mandeville's work is to explain how "civil society", which "consists in great multitudes of both sexes, that widely differing from each other in age, constitution, strength, temper, wisdom and possessions, all help to make up our body politick," came to be. the fable ii, p. . see hundert, "mandeville to rousseau and back," pp. - . metamorphosis of destructive 'passions' into 'virtues'" might actually have taken place. recognizing the evils of the purely natural state, "lawgivers and other wise men" (i: ), slowly and through the ages, "by skilful management compose a lasting society" (f.t., nov., ). but to do this, they had to "make the people they were to govern, believe, that it was more beneficial for every body to conquer than indulge his appetites, and much better to mind the publick than what seem'd his private interest" (i: ). thus 'lawgivers' must consider two main points, "what things will procure happiness to the society under their care" and, "what passions and properties there are in man's nature, that may either promote or obstruct this happiness" (ii: ). what they found, mandeville argues, when they examined the motives behind mankind's actions, is that self-interest is the governing human property, and pride is the primary human passion, "the hidden spring, that gives life and motion to all his actions" (ii: ). men must be taught to practice "the golden rule," that all- encompassing maxim of morality and, by experience and imitation, learn to "conceal the high value they have for themselves" (ii: ). they do this by conversing with one another. in this way, they learn the "many useful cautions, hirschman, the passions and the interests, p. . ibid., p. . in a note, hirschman points out that it has been convincingly argued by rosenberg that by "dextrous" (or "skilful") management, mandeville did not mean detailed day-to-day intervention and regulation but rather the slow elaboration and evolution, by trial and error, of an appropriate legal and institutional framework. rosenberg, "mandeville and laissez- faire," pp. - . for an elaboration of mandeville's theory of the role of the "lawgiver", see lovejoy, reflections on human nature, p. . lovejoy argues that mandeville used this feature of his account of the genesis of moral virtues merely as a literary artifice and that there was a long tradition behind its use. mandeville's more frequent emphasis, lovejoy claims, is upon the desire to be admired and praised by others, but because mandeville regards being admired and praised as an insubstantial, and unreal, value, he tends to use his account of the method of moral education as a further means of satirizing his race and of representing man to himself as an irrational, ridiculous, and self-deceiving creature. ibid., p. malcolm jack, citing lovejoy, says that the invention of the lawgivers' must be read allegorically and not literally. jack, "progress and corruption in the eighteenth century," p. . as mandeville explains, men "naturally will not do, as [they] would be done by." the fable ii, p. . shifts, and stratagems" (ii: ) that enable them to behave more tolerably to one another (ii: ). the subtlety of mandeville's argument about how self-interested individuals can be manipulated to live together in harmony, each conquering his appetites and subduing his own private interest for the public good, involves a little known feature of his thought, his interest in language "as a vehicle of socialization". in his discussion of the importance of rhetoric in mandeville's social and moral theories, e . j. hundert draws attention to mandeville's argument that it is through public speech "that a very considerable, if not the greatest part of the attribute (of sociability) is acquired" (ii: ) . if individuals are to be manipulated into "crossing [their] appetites and subduing [their] dearest inclinations," they must be convinced that they will receive greater reward by doing so than they would by indulging their natural inclinations. the reward offered in exchange for "the violence, which by so doing they of necessity must commit upon themselves," is public approbation in the form of "praise", through the "bewitching engine" of "flattery" (i: : ii, ). by exploiting the desire for esteem, both one's own and that of others, "wise men" and "lawgivers", through the seduction of speech, make men believe that praise is a worthy substitute for other more tangible rewards. see the fable ii. pp. ; ; ; . hundert, "mandeville to rousseau and back," p. . ibid., pp. - . hundert argues that mandeville's location of the origin of language in men's need to express their wants and their will did not arise from any serious epistemological interests on his part, but rather as a supplement to his interest in the development of social relationships. by pride, lovejoy argues, mandeville meant two things, a craving to be able to think well of oneself; and a craving to be well thought of, chiefly as an aid to the former. lovejoy, reflections on human nature, pp. / . hundert, "mandeville to rousseau and back," p. . hundert also develops this idea in "bernard mandeville and the rhetoric of social science." contrary to common understanding, mandeville argues, individuals, following the "rules of good sense", cannot govern themselves with either ease or readiness ( : ). fortunately, however, egoism, the corollary of pride, can be used to manipulate them into behaving in socially acceptable ways: "so silly a creature is man, as that, intoxicated with the fumes of vanity, he can feast on the thoughts of the praises that shall be paid his memory in future ages" ( : / ). three months after becoming a contributor to the female tatler, mandeville explains "the intent and usefulness" of tatlers. the "great aim which the old philosophers and all moralists, both antient and modern, have ever had in view, is the happiness of society." they accomplish this, he claims, "by teaching every body to govern his own affections," and in this way "they [make] all the members tollerable one to the other, and consequently serviceable to the whole body" (f.t. feb., ). if it is the business of philosophers and moralists "to reduce great numbers into a society," it is the business of tatlers, similar to that of the ancient stage, "to make them a civilis'd and polite society" (f.t., feb., ), to polish what the philosophers and moralists cut out roughly (ibid.). mandeville identified men's love of flattery or praise, proceeding not from any principle of virtue but from the vice of pride, as the quality in their nature by which they can be taught to behave in a way that fosters social harmony (f.t., jan., ). how this works is one of his more complex psychological arguments. the love of praise, which derives directly from self- liking, is innate to all, but, paradoxically, acts which seem to be motivated by self- see also the fable ii, pp. / . steele, on the other hand, claims that the theater should play a role similar to that of the philosophers and moralists. "it is not the business of a good play to make every man a hero," he observes, "but it certainly gives him a livelier sense of virtue and merit than he had when he entered the theatre." the tatler. no. , ( nov., ). interest, regardless of whether prompted by self-preservation, self-esteem or by the desire to gain the esteem of others, will not be praised. only those acts which seem to originate from selfless motives will be deemed to be praiseworthy. thus the only sure way to earn praise is to "take such uncommon pains for some publick good, that no body can reasonably think the purchase of all the praise in the world to be worth the trouble" (ft., jan., ). only by acting in ways that belie their self-interest can men gain the praise of others; only those seemingly "virtuous" acts, which appear to stem from other-regarding sentiments or motives will earn the esteem of one's fellows. here we encounter another of mandeville's 'contrarieties'. because pride is innate, the visible signs of it, either in countenance, mien or speech, are easily recognized by all; because men have been taught to take pride in counterfeiting good behavior in public (f.t. nov., ), subduing their own self-interested acts for those which appear to be in the public interest, acts that might betray self- interest have been strictly prohibited, by common sense, in all societies (ii: - ). this 'contrarietie' causes men to go to extraordinary lengths to convince others that their acts are other-regarding. the effect of mankind's desire for approbation is integral to mandeville's social theory. pride, this "principle of self-esteem" (ii: ), ensures that men will want to be well regarded by others (ii: ) and to be able to think well of themselves; it makes them susceptible to manipulation by "lawgivers and other wise men" who, offering the proper rewards, "by skilful management compose a lasting society" ( nov., ). as hundert points out, "flattery was thus the 'bewitching engine' used to tame men by encouraging within them a conception of self which has as part of its content the opinions of others. once the arts of flattery 'insinuated themselves into the hearts of men,' and they were instructed in the rhetoric of honour and shame, in the ideals of public service and the symbolic rewards of praise," men would go to extraordinary lengths to convince others that their actions were not motivated by self-interest: he that would be praised, must at least seemingly recede from that first principle, so as to make others believe that his own benefit is not the only thing he aims at. this is the great point where we are all cheat and are cheated by one another; if the most publick spirited man in the universe will be pleased strictly to examine himself, he will find that he has never committed any action deliberately but for his own sake (f.t., jan., ). left to its own devices, pride is either inconsequential or destructive to the harmony of society; but dexterously managed, it can be manipulated to make men solicitous of the welfare of others, placing the public over their private interests. experience has taught us, mandeville argues, that "tho' pride was not to be destroy'd by force, it might be govern'd by stratagem" (i: \ ). a n d the best stratagem for doing this is to play the passion against itself by teaching individuals to exult secretly in their ability to conceal their pride. only this can compensate for the sacrifice of restraining compelling emotions (u: ; / ). horatio comments on the contrary nature of pride, musing that "it is very strange; that to encourage and industriously encrease pride in a refined education, should be the most proper means to make men sollicitous in concealing the outward appearances of it" (i: ). cleomenes, always the psychologist, explains that it would be impossible for "mortal strength" to endure the restraint "if men could not be taught to play the passion against itself, and were not allow'd to change the natural home-bred symptoms of it, for artificial foreign ones" (u: ). what mandeville means by playing the passion against itself, is "placing a secret pride in concealing the barefac'd signs of it" (ii: hundert, "mandeville to rousseau and back," p. . ). the more the outward signs of pride are concealed, the more pride is heightened, and in this way 'pride', "often most superlative, where it is most conceal'd" (ii: ), is encouraged, increased and influenced (ii: , , ). one of the tenets of mandeville's argument is that the civilizing process, by which "great multitudes of both sexes, that widely differing from each other in age, constitution, strength, temper, wisdom and possessions" (ii: ) are brought to live together in "civil society" is dependant on "good manners or politeness" (ii: ). the origin of the "art of good manners...a science that is ever built on the same steady principle in our nature" (u: ), like the origin of all arts and sciences, mandeville claims, is self-liking. like all other arts, pride, working on human nature, makes improvements in good manners (ii: ). the importance that mandeville places on politeness and good manners can be gleaned from the number of times he refers to it in his index in part ii of the fable. by allowing the display of those "symptoms of pride," which are offensive to one another if not camouflaged (ii: ), politeness provides men with an outlet through which they can express and gratify their pride in warrantable ways (ii: ). since good manners have no other end than to "make ourselves acceptable to others, with as little prejudice to ourselves as is possible" (ii: ), for the good order of society, and because those in whom pride has been most encouraged will be most likely to offend and be offended, men of politeness and good breeding learn at a very early age to conceal the objectionable signs of pride in themselves, while stoking the pride of others. the doctrine of good manners thus teaches individuals to substitute for offensive signs of pride, easily politeness is not only discussed under its own listing, under headings such as "exposed", "the use of it," "seeds lodged in self-love and self-liking," "how it is produced from pride" and "philosophical reason for it"; but is listed under at least ten other subject headings in mandeville's own index in part ii of the fable. this point has been ignored by virtually all of mandeville's commentators. recognizable in language, looks, or gestures, other, more socially acceptable, signs which can be denied for being what they really are. a n d to reinforce the charade further, good manners and politeness not only forbid that the game be mentioned in polite company, but, more insidiously, combine with men's pride to deceive them into believing the masquerade. men are born with the capacity to reason and think, mandeville argues, but this capacity will not develop spontaneously in those who have not had time for leisurely reflection (v., ; u: ). just as morals and society evolve slowly and by degrees, so too do thinking and reasoning. thus, "those that have not been used themselves to thinking, but just on their present necessities, make poor work of it" (ii: ). left uninstructed in rude nature, individuals are stupid and ignorant, but, in close association with one another, by conversing with others wiser than themselves, they learn to think abstractly (ii: ). for this reason, in cities and towns, "a nursery which the country people know nothing of" (f.t., jan., ), men are better able to deduce abstract principles from concrete events than are those in more remote, less inhabited parts of a country (ii: ). but the preparation for this must begin in the nursery. affection prompts mothers to feed and protect their children, but when people are poor and women have no leisure to play with their children, the children grow up to be stupid and ignorant (ii: ). particularly aware as he is of the role and influence of language as a vehicle of socialization, mandeville argues that conversation not only teaches men to think abstractly, but, more importantly for society, it persuades them to be polite mandeville argues that the inventions and technologies that benefit society do not come from abstract reasoning and speculation but from practical application perfected through time: "they are very seldom the same sort of people, those that invent arts, and improvements in them, and those that enquire into the reason of things." the fable ii, p. . and well-mannered (ii: ). since it is a universal characteristic of self-liking that "all untaught men will ever be hateful to one another in conversation, where neither interest nor superiority are consider'd...because without a mixture of art and trouble, the outward symptoms of that passion are not to be stifled" (ii: ), good breeding and good manners are necessary to inculcate in them the habit of flattering the pride of others while concealing their own. once joined together in society, through conversing with one another, men learn to hide the "barefac'd pride" which otherwise causes them to be so hateful to one another (ii: ). only in this way do they learn to be sociable creatures ( : ; ; ; ). through the civilizing effect of speech and the joint experience of many ages, men learn to live together in societies, eventually coming to the rich and flourishing condition of contemporary commercial states (ii: ; ). by everyone behaving in ways acceptable to all, "every individual person is rendered more happy...in the fruition of all the good things he can purchase" (ii: ). without the ameliorating influence provided by politeness and good manners, men would not be able to live long together without warring with one another. although pride, through proper education, works to the benefit of society, when surpressed it turns to envy and malice, and becomes "the cause of cruelty" seen in mobs (ii: / ). politeness and manners, by allowing an acceptable outlet for pride, enable men to live together in civil societies. mandeville is not arguing that politeness and manners are for everyone. his audience is not "the rude and unpolish'd multitudes" (i: ), who perform "the drudgery of hard and dirty labour (ii: ), but rather the "beau monde" or mandeville's argument in defence of duelling is premised on the assumption that without the restraining effect of duelling, men would feel free to offend one another and to insult women. thus, he argues, duelling contributes to polite society. the fable ii. p. ; the female tatler, nov., . "fashionable part of mankind" (u: ): ladies and gentlemen whose "chief study and greatest sollicitude, to outward appearance, have ever been directed to obtain happiness in this world" (ii: ; ). not interested in turning the whole population into "a civilis'd and polite society," mandeville directs his efforts towards those who, in his opinion, stand most in need of good manners and politeness, "the voluptuous men of parts, that will joyn worldly prudence to sensuality, and make it their chief study to refine upon pleasure" (ii: ). none benefit society more, because, he claims, it is their "fickleness, and...restless desire after changes and novelty," that is the cause of "earthly greatness" (ii: ). their contribution to society is civil society itself. chapter m the role of women in mandeville's work . the inheritance at the beginning of the eighteenth century, ideas of women as lusty whores, scolding wives, trembling virgins, and nurturing and compassionate mothers competed with one another for prominence. the polarity between the traditional view of women as sexually and economically aggressive and self- seeking, inherited from such widely divergent sources as aristotle, the bible and juvenal's satires, and the puritan view of women as companions and help meets to men, equal before god, resulted in an increasingly idealized view of women and marriage amongst mandeville's contemporaries. at the same time, they retained the traditional misogynist mistrust of them. dryden's translation of juvenal's sixth satire on women, published in , "the most sweeping of mandeville was acquainted with juvenal's satires, quoting from juvenal in the fable ii, p. , n.l. regina james divides "the traditional satires with their familiar juvenalian topics - feminine infidelity, luxury, vanity, pedantry, promiscuity, masculinity, and shrewdishness; and the serious writings on education and marriage meant to fit women to be better companions to their husband and mothers to their children." regina james, "mary, mary, quite contrary, or, mary astell and mary wolstencroft compared," studies in eighteenth century culture. volume , ed. by ronald c. rosbottom, (the university of wisconsin press, ), pp. - . edmund leites argues that the puritans maintained a certain egalitarianism with respect to the relation between man and wife in moral matters; women were expected to concern themselves with their husband's moral and spiritual state. however, in all other matters, men and women were placed in a hierarchy: males to rule, females to follow. edmund leites, the puritan conscience and modern sexuality. (new haven: yale university press, ), p. . felicity nussbaum claims that the effect of puritanism on the status of english women defies easy clarification. it both improved the status of the sex and increased male authority over the family. felicity nussbaum, the brink of all we hate: satires on women, - , (lexington: the university press of kentucky, ),pp. / . nussbaum argues that the period from the restoration to the mid-eighteenth century in england witnessed a burgeoning of satires against women: "it may be that by the mid- eighteenth century, the image of the ideal woman, virtuous and chaste, largely replaced the satiric myth of whore, infidel, and amazon in literature. such a paragon constitutes a new myth, one of a desexualized upholder of the social, domestic and religious order." nussbaum, the brink of all we hate.p. . marlene legates argues that although the emphasis shifts to the ideal of a virtuous woman, women are still perceived as inherently dangerous and disorderly. marlene legates, "the cult of womanhood in eighteenth-century thought", eighteenth-century studies. ,( ), pp. - . classical anti-feminist satires," like others of its time, kept alive an especially virulent legacy of anti-feminist assumptions and traditions, "the stereotypes of the vain coquette, the affected learned lady, the amazonian imitator of men." heirs to an intellectual tradition that equated women with both extreme carnality and rigourous chastity, they had a wealth of literary, scholastic and religious material, both written and oral, to draw on. the view of women as carnal, vain and envious by nature came from several different traditions: philosophical, physiological, medical and religious. ian maclean, writing on the effect of the religious tradition on the renaissance notion of women, explains that "in the metaphorical and allegorical understanding of biblical texts woman is often identified with sensuality. once adam's eyes have been opened (gen. : ), woman in her person, became an incitation to lust and concupiscence." women, revered and reviled, "holy- threatening, passive-active, a v e - e v a , " are a symbol for both virtue and sin. this legacy of alternating eulogy and vituperation, derived from the bible, certain fathers of the church, and moralistic writings of the middle ages and the renaissance, is mirrored in another notion which, maclean claims, can be nussbaum, the brink of all we hate, p. . ibid., p. . a study made of the ideas about women, expressed in the writings of mandeville's and steele's contemporaries, has been summarized into three categories by richmond bond. bond identifies the first group as the conservative writers who held to the traditional doctrine that in morals, body and intellect women are weaker than men and therefore need to cultivate the passive virtues; the second group are the men of wit and gallantry who praised and satirized women in works that might be cynical, extravagant, or conventional; the third group, identified as the rational reformers, are those who promoted an enlightened equality in education, legal rights and individual opportunities. bond, the tatler: the making of a literary journal, p. . ian maclean, the renaissance notion of woman. (london: cambridge university press, ),p. . sekora, luxury, the concept in western thought, eden to smollett. (baltimore: the john hopkins university press, ), p. . maclean, the renaissance notion of woman, p. . found from the earliest times and in the most far-flung cultures: that of the female opposed to the male. this notion of the male opposed to the female is found in aristotle's tendency to produce dualities in which one element is superior and the other inferior. the duality of male/female in aristotle's philosophy is paralleled by the dualities of active/passive, perfect/imperfect, complete/incomplete. the female, according to aristotle, differs from the male in her make-up. she possesses fewer mental faculties and is passive, material and deprived. in contrast, the male is courageous, honest and imbued with moral strength. naturally more robust and active, more rational and less subject to extremes of emotion, the male by nature is the head of the state, the home and the female herself. because the male is active and the female passive, and activity is associated with virtue, maclean argues that the female is excluded from moral behaviour "unless she obtains entrance through...virtues deemed as imperfect as she is." excluded from the civic virtues of courage, selflessness and love of country, she is left with the meaner virtue of chastity. women's imperfection, resulting as it does from her physical characteristics, is thus natural and unchangeable. by the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, however, many doctors at least were writing eloquently against what they regarded as the wrong done to the honour of women by aristotle. "it is possible to argue" maclean claims, "that there is a feminist movement in medical spheres, where in theology there is little evidence of one." in spite of this, however, the belief persisted that the effects of the uterus on the mind weakened rationality and increased the violence of the ibid., p. . ibid- p. . ibid- pp. & . ibid- p. . ibid., p. . passions in women. the malevolent effects of the female's uterus are considered to be the cause of a number of maladies, including lovesickness, melancholia, listlessness and irrational behaviour. thus it was commonly accepted that women, like children and the mad, were meant by nature to be governed. the commonplace notion of women as less rational and more passionate is satirized by the novelist and essayist mary as tell, who, in , addressing the relationship between man and wife in a n essay in defence of the female sex, scorns the tyrannical husband, arguing on behalf of the wife that "since her reason is suppos'd to be less, and her passions stronger than his...he sho'd not play the little master so much." in the eighteenth century the popular myth of the disorderly, rapacious female began to be replaced by a new and equally debilitating one, that of the chaste maiden and the obedient wife. chastity, modesty and long-suffering, closely identified with the female sex even by stoic writers, and a commonplace in traditional conduct book literature, did not emerge as the "language of use" for talking about women nor the mode of thought for thinking about them until the 's and 's. pocock argues that around the late seventeenth century the mandeville, with his medical speciality in the 'hypondriack and hysteric passions', imputes certain physical and emotional impairments to the effect of the uterus but does not argue that it causes any mental or moral impairment. a treatise of the hypocondriack and hysteric diseases. (london, ), p. ; quoted in john mullan, "hypocondria and hysteria: sensibility and the physicians," the eighteenth century. theory and interpretation, vol. , no. , (spring, ), g. s. rousseau, ed., pp. - , p. . ibid-, p- . mary astell, an essay in defence of the female sex. (london, ), [goldsmith, kress collection], p. . see marlene legates, "the cult of womanhood in eighteenth-century thought", p. ; and felicity nussbaum, the brink of all we hate, p. . maclean, the renaissance notion of woman, p. . legates, "the cult of womanhood in eighteenth-century thought," p. . pocock, machiavellian moment, p. . the phrase is used by pocock in a different context. see regina james, "mary, mary, quite contrary," p. . notion of women's 'virtue' acquired a specifically sexist meaning. at the beginning of the eighteenth century, writers such as steele and addison confined women's virtue to chastity and compliant domesticity, holding up the image of the companionable woman and 'help meet' wife as the ideal, all the while employing stereotypic language to describe contemporary women. if chaste and docile females and 'help meet' wives were the ideal, "termagant wives...and women who pretend to the conduct of such affairs as are only within the province of men" were too often the reality, steele complains. "sweetness of temper, and simplicity of manners are the only lasting charms of woman," he argues, but then notes that "there is an outrageous species of the fair sex which is distinguished by the term scolds." timidity and fear, even though, but more especially because, they make women weak, are attractive and excellent qualities in them. if we were to form an image of dignity in a man...we should give him wisdom and valour, as being essential to the character of manhood. in like manner if you describe a right woman in a laudable sense, she should have gentle softness, tender fear, and all those parts of life, which distinguish her from the other sex, pocock, machiavellian moment, p. . pocock notes that the notion of women's "virtue" acquired as specifically sexist a meaning as that of her "fortune" which, during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries "came to bear the predominantly monetary meanings of inheritance, acquisition, or dowry." in an ironic twist, mandeville compares steele's "artful encomiums" on the sublimity of the human species to tricks used by women to teach children manners. the fable i, p. . the tatler, bond., ed.. no. , july, , p. . steele, the tatler, no. , : , quoted in edmund leites, "good humor at home, good humor abroad: the intimacies of marriage and the civilities of social life in the ethic of richard steele," educating the audience:addison, steele, and eighteenth-century culture. edward & lillian bloom, eds., (pasadena: the castle press, ), pp. - , p. . the tatler, no. , : , quoted in leites, "good humor at home, good humor abroad," p. . scolding, mandeville argues, serves a socially useful purpose as a vent for anger. it is only a custom, he claims, when "language is arrived to great perfection, and society is carried to some degree of politeness," the fable u, p. . interestingly, mandeville discusses the practice of scolding primarily in relation to men. leites argues that steele attacked extreme states of feelings in his campaign to establish good humour as the temperament and mood appropriate to social life and marriage. leites, "good humor at home, good humor abroad", p. . with some subordination to it, but such an inferiority that make her still more lovely. puritan teachings on the importance of spiritual compatibility between man and wife, taken up as well by non-puritan writers who stressed the importance of love as attraction before marriage and friendship afterwards, appear to have been honoured more in the breach than in the observance. mary astell, vehemently attacking those who would blacken the image of marriage by satirizing it, writes that if men are not happy in the 'married state', tis their own fault....the wise institutor of matrimony never did any thing in vain; we are the sots and fools if what he design'd for our good, be to us an occasion of falling. for marriage, not withstanding all the loose talk of the town, the satyrs of ancient or modern pretenders to wit, will never lose its due praise from judicious persons....marriage in general is too sacred to be treated with disrespect, too venerable to be the subject of raillery and buffoonery. leites credits prominent seventeenth century puritan theologians, who held that neither sex was more lusty than the other, with changing the medieval and renaissance belief that women were the more rapacious of the two. this change in attitudes toward the relative strength of sexuality in men and women, he argues, "may be attributed to changes in both the conception and the treatment of the moral capacities of women." when treated with less moral respect, women "will be regarded as more subject to the demands of sexuality. in the medieval world generally, they were regarded as inferior moral creatures and richard steele, spectator, no. , : , quoted in leites, "good humor at home, good humor abroad", p. . legates, "the cult of womanhood in eighteenth-century thought", p. . legates argues that the changes in the literary representation of marriage neither reflected nor followed societal changes in practice or attitude, but rather preceded or anticipated them. mary astell, reflections upon marriage, rd ed., (london, ), [goldsmith, kress collection], p. . leites, the puritan conscience and modern sexuality, p. . therefore, treated as the more lusty of the two sexes." less moralized than men because they had less access to "moralizing institutions" such as universities and other conscience-forming bodies, hilda smith argues that women could not pursue the goals idealized within civic humanism because they could hold neither public office nor professional positions within either the university or church. . passions, sexuality and marriage. mandeville was ambivalent in his attitudes towards women, but for different reasons than most. unlike many of his contemporaries who accepted either the traditional or the idealized view of women, and justified it on the principle that men and women have entirely different characteristics, mandeville began his theorizing with the claim that all persons bring nothing into the world with them but their passions (u: ), and that "the same appetites were given to all" for the same purpose (v., ). he thus rejects out of hand the traditional view of eve's inconstancy as a curse on women. in the v i r g i n unmask'd, lucinda sarcastically lashes out at men who, "derive our inconstancy, from eve our mother" (v., ), and believe of a women: yet, as a husband, she could leave him there, in hopes to meet with other joys elsewhere; a n d once got out of sight, she prov'd so frail, ibid. ibid., p. . both leites and hilda smith agree that women were excluded from moralizing institutions. hilda smith, reason's disciples. seventeenth-century english feminists, (urbana: university of illinois press, ). hilda smith, reason's disciples, p. . leites argues, in opposition to smith, that by the eighteenth century the relative balance of repression in the middle classes had changed. women were now subject to more internal restraints than were men he argues. leites, the puritan conscience and modern sexuality, p. . bridget hill, eighteenth-century women: an anthology. (london: george allen & unwin, ), p. . mandeville uses passions and appetites interchangeably: "a man need not conquer his passions...good breeding only requires we should hide our appetites." the fable i, p. . that she would listen to a serpent's tale, a n d rather enter with the dev'l in chat, than be a woman, and not be coquet (v., ). mandeville holds that all notions of virtue and standards of moral conduct are the result of social conditioning rather than religion or nature. addressing his male contemporaries, he argues that since women's "immortal substance is without doubt the same with ours," differences between the sexes are mainly the result of education and upbringing. the consequences of this argument for social understanding are profound. if women's immortal substance is the same as men's and there are no significant appetitive differences between the sexes, arguments concerning women's innate incapacity for rational thought, a necessary prerequisite for virtue, cannot be based on natural law. if this is so, then to what can women's subordinate role be attributed? what is it that motivates men to argue that women have different virtues than men? a n d if common beliefs concerning female virtues are just an elaborate fiction, does this not imply that so too are notions about all virtues? mandeville argues that it does. beginning with the premise that individuals are motivated solely by their passions, he claims that "moral virtues'" are nothing more than those qualities which skilful politicians and moralists, using the siren call of pride, have lured men into believing. by persuading individuals to subdue their own self-interested passions, law makers have rendered them more tractable, and thus are better able to "reap the more benefit from, and govern vasts numbers of them with greater ease and security" ( : ). through his arguments and insights about women, mandeville seeks to explode some of the prominent myths that surround them and demonstrates that moral virtues, "the mandeville, hypocondriack and hvsterick passions, p. ; quoted in e. d. james, "faith, sincerity and morality: mandeville and bayle", primer, ed., p. . political offspring which flattery begot upon pride," are not absolute, objective standards, but relative, self-serving ones. throughout his work, mandeville is as interested in interpreting motives as he is in exposing hypocrisy. many of the most important arguments that mandeville makes precisely and in detail in the fable, including the arguments designed to show that private vices result in public benefits, and those concerned with the development of moral virtues, are first made in the virgin unmask'd, his reflection on the female sex. in this early work, mandeville illustrates how actions ascribed to virtuous motives are almost always derived from self- interested passions, and he uses marriage, considered by his contemporaries to be both the ideal and the natural state for women, to illustrate his point. it is very significant that mandeville uses the virgin unmask'd, his first prose work in english, and an examination of marriage, to argue his thesis about the social origins of virtue, and that he uses a woman as the medium by which to do it, exposing the motives and the hypocrisy of his contemporaries at the same time. mandeville reveals his prejudices concerning women's capabilities very early in the book. though his satirical manner sometimes makes it difficult to know whether he is serious or not, the consistency with which he makes the same claims about women's intellectual capabilities in other works lends credence to accepting lucinda's stated opinions concerning herself as a true reflection of mandeville's own. the antithesis of the popular image of a female, lucinda is no giddy-brained thing incapable of controlling her own passions. the virgin unmask'd. p. ; chapter . see maclean, renaissance notions of woman, pp, / ; p. . maclean claims that the belief that women cannot be considered except in relation to marriage is reinforced by the ethical and medical vision of marriage as a natural state. see also roy porter, "mixed feelings: the enlightenment and sexuality in eighteenth-century britain, sexuality in eighteenth-century britain, ed., paul-gabriel bouce, new jersey: barnes & noble books, ). employing the rhetoric of civic humanism, she describes herself as "a rational and unconcerned stander-by," (v. ), and says of herself, "i was always so unnatural, as to deny my appetite, what my reason told me would hurt me, tho' my inclination was never so strong" (v., ). lucinda, in turn, examines the comparative merits of the married and single states. in a series of short, gossipy stories, she demonstrates that it is neither virtue nor reason which motivates women to marry, but rather, that "unaccountable passion," love (v., ) mandeville was much more sympathetic to the view that held women to be sexually rapacious by nature than he was to the view that held them to be chaste and timorous. unlike contemporaries who claimed that love is a virtue which transcends the demands of the flesh and, for women at least, the only true basis for marriage, in the virgin unmask'd lucinda argues on mandeville's behalf that the force which drives women to marry is nothing more than their natural sexual appetite (v., ), an urge so strong that against all that is reasonable, men, using it, have "enslaved our sex." "in paradise", she claims, as artesia does later in the female tatler, "man and woman were upon an even foot; see what they have made of us since: is not every woman that is married, a slave to her husband" (v., ). what human beings call love, mandeville bridget h i l l argues that spinsters were treated with scorn a n d derision. chastity, to w h i c h so m u c h importance was attached, becomes a frozen asset i n a spinster. h i l l , eighteenth-centu ry w o m e n , p. b y "love", m a n d e v i l l e means "a strong inclination, i n its n a t u r e distinct from all other affections of f r i e n d s h i p , gratitude, a n d consanguinity, that persons of different sexes, after l i k i n g , bear to one another: it is i n this signification that l o v e enters into the c o m p o u n d of jealousy, a n d is the effect as well as the h a p p y disguise of that passion that prompts us to labour for the preservation of our species". t h e fable ii, p. . m a n d e v i l l e makes a strikingly similar argument in t h e female tatler. jan., . see also t h e female tatler. jan., , where m a n d e v i l l e attributes the lack of eminent w o m e n i n history to the fact that "since m e n have enslav'd us, the greatest part of the w o r l d have always debar'd o u r sex from g o v e r n i n g , w h i c h is the reason that the l i v e s of w o m e n have so seldom been described i n history". argues, is nothing more than "the effect as well as happy disguise of that passion that prompts us to labour for the preservation of our species" (i: ). lucinda scorns romantics who view marriage as the natural and ideal state for women and a cure-all for everything that ails them. she argues that "married women are infinitely more exposed to accidents, that may occasion trouble, grief, and misery, than maids" (v., , ). from their personal suffering over the calamities that may befall their husbands and children, to the physical hardships of pregnancy and childbirth, married women's lot in life is one of pain and tribulation (v., - ). "old maids", on the other hand, "as soon as that troublesome itch is over, rejoice at having kept their liberty, and agree unanimously in the comforts of a single life" (v., ). . mandeville ridicules these mores which draw an absolute line between virtuous and immoral sexual conduct in women, with men the wooers and women the wooed. such conventions, he argues, are not rooted in natural law. quite the contrary, in savage societies men and women copulate at will, without giving any more thought to what they are doing than do animals. not only are these conventions not natural, mandeville claims, they are also unreasonable. as lucinda scornfully tells her niece, "what your opinion of wooing may be, i cann't tell, but i always thought it very ridiculous (v., ). the absurdity of this situation is that women, using all their charms to attract men, play at being ilza veith argues that it was a commonly accepted opinion that hysterical women needed only to be married to be cured. mandeville, for the first time in medical literature, veith claims, argued that women should not be married off just to cure them. women should either be cured of hysteria first, or else remain single and not inflict their infirmity on their husbands and children. ilza veith, hysteria, the history of a disease. (chicago: the university of chicago press, ), pp. / .. see also pp. and of the virgin unmask'd for the advantages of spinsterhood over marriage. in modest defense of publick stews. mandeville argues that one of the advantages of whorehouses would be to relieve males of having to distract their attention away from business and devote it to wooing women, just so they can satisfy their sexual urges. distant and aloof, and seem to disdain the very advances they have invited. men, in turn, first prostrate themselves at the feet of women, proclaim themselves slaves for life, and then, once married become tyrants. a l l this is necessary, mandeville argues, so that women can be married and spend the rest of their lives in bondage to the very men who enticed them into giving up their freedom (v., ). the rules of religion, law and social convention are so pervasive that it is necessary to arm and fortify both sexes, but women in particular, against their natural sexual impulses. "the appetite it self, and all the symptoms of it, tho' they are plainly felt and understood," mandeville argues, "are to be stifled with care and severity, and in women flatly disown'd" (i: ). although natural and necessary for the continuance of the human race, lust, left unrestrained, is so destructive to the order of society that, in mandeville's words, "the peace and happiness of the civil society requires that this should be kept a secret, never to be talk'd of in publick." not only is it taboo in polite society to talk about lust, but the prohibitions against it are so strong that it is considered a depraved appetite; (v., ) men and women no longer even recognize it for what it is (i: ). "the very name of the appetite...is become odious, and the proper epithets commonly join'd to lust are filthy and abominable" (i: ). by illustrating how ridiculous social conventions look when subjected to the scrutiny of a rational observer and demonstrating that the impetus for marriage, the most sacred of all social institutions, is filthy and abominable lust, not lofty and unsullied virtue, mandeville makes a strong case for his thesis that social institutions, like rich and flourishing societies themselves, depend not on men's virtues but on their vices. the hypocrisy of contemporary attitudes towards women, nicely summed up by patricia meyer spack's argument that "one may claim that men love women for their virtue, but everyone knows better," was not lost on mandeville. nor, he argues, was it lost on women: "a young lady of refin'd education keeps a strict guard over her looks, as well as actions, and in her eyes we may read a consciousness that she has a treasure about her, not out of danger of being lost, and which yet she is resolved not to part with at any terms" (i: ). in a very clever ploy, mandeville makes two points, both important to his argument. he demonstrates that standards of morality, like standards of dress, are only what society determines them to be and have no intrinsic value in and of themselves. he also exposes the hypocrisy in the attitudes of his contemporaries, ridiculing their contrariety which encourages "the very virgins, that should be the temples of modesty, [to] go with their bodies half naked" (v., / ), in order to invite male attention, while at the same time demanding that they preserve their virginity. loved by men for their sexual attractiveness, women must "fly to art and additional ornament" (ii: ) to make themselves more agreeable to men. having done so, they then must fortify themselves against the inevitable outcome, never giving in to their natural appetites nor men's seductive charms until they are safely married. patricia meyer spacks, "ev'ry woman is at heart a rake", eighteenth-century studies: an interdisciplinarian journal, vol. , - , no. , (fall ), pp. - . p. . important to mandeville's thesis is his argument that modesty in women depends on social convention. he devotes the first chapter of the virgin unmask'd to illustrating how rules of convention, like rules of dress, depend solely on taste and public opinion. "nothing is immodest in dressing", he claims, "but when people shew those parts, which the custom of the country bids 'em hide: in some countries women's petticoats reach but a little lower than their knees; yet if here a woman...should pluck up her coats half way the calf of her leg, everybody would call her immodest." the virgin unmask'd, p. . and the parts which are considered acceptable to show, even if they make a women half naked in the process, he argues, are those that men find most attractive. women are caught in a double bind according to mandeville. limited to a very narrow range of moral behaviour where morality is equated with sexual innocence, they are forced by the weight of the social and political structure to be chaste and modest. exhorted to behave virtuously, the expectation is that, because their reason is weaker and their passions stronger, they cannot unless strictly policed. the dictates of modesty and the force of honour will not allow women, particularly "the middle rank of womankind" (m.d., ) who have their interest and fortune depending on their reputation, to indulge that "inclination which nature has given us to propagate our species" (i: ) outside marriage, without risking ruin and lasting shame. this is the reason why "all young women have strong notions of honour carefully inculcated into them from infancy" (m. ). because "interest, indeed, is inseparable from female honour; nay it is the very foundation of it" (m.d., ), it is necessary to counterbalance women's violent sexual desire by honing their pride to heighten their shame. for "do but increase man's pride," mandeville claims, "and his fear of shame will ever be proportion'd to it" (i: ). it is women's fear of shame, their concern for what others, particularly men, will think of them, and not their love of virtue, that protects their chastity until such time as they are married. mandeville divides men into two classes: one which consists of abject, low-minded people who are incapable of self-denial;, the other class, and the one to which he directs his work, consists of those who have a sufficient stock of pride to be manipulated into subduing their passions. the fable i. pp. / . mandeville allows only two causes of chastity, "religion and the fear of shame," and argues that the former is seldom effective. bernard mandeville, an enquiry into the origins of honour and the usefulness of christianity in war. (london, ), p. . in both the virgin unmask'd and the fable mandeville discusses the physiology and psychology of blushing, which, he claims, results when women in particular feel shame at the discovery, or even the possible knowledge by someone else, of some forbidden act or thought, particularly of a sexual nature. the virgin unmask'd, pp. & ; the fable i, pp. / . see also the female tatler, nov., . mandeville appropriately employs the language of the battlefield to discuss women's virtue; their "glorious field of mars" is their own sexual nature, their honour their chastity. in direct opposition to those who claim that there is no higher virtue for women than chastity, nor for men than courage, mandeville argues that neither is praiseworthy and, more important to his argument, that neither has any foundation in reason or religion. he compares female virtue to garrisons under attack, laid siege to from without by men and betrayed from within by their own secret wishes (v., ) and uses lucinda to satirize the common wisdom that reason, religion and a modest way of life can be antidotes against natural appetites, particularly lust. lucinda explains to antonia the stratagems she used to reinforce antonia's honour: "to allay the heat of your blood; i often persuaded you to fasting...i advised you to frequent prayers, and the reading of pious books" (v., p. ). however, lucinda is a prudent woman who does not fully trust in these remedies to curb "wild nature." in a further effort to heighten antonia's dread of shame and fear of dishonour, and thus safeguard her against "this provocation of nature" (v., ), she admits, "i told ye five hundred stories about rapes of my own invention" v., ). once she had done this, lucinda confides to antonia, "your vertue and modesty i was persuaded of...i never fear'd any thing base" (v. ). the reason for this lack of concern, lucinda says, was because "i knew you had pride enough to secure your honour" (v., ). lucinda's argument that antonia's virtue is neither natural, nor god- given, but the result of the fear of shame instilled in her through custom and education, is similar to mandeville's later argument in the fable, that pride and mandeville, an enquiry into the origins of honour, p. . mandeville uses the same comparison several times in his modest defense of publick stews, pp. / , , . its reverse passion, shame, are the "two passions, in which the seeds of most virtues are contained":(i: ) for tho' the good and evil of honour and dishonour are imaginary, yet there is a reality in shame, as it signifies a passion, that has its proper symptoms, over-rules our reason, and requires as much labour and self-denial to be subdued, as any of the rest; and since the most important actions of life often are regulated according to the influence this passion has upon us, a thorough understanding of it must help to illustrate the notions the world has of honour and ignominy (i: ). the psychology of shame and its application to women in particular is a necessary feature of mandeville's social thesis. his training as a doctor and his interest in the relationship between emotions and actions made him a perceptive observer of human nature and social institutions. perhaps sparked by his study of the "hypochondriack and hysteric diseases", he turned his observations of the physical changes undergone by women who have been taught to feel shame at even the thought of sex, into a comprehensive theory of society and morality. mandeville argues that shame, a learned response, is a powerful deterrent against socially harmful acts. beginning with the virgin unmask'd, he analyses the psychological and physiological relationship of shame and demonstrates how it is used to control individuals so that they will behave in socially desirable ways (i: ). when women learn to regard their natural sexual feelings as immodest and disgusting, then, thereafter, every time they feel this taboo urge, they will blush from shame just from imagining that others will know what they are feeling or kaye points out that mandeville, in , recanted this statement that pride and shame are two distinct passions. he claimed instead that they are different affections of one and the same passion. the fable i, p. , n.l. thinking. honour without shame is not possible mandeville claims and therefore women must be trained to feel the latter to guard the former. it is the needs of civil society that tie female chastity so securely to female honour. for if the security of the state rests on the courage, born of pride and honour, of its male citizens, and upon their willingness to fight to death for the state, so too does the orderly succession of property, that other bastion of citizenship, depend on the chastity of females. the sexual fidelity of wives was considered essential to prevent bastards who would bring confusion to family property and inheritance. in some areas in england, free bench, the practice of granting a widow a portion of her deceased husbands estate, was conditional upon chaste living and no remarriage. without the assurance that one's heirs are one's own, succession of property is confounded. mandeville's problem is to demonstrate to his contemporaries, who believe that "the fundamentals of natural and moral justice and decorum, are laid down, and clearly stated, from scripture and reason", that, in fact, moral virtues, like moral vices and social institutions, are the result of custom and education, the cumulative experience of generations propelled by and acting on mankind's self-love and self-liking. by exposing the self-seeking motives behind for a discussion of the effects and power of shame in shaping honour, see remark c in part i of the the fable and the second dialogue in the virgin unmask'd. roy porter, "mixed feelings: the enlightenment and sexuality in eighteenth-century britain," p. . e.p. thompson, "the grid of inheritance: a comment," family inheritance: rural society in western europe. - , jack goody, joan thirsk, e. p. thompson, eds., (cambridge: cambridge university press, ), pp. - , p. - . in some counties, hapless widows who had been so imprudent as to violate their chastity could, for the price of a public humiliation, regain their property. to do so, they were required to ride astride a ram and recite a poem acknowledging their shame. ibid. the female tatler ran an advertisement for the doctrine of morality: wherein the fundamentals of natural and moral justice and decorum, are laid down, and clearly stated, from scripture and reason., the female tatler, nov., . commonly-held notions about marriage and women, notions believed to be sanctified by religious precept and traditional wisdom, mandeville calls into question all notions about virtue and thus about the foundations of society itself. vichert points out that mandeville uses lucinda to demonstrate the hardships married women suffer. he graphically details their use as pawns in the marriage market , bartered by parents and in-laws for financial gain; he points to the physical hardships they suffer bearing children and the emotional hardships they endure when they lose them; he is sensitive to their vulnerability to the vagaries of fortune should their husbands die or squander their marriage portions. mandeville had more extensive purposes then these, however. throughout his career, mandeville sought to expose the self-deception inherent in the moralizing cant of his contemporaries about relations between the sexes. using a literary device he later employs in both the female tatler and part ii of the fable, mandeville's two interlocutors demonstrate reason's impotence as a first cause in directing the actions, not only of women, but of all mankind. first we act and then we reason, he argues, and it is only after our passions are spent or where "all equally mutinous, none could predominate enough to make a great impression" (v., / ; ), that reason comes to the fore (v., ). in the virgin unmask'd, lucinda demonstrates the difficulty in judging the merits or virtues of individuals unless "the principle from which they acted, and the motive that first edg'd them on, were thoroughly known" (v., ). because she wants antonia to judge everything according to its own merits, she is brutally frank w.a. speck argues that the shift in the pattern of landownership which was going on at this time is attributable to a variety of long-term economic tendencies, including the ability of the large landowners to comer the more attractive bargains in the marriage market, as well as to engross the more lucrative posts in the administration and invest their surplus capital in the profitable public funds and private companies." w. a. speck, "conflict in society", p. . see also pp. - . with her, thus leaving her no alternative but to "think on the cause," both of her own and other's behaviour (v., ). the virgin u n m a s k ' d gives a powerful demonstration, both of the inefficacy of reason and virtue and of the power of passion as the motivating force in society and of the hypocrisy of mandeville's contemporaries who argued that the subordination of women, like other fundamentals of natural and thus moral justice, derives its legitimacy from scripture and reason. contrary to contemporary beliefs about marriage, the motives which prompt women to marry derive from no moral sources. if marriage is a rational institution, then an objective evaluation of the married state should reveal its advantages, for women and as well as men. mandeville shows, however, that if the merits of both the married and single state for women are examined, it becomes obvious that the unmarried state holds at least as many advantages for them as does the married, and that marriage, as an institution, is no more natural than society itself. each is the result of human intervention and political manipulation; both are the result of mankind's vices rather than virtues. the notion that women are motivated to marry by virtue is nothing more than a chimera. left to their own natural devices, women would surely choose to remain single, "mistress[es] of [their] own choice" (v., ). it is only women's libidinous urges, coupled with social standards which tie their self-interest to their chastity, that force them, against all that is natural and reasonable, into marriage. . women and the critique of 'virtue' a more apt title for the virgin unmask'd is "virtue unmask'd". the object of mandeville's satire is not to unmask lucinda's arid rationality, but to cook, bernard mandeville. p. . use it to unmask virtue and a society that refuses to recognize its hypocrisy. just as social and civic virtues are the product of mankind's manipulation of one another, so too are moral virtues. chastity, decreed by all the powers, civil, religious, and political, to be inviolate in women, derives from mankind's vices and is no more a law of nature than is any other virtue. having exposed the myths behind female virtue and laid bare the fallacy that virtue is either natural or absolute, mandeville successfully satirizes his contemporaries who subscribe to the civic humanist tradition in which virtue is seen as the moral as well as material foundation of social and personal life. mankind's capacity for self-deception is so great, and the effects of a learned education so persuasive, that, contrary to common belief, learned men, far from having the greatest understanding of human nature, usually have the least. this being so, and egoism, the consequence of mankind's self-liking, being as it is, a powerful incentive to men to conceal their motives from themselves, as well as from others, how then can men be brought to a state of self-awareness? in a digression on painting in part ii of the fable. cleomenes, horatio and fulvia, the only female character in the book, argue the merits of two paintings, one a charming but faithful copy of nature, the other a grander, but false representation. fulvia, with unfashionable straightforwardness, argues in the epicurean tradition for a real representation of nature over an idealized mandeville argues that "real virtue requires a conquest over untaught nature." the fable ii, p. ; and cautions that the "imaginary notions that men may be virtuous without self- denial are a vast inlet to hypocrisy" the fable i, p. .mandeville's paradox, kaye argues, turns on his definition of virtue in which virtue was either a transcending of the demands of corrupt human nature, or a conquest of self. the fable i, p. xlvii. thus, if women only remain chaste in order to catch a husband, and only marry in order to indulge their lust, then even the purest virgin cannot claim any virtue for her chastity. pocock, machiavellian moment, p. . see the female tatler. jan., ; jan., ; nov., ; and the virgin unmask'd, pp. / . and sublime one. she explains that "a picture then pleases me best when the art in such a manner deceives my eye, that without making any allowances, i can imagine i see the things in reality which the painter has endeavour'd to represent" (ii: / ). in reply, horatio, an adherent of shaftesbury's "lovely system", arguing for an exalted representation of nature, protests against "filth and nastiness, or vile abject things not fit to be seen, at least not capable of entertaining persons of quality" ( : ). at this point, cleomenes, in a tactic mandeville often uses to point up the absurdity of the position he is mocking, adjudicates the argument, explaining that "great masters don't paint for the common people, but for persons of refin'd understanding" (ii: ). great artists, he continues ironically, unlike michel angelo , demetrius, dionysius and lysippus, who have all been criticized for their too natural portrayals, should use artifice when portraying men, painting only what men wish to see rather than what is natural. after further discussion, fulvia, still holding fast to her position, states: "i prefer any thing that informs my understanding beyond all the recreations which either my eyes or my ears can be regal'd with" . fulvia's role in this exchange is an interesting one. the sentiments she expresses represent an argument used by mandeville in the virgin unmask'd and the female tatler, one in which he attacks the pretensions of learned men who entertain exalted notions of their intellectual and moral capabilities and whose "pride makes 'em such fools as to fancy they shall persuade the world, shaftesbury argues that there is a close connection between taste and morality and that they are psychologically dependent on one another. see walter jackson bate , "the sympathetic imagination in eighteenth-century english criticism", english literary history. (june, ), xii, p. . see also horne, the social thought of bernard mandeville, chapter , for a discussion of shaftesbury's philosophy. kaye argues that in this satire on the conventions forbidding realism in the arts, mandeville may have been not only indirectly preparing the defence of his psychological and moral realism, but vindicating the realistic homeliness of his style, which had been attacked. kaye, ed. the fable ii, p. , n.l. that they know every thing (v., ). women, because they are not esteemed for their learning, and are thus not compelled by pride to appear more learned than they really are, or corrupted by sophistical arguments, are not caught in this trap. in the female tatler, for example, lucinda discusses the difficulty of understanding pedantic writing and suggests that it can be understood "by the help of the females", much in the same way that the tame female of elephants inveigles the male. (f.t., jan., ). mandeville deliberately uses women to present his views. in introducing fulvia, he explains that he does so because he has some things to say about painting and opera that he thought with her could "be brought in more naturally, and with less trouble, than they could have been without her" ( : ). women are in a rather unique position, treated almost as 'idiots savants'; they are at the same time acknowledged to have special insights often denied to men. their more delicate constitution and emotional sensitivity were believed to heighten their sensibilities, endowing them with extraordinary intuitive powers. as jenny bickerstaff, steele's female persona in the tatler explains, "truth and simplicity...we may more justly pretend to beyond the other sex." in both the female tatler and the virgin unmask'd, mandeville takes pains to point out that women's wit and understanding are equal to men's. any differences between them, he argues, stem from differences in education (f.t., jan., ; v., / ). because sound judgment is no more than the labour of the brain joined to experience (ii: ), women have as much capacity for it as do for a discussion of this theme see g.s. rousseau, nerves, spirits and fibres: towards defining the origins of sensibility; with a postscript, , the blue guitar. ii, ( ). the tatler. july, . men. their superior capacity for sound judgment, joined with the fact that they are not blinded by pride in their ability to reason (f.t., jan. ), makes women privy to insights not available to men. although his contemporaries assumed that women's frailer bodies implied mental and emotional weakness, which justified their reduced status and exclusion from political life, mandeville did not. in the female tatler, mandeville uses the insights provided by women to point out the absurdity and hypocrisy of rules of honour which result in the glorification of war, and the flouting of both civil and religious laws in order to assuage one's honour through duelling (f.t., nov., ; jan., ). women's natural capabilities, combined with their lack of sophistry and intellectual pretension, makes them privy to insights lost to men. mandeville may have chosen to give women a place of prominence in his work, often using them as his spokesmen, for no other reason than that, in his role as "universal gadfly", he was "chiefly bent upon annoying everybody". it is more likely, however, that he did so because the image of women was the most effective satirical device by which to prick the civic humanist pretensions of his contemporaries and to demonstrate the fallacies underlying contemporary a clear indication of mandeville's position on women's versus men's intellectual capacities can be found in his index where, under the heading of "brain", he notes "the brain [is] more accurate in women than it is in men." the fable ii, p. . under the heading of "women", mandeville lists as a subject, "are equal to men in the faculty of thinking, . excell them in the structure of the brain, ." the fable ii, p. . in mandeville's account of the psychology of human beings, it is mankind's ego that gets in the way of his natural ability to perceive the truth. men believe themselves to be superior to animals because they have the capacity to reason; they also believe themselves to be superior to one another for the same reason. with their natural ability to perceive the world as it really is corrupted by reason, they are blind to their own nature. enamoured with their own intellectual powers, they refuse to admit what they do not know. maclean, the renaissance notion of women, pp. / . contemporary galenist physicians still maintained the belief that women were inferior to men for physiological reasons. maclean, the renaissance notion of women, p. . while not commenting on this in particular, in the virgin unmask'd, mandeville disdains their medical practices. the virgin unmask'd, p. . lovejoy, reflections on human nature, p. . notions of virtue. a natural corollary of the aristotelian belief that men and women have different and opposing attributes, with men possessed of those qualities and characteristics which are necessary for a virtuous citizenry, is the idea that women must behave differently from and subordinate to men. it is men's nature to be strong and courageous, it is women's nature to be weak and fearful; it is men's nature to command and lead, it is women's nature to obey and follow. women are admonished to be modest, silent, patient in suffering and complying, those who aren't are labeled scolds or shrews. mandeville unequivocally rejects this view of the order of nature and society whereby "the greatest encomium a man can give his wife is to tell the world that she is obedient" (f.t. jan., ). he attacks contemporary notions of female virtue which limit women to lesser moral standards, suitable only to domestic, not public life, and argues that "patience, chastity, conjugal love, and other female virtues," are no more women's lot by nature than "magnanimity, courage, or any of the heroick qualities, by which men have made themselves famous" (f.t., jan., ) are men's. rather, mandeville claims, all virtues are the result of custom and design and women are as capable of virtue as men are. because the hierarchy of the family, like the hierarchy of society, is believed to be established in nature, aberrations which might undermine the authority of either are viewed by mandeville's contemporaries as an affront to nature and ultimately to order and stability. thus, women who affect "everything that's masculine," including "manly reason, without the least womanish check" goldsmith argues that mandeville uses women to subvert the prevalent hierarchy of values which excluded women from the pursuit of virtues appropriate to landed gentlemen and the aristocratic ideals of honour. goldsmith, private vices, public benefits, p. . (f.t. july & aug., ), are considered both an outrage and a threat to society and therefore strongly criticized. in the virgin unmask'd and the female tatler, mandeville's female characters are the very antithesis of the "natural" and ideal female. well- educated, unmarried and of independent means, the two lucindas and artesia possess all of the traditional "manly" characteristics considered taboo for women but essential for virtuous, hence male, citizens. the prevalent attitude towards women who are so unnatural as to deny their femininity is put forward in the female tatler by an old gentleman who ridicules lucinda and artesia for their learning and independence. he warns them that no prudent man will ever take a wife that knows more than himself: every body loves women that are gay and witty, but solidity and learning are no more becoming them than breeches, and latin is as ungenteel a furniture for the inside of a woman's head, as a beard is for the outside (f.t., feb., ). "young women" should not behave in such an unbecoming and unnatural way, he admonishes, but "shou'd only study how to get husbands" (f.t., feb., ). mandeville presents women who contrast sharply with this portrayal: learned, knowledgeable about world affairs and financially independent, they are as capable of rational thought and as possessed of the heroic virtues as men. in the virgin unmask'd lucinda is not only a spinster, a learned lady and a woman of substantial means with a personal income of £ , , but, to add mandeville was not yet a contributor to the female tatler. bridget hill claims that spinsters and learned ladies were scorned because chastity, to which so much importance was attached, was considered a "frozen" asset in a spinster, while learned ladies were considered to be "desexed." hill, eighteenth-century women, p. . see the virgin unmask'd, p. ; the female tatler, dec. & , ; jan. , , ; feb., & , . a fortune of fifty thousand pounds was considered a substantial achievement for a rich london merchant. kramnick, bolingbroke and his circle, p. . see also lorna weatherill, consumer behaviour and material culture in britain, - , (new york: routledge, ). insult to injury, she is also one of the new financial entrepreneurs, holding a mortgage on land in exchange for a loan (v., ) and able to talk with authority about government bonds and securities. not content to argue that "the highest degrees of virtues are all the same," mandeville even goes so far as to develop a "table of fame" for women in the female tatler (f.t., dec, ; & jan., ), in opposition to the "table of fame" for men, published by steele in the tatler. he fills his table with women who have demonstrated wisdom, courage and love of country equal to that of any man. because the lack of women honoured for heroic deeds in the history books is cited as justification in the tatler for not giving women a table of fame of their own, mandeville's heroines argue that the only reason women have been conspicuously absent from the annals of history is because men have engrossed the writing of history to themselves. they have always been so careful to pick out the most remarkable subjects, never endeavouring to render any name immortal, whose greatness was not able to perpetuate their own. from what i have said it is evident, that the women, unless they had enjoy'd an equal share of power and greatness with the men, will not be found upon record for their excellencies so much as the latter, tho' they had exceeded them in every virtue (f.t., jan., ). artesia reiterates the complaint, made in both the virgin unmask'd, and the female tatler, that "since men have enslav'd us," women have been debarred bridget hill argues that "the main principles behind the accepted theory of the role of women were that men and women have entirely different characteristics and capacities." hill, eighteenth-century women, p. . mandeville does not subscribe to this idea and in his last edition of the female tatler, has lucinda argue, as she did in the virgin unmask'd that "letters were denied us, lest we shou'd see and claim our great prerogative and equality with haughty man, to whom we were created friends not servants, and design'd to advise and assist them in the government of the earth." the female tatler, march, . steele's squire bickerstaff promised a table of fame for the women but never put one together. in one edition of the tatler. however, he wrote that "sweetness of temper and simplicity of manners" are the only lasting charms of women. the tatler, no, ., quoted in leites, "good humour at home, good humour abroad," p. . from governing, "which is the reason that the lives of women have seldom been described in history" ( jan., ). the question of why men have enslaved women is, moreover, central to mandeville's larger argument about the evolution and development of civil societies. the contrivance of chastity as the chief virtue for women has a very practical explanation, mandeville argues. it removes a constant source of contention that would always be present if men could not lay ownership to women. as well, it satisfies men's need for dominance, meets the needs of civil society by ensuring an orderly succession of property rights and provides for a constant supply of cheap labour, thus enabling society to be divided into classes, a necessary prerequisite for rich and flourishing nations (f.t., nov., ; v., ). when mandeville turns his attention to the question of how, and by what means, savages, driven by their appetites, can be civilized, he begins with the assumption that, in a state of nature, men will satisfy their two primary needs, lust and hunger, vying with one another for women and food. so powerful is the sexual urge, mandeville argues, and so disastrous for civil society the consequences of an unbalance in the number of males and females, that nature has contrived to keep the numbers of adult males and females in equal balance. nature compensates for the number of men that are invariably killed by war and the vagaries of life by producing more male than female babies (ii: / ). otherwise, the "perpetual scarcity of women, and superfluity of men, would see the virgin unmask'd, pp. / ; the female tatler, jan., , jan., , and feb., . by war mandeville means civil, foreign, massacres, private murders, poison, swords and all other hostile acts men use to kill one another. the fable ii, pp. / . kaye notes that mandeville is referring to natural and political observations...upon the bills of mortality. the observations claim that although more men die than women because of their more hazardous life, the fact that their birth rate exceeds females by about a thirteenth part preserves the balance between the sexes. the fable ii, p. , n. . make great uneasiness in all societies...the price of women, would be so enhanced by it, that none but men in tolerable good circumstances would be able to purchase them" (u: / ). . female chastity mandeville's hypothetical account of how societies might have developed also has, as an important component, an explanation of the evolution of chastity. his argument that female chastity is not natural, but a product of pride and social conditioning, derives from the tradition of bayle, but breaks with that tradition in a very important way. in his pensees diverses sur la comete, bayle explains his mistrust of female virtue, saying: je ne voi pas qu'on doive trouver etrange, que je soupcpnne de faussete la plus-part des vertus humaines, et la chastete des femmes nommement. si celles qui ont fait leur devoir de ce cote-la, s'examinent a la rigueur, elles trouverent, je m'assure, que la peur du qu'en dira-t-on, y a plus contribue que toute autre chose. while mandeville believes with bayle that "les femmes s'y piqueroient de pudicite, parce qu'infailliblement cela leur acquerroit l'amour et l'estime des hommes," he does not, like bayle, lay special blame on women for being more lustful than men because of a defect in their constitution. c'est qu'elles sont retenues par la dure loi de l'honneur, qui les expose a l'infamie, quand elles succombent au penchant de la nature. ii est certain que si les hommes n'eussent point attache l'honneur et la gloire des femmes a la chastete, les femmes seroient aussi generalement plongees dans les pechez de la chair, que les hommes; il ya a meme beaucoup d'apparence qu'elles s'y -\ bayle, pensees diverses sur la comete ii. p. . ibid., p. . porteroient avec plus d'ardeur, parce qu'il est fort apparent que cette passion est plus violente dans les femmes que dans les hommes. indeed, there is an intricate relationship in mandeville's argument between the physiology of the sexes and the psychology that must be employed with women. because women mature earlier sexually than do men (ii: ) , they must be flattered more and from an earlier age to secure them against their own nature. again mandeville disagrees with bayle's low opinion of women, particularly his argument that, by nature, women are more lustful than men. o n the contrary, he argues, the sexual urge is stronger in men than it is in women (i: ). for this reason, not only must a woman be secured against her own nature, but she must also be secured against the wiles of "a seducer of uncommon address and resistless charms," who "may court her to what nature prompts and sollicites her to do" (ii: ). one of mandeville's major tenets is that if virtue, moral, social or religious, is innate in mankind, then men would not behave as they do. striking evidence of this, he claims, can be found in an examination of female chastity. it is only 'good' women who are driven to murder their unborn children in order to protect their self-interest. whores, who could be expected to be without either ibid., pp. / . home argues that bayle's low opinion of women helps explain why the chastity of women is one of his favourite examples of the way in which pride works. home, the social thought of bernard mandeville, p. . not only were women more lustful than men by nature, according to bayle, but "des vices qui flattent extremement notre vanite, notre envie, notre avarice et notre haine...generalement parlant, les femmes sont fort vaines et fort envieuses; si bien que pour les entretenir agreablement, it ne suffit pas de savoir mentir en les loiiant, il faut encore savoir mentir en blamant les autres femmes, et sur tout celles qui sont en concurrence de beaute, ou d'esprit, ou de credit, ou de rang avec celles qu'on entretient. bayle, pensees diverses sur la comete, pp. / . mandeville argues that men are not usually ready for sex until they are about fourteen, whereas women are ready by about twelve. the fable ii, p. . mandeville is somewhat ambivalent concerning male and female sexuality, arguing that although sexual desire is slower to be aroused in women, once raised to the critical height, it is absolutely irresistible. mandeville, modest defense of publick stews, p . conscience or morality, seldom are guilty of this crime (i: ). 'good' women may be persuaded to give in to their sexual urges in private but, because their honour, "ally'd and clearly annex'd to worldly interest," (m.d., ) demands that they remain chaste until married, if their private acts can be publicly discovered, they will risk all, even murdering their bastard children, to escape public disgrace. neither love of virtue nor hatred of vice keeps women chaste, mandeville claims. only pride, in the guise of shame, is powerful enough to do that. "honour routed never rallies, nay, the least breach in female reputation is irreparable" (m.d., ): threat of gaol and fear of god will not persuade women above a certain class to suffer the shame of dishonour and the public ignominy and loss of opportunity that inevitably follows such a disclosure. if moral virtues are not absolute and inviolate, rooted neither in natural or divine law, then what explains the ferocity with which society proclaims chastity to be the chief, if not the only, virtue of any consequence for women and the relentless pursuit of hapless women who are so unfortunate as to besmirch theirs? mandeville argues that the explanation is to be found in men's domineering spirit. in the early stages of the development of societies, he claims, mankind's natural propensity to dominate, coupled with self-love and self- liking, will cause men to strive for superiority over one another: because "every man is born with this domineering spirit," once his needs for food and sexual mandeville claims that "all marry'd women are above the world, in so far as they are out of the reach of any suspicions or surmises, or even a probability of incontinence; and since they are not liable to be detected by pregnancy, there's no other sort of conviction able to prejudice them." mandeville, modest defence of publick stews, p. . the fable i, pp. / ; the fable ii. p. ; the female tatler, nov., .for examples of the treatment that women who murdered their bastard children received, see hill, eighteenth-century women, pp. - . gratification are satisfied, "a desire of superiority, and grasping to himself" will make him look for ways to gain ascendancy over others. for this reason, in a state of nature men will value themselves for their strength and prowress, whereas women "will always prize themselves for what they see men admire in them" (ii: ). it is this human tendency for mankind to value themselves, either for what others think of them, or, more perversely, what they imagine others think of them, that results in the contrivance of chastity as "the chief virtue of the women" (f.t., jan., ), as well as all other moral virtues. as lucinda explains, women do not behave modestly because they value modest behaviour, but only because they are afraid men will despise and hate them if they behave otherwise (v. ). lust, "that passion that prompts mankind to labour for the preservation of our species" (i: ), is so strong a force in human beings that, in savage societies, men and women will satisfy their sexual urge without any thought or understanding of what it is they are doing. thus, without some strong incentive for restraint, "tho' we agree not to take away, and this "thirst of dominion" plays an important role in mandeville's theory of society. without it, he argues, men "could never have been form'd into societies." the "desire of dominion", he claims, "is a never-failing consequence" of men's pride. the fable ii, pp. / . although mandeville gives a reasoned argument for why men will value themselves for strength and prowress, he does not give a similar argument for why it is that women value themselves for what men prize in them. see the fable i, p. , for mandeville's argument on how this trait in men can be used to the benefit of society. "patience, chastity, conjugal love, and other female virtues", are considered important, but the consensus of the female tatler's contributors is that chastity is the most important female virtue. male virtues are "magnanimity, courage, or any of the heroic qualities, by which men have made themselves famous." the female tatler, jan. . the oxford gentleman, however, explodes the myth that there are different virtues for men and women, arguing that there is a single standard and that all virtuous acts proceed from self-interested motives. the female tatler, jan., . goldsmith argues that mandeville "in a number of his works both directly and indirectly undermined the conviction that there was a single standard of ethical value-a standard embodied in the eighteenth-century conception of the landed patriotic gentleman citizen." goldsmith, private vices, public benefits, p. . preservation of the species is the result, not the cause, of lust mandeville argues. see an enquiry into the origins of honour, pp. / . mandeville tells a wonderful story about a cherry tree to illustrate this point. the fable ii, pp. / . rob a man of the woman that is his own, it is yet to be fear'd, that if we like her, this innate principle, that bids us gratify every appetite, will advise us to make use of her, as if she was our own; tho' our neighbour is at the charge of maintaining her, and all the children she brings forth" (ii: ). compelled as he is by the conceit of egoism to imagine that everything he can get his hands on is his own, the savage "will look upon his children as his property" (ii: - ). this is the original motive, mandeville argues, that prompts men to value chastity in women above all else. to be certain that their children are their own, men have contrived to make chastity the primary female virtue. but if women are to be restrained from satisfying a passion as compelling as lust, there has to be an even more compelling passion substituted in its place. by tying women's honour solely to their chastity, pride, the "principle of self-esteem" (ii: ), ensures that women, because they want to be well thought of by men, will endeavour to restrain their "darling passion, lust", giving way to it only within the confines of marriage. in this way, men can be reasonably confident that the offspring of the union are their own, and that they own the offspring they father. mandeville gives preeminence in his theory of "pride" to women. convinced that the differing degrees of pride are owing to circumstances and education (ii: ), he argues that women, while not having "more pride from nature than men....have a great deal more from education" (ii: / ). mandeville argues this theme at length in his modest defense of publick stews. it is not just savages that are prompted by these motives, mandeville claims. love is not the cause of marriage, but the effect of lust. men do not marry out of any noble sentiments, but out of pride and a desire to secure their possessions: "a rich man may, with great impatience, wish for a son, to inherit his name and his estate; perhaps, he may marry from no other motive, and for no other purpose; but all the satisfaction he seems to receive, from the flattering prospect of a happy posterity, can only arise from a pleasing reflection on himself, as the cause of those descendants" the fable ii: . mandeville does concede that individuals bom with the finest parts have the greatest aptitude to be proud, and that "the workmanship in the make of women seems to be more elegant, and better finish'd....there is no reason to imagine, that nature should have been women's pride, refined to a higher pitch than men's because they are flattered more, and from an earlier age (ii: ), increases their fear of shame, "the reverse of pride" (i: ), thus keeping them mindful of their honour which "has no other object than their chastity"(ii: ). the multitude will hardly believe the excessive force of education, and in the difference of modesty between men and women ascribe that to nature, which is altogether owing to early instruction: miss is scarce three years old, but she is spoke to every day to hide her leg, and rebuk'd in good earnest if she shews it; while little master at the same age is bid to take up his coats, and piss like a man" (i: ). mandeville's utilitarian bent is evident in this argument that the standards of virtue are different for men than for women. if the standards are absolute and apply equally to both sexes, he argues, then neither sex will dare make the first advance towards the other and there will be no increase in population, particularly among fashionable people ( : ). but because virtue is socially determined, and because it is in the interest of politicians to encourage large populations, and since lust is stronger in men than in women, society has made it acceptable for male modesty to have a less rigourous standard applied to it. with male modesty not tied to chastity, as is a female's, all that is required for men to be modest, is for them to maintain "a civil behaviour amongst the fair in publick and a deportment, inoffensive both in words and actions" (ii: ). if it is pride of ownership and lust for dominion that prompts all men in rude and savage states to value chastity as the prime virtue in women, it is the need for large populations that makes matrimony politically desirable in more neglectful of them out of sight, than she has where we can trace her; and not have taken the same care of them in the formation of the brain, as to the nicety of the structure, and the superior accuracy in the fabric..." the fable ii, p. societies with more complex social structures. once men no longer live in a state of nature, mandeville claims, "but form'd into several societies independent of one another, and these societies again [are] divided into several ranks and degrees of men, distinguished by their titles and possessions, which descend fmm father to son" (m.d., ), marriage becomes absolutely necessary. not only is marriage necessary "for the regular propagation of the species, and their careful education, but likewise for preserving that distinction of rank among mankind, which otherwise would be utterly lost and confounded by doubtful successions" (m.d. ). the impetus for marriage may come from men's inclination to lewdness (m.d., ), but the purpose of marriage is to promote population growth (m.d. / ). by regulating lust to prevent the inevitable strife and mischief that results if men and women are free to promiscuously copulate and change partners at will, legislators encourage social harmony, peace and prosperity. mandeville argues the mercantilist case that the prosperity of any country depends "in a great measure, on the number of its inhabitants" (m.d. ). for this reason, it is in the interest of the politicians to regulate relations between men and women, require less rigourous standards of chastity for males than for females and promote large populations by encouraging marriage. . fashion and improvement one of mandeville's most carefully developed positions, and the only vice for which he supplies a detailed demonstration of how it could be turned into a mandeville, an enquiry into the origins of honour pp. / . mandeville argues that marriage was not invented to make men procreate, they already knew how to do that, but rather to regulate procreation to prevent mischief. see t.e. gregory, "the economics of employment in england, - ", economica : - , ( ), p. . unlike his contemporaries though, mandeville argues for the benefits of consumption, not just production. mandeville argues this theme in the virgin unmask'd, p. , and the fable i, pp. / . public benefit, hirschman claims, is the vice traditionally associated with women and civic ruin, "the passion for material goods in general and for luxury in particular." traditionally thought to be more deeply imbued than men with "the trio of vices - ambition, avarice and lechery," women were synonymous with luxury and thus with self-indulgent excess of any sort, sexual as well as material. moral prohibitions against luxury and legal prohibitions against dressing above one's station had existed in one form or another in many societies. women's desire to ornament themselves and enhance their beauty, a persistent theme throughout church history, produced a copious literature of admonitions to them about self-ornament long before mandeville's time. sumptuary laws, still read from pulpits annually in england, applied to all citizens who laboured or were dependent on others, but they applied to women in particular. the desire to dress above one's rank was seen as a threat to the social order, undermining class distinctions, corrupting the morals and hirschman, the passions and the interests, p. . hirschman overlooks mandeville's argument about how female chastity is derived from men's vices, to the continual benefit of society. mandeville's fable of the bees was one of the more important eighteenth-century works on luxury. see also sekora, luxury. ibid., p. . mandeville identifies lust, pride and selfishness as the passions that men must hide for the happiness and embellishment of society. the fable i, pp. / . with one major exception, virtually all medieval and renaissance personifications of luxury are feminine. the major exception, sekora says, was spenser's faerie queen. depicted as a beautiful, lustful woman in the windows of chartes, notre dame and amiens, luxury appears carrying the comb and mirror of cupidity and self-love. in some places she holds a scepter to mark her omnipotence and sexual domination over men; several medieval and early renaissance depictions carry beneath the name a subtitle: "the power of woman". sekora, luxury, pp. / . see maclean, the renaissance notion of woman, pp. - . jerome, aquinas and saint francis all took up the debate. ibid., p. . see sekora, luxury, pp. - . sekora claims that the society for the reformation of manners was formed in by influential men in london who decided that the sumptuary laws were being neglected. ibid., p. . discipline of citizens and impoverishing the state by diminishing the aggregate wealth of the commonwealth through overspending on luxury goods. mandeville's intention was to turn the traditional arguments against luxury upside down, arguing instead that luxury is as necessary to create rich and flourishing societies as his contemporaries believed it to be harmful. qualities customarily held to be advantageous to society such as "humility, temperance, contentedness, frugality, and several other virtues" are so "very insignificant, as to the publick," mandeville argues, "and so far from making a country flourish, that no nation yet enjoy'd the most ordinary comforts of life", if they were not "counter-ballanc'd by the opposite vices" (f.t., nov., ). pride, passion and prodigality are so essential to the state, "that no nation can be great without them...[and] to wish for a flourishing trade and the decrease of pride and luxury is as great an absurdity, as to pray for rain and dry weather at the same time" (f.t. nov., ). mankind's emulative nature and women's insatiable appetite for fashion provides the incentive for invention and keeps tradesmen, craftsmen, shopkeepers and scores of others employed. indeed, it is this reciprocal relationship between the never-ending desires of the prosperous classes and the labour of the poor that drives society (i: / ). this is the reason that mandeville directs his work to the middle and upper classes and argues so vigorously on behalf of the "beau monde". society is beholden for the comforts and splendors of life neither to the lower classes, who this attitude is discussed in an early edition of the female tatler where "the prodigality of inferior classes" and "the deceitfulness of most men's appearances," are criticized because rank distinction is "highly necessary for the oeconomy of the world." the female tatler. aug., . the necessity for sumptuary laws to prevent harm to english morals and manufactures through excessive spending on luxury goods is discussed by an anonymous writer in a proposal for remeeding our excessive luxury. ( ), [goldsmith, kress collection]. mandeville repeats this argument in the fable. "luxury and politeness ever grew up together, and were never enjoy'd asunder." the fable ii, p. . are devoid of honour (i: ) and thus seldom powerfully influenced by pride to improve their lot (i: ), nor to sober-living citizens who manage their money prudently. rather, society is the beneficiary of vain, affected pleasure seekers who have wealth and spend it lavishly (f.t., nov., ). one of the first to focus attention on consumption as a spur to economic growth, mandeville, unlike most of his contemporaries, argues for the benefits deriving to the economy from consumption, particularly foreign consumption. his contemporaries deplored the frequently changing fashions in food and clothing because these items were usually imported. foreign trade was thought to be beneficial to the state only if english goods were sold abroad or imported goods were re-exported. mandeville, however, did not agree. if england did not buy luxury items such as indian pepper, tea, coffee, calico and fashion goods from other countries, she would not be able to sell her own products to them, and not only would the economy be undermined but civil society itself would be threatened (i: ). arts and sciences, trade and commerce, employment, the class structure and domestic tranquility are all, he claims, due to the profligate spender and the insatiable consumer. these economic features of mandeville's social theory rest on one primary notion, that human beings are egotistical by nature. passion and self-interest, f.b. kaye points out that north had also anticipated mandeville's attack on national frugality when he wrote: "countries which have sumptuary laws, are generally poor....for that never thrives better, than when riches are tost from hand to hand." sir dudley north, discourses upon trade ( ). p. ; the fable, i, p. . joan thirsk, economic policy and projects, (oxford: clarendon, press, ), p. . the fashion craze for indian cottons, imported silks, french fashion goods and exotic foods was deplored because these items were believed to hurt the home economy by draining money from the country and fostering lax morals in the people. a proposal for remeeding our excessive luxury. kaye writes that mandeville was not abandoning the orthodox 'balance of trade' argument, but rather arguing for the stimulation of both exports and imports. the fable i, p. . mandeville devotes two consecutive papers to this topic. the female tatler. nov., ; nov., . manifest in a desire to be well regarded by others, results in mankind's propensity to strive constantly for preeminence over one another. central to mandeville's theory, and overlooked by scholars, is his description of the effect that this need for esteem has on women and the social consequences which flow from it. he argues that mankind's need for confirmation from others of his own self-worth acts on women, causing them to value themselves for whatever it is that men prize in them. a n d what men prize, mandeville claims, is physical attractiveness. mandeville was acutely aware of what neil mckendrick calls "the biological display function of clothes." in a state of nature, he argues, women who, naked and unenhanced, are less attractive than others, very quickly discover that they can enhance their beauty by the use of artifice and ornament. once other women realize this, they too begin to improve on nature. in this way, because human beings constantly strive to emulate those whom they feel are superior to themselves (i: ), with time and through custom, by constantly competing with one another for men's attention, women are driven to dress above their stations (i: / ). the direct correlation between pride and luxury gives women the foremost role in the development of the fashion industry. their greater pride and their need to be physically attractive to men combine to produce in them an almost insatiable desire for fashion goods. mckendrick, "commercialization and the economy," p. . • this is a topic of considerable discussion in the the virgin unmask'd. lucinda argues that women only show those parts of their bodies that men find attractive. because men find women's bosoms attractive, women display them. the reason that women don't show "the lower-parts, for there [they] are ugly, ill-shaped, nasty creatures," is not out of modesty, lucinda says, but because "they are only afraid men will despise and hate them for it." the virgin unmask'd, p. . the financial revolution, begun in the s, had a significant effect on women's fortunes and especially upon their power as consumers. p . g . m . dickson argues that the creation of new forms of mobile wealth through the expansion of commerce into the west indies and north america, along with technical innovations among the merchants and traders of london, resulted in the distribution of this wealth to new groups of people. prominent among them, controlling both land and money, were women. there is evidence to suggest that early eighteenth-century demographic conditions "were favourable for the production of heiresses." by coincidence, at the same time as the financial revolution was taking place, a 'quirk' of nature, combined with english inheritance laws, provided women with greatly increased access to wealth, both in property and investment capital. since fewer males were being born than females, and patrimony was divided equally among sons and daughters, the number of heiresses and brides with large portions increased substantially while large quantities of land were brought under direct or indirect female control. inheritance, marriage settlements and widowhood combined to offer women increased control of large sums of money, which they then invested in the new the effect of this revolution on women is an omission in goldsmith's discussion on women and their place in early eighteenth society. goldsmith argues that few women held or controlled landed or commercial property. m.m. goldsmith, "the treacherous "arts of mankind," p. . p. g. m. dickson, the financial revolution in england: a study in the development of public credit. - . (toronto: the macmillan co., ), p. for women as land owners, see h.j. habakkuk, "english landownership, - ," the economic history review, vol. x, no. , (feb., ), pp. - ; lloyd bonfield, "marriage settlements and the rise of great estates: the demographic aspect," the economic history review, nd series, vol. xxxii, no. , (nov. ) pp. - ; and christopher clay, "marriage, inheritance and the rise of large estates in england, - ," the economic history review. nd series, vol. xxi, no. , ( ), pp. - . dickson, the financial revolution in england, pp. ; . lloyd bonfield, "marriage settlements and the rise of great estates," p. . both bonfield and clay cite hollingsworth's calculations of male replacement rates for the peerage in support of this conclusion. clay, "marriage, inheritance and the rise of large estates in england, - ," p. . bonfield, "marriage settlements and the rise of great estates," p. ; clay, "marriage, inheritance and the rise of large estates in england," p. . financial institutions. evidence of this is their importance as speculators, from the first establishment of public credit at the end of the seventeenth century, up to at least the middle of the next century. dickson calculates that when the first english loan was floated in , women made up . % of the subscribers for . % of the subscription. as the century wore on, they became increasingly important as investors in both government and private shares, holding, by mid- century, . % of the bank stock for . % of the total amount, and . % of the east india stock for . % of the total. what this meant was that women as consumers and investors were now an important component of and potent market in british civil society. the image of "woman as capricious consumer", a recurrent feature of "the rather prominent sexism found in augustan social criticism," was a target for many of mandeville's contemporaries. steele, for example, attacked women for their love of finery, rhapsodizing that they are loveliest when plainly dressed in simple, unadorned garments. mandeville argues for the benefits deriving to society from "the fickle strumpet that invents new fashions every week; the haughty dutchess that in equipage, entertainments, and all her behaviour would imitate a princess" (i: ). he employs the common image of the woman who wants a new gown for thoroughly selfish and whimsical reasons to demonstrate the unintended consequences which flow to society from the self- dickson, the financial revolution in england, p. . women were also an important component in the marriage market and contributed to the widening gap between the wealthier and the poorer landowners. speck claims that the wealthy landowners were able to corner the marriage market, thereby increasing their wealth and holdings. because it was socially acceptable for gentlemen (but not for gentlewomen) to marry down the social ladder, men were able to make prudent alliances with wealthy merchants' daughters. speck, "conflict in society," pp. , . pocock, machiavellian moment, p. . both montesquieu and addison also attacked women for their consumerism. indulgent woman and the extravagant spender. indeed, the "abominable improvement in female luxury" does far more to promote the welfare of the nation than all the beneficent virtues of a good and contented gentleman, living in harmony with his neighbours and coveting nothing, ever could (i: / ; ; f.t., nov., ). women, both single and married, gained increasing command of earnings of their own and, in luxurious cities like london in particular, access to shops and private dealers selling a wide variety of consumer goods. mandeville gives a facetious demonstration of the power of emulation amongst all classes of women and the effects of their emulative spending on fashion. from "the poorest labourer's wife in the parish," who will "half starve her self and her husband to purchase a second-hand gown and petticoat" (i: ), to the "merchant's lady" who, not bearing to see the women below her in the social scale fitted out as well as she is, "flies for refuge to the other end of the town, and scorns to follow any fashion but what she takes from thence," to the court, where "the women of quality are frighten'd to see merchants wives and daughters dress'd like themselves," women compete with one another, emulating those above them and striving to set themselves off from those below. a n d all of this acts to benefit society, mandeville argues, by setting the "mantua-makers" and other assorted tradesmen to work. mandeville devotes three editions of the female tatler to the benefits of both those who devote their time to earning money and those who devote it to spending money, each is necessary to the other and both to society. see , and march, . mckendrick argues that even women in domestic service received higher money wages as a result in the rising competition for labour. mckendrick, "commercialization and the economy," p. . see e. a. wrigley, "a simple model of london's importance in changing english society and economy, - ", past and present. no. , quly, ), pp. - , p. . wrigley argues that by mandeville's time the shop is a normal feature and a most important influence on social life. to this emulation and continual striving to out-do one another it is owing, that after so many various shiftings and changings of modes, in trumping up new ones and renewing of old ones, there is still a plus ultra left for the ingenious; it is this, or at least the consequence of it, that sets the poor to work, adds spurs to industry, and encourages the skilful artificer to search after further improvements. (i: ) commercial societies are the product of the uninhibited and often whimsical pursuit of desires which raise production by increasing demand. thus there is a direct relationship between improvements in female luxury and economic improvement. mandeville argues that the desire for luxury materials such as brocades and embroideries encourages trade and promotes the welfare of the country (i: ). he scoffs at contemporary suggestions that religion has any relevance for the behaviour of individuals and the wealth of nations, and argues instead that "the silly and capricious invention of hood'd and quilted petticoats" has done far more to spur trade, employ workers and promote the arts and sciences than religion and sober living ever could (i: ). although unaware of the demographic trend which improved women's fortunes, mandeville was certainly conscious of their emerging role in the nation's economic life. unlike contemporaries such as steele, he did not deplore women's growing economic independence as a threat to marital harmony and an aberration of the natural order of society. instead, he viewed their participation in the economic life of the nation as natural, and important for a flourishing, commercial nation. moreover, he understood their importance to transcend their power as consumers. as mandeville points out in the virgin unmask'd, too often men are able to wheedle women's portions and wealth away from them (v., / ). if all that is necessary for a rich and flourishing astell expresses a similar complaint against husbands in reflections upon marriage, pp. / . society is that money circulate, then it matters not if women or men are spending it. c o n c l u s i o n the importance of women in mandeville's social thinking derives from what he understood to be the most basic and fundamental facts of human association. when mandeville analyzed society, he did not find magnanimous, spiritually lofty individuals who associate together out of a natural desire for society and an innate love for one another. rather, he found a collection of self- interested individuals. what leads to society, he argues, is their pride and the desire for dominion over one another ( : / ). self-liking makes individuals so fond of the approval and approbation of others that they can be manipulated into behaving in socially desirable ways and, through a slow evolutionary process, learn to curb and restrain wild nature and assume traits that will allow them to live together in stable and harmonious groups. mandeville's work is about pride, a quality in human beings so ineffable, yet so powerful, that, properly developed and refined, it can cause women to deny their strongest, most basic appetite. central to mandeville's social theories and his formulation of them are his reflections on women and their role in civil society. given his reliance on the paramountcy of the passions and the socially destructive effects of lust coupled with men's selfish and domineering nature (ii: ), it is difficult to imagine how mandeville could have formulated his theory in the way he did without his speculations on women and their importance for civil society and material progress. a l l wise laws, mandeville claims, are crafted to direct the energies of those who are meant to obey them. even laws as sacred as the ten commandments are merely stronger versions of prohibitions and rules which were in existence mandeville returns to this theme again and again. for example: the fable i, p. ; ii, p. , - , . amongst the israelites at the time of moses. the prohibitions against stealing, coveting and adultery all stem from the necessity of regulating relations between the sexes so as to foster harmonious relations within the social group (ii: / ). herein lies the conservative nature of mandeville's thought, for though he credits women with intelligence and ability equal to men's, and rejects the notion that moral virtues are divinely determined, he does not reject the double standards that society applies to women. mandeville's social theorizing ought to be understood as a radical defense of the status quo. he sought to justify the social practices and mental habits of commercial societies by employing original and unsettling modes of analysis to achieve this end. mandeville's aim is not to reform society, but rather to illuminate it, and his arguments about women are a central feature of this enterprise. if men and women are to live together in complex, materially prosperous societies, mandeville insists, then, given human nature, laws and prohibitions must exist to restrain their socially destructive tendencies. for this reason, female chastity and stable marriage are as necessary to the growth, harmony and prosperity of civil societies as are patriotism and wise laws. so important is female chastity and so difficult is it to preserve it given the compelling nature of the sex drive, that even enforcing chastity with the entire weight of the social, religious and political structure will not ensure it. only pride has the power to overcome lust. only by allying honour with chastity has society succeeded in enforcing it upon women. the deceptions and manipulations based upon pride, fostered by society and practiced by women, result in a functioning and polished social order. bayle makes this point in his pensees. he argues that women "sont retenues par la dure loi de 'honneur, qui les expose a rinfamie, quand elles succombent au penchant de la nature." pensees diverses sur la comete, p. . investigation of mandeville's attitudes towards women and women's issues reveals that no discussion of his social, moral or economic thought is complete without a consideration of their central role. beginning with his analysis of human psychology in the virgin unmask'd, he develops his characteristic arguments about the passions, and the civilizing effects of society, by satirizing contemporary assumptions about women. he attempts to demonstrate the hypocrisy inherent in claims for the absoluteness of conventional moral, social and economic standards by exposing the motives behind conventional assumptions about women, the roles they were expected to play and the moral standards they were obliged to maintain. mandeville discusses associations between the sexes in the context of civil society. throughout his work, he argues that men and women are essentially the same in nature and ability, desires and appetites. thus, in a state of nature, when their desires and appetites are unfettered by convention or prescription, they will copulate promiscuously and at will. "tho' lust in man is not so raging as it is in bulls and other salacious creatures, yet nothing provokes men and women both sooner and more violently to anger, than what crosses their amours, when they are heartily in love" ( : / ). to prevent the mischief which this must invariably bring once any number of men and women live together in close proximity to one another, mandeville, adopting the ancient lucretian device of the skilful politician, postulates that "lawgivers and other wise m e n , that have labour'd for the establishment of society, have endeavour'd...to make the people they were to govern, believe, that it was more beneficial for every body to conquer than indulge his appetites, and much better to mind the publick than what seem'd his private interest" ( : ). thus mandeville shows that it is civil expediency, not religious canon, that demands chastity be the primary virtue in women and allies it to their honour to ensure its enforcement and prevent civil strife. in the same way that chastity has been made a moral virtue, marriage has been made a religious and civil institution. mandeville's arguments about marriage, first made in the virgin unmask'd, remained a constant and important part of his social theorizing. in a n enquiry into the origin of honour, published in , the year before his death, mandeville repeats his claim that marriage is an institution designed by politicians, not god, and "instituted to regulate strong passions and to prevent the innumerable mischiefs that should ensue, if men and women should converse together promiscuously, and love and leave one another as caprice and their unruly fancy led them." once the continuity in mandeville's arguments is recognized, it becomes clear that in the virgin u n m a s k ' d he is not just attempting to show the hardships of marriage. rather, he uses a satirical description of marriage to develop comprehensive social and moral arguments. crucial to his famous maxim that private vices bring public benefits are his arguments that chastity and marriage (both, he claims, necessary for materially prosperous, multi-strata, societies, in which property is passed on from one generation to the next), are the result of lust and pride. pride, allied to luxury, creates rich and powerful nations (v. ; f.t. nov., ; ii: ). mandeville's beliefs about the effects of self-interest on women's behaviour, and the relationship between the two and luxury, art and science, make women as consumers an important component of his economic see the fable ii, p. ; and i, p. for mandeville's discussions on the necessity for men to behave in ways that are beneficial to the group as a whole. mandeville, an enquiry into the origin of honour, pp. / . theorizing. his argument that women's self-esteem is derived from men's good opinions of them, which, in turn, depend solely on how physically attractive they are, made him a vocal critic of those who argued against luxury spending, and maintained that women are most attractive to men when dressed in plain, unadorned clothes. women's need for men's approval, mandeville claims, makes them particularly susceptible to manipulation concerning their appearance. for this reason, men like steele and addison are, in his eyes, not only self-deluded, but also a threat to prosperity and society as it is currently enjoyed. it is women's desire for fashion and ornaments which so powerfully helps to turn the wheels of trade. it is their competition for men's attention and their striving to set themselves off from one another that spurs industry and invention. therefore, convincing women that men find them most attractive when they are modestly dressed and plainly ornamented is counterproductive in mandeville's eyes. the wife who goads her husband to earn more so that she can dress as lavishly as her betters, and thus distinguish herself from those whom she believes to be her inferiors, and the husband who takes pride in his wife's appearance, and in his ability to provide her with the means to achieve this status, are the contributors to the general well-being and profit of society (i: - ). it is this constant round of desire fuelling acquisition, propelling productivity and invention, that pushes society to new and greater heights of power and splendor. mandeville's conviction that society derives from mankind's self- interested passions, particularly pride, is not unique to him. what is unique in this regard, and largely unrecognized, is his emphasis on women. mandeville's analyses of women and women's issues and his speculations concerning the psychology employed to manipulate them into behaving in socially desirable ways are important, both to the development of his economic theory and to the development of his larger theory about the origin and evolution of civil society. without his speculations on women, mandeville might have written his famous fable, but it would not have been quite the same powerful book. bibliography works by m a n d e v i l l e : mandeville, bernard. a treatise of the hypocondriack and hysteric diseases, (london, ). aesop dress'd: or, a collection of fables writ in familiar verse, (london, ). a n enquiry into the origins of honour a n d the usefulness of christianity in war, (london, ). bernardia mandeville di medicina oratio scholastica. 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"a simple model of london's importance in changing english society and economy, - ". past and present, no. , (july, ), pp. - . of global america a n d t h e f u t u r e o f visions critical reading ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e o h i o s t a t e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s c o l u m b u s d a n i e l t . o ’ h a r a of global america a n d t h e f u t u r e o f visions critical reading ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm copyright © by the ohio state university. all rights reserved. library of congress cataloging-in-publication data o’hara, daniel t., – visions of global america and the future of critical reading / daniel t. o’hara. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. isbn - - - - (cloth : alk. paper)—isbn - - - - (cd-rom) . criticism—united states. . american literature—history and criticism. . truth. . badiou, alain—criticism and interpretation. . emerson, ralph waldo, – — criticism and interpretation. . james, henry, – —criticism and interpretation. . baldwin, james, – —criticism and interpretation. . purdy, james—criticism and interpretation. i. title. ps . .' —dc this book is available in the following editions: cloth (isbn - - - - ) cd-rom (isbn - - - - ) cover design by juliet williams type set in adobe sabon printed by thomson-shore, inc. the paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the american national standard for information sciences—permanence of paper for printed library materials. ansi z . - . ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm preface	 	 vii acknowledgments	 xiii introduction		the	event	of	reading	 part one : the critical apparatus 	 	 	badiou’s	truth	and	the	office	of	the	critic:	 	 	 	neither	gods	nor	monsters	 	 		 	figures	of	the	void:	 	 	 	on	the	subject	of	truth	and	the	fundamentalist	imagination	 	 		 	“the	cry	of	its	occasion”: 	 	 	the	subject	of	truth,	or	the	terror	in	global	terrorism	 part two : the literary culture of global america 	 	 	global	america	and	the	logics	of	vision	 	 		 	america,	the	symptom: 	 	 	on	the	post- / 	allegory	in	american	studies	 	 	 	our	worldly	apocalypse: 	 	 	literature	and	everyday	life	 part three : the exalted states of reading 	 	 “monstrous	levity”: 	 	 between	realism	and	vision	in	henry	james	 	 	 toward	a	global	democracy: 	 	 james	baldwin	and	the	stoic	vision	of	amor fati	 	 	 bringing	out	the	terror: 	 	 james	purdy	and	the	culture	of	vision	 contents ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm conclusion		the	truth	of	american	madness: 	 	 									on	love	and	vision	in	the golden bowl	 appendix					 why	badiou	counts—in	this	book	and	generally	 notes	 	 	 index	 	 	 c o n t e n t s  vi ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm she went in silence to where her friend—never in intention visibly so much her friend as at that moment—had braced herself to so amaz- ing an energy, and there under amerigo’s eyes she picked up the shin- ning pieces. bedizened and jeweled, in her rustling finery, she paid, with humility of attitude, this prompt tribute to order—only to find however that she could carry but two of the fragments at once. she brought them over to the chimney-piece, to the conspicuous place occupied by the cup before fanny’s appropriation of it, and after laying them carefully down went back to what remained, the solid detached foot. with this she returned to the mantel-shelf, placing it with deliberation in the centre and then for a minute occupying herself as with the attempt to fit the other morsels together. the split determined by the latent crack was so sharp and so neat that if there had been anything to hold them the bowl might still quite beautifully, a few steps away, have passed for uninjured. as there was however nothing to hold them but maggie’s hands during the few moments the latter were so employed, she could only lay the almost equal parts of the vessel carefully beside their pedestal and leave them thus before her husband’s eyes. . . . she had taken him for aware all day (that she knew); but what had been wrong about was the effect of his anxiety. . . . [i]t was shut there between them, the successive moments throbbing under it the while as the pulse of fever throbs under the doctor’s thumb? (james, the golden bowl – ) how do we learn to read such a complex passage as this? how do we recognize and address its rich and various contexts? perhaps most important: in our emerging “post-human” global society, what is there to be gained from such an experience of reading? that is the preface  vii ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p r e f a c e  viii subject of this book. the final chapter of this book is intended to demonstrate the inter-animating experience of reading such a pas- sage; the intervening chapters are the ways in which i have learned how to do it. for a more detailed account of my argument and the book’s organization, please see the introduction. for convenience, i have organized these chapters into three parts: “the critical apparatus,” “the literary culture of global america,” and “the exalted states of reading.” by elaborating the framework of part through a continuing analysis of contemporary fundamentalism, i also implicitly discuss the sublime experiences of reading that is possible for the culture of global america. similarly, my introductory and concluding chapters explore and complete the book’s theoretical agenda. the interrelationship of the book’s parts is thus deliberate, as the reading entailed by passages such as that cited above require just that brand of interpenetrative process of textual self-interpretation i recommend. as good critical readers, i believe that we discover the truth of reading, in reading. the essential premise of this book is that there is indeed an american difference to reading. in saying this, i do not assume that this difference lies in the optimistic and chauvinistic versions of american exceptionalism and manifest destiny, nor do i accept that identity politics are necessary or sufficient to the human condition in the early twenty-first century. quite the contrary: i believe the american difference entails the specific dream of the human being transcending itself here on this continent in accordance with the romantic visionary desire for spiritual and material apotheosis. as such, this american dream is a terrible contingent nightmare for the rest of the human species, as well as for most of the other species on the planet. in this admittedly hyperbolic light, mormonism, with its doctrine of eternal progression to divinity, is the most american of religions in our global american empire. an american christian fundamentalism, on the other hand, claims that only the quality of one’s personal relationship with jesus warrants a free trip to heaven, all the while allowing the practice of a radical antinomianism here below. the first chapter argues that the way this traditional romantic american version of liberated human nature plays itself out today is via the seductions of the post-human imagination. in this chapter, i ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p r e f a c e  ix marshal alain badiou’s theory of truth and its implications for the transformative role of the critic in the face of such strong allures. while i admit that the post-human includes both popular sci-fi rep- resentations and scientific innovations that are making human bio- genetic engineering increasingly possible, this book deals exclusively with the former. since the mid- s, america has become a sci-fi culture, while those of us who are human (all-too-human) are living in poverty on, what i call, after badiou, the edge of the void of rep- resentation. chapter continues the elaboration of badiou’s militant theory of truth in relationship to what looks, at first blush, a lot like it—the contemporary fundamentalist imagination. what i point out here, however, is that where badiou’s militant truth is put to the test by its very own subject, the experience of fundamentalism better resembles what freud recognized in the schreber case: namely, that the psy- chotic mind can recover part of its balance in the mad myths to which it publicly testifies, regardless of their falsifiability. by using badiou to analyze a specific case of the fundamentalist imagination in this chapter, i demonstrate what i call the american madness at work, even as i separate the experience of the authentic subject of truth from the profoundly self-deceived. the final chapter of this first part on the critical framework of the book completes the elaboration of badiou’s theory of truth in a relationship to global terrorism and the source of the terror in its threat, especially after / . it is here that the lacanian dimension of my critical framework emerges more fully. here i examine how and why the american subject must both disavow ever being split, while at the same time taking the most elaborate steps to repair the damage of that disavowed split. in the context of / , the tradition- ally dominant forms of american culture have enacted this battle explicitly, but the structure of this struggle has been pervasive in american culture even before the event. the psychotic anxiety of this schizoid situation of disavowal and identification is the defining trauma of being an american; it is the real of american culture, and it has been confirmed with a vengeance by contemporary history. part , “the literary culture of global america,” lays out why and how this is the case. in chapter , i analyze the logics of the american visionary experience with respect to two representative ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p r e f a c e  x cases of these logics at work: ralph waldo emerson and henry james. emerson, whatever else he contains, espouses a vision whose logic makes a virtue of the incapacity to love by promising an apoca- lyptic self-transformation—a rebirth of self as a creative genius, even an apotheosis into a divinity—all in the name of emerson’s vision of “the new, yet unapproachable america.” james writes consistently against this romantic vision of creativity, dramatizing the limits of the imagination, what he calls (in “the middle of the journey”) “the infirmity of art,” in “the candour of affection,” an often tragically impossible love expressed best, most fully, in the parent-child rela- tionship and its diverse avatars ( ). chapter then discusses how the catachresis of “america,” the metaphorical figure of america, plays both a symptomatic role in contemporary american studies, and can be made to play the role of what lacan in his late work calls “le sinthome.” i reference james’s “the beast in the jungle” to show how the symptom of the protago- nist’s fundamental incapacity for love can become, for james and his reader, a material thread of jouissance that animates and enhances their identity beyond gender or sexuality in the service of a truth of an ultimate impersonal intimacy—a prophetic vision by james of lacan’s le sinthome. my chapters on james purdy and james’s the golden bowl conduct similar experiments in critical reading to work out more fully how through self-reading we may transform what threatens our psychic dissolution into that which holds ourselves together. chapter closes out part by suggesting how reading for le sinthome so as to discover the subject of truth, amidst the (self-)ter- rorizing experience of the real, is in fact best accomplished by the art of reading as practiced by philology, especially as performed by erich auerbach. by taking this brand of reading to two literary texts of the s, john cheever’s falconer ( ) and john ashbery’s self-portrait in a convex mirror ( ), the theory of reading as the truth event of the modern split subject’s self-recognition here con- nects badiou on truth and lacan on le sinthome with auerbach on “ansatzpunckten” and hans ulrich gumbrecht’s notion of “stim- mung.” to put this chapter’s argument in a nutshell, as it were: just as “global america” is the catachresis for the emergence of an unprecedented modern form of imaginative hegemonic empire, so ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p r e f a c e  xi these terms of philological art provide an instance of the unprec- edented event of reading my theory proposes and asks contemporary critical practice to perform. part focuses on three forms of sublime (but not divine) exal- tation in and through self-reading, in which reading is explicitly highlighted as such. chapter uses two artist-tales by henry james to bring out the self-destructive experience of radical jouissance as the legacy of the emersonian tradition. chapter then shows how foucault’s the hermeneutics of the subject recasts the stoic vision of amor fati so that we may see it creatively repeated in james bald- win’s surprisingly jamesian vision of the democracy of love as the best—most authentic—future of humanity. and chapter , putting into play to the fullest the lacanian vision of the real and le sin- thome, then argues that the vision of the subject in james purdy’s work is one where human subjectivity may be legitimately sacrificed in a self-overcoming unto death that testifies to the strength, not the weakness, of being human, and so gives the ultimate lie to global america and its grandiose post-human phantasms. the book’s conclusion then provides the reading promised by the preface. it gives the truth of the american madness that my reading of the golden bowl—made possible through the progress in reading of this book—would critique and temper via the “tough love” of james’s tragic vision of life. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm portions of chapters in this book started as unpublished lectures or published essays. i am grateful to my hosts and to the editors of boundary and the henry james review for permission to reprint them in their revised forms in this book. acknowledgments  xiii ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm � a s 	 i 	 wa s 	 teaching “introduction to graduate studies” recently, i noticed a passage in erich auerbach’s mimesis that has not previ- ously attracted much attention. auerbach is in the midst of sketching a popular post-romantic reading of the relationship between don quixote and sancho panza (“he had fallen in love with his master’s madness and his own role,” etc.), effectively tying quixote and panza to a long tradition of comic types from the ancient to the present. but then auerbach suddenly interrupts himself. however much he feels the allure of this rather amateurish and popular perspec- tive, auerbach ruefully admits that since “the romantics” especially, “many things have been read into [cervantes] which he hardly fore- boded, let alone intended” ( ). don quixote, auerbach notes, has become iconic for its culture; it “dissociates itself from the author’s intention and leads a life of its own.” he sternly continues the pas- sage: “don quixote shows a new face to every age which enjoys him. yet the historian—whose task it is to define the place of a given work in a historical continuity—must endeavor, insofar as that is still possible, to attain a clear understanding of what the work meant to its author and his contemporaries” ( – ). the intellectual con- science of the good processional philologist here trumps the affective identification of the amateur. this clear split between the amateur and the professional mirrors other splits in mimesis. in the famous opening chapter, “odysseus’ introduction the	event	of	reading ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm i n t r o d u c t i o n �  scar,” there is the split between the classical aesthetic of a seamless and decorous representation of the present moment in the heroic life of an aristocratic class versus the hebraic evocation of something more in the mixture of styles, of mysterious gaps and ellipses of every life of a god-intoxicated people. there is a similar split per- formed in “the brown stocking,” the (almost as famous) closing chapter on virginia woolf. here the split lies between the deadly homogenizing trends of an emerging one-dimensional postwar world order (whether american or soviet style is naturally not yet clear to auerbach) and the exquisitely animating sublimities of the random moment of everyday life. the amateur, the hebraic, and the radically contingent versus the professional and the classical and the rational- izing new order are the three sets of splits in the subject of reading that auerbach’s great work enacts before the reader’s eyes. each set is allusively associated with the extreme political representations of the liberal social democracies recently triumphant in the second world war and the infamous, defeated nazi state. auerbach, in exile in turkey for his jewishness, has a big stake in these splits, especially the last. i argued in my class, and contend here, that these explicit splits, as formulated by auerbach more than sixty years ago, still haunt the subject of reading today. (the pause auerbach’s text gives me testifies to my own or any reader’s truth event.) these splits have, of course, changed somewhat, but their presence is readily recognizable in the worldly conditions that face us now as critics. how we each line up with respect to these three homologous sets of splits varies considerably. these critical self-oppositions—of amateur and professional, of classical decorum and sublime aesthetic experimentation, of radical contingency and instrumental reason—too often encourage a vicious circle of reading. we are unable to synthesize their reconciliation, unlike, we believe, in earlier epochs in western cultural history such as the late renaissance, the enlightenment, and the romantic age. we currently disbelieve in even the possibility, or perhaps the desirability, of any such totalizing dialectical resolution. preferring instead the free play of a postmodern situation without grand nar- ratives, we wander and drift. we are creatures of the critical fashion of the moment, hoping for little more than inspiration to at least go ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e e v e n t o f r e a d i n g � on, for a while, a bit longer, like characters out of a bad parody of a beckett play. there is a more cheerful, heroically pessimistic way of viewing the divided modern subject of reading. nietzsche, as pierre klossowski argues, pursues experimentally, via his so-called aphoristic and per- spectivist style, the moment of self-division, like that in auerbach’s text, in which the conflict among affective perspectives can be made visible, indeed legible, to the philologist in him. the idea is that this conflict may thus be read symptomatically, but not only for its linguistic, historical, conceptual, or professional diagnosis. rather, we are also to read this “psychomachia,” as the great contempo- rary hans ulrich gumbrecht puts it, for what this conflict’s “states or moods”—composing a material semiotics of the body—disclose about the conditions of life and the fate of the self, incarnated and played out as the modern subject of reading. this is because, as klossowski, summarizing nietzsche, puts it, “we [modern subjects] are only a series of discontinuous states in relation to the code of everyday signs . . . about which the fixity of language deceives us.” nietzsche traces back (genealogically and physiologically) the concepts and ideas he is inscribing in his notebook to the contest of affects and the mix of conventional and innovative names for them. the hermeneutic intention here is to discover, at least momentarily, the impulses underlying and informing the particular dominant state or mood and its phantasms. these impulses shape the contest of affects in the subject, and really each one is a drive to dominate all the others by imposing its passionate perspective on the psyche as a whole. such self-reading of the psyche as a shifting balance of forces can disclose, via the sign language of the external and interior motions of the body, the different truths befalling (often sublimely) the divided modern subject, as such. nietzsche is truly the philologist of the body and its semiotics of powerful physical energies and its “high tonality of the soul [hohe stummung]” (klossowski ). we as critical readers may in turn disrupt and short-circuit iden- tification with the conventional linguistic code of everyday signs for similar radical purposes. in fact, such radical disruption is precisely what literature since plato has been accused of doing, which is why it often has been submitted to restrictive professional treatment. the ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm i n t r o d u c t i o n �  long, slow eclipse of the paternal metaphor as the linchpin of psyche structure—i mix my metaphors advisedly here—suggests that reading, much as auerbach on don quixote foretells, can lead to powerful dislocations, revolutions, and even mass psychosis. what klossowski sees nietzsche doing in his work is systematically and progressively, over the course of his career, detaching his ego, which nietzsche often terms “herr nietzsche,” from his consciousness (klossowski – ). a consciousness without an ego is also a consciousness without a super-ego, as klossowski notes, a thin membrane stretched tight as a defensive surface over the id, the abyss of the primary processes, which may inscribe their drives on its transparent inside, like an alien monster writing its messages to us from the other side of some quantum mirror. in other words, klossowski reads nietzsche’s final collapse into outright madness, whatever its physiological pathology, as the log- ical conclusion of a lifetime of self-experimentation in the disruption of the nietzschean social identity (“herr nietzsche”). what stands clear in nietzsche after this disruption, according to klossowski, is an impersonal consciousness of raw psychic energies. these cosmic and quantum powers can then make use of the more impersonal medium of consciousness to learn to read for themselves. in this basic, albeit figurative, way, the forces and energies can then, through perspectival aphorism, speak and teach the truth inhering in such powers; that is, they can tell us what we are as modern embodied subjects of reading. why is this significant? with these powers at our disposal, we may thus be able to begin to shape the future of humanity as a species, and on a planetary scale, in way which is more, not less, humane. we can thusly do battle against the mon- strous seductions of the post-human imagination. for klossowski, nietzsche is, in this rather wildly idiosyncratic and often exuber- antly self-parodying but all very human manner, the philologist of the future. the hermeneutic Übermensch may be super-human, but he is not post-human. despite the grand prospects of the title, visions of global america and the future of critical reading has in fact a more modest, and mediated, goal and proceeds differently in terms of method and topic. in the subsequent chapters i am not so much interested in performing my own impersonalizing (or self-aggrandizing) psychomachia, à la ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e e v e n t o f r e a d i n g � klossowski’s affective interpretation of nietzsche, as i am in inter- preting the formation of such an imperial subject of self-reading as a topic. in this sense, the emergence of the american empire stands as the sublime figure par excellence for the imaginative representational space in modernity within which such sublime self-creation primarily takes place. “global america,” in other words, is the catachresis for what otherwise has no conventional name; it is a figure of speech. i use it to characterize the truth of the present and foreseeable moment in history of the modern culture of representation, by which i mean the conventional, and latest, forms of the mediation of information, knowledge, opinion, and their accompanying imaginaries. as we will see later in this book, this culture of representation is a system, and like all systems of countable elements, as kurt gödel demon- strated, it can be neither complete without self-contradiction nor coherent without being incomplete. the consequent necessary gap in the system of representation, which alain badiou terms the “null set” or “void,” is the place where old imaginaries reemerge and new ones fleetingly manifest themselves—and just sometimes take hold in revolutionary ways. the luminous void (or “real” as lacan would call it) is the limit site in the system of representation. it is subtracted from the system and signaled by self-evident contradiction and crit- ical incompleteness. the void, in essence, opens onto the truth of the contemporary subject, which is this: it has become so plastic that it can transform into anything. humanity is now becoming materially and physically the only species that is a non-species, for better and for worse. the technological and medical advances, from human genome mapping to cosmetic interventions, stand at the horizon of the present and the future that this book presumes, even as it focuses on the resources of the humanities, and especially literature, for meeting the challenge of the future of humanity in this context of a global and post-human america. part of this book, “the critical apparatus,” then presents in three interrelated chapters on alain badiou’s eventful and subtractive theory of the subject of truth in the contexts of three contemporary global phenomena: fundamentalism, terrorism, and the role of the public intellectual. an intellectual of the present day, i contend, must be militantly critical in attempting to universalize new standards of ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm i n t r o d u c t i o n �  truth and value in the emerging culture of the post-human imagina- tion. this part thus presents the fullest version of my admittedly complex critical framework as it engages difficult contemporary con- texts and considers how they bear on the future of humanity. to put badiou’s insight in terms of the opening example from auerbach: the truth event of auerbach’s reading is not so much his insight into the text of don quixote itself, nor is it the sacrifice of this insight he must make to the rigors of his professional method; rather, the truth event is this self-division in the modern reading subject itself. auerbach can do nothing with this split but recognize it as he performs it, because he lacks a developed theory of the practice of reading. such a theory must necessarily go beyond even the great diagnostic power of paul de man’s “blindness and insight” allegories of reading; this is possible by adapting for reading what badiou calls “truth-procedures.” badiou outlines these procedures most concretely in his study of st. paul and the foundation of uni- versalism, which i explore and develop in chapter . by “truth procedures,” i refer to the modes of fidelity to the fleeting and fugitive truth event that are available to the critical reader. the reader can use these modes to attempt to universalize its new truth into the present situation in which we find ourselves, thereby transforming current knowledge in potentially radical, if not revolutionary, ways. what i hope to do in this book, especially in its concluding chapter, is to begin to provide such a theory fully at work with such necessary accompanying procedures: badiou’s vision of the modern subject of truth and lacan’s theory of le sinthome. while all the chapters assume this lacanian perspective, the specifics of the joycean elements of the model of le sinthome are explored most fully in relationship to the work of james purdy in chapter , “bringing out the terror: james purdy and the culture of vision.” part , “the literary culture of global america,” beginning with chapter , “global america and the logics of vision,” explicates the two opposing logics of the visionary experience in american literature. stemming from ralph waldo emerson and henry james, these competing logics have both confronted and interpenetrated one another for the last century and a half. chapter , “america, the symptom,” clarifies this confrontation in light of my discussions on ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e e v e n t o f r e a d i n g � badiou’s truth and lacan’s symptom and the real. i suggest that emerson’s and james’s logics of vision haunt contemporary american literature studies, and in chapter , “our worldly apocalypse,” i illustrate how they both worked together in the mid to late s to form what i call “the liberal decadence.” this is the period of the carter administration, between the fall of the “imperial presidency” of richard nixon and the regressive de-sublimation of a genial primal (grandfather) mask, as worn by a truly ruthless ronald reagan. the moment in recent cultural history is in many ways a “time out of mind,” as bob dylan might say, in which the established formations of the culture of representation are reestablished and new formations of its latest avatar, that of global america per se, were suspensefully suspended. a rare time of creative decadence in every sense and by every measure, this his- torical moment was also the time of maximum freedom for minori- ties, ethnics, and the marginalized of all sorts who, previously exiled at the edge of representation, were then offered the opportunity to perceive, to understand, and most of all, to move out and up. part , “the exalted states of reading,” rediscovers and cre- atively repeats the high tonality of the antinomian and anarchic spirit of this lost time. these chapters focus on the presentation and performance, in the texts selected, of what nietzsche characterizes as the highest tonality of the spirit, and what james—as i claim in chapter —calls “monstrous levity.” this affect is a special sort of jouissance, as lacan would say; nietzsche calls it “stimmung,” and it is best evoked in the following section (# ) of the gay science, which i will analyze in concluding this introduction: the humanity of the future.—when i view this age with the eyes of a distant age, i can find nothing odder in present-day man than his peculiar virtue of disease called ‘the sense of history.’ this is the beginning of something completely new and strange in history: if one gave this seed a few more centuries and more, it might ultimately become a wonderful growth with an equally wonderful smell that could make our old earth more agreeable to inhabit. we present- day humans are just beginning to form the chain of a very powerful future feeling [stimmung], link by link—we hardly knew what we ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm i n t r o d u c t i o n �  are doing. it seems to us almost as if we are delaying not with a new feeling [stimmung] but with a decrease in all old feelings [gefühlen]: the sense of history is still something so poor and cold, and any are struck by it as by a frost and made even poorer and colder by it. to others it appears as the sign of old age creeping up, and they see our planet as a melancholy sick man who chronicles his youth in order to forget his present condition. indeed, that is one color of this new feeling [gefühl]: he who is able to feel the history of man altogether as his own history feels in a monstrous generalization all the grief of his youth, thinking of health, of the old man thinking of the dreams of his youth, of the lover robbed of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is perishing, of the hero on the eve after a battle that decided nothing but brought him wounds and the loss of a friend. but to bear and to be able to bear this monstrous sum of all kinds of grief and still be the hero who, on the second day of battle, greets dawn and his fortune as a person whose horizon stretches millennia before and behind him, as the dutiful heir to all the nobility of the past spirit, as the most aristocratic of old nobles and at the same time the first of a new nobility the likes of which no age has ever seen or dreamt: to take upon one’s soul—the oldest, newest, losses, hopes, conquests, victories of humanity. to finally take all this in one soul and com- press it into one feeling [stimmung]—this would surely have to pro- duce happiness unknown to humanity so far: a divine happiness full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness which, like the sun in the evening, continually draws on its inexhaustible riches, giving them away and pouring them into the sea, a happiness which, like the evening sun, feels richest when even the poorest fisherman is rowing with a golden oar! this divine feeling [stimmung] would then be called—humanity! ( – ) this valetudinarian, prophetic, and indeed ironically posthu- mous vision of the future of humanity celebrates the most sublime feeling—a mega-state or mood in sharp opposition to the dominant hegemony—and marks nothing less than a new nobility. referred to in this translation simply as “humanity,” the word humanness would capture more of nietzsche’s sense. this highest feeling, then, of humanness is a knot of metaphorical drives, which in their con- ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e e v e n t o f r e a d i n g � ceptual form nietzsche calls doctrines: the eternal recurrence of the same, the will-to-power, and the overman. unlike what we might expect, the Übermenschen is all-too-humanly human. as klossowski makes clear, each above phrase of nietzsche’s visionary song to the future of humanity seemingly comes from the future itself, when nietzsche will be long dead and living again in that age’s over-human yet still human readers. each phrase is a string of impulses, drives, and affects at work, each contesting with the other for dominance and self-definition, culminating with the trans- figuration into an ideal, glorifying passion. the concept or idea of such a transformation represents, however, only a pale imitation of original raw impulses. this passage presents, in fact, a parody of the human ideal. in addition, the passage embodies in its vision nietzsche’s three central doctrines in their most sublime form. nietzsche would replace the personal unconscious of potentially creative people with the inter- nalization of these doctrines as lived experiences. foucault, i argue in chapter , “toward a global democracy,” follows nietzsche’s lead here (as does james baldwin), by using a cosmic vision of sublimity to eradicate our given unconscious and replace it with a new, more humane one. james purdy, as i argue in the next chapter, “bringing out the terror,” carries through the logic of this project with a ven- geance. the eternal recurrence of the same, as we see from the above passage, is thus not some loony cosmological vision. rather, it is a vision in which a newly emerging humanity, imaginatively superior to the humanity of nietzsche’s time and to all of the past, will assume upon itself via its greater historical sense all the affective experiences of the human past. further, it will compress those feelings into its own super-feeling as described therein, and then release that feeling upon the world the way the sun in the evening transfigures all the world as it sets. the eternal return of the same is a repetition in a finer tone of the affective past of the species in the strength of the nietzschean interpreter’s aesthetic imagination. the squandering of energy of this transcendent mediating process is really the will-to-power in its most sublime form. so, too, the most effective of nietzschean interpreters would be the preparatory human beings whose works prophesize the coming of the overman in this manner. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm i n t r o d u c t i o n �   we can see emerson, in the following excerpt from his journals, approach his own distinctively american version of this nietzschean vision: perhaps after many sad, doubting, idle days, days of happy, honest labor will at last come when a man shall have filled up all the hours from sun to sun with great and equal action, shall lose sight of this sharp individuality which contrasts now so oddly with nature, and ceasing to regard, shall cease to feel his boundaries, but shall be inter- fused by nature and shall [so] interfuse nature that the sun shall rise by his will as much as his own hand or foot do now; and his eyes or ears or fingers shall not seem to him the property of a more private will than the sea and the stars, and he shall feel the meaning of the growing tree and the evaporating waters with a more entire and sat- isfactory intelligence than now attends the activity of his organs of sense. (journals, v, – ) the major differences between emerson’s apocalypse and nietzsche’s is that emerson’s transcendent event occurs to the indi- vidual, while nietzsche’s is made to happen, as an event, to all by the super-individual who, like the sun, bestows transfiguring cre- ativity like a gift. what’s missing in emerson is outgoing love; what is present in nietzsche is just such love. this raises the question of whether emerson is more honest than the dean of the school of critical suspicion. or is nietzsche, even nietzsche, more loving (and lovable) than emerson? of course, critics whose commitments are to a politics of identity could argue that both visions are compromised fatally by belonging to white, euro-american, straight, privileged men. they would be right about everything, except the charge that being who and what they inevitably are fatally compromises these visions equally alike. the point i would make in distinguishing nietzsche’s active whit- manian vision from emerson’s more passive spectral one (whitman’s self-identifications with the sun and emerson’s with snowy puddles are so strong they haunt even wallace steven’s poetry) is that in becoming like the sun in the evening, one is becoming an enor- mous, impersonal, spontaneous “quantum” of discharging energy that, for better or worse (and most often for the better), transfigures ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e e v e n t o f r e a d i n g �� the planet. its existence is not only possible but also necessarily, beautifully justified. if one has to expend oneself totally in the end, i prefer this golden way to go. it gives joy (perhaps even jouissance) to oneself, in contrast to the grayer, chillier tones of emerson’s self- regard. in any event, it is the argument of this book that this american difference, however we finally read and critically judge it, distin- guishes global american culture. as i show in the concluding chapter, henry james, the most cosmopolitan of our authors, puts these two essentially romantic visions and their wills-to-power into play most dramatically. as such, james’s more inclusive, worldly vision would contest the ground and influence of the emersonian dream of such perfected natural self-love that the sage of concord christened “self- reliance.” global america as the monstrous planetary automaton of amour proper versus any citizen of the world’s spontaneous aes- thetic transfiguration of the earth—this is the contest which visions of global america and the future of critical reading enters on the side of what nietzsche presents as “the future of humanity.” — • — i 	 c a n n ot 	 co n c lu d e this introduction without noting, for ameri- canists, that what follows is a visionary polemic. it draws sharp lines between the emersonian and jamesian traditions in american litera- ture and culture. i do so because i have been reminded by impor- tant new americanist scholars, such as jonathan arac and donald e. pease, that the emerson and emersonianism critiqued in these pages are but one strain, perhaps not the major one, in emerson’s own work. however that may be, i would argue, and do so herein, that what later generations take from emerson is indeed essentially what i characterize in this book negatively. it may be that emerson has brought many a simmering pot to boil, but if so he has done it while also punching holes in them. similarly, as recent scholars, such as wai chee dimock in through other continents: american literature across deep time (princeton university press, ), have suggested, a globalized critical approach to american literature can defuse its imperial tendencies, making it but one among many litera- ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm i n t r o d u c t i o n ��  tures seen in their generic dimensions. in fact, such an approach, it seems to me, reinstates the homogenizing drive of culture under a liberal, multicultural smile. the key in this case is that all of the sin- gular specificity of the languages of the various literatures, including that of american literature, is lost when a mishmash of snippets from the texts cited are rendered via the latest, albeit approved, transla- tions and editions. in short, mine (like slavoj Žižek’s in defense of lost causes [ ]) is an antithetical, contrarian book, but unlike the former’s polemic, this one is more modest, critiquing contempo- rary literary and cultural studies in the name of the future of critical reading, not in that of global revolution. of course, my belief is that unless we can read critically, such a revolution will never come. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm part one t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ��  w h e n 	 i 	 b e g a n reading science fiction at the height of the cold war in the early s, i became fascinated with the stories of a writer with the unlikely pen name of cordwainer smith. paul m. a. linebarger, the real name of the writer of these fantastic tales of the future, was a professor of what was then called asiatic studies at the johns hopkins university, an expert in psychological warfare, and a civilian consultant to army intelligence. smith’s stories typically envision a future world, spanning many thousands of years, in which the lords and ladies of the instrumen- tality, supported by supercomputers and other marvelous machines, supervise the production and distribution of “stroon,” a drug synthe- sized from gigantic mutant sheep whose hides have become infected by an alien virus on a world called norstrilia. stroon grants near immortality in a time when other powerful drugs, incredible medical advances, and super prosthetic devices make a long life of a millen- nium or so not just possible but desirable. this world is supported in various ways by the slave labor of robots and the underpeople, a race of genetically engineered humanoid creatures derived from animal stocks. (there are also badiou’s	truth and	the	office	of	the	critic neither gods nor monsters � ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  many different kinds of genetically altered human beings who have to perform specialized functions in the hostile environments of inter- galactic space.) but it is the political and personal intrigues between the underpeople and the instrumentality that provide smith’s world with its greatest dramatic interest. these intrigues grow more com- plex and intense, even revolutionary, as telepathy and clairvoyance become increasingly widespread, first by mutation and then due to the selective (and clandestine) interventions in breeding practices made by the rebel underpeople, another mysterious race of godlike aliens, and key enlightened members of the instrumentality itself. i have recalled this sci-fi world from the mists of my youth not for nostalgia’s sake but because in many ways smith’s world, chronicled in his published work between and his untimely death (at age ) in , could virtually be the model of the world several recent books claim is emerging triumphantly or ominously (or both) right now. in the following argument, i focus on one of these books, elaine l. graham’s representations of the post/human: monsters, aliens and others in popular culture, because it is the most com- prehensively informative and representative of them and, i think, highly instructive concerning typical critical attitudes toward what it attempts to define and then deploy as “the post/human.” at the end of this chapter, i will return to a discussion of why i think smith’s world does uncannily anticipate what has been called “our posthuman future.” but before turning to that discussion, another introductory remark is in order. my subtitle, “neither gods nor monsters,” is derived (by double negation) from the toast that the evil old dr. pretorious makes to young frankenstein in james whale’s classic horror film the bride of frankenstein: “to a new world of gods and monsters!” gods and monsters was also the title of the dramatized film biography of whale released in , which starred ian mckellen. and it is, too, the title of graham’s concluding chapter about this cinematic toast ( ). as the subtitle of this chapter may suggest, my ironic nietzs- chean perspective would cast critical suspicion on all such hyperbolic imaginary speculations, a suspicion that this (like any) new world will remain in the end for most people “human, all too human.” the latest revolutions in biotechnology (largely associated in the popular mind with the human genome project), in brain research ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  and psychopharmacology, as well as those in digital technologies, have given rise to a variety of subcultures. each of these has its own “worldview,” and almost all of these worldviews deploy in their dis- courses some form of the term post/human. the one meaning that the different uses of this term generally share is an opposition to what is characterized as “modernity,” which is portrayed in the discourses of these subcultures that are vying for hegemonic status in the new age as the culture of already empowered white male subjects who are up to no good: out to dominate nature, marginalize further so-called minority groups (however defined), and assume godlike status at the expense of all these “monstrous” others. that is, all these others have been “constructed” as monstrous in some fashion by being repre- sented, classified, subjected, supervised, and disciplined (by modern culture) solely in order to determine by contrast a purified (albeit fictionalized) standard of (white male) normality. although graham’s book contains a seventeen-page post/human bibliography in very tiny print, clearly the influence of only a few theorists shines through her basically feminist critical formulation of modernity. among the most prominent and formative of these theorists for graham’s argument are michel foucault, donna haraway, and bruno latour. i focus on graham’s representative use of foucault because he provides the announced critical framework and method. regarding haraway, more will follow from graham herself. broadly speaking, then, the discourses of the post/human (for graham), as they accompany developments in contemporary “tech- noscience,” are generally oppositional discourses critical of current conceptions and realities of western culture in many, often poten- tially conflicting, perhaps even self-contradictory, ways. this last is especially the case with technocratic futurists, who are critical of the status quo in contemporary society but in the name of their own desired white male hegemony. however that may be, my primary concern is not with the internal logic (or illogic) of these discourses; rather, my primary concern arises from two interrelated issues: the alleged affinity of their antihumanistic polemics with poststructur- alism in general and foucault specifically and the unrecognized nihilistic attitude they perpetuate. in a real sense, the centrality of graham’s book in this context is a testament to the fact that it has done its job admirably well: it does indeed effectively survey and ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  taxonomically place the discourses of the post/human, and it does so better (more critically) than other recent texts. however, in its deployment of what graham characterizes as a foucauldian critical framework (and the avowed method of critical genealogies) and in the incomplete analysis of its own invocations of a heideggerian perspective on modernity and technology, representations of the post/human, already an excellent introduction to the topic, remains seemingly paralyzed on the threshold of the very comprehensive critique it apparently aspires to mount. before turning to the specifics of my critique of her representative work, however, i first need to give the reader at least some sketch of heidegger’s treatment of modernity and technology, since his vision of these phenomena helps define my own critical framework and represents, i believe, the fundamental step still not taken by graham. the essence of modern technology, in fact of modernity per se, is what heidegger calls in his various readings of nietzsche “the will- to-will.” this will-to-will, the reader will recall, is the underlying form of what nietzsche could only see more metaphysically (in heidegger’s readings) as a universal and transhistorical “will-to-power.” all forms of being—atoms, ants, and anthropoids—display, according to nietzsche, a drive for ever-more power. whatever quantum of power is observed and taken as a base state in relation to a configuration of other quanta of power, the entity under analysis will be seen as acting to secure an increasingly larger quantum of power, initially at least despite the consequences for itself or other entities. “intelligence” in this context is basically an administrative phenomenon for directing the will-to-power in ways that, while still maximizing power, can avoid or at least postpone for as long as possible the worst consequences of its own fundamental drive. why such postponement? in the case of living organisms, so that reproduction may occur, and a potentially infinite future be made possible for the entity in question. what heidegger proposes in his readings of nietzsche’s will-to- power is that modernity’s form of this will is more precisely depicted as the-will-to-will: that is, as a will to itself in an infinite circuit of becoming through all the modes of being. it is a process of self- revision both captured in the staged spectacles of the modern will’s self-images and housed in modernity’s various media archives. in this ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  severe light, the modern subject can be seen as nothing more than an endlessly self-revising and self-recording performance artist with shocking masks, some drawn from the archives of the past, some from the imagination (perhaps now, the post/human imagination) of the future. that these masks may be made of reanimated dead flesh, silicon chips, and animal fur, or that they may penetrate the skin and serve as invasive prosthetic devices, matters little, analyti- cally speaking. “humanist,” “antihumanist,” or “posthumanist,” all modes of existence in modernity are manifestations of this nihilistic will-to-will. for heidegger, this modern condition is a historical epoch of potentially millennial expanse. but why is it nihilistic? after all, nihilism means that existence is seen as valueless, and certainly the discourses of modernity and of the post/human are awash in a sea of values, of value assertions, of value designations, of the conflict of values, and so on. for hei- degger, following nietzsche, once it is shown that the highest values of the judeo-christian tradition have devalued themselves, the pro- duction of new values is then a project always strangling itself in its own crib, as it were. how can this be? the highest value of the judeo-christian tradition is truth, according to nietzsche and heidegger. this tradition’s god is the true one, and this god demands truth from all believers: truth in speaking to and loving others and truth in praying and confessing to this god. for the better part of two thousand years, this tradition bred human subjects to be seekers of the truth. with the emergence of modern science, the quintessential method for seeking truth, the judeo-christian tradition bred its own executioner. not only has modern science discovered the falsity at the basis of this tradition, but it has led to the prospect that there are only lies, only appearances, only untruths. all truths, and so all “true” values, are necessary fabrications useful in the will-to-power’s (or the will-to-will’s) quest to secure ever more power long enough to pass on such accumulated power to posterity. to what end? no end, only the ever-enhanced prospect of this endless process of self-revising will-to-will itself. (heidegger stresses repeatedly that the value of imaginary or real self-enhancement, at the expense of all else, is the nihilistic “value” par excellence.) in this nihilistic context heidegger concludes that not only nietzsche’s philosophy but any philosophy can at best now ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s �   do nothing, for otherwise it will participate in and help to perpetuate such apparently endless nihilistic self-enhancement: philosophy will be unable to effect any immediate change in the cur- rent state of the world. this is true not only of philosophy but of all purely human reflection and endeavor. only a god can save us. the only possibility available to us is that by thinking and poetizing we prepare a readiness for the appearance of a god . . . insofar as in view of the absent god we are in a state of decline. (graham ) it is interesting to note that the verb to enhance and its nominal variants appear in graham’s book too many times to count, virtually every couple of pages or so. admittedly, such a seemingly quietist response of heidegger’s, attempting to think and to poetize only so as to prepare a readi- ness for a god’s appearance, does not appeal to the habitual activist impulses of the vast majority of modern intellectuals. what does appeal nowadays, of course, is representing one’s critical efforts as being part of a large struggle against the powers that be, a struggle for greater justice, that is, a struggle for greater access to and dis- tribution of the material and cultural resources of modernity, for all people, and now including, in light of the post/human imagination, all possible beings. each and every subject, in this best of all possible worlds that is emerging, should form itself on the model of the nihil- istic will-to-will according to the ultimate “value” of a potentially infinite self-enhancement that can recognize no limits to the course of its sensational transgressions. this is where a certain reading of foucault comes into play in most other varieties of contemporary oppositional discourse, post/ human or otherwise. this reading of foucault ignores or downplays the problematic of nihilism that foucault inherits from nietzsche and heidegger, despite his repeated invocations of this inheritance in his interviews and writings. this informed ignorance, as i like to think of it, derives from the opportunism of reading foucault as making possible a positive conception of critical agency to effect sub- stantial change in ways foucault would never countenance. what, more specifically, then, is this reading? it is a reading that presents foucault as a social constructionist and new historicist critic of ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  modernity’s institutions and discourses who is supportive of a liberal or socially democratic vision of all kinds of self-revising subjectivi- ties. well, you might say, isn’t this foucault? i do not think it is, and i have argued for a different darker vision of foucault, a foucault given to radical parodies of each and every one of the ever-emerging discourses of modernity. my “foucault,” as it were, is a knowing instance of the nietzschean will-to-power or the heideggerian will- to-will. foucault, in this sense, is preparing a readiness for thinking and poeticizing “beyond modernity” (or is it “behind its back”?) by playing out, via savage ironies, all the discursive possibilities of modernity, even those still in the process of emerging even now, such as the post/human. like nietzsche’s socrates in the twilight of the idols, foucault wills his own death as a figure or idol, so as to take as many of the discourses of incipient nihilism as possible with him into the black hole of his radical parodies. unfortunately, again like the dying socrates, foucault has been taken with full seriousness, when he would have preferred to have inspired demonic laughter instead. but isn’t such laughter a testament to nihilism, too? of course, for right now (however long that is), there simply is no escape from nihilism. this does not mean that we should all fall on our swords. what is does mean, however, is that we should all stop and try to think. thinking in modernity is not an easy task to perform. as paul a. bové has demonstrated over the last decade or so in his many essays on various aspects of henry adams and his work, thinking is perhaps the most important thing we can do and the thing we are least prepared to do by modernity. in this respect, at least, i think nietzsche, and heidegger, certainly would have concurred with bové’s adams. so, for purposes of argument, let us agree that attempting to think and to poeticize a readiness for a form of being beyond an endlessly self-revising and nihilistic modernity is an experiment that, whether itself nihilistic or not in the final analysis, generally has not been tried in sustained ways by modern intellectuals and espe- cially not by contemporary academic critics. why not? i think it is because such attempts could possibly lead to where heidegger’s did, to a contemplation of what he calls, in the previously cited pas- sage, “the absent god,” who is neither quite the gone god nor quite ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  a here one, either. such an absent god is clearly a stand-in for the mode of temporality we call the future, and it is in this mode of the future per se that this absent god paradoxically embodies best, by its very formative absence, the nonhuman dimension of existence. i say “nonhuman” deliberately to distinguish, terminologically at first, what i am indicating as being different from the human or the post/human or, for that matter, the inhuman. what does my “nonhuman” dimension of existence refer to? and how is it related to the divine, the religious, or the sacred? is it fun- damentally different from the post/human? if so, in what way? let me try to answer these questions by testifying to my own religious sensibility: i contain multitudes of conflicting fragments of modern subjectivities (or is it legions?). i follow jacques derrida in his recent work in identifying the con- flicted core of three of the world’s great religions—judaism, christi- anity, and islam—with the story of abraham and isaac. this story, as read most imaginatively by kierkegaard, defines for me my sense of the divine as the radically nonhuman. i will recall here only the basic outlines of the story. abraham has finally been given a son by his previously barren wife, sarah, thanks to god’s miraculous intervention. now god commands that abraham sacrifice this child. abraham sets out to do just that, in strict obedience to god’s divine command. before he can execute this sacrifice, however, gods sends an angel to intervene, and a ram is sacrificed instead of isaac. the mysterious inscrutability of both god and abraham in this story is what perplexes and performs the sense of the radically non- human, or divine. it inspires an infinite anxiety in kierkegaard, end- less “fear and trembling.” this story is a dramatic figuration of the impossible coming to pass, in each of its narrative moments and as a narrative whole. this impossibility is not just cognitive; it is also emotional. it is total, and it marks the limits of the human, surely, but also of the inhuman, which so readily, via the aesthetic concept of the sublime, can be subsumed into a consumable interpretation along the lines of “ho-hum, another mountain or abyss to imaginatively divine myself in.” similarly, the post/human, the next “demonic” phase in the human species, can be readily plotted into a historical trajectory (positive or negative, progress or decadence) that itself is ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  humanly understandable, even if the post/human’s initial manifesta- tions may be a bit confusing or upsetting. such master plotting, after all, is what graham (deploying her foucault) is doing in her represen- tative text. but what “moral” does the story of abraham and isaac exemplify? morals have been drafted for the story, of course, but what sort of god or father would produce or play along with such a story, if what the tale teaches is this: god demands blind obedience, abraham alone gives it, and therefore abraham and his disposable- in-principle descendants ironically become “a light to all nations,” informing all the absurdly gratuitous cruelty and mysterious wisdom of this deity and his chosen one. this unique moral will surely pack the tents now, won’t it? no, i think this story, at the heart of judaism, christianity, and islam, really stands for, performs, each time it is read and reflected critically on, the radically nonhuman, the divine, as the impossible that is ever to come and does indeed come, only in ways that we cannot recognize or understand, which is why we should be wary of any secular or religious invocations of human beings now becoming gods themselves, or even eagerly awaiting any such gods. heidegger’s impossibly “absent god,” who nonetheless ironically makes possible the thinking and poeticizing of the impossible ever to come, is more than enough for me. why? with this question in mind, i think we can now most usefully turn to representations of the post/human. graham provides in her introduction a map of the post/human by establishing a polarity within which the discourses of the subcul- tures concerned with the topic can be placed, as on a spectrum or continuum. one pole she terms “technophobic,” and this position sees the latest developments of science and their technological appli- cations to society as forms of further “enslavement” ( ) à la aldous huxley’s brave new world or george orwell’s nineteen eighty- four. the other pole graham designates “technophilic,” and this position champions these latest developments as “liberation,” even “salvation” ( ) à la technocratic, even technopagan, celebrations of a pseudo-nietzschean vision of the material realization of humanity’s superhuman destiny. in between these poles, she places an assortment of discourses in an array of critical genealogies, based on their ten- dency to lean more toward one pole than another. these discourses, given critical genealogies by graham, include classical myths about ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  and commentary on monsters, science fiction classics (such as mary shelley’s frankenstein), hermetic speculations (ancient and renais- sance), utopian and dystopian visions, transhumanist polemics, tech- nocratic futurism, cyberpunk fiction, feminist cyborg writing, popular cinema and television shows, and everything else conceivably dealing with the post/human. she conveniently defines the post/human as the radical intermixing of the human, the mechanical, and the so-called natural in its organic and inorganic physical forms. even jewish folk- tales about the golem, their sources and legacies in modern literature and film, find a place in her map of the post/human. along the way, the reader also learns something about the traditional study of mon- sters, which is termed “teratology.” this tremendous synoptic range adds to the reader’s sense that under graham’s capacious gaze the post/human as a category is fruitfully collecting many phenomena and providing them all with the same general name in a fashion useful to contemporary cultural criticism. by deploying as her critical framework a social construc- tivist and new historicist foucault, she is able to debunk in what- ever discourse she is interrogating any would-be essentialist preten- sions and naturalistic assumptions almost before they raise their own ugly heads. but with this brand of foucault, graham can also keep reminding the reader that her own critical discourse is always only comparatively gathering and provisionally identifying, with as much of an account of the differences as possible; what it nonetheless is presenting is a postmodern sort of unity, namely, the post/human. however much i think her foucault is incorrect, her strategic use of foucault in this admittedly conventional fashion enables her to mea- sure and judge, while avoiding, for the most part, committing any of the sins, essentialist or otherwise, she finds lurking in or rampaging through other discourses. in this fashion, graham is very good at sweeping the sanctuary of the contemporary academy clean of most essentialist debris. an exemplary case in point, and a difficult case (for feminist political reasons) for her to take on, appears in graham’s extended analysis of donna haraway’s work. graham discusses much of har- away’s feminist cultural criticism, from her famous essay, “a cyborg manifesto,” to her book, modest witness@second mil- lennium. femaleman©_meets_oncomouse™: feminism and techno- ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  science. as graham summarizes haraway’s general position (taken from her book, primate visions: gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science), “simians, cyborgs and women all occupy the boundaries of modernity, positioned there to show forth the scientific and cultural narratives that determine what will count as knowledge” ( ). one can, of course, slide into the slot under the rubric of “women” one’s own preferred “monstrous minority,” which is rather the point of both haraway’s original position and graham’s analytic use of it here. haraway is a feminist cultural critic of scientific modernity and a scientist herself. she not only argues her position announced above but attempts to perform it in her own writing, which she dubs “cyborg writing.” such writing would be, like poststructuralist écri- ture, both subversively disruptive of the binary logics of modernity in matters of race, class, gender, and species, and celebratory of the hybrid, permeable boundaries of cultural existence, because of the ever greater possibilities for human (and beyond human) subjectivi- ties it now supposedly can foster. cyborg writing is to conventional discourses what the cyborg is to the categories of humanity, nature, and technology recognized by the grand philosophical tradition; that is, such cyborg writing would make a vital mess of rigid demarca- tions. in this formulation, the blurring of class, race, gender, of life, death, human, and post/human, will ultimately promote the libera- tions of new possibilities of existence on the planet. in characterizing haraway’s position and writing in this way, however, graham does not intend to reduce haraway to the belated legacy of a romantic modernism intersecting with critical theory’s desperate hunger for “the next big thing.” haraway’s is no simple- minded rousseauistic vision for graham. if there are any inheri- tances, they are byronic in manner, mediated by shelley’s franken- stein. as graham remarks apropos of haraway’s figure of the cyborg and what it is intended to represent: her cyborg has endured no fall from primordial innocence, no oedi- pal crisis, but also has no need, equally, therefore of a narrative of restoration. cyborgs [are without families of any kind, and so] do not crave holism or reunification with abandoned paradises nor maternal [or patriarchal] figures; instead, like haraway’s other favorites, the ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  tricksters, cyborgs are restless nomads . . . so haraway’s narrative of redemption is [then] about transition and change without loss, permanent wandering and transmutation without origins or ultimate destination. ( ) whatever romantic analogies or paradigms for haraway might be appropriate, graham demonstrates that for this feminist cultural critic of modernity, neither narrative of progress nor visions of apoca- lypse are required. in fact, as graham details for most of an entire chapter, the ultimate expression of the modern western binary logic haraway wants to disarticulate and surmount is precisely the reli- gious logic that pits spiritual transcendence against material embodi- ment ( – ), and, certainly, this “progressive” critical position of haraway’s is indebted, broadly speaking, to a recognizably post-car- tesian romantic social and cultural project that has revolutionary dimensions. as graham underscores, haraway was raised a roman catholic, which touts officially an incarnational and sacramental religious vision. one can generally find in her work that “her opposition between human and divine, or (technolog-ized) earth and (immate- rial) heaven itself rests upon unexamined [binary] constructions of ‘religion and transcendence’ that owe their origins to the western enlightenment” ( ) and also to what i take specifically to be its secularized protestant and politically revolutionary discourses. con- sequently, graham concludes that while haraway’s cyborg writing demonstratively embraces “contingency and complicity [with irre- solvable complexities], it can do so only in a mood predominantly suffused with irony,” and thus it can only adopt “a postmodern veneer in its embrace of the hybridity and contingency of techno sci- entific culture” ( ). in short, despite her most influential feminist cultural essay being entitled, after foucault, “situated knowledges” (collected in primate visions), haraway apparently is not the real thing—she’s no foucault (as graham understands him), who did famously prophesize the so-called “death of man.” in graham’s view, haraway’s cyborg writing permits the re-coalescence of the rigid binary structures of modern thinking that it would explode precisely because of its not fully examined and critiqued, post-enlightenment religious underpinnings. in other words, haraway is not enough of a ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  social constructivist and new historicist critic, but is more of a power- fully diverting (albeit belatedly romantic) theoretical practitioner of modern irony. i have discussed graham’s representative critique of haraway at some length because it is so indicative of her avowedly foucauldian critical framework and interpretive method, and because, from my admittedly untimely critical point of view, graham misses the most important matter. she misses it specifically with regard to haraway’s would-be cyborg writing (whatever that is supposed to really mean and do) and more generally concerning all the talk of the post/human. what is that, you say? there is no post/human—yet! what haraway says about the figure of the cyborg and the kind of writing she wants to write in its name is all imaginary. it has no material reality to it (yet) and perhaps never will. no monsters, mythic or otherwise, left us their thousand years of cultural history. nor, as far as we know, have any godlike aliens dropped off their packets of instant worlds to mix up with a few of our spare tears. nothing like that has popped into existence. and nothing of the internet and its virtual realities has subverted anything in the real world of global capitalism; rather, all these developments have only enhanced the spread of capitalist power into every nook and cranny of existence, proliferating and accelerating the alienated and alienating work rhythms of our lives. there is no such thing as a vacation anymore; there are no holidays in reality for us; there is no respite from an increasingly driven will- to-will ever new value(s). this is not to say that graham’s book is not an important or effec- tive one. in fact, its organization is quite effective for the purposes of its argument. with its many mythic monsters, hermetic homunculi, jewish golems, frankenstein’s monsters (original story and subsequent cinematic adaptations), cyberpunk terminators, the alien borg (from the later star trek tv shows and films), the realities and dreams of artificial intelligence, and goddess “theology,” her book repeatedly stages not a continuous history of the same idea so much as critical genealogies of the cultural sites and archeological spaces, where all sorts of questions—what is human? who is human? is it better to be more or less human, or better still to be a god? and then, what kind of divinity, a fully embodied technopagan god or an apocalyptically disembodied cartesian ghost or a latter-day protestant spirit in the ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  machine body of a superplanetary computer?—can be shown to have appeared sequentially in the system of representation defining modern western culture, now with a most irresistible planetary reach. what graham’s book thus demonstrates most importantly, i think, is that the post/human now defines the latest imaginative horizon within which the poststructuralist global intellectual can define an identity. the post/human is, in this context, not the only, but surely the most powerful (because most comprehensive), if clearly not the most logi- cally coherent, game in town. but what if a critic doesn’t want to play this game of identities and identifications? what then? this question is not entirely my question. it is the question that i believe informs, silently, at least in some large part, this concluding paragraph of graham’s own book: in many respects, therefore, it is legitimate to regard the emergent cybernetic, biotechnological and digital age as representing a new era of post/human history. yet in other ways, the contemporary west retains a marked degree of continuity with more ancient cultures that first dreamed of gods and monsters at the margins of human imagining. and exploration of the many different hopes and fears surrounding the impact of advanced technologies requires, as i have been arguing, a full register of representational practices, cultural, literary, mythical and scientific. monsters, aliens and others still function as important monitors and mediators of understandings of what it means to be post/human, not least in the indeterminacy, their eschewal of ontological purity, and their attention to human nature as defined by boundaries rather than essences. they embody the disturbing reminders of difference at the heart of unitary identity, and they suggest that any post/human ethic can be neither an escape into technocratic invulnerability nor a retreat into the imaged purity of organic essentialism. rather, as i have argued, it will be about the pleasures and risks of multiple allegiances, contingent identities and nomadic sensibilities. fantastic encounters with representations of the post/human offer important insights into the many meanings of being human, but they are also devices by which new worlds can be imagined. ( – ) i want to conclude this chapter, however, not by critically reflecting ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  on graham’s self-evidently heartfelt but also half-hearted hesitations here in this concluding passage of her book, but by thinking about the larger questions of contemporary critical identity formation and its necessary relationship to the post/human. what does it really matter in a truly impersonal way whether or not there is a “designer baby,” cyborg writing, or a spaced-out virtual reality freak who may or may not have taken the required psychotropic medication today? what does it matter that the mate- rial and cultural resources of the emerging post/human imagination be more (rather than less) equally distributed? and if each one of us (or our professional group) is able to play out, on a brief break from our alienated labor, the fantasy of dr. frankenstein, so what? once the last person or group on earth can become whatever she, he, or it wants to be, what then? that insatiable modern will-to-will indeed will—must—not rest, cannot rest, because its only aim is an impos- sible infinite self-enhancement. but what if the universe is as perfect as it can be already at every moment, and what if any change, however tiny, however carefully done, means everything existing is abolished as it is, and so all begins to swing wildly out of kilter, like those com- plex physical systems (such as our weather systems on the planet), wobbling ever more crazily toward an absolute chaos that the madly beautiful figures of fractal geometry enshrine? what then? my point in raising such questions as these is not to suggest that i, or anyone, know the answers. precisely the opposite is the case. no one can ever know the answers about the whole, because no one, however enhanced by modern technology, can ever know the whole, much less pretend to judge its value. no one can become the post/ human god; the administrative imaginary of global capitalism is itself busy with the production of this god’s simulacra, especially in the harshest discourses of its severest critics. this particular dimension of critical imagination as an unintended repetition of the very thing it would overcome is the consequence of existence in such an epoch of nihilism as ours. all such “developments” compose the lesson of the unknowable (delivered in part from critical reflections on quantum physics and its theories) that few wish to recall now in this moment of global capitalism’s apparent ascendancy. it is just such recollec- tion of the unknowable when projected into an imaginary cultural future that smith’s science fiction stories repeatedly perform and so ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s �   uncannily anticipate for us now, but here is not the place for a full discussion of his work. i do think it is appropriate, however, to conclude here by remarking that the post/human imagination, however romantic or modernist, produces largely prophetic discourses, like smith’s, but the post/ human also produces discourses that, unlike those composing smith’s world, too often lose sight of their own fictional status as works of the imagination. in its rather desperate, not to say hectic, anticipa- tion of “the next big thing” in modern cultural development, even if, or especially if, it should be modernity’s transcendence by one or another “monstrous birth” of the post/human, this contemporary imagination forgets the sanguine history of the figure of monstrous births and its painful problematic in literary, cultural, and political discourses. (my own ironic critical performance here has been intended to preempt such cultural amnesia by provoking the reader to remember this legacy.) smith’s world, in the end, decides to remember such figures and all their mortal problematics, and does so by intentionally rediscov- ering, as part of its imagined ultimate (and generally peaceful) revolu- tion, the inveterately creaturely status of humanity—a humanity for whom all divine (or demonic) creators, eagerly invoked or scorned, are impossibly, joyfully absent: oh, you will see, you will see them striding fair, oh fair and free! down garden paths of silver grass past flowing rivers, their hair pushed back by fingers of the wind. and you will know them by their blank white faces, expressionless, removed, all lines smoothed, as they stride on in the night toward their unimaginable goals . . . and good riddance to all these deliberately absent-minded ones! ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  naming	the	militant	multiples	of	the	void when the poet uses the word flower, stephan mallarme famously declares, the flower that is missing from all the bouquets in the world appears in the text. the poet, that is, does not mirror a particular existing flower, nor does he express his personal ideal of flowery perfection. rather, the poet impersonally invokes and summons to appearance the spectral flower subtracted from and haunting these conventional collections of flowers as fits within the terms of their arrangements. as such, this poetic flower is not some positive pla- tonic idea or paradigm of perfection but the signifying negation of all positive presentations, the militant void of multiple differences. once so evoked, this subtracted specter or virtually indiscernible ghost of a flower then receives a new name from the poet via his innovative use of figures and speech. this simple formulation of a complex theory of truth as event and its relationship to being can stand as a rough guide to alain badiou’s being and event. potential critics might quarrel with mallarme or badiou about this apparently dialectical relationship of critique and negation between the already known structure of existing flowers and the poet’s new imaginative flower. for however critical and negating it might be, the structure would condition, perhaps even determine, the poet’s imagi- nation. but both mallarme and badiou resist such slick logical tricks, because they embrace infinite multiplicity and radical contingency. the poet’s virtual flower is by definition, then, not the recollected platonic norm but the repeated occurrence of the unknown truth of monstrosity. badiou’s theory of truth, in his newly translated masterwork, com- bines the major elements of the two competing conceptions of truth: truth as correspondence and truth as unveiling. these two theories have dominated the western philosophical tradition since the ancient greeks. unlike martin heidegger (his major predecessor here), how- ever, badiou does not definitively subsume one conception of the truth to another, as a lesser or fallen derivation of the privileged con- ception. heidegger argues, of course, that the correspondence model of truth derives from the unveiling model. the truth of a being must show itself to us before we can tell if any statement about this truth corresponds to it or not. (of course, the internal coherence model ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  of truth, that a statement is true if it coheres, is logically consistent, with the other statements of a system, has largely been compromised by kurt gödel’s famous proof that shows no system can be both coherent and complete, for there is always an element in the system for which the terms of the system cannot rationally account.) how- ever that may be, for badiou, the event of truth emerges in the void or gap in every situation, the abyss that separates what the situation presents and what it represents. the truth of this void is in itself an indiscernible multiple that only retrospective and retroactive truth procedures begin to define. the way the u.s. constitution defines a nation that includes as elements (women, african americans, indians) what it originally fails to represent as citizens is a good example of what badiou is getting at with his theory of truth as event and of truth procedures that flesh out and realize that event ex post facto. the event of truth introduces into the world a new, previously inconceivable universal that is then materialized piecemeal but never totally via truth procedures. to understand better badiou’s theory of truth, which is clearly indebted to gödel and heidegger, as well as to paul cohen’s innovations in set theory, requires for my purposes putting it in the context of both jacques lacan’s and michel foucault’s related yet fundamentally different conceptions. lacan’s formula for the sub- ject’s relationship to truth is by now familiar, and by repetition, per- haps, all too familiar. the subject receives the truth only via the other—and only in inverted and so misrecognized form. this is the truth of the unconscious, of the ineluctable signifying chain, and, in its extreme form, the truth of madness, psychosis. in other words, the noncorrespondence, in the mode of ironic opposition, between truth and the subject’s statement of it constitutes lacan’s parodic analysis of truth as correspondence. this is, in short, truth as systematic noncorrespondence and nonrecognition. naturally, the power of the analytic recognition of such nonrecognition and noncorrespondence, which the analysand, via the relationship to the analyst, may come to assume, is itself, however ironically theoretical, a form of recogni- tion and correspondence. the problem of truth for lacan is one that summons our most intense research into all the dimensions of the subject and its world, even if lacan’s primary focus in his career is analytic, on the truth or nontruth of interpretative signification, and ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  not comprehensively affective, on the full range of the experience of truth, especially as his seminar on anxiety does offer much food for further thought to his disciples. if lacan provides badiou with an ironic legacy concerning truth—truth is the noncorrespondence of the correspondence theory of truth—then foucault, in his later work, discusses at considerable length the conditions of possibility—the historical, political, and rhe- torical conditions—by which the subject may speak the truth, espe- cially to power. parrhesia, truth telling, for foucault, is the central pivot around which the ancient subject’s efforts of ethical self-styliza- tion, what he calls the subject’s relationship of truth, are highlighted in the erotic mode. this erotic mode is imagined as an eros that is increasingly sublimated into and internalized as a self-mastering quest for truth conducted by lover and beloved alike. no central- ized state or church authority regulates such truth or its pursuit. the most important procedures, with stoicism, are those involving the central relationship of the subject to the chosen master as that rela- tionship gets incorporated into an elected style of life appropriate for oneself. significantly, this relationship to the master is the gateway to the greater relationship to the sublime vision of the cosmos that the adept is meant to experience so that the stoic wisdom may take all the better. the invention of a true subject, that is, a subject true to its self-chosen and self-styled second nature, is what foucault means finally by truth. what lacan postulates about the transforma- tion of the subject’s symptom into le sinthome, with james joyce in finnegans wake, can be read as providing a psychoanalytic parallel to foucault’s vision of the true subject. with both lacan and foucault, we see two aspects of truth: its fugitive self-opposing nature and its procedural setting. the stoic practices of self and the psychoanalytic centrality of the clinic pro- vide the procedural setting, whether institutionalized or improvised, within which the fugitive emergence of truth as the inverted corre- spondence and signification of the unconscious signifier and signified may occur. badiou thinks of truth as both the event and the procedures of fidelity to that event which the subject, inaugurated by that event, produces. in this view, the subject is not conceived as a person or even a position. rather, it is thought of as “any local configuration ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  of a generic procedure from which a truth is supported” ( ). in other words, the subject functions as a formal space, and, as such, it maybe locally inhabited by a person, a couple, a group, or even, rarely, a people. truth procedures, however, are generic or universal, “global” in our terms: they are the rationally accessible rules for the initiation, transmission, and verification of the subject within the truth of the situation so far as it continues to exist, however un- (or under-) recognized it may be. the absent “flowers” of art, revolution, scientific discovery, or eros receive new names, which, as an ethical imperative, always must be seen as containing elements that cannot be nailed down, filled out, realized, or made more substantial. the event of truth and the procedures of naming enable us to perceive at the edge of the void the repeated emergence of these unnamable militant multiples of situation after situation, until all are free. within any situation, the elements of that situation are established as its members by a count or inventory, which establishes the state of the situation, and we should take “state” here in all its senses. since being, for badiou, is the inchoate prospect of infinite multiples without end, human beings construct a situation out of such a pros- pect in piecemeal fashion, using much smaller portions of that pros- pect and establishing order within them by means of the count. the principle of selection of any count determines what elements of the situation remain presented elements and what become representative members. badiou’s point is true for all aspects of the situation, but because every count or inventory of the situation also necessarily involves the terms for representing that count or inventory, the count or inventory always produces more terms as members of the situation than there are elements originally presented, even as certain elements are not represented by the count or inventory. to put it in structural terms, the state structure of any situation always excludes and includes more than it could or should. there is always a gap or void between the presented and represented situation. without getting into badiou’s explanatory mathemes and uses of set theory here, we can say that for him there are always more ele- ments presented by a situation than get represented in it by the count and its structures of definition and determination, and the production of terms used to represent the members of the situation always result ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  in more empty figures than ones with determinate referents. this superfluity or overdetermination of terms, arising from the indeter- mination or destitution of elements, is badiou’s application of the concept of the null set from set theory to the situation of truth per se. rightly or wrongly, i read badiou’s resorting to mathematics as his composing his dark conceit of ontology, his allegory of being, from a once traditional but now unconventional discipline, for the sanctioned novelty’s sake. it would be as if a critic resorted to the lineaments of spenserian allegory to discuss the vision of modernism. the reductive vision of “being” in the title of his book serves to make possible badiou’s conception of truth as event. a subject comes into existence, then, when the event of truth forces the use of terms, of names, whose referent is not in the situa- tion as represented but may be a repressed or simply missing element of it. badiou calls this feature “a hole in knowledge” ( ). such “a hole in knowledge” is the void or real of any situation, in lacan’s terms. it is what in large part makes the event of truth and its con- sequences radically contingent and unforeseen, indeed unforeseeable. such terms or names can gain their referents, badiou contends, only after the fact—they will have been true when the event of truth that inaugurated the critical intervention of this novel usage of language has been more fully realized in the situation, which is at the moment only just emerging. the subject and its relationship to truth in badiou turn out always to have been prophetic, even as the new situation that the improvised imagination of available terms conjures up must appear to be utopian at first: [unlike the terms of an ideology], the names used by the subject— who supports the local configuration of a generic truth—do not, in general, have a referent in the situation. therefore, they do not double the established language. but then what use are they? these are words which do not designate terms, but terms which “will have been” presented in a new situation: the one which results from the addition to the situation of a truth (an indiscernible) of that situation. with the resources of the situation, with its multiples, its language, the subject generates names whose referent is in the future anterior: this is what supports belief. such names “will have been” assigned a referent, or a signification, when the situation will have appeared in ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  which the indiscernible—which is only [figuratively] represented (or included)—is finally presented as a truth of the first situation. . . . ev- ery subject can thus be recognized by the emergence of a language which is internal to the situation but whose referent—multiples are subject to the condition of an as yet incomplete generic part that is yet to come [in the emerging new situation]. ( , original italics) these names and terms are not snatched out of the air, of course, but are present in the situation, yet not represented there, thanks to the state of the count. these new names are subtracted from the count, kept out of it, and deployed as both critique of the situation and prophecy of the situation to come. they are then submitted to a radical process of more precise and more specific indetermination by the selective and scrupulous use of irony, ambiguity, paradox, cata- chresis—in short, by the rigorous operation of imaginative figura- tion. badiou’s own use of mathematics may be seen as a rather novel version of such figuration operating on the state of the situation in poststructuralist philosophy. such terms, in any event, are thereby subtracted from, and so institute that original hole in, knowledge. such poetic use of terms thus is put into play as the figures of the truth to come ( ), to which the truth procedures we establish would maintain fidelity. to my mind, then, badiou, in being and event, whatever all his announced intentions, is clearly providing us with a poetics of truth, and perhaps the poetics of truth we have needed for reading and analyzing literature with a more sensitive perception than recently seen in literary studies. thus, we can say following badiou that a situation contains ele- ments which are counted as members in order to structure and secure the state of that situation, as such. the institution that performs this representative inventory is most often the state in the largest sense, but can be seen as any administrative agency from that of the ego on up. in making this count, the state neglects to represent elements in the situation that are determined as not fitting due to perceived or asserted contradiction, even as the state also ironically produces many more representative but essentially empty terms for the situa- tion. the event of truth is a contingent discovery of the subject of the situation, who then must use the indeterminate terms figuratively and ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b a d i o u ’ s t r u t h a n d t h e o f f i c e o f t h e c r i t i c ��  with precision, and can do so thanks to irony, ambiguity, paradox, and all the other resources of figuration. these newly appropriated terms can acquire their referents only from the perspective of the new situation as it emerges and completes itself according to the logic and direction of the truth procedures established by (and establishing) the subject of the emerging situation. although not presented in being and event, badiou’s major example is the case of saint paul. i will address badiou’s treatment of paul in detail in the next two chapters, but his position must be briefly sketched out here. in conclusion, badiou argues apropos saint paul that the event of truth that struck him down on the road to damascus was that of the resurrection, that faith in that truth superseded all the rituals of the law, even the law itself, and that the sole truth procedure necessary to be a christian, which was open to all without reservation, was the public avowal and militant practice of that faith, as borne witness to in paul’s letters and life after the event of truth occurred. the event of truth is therefore a discovery, an uncovering or unveiling of a new creation, to which the procedures we then invent express our cor- responding fidelity. and a new truth may be creatively discovered in this sense and remained faithful to, according to badiou, in science, in art, in love, and in politics—which is where he places saint paul’s case of a new form of militancy that founds the western sense of universalism. for badiou, by the way, saint paul largely rejects the discourses of greek philosophy, jewish law, and his own mystical vision. however that may be, we can say, following badiou’s lead, that a new truth may be a new law in science, a new style or experi- mental form in art, a new love in our erotic lives, or a political revo- lution, and its sphere of operation is, of course, human culture. if, as paul de man brilliantly argued, crisis is endemic to the critic’s office of criticism, badiou’s ontological poetics of truth in being and event may just provide us with a significantly new for- mulation of what we can do. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm w h at 	f o l low s 	i s an encounter between the most classically ratio- nalist imagination among today’s philosophers and the most ste- reotypically irrational of religious imaginations. i have staged this encounter for several reasons. first, i enjoy the sparks that often fly when such things do all too rarely occur. admittedly, this is my aesthetic perversity at work. second, i am interested in developing the ontology of the subject in its relationship to truth that can bridge the gap between reason and imagination in their extreme forms. “why?” you might ask. who cares? we know that there is no sub- ject or should not be, and even if there is, and we cannot shame it out of existence, yet we must ignore it, as any attention will serve only to preserve it for a little while longer. after all, we have seen “the death of man,” “the death of the author,” the tumescence of “western patriarchal culture,” have we not? in fact, the subject does exist. that is all it does. and it exists, as alain badiou suggests, in a way that leads either to revolutionary change or to the betrayal of all revolutionary hopes. there is no middle ground. either we work for revolution or we work against it, whether we know that or not. we must choose. this is my third and final reason, then. on the subject of truth and the fundamentalist imagination figures	of	the	void � ��  ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | f i g u r e s o f t h e v o i d ��  so, to me, we need an ontology of the subject, a study of the being of the subject, precisely as a guide (and not a guillotine), so that we may know how best to choose in any particular situation what there is to be done. — • — t r u t h 	 h a p p e n s .	 at least according to alain badiou it does. here is how he conceives of the happening of truth: any grouping of elements, as in set theory, may be thought of as a situation. what defines the situation as distinctive from any other is the structure of counting that selects the elements to be included in it. we never speak of pure multiplicities but always of collections, whose mem- bers we select for inclusion according to a principle of selection that then automatically structures that situation. all the balls that are red, all the people who are white, all the ocean vistas that are blue—these are easy examples, whose principle of selection is clear. badiou goes on, of course, to complicate this simple picture. within each such situation or “set,” there is not only a principle of counting and selection at work but also something that eludes or is excluded by the principle, on principle, as it were. as kurt gödel demonstrated, any such part not counted and presented as a member belonging to the set is nonetheless antithetically the set in question and its elements. in my previous examples, all based on color, the parts in the situa- tions that cannot be counted in this way—the object features of the situation, say—are still in the situation, even though they are not of it, according to the logic of this particular count. nonetheless, these uncounted, specifically uncountable, parts are the basis for the forma- tion and functioning of the respective situations: like the servants, say, that make possible a class society, or the subatomic particle waves that constitute the objects that bear the colors. such incommensurable parts—incommensurate with respect to the principle of selection of the count structuring the set—are said by badiou to “exist on the edge of the void” and function, when society is the set or situation in question, very much like what jacques rancière terms “the part of no part.” these nonmember parts of any situation i like to think of, somewhat fancifully perhaps, as “figures of the void.” ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s �   by this idea badiou means the following: in set theory, the formal constitution of any situation (also termed “state” by badiou in a punning reminder of his theory’s ramifications) depends on the inclu- sion of the set of zero (the “zeta” set, named after the greek letter used to designate it) among its elements; this empty set is the first item counted in any set, made up of any type of elements, structured by any principle of selection. on this foundation, no set can be said to contain itself as one of its members, and so an irrational infinite regress may be avoided. following the famous riemann hypoth- esis, as elaborated by paul cohen in set theory and the continuum hypothesis, badiou claims that in any situation, the nontrivial “zetas,” those empty or null sets significantly defining the set, collect along the critical line of the plane, thereby marking the set spatially at its fault line. the set of all apple trees, for example, contains as its first member the nothing, the zero, the void, the empty or null set. the latter con- tains none of the elements contained in the first set, hence the term the null set. this means that, under the label of the null set, all the parts that found the situation or set but that cannot be presented as elements or members of that situation or set due to the particular principle of selection at work may be formally represented. all struc- tured situations like sets include at their base this null set, which rep- resents what is excluded from the count, creating the particular set or situation. thereafter, in counting the rest of the designated elements (such as apple trees) in the particular set, the null set reproduces itself as the count continues. as the first element counted in the set, the number one refers to the null set. the number two consists in this number one plus the first of the elements designated and included as a member of the set, the number three is the null set plus the number two plus the next element, and so on. each set member is generically multiple, since it incorporates itself and at least the null set, just as every subsequent number in a sequence of numbers must include the number one (the null set, you will recall, is always counted as the first item) as its basis. at the same time, the parts not counted and presented by the principle of selection for the set are automatically consigned by the principle of selection to a position in the situation or state that badiou characterizes, as we have seen, more specifically as existing ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | f i g u r e s o f t h e v o i d ��  “on the edge of the void.” they are not simply precluded from any consideration. what is excluded from the set is also foundational to the set, and it is represented in the set by the null set. when truth happens, there is an event, a significant conflict between the set’s presentational and representational functions, thereby exposing the function of the null set. this exposure of what badiou, after lacan, calls “the real” of the situation throws the situation shortly into formal chaos. the solidity and position of all numbers of the situa- tion have been called into question. all members are disclosed to be split between what the member represents in belonging to the set and the null set that stands as this member’s and indeed the entire set’s fundamental basis. faced suddenly by the infinity of possibilities the set must preclude in order to constitute itself (all those “zetas” the null set formally presents but materially forecloses), a crisis ensues. what once seemed impossible, indeed a prospect of infinite pos- sibilities, excluded in principle in advance, irrupts into view out of the void, and this radical prospect of infinity appears to be, coun- terintuitively, the most possible, for better or worse. badiou argues that, as cohen has shown, the nontrivial “zetas,” in marking the fault line of the set’s structural formation, function like lacan’s “the real,” and all disavowed elements must be foreclosed substantially, to make the set or situation cohere. in other words, the null set reveals the incommensurate infinite set. in response to the exposure of the null set turning into a revelation of the infinite set, the mind often reacts defensively, returning to established elements in the situ- ation to maintain a familiar sense of self and world. one’s attitude to this crisis in and of the situation depends both on the position one occupies in the previously reigning situation and on one’s judgment about that situation and the places of oneself and others in it. it is out of this anarchic crisis that revolutions can occur. and they do occur as events of truth. a totally unpredictable experience of the void of any situation, inspiring the impossible of that situation to appear suddenly possible—this is “the real” of any situation. this experience of the real happens, giving rise to a state- ment or proclamation of the truth of this experience, which is to guide the further emergence and formation of the new situation. any situation, structured by a principle of selection that arbi- trarily counts its members as belonging to it, is founded necessarily ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  upon the void and excludes the infinitude of alternative possibilities. it may suffer the event of truth. if so, it thereby gives rise to the sub- ject of that truth event in a way that calls into radical question the terms of the situation. this subject of truth identifies itself not with the situation or its negation but with the proclamation of the truth event per se, which is freely offered and addressed to all without any coercion or sense of personal or group ownership or derivation. i suppose badiou’s best example of his theory of truth events and truth procedures is that of pauline christianity. paul’s visionary experience on the road to damascus releases into the situation of the early church new possibilities. paul offers this truth and witness to all: namely, that regardless of their satisfaction of the established law of ritual and belief, the early church’s principle of selection, both gentile and jew, pagan and philosopher, can indeed become members belonging to the situation. suddenly, what counts in the counting of people in this situation has, unpredictably, been changed by paul’s new universalizable truth. such radical contingency is an important part of badiou’s con- ception of truth as the happening of an event that is rather like heidegger’s conception of truth. but it derives immediately from the lacanian conception of the unconscious, which appears only in sym- bolic breakdown, failure, and then fleetingly in a momentary pulse of an imaginary opening that will be closed by the new—or at least the next—symbolic formation or principle of selection that follows, whether in fidelity to the truth of the event or not. admittedly, at a first critical glance, this conception of truth as event is strangely static and one-dimensional. what is the dynamic component of it? mere blind luck? passive breakdown? in addition, is there only ever one principle of selection at work in a situation? in his most recent work, badiou attempts to address his critics by for- mulating what he calls “logics of appearance” for his own ontology of truth as event. for this occasion, i intend to follow my own logic of appearance, based on a revision of certain psychoanalytic notions, which i find to be novel conceptions of structure and event. the most necessary feature of any situation must be the repetition of the count. the structure of any situation functions actively as a counting operation, as a policing of the “economic” identity of the situation. whether we think of this in terms of a group situation or a ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | f i g u r e s o f t h e v o i d ��  subject’s psychic economy, any situation or state, as such, repeatedly counts, that is, inspects and approves authoritatively, its elements as belonging or not belonging, as excludable or as ignorable. the more these ignorable elements increase, the more that must be excluded, but increasingly the more that cannot be. consequently, the more unstable the structuring, the ever more volatile the situation, the more explosive the event of collapse, and the more shocking the emergence of new, previously unthinkable possibilities will be. if we introduce “overdetermination” into this basic crisis situation (with only one principle of selection in the counting operation), then we can propose that there is more than one principle of selection for membership in any particular situation or set, even if one selection principle remains predominant or “hegemonic.” we also recognize that we add another dynamic and potentially explosive factor. the real of this crisis now beckons. its subjective warning signal is, of course, anxiety. the logic of appearance for the event of truth is thus like the logic of overdetermination and repetition-compulsion in anxiety neurosis. an important reason that i want to make use of such psychoanalytic logic is that lacanian psychoanalysis includes subjectivity and comes closest of the human sciences to modeling for subjectivity the logic of self-regulating physical systems (whether living or not), which function very much in this manner, without self-defeatingly doing away with subjective agency altogether. the subject of truth is “the real” of any situation, its critical fault line. as individual, dual, or collective agent, the subject of truth exists in the practices that seek to remain faithful to the new truth, which names the new principle of selection for the situation, as in the case of paul’s visionary practices of witnessing and recruitment, as they reveal the emerging univer- sality of the christian message. psychoanalytic theory, elaborating badiou, thus enables me to propose a viable, rational ontology of the subject within nature. moreover, even without the importation of other situations into the field of response of the first situation, that is, even without the essential conflict of any politics, any dynamic system, which is what a situation or state must be, is open to the possibility of its own “internal” politics of self-destruction. the sheer number of ele- ments formally included and excluded (yet still in the situation), the ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  mounting number of principles of selection (overdetermination), the accelerating rhythm of any count, the irruption of conflicts, and the prospect of radical incommensurability—all these things may inhere in any situation, reproducing the subjective existential “mood” of anxiety. but once we open this analytic model of truth as event to the antagonistic interplay of politics as we know it especially today, the occasions for a critical truth event grow by leaps and bounds, which is also why the policing operations usually can become more subtly violent, complex, and far-reaching in their repressive func- tions. anxiety (as i demonstrate in the next chapter) also increases exponentially. bush’s “war on terror,” in this respect, is a good case in point, even as it remains perhaps even cruder than past episodes in american history of this type. however that may be, threatened with collapse from both within and without, any situation is always fraught with truth as an event. for our purposes, here’s what may be said to happen when a truth event happens, based on my adaptation of badiou’s views. both from within a situation and without—and this distinction is often analytically hard to make, even as in practice it may be made all the time, irrationally and violently—the conflicts and incommensura- bility of elements are included in any overdetermined, anxiety-ridden count. those excluded and expelled (as well as those excluded and consigned to existence on the edge of the void or null set) remain at the heart of any situation and the impossible prospect of infinite pos- sibilities (or the infinite set) previously un-thought (because uncount- able) by the situation in its own particular ways. — • — to day,	 t h a n k s 	 to global capitalist modernity, we all live in situa- tions that are more or less open to the specter of imminent collapse. the fundamentalist imagination is one of the major “radical” reac- tions to this threatening apparition. courage, as opposed to anxiety, would be another possible response to this ever-imminent irruption of the real. there remain significant debates on the idea that fundamental- ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | f i g u r e s o f t h e v o i d ��  isms of all types from around the world are essentially reactions to the destructive spread of capitalist modernity that make selective use of traditional religious elements and cultural values for political purposes. nonetheless, this view is the majority scholarly position that, following the editors of a recent five-volume set the fundamen- talism project, i will also take. in taking this view, i do not intend to suggest that i believe capitalist modernity is the only global agent of radical change in our epoch. however, in the postwar period, it certainly has been the major dominant force inspiring the many episodes of nationalist and/or fundamentalist reactions. of course, what may effectively challenge its empire of dissolution remains to be seen. i want to propose, then, that when capitalist modernity enters the scene of a traditional culture, it not only exposes the null set of that situation—thereby also releasing the uncannily alluring prospect of infinite possibilities, but precisely because it is based on counting in statistical procedures and outlooks—it also transforms the hegemonic value system of the traditional situation to the point of nonrecogni- tion and endless displacement. members of the traditional culture can all count, potentially, on being discounted and so relegated to being “people of the void,” insofar as they are aboard or not aboard the supposed gravy train of capitalist modernity. capitalist moder- nity thus functions like a truth event for traditional cultures, wher- ever they may be located and however they are functioning. into the already overdetermined and fraught situation of always imminent crisis for a group, capitalist modernity intervenes, at the very least, like the last straw and, most often, like a bomb, transforming its members into the literally or socially symbolic “shameful” forms of the dead. what the editors of the fundamentalist project call “the funda- mentalist imagination” is, then, a response in religious and cultural spheres first of all to this new crisis situation in their traditional ways of life. such a purely reactionary response may then take political forms, but it also essentially remains a religious and cultural move- ment. so-called fundamentalists react to capitalist modernity by returning to religious and cultural traditions and selectively appro- priating those elements that, with fitting revision, they feel meet the needs of the critical situation, so that they may not become “people ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  of the void,” that is, may not become those elements that are not recognized by the new, often actively hostile principle of selection in the emerging situation. all too naturally, fundamentalists want to continue as they are so as to be able to imagine themselves as counting in their world. this is the fundamental feature of what the term fundamentalist imagination really means. from the perspective provided by my adaptation of badiou on truth as event, the fundamentalists refuse, indeed disavow, the event of the null set irrupting into their world in the form of capitalist modernity, with the accompanying revelation of the infinite set, and so they never experience a new critical truth to which any proclama- tion of theirs may bear faithful witness. instead, they must return to their traditions to select elements of what they feel is a better defense against any such experience in the first place. for badiou, the closer one comes in any situation of destitution, to the edge of the void, to existing as one of the people of void, the more one is in the truth and the truth in one. this is the visionary truth of the newly emerging situation, out of which authentic revolutionary developments may spring to be guided critically by the faithful witnessing of proclama- tions whose fidelity to the truth event remains strong. once again, we may recall as a pertinent example the experi- ence of saint paul. his witnessing to the truth event he suffered not only changed his name and identity; it introduced into the new situation of christianity a universalism and an antinomianism that made it impossible simply to return to ritual laws of observation and membership connected to circumcision, liturgical practice, and visionary prophecy. after paul, the new truth “christ is risen!” would be offered to all as a gift of grace that saved all potentially from the double bind of any law-inspired acts of childish transgres- sion. our faith alone may save us, regardless of what we do or do not do. of course, the authentically prophetic vision got him in deep trouble with both jerusalem and rome and led to his five years of house arrest in rome before his death from the proverbial “myste- rious circumstances.” what makes his case exemplary is that rather than remain the passive victim of crisis, anxiety, and cowardice, paul embraced this revolutionary vision, universalized it by addressing it to all, and impersonalized it by deriving it from no one set of previ- ously existing and would-be hegemonic factions, groups, or sects ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | f i g u r e s o f t h e v o i d ��  and their discourses. this is why the pauline vision generally remains “new” and “revolutionary” even today. we know that the dominant american form of fundamentalism, which in fact gives its name to global fundamentalisms, entails a discourse that apes this kind of prophetic vision of saint paul. most of this apocalyptic discourse, however, is drawn not from him but from the book of daniel and the book of revelation. this discourse, presupposing biblical inerrancy, also proposes that a limited number of saved souls, these elect, depending on the state of their souls at the time, will be lifted up into heaven during what they call “the rap- ture.” this will happen just before the end of days time of tribula- tions in most accounts; this is what george w. bush’s pre-millennial fundamentalism holds. the elect may enjoy observing the working out of god’s will on earth as the antichrist and the faithful remnant left behind to fight the battle of armageddon in jerusalem, when jesus will return to offer the jews a final opportunity to believe in him. those who do not will suffer the same fate as the evil ones helping satan. terrible, cataclysmic fire will destroy them. thereupon a thousand-year reign of peace will follow, until the earth is trans- formed back into paradise and god’s saints will either return with perfected bodies from heaven or those who died will experience the resurrection of the body just like jesus. some fundamentalists, believing such a comic-book version of apocalypse, think they have to do nothing politically in the world, that they need only await in faith the working out of god’s will. the fundamentalists associated with george w. bush and the republican party, by contrast, believe that political intervention in social and cultural policy matters will keep america a good christian nation and will help to hasten both the rapture and armageddon in some unexplained ways. as we know from leo strauss and his disciples’ work, despite their espousal of classical rationalism, such a religious movement may be thought of as a perfect reactionary instrument of politics in a modern democracy, in which the rule of the enlightened elite who know the truth—that we need beautiful lies to live—is secured by dispensing religion, purely for administrative and therapeutic pur- poses, to the masses, who cannot handle any truth. what is so poi- sonous about this straussian position is that it parades as classical ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  rationalism what is in reality the rankest of cynical modern nihilisms. it does so in the name of liberal democracy, all the while actively working to pervert and transform all authentic democratic possibili- ties into the raw materials and instruments for their new situation of neoconservative elite rule. that situation of elite rule is now being instituted before our stunned eyes. such a situation is strongly sup- ported and enforced, to our ever greater amazement, by the political madness of an increasingly open theocratic populist ideology. naturally, a number of explanations for “the fundamentalist imagination” can be offered. for purposes of analytic clarity and immediately relevant topical reference, i focus on american funda- mentalism. nietzschean ressentiment causes it. it is the sudden pros- pect of social death being experienced by previously secure traditional peoples of one sort or another. it is the populist response of men in traditional patriarchal societies to the changes introduced into their world by capitalist modernity and its stalking horse, liberal democ- racy. one could multiply the proposed explanations. i would rather concentrate on the dynamics of the situation, as effectively informed by my adaptation of badiou’s theory of the truth event. the situa- tion faced by the prototypical fundamentalists is one in which the inherent instability of this situation is exasperated to the point of col- lapse and transformation by capitalist modernity. failing repeatedly to find a suitable place for themselves in the emerging new order, the prototypical fundamentalists react in a dual way. they anxiously and repeatedly return to the roots of their traditions, select those “funda- mental” features most adaptable to the fight of the present moment, and embrace the modes of communications and other aspects of capi- talist modernity’s technological innovations to promote their now fully recognizable agenda. what fundamentalists resist with all their being, therefore, is their displacement, material and imaginary, which capitalist modernity would introduce into any traditional culture or society. they resist it in a completely double way. in returning to the original documents and doctrines of their traditional belief and value systems, funda- mentalists feel especially empowered, in fact, to choose selectively among them and to reinterpret them with ruthless abandon, thereby most often perverting their own origins totally. they then exploit the present situation for all the political edge and financial and techno- ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | f i g u r e s o f t h e v o i d ��  logical support they can gain for the promotion of their views and their institutionalization as governmental policies. the revisionism of fundamentalists is a fully engaged kind. jerry falwell and pat rob- ertson, during the s, come to mind as relevant examples here. however, so too do the nazis and many other individuals and groups since the american and french revolutions in the west and glob- ally. merely attempting to placate or buy off fundamentalists, then, clearly misses the point. the displacement that capitalist modernity introduces into the traditional context may be radically negative for fundamentalists in the material dimension, but it is always so in the imaginary dimension. similarly, whether a particular fundamentalist had been in a leading socially symbolic position or not prior to the intervention of capitalist modernity into the situation, his imaginary experience has been shaken up and usually threatens to be trans- formed for him in impossible ways. moreover, this dread of imagi- nary displacement is often intimately tied to the national, religious, and/or ethnic or racial identity of the fundamentalist’s community or state, that is, the established community’s worldly status. the pauline model of the truth event is almost symbolically in a position of advantage when persecuting the first christians, and then, through his conversion experience, or truth event, paul plunged (in terms of real and imaginary status) into the abyss. with his antino- mianism and universalism, paul virtually fell off the radar screen of peter and james in jerusalem, until it became clear that he had enough of a following among gentiles who would contribute finan- cially such that paul had to be compromised with if possible or, if not, then allowed to be charged by jewish authorities with blas- phemy. when he demanded a trial in rome before the emperor, as was his right as a roman citizen, he was confined to house arrest until his death. ironically enough, those in the jerusalem church who opposed receiving paul’s gentile collection won the day, because they argued successfully that these funds were unclean in principle, having been donated by the uncircumcised. consequently, then, peter and james lost both paul as a self-declared “apostle” and his considerable gentile collection. these two features—paul’s universalism and antinomianism—are the twin hallmarks of any authentic truth event. xenophobic par- ticularism of identity and selective literalism of interpretation have ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s �   no place in the truth event. we bear witness to this event in a freely offered truth statement or proclamation. the event of truth is not only unpredictable and unlikely, but it is also never cowardly imposed by means of physical or psychological violence on others. rather, in “fear and trembling,” a subject arises out of the void, and this subject may be individual or collective, but it is always singular, having no recognizable derivation in the reigning order; and this subject pro- nounces its fidelity to the truth event of the real that has appeared and disappeared, as in the twinkling of an eye. the last judgment and apocalyptic remaking of the world are not events of truth that end time; rather, they are events that restart time, reinaugurate his- tory, subject by singular subject, like a western wildfire. and either these subjects are already people of the void, or, like saul after he becomes paul, they soon become so. to put it in rather mock under- statement, their situations have changed—radically. in the following extended quotation from saint paul: the foun- dation of universalism, not only does badiou clarify what is the crucial distinction between the truth event that paul bears witness to and the initially codified doctrine of early christianity, to be found in the synoptic gospels; he also thereby offers the definitive difference between the truth event per se and any form of fundamentalism: the pauline reference [to the event] is of a different substance [from the gospels]. the event is not a teaching; christ is not a master; disciples are out of the question. . . . the christ-event establishes the authority of a new subject path over future eras. . . . [there is] a community of destiny in that moment in which we have to become “a new creature.” that is why we need to retain of christ only what ordains this destiny, which is indifferent to the particularities of the living person: jesus is resurrected; nothing else matters, so that jesus becomes like an anonymous variable, a “someone” devoid of predicative traits, entirely absorbed by his resurrection. the pure event is reducible to this: jesus died on the cross and was resurrected. this event is “grace” (kharis). thus, it is supernumerary relative to all this and presents itself as pure givenness. as subject to the ordeal for the real, we are henceforth constituted by evental grace. the crucial formula—which, it must be noted, is simultaneously a universal address—is: ou gar este hup noman all’hupo kharin, “for ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | f i g u r e s o f t h e v o i d ��  you are not under the law, but under grace” (rom. : ). a struc- turing of the subject [is accomplished] according to a “not . . . but” through which it must be understood . . . a becoming rather than a state [results]. the subject of the new era is a “not . . . but.” . . . it is precisely this form that bears the universal [original italics]. no literalism, particularism, or exceptionalism can successfully operate in the context of this division of the subject into the “not” of the null set and the “but” of the infinite set of the event of truth, a “not . . . but” subjective formation, which also breaks history in two. just as the key elements that mark pauline christianity as an authentic truth event for badiou are its universalism and antinomi- anism, so, too, the key elements that mark any fundamentalism are precisely the opposites of these traits: a xenophobic particularism of identity and a literalism of interpretation of the law establishing the outward signs of that identity. the repeated accusation of un- americanism and the repeated insistence on biblical inerrancy by our homegrown fundamentalism demonstrates how far it is from the pauline christian, or indeed any, truth event. granted this critical distinction, why is it that millions of ameri- cans nonetheless declare beliefs, in biblical inerrancy and pre-millen- nial rapture, the traits distinguishing one major form of fundamen- talism from another, that are clearly so irrational? are we to assume that all of them are certifiably insane or perversely proud of their chosen ignorance? while madness or ignorance can explain many things, in this instance they can tell us nothing of use. in order to provide some insight into the possible reason for why fundamen- talism has been perceived as possible in our current situation, i will underscore the major critical features of badiou’s model of the truth event in preparation for discussing what still to my mind is the best analysis of the religious complex i know, freud’s reading of the psy- chotic dr. schreber’s memoirs of my nervous illness. badiou proposes that those who exist in any situation on the edge of the null set, because they do not count in that situation, for whatever reason, are exposed to the always possible vision of the essential destitution and volatility of it or any situation. the contin- gent ways people respond to this ontological vision of the essential destitution and volatility of it or any situation appear striking in our ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  age of capitalist modernity. this impersonal, anonymous, atheistic mathematical sublime is precisely the ontological revelation that fun- damentalists refuse by disavowing, even as they approach it in the mistaken terms of their own personal sinfulness or errancy. the true vision of pure destitution and total nihilism, disavowed or foreclosed from memory, like the prospects of symbolic castration, necessarily returns from the unconscious, in the bizarrely distorted forms of the deranged fantasies of a partially healing paranoid psychosis. this is freud’s most original insight: “what we take to be the production of the illness, the formation of the delusion, is in reality the attempt at a cure, the reconstruction” of the self’s lost relationship to its world. after suffering a tremendous blow to his self-regard, schreber cannot face his symbolic investiture as judge in his traditional cultural situa- tion and abandons his emotional investments in people and objects. as he begins to project his paranoid fantasies of being used as a woman by his psychiatrist—which is soon superseded by the grander, if more blasphemous, fantasy of being transformed into a woman so that he may pleasure god and bear him a new race of superior beings who, like him, can think exciting thoughts constantly—schreber is actually, according to freud’s brilliant insight, not sinking deeper into paranoid psychosis but rather beginning to recover his relation- ship—albeit a strange one—to his libidinal objects. what i am proposing, then, is that the fundamentalist imagination is an attempted act of recovery of this sort on the part of believers who live on the edge of psychosis all the time. the following is the conversion narrative of elder walter evans of the primitive baptists of the blue ridge mountains of north carolina. before recounting it, elder evans explains that he had always “felt so much of my time in my life, like a stranger,” especially when he observed religious rites. “as for me, i got nothing out of [anything]” ( ). this alienation was radical, and nearly total, except for periodic binges of booze and sex in town. elder evans before conversion was dead to the world, virtually psychotically withdrawn. as his self-destructive pathology lifts, at least partially, with his conversion (the deadpan tone of his narrative is a sign of this par- tiality), elder evans continues his conversion tale: ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | f i g u r e s o f t h e v o i d ��  it was on tuesday night while standing at the back of the house [watching a service my father insisted i attend] that i felt a strong power arrested my heart and soul to the extent my body trembled under the weight like a leaf on a tree shaken by a mighty wind. a voice from somewhere, a still voice taut with power, said: “you are lost without god or hope in the world.” ( ) elder evans recalls how he sank on the mourner’s bench, inconsol- able by his parents or anyone else, convinced that his sins were too great to be forgiven, when that same still voice taut with power announced, “your sins are all forgiven,” and thereupon, “before the song [of the congregation] was ended, a call or strong impression came to me. . . . o, how i desired to tell what the lord had done for me. i was in a new world” ( ). you may recall that the voice speaking to paul in his damascus road vision asks a critical ques- tion, but it does not promise, as elder evans’s voice in his vision does, any final solution. rather than living with the symbolic and imaginary destitution of his life as a stranger in the world on the edge of the void, as one of the people of the void in the situation of modern america, elder evans is seized by the already formulated and elaborated fundamen- talist mythos of his historical context, and so he may again begin to relate to his world, albeit only through a highly limited and stylized mode of expression. elder evans is clearly no saint paul, an inspired master of visionary paradox and a martyr to his own inventive the- ology. like schreber, however, elder evans’s conversion experience reconciles him to his father and mother and his locality, and it opens the door to his assuming a leading position there. schreber, having failed the crisis of symbolic investiture by going mad, nonetheless then became a cause célèbre in the well-established discipline of gen- eral psychiatry at the time when freud appropriated his memoirs for his own original purposes. in badiou’s terms, fundamentalism is a step up (and back) in socially symbolic space from becoming one of the people of the void. like william blake’s title character in the book of thel, who, rather than encounter the terrible void of the grace of experience, hastily returns to the unreality of her stereo- ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  typical pastoral abstraction, the fundamentalist imagination would rather embrace an accredited form of madness than discover its own potentially revolutionary truth. in conclusion, i would suggest that the fundamentalist imagina- tion is what we may think of as the most common, socially accept- able form of “healing” madness in modern america. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm �� t h i s 	c h a p t e r 	will skirt the edges of literature. my primary concern here is to outline a broadly lacanian theory of the subject of truth. this subject should be able to resist, on the one hand, assimilation to the law of the global economy and, on the other, subjective iden- tification with already established, so-called minority groups. such a subject, in short, would be “new,” even revolutionary, with respect to the present moment. in this respect, i will be following the lead of alain badiou. so, to begin with (and for all of what follows), i want to borrow as the motto for this chapter a formulation from badiou’s saint paul: “a subject without identity, a law without support.” although this formulation may sound nihilistic, such is not the case. without going into all the details of badiou’s analysis of saint paul’s letter, i will start here by referring to the problem badiou poses, to which this catchy formulation is ironically the solution. badiou is in search of a viable militant figure of the subject in its relationship to truth. what are this figure’s invariantly resistant traits? according to badiou, we currently live in a world where the abstract homogeneity of the global market economy (one counts only if one submits to being counted) and its rapid and devastating flows of capital (and all the rest) define the general parameters for “the	cry	of	its	occasion” on the subject of truth, or the terror in global terrorism � ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  an oppositional array of preestablished group identities. no one such identity, nor any combination of them, can determine for him the militant subject of truth. the landscape of differential identity types, in fact, constitutes the established terrain upon which the abstract homogenization of the global market, ironically enough, can exercise its powers for ever greater profits. here is badiou on the topic: both processes [of subjectivization and commodification] are per- fectly intertwined. for each identification (the creation or cobbling together of identity) creates a figure that provides a material for its investment by the market. there is nothing more captive, so far as commercial investment is concerned, nothing more amenable to the invention of new figures of monetary homogeneity, than a community and its territory or territories. the semblance of a non- equivalence is required so that equivalence itself can constitute a process. what inexhaustible potential for mercantile investments in this upsurge—taking the form of communities demanding recogni- tion and so-called cultural singularities—of women, homosexuals, the disabled, arabs! and these infinite combinations of predicative traits, what god-send! black homosexuals, disabled serbs, catholic pedophiles, moderate muslims, married priests, ecologist yuppies, the submissive unemployed, prematurely aged youth! each time a social image authorizes new products, specialized magazines, improved shopping malls, “free” radio stations, targeted advertis- ing networks, and finally, heady “public debates” at peak viewing times. deleuze put it perfectly: capitalist deterritorialization requires a constant reterritorialization. capital demands a permanent cre- ation of subjective and territorial identities in order for its principle of movement to homogenize its space of action: identities, more- over, that never demand anything but the right to be exposed in the same way as other to the uniform prerogatives of the market. the capitalist logic of the general equivalent and the identitarian and cultural logic of communities or minorities form an articulated whole. (sp – ) to put it in other, slightly less satiric terms, the global economy is the literal default position for the absence of any accessible real for the diverse “minorities” whose cultures (or so-called subcultures) con- ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ t h e c r y o f i t s o c c a s i o n ” �� stitute the cynically recognizable mirages of our global culture. the contemporary subject may declare the truth of its identity-theme, whatever it may be, and its distinctive (if too often exclusive, brand- like) cultural affiliation, but it cannot declare any universalizable truth. such a truth of the subject is one that arises out of the unpre- dictable experience of the real; it has no determinative source in the symbolic order, and no purely imaginary phantasm can capture or captivate it for narrow partisan or sectarian interests. in the current context, the global economy and its culture operate as the ultimate horizon of thinking for all and at the most intimate levels of the single one, that of the subject’s relationship to itself. what are permitted are only the prefabricated identities or minor group imaginaries. this is the case so long as the groups accept their grounding in the global market’s rule of law, presumably based on principles of democratic tolerance, but actually based in the powers of the security forces of the nation and the international economic order. the law and order of global modernity is the provocative basis for all the reactive types of supposedly transgressive, oppositional imaginary identities. the foundation of universalism for late capitalist global culture, in short, is not the subject’s relationship to its truth, which it declares and offers to all—the prototypical situation of the pauline christian. it is, rather, the mindless, passionless operations of the global market as it rotates one after another subject-type into position as the latest object of commodification and control. such an ersatz façade of universalism is the demonic parody of any potentially authentic uni- versalism. according to badiou, the latter is always a singular uni- versalism: the subject in question has no relationship of derivation to what went before the event of truth it passionately undergoes and to which it bears faithful witness in its proclamation. as such, the authentic subject of truth testifies to the absence of any law touching its being, even the law of its own supposed intellectual autonomy. like saul becoming paul “on the road to damascus,” the subject of truth has no relationship to commodification and control by means of the market. the event of truth and its subject is incommensurate with all established orders, even as it cuts across any such order. consequently, this means that no one subject or group under the hegemony of global capitalism can stand in a creative relationship ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  to the truth of the real. in fact, each must accept the alibis of the global system and the utopian or merely fantastic fictions of this system’s ideology or its group’s reactive imaginary. no new revolu- tionary social formation, therefore, can emerge from such a situation of essentially captive audiences of the present world-system. the subject’s relationship to the declaration of truth is at best reduced to the status of a reality television show, in which the participants perform their identities for millions of others vicariously, and often viciously, to enjoy. the military police at abu ghraib, who with sadomasochistic antics videotaped and photographed themselves torturing prisoners to the point of total abjection of all concerned, would be the logical extension of such practices as regularly grace fear factor. time to eat the worms, boys and girls! for badiou, saint paul represents the figure par excellence of the militant radical subject in its relationship to the declaration of truth. badiou calls him “the poet-thinker of the event” (sp ). this is because saint paul proposes truth procedures that are antinomian— against all established law—and anonymous—no group identity pre- owns the truth: hence, precisely, “a subject without an identity, a law without support” (sp ). saint paul subtracts identity per se from the law of the roman empire in the subject’s relationship to preestablished truths of any kind, whether of a jewish or hellenistic sort. here is, again, how badiou puts it: paul’s general procedure is the following: if there has been an event [designated as such, “christ is risen!”] and if truth consists in declar- ing [it] and then in being faithful to this declaration, two conse- quences ensue. first, since truth is evental, or of the order of what occurs, it is singular. it is neither structural, nor axiomatic, nor legal. no available generality [such as empire of any kind] can account for it, nor [can it] structure the subject who claims to follow in its wake. consequently, there cannot be a law of truth. second, truth being inscribed on the basis of a declaration that is in essence subjective, no pre-constituted subset [or group] can support it; nothing communi- tarian or historically established can lend its substance to the process of truth. [that is,] truth is diagonal relative to every communitarian subset; it neither claims authority from, nor (this is obviously the most delicate point) constitutes any identity. it is offered to all, or ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ t h e c r y o f i t s o c c a s i o n ” �� addressed to everyone, without a condition of belonging being able to limit this offer or this address. (sp ) badiou does not accept the fable of christian salvation history that saint paul uses to fill out the form of these truth procedures. his interest is not in the particulars of doctrine but in the relationship of the subject to its truth. can the subject, without cowardly resorting to physical violence, universalize it or not? badiou does have his own theory of “grace,” as the secularization of the infinite, but that will have to become my subject on another occasion. i will suggest in my conclusion, however, that the revolutionary artist and this subject’s “cry of its occasion” may best incarnate such a “graceful” infinitude. as an example of these truth procedures at work, i want to present a famous passage from saint paul about the law’s relation- ship to transgression. this comes from saint paul’s most influential letter, the epistle to the romans: i would not have known wrongdoing if it were not for the law. for, i would not have known desire if the law did not say, “you shall not desire.” but wrongdoing, taking its opportunity through the commandment, effected in me every desire. for apart from the law, wrongdoing is dead. and without the law i was once alive, but when the commandment came wrongdoing sprang to life, and i died, and the commandment—the commandment issued for life—this was found to be for me a commandment for death. for wrongdoing, tak- ing its opportunity through the commandment, deceived me utterly and through it killed me. . . . for what i am effecting, i do not know. for what i want—that’s not what i do; but what i hate—that’s what i do. and if what i don’t want—that’s what i do—then i say “yes” to the law, and agree it is fine. and now it is no longer me effecting this, but the wrongdoing that lives in me. for i know that the good does not live in me, i mean in my flesh. for to want it, that is close to hand, but to effect what is fine—that is not. for i didn’t do what i want, the good; but what i don’t want, the bad—that is what i do. and if what i don’t want—that’s what i do—then it is no longer me that is effecting it, but the wrongdoing that lives in me. so i find the law, for me who wants to do what is fine—i find that for me what is bad ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s �   is close to hand. i share the delight in the law of god, in my inner person; but i see another law in my members, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner in the law of wrongdoing which is in my members. what a wretch am i! who will deliver me from the body of this death?—but thanks be to god through jesus christ our lord! there is now no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus. for . . . the spirit of life in christ jesus has freed [us all] from the law of sin and of death. (romans : – ) saint paul speaks in anguish and joy here about the conflict between laws: the old law of moses, which determines the mind, and the law of transgression (wrongdoing, or “sin”), which determines the flesh, the body, and its unruly members. and he does this speaking as if in his own voice, making his own case the great prototype of all possible cases, assimilating to this figure of himself in his text the biblical archetypes of moses and adam in the process. (i cannot help hearing prophetic echoes here, too, of freud and foucault, among others, on the unconscious, repression, and the ironic law of trans- gression.) saint paul, i believe, is internalizing, incorporating, incarnating, in the persona of this address—an address offered to the roman converts, mostly gentiles, but also to all and sundry pagans and jews—the central conflict between the law (any law) and that which it produces: the materials of purely reactive transgression, the unruly members of the flesh, “the body of this death.” neither mind alone, nor body alone, nor mind and body together, can suffice for authentic existence—they only grant, alone or together, the terrible anguish of total self-abjection. only the entirely uncanny third term and being, the spirit (or “grace”), may grant this gift of a new creation in one- self. the spirit is the unruly phantasm (or specter) of the body of this death transformed, transfigured, in the twinkling of an eye, into the new sign of life (“grace”) by the repeated anxiety for the real. this is why he can refer to his own private travails as the creative gift of grace. these travails, like that of a woman in labor, constitute a potential representative giving birth to himself, thanks to the pen- etrating power of the spirit. in this public confession of his private sufferings, in other words, saint paul unveils in his own person the ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ t h e c r y o f i t s o c c a s i o n ” �� liberating truth of this new faith: “there is now no condemnation for those who are in christ jesus. for . . . the spirit of life in christ jesus has freed you from the law of sin and of death.” the spirit of life joyfully transcends not only the jewish law (or any such law) but in the grace of the spirit the very idea of law itself. in badiou’s mathematical formulation, as the reader will recall, the subject of truth emerges always from a particular situation whose state (often maintained by the state, in the big sense) contains what is missing from its elements in a form analogous both to the null (or empty) set and to the infinite set in set theory. this “void” or impos- sible “infinitude” emerges out of the particulars, even the peculiari- ties, of a specific situation. experienced as the real of this situation, a subject arises in “fear and trembling,” in a condition of radical anxiety or terror, to which as its real this subject seeks to maintain its fidelity. as such, this subject prophetically declares the truth of the event as the event of truth appropriate to the initial situation, even if necessarily constructed and recognized as being so, retroactively, by posterity. all symptoms, as seen from the perspective of the dominant order of society or that of a person’s routine fantasies, are marks of veracity and fidelity to such truth, its stigmata. the visionary proc- lamation of the subject of truth is at once an authentically discursive and bodily gesture: saint paul’s “vision” from romans would be, for badiou, a good case in point of an essentially visionary literary discourse. according to him, the discourse of politics, science, art, and love provides the raw materials for what he calls “the sutures” that philosophy requires to compose itself into the source of poten- tially universal truths. we can distinguish each age in the history of philosophy by what it chooses to use as the primary material for its “suture.” our age, so far, has been sutured by the faux art of terror. the problem with our current global culture of multicultural minority identities, as badiou has declared, is that hardly any sub- ject feels at all empowered by its imaginary identifications to attempt to universalize, solely by means of its proclamations and existen- tial witnessing, what it takes as its truth. the result has been that the supposed truths of the subject are automatically recognized and confessed to be self-justifying fictions of one person or group. the conditions—material and cultural—of the world-system remain the ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  default position of all. this is true of everyone, it would seem—even terrorists whose activities are not intended, after all, to win over others to their traditional beliefs but rather to eliminate others from the ranks of modernity and its regimes of power, even as they take assiduous enjoyment in that modernity’s determining technologies and commodities. the “truth” of terrorism is therefore a purely negative, horrifically literal, self-destructive fiction: it doesn’t uplift the other or oneself; it blows both of them up. according to frank lentricchia and jody mcauliffe in crimes of art and terror, avant-garde artists, from wordsworth to stock- hausen, espouse a similarly perverse negative fiction of their radical formal visions, to the point where they too express a transgressive desire for the apocalyptic destruction of western culture—i say “too,” meaning that these artists share this fundamental transgres- sive desire with terrorists, whether homegrown like the unabomber, or bred abroad: from romanticism to modernism, these [avant-garde] movements consciously presented themselves as revolutionary and sought to shake up—and even overturn—the order of the west. we find that disturbing events of violence and terror—including the events of september —are in many ways governed by a logic that grows out of romantic tradition, as life imitates art with a vengeance and real terrorists take their inspiration from books. transgressive desire is again and again on display: encouraging us to reexamine our presup- positions about our artistic heritage and, above all, challenging our easy assumption that art is something good and at worst benign. it is, then, no wonder that the psychology of anxiety cannot help defining the daily lives of people. i want to propose that, given the rule of the ideology of terrorism under global capitalism, anx- iety must saturate the field and horizon of existence to such an extent that no possibility of change can even begin to be imagined without invoking anxiety. consequently, we all become like swim- mers treading water over twenty thousand fathoms, or like saul in the anguished instant before he sees the light of the real and thereby becomes paul. anxiety, of course, is the affective response to the sense of trauma ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ t h e c r y o f i t s o c c a s i o n ” �� or its imminent, if unspecified, approach. we know this from freud’s last major work on the subject, inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety ( ). as inspired by trauma, anxiety is the experience of helpless- ness in the face of the sudden emergence of unpredictable and over- whelming stimuli, whether from without or within, whether experi- enced individually or communally in groups. we may call this form of anxiety the event of anxiety. as in the homeopathic treatment of severe allergies, a little dose of such signal anxiety may go a long way to a cure or at least to being a therapeutic palliative. although freud officially lays to rest in this book his earliest psychoanalytic conception of neurotic anxiety as the transformation of excess libido (due to repression) into anxiety, i want to retain it, if only for the idea of the transformation of an excess of one thing into something else, as a partial therapeutic release. this would then be the third type of anxiety, anxiety as a partially transforma- tive safety-valve mechanism: currents of energy become like released gases (sublimations) of some kind. (whether such partial sublima- tions are repressive forms or not, or just the psychic equivalent of breaking wind, i am leaving open at this time.) we can reasonably conclude from this, i think, that the vent of anxiety as trauma directly refers to the present; the prospect of anx- iety, or signal anxiety, would refer to the future; and anxiety as this magical safety valve would reference the past, as a dimension where unwanted levels of tension have built up and are demanding release. this insistent call for release would be either (according to freud’s disavowed theory) via sexual activity or via any of its elementary substitutes, including dispersing quanta of anxiety via symptomatic displacements of one sort or another, like hysterical diarrhea or vom- iting. as uncannily predicted by kierkegaard and phenomenologically demonstrated by heidegger, anxiety, for freud, too, is thus deeply entangled with the human experience of temporality as an essen- tially objectless horizon of uncanny dread. the latest discussions in empirical/psychobiological circles, surprisingly enough, concur with such a conclusion, as found in psychoanalytic and phenomenological theories, namely, that there is a deep connection between anxiety and the traumatic experience of time. naturally, the present form of anxiety, event anxiety, in its sense of helplessness, does refer to the past, the past of infancy, when we ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  were all helpless, as well as to the subsequent repetitions of such feelings of helplessness, up to the emergence of the latest moment of event anxiety. similarly, anxiety as a prospective signal addresses not only the future but the very idea of becoming itself, as any kind of change or new emergence, and, as such, strongly alludes to the present (and its immediate past) as continuing static conditions that the organism desperately strives to maintain. finally, anxiety as a magical safety valve looks forward to or anticipates a future as a return to homeostasis and to a present of mounting excitation, as well as to a past as the repeated run-up to such a present situation. i have sketched out this anatomy of anxiety to argue that anxiety (in any or all of its forms) is, in the post- / world, now being called “terror.” terror, of course, has been elicited for a long time as a response to horror, via gothic tales and movies, and has been analyzed and exploited by everyone from edmund burke to alfred hitchcock, just to name a few of the more respectable figures. but terror, when occasioned by violently radical political acts, is what anxiety, with its newly emergent global reach, most prominently and immediately has become for us in our post- / world. in other words, terror and terrorism now constitute “a geopolitics of anxiety.” in sum, anxiety, in its three forms of traumatic event, prospective signal, and magical safety valve, is so entangled with temporality as it is experienced by human beings that it must appear in over- lapping linear and nonlinear ways, simultaneously, which means its structure cannot be easily mapped. this problem with representing anxiety, which freud’s book largely and repeatedly demonstrates, according to editor james strachey, makes discussing analytically its latest political manifestations as “terror” extremely difficult. as is always the case when dealing with anxiety, then, one must return to it. badiou, in a journal entry dated april , , pub- lished recently, develops lacan’s conception of anxiety by relating it to the super-ego via the bizarre phenomenon of the subject’s helpless power of anxiously preceding itself. badiou thus focuses on lacan’s revisionary analysis of anxiety in relationship to the real of the super- ego. here is lacan on the super-ego, as cited by badiou: the super-ego is at one and the same time the law and its destruc- tion. as such, it is speech itself, the commandment of law, in so far ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ t h e c r y o f i t s o c c a s i o n ” �� as nothing more than its root remains. the law is entirely reduced to something, which cannot even be [fully] expressed, like the you must [of the pure imperative], which is speech deprived of all its meaning. it is in this sense that the super-ego ends up by being identified with only what is most devastating, most fascinating, in the primitive expe- riences of the subject. it ends up being identified with what i call the ferocious figure, the figures which we can link to primitive traumas the child suffered, whatever these are. the subject experiences anxiety in relationship to this ferocious figure of the super-ego, whose law is a meaningless blank of pure infinite commandment: you must. badiou argues that because the super-ego gives access to the force of law as it fashions the law’s own power to destroy itself, it then is “the first sign of the eternal precedence of the subject to itself” (ld ). this sign of the super-ego is the often-paralyzing signal of anxiety, with respect to all the subject’s possible futures. the engulfing real of this infinite prospect of pure futurity invades the subject like a smothering presence without any openings. badiou cites lacan again, this time on anxiety proper: anxiety is a crucial term of reference, because in effect anxiety is that which does not deceive. but anxiety may be lacking. in experience, it is necessary to canalize it and, if i may say so, to take it in small doses, so that one is not overcome by it. this is a difficulty which is similar to that of bringing the subject into contact with the real. (ld ) badiou then further comments on lacan’s theory of anxiety at some length, as follows: anxiety is the result of the submersion by the real, of the radical excess of the real over the lack [of desire in the symbolic order]. it is [thus] the destruction of the symbolic network by what reveals itself, here in the opening, of the unspeakable encounter. [consequently] it is necessary to channel anxiety’s effect, since it destroys the adjust- ment to the repeatable. it short-circuits . . . the subject [into] the real. anxiety, then, is the sign of that which in the subject forces [the site of the law’s own self-overcoming]. as lacan says beautifully, anxiety is ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  nothing but the lack of the lack. but when the lack comes to lack, its metonymic effect is interrupted and a real loss has to start, which is paid for with the ravaging of all symbolic points of reference. hence anxiety never lies. destruction must meet the law of lack in order to sweep away deception, the semblant, and the oblivion of oblivion. the super-ego, in so far as it is the ferocious figure, reveals the illegal- ity of the law, as it mandates the absolute absurdity of the you must haunting the subject as its truth of being. (ld – ) anxiety signals the subject’s recognition of this self-destructive tran- scendence of the law over itself. the subject experiences the self-can- cellation of the law as an encounter of the overwhelming presence of the real, the lack of the lack. this lacking lack is what is not lacking when interpellation into the symbolic order is securely if repeatedly in place. with “the ravaging of all symbolic points of reference,” however, the subject stands open to the experience of the event of its truth, which it then may declare and offer to all. this “unspeak- able encounter” may arise intrapsychically, as the ego’s confronta- tion by the ferocious figure of the super-ego, but also (and in adult life usually at the same time) as one subject’s truthful experience of another subject in real love: the ultimate “unspeakable encounter.” of course, the global market culture, the contemporary symbolic order, exists with its imaginary fetishistic commodities precisely to foreclose on the real possibility of such an event of truth for the subject. consequently, when what is foreclosed upon by the symbolic order returns in the real, it must be the literal “ravaging of all sym- bolic points of reference,” as in the apocalyptic terrorism of modern art and politics courageously discussed by lentricchia and mcauliffe in their crimes of art and terror. the avant-garde artist and the sui- cidal terrorist, in the context i have been constructing, may thus be seen as the imaginary and symbolic instances (respectively) of what lacan has called “the ferocious figure,” which the super-ego cuts for the anxiety-ridden subject of modernity. the contemporary terrorist impersonates “the ferocious figure” for us. badiou, in these journal reflections from , goes on to discuss how the subject may productively appropriate (via analysis) the expe- rience of the real, so as to give birth to a new, even revolutionary, order. “the excess-of-the-real,” he declares, “detached [by and in ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ t h e c r y o f i t s o c c a s i o n ” �� analysis] from its obscure readability in the truth of anxiety, must be able to stretch the symbolic order and not simply to replace what functions as the out-of-place” of the lawless law (ld ). presum- ably, by such sensitive but firm stretching, one may insert the truth of the subject, arising out of the faithful declaration of the event of the real, which is offered to all—not for purposes of the profitable exchange of goods and services, but instead for the purely creative giving’s sake. rather than exploding a bomb as one’s truth into the global order of modern culture, therefore, the subject of truth pres- ents to all who are willing to receive it its witnessing to “courage,” the graceful gift of such giving, without any reservations, inserting thereby its newly invented proclamation into the matrix of contem- porary communications. out of its repeated anxiety for the real, the subject may live as if each moment were the end of the world or the time of its new birth. this is not, i think, a bad thing, for it can become the real basis for any good that may happen. that is, we can become authentic witnesses to our own proclamations of the spirit of life’s repeated triumph over the always-imminent threat of death. but all this self-transformation, of course, requires personal as well as collective courage, according to badiou, a virtue that the present age ridicules, when it doesn’t ignore it. courage, for him, is putting anxiety to work: courage is the non-subjection to the symbolic order at the urging of the dissolutive injunction of the real. arising in response to the excess-of-the-real, courage is identical to anxiety, but as [an abso- lutely] disruptive [if creative] force. . . . through the disruption of communication, courage brings disorder into the symbolic, whereas anxiety is simply the invocation of death. [courage as strength of mind] relates to the true. the true is the result of a deficiency in the symbolic produced by the [merely transgressive] thrust of the real. from this deficiency the subject derives its force, which is pro- portional to the measure of its courage in the face of the radical absence of any security. in this [sensitive] situation, the subject loses its name. . . . [security] de-subjectifies. . . . [security] is not a virtue, but rather the sign of subjective impotence. anxiety results from the [ferocious] deficiency of the place [in the symbolic order], while courage is the [delicate] assumption of the real by which the place is ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t o n e | t h e c r i t i c a l a p p a r a t u s ��  productively disrupted. anxiety and courage share the same causal- ity in a reversible order. hence a political subject comes into being only by giving rebellion a revolutionary value, by tying destruction [anxiety] to reconstruction [courage]. it will become apparent in the real that every order and every legal injunction, however stable they may seem, end up internally dividing themselves. the other must let itself be [gracefully] divided into an unknown other that it never was, and into a same whose identity it had never [repressively] prescribed. (ld – ) in the admittedly somewhat dark light of badiou’s rather gnomic declarations here, i would like to conclude by suggesting that the “unknown other,” which the “other must let itself” first “be [grace- fully] divided into,” is, in fact, what he himself terms in his later med- itation on saint paul “a subject without identity”; and that the “same of this other, “whose identity” the other “had never [repressively] prescribed,” is “a law without support.” the array of multicultural minor identities put on display in the global marketplace and their spectral shadowing antithetical doubles, the revolutionary avant- garde artist or the radical suicidal terrorist, all cancel themselves out anxiously and equally in the sudden and unpredictable emergence of the “unknown other,” singularly declared in the subject’s coura- geous proclamation of its truth of imaginative witness, a truth that is offered to all. in other words, rather than anxiously domesticating terror in the sublime prospect of global terrorism, which the security forces of global capitalism may subdue to its repressive purposes, we can instead see that such terror may become what wallace stevens, another poet-thinker of the event, already envisions modern poetry as, namely, “the cry of its occasion”—or, in short, the subject of truth itself: the poem is the cry of the occasion, part of the res itself and not about it. the poet speaks the poem as it is, not as it was: part of the reverberation of a windy night as it is, when the marble statues are like newspapers blown by the wind. he speaks ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ t h e c r y o f i t s o c c a s i o n ” �� by sight and insight as they are. there is no tomorrow for him. the wind will have passed by, the statues will have gone back to be things about. the mobile and the immobile flickering in the area between is and was are leaves, leaves burnished in autumnal burnished trees, and leaves in whirlings in the gutters, whirlings around and away, resembling the presence of thought, resembling the presences of thoughts, as if, in the end, in the whole psychology, the self, the town, the weather, in a casual litter, together, said words of the world are the life of the world. this whole psychology of self, its “words of the world” that are “the life of the world,” does not constitute what slavoj Žižek recently has prophetically invaded against, some “total availability of the past to its subsequent retroactive rewriting.” instead, the self’s “casual litter” of emotionally invested letters constitutes what Žižek proclaims as “the real of a traumatic encounter whose structuring role in the subject’s psychic economy forever resists its symbolic rewriting.” in our other terms, that is, the terror in global terrorism is the hard truth of the subject. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm part two t h e 	 l i t e r a r y 	 c u l t u r e 	 o f	 g l o b a l 	 a m e r i c a ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm �� t h e 	e m e r g e n c e of what i call “global america” coincides with the emergence of american literature during the antebellum, so-called american renaissance, period. as many critics and scholars have remarked, literature in the american context develops at the expense of other genres of writing, such as national narrative, local-color tall tales, romance, chronicles, etc. literature defines itself as such in dialectical opposition to, and critical negation but also sublimation of, these other modes of writing. during this time, and following the romantic example of late-eighteenth- and earlier-nineteenth-century britain and especially germany, imaginative writing sets itself off as a separate world whose internal logic of self-reference apparently takes precedence over its referential power with respect to the social and historical worlds in which it appears. i say apparently because in fact literature constituted as a separate world nonetheless acts as a critique of its time and place by its very existence and its often- critical reflection of and upon the world of its origin. ralph waldo emerson plays a central role in this constitution of american literature. he does so because he demonstrates most clearly and powerfully the logic of vision that informs this emer- gence, and nowhere does he perform his demonstration more pow- global	america	and	the logics	of	vision � ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a ��  erfully than in his famous essay, “experience.” in this essay, more than others, emerson invents what i call global america. i take this position knowing full well it stands opposed by the present-day american studies establishment. what “experience” demonstrates, precisely, are the morbid pre- conditions for the birth of this figure of global america. nothing less than the death of the capacity to be in relationship with people and objects around one that can penetrate and pervade the imaginative being of oneself are required if the ideas of “experience” are to be enacted. “experience” demands nothing less than the death of the power to love. emerson candidly exhibits this precondition with his admission that with the death of his son and namesake waldo, “two years ago,” he had expected, as such a costly price, to be brought “into the reality.” i understand his “reality” to mean a deep-seated and penetrating passion. instead, as fits with all the examples in this essay of the illusory nature of the world and its apparently determi- nant forces, this experience of the death of his son only proves that “souls never touch their objects,” much as bodies, as modern science shows, never touch each other either ( ). here is the famous pas- sage in which emerson confesses his discovery of this first principle of a terrible logic: in the death of my son, now more than two years ago, i seem to have a beautiful estate,—no more. i cannot get it nearer to me. if tomorrow i should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principal debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me,—neither better nor worse. so it is with this calamity: it does not touch me: something which i fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar. it was caduceus. i grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature. the indian who was laid under a curse, that the wind should not blow on him, nor water flow to him, nor fire burn him, is a type of us all. the dearest events are summer-rain, and we the para coasts that shed every drop. nothing is left now but death. we look to that with a grim satisfaction, saying, there at least is reality that will not dodge us. . . . ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | g l o b a l a m e r i c a a n d t h e l o g i c s o f v i s i o n �� what emerson displays here is the first principle of a logic of vision that constitutes both american literature as such and what i call global america. it is the “state of mind,” as william blake might put it, that permits capitalism, imperialism, and dreams of manifest destiny to flourish with more or less a good conscience. the american dream may very well begin with the acceptance of this awful self-recognition: i may practice bad faith with a good conscience, since this is the way i am and the way all people are. it is this failure to love, due to a fundamental defect in the capacity of a person to love, that fuels the ideology of the self-made radical individualist, whether in american business, literature, or imperial politics. the second principle of this dialectical logic of vision is the sur- plus value derived from the refusal (really the inability) to mourn; this results in the experience of a rebirth of oneself as a visionary, whether prophet or entrepreneur. the death of love as a possibility repeatedly fosters the birth of the self and its “authentic” vocation as a visionary creator and not a passionate sufferer. here is the passage from “experience” that spells out this principle: when i converse with a profound mind, or if at an time being alone have good thoughts, i do not at once arrive at satisfactions, as when being thirsty, i drink water, or go to the fire, being cold: no! but i am first apprized of my vicinity to a new and excellent origin of life. by persisting to read or to think, this region gives further sign of itself, as it were in flashes of light, in sudden discoveries of its profound beauty and repose, as if the clouds that covered it parted at intervals, and showed the approaching traveler the inland mountains, with the tranquil eternal meadows spread at their base, whereon flocks graze, and shepherds pipe and dance. but every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. i do not make it; i arrive there, and behold what was there already. i make! o no! i clap my hands in infantine joy and amazement, before the first opening to me of this august magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sun bright mecca of the desert. and what a future it opens! i feel a new heart beating with the love of a new beauty. i am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable america i have found in the west. ( ) ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a ��  the difference between emerson’s vision here and horatio alger’s is that emerson wants to retain his innocence by passively experi- encing the vision, a vision of “the ideal journeying always before us,” that he now says has become identified, largely though his own prophetic nomination, with “america.” as we see, emerson appro- priates as his imaginative property—to compensate for the loss of his son-estate, perhaps—both the elysian fields of the greeks and the mecca of islam. in spatializing cultural history imperialistically, then, emerson demonstrates once again that he experiences reading another mind and thinking alone as the same thing. he makes what appears to be a relation into evidence of a rapacious self-identity. he then places this new version of the transcendental ideal, which does penetrate him and provoke his lover’s ardor because it is him- self in another guise, in the west of america. clearly, this west may in fact be located anywhere, as it is a place of thought, a place in thought, a conceptual and rhetorical topic that will become fully in our time what i call global america. and rather than simply saying emerson compensates for the death of his son by refusing to mourn and then uses this surplus of libido to fund his new version of the ideal as if giving birth to his son anew in the guise of this ideal, i think it is more accurate to say that emerson performs the rebirth of his self-love, more maniacally intense, in the project of “this new yet unapproachable america.” the new heart he feels beating is his own. he has become his own father-mother-son, and another name for that imaginative monster would be global america. this is the logic of vision in american literature in its purest form. even such a sophisticated and ironical figure as henry james feels the pull of emerson’s visionary logic. and in his early resistance he will reveal how emerson’s apparently provincial nationalistic vision underpins liberal urbane cosmopolitanism, which is also clearly indebted to european intellectual sources and visions of world lit- erature. in a letter to thomas perry ( ), the young henry james exhibits a combined hegelian/goethean/emersonian confidence in being an american: we young americans are . . . men of the future. i feel that my only chance for success . . . is to let all the breezes of the west blow ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | g l o b a l a m e r i c a a n d t h e l o g i c s o f v i s i o n �� through me at their will. we are american born. . . . i look upon it as a great blessing; and i think that to be an american is an excel- lent preparation for culture. we have exquisite qualities as a race, and it seems to me that we are ahead of the european races in the fact that . . . we can deal freely with forms of civilization not our own, can pick and choose and assimilate and in short (aesthetically etc.) claim our property wherever we find it. to have no national stamp has hitherto been a regret and a drawback, but i think it not unlikely that american writers may yet indicate that a vast intel- lectual fusion and synthesis of the various national tendencies of the world is the condition of the more important achievements than any we have seen. i bring in henry james to stress that for american intellectuals of the period, the freedom of aesthetic or imaginative appropriation of (or affiliation with) other cultures and nationalities, for whatever promising purpose of would-be liberation, depends for its very con- ceivability upon the logic of vision articulated by emerson. as james puts it so well, “we can deal freely with forms of civilization not our own, can pick and choose and assimilate and in short (aesthetically etc.) claim our property wherever we find it.” to be fair to james, soon enough he recognizes the foolishness of this cultural project of producing “a vast intellectual fusion and synthesis of the various national tendencies of the world” under the hegemony of “we young americans.” in an essay, “m. turgenev,” james appears to reverse himself and recognize the irre- ducible reality of the larger world, and its particularly inescapably worldly dimension, as a fact of struggle and not facile aesthetic appropriation. actual experience makes for the basis of an ethics of greater consciousness and understanding: life is a battle. . . . [t]he world as it stands is no illusion, no phan- tasm, no evil dream of a night; we wake up to it again for ever and ever; we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. we can welcome experience as it comes, and give it what it demands, in exchange for something which it is idle to pause to call much or little so long as it contributes to swell the volume of consciousness. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a ��  in this there is mingled pain and delight, but over the mysterious mixture there hovers a visible rule; that bids us learn to will and to seek to understand . . . . much of james’s subsequent fiction may be seen in light of this dif- ferent appreciation of the world and of experience. in focusing on what donald pease calls “emersonianism,” i do not want to leave the impression that this logic of vision is the only one. for one brief but familiar example we can turn to william butler yeats, who follows blake, if not freud, to see a mode of vision that, while largely individual, takes a different turn than those of emerson or james. in “per amica silentia lunae” ( ), the poet climbs to the waste room alone and must chew over “the bitter crust” of some remnant of his youthful vision in hopes of inspiring himself to new visions. this leads to yeats’s most famous pronouncement about the visionary process: “i shall find the dark grow luminous, the void fruitful, when i realize i have nothing, that the ringers in the tower have appointed for the hymen of my soul a passing-bell.” here, the visionary logic turns back on the visionary and is internalized, producing the recognition that experience is tragically penetrating and entails inescapable loss, and that is, as nietzsche would say, a matter of amor fati. it is not to be denied or compensated for by mad projects for world transformation. this is comparable to the truth event in badiou, understood as a singular vision of a new multiple set breaking into experience. the subject of this truth event is collective and constitutes itself only via the various truth processes worked out among the members of the collective over time in the joint effort to preserve and develop fidelity to, and rational conviction about, the truth event. to spell out why i think it is necessary to confront and critique “emersonianism,” by which i mean the logic of vision in american literature and culture as i have laid it out here, i would point to the continuing fiasco, beyond tragedy, in iraq. the pattern is clear: the refusal to accept catastrophic loss ( / ) and internalize it, incorpo- rating it into a more humane personal and/or cultural super-ego, so that it may act both as a check on the narcissistic drive (evidenced so clearly in the passages from emerson discussed previously) and as a humanizing force in one’s relationships with others, perfectly ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | g l o b a l a m e r i c a a n d t h e l o g i c s o f v i s i o n �� captures the mindset of george w. bush and his closest advisors. the elective, preemptive military “adventure” in iraq is precisely the discovery, yet again, of “this new yet unapproachable america,” but this time as if found uncannily in some “sunbright mecca of the desert,” in an insane neo-conservative wet dream that in arrogant ignorance overlooks the realities of the region, its peoples and their histories, and indeed of the larger world generally. in declaring this, i do not mean to suggest that this mindset is necessarily coincident with bush’s and his advisors’ psychologies at every point, or even in most points. rather, i am suggesting that via the operation of education, popular culture, and all the usual apparatus of modern u.s. culture, there is available to anyone what blake would call a “state” that one can enter and pass through, or get stuck in and cling to for security’s sake. this “state” is less a hegelian “spirit of the age” than what pierre bourdieu terms a “hab- itus,” what foucault calls “a disciplinary practice,” or what i would simply name, after its ubiquity in popular culture, “the american dream.” for reasons of history, economic reality, and personal devel- opment (or lack of same), “emersonianism” is one such “state” and in our moment the preferred “state of the state.” by both exposing emerson’s logic wherever and whenever it appears in american lit- erature and culture, and by setting forth the opposing logics, some of which i have just mentioned, we practice both a literary politics and a literary ethics that can hopefully help in time to change the educational apparatus, and through that change to some extent the media apparatus. what i have in mind can be indicated by a passage that i will con- clude, from robert stone’s riveting memoir remembering the s, prime green: what i will never forget [about visiting ken kesey, his family, and friends—the band of “merry pranksters” stone knew so well—in mexico in ] is the greening of the day at first light on the shores north of manzanillo bay. i imagine that color so vividly. . . . in the moments after dawn, before the sun had reached the peaks of the sierra, the slopes and valleys of the rain forest would explode in green light, erupting inside a silence that seemed barely to contain it. when the sun’s rays spilled over the ridge, they discovered dozens of ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a �   silvery waterspouts and dissolved them into smoky rainbows. then the silence would give way, and jungle noises rose to blue heavens. those mornings, day after day, made nonsense of examined life, but they made everyone smile. all of us, stoned or otherwise, caught in the vortex of the dawn, would freeze in our tracks and stand to, squinting in the pain of the light, sweating, grinning. we called that light prime green; it was primal, primary, primo. to me, the importance of such a passage as a counterforce to the logic of vision in emerson (and through him generally in american culture) lies not in the suggestion, following william wordsworth, that love of nature leads inevitably to love of man, but that this vision of prime green is a vision of being, of the real. whatever its sub- lime dimensions, it is essentially experienced as a penetrating beauty whose force and transcendent power chastens and inspires stone and the community of “merry pranksters” there in mexico over forty years ago. the loss of this vision, however, inspires no violent proj- ects of displacement and denial, of sublimity. instead, the state of mind in this passage is one clearly of continuing joyful love. at the risk of courting sentimentality, one that stone’s austere style gently controls here, i would want such a logic of vision to supplant that which has haunted american literature and culture from emerson’s time at least to the present moment. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm  �� a s 	 i 	 e l a b o r at e 	throughout empire burlesque: the fate of critical culture in global america, abjection is a technical, theoretical term and concept in julia kristeva’s revisionary feminist post-lacanian psychoanalysis. i will not on this occasion repeat my critical elabora- tions of abjection, sparing you the often-dark intricacies of mucking around in our more abstruse psychic exfoliations and excretions. i know that may spoil the fun for some of us, but instead of that course, i will take another by discussing my position on criticism with broader accessible examples to underscore my point, i hope, with more immediacy. strangely enough, two scenes from arnold schwarzenegger films, last action hero ( ) and true lies ( ), hover over my fol- lowing reflections as i do so. the first scene, from last action hero, is that of the figure of death, from ingmar bergman’s classic the seventh seal ( ), coming out of the film and stepping off the screen into the movie theater while the audience runs, literally, for its life. the second scene, from true lies, is that of arnold schwar- zenegger flying his jet into a skyscraper trying to rescue jamie lee curtis from the islamic terrorists who plan to fire nuclear missiles at miami. the time of the reagan and first bush administrations is a fertile one for such fantasy images that return to us in the real, with on the post- / allegory in american studies america,	the	symptom � ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a �� a twist, sometime later, as they so clearly do on / . and now to my assignment. while i borrowed the main title of empire burlesque from a album of that same name by bob dylan, i coined the phrase “global america” in the book’s subtitle of the fate of global america. (i took from emerson my sense of “fate” as an ever-diminishing expression of human agency.) what did i mean by “global america”? i meant and still mean the horizon of possibility defining the present moment and its foreseeable future in the planet’s human history. within this fateful horizon, critical culture, that is, the culture of intellectuals adverse and resistant to the hegemony of any one national power, would now and hereafter, for some time to come, have to operate, for better and for worse. global america, therefore, is a figure for the admittedly diminished prospects of criticism. by identifying the international processes of globalization, which include the resistances to, as well as the collaborations with, my figure of global america, i am not assuming anything permanent about the actual position of the united states, whatever its military prowess has been. i recognize now, for instance, that the country has become drastically weakened geopolitically and in terms of its cultural influence, due to the foreign policy disasters of the bush administration. nonetheless, my view is that the global cultural stage upon which we all must play is increasingly situated as a sensational scene of self-abjection, as if simply to appear publicly requires us to perform a pole dance in the strip club of criticism, or whatever is your equivalent figure for the lowest common denominator of popular tastes. perhaps your figure for such tastes might run to the personal blogs of would-be leading critics detailing their every daily movement? the assessment i made when empire burlesque came out in and that i still make today is this: the prospects for criticism are not good. as i see it, the economic processes connected with globalization have reduced criticism to a broad parody of itself and its oppositional gestures, on the model of the global phenomenon apparently most suited to our benighted time: professional wrestling. as in wrestling, criticism has its latest baby faces or heroes, and its old heels or hard- core villains, the ubiquitous slogans and catchphrases, the predict- able finishing maneuvers, all done under the transparent guise of one ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | a m e r i c a , t h e s y m p t o m  �� or another identity theme—the barbwire baseball bat–wielding lone cowboy, the nasty foreign menace (or heroic postcolonial victim), the sleazy ladies’ man, the demented, fire-throwing maniac, the cross- dressing ass man, the femme fatale, goth or punk, or the femme (or butch) diva, and so on. and throughout this reduced scene of criticism i tried to offer the elements of a (self-)critique and in terms that might have the potential for transforming the entire game and playing another one with different rules, however utopian that pros- pect seemed then (or seems now). most of empire burlesque thus explores the emerging rules of this reduced game of globalized criti- cism as it developed from to , attempting to bend those rules or even break open the game, by making what we do available for other, more serious critical purposes. in the introduction to empire burlesque, i put into play the term “authentic gimmick.” this term comes from the first of mick foley’s three memoirs of his life as a professional wrestler. according to foley, the authentic gimmick is the distinguishing trait of a wrestler’s performance based on some feature of his or her actual personality that his adopted persona exaggerates into an identity marker like a brand name. so while foley (as cactus jack, one of his three wres- tling personae) is not really from truth or consequences or new mexico, nor has he served time in jail for manslaughter, his high-risk daredevil antics, like letting himself be thrown off a twenty-foot-high steel cage onto a tv announcers’ table in a hell-in-a-cell match with the undertaker in , compose a hyperbolic performance of his aspiration to such bizarre subjectivity. these daredevil antics, in short, help largely to define his authentic gimmick. by inserting this term into the critical context of identity politics, i hoped both to make use of such a context and to burlesque it, insofar as such poli- tics play into the representative corporate culture of global america with its too-often empty multicultural political correctness. it was after empire burlesque appeared in early (but com- posed nearly two years before) that i began studying closely the philosophy of alain badiou. i came to his work via my reading of jacques lacan and his commentators and was moved by the event of / to examine his thinking. the apparently “impossible” had happened—the united states had been attacked at home, right in the symbolic heart of its financial and cultural modernity—and that ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a �� “impossibility” made me feel that the prospects of criticism had to be projected upon the basis not of the merely possible, but upon that of the “impossible” too. what captured me in badiou was his theory of truth, which is all about the “impossible” infinite coming to pass in and as authentic history. the real theoretical advantage of badiou lies precisely in his posi- tion on truth. truth, for him, is not a matter of correspondence between a statement and a state of affairs, such as “it is raining,” when it is; nor is it a matter of the internal coherence of statements made about something, such as the axiomatic definitions of geo- metric figures; nor is truth, as it is for nietzsche, a matter of the lie or fiction we have forgotten or never admitted to ourselves is a lie or a fiction, such as the myriad of dead metaphors in language or the love we feel for another but have never fully acted on. as for heidegger, so for badiou: truth is an event. but unlike heidegger, who declares that truth is the unveiling of being that appropriates us via the poet’s creative saying or the philosopher’s formative thinking, badiou describes truth as an event subtracted from being, which for him is the indifferent infinities of multiples upon multiples that make up mathematics. for badiou, mathematics alone is the bleak ontology of being; so truth, in this unusual context, is then the explosive event of the void haunting being suddenly, unexpectedly, and impossibly manifesting itself as a contingent hole in established knowledge. the sequences of youth revolts all around the world in —in france, in czechoslovakia, in china, in the united states, etc.—are examples of the truth event. in order to understand even better what badiou means by the truth event, we have to focus on how human beings experience existence in terms of situations. a situation, as we have seen, is the presenta- tion of being within the human horizon. a situation therefore pres- ents a multiple of elements composing a set. each set of elements has a state of knowledge, what badiou calls its “encyclopedia,” which inventories the set’s members. a set is composed of those elements belonging to the set and those fully included as members of the set. to be included as a member of a set is to be a part incorporated into a subset of the set, and so to be counted officially. to belong to a set just means that the elements in question have been presented by the situation but not integrated by the count into the set as a represented ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | a m e r i c a , t h e s y m p t o m  �� subset. the state of the situation refers to the operation of counting as members all those elements that count for that state based on the encyclopedia of knowledge for that situation. this vicious circle of knowledge explains why truth must appear as the impossible inter- ruption of all established logics. thus, what a situation presents and what is represented as the situation by the state are never the same thing. such a gap between presentation and representation in any situa- tion is its constitutive void. the state of the situation then generates many names from the established encyclopedia of knowledge to cover over this void. these are contradictory or antagonistic names, whose lack of determinate meaning continues to haunt the situation with semantic and ontological instability. (the original “three-fifths of a man count” in the constitution that defined the slave is a good case in point.) the truth event happens when the void founding the situation and inadequately covered over by organized knowledge and its con- ventional names is experienced by those living on the void’s edge—i will call them “the purely abject”—as incommensurate with any and all of these official names. it is then that the void can irrupt into the situation through the purely abject’s newly self-empowered subjective agency for their naming the void in their own terms, thereby exposing the situation to the conflict between presented and represented ele- ments that the state has tried to cover up and suppress. the truth event is always fleeting and often fragile, even if it inspires impressive sequences of fidelity to it. the civil war and the civil rights move- ment are instances of this explosive truth event and its consequent sequences of fidelity that punch holes in the state of current knowl- edge for the situations of their respective times. in this light, is / , for the perpetrators, a truth event? according to badiou, it is not. this is because a truth event always has as a consequence a truth procedure attached to it, that is, a declaration bearing witness to the truth of the event as such, and although the bush administration attributed / to osama bin laden and his fol- lowers, no one formally took responsibility for the event in a state- ment, which for badiou is essential to any truth procedure following a truth event. otherwise, what appears as the irruption of the truth event is actually just the latest form of nihilism. whether the truth event occurs in politics, art, science, or love—the four domains of ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a �� truth that philosophy coordinates and clarifies critically—the con- sequent truth procedure incorporates a discourse of witnessing that thereby defines the existence of the subject of that truth. the best example of this relationship between truth event and truth procedure and statement is, according to badiou, saint paul, because paul’s discourse of sacred mystery dispenses, in one fell stroke, with the discourses of jewish law and classical philosophy, without resorting to a purely mystical discourse. but there are other examples badiou repeatedly deploys, including the russian revolution and vladimir lenin’s writings (politics), the invention of symphonic musical form and its aesthetics or arnold schoenberg’s twelve-tone scale (art), the theories of special and general relativity (science), and the discovery and revision of psychoanalysis in freud and lacan (love). given badiou’s requirements, for those who car- ried it out but remained silent as death about their reasons for it, / cannot be a truth event. but can it be one for “us,” its sufferers; that is, for those of us who have borne its effects and testify to them? are we already, or can we yet make up, the post- / american subject, and if so, will that make a difference in what we mean by “american” and also what we mean by criticism? is there a discern- ible truth of the / event for all its victims, or not? an admittedly evident way to think about / is that it brings home to americans that ours is not an exceptional nation, ordained by history or providence, to act in the world apparently with per- petual immunity, thanks also in part to our geographic protection by two oceans. ours, in the words of john ashbery’s title to his latest book of poems, is “a worldly country,” not a virgin land impervious to what the rest of the world is open to all the time. neither a shining city on the hill nor a legendary byzantium, america is both of and in the world, for better and for worse. as such, the post- / global america is a symptom of the state of the world system. to understand more fully what i mean by this formulation, we must take a digression into lacan’s theory of the symptom. in seminar : le sinthome, lacan gives his pithiest definition of the drive. it is “the echo in the body of the fact of speech” (“c’est l’écho dans le corps du fait qu’il y à un dire”). a drive arises then in the act of speaking. it inhabits the body as a repeated echoing, a constant force of reverberation, moving ceaselessly (as long as it can) ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | a m e r i c a , t h e s y m p t o m  �� into an open-ended future within the matrix of the symbolic order and the narcissistic mirages of the imaginary. as such, the drive, in the act of a saying, is a rendering of the real, a writing, an inscription of the voice, in and upon the self-invaginating surface of the body. the drive does not ever not write, as lacan reminds us, rehearsing that primal saying marking the subject of the signifier. the drive is a writing of the letter that in principle is endless, infinite, carrying the eternity or immortality effect, like the longinian sublime. this infinite writing is a visionary figuration of the real simultaneously transcending and disclosing the limits of symbolic representation. such a sublime writing is located in an entirely self-referential scene of instruction, an antimimetic dramatic act of saying—a pure perfor- mance of the real. the symptom of this drive-propelled inscription, an echo of the necessary fiction of a primal saying, is thus inherently theatrical and figurative, productive of a theatre of trope, and, in its formal embodiment, capable of being turned to use by the artist as an aesthetic support of his or her psyche, as lacan shows in james joyce’s case. the symptom in joyce, now revised into le sinthome by the art of the letter, becomes a supplemental structure suturing the wobbly borromean knot of the three registers of the real, the sym- bolic, and the imaginary. that is, the power of revisionary naming transforms the painful compromise formation of the symptom into the new structural principle of jouissance that lacan christens le sinthome. i want to suggest that global america after / has become just such a symptom/sinthome dyad. insofar as we publicly and repeat- edly disavow all the evidence demonstrating the fiction of american exceptionalism, we will see returning to us in the real of world system the symptomatic, unconscious truth of our situation. but insofar as we avow this symptom of global america, we can make use of this figure sinthomatically to tie together our traumatically disarranged psychic agencies (after / ) into a new supplementary pattern open to the truth of the u.s. position in the world. in light of this double- edged possibility, we can read anew older texts by american writers, as well as appreciate new texts in unpredictable ways. although set in england, “the beast in the jungle” ( ) by henry james can be and has been read as expressing james’s sense of his father’s fateful sense of anticlimax. certainly, the haunting of ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a �� its male protagonist by the visionary figure of his own creation, “the beast in the jungle,” as symbolic of his sui generis destiny, recalls both the author of the tale’s feeling of distinction and, even more so perhaps, henry james senior’s famous scene of “vastation,” when he was literally haunted by a monstrous hallucination for days and nights on end during his son and namesake’s early childhood. more- over, i would suggest that the idea of infinite exceptional promise infinitely deferred in its realization is a theme memorably explored in emerson’s classic essay “experience” ( ). in short, james in this tale has sounded an american and personal theme, regardless of the locale of the setting. “the beast in the jungle” is a tale about a man whose symptom, ironically enough, is that he is exceptionally unmarked by any symptom. that is to say, john marcher passes for the perfectly normal man, even as he manifests narcissism so terrible in its iso- lating deception that he is totally unaware of its existence, and other people exist for him only insofar as they serve his interests. he is obsessed with the idea that his unmarked status is a sign that he will have been marked before he dies by some distinction so unexpected and unprecedented that, like freud’s psychotic jurist schreber, he awaits its advent with a meticulous watching for the tiniest sign of such exceptional election. joined in this curious adventure by may bartram, marcher passes the better part of his life in her company, in which they share together his evident folly. so intimate do they appear to be that even marcher recognizes that she often seems to be looking with him through the public mask that he wears, his gaze and hers being, at such times, as if one. despite such apparent intimacy, however, when on the eve of her death, marcher grills may relentlessly about what it is she now seems to know about his fate, he fails to see in the sick woman’s gestures all the obvious signs of her love. she then collapses back into her chair from this climactic effort to illuminate marcher as to his fate of being inca- pable of true love. what they have called “the beast in the jungle” of his fanciful ever-coming distinction is now confirmed as being, ironically enough, that he is, of all his generation, the only one to whom nothing significant will have happened, for he will remain unmarked by and impervious to any passion. marcher fails again to realize this awful truth now, which the reader sees all too vividly. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | a m e r i c a , t h e s y m p t o m  �� all that marcher knows is that after her imminent death he will be left alone to his own devices. once may does die, he goes global, circling the globe in a des- perate attempt to fill up his life. on his return, however, he begins frequenting the cemetery, this “garden of death,” as he calls it, where she lies buried, and this ritual comes to replace his visits to her in life ( ). one day he has an uncanny vision of his present self walking arm in arm with his younger self, around the gravesite that may’s spirit establishes as the fixed point, with her spectral gaze confirming the continuous identity of marcher’s two selves: [h]e seemed to wander through the old years with his hand in the arm of a companion who was, in the most extraordinary manner, his other, his younger self; and to wander, which was more extraor- dinary yet, round and round a third presence—not wandering she, but stationary, still, whose eyes, turning with his revolution, never ceased to follow him, and whose seat was his point, so to speak, of orientation. thus in short he settled to live—feeding only on the sense that he once had lived, and dependent on it not only for a support but for an identity. ( ) marcher’s narcissism stages this imaginary tableau perfectly if insen- sitively at the gravesite, attempting thereby to evade the reality of death it ritually memorializes. because the figure of the beast in the jungle has repeatedly stitched together marcher’s psyche and his rela- tionship with may, having been his avowed symptom and symbol, “muse” and “demon” are apparently equated by this tableau. the beast itself does at last make its climactic appearance at the tale’s end. after seeing the passion of loss in the face of another man who comes to visit his recently deceased wife, marcher realizes what is missing from his response to may and to his life generally: the ravages of any true passion. trying desperately to turn this very insight itself into a real passion, the attempt sickens him virtually at once, and he collapses, losing his focus on anything other than the state of his own feelings. as he collapses onto the gravestone, however, he glimpses, with full awareness, just before he turns to hide his eyes in his arms again, the figure of the beast in the jungle spring at last: ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a � the horror of waking—this was knowledge, knowledge under the breath of which the very tears in his eyes seemed to freeze. through them, none the less, he tried to fix it and hold it; he kept it there before him so that he might feel the pain. that at least, belated and bitter had something of the taste of life. but the bitterness suddenly sickened him, and it was as if, horribly, he saw, in the truth, in the cruelty of his image, what had been appointed and done. he saw the jungle of his life and saw the lurking beast; then, while he looked, perceived it, as by a stir of the air, rise, huge and hideous, for the leap that was to settle him. his eyes darkened—it was close; and, instinctively turning, in his hallucination, to avoid it, he flung himself, on his face, on the tomb. ( ) the precision of thrust and hesitation in this dramatic prose raises this scene of instruction to the level of visionary poetry. “the beast in the jungle” concludes with this ironic apocalypse of its pathetic protagonist, whose final plight provides the text in which he persists with le sinthome tying together the imaginary, symbolic, and real registers of its subjective formation. neither a symbol of any one character or idea, as may might be for marcher, nor a fantasy of the author, however much its vehicle is marcher’s hallucination, this figure of the beast in the jungle springing upon him through the air performs the allegory of any possible reading of the text it formally holds both together and open. “the beast in the jungle” is james’s sublime figure for the vision of modern literature that overcomes the subject not strong enough to accede to its terrifyingly infinite drive of the real. as we can see even at the end here, what for the character func- tions as a symptom of fatal waste can become for the critical reader the sublime basis of the healing sinthome. moreover, what the reader now sees, much as may previously saw, comes through the character’s eyes, and as we see the beast in the jungle as well as the character’s fate, we also see then as the author does, that it hovers upon the air generally, returning from its psychic hideout to the real of the situ- ation the tale establishes, a phantasm of personal apocalypse once shared by two (marcher and may) and, as a cautionary tale, pre- sented now to all. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | a m e r i c a , t h e s y m p t o m  �� as we have seen, a strong model in american literature for any such apocalyptic (self-)illumination is the passage in emerson’s “experience” where he observes “the mode of our illumination” by the visionary moment. like the truth event, this moment comes to us without calculation, in pure contingency, even as it tells of the truth that inhabits our experience, however broken, bereaved, or isolated. here is the key passage when, for emerson, symptom becomes sin- thome, as a dreaded fate becomes, for him in the central passage of his “experience,” a beloved joy—but at a tragic cost: “i feel a new heart beating with the love of the new beauty. i am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable america i have found in the west” ( ). just as the beast in the jungle springing into the air in james’s tale initiates the would-be-exceptional marcher at last into the common world of human experience, so too does / , truly experienced, serve to do so for any latter-day exceptionalist american marchers in our global world. thus, emerson provides us with the direction to go from here, to transform our trauma into a creative occasion of imaginative rebirth, by reading, listening, thinking, rather than rashly acting and ignoring or disavowing our feelings and those of others. for us, following emerson’s lead here, we may give birth to ourselves at last (or, perhaps, once again), provided we, unlike him, do not sacrifice the power to love to the quest for reason. it is in this context that i want to conclude by discussing the sig- nificance of jonathan lear’s radical hope: ethics in the face of cul- tural devastation. although / is never specifically mentioned, we can infer its absent “beast-in-jungle” phantasmal presence symptom- atically haunting such remarks as the following, from the opening: “we live in a time of a heightened sense that civilizations are them- selves vulnerable. events around the world—terrorist attacks, vio- lent social upheavals, and natural catastrophes—have left us with an uncanny sense of menace” ( ). ironically, though, among academic professionals, lear’s book has been read either in terms of identity politics or as a purely liberal cautionary tale about how we in the west should understand those civilizations our capitalist modernity threatens in so many ways. however, when i taught this book to my students at temple university in a senior english major capstone ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a �� seminar (“d. h. lawrence’s ‘america’”), they read the book almost entirely for how it spoke to their fears inspired by / . i find this split in response telling, as i will try to demonstrate. lear’s radical hope tells the story of the crow indian chief, plenty coups, and his practical understanding of and response to his people being forced onto the reservation and having to give up their way of life as hunters and warriors for the settled life of farmers. something plenty coups said at the end of his life, that after the buffalo were mostly wiped out and he and his people were forcibly confined to the reservation, “after this nothing happened,” provides the text for lear to interpret ( ). the cultural devastation or culture death that the crow experienced centers on their symbolic act of planting the coup stick. this is a wooden spear decorated with feathers and scalps used to mark the boundary between the territory of the crow hunters and that of any rival for that territory. because the crow people’s entire way of life, for all the tribe’s members, is defined by such com- paratively elementary ritualistic acts, once they are on the reservation, confined to a farming life, planting the coup stick for them can no longer mean anything; it is as if their lives have come to an end, not only psychologically but ontologically. that is, once the historically defined schemas that form their sense of space and time, inform their imagination, and pervade their recognition of the world have been abolished, the crow are without anchoring concepts, principles, and values to make even rudimentary sense of experience. they are adrift, at sea, like the undead aboard some ghost ship. lear goes on to argue that plenty coups, by making use of the resources of his tradition, was able to lead his people to survival, albeit in diminished circumstances, but to survival nonetheless. unlike sitting bull, whose courage takes the form of rashness in his radical opposition to the u.s. government and military, or the many indian scouts whose courage in performing their duties was in the service of collaboration to ensure their own personal survival, plenty coups’ courage sought primarily to serve his people’s survival on their own land. (lear develops this aristotelian golden mean schema of virtue to generalize plenty coups’ example beyond the specific or “thick” terms of his life into a broader, “thinner” concept that, he hopes, can be put to many uses in often quite different contexts.) specifically, what plenty coups does is to make use of his tradi- ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | a m e r i c a , t h e s y m p t o m  �� tion’s myth of the “chickadee,” the little bird that is a trickster figure in crow storytelling. plenty coups goes into the woods and has a dream-vision, in which this bird instructs him to observe, listen, and learn enough of the ways of others to allow plenty coups to serve as a chief who can lead his people to survive, admittedly in reduced circumstances, but at least with a somewhat renewed form of their culture. “radical hope” is then the courage to act in the face of cul- ture death amid all the persistent uncertainty of not even being able to envisage the full shape of the good such hope may help to bring about. like keatsian “negative capability” for the poet, but even more dire and indeterminate, radical hope can empower a person or a people and their culture to live on, anew. the professional response to the book has seemed odd to me. either, as in the humanities reading group at temple, academics such as lewis gordon (philosophy), rebecca alpert (religion/women’s studies), and steve newman (english) read it simply in accord with the one-dimensional themes of their own identity politics as a pro- vincial “bad” liberal white man’s self-serving racialist manifesto; or, as in charles taylor’s following remarks from his review essay for the new york review of books, the book comes off as a worldly “good” liberal’s cautionary tale for the west: what do i take away from this short, illuminating book? my own version of radical hope applied to very different circumstances. like the version lear attributes to the crow, this starts with a devastating realization: that the emergence of a world civilization, highly unified economically, politically, and in communication, has exacted, and will go on exacting, a tremendous human cost in the death or near death of cultures. and this will be made worse because those who dominate modern civilization have trouble grasping what the costs involve. ( ) taylor has already stipulated that our modern civilization is far dif- ferent from the crow culture, in terms of what constitutes the fund of basic elements of concepts and principles defining the respective peo- ples. we are “richer” in that respect, with more resources to draw on than simply planting the coup stick. but we are richer, according to taylor, also in terms of the comparative flexibility of self-identity our ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a �� civilization possesses and endorses, as opposed to that of the strictly hunter-warrior culture of the crow. in fact, we now encourage young people to assume the possibility of having to develop many different subjectivities over their lifetime, for the economy will require them to perform many jobs in the future. in this “liberal” differential context, here is the rest of taylor’s version of radical hope: [my own radical] hope comes from lear’s account of crow society: that human beings can find the resources to come back from a virtual dead end, and invent a new way of life in some creative continuity with the one that has been condemned, as the crow did in embrac- ing settled agriculture. the hope is “radical,” because it is virtually impossible to say beforehand what the hope of this new kind of life will be. this has to emerge in specific new forms, drawing on the particular cultural resources of each society. there is no general for- mula, except utterly empty, formal ones, like: “find a novel solution from within your own traditions.” the notion that there could be a how-to manual for this kind of creative initiative is close to absurd. in spite of that, a powerful stream of thought and policy in our society persists in thinking in such hortatory ways. there is, for example, the notion that so-called experts can be dispatched to teach societies that have been living for centuries under authoritarian rule how to become democracies. some even think that it’s obvious how to do this—just hold elections. all people, we are told, desire “freedom”; we just have to remove the bad guys who are stopping them from having it. the naïve, destructive rhetoric of the bush administration is an extreme case, but many less crude versions of the same idea underpin western policies of development. . . . this is what makes lear’s well-written and philosophically sophisticated book so valuable. as a story of courage and moral imagination, it is very powerful and moving. but it also offers the kind of insights that would-be builders of “new world order” desperately need. ( ) well, i don’t know what i find worse: my professional colleagues at temple reading lear’s book habitually in terms of their opposi- tional identity themes; or taylor reading it patronizingly as a liberal cautionary tale for president bush and his neoconservative policy ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | a m e r i c a , t h e s y m p t o m  �� makers and executors eventually to have fathomed and gotten on board with. i think i prefer instead what my twenty-two- or twenty-three- year-old students, from very diverse “global” backgrounds, had to say. whether they referred to / in detail or some other manmade or natural catastrophe as they read the story of plenty coups and the crow people, they saw that story as continuous with their own american contexts and identities now and into their new, yet ever radically unknown, futures. that is, they saw their cultural devasta- tion (that of the crow people) as a potentially prophetic version of our (u.s.) “impossible” truth event, as signaled and announced by / . my students were reading lear, in other words, like the “chick- adee.” / had opened up a symptomatic hole in their conventional knowledge so that they could experience the truth event of cultural devastation in its most terrible, because universalizable, infinitude. given global america’s real situation we all, too, should be unceas- ingly hearing death hovering in the mid-air of our lives, even as we recall, perhaps, among other things, one of wallace stevens’s most resourceful late poems about such creative responsiveness, “large red man reading” ( ), written at the dawning of the atomic age and in the face of his recent diagnosis of the cancer that would kill him. there were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases, as he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae. they were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more. there were those that returned to hear him from the poem of life, of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them. they were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality, that would have wept and been happy, have shivered in the frost and cried out to feel it again, have run fingers over leaves and against the most coiled thorn, have seized on what was ugly and laughed, as he sat there reading, from out of the purple tabu- lae, ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a �� the outlines of being and its expressing, the syllables of its law: poesis, poesis, the literal characters, the vatic lines, which in those ears and in those thin, those spended hearts, took on color, took on shape and the size of things as they are and spoke the feeling for them, which was what they had lacked. ( – ) to be completely fair to stevens, i must add in conclusion that no one knows for sure what he meant by “large red man reading.” it could be, of course, the once common epithet for a native american or the indian; but it could also be one of his most favorite and central figures, that of the solar wheel, a whitman-like celestial vagabond- clown here reading the auguries of the sky and future fates, as the day fades from blue to purple tabulae. this would fit with the volume this poem appears in, the auroras of autumn ( ). but the figure could also be, as one of his letters suggest, how he felt he must have looked during a reading at the front of the room, as the princeton audience begin to leave, looking back at him as his now hoarse voice somehow grew a bit louder and hastier. in any event, this cosmic image of the prophetic reader just may be his (and now our) most appropriate critical figure for the “little chickadee” of chief plenty coups. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm �� i 	 w i l l 	 s e l e c t 	 for my point of departure a quotation from “the brown stocking,” the famous last chapter on virginia woolf, in mimesis, erich auerbach’s magisterial study of the history of rep- resentation in western literature. this chapter fulfills, figuratively speaking, with a gentle irony the promise of his even more famous opening chapter on homer, “odysseus’ scar”: what takes place here in virginia woolf’s novel [to the lighthouse] is precisely what was attempted everywhere in the works of this kind . . . that is, to put the emphasis on the random occurrence, to exploit it not in the service of a planned continuity of action but in itself. and in the process something new and elemental appeared: nothing less than the wealth of reality and depth of life in every moment to which we surrender ourselves without prejudice. to be sure, what happens in that moment—be it outer or inner processes— concerns in a very personal way the individuals who live in it, but it also (and for that very reason) concerns the elementary things which men in general have in common. it is precisely the random moment which is comparatively independent of the controversial and unstable orders over which men fight and despair; it passes unaffected by them, as daily life. the more it is exploited, the more literature and everyday life our	worldly	apocalypse � ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a �� the elementary things which our lives have in common come to light. the more numerous, varied and simple the people appear as subject of such random moments, the more effectively must what they have in common shine forth. in this unprejudiced and exploratory type of representation we cannot but see to what an extent—below the surface conflicts—the differences between men’s ways of life and forms of thought have already lessened. ( ) auerbach goes on to worry that what he judges to be a relatively common event, this random moment of imaginative insight, this new universal of everyday life that is revealed by modern literature’s worldly realism and that stands beyond or apart (to some degree) from the political wars and conflicts of the times—that this practice of everyday life will likely become, in its turn, subject to the great simplification of a reductive regime of mass consumer culture. this will be, for auerbach, writing at the end of world war ii, either an american or a stalinist global order—an order to replace those other totalitarian ones just destroyed. however rueful his—and our—awakening to this baleful historical prospect may be, auer- bach has progressively revealed in mimesis this worldly apocalypse of everyday life, as i will call it. this literary vision is fully realized, for auerbach, in to the lighthouse’s mrs. ramsay sewing her son james’s brown stocking, with her unguarded expression making her face appear to be the most beautiful and the saddest face anyone has ever seen. it stands in counterpoint to odysseus’s faithful maidservant recognizing her master by the manly scar he obtained from the noble hunt. and auerbach argues that this imaginative representation of the everyday world has progressively become (naturally with setbacks along the way) the subject of literature from homer to woolf. certainly, this ironically stated “hebraic” vision of auerbach’s immediately dis- closes to us its romantic, hegelian, vichian, and generally enlighten- ment provenance. my point in jumping off from this vision is not to elaborate on all its features or to perform a critical genealogy. nor is it to demonstrate self-contradicting beginnings and take the legs out from under auerbach’s delicately made argument. rather, my point is to offer a viable and sturdy rationale for the future of english studies, which for me, at this time, means the future of literary studies. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | o u r w o r l d l y a p o c a l y p s e �� much work has been done on the idea of “everyday life.” one of the best recent books on the subject is michael sheringham’s everyday life: theories and practices from surrealism to the present. and we know or have heard of the names of everyday life’s influential and diverse thinkers, such as erving goffman, michel de certeau, and perhaps even such names as georges perec and eric santner. of the more famous and influential names, such as charles baudelaire, sigmund freud, and martin heidegger, we have heard, perhaps, over- much. but i prefer on this occasion to stick with auerbach’s formula- tion of everyday life, given previously, with its emphasis on the fugitive or contingent moment of individual imaginative perception, grounded in the worldly reality of a people as they live their daily lives: “it is pre- cisely the random moment which is comparatively independent of the controversial and unstable orders over which men fight and despair; it passes unaffected by them, as daily life” ( ). auerbach’s formulation of this event of the random moment in mimesis can be read as an aesthetic moment, a piece of bourgeois ideology, or even a postmodern sublimity, avant le letter. given my immersion in alain badiou’s work, i could assimilate auerbach’s random moment to badiou’s theory of the truth event. but, along with auerbach’s best commentators, edward w. said and paul a. bové, i prefer not to make such moves of assimilation, finding greater critical virtue in the more open-ended turns of phrase in auerbach’s well-informed but sinuously articulate and qualifying prose. the indelible details of imaginative life arise in their sharp lucidity in the still-warm ground of such essayistic creation. similarly, but with an even keener edge, a long paragraph from the middle of john cheever’s great novel about prison life, falconer, provides me with a surprisingly detailed and even mundane represen- tation of the basic situation of the modern subject that literature—as the pleasurable performance of critical judgment—addresses: farragut found his sense of time and space somewhat imperiled. he owned a watch and a calendar and his surroundings had never been so easily catalogued, but he had never faced with such deep apprehension the fact that he did not know where he was. he was at the head of a slalom trail, he was waiting for the train, he was waking after a bad drug trip in a hotel in new mexico. “hey ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a � tiny,” he would shout [to the guard], “where am i?” tiny under- stood. “falconer prison,” he would say. “you killed your brother.” “thanks, tiny.” so, on the strength of tiny’s voice, the bare facts would return. in order to lessen this troubling sense of otherness, he remembered that he had experienced this [profound disorientation] in the street as well. the sense of being simultaneously in two or three places at the same instant was something he had known beyond the walls. he remembered standing in an air-conditioned office on a sunny day while he seemed, at the same time, to be standing in a shabby farmhouse at the beginning of a blizzard. he could, stand- ing in a highly disinfected office, catch the smell of a woodbox and catalogue his legitimate concerns about tire chains, snowplows and supplies of groceries, fuel and liquor—everything that concerns a man in a remote house at the beginning of a tempest. this was a memory, of course, seizing someplace in the present, but why should he, in an antiseptic room in midsummer, have unwillingly received such a memory? he tried to track it down on the evidence of smell. a wooden match burning in an ashtray might have provoked the memory. ( – ) what makes this experience of radical dissociation so disturbing for farragut is that the temporal and spatial dissemination is more dis- persed in this internal exile of falconer prison, and the power of the sensuous image even greater, than they were for “marcel” in proust’s in search of lost time. “[farragut] had been skeptical about his sen- sual responsiveness ever since he had, while watching the approach of thunderstorm, been disconcerted by a wet and implacable erec- tion” ( ). nonetheless, cheever goes on to note, farragut feels he must explain this radical dissociation, or at least tie himself down to the bare coordinates of the present moment, in order to resist success- fully becoming dispersed into the involuntary memory—images of his past that he has a hard time distinguishing from such facts. if he could explain this duality by the smoke of a burning match, he could not explain that the vividness of his farmhouse memory deeply challenged the reality of the office where he stood. to weaken and dispel the unwanted memory, he forced his mind beyond the office, ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | o u r w o r l d l y a p o c a l y p s e � � which was indeed artificial, to the incontestable fact that it was the nineteenth of july, the temperature outside was ninety-two, the time was three-eighteen and he had eaten for lunch scallops or cod cheeks with sweet tartar sauce, sour fried potatoes, salad, half a roll with butter, ice cream and coffee. armed with these indisputable details, he seemed to scourge the farmhouse memory as one opens doors and windows to get the smoke out of a room. he was successful at establishing the reality of the office and while he was not truly uneasy about the experience, it had very definitely raised a question for which he had no information at all. ( ) what cheever, via his protagonist farragut, registers is that auer- bach’s worry about the great unification and simplification of everyday life, under the regime of consumer or mass culture, did not work out quite the way he anxiously foresaw. the great unification and simplification remain specters of the failure of homogenizing processes of globalizing modern culture. these failures are the built-in inefficiencies of any process of assimilation, but at least some of them result from personal and group resistances—political, social, racial, sexual, and so on—which are connected to what, for purposes of brevity, i will allude to here as “the counter-culture.” finally, and most worrisome of all, glo- balization depends, indeed thrives, on such an amalgam of inertial and differentiating processes for its successful operation. cheever’s own belated, painful coming out, which the novel falconer partially realizes, can readily serve as one connection to these mixed effects of the radical upheavals of the s and early s. in this complicated light cast by my auerbach and cheever exam- ples, we can see that literature is clearly related to the great unification, simplification, and differentiation processes of global consumer cul- ture, which the current american imperial order attempts to supervise and discipline; and just as clearly, literature is also related to the many resistances to these very processes. literature apocalyptically dis- closes, demonstrates, dramatizes, and yet also composes the spatially and temporally dispersed subject of everyday life. ironically enough, then, literature, with its imaginative visions of the random moment or event, brings out of the background and into the foreground “the incontestable details” of that life, which, as henry james famously ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a � � put it, “cannot not be known.” as auerbach remarks, such details constitute “the process of formulation and interpretation whose sub- ject matter is our own self” ( ). and as auerbach, anticipating cheever, puts it, this subject is not part of a totally coherent order, though in part of the world it certainly is, because, in said’s words, glossing auerbach, there is “not one order and one interpretation, but many, which may either be those of different persons or of the same person at different times; so that overlapping, complementing and contradicting yield something that we might call a synthesized cosmic view or at least a challenge to the reader’s will to interpretive synthesis” ( ). i take this challenging “cosmic view” to be the summary yet never total vision of a faithfully provisional “last” critical judgment about a text and its world that a community of different readers, or the different readings of one person, make up out of the fragmentary yet ever reverberating passages of our lives as (self-)readers. the future of english studies, of literary studies, for me, is continually learning and in my turn bearing witness to the incontestable details of this synthesized cosmic view, which is standing as a challenge to any reader’s will to that total order of final “interpretive syn- thesis,” which would as such mirror the containing order of “global america.” “life	englobed”:		on	the	american	subject the following lines occur near the end of the first section of john ashbery’s poem “self-portrait in a convex mirror,” and demon- strate, i believe, the fierce resistances to all such reflective totali- ties: and just as there are no words for the surface, that is, no words to say what it really is, that it is not superficial but a visible core, then there is no way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience ( ) these lines recall from earlier in the first section the more celebrated, sublimely put, declaration of the problem: ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | o u r w o r l d l y a p o c a l y p s e � � this is what the portrait says . . . there is in that gaze [of parmiginano] a combination of tenderness, amusement and regret, so powerful in its restraint that one cannot look for long. the secret is too plain. the pity of it smarts, makes hot tears spurt: that the soul is not a soul, has no secret, is small, and it fits its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention . . . it is life englobed. ( ) in glossing these lines, i will be treading a path made by harold bloom and lee edelman in their excellent readings of ashbery’s mas- terpiece. in addition, many other critics over the years have shaped my general appreciation for ashbery’s artistry of self, including and especially charles altieri, whose latest book, the art of american poetry: modernism and after, continues brilliantly to contribute to my understanding of ashbery. when i read the stark, prosy formulation, “the problem of pathos vs. experience,” the ultimate reference for me is not wallace stevens from his discussion of the self in “the man with the blue guitar,” nor one of walt whitman’s innumerable discussions from “song of myself,” but ralph waldo emerson’s two deliberately separated but still dialectically interrelated paragraphs from “experience” ( ). my license for such a leap comes from ashbery himself in his poem, as he reminds himself and us that “no part / remains that is surely you” ( ). the first of these emersonian paragraphs testifies to the essen- tially superficial nature of all our experiences. although we might willingly “even pay the costly price of sons and lovers,” should that give us purchase on “the reality” of our experience, not even the loss of his son, his namesake, introduces emerson into such passionate grief. emerson discovers and confesses a preternatural lack of con- tact between subject and object, subject and other subject. while scientific analogies clarify, no amount of poetic thinking can reduce it to his understanding: people grieve and bemoan themselves, but it is not half so bad with them as they say. there are moods in which we court suffering, in ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a � � the hope that here, at least, we shall find reality, sharp peaks and edges of truth. but it turns out to be scene-painting and counterfeit. the only thing grief has taught me, is to know how shallow it is. that, like all the rest, plays about the surface, and never introduces me into the reality, for contact with which, we would even pay the costly price of sons and lovers. was it boscovitch who found out that bodies never come in contact? well, souls never touch their objects. and innavigable sea washes silent waves between us and the things we aim at and converse with. grief will makes us idealists. in the death of my son, now more than two years ago i seem to have a beautiful estate,—no more. i cannot get it nearer to me. if tomorrow i should be informed of the bankruptcy of my principle debtors, the loss of my property would be a great inconvenience to me, perhaps, for many years; but it would leave me as it found me,—neither better nor worse. so it is with this calamity: it does not touch me: something which i fancied was a part of me, which could not be torn away without tearing me, nor enlarged without enriching me, falls off from me, and leaves no scar. ( ) as we have seen, emerson is not testifying here to the pathos of trauma and mourning; rather he is saying that in the death of his son, in that death of love, he thought he might have found that pre- viously missing depth of feeling, of loss, of passion. while he hoped to have been in contact with a piercing reality, what has instead been confirmed for him is the experience of his essential separate- ness, as pater would say, “the impenetrable wall of personality” sur- rounding him. i believe that emerson is living, as ashbery puts it, à la parmigianino’s and his own self-portrait, a “life englobed.” such a life bears witness to a small soul whose secret is that its hollow holds no authentic soul at all, but only “our moment of attention” on its own substantially self-reflexive motion. like samuel beckett’s aural self-portraitist, krapp, that pure drive motion can be reduced to a delight in the tastiness of a single, symptomatic word, such as “spool.” however that may be, when we read this paragraph from emerson not in isolation but in concert with the later paragraph from “expe- rience” in which our hero discovers “the new yet unapproachable america . . . in the west,” we find, as stanley cavell has beautifully ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | o u r w o r l d l y a p o c a l y p s e � � written, a new founding of the nation. this second founding is a definition of america as both the space or place or scene of self-cre- ation and the subject so created, whether that scene and self are actu- ally “found in the west” of north america or not. i stress this point because the american subject of my title living its “life englobed” is in fact now a global subject. it is that subject whose power of suffering may not constitute a passion but whose experience of the world, precisely because of its superficiality, is always at the ready when “the moment of our attention” pauses in its perpetually self- renewing postures of reflection. i would like also to cite the second of those two emersonian para- graphs that i think ashbery is commenting on in “self-portrait in a convex mirror.” after reminding us, via another scientific analogy (from sir everard home’s work on the growth in the womb of the embryo) that “life has no memory” and does not follow a linear march of progress, emerson suggests that “life” develops simultane- ously from many points, that is, develops globally; emerson concludes this paragraph with imagery that dramatizes his own self-birth. here, emerson becomes what he always already has been, his own father and son. this fact, more than any other about emerson’s personal coldness of temperament, explains the transcendental precondition that exists for him before all facts of experience: namely, that he, as a representative of the american subject, cannot have been affected passionately by his son’s death or by any loss, since the self he pos- sesses is not a property of any kind, but a quality, a motion, a self- renewing drive identical to the vision of the imaginative life itself: when i converse with a profound mind, or if at a time being alone have good thoughts, i do not at once arrive at satisfactions, as when being thirsty, i drink water, or go to the fire, being cold: no! but i am first apprized of my vicinity to a new and excellent origin of life. by persisting to read or to think, this region gives further sign of itself, as it were in flashes of light, in sudden discoveries of its profound beauty and repose, as if the clouds that covered it parted at intervals, and showed the approaching traveler the inland mountains, with the tranquil eternal meadows spread at their base, whereon flocks graze, and shepherds pipe and dance. but every insight from this realm of thought is felt as initial, and promises a sequel. i do not make it; i ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a � � arrive there, and behold what was there already. . . . i am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable america i have found in the west. ( ) i hear innumerable echoes here—of milton, wordsworth, shelley, byron, and blake—but i also detect the prefiguring of many to come, including among them ashbery’s previously cited formula, “the problem of pathos vs. experience.” ashbery’s “self-portrait in a convex mirror,” whatever else it is doing, is also casting a cold eye on the quintessentially american project of self-creation: the recognition of the death of love as pre- condition for the birth of the self. whatever emerson’s honesty in the matter may be said to be, out of shame alone, he and the american subject he would represent should just shut up, or at least be reduced to blank murmurings, like ronald reagan at the end. i think ashbery would agree: the hand holds no chaulk and each part of the whole falls off and cannot know it knew, except here and there, in cold pockets of remembrance, whispers out of time. ( ) time	out	of	mind “himself in anachron,” a sci-fi tale by cordwainer smith (a.k.a. paul linebarger), perfectly sums up what i have read auerbach, cheever, and ashbery as performing, what i call “the worldly apocalypse.” there is an explicitly cosmic dimension to it, too. originally, this contribution to the lords and ladies of the instru- mentality cycle was to be published posthumously in galaxy, the pulp magazine most supportive of smith’s work through the years. galaxy’s circulation troubles in the mid- s, which prompted its submission, also caused its publication to be postponed repeatedly until the magazine went out of business. the story was in draft form and was prepared for publication by smith’s second wife, genevieve, ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | o u r w o r l d l y a p o c a l y p s e � � who finally put it in the omnibus collection of his tales, the redis- covery of man ( ). it subsequently was published in when people fell ( ). it is essential smith and tells the story of tasco magnon and his new wife, dita, who on their honeymoon have undertaken a mission for the instrumentality into the mysterious knot of time. they are to gain there as much information as their instruments can garner about this curious knot, but despite their best calculations, their time-trav- eling vehicle is bearing too much weight. after ejecting as much of the ship’s contents as possible, even their food, they realize that one of them must make the leap into “anachron,” the realm in between the probabilities, from which no one has ever returned. this realm is the space beyond all imagination between one quantum probability of the breaking wave function and another in the sum-over history of infinite probability that collapses when one course is “chosen” to be realized, rather than some other, by the quantum foam of particles. from experiments in quantum mechanics, we still believe that this is what happens each time an observer in an experiment performs the experiment, but also, presumably, when one probable course of a particle appears rather than any other. tasco takes the flying leap in anachron and finds that he is “back- timing” ( ). from a gray impalpability to a worldscape moving backward in time, tasco snaps into the intensely paradoxical and painful experience of two times at one—that of his continuing pro- gression of bodily aging in his time-traveling suit even as he recog- nizes the panel of his history on this planet that the temple erected to him displays before it shows him arriving old and becoming young again, going back to the point of his birth as a shining god-like being in the amazed eyes of the people on this world. this is the case even as he moves inexorably to his old age and death and approaches his arrival point. that is, he is moving back in time, which is the time of his virtual death, to the point where the process of his growing younger and his birth into a god-like being for these people ironi- cally coincide with that moment of his death. the following passage presents both smith’s version of the american dream into self-birth into a god emerson celebrates and the tragic vision of the human cost of that dream james tragically critiques. as such, it encapsulates the post-human imagination, which now is materially realizing itself ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t w o | t h e l i t e r a r y c u l t u r e o f g l o b a l a m e r i c a � � every day, albeit in biogeneticsm not time travel and its self-over- coming in the persistent reading of the future of humanity, according to the humanist vision: he was still back timing. he had passed the time of his arrival and resurrection in this world. the resurrection was wisely prophesied by the beings who built the palace, painted the wings and halo around him. he would die soon, in the remote past of this civilization. long afterwards, centuries before his own death, his alien remains would fade into the system of this time-space locus; and in fading, they would seem to glow and to assemble. they must have been untouch- able and beyond manipulation. the people who had built the palace and their forefathers had watched dust turn to skeleton, skeleton heave upright, skeleton become mummy, mummy become corpse, corpse become old man, old man become young—himself as he had left the spaceship. he had landed in his own tomb, his own temple. he had yet to fulfill the things these people had seen him do, and had recorded in the panels of the temple. across his fatigue he felt a thrill of weary remote pride: he knew that he was sure to fulfill the godhood which these people had so faithfully recoded. he knew he would become young and glorious only to disappear. he’d done it, a few minutes or millennia ago. the clash of time within his body tore at him with peculiar pain. . . . the building glowed as it seemed to come nearer. the ages thrust against him. he thought, “i am tasco magnon and have been a god. i will become one again.” but his last conscious thought was nothing grandiose. a glimpse of moon-pale hair, a half-turned cheek. in the aching lost silence of his own mind, he called. dita! dita! ( ) if we answer such an imperative call, we become not sufferers of our impossible apotheosis but actors in the worldly apocalypse of our human tragedies. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm part three t h e 	 e x a l t e d	 s t a t e s 	 o f 	 r e a d i n g ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ��� “ t h e 	 s to r y 	 of a masterpiece” ( ) and “the liar” ( ) recount the same basic plot. an artist is involved in a romantic triangle. he paints a portrait betraying the true character of one of the other members of the triangle. the artist’s far-from- disinterested, rather ironic intention—resentment inspiring the appearance of art for art’s sake—is to paint a psychological mas- terpiece unveiling the other’s deceptiveness. in revenge for wounded pride, he seeks to hold up the woman or her new partner or per- haps both to public scorn. the familiar oedipal triangle’s final member (fiancé or husband) then destroys the all-too-successful picture by stabbing through it many times. in both stories the scene of the portrait’s ultimate destruction, unwittingly but inexorably caused by the artist himself, is described with a strangely intense pleasure, with what i would call, borrowing the phrase from “the liar,” “monstrous levity.” this affect and pattern, the more they are analyzed, will reveal a satanic paradigm. here, then, are the two climactic scenes in question: he looked about him with an angry despair, and his eye fell on a long, keen poniard, given him by a friend who had brought it in the east and which lay as an ornament on his mantel-shelf. he seized between realism and vision in henry james “monstrous	levity” � ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� it and thrust it, with barbarous glee, straight into the lovely face of the image. he dragged it downward, and made a long fissure in the living canvas. then, with half a dozen strokes, he wantonly hacked it across. the act afforded him an immense relief. (cs ) — • — at one and the same moment lyon perceived that the object [the captain] had seized was a small eastern dagger and that he had plunged it into the canvas. he seemed animated by a sudden fury, for with extreme vigour of hand he dragged the instrument down (lyon knew it to have no very fine edge) making a long, abominable gash. then he plucked it out and dashed it again several times into the face of the likeness, exactly as if he were stabbing a human victim: it had the oddest effect—that of a sort of figurative suicide. in a few seconds more the colonel had tossed the dagger away—he looked at it as he did so, as if he expected it to reek with blood—and hurried out of the place, closing the door after him. the strangest part of all was—as will doubtless appear—that oliver lyon made no movement to save his picture. but he did not feel as if he were losing it or cared not if he were, so much more did he feel that he was gaining certitude. his old friend was ashamed of her husband, and he had made her so, and he had scored a great success, even though the picture had been reduced to rags. the rev- elation excited him so—as indeed the whole scene did—that when he came down the steps after the colonel had gone he trembled with his happy agitation; he was dizzy and had to sit down a moment. the portrait had a dozen jagged wounds—the colonel literally had hacked it to death. lyon left it where it was, never touched it, scarcely looked at it; he only walked up and down his studio, still excited, for an hour. (cs – ) these two climactic scenes, despite their perverse resemblances, pri- marily demonstrate the major difference between these two artist- tales. that difference, of course, is largely a matter of technique. in the earlier story, the reader shares the narrator’s omniscient, disembodied gaze. in the later story, the reader shares the limited, embodied point of view of the artist himself as he spies on the scene ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ m o n s t r o u s l e v i t y ” ��� before him. a corollary consequence of this technical difference is that “the story of a masterpiece” represents directly, as a simple whole, the strange pleasure taken in the portrait’s destruction by the tale’s generally sympathetic, albeit jealous, hero and shared with the narrator and reader alike, while “the liar” displaces such plea- sure onto others, splitting it between the colonel and the mediating figure of the artist, who is now an ambiguous, if not diabolic, hero. whether the critical reader of “the liar” and its authorial intelli- gence are to participate in the passions of these characters is a ques- tion left ironically in suspense. clearly, however, in the later story, james is revising, literally redoing, the earlier one according to his greater understanding of and mastery over his imaginative powers. my question concerns the nature of the strange pleasure in these two artist-tales. “the story of a masterpiece” represents this plea- sure as both murderous and more than a little tinged with erotic satisfaction. in “the liar” the artist names the act of destruction “a sort of figurative suicide,” but he also exudes a voyeuristic pleasure of such great intensity that he becomes dizzy and excited for an hour. the simple whole of pleasure shared alike by the reader/narrator couple and the hero in the earlier story is thereby explicitly divided in two in the later story, becoming redefined in the process as two different pleasures, which are then distributed and embodied by the portrait destroyer and the artist, respectively. the earlier story, however, provides a clue to the identity of the original pleasure in one of its narrator’s awkward asides: “the artistic half of [the painter’s] nature exerted a lusty dominion over the human half-fed upon its disappointments and grew fat upon its joys and tribulations. this, indeed, is simply saying that the young man was a true artist” (cs – ). what james’s the sacred fount ( ) much later projects as a demonic, vampire-like rela- tionship between lovers is here represented at its source in the split subject of the true artist, that is, the modern transcendental genius. for james, the latter demonically consumes the former, like any fire its fuel. contemporary psychoanalysis names such radical, excessive pleasure, with its interfusion of eros and thanatos, “jouissance”: jouissance, and the corresponding verb jouir, refer to an extreme pleasure. . . . [j]ouissance is an enjoyment that always has a deadly ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� reference, a paradoxical pleasure, reaching an almost intolerable level of excitation. . . . lacan refers to the subject of jouissance as “the fathomless thing capable of covering the whole spectrum of pain and pleasure. . . .” there is an element of horror present in jouissance connected with the erotics of the death drive and offering terrible promises, going beyond the pleasure principle. jouissance is fundamentally linked with excess. this excess refers to a pure expenditure which serves no purpose and is of a negative order, an excess of sexuality and death. ( ) what a comparative analysis of these two artist-tales so far sug- gests, then, is the driven nature of aesthetic pleasure for james and the technical method, the ironic manipulation of point of view he develops to represent it effectively, so as both to maximize and to master it imaginatively. to put the matter somewhat schematically, the jamesian subject shows itself to be split between the empirical person and the artistic demon or transcendental genius. this familiar romantic conception of the artist is then the source, the ground, for the projected divi- sions and distinguishing qualities distributed among the jamesian characters. all their relationships, however, are determined by the original paradigm of demonic, vampiric self-relation of “the true artist” announced in “the story of a masterpiece.” i would sug- gest that the biographical basis for james’s internalization of such a demonic paradigm of self-relation may derive from his perception of the relationship between his parents, in which the “genius” of his swedenborgian father got fat by feeding off the practical care of his indulgent mother. however that may be, these two artist-tales taken together also disclose what can most destroy love and what needs to be con- demned. both tales name that quality of soul “levity.” the genius of the artist is defined, ironically enough, as being especially intimate with and so best able to detect and expose such levity. here is how it is revealing in “the story of a masterpiece”: it seemed to lennox [her fiancé] that some strangely potent agency had won from his mistress the confession of her inmost soul, and had ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ m o n s t r o u s l e v i t y ” ��� written it there upon the canvas in firm yet passionate lines. marian’s person was lightness—her charm was lightness; could it be that her soul was levity too? was she a creature without faith and without conscience? what else was the meaning of that horrible blankness and deadness that quenched the light in her eyes and stole the smile from her lips? (cs ) similarly, in “the liar,” the artist-figure definitively judges his former lover and her husband, who destroys his own portrait, as guilty of “monstrous levity” (cs ) for their conveniently displacing the responsibility for the crime onto a “wretched woman” and help- less innocent, a now chronically tipsy, cockney artist-model, miss geraldine. in the earlier tale, the artist’s genius is best able to wrest the quality of levity from “the most superficial, most heartless of women” (cs ), and render it for all to see in the picture; in the later tale, such levity, now portrayed as “monstrous,” is the quality of the invented story about miss geraldine that most revolts the artist there, just as it inspires lennox in the early tale to a murder- ously penetrative rage against the betraying portrait. why “levity,” and what is its relationship to jamesian jouissance? according to the oxford english dictionary online, levity is “the treatment of a serious matter with humour or lack of respect.— origin latin levitas, from levis ‘light.’” of course, such “light” refers to being the opposite of heavy, or gravitas, but i like to trope on it as a monstrous light but in a comic, lack-of-respect sort of vein. as such, it suggests to me the extremes of parody and travesty that are virtually of a demonic nature. a once lucifer-like “light”(-ness) is now seriously grave and demonic, satanic—or only apparently so. another helpful clue to the identity of this levity can be found in “the story of a masterpiece.” when the artist and his former fiancée are finally alone together as she sits for her portrait, this is how the young james renders the scene: “well, miss everett,” said the painter, in accents which might have been tremulous if he had not exerted a strong effort to make them firm. “well, mr. baxter,” said the young girl. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� and the two exchanged a long, firm glance, which at last ended in a smile—a smile which belonged decidedly to the family of the famous laugh of the two angels behind the altar in the temple. (cs ) i have searched for what “the famous laugh of the two angels behind the altar at the temple” refers to but to no avail. it appears to express a secret erotic complicity, as if the two angels were blakean or, better still, swedenborgian. here is where the later story may cap speculation. “the liar” presents miss geraldine—the name alludes to an implicit source in samuel taylor coleridge’s “christabel,” much as robert browning’s “my last duchess” is explicitly discussed in the earlier tale—as an uncanny intruding figure. she steals in from the garden entry to oliver lyon’s studio while he is painting colonel capadose, the hus- band of his former lover, everina brant, and asks for a job as an artist-model. lyon recognizes her type, whose “blighted career or interrupted profession” (cs ) has been destroyed by her alco- holism, as if he “had made her” ( ), but he fails to recognize her as an individual, when she pointedly and poignantly notes “with rather a wounded manner, ‘well, you know you ’ave ’ad me!’” lyon responds coldly to this potential double entendre, “i don’t remember you” ( ). geraldine continues as if she knows he knows her but reminds him of her name and address, just in case he wants to send her a postcard if he ever needs her again. this chance incident later in the story gives everina and her husband the plausible basis in literal fact for their libelous fiction. but since lyon has seen what has really happened because he was spying on them from behind some curtains on the rickety stair landing above the studio, the “monstrous levity” of their irresponsible invention is all for naught. ironically, the literal omniscience present in the earlier tale has been given to the fictional artist in the later, limited third-person tale. but, of course, ultimately, james retains in principle total mastery of point of view in both cases. monstrous levity, with a vengeance? in any event, i think the scene of repressive non-recognition of miss geraldine in “the liar” bears further probing. first of all, “the radical defect,” the “brutal” provocative effect of the portrait in “the story of a masterpiece” on the jealous fiancé john lennox ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ m o n s t r o u s l e v i t y ” ��� resides, he says, in its giving “miss everett the look of a profes- sional model” (cs ). like actresses, professional artist-models were thought to be a bit unsavory by polite victorian society. more important, the pathos of miss geraldine’s non-recognition in the later story, when combined with the diabolic nature of the literary resonance peppering the surface of both artist-tales, recalls for me the following notorious scene, so formative for the modern visionary subject. hast thou forgot me then, and do i seem now in thine eye so foul, once deemd so fair in heav’n, when at th’ assembly, and in sight of all the seraphim with thee combin’d in bold conspiracy against heav’ns king, all on a sudden miserable pain surpris’d thee, dim thing eyes, and dizzie swum in darkenss, while thy head flames thick and fast threw forth, till on the left side op’ning wide, likest to thee in shape and count’nance bright, then shining heav’nly fair, a goddess arm’d out of thy head i sprung; amazement seis’d all th’ host of heav’n; back they recoild afraid at first, and call’d me sin, and for a sign portentous held me; but a familiar grown, i pleas’d, and with attractive graces won the most averse, thee chiefly, who full oft thy self in me thy perfect image viewing becam’st enamour’d, and such joy thou took’st with me in secret, that my womb conceiv’d a growing burden pensive here i sat alone, but long i sat not, till my womb pregnant by thee, and now excessive grown prodigious motion felt and rueful throes. at last this odious offspring whom thou seest thing own begotten, breaking violent way tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� distorted, all my nether shape thus grew transform’d: but he my inbred enemie forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart made to destroy: i fled, and cry’d out death; hell trembl’d at the hideous name, and sigh’d from all her caves, and back resounded death. (milton . – ) the “monstrous levity” that inspires the destructive and self-destruc- tive jouissance of the split jamesian subject is truly diabolic, demonic, entailing a lusty dominion. or so, following the lead of these artist- tales, i would contend. in doing so, however, i do not intend to imply that james’s per- fected art of realistic imitation, as in these scenes from “the liar,” can be subsumed by some miltonic demonic archetype of visionary self-creation, the way everina brant, now mrs. clement capadose, claims at the end of the story that no artistic portrait, even a mas- terpiece, can ever measure up to the great “original” of her husband, which she alone possesses (cs ). nor would i suggest that the critic can simply read the jamesian text allegorically, according to the key provided by milton or any other visionary or theoretical source. rather, i propose that, on the basis of these two artist-tales, we may begin to see how the jamesian text seductively dangles, between realism and vision, in a truly demonic form of “monstrous levity.” the exquisitely done euphuistic equivocation and double entendre, the deftly unresolved and irresolvable ambiguity hanging radically suspended in the country of blue: this is the figural gesture of irony that exercises lusty dominion over the art of the jamesian text and defines the jamesian subject. to identify the significance of james’s text entirely with either its represented society or its imaginative auteur is not to rise to its challenge, since the non-identification with any one position is key to the sublime effectiveness of james’s aesthetic imagination; as such neither the “old” henry james of american literature studies nor the “other” henry james of new americanist critiques alone can grant us a firm grasp on this slippery figure. as a final rationale for this critical approach to james, i will turn to alain badiou’s set theory, in which any set is founded upon the ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | “ m o n s t r o u s l e v i t y ” ��� void; that is, the void is all that the set cannot contain and remain the set it is. the void can become manifest within the set only when the state of the situation is put into radical suspense, when the policing function of business-as-usual, the endless counting and putting into place of the set’s elements, suffers a crisis, an emergency, and all the set’s elements then hang in a delicate balance within the enlightening space of the set’s void. within this visionary scene, a new truth can emerge. james’s ironic art discovers and opens up this very luminous void in the house of modern fiction to a monstrous levity indeed. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm o n e 	 o f 	 michel foucault’s final lecture courses, published recently as the hermeneutics of the subject, makes it clear that neither the historical stoicism—that is, stoicism in its time—nor the stoic vision foucault derives from it in this book is a retreat from politics into a purely self-regarding aesthetics of existence. i will show that the stoic vision foucault wrestles from hellenistic culture is one that has substantial promise for the emergence of global democracy. in order to make such a demonstration, some preliminary theoretical discussion is first necessary. a classic scene concerning the nature of the self, from the history of the modern novel in english, is found in henry james’s the por- trait of a lady. isabel archer, the novel’s young, newly rich american heroine, tells madame merle, an older, expatriate american divorcée and accomplished woman of the world, about the offers of marriage she has already entertained and rejected in her young womanhood. when madame merle asks about a recent suitor, inquiring about what his house looks like, isabel is surprised and balks at the acquisi- tive intention inherent in such a question. madame merle, who is the female villain of the story, then explains what the jamesian nar- james baldwin and the stoic vision of amor fati toward	a	global	 democracy � �� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | t o w a r d a g l o b a l d e m o c r a c y ��� rator terms her “metaphysics” ( ). every person comes equipped with her or her “shell” ( ). in the case of isabel’s recent suitor, his “shell” is his house, which comprises “the envelope of circumstances that surrounds one” ( ) and includes all the material manifesta- tions of one’s life. the self in madame merle’s scheme of things exists in its material signs and can be read only from them. this self is not a whole greater than the sum of its parts; it is its parts loosely or strictly coordinated in response to social stimuli. all else is pure ide- alistic and speculative nonsense. madame merle is like a pragmatist semiotician, somewhat avant le letter. isabel objects to this view and claims instead that while she does not know if any of her things “express” her, even partially, she does know for sure they cannot exhaust who she is. her things certainly do not act, for her, as a “measure” or standard that she tries to live up to, because she knows that social conventions, such as wearing clothes, can never truly express her self, since these are imposed on her by cultural norms and are not her free choice. the self, for isabel, is greater than the sum of its parts. moreover, her self is deeply interior and is only partially manifested in those few impor- tant choices that approach the conditions of being free ones. isabel is a hermeneutic interpreter of consciousness and would be happy with her puritan ancestors, romantic cousins, or the geneva school of literary criticism. i invoke this scene from james because it allows me to make two fundamental points. the first is that however much one may want to believe isabel is right about the self, she is not. madame merle is right. and the novel proves it, as isabel continues to try to live as if she can entertain multiple possibilities forever, even as she recognizes later in her celebrated meditation (chapter ) that her life has been reduced from the prospect of an infinite vista to dully staring at a dead wall ( ). we too are constrained by the melodramatic plot of the novel to admit isabel’s reduction. by first running off to england, against her husband’s wishes, to attend to her dying cousin, ralph touchett, and then bolting from the too-crude embrace of self-made manufacturer caspar goodwood back to rome and her husband and her stepdaughter, pansy, isabel is like the prey in its lair, with one exit after another blocked by the uncanny hound. the second point on which madame merle is right and isabel wrong is that the ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� world of her time, her culture, and even more so that of our global culture of modernity function according to the logic of pragmatic semiology. that is, the deep self, existing outside of culture, has been shown to be most likely illusory, a mirage of language; but what is worse is that the contemporary world works whether or not the deep self does exist. in other words, it does not matter even if one could prove the hermeneutics of consciousness correct, as isabel presents it. no one would use such proof in everyday calculations of oppor- tunities to advance their interests. madame merle wins the argument every time today, as she does when isabel says she does not choose to wear clothes but society requires it. and madame merle agrees, saying whether or not it is a free choice, no one goes about without them. how you act matters big time; what you say you intend mat- ters little, if at all. i realize that in this context it may appear ironic for me to be offering to your appreciation a book, the hermeneutics of the sub- ject, if i do not believe in the usefulness, perhaps even the actual exis- tence, of what such a book apparently presupposes, namely, isabel’s metaphysics and method of reading. but foucault entitles the book as he does, and does not call it “the hermeneutics of the self,” precisely to avoid such inadvertent irony. that is, he takes hermeneutics as being what the thinkers and writers he discusses are doing, or think they are doing, but not what he is doing. and he indicates this by using the word subject in his title and throughout the book, which is not a word his chosen thinkers and writers would have used. by subject, i take him to mean what the discourses he examines from the first centuries after christ perform in their signifying structures and styles of thinking. if you imagine madame merle reading marcus aurelius, you have a rough idea of what foucault is doing in this book. in a central passage in the hermeneutics of the subject, foucault clarifies this difference between self and subject, with respect to the most important topic in the book, what he calls “le savoir de spiri- tualité.” as i have reminded you, within this general theme of conversion to the self and within this general prescription, “one must return to the self,” i wanted to define the meaning given to the particular precept “turn your gaze on yourself,” “turn your attention on yourself,” ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | t o w a r d a g l o b a l d e m o c r a c y ��� “apply your mind to yourself.” in posing this question and seeing how seneca and marcus aurelius resolve it, it seems perfectly clear to me that it is not in any way a matter of constituting knowledge of the human being, of the soul, or of interiority, alongside, in opposi- tion to, or against knowledge of the world. what, then, is involved is the modalization of the knowledge of things, with the following characteristics. first, it involves the subject changing his position, either rising to the summit of the universe to see it in itself totally, or striving to descend into the heart of things. in any case, the subject cannot properly know by remaining where he is. this is the second point, the first characteristic of this spiritual knowledge. second, on the basis of this shift in the subject’s position there is the possibility of grasping both the reality and the value of things. and what is meant by “value” is the place, relations and specific dimensions of things within the world, as well as their relation to, their importance for, and their real power over the human subject insofar as he is free. third, this spiritual knowledge involves the subject’s ability to see himself and grasp himself in his reality. it involves a kind of “self- viewing” (“heauto-scopie”). the subject must see himself in the truth of his being. fourth, and finally, the effect of this knowledge on the subject is assured by the fact that the subject not only finds his free- dom in it, but in his freedom he also finds a mode of being, which is one of happiness and of every perfection of which he is capable. in sum, knowledge involving these four conditions (the subject’s change of position, the evaluation of things on the basis of their reality within the kosmos, the possibility of the subject seeing himself, and finally the subject’s transfiguration through the effect of knowledge) constitutes, i believe, what could be called spiritual knowledge. foucault goes on to say how it would be interesting to write the history of this spiritual knowledge (le savoir de spiritualité): how it was limited and then buried in successive waves, culminating in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with descartes, pascal, and spinoza, by the final full emergence of what he calls le savoir de con- naissance, the knowledge of knowledge, or, as it is translated here, “intellectual knowledge,” that is, knowledge of the conditions of any sort of knowledge, rather than knowledge with specific spiritual content or directives. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� these four characteristics of spiritual knowledge that foucault distinguishes form an interlinked action. from the subject’s change of position to his evaluation of things based on their positions within the world, to the subject’s seeing himself in this world, to the sub- ject’s transfiguration by such cumulative knowledge is what “return to self” means. rather than some purely fanciful act of self-styliza- tion, as if the subject were remodeling himself via the mirror of his concave interior, the subject recognizes his world and his position in it by means of substantially changing positions and viewpoints, literally and imaginatively, and that knowledge acts upon the subject to transform him from merely a passive observer into an active, par- ticipatory reader committed to the pursuit and experience of spiritual knowledge as it appears and affects the world. think of a madame merle, with the heart of an isabel. only such a figure would be an appropriate mother for the innocent and fragile pansy. the stoic vision of the cosmos, as seen from a new perspective by the subject, from either the heights or the depths, is intended to dislocate the subject from his familiar surroundings and habitual responses to radically new conditions that inspire or, better, provoke the subject into responding with new thinking, perhaps even creative thinking. this spiritual exercise is accompanied by more than mental traveling. the subject does not remain a provincial but becomes a cosmopolitan, not of the empire alone but of the world, indeed of the cosmos. the stoic vision could be better named, perhaps, a cosmic or even a cosmological vision. in its self-imposed nature, this vision entails the kind of passionate attention to detail and the shape of the whole that the work of art does in its creation. the aesthetics of existence that foucault celebrates in the final published volumes of the history of sexuality, in which one is to view the self as a work of art, follows from the idea of the stoic vision as outlined in the hermeneutics of the subject. the subject’s state of mind in this vision is what i would call, after yeats’s “a prayer for my daughter,” “excited reverie.” it is a condition in which the subject experiences, to borrow psycho- analytic terms, both primary processes of the unconscious and sec- ondary processes of the rational ego, simultaneously, the way the analyst and, presumably, the analysand do by the end of analysis. this mode of subjective self-consciousness is in fact as near to an ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | t o w a r d a g l o b a l d e m o c r a c y ��� objective experience of oneself that any person can have, and in certain circumstances, such as that of love, it may be made more readily available for more people than analysis, if only for brief and irregularly appearing moments at a time. consider, for example, the scene in james baldwin’s blues for mister charlie, written in but not performed on broadway until , when, in act juanita confesses to pete, another black student professor, that when richard, the murdered blues musician whom she knew in childhood, had returned home, “he—hit—me in someplace i’d never been touched before.” she then explains: i don’t mean—just physically. he took all my attention—the deepest attention. maybe, that one person can give another. he needed me and he made a difference for me in this terrible world—do you see what i mean? and—it’s funny—when i was with him, i didn’t think of the future, i didn’t dare. i didn’t know if i could be strong enough to give him what he needed for as long as he would need it. it only lasted four or five days, pete—four or five days, like a storm, like lightning! and what i saw during that storm i’ll always see. before that—i thought i knew what i was. but now i know that there are more things in me than i’ll ever understand—. whether we associate the sublime imagery of the storm with a trans- port to the heights or the depths of existence, we understand from the passage the scene of love’s instruction in passionate attention. such attention yeats calls “excited reverie,” and in one formulation or other, he identifies this “liminal” or “threshold” experience with vision. this transport is at once dreamlike and precisely focused, ecstatic and deeply immersed. in “nineteen nineteen,” yeats refers to this state as the “daemonic rage,” which makes it sound more aggressive and intense than “excited reverie,” but i think such differences are of degree, not kind. the affect yeats is indicating, like baldwin in the above passage, is a particular variation on the sublime: it is the state of mind of the creative moment, that moment when, fleetingly, the mind’s components work together, however great the splits in the subject, and yet without reliance on habit or convention or automa- tism of any sort. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� foucault spells out the complicated nature of such passionate attention when he contrasts the eros of plato, especially in the sym- posium and the phaedrus, which would rise to the heights of the ideas, with the stoic vision of seneca. seneca’s eros is familiar to us now in the form of the nietzschean “amor fati.” you can see that the movement outlined [in seneca’s natural ques- tions] is not that of an effort by which we attempt to see another reality by detaching ourselves from this world of which we ourselves are parts. in other words, rather than a spiritual movement borne upwards by the impulses of eros and memory, what is involved is a completely different kind of effort, that of the real knowledge of the world, of placing ourselves so high that from this point, and below us, we can see the world in its general order, the tiny space we occupy within it, and the short time span we remain here. what is involved is a view from above (une vue plogeante) looking down on the self, rather than looking up to something other than the world in which we live. it is the self’s view of itself from above which encompasses the world of which we are a past and which thus ensures the subject’s freedom within this world itself. . . . [this vision] involves saying [to the subject] that there is no choice [among elements of the world] and that all the wonders to be found in heaven, in the stars and meteors, in the beauty of the earth, in the plains, in the sea and the mountains, are all inextricably bound up with the thousands of plagues of the body and soul, with wars, robbers, death and suffering. he is shown the world now so he can, like plato’s souls in the republic, choose his destiny. he is shown the world precisely so that he clearly under- stands that there is no choice, that nothing can be chosen without choosing all the rest, that there is only one possible world, and that we are bound to this world. the only thing and the only point of choice is this . . . whether or not you want to live. the stoic vision as exhibited in seneca’s natural questions and analyzed by foucault is one that gives the subject the choice between embracing existence as it is, with its terrible mixture of elements, or not living. it makes stark the decision each subject must make: either one chooses to live and so love the world, doing the best one can within the terms of reality, or, preferring the vision of another unreal ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | t o w a r d a g l o b a l d e m o c r a c y ��� world of the pure good, whether deeply interior or high above, one refuses to be reborn into existence. like blake’s title character from the book of thel, the subject confronts in the stoic vision the choice of this world or the death-in-life of some perfect transcendent but nonexistent realm. this stoic vision can work for western, particularly u.s., citizens as the formative prolegomena to the democratic subject in our global epoch. the hundreds of millions of economically displaced peoples of the planet already know the literal experience of radical disloca- tion and the necessity to choose to live in a polyvalent world that the stoic vision fosters in the name of a secular or worldly amor fati. one could argue that it is precisely the culture of security at all costs of the west and especially of the united states that, in reaction to such economic and other dislocations being brought back home, have provoked, via their total “war against terrorism,” the very sui- cidal terrorism that culture would secure out of existence if it only could. be that as it may, the effectiveness of the stoic vision for any future global democracy lies, first of all, in its promise for educating in the ways of the world western and u.s. subjects. once again, baldwin’s blues for mister charlie provides a salient example. his opening stage directions set up the theatrical frame- work for performance that can maximize the experience of disloca- tion and the necessity to embrace life as it is, which implies not quietism but precisely the initial phase of a radical activism: multiple set, the skeleton of which, in the first two acts, is the negro church, and, in the third act, the courthouse. the church and the courthouse are on opposite sides of a southern street; the audience should always be aware, during the first two acts, of the dome of the courthouse and the american flag. during the final act, the audience should always be aware of the church, and the cross. the church is divided by an aisle. the street door upstage faces the audience. the pulpit is down stage, at an angle, so that the minister is simultane- ously addressing the congregation and the audience. in the third act, the pulpit is replaced by the witness stand. this aisle also functions as the division between whitetown and blacktown. the action among the blacks takes place on one side of the stage, the action among the whites on the opposite side of the stage—which is to ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� be remembered during the third act, which takes place, of course, in a segregated courtroom. this means that richard’s poem, lyle’s store, papa d’s joint, jo’s kitchen, etc., are to exist principally by suggestion, for these shouldn’t be allowed to obliterate the skeleton, or, more accurately, perhaps, the framework, suggested above. for the murder scene, the aisle functions as a gulf. the stage should be built out, so that the audience reacts to the enormity of this gulf, and so that richard, when he falls, he falls out of sight of the audience, like a stone, into the pit. in the darkness we hear a shot. lights up slowly on lyle, staring down at the ground. he looks around him, ends slowly and picks up richard’s body as though it were a sack. he carries him upstage, drops him. from these stage directions, we can see that the action of blues for mister charlie will clearly involve ironic simultaneity, proustian or faulknerian flashbacks and flash-forwards, a theatrical approach to cinematic montage with the lighting up of different parts of the multiple set to play out different scenes in rapid succession, and in general a modernist aesthetic presentation and performance of the radical themes of the play. the play foregrounds especially the poli- tics of the black power movement of the time, as it demonstrates the limits of the nonviolent approach of martin luther king jr. and pushes the audience to embrace a more revolutionary project for race relations in the united states. baldwin creates in this play a s variation on the stoic vision, with his world of terror and beauty, love and murder, racial hatred and religious delusion. it is this latter-day cosmos that we, the audience, must choose to embrace and live in, so as to do what we can, or, if we choose to reject and flee from it, we will continue to live without the passionate attention of love and sink, as largely the united states has, into the undead life of willful ignorance in the deluded culture of security. lionel trilling, in a once-famous essay on the princess casam- assima, invokes the trope of “the young man from the provinces,” by which he means that “the defining hero” in “the very backbone” of nineteenth-century fiction may come from any class but begins his career with a narrower mind-set than that with which he ends it. regardless of gender or race, apparently, this figure, according to trilling, “starts with a great demand upon life and great wonder ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | t o w a r d a g l o b a l d e m o c r a c y ��� about its complexity and promise. he may be of good family but he must be poor. he is intelligent, or at least aware, but not at all shrewd in worldly matters. he must have acquired a certain amount of education, should have learned something about life from books, although not the truth.” we can think of many such novels in the history of the genre, most saliently james joyce’s a portrait of the artist as a young man (although it is of the twentieth century). such a protagonist, whether an artist or not, must go through the terrible discipline of culture by which the mind receives its education, which bears a striking resemblance to the stoic vision of learned humility in the face of the greater forces of society and life, which leads not to despair or defeatism, however, but to a salutary realism, what trilling identifies as moral realism. baldwin’s life exemplifies the story of this figure of the young man from the provinces, as his own accounts and those of his biogra- phers make clear. but what they have not made clear is that baldwin’s work, whether fiction or drama, essay or review, generally depicts the failure of this figure to survive being black in mid-twentieth-century america. “sonny’s blues,” the story of a jazz musician apparently overcoming the odds and getting back to his music, is an important exception, but sony’s ultimate fate remains unclear and shadowed by threats. the fate of rufus in another country, also a jazz musician, who jumps off the george washington bridge, something a friend of baldwin’s in fact did, is much more typical. baldwin is telling us in his work something about this failure of traditional patterns of life to apply successfully to african americans, and his telling us these things is part of his updated stoic vision of an ordered if inhuman world not fitted to reward our demands or help us fulfill our promise. unless we fully accept such a vision, one in which nature and capi- talism cooperate to produce monsters, such as racism, we cannot hope to deal with ourselves and each other with the moral realism and humanity trilling discusses and baldwin performs. the demo- cratic imperative can operate effectively and justly only given such vision. baldwin is not simply repaying the liberal white partisan review mentors of his earlier work with a slap in the face by portraying the failure of the young man from the provinces figure to function suc- cessfully for african americans. he is also, and more significantly, ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g �� testifying to the need for his imaginative version of black power self- reliance. one of the standard views of baldwin is that all his works replay his relationship with his stepfather, david baldwin, whose first son and namesake died and whose later son by baldwin’s mother was also named david. what is not recognized is that in such a work as the amen corner, baldwin does indeed replay this relationship, but in a way that avoids any dependency on the white world and transfigures the father-son relationship, making it a vehicle for black self-reliance based on his version of the stoic vision. in act of the amen corner, david and luke alexander, son and father, are talking about what led to luke’s return home, sick and defeated, on the verge of death, just as david has to choose between doing what his mother, margaret, wants, following her lead and becoming a preacher in church, and doing what he wants, fol- lowing luke’s lead into the world of jazz and blues. this scene of choice of vocation repeats itself in baldwin again and again, and it is tied always to the capability of passionate attention inherent in the vision of amor fati found in the stoic vision of self-education. luke: well, son, tell you one thing. wasn’t music put me here. the most terrible thing in a man’s life, david, is when he’s done lost everything that held him together—it’s just gone and he can’t find it. and it just as hollow as a basin when you strike it with your fist. then that man start going down. if don’t know hand reach out to help him, that man goes under. you know, david, it don’t take much to hold a man together. a man can lose a whole lot, might look to everybody else he done lost so much that he ought to want to be dead, but he can keep on—he can even die with his head up, hell, as long as he got one thing. that one thing is him, david, who he is inside—and son, i don’t believe no man ever got to that without somebody loved him. somebody looked at him, looked way down in him and spied him way down there and showed him to himself—then started pulled, a-pulling of him up—so he could live. (exhausted) hold your head up, david. you’ll have a life. tell me there’s all kinds of ways for ruined men to keep on living. you hears about guys sometimes who got a bullet in their guts and keep on running—running—spilling blood every inch, keeps running a long time—before they fall. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | t o w a r d a g l o b a l d e m o c r a c y ��� i don’t know what keeps them going. father—or something— something—something i never had. (a pause) so don’t you think you got to end up like your daddy just because you want to join a band. david: daddy—weren’t the music enough? luke: the music. music is a moment. but life’s a long time. in that moment, when it’s good, when you really swinging—you joined to everything, to everybody, to skies and stars and every living thing. but music ain’t kissing. kissing’s what you want to do. music’s what you got to do, if you got to do it. question is how long you can keep up with the music when you ain’t got nobody to kiss. you know, the music don’t come out of the air, baby. it comes out of the man who’s blowing it. this is a rich exchange between father and son, and it highlights all that baldwin did not have from his stepfather and all that his step- father also needed. more than this, this scene performs the transmis- sion of the stoic vision of self-education in amor fati, the love of fate expressed in cosmic terms, in a sharply poignant way significantly inflected by the african american experience of the choice of voca- tion in mid-century america. the worldly interiorized self is literally turned inside out in this vision and made to see itself as part of a play of signs and relations among signs, given motor force by what luke identifies specifically with acts of love. the passionate atten- tion called forth by playing music must be accompanied by such vision empowered by “kissing”—as luke puts it, “what you want to do”—as well as by music, one’s art and vocation, something “you got to do.” any would-be democratic subject emerging especially out of the u.s. context and acting upon the global stage must pass through this process whereby one can turn inside out the narcissistic illusions of person, family, kin, race, and nation, any supposed deep interiority becoming a tissue of signifying relationships that potentially stop nowhere, being cosmic in their scope. the self-mystifying innocence and narrow-minded idealism of the american subject may then be reduced to and exposed as the imperialistic mechanized nothingness that it is. only then may u.s. subjects, and hopefully the rest of the world, be worthy of true global democracy. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm toward	a	poetics	of	terror my aim in this chapter, beyond attempting to read well a recent story by james purdy, is to contribute to the large-scale and long-term critical project of elaborating a poetics compatible with what i take to be representative visionary projects. the classic modern statement of the writer’s passion for vision appears in w. b. yeats’s “mythology,” per amica silentia lunae: “i shall find the dark grow luminous, the void fruitful when i understand that i have nothing, that the ringers in the tower have appointed for the hymen of the soul a passing bell.” the condition of being completely undone, at an absolute loss, perfectly destitute, without resources of tradition or status, caught in the grip of not knowing whither or what, and, in terror, expecting some sort of total violation—this is, for yeats, the tragic precondition of visionary creation. as yeats’s gothic figures of speech suggest, being rather like the damsel in distress of chivalric romance defines the moment immediately prior to ineluctable ravishment by—for him—a super- natural demon or beast. imagine, in a different setting, the instant james purdy and the culture of vision bringing	out	 the	terror � ��� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b r i n g i n g o u t t h e t e r r o r  ��� the sudden blow of the divine swan struck leda. this moment is the terror of vision, out of which transgressive experience gives birth to something monstrous, uncanny, but also strangely beautiful, “a terrible beauty,” as yeats famously calls it in “easter .” the big difference between leda and yeats is that the poet, unlike the girl, courts vision’s terror, while she has it literally befall her out of the blue. in this text, yeats tells how the aging writer ascends to some waste room in his tower in search of any scrap of writing, “else forgotten there by youth,” as he puts it, “some bitter crust” ( ), on which the present-day older writer may feed for imagina- tive sustenance while awaiting, one more time, the spark of heaven to fall. rather gnaw upon such stale crusts than end one’s days like william wordsworth, sappily sentimental and empty-witted, writing hundreds of sonnets about the history of the anglican church. when ecstasy is the goal of the quest, the visionary imagination is prepared to sacrifice all else. like yeats, purdy pursues such a project of vision. the problem for the critic is how to talk about it, especially to the great public who are not schooled in byzantium or its american equivalents (if any, now). my current work concerns how to represent effectively for general critical discussion the dimension of the visionary in such writers as yeats and purdy, without reductive popularization or unwitting obscurantism. in this connection, ironically enough, given his notorious reputation, jacques lacan’s psychoanalytic theories of the human subject, especially those in his later seminar volumes, have been selectively useful to me. the later lacan permits me to describe the terror of vision as the jouissance of the real, that is, as that painfully compelling yet perversely enjoyable experience of acute anxiety. for lacan, this anxiety or anguish arises not from the absence of all specific objects but precisely from the uncontrollable and imminent presence of the object or event that you know must render you absolutely help- less. rather than envisioning the simulacrum of such an object or event—the leap off the cliff with bungee cord unrolling and cameras going, as on fear factor—just imagine taking a flying leap into the blackness, without any defenses or safety devices. such libidinally invested, potentially suicidal acts bring out the terror of both leda and zeus. such experiences of what lacan calls the real constitute, ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� via these works that prophetically and perversely celebrate it, like those of yeats or purdy, the culture of vision. in this culture, the real possesses and overwhelms all would-be masters and slaves. i stress this ecstatic dimension of literature not gratuitously; when i awake in the middle of the night now, i do so in terror that having fallen asleep i may have been transformed into one of those alien beings i rail against during the day. the succubi i fear are not the pod people but the “security sheep.” who are they? they are those americans who, since / , deny the present, revise the past, and hope to preclude any new future emerging, all in the name of a per- fected total security so exceptionally averse to life and its risks that they would coerce a new, nonhuman species into existence before our very eyes. it is my hope that literature, especially tragic litera- ture, such as that of yeats, james, purdy, or nathaniel hawthorne, can withstand this new culture of security and in the end help to overcome it, provided we know how to speak about it clearly and truthfully. according to slavoj Žižek, we can readily recognize the culture of vision, in which literature and the arts participate, in alfred hitch- cock’s films, for they disclose the uncanny presence of the lacanian sinthome, a term i will explain following this quotation from the recently revised edition of Žižek’s enjoy your symptom: hitchcock did not proceed from the plot to its translation into cinematic audio-visual terms. he rather started with a set of (usu- ally visual) motifs that haunted his imagination, which imposed themselves as his sinthoms [sic]; he then constructed a narrative that served as the pretext for their use. these sinthoms [sic] provide the specific flair, the substantial density of the cinematic texture of hitchcock films: without them we would have a lifeless formal nar- rative. [hitchcock] invented stories in order to be able to shoot a certain scene. however paradoxically ironic it may appear, this technical term, le sinthome (for some reason Žižek cuts off the e), works effectively to clarify the jouissance of the real. for what lacan, in his late work, means in particular by le sinthome is this: it is a material form, evacu- ated of any rationally communicable meaning by its overdetermined ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b r i n g i n g o u t t h e t e r r o r  ��� and fragmentary nature, in which we nonetheless invest libidinally, erotically, with a fierce joy, or jouissance, even to a terrifying point of self-shattering and self-subjecting ecstasy. le sinthome material- izes jouissance in the very medium of the art form. it is not simply a fancy name for a fetish. at the core of subjective existence are these psychophysical kernels of pure irrationality—both contingent and fated—gaps in the symbolic order of social life, recalcitrant remain- ders (and reminders) of our infantile personalities that punch holes in the tissue of imaginary fantasies we would impose upon others and upon ourselves. these sinthomes (née symptoms) of the failures of repression (and so the promised guarantees of the inevitable ironic return of the repressed) become the hooks on which much of what we do not want to deal with gets caught. rather than attempt to assimilate such symptomatic phenomena into a larger logic, lacan would have us learn to enjoy them in their aesthetic forms as the compositional elements out of which works of art arise, artworks that can stitch together in ever new patterns the configuration of our psyches. lacan had originally defined his view of sublimation as a form of idealization, but in his late work he revises that defini- tion and presents sublimation as the material practice of an art that would transform the artist into the expression of his or her revised medium. this is one reason why lacan renames the symptom le sinthome, especially with reference to the major example he analyzes in his seminar “joyce, the symptom.” if le sinthome sutures, with openly and increasingly nonsensical material, as lacan thinks finnegans wake does, the structures of the psyche, then, without this supplemental operation, would fall apart, nothing more than the crimson wave thudding at sunset on the beach. although like motifs in the way they carry through the story of a life, sinthomes are different in this respect, especially: they are not keyed to any communally recognizable codebook of symbolic meanings, and they tend to explode or subvert in other ways the imaginary fantasies we practice on ourselves and others. Žižek reminds us that hitchcock stages one particular sinthome repeatedly. a hand is offered to another, to save the other, but that hand withdraws or slips the grasp, sometimes purposefully, some- times by accident, as the figure of the other falls into an abyss. vertigo ( ) offers the most memorable instance in hitchcock’s ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� cinematic corpus, but there are both earlier and later variations in saboteur ( ) and north by northwest ( ). Žižek concludes his abbreviated anatomy of le sinthome in hitch- cock with a surprising and most instructive turn: he quotes joseph stalin’s deathbed gesture (from his daughter svetlana’s memoir), in which [stalin, at] what seems like the very last moment . . . opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. it was a terrible glance, insane or perhaps angry and full of fear of death and the unfamiliar faces of the doctors bent over him. the glance swept over everyone in a second. then something incomprehensible and terrible happened that to this day i can’t forget and don’t understand. he suddenly lifted his left hand as though he were pointing to something up above and bringing down a curse on us all. the gesture was incomprehen- sible and full of menace, and no one could say to whom or what it might be directed. the next moment, after a final effort, the spirit wrenched itself free of the flesh. Žižek asks, “what, then, did this gesture mean?” he explains that “the hitchcockian answer is nothing—yet this nothing was not an empty nothing, but the fullness of libidinal investment, a tic that gave body to a cipher of enjoyment.” scenes of such visionary tics, such incomprehensible gestures, such figurative traces of our so-called perverse enjoyment in formally producing these very gestures and scenes, are ultimately what the analytic focus on le sinthome allows us to see. purdy’s work has both performed these sorts of gestures over the years and so confronted the emerging culture of security with its own often unacknowledged and “symptomatic” truths. this is the major reason for that work’s unconscionable neglect. a formal anatomy of these signatures of the real in purdy would highlight three significant types: ( ) the repeated (and at points over- whelming) presence of all sorts of bodily fluids (and other liquids), but especially water spraying onto people; ( ) the problematic of names and naming; and ( ) somnambulism (sleepwalking) or other hypnotic states. (the very word terror and its variants perhaps could make up a fourth sinthome.) one of his initial stories, “don’t call ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b r i n g i n g o u t t h e t e r r o r  ��� me by my right name” ( ), features all three major types of signatures of what i would define as impersonally driven subjective identity. in this very early story, lois mcbane, married to frank klein for six months, cannot abide her new name—lois klein—and refuses to use it. at a party, the two of them drunkenly fight about it, with frank dreamily knocking her down as she repeatedly gets up again and again, always refusing to accept his name as hers. blood and whiskey spill everywhere, as do tears. lois receives, finally, a con- cussion for her resistance and can no longer get up on her own. but these efforts of opposition are not in support of some protofeminist ideal of woman’s autonomy, nor is there any evidence of any bias on her part. rather, for lois, it is a purely formal matter of the sound of the name: she hates it. similarly, liquids (particularly bodily fluids), the problematic of naming, and a compelling dreamlike logic, as of a half-roused mind, haunt “some of these days,” the lead-off story in the col- lection the candles of your eyes. the protagonist is a nameless twenty-year-old for most of the tale. on getting out of prison, where he was brain-damaged from a fight and thus has trouble remem- bering names, he seeks his older male patron, sidney fuller, a some- time musician and composer. our hero has come to call fuller his “landlord” and is seeking him out in order to make it up to him for all the pain and trouble that he, james di silva, has caused. unable to find his “landlord” (or more often just “lord,” for short), because he has forgotten fuller’s name, di silva virtually lives out his days in an all-night porn theater, a place similar to one that fuller used to frequent. there, di silva permits the men to perform unprotected sex on him for months on end, for the little human contact it affords. contracting hiv and “rescued” too late by social services personnel, di silva suddenly recalls his patron’s name when he is asked his own, and then, ironically enough, gives his own name when asked to whom his belongings, his “legacy,” should be sent when he dies. more examples from this collection, or from across purdy’s career as a novelist, playwright, and poet, could be given of these three major types of formal signatures (spraying or exploding bodily—and other—fluids, the question of name and identity, and sleepwalking as the model of all autonomic response). in themselves, such sinthomes ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� (or libidinally invested material figures) help to identify author and character, as lacan in his seminar on joyce suggests. purdy’s story “brawith,” from the recent collection, moe’s villa and other stories, is another case in point. what happens to its oddly named title character—a progressive case of literal liquidation—showcases the reduction of his body to being a sounding board or an echo chamber for the body’s deep interior as it torturously turns itself inside out. before giving a reading of that tale, with its striking signatures of the real, as well as a sketch of its place in purdy’s work overall, i want to make a brief digression into my understanding of the present moment, politically and intellectually, which makes purdy’s work even more compelling and important to understand than ever before. as the ad nauseam broadcasts of all the “ins and outs” of the terri schiavo case underscores, since / , u.s. popular culture, not surprisingly, has been obsessed with terror, terrorism, destruction, and death in all its forms and ramifications. the exceptionally driven nature of this obsession is often paraded out under the banner of “a culture of life” (as if culture wasn’t always also, necessarily, as freud has shown, “a culture of death”), and it is tied to news cycles of varying lengths and the political manipulations of the usual rightist sort. something, some ur-plot, some indivisible remainder of primal trauma, some void in the logics of representation and symbolic sac- rifice (public and personal), must be at work here. today, we appear to be painfully driven to learn how to love our self-destructive fates, personal and public alike, under the guise of an imperiously smarmy ethos of fundamentalist religiosity. to put all this in some larger historical perspective i recall how nietzsche predicted that the next few centuries after the nineteenth would be “the age of grand politics,” a struggle among ideas attached to military machines to master the planet, a struggle that many think, for better or worse, the united states has now won—except for various so-called minor insurgencies, terrorist groups, and other outlaw types, of course. whether truly actualized now or not, i am not alone or uniquely prescient in thinking that global domination by one national power is not a good idea for the future survival of our species (or any other, for that matter). one major reason is that ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b r i n g i n g o u t t h e t e r r o r  ��� given such domination, when that power goes down, it is likely to take the rest of the world with it. “the culture of vision” (or “the real”), then, is my term for that feeling of late modernity in which we all now exist: we all stand at the brink of such a potentially planetary down-going in which all material and ideological forces and struc- tures are geared up for a final transformation of the human species into versions of nietzsche’s “last man,” that security-crazed type of barely human being for whom all contingent risks, heroic passions, and tragic awareness are themselves perceived to be instruments of a cosmic terrorism that must be not only corrected, as plato might sug- gest, but extirpated, wiped out, completely. the vicious anxiety of this now-chronic condition of “the last man” (and also “the last woman”) modernity, long in the making, is the real global terror that informs the personal and political dimensions of contemporary lives, especially in the united states, what i would now call “secu- rity/terror central,” or, more simply, “the culture of security,” with its ever-increasing numbers of “security sheep.” bringing out the real terror in this long-in-the-making personal and political condition of modernity, rather than affording us another ramshackle fictional or intellectual refuge from it, best describes, i think, the profound truth of purdy’s authentically visionary career, which is every bit as pow- erful and important, in my estimation, as that of yeats, hawthorne, or blake. the	impossible	subject:	the	truth	of	the	real thanks to the james purdy society web site, the thomson gale digital text contemporary authors, and donald pease and warren french’s entry on purdy in thomson gale’s dictionary of literary biography, volume : american novelists since world war ii, critics have an archive of pertinent materials to begin with if they want to tackle purdy’s work. i will not rehearse again now the general outline of his career as a novelist, short story writer, dramatist, poet, and man of letters. instead, i want to focus on a few of his statements in order to connect what i have said so far about his work and the present moment we inhabit with his most fundamental imaginative principles. to that end, i will begin with some statements purdy ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g �� makes in an interview conducted by christopher lane at purdy’s brooklyn home on november , . “i learned early on that the only subjects that i could possibly deal with were impossible. . . . nearly all my books are based on ‘impossible’ subjects” ( ). it is clear from the context that purdy is referring not only to subjects in the sense of “topics” for literary treatment, but also to subjects as “characters” who pursue impos- sible courses of action. as such, purdy, in lane’s helpful rephrasing a few lines further on, writes about subjects in their “enjoyment of the forbidden” and transgressive ( ). unlike any popular notion of such things, however, as he goes on to elaborate, purdy is after forbidden or transgressive truths. speaking of one of the characters of his novel eustace chisholm and the works, purdy says that “his problem is everybody’s problem. we can’t face what is most ourselves, what is deepest in ourselves. like macduff, in macbeth, who was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped, we want to rip out the really delicate, beautiful things in us so that we will be acceptable to society. . . . it is [then] when we don’t face ourselves that we become destructive” toward others and ourselves ( ). lane then adds, again most helpfully, “a lot of your characters are on boats that are sinking,” and purdy runs with this image, saying, “almost all of them. i think humanity is always on a sinking ship. certainly america is sinking with outrageous crimes that our government has perpetrated” ( ). unfortunately, this is even truer today. purdy continues in this vein: “these [characters] are very desperate, confused people who are doing the best they can. . . . but i think if you look at anyone’s life, their life is not cor- rect—they’re making one mistake after another. they’re blundering, they’re falling, they’re hurting people” ( ). as lane teases it forth from purdy, “intimacy with someone is also about a non-relation with the person one apparently is involved with,” or, as purdy now revises lane, “we may never know whom we’re loving, and they don’t know who is being loved” ( ). because of this fundamental nonrelation at the heart of all intimate relation- ships, purdy’s characters live lives in which truly, as yeats would also have it but in purdy’s own words, “eros is the violent god” ( ). that is, as lacan (following freud’s lead) sees it, jouissance melds death and life drives. as lane puts the issue facing purdy’s ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b r i n g i n g o u t t h e t e r r o r  ��� characters, they “seem to be stuck between two options—either to pursue rapture and to try to live it out to the full [as possible delusional endurable joy] . . . or to confront its [inevitable] demise, and learn to do without, which is shattering and painful for them” ( ). consider the beautiful moment in the midst of the stormy one- act play clearing the forest ( ), collected in proud flesh ( ). the two characters, gil and burk, confront each other, and gil in particular confronts the truth about himself and their relationship, as they prepare dinner for the woman gil plans to marry, because he thinks he cannot stand a life of “all storms and flashes of light- ning.” gil (turns to the audience): “i’ve heard of boys (as if to himself) who loved the storm even after they had been struck and singed by the lightning and drowned by the rain and deafened by the thunder . . . when the great summer thundershowers would be at their height whether in the dead of night, or before the dawn had come, they would steal out of their warm beds, and go into the clearing before the forest, and look up into the world eye of the tempest, they would hold their body and soul up to its destruc- tion, not just once in a lifetime, but again, again, again!” (he falls down on his knees and covers his face with his hands.) burk’s response to this vision is, simply, to come over to gil, saying, “you deserted your lightning, your storm.” without going much further into this powerfully moving drama, i want to underscore the tragic alternatives presented in this scene. for as the play concludes, gil stabs himself to death rather than embrace his “lightning,” his “storm,” or accept a conventional marriage of convenience, and so this tragic climax perfectly exemplifies purdy’s (and lane’s) points made in the interview cited about the choices open to “the impossible subject” in purdy’s work. my point here is this: the theme of the impossible subject is much akin to lacan’s conception of antigone’s drive not to cede ground with respect to her desire, and such a theme in both writer and theorist manifests itself first of all and essentially on the purely formal textual and structural levels as generic signatures of the real, here the semiautomatic vision ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� of being struck dumb in the simplicity of the lightning’s fire. it is just such sinthomes modern culture ironically disseminates and paradoxi- cally disavows—only for them to return upon that culture, in fact upon the idea of culture itself, with a vengeance, sometimes, as now, with all the terror of apparently apocalyptic (self-)destructiveness. in the present moment of human history, in the united states at least, the very possibility of facing such a tragic deadlock would be foreclosed. the goal of this total security mind-set (as far as i can see it) is to shape a populace for the future that could not even conceive of anything but such security and of any potential difference from it as terroristic impiety. if purdy, like yeats, envisions the creative writer as courting his tragic vision of evil and divine ravishment, at the risk of death itself, then bushworld, ideally, would banish the seeds of all such visions precisely in the moment just prior to their being formed. bushworld would perfect the prophylactics of the condom on a grand, indeed global, scale. rhetorically or compositionally speaking, purdy’s short story “brawith” is most like a process essay. it lays out, step by painful step, with a few comically grotesque pratfalls along the way, the story of how its title character, perhaps named for a deserted medi- eval village in north yorkshire, dissolves from the inside out due to his severely traumatic injuries from the war (which one does not matter). brawith ends his days stuck up his grandmother’s chimney and then wrapped in toilet tissue from head to toe, finally stepping out, bursting like a tsunami wave of blood, sweat, and tears (and other excretions), all of which cascade down all over her. the story’s final coherent image of brawith is that of a human tampon, his identity (like the absorbed contents) exploding out of the chimney in what is perhaps on one level a visionary allegory of toxic shock writ large. because purdy tells this strangely named story, which is cer- tainly worthy of or even tops blake, poe, or beckett at their surreally macabre best, with such precise and progressively appalling detail, in such relentlessly exacting and formally exquisite prose poetry, as if miming the pace of the dreaming sleepwalker, the reader is capti- vated and caught up in the anxious logic of the story right up to its terrible, long-postponed, and anxiety-ridden bitter end. the story within this story, that of the uncanny relationship between brawith and his grandmother, moira (which, of course, means “fate”), their ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b r i n g i n g o u t t h e t e r r o r  ��� unsymbolizable bond beyond all constraints of gender or genera- tion, makes one think of some greek tragedy or possibly an old english folk tale of heroic suffering, taking place in that fabulous territory of legend, myth, and the white goddess and her son (or grandson) that robert graves plumbed in his classic text on the subject of the sacrifice. be that as it may, “brawith” does clearly bring together those three signatures of the real, those sinthomes of fiercely enjoyed drive activity earlier noted: that of the overwhelming presence of precious bodily (and other) fluids; the problematic of the name, naming, and identity (brawith is an orphan, having lost his parents some time ago); and the transformation of human agency into the inhuman agency of somnambulism—in this case, not only at the level of the narration itself, which proceeds as if according to the often nightmarish, slow-motion logic of sleepwalking. since the story is told from the point of view of moira, the reader is implicated in all the effects of brawith’s fate as they are unfolding upon her, literally in sheet after sheet of first sweat and then blood, urine, shit, and semen. moira rescues her grandson, brawith, from the veterans hospital near where she lives in flempton, ohio. her cousin keith had per- suaded her, against her better judgment at the time, to allow the army to send brawith there. due to a bomb explosion of shrapnel and likely machine-gun fire, brawith has internal injuries so severe that he is forced to carry a roll of toilet tissue around with him. to say he is incontinent is to practice understatement with a vengeance. moira asks him one day while visiting him in the hospital if he wants to stay there or move into “grandmother’s house” in the countryside near the copse, the river, and the woodlands. he reiterates the words “grandmother’s house,” nodding repeatedly. moira takes brawith home with her. once he is home with her, and she sees how his condition is progressively deteriorating—all he can do at first is mail her “government postcards” for her, and then not even that—moira remains fixed in her initial decision. she expresses her doubts to herself, but rarely to brawith. before he dies, however, she does cli- mactically ask him again if he wants to go back to the hospital, and he indicates he wants to stay with her. here is how the reader is introduced to what moira comes to experience on a daily basis: ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� gradually it occurred even to her that he was slowly oozing from almost every pore in his body, and it was not that he did not think with words anymore, or not hear words, his attention was entirely occupied by the soft sounds like whispers arising from the wet parts of his insides, which shattered by wounds and hurts had begun gently coming out from within him or so it seemed, so that all his insides would one day peacefully come out; so his insides and his outer skin would merge finally into one complete wet mass. ( ) naturally, this hope for a peaceful end is thwarted by the increas- ingly loud and painful reverse osmosis going on. but given just his initial condition of incontinence, why does moira not return him to the hospital? one reason is typical human stubbornness, of not wanting to go back on a decision made against all sensible advice, so as to avoid having to have been told “i told you so” by her cousin and others. the other reason, however, is that moira feels she and brawith have established a bond, from which she receives great joy: “he was the only human being who looked up to her, and she would keep him by her side therefore. . . . her reward came when he would once or twice a week, no more, look up at her and say ‘moira.’ it meant thank you, she supposed, it meant, even love, she felt” ( ). repeatedly, moira now vows to herself that “nothing is too good for you, brawith,” that he is the only person she now or ever would do anything for, and that due to his sacrifice, the community should honor him, and that if the community won’t do so, or can’t somehow, she will do it ( ). one day, however, as she is cleaning his feet in a basin, the soft sounds of his insides leaking out grow much louder: she paused for a moment, incredulous, fearful, yet at the same time she could share his knowledge. she listened carefully and she heard enough [being somewhat deaf in one ear] of the many sounds that were coming from inside himself and which he listened to constantly. all this she was now aware of. their eyes met briefly, and he gave her a kind of nod, meaning he knew she had heard the sounds and had understood. she held his feet in a tight clasp. that [moment] was the beginning of their even deeper closeness. ( ) ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b r i n g i n g o u t t h e t e r r o r  ��� although in this situation, there is considerable leeway for miscon- struing on her part, that last sentence appears to endorse moira’s view of things from the narrator’s perspective. i take this to be sig- nificant, because not only are moira and brawith increasingly beyond the conventional symbolic order of society, despite being still depen- dent on its operations for their necessities (such as food deliveries), but moira and brawith are also, at this point and until his death, beyond the imaginary misreadings of projective identification and personal fantasy. these two characters are living out their unsymbolizable bond in what lacan calls “the real,” that domain of pure drive activity that informs but also is analytically prior to even the primary processes of the unconscious: nothing is too good for you my darling. she felt he heard her, though she was beginning to understand that at last all he heard, all he felt, all he knew was the communications which the vast flowing we of his insides imparted to him, those rivulets of blood and lymph, the outpouring of his arteries and veins, all of which whispered and told him of irreparable damage and despair, and of the awesome future that was to come. ( ) as they both are sleepless, they spend their nights together lis- tening to these sounds, and as they get louder and louder, more authoritative and commanding, like the voice of conscience or of impulse, they establish communication between them by means of these sounds suddenly getting louder in response to her question or remark, and then subsiding again: a kind of natural language of abjection. as she comes out of a brief doze one morning, moira hears “some new sounds arising from the fireplace” ( ). now, brawith can barely hear anything, she says, and she can hardly hear herself think, as “the sounds of his own swimming insides drowned out all other sound,” reverberating as they do from the chimney to envelop the house inside and out. once again, despite her own piercingly poignant misgivings, she refuses to go back on her decision and cede any ground to social norms or common sense, and realizes that, in a ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� comically painful pun, “she had never loved anybody with such com- plete absorption as she did brawith. she felt her own insides cried out along with his” ( ). are we to mention moira and brawith in the same breath with spongebob and patrick? however that may be, this is the moment when she asks him one last time whether he wants to return to the hospital, but she interprets his sudden uncanny silence as meaning “he would not wish to return” ( ). so she welcomes his unspoken word “more than sunshine” ( ), as her feminine gaze “hears,” rather than reads, what the sign of his absent gesture ironically signifies. at this point in the story, however, purdy introduces a strong caveat to the reader’s taking moira’s view of things without question, when he has her reflect enthusiastically that she “felt now that he had come to her of his own free will, that she had not prevailed on him to join her here at the outskirts of flempton, that he had in fact written her asking to join her in her home. she had never known such happiness, such calm, such useful tasks” ( ). of course, brawith had never written her anything of the kind. while the other interpre- tations prior to that statement may be plausibly correct, that state- ment is dead wrong, and so it begins to make us recall other of her readings that may have skewed the truth so that she might feel useful and important to someone, such as the following, which can appro- priately represent the others: “he has given his all,” moira was heard again and again to retort on the phone to lily [her sister], and as she said these words brawith looked over at her, and something almost like a smile passed over his blurred lips, for there was never any real expression on his face—all there was of expression must have been kept now in the depths of his insides which nudged and urged more and more to come out, to be released themselves like a sheet which would cover his outside skin and hair. ( ) and yet, as they are “sleepless together in the darkness,” and as she hums and sings songs to him all night and day “rather than say anything to him in ordinary speech” ( ), we have to wonder if moira is really wrong in terms of the spirit of their relationship now. similarly, as “his brow became more and more sopping wet the ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b r i n g i n g o u t t h e t e r r o r  ��� voices inside his body grew more insistent, more authoritative. she felt they were crying out for something withheld from him” ( ). is moira wrong here? apparently not, given the narrator’s comment at the conclusion of the following passage: “at first spitting out his food before swallowing it, after eagerly gobbling up, brawith ends unable to chew at all but just spits out anything put in his mouth,” as moira and he sit “listening to the dictatorial sounds issuing from inside him. grandmother and grandson were pushed into deeper silence as if they sat before a political orator or a preacher of the gospel” ( ). both share in the abjection of authority. refusing to come out of the fireplace, with his head stuck up the chimney, brawith is becoming too weak to stand all day and night, and so moira, having already moved her cot to be with him, holds him up while he turns into a quivering mass, scratching and clawing at the brick of the chimney, but instead of dust coming down, now “moira saw a sheet of sweat descending as if from a broken pipe, and this was followed by actual sheets of blood” ( ). despite all this, she “felt she must hold him up into the body of the chimney since this was his wish” ( ). as the climax (or better, “the end”) is coming on, moira asks brawith if he wants her to do anything different from what she is doing, and showing that he does still communicate with her, he all at once lowers “his head from inside the chimney and pointed with a kind of queer majesty with one hand toward a roll of toilet paper” ( ). as the reader knows, brawith always carried one with him everywhere, even sitting in a rocker and holding a roll on his lap as he would rock the night away. (just imagine the radically parodic effects of him approaching townsfolk, carrying his roll of toilet tissue in his hand.) brawith wants it now so he may cover over his entire body, mummy-like. at first appearing naked to moira, looking again, she realizes that his skin and clothes and insides are now all the same color and wetness, “as his skin [is] breaking totally now,” exposing his insides ( ). nonetheless, brawith manages to put over the worst of “the bursting places” sheets of toilet paper that now are turning red immediately “from the wet stuff that was now bursting from within his entire body” ( ). despite this savagely grim spectacle, moira manages to wonder with a blackly humorous bemusement what would happen when “the last roll was consumed” ( ). ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm p a r t t h r e e | t h e e x a l t e d s t a t e s o f r e a d i n g ��� the story concludes with the depiction of the act of death and its immediate aftermath like none other in the history of literature, and i will cite it in its entirety for its powerful effect, which will strongly inform and support my own conclusion. these last three paragraphs are all punctuated, like a good process-analysis essay, by the transi- tional term then. then she thought she heard him scream, but she realized that the many noises and sounds which had been audible within his body were moving now up to his larynx and causing his vocal cords to vibrate as if he were speaking. then she fancied he did speak one word or part of an unfinished phrase: “deliver!” repeated again and again: “deliver.” then like a flock of birds the terrible noise seemed to rush over her head deafening her. she fell, losing hold on his legs, and as she did so an immense shower of blood and intestines covered her, and his body entirely wrapped in toilet paper from head to toe fell heavily on her. moira did not know how she was able to rise and finally make her toilsome way to the side porch where mr. kwis was waiting with anxious dread. she hardly needed to tell him her grandson was no more. in silence mr. kwis took her hands in his and pressed them to his lips. then speaking in a faint whisper, he said he would go now to tell those who were concerned that the heavy burden of brawith’s life had been lifted at last. ( ) so many possible interpretations of this story and its conclusion arise now that the mind is boggled, and yet the action is as simple as can be, both appalling and grotesquely comic at once. the reader can conjecture with every plausible rationale, especially given the yeatsian visionary context i began with, that brawith in the chimney is returning to the womb, or at least the birth canal, and moira is acting as midwife to his rebirth into that other name for either living death or salvation: “deliver!” or, as a friend recently suggested to me, a reader may hear in the name kwis an intimation of what the leaking of brawith’s insides into the outside world must have first sounded like. the best way to sum up “brawith” and this conclusion is to sug- gest that not only does purdy here gather together three of his most ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c h a p t e r | b r i n g i n g o u t t h e t e r r o r  ��� formative signatures (or master figurative sinthomes), but he also presents, with his typical “in-your-face” flair, the real dimensions of the ultimate human experience. beyond this, i think, he also drama- tizes rather quietly, amid all the fundamental sounds, what it would mean to have existing between two people an unsymbolizable bond in the domain of what lacan calls “the real” of primary drive activi- ties. that is, beyond the conventional imperatives of certainly any modern culture, beyond the traversable, too-often-flimsy fantasies of individual desires, we have here in “brawith” the pure form of an unspeakable and strangely impersonal intimacy. such an uncanny intimacy, if broadly practiced, would confront and defeat our culture of security with that original “weapon” of mass creation: the truly visionary human imagination. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e r e 	 i s 	 a 	 moment in the golden bowl ( ), henry james’s famously difficult, final novel, in which prince amerigo, despite the sharp differences he perceives between himself and all the americans he is involved with, contemplates his situation with pleasure and amusement. an italian prince whose ancestors have squandered the family wealth, amerigo has married maggie, the only daughter of an american billionaire, adam verver, who has given up making money for spending it on art. verver’s “supreme idea” ( ), as he calls it, is to place the best representations of human civilization in the museum he has built back in his hometown of american city, and, as we learn, verver has a special eye for what counts as “the real thing” in business or in art. amerigo’s generous father-in-law has provided the substantial funds to bail out amerigo’s family from their debts, and then some, based on his judgment that amerigo is precisely the authentic item. meanwhile, maggie, with amerigo’s friend fanny assingham’s help, has provided him with a most agreeable new mother-in-law, charlotte stant, amerigo’s former lover, who is also maggie’s best friend. now that maggie presumably will not be there to protect the	truth	of	 american	madness on love and vision in the golden bowl conclusion �� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e t r u t h o f a m e r i c a n m a d n e s s ��� him, adam will not have to deal with importunate gold-digging women who are auditioning to replace his long-dead first wife, once the father and the daughter decide to bring charlotte in to clean house, as it were. amidst such psychologically incestuous complications, amerigo pauses to reflect, not so much on his uncanny good fortune as on how, despite his several years dealing with all these americans, he does not really understand them at all: those people—and his free synthesis lumped together capitalists and bankers, retired men of business, illustrious collectors, american fathers-in-law, american fathers, little american daughters, little american wives—those people were all the same large lucky group, as one might say, they were all at least of the same general species and had the same general instincts; they hung together, they passed each other the word, they spoke each other’s language, they did each other “turns.” ( ) amerigo’s casual observation is in fact an important one, as i will argue. the difference between americans and amerigo is that between two species—a mutation in human nature, at least, in the form of life. and if we take that phrase seriously, then a people living in the same place and practicing the same increasingly new form of life can transform the human subject in ways that can make it appear like a new and different species. wherein lies this salient figurative difference, which is now, thanks to imperialism and globalization, spreading around the world and is increasingly making all human beings not so different, as other forms of human life are killed off, or “radically transformed,” as the popular pundits say? the primary mark of difference between amerigo and the ameri- cans (ironically enough given his distant familial ties to the ancient explorer for whom their continent is named) lies in the form of subjectivity. amerigo, early in the novel, explains to his fiancée that there are “two parts of me” ( ); the larger part is the family his- tory, not its genetic structure but the genealogical record of what his ancestors have done in history. their actions and those consequences have been inscribed into his individual subject. so powerful is this ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c o n c l u s i o n ��� historical second nature that at times in the novel the ghost of one ancestor or another takes over amerigo’s facial appearance, gazing out spectrally upon the world once again. there is “another part, very much smaller doubtless,” amerigo then admits, “which, such as it is, represents my single self, the unknown, unimportant—unim- portant save to you—personal quantity” ( ). it is this unknown individual part, given by nature and strength- ened in the notorious absence of long-standing authoritative institu- tions, of which the americans are primarily made. amerigo views this unknown part of himself with suspicion for its possible irra- tionalities, which are the result of its inability to be adjusted to the historical realities of human life in society. the americans, on the other hand, possess to their self-conscious knowledge largely nothing else but this unknown representation or private imagination of their single self, and they assume it is largely good, and naturally moral: “like a dazzling curtain of light” ( ), it is “the colour of milk or snow” ( ). it is as if what americans do in the world and all the consequences of such action cannot touch or penetrate this “great white curtain” ( ), dividing their true selves from the world in which the rest of human beings live. amerigo’s father-in-law, for instance, modeled on andrew carnegie in many respects, aches for the vision of this “impersonal whiteness” of pure innocence when he falls prey to potential social complications. he is said to riffle the golden isles, with his daughter, of all of europe’s art, much as, in gilded age robber-baron fashion, he made his many billions via capitalist exploitation. such a literally transcendental self-imagina- tion by americans—transcendent of all ensnaring circumstances— amerigo can perceive, even as he cannot begin to understand it. we are given a more precise formulation of the difference between amerigo’s historically representative tragic mode of human subjec- tivity from the new romantic american subject, when the jamesian narrator, taking his cue from his character adam verver’s supreme idea of connoisseurship, nominates “the aesthetic principle” as what marks this difference ( – ). a new measure of all value is what this aesthetic principle is, and it defines adam verver’s life in both its productive and consumptive phases as capitalist and connoisseur, respectively. it is as if, the text says, adam verver had the same glass lens—presumably like a jeweler’s loupe for judging the quality ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e t r u t h o f a m e r i c a n m a d n e s s ��� of gemstones—to use for determining the reality or authenticity of a financial opportunity or a fancy statute ( ), and yet the object in question is said to fill the glass like a fluid in a fancy sipping utensil. on the face of it, however, this mark of difference, the aesthetic principle being applied to all of life as the universal measure of all value, does not really fly. the idea of the aesthetic principle as a substitute for the religious principle as the end-all and be-all of value judgments comes originally, after all, from europe, whether we trace it back to the romantics there or to the generation of the symbolists and aesthetes and decadents. certainly, amerigo is no stranger to its workings of the aesthetic principle, or to recognizing his father- in-law’s successes. i think the difference, which the introduction of the aesthetic principle both discovers (because it does tend to flatten out history’s three-dimensional solidities into a series of images) and obscures (because this operation distracts from what is really hap- pening on a deeper level of human subjectivity), is that of the split subject and how the american responds to that fact of civilized life. we know from anthropologists and psychoanalysts that civiliza- tion in the shape of human culture requires that each subject be formed out of a split between the person and the performance. this split occurs between the individual and the role, or the unknown part and the portion determined by the symbolic linguistic and discursive networks of family, religion, class or social group, people, nation, culture, and so on. on the evidence of the golden bowl, americans both deny the existence of such a split and fill it in when it appears so that as an aesthetic appearance the subject is innocent of all fracture or penetration. as maggie verver puts her highest (albeit remedial) desire, late in the novel: “the golden bowl—as it was to have been” ( ). so, the aesthetic principle as the highest and only principle of valuation does lead us to recognize the american difference, but whereas the good european accepts the necessarily unfulfilling nature of life, the good american disavows that vision as impossible. fur- thermore, the american would use all available material resources to make the ideal vision of innocent perfection, paradise on earth. the human subject must be perfect to begin with and perfected always—both, insanely, at once. we can call this national insanity of our would-be super- (or post-)human state, however it may also ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c o n c l u s i o n ��� appear elsewhere and else-when (as in the roman proclivity to deify the emperors they just killed), the exceptionally american madness. as we have seen in previous chapters, the cost of this american vision of a quintessentially undivided state of being is the loss of love as we have known it in human history, a loss that makes possible, perhaps, the planetary acquisition and hegemony of late capitalism and its new form of life. james stages the recognition of the american madness as a vision of perfection at the price of love, and he does so, ironically, as maggie testifies to her father about her discovery of the three modes of love and how they are intimately tied to three forms of jealousy. she has made this multifold discovery through her painful confronta- tion of her husband’s and her mother-in-law’s adultery. maggie pur- chases and subsequently speaks with the shopkeeper who sold her the same golden bowl amerigo and charlotte memorably passed on as a gift for her wedding four years previously because of the crack in its gilded crystal. as maggie and adam are meeting to arrange the future for themselves and of their wayward spouses, without speaking directly about what would ruin the precarious equilibrium of their collective life, maggie remarks on these three kinds of love and jealousy: my idea is this, that when you only love a little you’re naturally not jealous—or are only jealous a little, so that it doesn’t matter. but when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you’re in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. when however you love in the most abysmal and unutter- able way of all—why then you’re beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down. ( ) after a significant pause, her father responds: “i guess i’ve never been jealous,” and it said more to her, he had occasion next to perceive, than he was intending: for it made her, as by the pressure of a spring, give him a look that seemed to tell of things she couldn’t speak. but she at last tried for one of them. “oh it’s you, father, who are what i call beyond everything. nothing can pull you down.” ( ) ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e t r u t h o f a m e r i c a n m a d n e s s ��� we can read this exchange as revealing, by its denial, of adam verver’s repressed jealously, if we want. this would be, however, a subtlety of which the character is incapable. another option avail- able to us is to read it as his testimony to never having loved, really, either of his wives. this is certainly true, as we know from early on in the novel. he “brings in” charlotte, as he always says, for his daughter’s sake; maggie need not worry about him. we even learn then that he is grateful for the timely death of his first wife just as the spirit of art collection descends on him, for he knows she would never have been able to accompany him in his new role as global connoisseur ( ). i propose to read it, especially in light of maggie’s final response here, in a more absolute sense. adam verver is a visionary captain of industry and great art collector because he is not capable of the most intense and deepest kind of love. he may not be capable, if we take him with full seriousness, of any kind of love at all. this form of being “beyond everything,” as maggie turns her epi- thet around on her father to distract him from the full import of his self-betrayal, strikes the true note of american madness. as we have seen in earlier chapters, especially in ralph waldo emerson’s case in “experience” ( ), the most representative american visionary is “beyond everything.” when emerson admits that despite his expecta- tion that his son’s death would introduce him into reality by its sharp- ness and permanently wounding nature, and he experiences instead nothing worse than if he had lost some property, emerson is testi- fying to being beyond love, if not incapable of it. moreover, when a few paragraphs later in this essay emerson celebrates the approach of some “new, yet unapproachable america” that he has discovered in the west, he characterizes this visionary america with attributes taken from around the globe and from different periods of history. america is the catachresis of the abysmal love of which the emerso- nian visionary is not capable, except as a sublime image encountered in his experience of reading or thinking alone. james has already pre- sented adam verver’s discovery of his supreme idea of connoisseur- ship ( ), which applies the aesthetic principle to his life as a whole and so disguises the split in him between commercial and cultural halves under the mask of pure acquisition of its own sake. in doing so, james shows his character as being a true emersonian visionary (much ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c o n c l u s i o n ��� like his own father), even as verver analogizes this vision in term of john keats’s sonnet, “on first looking into chapman’s homer,” and his famous conceit of that experience being like proud cortez discovering the pacific, silent on a peak in darien. (of course, verver repeats keats’s mistake, as james, too, must have known that it was balboa who made this find, not cortez.) however that may be, what we see in verver is precisely the absence of the deepest love in the most representative form of american visionary experience. as i have argued earlier, however, and find repeated here per- fectly, is the contrasting kind of visionary experience, which is dif- ferent in kind and degree of intensity. maggie verver, in a passage not cited above, admits to her father she is beyond everything, not knowing “where i am,” as she puts it. in admitting this, she has the following experience: “the mere fine pulse of passion in [this love], the suggestion as of a creature consciously floating and shining in a warm summer sea, some element of dazzling sapphire and silver, a creature cradled upon depths, buoyant among dangers” ( )—this absolute experience of real love, of erotic rapture, even when it then sinks her in act to the bottom of the abyss of jealousy, is what she now knows her father never convinced anyone else, least of all him- self, of being able to experience. such erotic rapture entails being vulnerable to wounding. when maggie, a few pages later, realizes that without saying a word her father has decided to go back to american city with his young wife and thus save his daughter’s and his own marriages, making his life and her life as successful as any work of art he has acquired, she experiences in her vulnerability what can only be called a strength- ening and protective phallic jouissance: before she knew it she was lifted aloft . . . in their transmuted union, to smile almost without pain. it was like a new confidence, and after another instant she knew ever still better why. wasn’t it because now also, on his side, he was thinking of her as his daughter, was trying her, during these mute seconds, as the child of his blood? it swelled in her fairly; it raised her higher, higher: she wasn’t in that case a failure either—hadn’t been, but the contrary; his strength was her strength, her pride was his, and they were decent and competent together. ( ) ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e t r u t h o f a m e r i c a n m a d n e s s ��� in this scene we have the true climax of the golden bowl. after maggie and adam confess their belief in each other beyond all others, the halves of what i have termed emersonian and jamesian expe- riences of vision, of being beyond everything in the two opposing senses of psychotic narcissism and absolute abjection, respectively, are momentarily intermingled, if not fused, in ultimate intimacy: “his hands came out, and while her own took them he drew her to his breast and held her. he held her hard and kept her long, and she let herself go; but it was an embrace that, august and almost stern, produced for all its intimacy no revulsion and broke into no incon- sequence of tears” ( ). what precedents can we raise for this momentous union? the union of athena and zeus? she pops out of his forehead after he has ripped the child out his sister-wife hera’s womb and swallows it whole so that no greater deity than he will be born into the world (power tops wisdom every time for the greeks, it would seem). the satanic version of this mythic scene of terrible self-begetting, as john milton gives it, in the birth of sin in paradise lost? there is emer- son’s self-birth in “experience,” via the agency of his discovery of the “new, yet unapproachable america,” as if the black hole of his son’s death had turned into a worm hole of a new life, his father’s life. emerson imagines himself reborn after his son’s death by sub- lime reading or thinking in imagery quite explicitly natal. plate in william blake’s jerusalem ( ), of one hundred years before the golden bowl, also works, perhaps best of all. it shows jeru- salem as a young, naked woman being embraced by an old man in silk robes, urthona (or los, the creative principle of the redeemed human form divine), who here represents albion (or the one man). this statuesque archetypal figure is modeled on the conventional imagine of jehovah, but with the distinctive blakean twist: clearly visible female breasts! i bring in blake, because james’s late fiction especially, whether mediated by his father’s writings or not, returns to the topoi of romanticism and plays them out compellingly. however that may be, i think alain badiou’s theory of the truth event and of the truth procedures to follow the event can work here best of all to clarify this scene. what reveals itself in this climactic vision is both the american madness and its cure appearing contin- gently as the event of truth in the love lives of this father-daughter ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c o n c l u s i o n ��� pair. in other words, the truth of the american madness in the golden bowl lies not in emersonian value alone, or in jamesian self-abjecting love alone, but in their occasional abysmal moments of ultimate intimacy. to remain faithful to this vision of the truth event of love means these moments must remain occasional and contingent, and not try to become permanent. the ritual of maggie and her father meeting three times over the course of the novel can help us in this context. they meet alone together to decide to bring charlotte into their lives. the two of them decide to go to fawns rather than abroad, so that maggie and char- lotte can face each other and maggie disavow any jealousy; and, as noted in the quote above, they decide to separate for good. these three ritual-like meetings have the air of casting a magic spell when we think of them in retrospect, but in the actual reading they come up in the narrative as circumstances warrant. and they certainly don’t mark permanence so much as change. they are, in fact, a therapeutic distancing of both father and daughter from the emotionally inces- tuous relationship. such occasions of both growing separation and renewed fidelity to their relationship mark the truth-procedure pro- cess as badiou explains it, and as i have detailed in earlier chapters. i have also argued, following klossowski on nietzsche, that in reading we encounter consciously the otherwise unconscious experi- ence of our impulsive drives—one after another or two dominant ones simultaneously in antagonistic contest—as they attempt to take hold of and use as allegorical masks, the stimmung—the mood or tone or sounding—inscribed in the literary text, so that they may become fixed ideas and consume our lives with their madnesses. the word that signals the presence of this contest of drives in james’s text is vibration. while not as pervasive as anxiety or as ubiquitous as truth, in the golden bowl the word vibration and its evident avatars sound pointedly, and often poignantly. the characters we have any interior vantage on—maggie, amerigo, fanny—repeatedly suffer this “vibration,” often, like amerigo at the novel’s opening, as a form of restlessness. maggie describes such “nerves” as “the little idol of anxiety” ( ), which gives rise to usually failed attempts to name and define this “vibration.” the novel’s second volume, for example, opens with maggie finally confounding her husband’s and mother-in-law’s expectations, and maggie envisions a huge porcelain ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm t h e t r u t h o f a m e r i c a n m a d n e s s ��� pagoda silently looming in the middle of the garden of the lovers’ lives. she now has simply knocked on it, and has received in answer to her quietly echoing tap a sharper sounding from within ( ff.). unable to do anything but employ words and images as components of catachresis for the otherwise unnamable experience of the drives, james’s characters, as we read them mirroring our reading experi- ence, repeatedly come face to face with what, with reference to her husband and charlotte’s adulterous relationship, maggie calls “the figured void” ( ). james pauses to remark and elaborate: there had been, through life, as we know, few quarters in which the princess’s fancy could let itself loose; but it shook off restraint when it plunged into the figured void of the detail of that relation. this was a realm it could people with images—again and again with fresh ones; they swarmed there like the strange combinations that lurked in the woods at twilight, they loomed into the definite and faded into the vague, their main present sign for her being however that they were always, that they were duskily, agitated. ( ) these images that yet fresh images beget are what klossowski calls phantasms; these are the foundational elements of the simulacra the impulsive drives use to stabilize themselves so as to signal their passions. we combine and organize these simulacra into the admit- tedly phantasmagoric ideas of our imaginations of ourselves and of the world. when we can shake off our restraints in confronting the figured void of some previously unaccounted for and provocatively wounding new event, we then people that void with our visions, which otherwise convention and habit cover over and contain. our new glimpses and procedures for remaining faithful to the new truths we have glimpsed keep our visions alive. once again, our reading of the climactic father-daughter embrace concluding chapter of book is a good case in point. there, the aesthetic principle of vision represented by her father and the principle of love by his daughter momentarily fuse or interpenetrate in an ultimate form of intimacy that blake, to recall him one again for clarification’s sake, imagines as love making from head to toe. what makes the novel’s final scene so resonant, however, a kind of after-climax (and so perhaps a sign of feminine jouissance) is that ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm c o n c l u s i o n �� it exhibits at once the subject of truth’s exaltation and abjection. we see both this daughter’s continuing abjection in the wild specula- tion of her abysmal love for amerigo (“she had thrown the dice, but his hand was over the cast” [ ]) and her lineage. she faces, for a moment, the tragic recognition of amerigo’s abject love for her emerging right there before her eyes, in outright disavowal of charlotte’s power to captivate any longer his gaze: he tried, too clearly, to please her—to meet her in her own way [about how useful charlotte has been and will still be]; but with the result only that, close to her, her face kept before him, his hands hold- ing her shoulders, his whole act enclosing her, he presently echoed: “see? i see nothing but you.” and the truth of it had with this force after a moment so strangely lighted his eyes that as for pity and dread of them she buried her own in his breast. ( ) maggie verver experiences here the physical transport of married love, and its often awful costs. such tragic love is itself visionary, but as she says herself, it is “beyond everything,” and so, beyond coherent or complete repre- sentation. it is what lacan would call the real of the system of rep- resentation: that which is in it but not of it, also then “outside” it, and which the symbolic order would contain by its chain of signifi- cation, as in a game of hot potato, and which the imaginary would freeze into its purely reflective phantasms. it may be that the princess wants “a happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger,” or “a brilliant perfect surface” as fanny assingham glosses her desire—“the golden bowl,” maggie completes fanny’s reading for her, “as it was to have been.” but “the golden bowl with all our happiness in it,” the “bowl without the crack” ( ), as maggie learns, would enclose within its luminous void of feminine jouissance the truth of the american madness. as such, the golden bowl, i conclude, is henry james’s modern epic of reading in our global america, worth to stand beside the traditional epics of homer, virgil, dante, and milton. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ��� several of my closest friends have repeatedly questioned why i use alain badiou in my recent work. since they are all thoughtful people, and despite my best past efforts to explicate badiou for my purposes, i am here making another attempt to explain why badiou counts. i realize that this is a bit unorthodox, but if readers want to do so, they can just ignore it. i choose this word counts with deliberate irony, of course, as the biggest objection to badiou concerns his use of mathematics, specifically in being and event ( ) and its sequel, logics of worlds ( ), set theory and category theory, respectively. both his ontology and phenomenology are thereby formalized in math- ematical terms. although there is a long tradition of doing so in both analytic and continental philosophy traditions, indeed going all the way back to plato, most philosophers in recent years have not done so, and certainly the philosophers thought of as poststructuralist are generally not known for this mode of formalization. jacques lacan, the anti-philosopher, is the exception to this, as to all rules. badiou, in short, is doing something in his work that is largely unfamiliar nowadays and for humanists unwelcome. they cannot understand the mathematics, or, if they do, they believe mathematics as the discipline for formalizing philosophy works more reductively than does anthropology, history, psychoanalysis, sociology, politics, why	badiou	counts— in	this	book	and	generally appendix ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm a p p e n d i x ��� or linguistics. all modes of formalization, of course, are reductive and have the same two goals: to limit the everyday habits of mind that too often interfere with critical thinking and to make possible the communication of the practice of philosophy from one genera- tion to the next. badiou chooses to use mathematics because his ontological insight is that being itself is mathematical, that is, being is the multiple to infinity. the expanse of being is infinitudes upon infinitudes of mul- tiple. there is no closure and no single identity, no one—except as we humans construct it after the fact for our purposes. given this ontology, every situation—a term badiou derives more from the french tradition of mathematical theory than from john-paul sartre—is necessarily a political situation in which some human beings get to determine what counts as the one of the situation—that is, its identity and the select members of the situation, drawn from all its elements, that in turn count. these elements are members of the situation because they count toward its identity. they are so deter- mined by those who say what counts in the count—the repetitive inventory—that they have set up regular procedures for so counting. knowledge, in this context, tends to become encyclopedic and self- reinforcing. for badiou, it is purely operational: it pertains to what makes the count count—an archive of taxonomies for identifying what matters. beyond such mathematical ontology and pragmatist epistemology, however, is badiou’s subtractive theory of truth. truth is an event— fugitive and fleeting—that supplements any situation as counted by the state of the situation. this state of the situation is the present condition of the chronic inventory of the situation’s approved mem- bership. imagine a perpetual census-taking. a truth emerges from within the situation as its founding void: a repressed or disavowed, unnamed or misnamed element of the situation that in fact forms the basis of the situation—on the analogy of the way the null set forms the basis of any set. truth irrupts as what the situation has disavowed, and does so as something “real” exploding (as it supple- ments) the state of the situation. if we remember how the power set of any set contains more subsets than there are original elements in the set, we can begin to see, i think, the fertility of set theory for badiou’s allegory of truth. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm w h y b a d i o u c o u n t s ��� by naming this truth, the subject—which for badiou is never simply individual but always determined by a collective project— inaugurates a new configuration of the situation upon the ruins of the old. a revolutionary truth is one in which this truth precludes the coercive forcing of the new configuration upon all elements of the situation, so that a new situation can emerge cleanly, the way a new category does, from the truth procedures set up by the subject of this truth, not as a new repressive law but rather as an experimental test of the universality of the truth in question. the four primary domains in which truths emerge or manifest themselves for badiou as new beings in the world are politics, science, art, and love. phi- losophy invents no new truths, but instead analyzes, evaluates, and coordinates the truths emerging from these domains. although i have read all of badiou available in french and eng- lish, as well as his many commentators and critics, i find that of the former, peter hallward, in badiou: a subject to truth (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, ), is the most helpful, explaining, for instance, the thirty-eight meanings of “subtraction” in badiou; and of the latter, slavoj Žižek in in defense of lost causes (new york: verso, ) is most provocative, for instance, in raising the questions of capitalism’s inherently transformative dynamic and its outmoding effects on the idea and reality of class. because Žižek does not deal with badiou’s mathematics, however, he fails to under- stand that the state of the situation under capitalism or under rome counts as zero, as null set, as part of the void, the class of its ele- ments that will not count as members. the state of the situation, that is, already subtracts into the void the class that does not count: illegal immigrants, for example. the critic, the philosopher, is then to subtract from this subtraction in helping to name the nameless with a name already subtracted from the field of positively recognized names and not already in circulation as part of the official story of reality. by using badiou in this book i hope to begin this process of revisionary naming with critical reading in american studies. besides my friends’ objection to badiou’s mathematical ontology and eventful theory of truth, they argue that i can simply use the work of literary figures in the romantic tradition—blake, shelley, yeats, etc.—to make the points i want to make, or indeed the points ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm a p p e n d i x ��� that badiou makes. sometimes, these same friends go further and say that i should not bother with reading through the texts of any figures as so many masks or personae of my own message when i can even more simply just speak in my own person and elaborate my position, as it were, ex cathedra. the reason i do what i do—produce theory via reading the texts of others—is that i am in my criticism, well, a critic. that is, i am a scholarly reader of and commentator upon texts. i am not immanuel kant, nor was i meant to be. my mind as a critic, such as it is, is itself a text made up of all the other texts i have read. theory is the name for the order i can bring to those memories, and the names of the theorists are the presiding genius loci of the admittedly odd commonplaces of my mind. in this context, badiou is the present name for the visionary power of the romantic tradition, even as he would contend he is a classicist—both platonic and pascalian—and is harshly critical of german romanticism. but, thanks to freud and harold bloom, we know that story all too well by now. if under the guise of such a figure as badiou i can insinuate the romantic tradi- tion of imagination and thinking into our discussions, so much the better, as i do not believe, regardless of what my friends say, we can convince contemporaries to take seriously that tradition for our time. however, i will conclude with an explicit bow to and endorsement of that tradition—for my friends’ sakes. in blake’s milton, one of the recurring mythic tropes is that of the secret moment in each day that satan’s watch-fiends can never find and inventory. this is the creative moment when a vision can arise that is a poetic event: spontaneous, unpredictable, and transforma- tive. this is so only if it is not strangled as it is born by the habits of conventional thinking. this idea of the fugitive, creative moment is central to blake, and indeed to all the romantics, and in the terms in which i have stated it, it is easy to dismiss as outmoded, a pious relic of a defeated, liberal humanist past, and yet, for me, it remains one of the most signifi- cant truths there is. badiou’s philosophy is, in this context, an ironic visionary allegory for the propagation of faith in the transformative power of the creative moment that can escape the mindless inventory of satan’s watch-fiends. upon such moments, worlds can turn. or at the least, heads. ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ��� preface . henry james, complete stories, – , ed. edward w. said (new york: library of america, ), . . ralph waldo emerson, essays and lectures, ed. joel porte (new york: library of america, ), . introduction . see erich auerbach, mimesis: the representation of reality in western lit- erature, trans. willard r. trask (princeton, nj: princeton university press, , ), . . see pierre klossowski, nietzsche and the vicious circle, trans. daniel w. smith (chicago: the university of chicago press, ), . . friedrich nietzsche, the gay science with a prelude in german in rhymes and an appendix of songs, ed. bernard williams, trans. josefine nauckhoff and andrian del caro (new york: cambridge university press, ), – . . my reading is influenced here by a forthcoming essay in boundary from hans ulrich gumbrecht, “reading for the stimmung? about the ontology of lit- erature today.” . cited in quentin anderson, the imperial self: an essay in american liter- ary and cultural history (new york: vintage books, ). chapter . for smith’s biography, see karen l. hellekson, the science fiction of cord- wainer smith (jefferson, nc: mcfarland and co., inc., ), – . . to note just two of these recent books, see christ hables gray, cyborg citi- zen (new york: routledge, ), and francis fukuyama, our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution (new york: farrar, strauss and giroux, ). fukuyama is particularly good at separating realistic from purely imaginary expectations with respect to these consequences. his own ultimate practical solution to the dilemmas they inspire, conservative populist that he is, is notes ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm to remind us of the power of the ballot box, which, given his very own call for the new international controls and institutions in these matters, leads only to further dilemmas, it would seem. . elaine l. graham, representatives of the post/human: monsters, aliens and others in popular culture (new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press, ). hereafter, this work is cited parenthetically in the text by page number. graham argues for writing the term as “post/human” (rather than any other way), and in discussing her work i use that same term, but “post-human” elsewhere in my writing. i have also used other people’s preferred usage when citing their own work. for a recent study that discusses in more detail the cybernetic connection to the “post/human,” see n. katherine hayles, how we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics (chicago: university of chicago press, ). . fukuyama’s book takes a very different theoretical approach to erecting a critical framework than graham’s, as we shall shortly see. fukuyama vainly resurrects a scholastic version of aristotle’s conception of human nature and then attempts to supplement its perceived inadequacies with some mumbo jumbo from modern statistical research. the result is the production of a truly “monstrous” version of typical or representative human nature intended to be appropriate for so-called liberal capitalist democracies. this “creation” of fukuyama’s is stranger than any mary shelley envisioned. . see martin heidegger, “the question concerning technology” and “build- ing, dwelling, thinking,” both in basic writings, ed. david farrell krell (london: routledge, ). . for one of the more influential versions of this reading of foucault, see arnold i. davidson, “archeology, genealogy, ethics,” in foucault: a critical reader, ed. david couzens hoy (oxford: blackwell, ), – . . see my radical parody: american culture and critical agency after foucault (new york: columbia university press, ). . these essays, in revised form, constitute what will be the core of bové’s forthcoming study on adams for harvard university press. . for a brief influential discussion of “the inhuman,” see jean-françois lyotard. . for his latest discussion on the topic, see jacques derrida, “hostipitality” [sic], in acts of religion, ed. gil anidjar (new york: routledge, ), – . . see arkady plotnitsky, the knowable and the unknowable: modern sci- ence, nonclassical thought, and the “two cultures” (ann arbor: university of michigan press, ). . see “planet-buyer and cat-master” in my empire burlesque: the fate of critical culture in global america (durham, nc: duke university press, ). . for one exemplary remembrance, see geoffrey hartman, “language and culture after the holocaust,” in the fateful question of culture (new york: columbia university press, ), – . . cordwainer smith, nostrilia (framingham, ma: the nesfa press, ), . this is one of smith’s own poems, in this case about the mysterious alien race of “daimoni” that came and went, apparently leaving scarcely a trace of their divinely obvious selves. . for a more sustained imaginative version of this untimely “human, all-too- human” nietzschean critical gesture of mine, see kenzaburo oe’s stunningly ironic rereading of blake’s influence on his life and work, rouse up o young men of the n o t e s t o c h a p t e r ��� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm new age! trans. and with an afterword by john nathan (new york: grove press, ). . alain badiou, being and event, trans. oliver feltham (new york: con- tinuum, ). hereafter, this work is cited parenthetically by page number. chapter . peter hallward, badiou: a subject to truth (minneapolis: university of min- nesota press, ). this is the best introduction to badiou available in english. i have drawn heavily upon it for my summary of his position. for the disciplinary basis of badiou’s version of set theory, see paul cohen, set theory and the con- tinuum hypothesis (new york: w. a. benjamin, ). . alain badiou, saint paul: the foundation of universalism, trans. ray brass- ier (stanford, ca: stanford university press, ). . alain badiou, theoretical writings, trans. and ed. ray brassier and alberto toscano (new york: continuum, ). . the fundamentalism project consists of five substantial tomes, all edited by martin e. marty and r. scott appleby (et al.) and published by the university of chicago press from through . all volumes are now in paperback. the titles of the individual volumes are: fundamentalisms observed, vol. ; fundamen- talisms and society: reclaiming the sciences, the family, and education, vol. ; fundamentalisms and the state: remaking polities, economies, and militance, vol. ; accounting for fundamentalisms: the dynamic character of movements, vol. ; and fundamentalisms comprehended, vol. . an early selection of the contribu- tions dealing with islam was edited by james piscatori and was published in by the american academy of arts and sciences as islamic fundamentalisms and the gulf crisis. the entire project was underwritten by a substantial macarthur foundation grant. i am indebted to these volumes for whatever understanding of the topic i have. i am also indebted to paul a. bové for pointing me in their direc- tion at an early stage in the research for this chapter. . for this term and the explanation of its usage, see the general editors’ con- clusion, “remaking the state: the limits of the fundamentalist imagination,” in fundamentalisms and the state, vol. of the fundamentalism project, – . . see robin griffith-jones, the gospel according to paul: the creative genius who brought jesus to the world (san francisco: harpersanfrancisco, ). . see james l. peacock and tim pettyjohn, “fundamentalisms narrated: mus- lim, christian, and mystical,” in fundamentalisms comprehended, vol. of the fundamentalism project, – . . see shadia b. drury, leo strauss and the american right (new york: st. martin’s press, ). . the entire final volume of the fundamentalism project, fundamentalisms comprehended, is devoted to these explanations. . see griffith-jones, the gospel according to paul, – . . badiou, saint paul, – . . sigmund freud, the schreber case, trans. andrew webber, with an introduc- tion by colin maccabe (new york: penguin books, ). . freud, the schreber case, . . all my citations of elder evans’s conversion story come from peacock and pettyjohn, “fundamentalisms narrated,” – . n o t e s t o c h a p t e r ��� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm chapter . alain badiou, saint paul: the foundation of universalism, trans. ray brass- ier (stanford, ca: stanford university press, ), . hereafter, this work is cited parenthetically as sp. . robin griffith-jones, the gospel according to paul: the creative genius who brought jesus to the world (san francisco: harpersanfrancisco, ), – . i have modified some of these more colloquial terms back into the tradi- tional formulations when it has seemed to make for greater clarity for the general reader. i cite from this text because griffith-jones is a new testament scholar of considerable reputation whose translations capture the concrete power of the origi- nal text. . ibid., . . frank lentricchia and jody mcauliffe, crimes of art and terror (chicago: university of chicago press, ), . . james strachey, ed., the standard editions of the complete psychological works of sigmund freud, vol. , an autobiographical study, inhibitions, symp- toms and anxiety ( – ) (london: hogarth press), . . see the “historical introduction” to søren kierkegaard, the concept of anxiety, kierkegaard writings, vol. , ed. and trans. reidar thornte (princeton, nj: princeton university press, ), vii–xviii. . richard g. heimber, cynthia l. turk, and douglas s. mennin, eds., gener- alized anxiety disorder: advances in research and practice (new york: guilford press, ). see, especially, michel j. dugas, kristin buhr, and robert ladouceur, “the role of intolerance of uncertainty in etiology and maintenance,” – . . see strachey, the standard edition, introduction to vol. , an autobio- graphical study, inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety, . . alain badiou, “lack and destruction,” umbr(a): a journal of the uncon- scious ( ): – . hereafter, this work is cited parenthetically as ld. badiou focuses here on lacan’s remarks about anxiety from the seminar of jacques lacan, book : freud’s papers on technique – , ed. jacques-alain miller, trans. john forrester (new york: norton, ), and the seminar of jacques lacan, book : the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, ed. jacques-alain miller, trans. alan sheridan (new york: w. w. norton, ). for an extended study of lacan’s views on anxiety, see roberto harari, lacan’s seminar on “anxi- ety,” with a foreword by charles shepherdson, trans. jane c. lamb-ruiz, rev. and ed. rico frances (new york: other press, ). . wallace stevens, “an ordinary evening in new haven, xii,” in stevens: collected poetry and prose, ed. frank kermode and joan richardson (new york: library of america, ), . . slavoj Žižek, iraq: the borrowed kettle (new york: verso, ), . . ibid. chapter . for the basis of this view, see jonathan arac, the emergence of ameri- can literary narrative, – (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, ). n o t e s t o c h a p t e r ��� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm . ralph waldo emerson, essays and lectures (new york: ), . . leon edel, ed., the letters of henry james, vol. , – (cambridge, ma: harvard belknap press, ), . . henry james, literary criticism, vol. : european writers and prefaces to the new york edition (new york: library of america, ), . . see “empire baroque: becoming other in henry james” in my empire burlesque: the fate of critical culture in global america (durham, nc: duke university press, ). . william h. o’donnell, ed., later essays, vol. vii (london: palgrave mac- millan, ), . for “emersonianism,” see donald e. pease, “emerson’s ‘experi- ence’ and the crisis in emersonianism,” forthcoming in boundary . . robert stone, prime green: remembering the sixties (new york: houghton mifflin, ), . much of the vision here portrayed, stone admits, derives from the influence of d. h. lawrence’s american writings, a subject to be explored sub- sequently. chapter . the latest volume by mick foley is the hardcore diaries (new york: pocket books, ). . alain badiou, polemics, trans. steve corcoran (london: verso, ), . for a radically different view of / , see frank lentricchia and jody mcauliffe, crimes of art and terror (chicago: university of chicago press, ). . alain badiou, saint paul: the foundation of universalism, trans. ray brass- ier (stanford, ca: stanford university press, ). . john ashbery, a worldly country: new poems (new york: ecco press, ). . jacques lacan, seminar, livre xxiii: le sinthome, – , ed. jacques alain-miller (paris: editions du seuil, ), . the published english translation is partial and appeared in ornicar? ( – ): – . there is an unauthorized manuscript version of the complete seminar in circulation as well based on texts established by luke thurston. i have also consulted these published and unpub- lished sources. for the best recent study of the joycean dimension of seminar xxiii, see philip dravers, “joyce and the sinthome: aiming at the fourth term of the knot,” psychoanalytic notebooks of the lsnls : “lacan with joyce,” – . . “the beast in the jungle,” in tales of henry james, ed. christof wegelin and henry b. wonham (new york: norton, ). the companion tale, “the jolly corner” ( ) tells the story of an expatriate american returning to new york city to take care of the final disposal of his properties there, including his childhood home. spencer brydon, the protagonist in question, becomes convinced that if he haunts the premises at midnight he will come upon the ghost of all that he never became, the crass commercial personality his aesthetic personality repressed. here, the living man turns the tables on the undead one in ways that could easily lend themselves to a similar kind of symptomatic reading. . joel porte, ed., emerson: essays and lectures (new york: library of amer- ica, ). . jonathan lear, radical hope: ethics in the face of cultural devastation (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, ). n o t e s t o c h a p t e r ��� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm . charles taylor, “a different kind of courage,” the new york review of books (april , ): , – . . wallace stevens, collected poems (new york: knopf, , ). . holly stevens, ed., the letters of wallace stevens (new york: knopf, ), . chapter . erich auerbach, mimesis: the representation of reality in western lit- erature, trans. willard trask with an introduction by edward w. said (princeton: princeton university press, ). . michael sheringham, everyday life: theories and practices from surrealism to the present (new york: oxford university press, ). . john cheever, falconer (new york: vintage, ). . john ashbery, self-portrait in a convex mirror: poems (new york: penguin, ). . charles altieri, painterly abstraction in modernist american poetry (lon- don: cambridge university press, ). . ralph waldo emerson, essays and lectures, ed. joel porte (new york: library of america, ). . stanley cavell, this new yet unapproachable america: essays after emer- son after wittgenstein, frederick ives carpenter lectures, (new york: living batch books, ). . cordwainer smith, the rediscovery of man (new york: nesfa press, ). chapter . the dates refer to original publications in magazines. . see james’s cs -complete stories, – (new york: library of amer- ica, ). . see james’s cs -complete stories, – (new york: library of amer- ica, ). . see huguette glowinski, zita m. marks, and sara murphy, a compendium of lacanian terms (london: free association, ). for lacan, jouissance takes two forms: phallic and feminine. the former would be perfectly exemplified in both stories by the sudden impulsive stabbing of the portraits, granting relief; the latter, in “the liar,” by oliver lyon’s dizziness and prolonged excitement after he wit- nesses the scene of his masterpiece’s orgiastic destruction. so-called “adult genital sexuality” versus “polymorphous perversity” would be the classic psychoanalytic way of putting this difference. . i am following the lead here of quentin anderson. see anderson, the ameri- can henry james (new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press, ). . examples of james’s levity are scattered throughout both stories. the wom- an’s last name of “everett” in the earlier story and the woman’s first name of eve- rina in the later one are both names containing humankind’s mythic first mother’s notorious name of eve. in “the liar” the model of the type of portrait the artist wishes to emulate is “the tailor,” one of giovanni battista moroni’s mannerist n o t e s t o c h a p t e r �� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm classics. the figure of the young man, the tailor of the title, is simultaneously so evidently a figure broadly suggestive of, but not specifically identified with, the figure of pan. in this context of james being between realism and vision, i find this reference revealing for thinking about the form of james’s art, here in the artist-tales but also more generally. . the most influential critic discussing the visionary imagination is, of course, harold bloom. a good overall introduction to his work is to be found in poetics of influence. see bloom, new and selected essays, ed. and intro. john hollander (new haven, ct: henry schwab, ). critics of james treat his visionary ten- dencies in terms of james’s own famous distinction between realism and romance, about which i propose my own views in chapter of lionel trilling: the work of liberation (madison: university of wisconsin press, ). . here is luxon’s introduction to this online edition of the text: the first edition of printed the poem in ten books. the arguments at the head of each book were added in subsequent imprints of the first edition. in , a fully “revised and augmented” edition with new front matter, arguments at the head of each book, and a new division into twelve books was issued. milton scholars generally have used this edition as the standard for any new scholarly edition. the milton reading room text of paradise lost was prepared from the copy of on uni- versity microfilm’s wing – * copy (early english books, – ; : ), and checked against a copy of in the rauner special collec- tions library at dartmouth college. whenever made no sense, the equivalent passage from (wing – ) was checked and sometimes followed. all deviations from are recorded in the notes. see cordelia zukerman and thomas h. luxon, introduction, paradise lost by john milton. the milton reading room, dartmouth college, february , , http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/intro/index.shtml (accessed march , ). . see my empire burlesque: the fate of cultural criticism in global america (durham, nc: duke university press, ). in “empire baroque: becoming other in henry james,” i elaborate on james’s slippery nature and relate it to the specter of what i term global america ( – ). to be brief here by necessity, the figure of “the new, yet unapproachable america” that emerson declares in “experience” ( ) he manifestly discovers in the west as his visionary destiny, rather than avow any grief for his dead son and namesake. this “always already” death of love is the american form of satan’s sin. in this chapter, too, i assess the relative critical value of the work by millicent bell, philip horne, ross posnock, and john carlos rowe. eric savoy’s readings of james (see his henry james and queer formalism, forthcoming, duke university press, ), found often in the pages of this journal and composing the basis of his forthcoming study, provides for me the model of a contemporary critical approach that makes the most of both older and newer forms of scholarship in james studies. chapter . michel foucault, the hermeneutics of the subject: lectures at the college de france – , ed. francois ewald and alessandro fontana, trans. graham n o t e s t o c h a p t e r ��� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm burchell (new york: palgrave macmillan, ). . henry james, the portrait of a lady: a norton critical edition, d ed., ed. robert o. bamberg (new york: w. w. norton, ). hereafter, this work is cited parenthetically by page number only. . foucault, the hermeneutics of the subject, . . ibid. . w. b. yeats, the collected works, volume : the poems, rev. ed. richard j. finnegan (new york: scribner’s, ), . . james baldwin, blues for mister charlie: a play ( ; repr., new york: vintage international, ). . ibid., . . chapter is a more in-depth discussion of this topic. . see pierre klossowski, nietzsche and the vicious circle, trans. daniel w. smith (chicago: university of chicago press, ). . foucault, the hermeneutics of the subject, , – . . for what is still the best study of this work in relation to blake’s poetic mythology, see northrop frye, fearful symmetry: a study of william blake ( ; repr., princeton, nj: princeton university press, ). . baldwin, blues for mister charlie, – . . lionel trilling, “princess casamassima,” in the moral obligation to be intelligent, ed. with an intro. leon wieseltier (new york: farrar, strauss and gir- oux, ), – . . ibid., . . james baldwin, the amen corner: a play (new york: vintage international, ). chapter . i allude here to the psychoanalytically inspired literary and cultural studies of such critics as christopher lane, tim dean, joan copjec, jean-michel rabate, charles shepherdson, leo bersani, julia kristeva, and slavoj Žižek, among others, including donald e. pease. although not all of those i just mentioned (or am think- ing of) do gay studies or queer theory, much of the most important and promising work is being done there, and all of the promising studies bear witness to these developments. . w. b. yeats, per amica silentia lenae, in the collected works of w. b. yeats, volume v: later essays, ed. william h. o’donnell (new york: scribner’s, ), . hereafter, this work is cited parenthetically by page number only. . slavoj Žižek, enjoy your symptom: jacques lacan in hollywood and out, d ed. (new york: routledge, ), . . ibid. . ibid. . james purdy, : dream palace and other stories (new york: penguin books, ). this book was first published in by new directions under the title the color of darkness. . james purdy, the candles of your eyes and thirteen other stories (san francisco: city lights, ), . . christopher lane, “out with james purdy: an interview,” the james purdy society web site, http://www.wright.edu/~martin.kich/purdysoc/lane.htm. the n o t e s t o c h a p t e r ��� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm interview was recorded on november , . hereafter, this work is cited par- enthetically by page number only. page numbers refer to this online version printed from the web site. . james purdy, proud flesh: four short plays (northridge, ca: lord john press, ), . . ibid., . . james purdy, moe’s villa and other stories (new york: carroll and graf, ), . subsequent references to this text are cited parenthetically by page number only. conclusion . henry james, the golden bowl, with an introduction by denis donoghue (london: everyman library, knopf , ). n o t e t o c o n c l u s i o n ��� ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ��� abraham and isaac, – alger, horatio, jr., the amen corner (baldwin), – america, ; / , , , – , , , , – ; and abjec- tion, – , ; and abu ghraib, ; american dream, ; culture of security, , , ; excep- tionalism, viii, ; manifest des- tiny, ; renaissance, ; sci-fi culture, ix; the west, . see also global america; subject another country (baldwin), anxiety, – , – , ashbery, john, , . see also self- portrait in a convex mirror auerbach, erich, x, – , , – , . see also mimesis the auroras of autumn (stevens), – badiou, alain, ix, x, , , , – , – , , , , – , – , , , , – ; and hei- degger, . see also being and event; logics of worlds; saint paul: the foundations of uni- versalism baldwin, james, xi, . see also the amen corner; another country; blues for mister charlie; “son- ny’s blues” “the beast in the jungle” (james), x, – index being and event (badiou), , , blake, william, , , , , , , – ; kenzaburo oe’s rereading of, n ; and the “state,” . see also the book of thel bloom, harold, , , n blues for mister charlie (baldwin), , – the book of thel (blake), , bourdieu, pierre: “habitus,” bové, paul, , , n “brawith” (purdy), , – bush, george walker, ; and the “war on terror,” , ; and pre-millennial fundamentalism, ; on iraq, cheever, john, . see also the fal- coner clearing the forest (purdy), crimes of art and terror (lentricchia and mcauliffe), derrida, jacques, drive, ; definition of, emerson, ralph waldo, x, , – , – , , , – , , , empire burlesque (o’hara), – , n enjoy your symptom (Žižek), – ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm i n d e x ��� the falconer (cheever), x, – foucault, michel, xi, , , , – , , – ; “disciplin- ary practice,” . see also the hermeneutics of the subject freud, sigmund, , , , , ; on dr. schreber, – , ; see also inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety fukuyama, francis, n , n fundamentalism, viii, ix, , – , – , – , global america , viii, , , , – , , – , the golden bowl (james), vii, x, xi, – graham, elaine l., , – , n , n gumbrecht, hans ulrich, x, , n haraway, donna, , – hegel, georg wilhelm friedrich: “spirit of the age,” heidegger, martin, – , , , , , , the hermeneutics of the subject (foucault), , – , identity, x, , , – , – , , , , , , ; identity- theme, , , ; of groups, ; in politics, viii, , ; and self- revision, , . see also truth procedures inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety (freud), in defense of lost causes (Žižek), in search of lost time (proust), james, henry, x, xi, , , , – , , , , n , n . see also “the beast in the jungle”; the golden bowl; “the jolly corner”; “the liar”; the portrait of a lady; the sacred fount; “the story of a master- piece” “the jolly corner” (james), n judeo-christian tradition, , kant, immanuel, keats, john, , kierkegaard, søren, , klossowski, pierre, – , , lacan, jacques, ix, x, , , – , , , , , – , – ; and definition of sinthome, ; and jouissance, x, xi, , , , – , , – , , , , n ; and le sinthome, x, xi, , , – , – , – , – , ; and the three orders, , , , – , – , – , – , – , , , , , , , . see also the real; seminar : le sinthome “the liar” (james), – logics of worlds (badiou), de man, paul, , mimesis (auerbach), – nietzsche, friedrich, – , – , , , , , – ; and amor fati, xi, , , – , – ; and eternal return, ; and the “last man,” ; and ressenti- ment, nihilism, , pease, donald, , , the portrait of a lady (james), – post/human, vii, viii, – , – , , , , ; and the cyborg, the cyborg, ; as Übermensch, , ; and the nonhuman, – public intellectuals, , , , , – purdy, james, x, xi, , , – , – ; interview with chris- topher lane, – . see also clearing the forest; “brawith” radical hope: ethics in the face of cultural devastation (lear), – ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm i n d e x ��� reading, xi; american difference of, viii; experience of, vii; and self- interpretation, viii; and truth procedures, the real, ix, xi, , , , , , romanticism, , the sacred fount (james), said, edward, , saint paul: the foundations of uni- versalism (badiou), , , , self-portrait in a convex mirror (ashbery), x, , – seminar : le sinthome (lacan), smith, cordwainer, – , – , n “sonny’s blues” (baldwin), stevens, wallace, , , . see also the auroras of autumn stoicism, , , , “the story of a masterpiece” (james), – strauss, leo, – subject, , – , , ; amer- ican, ix, , , – , , , – , ; and anxiety, – ; modern, , ; and psychoanalysis, , , ; and revision, – ; and truth, , , , , – , , – , sublime, , , terrorism, ix, , – , , , – , , , , truth, , ; as correspondence, – ; the four domains of, ; procedures, , , , , , , ; and set theory, – , – , ; as unveiling, ; and the void, – , , , , , , , the twilight of the idols (nietzsche), vision: culture of, , ; vision- ary experience, – ; visionary imagination, – , , , n whitman, walt, , will-to-power, , – , ; and heidegger’s will-to-will, – , – wordsworth, william, , yeats, william butler, , – , – , , , Žižek, slavoj, , . see also enjoy your symptom; in defense of lost causes ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm ohara_final print.indb / / : : pm i oscillations of the absolute: an examination of the implications of wallace stevens* '^central poetry" by keith darrel eccleston b.a., the university of b r i t i s h columbia, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts i n the department of english we accept t h i s thesis as conforming to the required standard the university of british columbia september, k. . in p r e s e n t i n g t h i s t h e s i s i n p a r t i a l f u l f i l m e n t of the requirements f o r an advanced degree at the u n i v e r s i t y of b r i t i s h columbia, i agree that the l i b r a r y s h a l l make i t f r e e l y a v a i l a b l e f o r reference and study* i f u r t h e r agree that per- mission, f o r extensive copying of t h i s t h e s i s f o r s c h o l a r l y purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by h i s r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s . i t i s understood that, copying or p u b l i - c a t i o n of t h i s t h e s i s f o r f i n a n c i a l gain s h a l l not be allowed without my w r i t t e n permission* department of i b r i ^ l i s l the u n i v e r s i t y of b r i t i s h columbia, vancouver , canada date abstract the inadequacy of the image has ever been the b e s e t t i n g problem of i d e a l i s t e s t h e t i c s . the discrepancy between the absolute and the contingent, between the t h i n g , the idea of the t h i n g and the experience of the t h i n g provides common cause f o r the compositions of hermetic a r t . the b a s i c a f f i r - mation of t h i s t h e s i s i s that the theory of wallace stevens o f f e r s a demonstrable s o l u t i o n t o the problem and that h i s r e l a t i o n a l use of images i n the c o l l e c t e d poems overcomes the inadequacy of those images. in p r a c t i c e , however, t h i s t h e s i s i n v o l v e s the d e l i n e a - t i o n of that s o l u t i o n l e s s than the d i a l e c t i c s necessary to determine i t s nature. such a method i s d i c t a t e d by an i n i t i a l acceptance of d e l i b e r a t e obscuration as one of the formative p r i n c i p l e s of stevens' e s t h e t i c . the i n t r o d u c t i o n to t h i s paper i s l i t t l e more than an examination of the causes and values of obscuration i n stevens' prose and i n h i s poems and a defence of the method adopted h e r e i n to d e a l w i t h those values; i n i t , stevens' poems are vievred as acts appropriate to the p r a c t i c a l process of transcendence - a process designed to a t t a i n , i n the words of the athanasian creed, "one, not by conversion of the godhead i n t o f l e s h , but by t a k i n g of the manhood i n t o god." the t h e o r e t i c v a l i d i t y of transcendence as process becomes the onus proband! of "part i " . i t c o n s t i t u t e s an attempt to appease apparent a m b i g i i i t i e s i n stevens' theory of poetry - a m b i g u i t i e s that have plagued c r i t i c s who would perceive i n h i s poems the p r i n c i p l e s of h i s theory - by determining the nature and i m p l i c a t i o n s of stevens' concept of " c e n t r a l poetry." the source, nature, and mode of existence of that concept - used h e r e i n as generic name f o r stevens' t o t a l theory - are charac- t e r i z e d by the image of o s c i l l a t i o n s contained i n the t h e s i s t i t l e . b a s i c a l l y , the d i s c i p l i n e of the " c e n t r a l poet" i s analogous t o that i n v o l v e d i n the v i a a f f i r m a t i v a and v i a n e g a t i v a of r e l i g i o u s a r t , but the phrase ' o s c i l l a t i o n s of the absolute* more e a s i l y manifests the character of h i s symbols. the phrase describes both the movement of the mind from i n - volvement i n the l i m i t a t i o n s of images and ideas to free con- templation and the nature of the ' e x i s t e n t images' which become adequate objects f o r that contemplation. the c o u p l i n g of o s c i l l a t i o n s i n the image w i t h movements of the mind d i c t a t e s the kind of study p r o j e c t e d i n "part i i " of t h i s paper. therein stevens' theory i s compared to the tenets of symbolism, i n terms both of the c r e a t i o n of the i n - d i v i d u a l symbol and of the symbolic work - s p e c i f i c a l l y w i t h mallarme's concept of "the book." the a r c h i t e c t o n i c s of the c o l l e c t e d poems of wallace stevens - the v a r i a t i o n and r e p e t i - t i o n of image, the i n c o r p o r a t i o n s of a l l u s i o n , the progression i n the volume from p o s i t i n g s of the contingent to e x i s t e n t images of the absolute - are i n d i c a t e d , and the karmic process of the mind as i t dramatizes i t s e l f i n that created a r c h i t e c t u r e i s d e s c r i b e d . decreation, a b s t r a c t i o n , composition, and r e p e t i - t i o n are t r e a t e d as the major aspects of the movement of the mind towards the u n f e t t e r e d experience of the absolute. the purpose of t h i s t h e s i s i s to provide a concept of the nature of stevens' p o e t i c that w i l l prove e f f i c a c i o u s as a i v c r i t i c a l approach to h i s poems. i t s v a l i d i t y , t h e r e f o r e , i s dependent upon the degree to which the concept h e r e i n evolved provides an i n s i g h t i n t o the experience of the c o l l e c t e d poems of wallace stevens. v table of contents page preliminary: an introduction to obscurity and a defence of method part i - central poetry: morphology part ii - central poetry: syntax conclusion footnotes bibliography preliminary: an introduction to obscurity and a defence of method. singular teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst t o l d thy singular story i n p l a i n words! ... nothing but innuendoes, f i g u r a t i v e crocihetsj a t y p i c a l shadow, f i t f u l l y wavering, p r o p h e t i c o - s a t i r i c ; no c l e a r l o g i c a l picture. "how paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, "what passes i n the holy-of-holies of man's soul; i n what words, known to these profane times, speak even a f a r o f f of the unspeakable?" we ask i n turn: why perplex these times, profane as they are, with need- less obscurity, by omission and by commission? not mystical only i s our professor, but whimsical; and i n - volves himself ... i n eye-bewildering chiaroscuro. carlyle - sartor resartus to embark upon a study of the poetry and prose of wallace stevens by exploring the p o s s i b i l i t i e s of an analogy between him and teufelsdrb'ckh may appear b i z a r r e , yet the points of resem- blance, not only between the two but also between teufelsdrockh's english editor and a stevens* c r i t l c - i n - t h e - a b s t r a c t , are such that the exploration becomes well-nigh inescapable once conceived. the p o s s i b i l i t i e s are such, at l e a s t , as to f a c i l i t a t e an orderly introduction to the thesis of t h i s study. there i s , i n i t i a l l y , the fact to face that the outcry against obscurity contained i n the epigraph of this introduction has often been voiced by the c r i t i c s of stevens and with more cause than teufelsdrb'ckh's editor could show. as the composer of an esthetic theory couched almost wholly i n terms both i d i o s y n c r a t i c and ambig- uous, stevens must inevitably evoke the kind of response expressed by graham hough: the c r i t i c a l essays (of stevens] either say, with ponder- ous mannerism, nothing at a l l ; or something so elemen- tary that one can hardly believe it to be the r e s u l t of such an elaborate procedure... outside his own peculiar poetic vein he cannot have been a very i n t e l l i g e n t man. this i s not a thing that can be said of many poets and one would not wish to say i t of stevens, except that the pretensions to a speculative i n t e l l i g e n c e bulk so l a r g e l y i n his work. stranger s t i l l , the subject of these meandering pronouncements - the r e l a t i o n between r e a l i t y and imagination - i s the very one that l i e s at the centre of his poetry. if the prose of the necessary angel and opus posthumous can have t h i s e f f e c t , i t i s not surprising that stevens' poetry, based as ' i t i s on his theory, should e l i c i t displays of animosity and a c r i d wit of the kind used by winters who, i n objecting to stevens* "perverse ingenuity i n confusing the statement of e s s e n t i a l l y simple themes," characterized the poetry by quoting stevens* poem "the revolutionists stop for orangeade": hang a feather by your eye nod and look a l i t t l e s l y . the analogy between the obscurity of teufelsdrockh and that of stevens i s not t r i v i a l . there are at least two kinds of obscurity - that amorphous kind which comes from vagueness of motive or v a c i l l a t i o n i n the execution of idea and act, and that unavoidable kind which comes when one seeks to embody the i n e f f a b l e . both are equally indefinable i n terms of a "clear l o g i c a l picture." but teuf elsdrb'ckh had his' defense; deliberate obscurity i s the only way open, i n "profane times," to speak "of the unspeakable." one of the products of t h i s analogy then, i s a pronouncement that the purpose of t h i s present study of stevens' work i s to provide a l i k e defense f o r him by proving that the element of obscurity i n h i s work i s a necessary and deliberate aspect of h i s attempt to speak the unspeakable i n honest speech. it may here be objected that what one man finds abstruse i s to another obtuse, that teufelsdrockh's philosophy was not r e a l l y obscure, and that allegations of obscurity i n writers usually a r i s e because of a penchant i n buffoons l i k e teufelsdrbckh's e d i t o r f o r treating private misreadings as though they were public. indeed, the p r o b a b i l i t y of such an objection a c t u a l l y occurring can be.adequately assessed by reference to the fact that an ear- l i e r version of t h i s study of stevens was rejected on the grounds that i t made abstruse what else was p e r f e c t l y c l e a r to everyone. in face of such objections, i t i s not enough to apostrophize the perversity of the gods, nor i s i t possible to become an apostate from the view that stevens, by deliberate obscurations, sought to bring into being the i n e f f a b l e . an apologia i s needed that w i l l j u s t i f y both the a t t r i b u t i o n of obscurity to stevens work and the method used i n t h i s study to bring that obscurity to bear. it i s easy enough to prove that stevens was an advocate of obscurity i n poetry. both the s u p e r f i c i a l statement and the i l l u s t r a t i o n provided by the poem "man carrying thing" make the point evident: the poem must r e s i s t the i n t e l l i g e n c e almost successfully. i l l u s t r a t i o n ? a brune figure i n winter evening r e s i s t s identity. the thing he c a r r i e s r e s i s t s the most necessitous sense. accept them, then, as secondary (parts not quite perceived- of the obvious whole, uncertain p a r t i c l e s of the c e r t a i n s o l i d , the primary free from doubt, things f l o a t i n g l i k e the f i r s t hundred flakes of snow out .of a storm we must endure a l l night, out of a storm of secondary things), a horror of thoughts that suddenly are r e a l . we must endure our thoughts a l l night, u n t i l the bright obvious stands motionless i n cold. (cp - d "man carrying thing" i s not an obscure poem, but a poem about obscurity. it involves irony to be sure* the r e s o l u t i o n of the problem of the desire f o r the one i n face of the world of the many, contained i n the f i n a l l i n e , i s such that shock i s sub- s t i t u t e d f o r the reader's tendency to share the quest of "the most necessitous sense," and then a profound yea-saying supplants the shock. but one can explicate the poem i n the normal way by de- manding of i t that i t uphold the d i c t a of the rev. james bowyer and exhibit the "reason assignable, not only f o r every word, but for the p o s i t i o n of every word." the figure i s "brune", for example, because the french word i s the only one which combines the necessary sense of the figure's intimate merging with the evening with the subtle suggestion of the savageness, the a n i - mality, of i t s english phoneme "bruin." ("shambling" emerges as an unspoken word image.) the i n t e r r e l a t i o n s h i p s among words within the poem, are exact, natural, and e f f i c a c i o u s . the " s i m i l e " con- necting "the brune f i g u r e " and "the thing he c a r r i e s " with the f a l l i n g snow i s exact because, as dimly perceived and interdepend- ent parts of the evening, the q u a l i t i e s of one are perceived by the s t r a i n i n g "necessitous sense" as the q u a l i t i e s of both - as for- example the " f l o a t i n g " of the snow. the analogy between the concrete image of the evening and the i m p l i c i t image of the state of mind plagued by doubt and uncertainty i s natural because one's v i s i o n i s twofold and because the s t r a i n f e l t by the mind as i t seeks to perceive the truth (or the one, or i t s e l f ) i s l i k e the s t r a i n f e l t by the eyes as one seeks the i d e n t i t y of someone (or something) dimly seen. the two analogies together are e f f i c a c i o u s because the concreteness given the state of mind ("a horror of thoughts that suddenly are real") c a r r i e s past the technical point of departure to the awesome image of "the bright obvious". to explain why t h i s image i s awesome requires that a number of senses that occur simultaneously i n reading the poem be strung out i n succession, but c r i t i c i s m aims at explanation before e f f e c t . the image, then, inspires triumph and t e r r o r a l l . at once and i s , i n consequence, released from a l l motivation, to become an object f o r the perfect indifference of esthetic contem- p l a t i o n . (it i s what l a t e r i n t h i s paper w i l l be termed an existent image). the fear and p i t y derive, of course, from the concreteness given the image by the man-carrylng-thing of the t i t l e who, having already undergone the transformations induced by his environment (the animallty and darkness of brune and the movement and coldness of snow), i s now c r y s t a l l i z e d , quite l i t e r - a l l y , as the iceman standing neither a l i v e nor dead but free from such l i m i t e d d e f i n i t i o n s of existence and non-existence. the im- pulse of triumph comes because the reader, addressed d i r e c t l y by the narrator, desired to know the figure's i d e n t i t y and to know as a form of rescuing both the figure and himself from the "storm of secondary things." but the counter-impulse of fear follows because, known i n the "bright obvious," the figure i s u t t e r l y a l i e n , u t t e r l y unlike the human i d e n t i t y anticipated. the darkness of the many y i e l d s to the brightness of the one (one because "obvious" "stands motionless" and has, therefore, corporate being), but that brightness i s neither warm nor comforting. what happens i n t h i s poem i s not that the truth i s reduced to 'human understand- ing' but that human understanding i s elevated to t r u t h . by using the technique of d i r e c t address, stevens has f i r s t i n t e n s i f i e d the solipsism that truth w i l l be found within the framework of human concepts of i d e n t i t y and r e a l i t y , then divided t h i s preconception into the components of stoic f a i t h - hope (induced by "the c e r t a i n s o l i d , the primary free from doubt") and indifference to pain (the command to "accept, them, then, as secondary" and the asser- t i o n "we must endure a l l night"). the indifference engendered by "the bright obvious" i s stevens' f i n a l move; i t i s an esthetic rather than a stoic indifference. stoic indifference i s f a l s e i n that i t derives i t s strength from hope and can be measured only i n terms of the i n t e n s i t y of f a i t h i n something as yet unpossessed. esthetic indifference, however, i s possible only when the desire to possess which i s hope has been negated and consciousness has been freed from a l l attachments - i n t h i s case, from the negative bonds of the many and the p o s i t i v e bond to the one. such an i n - difference i c a l l "a profound yea-saying" because i t depends upon achieving a state of consciousness i n which the d u a l i s t i c quandary that to a f f i r m one thing i s to deny another i s absolved by accept- ing both at once. two proofs emerge from the explication of t h i s poem. one i s that "man carrying thing" i s not an obscure poem; i t combines a philosophy of poetry with an act of poetry which can only be delineated clumsily i n prose explications but which, nonetheless, are amenable to e x p l i c a t i o n . the second proof supports the con- tention that stevens i s an advocate of obscurity i n poetry. the analogy between the l i n e s "the poem must r e s i s t the i n t e l l i g e n c e / almost successfully" and the i l l u s t r a t i o n makes i t obvious that stevens wants his poems to undergo the same kind of obscurations as those suffered by "the brune f i g u r e " and that he wants t h i s for the same reason - to transform his reader's awareness from i t s normal state to a state of esthetic contemplation. to do so, stevens must posit preconceived i d e n t i t i e s f o r words and then transform those preconceptions. how he does so and why are questions which occupy the main body of t h i s paper. the proofs which emerge from "man carrying thing" constitute an adequate apologia f o r a t t r i b u t i n g deliberate obscurity to stevens' poetry. that they can also serve to defend the w i l f u l obscurations of stevens' prose against the kind of charges made by hough requires explanation. it i s a fact that even i n prose stevens r e s i s t e d the kind of i d e n t i f i c a t i o n created by d e f i n i t i o n . in "the noble rider and the sound of words," f o r example, stevens describes the concept of n o b i l i t y - the c e n t r a l concept of the essay - in these terms: i mean that n o b i l i t y which i s our s p i r i t u a l height and depth; and while i know how d i f f i c u l t i t i s to express i t , nevertheless i am bound to give a sense of i t . nothing could be more evasive and inaccessible. nothing d i s t o r t s i t s e l f and seeks disguise more quickly. there i s a shame i n d i s c l o s i n g i t and i n i t s d e f i n i t e presentations a horror of i t . but there i t i s . ... i am not thinking of the e t h i c a l or the sonorous or at a l l of the manner of i t . the manner of i t i s , i n f a c t , i t s d i f f i c u l t y , which each man must f e e l each day d i f f e r e n t l y , f o r himself. i am not thinking of the solemn, the portentous or demoded. on the other hand, i am evading a d e f i n i t i o n . if i t is defined, i t w i l l be fixed and i t must not be f i x e d . (na - * -) this i s as close as stevens' reader w i l l get to a d i r e c t statement of " n o b i l i t y . " it should be noted, however, that the vagueness of the statement does not appear to be that of a man who doesn't know what he i s t a l k i n g about, nor i s i t solely a product of the d i f f i - c u l t y encountered by a l l writers of prose who wish to impose a comprehensive order upon a chaos of p o s s i b i l i t i e s . it i s the w i l f u l evasion of a man who f e e l s that "the l i f e of his concept w i l l be endangered by d e f i n i t i o n . whether or not one feels that the evasion of d e f i n i t i o n i n prose i s unacceptable is beside the point. the point i s that stevens did d e l i b e r a t e l y embody his esthetic theory i n obscure forms and those who want to study stevens must, of necessity, be prepared to take into account and explain, not merely the theory, but the theory's mode of existence. such, at l e a s t , i s the assumption upon which t h i s paper r e s t s . a detailed defence of the mode of existence of stevens* theory i s part of the involvement i n the f i r s t part of t h i s paper. intimations of the kind of defence i t w i l l o f f e r have already been given i n the defence of the mode of existence of his poetry. suffice i t f o r now to say that to accept evasive prose as value i s to accept the consequence that such evasions are not then to be evaded by s i m p l i f i c a t i o n . it has been suggested to me, f o r example, that the concept of "central poetry" used herein as the nexus f o r a l l argu- ments and observations, i s explainable i n terms of coleridge's d i s t i n c t i o n between primary and secondary imagination.^.while the suggestion i s a v a l i d and h e l p f u l one, there are several prohi- b i t i o n s , i m p l i c i t i n the nature of the subject, against following i t too c l o s e l y . there i s , to begin with, the obvious fact that coleridge's d e f i n i t i o n s of the imagination are i n t e g r a l parts of a theory of poetry and a metaphysics which have to be explained as well and which, when explained, do not conform to the mode of existence stevens demanded for the theory of "central poetry.", in t r u t h , t h i s objection i s one voiced by stevens himself i n "the figure of the youth as v i r i l e poet"s as poetry goes, as the imagination goes, as the approach to truth, or, say, to being by way of the imagination goes, coleridge i s one of the great f i g u r e s . even so, just as william james found i n bergson a persistent euphony, so we f i n d i n coleridge...a man who may be said to have been defining poetry a l l h i s l i f e i n d e f i n i t i o n s that are v a l i d enough but which no longer impress us primarily by t h e i r v a l i d i t y . (na kl) the second objection i s entailed by the f i r s t . though he who made the suggestion was a man capable of comprehending the range of relationships which should and could be applied to any com- parison between the theories of stevens and coleridge, i t i s not possible to a f f i r m that a l l c r i t i c s who would make the comparison possess h i s exactitude. when the subject of the comparison recurs i n the f i r s t part of t h i s paper, an example drawn from a c r i t i c of stevens w i l l a f f o r d concrete evidence of the d i s t o r t i o n s which occur when s i m p l i f i e d comparisons are attempted. the point i s appropriate not only to a description of the importance of modes of existence f o r stevens, but also to a defence of the methodology of this paper. the whole of t h i s paper i s , quite properly i n my view, an exercise i n apologetics. its aim i s to e s t a b l i s h what stevens' theory of poetry i_s, by a process of d i a l e c t i c a l argument, and to demonstrate pragmatically that the theory thus established i s , indeed, the one that informs his poetry. but that aim could not be accomplished i f the paper did not include an affirmation of the value of stevens' theory and p r a c t i c e . benet's comment - "stevens' mind dwells with v e l l e - i t l e s that may well be unimportant - but who i s to say they are?"- - i s facetious; i f they are " v e l l e i t i e s " the poems and the prose which d i s c l o s e them are vapid. poetry i s an act of wholeness, a theory of poetry i s a defence of the importance of that act, and c r i t i c i s m must be an explanation of that act, that defence and that importance. the long arguments and laborious explications that compose the body of t h i s paper are, then, meant as guarantees not only of the importance of stevens' work but of the t i g h t n e s s of t h i s kind of approach. every e f f o r t has been made to avoid the p i t - f a l l s pointed out so v i v i d l y by the presence therein of previous c r i t i c s of stevens. to explain what those p i t f a l l s are i s to explain why t h i s paper i s what i t i s . the fact that t h i s paper contains no survey of stevens* poems, f o r example, can be j u s t i f i e d by the assertion that surveys made previous to a thorough understanding of i n d i v i d u a l poems are premature and can only lead to d i s t o r t i o n . frank kermode's survey wallace stevens, written as a contribution to the writers and c r i t i c s s e r i e s , i s a case i n point. in discussing stevens' f e a l t y to " r e a l i t y , " kermode quotes his proofs from l i n e s of poetry taken out of context (the f i r s t underlining i s mine): it { r e a l i t y ] i s always that upon which the l i g h t of the mind must beat, i l l u m i n a t i n g , warming, but not changing i t . it matters where you see i t from: there are men whose words are as natural sounds of t h e i r places as the crackle of toucans- and also, *i am what i s around me.'" inasmuch as the two poems from which these l i n e s are taken, "anecdote of men by the thousand" and "theory," are not d i d a c t i c , kermode's proof i s u n i n t e l l i g i b l e and his use of the l i n e s a d i s t o r t i o n . the context of both poems reveals, when considered, that the mind's r e l a t i o n to "place" (kermode's term f o r r e a l i t y ) i s experienced i n ways t o t a l l y opposite to that suggested by kermode. in "anecdote of men by the thousand" the speaker of the l i n e s quoted by kermode i s the "he" of the opening - "the soul, he said, i s composed/of the external world" (cp ) - a nd the function of the f i n a l two stanzas i s to i n t e r j e c t , by means (for p r a c t i c a l purposes) of narrative voice, an i r o n i c contradiction of the thesis propounded by "he": are there mandolines of western mountains? are there, mandolines of northern moonlight? the dress of a woman of lhassa, in i t s place, is an i n v i s i b l e element of that place made v i s i b l e . (cp ) a bare statement of the contradiction would be that the external world i s a composition of the soul, or, to use kermode's terms, that the mind does indeed "change" r e a l i t y , not only at s i g n i f - icant moments but also during i t s day to day existence. but the contradiction i s experienced as a series of subtle a l t e r a t i o n s of the content of "he's" statement. the most obvious a l t e r a t i o n i s "an i n v i s i b l e element of that place" which i s the woman's soul "made v i s i b l e " by the " r e a l " dress acting quite e x p l i c i t y as embodiment, as manifest symbol of soul. the fact that the "woman" i s "of lhassa" i s a d e l i g h t f u l stroke, since lhassa (lhasa) i s a holy c i t y (for buddhists) comparable, i n most respects, to mecca and jerusalem and everyone knows the anagogic propensities of holy c i t i e s . one could deepen the stroke, speculatively, by commenting that buddhism admits women as monks and the robes worn by buddhist monks are reincarnations of the buddha's way of l i f e ? - of, i n other words, an i n v i s i b l e i d e a l emanating from both the i n d i v i d u a l soul and the one soul. but even without such spec- u l a t i o n s , there are the minor a l t e r a t i o n s i n the concept of place which help to bring to l i g h t the contradiction i n "he's" thesis that had been i m p l i c i t from the beginning. place i s shown to be a r e l a t i v e concept of the soul as indicated by the narrator's two questions. "he" had spoken of "the east" i n c a p i t a l s (and here, again, note the subtle i r o n i c prelude to lhassa and the anagoglc l e v e l ) , as though i t were a place, but the poem proves that "the east" i s a conceived rather than perceived place by. p o s i t i n g "western mountains" and "northern moonlight." moon- l i g h t i s not a place at a l l ; i t exists i n r e f l e c t i o n everywhere and i t s d i r e c t i o n depends upon which way the observer faces. western mountains heighten the r e l a t i v i t y of d i r e c t i o n , and they also contrast with the "valleys" of the "men of a valley/who are that v a l l e y . " the contrast i s one between circumscribed views and l i m i t l e s s v i s i o n . the irony i m p l i c i t i n 'he's* statement i s thus brought f u l l y to l i g h t ; i f one says "the soul... i s composed/of the external world", one i s saying i n e v i t a b l y that the external world i s a manifestation of the soul. stevens was fond of this kind of i r o n i c inversion. it can be seen, for example, i n "tattoo" (cp ), where what begins as an invasion of the i n t e r n a l by the external ends as an assault of the i n t e r n a l upon the external; and i t can be seen i n the f l u c t u - ations of sense between opposition and i d e n t i t y that characterize the r e l a t i o n between the two themes of "the comedian as the letter c»: nota: man i s the i n t e l l i g e n c e of his soil...(cp ) notaj his s o i l i s man's i n t e l l i g e n c e . (cp ) inversion can be seen too, although not as e x p l i c i t l y , i n the second of the poems used by kermode for i l l u s t r a t i o n - "theory": i am what i s around me. women understand t h i s . one i s not a duchess a hundred yards from a carriage. these, then, are p o r t r a i t s : a black vestibule; a high bed sheltered by curtains. these are merely instances. the irony here i s developed on two fronts. the simple assertion "i am what i s around me" i s forced to i t s own contradiction by the f i n a l l i n e ; i f one went on multiplying instances the doc- t r i n e *i am everything' would inevitably emerge. but t h i s i s a very funny poem and i t i s a stevens armed with r i d i c u l e who c a r r i e s out the major attack against h i s narrator's t h e s i s . the vanity of women would lead them quickly to the necessity of the carriage as a setting and foundation for t h e i r glory, but "a black v e s t i b u l e " and "a high bed sheltered by curtains," though l o g i c a l extensions of the carriage, x^rould hardly command the same acceptance. thackeray's fundamental law - 'above a l l , been seen' - is not to be taken l i g h t l y . women w i l l surround themselves with carriages f o r purposes of portraiture - but vestibules and beds (though these, too, undoubtedly have t h e i r purpose) never. but the aspect of the o r i g i n a l thesis made ridiculous by the analogy of the women i s i t s r e f u s a l to grant any powers or sovereignty to the i n d i v i d u a l ' i ' or psyche. that r e f u s a l is seen, by analogy, to involve the same cattiness as that displayed by women who would l i m i t the q u a l i t y of a duchess to the trappings of a duchess - who, i n short, would l i m i t beauty i n others to costume and cos- metics and, by so doing, destroy the p o s s i b i l i t y of beauty i n themselves. so the l i n e "i am what i s around me" - which kermode quotes to prove a point about the poetic theory and practice of stevens - has, i n r e a l i t y , nothing whatsoever to do with stevens' theoret- i c a l p o s i t i o n and concerns his practice only i n so f a r as i t can ik be shown by explicating i t s context that the l i n e demonstrates his technique f o r bringing out the ambiguities of a l l »x i s y' d e f i n i t i o n s . while i t i s true that the d i s t o r t i o n s engendered by the l i t e r a l t r a n s l a t i o n of l i n e s of poetry into prose statement can be avoided by observing the elementary d i s t i n c t i o n between nar- r a t i v e voice and the poet's 'point of view,' the practice i s , i n r e a l i t y , i n d i c a t i v e of an excusable eagerness on the part of stevens' c r i t i c s to make his poetry meaningful and to escape, thereby, forced acquiescence i n the proposition that something which moves them deeply i s nothing but pretence, or, to use winters* term, "pseudo-mysticism."^ that such eagerness leads, even i n c a r e f u l c r i t i c i s m , to the d i s t o r t i o n s of interpretive t r a n s l a t i o n can be demonstrated by choosing two i l l u s t r a t i o n s , both involving poems which ' r e s i s t the i n t e l l i g e n c e . ' the f i r s t of these i l l u s t r a t i o n s comes from william van o'connor's e x p l i c a t i o n of "fabliau of f l o r i d a . " (i quote at length because i want the r e l a t i o n s h i p between o'connor's e x p l i - cation and his basic c r i t i c a l p o s i t i o n to be seen c l e a r l y . with the exception of the sentence "the barque could be poetry or a human being," the underlining i s mine.) stevens' usual, or at least very frequent, method i n writing a poem i s to make a general i n i t i a l statement. thus i n one of the sections of notes toward a supreme fiction? two things of opposite nature (sic seem to depend on one another, as a man depends on a woman, day on night, the imagined on the r e a l . this i s the o r i g i n of change. usually, too, the statement i s elaborated, q u a l i f i e d , enlarged, and probed. and a l l the while, there i s being evoked, as well, by means of metaphor, variant phrases, and the employment of d e f t l y appropriate rhythms, a conviction or strong sense of the experience generalized about i n the introductory abstraction. in "fabliau of f l o r i d a , " from harmonium, the generalization i s held u n t i l the f i n a l couplet. the couplet i s not quite abstract and i s therefore hardly t y p i c a l , but the method of the poem i s i n d i c a t i v e of much else that i s charac- t e r i s t i c of his method. barque of phosphor on the palmy beach, move outward into heaven into the alabasters and night blues. foam and cloud are one. sultry moon monsters are d i s s o l v i n g {sic] f i l l your black h u l l with white moonlight [sic] there w i l l never be an end to t h i s droning of the surf. the statement," there w i l l never be an answer to the mystery i n which we l i v e , i s c l e a r enough. the roaring of the sea, the d i s s o l v i n g clouds, and the firmament extend the simple "statement," giving us as i t were convincing and moving proof. because we are i n and a part of t h i s world we should accept i t i n i t s f u l l n e s s - l i v e l i v e s of the s e n s i b i l i t i e s and imagination. the language i s both ambiguous and suggestive. the barque could be poetry or a human being. the luminous barque f l o a t s on a dark sea; the beach i s r i c h with physical l i f e ; the sky i s b e a u t i f u l with b r i l l i a n t l y contrasting "alabaster" and "night blue (sicj,^ the alabaster repeat- ing the whiteness of "phosphor" and preparing for the whiteness and suggestions thereof i n "foam," "cloud," "moonlight," and surf and the symbolism of blue and moonlight s i g n i f y i n g the realm of s e n s i b i l i t y and imagination which the poet would not have us neglect or deny.v" those who f i n d o'connor's e x p l i c a t i o n of "fabliau of f l o r i d a " i l l u m i n a t i n g , or even admlssable as c r i t i c i s m , w i l l no doubt f e e l that t h i s paper i s nothing but the most arrant nonsense. on the other hand, those who share my sense of dumfoundment. at the travesties of c r i t i c a l p r i n c i p l e contained therein w i l l r e a l i z e that o'connor's e x p l i c a t i o n i s the product of a fundamental c o n f l i c t between two theories of the nature and function of poetry. clearly perceivable behind o'connor's e x p l i c a t i o n i s the assump- t i o n that poetry i s , or ought to be, what i c a l l euhemeristic. but the poem i t s e l f i s quite obviously based upon, and amenable only to, theories of poetry which i c a l l hermetic. the d i s t i n c - t i o n between euhemeristic and hermetic theories i s a d i f f i c u l t one to make c l e a r , because i t i s , i n the f i n a l a n a l y s i s , a d i s - t i n c t i o n between two a r t i f i c i a l l y r i g i d philosophies rather than a philosophical d i s t i n c t i o n . i f i were to characterize the euhemeristic theory, f o r example, as thorough-going humanitarian- ism, i would make i t appear that hermetic theories were based upon a r e a l or "pseudo" mysticism, whereas the hermetic view that the function of poetry i s e i t h e r primarily or wholly 'esthetic* i s , i n a c t u a l i t y , merely the product of an emphasis upon bursting the bonds of a narrow humanitarian!sm. to say that the d i v i s i o n i s fundamental i s one thing; to say that the two theories are of necessity mutually exclusive i s another. a digression upon the d i s t i n c t i o n between these theories i s mandatory because i t i s a d i s t i n c t i o n which explains why stevens was so r e t i c e n t about d e f i n i t i o n s of h i s theory. it w i l l emerge c l e a r l y i n the f i r s t part of t h i s paper that stevens* theory of poetry i s one which negates the a r t i f i c i a l d i s t i n c t i o n between the two by destroying the most extreme premiss of each - the euhemer- i s t i c doctrine that terms l i k e god, soul, and poetry should be explained i n terms of psychological or s o c i o l o g i c a l or some-kind- o f - l o g i c a l phenomena. and the hermetic doctrine that a l l the absolute things, l i k e god, soul, and poetry, are not demonstrable i n man's mere terms and can be known only through b e l i e f . stevens* whole e f f o r t was directed toward proving that the hermetic acceptance of absolutes could be reached, and indeed must i n - •• evitably be reached, through the euhemeristlc. his aim, i n other words, was to transform the euhemeristlc into the hermetic. this i s not the same as saying that he wanted the hermetic to become the euhemeristic because the euhemeristic i s , by v i r t u e of i t s mode of existence, directed towards the exclusion of c e r t a i n human attitudes or states of mind, while the hermetic, because of the absolute nature of i t s postulates, must be p o t e n t i a l l y capable of including everything. to object to t i n d a l l ' s observation - "by h i s stevens* prose you can prove anything you like" - i s to give a sense of the difference; proving the accord of everything i s not l i k e proving "anything you l i k e . " the trouble with o'connor's explication of "fabliau of f l o r i d a " i s not that i t exhibits the same kind of unfortunate misreading that led o'connor to a t t r i b u t e to stevens tate's t r i b u t e to t.s. e l i o t , h but that i t passes over the r e a l act of the poem i n a f r a n t i c attempt to make i t conform to euhemeristic preconceptions of the nature and function of poetry. o'connor assumes that the function of the poem i s to say something to someone; and he gives his reader two related statements which supposedly issue from the poem - "the 'statement,' there w i l l never be an answer to the mystery i n which we l i v e . . . " and the statement "because we are i n and a part of t h i s world we should accept i t i n i t s f u l l n e s s - l i v e l i v e s of the s e n s i b i l i t e s and imagination." the f i r s t of these statements i s applicable to the poem only i n so f a r as i t i s applicable to thousands of poems; as an e x p l i c a t i o n of the l a s t two l i n e s i t i s meaningless. "there w i l l never be an end/to t h i s droning of the surf" i s not addressed to o'connor's "we"; it is a narrative comment made at the conclu- sion of a series of commands addressed to the "barque of phosphor." the second of o'connor's statements purports to e l i c i t from the poem a moral law; i t suggests, i n other words, that the poet i s making a plea for a c e r t a i n course of action, a c e r t a i n way of l i v i n g . again, as a general observation about what poets do i n - d i r e c t l y i n publishing t h e i r poems, this statement i s probably true; but any d i r e c t connection between i t and the poem i s garnered only by a process that makes a mockery of the concept of "symbolism." o'connor i s right when he says that the language of the poem " i s both ambiguous and suggestive," but when he attempts to make con- crete images y i e l d a statement of abstract terms f i r s t by spec- u l a t i n g that the barque of phosphor "could be poetry or a human being" and then by dogmatically asserting "the symbolism of blue and moonlight s i g n i f y ... the realm of s e n s i b i l i t y and the imagina- t i o n " - he wantonly destroys the very q u a l i t y of suggestiveness upon which the poem, as poem, depends. i f the relationship between abstract statement and concrete image were r e a l l y as o'connor suggests, people who read symbolist poetry would do better to turn to philosophy. in point of f a c t , one can read "fabliau of f l o r i d a " i n the a l l e g o r i c a l manner o'connor suggests. one then sees, "poetry or a man, from the midst of a r i c h physical l i f e ("the beach i s r i c h with physical l i f e " ) "move outxvard" into "the realm of s e n s i b i l i t y and imagination," because, presumably, "he" or " i t " has to accept the world " i n i t s f u l l n e s s . " that the r e s u l t of such a reading i s both a r b i t r a r y and unsatisfying should be obvious. but neither i s i t s a t i s f a c t o r y to echo holmes and say that stevens i s "... one of the best non-communicating poets of our day" because such a claim would validate yvor winters' major objection against stevens' kind of poem: ...the chief disadvantage i s that i t renders i n t e l l i - g i b l e discussion of art impossible, and i t relegates art to the p o s i t i o n of an esoteric indulgence, possibly though not c e r t a i n l y harmless.. . . . the question i s not one of whether "fabliau of f l o r i d a " communi- cates but of what i t communicates, and the only way to f i n d out i s to read the poem without making assumptions about the function of poetry and without, i f possible, preconceptions. read i n t h i s manner, the poem y i e l d s an hermetic rather than a euhemeristic 'meaning.* to begin with, the reader sees i n "barque of phosphor" purely a barque of phosphor; there i s nothing i n the poem to suggest that he should i d e n t i f y himself or any abstraction with i t . he then traces the suggestions of movement commanded by the narra- t i v e voice and l i s t e n s to the two formal statements of stanza three and stanza f i v e . unless he i s capable of rapid a s s i m i l a t i o n , that i s about a l l the reader w i l l get from a f i r s t reading. but even from that f i r s t reading i t has become obvious that the com- mands of the narrative voice are complex and somehow grouped around and j u s t i f i e d by the formal analogy "foam and cloud are one." in breaking down the complexity of command, the reader w i l l note that there i s an opposition between the d i r e c t i o n of " t h i s droning of the surf" and the command "move outward into heaven." he w i l l -also note that the r e l a t i o n between sky and sea, established by the formal analogy, does depend on the "alabasters" of the clouds seen against a setting of "night blues" and the corresponding whiteness of foam frothed up by the dark sea as i t meets the shore and becomes surf. he i s now capable of two extensions of the correspondence. the f i r s t i s that the contradiction involved i n the command " p i l l your black hull/with white moonlight" i s analo- gous to the r e a l i z e d contradiction between sea and foam, cloud and sky. the second extension w i l l come when he has questioned the f i r s t l i n e . to say, as o'connor does, that "the luminous bark f l o a t s on a dark sea" i s to man i t with the three wise men of gotham. the barque of phosphor i s a curious c r a f t ; were i t a f l o a t , one could agree.with o'connor's v i s i o n and a t t r i b u t e the phrase "of phosphor" to the phosphorescent wake l e f t by boats at dusk; but the barque i s "on the palmy, beach" and the command that i t "move outward into heaven" i s not followed immediately (since i n stanza four the barque i s s t i l l , as i t x\rere, taking on cargo). but what does "of phosphor" mean then? it can mean that the barque i s made of a phosphorescent substance, l i k e decayed wood, or i t can mean, l i t e r a l l y , that the barque i s made of phosphorus ( i t s "black h u l l " would then be a product of the transparent a l l o t r o p l c form subjected to great pressure), or, p o e t i c a l l y , that i t i s the barque of the morning star. in point of f a c t , a l l three meanings are relevant to the poem. if one takes the 'most r e a l i s t i c * pos- s i b i l i t y f i r s t , one establishes the image of the d e r e l i c t h u l l , no longer seaworthy, abandoned on the beach. i f one then superimposes the v a l i d analogy between the wood's phosphorescence and the prop- e r t i e s of phosphorus, one has an image of a boat which i s capable of acting on the narrator's impossible commands. the chain of transformation here i s from the transparent allotrope which can e x i s t as a c r y s t a l l i n e substance i n a i r and which, through pressure, i s transformed into the powdery substance of the black a l l o t r o p e , to the pure white phosphorus, which can be obtained by melting the black a l l o t r o p e , and which ignites i n a i r . the relevance of these transformations i s immediately v e r i f i a b l e by the exact image they evoke. "sultry moon-monsters/are d i s s o l v i n g , " and as the black h u l l f i l l s with moonlight i t appears to disappear. instead of .the v i s i b l e shape of a black h u l l on sand, there i s a moment of s i l v e r i n g i n which the black h u l l loses i t s shape i n the i n t e n s i t y of l i g h t . it i s one of those moments of b r i l l i a n t ' p f t t ' to which one's v i s i o n i s occasionally e n t i t l e d and i n "fabliau of f l o r i d a " i t i s used to r e a l i z e the narrator's desire. what hap- pens i s that as the moonlight h i t s the boat i t appears to peel away the black h u l l , to make i t move away from where i t was; and i f the eye follows t h i s apparent movement i t w i l l f i n d the movement's extension, not i n the sea because there i s an opposition of d i r e c - t i o n , but i n , say, the morning star which appears to be moving as fast as the boat because i t too takes i t s movement, d i r e c t i o n and speed from the clouds* movement across the sky. the moonlight gives to the barque its appearence of movement, but i t i s the star which retains i t s substance. the analysis i s not yet complete. to t h i s point, the endea- vor has been to explain what happens i n the poem, but any c r i t i c a l account must be able to explain why what happens i s l e g i t i m a t e l y c a l l e d poetry. were the poem as devoid of human concern as the reader's e x p l i c a t i o n has thus f a r made i t appear, i t would be tempting to return to the i n s p i r a t i o n a l d i s t o r t i o n s of o'connor. but the narrative voice of "fabliau of f l o r i d a " i s a human one and i t s role i n the poem explains why what happens i s poetry. in e f f e c t , what happens to the barque i s an intimation of transcen- dence, a momentary proof of the f l u i d nature of r e a l i t y . the poetic analogy" "foam and cloud are one," becomes b r i e f l y , a philosophical analogy because the barque appears to be able to s a i l the sky. such a coupling of reason and the imagination was of primary importance to stevenst . . . i f an imaginative idea s a t i s f i e s the imagination, we are i n d i f f e r e n t to the fact that i t does not s a t i s f y the reason, although we concede that i t would be com- plete, as an idea, i f , i n addition to s a t i s f y i n g the imagination, i t also s a t i s f i e d the reason. from t h i s analysis, we deduce that an idea that s a t i s f i e s both the reason and the imagination, i f i t happened, f o r instance, to be an idea of god, would e s t a b l i s h a divine beginning and end f o r us which, at the moment, the reason, singly, at best proposes and on which, at the moment, the imagination, singly, merely meditates. this i s an i l l u s t r a t i o n . it seems elementary, from t h i s point of view, that the poet, i n order to f u l f i l l himself, must accomplish a poetry that s a t i s f i e s both the reason and the imagination. it does not follow that i n the long run the poet w i l l f i n d himself i n the p o s i t i o n i n which the philosopher now finds himself. on the contrary, i f the end of the philosopher i s despair, the end of the poet i s f u l f i l l m e n t , since the poet finds a sanction for l i f e i n poetry that s a t i s f i e s the imagination. (na kz-kj) such i s the value of the barque's momentary transcendence. it should be emphasized, however, that neither stevens nor the narrative voice of "fabliau of f l o r i d a " would attempt to palm o f f an evanescent t r i c k of the moonlight as mint transcendence. the poem ends with the admission "there w i l l never be an end/to t h i s droning of the surf." it i s , i n the context of the poem, the monotonous pressure of the surf that has driven the barque to i t s grave ashore and which represents the energy of l i m i t a t i o n . it i s t h i s almost intangible sense of l i m i t a t i o n that the narrator r e s i s t s by indulging i n his mental game of counter-move. the f i n a l two l i n e s are an admission, not of defeat, but of l- relinquishment. in making his moves, the narrator has won trans- cendence for the barque, but a l l his pieces have been used. the ephemeral forces of-the moonlight are not as permanent as the i n s i s t e n t sea. both the poem and narrator's point of view exemplify what must be c l a s s i f i e d i n the catalogue of stevens' categories as the exercise - one of the ways i n which "the figure of a youth as v i r i l e poet" expends his energy: having elected to exercise his power to the f u l l and at i t s height, and having i d e n t i f i e d his power as the power of the imagination, he may begin i t s exercise by study- ing i t i n exercise and proceed l i t t l e by l i t t l e , as he becomes his own master, to those violences which are the maturity of h i s desires. (na - ) it i s noteworthy that such exercises as "fabliau of f l o r i d a " are not to be considered merely as i s o l a t e d instances of a tenuous e s t h e t i c , but as paving stones on the way to f u l f i l l m e n t . nor i s there much doubt about the nature of that f u l f i l l m e n t i n stevens' mind: „ in t h i s state of elevation we f e e l p e r f e c t l y adapted to the idea that moves and l'oiseau qui chante. the i d e n t i t y of the f e e l i n g i s subject to discussion and, from t h i s , i t follows that i t s value i s debatable. it may be dismissed, on the one hand, as a commonplace aesthetic s a t i s f a c t i o n ; and, on the other hand, i f we say that the idea of god i s merely a poetic idea, even i f the supreme poetic idea, and that our notions of heaven and h e l l are merely poetry not so c a l l e d , even i f poetry that involves us v i t a l l y , the f e e l i n g of deliverance, of a release, of a perfection touched, of a vocation so that a l l men may know the truth and that the truth may set them free - i f we say these things and i f we are able to see the poet who achieved god and placed him i n his seat i n heaven i n a l l his glory, the poet himself, s t i l l i n the ecstacy of the poem that completely accomplished his purpose, would have seemed, whether young or old, whether i n rags or ceremonial robe, a man who needed what he created, u t t e r i n g the hymns of ;j.oy that followed h i s creation. (na ) should there be any doubt about what stevens is saying here, i should l i k e to resolve i t by quoting a comparable comment by valeryj k i consider that the essence of poetry i s , according to d i f f e r e n t types of minds, either quite worthless or of i n f i n i t e importance? i n which i t i s l i k e god himself. ^ it may appear that the i l l u s t r a t i v e use of o'connor's d i s t o r t i o n of "fabliau of f l o r i d a " has been stretched too f a r , but i t is p r e c i s e l y the f a i l u r e to recognize the hermetic concept of transcendence that constitutes the c r i m i n a l i t y of euhemeristic c r i t i c s . they attempt to give worth to poetry by making i t into something else and, i n so doing, they discard the l i f e of poetry and leave t h e i r readers with the trash of terms. the second i l l u s t r a t i o n of the p i t f a l l s of interpretive c r i t i c i s m i s p a r a l l e l to the f i r s t and i use i t only to define one of the necessary l i m i t s to t h i s paper. the i l l u s t r a t i o n involves the poem "the v i r g i n carrying a lantern": there are no bears among the roses, only a negress who supposes things f a l s e and wrong about the lantern of the beauty who walks there, as a farewell duty, walks long and long. the p i t y that her pious egress should f i l l the v i g i l of a negress with heat so strong! (cp ) two responses to t h i s poem, when placed together, accurately delineate the dilemma of stevens' c r i t i c s . the f i r s t response i s richard watson's and the second t i n d a l l ' s : it i s appropriate that aphrodlsiacal night should be the time that v i r g i n s , i n " l e t t i n g themselves go" should lose what, i n the r e a l i s t i c l i g h t of day, they would guard - t h e i r maidenhead. ...here i s an aspect of our study of self-completion, the sexual aspect. ...the symbol of individuation here...is the garden, occur- r i n g constantly with t h i s function from the book of genesis to t.s. e l i o t ' s burnt norton. in t h i s d e l i g h t f u l l i t t l e poem, the white v i r g i n who i s approaching consummation i s watched by a frustrated negro woman, who suspects what is to occur.^ in stevens' l i t t l e scene the d e t a i l s , which have the c l a r i t y of dream, share dream's darkness despite that lantern. what are the v i r g i n and her observer doing there? why are there no bears among the roses? like a metaphor of stevens' magnifico, t h i s s i t u a t i o n " w i l l not declare i t s e l f yet i s c e r t a i n as meaning." evad- ing analysis, "the v i r g i n carrying a lantern" i s i n - d e f i n i t e l y suggestive. . . . i t i s a strange experience, and i t s meaning, l i k e that of a picture, i s what i t i s . "a poem," says stevens i n "adagia," "need not have a meaning and l i k e most things in nature often does not have."l° watson's c r i t i c i s m i s part of an attempt to f i t stevens' harmonium poems into a framework constructed from "...a combination of a n a l y t i c modes developed by sigmund freud and c.c. jung, the psychologists, and kenneth burke, the post-colerldglan l i t e r a r y c r i t i c . " ? though, i n p r i n c i p l e , watson's approach i s s i g n i f i c a n t , one cannot escape the f e e l i n g that his 'psychological dramatism' i s wrongfully applied when i t makes of "the beauty/who walks there, as a farewell duty" the image of a woman ' l e t t i n g herself go.' once again, the a p p l i c a t i o n of t h e o r e t i c a l terminology has sup- planted p r a c t i c a l c r i t i c i s m and resulted i n euhemeristic d i s t o r - t i o n s . but what are the results of p r a c t i c a l c r i t i c i s m i n t h i s case? t i n d a l l asks the p r a c t i c a l questions, but he gives no answers. to say, "evading analysis, "the v i r g i n carrying a lantern* i s i n d e f i n i t e l y suggestive" i s to say that a poem i s no more mean- i n g f u l than a woman's face or a summer's cloud. both watson and t i n d a l l are i n t e l l i g e n t c r i t i c s and the p o s s i b i l i t y that t h e i r d i f f i c u l t i e s are due to dullness can be dismissed at once. they are, rather, i n d i c a t i v e of a problem pointed out by frank doggett as recently as . "for any reader of stevens the p r i n c i p a l d i f f i c u l t y i s to know what each poem r e a l l y .is. this i s more than a matter of knowing what i t means." ^ the resolution of that problem i s a task which demands a itfhole body of c r i t i c i s m .written on the basis of a single set of p r i n c i p l e s ; "the v i r g i n carrying a lantern" demonstrates why. in actual f a c t , the poem can be analyzed by a c r i t i c either purely pragmatic or else theoretic only to the extent that he expects poetry to be a wholeness of sense. such a c r i t i c would answer t i n d a l l ' s question about the f i r s t l i n e by noting that "bears" i n conjunction with v i r g i n s are not to be seen as animals but as the v i r g i n votaries of artemis who, during the brauronian r i t e s of i n i t i a t i o n , were c a l l e d 'bears' i n recognition of the goddess* connection with that animal.^ the relevance of the s u b s t i t u t i o n of a "negress" for the v i r g i n s about to be dedicated to the i d e a l of v i r g i n i t y he would explain by noting the h i s t o r i c degeneration of the artemis c u l t , c l a s s i c a l l y known for i t s e t h i c a l p u r i t y , through i t s intermingling with the o r g i a s t i c c u l t of hecate, a c u l t which s t i l l survives among the negro p r a c t i t i o n e r s of voodoo i n the west indies and the southern united states, and perhaps among witches everywhere. seen i n t h i s l i g h t , the poem i s a s a t i r e on the subject of myth; i t s a t i r i z e s the degeneration of myth into s u p e r s t i t i o n and the consequent substitution of the energy of mundane human desires for the power of high ideals to l i f t human conduct above i t s ordinary l e v e l . such a c r i t i c could go to great lengths to prove h i s reading legimate without any actual misreading of the poem. he could i n s i s t , for example, that the suppositions of the negress are not concerned with what the v i r g i n i s going to do. those who read the l i n e s "things f a l s e and wrong/about the lantern of the beauty/who walks there as a farewell duty/walks there as a farewell duty/ walks long and long" as though they proved that the v i r g i n i s "approaching consummation" are forced to the contradictory view that the v i r g i n i s carrying the lantern as a signal to her lover and at the same time i s carrying i t because i t i s a duty imposed i n connection to her farewell to v i r g i n i t y . such a reading, i n e f f e c t , grants the alleged supposition of the negress, and can disagree only with her 'moral reaction'; i n short, such a reading must end with an encomium on how good i t i s for v i r g i n s to give up t h e i r maidenheads and what a p i t y i t i s that the negress cannot see the esthetic charm of the act. howard baker's i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of the poem i s a case i n point: the point of t h i s poem i s that a pious action i s mistaken f o r lechery ... the clash of interpretations i s gay and i r o n i c , but i t i s also a serious matter; f o r such clashes are what make a l l moral decision d i f f l c u l t . . . t h e poem i s s l i g h t l y ambiguous i n that x\re are not t o l d s p e c i f i c a l l y why the v i r g i n walks abroad with a lantern... we may guess that the v i r g i n i s concerned with her state of v i r g i n i t y and intends to part from it. a pragmatic reading, however, reveals that i t i s the suppo- s i t i o n s of the negress and of baker and watson (a c l e a r case of g u i l t by association) which are "false and wrong." the "things" which the negress supposes have to do with "the lantern of the beauty"; there i s no s y n t a c t i c a l necessity f o r assuming that the negress' suppositions are about the function of the l i g h t and not about i t s nature. in other words, one of the "things f a l s e and wrong" i s the fact that the "pious egress" of the v i r g i n "should f i l l the v i g i l of a negress/with heat so strong!" the fact that egress means, l i t e r a l l y , 'a going out' points up the transforma- t i o n of l i g h t into heat that here takes place and helps to prove the pragmatic reading of degeneration. " v i g i l " i s used i r o n i c a l l y , to denote the difference between the purposeful wakefulness of the negress and the r e l i g i o u s v i g i l formerly kept by "bears." the "pious egress" of the v i r g i n i s not her "farewell duty," but the consequence of that duty. thus the duty of the v i r g i n can be seen as an expression of that obligation on the part of gods and goddesses to l i f t men out of the sensuous darkness by the shining example of the immortal i d e a l . that the v i r g i n ' s duty i s here a "farewell duty" i s either an atrocious pun on human welfare or i t refers to the fact that though the gods of myth have deserted the world of r e a l i t y they have l e f t i n t h e i r stead s t i l l - l i v i n g i d e a l s . her egress i s "pious" for two reasons; because i t i s i n the nature of i n i t i a t i o n that the l i v i n g i d e a l of v i r g i n i t y should be trans- ferred from embodiment i n the goddess to embodiment i n her "bears" - from the h i e r a t i c to the human - and the transfer necessitates the withdrawal of the goddess, and because the debasement of an • i d e a l , i n the s a t i r i c context, i s not to be countenanced by a goddess whose very existence i s devoted to that i d e a l . the pragmatic reading of "the v i r g i n carrying a lantern" creates no c o n f l i c t with the theoretic concept of transcendence as the function of poetry, discussed i n r e l a t i o n to "fabliau of f l o r i d a " and suggested by the analysis of "man carrying thing." it i s true that the poem appears to be about transcendence rather than being i t s e l f transcendent - i t i s a peculiar q u a l i t y of s a t i r e that i t i s negative i n so f a r as i t s emphasis i s upon negation rather than creation. but the elements of transcendence are there i n the opposition between the human misuse of embodiments of the i d e a l and the p o s s i b i l i t y of human transcendence from one l e v e l of existence to another by incorporation of i d e a l values into the psyche, just as the intense desire for a pure love i s evident i n john donne *s "song; 'go and catch a f a l l i n g star.*" mo, the problem created by t h i s reading concerns stevens' tech- nique rather than his theory and, by i n d i r e c t i o n , c r i t i c a l ap- proaches. the reading appears to depend upon the recognition of an a l l u s i o n and consequently the body of the poem seems to be d e r i v a t i v e . this brings up! the problem of allusiveness i n poetry - a problem ably discussed by wlmsatt i n the verbal icon: the frequency and depth of l i t e r a r y a l l u s i o n i n the poetry of e l i o t and others has driven so many i n pursuit of f u l l meanings to the golden bough and the elizabethan drama that i t has become a kind of commonplace to suppose that we do not know what a poet means unless we have traced him i n h i s reading - a supposition redolent with i n t e n t i o n a l i m p l i c a t i o n s . ^ wimsatt would grant the e f f i c a c y of a l l u s i o n as long as i t i s "integrated" within the poem and so would be s a t i s f i e d , presumably, with stevens' use of artemis i n "the v i r g i n carrying a lantern." but stevens i s frequently a l l u s i v e and his a l l u s i o n s are not always i d e n t i f i a b l e . in "the novel," f o r example: how t r a n q u i l i t was at v i v i d e s t varadero, while the water kept running through the mouth of the speaker, saying: o l a l l a blanca en e l bianco, l o l - l o l l i n g the endlessness of poetry. (cp - ) o l a l l a i s the spanish name for saint e u l a l i a and the phrase means "white e u l a l i a i n the (masculine) white" but that fact i s not to be found i n most spanish-english d i c t i o n a r i e s , nor i s i t immediately illuminating once found. varadero s t i l l remains an erewhon for me. the whole poem i s a commentary on an a l l u s i o n and the source and circumstances of that a l l u s i o n remain unnoted i n c r i t i c i s m . to admit stevens-* allusiveness i s not to say, however, that the only recourse l e f t to the c r i t i c i s the search f o r i n f l u e n c e s and b i o g r a p h i c a l c r i t i c i s m . stevens' a l l u s i o n s , l i k e a l l h i s other obscurations, have t h e i r purpose and j u s t i f i c a t i o n i n e s t a b l i s h i n g the mode of existence of " c e n t r a l poetry," and mere s c h o l a r s h i p w i l l not uncover that purpose, no matter how many sources i t f i n d s . the point i s that there i s a much more valuable way, a l b e i t a much longer one, to come to g r i p s w i t h poems l i k e "the v i r g i n c a r r y i n g a lantern" than through t r a c i n g a l l u s i o n s . that way i s to study recurrent images i n the c o l l e c t e d poems and what stevens termed " v a r i a b l e symbol" i n reference to the statue i n "owl's clover" (op ). i t i s the conception of such a study that makes both the i m p o s i t i o n of l i m i t s on t h i s paper and the i n s i s t e n c e that c r i t i c s should approach stevens' poems with a common set of p r i n c i p l e s necessary. as the p u b l i c a t i o n of walsh's concordance to the poetry of wallace s t e v e n s i n d i c a t e s , any study of the i n t e r a c t i o n s be- tween poems that r e s u l t from r e c u r r e n t images would have to be of monumental proportions to be considered at a l l i n c l u s i v e . nor w i l l any study of stevens' " v a r i a b l e symbols" succeed which i s based upon the p e u r i l e attempt to s t i l l the vibrancy of t h e i r o s c i l l a - t i o n s i n order to equate them with a b s t r a c t terms l i k e imagination, r e a l i t y , or the i d e a l . the kind of harmony that santayana t a l k e d about i s the k i n d that stevens a c t u a l l y composed: the poet i s a r e b u i l d e r of the imagination, t o make a harmony i n t h a t . and he i s not a complete poet i f h i s whole imagination i s not attuned and h i s whole experience composed i n t o a s i n g l e symphony. the argument concerning the techniques of recurrent images and " v a r i a b l e symbol" i s pursued i n the second part of t h i s paper. the nub of t h a t argument i s , however, immediately r e l e v a n t . the point i s that to explicate an i n d i v i d u a l poem of stevens i t is s u f f i c i e n t that the c r i t i c avoid the p i t f a l l s of preconception and trust stevens' i n t e g r i t y i n using words, but to understand the t o t a l harmony of stevens' poems i t i s necessary to experience the i n d i v i d u a l poem i n i t s r e l a t i o n to the whole of his collected poems. the intent i n t h i s paper i s to e s t a b l i s h that necessity by examining the theory and purport of "central poetry." any short- comings i n such a project are. afforded t h e i r excuse by a parting reference to teufelsdrockh's editor: be i t remembered, however, that such purport is here not so much evolved, as detected to l i e ready for evolving. we are to guide our b r i t i s h friends into the new gold-country, and show them the mines; nowise to d i g - out and exhaust i t s wealth...once there, l e t each dig f o r his own behoof, and enrich himself. part i - central poetry: morphology is i t true that our a i r i s disturbed., as mallarme said, by "the trembling of the v e i l of the temple," or "that our whole age i s seeking to bring forth a sacred book?" some of us thought that book near towards the end of l a s t century, but the tide sank again. yeats - the trembling of the v e i l among the anecdotes that have accumulated around stevens there i s one. reported by c l a r d i which deserves r e p e t i t i o n , both for i t s p i t h and i t s pertinency to the subject of "central poetry": ...stevens said, "the trouble with you, frost, i s that you write on subjects." frost r e p l i e d , "the trouble with you i s you write b r i c - a - b r a c " ! the anecdote i s undated, but what stevens meant by "subjects" i s undoubtedly what he referred to (in a l e t t e r to william carlos williams written before ) as not having "a fixed point of view." williams' reaction was i n i t i a l l y as antagonistic as f r o s t ' s * and as l a t e as ? he published a charge that the trouble with stevens i s that "he wants to think."^ but by there appears to be an a l t e r a t i o n i n williams' a t t i t u d e . in his autobiography, he wrote that wallace stevens " . . . i s constantly i n my thoughts," and i n , he e n t i t l e d a review of opus posthumous "poet of a steadfast pattern" and recognized therein the e f f i c a c y of a fixed point of view: as good a summary of stevens' s i t u a t i o n facing the world i s contained - as might be expected i n a man at the same time so vocal and reticent as he was and prone to cover his own traces - i n the poem "architecture," laying out when he was a young man a plan he was to follow during his entire l i f e . it i s , on the face of i t , a mistake to maintain, as lionel abel does, that stevens was "outside the l i t e r a r y controversies of h i s time." a l l three poets, williams, frost, and stevens - are contemporary and the basis of t h e i r arguments can be found i n the pre-eminent esthetic problem of t h e i r time. walter buttel, i n his study of the origins of stevens* "theme and s t y l e , " defines that problem (and quotes williams i n doing so): stevens wrote his undergraduate verse at a time ( - ) when . . . " i t was commonplace to say that a l l the poetry had been written and a l l the paintings painted." ...this commonplace does not seem to have taken into account yeats' mastery of his early style or the poetry of hardy or housman, but perhaps t h e i r voices were obscured by such decadents as dowson, symonds, and wilde, whose celebration of art for art's sake - the ivory tower tennyson had warned against i n "the palace of a r t " seemed to mark the end of an era, even though they contributed to the poetry of the era to come when they did much to introduce french symbolism into english poetry. in america, the sweeping innovations of whitman and the i n c i s i v e wit and suggestiveness of emily dickinson were l a r g e l y ignored. ...poetry seemed less and less s i g n i f i c a n t i n a world of science, industrialism, and middle-class culture. the decadent's response was to e s t a b l i s h a c u l t of isolated beauty, while at the opposite extreme the r e a l i s t i c and n a t u r a l i s t i c novelists were making a determined e f f o r t to deal with the actual world, as sordid as i t might be. the problem was one of the nature and function of poetry, as i t always i s , and i t arose at t h i s time because of a very r e a l sense that poetry and l i f e had become bifurcated. on the one hand, the pure poets of the f i n de s l e c l e had pushed what seemed the l o g i c a l value of art - the esthetic value - to i t s utmost; and, on the other hand, there was d a i l y evidence that ' r e a l ' l i f e was based upon p r i n c i p l e s wholly foreign to those which created beauty. faced with t h i s overwhelming p o l a r i t y between a dedication to beauty and a dedication to l i f e , i t must have seemed evident to the young poet of the period that he had to make a choice'. •some poets, l i k e paul valery, chose to a f f i r m beauty, even i f i t meant a r e j e c t i o n of the 'mainstream* of l i f e : i l i v e d among young people for whom art and poetry were a kind of e s s e n t i a l nourishment impossible to forego, and indeed something more: a supernatural food. in those days - some who are s t i l l l i v i n g w i l l remember - we had the urgent impression that a sort of c u l t or new kind of r e l i g i o n was about to be born, that would give shape to the quasi-mystical state of mind which reigned at that time and which was.inspired i n or communicated to us by our extremely intense awareness of the universal value of the emotions of art. # , * * when one looks back to the youth of that epoch, to that time more charged with i n t e l l e c t than the present, and to the way i n which we faced l i f e and the knowledge of l i f e , one can see that a l l the conditions were present for some development or creation almost r e l i g i o u s i n character. indeed, there reigned at that moment a kind of d i s i l l u s i o n with philosophic theories, a contempt for the promises of science, that had been very i l l i n t e r - preted by our predecessors and elders, the r e a l i s t and n a t u r a l i s t writers. the r e l i g i o u s had experienced the assault of p h i l o l o g i c a l and philosophical c r i t i c i s m . metaphysics seemed to have been destroyed by kant's a n a l y s i s . before us was a white, blank page, and we could inscribe on i t only a single affirmation. this seemed to us indisputable, being founded neither on a t r a d i t i o n , which can always be contested, nor on a science, whose generalizations can always be c r i t i c i z e d , nor on texts, which can be interpreted at w i l l , nor on philosophical reasoning, which l i v e s only on hypothesis. our certainty was i n our emotion and our f e e l i n g for beauty. some of those who made vale'ry's affirmation f e l l back i n despair - l i k e the yeats of my epigraph - while others chose f e a l t y to ' r e a l l i f e and sought to construct a poetry based upon the p r i n c i p l e s of that l i f e - upon psychology or communism or americanism or catholicism, or* i n short, upon the philosophies and s o c i a l sciences which gave that ' r e a l ' l i f e form. what stevens' response to the problem x«fas, however, i s a question xtfiich has provoked, and s t i l l provokes c o n f l i c t i n g answers. williams' view of stevens' steadfast purpose, f o r example, implies^that stevens' did make a response of a kind which denies bradley's assertion that "...the subject of his poetry remains a sum of aspects rather than an apotheosis of one or two monolithic worlds..." yet bradley's attitude i s one which has long endured among stevens' c r i t i c s , as a comparison of untermeyer*s early comment with sypher's assessment of stevens i n mid-career w i l l show: itfstevens* poetryjhas much f o r the eye, something for the ear, but nothing f o r that central hunger which i s at the heart of a l l the senses.h thus l i v i n g i n many sensuous worlds indicates a f a i l u r e i n imagination. the supreme f i c t i o n becomes f i c t i t i o u s indeed, a dizzy pluralism, a rage for order that cannot be spent.... the recent tendency, noted by brown and h a l l e r , for c r i t i c s to anchor t h e i r discussions with "the discovery, or rather the e x p l o i t a t i o n of themes other than the important one of imagination versus reality" i s an i n d i c a t i o n that stevens' c r i t i c s , i n gen- e r a l , have found the question of stevens' fixed point of view e i t h e r f u t i l e or impossible to discuss. while these c r i t i c s have not reduced stevens' poetry to mere decoration, as untermeyer would, they have, indeed, committed i t to a "dizzy pluralism" by f i n d i n g i n his poems expressions of humanism, e x i s t e n t i a l i s m , essentialism, mysticism, realism, and i d e a l i s m l ^ - to name only a few of t h e i r discoveries. such a c r i t i c a l reaction was probably inevitable i n view of the end r e s u l t of repetitious explorations of the 'important' theme "of the imagination versus r e a l i t y . " that r e s u l t was bore- dom - a boredom expressed by anthony hecht i n his complaint against "stevens* esthetic doctrine, which i s so obsessively present on almost every page that the reader i s l i k e l y to f e e l badgered by the r e l e n t l e s s declaration of a single idea. " but the fact remains, nonetheless, that both the reaction and the approach which caused that reaction are f u t i l e and misdirected as approaches to stevens. both treat stevens' poetry as though i t were prose and both assume that stevens' theory of poetry must stand and be counted on one side or the other of the philosophical s p l i t which i e a r l i e r characterized as the s p l i t between the euhemeristic and the hermetic. williams was right i n a t t r i b u t i n g a "steadfast pattern" to the poems of wallace stevens, and i n the poem which he mentions as proof of h i s point there are indications of the nature of that pattern and of i t s value as a response to the dilemma of the times (i quote only stanzas i and vi): what manner of building s h a l l we build? let us design a chastel de chastete'. de pense'e ... never cease to deploy the structure. keep the laborers shouldering p l i n t h s . pass the whole of l i f e earing the c l i n k of the chisels of the stone-cutters cutting the stones. and, f i n a l l y , set guardians i n the grounds, gray, gruesome grumblers. for no one proud, nor s t i f f , no solemn one, nor pale, no chafferer, may come to s u l l y the begonias, nor vex with holy or sublime ado the kremlin of kermess. ( op , ) i have no intention of explicating "architecture," beyond noting how apropos these two stanzas are to any discussion of the nature and mode of existence of stevens' 'fixed point of view.' the a p p l i c a t i o n of the f i r s t stanza i s self-evident; stevens never ceased "to deploy the structure," the interactions and variations that make his poetry a harmonious whole and which allowed john wain to describe h i s l a t e r poetry, although somewhat paradoxically, as " a fragment broken o f f the monolith of his own d i a l e c t . " the "guardians" of the s i x t h stanza are, of course, the deliberate obscurations discussed i n the introduction to t h i s paper and t h e i r purpose i s , as i there suggested, twofold. they are to keep out the "chafferer" who would " s u l l y the begonias" and the "solemn one" who would "vex/with holy or sublime ado/the kremlin of kermess." it i s a shame to translate these characters into ab- stractions, but so seen, the chafferers are those euhemerists who would trample the poetry out of poetry with t h e i r stumblefoot c r i t i c i s m , and the solemn ones are those hermeticists who would "vex" poets and poetry readers by making the joy of t h e i r esthetic contemplation a matter of "holy or sublime ado" - of r e l i g i o u s proof. "the kremlin of kermess" means, l i t e r a l l y , the c i t a d e l of a c i t y of f e s t i v a l s which derive from feast days of saints: and a l l the suggestions contained i n that l i t e r a l meaning are relevant - the p o l i t i c a l idea of a place of refuge f o r the populace i n time of need and the r e l i g i o u s idea of human celebration of the s p i r i t - u a l . translated, the "kremlin of kermess" i s "central poetry": i t i s that r e u n i f i c a t i o n of l i f e and beauty which was stevens' response to the dilemma of h i s time. the 'theory' of "central poetry" i s somewhat c r y p t i c a l l y stated i n stevens' essay "effects of analogy": the poet i s constantly concerned with two theories. one relates to the imagination as a power within him not so much to destroy r e a l i t y at w i l l , as to put i t to his own uses. he comes to f e e l that his imagination i s not wholly his own but that i t may be part of a much larger, much more potent imagination, which i t i s his a f f a i r to t r y to get at. for t h i s reason, he pushes on and l i v e s , or t r i e s to l i v e , as paul valery did, on the verge of consciousness. this often r e s u l t s i n poetry that i s marginal, subliminal. the same theory exists i n r e l a t i o n to prose, to painting and other a r t s . the second theory relates to the imagination as a power with- i n him to have such insights into r e a l i t y as w i l l make i t possible for him to be s u f f i c i e n t as a poet i n the very center of consciousness. this r e s u l t s , or should r e s u l t , i n a central poetry. dr. whitehead concluded h i s modes of thought by saying: ...the purpose of philosophy i s to r a t i o n a l i z e mysticism....philosophy i s akin to poetry, and both of them seek to express that ultimate good sense which we term c i v i l i z a t i o n . the proponents of the f i r s t theory believe that i t w i l l be a part of t h e i r achievement to have created the poetry of the future. it may be that the poetry of the future w i l l be to poetry of the present what poetry of the present i s to the b a l l a d . the proponents of the second theory believe that to create the poetry of the present i s an incalculable d i f f i c u l t y , which r a r e l y i s achieved, f u l l y and robustly, by anyone. they think that there i s enough and more than enough to do with what faces us and concerns us d i r e c t l y and that i n poetry as an a r t , and, f o r that matter, i n any a r t , the central problem i s always the problem of r e a l i t y . the adherents of the imagination are mystics to begin with and pass from one mysticism to another. the adherents of the central are also mystics to begin with. but a l l t h e i r desire and a l l t h e i r ambition i s to press away from mysticism toward that ultimate good sense which we term c i v i l i z a t i o n . (na - ) by i t s e l f , the statement i s a statement of difference; i t s context i s a discussion of "apposite" analogies and the concept of "central poetry" i s intended as an i l l u s t r a t i o n of "a d i s c i p l i n e of tight- ness" (na ) with.respect to the creation of those analogies. that difference, however, opens up avenues of c r i t i c a l exploration which do lead to the full-blown theory upon which the difference, and stevens' poems, depend. before exploring those avenues, i t i s necessary to note that the difference between the two theories i s not as clearcut as i t might appear. an apparent contradiction i n northrop frye's explanation of the difference points up the need f o r cautious assessment. frye's explanation begins reasonably enough: (the underlining i s mine): a t h i r d mode of mental a c t i v i t y , which i s poetic but not stevens' kind of poetry, i s the attempt to suggest or evoke universals of mind or substance, to work at the threshold of consciousness and produce what stevens c a l l s "marginal" poetry and a s s o c i a t e s with v a l e r y . what- ever i t s merit such poetry f o r him i s i n c o n t r a s t w i t h " c e n t r a l " poetry based on the concrete and p a r t i c u l a r act of mental experience. stevens speaks of the imagina- t i o n as moving from the h i e r a t i c to the c r e d i b l e , and marginal poetry ...seeks "a hierophant omega" or u l t i - mate mystery. ...but f o r the imagination " r e a l i t y i s the beginning not the end," "the imperfect i s our paradise ," and the only order worth having i s the " v i o l e n t order" produced by the e x p l o s i o n of imaginative energy which i s a l s o a "great disorder." but, a paragraph l a t e r , he a l t e r s h i s terms and appears to q u a l i f y h i s o r i g i n a l assessment: however, the imagination does b r i n g something to r e a l i t y which i s not there i n the f i r s t p l a c e , hence the imagina- t i o n contains an element of the " u n r e a l " which the imag- i n a t i v e form i n c o r p o r a t e s . this u n r e a l i s connected w i t h the f a c t that conscious experience i s l i b e r a t e d experience. the u n r e a l . . . i s the sense of e x h i l a r a t i o n and splendour i n a r t , ..."the way of t h i n k i n g by which we p r o j e c t the idea of god i n t o the idea of man." ...although a r t i s i n one sense an escape from r e a l i t y ( i . e . , i n the sense i n which i t i s an escape of r e a l i t y ) , and although a r t i s a heightening of consciousness, i t i s not enough f o r a r t simply to give one a v i s i o n of a b e t t e r world. a r t i s p r a c t i c a l , not s p e c u l a t i v e ; i m a g i n a t i v e , not f a n t a s t i c ; i t transforms experience, and does not merely i n t e r r u p t i t . the u n r e a l i n imaginative perception i s most simply described as the sense that i f something i s not there i t a t l e a s t ought to be there. but t h i s f e e l i n g i n a r t i s anything but w i s t f u l ; i t has created the tone of a l l the c i v i l i z a t i o n s of h i s t o r y . thus the " c e n t r a l " poet, by working outwards from a beginning instead of onwards tox^ards an end, helps to achieve the only genuine k i n d of progress. as stevens says i n a passage which e x p l a i n s the ambivalence of the term "mystic" i n h i s work: "the adherents of the c e n t r a l are a l s o mystics to begin w i t h . but a l l t h e i r d e s i r e and a l l t h e i r ambition i s to press away from mysticism toward that u l t i m a t e good sense which we term c i v i l i z a t i o n . " such u l t i m a t e good sense depends on p r e s e r v i n g a balance between o b j e c t i v e r e a l i t y and the s u b j e c t i v e u n r e a l element i n the imagination!"^ the a l t e r a t i o n i n terms here i s from t h e o r e t i c d i f f e r e n c e to p r a c t i c a l d i f f e r e n c e , but that i s not the c o n t r a d i c t i o n - even though i t i s hard to see how an " u n r e a l " of which prye approves, and which he describes by the l i n e "the way of t h i n k i n g by which . we project the idea of god into the idea of man," i s to avoid c l a s s i f i c a t i o n as "the attempt to suggest or evoke universals of mind or substance." the contradiction occurs when prye attempts to explain the concepts of r e a l i t y and u n r e a l i t y . one has to compare frye's statement that "stevens speaks of the imagination as moving from the h i e r a t i c to the credible, and marginal poetry seeks 'a hierophant omega' or ultimate mystery" with h i s view of the imagination's a c t i v i t y i n the second c i t a t i o n . on the one hand, we have the imagination moving from the unreal to the r e a l and on the*other the imagination bringing the unreal to the r e a l and judging the r e a l by standards of u n r e a l i t y . on the one hand there i s the frye who says, "but f o r the imagination r e a l i t y i s the beginning not the end," and, on the other hand, there i s the frye who says that f o r the imagination u n r e a l i t y i s the beginning (since standards of judgement must always precede the thing judged): and f i n a l l y , there i s the frye who resolves the d i f f i - c u l t y by f a l l i n g back on the preservation of "a balance between objective r e a l i t y and the subjective unreal element i n the imagination." although frye i s right i n his d i s t i n c t i o n between p r a c t i c a l and speculative a r t , i t i s impossible to c r e d i t h i s discussion of the difference between marginal and.central poetry as the f i n a l word on the subject f o r two reasons. the primary reason i s that neither i n the poems nor the prose does stevens say what frye says he says. stevens speaks of "a war between the mind/and sky, between thought and day and night." (op ) this i s , as i s h a l l show, a war between what frye c a l l s 'the subjective unreal' and 'objective r e a l i t y ' ; such a war, for stevens, was not a war of a t t r i t i o n . the difference between the marginal poet and the central poet i s that the marginal poet either wins his war, or r e j e c t s the necessity for f i g h t i n g , before he writes his poems. the central poet wins his war, or attempts to, i n h i s poems. one finds i n stevens* prose and poetry, not a search for a balance, but a search for conquest. to prove that stevens ignores frye's concept of balance i n h i s prose i s the subject of a long argument, but i t i s possible to introduce that argument by examining the poems from which frye extracted l i n e s to see i f t h e i r meaning, as l i n e s of poetry, cor- responds to his use of them. one of the l i n e s occurs i n "the poems of our climate"; "the imperfect i s our paradise. ? (cp ) frye uses the l i n e to i l l u s t r a t e an opposition between 'stevens' theory' of "violent order" and the marginal poet's concept of "order i n terms of f i n a l i t y , as something that keeps receding from experience u n t i l experience stops, when i t becomes the mirage of an 'after l i f e ' on which a l l hierophants whether poets or p r i e s t s depend." o'connor supports frye's reading of the l i n e , a l b e i t as the r e s u l t of a d i f f e r e n t approach, when he says "...the ideal of s i m p l i c i t y , of describing natural objects, however b e a u t i f u l l y done, i s not enough. there always remains 'the never resting [sic] mind.' the mind i t s e l f wants to create. it has i t s own c r i t e r i a . among them, s u r p r i s i n g l y , i s i t s l i k i n g f o r the imperfect, for the 'flawed words, and stubborn sounds.'" j j o w o'connor's approach refutes frye's; i t i s a ' n a t u r a l i s t i c order' which i s found wanting i n the poem and not a hierophantic ones . clear water i n a b r i l l i a n t bowl, pink and white carnations. the l i g h t in the room more l i k e a snowy a i r , reflecting snow. a newly f a l l e n snow at the end of winter when afternoons return. pink and white carnations - one desires so much more than that. the day i t s e l f is s i m p l i f i e d : a bowl of white, cold, a cold porcelain, low and round, with nothing more than the carnations there. (cp ) the narrator i s here self-consciously engaged i n an attempt to wring meaning out of painstaking description - to write a poem of the climate. this much i s evident from the syntax; but it should also be evident that the s i m p l i c i t y attained purports to be a r e a l and not an ideal s i m p l i c i t y . the color harmony (order) of the f i r s t f i v e l i n e s i s an order of something which is there. the restatement of that order i n the l a s t three l i n e s constitutes a resemblance - between pink and white carnations and the afternoon l i g h t on snow and between the bowl and the glaze of snow on the earth. now, to stevens, resemblance i s - ...one of the s i g n i f i c a n t components of the structure of r e a l i t y . it i s s i g n i f i c a n t because . . . i t binds together. it i s the base of appearance. in nature, however, the r e l a t i o n i s between two or more of the parts of r e a l i t y . in metaphor (and this word is used as a symbol for the single aspect of poetry with which we are now concerned - that i s to say, the creation of resemblance by the imagination, even though metamorphosis might be a better word) - i n metaphor, the resemblance may be, f i r s t , between two or more parts of r e a l i t y ; second, between something r e a l and something imagined or, what i s the same thing, between something imagined and something r e a l as, f o r example, between music and whatever may be evoked by i t ; and, t h i r d , between two imagined things as when we say that god i s good, since the statement i n - volves a resemblance between two concepts, a concept of god and a concept of goodness. (na ) since the statement of resemblance i n the l a s t three l i n e s i s a metaphor (of the f i r s t kind), i t can be assessed by subjecting i t to the generalized rules governing the image which stevens posits i n "effects of analogy": every image i s the elaboration of a p a r t i c u l a r of the subject of the image. (na ) every image i s a restatement of the subject of the image i n terms of an a t t i t u d e . (na ) every image i s an intervention on the part of the image- maker. it [this generalization]refers to the sense of the world, as the second p r i n c i p l e did, and i t could be said to be a phase of the second p r i n c i p l e , i f i t did not r e f e r to s t y l e i n addition to the sense of the world. (na ) applied to the resemblance i n "the poems of our climate," these technical observations help to bring out the flaw therein. the resemblance f a i l s to s a t i s f y or incorporate the narrator's desire. it i s a created image and, as such, involves the attitude of the creator and his intervention. the trouble i s that the attitude and the intervention contradict each other. the nar- • rator's sense of the world springs from the presupposition that received r e a l i t y - h i s 'climate* - should be enough, and, in consequence, his s t y l e i s limited to the description of received resemblances - to the poems of h i s climate. in other words, his words attempt to disguise themselves as description - attempt to pass themselves off as a simple imitation of r e a l i t y . his sense of the world i s that i t i s r e a l and should be described, but his intervention i s i n words and words are always creation and not d e s c r i p t i o n . the point of a l l this i s that n a t u r a l i s t i c description not only d i s t o r t s the nature of words - i t also f a l s i f i e s r e a l i t y . "the day i t s e l f i s s i m p l i f i e d " because the day described i s an attitude only - a preconception about r e a l i t y . the point i s important because the poem i s about one's sense of words as well as one's sense of r e a l i t y and about the r e l a t i o n between those two senses. the result of the narrator's essay i s the conclusion that n u ij r e a l i t y i s not to be found by description: say even that t h i s complete s i m p l i c i t y stripped one of a l l one's torments, concealed the e v i l l y compounded, v i t a l i and made i t fresh i n a world of white, a world of clear water, b r i l l i a n t - e d g e d , s t i l l one would want more, one would need more, more than a world of white and snowy scents. i l l there would s t i l l remain the never-resting mind, so that one would want to escape, come back to what had been so long composed. the imperfect i s our paradise. note that, i n t h i s bitterness, d e l i g h t , since the imperfect i s so hot i n us, lies i n flawed words and stubborn sounds. (cp - ) the trouble i s that the mind i s not herein r e j e c t i n g description because, as o'connor suggests, " i t .wants to create" or because of " i t s l i k i n g for the imperfect." it rejects description because i t is an exclusive rather than an inclusive creation. but there i s no sense of delight i n the second and t h i r d parts of the poem - no sense of actual release. the impossible ambiguities are pain- f u l to the narrator and must benumb the reader. what has happened i s that the " v i t a l i" has been "evilly-compounded", which means, presumably, that i t i s not capable of resting i n any simple r e a l i t y because i t s nature i s both of that r e a l i t y and of the force which creates that r e a l i t y . the rat that t r i e s to catch i t s own t a i l - the snake that swallows i t s e l f . once the i becomes aware of i t s inevitable c r e a t i v i t y , i t r e a l i z e s that i t s creations imprison i t i n inadequate compounds. what the."never-resting mind" makes one "want to escape" i s the trap of i t s own f i c t i o n - a l i t y . note that the intent of such an escape i s to "come back/ to what had been so long composed." what i t i s that has been composed defies explanation; s u f f i c e i t to note that composed i s not compounded, nor i s i t simple. unlike compounds, compositions / do not destroy the i n d i v i d u a l c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of the things which compose them. unlike a simplex, a composition i s i n c l u s i v e , rather than exclusive. f i n a l l y , what has been composed appears not to have been composed by the narrator and, i n consequence, appears to be composed i n the sense of peacefulness as well. the movement of the poem, therefore, appears to be from an attempt to find r e a l i t y by dint of one's own creation to an attempt to escape the dilemma thereby fostered by finding a larger framework of com- p o s i t i o n ( i . e . by creating a creator for the creator and the created). l o g i c a l l y , of course, t h i s framework involves the same v i c i o u s regress as the simplex, except for one saving grace. such a creation allows the v i t a l i release from e v i l compoundings. thus analysed, the poem supports frye's marginal concept of order rather than his central one or, better, denies that there is an opposition between the two orders so conceived. the f i n a l four l i n e s prove the point; the furious v a c i l l a t i o n s therein are ex- pressions of a "violent order", as frye suggests, but they are also a confession that "order keeps receding from experience u n t i l experience stops." words are not simple one-to-one correspond- ences of r e a l i t y ; they are "flawed" and "stubborn" - composed of creator and created, of r e a l and unreal. what i s important here i s that we who create the words are the imperfection that makes paradise possible - the b i t t e r who afford d e l i g h t . we are what makes possible the " f e a r f u l symmetry" of the absolute; the creator i n the created. the "violent order" of the central poet i s dynamic and i t s dynamism i s perhaps most c l e a r l y described i n terms of the t i t l e to t h i s paper - as o s c i l l a t i o n s between the i n d i v i d u a l and the absolute. "the poems of our climate" i s a f r i g h t f u l experience when read nakedly, and that i s p r e c i s e l y i t s point. to come to a sense of "what had been so long composed" as something necessary even though not comforting, as something more than a matter of concept even though not concretely embodied, i s to experience one aspect of the absolute. there are countless aspects. it i s appropriate, by way of aside, to note i n connection with "the poems of our climate" another aspect brought out by richard watson i n h i s analysis of "negation." watson sees i n the "creator" of the poem " a completely d i f f u s e concept"j in the terms of transcendentalism, this oversoul has a s p l i t personality, one part of which i s immanent or i n this world, and the other part of which i s trans- cendental or out of t h i s world. god is t r y i n g to unify himself. ...because there i s a continuous tendency towards unity, the physical d i a l e c t i c (as studied by science), the s o c i a l d i a l e c t i c of nations (as studied by hegel and other p o l i t i c a l philosophers), and the i n - d i v i d u a l d i a l e c t i c (as studied by freud and jung) a l l present a gigantic attempt to return to the transcenden- t a l part of the oversoul. in "negation" there i s , in f a c t , a parody of the i d e a l i s t i c transcendentalism of whitman the poet and hegel the philosopher. hegel postulated an impersonal "oversoul" which was also the epitome of consciousness and s p i r i t u a l i t y . stevens, as the t i t l e suggests, takes a negative view-point, and says that "the creator too i s b l i n d " and has to struggle as we do to achieve i n d i v i d - uation. . ...the t i t l e , "negation," suggests more than stevens* negative attitude towards idealism, however. there i s a paradox, of which stevens was most l i k e l y aware, a paradox which kenneth burke c a l l s the "paradox of purity," or "paradox of the absolutes" we confront t h i s paradox when deriving the nature of the human person from god as "super-person." as "pure" or "absolute" person, since god as a super- person would be impersonal - and the impersonal would be synomymous with the negation of personality. there i s no denying that the paradox exists i n "negation," just as i t exists i n "the poems of our climate." a comparison of the two poems, however, does make i t possible to refute the i n - tentional misconception, widespread among stevens' c r i t i c s , that ? stevens was a n t i - i d e a l i s t . to employ the transcendentalist paradox i n poetry i s not necessarily to either negate or parody i t . the way that paradox i s used i s , obviously, the important thing. in "the poems of our climate," the paradox of the human s i t u a t i o n , of the process of human conception, i s the beginning and i t i s only the p o s s i b i l i t y of the transcendency i m p l i c i t i n that paradox that makes the human s i t u a t i o n bearable. in "negation," the narrator begins e n t h u s i a s t i c a l l y by c a l l i n g atten- t i o n to the transcendental paradox, and he ends on a somewhat muted note by recognizing the human s i t u a t i o n : for t h i s , then, we endure b r i e f l i v e s , the evanescent symmetries from that meticulous potter's thumb. (cp ) i hate to disagree with watson on such s l i g h t evidence, but i t does seem that the element of parody he notes i s not sustained through the whole poem. one has only to contrast the f i n a l three l i n e s with the f i r s t seven: hi! the creator too i s b l i n d , struggling toward his harmonious whole, rejecting intermediate parts, horrors and f a l s i t i e s and wrongs; incapable master of a l l force, too vague i d e a l i s t , overwhelmed by an a f f l a t u s that p e r s i s t s . (cp - ) what i s being parodied i n this poem, i f anything, i s not any transcendental but a t o t a l l y immanent concept of godhead. this, at l e a s t , i s the kind of concept the narrator announces so exuberantly i n the f i r s t l i n e . the syntax, however, suggests a movement from presto to andante. the verbal energy of the f i r s t ? i three l i n e s gives way to the more forced but less f o r c e f u l energy of the emotion behind the r i d i c u l e of l i n e s to . the period at the end of l i n e i s necessary only for reasons of rhetoric - the orator's breath i s spent and the energy of exuberance gone. the f i n a l three l i n e s are t e r r i b l y slow (one almost feels that exact measurement of the difference between the f i r s t three l i n e s and the l a s t three might be possible); the parenthetical "then," and the a r t i c u l a t o r y q u a l i t i e s of the phrase "that meticulous potter's thumb" arrest the pace. the rhythmic changes serve to support a view that what happens i n t h i s poem i s that the narrator's sense of v i c t o r i o u s release which accompanies h i s newly-discovered view of the creator as t o t a l immanence i s negated when he r e a l i z e s the implications of his discovery. to reject the transcendental- i s t paradox i n favor of t o t a l immanence i s to f a i l to make l i f e meaningful i n human terms. a l l the narrator has a c t u a l l y ac- complished i s the substitution of an "evanescent" f o r an "absolute" symmetry. this poem i s i r o n i c , but the irony i s d i - rected toward the narrator primarily, and only secondarily to h i s view of the world. frye's other reference to stevens' poems, i n the passages e a r l i e r c i t e d , involves the same d i s t o r t i n g concept of the opposition between the ordering p r i n c i p l e s of central poets and of marginal poets. the poem involved i s "an ordinary evening i n new haven" - s p e c i f i c a l l y section vi: reality i s the beginning not the end, naked alpha, not the hierophant omega, of dense i n v e s t i t u r e , with luminous vassals. it i s the infant a standing on infant legs, not twisted, stooping, polymathic z, he that kneels always on the edge of space in the p a l l i d perceptions of i t s distances. alpha fears men or else omega's men or else h i s prolongations of the human. these characters are around us i n the scene. for one i t i s enough; for one i t i s not; for neither i s i t profound absentia. since both a l i k e appoint themselves the choice custodians of the glory of the scene, the immaculate interpreters of l i f e . but that's the difference: i n the end and the way to the end. alpha continues to begin. omega i s refreshed at every end. (cp ) the " r e a l i t y " here, upon which frye fondly bases his judgement, i s delusive; i t i s only one of the many r e a l i t i e s which coalesce i n the poem - a poem i n which the f i n a l conclusion to the open- ing intention to add "a few words, an and yet, and yet, and yet -" to "the eye's p l a i n version" of r e a l i t y i s - it i s not i n the premise that r e a l i t y is a s o l i d . it may be a shade that traverses a dust, a force that traverses a shade. (cp ) one f i n d s , f o r example, i n section vii, the kind of r e a l i t y one thinks of when one talks of realism, a r e a l i t y f i l l e d "with l e s s e r things, with things exteriorized/out of r i g i d r e a l i s t s . " (cp ) this r e a l i t y i s meant as a contrast to the r e a l i t y of section vi. it i s true that the narrator of the poem expresses h i s f e a l t y to r e a l i t y , but he does not do so i n terms accordant with fryers: we seek nothing beyond r e a l i t y . within i t , everything, the s p i r i t ' s alchemicana included, the s p i r i t that goes roundabout and through included, not merely the v i s i b l e , the s o l i d , but the movable, the moment, the coming on of feasts and the habits of saints, the pattern of the heavens and high, night a i r . (cp ) faced with such passages, i t i s hard to see how anyone could emerge from a reading of "an ordinary evening ..." with an intact sense of the opposition between r e a l and unreal, or with a concept of poetry as the balancing of these forces. the d i s t i n c t i o n stevens makes between r e a l and unreal cuts across the oppositions of philosophers and t h e i r schools. to stevens, what's r e a l i s l i f e , which can include p h i l o s o p h i c a l l y r e a l and unreal concepts; what's unreal i s anything which isn't a l i v e . what's r e a l , i n other words i s poetry. such statements are true, and serve to define the inadequacy of assessing stevens' terms on purely philosophical grounds, but they are not the p o s i t i v e d e f i n i t i o n of "central poetry" i would l i k e them to be, because they merely substitute one set of un- defined terms for another. nonetheless, a sense of the d i s t i n c t i o n i s available i n section x of "an ordinary evening...": it i s f a t a l i n the moon and empty there. but, here, a l l o n s . the enigmatical beauty of each b e a u t i f u l enigma becomes amassed i n a t o t a l double-thing. we do not know what is r e a l and what i s not. we say of the moon, i t i s haunted by the man of bronze whose mind was made up and who, there- fore, died. we are not men of bronze and we are not dead. his s p i r i t i s imprisoned i n constant change. but ours i s not imprisoned. it resides in a permanence composed of impermanence.... (cp ) the contrast between t h i s section and section vi, i s the contrast between mode of existence and theory which i am about to discuss i n r e l a t i o n to stevens' prose. but, f i r s t , i t should be noted that the theory of section vi i s not, as frye suggests, a theory of balances, but a theory of "a t o t a l double-thing" which makes poetry possible. alpha and omega are not separate beings, despite t h e i r disparate appearances. omega i s "polymathlc" because he i s many-knowing as p e r s o n i f i c a t i o n , and because, as alphabetic l e t t e r , he i s the sum of a l l l e t t e r s and alpha's end. alpha i s "naked" (shades of teufelsdrockh) and "fears men or else omega's men/or else h i s prolongations of the human" because he is unper- celved r e a l i t y and men's conscious perceptions (which are usually conceptions) are the force which transforms him, changes him, ages him, into omega. whether one analyses omega, or syntheslses alpha, the difference i s only one of d i r e c t i o n ; as "professor eucaplyptus said, 'the search/for r e a l i t y i s as mo- mentous as/the search for god." (cp ) the"total double thing" of alpha and omega i s the acnode which one encounters at either end of the central poet's philosophical o s c i l l a t i o n . the discussion of "the poems of our climate" and "an ordinary evening..." was twofold i n intent - to give grounds for one of two objections to frye's approach to the question of "central poetry" and to indicate the kind of argument about s l i g h t d i s t i n c t i o n s that stevens' concept demands. the second objection to frye's c r i t i c i s m i s an objection to phrasing; i t arises because of frye's d e s c r i p t i o n of "the unreal in imaginative perception" as "the sense that i f something i s not there i t at least ought to be there." this brings into question the ' r e a l i t y ' of 'the supreme f i c t i o n s * which the central poet creates, and which stevens defines i n "the noble rider and the sound of words": there i s , i n f a c t , a world of poetry indistinguishable from the world i n which we l i v e , or, i ought to say, no doubt, from the world i n which we s h a l l come to l i v e , since what makes the poet the potent figure that he i s , or was, or ought to be, i s that he creates the world to which we turn incessantly and without knowing i t and that he gives to l i f e the supreme f i c t i o n s without which we are unable to conceive of i t . (na ) the most d i f f i c u l t thing to avoid i n dealing with stevens i s h i s constant insistence upon the truth of such supreme f i c t i o n s . his insistence i s of a kind which brings him within the sphere, i r o n i c a l l y , of those believers i n poetic truth castigated by i.a. richards: b r i e f l y , i f we can contrive to believe poetry, then the world seems, while we do so, to be transfigured. it used to be comparatively easy to do t h i s , and the habit has become well established. with the extension of science and the n e u t r a l i z a t i o n of nature i t has become d i f f i c u l t as well as dangerous. yet i t i s s t i l l a l l u r - ing; i t has many analogies with drug-taking. ...various subterfuges have been devised along the l i n e s of regard- ing poetic truth as f i g u r a t i v e , symbolic; or as more immediate, as a truth of i n t u i t i o n , not of reason; or as a higher form of the same truth as reason y i e l d s . such attempts to use poetry as a denial or as a corrective of science are very common. one point can be made against them a l l ; they are never worked out i n d e t a i l . there i s no equivalent to m i l l ' s logic expounding any such view. the language i n which they are framed is usually a blend of obsolete psychology and emotive exclamations. the irony here i s that there are two sides to this question of b e l i e f . both richards i n his c r i t i c i s m and stevens i n his theory make the contemporary s i t u a t i o n paramount; but richards r e j e c t s the p o s s i b i l i t y of believing i n poetic truth as m a higher form of the same truth as reason y i e l d s " because he believes i n r e a l i t y . stevens, on the other hand, rejects the r e a l i t y of the contemporary s i t u a t i o n as something to believe i n - he says "a possible poet must be a poet capable of r e s i s t i n g or evading the pressure of r e a l i t y . . . " (na ) - and this makes i t possible f o r him to believe i n poetic truth as "a higher form of the same truth as reason y i e l d s . " if one can accept the poem "as you leave the room" as autobiographical, one has ready-made proof of the point: that poem about the pineapple, the one about the mind as never s a t i s f i e d , the one about the credible hero, the one about summer, are not what skeletons think about. i wonder, have i l i v e d a skeleton's l i f e , as a d i s b e l i e v e r i n r e a l i t y , a countryman of a l l the bones i n the world? now, here, the snow i had forgotten becomes part of a major r e a l i t y , part of an appreciation of a r e a l i t y and thus an elevation, as i f i l e f t with something i could touch, touch every way and yet nothing has been changed, except what i s unreal, as i f nothing had been changed at a l l . (op ) one can name the poems referred to - "someone puts a pineapple together," "the well dressed man with a beard," and so on - and one can also demonstrate the difference between the r e a l i t y which y i e l d s the truth i n which richards believes and the "major r e a l i t y " i n which stevens believed. one has only to propound, i n p o s i t i v e fashion, stevens* prose statements. in the essays of both the necessary angel and opus posthumous, stevens i s constantly concerned with four implications of the theory of "central poetry." the immediate implication of the metaphysical or epistemological stature of the theory - "the c e n t r a l problem i s always the problem of r e a l i t y " - i s the primary burden of "the imagination as value" and crops up i n almost a l l the essays, including (despite stevens* statement "i am not competent to discuss r e a l i t y as a philosopher" (op ) ) "the i r r a t i o n a l element in poetry." as a consequence of the nature of the theory as philosophy there arises a second implication, and that i s that "central poetry" must conform to a c e r t a i n mode of existence; such a mode of existence involves questions of tech- nique as a minor implication. but the basic implication behind the vxhole theory i s that there can be a c e r t a i n kind of poet capable of existing " i n the very center of consciousness;" the implications, therefore, resolve themselves into questions of the nature of the c e n t r a l poet, the grounds of his existence, and his mode of e x i s t - ence. who i s the central poet? stevens begins his description of "the figure of a youth as v i r i l e poet," i n h i s essay of that name, because there i s no d e f i n i t i o n of poetry (na ) and the best way to account for the fact of poetry i s by saying that " i t i s a process of the personality of the poet." this does not mean that poetry i s merely expressionism i n the sense of a manifestation of ego j a r i s t o t l e said: "the poet should say very l i t t l e i n propria persona." without stopping to discuss what might be discussed for so long, note that the p r i n c i p l e so stated by a r i s t o t l e i s c i t e d i n r e l a t i o n to the point that poetry i s a process of the personality of the poet. this i s the element, the force, that keeps poetry a l i v i n g thing, the modernizing and ever-modern influence. the statement that the process does not involve the poet as subject, to the extent to which that i s true, pre- cludes d i r e c t egotism. on the other hand, without i n - d i r e c t egotism there can be no poetry. there can be no poetry without the personality of the poet and that, quite simply, i s why the d e f i n i t i o n of poetry has not been found and why, i n short, there i s none. (na - ) the question of the central poet's i d e n t i t y i s thus an important one for stevens, as i s indicated by the defence he provides for his discussion of a "possible poet" i n "the noble rider and the sound of words": . . . i f i had been less interested i n t r y i n g to give our possible poet an i d e n t i t y and less interested i n t r y i n g to appoint him to his p l a c e . . . i t might have been thought that i was r h e t o r i c a l , when i was speaking i n the simplest way about things of such importance that nothing i s more so. a poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words. (na j ) what he means i n the f i n a l l i n e of the c i t a t i o n i s analogous to what he means by " i n d i r e c t egotism." the mind of the poet describes i t s e l f as constantly i n his poems as the mind of the sculptor describes i t s e l f i n his forms. ...we are t a l k i n g about something a good deal more comprehensive than the temperament of the a r t i s t that i s usually spoken of. we are concerned with the whole personality and, i n e f f e c t , we are saying that the poet who writes the heroic poem that w i l l sat- i s f y a l l there i s of us and a l l of us i n time to come, w i l l accomplish i t by the power of h i s reason, the force of his imagination and, i n addition, the e f f o r t l e s s and inescapable process of his own i n d i v i d u a l i t y . (na ) now a l l t h i s i s r e l a t i v e l y simple and suggests that poems are a kind of record of the mind, a proof of the adage that a man i s known by what he does. but the edges of t h i s adage become a b i t misty when one notes that the r e l a t i o n between a poet and h i s poem i s a r e l a t i o n between two unknowns: the poet i s able to give i t [any p a r t i c u l a r experience]: the form of poetry because poetry i s the medium of hfs personal s e n s i b i l i t y . this i s not the same thing as saying that a poet writes poetry because he writes poetry, although i t sounds much l i k e i t . a poet writes poetry because he i s a poet; and he i s not a poet because he i s a poet but because of his personal s e n s i b i l i t y . what gives a man h i s personal s e n s i b i l i t y i don't know and i t does not matter because no one knows. (op ) were i t not for the fact that what poetry is_ i s indefinable except i n terms of process of personality, there would be nothing contradictory about retaining the adage, even a f t e r t h i s laughable exercise i n the pedantic manner. thus one could say that stevens discovered that his s e n s i b i l i t y included the recognition that i c e - cream has a contradictory taste by expressing the contradiction i n terms i n "the emperor of ice-cream." but stevens' expression of the r e l a t i o n between poet and poetry thus f a r i s contradictory because the adage applicable i s that what a man does i s known by what he i s . poets, says stevens, "cannot ... be predetermined." (op ) but what a poet does can be. what poets do i s to transform things; transformation i s the process of t h e i r personality: to describe i t by exaggerating i t , he shares the transformation, not to say apoetheosis, accomplished by the poem. it must be t h i s experience that makes him think of poetry as possibly a phase of metaphysics.... i f when we experience a sense of p u r i f i c a t i o n , we can think of the establishing of a s e l f , i t i s c e r t a i n that the experience of the poet i s of no less a degree than the experience of the mystic and we may be c e r t a i n that i n the case of poets, the peers of saints, those experiences are of no less a degree than the experiences of the saints themselves. it i s a question of the nature of the experience. it i s not a question of i d e n t i f y i n g or r e l a t i n g d i s s i m i l a r figures; that i s to say, i t is not a question of making saints out of poets or poets out of saints. (na - ) in a paper published i n , s i s t e r quinn pointed out the importance of transformation i n stevens' poetry and the c r u c i a l problem i n h i s e s t h e t i c : set against the imagination as shaping s p i r i t i s the desire of stevens expressed with equal vividness, to face things as they are. indeed, his devotion to things as they, are i s hard to reconcile with his wish to remold them to what they should be. it may be that these two contradictory views are merely another i n - stance of his heraclitean opposites which fuse into a t h i r d and perfect singular - but on the other hand t h e i r incompatibility may constitute a c r u c i a l lack of c l a r i t y i n his aesthetic... subtle as stevens' proposit- ions are and admirable as i s the i n t r i c a c y with which he had devised them...there appear to be basic d i f f i c u l t i e s i n his p o s i t i o n , ifhich suggest that the center which he seeks i s s t i l l i n the future tense. benamou has recently published a l e t t e r stevens wrote to s i s t e r quinn i n ^ which suggests that her statement of the problem has i t s authority: ...i do not want to turn to stone under your very eyes by saying "this i s the centre that i seek and t h i s aim." your mind i s too much l i k e my own for i t to seem an evasion on my part to say merely that i do seek a centre and expect to go on seeking i t . i don't say that i s h a l l not f i n d i t as that i do not expect to f i n d i t . it i s the great necessity even without s p e c i f i c i d e n t i f - i c a t i o n . the center i s that place wherein i s and should be are one - where conception equals perception and the poet equals what he does. i t i s possible to understand the nisus a f t e r t h i s center by- disposing of two c r i t i c a l reactions to the question of the s t r i v - ing personality. the f i r s t of these reactions to transformation i s given voice by ralph nash; "...we have here a concept of poetry as an approach to the center of r e a l i t y , an ascent through i l l u s i o n past hordes of destructions, a r r i v i n g at l a s t at 'what we wanted fact to be.' this v a t i c concept necessitates a v a t i c f a i t h i n the figure of the poet. ...his godhead i s the nimbus of imagination." nash's view would be acceptable, were i t not that one of the 'hordes of i l l u s i o n s ' which stevens' rejects i s p r e c i s e l y t h i s v a t i c concept of the imaginationj it i s important to believe that the v i s i b l e i s the equivalent of the i n v i s i b l e ; and once we believe i t , we have destroyed the imagination; that i s to say, we have destroyed the f a l s e imagination, the f a l s e con- ception of the imagination as some incalculable vates within us, unhappy rodomontade. (na ) stevens* avoidance of the vatic concept i s the r e s u l t of his desire to a f f i r m the r e a l i t y of transformations i n poetry. the vatic poet, who owes his f e a l t y to his v i s i o n , i s imprisoned too often i n h i s prophecy. he i s committed to that which does not yet e x i s t ; he i s a marginal poet. stevens i s always meticulous i n making the d i s t i n c t i o n between the marginal and the central poet; note, f o r example, that though he equates the experience of the poet with the experience of mystics and saints, he c a r e f u l l y disclaims any s i m i l a r i t y among the experiencers. the second view to be dismissed i s a natural c o r o l l o r y of the f i r s t . it i s a view expressed by mary colums it seems to us that what wallace stevens i s r e a l l y concerned with i s the r e l a t i o n between one man's consciousness and the world, but a world i n which humanity and i t s problems, desires and affections have hardly any place. s u p e r f i c i a l l y , of course, t h i s c r i t i c i s m springs from the same kind of euhemeristic concern described e a r l i e r , but that i s not i t s point. the fact that stevens denied that the poet possessed s o c i a l r e s p o n s i b i l i t y (na ), which i n humanist terms means the r e s p o n s i b i l i t y of grappling with the immediate and s i g n i f i c a n t problems faced by s o c i a l man, must reduce h i s poems, i n the eyes of euhemerist c r i t i c s , to what powys terms "bizarre ornamentation." the now famous a r t i c l e written by stanley burnshaw has received i t s reply i n "owl's clover" and such r e s t r i c t i v e views are no longer important except as matters of s o c i a l h i s t o r y . what i s important about mary colum< 's c r i t i c i s m i s that i t points out the r i s k run by any poet who rejects vatic authority and s t i l l wants to t a l k about r e a l i t i e s whose presence on the scene i s not im- mediately obvious!. the point about prophets i s that they don't have to depend upon r e a l i t y to do t h e i r bidding u n t i l a f t e r they are dead while central poets are committed to proving t h e i r v i s i o n - ary experiences right now. her c r i t i c i s m , then, i s a c o r o l l a r y of nash's because i t implies that unauthorized visions are sub- j e c t i v e i l l u s i o n s . the easiest way to escape the charge of s u b j e c t i v i t y , of course, i s not to have any visions and to experience no trans- formations. it has already been determined that such a course i s impossible f o r stevens. "central poetry" i s transformation and the sense of transformation i s intended to be public and not merely p r i v a t e . "the measure of the poet i s the measure of h i s sense of the world and of the extent to which i t involves the sense of other people" (na - ); he w i l l consider that although he himself witnessed, during the long period of h i s l i f e , a general t r a n s i - t i o n to r e a l i t y , his own measure as a poet, i n spite of a l l the passions of a l l the lovers of truth, i s the measure of his power to abstract himself, and to with- draw tfith him into h i s abstraction the r e a l i t y on which the lovers of truth i n s i s t . he must be able to abstract himself and also to abstract r e a l i t y , which he does by placing i t i n h i s imagination. (na ) "abstraction" i s one of the key terms i n stevens' theory and one aspect of i t s meaning f o r him involves the adherence to contem- poraneous r e a l i t y . "it i s one of the p e c u l i a r i t i e s of the imag- i n a t i o n that i t i s always at the end of an era. what happens i s that i t i s always attaching i t s e l f to a new r e a l i t y , and adhering to i t . it i s not that there i s a new imagination but that there i s a new r e a l i t y . " (na ) what makes abstraction necessary i s that the adherence to r e a l i t y spawns pressures which must be r e s i s t e d or avoided: by the pressure of r e a l i t y , i mean the pressure of an external event or events on the consciousness to the exclusion of any power of contemplation. (na ) it i s precisely t h i s abstractive power, the power of contemplation that i s the poet's b i r t h r i g h t , or at least h i s karma; and i t s p r a c t i c a l r e s u l t i s poetry: the trouble i s that the greater the pressure of the contemporaneous, the greater the resistance. resist- ance i s the opposite of escape. the poet who wishes to contemplate good i n the midst of confusion i s l i k e the mystic who wishes to contemplate god i n the midst of e v i l . there can be no thought of escape. both the poet and the mystic may establish themselves on herrings and apples...the only possible resistance to the pres- sure of the contemporaneous i s a matter of herrings and apples, or, to be less d e f i n i t e , the contemporaneous i t s e l f . in poetry, to that extent, the subject i s not the contemporaneous, because that i s only the nominal subject, but the poetry of the contemporaneous. resist- ance to the pressure of ominous and destructive c i r - cumstance consists of i t s conversion, so far as possible, into a d i f f e r e n t , an explicable, an amenable o circumstance. (op ) the poem "mozart, " provides a p r a c t i c a l example of the nature and purpose of the poet's abstract adherence to r e a l i t y . the key stanza i s the t h i r d : that l u c i d souvenir of the past, the divertimento; that a i r y dream of the future, the unclouded concerto... the snow i s f a l l i n g . strike the piercing chord. (cp ) the poem i s not, as benamou suggests, a parody of romantic tenets. frankenburg's comment i s closer to the t r u t h : by observing the present t r u l y and intensely enough, the poet may hope, symbolically, to resolve i t s con- f l i c t s . ...he i s not the p o l i t i c i a n s * c o l l e c t i v e "you," but the a r t i s t ' s singular "thou. •• but more than symbolic resolutions are at issue i n the poem, and the poet's i d e n t i t y i s not as simple as frankenburg suggests. the poet i s an 'ephebe' under the i n s t r u c t i o n of a music master, who t e l l s him, i n e f f e c t , to become the voice of the mass: be thou the voice," not you. be thou, be thou the voice of angry fear, the voice of t h i s besieging pain. be thou that wintry sound as of a great wind howling, by which sorrow i s released, dismissed, absolved in a starry placating. we may return to mozart (cp ) the images of winter and wind i n the poem reinforce the analogy implied i n the t i t l e . mozart's society was occupied with the p a r t i t i o n of poland; i n » the same wrenching of s o c i a l order was evident, both i n the rebellious s t i r r i n g s of the depression and i n germany's occupation of the saar. in the midst of his chaos, mozart established the concerto, a t o t a l form completely opposite i n concept and significance to the decorative diver- timento, yet a form giving f u l l expression to the solo instruments. that the music master of the present should consider "the un- clouded concerto" an "airy dream of the future" i s a fact which indicates his concept of the function of "thou." the poet, as "thou," unclouds the concerto by, l i t e r a l l y , blowing away the clouds from which snow i s f a l l i n g and thereby absolving sorrow i n "a starry placating" - an unclouded concerto. to do so, he must practice "arpeggios" composed i n the present: play the present, i t s hoo-hoo-hoo, its shoo-shoo-shoo, i t s r i c - a - n i c , its envious cachinnation. (cp ) the point of the "arpeggios" i s that they manifest an order which i s capable of becoming a part of that t o t a l harmony which i s the concerto, though at the same time they r e f l e c t r e a l i t y , the sense of l i v i n g i n the world. the poet must discover the order of the present and harmonize i t with the order of the future - with t o t a l order. "...when we think of arpeggios, we think of opening wings...."(na ). such an order cannot be purely h i s own; diver- tlmenti are no longer adequate, because the "greater the pressure of the contemporaneous,- the greater the resistance." the tone of the music master i n the poem i s a study of the way i t sounds to ' r e s i s t the pressure of r e a l i t y . • i f they throw stones upon the roof while you practice arpeggios, it i s because they carry down the s t a i r s a body i n rags. be seated at the piano. (cp - ) the balance established here i s not dependent on a pose of complete indifference to the world (the body's possible i d e n t i t y i s too ominously suggested for that). it i s a tone expressive of "...the r e l a t i o n between the v i v i d conception of great e v i l s , and that s e l f - a s s e r t i o n of the soul which gives the emotion of the sublime..." what affords sublimity i n the context of the poem i s that i t may be possible "to return to mozart." the difference between the poet and those who "throw stones on the roof" i s one of d i r e c t i o n . the poet partakes of the present fear, but he attempts to transcend i t s destructive force by making i t a part of the sublime. in the process, he himself i s transformed; he abstracts himself from the personal consequences of the present fear and contemplates i t from an absolute perspective - mozart's t o t a l harmony. with the example of "mozart, " in mind, i t i s easy to see how abstraction, as a process, becomes a matter f o r philosophical proof. the t r a n s i t o r y nature of sublime states, even for those capable of experiencing them, was a l l too evident even before - macleish's e a r l i e r poem, "men of my century loved mozart," stresses how ethereal the dream of the music master had become: never did we hear mozart but the mind, fished from i t s feeding i n some weedy deep, and wound i n web that must more c l o s e l y bind the more i t altered from i t s e l f , would keep one moment i n that bond i t s perfect kind - never, when we would question i t , but shone through breaking cordage s i l v e r and the god was gone. the questions - the pressures of contemporaneous r e a l i t y - are many and unless the central poet can o f f e r some answer, i t i s doubtful i f many who share the fears of the present w i l l rest s a t i s f i e d with q u i c k s i l v e r as t h e i r catholicon. the questions the narrator asks i n "the american sublime" - stevens' companion poem to "mozart, " - are e s s e n t i a l : how does one stand to behold the sublime, to confront the mockers, the mickey mockers and plated pairs? what wine does one drink? what bread does one eat? (cp - ) the wine and bread are, of course, the body and blood - the common- place things which take on transcendent r e a l i t y and a s s i s t s p i r i t - u a l communion. (in t h i s context, one can speculatively explain "the mickey mockers/and plated p a i r s " i n terms of the i r i s h americans whose act of communion i s somewhat f a l s i f i e d by a stomach f u l l of saturday night's booze and i n terms of the opposition between man and god that becomes the permanent meaning of the r i t u a l instead of the o r i g i n a l intent of the r i t u a l as a breaking down of p a i r s ) . what has happened to the american sublime i s that an opposi- t i o n has been enforced between s p i r i t and substance, between the r e a l and the unreal: when general jackson posed for his statue he knew how one f e e l s . shall a man go barefoot blinking and blank? but hoxf does one f e e l ? one grows used to the weather, the landscape and that; and the sublime comes down to the s p i r i t i t s e l f , the s p i r i t and space, the empty s p i r i t in vacant space. (cp - ) general jackson posed because he f e l t the need for some embodiment of his s p i r i t - of his sense of the sublime meaning of his l i f e . but that embodiment turned out to be the statue " . . . i n lafayette square... of andrew jackson, r i d i n g a horse with one of the most b e a u t i f u l t a i l s i n the world" (na ), a statue of which stevens saidj treating this work as t y p i c a l , i t i s obvious that the american w i l l as a p r i n c i p l e of the mind's being i s e a s i l y s a t i s f i e d i n i t s e f f o r t s to r e a l i z e i t s e l f i n knowing i t s e l f . . . . a glance at i t shows i t to be unreal. the bearing of t h i s i s that there can be works, and t h i s includes poems, i n which neither the imagination nor r e a l i t y i s present. (na ) one of the pressures of present r e a l i t y i s the tendency to make the s p i r i t incredible and therby deny i t a home i n r e a l i t y . but the f u l l s p i r i t i s one f i l l e d with a sublime sense of a l i f e l i v e d i n r e a l i t y ; and the central poet i s one who must f i n d again i n t h i s l i f e the 'sanctions' of the s p i r i t and of i t s v i s i o n s . it should be obvious by now that the central poet i s not content with either the h i e r a t i c or the subjective. what he wants i s to make the h i e r a t i c credible . it i s not simply a matter, as frye suggests when he says that "stevens speaks of the imagination as moving from the h i e r a t i c to the credible," g f giving up one thing i n favor of another. the f u l l c i t a t i o n of the passage to which frye refers proves that: summed up, our p o s i t i o n at the moment i s that the poet must get r i d of the h i e r a t i c i n everything that concerns him and must move constantly i n the d i r e c t i o n of the credible. he must create his unreal out of what i s r e a l . (na ) that this i s only a momentary p o s i t i o n , a sort of i n i t i a l stage of the " v i r i l e poet's" i n i t i a t i o n into the mysteries, i s evident from the progressive nature of his devotion to his muse. in t h i s i n i t i a l state, he feels no need of the trappings of metaphysics (na ) (the f i r s t underlining i s mine): what we have c a l l e d elevation and e l a t i o n on the part of the poet, which he communicates to the reader, may- be not so much elevation as an incandescence of the i n t e l l i g e n c e and so more than ever a triumph over the i n c r e d i b l e . here as part of the p u r i f i c a t i o n a l l of us undergo as we approach any central purity, and that we f e e l i n i t s presence, vre can say: no longer do i believe that there i s a mystic muse, s i s t e r of the minotaur. this i s another of the monsters i had f o r nurse, whom i have wasted. i am myself a part of what i s r e a l , and i t i s my own speech and the strength of i t , t h i s only, that i hear or ever s h a l l . (na ) why i t should be ariadne who he rejects i s a matter for l a t e r conjecture. note only that i n t h i s state of p u r i f i c a t i o n the poet has come to i d e n t i f y poetic truth with f a c t . "but i f poetic truth means fact and i f fact includes the whole of i t as i t i s betx^een the extreme poles of s e n s i b i l i t y , we are talking about a thing as extensible as i t i s ambiguous." (na ) this i d e n t i f i c a t i o n enables him to wash "the imagination clean" (na l ) . but he i s faced now with a decision - "at what l e v e l of the truth s h a l l he compose his poems?" (na l ) this question concerns the function of the poet today and tomorrow, but makes no pretence beyond. he i s able to read the i n s c r i p t i o n on the portal and he repeats: i am myself a part of what i s r e a l and i t i s my own speech and the strength of i t , t h i s only, that i hear or ever s h a l l . he says, so that we can a l l hear him: i am the truth, since i am part of what is r e a l , but neither more nor less than those around me. and i am imagination, i n a leaden time and i n a world that does not move for the weight of i t s own heaviness. can there be the s l i g h t e s t doubt what the decision w i l l be? can we suppose for a moment that he w i l l be content merely to copy katahdin, when with his sense of the heaviness of the world, he feels his own power to l i f t , or help to l i f t , that heaviness away? (na - ) this statement of dedication from the p u r i f i e d poet has much i n i t to make one think of the dominant images i n stevens' poems. katahdin, for example, i s the highest mountain i n maine, and one finds i n "the poem that took the place of a mountain" (cp ) the accomplishment of the poet's purpose; just as one finds i n "credences of summer" his movement towards the f u l f i l l m e n t of that purpose: the rock cannot be broken. it i s the t r u t h . it r i s e s from land and sea and covers them. it i s a mountain half-way green and then, the other immeasurable h a l f , such rock as placid a i r becomes. (cp ) in t h i s second, or purposeful stage, the poet discovers that - poetry i s the imagination of l i f e . a poem i s a p a r t i c - ular of l i f e thought of for so long that one's thought has become an inseparable part of i t or a p a r t i c u l a r of l i f e so intensely f e l t that the f e e l i n g has entered into i t . when, therefore, we say that the world i s a compact of r e a l things so l i k e the unreal things of the imagina- t i o n that they are indistinguishable from one another... we have a sense that we l i v e i n the center of a physical poetry, a geography that would be intolerable except for the non-geography that exists there.... (na - ) it i s this discovery that makes the poet v i r i l e . ...for the poet, the imagination i s paramount, and i f he dwells apart i n his imagination, as the philosopher dwells i n h i s reason, and as the priest dwells i n h i s b e l i e f , the masculine nature that we propose for. one that must be the master of our l i v e s w i l l be l o s t . . . as we say these things, there begins to develop ... an i n - timation of what he i s thinking as he r e f l e c t s on the imagination of l i f e , determined to be i t s master and ours. he i s thinking of those facts of experience of which a l l of us have thought and which a l l of us have f e l t with such i n t e n s i t y , and he says: inexplicable s i s t e r of the minotaur, enigma and mask, although i am part of what i s r e a l , hear me and recognise me as part of the unreal. i am the truth but the truth of that imagination of l i f e i n which'with unfamiliar motion and manner you guide me i n those exchanges of speech i n which your words are mine, mine yours. (na ~ - ) what such an o s c i l l a t o r y movement on the part of the poet accomplishes, and how i t i s accomplished, are pertinent questions. e s s e n t i a l l y , of course, the poet has moved from a philosophical view of r e a l i t y to a 'poetic' one and i n the process has wit- nessed the reviviscence of his muse. the parts stevens has muse and poet play are an interesting i n d i c a t i o n of the transcendental nature of the resurrection. in the beginning of t h e i r person- i f i c a t i o n , the muse had been ariadne only vaguely and the poet a brash sort of aeneas just about to wander: in e f f e c t , what we are remembering i s the rather haggard background of the incredible, the imagination without i n t e l l i g e n c e , from which a younger figure i s emerging, stepping forward i n the company of a muse of i t s own, s t i l l half-beast and somehow more than human, a kind of s i s t e r of the minotaur. this younger figure i s the i n t e l l i g e n c e that endures. it i s the imagination of the son s t i l l bearing the antique imagination of the father. it i s the c l e a r intelligence of the young man s t i l l bearing the burden of the obscurities of the i n t e l l i g e n c e of the old. it i s the s p i r i t out of i t s own s e l f , not out of some surrounding myth, delineating with accurate speech the complications of which i t i s composed. for t h i s aeneas, i t i s the past that i s anchises. (na - ) i f one accepts these personae as 'accurate delineations' of the nature of the central poet, one has a mixed semi-myth which, when unravelled, reveals what the poet's movement accomplishes. anchises was blighted with paralysis because he boasted about h i s union with venus, and aeneas was forced to carry him on his shoulders when they f l e d from troy. but aeneas, warned by his father's fate, escapes the charms of dido i n order to establish c i v i l i z a t i o n : ...when the earth i s v e i l e d i n shadow and the f i e r y stars are burning, i see my father, anchises, or his ghost, and i am frightened; i am troubled for the wrong i do my son, cheating him out of his kingdom i n the west, and lands that fate assigns him. the mistake of the father was to place more importance i n the love of the goddess than i n his earthly task. but aeneas, who takes up that task, i s to establish a c i v i l i z a t i o n more l i k e the c i t y of god than h i s t o r i c a l rome - a home for the p u r i f i e d heroes - where the shades of elysium become the sustaining s p i r i t s of l i f e : the "image" of anchises makes t h i s c l e a r when aeneas v i s i t s the underworld: anchises answers: - "these are s p i r i t s , ready- once more for l i f e ; they drink of lethe's water the soothing potion of forgetfulness. i have longed, for long, to show them to you, name them, our children's children; i t a l y discovered, so much the greater happiness, my son." "but, my father, i s i t thinkable that souls would leave t h i s blessedness, be w i l l i n g a second time to bear the sluggish body, trade paradise f o r earth? alas, poor wretches, why such a mad desire for l i g h t ? " anchises gives detailed answer: " f i r s t , my son, a s p i r i t sustains a l l matter, heaven and earth and ocean, the moon, the stars; mind quickens mass, and moves i t . hence comes the race of man, of beast, of winged creatures of the a i r , of the strange shapes which ocean bears down below h i s mottled marble surface. a l l these are blessed with the energy of heaven; the seed of l i f e i s a spark of f i r e . . . . thus f a r , the persona of aeneas i s appropriate to the central poet whose main purpose i t was to reach "that ultimate good sense which we term c i v i l i z a t i o n . " (na ) the persona helps to define c i v i l i z a t i o n . but ariadne i s another myth. it i s true that she appears as ob.jet d'arte i n the apollonian temple b u i l t by daedalus which i s the s t a r t i n g place of aeneas' search for the portals to the underworld, but her presence i n stevens* l i t t l e drama seems to be ascribable to his need for a transcendent analogy to dido. like dido, ariadne i s deserted by her betrothed hero (theseus), and, l i k e dido, she commits suicide (though by hanging rather than drowning). but unlike dido, ariadne ends up, by v i r t u e of the complications of myth, as fecund wife of the one god above a l l who offered man a divine g i f t to serve as substratum of his c i v i l i z a t i o n - dionysus who gave man the vine. in the end, ariadne dwells i n the temples b u i l t by a theseus repentant while dido i s doomed to walk the wasteland of the stygian shore. though the analogy does have transcendent p o t e n t i a l and i s permissable (both dido and ariadne are versions of astarte and thus of graves' white goddess), stevens' treatment of ariadne i s confusing. at the beginning of the poet's progress, she i s only vaguely the ariadne of c l a s s i c a l myth. rather than a princess whose p a t r i l i n e a l descent i s from zeus (through minos), stevens has a figure " s t i l l half-beast and somehow more than human." she i s , i n other words, f u l l s i s t e r to the minotaur. the only way to explain t h i s fact i s by speculating about the function of stevens' images. the " v i r i l e " poet i s situated i n modern r e a l i t y and therefore must accept his muse as he finds her. the modern view of c l a s s i c a l myth i s one which tends to reduce mythical d i v i n i t y into b e s t i a l i t y . to say that the greek gods were pan- t h e i s t i c i s to say that they were mere representations of, or superstitions about, natural forces - those "facts of experience" which are no longer an "enigma" and are explicable now i n terms of science. the poet must dispose of t h i s mutilated corpse, whose d i v i n i t y was denied and who therefore died, i n order to e f f e c t a reincarnation. the reincarnation i_s of d i v i n i t y , and i s made pos- s i b l e because the poet has probed the "facts of experience" and found i n t h e i r strange transformations an "enigma" s t i l l - a force at work which i s not to be explained except by recognition of the true nature of the masks of the absolute. apropos to this view of what the central poet's i n i t i a t i o n accomplishes, i s the fact that there i s , i n the louvre, a b e l l - shaped ariadne d o l l whose function was the same as that of the o s c l l l a of i t a l y - to hang in a tree as a mask of god and speak the speech of the wind. in the poet's f i n a l awareness of her, ariadne i s just such a mask. she i s the poetry of the poem; her mask i s the poem fashioned by human hands and she "shares" the poet's words. the o s c i l l a t i o n s of the mask i t i s the poet's purpose to create catch the accordant descant of the ineffable - the o s c i l l a t i o n s of the absolute. what the poet accomplishes i n his o s c i l l a t i o n , then, i s the resurrection of the dead h i e r a t i c as the l i v i n g credible. how he accomplishes i t i s , however, a much knottier matter. but a clue may be provided by the invocatory "to the one of p i c t i v e music." the poem i s not necessarily the utterance of stevens' voice, nor i s "the one of f i c t i v e music" s o l e l y ariadne, though she is suggested pretty c l e a r l y i n her role as l i b e r i a - goddess of the vine and consort to dionysus, whose chaplet, "made by hephaestus of f i e r y gold and red indian gems, set i n the shape of roses,"^ i s the corona borealisj bough and bush and scented vine, i n whom we give ourselves our l i k e s t issuance. on your pale head wear a band entwining, set with f a t a l stones. (cp ) but there i s a p a r a l l e l between the ' v i r i l e ' poet's r e l a t i o n to h i s muse and that between the narrator of the poem and the composite figure who i s "the one of f i c t i v e music." benamou sees i n t h i s poem the ironic treatment of "romantic intoning,"^ and mcpadden a statement of "flaccid romanticism." both views, though opposed, are f a r from the truth. mcfadden's comment i s one of those easy rejections c r i t i c s too often make en passant and can be i t s e l f subjected to the same treatment. but benamou's interpretation contains, at l e a s t , the sense that there i s some kind of opposition i n the poem; according to i t , the e u l o g i s t i c description of l i n e s to are to be taken as examples of romantic hyperbole and l i n e as an i r o n i c d e f l a t i o n : s i s t e r and mother and diviner love, and of the sisterhood of the l i v i n g dead most near, most c l e a r , and of the clearest bloom, and of the fragrant mothers the most dear and queen, and of d i v i n e r love -the day and flame and summer and sweet f i r e , no thread of cloudy s i l v e r sprinkles i n your gown its venom of renown, and on your head no crown i s simpler than the simple h a i r . (cp ) benamou doesn't r e f e r to the rest of the poem; presumably he would make of the next three stanzas a continuation of the de- f l a t i o n . but i f his view of l i n e i s correct, why should the second stanza end with reference to "laborious weaving" and why should the narrator ask that the figure wear "a band entwining, set with f a t a l stones"? no, the opposition i s not between the wrong romantic and the r i g h t r e a l i s t i c , but between the muse too humanized and the muse transcendent. in e f f e c t , the poem is a poet's plea f o r the boon of imagination which only the transcendent muse of the fourth stanza can give: unreal, give back to us what once you gave: the imagination that we spurned and crave. (cp ) note that t h i s plea i s f o r a second giving of the g i f t : "the one of f i c t i v e music" had given men imagination, they had spurned i t , and they now crave i t again. the nature of t h i s spurning i s c l e a r l y defined i n the second and t h i r d stanzas: now, of the music summoned by the b i r t h that separates us from the wind and sea, yet leaves us i n them, u n t i l earth becomes, by being so much of the things we are, gross e f f i g y and simulacrum, none gives motion to perfection more serene than yours, out of our imperfections wrought, most rare, or ever of more kindred a i r in the laborious weaving that you wear. for so retentive of themselves are men that music i s intensest which proclaims the near, the c l e a r , and vaunts the clearest bloom, and of a l l v i g i l s musing the obscure, that apprehends the most itfhich sees and names, as i n your name, an image that i s sure, among the arrant spices of the sun, bough and bush and scented vine, i n whom we give ourselves our l i k e s t issuance. (cp - ) the grievous error men have committed i s primarily that they have invested t h e i r imagination i n fixed concepts of r e a l i t y , i n "the near, the c l e a r , " i n extensions of themselves. like the woman who spends a l l her time buttering a lingam, men have mistaken the object of t h e i r desire; they have substituted t h e i r names f o r the known, t h e i r images for the i n e f f a b l e , t h e i r masks f o r the masks of the absolute. it i s the old problem of the creator and the created once again, here seen i n terms of the poet's creations of a creator. . his i n i t i a l images of "the one of f i c t i v e music," including l i n e , are, l i k e the "gross e f f i g y and simula- crum" of an earth too amenable to the manipulation of human pur- pose, traps to catch the imagination i n concrete bodies. they are expressive of the poet's insistence that she i s related to him i n human fashion. despite the grand language, the whole e f f o r t of the poet i s bent on getting r i d of the "thread/of cloudy s i l v e r " with "its venom of renown" and substituting the humanized figure whose r e l a t i o n to the poet i s made conclusive by "the simple h a i r " with which he adorns her. benamou i s quite r i g h t about the intoning, but l i n e is the culmination, not the r e j e c t i o n , of that intoning. the a l l u s i o n i n the "thread/of s i l v e r " i s to the c o n s t e l l a - t i o n serpens - a c o n s t e l l a t i o n which seems to play an important part i n the as yet unmapped star chart of stevens. here the a l l u s i o n i s to the fact that serpens capua (the head of the serpent) appears to crawl towards corona borealis; "whence the out wishing to over-emphasize the matter, the r e l a t i o n of the serpent to the crown i s a variable one. the s t e l l a r drama begins :('for observers i n canada and the northern h a l f of the u.s) with the very f a i n t appearance of corona borealis on the northeastern h o r i z o n . ^ next, serpens capua (the head of the serpent) makes i t s appearance and appears to be pursuing the crown across the sky. also i n evidence i s the c o n s t e l l a t i o n hercules - the figure kneeling upside down and appearing to reach out i n a kind of extreme nisus to grasp serpens capua. the significance of hercules becomes c l e a r when ophiuchus makes his appearance: there i s c e r t a i n l y a significance i n the l o c a t i o n of t h i s figure hercules of a giant trampling on a serpent [not serpens but draco] , for he i s placed head to head with the giant ophiuchus, who i s represented as hold- ing a writhing serpent i n his grasp. hercules has been thought to represent the f i r s t adam, beguiled by the serpent, and condemned to a l i f e of t o i l , while ophiuchus i s supposed to be the second adam, triumphant the point about ophiuchus, who i s seen to grasp serpens firmly when serpens capua i s closest to the corona borealis and then to p u l l the serpent slowly back from the crown, i s that he i s also aesculapius "with whose worship serpents were always assoc- i a t e d , as symbols of prudence, wisdom, renovation, and the power of discovering herbs..... he became so s k i l l e d i n practice that i t i s said he even restored the dead to l i f e . " ^ the function of t h i s a l l u s i o n i n "to the one of f i c t i v e music" i s to provide an analogy with the double view of the poet and his muse. the analogy i s complicated by a concurrent analogy with the serpent i s often said to be .'licking the crown . ' " ^ now, with- earth i n i t s seasonal changes, but the main l i n e s are c l e a r . the poet, l i k e hercules, attempts to grasp the serpent because he fears the "venom of renown" and i t s threat to his humanized muse. "renown" means, l i t e r a l l y , 'to name again, or often' and thus to 'make famous.' but the muse of the fourth stanza i s asked to assume her old attributes again: ...whence springs the difference that heavenly p i t y brings. -for t h i s musician, i n your g i r d l e fixed bear other perfumes. (cp ) in other words, the serpent's "venom of renown," when transformed by ophiuchus, becomes i t s own antidote. the poet reduces his muse from the outworn ethereal to the physical only to discover of a l l music "none/gives motion to perfection more serene/...out of our imperfections wrought" than the music of his muse once again becom- ing ethereal (note the contrast between "simple h a i r " and " l a b o r i - ous weaving"). what makes such a progression inevitable i s that i n reducing h i s muse, the poet has i d e n t i f i e d her with earth or an aspect of i t (ariadne as the "scented vine") and with the passage of the season such i d e n t i f i c a t i o n s become less and less adequate. the death of every image constitutes an embryonic stage i n the r e b i r t h of the muse as mystery. in the months of f r u i t i o n , man rests content with his perception that the beauty of the bloom i s a property of the physical flower (and indeed i t i s ) . but with the decay of the flower, the achieved recognition of the b e a u t i f u l remains and men r e a l i z e that beauty i s something else besides the merely physical. on the l e v e l of the analogy, the poet's images are never f u l l y adequate to the muse u n t i l they are such that they combine both the ethereal and the earthly - a feat of which no single physical image, nor single idea-as-name, i s capable. this i s a fact which has important consequences i n regard to the technique of the central poet; i t necessitates h i s endless o s c i l l a t i o n s from the physical to the ethereal - h i s var- i a b l e symbols and recurrent image's. "to the one of f i c t i v e music" i s an incredibly concentrated poem and i t s complications are the kind constantly encountered i n stevens' poems. they arise because to imagine an opposition i n a " t o t a l double-thing" i s d i f f i c u l t . i have, f o r example, posited an analogy between the ethereal movement of the constel- l a t i o n s and the physical t r a n s i t i o n of the season as the basis of the poet's o s c i l l a t i o n . while the analogy does operate i n the poem, the opposition i t indicates i s not as simple as i t seems when expressed as an opposition between the ethereal and the physical. the f i r s t appearance of the c o n s t e l l a t i o n business i s used negatively; i t stands f o r the idea-as-name which i s out- moded and dead - empty of f e e l i n g . the poet supplants this idea- as-name with the physical image, nameless and known only by the poet's e x p e r i e n t i a l sense of i t . but, i n the t h i r d stanza, image and idea-as-name are seen as the same; the "arrant spices of the sun" i s wonderfully appropriate to both stars and blooms. it i s t h i s subtle c o r r e l a t i o n of the two terms of the opposition that releases the muse of the f i n a l stanza from the images that sur- round her. she i s , i n e f f e c t , no longer chained to that which describes her; she i s beyond the words. it i s t h i s curious but nonetheless c a r e f u l l y planned release which affords the reader h i s sense of the vibrant l i f e of the muse as "unreal." in other words, the poem works and creates, because of i t s concentrations, poetry. my use of the poem, however, was aimed only at demonstrating how the "central poet" makes the ineffable c r e d i b l e . this poem i s , perhaps no more of an i l l u s t r a t i o n than (for example) "fabliau of f l o r i d a , " but i t does have the v i r t u e of applying p a r t i c u l a r l y to the o s c i l l a t i n g movement of "the central poet". for those who f i n d the poem, or the interpretation of i t , too complicated to be i l l u s t r a t i v e , the poem "last looks at the l i l a c s " (cp ) w i l l c l a r i f y at least the l a t t e r , or transcendent, h a l f of the poet's f u l l o s c i l l a t i o n . in "last looks at the l i l a c s " the basic analogy i s between the l i l a c and i t s personifications or transformations. the iden- t i t y of " c a l i p e r " i s not too d i f f i c u l t : riddel says "the figure of 'caliper'...symbolizes the extreme consequences of the r a t i o n - a l mind which anatomizes nature at the expense of beauty. » precisely; " c a l i p e r " i s the baser h a l f of man, whose measure of the r e a l i s the measure of the earth upon which he stands. his companion, however, is an ambiguous figure, a phantasia of f a i n t - l y f e l t forms. as woman, she i s a p e r s o n i f i c a t i o n of the flowers, and, i n the extension of the f i n a l stanza, of the " l o s t " pleiad i n the c o n s t e l l a t i o n pleiades. stevens probably i d e n t i f i e s the " l o s t " pleiad as merope, because he writes of her marriage as "the marriage/of f l e s h and a i r " (cp ) ; i t i s p r e c i s e l y t h i s marriage which forms the central opposition i n the poem. the c a l i p e r ' s analogies are d e f i n i t i o n s , i d e n t i f i c a t i o n s , attempts to reduce the ineffable with the framework of a presupposed r e a l i t y : . . . t h i s bloom i s the bloom of soap and t h i s fragrance the fragrance of vegetal (cp ) like the unaware poet of "to the one of f i c t i v e music," but to a f a r greater degree, he wants his images r e a l . the narrator of "last looks..." i s the aware poet chastising the unaware; his analogies emcompass the i s and is-not of both bloom and fragrance. he grants the c a l i p e r ' s sense of the flowers by making his per- s o n i f i c a t i o n ambivalent. "she" i s the c a l i p e r ' s companion, which means she exists within his frame of reference as his sense of the r e a l flowers. but she i s also the i n e f f a b l e ; unlike the " c a l i p e r " she i s not h a l f - l i f e . as flower and p e r s o n i f i c a t i o n of flower she w i l l end up as "trash" - the flowers w i l l w i l t and die and be used i n the production of soap. the flower, as a subject for p e r s o n i f i c a t i o n w i l l then be as intangible as a i r - "her nakedness i s near." like merope, the "she" w i l l become i n v i s i b l e because companion of a mortal (the flowers and t h e i r p r a c t i c a l uses) and reside i n the sky with her s i s t e r s unseen. but her i n v i s i b i l i t y , i n the context of the poem, i s a consummation with the sun. the time i s important here; i t i s the month of may, the blossomal on the revolutionary calendar, and the month i n which, according to seyffert, the morning r i s i n g of the pleiades s i g n i - f i e s the approach of harvest: her body quivering i n the f l o r e a l toward the cool night and i t s fantastic star, prime paramour and belted paragon, well-booted, rugged, arrogantly male, patron and imager of the gold don john, who w i l l embrace her before summer comes. (cp ) the star i s betelgeuse, which belongs to the c o n s t e l l a t i o n orion, and which heralds i t s c o n s t e l l a t i o n s ' r i s e . at the end of may, orion r i s e s i n the early morning; i t , , i n turn, heralds the r i s i n g of the sun and has been i d e n t i f i e d with i t i n myth. "the eygptians represented i t as horus, the young or r i s i n g sun... now, orion i s "prime paramour" i n the sense that he i s f i r s t lover of merope, or at least would-be-lover (he pursued she and her s i s t e r s f o r f i v e years while on earth and s t i l l pursues the pleiades toward the morning as c o n s t e l l a t i o n ) . he i s "belted paragon" because he affords the sun a non-constrictive image, through t h e i r association, that makes the marriage possible. thus he i s "patron and imager of the gold don john" - patron because he drives merope towards the sun. note how s w i f t l y and cleanly t h i s "divine ingenue" f l i t s from inadequate image to inadequate image u n t i l she attains her consummation with the completely released sun. it i s t h i s "double-thing" e x i s t i n g i n perfect freedom which i s exemplified by what i e a r l i e r c a l l e d existent images in r e l a t i o n to "the bright obvious" of "man carrying thing." the muse of the fourth stanza of "to the one of f i c t i v e music" and the "she" and sun of "last looks..." are also existent images - they accompany the words which surround them f r e e l y because their.existence i s not contained or defined f u l l y by them. one has intimations here of the reason behind stevens' r e f u s a l to define metaphor as a state- ment of i d e n t i t y - a fact frye, for one, finds confusing . the "central poet's" o s c i l l a t i o n s are made possible by "the strange unlike, whence springs/the difference that heavenly p i t y brings." (cp ) they do not destroy images and ideas-as-names; they cause vibrations within them and v i b r a t i o n i s l i f e . this i s the point of "adult epigram" - stevens' pedagogical t i d b i t , offered, presumably, to his i n i t i a t e d students: the romance of p r e c i s i o n is not the e l i s i o n of the t i r e d romance of imprecision. it i s the ever-never-changing same, an appearance of again, the diva-dame. (cp ) what's precise about the "romance of p r e c i s i o n " i s i t s recognition of the imprecision of.the images of "the t i r e d romance." it does not e l i d e that imprecision; i t uses i t as the source of i t s power. by so doing, i t causes to appear once again the same goddess or leading singer whose r e a l i t y was cause f o r a l l the images i n the f i r s t place but who had been entombed by the pretensions to p r e c i s i o n of imprecision. the technique of the existent image .does not always reveal i t s e l f i n the single poem, but t h i s i s only because the o s c i l - l a t i o n s of the "central poet" are not so confined. the deadening d i v i s i o n s of the human understanding are so pervasive as to demand from the poet, i n his resistance of the pressure of r e a l i t y , far more rigorous endeavors than the mere resurrection of his muse or the accurate delineation of the experience of l i l a c s i n may. these are parts of the "non-geography" i n which the f u l l y con- scious man e x i s t s , but unlike the haphazard and bloody choas of man's p o l i t i c a l ' r e a l i t y ' t h i s non-geography constitutes a har- monious whole. the task of the "central poet" i s to make the whole appear whose r e a l i t y i s affirmed by every minor part. such, at l e a s t , i s the promise of many of stevens' poems - among them "the woman i n sunshine": it i s only that t h i s warmth and movement are l i k e the warmth and movement of a woman. it i s not that there i s any image i n the a i r nor the beginning nor end of a form: it i s empty. but a woman i n threadless gold burns us with brushings of her dress and a dissociated abundance of being, more d e f i n i t e for what she i s - because she i s disembodied, bearing the odors of the summer f i e l d s , confessing the t a c i t u r n and yet i n d i f f e r e n t , i n v i s i b l y c l e a r , the only love. (cp ̂ ) there i s a strangely autobiographical element i n t h i s poem and i n many of stevens' l a t e r poems. it i s as though the poet and his reader had agreed that the accomplishments which required so much concentration i n the early poems had become so much a matter of mutual acceptance that the continued extensions of that kind of experience could nox̂ be shared e a s i l y , g r a c e f u l l y , without e f f o r t and almost without the necessity of words. the poet speaks and presto! one exists i n the f e l t freedom of the sun and prepares to meditate the problem of "the only love." a l l t h i s may not be v a l i d as c r i t i c i s m , but i t ' s true, and i t ' s what makes stevens' the poet he i s . if there i s a 'change' i n stevens' l a t e r poems, i t i s not a change i n his conception of his function or h i s sense of the world as riddel suggests: necessity informs the apocalyptic tone of the late poetry to suggest that the r e a l problems of stevens' f i n a l years were to e f f e c t some kind of compromise between the unremitting naturalism, and i n one sense, atheism, of his early poetry and the s p i r i t u a l tones of his l a t e . the d i s t i n c t i o n is not altogether correct. from the very beginning, he linked .poetry with the forms of d i v i n a t i o n , though he knew as well as wordsworth that the poet was a man speaking to,men, and charged only with human truths. i f there i s a change, i t i s a change induced by stevens' sense that "the only love" was " t a c i t u r n and yet i n d i f f e r e n t " ; each time the minors of the harmony had been more e a s i l y mastered, but s t i l l the major music, of which the minors are but phases, had not come. this x\ras, perhaps, i n e v i t a b l e , because stevens' music was godbole's: it was a r e l i g i o u s song. i placed myself i n the p o s i t i o n of a milkmaiden. i say to shri krishna, 'come! come to me only.! the god refuses to come. i grow humble and say: 'do not come to me only. multiply your- s e l f into, a hundred krishnas, and l e t one go to each of my hundred companions, but one, lord of the universe, come to me.' he refuses to come. ... "but he comes i n some other song, i hope?" said mrs. moore gently. "oh, no, he refuses to come," repeated godbole, perhaps not understanding her question. "i say to him, come, come, come, come, come, come. he neglects to come." but i t cannot be considered a f a i l u r e on the part of the "central poet" that the complete harmony remains beyond the edges of h i s poems. it i s the woman h e r s e l f , i n "the woman i n sunshine", who by the freedom of her being r e f l e c t s not only the r e a l i t y of the experience i n which she hovers but also the r e a l i t y of that which she loves and which i s beyond a l l experience. an e s s e n t i a l knowledge i n any genuine understanding of stevens must be that existent images are not ends i n themselves. they are facets of the absolute, true symbols, c r y s t a l perspectives through which i t i s possible to glimpse the f i r e at the heart of the gem. surfaces, they r e f l e c t the l i g h t of the images which surround them and min- gle with i t a suggestion of the radiance of the "that" of which they are composed. such description may sound too euphuistic, but i t i s a fact that stevens had t h i s kind of double r e l a t i o n i n mind, i n his prose and his poetry. evidence of i t appears i n such poems, for example, as "an ordinary evening i n new haven": the w i l l of necessity, the w i l l of w i l l s - romanza out of the black shepherd's i s l e , like the constant sound of the water of the sea in the hearing of the shepherd and his black forms out of the i s l e , but not of any i s l e . close to the senses there l i e s another i s l e and there the senses give and nothing take, the opposite of cythere, an i s o l a t i o n at the centre, the object of the w i l l , t h i s place, the things around - the alternate romanza out of the surfaces, the windows, the walls, the bricks grown b r i t t l e i n time's poverty, the c l e a r . a c e l e s t i a l mode i s paramount, i f only i n the branches sweeping i n the rains the two romanzas, the distant and the near, are a single voice i n the boo-ha of the wind. (cp - ) there i s a strong suggestion of a l l u s i o n i n the s p e l l i n g of cythere x<rtiich i cannot trace, but at this l e v e l i t may be con- sidered of secondary importance. the meaning of the l i n e s emerges c l e a r l y . in t h e i r context, they describe the struggle "of a man,/ who s i t s thinking i n the corners of a room." (cp ) what he i s thinking about i s "the pure sphere" (cp ) of the absolute. there are three elements which compose his thought - "the town" as "a residuum,/a neuter shedding shapes i n an absolute," (cp ) the " t r a n s c r i p t s " of imagination and f e e l i n g which become "the nameless f l i t t i n g characters" (cp ^ ) and which correspond to existent images and are the 'shapes shed by the neuter i n an absolute,' and "the pure sphere" of the absolute i t s e l f which he desires to comprehend. but his nisus for the absolute i s blocked, inevitably, by the w i l l of the absolute i t s e l f s in t h i s chamber the pure sphere escapes the impure because the thinker himself escapes. and yet to have evaded clouds and men leaves him a naked being with a naked w i l l and everything to make. he may evade even his own w i l l and i n his nakedness inhabit the hypnosis of that sphere. xxi but he may not. he may not evade his w i l l , nor the w i l l s of other men; and he cannot evade the w i l l of necessity, the w i l l of w i l l s - (cp ) "the bright obvious" .was never more obvious, nor ever more beau- t i f u l than i t i s here. how much of i t s power can the c r i t i c be expected to capture by pointing to the opposition between the i s l e of cythere - the i s l e where venus rose from the sea as g i f t from the gods, herself divine - the the i s l e of the black shepherd and his black forms where "the senses give and nothing take" because i t i s the w i l l of the black shepherd that man return his g i f t f i l l e d with a l l the love and devotional labor they can muster from t h e i r l i v e s ? what hope i s there that the f l a t statement that the d i s s o c i a t i o n of the "romanza" of the black shepherd from a l l i t s images ("out of the i s l e , but not of any i s l e " ) gives "him" free existence can define the tremendous l i f e of the poetry? one reads the l i n e s "the two romanzas, the distant and the near,/ are a single voice i n the boo-ha of the wind" and knows that everything that he has said about stevens has been r i g h t and true and that everything that stevens i s saying about him and everyone i n the poem i s also right and true. as c r i t i c , he says that "the boo-ha.of the wind" means l i f e , my f r i e n d , and i n l i f e i t i s hard to see our moments of greatest exultation as but pale r e f l e c t i o n s and p a r t i a l sharings of the absolute. stevens avoids the "hypnosis" of the void and seeks, as he must, the sense of the plenum-void. that h i s c r i t i c s have f a i l e d to follow him i s due to t h e i r delusion that they must adhere, and stevens should adhere, to one side or the other of the euhemerist- hermetic s p l i t . the kind of objection richards made to theories of the truth of poetry, which i s the kind of objection underlying the s p l i t , no longer applies to a l l theories because the grounds of the "central poet's" existence constitute proof that i s the equivalent of " m i l l ' s logic." the purpose now must be to examine those grounds, both for themselves and for t h e i r influence on the mode of existence of " c e n t r a l poetry" and i t s techniques. s u r p r i s i n g l y , there i s l i t t l e that needs to be s a i d about the theory of " c e n t r a l poetry" once one has understood the k i n d of transcendence achieved by the " c e n t r a l poet" i n h i s poems. there i s nothing very elaborate about i t , though i t i s theory capable of absorbing an i n f i n i t e number of exempla. nor i s there anything new about i t ; i t belongs to a theory of e s t h e t i c s so o l d as to be almost f o r g o t t e n - a theory r e c e n t l y r e i t e r a t e d by ananda coomaraswamy, a man stevens very probably knew: p r e c i s e l y as love i s r e a l i t y experienced by the l o v e r , and t r u t h i s r e a l i t y as experienced by the philosopher, so beauty i s r e a l i t y as experienced by the a r t i s t ; and these are three phases of the absolute the a r t i s t r e v e a l s t h i s beauty wherever the mind attaches i t s e l f ; and the mind attaches i t s e l f , not d i r e c t l y to the absolute, but t o the objects of choice. thus we r e t u r n to the e a r t h . i f we supposed we should f i n d the object of search elsewhere, we were mis- taken. the two worlds of s p i r i t and matter, purusha and p r a k r i t ! , are one: and t h i s i s as c l e a r to the a r t i s t as i t i s to the l o v e r or the philosopher. those p h i l i s t i n e s to whom i t i s not so apparent, we should speak of as m a t e r i a l i s t s or as n i h i l i s t s - e x c l u s i v e monists, to whom the report of the senses i s e i t h e r a l l i n a l l , or nothing at a l l . the theory of rasa set f o r t h according to vishvanatha and other a e s t h e t i c i a n s , belongs to t o t a l monism: i t marches w i t h the vedanta. compare t h i s theory of " t o t a l monism" w i t h stevens' statement; "as we come to the point at which i t i s necessary to be e x p l i c i t i n respect to p o e t i c t r u t h , note t h a t , i f we say that the p h i l o s - opher pursues the t r u t h i n one way and the poet i n another, i t i s i m p l i e d that both are pursuing the same t h i n g , and we overlook the f a c t that they are pursuing two d i f f e r e n t parts of a whole." (na ) then compare the s i m i l a r i t y between the technique of e x i s t e n t images and the technique of the r e l i g i o u s a r t of t o t a l monism: religious art i s simply a v i s u a l theology: c h r i s t i a n and oriental theology a l i k e are means to an end, but not to be confused with that end. both a l i k e involve a dual method, that of the v i a a f f l r m a t l v a and of the v i a negatlva; on the one hand affirming things of god by way of praise, and on the other hand denying every one of these l i m i t i n g descriptive affirmations, f o r though the worship i s d i s p o s i t i v e to immediate v i s i o n , god i s not and never can be "what men worship here." the two ways are f a r from mutually exclusive; they are comple- mentary....! s h a l l only c i t e from the upanishad, where i t i s a question of the use of c e r t a i n types of concepts of deity regarded as supports of contemplation. which of these i s the best? that depends on i n d i v i d u a l fac- u l t i e s . but i n any case, these are pre-eminent aspects of the incorporeal deity; "these one should contemplate and praise, but then deny. for with these one r i s e s from higher to higher states of being. but when a l l these forms are resolved, then he attains to the unity of the person". i cannot overemphasize the closeness of the c o r r e l a t i o n between the theory and practice of "central poetry" and the theory and practice of " t o t a l monism." one could go on comparing passages i n d e f i n i t e l y - stevens' concept of poetry as "a process of the personality" compared to coomaraswamy•s view of art "starting from the p o s i t i o n that 'though he i s an a r t i s t , the a r t i s t i s nevertheless a man'," and ending with the same transcendence^ _ but the purpose of the comparison i s primarily to put stevens' theory safely beyond the dualism involved i n frye's "balance" and beyond riddel's assertion that "stevens' r e l a t i v i s m , which has always been the pediment of his esthetic ...becomes h i s sustain- ing b e l i e f . " i f stevens had any b e l i e f , i t was one describable only i n terms of seng-ts'an's "suchness": . the perfect way knows no d i f f i c u l t i e s except that i t refuses to make preferences; a tenth of an inch's difference, and heaven and earth are set apart. if you wish to see i t with your own eyes have no fixed thoughts either for or against i t . . pursue not the outer entanglements, dwell not in the inner void; be serene i n the oneness of things, and dualism vanishes by i t s e l f . . and when oneness is not thoroughly understood, in two ways loss i s sustained: the denying of r e a l i t y i s the asserting of i t , and the asserting of emptiness i s the denying of i t . . the two exist because of the one, but hold not even to t h i s one; when a mind i s not disturbed, the ten thousand things o f f e r no offence. . when you are not prejudiced against the six sense objects, you are then one with the enlightenment. the wise are non-active, while the ignorant bind themselves up; while i n the dharma i t s e l f there i s no individuation. they ignorantly attach themselves to p a r t i c u l a r objects. it i s t h e i r own mind that creates i l l u s i o n s , is t h i s not the greatest of a l l self-contradictions? . forget the wherefore of things, and we a t t a i n to a state beyond analogy; movement stopped and there i s no movement, rest set i n motion and there i s no r e s t ; when dualism does no more obtain, oneness i t s e l f abides not. . the ultimate end of things where they cannot go any further, is not bound by rules and measures; in the mind harmonious we have the p r i n c i p l e of i d e n t i t y , in which we f i n d a l l s t r i v i n g s quieted; there i s nothing l e f t behind, there i s nothing retained, a l l i s void, l u c i d and s e l f - i l l u m i n a t i n g , there i s no exertion, no waste of energy - this i s where thinking never a t t a i n s , this i s where the imagination f a i l s to measure. to understand these aphorisms i s to perceive i n i t s f u l l n e s s the theory of "central poetry." i include them here, not from any desire to proselytize f o r buddhism (or even for hinduism), but to provide models of stevens' theory that have a t r a d i t i o n behind them. coomaraswamy, seng-ts'an, and stevens a l l a f f i r m the same theory, but they see i t through i n d i v i d u a l eyes. the trouble with stevens' version i s that his theory i s less theory than p r a c t i c e , even in his prose. but the "central poet" does have his "intimidating thesis" - " i t i s no doubt true that absolute fact includes everything that the imagination includes" (na - ) - and i t i s from t h i s thesis that the e s s e n t i a l elements of his theory spring. the immediate consequence i s the denial of d u a l i s t i c concepts - a denial stevens makes repeatedly: ... the poet w i l l come to a decision regarding the imagination and r e a l i t y ; and he w i l l f i n d that i t i s not a choice of one over the other and not a decision that divides them, but something subtler, a recognition that here, too, ... the universal interdependence ex- i s t s , and hence his choice and h i s decision must be that they are equal and inseparable. . (na k) poetry i s an interdependence of the imagination and r e a l i t y as equals. this i s not a d e f i n i t i o n since i t i s incomplete. but i t states the nature of poetry. (na ) the subject matter of poetry i s not that " c o l l e c t i o n of s o l i d , s t a t i c objects extended i n space" but the l i f e that i s l i v e d i n the scene that i t composes; and so r e a l i t y i s not that external scene but the l i f e that i s l i v e d i n i t . reality i s things as they are. (na ) reality i s l i f e and l i f e i s society and the imagination and reality....yes the all-commanding subject matter of poetry i s l i f e , the never-ceasing source. (na ) it i s t h i s denial that forms the f i r s t phase, as i t were, of the poet's movement toward abstraction. as a philosophical gambit, i t plunges stevens into, an i n t r i c a t e maze of d i s t i n c t i o n s and apparent contradictions which must now be sorted out. the f i r s t d i s t i n c t i o n stevens would emphasize i s that between the "central poet" and philosophers. this d i s t i n c t i o n involves stevens' comparison of poetic truth and philosophical truth as "two d i f f e r e n t parts of a whole" (na k) t there i s a difference between them [the truths]and i t i s the d i f f e r e n c e between l o g i c a l and e m p i r i c a l knowledge. (na ) the d i s t i n c t i o n h e r e i n advanced i s not as simple and f i n a l as i t appears. i t i s necessary f o r stevens because of the s i m i l a r i t y between poets and p h i l o s o p h e r s , not because they are t o t a l l y opposed. this i s the whole problem of "a c o l l e c t of philosophy" - an essay i n which stevens attempts to i n d i c a t e the d i f f e r e n c e as one of o r d e r i n g : the h a b i t of forming concepts u n i t e s them(poets and p h i l o s o p h e r s ^ . the use to which they put t h e i r ideas separates them...the h a b i t of forming concepts i s a h a b i t of the mind by which i t probes f o r an i n t e g r a - t i o n . . . the h a b i t of probing f o r an i n t e g r a t i o n seems to be part of the general w i l l to order.... the p h i l o s - opher searches f o r an i n t e g r a t i o n f o r i t s own sake, as, f o r example, p l a t o ' s idea that knowledge i s r e c o l l e c t i o n or that the s o u l i s a harmony; the poet searches f o r an i n t e g r a t i o n that s h a l l be not so much s u f f i c i e n t i n i s - s e l f as s u f f i c i e n t f o r some q u a l i t y that i t possesses, such as i t s i n s i g h t , i t s evocative power or i t s appear- ance i n the eye of the imagination. the philosopher intends h i s i n t e g r a t i o n to be f a t e f u l ; the poet intends h i s to be e f f e c t i v e . (op - ) what t h i s means, i n e f f e c t , i s that one knows p h i l o s o p h i c a l t r u t h as one knows something l o g i c a l l y ( i . e . the conclusion, of a l o g i c a l premiss i s always that something, u s u a l l y the premiss, must be)- and t h i s includes empiricism as p h i l o s o p h i c t r u t h - w h i l e one knows p o e t i c t r u t h as one knows something e m p i r i c a l l y ( i . e . as a matter of experience or as something which simply i s ) - and t h i s includes i n t u i t i o n . so says stevens i n "imagination as value": i t i s so easy f o r the poet to say that a learned man must go on being a learned man but that a poet respects no knowledge except h i s own and, again, that the poet does not y i e l d to the p r i e s t . what the poet has i n mind, when he says things of t h i s s o r t , i s that p o e t i c value i s an i n t r i n s i c value. i t i s not the value of knowledge. i t i s not the value of f a i t h . i t i s the value of the imagination. the poet t r i e s to exemplify i t , i n p a r t , as i have t r i e d to exemplify i t here, by i d e n t i f y i n g i t w i t h an imaginative a c t i v i t y that d i f - fuses i t s e l f throughout our l i v e s . i say exemplify and not j u s t i f y , because poetic value i s i n t u i t i o n a l value and because i n t u i t i o n a l values cannot be j u s t i - f i e d . (na ) (before anyone turns back to richards' charge against the- o r i e s of p o e t i c t r u t h as the t r u t h of i n t u i t i o n and to my a s s e r - t i o n that the " c e n t r a l poet's" grounds of existence provided j u s t i f i c a t i o n f o r such a view, i should l i k e to point out that the end of the argument has not yet been reached. indeed, i t i s j u s t beginning.) i t must be remembered that t h i s d i f f e r e n c e , f o r stevens, i s not f i n a l or f i x e d . to r e i t e r a t e what was s a i d i n the i n t r o d u c - t i o n of t h i s paper, i t was the r e l a t i o n between the imagination and reason which gave the " c e n t r a l poet" the grounds f o r h i s existences ...the poet, i n order to f u l f i l l h i m s e l f , must accomp- l i s h a poetry that s a t i s f i e s both the reason and the imagination. (na ) the point i s redefined i n "a c o l l e c t of philosophy"; the most s i g n i f i c a n t , deduction p o s s i b l e r e l a t e s to the question of supremacy as between philosophy and poetry. i f we say that philosophy i s supreme, t h i s means that the reason i s supreme over the imagination. but i s i t ? does not philosophy c a r r y us to a point at which there i s nothing l e f t except the imagination? i f we r e l y on the imagination (or, say, i n t u i t i o n ) , to c a r r y us beyond that p o i n t , and i f the imagination succeeds i n c a r r y i n g us beyond that p o i n t (as i n respect to the idea of god, i f we conceive of the idea of god as t h i s world's c a p i t a l i d e a ) , then the imagination i s supreme, because i t s powers have shown themselves to be g r e a t e r than the powers of reason. philosophers, however, are not l i m i t e d to reason and, as the concepts, to which i have r e f e r r e d , show, t h e i r ideas are o f t e n triumphs of the imagination. (op ) stevens goes on to give a concrete example of one of the "triumphs of the imagination" which supersede the process of reason. in great d e l i g h t , he passes over pascal and chooses a figure f a r l e s s amenable to the imagination or.to poetry - planck - and c i t e s andre' george's observation about planck's t h e s i s , the concept of causality i n physics; he says: ...the l a s t pages of• the thesis are quite curious. one f e e l s there, as i t were, a supreme h e s i t a t i o n ; the believer henceforth i s no longer able to con- ceal a c e r t a i n trouble. the most convinced de- terminst, planck declares, i n so many words, i s not able to s a t i s f y himself e n t i r e l y with such an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . for, i n the end, a universal p r i n c i p l e l i k e the rigorous causal bond between two successive events ought to be independent of man. it i s a p r i n c i p l e of cosmic importance, i t ought to be an absolute. now, planck not only recognizes that i t i s part of human aptitude to forsee events but to forsee them by means of science, "the provisional and changing creation of the power of the imagination." how then l i b e r a t e the concept from such an anthropomorphic hypothesis? only an i n t e l l i g e n c e external to man, "not c o n s t i t u t i n g a part of nature," would be able to l i b e r a t e i t . this supra-natural i n t e l l i g e n c e would act through the deterministic power.... planck there upon concludes that the law of causality i s neither true nor f a l s e . it i s a working hypothesis. george says, f i n a l l y , that this conclusion i s f a r away from the r i g i d concept, firmly determinist, which seemed up to now to constitute planck's b e l i e f . he c a l l s i t a nuance but a nuance of importance, worth being s i g n a l - ized. i think we may f a i r l y say that i t is a nuance of the imagination....it is.unexpected to have to recognize even i n planck the presence of the poet. it i s as i f i n a study of modern man we predicated the greatness of poetry as the f i n a l measure of his stature, as i f his willingness to believe beyond b e l i e f was what made him modern and was always c e r t a i n to keep him so. (op ) stevens' i l l u s t r a t i o n proves the point about philosophers; now an example i s needed that w i l l demonstrate what kind of a c t i v - i t y characterizes the poet who w i l l " s a t i s f y both the reason and the imagination." there i s such an i l l u s t r a t i o n at hand; i t con- s i s t s of a demonstration of a r e l a t i o n between kant, plato, and stevens. the point of the r e l a t i o n i s that plato, i n h i s myths, s a t i s f i e d the imagination but not the reason, kant, i n h i s philosophy, s a t i s f i e d the reason but not the imagination, and stevens, i n h i s poetry, s a t i s f i e d both. to begin w i t h , the r e l a t i o n i s one between two metaphysi- c i a n s par excellence and t h e i r v a r i a n t use of the imagination, and a poet and h i s use of reason. stevens was very f i r m i n h i s i n s i s t e n c e on the d i f f e r e n c e : . . . i t may be. s a i d that p o e t i c t r u t h i s an agreement w i t h r e a l i t y , brought about by the imagination of a man...expressed i n terms of h i s emotions, or, since i t i s l e s s of a r e s t r i c t i o n to say so, i n terms of h i s own p e r s o n a l i t y i f we consider the nature of our experience when we are i n agreement w i t h r e a l i t y , we f i n d , f o r one t h i n g , that we cease to be metaphysicians...even though we have acquired something from them as from a l l men. ...the t r u t h that we experience when we are i n agreement w i t h r e a l i t y i s the t r u t h of f a c t . (na - ) this d i s t i n c t i o n p a r a l l e l s , i n a way, the d i s t i n c t i o n between mysticism and c i v i l i z a t i o n so fundamental to the theory of " c e n t r a l poetry". stevens does not r e j e c t metaphysics out of hand; he uses i t . but the d i s t i n c t i o n i s necessary because i t would be a great mistake to confuse, as wagner does, the imagination as metaphysics and p o e t i c imagination. wagner e r r s when he describes the r e j e c - t i o n s of the imagination as metaphysics as though they were the r e j e c t i o n s of the p o e t i c imagination (the u n d e r l i n i n g i s mine): c e n t r a l poetry i s created out of the interweaving of pure imagination and bare r e a l i t y . to a t t a i n t h i s moral (or a r t i s t i c ) synthesis a s e r i e s of r e j e c t i o n s i s necessary. the most important of these i s the r e j e c t i o n of t r a d i t i o n a l r e l i g i o n . ...then the " f a l s e imagina- t i o n " w i l l be destroyed and r e l i g i o n may be judged as we judge poetry:" not so much that i t a c t u a l l y i s so as that i t must be so" - not so much that god a c t u a l l y e x i s t s , as that he i s a moral n e c e s s i t y based on con- t i n g e n t experience. wagner goes on to describe the r e j e c t i o n s stevens p o s i t e d f o r the imagination as metaphysics i n "imagination as value" but h i s cause has already been l o s t . it was kant who made god " a moral necessity," not a poet. stevens' poetry i s not be be judged, as i have shown, on the basis of "must be" but on the basis of " i s " . it i s quite true that stevens t r i e s to exemplify the value of poetic truth by i d e n t i f y i n g i t with metaphysical truth i n "imagination as value"; such truth i s also the basis for the "central poet's" equation of the imagination with r e a l i t y : to regard the imagination as metaphysics i s to think of i t as part of l i f e , and to think of i t as part of l i f e i s to r e a l i z e the extent of a r t i f i c e . we l i v e i n the mind. (na ) but stevens repeatedly denies the c o r r e l a t i o n wagner makes - (the underlining i s mine). a.second d i f f i c u l t y about value i s the difference between the imagination as metaphysics and as a power of the mind over external objects, that i s to say, r e a l i t y . (na i ) when i speak of the power of the mind over external objects i have in mind, as external objects, works of art as, f o r example... the jesuit church at lucerne, where one might so e a s i l y pass from the r e a l to the visionary without consciousness of change. , imagination, as metaphysics, leads us in one d i r e c t i o n and, as a r t , i n another. (na ) ...the imagination penetrates l i f e . . . . i t s value as metaphysics i s not the same as i t s value i n arts and l e t t e r s . ...in l i f e what i s important i s the t r u t h ' as i t i s , while i n arts and l e t t e r s what i s important i s the truth as we see i t . there i s a r e a l difference here.... its value i n arts and l e t t e r s i s aesthetic. most men's l i v e s are thrust upon them. the existence of aesthetic value i n l i v e s that are forced on those that l i v e them is an improbable sort of thing. there can be l i v e s , nevertheless, which exist by the d e l i b - erate choice of those that l i v e them. to use a single i l l u s t r a t i o n : i t may be assumed that the l i f e of professor santayana i s a l i f e i n which the function of the imagination has had a. function s i m i l a r to i t s func- t i o n i n any deliberate work of art or l e t t e r s . we have only to think of the present phase of i t , i n which, i n his old age, he dwells at the head of the world, i n the company of devoted women, i n t h e i r convent, and i n the company of f a m i l i a r saints, whose presence does so much to make any convent an appropriate refuge for a generous and human philosopher. (na - ) one could hardly expect a more exact description of the d i f f e r - ence - a difference contained, too, i n "to an old philosopher i n rome" i n the image of the b e l l s : the b e l l s keep on repeating solemn names in-choruses and choirs of choruses, unwilling that mercy should be a mystery of silence, that any solitude of sense should give you more than t h e i r peculiar chords and reverbrations c l i n g i n g to whisper s t i l l . (cp ) for santayana r e a l i t y and the imagination are known as one i n l i f e - "the threshold rome, and that more merciful rome/beyond, the two a l i k e i n the make of the mind" (cp ) - but i t i s not merely the transformations made possible by such insight that make his l i f e esthetic. like the "thinker".in "an ordinary evening...", santayana does not stop at his existent images: how e a s i l y the blown banners change to wings... things dark on the horizons of perception, become accompaniments of fortune, but . of the fortune of the s p i r i t , beyond the eye, not of i t s sphere, and yet not f a r beyond, the human end i n the s p i r i t ' s greatest reach, the extreme of the known i n the presence of the extreme of the unknown. (cp ) santayana does not want to hold to "the one." he recognises i t as the presence of the unknown i n the "extreme of the known.", he acquiesces i n "the t r a g i c accent of the scene," ( ) as the contemplative must. it i s t h i s power of contemplation complete- l y released from desire that makes the value of santayana's l i f e an esthetic value.: the b e l l s are wrong; they sound the desire of the ignorant to "attach themselves to p a r t i c u l a r objects," to f i n d "individuation" i n "the dharma i t s e l f . " whether santayana, the man, was a l l that stevens thought he was i s i r r e l e v a n t . the point i s that "the old philosopher" of the poem treats l i f e as a r t . the function of a r t , and t h i s i s extremely important, i s not to embody the absolute i n the con- tingent, the unknown i n the known. the function of art i s to embody the extreme of the known and thereby become an object f o r the contemplation of the unknown because i n the extreme of the known one becomes aware of the unknown. the point becomes apparent i n the comparison of plato, kant and stevens. the purpose of the comparison i s to demonstrate how a poet can write poetry that s a t i s f i e s both the reason and the imagination, and i t begins with an apologia written, on plat behalf, by j. a. stewart i n his book the myths of-plato: let me close t h i s introduction...in the form of a defense of plato against a charge brought by kant i n a well-known passage. the l i g h t dove, i n free f l i g h t cleaving the a i r and f e e l i n g i t s resistance, might imagine that i n a i r l e s s space she would fare better. even so plato l e f t the world of sense, because i t sets so narrow l i m i t s to the understanding, and ventur ed beyond, on the wings of ideas, into the empty space of the pure understanding. he did not see that, with a l l his e f f o r t , he made no way. here kant brings against plato the charge of "trans- cendental use, or rather, misuse, of the categories of the understanding" - of supposing super-sensible objects, soul, cosmos, god, answering to "ideas" which have no adequate objects i n a possible experi- ence, and then determining these supposed objects by means of conceptions - the categories - the applica- t i o n of which ought to be r e s t r i c t e d to sensible objects. this defence takes the form of a summary of stewart's i n t r o - ductory observations, the g i s t of which i s that plato's myths are poetry and the function of poetry i s to create i n the reader "transcendental feeling:" the chief end of poetry, then, i s to induce trans- cendental feeling-experienced as solemn sense of the immediate presence of "that which was, and i s , and ever s h a l l be" - i n the poet's patient, by throwing him suddenly, f o r a moment, into the state of dream- consciousness, out of a waking consciousness which the poet supplies with objects of i n t e r e s t ; the sudden lapse being effected i n the patient by the communication to him of images and other products of the poet's dream consciousness.. . to sum up i n e f f e c t what i have said about trans- cendental feeling; i t i s f e e l i n g which indeed appears i n our ordinary object-distinguishing, time-marking consciousness, but does not originate i n i t . it i s to be traced to the influence on consciousness of the presence i n us of that "part of the soul" which holds on, i n timeless sleep, to l i f e as worth l i v i n g . . . . i n the first-mentioned phase transcendental feeling appears as an abnormal experience of our conscious l i f e , as a well-marked e c s t a t i c state; i n i t s other phase - as conviction that l i f e i s good - trans- cendental feeling may be said to be a normal experience of our conscious l i f e ; i t i s not an experience oc- c a s i o n a l l y cropping up alongside of other experiences, but a f e e l i n g which accompanies a l l the experiences of our conscious l i f e . . . . s u c h a f e e l i n g , though normal, i s r i g h t l y c a l l e d transcendental, because i t i s not one of the e f f e c t s , but the condition of our entering upon and persevering i n that course of endeavor which makes experience. it i s d i f f i c u l t to avoid the f e e l i n g that stevens read stewart. in "imagination as value" he speaks of the imagination as a "power that enables us to perceive the normal, the opposite of chaos i n chaos" (na ) and means by the normal "the i n s t i n c - t i v e integrations which are. the reason for l i v i n g . " (na ) in any case, stevens would agree about "transcendental feeling" as a function of poetry, though he would probably prefer to c a l l i t santayana's "animal f a i t h " l and he would most c e r t a i n l y disagree about the manner of i t s engendering. to stevens, the f a u l t of plato i s the f a u l t of,the times; kant and the content of two m i l l e n i a of consciousness had sapped the v i t a l i t y from his myths. his discussion of plato's figure of the charioteer proves the point: ..we have scarcely read the passage before we have i d e n t i f i e d ourselves with the charioteer....then suddenly we remember, i t may be, that the soul no longer exists and we droop i n our f l i g h t and at l a s t s e t t l e on the s o l i d ground. the figure becomes antiquated and r u s t i c . what r e a l l y happens i n t h i s b r i e f experience? why does t h i s figure, potent f o r so long, become -merely the emblem of a mythology, the r u s t i c memo- r i a l of a b e l i e f i n the soul and i n a d i s t i n c t i o n between good and e v i l ? the answer to these questions i s , i think, a simple one. ...the figure does not become unreal because we are troubled about the soul. besides, unreal things have a r e a l i t y of t h e i r own, in poetry as elsewhere. we do not hesitate, i n poetry, to y i e l d ourselves'to the unreal, when i t i s possible to y i e l d ourselves.. in plato's f i g u r e , his imagination does not adhere to what i s r e a l . on the contrary, having created some- thing unreal, i t adheres to i t and i n t e n s i f i e s i t s u n r e a l i t y . its f i r s t e f f e c t . . . i s i t s maximum e f f e c t , when the imagination, being moved, puts us i n the place of the charioteer, before the reason checks us. ...we understand the f e e l i n g of i t , the robust f e e l - ing, c l e a r l y and f l u e n t l y communicated. yet we understand i t rather than p a r t i c i p a t e i n i t . (na - ) the f a u l t with, i n stewart's xvords, "images and other products of the poet's dream consciousness," or with any objects which attempt to embody, as i d e n t i t y , something l i k e soul i s that reason refutes them, - as things not r e a l l y what they pur- port to be. it i s the difference between emblems and symbols, between (embodiments) and existent images, that underlies stevens' c r i t i c i s m of plato's f i g u r e . there i s an informative analogy between plato's figure and stevens' poem "invective against swans" that demonstrates the d i f f e r e n c e . like plato's figure, stevens' poem concerns the soul: the soul, ganders, f l i e s beyond the parks and far beyond the discords of the wind. (cp ) the difference between stevens and plato i s not that stevens gives up the soul as unusable concept. it i s not even that stevens discounts the e f f i c a c y of images; the r e a l difference i s that stevens creates existent images rather than embodiments. in t h i s poem, the existent image i s created by an imperfect re- duction of swans into ganders. frankenburg•s assumption that the t i t l e captures stevens' attitude toward the swans i s er- roneous. ganders are male geese, not swans, and the narrator's address to ganders has more purpose than a simple i n s u l t to the d i g n i t y of swans. the soul does f l y "to the skies." and the soul, ganders, being lonely, f l i e s beyond your c h i l l y chariots, to the skies. (cp ) the motivation of the soul f o r i t s f l i g h t i s a l l important. what i t w i l l f i n d i n the sky to assuage i t s loneliness i s the ' p u r i f i e d ' swan: a bronze r a i n from the sun descending marks the death of summer, which that time endures like one who scrawls a l i s t l e s s testament of golden quirks and paphian caricatures, bequething your white feathers to the moon and giving your bland motions to the a i r . (cp ) the "chariots" of the ganders had been the conveyance, pre-• sumably, of the soul. they are " c h i l l y " now because, quite l i t e r a l l y , the "bronze r a i n " of the sun at the end of summer bronzes them, turns them into the statues that "the crows... anoint with t h e i r d i r t . " the r a i n k i l l s the motion and the beauty of the ganders - the things i\rhich had made them swans, as i t were. if the soul i s to f i n d a conveyance, i t w i l l not be i n the concrete image of the swans but i n t h e i r l i f e and beauty; i f the time dismisses l i f e and beauty to the unreal - as i t does i n i t s "testament/of golden quirks and paphian c a r i - catures" ( i . e . caricatures because love of the image has replaced love of the l i v i n g goddess), then the soul w i l l f i n d i t s con- veyance there. the unreal becomes more r e a l than the r e a l because the unreal has a l l the l i f e of the r e a l . plato's un- r e a l was unreal because he placed objects there which could not possibly exist i n the unreal; stevens' unreal i s r e a l because what's placed there i s released from i t s embodiment i n object. the difference i s made s t i l l clearer by "lions i n sweden," stevens' most open reference to the technique of existent images: no more phrases, swenson: i was once a hunter of those sovereigns of the soul and savings banks, fides, the sculptor's p r i z e , a l l eyes and s i z e , and galled j u s t i t i a , trained to poise the tables of the law, p a t i e n t i a , forever soothing wounds, and mighty fortitudo, f r a n t i c bass. but. these s h a l l not adorn my souvenirs, these l i o n s , these majestic images. i f the f a u l t i s with the soul, the sovereigns of the soul must likewise be at f a u l t , and f i r s t . if the f a u l t i s with the souvenirs, yet these are the soul i t s e l f . and the whole of the soul. swenson, as every man i n sweden w i l l concede, s t i l l hankers a f t e r l i o n s , or to s h i f t , s t i l l hankers a f t e r sovereign images. if the f a u l t i s with the l i o n s , send them back to monsieur dufy's hamburg whence they came. the vegetation s t i l l abounds with forms. (cp - ) ramon guthrie and william york t i n d a l l have both explained the a l l u s i o n i n the penultimate l i n e , but t i n d a l l ' s explication i s an i l l u s t r a t i o n that explanation i s not always understanding: p l a i n l y i n a french t r a d i t i o n , was stevens i n the symbolist t r a d i t i o n ? attempts to answer t h i s question raise others. take "lions "in sweden." these stone l i o n s of stockholm, a l l e g o r i c a l images of bourgeois virtues ...are suitable for savings banks. absurd perhaps, yet somehow the soul hankers a f t e r such "sovereign images." if the f a u l t of these l i o n s i s t h e i r s , stevens t e l l s swenson, "send them back...." this c a l l s for explanation. raoul dufy i l l u s t r a t e d guillaume a p o l l i n a i r e • s le bestlare. hamburg, a supplier of zoological specimens, stands for bestiary here; and a bestiary i s commonly a l l e g o r i c a l . yet a p o l l i n a i r e , author of a bestiary, i s i n the symbolist t r a d i t i o n , whatever that i s ; and vegetation abounding with forms suggests baudelaire's "forest of symbols. stevens i s i n the symbolist t r a d i t i o n , as i s h a l l show, and "lions i n sweden" i s a wonderful example of what symbolism means. the central opposition i n the poem i s between "souvenirs" and "sovereign images." the soul has "souvenirs" which "are the soul i t s e l f " . they are, i n other words, the soul's con- sciousness of i t s existence, awarenesses of i t s e l f i t has pick- ed up i n i t s l i f e . "sovereigns of the soul," however, have a twofold function.. the i n i t i a l "sovereigns of the soul" are also of "savings banks." it i s of these that the narrator refers when he says "these s h a l l not adorn my souvenirs." now, i n one sense, such "sovereign images" are tangible representations of the soul's awareness of i t s l i f e - the coins, the photos, the claptrap one keeps to prove that one has been there - but i n another sense, they are "sovereigns of the soul" because they are above or superior to i t - master of i t . the soul, then, rejects those sovereign images which f a i l to correspond to i t s awareness of i t s e l f - "the whole of the soul." those who succumb to the 'myth of the state' immerse t h e i r souls i n a 'mess of pottage;' the "sovereign images" which w i l l s a t i s f y the soul must be more than adornments and more even than souvenirs (the awareness of existence) - they must be masters of that existence (masters to which the soul's existence i s dedicated). the l i o n s i n sweden are caricatures of that mastery - stone images of an image. a p o l l i n a i r e , the symbolist, was well aware of t h e i r i n - adequacy, as guthrie points out: "monsieur dufy's hamburg".... i s c l e a r l y a reference to guillame a p o l l i n a i r e ' s le bestiare ou l e cortege d' orphee... in the woodcut, the lion,, the animal i s shown i n the heraldic p o s i t i o n known as s a l i e n t against the background of a seaport. ...apollinaire* quatrain beneath reads: l i o n , malheureuse image des r o i s chuse lamentablement, tu ne nais maintenant qu'en cage a hambourg chez les allemands. the l i o n i s indeed an image only of f a l l e n royalty when i t exists i n cages. but i n l i f e one s t i l l can find free l i o n s - "the vegetation abounds with forms" - who w i l l remain adequate images of royalty as long as they are not captured by the cage of concept (i.e. as long as both image and concept l i v e freely) the l i o n i s one of stevens' variable symbols whose v a r i a - t i o n , i n i t s recurrence i n h i s poems, finds i t s expression i n "the man with the blue guitar": that i may reduce the monster to myself, and then may be myself in face of the monster or better not of myself at a l l , but of that as i t s i n t e l l i g e n c e , being the l i o n i n the lute before the l i o n locked i n stone. (cp ) it w i l l recur. the point now, however, i s to continue the comparison be- tween stevens and the two philosophers. the nature of the d i s - t i n c t i o n between stevens' images and plato's should now be c l e a r . it i s most emphatically not a difference describable i n terms of coleridge's " d i s t i n c t i o n between imagination and fancy as pack suggests i n speaking of stevens' terminology: the imagination "discovers order, but also imposes it this d i s t i n c t i o n derives from coleridge, who used the term "primary imagination" f o r the former and "sec- ondary imagination" for the l a t t e r . but there i s another a c t i v i t y of the mind which coleridge c a l l s "the fancy" and describes as "a mode of memory eman- cipated' from the order of time and space." with stevens, however, the fancy i s not so c l e a r l y d i s - tinguished from the imagination, but i s part of i t s functioning. inasmuch as fancy i s removed from "the order of time and space," that part of the imagination w i l l produce f i c t i o n s that do not describe what i s r e a l ....when stevens says "the figure i s a l l imagination," as he does i n reference to plato's figure i t i s equivalent to coleridge c a l l i n g i t fancy, for i t i s imagination working apart from the r e a l i t y . ...a figure that comes only from the imagination i s an i n - vention, an imposition of order.° this i s nothing but contradictory nonsense. not only does pack s h i f t from c o r r e l a t i n g "the imposition of order" with coleridge's "secondary imagination" to c o r r e l a t i n g i t with "fancy," he also ignores the fact that stevens was well aware of what coleridge thought. stevens uses fancy to describe general jackson's statue and not plato's f i g u r e : this work [general jackson's statue] i s a work of fancy. dr. richards c i t e s coleridge's theory of fancy as opposed to imagination. fancy i s an a c t i v i t y of the mind which puts things together of choice, not the * the w i l l , as a p r i n c i p l e of the mind's being, s t r i v - ing to r e a l i z e i t s e l f i n knowing i t s e l f . fancy, then, i s an exercise of s e l e c t i o n from among objects already supplied by association, a selection made for purposes which are not then and therein being shaped but have already been fixed. (na - ) the "fancy," for both coleridge and stevens, i s an exercise i n r i g i d realism; i t treats f i x i t i e s as f i n a l i t i e s and never a t - tempts to transform them. the imagination adhering to the un- r e a l i s not the same as the fancy which i s non-creative because enslaved by the r e a l . so says coleridge about r e a l and unreal: hence the mystic theologians, whose delusions we may more confidently hope to separate from t h e i r actual i n t u i t i o n s , when we condescend to read t h e i r works without the presumption that whatever our fancy (always the ape, and too often the adulterator and counterfeit of our memory) has not made or cannot make a picture of, must be nonsense - hence, i say, the mystics have joined i n representing the state of the reprobate s p i r i t s as a dreadful dream i n which there i s no sense of r e a l i t y . . as to coleridge's d i s t i n c t i o n between two "degrees" and "modes" of the same imagination, there i s l i t t l e evidence that stevens was concerned with i t as a basis for h i s d i s t i n c - t i o n between c e n t r a l and marginal poets. i f we take shawcross' conception of the d i s t i n c t i o n , i t would appear to be one which precedes stevens' d i s t i n c t i o n s between poets and between poets and philosophers: the d i s t i n c t i o n here drawn by coleridge between two degrees of imagination i s evidently between the imagination as u n i v e r s a l l y active i n consciousness (creative i n that i t externalizes the world of objects by opposing i t to the s e l f ) and the same faculty i n a heightened power as creative i n the poetic sense. in the f i r s t case our exercise of the power i s uncon- scious: i n the second the w i l l d i r e c t s , though i t does not determine, the a c t i v i t y of the imagination. the imagination of the ordinary man i s capable only of detaching the world of experience from the s e l f and contemplating i t i n i t s detachment; but the philoso- pher penetrates to the underlying harmony and gives i t concrete expression. the ordinary consciousness, with no p r i n c i p l e of u n i f i c a t i o n , sees the universe as a mass of p a r t i c u l a r s : only the poet can depict t h i s whole as r e f l e c t e d i n the i n d i v i d u a l parts. the trouble with plato's figure, i n coleridge's terms, i s that i t i s a l l e g o r i c a l rather than symbolic - a difference which w i l l be f u l l y explained i n the second section of t h i s paper. the point, at the moment, i s to a f f i r m that coleridge's sense of symbol i s derived from kant's affirmations about the nature of absolutes and that stevens' sense of symbol i s i n accord with coleridge's. stevens says l i t t l e about kant, but what he says i s informative: the philosopher proves that the philosopher e x i s t s . the poet merely enjoys existence. the philosopher thinks of the world as an enormous pastiche or, as he puts i t , the world i s as the percipient. thus kant says that the objects of perception are con- ditioned by the nature of the mind as to t h e i r form. but the poet says that, whatever i t may be, l a vie est plus b e l l e que les idees. (na - ? ) in part, of course, stevens' objection to kant here p a r a l l e l s santayana's - kant's " t e r r i b l e negation" was that "everything conceivable would have collapsed into the act of conceiving i t , and t h i s act i t s e l f would have l o s t i t s terms and i t s purpose" - but i f the question of the form of "objects of perception" i s pursued, one discovers the difference between existence and enjoyment of that existence. kant's l o g i c a l deduction of the nature of categories of the understanding seemed to e n t a i l the c o r o l l o r y that ideas of reason could never be known empirically. it was this consequence of his reasoning that made the young vale'ry f e e l that kant had "destroyed metaphysics," and which l e d to kant's objection against plato. but there i s a curious passage i n kant which seems to o f f e r a way out of the dilemma» ...suppose we combine the apparently contradictory command to proceed to concepts outside the f i e l d of the immanent (empirical) use of the i n t e l l e c t with the command to avoid a l l transcendent judgements of pure reason. we then become aware that both commands may p r e v a i l together, but just on the boundary of a l l admissable use of reason. this boundary belongs as much to the f i e l d of experience as to that of the beings created by thought. at the same time we are taught how those strange ideas merely serve to determine the boundaries of human reason. on the one hand, we must not seek to extend beyond a l l bounds knowledge based on experience, for then nothing but a mere phenomenal world remains f o r us to know. on the other hand, we must not seek to transcend the boundar- ies of experience and to judge things outside experi- ence as things-in-themselves. we are keeping to this boundary when we l i m i t our judgement to the r e l a t i o n the world may have to a being whose concept l i e s outside a l l that knowledge of which we are capable within t h i s world. in this case we are not a t t r i b u t i n g to the supreme being i t - s e l f any of the q u a l i t i e s by which we conceive the objects of experience and we are thus avoiding dogmatic anthropomorphism. but we do a t t r i b u t e these q u a l i t i e s to the relations of the supreme being to the world. we are thereby allowing ourselves a symbolical anthropomorphism x-jhich, as, a matter of f a c t , only concerns the language and not the object. when i say that we are impelled to regard the world as i f i t were the work of a supreme w i l l and i n t e l l e c t , i am not r e a l l y saying more than . . . a l l that constitutes the basis of this aggregate of phenomena, i s related to the unknown, which i con- ceive, not according to what i t i s i n i t s e l f but according to what i t i s f o r me i n regard to the world of which i am a part. an insight such as this i s gained by analogy, not i n the usual meaning" of an imperfect resemblance of two things, but of a perfect resemblance of two r e l a t i o n s between t o t a l l y d i s s i m i l a r things. there i s a great deal i n stevens' xvork that smacks of the kantian; his concluding observations on the i r r a t i o n a l , for example, bring into play kantian concepts of l i m i t and r e l a t i o n : the i r r a t i o n a l bears the same r e l a t i o n to the r a t i o n a l that the unknown bears to the known, ...i do not for a moment mean to indulge i n mystical r h e t o r i c , since for my part, i have no patience with that sort of thing. that; the unknown as the source of knowledge, as the object of thought, i s part of the dynamics of the known does not permit of d e n i a l . ...we accept the unknown even when we are most s k e p t i c a l . we may resent the consideration of i t by any but the most l u c i d minds; but when so considered, i t has seduc- tions more poxverful and more profound than those of the knox<m. just so, there are those who, having never yet been convinced that the r a t i o n a l has quite made us d i v i n e , are w i l l i n g to assume the e f f i c a c y of the i r - r a t i o n a l i n that respect. the r a t i o n a l mind, dealing with the known, expects to f i n d i t g l i s t e n i n g i n a f a m i l i a r ether. what i t r e a l l y finds i s the unknown always behind and beyond the known, giving i t the appearance, at best, of chiaroscuro the poet cannot profess the i r r a t i o n a l as the p r i e s t professes the unknown.. the poet's role i s broader, because he must be possessed, along with everything else, by the earth and by men i n t h e i r earthly implications. (op - ! even the kantian concept of analogy finds i t s way into stevens' poems: indeed, i n varying forms, i t composes the basis of his technique. what better i l l u s t r a t i o n of kant's d e f i n i t i o n of analogy could one f i n d than the poem "les plus belles pages" and stevens' note on i t ? the milkman came i n the moonlight and the moonlight was less than moonlight. nothing exists by i t s e l f . the moonlight seemed to. two people, three horses, an .ox and the sun, the waves together i n the sea. the moonlight and aquinas seemed to. he spoke, kept speaking, of god, i changed the word to man. the automaton, i n l o g i c self-contained, existed by i t s e l f . or did the saint survive? did several s p i r i t s assume a single shape? theology a f t e r breakfast sticks to the eye. (cp - ^ ) apparently the poem means that the conjunction of milkman and moonlight i s the equivalent of the con- junction of l o g i c i a n and saint. what i t r e a l l y means i s that the i n t e r - r e l a t i o n between things i s what makes them fecund. interaction i s the source of poetry. sex i s an i l l u s t r a t i o n . but the p r i n c i p l e i s not confined to the i l l u s t r a t i o n . the milkman and the moonlight are an i l l u s t r a t i o n . the two people, the three horses, etc., are i l l u s t r a t i o n s . the p r i n c i p l e finds i t s best i l l u s t r a t i o n i n the i n t e r - action of our f a c u l t i e s or of our thoughts and emotions. aquinas i s a c l a s s i c example: a figure of great modern i n t e r e s t , whose special force seems to come from the i n t e r a c t i o n of his prodigious love of god. the idea that his theology, as such, i s in- volved i s dismissed i n the l a s t l i n e . that the ex- ample i s not of scholarly choice i s indicated by the t i t l e . but the t i t l e also means that les plus b e l l e s pages are those i n which things do not stand alone, but are operative as the r e s u l t of i n t e r - a c t i o n , i n t e r - r e l a t i o n . this i s an idea of some consequence, not a casual improvisation. the i n t e r - r e l a t i o n between r e a l i t y and the imagination i s the basis of the char- acter of l i t e r a t u r e . the i n t e r - r e l a t i o n between r e a l i t y and the emotions i s the basis of the v i t a l i t y of l i t e r a t u r e , between r e a l i t y and thought, the basis of i t s power. (op - ^) the "two r e l a t i o n s between t o t a l l y d i s s i m i l a r things" are the r e l a t i o n between moonlight and milkman and that between aquinas the l o g i c i a n and aquinas the saint. there i s an analogy between these relations - fa perfect resemblance" - and i t i s analogy which makes the poem work. without belaboring the obvious, i t should be pointed out that stevens thinks both the i r e l a t i o n s are, i n themselves "fecund" (using sex as an i l l u s t r a - t i o n , fecund r e l a t i o n s have o f f s p r i n g ) . what's fecund about the milkman-moonlight r e l a t i o n i s that the milkman's intrusion leads to the observation "nothing exists by i t s e l f . " in this case, the moonlight had seemed to e x i s t by i t s e l f , u n t i l the i n t r u s i o n of the milkman reminded the narrator that the moon r e f l e c t s the l i g h t of the sun and that r e f l e c t e d l i g h t i s i n turn r e f l e c t e d by the milkman. by i t s e l f , such a r e l a t i o n i s useless, but i t informs the analogy with the aquinas r e l a t i o n and that i s important. the narrator thinks aquinas, l i k e the moonlight, exists by himself. he therefore substitutes the word "man" whenever aquinas speaks the word "god." but what he discovers, i f the analogy between the two relations i s to be taken seriously, i s that aquinas without god i s less than aquinas. aquinas i s , l i k e moonlight, r e a l l y a r e f l e c t i o n - a r e f l e c t i o n of god. as saint, he i s symbol of the unknown. the aura of h i s sainthood cannot be reduced or explained i n terms of h i s l o g i c . the intangible power of "his prodigious love" i s too much a part of what aquinas experientally i s . what stevens means when he says "his theology, as such, i s dismissed i n the l a s t l i n e , " i s that aquinas i s symbolic because he contains within himself the l i v i n g r e l a t i o n between the known and the un- known and not because of his " l o g i c a l proofs" of the absolute nature of that unknown. the g i s t of both kant's concept of symbolism and stevens' theory of "central poetry" i s that language as designation i s supplanted by language as r e l a t i o n - the meaningful content of language i s not what i t designates but what the formal r e l a t i o n s within i t s i g n i f y . but kant's t e l l i n g phrase, that symbolical anthropomorphism "only involves the language and not the object," reveals that the accord between concept and theory i s not com- p l e t e . for kant, analogical symbolism can o f f e r transcendental ideas - psychological, cosmological and theological - which, " i f they do not i n s t r u c t us p o s i t i v e l y , at least serve to repu- diate the audacious assertions of materialism, naturalism and f a t a l i s m that narrowly r e s t r i c t the f i e l d of reason," but they cannot "gain the general acceptance that reason requires . . . " for philosophic reason there i s always the search for the f a t e f u l integration which exists apart from our knowledge of i t and which alone i s true. but for stevens, the formal r e l a t i o n s of the analogical symbol are the truth, because they are pragmatically d i s c e r n i b l e indications of the nature of the unknown soul. when stevens writes "a poet's words are of things that do not exist without the words," (na ) he makes the^re- l a t i o n a l aspect of language paramount; and when he i n s i s t s that poetry i s truth, he i s affirming that the r e l a t i o n a l power of words has i n i t the "magical" q u a l i t y of revelation". "poetry i s a r e v e l a t i o n i n words by means of the words." (na ) to make these observations about the r e l a t i o n between kant and stevens i s to do no more than a f f i r m that the philosophical ground of the theory of "central poetry" i s identical with that which cassirer used to j u s t i f y his philosophy of symbolic form. now, the advance made by cassirer over the philosophy of kant i s e s s e n t i a l l y this-: both kant and cassirer deny the adequacy of designation, but cassirer does not follow kant i n denying the adequacy of r e l a t i o n (which i s symbolic form) as truth. to demonstrate the nature of t h i s advance, i t i s necessary to quote at length from the introductory argument i n the f i r s t volume of cassirer's the philosophy of symbolic forms. the s p e c i f i c argument has the s u b t i t l e "ideational content of the sign. transcending the copy theory of knowledge" and i t s movement i s from the concept of "natural symbolism"?^ to the concept of symbolic forms a r t i s t i c delineation becomes what i t i s and i s distinguished from a mere mechanistic reproduction, only through itfhat i t omits from the "given" impression. it does not r e f l e c t t h i s impression i n i t s sensuous t o t a l i t y , but rather selects certain "pregnant" fac- tors, i . e . , factors through which the given impression i s amplified beyond i t s e l f and through which the a r t - i s t i c - c o n s t r u c t i v e fantasy, the synthetic s p a t i a l im- agination, i s guided i n a c e r t a i n d i r e c t i o n . what constitutes the true force of the sign, here as i n other f i e l d s , i s p r e c i s e l y thiss that as the immediate, determinate contents recede, the general factors of form and r e l a t i o n become a l l the sharper and c l e a r e r . the p a r t i c u l a r as such i s seemingly l i m i t e d ; but p r e c i s e l y thereby that operation which we have c a l l e d "integration" i s effected the more c l e a r l y and force- f u l l y . we have seen that the p a r t i c u l a r of conscious- ness " e x i s t s " only i n so f a r as i t p o t e n t i a l l y contains the whole and is,as i t were, i n constant t r a n s i t i o n towards the whole. but the use of the sign l i b e r a t e s t h i s p o t e n t i a l i t y and enables i t to become true actu- a l i t y . now, one blow s t r i k e s a thousand connected chords which a l l vibrate more or less f o r c e f u l l y and c l e a r l y i n the sign. in positing the sign, conscious- ness detaches i t s e l f more and more from the d i r e c t substratum of sensation and sensory i n t u i t i o n : but p r e c i s e l y therein i t reveals i t s inherent, o r i g i n a l power of synthesis and u n i f i c a t i o n what would seem to constitute the bias of "empiricism" as well as abstract "idealism" i s p r e c i s e l y that neither of them f u l l y and c l e a r l y develops t h i s fundamental r e l a t i o n . one posits a concept of the given p a r t i c u l a r but f a i l s to recog- nize that any such concept must always, e x p l i c i t l y or i m p l i c i t l y , encompass the defining attributes of some universal; the other asserts the necessity and v a l i d i t y of these attributes but f a i l s to designate the medium through which they can be represented i n the given psychological world of consciousness. i f , however, we s t a r t not with abstract postulates but from the concrete basic form of s p i r i t u a l l i f e , t h i s d u a l i s t i c a n t i t h e s i s i s resolved. the i l l u s i o n of an o r i g i n a l d i v i s i o n between the i n t e l l i g i b l e and the sensuous, between "idea" and "phenomenon," vanishes. true, we s t i l l remain i n a world of "images" - but these are not images which reproduce a self-subsistent world of "things"; they are image-worlds whose p r i n c i p l e and o r i g i n are to be sought i n an autonomous creation of the s p i r i t . through them alone we see what we c a l l " r e a l i t y , " and i n them alone we possess i t s for the highest objective truth that i s accessible to the s p i r i t i s ultimately the form of i t s own a c t i v i t y . in the t o t a l i t y of i t s own achievements, in the knowledge of the s p e c i f i c rule by which each of them i s determined and i n the consciousness of the context which reunites a l l these special rules into one prob- lem and one solutions i n a l l t h i s , the human s p i r i t now perceives i t s e l f and r e a l i t y . true, the question of what, apart from these s p i r i t u a l functions, con- s t i t u t e s absolute r e a l i t y , the question of what the "thing i n i t s e l f " may be i n t h i s sense, remains un- answered, except that more and more we learn to re- cognise i t as a f a l l a c y i n formulation, an i n t e l l e c - t u a l phantasm. the true concept of r e a l i t y cannot be squeezed into the form of mere abstract being; i t opens out into the d i v e r s i t y and richness of the forms of s p i r i t u a l l i f e - but of a s p i r i t u a l l i f e which bears the stamp of inner necessity and hence of object- i v i t y . in t h i s sense each new "symbolic form" - not only the conceptual x\rorld of s c i e n t i f i c cognition but also the i n t u i t i v e world of a r t , myth, and language - constitutes, as goethe said, a revelation sent outward from within, a "synthesis of world and s p i r i t , " which- t r u l y assures us that the two are o r i g i n a l l y one. and here new l i g h t i s cast upon a l a s t fundamental a n t i t h e s i s ....its "subjective" trend has led philos- ophy more and more to focus the t o t a l i t y of i t s prob- lems i n the concept of l i f e rather than the concept of being. but though t h i s seemed to appease the a n t i t h - e s i s of s u b j e c t i v i t y and o b j e c t i v i t y i n the form man- i f e s t e d by dogmatic ontology ... now, i n the sphere of l i f e i t s e l f a s t i l l more r a d i c a l a n t i t h e s i s appeared. the truth of l i f e seems to be given only i n i t s pure immediacy, to be enclosed i n i t - but any attempt to understand and apprehend l i f e seems to endanger, i f not to negate, t h i s immediacy it would seem, therefore, that any understanding of s p i r i t u a l l i f e must choose between the two extremes. we are c a l l e d upon to decide whether to seek the substance of the human s p i r i t i n i t s pure o r i g i n a l i t y , which precedes a l l mediate con- figurations - or whether to surrender ourselves to the richness and d i v e r s i t y of these mediate forms. only i n the f i r s t approach do we seem to touch upon the true and authentic center of l i f e , which however appears as a simple self-enclosed, center; i n the second, we survey the entire drama of s p i r i t u a l developments, but as we immerse ourselves i n i t , i t dissolves more and more manifestly into a mere drama, a r e f l e c t e d image, without independent truth and essence. the cleavage between these two antitheses - i t would seem - cannot be bridged by any e f f o r t of mediating thought which i t s e l f remains e n t i r e l y on one side of the an- t i t h e s i s ; the farther we advance i n the d i r e c t i o n of the symbolic, the merely f i g u r a t i v e , the farther we go from the primal source of pure i n t u i t i o n . philosophical mysticism has not been alone i n i t s constant confrontation of t h i s problem and i t s dilemma; the pure logic of idealism has repeatedly seen i t and formulated i t . plato's remarks i n h i s seventh e p i s t l e on the r e l a t i o n of the "idea" to the "sign" and on the necessary inadequacy of t h i s r e l a t i o n , s t r i k e a motif which has recurred i n a l l manner of v a r i a t i o n s . ...even kant, who assigned i t s exact l o g i c a l p o s i t i o n to t h i s idea by defining i t as a mere border- l i n e concept of cognition, and who believed that i n so doing he had c r i t i c a l l y mastered i t - even kant ... once again sharply develops the a n t i t h e s i s ...between the i n t u i t i v e archetypal i n t e l l e c t and the discursive i n t e l l e c t "which i s dependent on images." prom the standpoint of t h i s a n t i t h e s i s i t x«rould seem to follow that the r i c h e r the symbolic content of cognition or of any other c u l t u r a l form becomes, the more i t s es- s e n t i a l content must diminish. a l l the many images do not designate, but cloak and conceal the imageless one, which stands behind them and towards which they s t r i v e i n vain. only the negation of a l l f i n i t e f i g - uration, only a return to the "pure nothingness" of the mystics can lead us back to the true primal source of being. seen i n a d i f f e r e n t l i g h t , t h i s a n t i t h e s i s takes the form of a constant tension between "culture" and " l i f e . " for i t i s the necessary destiny of c u l - ture that everything which i t creates i n i t s constant process of configuration and education removes us more and more from the o r i g i n a l i t y , o f l i f e . the more r i c h l y and energetically the human s p i r i t engages i n i t s formative a c t i v i t y , the farther t h i s very a c t i v i t y seems to remove i t from the primal source of i t s own being. more and more, i t appears to be imprisoned i n i t s own creations - in the words of language, i n the images of myth or a r t , i n the i n t e l l e c t u a l symbols of cognition, which cover i t l i k e a d e l i c a t e and trans- parent, but unbreachable veil....to philosophy, which finds i t s f u l f i l l m e n t only i n the sharpness of concept •and i n the c l a r i t y of "discursive" thought, the par- adise of mysticism, the paradise of pure immediacy, i s closed. ...instead of taking the road back, i t must attempt to continue forward. if a l l culture i s man- i f e s t e d i n the creation of s p e c i f i c image-worlds, of s p e c i f i c symbolic forms, the aim of philosophy is not to go behind a l l these creations, but rather to i l l understand and elucidate t h e i r basic formative p r i n c i p l e . ...in truth, the negation of the symbolic forms would not help us to apprehend the essence of l i f e ; i t would rather destroy the s p i r i t u a l form with which for us t h i s essence proves to be bound up. if we take the opposite d i r e c t i o n , we do not pursue the idea of a passive i n t u i t i o n of s p i r i t u a l r e a l i t y , but situate ourselves i n the midst of i t s a c t i v i t y . if we approach s p i r i t u a l l i f e , not as the s t a t i c con- templation of being, but as functions and energies of formation, we s h a l l f i n d c e r t a i n common and'typical p r i n c i p l e s of formation, diverse and d i s s i m i l a r as these forms may be. if the philosophy of culture succeeds i n apprehending and elucidating such basic p r i n c i p l e s , i t w i l l have f u l f i l l e d , i n a new sense, i t s task of demonstrating the unity of the s p i r i t as opposed to the m u l t i p l i c i t y of i t s manifestations - for the clearest evidence of this unity i s p r e c i s e l y that the d i v e r s i t y of the products of the human s p i r i t 'does not impair the unity of i t s productive process, but rather sustains and confirms it" if stevens read this argument, he did so at a time when a l l his ideas were formulated, when a l l but a f r a c t i o n of h i s poetry was written. but nonetheless, the "productive process" of symbolic forms i s precisely the formative p r i n c i p l e upon which h i s writing was based. its p a r t i c u l a r name i s "the habit of probing f o r an integration" and i t s manifestation i s the con- t i n u a l transcendence of the designative function of the word by means of the p r o l i f e r a t i o n of r e l a t i o n s between each word and every other word. what one finds i n cassirer i s both a statement of the necessity for the mode of existence of central poetry and a statement of the promise i m p l i c i t i n that process. to make symbols x^hich are not "merely f i g u r a t i v e " but which partake of temporal order and to indicate the permanent p r i n c i p l e of unity within that changing order by showing the s i g n i f i c a n t form of r e l a t i o n (which includes variation) i s the task of the c e n t r a l poet. out of stevens' basic r e j e c t i o n of an a n t i t h e s i s between r e a l i t y and the imagination and out of h i s acceptance of the c o n t r a d i c t i o n between the image and the l i f e of the image, came the techniques of " c e n t r a l poetry." b a s i c a l l y , those techniques were grounded upon the c o n v i c t i o n that the concept of r e l a t i o n a l form i s progressive and could be a p p l i e d to a body of poetry as a f o r c e of development. the d i r e c t i o n of that development, i n stevens' c o l l e c t e d poems, i s from the d e c r e a t i o n of the p a r t i c - u l a r , sharply d i f f e r e n t i a t e d , image to the c r e a t i o n , i n con- sciousness, of a world of t o t a l l y r e l e a s e d images - a world which frye, d e s p i t e i n c o n s i s t e n c i e s i n h i s argument, a c c u r a t e l y d e l i n - eates: the t h e o r e t i c a l p o s t u l a t e of stevens' poetry i s a world of t o t a l metaphor, where the poet's v i s i o n may be iden- t i f i e d w i t h anything i t v i s u a l i z e s . for such poetry the most accurate word i s a p o c a l y p t i c , a poetry of " r e v e l a t i o n " i n which a l l objects and experiences are u n i t e d with a t o t a l mind. ° " a p o c a l y p t i c " i s one of frye's key c r i t i c a l terms; he de- f i n e s i t i n h i s anatomy of c r i t i c i s m : in the anagogic phase, l i t e r a t u r e i m i t a t e s the t o t a l dream of man, and so i m i t a t e s the thought of a human mind which i s at the circumference and not. at the center, of i t s r e a l i t y . we see here the completion of the imaginative r e v o l u t i o n begun when we passed from the d e s c r i p t i v e to the formal phase of symbolism. there, the i m i t a t i o n of nature s h i f t e d from a r e f l e c - t i o n of e x t e r n a l nature to a formal o r g a n i z a t i o n of which nature was the content. but i n the formal phase the poem i s s t i l l contained by nature, and i n the a r c h e t y p a l phase the whole of poetry i s s t i l l contained w i t h i n the n a t u r a l or p l a u s i b l e . when we pass i n t o anagogy, nature becomes, not the c o n t a i n e r , but the t h i n g contained, and the archetypal' u n i v e r s a l symbols, the c i t y , the garden, the quest, the marriage, are no longer the d e s i r a b l e forms that man c o n s t r u c t s i n s i d e nature, but are themselves the forms of nature. nature i s now i n s i d e the mind of an i n f i n i t e man who b u i l d s h i s c i t i e s out of the milky way. this i s not r e a l i t y , but i t i s the conceivable or imaginative l i m i t of d e s i r e , which i s i n f i n i t e , e t e r n a l , and hence a p o c a l y p t i c . by an apocalypse i mean p r i m a r i l y the imaginative conception of the whole of nature as the content of an i n f i n i t e and e t e r n a l l i v i n g body which i f not human, i s c l o s e r to being human than inhuman. despite the c o n t i n u i n g and p e r n i c i o u s confusion between r e a l and u n r e a l h e r e i n , frye's d i s t i n c t i o n between nature as con- t a i n e r and nature as contained is a good d e s c r i p t i o n of the d i f f e r e n c e between the d e s i g n a t i v e symbol (which i s always i n - adequate because i t does not c o n t a i n temporal order and i s t h e r e f o r e destroyed by time) and the r e l a t i o n a l symbol (which does c o n t a i n temporal order because i t i s a completed act and not a t h i n g or the i m i t a t i o n of a t h i n g ) . the i d e a l of, and the o b j e c t i o n s t o , a p o c a l y p t i c poetry have been defined by paul v a l e r y : . . . i f the poet could manage to c o n s t r u c t works i n which nothing of prose ever appeared, poems i n which the musical c o n t i n u i t y was never broken, i n which the r e l a t i o n s between meanings were themselves per- p e t u a l l y s i m i l a r to harmonic r e l a t i o n s , i n which the transmutation of thoughts i n t o each other appeared more important than any thought, in which the play of f i g u r e s contained the r e a l i t y of the subject - then one could speak of pure poetry as of something that e x i s t e d . i t i s not so: the p r a c t i c a l or prag- matic p a r t of language, the h a b i t s and l o g i c a l forms, and the d i s o r d e r and i r r a t i o n a l i t y that are found i n i t s vocabulary...make the existence of these c r e a t i o n s of absolute poetry impossible... valery has in mind more than " t h e o r e t i c p o s t u l a t e s . " he sees the p o t e n t i a l of language as the shape of t r u t h , and he sees the f u n c t i o n of the poet as a p r a c t i c a l , r a t h e r than a v i s i o n a r y , f u n c t i o n - the f u n c t i o n of the d i s c o v e r e r of words and of the r e a l i t y i n f i g u r e s . his d e s c r i p t i o n of the mode of existence necessary f o r an absolute poetry i s a d e s c r i p t i o n of stevens' poems. i t i s , at any r a t e , p a r a l l e l e d by c r i t i c a l accounts of stevens' poems l i k e frankenburg's f o r example - "stevens', poetry plays a game of l i v i n g s t a t u e s , w h i r l i n g and f r e e z i n g , f r e e z i n g and whirling. his poems combine the attitudes taken, with the w h i r l from attitude to a t t i t u d e ; the kaleidoscope, and the kaleidoscope shaken" - and by stevens' own description of "resemblances and the r e p e t i t i o n of resemblances as a source of the i d e a l : " (na ) in both prose and poetry, images come w i l l i n g l y but, usually, although there i s a r e l a t i o n between the subject of these images there i s no r e l a t i o n between the images themselves. a group of images i n harmony with each other would constitute a poem within, or above, a poem. (na ) inasmuch as t h i s absolute poetry i s the end and object of the central poet's search for integrations and inasmuch as he does pursue that end by granting the inadequacy of images as embodiments of absolutes, i t should now be possible to "trace some of the general techniques stevens' employs i n achieving h i s end. part ii - central poetry: syntax everything w i l l be h e s i t a t i o n , d i s p o s i t i o n of parts, t h e i r alternations and relationships - a l l t h i s contributing to the rhythmic t o t a l i t y , which w i l l be the very silence of the poem, i n i t s blank spaces, as that silence i s translated by each s t r u c t u r a l element i n i t s own way....then again the perfect symmetry of verses within the poem, of poems within the volume, w i l l extend even beyond the volume i t s e l f ; and t h i s w i l l be that creation of many poets who w i l l inscribe, on s p i r i t u a l space, the expanded signature of genius - as anonymous and perfect as a work of a r t . mallarme' - a description of "the book" (trans. b. cook) comparisons between mallarme and stevens are not new to stevens' c r i t i c s : riddel has made an e x p l i c i t comparison between stevens' "supreme f i c t i o n " and mallarml's concept of "the book,"l hi simons has drawn seven s p e c i f i c p a r a l l e l s between t h e i r techniques - including one between t h e i r use of "figures of a negative order" intended to achieve "an i d e a l poem, a supra- sensuous one that conveys i t s e f f e c t without tangible means or meanings...like keat's unheard melodies," and morton dauwen zabel has seen i n stevens' early poems a f r u i t f u l blending of "mallarme's imagism ...absolute i n i t s claims, irreducible and exhaustive i n intention, refined and specialized i n i t s subtlety" and "hopkin's imagery . . . r e a l i s t i c i n basis ...as exhaustively and i n t e n t i o n a l l y r e a l i s t i c , at least i n intention, as the threading of a psychological maze i n henry james." preliminary proofs of the comparisons are not hard to f i n d . stevens' hes- i t a t i o n i n gathering together the poems of harmonium, his repeated insistence on the relatedness of a l l poems, and his expressed intention to t i t l e harmonium "the grand poem: preliminary minutia" and h i s collected poems "the whole of harmonium," a l l a t t e s t to his involvement with a schema which would lend o v e r a l l u n i t y to h i s work and make of h i s poems "a book, a r c h i t e c t u r a l and.premeditated, and not a m i s c e l l a n y of chance i n s p i r a t i o n s . . . " l i k e that great book envisaged by mallarme'. the point now i s to examine, not so much the a c t u a l " d i s - p o s i t i o n of p a r t s " i n stevens' c o l l e c t e d poems (that i s a task beyond my a b i l i t y at p r e s e n t ) , but some of the techniques by which those parts are disposed. such a procedure i s free of a l l arguments but one, and that i s one which concerns the com- p a r i s o n which i s the b a s i s f o r the p r o j e c t e d i n v e s t i g a t i o n . not a l l c r i t i c s have acquiesced i n the s y m b o l i s t s ' attempts to appropriate stevens as one of t h e i r own. feldman, f o r example, a f f i r m s that "stevens i s p r i m a r i l y a r e a l i s t . this i s , perhaps, h i s c h i e f d i v i g a t i o n from such a school as "symbolisme" and i t i s , a f t e r a l l , an important one." t i n d a l l , i n d i s c u s s i n g t h i s q u e s t i o n , makes a more dangerous observation? the essays are of l i t t l e help. there stevens sometimes p r e f e r s the image without meaning; yet he p r a i s e s the s i g n i f i c a n t images of bunyan and la fontaine. some- times he c a l l s emblem or a s i g n a symbol. . . . i t i s a f a c t that hox\rever much he loved analogy, he hated the hermetic transcendentalism on which the symbolists based t h e i r a n a l o g i e s . of no more h e l p , h i s poems abound i n a l l e g o r i c a l signs with d e f i n i t e meanings, i n a l l e g o r i c a l p e r s o n i f i c a t i o n s , and i n unassigned symbols. his r e c u r r e n t blue and green, north and south, moon and sun are signs f o r the imagination and f a c t , not symbols. many of h i s creatures (woman, g i a n t , and ephebe) are a l l e g o r i c a l . yet many, "not too e x a c t l y l a b e l l e d , " are symbols. ... the question i s u n p r o f i t a b l e . i l t i n d a l l ' s a s s e r t i o n about stevens' hatred of "hermetic transcendentalism" i s only an a s s e r t i o n ; he nowhere provides evidence of i t s f a c t u a l i t y . but the r e a l danger i n t i n d a l l ' s d i s m i s s a l of the question of symbolism i s t h a t , i n so doing, he http://unprofitable.il p a r t i c i p a t e s i n the massive d e f o l i a t i o n of stevens images i n i t i a t e d by c r i t i c s who, i n t h e i r eagerness to " a s s i g n " symbols, have t r e a t e d those symbols as though they were merely signs or emblems. hartsock's essay on stevens i s a case i n p o i n t : a l l have c l a s s i f i e d c e r t a i n basic symbols used by stevens. the purpose of t h i s paper i s to extend t h e i r study giants and mountains, throughout the poems are used to symbolize both the poet and the largeness of the poet's v i s i o n . . . . i n c r e d i b l y enough, hartsock's opening statement i s j u s t i f i e d ; almost a l l of stevens' c r i t i c s have taken part i n the c l a s s i - f i c a t i o n of "symbols" according to what they " s i g n i f y " as idea. even the word " w e i s h e i t " (cp ) has been seen as a symbol f o r wisdom. c o l o r s , c h a r a c t e r s , f l o r a and fauna, the elements of e a r t h and the bodies of heaven, have repeatedly been assigned t h e i r s i g n i f i c a t i o n s . the f a c t that the r e s u l t a n t s i g n i f i c a t i o n s are seldom i n accord w i t h each other, or with the poems i n which, supposedly, they are at work, proves something about the nature of stevens' images. t i n d a l l ' s equation of moon and sun as signs f o r the imagination and f a c t r e s p e c t i v e l y serves as i l l u s t r a t i o n . hartsock repeats the i d e n t i f i c a t i o n , ! ^ but o'connor makes sun symbolic of " l i f e f o r c e , p h y s i c a l e x i s t e n c e ; the u n t h i n k i n g source. pack sees the sun-as stevens' " c e n t r a l symbol f o r r e a l i t y , l and b a i r d sees i t as myth; watts wants the moon to represent "man's i n a b i l i t y to see c l e a r l y . " l ^ obviously stevens' images, whether signs or symbols, a f f e c t d i f f e r e n t c r i t i c s i n d i f f e r e n t ways. in s h o r t , they o s c i l l a t e through a range of suggestiveness, and are t h e r e f o r e , symbols i n mallarme's sense: to name an object i s l a r g e l y to destroy p o e t i c enjoyment, which comes from gradual d i v i n a t i o n . the i d e a l i s t o suggest the object. i t i s the p e r f e c t use of t h i s mystery which c o n s t i t u t e s symbol. an object must be g r a d u a l l y evoked': i n order to. show, a s t a t e of s o u l ; or e l s e , choose an object and from i t e l i c i t a s t a t e of soul by means of a s e r i e s of decodlngs. the major f a l l a c y of g e n e r a l i z e d i d e n t i f i c a t i o n s between image and idea i s the theory that leads to them. the theory i s t h a t i f images can be given a meaning i t w i l l be p o s s i b l e to a r r i v e at a secure understanding of the poems i n which the images occur. this i s a f a l l a c y of the r a t i o n a l mind; i t i n - volves the assumption that ideas are more meaningful, more com- municable, than images. but the s e c u r i t y gained by reading "imagination" f o r moon i s i l l u s i v e ; the c r i t i c s t i l l has to d i s c o v e r what stevens means by imagination i n the context of the poem. c r i t i c s who make such i d e n t i f i c a t i o n s reverse the process of poetry to no good purpose; they make of i t the same impoverished t h i n g as "the common l i f e " ! the paper i s whiter the men have no shadows and the women have only one s i d e . (cp ) not a l l c r i t i c s , however, have rushed i n where the necessary angel refuses to t r e a d . among the a b s t a i n e r s i s doggett, whose c r i t i c a l approach to stevens' poems i s based on the e x p l i c i t r e j e c t i o n , not only of the p r a c t i c e of reducing stevens' images i n t o ideas, but a l s o of t r e a t i n g stevens' ideas as i d e a s ; the l a t e manner does resemble t h a t of p h i l o s o p h i c a l statement; we can almost expect l o g i c a l forms; we look f o r a c o n s i s t e n t o r g a n i z a t i o n of thought; i t seems that a paraphrase i s almost p o s s i b l e , that we can s t a t e a c e r t a i n meaning f o r a c e r t a i n poem, an e f f o r t that misses most of i t s purpose, l i k e t e l l i n g dreams or d e s c r i b i n g music...one can answer some attempts to d i s t i l l a system of ideas from h i s poetry by another and divergent d i s t i l l a t i o n . his ideas are not systematic but thematic... what seems a development of d o c t r i n e i s a v e r s i o n of experience. what doggett means when he speaks of thematic ideas i s p r e c i s e l y what mallarme' means by symbols and i mean by e x i s t e n t images and r e l a t i o n a l symbols. words or groups of words which de- s c r i b e ideas (essence i s a simple example) are images of the ideas they designate, and because they are words they can be transformed by r e l a t i o n - they can transcend d e s i g n a t i o n by becoming form. in so doing, they l o s e t h e i r r e s t r i c t e d f u n c t i o n as signs f o r conception - as - idea and become symbols of what coleridge c a l l e d " i n t u i t i v e i d e a " : this i s the t e s t and character of a t r u t h so a f f i r m e d ...that i n i t s own proper form i t i s i n c o n c e i v a b l e . for to conceive i s a f u n c t i o n of the understanding, which can only be e x e r c i s e d on subjects subordinate t h e r e t o . and yet to the forms of the understanding a l l t r u t h s must be reduced, that i s to be f i x e d as an object of r e f l e c t i o n , and to be rendered e x p r e s s i b l e . and here we have the second t e s t and s i g n of a t r u t h so a f f i r m e d , that i t can come f o r t h out of the moulds of the understanding only i n the d i s g u i s e or two c o n t r a d i c t o r y conceptions, each of which i s p a r t i a l l y t r u e , and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes the r e p r e s e n t a t i v e or expression (-the exponent) of a t r u t h beyond conception and i n e x p r e s s i b l e . ^ l the expression of the i n e x p r e s s i b l e i s symbol, and t h i s , accord- ing to c o l e r i d g e , i s at l e a s t a t h r e e - f o l d f u s i o n : an idea t h e r e f o r e contemplates the alpha and the omega (one-all; f i n i t e - i n f i n i t e ; subject-object; mind - matter; substance - form; time - space; motion - rest; f u t u r a t l o n - presence...and i t i s i n d i f f e r e n t which of the p a i r s you take, f o r they are a l l symbols of the same truth produced by d i f f e r e n t p o s i t i o n s ) as one....' the analogy between coleridge's concept of symbol and stevens' concept of "the t o t a l double-thing" and the r e l a t i o n between symbol and "the only l o v e " i s obvious. despite t i n d a l l , t h e r e f o r e , the question of stevens' symbolism i s not only p r o f i t a b l e , i t i s the only p e r t i n e n t q u e s t i o n that can be discussed. benamou, i n an essay which has j u s t been p u b l i s h e d , i n d i c a t e s the necessary nature of the d i s c u s s i o n ; ?a sears and roebuck l i s t of stevens* symbols would j u s t catalogue h i s f a v o r i t e garments....but basic movements of the mind r e v e a l more than i t s i n v e n t o r y . " the i n i t i a l movement of stevens' mind as i t handles i t s images has a m u l t i p l e name because i t i s a complex movement. b a s i c a l l y , i t i s the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c movement of the v i a negativa i n that i t seeks to deny the adequacy of the content of the image. but the movement has two phases - d e c r e a t i o n and ab- s t r a c t i o n - and i t i s these phases i want to d i s c u s s , together w i t h t h e i r attendent arguments and images. stevens mentions d e c r e a t i o n only once - i n "the r e l a t i o n s between poetry and p a i n t i n g " ; simone weil i n la pesanteur et la grace has a chapter on what she c a l l s d e c r e a t i o n . she says that d e c r e a t i o n i s making pass from the created to the uncreated, but that d e s t r u c t i o n i s making pass from the created to nothingness. modern r e a l i t y i s a r e a l i t y of d e c r e a t i o n , i n which our r e v e l a t i o n s are not the r e v e l a t i o n s of b e l i e f , but the precious portents of our own powers. the g r e a t e s t t r u t h we could hope to d i s c o v e r . . . . i s that man's t r u t h i s the f i n a l r e s o l u t i o n of every- t h i n g . (na - ) that s i n g l e r e f e r e n c e , however, i s becoming i n c r e a s i n g l y more important to stevens' c r i t i c s . benamou, f o r example, sees i t as the b a s i s f o r an e s s e n t i a l d i s t i n c t i o n between stevens and mallarmet a symbol d u p l i c a t e s a " f a c t " i n the mind; a b s t r a c t , i t i s "pure". an imagination such as mallarme/*s w i l l not create a paradise of calm sensual presences, b e a u t i f u l shapes and c o l o r s ; i t w i l l decreate appear- ances, b r i n g death to f o r e s t a l l death, thus master death, and save from decay a "pure" world i n the mind ....for mallarme's paradise of perception i s a mental i s l a n d outside nature. a c l e a r outline separates i t from earthly gardens. purity means schism. divorce, not marriage, i s the law of the poet's hygenic v i s i o n . to stevens, on the contrary, transparence brought p a r t i c i p a t i o n . ...the main notion conveyed, times out of occurences, by his use of the word "pure" i s a cleansing of the verbal medium. reality i_s pure. the adamic t r a d i t i o n does not accept the sense of a f a l l . then purity r e s u l t s from clearing sight of i t s "man-locked set" of r e l i g i o u s ideas and mythological metaphors. i w i l l return to benamou, but, for the moment, the variant c r i t i c a l views of decreation are more pressing. in the same •wallace stevens issue' of elh that benamou's a r t i c l e appears i n , there i s another by j . h i l l i s m i l l e r i n which decreation has a d i f f e r e n t faces no sooner has the mind created a new f i c t i v e world than t h i s "recent imagining of r e a l i t y " becomes obsolete i n i t s turn, and must be rejected. this r e j e c t i o n i s the act of decreation, and returns man once more to unadorned r e a l i t y . the cycle then begins again: imagining followed by decreation followed by imagining and so on f o r as long as l i f e l a s t s . in t h i s rhythmic a l t e r n a t i o n l i e s our only hope to possess r e a l i t y . m i l l e r ' s elucidation of what he c a l l s "the poetry of being" has several curious analogies to what has been said e a r l i e r in t h i s paper. he, too, employs the concept of o s c i l l a t i o n to open the impasse of the inadequate images it seems that the poet w i l l make s t e r i l e vibrations back and f o r t h between one s p i r i t u a l season and the other, always a l i t t l e behind the perpetual flowing of r e a l i t y . there i s one way to escape...and the discovery of t h i s way gives i t s special character to a l l stevens' l a t e r poetry. he can move so fast from one season to another that a l l the extreme postures of the s p i r i t are present i n a single moment. if he can do t h i s he w i l l never pause long enough at any extreme for i t to freeze into a dead f i x i t y , and he w i l l appease at l a s t his longing to have both imagination and r e a l i t y at once. an o s c i l l a t i o n rapid enough becomes a blur i n which opposites are touched simultaneously.... " but i f the way to the end i s analogous, m i l l e r ' s ending only serves to p o i n t up the need f o r a . f u l l e r understanding of symbolic formation and the f u n c t i o n of d e c r e a t i o n w i t h i n that formations in the l a t e r poetry nothingness appears to be the source and end of e v e r y t h i n g , and to u n d e r l i e every- t h i n g as i t s present r e a l i t y . imagination i s nothing. r e a l i t y i s nothing. the mind i s nothing. words are nothing. god i s nothing. perhaps i t i s the f a c t that a l l these t h i n g s are equivalent to nothing which makes them a l l equivalents of each other.. i t seemed that stevens was moving c l o s e r to the p l e n i t u d e of t h i n g s , but as the t e n s i o n between imagination and r e a l i t y diminishes there i s an unperceived emptying out of both, u n t i l , at the moment they touch....the poet f i n d s himself face to face w i t h a u n i v e r s a l nothing. nevertheless, t h i s apparent defeat i s the supreme v i c t o r y , f o r the nothing i s not nothing. i t i s being. being i s the u n i v e r s a l power, v i s i b l e nowhere i n i t - s e l f , and yet v i s i b l e everywhere i n a l l things. this sounds m y s t i c a l i n the mallarmean manner. being i s absolute. being i s a l s o nothingness, but there are s e v e r a l kinds of noth- ingness. wagner demonstrated that when he compared the idea of nothingness i n stevens' poems to valery's comment, "...perfected consciousness d i f f e r s as l i t t l e as could be wished from noth- ingness. " he found that the idea has v a r i a b l e aspects: ( ) blank s p i r i t i s open to a l l p o s s i b l e o b j e c t s , being c h a r a c t e r i z e d by nothing but l i g h t . ( ) a perfected s p i r i t approaches to nothing; the . impossible l i m i t of u l t i m a t e contemplation or absolute peace i s nothingness. ( ) the s e l f regards i t s e l f as nothing during the supreme moment of otherness; l i f e i s turned i n t o the pure act of awareness. ( ) u t t e r d i s i l l u s i o n m e n t reduces a l l t r a d i t i o n a l and conventional m o r a l i t i e s to nothing; a c o n d i t i o n of "poverty" - poverty of r e l i g i o u s b e l i e f s i s accepted as the new m o r a l i t y . ( ) the objects of s p i r i t or imagination are im- m a t e r i a l , a i r y nothings having p o s i t i v e being but not e x i s t e n c e ; they are essences, nothing that need e x i s t , yet everything that i s p o s s i b l e . ( ) l i f e and r e a l i t y are sacraments f o r the s p i r i t ; both are at once everything and n o t h i n g . the d i f f e r e n c e between the f i n a l two aspects of nothingness i s the d i f f e r e n c e between marginal and c e n t r a l poetry, between v o i d and plenum-void, between d e s t r u c t i o n and d e c r e a t i o n , between m i l l e r ' s concept of the o s c i l l a t i o n s of poetry as an emptying- out and benamou's concept of " p a r t i c i p a t i o n . " to see how d e c r e a t i o n manifests i t s e l f i n technique, how- ever, i t i s mandatory that a r e j e c t i o n be made of benamou's a s s o c i a t i o n of stevens and the adamic t r a d i t i o n and h i s r e l a t e d c l a i m "since a l l we want i s a new sense of t h i n g s , renewing the words w i l l do. the impressionist impulse goes toward the t r a n s - parence of the medium, and eschews the issue of absolutes." stevens i s not "a l a t t e r - d a y adam," d e s p i t e the number of c r i t i c s who have c a l l e d him so. adam, as pearce r i g h t l y sug- gests i s l e d i n e v i t a b l y t o usurp the thrones wanting to be adam, the american poet...has f i n a l l y d i s c o v e r e d , i s not the same as wanting to be a poet, or a man, any man of the imagination. i t i s wanting to be a god - a god i n a world without gods, to be sure, but a god nonetheless. pearce's adam ends i n inescapable d i s o r d e r and the emptiness of exhaustions demanding that poetry t r a n s v a l u a t e i t s e l f by exhaust- ing i t s e l f (which was i t s mode of being i t s e l f ) ; that i t become an instrument which i n a l l i t s d e c r e a t i v e power, could blazon f o r t h the pure power of c r e a t i v i t y - stevens perhaps demanded too much f o r lt. the point i s w e l l - t a k e n because i t r e v e a l s an unresolved problem i n benamou's approach - a problem benamou a s c r i b e s to stevens (the u n d e r l i n i n g i s mine)s the metaphors of concealment and divestment help us to understand stevens' d i f f i c u l t y : that center which he seeks i s both r e a l i t y and a s e l f . i t tends to naked r e a l i t y through a c e n t r i p e t a l movement. for t h i n g s r e v e a l t h e i r essence as,a sum of p r o f i l e s . the problem i s g r a p h i c a l l y i l l u s t r a t e d by the poem "study of two pears" (cp ). pack has pointed out that the poem "begins w i t h the assumption that the pears can be a b s o l u t e l y d e f i n e d , drawn to the f a c t of what they are and ends i n the knowledge that the pears can never be known i n i s o l a t i o n . but the poem i s more involved than the bare statement of the con- t r a d i c t i o n suggests. there are two pears i n the poem because the "opusculum paedagogum" i s more than an i l l u s t r a t i o n of the f l u i d l i m i t s of o b j e c t s . the "viols,/nudes or b o t t l e s " of the f i r s t stanza are dead forms - what stevens terms i n "add this to r h e t o r i c , " "evading metaphor" (cp ). but each pear can be observed and described only as an endless s e r i e s of chang- i n g r e l a t i o n s both w i t h i n and without i t s shape, and the only t h i n g which makes the pears pears i s that they resemble each other. such a statement sounds t r i t e , but i t does have conse- quences. i t proves, among other t h i n g s , that s i s t e r quinn s l i p p e d when she made of the poem an example of " v i c t o r y going to the r e a l over the f i c t i v e . " ? rather, i t i l l u s t r a t e s the r e a l i t y of what she terms "the f l u d i t y of essence": one c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of the world of wallace stevens i s the f l u i d i t y of essence. besides the union of opposites i n nature, there i s a l s o a mysterious transference of essences. now that the concept of essence i s no longer taken f o r granted - at l e a s t i n s e v e r a l schools of modern philosophy - t h i s i n t e r f e r e n c e w i t h q u i d d i t y r e q u i r e s l e s s suspension of d i s b e l i e f than i t would have i n e a r l i e r p e r i o d s . one instance of such mutation occurs i n the middle s e c t i o n of "notes toward a supreme f i c t i o n " ; the water of the l a k e , says the poet was "like a momen- t a r y c o l o r , i n which swans/were seraphs, were s a i n t s , were changing essences." "study of two pears" demonstrates that the essence of pear can never be known i n the object but only as a resemblance between the r e l a t i o n s that compose two o b j e c t s . the. i r o n y of the n a r r a t o r ' s unconscious preconception that the pears are i d e n t i c a l i s f u l l y brought out i n the f o u r t h stanza: in the way they are modelled there are b i t s of blue. a hard dry l e a f hangs from the stem. (cp ) pears hang i n d i v i d u a l l y , l i k e apples; i s there one l e a f or two? does "modelled" imply that the pears are n a t u r a l or a r t i f i c i a l - modelled by the hands or modelled a f t e r a p a t t e r n of excellence f o r pears? the n a r r a t o r can only avoid the problem; he has f a l - l e n i n t o the s i n of r e a l i s m pointed out by camus: the r e a l i s t a r t i s t and the f o r m a l i s t a r t i s t t r y to f i n d u n i t y where i t does not e x i s t , i n r e a l i t y i n i t s crudest s t a t e , or i n imaginative c r e a t i o n which wants to a b o l i s h a l l r e a l i t y . this i s the problem: i t would appear that there i s no "sum of p r o f i l e s " other than an impossible t o t a l i t y which w i l l r e v e a l the essence of t h i n g s . the adamic s o l u t i o n o f f e r e d by benamou j u s t w i l l not wash: the " t r a n s f i x i n g o b j e c t " i s a r e s i d u e , at a "center of resemblance," l i k e the pineapple "reduced" from the "sum of i t s c o m p l i c a t i o n s " ; i t i s an image of convergence to a center. cur i m p e r f e c t i o n s , as stevens c a l l s our successive views of r e a l i t y . . . form a c i r c l e of shapes, c o l o r s , metaphors. keeping t h i s world on the move w i l l guarantee the f i x i t y of i t s c e n t e r : " i t must change," so that the perceptive s e l f may be evolved. the pure object r e v e a l s the pure s e l f , or should; the naked t h i n g m i r r o r s the naked man or should. such are the a b s t r a c t terms of the exchange. stevens' poetry produces poems....out of a f a i t h ; the f a i t h that the imagination can or should t r y to apprehend r e a l i t y , and i n so doing, apprehends i t s e l f . this view, o f f e r e d as c o n c l u s i o n , can serve to d i s t i n g u i s h on one side the d u a l i s t i c imagination of mallarme and v a l e r y , i s s u i n g i n the same h y p e r b o l i c doubt of r e a l i t y as descartes' cogito, and on the other side the romantic imagination culminating i n husserl's cogitos the f l u x of l i v i n g , my f l u x , as t h i n k i n g s u b j e c t , can be l a r g e l y unapprehended, unknown to any extent of i t s past or f u t u r e , i t i s enough to look at l i f e i n f l u x and a c t u a l l y present, f o r me to say, without any r e s t r i c t i o n and of neces- s i t y , i am, t h i s l i f e i s , i l i v e : cogito. in making the statement "stevens' a s c e t i c look resembles the phenomenologist's epoche much more than i t does the symbolist's askesis," benamou u n w i t t i n g l y r e t u r n s to the i s s u e of a b s o l u t e s . the whole point of sartre's argument with h u s s e r l i n the transcendence of the ego i s that the " i " of the phenomenological c o g i t o i s unnecessary - an " o p a c i t y " - and that r e d u c t i o n can only be p o s i t e d as an escape from "absolute con- sciousness" : perhaps, i n r e a l i t y , the e s s e n t i a l f u n c t i o n of the ego i s not so much t h e o r e t i c a l as p r a c t i c a l . we have n o t i c e d , indeed, that i t does not bind up the u n i t y of phenomema; that i t i s l i m i t e d to r e f l e c t i n g an i d e a l u n i t y , whereas the r e a l and concrete u n i t y has long been e f f e c t e d . but perhaps the e s s e n t i a l r o l e of the ego i s to mask from consciousness i t s very spontane i t y . s a r t r e ' s concept of the f u n c t i o n and l i m i t of the ego i s much c l o s e r to the egos d r a m a t i c a l l y presented by stevens i n h i s poems. when consciousness becomes aware of i t s e l f as subject i t i s absolute; when man's consciousness becomes aware of i t s e l f ( " r e f l e c t s " ) , i t can only be as an object ("mask") - a f a c t a f f i r m e d by coleridge long ago: here then we have, by a n t i c i p a t i o n , the d i s t i n c t i o n between the c o n d i t i o n a l f i n i t e i (which, as known i n d i s t i n c t consciousness by occasion of experience, i s c a l l e d by kant's f o l l o w e r s the e m p i r i c a l i) and the absolute i am, and l i k e w i s e the dependence or r a t h e r the inherence of the former i n the l a t t e r ; i n whom "we l i v e , and move, and have our being," as saint paul d i v i n e l y a s s e r t s . . . . ^ perhaps t h i s concept e x p l a i n s why joyce's stephen dedalus should make "the dramatic form" the highest p o s s i b l e form: the p e r s o n a l i t y of the a r t i s t , at f i r s t a c r y or a cadence or a mood and then a lambent n a r r a t i v e , ; , f i n a l l y r e f i n e s i t s e l f out of e x i s t e n c e , impersonalizes i t s e l f , so to speak. the e s t h e t i c image i n dramatic form i s l i f e p u r i f i e d i n and r e - p r o j e c t e d from the human imagination. the mystery of e s t h e t i c , l i k e that of m a t e r i a l c r e a t i o n i s accomplished. the a r t i s t , l i k e the god of c r e a t i o n , remains w i t h i n or behind or beyond or above h i s handiwork, i n v i s i b l e , r e f i n e d put of e x i s t e n c e , i n d i f f e r e n t , paring h i s f i n g e r n a i l s . the l o g i c of t h e i r p o s i t i o n should, t h e r e f o r e , b r i n g the c r i t i c s of an adamic stevens back to the absolute and hence to a concept of symbolism. that i t does not i s i n e x p l i c a b l e . pearce, f o r example, would object to a paper by b a i r d on stevens* " e x i s t e n - t i a l i s m " ^ on the grounds that "he wants to save stevens f o r some form of theism." g u t pearce misses completely the i r o n i c c o n t r a d i c t i o n i n h i s own view; "the supreme f i c t i o n , the im- p o s s i b l e p o s s i b l e man, the u l t i m a t e poem - these a r e , i n the work of stevens' l a s t phase, the grand p o s t u l a t e s of the ego. (stevens once remarked: "god i s a p o s t u l a t e of the ego.") p o s t u l a t i n g these, the ego guarantees i t s own c o n t i n u i n g ex- i s t e n c e ...." i t i s not that the ego p o s t u l a t e s the existence of god, thereby making god a dependent c r e a t i o n of the ego; i t i s that god i s a necessary p o s t u l a t e of the ego-- the'grounds of i t s e x i s t e n c e . the i r o n y i s f u l l y brought out i n stevens' two e x p l i c i t treatments of adam i n h i s poetry. in "the pure good of theory," the f i g u r e of adam i s opposed to "a large-sculptured, p l a t o n i c person, f r e e from time..." (cp )' the impetus of the poem i s the d e s i r e f o r " f e l i c i t y " : f e l i c i t y , ah i time i s the hooded enemy, the i n i m i c a l music, the enchantered space in which the enchanted preludes have t h e i r place. (cp ) adam and the p l a t o n i s t are not the same f i g u r e i n the poem. i t was adam who, by usurping absolute c r e a t i v i t y , created time: we knew one parent must have been d i v i n e , adam of beau regard, from f a t e l y s i a , whose mind malformed t h i s morning metaphor, while a l l the leaves leaked g o l d . his mind made morning, as he s l e p t . he woke i n a metaphor: t h i s was a metamorphosis of paradise, malformed, the world was paradise malformed... (cp - ) adam was the enchanterer and h i s c r e a t i o n i s what the p l a t o n i s t must decreate by c r e a t i n g "enchanted preludes" w i t h i n time. adamic time i s d e s t r u c t i o n : i t i s time that beats i n the breast and i t i s time that b a t t e r s a g a i n s t the mind, s i l e n t and proud, the mind that knows i t i s destroyed by time. time i s a horse that runs i n the h e a r t , a horse without a r i d e r on a road at n i g h t . (cp ) the key to the nature of the p l a t o n i c person i s contained i n t h i s d e s c r i p t i o n of the 'proud mind'; the parody, i n the l i n e "whose mind malformed t h i s morning metaphor," of hopkin's l i n e " i caught t h i s morning morning's minion..." ("the windhover") i s i n d i c a t i v e of adam's p r i d e . in d i s c o v e r i n g only ego i n the world (the k i n d of i d e n t i t y between s e l f and other p o s i t e d by benamou), he has created a "metaphor" which w i l l be destroyed. the world of adam i s trapped i n the i d e n t i t y of ego and other; i t i s the world discovered by the v i r i l e poet - "...a world that does not move f o r the weight of i t s own heaviness." (na ) the p l a t o n i s t , on the other hand, i s not l e d through p r i d e t o a f f i r m that metaphor i s i d e n t i t y . in my view, the e l l i p s i s a f t e r "malformed" i s the equivalent of hopkins' "brute beauty and v a l o r and a c t , oh, a i r , p r i d e , plume/here/buckle!" i t i n d i c a t e s the end of adam and the i n i t i a t i o n of the prelude of the p l a t o n i s t . i t i s the p l a t o n i s t ' s ear that attends the v a r y i n g of t h i s precarious music, the change of key not q u i t e detected at the moment of change and, now, i t attends the d i f f i c u l t d i f f e r e n c e . to say the s o l a r c h a r i o t i s junk is not a v a r i a t i o n but an end. yet to speak of the whole world as metaphor is s t i l l to s t i c k to the contents of the mind and the d e s i r e to b e l i e v e i n a metaphor. i t i s to s t i c k to the n i c e r knowledge of b e l i e f , that what i t b e l i e v e s i n i s not t r u e . (cp ) in t h i s reading, the poem springs to l i f e . the " s o l a r c h a r i o t " i s adam's, of course, or more s p e c i f i c a l l y , i t i s h i s c l a i m to d i v i n i t y . the p l a t o n i s t , by d i s c o v e r i n g the d i f f e r e n c e between the paradise of adam and 'the r e a l p a r a d i s e ' discovers "...a s o u l i n the world" (cp ). he d i s c o v e r s the t r u t h that metaphor i s resemblance: i t i s never the t h i n g but the v e r s i o n of the t h i n g : the fragrance of the woman not her s e l f , her s e l f i n her manner not the s o l i d b l o c k , the day i n i t s c o l o r not perpending time, time i n i t s weather, our most sovereign l o r d , the weather i n words and words i n sounds of sound. (cp ) "the pure good of theory" i s the p l a t o n i c good that the theory of metaphor as resemblance leads t o , and one uses that theory t o decreate, which as benamou suggested i s to c l e a r the world of i t s "man-locked s e t " (cp ). but such a process i n v o l v e s more than " r e l i g i o u s ideas and m y t h o l o g i c a l metaphors": the "necessary angel of e a r t h " (cp ) who speaks the words i s h i m s e l f only one of the p l a t o n i c preludes: "am i not,/myself, only h a l f a f i g u r e of a s o r t . . . " (cp ). despite the macabre nature of the d e c r e a t i v e transformations imposed upon him by the "enchantering" of adam, the preludes of the p l a t o n i s t have t h e i r i d e a l end: these devastations are the d i v e r t i s s e m e n t s of a d e s t r o y i n g s p i r i t u a l that digs-a-dog, whines i n i t s hole f o r puppies to come see, springs outward, being l a r g e , and, i n the dust, being s m a l l , i n s c r i b e s f e r o c i o u s alphabets, f l i e s l i k e a bat expanding as i t f l i e s , u n t i l i t s wings bear o f f n i g h t ' s middle w i t c h ; and yet remains the same, the beast of l i g h t , groaning i n h a l f - e x p l o i t e d g u t t u r a l s the need of i t s element, the f i n a l need of f i n a l access to i t s element - of access l i k e the page of a wiggy book, touched suddenly by the u n i v e r s a l f l a r e for a moment,'a moment i n which we read and r e - peat the eloquence of l i g h t ' s f a c u l t i e s . (cp - ) his d i s c o v e r y of the inadequacy of adam and h i s images leads to a s e r i e s of r e b i r t h s . the source of stevens' images here ( t h e i r p a r t i c u l a r j u s t i f i c a t i o n i n other words) i s not c l e a r to me, but the movement from night towards l i g h t a f f i r m s the general l i n e s of the p l a t o n i c concept of the r e b i r t h of the soul. the f a c t that the p l a t o n i s t never reaches h i s element " f r e e from time" does not negate the reading. the p l a t o n i s t i s not "pure good"; l i k e aquinas, he i s a symbol of the pure good. p l a t o n i s t as poet becomes orpheus; and the proper image f o r the " c e n t r a l poet" i s n e i t h e r 'ultra-omnipotent' man or omniscient god. he i s orpheus, son of man and muse, l i v i n g i n a world f u l l of imprisoned nymphs and dryads, whose movements form the c o n f i g u r a t i o n s of h i s music, who plays h i s preludes u n t i l the used-to earth and sky, and the t r e e and cloud, the used-to t r e e and used-to c l o u d , lose the o l d uses that they made of them, and theys these men, and earth and sky, inform each other by sharp i n f o r m a t i o n s , sharp, free knowledges, secreted u n t i l then, breaches of that which held them f a s t . i t i s as i f the c e n t r a l poem became the world, and that which i n an a l t i t u d e would soar, a v i s , a p r i n c i p l e o r , i t may be, the meditation of a p r i n c i p l e , or e l s e an inherent order a c t i v e to be i t s e l f , a nature to i t s n a t i v e s a l l beneficence, a repose, utmost repose, the: muscles of a magnet a p t l y f e l t , a g i a n t , on the h o r i z o n , g l i s t e n i n g . . . ( c p - ) the " g i a n t " of "a p r i m i t i v e l i k e an orb" i s the i d e a l , the absolute mirrored but not contained by the orphic music: that's i t . the l o v e r w r i t e s , the b e l i e v e r hears, the poet mumbles and the p a i n t e r sees, each one, h i s fated e c c e n t r i c i t y , as a p a r t , but p a r t , but tenacious p a r t i c l e , of the s k e l e t o n of the ether, the t o t a l of l e t t e r s , prophecies, p e r c e p t i o n s , clods of c o l o r , the g i a n t of nothingness, each one and the g i a n t ever changing, l i v i n g i n change. (cp ) decreation, f o r the orphic poet, i s not a process of exhaustion, but a process of r e l e a s e . i t i s not a d e n i a l of the absolute, but an acceptance of the contingency of the contingent. orpheus was, above a l l , a s y m b o l i s t , even in p l u t a r c h i a n myth. (aridaeus-thespesius i s the double name of a soul r e l e a s e d from i t s body but not i t s image); the r a t i o n a l part of the soul of aridaeus-thespesius, then, comes near t o , but may not pass, the moon; and can only see from a f a r the g l o r y of the true delphi which i s e t e r n a l i n the heavens - the sun, the seat of a p o l l o , the home of reason. orpheus, when he went to seek eurydice, came, aridaeus-thespesius i s t o l d , only as f a r as the oracle, of dreams, i . e . the moon. stevens' other e x p l i c i t a l l u s i o n to adam only i n t e n s i f i e s the view of h i s f a l l a f f i r m e d i n "the pure good of theory." i t occurs i n "notes toward a supreme f i c t i o n " i n connection w i t h the n a r r a t o r ' s i n v o l v e d i n i t i a t i o n of the "ephebe" i n t o the mysteries of " a b s t r a c t i o n " ! the f i r s t idea was not our own. adam in eden was the f a t h e r of descartes and eve made a i r the m i r r o r of h e r s e l f , of her sons and of her daughters. they found them- selves in heaven as i n a g l a s s ; a second e a r t h ; and i n the earth i t s e l f they found a green - the i n h a b i t a n t s of a very varnished green. (cp ) venturing i n t o "notes..." has become a dangerous but i n - escapable e x e r c i s e f o r c r i t i c s of stevens. so much has been s a i d and so l i t t l e e s t a b l i s h e d that i t i s not p o s s i b l e to r e s o l v e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s . only a blanket i n d i c a t i o n of the work done can be made. one issue alone concerns the present d i s - c u s s i o n and that i s benamou's a s s e r t i o n about the nature of the " f i r s t i d e a " ! his " f i r s t i d e a " i s not at a l l mallarme's p l a t o n i c idge. he explained i f i n terms of p i c t o r i a l v i s i b i l i t y ! someone here wrote me the other day and wanted to know what i meant.by a t h i n k e r of the f i r s t i d e a . i f you take the v a r n i s h and d i r t of generations o f f a p i c t u r e , you see i t i n i t s • f i r s t idea. i f you t h i n k about the world w i t h - out i t s v a r n i s h and d i r t , you are a t h i n k e r of the f i r s t idea. the l i n g u i s t i c equivalent of such a cleaning-up (which, i n c i d e n t a l l y , makes man a god) takes place i n many poems.... the temptation to prove the c o n t r a d i c t i o n inherent i n benamou's approach simply by p o i n t i n g out the r e l a t i o n between the world of adam and eve and the f u n c t i o n of the t h i n k e r of the f i r s t idea i s strong. but the poem i t s e l f proves that the " f i r s t i d e a " i s something so c l o s e l y resembling the p l a t o n i c idea that no d i s t i n c t i o n can be formulated. the "ephebe," a p p r o p r i a t e l y enough, i s about to be i n i t i - ated i n t o h i s f u n c t i o n as c i t i z e n of the s t a t e - a s t a t e which soon reveals i t s i d e a l q u a l i t i e s . two aspects of that i n i t i - a t i o n give coherence to " i t must be a b s t r a c t " - the " f i r s t idea" and the " t h i n k e r of the f i r s t i d e a . " in i , the l e s s o n i s that the ephebe must see the sun " c l e a r l y i n the idea of i t , " (not t h i n k i t ) and see i t as i t i s , without phoebus: phoebus i s dead, ephebe. but phoebus was a name f o r something that never could be named. there was a p r o j e c t f o r the sun and i s . there i s a p r o j e c t f o r the sun. the sun must bear no name, g o l d f l o u r i s h e r , but be in the d i f f i c u l t y of what i t i s to be. (cp i) those who t h i n k that the phrase "the death of one god i s the death of a l l " equals humanitarian r e j e c t i o n of the absolute miss the r e a l point of the l e s s o n : how c l e a n the sun when seen i n i t s i d e a , washed i n the remotest c l e a n l i n e s s of a heaven that has e x p e l l e d us and our images....(cp i) phoebus i s dead because he was a name. one can almost p i n p o i n t the source of stevens' i n s p i r a t i o n here by r e f e r r i n g to c o l e r i d g e ' s r e j e c t i o n of one of gray's l i n e s - "and reddening phoebus l i f t s h i s golden f i r e . " coleridge s a i d of i t : but then i t i s a bad l i n e , not because the language i s d i s t i n c t from that of prose; but because i t conveys incongruous images, because i t confounds the cause and the e f f e c t , the r e a l t h i n g with the p e r s o n i f i e d r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of the t h i n g . . . . that the "phoebus" i s hackneyed, and a school-boy image, i s an a c c i d e n t a l f a u l t that i t i s part of an exploded mythology, i s an o b j e c t i o n more deeply grounded. yet when the t o r c h of ancient l e a r n i n g was r e - k i n d l e d , so cheering were i t s beams, that our e l d e s t poets, cut o f f by c h r i s t i a n i t y from a l l a c c r e d i t e d machinery, and de- p r i v e d of a l l acknowledged guardians and symbols... were n a t u r a l l y induced to adopt, as a p o e t i c language, those fabulous personages .... phoebus i s two removes from a symbol. he p e r s o n i f i e s sun, but the sun i t s e l f i s the r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of the power behind i t . . . i t s cause. the sun the ephebe i s to perceive i s a "supreme f i c t i o n . " so much i s i n d i c a t e d by the f i r s t stanzaj begin, ephebe, by p e r c e i v i n g the idea of t h i s i n v e n t i o n , t h i s invented world, the i n c o n c e i v a b l e idea of the sun. (cp ) the exact balance between conception, p e r c e p t i o n , and i n v e n t i o n i s maintained throughout stevens' poems. here i t q u i t e c l e a r l y i n d i c a t e s the mediating r o l e played by the sun between the idea and the p e r c e i v e r . the idea i s inconceivable and somehow serves as cause of the sun, although i t , i t s e l f , i s to have no con- c e i v e d cause; never suppose an i n v e n t i n g mind as source of t h i s idea nor f o r that mind compose a voluminous master f o l d e d i n h i s f i r e . (cp ) what t h i s means e x a c t l y i s that i f there i s such a mind, the ephebe cannot conceive of i t as " i n v e n t i n g " the idea. anyway, the idea i s , d e s p i t e stevens' l e t t e r , so a b s t r a c t as to be i n c o n c e i v a b l e as other than absolute. unless he has read "the extremest book of the itfisest man" (cp ) which stevens mentions i n h i s d e d i c a t i o n , the ephebe should be awestruck by the demands made on him by h i s master; the f o l l o w i n g s e c t i o n s i n d i c a t e the n e c e s s i t y f o r c l a r i f y i n g the l e s s o n . the ephebe has l e a r n e d , however, that a l l con- ceptions (except the sun?) of the absolute idea are inadequate; i t i s something x^hich can only be perceived by "an ignorant eye." this i s the eye of stevens' prose - "what the eye be- holds may be the t e x t of l i f e . i t i s , n e v e r t h e l e s s , a t e x t we do not w r i t e . the eye does not beget i n resemblance. i t sees. but the mind begets i n resemblance" (na ). i t i s a l s o the eye of "peter the voyant" i n "questions are remarks," whose s i n g l e question seems to be of the essence of d e c r e a t i o n : the sun aches and a i l s and then returns h a l l o o upon the h o r i z o n amid a d u l t e n f a n t i l l a g e s . i t s f i r e f a i l s to p i e r c e the v i s i o n that beholds i t , f a i l s to destroy the antique acceptances, except that the grandson sees i t as i t i s , peter the voyant, who says "mother, what i s t h a t " - the object that r i s e s w i t h so much r h e t o r i c , but not f o r him. his question is complete. i t i s the question of what he i s capable. i t i s the extreme, the expert aetat . he w i l l never r i d e the red horse she d e s c r i b e s . (cp ) the ephebe, too, has h i s questions, and one of them emerges i n i i . the- master has j u s t given him the motive f o r the de- c r e a t i v e r e t u r n to the f i r s t i d e a : i t i s the c e l e s t i a l ennui of apartments that sends us back to the f i r s t i d e a , the quick of t h i s i n v e n t i o n ; and yet so poisonous are the ravishments of t r u t h , so f a t a l to the t r u t h i t s e l f , the f i r s t idea becomes the hermit i n a poet's metaphors, who comes and goes and comes and goes a l l day. (cp l ) i t i s important that t h i s passage be understood because i t i s the p o i n t of b i f u r c a t i o n between two stances adopted i n face of the f i r s t idea. the motive i s c l e a r . "apartments" are s e l f - c o n t a i n e d , d i v i s i v e u n i t s - adamic names or ego i d e n t i t i e s . " c e l e s t i a l ennui" i s a heavenly boredom communicated as impulse t o the ephebes of the world. but what happens to the f i r s t idea i s ambiguous; "ravishments" means e i t h e r the rape of t r u t h or the ecstacy of i t . probably i t means both. in h i s d e l i g h t a t d i s c o v e r i n g the f i r s t idea as f i r s t i d e a , i t would appear that the poet e f f e c t s the kind of d i v o r c e benamou imagined f o r mallarme. the poet makes the f i r s t i d e a , i n i t s absoluteness, u n r e l a t e d to the world - e x p l i c i t l y to h i s metaphors - when, i n r e a l i t y , the f i r s t idea i s the l i f e of the world - "the quick of t h i s i n v e n t i o n . " there i s danger here. the poisonous "ennui of the f i r s t i d e a " evokes two kinds of response. one i s contained, as i l l u s t r a t i o n , i n the second h a l f of i i : but the p r i e s t d e s i r e s . the philosopher d e s i r e s . and not to have i s the beginning of d e s i r e . to have what i s not i s i t s ancient c y c l e . (cp ) the other response i s contained i n vi: not to be r e a l i z e d because not to be seen, not to be loved nor hated because not to be r e a l i z e d . weather by franz hals, brushed up by brushy winds i n brushy clouds, wetted by b l u e , c o l d e r f o r white. not to be spoken t o , without a r o o f , without f i r s t f r u i t s , without t h e ' v i r g i n a l of b i r d s , the dark-blown c e i n t u r e loosened, not r e l i n q u i s h e d . gay i s , gay was, the gay f o r s y t h i a and yellow, yellow t h i n s the northern blue. without a name and nothing to be d e s i r e d , i f only imagined but imagined w e l l . my house has changed a l i t t l e i n the sun. the fragrance of the magnolias comes c l o s e , false f l i c k , f a l s e form, but falseness c l o s e to k i n . i t must be v i s i b l e or i n v i s i b l e , i n v i s i b l e or v i s i b l e or boths a seeing and unseeing i n the eye. the weather and the g i a n t of the weather, say the weather, the mere weather, the mere a i r ; an a b s t r a c t i o n blooded, as a man by thought. (cp ) in vi, the f i r s t idea i s not even mentioned - with the exception of ix, the s i n g l e omission of the phrase from the p a r t s of " i t must be a b s t r a c t . " i t i s appropriate that i t should not be because vi i s the master's attempt to demonstrate i t r a t h e r than t a l k about i t , j u s t as ix i s h i s attempt t o demonstrate the t h i n k e r of the f i r s t i d e a . of the elements which compose t h i s s e c t i o n , some must be passed over l i g h t l y . the " f o r s y t h i a " f o r example, i s part of the elaborate process to produce a "symbolic" green noted by heringman: and i n the c o n c l u s i o n of the "notes," stevens marks a f u l l r e a l i z a t i o n of s y n t h e s i s , not only w i t h the transcendence which the poem i l l u s t r a t e s but with the s p e c i f i c i n t e r s e c t i o n s of h i s two realms i n the f i g u r e s of t h e i r c h i e f names £?]and symbols. the passage includes the harmonious i n t e r s e c t i o n of f i c - t i o n and f a c t , poetry and s c i e n c e , i r r a t i o n a l and r a t i o n a l , i d e a l ( c r y s t a l ) and r e a l ; and the symbolic f u s i o n of moon and sun (or n i g h t and day) i n t w i l i g h t , and of blue and g o l d i n green. the realms of imagi- n a t i o n and r e a l i t y i n t e r s e c t to produce a transcendent r e a l i t y which i s green. frans hals i s noteworthy because h i s technique - evolved t o give a sense of l i f e to h i s p o r t r a i t s - had a great i n f l u e n c e on the i m p r e s s i o n i s t s , whose p o i n t i l l i s m l e f t , f o r example, green t o be "a seeing and unseeing i n the eye." on the l e v e l of analogy, green i s symbol of the f i r s t i d e a , " i f only imagined but imagined w e l l . " what one imagines i s not the f i r s t i d e a , but the images capable of. symbolizing that idea (opposites coupled i n the coleridgean sense). in s h o r t , vi i s a demonstration of the nature of e x i s t e n t images. the point of the analogy between i m p r e s s i o n i s t technique and p o e t i c p r a c t i c e i s worth d w e l l i n g on. benamou once made a study of the r e l a t i o n : thus the poetry of wallace stevens incorporates con- f l i c t i n g elements from impressionism and cubism: naturalness and a r t i f i c i a l i t y , d e l i g h t i n appearances and metamorphosis of appearances. a b a f f l i n g sum of . r e l a t i o n s - f o r where i n these extreme ranges i s the i d e n t i t y of the poet's s e n s i b i l i t y ? the i d e n t i t y i s i n stevens' concern w i t h change. impressionism shows the passive p r i n c i p l e of change. ...but i n cubism, "more than changes of l i g h t " are i n v o l v e d . imagination i s the a c t i v e p r i n c i p l e which transforms and extends the object by m u l t i p l y i n g r e - semblances . but so d i d stevens i n "a lot of people bathing i n a. stream" (cp )i the whole poem generates the impression of a poin- t i l l i s t p a i n t i n g too c l o s e l y seen. stevens d e l i b e r a t e l y draws an analogy between the plane of s t r i c t r e a l i s m apparent i n the n a r r a t o r ' s d e s c r i p t i o n and the i m p r e s s i o n i s t ' s use of points of c o l o r to suggest the a c t u a l . the opening l i n e s , " i t was l i k e passing a boundary to d i v e / i n t o the s u n - f i l l e d water..." suggest t h a t boundary of space between p a i n t i n g and p e r c e i v e r at, which the apparently s o l i d and r e a l i s t i c forms d i s s o l v e i n t o a mass of "anonymlds": ourselves i n the c l e a r e s t green - w e l l , c a l l i t green. we bathed i n yellow green and yellow blue and i n these comic c o l o r s dangled down, l i k e t h e i r p a r t i c u l a r c h a r a c t e r s , a d d i c t s to b l o t c h e s , angular anonymlds gulping f o r shape among the reeds. the poem emphasizes the observation of r e a l i t y and the con- sequence of that observation. the n a r r a t o r i s , l i k e " c a l i p e r " of "last looks at the l i l a c s , " r a t i o n a l i s t i c . his experience i n the stream i s traumatic, but though he l o s e s h i s head ("it was l i k e passing a boundary, f l o a t i n g without a head.... ') i n the sun of the moment, he recovers the c e r t a i n t y of h i s adamic r e a l i t y and consequently of h i s s e l f ? how good i t was at home again at night to prepare f o r bed, i n the frame of the house, and move round the rooms, which do not ever seem to change... "gulping f o r shape among the reeds," he r a t i o n a l i z e s h i s ex- perience by making i t "grotesque" r a t h e r than a r e l i g i o u s ex- perience r e l a t e d , through o p p o s i t i o n , to kenosis; he r e j e c t s i t as an i l l u s i o n f o s t e r e d by the good o f f i c e s of the sun, which, a t the moment of withdrawal, becomes l u d i c r o u s - "good f o r t u n e r of the grotesque, patroon,/a funny f o r e i g n e r of meek address." the i r o n y of h i s p o s i t i o n i s f u l l y i n d i c a t e d by the e l l i p s e s a f t e r "change." this i s r e d u c t i o n w i t h a-vengeance and i t s motive i s the f e a r of a r e a l i t y which denies adam the comforts of h i s ego. the master of "notes..." comes to a complementary con- c l u s i o n . i f i t i s wrong to f e a r the experience of the absolute, i t i s a l s o wrong to d e s i r e to possess i t . this i s the meaning of the "hermit" image i n i i ; the master's l e s s o n was that the f i r s t idea should be a hermit i n the poet's metaphors. l i k e the image of the " b o d i l e s s " serpent i n "the auroras of autumn," the poet's metaphor " . . . i s form g u l p i n g a f t e r formlessness,/ skin f l a s h i n g to wished-for disappearances/and the serpent body f l a s h i n g without the s k i n . " (cp l l ) l i k e the "ravishments of t r u t h , " that double-serpent, too, has h i s poison: these l i g h t s may f i n a l l y a t t a i n a pole in the midmost midnight and f i n d the serpent t h e r e , l o in another n e s t , the master of the maze of body and a i r and forms and images, r e l e n t l e s s l y i n possession of happiness. this i s h i s poisons that we should d i s b e l i e v e even t h a t . his meditations i n the f e r n s , when he moved so s l i g h t l y to make sure of sun, made us no l e s s as sure. (cp - ) despite the d i s s a t i s f a c t o r y nature of the r e s u l t s of h i s honest e x p l i c a t i o n of the poem, davie has made the e s s e n t i a l observation about t h i s passages sure of what? of some constant p r i n c i p l e behind the e l u s i v e metamorphoses of the n a t u r a l world as p r o f f e r e d by our senses? or of there being no such u n d e r l y i n g constancy to look f o r ? elsewhere i n the poem we seem to l e a r n that the c h a n g e a b i l i t y of that snake, the world, when i t leads us to accept the second a l t e r - n a t i v e , leads us a s t r a y - "this i s h i s poison." the image of.the poisonous a s s o c i a t e d with the absolute occurs repeatedly i n stevens' poems. in "st. john and the back-ache" - i n what r i d d e l terms "the mock debate...between the s p i r i t and the imperfect world where i t r e s i d e s " _ i t appears i n a new l i g h t at the c l o s e of st. john's l i s t of e x i s t e n t images of "presence"s my point i s that these i l l u s t r a t i o n s are n e i t h e r angels, no nor b r i l l i a n t blows t h e r e o f , t i - r i l l - a - r o o , nor a l l one's l u c k at once i n a play of s t r i n g s . they help us face the dumbfoundering abyss between us and the o b j e c t , e x t e r n a l cause, the l i t t l e ignorance that i s e v e r y t h i n g , the p o s s i b l e nest i n the i n v i s i b l e t r e e , which i n a composite season, now unknown, denied, dismissed, may hold a serpent, loud in our captious hymns, erect and sinuous, whose venom and whose wisdom w i l l be one. (cp ) one sees here so many things t h a t i t becomes' d i f f i c u l t to sep- a r a t e them. the b i b l i c a l analogy i s foremost; the serpent here sounds l i k e the "brazen serpent" of moses, used by jesus, i n john s l , as an i l l u s t r a t i o n of the k i n d of r e b i r t h man must undergo. that the serpent is " e r e c t " suggests both the legend of the snake's a b i l i t y to walk erect before the f a l l and the u p l i f t e d serpent of moses. the a l l e g o r i c a l s i g n i f i c a n c e of the b i b l i c a l serpent i s mentioned by peloubet; to present the serpent form, as deprived of i t s power to h u r t , impaled as the trophy, of a c o n q u e r o r w a s to a s s e r t that e v i l , p h y s i c a l and s p i r i t u a l , had been overcome, and thus help to strengthen the weak f a i t h . . . others look upon the u p l i f t e d serpent as a symbol of l i f e and h e a l t h , i t having been so worshipped i n eygpt. the two views have a p o i n t of contact, f o r the primary idea connected with the serpent i s wisdom. wisdom, apart from obedience to god, degenerates to cunning and degrades and envenoms man's nature. wisdom, y i e l d - ing to d i v i n e law, i s the source of h e a l i n g and r e s t o r - i n g i n f l u e n c e s , and the serpent form thus became a symbol of d e l i v e r a n c e and h e a l t h . there is i r o n y here; the brazen serpent made by moses became an object of i d o l a t r o u s worship and was destroyed. st. john's serpent i s somehow to escape that f a t e . the serpent i s "presence" but the c o u p l i n g of i t s wisdom and i t s venom i s put i n the con- d i t i o n a l f u t u r e . in godbole's terms, "presence" manifests i t - s e l f as absence i n a f a l l e n world: good and e v i l are d i f f e r e n t , as t h e i r names imply. but, i n my own humble o p i n i o n , they are both of them aspects of my lord. he i s present i n the one, absent i n the other, and the d i f f e r e n c e between presence and absence i s g r e a t , as great as my feeble mind can grasp. yet absence i m p l i e s presence, absence i s not non- e x i s t e n c e , and we are therefore e n t i t l e d to repeat, 'come, come, come, come.' the e x i s t e n t images i n d i c a t e d by st. john are j u s t i n - d i c a t i o n s . l i k e the woman of "the woman i n sunshine". the e f f e c t of the object i s beyond the mind's extremest pinch and, e a s i l y , as i n a sudden c o l o r of the sea. but i t i s not that big-bushed green. or i n a t r a g i c mode, as at the moment of the year when, t i c k , autumn howls upon half-naked summer. but i t i s not the u n r a v e l l i n g of her yellow s h i f t . presence i s not the woman, come upon, not yet accustomed, y e t , at s i g h t , humane to most i n c r e d i b l e depths. (cp - ) now stevens i s using e x i s t e n t images e s t a b l i s h e d i n e a r l i e r poems - a tendency e a r l i e r noted - to meditate the problem of "the only l o v e . " the image of the woman here, f o r example, i s one e s t a b l i s h e d i n "the beginning" (cp ) - "the s e l f of summer p e r f e c t l y perceived ." this c u l m i n a t i n g r e p e t i t i o n of images i s , i n i t s e l f , one of the major and most e x c i t i n g move- ments of h i s mind, a movement which w i l l s h o r t l y be of concern. but the p o i n t now i s to a f f i r m that the nature, e f f e c t , and i d e a l end of these images are here d e l i n e a t e d by st. john. the b a s i s of h i s argument i s that "the world i s presence and not force./presence i s not mind." (cp ). "the back-ache" would d i s m i s s presence as "kinder-scenen" - the "adult e n f a n t i l l a g e s " of "questions are remarks" - because he mistakes the image f o r the l i f e of the image. john's r e f u t a t i o n i s the same as "the t h e s i s of the p l e n t i f u l l e s t john" i n " d e s c r i p t i o n without p l a c e " : d e s c r i p t i o n i s r e v e l a t i o n . i t i s not the t h i n g d e s c r i b e d , nor f a l s e f a c s i m i l e . i t i s an a r t i f i c i a l t h i n g that e x i s t s , in i t s own seeming, p l a i n l y v i s i b l e , yet not too c l o s e l y the double of our l i v e s , intenser than any a c t u a l l i f e could be, a t e x t we should be born that we might read... thus the theory of d e s c r i p t i o n matters most.- i t i s the theory of the word f o r those for whom the word i s the making of the world, the buzzing world and l i s p i n g firmament. i t i s a world of words to the end of i t , in which nothing s o l i d i s i t s s o l i d s e l f . (cp - ) the b i b l i c a l connotations of the l i n e "for whom the word i s ^ the making of the world" f i n d s i t correspondence i n john is i and the r e l a t i o n of " r e v e l a t i o n " i s obvious. d e s c r i p t i o n i s used to mean the act of human c r e a t i o n a f t e r the man-made so- l i d i t y of the " s o l i d s e l f " of the world has been decreated. i t then becomes, l i t e r a l l y , a d e s c r i p t i o n of c r e a t i o n as i t i s . one f u r t h e r reference to the serpent w i l l c l a r i f y h i s "poison" and b r i n g the d i s c u s s i o n back to "notes...." the a s s o c i a t i o n of ananke w i t h the serpent i n "like decorations i n a nigger cemetary" i s the i n i t i a l stage i n the development of the image: the sense of the serpent i n you, ananke, and your averted s t r i d e add nothing to the h o r r o r of the f r o s t that g l i s t e n s on your face and h a i r . (cp ) this i s the u n - u p l l f t e d serpent, when man must s u f f e r the agony of an existence completely h i s own, an a b s u r d i s t existence i n the v o i d . i r o n i c a l l y , the v o i d i s man's own c r e a t i o n - the u l t i m a t e product of h i s d e s i r e to possess absolute t r u t h . a f t e r he has seen h i s more amenable mythologies destroyed because they were only images i n time, man i s l e f t w i t h only h i s own b l i n d need to c r e a t e . i f bradley's view of the meaning of "nigger" can be accepted without f u l l y accepting h i s treatment of the poem, then the p o s i t i o n can be c l e a r l y seen: "nigger" represents i n other stevens' poems, a l s o , the p r i m i t i v e b a s i s f o r a l l conscious l i f e . the poem "the newstand and the weather" speaks of "... a nigger fragment, a mystique/for the s p i r i t l e f t h e l p l e s s by the i n t e l l i g e n c e . " this nigger fragment i s a r e t u r n from the i n t e l l i g e n c e or f a c t u a l r e a l i t y to i n s t i n c t i v e l i v i n g . according to stevens, one of man's b a s i c i n s t i n c t s i s h i s i n s t i n c t f o r a s s i g n i n g meanings to h i s experiences; thus "nigger" i s the u r - a r t i s t , the unadorned i n s t i n c t f o r creation.°° the poison i s the apparently endless n e c e s s i t y to create e s s e n t i a l l y meaningless images i n an incessant round of c r e a t i o n and d e s t r u c t i o n . i t resembles the i n i t i a l movement of the " v i r i l e poet" i n h i s process of p u r i f i c a t i o n , and the t r a n s - formation of the snake image that has taken place by "st. john and the back-ache" resembles the completion of h i s o s c i l l a t i o n . related images from the same poem demonstrate t h a t , while i n - d i v i d u a l poems c o n t a i n i n mlnature the o s c i l l a t i o n of the " c e n t r a l poet t" the c o l l e c t e d poems contains the vast surge of the s p i r i t toward i t s a p o c a l y p t i c v i s i o n - the t o t a l o s c i l l a t i o n of the f a l l e n man. "nigger", f o r example, i s deposed, i n a long and i n v o l v e d process, by "the shepherd and h i s b l a c k forms" (cp ) of "an ordinary evening...." part of the process i s v i s i b l e i n "prelude to objects" when the n e c e s s i t y of c r e a t i n g becomes i t - s e l f the object of concern: one i s always seeing and f e e l i n g o n e s e l f , that's not by chance. i t comes to t h i s : that the g u e r i l l a i should be booked and bound. i t s nigger mystics should change foolscap f o r wigs. academies as of a t r a g i c science should r i s e . (cp ) the b a s i s of the change had been contained i n companion epigrams: nudity at the capital but nakedness, woolen massa, concerns an innermost atom. i f that remains concealed, what does the bottom matter?. nudity in the colonies black man, b r i g h t nouveaute's leave one, at b e s t , .pseudonymous. thus one i s most d i s c l o s e d when one i s most anonymous. (cp ) benamou quotes only t h e . f i r s t epigram, thereby completely m i s s i n g the p o i n t : he says of i t , "this d e f i n e s nakedness as a q u a l i t y at the center (the c a p i t a l ) of being, and not as some- t h i n g on the other side of a g l a s s w a l l , l i k e mallarme's 'nudite i d e a l e . " ' the whole p o i n t i s that the "woolen massa," i n h i s as yet un-exchanged wig, i s so engrossed w i t h h i s p h y s i c a l nakedness ("the g u e r i l l a i") that he leaves h i s soul concealed. his c a p i t a l , l i k e the " c a p i t o l " of the b r u t a l l y - s e x u a l "x" i n "anecdote of canna," i s the c a p i t o l of ego where "thought that wakes/in sleep may never meet another thought/or t h i n g " (cp )• the second eipgram proves the p o i n t . "nouveautes" means both new c l o t h e s and new ideas; to dress the naked ego i n e i t h e r i s t o f a l s i f y i t . true r e v e l a t i o n of the "innermost atom" c o n s i s t s i n a n n i h i l a t i o n ' o f the ego as i d e n t i t y . to experience anonymity i s the experience demanded by n e c e s s i t y - an experience of r e v e l a t i o n timorously refused by the r a t i o n a l i s t of "a lot of people bathing i n a stream." the c i r c u i t o u s d i s c u s s i o n of a s i n g l e image - the poisonous "ravishments of t r u t h " i n i i of "notes..." - i s j u s t i f i e d , i t h i n k , by the f a c t that the v i s i o n thus seen developing i n sev- e r a l poems i s c r y p t i c a l l y contained w i t h i n " i t must be a b s t r a c t . " the d i s c o v e r y of the f a l l of adam and the f a l s e n e s s of h i s p a r a d i s e , communicated as necessary impetus ( " c e l e s t i a l ennui") leads the i n d i v i d u a l consciousness back to the f i r s t i d e a . quite simply - t h i s i s d e c r e a t i o n . the names adam gave to things are dispensed w i t h ; h i s c r e a t i o n s become t r a s h . the exemplifying c r e a t i o n i n "notes..." i s "phoebus," but, as i have attempted to show, even i f i t were "nothingness" i t would have to be d i s - pensed w i t h . i t i s the name of the t h i n g that i s destroyed and not the t h i n g i t s e l f , a f a c t stevens made c l e a r at l e a s t as e a r l y as "the man with the blue g u i t a r " : throw away the l i g h t s , the d e f i n i t i o n s , and say of what you see i n the dark that i t i s t h i s or that i t i s t h a t , but do not use the r o t t e d names. how should you walk i n that space and know nothing of the madness of space, nothing of i t s jocular, p r o c r e a t i o n s ? throw the l i g h t s away. nothing must stand between you and the shapes you take when the c r u s t of shape has been destroyed. (cp ) name as the " c r u s t of shape" i s a concept taken up and u t i l i z e d i n "notes...." decreation a p p l i e s not merely to things and s t a t e s and q u a l i t i e s , but to the gods themselves and to the a b s o l u t e . that i s why "there was a p r o j e c t f o r the sun and i s " (cp ) . decreation r e s u l t s i n the perception of the shape of t h i n g s as they are; that perception i s the mainspring of the poemj there was a muddy centre before we breathed. there was a myth before the myth began, venerable and a r t i c u l a t e and complete. from t h i s the poem s p r i n g s ; that we l i v e i n a place that i s not our own and, much more, not ourselves and hard i t i s i n s p i t e of blazoned days. (cp ) (there are enough mythic elements i n " i t must be a b s t r a c t " without making much of t h i s echo of bernal diaz' great meta- p h y s i c a l quest i n macleish's conquistador.) the p e r c e p t i o n of the shape of things as they are c a l l s i n t o p l a y the second phase of the v i a negativa - a b s t r a c t i o n . a b s t r a c t i o n i s the sublime movement of the poet, i n h i s poems, from involvement i n the 'fear and trembling' produced by the decreate p e r c e p t i o n . an example of the a b s t r a c t i v e process was "mozart, " (cp ) ; i t should be kept i n mind because the p a t t e r n of the development of that process i n "notes...." i s d i s c e r n i b l e , but not c l e a r . ik? in i i i and v of " i t must be a b s t r a c t , " two semi-myths semi- dreams are presented. to understand them i s to understand the motive f o r the long search f o r "the t h i n k e r of the f i r s t i d e a . " the f i r s t semi-myth comes a b r u p t l y at the end of an a f f i r m a t i o n t h a t "the poem, through candor, b r i n g s back a power again/that g i v e s a candid kind to e v e r y t h i n g . " what t h i s d i s c u s s i o n of the poem's r e f r e s h i n g power means i s that the poem i s a b l e , through the poet's acceptance of the f i r s t i d e a , to give candor ( l i t e r a l l y s h i n i n g l i g h t ) t o "everything" - the images used to symbolize the f i r s t idea. but the meaning of the myth i s not as immediately c l e a r : we say: at night an arabian i n my room, with h i s damned hoobla-hoobla-hoobla-how, i n s c r i b e s a p r i m i t i v e astronomy across the unscrawled fores the f u t u r e casts and throws h i s s t a r s around the f l o o r . by day the wood-dove used to chant h i s hoobla-hoo and s t i l l the grossest i r i d e s c e n c e of ocean howls hoo and r i s e s and howls hoo and f a l l s . l i f e ' s nonsense p i e r c e s us with strange r e l a t i o n . (cp ) i was i n i t i a t e d i n t o t h i s myth because i chanced to glance through wordsworth•s the prelude one day: there may be other entrances. once the i d e n t i t y of the arabian has been e s t a b l i s h e d an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n can be made, and the arabian i s , of course, wordsworth's a p o c a l y p t i c "phantom arab" (the u n d e r l i n i n g i s mine);: while i was seated i n a rocky cave by the sea-side, perusing, so i t chanced the famous h i s t o r y of the errant knight sleep s e i z e d me, and i passed i n t o a dream. i saw before me s t r e t c h e d i n a boundless p l a i n of sandy w i l d e r n e s s , a l l b l a c k and v o i d , and as i looked around, d i s t r e s s and f e a r came creeping over me, when at my s i d e , close at my s i d e , an uncouth shape appeared he seemed an arab.of the bedouin t r i b e s wordsworth's arab c a r r i e s two objects - a stone seen as a copy of " e u c l i d ' s elements" and a s h e l l which i s a l s o seen as a book "...that was a god, yea many gods/had voices more than a l l the winds, w i t h power to e x h i l a r a t e the s p i r i t , and to soothe,/ through every c l i m e , the heart of human k i n d . » prom t h i s s h e l l emerges "an ode, i n passion u t t e r e d , which foretold/de- s t r u c t i o n to the c h i l d r e n of the earth/by deluge, now at hand." so near at hand i s the d e s t r u c t i o n that the arab leaves the dreamer because the "waters of the deep" are even then gather- i n g upon them. stevens incorporates t h i s dream to i n d i c a t e the agonizing nature of the experience of the decreate p e r c e p t i o n . more, he develops i t f u l l y , to i n d i c a t e the nature of a b s t r a c t i o n ; i n f a c t , the l a t t e r h a l f of " i t must be a b s t r a c t " p a r a l l e l s wordsworth's search to recover the innocent eye of childhood i n "book v" of the prelude. (the p a r a l l e l c o n s t i t u t e s a resemblance.) in stevens' mingled myth, the f l o o d i s the decreated present, the arab and h i s " p r i m i t i v e astronomy" are parts of prophecy, and the wood-dove (presumably noah's dove) i s part of the past. now the wood-dove's 'nonsensical' song was of s a l v a t i o n i n the world through the grace granted to f a i t h and good works; the arab's song i s of s a l v a t i o n through the a p o c a l y p t i c v i s i o n of some " p r i m i t i v e " astronomy of the yet-to-be created f u t u r e ; and the ocean has i t s obscure song i n the l i g h t which plays upon i t s waters. a l l these songs are obscure, but they are a l l r e l a t e d . the master does -not p o s i t t h i s mingled myth as something to be b e l i e v e d i n ; he c a l l s i t " l i f e ' s nonsense". rather, i t i s to be the subject f o r meditation on the part of the ephebe - a problem, c a l l e d i n t o being by the d i s s a t i s f a c t o r y nature of d e s i r e , the s o l u t i o n of • which w i l l provide the key to the proper stance to adopt i n order to w r i t e a poetry that "...refreshes l i f e , so that we share,/for a moment, the f i r s t i d e a . . . . " (cp ) in the developmental scheme of the l e c t u r e , iv i s a h i n t tossed to the ephebe about the nature of the s o l u t i o n , and v represents h i s i n i t i a l attempt. what he i s d e a l i n g w i t h here i s the " p r i m i t i v e astronomy" of the arab, f o r the images h e r e i n are not of animals, as i s u s u a l l y supposed, but of c o n s t e l l a t i o n s : the l i o n roars at the enraging d e s e r t , reddens the sand w i t h h i s red-colored n o i s e , defies red emptiness to evolve h i s match, master by f o o t and jaws and by the mane, most supple c h a l l e n g e r . the elephant breaches the darkness of ceylon w i t h b l a r e s , the g l i t t e r - g o e s on surfaces of tanks, s h a t t e r i n g v e l v e t e s t far-away. the bear, the ponderous cinnamon, s n a r l s i n h i s mountain at summer thunder and sleeps through winter snow...(cp ) the a s t r o l o g y of t h i s passage i s not a r a b i c , but r a t h e r a b r i l l i a n t mingling of eygptian, buddhist, and zuni myths, i n that order. with the zunis, ursa major was important as marking the seasons. they say that when winter comes the bear l a z i l y s l e e p s , no longer guarding the westland from the c o l d of the i c e gods...but, when the bear, awaken- i n g , growls i n the springtime and the answering thunder mutters, the s t r e n g t h of the i c e gods being shaken, the r e i g n of summer begins again. " "the sun glows i n the l i o n , " says seneca.... the p l a c - ing of the f i e r y and f e r o c i o u s l i o n . . . i n t h i s part of the sky, symbolised the f a c t that the sun reigned supreme when i t a r r i v e d i n t h i s c o n s t e l l a t i o n . the con- n e c t i o n between the sun, k i n g of the heavenly h o s t s , and the l i o n , k i n g of beasts, i s obvious. macrobius says? "this beast seems to d e r i v e h i s own nature from that luminary...being i n force and heat as s u p e r i o r to a l l other animals as the sun i s to the stars." in buddhist a s t r o l o g y , the l i o n becomes the elephant when the sun i s i n i t s s i g n . the mingling i s extremely complicated, but the paramount r e l a t i o n among a l l the images involves the r e t u r n of the sun or the idea of the sun i n t h e i r s i g n . this i s the p r o j e c t at hand. i f i read the a s t r o l o g y c o r r e c t l y , the seasonal i n c o n s i s t e n c i e s make the n i g h t i n which the s t a r s appear not the r e a l n i g h t , but 'the dark night of the s o u l . ' the bear passes through a c y c l e of seasons, so the sun must 'come and go' l i k e the "hermit i n a poet's metaphors." this means that the sun must pass through the l i o n - e l e p h a n t (and i n so doing r e v e a l i t s ambiv- alence as generative and d e s t r u c t i v e f o r c e ) . but the ephebe cannot see the sun; he can only see the images of the sun. for him, l i o n equals phoebus; he cannot make h i s n i g h t day. the cause of the ephebe's f a i l u r e i s r a t h e r ambiguously analyzed by the master i n the l a t t e r h a l f of v: but you, ephebe, look from your a t t i c window, your mansard w i t h a rented piano. you l i e in s i l e n c e upon-, your bed. you c l u t c h the corner of the p i l l o w i n your hand. you writhe and press a b i t t e r utterance from your w r i t h i n g , dumb, yet v o l u b l e dumb v i o l e n c e . you look across the roofs as s i g i l and as ward and i n your centre mark them and are cowed... these are the h e r o i c c h i l d r e n whom time breeds against the f i r s t idea - to l a s h the l i o n , caparison elephants, teach bears to juggle. (cp - ) the ephebe q u i t e l i t e r a l l y repeats the lesson learned i n "mozart, " but t h i s time with e l a b o r a t i o n because more images can now be o r i e n t e d , l i k e i r o n f i l i n g s , i n the magnetic o s c i l l a t i o n . what the master t e l l s him, i n s u r p r i s i n g l y contemptuous tones, i s that the c o n s t e l l a t i o n s are doing t h e i r job - f u n c t i o n i n g as e x i s t e n t images - but he i s s l u f f i n g h i s . stevens' ephebe i s supposed to be " s i g i l " and "ward - guardian of h i s c i v i - l i z a t i o n and at the same time a s i g n to that c i v i l i z a t i o n of, or possessing, mysterious power. but the ephebe i s "cowed" by "the r o o f s . " the reading could be supported by examining the f u n c t i o n of housing s t r u c t u r e s i n other poems, but i t seems c l e a r enough from the mere syntax. the "centre" i s once again the ego r e s i s t i n g the experience of the absolute - a point emphasized by "your". the f i n a l stanza may be ambiguous, but i t s e s s e n t i a l mean- i n g i s not i n doubt. e l l i p s i s , i t has been noted, i s o f t e n used by stevens to covey i r o n y , and an i r o n i c reading of the stanza r e v e a l s that "heroic c h i l d r e n " i s a s a r c a s t i c reference to the ephebe. the expression takes up and a l t e r s the meaning of "ward" and d r i v e s home the lesson learned i n i i about d e s i r e by making the c h i l d a spawn of time. c h i l d r e n i s a l e g i t i m a t e g e n e r a l i z a t i o n about 'today's youth.' the f u l l i r o n y i s that merely through f e a r the c h i l d r e n should be able to perform the h e r o i c f e a t of taming e x i s t e n t images - of reducing them to names. vi i s , as i have s a i d , a demonstration of the proper per- c e p t i o n of the f i r s t i d e a . the demonstration i s appropriate i n view of the woes of the ephebe. the f a c t that the f i r s t idea i s to be "without a r o o f " comes i n t o prominence; l i t e r a l l y i t i s not to be contained w i t h i n s t r u c t u r e s - i t s home i s not to be man's world. the sudden a l t e r a t i o n from night to day between v and vi s t r e s s e s the v a l i d i t y of the demonstration; and the d i f f i c u l t l i n e "the dark-blown c e i n t u r e loosened, not r e l i n - quished" suggests a c o n t i n u a t i o n of a s t r o l o g i c a l images by blending i n the "donna, donna, dark,/stooping i n indigo gown/ and cloudy c o n s t e l l a t i o n s . . . " of " f l o r i d a , venereal s o i l " (cp ) . that l a d y , had she not been c o r r u p t l y sensuous, could have be- come the poet's muse and worn the crown of ariadne. in any case, vi p o s i t s the t r u e home of the f i r s t idea - i n the per- c e p t i v e contemplation of the " g i a n t " : the weather and the g i a n t of the weather, say the weather, the mere weather, the mere a i r : an a b s t r a c t i o n blooded, as a man by thought. (cp ) i t i s time that the b e a u t i f u l i n v e r s i o n i n the l a s t l i n e be p u b l i c l y heralded. one would expect, i n the l o g i c of the t h i n g , the phrase 'a thought by man.' but here, i t i s the man who i s the " a b s t r a c t i o n " and the i n v e r s i o n gives t o "blooded" the wondrously exact meaning of i n i t i a t i o n i n t o k i n s h i p by the blooding r i t e (as i n faulkner's the bear). the t h i n k e r of the f i r s t idea contemplates i t . he does not worship i t because i t i s without " f i r s t f r u i t s " , nor does he f e a r i t . he contemplates i t and i n consequence h i s "...house has changed a l i t t l e i n the sun." the world he l i v e s i n has changed a l i t t l e , and he, i n becoming a g i a n t , has been almost a n n i h i l a t e d as ego-man. vii can be d e a l t w i t h by n o t i n g i t s resemblance to "of b r i g h t & blue b i r d s & the gala sun" (cp ) and by a p p l y i n g marie b o r o f f ' s comment on that poem to t h i s s e c t i o n : the d i s c i p l i n e s of observation and meditation are means toward apprehending an order i n which s a t i s - f a c t i o n can be found. but such apprehensions are not e n t i r e l y under the c o n t r o l of the w i l l . a sense of order and meaningfulness i n existence can descend upon the mind u n a n t i c i p a t e d , f l o o d i n g i t with joy. ...in these spontanelous remissions of human misery we experience "a g a i e t y that i s being, not merely know- i n g . "...beneficences of weather and season can indeed make us forget the e s s e n t i a l tragedy of our c o n d i t i o n . such moments i n vi, however, are on the edge between sleep and awakening, between the 'dark night of the s o u l ' and i t s f u l l p e r c e p t i o n of d a y l i g h t . what that soul then beholds i s "the academies l i k e s t r u c t u r e s i n a m i s t . " these academies are the ones "as of a t r a g i c s c i e n c e " i n "prelude to objects" (cp ) now seen i n a more promising l i g h t . they are s t i l l t r a g i c , but the " i n c a l c u l a b l e balances" act as guarantees of the eventual r e l e a s e and joy to be found i n the t r a g i c study of the p r i n - c i p l e s by which ananke governs the world. the academy becomes a d e s i r a b l e t h i n g r a t h e r than a necessary t h i n g because of the f o r t u i t o u s r e v e l a t i o n s of v i i . the f i n a l three s e c t i o n s of " i t must be a b s t r a c t " create new obscurations by i n v o l v i n g the ephebe i n the concept of "major man." to get at those obscurations i t i s necessary to r e j e c t the almost u n i v e r s a l acclamation of "the macc.ullough" as stevens' u l t i m a t e hero, and to see him as he r e a l l y i s - the f i n a l evasion of the ephebe. he i s s t r i c t l y the ephebe's con- c e p t i o n and c o n s t i t u t e s a r e t u r n to adams can we compose a c a s t l e - f o r t r e s s - h o m e , even with the help of v i o l l e t - l e - d u c , and set the maccullough there as major man? the f i r s t idea i s an imagined t h i n g . (cp ) the passage c i t e d r e c a l l s , i n i t s very rhythm, a passage from "the man with the blue guitar"s and s h a l l i then stand i n the sun, as now i stand i n the moon, and c a l l i t good, the immaculate, the m e r c i f u l good, detached from us, from things as they are? not to be p a r t of the sun? to stand remote and c a l l i t m e r c i f u l ? the s t r i n g s are c o l d on the blue g u i t a r . (cp ) the orphic symbols leap out of the words here, but the point i s to note t h a t the master's statement, "the f i r s t idea i s an im- agined t h i n g , " i s equivalent to the g u i t a r i s t ' s d e s c r i p t i o n of h i s g u i t a r ' s r e a c t i o n . the ephebe's concept of the maccullough i s a v i o l a t i o n of the maxim l a i d down i n i - "never suppose an i n v e n t i n g mind as source/of t h i s i d e a . . . . " v i o l l e t - l e - d u c was a r a t i o n a l i s t t h e o r i s t of a r c h i t e c t u r e , h i s t o r i c a l l y noted f o r h i s attempt to r a t i o n a l i z e the gothic by viewing i t as u t i l i t a r i a n (e.g. gargoyles as r a i n s p o u t s ) . his view i s probably an advance from the purely d e c o r a t i v e theory, but i t i s an advance i n the wrong d i r e c t i o n . "the maccullough" i s an analogous view of "the t h i n k e r of the f i r s t i d e a . " his name, even beyond the damming f a c t that he has a name, i n d i c a t e s h i s inadequacy. the legend of the maccullough c l a n i s ( t r a n s l a t e d ) "before the memory of man." a v a r i a n t s p e l l i n g of the name makes the meaning "son of the boar", which i s i r o n i c : a maccullough who p o s i t s the maccullough i n v o l v e s h i m s e l f i n an i n f i n i t e r e g r e s s , a k i n d of search f o r a p r e - a r c h e t y p a l f a t h e r . that stevens was aware of t h i s business of. the name i s c l e a r l y shown by the master's d e s c r i p t i o n of the proper major man i n ix: he i s and may be but oh! he i s , he i s , this f o u n d l i n g of the i n f e c t e d past, so b r i g h t , so moving i n the manner of h i s hand. yet look not at h i s c o l o r e d eyes. give him no names. dismiss him from your images. the hot of him i s purest i n the h e a r t . (cp ) the f u n c t i o n of academies, i t must be remembered, i s to "book" the i and study i t s t r a g i c separation from i t s grounds of existence and i f p o s s i b l e , to recover that ground through such a study. v i i i and ix are two books, not j u s t two v e r s i o n s . the study of "the maccullough" would d i s c o v e r the grounds of the ego's e x i s t e n c e ; the study of the master's major man would recover the grounds of the existence of "the innermost atom." the master's "major man" i s a symbol, l i k e the sun, f o r the f i r s t i d e a . his o r i g i n i s i n the u l t i m a t e d i s c o v e r y of maccullough that "...the maccullough i s maccullough" and h i s consequent r e t u r n to a study of the waters which engulf hims i f maccullough h i m s e l f l a y lounging by the sea,. drowned i n i t s washes, reading i n the sound, about the t h i n k e r of the f i r s t i d e a , he might take h a b i t , whether from wave or phrase, or power of the wave, or deepened speech, or a leaner being, moving i n on him, of g r e a t e r a p t i t u d e and apprehension, as i f the waves at l a s t were never broken, as i f the language suddenly, w i t h ease, said t h i n g s i t had l a b o r i o u s l y spoken. (cp ) l i k e wordsworth drowsing by the sea, maccullough w i l l have h i s experience. in mawkishly r e l i g o u s terms, the l i g h t upon the waters w i l l enter h i s s p i r i t and h i s soul w i l l become a "leaner b e i n g " - t r u e symbol- because i t w i l l be f r e e of h i s ego. the t r a n s i t i o n from ix to x, during which maccullough l o s e s h i s name i n the t r a d i t i o n a l manner of those who are reborn i n the s p i r i t , i s very c a r e f u l l y handled. i t has, f o r example, i t s d e l i c a t e c o r r e l a t i o n s w i t h wordsworth's the prelude. in the prelude, wordsworth i s moved to c e l e b r a t e , because of h i s e x p e r i e n c e n a t u r e * self,/and things that teach as nature teaches... " n j _ s c e l e b r a t i o n of the books of the poets trembles on the edge of an apotheosis of the poets: 't i s j u s t that i n behalf of these, the works, and of the men that framed them, whether known or s l e e p i n g nameless i n t h e i r s c a t t e r e d graves, that i should a s s e r t t h e i r r i g h t s , a t t e s t their honours, and should, once f o r a l l , pronounce their b e n e d i c t i o n ; speak of them as powers for ever to be hallowed; only l e s s , for what we are and what we may become, than nature's s e l f , which i s the breath of god, or his pure word by m i r a c l e revealed. the master of "notes...." w i l l grant that such benedictions are the n a t u r a l trappings of "the major man," but he knows, too, t h a t "the major man" has a purpose and must s u f f e r to achieve that purpose: the romantic i n t o n i n g , the declaimed c l a i r v o y a n c e are p a r t s of apotheosis, appropriate and of i t s nature, the idiom thereof. they d i f f e r from reason's c l i c k - c l a c k , i t s . a p p l i e d e n f l a s h i n g s . but apotheosis i s not the o r i g i n of major man. (cp ) the nature of the major man's task i s exposed i n x: the major a b s t r a c t i o n i s the idea of man and major man i s i t s exponent, a b l e r in the a b s t r a c t than i n h i s s i n g u l a r , more fecund as p r i n c i p l e than p a r t i c l e , happy f e c u n d i t y , flor-abundant f o r c e , in being more than an exception, p a r t , though an h e r o i c p a r t , of the commonal. (cp ) i f one remembers the i n j u n c t i o n to the poet of "mozart, - " - "be thou the voice.not you" (cp ) - and the f i n a l l i n e of "nudity i n the c o l o n i e s " - "thus one i s most d i s c l o s e d when one i s most anonymous" (cp ̂ ) - the f u n c t i o n of the major man i s c l e a r : who i s i t ? . ... i n h i s o l d coat, . his s l o u c h i n g pantaloons, beyond the town, looking f o r what was, where i t used to be? cloudless the morning. i t i s he. the man in that o l d coat, those sagging pantaloons, i t i s of him, ephebe, to make, to confect the f i n a l elegance, not to console nor s a n c t i f y , but p l a i n l y to propound. (cp - ) stevens i s seldom unambiguous, but here the almost p e r f e c t a m b i g u i t i e s are not created from any d e s i r e to obscure or evade the f u n c t i o n of the "major man"; on the c o n t r a r y , they r e v e a l i t . he i s " p r i n c i p l e " r a t h e r than " p a r t i c l e " both of the f i r s t idea and of the "commonal" - a c h r i s t . the "commonal" i s a comic f i g u r e i n h i s rags; but he i s a l s o the t r a g i c s a n s c u l o t t l s t , dispossessed by h i s act of r e b e l l i o n , the f i g u r e of a f a l l e n adam outside eden "looking f o r what was, where i t used to be." the town i s ' eden i n one sense, the malformations of a self-aware adam i n another. the ephebe, who presumably p a r t i c i p a t e d i n the r e b i r t h of v i i i and ix, i s not "to console/nor s a n c t i f y " because there can be n e i t h e r f o r adam as long as he remains adam, but out of him can be 'confected' "the f i n a l elegance" - the p u t t i n g together of q u a l i t i e s s e l e c t e d from him, s p e c i f i c a l l y from the images he produces. in sum, the movement of a b s t r a c t i o n corresponds to the second stage of the p u r i f y i n g o s c i l l a t i o n of the " v i r i l e poet". he has a b s t r a c t e d himself from h i s imagination to a p o i n t at which he can see the imaginations of those around him and can, because he no longer d e s i r e s to possess the t r u t h conceived by h i s own ego, s e l e c t those elements present i n the imagination of the commonal. he engages i n what stevens' terms "a science of i l l u s i o n s " (na ) * "the c o r p o r e a l would e x i s t s as the common denominator of the i n c o r p o r e a l worlds of i t s i n h a b i t - a n t s " (na ) . as though to prove that j u s t such a concept was i n h i s mind, the master of "notes..." invokes the muse as mask: "my dame, s i n g f o r t h i s person accurate songs" (cp ) . the r e s t of "notes...." i s a f i l l i n g out, as i t were, of the muse, the f i n a l r e s o l u t i o n of ariadne and the p l o r i d e a n venus, the f u l l y e x i s t e n t image of wordsworthian "nature" as stevens i n d i c a t e d i n h i s l e t t e r to church: the f a t g i r l i s e a r t h : what the p o l i t i c i a n s now-a-days are c a l l i n g the globe, xtfhich somehow, as i t revolves i n t h e i r minds, does, i suppose, resemble some great object i n a p a r t i c u l a r l y blue area....i am always s u r p r i s e d by the p a r t i c u l a r things that people f i n d obscure. but, a f t e r a l l , one's own symbols may not be everyone's. the laughter of the gods could not be more i n s u l t i n g than stevens' f i n a l comment, nor could the i r o n y of the p o l i t i c i a n s ' view of the r e a l world be more intense. reference to the f i n a l movement of stevens' mind brings t h i s t h e s i s to a c l o s e at a p o i n t where, i d e a l l y , i t should begin. one can give i t a name by r e c a l l i n g stevens' d e s c r i p t i o n of leo s t e i n ' s d i s c o v e r y of a r t (the u n d e r l i n i n g i s mine): he says t h a t , xshen he was a c h i l d , he became aware of composition i n nature and g r a d u a l l y r e a l i z e d that a r t and composition are one he improvished a d e f i n i t i o n of a r t : that i t i s nature seen i n the l i g h t of i t s s i g n i f i c a n c e , and r e c o g n i z i n g that t h i s s i g n i f i c a n c e was one of forms he added "formal" to " s i g n i f i c a n c e . " ...by composition he meant the compositional use of words: the use of t h e i r e x i s t e n t i a l meanings. com- p o s i t i o n was h i s passion. he considered that a f o r - mally complete p i c t u r e i s one i n which a l l the parts are so r e l a t e d to one another that they a l l imply each other. (na l l- ) c a l l i t composition, then, and r e l a t e i t to stevens' d i s c u s s i o n of the i d e a l l y composed poem - "a group of images i n harmony w i t h each other would c o n s t i t u t e a poem w i t h i n , or above, a poem" (na ? ). the u l t i m a t e composition, the u l t i m a t e poem, i s the book, and one sees i n i t s mere conception the n e c e s s i t y f o r the movements of d e c r e a t i o n - a b s t r a c t i o n s ...these are the p i c t o r i a l i z a t i o n s of men, f o r whom the w o r l d - e x i s t s as a. world and f o r whom l i f e e x i s t s as l i f e , the objects of t h e i r passions, the objects before which they come and speak, w i t h intense choos- i n g , words that \*ie remember and make our own. their words have made a world that transcends the world and a l i f e l i v a b l e i n t h a t transcendence. i t i s a transcendence achieved by means of the minor e f f e c t s of c o n f i g u r a t i o n s and the major e f f e c t s of the poet's sense of the world and of "the motive music of h i s poems and i t i s the imaginative dynamism of a l l these analogies together. thus poetry becomes and i s a transcendent analogue composed of the p a r t i c u l a r s of r e a l i t y , created by the poet's sense of the world, that i s to say, h i s a t t i t u d e , as he intervenes and interposes the appearances of that sense. (na ) i n e v i t a b l y , the' d i s c u s s i o n of d e c r e a t i o n - a b s t r a c t i o n has e n t a i l e d a p r e l i m i n a r y view of composition because they are p a r t of the s i n g l e process of composition - the joycean dramatic impulse, "the whole of the s o u l " i n "lions i n sweden" (cp ) as i t seeks and f i n d s i t s "sovereign images," the expanding of the mallarmean "signature of genius - as anonymous and p e r f e c t as a work of a r t . " composition manifests i t s e l f i n the i n - d i v i d u a l poem i n the d e c r e a t i o n and recomposition that creates the e x i s t e n t image. but the r e a l l y awesome t h i n g i s the pos- s i b i l i t y , more the unproven c e r t a i n t y , that i n the t o t a l o s c i l l a t i o n of the c o l l e c t e d poems a l l of stevens' words undergo the same process and become e x i s t e n t images. the name i would l i k e to appropriate f o r t h i s aspect of stevens' compositional technique i s r e p e t i t i o n . in p a r t , the j u s t i f i c a t i o n f o r the names d e r i v e s from stevens' d e s c r i p t i o n of the idea i n "three academic p i e c e s " ! . . . i t i s not too extravagant to t h i n k of resemblances and of the r e p e t i t i o n s of resemblances as a source of the i d e a l . in s h o r t , metaphor has i t s aspect of the i d e a l . this aspect of i t cannot be dismissed merely because we t h i n k that we have long since o u t l i v e d the i d e a l . the t r u t h i s that we are c o n s t a n t l y o u t l i v i n g i t and yet the i d e a l i t s e l f remains a l i v e with an enormous l i f e . . (na - ) but the concept of r e p e t i t i o n occurs repeatedly i n the poems as w e l l , i n contexts which define the progressive nature of the technique. the a p p l i c a t i o n of i t as technique i n the nisus a f t e r e x i s t e n t images, i s the p o i n t of a passage i n "academic discourse at havana"} is the f u n c t i o n of the poet here mere sound, s u b t l e r than the ornatest prophecy, to s t u f f the ear? i t causes him to make his i n f i n i t e r e p e t i t i o n and a l l o y s of p i c k of ebon, p i c k of halcyon. his r a r i t i e s are ours: may they be f i t and r e c o n c i l e us to ourselves i n those true r e c o n c i l i n g s , dark, p a c i f i c words, and the a d r o i t e r harmonies of t h e i r f a l l . (cp ) the world of havana i s a f a l l e n world i n which symbols have been exchanged f o r , have become no more than, d e c o r a t i o n s : canaries i n the morning, orchestras in the afternoon, balloons at n i g h t . that i s a d i f f e r e n c e , at l e a s t , from n i g h t i n g a l e s , jehovah and the great sea-worm. (cp ) the " a l l o y " which i s the object of r e p e t i t i o n s i s an a l l o y of the more valuable - the mythic white halycon - and the l e s s v a l u a b l e but p r e s e n t l y r e a l - the dark wood of the ebon. these syntheses make p o s s i b l e the symbol; the movement i s f a m i l i a r and needs no d e t a i l e d e x p l a n a t i o n . the process i s , i n i t s e l f , a r e p e t i t i o n . such i s perhaps the p o i n t of the n a r r a t o r i n ix of " i t must give pleasure" of "notes...." freed from "every f i c t i o n , except one/the f i c t i o n of an a b s o l u t e " (cp ), the n a r r a t o r becomes a composer of "vast r e p e t i t i o n s " : red r o b i n , stop i n your preludes, p r a c t i c i n g mere r e p e t i t i o n s . these things at l e a s t comprise an occupation, an e x e r c i s e , a work, a t h i n g f i n a l i n i t s e l f and, t h e r e f o r e , good: one of the vast r e p e t i t i o n s f i n a l i n themselves and, t h e r e f o r e , good, the going round and round and round, the merely going round, u n t i l merely going round i s a f i n a l good, the way wine comes at a t a b l e i n a wood. and we enjoy l i k e men, the way a l e a f above the t a b l e spins i t s constant s p i n , so that we look at i t w i t h pleasure, look at i t spinning i t s e c c e n t r i c measure. perhaps, the man-hero i s not the e x c e p t i o n a l monster, but he that of r e p e t i t i o n i s most master. (cp - ) without g e t t i n g too i n v o l v e d i n the images i n t h i s passage, i t must be pointed out that the song of the b i r d s i n "notes" i s the opposite of the poet's i n "mozart, " ; they s i n g "bethou me..." (cp ) . their constant s e i z u r e of every element i n the f i e l d of t h e i r existence makes of t h e i r act a "mere" r e p e t i t i o n - l i k e that of the e n d l e s s l y c r e a t i n g adam. the n a r r a t o r ' s r e p e t i t i o n s , however, are "vast" because they are contained w i t h i n , and comprise, a work " f i n a l i n i t s e l f " - a n a t u r a l d e s c r i p t i o n of the book. note, too, that the d e s c r i p t i o n of the n a r r a t o r ' s r e p e t i - t i o n i s not of a repeated i d e n t i c a l a c t , but of "going round,/ u n t i l merely going round i s a f i n a l good." the developmental r e p e t i t i o n of round here gives i t the same sense i t has i n "on the road home": i t was at that time, that the s i l e n c e was l a r g e s t and l o n g e s t , the night was roundest, the fragrance of the autumn warmest, c l o s e s t and s t r o n g e s t . (cp ) the g i s t of "on the road home" i s that the t r u t h becomes most evident when f i x e d forms of i t are decreated. the point of the r e p e t i t i o n of round i n "notes..." i s that the d e c r e a t i v e - r e - c o n s t i t u t i v e r e p e t i t i o n of the image makes i t rounder - an e x i s t e n t image - and the r e p e t i t i o n of that roundness leads to "the f i n a l good" which i s , i n terms of the book, "the very s i l e n c e of the poem, i n i t s blank spaces, as that s i l e n c e i s t r a n s l a t e d by each s t r u c t u r a l element i n i t s own way." the leaves here are reminiscent of the leaves i n hopkin's sonnet "spring and f a l l : to a .young c h i l d . " the master of r e p e t i t i o n can contemplate the absolute as i t manifests i t s e l f i n the seasons "though worlds of wanwood leafmeal. l i e . " the compositional use of r e p e t i t i o n , s p e c i f i c a l l y the r e p e t i t i o n of resemblances, r e s u l t s i n symbol, and symbols .which c o n t a i n the "going round" of r e p e t i t i o n w i t h i n themselves r e s u l t i n r e l e a s e from r e p e t i t i o n by becoming a completed t h i n g through which the a b s t r a c t consciousness can contemplate the e t e r n a l . new haven as " t o t a l double t h i n g " i s an i l l u s t r a t i o n : the c o n s o l a t i o n s of space are nameless t h i n g s . i t was a f t e r the neurosis of w i n t e r . i t was in the genius of summer, that they blew up the statue of jove among the boomy clouds. i t took a l l day to quieten the sky and then to r e f i l l i t s emptiness a g a i n , so that at the edge of afternoon, not over, before the thought of evening had occurred or the sound of incomicia had been s e t , there was a c l e a r i n g , a readiness f o r f i r s t b e l l s , an opening f o r outpouring, the hand was r a i s e d : there was a w i l l i n g n e s s not yet composed, a knowing that something c e r t a i n had been proposed, which, without the s t a t u e , would be new, an escape from r e p e t i t i o n , a happening in space and the s e l f , that touched them both at.once and a l i k e (cp - ) "incomincia" i s a t h r e e - f o l d pun. the coinage suggests p o l i t i c a l bureaucracy as a pun on incoming (as opposed to "outpouring"), but i t a l s o c a r r i e s the sound of "incommence" (non-beginning). anyway, incomlncia supplanted the statue's f u n c t i o n i n space as s t e r i l e s e t t i n g of "the thought of evening" i n t o r e a l i t y , and destroyed the p o s s i b i l i t y of "an escape from r e p e t i t i o n , a happening." the image of p o l i t i c a l man takes over the f u n c t i o n of the statue of jove. "marx has ruined nature,/for the moment" (cp ). a f i n a l n o t a t i o n on the concept of r e p e t i t i o n as technique must be made. the s t r o n g l y a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l element of "the p l a i n sense of things" makes i t necessary: i t i s as i f we had come to an end of the imagination, inanimate i n an i n e r t s a v o i r . i t i s d i f f i c u l t even to choose the a d j e c t i v e for t h i s blank c o l d , t h i s sadness without cause. the great s t r u c t u r e has become a minor house. no turban walks across the lessened f l o o r s . the greenhouse never so badly needed p a i n t . the chimney i s f i f t y years o l d and s l a n t s to one s i d e . a f a n t a s t i c e f f o r t has f a i l e d , a r e p e t i t i o n in a r e p e t i t i o u s n e s s of men and f l i e s . (cp ) this i s an extremely touching poem about the c h r i s t - f i g u r e of the poet paying the cost of h i s kenosis - l i k e the f i g u r e of "the men that are f a l l i n g " : what i s i t he d e s i r e s ? but t h i s he cannot know, the man that t h i n k s , yet l i f e i t s e l f , the f u l f i l l m e n t of d e s i r e in the g r i n d i n g r i c - r a c , s t a r i n g s t e a d i l y at a head upon the p i l l o t ? i n the dark, more than sudarium, speaking the speech of absolutes speak and say the immaculate s y l l a b l e s that he spoke only by doing what he d i d . god and a l l angels, t h i s was h i s d e s i r e , whose head l i e s b l u r r i n g here, f o r t h i s he d i e d . taste of the blood upon h i s martyred l i p s , pensioners, demagogues and pay-men! this death was h i s b e l i e f though death i s a stone. this man loved e a r t h , not heaven, enough to d i e . (cp ) the poet, l i k e c h r i s t , must pay the cost of h i s awareness of the d i v i n e love f o r man. his words are not, l i k e the prayers of the m ystic, d i r e c t e d to the a b s o l u t e ; they are the speech of the absolute d i r e c t e d to men. the denunciation " pensioners, demagogues and pay-men" i s analogous to blake's blanket de- n u n c i a t i o n of those " h i r e d to depress a r t " i n h i s m i l t o n . c r i t i c s must " t a s t e of the blood upon h i s martyred l i p s " and know i t f o r what i t i s - "the speech of a b s o l u t e s . " to say that the n a r r a t o r of "the p l a i n sense of things" i s an analogous f i g u r e i s to d i s c o v e r the r e a l nature of stevens' f e e l i n g about h i s value i n the market-place. the house i s both h i s a c t u a l house and h i s " a r c h i t e c t u r e " (op ). his l i f e had been spent i n transforming the things of man i n t o symbols of the absolute i n order to give man h i s d i g n i t y - h i s "candid k i n d . " in the s t e r n n e c e s s i t y of that labour of l o v e , he had been forced to accept the world of man as he found i t — an imagined world i n which there was no imaginations yet the absence of the imagination had i t s e l f to be imagined. (cp ) stevens d i d imagine that absence and i t s cure i n r e p e t i t i o n , but the c l a r i o n of that cure had been drowned out "in a r e p e t l - tiousness of men and f l i e s . " the guardians of obscuration had, a p p a r e n t l y , not been enough to prevent the l e s s e n i n g of h i s " c h a s t e l de pensee", by the c r i t i c s of the market-place, i n t o stevens' house, i n t o the mere expression of stevens' mind. they had not entered, but they had i d e n t i f i e d the place and i t s owner. where stevens s a i d always "we" (he and the masks of h i s muse), they had s a i d "he" and ended the matter. i n t e r p o l a t e d as t h i s account of stevens i n r e l a t i o n to h i s c r i t i c s might be, i t i s nonetheless true that the a c t u a l study of stevens' words i n t h e i r mallarmean " a l t e r n a t i o n s and r e l a - t i o n s h i p s " i s s t i l l , at b e s t , only i n the a b o r t i v e stages of beginning. c r i t i c s have been remiss i n making h i s images signs r a t h e r than studying those v a r i a t i o n s i n "the v a r i a b l e symbol" - those r e p e t i t i o n s of resemblances - that make images symbols. an i l l u s t r a t i o n of the d i f f e r e n c e i n approach and i t s con- sequences i s observable i n connection w i t h the image of the rock. two c r i t i c s have attempted to make the rock the c e n t r a l image i n a l l of stevens' poems. m i l l s i s most c e r t a i n of i t s c e n t r a l i t y s the t i t l e given to the group, the rock, f i g u r e s i n a number of the more important poems, and i t becomes evident that t h i s symbol i s appointed a heavy burden. i t i s to give a f i n a l character to the whole body of stevens' poetry, i s s u i n g and r e c e i v i n g meaning i n a ceaseless flow of r e c i p r o c a l r e l a t i o n s w i t h i n that body. m i l l s recognises the convolutions of r e p e t i t i o n s i n stevens' poems, and h i s development of the meaning of the rock takes i n t o account some of the v a r i a t i o n s i n meaning which the rock undergoes d u r i n g the course of that development. watts, on the other hand, makes no such allowances. his beginning i s a r i g i d s e p a r a t i o n of the good and the bad: to stevens, the "meaning" of summer and sun and l i o n s and l i a n a s i s s e l f - e v i d e n t ; a l l p o i n t to the only a f f i r m a t i o n p o s s i b l e to man, j u s t as angels and trum- pets and preposterous hymns stand f o r impossible a f - f i r m a t i o n s . likewise the opposed recurrent f i g u r e s - the moon and the north and a t h e o l o g i z i n g jew - ex- press stevens' i n s i g h t i n t o the e v i l side of men.... "counters" l i k e these, one may say, are 'the dramatis personae i n the l i t t l e drama that i s the subject of stevens' poetry. i t i s a drama - t h i s em- bodiment of the r e l a t i o n between the perceived and the p e r c e i v e r , between rock and man - that i s n e i t h e r comedy nor tragedy. to watts, the rock i s the t r u t h which exposes d e l u s i o n s . " i f man l e a r n s only from the sense, that knowledge which cannot be shown to come from the sense should no longer be named knowledge. i t i s i n no v a l i d r e l a t i o n with the 'rock of summer i . . . " i t i s easy to dispose of watts' e l e c t i o n of the rock as the b a s i s by which i t i s p o s s i b l e to judge the v a l i d i t y of a l l other r e c u r r e n t images. indeed, h i s view disposes of i t s e l f : at times i t seems that stevens a l s o comes dangerously , c l o s e to the "whole" which he r e j e c t e d because of h i s • esteem f o r "parts". ^ in other words, watts has discovered h i s d e f i n i t i v e meaning and he r e j e c t s anything i n stevens that doesn't conform to the ex- c l u s i o n s of that d e f i n i t i o n . his a t t i t u d e resembles that of belshazzar - another k i n d of rock - i n "country words"; i sang a canto i n a. canton, gunning-coo, , cuckoo cock, in a canton of belshazzar to belshazzar, putrid, rock, p i l l a r of a p u t r i d people, underneath a w i l l o w there i stood and sang and f i l l e d the a i r . i t was an o l d r e b e l l i o u s song, an edge of song that never c l e a r s ; but i f i t d i d . . . i f the cloud that hangs upon the heart and round the mind cleared from the north and i n that height the sun appeared and reddened great belshazzar's brow, , r u l e r , rude with rubies then, attend me now. what i s i t that my f e e l i n g seeks? i know from a l l the things i t touched and l e f t beside and l e f t behind. i t wants the diamond p i v o t b r i g h t . i t wants belshazzar reading r i g h t the luminous pages on h i s knee, of being, more than b i r t h or death. i t wants words v i r i l e with h i s breath. belshazzar, the temporal r u l e r , the rock of r e a l i t y , who refuses t o see the "luminous pages on h i s knee" which are the words of r e v e l a t i o n , made h i s c i t y the kingdom of earth r a t h e r than the c i t y of god. "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin...." in i t s e l f , the rock i s as f a l s e as angels and t h e i r trumpets are. watt's em- phasis on the rock as t r u t h would make of stevens' world, as stevens knew i t would, a "gubbinal" (cp ) ; gubbinal means of i r o n rock.- m i l l s , however, has avoided reducing the rock to i t s gub- b i n a l aspects. but even he confuses the image with the idea of r e a l i t y : " r e a l i t y , or the p h y s i c a l f a c t u a l world, i s a c l o s e d system i n stevens' cosmology, conditioned by 'generations of the imagination' and bounded by seasonal periods whose importance i n the poetry we have already mentioned." in consequence, h i s f i n a l comment on the rock's s i g n i f i c a n c e must be accepted with c a u t i o n : in "the poem that took the place of a mountain" the rock appears as the f i n a l r e s t i n g p l a c e , where the poet merges i n t o h i s work and d i s c o v e r s there a sub- s t i t u t e f o r the i m m o r t a l i t y of the soul and the r e - s u r r e c t i o n of the person. art i s the v e s s e l of the p u r i f i e d , t r a n s f i g u r e d e s s e n t i a l s e l f . since the rock belongs to time, death merely replaces one r e l a t i o n s h i p with the earth f o r another, more i n - e x p l i c a b l e . the rock i n "the poem that took the place of a mountain" (cp ) bears only a f a i n t resemblance to the rock of r e a l i t y ; i t has been f u l l y transmuted ("he breathed i t s oxygen"). i f m i l l s meant by a c l o s e d system what bergson meant, then stevens' r e a l i t y i s not c l o s e d , but open. i t i s , i n f a c t , dynamic. nonetheless, m i l l s ' study of the rock does i n d i c a t e the proper c r i t i c a l d i s p o s i t i o n of the a c t u a l " d i s p o s i t i o n of the p a r t s " i n stevens' book. i t s only f a u l t i s that i t i s pre- mature i n i t s i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of the image of the rock as the c e n t r a l image and " f i n a l c h a r a c t e r " of stevens' poems. there i s no s i n g l e c e n t r a l image. there i s j u s t the c e n t r a l movement of the mind coming to terms w i t h the absolute. every image x-rhich becomes e x i s t e n t i s c e n t r a l to that movement. every image, whether of rock or a i r , i s drawn up and r e s u r r e c t e d by the sweep of the o s c i l l a t i o n s of the absolute. every image, whether of myth or of r e a l i t y , i n the mallarmean stevensian book e x i s t s : the theater c a l l s not f o r s e v e r a l , e s t a b l i s h e d , e t e r n a l , or well-known myths, but f o r one myth f r e e of i n d i v i d u a l i t y , since i t must embrace the many aspects of human l i f e . a r t , with a magic b e f i t t i n g the n a t i o n a l s p i r i t , must evoke these aspects and m i r r o r them a l l i n us. the hero must have no name, f o r there must be a s u r p r i s e . his gesture x<rill c o n t a i n , xsrithin i t s e l f , our dreams of p r i v i l e g e d places and of paradise - dreams which were engulfed by the old-time drama, w i t h i t s f o o l i s h d e s i r e to c o n t a i n or represent them on the stage! i t i s he that e x i s t s , not any p a r t i c u l a r stage! ...does a gesture of our s o u l , do symbols i n p r e p a r a t i o n or i n blossom need any place f o r t h e i r development, other than i n the f i c t i t i o u s stage of v i s i o n which f l a s h e s i n the glance of the audience? myth i s the saint of s a i n t s , but i t must l i v e i n our imaginations. in a miraculous, supreme f l a s h of l i g h t n i n g g i v i n g b i r t h to that figure which i s no one, i t embraces each a c t i n g pose f i t t e d by the figure to the symphonic rhythm. and thus i t i s set free!to myth i s an audience a t t e n t i v e to that symphonic music. coneluslon and i saw a strong angel proclaiming w i t h a loud v o i c e , who i s worthy to open the hook, and to loose the s e a l s thereof? r e v e l a t i o n i saw a c r i t i c once who was p o t e n t i a l l y worthy of completely opening stevens' c o l l e c t e d poems. he was an e x t r a t e r r e s t r i a l i n walter t e v i s ' the man who f e l l to e a r t h , and he sat reading the book on a plane to chicago. "the book was the c o l l e c t e d p o e t r y ( s i c ) of wallace stevens. newton's face was p l a c i d ; he seemed ab- sorbed. " his name (a pseudonym) i s appropriates george mcfadden once s a i d that "a wallace stevens needs a newton of h i s own." he was a being capable of h o l d i n g a l l the d e t a i l s of h i s g i g a n t i c spaceship i n h i s mind while hundreds were at work a b u i l d i n g i t . in the end, newton became an a l c o h o l i c . this i s why t h i s t h e s i s has no c o n c l u s i o n , but ends, l i k e graves'- c o l l e c t e d poems, on a comma. there i s so much l e f t to be s a i d about stevens' poems that any other ending would be h y p o c r i s y . stevens' p r a c t i c e of a l l u d i n g to the work of other poets f o r example, as an aspect of that " p e r f e c t symmetry of v e r s e s " i n the book that w i l l extend "beyond the volume i t s e l f " has been i n d i c a t e d , but not s t u d i e d . in f a c t , most of the points made i n t h i s t h e s i s have been i n d i c a t i o n s r a t h e r than extended s t u d i e s . i f a c o n c l u s i o n to the thesis' i s impossible, however, a con- c l u s i o n about the aim and a s p i r a t i o n of t h i s unconcluded t h e s i s i s not. the problem was to f i n d a conceptual framework, adequate t o stevens' "image world" " i n which nothing s o l i d i s i t s s o l i d s e l f , " a framework which would, or could, free the c r i t i c from incessant beginnings and acrimonious argument. this t h e s i s , i t s e l f , i s not free from those beginnings and that kind of argument, and that i s i t s burden. but i f i t has proved that the conceptual framework i m p l i e d by the phrase ' o s c i l l a t i o n s of the absolute' i s what stevens' c r i t i c s so badly need, a concept u n i v e r s a l l y acceptable because true and workable i n r e l a t i o n to the poems, then i t s burden i s not i t s g u i l t , but only i t s martyrdom. footnotes preliminary . graham hough, "the poetry of wallace stevens," c r i t i c a l q u a r t e r l y , i i , i , p. . . yvor winters, "the hedonist's progress," in defense of reason, new york, , p. . cf. the c o l l e c t e d poems of wallace stevens, new york, » p« • h e r e a f t e r , references to t h i s volume w i l l he c i t e d thus i n the t e x t - (cp ) . references to stevens* opus posthumous, ed. samuel french morse, new york, » w i l l be c i t e d i n the t e x t by the a b b r e v i a t i o n op followed by the page number. stevens' the necessary angel..., new york, > w i l l be c i t e d by the a b b r e v i a t i o n na followed by the page number. . s.t. c o l e r i d g e , biographia l i t e r a r i a , ed. j . shawcross, london, , ( ? ) , i , p. . bowyer was coleridge's head master. . see c o l e r i d g e , b i o g r a p h i a , i , p. f o r a d e f i n i t i o n of terms. . w i l l i a m rose ben t, , saturday review of l i t e r a t u r e , xv, jan. , p. . . frank kermode, wallace stevens, london and edinburgh, i , pp. - . . christmas humphreys, buddhism, london, , pp. - . . winters, p. . . w i l l i a m van o'connor, the shaping s p i r i t : a study of wallace stevens, chicago, , pp. - . . w i l l i a m york t i n d a l l , wallace stevens, minneapolis, , p. . . thomas vance, "wallace stevens and t.s. e l i o t , " dartmouth college l i b r a r y b u l l e t i n , december , pp. - . . john holmes, "five american poets," v i r g i n i a quarterly review, x i i , a p r i l , p. . . winters, p. . . paul v a l e r y , the a r t of poetry, t r a n s . denise f o l l i o t , new york, l , p. . . richard watson, between the " i " and the " i t " i n wallace stevens' "harmonium", (unpublished), u.b.c., , p. . w i l l i a m york t i n d a l l , p. . . richard watson, p. . . frank doggett, "wallace stevens and the world we know," e n g l i s h j o u r n a l , x l v i i i , , p. . . see lewis richard f a r n e l l , the c u l t s of the greek s t a t e s , oxford, , i i , pp. - but e s p e c i a l l y p. . . howard baker, "wallace stevens and other poets," the achievement of wallace stevens, eds. ashley brown and robert s. h a l l e r , p h i l a d e l p h i a , , p. . w.k. wimsatt, j r . , the verbal icon, new york, , p. . . thomas f. walsh, concordance to the poetry of wallace stevens, pennsylvania, ± . . george santayana, i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s of poetry and r e l i g i o n , new york, , p. . . thomas c a r l y l e , sartor resartus, london and glasgow, c o l l i n s ' c l e a r type press, no date, pp. - part i . john c i a r d i , "wallace stevens' "absolute music", -nation, clxxix, oct. , p. . . w i l l i a m c a r l o s w i l l i a m s , kora i n h e l l , boston, , p. . . i b i d . , p. . . w i l l i a m c a r l o s w i l l i a m s , , new republic, x c i i i , nov. , p. . . w i l l i a m carlos w i l l i a m s , the autobiography of w i l l i a m c a r l o s w i l l i a m s , new york, , p« x i i . . w i l l i a m carlos w i l l i a m s , "poet of a steadfast p a t t e r n , " nytbr, aug. , p. . . l i o n e l a b e l , "in the sacred park," p a r t i s a n review, xxv, , p. . . robert b u t t e l l , "wallace stevens at harvard: some origins of his theme and s t y l e , " elh, : , march , pp. - . . paul v a l e r y , pp. - . . ardyth bradley, "wallace stevens' decorations," tcl, : , oct. , p. . . louis untermeyer, "five american poets," yale review, xiv, oct. , p. . . wylie sypher, "connoisseur in chaos: wallace stevens," partisan review, xiii, , p. . ashley brown and robert s. h a l l e r , "introduction," the, achievement of wallace stevens, p. . .. see respectively, roy harvey pearce, "stevens posthumous," international l i t e r a r y annual, i i , (london )» p. - james baird, "transvaluation i n the poetics of wallace stevens, studies i n honour of john c. hodges and alwln thaler (tennessee studies i n l i t e r a t u r e , special number), knoxville, , - ? george mcfadden, "poet, nature and society i n wallace stevens," mlq, xxiii, sept. , p. - joseph n. riddel, "wallace stevens' "notes toxiard a supreme f i c t i o n " , " wisconsin studies i n contemporary literature, i i , i i , p. - steve feldman, "reality and the imagination: the poetic of wallace stevens' "the necessary angel",", university of kansas city review, xxi, , p. - and emilie buchwald, "wallace stevens: the delicatest eye of the mind," american quarterly, xiv, summer , p. . . anthony hecht, "poets and peasants," hudson review, x, winter - , p. . . as quoted by frank kermode i n wallace stevens, p. . northrop frye, "the r e a l i s t i c oriole: a study of wallace stevens," wallace stevens: a c o l l e c t i o n of c r i t i c a l essays, ed. marie borrdff,englewood c l i f f s , , p. i . . ibid., p. . ibid., p. i . . william van o'connor, p. . . richard watson, p. • • ibid., pp. - » . see joseph n. riddel, "wallace stevens' " v i s i b i l i t y of thought"," pmla, lxxvii, number , part i, sept. , p. f o r a description of the changes i n the ordering of the section and t h e i r s i g n i f i c a n c e . . i.a. richards, "poetry and b e l i e f s , " critiques and essays i n c r i t i c i s m , - , new york, , p. . . see op x y i for morse's account of the genealogy of the poem . s i s t e r m. bernetta quinn, "metamorphosis i n wallace stevens wallace stevens: a c o l l e c t i o n of c r i t i c a l essays, p. . . as quoted by michel benamou, "wallace stevens and the symbolist imagination," elh, * , march , p. . . ralph nash, "wallace stevens and the point of change," p e r s p e c t i v e , v i i , autumn , p. . . mary colum, , nytbr, nov. , p. . . llewelyn powys, "the t h i r t e e n t h way," the achievement of wallace stevens, p. » . stanley burnshaw,- "turmoil i n the middle ground," new masses, oct. » pp« - . mr. burnshaw's l a t e r e x p l a n a t i o n of h i s p o s i t i o n i n "wallace stevens and the statue," sewanee review, lxix, pp. - , i s a moving account, t o be valued i f not f o r i t s e x p l i c a t i o n of stevens, at l e a s t f o r the ex- p l a n a t i o n i t a f f o r d s of the e a r l i e r burnshaw. . michel benamou, "jules laforgue and wallace stevens," romanic review, l, , p. « « lloyd frankenburg, "wallace stevens," plea.sure dome, cambridge (mass.),' , p. . . george santayana, the sense of beauty? being an outline of a e s t h e t i c theory, new york, , p. . . a r c h i b l a d macleish, c o l l e c t e d poems? - , boston, , p. . . northrop frye, "the r e a l i s t i c o r i o l e . . . " , p. . . v i r g i l , the aeneid, t r a n s . rolfe humphries, new york, , (bk. i v ) , p. . . v i r g i l , (bk. v i ) , pp. - . robert graves, the greek myths, b a l t i m o r e , , i , p. . . i b i d . , i , p. . . michel benamou, "jules laforgue and wallace stevens," p. . . george mcfadden, "probings f o r an i n t e g r a t i o n ; color symbolism i n wallace stevens," mp, l v i i i : , feb. , p. . . w i l l i a m t y l e r o l c o t t , star lore of a l l ages, new york and london, > p. . . for v i s u a l demonstration see the s t a r charts i n barton and barton, a guide to the c o n s t e l l a t i o n s f o r the months march to october, new york, . . o l c o t t , p. . . i b i d . , pp. - . . joseph n. r i d d e l , the never-ending m e d i t a t i o n ; a study of myth, metaphor, and the poetry of order i n the works of wallace stevens, u n i v e r s i t y of wisconsin, i , p. ' . rev. charles whyte, the c o n s t e l l a t i o n s and their h i s t o r y , london, , p. . . northrop frye, "the r e a l i s t i c o r i o l e , " pp. - . . joseph n. r i d d e l , "stevens' " v i s i b i l i t y of thought"," p. . . e..m. f o r s t e r , passage to i n d i a , london, i , p. . ananda k. coomaraswamy, the dance of shiva, new york, , p. . . ananda k. coomaraswamy, c h r i s t i a n and o r i e n t a l philosophy of a r t , new york, , p. . . i b i d . , pp. - . . joseph n. r i d d e l , "stevens' " v i s i b i l i t y of thought."," p. . . seng ts'an, "on b e l i e v i n g i n mind," buddhist s c r i p t u r e s , t r a n s . edward conze, harmondsworth, , pp. - • . c. roland wagner, "a c e n t r a l poetry," wallace stevens: a c o l l e c t i o n of c r i t i c a l essays, englewood c l i f f s , , p. i n p a r t i c u l a r . . j.a. stewart, the myths of p l a t o , new york, , p. . . i b i d . , p. - . i b i d . , pp. - . . george santayana, scepticism and animal f a i t h : i n t r o d u c t i o n t o a system of philosophy, u.s.a., , p« i n p a r t i c u l a r . . lloyd frankenburg, pleasure dome, p. . . w i l l i a m york t i n d a l l , wallace stevens, p. . . ramon g u t h r i e , "stevens' "lions i n sweden"," e x p l , xx, dec. l, item . . robert pack, wallace stevens: an approach to h i s poetry and thought, new brunswick (n.j.)., , pp. - . ' . s.t. c o l e r i d g e , biographia l i t e r a r i a , i i , p. . . i b i d . , i , p. . . see shawcross' "introduction,'-' biographia l i t e r a r i a , i , l x v i i - l x v i i l . ? . george santayana., scepticism and animal faith, p. . . immanuel kant, the philosophy of kant, ed. carl j . f r i e d r l c h , new york, , pp. - . . ibid., p. . . ibid., p. . . ernst cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms, trans. ralph mahheim, new haven, , vol. i ("language"), p. . . ibid.. p. . . ibid., pp. - . . northrop frye, "the r e a l i s t i c oriole," p. . . northrop frye, anatomy of c r i t i c i s m ; four essays, princeton, , p. . . paul v a l e r y , p. . * lloyd frankenburg, pleasure dome, p. . part ii . joseph n. riddel, "the never-ending meditation...," p. . . hi simons, "wallace stevens and mallarme," mp, xliii, , p. . . morton dauwen zabel, "wallace stevens and the image of man," wallace stevens; a c o l l e c t i o n of c r i t i c a l essays, pp. - * . ibid., p. . « william van o'connor quotes an amusing poem by amy lowell on t h i s subject i n the shaping s p i r i t , pp. - . . joseph n. riddel, "the never-ending meditation...," p. . . ibid., p. . . .frank kermode, wallace stevens, p. . . stephane mallarme, mallarme; selected prose poems, essays & letters, trans. bradford cook, baltimore, , p. * . steve feldman, "reality and the imagination," p. . . william york t i n d a l l , wallace stevens, pp. - . . mildred e. hartsock, "image and idea i n the poetry of stevens," tcl, v i l l i , a p r i l l , pp. - . . , james b a i r d , "transvaluation i n the p o e t i c s of wallace stevens," p. . . op. c l t . . p. . .. w i l l i a m van o'connor, the shaping s p i r i t , p. . . robert pack, "wallace stevens: an approach to his thought," p. . . james b a i r d , "transvaluation i n the p o e t i c s of wallace . stevens," pp. - . . harold watts, "wallace stevens and the rock of summer," kenyon review, xiv, . , pp. - . . , stephane mallarme, mallarme: selected prose, p. . . frank doggett, "wallace stevens' later poetry,." elh, xxv, june , p.. . . .t. c o l e r i d g e , the table talk and omniana, ed. t. ashe, london, , p. n. . " s.t. c o l e r i d g e , the c o l l e c t e d l e t t e r s of samuel taylor c o l e r i d g e , ed. e a r l l e s l i e griggs, oxford, , v o l . iv, p. - . michel benamou, "wallace stevens and the symbolist imagination," p. . . i b i d . , p.. . . j . h i l l i s m i l l e r , "wallace stevens' poetry of being," elh, : , march , p. - . i b i d . , p. . ?.. i b i d . , pp. , . . c. roland wagner, "the idea of nothingness i n wallace stevens," accent, x i i , spring , p. . . i b i d . , p. . .. michel benamou, "wallace stevens and the symbolist imagination," p. • . e m i l i e buchwald, "wallace stevens: the d e l i c a t e s t eye of the mind," p. . . for an example, see s i s t e r quinn's "metamorphosis i n wallace stevens," p. . «, roy harvey pearce, "stevens posthumous," p. . . roy harvey pearce, "stevens posthumous," p. . . michel benamou, "wallace stevens and the symbolist imagination," p. . . robert pack, wallace stevens; an approach..., p. ^. . s i s t e r m. bernetta quinn, "metamorphosis i n wallace stevens," p. . . i b i d . , p. . . a l b e r t camus, the' rebel; an essay on man i n r e v o l t , t r a n s . anthony bower, new york, , p. ." . michel benamou, "wallace stevens and the symbolist imagination," p. l . . i b i d ; , :p;. , . . jean-paul' s a r t r e , the transcendence of the ego; an e x i s t e n t i a l i s t theory of consciousness, t r a n s . f o r r e s t williams and robert k i r k p a t r i c k , new york, , p. . s.t. c o l e r i d g e , biographia l i t e r a r i a , i , p. . . james joyce, p o r t r a i t of the a r t i s t as a young man, harmondsworth, i , pp. - . . see james balrd's "transvaluation i n the p o e t i c s of wallace stevens.." this i s probably a v e r s i o n of the paper pearce a l l u d e s t'o. . i b i d . , p. . . i b i d . , p. . . michel benamou, "wallace stevens and the symbolist imagination," p. . . j.a. stewart, the myths of p l a t o , london, , pp. - . . i b i d . , p. . . see p a r t i c u l a r l y merle e. brown, "concordia discors i n the poetry of wallace stevens," al, ^ ; , may , pp. - . . michel benamou, "wallace stevens and the symbolist imagination," pp. - • the l e t t e r quoted i s addressed t o henry church. .' c o l e r i d g e , biographia . l i t e r a r i a , i i , p. . . bernard heringman, "the poetry of synthesis," p e r s p e c t i v e , vi , autumn ^, p. ? . • michel benamou, "wallace stevens: some r e l a t i o n s between poetry and p a i n t i n g , " comparative l i t e r a t u r e , x i , » p. . . donald davie, "the auroras of autumn," p e r s p e c t i v e , v i i , autumn , p. . . joseph n. r i d d e l , "stevens' " v i s i b i l i t y of thought"," p. . . peloubet's b i b l e d i c t i o n a r y , p h i l a d e l p h i a , , p. . « e.m. f o r s t e r , passage to i n d i a , p. . . ardyth bradley, "wallace stevens' decorations," pp. - . . michel benamou, "wallace stevens and the symbolist imagination," p. * . w i l l i a m wordsworth, the prelude, v, . - . . i b i d . , . - . . i b i d . , . - . w i l l i a m t y l e r o l c o t t , star lore of a l l ages, pp. - . . i b i d . , pp. , . .. marie b o r r o f f , " i n t r o d u c t i o n : wallace stevens: the world and the poet," wallace stevens: a c o l l e c t i o n of c r i t i c a l essays, p.- . . w i l l i a m wordsworth, the prelude, v, . - . . i b i d . , . - . ; michel benamou, "beyond emerald or amethyst: wallace stevens and the french t r a d i t i o n , " dartmouth college l i b r a r y b u l l e t i n , december l , p. l . . ralph j . m i l l s , j r . , "wallace stevens: the image of the rock," accent, x v i i i , , pp. - . ; harold w a t t s " w a l l a c e stevens and the rock of summer," pp. , . - i b i d . , p. . ; i b i d . , .p. . . d a n i e l , * . ; ralph j . m i l l s , j r . , "wallace stevens:-the•image of the rock," p. . . i b i d . , p. . . stephane mallarme, mallarme"; selected prose, p. . conclusion . walter t e v i s , the man who f e l l to earth , greenwich, ? p. . . george mcfadden, "probings f o r an i n t e g r a t i o n . . . , " p. . bibliography i wallace stevens stevens, wallace. opus posthumous. ed. samuel french morse, new york, . . the collected poems of wallace stevens, new york, <tl t . the necessary angels essays on reality and the imagination. new york, * ii books and articles on wallace stevens abel, lionel.."in the sacred park," partisan review, xxv ( ) pp. - . baird, james. "transvaluation i n the poetic of wallace stevens," studies i n honour of john c. hodges and alwln thaler (tennessee studies i n l i t e r a t u r e , special number), knoxville ( ) pp. - . baker, howard. "wallace stevens and other poets," the achievement of wallace stevens. eds. ashley brown and robert s. haller, philadelphia, , pp. - . benamou, michel. "beyond emerald or amethysts wallace stevens and the french tradition,".dartmouth college library b u l l e t i n (december l ) pp. - . . "jules laforgue and wallace stevens," romanic review, l~ t l ) pp. - . . "wallace stevens and the symbolist imagination," elh, s l t m a r c h ) pp. - . . "wallace stevenss some relations between poetry and painting," comparative literature , xi ( ) pp. - . bene^t, william rose. "review of "owl's clover"," saturday review of l i t e r a t u r e . xv (jan. ) p. . borroff, marie. "introductions wallace stevenss the world and the poet," wallace stevenss a c o l l e c t i o n of c r i t i c a l essays. ed. marie borroff, englewood c l i f f s , , pp. - . bradley, ardyth. "wallace stevens' decorations," tcl, : (oct. ) pp. - ?. brown, ashley and h a l l e r , robert s. "introduction," the achievement of wallace stevens. philadelphia, , pp. - . brown, merle e. "concordia discors i n the poetry of wallace stevens," al, $ (may ) pp. - . buchwald-, emilie. "wallace stevens: the dellcatest eye of the mind," american quarterly, xiv (summer ) pp. - . burnshaw, stanley. review of "ideas of order", .new masses (oct. ) pp. - . . "wallace stevens and the statue," sewanee review, lxix, pp. - . b u t t e l l , robert. "wallace stevens at harvard: some origins of his theme and style," elh, : (march ) pp. - . c i a r d i , john. "wallace stevens' "absolute music"," nation, clxxix (oct. ) pp. - . colum, mary. review of "parts of a world", nytbr (nov. ) p. . davie, donald. ""the auroras of autumn"," perspective, vii, (autumn ) pp. - . doggett, prank. "wallace stevens and the world we know," . english journal. xlviii ( ) pp. - . • "wallace stevens' later poetry," elh, xxv (june ) pp. - . feldman, steve. "reality and the imagination: the poetic of wallace stevens' necessary angel," university of kansas city review, xxi ( ) pp. - . frankenburg, lloyd. "wallace stevens," pleasure dome. cambridge (mass.), , pp. - . frye, northrop. '"the r e a l i s t i c oriole: a study of wallace stevens," wallace stevens: a c o l l e c t i o n of essays. ed. marie borroff, englewood c l i f f s , , pp. - . guthrie, ramon. "stevens' "lions i n sweden"," expl, xx (dec ) item . hartsock, mildred e. "image and idea i n the poetry of stevens," tcl, vii : (april l ) pp. - . hecht, anthony. "poets and peasants," hudson review, x (winter - ) pp. - . heringman, bernard. "the poetry of synthesis," perspective, vii (autumn ) pp. - . holmes, john. "five american poets," v i r g i n i a quarterly review, xii ( a p r i l ) pp. - . hough, graham.. "the poetry of wallace stevens'," c r i t i c a l quarterly, ii ( i ) pp. - . ' kermode, frank. wallace stevens. london and edinburgh, i , (in series writers and c r i t i c s , ed. norman a. j e f f a r e s ) . mcfadden, george. "poet, nature and society i n wallace stevens," mlq, xxiii (sept. ) pp.' -?l. . "probings for an integration: color symbolism i n wallace stevens," mp, l v i i i (feb. ) pp. - . m i l l e r , j . h i l l l s . "wallace stevens' poetry of being," elh, . » (march, ) pp. - . m i l l s , ralph j. j r . "wallace stevens: the image of the rock," accent, xviii ( ) pp. ., - . nash, ralph. "wallace stevens and the point of change," perspective, vii, (autumn * pp. - . o'connor, william van. the shaping s p i r i t : a study of wallace stevens. chicago, . pack, robert. wallace stevens: an approach to his poetry and thought, new brunswick (n.j.), . [ ' pearce, roy harvey. "stevens posthumous," international l i t e r a r y annual, ii (london ) pp. - . powys, llewelyn. "the thirteenth way," the achievement of wallace stevens. eds. ashley brown and robert s. h a l l e r , philadelphia, , pp. - . quinn, s i s t e r m. bernetta. "metamorphosis i n wallace stevens," wallace stevens: a c o l l e c t i o n of c r i t i c a l essays. ed. marie borroff, englewood c l i f f s , , pp. - . riddel, joseph n. the never-ending meditation: a study of myth, metaphor and the poetry of order i n the works of wallace stevens. university of wisconsin, i , (l.c. card # - ) . . "wallace stevens' "notes towards a supreme f i c t i o n " , " wisconsin studies i n contemporary l i t e r a t u r e , ii, i i , pp. -w. [ . "wallace stevens' " v i s i b i l i t y of thought"," pmla, lxxvii, number , part i (sept. ) . simons, hi. "wallace stevens and mallarme'," mp, xliii ( ) pp. - . sypher, wylie. "connoisseur i n chaos: wallace stevens," partisan review, xiii ( ) pp. - . t i n d a l l , william york. wallace stevens: phamphlets on american writers number . minneapolis, . untermeyer, louis. "five american poets," yale review, xiv (oct. ) pp. - . vance, thomas. "wallace stevens and t.s. e l i o t , " dartmouth college library b u l l e t i n (december ) pp. - . wagner, c. roland. "a central poetry," wallace stevens; a c o l l e c t i o n of c r i t i c a l essays. ed. marie borroff, englewood c l i f f s , , pp. - . . "the idea of nothingness i n wallace stevens," accent, xii (spring ) pp. - . walsh, thomas f. concordance to the poetry of wallace stevens. pennsylvania, . watson, richard. between the " i " and the " i t " i n wallace stevens "harmonium". unpublished, u.b.c., . watts, harold h. "wallace stevens and the rock of summer," kenyon review, xiv ( ) pp. - . williams, william carlos. kora i n h e l l . boston, . _____ . "poet of a steadfast pattern," nytbr (august ) p. . . . "review of "the man with the blue guitar"," new republic, xciii (november ) p. . . the autobiography of william carlos williams. new york, . winters, yvor. in defense of reason. new york, . zabel, morton dauwen. "wallace stevens and the image of man," wallace stevens: a c o l l e c t i o n of c r i t i c a l essays. ed. marie borroff, englewood c l i f f s , , pp. - . i l l other books cited camus, albert. the rebel: an essay on man i n revolt. new york, . c a r l y l e , thomas. sartor resartus. london and glasgow (no date). cassirer, ernst. the philosophy of symbolic forms. trans. ralph manheim. new haven, . volume i (language!". coleridge, samuel taylor. biographla l i t e r a r i a . ed. j. shawcross. oxford, . volumes. . collected letters of samuel taylor coleridge. ed. e a r l l e s l i e griggs. oxford, . vol. iv. . the table talk and omniana of samuel taylor coleridge. ed. t. ashe. london, . coomaraswamy, ananda k. c h r i s t i a n and oriental philosophy of art. new york, ( ? ) . . the dance of shiva; fourteen indian essays. new york, - f a r n e l l , lewis richard. the cults of the greek states. oxford, , vol. ii. forster, e.m. a passage to india. london, i . graves, robert. the greek myths. baltimore, > two volumes. humphreys, christmas. buddhism. harmondsworth, . joyce, james. a p o r t r a i t of the a r t i s t as a young man. harmondsworth, i . kant, immanuel. the philosophy of kant. ed. carl j . f r i e d r i c h . new york, w* macleish, archibald. collected poems: - . cambridge, . mallarme^, stephane. selected prose poems, essays, & letters. trans. bradford cook. baltimore, " . olcott, william tyler. star lore of a l l ages. new york and london, . santayana, george. interpretations of poetry and religion. new york, . . scepticism and animal faith; introduction to a system of philosophy, u.s.a., . . the sense of beauty: being the outline of aesthetic theory. new york, * sartre, jean-paul. the transcendence of the ego: an e x i s t e n t i a l i s t theory of consciousness. trans. forrest williams and robert kirkpatrick. new york, i . stewart, j.a. the myths of plato. london, . tevis, walter. the man who. f e l l to earth. u.s.a., . . vale'ry, paul. the art of poetry. trans. denise f o l l i o t . new york, . v i r g i l . the aeneid. trans. rolf humphries. new york, . whyte, rev. charles. the c o n s t e l l a t i o n s and their h i s t o r y . london, . wimsatt, w.k., j r . the verbal loon. studies i n the meaning of poetry. u.s.a., . the songs we know best: john ashbery's early life by karin roffman (review) the songs we know best: john ashbery's early life by karin roffman (review) ellen levy wallace stevens journal, volume , number , spring , pp. - (review) published by johns hopkins university press doi: for additional information about this article [ access provided at apr : gmt from carnegie mellon university ] https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ reviews as for the musicality of words, throughout the volume we find a sensi- tive treatment of stevens’s concern with lyrical form, which manifests itself most visibly in the case of “the man with the blue guitar.” while it is nearly impossible to capture the poem’s iambic rhythm in its entirety in turkish, Çelebioğlu manages to keep line lengths as close as possible to the originals. he also keeps most of the rhymes, and inserts additional ones to compensate for those he glosses over, as in “eğildi” / “göverdi” of the very first couplet ( ). the use of inverted sentences also enables the translator to preserve some of the rhymes—for instance, in section iv of “the man with the blue guitar,” where the translation of the rhyme “are” / “guitar” (cpp ) as “olanlar” / “gitar” ( ) comes close to capturing the interplay between “things as they are” (reality) and “the blue guitar” (the instrument of poetic imagination). on other occasions, however, the change of rhyming patterns fails to register the link between the “blue guitar” and “things as they are” (see, for instance, sections i, vi, and xxviii). notably, here the translation of stevens’s dialogue between the poet-speaker and the audience is skillfully integrated into the turkish text with the adaptation of the “dedi” / “dediler” (s/he said / they said) pattern—a folk form characteristic of anatolian “müracâ’a poetry.” it is precisely with respect to such aesthetic features that Çelebioğlu’s translation of the poem surpasses biçen’s earlier version. ultimately, bir karakuşa bakmanın on Üç yolu is a highly accomplished and genuinely ambitious presentation of stevens to turkish readers. even though stevens’s poetry entered into turkish as early as the mid-fifties, public recep- tion has so far been limited. with its expansive range of selections and beauti- ful physical design, Çelebioğlu’s new translation has the potential to attract a broader audience and to elicit new forms of readerly attention, as several online reviews have already indicated. as such, the book is not only a wel- come addition to the expanding body of translated poetry into turkish, but also an important contribution of this canonical american poet to the sphere of world literature. gül bilge han stockholm university sweden the songs we know best: john ashbery’s early life. by karin roffman. new york: farrar, straus and giroux, . most devoted readers of john ashbery know the strange story of his first po- ems to see print: how a prep-school classmate submitted ashbery’s work to poetry as his own, a fact their author discovered, to his intense chagrin, only when he read them in the magazine. or, at least, most of us thought we knew this story. in karin roffman’s gripping account of the poet’s formative years, however, the incident forms part of a still stranger tale. the poetry thief, a boy by the name of bill haddock, haunted ashbery during their time at deerfield academy like a demonic doppelganger out of a patricia highsmith novel, al- ternately befriending and tormenting him, spreading rumors that he was “an the wallace stevens journal h.o.” (homosexual; true) and public masturbator (not true) ( ). haddock himself was gay, and an aspiring poet who envied his friend’s precocious tal- ent; the one real edge he had on ashbery was that he was upper-middle-class, while ashbery was made to suffer for being a farmer’s son from the moment he entered deerfield. the two boys, in other words, could be seen as distorted mirror images of one another, bound together by anxieties about class and sex, as well as an ambition that only one would realize. “the thief of poetry,” “my erotic double,” “self-portrait in a convex mir- ror”—these ashbery titles inevitably came to mind as i was writing the previ- ous paragraph, still more evidence that this poet is always steps ahead of his would-be interpreters. still, i hesitated to cite the poems. an aesthetics and ethics of impersonality is central to ashbery’s writing; by deliberately omit- ting recognizable biographical details, he means to leave room in the poem for the reader. he often said that, like gertrude stein, he wanted to write “every- body’s autobiography,” and famously described his anthology piece “soon- est mended” as a “one-size-fits-all confessional poem” (poetry review, vol. , aug. , p. ). one startles at the scant handful of moments when bits of the life do surface in the poems; when roffman cites one such moment, in “the history of my life” (from your name here [ ]), she remarks on the poet’s “unusual candor” ( ). “once upon a time there were two brothers,” the poem begins, “then there was only one: myself” (qtd. on ). the lines refer to what emerges, in roffman’s sensitive narration, as the first great earth- quake of ashbery’s life: the death of his younger brother richard, at the age of nine, of leukemia. richard had been their father’s son—masculine, sports- loving, outgoing—as john never could nor would be. “this otherness, this / ‘not-being-us’ is all there is to look at / in the mirror,” ashbery insists, in “self-portrait” (collected poems – , library of america, , p. ): for all his differences from john, roffman suggests, richard remained for his brother the model of the haunting other, the absent-present second self. so, perhaps the haddock story, for all its cringe-inducing adolescent pet- tiness, can be made relevant to the poems after all. in one of roffman’s many fascinating and telling citations from the young ashbery’s unpublished writ- ings, the high-school senior tackles the vexed question of why modern poetry must be so difficult: “the poems are complex because they spring from a mind which has been made complex by its double existence—its social responsi- bility and its inward enigma” (qtd. on ). one recognizes in this phrase the ashbery who follows wallace stevens in conceiving poetry as “a violence from within that protects us from a violence without,” “the imagination press- ing back against the pressure of reality” (cpp ). stevens has been central to discussions of ashbery’s poetic development at least since the mid- s, when harold bloom portrayed ashbery, eloquently if too insistently, as an “ephebe” almost wholly shaped by “the necessary anxiety induced in him by the siren song of stevens’ rhetorics” (figures of capable imagination, seabury p, , p. ). roffman, for her part, notes that, during a crucial period in college, ashbery’s “appreciation for stevens’s work rapidly grew,” and that when the poet gave a reading at harvard in , “john was in the front row” ( ). my sense, though, is that it was not so much stevens’s “rhetorics” that reviews were the draw for ashbery at this point as it was the elder writer’s incompa- rable handling of the dialectical relation between our inner and outer lives. “[n]othing illustrates the importance of poetry better than this possibility that within it there may yet be found a reality adequate to the profound neces- sities of life today,” stevens declares (cpp ), in a essay on marianne moore that, according to roffman, ashbery found “revelatory” ( ). which reminds me, in turn, of ashbery’s self-revealing remark apropos the poems of elizabeth bishop, like him an ephebe of both stevens and moore: “we live in a quandary, but it is not a dualistic conflict between inner and outer reality; it is rather a question of deciding how much the outer reality is our reality, how far we can advance into it and still keep a toe-hold on the inner, private one” (se- lected prose, ed. eugene richie, u of michigan p, , p. ). the biographer is, by necessity, more accountable to outer reality—“the unsubstantial, fluctu- ating facts of the world about us,” as stevens loftily calls them (cpp )—than the poet is. yet the pattern of social tensions that roffman traces in the fluctuat- ing facts of ashbery’s life also bespeaks a double existence, one that, in the cru- cible of the poetic sensibility, would transform into an imaginative dialectic. thus, as a child, ashbery continually moved back and forth between the home of his parents, to whom he would always seem somewhat alien, and that of his maternal grandparents, highly educated people who recognized and nurtured the boy’s gifts. the farmer father and scientist grandfather also represented different class positions, between which john remained uneasily suspended, until he finally escaped, after college, into the declassed world of new york bohemians. as adolescence approached, he began to live another kind of double life, struggling to conceal the nature of his burgeoning sexual- ity from his family and friends, an effort that extended to using various kinds of coded language in his diary, in case his mother should read it. roffman is not the first to suggest that coded quality of ashbery’s adult work stems from an urge to deflect our curiosity about his sexuality, but the examples she adduces from the early writings offer an unparalleled view of that enigmatic style as it develops. the most eye-opening example is a diary entry roffman describes as “john’s first original modernist poem” ( ), which, she tells us, commemorates another first, the thirteen-year-old ashbery’s first ejaculation achieved in bed-play with another boy, and which reads exactly like some- thing out of the tennis court oath: tulip garden old dutch home all our own until recall once more fashion in shows dog cast in days before were almost learning to forget happy fear came from a trough kin (qtd. on – ) the wallace stevens journal roffman traces a more complex, but no less suggestive, connection between the poet’s sexual and poetic development via his teenage enthusiasm for hart crane, a poet whose influence on ashbery, unlike stevens’s, has gone largely unremarked until now. she mentions that ashbery and his first real boyfriend, a summer worker at his father’s fruit farm, bonded over their love for crane, and that at the end of that summer, the poet read philip horton’s crane bi- ography and was disturbed by “horton’s assertion that homosexuality was ‘abnormal’ and ‘an aberration’” ( ). but it is the poems she quotes that show just how deep an impression crane made, and how intricately bound up his influence was with the emergence of themes that would remain with ashbery even after he had shed all traces of crane’s seductive style. read crane’s “pos- sessions” and “recitative,” and then “poem,” which roffman offers us from ashbery’s junior year at deerfield: always the left hand flickers, falls to right; the eyes groping at mirrors strike the sought self, opaque and firm, safe in its frame. a sweet disorder arranges mirrors, and the tensile gaze turns inward, calls the turning love. let our dual sight see not so clearly, and turning, take daylight. and before mirrors long unvisited award the milk white and translucent face that stays there, that we know not how to name. (qtd. on – ) the writing knows something that the writer doesn’t quite yet, about the diz- zyingly complex relation between inner and outer, self and other—and that uncanny mediator between them, the mirror. one can see why bill haddock went a little mad with envy. certainly, the ashbery that roffman portrays was prodigiously gifted. his first poem, an adept pastiche of the verse in a children’s anthology he found in his grandparents’ well-stocked library, astonished the adults, and “demon- strated, above all else, a quick and naturally musical ear” ( ). but the early diaries, letters, stories, and poems that roffman has unearthed, and put into rich context via extensive interviews with ashbery and others in his life, also show a boy and young man driven by a persistent desire for “escape” and “improved . . . social status” ( , )—for an out from the double bind of the family situation. we watch as, year by year, the young ashbery cultivates a fearsome work ethic, writing every day and drawing up ambitious book lists: “get the diary of samuel pepys from the library,” he reminds himself, at thir- teen, “so as to inspire mine” ( ). it is less of a mystery, now, how he grew into the dazzlingly inventive, overwhelmingly productive writer with whom we have only just begun to reckon. with ashbery, one hesitates to turn one’s focus from the inward enigma, his natural subject, to the pressure of reality, but, as reviews roffman so deftly demonstrates, to know this poet we must learn to turn and turn again, to master the difficult practice he presciently called “dual sight.” ellen levy pratt institute restless secularism: modernism and the religious inheritance. by matthew mutter. new haven and london: yale university press, . restless secularism: modernism and the religious inheritance is a daunting study of the relation between writing and religion in modernist literary discourse. with its broad-ranging focus on the work of both american and british liter- ary practitioners of the last century—wallace stevens, virginia woolf, w. b. yeats, and w. h. auden—matthew mutter endeavors to rival what he nomi- nates some of the “best recent books on twentieth-century literature and reli- gion” ( ): pericles lewis’s religious experience and the modernist novel ( ), amy hungerford’s postmodern belief: american literature and religion after ( ), and john mcclure’s partial faiths: postsecular fiction in the age of pyn- chon and morrison ( ). flagged by his title, mutter’s particular contribution to all this prodigious critical achievement is to focus on “secularism” rather than “religion,” as he states at the outset, clarifying further that “this book investigates not post-secular religious experience but the secular frames that alter the coordinates of all experience, religious or other” ( ). the overriding frame, moreover, is stevens’s famous declamation that “the major poetic idea in the world is and always has been the idea of god,” and that “one of the visible movements of the modern imagination is the movement away from the idea of god” (qtd. on ). for mutter, then, “secular” becomes a kind of shorthand “for the imaginative frame within which stevens resists or reworks all of the perspectives he thinks of as religious,” so that for the remaining writers he takes up in the book, the term “could mean a number of things and take a number of shapes, including ones that show significant continuity with religious ideas” ( ). with that somewhat ambiguous swerve back in the di- rection of religion, therefore, readers are given to think that “secularism” is a considerably “restless” notion indeed. stevens’s own programmatic secularization of the idea of god, as that famous declamation above goes on to elaborate, suggests a trio of creative alternatives: namely, adaptation, substitution, and elimination. these alterna- tives can further suggest more particular and highly individualistic gathering points or “fields of experience” from which modernist secularization might be viewed: “language” in the case of stevens himself, “aesthetics” for woolf, “emotion” for yeats, and, finally, “material life” for auden ( ). some of these idiosyncratic (and in all cases quite extensive) elaborations work better than others, but none is ever facile or uncomplicated or seamlessly uninflected. be warned, therefore: this is not a book for speed readers. with stevens, the secular movement away from god by means of language can suggest a kind of “demythologized, self-conscious anthropomorphism” to take his place, according to mutter ( ), a stance about which stevens can t h e inner life: a conversation with l e a d e r s in british columbia post-secondary education by joan m c a r t h u r - b l a i r b.a. university of western ontario, m . ed. simon fraser university, a thesis submitted in partial f u l f i l l m e n t o f t h e requirements for t h e d e g r e e of d o c t o r of education in t h e f a c u l t y of g r a d u a t e studies department of educational studies (educational leadership and policy) we accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard dr. shauna butterwick dr. tom sork dr. carl leggo dr. jo-ann archibald dr. karen meyer dr. heesoon bai t h e university of british co lum bia december © joan mcarthur-blair, t h e inner l i f e : a conversation with l e a d e r s in british columbia post-secondary education by joan m c a r t h u r - b l a i r b.a. university of western ontario, m . ed. simon fraser university, a thesis submitted in partial f u l f i l l m e n t of t h e requirements for t h e d e g r e e of doctor of education in t h e f a c u l t y of g r a d u a t e studies department of educational studies (educational leadership and policy) t h e university of british columbia december joan mcarthur-blair, a b s t r a c t in this inquiry, i undertook a j ourney, nineteen people travelled with me, we had a powerful conversation a conversation about the inner life of leaders... this inquiry is a conversation with formal leaders in post-secondary education, about the inner life of leadership. the journey and outcome of that conversation are presented as a narrative in several modes. i begin by locating this notion of the inner life and creating a container for the conversation. in exploring the literature, i offer glimpses and critical reflections into the inner life and leadership. through telling the story of the study and the journey of the conversation, i offer insight into how i undertook this conversation with leaders and the rationale for the process of inquiry. the inquiry data are represented and interpreted through a constructed conversation play. the play is the core of this study, and its capacity to convey an understanding of the meaning and influence of the inner life is central to this undertaking. nineteen leaders gave of their time to assist me and their words are the power and heart of this narrative inquiry. the inner life conversation circulates around three primary themes that arose from the research, inner life as social justice, inner life as sanctuary, and inner life as values or ethics. as three different characters in the play state: "i think for me the inner life has a social justice basis," "it is a set of fundamental values," "my inner life has to ground me." it is from these central notions that the narrative exploration of the inner life expands. there are several implications of this inquiry. these include processes for assisting new education leaders to consider the underlying tenets of their leadership; the creation of settings that encourage reflection on the inner life; and additional research on the inner life and how that inner life is at the core of leadership. perhaps the most profound implication is that the inner life conversation is one that has energy and power to assist leaders in reflecting on who they are in the day to day of their leadership. t a b l e o f c o n t e n t s a b s t r a c t i t a b l e of c o n t e n t s iii d e d i c a t i o n vi a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s vi c h a p t e r o n e : t h e inner life -- s t a r t i n g t h e c o n v e r s a t i o n the inquiry and its significance defining two key concepts locating the research the structure and the design the conversation c h a p t e r t w o : inquiring of t h e l i t e r a t u r e philosophy and possibility leadership spirit summary .• c h a p t e r t h r e e : m o d e of inquiry narrative conversation the inquiry method • construction and representation development of interview protocol the constructed conversation play reflections on trustworthiness c h a p t e r four: t h e j o u r n e y c h a p t e r five: t h e inner life - a c o n v e r s a t i o n with e d u c a t i o n l e a d e r s in t h r e e a c t s act one scene one: inner life defined act one scene two: good, intention and power act one scene three: telling the inner life act two scene one: origins and maturing act two scene two: the work -- loving and hating it act three scene one: making a difference act three scene two: inner life revisited act three scene three: gender matters act three scene four: the quest and the pain c h a p t e r six: c o n v e r s a t i o n ongoing central notions m y leadership provoking possibilities further inquiry conversation paused r e f e r e n c e s a p p e n d i x a a p p e n d i x b appendix c a p p e n d i x d a p p e n d i x e iv a p p e n d i x f a p p e n d i x g a p p e n d i x h a p p e n d i x i a p p e n d i x j v d e d i c a t i o n i dedicate this work to my partner, jeanie cockell, who understands the undertaking of living a full and wonderful life and shares that wonder with me everyday. i also dedicate this work to ioleen mary blair who first taught me to read and to see language with awe and joy and who embodied an understanding of possibility. a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s i want to thank the british columbia education administrators who took time to be part of this inquiry. their dedication to post-secondary education and to leadership is at the heart of this study and clearly at the heart of what they do everyday. i want to express my profound thanks to my committee who took time, energy, and many hours with me on the journey from idea to dissertation. shauna butterwick, who advised, encouraged, challenged and mentored, made being a doctoral student the most rewarding and challenging experience of my life. carl leggo, who honoured my poetry and my work with his unique and vibrant view of language, made so much difference to how this work was structured. tom sork, who offered his wisdom, insight, and attention to detail to this work, contributed so much to getting this work done. there are twelve people in the e d . d . cohort. every one of the twelve has offered me ideas, feedback, support, and encouragement. without the power of the buffalo twelve, this work would not have been completed. the circle of twelve is a powerful and sustaining intellectual force in our lives and through its use we have all changed how we view leadership, education and being human. i want to give a huge thank you to dale and joan who turned final eyes to the proofreading of this work and helped in the creative art of comma usage. finally and importantly, i want to thank my vancouver community college colleagues who cheered me on, teased me, encouraged me, and supported me throughout the journey. you did more than you know. c h a p t e r o n e : t h e i n n e r l i f e -- s t a r t i n g t h e c o n v e r s a t i o n when i make a decision i always stop and think about what is right, keeping in mind that we are in public education. we're there to provide people with opportunities that impact their lives. (inquiry participant) as i introduce the purpose and significance, define terms, set the context, and outline the structure in this first chapter, the inquiry participant's words above help preview the power of this study, the power of leaders speaking about what guides their leadership and forms the foundation for what they do every day in post-secondary education. this inquiry is about telling the story of the inner life of leaders. stories are the linked words through which we construct our understanding, and i have played with words and stories in multiple ways to construct notions of the inner life of leaders. there are reflections on literature, reflections on leadership, poetry and theatre all created around the stories and notions of leadership and the inner life. this inquiry evokes, portrays, challenges, and interprets at multiple levels and in multiple ways. the fiction of leadership leadership is like science fiction. everyone has a fantasy about what is right, who you are, how it should be, who the alien is amongst us, what planet leaders are from. everyone has a fantasy about you jmcb the inquiry and its significance the purpose of this inquiry is to record, reflect, and wonder (clandinin & connelly, ) about the inner life of education leaders and the inner life's influence on their leadership. this inquiry reflects on the inner life, as defined by the participants in the study, and creates a representation of how that inner life influences their work and how the meaning and meaningfulness of leading in british columbia colleges and university colleges (post-secondary) 'reside within the inner life. it seeks to answer two primary questions about the inner life of leaders: . what is the meaning of the inner life as defined by the education leaders in the study? . how does the inner life influence leadership? waterhouse ( ) states that "part of our challenge is to work out the significance of the stories we are living" (p. ). this inquiry is an exploration of the significance of the inner life as one storied aspect of living current post-secondary leadership. this storied aspect is "forever on its way" (greene, , p. ) in this inquiry and the conversation here is a beginning one designed to invite the reader into the conversation about the inner life as explored by a particular group of education leaders. as i explore the meaning of the inner life in later chapters, i am constructing that meaning within the context of this particular group of leaders. i have used post-secondary in this inquiry to refer to colleges and university colleges. university leaders were not involved in the study. this research contributes to the study of leadership in three ways. first, an inquiry of this nature contributes to the literature on leadership, moral philosophy, and spirituality by interweaving concepts of leadership, inner life, and moral undertaking. second, this inquiry makes transparent a conversation about the inner life of leaders that is for the most part silent and by doing so offers up a new lens through which to examine the practice of leadership. although there is relevant literature, there are very few conversations about the guiding foundations of being a formal leader in post- secondary education. i hope that this inquiry will begin a conversation about the inner life and leadership that will develop amongst post-secondary leaders and change how we speak about what we undertake every day. i would argue that the most significant contribution of this work is to the ongoing conversation about what it means to lead in post-secondary education. third, this inquiry contributes to my own leadership as a vice president in post-secondary education and provides an opportunity for me to reflect on my own inner life and my own leadership. as a student in the doctorate in educational leadership and policy (ed.d.) program, i am encouraged to use scholarship to inform my practice. the program is designed as "advanced preparation for education practitioners with leadership and policy responsibilities in both formal and nonformal settings... the program is grounded in the belief that it is important for participants to engage in scholarly discourse about understanding, critiquing and improving practice in educational settings" (department of educational studies website, u b c , ). in undertaking this program, i have changed as a leader, grounded my leadership more clearly in some of the notions arising from the literature, and enhanced my reflective self as a leader. i am drawn to the exploration of the inner life by those things mentioned above, but also by a desire to understand leadership in a different way. this exploration seeks to find and interpret the very essence of leadership. this is not an exploration of the seven reasons for success or the ten tips for successful management. this research is attempting to establish a conversation amongst a group of leaders about what they believe and what inner life motivates them, guides them, and offers possibility in and for educational leadership. defining two key concepts two key concepts are integral to this inquiry: leadership and the inner life. the discussion below provides a container for the conversation about the inner life by defining these two key terms for the purposes of this study. the definition of the inner life grew and changed as the participants wrote narratives and participated in the interviews. however, as a place to begin the inquiry i defined the inner life as a belief system, an ethical practice, a religion, a spirituality and/or an inner dialogue. the term "inner life" has been used by others (palmer, ; kessler, ) to describe, in palmer's case, inner vocation work and, in kessler's instance, something that can be awakened by offering solo or quiet time to children. the inner life definition used in this inquiry was built out of a journey with the literature that will be explored more fully in chapter two. in the early days of this inquiry, i defined the inner life as spirituality. i used some of the ideas of palmer and kessler as well as briskin ( ) who write about spirituality, soul and inner life as a place of growth, reflection and inner growth. however, the concept of the inner life as moral or ethical thought as illustrated in the ideas of greene ( , ), bickford ( ), and caputo ( ) offered critical pieces to the definition and notion of the inner life that related to the ideas of possibility, imagination, god and translation of moral thought into action and listening. as i integrated the ideas of spirituality with the philosophical literature, the concept of the inner life began to take shape as the place from which leaders create, reflect upon, and understand their quintessential self as leader. the interlinking notions of belief system, an ethical practice, a religion, a spirituality and/or an inner dialogue are explored more extensively in the review of the literature found in chapter two and are found at the heart of the play in chapter five. leadership for the purposes of this inquiry is the practice of leading. leadership as practice is based upon the idea that leadership is not a static act, but rather a practice that is undertaken each day, honed, refined and evolving. palmer ( ) uses the metaphor of the seasons to portray vocation as ever evolving. wheatley ( ) states, i thought later about leadership - the harmony of the word.... leeed...errr...ship. the possibility of movement and of change intrinsic to the rhythm and the rhyme of the word. leeeed — to pull forward, to push from behind, to walk with. say the word, let it roll off your tongue - it urges you to do something anything ...to lead. the errr - alone transitory to some other place a word that shivers against the skin then slips away. lastly — ship - the harsh clipped syllables commending the possible compelling the practice. jmcb "we have come to confuse control with order" (p. ) and "what if we stopped looking for control and began, in earnest, the search for order? order we can find in places we never thought to look before - all around us in nature's living, dynamic systems" (p. ). the leadership explored in this research is a dynamic living system that changes, shifts and grows. senge, kleiner, roberts, ross, roth, and smith ( ) describe leadership as "the capacity of a human community to shape its future and specifically to sustain the significant processes of change required to do so" (p. ). although this inquiry is not focused solely on leaders as change agents, within this definition is the idea that leadership is related to the human capacity to see a future and work toward that future. this "human capacity to shape its future" requires a sense of leadership as practice, as something that is fluid and dynamic. as rolls ( ) states: the leadership qualities most in demand, and the rarest, are those that result from the inner journey: integrity, vulnerability, awareness of the human spirit, courage in relationships, curiosity, predictability, breadth, comfort with ambiguity and presence. leaders who have successfully navigated deep personal change are transformational and can create and manage organizations (p. ). senge et al. ( ) in the dance of change and bolman and deal ( ) in leading with soul write about leading as essence. gardner ( ) defines leadership as "the process of persuasion or example by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers" (p. ). i propose that leaders with the courage to navigate a leadership based on essence and example are in the practice of leadership, daily exercising and training and re-training for leading. i refer to this practice as the daily exercise of pumping the iron of leadership and hold to the notion that if one does not pump the iron of leadership one loses the practice of leadership in the same way that an athlete loses muscle if not exercising. leadership as practice and the inner life as ethical practice, a religion, a spirituality and/or an inner dialogue are the containers that hold this conversation on the inner life of leaders. i want to end this section with stanfield ( ) who writes on the courage to lead in the modern world. his words focus in on the place in which current leaders find themselves as they attempt to lead everyday. today we are all carving out new moral systems. we see clearly that moral principles are human inventions, and as such, are relative. today, it is not just a matter of deciding right from wrong. often as not, we have to decide between right and right, and wrong and wrong. in our times, as camus said, we are clear that the cry for clean hands that might come from making the exactly 'right' decisions is the cry of a damned soul. there are no clean hands... today, we ask not what is right, but what is responsible. not what is good or bad, but what is befitting or appropriate. not whether it is honest or pure, but whether it is necessary and responsible (p. ). locating the research i have discussed the significance of this inquiry and defined two critical concepts for the inquiry. the next element of this introduction is to locate the research. i do this through two lenses, the context of current leadership theory and through a personal lens. to set the context for leadership i have used leadership literature from the past ten years that reflects a trend toward a conversation of the inner leader, and to set the personal context i have used my own story, which is reflected in poetry and in narrative throughout this study. the view of what makes a leader has shifted dramatically over the past decade (senge et al., ; bushe, ; collins, ) and continues to change as leaders seek to find better and more innovative processes for leading. the locations from which authors view leadership and attempt to either understand it or provide lexicons for actions vary widely. some authors focus on the capacity for leaders to bring about change in their organizations (senge et al., ). golemen ( ) writes about the power of emotional intelligence, while others are writing about soul, spirit and ethics (covey, ; bolman & deal, ; koopman & johnson, ; briskin; ). some are writing about appreciative inquiry (bushe, ), others on the courage to lead (stanfield, ). in each of these works, there is a longing to guide leaders in the modern world toward a perceived better place of leadership. more and more, that place resides not in the strategies that one uses as a leader, but in the examination of who we are as leaders and what we believe as human beings who find ourselves in leadership roles. this inquiry seeks to linger on the question of who we are as leaders. the questions guiding this exploration are what is the inner life of leaders and how does that inner life influence their leadership? it would have been possible, as the above authors have done, to go beyond the exploration of the inner life to the promotion of a way of being as a leader. however, in this inquiry the emphasis of the research is not on teaching leaders how to be, rather, it is on prompting a conversation with leaders, those that have participated here, and others who read this work. several times in this inquiry, i pause to locate myself personally within the research and to reflect on my role in the research process. this personal exploration here in chapter one and throughout the thesis is important as i play various roles within this inquiry: researcher, researched, playwright and formal leader. i have been a vice president of education for three years and before that a dean and a department head. each of these roles has been a formal leadership position. i have come to formal leadership through a strong background in adult education where i played many informal leadership roles in instructor education and organizational development. the part of my history that is germane to this inquiry is the journey that brought me to begin to ask questions about the inner life. i grew up on a farm in a family that believed in god; however, any early religious training did not adhere to me, and by my teens, i was a devout agnostic. i took this background into university where as a student in the seventies i found feminism, which felt to me then as close to home as i had ever been. at that time, it felt like everyone around me was a feminist and that the causes were easy to be part of and spoke to a longing for a world that was inclusive of its human beings. in many / ways feminism is the foundation of the quest to answer questions about the inner life in that it taught me about belonging and not belonging. it taught me about perspective, power, hope, and despair. as a feminist and a lesbian, it made me aware of both the glass ceiling and the lavender ceiling (wenniger & conroy, ) and how these things have influenced my life and my career. the years of teaching teachers cemented for me the power of creating learning environments that allowed learning to happen. in the study of learning and of teaching other teachers, i found that it was not the techniques of teaching that moved students; it was the power of something else, something less tangible and more profound. in this period, i began to build upon earlier experiences and began working with teachers around issues of inclusion in their classroom. i worked almost exclusively with inclusive strategies designed to assist teachers in creating classrooms that were more inclusive. underneath the teaching strategies was the beginning of a profound understanding that as teachers, who we were was at the heart of our capacity to include in the classroom. this point in my work was the beginning of the quest to understand the inner life because i was coming to understand how strategy could be useful, but was something that did not reach the real place of teaching and leading for me. for all the years that my primary occupation was teaching, i brought to my work a profound sense of idealism and a belief in the possibility of education to change lives. as i moved from the role of teacher to the role of formal leader, this sense of idealism the lavender ceiling is a term that refers to the experience of some g l b t [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered] employees not fully enjoying career development and promotional advancement because they are, or are perceived to be, g l b t ( u s d a globe, ). it is a concept similar to the glass ceiling. and belief in possibility was tested. i found, rather than a continuation of teaching as i thought it would be, the world of education administration was a place of isolation from my teaching roots. i think that there are many reasons for this: the nature of leading in hierarchical organizations, the notion of leaders as the 'other' or enemy, and the very nature of leadership as a political act, which then draws political action and reaction. i often teach or present around the issues of leadership and i find the leadership literature upon which i base my work to be interesting and often directly transferable, but rarely does it focus on post-secondary education leaders. i began to ask questions of myself and other leaders about what it was that we were doing in and for education. i keep being drawn back vice president to forums designed for adult i lie awake on the deck floor and look at the stars. i long to go there from here, to see the earth round and clean from far, far away. and yet i am here to be vice, vice to everything, the one that takes the place of you and you and you and you. leader by default, by vice-dom, never wanting to dream in this way, only dreaming of stars, longing to go there. it makes me wonder if hierarchy is a short cut. knife sharp cut, blood to bone cut between the stars and i. jmcb educators as a place to have conversations about leadership but feel, as a vice president, i do not really belong there. it is not that adult educators do not make me welcome. it is because, in some of the discourses, adult educators are surprised to find a vice president wanting to take part. in others, i find the conversation not directly related to my day-to-day work of leading. consequently, i began a journey with other leaders to develop a workshop entitled the labyrinth and art of leadership which was designed to provide a forum for conversation about leadership within a container of personal reflection. it was from these workshops that i began to work more closely with the notions of the inner life. i have been a poet since i was young. i feel compelled to write, as others are compelled to be athletes. i apologize to those who define "poet" by the number of publications, which for me are few; however, i still define myself as such. poetry is the way in which i use language to interpret and interrupt my world. the lens of a poet influences this work — i include poems about leadership, represent the data as a play, and use metaphor to frame pieces of the discussion. i will explore other influences on this research in later chapters; however, this short snapshot begins to locate me within the conversation of the inner life and begins to create the context within which the stories from the participants reside. i cannot underestimate the power of my background on my view of education leadership, nor can i underestimate the context within which i lead as an influence in this inquiry. as a formal leader, i believe that education changes the lives of those who have the privilege to experience it and, as an education leader, i have a profound responsibility to provide education that is worthy of the students who come. it is a task that i undertake each day with intention and seek to lead in a manner that honours the community that i serve. the structure and the design this inquiry is a conversation in six chapters. it is a conversation with the literature, a conversation with the method of inquiry, a conversation with me, and most importantly a conversation with nineteen other leaders in post-secondary education. in working with the literature, i sought to explore discourses that bridged across philosophy, spirituality, and leadership. in inquiring into the nature and meaning of the inner life i used narrative inquiry (clandinin and connelly, ; denzin & lincoln, ) as the basis for this work. seeking to understand the inner life of education leaders lent itself to the telling of stories that reflected on the inner life, and the re-storying of those narratives lent itself to a dramatic representation that invited the reader into the interpretation ofthe data. the nature of acquiring stories, re- storying and representing those stories is integral to this inquiry and will be explored extensively in chapter three and chapter four. the creation of a constructed conversation play and the methods used to represent data in an alternative manner are discussed in chapter three. as clandinin and connelly ( ) state, "phenomena shift depending on how we frame their contexts and our researcher position within that context" (p. ). this research is a work that moves from researcher, researched, to self, offering ideas about the inner life of leadership. the notions of how stories were acquired and how stories were represented in a manner that allowed for verisimilitude and trustworthiness (willis, ) will be explored. also in chapter three, i explore the process and design of participant selection. the leaders who participated in this research were formal leaders engaged in adult and/or higher education at a b c college or university college. the participants were deans, directors, vice presidents, presidents, a faculty member and me as a vice president. i chose leaders in these formal positions for the inquiry because i was interested in undertaking research that related directly to my own location and practice of educational leadership. as i explored the notions of the inner life in others i could also reflect upon my own inner life and how that inner life creates possibility in my leadership. as a collective whole, post-secondary system leaders experience changes in political ideology, funding, educational mandate and are in a loose sense, a quasi-culture with somewhat shared norms, levels of privilege and experience. this similarity provided a common location for the research across all of the participants. this allowed the outcomes of this inquiry to reside within a specific leadership context and to be used within that context. in chapter four i tell the story of my own journey as i move through the experience of being an education leader, being a participant in the inquiry and being the researcher. as in every study the journey of inquiring was a powerful one and i would be remiss to not explore the impact the journey itself had on this thesis. formal leaders are defined as leaders who hold designated positions within colleges or university colleges and were in the dean, director, vice president or president category. the one faculty member had previously held formal administrative roles. chapter five is the conversation with leaders, the heart of the inquiry where i share the data gathered from my research process through a constructed conversation presented as a play that represents a moment in leadership time and provides insight into the inner life of leaders at that moment in time. the play both represents the findings and presents the analysis of the findings. its depth and power comes from the specific and particular stories that leaders shared with me as the researcher. it is hoped that as leaders read the notions of the inner life represented in this inquiry they will find them applicable to other moments in leadership or to other leadership contexts. the constructed conversation as dialogue for the play emerged from text stories written by post-secondary education leader participants and from semi- structured interviews with post-secondary education leader participants. chapter six draws together the threads of the research, discusses implications, ends this conversation about the inner life, and opens the door to further conversations. i could have had many further inner life conversations with these leaders. there is scope for further exploration of the inner life and translations of that life to the organizations of which leaders are a part and i explore those future inquiry possibilities in chapter six. the conversation this chapter has introduced the conversation about the inner life and as you read this inquiry, you will notice that like any conversation it evolves and changes as the inquiry moves through the literature, the process, and the researcher journey to the inner life conversation. the play about the inner life, in chapter five, is the heart of this inquiry and reflects on the multiplicity of ideas within the notion of an inner life and allows a glimpse into the core of education leadership by the use of participants' words. like any good conversation, i have left this research, wanting to return to the participants and ask further questions to seek further conversations. c h a p t e r two: inquiring of t h e l i t e r a t u r e in this chapter, i seek to inquire of the literature how it informs the conversation about the inner life. i have found little literature that directly engages with a conversation about the inner life and post-secondary education leadership in the way that this inquiry undertakes to do, with the exception of palmer ( , ), who touches on the notion of the inner life in his explorations on vocation, teaching and leading. there is literature on public and private (goffman, ), on soul and spirit (briskin, ; bolman and deal, ; guillory, ; kessler ), and although this literature exists and informs this inquiry, it does not fully explore the ideas that this inquiry attempts to examine. in goffman's case, the public private conversation is about how one is represented in everyday life rather than relating the public and private to notions of the influence of an inner life on the public undertaking. in the case of briskin and bolman and deal, these authors are writing on spirit and are more focused on how to include soul and spirit in the workplace or in one's personal journey, rather than an exploration of the inner life itself and how it influences leadership. there is a large body of literature in philosophy about goodness and moral and ethical undertaking, and to some extent the notion of the inner life, (although that term is rarely used), has been taken up in philosophical discussions of self, essence and subjectivity, for example in the works of descartes (audi, ). both bickford ( ) and greene ( , , ) write about ideas related to the inner life, the ideas of seeking, listening, and possibility. in the leadership literature there are some recent works by authors like goleman ( ) that touch on the notion of "primal leadership" which is an idea that borders on the inner life but focuses more on the brain as the primal emotional force. traditional organizational development authors such as senge et al. ( ) and covey ( ) have undertaken research that does not address directly the inner life, but does focus on values and ideas of leading and nurturing change. simply put, there is an enormous field of related literature that informs and very little literature that engages directly with the inner life as this inquiry undertakes to do. consequently, this leads me to draw from various genres of writing and from various forms to situate the inquiry of the inner life within the available literature. the categories of literature included here cast indirect light upon the conversation of the inner life and provide a backdrop to the stories of inner life told in this inquiry. philosophical literature inner life spiritual literature leadership literature i explore three broad categories of literature: literature from philosophy that explores the human condition, literature from leadership and business that explores ideas related to leadership, and literature that examines the human spirit or spirituality (including spirit, soul, heart, etc.). in working with this spectrum of literature, i am interested in creating a circle of literature that draws out how authors write about concepts related to the inner life and how this inner life seeks to be heard. i have been both critical and selective in including literature in this review. the available literature undertakes to discuss the inner life in a tangential way rather than a direct way; consequently, the selection could have been vast. in undertaking to select literature, i sought out authors who provoked ways of thinking about the ideas that i was exploring and who forced me to analyze critically the notions that were central to this inquiry. from the philosophical literature, i have drawn on the ideas of moral possibility. from the organizational development literature, i have reflected on the current notions of leadership theory. from literature on spirit, i have drawn upon discussions that attempt to understand spirit and leadership in new ways and include spirit in the process of leading. philosophy a n d possibility i start the discourse with the first third of the literature circle by examining the philosophy of greene ( , , , ). her ideas have been for me the most alluring in that the notions of possibility and moral wide-awakeness are at the core of this inquiry into the inner life. " it is only when persons experience themselves as taking risks, embarking on new beginnings, that the predictable gives way to the possible" (greene, , p. ). this idea of "possible" is at the core of this inquiry; in fact to seek knowledge of the inner life is to wonder about "possibility." this idea of "the possible" is thematic in the writing of greene and is related to her ideas of quest (greene, ) and being "morally wide-awake" (greene, ). greene ( ), in building this idea of possibility, houses her philosophy or "doing philosophy," (ayers, , p. ) as she calls it, within the realm of teaching and pedagogy. her ideas are situated in the connections amongst freedom, imagination, philosophy, and education (ayers, ; kohli, ). kohli ( ) locates greene's notion of freedom in the ideology of "justice, community, democracy, and imagination" (p. ). so what is this "possibility"? greene writes and speaks about this concept in a number of ways. she equates it with the idea of imagination in her work releasing the imagination ( ). in her speech, the passion of the possible ( ), she builds on the idea of a passion built out of conversation, teaching, learning, and moral debate. in variations on a blue guitar ( ) she sums up this idea of possibility: i have quoted emily dickinson before, writing that "the possible's slow fuse is lit / by the imagination" a l l we need to do is summon up the cognitive capacity called imagination to remind ourselves that experience always holds more than can be predicted (p. ). greene's concept of being "morally wide-awake" relates to the notion of possibility. for the possible to occur, one must be present enough to conceive of the idea of some act that might be different from the norm or without precedent. in landscapes of learning ( ), greene examines this idea of "moral wide- awakeness" in opposition to the notion that most people live within the normalcy of convention and do not question the world around them and whether they use their life and their freedom. greene posits that people in modern society feel both dominated and powerless in their worlds. however, greene suggests that feeling powerless can be overcome through endeavouring to be wide-awake, and to have a curiosity into what forces influence their action. perhaps the most interesting part of greene's "moral awakeness" is the concept that without being morally wide-awake we cease to question our lives; rather, we interpret our lives in standard ways that are acquired over time and lack insight and moral questioning. greene pushes human beings to stay morally wide-awake through questing in our lives. in response to maxine greene you talk about modern society or modern to you circa . our feeling of being lost.. .dominated you say, powerless... the great indifference of the lost, the sleeping. you apologize for embracing the plague. camus' plague. you center on choice as if we all had it.. .even the most oppressed can choose.. .to fight, to die, to do nothing. wide-awake, wide-awake, wide-awake. i hear you. down the halls to teachers, wake, wake, wake up.... try on your principles, dust off the moral life. you would have me share this life i hold tight inside my moral life. my principles. my private plague. you ask me to show up to "be present." yet, i have four staff meetings, a discipline hearing, two complaints and all those people standing by my door. and as i turn to fix, to nurture, to plan, i hear you whisper camus' words " the first thing is not to despair." jmcb [the ideas for this poem were taken from maxine greene, landscapes of learning. ] for greene ( ) the quest places humanity in a condition, not of certainty or structure, but in a place of unknowing, of never arriving. this is very different from the classical notions of viewing life within the logical and the structured. for greene it is the moving away from the logical structured life that creates the possible conditions required to be awake and questing. each of us must enact a course of understanding in the recognition that the same person is engaging in behaviour that might be called observable and objective and, at once, experiencing herself/himself in an open ended quest, whose end can never be guaranteed.... if there is some abstract totality, some generalized certainty, or even some concept like humanity, it exists on the horizon, forever on the horizon, to be sought en route, on the way.. .it is passion that personalizes them, as it is passion that is evoked by the thought of what is not yet, of what might be, of (we must hope) what ought to be (p. ). greene's ideas are idealistic and could be criticized as unobtainable, in that they seek what might or ought to be. however, this idea of leadership as possibility brings into focus the backdrop of leadership where the quest, the seeking of the possible, and the search for the moral place are all part of the modern leader. i would suggest that much of greene's work could be understood as a call to justice and rights. without this call, leaders would only manage or lead from a place of personal gain, never striving to be different, to re-create the world or to make a difference in education. greene does not focus clearly in her work on the required conditions that would drive people to pull forth into everyday leadership this 'quest' for possibility. ayer ( ) touches on this with greene's idea of imagination and the use of imagination as the agent to propel individuals to "quest." this inquiry builds upon some of greene's ideas and in the words of the leaders in chapter five, one can see their quest for the possible and the quest to be morally wide-awake as an education leader. i want to leave for a minute the notions of possibility, quest, and moral wide-awakeness and examine one theorist that focuses on the conditions required for moral interaction. bickford ( ), basing much of her discussion on hannah arendt, focuses on democracy in the political sense. however, i would argue that the same conditions are required to exercise leadership, because my sense of leadership is that it is a form of democratic action that must be daily started anew. as arendt ( ) states: the life span of man running toward death would inevitably carry everything human to ruin and destruction if it were not for the faculty of interrupting it and becoming something new, a faculty that is present in action like an ever present reminder that men [sic], though they must die, are not born in order to die but in order to begin (p. ). for bickford ( ), this required condition resides in moving beyond the theories of arendt ( ) and habermas ( ) to a forum where a different type of political democracy might reside. bickford builds on the ideas of arendt and habermas by introducing the idea of listening. i would propose that her notion of listening is similar to greene's idea of being "wide-awake" enough to allow for possibility. bickford's analysis of habermas is that his communicative action as an ideal can lead to undemocratic outcomes because of its underlying idealized sense of communication. she moves away from habermas and builds on a model of moral interaction that ".. .depends not on the possibility of consensus but on the presence of listening" (p. ). she also makes the argument that arendt's idea of presence is closely linked to her idea of listening and she builds on arendt's ideas that democracy is conducted in a pluralistic world, not by the ordered rules of aristotle. she uses the metaphor of the theatre and the inter-relationships between actor, spectator, and actors on the stage to examine the notions of understanding, perspective, listening and action. for bickford the idea of listening presupposes the condition of a willingness to change ones ideas, direction, and beliefs. this listening is placed within the contradictions of social and political difference. recognizing this social and political difference bickford ( ) builds on the work of arendt to discuss the idea of voice, identity, and presence. she uses the example of a class of students wanting to respond to the questionable death of one of the members and discussing whether to use "black english" and whether the message would be heard. in bickford's example, the students do use "black english" and she locates this discussion within the larger discussion of voice, representation, and equality. .. .that appearing in the world through speech and action is a central human experience, and that the quality of attention paid is central to that appearance.. .a particular kind of listening can serve to break up linguistic conventions and create a public realm where a plurality of voices, faces and language can be heard in some sort of authentic pristine clarity... (bickford, , p. ). as bickford ( ) states "courage is necessary for citizenship" (p. ) and, i would argue necessary for leadership. bickford views the agency required to act as a type of urgency or need that something be done. the class needing to respond to the death of one of its members is an example of this. for bickford this agency is brought about by acts of oppression that create the need to do something in response. her work, although providing a context for what might be possible in the everyday of democracy (listening), does not address why people might act in the everyday. what would motivate one to undertake to listen? what inner conditions need to exist for individuals to undertake this form of democratic action? bickford leaves us with some important challenges that are germane to leadership. the first is if "we listen and truly listen we might be forced to change because of what we hear" (p. ). the second is that there is not an end to the conversation ".. .in other words, the conception of citizenship that i have developed here is characterized by a tension between openness and commitment, a tension that is never fully resolved" (p. ). this last notion of the openness of ongoing democracy is an important notion for leadership in that the possibility of listening and re-listening are central to everyday leadership. caputo ( ) moves in a different and yet related direction from greene and bickford in his work on religion. in this work, he attempts to find an answer to a single question: "what do i love when i love my god" (p. ). he is clear that he is not the first to ask such a question; the question resides originally with st. augustine. in attempting to answer this question, he engages the reader on a journey, not through religion, but through romanticism, modernism, and post-modernism. however, before he addresses any of these ideas he provides the most interesting definition of the inner life that i have come across in the literature. he asks the reader what she/he believes when they become "unhinged" (p. ). he is not evoking the reader to seek within traditional religion for the answer; rather, he is arguing that religion exists in what we hope for and what we love with an unending passion. he calls it religion for the unreligious: "to have a religious sense of life is to long with a restless heart for a reality beyond reality, to tremble with the possibility of the impossible" (p. ). that is the possible, the impossible, which is why we love it all the more. so the unhinged life of love and hope and faith is saltier and more passionate and more worth living than that of aristotle's well-hinged phronimoi who swing back and forth effortlessly and make it all look easy. religion, i say at the risk of being misquoted, is for the unhinged (p. ). the entire book is a conversation in text on this matter of what we love when we love our god and why now, why are we wanting to love that god now. caputo ( ) locates his argument in the notion that in a cyber world we know and live the impossible every day, and that because of this it is beginning to make sense that there is a new rise of religion in the world. he includes in his definition of religion everything from christianity to buddhism to new ageism and on. he proposes that in this world of virtual reality it is only a small step to believe in the impossible because we are everyday impossible in the way that we live. in the end caputo argues that it is love that is god after all. "then the love of god means to learn how to dance or swim, to learn how to join in the cosmic play, to move with its rhythms, and to understand that we are each of no special import other than to play our part.. .in the translatability of the love of god it is we who are translated, transformed, and carried over into action, carried off by the movements of love, carried away by the transcendence that his name means and commands" (p. ). caputo ( ) writes about god and love, greene ( , , ) writes about possibility, bickford ( ) about democracy. are they all asking; "what do i love when i love my god?" is bickford saying that in listening and dialogue, and greene in possibility they have already found out what or who their god is? if so, where does their god reside? does it reside in the inner life? leadership many of the current influences on leadership in education are arising out of the literature of business leadership. the influence of this literature on how leaders are seen and see themselves cannot be underestimated. a simple example of this is illustrated by the number of close colleagues who have recently undertaken to read collins ( ) good to great, a work on publicly traded companies. a n examination of the leadership literature forms the second piece of the circle. as discussed in chapter one, gardner ( ) defines leadership as "the process of persuasion or example by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers" (p. ). although one can find many definitions of leadership, this particular definition fits well with the conditions of formalized leadership in post-secondary education. it is not common in the modern institution to be either hero or super motivator. it is as gardner suggests much more common to be the persuader of common purpose. schon ( ) creates for teachers a process for interacting with their practice which promotes reflection. his work is useful in the examination of leadership because the "reflection in action" notion aligns itself with the idea of an examination of the inner life. his idea of "reflection in action" allows the practitioner to create multiple levels of knowing. as schon states, when practitioners reflect on their work they ".. .remake part of their practice world and thereby reveal the unusually tacit processes of world making that underlie their practice" (p. ). it is interesting to posit the idea that the reflective practitioner could be seen to be training her/his inner life for the service of his/her outer practice. change literature builds on this reflective conversation by attempting to provide a roadmap for leading change and, in some cases, managing change, not just for practitioners but also for whole organizations. senge et al ( ) in the dance of change presents the idea of the leader as gardener of change, tending, urging, and nudging change forward. kanter ( ) states that leadership is, "that which leaves the world a better place, that is you lead people in new directions, to solve problems and make new things happen" (p. ). it is interesting to note that by definition kanter is stating that leadership "leaves the world a better place." it is an important idea — this notion that leadership that does otherwise is not leadership. it is not clear that kanter is actually intending to put forward this idea, but it is implicit in her definition. it is more likely that she is positing a notion similar to palmer ( ), "a good leader is intensely aware of the interplay of inner shadow and light, lest the act of leadership do more harm than good" (p. ). this change conversation can also be found in the edited work by chawla and renesch ( ) on learning organizations. it focuses on the conditions required to change organizations so that they become learning organizations. in this work rolls ( ) writes about a new kind of leader required for the learning organization, "the new leader supports an intimacy that believes in disclosing true selves in an environment of nurturance and acceptance" (p. ). this notion of "true self as leader is linked to the ability to reside in a place that allows change to happen. what is missing from the change literature is the why. why is it that leaders bother to attempt the change at all? what is the intrinsic motivation for being a change leader? badaracco ( ) argues that in the everyday leaders "recognize the full complexity and uncertainty that governs so much of life and work" (p. ) and that "quiet leaders," as he calls them, change the world through their everyday small acts. he does not go so far as to posit that a quest for leading is not required, but clearly sets forth the idea that leaders are not necessarily out to change the world, rather they are out to do the "small things right.. .in short, quiet leadership is what moves and changes the world" (p. ). collins ( ) touches on three ideas that are germane to this inquiry in his research on great companies. collins' research in good to great ( ) attempts to answer the questions of why some good companies become great companies. he uses an economic performance model for the measurement of great and, consequently, his work could easily be discarded as not having any applicability to academic environments. however, there are some points that he makes about leadership and the type of leadership that it takes to create a great organization that are relevant to the conversation of the inner life. the first is his description of "level five" leadership, which focuses on specific traits of leadership that existed in all eleven of his "good to great" companies. the level five traits are: leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will leaders set up their successors for success leaders are compellingly modest, self-effacing and understated leaders are fanatically driven leaders attribute success to others and failures to themselves (p. ). these traits are not the ones usually associated with ceo's and they display a side of corporate leadership more closely aligned with schon's ( ) reflective practice. the second idea put forth by collins ( ) that is useful here is his discussion of the "stockdale paradox" (p. ) which is a story about admiral stockdale and his drive to survive being a pow and help others survive the experience. collins states that the stockdale paradox is ".. .retaining] faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of difficulties [and that you will] confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, what ever they might be" (p. ). in this example, stockdale is in fact defining his inner life of leadership as one of faith and truth. although collins is describing circumstances where leadership is defined by a company's ability to a make profit, he is also finding in his research that the ability to do so is based on who leaders are and what they believe about leading. the third concept from collins ( ) is the idea that companies that become great are led by people who have passion and understand their own passion for doing what they do. the companies' leaders in the study looked at passion in an interesting way. they did not try to motivate people to be passionate; rather they asked their company to "only do those things that we can get passionate about" (p. ) or as goleman ( ) articulates, "the challenge for every leader lies in reaching inside to the source of hope" (p. ). in the reading of current literature on leadership, one sees glimpses of the inner life. it is there in the level five leader (collins, ); it is there in the notion of leader as gardener (senge et al. ). wheatley ( ) offers a list of new metaphors that describe a new and emerging leadership language, "gardeners, midwives, stewards, servants, missionaries, facilitators, conveners" (p. ). however, i would argue that this current literature does not delve far enough into the examination of what makes the leader practice the undertaking of leadership. it does not ask leaders why they follow a business model or a spiritual model or a change model. the literature discussed here begins from the place that leading is a moral imperative in and of itself. for example, in the beginning of the dance of change, senge et al. ( ) write about wanting the book to enable ".. .all of us who care deeply about building new types of organizations..." (p. ) but the authors do not delve into the motivation or imagination required to "care." in this exploration of the inner life, i strive to complete some of the questions not addressed by this literature. spirit this inquiry into the inner life is a search for meaning. it asks the questions, what is the inner life of leaders, and what does that inner life mean to them. above i have located this inquiry in two thirds of the circle of literature. the notions of philosophy and the idea of leadership both strongly reflect upon concepts of the inner life of leaders. this last link in the circle is an examination of literature that deals with spirit, spirituality, and soul. it can be argued that the notion of the inner life is built out of people's ideas and concepts of god, spirit, belief, ethic, and moral understanding. these concepts are the archetypes upon which the inner life rests. solomon ( ) brings together philosophy and spirituality and argues that these are not separate concepts but intrinsically interwoven. .. .philosophy becomes spirituality when it learns to listen... it is to ask and attempt to answer for ourselves the most perennial philosophical questions about the meaning of life, the inevitability of death, and the place each and all of us [sic] in an increasingly (perhaps tragically) human world... philosophy, as plato clearly saw, is a spiritual practice (p. ). he goes on to talk about spirituality as passion and proposes that the spiritual passions are "...love, reverence and trust" (p. ). it is interesting to note that these same notions arise from the participants in this inquiry. like caputo ( ) and his notion of "what do i love when i love my god," solomon is pushing the boundary of what is considered a philosophical undertaking. he sees no separation between philosophical inquiry and spiritual inquiry. hooks ( ) writes about her experience as a black feminist in graduate school and the contradictions she found between academic endeavour and spirituality. graduate school was difficult. i found most of my classes to be without passion or joy. and the rich intellectual life i had dreamed of seemed more and more to be fantasy. the academy as i experienced it was essentially such a dishonest, disheartening place that i felt myself torn, pulled between the longing to walk a spiritual path that i often hoped would lead to a monastic life. in my search for self-understanding, i came to rely more and more on spiritual teachers and their writing and felt less engaged with critical theory. still, i wanted there to be a place in my life for theory and politics as well as spiritual practice. my quest was to find that place (p. ). and yet, in her journey she did not give up. she pushed past those experiences, built upon them, and attempted to create a place to "transgress." in the final chapter of teaching to transgress ( ) she states: "in a field of possibility we have the opportunity to labour for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways beyond boundaries, to transgress" (p. ). again, there arises here the notion of questing, of seeking the possible, and wondering if there is something beyond what exists in this condition and at this moment in time. as is often the case in literature on spirit, palmer ( ), and bolman and deal ( ) offer highly personalized stories. in palmer's case, he is writing autobiographically about finding vocation in life. in the case of bolman and deal, they are telling the story of one executive's quest for meaning. palmer tells a deeply personal story of his own struggle, which is often dark, with what his vocation might be and how his journey reflects light upon the possibility of other leadership journeys. the power for authentic leadership, havel tells us, is found not in external arrangements but in the human heart. authentic leaders in every setting - from families to nation states - aim at liberating the heart, their own and others', so that its powers can liberate the world (p. ). bolman and deal ( ) capture the idea of leadership by describing its essence. "the essence of leadership is not giving things or even providing visions. it is offering oneself and one's spirit" (p. ). these authors are questing in their literature to examine a concept that is very elusive and one could argue, ill-defined, and yet they are contesting the idea that leadership is a thing external to leaders and challenging leaders to seek leadership within their own spirit. jardine ( ) perhaps puts it best when he states: "self-understanding and self-reflection are required from which no theory will exempt me" (p. ). he is discussing teaching with children in a classroom setting but his ideas reflect upon some of the same struggles that leaders have in being present with those they work with. thompson ( ) promotes the idea of leaders developing a spiritual centre for their work: "developing a spiritual approach to education leadership is not likely to eliminate all stress or prevent political storms. but, it can be the anchor that helps leaders stay grounded and tightly focused on the high goal of improving education for all students" (p. ). fry ( ) views this call to include spirit in the practice and the study of leadership as a response to the perceived need for a more holistic approach. there is complexity in reviewing the literature of spirit and soul for the purposes of this study. in the literature of spirit and leadership there is a broad and varied number of definitions of what spirituality or soul is, consequently it is difficult to create a clear focus on the discourse. solomon ( ) offers ".. .if spirituality means anything it means thoughtfulness" (p. ). briskin ( ), comments "to approach soul means to go deeper, down into a place in which past and future blur, where what we strive for and what drives us can be glimpsed" (p. ). bolman and deal ( ) view spirit and soul as distinct. they see "soul as personal and unique... spirit is transcendent and all embracing" (p. ). within each work, the authors have taken care to define the notion within which they are working; however, there is not yet a common language that allows for adequate comparisons between the theories being put forward. this is a very similar struggle to my own in seeking a clear definition for the inner life as a place to start the conversation in this inquiry. as klenke ( ) states: "if spirituality were to become the next frontier in leadership thinking, elucidating the emotional, cognitive, and motivational underpinnings of spirituality would do a great service" (p. ). i want to end this section on spirit with a short discussion on calling the circle (baldwin, ). this book details how to create space for possible dialogue, and i propose that discussion of spirit and leadership can not happen without creating such conditions. the circle, as used by baldwin, is designed to create a space within which one can listen and speak and be heard. the notion that baldwin puts forward is relatively simple, but takes a considerable amount of tending and caring. the stages of a circle are simple. the first stage is telling the intention of the circle that allows those present to understand why they are sitting in a circle and what they can expect from the process. the next stage is the setting or re-setting of agreements for the conversation that is about to take place in the circle. conducting the circle, which follows upon the agreements, takes the form of each person speaking without interruption and without follow-up conversation. when all participants have spoken, then conversation can happen depending on the agreements. the last two stages are feedback to the circle and closing the circle. what is most powerful in this designing of a place where dialogue can occur is that we are seeking to understand and to listen as bickford ( ) would have us do. the circle, as proposed by baldwin, grows and changes as participants begin to care about the ideas of others and about those others' lives. in her book, baldwin sets out a possible plan to undertake a circle and experience a different way of communicating. baldwin provides many examples of using circles for conversation and for social change. "if we look at the world as citizens of the circle - a birthright that precedes all current political, social and spiritual divisions - we begin to ask: what piece of the world's condition can i respond to? be in relationship with? dialogue about?" (p. ). the concept of the circle is that the leadership becomes hidden and is shared and that every voice has equal authority. baldwin ( ) in calling the circle invites us not to be "ashamed to hope" (p. ) and it is in this final notion of hope for leadership that i end this section. summary in the literature explored, there has been a call. it is a call to the philosophical literature leadership literature possible, to understand what inner life happens when one is unhinged, spiritual literature to listen, and to believe. this calling to the inner life of literature is powerful in its leadership and to the soul of humanity to be better, to change, to consider, and to reach for greene's "possibility." i want to argue that the discussion of philosophical literature, the discussion of leadership literature, and the discussion of literature of the spirit, interlock to form the discussion of the inner life. by grounding the conversation of the inner life in the literature of philosophy there was opportunity to engage with the ideas of possibility and hope. by working with the leadership literature, it was possible to strengthen the location of this conversation in the discussion of leadership and leading. the spirit literature offered into the conversation the ideas of working with spirit as a leader and the desire and quest for more holistic leadership. each one of these areas of literature offers into the conversation a critical link to the understanding and the conceptualization of the inner life and, as illustrated above, they create a discourse that interlinks to create a circle of literature. chapter three: mode of inquiry if you were to choose one story what would it be. would it be yours, or another's... a fiction or a fact. how, how would i know, who would tell me, and what would it matter. it is yours your reality, this day's truth, a story offered up just for me. me, the inquirer seeking your inner life to be coded translated, projected and probed. seen through my eyes, eyes that have danced down all the years and known my own story best. if you were to choose one story what would it be? tell me, tell me your truth. jmcb josselson and lieblich ( ) state, "...we have dropped the term methodology which carries deep connotations of the traditional research paradigm, and prefer to speak in terms of modes of inquiry" (p. ). this term, "mode of inquiry," works well for this research study because, although structured, it did not attempt to impose a strict methodology; rather it attempted to follow a path of exploration using a series of conversations through text and interview. in this chapter, i discuss the notion of a narrative conversation, detail the inquiry method, discuss the participant profile, provide the inquirer perspective, and illustrate the construction and representation of the inquiry. narrative conversation this study of the inner life of leaders as a conversation in various forms is informed by qualitative research as ".. .a situated activity that locates the observer in the world. it [qualitative research] consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible" (denzin & lincoln, , p. ). this use of qualitative research as the mode in this study provided an opportunity to both create and co-create with the participants meaning around the notions of an inner life. denzin and lincoln ( ) write about this as studying things/people in the setting that is natural to them, and from that interaction attempting to create meaning that builds out of the understanding participants have of their worlds. the use of the word conversation in the title of this thesis was intentional. the word conversation has its roots in latin and initially was used to mean "living, or mode of living" and then later as "frequent use" (onions, , p. ). using the word conversation in the study combined both the archaic meaning of a place where the inner life resides and is accessed frequently and the modern meaning of the "oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas" (woolf, , p. ). clinchy ( ) does not use the word conversation in writing about her work of teaching others the process of narrative research; however, as she writes about undertaking her own research, she reflects on coming to an understanding that her work of interpreting data was becoming more empathic and personal rather than detached. in this inquiry, i borrowed her concept of interpreting data with an empathic eye and through a personal lens while honouring the participant data. the stories or narratives of the inner life of leaders are at the heart of this research. it is through the stories of leaders that i have caught a glimpse of this notion of the inner life. i gathered these stories through two narrative processes using a staged inquiry that will be explored further later in this chapter. the first stage involved a form of narrative story writing and the second involved narratives collected through interviews. when i invited participants to write a story or to participate in the interviews, i was asking them to reflect on an idea that was not often talked about and to go deeper into the conversation of leadership. through using the participants' stories and then the writing, re-writing and the re-telling of those stories i found places of the inner life that both surprised, dislocated, and changed how i viewed leadership. as casey ( ) in quoting greene states, "i want to see through as many eyes and from as many angles as possible" (p. ). i was seeking, by the use of narrative inquiry, multiple eyes and multiple lenses. clinchy ( ) describes this idea of seeing and viewing through many lenses as connected knowing which she describes as .. .> "to understand and be understood" (p. ). i used narrative inquiry in this study to create a place from which the stories of the inner life of leaders were told, re-told, and re-storied. clandinin and connelly ( ) pose the question, "what does narrative inquiry help us learn about our phenomenon that other theories do not?" (p. ). later in this chapter i will focus more specifically on the stages of the inquiry and the creation of the play as narrative representation. here, however, it is useful to answer the above question because i selected this form of inquiry specifically because of what the form could offer to this research. i was seeking a process that would allow the stories of the individual leaders to come to the fore because their stories of the inner life were intrinsic to the study. conle ( ) likens narrative inquiry to a quest and, in the case of this study, the narrative process was a quest. it was a quest to represent the concept of the inner life as told by the participants and a quest to understand that inner life. in this inquiry quest, narrative offered three interlinked critical factors that, for me, needed to be part of a conversation on the inner life. the first was the ability to situate the inquiry with the leaders that were part of the inquiry. as will be explored in later chapters, the notions of the inner life belong to those that participated in this study. it was part of their inner landscape (clandinin and connelly, ). the second was the ability to inter-weave my own leadership narrative into the inquiry. narrative inquiry allowed me to be the researcher, the researched, and the represented. narrative inquiry is the study of experience, and experience, as john dewey taught, is a matter of people in relation contextually and temporally. participants are in relation, and we as researchers are in relation to the participants. narrative inquiry is an experience of the experience. it is people in relation studying people in relation (clandinin and connelly, , p. ). the third was the ability to present the inquiry through an expressive representation that honoured the insights of the participants. willis ( ), in reference to expressive approaches, notes that such inquiry forms allow the researcher to take the position of receiving data for consideration rather than the more proactive stance of seeking to answer a firmly structured research question. this inquiry worked with leaders in multiple narrative processes to locate their stories of the inner life within their practice of leadership and within my practice of leadership. the conversation about the inner life of leadership sought to understand, to hear and to listen to the inner life as described by leaders. the inquiry method i conducted this inquiry in three stages and involved formal leaders from the post- secondary system in british columbia. the following sections outline the stages involved in the inquiry, the selection of the inquiry participants, and some reflections on the perspective of the researcher as inquirer and participant. inquiry — stage one: i conducted stage one of the inquiry in the spring and early summer of . during stage one, i asked four leaders to write an inner life story that reflected upon their lives as leaders. as the researcher, i also wrote an inner life story. the participants were given inner life prompts to assist in their writing but were not required to use them (appendix e). i met with each participant before the writing of the inner life story to talk about the research and the idea of the inner life and leadership. after writing his or her story, each participant posted his or her story to me via email. i removed any identifiers and reposted all the stories, including my own, to the four stage one participants. the email (appendix f) included instructions requesting the participants to add to the inner life stories, make comments or to re-tell their inner life story and/or write a different story. the idea of telling and re-telling the stories was to gain depth in the research, prompt reflection, and generate new reflections. after the iterative storytelling process was completed i extracted themes from the stories about the inner life of leaders and used those themes to create the interview protocol for stage two (appendix g). in addition, these themes were used in the creation ofthe conversation play in chapter five. using inner life stories from other leaders as the basis for the interview protocol proved to be very powerful in that the interview questions became ours, not just mine. inasmuch as the participants became both readers and writers, they began to collaborate on the research and on the next stage of interviewing leaders. although i was the person drawing out the themes and moving the stories to the stage two interviews, the participants played an important role in the construction of meaning in this quasi-collaborative process (bray, lee, & smith, ). as researcher, i was including my participants in meaning making and yet clearly directing the process of thematic analysis. bentz and shapiro ( ) talk about this notion as "surrender and catch." in surrender and catch, one abandons one's self to something that one is studying.. .through surrendering in this way and catching in this way, one becomes different from what one was at the start.. .one may need to surrender one's self in order to encounter that which leads to knowledge (p. ). in the creation of the stage two interview process this semi-collaboration allowed for aspects within the interview protocol that would not have otherwise been there. it allowed for the creation of a list of concepts/metaphors used by others to describe the inner life that would not otherwise have been available as a starting place for the interviews. it allowed me, the researcher, to use language such as "others have said," "when leaders wrote me stories they touched on" and "i have noticed in the stories that." it also led me to ask questions that i would not have created as sole researcher. for example, i would not have created the question about upbringing/background (e.g. how does a privileged, or underprivileged, background play into your inner life?). when i created the staged study, it was my assumption that the stage one leaders would go deeper into the notion of an inner life than the stage two interviewees. i assumed it would be the most powerful data because i allowed participants to reflect in their own time on the questions asked; the response was text based rather than interview based; the stories were exchanged with the participants as a group; then the participants were asked for more input. what became apparent was that although the stories were powerful, the real richness from stage one was in how useful the stories became as a basis for the second stage interview protocol. through the creation of stories, these leaders would co-create an interview protocol that had richness and depth that i could never have achieved without that collaboration. using the themes to develop the protocol opened up new territories of the inner life to explore that i, as a single researcher, would not have included. it was just the first of many times as i conducted the research that i felt that it was research that was emerging out of the process of the inquiry. inquiry — stage two in the fall of , interviewed fourteen leaders and asked another student in the e d . d . program to interview me. above i have introduced the use of stage one data for development of the interview protocol (appendix g). i will discuss the analysis and development of the interview questions more fully later in the construction and representation section of this chapter. the stage two interviews were semi- structured and areas were probed based on the responses given by the participant. as clandinin and connelly ( ) point out, as the researcher working in this environment, i was creating an "interpretive and contextualized text" (p. ) as i worked with the interviewees. my objective, as i conducted the interviews, was not to create a repeating interview protocol. i wanted an interview tool that would allow me to listen deeply to what the leaders had to say and to build on their ideas by asking probing questions. i was conscious of the ways in which this structure shaped the research, allowing both researcher and participant to interpret what was important and useful in the interview. willis ( ) views this as an expressive orientation to research where the researcher is seeking through phenomenological questions to represent the research in an empathic and/or metaphoric way. atkinson ( ) writes about creating, through interview, a life story and, in parallel, i was creating a leadership inner life story through the interviews. this affected the questions asked or not asked in each case. each leader was asked questions one through eight (appendix g) and, depending on the path of the answers, i probed further in some cases and/or moved on to other questions in the protocol. i followed the path that leaders wanted to take in terms of speaking about their inner life. the interviews were audio taped, later transcribed, and then housed on compact disk for analysis. i discuss the analysis process later in this chapter. each participant received a copy of his/her interview transcript with sections that i thought would identify her/him highlighted and or changed (appendix h). participants were asked to read the transcript and provide any changes and/or edits. in cases where stories might identify the participant and i wanted to use the story in the study because it was powerful, i re-confirmed with the participant that i had their permission to do so. inquiry — stage three in the spring of , conducted stage three of the inquiry (appendix j). stage three involved providing to the stage three participants (same five participants as stage one) primary themes from the interviews and a short inner life story from the interviews that reflected that theme. they were invited to choose one of the themes and its corresponding story and write a short piece on what the theme and story meant to them as a leader. this process was an emergent design, which differed from the original inquiry design. the original inquiry plan was to meet with each of the participants for one hour, discuss the themes that i had found in the interviews, and then ask the participants to write another inner life story. during the process of working with the original five inner life stories and the interview data, i became immersed in the narratives and the power of those narratives to provoke ideas about the inner life and leadership. consequently, i decided to share short pieces from the interviews with the stage three participants rather than meeting with them and sharing themes only. i hoped that by proceeding in this richer way, i would provoke further interesting narratives about the inner life and leadership. stage three participants were provided with the following themes and stories from the interviews. the process of acquiring these themes from the interview data will be discussed later in this chapter. theme one: the inner life as a place of social justice story: i remember walking home with a friend who was protestant, i was roman catholic and we lived next to each other and were very good friends and i remember thinking after i dropped her off, well why wouldn't she be able to go to heaven also. it didn't make any sense to me that she would not go to heaven. it was what i was taught and it didn't make sense to me because she was equal to me and my friend was really good. my friend should be able, when she dies, to go the same place i am going.... theme two: the inner life as a place of values or moral understanding story: in fact, i have had some real struggles with religion - going back to my childhood, but i do consider myself spiritual. the thing that keeps me going is making sure all my decisions and my intentions with people sit within my value system, which is hard to define. it is a system that i believe has to do with morals, whether it is truth telling or promise keeping, or treating everybody consistently, or being responsible and accountable. it is a set of values that i have that, i think, are morally and socially responsible and that guide me as a leader. it has a lot to do with ethical behaviour, truth telling and promise keeping. theme three: the inner life as sanctuary story: .. .immediately the word grounding comes to me. it is the place that you go back to be grounded, and have a point of reference. when you said what kind of metaphor and i am thinking images. i think it was the movie terminator when he is immersed into that boiling pot of destructive whatever it was and all you could see on the screen was a line that started moving towards the middle, then there was the one dot, and it just ended with the dot. i guess it is the reconciliation of who you are externally and then the place that you live inside yourself, which is that point of reference. there can be all sorts of people outside and all sorts of factors can temper you, but you are who you are and that little kernel inside you is you. inquiry participants the participants for this research were formal leaders in the post-secondary system at the college and university college level in british columbia. "formal" means that they hold a position within the system that formally recognizes them as leaders. the reason for selecting from this group was that within the context of the post-secondary education system they have similar types of experiences, stresses, and political encounters. formal leaders from universities were not included in the study because the context in which they lead differs in profile, in relationship through governance to their community, in funding and in relationship to the ministry of advanced education. there are twenty-two colleges, university colleges, and institutes in the province of b c . each of these institutions is lead by an administrative team made up of a president as c e o , and some combination of vice president(s), dean(s) and directors. post-secondary system leaders experience changes in political ideology, funding, and educational mandate as a collective whole and are in a loose sense a quasi-culture with similar norms, levels of privilege and experience. this similar experience provided a context for the research that was approximately common across all the participants. this allowed the outcomes of this inquiry to reside within a specific leadership context and will allow the outcomes of this research to be relevant within that context. there are other aspects of context that impact leaders everyday in their work, the government of the day, funding issues, issues of student access etc... that said i have chosen not to explicate these issues further because this inquiry is a conversation with leaders about their individual inner lives and each one of the participants had an individually constructed context within which they were telling their inner life story. there were participants in the inquiry, including me, as researcher, who participated in all stages . in stage one and three the five leaders were in the leadership categories of dean, director and vice president [me]. the fourteen stage two leaders were in the categories of presidents, vice presidents [including me], deans, directors, and one faculty member who had been an administrator previously. each stage had a mix of male and female leaders. there is very little visible ethnic diversity in senior post-secondary leadership in b c at this time and this was reflected in the participant pool. a l l participants in the research had been in senior management positions for more than three years. i chose the stage one and three participants for the research based upon my knowledge of them as post-secondary leaders. i did this because i was asking for a considerable number of hours from these leaders and because i was starting out on a journey that was exploring a relatively unexamined notion. i wanted to begin the journey with colleagues that i knew. choosing colleagues that i knew well had a positive impact on stage one because of the positive personal engagement between there were five participants in stage one including myself. there were participants in stage two including myself. i have only counted myself as one participant in the inquiry, rather than counting myself twice. consequently, the number of participants in the inquiry is rather than . to protect anonymity i have not indicated numbers of participants in each category except to note that there was only one faculty member. the researched and the researcher. i considered the following criteria in choosing the stage one participants. primarily, i was seeking leaders who would be willing to engage in the conversation about the inner life and had an interest in the subject. i was seeking leaders that i knew and respected for their work in the post- secondary system. due to the nature of the conversation, i sought out leaders who had knowledge of my work and me. i needed leaders who felt that they could commit to writing a story for the research and remain in the research through stage three, a task that might consume as much as fifteen hours. i sought out a mix of male and female leaders because i was interested in whether there might be some gender-based differences in viewpoint. a college and university college mix was also important. to find the participants i contacted seven post-secondary leaders in april by letter (appendix a). after initial contact, i asked to meet with each potential participant to describe the inquiry and from those meetings all seven leaders agreed to be part of stage one and stage three and signed the letter of consent (appendix c). subsequently, one participant withdrew and one participant wrote a story that identified her so fully that for reasons of confidentiality, i decided to withdraw her input from the inquiry. this left five (including myself) participants in stage one and three. the stage two participants were chosen based on the following criteria. i sought a geographical distribution across the province to improve the ability to keep the participants' identity confidential. distribution across presidencies, vice presidencies, and deans was important to reflect the notion of the inner life in formal leadership rather than a specific subset such as presidents. again, i sought to balance the male and female gender mix. i chose leaders that had been in formal positions for more than three years to provide for as much of a common experience as possible amongst the leaders. lastly, i chose leaders who had expressed interest in being part of the study. i included one faculty member in this group who had expressed an interest in being part of the study and had formerly been an administrator. to find the participants i contacted sixteen post-secondary leaders in september using the contact letter found in appendix b. from those sixteen contacts, fourteen consented (appendix d) to be part of the inquiry and remained in the research. in addition, i was also interviewed, by an e d . d . student, in stage two, bringing the number of participants in stage two to . perspective of the inquirer i want to pause and reflect upon myself as the inquirer before i move on to the process of making meaning from the stories that i collected. in chapter four i will more fully explore my personal journey as inquirer; however, it is useful to touch upon how who i am influenced the methodological approaches in this inquiry. i am a researcher who is a formal leader in the british columbia post-secondary system, a feminist (i will explore this in chapter four) and a person who loves words, poetry, and literature. each of these has influenced the "how" of this inquiry. denzin and lincoln ( ) touch on this influence as they write about the interpretive bricoleur. the interpretive bricoleur understands that research is an interactive process shaped by his or her personal history, biography, gender, social class, race, and ethnicity and by those of the people in the setting... the product ofthe interpretive bricoleur's labor is a complex, quilt like bricolage, a reflexive collage or montage - a set of fluid, interconnected images and representations. this interpretive structure is like a quilt, a performance text, a sequence of representations connecting the parts of the whole (p. ). as a leader in post-secondary education, i came to this research with a particular lens. i was interested in exploring who we are as leaders and how we reside within ourselves as leaders. as an insider, i bring the perspective that the work of public education leadership is of value and contributes to the lives of students. i also bring the perspective that this work is difficult, demanding, and highly political. it is very difficult to estimate exactly how the leadership insider lens affected my inquiry method. however, i am very aware that as an insider there are things that i do not ask and do not see because i am an insider. there may have been moments, concepts and ideas that i did not explore more deeply because i assumed there was a shared understanding and/or it was an area that might be uncomfortable for a colleague. ahh.. .poetry and words.... as inquirer, i bring to this process a love of words and literature and poetry. i think it is this love of words and their evocative nature that is at the heart of everything that i do. this does not mean that i am a master writer. it has, however, drawn me toward expressing the inner life using words, poetry and theatre to evoke the notions of the inner life. construction and representation having outlined the stages of the inquiry, in the next section i will examine in more detail the process of analysis used to develop the interview protocol, the process of analysis used to undertake the creation of the constructed conversation play, and the rationale for an expressive representation of the inner life conversation. development of interview protocol stage one data served two purposes in the research. first, the themes from the stage one stories were used to develop the interview protocol and, second, the stories themselves became part of the constructed conversation of the inner life, presented in chapter five. i have described the stage one inquiry process earlier and the influence using this data had on the development of the interview protocol. here i will focus on the process of analysing the data from stage one. each participant in stage one produced a first inner life story of approximately to words and then responded to other participant stories with approximately to words. the stories were analysed using a simple three part thematic coding method. first, the stories were analyzed for themes that indicated how the writers understood or gave meaning to the notion of the inner life. second, stories were analysed for questions that the writers were asking in their narrative and/or statements that immediately prompted a question; and third, for sections of text that indicated events, times, places in a leader's history that influenced her/his inner life. in seeking out themes that indicated understanding of the inner life, i looked for metaphors that participants used to describe their inner life. i used these metaphors to develop question one of the interview protocol (appendix g). the parts of the stories that involved the participants asking questions about the inner life or stories that prompted questions for me, the researcher, were developed in questions such as: "is your inner life the servant or the master of your leadership?" doing time and place analysis was not foreseen as i started into the research; however, four of the five stage one participants in either the original story or in the response to the grouped stories, commented on their earlier careers or childhoods and connected those experiences to their inner life. one participant told a story of an incident from years ago, one used a metaphor from her childhood, one spoke about attributes inherited from their parents, and one told a more recent story. this reference to a specific time and place led to important questions for the stage two interviews about the origins of one's inner life. it is important to note that in this stage, my analysis focus was on using the stage one stories to create questions for the interview protocol and that stage one would be re- analysed for the larger constructed conversation. in addition, as researcher i added several questions to the protocol that were of specific interest to me, that did not arise directly from the stage one participant stories. these additional questions were extensions of the themes. for example, one participant in stage one wrote about prayer, while the others did not. in the interviews, i asked questions about whether the leader engaged in a spiritual practice. the following questions formed the initial interview protocol. i clustered the questions around similar concepts as seen below. during the interview the participants might be asked some or all of the questions in a cluster depending on how the interview flowed and their or my interest in exploring a topic further. cluster one: . others have described the inner life as . . . a. code of ethics b. a place where i feel "real" c. a place where justice and fairness reside d. the heart of leadership e. a place of meaning f. emotions and feelings g- a place of prayer h. an inner dialogue i. a place of leadership strength j- a place of patient listening k. self talk . guiding principles m. a fictitious judge that helps and guides n. my upbringing . a deeply spiritual place p- a place of universal values what words/metaphors/concepts would you use to describe your inner life? cluster two: . how did this inner life form? . when you think about your inner life, what period in your life do you go to? cluster three: . how does your inner life influence how you lead? . how does your inner life influence you every day? . how does your inner life influence leadership in everyday leadership situations? cluster four: . how do you articulate your inner life with your colleagues and/or the academy? . are you afraid to articulate your inner life to the academy? what causes this fear? cluster five: . does your inner life sustain you? how? . what sustains you in your leadership? . what gives your leadership meaning? is this meaning found in your inner life? cluster six: . when do you feel 'real' as a leader? . who/what, nurtures your inner life? . what role does humility play in your inner life? . is your inner life the servant or the master of your leadership? . describe the heart or spirit of your leadership. cluster seven: . how does a privileged or underprivileged background play into your inner life? cluster eight: . do you pray? . do you believe in a universal good and if so, how do you decide what is good? . who is your inner judge? cluster nine: . how does your inner life grow or mature? cluster ten: . demographic information (age, gender, time in position) after the third interview, i added two additional clusters. these questions were added because the participants were speaking about the issues of gender and alignment and i decided to follow up on these ideas. again, this was an instance of the participants in the inquiry informing the inquiry process. cluster eleven: . as i have been doing this study, i have been noticing some gender differences in how female and male leaders describe the inner life. can you make a comment on this? cluster twelve: . tell me a story about a time that your inner life and your leadership aligned. . tell me a story about a time that your inner life and your leadership didn't align. the constructed conversation play the constructed conversation in chapter five is a representation and interpretation of the data from all three stages of the inquiry. several issues became primary for me in analyzing the stories that had been offered to me by leaders. representing the data in a fashion that respected my colleagues who had contributed to the study was very important to me. the journey of working with participants in the study who were also my colleagues influenced my view of the data and how i wanted to structure the representation of that data. making meaning and addressing issues of authenticity, trustworthiness and representation were also primary (clandinin and connelly ). i was seeking a mode of representation that would be emotive and that might evoke further conversation on the possibility of the inner life. as heywood ( ) states: the artist can legitimately appeal to the emotions, while academia demands of writers that they studiously avoid doing thus. however, these strictures are being challenged. academics exploring the complexities of lived experience are stretching the boundaries, (p. ) i wanted in this research to take up this challenge of representation and meaning making through a process that would both evoke and represent. i knew that the representation needed to be expressive and evocative. i knew that i wanted to use poetry as part of the process of this inquiry to reflect my own notions of the inner life. i also was seeking another expressive form for representation of the data from the inquiry stages. as heywood ( ) reflects, ".. .for this i sought something more pliable, manipulable, delicate, resilient...." (p. ). i found this form in the notion of a constructed conversation presented as a play (see chapter five). the idea of an inner life is an evocative idea and, in representing the findings of this inquiry as a constructed conversation amongst a group of leaders, i wanted to evoke and provoke ideas that "join the writer and reader" (heywood, , p. ) in the process of meaning making. the text based stories about the inner life and the semi-structured interviews had both produced narratives of participants' views of the inner life. the narratives in some instances were stories from participant's lives and in other cases narratives that expressed a viewpoint on a particular question. widdershoven ( ) notes that, ".. .from a hermeneutic point of view, stories are based on life, and life is expressed, articulated, manifested and modified in stories... thus stories are interpretations of life in which the meaning of life is spelled out..." (p. ). based on these ideas i began to view the stories told as interpretations of the inner life. widdershoven ( ) touches on the idea that interpretation - the researcher making meaning in this case - is a dialogue in that the reader and the text are coming together to create an understanding. in this research, i would propose that there were three interlinked negotiated processes of meaning making or creation of understanding. first, there was my role as researcher creating the inner life prompts (appendix e) which both provided an opportunity in stage one for participants to understand the process of writing an inner life story and limited, in a way, that story through the use of prompts. the second negotiated construction of meaning occurred when, as researcher, i took the text and created an interview protocol from the inner life stories. by taking the stories from stage one and creating an interview protocol from them, i constructed meaning by shifting the context within which the stories were residing (widdershoven, ). by doing so i was exerting my power as researcher to construct the notion of the inner life of leaders. the third negotiated construction of meaning occurred when i created the constructed conversation play using data from all three stages. in creating the constructed conversation play, i worked with the data from stage one, two and three, collecting clusters of themes, seeking out repeating ideas, reading, rereading for the repeating themes and patterns. in the beginning of this inquiry i very much wanted to have a conversation with leaders about the inner life, and in representing the data through the process outlined below, i attempted to bring to life a conversation about the inner life and leadership. chapter five is a constructed conversation play. i have used the term a constructed conversation play because it is a conversation constructed directly from the words of the participants in this inquiry staged as a play. the play revolves around a conversation by five leaders who are part of one of the character's (joan) research. this conversation is overheard by the character joan [myself, the researcher] and she fulfills the function of an "interpretive bricoleur" (denzin & lincoln, , p. ), providing a monologue on what she is hearing. as "interpretive bricoleur" i must as researcher and actor expose and engage with the how of meaning making, the bias of meaning making and the notions that are underlying the conversation. the rationale for using a constructed conversation play as the representation of the findings in this inquiry was fourfold. first, i wanted to use a representation of the findings that would honour the gift of data offered to me by education leaders. in using their own words to construct a play, i was seeking to honour their input. second, the storied nature of the text from stages one and three and the interviews from stage two held the evocative power of the notion of the inner life and leadership, and i wanted to hold on to this narrative power in the representation. third, many of the stories told by leaders were very personal and by taking the data from leaders and re-storying it as dialogue for five characters in a play ensured a level of confidentiality and anonymity to the participants. the characters in the play were created as composite characters who speak re-storied data from across all stages in the inquiry and across all participants. fourth, plays, even in their written form, undertake to assist the audience to experience ideas. in the honouring of a conversation about the inner life i did not want to write about the conversation, rather i wanted the reader to experience the conversation and be part of it. simply put, i wanted to be part of the conversation, i wanted the reader to be part of the conversation, and i wanted to allow for interpretation by both the reader and myself. the constructed conversation play represents the findings in this inquiry and the creation of the play took a series of carefully planned out steps. step one. i sought out overarching notions of the inner life in the data. i found that there were three key notions of the inner life for education leaders that were repeating in the data: the inner life as a place of social justice; the inner life as a place of values, ethics, or moral understanding; and the inner life as peace, balance, or sanctuary. i noted earlier that these key notions were used in stage three of the data collection. in the construction of /\ac\u\ justice \ m e pla v> these notions became the meta-organizational tool •». for the nature of the five characters. i have \ \ represented the meta- sanctuary themes in a venn diagram \ / . / that shows the overlap and intersection of the ideas — ^ because the themes were not exclusive within a single participant's story. participants that spoke about social justice also might have spoken about moral and ethical thought. however, within the data there was a stronger theme of social justice than ethics or sanctuary. therefore, as described below i created three characters for the inner life theme of social justice; one character for the inner life theme as a place of values, ethics or moral understanding; and one character for the theme of the inner life as peace, balance or sanctuary. step two. i created and named the characters in the play as the next step. i created three female characters and two male characters, which reflected the slightly greater number of females in the inquiry. for reasons of confidentiality, i do not disclose the number of men or the number of women in the inquiry. harry, sally, and joanne were the characters that held the meta-concept of social justice and the inner life. martha was the character who held the inner life as sanctuary and kevin was the character that embodied the notions of ethics, morals, and values. the names of the characters were fictional and do not represent any administrator in post-secondary education. step three. i then began the process of reading and re-reading for specific themes. i extracted these themes from the data and organized them into dialogue for the five characters. i extracted exact wording from the data, and as will be seen in chapter five, used that exact wording as dialogue in the play. the process i used to analyze and construct the dialogue took several attempts. i finally resorted to a simple technique of literally cutting up the data and sorting it into thematic dialogue for the characters. i did this by taking over the dining room table for several weeks. i selected five figurines from around the house and gave each the name of one of the characters. i then began the process of sorting the dialogue. i first sorted for themes using the three meta-themes of social justice as inner life, inner life as ethics, values, and morals, and inner life as sanctuary. then i sorted those themes by character. next, i sorted for scenes of dialogue. then i sorted for dramatic progression through a conversation amongst five people. finally, i re-sorted using the lens of my primary purpose, which was to have a conversation with leaders about the inner life and meaning of that inner life in their work. i spent several weeks with the characters living on my dining room table as i worked and re-worked the ideas. it is interesting to note that after completing the play i had unused dialogue. this unused dialogue was very much like the scenes that are edited out of films. connelly and clandinin ( ) write about the notion of re-storying and it is this idea that i built upon in working with the data. the notion of re-storying fits the undertaking of an examination of the inner life because from the beginning of the research i have been taking an idea and "re-storying" it to lead into the next examination and/or to lead into the representation and meaning making of the data. "the spoken or written word has always a residue of ambiguity, no matter how carefully we word the questions and how carefully we report or code the answers" (fontana & frey, ), and it is within this ambiguity that i attempted to re-story and honour the intended meaning of the data that i had collected. the analysis borrowed the hermeneutic idea of attempting to re-dialogue with the stories and the interviews, to ask what meaning it held for who wrote [or spoke] it (bentz & shapiro, ). step four. having analysed for themes, sorted, and selected dialogue, i moved to creating the constructed conversation play itself. i created a setting for the play that would allow a dialogue to take place. i chose an island where the leaders had been grounded by a storm as a fictional setting because it allowed the administrators to be isolated enough to have a conversation. it is common for senior administrative leaders to be in a helicopter together en route to a meeting or other event. i next undertook to write the play itself. each piece of dialogue was utilized to create a progressive conversation about the inner life. this progressive conversation was clustered into the following acts and scenes: i. act one, scene one: inner life defined ii. act one, scene two: good, intention and power iii. act one, scene three: telling the inner life iv. act two, scene one: origins and maturing v. act two, scene two: work: loving and hating it vi. act three, scene one: making a difference vii. act three, scene two: inner life revisited viii. act three, scene three: gender matters ix. act three, scene four: the quest and the pain having created the shell of the play i then worked on the character joan's monologues, which i describe further in chapter four. each monologue reflected upon the words of the leaders and provided further analysis. the last step was to create bridges and scene prompts that provided movement in the play. i used fictional scene prompts when i needed an action to create momentum or tension in the play. in creating the scene prompts, i took great care to honour the meaning intended by the original participant. in the transcripts, i ensured that every pause, every laugh, etc. was transcribed and i returned to the transcriptions to lift out some of the scene prompts. however, some fictional scene prompts were required to create action in the play and allow the characters to acknowledge each other's dialogue. in representing the findings of this inquiry as a constructed conversation play, i sought to offer levels of interpretation. i was seeking to present the words of leaders as they wrote and spoke about their inner life. i was seeking to meet the original inquiry purpose of seeking to record, reflect and wonder (clandinin & connelly, ) about the inner life of education leaders and the inner life's influence on their leadership. and, i was seeking to evoke a conversation about the inner life of leadership. reflections on trustworthiness this research is a conversation with a specific group of british columbia post- secondary education leaders at a specific moment in time. to borrow from greene ( ) this research is "forever on its way" (p. ) in that it touches into a conversation that is changing, multiple and dynamic. what an education leader would say about her/his inner life on any given day is profoundly impacted by that particular day in education, the political influences of the day, funding issues, issues of hope for education, and by personal dreams about what education should be. in fact, i had one participant who was having a very bad leadership day when we did the interview and there was no question that her day influenced her answers. consequently, this inquiry is more about a beginning of a conversation than a final or transferable statement on the inner life of leaders. this inquiry should be judged in relation to trustworthiness (smith, ) and possibility (greene ). smith lays out four elements in his concept of trustworthiness: "reflexivity, transparency, moral reasoning, and persuasiveness" (p. ). transparency, as defined by smith, is an accounting of how one arrives at the understandings one is presenting and reflexivity is an accounting of the inter- relationships between the context, the researcher, and the data. in this research this transparency and reflexivity are addressed through the presentation of the theoretical and literature framework within which the inquiry resides, the attention paid to the mode of inquiry, a discussion of the care that has been taken in building the data representation, and the reflections of the inquirer. in building the theoretical framework i drew from literature aligned with the ideas of hope, possibility, quest and seeking because that literature lent itself to a discussion of the inner life as a place that held particular qualities and influenced leadership in particular ways. the mode of inquiry was written in a way that helped the reader to understand the progression of the inquiry. in doing this i was establishing both a transparency and reflexivity into the discussion that allowed the reader to understand how the research had been undertaken and the position i held as researcher. in chapter four, the journey, i have written a reflective piece on the experience of conducting the research to more clearly locate myself within the research and to make transparent my biases, views, and experiences as researcher. in the representation of the data, i undertook to honour those that had participated in the study. in this honouring, i undertook to represent the data in a format that allowed for multiple meanings of the narratives and illustrated my interpretative stance. what is important here is that the reader can both see the stance of the researcher and experience a representation of a conversation, one with many possible interpretations. as clandinin and connelly ( ) state "it is wakefulness that in our view most needs to characterize the living out of our narrative inquiries..." (p. ). moral reasoning and persuasiveness are the second set of criteria smith ( ) lays out; however, for the purposes of this inquiry it is more useful to use related concepts from willis ( ). willis discusses arts-based research and as this inquiry uses an arts-based representation of the data (a constructed conversation play) his ideas are useful to this undertaking: verisimilitude, last on the list but perhaps key to a quality test of this kind of inquiry, refers to what has been call the 'phenomenological aha' - the moment of 'that's it'; 'yes that is what it is really like' (p. ). in this study, the stories are re-presented through a constructed conversation play. britzman ( ) writes about narration not being done to capture truths, but rather it is about constructing particular versions of truth through the process. i have undertaken, as discussed above, to honour the narratives and stories of the participants, but also to create a conversation that "provokes a recognizable representation of the real world" (willis, , p. ) or, in this case, the inner life. the process from stage one to the constructed conversation play required attention and rigour. in particular, because i was using the exact words of the leaders, rigour was an essential requirement to every step in this inquiry. as noted earlier i had returned the transcripts to the participants for their input and during the data analysis stage and early drafting of the play, i paused to both thank the participants and bring to their attention that i would be using the data to construct a play (appendix i). the last component that willis outlines is "utility" (p. ). i argue that the "utility" of this research is in advancing a conversation about the inner life of leadership and the prompting of the reader to reflect on her/his inner life and leadership work. this chapter has outlined the mode of inquiry used in this study. i want to close this chapter with a final comment on the iterative nature of this inquiry. at each stage of this inquiry, i found the words of the participants in this inquiry leading me to modify my inquiry, to broaden my thinking and to include more ideas. i think the design of the inquiry allowed for that process to take place and the inquiry is richer for it. c h a p t e r four: t h e journey we travel, not knowing the way pretending, the map detailed in our laps. we do not know what is coming nor where we go i do not want to travel laden i crave to travel light and quick i pack for conversation, make room for laughter, hope, and attempt to squeeze out despair i pack your gifts tissue wrapped and gentled i know i am unknowing and yet, i hold my map tight close in to my heart hoping to read in the dark jmcb in this chapter, i chatter about the journey of creating this inquiry. i use the word chatter intentionally because in this chapter i allow a place for myself in this thesis through reflecting on being an inquirer, my own story, the experience of undertaking this inquiry and my experience of leadership. for me, the journey of this inquiry was an important part of understanding my own inner life. who i am as leader, what my own inner life tells me about leadership and how that influenced the how, why and outcome are all critical pieces of this conversation. there is a wonderful poem by mary oliver ( ) entitled the "journey" which in part states: one day you finally knew what you had to do, and began though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice.... as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life that you could save. (p. ) for me, this poem represents the beginning of this research journey. as doctoral students we are encouraged to study our practice and, for me, my practice could have been any one of the many things i do. it could have been policy, governance, management styles, or strategic planning. the list was endless. however, i wanted to inquire into something else. i was drawn to have a conversation with leaders about who we are as leaders, what the leaderly possibility is in what we do everyday. this drive to have the inner life conversation is based on my own personal views of leadership and from the beginning of the e d . d . program, it was apparent to me that i could not undertake another form of inquiry. it was as if this inquiry was calling me, telling me to undertake the journey and that no other journey was possible for me as a leader. leaderly is not a proper english word. it has been created for this inquiry because in playing with the word lead, leader, leading the word leaderly evoked for me meaning that the other words did not quite capture. as e d . d . students, we undertake research directly related to our practices and, therefore, must be in practice to be part of the program. the program's intention is to bridge theory and practice. this inquiry into the inner life of leaders fits perfectly into this notion of bridging theory and practice through having a focused conversation with leaders about their inner life and wrapping around those conversations theoretical notions that focus on the concept of the inner life of leadership. the e d . d . program was a wonderful journey for me in that it melded together practice and theory in ways that were, in my experience, unusual. in this chapter, i have a conversation about my own practice of post-secondary leadership because it is this practice that i bring to the e d . d . educational undertaking. i also have a conversation about the journey of this inquiry and include excerpts from my own interview on the inner life and my own inner life story (in italics). my journey to public leadership has been more accidental than planned and yet at the core of the journey has been the vocation of teaching and learning. like palmer ( ), at the core of everything i do as a leader, is teaching. i love the vocation of teaching, the magic (cockell, ) that can occur within an environment that is designed for learning. before becoming an administrator, i taught in faculty development, and the power of working with teachers who wanted to change the lives of their students was amazing. i take this possibility of teaching into leadership with me every day and desire that leadership and leading could be a place of teaching and learning. leading in education has become my vocation and, as such, it has a powerful hold on me and i can neither turn away nor can i be different than i am as a leader. palmer writes about vocation: vocation at its deepest level is, "this is something i can't not do, for reasons i'm unable to explain to anyone else and don't fully understand myself but are nonetheless compelling" (p. ). for me, leading is like this, it is something i find myself compelled to do, without adequate words to describe why. leading is my vocation and, at times, it is hard. in my own interview on the inner life, i talked about having a desire "to work at a workplace where people felt like they could be honest and felt like what they did was respected and cared for. " i am not so naive to believe that this is possible in a world of competing values and concerns but, as a core to my leadership, it is something that i work toward and practice. this word practice is an important one for me in leadership because it reflects what is at the core of the leaderly undertaking. as i say in my interview: i talk about leadership being a practice not a thing, and the notion of practice is that you practice everyday at being a leader and you practice at some place of leadership. it is a practice, it requires training, and honing your skills and it requires a sense of your inner life and your leadership. and, so leadership and practice this is an unfinished canvas. for me, in leadership many external influences shape my role as an education leader. there are the political forces of the day and the integration of political ideology into the leading of education. the provincial government in power has influence on the post-secondary education system and its priority areas. this has an impact on policy development and consequently on leadership. there are always issues of funding in public education and issues of how the taxpayer views the costs of education versus the social good of education. there is the internal climate of an organization and how organizationally flexible and nimble it is in terms of its ability to adapt to changing times. a l l of these things are present every day in the environment in which i lead. what interests me is how leaders view and work with these things. what internal leadership views allow leaders to work across these issues with integrity and hope? hope carries with it its opposite despair, although for me the moments of despair as a leader are not so much despair, as moments where learning and leadership collide: moments where i am forced to seek harder the place of leadership and look for the path that can help an organization. hope and despair are an integral part of my leadership and an integral part of being the kind of leader i hope to be. maxine greene ( ) writes about the idea of possibility and for me it is in this place leadership hope resides. senge et al. ( ) write about the kind of leadership and processes that might bring about positive change in organizations. for me the cultural shift that needs to happen for change to be fostered can lead to despair. caputo ( ), in his work on religion, focuses on what we believe in when we become unhinged or when all that we believe in seems to be off kilter. wheatley ( ), in her article finding hope in hopelessness, talks about the idea of hopelessness as the foundation for both patience and not giving up hope. these concepts of hope and despair are becoming more and more important to me as i work in education and my belief builds that social good is at the heart of education and that public education serves that social good. it would be easy to despair for the future of education and i think that i draw some of my courage from walking the edge of despair and being able to look both directions, to despair and to hope. if i did not understand the concepts of despair and hope, i would not be able to offer leadership something of value. i reside in the place of dilemma created from hope and despair and i argue that this is a good place. m y willingness to be in this place comes from how i exercise my leadership and the underpinnings of that leadership. leading for me is not only the exercise of my position at the college. it also includes the work that i do either to enhance the leadership of others and/or to grow in my own capacity as a leader. if i can experience both despair and hope, as noted above, and continue to lead, this is evidence that i reside and work in dilemma. however, it is not enough to reside there; i need to have the capacity to make decisions in that place that are of use to the institution, my classes, and/or the students that i serve. greene ( ) examines the idea of being morally wide-awake, i think that in order for me to be a leader in this place, and at this time, i must struggle constantly to be awake. i can only struggle to be awake and sometimes obtain a moment of being truly morally wide-awake. one of the reasons that i have co-created the workshop series labyrinth and leadership (a workshop combining reflection on leadership and labyrinth walking) is an opportunity to reflect, along with other leaders, on the work that we do. i have undertaken to study the inner life of leaders and i am proposing that it is in this place of the inner life that concepts such as "moral awareness" and "possibility" reside. i think that this inquiry that i have undertaken is also a critical study of my own leadership and the hopes of that leadership. kanter ( ) states leadership is "that which leaves the world a better place, that is you lead people in new directions, to solve problems and make new things happen" (p. ) and this is a constant desire in my leadership. m y ideas of leadership are framed in a background of feminism and the issues of diversity. i worked and taught in the areas of gender and diversity for some years and try to understand how my own feminist notions influence the way in which i lead. being a feminist leader is challenging and falls again into a management of dilemma. for some feminists i am perceived as too conservative, and for some conservatives i am perceived as too feminist. yet for me i am only a person who believes that each person in the community that i serve has rights and obligations regardless of race, creed, gender or religion. palmer ( ) writes about courage. he is writing about courage to teach and talk about teaching, but his ideas translate to leading, in that courage is a very important part of defining the kind of feminist i will be, and what kind of role model in leadership i present. i can now open a book on research and find entire sections on feminist notions of research. finding these ideas in print is like coming home at last. for me, feminist thought was not located in the academy in the seventies; rather it was located in living rooms, in writings by early feminists, in attempting to assist women in accessing non- traditional careers, and in fighting for my own rights as a woman and as a lesbian. the journey that i have traveled in leadership has always been one constructed from a feminist philosophy. feminist philosophy is defined as: "a discussion of philosophical concerns that refuse to identify the human experience with the male experience" (audi, p. ). the feminism, which grounds my work and life, has grown out of my lived experience. this lived experience has led me to a strong ethic of justice, rights, and inclusion - tenets of my own inner life. the experience of living as a woman in the t h and s t centuries has also brought a keen awareness of the differences and, often, inequalities of access in relation to how men and women have accessed higher education and accessed leadership positions in higher education. my identity as a feminist shapes who i am and how i practice leadership and is an essential piece of the bricolage (denzin & lincoln, ) that i bring as an inquirer to this study. being a feminist informs my practice as well as my view of research. it makes me aware of issues of inclusion and access and power. it also makes me aware of my inner and outer self as a leader. at times, i expose my feminist self and at others, i do not. i make the public/private choice based on the situation. i have made a conscious choice to be publicly "out" as a lesbian because i hope that in doing so, the power of my position allows others who are different to be safer within the institution. in my public/private choices, i take great care to be true to the notions of belonging and inclusion and recognize that it is not just my belonging that is important but the belonging of all members of the community. in choosing to expose either my feminist or lesbian self, i am making a conscious leadership choice with all the accompanying political ramifications. i have talked about hope and despair, about dilemma and about underpinnings. now i want to talk about practicing leadership. i go to work every day and i know that i have one purpose and that is, as an educational leader, to preserve what is good in what we do and to foster positive educational change. this is not easy work because what is good and what should be changed are different for people across the institution, depending on their perspectives. i seek to understand and listen to these differences and, as in the practice of leadership, there are days when i succeed and days that i fail. it would be easier to disregard the perspectives of others, to stop listening and stop seeking, but i refuse to do so. i do not think that in my lifetime i will have the opportunity to lead in a "morally wide-awake" (greene, ) community; however, in the meantime i will continue to quest for this in myself, my team and my institution. i administer the day-to-day world of education and do it well, but in the realm of leadership i quest, and in that questing, i try to understand both my own leadership and the leadership i see around me. in this questing to be "morally wide-awake" and to "listen," i understand that my leadership makes a positive difference for some and a negative difference for others. in so being, my leadership is no less morally sound or less democratic, it is merely my leadership, my dilemma. i would argue that to administer in the modern world of leadership is the easy part. it is a world of policies and procedures and one can often see the choices as right or wrong. in leading, i ^ would argue that the opposite is true. although as leaders we receive a great deal of feedback on our leadership, it is a place that is filled with multiple perspectives, multiple agendas, and multiple moral principles. consequently it is much harder to measure the outcome of leadership. in my own work, i have a great desire to administer with excellence (the easy part) and lead with possibility (the hard part). the journey of the conversation with leaders about their inner life was located in my own notions of leadership and my own concepts of what leadership might be. as i moved from the idea of a conversation with leaders to undertaking the conversation, it was a journey of constant reflection on what i was doing and what i was hoping to do. the first stage in the journey was to seek out four colleagues who would work with me in stage one of the inquiry. i have written in the previous chapter about the practical aspects of selecting participants for the study. here i want to write about the less tangible aspects of working with this first group. when i first set out to select the participants for stage one my reaction was one of high anxiety. the entire inquiry was based upon the idea of an inner life of leaders that i did not know existed in others. it was quite possible in this first phase that i would find out that leaders could not write about their inner life nor would they be able to identify with the idea of how an inner life might influence their leadership. i struggled with what this thing that i wanted to explore was, what i would do with the data when it was returned and if my colleagues would think me daft in wanting to explore something so philosophical when there was so much work to be done in policy, funding and other kinds of work. a l l of these things were swirling in my head as i approached the first participants. it brought the issues of "why this research?" to a focal point for me. i began to understand that in my view, the issues of governance, policy, funding, etc. sprang from a core of leadership and it was this core i wanted to explore. i also began to struggle with form and function at this point. i knew that some form of alternative representation would be required for the data to have any meaning and began the exploration of narrative inquiry as a form for the research. as i understood more and more about narrative as a form of inquiry i began to understand that the "process and product" (conle, , p. ) were inter-linked and that i was not collecting data about other leaders. rather, i was co-exploring with other leaders the idea of the inner life and that my view of myself as leader was central to the inquiry. this idea of an autobiographical piece, the journey, was both fascinating and frightening because it required that i write about my own inner life and own that as my belief about leadership. i found myself in that place of wondering what my own voice could and should be in this research. what would remain silent and what would find its way onto the page along with the findings of the research? i was interested in being a participant/researcher (ellis & bochner, ) that would allow for who i was and my leadership being part of the context, but the conversation with other leaders being the primary focus of the inquiry. with all this in mind, i created the inner life writing prompts for stage one and went out to my colleagues to ask for inner life stories. i also wrote my own story using the same process. when the stories came back i knew for the first time that i had something worth exploring. there were words and themes in the stories that resonated with my own, and yet each description was rich, unique and powerful. building the interview protocol from stage one was an interesting experience because i was not alone; it was as if i had a group of collaborators sitting on my shoulder co-creating the questions. i attempted to create the questions in such a way that would get at the concepts of the inner life without asking for levels of participant disclosure that might make them uncomfortable. these participants were my colleagues and i wanted to approach them with respect and yet ask questions that would explore the concepts of an inner life. i started the interviews with the person i knew best of all my participants. this was more accidental than by design, but in doing so it allowed me to explore with this person more fully the questions, the intended meaning of the questions and to revise some of the questions as i moved to interview two. again, there was this aspect of collaboration between researcher and participant that seemed to be shifting and moving the research. it was also this first participant that started the conversation about gender that led me to add in the gender question after a couple of interviews. as i moved through the interviews and through stage three there was a primary emotion that kept re-surfacing, that of awe and respect for the people in this inquiry. as i listened to them speak about the inner life, about leadership and about their work, i was humbled by each person's profound desire to make a difference in education. as i was moving into the data analysis stage, i met with my supervisor one day and she commented on my use of the word "data." she stated that its origin was "gift." i looked it up and its root is from the latin "to give" (onions, ). as often in undertaking this inquiry, there occurred at that moment an "aha" about the inquiry and the notion of gift; a true gift is considered, chosen wisely and offered freely. i look back on the narratives and the interviews and that is, in fact, what the leaders in the inquiry were doing. they were offering gifts of their inner life. i took these gifts and began to seek out a form of representation that would honour the gifts and provide understanding of what was being said in this inquiry. i played with using some kind of found poem format. i struggled with using the participants' words to attempt to create a series of narratives about the inner life. i returned to more traditional thematic analysis approaches. having struggled with all of these ideas i returned to the notion of a conversation with leaders. the essence of this inquiry had always been to have a conversation about the inner life and leadership. consequently i began to play with the ideas of what such a conversation might look like. at first i thought i would create a conversation with all nineteen leaders as if they were at a cocktail party. then i struggled with the idea of using the form of the labyrinth as a conversational container. my first realization was that nineteen characters were too many to work with and still bring the conversation to life. my second realization was that the participants had provided me with some very profound comments about the inner life and leadership and i had a responsibility to the issue of confidentiality. i began to work with the notion of a play. this was the representation that had energy for me as the inquirer. the process of writing the play was wonderful and difficult. i wanted the play to be true to the expressive form and yet fulfill the inquiry requirement of representation and meaning making. this was the place that my two halves as writer and leader came together for me for the first time in my life. i have always kept my writer in the closet, as it were, and people who knew me as a vice president rarely knew me as a writer. bringing these two halves together in this inquiry felt like a very high risk activity and yet the honouring of a conversation kept bringing me back to doing just that. in writing the play i created five leaders, a researcher and a pilot. the responsibility of these five fictional leader characters was to honour the words of the participants in a valid way. they did this as described in chapter three; however, like fictional characters they also took on a life of their own. for example, as i worked with the dialogue, having sorted and re-sorted it by themes, i would be writing and suddenly i would find myself saying, "sally would never say that; that is martha's line." i knew when this happened that the inquiry was in fact honouring the participants' contribution. it was as if the characters began to protect the data from being misrepresented. in an academic undertaking it is scary to write this last sentence. it is very common for fiction writers to have the experience of characters beginning to take on the plot, but i have a voice in my head that tells me this is not supposed to be the way in academic writing. however, i would argue that in this inquiry the way that i have used the words of the participants to create five characters also allowed for the characters to push against what the character was willing to take on as dialogue and to push against misusing the data. it is as if the words of the participants became embodied in these five leader characters. the leader characters provided the representation of the data, but for the inquiry to work, i also needed to ask the question what do these words mean? i created a character that fulfilled the role of meaning maker. at first i made this character a male pilot who would appear on stage, speak in the third person and tell the audience what the characters had meant in their dialogue. this approach had a few problems: one, it was boring; two, it was arrogant; and three, it jarred in a theatrical sense. next i made this character the cottage owner. it worked slightly better, but still did not fit. next, i made the character the "researcher." this worked reasonably well as the character had a softer, more inclusive way of making meaning through a series of monologues. after my supervisor read the play she made a simple suggestion, "why not call this meaning maker character joan?" i knew when she said it that it was the right suggestion and i hated it. it, for me, was a level of exposure that i did not want. and yet, as soon as i began to re-work the monologues spoken by the new character, "joan," the issues of voice and finding the right tone for meaning making began to go away. as i re-worked the play several times more and more of me entered into the character, i allowed poetry, humor and my voice to find their place. chapter five is the representation of the conversation about the inner life and leadership in theatrical form. writing it was the hardest part of the thesis and yet recently, when i experimented with the play being read aloud, it sounded authentic. after the reading a member of the group who was an administrator (not in the inquiry) said to me "that is exactly how it is - leadership is like that." i want to end this telling of the journey with two things, first, my own inner life story and, second, a final comment on post-secondary leadership. inner life story a n inner life implies an outer one, protected and armoured against the world. and, then the inner life a place of refuge and desire and hope and longing. a place where leadership is worked and worked like a favourite pebble against the thumb of meaning. meaning is such an interesting word, the origin of which both contains the idea from middle english of meanness and the meaning a common understanding. for me it is interesting to start at this place of meaning, because it is creating a place of meaning that gives substance to my inner life. i seek within me the meaning of my leadership, the things, ideas and potential that make leading a value-based experience for me. when i reflect on my leadership, i seek this meaning and long for my work to have at its core much more than the tips and tricks of management. rather i long for it to be based on this place within that sustains and works and re-works the leaderly actions of my day. as i write, i think that it sounds as if my inner life is simply a worrier going over actions again and again. that is not what i mean by working and re- working; rather i am talking about plunging my actions during the day into the vat of my inner life and holding them up against a few things that i hold as core to my being a leader. this core has developed over the years and been added to as i have grown and changed. it would be a little too simplistic to call this place a set of values or my upbringing. i think it is something else. i think, for me, it is actually an inner dialogue with my leader self about what might be, and it gets me up in the morning believing in a workplace of respect and communication and valued humans. i grew up on a farm, and i remember kneeling in the field with my father and examining the small shoots of grain poking up through the earth and feeling the hope of a good crop. not all the storms, rain, and bad crops could ever take away that hope that was there every spring. my leadership is like this cycle. the hope of spring and then the despair of standing in the pelting rain watching the grain go down to the earth and knowing that i can not save it and wondering why i plant at all and then it is spring again and i am kneeling in the morning sun urging the little shoots to grow. all that said, i know that my inner dialogue about leadership and the things that i care about are influenced by being a lesbian, a feminist and being privileged. my inner dialogue has rights that others do not and, as such, can find the morning sun easier than others do. i never doubt that these things make a difference to my leadership and how i undertake my work everyday. anyway, on with the inner dialogue: it is not as if i talk to myself every time i do something at work, although as i move into menopause i do find myself talking to myself now and again. the inner dialogue is a spiritual place for me although i do not hold to any religion. it is a place where my leadership soul can find wisdom, solace, and comfort. it teaches me that redemption is possible both for me and others. it teaches me that no one is right and that relativity can kill an organization. it teaches me that although i am an administrator every day, some days i lead and others i do not. it teaches me that what i know today is probably not what i will need for tomorrow, and that all i can do is forgive, others and myself. it gives me a longing to lead that gets me up every morning willing to stand up against the pelting rain of public leadership. writing the inner life story was powerful for me and it brought into perspective many of my notions about leading and leadership. i started this inquiry because i had a fascination with the idea of the inner life in whatever form or description it appeared. as i moved through the inquiry and read or heard the stories, i became interested in how we represent our inner lives to the outer word through metaphor and an almost fable-like story telling. the words and the construction of meaning fascinated me. nineteen people gave of their time and energy for this inquiry and it is their words that create the play in chapter five. as i conclude this inquiry, i take with me the capacity of these participants who profoundly care about education, about students and about doing leadership that is worthwhile. this inquiry has engaged in a conversation that for the most part is unheard in administration and i want to end this chapter with a poem that addresses that issue. talking leadership, talking dirty what if leadership talk was like sex talk forbidden and secret can you hear the conversation the innuendo slipping into someone's office asking in whispered tones "did you do it" "was it good" "was it good for them" "are you going to see them again" "you know i read about that position" "what will your boss say if he/she finds out" makes me want to talk leadership, you? jmcb c h a p t e r five: t h e inner life - a conversation with education l e a d e r s in t h r e e a c t s characters: harry, education administrator, dressed in business attire. sally, education administrator, dressed in business attire. martha, education administrator, dressed in business attire. joanne, education administrator, dressed in business attire. kevin, education administrator, dressed in business attire. joan: dressed in jeans and sweatshirt. pilot: dressed in pilot uniform. notes to the characters: each of the characters above is a compilation of senior education administrators. the word administrator has been used as opposed to president, vice president, etc. to both honour the fact that each compilation has been made up of several levels of senior administration and to ensure confidentiality. each character is part president, part vice president, part dean or director and each has a little bit of the one faculty member who was part of the study. notes to the dialogue: the dialogues of the characters are for the most part exact quotes from the research. fictional bridges were created in some cases and serve the purpose of keeping the play moving and/or transitioning the dialogue. for the most part, each time a character speaks, his/her words are a discrete excerpt from either a participant narrative or interview. great care was taken to ensure that the integrity of the ideas or their meaning was not compromised in the rare cases where excerpts from the interviews or stories of more than one participant were combined in a single dialogue. minor grammar modifications appear where necessary, but were used sparingly and related for the most part to tense modifications. fonts: exact quotes from the participant narratives and interviews are in times roman, pt. fictional bridges are in times roman, pt, italic stage cues are in times roman, pt. italic, bold stage cues: the stage cues are fictional and created for the purpose of bringing life to the drama of reading the dialogue. care was taken to honour the integrity of the interview and narrative excerpts and the meaning intended by the participants. consequently, there are not dramatic scenes that evoke high levels of emotion as one might find in a more typical theatrical production. in some cases, the stage cues were derived from the transcripts. for example, if a participant paused to say something with emotion, that was recreated into a stage cue. act one scene one: inner life defined five senior administrators enter a small cottage shaking off rain from their overcoats. all are dressed in business attire. a helicopter, high wind, and rain can be heard in the background. the interior of the building is very spartan, clearly a summer cottage. the furniture is old and well used but clean. there are two couches of different eras, an old recliner, and a rocking chair. at one end of the room is a pot-bellied stove. across the room is the kitchen, also old but clean, with pots and pans hanging from the ceiling. doors to the bedroom, bathroom, and french doors to the outside deck can be seen. the only unique character to the cottage is a wall of books amongst which are maxine greene, parker palmer, john caputo, and a whole series on the latest leadership theories. beside the bookshelf is a desk at which a woman sits typing on a portable computer. she types throughout the play and only ceases typing when she interacts with the audience. she is invisible to all the other characters and only interacts directly with the audience. a recent copy of the educational leadership journal and jim collins' good to great are sitting on the coffee table. also on the coffee table is a palm-sized stone. harry: (moving into the main room, voice a little shaky, to no one in particular) that was wild, i could almost kiss the ground. what island is this anyway? sally: (following harry, voice shaky) i don't know where we are, i'm just glad to be on the ground, i thought we weren't going to make it down. everyone just stands for a minute, taking off coats, shaking off the rain. there is a sense of real tension andfear in the body stances and yet everyone is attempting to be calm. sally: i don't know about anyone else, but my heart is still pounding. where is the pilot, still out at the helicopter? wow, he is good. (sally moves into the room and perches on the edge of the rocking chair, then immediately stands up and moves over to the stove) kevin: i'm going to be late for my meeting with the minister. the other four look at kevin startled, then laugh. kevin moves over and sits on one of the couches, pulls out his phone only to find there is no signal. the helicopter noise in the background stops. joanne and martha move over to the other couch and sit down. s a l l y : (picks up the stone from the coffee table) harry: (moving closer to sally) what? sally: that was hairy. i have flown this trip a thousand times and never run into weather like this... my heart is just pounding. harry: mine too. (pauses, then continues) anyway, i guess we are stuck here for a while, (both pause and look around) harry: i don't mind being stuck here as much as i minded being in that helicopter. being tossed around like a toothpick made me think about life: the old life flashing before your eyes (laughs). it has been a crazy time, work is demanding more and more all of the time. it sure makes you think about things... (drifts off) hey, are you one of joan's subjects for her doctorate? sally: yes, lam, are you? harry: yes kevin: (overhearing) you mean that thing she is doing on the inner life and leadership? i'm part of that too. martha and joanne: (in unison) so am i. (they all laugh). h a r r y : / found the interview interesting: it really forced me to go into my self and ask where it all starts. i think that for me the inner life has a social justice basis, doing something that makes a difference for people and for education. / think many of us feel that way. (harry sits in the recliner, sally sits in the rocking chair) s a l l y : for me the inner life is social justice as well and it is something more. it is a link, a conversation with self, a belief in an inner value system, a moral link. it can't be all inside of us; if we are going to have an inner life at all we need to have an outer one that feeds and nourishes what goes on inside us, that self talk that helps define who we are and what we do as leaders. k e v i n : (sitting legs crossed, still playing with his phone, delivered with humour) when i think about an inner life, the first words that come to mind are "uuuh," "well" and "hmmm." (more seriously) for me it is not using words like "inner life;" it is a set of fundamental values from which i work that aren't likely to switch too much: honesty, integrity, dedication, a strong set of values. i think people want to know where your sense of priorities is; you need to be responsible and accountable for your behaviour. h a r r y : (directly to kevin) i am not like you: i don't proclaim a list of ethics. s a l l y : m y inner life has to ground me. (martha interrupts, leans forward) m a r t h a : i think of my inner life as being the self-talk and guiding principles that influence my behaviour at work. i think of it as my emotions, feelings and the conversations i have with myself.. .who you are, that little kernel that is inside of you. (delivered with humour) i think it was the movie terminator when he is immersed into that boiling pot of destructive whatever it was and all you could see on the screen was a line that started moving towards the middle, then there was the one dot, and it just ended with the dot. i guess the inner life is the reconciliation of who you are externally and then the place you live inside yourself, which is that point of reference. (joanne gets up, moves into the kitchen, and begins to look in cupboards) s a l l y : i have a colleague in the system that seeks understanding in prayer. she says that prayer and religion move her to a place of acceptance as opposed to tolerance. that it gives her a true sense of the other and so much of her leadership work is about where people have been put in categories of the other. she says that prayer really makes her pay attention to who she is and what she does. k e v i n : i don't consider myself a religious person. in fact i have had some real struggles with religion, although (laughs) i have tried out the odd "touchy feely" new age activity - they don't come very naturally to me. i rely on a code of ethics and standards of practice, which have become a way of how i think and act. (joanne turns toward the group: but remains in the kitchen with one hand on a cupboard door) j o a n n e : i would describe the inner life as a set of principles related to social justice, equity and fairness...(interrupts herself)...doyou think the owner would mind if we made some coffee. harry: i can't imagine that they would mind. we will need to contact them somehow and let them know that we ended up here, (humorously) if we are here for hours we may be needing more than coffee. j o a n n e : (continues as if she hadn't interrupted herself) in order to make my daily existence feel worthwhile i need to feel that i am engaging in some process of action, social action, social justice, that i, in some way, make a difference. that's what drives me, my whole life has been guided by social justice. (sally and harry nod. joanne begins to make coffee, find cups, etc.) h a r r y : (directly to sally) it is difficult in the academy to talk about your inner life. when i articulate my inner life to colleagues, within the academy, it takes the form of value statements, ideas, concepts, or a strategy. as colleagues i believe we have difficulty facing our differences that are not connected to the business of the academy.. .perhaps it feels safer than talking about what guides your inner life. s a l l y : (directly back to harry) well i think it is a kind of fear - not rooted in people judging me against my favourite list of ethics. i think the fear is more about... (drifts off and then addresses the whole group) it's like a painting, i think the fear is about the critics arriving to look at the canvas before it is finished and saying "oh well that's the painting then isn't it" and you want to say "no" it is just a work in progress. so, i don't think it is fear as much as how could you ever help people understand that your inner life was a work in progress and that what you see today is not the understanding i will have tomorrow. you know every once in awhile you run up against somebody who teaches you something and teaches you something profoundly and then it shifts your inner life. i have had that experience sometimes with students, you know, i listen to them and sometimes they teach me something profound about leading an organization that has as its work teaching. h a r r y : (nods) for me it is not about someone nit-picking about whether i am following my list. it is more around, particularly recently, i have learned, that the way i perceive myself as a leader and the way the people around me perceive me as a leader is a significant gap, and i have to keep reminding myself that people will pay attention to what i have said just because i am an administrator. m a r t h a : for me it is not really about that. the inner life is the reconciliation of who you are externally and then the place that you live inside yourself. the inner life is my stream of consciousness, always there, always present, never apart, it guides me, counsels me: a place of guiding principles, a place of peacefulness. (the group pauses for a few seconds then sally takes up the conversation) s a l l y : when i am faced with an ethical dilemma at work, i find i have a fictitious "judge" in mind when i consider what the correct decision is. i seem to play out the problem imagining how i would justify my decision at a later point. years ago, i used to be fearful of being judged by others, to the point that it blocked me from taking action. i would be more tentative and possibly freeze up to some extent. today, i don't fear being judged so much; instead i use the fictitious judge in a more constructive way as a metaphor ~ a way to evaluate my reasoning while making tough decisions. i believe i am usually playing the role of judge, as opposed to being judged by others. i believe strongly that others can only judge me if i choose to let them, and if i believe they have the skills and knowledge for which they are judging me. i think this belief limits the anguish i could feel from being criticized or judged by others. (joanne moves back toward the couches, carrying coffee and mugs, sally gets up to help her) j o a n n e : coffee? e v e r y o n e : sure... j o a n : (stops typing, looks at the administrators and then speaks directly to the audience. the administrators are silent with their heads bowed and do not acknowledge joan, nor do they appear to be listening to her words. joan delivers her monologues in a tone that is in turn musing, humorous and sincere) well, welcome to my five characters, distilled, as you will remember from nineteen participants' data (picks up a huge stack of paper and shows it to the audience). in a thesis, you are supposed to undertake to make meaning of what you have explored and that is my part in this play, to make meaning from the conversations that i have had. i would consider my role in this endeavour to both entertain you and prompt you to think about these five (points back toward the group) and the conversation they are having about the inner life, (more seriously) this is just the first scene; consequently, i don't want to tell you everything that i discovered right up front, but there are a few things i want you to notice. this is the beginning, the conversation about defining the inner life, about exploring whether there are common ideas about the what and how of the inner life. as i worked to create these characters from the pooled data, i was intrigued by how the defining of an inner life orbited around three central themes: social justice, values and ethics, and/or a place of peace, sanctuary, or sense of self, (humorously, as an aside) i love that terminator story as a metaphor for the core of our being, don't you? (more seriously) these three ideas are core to the conversations that i had with leaders. the notion of social justice as intrinsic to the inner life was a predominant theme; you will hear it again later. other leaders talked about the notions of ethics and morals and a sense of inner self or balance in defining the inner life, (looking directly at the five characters) i also was struck by how very human each one of these leaders was. the humanity of their voices is powerful, human because they cared about what they did, not for themselves but for some larger educational good, (pauses, looks down then back up at the audience) in talking to the leaders in this inquiry, it became apparent very quickly to me that the inner life was individually defined and that, although the three themes mentioned were present, it really was a conversation that i was having with each individual leader about her/his personal view of their inner life and how that inner life guided them as a leader. the idea that leadership, although common in intention, is a very personal endeavour and that this personal endeavour is not easily generalized into a few themes, a matrix, or a model became apparent early on in working with the stories and interviews. for example, when sally states (gets up and walks over to sally): "the inner life is a link, a conversation with self, a belief in an inner value system, a moral link," it is not the same as kevin's (points to kevin) idea of "i rely on a code of ethics and standards of practice, which have become a way of how i think and act." sally's description is about a system that appears to be self-defined internally and kevin's comments led me to think about an inner world defined externally through standards of practice and ethical frameworks. martha's (moves back to her chair) idea of the inner life as a place of "peace" or an intrinsic sense of self was not as predominant a notion amongst the participants. however, for those that did speak about this as an aspect of the inner life it was a central notion of what the inner life meant to xhem.(puzzled and musing) for some participants the locus for an inner life appeared to be external, for others internal and for others they made no separation between and inner and outer life and, argued that no such separation could exist. i leave the research questioning whether there was an internal-external locus for the inner life or merely an inability of language to convey the idea of the meaning of the inner life. the conversation about leadership is personal, a conversation about individual notions of leading rather than leadership as a transferable notion. as leaders defined the inner life, i began to understand how little language we have as leaders to talk about what we care about and what we believe in. the language the leaders chose to describe their inner life spread out along a continuum of language from secular to spiritual. however, each leader was seeking, regardless of the language they chose, to understand why they were doing what they were doing and how what they were doing made a difference, (frowns and leans forward) notice the words around judgement of self and the judgement of self by others. this is a little bit of foreshadowing here, but this idea of the difficulty in communicating the inner life and communicating leadership within an organization is important to note and we will be returning to it in later scenes, (quietly, almost to herself) it is not the description of their inner life that draws me most in this scene; it is the heart with which they describe it. bolman and deal ( ) - (aside, humorously) i have to tell you the year because this is a thesis - (continues) state: "perhaps we lost our way when we forgot that the heart of leadership lies in the hearts of leaders" (p. ). i would add to that the heart of the inner life of leadership also resides in translating the inner life to, as harry states, ".. .doing something that makes a difference for people and for education". act one scene two: good, intention and power joan begins typing again. the others reanimate, begin to drink their coffee, except for kevin who gets up and begins opening cupboard doors looking for sugar. k e v i n : anyone else need sugar? (speaks, as he moves with the sugar back to his chair) you have to have integrity in the things you do, certain predictability. you should be expected to behave in certain ways - people should be able to anticipate what you might suggest or do so that you are not surprising them - so there is consistency that they can come to count on all the time, but integrity is an important part. the only thing you have any real power with is your integrity, which you will have had to earn. you don't get it with the job. you don't get any power or authority, you do but it is useless unless you have integrity to supersede that and it is your integrity that allows you to be a leader, not your power or your authority or your position. that's a hard thing to attain particularly when you are in our environment because we are dealing with such great diversity, and so people think you're listening to them and not to me, you know, your integrity is in question. you have to put integrity in a broad context so people can see and that is one of the problems we have. that is why i am trying to create a shared vision so that people will sign on and we can work towards that. h a r r y : (turning and speaking directly to kevin in response) the only thing that you learn from history is that intentions are usually quite a long way off from consequences and a lot of consequences are unintended but if there isn't that attempt to try and get there in the first place then even those less than ideal results will not be achieved. i think that my view of the world is generally that.. . continue to believe.. .people can make a difference and they make a difference largely through effort and persuasion and ultimately through leadership. s a l l y : there are many different goods - it is in the eye of the beholder - mean, one person's good is the other person's bad. (joanne nods) as an individual, there are things that i hold to be true, good, worthwhile, and worthy but i know that many of those things are not the same for others. i view things in a very physical way, this is not the way a lot of people view things. m y husband is a perfect example; i mean we are opposite to a point in many of the ways in which we view things, but i don't think that my good is any better than his good. in my mind there is no one universal good; there are things that are better then others but i certainly recognize that other people are every bit as worthy in the way that they view things as well. but, at the same time, i guess if i look at what i consider to be good things about internal leadership, i have to believe that i have confidence in the way that i do things and for the most part that i do things based on what i consider to be good. joanne and martha both start talking at once m a r t h a : i think i have an... joanne: i talk about leadership as...sorry go ahead... m a r t h a : i think i have an enormous quest both to be seen to be ethical and to (emphasis) be ethical in the work that i do. (others nod) i think i have great desire to work at a workplace where people feel like they can be honest and feel like what they do is respected and cared for. i think that can only happen in a place where they can actually see somebody else's ethics and so i think my inner life influences me in a huge way in terms of what it is that i want to attempt to do in leadership. (sally leans forward as if to interrupt) i want to be part of something that is based upon ethical pursuit that actually has an understanding of its own ethics. s a l l y : for me the right is looking at the outcomes, what are some of the goals and how are we achieving those. i think one of the hardest things about being in the leadership position is you end up having to make decisions, despite the thought process you go through, that are going to be hurtful to some people, whether financially hurtful or emotionally hurtful. i mean, i struggle with that all the time (others nod j and i also find that by virtue of being in a position, a leadership position, in having power, when you do hurt somebody it's very hard to address that because the power you have gets in the way of two people having a conversation that may begin to heal. k e v i n : (interrupting) it is a rollercoaster.. .my inner life the rollercoaster... s a l l y : (smiles and nods at kevin) so i find, that i am constantly trying to find a way -is there a way - can get past who i am organizationally and actually really be able to talk to someone at heart, and i don't ~ that's probably one of the things i find a real barrier and i'll get my positional power thrown up at me and that's very hard.... j o a n n e : the ability to take both my spiritual life and my social action and live it... s a l l y : (interrupting and said with some emotion) i do consider myself spiritual and the thing that keeps me going... (pauses) ufnm.. .is making sure that all my decisions and my interactions with people sit within my value system. it is a system -hard to define - it is a system that i believe in that has to do with morals: whether it is truth telling or promise keeping or treating everybody consistently or being accountable for your behaviour. h a r r y : (shaking his head) .. .the one and only good.. .that's almost the realm of theology. is there only one god and is my god the only god and is everyone else mistaken about their god. the word i would use is dialogue with myself, internal dialogue. i use the word right more than i use the word good and i don't mean correct necessarily because sometimes i think things can be correct but not right. so, right probably is more akin to the meaning that is embedded in righteous. i am uncomfortable with a good or a universal good. if i didn't believe that the construct of values that produced a platform of good was the compelling good, then how could i consider the decisions i was making were right decisions? j o a n n e : (directly to harry) i am acutely aware of my own limitations in interpreting what is good. h a r r y : i have talked to other people, they've also used the word "good" or "just." those are powerful words. i think that when i was younger i believed in a universal good. i believed that you could actually tell what was good and what was right and what was just. as i have matured and as my inner life has matured i don't think i do believe in a universal good. j o a n n e (interrupting with emphasis) how do you decide then what is good or right? h a r r y : i decide based on the situation. one of the big maturities in my inner life was coming to an understanding of unintended consequence and so you can do good in the world and create unintended bad consequences and you can still be just and right and create bad consequences. j o a n : (stops typing, looks at the administrators and then speaks directly to the audience. the administrators are silent with their heads bowed and do not acknowledge joan nor do they appear to be listening to her words.) three small words good, intention, and power, they are such powerful words. they are the words of sleepless nights. (joan gets up and moves to the front of the stage) to undertake what is good for education is the impossible task of educational leadership: impossible not because of a lack of willingness to undertake the "good" but because the goods compete with one another. what is good for the institution as a whole may not be good for some of its constituents and what might be good for them might be bad for the institution. doing "good," education for social justice, these are ideas that are critical to what the participants in this inquiry had to say. as a leader, the intention of the action may be clear but the control of the outcome is not possible: as harry states: "one of the maturities of my inner life was coming to an understanding of unintended consequences." (quietly and powerfully) the words swirl together when you link them: good, action, undertaking, integrity, perspective, truth telling and unintended outcome. the interrelationship between leading from a place of integrity, while knowing that outcome cannot be controlled, and that a leader's good is not everyone's good is a powerful notion of the complexity of daily leadership. the ambiguity or perhaps more strongly the impossibility of leadership is a powerful voice in their (points back at the group) dialogue. by ambiguity and impossibility, i do not mean doubt. i mean awareness in recognizing that there are not necessarily common notions of good, intention, or power and that the understanding or outcomes of these are not prescribed in some leadership text but prescribed within a leader, within a leader's inner life, (pauses, clearly pondering) i want to tell you what i think — i think this place within a leader is a place of struggle. struggle not because it is difficult but because it is a place from which leaders consciously bring their ethical actions to life. in bringing their ethical actions to life they are distributing meanings for these words into an organization for the organization to interpret, reframe, and dispute. for example, when sally states, "there are many different goods" or kevin states, "the only thing you have any real power with is your integrity, which you will have had to earn. you don't get it with the job. you don't get any power or authority, you do but it is useless unless you have integrity to supersede that and it is your integrity that allows you to be a leader not your power or your authority or your position," they are expressing meaning that is based on their individual and internal translation of these words. when sally states that interactions must "sit within my value system... whether it is truth telling or promise keeping or treating everybody consistently or being accountable for your behaviour" you can catch a glimpse of how she is translating the words to actions, (walks over to the table and pours a coffee) power, now that is an amazing word, isn't it? like joanne, i think the consciousness of the power that we exert on the organizations of which we are a part is a critical part of how we are as leaders. harry mentioned this as well in the first scene. power, having it, earning it and deciding what to do with it (laughs) on many days it makes me want to reconsider this leadership thing...(shakes her head and returns to her desk) act one scene three: telling the inner life joan returns to typing. the other characters reanimate. kevin pours himself more coffee. m a r t h a : (stands up and wanders over to the stove and then turns back and speaks to the others) i think that inner life is essential. it is not what we learn from the leadership gurus about the technical aspects of how to build teams or some shared decision-making or whatever. it is how we demonstrate those skills to others and carry them out with others that i think matters most in leadership. it's the ability to feel confident enough in who you are and the strengths of your values, that you are human, open to others. having others feel that you're a real person that they can talk to... h a r r y : (leaning forward and interrupting as martha pauses for a second) and, it often means that you've got to do something that may not be very popular so you've got to be prepared to take some criticisms, some heat, and i don't think you can do that unless you feel inside a certain strength, a certain conviction and so i'd say in those sorts of situations that kind of inner place is... (joanne interrupts). j o a n n e : i talk about a set of values and i check out with people if they are their sets of values. s a l l y : i am a person who puts their values and feelings (pauses)... i wear them on my sleeve probably to a greater extent than a lot of people. i have conversations with people and talk to people about the fact that it is a difficult job, decisions impact people and they hurt people, they cause pain, and despite that, there are obvious decisions we have to make. i think i demonstrate my inner life by sharing with people. m a r t h a : (moves over closer to sally but remains standing) if we don't enjoy what we're doing and there have been lots of times in the last couple of years that have been very trying. still, that aspect of who i am and where i came from and where i want to go is based on a set of values, i think are essential for working with others to do this wonderful work that we have to do. it is so integral, to who i am, it is hard to pick apart... h a r r y : (nods and picks up as martha pauses) i won't pretend that i am always able to live up to the values. i mean there are times when you are tired, where you say, "okay i'll do this," but there is still that jimmy cricket voice of conscience that tells you no that actually wasn't the right thing to do. it was the easy thing to do, but it wasn't the right thing to do. i think you need to keep sight of that because my experience is that people will take a lead from you even if it's going somewhere that they don't particularly want to go if they feel that you have or are informing that decision with some kind of value. j o a n n e : i agree. it really forces you to go into yourself and say where it all starts because for me that is what the inner life is - the point that you take off from and you have to go home to. it's like the crows going back to roost every night, but you know, if you can't go back there and feel comfortable, i don't know how you would... (drifts off, all the characters become silent for a moment, martha returns to sit down) k e v i n : i don't seem to reflect upon or evaluate my inner life, nor do i discuss my inner life and leadership qualities with others. in this respect, i find the role of leader to be a solitary role. i work with others who are providing leadership, but i don't often discuss with them what truly guides behaviour and motivates us. s a l l y : yeah, it's hard to articulate the inner life because it exposes you. you need a huge safety zone around yourself. it comes back to trust and the feeling of - ability to be understood because our language isn't always...(drifts off) it doesn't really portray sometimes the feelings that you hold so deeply inside yourself. so, you can't just pop them out on a table somewhere (laughs) and let them run around. people confuse them and they play them back to you in a way that you might have to be defensive and who wants to be defensive about the essence of who the hell they are (laughing). (harry and kevin both laugh with sally) j o a n : (stops typing, the other characters freeze, speaks directly to the audience) "it is how we demonstrate those skills to others" - these are martha's words. articulation of the inner life through action: i find this interesting juxtaposed with the knowledge that good and outcome are not controllable in the leadership environment and yet these leaders (gestures to the group) are willing to risk action anyway. it did not surprise me that they moved quickly to the strength it takes to undertake leadership action in that environment, and in some cases, the risk of articulating the inner life to the academy. it was one of the questions that i asked leaders: how do you articulate the inner life to your colleagues or the academy? some told me that they articulated their inner lives in overt ways and others did not. the themes that predominated were around action as value, the idea being that it was what you did that was important. sally's dialogue brings together the thoughts around attempting to communicate the inner life. sally states: "people confuse them and play them back in a way that you might have to be defensive." kevin talks about "the role of leadership as a solitary one" and of not talking about "what truly guides and motivates us." it is interesting to follow the path of these ideas for a minute. i have talked with you about what the inner life is: social justice, values/ethics, and a place of peace or balance. i have puzzled with you over good, intention, and power. here in this dialogue they are talking about the embodiment and representation of the inner life. and, we hear that while it is one thing to embody the inner life, it is another to represent it to the institution. as harry says, you have to be prepared to "take some heat, some criticism;" the work of leaders is political and as a consequence draws to it political action, reaction and heat. act two scene one: origins and maturing characters reanimate and joan returns to typing m a r t h a : (in the kitchen opening and closing cupboard doors.) i feel guilty raiding a stranger's house but i need something to eat...hey this place has all kinds of stuff... (joanne gets up and moves over to martha, they both open and close cupboard doors) j o a n n e : m y first criterion in my work is examining the social impact of what i do. cookies, soda anyone? (martha and joanne return to sitting, each with a bag of cookies) s a l l y : (with power directly to joanne) i agree, one's existence has to mean something and meaning for me is that others are helped. there is no meaning otherwise. there is no meaning to an individual life otherwise, and so, that is the golden rule. you behave so that you contribute to the welfare of others. (reaches for a cookie) k e v i n : first and foremost it is being honest with yourself, being able to say, this is the right thing to do, being honest with people that you are working with. i look at honesty; i come at it from the opposite side what is being dishonest, or what is being untruthful. j o a n n e : i am always looking for ways, through my work, to improve the lives of those who are disadvantaged, marginalized, or less fortunate. s a l l y : (leans forward and with emotion in her voice) i can remember being in grade three and there was a family that was a really, really poor family. i went to a country school. i remember the way people treated those kids. i remember this young girl - now i was in grade three and she probably should have been in grade six or seven or even higher. i remember her standing up to walk to the front of the room and a huge wad of paper towel fell out. obviously, she was menstruating. everybody laughed and she was horrified. there was this way that people had of treating her differently and looking down on her. that experience has always stuck in my head. it was not fair; she deserved the same opportunities as others and i realized that she wasn't getting them and that others weren't getting them either. i grew up in a world of privilege and at the same time, it was instilled in us that everybody should have opportunity. i thought everyone had those opportunities. i came to realize quite quickly that people didn't and so trying to give opportunities is something i truly believe in. j o a n n e : (with power) i came from a family where politics and social action were key factors. i think from my very earliest times the news was an integral part of our family discussions. both of my parents had a history of activism. i was encouraged in my own activism and i also had some of my own experiences . of being marginalized. out of that, i had both a personal experience and maybe a free radical experience of trying to engage in a different process for change. my mother was an early feminist and so in about ' or ' when feminism started to emerge it was natural for me to see that as a path. m a r t h a : it was a little different for me. i was raised in a small rural community where it was safe, safe, safe. i mean i walked home three miles everyday, nobody was worried about anything. on halloween we knocked on every door and nobody worried about that. i had a two parent family, siblings that i got along with, a great education. i had good teachers. yeah, i think that there are psychopaths and other outliers that aren't wired the same way [others are] but i think people seek universal good and that it is built into us chromosomally somehow. i know people are twisted and changed or whatever but i think there is a universal good about being human, about living together and about having hope. i don't think anybody wants to be sad or worried or spend their lives not looking for good, (passes the bag of cookies to harry) h a r r y : (looks at the bag of cookies and puts it back on the table) me, i was brought up on a farm, you put in a good days work, and you respected and valued what you ended up with, (shrugs) i won't say a farm life was harsh but it was very pragmatic, (there is a pause then kevin picks up the conversation) k e v i n : i reflect back on my mom in particular. she forced me to make my own decisions and develop an early sense of responsibility. h a r r y : almost everything i do probably arises primarily from family and upbringing in the sense that i came from a close-knit family, a fairly large family where i had a father who went to work, was the primary supporter and a mother who committed herself to taking care of the family. so, when you are looking for a base foundation i draw most of my principles from the way in which my father worked. kevin: but we mature and change m a r t h a : my inner life has matured in that i am not as naive in thinking that i can fix everything...(laughs) h a r r y : right s a l l y : (interrupting) i've had conversations with myself about people that are bothering me or things i couldn't figure out or things i couldn't solve or things that i couldn't understand the motivation behind like someone issuing a death threat or taking the institution to arbitration over an insignificant issue. i have come to realize that there is a certain proportion of the population at work that i can't do anything about. they are angry, bitter, resentful people and i have to be able to let all that stuff go. i guess it is a maturity that whatever i try to do with my inner life to solve issues there is a certain letting go of things that just aren't going to work. j o a n n e : (nods reflectively) i think who we are, kind of the quintessential hard crystal of our being, forms in childhood and so i think i am coming to understand that all of my ethical framework resides there. my mother in particular influenced my ethical framework in terms of what is fair and right and also around the possibility that tomorrow might be different than today. i think the idea of a framework is interesting because it brings up for me the idea of a frame (makes a framing motion with her hands). as i grow, mature, and change i am first stretching a canvas on that frame and then over a lifetime beginning to paint on it this picture of my world. i think my inner life formed strongly in childhood and has matured, profoundly between and .. . have come to understand my life differently. k e v i n : i grew up in a christian household, i moved away from that belief system and went through a typical anti-religious existential phase, and then everything was secular. later i began to read writers, particularly some of the zen buddhist writings and so forth and that made me feel that there was a much more subtle way of understanding things, and that it is really about integration. trying to separate the material and the inner life and talk about them as if they were disconnected runs against the grain of human experience. s a l l y : (directly to kevin) i am not a very religious person - although i went to sunday school when i was a kid and the "do unto others as you would have done unto you" is something that guides me a lot usually at the subconscious level not because i practice religion but because i am motivated by that. i ask myself what i would want out of a situation if i were a follower or someone who is in trouble or someone who has come to me for help. asking the question what would i want, someone, a mentor, or a person in authority to do, asking that [question] guides me a lot. m a r t h a : i wouldn't call myself a practicing christian in the sense that i don't go to church. it's interesting because there have been two or three evolutions of where i am from a spiritual point of view. first nations people have a tradition of looking at even totally inanimate objects, like rocks as having life, or having a place in the universe and so i like that notion and i think that probably that is where i go to draw some extra spirituality or some extra strength. s a l l y : (stands up and stretches and moves back over to the kitchen) i truly believe that the things that absolutely form us happen in those formative years. it is that silly thing about everything i needed to know i learned in kindergarten. it is true for me. i have learned many other things, huge number of things along the way. i think in childhood you are influenced by dramatic events. m a r t h a : (stands up and moves over to speak directly to sally) i mean i come from a christian background, i don't consider myself to be a devout christian, but i think there are certain aspects of that upbringing that were foundational for a lot of values. honesty is like that, i see it as a two way street, being honest with myself and honest with others. s a l l y : (speaking to martha) i think my socialization has influenced me and big socialization for me was my father who took me around to places that he worked and caused me to see some difficult situations: difficult situations in which people were living. i think a lot came from his values, always trying to help other people less fortunate thari you are. he did that. .. . was always brought along as a little kid. he had a real strong involvement in community volunteer work and brought me with him. so, it seemed natural that i would get into something serving the public. i got into it because i had a strong commitment to community volunteer work. m a r t h a : (speaks to the whole room) going back for a minute...there, is an expression in judaism that means 'repairing the world.' my friend who is an education leader talks about how her judaism provides a spiritual dimension to her work (others look at martha and nod in understanding). k e v i n : for me, it's largely a question of experience, of learning through experience, gaining confidence as you experience different situations and being able to reflect on what you have done. it's like layers of an onion except instead of peeling them off you're building them up. you are gaining experience, you are gaining confidence and ultimately you come to a point where you say to yourself i am confident and i can do whatever i want to given the circumstances and given the resources and knowledge and so on...(drifts off) s a l l y : (quietly and with emotion) i think you can draw a lot from being a teenager because i don't think there is another part of your life where you could possibly identify more personal challenges than at that age. it is a tough time in most people's lives and you're not as a person as sure at that point in your life. i think there are times to be strong and those are sometimes really difficult times when you know you are swimming upstream and you got to decide is it worthwhile to swim upstream, and sometimes you have to so it - it's painful. (sally pauses walks over to the bookshelf, the whole group is looking at her waiting for her to continue) i would suspect that [my] values were founded in my childhood but didn't express themselves in a language. certainly most of the values that i use as a fulcrum for making decisions are consistent with my parents' values or what i would predict my parent's values to be. certainly, the awareness of those principles became more conscious to me in my twenties. m a r t h a : (nods and responds to sally) it has to start with you as a child and the environment that you grow up in, the influences of those that are most significant, your parents, siblings, the close circle of friends. then what gets blotted onto any moral or religious experiences that you have as a young person, your successes, your failures. these things force you to grow and be respectful of those kinds of emotions or senses that give you gratitude to be alive and interacting with other people. j o a n n e : i have struggled with organized religion my whole life, (to entire group) much of my struggle has to do with interpretation of the religion and how it is applied to everyday life, as well as the control and domination of thought that at times is tied to a particular religion or faith. the underlying values of most organized religions are similar to what i subscribe to and include respect for others, caring and kindness, honesty and truthfulness, loyalty, promise keeping and fairness. these are values that i try to adhere to in my leadership practice. s a l l y : my mother was a very strong catholic and so i think i can't deny that as being an influence. obligation meant trying to meet the expectations of my family and was characterized by traditions and values that i continue to practice and nurture. the obligation has been evident throughout my life and been a major influence in the way i practice my leadership. (sally and martha return to their chairs) j o a n : (stops typing, stretches and flexes her shoulders, the other characters freeze, she speaks directly to the audience, and stays at the desk for this entire monologue) the nineteen participants told me so much in the interviews it is really hard to leave pieces of dialogue out. i feel like some hunchbacked editor crossing out words, distilling the dialogue down to short scenes. anyway, (waves her hand) you don't want to hear my playwriting woes. this scene is about origins and maturing. it is about the characters talking about how their inner lives came to be and how that inner life matured over the years. each leader i spoke to in this inquiry talked about events, people, or experiences in their early lives that made a difference to who they were as leaders. some spoke of religious influences, others ethical influences, others influence of hard work and work well done. the influences described were powerful ones of childhood, of parents, of events that were formative in creating a value system that became part of the inner life. the stories were around upbringings that influenced how we are as leaders. the profundity in the answers was how clear it was that early events in our lives influenced what kind of leader we would become. witnessing difficult events, an ethic rooted in the origins of religious or spiritual practice, hard work, being marginalized and ethics of work well done were the crystallizing events that formed leaders' inner lives. as i listen again to their words i am moved by the strength of the ethic that underlies leadership work and by some of the distress that begins to pop through about how making that ethic come to life can be very hard. perhaps sally states it best when she uses the word "obligation." when i asked this question about origins of the inner life to the interviewees, i expected to hear very much what i heard. what surprised me was how powerful these influences were and yet when i think about the origins of my own inner life i find many of these same words arise that indicate a progressive acquiring of the knowledge and understanding of the origins of an inner life. act two scene two: the work ~ loving and hating it characters reanimate and joan returns to typing. sally moves back to her chair and on the way looks in both bags of cookies, hesitates but doesn't take one. s a l l y : (sits down and sighs) i have often been asked what sustains me in a job. j o a n n e : (nods) a thought i have had is how very alone some of us feel in our leadership role. perhaps i pick this out of stories [i hear] because it still resonates so much for me in my own role. it also makes me reflect on what it was like to be truly alone in a leadership role, (others nod) a few years ago, when i was a new senior administrator, not only to the position, but in the institution and in the b c system, i was appointed to a position with little knowledge of the internal dynamics of the place and without any type of support system that involved my peers. the outcome was that i ended up making a number of fairly major decisions as a result of being put into an area of the institution that needed some immediate attention due to budget challenges. the decisions were personally painful and at times, i am still amazed to have survived personally and professionally. since that time, i have vowed to not place anyone else that i work with in that type of situation. i will do mentoring, give guidance, whatever it takes. h a r r y : (laughing) in terms of being an administrator nobody grows up wanting to become one whether, v p , head, dean, or president. k e v i n : (seriously) trustworthy colleagues make our work easier to do - teamwork with mutual respect and individual accountability are critical to success. h a r r y : how i perceive myself as a leader and the way the people around me perceive me as a leader is significant in its gap, and i have to keep reminding myself that people will pay attention to what i have just said because of who i am. s a l l y : it is strange how we get into these things. many of the jobs i have taken have come down to looking around and saying "well i am not sure i would like what might happen with some other person doing the work" i believe that you can make a difference. we don't often look back, you tend to be trying to look forward so much in these jobs. i think if you do look back every now and then, i think you can spot places where you've made a difference. if you didn't think you were successful in it i'm pretty sure you would get out of it. but, for me, the next day's meeting and the next day's issues are interesting stuff and need to be dealt with. i like the people i am surrounded with, i am able to draw on them and i think they are able to draw on me. it is hard to contemplate a job that would be better when you have that kind of interaction. k e v i n : (with angst) some days it is wonderful. i love it. i think i'm doing a really good job and other days i can't stand it and i think i am doing a terrible job. i think the public system is a little spoiled compared to the private system, so sometimes i have a fair amount of dissonance happening within me because of my view of what are equitable workload, equitable pay, and what expectations of employees should be. sometimes, it takes so long to get anything to happen, the inner life in me just wants to scream... (shrugs & pauses) i expect people to rise to the challenge. i mean that's the kind of feedback i get and i think it's true. i think i do expect people to rise to the challenge and do the right thing for the right reasons. m a r t h a : (picks up the bag of cookies only to find it empty) i think in those days that are extraordinary, [those ones that are] very hard as a leader, my inner life simply helps me survive. it is a place that i can seek refuge. the inner life is a place to seek refuge to have strength to go another day or do another piece of work. i think it is related to a deeply spiritual place for me. spiritual places for me are related to the notion of sanctuary, and so i think my inner life plays a huge role in terms of sanctuary for my leadership. a place where i can go that is silent, quiet, and powerfully healing. my inner life, on those tough days, plays an extraordinary role in that it allows me to have strength to do some very difficult things. s a l l y : yeah, the inner life has to ground me, and it comes from the things that i take pleasure in whether it is just spending time in the garden or simply putting on some nice music and turning off all the lights and lying by myself in front of the fireplace and just getting that stuff out of my brain before i go to sleep. h a r r y : (to sally) my inner life gives me strength... s a l l y : a lot of it goes back to those inner conversations and working out those inner conversations. the conversations i have with people who are in conflict, with people who are in conflict with what i believe, they can stray you and push you down a path you don't think you should be going or try to take you away from your moral beliefs and your values. people say you should do this or that or are critical because you are not doing this or not doing that. so, they tug on you and i see them trying to take me away from the path that i try to lead on: there have been times that they have taken me away and i have been really disappointed in myself. k e v i n : (directly to sally) for me, my values are the thing that holds me real and helps me move on from that. s a l l y : (sighs) we develop value statements for the college and then when we make program cuts people are all over you saying you are not living up to your values, so saying [it] what you believe in haunts you. i articulate my 'moral link' through my annual goals and living up to those goals. h a r r y : i know. there are some things that are not necessarily shared by everyone and i accept that they don't need to be shared by everyone. i might wish them be shared by everyone in my academy while i am leading it because it is the way we are going to do some business but there are ways of being 'good' without ascribing to those values. i guess i am starting to talk about a hierarchy of values but then there are some core ones that i think are fundamental. j o a n n e : (forcefully) the constructs for me center around equalness of all people. they center on justice, fairness and they center very much on non- judgemental attitudes. s a l l y : the only time that is real for me as a leader - the only time i am happy to be leader is when my inner life and my outer life are in sync and i have achieved something that i believe is a very good thing for this college and the people who work here. i believe that leaders of necessity have to be out of sync sometimes and that for me is unhappy and i've had to learn to accept that. j o a n n e : (makes an inclusive circle gesture) so many of the commonalities strike me. how so many of us refer to the inner life as manifesting itself as an inner voice that speaks to us or with which we talk. how many of us struggle with quasi-religious feelings but can't accept religion per se. how we all deal with periods of self-doubt - made all the more difficult, i suppose, because we feel that displays of self-doubt might undermine our leadership. how we struggle with sometimes finding we aren't completely comfortable with the direction in which we are expected to lead. how we have difficulty with the notions of judging others, knowing that we are expected to make decisions and decisions inevitably entail and reflect judgements we have made. j o a n : (stops typing, the other characters freeze, speaks directly to the audience) love and hate it and yet you can hear that they love it even when they hate it. in their words are contained the conflict of leadership and the striving of leadership, (gets up, clearly stiff from typing and moves to the front of the stage) i think that leadership is hard: hard for the reasons that sally and the others state. it is not easy to stay in sync with your inner life. it is easy to find oneself isolated and alone as a leader. it is difficult to remember that the institution views our leadership differently than we do as leaders. it is a rollercoaster as kevin puts it so nicely in an earlier scene. there is little time to reflect. in this place of loving it and hating it, the inner life offers as harry states, "strength." there is strength that each of the leaders draws on to handle the "rollercoaster." sally talks about setting goals and living up to them. joanne talks about the struggle of leadership. harry talks about knowing that not everyone agrees, but leading anyway. it is a strength that resides in the inner life, in the understanding of leaders of their own leadership and why they lead. (joan walks back to her desk and picks up a journal) i want to read you a piece from my journal on the word rollercoaster. i love that word... (reads as a title) journal notes on the word - rollercoaster i laughed when she said it in the interview. then loved it, it was perfect. one of those gifts you get in research when you least expect it. rollercoaster, how could i ever find a better metaphor for post- secondary leadership? just think about it, there is that wonderful anticipation of the ride. buying the ticket.. .for some that would be education, others hard work for some of us luck and timing. we were in, we were formal education leaders. sitting in the chair and realizing that this was going to be hard. that sometimes we would be pulled along for the ride by everyone else who had jumped on and other times we would be out pushing the fully loaded train up the hill, seemingly by ourselves. then that moment at the top when everything pauses and you can see clearly. then it is gone, far too rapidly - torn away at high speed. over the edge into free fall, careening down the slope, excited, a little out of breath, hoping for a wonderful coast to the finish line. hey, how did i get back out here, starting over pushing a fully loaded train up the hill...? act three scene one: making a difference everyone but kevin is in the kitchen opening cupboards doors. harry has his head in the fridge. h a r r y : (muffled by the fridge door) there is some cheese in here, apples, olives too... s a l l y : (looking in a cupboard) i have some crackers here... j o a n n e : (looking in a cupboard) i found a bottle of red wine and some juice... harry: (laughing, cutting up an apple, and uncorking a bottle of wine) now we really will have to track down the owner and repay her for the food and shelter. kevin: that is if we ever get off this island, what has it been — four hours? m a r t h a : (starts cutting up cheese and putting it on a plate, puts the plate on the coffee table) i am kind of enjoying it with no cell phone, no meetings, and just us talking: it is nice for a few hours. we don't often talk as colleagues about our work. i believe that even with all of the mundane kind of shitty stuff that we do there is a bigger purpose. i can't lose sight of the fact that we have the power, whether we want it of not, we have the power to make a difference in people's lives. h a r r y : (walks over to the coffee table and sits the apple, juice and the wine on the table) i have a deep-seated belief in the importance of public education and for me the mission of the institution and my own sense of involvement in society are dead on one another. s a l l y : (walking over the coffee table with a collection of glasses and the crackers) my inner life led me to be a leader in public post-secondary education because for me it is one of the places in society that can influence what the future is going to look like. i need to be able to provide change, good change. the value of public education is very important to me. it is distressing to me when i see that eroding and i think it's in danger of eroding, eroding more and more all the time. i think we need to be reminded of the inner value of public education and what it should mean and that it is a basis of democratization and access of people to a better life and future. through the next pieces of dialogue the characters eat and drink h a r r y : when it gets tough, i say, wait a minute students come first. j o a n n e : (with force) i live it. added to social justice is a kind of moral ethical righteousness. i cannot be bought, i cannot be coerced, (the others pause and look at her, then nod) h a r r y : (with passion ) i believe ultimately that things are improvable, that change for the better is possible - suppose it is a kind of reformist view in a way. i think it's hard to be in the position i am in without having something of that because the whole time you're trying to manage a very difficult operation but with a purpose. the purpose presumably is to do something that is meaningful and worthwhile and that will make a difference and certainly, for me that is my view of the world. k e v i n : i'm trying to find hope now because i see this schism between our biology and our intellect.... (pauses without finishing) s a l l y : (with passion) when i am listening to music that i like it is kind of reaffirming. i suppose it is reaffirming of the idea of improvement - not in a social reformist sense - but in terms of the human spirit. i think about music being produced by somebody using their creative powers and it can contain so much - uplift you or it can take you to the depths. there are a whole bunch of lessons and meaning to that; it's not text and it is not a series of precepts for living but in a way it does communicate a certain value of human life (pause) - guess the best of human life itself. h a r r y : (to sally) music can be amazing... m a r t h a : (interrupting harry) i have beliefs that are germane to my inner life and i think they reflect common concepts that stretch across cultures and religions. my universal beliefs include treating others as i wish to be treated, with respect, dignity, fairness, honesty, understanding. i believe in a common and universal good that respects individual rights and freedoms as long as harm is not inflicted upon others. i believe in a fair and just, civil society. i believe that good can overcome evil if goodness truly is good, not merely action exploited as such. values that guide my inner life are also universal, not tied to one particular culture, and include concepts of reciprocity, kindness, generosity, caring, obligation, justice, hope, peace, honesty and fidelity. h a r r y : it is the only reason for staying in a situation of leadership - being able to say to yourself at the end of the day, did you do something that was morally right, did you help someone. i don't have a definition of the good. for me it is instinctive and based largely on what i think the results will be. k e v i n : (dryly) if you don't have a sense of fairness or completeness that is a bit of a problem at our level. h a r r y : the question i always ask myself is what is right, what feels balanced, what is fair and a morally right thing to do in any given situation. k e v i n : (to harry) i think being a leader is difficult and you had better have your shit together and you had better be able to withstand - especially in our sector - the barrage of assault against administration. i don't think we are alone, but i think many administrators are beaten down and many people don't want to become administrators because it is not fun. it is not fun at the top. there is no perk here. i mean it is just not fun. it used to be more fun in the classroom. that is sad, i like being a leader. j o a n n e : (to kevin) on an everyday basis, i think you are in touch with the sums of yourself. every interaction you have comes from within, from what and who you are. i think when you are stretched into leadership positions you mould some of that but you are tempered by the politics of the situation, power differentials and self-preservation. sally: yeah and it can be harsh h a r r y : there are some innate value systems and innate principles that i use across my life and in so doing, it gives me a sense of peacefulness in that i make decisions around constant constructs that have meaning for me. s a l l y : i leave work predominantly at work. i will do some contemplating around it but i try to focus when i'm [at the college] and then i try to focus on my life when i am not. i try to surround myself with people who have very little to do with my work because i don't need that conservation again. i need conversations about other aspects of who i am (others nod). j o a n n e : this is nice wine...what is it. (leans forward and reads the label) i think my inner life is energized through interpersonal contacts where i invest myself in the moment with individuals. i think of the personal component of the interaction as being just as important as the content and outcome. i am reminded of the term "teacher as person" where the personal qualities of the teacher have a far greater impact on the students than what is taught. what is important for my inner life is to be genuinely engaged with people, to give something of myself as a person, "leader as person" (pauses). who i am as a person influences others at work in a far greater way than the tasks i accomplish. m a r t h a : (to joanne) validation for who i am and what i stand for as a leader is drawn from my inner life in a way that cannot be replicated by those who surround or nurture me. h a r r y : a part of good leadership is being predictable, that people who look at an issue have a fair sense of the way you would go on that issue because they have a fair sense of what that construct within your inner self is. s a l l y : and how we view our inner life changes and grows. m a r t h a : i am much more mature in an emotional way because of dealing with crises, dealing with death, with birth and the maturity of my children. i have always been interested in the inner life, the personal life of my colleagues, which are those whom i work with closely day by day. it has helped me mature, helping them through hard times and having them support me in hard times. realizing no matter what conflicts i have had in my professional life amongst colleagues or with labour relations, people usually support one another. s a l l y : not always...the thing that shocked me the most was when i had a death threat at the college that really threw me for a loop. it was a turning point for me. i thought that everybody working in an institution would be happy, you know. others look at sally acknowledging that it was a shocking experience, the conversation pauses for a few seconds, then sally continues. s a l l y : as an educational leader, i feel a great deal of responsibility to the people i work with, our students, and our communities. this feeling of responsibility comes in part from being a first-born child and grandchild. this position within my family came with responsibilities, which i believe my siblings and my cousins may not have felt. i was the caretaker of the children, the child that my parents and grandparents had high hopes and expectations for and with that came a sense of responsibility and obligation. h a r r y : there is no perfectly blackavhite, right/wrong - given what you believe in, given what post-secondary education stands for, the decision is about not compromising those basic tenets that you hold strong about education. k e v i n : a lot of it has to do with just common belief systems, ethical behaviour. you tell the truth, and you keep your promises, and you don't lie, and you don't cheat. h a r r y : when i make a decision or when i am faced with not knowing how to make a decision, i always stop and think about what is the right thing to do. we are here to provide people with opportunities that impact their lives. people laugh about it when i say wait a minute, how will this decision affect the life of our students. it is about constantly saying we are here to provide an opportunity. j o a n n e : (looking at sally) one of the things that influenced the way i do things was my son's conviction. the whole process of my son being charged and convicted of murder. looking at what happened to our family, to our family unit. we had a really strong family unit and it got stronger - there were lots of cracks but it got stronger. we were suddenly being judged by people in a very public way for what he had done. i began to think about how i do that kind of thing where i make assumptions. everyone looks at joanne. clearly harry and sally know the story and nod in empathy. no one says anything for a few seconds s a l l y : i remember walking home with a friend who was protestant, i am roman catholic, and we lived next door to each other and were very good friends. i remember thinking after we dropped her off - well, why wouldn't she be able to go to heaven. it didn't make any sense to me because my friend is equal to me and my friend is really good. my friend should be able when she dies to go to the same place i am going. m a r t h a : (with sadness) it is critical to be present with people, to be compassionate, listen and actually hear what they say. m y older brother was born very premature and therefore is mentally handicapped and seeing how he was treated in the system and his lack of opportunity and at the same time knowing him as a brother and knowing he so much wanted to do so many things (drifts off) . everyone is silent for a minute contemplating what they have heard. j o a n n e : (seriously) i constantly grapple with being awake, being aware of bias, of my own limitations, of my own struggles and challenges of being human. i am always conscious of my own power and i try very hard to be conscious and never impose power. j o a n : (stops typing, the other characters freeze, speaks directly to the audience, joan leans forward with her head on her hand) "we have the power to make a difference in people's lives." these are martha's words. i am not sure what to tell you about questing and power and attempting to change lives as harry states "for the better." the lives that they are talking about are students' lives and the lives of the people who work in education. "it is critical to be present with people, to be compassionate, listen and actually hear what they say," again martha's words. i am moved by the words about making a difference. it is such a strong force in the words of leaders. and, this quest is hard and changes and is twisted and influenced by the experience of a leader's life. harry (points to harry) talks about the "importance of public education," sally (points to sally) talks about being in a place that can "influence what the future is going to look like." this is the "obligation" of public leadership: this is the possibility and imagination that maxine greene ( ) writes about. this is the quest that i heard as a researcher and talked about myself as a subject. we lead in public education because we want to make a difference in people's lives. however, this is dangerous ground and not easily walked upon. again, the notions of good and right come to the surface and the struggle to define and implement change for the good of public education is there in the leadership consciousness. (joan gets up and walks forward to the front of the stage) then there are the deeply moving comments about coming to understand the difference of profound leadership and life events that influence the psyche of leadership and represent the strength of everyday leading. (joan pauses as if to say more then returns to her desk and starts speaking again) the strength of the possibility and imagination of leadership is best summed up by martha: "validation for who and what i stand for as a leader is drawn from my inner life in a way that cannot be replicated by those that surround or nurture me." (joan pauses) wouldn't it be amazing if there was such a notion as a common and universal good? act three scene two: inner life revisited characters reanimate and joan returns to typing. some characters are still eating and drinking, others just sitting. j o a n n e : (quizzically) did joan ask all of you about the inner life being the master or servant of your inner life? i think i have a good sense of the inner life as master of my leadership but i've always felt that you get through by being the servant so i think that for me it is the servant of my leadership. s a l l y : (firmly) my inner life is the master of my leadership. being a servant of my leadership would be transient or less sturdy than if i look at it as the master of my leadership. i need it to be there. i need it. i rely on my inner life as i provide leadership. i don't think i would be who i am if my values, my inner life were servant of what i had to do. for me my inner life, my values are my anchor. k e v i n : (stands tip and wanders around throughout the rest of the scene - restless energy - picks up things puts them down) i would say the inner life is the servant - don't think the inner life rules my life. it guides me but doesn't rule my life and i would say that it is more servant than master. j o a n n e : the inner life is the master because when i am doing something in my leadership that doesn't feel good it means that i am out of sync with my inner life. i think the inner life is a gentle master, but i think it is the master and (laughs) sometimes it is not such a gentle master. m a r t h a : there is a bit of a continuum but certainly i would come down on the servant side. it has been consistent for me since i was a kid that the locus of control was more external than it was internal. being raised catholic had an impact on that - definitely servant, lay out the objectives and tell me how i can help. i guess the inner life is the reconciliation of who you are externally and the place you live inside yourself (kevin interrupts, moves toward martha). k e v i n : (quickly with emphasis) there is one notion that comes through that i have difficulty with, the idea that the inner life is really a separate life from the outer life, something we go to get away from our outer life. certainly, i have a private life - my passion for music, theatre and family which fortifies me and allows me to face the long hours of work and stress. but, this private life and what i think of as my inner life are very different things. the inner life is a much more integrated, albeit usually invisible, part of my life in leadership. m a r t h a : i guess [for me] it is the reconciliation of who you are externally and then the place that you live inside yourself. h a r r y : i would say that [the inner life] is almost like a reference point. i don't feel that it is some sort of specific idea that i am going around looking for opportunities to implement or realize. but, it is a way of being able to hold up something that you're looking at doing or some decision or some choice you're making and testing it against some deep-seated kinds of assumptions and values. k e v i n : certainly, the word values - a place of universal values - appeals to me. i think that pretty much reflects the way i look at the inner life. m a r t h a : i am a very spiritual person. i would say that my spirituality is not primarily based in religion or faith. it's mainly based on a sense of values and ethics and a sense of what is good and what's right and just - social justice more so than anything. j o a n n e : speaking of spiritual...! have tried meditation. i have been a member of a church. i have studied buddhism. i found a spiritual practice that works for me, cooking. i have a huge belief in food as a spiritual thing, a place of coming together, of healing. s a l l y : in my early forties i did a fair amount of study in buddhist practice and although i am not a practicing meditator i think the notions of buddhism, the notions of equanimity, the notions of forgiveness have played a huge role in shifting my inner life from place of judgement to a place of forgiveness. m a r t h a : i have firm belief that in order for this to be a good place for me to live and for other people to live the things that i do have to relate to the kinds of equality, the kinds of opportunity, the kinds of fairness and equity that need to exist in the world for it to be a place i want to live and i want my family to live. s a l l y : (in a quiet voice) the inner life is a profoundly spiritual place. it is a place that seeks to understand what is good and what is just: a place that seeks to understand who i am in the world. i know colleagues who believe prayer to be a powerful tool, a tool that keeps them centred, grounded, and focused. i would view prayer as a special gift, a privilege that i won't want to exploit or become too familiar. joan: (stops typing, the other characters freeze, speaks directly to the audience) to tell you the long story of the design of this research will take too long but suffice it to say that this question about servant or master came from some early stories in the inquiry. i became fascinated by this notion of how the participants might view this idea of servant or master, (leans forward) i need to be honest with you. this question confused some of the participants because some went to the notion of servant leadership and spoke about the inner life from that perspective. that said, i think some very interesting ideas were expressed about the inner life as servant or master. for some it is the servant of our leadership, offering guidance to our work. for some it is the master, ensuring that our leadership has a solid grounding. for some the notion that it is one or the other did not make sense and they argued for a more integrated notion of the inner life. the constant, however is the power of the inner life to guide leadership in the everyday. as sally states: "my inner life, my values are my anchor." you notice that as the dialogue transitions to a conversation about spirituality the notions of social justice and doing good again arise. notions of seeking to understand spirit and themselves as leaders servant-leadership is a practical philosophy which supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead as a way of expanding service to individuals and institutions. servant- leaders may or may not hold formal leadership positions. servant-leadership encourages collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and the ethical use of power and empowerment. (greenleaf center, ) are an integral part of the journey for these leaders. again it is sally that crystallizes the idea: "it [the inner life] is a place that seeks to understand what is good and what is just" and later: "the inner life is a profoundly spiritual place." act three scene three: gender matters characters reanimate and joan returns to typing h a r r y : (tentatively) i don't know where i get this but i sense that women are more in touch with their inner self than men are. j o a n n e : perhaps women are more in touch with how their actions impact others. h a r r y : (ignores joanne's comment and goes on) inner life, i think, is a phrase that men probably don't use very much except maybe religious men. even then, i think they're probably more likely to use spiritual life or soul or something. maybe there is a linguistic piece there. i mean the word darling is a good example. i think it would raise most eyebrows if a man were to say... s a l l y : (laughing) that's a darling tie... h a r r y : yeah, isn't that a darling tie. i think the inner life is probably on the feminine side of the page. i think in our society, in general, men do not tend to talk about their inner lives, even using different words. they tend to have the expression "gender matters" is an expression borrowed from professor jane gaskell. more segmented ways of looking at themselves and don't look at themselves as holistically as women do. they are more likely to say i am guided by these principles, or values or this is my sense of right and wrong as if it were external to them. s a l l y : (directly to harry) men never doubt themselves and i think that is what makes women better leaders in lots of ways. k e v i n : (shaking his head) well, it makes sense in my head. i don't have any solid data on this but i think back to the nature nurture thing. i would imagine for many of the male leaders, in our generation talking about an inner life wasn't part of their acculturation. you don't go there, you don't talk about it, you don't label it, you don't think about it, but it's there and you draw on it nonetheless. so, does it matter if you can describe it or not? i have a daughter who is nine years old. i was balanced on the gender issues before i had a daughter but now i am almost militant on the issue. there is expertise, ability, energy and perspective that males don't have, that we don't embrace and capitalize on. s a l l y : (to kevin) for me gender probably shaped and probably contested with some of those inner values because i put a lot of pressure on myself as a woman competing in what is still largely a male world. h a r r y : women are probably more conscious of that kind of inner world - they tend to relate to people in a different way than men. i am pretty passionate about these issues. i think it is screwed up. yet, i'll acknowledge that fact that as a male, white male, i have all kinds of advantages in getting a job and so from a personal perspective, i'm trying to get the best job i can but at the same time, i probably have an unfair advantage. j o a n : (stops typing, the other characters freeze, speaks directly to the audience) gender matters. i think that we as leaders would like to think that it doesn't matter but it does, (humorously) in this scene, there are more generalizations than one can handle. notions of male and female acculturation, gendered language, women as holistic leaders, men viewing themselves in a segmented way, male privilege and the idea that men don't talk about the inner life. the fact that it is so easy to drop into these generalizations, whether true or false, implies that gender does still matter and that the experiences of men and women leaders are different or seen to be different, (starts to flip back through pages of material) i didn't find, as harry implies, that women were more in touch with their inner lives than men were. i did find that the participants that spoke about gender found that there were differences between men and women's experiences. here it is (points)... i want to pull forward a couple of ideas. in earlier scenes the characters talked about difference and coming to understand that difference mattered. whether you were included or excluded did matter - the story of the young protestant girl, for example. one of the characters also mentioned her own marginalization. i think what is worthy of note here in this discussion of the inner life is that these leaders are aware that gender matters and that difference matters, (leans forward) i would argue that this awareness influences how they lead and influences the tenets of their inner life. it is very much alive in how men and women in this study view the notions of the inner life, alive in how men and women experience their leadership and have access to leadership, alive in our daily leadership lives, (opens her journal and begins to read aloud) gender matters (reads as title) gender whispers in the dark to little girls and little boys, a cruel soft voice calling gender matters, gender matters, and even if wee ones can not sing the words, they begin to gender into life. up to adulthood, they sit and wonder why the difference will not disappear. then, children of their own. and, sometimes late at night they startle, thinking they may have heard voices in the dark, whispering gender matters, gender matters close by their children's beds. act three scene four: the quest and the pain characters reanimate and joan returns to typing pilot: (enters the cabin shaking the rain off his coat) i have just heard from base, the storm is lifting and we can take off in about twenty minutes. i am really sorry about this folks but we will have you back in the air as soon as possible, (exits the cabin) j o a n n e : that's great. it has been interesting though, talking about our work. we rarely get to do that. m a r t h a : yeah, it has been good because sometimes our work is hard and we don't talk about that part every much. it hurts some days, because you're going to take the high road which means you don't yell and scream or say get the hell out of my office. k e v i n : there are a lot of grudges and a lot of people angry. they may be angry for a whole lot of other reasons that you can't do anything about. you don't have responsibility for that. it is important for me that i don't hold grudges even though i know lots of other people hold grudges and they hold grudges against me and there is nothing i can do about that. j o a n n e : (with passion ) i think one of the things that really bothers me is the devaluing of the work we do in the public sector and the devaluing of the work we do as people engaged in helping functions or social work functions in the most generic sense. h a r r y : it's a question of self-respect. you feel what you are doing has integrity and has some kind of purpose and that it adds value to the people around you. it's kind of "it's a wonderful life" with jimmy stewart, (laughs) i won't put myself on the same plane as him but if you subtract the person from the world there is a net loss. j o a n n e : i had an experience where i had impacted, negatively, a group of people and i met with them and apologized, not for the decision, but for the implementation of a decision and the impact it had on them as human beings. i took whatever they wanted to say to me because they had that right to say it. group pauses for a few seconds, acknowledging what joanne has said and then martha continues m a r t h a : asking for forgiveness, sometimes when you make mistakes and not being afraid to tell people that you are real... regardless of how i mature through this leadership role and learn what to do and not to do, being real and sharing who i am with others is just part of who i am and i won't stop doing that. h a r r y : we should tidy this place up before we go... harry, sally and martha begin to tidy, wash cups and glasses, return items to cupboards etc. s a l l y : (from the kitchen, pensively) i think it's hard to say that what drives me is just social justice because i think that's the place i start from and then add onto it. you add to that a set of principles, how that leads you to behave in an ethical way, how that leads you to examine why you are doing different things and what difference you can make in the world. j o a n n e : i work to listen to grievances, not ever coming to an opinion before i hear all parties and listening to complaints and trying to understand the meaning something has for all parties involved, then working through what is just, equal and fair. k e v i n : (to joanne) human behaviour is not predictable but it does have meaning to the individual expressing it. h a r r y : (from the kitchen as he dries dishes) i talk about leadership being a practice not a thing. it is a practice that requires training, it requires honing your skills, and it requires a sense of you inner life and what your leadership is built on. i think of a canvas, unfinished, my inner life. where my inner life will be when i am eighty is different from where it is now. what sustains me in leadership is that i can always stand back, look at my inner life, and say i need to grow. it is not as if you look at your inner life and find it lacking. you look at your inner life and see where it can grow. j o a n : (stops typing, the other characters freeze, speaks directly to the audience) the quest and the pain... (sighs). we have talked about leading for the social good and for doing what is right but that does not mean that we do no harm or don't have harm done to us as leaders. martha talks about asking for forgiveness; joanne talks about apologizing; sally talks about how it hurts. i would propose to you that questing and pain are the twins of leadership. (joan moves over and clears what is left of the dishes andfinishes tidying as she talks) if leaders lead for social good, they are questing to make the world better. in undertaking that quest to lead, leaders run all the risks that these characters have highlighted: unintended consequences, power differentials, harming people for the good of the organization. those outcomes are painful and in some cases, very positive outcomes are also painful. and, at times, there is a "devaluing of the work we do in the public sector and the devaluing of the work we do as people engaged in helping functions." characters reanimate, joan returns to typing pilot: (steps into the cottage) folks we have the helicopter ready. everyone begins to gather up their briefcases etc. as each person gathers their things and leaves the stage, they walk over to joan and speak to her directly h a r r y : my inner life gives me strength. (harry exits) j o a n n e : i think my inner life is a sense of self. (joanne exits) m a r t h a : grounding, my inner life is grounding. it is doing good. (martha exits) k e v i n : i think the inner life is a place of universal values. (kevin exits) s a l l y : the inner life is that place of possibility, always that place of possibility. (sally touches joan on the shoulder, exits and closes the door) j o a n : (stops typing, stands up, picks up a chair, moves it to the front ofthe stage, and sits down) they are gone, the conversation is done. i started this research wanting to have a conversation with other leaders about the inner life because i imagined and speculated that i would find in this place, the inner life, the meaning, and meaningfulness of leadership. i did find those things. i found that the leaders in this study were guided by their version of the inner life whether it was social justice, ethics and values or a more spiritual place of balance and peace. i found that these three themes cut across the study, appearing in some version in almost every story and/or interview. i found that the inner life was an individual place and that each leader constructed language to describe it. this made the inquiry interesting in that i needed to take great care not to generalize their words because words like 'good,' 'right,' 'social justice,' 'ethics,' and 'peace' are all contested words. words constructed from each leader's understanding of her or his inner life. (pauses) i met leaders during this inquiry who lead with passion and joy and a little despair thrown in. their words were powerful and projected the inner life in a very real way. kevin, for example, was a composite of interview and narrative responses that struggled with the words and ideas that i was expressing. he represented those that saw no separation between inner and outer life: that believed it was about ethics and offered into the research a level of pragmatism that was useful and at times humorous. harry, sally, and joanne were composites of interview and narrative responses that strongly expressed that the inner life was about undertaking social justice. martha represented interview and narrative responses that looked at the inner life as a place of balance, peace, and sanctuary, (pauses again) i started this work seeking the meaning and the leadership influence of the inner life on nineteen leaders' work. i found leaders who were willing to undertake a conversation about what this meant to them. each of them deeply reflected on this notion of the inner life, and in those reflections i found the meaning and meaningfulness of everyday leadership for them. i started this research with respect for these participants and now i have even more respect for the work that they undertake. listening to their stories has made me even more convinced that it is in this place, the inner life, that leadership resides. it has left me understanding that leadership is who we are; it is our inner life in action. (stands up and walks over to the desk, picks up a journal, and reads from it) words (reads as a title) you have given me your words, in the hope that i would honour them, hone them razor sharp, find their deepest meaning. inner life, your definition, my lens an unholy twinning of minds calculated to birth a prodigy full grown and clever i look down at all the words. discarded, drifting at my feet, wondering if prodigy has been aborted, terminated before meaning could take hold i force myself to turn away, assume nothing there at my feet could grow i gaze only on my prodigy, full grown, stitched carefully from your words suture scars, visible only with reading glasses which i still refuse to wear joan puts down the journal, walks to the front of the stage speaks directly to the audience i hope you have enjoyed this constructed conversation play. (humorously) you are free to go now... c h a p t e r six: conversation ongoing the amazing conversation that i have had with my colleagues about the inner life is ending, and like the termination of any marvellous journey, there is a sense of wanting to convey a few last notions before it ends. as this conversation ends, i hope that a new one will begin, about the inner life and leadership amongst education leaders. in this last chapter i return to some central notions of the inquiry, reflect on the influence of this inquiry on my leadership practice, provoke possibilities for leadership education and development, and pose ideas for further inquiry. when i started, i stated that the purpose of this inquiry was to record, reflect, and wonder (clandinin & connelly, ) about the inner life of education leaders and the inner life's influence on their leadership. i wanted to answer two key questions: ) what is the meaning of the inner life as defined by the education leaders in the study? and ) how does the inner life influence leadership? i have recorded, reflected, and wondered about the inner life of leaders. i started this inquiry wondering if there was an inner life of leaders. what i found was a very powerful place that guided and held the very essence of how leaders saw themselves and i found a place that influenced how they lead in the everyday. leaders talked about notions across the spectrum of how they viewed the inner life from justice to sanctuary. they talked about the notions of good and right, of power and of hope. they talked about how hard it can be at times to be a public education leader. the strength of this inquiry resided in the words of the leaders spoken through the characters in chapter five. their words reflect the inner life of these participant leaders and offer up understandings about leading in the everyday. central notions as i am about to leave the inquiry i am drawn back to the beginning of the discussion with greene ( ) and caputo ( ). in working with the meta-themes in the text and interview stories there were three notions of the inner life. these were inner life as a place of social justice; the inner life as a place of values, ethics, or moral understanding; and the inner life as ^ — - - ^ balance, peace or sanctuary. these / ^ \ three notions tie back into the / s o c i a l j u s t j c e \ concepts put forward by greene \- • and caputo. from greene y there are two ideas within \ \ which the meta-themes / \ reside. the first is the \ values ' sanctuary i notion of possibility and ^ s e c o n a " is the notion of being morally wide-awake. the idea of inner life as social justice relates to greene's idea of possibility. the dialogue in chapter five reflects this quest on the part of leaders to undertake work that makes a difference in education. as joanne states: "in order to make my daily existence feel worthwhile i need to feel that i am engaging in some process of action, social action..." or as kevin states: "it is a set of fundamental values." these ideas of working for good and working from a framework of moral understanding are integral to the inner life as described by the participants in the inquiry. the meta-theme of inner life as sanctuary is found in the words of martha "my inner life grounds me"; "the inner life is the reconciliation of who you are externally and then the place you live inside yourself." although, i do not think caputo ( ) was writing about a place of inner grounding, i do think in asking what you love when you love your god, he was asking the question of what we believe at our very core. that is what this recording, reflecting, and wondering (clandinin & connelly, ) about the inner life has been about. what is it that we as leaders believe our inner lives to be and how does that inner life form and inform how we lead? as seen in chapter five, the individual notions of an inner life are diverse, but they orbit around the three meta-themes of social justice, moral undertaking, and sanctuary. perhaps joanne states it best when she says, "i live it. added to social justice is a kind of moral ethical righteousness. i cannot be bought, i cannot be coerced." my l e a d e r s h i p part of ending this conversation on the inner life is reflecting upon how this inquiry has influenced my view of leadership. perhaps the most profound influence has been the conversation itself, the opportunity to sit and talk with other leaders about the notions of the inner life and find that there were themes that were common amongst us. as kevin notes, "leading is lonely" and to have had an opportunity to work with the words of other leaders and to hear their hope for education dispels that loneliness. as i leave this inquiry, i am certain that this conversation is worth having and promoting in leadership contexts as a place from which to discuss the tenets of leadership. in addition, my practice of leadership has changed. as i worked with the words of leaders, i began to hear the possibility of education championed and the courage with which leaders work for that possibility. it gives me hope that in my own leadership, i can continue to work for social justice and the good of education. have i changed doing this inquiry? yes, and profoundly. doing this inquiry has encouraged the work i was already doing around the creation of reflective spaces, such as the "labyrinth and leadership workshop" for leaders. it has encouraged me to continue to write more about the notions of the inner life. most of all it has encouraged me to continue in the work of public education leadership and to lead in a way that is good. that said, as pope john xxiii stated: "it often happens that i awake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide that i must tell the pope about it. then i wake up completely and remember that i am the pope" (kornfield & feldman, , p. ). this humorous note is about the fact that i do wake up surprised to find myself a vice president and in that surprise, i find myself. i find the person i wish to be as a human and as a vice president. i go into my day attempting to take with me the notion of pumping the iron of leadership and pulling upon the foundation of my inner life. provoking possibilities this inquiry into the inner life of leaders provided a unique window through which to view leadership. i think that the conversation has implications for how education leadership is discussed and how education leaders prepare themselves for leadership. i entitled this section "provoking possibilities" because the more traditional notion of implications seemed harsh and analytical, given the journey of this inquiry. below i provoke four possibilities from this inquiry. storytelling: this inquiry is built around the notion of storying and re-storying. i think that there are important ways in which leaders can use their own stories as leaders. denning ( ) in his article "telling tales" does a wonderful comparison between what he considers the norm of business analysis and the power of story: analysis is what drives business thinking. it cuts through the fog of myth, gossip, and speculation to get to the hard facts. it goes wherever the observations and premises and conclusions take it, undistorted by the hopes or fears of the analyst. its strength lies in its objectivity,, its impersonality, its heartlessness. yet this strength is also its weakness. analysis might excite the mind, but it hardly offers a route to the heart. and that is where we must go if we are to motivate people not only to take action but to do so with energy and enthusiasm, (p. ) the power of telling the stories of education leadership within our institutions can build upon the techniques of leadership. telling stories of our inner lives, telling stories of what we believe about education; telling stories could be a powerful force within our colleges and university colleges. reflective spaces: in order to reflect upon who we are as leaders and how that influences our leadership, there needs to be creation of reflective spaces for leaders in which to examine issues in addition to the techniques of leadership. this lack of spaces led to the creation of the "labyrinth and leadership workshop," mentioned earlier. the inner life is an individual space and, as seen in the inner life themes, a shared space. there are very few specifically designed spaces to promote reflection on the "who" of leadership and promote deep levels of understanding. specifically, extremely few places exist that provide reflective spaces for public education leaders. this inquiry created a powerful conversation worth having, and the creation of reflective spaces could keep that conversation going forward. educating for leadership: in classrooms focused on management and leadership there could be a place created for the inner life conversation with leaders. i want to argue that one of the important implications from this inquiry is around how we educate leaders. one cannot underestimate the power of learning the techniques of leadership; however, techniques alone cannot house the entire notion of leadership. i want to argue that notions such as soul, spirituality, morals, ethics, and inner life need to find their way into leadership curricula in a central way rather than a tangential way. in this inquiry, the inner life was foundational to the leadership of these participants and i would argue for leadership education that enhances the conversation and brings these notions to the forefront of leadership education. alternative representations of leadership: i never thought that "talking leadership, talking dirty" (chapter four) was a good poem. in fact, it is not finished and yet people love that poem because it dislocates, surprises and challenges. i want to provoke the possibility that there is room for alternative processes of talking about leadership: poetry, art, and theatre. the power of alternative representation is that the reader/audience is party to meaning making and is invited to argue back, to be moved, to cry, to laugh, and to deeply understand. the provoking possibilities above have within them the notion of creating pedagogical spaces to explore the inner life. in the creation of these spaces, care needs to be taken to create spaces that are as safe as possible for participants to explore some of these ideas. for example, the play could be used as a workshop tool to explore the inner life rather than having leaders tell their own inner life stories. any space created to examine the inner life is not without risk and great care needs to be taken to allow leaders to reflect on the 'who' of their leadership in a way that is useful, inclusive and adds to the conversation of the inner life and does not put individuals at risk. i encourage you, the reader, to add to this list of provoked possibilities. in the same way that you have participated in the meaning making of the constructed conversation play, there is room for other possibilities from this inquiry. above i have offered four, but the list is not closed and, in fact, i encourage it to be left open to other provoked possibilities. further inquiry what follows are ideas for further inquiry. they arose as i worked with the data and wondered what the answers were to questions that i had not asked; arose as i wondered about language use and descriptions of the inner life; or arose from wanting to keep the conversation about the inner life and leadership moving forward. this inquiry was a conversation with nineteen participants. it would be interesting to extend the inquiry to a larger number of participants and examine whether there are particular kinds of notions of the inner life that exist in public education leadership. for example, the notion of social justice that arose in the study; is this a theme that resides broadly in public education leadership? the participants in this inquiry were relatively homogeneous. some of the notions of the inner life had their basis in archetypes: the golden rule for example. it would be interesting to have a conversation with education leaders across cultures to examine how views of the inner life are culturally constructed. some of the concepts of the inner life had a judaeo-christian basis. it would be interesting to examine whether these notions are generational. what i mean by that is most of the leaders in this inquiry were of the baby boom generation. the generation coming into leadership has experienced a more secular society. would the generational aspect influence how the inner life was described or how it influenced leadership? lastly, it would be useful to extend research on alternative representation as a tool for leadership education. how do poetry, art and theatre offer richness to the educating of public education leaders? conversation paused the inquiry must end and yet i want to imagine that the conversation is only paused. i began with the words of a participant and end with the words of a participant. in this inquiry i had the privilege to record the words of leaders i respect. i had the opportunity to reflect upon the meaning of those contributions and i had the gift of wondering about the inner life. this place, the "inner life," is the heart of leadership, and i have argued from the beginning of this inquiry that it is in this place that leadership resides. it is in this place, "the inner life" that leaders find themselves and the meaning of their work. as an education leader, i feel a great deal of responsibility to the people that i work with, our students and our communities... the underlying values of most religions are similar to what i subscribe to and include respect for others, caring and kindness, honesty and truthfulness, loyalty, promise keeping and fairness. these are values that i adhere to in my leadership... 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( ) webster's new collegiate dictionary. toronto: merriam webster company. appendix a [letterhead] [date] letter of initial contact for stage one & stage three participants project title: the inner life: a conversation with leaders dear m y name is joan mcarthur-blair and i would like to invite you to become part of a research project that aims to examine the inner life of public education leaders. i am currently a graduate student at the university of british columbia, completing requirements for a doctor of education degree. also, as a vice president in public education i am very interested in having a conversation with other leaders about the notions of an inner life and how that inner life impacts everyday leadership in public education. the purpose of this study is to examine the inner life of public education leaders and through that examination analyze the impact and/or incorporation and/or influence of the inner life on the leaders' everyday work, beliefs and the academy. the inner life for the purposes of this study is defined as a belief system, an ethical practice, a religion, a spirituality and/or an inner dialogue. this research on the inner life will explore and reflect upon: • aspects of the inner life of leaders in public education • how that inner life influences everyday leadership • how the inner life sustains the capacity to lead • how the inner life is translated to everyday leadership situations • the relationships between the leadership conversations in this research and the literature in moral philosophy and leadership appendix b september , letter of initial contact for stage two participants project title: the inner life: a conversation with leaders dear m y name is joan mcarthur-blair and i would like to invite you to become part of a research project that aims to examine the inner life of public education leaders. i am currently a graduate student at the university of british columbia, completing requirements for a doctor of education degree. also, as a vice president in public education i am very interested in having a conversation with other leaders about the notions of an inner life and how that inner life impacts everyday leadership in public education. the purpose of this study is to examine the inner life of public education leaders and through that examination analyze the impact and/or incorporation and/or influence of the inner life on the leaders' everyday work, beliefs and the academy. the inner life for the purposes of this study is defined as a belief system, an ethical practice, a religion, a spirituality and/or an inner dialogue. this research on the inner life will explore and reflect upon: • aspects of the inner life of leaders in public education • how that inner life influences everyday leadership • how the inner life sustains the capacity to lead • how the inner life is translated to everyday leadership situations • the relationships between the leadership conversations in this research and the literature in moral philosophy and leadership appendix c [letterhead] [date] letter of consent for stage one and stage three leaders project title: the inner life: a conversation with leaders dear my name is joan mcarthur-blair. i am currently a graduate student at the university of british columbia, completing the requirements for a doctor of education degree. i am conducting research that aims to examine the inner life of public education leaders. thank you for indicating your interest in participating in both stage one and stage three of the inner life: a conversation with leaders. the purpose of this study is to examine the inner life of public education leaders and through that examination analyze the impact and/or incorporation and/or influence of the inner life on the leaders' everyday work, beliefs and the academy. the inner life for the purposes of this study is defined as a belief system, an ethical practice, a religion, a spirituality and/or an inner dialogue. this research will be conducted in three stages. stage one: • four leaders will be invited to write a short (one to two pages) narrative (this can be a specific story from their leadership experience, a piece of poetry, a statement about their inner life, an autobiographical piece of their life) on their inner life and what it means to their leadership • the short narrative will be exchanged among the four and the leaders will be invited to add to or recast their story stage two • from the narratives of the four leaders in stage one, interview questions will be developed on the inner life of leaders • ten additional leaders will be interviewed about their inner life (these interviews will be audio taped and transcribed with the consent of the participant) stage three • the leaders in stage one will be invited to meet (individually) with the researcher for a one hour conversation that will highlight the major findings from stage one and two • after reflecting on the findings stage one leaders will be invited to again write a short narrative on the inner life and/or provide feedback on the findings the data from all three stages will be analyzed, themes identified and these themes will be reflected upon to form the findings regarding the inner life of leaders. the data from all stages will be held confidential. each participant will receive a pseudonym and the transcriptions will be coded to ensure that both confidentiality and anonymity are maintained. as a leader in stage one i will be asking you to: . meet with me to discuss the research and the notions of an inner life . write a short story (one to two pages) about your inner life . allow your story (after identifiers have been removed) to be shared with the other three leaders in stage one . read the three other stories provided to you and write a new story and/or re- cast your story and/or make comments on the other stories. as a leader in stage three i will be asking you to: . meet with me to discuss the findings of stage one and stage two . again re-cast or re-write your story about your inner life and/or provide feedback on the findings participation in stage one and stage three of this research will require approximately six to fifteen hours of your time over the course of one year. your participation in this study is entirely voluntary. data provided by you will be kept anonymous. each participant will receive a pseudonym and the transcriptions will be coded to ensure that both confidentiality and anonymity are maintained. you will have an opportunity to review the use of your story; provide feedback and withdraw any sections that you are not comfortable with. also, if at anytime you wish to withdraw your contribution to the research you may do so. you do not waive any of your legal rights by signing this consent form. appendix d [letterhead] [date] november, letter of consent for stage two leaders project title: the inner life: a conversation with leaders dear m y name is joan mcarthur-blair. i am currently a graduate student at the university of british columbia, completing requirements for a doctor of education degree. i am conducting research that aims to examine the inner life of public education leaders. thank you for indicating your interest in participating in stage two of the inner life: a conversation with leaders. the purpose of this study is to examine the inner life of public education leaders and through that examination analyze the impact and/or incorporation and/or influence of the inner life on the leaders' everyday work, beliefs and the academy. the inner life for the purposes of this study is defined as a belief system, an ethical practice, a religion, a spirituality and/or an inner dialogue. this research will be conducted in three stages. stage one: • four leaders will be invited to write a short (one to two pages) narrative (this can be a specific story from their leadership experience, a piece of poetry, a statement about their inner life, an autobiographical piece) on their inner life and what it means to their leadership • the short narrative will be exchanged among the four and the leaders will be invited to add to or recast their story stage two • from the narratives of the four leaders in stage one, interview questions will be developed on the inner life of leaders appendix g stage two of the inner life: a conversation with leaders interview protocol . others have described the inner life as a. acode of ethics b. a place where i feel "real" c. a place where justice and fairness reside d. the heart of leadership e. a place of meaning f. emotions and feelings g- a place of prayer h. an inner dialogue i. a place of leadership strength j- a place of patient listening k. self talk . guiding principles m. a fictitious judge that helps and guides n. my upbringing . a deeply spiritual place p- a place of universal values what words/metaphors/concepts would you use to describe your inner life? . how did this inner life form? . when you think about your inner life, what period in your life do you go to? . how does your inner life influence how you lead? . how does your inner life influence you everyday? . how does your inner life influence leadership in everyday leadership situations? . how do you articulate your inner life with your colleagues and/or the academy? . are you afraid to articulate your inner life to the academy? what causes this fear? . does you inner life sustain you? how? . what sustains you in your leadership? . what gives your leadership meaning? is this meaning found in your inner life? . when do you feel 'real' as a leader? . who/what, nurtures your inner life? . what role does humility play in your inner life? . is your inner life the servant or the master of your leadership? . describe the heart or spirit of your leadership. . how does a privileged or underprivileged background play into your inner life? . do you pray? . do you believe in a universal good and if so how do you decide what is good? . who is your inner judge? . how does your inner life grow or mature? . demographic information (age, gender, time in position) . questions added after interview three: . as i have been doing this study, i have been noticing some gender differences in how female and male leaders describe the inner life. can you make a comment on this? . tell me a story about a time that your inner life and your leadership aligned. . tell me a story about a time that your inner life and your leadership didn't align. appendix h january , r e : the inner life: a conversation with leaders thank you so much for assisting me in my doctoral work. i am honoured by the time, energy, and insight you have offered to my study. i look forward to sharing my results with you when i have completed my research. i have attached the transcript of the interview we conducted in the fall. you will note changed text in colour if i think you will be identified and/or you have identified an individual or institution. changes in blue are simple identifier changes. changes in red are places that i have edited and/or changed a story to ensure anonymity. please feel free to suggest additional changes to edited stories. please read the transcript and email or mail to me any additional changes and/or items you may wish to remove from the study. as noted in the letter of consent, if you are no longer comfortable with being part of the study you may withdraw at any time. you have selected a name in the interview and that name will appear in the study. also, if you wish to add anything further to the discussion on the inner life, please feel free to do so. a p p e n d i x i thank you note to stage two participants when i sent out a copy o f your t r a n s c r i p t i s a i d thank you but. i wanted t o thank you a g a i n f o r p a r t i c i p a t i n g i n my r e s e a r c h . as i move f o r w a r d t o w o r k i n g w i t h t h e 'data,' which, as you p r o b a b l y know, has i t s o r i g i n s i n l a t i n meaning " g i f t , " i wanted t o l e t you know t h a t i w i l l be w o r k i n g w i t h t h e themes from t h e d a t a t o c r e a t e a q u a s i - p l a y , a c o n v e r s a t i o n about the i n n e r l i f e o f l e a d e r s as i f a l l the p a r t i c i p a n t s were p r e s e n t a t t h e same moment i n t i m e . t h i s p l a y w i l l be i n s e r t e d i n t o what i s o t h e r w i s e a t y p i c a l academic d i s s e r t a t i o n . i hope t o d e f e n d i n october , so t h e r e are many d r a f t s y e t t o be w r i t t e n . your words and s t o r i e s have made an i n c r e d i b l e d i f f e r e n c e t o t h i s r e s e a r c h j o u r n e y and i want t o pause amongst t h e many d r a f t s and, a g a i n , thank you. joan m c a r t h u r - b l a i r a p p e n d i x j stage three inner life: a conversation with leaders i want to start by again thanking you for your stories in stage one. in using the interview protocol developed from your stories there was a richness and power to the interviews that would not have been there without your original stories. as i have moved through this research and spent time with educational leaders, i have become engaged in the stories told and what meaning those stories have to offer to the understanding of leadership. when i first designed the inquiry, i was planning to meet with each of you for one hour, discuss the themes that i had found in the interviews, and then ask you to write another story. after having read your stories and after having worked with the stories in the interview material, i would like to honour the narrative nature of this inquiry and build upon stories offered into the research process during the interviews. consequently, below i have outlined a slightly revised process for your engagement with stage three of the inner life: a conversation with leaders which removes the one hour meeting and keeps the re-storying process. below you will find three themes that came out of the interviews and three short segments from the interviews that align with those themes. i would like to invite you to choose one of the themes and its corresponding story and write a short piece on what the theme and story mean to you as a leader. this can be in the form of comment or in the form of a story from your own leadership, which illustrates what you want to say. please return your response to me via email by april , . theme one: the inner life as a place of social justice story: i remember walking home with a friend who was protestant, i was roman catholic and we lived next to each other and were very good friends and i remember thinking after i dropped her off, well why wouldn't she be able to go to heaven also. it didn't make any sense to me that she would not go to heaven. it was what i was taught and it didn't make sense to me because she was equal to me and my friend was really good. my friend should be able, when she dies, go to the same place i am going.... theme two: the inner life as a place of values or moral understanding story: in fact, i have had some real struggles with religion - going back to my childhood, but i do consider myself spiritual. the thing that keeps me going is making sure all my decisions and my intentions with people sit within my value system, which is hard to define. it is a system that i believe has to do with morals, whether it is truth telling or promise keeping, or treating everybody consistently, or being responsible and accountable. it is a set of values that i have that, i think, are morally and socially responsible and that guide me as a leader. it has a lot to do with ethical behaviour, truth telling and promise keeping. theme three: the inner life as sanctuary story: .. .immediately the word grounding comes to me. it is the place that you go back to be grounded, and have a point of reference. when you said what kind of metaphor and i am thinking images. i think it was the movie terminator when he is immersed into that boiling pot of destructive whatever it was and all you could see on the screen was a line that started moving towards the middle, then there was the one dot, and it just ended with the dot. i guess it is the reconciliation of who you are externally and then the place that you live inside yourself, which is that point of reference. there can be all sorts of people outside and all sorts of factors can temper you, but you are who you are and that little kernel inside you is you. hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers atkinson, paul <http://orcid.org/ - - - > available from sheffield hallam university research archive (shura) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/ / this document is the author deposited version. you are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. published version atkinson, paul ( ). hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers. design and culture. copyright and re-use policy see http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html sheffield hallam university research archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk http://shura.shu.ac.uk/ http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html full terms & conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalinformation?journalcode=rfdc design and culture the journal of the design studies forum issn: - (print) - (online) journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfdc hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers paul atkinson to cite this article: paul atkinson ( ): hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers, design and culture, doi: . / . . to link to this article: https://doi.org/ . / . . © the author. published online: jul . submit your article to this journal article views: view crossmark data http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalinformation?journalcode=rfdc http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfdc http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showcitformats?doi= . / . . https://doi.org/ . / . . http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorsubmission?journalcode=rfdc &show=instructions http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorsubmission?journalcode=rfdc &show=instructions http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi= . / . . &domain=pdf&date_stamp= - - http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi= . / . . &domain=pdf&date_stamp= - - hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers paul atkinson abstract the cigar box guitar has a long history in the usa, where it formed part of the culture of traditional blues music and became a popular diy project. despite the growth in popularity of the blues in the uk, the penchant for constructing cigar box guitars did not travel with it. this article explores the recent appearance of the instrument and the culture surrounding it in the uk as a particular form of cul- tural diy activity combining individual design and production with collective performance, which has in some cases grown far beyond an amateur hobby into a professional business. keywords: do-it-yourself, amateur making, professional making, musical instruments, diy culture, authenticity, cigar box guitars paul atkinson is professor of design and design history at sheffield hallam university, uk. he has authored a number of articles, edited special issues, and curated exhibitions on the history of diy, and written about the changing nature of amateur design and its relation to professional design practice. he is the author of two books on the design history of computers (computer, reaktion , and delete: a design history of computer vapourware, bloomsbury ). p.atkinson@shu.ac.uk d es ig n an d c u ltu re design and culture, vol. , no. , – , https://doi.org/ . / . . © the author. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ . /), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. http://orcid.org/ - - - http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi= . / . . &domain=pdf https://doi.org./ . / . . http://www.tandfonline.com introduction on december , , bbc television broadcast the fourteenth annual jools holland’s hootenanny to welcome in the new year (bbc ). a large studio audience watched as a variety of well- known, glamorously dressed stars graced the multiple stages: among them amy winehouse, paul weller, the zutons, marc almond, and lily allen. also appearing was a then largely unknown sixty-six-year-old american blues guitarist with a long gray beard, dressed in a shabby checked shirt, faded baseball cap and braces holding up worn denim jeans. a member of the invited audience that night recalls, he was the real deal. not like the other polished performers around him. he had the air of someone with no fixed abode. he carried his battered guitar with him wherever he went, even to the toilet! they were inseparable, like it was his best friend. (duckworth ) when it was his turn to play, he sat alone, holding his old, dilapi- dated, cheap six-string electric guitar fitted with only three strings and a home-made stomp box he called the “mississippi drum machine.” he played a “three-string trance boogie” that included a brief history of his time living rough, and finished spectacularly by rubbing his gui- tar strings vigorously on the edge of his amplifier before dropping his guitar to the side and walking off to huge cheers and wild applause. his performance reminded viewers that expensive, “perfect” musical instruments were not a necessity for high-quality music, and that in fact, there might be something about such a rudimentary approach that brought the performer closer to the “soul” of blues music. over the course of the next few years, seasick steve released major-label cds, performed live at numerous festivals, and appeared widely on national television drawing music out of a variety of home- made instruments including basic, one-string “diddly bows,” cigar box guitars, and hub-cap banjos. his promotion of rough and ready homemade instruments has been a major driving force behind their increase in popularity over the last decade, particularly in the uk, where his influence has led many people to make and play cigar box guitars. a number of these makers have set themselves up as serial manufacturers, making the construction and playing of cigar box gui- tars an area ripe for academic study and analysis. do-it-yourself as an area of study it is pertinent here to give a brief overview of how the topic of “do-it- yourself” (diy) has been addressed as an area of academic study, as it seems that for a long time it eluded analysis. one early article on the remarkable popularity of diy in the usa written in won- dered “how any discussion of do-it-yourself could be so conspicu- ously absent in contemporary literature on the subject of leisure” p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re (roland , ). in more recent research, a major study by the historian steven gelber produced a series of academic articles about the social aspects of diy in the early s and, in , an oft-cited book titled hobbies: leisure and the culture of work in america (gelber ). within the field of design history, as early as , philip pacey ( ) wrote an insightful article warning of the potential limitations on the discipline’s area of study if it were to continue to focus solely on “professional” design activity, arguing that critical analysis of the work of non-professional designers was important; and in , judy attfield’s book wild things: the material culture of everyday life highlighted the topic as being worthy of serious academic atten- tion for design history. later, in special issues of the journal of design history, i addressed the diverse nature of such amateur activ- ity and located it in relation to professional design practice (atkinson ; beegan and atkinson ). in the design of everyday life, elizabeth shove, matthew watson, martin hand, and jack ingram examine diy as the consumption of craft, a manifestation of “the practicalities and processes of effecting change” (shove et al. , ). andrew jackson’s work on diy activity focused on two main aspects – those of the motivation and reward gained by undertaking such activities (jackson , ), and the role of the locations in which they take place (jackson ). fiona hackney’s work has considered the dissemination of diy to women through analysis of s women’s magazines (hackney ) and critiqued the recent resurgence of home crafts as a form of design activism (hackney ). also relevant here is david gauntlett’s ( ) book making is connecting, which assesses the impact of social media on the shar- ing of diy knowledge. finally, without suggesting this overview to be complete in any sense, one of the most recent relevant studies would be stephen knott’s ( ) amateur craft: history and theory, which, as with attfield’s ( ) work, sees amateur craft as having made “a vital and important contribution to the material culture of the modern world” (knott , xi). there has, predictably, been even less written on the intersection between the worlds of diy and musical instruments. one study that touches upon the amateur making of musical instruments as part of a much wider group of hand-crafted artifacts is nicholas j. saunders’ ( ) work trench art: materialities and memories of war. saunders notes that handmade musical instruments seem to have achieved particular resonance in times of great hardship and adversity. during the first world war, musical instruments were apparently made on all sides by soldiers in active service and by pris- oners of war: “percussion instruments and xylophones were made from recycled metal, flutes from miscellaneous tubes, and guitars, banjos, violins and cellos from any available scrap wood” ( ). they were used to accompany traditional folk songs and patriotic songs sung to raise morale, and images of small orchestras of soldiers with hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re such instruments were published in various magazines of the period. as saunders notes, the fact that these instruments were often made from the debris of war itself was an ironic twist. steve waksman’s ( ) study california noise: tinkering with hardcore and heavy metal in southern california relates more recent diy activity to musical instruments. it focuses on the solid-bodied electric guitar and its associated electrical components and describes the activities of two well-known guitarists (van halen’s eddie van halen and greg ginn of black flag) in adapting existing instruments to alter their sonic characteristics as opposed to building instruments from scratch. although both guitarists had similar aims “to gain control over the means of musical production” (waksman , ), and both garnered a dislike of the sonic strictures of mass-produced instruments, their motivations to tinker with the tech- nology of the electric guitar came, in van halen’s case, from an iden- tity-related “construction of virtuosity,” ( ) and in ginn’s case from a desire to be more artistically independent. as waksman notes, the practical aptitude involved in such tinkering connects both guitarists to “broader trends in the history of technology wherein technical facil- ity has been associated with ‘masculine’ virtues of knowledge, power, and self-determination.” their acts, he concludes, demon- strate “an impulse to position the male self as producer rather than consumer” ( ). in “do it yourself: democracy and design,” (atkinson ) i iden- tified sub-categories of diy activity based upon the motivations of those involved: “reactive diy” (the use of mediated kits and tem- plates as a pastime or hobby); “essential diy” (such as vital repair and home maintenance); “lifestyle diy” (for example, home improve- ment as conspicuous consumption); and “proactive diy” (self- directed design and production carried out for personal pleasure). the practice of making cigar box guitars would appear to be most closely aligned with this category of “proactive diy,” although it is a particular subsection of diy activity that has a number of distinct characteristics. history: locating the cigar box guitar a cigar box guitar is a simple acoustic instrument that can easily be made from reclaimed materials. an old cigar box (or any wooden box or even an empty tin) forms a resonating chamber, and a neck is fashioned from either a dowel or a wooden board that is built through the body of the cigar box and then fitted with strings. usually unfretted, they tend to be played with a metal or glass slide fitted over a finger. it was likely developed from an even more rudi- mentary instrument now known as a “diddly bow” – a single cord stretched between two nails hammered into a plank of wood, which could be hit or plucked to vibrate the cord and produce a sound. using a slide, made of a piece of pipe or an empty bottle, at various p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re points along the cord would reduce its effective length and allow dif- ferent notes to be produced. as many scholars have pointed out, the precise origin of cigar box guitars is not clear. david sutton’s ( ) book, an obsession with cigar box guitars, identifies the earliest reference to a cigar box instrument in an etching of a civil war soldier playing a cigar box violin. he discusses how president lincoln’s taxation of goods in order to help fund the civil war led to an “industry standard” tax- stamped cigar box of cedar wood – which is used to keeps cigars fresh, but which also just happens to be a very good tone wood for guitars (sutton , , ). in , the cigar box nation website republished a story written by daniel carter beard in about three boys being entertained by uncle enos, an african american farmhand who had built a five-string banjo out of a cigar box and a broomstick. when first published in the book buyer: a summary of american and foreign literature around / , the story included plans to build the same instrument. another early reference appeared around the same time, on april , , in a detailed article in the galveston daily news about an african american boy who drew a large crowd by playing his cigar box guitar on an obscure city street (speal a). the very fact that this event was deemed of interest, enough to publish a newspaper article, indicates that encounters with the cigar box guitar were not an everyday occurrence at that point. by the early twentieth century, however, references to cigar box instruments became increasingly common. plans for a cigar box mandolin were syndicated and published in various newspapers in (mcnair ), and the artifact is also mentioned in various depression-era newspaper articles (speal b). by the time of the diy boom in s america, cigar box guitars had become a popu- lar diy project, with plans for making them appearing in various books and magazines. even charles schulz’s peanuts cartoon strip featured charlie brown playing a cigar box banjo. saunders observed that handmade musical instruments gain popularity in times or places of hardship and adversity. indeed, it is well documented that many of the early american blues players, who came from very impoverished backgrounds yet went on to influence the development of modern music, first learned to play on simple, homemade instruments. for example, blues guitarist furry lewis (b. circa ) recounts being aged eight or nine years old and making a cigar box guitar using some two-by-four for the neck and screen wire for a string attached to a bent nail (booth , ). at around the same time, big bill broonzy (b. ), the son of an itinerant sharecropper, started his significant musical career by making a cigar box fiddle at the age of twelve (farley , ). the first instrument for texan blues guitarist lightnin’ hopkins (b. ) was a home- made cigar box guitar with chicken wire strings (beecher ), and later, chicago bluesman buddy guy (b. ) who grew up in louisiana as a poor sharecropper’s son made guitars out of old hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re kerosene cans, nailing a stick in and using wire from the insect screen on the kitchen door as strings (trynka , ). shane speal, the founder of the cigar box nation website had his interest sparked after reading an interview in an old issue of guitar player magazine, in which the rockabilly guitar player carl perkins stated he learned to play on a two-string cigar box guitar his father made for him, with the article also containing the plans to build one (sutton , ). though people have been making cigar box guitars for over a century, and the instruments have clearly influenced today’s popular music, it is not a practice that seems to have caught on in the uk before the appearance of seasick steve. the advent of the internet, though, has enabled the activity to be far more easily accessed across geographic boundaries (as will be shown), and american magazines, such as make: technology on your time, which is part of a much wider growth of interest in diy and maker culture, find a ready audience in the uk (figure ). figure cover of make: technology on your time. vol. . . courtesy of maker media inc. p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re methodology although its early history is not absolutely clear, the cigar box guitar is, without doubt, american in origin, and though it has fallen in and out of favor over the intervening years, that is where the current revival began. there is an incredibly active social scene around their making and playing in the united states, documented, for instance, in the film songs inside the box (shores ). here, though, i am interested in how this specific form of diy activity has been taken up in and across the uk, where it is a relatively recent phenomenon with no established tradition of rudimentary instrument-making behind it. because people involved in this particular field of diy activity are dispersed across the uk, this study necessitated a purposive sam- pling approach. primary data was obtained from a very specific group of respondents for qualitative analysis, and only certain practi- tioners could usefully contribute to the study. in addition to those described here, interviews were conducted with professional makers of acoustic and electric guitars, professional tutors of electric guitar- making, and amateur makers of other types of instruments (including wind instruments such as french horns). but the makers of cigar box guitars formed a particular group of interest, because the rudimen- tary nature of the instrument lowers the barrier to entry, lending itself to easy fabrication by amateur makers. initial research identified a small number of people who had made cigar box guitars. these makers were then asked to suggest others involved in cigar box gui- tar culture. the suggested people were contacted and where suit- able, asked to participate in the research study. the study was intended to explore the amateur nature of respondents’ making activity, but the snowball sampling procedures employed introduced certain problems. for example, the terms “amateur” and “professional” can become blurry. one traditional interpretation sees a professional as someone who has undergone extensive training, become specially qualified to a high level, or achieved accreditation by a recognized professional body in order to be able to carry out a particular, usually highly complex role (for example, the legal and medical professions, and disciplines such as architecture that are not open to untrained practitioners). but the more popular current convention interprets a person to be a profes- sional if they derive their main income from carrying out a particular role. it could be argued that the “traditional” definition of a profes- sional does not hold up as strongly in an age of increasing leisure, where contemporary working practices and technological develop- ments conspire to blur the lines between “work” and “leisure,” and a significant number of people hold multiple jobs, many of which involve a level of self-employment. as stebbins ( , ) notes, leisure studies researchers have been content to use the simpler economic definition of professional as a person who is paid for hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re the activity in question. i now see the merit of their position, for what is important for the study of amateurs and hobbyists is that some of them begin to make some sort of living at the activity. some of those interviewed for this study are indeed clearly “amateurs,” happily tinkering about making cigar box guitars purely as a hobby, while others either see themselves as “semi- professional” due to some income being generated or because of their increasingly professional attitude to making. still others have made the deliberate choice to make their living purely from producing cigar box guitars, having voluntarily given up “professional” careers in other industries in order to do so. according to stebbins ( , – ), though, the term “amateur” relies on having a professional counterpart, one who is visible to the amateur and that the amateur either looks to for inspiration or aspires to be. in stebbins’ view, without this professional counter- part element, the leisure side of any activity, although possibly still “serious leisure,” remains at a hobbyist level. if there is no “professional” cigar box manufacturing – and because of its diy nature and use of repurposed components it could be argued that there is not – then the making of cigar box guitars is, by stebbins’ definition, a hobby, not an amateur activity. this is rightly problem- atic to those interviewees who see themselves as professional makers of cigar box guitars. for them it has become a serious, full-time occupation through which they support themselves and their families. for them, the term “amateur” carries negative connotations. the makers the following makers, based in various locations around the uk, were interviewed where they made their instruments. the makers ranged in age from early thirties to late sixties. the semi-structured interviews covered their backgrounds in diy and instrument-making, their inspirations, the design and making processes they employed, and their motivations for making. given the likelihood that makers might also play their product, interviewees were also asked whether they performed with their instruments and whether they saw them- selves as amateur or professional makers and amateur or profes- sional players. the results of each interview were transcribed and coded, and the contents analyzed. nig richards and margaret nig richards (figures and ) and his partner margaret make cigar box guitars mainly for nig’s use as a performer. following a perform- ance in which nig used his “crapocaster,” they sold three or four of this model. not strictly a cigar box guitar, this design came about after nig and margaret received the neck of an electric guitar. p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re wondering what to use as a body, they noticed a spare toilet seat lying around. woofie woofie set up “spatchcock and wurzill” in (figures and ). the company makes and sells tin can guitars, ukuleles, dulcimers, and “canjos” (diddly bows with a tin can as a soundbox). he also figure nig richards with one of his “crapocaster” guitars. figure nig’s one-string cigar box bass made with a broom handle. hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re offers a commission service to turn customers’ own tin cans or wooden boxes into bespoke musical instruments. it was woofie who inspired the title of this article. in response to my request for an interview, he wrote: “i’m not sure how much use to you i would be as i’m just a hairy guy in a shed.” rob stephenson after being made redundant from a job servicing jukeboxes, rob stephenson set up “treadstone guitars” and now makes guitars to order from reclaimed materials (figures and ). he sells them through a nearby guitar shop, or through stalls at festivals. nick barney nick barney is an it consultant who spends much of his spare time teaching guitar and performing as an amateur guitarist (figures and ). he set up “barney cigar box guitars” in . figure woofie in his workshop with a “roberts radio” guitar. p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re chickenbone john chickenbone john uses the tagline “the godfather of the cigar box guitar” on his website (figures and ). he has been making and playing them since and has been instrumental in promoting the activity and the scene in the uk and across northern europe ever since. rob collins rob collins’ website, tinguitar.com, is named after his early practice of making guitars only from biscuit tins (figures and ). bespoke traditional wooden stringed instruments including dulcimers, mando- lins, and guitars now form the mainstay of his work, but he still makes two or three biscuit tin or cigar box guitars a year. dan price dan price is a part-time primary school teacher, performer, and com- poser (figures and ). he has just started to make cigar box figure woofie’s “steampunk” tin guitar made from whiskey tins and copper tubing. hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re guitars purely for the enjoyment of making them, and has only recently sold his few first instruments. standing as makers the interviewees have different levels of experience of constructing cigar box guitars and consequently view their respective roles as amateur or professional in different ways (figure ). none of them have any formal training as luthiers, but only two of the makers, dan price and nick barney, happily admit to being amateurs. dan, using plans in a book, made a cigar box guitar with his son three years ago as a one-off summer “bonding” project, but only started making them again six months ago after earning money through publishing his music and using it to buy some tools. he is “learning as he goes” and has just started selling his work through a local music shop. nick barney has been making instruments for six years after seeing chickenbone john play a cigar box guitar and then researching the subject online. his first attempt at making one went disastrously wrong, but each subsequent build went better as he gained more figure rob stephenson with one of his “pre-worn” three-string cigar box guitars. p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re experience and obtained better tools. he has been making them ser- iously for three years and has sold around eighty guitars to date – mainly to individuals. he has sold some to a local guitar shop for resale, and has taken stands at guitar shows. barney’s self-identifi- cation as an amateur stems from the fact that “after parts, wood and other overheads, i make nothing from the sales of my guitars.” woofie sees himself as “somewhere between amateur and semi- pro” because, though he makes tin can guitars for a living, he is self- taught. he made his first homemade instrument, a one-string diddly bow, around , after seeing someone playing one on youtube. wanting to improve, he made a series of tin can guitars, and “before i knew it i had a houseful and my wife said, ‘you’ve got to do some- thing with these!’” he sold one or two and gave some away as presents before deciding to make them more seriously. he went part-time from his job as a landscape architect, earning the rest of his money through making guitars to order from reclaimed materials. he took forty or so guitars and set up a stall at a festival. sales were strong and he decided to make guitars full time. figure two of rob’s cigar box guitars ready to ship. hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re nig richards and rob stephenson see themselves as semi-pro- fessional makers. around , nig read about old blues players using homemade guitars and decided to have a go by attaching a neck to his wife’s jewelry box. having no formal training in design or making, he learned through trial and error and developed his know- ledge slowly, over a number of years, including one spent doing pov- erty relief work in south africa where music played on homemade instruments was an important part of the culture. nig and his partner margaret have resisted making their own instruments in quantity, as it would change the way they feel about the activity: “it’s got to be fun and that’s really why we don’t want to, we kind of resisted becoming a cottage industry.” he has made around thirty to forty guitars and occasionally gets some income from selling instruments that people have asked him to make, although “always at a loss as basing the final price on the true cost of time, effort and materials would make the sale price prohibitive.” rob stephenson says, “i’m a semi-professional maker as most of the time i am a stay-at-home dad.” he has no training in woodwork, but has altered every guitar he has ever owned. unlike nig and figure nick barney in his shed with a partly built three-string cigar box guitar. p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re margaret, rob saw making cigar box guitars as a business oppor- tunity from the very start. he was let go from his job in and was considering retraining as a photographer when his friend said “have you heard of seasick steve? have you tried to make a cigar box guitar?” he researched it on youtube, downloaded templates from the cigar box nation website, and had soon made his first gui- tar. through word of mouth rob was soon busy with orders to make more. he set up “treadstone guitars” and has now made and sold over guitars. two interviewees regard themselves as professional makers. like rob stephenson, rob collins has “tinkered” with electric guitars to modify the sound since he was a teenager. more recently, he has built complete guitars from parts salvaged from other instruments. around , his playing got him interested in building his own tin and cigar box instruments. he started with a ukulele made from a yorkshire tea tin, posted it on the musical instrument maker’s forum (http://www.mimf.com/), and went from there. though initially a hobby, before long there came “a point where you’ve got to get rid of everything before you’ve got space to make any more.” he sold figure nick’s “flying v” and “standard” four-string cigar box guitars. hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re http://www.mimf.com/ figure chickenbone john with a guitar made for him by a friend. figure a row of john’s cigar box guitars ready to go. p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re some of the instruments he had made, which gave him the confi- dence to invest in better tools. soon it had evolved into a self-funding hobby. when his full-time job as a chemical engineer was reduced to part-time, the instrument building became a side business run out of his loft conversion. he continued to grow in confidence and ambition, adding to his repertoire more “traditional” instruments such as all- wood ukuleles, dulcimers, mandolins, guitars, and tenor guitars. three years ago, he left his engineering job and went full-time as an instrument-maker and moved into a small workshop unit on a local trading estate. he has made around instruments, of which figure rob collins with a cigar box guitar kit designed for a workshop. figure some of rob’s more traditional wooden ukuleles in progress. hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re figure dan price with one of his first cigar box guitars. figure a cigar box ukulele dan helped his friend’s son make for a school project. p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re have been biscuit tin or cigar box guitars. he says, “as a maker, i am most definitely professional – it is my sole source of income and i’m supporting a family of four from my luthier business.” chickenbone john made numerous instruments as a young boy, producing his first electric guitar at the age of fourteen. he left music while he trained professionally as an architect. after being in practice for a number of years, he discovered cigar box guitars through the internet and decided to make one. he then offered to make cigar box guitars for people who asked after seeing him play them, and then sold them through ebay. he treated it purely as an interesting hobby until an economic recession hit his architecture practice hard. by he had begun earning more money from making and selling cigar box guitars than he did in his professional practice, and gave up architecture altogether. he now makes between and cigar box guitars a year which usually sell for between £ and £ . at the time of this writing, he was coming up to making his th cigar box guitar. being seen as professional is important to him because, making guitars and everything associated with this is my sole source of income. the business is run by myself and my daugh- ter. my wife is retired and so apart from my wife’s pension, the cigar box guitar business is the only earned income that supports our household … . as for making guitars, both me and my daughter are professional in the true and full sense of the word – it’s a set of skills that we’ve learned and by those skills we earn our living. chickenbone john is a uk registered trademark and we are vat registered. standing as performers the interviewees also have different levels of experience performing live in front of an audience, though these levels do not align with their experience as makers (see figure ). even though woofie, nick barney, rob collins, and rob stephenson have all played the guitar or banjo for many years, all describe themselves as amateur or even reluctant players, only really playing cigar box guitars in order to demonstrate and promote them to potential customers. rob stephenson has played electric guitar in heavy metal bands since the age of fourteen, and nick barney teaches guitar on a part-time basis. woofie even has a “stage” in his stall when selling at festivals “so people can play and i don’t have to, which is my plan.” playing music live is a much more important part of life for dan price and nig richards, both of whom describe themselves as semi- professional musicians. dan describes himself as being “obsessed” by music, having played guitar in bands for many years. after cutting his job as a primary school teacher down to a part-time role, he now spends half his week writing and successfully publishing music with a song-writing partner. making cigar box guitars has allowed dan to hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re learn how to play slide guitar, which he says “is great. i’ve been able to test-run my own stuff!” he is also now experimenting in making glass slides from the necks of old wine bottles. nig admits to being a player first and foremost, and has played in numerous bands since the s. he has now gained a reputation for performing live with his own, homemade instruments. he says: guitar players will always tell you, and it is certainly true for me, that what i play will depend on the instrument i’ve got in my hand. so, if i’ve got the telecaster in my hand, it will be very “country” kind of licks, you know. if i’ve got the strat in, it’ll go very kind of “soul music-y.” if i’ve got my cigar box it’ll be full-on blues bottleneck sort of stuff, you know, so the instrument deter- mines the kind of music i’m going to play. both dan and nig perform on stage regularly, dan with his skiffle band the original black diamonds and nig with his rhythm and blues band the primates. they get paid to perform, even if, by their own admission, they probably don’t charge enough for their gigs. chickenbone john is an experienced player and gigging musician. he has played stringed instruments since childhood, and in college he was in a number of punk bands, one of which recorded a song that was played on the john peel show on bbc radio . he regards himself as a professional musician, even though he earns very little income from the pursuit. he says live music is “essential to what we [his family business] do” and is a paying member of the musician’s union. john is heavily invested in the culture of cigar box guitars. in , he organized boxstock, a cigar box guitar festival that was the first uk event to bring cigar box guitar players together. it is now an annual event and all performers are paid. he has received a lot of figure map of interviewees’ perceptions of their standing as players and makers. p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re international publicity over the years, and as a cigar box guitar player, has toured with seasick steve. as with nig richards, the connection between making and playing is particularly strong for chickenbone john, and he is part of a network of players, some of whom play his instruments, which he understandably finds rewarding. in response to being asked about the difference between playing an off-the-shelf instrument and a homemade one, he answered, you are connected a bit more when you’ve actually made the thing yourself. … i love playing cigar box guitars and i love to see what people can do with it. that’s the other cool thing. there’s one or two pro artists – a guy called brooks williams … [and] hollowbelly, a very good friend of mine … and it’s great when you see that or hear a record and think, “that’s the stuff that i made”. the design and construction process with none of the makers having had any formal training as a luthier, it is perhaps inevitable that there would be significant variation in the design and construction processes they each employ, especially given the varied nature of cigar box guitars. only one of the inter- viewees – rob collins – creates detailed preparatory drawings. he uses cad software to create templates before making anything, be it a biscuit tin ukulele or a traditional tenor guitar. when the others begin a project, they do not make any detailed plans of what they are going to do, but just “get stuck in,” sometimes scribbling an idea down on a back of an old envelope (nick barney). apart from care- fully measuring the scale length, which needs to be accurate so the instrument will play properly, they just go by what, as rob stephenson says, “feels right.” woofie’s approach is “organic”: “you have an idea what goes where but the bits in between sort of grow as you go.” he admits the rest is designed “on the bench.” despite being a trained architect familiar with drafting plans, chickenbone john takes the same approach and designs his guitars by eye, “under the tools, under the saw.” as a form of diy, the cigar box gui- tar, by its very nature, affords a high level of creative freedom and exploration. the use of found objects, reclaimed materials, and the huge variety of boxes or tins that might be used as a soundbox require that almost every item be made as a distinctive, one-off piece. the enjoyment and freedom of this amateur approach was best conveyed by nig richards and his partner margaret: there are no plans, you know. a real luthier would sit down and pull out a roll of wallpaper and draw in full size exactly what you want. we just sit here with a load of parts, don’t we? and scratch our head and think “how are we going to stick this on that?” … [then, at the end], “look at that, it’s brilliant!” and then realise you’ve screwed your shirt to the worktop. you know, all these hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re little things that amateurs get involved in! i’d like to think that leo fender was the same, with his shirt screwed to his prototypes! it really is sort of just untried and untested. the making process for the guitar usually starts with whatever receptacle is being used for the body. it is cut so as to allow a sin- gle-piece through neck to be fitted into it. (the body not usually being strong enough or suitable for a separate neck to be attached and take the tension of the strings.) the strings – sometimes two or four, but more usually three – are then attached to the bottom end of the through neck, raised over the surface of the body by a bridge – often a bolt, piece of rod, or even an old key – and stretched over the “nut” at the top end of the neck before being threaded through machine heads or tuners to allow tightening of the strings and their tuning into an open chord to allow slide playing. sound holes are often cut into the top of the body (especially if it is purely an acoustic model), and if using electrics, the pick-ups, control knobs, and jack socket are wired in place inside the box before it is finally sealed. the fact that the same parts are rarely used twice in making cigar box guitars means this process always involves experimentation and an element of trial and error. authenticity the participants clearly stated that their interest in cigar box guitars stemmed at least in part from notions about their “authenticity.” the instrument’s appeal appears to be constructed around the very fact that it is handmade without the need for specialist equipment. this distinguishes the instruments from professionally made or factory- produced guitars. the search for authenticity is in some cases a deliberate attempt to generate kinds or qualities of sounds close to those made by early blues guitar players, without spending money on expensive pick-ups, valve amplifiers, or a range of effects pedals. as nig richards says, they don’t have the character, you know. the thing for me is the character … people have spent a fortune, and probably still do, in studios, trying to recreate an authentic blues sound. and you know, really, the authentic blues sound is a cigar box and a cheap amp, because that’s what those guys had! you know, the sound came out of poverty, so trying to recreate it with buying more and more sort of stuff for your apple mac isn’t going to do it. in other cases, the quest for authenticity it a reaction to the exces- sive costs of factory-made guitars, especially since some of those costs are seen to arise from brand name recognition and association or with celebrity players rather than the “real” cost of manufacturing a factory instrument. as chickenbone john says, p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re i was about to buy a good guitar, thinking i can actually afford to buy myself a martin or a lowden or a gibson or something. i thought, all the guys – the music i’m listening to, the old-time blues stuff – they didn’t have fancy guitars. they were just street singer performers. all those players would have had cheap guitars really – the classic one is the sears roebuck catalog where you’d put cents down. [i thought] i don’t need a fancy guitar. then i think i was online or something and i heard about the idea of the cigar box guitar. i think it’s the ultimate cheap guitar. a stick in a box. a box that had been thrown away and a broom handle or something like that. made myself one. then i played it at a jam session or whatever, and people would say “that’s really cool.” a real paradox emerges here: a cigar box guitar made today may differ very little physically from one made at the end of the nineteenth century, but, in reality, it is still not the same thing. one major differ- ence lies in the reason for their production. today’s cigar box guitars, despite their individual nature, could be argued to be mere reproduc- tions. they do not arise from necessity, as did the original instru- ments made by poverty-stricken musicians. they arise instead from desire, made deliberately to recall an earlier age, to reject main- stream mass production, to stand out from the crowd, or for the sheer pleasure of making. as dan price – whose guitars bear a sticker referencing woody guthrie’s famous slogan “this machine kills fascists” – contemplates: i think people are genuinely looking for something a bit more, are- n’t they, something a bit more bespoke? i think it’s part of that sort of hipster thing of having craft beer. there being a story behind it. that’s what people have told me – oh, people need to see the story behind it. for me, i’m forty-nine so that doesn’t really matter to me, but i think people younger than us are more interested in the story of how things are made. which is a really interesting thing when you think about the world we live in, where you can basically buy anything mass produced. go online and you’ve got amazon prime and you get it the next day! it’s bizarre, isn’t it, in that world. that something bespoke made by some guy like me in a little studio somewhere in west yorkshire is of interest to anybody, but i suppose it is. this penchant for authenticity and bespoke production drives some members in the scene. perhaps blind to their obvious status as a reproduction, cigar box guitars are often seen as a deliberately handmade, one-off object that is neither a monetized nor market- driven product. so much is this the case that those involved in serial production often experience a backlash. chickenbone john describes this as follows: the whole internet phenomenon is very curious on things like forums and that, because there’s a lot of people who spend a lot of time on there. but the people who are actually doing it don’t hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re spend any time on there, because they’re too bloody busy. … you get this peculiar reversal of things where everybody wants to create a cottage industry and then the people who actually take off – they’re almost rejected by the people who aspire to doing it. when one of their kind actually does something, they all think “sold out,” he’s making a bloody living! so that’s not right, i want to do that, he’s done it. so there’s people like that. … i think for most people it’s just a little hobby, a bit of pocket money. whereas there’s just a few of us, it’s our livelihood, we do nothing but. i haven’t got a day job; this is my day job. so it’s a different kettle of fish. it’s curious. it’s an interesting phenomenon. there is a handful of people making a living at it. this “authenticity” paradox is further complicated by the compo- nents makers use to fabricate cigar box guitars, and how they finish them. some of the interviewees expressed ethical preferences for repurposed parts, salvaged from broken or discarded instruments, or for new parts purchased from local suppliers. however, when cer- tain parts are needed, or costs need to be kept down, parts are regularly bought from china. when interviewees were asked where they get the parts to build their instruments, the majority replied “ebay”. even a cursory ebay search reveals that a whole infrastruc- ture of suppliers has emerged to cater to the hobby. any part required – be it the cigar box itself, the electrics, the machine heads, sound hole bezels, or string sets – can be bought from a range of companies, with the vast majority produced in china. in fact, com- plete kits to make a one-off cigar box guitar are readily available, which many purists would argue kind of defeats the point. it is now even possible to custom order specific parts for one’s unique design. for chickenbone john, who is operating at a larger production scale, component supply has a particularly international flavour: these [pickups] come from china, these particular ones. but we have them made. i try to source stuff as near as i can to here. tools are made in sheffield. the saws are made in sheffield of course. the special fretting hammers, they’re made in birmingham. the other tools we actually have them made in wolverhampton. a lot of machine heads, the tuners, and the fret wire, that all comes from holland. some of the electrics come from liechtenstein of all places. cable from holland. some parts come from america. we do buy a lot of machine heads and pick- ups from china, but what amazed me … i thought they would have warehouses full of this stuff and i started negotiating with people and they said this is the price, we’ll be shipping it in about three or four weeks because we’re going to be making them. what plating do you want on it? it’s pretty cool. i thought there would be some vast warehouse. it’s obviously a relatively small enterprise that can do all this stuff and it’s custom-made for you, which is fantastic. the hobby has now become so popular, and people are making them in such numbers, that finding cheap, used boxes has become p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re quite difficult. casual discussions with tobacconists shows they used to give them away freely, but, as demand rose, began charging for them. now they sell them as soon as (or even before) the last cigars in the box have been sold. there are not only companies online that sell used cigar boxes, but also companies that sell virgin boxes in quantity that have never seen the inside of a cigar factory. some of the makers interviewed have used these suppliers when other sour- ces have run out. rob stephenson, for example, often resorts to brand new cigar boxes in order to meet demand, and then goes to great lengths to “age” them by covering the boxes with boot polish or with black spray paint and then sanding them. rob is convinced that these homegrown methods produce the effect that buyers want: it seems to be my forte – it can be quite a drawn out process, especially if you’re doing multi layered stuff. waiting for boot pol- ish to dry is a nightmare. i have sold ones that are pristine but it’s not something i make a big habit of. i think they’ve got more character. rob has even developed his own “rust compound” – a mix of ingredients that he applies to any polished or chromed components in order to make them look old. the church of the three strings as might be expected in relation to a purely voluntary activity, the makers all stated that they were very happy to be doing what they were doing, with some recounting almost obsessive behavior in mak- ing their guitars. most spend long periods of time carrying out con- struction in their sheds or workshops, where focused concentration places them in a world of their own and time passes unnoticed. andrew jackson describes this phenomenon in relation to diy, refer- ring to csikszentmihalyi’s concept of “flow” – “a form of pleasure resulting from a merging of action and experience” (jackson , ). dan price says, the great thing for me about doing it is that it’s such a solitary endeavor really. … but that’s what i love. i come here on thursday. i stick some music on and i just do. … i get a text, my phone goes at . – are you coming home for your tea? similarly, woofie states, “i go in the shed about am and i’m there till pm much to my wife’s infuriation. … it’s like a time warp in the shed, come out and its dark, how did that happen?” the making process was inevitably described by all as “a labor of love.” all the makers experienced the joy to be found in “tinkering” in the physical aspects of construction. woofie said, i think the fun comes from solving little problems as you go along. genuinely, the research and development time i tend to enjoy hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re much more than [being] out on the road flogging … i can’t lie, i mean i have to pay the bills, but now i’ve been doing it for a few years i can’t imagine wanting to do anything else ’cos i love it. it is the joy of someone giving you a tin then you give them a guitar in return – it’s quite satisfying. there also emerged a motivational element of altruism running unexpectedly through a number of the interviews, with makers fondly recalling the feelgood factor of working to help others. in some cases, this was simply a case of helping someone make a guitar, such as dan price’s recollection of jointly making a cigar box guitar with his son or helping a fellow band member’s child make a little cigar box ukulele for a school project. in others, altruism operated on a larger scale, as with nig richards carrying out poverty relief work in south africa. he explains, in all the townships and the squatter camps, music was very big. but people couldn’t afford instruments, so they were making them themselves. and we came across so many amazing instru- ments, you know, that people were getting music out of. … we made ukuleles and had a go at violins – all sorts of things. but the rule was, we had to use, as far as possible, unbought materi- als. the kids were doing it for fun. other philanthropic activity is also carried out by makers. woofie offers a “make and play a canjo day” to schools, but often finds they can’t afford it. nick barney, rob collins, and chickenbone john each run workshops for different groups of people, wherein attendees, often youths, learn to make and play a cigar box instrument. while there is admittedly a financial element involved, these workshops are clearly not very lucrative. the motivation for running them clearly lies in the emotional rewards they generate. the most experienced in this respect is chickenbone john, who has run workshops with over , people: if they come to make a guitar, in a day we can teach them how to make their instrument from a stick of wood and a box and then learn how to play it. it’s very satisfying. those are really hard days, because we spend a lot of time preparing all the parts, loading the van up, driving, set everything up, then once we start, it’s full tilt from am ’til pm, with hardly a breath taken. but at the end of the day, you’ve got twenty happy people who’ve built an instrument and some of them have never even played an instrument and they’re going home and they can play it. that is … an evangelical thing. you’re going out and spreading the good word of the church of the three strings. it’s a really nice thing. it does keep you going. the role of the internet one of the most striking aspects of these interviews is the extent to which the internet has been central to the makers’ activity. they p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re seem to recognize that “the ‘making is connecting’ power of the internet … offers us a potential way to disrupt the inevitability and dominance of the one-size-fits-all broadcasting and consumerism model” (gauntlett , ). they have all, in one way or another, resorted to online resources to either source information about how to make cigar box guitars, find inspiration for designs and to source components for making them, identify places and events at which to perform or to sell, or contact other makers or performers that use cigar box guitars. the interviewees were well aware of a number of websites, but all were most familiar with cigar box nation. most cited it as the place that they found their first plans for constructing an instrument, and recognized it as the go-to place for anyone interested in the subject. cigar box nation emerged from a single-page website set up by shane speal in . it received so many followers that it kept mov- ing hosts to accommodate its size. by it had , members and at the time of writing it has , members, making it by far the largest online resource for cigar box guitar-making, with an online forum and a repository of videos and downloadable plans. the use of youtube as a source for instructional videos has been of huge value to all interviewees. it has provided practical advice on everything from building a simple one-string canjo to constructing complex scarf joints for guitar headstocks and wiring electrical cir- cuits connecting pick-ups to the control knobs and jack sockets. dan price found it enormously helpful when he was first beginning to make cigar box guitars. others, like nig richards, really appreciate how much easier it now is to find obscure information that was once very difficult to track down. youtube was also used by chickenbone john, who searched for online video of players’ per- formances in order to generate the network that led him to organize the boxstock festival. nick barney uses pinterest regularly as a source of inspiration for new designs. as described above, ebay is used regularly by all the makers to source components for producing cigar box guitars from all over the world. it has also been used by many of the makers to sell their finished products. dan price sold his first guitar by posting an image of it on facebook, and others such as rob collins have found that social media sites often lead directly to requests to purchase or to have a bespoke guitar made. of the makers, woofie, rob stephenson, nick barney, rob collins, and chickenbone john all have their own detailed websites to promote and sell their work online. conclusions the above findings describe a very particular form of do-it-yourself activity that coalesces around a subculture of musical performance or participation. perhaps uniquely, it combines production with public performance, often disseminating the aspects of the culture to a non-diy related audience. hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re why the making of such an anachronistic, basic instrument should have become such a popular pastime in an age when high-quality instruments are readily available, and digital music formats have threatened to remove physical formats is another of the paradoxes surrounding the cigar box guitar. as some of the makers have hinted, their popularity may very well be a reaction to this state of affairs – an active resistance against the homogenizing nature of global capit- alism and passive digital culture. it is ironic that even though the instruments are not complicated to make, it is digital technology that has lowered the barriers to participation and spread the necessary knowledge to spark their construction around the world. the internet and social media clearly play a huge part in bringing the people involved together into an active community, regularly exchanging news, events, performances, and know-how. all of the participants in this study were aware that they were part of a growing scene based around an interest in cigar box guitars in the uk, and while they all admitted the internet had played a key role in promot- ing the making aspect, most identified seasick steve’s celebrity as at the heart of the movement. the majority of the makers said that when they talked to new customers or to audiences after a perform- ance, seasick steve would inevitably be brought up by people who had either seen his live performances, seen him on tv, or watched his youtube videos, and were well aware of his association with homemade instruments. for most of the makers, the activity had grown and expanded much further than originally intended, becoming a side business for some, and a sole source of income for others. while the construction of cigar box guitars is clearly a diy activity, the research here shows that it cannot be dismissed as purely a hobby or amateur activity. leaving aside arguments about the diy nature of the object negating it as a “professional” instrument, the makers see themselves on a spectrum stretching from amateur to professional, largely based around the amount of financial return gained from their production and the amount of time they devote to the activity. at a time when self-employment is seemingly becoming a de facto position for younger generations, the distinctions between amateur and profes- sional status is becoming a moot point. acknowledgments i would like to take this opportunity to thank all the interviewees who generously donated their time to support this work, and the art and design research centre at sheffield hallam university for supporting my involvement. disclosure statement no potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re funding this research was funded by the art and design research centre, sheffield hallam university. notes . stebbins ( ) describes the three forms of leisure activity as “serious leisure,” “casual leisure,” and “project-based leisure”. the differentiation between the three depends on the frequency of activity, amount of skill required, and the level of reward in terms of fulfillment (xii). orcid paul atkinson http://orcid.org/ - - - references atkinson, paul. . “do it yourself: democracy and design.” journal of design history ( ): – . attfield, judith. . wild things: the material culture of everyday life. london: berg. bbc . . video clip available on the bbc webpage. accessed th april . http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p gzshd. beecher, russell. . sleevenotes to audio cd lightnin’ hopkins: short haired woman. catfish entertainment/charly records. sbluecd . beegan, gerry and paul atkinson. . “professionalism, amateurism and the boundaries of design.” journal of design history ( ): – . booth, stanley. . “furry’s blues ( ).” in peter guralnick et al. (eds) martin scorsese presents the blues. new york: harper collins: – . duckworth, bruce, interview with the author, april , . farley, christopher j. . “big bill broonzy: key to the highway.” in peter guralnick et al. (eds) martin scorsese presents the blues. new york: harper collins: – . gauntlett, david. . making is connecting: the social meaning of creativity, from diy and knitting to youtube and web . . cambridge: polity press. gelber, steven, m. . hobbies: leisure and the culture of work in america. new york: columbia university press. hackney, fiona. . “use your hands for happiness: home craft & make-do-and-mend in british women’s magazines in the s & s.” journal of design history ( ): – . hackney, fiona. . “quiet activism and the new amateur.” design and culture ( ): – . jackson, andrew. . “constructing at home: understanding the experience of the amateur maker.” design and culture ( ): – hairy guys in sheds: the rough and ready world of diy cigar box guitar makers d es ig n an d c u ltu re http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p gzshd jackson, andrew. . “men who make – the ‘flow’ of the amateur designer/maker.” in buszek, maria ed. extra/ordinary: craft culture and contemporary art. north carolina: duke university press. jackson, andrew. . “understanding the home workshop: project space, project time, and material interaction.” interiors: design, architecture, culture ( ): – . knott, stephen. . amateur craft, history and theory. london: bloomsbury. mcnair, john. . cigar box nation website. accessed april , . http://www.cigarboxnation.com/page/ -string-cigar-box- mandolin. pacey, philip. . “‘anyone designing anything?’ non-professional designers and the history of design.” journal of design history ( ): – . roland, albert. . “do-it-yourself: a walden for the millions?” american quarterly ( ) part : – . saunders, nicholas j. . trench art: materials and memories of war. oxford: berg. shores, max. . songs inside the box, the university of alabama center for public television and radio. see also the website. accessed may , . http://www.songsinsidethebox.com. shove, elizabeth, matthew watson, martin hand and jack ingram. . the design of everyday life. oxford: berg. speal, shane. a. cigar box nation website. accessed april , . http://www.cigarboxnation.com/m/discussion?id ¼ % atopic% a . speal, shane. b. cigar box nation website. accessed april , . http://www.cigarboxguitar.com/james-brown-didnt-invent- soul- -newspaper-clipping-champions-cigar-box-banjo/. stebbins, robert. . serious leisure. new jersey: transaction publishers. sutton, dave. . an obsession with cigar box guitars. east petersburg, pa: fox chapel publishing. trynka, paul. . “buddy guy arrives in chicago.” in peter guralnick et al. eds martin scorsese presents the blues. new york: harper collins: . waksman, steve. . “california noise: tinkering with hardcore and heavy metal in southern california.” social studies of science ( ): – . p. atkinson d es ig n an d c u ltu re http://www.cigarboxnation.com/page/ -string-cigar-box-mandolin http://www.cigarboxnation.com/page/ -string-cigar-box-mandolin http://www.songsinsidethebox.com http://www.cigarboxnation.com/m/discussion?id &hx d; &hx ; atopic&hx ; a http://www.cigarboxnation.com/m/discussion?id &hx d; &hx ; atopic&hx ; a http://www.cigarboxguitar.com/james-brown-didnt-invent-soul- -newspaper-clipping-champions-cigar-box-banjo/ http://www.cigarboxguitar.com/james-brown-didnt-invent-soul- -newspaper-clipping-champions-cigar-box-banjo/ 	abstract 	introduction 	do-it-yourself as an area of study 	history: locating the cigar box guitar 	methodology 	the makers 	nig richards and margaret 	woofie 	rob stephenson 	nick barney 	chickenbone john 	rob collins 	dan price 	standing as makers 	standing as performers 	the design and construction process 	authenticity 	the church of the three strings 	the role of the internet 	conclusions 	acknowledgments 	disclosure statement 	funding 	references _ch .indd chapter the lady vanishes: aurality and agency in cinematic ophelias kendra preston leonard w ith the exception of kenneth branagh’s hamlet , billed (disin-genuously) as the first-ever “full-length” version of the play on film, major english-language cinema productions of hamlet have reduced the screen time, dialogue, and singing allotted to ophelia by nearly half since laurence olivier’s film of . in purely statistical terms, olivier’s ophelia is accorded words, franco zeffirelli’s allowed only , and michael almereyda’s a scant . in contrast, branagh’s ophelia has words, standing as the only popular-cinema ophelia to retain her sole soliloquy in act . increasingly, we see ophelia being treated by directors as an object only marginally necessary for the plot. in almereyda’s hamlet of , her inclusion is both minimal in terms of spoken dia- logue for the actor and for the impact her actions have on the rest of the characters; in this production, rosencrantz and guildenstern are afforded more presence and weight than ophelia. it is not unlikely that a future hamlet may well dispense with the speaking parts of her character— or with ophelia altogether. ophelia is generally shown in cinematic adaptations of hamlet in three sequences: when hamlet accosts her in her chamber in . ; when she is used as bait by polonius and claudius in . ; and in her act scenes of madness. as i will discuss in detail, all three of these appearances are truncated in the olivier, zeffirelli, and almereyda hamlet s, which represent three of the four most widely screened english-language hamlet s of the twentieth century. in _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm kpl typewritten text kpl typewritten text ● kendra preston leonard zeffirelli’s and almereyda’s films, the text of ophelia’s report of hamlet’s appearance in her closet in . is omitted and shown in visual treatment only; all three films eliminate her . soliloquy and cut her spoken and sung lines in act . these cuts necessarily also reduce ophelia’s screen time: olivier’s ophelia gets : minutes, zeffirelli’s : , and almereyda’s : (in comparison to branagh’s : ). while olivier’s ophelia speaks in all of her appearances, zeffirelli’s and almereyda’s are often mute, such as zeffirelli’s scriptless . and almereyda’s silent ophelia—already fantasizing about drowning—in his adaptation of . . the silences afforded ophelia in zeffirelli’s and almereyda’s presentations of . provide early clues to the level of vocality that will be permitted her throughout the film as well as explain their rationale. none of these ophelias is granted her . soliloquy, disempowering her by eliminating the sole display of her mental faculties before she succumbs to madness. for olivier’s ophelia, her silence in this scene is a result of both her extreme emotional distress caused by hamlet’s rejection and the presence of polonius, who tells her to be quiet, and claudius, who ignores her entirely. she is a nonentity already, in the eyes of these characters, a creature without reason. zeffirelli’s ophelia displays a simplicity of mind combined with fear of hamlet, a much older man; almereyda’s ophelia finds herself under constant surveillance by polonius, claudius’s men, and even by hamlet himself, who videotapes her reading in bed. in both cases, ophelia’s agency—in the form of vocality—is suppressed by the men who surround her. within the text, ophelia’s role is an important one, advancing the inves- tigation into hamlet’s apparent madness and later offering the audience cru- cial information as to the true state of corruption within the court. when ophelia’s lines are lost through cuts made by the director or scriptwriter, her role as a commentator or, as foucault would have it, the truth-teller about the actions of the court, is muted. despite her delusions and irrational behavior during her mad scenes, ophelia is evidently enough in control of her faculties to attempt to communicate through symbolic spoken and musical means. because ophelia sings and recites fragments of songs, proverbs, and folklore that are familiar to contemporary audiences, the meanings of her texts were plain for early modern theatergoers. a contemporary audience would have well understood that ophelia’s gift of fennel and columbine to claudius was an insult, as these represent f lattery, foolishness, and adultery. “ophelia’s madness is represented almost entirely through fragmentary, communal, and thematically coherent quoted discourse,” writes carol thomas neely, “she recites proverbs, formulas, tales, and songs that ritualize passages of transformation and loss—lost love, lost chastity, and death.” to gertrude _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm the lady vanishes ● she gives rue, a commonly known abortifacient also associated with adul- tery, and then declares that there is no one to whom she can give her daisy, the symbol of innocence. indeed, more than one careful reader claims that these lines also hint at ophelia’s pregnancy: she and gertrude are to wear their rue “with a difference” ( . . – ) —gertrude’s difference being to admit her sin, ophelia’s to remove the effects of hers. ophelia’s vocality thus empowers her, particularly in her madness, allowing her to express her- self through powerfully suggestive references. the inclusion of ophelia’s musicality is as important as her spoken dialogue. although, as david lindley notes, the exact sources for all of ophelia’s songs have not been found, they “clearly belong to the popular bal- lad tradition.” english stage history records that, in shakespeare’s time, the actor playing the part sang many lines to popular tunes, including “bonny sweet robin,” “robin is to the greenwood gone,” and “walsingham,” all of which appear in william chappell’s the ballad literature and popular music of the olden time , a nineteenth-century source for music featured in early modern theater productions. ophelia’s song “bonny sweet robin” is a lament for a dead lover (“robin” is also slang for penis and used frequently in songs in this context). altering the lyrics to “walsingham”—“how should i your true-love know / from another one? / by his cockle hat and staff, / and his sandal shoon” ( . . – )—ophelia shifts the gender of the original protagonist in order to sing of a male lover’s departure. interspersed with these fragments and variations on more serious airs, ophelia sings the entire text of one bawdy song, “to-morrow is saint valentine’s day,” representative of seventeenth-century ballads telling the story of a woman’s seduction by her social superior. ophelia herself could well be the maid let in “that out a maid / never departed more” ( – ). the very act of singing is also important in underscoring ophelia’s condi- tion. susan mcclary writes that “women who sang [of their own accord] in public . . . were regarded as courtesans and were pressured to grant sexual favors in exchange for being permitted to participate in cultural production.” for women presumed chaste, song was, instead, the purview of the madwoman, and this aspect of a disturbed woman’s behavior was especially emphasized on the stage. audiences who may have missed the actor’s initial physical cues would certainly have recognized the character’s distraction, given her insis- tence on singing in the presence of the court. as leslie dunn has shown, ophelia’s act of singing suggests both her courage and torment: in shakespeare’s dramatic construction of ophelia as madwoman, the discourse of music has a privileged place: ophelia’s songs dominate her mad scene, not only in their profusion, but in their disruptive and invasive _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm ● kendra preston leonard power. from her first entrance ophelia uses singing to command atten- tion and confuse response, frustrating gertrude’s attempts to contain her utterance within the bounds of polite conversation. thus, song lyrics provide ophelia with a certain power even in her very unraveling. foucault has written that the role of the fool or madman in early modern drama is often that of the truth-teller: “he speaks love to lovers, the truth of life to the young, the middling reality of things to the proud, to the insolent, and to liars.” indeed, this is ophelia’s role beginning with the onset of her madness in . . none of her words are trivial, all of them imparting information or moving the plot forward; musically, ophelia’s text is a rich and complex tapestry of deliberate references. over the course of time, the musical aspects of ophelia’s role have been subject to the changing tastes of stage practice—from the elizabethan era, when the role was performed by a boy or young man playing a lute, to modern-day staging, in which actors rarely play the instrument or speak all of ophelia’s lines, much less sing any of them. women first took on the role in the eighteenth century, at which point it appears that ophelia no longer played the lute, although her songs may have been supported by a small ensemble. during the first part of the eighteenth century, hardin aasand writes, “ophelia’s entrance resulted in a censored script that removed the bawdiness of her madness for a more refined, more operatic impression. in fact, the performance history of ophelia shows an ambiguous regard for her character.” by the late nineteenth century, actors considered the part an essential element of staging repertoire and singers were rarely, if ever, engaged for the role. stage performances at this time usually featured ophelia’s full text with her songs presented musically, usually unaccompanied. modern filmmakers, however, have not generally followed the old stage practices for presenting ophelia’s mad songs, instead relying on the actor to sing a cappella and embellishing her other scenes with new music. there are several explanations for this discontinuity in ophelia’s musical presentation: the lack of continuity inherent in musical practice generally as it shifted first from stage productions to silent film, next to early sound film, and thence to modern cinema; the desire for new film scores; and the rise to primacy of the gesamkunstwerk score. while staging and acting techniques were often imported whole cloth into silent films from the stage, sound was not. silent adaptations of shakespeare only rarely had accompanying sheet music or sound cylinders (sarah bernhardt’s hamlet was accompanied by these, containing spoken dialogue and the sounds of dueling only). more often, cinemas employed organists or small orchestras to accompany the films shown there; the majority of these relied on canned cues that could _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm the lady vanishes ● be repurposed for a number of different movies. early silent films of the play were, thus, widely accompanied by a house pianist or organist who selected suitable pieces to accompany the action. with titles like “sorrow,” and “lovers’ embrace,” and “grand march,” these short works, often sold in collections of twenty to thirty pieces, could be used for any number of films. the creation of readily accessible musical accompaniment was a boon for cinema musicians; it also established the common musical signifiers still used in narrative film music. in some cases, these prepackaged sets of accompanying tunes were meant to be ironic or satiric while still conveying some superficial information about the plot. comedian george l. fox’s early hamlet (likely based on his burlesque hamlet travestie ) for the nickelodeon, contained the follow- ing popular tunes: after a duet of thomas moore’s “you’ll remember me,” in the second scene, ophelia sings and dances the minstrel tune “the girl with the golden switch.” the third scene features marcellus and bernardo sing- ing “beautiful night,” an offstage chorus intoning “johnny fill up the bowl,” and hamlet warbling “i’m a native here.” the mousetrap [sic] induces the chorus to sing “shoo fly,” and the graveyard scene features both “five o’clock in the morning” and “why do i weep for thee?” ophelia’s scenes would have been given predictable treatment by a performer reading the cues for “melancholy” or “turmoil” rather than singing the orig- inal lyrics themselves; this shift represents the first instance of the character’s vocality being subverted by musicians playing according to type, establish- ing ophelia as an “entire[ly] lyrical” being, in toshiko oshio’s words. as film and sound technology developed, directors and producers sought out specialist composers to write new music for their sound productions. some filmmakers subscribed to the idea of a gesamtkunstwerk approach to film music: a score that was highly continuous over the course of the film, includ- ing the use of leitmotifs to help audiences identify characters and their emo- tions and actions. scott d. paulin has written about how european directors in particular found gesamtkunstwerk scoring useful: the wagnerian model, with which filmmakers including sergei eisenstein and the french impressionists (including abel gance) were sympathetic, allowed an analogy to be made from the relationship between music and drama in opera, to the relationship between cinema (defined as the visual elements and techniques specific to film) and narrative in the motion picture. _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm ● kendra preston leonard this method was familiar to theater and opera audiences and provided an easily understood means of character identification for those unfamil- iar with the roles or the plots of films. however, as with canned music, scores that traded heavily in leitmotif also promoted the use of stereotyped or generic music. there was little room for composers to incorporate the oft- disparate tunes, set pieces, and songs from stage tradition into a score that called for an organic and holistic set of themes and structures. with production houses allocating greater budgets for film scores, it became clear that hollywood offered composers the chance to earn sig- nificant money, and high-profile modernist composers including aaron copland, virgil thomson, and other classically trained musicians began working in the field. they, too, were more focused on the creation of new music—written to provide a full-length, organic score for each film— than in partnering shakespearean characters with their original music. traces of “robin is to the greenwood gone” and “walsingham,” ophelia’s traditional melodies, remain, but they are, as i will show, obscured, cut, or transformed into spoken presentations. it is paradoxical that at the time new technologies emerged to provide cinematic ophelias the opportunities to be heard on film, her lines and songs were being reduced even beyond what eighteenth-century theater censors had done, thus reducing the power and impact of ophelia’s nascent filmic aurality. olivier cinematic ophelias begin to appear in full-sound productions with the advent of laurence olivier’s hamlet . as bernice kliman has pointed out, olivier’s film is more of a fantasy upon themes of hamlet rather than a true rendition of the play. this is due mostly to the nature of film aesthetics at the time: its somewhat uneasy mingling with the values and traditions of stage productions, as well as olivier’s own desire to present something more akin to a theater-going experience for his audience rather than exploit the new medium’s presentational capabilities beyond filming staged plays. kliman writes that “the relationship between stage and film was somewhat more complicated; the film is a hybrid form, not a filmed play, not pre- cisely a film, but a film-infused play or a play-infused film, a form olivier conceived as being the best possible for presenting the heightened lan- guage of shakespeare.” shakespeareans note that the text is heavily cut, omitting a number of major soliloquies, not to mention entire scenes and characters, including rosencrantz and guildenstern. for olivier, the text is f luid and can be altered and reshaped at will; the goal of the film is sim- ply telling the story in a dramatic fashion. olivier’s alterations to the play _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm the lady vanishes ● are significant: the “nunnery scene” takes place before the “to be or not to be” speech; secondary plot lines are eliminated; and olivier’s editing is an attempt to reconcile what some critics and readers view as shakespeare’s own confusion of events. filmed with a cast of well-known british actors, including jean simmons as ophelia and ellen herlie as gertrude, olivier’s hamlet took most of its interpretative cues from tyrone guthrie’s west end production, in which olivier had played the title role. guthrie and olivier relied heavily on a freudian, oedipal reading of the text, drawn primarily from ernest jones’s essay in applied psycho-analysis . in an interview with kenneth tynan, olivier discussed this approach: i thought it was the absolute resolution of all the problems concerning hamlet. at least, it gave one a central idea which seemed to fill the great vacuum left by all the crossed ideas about hamlet, what he really was, what he really wasn’t, whether he was a man of action, whether he wasn’t a man of action. he could safely be a man of action under the auspices of that particular idea, that he couldn’t kill the king because, subcon- sciously of course, he was guilty himself. much of the film focused on hamlet’s apparent inability to relate normally to women according to early-to-mid twentieth-century heterosexual norms: an obviously oedipal relationship to his mother is introduced early on, with a lingering mouth-to-mouth kiss between them that moves on to gertrude’s ever-solicitous stroking of hamlet’s brow, hands, and torso. (herlie, as gertrude, was twenty-eight at the time of filming, to olivier’s forty-one and simmons’s sixteen.) hamlet’s intensely sexual confrontation with his mother in her chamber during the film’s staging of . seems on its way to full consummation when they are interrupted by the ghost. hamlet’s relationship with ophelia is likewise troubled, albeit in the opposite way: he is aloof with her, as though her female presence is physi- cally distasteful. peter donaldson notes that olivier’s staging of . is inf luenced by dover wilson’s interpretation, in which hamlet overhears polonuis instructing ophelia: because his erotic ideal is embodied in his mother, and because of his foreknowledge that ophelia is a pawn in claudius and polonius’s game, hamlet has no more use or respect for her. kenneth s. rothwell writes in his overview of olivier’s film that “hamlet shows only coldness without a trace of tenderness for the poor, beleaguered young woman, who remains the ultimate female victim.” she becomes the least important of the play’s four major characters, leaving gertrude as the sole sane female figure before ophelia’s actual death. _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm ● kendra preston leonard olivier’s adaptation is scored by william walton, who had also provided the music for olivier’s henry v . in examining the use of music and ophelia’s songs in this hamlet , it is important first to note that critics had earlier condemned olivier’s excess of music in henry v . accordingly, olivier privileges hamlet ’s—and hamlet’s—text over any kind of musical dramat- ics; in scenes with multiple actors present, hamlet’s words are unaccompa- nied by music, so that they might better stand out. in solitary moments, however, such as the soliloquies, hamlet’s lines garner accompaniment even when music is not indicated in the text, and not always effectively; charles hurtgen, writing in shakespeare quarterly , complained that there was too much music behind the speeches, making the film overly operatic in nature: evidently, the composer and olivier felt that the words even of the “to be or not to be” soliloquy required music to aid the imagination, for the speech has been liberally orchestrated. [. . . .] olivier may have hoped that this passage would sound less like a soliloquy with these orchestral punc- tuations. but, in effect, the speech has been turned into a recitative . this contrasts greatly with the comparatively unmusical treatment of ophelia’s decidedly musical text. after all, ophelia’s singing of popular and bawdy songs had been one of the key elements in constructing her mad- ness on stage; the songs she sings are ambiguous but necessary clues to her relationship with hamlet and her understanding of what has happened in elsinore. when they are altered, ophelia’s agency is reduced and also denies the audience her individual point of view borne out by the text. this estab- lishes a “male aurality” that accompanies director olivier’s male gaze, the combination of which effects ophelia’s even greater marginalization. although laura mulvey’s classic definition of the male gaze as framing women in a gendered manner is somewhat dated and its more freudian aspects have been disowned by mulvey herself, the core theory is still per- tinent, serving as a basis for establishing an aural counterpart. as robyn stilwell has written, “one need not even buy the psychoanalytic trappings of such an argument to recognize the camera as an extension of male direc- tors and male cinematographers working for an audience in which the male perspective is not just presumed but assumed to be the norm.” given that, as of , women make up only seven percent of the film indus- try’s population of directors and secure less financing for their projects, it should come as no surprise that every major hamlet —generally a costly endeavor—to appear on screen has been directed by a man. it is also unsurprising, then, that the images resulting from male-led enterprises _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm the lady vanishes ● often objectify or, as mulvey termed it, create a “to-be-looked-at-ness” for the female characters. the concept of male aurality is based on mulvey’s essential observation that in the construction of a work created by a male subject, his aesthetic will dominate the integration of art forms as a totality. with this consideration in mind, it is not too difficult to understand how music—just as much as visual renderings—can be used to situate, delimit, and control women within film. for this particular essay, male aurality refers to the use of music to privilege or emphasize male characters and their actions to the diminishment of female characters and their actions. the most common manifestations of male aural- ity in hamlet films discover either themes or motifs that announce the pres- ence or actions of male characters but fail to do so for female roles of equal stature; a marked lack of or less complex corresponding musical material for female roles; and/or the use of musical expression to define female characters as less serious, stable, or crucial to a film than their male counterparts. at the beginning of . , olivier omits ophelia’s first stanza from “walsingham,” and instead she sings “he is dead and gone, lady,/ he is dead and gone,/ at his head a grass-green turf,/ at his heels a stone” ( – ) to its traditional tune. as in earlier scenes, ophelia is perceived in a contradictory light that both reduces her character’s maturity and emphasizes her physi- cal beauty. the song is interpolated with an infantile, high-pitched crying, which is juxtaposed with olivier’s sexualizing shot of ophelia’s bare upper thigh while she writhes on the ground. continuing on, olivier changes ophelia’s lines from “which bewept to the ground did not go” to “which bewept to the grave did go” ( , emphasis added) in order to emphasize that, at this moment, ophelia is focused on her father’s death rather than on hamlet’s actions towards her. that she is thinking of hamlet is driven home further with the virtual omission of ophelia’s second song, “tomorrow is saint valentine’s day,” the very clear narrative of a woman who has lost her virginity to a man she trusted who shuns her for having done so (in a common double-standard): to-morrow is saint valentine’s day, all in the morning betime, and i a maid at your window, to be your valentine. then up he rose and donned his clo’es, and dupp’d the chamber-door, let in the maid, that out a maid never departed more. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm ● kendra preston leonard by gis, and by saint charity, alack, and fie for shame! young men will do’t if they come to’t, by cock, they are to blame. quoth she, ‘before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed.’ [he answers.] so would i ’a’ done, by yonder sun, and thou hadst not come to my bed. ( – ; – ) ophelia does sing a small excerpt of “st. valentine’s day,” but it occurs after she has been placed under horatio’s watch; only horatio and the two sailors delivering hamlet’s letter to him hear her—even the film’s viewers cannot clearly hear or understand her. she paces about her terrace, pick- ing up and setting down f lowers, singing as she walks away from horatio and the soldiers, away from the camera. lyrics are muff led to the point of abstraction and reduced to a vague tune, fading rapidly while the camera focuses on the three men. horatio speaks over ophelia’s singing, dismissing it entirely, and then leaving her alone. olivier’s removing of this song from its original rehearsal in front of the entire court and shortening its perfor- mance obscures its meaning and diminishes the potential sexual origins of her madness. by prohibiting ophelia from singing fully of her sexuality, her agency as a sexual being is sublimated, not by the pressures of the charac- ter’s situation, but by olivier himself, who alters the text in order to keep the character pure and under male control. furthermore, suppressing her words and singing reduces the force of her madness. if song is meant to be a clear signifier of madness on the early modern stage, reducing its appearance diminishes the power of ophelia’s madness to shock and affect, within the text and for the audience. in these scenes, olivier creates a male aurality by discounting song as a signifier of madness and eliding the possible, personal meaning of the song for ophelia. this ophelia is a sad but minor inconvenience to the court, not a voice of earthy truth in recounting her experiences with hamlet and her observation of the goings-on at elsinore. the original text’s fuller explana- tion of ophelia’s bewildering actions is removed by olivier’s editing in order to focus more on the adventures of hamlet with the pirates. in fact, ophelia’s material is cut short while olivier interpolates a swashbuckling-and-fighting interlude only reported in the play but shown with great drama and swagger in the film. this episode reinforces the primacy of olivier himself in the film and the lack of interest he has in the women’s roles in the play. as i will _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm the lady vanishes ● show, this gendering through vocality and music by olivier is but the begin- ning of a larger trend among directors of cinematic hamlet s and film more broadly to control the agency of female characters and their actions. ophelia sings again from “walsingham” (still very brief ly), before and after bequeathing her f lowers to gertrude, claudius, and laertes. before she gives the f lowers to the assembled group, she sings once more, fac- ing away from the camera and microphone, making her words difficult to understand and easily ignored by players and viewers alike. visually, she appears in the scene as a potential seductress, offering laertes a kiss that threatens to go into decidedly unsisterly territory. physically, she is depicted wearing loose and revealing clothes, the camera’s focus on her breasts mak- ing her a sexualized object, but since ophelia, for olivier, cannot actually be a sexual being, her words pointing to such an identity are diminished by the words of the men present. even when ophelia interrupts claudius and laertes’s conversation, her song—“robin is to the greenwood gone,” replete with its double entendres—is once more obscured by laertes’s comments. only when she resumes speaking in prose as she doles out the f lowers does olivier let the camera refocus on her face and her voice be heard. still, in the last instance of ophelia’s singing, she again has her back to both onstage and viewing audiences; as before, her song is scarcely audible. gertrude, claudius and laertes watch her leave the castle without a single gesture to indicate their concern. ophelia looks back twice to see if they are following her to help her or give her comfort, but her arched eyebrow indicates that she realizes they will not. from this point onward, the court—including her own brother—considers her pitiable but unimportant. she tells them, from a distance, “god be with you,” and very deliberately exits the room. a moment later, ophelia f loats downstream past the camera in a singular, grotesque moment reminiscent of millais’s famous painting of ophelia. she sings, and unsurprisingly, her speech is distorted, broken up with childish giggles and sighs. olivier’s ophelia is quite obviously made to suffer an accidental death; the singing, childlike creature in the water lacks the knowledge and deter- mination to commit suicide. she is rendered speechless by gertrude, who is, after all, at least a narrative witness to the drowning, the queen’s own mind perplexed by the recent events at her court. overall, gertrude’s words are given greater importance, heard more clearly and less interrupted than ophelia’s. throughout the film, ophelia’s appearances and text have been minimized to place her at the very bottom of the social order at elsinore. even the gravedigger is allowed to sing uncensored, a full and lusty pre- amble to ophelia’s burial. _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm ● kendra preston leonard zeffirelli franco zeffirelli presses on with the silencing of ophelia in his hamlet . his ophelia is provided with a text that is cut by almost half in comparison to olivier’s already attenuated role, retaining only words of her first folio lines. in this version, ophelia begins singing long before she succumbs to madness; in fact, she is singing “tomorrow is saint valentine’s day” even as she threads a sewing needle just before hamlet enters for the closet scene. yet zeffirelli’s intent in having her sing this so early in the action is not to suggest that she is sexually experienced, but rather to high- light the opposite. frightened by the disheveled hamlet as she sews, she suggests no hidden relationship with hamlet through song, made clear by helena bonham-carter’s wide-eyed expression. in a discussion about the film, actor mel gibson could not imagine ophelia in a physical relationship with his character, professing himself shocked when asked if hamlet and ophelia had a sexual relationship. ophelia is still a child. . . . while hamlet is . . . thirty. . . . in this produc- tion, ophelia is fourteen years old and just beginning to awaken sexually. . . . she is too young to be sexual, and besides, hamlet would never use her in that way. her song here, truncated by hamlet’s appearance, does not serve to illu- minate the audience or the court as to the nature of their relationship. it is merely a ditty sung by a childlike young woman. it is not surprising, then, that ophelia willingly gives claudius the letters she has received from hamlet and follows his instruction in baiting her erstwhile suitor. the encounter, using a heavily cut . , loses much of its meaning. zeffirelli breaks up this scene, removing hamlet’s command to banish her to a nunnery and placing it, instead, later in the film, just before the performance of the mousetrap. ophelia is denied her “o, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” ( . . ) soliloquy, and claudius does not discuss hamlet’s madness as a threat to the body politic. with her text so cut, this ophelia can convey only a fraction of her emotions. she begins her mad scene by singing to a guard; no members of the court can hear her rhythmic declamation of the song “walsingham.” instead, gertrude watches from her chamber window, unable to discern what ophelia might be saying; the fact that she might be singing instead— which would cause serious concern for her auditors if handled authentically within the film’s medieval setting—cannot be transmitted to gertrude at all. like olivier, zeffirelli dismisses the weight of ophelia’s words by _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm the lady vanishes ● obscuring their impact and altering their delivery to the court. as she next approaches gertrude, ophelia’s lines from “walsingham” clearly refer to polonius. neither gertrude nor claudius nor horatio hears her sing again from “tomorrow is saint valentine’s day” as she exits. only the audience hears this particular song in the film, which excises it as a potential comment on her real or imagined relationship with hamlet. like olivier, zeffirelli disprivileges ophelia’s agency by limiting the extent of her vocality within the text and its audience. when ophelia’s second mad episode takes place, the original text is altered once again to hide its potential meanings. she gives her “f lowers”— bones and straw—to the assembled crowd, but in a reversal of the traditional disbursement. instead of giving fennel and columbines to claudius in an accusation of his adultery, she gives these to gertrude. gertrude, who nor- mally receives rue, watches as ophelia gives this herb, associated with women for its abortifacient properties, to claudius. perhaps in her innocence and distraction, zeffirelli’s ophelia no longer remembers the associations her chosen f lowers and herbs bear; surely zeffirelli knew their meanings despite his changes to the text. yet, laertes gets rosemary and pansies: somehow this ophelia knows that he will be the keeper of her memory and thoughts now that she cannot keep them herself. the last images of ophelia alive show her running and skipping through a meadow on her way to the brook where she will drown. she is shown in the water only from a distance, her status uncer- tain. what is for certain is that zeffirelli’s ophelia has had very little to say or do in this adaptation. because of the cuts to her text and the dismissal of her musical vocalizations, she serves neither as foucault’s knowing fool nor as a particularly compelling character in her own right. almereyda michael almereyda’s hamlet , set in a twenty-first century new york, fea- tures julia stiles as ophelia. stiles, who has spent much of her career in recent shakespearean adaptations (including things i hate about you [ the taming of the shrew ] and o [ othello ]), was cast as a teen favorite with name recognition. despite almereyda’s description of stiles as possessing a “calm seriousness, a sense of unbudgeable inner gravity,” the ophelia he directs is without gravitas , alternately independent and babyish in her pre- sentation. as for the other cinematic ophelias, much of her text is whittled down, even more drastically so than it is for her predecessors: stiles speaks but words. depicted in this adaptation as a photographer and presumably, given her age and activities, a college student, ophelia has an uneven relationship _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm ● kendra preston leonard with laertes and polonius. she relies on them when she is tired of being self-reliant and tolerates them with petulance, complete with eye-rolling and pouting lips. she is frequently silent in sullenness or boredom; when she does speak, her lines are brief and edited to be brusque. in her discus- sion with laertes extracted from . . – , it is clear that she is fond of her brother and familiar enough with him such that her jibes about his own sexual behavior are neither shy nor defensive. with her father, ophelia is at once rebellious and dependent, arguing with him about her relationship with hamlet yet allowing him to tie her shoelace like a small child. as one of film’s most sympathetic and caring poloniuses, bill murray approaches the role as an overanxious father rather more than functioning as the king’s primary courtier. ophelia is provided with a rich aural landscape through the film’s diegetic background music and nondiegetic score, but the text of her own songs is markedly suppressed. throughout the film, she is surrounded by diegetic music: in her apartment, music plays as she develops photo- graphs; at polonius’s residence, music plays as she and laertes speak before his departure for france. when she goes mad, however, this background aurality shifts. instead, almereyda’s script omits all of the song text from “walsingham” and much of “tomorrow is saint valentine’s day,” leaving just a few lines. instead of using music to signify her madness, almereyda associates ophelia’s sanity with her own personal soundtrack, leaving more aggressive vocalizations to convey her madness. ophelia’s breakdown is quite public. it occurs at a cocktail party set in the guggenheim museum in new york, amid spiraling balconies and to champagne toasts. accosting gertrude with a pleading demeanor, ophelia quickly gives way to nonverbal screaming that echoes through the museum. she tunelessly recites part of “tomorrow is saint valentine’s day” before being hauled off by security guards. there is no music to accompany her, only the ambient noise of the party. rather than allowing her madness to be signified traditionally through song, perhaps almereyda interprets scream- ing as the modern-day equivalent of distracted vocality. for this twenty-first century ophelia, screaming in public rather than singing becomes the taboo vocality; by violating the taboo of public silence, ophelia conveys her emo- tional crisis in a way more familiar to contemporary viewers. ophelia appears in a corridor for the remainder of her scene. no longer agitated to the point of screaming, she is now quiet and resigned, speaking softly. in lieu of f lowers, she tosses polaroids into the air for invisible recipi- ents. she never approaches claudius and gertrude, nor makes eye contact with either of them. there is nondiegetic music to accompany her words, a soft and slow blues-like guitar line that ref lects ophelia’s own sadness and _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm the lady vanishes ● laertes’s as he tries to comfort her. it is highly reminiscent of the diegetic blues guitar music playing at polonius’s home previously, linking the two scenes shared between the siblings together through the genre of the blues. almereyda’s ophelia is given the fewest lines of any film hamlet dis- cussed up to this point. nor does she receive her traditional elegy provided by gertrude: gertrude tells laertes only that his sister is drowned; only the audience witnesses a security guard pull her body from a shallow foun- tain. this ophelia is most obviously a suicide; there are no heavy skirts or long weeds to pull her to unwitting death. although she is, ironically, perhaps the most cared-for ophelia of all the cinematic hamlet s, she is also the least allowed to speak, be heard, and be seen. if this production stands as a ref lection of modern culture, then the women’s voices have never been more silenced. the increasing erasure of ophelia’s vocality and agency evident in these examples results in a radical alteration to the original text. if in olivier’s film she is only partially disempowered, she has become all but dumb property in almereyda’s adaptation, a decorative object in the films rather than a meaningful participant. as each of the films progresses—and as films of hamlet are created over time—ophelia is increasingly silenced by her male counterparts in the play and by cuts to both dialogue and song. ignored by those around her and excised so casually by directors, she is, ultimately, disposable. notes . william shakespeare’s hamlet, dir. kenneth branagh, perf. kenneth branagh, julie christie, derek jacobi, kate winslet, castle rock entertainment, . . michel foucault, trans. richard howard, madness and civilization (new york: vintage, ) . . carol thomas neely, distracted subjects: madness and gender in shakespeare and early modern culture (ithaca: cornell university press, ) . . text references are from hamlet , by william shakespeare, arden third series, ed. ann thompson and neil taylor (london: thomson learning, ). . see alex epstein, “by the way, ophelia is pregnant,” crafty screenwriting, mar. , ( http://www.craftyscreenwriting.com/ophelia.html ) and graham holdernesss, “ ofelia laurence nowel: excerpta quaedam danica ( ),” early modern culture ( ), aug. , ( http://emc.eserver.org/ - /holderness .html ). . david lindley, shakespeare and music (london: thomson learning, ) . . for a discussion of chappell’s history of english popular songs first pub- lished in , see robert hapgood, hamlet: prince of denmark (cambridge: cambridge university press, ) – . _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm ● kendra preston leonard . vic gammon, desire, drink, and death in english folk and vernacular song, – (aldershot: ashgate, ) – . . susan mcclary, foreword, opera, or the undoing of women , by catherine clement, trans. betsy wing (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, ) ix–xviii; xvi. . maurice and hanna charney, “the language of madwomen in shakespeare and his fellow dramatists,” signs: journal of women in culture and society . ( ): – ; . . leslie dunn, “ophelia’s songs in hamlet : music, madness, and the feminine,” in embodied voices: representing female vocality in western culture , ed. leslie c. dunn and nancy a. jones (cambridge: cambridge university press, ) – ; . . foucault, madness and civilization . . david bevington, this wide and universal theater: shakespeare in performance then and now (chicago: university of chicago press, ) . . hardin aasand, “the young, the beautiful, the harmless, and the pious: contending with ophelia on the eighteenth century,” reading readings: essays on shakespeare editing in the eighteenth century, ed. johanna gondris (madison, new jersey: fairleigh dickinson university press, ) – ; . . robert hamilton ball. shakespeare on silent film (london: allen and unwin, ) . . royal s. brown, overtones and undertones: reading film music (berkeley: university of california press, ) . . rick altman, silent film sound (new york: columbia university press, ) . . toshiko oshio, “ophelia: experience into song,” hamlet and japan, ed. yoshiko uéno (new york: ams, ) – ; . . scott d. paulin, “richard wagner and the fantasy of cinematic unity: the idea of the gesamtkunstwerk in the history and theory of film music,” music and cinema , ed. caryl flinn and david newmeyer (hanover, nh: wesleyan university press, ) – ; . . bernice w. kliman, hamlet: film, television, and audio performances (london: associated university press, ) . . hamlet , dir. laurence olivier, perf. laurence olivier, jean simmons, john laurie, esmond knight, two cities films, . . anthony davies, “the shakespeare films of laurence olivier,” the cambridge companion to shakespeare on film, ed. russell jackson (cambridge: cambridge university press, ) – ; . . kenneth tynan, “the actor: tynan interviews olivier,” the tulane drama review . (winter ): – ; . . peter donaldson, “olivier, hamlet, and freud,” cinema journal . (summer ): – ; . . kenneth s. rothwell, a history of shakespeare on screen: a century of film and television (cambridge: cambridge university press, ) . _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm the lady vanishes ● . charles hurtgen, “the operatic character of background music in film adaptations of shakespeare,” shakespeare quarterly . (winter ): – ; . . hurtgen, operatic character of background music – . . laura mulvey, “visual pleasure and narrative cinema,” feminist film theory: a reader , ed. sue thornham (new york: new york university press, ) – ; . . robyn stilwell, “sound and empathy: subjectivity, gender and the cinematic soundscape,” film music: critical approaches, ed. k. j. donnelly (new york: continuum, ) – ; . . martha m. lauzen, “the celluloid ceiling: behind-the-scenes employment of women in the top films of ,” movies by women.com , jun. , ( http://moviesbywomen.com/stats_celluloid_ceiling_ .php ). . hamlet , dir. franco zeffirelli, perf. mel gibson, glenn close, alan bates, paul scofield, warner bros. pictures, . . michael p. jensen, “mel gibson on hamlet ,” shakespeare on film newsletter . ( ): – ; . . hamlet, dir. michael almereyda, perf. ethan hawke, kyle maclachlan, diane venora, sam shepard, miramax films, . . michael almereyda, william shakespeare’s hamlet (london: faber and faber, ) . _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm _ch .indd _ch .indd / / : : pm / / : : pm wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk params is empty sys_ exception wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk no params is empty exception params is empty / / - : : if (typeof jquery === "undefined") document.write('[script type="text/javascript" src="/corehtml/pmc/jig/ . . /js/jig.min.js"][/script]'.replace(/\[/g,string.fromcharcode( )).replace(/\]/g,string.fromcharcode( ))); // // // window.name="mainwindow"; .pmc-wm {background:transparent repeat-y top left;background-image:url(/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/wm-nobrand.png);background-size: auto, contain} .print-view{display:block} page not available reason: the web page address (url) that you used may be incorrect. message id: (wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk) time: / / : : if you need further help, please send an email to pmc. include the information from the box above in your message. otherwise, click on one of the following links to continue using pmc: search the complete pmc archive. browse the contents of a specific journal in pmc. find a specific article by its citation (journal, date, volume, first page, author or article title). http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/ the peripatetic method: walking with woodbridge, thinking with aristotle ..• thinking and walking are different ways of getting about in a common world which has a make- up agreeable to each of these ways. preamble walking the streets of the greenwich village on a rather bitter, early january day, a year after defending my dissertation and months before receiving my first job offer, i stum- bled upon one of those inconspicuous little bookstores tucked away from the bustle of things, just below street level. descending three stairs, i entered, drawn more by the promise of warmth than by the hope of inspiration. as i made my way toward the philosophy section, i was ·prepared to feel my reigning mood of uncertainty aug- mented by the daunting quantity of words to be read, new ideas somehow to be digested. almost immediately, i found myself addressed by a rather pathetic looking lit- tle volume: it seemed to be a photocopy of a text, bound in plastic with a spine of burnt orange and nothing to identify its content. pulling it from the shelf, i was at first put off by its announced title, aristotle's vision of woodbridge, the realm of mind, nature, so critical as i was at the time of the metaphysics of vision. and yet, there was this name, woodbridge, and another, randall, that seemed to give the thing a kind of weight. someone had taken care to photocopy these pages, to bind them together, to preserve them for posterity, per- haps, indeed, for me. plus, it only cost a dollar. and so it was, with a cenain hesitation, and yet in wonder, that i opened the book and began to read. "this small volume is offered," wrote randall in the introduction, "in the convic- tion that it is the most imponant writing on aristotle's thought since the revolutionary study of werner jaeger in ." the state- ment comes as a shock and one is tempted initially to dismiss it as nothing more than yet another one of those generous, but hyper- bolic gestures of respect students tend to bestow upon their teachers. however, somewhere along the paths of thinking woodbridge traverses in these the peripatetic meibod lectures, this initial impression gives way to the growing realization that woodbridge, drawing upon his own great mentor, george santayana, has indeed charted a methodo- logical approach to aristotle's thinking that surpasses that of jaeger's developmentalism. although woodbridge offers only a rough topography of what i have elsewhere called aristotle's peripatetic legomenology, to pur- sue the tack woodbridge takes in these lec- tures is to be led back to an aristotle who brings his thinking to life by allowing life to animate his thinking. ...... peripatetic legomenology to say more than human things with human voice, that cannot be; to say human things with more than human voice, that, also, cannot be; to speak humanly from the height or from the depth of human things, that is acutest speech. wallace stevens, "chocorua to its neighbor" these lines from wallace stevens articulate something of the spirit in which aristotle's thinking unfolds; for his philosophical endeavor involves precisely that "acutest speech" that attempts "to speak humanly from the height or from the depth of human things." but as the stevens poem itself brings to language, the realm "of human things" is bound intimately up with the realm of natu- ral things . . this intimacy between human-be- ing and natural being is at the very root of aristotle's thinking. thus, although aristotle has sometimes been accused of seeking "to say more than human things with human voice," in fact, everything he says is said in an attempt to give voice to the nature of things. the manner in which nature expresses itself is, for aristotle, so deeply integrated into the power of human articulation that each genu- ine attempt to articulate the truth concerning the nature of things touches upon something of that nature however ultimately elusive. the attempt to speak humanly from the height and depth of human things is, then, to embark on a path of speaking and thinking that uncovers something of the highest and deepest truths of nature itself. this is pre- cisely the path toward which woodbridge's engagement with aristotle points; it is the path that randall recognizes as on par with the contributions of jaeger, but it is also a path so deeply rooted in aristotle's thinking that it remains discernible in jaeger's own developmental approach. in his seminal book, aristoteles, grundlegung einer geschichte seiner entwicklung, werner jaeger shows that "at the root of [the aristotelian texts], there is a process of development." his great insight is the recognition that aristotle's texts give voice to a thinking that lives and develops. the book's appearance in might best be traced along a line of scholarship that extends back through f. a. trendelenburg to hegel, who, a century earlier, argued in his vorlesungen uber die geschichte der philosophie that aristotle is not to be read as a "unspeculative empiricist" but rather as a great idealist whose thinking was alive to the life of thinking itself . if hegel's inter- pretation excited his students because it chal- lenged the "the axiom defended by locke to kant up to schleiermacher, that aristotle was an unspeculative empiricist," trendelenburg, challenging hegel's own tendency to privi· lege pure thinking, emphasized the organic interaction between the human mind and the environment. as rosenstock puts it, trendelenburg "views the role of reason in the context of its genesis and operation in nature." situating jaeger in this tradi- tion at once accounts for a central tension in his reading of aristotle and connects him to a tradition that had a deep influence on frederick woodbridge. the central tension in jaeger's work is between a certain tendency toward systema- ticity and an affirmation of the living context in which aristotelian thinking unfolds. the developmental approach to aristotle's work resolves the tension beautifully by turning a specific biographical story about aristotle into the organizing principle of his philoso- phy. more specifically, jaeger appeals to aristotle's relationship to his teacher, plato, and his alleged struggle to come to his own terms with the world in the shadow of plato's "unlimited genius," in order to explain away the inconsistencies one encounters if one reads aristotle's work as the articulation of fully developed system. but the develop- mental approach, despite its great recog- nition of the living nature of aristotelian thinking, ultimately reinforced the seduc- tion of hermeneutical consistency: it remains animated by an attempt to explain away the apparent contradictions in aristotle's think- ing. however, the appearing of contradiction is for aristotle the very sort of diction that announces the presence of a matter for thinking. aristotle attends to such dictions carefully, not as intractable contadictories, one side of which must be destroyed to allow the other to reign, but as indications of impasses to be navigated, oriented always by the beacon of the appearing of things. his is a thinking on the way. it is peripatetic, just as those who followed him as he walked the grounds of the lyceum were called "peripatoi," the ones who walk. the peripatetic method although woodbridge does not speak of aristotle's thinking as peripatetic, the great -insight of his own engagement with aristotle is precisely this attempt to walk with him as he "goes directly without preliminary to the subject-matter involved and follows where it leads him." like jaege.r; woodbridge rec- ognizes the living dimension of aristotelian thinking; but unlike jaeger, for woodbridge, the deepest expression of this living thinking is experienced in aristotle's philosophical meth- odology. here, "methodology" speaks with a decidedly greek accent: it names a way of following along after, meta-hodos, the logos of things. but the logos of things expresses a structure accessible to the powers of the human soul, even if our finite powers can never cap- ture the full depth of nature's expression. john e. smith at once articulates the meaning of the term "expression" that should be amplified here and emphasizes the dimension of inacces- sibility that cannot be eclipsed: in any present, something is expressed or made manifest, but much is not expressed. i do not mean that the mani- fest or surface is "appearance" and the depth "reality," since both are equally real in relation to the individual express- ing itself; it is rather that with respect to the expression of any individual in any specific situation, there is always "more to come." for smith as for aristotle, the surface and the depth are part of the same reality at work expressing itself. human access to the depth of things is, however, mediated by the power of human articulation that itself, as smith rightly suggests, "is integral to being." thus, the way to the depth of things is mediated by the human capacity for articulation that itself ought not to be understood to fundamen- tally distort the nature of things, but rather, the peripatetic method to correspond to and with the expression of nature in ways that bring meaning to life. this sense of correspondence-woodbridge speaks in terms of "cooperation," "correla- tion" and even "conformation"-between the human power of articulation and the natural expression of things is at the root of aristotle's methodological approach. in an early passage from the de anima, aristotle articulates the manner in which his investigation into the soul follows along after the things said beautifully about it: while inquiring concerning the soul, going through the impasses (diaporoun- tas) concerning which there is a need to find a way (euporein) in order to move forward, it is at the same time necessary to take up along the way the opinions of those who came before, however many showed forth (arephenanto) something concerning the soul, in order that we may take hold of the things said beauti- fully, but, if any are not said beautifully, that we may beware of these. the peripatetic methodology is thus a legom- enology: the things said, 'ta a.£y µevn, open a path into the nature of things. in this passage the appearance of words related to the greek, poros-road, passage, way-testifies to the dynamic nature of aristotle's thinking as a thinking on the way. in the physics, aristotle has famously designated his way of thinking as a "natural road from what is more famil- iar and clearer to us to what is more famil- iar and clearer by nature." in practicing a peripatetic legomenology, however, aristotle recognizes that this natural path to nature is itself made possible by the nature of language. woodbridge puts it this way: metaphysics thus follows and may refine the uses of common speech. we need not be metaphysicians to claim mind and body as our rightful possessions. for just as it is natural for us to speak of a man who walks far and lustily, as a great walker, and to endow him with a strong body, so it is natural for us to speak of him who thinks profoundly, as a great thinker, and to endow him with a great mind. thus common speech condenses into single words meanings which require many sentences for their full expression. such words economize speech and give to language its wealth of significance. from this perspective, it is unnecessary to posit two separate methodological appro- aches in aristotle, the one empirical, deal- ing with the appearances of sense, the other, dialectical, dealing with the common manner in which people speak. rather, aristotle's naturalistic understanding of language roots the things people say in the very nature of things in a way that undercuts the standard dichotomy between naturalism and conven- tionalism. that dichotomy is predicated on a conception of human-being and human language fundamentally uprooted from the world of nature. the wealth of signifi- cance endemic to human language is itself an expression of the wealth of significance endemic to nature. woodbridge emphasizes this deep correla- tion between language and nature in his lec- tures on aristotle when he writes: but [aristotle] will not let the natural- ness of language be natural in admission only. he makes it natural in nature. it becomes one of nature's supreme prod- ucts, the product in which all other products find articulated linkage. for things to go into language is a going, just as much of a going on their part, and just as natural, as their going into air or water, up or down, or from seed to flower. thus, when aristotle speaks, again and again, of how things are said, when he attends care- fully to the various ways they are said and when he rehearses what others have said about them, his manner of speaking must be heard as organically bound to a way of think- ing rooted in the natural community of com- munication between the powers of the soul and things of nature. aristotle's phenomeno- logical attunement to the ways things express themselves and his assiduous attempts to get things said beautifully are thus two dimen- sions of a peripatetic legomenology that speaks with and attends to the language of nature in an attempt to do justice to the nature of things. the surface of things it is as if being was to be observed, as if, among the possible purposes of what one sees, is the purpose to be seen, the property of the moon, what it evokes. wallace stevens, "note on moonlight" peripatetic legomenology is rooted in arist- otle's naturalistic understanding of the rela- tionship between the powers of the soul and the things with which they cooperate. woodbridge puts it this way: "the correla- tion between the powers of the soul and the natural conditions of their exercise is, perhaps, the one dominant and outstanding characteristic of aristotle's psychology." yet, what woodbridge identifies as the key to aristotle's psychology, is in fact the organic enabling condition of aristotelian thinking itself. his peripatetic legomenology is predi- cated on the recognition that the logos at work in nature is also somehow at work in the soul. the peripatetic method in da ii. , aristotle pursues a legomenol- ogy of perceiving, "'to aio aveo ai.," in order to lend determination to the precise manner in which the power of perceiv- ing cooperates with that which can be per- ceived. attending first to the things said about aisthesis, aristotle identifies the limits of understanding perceiving in purely pas- sive terms. he proceeds then to consider the way perceiving itself is said. the articu- lar infinitive that designates the activity of perceiving, "to aio aveo at," speaks in the middle voice and so points to perceiving as an active condition of the soul, a hexis with the power to actively receive what presents itself in perceiving. by attending to the way perceiving is said, aristotle is himself able to hear the manner in which perceiving is itself the expression of a cooperation between the power of the soul and the nature of the thing perceived. he begins by delineating the two ways perceiving is said: since we say perceiving (to aio aveo al) doubly (for what has the potency of hear- ing and seeing we say hears and sees, even if it happens to be asleep, as well as what is already at-work ['to evepyoi v] seeing and hearing), so too should the power of perceiving be said doubly, on the one hand, as in potency, and on the other, as being-at-work; also similarly that which is perceived (to aioerit v) is a being both in potency and at-work. the way we speak about perceiving suggests something decisive about the nature of the phenomenon itself: namely, that it must be twofold. not only is the greek word itself articulated in the middle voice, suggest- ing already that it is not simply passive, but we also speak about hearing and seeing as active powers even when they are not actively the peripatetic melhod at work. the cascading structure of this passage that moves from "'to alo <lveo ai.," to and ultimately, to "'to alo ft v" itself illustrates beautifully the manner in which the way we speak about "'to alo <lvw m" uncovers something of the truth about the power of perceiving in its relation to what is perceived. by the end of . , aristotle is thus in a position to recognize on the basis of his legomenojogy of "'to alo aveo m" both the limits of our ways of saying things and the insights we gain from attending carefully to the ways things are said: but since these differences [with respect to the senses of potency] are with- out names, though it has been marked out that they are different and how they are different, there is a need to use the words "to be acted upon" and "to be altered" as though they were appropriate. and the ability to perceive is in potency such as the perceived thing is already in its being-at-work-staying-itself just as has been said. so it is acted upon when it is not like {the per- ceived thing], but when it has been acted upon (peponthos), then it has become likened (homoiotai) to it, and is such as that is. although the double nature of perceiving finds articulation in the ways perceiving is said, still, our ways of speaking about things do not always articulate dearly the differ- ences heard in our ways of saying things. aristotle here remains willing to use the com- mon way of speaking about the nature of per- ceiving as a kind of being acted upon, but he emphasizes the limitations of understanding the encounter between the power of perceiv- ing and what is perceived in purely passive terms. indeed, his own careful language-and here particularly his use of the perfect tense--gestures to the moment of perceptual encounter between the power of perceiving and what is perceived that cannot quite be captured in purely passive terms. the perfect tense-"peponthos" and "homoiotai"-ar- ticulates the moment of perceptual encounter as having already happened; this aristotle is forced to do here because as he himself says: "there is a need to use the words 'to be acted upon' and 'to be altered' as though they were appropriate." the need to use these words that amplify the passive dimension of per- ceiving require aristotle to speak in the per- fect tense in order to give voice to the active side of the cooperative relationship that ena- bles perceiving itself. a legomenological reading of aristotle as he himself pursues a legomenology of perceiving uncovers his teaching on the nature of perceiving as a cooperative activity between the power of perceiving and what is perceived. this teaching on the cooperative nature of perceptual encounter finds its cor- relate in aristotle's teaching on the nature of thinking itself. woodbridge rightly makes the correlation between perceiving and think- ing central to his own reading of aristotle's account of the soul. thus, according to woodbridge, the most significant sentence of the da extends the correlation between the powers of perceiving and the perceivable things with which they cooperate to what woodbridge calls the realm of mind: "just as the power of perceiving is to that which is perceptible, so too is the intellect (to voilv) to that which is intclligible." aristotle puts it this way in da iii. on the so-called pas- sive intellect: [thinking] must be unaffected (apathes) but capable of being receptive (dektikon) of the form and in potency it must not be the form, but such as it is, and it must hold similarly lxav), with the result that as the ability to perceive is to the thing perceived, so too is thinking to the thing thought. although aristotle here speaks of think- ing as "unaffected," he immediately refers to the specific capacity thinking has-it is "dektikon"-and indeed, to the manner in which it holds itself as lxav"-to the form in order to explain how thinking is itself possible. the model to which he gestures as he attempts to articu- late the nature of thinking is, in fact, that of perceiving. woodbridge emphasizes how this analogy between the powers of perceiving and the power of the intellect articulates the manner in which each of these natural powers of the soul operates in "realms of being congruent with their exercise." thus, just as vision may be said to operate in the realm of the vis- ible, intellect is said to operate in a realm of the intelligible. such realms, for woodbridge, are not separate worlds independent of one another-the one bodily, the other mental- rather, they are different ways the natural world expresses itself, each of which is dis- cernible to and by a corresponding power of the soul. thus, woodbridge writes: men think and reason as well as perceive and take nourishment. both are equally natural activities on man's part. but just as the taking of nourishment involves a field of food or food objects, so the exer- cise of reason involves a field of ideas or ideal objects. in other words, the rational life of man is not something superim- posed on his other lives or growing out of them, but is life in a realm of being different from theirs. nature in its own right must possess such a realm of being, the peripatetic method or man could not think at all, just as he could not see at all if nature in its own · right were never visible. what the mind thinks and what the eyes see are different aspects of the same natu- ral world operating in what woodbridge calls distinct "realms of being." but for woodbridge, a "realm" does not fragment the integrity of the natural world. although an idea can no more nourish our physical bodies than a carrot can feed our mind, still the idea and the carrot remain natural expressions of a natural world to which our human diges- tive and intellectual capacities correspond. even so, however, in speaking the language of "realms," woodbridge risks introducing a chasm between the nutritive, perceptive soul and the intellect that is nowhere present in aristotle. for woodbridge, inquiry begins with the things we encounter in the world. he writes: "so men find rocks and trees, seas and stars, memories and fancies, and look to see what these things are and what can be said about them. all inquiry starts in this way and not with 'phenomena' or 'experience' or 'sense-data."' to use the aristotelian lan- guage of the metaphysics, we begin "wonder- ing about the strange things at hand." yet for aristotle, these are precisely the wholes "better known by perceiving" that lead somehow along a natural road to the nature of each thing. by insisting that these things we encounter are not "phenomena" or "expe- rience" or "sense-data," woodbridge seeks to emphasize that these encountered things are not at first encountered in philosophical terms. and even if this point resonates with aristotle's own starting point in the world of common human interactions, aristotle's thinking always already takes the things encountered themselves as phenomena; the peripatetic method not, indeed, as phenomena disjoined from being, but as appearances in and through which being expresses itself. thus, although woodbridge follows aristotle in his attempt to begin with the things encountered, he nev- ertheless parts ways with aristotle insofar as he refuses to pursue the manner in which thinking does in fact grow somehow out of perceiving even if perceiving and thinking operate in distinct, albeit parallel, "realms." spinoza, it seems, has exerted a bit too much influence on woodbridge in this regard, for the sort of parallelism woodbridge seems to advocate is more at home in spinoza than in aristotle who, despite wood bridge's claims to the contrary, sought to weave perceiving and thinking together into the fabric of nature. a path phantastic the imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. wallace stevens in the realm of mind, woodbridge argues that walking, perceiving and thinking are thoroughly natural and yet also, that they belong to different "realms" within one "realm of being." woodbridge is careful to insist that to speak of a realm of mind found within the realm of being is neither to exclude nor to devalue the other realms in which being expresses itself differently. yet his own tendency to insist that the realm of mind is incommensurable with the other realms of being threatens the organic coher- ence of nature. to put this in terms of the his- tory of philosophy gestured to above, there remains in woodbridge a residual segregation of mind and body that seems to be more the result of a spinozistic response to cartesian dualism than that of a genuine engagement with aristotle. although woodbridge does not speak of nature as an expression of god's infinite attributes, two of which are thought and extension, nevertheless, like spinoza, woodbridge insists that thinking can be nei- ther derived from nor reduced to the opera- tions of the body. if spinoza calls thinking an attribute of god, woodbridge designates it as an operation at work in a realm of mind as part of the overarching realm of being. yet, by introducing the spatial metaphor of the "realm," which itself, according to woodbridge, names "neither a place nor an event" but rather a "region inhabited," woodridge reinforces the impression that the life of the mind is in some fundamental way divorced from the life of walking and per- ceiving. this impression is augmented by woodbridge's tendency to emphasize precisely the difference between the realms in which walking, perceiving, and thinking operate. in the realm of mind, for example, even as woodbridge insists that thinking is also an embodied activity, nevertheless, he writes: "but when these bodies think, they do something incomparable with what they do when they walk." the impulse to emphasize the differ- ence seems animated by woodbridge's desire to insist that what the mind discovers by means of its operation is not a mere construct of the mind, but a genuine discovery that belongs to the logical structure of nature itself. in his admirable attempt to avoid the pitfalls endemic to the modem conception of the con- structive, agent mind, however, woodbridge relinquishes something of aristotle's powerful but difficult understanding of the life of the mind as organically bound up with the per- ceiving life and the walking life. although woodbridge insists, rightly, that the life of the mind is not superimposed upon the life of perceiving and walking, and further, that there is in aristotle no evolu- tion of the powers of the soul, still, however, aristotle himself is driven to account for the manner in which what is given in perceiving is itself ultimately also given to thinking, not as something expressed differently in differ- ent realms, but as something that emerges from or indeed grows out of our most rudi- mentary encounters with things. this can be felt already in aristotle's account of perceiv- ing, which is said to operate at its deepest level both according to a certain logos and indeed with a kind of discerning (krinein). it can be heard in aristotle's various attempts to delineate the operation of the phantasia or imagination as rooted in but somehow also different from perceiving even as it ena- bles thinking. somehow this community of powers operates according to a logos that belongs as much to them as to nature itself. indeed, this is a community of communica- tion, a joint accomplishment of the soul and the things it encounters made possible by a logos that lives an amphibious life, at home in the body as much as the mind. to pursue this living logos as it makes the passage from perceiving through imagining to thinking possible is a longer, more com- plicated and yet more beautiful path than it is possible to take here. woodbridge, how- ever, in his book, an essay on nature, has gone some distance down the path and has left us the following words that trace the contours of a difficult itinerary: the only magic worth having is that born of a happy marriage of sense and intellect, the touch, not of midas, but of metaphor, which so transmutes existence into speech that what things are and what they are said to be become increasingly a profounder intimacy with nature. she is metaphor, pantomime punctuated with sounds, and is not out-of-doors waiting the peripatetic method to be admitted to conversation. she is jointly translating and translated. aristotle's peripatetic legomenology is rooted in nature's metaphorical power, and one of nature's most powerful metaphors is the human imagination. if, as aristotle says in the poetics, "a good metaphor is to theorize things that are similar," then the phantasia in aristotle is a good metaphor indeed, for it enables aristotle to theorize the manner in which that which is encountered in perceiv- ing nevertheless gives itself to be thought. so the enigmatic account of the phantasia in aristotle is enigmatic precisely because it attempts to articulate the manner in which what is given in perceiving can and in fact does become a matter for thinking. to understand the phantasia as a metaphor is to theorize it as that which carries perceiv- ings over into thinking-metapherein-thus enabling a passage from one dimension into another without either reducing thinking to perceiving or perceiving to thought. on the one hand, the phantasia in aristotle is rooted in perceiving. aristotle calls it "acer- tain motion and not to come into being with- out the power of perceiving." and he goes on to claim that "this motion would be neither possible without the power of perceiving nor present in beings that do not perceive .... " on the other hand, there is no thinking without an appearance (phantasmatos), as aristotle says repeatedly. as a metaphor in the sense suggested here, the phantasia is somehow capable of translating what is encountered in perceiving into the vernacu- lar of thinking. in aristotle, the metaphor that accounts for the metaphorical activity of the phantasia is that of the lever or joint. the intimate connection between the joint and articulation is heard in the greek word "arthron," which means first of all, "joint," the peripatetic me hod but then also "to articulate," "arthroun." the joint, which for aristotle functions like a lever insofar as small movements on one side of the fulcrum can cause greater movements further from the fulcrum, offers a powerful way to understand the manner in which two phenomena as different from one another as perceiving is from thinking can, nevertheless, be intimately and organically connected. the analogy would go something like this: just as the lever manifests the intimate connec- tion between distance and weight or force, two phenomena that seem disparate and dis- connected, so too, the phantasia manifests the intimate connection between perceiving and thinking. that something like this is at work in aristotle may be heard in this pas- sage from the de motu animalium: but appearances (phantasia) and sense- perceptions and ideas are ways of becoming-other. for on the one hand, sense-perceptions arise straight away, being a kind of becoming-other, on the other hand, being-appeared to (phanta- sia) and thinking (noesis) have the power of the things t<i>v :rcpayµatrov ... mvaµtv). for the form (eidos) that is thought of [the warm or cold] or pleas- ant or fearful happens to be in some way like each of the things themselves; and because of this those who are just thinking [these things] shudder and are frightened. all these things are affections (pathe) and ways of becoming-other. and when body parts become-other, some become larger, some smaller. it is not unclear, then, that a small change generated in the origin produces great and numerous differences at a distance- just as, if the rudder is briefly shifted, a great shift of the prow is generated. the example of the rudder illustrates the point that small shifts close to the fulcrum can widely alter the course of the ship. in this passage, aristotle connects the phenomena of the rudder, which functions here on the lever principle, with the origins of perceiving, being appeared to (phantasia) and thinking in the things encountered in the world. indeed, it is the power of the things themselves that moves us to shudder and be frightened not only when we perceive them but also when we imagine or think them. the vitality of the imagination and the life of thinking itself is rooted in the power of things expressing themselves. ultimately however, it is not simply, as the above passage suggests, the form or look, the eidos, of things that is taken up by perceiving, imagining, and thinking, but the logos express- ing itself in and through the eidos that enables the cooperative connection between the pow- ers of the soul and the power of things to move us in certain ways. this logos too is at work in the things encountered in perceiving, and it can be translated by the imagination into the vernacular of thinking precisely because it belongs to things as an expression of nature itself. to borrow from woodbridge, perhaps it might be said this way: for things perceived to go into thinking is a going, just as much of a going on their part, and just as natural, as their going into air or water, or up or down, or from seed to flower, or, indeed, for a winter walk in the city. thus, by attending to the logos of things, aristotle's own imaginative thinking is able to chart a path to a profounder inti- macy with nature in which the things said are heard to give voice to the nature of things. ...... postamble the longer, more difficult and more beau- tiful path toward which i point here but cannot follow further in this chapter has been marked by the words and poetry of wallace stevens. stevens' writing gives voice to the recognition at the root of aristotle's peripatetic legomenology and woodbridge's naturalism: human-being is at home in nature even if nature remains always also alien to us. stevens emphasizes the connection between human-being and natural being by focusing on the power of the imagination: " ... absolute fact includes everything that the imagination includes. this is our intimidating thesis." the the- sis, however intimidating, implies that even the human imagination must be experi- enced as a way, perhaps as an extraordinar- ily powerful way, nature expresses itself. the thesis may indeed be intimidating precisely because it requires us to consider the degree to which we are bound inti- mately up with-now to use woodbridge's words-the "whole vast scheme of things," which "seems to be engaged in expressing what it is." the dialogue between the guitarist and his audience that opens stevens' poem "the man with the blue guitar" suggests the depth of the human connection with the things that are, even as it articulates the impossibility of reducing the reality of things to our attempts to articulate them well: the man bent over his guitar, · a shearsman of sorts. the day was green. they said, "you have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are." the man replied, "things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar." and they said then, "but play, you must, a tune beyond us, yet ourselves, a tune upon the blue guitar of things exactly as they are." the peripatetic method play, we must, a tune beyond us, yet our- selves: this indeed articulates something of the path along which aristotle's thinking unfolds. and if the tune he plays attempts assiduously to say things exactly as they are, we too must recognize that things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar, not indeed by being rendered other than what they are; but rather, things are exactly what they are in relational dialogue with the things they encounter. one path toward this recognition was marked for me on that bitter january day when i encountered a strangely bound burnt orange volume on a walk through the streets of greenwich village. notes see woodbridge, . ibid., xvi. christopher p. long the idea of a phenomenology of the things said is developed in long, . the term, "legomenology," however, was introduced first in an essay on aeschylus and hesiod as a way to articulate the methodological approach to read- ing the theogony and the oresteia. see, long, , . see stevens, , - . gyorgyi voros mentions "chocorua to its neighbor" when he speaks both about the degree to which stevens "joyfully affirms human nature, while allowing nonhuman nature its own integrity and domain" and, later in his life, "more and more sang of a self subsumed under a greater natural order." see voros, , , - . for one poignant example, see dewey, , . for a more detailed discussion of dewey's misreading of aristotle and of why dewey, of all people, should have known better, see long, , - . a passage from book ii of the metaphysics, a -b , emphasizes at once the accessibil- ity and the elusiveness of the nature of things. for a discussion of this passage, see long, , - . the peripatetic method see jaeger, , . the translation is my own. ibid., . the formulation seems to have been borrowed from goethe. hegel thus writes in typical fashion: "the platonic is the objective in general, but the jiving principle, the principle of subjectivity is missing; and the jiving principle, subjectivity, not in the sense of an accidental and merely particular subjectivity, but rather pure subjectivity is proper to aristotle." see hegel, , vol. , . michelet reports that the students in hegel's seminars on aristotle were eager to hear this new, living aristotle. see, michelet, , . see rosenstock, , . trendelenburg is the connection between woodbridge and jaeger. as suzanne marchand notes: "upon jaeger's induction into the prussian academy of sciences in , gustav roethe claimed that the philosophi- cally oriented philologist represented a link to the tradition of schleiermacher and adolftrendelenburg as well as an unswerv- ing defender of text-critical accuracy." see marchand, , . woodbridge's own interest in aristotle was cultivated during the period he spent in berlin studying with friedrich paulsen. see, lachs and talisse, , . in his book on the character and develop- ment of german universities, paulsen speaks in compelling and personal terms of the way trendelenburg, "the restorer of aristotelian philosophy," gave "his pupils heart for the study of aristotle." see, paulsen, , , . there is, then, an important line of scholarship stemming from trendelenburg that connects american pragmatic naturalism to a german philosophical and philological tradition that includes not only jaeger but also dilthey, brentano, and heidegger. the american tradition of naturalism can be traced from trendelenburg to paulsen to woodbridge, george santyana and george sylvester morris, and thus to dewey and john herman randall. for its part, the philological side of the german tradition might be traced from trendelenburg to wilamovitz and hermann diel• to jaeger, while on the phenomenologi- cal side it might be traced from trendelenburg to dilthey, brentano, and heidegger. for an attempt to bring the tradition of american naturalism back into dialogue with german phenomenology via a reading of aristotle that is informed by that german tradition of close philological attention, see long, . see jaeger, , . there is no question that aristotle was influenced by plato and, indeed, that their relationship must have been a pro- found and perhaps, at times, a tense one. the issue is that reading aristotle in the shadow of plato eclipses the extent to which aristotle, as woodbridge insisted, sought always to address and pursue the things at hand (met. i. , b ). joseph owens draws upon precisely this rec- ognition of the important role such impasses or aporiai play in aristotle's thinking in his seminal study of aristotle's metaphysics. see owens, . see woodbridge, , . see long, , - . smith, , . ibid., . the difference between expression and articulation is important. articulation, following smith, "means the making of something distinct so that it stands out as an identifiable unit with its parts arranged in significant patterns. on the other hand, articulation means that the manner of making something distinct requires its being set in precise relations to other things. the term, therefore, focuses attention on what is individual and on the fact of its belonging to a system or world at the same time." ibid., . for a more detailed discussion of expression and articulation, see long, . woodbridge writes: "the correlation is ... between an act and a field of action, and an act and a field of action are as different as can be, but it is only the cooperation of the two that is ever effective. the effect of this correla- tion in operation is the 'conformation' of the soul to what is perceives." see woodbridge, , . see de anima b - . all translations are my own. see physics a - . for a further discussion of aristotle's path of inquiry in relation to the things said, see long, , - . see too, long, , - , - . see woodbridge, , . see irwin, , - . john cleary argues the case for a unified methodological approach in aristotle along the lines of the legomenology developed here. see cleary, . deborah modrak calls the traditional dichotomy into question when she insists that aristotle advocates a conventionalism with respect to the relationship between phoneme and meaning and a naturalism with respect to the relationship between meaning and refer- ence. see modrak, , . see woodbridge, , . stevens, , . woodbridge, , . da b - a . da a - . da a - . the translation of entelecheia as "being-at-work-staying-itself" is drawn from joe sachs. see sachs, . for another example of the use of the perfect tense to gesture to that moment of transforma- tion that is difficult to articulate, see the discus- sion of praxis in met. ix. , in which aristotle speaks of complete actions as actions in which we can say, at once, the same thing is seeing and has seen, or is thinking and has thought. met. ix. , b - . for a discussion of that passage along lines similar to those pursued here, see long, , - . see woodbridge, , , - . woodbridge calls this an "algebraic sentence," but it is more geometric than algebraic insofar as, on woodbridge's own account, it establishes an analogy between terms that are correlated without being connected. da ill. , a - . see woodbridge, , . ibid., . to be sure, aristotle distinguishes between various parts of the soul, but he thinks of these "parts" most often in terms of capaci- ties or powers that may best be articulated in terms of various dimensions of the soul as opposed to segregated parts. aristotle articulates the various dimensions of the soul, for example, in da . , by talking about the various senses in which we speak about living: "thinking, perceiving, motion and stasis with respect to place, and the motion that results from nourishment, that is, perishing and growth." da a - . in ii. , the peripatetic method he speaks more explicitly of the "powers of the soul" (trov l>e bvvaµewv tij; jlvxij;) as he delineates its nutritive, perceptive, locomotive and deliberative capacities (da a - ). to be fair, woodbridge himself argues eloquently against the modern tendency to divorce the mind from the body. in his book, the realm of mind, woodbridge draws on precisely this vision of nature in order at once to critique and explain the origins of the modern dichotomy between mind and body. there he shows how the modern assumption that the mind is an agent separable from but operating with the body, specifically the brain, leads to the notion that the immediate objects of the mind are "nerv- ous processes in the brain." but, he argues, this is patently untrue for although the tree may stimulate a brain, what the mind thinks is not these brain processes, but the tree. the recognition that the idea of the tree is differ- ent from the processes of the brain leads, on the assumption of the mind as agent, to the positing of a dichotomy between mind and body. see woodbridge, , - . see woodbridge et al., , . met. b - . "" phys. a - . spinoza recognizes thinking and corporeality as two attributes of god's infinite substance. this leads to a strict parallelism between ideas and things as expressed clearly in ethics, book ii, proposition vii: "the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connec- tion of things." see spinoza, . stevens, , . woodbridge, , . ibid., , . ibid., . emphasis added. woodbridge writes: "if, however, our thinking is to be wise and sane and correct, it is not the body which makes it so, but a genuine coherence among the things we think about. it is something we discover. we discover, that is, that there is in the realm of being a structure by virtue of which one fact or event in it may lead our thinking on to other facts and events what are involved, and opens us to the reaches of space and time and what they contain. this structure cannot be described as physical. it is logical." ibid., . the peripatetic melhod • in an unpublished paper entided "aristotle on the ontology of the senses," john m. cooper traces the connection between aisthesis and krinein in order to account for the active dimension of perceiving in aristode. i am grateful to professor cooper for sending me a copy of this paper. see, cooper, . for a detailed discussion of the role of krinein in aristotle's account of aisthi sis, see long, , - . there are a number of important passages in which aristotle introduces the capacity to discern- krinein--into the logic of perceiving. see, for example, da il. , a - , ill. , b - , b - , and b - ; in parts of animals, aristotle insists that ani- mals too can discern the pleasant in what they taste. see, parts of animals b - . • this is, in fact, the longer path that was pur- sued in chapters and of long, . • see woodbridge, , . poetics a - . the nature of the phantasia in aristotle has given rise to a long tradition of rich scholar- ship. in calling it a metaphor here, the intent is decidedly not to suggest that, as philoponus has insisted, the phantasia is that which "carries off from things that are and constructs a representation of that which is not, for instance a centaur." see, philoponus, , , - . rather, metaphor here draws on the original greek meaning of "meta- pherein," to carry from one place to another. s da m. , b - . see, da fil. , a - and ill. , a - . freudenthal suggests that the difficulties associated with interpreting the meaning of the phantasia in aristotle result from its position between perceiving and thinking. see, freudenthal, , . wedin has suggested, to name only one scholar who has taken up the question of the phantalia as situated between perceiving and thinking in a serious way, that the phantasia ought not be understood as a "full fledged faculty" at all, but rather, it should be under- atood to serve the full faculties of aisthisis and nolsis. see wedin, , - . for a detailed discuuion of these issues, see long. , - . &p f>ov, 't , see liddell, . for a discussion of this connection, see whitney, . for a discussion of the "lever principle" on which this analogy depends, see de groot, , . see nussbaum, , b - . for a justification of the translation of phantasia as "being appeared to," see long, , . see too, lycos, . stevens, , . for a detailed discussion of this passage, see critchley, , - . woodbridge, , . stevens and stevens, , . references cleary, john j., "phainomena in aristotle's methodology," international journal of philosophical studies, . ( ), - . cooper, john m., "aristotle on the ontology of the senses," princeton university conference on ancient philosophy ( ; unpublished). critchley, s., things merely are: philosoplry in the poetry of wallace stevens, london/ new york: routledge, . de groot, j., "dunamis and the science of mechanics: aristotle on animal motion," journal of the history of philosoplry, . ( ), - . dewey, j., experience and nature, new york: dover publications, . freudenthal, j., ober den begriff des wortes phantasia bei aristoteles, gottingen: verlag von adalbert rente, . hegel, g. w. f., werke in zwanzig banden, frankfurt: suhrkamp, . irwin, t., aristotle's first principles, oxford: clarendon, . jaeger, werner wilhelm, aristoteles: grundlegung einer geschichte seiner entwicklung, berlin: weidmann, . jaeger, w. (ed.), aristotelis metaphysica, oxford: oxford university press, . kassel, r. (ed.), aristotelis de arte poetica liber, oxford: carendon, . lachs, j. and robert talisse (eds), american philosophy: an encyclopedia, new york: routledge, . lennox, j. g. (trans.), aristotle. on the parts of animals, oxford: oxford university press . liddell, g. h., and robert scott, a greek-english lexicon, oxford: clarendon, . long, christopher p., the ethics of ontology: rethinking an aristotelian legacy, albany: suny, . -, "saving ta legomena: aristotle and the history of philosophy," the review of metaphysics, ( ), - . -, "the daughters of meris: patriarchal dominion and the politics of the between," the graduate faculty philosophy journal, . ( ), - . -, aristotle on the nature of truth, cambridge: cambridge university press, . lycos, k., "aristotle and plato on 'appearing,'" mind, . ( ), - . marchand, suzanne l., down from olympus: archaeology and philhellenism in germany, - , princeton: princeton university press, . michelet, karl l., geschichte der letzten system der philosophie in deutsch/and von kant bis hegel, berlin: verlag von dunder und humbolt, . modrak, deborah k. w., aristotle's theory of language and meaning, cambridge/ the peripatetic method new york: cambridge university press, . nussbaum, m., aristotle's de motu animalium, princeton: princeton university press, . owens,]., the doctrine of being in the aristotelian metaphysics, toronto: pontifical institute of mediaeval studies, . paulsen, f., the german universities: their character and historical development, new york/london: macmillan, . philoponus, j. and william charlton., on aristotle's on the soul . - , ithaca, ny: cornell university press, . rosenstock, gershon g., f. a. trendelenburg, forerunner to john dewey, carbondale: southern illinois university press, . ross, w. d. (ed.),aristotelis physica, oxford: oxford university press, . -, aristotelis de anima, oxford: oxford university press, . sachs, j., aristotle. on the soul and on memory and recollection, santa fe, nm: green lion press, . smith, john e., "being, immediacy, and articulation," the review of metaphysics, . ( ), - . spinoza, benedict de, the collected works of spinoza, vol. i, princeton: princeton university press, . stevens, w., the necessary angel: essays on reality and the imagination, new york: vintage books, . -, collected poetry and prose, new york: library of america, . stevens, w. and holly stevens, the palm at the end of the mind: selected poems and a play, hamden: archon books, . the peripatetic method voros, g., notations of the wild: ecology in the poetry of wallace stevens, iowa city: university of iowa press, . wedin, michael v., mind and imagination in aristotle, new haven: yale university press, . whitney, w. d., "what ls articulation?" the american journal of philology, . ( ), - . woodbridge, frederick james eugene, the realm of mind: an essay in metaphysics, new york: columbia university press, . -, an essay on nature, new york: columbia university press, . -, aristotle's vision of nature, new york: columbia university press, . woodbridge, frederick james eugene, et al., nature and mind: selected essays of frederick]. e. woodbridge, presented to him on the occasion of his seventieth birthday by amherst college, the university of minnesota, columbia university; with a bibliography of his writings, new york: columbia university press, . 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page bir karakuşa bakmanın on Üç yolu by wallace stevens (review) bir karakuşa bakmanın on Üç yolu by wallace stevens (review) gül bilge han wallace stevens journal, volume , number , spring , pp. - (review) published by johns hopkins university press doi: for additional information about this article [ access provided at apr : gmt from carnegie mellon university ] https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ the wallace stevens journal . (spring ): – . © johns hopkins university press. reviews bir karakuşa bakmanın on Üç yolu. by wallace stevens. translated into turkish by gökçenur Çelebioğlu. istan- bul: yitik Ülke, . taking its title from “thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird,” gökçenur Çelebioğlu’s bir karakuşa bakmanın on Üç yolu is the most comprehensive turkish translation of wallace stevens to date. compared to previous transla- tions, the book features a rich selection from the early, middle, and late po- etry—from harmonium to opus posthumous. it also presents first-ever trans- lations of major poems such as “an ordinary evening in new haven” and “notes toward a supreme fiction,” together with shorter and sometimes less canonical poems from ideas of order, parts of a world, transport to summer, the auroras of autumn, and the rock. the demanding task of covering such a large body of work, combined with the linguistic distance between turkish and english, adds to the already substantial challenge of translating a poet as dif- ficult as stevens. bir karakuşa bakmanın on Üç yolu represents a well-balanced attempt to adopt stevens’s poetic idiom to turkish while retaining some sense of the foreignness and at times the strangeness of his original verse. a poet himself, Çelebioğlu joins a line of turkish poet-translators who have engaged with stevens’s aesthetic abstraction and poetic thought since , when the first translations of individual poems—part vii of “sunday morning” (“yaz sabahlarından birinde”) and “a postcard from the volcano” (“dünyaya bir posta kartı geldi”)—appeared in the anthology Çağdaş ameri- kan Şiirleri (contemporary american poems) by Özdemir nutku and tarık dur- sun k. in heavily paraphrasing and rewriting the originals, however, these earliest attempts radically departed from the actual sense of stevens’s work. it was in the s, a period that marked a turn toward abstraction in turkish poetry, that more accomplished translations were produced. in , one of the major figures of the avant-garde “garip” and “ikinci yeni” poetry move- ments, melih cevdet anday, translated several poems, including “gubbinal” (“acaip cicek”) and “the reader” (“okur”), for yeni ufuklar, an influential literary magazine of the period. a year later, cevat Çapan, a prominent trans- lator of english and greek poetry, translated another set of poems, including “re-statement of romance” (“yeniden aşk demek”) and “god is good. it is a beautiful night” (“tanrı iyi. güzel bir gece”), in his anthology of world poetry, Çin’den peru’ya (from china to peru), in which stevens was placed alongside such figures as w. b. yeats and federico garcía lorca. but it was not until the publication in of talat sait halman’s wallace stevens: Şiirler (wallace stevens: poems) that readers could get a broader sense of stevens in turkish. poet-critic, translator, and coincidentally the first culture minister of turkey, halman brought together forty poems, including “the emperor of ice-cream,” “poetry is a destructive force,” and “of mere being,” most reviews of which had been published in established literary magazines such as varlık and türk dili. nearly three decades later, in , aslı biçen’s first translation of the man with the blue guitar (mavi gitarlı adam) was published by the (now defunct) press iyi Şeyler. more recently, the celebrated poet Ülkü tamer’s translations of stevens’s poems, among them “variations on a summer day” (“bir yaz günü Üstüne Çeşitlemeler”) and “hieroglyphica” (“hiyeroglif”), came out in two small magazines, geceyazısı and mavi yeşil. owing to its generous selection and its inclusion of long poems, Çelebioğlu’s book fills a substantial gap in existing turkish translations of stevens, though some significant poems such as “anecdote of the jar,” “the comedian as the letter c,” and “esthétique du mal” remain to be translated. because a num- ber of poems included in the volume have been translated previously—there are now, for instance, three turkish versions of “vacancy in the park”—we can see how successfully Çelebioğlu handles the difficulties of translating ste- vens. take the ambiguous use of pronouns and similes, which dominates that poem’s semantic structure: it is like a boat that has pulled away from a shore at night and disappeared. it is like a guitar left on a table by a woman, who has forgotten it. it is like the feeling of a man come back to see a certain house. (cpp ) in the repeated lines “it is like . . .” the pronoun has no clear antecedent; “it” might be alternatively referring to “march” evoked in the beginning of the poem, to the “disappeared” object of line two, or perhaps to the “vacancy” of the title itself. indeed, in the earliest turkish translation, anday not only replaced the vague pronoun “it” with “march” but also de-emphasized the rhetorical effect of the simile by removing it from stanzas two and three. con- versely, the latest version of the poem reflects a greater awareness of stevens’s strategic use of figurative language; the imagery in turkish is built upon the translation of the simile with the introduction of “gibi” (like) at the end of each line: gece, kıyıdan sürüklenmiş ve kaybolmuş bir sandal gibi. bir kadının masanın Üstünde unutup gittiği gitarı gibi. Çocukluğunun geçtiği evi görmek için geri dönen bir adamın hissettikleri gibi. ( ) the wallace stevens journal significantly, Çelebioğlu’s translation also indicates an attempt to preserve the ambiguity entailed by stevens’s rhetoric, which he accomplishes by incorpo- rating the pronoun “it” as an absent referent within the linguistic structure of his turkish version, thereby allowing the reader to decide what “it” refers to. the choice is important, since, as several critics have pointed out, the absent referent evoked in “vacancy in the park” accords with the famous “the noth- ing that is” of “the snow man” (cpp )—also featured in this volume—mark- ing the thematic and conceptual continuities between stevens’s early and late poetry. the emphasis on linguistic detail brings me to the issue of lexical choices, generally handled with care throughout the collection. take, for instance, the phrase “watery syllable” from the first section of “le monocle de mon oncle” (cpp ), translated as “ıslak seslem” ( ). whereas a predictable choice for the translation of “syllable” would be “hece,” the translator opts for “ses- lem,” which, apart from meaning “syllable,” is also a musical term referring to harmonic intonation—a choice that anticipates the “choirs of wind” and “choirs of welcome” in the poem’s second section (cpp ). a similar atten- tion to diction applies to other poems, such as “peter quince at the clavier” and “thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird,” where stevens’s style and imagery are impressively channeled into turkish, and culturally specific ref- erences are supported with footnotes where necessary. in other cases, how- ever, lexical choices result in semantic alterations that call for brief reflection. for example, in Çelebioğlu’s version of sections i and ii from “notes toward a supreme fiction,” both “difficulty” and “ennui” (cpp ) are translated as “sıkıntı” ( – ), a choice that does not account for the semantic differ- ence between the two words: perhaps “güçlük” or “zorluk” would have more clearly differentiated “difficulty” from “ennui.” another example in which interpretive choices have a puzzling effect is the translation of the title “large red man reading” (“dev kızılderili okuyor”): here, “red man” appears as “kızılderili” (native american), a cultural identity not specified or seemingly implied in the original. but perhaps the most glaring problem of the volume is that a number of poems (i.e., “variations on a summer day” and “things of august”) have been translated only partially with no explanation accounting for the incomplete versions. a demanding aspect of english-turkish translations derives from the radi- cally different structure of turkish with respect to word order and syntax. turkish is a verb-final language; its regular sentence order (sov) is highly dissimilar to that of english. this typological distance between the two lan- guages poses a great challenge to the translator, especially in the case of ste- vens’s poetic language with its frequent use of enjambments and continuous lines often pointing to a lack of closure. this characteristic of stevens’s verse is most apparent in long poems like “an ordinary evening in new haven” and “sunday morning.” in order to adapt stevens’s lines to turkish, the transla- tor needs to flip the initial word order, which in turn makes it hard to convey the original sequence in which the images and metaphors are introduced. to address this, Çelebioğlu makes creative use of inverted sentence structures (see, for instance, section xi of “an ordinary evening”), and sometimes cuts run-on sentences to maintain stevens’s original sequence. reviews as for the musicality of words, throughout the volume we find a sensi- tive treatment of stevens’s concern with lyrical form, which manifests itself most visibly in the case of “the man with the blue guitar.” while it is nearly impossible to capture the poem’s iambic rhythm in its entirety in turkish, Çelebioğlu manages to keep line lengths as close as possible to the originals. he also keeps most of the rhymes, and inserts additional ones to compensate for those he glosses over, as in “eğildi” / “göverdi” of the very first couplet ( ). the use of inverted sentences also enables the translator to preserve some of the rhymes—for instance, in section iv of “the man with the blue guitar,” where the translation of the rhyme “are” / “guitar” (cpp ) as “olanlar” / “gitar” ( ) comes close to capturing the interplay between “things as they are” (reality) and “the blue guitar” (the instrument of poetic imagination). on other occasions, however, the change of rhyming patterns fails to register the link between the “blue guitar” and “things as they are” (see, for instance, sections i, vi, and xxviii). notably, here the translation of stevens’s dialogue between the poet-speaker and the audience is skillfully integrated into the turkish text with the adaptation of the “dedi” / “dediler” (s/he said / they said) pattern—a folk form characteristic of anatolian “müracâ’a poetry.” it is precisely with respect to such aesthetic features that Çelebioğlu’s translation of the poem surpasses biçen’s earlier version. ultimately, bir karakuşa bakmanın on Üç yolu is a highly accomplished and genuinely ambitious presentation of stevens to turkish readers. even though stevens’s poetry entered into turkish as early as the mid-fifties, public recep- tion has so far been limited. with its expansive range of selections and beauti- ful physical design, Çelebioğlu’s new translation has the potential to attract a broader audience and to elicit new forms of readerly attention, as several online reviews have already indicated. as such, the book is not only a wel- come addition to the expanding body of translated poetry into turkish, but also an important contribution of this canonical american poet to the sphere of world literature. gül bilge han stockholm university sweden the songs we know best: john ashbery’s early life. by karin roffman. new york: farrar, straus and giroux, . most devoted readers of john ashbery know the strange story of his first po- ems to see print: how a prep-school classmate submitted ashbery’s work to poetry as his own, a fact their author discovered, to his intense chagrin, only when he read them in the magazine. or, at least, most of us thought we knew this story. in karin roffman’s gripping account of the poet’s formative years, however, the incident forms part of a still stranger tale. the poetry thief, a boy by the name of bill haddock, haunted ashbery during their time at deerfield academy like a demonic doppelganger out of a patricia highsmith novel, al- ternately befriending and tormenting him, spreading rumors that he was “an nbn_se_uu_diva- .pdf comprehensive summaries of uppsala dissertations from the faculty of medicine positron emission tomography in the management of neuroendocrine tumors by hÅkan Örlefors acta universitatis upsaliensis uppsala to my father you would have been so proud! papers included in the thesis this thesis is based on the following papers, which are referred to in the text by their roman numerals: i Örlefors h, sundin a, ahlström h, bjurling p, bergström m, lilja a, långström b, Öberg k, eriksson b. ( ). positron emission tomography with -hydroxytryptophan in neuroendocrine tumors. journal of clinical oncology ( ): - ii wu f, Örlefors h, bergström m, antoni g, omura h, eriksson b, watanabe y, långström b. ( ). uptake of -c- and -c- labeled glutamate, glutamine and aspartate in vitro and in vivo. anticancer research : - iii Örlefors h, sundin a, fasth kj, Öberg k, långström b, eriksson b, bergström m. demonstration of high monoamineoxidase-a levels in neuroendocrine gastroenteropancreatic tumors in vitro and in vivo - tumor visualization using positron emission tomography with -c-harmine. nuclear medicine and biology (accepted) iv Örlefors h, sundin a, lu l, Öberg k, långström b, eriksson b, bergström m. carbidopa pretreatment improves image interpretation and visualization of neuroendocrine tumors with - c- -htp-pet. (submitted) v Örlefors h, sundin a, garske u, juhlin c, Öberg k, långström b, bergström m, eriksson b. whole-body -c- -htp-pet as a general imaging technique for detection of neuroendocrine tumors - a comparison with somatostatin receptor scintigraphy and comventional radiology. (manuscript) contents introduction..................................................................................................... the neuroendocrine concept .................................................................... amine turnover in neuroendocrine tumor cells.......................................... neuroendocrine tumors .............................................................................. classification ......................................................................................... lung carcinoids ..................................................................................... endocrine pancreatic tumors ................................................................. midgut carcinoid tumors ....................................................................... hindgut carcinoid tumors .................................................................... multiple endocrine neoplasia type (men- ) .................................. treatment of net´s............................................................................. imaging of neuroendocrine tumors ......................................................... computed tomography, magnetic resonance tomography and ultrasonography .................................................................................. somatostatin receptor scintigraphy ..................................................... vip- and mibg-scintigraphy .............................................................. positron emission tomography ............................................................... fdg ..................................................................................................... l-dopa and -htp ............................................................................ hed, fluorodopamine and metomidate.............................................. aims of the study .......................................................................................... materials and methods.................................................................................. patients ..................................................................................................... biochemistry ............................................................................................ in vitro methods ....................................................................................... multicellular aggregate culture / spheroid model ................................ amino acid accumulation and uptake modulation .............................. molecular fraction separation and hplc ............................................ distribution of positron labeled amino acids in rats ............................ tissue samples for autoradiographies.................................................. autoradiography of tumor sections ..................................................... positron emission tomograpy ................................................................. chemistry ............................................................................................ general ....................................................................................... synthesis of c- -htp .............................................................. synthesis of c-harmine........................................................... image reconstruction and interpretation .............................................. paper i ........................................................................................ paper ii ....................................................................................... paper iii...................................................................................... paper iv ..................................................................................... paper v ....................................................................................... somatostatin receptor scintigraphy ........................................................ computed tomography ........................................................................... statistical methods ................................................................................... results and discussion ................................................................................. imaging of net´s (paper i, iii and v) ..................................................... pet in treatment monitoring (paper i) ..................................................... in vivo modulation of -htp uptake (paper iv)...................................... uptake, modulation and distribution of amino acids (paper ii) ............... in vitro binding to tumor specimens ........................................................ general summary .......................................................................................... swedish abstract / svensk sammanfattning ............................................ conclusions................................................................................................... diagnostic algorithm for net`s............................................................... future aspects ............................................................................................... pet in neuroendocrine tumors................................................................ references..................................................................................................... acknowledgements....................................................................................... abbreviations aadc aromatic amino acid decarboxylase acth adrenocorticotropic hormone apud amine precursor uptake and decarboxylation asp aspartate bq bequerel cga chromogranin a cd carbidopa ct computed tomography dopa dihydroxyphenylalanine dtpa diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid ecl enterochromaffine like ept endocrine pancreatic tumor fdg fluorodeoxyglucose gaba gamma amino butyric acid gep gastroenteropancreatic gln glutamine glu glutamate har harmine hiaa hydroxy indole acetic acid hplc high performance liquid chromatography ht hydroxytryptamine (serotonin) htp hydroxytryptophan mao monoamine oxidase men- multiple endocrine neoplasia type mgc midgut carcinoid mri magnetic resonance imaging net neuroendocrine tumor pet positron emission tomography roi region of interest spect single photon emission tomography srs somatostatin receptor scintigraphy suv standardized uptake value us ultrasonography wb whole body introduction the knowledge of tumorigenesis has increased rapidly in the last decade. both environmental and genetic factors contribute to the risk of developing a tumor disease over a lifetime. molecular genetics has brought new insights about the mechanisms of tumor development and the gene damage that underlies inherited as well as sporadic forms of neoplasia. generally multiple mutations over time in a gene controlling cell growth are needed to create a neoplastic phenotype. on the other hand, for inherited tumor syndromes mutations in key genes are already present in somatic cells at birth (germ line mutations). in the progenitor cell a sufficient number of damages to the deoxyribonucleic acid (dna) are accumulated and this can be manifested as an increase in proliferative capacity or reduced programmed cell death. neuroendocrine tumors (net´s) are often highly differentiated tumors and they tend to express hormonal activity that corresponds to the normal cell type. however, deregulation of growth and hormonal hyperfunction do not coexist by default. in biological hyperplasia with hormonal overproduction, which in most cases are polyclonal expansions as a result of an extrinsic stimulus (as a contrast to the monoclonal growth of a tumor), oncogenesis do not occur in the majority of cases. net´s derive from endocrine cells capable of producing biogenic amines and polypeptide hormones. classically these tumors have been related to as apud-omas (amine precursor uptake and decarboxylation). depending on the extent of the tumor disease and hormonal production, net´s can usually be visualized with some form of imaging method. however, even in cases with a fully developed clinical endocrine syndrome the tumor lesion can be very small and difficult to detect. the general aim of this study was to, in vitro and in vivo, investigate some of the potential monoamine pathways of net´s, using radionuclide labeled tracers for positron emission tomography (pet). the intention was also to explore the value of clinical pet imaging in the management of net´s. the neuroendocrine concept using classical histological staining methods, friedrich feyrter in reported the presence of a number of pale cells (helle zellen) present throughout the body but with a preference to the intestinal tract ( ). he grouped these single cells, or small cell populations, together suggesting a "diffuse endocrine system" outside the brain capable of secreting “blood borne chemical messengers". as early as , bayliss and starling published their pioneer work concerning endocrine and paracrine action of such blood borne substances ( ). following major developments in histochemistry and electron microscopy everson pearse in the late s and s formulated the first version of his neuroendocrine concept by grouping a number of cells, with the common feature of producing peptide hormones and similarities in cytochemistry and ultrastructure, under the acronym apud, amine-precursor uptake and decarboxylation ( , ). one of the bases for this concept pearse formed through converting amines such as dopamine and serotonin into fluorescent isoquinoline derivatives after injection of the amine precursors dihydroxyphenylalanine (dopa) and -hydroxytryptophan ( -htp). with this he demonstrated presence of the enzyme aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (aadc), which decarboxylates these amino precursors. in this classification he unified widely spread cells from endocrine organs or isolated sites throughout the body to what we today understand as the diffuse (or dispersed) endocrine system. pearse favored the endo- and paracrine action theory, but also postulated these cells to be a novel third branch of the nervous system constructed to complement the autonomic and somatic nervous systems ( ). this neuroendocrine concept was developed during a period of more than ten years and at that time also peptidergic nerves were included in the diffuse endocrine system ( ). the localization of specific peptide hormones and the functional criterion gave rise to the frequently used pseudonym "peptide- hormone-producing" cells. pearse went further to also suggest a common embryological origin, the neural crest, of all neuroendocrine cells ( ). this was a result of the increasing number of neuropeptides that were discovered and commonly expressed in neurons and neuroendocrine cells ( ). this was an attractive approach to explain why endocrine pathologies such as medullary thyroid cancer occurred at the same time as pheochromocytomas ( ). some striking experiments have also been made with the beta-nerve growth factor (ngf), that was able to produce neurite-like extensions in medullar chormaffin and pancreatic islet cells ( ). the criteria of common embryological origin was however shown to be the case in far from all of the cells included in the apud series ( , ) and lately an origin from endodermal stem cells have been proposed ( , ). pearse himself later modified his theory to not include the criterion of common origin. this redefined concept, in which all apud cells must be "programmed" to become neuroendocrine ( ), still stands today. taking into account also the ideas of "paraneurons" by fujita ( ), a new set of criteria to define neuroendocrine cells was stated by langley ( ): neuroendocrine cells produce neuropeptide hormones or neurotransmitters. these substances are contained within granules or vesicles from which they are released by a process of regulated exocytosis in response to external stimuli. neuroendocrine cells differ from neurons by the absence of axons and specialized nerve terminals. different types of neuroendocrine cells share many similar properties and express several proteins in common, but the expression of any specific marker protein is not an absolute criterion. with more than bioactive peptides, more than gut peptide hormone genes and at least different neuroendocrine cell types ( ), the gut is maybe the largest endocrine organ in humans ( ) (table ). amine turnover in neuroendocrine tumor cells the enterochromaffin (ec) cell is the largest population of neuroendocrine cells in the gut ( ). masson showed with his silver staining that so-called midgut carcinoid tumors (see under heading net´s) are derived from these ec-cells in the crypts of lieberkuhn in the intestinal epithelium ( ). these ec-cells have the property of producing and secreting amines (e.g. serotonin) and polypeptides (e.g. neurokinin-a and substanse p). also the enterochromaffin-like (ecl) cells in the gut and endocrine cells of the bronchi can dedifferentiate to become oncogenic. tumors deriving from these cells can produce a whole range of peptide hormones, like gastrin, adrenocorticotropic hormone (acth), calcitonin, pancreatic polypeptide etc ( ) (table ). tumors of “midgut” origin produce serotonin to a high extent, while tumors arising from the “foregut” frequently have low levels of the enzyme aadc and thereby only secrete the amine-precursor -htp ( , ). the initial step in the synthesis of serotonin, -hydroxytryptamine ( -ht) in the ec-cell, is the transport of tryptophan by an amio acid carrier across the cell membrane. hydroxylation of tryptophan then takes place table . peptides and amines in the diffuse neuroendocrine cell system. adapted from molecular and cellular endocrine pathology, stefaneau ed., intracellularly to produce -htp, that in turn is converted to -ht. this step is rate limiting in the serotonin synthesis. via vesicular membrane proteins (vmats) -ht is stored in secretory granules and upon stimuli granules translocate to the cell membrane and their content is released into the portal circulation through exocytosis. there is also a reuptake system for serotonin through an amine reuptake membrane pump mechanism. a certain amount of the serotonin is also released into the gut lumen of the small intestine. a majority of the circulating -ht is taken up by platelets. degradation of - ht is not performed solely by the ecl-cell but also in organs like the kidney, lung and liver ( - ). the enzyme responsible for the conversion of -ht to urinary -hydroxyindoleacetic acid (u- -hiaa) is monoamine oxidase (mao) (fig ). fig . the processing of serotonin and cga in the ecl-cell reprinted from westberg, , with permission chromogranin a (cga) is an acidic glycoprotein of amino acids with a molecular weight of kd. its immunoreactivity has been found in all parts of the gastrointestinal tract and pancreas and it has been isolated from all endocrine glands ( ). the physiologic role of cga is not clear, but it is present in neuroendocrine tissue and is co-secreted with peptide hormones and amines, thus indicating a storage role of peptides within the secretory granule ( , ). cga is an important serum marker for net´s independent of their origin. neuroendocrine tumors neuroendocrine tumors of the gastroenteropancreatic system (gep) are rare and usually show slow tumor growth. the estimated incidence is reported to vary from - ( ) to . ( ) cases per , people. these tumors show different tumor biology and patients often present clinical symptoms due to hormonal overproduction. symptoms like hypoglycemia, gastric ulcers, severe diarrhea and flushing can be prominent parts of the patient's clinical presentation ( ) and a major problem even though the tumor lesion itself can be very small. however, in many cases the tumor burden is large with distant metastases. there are also more malignant forms where tumor proliferation rate can be high and tumor growth rapid ( ). otto lubarsch was in the first to describe the clinical presentation and histopathologic feature of carcinoid tumors in the gastrointestinal tract ( ). in the beginning of the last century the term karzinoide was introduced for what the pathologist oberndorffer claimed to be a more or less benign neoplasm of the ileum ( ). this view was later reformed in when a series of patients with distant metastases of carcinoid tumors was described ( ). however, the misunderstanding of the benign nature of these tumors can be seen even in our century. carcinoid tumors have been reported from a number of different organs like the ovaries, the thymus and the heart but the most common sites of origin are the lungs and the gastrointestinal tract. in many cases the acronym gep-tumors is used for this latter group of net´s. the following short resume will be focused on these main groups of net´s, including the entity of multiple endocrine neoplasia type- (men- ), a not so uncommon entity processed at our clinic (the clinic for endocrine oncology, uas, uppsala, sweden). classification a clinically commonly used classification for net´s was formed by williams and sandler in . they took into account a relationship between the embryologic origin as well as the histologic and biochemical features of the different entities of carcinoid tumors ( ). they formed three different groups: . foregut carcinoids (thoracic, gastric, duodenal carcinoids and endocrine pancreatic tumors) . midgut carcinoids (carcinoids of the small intestine, appendix and proximal colon) . hindgut carcinoids (carcinoids of the distal part of colon and the rectum). this classification has been very useful in the clinical assessment of these tumors and a tool for directing the work-up and diagnostic procedures. however, there are drawbacks of this classification regarding mainly lack of information concerning differentiation and invasiveness. therefore a more clinicopathologically orientated classification has been proposed and found to reflect the nature of these tumors in a more adequate way ( ) (table ). table . clinicopathologic classification of gep-tumors. lung carcinoids presenting symptoms in patients with bronchial carcinoids can be cough, recurrent pulmonary infections or hemoptysis ( ). nevertheless, many tumors are asymptomatic and diagnosed en passent on a ct or chest x-ray performed for other reasons. these tumors account for - percent of all lung neoplasm’s and are usually divided into typical or atypical carcinoid tumors ( ). the incidence is approximately . / , inhabitants and the etiology is unknown. however, there is a known connection to the multiple endocrine neoplasia type (men- ) syndrome ( ). lung carcinoids are often localized in the main or lobar bronchi and have been reported to display a mean diameter of . cm, whereas peripheral tumors usually are smaller (mean . cm) and may be multiple and surrounded by satellite lesions ( ). since lung carcinoids are of neuroendocrine origin they may secrete hormones. for example, histamine overproduction may cause a clinical condition of asthma-like symptoms, redness and swelling, and production of acth or corticotrophin-releasing factor (crf) can cause an ectopic cushing’s syndrome. since the lesions often are small there can be problems in visualization of the tumor causing the clinical syndrome ( , ). ct or mri serve as standard methods for tumor detection but somatostatin receptor scintigraphy has shown additive information in small receptor positive tumors ( , ). typical carcinoids are considered to be of a more benign nature and have been reported to metastasize in – %, whereas up to % of the patients with atypical carcinoids develop distant metastases ( , ). endocrine pancreatic tumors neuroendocrine pancreatic tumors (ept´s) have an incidence of about . per , inhabitants ( ). except for insulinomas, ept´s are malignant in more than % of the cases and treatment is needed both to control the often present endocrine symptoms as well as tumor growth. ept´s are classified as functioning when they are associated with a specific clinical syndrome caused by hormonal overproduction. however, the most common group of ept´s is the non-functioning entity that account for up to - % of the cases ( ). biochemical diagnosis is always a challenge for the different functioning ept´s. with the use of chromogranin a (cga) there is a general marker at hand that is independent of syndrome or functionality ( ). the endocrine part of pancreas includes four different islet cells; a, b, d and pp cells, producing glucagons, insulin, somatostatin and pancreatic polypeptide respectively. when a tumor is developed from these cells, hormones that are not normally present in pancreas can be produced, i.e. gastrin, vasointestinal peptide (vip), acth and calcitonin. the functional ept´s are divided into groups referring to their respective hormone production: gastrinomas cause the zollinger-ellison syndrome with hypergastrinemia, secondary hyperacidity with risk for gastro- duodenal ulcers and diarrhea ( ). gastrinomas are malignant in approximately – % and the primary tumor is preferably located to pancreas or duodenum ( ). insulinomas are in a majority of cases benign and located to the pancreas in more than % ( ). insulinomas can be small and difficult to visualize. however, when hyperinsulinemia is present and repeated hypoglycemias with elevated insulin/glucose-ratios are detected, there is often indication for surgical exploration ( ). mainly malignant insulinomas present with elevated proinsulin or c-peptide ( ). vipomas are associated with the so called verner-morrison syndrome that is characterized by watery diarrhea, hypokalemia and achlorhydria ( ). these tumor lesions malignify to a high extent and primary lesion are to be expected in pancreas ( ). glucagonomas are found exclusively in pancreas as primary tumors and they set distant metastases in about % ( ). the glucagonoma syndrome can be connected to skin lesions referred to as necrolytic migratory erythema ( ). severe anorexia, glossitis and diabetes can accompany this syndrome. somatostatinomas are rare endocrine pancreatic tumor manifestations with a malignant potential. they can also originate from the upper small intestine. acthomas of the pancreas can cause ectopic cushing’s syndrome and are described to count for - % of the cases ( ). mb cushing is clinically a challenging syndrome that due to the acth-stimulated hypercortisolism affects many metabolic systems throughout the body. the classical findings of cushing’s disease are hypertonia, diabetes mellitus and hypokalemia. these symptoms can progress rapidly in patients with malignant acthomas ( ), while they often develop over a longer period of time in benign cases where also the classical redistribution of body fat is present. midgut carcinoid tumors midgut carcinoid tumors (mgc) originate, as previously mentioned, from the kulchitsky cells in the crypts of lieberkuhn in the intestinal epithelium ( ). despite the undisputedly small primary tumor of the terminal parts of the ileum, it is a fact that mesenteric and liver metastases are commonly present at the time of diagnoses ( ). since initial symptoms can be vague there may be a delay in diagnosis for approximately - years ( ). bowel obstruction and pain are local symptoms from the abdomen, while the carcinoid syndrome with diarrhea, flushing, right-sided heart failure and bronchial obstruction is secondary to hormonal excess ( , ). presence of the carcinoid syndrome indicates a tumor burden not only limited to the regional lymph nodes but also present in the liver ( ). histologically mgc-tumors are characterized by positive reactions to silver stains and to markers of neuroendocrine tissue, like synaptophysin, chromogranin and neuron specific enolase (nse) ( ). one of strongest indicators of a mgc tumor is the presence of a positive serotonin ( -ht) staining or elevated levels thereof in serum or urine. -ht is synthesized from its precursor -hydroxytryptophan ( -htp) and further metabolized to -hiaa (fig ), which is excreted in the urine. u- -hiaa and cga are the two main markers for mgc´s ( , , ). however, measurement of platelet or urinary serotonin can also be used for diagnosis with high sensitivity ( ). fig . synthesis and degradation of serotonin. from Öberg, k. williams textbook of endocrinology, th ed. hindgut carcinoid tumors this group can be divided into rectal and colonic carcinoids, with a majority belonging to the former. reports have been made of an up to % malignancy frequency for rectal carcinoids ( ). hindgut carcinoids do rarely stain positive for serotonin ( ) and presentation of carcinoid syndrome is rare. approximately % of the tumors are asymptomatic and found on routine endoscopy. patients with symptoms usually present with pain, constipation or rectal bleedings. rectal carcinoid tumors constitute up to percent of all rectal tumors ( ). multiple endocrine neoplasia type (men- ) this syndrome is an inherited disorder characterized by combinations of different endocrine tumors. the classic men- lesions include: primary hyperparathyroidism (in more than %) endocrine pancreatic tumors (in - %). pituitary tumors (in - %) two of these lesions are necessary to set the diagnosis. there is a known overrepresentation of adrenocortical cancer and foregut carcinoids in men- patients ( ). the penetrance of this syndrome is high (> %) and the gene defect, located to the long arm of chromosome , denoted q , encoding for the menin protein ( ), can be phenotypically identified in suspected carriers. any of these classical men- lesions can be the presenting one, whereas hyperparathyroidism is the most common initial endocrinopathy ( ). the second most common lesion is the endocrine pancreatic tumor with a prevalence of up to – % ( , ). in the majority of cases the presence of an ept causes an elevation in any of the pancreatic hormones and even in non functioning tumors a secretory product can be measured. when clinical symptoms are present approximately half of the patients have a malignant disease ( ). most of the men- -ept´s are adenomas in a size of millimeters to several centimeters ( , ). in all men- patients with pancreatic lesions, multiple tumor involvement of the gland should be suspected ( ). elevation of pancreatic tumor markers in patients with men- can be detected more than years before lesions are detectable on conventional radiology ( ). the early detection of ept´s is improved by a standardized meal stimulation test and this test has been shown to be efficient regardless of the peptide secreted by the tumor ( ). for early diagnostic visualization of ept´s in men- subjects most imaging methods have shown unsatisfying results with the exception for endoscopic ultrasonography, that has shown sensitivities from – % in the detection even of small ept´s ( , , ). treatment of net´s in the treatment of net´s surgery must always be discussed as a therapeutic option. cure can of course be obtained if radical surgery of primary tumor and limited disease can be performed. favorable survival statistics and maintenance of daily physical activity has been reported using an active surgical approach even in patients with disseminated disease ( ). more radical surgical interventions like liver transplantation have also been reported as a possible therapeutic option in net´s with metastases limited to the liver ( ). even if curative surgery can not be performed, there should always be a discussion of the possibilities to perform debulking surgery, since both good palliation and reduction in hormonal symptoms has been reported from such procedures ( , ). in a limited number of patients resection of local metastatic disease can provide cure ( ). radiofrequency ablation (rf-ablation) can be an alternative for treatment of liver metastases in net´s ( ), as well as alcohol injection and the use of laser. however, further studies are needed in that area. to reduce the bulk of liver metastases embolization of the hepatic artery with spongostan® can be performed, causing response rates of – % with a median duration of - months ( ). this procedure can also be performed with addition of cytotoxic agents (chemo-embolization) ( ). medical treatment of net´s include biochemical response modifiers like different somatostatin analogs and interferon’s, but also different chemotherapeutic drugs. the combination of streptozotocin and -fu or doxorubicin has generated response rates of - % in patients with ept and distant metastases ( , ). in patients with progressive disease the combination of cisplatin and etoposide has proven radiological or biochemical response in more than % of patients with foregut carcinoids ( ). in contrast, mgc´s have not been responding to chemotherapy to any greater extent and duration of response in previous studies was short ( , ). on the other hand long-term responses have been seen in mgc-patients using alpha interferon ( , ) in the treatment of ept´s alpha interferon has also been used ( ) and response rates in approximately % have been seen with duration for more than years ( ). recently, data for the combination of -interferon and somatostatin state radiological and biochemical responses in approximately % and %, respectively ( ). somatostatin analogues are known to inhibit both release of peptides and to exert an antiproliferative effect on endocrine tumors. their use in controlling clinical symptoms due to hormonal excess in net´s is undisputed and they are also used as growth controlling agents in these tumors ( ). a treatment modality that has come into clinical use in the last few years is peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (prrt). treatment of net´s using radioactive somatostatin analogues like in-octreotide has so far been evaluated in only a limited number of patients, but this prospect is promising and new isotopes are being introduced for prrt in net´s. in initial studies response rates of - % has been reported ( - ). treatment of catecholamine secreting tumors like pheocromocytomas with ( )i- metaiodobenzylguanidine (mibg) is established and videly spread and this modality has also been tried in different net´s with fairly good response rates of over % ( ). stable disease has been reported in over % ( ) of a patient material where both carcinoids and paragangliomas were included. imaging of neuroendocrine tumors in a majority of the patients with mgc distant metastases already occur when the diagnosis is set. therefore radiological visualization is often concentrated on mapping the extent of tumor spread. the primary tumor in the area of the distal ileum is difficult to detect and can only occasionally be diagnosed preoperatively. in those cases there are often clinical signs of small intestine obstruction due to a characteristic mesenteric fibrosis that together with mesenteric lymph node metastases can cause obstructive symptoms ( ). the primary tumor itself is seldom large enough to cause intestinal lumen obstruction ( ). the radiological work-up concerning ept´s can be more problematic. primary tumors are often small even though the hormonal production and clinical symptoms can be prominent. previously, angiography of the mesenteric and coeliac arteries was considered gold standard for diagnosing these small but rather vascular tumors. this method of course fails to visualize tumors that lack hypervascularity ( , ). percutaneous transhepatic vein catheterization and venous sampling (ptp) has also been shown to be of value in detecting small ept´s ( , ), but this method is known to sometimes produce false positive results ( ). however, this method can possibly be enhanced by an intra-arterial calcium infusion ( ). perhaps is surgical exploration and peroperative palpation, including intraoperative ultrasonography, the outstanding method to localize net´s? there are, on the other hand, undoubtedly advantages in having a staging protocol and a non invasive lesion detection procedure performed for imaging of the tumor burden before surgery. in the following review over the different imaging modalities of net´s, focus has been set on tumors outside the central nervous system, thereby excluding the field of pituitary adenomas. computed tomography, magnetic resonance tomography and ultrasonography computed tomography (ct) and ultrasonography (us) are important methods in the radiological work up, and the most valuable methods for therapy monitoring in patients with net´s. ct has well defended its place over the last two decades ( ) and its sensitivity has been significantly improved by the introduction of spiral-ct scanners ( ). especially for ept´s spiral-ct should be used in preference to so called incremental ct. bronchial carcinoids are to a high degree visible at an ordinary chest x-ray ( ) whereas detection rate is greatly improved using ct or magnetic resonance imaging (mri) ( ). mri is often what is proposed as the next step if ct and us do not provide sufficient imaging results. with the development in mri pulse sequences, improvements in motion artifact reduction technique and new contrast agents this radiological method has become a powerful and sensitive instrument in the detection of net´s ( ). us on the other hand is dependant on the individual skill of the performing physician, but effective both as screening method for the whole abdomen and in local examination of the liver. using contrast enhanced examinations depiction of tumors (preferably in the liver) can be greatly improved. the interventional capacity is also great with us, e.g. rf- treatment of liver metastases. lately the development of endoscopic us (eus) has improved the diagnosis of small ept´s and in the hands of a skilful investigator this method has been shown to produce sensitivities from to over % ( , , , ). comparisons have been made between eus and somatostatin receptor scintigraphy, ct and mri in the detection of insulinomas and gastrinomas, where the sensitivity is at most % for all these last three methods ( ). in addition, us can be used intraoperatively for achieving even higher tumor detection rates ( ) and, as stated before, a combination between a surgical peroperative palpation and inspection together with intraoperative us perhaps account for the highest success rate. somatostatin receptor scintigraphy somatostatin is a cyclic peptide and in two biologically active isoforms it comprises and amino acids. it was isolated as early as ( ) and shown to be expressed mainly in the cerebral cortex, the hypothalamus, the brain stem, d-cells of the pancreatic islets, the thyroid gland and in the gastrointestinal tract ( , ). receptors for somatostatin have been identified in the central nervous system, the gastrointestinal tract and on many cells of neuroendocrine origin, including the somatotropes of the anterior pituitary gland, the c cells in the thyroid and the d cells of the pancreatic islets ( , ). the general inhibitory effect of somatostatin on hormone secretion of various glands ( , ) has made somatostatin an agent for controlling endocrine hyperfunction both in pituitary adenomas ( ) and gastroenteropancreatic net´s ( , , ). octreotide, containing amino acids in the bioactive core sequence, is commercially the most used somatostatin analogue for treatment and peptide receptor scintigraphy of net´s. peptide receptor scintigraphy with radioactive somatostatin-analogues was initially performed with i-tyr -octreotide. however, in the last decade in-dtpa - octreotide (octreoscan) has been shown to have high accuracy for scintigraphic visualization of net´s, such as carcinoid tumors, islet cell tumors and paragangliomas ( - ). a european multicenter trial in patients with net´s was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of srs with in-dtpa - octreotide (octreoscan) ( ). in that study tumor detection was positive in % with srs, as compared to % with conventional radiology. detection rates of islet-cell tumors in that study was - % (highest success rate for glucagonomas). furthermore, a positive somatostatin receptor scintigraphy (srs) can predict a beneficial effect of somatostatin analogue therapy on hormonal hypersecretion ( , ). since srs is a sensitive imaging method for net´s and can produce a staging of the disease, the scanning result also has great impact on the clinical management of patients with net´s. in a study by lebtahi et al. srs changed the surgical therapeutic strategy in % of the patients ( ) and termanini et al. showed that the use of srs altered management in % of the patients with gastrinomas ( ). furthermore, the sensitivity of srs has been compared to ct, mri, us and selective angiography in the detection of primary and metastatic gastrinomas, and has been found to be the single most sensitive imaging method for that group of ept´s ( ). however, in this comparison eus was not included as one of the imaging techniques. srs is, when combined with single photon emission tomography (spect), to be considered as the first choice of imaging technique for net´s. however, there are a few drawbacks that need to be commented. octreotide binds with high affinity to somatostatin receptor subtype and with relatively high affinity to receptor subtype , but has low affinity to number , and ( , ). net´s express subtype and in up to % of the cases. tumors that lack or have limited expression of these receptors are potentially negative on srs but the receptor expression can also differ between different lesions in the same patient ( ). tumor lesions smaller than . – cm can be problematic to visualize with srs. this is probably reflecting the limitations in spatial resolution of the spect technique with its detection of a single photon emission. to further comment on the issue of tumor localization with srs, there are a few reports of intraoperative tumor detection using scintillation detectors following the injection of labeled somatostatin analogues. tumor detection rates that surpass conventional srs and detects all (!) intra-abdominal tumors over . cm in diameter ( , ) have been reported. vip- and mibg-scintigraphy vasoactive intestinal peptide (vip) has been labeled with iodine- for scintigraphy of intestinal tumors. in this study regular pancreatic- and colorectal adenocarcinomas, as well as mgc´s and insulinomas were imaged by vip-scans ( ). however, this method has not been further evaluated in other studies. metaiodobenzylguanidine (mibg) shares the same uptake mechanism as norepinephrine and i or i-labeled mibg scintigraphy has a good capacity to detect medullary pheochromocytomas of the adrenals with reported sensitivity of % and specificity of as high as % ( , ). mibg-scintigraphy has been evaluated for diagnostic visualization of net´s and produces sensitivities that are very low ( %!) for ept´s and up to % for carcinoids ( , ). positron emission tomography positron emission tomography (pet) is a non-invasive technique for measurements of regional tracer accumulation and quantification. the principle of which pet rests is annihilation coincidence detection ( ) and its possible potential in medical imaging was noted as early as in the s ( ). a biological substance, that one wants to study, can in a majority of cases be labeled to become a radioactive tracer. radionuclides like c, o and f decay with the emission of positrons. a positron travels a short distance of a few millimeters in tissue before it collides with its antiparticle, the electron. at the collision both particles are annihilated and two photons with an energy of kev are produced. these leave the tissue in counter-opposite directions and can simultaneously be detected (so called coincidence detection) in a double set of detectors arranged as a ring around the subject. each detector ring consists of hundreds of coincidence coupled detector units that basically becomes the pet-camera (fig ). the coincidence detection provides a high spatial resolution that is nearly depth independent ( , ). a computerized procedure calculates a value that represents the number of photons emitted from each pixel (“volume unit”) and an array of pixel data is produced that corresponds to the activity concentration of the tracer substance in the tissue. by commencing each pet examination with a transmission scan, corrections can be made for loss of annihilation photons due to tissue attenuation. as a result of this mathematical reconstruction, pet provides high image quality and quantitative measurements of biological processes for research and clinical practice ( , ). table . half-lives (min) of standard positron emitters. f . c . o . n . ga . data from the nudat database ( ) the classical positron emitting radionuclides are produced with particle accelerators, typically cyclotrons. they are short-lived isotopes of normal biological matter with half-lives from minutes to approximately hours table ). fig, . schematic illustration of the principle for pet. patient tracer injection depending on what physiological principle you want to describe, these radionuclides can be used for substitution in a molecule that in its labeled form will remain biologically unchanged. with pet it is not only possible to make an image of a structure, but also to gain information of a bio- physiological principle, a metabolic pathway or, e.g. receptor expression, all depending on the choice of the pet-probe. the tracer substance itself and the actual labeling procedure with a positron emitter are key points in the use of pet in molecular imaging and clinical medicine. the logistics of pet is shown in fig . fig . the logistics of pet-examinations (modified from lidholt, ). d c a b the different steps in a pet-examination consists of: the radionuclide production in a cyclotron (a), the labeling of a specific tracer, tracer synthesis (b), tracer analysis (c) and administration of the tracer to the patient and thereafter scanning procedure. fdg the use of pet in clinical oncology has dramatically increased in the last decade. this is mainly a result of the use of the tracer -fluoro-deoxy- glucose ( f-fdg) as a general tool for the study of glucose transport and metabolism in neoplastic and benign pathologic processes ( ). the value of fdg is based on the importance of glucose metabolism in normal cellular function. alterations in the normal glucose turnover, like those occurring in a malignant tumor, can be detected with fdg-pet, including abnormalities that not even are detectable as anatomical changes on conventional ct or mri ( , ). however, since fdg enters the cell through the pathway of glucose and is intracellularly phosphorylated to fdg- -phosphate, tissues like the brain, myocardium and most malignant cells accumulate fdg- - phosfate proportionally to the glycolytic rate of the cell. this demands knowledge of the normal distribution of fdg when differentiating between normal physiology and pathologic conditions. the clinical use of fdg-pet has been reported in numerous different tumor categories like lung tumors ( , ), breast carcinoma ( , ), colorectal carcinomas ( , ) and lymphomas ( , ). furthermore, fdg has with success been utilized as tracer for imaging of benign disorders like seizures, dementias and cardiac perfusion ( - ). unfortunately fdg has not been shown to image net´s in a sufficient way. there have been reports of a limited value of fdg-pet for the diagnostic visualization of net´s, where only tumors with high proliferative activity and low differentiation show an increased fdg-uptake ( ). in the same study there were positive fdg scans in patients with medullary thyroid carcinomas and rapidly increasing levels of cacinoembryonic antigen (cea). furthermore, in a study by pasquali et al. patients with net´s were divided in two groups according to clinicopathologic features of the tumor and the fdg-tracer was accumulated in % of the lesions in the group with aggressive tumors ( ). only in one case in the slow-growing group did fdg show a slightly increased uptake. more data have also been presented with negative imaging results for fdg-pet in carcinoid tumors ( , ). pheochromocytomas are benign in % of the cases and they are visualized by mibg-scintigraphy in more than %. however, it has been reported by shulkin et al. that pheochromocytomas negative on mibg-scans are successfully imaged with fdg ( ). moreover, in a large series of pheocromocytoma patients investigators have reported % sensitivity for detection of malignant pheocromocytomas using fdg-pet ( ). incidentally discovered adrenal masses in patients without a history of malignancy are rarely metastatic. however, in autopsied cases it has been reported approximately % malignancy of adrenal lesions in patients with known cancer ( ). in so called incidentalomas there are difficulties for conventional radiology to establish the true nature of this lesion. pet with fdg has shown sensitivity and specificity of % and %, respectively, to predict malignancy in such patients ( , ). l-dopa and -htp in the search for tracer substances to facilitate detection of ept´s, the amine precursor l-dihydroxyphenylalanine (l-dopa) was attempted in a study of patients ( ). fifty percent of those tumors were visualized with c-l- dopa-pet but unfortunately non functioning tumors and small insulinomas were difficult to detect. seven of the tumors were not localized with any method at all (diagnosis was set biochemically). however, a small number of the patients with visible tumors (n= ) were also examined with the serotonin precursor -htp labeled for studies with pet of the central nervous system (cns). all these patients displayed significantly higher suv in the tumors with c-htp than c-l-dopa. noteworthy is that none of these patients had a serotonin producing tumor. recently, hoegerle et al. published a study of patients with gastrointestinal carcinoid tumors examined with f-dopa-pet in comparison with fdg-pet, srs and ct ( ). the results of this study indicate a higher sensitivity for f-dopa-pet ( %) compared to % for fdg and % for srs. however, in this study the highest sensitivity was seen for morphologic procedures including both ct and mri ( %). the authors state that in % of the patient’s f-dopa-pet produced additional information and previously undetected primary tumors were localized with this method. in this study it is shown that the strength of functional methods like pet is the possibility to discriminate between the benign or malign nature of a small lymph node, which is a weakness in morphologic imaging. in two other studies it has been demonstrated that, with amine-precursor tracers like c-dopa and c- -htp, the metabolic activity, measured as decarboxylation rate, can truly be studied and measured in vivo ( , ). these studies show that the same event takes place in both mgc´s and ept´s, and that the decarboxylation is evident in net´s using either of these radiolabelled amine-precursors. hed, fluorodopamine and metomidate the above listed substances have been labeled for the use in pet and for visualization of tumors or adenomas in the adrenals. hed, or hydroxyephedrine, is an analogue of epinephrine. norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter with presynaptic uptake in sympathomedulla tissues with deposition into neurosecretory granule. pet with c-hed-pet has been performed in the imaging of neuroblastomas with a high success rate ( ). in a recently performed study at our institution, patients with pheochromocytomas were examined with hed-pet, presenting a sensitivity and specificity of . % and % respectively ( ). however, alternatives have recently been presented for diagnostic visualization of pheocromocytomas. pacak et al. reported a study of patients examined with -( f)-flurodopamine-pet where all patients with surgically proven tumor could be detected with this technique. furthermore, the scans were consistently negative in patients with negative plasma metanephrine results ( ). these two new imaging modalities have the potential to improve the limited sensitivity of mibg and octreoscan as well as the poor specificity of ct and mri for localization of pheochromocytomas ( ). accidentally detected adrenal masses, so-called incidentalomas, are frequently revealed as a result of the increasing use of ct, mri and us. incidentalomas have been reported to occur in . - % of the ct examinations performed over the abdomen ( ). a majority of these masses represent benign adreno-cortical adenomas without clinical implications. the possibility for conventional radiology to determine the functional status of these lesions is poor. therefore biochemical screening programs have been developed in most centers to establish the nature of the incidentally imaged lesion. to be able to discriminate cortex from medulla, metomidate, a methyl ester of the former anesthetic drug etomidate, has been labeled with carbon- . the substance was initially studied in frozen section autoradiography of adrenals and adrenocortical tumors, revealing high uptakes ( ). a clinical study was performed in patients with a unilateral adrenal mass using c-metomidate-pet and the lesions ( adenomas, carcinomas and nodular hyperplasia) of cortical origin were easily discriminated from those of noncortical origin ( pheo, myelolipoma, cysts and metastases) due to exceedingly high uptake of the tracer in cortical lesions ( ). in a separate study, high uptakes have been seen in patients with adrenocortical cancers, where irregular tracer uptake and multiple lesions are suggestive of malignancy rather than adenomas ( ). aims of the study the general aim of this study was to, in vitro and in vivo, investigate some of the potential monoamine pathways in net´s, using radionuclide labeled tracers for positron emission tomography (pet). the intention was also to explore the value of clinical pet imaging in the management of net´s. specific aims: to study the turnover of the c-labeled amino acids glutamate, aspartate and glutamine in neuroendocrine tumor cells in vitro and to evaluate the in vivo distribution and uptake of these amino acids as potential tracer substances for characterization and visualization of net´s with pet. to investigate in vitro on frozen sections of net´s the possible expression of a number monoaminergic systems present in neuronal tissue (cns), and to try to find a new tracer substance for in vivo characterization and visualization of net´s. to investigate the use of pet with c- -htp as tracer for visualization and therapy monitoring in patients with net´s. to try to improve the c- -htp-pet examination in order to reduce image reconstruction artifacts and facilitate tumor visualization. to compare c- -htp-pet with established imaging modalities such as somatostatin receptor scintigraphy and computed tomography as whole body examinations for detection of net´s and to investigate in a mixed patient material if c- -htp can be used as a general pet-tracer for imaging of net´s. materials and methods patients in the first paper, consecutive patients ( men and women) with histopathologically verified neureoendocrine tumors were investigated. the patients were randomly selected based on the availability of the pet-scanner while they were admitted to the hospital, dept of internal medicine, uas, uppsala. the aim was to include a majority of midgut carcinoid patients and a few patients with other neuroendocrine tumors. no patient was excluded from the study once the first c- -htp-pet scan was performed. fourteen patients had classical mgc´s with elevated u- -hiaa and liver metastases detected by ct. one patient had a lung carcinoid with liver metastases and another patient had a calcitonin-producing net with liver metastases. two patients had non functioning ept´s. ten of these patients were examined with pet before and at different intervals during treatment and the results were analyzed with regard to changes in tumor markers and tracer uptake. the clinical part of the second paper was conducted on patients with net´s. two patients, one with a mgc with multiple liver metastases and one with ept and multiple liver metastases, were examined with c- glutamate-pet. two patients with mgc´s and one patient with ept were examined with pet using c-aspartate as tracer. in the third paper consecutive patients were enrolled in the study. all had histopatologically verified net´s ( with mgc and with ept of which had non functioning ept´s). the aim of this study was to include more ept´s and also the non functioning group based on previous experiences with some difficulties in visualizing this entity with pet. all patients with mgc displayed liver metastases on ct except for one patient where the pet-scan instead was focused on the abdominal lymph node metastases. four subjects with ept had pancreatic lesions according to ct, whereas the other three presented with liver metastases. six consecutive patients with mgc´s were included in the part of this thesis covered by paper no iv. all of these patients underwent c- -htp- pet before and after pretreatment with two different doses of cabidopa. in the last part of this study (paper v) forty-two consecutive patients with different net-diagnosis were included ( midgut-, foregut-, lung- and thymic carcinoids, gastrinomas, insulinoma, ecl-oma, non- functioning endocrine pancreatic tumors, endocrine pancreatic cancers and paraganglioma), including patients with multiple endocrine neoplasia type (men- ). the inclusion criteria were: histopathological diagnosis of net and detected lesion on conventional radiology or octreoscan. biochemical evidence of net and detected tumor lesion on conventional radiology or octreoscan. nineteen patients had been submitted to previous surgery for removal of the primary tumor and in patients surgery was performed after the biochemical and imaging work-up. biochemistry biochemical screening was performed in all patients except for the patients undergoing pet-scans with radiolabeled amino acids (paper ii). a standard panel of biochemical marker was analyzed in serum or plasma, according to the routine methodology of the department of clinical chemistry at the university hospital, uas, uppsala, sweden. included in this panel of peptide hormones were: gastrin, insulin, pro-insulin, c-peptide, pancreatic polypeptide (pp), glucagon, vasointestinal peptide (vip), calcitonin and acth. urinary levels of cortisol and histamine were analyzed when indicated upon clinical signs. individual biochemical profiles for each subject were used if diagnosis was manifest and treatment ongoing when the patient was included in the study. the two main markers used in this study for work-up, treatment follow up and correlation analysis were cga ( , ) and u- -hiaa ( , ). in vitro methods multicellular aggregate culture / spheroid model three different human tumor cell lines were used. a pancreatic carcinoid cell line, bon- (a kind gift from dr cm townsednd, univ of texas, galveston, usa) ( ), was cultured in ham f- k medium supplemented with l-glutamate . mg/l (nordcell, stockholm, sweden) and dmem medium without l-glutamate (seromed, biochrom kg, germany). a neuroblastoma cell line, lan (established by dr. rc seeger, dept of pediatrics, ucla school of medicine, la, california, usa) was grown in mem-eagle medium (containing l-glutamate . mg/l). a glioma cell line (u- ) ( ) was cultured in ham´s f- medium (supplemented with . mg/l l-glutamate). all media were also supplemented with % fetal bovine serum, mm l-glutamine, penicillin ( iu/ml) and streptomycin ( µg/ml). stem monolayer cultures were performed according to standard procedures. the tumor cells were harvested from the stem monolayer culture after digestion with . % trypsine in . % edta. the cell suspensions were seeded in the -well culture plate coated with agarose in the amount of x cells per well for bon and x cells per well for lan and u- . the cultures were kept at c with % humidity/ % co . after days the medium was changed for the first time and then once every second day. the aggregates were ready to use from day after seeding. the aggregate size was measured by means of an ocular scale manipulated by a micrometer screw in an inverted zeiss microscope. the handling of the spheroids and the volume calculation of each aggregate was performed as previously described ( , ). amino acid accumulation and uptake modulation all experiments were performed in ham´s f- medium. the aggregates were incubated in . ml medium per well with . mci/ml of l-(u- c)- glutamate, l-(u- c)-glutamine or l-(u- c)-aspartatic acid (amersham, england) at c. after minutes the aggregates were washed with medium ( ml/well) for x minutes. the aggregates were then treated with biolute-s (sinsser analytic, uppsala, sweden) for solubilising over night and the radioactivity was measured in a liquid scintillation counter. in parallell, µl of the incubation medium was measured as a reference, and µl of normal medium to give an estimate of background. for description of radioactivity uptake, the average relative value (a.r.v.) was used, defined as: (cpm/volume of spheroid) / (cpm/volume of reference). unlabeled l-glutamate, l-glutamine, dl-aspartate or cystine was given . – µm just before the c-labeled amino acids. substance p was added in concentrations of . - nm min before the addition of c- glutamate. to study the effects of somatostatin analogues on c-glutamate, the aggregates were pretreated with sandostatin® (novartis, basel, switzerland) in concentration of . - . µg/ml for minutes. to explore if sandostatin® could affect release of c-glutamate, at the end of the procedures, one group of the aggregates were put back into the same concentration of sandostatin® for hours before evaluation by liquid scintillation counting. the glutamate/glutamine antagonist l- -aminoadipic acid (aaa) and -diaxo-oxy-l-norleucine (don) was tested to evaluate their potential effect on the amino-acid uptake. the aggregates were pretreated with aaa or don ( , , and µm) for days. molecular fraction separation and hplc for detailed procedures concerning separation of high (> kd) and low molecular fractions see paper ii. in the hplc-analysis, the low molecular fraction was spiked with unlabeled -aminobutyrate, aspartate, glutamate, glutamine and -ketoglutarate ( -kg), and to ml of the mixture was injected onto a semipreparative lc-nh column ( / mm). fractions were taken every sec for min. detailed procedures for the hplc- analysis are desribed in paper ii. distribution of positron labeled amino acids in rats male sprague-dawley rats ( - weeks old and approximately g body weight) were used. more than rats were included in each group. c- glutamine, c-glutamate and c-aspartate were synthesized according to previously described procedures ( ) and injected into the tail vein of the rats as a bolus at an amount of mbq/rat. parallel experiments were performed with a radioactive tracer plus unlabeled glutamine ( mg/kg), glutamate ( mg/kg) or aspartate ( mg/kg). twenty minutes after the injection the rats were sacrificed and samples of blood, heart, lung, liver, kidney, pancreas and spleen were taken and measured in a calibrated well counter. the concentrations of radioactivity were expressed as standardized uptake value (suv = (organ activity/organ weight) / (total given activity/body weight)). tissue samples for autoradiographies surgical specimens were obtained from patients with neuroendocrine tumors: carcinoid tumors and endocrine pancreatic tumors (totally different samples), including patient with multiple endocrine neoplasia type . the tumor samples were immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at - oc until processed. histopathological examination was performed with established immunocytochemical staining techniques for correct diagnosis. rat brain samples from male week old sprague dawley rats were included as a standard. sections through the central aspects of the brain including striatum were used since it has been found to well express the target systems in previous brain studies with these tracers at our institution (unpublished data and personal communication mats bergstrom, uppsala univ pet center). cryostat sections at a thickness of um were generated on a microm hm microtome (carl zeiss ab, stockholm, sweden), placed on gelatin coated glass slides and stored at - ° for approximately week prior to the experiments. autoradiography of tumor sections the slides were preincubated in mm tris-hcl buffer at ph . for minutes and thereafter incubated for minutes with either of the radiolabelled substances at a concentration of nm in mm buffer. to evaluate possible non-specific binding, parallel experiments were performed where non-radioactive blocking compounds were added at a concentration of µm to block the c-labelled tracer binding. after incubation the slides were washed in buffer for x minutes, rinsed briefly with distilled water and dried at + o c for - minutes. the choice of incubation time, tracer concentration and blocking concentrations were based on experience from previous experiments (data not shown). the slides were then covered with a thin plastic film, placed on a phosphorimage plate (molecular dynamics inc.) and allowed to expose for minutes. the autoradiograms were evaluated using ”image quant” software program (molecular dynamics inc) ( ). in the computed images, regions of interest (roi) were manually outlined to represent tumor tissue using a scale to scale model comparing with the original tumor slide. the total binding was calculated according to a relative scale counting the pixel values for each region and subtracting the background value. several sections of the same tumor tissue were used, the experiments were repeated at least three times and an average value was calculated. the same roi was transferred to the corresponding autoradiogram from the slides incubated with an excess of non-radioactive substance and these values were subtracted from the total binding to give a value of specific tracer binding. sections of rat brain were used as a reference for standardization of tracer uptake between different experiments. the tracer uptake in rat brain was set to % (determined as an average over the whole section) and the uptake in the neuroendocrine tumor tissue was expressed as a percentage of that in rat brain. unlabelled compounds for selective blockade of each system: nitroquipazine for the serotonin reuptake system, beta-cit for the dopamine reuptake system, n-methyl-spiperone for the serotonin ht a receptor, methyl- -piperidyl benzilate for muscarinic receptors, sch for the dopamine d receptor and harmine as a mao-a enzyme inhibitor, were purchased from sigma chemical corp, st louis, usa. [ c]nor-cit (nci) ( ), [ c]beta-cit-fe (cit) ( ), n- [ c]methyl-spiperone (nms) ( ), n-[ c]methyl- -piperidyl benzilate (nmp) ( ), [ c]sch (sca) ( ) and [ c]harmine ( -methoxy ( c- methyl- -h- . -indole)) (har) (see below), were produced by reacting c-methyliodide with respective desmethyl compounds according to procedures described below. the specific radioactivity of the tracers was in the range of - gbq / µmol at the end of synthesis. positron emission tomograpy the patients in paper i-iv were examined using a scanditronix ge pet scanner (general electrics medical systems, milwaukee, wisconsin, usa), with a mm axial field of view, producing . mm tomographic slices with an inplane resolution of - mm. before each pet examination a minutes transmission scan was generated with an external rotating ge pin to correct the ensuing emission scan for attenuation. the images were corrected for attenuation and scatter, then reconstructed to represent radioactivity concentration in a x matrix with mm pixel size using filtered back projection in a mm hanning filter. the patients in paper v were examined using a siemens ecat hr+ pet scanner (siemens, germany) using - bed positions, each with a . cm axial field of view providing . mm slices with a resolution of approximately . mm. the emission times were typically , , , and seconds at bed positions - , respectively. after the emission scanning, a minutes transmission scan was aquired at all bed positions using externally rotating ge-pins. all transmission scans were segmented. the images were corrected for scatter and attenuation, then reconstructed in a x matrix to represent radioactivity concentration using an iterative reconstruction algorithm utilizing iterations ans subsets and a mm ramp filter. chemistry general c-carbon dioxide was produced by the n( , )- c reaction using a nitrogen gas (aga, nitrogen . ) target containing . % oxygen (aga, oxygen . ) and - mev protons produced by the scanditronix mc- cyclotron at uppsala university pet center. synthesis of c-metyl iodide was performed as previously described ( ). all synthesis involving c were preformed using fully automated systems in closed lead shields. synthesis of c- -htp synthesis of c- -htp was performed according to a multi-enzymatic process described briefly below and in detail in the original paper by bjurling et al ( ). c-labelled alanine was synthesized by a method described previously ( ), with some modifications ( ). c-methyl iodide was obtained after reduction of c-carbon dioxide and subsequent treatment of the resulting methoxide anion with hydriodic acid in a one-pot procedure described in detail elsewhere ( ). - c-pyruvic acid was obtained from - c-alanine using d-amino acid oxidase (d-aao) / catalase and glutamic-pyruvic transaminase (gpt). the combination of these enzymes with tryptophanase (tpase) made it possible to obtain c- labelled l-tryptophan and l- -hydroxytryptophan (fig ). total synthesis time was approximately - min counted from release of c-carbon dioxide. in a typical run starting with . gbq c-carbon dioxide, mbq of purified, sterilized -hydroxy-l-( - c)tryptophan was obtained. fig . synthesis of c- -htp ( ) or c-tryptophan, where - c-pyruvic acid ( ) is obtained from - c-alanine ( ) using the enzymes d-aao/catalase (i), gtp (ii) and tpase (iii). indole or -hydroxyindole is added (iv) as described previously ( ). synthesis of c-harmine c-harmine ( -methoxy- c)- -methyl- h-( , -b)indole was prepared using a procedure described in detail elsewhere ( ). the specific radioactivity was generally in the region - gbq/µmol at the end of synthesis. unlabelled harmine was purchased from sigma chemical corp (st. louis, mo, usa). the production of c-methyl iodide was performed as described previously ( ). image reconstruction and interpretation paper i c - -htp at a dose of to (mean ) mbq was injected as an intravenous bolus. immediately thereafter a dynamic sequence was started with time frames obtained during minutes. the time frames during scanning were successively increased from to seconds. twelve plasma samples from a peripheral vein, “arterialized” by heating of one hand, were obtained at varying postinjection intervals and analyzed for c concentration. the image reconstuction produced a set of dynamic images, each of which represented a quantitative estimate of the radioactivity concentration. the data obtained to minutes post injection were used and the radioactivity concentration in the image was recalculated to provide images of standardized uptake values (suv), whereby the radioactivity concentration was divided by the injected dose per gram body weight. plasma radioactivity values at different times after injection were used to estimate the transport rate constant for binding of c or the patlak slope. in the suv images, regions of interest (rois) were outlined to represent solid tumor tissue, normal liver, pancreas, spleen and kidney parenchyma. rois that represented the axial tumor area (at) were drawn according to a standardized procedure. this entailed an isocontour positioned halfway between the highest tumor radioactivity and the immediate surrounding tissues. paper ii one sector over the liver – pancreas was examined with a dynamic imaging sequence consisting of frames aquired during minutes. the images obtained were inspected for the definition of the tumors in parallel with the inspection of ct images. in the images regions of interest were outlined to delineate uniform areas of liver, kidney cortex, pancreas and spleen. the tissue concentration was calculated and plotted against time after injection with concentration represented as suv values. paper iii c-harmine was administered as an intravenous bolus (mean mbq, range - mbq) and a minutes dynamic scanning was started. due to the pharmacokinetics of the tracer in tumor tissue with high initial values as compared to e.g. the liver, an average image (summation) was created from data obtained - minutes after tracer injection for optimal visualization. in these images the largest axial tumor area was delineated as a region of interest (roi). this was done according to a standardized procedure, outlining an isocontour half-way between the area of the highest tumor activity and the immediate surroundings. a roi comprising the contiguous pixels with the highest radioactivity values in each tumor lesion, designated ”hot spot”, was also created. various normal tissues such as liver, pancreas and small intestine where delineated to create roi´s, according to the standardized procedure described above, in the images displaying the largest normal tissue areas. for each of these roi´s, time activity-curves were generated to calculate the regional tracer concentration over time. the summation images were recalculated to provide standardized uptake values (suv). for more detailed information see paper iii. paper iv c - -htp at a dose of - mbq (mean mbq) without carbidopa and - mbq (mean mbq) with carbidopa, was administered as an intravenous bolus and a minute dynamic sequence was performed. dynamic images were reconstructed to represent a quantitative estimate of the radioactivity concentration. an average image (summation) was created from data obtained - minutes after tracer injection for optimal visualization. in these images the urinary collecting system, tumor tissue and various normal tissues were chosen as regions of interest (roi). the largest axial area of tumor tissue, urinary collecting system (pelvis), urinary bladder, liver, pancreas, spleen, vertebrae, heart, muscle and small intestine was delineated according to a standardized procedure as described above. plasma radioactivity values at different times after injection were used as the input function to calculate the patlak slope ( ). in each patient suv and patlak slope for tumor lesions (met) and various normal tissues, including kidney pelvis, were compared before and after carbidopa premedication. paper v c - -htp at a dose of - mbq (mean mbq) was administered as an intravenous bolus and a minute dynamic sequence was performed. the scans were performed in a whole body mode. to reduce tracer decarboxylation by blocking the enzyme aadc, all patients received mg of carbidopa as pretreatment hour prior to the pet-examination. after the emission scanning, a minutes transmission scan was aquired at all bed positions using externally rotating ge-pins. all transmission scans were segmented. the images were corrected for scatter and attenuation, then reconstructed as previously described. based on analysis of the tracer accumulation pattern over time for tumor and various normal tissues, data obtained - min after tracer injection were summed to create an average image. somatostatin receptor scintigraphy somatostatin receptor scintigraphy was performed as previously described ( ). briefly: in-dtpa-d-phe -octreotide (octreoscan; mallinckrodt, petten, netherlands), as a standard dose of mbq was injected intravenously. planar scintigrams were obtained with a large field of view gamma camera and a medium-energy collimator. static wb-images were collected and spect (single photon emission computed tomography) was performed after hours using a single headed -scintillation camera with a medium-energy general purpose collimator (nuclear diagnostics, hagersten, sweden and london, uk). the data collection for spect images was performed using a -step rotation of in a x matrix and second acquisition per projection. images were iteratively reconstructed in subsets, iterations and no postfiltering (hosem, hermes ordered subset expectation maximization: hermes, stockholm, sweden). in one case a regular filtered back-projection was used (see paper v). computed tomography ct (computed tomography) was performed on two different scanners (somatom plus and somatom plus s, siemens, germany) over the thorax and abdomen in all patients before pet-scanning. ct was performed before and during intravenous contrast-enhancement using mm slice thickness and increment. for ct of the pancreas mm thickness and . mm increment were additionally used in the arterial contrast enhancement phase. statistical methods the means and the standard deviation of the means were calculated. differences between means were evaluated with a paired student t-test. the correlation between tracer uptake in tumor tissue and levels of plasma hormones, as well as the correlation between the change in transport rate constant and the change in plasma cga and u- -hiaa was evaluated in a regression analysis. all p-values are two-tailed and p< . was considered significant. results and discussion imaging of net´s (paper i, iii and v) in paper no i all eighteen patients had increased uptake of c- -htp in tumor tissue with a suv of + . (mean + sd) and a transport rate constant, uncorrected for -htp metabolites, of . + . minutes. liver metastases in all patients with mgc were imaged as well as lymph node metastases in the five subjects presenting with such lesions. tumor involvement of abdominal lymph nodes was much easier to visualize with pet than ct. the tracer uptake in liver metastases was high in areas of avtive tumor tissue, whereas necrotic areas were totally devoid of activity (fig ). additionally, pleural metastases and a previously undetected skeletal metastasis were visualized (later verified by ct using a bone window setting). two patients with non functioning ept´s were examined and in one of those the tracer uptake was variable in the liver metastases and weak in the primary tumor. however, in the second patient displaying a non functioning ept both the tumor in the caput region and a suspect lymph node metastasis (later verified at surgery) were imaged by pet (fig ). yet another patient, with a calcitonin producing net, showed uptake of the tracer both in the pancreatic lesion and in liver metastases, regardless of normal levels of u- -hiaa. in normal tissues, the suv´s were . + . , . + . and . + . for liver, pancreas and kidney, respectively. in / patients pet showed more lesions than ct and an equal number in the remaining cases. a total of and lesions were detected with pet and ct, respectively. the high liver metastases-to-normal liver background suv ratio ( . + . , mean + sd) contributed to the better tumor visibility with pet and the radioactivity uptake rate constant in tumor as compared to normal liver indicated an irreversible trapping of -htp in the metastases (fig ). these data show that the incorporation of -htp in net´s is very selective and high in comparison to what was seen in normal tissue. tumors in liver, lymph nodes, pancreas, bone and pleura were all well visualized. fig . ct and pet examination of a patient with a midgut carcinoid and multiple liver metastases. large metastasis in the left liver lobe contains active tumor cells in the periphery taking up c- -htp and a central necrosis devoid of activity (arrow). fig . patient with a non functioning ept. pet-scanning revealed a tumor in the caput region (arrow) and a lower uptake ventrally in the liver hilum, indicating presence of a lymph node metastasis (arrow head) that later was confirmed by surgery. concerning non functioning tumors, these data support the results of a previous study where non-functioning tumors (ept´s) were taking up amine precursor tracers, in that case l-dopa, in a moderate fashion ( ). this indicates that an active intratumoral pathway for production of biogenic amines needs to be present at some degree for the tumor to be imaged by c- -htp-pet. however, this might not necessarily include the synthesis of serotonin. pet with c- -htp appears to be superior to ct in lesion detection although all lesions understandably not could be biopsy-verified as representing tumor. both intra- and extra hepatic lesions, which were overlooked on ct, were clearly depicted by pet due to the superior tumor- to-background ratio. the depiction of a tumor by pet is not only related to the resolution of the camera and the size of the lesion, but also to the degree of tracer accumulation in relation to the immediate vicinity of the lesion, i.e. the tumor-to-background ratio. thus, a large lesion may be overlooked if the tracer uptake is extremely low (the case in necrotic tumor lesions) and a very small lesion with a size similar to, or even smaller than, the resolution of the pet camera ( mm) may easily be detected given that the tracer accumulation is high. fig . rate of trapping of -htp in a livermetastasis ( - ) and a lymph node metastasis ( - ) versus normal liver ( using the patlak method. uptake in normal liver is nearly in equilibrium with radioactivity in plasma, indicated by the horizontal curve. in metastases, uptake of -htp indicates high and virtually irreversible trapping of the substrate. in many patients with net´s the treatment with interferon induces fatty changes in the liver that may constitute a problem on ct. by contrast, on pet, the c- -htp accumulation is unaffected by this phenomenon and thereby the image interpretation is not hampered. a drawback in this investigation was the rapid elimination of activity by the kidneys and the disturbances in image interpretation this can cause. the investigation was also performed on a pet scanner with an axial coverage of only cm which demands for multiple scanning levels to be used. for clinical reasons the optimal correlation with surgical verification or biopsies from all lesions could not be made due to inoperable patients with disseminated discease who were subjected exclusively to medical therapy. using c-harmine as tracer for imaging of net´s, tumors in all patients included in paper ii could be visualized. these findings correlate well to the morphological findings on ct. tumor lesions in all patients with non- functioning ept were clearly visualized by pet (fig. ). the mean suv + sd in mgc metastases were . + . and in “hot spot” . + . . in primary ept´s the suv was . + . and in ”hot spot” . + . , in ept metastases . + . and in ”hot-spot” . + . . suv in normal liver was . + . , in intestine . + . and in normal pancreas . + . . there was a tendency toward higher uptake in the endocrine pancreatic lesions than in mgc´s, however, this was not significant in the statistical analysis. a high lesion to background ratio was evident in all cases with a significantly higher tracer uptake in the tumor lesions than in the surrounding normal tissues; primary pancreatic tumor vs normal pancreas and metastases vs liver and intestine (p < . ). fig shows time-activity-curves for liver metastasis and normal liver parenchyma in a patient with an ept. in the liver metastasis an early high tracer uptake in seen, peaking within minutes after tracer injection, and then gradually declining over time. by contrast, the tracer uptake in normal liver gradually increases over the first minutes and after that forms a plateau during the rest of the examination period. fig . pet-scan with c-harmine in a patient with a non-functioning ept. arrow indicating the tumor in caput pancreatic. corresponding ct-scan showing the tumor (arrow). figsdfsdfsdfsdffi time (min) suv fig . suv plotted against time in a patient with an ept examined with c- harmine, showing high tracer uptake in the livermetastases ( - ) compared to normal liver ( - ) during the first minutes. all but two patients underwent continuous treatment at the time of the pet- study without apparent blocking of the tracer uptake. all patients had elevated levels of circulating hormones but no correlation was found between plasma hormone levels (cga and u- hiaa) and tracer uptake (suv). a more than % higher suv was found in the primary ept-lesions than in the mgc. this could reflect both the fact that medical antitumor treatment was ongoing in a larger portion of the mgc-patients at the time of examination, but also that the monoamine producing machinery is more developed in the ept´s. this is supported by a previous study where foregut carcinoids were shown to express higher mao-levels than mgc´s, indicating the use of mao-quantification as a complement to histopathological diagnosis ( ). it was not possible to perform the study on all of the patients in vivo and in vitro, but still both parts of the study reflect a high expression of mao-a in the tumors and because of this high amount of mao-a tumor visualization with pet was feasible in all subjects. this also included depiction of non-functioning ept´s, an entity that previously had posed diagnostic problems. a contribution of different perfusion in the tumors could add to the different degree of tracer uptake, where time also is important since harmine gradually is metabolized (see below). although this study was not intended as a regular comparison between ct and c-harmine-pet as imaging modalities, even the smallest tumor lesion seen on ct ( . x . cm) was readily imaged by c-harmine-pet. carcinoid liver metastases were well visualized in / of the patients, whereas in the third subject with extensive tumor burden in the liver, no individual metastases were depicted and the tumor load was instead indicated by larger diffusely delineated areas of heterogeneous tracer accumulation. because of the pharmacological pattern of c-harmine and the fact that the tracer is fairly rapidly metabolized, the optimal diagnostic image data were obtained early and the summation image was therefore based on data collected - minutes post tracer injection. in a previous human study ( ) the metabolite pattern in plasma was determined with % of plasma radioactivity constituted by intact tracer at minutes after injection, % at minutes and % at minutes. this analysis was further complicated by a significant plasma protein binding of radioactivity. early summation data thus mainly represent tracer binding whereas data collected later most likely are to a high degree influenced by c-labelled tracer metabolites especially in the liver. for c-harmine the fact that optimal imaging time point was shown to be - minutes after tracer injection, limits the use of this tracer for whole body imaging and examination is thus restricted to one bed position to cover a – cm region of the body (depending on the axial field of view of the pet scanner used). the biopsies taken from the patients to establish histopathological diagnosis were all from lesions that displayed a high uptake of c-harmine, indicating that the tracer uptake on the pet-scans represent true tumor tissue. the high expression of mao-a in net´s, assessed both in vitro and in vivo, enabling visualization of the tumors using c harmine-pet. these results contribute to the characterization of these tumors and add to the previous findings of similarities between neurons and neuroendocrine cells. future clinical application of c-harmine-pet needs to be elucidated by a comparison with other diagnostic examinations but can be of value in imaging of net´s, including the subgroup of non-functioning ept. in paper no v the greatest number of lesions was found on the pet-scans. pet could visualize positive lesions in % ( / ) of the patients. in % ( / ) of the patients pet could detect more lesions than srs and ct and in % ( / ) of the patients imaging with pet was equal to that of srs and/or ct. in cases srs or ct showed more lesions than pet. four patients had to be excluded from the study ( due to change in medical therapy between examinations, one patients did not want to perform the last examination and the last patient had to interrupt the examination due to pain). somatostatin receptor scintigraphy (srs) could detect more lesions than ct in % ( / ) whereas in % ( / ) of the cases ct showed more lesions than srs. lesions depicted at ct could be correlated to the pet-findigs in all patients except for patient no , and (for patient details se the table in original manuscript) and for srs no corresponding pet findings were found in patient no and . these cases (no. , and ) will be discussed further below. in all cases there was a better spatial resolution and a higher tumor-to-background ratio on pet than on srs. the contrast in the images was far higher on pet than on ct. pet-positive tumor lesions in out of patients ( %), a total of lesions, were histopathologically confirmed with biopsy or surgery. no false positive were found. in patients it was not possible to obtain histologic proof of positive tumor (see paper no v). pet could visualize the primary tumor lesion in % ( / ) of the patients with remaining primary tumor, compared to % ( / ) for srs and % ( / ) for ct. a subgroup of seventeen patients underwent surgery after the biochemical- and imaging work-up. sixteen of these patients displayed pet- positive lesions (patient no with a recurrence of a non functioning ept was negative on pet) and in of those cases surgery could confirm tumor findings. in of the pet-positive primary tumors surgery could confirm these findings. biopsy confirmed tumor in of the primary tumors, whereas the final has not yet been confirmed. the size of the pet-positive and surgically removed primary tumors were in the range of mm to mm. fig . pet-scan (left) over the abdomen of a patient with men- showing pancreatic gastrinomas. to the right octreoscan showing one of the two tumors. both tumor lesions were later surgically confirmed. in this paper we have included an unselected material of tumors classified as net´s. despite their different origin, these tumors share common features concerning peptide processing of biogenic amines. the results of this study confirm the apud characteristics of net´s and that this feature can be used for diagnostic visualization with pet using the carbon- labeled serotonin precursor -htp. tumors in all patients, but one, did take up this amino- precursor and could therefore be imaged with pet. also tumors that did not produce serotonin ( -ht) and consequently had normal u- -hiaa levels, were imaged with this tracer. the patient in whom pet not could visualize any tumor (patient no ) had a recurrence of a non functioning ept. in this patient peripheral tumor markers were normal except for a slightly elevated cga. in two other cases pet displayed less tumor lesions than srs and ct. this was in patient no with a thymic carcinoid with liver metastases and a high proliferation rate, and in patient no with an endocrine differentiated pancreatic cancer. this tumor was also poorly differentiated showing a proliferation index of > %. for these tumors fdg may be a better choice of tracer ( , ). several previously undiagnosed lesions were detected with pet (fig ), most of them in the range of . – . cm and therefore easily overlooked at ct and srs. for example in patient no with mgc pet could visualize several small liver metastases. these lesions could also be seen on srs, however, not as clearly due to a better spatial resolution and higher tumor-to- background ratio on pet (fig ). primary tumors could also be visualized to a high extent with pet. in several patients where srs and ct were negative or unclear, pet could contribute significantly in the tumor detection (fig ). since c- -htp-pet is incorporated in a biochemical pathway, pet imaging with this tracer reflects the metabolic activity of a tumor concerning processing of biogenic amines. consequently, some lesions show lower tracer uptake and for necrotic tumors totally lack tracer accumulation. other tumors that showed a limited trace uptake poorly were the poorly differentiated net´s with features more like an ordinary carcinoma (for details se paper v). in contrast, the non functioning entity can be visualized with c- -htp-pet, as seen in patients included in this study. probably there are differences in the expression of the amine uptake systems and processing in these tumors and thereby the different degree of visualization with pet. this is also illustrated by patient no , with multiple ept´s as part of a men- syndrome. this patient only showed a slight raise in pp- and cga-levels and consequently the -htp uptake was only slightly increased in the pancreatic lesions, but enough to be visible. on the other hand, when surgery was performed in this patient, ept-lesions were found, where the smallest lesion measured mm. fig . pet-scan with c- -htp in a patient with a mgc displaying several pathological tracer uptakes in the liver (left). to the right corresponding octreoscan image showing pathological uptakes with lower tumor-to-background ratio and lower spatial resolution. arrow indicating the spleen in both images. fig . previously undetected ept(arrow). surgery was performed, strengthened by the pet-findings, and the tumor could be verified and removed. when c- -htp-pet was compared to srs and ct, more tumor lesions wwere detected in a vast majority of the cases. srs, however, still defends its place as nuclear imaging method of choice due to the connection to treatment with non radioactive- and beta-emitting labeled somatostatin analogues. in combination with conventional radiology srs probably is sufficient as work-up in a majority of patients with net´s, but as this study indicates, c- -htp-pet can contribute with additive information of the tumor status in a majority of cases. since cost is an increasingly important factor in health care, this new and fairly expensive technology should be used only in selected cases. these cases can be in the situation of a clinically significant syndrome with unknown tumor site, but also when aiming at curable surgery or when having biochemistry of recurrent disease and a negative conventional work-up. a situation when c- -htp-pet is an excellent contribution is when considering liver transplantation in a patient with solely liver metastases of a net. this imaging technique can then help to detect small extrahepatic lesions that are crucial to have knowledge about when performing a procedure that will submit the patient to potent immunosuppressive therapy. we believe that this method is very sensitive and so far we have not come across any false positive results. how sensitive, is probably depending on the biochemical activity of the tumor investigated. these results also indicate that c- -htp can be used as a general tracer for imaging of net´s due to the common characteristics of amine precursor uptake and decarboxylation. pet in treatment monitoring (paper i) ten patients were examined with pet before and at different intervals during treatment. linear regression analyses showed a clear correlation (r = . ) between changes in urinary -hiaa and changes in the transport rate constant (fig ), whereas the correlation between changes in u- -hiaa and the suv was poor (r = . ). changes in plasma cga during treatment did not correlate to changes in transport rate constant (r = . ), but to some extent with changes in suv (r = . ). figure show pet-scans at two different occasions in the same patient before and after months of treatment with interferon-alpha and octreotide. apparently, changes in the transport rate constant of -htp reflect well what happens biochemically, reflected as u- -hiaa, in the tumor and there was a greater than % correlation beween these two parameters. however, it is still not known whether the changes in uptake of -htp reflect changes in the general tumor metabolism or merely in amine processing. pet examination was performed at varying time intervals after initiation of treatment, most of them after months or more. in one patient, pet was performed after only days of interferon treatment and the result of this early examination reflected a treatment response that could be confirmed after two months, ie, progressive disease. it would be of great value to be able to predict therapeutic response as early as a few days after initiation of treatment. in therapy monitoring, these results indicate that pet can provide additional information to that obtained from conventional radiological techniques like us, ct and mri. fig . regression analysis of changes in u- hiaa (%) and changes in the transport rate constant (%) for -htp during treatment (n= ). fig . patient with a mgc and liver metastases, who received a combination of interferon alpha and octreotide. pet was performed before (a) and after month of treatment (b). in vivo modulation of -htp uptake (paper iv) a high -htp uptake was found in the tumor lesions of all patients with a mean suv of + sd at pet without cd premedication (suv shown in table ). in all patients but two, the measured tumor lesions were liver metastases. in the remaining two patients (pat and ) the suv´s were calculated in paraaortal lymph node metastases. in the urinary collecting system (kidney pelvis) the uptake values were very high in the pet scans without cd premedication with a mean suv of + . at pet after cd administration the suv of tumor lesions and pelvis was + sd and + sd respectively. fig illustrates the high initial kidney uptake and subsequent reduction after cd premedication, as well as the opposite phenomenon in tumor metastases. table . pet-data (suv) pat no/cd cd-dose met met met pelvis pancreas liver - , , , , , , /cd mg , , , , , , - , , , , , , /cd mg , , , , , , - , , , , , , /cd mg , , , , , , - , , , , , , /cd mg , , , , , , - , , , , , , /cd mg , , , , , , , , , , , /cd mg , , , , , , concerning the urinary collecting system the reduction after cd did not show statistical significance in a simple t-test (p< , ). however, in all cases there was a marked decrease in the uptake values (table ), all together a four-fould decrease, leading to a general improvement in the image quality and interpretation of tumor lesions. for example in patient no with an extremely high suv of , in the urinary collecting system before cd, the uptake value was reduced to , after cd. in this case the pelvic uptake caused severe streaky image reconstruction artifacts that were markedly improved after cd administration and a previously undetected vertebral metastasis could be delineated (fig ). tumor uptake of -htp was significantly increased after the administration of cd (p< , , n= ). this was the case both for mg cd (p< , , n= ) and for the dose of mg (p< , , n= ). in all patients the cd administration improved the tumor lesion interpretation. also concerning the hot-spot measurements the increase in suv was highly significant after cd (p< , , n= ). the difference between the mg and mg was, however, not statistically significant (p < , , n = ). the liver showed suv of , + , sd before cd and , + , sd after cd, giving a significant increase in -htp uptake (p< . ) and in pancreas the suv were , + , without cd and with cd-premedication , + , , which was a significant reduction (p < , ) in suv. patlak slope was calculated and the difference was significant for metastasis (p< , ), hot spots (p< , ) and liver (p< , ). however for pelvis and pancreas there was no significant difference (p< , and p< , respectively). for heart, vertebrae, muscle, small intestine, bladder and spleen suv and patlak slope data are not shown. all tumor lesions seen at ct could be visualized by pet and additional liver metastases were seen in patient no and a bone metastasis in pat no . imaging in both cases was improved by cd administration. the smallest tumor lesion imaged by pet was a lymph node metastasis that measured approximately , x , cm at ct. pet-positive tumor lesions in all patients were biopsied and verified as true tumor histopathologically. there was a tendency toward a reduction in u- -hiaa after cd, however this was not significant in the statistical analysis (p= , ). a drawback with c- -htp-pet has been that the high radioactivity concentration in the kidney pelvis and urinary bladder, sometimes will give rise to streaky image reconstruction artifacts which may impair image reading. hence, major interpretation problems are occasionally experienced at the level of the kidney pelvis where especially delineation of ept´s and lymph node metastasis in this area may be difficult as well as identification of metastases in the caudal part of the liver. moreover, evaluation by quantification of tracer accumulation in these regions can be unreliable. this phenomenon was well illustrated in patient no (fig ) in this study, where a reliable interpretation of the first pet-scan could not be made. when the radioactivity concentration in the urine is extremely high, with suv not seldom exceeding , also tumor lesions in the vicinity of the kidney may readily be overlooked. however, at pet after carbidopa pretreatment the urinary radioactivity excretion was reduced considerably which improves image quality and thereby tumor detection. the effect of blocking the decarboxylation of -htp was predominantly observed in the urinary collecting system. this is supported by previous findings of the distribution of aadc and a high degree of conversion of - htp to serotonin ( -ht) in the kidney parenchyma ( , ). when pet was performed after carbidopa premedication not only was there a reduction of the urinary radioactivity concentration but also a reduction of tracer elimination from blood/plasma. this led to a situation where the tissues were fed by higher concentrations of c- -htp which most likely explains the simultaneous increase of tracer accumulation in tumor tissue. this was a secondary effect but nevertheless very important for improving tumor visualization especially of small tumor lesions. fig . patient no before (top) and after (bottom) premedication with mg cd. note extremely high radioactivity in the renal pelvis causing streaky artifacts deteriorating the image. after cd the image is greatly improved and a previously undetected vertevral meta-stasis can be detected (arrow). the tracer uptake in pancreas was also significantly lowered by cd administration. this is an effect that might have impact when using c- - htp-pet for diagnosis of endocrine pancreatic tumors since the tumor-to- background ratio then is increased which can facilitate tumor detection. it also indicates the presence of high amounts of the aadc in pancreas that can be blocked by cd. the tracer uptake of the liver was increased over time after cd premedication, probably due to the reduced elimination of circulating tracer. however this did not reduce the tumor-to-background ratio since also the liver metastases increased their tracer uptake. a higher dose of carbidopa did not decrease the urinary radioactivity concentration better than the lower dose and no firm conclusion could therefore be made regarding which dose to use for premedication. however, although the patients were not questioned in detail regarding potential side effects, none of the patients were found to experience any side-effects. this finding in addition to the fact that mg of carbidopa is a moderate dose used for medical treatment of parkinsons disease, have made us chose this higher dose for premedication before c - -htp-pet on a routine basis. in a previous study, f-dopa-pet was found to contribute substantially to the visualization of gastrointestinal carcinoid tumors as compared to conventional radiology, somatostatin receptor scintigraphy and fdg-pet ( ). since c-dopa has been shown in vivo to be decarboxylated (by aadc) in endocrine pancreatic tumors ( ), the mechanism for tracer uptake can probably be attributed to the apud-concept of these tumors. consequently premedication with carbidopa could presumably be of additional value also in pet-imaging of neuroendocrine tumors using tracers like c-, or f-dopa. time (minutes) u pt ak e (s u v ) pelvis pelvis cd fig . time-uptake curve showing the how extremely high the radioactivity can be in pelvis and the marked reduction after cd. uptake, modulation and distribution of amino acids (paper ii) the uptake of the c-labeled amino acids in bon and lan aggregates increased almost linearly with incubation time. the uptake of glutamate and aspartate was higher in lan than in bon, but the glutamine uptake was similar (fig ). the uptake of glutamate and aspartate was blocked by unlabeled l-glutamine ( . mm) to about % in bon aggregates and to % in lan aggregates. the blocking effect by mm glutamine on the uptake of glutamine was less than %. aspartate at mm reduced the glutamate uptake in lan-aggregates with %, but only with about % in bon and had no effect in u- . in contrast, cystine at mm inhibited % of glutamate accumulation in bon and u aggregates, but no significant effect was observed in lan. figure . uptake of c-glutamine (gln), glautamate (glu) and aspartate (asp) in multicellular aggregates from carcinoid (bon) and neuroblastoma (lan). uptake in relative value (radioactivity concentration in aggregates devided by radioactivity concentration in medium) plotted against time of incubation. the data were from x aggregates respectively. the addition of don, a glutamine analogue, decreased the uptake of glutamate and aspartate in bon aggregates by approximately % and with - % in lan aggregates, after days treatment in the dose of µm. the effect was dose-dependant. in contrast, glutamine uptake increased by - % in both bon and lan. aminoadipic acid, a glutamine antagonist had no significant effect on the uptake of the three amino acids in neither of the cellines. substans-p, acting via the nk- receptor, reduced the uptake of glutamate in bon with about % at all concentrations. in glioma aggregates (lan) there was a % decrease in glutamate uptake. sandostatin® had no significant effect on the uptake or release of glutamate in the aggregates. most of the radioactivity was found in the low molecular fraction from min to hour after incubation, both in aggregates and in medium. the radiation was found in the high molecular fraction increasingly with time up to maximally - %. in the low molecular fraction - % of the radioactivity was recovered in the glutamate fraction, - % in glutamine, - % in aspartate, % in alpha-ketoglutarate ( -kg) and % in gaba, for the bon cells within hour after incubation. at minutes after injection of the tracer to rats, suv of c-aspartate was below . in all organs except lung (suv . ). suv was above . for c-glutamine in pancreas, kidney and liver. the highest suv´s for c- glutamate was found in pancreas, kidney and lung (suv . - . ). co- injection of unlabeled substances did not significantly alter the organ uptakes. however, for aspartate there was an up to % increase in the kidney radioactivity when unlabeled substance was added. in patients the distribution of c-glutamate copied the pattern in rats with high initial uptake values in pancreas and kidney, moderately high liver uptake and a marked uptake in the spleen (fig ). the high kidney uptake decreased rapidly during the first minutes. liver metastases could be suspected on the pet-images as areas with decreased uptake using c- glutamate. primary tumors were not visualized. with c-aspartate, in general half of the suv levels of glutamate were seen. one patient with an ept showed a slight increased uptake in liver metasatses compared to the surrounding normal liver, whereas the primary tumor could not be imaged. for mgc-patients no tumor lesion was displayed on the scans. the amino acids glutamine, glutamate and aspartate are utilized intracellularly mainly as components in proteins, as intermediate substrates in the tca-cycle, as neurotransmitters and as precursors for other essential molecules. this implies that there will be a problem to use these substances for characterization of net´s since these tumor lesions often are present in organs with constitutionally high protein synthesis like pancreas and liver. in that respect c-aspartate was more favorable with a lower organ uptake. on the other hand, the uptake of this tracer in bon-aggregates was not so high, and since uptake in lan was higher, this might motivate an attempt to use this tracer in vivo for neuroblastoma imaging. fig . time-activity data for c-glutamate in different organs in human, expressed as suv in an average of patients. these data do not support the use of these substances as tracers for the characterization and visualization of net´s. in vitro binding to tumor specimens the tumor sections showed a high level of specific c- harmine binding compared to reference tissue (rat brain), except for patient sample no (fig ). the relative mao-a-binding (mean + sd) for carcinoid tumor specimens was + % (range - %, n = ) of that in rat brain. in ept the binding showed higher values of + % (range - %, n = ) compared to rat brain. the tumor specimens with the highest tracer binding (samples and ) were both from primary ept´s (glucagonomas) where the patients had not received any treatment before operation. in all sections the binding was markedly blocked by adding µm non radioactive (cold) substance (fig. ). the average non-specific binding was % of the total binding and there was no statistical difference in this respect between tumor and rat brain. for all the other tested tracer substances (nci, nms, nmp, beta-cit and sca) the specific binding in the autoradiographies was low. the binding of these tracers were in the range of approximately - % and not significantly blocked by cold substance. the exact mean uptakes were: nci % (range - %), nms % (range - %), nmp % (range - %), beta-cit % (range - %) and sca % (range - %). fig pat sample no re la tiv e m a o -a b in di ng % mgc ept fig . relativ binding of c-harmine assessed by autoradiography of tumor samples. rat brain uptake set to % as a standard. fig . autoradiograms using c-harmine ( nm). mgc (left), non funct ept (middle) and rat brain (right). below similar sections blocked (for mgc and ept not visible above background). the use of autoradiography, with the positron emitting radionuclide c, allowed rapid processing compared to using c or h. the method also proved to be very suitable for assessing enzyme expression and thus provided an efficient means for investigating presumptive pet tracers in vitro prior to clinical application. this was further facilitated by the ability to quantify enzyme binding with the image quant system. in vitro the uptake of c-harmine was more than % higher in ept´s than mgc´s. for the substances nci, nms, nmp, beta-cit and sca, the in vitro binding to net´s were low, indicating the possible lack of expression of these molecular targets in net´s. on the other hand these substances only represent some examples of the vast range of potential target molecules for describing these systems. the results in this study, indicating high levels of mao-a in net´s, add to the similarities between neuronal tissue and neuroendocrine cells since the expression of mao-a is known to be high in the central nervous system. the in vitro findigs also initiated the above described in vivo examinations with c-harmine in patients. general summary the results of the present thesis reflect that pet is a method especially suitable for use in the management of net´s. the pet-technique can, with its high tumor-to-backgound-ratio and compared to srs, superior spatial resolution, visualize net´s to a greater extent than commonly used imaging methods. pet does not only give information in the sense of tumor imaging, but is also informative concerning tumor biochemistry. through the use of the serotonin precursor -htp labeled with the positron emitting radionuclide c, we can obtain information of the degree of active amine production in the tumor cell. this tracer is internalized and further metabolized to serotonin and finally excreted in the urine as u- hiaa. in this study we could show a strong correlation between the change in tumor transport rate of -htp and the change in u- -hiaa during treatment of patients with net´s. this indicates that c- -htp-pet can be used in therapy monitoring of these patients and perhaps also to predict outcome of therapy since pet in some cases could foresee the biochemical response several months before evaluation of treatment response. the choice of tracer substance is of course extremely important for the information one wants to achieve. in this study the major work was done with c- -htp. the basis for this was the apud concept stating that biogenic amines can be taken up and decarboxylated by net´s. from the results of this study it is indicated that this concept is valid, since tumors in % of the patients in a mixed group of net´s, including different tumor entities, could be imaged with c- -htp-pet. on the other hand this method of imaging has its drawbacks. what we are looking at in vivo is amine uptake and turnover, i.e. one aspect of tumor metabolism. if a tumor lacks or has reduced metabolism of amine-precursors, the likelihood of imaging that tumor is low. in this study this could be seen in some of the non functioning tumors and tumor lesions that to a large extent consist of necrosis. also poorly differentiated tumors with a high proliferative rate, that can be suspected to express the target metabolic pathway to a minor degree, were poorly imaged with this method. in this work we have by interacting with the metabolism of the tracer c- -htp, been able to improve image interpretation and tumor detection on c- -htp-pet scans. this is of great benefit in detecting lesions in pancreas and the vicinity of the kidneys since previously there was a risk for image reconstruction artifacts in that area due to high tracer concentrations in the kidney pelvis. with the modified whole body imaging technique and carbidopa premedication, we have shown that c- -htp-pet exceeds both ct and srs in detection of net´s. furthermore, visualization of primary tumors and lymph node metastases that are preferably small tumor lesions are greatly facilitated using this imaging method. thereby it is not stated that it is possible to image all net-lesions, since the heterogeneity of these tumors is great and expression of -hydroxytryptophan uptake systems might differ between tumors. this has also been seen in this study in the respect of variable tracer uptake in different tumor lesions of the same patient. through this functional imaging one can also differentiate between the benign or potentially malignant nature of a small lymph node as indicated by an active tracer uptake. using conventional morphologic modalities this decision is based on size of the lesion rather than metabolic activity. using a wb- examination, the opportunity of staging the disease is present. this means that c- -htp-pet can contribute significantly to the management discussion of a patient both in terms of the primary tumor detection and preoperative evaluation, as well as in a later stage with work-up concerning residual or recurrent disease. since the technique reflects biochemical activity it can also be used in evaluation of therapeutic interventions like radiofrequency (rf) treatment of liver metastases or liver embolization. the clinical use of c-harmine as tracer for visualization of mainly non functioning entities of net´s has to be further evaluated before any firm conclusions can be drawn. there is also a rapid metabolism of harmine where after minutes only % persists as intact tracer. this, and the fact that there is a significant plasma protein binding complicates the analysis of tracer binding to the tumor. but since c-harmine-pet can image non functioning tumors it might come into clinical use with the existing, or an alternate, mao-a ligand. as described previously, pet-scanning with c- harmine is limited to one bed position due to the preferable time frame of - min for optimal image analysis. as described earlier, the major work in the imaging of net´s has been done using srs, and despite the results of this study, srs is still to be considered as the first choice of imaging technique for net´s. this is based not only on high tumor detection rate, but also on its possibility to predict therapeutic response to somatostatin analogue treatment and peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (prrt). srs is also available as a clinical routine examination in a majority of centers dealing with net´s. on the other hand, as shown in this thesis, c- -htp-pet can in many cases add important extra information and should probably be adapted in more centers for the management of net´s. swedish abstract / svensk sammanfattning neuroendocrina tumörer (net´s) karaktäriseras ofta av överproduktion av peptid hormoner. trots ofta uttalade kliniska symtom kan tumörerna vara små och svåra att detektera. dessa tumörer tillhör de sk apudomas (amino precursor uptake and decarboxylation) med förmåga att ta upp och decarboxylera amine-precursorer samt att därefter frisätta färdiga biogena aminer. det övegripande syftet med detta avhandlingsarbete var att studera, in vivo och in vitro, några av de potentiellt förekommande monoaminerga systemen i net´s, genom att använda radioaktivt märkta spårsubstancer för positron emissons tomografi (pet). intentionen var också att undersöka värdet av pet för diagnostisk visualisering och terapi-monitorering av net´s. vi har använt den kol- -märkta serotonin precursorn - hydroxytryptophan ( -htp) som spårsubstans (tracer) för visualisering av net´s. i mer än % av patienterna sågs ett högt upptag av denna substans med pet och detektionsgraden av tumör lesioner var högre hos > % av patienterna jämfört med både somatostatin receptor scintigrafi (srs) och dator tomografi (ct). primärtumörerna visualiserades till % ( / ) med pet, jämfört med % för srs och % för ct. på grund av ett högt sk tumor-to-background ratio och en bättre spatial upplösning var det lättare att detektera tumör lesioner med pet än med övriga tekniker. vi fann också en stark korrelation (r = . ) mellan förändringen i urin- -hydroxy indole acetic acid (u- -hiaa) och förändringen i transport hastighet för c- -htp under medicinsk behandling, indikerande ett värde av pet för att monitorera terapi hos patienter med net´s. behandling med carbidopa, en perifier hämmare av enzymet aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (aadc), inför en c- -htp-pet undersökning minskade utsöndringen av radioaktivitet i urinen fyrfaldigt och ökade signifikant (p< . ) tracer upptaget i tumörvävnad. i en screening för uttryck av monoaminerga system på fryssnitt av net´s fann vi ett högt uttryck av enzymet monoamineoxidase-a. detta gjorde att vi genomförde pet-undersökningar med c-harmine (en mao-a ligand) där det var möjligt att visulaisera tumörer i samtliga undersökta patienter, inkluderande sk non-functioning endokrina pancreas tumörer (ept) som varit svåra att visualisera med pet tidigare. slutligen studerade vi in vitro och in vivo omsättning och distribution av aminosyrorna glutamate, glutamine och aspartate. begränsat upptag av dessa substanser i net´s gör att de inte lämpar sig som pet-tracers för diagnostik och karaktärisering av dessa tumörer. conclusions from the results of the present study the following conclusions are drawn: pet with the carbon- labeled serotonin precursor -htp is a valuable contribution in the diagnostic arsenal for neuroendocrine tumors. wb- c- -htp-pet has a high tumor detection rate in net´s that surpasses both computed tomography and somatostatin receptor scintigraphy (octreoscan). c- -htp appears to be well suitable as a general tracer for imaging of net´s, probably due to the internalization of the compound through the amine-uptake system that is present in tumors belonging to the apudomas. c- -htp-pet is sensitive in detecting small net-lesions and can contribute significantly to the management of a patient both in terms of the primary tumor detection and preoperative evaluation, as well as in staging and work-up concerning residual or recurrent disease. non functioning tumors and poorly differentiated tumors seem to be less well visualized with c- -htp-pet. there is a strong correlation between the change in transport rate constant and the change in u- -hiaa during treatment, which indicates that this technique can be used in treatment follow up and perhaps in response prediction of patients with net´s. the use of premedication with carbidopa, before conducting an c- -htp-pet scan, improved greatly the image interpretation and tumor lesion detection. pet with c-harmine has the potential of imaging also non functioning net’s. the in vitro and in vivo findings of high levels of mao-a in net´s add to the similarities between neuronal and neuroendocrine tissue. there is a relatively low uptake in vivo of the labeled amino acids glutamate and aspartate in net¨s, and therefore they are not primarily an option as pet-tracers for imaging and characterization of these tumors. diagnostic algorithm for net`s comments: in many cases conventional radiology is performed previous to srs. however, if diagnosis then can be obtained, it is still advisable to perform srs for staging/tumor mapping. in the case of localized disease, where radical surgery is planned, c- -htp-pet can possibly add extra information concerning the presence of additional small tumor lesions. future aspects the future is already here! the future of pet with new solutions for imaging of normal physiology and the biological nature of disease is already present in many centers around the world. pet scanners with fusion imaging of pet and ct will become more common in the future ( , ) and new pet scanners will have a performance that widely exceed the scanners of today and thereby will high quality whole body investigations be performed in minutes or less ( ). detector material will also improve and lutetium orthosilicate (lso), a high performance detector material, will probably replace bismuth oxygerminate (bgo) in the future ( ). lso is already used in so called micro-pet scanners that recently have become available for preclinical research and molecular imaging of cells and mammalian species like the mouse ( ). there is development in the direction that molecular imaging probes for nuclear medicine and pet, designed to target genomics as well as proteomics and pharmacogenetics, will be produced in the near future. the applications of basic science using pet will increase radically in the next decade. in clinical imaging, pet will expand its use with diversity of molecular imaging probes for inflammatory processes, diabetes, different neurological disorders and of course oncology. fdg-pet will probably be even more commonly used and molecular characterization with pet will be closer linked to the selection of patient therapy. pet in neuroendocrine tumors as shown in this study, pet with c- -htp is a very good instrument for the diagnostic imaging of net´s and this amine precursor might be used as a general tracer for visualization of these tumors. of course further studies must be done on a larger patient material in the heterogeneous population of net´s before any final conclusions can be made concerning the universal use of wb- c- -htp-pet. this thesis shows a high detection rate for net´s and if we add our clinical experience to these results it appears that this imaging method truly can add valuable extra information in very many cases. two studies are started up at our center to further enlighten the accuracy and validity of c- -htp-pet. the first study is already ongoing and is aiming at investigating patients with biochemical indications of a primary net but with negative imaging work-up, or with a biochemical recurrence of tumor after considered being disease-free and a negative imaging work- up. pet is then performed as the last in the line of diagnostic modalities. this study will ultimately show if pet can add anything extra in cases where blind surgical exploration or expectancy is the next clinical step. the second study is the confirmation of tumor yield at surgery; the comparison with “golden standard”, a full surgical mapping of tumor sites. this is not an easy study to perform, especially concerning patients with midgut carcinoids, but the endocrine surgeons at our center have responded positively to the study design. the use of pretreatment with carbidopa before a pet-scan with c- - htp is already a routine at our institution and attempts have also been made to further improve images with the use of mao-inhibitors. for non-functioning ept´s the use of c-harmine as tracer can perhaps improve diagnostic accuracy. however, this tracer needs to be further evaluated and compared to standard imaging methods. in the pipeline there is a new mao-a binding substance that is even more suitable for labeling with positron emitters. we are also conducting another study comparing ga-dota-doc-pet with octreoscan. the advantage of this tracer is that it can be produced without direct access of a cyclotron for production of the radionuclide. a comparison between that tracer and c- -htp is also to be made. furthermore, there are other promising tracers that are coming into clinical use: f-dopa for net´s in general, c-metomidate for adrenocortical cancer, hed-pet and -( f)fluorodopamine-pet for pheocromocytomas. our aim is also to lable -htp with fluor- to make the technique more available in other centers. well, the future for pet “is so bright we got to wear shades”, but as for everything that generates an extra cost in today’s limited economy, the expansion of this method is in the hands of the politicians and budget makers, rather than the physicians… references . feyrter, f. . uber diffuse endokrine epitheliale organe. j. a. barth. leipzig. . bayliss, w. m., starling, e. h. . on the causation of the so-called "peripheral reflex 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. . phelps, m. e. . positron emission tomography provides molecular imaging of biological processes. proc. natl. acad. sci. : - . . kinsey, r. r. . the nudat program for nuclear data on the web, version . , http:// www.nndc.bnl.gov/nndc/nudat/. national nuclear data center, brookhaven national laboratory. . clanton, j. . fdg production and distribution. in: practical fdg imaging. eds: delbeke d, marin wh, patton ja and sandler mp. springer- verlag, new york, usa. - . . patz, e. f., lowe, v. j., hoffman, j. m.; paine, s. s., burrowes, p., coleman, r. e., goodman, p. c. . focal pulmonary abnormalities: evaluation with f- -fluorodeoxyglucose pet scanning. radiology. : - . . inoue, t., kim, e. e., komasi, r., wong, f. c., bassa, p., wong, w. h., yang, d. j., endo, k., podloff, d. a. . detecting recurrent or residual lung cancer with fdg-pet. j. nucl. med. : - . . jansson, t., westlin, j. e., ahlstrom, h., lilja, a., långström, b., bergh, j. . positron emission tomography studies in patients with locally advanced and/or metastatic breast cancer: a method for early therapy evaluation? j. clin. oncol. : - . . nieweg, o. e., kim, e. e., wong, w. h., broussard, w. h., singletary, s. e., hortobagyi, g. n., tilbury, r. s. . positron emission tomography with fluorine- -deoxyglucose in the detection and staging of breast cancer. cancer. : - . . flamen, p., stroobants, s., van cutsem, e., dupont, p., bormans, g., de vadder, n., penninckx, f., van hoe, l., mortelmans, l. . additional value of whole-body positron emission tomography with fluorine- - - deoxy-d-glucose in recurrent colorectal cancer. j. clin. oncol. : - . . lai, d. t., fulham, m., stephen, m. s., chu, k. m., solomon, m., thompson, j. f., sheldon, d. m. storey, d. w. . the role of whole- body positron emission tomography with ( f)fluorodeoxyglucose in identifying operable colorectal cancer. arch. surg. : - . . rodriguez, m., rehn, s., ahlström, h., sundström, c., glimelius, b. . predicting malignancy grade with pet in non-hodgkin´s lymphoma. j. nucl. med. : - . . delbeke, d., kovalsky, e., cerci, r., martin, w. h., kinney, m., geer, j. . f-fluorodeoxyglucose imaging with positron emission tomography for initial staging of hodgkin´s disease and lymphoma. j. nucl. med. : p. . delbeke, d., lawrence, s. k., abou-khalil, b. w., blumenkopf, b., kessler, r. m. . postsurgical outcome of patients with uncontrolled complex partial seizures and temporal lobe hypometabolism on f-fdg- pet. investigative radiology. : - . . friedland, r. p., frackowiak, r. s. j., phelps, m. e. . regional cerebral metabolic alterations in dementia of the alzheimer type: positron emission tomography with f- -fluorodeoxyglucose. j. computer assit. tomogr. : - . . beller, g. a. . noninvasive assessment of myocardial viability. n. engl. j. med. : - . . tillisch, j., brunken, r., marshall, r., schwaiger, m., mandelkern, m., phelps, m., schelbert, h. . reversibility of cardiac wall-motion abnormalities predicted by positron emission tomography. n. engl. j. med. : - . . adams, s., baum, r., rink, t., schumm-drager, p. m., usadel, k. h., hor, g. . limited value of fluorine- fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography for the imaging of neuroendocrine tumors. eur. j. nucl. med. : - . . pasquali, c., rubello, d., sperti, c., gasparoni, p., liessi, g., chierichetti, f., pedrazzoli, s. . neuroendocrine tumor imaging: can f- fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography detect tumors with poor prognosis and aggressive behavior? world j. surg. : - . . foidart-willems, j., depas, g., vivegnis, d. . positron emission tomography and radiolabeled octreotide scintigraphy in carcinoid tumors. eur. j. nucl. med. : - . . jadavar, h., segall, g. m. . false-negative fluorine- -fdg-pet in metastatic carcinoid. j. nucl. med. : - . . shulkin, b. l., thompson, n. w., shapiro, b., francis, i. r., sisson, j. c. . pheocromocytomas: imaging with -(fluorine- ) fluoro-s-deoxy-d- glucose pet. radiol. : - . . shulkin, b. l., koeppe, r. a., francis, i. r., deeb, g. m., lloyd, r. w., thompson, n. w. . pheocromocytomas that do not accumulate metaiodobenzylguanidine: localization with pet and administration of fdg. radiol. : - . . abrams, h. l., spiro, r., goldstein, n. . metastases in carcinoma: analysis of autopsied cases. cancer. : - . . boland, g. w., goldberg, m. a., lee, m. j., mayo-smith, w. w., dixon, j., mcnicholas, m. m., mueller, p. r. . indeterminate adrenal mass in patients with cancer: evaluation at pet wiht -f- -fluoro- -deoxy-d- glucose. radiology. : - . . erasmus, j. j., patz, e. f. jr., mcadams, h. p., murray, j. g., herndon, j., coleman, r. e., goodman, p. c. . evaluation of adrenal masses in patients with broncogenic carcinoma using f-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography. ajr. am. j. roentgenol.. : - . . ahlström, h., eriksson, b., bergström, m., bjurling, p., långström, b., Öberg, k. . pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors: diagnosis with pet. radiology. : - . . hoegerle, s., altehoefer, c., ghanem, n., koehler, g., waller, c. f., scheruebl, h., moser, e., nitzsche, e. . whole-body -f-dopa pet for detection of gastrointestinal carcinoid tumors. radiology. : - . . sundin, a., eriksson, b., bergström, m., bjurling, p., lindner, k. j., Öberg, k., långström, b. . demonstration of ( c) -hydroxy-l-tryptophan uptake and decarboxylation in carcinoid tumors by specific positioning labeling in positron emission tomography. nucl. med. biol. : - . . bergstrom, m., eriksson, b., Öberg, k., sundin, a., ahlström, h., lindner, k. j., bjurling, p., långström, b. . in vivo demonstration of enzyme activity in endocrine pancreatic tumors: decarboxylation of carbon- - dopa to carbon- -dopamine. j. nucl. med. : - . . shulkin, b. l., wieland, d. m., baro, m. e., ungar, d. r., mitchell, d. s., dole, m. g., rawwas, j. b., castle, v. p., sisson, j. c., hutchinson, r. j. . pet hydroxyephedrine imaging of neuroblastoma. j. nucl. med. : - . . trampal, c., engler, h., juhlin, c., bergström, m., långström, b. . detection of pheochromocytoma using -c-hydroxyephedrine-pet. accepted for publ in radiology. . pacak, k., eisenhofer, g., carrasquillo, j. a., chen, c. c., li, s. t., goldstein, d. s. . -( f)-fluorodopamine positron emission tomography (pet) scanning for diagnostic localization of pheochromocytomas. hypertension. : - . . pacak, k., eisenhofer, g., carrasquillo, j. a., chen, c. c., whatley, m., goldstein, d. s. . diagnostic localization of pheochromocytoma: the coming of age of positron emission tomography. ann. ny acad. sci. : - . . kloos, r. t., gross, m. d., francis, i. r., korobkin, m., shapiro, b. . incidentally discovered adrenal masses. endocr. rev. : - . . bergström, m., bonasera, t., lu, l., bergstrom, e., backlin, c., juhlin, c., långström, b. . in vitro and in vivo primate evaluation of carbon- - etomidate and carbon- -metomidate as potential tracers for pet imaging of the adrenal cortex and its tumors. j. nucl. med. : - . . bergström, m., juhlin, c., bonasera, t. a., sundin, a., rastad, j., Åkerström, g., långström, b. . pet imaging of adrenal cortical tumors with the beta-hydroxylase tracer c-metomidate. j. nucl. med. : - . . kahn, t. s., sundin, a., juhlin, c., långström, b., bergström, m., eriksson, b. . a diagnostic evaluation of adrenocortical cancer and its metastases with pet using -c-metomidate. eur. j. nucl. med. accepted. . stridsberg, m., hellman, u., wilander, e., lungqvist, g., hellsing, k., Öberg, k. . fragments of chromogranin a are present in the urine of patients with carcinoid tumors: development of a specific radioimmunoassay for chromogranin a and its fragments. j. endocrinol. : - . . stridsberg, m., Öberg, k., li, q., lundqvist, g. . measurement of chromoranin a, chromoranin b (secretogranin i), chromogranin c (secretogranin ii) and pancreastatin in plasma and urine from patients with carcinoid tumors and endocrine pancreatic tumors. j. endocrinol. : - . . feldman, j. m. . urinary serotonin in the diagnosis of carcinoid tumors. clin. chem. : . . mailman, r. b., kilts, c. d. . analytical considerations for quantitative determination of serotonin and its metabolically related products in biological matrices. clin. chem. : - . . evers, b. m., townsend, c. m. jr., upp, j. r., allen, e., hurlbut, s. c., kim, s. w., rajarman, s., singh, p., reubi, j. c., thompson, j. c. . establishment and characterization of a human carcinoid in nude mice and effect of various agents on tumor growth. gastroenterology. : - . . westermark, b., pontén, j. huggosson, r. . determinants for the establishment of permanent tissue culture lines from human gliomas. acta,pathol. microbiol. scand. : - . . sutherland, r. m. cell and environment interactions in tumor micro regions: the multicell spheroid model. . science. : - . . gati, i., bergström, m., muhr, c., långström, b., carlsson, j. . application of (methyl- -c)-methionine in the multicellular spheroid system. j. nucl. med. : - . . antoni, g., omura, h., sundin, a., enzyme catalysed synthesis of l-( - c)aspartate and l-( - c)glutamate and some examples of their use in biomedical research. j. label. compd. radiopharm. . yanai, k., ryu, j. h., watanabe, r., iwata, r., ido, t. . receptor autoradiography with -c and -h-labeled ligands visualized by imaging plates. neurorep. - . . bergstrom, k. a., halldin, c., hall, h., lundkvist, c., ginovart, n., swahn, c. g., farde, l. . in vitro and in vivo characterisation of nor-beta-cit: a potential radioligand for visualisation of the serotonin transporter in the brain. eur j nucl med. : - . . halldin, c., farde, l., lundkvist, c., ginovart, n., nakashima, y., karlsson, p., swahn, c. g. . [ c] beta-cit-fe; a radioligand for quantitation of the dopamine transporter in the living brain using positron emission tomography. synapse. : - . . nyberg, s., farde, l., eriksson, l., halldin, c., eriksson; b. . c -ht and d dopamine receptor occupancy in the living human brain. a pet study with risperidone. psychopharmacology. : - . . nishiyama, s., sato, k., harada, n., kakiushi, t., tsukada, h. . development and evaluation of muscarinic cholinergic receptor ligands n- [ c]ethyl- -piperidyl benzilate and n- [ c]propyl- -piperidyl benzilate: a pet study in comparison with n- [ c]methyl- - piperidylbenzilate in the conscious monkey brain. nucl med biol. : - . . farde, l., halldin, c., stone-elander, s., sedvall, s. g. . pet analysis of human dopamine receptor subtypes using c-sch and c- raclopride. psychopharmacology. : - . . långström, b., antoni, g., gullberg, p., halldin, c., malmborg, p., någren, k., rimland, a., svärd, h. . synthesis of l- and d-(methyl- c) methionine. j. nucl. med. : - . . bjurling, p., watanabe, y., tokushige, m., oda, t., långström, b. . syntheses of - c-labelled l-tryptophan and -hydroxy-l-tryptophan using a multi-enzymatic reachtion route. j. chem. soc. perkin. trans. : - . . antoni, g., långström, b. . j. labelled compd. radiopharm. : . . bjurling, p., watanabe, y., långström, b. . appl. radiat. isot. : . . bergström, m., westberg, g., kihlberg, t., långström, b. . synthesis of some c-labelled mao-a inhibitors and their in vivo uptake kinetics in rhesus monkey brain. nucl. med. biol. : - . . patlak, c. s., blasberg, r. g., fenstermacher, j. d. . graphical evaluation of blood-to-brain transfer constants from multiple time uptake data. j. cereb. blood. flow. metab. : - . . westlin, j. e., tiensuu janson, e., ahlstöm, h., nilsson, s., Öhrvall, u., Öberg, k. . scintigraphy using a -indium-labeled somatostatin analogue for localization of neuroendocrine tumors. antibody. immunoconj. radiopharm. : - . . feldman, j. m., . monoamine and diamine oxidase activity in the diagnosis of carcinoid tumors. cancer. : - . . bergström, m., westerberg, g., németh, g., traut, m., gross, m., greger, g., muller-peltzer, h., safer, a., eckernäs, s. a., grahnér, a., långström, b. . mao-a inhibition in brain after dosing of esuprone, moclobemide and placebo in healthy volunteers – in vivo studies with positron emission tomography. eur. j. clin. pharmacol. : - . . bergstrom, m., lu, l., eriksson, b., marques, m., bjurling, p., andersson, y., langstrom, b. . modulation of organ uptake of -c-labelled - hydroxy-tryptophan. biogenic amines. : - . . sole, m. j., madapallimattam, a., baines, a. d. . an active pathway for serotonin synthesis by renal proximal tubules. kidney int. : - . . beyer, t., townsend, d. w., brun, t., kinahan, p. e., charron, m., roddy, r., jerin, j., young, j., byars, l., nutt, r. . a combined pet/ct scanner for clinical oncology. j. nucl med. : - . . patton, j. a., delbeke, d., sandler, m. p. . image fusion using integrated dual-head coincidence camera with x-ray tube based attenuation maps. j. nucl. med. : - . . shreve, p. . adding structure to function. j. nucl. med. - . . casey, m. eriksson, l., schmand, m. . investigation of lso crystals for high spatial resolution positron emission tomography. ieee trans. nucl. sci. : - . . chatziioannou, a. f., cherry, s. r., shao, y., silverman, r. w., meadors, k., farquhar, t. h, pedarsani, m., phelps, m. e. . performance evaluation of micropet: a high resolution lutetium oxyorthosilicate pet scanner for animal imaging. j. nucl. med. : - acknowledgements these studies were carried out at the department of medical sciences, uppsala university, at the uppsala university pet-center and in vitro lab (presently uppsala research imaging solutions, uris) and at the clinic for endocrine oncology, uppsala university hospital (uas), uppsala, sweden. the work was generously supported by grants from the swedish cancer foundation, torsten and ragnar söderbergs fund and lions cancer foundation. i would like to express my sincere gratitude to all involved in this project and especially: barbro eriksson, my supervisor, for sharing your vast clinical knowledge in the field of neuroendocrine tumors with me, for introducing me to and guiding me through the world of science, for believing in me both as a clinician and as a scientist, and for just being a fantastic doctor! mats bergström, my co-supervisor, for always having a new idea and a new project in mind every time we meet, and for being the most inter- disciplinary scientist i know. mats, you´re one of a kind! anders sundin, my co-supervisor, for your skilful professional knowledge and for every after-working-time hour in front of the image- screen at the pet-center, for all discussions about everything from imperialism and indian cooking to fusion-music and blues guitar, for helping me to move and store when my life was in a box and my leg in a package, and for being a friend to trust! kjell Öberg, dean of the medical faculty, head of the endocrine oncology research group and my initial boss at the department of internal medicine, for his visionary personality, his enthusiasm, and for including me in his team and encouraging me to start research. feng wu, author of paper no and my co-worker on the in vitro part of the don project, for all projects that gave results and for those who didn´t (i´m specially thinking about the cga-gene knock-down experiments in the multicellular spheroid model where we spent many hours!!). bengt långström, head of the uppsala university pet-center (uupc), for creating a superb center for functional medical research in vivo. li lu, ulrike garske, karl-johan fasth, claes juhlin, gunnar antoni, yasuyoshi watanabe, hironori omura, håkan ahlström, anders lilja and peter bjurling, co-authors on the different papers, for significant contribution to this work. elisabeth bergström, research assistant at the in vitro lab of uupc, for skilful guidance in the lab. dan, staffan, britt, eva and the rest of my colleagues at the department of endocrine oncology, for fruitful discussions of clinical and scientific topics. the staff at b: , the ward for endocrine oncology, for excellent patient care and assistance in finding patient charts. the Öberg-research group, for providing a scientific environment and for support when needed. the staff at uupc (presently uris, uppsala research imaging solutions) and especially rita and lars for always trying to make the logistic work. friends and colleagues at the department of internal medicine in uppsala and västerås, for making the daily work more interesting. friends and co-researchers at the jrdc-lab (in vitro lab of uupc), especially feng, li, elisabeth, vibke and sven, for help, support, guidance in the lab and a positive spirit. mikael björk, it-specialist at the dept of endocrine oncology, for always "solving the problem". anette hägg, department secretary, for having a fantastic potential to help and assist with every possible little detail. helena filipsson, friend and co-organizer of syed (sveriges yngre endokrin-och diabetologer), for enthusiasm and fruitful discussions. the ums-boys, especially jalle, steffe and hågge, for wining & dining, in depth discussions and late night city-tours. torulf and lasse, for being first and thereby putting an “extra log on the fire”! kent, for “vapen och ammunition”. l & l, lustans lakejer, for "diamonds", a superb song to make me wake up when falling asleep over the computer! my mother, eivor, for being my biggest supporter and for always helping out (even in the middle of the night, like when our second child aron was born last year). my close relatives; patrik and his family, pernilla and her family, gun- britt and lars, anders and elsie, for always caring and being there when it counts. my grandmother ruth, for outliving us all and still being at your senses at the age of years! my parents in law, astrid and walter for support and help. my sister and brother in law, maria and hans and their children, for the never ending care and love of my family. and last, but not least…my dear family; anna, kajsa and aron, for simply being the meaning of life!! 	papers included in the thesis 	contents 	abbreviations 	introduction 	the neuroendocrine concept 	amine turnover in neuroendocrine tumor cells 	neuroendocrine tumors 	classification 	lung carcinoids 	endocrine pancreatic tumors 	midgut carcinoid tumors 	hindgut carcinoid tumors 	multiple endocrine neoplasia type (men- ) 	treatment of net´s 	imaging of neuroendocrine tumors 	computed tomography, magnetic resonance tomography and ultrasonography 	somatostatin receptor scintigraphy 	vip- and mibg-scintigraphy 	positron emission tomography 	fdg 	l-dopa and -htp 	hed, fluorodopamine and metomidate 	aims of the study 	materials and methods 	patients 	biochemistry 	in vitro methods 	multicellular aggregate culture / spheroid model 	amino acid accumulation and uptake modulation 	molecular fraction separation and hplc 	distribution of positron labeled amino acids in rats 	tissue samples for autoradiographies 	autoradiography of tumor sections 	positron emission tomograpy 	chemistry 	image reconstruction and interpretation 	somatostatin receptor scintigraphy 	computed tomography 	statistical methods 	results and discussion 	imaging of net´s (paper i, iii and v) 	pet in treatment monitoring (paper i) 	in vivo modulation of -htp uptake (paper iv) 	uptake, modulation and distribution of amino acids (paper ii) 	in vitro binding to tumor specimens 	general summary 	swedish abstract / svensk sammanfattning 	conclusions 	diagnostic algorithm for net`s 	future aspects 	pet in neuroendocrine tumors 	references 	acknowledgements dspace dspace niet meer beschikbaar wegens de overgang naar het nieuwe onderzoeksinformatiesysteem pure is dspace niet meer beschikbaar. er wordt op dit moment hard gewerkt aan het valideren van de onderzoeksoutput in pure. na validatie wordt de researchoutput getoond via https://research.ou.nl let op, niet alle onderzoeksoutput zal worden getoond in pure, dit is mede afhankelijk van het beleid binnen de verschillende faculteiten. heeft u vragen, dan kunt u een e-mail sturen naar het pure support team pure-support@ou.nl t.a.v. katrine bengtsson, pure-co&oumlrdinator. wallace stevens journal, volume , number , spring , pp. - (article) doi: . /wsj. . for additional information about this article access provided by universiteit antwerpen bibliotheek ( mar : gmt) http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wsj/summary/v / . .eeckhout.html http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wsj/summary/v / . .eeckhout.html the wallace stevens journal . (spring ): – . © the johns hopkins university press. editor’s column: a ghostly visit to london (enter stevens in a -year-old bavarian tree) bart eeckhout one of the more exciting publication projects that are currently in the pipeline is wallace stevens in context, a volume with thirty-seven contributions to be edited by glen macleod for cambridge university press. having been commissioned to write the chapter on stevens’ international reputation, i am keeping my antennae up to catch the most interesting manifestations of stevens’ fame outside the united states. as a result, when in early november the officers of the wal- lace stevens society received an invitation to attend a “special event” on stevens in london, i was naturally tempted to go. for a belgian resident, the eurostar train connection underneath the channel makes a quick round trip very easy. two aspects of the event in particular appealed to me: the lineup of speakers and the location. the four speakers’ diverse backgrounds prom- ised to deliver unpredictable results. there was, to be sure, the inevitable academic specializing in american literature, here in the guise of sarah churchwell, who is also known as a literary journalist regularly appear- ing on british tv and radio. but even in her case, it was hard to foresee what exactly she might say as someone who is not an expert on stevens (her latest book is on the great gatsby); the program merely announced she would be “providing a modernist context from which to view wallace stevens.” almost as inevitably, there was a british poet on call, though the name of lachlan mackinnon has not been circulating much in steven- sian circles either—unless you happen to have an elephant’s memory and recall that his tls review of aidan wasley’s the age of auden was quoted in the pages of this journal, including a not very flattering comment about “the meagreness of stevens’s thought considered in the abstract” ( , qtd. in eeckhout and goldfarb ). given mackinnon’s snide remark in the tls, it was interesting to see what would happen when the same poet was invited to “explor[e] the poetic detail of stevens’ work.” yet the two par- ticipants to whom i was most looking forward were almost sure to shine a new light on stevens’ afterlife in british art and letters. one was the visual artist christopher le brun, president of the royal academy of arts, who the wallace stevens journal was going to talk about “the influence of wallace stevens on modern and contemporary artists.” the other was one of the most celebrated and origi- nal of british novelists and short story writers today, ali smith, already three times shortlisted for the man booker prize, who would “discuss the influence of stevens on her own work.” as far as i know, stevens appears only fleetingly in contemporary fiction; i recall how he flits through mi- chael cunningham’s a home at the end of the world, samuel delany’s dark reflections, and alison bechdel’s graphic memoir fun home, but am at a loss to think of a single instance that has been the object of serious critical discussion. so i was eager to hear a leading fiction writer outside the u.s. confessing to a genuine sense of influence. before i report on any of the things said (and not said, as we will see) by the four illustrious speakers, i would like to take some time to reflect on the second attraction exerted by the event: its venue, which opened only in and was unknown to me before my being invited to it. one of my favorite stevens quotations is from the -year-old would-be writer in new york city who had no idea yet where his literary ambitions, love life, or travels were going to take him: “i should mope in paradise (possibly) if i were to die without first having been to london,” he wrote in a letter to elsie (contemplated spouse ). the luxury of hindsight allows us to smile at the idea that, almost fifty years later, stevens would die without ever having crossed the atlantic—but also at the fact that, another sixty years later, the poetry he had written is still being quoted in a journal devoted to his work, where he is heard sighing from that same hypothetical paradise, now as one of the “ghosts that returned to earth to hear his [own] phrases” and “that would have wept to step barefoot into reality” (cpp ). what kind of reality did stevens’ barefoot ghost step into on the evening of no- vember , , during his long-awaited visit to london? if, as we might assume, stevens would have gone to paris first, he would have chosen to arrive in london by eurostar (a shorter trip, in duration, than his habitual train rides between hartford and new york). thus, he would have gotten off at st. pancras international, in one of the city’s most glorious public spaces (the victorian style would have felt very familiar), and been able to stroll to the venue in almost no time. for the wallace stevens event was programmed at kings place, a mere five-minute walk along the eastern side of king’s cross station, whose main entrance sits immediately next to st. pancras. because of my background in urban studies and general interest in con- temporary architecture, i was drawn to the event partly as an occasion to study the material and cultural circumstances in which a poet such as stevens today emerges in a place such as london. how does he fit into what the urban sociologist sharon zukin has described as a “symbolic economy” devised by “place entrepreneurs” ( )? characteristic of this economy, in zukin’s definition, is “its symbiosis of image and product, the scope and scale of selling images on a national and even global level, editor’s column and the role of the symbolic economy in speaking for, or representing, the city” ( ). all i had to do was watch the online audio and video guide in which the property developer of kings place explained about his project to hear the typical rhetoric that comes with such urban redevelopments— a rhetoric about the area being historically a major transport hub, about how the rerouting of eurostar trains from waterloo station to st. pancras changed the shops and people in the neighborhood overnight, and about how kings place has been constructed in what is “definitely going to be one of the most exciting areas of london in the next ten to fifteen years” (this already back in ). kings place, as it has decided to call itself (without apostrophe and usu- ally without capitals), is part of a postindustrial redevelopment project typically driven by economic and real-estate interests. it is huddled up in what was likely an unattractive corner (a sort of urban armpit) between the railroad tracks converging in the king’s cross terminal and the attached regents canal and battlebridge basin, which, in a distant industrial era, allowed for the freight of trains to be unloaded directly onto boats. in this postindustrial corner, what has arisen is a glitzy, multivolume structure that combines office space with the kind of mixed cultural use flagged up in the tagline of kings place as music+art+restaurants. in the seven floors of open landscape offices above ground level, a global footwear manufac- turer such as wolverine sits cheek by jowl with two of the u.k.’s leading newspapers, the guardian and the observer. no less typically, this mixed-use building also proves to be janus-faced: it has a street side and a back side impossible to associate with each other. the street side is spectacular and iconic: the three-layered undulating fa- çade is made up of hundreds of slightly curved sheets of glass (produced in a factory near venice, so the website kindly informs us, unaware of the way stevens conjured up “a night blown at a glassworks in vienna / or venice” half a century ago [cpp ]). the undulating glass façade is meant to be at once beautiful, attention-getting, and ecologically respon- sible (it diminishes the need for air conditioning). stepping inside through the main entrance creates a very different spa- tial sensation: what suddenly stretches out before the visitor is a large in- terior space, a semipublic street flowering into a high atrium that pulls the eyes at once upwards and downwards. upwards you look into the bustling office spaces, downwards into two large basement levels acces- sible by long escalators. the architectural style of this atrium is clearly indebted to the sleek and expensive, generically white, abstract-modernist tradition that richard meier has turned into his trademark around the globe. (the complex is not by meier but by the local architectural firm of dixon jones, whose experience with cultural institutions includes rede- signs of the royal opera house and the national gallery. according to the architects’ website, the complex of buildings we have just entered is a £ million project. in a twist on stevens’ most infamous aphorism, you could the wallace stevens journal say that if money is not always a kind of poetry, here at least it prepares the stage for it.) besides feeling the grand pull of this vertical axis, the visitor is also pulled forward into the rotunda that constitutes the building’s back side. here the curved restaurant and bar give out onto al fresco seating that overlooks the battlebridge basin and regents canal waterfront. the basin, quiet as a pond, is full of slender antique houseboats. on the night of my visit, two sleeping swans float in it, their heads retracted into their plum- age so that they look like outsize meringues drifting aimlessly through the water. the brand-new apartments with glass curtain walls on the other side of the basin look resolutely unaffordable. the rotunda and adjacent offices on the waterfront side have a radically different look from the wavy venetian glass along york way: they are in a sturdy beige limestone and assume classical geometrical shapes (cuboid-cylinder-cuboid). the ambience on this side of the building is one i am inclined to label gentri- fied metropolitan picturesque: while most of the material components are generic and formulaic, symbolizing a recognizable sort of transnational luxury lifestyle, the elegantly decorated houseboats add a local pictorial touch to the scene, as if the whole were london’s postmodern riff on venice. yet before we wind down the evening with cocktails at the waterfront, we should turn back first and descend the escalator into the basement levels. this is where kings place as a newfangled cultural hub comes into its own. we have already passed the sculpture exhibition gallery by the entrance (called pangolin london), but the two levels of the commercial kings place gallery that surround us on all four sides while we descend the escalator are much more striking. on the evening of my visit, the doz- ens of paintings on the walls are all by a single artist, the norwegian figu- rative painter frans widerberg, promoted as a twenty-first-century heir of edvard munch (who else?). the paintings have a strong unifying effect on the gallery spaces by being all in a mix of the same three primary colors (red, yellow, blue), so that i am reminded of at least one way in which ste- vens’ artistic appeal continues unabated: his favorite genre of variations on a theme has not lost any of its attraction for artists who wish to affirm their unique creativity, virtuoso craftsmanship, obsessive search for an ad- equate aesthetic language, and flexibility of spirit and imagination. to be transported downwards into a cyclorama of painterly variations on a few colors and the same semi-figurative shapes can feel remarkably like easing into a comfy chair for another reading of “the man with the blue guitar.” the escalator drops us off at the lowest level, where the two event halls are located. the main hall, where the stevens gathering is about to take place, is the principal architectural draw for me. here it is that the first public concert hall in london has been built in over a quarter of a century, entirely below street level (in a conspicuous spatial reversal of karl marx’s dictum that all cultural superstructures emerge on top of an economic base). as an aficionado of the world’s greatest concert-hall acoustics (from editor’s column vienna’s musikverein to amsterdam’s concertgebouw), i am curious to find out what the architect and the acoustical engineers of arup have managed to come up with in the era of computer simulations. hall one is our desti- nation and i marvel at the challenge of creating such a multipurpose space, which should accommodate not only spoken-word programs, stand-up comedy, piano recitals, folk, jazz, and world music, but also two musical ensembles with utterly different acoustical profiles that have made this their home: the orchestra of the age of enlightenment (celebrated for its performance on period instruments) and the london sinfonietta (no less admired for its premieres of contemporary classical music). hall one turns out to have the size of a chamber music hall; it seats people. upon entering it, i immediately recognize the shoebox shape (roughly two cubes) that i know to be one of the lessons in acoustics taught by the world’s best concert halls. i also recognize the stylized, abstracted language of a well-worn neoclassical tradition in architecture, with nor- dic influences in the design style (we could be in scandinavia as well). i see the same pale wood all around, from the coffered ceiling to the sur- rounding pillars above the wall paneling down to the parquet floor and the backs of seats—and i know that this, too, is elementary for producing good acoustics. the hall appears to be a warm and plush ritual space, ide- ally prepared for the secular-artistic variant of collective praying that is about to take place here. still, there is only so much one can grasp through direct observation: to learn the larger story of the hall’s construction, i need to go online after- wards. then i begin to understand also why it has been pushed entirely underground (to prevent street noise from coming in) and how it avoids acoustic interference from the railroad tracks nearby (by resting on rub- ber springs so that the entire hall “floats” within the building). i begin to grasp the purpose of the curtains pulled behind the pillars: they are there to mute the acoustics during spoken-word events and are pulled away for musical performances, when the sound requires a richer echo. and i learn what i cannot resist staging in my column’s title because it provides a fanciful little narrative where none is expected: all the woodwork in the hall, from ceiling to walls to floors and backs of seats, derives from a single -year-old oak tree in an ancient bavarian hunting forest, named “con- tessa” by its owners. contessa, we are told, was respectfully felled on the full moon before christmas in . after her timber was boiled for a full week, she delivered an acre of superb veneer. what a remarkable stage entrance this suddenly turns out to be: stevens finally arrives in london to be celebrated inside the belly of a pre-shakespearean oak tree by the name of contessa. he would have wept to step barefoot on the parquet floor, touch the wood, enjoy the hum of this humane temple for the arts. to be sure, he might also have been taken aback a little by the large projection of his face on the big screen lowered above the stage, though he would probably have appreciated its being linked to a poetic epigraph the wallace stevens journal (repeated in the brochure and on the website announcing the event): “ourselves in poetry must take their place, [/] even in the chattering of your guitar.” there is no mention of this being the conclusion of section v of “the man with the blue guitar,” nor of the preceding, contextually and grammatically required lines, though these happen to add to the sig- nificance of the concert hall, with its secular-aesthetic rituals, in which we find ourselves: poetry exceeding music must take the place of empty heaven and its hymns, ourselves in poetry must take their place, even in the chattering of your guitar. (cpp ) the brochure for the event reproduces picasso’s the old guitarist on the cover and tells us, “poet in the city presents wallace stevens: poet, in- surance broker, philosopher of the imagination.” (i suspect the insurance broker is there to attract a few extra visitors from the offices overhead.) “poet in the city,” we learn, “is a registered charity committed to attract- ing new audiences to poetry, making new connections for poetry, and rais- ing money to support poetry education.” it is housed at the kings place music foundation and supported by the arts council england. a leaflet with “poet in the city highlights” picked up in the atrium allows me to contextualize stevens’ appearance: his is apparently the only such event devoted to a canonical american poet in . the nine other high- lights are a centenary celebration of dylan thomas, a chaucer event extra muros at southwark cathedral, the poetry and songs of p. g. wodehouse, a tribute to seamus heaney, an event on viking sagas at the british mu- seum, a cavafy event, a celebration of poetry and fine art under the title “poetry portraits,” “first world war: poetry in translation,” and newly commissioned poems from london archives, featuring the former poet laureate sir andrew motion. for £ . at the box office and £ . if booked online, all londoners have been invited to enjoy stevens as (literally) an underground poet cozi- ly snuggling up inside a contessa, somewhere beside railroad tracks and waterways in a brightly redeveloped armpit of the city. about people show up, which does not seem all that bad to me for a paying event on an ordinary monday in november at the somewhat impractical hour of p.m. predictably, a majority in the audience turn out to be gray-haired, though i am amused to notice a group of arty, gay-looking twinks as well (maybe these attend central st. martins, one of the art colleges that moved editor’s column into the area in ). the gender balance seems fine, but i am unable to spy a single person of color in the room, in spite of the community out- reach program kings place is running. suddenly, i find myself wishing it were possible to have stevens speak also to multiethnic london, not just to a white cultural elite with a particular educational pedigree that enjoys visiting creative hubs soaking in money. i feel caught out and branded. still, there is pleasure in observing this devoutly concentrated audience over the next hour and a half. doing so reminds me, for instance, both of the amateur enthusiast and of the serendipitous non-expert. the former is in evidence whenever a title of a famous poem by stevens draws audible gasps of approval. such spontaneous displays of enthusiasm contribute notably to the overall atmosphere of celebration. the latter is especially striking whenever lines are read out that display stevens’ typical humor. at an academic conference, nobody will burst into laughter because ev- erybody anticipates the lines, but with a general literary audience in a humor-loving culture such as the british, this is charmingly different. the mere announcement of “a high-toned old christian woman” is enough to draw chuckles, and many listeners around me laugh out loud at hear- ing the poem’s concluding lines: this will make widows wince. but fictive things wink as they will. wink most when widows wince. (cpp ) this mix of irreverence and verbal fun is clearly one that a sympathetic british audience relishes. stevens’ poems are read out by the american actor david calvitto, who opens the evening—before anything else is said—by reciting “the em- peror of ice-cream.” calvitto will read three more times over the course of the evening, for a total of nineteen poems. with the exception of the pref- ace to “notes toward a supreme fiction,” these are all individual lyrics. despite the event’s epigraph from “the man with the blue guitar,” then, the audience is not really given a sense of stevens’ variational technique in the longer poems (unless through the elliptical alternative of “thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird”). at first, it would appear also that the selection of recited poems is heavily weighted toward harmonium: six of the first seven poems are from stevens’ debut collection. but the audience is not provided with dates or titles of collections, or with any sense of development: later in the program, the recited poems will jump around from “the latest freed man” ( ) to “thirteen ways” ( ) to “the well dressed man with a beard” ( ) to “final soliloquy of the interior paramour” ( ). gradually also, the recitations will become the least rewarding part of the evening for me. calvitto sounds poorly prepared and struggles with the materials in front of him: he accentuates too many words, reads too fast, misreads words and then has to correct himself, at the wallace stevens journal times gets lost in stevens’ meandering syntax. even a professional actor, it turns out, cannot sight-read stevens: these lines are a complex score that needs to be studied first to identify unexpected and obscure words, check pronunciations, and develop the right sense of musical phrasing. by the time we listen to “the idea of order at key west,” where calvitto trips over “she” versus “sea,” i am wishing some of stevens’ own recordings had been played in this pleasant musical space. the audience was ready, i think, for a good haunting. calvitto’s initiating recitation of “the emperor” (in which “concupis- cent” is immediately mispronounced) is followed by a brief welcome from jeffery sugarman, the event manager of the evening, who tells us that he grew up in florida but got to know stevens’ work only some ten years ago; since then he has been addicted to what he calls stevens’ “devilishly american” qualities as a poet (the first surprising characterization of the evening). sugarman also brings the disappointing news that ali smith has had to cancel due to illness. (so much for building up suspense, both in the run-up to my own visit and for the reader of this column.) the audi- ence will have to make do with churchwell, mackinnon, and le brun, in that order. to kick off her exploration of stevens’ place in american culture, churchwell makes deft use of a phrase by marianne moore, who is sup- posed to have described stevens once as “equipoise itself.” although churchwell calls stevens, in the usual reductive cliché, “a conservative lawyer,” she does so only to contrast this with one of his fundamental claims as an artist: “all poetry is experimental poetry” (cpp ). the brief biographical portrait churchwell then draws up has its dubious spots, for instance when she suggests stevens studied law at harvard. more interesting is her personal appreciation of the poet, since this is the kind of language that must kindle the audience’s interest in stevens’ writ- ings: after hailing both his comic side and his defiance of modernist dicta, she calls his work “incredibly consoling.” stevens’ work does not offer an “empty fantasy” to churchwell; it demonstrates, rather, how art is able to provide a constant “defense against tragedy.” in this regard, he should not be labeled a modernist, which churchwell dismisses as “an insufficient hook upon which to catch him.” more relevant to her is the influence of french symbolism on his work, particularly as it afforded a place in his writings for the irrational. as a professor of american literature, churchwell proves good at painting the inferiority complex of american writers around the turn of the twentieth century. her disciplinary background may also account for her insistence that stevens is “american to his core” and that harmonium is “of the american soil,” though she quickly qualifies this by pointing to the poet’s simultaneously “more global perspective.” churchwell goes on to align stevens’ reticence with emily dickinson’s (a helpful way of letting her listeners develop a quick mental image) but gets carried away when editor’s column she adds that he also “greatly admired” dickinson. (in all of his published journals and letters, stevens never once mentions her. as joan richardson reminds us, “both whitman and dickinson were largely ignored by ste- vens’s generation” [ ].) when churchwell mentions that it took the new york times eight years to review harmonium, she draws a few sniggers— and probably diminishes the sense of intimidation some of the audience still experience vis-à-vis stevens’ work. drawing inspiration from helen vendler, churchwell assures her audi- ence that the widespread image of a dispassionate stevens has now been displaced by a sadder figure, whose work records especially disappoint- ment and longing, besides hope. in her opinion, he is also “one of the first great american poets of perception,” most famously in poems such as “thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird.” yet the most provocative claim churchwell wishes to make, by her own admission, is that stevens should be regarded as an “anti-whitman,” mainly because he is “anti- grandiose.” she rounds off her sketch by adding that music and prosody are central to the greatness of stevens’ poetry, and that he is very much a poet of the senses. in a clever rhetorical maneuver, churchwell wraps up her talk by reading out some of her personal favorites from stevens’ “adagia,” ranging from “the poet makes silk dresses out of worms” and “authors are actors, books are theatres” to “life is an affair of people not of places. but for me life is an affair of places and that is the trouble” (cpp – )—a self-disparagement that goes down well with a british audi- ence and draws further laughter from the auditorium. after the first batch of recited poems, mackinnon takes over in a heavy oxbridge accent that makes his scottish background perfectly inaudible. with practiced laconic wit he improvises on the basis of a few scribbles, asking the audience to imagine a man walking through a park in hartford every morning on his way to work and looking “like a platonic idea of an eisenhower conservative.” mackinnon makes his listeners chortle again when he tells of the fistfight with ernest hemingway and the quarrels with robert frost at key west. taking biographical liberties, he says that stevens as a rule skipped lunch to go walk in the park (as if elizabeth park had been next-door to the office), arriving back with a few scribbled lines of verse for his secretary to type up. one such poem might be called “of hartford in a purple light.” immediately, it becomes clear that, despite the witty approach, mackinnon has no wish to disparage the poetic results. he may be idiosyncratic in his claims about the poem—its use of french words was “learned from whitman,” the ideas expressed in it are “almost serious,” and the address to the sun is “old-fashioned”—but he builds up such remarks so as to prepare for a full reading of the text that turns out to be much livelier and more dramatic than calvitto’s performances. mackinnon’s stevens is nevertheless recognizably british: we must understand this was a man who refused to take himself quite seriously. his marriage, moreover, was “a catastrophe”—perhaps another marker the wallace stevens journal of poetic genius in the country of philip larkin. yet once again, such ob- servations are tossed off as mere interludes because, as a poet, mackinnon wants to get to the more important question of what poetry was doing for stevens. he suggests two different answers. on the one hand, poetry for stevens could bring “a new knowledge of reality.” spiraling back to “of hartford in a purple light,” mackinnon aligns stevens with oscar wilde’s aestheticist claim that nature imitates art, and presents him as “emphati- cally post-nietzschean.” here mackinnon’s praise is unmitigated and stated without a trace of irony: stevens’ belief in a “supreme fiction,” em- braced in the full awareness of its being a fiction, “requires a lot of cour- age, which stevens had.” it also requires that a poet dare to engage in a “game with the reader,” for “poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully” (cpp ). this makes for a demanding poetry, mackinnon admits, in which the reading experience is “like trying to crack the world.” on the other hand, poetry for stevens had to do something very differ- ent: it had to find “an object adequate to the imagination.” in this respect, stevens was arguably more of a romantic than a modernist, which mack- innon illustrates by going on to recite “of modern poetry” in its entirety. to the closing lines about “a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman / combing” (cpp ), he adds how much he loves their “domestic genre painting”—and how, in stevens’ buildup of the poem, these unspectacular images might actually be good enough to “meet our capacity for wonder.” mackinnon ends with a local pirouette about stevens’ influence in eng- land. after a dizzying spin on aubrey beardsley, franz kafka, and ste- vens as “literary insurance businessmen,” he lands on the poet roy fuller ( – ), who was a “company solicitor” for “the woolwich” (one of the u.k.’s largest and oldest building societies). too few readers, accord- ing to mackinnon, are aware that the later poetry of fuller (who moved from lawyering to being a poetry professor at oxford) is “very clearly influenced by stevens,” and so mackinnon urges his audience to reread these later verses through the american poet’s lenses. it is a suggestion worth repeating in the pages of this journal. meanwhile, it is time again for calvitto to step up to the plate and read his final batch of poems before the least predictable of the three speakers is allowed to bring the evening to a satisfying conclusion. christopher le brun (° ) is a painter, sculptor, and printmaker who was born in ports- mouth and trained at the slade and chelsea art schools in london. he has been appearing in international solo exhibitions since the early s, and served as a trustee of the tate and the national gallery in the s and early s. a good ten years after becoming a professor of drawing at the royal academy in , he was elected the th president of this institu- tion since sir joshua reynolds, the youngest artist in this position since . le brun has brought along five images to be projected during his talk, three from canonical painters (a depiction of the montagne sainte- victoire by cézanne, a braque painting, another by robert motherwell) editor’s column and two of his own large-scale oil paintings made at very different stages of his career. the first of these, thorn, dates from – and is reprinted on the cover of this issue; the second, enter the city, is a recent abstract composition in yellow, orange, and red from (at the time of writing, it may be viewed on the artist’s website). le brun announces he would like to talk about how as a young artist in the s he encountered stevens’ work and “how it related to me as an artist and to the situation of painting at that time.” “essentially,” he says, this boils down to “how his work helped me.” ad-libbing a link with the final line from “the poem that took the place of a mountain” just read by calvitto, in which stevens “recognize[s] his unique and solitary home” (cpp ), le brun tells his hearers how in turn he has recognized a home in stevens’ work for decades. the cézanne that is up on the screen builds a further visual link with stevens’ poem. cézanne is the best point to start, le brun feels, because of his special significance for both stevens and the birth of modern art. after all, this painter may be said to have established the independent existence of the painting as a thing in the world, and as an object that connects, not as a copy but as something parallel or equivalent or speaking to the world, and not of a lesser order or significance. it is not an illustration. it doesn’t fetch and carry for others. it is profoundly resistant to explanation. to recall the imagery of the poet david gascoyne, it is both a wall, a wood, and a well. le brun reminisces how as a young artist arriving in london from the provinces he read poets—especially the english romantics—voraciously, but was soon told he should stop the habit immediately. coming across stevens’ poetry, nevertheless, he found in the work “tremendous support” for his own “instincts” as an artist. stevens helped le brun resist the three dominant trends at the slade school of fine art at the time: one pushed him in the direction of a hard-won realistic scrutiny, another toward irony and pop art, and a third toward american-style abstract painting. while his own early painting thorn, alluding to the winged horse pegasus, is projected on the screen, le brun tells us of his passionate if secretive im- mersion in stevens. he recalls how his teacher at the slade, in the “eng- lish tradition of particularism,” demanded to know whether a wing he had painted was that of an eagle, a goose, or a flamingo, while le brun wanted (but did not dare) to answer it was the wing of poetry. as a result, le brun was all the more excited recently to discover a sentence stevens wrote in “a collect of philosophy”: “that the wing of poetry should also be the rushing wing of meaning seems to be an extreme aesthetic good” (cpp ). back in the s, it was especially stevens’ essay “the no- ble rider and the sound of words” that gave le brun a language and a framework for his artistic instincts: as a visual artist he felt that his own the wallace stevens journal “compulsion to imagine pictures and make them” was “entirely substanti- ated” in this essay. pointing to the opening page of stevens’ essay, which conjures up the image of “a pair of winged horses and a charioteer” from plato’s phaedrus (cpp ), le brun nods at his own thorn by saying, “there are no prizes for guessing how this may have influenced me.” he goes on to explain: the separation of the image, in this case noble and resplendent in itself, from what it might or might not carry, and that the image nevertheless satisfies an overwhelming need, is one of the lessons of cubism. . . . so for the painter who feels that the imaginative impulse is supreme, how does the cultural stage, his context of performance, appear? the ambitious young per- son proceeds to look and to read because, in preparation for this lifelong journey towards the distant mountain, only the best of art and writing should be packed and learned and re- membered. one poetic opponent le brun needed to overcome while packing for his journey as an artist was philip larkin, who jettisoned “tradition” and the “common myth-kitty” from antiquity and the bible, and instead called for artists who did not “dodge” their “duty to be original.” against this, le brun quotes the poet c. h. sisson’s riposte, which marshaled sir phil- ip sidney’s “an apology for poetry” to defend the invention of “forms such as never were in nature” (from demigods to chimeras and winged horses). more generally, le brun wishes to insist on the value of “bringing something new into the world” as against merely “preserving” personal experiences. he calls this “a key dilemma of contemporary art” as it has developed in his lifetime. to illustrate this, he refers to an epic-scale ex- ample of wagnerian proportions that rather matches the image of thorn on the screen and the audience’s coincidental huddling up inside a bavar- ian tree: “anyone who has seen the anselm kiefer exhibition now at the royal academy has witnessed the resurgence of history painting like a counterreformation. kiefer, of course, has the biggest, vastest myth-kitty of them all.” the image on the screen switches to an abstract painting by mother- well, which allows le brun to pursue stevens’ relation to american ab- straction. here he seems to be in agreement, by and large, with al filreis’ work on the topic: le brun explains how stevens in the late s and early ’ s continued to buy pictures from paris instead of following the art world’s turn to new york. stevens proved to be “equivocal” about the evolution toward full abstraction even as he prepared the path for it. if motherwell (who wrote about stevens already in the s) could sug- gest that the beauty of american painting was “how it stands alone” and cannot be reduced to a national origin, stevens had things to say about editor’s column how this beauty must resist the observer. like mackinnon, le brun quotes the epigram “poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully” (cpp ). in le brun’s estimation, this claim, which stops short of absolute ab- straction, is “enormously helpful for a painter,” and its key word, almost, is a very humane one. motherwell’s kind of abstraction, le brun concludes, may have been ahead of stevens, yet it was arguably also influenced by him. under the final projected image of le brun’s own abstract, vibrantly colorful enter the city, the artist tells us how stevens is ultimately “on the side of the maker,” and that this maker, in the case of the painter, “does not require a correspondence with a previous experience for validation because the experience of imagining and building is what is required, not as a record but for the pleasure of performance and of acting out.” these words about imagining, building, pleasure, and performance strike me as felicitous terms to bring a spoken-word celebration of stevens’ poetry inside a performance hall to a conclusion, and i ponder how the projected image of a richly imaginative artistic force “entering the city,” with its own abstract way of resisting the intelligence almost successfully, adds beauti- fully to the manner in which stevens’ immaterial presence is being evoked during this belated visit to london. the yellow, orange, and red colors that have erupted on the screen allow le brun to reaffirm his attachment to the conclusion of “the noble rider,” where nobility is described as an artistic force: it is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. it is the imagination pressing back against the pres- sure of reality. it seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives. (cpp ) university of antwerp belgium notes here and in the rest of this column, a number of quotations from the program bro- chure are included without further bibliographical reference. internal textual evidence should be sufficient to understand that words are being quoted from this source. the following description has been composed on the basis of three sources: the kings place website (www.kingsplace.co.uk), the wikipedia entry on kings place, and my own observations on the evening of november , . the website information was accessed on november , . according to the kings place website, this is the deepest single propped basement ever built in london. the “words on monday” series contains more than poetry events alone: a leaflet for the period september–november lists seventeen evenings, including famous the wallace stevens journal british writers such as julian barnes, sebastian faulks, louis de bernières, and wendy cope, discussions with a historian, a composer, and a philosopher, book launches with global subject matter (a novel on sri lanka’s civil war, another on algerian women and immigration to europe), an introduction to a living brazilian poet, and a not very literary evening in the company of the “technology entrepreneur and co-founder of paypal, peter thiel,” who “imparts lessons” on “principles that are fundamental to building valuable companies.” all quotations from churchwell are based on my notes and are thus approximate. as with churchwell, all quotations by mackinnon are based on my notes. the information in my biographical sketch of le brun has been composed from the artist’s website (christopherlebrun.co.uk) and the wikipedia page devoted to him. in what follows, i will be able to cite the artist’s words at length and with complete accuracy thanks to the preparatory notes he sent me and his vetting of all quotations. i wish to express my sincere gratitude to le brun for his kind cooperation as well as for the enthusiasm with which he met my request to publish a reproduction of thorn on the cover of this issue of the journal. the kiefer exhibition at the royal academy of arts ran from september to de- cember , , and offered the most significant overview of the german artist’s career until then in the u.k. works cited eeckhout, bart, and lisa goldfarb. “stevens and auden: disparities and affinities.” in- troduction. wallace stevens and w. h. auden. spec. issue of wallace stevens journal . ( ): – . print. mackinnon, lachlan. “liberators.” times literary supplement oct. : . print. richardson, joan. wallace stevens: the early years, – . new york: morrow, . print. stevens, wallace. the contemplated spouse: the letters of wallace stevens to elsie. ed. j. donald blount. columbia: u of south carolina p, . print. ———. wallace stevens: collected poetry and prose. ed. frank kermode and joan rich- ardson. new york: library of america, . print. zukin, sharon. the cultures of cities. cambridge: blackwell, . print. the creative writing course in the british columbia senior secondary school: a telephoto examination with accompanying curriculum development guidelines by norma jamieson b.a., (honours e n g l i s h ) a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of arts i n the faculty of graduate studies department of english education we a c c e p t t h i s t h e s i s as c o n f o r m i n g t o the r e q u i r e d s t a n d a r d the university of british columbia september, (c) norma jamieson, in p r e s e n t i n g t h i s t h e s i s i n p a r t i a l f u l f i l l m e n t o f the r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r an advanced degree a t the u n i v e r s i t y o f b r i t i s h columbia, i agree t h a t the l i b r a r y s h a l l make i t f r e e l y a v a i l a b l e f o r r e f e r e n c e and s t u d y . i f u r t h e r agree t h a t p e r m i s s i o n f o r e x t e n s i v e c o p y i n g o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r s c h o l a r l y purposes may be g r a n t e d by the head o f my department o r by h i s r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s . i t i s u n d e r s t o o d t h a t p u b l i c a t i o n , i n p a r t o r i n whole, o r the c o p y i n g o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r f i n a n c i a l g a i n s h a l l not be a l l o w e d w i t h o u t my w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . norma jamieson department the u n i v e r s i t y o f b r i t i s h columbia westbrook p l a c e vancouver, canada v t w i i abstract t h i s i n - d e p t h e x a m i n a t i o n o f the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e i n the b r i t i s h columbia s e c o n d a r y s c h o o l s w i t h accompanying c u r r i c u l u m development g u i d e l i n e s was prompted because o f the p r o v i n c i a l l a c k o f c o u r s e s u r v e y i n f o r m a t i o n and the l a c k o f m a t e r i a l s and g u i d e l i n e s f o r t e a c h e r s to use when d e v e l o p i n g t h e i r i n d i v i d u a l c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l a . c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s d e f i n e d as an i n e x t r i c a b l e c o m b i n a t i o n o f both p r o c e s s and p r o d u c t , s u f f i c i e n t l y d i s t i n c t from s t a n d a r d c l a s s r o o m e x p o s i t o r y w r i t i n g to w a r r a n t a s e p a r a t e l a b e l . a s e p a r a t e c o u r s e i n c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s j u s t i f i e d by con- temporary s t u d i e s o f t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s which emphasize homogeneous g r o u p i n g to encourage the p a r t i c u l a r t a l e n t c o n c e r n e d . c r e a t i v i t y , c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s p e c i f i c a l l y , i s a d i s t i n c t t a l e n t . the p r o v i n c i a l s u r v e y e f f e c t e d c o m p i l a t i o n o f a l i s t o f b r i t i s h columbia s c h o o l s o f f e r i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g w i t h the r e s p e c t i v e t e a c h e r s . the s u r v e y q u e s t i o n n a i r e i n c l u d e d q u e s t i o n s c o n c e r n i n g methodology and c o n t e n t o f the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e . t a b u l a t e d r e s u l t s and t e a c h e r comments c o n f i r m the g r e a t d i v e r s i t y o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l a o f f e r e d t h r o u g h o u t b r i t i s h columbia, the extreme v a r i a t i o n i n t e a c h e r c o n f i d e n c e , and the g e n e r a l l a c k o f p r e s c r i b e d i i i t e a c h e r q u a l i f i c a t i o n s . the s u r v e y emphasized the t e a c h e r s ' need o f r e a l i s t i c g u i d e l i n e s f o r c u r r i c u l u m development. contemporary c r e a t i v i t y r e s e a r c h and t h e o r y a r e o u t l i n e d as they a f f e c t the development o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l a . the c r e a t i v e p e r s o n a l i t y , c r e a t i v i t y needs and f a c t o r s i n h i b i t i n g c r e a t i v i t y development a r e emphasized. s p e c i f i c and p r a c t i c a l c u r r i c u l u m development g u i d e l i n e s , i n t e n d e d f o r i n d i v i d u a l t e a c h e r use, a r e approached i n a two s t a g e c o n c e p t t h a t r e f l e c t s the r e a l w o r l d o f w r i t i n g . stage one: d r a f t i n g e x p l o r e s e x p e r i e n t i a l c o n t e n t t h a t i s small and o r d i n a r y , the t e a c h e r ' s r o l e , j o u r n a l use and o b s e r v a t i o n s k i l l s . stage two: e d i t i n g and p u b l i s h i n g e x p l o r e s the v a l i d i t y and n e c e s s i t y o f s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n , and v a r i o u s p u b l i c a t i o n forms. the i m p l i c a t i o n s o f p u b l i c a t i o n f o r c u r r i c u l u m development t h a t are d e a l t w i t h are peer r e s p o n s e , t e a c h e r as t u t o r , r e v i s i o n p h i l o s o p h y , e d i t i n g o f mechanics, form and s t y l e . p a r t i c u l a r e v a l u a t i o n formats a r e del i n e a t e d . c o n c l u s i o n s recommend r e w o r k i n g the c u r r i c u l u m guide and t h e p r e s c r i b e d textbook l i s t . g u i d e l i n e s f o r c u r r i c u l u m development need to be made a v a i l a b l e to each c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r , and a t t e n t i o n must be d i r e c t e d to making the c o u r s e an i n t e g r a l p a r t o f the w r i t i n g w o r l d o u t s i d e the c l a s s r o o m . i v i write to join myself. i write because words wait, hands out, to be joined. i will write until i have joined them all every way i can j i l l handford matthew mcnair s r . sec. richmond grade v table of contents page abstract i i epigraph i v table of contents v list of tables i x acknowledgments x introduction c h a p t e r . creative writing: something different . a separate course: why bother? . . . provincial survey: expose q u e s t i o n q u e s t i o n q u e s t i o n q u e s t i o n q u e s t i o n q u e s t i o n q u e s t i o n t e a c h e r comments q u e s t i o n t e a c h e r comments q u e s t i o n t e a c h e r comments v i chapter page q u e s t i o n t e a c h e r ' comments q u e s t i o n t e a c h e r comments q u e s t i o n t e a c h e r comments q u e s t i o n t e a c h e r comments q u e s t i o n t e a c h e r comments books suggested q u e s t i o n . . . . t e a c h e r comments q u e s t i o n t e a c h e r comments added i n c e n t i v e survey c o n c l u s i o n s . curriculum development guidelines: victoria, it's time u . studies in creativity: implications for curriculum development the c r e a t i v e p e r s o n a l i t y c r e a t i v i t y needs . ^ f a c t o r s i n h i b i t i n g c r e a t i v i t y development c o n c l u s i o n ^ v i i chapter page . specific guidelines for curriculum development of senior secondary creative writing courses: good-bye midnight slavery stage one: drafting e x p e r i e n c e - b a s e d w r i t i n g t e a c h e r as ' t r a v e l c o u n s e l l o r the j o u r n a l o b s e r v a t i o n s small e x p e r i e n c e s o r d i n a r y e x p e r i e n c e s °° d r a f t i n g summary stage two: editing and publishing v a l i d i t y and n e c e s s i t y o f s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n ° p u b l i c a t i o n forms i m p l i c a t i o n s o f p u b l i c a t i o n f o r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g programs peer response t e a c h e r as t u t o r r e v i s i o n p h i l o s o p h y e d i t i n g o f mechanics form s t y l e p u b l i c a t i o n : end o r a n o t h e r b e g i n n i n g ? e d i t i n g and p u b l i s h i n g summary v i i i chapter page evaluation s t r u c t u r i n g c o n t r a c t s t y p i c a l c o n t r a c t components conclusion . c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g j o u r n e y summary . . the l a s t word . appendix a - provincial survey letter to all b.c. super- intendents appendix b - provincial survey letter to all teachers of creative writing in british columbia appendix c - schools offering creative writing in . - . with the respective teachers appendix d - provincial survey: additional teacher comments . appendix e - ways of knowing the student appendix f - helpful articles on the practicalities of student publications with the school appendix g - exemplary published student work appendix h - musts for the creative writing student library appendix i - writers' market appendix j - writing competitions bibliography i x list of tables t a b l e page . c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i n b.c. survey (n = ) x acknowledgments i am p a r t i c u l a r l y g r a t e f u l to a l l t h o s e p e o p l e who have made the w r i t i n g o f t h i s t h e s i s an e n l i g h t e n i n g and e n j o y a b l e e x p e r i e n c e f o r me. p r o f e s s o r p h i l i p penner and dr. syd b u t l e r have been c o n s t a n t s o u r c e s o f i n s p i r a t i o n and s o l i d p r a c t i c a l a d v i c e , and i cannot thank them enough. i a l s o acknowledge w i t h g r a t i t u d e p r o f e s s o r frank bertram f o r h i s i n t e r e s t and encouragement. i have been g r e a t l y i n f l u e n c e d by two remarkable i n d i v i d - u a l s whose i d e a s have r e v o l u t i o n i z e d e n g l i s h e d u c a t i o n i n the w o r l d a t l a r g e . i thank stephen judy f o r s h a r i n g w i t h me h i s s e n s i t i v i t y t o language and h i s e n t h u s i a s m f o r making s t u d e n t w r i t i n g ' r e a l . i thank paddy c r e b e r f o r i m p a s s i o n i n g me w i t h h i s b e l i e f i n the i n t e r d e p e n d e n c y o f language and s e l f . the mechanics o f the s u r v e y c o n s t i t u t e d demanding t a s k s a t times and i p a r t i c u l a r l y a p p r e c i a t e the e f f o r t s o f diana c r u t c h l e y and e r n i e novakowski i n a t t e m p t i n g t o o b t a i n i n f o r m a t i o n from the s t a t i s t i c s branch o f the department o f e d u c a t i o n i n v i c t o r i a . i am a l s o most g r a t e f u l t o cathy a b r o s s i m o f f , j e a n n i e b a l l and t h e i r s e c r e t a r i a l s t u d e n t s f o r t h e i r e x p e r t a s s i s t a n c e . and, w i t h o u t the t h o u g h t f u l r e s p o n s e s o f a l l the s u p e r i n t e n d e n t s and w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s i n b r i t i s h columbia who p a r t i c i p a t e d i n the s u r v e y , t h i s t h e s i s c o u l d n e v e r have been completed. x i acknowledgements a r e a l s o due to the b.c. e n g l i s h t e a c h e r ' s a s s o c i a t i o n f o r t h e i r eager s u p p o r t o f my p r o j e c t and i t s i m p l i c a t i o n s . i must be s u r e t o o f f e r my a p p r e c i a t i o n o f the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s t u d e n t s o f matthew mcnair s e n i o r secondary who c o n s t a n t l y remind me o f the i n d i v i d u a l i t y and the fun o f w r i t i n g . p a r t i c u l a r c r e d i t i s due t o t h o s e s t u d e n t s whose works i have quoted: marci cheveldave, d a r l e n e c o r n e l s o n , donna d e l i s l e , j i l l h a n d f o r d , e l a i n e h u t c h i n s o n , c o l l e e n l a c r o i x , ann m a r t i n , g e o r g i a merry, marjo mulder, barb r i t c h i e , lynda s c o b i e , c o l e t t e watson, l i n d a w e l t e r , and e l a i n e uyeno. i am a l s o i n d e b t e d t o bob simpson, t h e p r i n c i p a l o f mcnair, f o r h i s p r o g r e s s i v e i d e o l o g i e s and concern f o r the s t u d e n t s as i n d i v i d u a l s . i a p p r e c i a t e the freedom o f e x p e r i m e n t a t i o n , the freedom t h a t a l l o w s me c o n t i n u o u s l y to d i s c o v e r - e f f e c t i v e ways o f e n c o u r a g i n g noteworthy c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . the generous t e c h n i c a l a s s i s t a n c e o f mrs. e l l i s , who t y p e d the m a n u s c r i p t , and o f georgi w i l l i n g d o n , i h o l d i n g r e a t esteem. l a s t l y , i d e e p l y thank my husband, bob, f o r h i s unwaver- i n g u n d e r s t a n d i n g and cheer. introduction c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e s i n s e n i o r secondary s c h o o l s need more a t t e n t i o n and guidance than have been a v a i l a b l e t o d a t e . the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r has, by and l a r g e , been l e f t to f e n d f o r h i m s e l f i n a s u b j e c t a r e a where v e r y few m a t e r i a l s a r e a v a i l a b l e t o a s s i s t him. the m a t e r i a l s t h a t are o f s i g n i f i c a n t v a l u e are g e n e r a l l y d i f f i c u l t to l o c a t e , and then must be s o l e l y f i n a n c e d by the s c h o o l i n some manner. the department o f e d u c a t i o n p r e s c r i b e d t e x t b o o k l i s t and i n t e r i m c u r r i c u l u m guide are p a r t i c u l a r l y weak, and o f n e g l i g i b l e v a l u e . in my endeavour t o w r i t e some p r a c t i c a l and r e l e v a n t g u i d e l i n e s f o r s e n i o r s e c o n d a r y t e a c h e r s t o use when each i s d e v e l o p i n g h i s own i n d i v i d u a l c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l u m , i found t h a t i had to go back t o the v e r y ' r a i s o n d ' e t r e ' o f a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e as such. c h a p t e r s one and two deal w i t h t h i s l i n e o f r e a s o n i n g , s e t t i n g the s t a g e f o r the drama o f my work. however, b e f o r e q u i d e l i n e s can be o f f e r e d , one has t o know what g u i d e l i n e s a r e needed. in o t h e r words, what a r e the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s i n the p r o v i n c e l o o k i n g f o r i n terms o f p h i l o s o p h y , m a t e r i a l s , methodology and so on? because no i n f o r m a t i o n whatsoever on c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g courses i n b r i t i s h columbia was a v a i l a b l e from v i c t o r i a i l a u n c h e d a p r o v i n c i a l s u r v e y t o d i s c o v e r the a c t u a l s t a t e o f t h e c o u r s e . why the a l l - i n f o r m a t i v e j-forms t h a t each s c h o o l d u t i f u l l y f i l l s o u t each y e a r are not t a b u l a t e d and r e c o r d e d on computer tape can o n l y be j u s t i f i e d - o v e r l o o k e d - i g n o r e d by a government b u r e a u c r a c y . n e v e r t h e l e s s , the s u r v e y r e s u l t s a r e most i n f o r m a t i v e , e m p h a s i z i n g once a g a i n , the need f o r r e a l i s t i c g u i d e l i n e s f o r c u r r i c u l u m development. the n e x t s t e p i n w r i t i n g t h e g u i d e l i n e s was t o examine i n depth the contemporary r e s e a r c h and t h e o r i e s o f the c o n c e p t , ' c r e a t i v i t y , e x t r a c t i n g the essence o f t h e s e s t u d i e s as i t a p p l i e s t o c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l a i n s e n i o r s e c o n d a r y s c h o o l s . c h a p t e r i s an i m p o r t a n t s o u r c e o f i n f o r m a t i o n to t h o s e demanding c o u r s e s which a r e s o l i d l y r o o t e d i n r e s e a r c h . c r e a t i v i t y s t u d i e s combined w i t h c o m p o s i t i o n s t u d i e s ( o b v i o u s l y a b l o o d r e l a t i v e o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ) combined w i t h e x e m p l i f y i n g m a t e r i a l s , y i e l d s c h a p t e r , the g u i d e l i n e s f o r each i n d i v i d u a l t e a c h e r to c o n s i d e r when d e v e l o p i n g h i s own c u r r i c u l u m . t h i s f i n a l c h a p t e r i s the c u l m i n a t i o n o f y e a r s o f r e a d i n g r e s e a r c h , t h e o r y and t e s t i m o n i a l , o f c o u n t l e s s d i s c u s s i o n s w i t h c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s and s t u d e n t s , and o f t e a c h i n g the s e n i o r s e c o n d a r y c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e , m y s e l f , numerous t i m e s . the f i n a l c h a p t e r i s a s e r i e s o f g u i d e l i n e s which promise the t e a c h e r a more s u c c e s s f u l and dynamic c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s and which promises t h e s t u d e n t i n c r e a s e d c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s k i l l s and an i n s a t i a b l e d e s i r e to w r i t e . chapter creative writing: something different? " c r e a t i v i t y and ' c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g are c o n c e p t s which seem c l e a r and s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d enough u n t i l one i s f a c e d w i t h the t a s k o f d e f i n i n g them. as the eye s t r a i n s i n v a i n t o f o c u s on the v e r y e s s e n c e o f c r e a t i v i t y , i t i s o f some s m a l l c o m f o r t to r e c a l l e a r l e b i r n e y ' s f r u s t r a t i o n s w i t h t h i s d e f i n i t i o n t a s k . he s t a t e s t h a t attempts t o d e f i n e ' c r e a t i v i t y ' o r ' c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g make t h e s e c o n c e p t s b e g i n " t o s w e l l up l i k e a c l o u d i n t o something t h a t f i l l s the whole sky o f meaning, and darkens i t , and comes t o s i g n i f y e v e r y t h i n g o r n o t h i n g . " i t i s t r u l y i m p o s s i b l e to c o n s i d e r any human a c t as u n c r e a t i v e . each person i s c o n s t a n t l y i n v e n t i n g and r e c o m b i n i n g i n new p a t t e r n s , t h o u g h t s , works and a c t i o n s . f o l d i n g up the l a u n d r y , s h a v i n g i n the morning, and making l o v e are a l l c r e a t i v e a c t s . l i f e i s c r e a t i v i t y p e r s o n i f i e d . a s a m p l i n g o f a few noteworthy d e f i n i t i o n s o f c r e a t i v i t y r e i n f o r c e the opeh-endedness and d i v e r g e n c y o f the i s s u e . s c h o l a r s from a l l walks o f l i f e , w r i t e r s , s c u l p t o r s , l i n g u i s t s , p h i l o s o p h e r s , and s c i e n t i s t s , each forwards h i s own t e n e t : c r e a t i v i t y i s the e n c o u n t e r o f the i n t e n s i v e l y c o n s c i o u s human b e i n g w i t h h i s w o r l d . rollo may "the nature of creativity" the c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s i s the emergence i n a c t i o n o f a novel r e l a t i o n a l p r o d u c t , growing out o f the uniqueness o f the i n d i v i d u a l . carl b. rogers "toward a theory of creativity" c r e a t i v i t y i s the o c c u r r e n c e o f a c o m p o s i t i o n which i s both new and v a l u a b l e . henry a. murray "vicissitudes in creativity" c r e a t i v i t y i s d e f i n e d as the a b i l i t y t o make new c o m b i n a t i o n s o f s o c i a l worth. john w. haefele "creativity and innovation" the a b i l i t y to r e l a t e and t o c o n n e c t , sometimes i n odd and y e t i n s t r i k i n g f a s h i o n , l i e s a t the v e r y h e a r t o f any c r e a t i v e use o f the mind, no m a t t e r i n what f i e l d o r d i s c i p l i n e . george j . seidel "the crisis in creativity" a f i r s t r a t e soup i s more c r e a t i v e than a second r a t e p a i n t i n g . abraham maslow "creativity in self-actualizing people" many have i n s i s t e d t h a t the i m a g i n a t i v e p r o c e s s i s d i f f e r e n t i n a r t and s c i e n c e . . . on the c o n t r a r y , the c r e a t i v e a c t o f the mind i s a l i k e i n both c a s e s . dr. r. gerard "the biological basis of imagination" c r e a t i v i t y i s the a b i l i t y t o see ( o r be aware) and t o respond. eric fromm "the creative attitude" from one man, i l e a r n e d t h a t c o n s t r u c t i n g a b u s i n e s s o r g a n i z a t i o n c o u l d be a c r e a t i v e a c t i v i t y . from a young a t h l e t e , i l e a r n e d t h a t a p e r f e c t t a c k l e would be as a e s t h e t i c a p r o d u c t as a s o n n e t and c o u l d be approached i n the same c r e a t i v e s p i r i t . abraham h. maslow "creativity in self-actualizing people" we do not o b s e r v e c r e a t i v i t y because the c o n s c i o u s mind i s anchored t o r e a l i t y and s u r v i v a l . but i t i s not the whole mind, nor i s i t v e r y f l e x i b l e mind, and the w o r l d i n which i t must s u r v i v e i s t o t a l l y new e v e r y morning and e v e r y moment . . . beyond s u r v i v a l i s e v o l u t i o n . eugene a. brunelle "creative intelligence and semantics" etc., june [fabun, , pp. - ] paul t o r r a n c e , one o f the l e a d i n g r e s e a r c h e r s i n c r e a t i v i t y s t u d i e s f o r m u l a t e s an i m p r e s s i v e and sound d e f i n i t i o n : l e a r n i n g c r e a t i v e l y t a k e s p l a c e i n the p r o c e s s o f becoming s e n s i t i v e t o o r aware o f problems, d e f i c i e n - c i e s , gaps i n knowledge, m i s s i n g e l e m e n t s , d i s h a r m o n i e s , and so on; b r i n g i n g t o g e t h e r i n new r e l a t i o n s h i p s a v a i l a b l e e x i s t i n g i n f o r m a t i o n ; d e f i n i n g the d i f f i c u l t y o f i d e n t i f y i n g the m i s s i n g e l e m e n t s ; s e a r c h i n g f o r s o l u t i o n s , making g u e s s e s , o r f o r m u l a t i n g hypotheses about the problems o r d e f i c i e n c i e s ; t e s t i n g and r e t e s t i n g t h e s e hypotheses and m o d i f y i n g and r e t e s t i n g them; p e r f e c t i n g them, and f i n a l l y , communicating the r e s u l t s . [ t o r r a n c e , , p. ] t o r r a n c e s t a n d s as the a c c l a i m e d a u t h o r i t y on c r e a t i v i t y . h i s words subsume the m u l t i t u d e s o f o t h e r d e f i n i t i o n s t h a t are c o n c e r n e d w i t h c u r i o s i t y , o r i g i n a l i t y , i m a g i n a t i o n , d i s c o v e r y , i n n o v a t i o n , i n v e n t i o n , r e - c o m b i n i n g i d e a s , s e e k i n g new p a t t e r n s and new r e l a t i o n - s h i p s , and b r e a k i n g out o f the mold o f c o n f o r m i t y . in view o f t h i s d i s c u s s i o n i t i s e v i d e n t t h a t the v e r y a c t o f w r i t i n g , o f e t c h i n g symbols on paper o r s e a s h o r e , i s c r e a t i v e . and the w r i t e r o f an e f f e c t i v e p i e c e o f e x p o s i t i o n i s no l e s s c r e a t i v e than the w r i t e r o f a poem, p l a y , s h o r t s t o r y o r n o v e l . e x p l o r i n g g a r i b a l d i park i s j u s t as much a work o f the c r e a t i v e i m a g i n a t i o n as i n great e x p e c t a t i o n s . each o f t h e s e works depends on the w r i t e r to employ the s k i l l s t h a t t o r r a n c e has i s o l a t e d as b e i n g i n d i c a t i v e o f c r e a t i v e work. s t i l l - - t h e r e remains the unanswered q u e s t i o n — w h a t i s ' c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ' ? an u n d e n i a b l e d i f f e r e n c e c e r t a i n l y e x i s t s between works o f e x p o s i t i o n which d e l i n e a t e o b j e c t i v e f a c t and o t h e r works which s u b j e c t i v e l y i n t e r p r e t e x p e r i e n c e . take note o f john d e w i t t mckee who emphasises t h a t the d i s t i n c t d i f f e r e n c e between the two types o f w r i t i n g i s t h a t w h i l e s u b j e c t i v e e x p e r i - mental w r i t i n g must use f a c t as a base f o r both f a c t and f i c t i o n , e x p o s i t i o n must limit i t s e l f t o the f a c t s . i t i s t h i s s u b j e c t i v e w r i t i n g t h a t has become known as ' c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . ' ' c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ' encompasses both p r o c e s s and p r o d u c t , hence any work l a b e l l e d c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g must r e f l e c t t h i s i n e x t r i c a b l e p a i r . kaufman and powers s u c c i n c t l y l i s t t h e i r t h r e e d e f i n i t i v e c r i t e r i a : f i r s t , a w r i t e r must have some form o f e x p e r i e n c e . something e n t e r s h i s nervous system and b r a i n . second, h i s mind does something t o t h a t e x p e r i e n c e . he f e e l s i t o u t by c l a s s i f y i n g , c a t e g o r i z i n g , comparing, c o n t r a s t i n g , o r g a n i z i n g , e x t e n d i n g p o s s i b i l i t i e s , p l a y i n g , s i m p l i f y i n g , m e d i t a t i n g , and so on. t h i r d , he e x p r e s s e s something. he w r i t e s words, s e n t e n c e s and p a r a g r a p h s t h a t t e l l what he wants t o communicate about the p a s t e x p e r i e n c e . [ k a u f m a n a n d p o w e r s > e d . , p. ] c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g does not i s s u e f o r t h from one who s i m p l y gleans v i c a r i o u s e x p e r i e n c e s . such w r i t i n g c o u l d be l i k e n e d t o an u n c o n t r o l l e d and i n e f f e c t u a l 'news' r e p o r t o f one's l i f e . nor does c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ensue from s o l e l y c a p t u r i n g e x p e r i e n c e s i n 'fancy' language. c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g demands t h a t t h e mind, the c r e a t i v e i m a g i n a t i o n , p l a y i t s r o l e . the mind must work i t s magic on the i n i t i a l e x p e r i e n c e , and then provoke the w r i t e r i n t o r e c o r d i n g i t i n e f f e c t i v e language. t h i s , t h e n , p r o c e s s and p r o d u c t , i s c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . chapter a separate course: why bother? a c c o r d i n g to the p r e v i o u s c h a p t e r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s d i s t i n c t i n c h a r a c t e r from the e x p o s i t o r y w r i t i n g which predomin- a n t l y tends to c h a r a c t e r i z e the c u r r i c u l a o f the t r a d i t i o n a l e n g l i s h and c o u r s e s . but does t h i s d i s t i n c t i o n w a r r a n t y a s e p a r a t e c o u r s e ? yes, most d e f i n i t e l y ! c r e a t i v i t y can be d e v e l o p e d . i t i s n o t e n t i r e l y a 'have' o r 'have not' s i t u a t i o n . a v a r i e t y o f contemporary s t u d i e s by samson, t o r r a n c e and o t h e r s ( n o t to mention b i n e t ' s s t u d y o f !) c o n f i r m t h a t a l l mental f u n c t i o n s , e s p e c i a l l y those i n v o l v e d w i t h p r o d u c t i v e t h i n k i n g , r e q u i r e o p p o r t u n i t y f o r g u i d e d p r a c t i c e i n o r d e r to d e v e l o p a h i g h degree. [ b a r t l e t t , ; barnes and, meadow, , i ; s i n g e r , ; samson, ; t o r r a n c e , , ] hence the c r e a t i v i t y s k i l l s o f the i m a g i n a t i o n can be de- v e l o p e d must as can the s k i l l s o f l o g i c a l r e a s o n i n g . t o r r a n c e has p u b l i s h e d e x t e n s i v e games to encourage c r e a t i v e t h i n k i n g as w e l l as t e s t s to measure t h e i r e f f e c t i v e n e s s . these c r e a t i v i t y s k i l l s cannot be t a u g h t e f f e c t i v e l y a l o n g s i d e the s k i l l s o f reason and l o g i c . the s k i l l s a r e a t c r o s s p u r p o s e s . the c r e a t i v i t y s k i l l s a r e b e s t t a u g h t as a .separate package i n o r d e r to become more i n h e r e n t . hence a s e p a r a t e c o u r s e i s r e q u i r e d . w r i t e r s need time s e t a s i d e f o r w r i t i n g r e g u l a r l y . w r i t i n g i s a d i s c i p l i n e and i f postponed f o r any reason whatsoever, w i l l b e g i n t o assume an e l u s i v e n a t u r e t h a t words a r e a t a l o s s t o c a p t u r e . the w r i t e r must be r i g o r o u s about s e t t i n g up a w r i t i n g s c h e d u l e and b e i n g f a i t h f u l t o i t . as e a r l e b i r n e y so vehemently s t a t e s "never postpone the w r i t i n g , o r t h e r e w i l l come a day when you can no l o n g e r w r i t e , i know; i've been through the canadian academic m i l l s . " [ b i r n e y , , p. ] h i s a d v i c e to young w r i t e r s i s to e n r o l l i n a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e on a p a r t time b a s i s so as to have time t o w r i t e , o r t o take a nondemanding j o b such as s e a s o n a l salmon f i s h i n g o r n i n e - t o - f i v e , no homework, b a n k i n g , so as t o have time t o w r i t e . a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e o f f e r s the r i t u a l i s t i c time d i s c i p l i n e t h a t the w r i t e r so d e f i n i t e l y needs. the w r i t e r a l s o needs t o have the o p p o r t u n i t y t o meet o t h e r w r i t e r s i n o r d e r t o l e a r n from them and t o use them as sounding boards f o r h i s work. w r i t e r s a l s o need each o t h e r f o r s u p p o r t . w r i t i n g i s a l o n e l y endeavour, more o f t e n f r u s t r a t i n g and d e p r e s s i n g than r e w a r d i n g . when a w r i t e r l i k e b r i a n b r e t t , from white rock, pours f o r t h : my l i f e as an a d u l t i s s t i l l the wrong end o f t h a t northbound h o r s e , i s s t i l l l o o k i n g out through a g l a s s a t the r e a l a n i m a l s o f c o r r u p t i o n and i n - e q u i t y . . . . whatever happened t o t r u t h and the i d e a l . p o e t r y has become as r e l e v a n t as a h u r r i c a n e i n an i c e age. [ m i s j ] g j p > g ] he needs the u n d e r s t a n d i n g t h a t o n l y a community o f w r i t e r s can o f f e r . such a s i t u a t i o n i s most u n l i k e l y t o d e v e l o p i n the o r d i n a r y e n g l i s h c l a s s r o o m w i t h i t s motley a s s o r t m e n t o f s t u d e n t s the a b i l i t y to w r i t e c r e a t i v e l y i s a t a l e n t , and the s t u d e n t o f t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s by such w e l l known r e s e a r c h e r s as abraham, durr, maltzman, m i c h a e l and osborne, contend t h a t i t i s i m p o s s i b l e to encourage and r e i n f o r c e t a l e n t o f any bent e f f e c t i v e l y , g i v e n the r e g u l a r c l a s s r o o m and the e v e r y d a y c u r r i c u l u m . ' e f f e c t i v e l y * means a l l o w i n g the t a l e n t e d i n d i v i d u a l the o p p o r t u n i t y to d e v e l o p h i s t a l e n t to i t s f u l l e s t . c e r t a i n l y a v a l i a n t attempt can be made, but the t e a c h e r can o n l y s p r e a d h i m s e l f so t h i n , and the t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t can o n l y work on h i s own w i t h minimal t e a c h e r - s t u d e n t i n t e r a c t i o n f o r so l o n g u n t i l i t i s g l a r i n g l y a p p a r e n t t h a t t h i s system can never be e f f e c t i v e . to encourage t a l e n t to blossom u n i n h i b i t e d l y , t h r e e c o n d i t i o n s must be met: f i r s t , the t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s must be p l a c e d i n a homogeneous s e t t i n g ; second, the c u r r i c - ulum must be e n r i c h e d and a c c e l e r a t e d i n o r d e r to r e f l e c t the needs, i n t e r e s t s and c a p a c i t i e s o f the t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s ; and t h i r d , the environment must be c o n d u c i v e to optimum l e a r n i n g . these c o n d i t i o n s , when a p p l i e d to the t e a c h i n g o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g promise s u c c e s s . c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s t u d e n t s a r e most s u c c e s s f u l when grouped by t h e m s e l v e s . i d e a l l y , t o t a l s e g r e g a t i o n i s the most e f f e c - t i v e type o f a b i l i t y g r o u p i n g , p r e c i p i t a t i n g s p e c i a l s c h o o l s f o r t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s as i n b a l t i m o r e , b o s t o n , c h i c a g o , p h i l a d e l p h i a and new york. the new york high school o f s c i e n c e i s the most renowned o f t h e s e s p e c i a l s c h o o l s , a t the s e c o n d a r y l e v e l . the v a l u e o f t h e s e s e g r e g a t e d s c h o o l s i s t h a t the e n t i r e c u r r i c u l u m can be geared t o the l e a r n i n g l e v e l s o f t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s , s i n c e o t h e r s t u d e n t s a r e not e n r o l l e d . the t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s can engage i n a c h a l l e n g i n g , r i g o r o u s program d e s i g n e d t o t a k e advantage o f t h e i r unique a b i l i t i e s . these s e p a r a t e s c h o o l s a r e u s u a l l y d e s i g n e d w i t h the purpose o f p r e p a r i n g the s t u d e n t s f o r c o l l e g e and a subsequent c a r e e r i n h i s t a l e n t a r e a . such s c h o o l s a r e , u n f o r t u n a t e l y , o n l y e c o n o m i c a l l y f e a s i b l e i n d e n s e l y p o p u l a t e d a r e a s . when t h e r e i s a r e l a t i v e l y l a r g e number o f t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s , but n o t enough t o w a r r a n t s e g r e g a t e d s c h o o l s a 'school w i t h i n a s c h o o l ' may be e s t a b l i s h e d . while t h i s e x i s t s w i t h i n the framework o f a r e g u l a r s c h o o l , a s e p a r a t e f a c u l t y and a d m i n i s t r a t i o n are c o n c e r n e d w i t h the s p e c i a l needs o f the t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s . a y e t s m a l l e r p o p u l a t i o n o f t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s w a r r a n t s p a r t i a l g r o u p i n g . t h i s system p r o v i d e s s p e c i a l c l a s s e s f o r the t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s i n each grade l e v e l o f each t a l e n t a r e a . in t h i s system the t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t a t t e n d s s p e c i a l c l a s s e s f o r h i s t a l e n t a r e a , and then r e t u r n s to the main stream. t h i s i s the system which i s , a t p r e s e n t , most w o r k a b l e i n b r i t i s h columbia s c h o o l s , p r e c i p i t a t i n g a s e p a r a t e c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e . as i s s t a t e d , the mere e s t a b l i s h m e n t o f a s e g r e g a t e d homogeneous s e t t i n g , does not ensure the s t u d e n t ' s a t t a i n m e n t o f h i s optimum l e a r n i n g c a p a c i t y . t h i s s e t t i n g o n l y makes i t a p o s s i b i l i t y . the c u r r i c u l u m must be e n r i c h e d and a c c e l e r a t e d i n o r d e r t o r e f l e c t the needs, i n t e r e s t s and c a p a c i t i e s o f the t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s . an example o f such a c u r r i c u l u m i s the c u r r i c u l u m o f the new york high school o f s c i e n c e . because one a r e a o f knowledge i s emphasized, the o t h e r a r e a s a r e c e r t a i n l y not n e g l e c t e d , o r t r e a t e d as t a l e n t f i e l d s . in the freshman y e a r (grade ) s t u d e n t s t a k e a l l the o t h e r academic c o u r s e s . in the sophomore and j u n i o r y e a r s (grades & ) s t u d e n t s p r e p a r e themselves f o r meeting the a d m i s s i o n r e q u i r e m e n t s o f f i r s t - r a t e c o l l e g e s and t e c h n i c a l s c h o o l s . in the s e n i o r y e a r (grade ) the s t u d e n t s s p e c i a l i z e and pursue any s p e c i a l i n t e r e s t , i n t h e i r t a l e n t f i e l d , which they have a c q u i r e d d u r i n g t h e i r more g e n e r a l e d u c a t i o n y e a r s . [ m i c h a e l , ] such programs a r e a l s o i n e x i s t e n c e f o r o t h e r t a l e n t a r e a s , such as music, a r t , and p e r f o r m i n g a r t s . with t h i s emphasis on a d i f f e r e n t c u r r i c u l u m , e n r i c h m e n t and a c c e l e r a t i o n , i t must not be f o r g o t t e n t h a t t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s must a l s o master the fundamental l e a r n i n g s t h a t w i l l a l l o w them t o o p e r a t e e f f e c t i v e l y i n a b s t r a c t realms. the v a l u e o f a homogeneous s e t t i n g and a p p l i c a b l e c u r r i c u l u m i s t h a t f a r l e s s time i s r e q u i r e d f o r such mastery, and the s t u d e n t s do not have t o b e a r the deadening i n f l u e n c e s o f o v e r t e a c h i n g . they can move on to spend t h e i r time e x p l o r i n g . t h e i r t a l e n t s . such a c u r r i c u l u m p l a n i s i d e a l , i n d e e d , but most u n r e a l i s t i c f o r b r i t i s h columbia s c h o o l s a t p r e s e n t . but the f o u n d a t i o n o f t h i s i d e a l c u r r i c u l u m can be i n c l u d e d i n a s e p a r a t e c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s . the s t u d e n t s ' needs, i n t e r e s t s and c a p a c i t i e s can be met i n a unique and a p p r o p r i a t e c u r r i c u l u m . a l s o , the s t u d e n t s can spend e x t r a time, a p a r t from a l l t h e i r o t h e r s t u d i e s , e x p l o r i n g and d e v e l o p i n g t h e i r i n d i v i d u a l c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t a l e n t s . the t e a c h e r s s e l e c t e d to work w i t h t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s must themselves be t a l e n t e d i n t h e i r c o n t e n t a r e a and a l s o t a l e n t e d i n t e a c h i n g g i f t e d s t u d e n t s . as durr [ ] i n s i s t s i n g r o s s understatement: "the o p p o r t u n i t y to work w i t h t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s i s n o t a reward g i v e n s i m p l y f o r l o n g and f a i t h f u l s e r v i c e o r a compensation f o r h a v i n g t a u g h t "slow" l e a r n e r s i n a p r e v i o u s y e a r . " the t e a c h e r o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g must n o t o n l y w r i t e e x t e n s i v e l y h i m s e l f , b u t must a l s o be t a l e n t e d i n meeting the s p e c i f i c and v e r y unique l e a r n i n g needs o f s t u d e n t s w i t h a c r e a t i v e bent. in c h a p t e r , s t u d i e s i n c r e a t i v i t y : i m p l i c a t i o n s f o r c u r r i c u l u m development, i e l a b o r a t e on t h i s i m p o r t a n t c o n c e r n . i c a n n o t s t a t e s t r o n g l y enough t h a t the t e a c h e r d e t e r m i n e s the s u c c e s s o r f a i l u r e o f the s e t t i n g and c u r r i c u l u m . i f the t e a c h e r f a i l s to c r e a t e a c o n d u c i v e environment f o r optimum l e a r n i n g , the e n t i r e program w i l l l i k e w i s e f a i l . while a l l s t u d e n t s must have these a f o r e m e n t i o n e d o p p o r t u n i t i e s , i t i s p a r t i c u l a r l y i m p o r t a n t f o r t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s to p a r t i c i p a t e i n such a d i s t i n c t i v e e d u c a t i o n . i t i s the t a l e n t e d p e o p l e t h a t , i f p r o v i d e d w i t h adequate e d u c a t i o n a l exper- i e n c e s , have the p o t e n t i a l t o be the f u t u r e problem s o l v e r s , i n n o - v a t o r s and e v a l u a t o r s o f o u r c u l t u r e . c o l e r i d g e s h a r e s t h i s b e l i e f i n the w o r l d l y s i g n i f i c a n c e o f w r i t i n g : thus much i s e f f e c t e d by works o f i m a g i n a t i o n ; - - t h a t they c a r r y the mind out o f s e l f , and show the p o s s i b l e o f the good and the g r e a t i n the human c h a r a c t e r . . . . in the i m a g i n a t i o n i s the d i s t i n g u i s h i n g c h a r a c t e r i s t i c o f man as a p r o g r e s s i v e b e i n g : and i r e p e a t t h a t i t ought t o be c a r e f u l l y g u i d e d and s t r e n g t h e n e d as the i n d i s p e n s a b l e means and i n s t r u m e n t o f c o n t i n u e d a m e l i o r a t i o n and r e f i n e m e n t . [ c o l e r i d g e , "essays and l e c t u r e s , " everyman, , p. ] w i l l i a m f a u l k n e r i n h i s a c c e p t a n c e speech f o r the nobel p r i z e i n e l o q u e n t l y s t a t e s : i d e c l i n e t o a c c e p t the end o f man. i t i s easy enough t o say t h a t man i s immortal s i m p l y because he w i l l endure; t h a t when the l a s t ding-dong o f doom has changed and f a d e d from the l a s t w o r t h l e s s rock hanging t i d e l e s s i n the l a s t r e d and d y i n g e v e n i n g , t h a t even then t h e r e w i l l s t i l l be one more sound: t h a t o f h i s puny i n e x h a u s t i b l e v o i c e , s t i l l t a l k i n g . i r e f u s e t o a c c e p t t h i s . i b e l i e v e t h a t man w i l l not merely endure: he w i l l p r e v a i l . he i s i m m o r t a l , not because he a l o n e among c r e a t u r e s has a n . i n e x h a u s t i b l e v o i c e , b u t because he has a s o u l , a s p i r i t c a p a b l e o f compassion and s a c r i f i c e and endurance. the p o e t ' s , the w r i t e r ' s , duty i s t o w r i t e about t h e s e t h i n g s . i t i s h i s p r i v i l e g e t o h e l p man endure by l i f t i n g h i s h e a r t , by r e m i n d i n g him o f the courage and honor and hope and p r i d e and compassion and p i t y and s a c r i f i c e which have been the g l o r y o f h i s p a s t . the p o e t ' s v o i c e need n o t m e r e l y be the r e c o r d o f man, i t can be one o f the p r o p s , the p i l l a r s t o h e l p him endure and p r e v a i l . [judy, u n p u b l i s h e d monograph, ] w r i t i n g has i m p o r t and s i g n i f i c a n c e . the g r e a t e r the e x t e n t t h a t t h e s e c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c a p a c i t i e s do not d e v e l o p , the g r e a t e r the l o s s to the i n d i v i d u a l w r i t e r , and a l s o to o u r s o c i e t y and t o o u r c u l t u r e . c r e a t i v e t a l e n t can o n l y be encouraged and r e i n f o r c e d i f e d u c a t o r s a r e s e n s i t i v e t o the needs, i n t e r e s t s and c a p a c i t i e s o f s t u d e n t w r i t e r s . with due r e s p e c t f o r economical r e a s o n s , one cannot j u s t i f y any e d u c a t i o n a l program t h a t condemns t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s , be they c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s t u d e n t s o r woodworking s t u d e n t s , t o the everyday s i t u a t i o n . t a l e n t e d s t u d e n t s have s p e c i a l a b i l i t i e s , and r e q u i r e s p e c i a l s c h o o l s o r a t l e a s t , s p e c i a l c l a s s e s , s p e c i a l c u r r i c u l a and s p e c i a l t e a c h e r s . c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t a l e n t must be encouraged and r e i n f o r c e d , not d e s t r o y e d by the l e v e l i n g i n f l u e n c e s o f s c h o o l p r e s s u r e s which l e a d to c o n f o r m i t y and i m i t a t i o n . c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s must be g i v e n the o p p o r t u n i t y f o r s u c c e s s , and t h i s can o n l y be a c h i e v e d through a d i s t i n c t l y s e p a r a t e c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g program. chapter provincial survey: expose t h i s s u r v e y r e p r e s e n t s the f i r s t c o m p i l a t i o n o f i n f o r m a t i o n on the s t a t e o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e s i n b r i t i s h columbia. not even a l i s t o f s c h o o l s o f f e r i n g w r i t i n g i s a v a i l a b l e from v i c t o r i a , though each y e a r s c h o o l s r e l i g i o u s l y f i l l o u t a j-form which l i s t s a l l c o u r s e s the s c h o o l o f f e r s , a l o n g w i t h the s t u d e n t e n r o l l m e n t i n t h e s e c o u r s e s . t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n must be b u r i e d i n t h e r e c e s s e s o f some o b s c u r e f i l e c a b i n e t a c c e s s i b l e o n l y t o s p i d e r s and b e e t l e s . i n i t i a l l y , l e t t e r s were s e n t t o e v e r y d i s t r i c t s u p e r i n - t e n d e n t i n the p r o v i n c e , r e q u e s t i n g a l i s t o f the s c h o o l s i n t h a t p a r t i c u l a r d i s t r i c t which o f f e r w r i t i n g . s u p e r i n t e n d e n t s were a l s o r e q u e s t e d t o s u p p l y the name, o f the t e a c h e r and a l s o the p a r t i c u l a r branch o f w r i t i n g o f f e r e d : c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g , j o u r n a l i s m , o r b r o a d c a s t i n g . see appendix a. most o b l i g e d i n t h i s r e s p e c t . a f t e r a second s e t o f l e t t e r s was m a i l e d t o s t r a g g l e r s , a % r e t u r n was r e c e i v e d . the next s t a g e i n the s u r v e y was t o send a q u e s t i o n n a i r e t o e v e r y t e a c h e r i n e v e r y s c h o o l which o f f e r s w r i t i n g . see appendix b. the r e t u r n on t h e s e q u e s t i o n n a i r e s , by s c h o o l s s u r v e y e d , i s % and by t e a c h e r s s u r v e y e d i s %. ninety-two s c h o o l s and t e a c h e r s were s e n t s u r v e y forms. a n o t h e r b a t c h o f l e t t e r s w i l l be s e n t i n september t o improve the r e t u r n p e r c e n t a g e as the l i s t o f names o f s c h o o l s and t e a c h e r s i s d e s i r e d by the b.c. e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n f o r workshop p u r p o s e s . undoubtedly, most o f the q u e s t i o n n a i r e s not r e t u r n e d r e p r e s e n t o p t i o n s o f the w r i t i n g c o u r s e o t h e r than c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . hence, the r e t u r n as i s , i s v a l i d and from t h i s r e t u r n the s u r v e y r e s u l t s a r e c o m p i l e d . w r i t i n g has many o p t i o n s open t o the s c h o o l . the most common a r e c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g , j o u r n a l i s m and b r o a d c a s t i n g . a t times w r i t i n g becomes a c a t c h - a l l l a b e l f o r l o c a l l y d e v e l o p e d c o u r s e s which have not r e c e i v e d a p p r o p r i a t e a d m i n i s t r a t i v e a p p r o v a l . the c o u r s e o p t i o n s a c r o s s the p r o v i n c e a r e : c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g j o u r n a l i s m c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g - j o u r n a l ism combination b r o a d c a s t i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g - j o u r n a l i s m - b r o a d c a s t i n g combination g r a p h i c a r t s f i l m study t e l e v i s i o n p r o d u c t i o n t e c h n i c a l w r i t i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g - f u n c t i o n a l w r i t i n g combination remedial w r i t i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g - j o u r n a l ism-remedial w r i t i n g combination double programmed w i t h l i t e r a t u r e the s c h o o l s o f f e r i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i n - , w i t h the r e s p e c t i v e t e a c h e r s a r e l i s t e d i n appendix c. a t p r e s e n t s c h o o l s o f f e r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . i t s t r i k e s me t h a t the l a b e l w r i t i n g it i s i n a d e q u a t e and vague. the c o u r s e s s h o u l d be l a b e l l e d w i t h the s p e c i f i c name o f the c o u r s e o p t i o n . i t i s a l s o e v i d e n t t h a t because o f the extreme v a r i a t i o n i n c o u r s e s r e p r e s e n t e d h e r e , s t u d e n t s s h o u l d be a b l e t o r e c e i v e c r e d i t f o r more than one o f them. a t p r e s e n t t h i s i s n o t t h e c a s e , because t h e y a l l f a l l under the same c o u r s e l a b e l . the s u r v e y q u e s t i o n n a i r e i n c l u d e d q u e s t i o n s c o n c e r n - i n g methodology and c o n t e n t o f the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e . the q u e s t i o n s were asked i n such a manner as t o evoke a d i r e c t answer. room was a v a i l a b l e f o r comments. a l l t a b u l a t i o n s a r e based on numbers o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r r e t u r n s , r a t h e r than s c h o o l r e t u r n s . p e r c e n t a g e s are t a b u l a t e d by u s i n g the number o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r r e t u r n s ( r e t u r n s ) as a c o n s t a n t denominator. see t a b l e i. q u e s t i o n : yes . % "does y o u r c l a s s ' p u b l i s h ' a 'book'? some years . % no . % u s i n g s c h o o l d i t t o machines? yes . % u s i n g the s c h o o l o f f s e t p r e s s ? yes . % u s i n g o u t s i d e p u b l i s h e r s ? yes . % do you s e l l y o u r p u b l i c a t i o n ? " yes . % o t h e r p u b l i c a t i o n d e v i c e s t h a t were s u g g e s t e d : u s i n g s c h o o l board xerox machine . % u s i n g s c h o o l paper . % u s i n g l o c a l newspaper . % u s i n g s c h o o l annual . % u s i n g p r i v a t e a n t h o l o g i e s . % table i c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i n b.c. survey ( n = ) q u e s t i o n yes no . does y o u r c l a s s p u b l i s h a book? . % . % u s i n g s c h o o l d i t t o machines? . % u s i n g the s c h o o l o f f s e t p r e s s ? . % u s i n g o u t s i d e p u b l i s h e r s ? . % do you s e l l y o u r p u b l i c a t i o n ? . % . does y o u r c o u r s e r e v o l v e about a s e r i e s o f assignments? . % or, do the s t u d e n t s w r i t e what t h e y wish? . % combination o f the two? . % . do you s e t d e a d l i n e s ? . % . % . do you i n s i s t s t u d e n t s mimic the form o f o u t s t a n d i n g w r i t e r s ? . % . % . do you i n s i s t s t u d e n t s t r y w r i t i n g i n v a r y i n g genres? . % . % . do you i n s i s t on r e v i s i o n ? . % . % . do you mark i n d i v i d u a l p i e c e s o f w r i t i n g ? . % . % i f so -- e v e r y p i e c e ? . % . do you i n s i s t on s i l e n c e i n y o u r c l a s s ? . % . % t a b l e i ( c o n t i n u e d ) q u e s t i o n yes no . do s t u d e n t s d i s c u s s o t h e r s t u d e n t s ' works? i f so -- o n l y as a p r e s c r i b e d p a r t o f the c o u r s e ? or o n l y c a s u a l l y and s p o n t a n e o u s l y among i n d i v i d u a l s ? combination o f the two. . % . % . % . % . do you p r e s c r i b e r e a d i n g ? . % . % . do you have r e a d i n g s ? i f so — by the s t u d e n t s ? — by community w r i t e r s ? . % . % . % . % . do you i n s i s t t h a t s t u d e n t s keep a d a i l y j o u r n a l ? . % . % i f so — do you i n s p e c t i t ? . % . % — do you mark i t ? . % . % . do you i n v o l v e the s t u d e n t s i n o t h e r modes o f e x p r e s s i o n ? . % . % . do you use any t e x t s ? . % . % . does y o u r s c h o o l o f f e r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ? . % . % . do you f e e l more d i r e c t i o n from the department o f e d u c a t i o n i s needed f o r t h i s c o u r s e ? . % . % i t i s e x c i t i n g t o d i s c o v e r t h a t most c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s e s a r e i n t e g r a t i n g p u b l i c a t i o n i n t o t h e i r c u r r i c u l a . the l a r g e numbers o f c l a s s e s u s i n g the o f f s e t p r e s s t e l l o f the h e a l t h y i n t e r d e p a r t m e n t a l l i a i s o n between the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g departments and the g r a p h i c departments. and the numbers o f c l a s s e s s e l l i n g t h e i r p u b l i c a t i o n s bespeaks o f r e a l l i f e p u b l i c a t i o n . how e n l i g h t e n i n g i t would be f o r s t u d e n t s and t e a c h e r s a l i k e t o s e t up a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g p u b l i c a t i o n exchange, through the b.c. e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n . q u e s t i o n : "does y o u r c o u r s e r e v o l v e about a s e r i e s o f a s s i g n m e n t s ? yes . % or, do the s t u d e n t s w r i t e what they w i s h ? " yes . % combination . % the c l a s s e s t h a t employ a c o m b i n a t i o n o f assignments and f r e e c h o i c e v a r y from s t r e s s i n g e i t h e r end o f the continuum t o a / s p l i t . the numbers o f c l a s s e s t h a t r e v o l v e s t r i c t l y around assignments i s very d i s t u r b i n g . c u r r i c u l a o f t h i s o r d e r go a g a i n s t a l l c r e a t i v i t y r e s e a r c h and t h e o r y t h a t have been c o m p i l e d o v e r the l a s t t h i r t y y e a r s . such c o u r s e s must be h e a v i l y s t r e s s i n g the s t r u c t u r e o f w r i t i n g , as t h i s i s the a r e a o f w r i t i n g most e a s i l y packaged i n t o l e a r n i n g u n i t s . q u e s t i o n : "do you s e t d e a d l i n e s ? yes f l e x i b l e ones no those r e t u r n s t h a t f a v o u r the use o f d e a d l i n e s v a r y from a few e x c l a m a t o r y y e s l ' s t o a more w i d e s p r e a d i n s i s t e n c e on d e a d l i n e s f o r major assignments o n l y . there e x i s t s an overwhelming c o n t e n t i o n t h a t c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s t u d e n t s need a w o r k a b l e framework w i t h i n which t o d i s c i p l i n e t h e m s e l v e s . . % . % . % q u e s t i o n : "do you i n s i s t s t u d e n t s mimic the form o f o u t s t a n d i n g w r i t e r s ? " yes . % no . % those t e a c h e r s t h a t r e p l y i n the a f f i r m a t i v e range from making i t p e r f e c t l y c l e a r t h a t the m i m i c k i n g i s a l o n e assignment t o s t a t i n g t h a t the m i m i c k i n g i s a s t y l e u n i t . the l a r g e number o f n e g a t i v e r e s p o n s e s i n d i c a t e t h a t most t e a c h e r s a r e more c o n c e r n e d w i t h o t h e r a s p e c t s o f w r i t i n g . the n e g a t i v e r e s p o n s e s may a l s o r e f l e c t the l o a d e d c o n n o t a t i o n s o f the word 'mimic.', perhaps ' i m i t a t e ' would have been a b e t t e r word c h o i c e . q u e s t i o n : "do you i n s i s t s t u d e n t s t r y w r i t i n g i n v a r y i n g g e n r e s ? " yes % no . % a c o u p l e o f the t e a c h e r s i n d i c a t e they do encourage e x p e r i - m e n t a t i o n w i t h v a r y i n g g e n r e s , though they do not i n s i s t upon i t . t e a c h e r s , on the whole, seem t o be bent on b r o a d e n i n g the s t u d e n t w r i t e r s ' h o r i z o n s . q u e s t i o n : "do you i n s i s t on r e v i s i o n ? " yes . % no . % of the t e a c h e r s t h a t do i n s i s t on r e v i s i o n , some s t a t e t h a t they o n l y do so o c c a s i o n a l l y . one t e a c h e r i n d i c a t e s t h a t r e v i s i o n i s e f f e c t e d i n groups. a n o t h e r s t a t e s t h a t the r e v i s i o n i s i n s i s t e d upon w h i l e the s t u d e n t i s w o r k i n g on the work; not a f t e r i t i s completed. other t e a c h e r s a r e most adamant i n s t a t i n g t h a t the s t u d e n t has the f i n a l word; i t i s h i s c r e a t i o n . however, the overwhelming m a j o r i t y o f t e a c h e r s b e l i e v e t h a t the a c t o f r e v i s i o n i s n e c e s s a r y . q u e s t i o n : "do you mark i n d i v i d u a l p i e c e s o f w r i t i n g ? yes . % no . % i f so - - - e v e r y p i e c e ? yes . % i f not — e x p l a i n . " t e a c h e r comments: - no mark ( l e t t e r grade) i s a s s i g n e d u n t i l june. the r e s t o f the c o u r s e i s e v a l u a t e d by comment/discussion w i t h the s t u d e n t . - s t u d e n t s choose what they wish marked. - the marking i s , i n i t i a l l y , s u b j e c t i v e and done i n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h d i s c u s s i o n o f the work. there i s a mark g i v e n f o r each r e p o r t c a r d . - j o u r n a l s a r e c o n s i d e r e d o n l y from the view o f q u a n t i t y . - most work i s marked. volume sometimes p r e v e n t s marking a l l work. - there i s n o t enough time o r i n c l i n a t i o n t o mark e v e r y t h i n g . - some works are d i s c u s s e d and/or marked by the s t u d e n t s . - o c c a s i o n a l l y s t u d e n t s mark each others', o r t h e i r own a t a l a t e r d a t e . some t h i n g s may never be marked. - sometimes i mark; sometimes i m e r e l y read and comment. - i mark i n the sense o f i n s t r u c t i v e comments. - i e d i t work. s t u d e n t s then may p i c k the b e s t from each term's p r o d u c t i o n t o submit f o r a grade. - i mark the e n t i r e p o r t f o l i o o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g w i t h one l e t t e r grade (one p o r t f o l i o per s t u d e n t ) . i t i s amazing the number o f t e a c h e r s who not o n l y f e e l o b l i g e d , but a c t u a l l y manage, to mark e v e r y p i e c e o f w r i t i n g o f e v e r y s t u d e n t . research s t a t e s t h a t t h e s e t e a c h e r s a r e o v e r - working themselves f o r no r e t u r n . c r e a t i v i t y s t u d i e s r e v e a l t h a t , i d e a l l y , judgement s h o u l d be suspended u n t i l the l a s t p o s s i b l e minute o f the c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s . there i s a danger t h a t s t u d e n t w r i t e r s become i n h i b i t e d by e v a l u a t i o n mania. and, i n r e a l i t y , p u b l i c a t i o n response i s the o n l y e v a l u a t i o n t h a t i s s i g n i f i c a n t . q u e s t i o n : "do you i n s i s t on s i l e n c e i n y o u r c l a s s ? " yes . % no . % t e a c h e r comments: - sometimes a c o n v e r s a t i o n can h e l p . - while w r i t i n g i s b e i n g a t t e m p t e d , s i l e n c e i s a must. - s i l e n c e i s mandatory o n l y when someone 'has the f l o o r , ' e i t h e r m y s e l f o r a n o t h e r s t u d e n t . ( i t ' s c a l l e d manners). - we have s i l e n c e e x c e p t on i n f o r m a t i o n and d i s c u s s i o n day o r reading day. - reasonable q u i e t i s e x p e c t e d . - s i l e n c e u s u a l l y p r e v a i l s when s t u d e n t s a r e w o r k i n g t h e i r h a r d e s t . - s i l e n c e i s a p e a c e f u l s i t u a t i o n . - i i n s i s t on s i l e n c e but i never get i t . - i use music t o s t i m u l a t e w r i t i n g . the v a s t m a j o r i t y o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s r e c o g n i z e the w r i t e r ' s needs t o communicate w i t h h i s f e l l o w w r i t e r . t h i s i s where a g r e a t p a r t o f the c o u r s e ' s v a l u e stems from. q u e s t i o n : "do s t u d e n t s d i s c u s s o t h e r s t u d e n t s ' works? yes . % i f so -- ( o n l y ) as a p r e s c r i b e d p a r t o f the c o u r s e ? yes . % or, o n l y c a s u a l l y and s p o n t a n e o u s l y among i n d i v i d u a l s ? " yes . % both p r e s c r i b e d and s p o n t a n e o u s l y . yes . % t e a c h e r comments: - spontaneous d i s c u s s i o n s d e v e l o p n a t u r a l l y i n t o a p e r i o d s e t a s i d e f o r c r i t i c i s m — a t l e a s t one p e r e i g h t day c y c l e . - one must be a t t e n t i v e t o not e m b a r r a s s i n g a s t u d e n t . - r e g u l a r seminars o c c u r i n which work i s r e a d t o the group by the a u t h o r , o r exchanges a r e made among s e v e r a l a u t h o r s who comment and e d i t the work they r e a d . - we have worksheets o f s t u d e n t s ' work. e n e r g e t i c s t u d e n t w r i t e r s soon d i s c o v e r the v a l u e o f d i s c u s - s i n g t h e i r works w i t h t h e i r f e l l o w w r i t e r s . most t e a c h e r s have a l s o r e a l i z e d the v a l u e o f such p e e r feedback and have a t t e m p t e d t o work t h i s l e a r n i n g d e v i c e i n t o the c u r r i c u l u m . q u e s t i o n : "do you p r e s c r i b e r e a d i n g ? yes . % i f so — s p e c i f y " no . % teacher comments: - we r e a d works f o r models; joyce cary's s p r i n g song i s a model. - i p r e s c r i b e a r e a d i n g l i s t f o r the y e a r which c o v e r s t h e d i f f e r e n t genre s t y l e s . - i ask them t o r e a d s e l e c t i o n s from w e l l known w r i t e r s t o 'get the f e e l ' o f mood, f l o w , imagery, e t c . - we have r e a d i n g p e r i o d s , and t h e s t u d e n t s g e n e r a l l y s e l e c t t h e i r own m a t e r i a l t o read. - i o n l y p r e s c r i b e r e a d i n g i n the 'major poet s t u d y t h a t i s r e q u i r e d t o pass the c o u r s e . - my god. i p r e s c r i b e masses o f contemporary s t u f f : l i t t l e magazines, u n i v e r s i t y l i t e r a r y p u b l i c a t i o n s l i k e p r i s m . - a r t i s t and p e r s o n a l p u b l i s h e d by ginn and co. i s p r e s c r i b e d . - c u r r e n t p a p e r s , magazines, reviews are p r e s c r i b e d . - i u s u a l l y s e t a r t i c l e s o u t o f the s t u d e n t e d i t i o n o f the a t l a n t i c ; - - a l s o p o e t r y and s h o r t s t o r i e s from the same p u b l i c a t i o n . - i r e a d to them what i f i n d s t i m u l a t i n g . - i f e e l t h a t i n s p i r a t i o n i s g a i n e d through c o n t e m p l a t i o n o f the w r i t i n g s o f o t h e r s i n a l l a s p e c t s o f t h e w r i t t e n word. - sometimes i recommend a s p e c i f i c book t o an i n d i v i d u a l i f i t h i n k he w i l l e n j o y i t , o r i f the a u t h o r ' s s t y l e echoes t h a t o f the s t u d e n t . - whenever s u i t a b l e m a t e r i a l i s found i t i s put on d i t t o and passed o u t . - to h e l p the s t u d e n t ' p l a c e ' h i s own work, i do p r e s c r i b e r e a d i n g . - i p r e s c r i b e a book r e p o r t on one o f the c u r r i c u l u m books ( s t u d e n t ' s c h o i c e ) f o r each s t u d e n t . reports a r e g i v e n o r a l l y . there tends t o be a wide d i v e r s i t y i n p r e s c r i b e d r e a d i n g t e n d e n c i e s . s i x t e e n p e r c e n t o f the t e a c h e r s s i m p l y do not a s s i g n any r e a d i n g whatsoever, w h i l e a p p r o x i m a t e l y the same number go so f a r as t o p r e s c r i b e y e a r l y r e a d i n g l i s t s which i n c l u d e a l l the g e n r e s . about the same number o f t e a c h e r s a g a i n , p r e s c r i b e c l a s s r e a d i n g f o r model s t u d y , w h i l e the r e m a i n i n g q u a r t e r t e n d t o be more i n d i v i d u a l i s t i c and spontaneous when s u g g e s t i n g r e a d i n g f o r t h e i r s t u d e n t s . q u e s t i o n : "do you have r e a d i n g s ? i f so — by the s t u d e n t s ? -- by community w r i t e r s ? s p e c i f y . " * the r e a d i n g s r e f e r r e d to here a r e o r a l r e a d i n g s . yes . % no . % yes . % yes . % t e a c h e r comments: - we do not have many r e s i d e n t w r i t e r s i n t r a i l , so such r e a d i n g s a r e r a r e . - s t u d e n t s have the c h o i c e t o have t h e i r m a t e r i a l r e a d a l o u d . - u s u a l l y i b e g i n by f r e q u e n t l y r e a d i n g the works the s t u d e n t s submit. they, i n t u r n , u s u a l l y r e a d t h e i r own works. i do not f o r c e the more i n t r o v e r t e d s t u d e n t s t o r e a d t h e i r sub- m i s s i o n s , a l t h o u g h most do not o b j e c t t o my r e a d i n g o f t h e i r works. - we have v i s i t s from community r e s o u r c e p e o p l e ; amateur p o e t s , e d i t o r s , i n t e r e s t i n g c i t i z e n s ; i t r y f o r a t l e a s t f o u r g u e s t s p e a k e r s p e r semester. - few p r a c t i c i n g w r i t e r s a r e a v a i l a b l e i n c h i l l i w a c k . no h o n o r a r - ium i s a v a i l a b l e e i t h e r . ( w r i t e r s i n the boondocks a r e s t a r v i n g o r mercenary, o r b o t h ) . - we s h a r e p e r i o d s once a week f o r s t u d e n t r e a d i n g s . i t i s v e r y e x c i t i n g . - the canadian league o f poets p e o p l e are good f o r r e a d i n g s , e.g., leona gom, f r e d e r i c k c a n d e l a r i a , p a t r i c k lane. - i would l i k e t o i n v i t e w r i t e r s but we have no budget. - fotheringham and paul s t . p i e r r e have been our g u e s t s . - l o u i s dudek was i n the c i t y and came t o the s c h o o l i n f o r m a l l y t o t a l k t o s t u d e n t s and s t a f f . - we have s t u d e n t r e a d i n g s i n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h group c r i t i c i s m . - we do not have g u e s t w r i t e r s due t o o u r remoteness i n vanderhoof. - mike doyle and p.k. page have been our g u e s t s . - former s t u d e n t s have r e t u r n e d as guest p o e t s . - rosenthal and hodgins came t o t a l k t o the c l a s s . - the w r i t i n g c l a s s p a i d f o r the w r i t e r t o come. - kevin roberts (from m a l e s p i n a ) and gary geddes have v i s i t e d us. - we have had s e v e r a l canadian w r i t e r s b r o u g h t i n by the l o c a l a r t s a l l i a n c e . many o f t h o s e t e a c h e r s r e p l y i n g n e g a t i v e l y s t a t e t h a t they a r e l o o k i n g f o r w a r d t o t r y i n g t o get community w r i t e r s i n t o the s c h o o l s . remoteness and f u n d i n g a r e c o n s i d e r a b l e o b s t a c l e s , but can be overcome w i t h energy and p e r s i s t e n t c o n t a c t s . i t i s e x c i t i n g t o see t h a t s e v e r a l s c h o o l s use the r e s i d e n t w r i t e r s w i t h i n the s c h o o l t o g i v e r e a d i n g s t o o t h e r s t u d e n t s . in a d d i t i o n t o a l l the b e n e f i t s o f s t u d e n t r e a d i n g s , t h i s i s an e x c e l l e n t method o f a d v e r t i s i n g f o r the f o l l o w i n g y e a r ! q u e s t i o n : yes . % "do you i n s i s t t h a t s t u d e n t s keep a d a i l y o p t i o n a l . % j o u r n a l ? no.. . % i f ".so — do you i n s p e c t i t ? yes . % no . % — do you mark i t ? yes . % no . % t e a c h e r comments: - the j o u r n a l i s overworked by the e n g l i s h department i use an o b s e r v a t i o n j o u r n a l : f l o r a one week, emotions n e x t , a r c h i t e c t u r e a n o t h e r , e t c . - i i n s p e c t the j o u r n a l f o r q u a n t i t y , not q u a l i t y . - i comment on the s t u d e n t s ' j o u r n a l s . - i o n l y i n s p e c t the j o u r n a l i f the s t u d e n t a l l o w s i t . - i b e l i e v e a j o u r n a l i s p r i v a t e and w h i l e a s t u d e n t may l e t me r e a d i t , i t must be h i s / h e r d e c i s i o n . - i i n s i s t t h e y keep a j o u r n a l t w i c e weekly. the t e a c h e r s a r e more o r l e s s e v e n l y s p l i t on the p r a c t i c e o f h a v i n g the s t u d e n t s keep a j o u r n a l . those t h a t do use the j o u r n a l t e c h n i q u e are almost unanimous i n s t a t i n g t h a t t h e y do i n s p e c t i t , but do n o t mark i t . t h i s p r a c t i c e can o n l y r e f l e c t the con- t e n t i o n t h a t the j o u r n a l i s the s t u d e n t ' s p e r s o n a l , p l a c e and s h o u l d be r e s p e c t e d as such. q u e s t i o n : "do you involve''the s t u d e n t s i n o t h e r modes o f e x p r e s s i o n ? yes . % i f so -- s p e c i f y . " no . % t e a c h e r comments: - taped r e a d i n g s , r a d i o s c r i p t s - i l l u s t r a t i o n o f some work - add music t o w r i t i n g s f o r e f f e c t - v i d e o o f t e l e v i s i o n s c r i p t s , commercials - f i l m s , s l i d e s - c a r t o o n s - o r a l communication i n c l a s s d i s c u s s i o n , s h o r t speeches and r e a d i n g s - some r o l e p l a y i n g f o r purposes o f a s t i m u l u s - r e s p o n s e s i t u a t i o n i n t h e c l a s s r o o m - m u l t i - m e d i a p r e s e n t a t i o n s - c o l l a g e s , montages - p o s t e r poems - p o s t u r e , g e s t u r e , dance - c l o t h i n g , a r c h i t e c t u r e - performance o f s k i t s and p l a y s t h a t s t u d e n t s have w r i t t e n - performance o f song l y r i c s t h a t s t u d e n t s have w r i t t e n - puppet t h e a t r e - s t u d e n t s a r e i n s p i r e d by music, p a i n t i n g s , s l i d e s , f i l m s - s t u d e n t s a r e i n s p i r e d by any l o c a l a r t e x h i b i t i o n s a v a i l a b l e , and by g o i n g t o p l a y s - p a r t i c i p a t i o n i s e x p e c t e d i n debates i n the form o f a combined e f f o r t . t e a c h e r s o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g a c r o s s the p r o v i n c e a r e c e r - t a i n l y c r e a t i v e i n s u g g e s t i n g a l t e r n a t e modes o f e x p r e s s i o n . do t h o s e t e a c h e r s who a b s t a i n from such d i v e r s i t y do so because t h e y haven't thought o f i t , o r because they a r e w r i t i n g p u r i s t s ? in t h i s m u l t i - m e d i a age the s t u d e n t s a r e e a g e r t o augment t h e i r w r i t i n g w i t h t h e s e f a m i l i a r modes o f e x p r e s s i o n . q u e s t i o n : "do you use any t e x t s ? yes i f so — s p e c i f y . " no . % t e a c h e r comments: - i use a l l the books i can f i n d on c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g f o r my own e d i f i c a t i o n . - i make my own handouts. - t e x t s are used o n l y as r e s o u r c e m a t e r i a l . for example, the s e c t i o n on " p o i n t o f view" i n s t o r y and s t r u c t u r e has proven e x t r e m e l y u s e f u l . - i use the government i s s u e t e x t s f o r r e f e r e n c e o n l y . - i use the government i s s u e t e x t s because they a r e r e a d i l y a v a i l a b l e . books suggested: p r e s c r i b e d books: how w r i t e r s w r i t e w r i t e r s a t work the elements o f s t y l e s t o p , look and w r i t e w r i t e r s guide and index t o e n g l i s h c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g other: canadian a u t h o r and bookman the p r a c t i c e o f p o e t r y so you want t o be a w r i t e r dreams and c h a l l e n g e s w r i t i n g i n c r e d i b l y s h o r t s t o r i e s , poems, p l a y s c r i t i c a l reading w r i t e now l e a r n i n g t o w r i t e a r t i s t and p e r s o n a l d i s c o u r s e w r i t e r s workshop w r i t i n g f o r t e l e v i s i o n modern r h e t o r i c sentence c r a f t l i t e r a r y c a v a l c a d e p r e s s time the young w r i t e r a t work while a v e r y few t e a c h e r s use the p r e s c r i b e d t e x t s , the v a s t m a j o r i t y have abandoned them, s e e k i n g more r e l e v a n t and i n s p i r i n g m a t e r i a l s . the g r e a t v a r i e t y i n books used by t h o s e who do a b i d e by t e x t s i n d i c a t e s t h a t t h e r e e x i s t s no c o r e book o r books t h a t a r e w h o l l y adequate. c o n s e q u e n t l y , many t e a c h e r s have taken to u s i n g a g r e a t number o f books as r e s o u r c e m a t e r i a l s f o r the needs o f i n - d i v i d u a l s t u d e n t s . the government p r e s c r i b e d t e x t s , by t h e i r non- use, are o b v i o u s l y i n a d e q u a t e . i t i s d i s a p p o i n t i n g t o see the l a c k o f book t i t l e s t h a t would r e a l i s t i c a l l y h e l p a w r i t e r improve h i s a r t , and i n f o r m him o f the t e c h n i q u e i n g e t t i n g h i s work pub- l i s h e d . i t i s a l s o d i s a p p o i n t i n g t o note the l a c k o f t i t l e s o f t e a c h e r r e s o u r c e m a t e r i a l s . a need i s n o t b e i n g met. q u e s t i o n : "does y o u r s c h o o l o f f e r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ? yes . % i f so -- what i s i t l a b e l l e d on the s t u d e n t s ' t r a n s c r i p t s ? no . % t e a c h e r comments: - our t r a n s c r i p t l a b e l i s w r i t i n g and d i r e c t i n g . - we u n o f f i c i a l l y l a b e l i t l i t e r a t u r e . - we have a p p r o v a l f o r w r i t i n g . - i'd l o v e an advanced c o u r s e , but t h e r e j u s t a r e n ' t enough s t u d e n t s t o o f f e r i t . - can you do t h i s ? i have s e v e r a l who want i t , but we are t o l d i t cannot be a c r e d i t c o u r s e . most s c h o o l s , f o r whatever r e a s o n , do n o t o f f e r the f o l l o w - up to c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . a c o u p l e o f s c h o o l s have gone the r o u t e o f g e t t i n g l o c a l s c h o o l b o a r d a p p r o v a l f o r the c o u r s e , w h i l e a c o u p l e o f o t h e r s c h o o l s u n o f f i c i a l l y use s u b s t i t u t e l a b e l s . though t h e r e are seldom enough s t u d e n t s a t the l e v e l w a n t i n g the c o u r s e t o w a r r a n t a whole c l a s s , t h e s e advanced s t u d e n t s can e a s i l y be accommodated i n the r e g u l a r w r i t i n g c l a s s . the department o f e d u c a t i o n s h o u l d be encouraged to r e c o g n i z e c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . q u e s t i o n : "do you f e e l more d i r e c t i o n from the depart- ment o f e d u c a t i o n i s needed f o r t h i s c o u r s e ? " yes . % no . % t e a c h e r comments: - god f o r b i d ! - we need good r e s o u r c e m a t e r i a l s . - i have more i d e a s now than i can p o s s i b l y use and am c o n s t a n t l y t h i n k i n g o f new ones. i do n o t want a p r e s c r i p t i o n . the c h a l l e n g e l i e s i n b e i n g i n n o v a t i v e as a t e a c h e r w r i t e r / g u i d e . - c r e a t i v i t y i s d i f f i c u l t to b u r e a u c r a t i z e . - more d i r e c t i o n i s needed i n terms o f l e a r n i n g outcomes, and s u g g e s t i o n s f o r p r a c t i c a l a c t i v i t i e s . - more s u g g e s t i o n s are needed, but freedom i s e s s e n t i a l . - an e x c i t i n g p r a c t i c a l t e x t would be n i c e . - t h i s c o u r s e needs t o be r e c o g n i z e d and c a t e r e d t o . - leave the c o u r s e to the c l a s s r o o m t e a c h e r and the e n g l i s h department. a t e a c h e r who wishes to t e a c h i t w i l l have i d e a s o f h i s own. - a y e a r l y l i s t o f new t e x t s and a c o m p i l a t i o n o f s m a l l p r e s s pub- l i c a t i o n s i n b r i t i s h columbia w i t h c u r r e n t a d d r e s s e s , produced by the department o r a n o t h e r s o u r c e would be v e r y h e l p f u l . - leave i t a l o n e , e x c e p t t o s p o n s o r workshops. - i would l i k e l o c a l money to buy t e x t s . - the department i s too d i r e c t i v e a l r e a d y . though some t e a c h e r s wish more d i r e c t i o n from the department o f e d u c a t i o n , they g e n e r a l l y o n l y d e s i r e more a p p l i c a b l e r e s o u r c e m a t e r i a l s . the g r e a t m a j o r i t y o f t e a c h e r s q u i t e e m p h a t i c a l l y echo t h i s need, but are a l s o emphatic about r e t a i n i n g t h e i r freedom i n d e v e l o p i n g the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l u m as they see f i t . the word " d i r e c t i o n " i n the q u e s t i o n seems t o s e t o f f n e g a t i v e v i b r a t i o n s i n most t e a c h e r s , who i n t e r p r e t the word as h a v i n g o v e r t o n e s o f p r e s c r i p t i o n and mandate r a t h e r than sugges- t i o n and g u i d a n c e . added i n c e n t i v e many t e a c h e r s have n o t o n l y completed the q u e s t i o n n a i r e i n d e t a i l but have a l s o added p r o f u s e comments. i t i s i m p r e s s i v e to see the c o n c e r n t h a t t h e s e t e a c h e r s have f o r d e v e l o p i n g the c o u r s e c u r r i c u l u m . a p p r e c i a t e d i s t h e i r time and energy taken t o s h a r e t h e i r c o n c e r n s . noted a r e some o f t h e s e comments i n appendix d because they more f u l l y r e f l e c t the s t a t e o f the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e i n b r i t i s h columbia than do the i s o l a t e d s u r v e y q u e s t i o n s . survey c o n c l u s i o n s there i s a g r e a t d i v e r s i t y o f c u r r i c u l a o f f e r e d t h r o u g h - o u t the p r o v i n c e . some c l a s s e s t e n d to be v e r y s t r u c t u r e d , w i t h y e a r l o n g r e a d i n g l i s t s , p r e s c r i b e d c l a s s a s s i g n m e n t s , and emphasis on grammar, mechanics and form. o t h e r c l a s s e s t e n d to be more l o o s e l y o r g a n i z e d , where s t u d e n t s f o l l o w t h e i r own b e n t , and to c o i n an o l d c l i c h e , 'do t h e i r own t h i n g , ' and the t e a c h e r i s con- c e r n e d o n l y t h a t some p r o c e s s i s o c c u r r i n g i n the s t u d e n t ' s head even i f i t n e v e r g e t s to paper. t h i s i s n o t even to mention the c o u r s e s t h a t are t a u g h t under the t i t l e o f w r i t i n g , but t h a t b e a r no resemblance to i t whatsoever. w r i t i n g cannot be d e s c r i b e d , p r o v i n c i a l l y , i n terms o f e i t h e r an e x p e c t e d p r o d u c t , o r even an e x p e c t e d p r o c e s s . there are no departmental expec- t a t i o n s t o speak o f , and the d i v e r s i t y o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l a r e f l e c t s t h i s s t a t e . some t e a c h e r s are c o n f i d e n t t h e i r approach i s e f f e c t i v e , to the p o i n t o f b e i n g exemplary, w h i l e o t h e r s would welcome any s u g g e s t i o n whatsoever. however, a l l agree t h a t r e l e v a n t r e s o u r c e s a r e d r a s t i c a l l y needed. the s t u d e n t s a r e w r i t e r s and need w r i t e r s ' r e s o u r c e s . many t e a c h e r s are o v e r f l o w i n g w i t h i d e a s , and see a g r e a t demand f o r s p e c i a l b.c. e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n workshops where c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s can exchange i d e a s and l e a r n from w r i t e r s and p u b l i s h e r s t h e m s e l v e s . t h i s s u r v e y cannot h e l p but b r i n g t o the f o r e the c o n c e r n t h a t the m a j o r i t y o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s are not q u a l i f i e d to t e a c h the c o u r s e . what does such q u a l i f i c a t i o n c o n s i s t o f ? courses from a u n i v e r s i t y department o f c r e a t i v e - w r i t i n g ? courses i n methodology from a u n i v e r s i t y f a c u l t y o f e d u c a t i o n ? simply b e i n g a w r i t e r ? s u g g e s t i o n : a t l e a s t the l a t t e r two s h o u l d be the n e c e s s a r y p r e - r e q u i s i t e s f o r t e a c h i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . the e d u c a t i o n f a c u l t i e s . c e r t a i n l y s h o u l d augment t h e i r c o u r s e o f f e r - i n g s to i n c l u d e a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g methods c o u r s e . c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s d i s t i n c t from e n g l i s h and i s s u f f i c i e n t l y d i s t i n c t and needs to be approached w i t h a unique t r a i n i n g and a unique mind s e t . chapter curriculum development guidelines: victoria, it's time the w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l u m guide, c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g o p t i o n , though p h i l o s o p h i c a l l y 'on t r a c k , ' i s s k e t c h y and l a c k i n g i n the c o n c r e t e guidance t h a t c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s need when d e v e l o p - i n g t h e i r c u r r i c u l a . the foreward t o the guide s t a t e s : a t t e n t i o n i s a l s o drawn to the f a c t t h a t h i s guide i s b e i n g p r i n t e d i n i n t e r i m form t o a l l o w f o r m o d i f i c a - t i o n s i n the l i g h t o f e x p e r i e n c e w i t h the c o u r s e . [p. u t h i s t h r e e page ' i n t e r i m form' was p u b l i s h e d i n . i t i s now, due time f o r some u p d a t i n g and augmenting to get underway. the b a s i c p h i l o s o p h y e v i d e n t i n the i n t e r i m guide i s sound. the a u t h o r s r e c o g n i z e the importance o f the s t u d e n t " u s i n g h i s own l i f e and e x p e r i e n c e as a most v a l i d s o u r c e o f w r i t i n g m a t e r i a l f o r him."[p. ] the guide a l s o s t a t e s t h a t s t u d e n t s s h o u l d "be g i v e n e v e r y o p p o r t u n i t y t o p r a c t i c e and w r i t e i n the genre o f t h e i r c h o i c e " [p. ] and the o p p o r t u n i t y t o p u b l i s h t h e i r works i n some form. the i n s t r u c t i o n a l methodology recommended " s h o u l d be as f r e e and u n s t r u c t u r e d as p o s s i b l e " [p. ] w i t h s p e c i a l c o n s i d e r a t i o n g i v e n to the number o f s t u d e n t s a c c e p t e d i n t o the c o u r s e . t e a c h e r s c o n c u r w i t h t h e s e g u i d e l i n e s , but a r e ^ q u i c k p o i n t out the b r e v i t y o f the e x p l a n a t i o n s and s u g g e s t i o n s . even the p r e s c r i b e d t e x t b o o k s are o f l i t t l e v a l u e to the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r w i t h r e s p e c t to c u r r i c u l u m development. the w r i t e r s a t work s e r i e s and e a r l e b i r n e y ' s the c r e a t i v e w r i t e r c o n s t i t u t e i n t e r e s t i n g and i n f o r m a t i v e r e a d i n g f o r the t e a c h e r as w e l l as f o r the s t u d e n t , but a r e o n l y m i n i m a l l y b e n e f i c i a l i n terms o f a c t u a l p r a c t i c a l s u g g e s t i o n s f o r d e v e l o p i n g a h i g h s c h o o l c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e . the r e m a i n i n g p r e s c r i b e d t e x t b o o k s f o r s t u d e n t use gen- e r a l l y miss the mark by some d i s t a n c e , and c o n s e q u e n t l y are seldom used. the w r i t e r ' s eye and s t o p , look & w r i t e a r e both aimed a t s t u d e n t o b s e r v a t i o n p r a c t i c e but are poor s u b s t i t u t e s f o r r e a l - l i f e o b s e r v a t i o n . the o t h e r t e x t s (the technique o f c l e a r w r i t i n g and w r i t e r s guide and index t o e n g l i s h ) which p u r p o r t to t e a c h the r u l e s o f model w r i t i n g , do j u s t t h a t . c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s not a c l a s s i n s t a n d a r d c o m p o s i t i o n 'do's' and 'don'ts.' though a t times the t e a c h e r may need a c c e s s t o a summary o f t h e s e r u l e s , i t i s h i g h l y u n l i k e l y t h a t a s t u d e n t would s e a r c h out any i n f o r m a - t i o n i n such a book. the elements o f s t y l e , i n t e n d e d f o r use as a s t u d e n t handbook, would be v a l u a b l e i f s t u d e n t s would r e f e r t o i t . t h i s book i s noteworthy f o r i t s b r e v i t y and c o n c i s e n e s s . u n d e r s t a n d i n g f i c t i o n i s a t y p i c a l l i t e r a r y a n a l y s i s o f the s h o r t s t o r y , which i s o f l i t t l e v a l u e to a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s t u d e n t . w r i t i n g and a n a l y s i s a r e two v e r y d i f f e r e n t s k i l l s . w r i t i n g i s a s y n t h e s i z i n g a c t i v i t y . i t i s no wonder t h a t t h e s e books seldom l e a v e the c l a s s r o o m s h e l v e s . the p r e s c r i b e d t e x t b o o k l i s t s h o u l d i n c l u d e p u b l i c a t i o n s t h a t a r e v a l u a b l e t o the t e a c h e r i n d e v e l o p i n g h i s c o u r s e c u r r i c u - lum, and p u b l i c a t i o n s t h a t are v a l u a b l e t o the s t u d e n t i n h e l p i n g him f u r t h e r h i s w r i t i n g c r a f t . the t e a c h e r needs a book much l i k e the l a s t c h a p t e r o f t h i s t h e s i s , a c t u a l p r a c t i c a l s u g g e s t i o n s r e l e v a n t t o the t a s k a t hand. the s t u d e n t s ' needs a r e d i v e r s e . n e i t h e r c o m p o s i t i o n t e x t s , nor the 'you, t o o , can be a w r i t e r i n easy s t e p s ' p u b l i c a t i o n s a r e what s t u d e n t s need. numerous s u b s c r i p t i o n s t o contemporary magazines a r e c r u c i a l . p u b l i c a t i o n o f i n t e r v i e w s w i t h w r i t e r s who a r e p r e s e n t l y p u b l i s h i n g and w i t h whom the s t u d e n t s can i d e n t i f y i s mandatory [ w r i t e r s a t work i s a good model, but n o t contemporary enough.] m a n u s c r i p t p r e p a r a t i o n and p u b l i c a t i o n i n f o r m a t i o n i s a l s o i m p o r t a n t . each s t u d e n t s h o u l d a l s o be i s s u e d a d i c t i o n a r y and a t h e s a u r u s . s p e c i f i c t i t l e s o f i n v a l u a b l e books a r e r e c o r d e d i n c h a p t e r . in view o f t h i s e x a m i n a t i o n o f the i n t e r i m c u r r i c u l u m guide and the p r e s c r i b e d t e x t b o o k s , t h e r e i s much work t o be done i n v i c t o r i a . the s u c c e s s f u l c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s e s i n b r i t i s h columbia a r e p r e d o m i n a n t l y a p r o d u c t o f t e a c h e r s t h a t who, w h i l e f r a n t i c a l l y g r o p i n g about i n the dark, stumbled upon some r e l e v a n t m a t e r i a l s and have combined t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n w i t h t h e i r own i n t u i t i o n and w r i t e r ' s sense . in a l l c o r n e r s o f b r i t i s h columbia t h i s g r o p i n g i s b e i n g r e p e a t e d . the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e needs some s p e c i f i c a t t e n t i o n v e r y soon. the p r e s c r i b e d t e x t b o o k l i s t needs to be t o t a l l y revamped. c u r r i c u l u m g u i d e l i n e s are needed, though not i n the format o f p r e s c r i b e d c u r r i c u l u m , but i n the f o r m a t o f p r a c t i c a l s u g g e s t i o n s and r e s e a r c h - b a s e d p h i l o s o p h y , t h a t the i n d i v i d u a l t e a c h e r can c o n s i d e r when d e v e l o p i n g h i s p a r t i c u l a r c u r r i c u l u m . chapter studies in creativity: implications for curriculum development contemporary s t u d i e s i n c r e a t i v i t y i n c r e a s e the u n d e r s t a n d - i n g o f the c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s , the p e r s o n a l i t y o f the c r e a t i v e p e r s o n , and the n a t u r e o f the mental a b i l i t i e s i n v o l v e d i n c r e a t i v e b e h a v i o u r . c o n s e q u e n t l y i t becomes e v i d e n t t h a t c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t s have needs which a r e g r e a t l y i n f l u e n c e d by d e f i n i t e f a c t o r s which i n h i b i t c r e a t i v e b e h a v i o u r , and c o n v e r s e l y , methodology which f a c i l i t a t e s c r e a t i v e b e h a v i o u r . c r e a t i v i t y s t u d i e s n o t o n l y have i m p l i c a t i o n s f o r t a l e n t e d c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t s ; t h e y have i m p l i c a t i o n s f o r 'average' s t u d e n t s who are t o y i n g w i t h t h e i r c r e a t i v i t y . however, the more c r e a t i v e a s t u d e n t i s , the more c o m p e l l i n g h i s needs and t h e more s i g n i f i c a n t l y the s t u d i e s a p p l y . a l t h o u g h s t u d i e s o f c r e a t i v i t y p u r p o r t to p r e c i p i t a t e u n i v e r s a l t r u t h s , i t i s mandatory t o keep i n mind t h a t t h e r e are g r e a t i n d i v i d u a l d i f f e r e n c e s i n p e r s o n a l i t y , c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s , and needs. c o n s e q u e n t l y , a l l g e n e r a l i z e d d e s c r i p t i o n s must not be r e - graded as p r o f i l e s o r e x c l u s i v e ways o f l e a r n i n g f o r a l l c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t s - - n o r f o r any i n d i v i d u a l s t u d e n t . however, a few g e n e r a l bases upon which i n d i v i d u a l i z a t i o n can be worked, a r e most h e l p f u l . d e v e l o p i n g c r e a t i v i t y r e q u i r e s l e a r n i n g a c t i v i t i e s which r e i n f o r c e the many t y p e s o f c r e a t i v e a b i l i t i e s . in a d d i t i o n to the a b i l i t i e s o f r e c o g n i t i o n , memory, and l o g i c a l r e a s o n i n g (--the a b i l i t i e s f r e q u e n t l y a s s e s s e d by t r a d i t i o n a l i n t e l l i g e n c e t e s t s and measures o f s c h o l a s t i c a p t i t u d e ) , d e v e l o p i n g c r e a t i v i t y r e q u i r e s a t t e n t i o n t o such a b i l i t i e s as c u r i o s i t y , e v a l u a t i o n ( s e n s i t i v i t y to problems, i n c o n s i s t e n c i e s and and m i s s i n g e l e m e n t s ) , d i v e r g e n t p r o - d u c t i o n ( e . g . , f l u e n c y , f l e x i b i l i t y , o r i g i n a l i t y , and e l a b o r a t i o n ) , and r e d e f i n i t i o n . each o f t h e s e a b i l i t i e s i s viewed by g u i l d f o r d , t o r r a n c e and s i g n i f i c a n t o t h e r s as a s e p a r a t e t h i n k i n g s k i l l . (with these, s k i l l s i n mind i t i s e v i d e n t why i t i s o f t e n s a i d t h a t a c r e a t i v e p e r s o n i s u s u a l l y ' i n t e l l i g e n t but t h a t an i n t e l l i g e n t p e r s o n i s not n e c e s s a r i l y ' c r e a t i v e ' ) . a prime goal i s to have t e a c h e r s i n v o l v e d i n c r e a t i v i t y (be i t music, w r i t i n g o r d r e s s - d e s i g n ) knowing t h e s e s k i l l s , so as t o have much more d e f i n i t e o b j e c t i v e s a t which t o have t h e i r s t u d e n t s aim. g u i l d f o r d , i n p a r t i c u l a r , contends t h a t an awareness o f t h e s e c r e a t i v e a b i l i t i e s g i v e s the t e a c h e r f a r b e t t e r guidance than the t r a d i t i o n a l , s t i m u l u s - r e s p o n s e models t h a t have dominated e d u c a t i o n a l p s y c h o l o g y . stages o f c r e a t i v i t y the p r o c e s s o f both a r t i s t i c and s c i e n t i f i c c r e a t i v i t y can be p l o t t e d i n terms o f s e q u e n t i a l s t a g e s . not a l l o f the s t a g e s a r e n e c e s s a r i l y p a r t o f e v e r y c r e a t i v e a c t ; c e r t a i n l y some c r e a t i v e a c t s a r e p a r t i c u l a r l y f o r t u i t o u s i n terms o f chance o r l u c k . i t a l s o s h o u l d be emphasized t h a t the mechanism u n d e r l y i n g the sequence i s o n l y p a r t i a l l y u n d e r s t o o d . there a r e smorgasbords o f f u r t h e r s t u d i e s i n t h i s a r e a . the r e s e r v a t i o n must be r e s t a t e d c o n c e r n i n g o v e r g e n e r a l i z i n g mental s t r a t e g i e s . as h e r b e r t fox s t a t e s i n "a c r i t i q u e on c r e a t i v i t y i n the s c i e n c e s " : i t would seem q u i t e a p p a r e n t t h a t t h e r e i s no one c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s , and t h e r e may w e l l be as many c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s e s as t h e r e a r e c r e a t i v e p e o p l e . [fabun, , p. ] n e v e r t h e l e s s , knowledge o f the g e n e r a l p r o c e s s o f c r e a t i v i t y undoubtedly l e a d s the t e a c h e r to d e v e l o p i n g a f a r more e f f e c t i v e c u r r i c u l u m i n c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . the f i r s t s t a g e i n the c r e a t i v i t y p r o c e s s i s desire. the person must, f o r some r e a s o n , want to c r e a t e . he may want t o e x p r e s s a p e r s o n a l e x p e r i e n c e , s o l v e a problem t h a t i s b o t h e r i n g him, o r make more money through the i n t r o d u c t i o n o f a new i n v e n t i o n , p r o c e s s o r t e c h n i q u e . r i c h a r d w i l b u r p h i l o s o p h i z e s about t h i s s t a g e o f d e s i r e : the need t o w r i t e a poem a r i s e s , i t h i n k , from the f e e l i n g t h a t the w o r l d i s g e t t i n g o u t o f hand, t h a t i t ' s s h a k i n g i t s e l f f r e e from the names and v a l u e s and p a t t e r n s t h a t the poet has p r e v i o u s l y imposed on i t . t h i s may happen f i v e minutes a f t e r you've w r i t t e n a poem. in o t h e r words, the mother o f i n v e n t i o n f o r the poet i s an i n n e r n e c e s s i t y t o r e a s s e r t h i s i m a g i n a t i v e c o n t r o l o v e r the w o r l d . a poem b e g i n s w i t h a f e e l i n g o f inadequacy. [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] whatever the r e a s o n , c r e a t i v i t y s t a r t s w i t h m o t i v a t i o n . the second s t a g e i s preparation. both r e l e v a n t and i r r e l e v a n t i n f o r m a t i o n a r e g a t h e r e d . whether through the d e v i c e s o f r e s e a r c h , e x p e r i m e n t a t i o n o r exposure to e x p e r i e n c e , t h i s s t a g e i s a n a l y t i c a l , c o n c e r n e d w i t h making the s t r a n g e f a m i l i a r . the j o u r n a l , d i s c u s s e d l a t e r i n d e t a i l , i s an i n v a l u a b l e d e v i c e f o r i n f o r m a t i o n g a t h e r i n g . the t h i r d s t a g e i s manipulation. once a l l the m a t e r i a l has been amassed, i n h i s mind, on s c r a p s o f paper, o r on a workbench, the c r e a t i v e person becomes i n v o l v e d i n t r y i n g t o f i n d a new p a t t e r n by m a n i p u l a t i n g the i n f o r m a t i o n i n many d i f f e r e n t ways. the goal i s to make the f a m i l i a r s t r a n g e . the f o u r t h s t a g e o f incubation i n v o l v e s an outward abandonment o f the c r e a t i v e t a s k . the w r i t e r drops h i s novel and goes on to something e l s e . yet, f o r reasons not f u l l y u n d e r s t o o d , the s u b c o n s c i o u s c o n t i n u e s t o dwell on the t a s k , w r e s t l i n g w i t h the problems i n v o l v e d w i t h i t s e x p r e s s i o n . r i c h a r d w i l b u r d e s c r i b e s h i s e x p e r i e n c e o f the i n c u b a t i o n s t a g e o f c r e a t i v i t y : the i n c u b a t i o n p e r i o d o f a poem may be s h o r t o r l o n g , but f o r me i t i n v o l v e s f i r s t a r e t r e a t from l a n g u a g e , the c u l t i v a t i o n o f a s t a t e o f a p p a r e n t s t u p i d i t y . during t h i s time the mind r e t r e a t s as f a r as p o s s i b l e i n t o a p r e v e r b a l c o n d i t i o n , and moves around among i t s fundamental images: b r i g h t n e s s , d a r k n e s s , f a l l i n g , r i s i n g , t h a t k i n d o f t h i n g . i suppose the c o n d i t i o n i s one which y o u r mind d e l i b e r - a t e l y r e f u s e s to r e l a t e the p o t e n t i a l elements o f a poem i n any f i n a l o r f u l l y c o n s c i o u s way. they shake around a t the bottom o f the mind as b i t s o f c o l o r i n a k a l e i d o s c o p e , and you c o n s c i o u s l y a v o i d any d e c i s i o n as t o what p a t t e r n s they might t a k e . a l l the w h i l e , f o c o u r s e , the l e s s c o n s c i o u s p o r t i o n o f the mind i s making f l u i d experiments i n p a t t e r n , t r y i n g on t h i s and t h a t , though you don't know i t . [kaufman and powers, ed., , pp. - ] the i m p l i c a t i o n s f o r the t e a c h e r o f c r e a t i v e b e h a v i o u r a r e p a r a - mount. the s t a g e o f i n c u b a t i o n i s a p e r i o d o f a p p a r e n t s t u p i d i t y and a i m l e s s n e s s , and i t may c o n t i n u e f o r days o r weeks. s t u d e n t s a r e o f t e n j u s t as b e w i l d e r e d and f r u s t r a t e d by the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s o f t h i s s t a g e , as i s the n a i v e t e a c h e r . s t u d e n t s need to u n d e r s t a n d t h a t 'the muse' has not f o r s a k e n them, but has o n l y gone underground t e m p o r a r i l y . t e a c h e r u r g i n g s t o 'produce'and rooms f u l l o f s i g n s r e a d i n g ' t h i n k ' a r e , a t b e s t , a n n o y i n g and u s e l e s s a t t h i s p o i n t . u n d e r s t a n d i n g and time ( t o l e t the mind be f r e e ) i s o f the e s s e n c e . the f i f t h s t a g e o f intimation i s o f t e n i n c l u d e d as the wind-up o f the i n c u b a t i o n s t a g e , because o f i t s f l e e t i n g and l u s t r e l e s s n a t u r e . t h i s s t a g e s i m p l y l a b e l s the p r e m o n i t i o n t h a t the c r e a t i v e a c t i s about t o o c c u r . to quote from w i l b u r ' s d e s c r i p t i o n a g a i n : a t t h i s s t a g e i n the coming o f a poem i haven't any i d e a as t o what the p a r a p h r a s a b l e c o n t e n t o f the poem i s going t o be when i t c o m e s - - i t s p r o s e meaning. i don't know what the poem i s g o i n g t o 'say'. a t most i ' l l have some i d e a as to the mood o f the poem, i t s p r o b a b l e s i z e , i t s p r o b a b l e scope, the e x t e n t t o which i t ' s going t o r a m i f y . the poem d o e s n ' t b e g i n w i t h a meaning, i t works towards m e a n i n g - - i t f i n d s out what i t ' s about. only when you w r i t e the poem do you f i n d o u t what i t has t o say. a f t e r a l l , t h i s i s n ' t d i s r e p u t a b l e . a poem i s , as one o f the p r e v i o u s s p e a k e r s s a i d , more than i t means, more than the sum o f i t s p a r t s . i t i s the t o t a l p a t t e r n o f the poem, the p r e s e n t a t i o n o f a s t a t e o f p s y c h i c harmony, the whole s o u l i n a c t i o n , to which we respond. [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] the s i x t h s t a g e o f illumination i s the d r a m a t i c and much r o m a n t i c i z e d s t a g e i n the c r e a t i o n p r o c e s s , and a l l too o f t e n the o n l y s t a g e t h a t w i s h f u l c r e a t o r s - t o - b e r e c o g n i z e . ' c r e a t i v i t y ' and the s t a g e o f ' i l l u m i n a t i o n ' a r e f a r too o f t e n m i s t a k e n l y taken f o r b e i n g synonymous by t h o s e l a c k i n g i n fundamental knowledge. o f t e n the e x p e r i e n c e o f i l l u m i n a t i o n i s d e s c r i b e d as a ' f l a s h , ' 'an i n s i g h t o r 'a sudden awakening.' c o n s i d e r the f o l l o w i n g attempts t o d e s c r i b e t h i s s t a g e : dr. elliott dunlap smith, s a i d , " i f the knowledge o f the i n v e n t o r and the c l u e s which w i l l b r i n g the i n v e n t i o n i n t o b e i n g have brought n e a r l y i n t o p o s i t i o n to p r o v i d e the i n v e n t i v e i n s i g h t , h i s i n n e r t e n s i o n w i l l be s t r o n g . . . . as he nears h i s goal he w i l l become i n c r e a s i n g l y e x c i t e d . . . . i t i s no wonder t h a t t h e sudden r e l e a s e o f such i n n e r t e n s i o n i s o f t e n d e s c r i b e d as a ' f l a s h ' . " sometimes i s t a r t w i t h a s e t s u b j e c t ; o r to s o l v e , i n a b l o c k o f s t o n e . . . a s c u l p t u r a l problem i've g i v e n my- s e l f , and then c o n s c i o u s l y attempt t o b u i l d an o r d e r l y r e l a t i o n s h i p o f forms, which s h a l l e x p r e s s my i d e a . but i f the work i s t o be more than j u s t s c u l p t u r a l e x e r c i s e , u n e x p l a i n a b l e jumps i n the p r o c e s s o f thought o c c u r ; and the i m a g i n a t i o n p l a y s i t s p a r t . henry moore "notes on sculpture" friedrich wilhelm nietzsche s a i d , "the n o t i o n o f r e l e v a t i o n d e s c r i b e s the c o n d i t i o n s q u i t e s i m p l y ; by which i mean t h a t something p r o f o u n d l y c o n v u l s i v e and d i s t u r b i n g s u d d e n l y becomes v i s i b l e and a u d i b l e . . . . one h e a r s — o n e does not seek, one takes--one does not ask who g i v e s : a t h o u g h t f l a s h e s o u t l i k e l i g h t n i n g . " (in "ecce homo") i t i s t o me the most e x c i t i n g moment—when you have a b l a n k canvas and a b i g brush f u l l o f wet c o l o r , and you plunge. i t i s j u s t l i k e d i v i n g i n t o a p o n d — t h e n you s t a r t t o swim. . . . once the i n s t i n c t and i n t u i t i o n get i n t o the brush t i p , the p i c t u r e happens, i f i t i s to be a p i c t u r e a t a l l . d.h. lawrence "making pictures" i have no i d e a whence t h i s t i d e comes, o r where i t goes, but when i t b e g i n s to r i s e i n my h e a r t , i know t h a t a s t o r y i s i n the o f f i n g . dorothy canfield "how fling and five started and grew from .americans all" [fabun, , p. ] i t i s no s u r p r i s e t h a t the s t a g e i s o f t e n c a s u a l l y r e f e r r e d t o as the 'a-ha, 'eureka' o r ' l i g h t - b u l b ' e x p e r i e n c e . the r a d i a n c e on the s t u d e n t ' s f a c e and h i s t o t a l e n t h r a l i m e n t w i t h h i s c r e a t i v e t a s k q u i c k l y r e v e a l a mind e n j o y i n g i l l u m i n a t i o n . in the f i n a l s t a g e o f verification the c r e a t i v e t a s k i s a c c o m p l i s h e d , examined and v a l u e d . in the b e g i n n i n g o f t h i s s t a g e : . . . you have a sense t h a t the whole p a t t e r n o f i t e x i s t s p o t e n t i a l l y but s t i l l somewhat f l u i d l y i n the u n c o n s c i o u s . you don't know where y o u ' r e g o i n g , but you do know t h a t y o u ' r e g o i n g somewhere. in o t h e r words, you have an o v e r r i d i n g p r e m o n i t i o n t h a t the poem i s going t o take shape. the w r i t i n g o f the poem i s a m a t t e r o f making moment-by-moment c h o i c e s among p o s s i b i l i t i e s proposed by the u n c o n s c i o u s . as b a u d e l a i r e s a i d , i n the p r o c e s s o f w r i t i n g a poem the p o e t must be h y p n o t i s t and s u b j e c t a t once. t h i s i s a very t i c k l i s h b u s i n e s s . you have t o g i v e the u n c o n s c i o u s f r e e p l a y , and a t the same time shape the p r o p o s a l s o f the u n c o n s c i o u s i n t o something t h a t makes d a y l i g h t sense. you have t o be s e r i o u s and l o g i c a l w i t h p a r t o f y o u r b e i n g but p l a y f u l and spontaneous w i t h a n o t h e r p a r t o f y o u r b e i n g . [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] the c r e a t i v e work once a c c o m p l i s h e d , i s c r i t i c a l l y re-examined and re-examined. a poem may be r e w r i t t e n and r e v i s e d s e v e r a l t i m e s , u n t i l i t s v a l u e i s e v i d e n t , e i t h e r by b e i n g p e r s o n a l l y s a t i s f y i n g t o the a u t h o r , o r by b e i n g demanded by the p u b l i c i n p r i n t . a r e c i p e o r even a mathematical f o r m u l a must be examined s e v e r a l times and u l t i m a t e l y t e s t e d . in the f i n a l s t a g e s o f v e r i f i c a t i o n the s t u d e n t needs much t e a c h e r s u p p o r t . r e v i s i n g and r e w o r k i n g f o r p e r f e c t i o n can be b o r i n g , r e q u i r i n g much s e l f - d i s c i p l i n e . and a f t e r the e n t i r e c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s i s complete, the s t u d e n t must be ready t o r e a l i z e t h a t h i s c r e a t i o n may not be v a l u e d by o t h e r s . the t e a c h e r ' s r o l e i s b l a t a n t l y o b v i o u s , y e t a l m o s t i m p o s s i b l e . t e a c h e r compassion and u n d e r s t a n d i n g i s undoubtedly the u l t i m a t e key. both t e a c h e r and s t u d e n t need t o be f a m i l i a r w i t h t h e s e s t a g e s i n the p r o c e s s o f c r e a t i o n so as t o be more e f f e c t i v e i n t h e i r e x p e c t a t i o n s o f the c r e a t o r . both a l s o need to remember t h a t the s t a g e s o f the c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s a r e t r u l y a s i m p l i f i c a t i o n and hence, t o a c e r t a i n e x t e n t a f a l s i f i c a t i o n . the s t a g e s a r e n o t d i s t i n c t , but b l e n d t o g e t h e r . the s e q u e n t i a l s t a g e s a r e , i n t r u t h , one c o n c u r r e n t p r o c e s s . the c r e a t i v e p e r s o n a l i t y c r e a t i v e p e o p l e s t a n d a p a r t from the crowd i n terms o f p e r s o n a l i t y , not o n l y i n d i v i d u a l l y , but a l s o as a r e l a t i v e l y homogeneous group. c r e a t i v e p e o p l e a r e n o t i c e a b l y unique. maslow, s t o d d a r d and fromm have made such keen o b s e r v a t i o n s : i t seemed to me t h a t much b o i l e d down to the r e l a t i v e absence o f f e a r ( i n c r e a t i v e p e r s o n s ) . . . . they seemed t o be l e s s a f r a i d o f what o t h e r p e o p l e would say o r demand o r laugh a t . . . . perhaps more i m p o r t a n t , however, was t h e i r l a c k o f f e a r o f t h e i r own i n s i d e s , o f t h e i r own i m p u l s e s , emotions, t h o u g h t s . abraham maslow "creativity in self-actualizing people" to be c r e a t i v e , i n s h o r t i s t o be u n p r e d i c t a b l e ; i t i s t o be d e c i d e d l y s u s p e c t i n the w o r l d o f a f f a i r s . the c r e a t i v e a s p e c t o f l i f e i s r i g h t l y viewed as a c t i o n . never s i m p l y c o n t e m p l a t i v e , the c r e a t i v e a c t a t i t s h i g h e s t b r i n g s about n o t a b l e d i f f e r e n c e s i n t h i n g s , t h o u g h t s , works o f a r t and s o c i a l s t r u c t u r e s . what i s t o be changed f i g h t s back; perhaps w i t h s u c c e s s . george d. stoddard "creativity in education" what a r e the c o n d i t i o n s o f the c r e a t i v e a t t i t u d e , o f s e e i n g and r e s p o n d i n g , o f b e i n g aware and b e i n g s e n s i t i v e to what one i s aware o f ? f i r s t o f a l l , i t r e q u i r e s the c a p a c i t y to be p u z z l e d . c h i l d r e n s t i l l have the c a p a c i t y to be p u z z l e d . . . . but once they a r e through the p r o c e s s o f e d u c a t i o n , most p e o p l e l o s e the c a p a c i t y o f wondering, o f b e i n g s u r p r i s e d . they f e e l they ought t o know e v e r y t h i n g , and hence t h a t i t i s a s i g n o f i g n o r a n c e t o be s u r p r i s e d o r p u z z l e d by a n y t h i n g . eric fromm [fabun, , p. ] the c h i l d i n the c r e a t i v e person i s i n d e e d e v i d e n t ! frank b a r r o n p r e s e n t s some i n t e r e s t i n g o b s e r v a t i o n s from h i s s t u d y o f f i f t y - s i x c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s . his c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s a r e p r o f e s s i o n a l w r i t e r s ( o f f i n e a r t s l i t e r a t u r e and a l s o more commercial works) and s t u d e n t s i n a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e . q u o t i n g from h i s paper: . . . the f i v e items most c h a r a c t e r i s t i c o f the group o f c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s were t h e s e : appears t o have a h i g h degree o f i n t e l l e c t u a l c a p a c i t y . g e n u i n e l y v a l u e s i n t e l l e c t u a l and c o g n i t i v e m a t t e r s . v a l u e s own independence and autonomy. is v e r b a l l y f l u e n t ; can e x p r e s s i d e a s w e l l . enjoys a e s t h e t i c i m p r e s s i o n s ; i s a e s t h e t i c a l l y r e a c t i v e . the next e i g h t more c h a r a c t e r i s t i c items were: is p r o d u c t i v e ; g e t s t h i n g s done. is c o n c e r n e d w i t h p h i l o s o p h i c a l .problems; e.g., r e l i g i o n , the meaning o f l i f e , e t c . has a h i g h a s p i r a t i o n l e v e l f o r s e l f . has a wide range o f i n t e r e s t s . t h i n k s and a s s o c i a t e s to i d e a s i n unusual ways; has u n c o n v e n t i o n a l thought p r o c e s s e s . is an i n t e r e s t i n g , a r r e s t i n g p e r s o n . appears s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d , c a n d i d i n d e a l i n g s w i t h o t h e r s . behaves i n an e t h i c a l l y c o n s i s t e n t manner; i s c o n s i s t e n t w i t h own p e r s o n a l s t a n d a r d s . [kaufman and powers, ed., , pp. - ] barron goes on t o s t a t e t h a t f o r t y p e r c e n t (an u n u s u a l l y h i g h p e r - centage) o f c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s c l a i m t o have had " e x p e r i e n c e s e i t h e r o f m y s t i c communion w i t h the u n i v e r s e o r o f f e e l i n g s o f u t t e r d e s o l a t i o n and h o r r o r . " the n a t u r e o f man i n r e l a t i o n t o the u n i v e r s e seems t o be o f paramount c o n c e r n t o them. he con- c l u d e s t h a t c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s a r e d e d i c a t e d t o the q u e s t f o r u l t i m a t e meaning. they u n d e r s t a n d themselves t o be e l e c t e d t o t a c k l e t h i s t a s k , and have a c c e p t e d the o f f i c e . c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s a r e c o m p e l l e d t o l i s t e n to the v o i c e w i t h i n and speak o u t the the t r u t h . t h i s t r u t h need not be everyone o r even anyone e l s e ' s t r u t h ; s t i l l the c r e a t i v e person f e e l s d r i v e n t o s h a r e i t . less c r e a t i v e , more c o n v e n t i o n a l p e o p l e a l s o have non- c o n f o r m i n g , even i r r a t i o n a l i d e a s , but condemn them and h i d e them b e f o r e they o r anyone e l s e can examine them. a t times such c o n v e n t i o n a l p e o p l e l o s e t h e i r i n h i b i t i o n s and r e l e a s e c o n t r o l , o f t e n even s h a r i n g t h e i r 'weird' i d e a s , when dreaming, day- dreaming, d r i n k i n g , t a k i n g drugs and going i n s a n e . the t e a c h e r can c e r t a i n l y a i d c r e a t i v i t y development by b e i n g s u p p o r t i v e o f s t u d e n t s ' d i v e r g e n t i d e a s , e n c o u r a g i n g them t o suspend judgement, p r i m a r i l y by d o i n g so h i m s e l f . b a r r o n ' s s t u d y s i n g l e s o u t the s t u d e n t w r i t e r s , d i s - c o v e r i n g t h a t e s s e n t i a l d i f f e r e n c e s e x i s t between the s t u d e n t s and the p r o f e s s i o n a l s : the s t u d e n t w r i t e r s , as p e r c e i v e d by the assessment s t a f f , d i f f e r e d from t h e s e mature c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s i n s e v e r a l i m p o r t a n t r e s p e c t s . for them, the second most c h a r a c t e r i s t i c item was: 'concerned w i t h own adequacy as a p e r s o n , e i t h e r a t c o n s c i o u s o r u n c o n s c i o u s l e v e l s . ' a l s o , h i g h l y c h a r a c t e r i s t i c were t h e s e i t e m s : 'is b a s i c a l l y a n x i o u s ' ; 'has f l u c t u a t i n g moods'; 'engages i n p e r s o n a l f a n t a s y and daydreams, f i c t i o n a l s p e c u l a t i o n s . ' [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] these r e s u l t s a r e somewhat e x p l a i n e d by the young ages, and the-accompany- i n g e g o - i d e n t i t y c o n c e r n s , o f the s t u d e n t s . but b a r r o n goes so f a r as t o s u g g e s t t h a t " f o r them w r i t i n g was much more a form o f s e l f - 'therapy, o r a t l e a s t an attempt a t working out t h e i r problems t h r o u g h d i s p l a c e m e n t and s u b s t i t u t i o n i n a s o c i a l l y a c c e p t a b l e form o f f a n t a s y . " such s e l f - t h e r a p y i s not to be s q u e l c h e d u n m e r c i f u l l y a t a l l , y e t s t u d e n t s o f t h i s bent s h o u l d be made t o r e a l i z e t h e i r s i t u a t i o n s . t h i s i s d e f i n i t e l y not to presume the t e a c h e r t o p l a y p s y c h o l o g i s t . the t e m p t a t i o n i s g r e a t to push two c h a i r s t o g e t h e r and ask the s t u d e n t t o r e c l i n e and r e c a l l h i s c h i l d h o o d , but t e a c h e r beware. have the s t u d e n t l i m i t h i s s e l f - t h e r a p y t o h i s j o u r n a l , and g e t on w i t h the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t h a t can become noted i n p r o f e s s i o n a l c i r c l e s . c r e a t i v i t y needs the c r e a t i v e person has d e f i n i t e needs upon which any c u r r i c u l u m d e a l i n g w i t h c r e a t i v i t y s h o u l d be based. c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l a must take note. one o f the most compel i n g needs o f c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t s i s the need f o r c u r i o s i t y . the c r e a t i v e person i s p e r s i s t e n t about a s k i n g q u e s t i o n s about t h i n g s t h a t p u z z l e him. he i s a t t r a c t e d t o the p u z z l i n g , the unknown, the b i z a r r e , and conse- q u e n t l y h i s q u e s t i o n s can be e m b a r r a s s i n g . t o r r a n c e ' s r e s e a r c h s t u d y c o n c e r n e d w i t h h a v i n g t e a c h e r s and p a r e n t s r a t e the d e s i r a b i l i t y and u n d e s i r a b i l i t y o f c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s o f c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t s , c o n s i s t e n t l y showed the p a r t i c u l a r c h a r a c t e r i s t i c "always a s k i n g q u e s t i o n s " as r a n k i n g u n i f o r m l y low. i t i s i n t e r e s t i n g t o note t h a t when e i n s t e i n was asked t o drop out o f s c h o o l , h i s t e a c h e r had kept a p o r t f o l i o on him which i n c l u d e d a c o m p i l a t i o n o f h i s e m b a r r a s s i n g q u e s t i o n s : "why c a n ' t we f e e l the e a r t h move?" what i s space?" "what keeps the w o r l d from f l y i n g i n t o p i e c e s as i t s p i n s around?" the t e a c h e r c o u l d n ' t answer h i s q u e s t i o n s and l a b e l l e d e i n s t e i n a bad i n f l u e n c e on the r e s t o f the s t u d e n t s , a c c u s i n g him o f c a u s i n g them t o l o s e r e s p e c t f o r the t e a c h e r . an i s o l a t e d i n c i d e n t ? h a r d l y ! there i s no reason why a t e a c h e r s h o u l d f e e l t h r e a t e n e d by q u e s t i o n s t h a t he cannot answer. the knowledge t h a t the c r e a t i v e c h i l d has t h e s e demanding needs, i s b e n e f i c i a l i n d e a l i n g r a t i o n a l l y w i t h them. the development o f a s t u d e n t ' s c r e a t i v e p o t e n t i a l does depend, t o a l a r g e e x t e n t , upon the way h i s needs f o r c u r i o s i t y a r e t r e a t e d . a n o t h e r o v e r t need, i s o l a t e d by t o r r a n c e i n , i s the need t o meet c h a l l e n g e and t o attempt d i f f i c u l t t a s k s . there i s a s t r o n g tendency towards s t r e s s - s e e k i n g i n t e s t i n g the l i m i t s o f one's a b i l i t i e s . t o r r a n c e ' s s t u d y o f c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s a l s o ranks " p r e f e r e n c e f o r complex t a s k s " and " a t t e m p t i n g d i f f i c u l t t a s k s as r a t h e r u n d e s i r a b l e . o f t e n t i m e s t h e d i f f i c u l t t a s k s t h a t c r e a t i v e p e o p l e embrace may become downright dangerous. w i l b u r and o r v i l l e w r i g h t c o n t i n u a l l y t e s t e d t h e i r l i m i t s i n a box k i t e which more than once wrapped i t s e l f and them around a t r e e . pen and paper do not i m m e d i a t e l y p r e s e n t themselves as l i f e - t h r e a t e n i n g e n t i t i e s , but one need o n l y t h i n k o f the p o l i t i c a l e x i l e o f a l e k s a n d r i. s o l z h e n i t s y n t o see t h a t c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g can have dangerous l i m i t s , as w e l l . the t e a c h e r s ' r o l e can o n l y be t o g i v e a l e r t and s e n s i t i v e guidance which w i l l a s s i s t the c r e a t o r i n h i s l i m i t - t e s t i n g endeavour. he c e r t a i n l y s h o u l d n o t attempt t o thwart the endeavour, as t e a c h e r s and p a r e n t s a r e wont t o do, e n c o u r a g i n g t h a t which i s s a f e and p r e d i c t a b l e , but l i f e l e s s and b o r i n g t o a c r e a t o r . a n o t h e r , c o m p e l l i n g need, and one t h a t many p e o p l e have d i f f i c u l t y u n d e r s t a n d i n g , i s the need t o g i v e o n e s e l f c o m p l e t e l y t o a t a s k and t o become f u l l y absorbed i n i t . the c r e a t i v e person o f t e n i s so p r e o c c u p i e d w i t h the t a s k a t hand t h a t he may seem i n a t t e n t i v e and absentminded. n e e d l e s s t o s a y , n a i v e t e a c h e r s and p a r e n t s f i n d t h i s b e h a v i o u r annoying a t b e s t , and f i n d themselves f o r b i d d i n g the n u i s a n c e a c t i v i t i e s . once a g a i n , s i m p l y u n d e r s t a n d i n g the c r e a t i v e need f o r complete submersion i n a t a s k makes a l l the d i f f e r e n c e . m o n t e s s o r i ' s methods emphasize t h i s d r i v i n g need. she i n s i s t s t h a t s t u d e n t s a b s o r b e d i n a t a s k be l e f t u n i n t e r r u p t e d r a t h e r than r u s h i n g them o f f t o a d i f f e r e n t l e a r n i n g t a s k , p r e v i o u s l y s c h e d u l e d . she s t a t e s : he who i n t e r r u p t s the c h i l d r e n i n t h e i r o c c u p a t i o n s i n o r d e r t o make them t o l e a r n some p r e d e t e r m i n e d t h i n g ; he who makes them cease the s t u d y o f a r i t h m e t i c t o pass on t o t h a t o f geography and the l i k e , t h i n k - i n g i t i s i m p o r t a n t t o d i r e c t t h e i r c u l t u r e , c o n f u s e s the means w i t h the end and d e s t r o y s the man f o r a v a n i t y ' [ m o n t e s s o r i , , p. ] t e a c h e r s , e s p e c i a l l y o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g , need to be s u r e to a l l o w f o r such i n d i v i d u a l p r e o c c u p a t i o n i n the day-to-day c u r r i c u l u m . the c r e a t i v e person has a need to be honest and to s e a r c h f o r the t r u t h . genuine c r e a t i v e achievement r e q u i r e s t h a t a p e r s o n make an independent judgement and then have the courage to s t i c k to h i s c o n v i c t i o n s , and work to t h e i r l o g i c a l c o n c l u s i o n s . the c r e a t o r may have to stand a l o n e , b u t the l i f e l o n g s e a r c h f o r the t r u t h i s a need o f u l t i m a t e i m p o r t . the c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t a l s o has a need to be d i f f e r e n t , to be an i n d i v i d u a l . t o r r a n c e i s q u i c k to p o i n t o u t t h a t t h i s i s not f o r the sake o f b e i n g d i f f e r e n t , but r a t h e r t h a t t h e c r e a t i v e p e r s o n has to be d i f f e r e n t i n o r d e r to a t t a i n h i s p o t e n t i a l i t i e s . u n f o r t u n a t e l y , t h i s need i s v e r y seldom r e s p e c t e d i n s t u d e n t s . p a r e n t s u s u a l l y do n o t want t h e i r c h i l d t o be c o n s i d e r e d p e c u l i a r , and t e a c h e r s g e n e r a l l y seem to be most adept a t making c h i l d r e n conform to b e h a v i o u r a l norms. a c l a s s o f c r e a t i v e i n d i v i d u a l s needs m e n t a l , even p h y s i c a l , room to be themselves and to a s s e r t t h e i r own unique p e r s o n a l i t i e s . f a c t o r s i n h i b i t i n g c r e a t i v i t y development in any c u r r i c u l u m d e a l i n g w i t h c r e a t i v e i n d i v i d u a l s , t e a c h e r s a r e c o n s t a n t l y f a c e d w i t h a handful o f v e r y powerful f a c t o r s which can i n h i b i t and even k i l l c r e a t i v i t y . these f a c t o r s a r e a l l s o c i e t y - b o r n and b r e d . our s o c i e t y i s a s u c c e s s o r i e n t e d s o c i e t y i n which e v e r y t h i n g d e t r i m e n t a l t o s u c c e s s i s r e a d i l y p r e v e n t e d . t h i s s u b v e r s i v e a t t i t u d e has c a r r i e d through i n t o the s c h o o l s , and s t u d e n t s w i t h c r e a t i v e p o t e n t i a l , who need t o a t t a c k complex t a s k s hence r i s k i n g f a i l u r e , a r e o f t e n t h w a r t e d . t e a c h e r s o f c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t s need to be open t o l e t t i n g the s t u d e n t s f a i l , and need t o encourage the s t u d e n t s t o r i s k f a i l u r e . the peer o r i e n t a t i o n o f our s o c i e t y c r e a t e s much p r e s - s u r e on i n d i v i d u a l s , and the e s p e c i a l i n h i b i t i n g e f f e c t s on c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t s a r e o b v i o u s and w i d e s p r e a d . a prime way o f d e a l i n g w i t h t h i s phenomenon i s t o encourage the s t u d e n t s t o respond t o t h e i r c r e a t i v e needs, t o be i n d i v i d u a l s i n t h e i r own r i g h t s t a n d i n g a p a r t from the t h r o n g . the sex r o l e s t h a t e x i s t i n o u r s o c i e t y have been m i s p l a c e d and overemphasized, e x a c t i n g t o l l s on c r e a t i v e i n d i v i d u a l s t h a t dare t o t r a n s g r e s s the r o l e b o u n d a r i e s . though r e c e n t y e a r s have brought men and women w r i t e r s i n t o the same camp, the s u b j e c t m a t t e r i s s t i l l somewhat r o l e - o r i e n t e d . eyebrows s t i l l r a i s e a t women w r i t e r s such as e r i c a jong and marion e n g l e , y e t q u i v e r not a t saul b e l l o w s o r john updike. s t u d e n t s need t o be encouraged t o i g n o r e t h e s e burdensome r o l e s and s t r i k e o u t on m e r i t o f t h e i r own t a l e n t . our s o c i e t y i s g u i l t y o f u n e q u i v o c a b l y e q u a t i n g d i v e r g e n c y w i t h a b n o r m a l i t y . as mentioned p r e v i o u s l y , p a r e n t s and t e a c h e r s t e n d t o be the w o r s t c u l p r i t s f o r m o l d i n g the c h i l d i n t o a s o c i a l l y w e l l - a d j u s t e d r o b o t . the f i n a l i n h i b i t i n g f a c t o r t h a t s o c i e t y has b l e s s e d our c u l t u r e w i t h , i s the w o r k - p l a y dichotomy. work i s supposed to be d i s l i k e d and p l a y i s supposed t o b e . e n j o y e d , and woe t o t h o s e d e v i a t e s who p r e f e r work. i t i s a l s o a p p a l l i n g t o note t h a t , i n t h i s s e n s e , r i g o r and work have a l m o s t become synonymous. where does the c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s f i t ? w r i t i n g i s a p o t p o u r r i o f work and p l a y ; r i g o r , d i s l i k e s and f u n . the dichotomy does not a p p l y . t o r r a n c e does not o f f e r any pat s o l u t i o n s t o c u r r i c u l u m d e v e l o p e r s and nor do i. these i n h i b i t i n g f a c t o r s t e n d t o g r a d u a l l y e a t away a t the i n d i v i d u a l , s t u l t i f y i n g h i s c r e a t i v i t y . i t i s the o b s e r v a n t t e a c h e r who knows h i s s t u d e n t s w e l l , t h a t can d e t e c t , and h e l p the s t u d e n t d e a l w i t h t h e s e s o c i a l p r e s s u r e s . c o n c l u s i o n t o r r a n c e i s most adamant i n s t r e s s i n g t h a t the c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t needs a " r e s p o n s i v e environment," r a t h e r than a s t i m u l a t i n g one. s t i m u l a t i o n o f c r e a t i v i t y comes from w i t h i n the s t u d e n t . he does not r e q u i r e s t i m u l a t i n g l i g h t shows and open-ended murder m y s t e r i e s t o provoke h i s c r e a t i v e p o t e n t i a l . these a r e o u t e r s t i m u l i , f o r e i g n and r e l a t i v e l y i n e f f e c t i v e f o r him. the c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t needs t e a c h e r s , p a r e n t s , and f e l l o w s t u d e n t s t o be r e s p o n s i v e t o h i s c r e a t i v e needs. he needs h i s freedom e m b e l l i s h e d w i t h s e n s i t i v e t e a c h e r g u i d a n c e and d i r e c t i o n . t o r r a n c e ' s words b e s t summarize the c o n c e p t o f the t e a c h e r ' s r o l e i n a c u r r i c u l u m devoted t o c r e a t i v i t y : e a r l y i n our i n v e s t i g a t i o n s , i became c o n v i n c e d t h a t we c o u l d b e s t r e s p e c t c r e a t i v e needs and s e r v e t h e purposes o f c r e a t i v e growth i n t h e c l a s s r o o m by r e s p e c t i n g the q u e s t i o n s t h a t c h i l d r e n ask, by r e s p e c t i n g the i d e a s t h a t t h e y p r e s e n t f o r c o n s i d e r - a t i o n , by showing them t h a t t h e i r i d e a s have v a l u e , by e n c o u r a g i n g o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r p r a c t i c e and e x p e r i m e n t a t i o n w i t h o u t e v a l u a t i o n and g r a d i n g , and by e n c o u r a g i n g and g i v i n g c r e d i t f o r s e l f - i n i t i a t e d l e a r n i n g and t h i n k i n g . we c a l l e d t h e s e p r i n c i p l e s f o r r e w a r d i n g c r e a t i v e b e h a v i o r . [ t o r r a n c e , , p. ] though t h e s e recommendations do r i n g out as s e l f - e v i d e n t and o v e r l y s i m p l i s t i c t r u i s m s , t e a c h e r s seldom seem to a p p l y them i n the c l a s s - room. the a p p l i c a t i o n o f t h e s e i d e a s t o the development o f a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l u m would be a v e r y p o w e r f u l f o r c e i n e n c o u r a g i n g the c r e a t i v e p o t e n t i a l o f many s t u d e n t w r i t e r s . chapter specific guidelines for curriculum development of senior secondary creative writing courses: good-bye midnight slavery in the f o l l o w i n g pages a r e s u g g e s t e d g u i d e l i n e s to c o n s i d e r i n d e v e l o p i n g the c u r r i c u l u m o f a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e . these g u i d e l i n e s a r e f i r m l y based i n both r e s e a r c h and p r a c t i c a l a p p l i c a t i o n and w a r r a n t s e r i o u s c o n s i d e r a t i o n . however, i t i s not suggested t h a t t h i s scheme be too r i g i d l y f o l l o w e d ; a too s t r i c t adherence might i n f a c t l e a d to an i n f l e x i b i l i t y o f approach t h a t would be i n c o m p a t i b l e w i t h the v e r y n a t u r e o f c r e a t i v i t y . these g u i d e l i n e s a r e b e s t i n t e r n a l i z e d , then c r a f t e d i n t o a c u r r i c u l u m t h a t i s e f f e c t i v e f o r the s i t u a t i o n a t hand. w r i t i n g c o u r s e s i n secondary s c h o o l s must come to terms w i t h b o t h p r o c e s s and p r o d u c t . to emphasize o n l y p r o d u c t i s to embrace the t r a d i t i o n a l methodology, e v o k i n g such c o n c e p t s as: i n s t r u c t i o n , s t a n d a r d , d i s c i p l i n e , form, model, and p r o d u c t . y e t to emphasize o n l y p r o c e s s i s to swing f a r p a s t the m i d l i n e i n the o p p o s i t e d i r e c t i o n , c o n j u r i n g up such vague ' u n t e s t a b l e ' n o t i o n s a s : i n s p i r a t i o n , i n n o v a t i o n , i n d i v i d u a l i s m , and p r o c e s s . w r i t i n g need not be a s c h i z o p h r e n i a o f the c l a s s i c v e r s u s the r o m a n t i c . i t can and, i n f a c t , must i n c l u d e both p e r s o n a l i t i e s i f i t i s t o have v a l u e and meaning to the s t u d e n t s . p u b l i c a t i o n o f s t u d e n t m a t e r i a l i s the l i n k between the i m a g i n a t i o n o f the a u t h o r and the r e c e p t i v e c o n s c i o u s n e s s o f the r e a d e r . p u b l i c a t i o n i n t r o d u c e s the e n t i r e a r e a o f the c o n s i d e r a t i o n by the a u t h o r o f how the r e a d e r w i l l respond to h i s ( t h e a u t h o r ' s ) work. however, we must n o t f o r g e t t h a t p u b l i c a t i o n i s the aim o f the second s t a g e o f w r i t i n g . the f i r s t s t a g e f o r the s t u d e n t i s the c o n s c i o u s t o t a l unawareness o f a p o t e n t i a l r e a d e r . in t h i s f i r s t s t a g e he w r i t e s s o l e l y f o r h i m s e l f . in b r i e f , the o v e r a l l p l a n f o r the s t u d e n t w r i t e r i s a two s t a g e c o n c e p t : * j i m sabol has o r g a n i z e d i n a q u a s i - s i m i l a r manner, the " b a s i c s k i l l s i n the e n g l i s h language a r t s program" f o r the b e l l e v u e e l e m e n t a r y s c h o o l s i n washington s t a t e . s t u d e n t a c t i o n ( p r o c e s s ) s t u d e n t work ( p r o d u c t ) stage i n s p i r a t i o n , e x p l o r a t i o n , c r e a t i o n i n i t i a l work d r a f t i n g s k i l l s goal r e l a t i o n o f ' s e l f to ' n o n s e l f stage _ r e f i n i n g , e d i t i n g , r e w r i t i n g w i t h a u d i e n c e i n mind p o l i s h e d work e d i t i n g and p u b ! i s h i n g s k i l l s g o a l : p u b l i c a t i o n each s t a g e has i t s own s e p a r a t e and d i s t i n c t g o a l , and the s t u d e n t s must adhere to the g i v e n c h r o n o l o g i c a l o r d e r . to i n t r o d u c e the goal o f p u b l i c a t i o n too soon i s t o i n v i t e l e s s than h o n e s t work, namely, work t h a t i s m e c h a n i c a l l y p u b l i s h a b l e , but t h a t i s s h a l l o w i n p e r s o n a l i n v o l v e m e n t . stage one: drafting e x p e r i e n c e - b a s e d w r i t i n g in the f i r s t s t a g e o f w r i t i n g the s t u d e n t ' s a t t e n t i o n must be d i r e c t e d i n t o h i m s e l f , i n t o h i s i n n e r w o r l d o f v i v i d and vague, r e c e n t and remembered e x p e r i e n c e s . i t i s t h i s i n n e r w o r l d t h a t the s t u d e n t s h o u l d be encouraged to d i s c o v e r and r e d i s c o v e r through w r i t i n g . w r i t i n g g i v e s to e x p e r i e n c e s i g n i f i c a n c e , meaning, and worth and, n o t s u r p r i s i n g , e x p e r i e n c e has t h i s i d e n t i c a l e f f e c t on w r i t i n g . that i s , s t u d e n t s n o t o n l y d i s c o v e r themselves and f i n d meaning i n t h e i r l i v e s by e x p l o r i n g t h e i r e x p e r i e n c e s through words, they a l s o c r e a t e works o f a r t t h a t are i n h e r e n t l y powerful i n t h e i r r e a l i s m and s e n s i t i v i t y . the c o n t e n t o f the s t u d e n t s ' w r i t i n g s h o u l d be e s s e n t i a l l y s e l f - c e n t e r e d , based i n t h e i r own e x p e r i e n c e s . the c o n c l u s i o n s o f the dartmouth anglo-american c o n f e r e n c e o f aimed t e a c h e r s o f s t u d e n t w r i t i n g i n t h i s d i r e c t i o n : while p r o v i d i n g f o r the b a s i c s k i l l s t h a t a l l s t u d e n t s need f o r t h e i r p r a c t i c a l p u r p o s e s , i t s u b o r d i n a t e d t h e s e t o human v a l u e s . i t s o b j e c t i v e was n o t merely p r o f i c i e n c y b u t p l e a s u r e i n the uses o f language and l i t e r a t u r e , and t h e s e uses as a means to l e a r n i n g how to l i v e , e x p l o r i n g as w e l l as communicating e x p e r i e n c e , i l l u m i n a t i n g , d e e p e n i n g , and e n r i c h - i n g i t . s i m i l a r l y , i t s s t r e s s was on p e r s o n a l e x p e r i e n c e , the development o f c h i l d r e n as i n d i v i d u a l s , w i t h p r o v i s i o n f o r t h e i r d i f f e r e n t p e r s o n a l needs and p o t e n t i a l i t i e s . [ m u l l e r , , p. ] e f f e c t i v e c r e a t i v e works w i l l stem from l o o k i n g inward i n t o the 'raw s t u f f t h a t we, as i n d i v i d u a l and unique human b e i n g s a r e made o f : t h o u g h t s , b e l i e f s , e m o t i o n s , c o n f l i c t s , e t c . c o n c e r n i n g our e x p e r i e n c e s . language and e x p e r i e n c e are so i n t e r - r e l a t e d t h a t language w i t h o u t e x p e r i e n c e i s a d e s e r t , and e x p e r i e n c e w i t h o u t language i s m e a n i n g l e s s . edward s a p i r s t a t e s , "while i t (language) may be l o o k e d upon as a s y m b o l i c system which r e p o r t s o r r e f e r s o r o t h e r w i s e s u b s t i t u t e s f o r d i r e c t e x p e r i e n c e i t does not as matter o f a c t u a l b e h a v i o u r s t a n d a p a r t from o r run p a r a l l e l t o d i r e c t e x p e r i e n c e b u t c o m p l e t e l y i n t e r p e n e t r a t e s w i t h i t . " [ s a p i r , , p. ] the a c t o f w r i t i n g about an e x p e r i e n c e g i v e s t h a t e x p e r i e n c e meaning. l.s. vygotsky, a r u s s i a n p s y c h o l o g i s t , l a b e l s t h i s form o f s e l f - c o m m u n i c a t i o n "speech f o r o n e s e l f . " each i n d i v i d u a l i s concerned w i t h making sense o f h i s own w o r l d and w r i t i n g i s but one method o f d o i n g so. w r i t e r s w r i t e , not o n l y to be u n d e r s t o o d , but to under- s t a n d . how o f t e n have p e o p l e s a i d to themselves when w r i t i n g , "now i see; now i u n d e r s t a n d . " where b e f o r e was o n l y c o n f u s i o n f r u s t r a t i o n , now i s s a t i s f a c t i o n t h a t p a r t o f l i f e has meaning. p e t e r elbow has s o l i d , p r a c t i c a l a d v i c e f o r a l l w r i t e r s : i n s t e a d o f a two-step t r a n s a c t i o n o f meaning- i n t o language, t h i n k o f w r i t i n g as an o r g a n i c , developmental p r o c e s s i n which you s t a r t w r i t i n g a t the v e r y b e g i n n i n g — b e f o r e you know y o u r meaning a t a l l - - a n d encourage y o u r words g r a d u a l l y t o change and e v o l v e . only a t the end w i l l you know what you want t o say o r the words you want t o say i t w i t h . you s h o u l d e x p e c t y o u r s e l f t o end up somewhere d i f f e r e n t from where you s t a r t e d . meaning i s not what you s t a r t out w i t h but what you end up w i t h . c o n t r o l , coherence, and knowing y o u r mind are not what you s t a r t o u t w i t h but what you end up w i t h . t h i n k o f w r i t i n g then not as a way t o t r a n s m i t a message but as a way t o grow and cook a message. w r i t i n g i s a way t o end up t h i n k i n g something you c o u l d n ' t have s t a r t e d o u t t h i n k i n g . w r i t i n g i s , i n f a c t , a t r a n s a c t i o n w i t h words whereby you free y o u r s e l f from what you p r e s e n t l y t h i n k , f e e l , and p e r c e i v e . you make a v a i l a b l e to y o u r s e l f something b e t t e r than what you'd be s t u c k w i t h i f you'd a c t u a l l y succeeded i n making y o u r meaning c l e a r a t the s t a r t . what l o o k s i n e f f i c i e n t — a r a m b l i n g p r o c e s s w i t h l o t s o f w r i t i n g and l o t s o f t h r o w i n g away--is r e a l l y e f f i c i e n t s i n c e i t ' s the b e s t way you can work up t o what you r e a l l y want to say and how t o say i t . [elbow, , pp. - ] too many p e o p l e a r e a f r a i d t o take pen i n hand u n t i l t h e y know e x a c t l y what they want t o communicate and how t h e y w i l l do so. i t i s the t e a c h e r ' s duty t o smash t h e s e m i s c o n c e p t i o n s , and l a u n c h the w r i t e r s on j o u r n e y s t h a t have no such s t a u n c h p r e - c o n c e i v e d formats o r e n d p o i n t s . w r i t i n g s h o u l d be somewhat o f an a d v e n t u r e , r a t h e r than a p r e d i c t a b l e h i e r o g l y p h i c t o u r . language a l l o w s the w r i t e r t o e x p l o r e a l i e n p i e c e s o f e x p e r i e n c e i n depth and t o r e f l e c t on them at l e n g t h , t o ruminate on them, g i v i n g him i n s i g h t and u n d e r s t a n d i n g t h a t would o t h e r w i s e d i s a p p e a r i n the c e a s e l e s s rush o f e x p e r i e n c e . and i n t h i s d i s c o v e r y o f the form and meaning o f h i s i d e a s , the s t u d e n t d i s c o v e r s h i m s e l f . c e r t a i n l y a w r i t e r w r i t e s t o i n f o r m , p e r s u a d e , e n t e r t a i n and e x p l a i n , but j u s t as v a l u a b l e , he w r i t e s t o d i s c o v e r the i n n e r m o s t spaces o f h i m s e l f . "the a c t o f p u t t i n g words on paper i s n o t the r e c o r d i n g o f a d i s c o v e r y .but the v e r y a c t o f e x p l o r a t i o n i t s e l f . " [murray, ] w r i t i n g i s d i s c o v e r y , d i s c o v e r y o f the meaning o f e x p e r i e n c e , d i s c o v e r y o f the s e l f . language, more than a n t h r o p o l o g i s t s and l i n g u i s t s know a t p r e s e n t , shapes the i n d i v i d u a l p e r s o n a l i t y . the e x t e n t t o which any g i v e n i n d i v i d u a l i s a user o r a v i c t i m o f language determines n o t o n l y how he i s viewed by s o c i e t y , but a l s o how he sees h i m s e l f : language g i v e s shape and b o u n d a r i e s t o i d e a s , t h o u g h t s , and f e e l i n g s and thus t o p e r s o n a l i t y . language i t s e l f has i n h e r e n t forms, however, so t h a t the v e r y tongue o u r p a r e n t s g i v e us shapes o u r p e r s o n a l i t i e s . . . . c r e a t i n g answers i n words can be a form o f i n v e s - t i g a t i o n and d i s c o v e r y ( i f you are h o n e s t ) . not h a v i n g words means t h a t i n some r e s p e c t s you have not y e t d i s c o v e r e d y o u r s e l f . or h a v i n g d i s c o v e r e d p a r t o f y o u r s e l f , what guarantee do you have t h a t i t w i l l n o t change? u n l e s s you become a mental and e m o t i o n a l f o s s i l , you w i l l always be c h a n g i n g . you w i l l always need new language to communicate t o y o u r - s e l f and to o t h e r p e o p l e . without new language f o r new s i t u a t i o n s , no one can be h i m s e l f . [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] george o r w e l l ' s c o n t e n t i o n s about the i n t e r d e p e n d e n c y o f language and thought i n n i n e t e e n e i g h t y - f o u r become i n c r e a s i n g l y r e a l i s t i c , as contemporary r e s e a r c h s u r f a c e s . p s y c h o l o g i s t s l a b e l the use o f language to come to know o n e s e l f : ' s e l f a c t u a l i z a t i o n , ' making the s e l f r e a l . t.s. e l i o t i s c o n c e r n e d w i t h t h i s t r u t h i n h i s m a s t e r p e i c e , the four q u a r t e t s : we s h a l l not cease from e x p l o r a t i o n and the end o f a l l o u r e x p l o r i n g w i l l be to a r r i v e where we s t a r t e d and know the p l a c e f o r the f i r s t time. [ e l i o t , , p. ] the s t u d e n t s s h o u l d be encouraged to s t r a y back i n t o t h e i r random t h o u g h t s o f the f a r and n e a r p a s t and b r i n g them i n t o f o c u s . they s h o u l d be encouraged t o s i f t through t h e s e thoughts and images i n s e a r c h o f the 'raw s t u f f o f e x p e r i e n c e t h a t they f e e l c o m p e l l e d to w r i t e about: indeed, w r i t i n g i s l a r g e l y a p r o c e s s o f c h o o s i n g among a l t e r n a t i v e s from the images and thoughts o f the end- l e s s f l o w , and t h i s c h o o s i n g i s a m a t t e r o f making up one's mine, and t h i s making up one's mind, becomes i n e f f e c t the making up o f one's s e l f . in t h i s way w r i t i n g t h a t i s honest and genuine and s e r i o u s (though n o t n e c e s s a r i l y w i t h o u t humor o r w i t ) c o n s t i t u t e s the d i s c o v e r y o f the s e l f . [ m i l l e r , , p. ] the s t u d e n t ' s j o u r n e y i n t o h i m s e l f has an u n t o l d p o s i t i v e e f f e c t on both h i s v i s i o n o f the n a t u r e o f h i s s e l f and h i s r e l a t i o n to o t h e r s , as w e l l as on h i s w r i t i n g . the w r i t i n g t h a t stems from such i n t r o s p e c t i v e j o u r n e y i n g i s g e n e r a l l y powerful and s e n s i t i v e . such d i r e c t e x p e r i e n t i a l w r i t i n g has an impact on the r e a d e r t h a t o t h e r w r i t i n g cannot e q u a l . but what happens t o the s t u d e n t h i m s e l f i s even more e x c i t i n g . he comes a l i v e to h i m s e l f . take i n t o c o n s i d e r a t i o n words o f f r e d c h a p p e l l , a poet and c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g p r o f e s s o r a t the u n i v e r s i t y o f north c a r o l i n a : "i've seen persons come a l i v e to themselves i n w r i t i n g c l a s s e s i n a way they n e v e r have done b e f o r e . " [ g a r r e t t , e d . , , p. ] in many w r i t i n g c l a s s e s t e a c h e r s have seen s t u d e n t s , who were p r e - v i o u s l y e n c o u n t e r e d as s t i f l e d and c l o s e d s t u d e n t s i n a r e g u l a r e n g l i s h c l a s s , grow i n t o open, s e n s i t i v e and warm i n d i v i d u a l s . wayne booth echoes t h i s o p i n i o n : i f we ask them to w r i t e about t h i n g s c l o s e to the home base o f t h e i r own honest e x p e r i e n c e , w h i l e c o n s t a n t l y s t r e t c h i n g t h e i r powers o f o b s e r v a t i o n , g e n e r a l i z a t i o n , and argument, n e v e r a l l o w i n g them to d r i f t i n t o pompous i n a m i t i e s o r empty c o n t r o v e r s i a l - i t y we may have t h a t r a r e but wonderful p l e a s u r e o f w i t n e s s i n g the m i r a c l e : a man and a s t y l e where b e f o r e t h e r e was o n l y a bag o f wind o r a bundle o f r e c e i v e d o p i n i o n s . [ b o o t h , , pp. - ] w r i t i n g i s an outward e x t e n s i o n o f the s e l f , and can be e f f e c t i v e i f the w r i t e r has h o n e s t l y l o o k e d inward f i r s t . the t e a c h e r s h o u l d be p r e p a r e d t o c h a t c a s u a l l y , but purpose-, f u l l y , a w h i l e w i t h each i n d i v i d u a l t h a t i s e r r i n g l y p r o - j e c t i n g h i s mind's eye s o l e l y outward, and w i t h each i n d i v i d u a l t h a t has s e e m i n g l y e x h a u s t e d h i s i d e a s . f i v e minutes o f ' i d l e ' t a l k t h a t c e n t e r s on the s t u d e n t ' s e x p e r i e n c e s can t u r n up c o u n t l e s s e x p e r i e n c e s which he may f i n d e x c i t i n g t o e x p l o r e on paper. a c h a t w i t h l i n d a about remembered e v e n t s t h a t were a l l i m p o r t a n t i n both - d i s t a n t c h i l d h o o d s provoked a poem t h a t many r e a d e r s can i d e n t i f y w i t h : t e a r s s l i p down h e r cheeks, as she pouts i n a c o r n e r . c r y i n g s o f t l y to h e r s e l f , she fumbles w i t h a kleenex, and s n i f f l e s h e r sorrows t o a w i l t e d rag d o l l . when you are f i v e , even b r e a k i n g a b u t t e r d i s h i s a v e r y b i g problem. l i n d a ' s e x p l o r a t i o n o f t h i s p a s t e x p e r i e n c e brought meaning and o r d e r to an o t h e r w i s e i n s i g n i f i c a n t and w o r t h l e s s e x p e r i e n c e . she d i s c o v e r e d a t r u t h about the e v e r c h a n g i n g p a t t e r n t h a t weaves t o g e t h e r s e l f and time. ann's j o u r n e y i n t o c h i l d h o o d speaks f o r i t s e l f : the f i f t h thummer t h i t h thummer wath f a n t a t h t i c ! we p r a c t i c a l l y l i v e d i n o u r b a t h i n g t h u i t h . jimmy and david (my b e t h t f r i e n t h ) and i found a f i e l d w i t h l o n g g r a t h e t h o v e r headth. we caught g r a t h h o p p e r t h and a b e a u t i f u l b u t t e r f l y w i t h y e l l o w and brown w i n g t h . but my daddy athed me i f i would l i k e to l i v e i n a j a r tho we l e t the g r a t h h o p p e r t h and b u t t e r f l y go. the thun b e a t down on o u r brown b o d i e t h a t h we l a y chewing on t h t r a w i n the l o n g g r a t h . then david went to the h o t h p i d a l . jimmy and i knew he would come back becauth h o t h p i d a l t h alwayth maketh p e o p l e b e t t e r . and jimmy knew i t b e t t e r than anybody becauth he'th d a v i d ' t h b r o t h e r . tho, jimmy and i went ahead and b u i l t the t h t u r d y f o r t r e t h i n the f i e l d . and f o r dayth a f t e r w a r d t h , we kept making i t b e t t e r and b e t t e r tho david c o u l d thee i t when he got back. today i went t o the f i e l d to meet jimmy. when i got t h e r e , he wath w r e c k i n g o u r b e a u t i f u l f o r t . i ran a t him and athed him what he wath d o i n g , what are we g o i n g t o thow david when he g e t t h back. i l o o k e d a t him. jimmy wath c r y i n g and jimmy n e v e r c r i t h becauth he'th the o l d e t h . david and i c r y becauth we're a y e a r y o u n g e r than him. jimmy t h a i d david had gone t o the a n g e l t h . david had lookemea o r something. i a t h e d him when david would get back. jimmy t h a i d he wath dead, t h u p i d , and he wathn't coming back. t h t i l l c r y i n g , jimmy ran away. but david i t h n ' t dead, i know. only o l d p e o p l e d i e . naw, o n l y o l d p e o p l e d i e . r e l a t i o n s h i p s among p e o p l e t h a t concern the s t u d e n t are f a s c i n a t i n g p l a c e s t o b e g i n a t e a c h e r - s t u d e n t c h a t . from t h e r e the c h a t can p r o g r e s s t o a p a r t i c u l a r e v e n t t h a t might c a p t u r e the e s s e n c e o f the r e l a t i o n s h i p . i t i s i m p o r t a n t f o r the s t u d e n t to w r i t e about h i s own i n t e g r a l p a r t o f the c o n c e r n e d r e l a t i o n s h i p , f o r i n t h i s very w r i t i n g l i e s the d i s c o v e r y o f the n a t u r e o f t h i s r e l a t i o n s h i p . a r e l a t i o n s h i p o f paramount concern to h i g h s c h o o l s t u d e n t s i s t h a t o f 'boy-man-girl-woman.' donna enhances h e r r e a l i z a t i o n o f the n a t u r e o f the r e l a t i o n s h i p between h e r s e l f and her b o y f r i e n d when she attempts t o c a p t u r e i t i n words: f o r mark: p a r a - chute i n t o my morning i n y o u r u s u a l , e x p e c t e d b l u e a n d w h i t e n y l o n g l o r y : we can c a t c h h o l d o f the wind- s t r i n g s and f l y , dodging c l o u d s and wax-melting s t a r s t o g e t h e r . the c l a s s r o o m i t s e l f p r o v i d e s many r e l a t i o n s h i p s between t e a c h e r and s t u d e n t , and between s t u d e n t and s t u d e n t . an e x p l o r a t i o n o f t h e s e r e l a t i o n s h i p s by any i n d i v i d u a l s t u d e n t can uncover un- t o l d c o n c e r n s . lynda e x p l o r e s h e r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s r e a c t i o n t o b e i n g asked, by a t e a c h e r , a q u e s t i o n t o which she has no answer: in a c i r c l e o f g l a r i n g eyes i am squeezed by s i l e n c e . they w a i t , r a v e n o u s l y , f o r my r e s p o n s e , ready to l e a p , and t e a r the words from my mouth. my f a c e t i g h t e n s , begging w i t h unsounding screams as i s i n k * deeper, i n t o m y s e l f . lynda wrote to u n d e r s t a n d , more than t o be u n d e r s t o o d . while a d o l e s c e n t s o f t e n o u t w a r d l y i g n o r e t h e i r f a m i l i e s , they s t i l l c o n s t i t u t e r e l a t i o n s h i p s o f g r e a t importance t o the i n d i v i d u a l s t u d e n t . c o l l e e n was s p u r r e d i n t o w r i t i n g f o l l o w i n g a f a m i l y v i s i t to h e r grandmother i n an o l d - f o l k s home: she s i t s r o c k i n g , w i t h n e e d l e s and wool i n hand. her sad brown eyes r i p a t the h e a r t s o f the v i s i t i n g f a m i l y . they a l l c h a t h a p p i l y a t h e r , but the words n e v e r touch h e r she t r i e s h e r s l u r r e d words c a u t i o u s l y , h o p i n g someone w i l l reach o u t t o u n d e r s t a n d , yet she i s not h e a r d . they don't s t a y l o n g , h e r q u e s t i o n s are l e f t unanswered. when t h e y ' v e gone, she remains i n h e r c h a i r . t e a r s s t r e a k down h e r d i s c o l o u r e d f a c e , and are l e f t unwiped. * p h r a s e s from edwin a. hoey's poem "foul shot" a r e echoed i n lynda's poem. a p a t h e t i c g r i n passes a c r o s s h e r w h i t e l i p s . the c h a i r s t o p s s t i l l , as h e r grandma-warm eyes s t r o l l around the empty, l i f e l e s s room. needles and v/ool drop to the f l o o r , as i f i n slow motion. her f a m i l y mourns an empty c h a i r . in a t t e m p t i n g t o c a p t u r e the r e l a t i o n s h i p o f grandma and f a m i l y , c o l l e e n had t o s i m u l t a n e o u s l y become and y e a r s o l d . an e f f e c t i v e and powerful poem r e s u l t e d , but j u s t as n o t a b l e , i f not more s o , was c o l l e e n ' s d i s c o v e r y o f the pathos o f age and the n a i v e t y o f a l l who a r e not y e t aged. as s t u d e n t s w r e s t l e and p l a y w i t h words and e x p e r i e n c e , each one i n e v i t a b l y d e s i r e s t o w r i t e about h i s own p e r s o n a l traumas o f a t t e m p t i n g t o a s s i m i l a t e language and e x p e r i e n c e . some s t u d e n t s f e e l c o m p e l l e d t o concern themselves w i t h the d i f f i c u l t i e s they e n c o u n t e r , as g e o r g i a does: molasses b r a i n s t a g n a n t , s t a l e no f i r e o f i n s p i r a t i o n m e l t s the s l u d g e . i t s t i c k y - d r i b b l e s bogging down more of my c r e a t i v e machinery. others t r y t o d e s c r i b e t h e i r i n d i v i d u a l c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s e s : when i c a n ' t t h i n k i squeeze my b r a i n i k e a r i p e orange t o e x t r a c t e v e r y ounce o f p r e c i o u s j u i c e . . . . then c a r e f u l l y s e p a r a t e the p u l p from the j u i c e and s i p i t s l o w l y t o quench my t h i r s t f o r i d e a s . (barb) o t h e r s , y e t , f e e l d r i v e n t o e x p l o r e t h e i r reasons f o r w r i t i n g : i c o u l d n e v e r be a w r i t e r . what t a l e n t have i? what w r i t e r ' s q u a l i t i e s ? i have none. i'm n o t a p e r s e c u t e d jew l i k e cohen n o r born i n a n c i e n t greece as was homer i was never a poor farmboy l i k e shakespeare n o r an a l c o h o l i c l i k e poe and i'm not mad l i k e hemmingway i doubt i f i'm e c c e n t r i c enough t o be a w r i t e r i'm not a n a t i o n a l i s t l i k e atwood n o r an i d e a l i s t l i k e whitman i haven't dickens' sense f o r s o c i a l j u s t i c e n o r c a r r ' s need t o r e f l e c t n a t u r e i doubt i f i have even the e s s e n t i a l s y e t , i w r i t e i w r i t e because . . . wel what the h e l l i l i k e t o w r i t e . ( e l a i n e ) because the w r i t i n g e x p e r i e n c e i s p r e s s i n g and p e r s o n a l , t h i s s u b j e c t can s u c c e s s f u l l y be s u g g e s t e d and encouraged. whenever a s t u d e n t has a temporary d r o u g h t , the t e a c h e r s h o u l d be ready f o r a s t u d e n t - c e n t e r e d c h a t t h a t w i l l c o v e r t l y r e a r o u s e the s t u d e n t ' s j o u r n e y i n t o h i m s e l f . a t t i m e s , d i r e c t i n g s t u d e n t s t o o t h e r a u t h o r ' s works may a c t i v a t e thoughts o f t h e i r own, but t h i s i s a v e r y round about and i n d i r e c t way o f s t i m u l a t i n g t h e i r own r e c o l l e c t i o n s . comparison o f the s t u d e n t s ' p o l i s h e d works w i t h o t h e r a u t h o r s ' works f o r c u r i o s i t y and i n t e r e s t ' s sake b e n e f i c i a l . however, t h i s comparison s h o u l d have no more d e s p o t i c v a l u e f o r form, c o n t e n t , o r s t y l e than a comparison w i t h a f e l l o w s t u d e n t ' s work. t h i s i s n o t to b l a t a n t l y i g n o r e the a u t h o r ' s form, c o n t e n t o r s t y l e , but to emphasize the p r i m a l r e s o u r c e — t h e s t u d e n t ' s own i n d i v i d u a l l i t e r a r y d e c i s i o n s based on h i s own e x p e r i e n c e s . remember: the predominant aim o f i n s t r u c t i o n i n s t a g e one i s to encourage the s t u d e n t s to b e t t e r know and u n d e r s t a n d t h e i r e x p e r i e n c e s and t h e i r v e r y s e l v e s through l a n g u a g e . t e a c h e r as ' t r a v e l c o u n s e l l o r ' where does the t e a c h e r f i t i n t o t h i s f i r s t s t a g e o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g where s t u d e n t s c e a s e l e s s l y d r a f t e x p e r i e n t i a l p e a r l s ? i t i s the t e a c h e r ' s job to encourage the s t u d e n t s to e x p l o r e the i n n e r m o s t r e c e s s e s o f t h e i r e x p e r i e n c e s and then to encourage them to w r i t e u s i n g t h i s i n v a l u a b l e raw m a t e r i a l as a c o r n e r s t o n e f o r each work. i d e a l l y a l l w r i t i n g assignments and t e a c h i n g c o n c e r n s s h o u l d engage the i n d i v i d u a l s t u d e n t i n p e n e t r a t i n g , p e r c e i v i n g , s t r u c t u r i n g , c r e a t i n g o r r e c r e a t i n g the r e a l i t y he knows. in t h i s w r i t i n g s t a g e the t e a c h e r i s both a ' t r a v e l c o u n s e l l o r , ' a i m i n g the s t u d e n t s on t h e i r j o u r n e y o f s e l f , and a 'momentum f a c i l i t a t o r , ' k e e p i n g them j o u r n e y i n g . some s t u d e n t s are a b l e to j o u r n e y i n t o t h e i r i n n e r w o r l d s much more r e a d i l y than o t h e r s . e d u c a t i o n a l i n n o v a t o r s i n a r e a s o f c r e a t i v i t y , such as t o r r a n c e , m o n t e s s o r i , b i n e t , f r o e b e l , and p e s t a l o z z i r e c o g n i z e t h a t the n a t u r a l f a c t o r s o f c r e a t i v i t y : c u r i o s i t y , p l a y f u l n e s s , m a n i p u l a t i v e n e s s , and the l i k e , w i l l n o t , i n t h e m s e l v e s , n e c e s s a r i l y promote c r e a t i v e development. e x t e r n a l g u i d a n c e , i n the form o f a t e a c h e r , i s needed t o d i r e c t the c r e a t i v e t a l e n t from aim- l e s s n e s s t o c o n s t r u c t i v e e x p r e s s i o n . d i s c u s s i o n , and o t h e r p r e w r i t i n g a c t i v i t i e s must not be f o r g o t t e n . the t e a c h e r s h o u l d be p r e p a r e d t o endeavour t o become adept a t c h a t t i n g w i t h i n d i v i d u a l s t u d e n t s , about t h e i r e x p e r i e n c e s , c o v e r t l y e n c o u r a g i n g the s t u d e n t t o assume the c o n v e r s a t i o n l e a d . there i s much r e s e a r c h and o p i n i o n t o s u p p o r t the e f f e c t i v e n e s s o f c h a t t i n g b e f o r e w r i t i n g . rohman and wlecke l a b e l t h i s a c t i v i t y " p r e w r i t i n g . " they go so f a r as t o p l a c e t h e i r f o c u s upon t h i s s t a g e , d e f i n i n g i t as "the s t a g e o f d i s c o v e r y i n p r o c e s s when a person a s s i m i l a t e s ' h i s s u b j e c t ' to h i m s e l f . " they go on t o s t a t e t h a t p r e w r i t i n g " i s c r u c i a l t o the s u c c e s s o f any w r i t i n g t h a t o c c u r s l a t e r " and " i s seldom g i v e n the a t t e n t i o n i t c o n s e q u e n t l y d e s e r v e s . " [rohman and wlecke, , p. ] j a n e t emig [emig, , pp. - ] and j.n. hook [hook, , p. ] c o n c u r w i t h the c o n c l u s i o n s o f t h i s r e s e a r c h . t o r r a n c e , i n h i s c r e a t i v i t y r e s e a r c h , terms t h i s a c t i v i t y "the warm-up p r o c e s s " and s t a t e s t h a t h e i g h t e n i n g the s t u d e n t ' s a n t i c i p a t i o n i s " f u n - damental t o any c r e a t i v e a c t . " [ t o r r a n c e , , p. ] there are c o u n t l e s s numbers o f momentum a c t i v i t i e s t h a t would v i r t u a l l y e n a b l e the s t u d e n t s t o d r a f t u n t i l the end o f the c o u r s e . the t e a c h e r can nudge the s t u d e n t i n t o d e l v i n g deeper i n t o h i s t o p i c by c o n s i d e r i n g p o i n t o f view, g e n e r a l — s p e c i f i c - - c o n c r e t e — a b s t r a c t a l t e r n a t i v e s , d i c t i o n a r y d e f i n i t i o n s , etymo- l o g i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n , q u e s t i o n s t h a t form i d e a s , word c o l l e c t i o n s and arrangements, ad i n f i n i t u m . the c l o s e r the r e l a t i o n s h i p between t e a c h e r and s t u d e n t , the e a s i e r i t i s t o tap the e x p e r i e n c e s they may f e e l c o m p e l l e d to w r i t e about and the e a s i e r i t i s t o keep them w r i t i n g e f f e c t i v e l y and c o n s t r u c t i v e l y . in o r d e r t o be a b l e t o empathize w i t h the s t u d e n t , to r e c o g n i z e h i s p o t e n t i a l , the t e a c h e r must g e n u i n e l y know him. knowing s t u d e n t s i s a demanding t a s k , and one t h a t s h o u l d not be taken l i g h t l y . t o r r a n c e c o m p i l e d a l i s t o f "ways o f knowing" a s t u d e n t , based on i n p u t from a workshop o f oregan t e a c h e r s . (see appendix e) these "ways o f knowing" are i n d e e d thought p r o v o k i n g . u l t i m a t e l y i t i s t h e t e a c h e r who i s r e s p o n s i b l e f o r m a n i p u l a t i n g the environment t o be warm and c o n d u c i v e t o the c r e a t i v e l y t a l e n t e d i n d i v i d u a l . such an environment i s n e c e s s a r y f o r e n c o u r a g i n g and r e i n f o r c i n g w r i t i n g t a l e n t . i t i s the t e a c h e r who i n s p i r e s o r d e s t r o y s s e l f - c o n f i d e n c e and s e l f - e s t e e m , encourages o r s u p p r e s s e s i n t e r e s t s , d e v e l o p s o r n e g l e c t s a b i l i t i e s , f o s t e r s o r b a n i s h e s c r e a t i v i t y , s t i m u l a t e s o r d i s c o u r a g e s c r i t i c a l t h i n k i n g , and f a c i l i t a t e s o r f r u s t r a t e s optimum achievement. the t e a c h e r must n o t o n l y condone, but b u i l d around the c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t ' s n a t u r a l c u r i o s i t y , encourage him t o deal w i t h problems r e l e v a n t to h i s own needs, p u r p o s e s , and i n t e r e s t s , encourage and reward i n i t i a t i v e , i n q u i s i t i v e n e s s , o r i g i n a l i t y and a q u e s t i o n i n g a t t i t u d e . above a l l , he must welcome and p r a i s e c r e a t i v e and c o g n i t i v e r i s k - t a k i n g , and encourage the c l a s s , as a whole, t o f o l l o w h i s l e a d . too many s t u d e n t s r e f r a i n from f r e e e x p r e s s i o n due to t h e i r r e p r e s s i v e f e a r s o f c r i t i c i s m and r i d i c u l e , by both t e a c h e r s and c l a s s m a t e s a l i k e . the t e a c h e r must c r e a t e an environment i n which each s t u d e n t has a sense o f b e l o n g i n g , o f s e l f - w o r t h and v a l u e i n h i s own i n d i v i d u a l i t y . only i n t h i s environment w i l l c r e a t i v e s t u d e n t s take the r i s k s o f e x p l o r a t i o n , e x p e r i m e n t a t i o n , s h a r i n g p e r s o n a l i d e a s and r e v e a l i n g t h e i r f e e l i n g s . in s h o r t , o n l y i n t h i s environment w i l l they not f e a r to be t h e m s e l v e s . thus, the t e a c h e r must be aware o f the n e c e s s i t y f o r e n c o u r a g i n g and r e i n f o r c i n g c r e a t i v e t a l e n t . he must be s e n s i t i v e t o each o f the s t u d e n t ' s needs, i n t e r e s t s and c a p a c i t i e s , and must be, t o them, a r e s o u r c e f o r l e a r n i n g r a t h e r than a d i s - p e n s e r o f i n f o r m a t i o n . the s t u d e n t s s h o u l d p e r i o d i c a l l y be g i v e n a r e l a t i v e l y f r e e r e i n t o d e v e l o p t h e i r o r i g i n a l i d e a s i n t h e i r own p a r t i c u l a r o r i g i n a l ways. and, most i m p o r t a n t o f a l l , the t e a c h e r must c r e a t e an environment o f warmth, b e l o n g i n g and s e l f - e s t e e m i n which r i s k - t a k i n g through c r i t i c a l t h i n k i n g , i n q u i s i t i v e n e s s and c r e a t i v i t y i s welcomed. the j o u r n a l each s t u d e n t s h o u l d be encouraged t o keep a j o u r n a l t h a t i s h i s own p r i v a t e c o l l e c t i o n o f t h o u g h t s , i m p r e s s i o n s , i d e a s and j u s t p l a i n word p l a y ! i t s h o u l d be s t r e s s e d t h a t t h i s i s a j o u r n a l , n o t a d i a r y . the word d i a r y , to many s t u d e n t s , seems t o have the c o n n o t a t i o n o f a c t u a l h i s t o r i c a l r e c o r d s o f e v e n t s , r a t h e r than w r i t t e n e x p l o r a t i o n s o f t h e i r thoughts about t h e i r p e r s o n a l e x p e r i e n c e s , p a s t and p r e s e n t . t h i s j o u r n a l s h o u l d n o t be used f o r r e c o r d i n g t r i v i a l i t i e s such as what the s t u d e n t had f o r b r e a k f a s t , o r what day he trimmed h i s t o e n a i l s , u n l e s s t h e s e t r i v i a l e x p e r i e n c e s are s i g n i f i c a n t to the s t u d e n t ' s t h o u g h t s . the j o u r n a l i s g e n e r a l l y a s u c c e s s because i t seems to s a t i s f y a need i n a l l types o f s t u d e n t s . s t u d e n t s f i n d i t b e n e f i c i a l t o 'unload' themselves through w r i t i n g . e x p e r i e n c e s t h a t h u r t , worry, d e l i g h t o r p l e a s e a r e a l l d i v u l g e d . the s t u d e n t s are f o r c e d i n t o t h e i r own r e s e r v o i r s o f e x p e r i e n c e because t h e r e are no a s s i g n e d t o p i c s . the s t u d e n t ' s j o u r n a l i s a u s e f u l p l a c e to r e c o r d h i s s i f t i n g through and e v a l u a t i o n o f e x p e r i e n c e , a p l a c e to r e c o r d the coming t o terms w i t h s i g n i f i c a n t o r i n s i g n i f i - c a n t e x p e r i e n c e . the j o u r n a l i s a l s o i d e a l f o r the s t u d e n t to use f o r d e f i n i n g and p a t t e r n i n g p r e v i o u s l y mushy and muddled e x p e r i e n c e . john winthrop s h a r e s t h i s c o n t e n t i o n about the v a l u e o f the j o u r n a l : i t i s a r e c o r d o f e x p e r i e n c e and i m p r e s s i o n . . . . we s h o u l d then d e s c r i b e the j o u r n a l as the r e c o r d o f the i n d i v i d u a l ' s s t r u g g l e w i t h chaos. i t may not be the p l a c e where one w i l l c r e a t e f i r m o r d e r , but i t s h o u l d be the p l a c e where the e x p e r i e n c e o f d i s o r d e r i s r e c o r d e d and examined, l a t e r to be u n d e r s t o o d and w r i t t e n about a g a i n . the s i m p l e s t f i r s t s t e p i n a j o u r n a l i s t o r e c o g n i z e d i s o r d e r and r e c o r d c l e a r l y the i n t e r e s t i n g d e t a i l . do not i m m e d i a t e l y worry about f i n a l answers. [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] and i n t h i s s t r u g g l e w i t h p a t t e r n i n g e x p e r i e n c e , the s t u d e n t s h o u l d l e t the words take t h e i r own form. q u i t e l i k e l y , though, because the j o u r n a l i s much more than a memory a i d , the w r i t i n g s w i l l be l e n g t h i e r and more d e v e l o p e d than such j o t t i n g s as t h o s e which f r e q u e n t l y appear n e a r k i t c h e n t e l e p h o n e s o r on laundromat b u l l e t i n b o a r d s : j o u r n a l w r i t i n g i s i n f o r m a l and o f t e n d i s o r d e r l y , but i t i s u s u a l l y w r i t i n g and n o t j u s t n o t e s . remember t h a t a l l language has form o r o r d e r . so r e c r e a t i n g e x p e r i e n c e , even i n a s e n t e n c e fragment, means s h a p i n g e x p e r i e n c e . w r i t e r s keep j o u r n a l s t o s a t i s f y t h e i r c u r i o s i t y . they want t o see what p o s s i b l e shapes e x p e r i e n c e might t a k e . sometimes the w r i t e r pursues one p o s s i b i l i t y , sometimes many. the key word i s possibility. f i n d i n g new p e r s p e c t i v e s means w i t h - h o l d i n g f i n a l judgment w h i l e t r y i n g t o see c l e a r l y - - both what i s and what might be. [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] in a d d i t i o n t o t h i s e x p e r i e n t i a l e x p l o r i n g , the j o u r n a l i s a l s o e f f e c t i v e i n s i m p l y s t i m u l a t i n g the f l o w o f h i s i m p r e s s i o n s and i d e a s , w h i l e p r o v i d i n g a p l a c e f o r him t o p l a y w i t h the language t h a t i s an i n h e r e n t p a r t o f t h e s e i m p r e s s i o n s and i d e a s . the p a s t and p r e s e n t s u c c e s s o f the j o u r n a l recommends f t s e l f ; however, a few words o f warning a r e n e c e s s a r y . without any doubts whatsoever, m i s d i r e c t e d t e a c h e r emphasis on the trimmings ( t h e b i n d i n g , the f o r m a t , e t c . ) n o t o n l y i g n o r e s , but d e v a s t a t e s the essence o f the j o u r n a l , i t s freedom and n a t u r a l - ness. while the s t u d e n t may o p t t o b i n d h i s j o u r n a l i n l e a t h e r volumes, he may j u s t as l i k e l y o p t to w r i t e on paper bags o r t o i l e t t i s s u e . the o n l y c r i t e r i a s h o u l d be the a c c e s s i b i l i t y o f any p a r t i c u l a r e n t r y . because the d e s i r e d c o n t e n t o f the j o u r n a l i s h i g h l y p e r s o n a l , the t e a c h e r s h o u l d emphasize t h a t t h i s i s the s t u d e n t ' s own j o u r n a l , and i f he does not wish him ( t h e t e a c h e r ) t o r e a d p a r t s then he s h o u l d e i t h e r i n d i c a t e so by w r i t i n g 'do not read' a t the top o f the page, o r i f he w i s h e s , t o f o l d t h a t page o v e r and s t a p l e i t b e f o r e s u b m i s s i o n . i f the s t u d e n t w i s h e s , he can even t e a r o u t a page. i t i s b e t t e r to have the s t u d e n t w r i t e m a t e r i a l t h a t w i l l n e v e r reach the t e a c h e r ' s e y e s , r a t h e r than not w r i t e i t a t a l l . t h i s i s h i s j o u r n a l . a f i n a l p o i n t e r i s t h a t the j o u r n a l must be nongraded. (a b l a n k e t grade f o r s u c c e s s f u l c o m p l e t i o n i s s u f f i c i e n t . ) to grade a j o u r n a l i s to i n v i t e ' t e a c h e r - p l e a s i n g ' c o n t e n t , which i n no p o s s i b l e way i s o f any v a l u e w h a t s o e v e r t o the s t u d e n t w r i t e r , and i n f a c t d e s t r o y s the v e r y r a i s o n d ' e t r e o f the j o u r n a l . each s t u d e n t w i l l undoubtedly c o n s i d e r d i f f e r e n t s u b j e c t m a t t e r each day. one day the w r i t i n g may c e n t e r about the s t u d e n t ' s r e a c t i o n s t o a newspaper c l i p p i n g , a s c h o o l e v e n t o r a f a m i l y s q u a b b l e . he may choose to w r i t e about v a r i o u s o b s e r v a t i o n s o f h i s , o r may d e l v e i n t o h i s i m a g i n i n g s o r even h i s dreams. s k e t c h e s , d o o d l e s , c a r t o o n s , photos and ads may even be c r e a t e d o r d i s s e c t e d . yet a n o t h e r day may f i n d the s t u d e n t r e l i v i n g remembered e x p e r i e n c e s o f y e a r s ago. perhaps some e v e n i n g j u s t b e f o r e bed, h i s thoughts may take a p h i l o s o p h i c a l bent and the j o u r n a l w i l l q u i c k l y s u r f a c e t o a c c e p t h i s mind's meanderings. a n o t h e r day the p r e o c c u p a t i o n w i t h w r i t i n g may be t u g g i n g a t h i s mind, e v e n t u a l l y f i n d i n g i t s c l a r i f i c a t i o n o r j u s t i f i c a t i o n on the pages o f h i s j o u r n a l . one o f e l a i n e ' s j o u r n a l e n t r i e s r e v e a l s t h i s s e r i o u s p u r s u i t : jan. , : i t ' s d i f f i c u l t t o be c r e a t i v e when most words are c o n n o t a t e d i n t o s h r e d s . e n g l i s h n e v e r was a pure language, anyway. i suppose most w r i t e r s p r e f e r to s t i c k new combinations o f words t o g e t h e r ( l i k e r e a r r a n g - i n g h a s h ) . i t ' s a good method, but i t h i n k t h a t r e a r r a n g i n g a t t i t u d e s and p e r c e p t i o n s i s more i m p o r t a n t . the w r i t e r ' s c r a f t , a f t e r a l l , i s a s c r i p t e a s e ( s i c ) o f l i f e . not t h a t t h e r e ' s much l e f t to r e v e a l t h a t h a s n ' t been s a i d a l r e a d y , but i t ' s not the words o r images, as such t h a t need f r e s h e n i n g ; i t ' s the i d e a s . t h i s e n t r y c e r t a i n l y g i v e s an i n s i g h t i n t o e l a i n e ' s t h o u g h t s . a note was w r i t t e n back to h e r a s k i n g h e r to c o n s i d e r the v e r y s u b j e c t o f t h i s p a p e r - - t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p o f e x p e r i e n c e and language. the p o i n t we c i r c l e d about was, 'how do you f r e s h e n i d e a s i f n o t through language?' w r i t t e n exchanges o f i d e a s and arguments can be e n j o y a b l e and b e n e f i c i a l f o r both s t u d e n t and t e a c h e r . t h i s c e r t a i n l y i s n o t t o imply t h a t the t e a c h e r hunt f o r oppor- t u n i t i e s t o s e t up such an exchange. q u i t e the c o n t r a r y . but i f the t e a c h e r f e e l s the a i r i s r i g h t , then l e t him t e n d e r l y p r o c e e d . as t h i s example i l l u s t r a t e s , the j o u r n a l can o f t e n t i m e s a l l o w the t e a c h e r - - i f he l o o k s - - t o see deeper i n t o the workings o f the s t u d e n t ' s mind. the j o u r n a l i s a l s o c o n v e n i e n t to use as a c a t c h - a l l f o r phrases and i d e a s which the s t u d e n t may wish t o remember so t h a t he can p l a y w i t h them a t any f u t u r e date. as s u c h , the j o u r n a l i s a s o u r c e o f p a r t i a l l y o r g a n i z e d m a t e r i a l , a s t a r t i n g p l a c e f o r w r i t e r s to f a l l back on. the t e r r o r o f the empty-page and the empty-head syndrome i s n e v e r m a n i f e s t when a j o u r n a l i s kept. c o n s e q u e n t l y i t i s no s e c r e t t h a t most p r o f e s s i o n a l w r i t e r s are adamant j o u r n a l s c r i b b l e r s . e a r n e s t hemingway, n a t h a n i a l hawthorne, a l b e r t camus, and g e r a r d manley hopkins are but a few. the p r o f e s s i o n a l w r i t e r s seldom dash o f f master- p i e c e s w i t h f l a i r and v i g o u r and l i g h t e n i n g speed. they take t h e i r time and b u i l d s l o w l y . and the j o u r n a l e n t r i e s p r o v i d e u n t o l d w e a l t h f o r t h e i r works. s t u d e n t w r i t e r s and p r o f e s s i o n a l w r i t e r s a l i k e know o n l y too w e l l t h a t f l a s h e s o f b r i l l i a n t i n s p i r a t i o n and p e r f e c t l y awesome phrases are more o f t e n f o r - g o t t e n than remembered, s i m p l y because the w r i t e r f e l t he c o u l d remember them and n e g l e c t e d t o r e c o r d them. not o n l y are t h e r e no t e a c h e r - d e l i n e a t e d t o p i c s f o r j o u r n a l w r i t i n g , n o r a r e t h e r e any t e a c h e r - d e l i n e a t e d time p e r i o d s s e t a s i d e f o r compulsory w r i t i n g . the j o u r n a l i s , i n e v e r y way p o s s i b l e , the s t u d e n t ' s own, and the c l a s s r o o m approach must be c o n s i s t e n t t o t h i s i d e a l . t h i s i s n o t t o negate some i n t r o d u c t o r y c l a s s j o u r n a l w r i t i n g s e s s i o n s t o i n i t i a t e the s t u d e n t s i n t o the whole j o u r n a l - k e e p i n g endeavour. but t o p r o l o n g such s e s s i o n s beyond the time o f t h e i r worth i s to t u r n the j o u r n a l i n t o a c l a s s notebook. the s t u d e n t s a r e v e r y c o n s c i o u s o f the d i f f e r e n c e . the s t u d e n t s w i l l n o t take l o n g to r e a l i z e t h a t many p l a c e s and many times o f f e r j o u r n a l r i c h e s . i t i s n o t unusual to see a s t u d e n t s c r i b b l i n g i n h i s j o u r n a l i n the m i d d l e o f a math c l a s s . even the f i f t e e n minute bus r i d e t o s c h o o l can p e r i o d i c a l l y be j o u r n a l time. in a d d i t i o n to b e i n g open t o w r i t i n g i n many s i t u a t i o n s , the s t u d e n t s h o u l d t r y t o e s t a b l i s h a d a i l y r o u t i n e o f h i s own t h a t w i l l encourage him t o w r i t e i n g r e a t e r q u a n t i t y , and c o n s e q u e n t l y [ h o p e f u l l y ] q u a l i t y . most p r o f e s s i o n a l w r i t e r s adhere f a i r l y r i g o r o u s l y t o t h e i r r o u t i n e s . l y i n g i n w a i t f o r the muse i s p o e t i c , but seldom t e r r i b l y p r o d u c t i v e . the muse most o f t e n descends on the w r i t e r when h i s page i s a l r e a d y w e l l i n k e d . p r o f e s s i o n a l w r i t e r s o f f e r m u l t i - t u d i n o u s a d v i c e on t h i s s u b j e c t . they a r e e a g e r t o s h a r e t h e i r own i d i o s y n c r a c i e s about where to w r i t e , when t o w r i t e , what t o w r i t e w i t h , what to wear when w r i t i n g , what sounds t o l i s t e n t o when w r i t i n g , even who to imagine one i s w r i t i n g t o . the key here i s t o make the s t u d e n t s r e a l i z e t h a t w r i t e r s do have t h e s e i d i o s y n c r a c i e s ; p e o p l e , i n g e n e r a l , have t h e s e i d i o - s y n c h r a c i e s . and the s o o n e r they can g e t i n touch w i t h t h e i r own p e r s o n a l q u i r k s , the more p r o d u c t i v e t h e i r w r i t i n g w i l l be. though j o u r n a l w r i t i n g i s e s s e n t i a l l y choppy i n i t s ramblings from t o p i c t o t o p i c , (no p r e c o n c e i v e d p l a n - - s h o c k ! ) i t i s an e x p e r i e n c e t h a t i s most b e n e f i c i a l t o a l l s t u d e n t w r i t e r s . i t e n a b l e s s t u d e n t s t o s t r e n g t h e n the m i n d — t o — p e n passage (as opposed t o the m i n d — t o — m o u t h p a s s a g e ) , f o r c e s them to s t o c k p i l e the v e r y f o r c e s which w i l l grow i n t o e f f e c t i v e p e r s o n a l w r i t i n g s , and encourages them t o spend time p l a y i n g w i t h t h e i r own thoughts about t h e i r own e x p e r i e n c e s . o b s e r v a t i o n i f the s t u d e n t i s t o be e f f e c t i v e i n w r i t i n g about h i s e x p e r i e n c e s , he must be o b s e r v a n t o f h i s s u r r o u n d i n g s . braddock has n o t i c e d t h a t a u t h e n t i c o b s e r v a t i o n produces b e t t e r n a r r a t i o n . o b s e r v a t i o n s h o u l d be s t r e s s e d by the t e a c h e r . the t e a c h e r can c e r t a i n l y h e l p the s t u d e n t t o l e a r n t o s e e , r a t h e r than b l i n d l y l o o k . he s h o u l d d i r e c t the s t u d e n t ' s a t t e n t i o n t o such d e t a i l s as s i z e , shape, c o l o u r , t e x t u r e , odour, t a s t e and sound. he s h o u l d a l s o see t h a t p o i n t o f view i s comprehended and t o y e d w i t h . s e n s i t i v i t y and o b s e r v a t i o n a r e i n s e p a r a b l e and e n t a i l a l l f i v e s e n s e s . in e f f e c t , t h e w r i t e r must :empathize w i t h h i s s u b j e c t m a t e r i a l i n o r d e r t o r e n d e r a moving work. paddy c r e b e r , department head o f e n g l i s h e d u c a t i o n a t the u n i v e r s i t y o f e x e t e r i n e n g l a n d , s t r e s s e s t h i s empathy, a l o n g w i t h ted hughes: . . . do one t h i n g . . . imagine what y o u ' r e w r i t i n g about. see i t and l i v e i t . don't t h i n k i t up l a b o r i o u s l y , as i f you were w o r k i n g out mental a r i t h m e t i c . j u s t l o o k a t i t , touch i t , s m e l l i t , l i s t e n to i t , t u r n y o u r s e l f i n t o i t . [hughes, autumn, ] john m o f f i t t , i n h i s poem "to look a t a n y t h i n g " has sound a d v i c e f o r w r i t e r s : to l o o k a t a n y t h i n g i f you would know t h a t t h i n g , you must l o o k a t i t l o n g : to l o o k a t t h i s green and say "i have seen s p r i n g i n t h e s e woods" w i l l not do--you must be the t h i n g you see: you must be the dark snakes o f stems and f e r n y plumes o f l e a v e s , you must e n t e r i n to the s m a l l s i l e n c e s between the l e a v e s , you must take y o u r time. and touch t h e v e r y p l a c e they i s s u e from. [lawrence, ed., , p. ] such empathy i s the key to i n t i m a t e o b s e r v a t i o n and powerful w r i t i n g . c l a s s f i e l d t r i p s are p r i c e l e s s f o r o b s e r v a t i o n - b a s e d w r i t i n g . the s t u d e n t s t e a c h each o t h e r , as each c a t c h e s s i g n i f i c a n t d e t a i l s the o t h e r s missed. i t i s f a s c i n a t i n g f o r t h e s t u d e n t s t o d i s c o v e r how one such s e e m i n g l y s i m i l a r e x p e r i e n c e i n t w e n t y - f i v e p e o p l e can r e s u l t i n such d i f f e r i n g works o f a r t . one c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s e s s p e n t an a f t e r n o o n wandering around gastown. the o b s e r v a t i o n s t h a t they g a t h e r e d y i e l d e d some powerful imagery. lynda and marjo were t r a n s f i x e d by the slum's n a t i v e s : grey, a r t h r i t i c - g n a r l e d f i n g e r s bang on the g u i t a r l i k e a c h i l d a t t e m p t i n g to make p l a y music. the weathered straw hat waits on the s i d e w a l k for c o i n s t o be t o s s e d . with e v e r y j i n g l e o f s i l v e r his f a c e awakens i n t o a broad t o o t h l e s s s m i l e . many would see him as a d i r t y beggar. (lynda) p o o l y eyes o f f s e t the f a c e ; drops o f p a i n s l i d e p a s t shredded l i p s . needle h o l e s mark b r u i s e d arms. f l a s h i n g c o l o u r s r i p through the broken mind, c r e a t i n g screams, o f unheard p l e a s . (marjo) c o l e t t e examined the ewerpresent dichotomy o f a slum t h a t has been s u p e r f i c i a l l y r e n o v a t e d f o r t o u r i s t s : shadows sway b e h i n d pebble g l a s s , v o i c e s , music, c l a n g i n g b o t t l e s , rocking and c l a p p i n g t o the drones o f the band, while o u t s i d e some s i t on s i d e w a l k s , begging f o r dimes, m i x i n g t h e i r d r i n k s i n second-hand p e p s i b o t t l e s . a f i e l d t r i p t o r i v e r v i e w mental h o s p i t a l sowed the d e t a i l o f c o l l e e n ' s poem: she s i t s i n c o r n e r s , t e l l i n g s t o r i e s t o h e r shadow, t r a p p e d on the w a l l . she g i g g l e s a t j o k e s t h a t are w h i s p e r e d to h e r by g i a n t green e l v e s . with r o c k s i n h e r hand, she d e c l a r e s war on a s e t t l e d pond, and h e r changing e x p r e s s i o n s r e v e a l t h a t h e r c h a r r e d mind i s amused. padded w a l l s and s t a r i n g f a c e s s u r r o u n d h e r w o r l d . she's the a l i c e o f t o d a y — o n l y m i s s i n g h e r magic mushrooms. t h i s i s not to s u g g e s t f i e l d t r i p s be used t o s i m p l y o b s e r v e d e t a i l s which w i l l be d u t i f u l l y r e c o r d e d i n a work o f a r t by each and e v e r y s t u d e n t upon h i s r e t u r n t o the c l a s s r o o m . god f o r b i d ! what i s s u g g e s t e d i s t h a t f i e l d t r i p s be used t o enhance t h e i r s e n s i t i v i t y t o l i f e and t h e i r u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e m s e l v e s , w h i l e s i m u l t a n e o u s l y opening the doors t o p o s s i b l e raw m a t e r i a l s t h e y may wish t o employ i n t h e i r w r i t i n g . the j o u r n a l i s an e x c e l l e n t p l a c e f o r them t o j o t down d e t a i l s they may too q u i c k l y f o r g e t , and then l a t e r — i f t h e y c h o o s e — t h e y can use t h e s e d e t a i l s t o b u i l d a work on. the s t u d e n t s s h o u l d c a r r y t h e i r j o u r n a l s w i t h them on t h e s e f i e l d t r i p s . one day i n the f a l l an e n e r g e t i c group o f w r i t e r s s p e n t a w h i l e s a u n t e r i n g through a wide open f i e l d . they were s i m p l y e n j o y i n g the f i e l d and the f r e s h a i r , an a c t i v i t y even s t u d e n t s seldom i n d u l g e i n , w i t h the senses a l e r t t o t r i v i a l i t i e s the g e n e r a l p u b l i c would p r o b a b l y o v e r l o o k . one g i r l was very r e s e r v e d a l l a f t e r n o o n . the f o l l o w i n g week she r e v e a l e d t h e s e two p e r c e p t i v e poems: c r o u c h i n g i n green a n t i c i p a t i o n , they c l u s t e r i n c l i q u e s , w i t h t h e i r p o i n t e d toques p u l l e d down s n u g l y t o keep o u t the r a i n , and t h e i r s m a l l , brown o v e r c o a t s b u t t o n e d t i g h t l y a g a i n s t the c o l d . the t o a d s t o o l s are ready f o r w i n t e r . and the unkempt g r a s s s t r a n d s p u l l e d g e n t l y , but became i n c r e a s i n g l y i n s i s t e n t t u g g i n g , r o u g h l y , a t the s t i l l a i r , angry a t i t s r e l u c t a n c e t o s t i r , but the a i r became g e n t l e g r a s s - n o i c e s , then i n c r e a s e d to a b r e e z e . the g r a s s bent o v e r , one row, a f t e r next and the breeze s l i d o f f t h e i r so s h i n y backs, i t s speed e v e r - i n c r e a s i n g . soon, i t s momentum was such t h a t i t became a wind, and n e a r i n g the end o f the f i e l d the g r a s s e s s t o o d up and w i t h one l a s t , a l l - o u t e f f o r t they f l u n g the wind i n t o the t r e e s , then s a t back, l a u g h i n g . the r e a d e r knows t h a t j i l l c l o s e l y o b s e r v e d the d e t a i l o f h e r s u b j e c t m a t t e r . she had t o i n o r d e r t o respond as she d i d . the t e a c h e r s h o u l d not h e s i t a t e to c o n s i d e r s e n d i n g s t u d e n t s on s m a l l group o r even on i n d i v i d u a l f i e l d t r i p s . as t o r r a n c e e x p l i c i t l y s t a t e s o v e r and o v e r a g a i n : for c r e a t i v i t y t o o c c u r , t h e r e must be o p p o r t u n - i t i e s f o r one t h i n g t o l e a d t o a n o t h e r . t h e r e f o r e , i t i s i n e v i t a b l e t h a t any genuine encouragment o f c r e a t i v i t y i n the c l a s s r o o m must take c h i l d r e n and young p e o p l e beyond t e x t b o o k s and beyond the c l a s s r o o m . [ t o r r a n c e , , p. ] the s t u d e n t s s h o u l d be c a r r y i n g o u t t h i s t y p e r o f a c t i v i t y on t h e i r own as w e l l . that i s , they s h o u l d be o b s e r v a n t o f the t r i v i a l i t i e s o f l i f e about them, and s h o u l d be c o n s t a n t l y j o t t i n g down t h e i r d i s c o v e r i e s . the s t a t e o f mind r e q u i s i t e f o r o b s e r v a t i o n s h o u l d be encouraged on t h e s e c l a s s f i e l d t r i p s , h o p e f u l l y e f f e c t i n g a p o s i t i v e c a r r y o v e r i n t o the s t u d e n t ' s s t a t e o f mind when o b s e r v i n g on h i s own. o r d i n a r y p l a c e s w i t h i n w a l k i n g d i s t a n c e o f the s t u d e n t s ' homes w i l l undoubtedly p r o v i d e ample o p p o r t u n i t y f o r s t u d e n t o b s e r v a t i o n . w i t h i n w a l k i n g d i s t a n c e o f my s c h o o l may be f i e l d s , bushes, a n a t u r e walk, dykes, a r i v e r , f i s h docks, major i n t e r s e c t i o n s o r an e l e m e n t a r y s c h o o l . any one o f t h e s e p l a c e s e x h i b i t s enough d e t a i l s t o w h i r l the s t u d e n t s ' minds, and i f the s t u d e n t s grew up near t h e i r p r e s e n t s c h o o l t h e s e p l a c e s a l s o may s t i r the s t u d e n t s t o r e c a l l e x p e r i e n c e s a s s o c i a t e d w i t h t h e s e p l a c e s . s t u d e n t s s h o u l d a l s o be encouraged t o 'observe' t h e i r own emotions. too o f t e n the r e a l emotion t h a t the s t u d e n t i s e x p e r i e n c i n g g e t s smothered by the emotion he f e e l s he ought t o be e x p e r i e n c i n g . robert b l y s h a r e s t h i s c o n c e r n : the f i r s t problem i s t o know what the emotion i s , what you r e a l l y f e e l . too o f t e n , what we t h i n k we f e e l i s o n l y what we want o r a r e e x p e c t e d t o f e e l . going t o g r e a t aunt e l i z a b e t h ' s f u n e r a l and l o o k i n g a t the c o r p s e , we may say t o h e r next o f k i n , "i'm so s o r r y . " l i k e as n o t , we a r e more f a s c i n a t e d , b o r e d , r e l i e v e d , i n c o n v e n i e n c e d , g u i l t y , o r u n c o m f o r t a b l e i n the s m e l l y room f u l l o f o l d p e o p l e . g e t t i n g away from e x p e c t e d o r d e s i r e d f e e l i n g s i s j u s t the b e g i n n i n g o f w r i t i n g , but i t i s no easy m a t t e r . [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] a w r i t e r must, i n a l l s e n s e s , be o b s e r v a n t o f h i s environment, but e q u a l l y i m p o r t a n t , o b s e r v a n t o f h i s own s e l f r e s p o n d i n g t o h i s environment. noteworthy i n d e e d , i s the f r e s h n e s s and power t h a t the s t u d e n t s a t t a i n i n t h e i r w r i t i n g through o b s e r v a t i o n p r a c t i c e . the m i n i s c u l e d e t a i l s the s t u d e n t w r i t e r s f e e l c o m p e l l e d t o c a p t u r e on p a p e r . d e f y c l i c h e . sydney h a r r i s ' d e l i g h t f u l work "you w i l l never be a w r i t e r i f you" s a t i r i z e s t h i s o u t d a t e d t r a d i t i o n a l l e s s o n : you will never be a writer if you . . . y o u ' l l never be a w r i t e r i f you r e f e r t o a p l a y e r who "sparked" a r a l l y , t o a p o l i t i c i a n who 'spearheaded' a d r i v e , t o a committee t h a t ' s l a t e d ' a c a n d i d a t e . y o u ' l l n e v e r be a w r i t e r i f you r e f e r t o ' o p t i m i z i n g ' an o p p o r t u n i t y , ' e n t h u s i n g ' o v e r a campaign, o r ' f i n a l i z i n g ' a c o n t r a c t . y o u ' l l never be a w r i t e r i f you r e f e r t o p a r i s as 'gay paree,' t o i r e l a n d as the 'emerald i s l e , ' t o a l i o n as the ' k i n g o f b e a s t s , ' t o a nose as a ' p r o b o s c i s , ' t o death as ' p a s s i n g away.' y o u ' l l never be a w r i t e r i f you r e f e r to a b a t t l e ' r o y a l , ' a 'foregone' c o n c l u s i o n , a ' m i s c a r r i a g e ' o f j u s t i c e , a ' h e l p i n g ' hand, a diamond ' i n the rough,' an ' e a g l e eye, a 'shadow' o f doubt, a s i g h t ' f o r s o r e eyes.' y o u ' l l never be a w r i t e r i f you r e f e r t o an a c t o r as a ' t h e s p i a n , ' t o a poet as a 'bard,' t o a t a v e r n - k e e p e r as a ' b o n i f a c e , ' t o a s o c i a l l e a d e r as a ' s o c i a l i t e , ' t o a f i r e m a n as a 'smoke-eater.' y o u ' l l n e v e r be a w r i t e r i f you r e f e r t o a ' f a r ' c r y , a ' l a p ' o f l u x u r y , a 'pageant' o f h i s t o r y , a 'square peg' i n a round h o l e , a 'sumptuous' meal, a 'swank' apartment, a 'supreme' s a c r i f i c e , a 'token' o f esteem. y o u ' l l never be a w r i t e r i f you r e f e r t o time as 'immemorial,' t o c l i m a t e as ' h a l c y o n , ' t o t r u t h as 'naked,' t o h e a r t s o f ' g o l d ' o r ' s t o n e , t o f e e t o f ' c l a y , ' t o a penny as ' p r e t t y , ' t o a d o l l a r as ' a l m i g h t y , t o o p i n i o n s as ' c o n s i d e r e d , ' t o p l o t s t h a t ' t h i c k e n . ' y o u ' l l never be a w r i t e r i f you r e f e r t o peace o f f e r i n g s as ' o l i v e branches,' t o d e l i c a t e s i t u a t i o n s as 'hanging by a t h r e a d , ' to any movement out as an 'exodus,' t o the l a t e s t p o s s i b l e time as 'the e l e v e n t h hour,' t o born i n p r o s p e r o u s c i r c u m s t a n c e s as a ' s i l v e r spoon,' t o an i r r o v a c a b l e s t e p as ' c r o s s i n g the rubicon.' y o u ' l l never be a w r i t e r i f you r e f e r t o a burdensome p o s s e s s i o n as a 'white e l e p h a n t , ' t o d a n c i n g as 'the l i g h t f a n t a s t i c , ' t o a mountain as 'coming t o mahomet,' t o a n y t h i n g s e l l i n g l i k e 'hot cakes' ( e x c e p t hot c a k e s ) , to ' l e a p s ' t h a t go w i t h bounds and ' f i t s ' t h a t go w i t h s t a r t s and 'hooks' t h a t go w i t h c r o o k s and 'bags' t h a t go w i t h baggages and ' t o o t h ' t h a t goes w i t h n a i l and 'rack' t h a t goes w i t h r u i n and ' f a s t ' t h a t goes w i t h l o o s e and 'high' t h a t goes w i t h dry and 'wear' t h a t goes w i t h t e a r and. . . [kaufman and powers, e d . , , pp. - ] i f s t u d e n t s i n t e r n a l i z e the p r a c t i c e o f o b s e r v a t i o n , t h e y w i l l c r e a t e works t h a t w i l l make such concern o v e r c l i c h e s u p e r f l u o u s o b s e r v a t i o n p r a c t i c e has i t s c o m p l i c a t i o n s . while braddock c o n s i d e r s the v i e w i n g o f p i c t u r e s , tv, and movies as d i r e c t o b s e r v a t i o n , h i s p l a t f o r m i s week. paddy c r e b e r a l s o has r e s e r v a t i o n s about w r i t i n g based on p i c t u r e ^ o b s e r v a t i o n : i t i s a d v i s a b l e , i n a l l t h i s work, t o s t r e s s t h a t we a r e w r i t i n g about a scene, r a t h e r than a picture, i n o r d e r t o encourage the c h i l d r e n t o ' p a r t i c i p a t e ' o r t o p r o j e c t t h e m s e l v e s . a t the l e v e l o f honest endeavour the p r o j e c t i o n i s v e r y i n c o m p l e t e and the w r i t i n g tends t o d e s c r i b e o n l y what i s t h e r e . a t the h i g h e r l e v e l , where the p i c t u r e has r e a l l y made some impact, the o r i g i n a l d e t a i l s may be s u b t l y t r a n s f o r m e d by the e s e m p l a s t i c power o f the c h i l d ' s own i m a g i n a t i o n . [ c r e b e r , , p. ] however, even the v a l i d i t y o f c r e b e r ' s approach i s q u e r i e d . i t p o s s i b l e t o s u c c e s s f u l l y t e a c h o b s e r v a t i o n through the media by comparing h y p o t h e t i c a l p o i n t s o f view w i t h the p a r t i c u l a r one employed, and by d i r e c t i n g a t t e n t i o n t o such d e t a i l s as c o l o u r , d i s t a n c e and sound, e t c . however, i t i s not a d v i s e d s p e n d i n g too much time d i r e c t i n g the s t u d e n t to t h e s e second-hand o b s e r v a t i o n s , second-hand because the s t u d e n t s a r e s e e i n g the r e a l o b j e c t through someone e l s e ' s e y e s , and hence through someone e l s e ' s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n and v i s i o n o f the r e a l i t y o f t h a t o b j e c t . the image on the tv s c r e e n , w h i l e i n one sense a r e a l image, i s t r u t h f u l l y the f i l m m a k e r s ' con- c e p t i o n and d i s t o r t i o n o f the r e a l o b j e c t b e i n g f i l m e d . i t i s more i m p o r t a n t f o r the s t u d e n t to see the o b j e c t through h i s own eyes and h i s own v i s i o n o f r e a l i t y so he can come t o f u r t h e r u n d e r s t a n d h i s w o r l d and h i s s e l f . u s i n g f i l m s and p i c t u r e s as jumping o f f p o i n t s f o r d i s c u s s i o n which aims a t i n d u c i n g the s t u d e n t to ruminate h i s own e x p e r i e n c e t h r o u g h language i s a l t o g e t h e r d i f f e r e n t , and most b e n e f i c i a l . small e x p e r i e n c e s with the s t r e s s upon w r i t i n g from e x p e r i e n c e and from f i r s t - h a n d o b s e r v a t i o n , i t i s o n l y n a t u r a l f o r the t e a c h e r t o s i m u l t a n e o u s l y encourage the s t u d e n t s to f o c u s t h e i r w r i t i n g on smal e x p e r i e n c e s . s t u d e n t s i n e v i t a b l y t e n d to attempt to w r i t e about such a b s t r a c t g e n e r a l i t i e s as l o v e , hunger, sorrow, h a p p i n e s s , ad i n f i n i t u m . the t o p i c i s too l a r g e , too g e n e r a l , too v a r i - egated f o r the s t u d e n t w r i t e r to even approach s u c c e s s . and s u c c e s s i s i m p o r t a n t . an i n t e r v i e w w i t h michael mewshaw, n o v e l - i s t and p a s t c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g p r o f e s s o r a t the u n i v e r s i t y o f m a s s a c h u s e t t s , s u p p o r t s the c o n t e n t i o n t h a t s t u d e n t s s h o u l d be s t e e r e d away from the hazy, u n d e f i n a b l e g e n e r a l i t i e s and d i r e c t e d to c o n c r e t e images t h a t the w r i t e r and r e a d e r can v i s u a l i z e : mewshaw: i t h i n k i would emphasize f i r s t a c o n s c i o u s t e c h n i q u e . yes, i t h i n k i would emphasize f i r s t a c o n s c i o u s t e c h n i q u e . i t h i n k too many young w r i t e r s spend a g r e a t deal o f t h e i r time t r y i n g t o e x p r e s s some deep, dark, vague, amorphous r e a c t i o n t o t h e i r own e x p e r i e n c e o f y o u t h , and i p e r s o n a l l y t h i n k i t would be more b e n e f i c i a l t o f o c u s on, perhaps a p e r s o n a l e x p e r i e n c e , but a s m a l l e r e x p e r i e n c e , one t h a t they can come t o g r i p s w i t h i n a c o n s c i o u s f a s h i o n , and shape. graham: not ' l i f e , ' but a b i r t h d a y p a r t y when you were t w e l v e , t h a t k i n d o f t h i n g ? mewshaw: i t h i n k t h a t ' s more o f a l o g i c a l approach. i know t h a t i n e v e r y c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s i e v e r took t h e r e was always a v e r y t a l e n t e d , but perhaps u n d i s c i - p l i n e d f e l l o w , who was w r i t i n g a book o f a thousand pages, a book t h a t was g o i n g t o encompass a l l o f human e x p e r i - ence. and i n e v i t a b l y i t broke down, and t h a t w r i t e r d e s p a i r e d o f a c c o m p l i s h i n g what he had s e t o u t t o do. i don't t h i n k you can go from a s e n i o r i n h i g h s c h o o l t o james j o y c e . i t h i n k t h a t t h e r e a r e a l o t o f s t e p s i n between, t h a t you have t o c l i m b t h o s e s t a i r s . [ g a r r e t t , ed., , p. ] the s t u d e n t who has w r i t t e n a l i n e such a s , "sorrow i s i n my h e a r t " s h o u l d be encouraged t o s u b v e r s i v e l y c o n v i n c e the r e a d e r o f t h i s f e e l i n g through h i s s p e c i f i c and s m a l l c o n c r e t e images, not by coming out and pounding the r e a d e r on the head w i t h an u n i m a g i n a t i v e s t a t e m e n t . the t e a c h e r might ask t h i s s t u d e n t t o c o n s i d e r such q u e s t i o n s as: 'when you are s o r r o w f u l do you see f a m i l i a r t h i n g s i n the same way as when you a r e happy? example? how do y o u r senses respond? as u s u a l ? example? how do you r e a c t t o p e o p l e when you are s o r r o w f u l ? example?' the t e a c h e r s h o u l d be a b l e t o e l i c i t remarks i n which s p e c i f i c examples a r e embedded. i t i s t h e s e s p e c i f i c examples t h a t s h o u l d be w r i t t e n i n l i e u o f the o r i g i n a l g e n e r a l i t y . henry james a d v i s e s young w r i t e r s : oh, do something from y o u r p o i n t o f view; an ounce o f example i s worth a ton o f g e n e r a l i t i e s . . . do something w i t h l i f e . you each have an i m p r e s s i o n c o l o r e d by y o u r i n d i v i d u a l c o n d i t i o n s ; make t h a t i n t o a p i c t u r e , a p i c t u r e framed by y o u r own p e r s o n a l wisdom, y o u r g l i m p s e o f the . . . w o r l d . [ e d e l , ed., , p. ] s t u d e n t s seldom r e a l i z e t h a t t h e i r use o f g e n e r a l i t i e s has e i t h e r no a f f e c t whatsoever on the r e a d e r , o r an a f f e c t t h a t i s v e r y d i f f e r e n t than they i n t e n d e d . the word 'sorrow' e l i c i t s a d i f f e r e n t image i n each r e a d e r , i f i t e l i c i t s an image a t a l l . c o n s i d e r the f o l l o w i n g g e n e r a l i t i e s and t h e i r s p e c i f i c c o u n t e r p a r t s : grey a r t h r i t i c - g n a r l e d f i n g e r s s a d l y bang on the g u i t a r . grey a r t h r i t i c - g n a r l e d f i n g e r s bang on the g u i t a r l i k e a c h i l d a t t e m p t i n g to make p l a y music. the q u e s t i o n asked here was ' what do you mean by s a d l y ? ' then s was t o l d a few ways o f i n t e r p r e t i n g ' s a d l y . ' not one matched her own way. here i s a n o t h e r comparison: l y i n g on my back f e e l i n g the i n t e n s e noonday h e a t , the p r i c k l e - g r a s s s e n d i n g s e n s a t i o n s through me. . . and l y i n g on my back f e e l i n g the i n t e n s e noonday h e a t , the p r i c k l e - g r a s s s e n d i n g s e n s a t i o n s through me. . . t h i s t h i r d l i n e i s much more e f f e c t i v e . however, t h e r e a r e s t i l l two a r e a s o f concern here. " f e e l i n g " i s a n o t h i n g word. how does " i n t e n s e noonday heat" f e e l ? and what a r e the s e n s a t i o n s you f e e l from the p r i c k l e - g r a s s ? the r e a d e r i s too f a r removed from the s t u d e n t ' s e x p e r i e n c e because o f t h e s e u n s u b s t a n t i a l words. a n o t h e r example o f g e t t i n g bogged down i n meaningless g e n e r a l i t i e s , i s the use o f the words r e a l i t y and u n r e a l i t y o r f a n t a s y . one s t u d e n t was a t t e m p t i n g t o c a p t u r e the i d e a o f b r i e f l y waking up from a dream, and wanted to c a p t u r e the i d e a t h a t both w o r l d s seemed r e a l to h e r i n t h a t p a r t i c u l a r i n s t a n t . she wrote: f l y i n g on the wings o f a b i r d the rush o f the wind s t u n s my s e n s e s . for a b r i e f moment f a n t a s y m i n g l e s w i t h r e a l i t y . i t i s much more powerful f o r h e r t o imagine j u s t what i t i s l i k e t o be i n both w o r l d s a t once--and w r i t e about something p a r t i c u l a r . she thought f o r some time and came back w i t h : f l y i n g on the wings o f a b i r d , the rush o f the wind s t u n s my s e n s e s . for a b r i e f moment i c y c o o l m i n g l e s w i t h s h e e t warmth. she went d i r e c t l y t o h e r senses f o r raw m a t e r i a l because she i n s t i n c t i v e l y knew t h a t i t i s man's senses t h a t make f a n t a s y seem r e a l . a poem t h a t c o l l e e n wrote was t r a n s f o r m e d when she p l u c k e d out the g e n e r a l i t i e s , r e p l a c i n g them w i t h e x p e r i e n c e s o f h e r own w o r l d : my h e a r t i s f i l l e d w i t h sorrow when i no l o n g e r see the t h i n g s o f beauty i once d i d t h a t ' s when i r e a l i z e the l o v e has d i e d . became my h e a r t i s a c h i l d - d e m o l i s h e d c o o k i e . when i no l o n g e r see the beauty i n an open f i e l d o f d a i s i e s , or the morning sun r e f l e c t i n g o f f the dew o f a s p i d e r ' s newly woven web, t h a t ' s when i r e a l i z e the l o v e has d i e d . there i s a d i f f e r e n c e i n the e f f e c t o f each o f t h e s e p a i r e d examples. d i r e c t r e f e r e n c e s t o s p e c i f i c , o r d i n a r y events the r e a d e r can empathize w i t h a l l o w the r e a d e r t o get very c l o s e t o the a c t u a l e x p e r i e n c e the w r i t e r had. the language becomes a v e h i c l e o f e x p r e s s i o n , r a t h e r than a b a r r i e r to e x p r e s s i o n . to r e a s s e r t the b a s i c premise o f t h i s paper, the s t u d e n t w r i t e r i s a b l e t o e x p l o r e deeper i n t o h i s i n n e r w o r l d when he chooses s p e c i f i c s o v e r g e n e r a l i t i e s . e x p e r i e n c e s do n o t o c c u r i n the form o f g e n e r a l - i t i e s , hence i t i s u n r e a l i s t i c f o r the s t u d e n t t o e x p l o r e them through the language o f g e n e r a l i t i e s . o r d i n a r y e x p e r i e n c e s the s t u d e n t ' s everyday s u r r o u n d i n g s r e f l e c t b o u n t i f u l s m a l l , o r d i n a r y e x p e r i e n c e s t h a t are the makings f o r c o u n t l e s s works o f a r t . wordsworth was most adamant about the f a m i l i a r i t y and o r d i n a r i n e s s o f h i s w r i t i n g t o p i c s , and h i s w r i t i n g i s w e l l l o v e d and r e s p e c t e d because o f t h i s v e r y q u a l i t y e v i d e n t i n h i s works. c o l e r i d g e d e s c r i b e s wordsworth as g i v i n g : . . . the charm o f n o v e l t y t o t h i n g s o f e v e r y day, . . by awakening the mind's a t t e n t i o n t o the l e t h a r g y o f custom, and d i r e c t i n g i t to the l o v e l i n e s s and wonders o f the w o r l d b e f o r e us; i n i n e x h a u s t i b l e t r e a s u r e , but f o r which i n consequence o f the f i l m o f f a m i l i a r i t y and s e l f i s h s o l i c i t u d e , we have e y e s , y e t see n o t , e a r s t h a t h e a r n o t , and h e a r t s t h a t n e i t h e r f e e l n o r u n d e r s t a n d . r r ... ,„-,-, [ c o l e r i d g e , p. ] common s e t t i n g s and everyday p e o p l e have a d i s t i n c t beauty when we s t o p t o n o t i c e and o b s e r v e . i t i s t h i s ' o r d i n a r y beauty' t h a t t r a n s c e n d s the passage o f time. l i f e i s , i n e f f e c t , an o r d i n a r y a f f a i r , and i t i s i n e v i t a b l y the s h a r i n g o f the o r d i n a r i n e s s o f day-to-day l i v i n g t h a t b i n d s t o g e t h e r p e o p l e o f a l l ages. teachers must manage to convey t o s t u d e n t s the i n e f f e c t i v e n e s s o f w r i t i n g about 'the most wonderful person i e v e r met' compared t o the c o n t r a d i c t o r y o l d codger next door who reeks o f r e a l i t y . j u s t as w a l l a c e stevens f a s h i o n e d h i s powerful works from e v e r y d a y e x p e r i e n c e — a g l a s s o f water, a sunday morning, a man w i t h a b l u e g u i t a r — s o can the s t u d e n t s f a s h i o n t h e i r s . whether t h e i r neighbourhoods have underground w i r i n g o r d i l a p i d a t e d b i l l b o a r d s , images embedded i n t h e i r own l i v e s w i l l always s u r p a s s phony, h a l f - h e a r t e d and homogenized g e n e r a l i t i e s . s t u d e n t s s h o u l d be encouraged to d i r e c t t h e i r a t t e n t i o n s t o o r d i n a r y e x p e r i e n c e s t h a t a r e s m a l l enough t o deal w i t h i n t h e i r e n t i r e t i e s . the analogy o f b i t i n g o f f more than you can chew i s r e a l i s t i c . (the i d i o m i s a l s o r e l e v a n t . ) i f t h e r e i s n ' t room i n the s t u d e n t ' s mouth to chew the morsel o f e x p e r i e n c e around, t o g r i n d i t and s a v o u r i t and g r i n d i t a g a i n , to p l a y w i t h i t f o r a w h i l e b e f o r e s w a l l o w i n g , then the morsel i s too l a r g e . marci has r e l i e d t o t a l l y on h e r own o b s e r v a t i o n s and f e e l i n g s c o n c e r n i n g h e r own o r d i n a r y s c h o o l mornings: orange marmalade newspaper morning, w i t h y o u r boots i n the h a l l w a y and steam from y o u r c o f f e e m e l t i n g the moon. the compactness and c o n c i s e n e s s o f t h i s ' o r d i n a r y ' morsel i s e f f e c t i v e . c o l e t t e has w r i t t e n about a 'greasy spoon' i n richmond t h a t she happened i n t o : sunny a f t e r n o o n s i n c o r n e r , c o u n t r y c a f e s , checkered t a b l e c l o t h s , warm m i l k , and f l i e s on y o u r t o a s t , d i r t y , o l d , w o r k i n g men, and m i n i - s k i r t e d o l d women, a l l make me g r i n . marjo spends much time r i d i n g h e r h o r s e a l o n g the s e a g u l l - f r e q u e n t e d dykes. t h i s i s h e r p r o t e s t a g a i n s t o i l seepage: beach rocks on the h o t summer sand make s u n n i n g c h a i r s and tombstones f o r dead s e a g u l l s . lynda i s a l s o f a m i l i a r w i t h the dyke a r e a . she u t i l i z e s h e r o r d i n a r y e x p e r i e n c e s i n y e t a n o t h e r manner: s t i l l waters — i n s h a l l o w sea rock p o o l s h o l d l i f e c a p t i v e . t i d e s r i s e , r e l e a s e the sea l i f e c r e a t i n g a water path to the open oceans y e t always some l e f t i n the s t a g n a n t s a l t p o o l s t o w a i t f o r the n e x t t i d e . the range o f o r d i n a r y , s p e c i f i c and s m a l l t o p i c s i s as l i m i t l e s s as the s t u d e n t s ' e x p e r i e n c e s . the t e a c h e r s h o u l d be aware o f the s t u d e n t ' s work as i t p r o g r e s s e s . as soon as he r e a l i z e s the s t u d e n t i s d r i f t i n g o f f i n t o a i m l e s s g e n e r a l i t i e s , r e t r a c k him i n t o h i s own a u t h e n t i c s u r r o u n d i n g s so he can e x p l o r e h i s s u r r o u n d - i n g s through language, g i v i n g h i s e x p e r i e n c e s meaning, purpose and worth. on the l a s t day o f c l a s s t h i s y e a r , a s t u d e n t d i s c l o s e ed. a poem w i t h a s m a l l note a t t a c h e d . as an impromptu g i f t , •this small poem emphasizes so w e l l the rewards i m p l i c i t i n g u i d i n g the s t u d e n t s to w r i t e about s m a l l , o r d i n a r y e x p e r i e n c e s i've blow-dried my cat/snowflake i've s m e l l e d the r a i n as i t s e t t l e d the d u s t on an o l d t r a c t o r r o a d . i've sung hare krshna and i've been to the s i k h temple. i've r i d d e n a k i t t e n - s o f t cow and i've s a i d good-bye to grampa. i've l a i d back i n t a l l c o u n t r y g r a s s , n i b b l i n g a honeyed w a t e r - r o o t , dreaming. i've b l o w - d r i e d my c a t a f t e r he f e l l i n t o a swimming pool and i've r e s c u e d him from the f r i d g e . i've s k i p p e d time-smoothed r o c k s o v e r c o l d b o i l i n g c r e e k s . a w h i l e ago i c a u g h t a snowflake i n my hand to a n a l y s e i t ; to s e a r c h f o r i t s beauty; but i c o u l d n ' t b e f o r e i t m e l t e d . then someone came a l o n g and p o i n t e d a t the sky where the f r o z e n c r y s t a l s d r i f t e d w e i g h t l e s s l y ; p e a c e f u l l y s w i r l i n g i n the b l a c k n e s s . i t made me c r y . mrs. jamieson: thanks f o r h e l p i n g me w i t h my p o e t r y - - a n d f o r h e l p i n g me r e c o g n i z e l i f e as not o n l y major happenings, but a l l the l i t t l e t h i n g s in. between. i had been m i s s i n g so much b e f o r e i c o u l d put my f e e l i n g s on paper. thanks a g a i n ! lonny cochran w r i t i n g has taken on a new p e r s p e c t i v e f o r lonny. so has her l i f e . d r a f t i n g summary fundamental i s the b a s i c p h i l o s o p h y o f stage one, the d r a f t i n g stage o f w r i t i n g . the w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s h o u l d do h i s u t - most t o encourage s t u d e n t w r i t e r s t o t u r n t h e i r mind's eye inward to the e x p e r i e n c e s t h a t are s e c r e t e d away w i t h i n t h e m s e l v e s . the p r o c e s s o f p l a y i n g w i t h words t o t r y and c a p t u r e t h e s e e x p e r i e n c e s on paper i s a p r o c e s s o f d i s c o v e r y . the s t u d e n t d i s c o v e r s a t r i a n g u l a r r e l a t i o n s h i p between words, e x p e r i e n c e , and h i s v e r y s e l f t h a t g i v e s meaning to l i f e : s e l f w o r d s ^ e x p e r i e n c e these t h r e e p o i n t s are so i n t e r r e l a t e d , t h a t they are i n s e p a r a b l e . to withdraw one f a c t o r i s t o l e a v e the t r i a n g l e g a p i n g and i n - complete. the t e a c h e r ' s goal s h o u l d be to h e l p each s t u d e n t w r i t e r , by c o n s i s t e n t , c o v e r t encouragement, to s t r e n g t h e n t h e s e bonds by p l a y i n g w i t h p e r s o n a l e x p e r i e n c e , t h r o u g h words. the a c t u a l w r i t i n g o f the poem ( e s s a y , s t o r y , p a r a g r a p h , e t c . ) , the word-play i n v o l v e d i n c r e a t i n g a poem, the s t u d e n t ' s own poem, h i s own way, i s the s o u r c e o f the a d d i c t i o n o f s u c c e s s f u l s t u d e n t w r i t e r s t o w r i t i n g . the t e a c h e r must t r y t o d i r e c t each s t u d e n t w r i t e r i n t h i s d i r e c t i o n . two v i g o r o u s s t u d e n t s , who are^ c a s t as s u c c e s s f u l s t u d e n t w r i t e r s w i t h an immense c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g p o t e n t i a l , p o e t i c a l l y e x p l o r e t h e s e v e r y a d d i c t i v e reasons f o r w r i t i n g : e l a i n e w r i t e s i n h e r j o u r n a l : feb. , : my w r i t i n g (and i don't c o n s i d e r m y s e l f a w r i t e r ) does not come from p r e c o n c e i v e d i d e a s o r p l a n s . n o r m a l l y , my mind i s e i t h e r wandering o r c o n c e n t r a t i n g t o the p o i n t o f mental e x h a u s t i o n , b e i n g i l l o g i c a l , d i s s a t i s f i e d , l a u g h i n g . yet none o f t h a t goes i n t o words t h a t i would l i k e t o l i s t e n t o , o r read. what i w r i t e i s merely what comes o u t o f my pen a t a g i v e n moment. so, ask me to e x p l a i n what i w r i t e , and t h e r e ' s n o t h i n g t o e x p l a i n . i d i d not w r i t e w i t h c l a r i t y o r l o g i c i n view, and r e v i s i o n i s a l m o s t a s i n - - e x c e p t i n t e c h n i c a l p o i n t s . i don't e x p e c t an a u d i e n c e o r anyone to want to u n d e r s t a n d , o r l i k e i t . i don't even w r i t e f o r what i l i k e , r e a l l y . i t ' s j u s t to make a p a r t o f my- s e l f , something b e t t e r . j i l l ' s poem e f f e c t i v e l y summarizes the g i s t o f t h i s f i r s t s t a g e o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g : i w r i t e to j o i n m y s e l f . i w r i t e because words w a i t , hands o u t , t o be j o i n e d . i w i l l w r i t e u n t i l i have j o i n e d them a l l e v e r y way i can. whether a s t u d e n t i s i n h e r e n t l y e l o q u e n t and p o e t i c o r an i n c o r r i g i b l e word f u m b l e r , the t e a c h e r must encourage him to d i s c o v e r , through h i s own language, h i s own e x p e r i e n c e s , h i s own s e l f . stage two: editing and publishing v a l i d i t y and n e c e s s i t y o f s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n the goal o f the second s t a g e o f w r i t i n g i s p u b l i c a t i o n . the w o r k i n g d e f i n i t i o n o f ' p u b l i c a t i o n ' t h a t i s employed: t h e exposure o f works to an a u d i e n c e o u t s i d e the c l a s s r o o m , and by 'audience' i s encompassed r e a d e r , l i s t e n e r , v i e w e r , e t c . in view o f t h i s d e f i n i t i o n , t h e n , a performance o f a s t u d e n t - w r i t t e n p l a y , a s t u d e n t ' s r e a d i n g o f h i s own p o e t r y , a b r o a d c a s t o f a s t u d e n t ' s r a d i o o r t e l e v i s i o n p l a y , as w e l l as the r e l e a s e i n p r i n t ( j o u r n a l s , magazines, e t c . ) o f the s t u d e n t ' s work are a l l v a r i o u s forms o f p u b l i c a t i o n . the f o r e r u n n e r t o such p u b l i c a t i o n i s the ' s h a r i n g ' o f s t u d e n t works w i t h i n the c l a s s r o o m . james b r i t t o n , the w e l l known b r i t i s h p s y c h o l i n g u i s t , has found t h a t t h i s ' s h a r i n g ' f a c e t i s e x t r e m e l y m o t i v a t i o n a l i n p e o p l e o f a l l ages: even when we can i n t e r p r e t i n s i l e n t r e f l e c t i o n , w i t h o u t b e n e f i t o f a u d i b l e language and a l i s t e n e r , we s t i l l p r e f e r t o do a g r e a t d e a l o f o u r i n t e r p r e t i v e work i n t a l k w i t h o t h e r p e o p l e . the i n c e n t i v e t o shape o u r e x p e r i e n c e i n words i s very f r e q u e n t l y t h a t o f s h a r - i n g i t w i t h somebody e l s e . [ b r i t t o n , , p. ] the s h a r i n g o f s t u d e n t s ' works i s a common endpoint.. i n many e l e m e n t a r y c l a s s e s (though some commendably pursue p u b l i c a t i o n as w e l l ) , and i s most i m p o r t a n t as a t r i a l f o r p u b l i c a t i o n i n the s e n i o r s e c o n d a r y c l a s s e s . three o f the most outspoken advocates o f t h i s i n t e r p e r s o n a l exchange o f w r i t i n g are the poets m i c h a e l mott, dabney s t u a r t , and s y l v i a w i l k i n s o n . they i n t e r a c t e d w i t h e l e m e n t a r y , j u n i o r and s e n i o r s e c o n d a r y s t u d e n t s i n a program i n which one o f the f o u r o b j e c t i v e s was t o c r e a t e a c l i m a t e i n which the s t u d e n t s c o u l d s h a r e t h e i r w r i t i n g w i t h o t h e r s , p r o - f e s s i o n a l s and p e e r s . t h i s ' s h a r i n g ' i m p l i e s a p a r t i c i p a t i o n w i t h o t h e r s i n e n j o y i n g and a p p r e c i a t i n g a f e l l o w s t u d e n t ' s work as w e l l as e d i t i n g and c o n s t r u c t i v e l y c r i t i c i z i n g t h i s work. p u b l i c a t i o n does not have t h e s e i m p l i c a t i o n s . p u b l i c a t i o n i s an u n v e i l i n g o f a work f o r the p u b l i c t o r e a c t t o i f i t w i s h e s , and as i t chooses. p u b l i c a t i o n i s a b a r i n g o f the w r i t e r ' s i n n e r - most reaches t o masses o f s t r a n g e r s . i n e v i t a b l y , the s t u d e n t s ' w r i t i n g aim must be p u b l i c a t i o n the c o n c l u s i o n s o f the dartmouth anglo-american c o n f e r e n c e o f aimed t e a c h e r s o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i n t h i s d i r e c t i o n : in the f i r s t p l a c e , c h i l d r e n need an a u d i e n c e o t h e r than the t e a c h e r . they w r i t e most e a s i l y when t h e y w r i t e f o r the c l a s s , a r e e n t e r t a i n e d and s t i m u l a t e d by one a n o t h e r ' s f a n c i e s . e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s f o r g e t t h a t w i t h o l d e r c h i l d r e n an a u d i e n c e i s no l e s s i m p o r t a n t . as wendell johnson has c o m p l a i n e d , t e a c h e r s f a i l be- cause they appear to emphasize ' w r i t i n g ' i n s t e a d o f ' w r i t i n g - a b o u t - s o m e t h i n g - f o r - s o m e o n e . ' you cannot w r i t e w r i t i n g . too o f t e n they a s s i g n the y o u n g s t e r s l i t e r a r y t o p i c s f o r which t h e r e can h a r d l y be a l i v e a u d i e n c e e x c e p t the t e a c h e r , h i m s e l f . [ m u l l e r , , pp. - ] the s t u d e n t must a c t u a l l y aim f o r a r e a l a u d i e n c e f o r h i s works, e l s e the c o u r s e i s a sham, a phoney. the h i g h s c h o o l s t u d e n t needs t o be exposed t o the r e a l t h i n g . h i s days o f ' l e t ' s p r e t e n d ' are o v e r . stephen judy c o n f i r m s t h i s a t t i t u d e : however, the s t u d e n t a l s o ( i n a d d i t i o n t o w r i t i n g about m a t e r i a l t h a t i s from p e r s o n a l e x p e r i e n c e s ) needs a r e a d e r s h i p ; and a c l a s s s h o u l d be a l i v e w i t h s t u d e n t s r e a d i n g t o each o t h e r , r e a d i n g each o t h e r ' s work, r e s p o n d i n g and r e a c t i n g t o the t h i n g s t h a t they have s a i d and done. i s i m p l y want t o n o t e t h a t the c l a s s r o o m needs t o be a p u b l i s h i n g and r e a d i n g c e n t e r , where s t u d e n t s ' work t a k e s on r e a l i t y by b e i n g g i v e n a p u b l i c r e a d e r s h i p . [judy, , p. ] no l o n g e r i s the c l a s s r o o m a c l o i s t e r e d i v o r y tower o f s a c r o s a n c t l e a r n i n g t h a t bears l i t t l e r e l a t i o n t o r e a l i t y . with the u l t i m a t e aim o f p u b l i c a t i o n , the c l a s s r o o m i s f o r c e d o u t i n t o the community, becoming an i n t e g r a l p a r t o f the ' r e a l ' w o r l d . for the s t u d e n t s , t h i s coming t o terms w i t h r e a l i t y i s commonly a p r e r e q u i s i t e t o t h e i r endorsement o f a c o u r s e , and hence t o the amount o f e f f o r t they w i l l expend i n i t . laverne g o n z a l e z , a p r o f e s s o r o f freshman c o m p o s i t i o n a t purdue u n i v e r s i t y i n l a f a y e t t e , i n d i a n a , w h o l e h e a r t e d l y applauds the p u b l i c a t i o n a p p r o a c h , c o n d u c t i n g c o u r s e s i n which the c o n t e n t i s p r i m a r i l y s t u d e n t c r e a t e d m a t e r i a l s . the c o n t e n t i o n i s t h a t s i n c e , by d e f i n i t i o n , a w r i t e r i s one who w r i t e s , a freshman w r i t i n g c o u r s e s h o u l d s i m u l a t e the p r o f e s s i o n a l w r i t i n g p r o c e s s and a l s o p r o v i d e an o u t l e t f o r the p r o d u c t . the o u t l e t f o r the p r o d u c t i s a newspaper p u b l i c a t i o n , easy w r i t e r s , c o n c e i v e d to p r o v i d e an a u d i e n c e f o r the works o f the freshman c o m p o s i t i o n c l a s s e s . g o n z a l e z ' s p h i l o s o p h y i s e n c a p s u l e d y e a r l y i n the opening a d d r e s s t o new s t u d e n t s : here e v e r y day f o r s i x t e e n weeks you w i l l be w r i t e r s — p r o f e s s i o n a l w r i t e r s because you w i l l be w r i t i n g f o r p u b l i c a t i o n . we p u b l i s h a weekly newspaper easy w r i t e r s i n which the b e s t a r t i c l e s w r i t t e n each week a r e p u b l i s h e d . t h i s newspaper goes t o deans, c o u n s e l l o r s , p r o f e s s o r s , a d m i n i s t r a t o r s a l l o v e r purdue's campus and t o o t h e r u n i v e r s i t i e s t h a t have r e q u e s t e d c o p i e s . anytime you want e x t r a c o p i e s t o send home o r t o f r i e n d s j u s t ask. as p r o f e s s i o n a l w r i t e r s you w i l l need to keep j o u r n a l s i n which you r e c o r d m a t e r i a l s f o r p o s s i b l e f u t u r e u s e — i c a l l i t mind rape. i f the term i s too s t r o n g , t r y something e l s e . but do c a p t u r e a moment, respond t o an i d e a , blow y o u r c o o l , w r i t e a poem, r e c a l l the p a s t , but the t r u t h i want t o f o c u s on most i s word t r u t h , i . e . , f i n d i n g the e x a c t word t o communicate p r e c i s e l y the i d e a you have. w r i t e e v e r y d a y f o r a t l e a s t ten minutes. we w i l l be c o n c e r n e d w i t h t r u t h — y e s , the p e r s o n a l e x p e r i e n c e ; each o f you has completed a t l e a s t y e a r s o f o b s e r v i n g and r e c o r d i n g i n y o u r mind. we w i l l use t h a t m a t e r i a l . . . . because the exchange o f s i x t e e n minds i s r i c h e r than one mind w o r k i n g a l o n e , we w i l l r e a d t o each o t h e r , d i s c u s s and c r i t i c i z e the i d e a s and w r i t i n g s . e v e r y t h i n g you w r i t e i s i m p o r t a n t . keep i t al i n a p o r t f o l i o . we w i l l spend a l o t o f time t o g e t h e r . we w i l l l e a r n t o know each o t h e r through o u r w r i t i n g . i promise you t h i s w i l l be the b e s t c l a s s you have e v e r o r w i l l e v e r have. in a d d i t i o n you w i l l s u r p r i s e even y o u r s e l f i n y o u r w r i t i n g . . . . and o n l y t h o s e changes you s a n c t i o n w i l l e v e r be made. when you have an a r t i c l e ready f o r p u b l i s h i n g , w e ' l l do i t . [ g o n z a l e z , , pp. - ] i t i s c e r t a i n l y b e l i e v a b l e t h a t a s t u d e n t would remark, " t h i s i s not a c o u r s e ; t h i s i s a way o f l i f e . " [ g o n z a l e z , , p. ] p u b l i - c a t i o n does not need t o be campaigned by t e a c h e r s . r a t h e r , p u b l i c a t i o n n o i t s e l f campaigns the c o u r s e t h a t endorses i t . there i s no sub- s t i t u t e f o r c l a s s r o o m e x p e r i e n c e s t h a t have v a l i d i t y o u t s i d e the c l a s s r o o m . b e a t r i c e a f u r n e r [ ], marlene knowles [ ], and b. jo k i n n i c k [ ], t h r e e w e l l known w r i t e r s on the t e a c h i n g o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g , a l s o agree on the i n v a l u a b i l i t y o f a r e a l a u d i e n c e f o r the s t u d e n t w r i t e r . the g r e a t e s t e f f e c t t h a t p u b l i c a t i o n has on t h e s t u d e n t s i s m o t i v a t i o n a l . c h a r l e s k. s t a l l a r d contends t h a t good w r i t e r s , as compared t o a randomly chosen comparison group, a r e more con- c e r n e d w i t h the purpose o f t h e i r w r i t i n g . [ s t a l l a r d , f a l l , ] naomi chase echoes t h i s s e n t i m e n t o f the importance o f purpose and a u d i e n c e . [chase, sept., ] i t i s not a new t h e o r y t h a t a s t u d e n t w i t h a g o a l , aim, o r purpose t h a t he c o n s i d e r s t o be meaningful and worthy i s more m o t i v a t e d , more w i l l i n g t o work h a r d , more e n t h u s i a s t i c than one who l a c k s such a g o a l . s t u d e n t s demand a r e l e v a n c e o f c l a s s work t o t h e i r l i v e s and the o u t s i d e w o r l d . few s t u d e n t s , anymore, w r i t e p r i m a r i l y t o p l e a s e the t e a c h e r and/or t o r e c e i v e a h i g h mark. there must be something deeper, something more m e a n i n g f u l , something more w o r t h y . o f t h e i r time and energy f o r which t o s t r i v e . e l l e n gray massey, t e a c h e r o f communications c l a s s e s a t lebanon high school i n m i s s o u r i , has found t h i s magical r e l e v a n c e t o be p u b l i c a t i o n : i have t a u g h t e n g l i s h c o m p o s i t i o n f o r s e v e r a l y e a r s and have n e v e r had s t u d e n t s so w i l l i n g t o r e v i s e and r e w r i t e . nor have my s t u d e n t s e v e r been so c r i t i c a l o f t h e i r own w r i t i n g s and so anxious t o g e t . ! a s s i g n m e n t s . b e f o r e , many s t u d e n t s would be s a t i s f i e d w i t h a paper q u i c k l y w r i t t e n the n i g h t b e f o r e the assignment was due. . . . the d i f f e r e n c e now i s due t o t h e magic o f p u b l i c a t i o n . now they a r e w r i t i n g f o r a magazine they have c r e a t e d about s u b j e c t s they t h i n k are i m p o r t a n t . they know t h a t any magazine must be top q u a l i t y t o s u r v i v e . they are d e t e r m i n e d t h a t b i t t e r s w e e t w i l l s u c c e e d . [massey, a p r i l / m a y , ] b i t t e r s w e e t i s a s t u d e n t produced q u a r t e r l y about the ozark way o f l i f e , s u b s c r i b e d t o by the g e n e r a l p u b l i c . t h i s i s m o t i v a t i o n . e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s can l e a r n about m o t i v a t i o n and s t u d e n t d e v e l o p e d m a t e r i a l s from r e s e a r c h e x e c u t e d by lawrence m i c h a e l rudner. [rudner, feb., ] rudner was c o n c e r n e d w i t h the achievement o f grade e i g h t mathematics s t u d e n t s who produced t h e i r own v i s u a l l e a r n i n g m a t e r i a l s on t o p i c s i n the c u r r i c u l u m compared w i t h e i g h t h g r a d e r s who d i d not have t h i s o p p o r t u n i t y . the two groups o f s t u d e n t s were assumed t o be e q u i v a l e n t due t o t h e i r random s e l e c t i o n and t h e i r comparable iq and p r e - t e s t s c o r e s . the s t u d e n t s i n the e x p e r i m e n t a l group were a l l o w e d t o produce t h e i r own f i l m s t r i p s on v a r i o u s t o p i c s i n the mathematics c u r r i c u l u m . the r e s u l t s were t h a t the e x p e r i m e n t a l group d i d not l e a r n more than t h o s e i n the c o n t r o l group. however, o b s e r v a t i o n showed t h a t the f i l m s t r i p p r o j e c t d i d have a s t r o n g i n t e r e s t and m o t i v a - t i o n a l v a l u e . the e x t r a p o l a t i o n o f t h i s r e s e a r c h on grade e i g h t mathematics s t u d e n t s t o h i g h s c h o o l c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s t u d e n t s i s m e r i t e d . rudner i s not a l o n e i n h i s f i n d i n g s , though he has more r e s e a r c h v a l i d i t y . many d e s i r a b l e outcomes i n s t u d e n t s t h a t t e a c h e r s a t t r i b u t e t o p u b l i c a t i o n a r e : an enjoyment o f l i t e r a t u r e , a sense o f competency w i t h language, a sense o f s o c i e t y w i t h i n the c l a s s r o o m [landrum, e t a l . , ]; p r i d e , a sense o f e f f i c a c y [ l e b a r o n , may, ]; g r e a t e x c i t e m e n t , a sense o f wonder about what they have a c c o m p l i s h e d [ c h a p n i c k , d e c , ]; the s t i m u l a t i o n o f c r e a t i v i t y i n w r i t i n g , enjoyment f o r r e a d e r s , and teamwork i n s t u d e n t p u b l i s h i n g . [ c a m p b e l l , ] m o t i v a t i o n i s a many c o l o u r e d rainbow, and t h a t pot o f g o l d a t the end i s the s t u d e n t ' s s e l f - c o n c e p t , which i s i n f l u e n c e d by both the p r o c e s s o f w r i t i n g , f o r h i m s e l f and f o r p u b l i c a t i o n , as w e l l as by the e f f e c t i v e n e s s o f the f i n a l p r o d u c t . in e f f e c t , p u b l i c a t i o n can be r e g a r d e d as a reward f o r s t r u g g l i n g w i t h a work u n t i l i t i s p o l i s h e d , u n t i l i t says e x a c t l y what the a u t h o r wishes i t t o say and how he wishes t o say i t . p u b l i c a t i o n i s a reward f o r s e l f - d i s c i p l i n e . those s t u d e n t s who s a y , 'i don't want anyone t o read my work. i w r i t e o n l y f o r myself, ' may g e n u i n e l y mean i t . but v e r y l i k e l y t h e s e s t u d e n t s a r e shy and unsure o f e x p o s i n g t h e i r a r t t o the masses, and need the c o n f i r m a t i o n t h a t p u b l i c a t i o n can g i v e them. i t i s i m p e r a t i v e t o s t a t e here t h a t a n e g a t i v e e x p e r i e n c e w i l l undoubtedly o c c u r i f the works a r e p u b l i s h e d u n p o l i s h e d . a l v i n granowsky, d i r e c t o r o f the d i a g n o s t i c reading c e n t e r a t greensboro, north c a r o l i n a , and morton b o t e l , p r o f e s s o r o f r e a d i n g — l a n g u a g e a r t s a t the u n i v e r s i t y o f p e n n s y l v a n i a , p h i l a d e l p h i a , b e l i e v e i n t h i s reward p h i l o s o p h y : the human s p e c i e s needs and wants rewards. give i t t o them i n terms t h a t they want and you have a g r e a t m o t i v a t i n g mechanism. i t i s o u r e x p e r i e n c e t h a t r e c o g n i t i o n o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g by p u b l i c a t i o n i s a b s o l u t e dynamite. the p o s s i b i l i t y o f h a v i n g a c r e a t i v e e f f o r t w i t h y o u r name b e s i d e i t i n p r i n t i s a powerful m o t i v a t o r . [granowsky and b o t e ! , may, , p. ] most t e a c h e r s f i n d t h a t s t u d e n t s r e a c t w i t h i n c r e d i b l e g u s t o , e x c i t e - ment and endeavour when p r e s e n t e d w i t h the p o s s i b i l i t y o f h a v i n g t h e i r works p u b l i s h e d . p u b l i c a t i o n forms p u b l i c a t i o n can take many forms, as s t a t e d i n the o r i g i n a l d e f i n i t i o n . i t i s l i m i t e d o n l y by the w r i t e r ' s own c r e a t i v e i m a g i n a t i o n . with r e s p e c t t o t h e p r i n t media, the most t r a d i t i o n a l p u b l i c a t i o n form, t h e r e a r e t r u l y e n d l e s s u n d e r t a k i n g s f o r the s t u d e n t s . there are always d i t t o and mimeograph machines t o run o f f c l a s s a n t h o l o g i e s and i n d i v i d u a l c o l l e c t i o n s . becoming i n c r e a s i n g l y common i s the a v a i l a b i l i t y o f o f f s e t p r e s s i n the s c h o o l s t h r o u g h the i n t r o d u c t i o n o f g r a p h i c s , commercial d e s i g n , and v i s u a l communications e d u c a t i o n c o u r s e s . p u b l i c a t i o n s need not be s h o r t c h a n g e d i n terms o f d e s i g n and i l l u s t r a t i o n . o f t e n the c r e a t i v e t a l e n t i s r i g h t t h e r e i n the c l a s s r o o m , w a i t i n g f o r the o p p o r t u n i t y t o be d i s c o v e r e d and a p p r e c i a t e d . e f f e c t i v e handmade c o v e r s a r e e x c i t i n g f o r l i m i t e d d i s p e r s a l . the a r t o f s i l k - s c r e e n i s p a r t i c u l a r l y a p p l i c a b l e . a n o t h e r a l t e r n a t i v e i s t h a t a n t h o l o g i e s be a j o i n t p r o j e c t between the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s e s , the a r t c l a s s e s , and the vicoed c l a s s e s . even a nearby p r e s s may o f f e r t o g r a t u i t o u s l y b i n d the books between p a y i n g j o b s . newspapers, magazines and j o u r n a l s can a l s o s u c c e s s f u l l y employ t h e s e v a r i e d t e c h n i q u e s o f d u p l i c a t i o n . the u l t i m a t e i n p r i n t i s t o have the c l a s s s e l l t h e i r p u b l i c a t i o n , i f the q u a l i t y i s h i g h enough. s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n s w i t h i n the s c h o o l r e q u i r e s p e c i a l e f f o r t on the p a r t o f a l l c o n c e r n e d , t e a c h e r and s t u d e n t s a l i k e . appendix f i n c l u d e s a l i s t o f a r t i c l e s which d e a l w i t h p r a c t i c a l c o n c e r n s o f s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n s w i t h i n the s c h o o l , t h a t i s h e l p f u l t o t e a c h e r s and s t u d e n t s . beyond the l i m i t s o f p u b l i s h i n g w i t h i n the s c h o o l , l i e s t h a t o u t e r w o r l d o f p r i n t c o m p e t i t i o n . c l a s s a n t h o l o g i e s t h a t evoke p a r t i c u l a r i n t e r e s t s h o u l d be c o n s i d e r e d f o r ' o u t s i d e ' p u b l i c a t i o n . there i s i n c l u d e d i n appendix g a s h o r t l i s t o f a n t h o l o g i e s t h a t are c o n s i d e r e d t o be s i g n i f i c a n t s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n s . p r e s e n t e d i s an a n n o t a t e d b i b l i o g r a p h y o f p u b l i s h e d m a t e r i a l which f e a t u r e c h i l d r e n ' s c r e a t i v e e f f o r t s . a l t h o u g h many o f the s t u d e n t works c i t e d are w r i t t e n by e l e m e n t a r y s t u d e n t s , s i m i l a r p r o j e c t s can be t a c k l e d on a more s o p h i s t i c a t e d , i n - d e p t h l e v e l by\:older s t u d e n t s . s t u d e n t s and t e a c h e r s o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g w i l l e n j o y s e e i n g the a r t o f o t h e r s i n s i m i l a r s i t u a t i o n s t o themselves--namely i n c l a s s r o o m s — a n d may be prompted t o engage i n a p u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e i r own. i n e v i t a b l y , however, each c l e v e r w r i t i n g s t u d e n t must e n t e r the w o r l d o f p u b l i c a t i o n on h i s own. the w r i t i n g o f a work i s a l o n g and l o n e l y t a s k , and.so i s the attempt t o p u b l i s h c o m p e t i v e l y , whether i t be i n j o u r n a l s and magazines, o r i n books. appendix h i n c l u d e s a l i s t o f books which s h o u l d be i n c l u d e d i n each c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s i n m u l t i c o p y . these books a r e d e s i g n e d t o e x p l a i n the p u b l i c a t i o n p r o c e s s t o n o v i c e w r i t e r s , to t e l l the w r i t e r how t o p r e p a r e a m a n u s c r i p t f o r s u b m i s s i o n , t o h e l p the f r e e l a n c e r s e l l h i s works, e t c . these books a r e mandatory t o a p u b l i c a t i o n - o r i e n t e d c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e . they w i l l always be i n use. a l l t h i s h e l p w i t h m a n u s c r i p t p r e p a r a t i o n i s o f l i t t l e v a l u e u n l e s s the s t u d e n t knows where t o send h i s work f o r p u b l i c a t i o n . there a r e many l i t e r a r y p u b l i c a t i o n s t h a t a c c e p t u n s o l i c i t e d m a n u s c r i p t s , but i t i s d i f f i c u l t t o keep t r a c k o f them as the months pass. g e n e r a l l y , l i t e r a r y j o u r n a l s a r e not s t a b l e p u b l i c a t i o n s . any l i s t would be i n c o n s t a n t f l u x . however, a t e n t a t i v e l i s t i s a must. a l i s t has been c o m p i l e d w i t h the a d d r e s s e s o f the more well-known p u b l i c a t i o n s , t h a t i s v a l i d a t t h i s time. (see appendix i) teachers must be con- s t a n t l y aware o f a d d i t i o n s and d e l e t i o n s t o t h i s l i s t . there a r e a number o f p u b l i c a t i o n s t h a t o f f e r s p e c i a l o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r h i g h s c h o o l s t u d e n t s i n the form o f w r i t i n g c o m p e t i t i o n s . there a r e l i s t e d i n appendix j the more prominent ones. these p e r i o d i c a l s and c o m p e t i t i o n s seldom pay, and t h o s e t h a t do are u s u a l l y o n l y o f f e r i n g token amounts. for u n e s t a b l i s h e d w r i t e r s payment f o r such w r i t i n g i s not the main c o n c e r n , but the v e r y r e a l s t r u g g l e o f s i m p l y g e t t i n g i n t o p r i n t . i f the s t u d e n t d e c i d e s t o e n t e r the p r o f e s s i o n a l market- p l a c e he s h o u l d be coached i n the a r t o f m a n u s c r i p t s u b m i s s i o n . there a r e p a r t i c u l a r p r o c e d u r e s t o f o l l o w , as f u l l y d i l i n e a t e d i n the books mentioned i n appendix h. a l s o , t h e s t u d e n t s h o u l d not j u s t w h i s t l e o f f h i s works t o the f i r s t magazine t h a t c a t c h e s h i s eye. he s h o u l d s t u d y the market, l o o k i n g f o r a magazine t h a t p u b l i s h e s the type o f work he has w r i t t e n . i n c i d e n t a l l y , t h i s w r i t i n g market s h o u l d be i n a d v e r t a n t l y s t u d i e d through c o n t i n u o u s l y r e a d i n g as much contemporary w r i t i n g as time p e r m i t s . much can be l e a r n e d from p o e t s , p l a y w r i g h t s , j o u r n a l i s t s and s t o r y t e l l e r s who are p r e s e n t l y p u b l i s h i n g . i n e v i t a b l y , the w i d e r r e a d a w r i t e r i s , the more e x t e n s i v e are the i m a g i n a t i v e p o s s i b i l - i t i e s he c o n j u r e s . then he s h o u l d send a l e t t e r o f i n q u i r y e x p l a i n i n g what he has w r i t t e n o r i s about t o w r i t e , and why i t i s s u i t a b l e f o r t h a t p a r t i c u l a r magazine. the e d i t o r ' s r e p l y w i l l be i n f o r m a t i v e and e n e r g y - s a v i n g . o t h e r forms o f p u b l i c a t i o n t h a t are not bound t o the p r i n t media are becoming more n o t i c e a b l e . the media o f f i l m has e x p l o d e d w r i t i n g i n t o a whole new e r a . with the amount o f m e c h a n i c a l hardware most s e n i o r secondary s c h o o l s , o r a t l e a s t the d i s t r i c t s , have a c q u i r e d i t s h o u l d be r e l a t i v e l y easy t o encourage the p u b l i c a t i o n o f t e l e v i s i o n p l a y s o r v i s u a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s o f poems ( f i l m poems) v i a f i l m o r v i d e o t a p e , which can then be p l a y e d back t o whatever a u d i e n c e i s d e s i r e d . the a u d i e n c e can be from w i t h i n the s c h o o l o r w i t h o u t . there are many o p p o r t u n i t i e s a t noon break, o r s c h o o l a s s e m b l i e s , f o r such performances. the community i s g e n e r a l l y v e r y i n t e r e s t e d i n s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n and would come t o see o r hear an e v e n i n g performance. the use o f the tape r e c o r d e r s h o u l d not be u n d e r e s t i m a t e d i n p r o v i d i n g a n o t h e r p u b l i s h i n g form. s t u d e n t r a d i o p l a y s and b r o a d c a s t s a r e thus a f f o r d e d g r e a t e r c i r c u l a t i o n o p p o r t u n i t i e s . there are many o t h e r a l t e r n a t i v e forms o f p u b l i c a t i o n r e c o g n i z e d by t e a c h e r - w r i t e r s . stephen judy s t a t e s : there are many d i f f e r e n t ways the t e a c h e r can p r o v i d e s t u d e n t s w i t h a r e a d e r s h i p . some papers a r e b e s t ' p u b l i s h e d ' by h a v i n g them r e a d a l o u d t o the c l a s s , e i t h e r by the a u t h o r o r the t e a c h e r . some w r i t i n g s h o u l d be r e a d and t a p e - r e c o r d e d to become p a r t o f a c l a s s l i b r a r y o f r e c o r d e d l i t e r a t u r e . s t u d e n t ' s work can be p o s t e d on the b o a r d , s u b m i t t e d to a c l a s s newspaper o r magazine,, s e n t to the s c h o o l paper o r magazine, r u n - o f f on d i t t o f o r the c l a s s , and c i r c u l a t e d i n m a n u s c r i p t form. [judy, , p. ] h e n r i e t t a dombey a l s o d e s c r i b e s a v a r i e t y o f p u b l i c a t i o n modes: the a u d i e n c e i s v i t a l t o the s t o r y t e l l e r but n e c e s s a r y t o the w r i t e r too. i h e l p c h i l d r e n make t h e i r own books l i k e r e a l books w i t h i l l u s t r a t i o n s , a l i s t o f c o n t e n t s , and none o f the t e a c h e r ' s red b i r o . ( s p e l l i n g can be t a u g h t more e f f i c i e n t l y than by cramping a c h i l d ' s w r i t i n g s t y l e ) . the c h i l d r e n r e a d t h e i r s t o r i e s t o t h e i r f r i e n d s and l e n d them round the c l a s s . i f i n d t h e i r books t r a v e l f u r t h e r than the c h i l d r e n t h e m s e l v e s . nine y e a r o l d boys r e a d s t o r i e s by g i r l s t h e y would be shy t o t a l k t o . s p e c i a l l y produced books and c l a s s mag- a z i n e s g i v e the c h i l d r e n a sense o f p u b l i c a t i o n and i n c r e a s e i n t e r e s t i n the c o n t e n t o f what i s w r i t t e n . . . . reading t h e i r own s t o r i e s o r poems a t a s c h o o l assembly g i v e s them a sense t h a t t h e i r work has an importance o u t s i d e t h e i r own c l a s s r o o m . pro- d u c i n g d u p l i c a t e d magazines f o r s a l e a t s i x p e n c e a time t u r n s them i n t o r e a l w r i t e r s . [dombey, autumn, ] n o t i c e t h a t l i v e performances by s t u d e n t s a r e not upstaged by the i m p r e s s i v e 'shows' which r e s u l t from the use o f a r r a y s o f m e c h a n i c a l p a r a p h e n a l i a . l i v e p o e t r y r e a d i n g s and l i v e performances o f s t u d e n t - w r i t t e n p l a y s are as c o m p e l l i n g as e v e r . they are a unique and t i m e l e s s p u b l i s h i n g form. words and music have been u n i t e d f o r c e n t u r i e s t o produce p a r t i c u l a r p u b l i c a t i o n e f f e c t s . the f o l k - s o n g i s r e a l l y p o e t r y - music. the montage i s a form o f p u b l i c a t i o n t h a t can be produced by i n d i v i d u a l w r i t e r s o r by s m a l l groups o f w r i t e r s . i t i n v o l v e s u s i n g a tape r e c o r d e r t o r e c o r d works which have been a r r a n g e d and accompanied by s e l e c t e d music. some w r i t e r s f e e l t h a t e l e c t r o n i c music makes a p r e f e r a b l e p o e t i c background because the w r i t e r can l i t e r a l l y t e a r o f f a s t r i p o f music and subdue i t t o h i s own purposes w i t h o u t b e i n g c o n c e r n e d about the i n t e g r i t y o f the m u s i c a l p e r f o r m e r and composer. though a time-consuming and c o m p l i c a t e d p r o c e d u r e , the montage o f t e n produces s u r p r i s i n g l y e f f e c t i v e r e s u l t s . a v a r i a t i o n o f t h i s p u b l i c a t i o n i s t o c o o r d i n a t e w i t h the montage, a s l i d e show, t r a n s f o r m i n g i t i n t o an a u d i o - v i s u a l e x p e r i e n c e . the c o m b i n a t i o n o f words and dance i s but a n o t h e r p u b l i c a t i o n form. the r e c i t e d poem o r s t o r y i s the s c r i p t f o r the choreography o f the dancer, who p h y s i c a l l y i n t e r p r e t s i n dance the moods and emotions the words evoke i n him. the a d d i t i o n o f music t o t h i s word-dance c r e a t e s y e t a n o t h e r p u b l i c a t i o n dimension. a r e l a t i v e l y new p u b l i c a t i o n form f o r w r i t e r s i s the medium o f v i s u a l a r t . s c u l p t o r s and p a i n t e r s a r e i n v i t i n g p o e t r y , i n s m a l l packages, i n t o t h e i r works. poem p o s t e r s have taken the w o r l d by storm o f l a t e . p o e t r y i s even a p p e a r i n g on c l o t h i n g ; t - s h i r t s and h i g h f a s h i o n d r e s s e s commonly s p o r t b o l d words and p h r a s e s . t h i s new p o e t r y may not always be a e s t h e t i c a l l y s t i m u - l a t i n g but i t i s a l i v e and t h r i v i n g and e x t r e m e l y p u b l i c . computer p o e t r y i s a c o n t r o v e r s i a l mode o f e x p r e s s i o n . though some w r i t e r s r e f u s e t o r e c o g n i z e i t as p o e t r y , o t h e r s such as e a r l e b i r n e y a p p l a u d i t s n o v e l t y : there's a l s o o f c o u r s e the s o - c a l l e d 'computer p o e t r y . ' r e c i p e : f e e d the b a s i c r u l e s o f s y n t a x and some r e c u r r e n t r h y t h m i c p a t t e r n s i n t o a computer, add v o c a b u l a r y l o a d e d w i t h image words, run the machine l o n g enough, and out come enormous l e n g t h s o f word-tape a r r a n g e d i n l i n e s . by the o p e r a t i o n o f s t a t i s t i c a l chance, such tapes w i l l o c c a s i o n a l l y produce passages w i t h s u f f i c i e n t u n i t y o f theme and image and enough p r o v o c a t i v e o v e r t o n e s t o w a r r a n t t h e i r b e i n g c l i p p e d o u t and p r e s e n t e d as poems. e n g l i s h p r o f e s s o r s who are o u t r a g e d o r t e r r o r - s t r u c k by such a f f a i r s , o r r e j e c t them s c o r n f u l l y as machine-made, b e t r a y t h e i r misunder- s t a n d i n g o f the n a t u r e o f p o e t r y . the computer, used t h i s way, i s s i m p l y an enormously c o m p l i c a t e d t y p e - w r i t e r . the poem i s s t i l l b e i n g made by p o e t i c a l l y - s e n s i t i z e d human b e i n g s - - b y t h e l i n g u i s t i c e x p e r t who chooses the d a t a words and, above a l l , by the e d i t o r o f the t a p e , the c r i t i c - p e r c e i v e r who e x t r a c t s the poem from the s u r r o u n d i n g g i b b e r i s h . even when you 'make' y o u r own poem longhand, you don't make i t s form, you f i n d i t . some o f t h e s e poems a r e , i n f a c t , much b e t t e r than many i've been r e a d i n g r e c e n t l y i n such f a s h i o n a b l e american p o e t r y j o u r n a l s as c h i c a g o poetry, under the s i g n a t u r e s o f s o - c a l l e d l e a d i n g american p o e t s . [ b i r n e y , , p. ] the r e a l w r i t e r s a r e . n o t t h r e a t e n e d by e l e c t r o n i c s and mechanics. i n s t e a d , they use t h e s e d e v i c e s t o f u r t h e r the scope o f w r i t i n g . the s t u d e n t s and the t e a c h e r must be a l i v e t o the end- l e s s a l t e r n a t i v e modes o f p u b l i c a t i o n . our minds, as e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s , a r e o f t e n i m p r i s o n e d i n the w o r l d o f p r i n t a l o n e . today s t u d e n t s are e x p l o r i n g a r e a s f o r p u b l i c a t i o n t h a t are t o t a l l y new and v i t a l . the e x p r e s s i o n o f words through v a r i o u s combina- t i o n s o f movement, c o l o u r , t e x t u r e , shape and sound i s but an i n t r o d u c t i o n t o t h i s f i e l d o f p u b l i c a t i o n . the w o r l d s o f a r t , c r e a t i v e drama, music and c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g a r e becoming i n c r e a s - i n g l y i n t e r t w i n e d as s t u d e n t s s e a r c h f o r t h e i r own p u b l i c a t i o n v o i c e . i m p l i c a t i o n s o f p u b l i c a t i o n f o r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g programs peer response the f o r e m o s t i m p l i c a t i o n o f a p u b l i c a t i o n o r i e n t e d c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e i s t h a t the s t u d e n t s need a s o u n d i n g b o a r d t o t e s t out t h e i r works b e f o r e a c t u a l l y p u b l i s h i n g . whatever he i s w r i t i n g , the w r i t e r t a k e s c a l c u l a t e d r i s k s w i t h the meanings o f words. the keener h i s awareness o f the many v a r i e d d e n o t a t i o n s and c o n n o t a t i o n s o f words, the more e f f e c t i v e h i s w r i t i n g i s l i k e l y t o be. he must t r y and f o r e s e e how the r e a d e r w i l l i n t e r - p r e t h i s work. james e. m i l l e r j r . v e r i f i e s t h i s c o n c e r n : the w r i t e r and r e a d e r t o g e t h e r make language mean and i n the i d e a l s i t u a t i o n t h e y are making i t mean the same t h i n g — b u t o f t e n too they a r e n o t , not because o f p e r v e r s i t y o r s t u p i d i t y , but because o f d i f f e r e n c e s . . . ( i n s o c i a l e n v i r o n m e n t ) . a l l o f us are f a m i l i a r w i t h p i e c e s o f w r i t i n g t h a t have meant one t h i n g t o the w r i t e r , and a v a r i e t y o f t h i n g s t o h i s r e a d e r s . t h i s w i l l p r o b a b l y always be the r e s u l t t o some e x t e n t w i t h w r i t i n g , p a r t i c u l a r l y when i t i s l o n g and c o m p l i c a t e d , s u b t l e , r i c h i n s u g g e s t i o n . but i f a w r i t e r i s g o i n g t o approach the i d e a l o f l u c i d i t y i n meaning, he must immerse h i m s e l f not i n the d i c t i o n a r y but i n language- use i n many c o n t e x t s , spoken and w r i t t e n , and he must d e v e l o p a deep s e n s i t i v i t y t o the nuances and s u b t l e t i e s o f words and p h r a s e s . he must d e v e l o p not o n l y a s t r o n g sense o f what he means and i n t e n d s t o mean, but he must a l s o d e v e l o p the i m a g i n a t i o n t h a t e n a b l e s him t o f o r e s e e how r e a d e r s w i l l respond, not j u s t t o g r o s s meaning but t o the o v e r t o n e s and s u b v i b r a t i o n s o f words. [ m i l l e r , , pp. - ] the s t u d e n t w r i t e r must d i s c o v e r , b e f o r e p u b l i c a t i o n , i f he i s i n c o n t r o l o f h i s words, o r i f they a r e r u n n i n g rampant o v e r the meaning he i s a t t e m p t i n g t o convey. in e f f e c t , t h i s s t a g e i n the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g p r o c e s s i s s i m p l y the n a t u r a l p r o g r e s s i o n o f the i n c e s t u o u s r e l a t i o n s h i p between c r e a t i o n and c r i t i c i s m . for c o n v e n i e n c e o f emphasis, c r e a t i o n i s s t r i c t l y s e p a r a t e d from . c r i t i c i s m but r e a l i s t i c a l l y they o v e r l a p each o t h e r almost i n d i s t i n g u i s h a b l y . as t.s. e l i o t s t a t e s i n h i s i n d i c t m e n t o f matthew a r n o l d : matthew a r n o l d d i s t i n g u i s h e s f a r too b l u n t l y , i t seems t o me, between the two a c t i v i t i e s : he o v e r l o o k s the c a p i t a l importance o f c r i t i c i s m i n the work o f c r e a t i o n i t s e l f . p r o b a b l y , i n d e e d , the l a r g e r p a r t o f the l a b o u r o f an a u t h o r i n composing h i s work i s c r i t i c a l l a b o u r ; the l a b o u r o f s i f t i n g , combining, c o n s t r u c t i n g , expunging, c o r r e c t i n g , t e s t i n g : t h i s f r i g h t f u l t o i l i s as much c r i t i c a l as c r e a t i v e . [ e l i o t , , p. ] in t r u t h , c r e a t i o n and c r i t i c i s m a r e i n s e p a r a b l e . the workshop approach i s deemed the most e f f e c t i v e method o f e l i c i t i n g such p r e - p u b l i c a t i o n response to s t u d e n t w r i t i n g . s t u d e n t w r i t e r s need t o be f r e e t o t e s t t h e i r m a t e r i a l s on t h e i r f e l l o w s t u d e n t s when they f e e l the work i s ready. the workshop approach i s i n f o r m a l and c a s u a l , y e t c o n s t a n t l y humming w i t h v a r i o u s forms o f b u s i n e s s . i t s t a n d s t o reason t h a t n o t e v e r y - one w i l l be ready f o r p r e - p u b l i c a t i o n response a t the same time. c o n s e q u e n t l y t h e workshop approach i s e f f e c t i v e . however, s t u d e n t s must be c a r e f u l not t o d i s t u r b t h o s e s t u d e n t s t h a t a r e e m b r o i l e d i n the f r a g i l e s t r u g g l e f o r i n i t i a l e x p r e s s i o n . they a r e t o ask o n l y those who are i n t o the p o l i s h i n g s t a g e s , as t h e s e s t a g e s are more e a s i l y r e t u r n e d to a f t e r a t u r n o f thought. as granowsky and b o t e l s t a t e : when the e a r l y w r i t i n g e f f o r t s are completed, t h e y ' l l need to be d i s c u s s e d , because even the f i n e s t c r e a t i v e e f f o r t s can be p o l i s h e d and made b e t t e r . why e l s e do p u b l i s h i n g houses h i r e e d i t o r s to work w i t h p r o f e s s i o n a l a u t h o r s ? [granowsky and b o t e l , may, , p. ] hence, the s t u d e n t s a c t as e d i t o r s f o r t h e i r c o l l e a g u e s . n o t i c e t h a t t h i s p r a c t i c e i s i n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h the ' r e a l ' w o r l d o u t s i d e the c l a s s r o o m ! stephen judy a l s o advocates workshops and s t u d e n t s as e d i t o r s : encourage the s t u d e n t s to t a l k t o you and to each o t h e r about problems w h i l e they are w r i t i n g . . . . encourage the s t u d e n t s to s e r v e as each o t h e r ' s e d i t o r s . one doesn't need t o be an e x p e r t i n c o m p o s i t i o n and r h e t o r i c to make u s e f u l s u g g e s t i o n s about the c l a r i t y and e f f e c t i v e n e s s o f w r i t i n g . a l t h o u g h s t u d e n t s may not know t e r m i n o l o g y , they are c e r t a i n l y c a p a b l e o f s p o t t i n g e d i t o r i a l problems and t a l k i n g about them i n t h e i r own language: 'hey, i don't know what y o u ' r e t a l k i n g about.' ( t r a n s l a t i o n f o r t e a c h e r s : 'lacks c l a r i t y . ' ) 'that's c r a z y . ' ( t r a n s l a t i o n : 'lacks l o g i c a l s t r u c t u r e . ' ) 'i don't b e l i e v e i t . ' ( t r a n s l a t i o n : 'needs more s u p p o r t i n g e v i d e n c e . ) s t u d e n t s are h i g h l y p e r c e p t i v e i n t h e s e ways, and when t h e i r e d i t i n g has r e a l purpose, they can take o v e r the p r o c e s s and make g e n u i n e l y h e l p f u l s u g g e s t i o n s to each o t h e r . leave p r o o f r e a d i n g to the s t u d e n t s . in e v e r y c l a s s t h e r e are some s t u d e n t s who have mastered most o f the p r o o f r e a d i n g s k i l l s . o f t e n such s t u d e n t s are s i m p l y 'good s p e l l e r s ' o r ' i n t u i t i v e p u n c t u a t o r s . ' acknowledge t h e i r s k i l l by s e t t i n g them up as p r o o f r e a d i n g c o n s u l t a n t s to the c l a s s . . . . help the s t u d e n t s l e a r n to r e a c t to each o t h e r ' s work. small-and l a r g e - g r o u p d i s c u s s i o n o f completed c o m p o s i t i o n s s h o u l d be a r e g u l a r p a r t o f any e n g l i s h c l a s s . a t f i r s t you may f i n d t h a t s t u d e n t s are a b i t h a r d on each o t h e r , no doubt i m i t a t i n g p r e v i o u s t e a c h e r s o f t h e i r a c q u a i n t a n c e . i t may take some p r a c t i c e b e f o r e the s t u d e n t s can respond t o the s u b s t a n c e o f each o t h e r ' s w r i t i n g , but i t w i l l come w i t h time and guidance read some o f y o u r own w r i t i n g t o the c l a s s , and s h a r e y o u r own s a t i s f a c t i o n s and d i s s a t i s f a c t i o n s w i t h i t . [judy, , pp. - ] in e f f e c t the workshop c l a s s b e g i n s to o p e r a t e v e r y e f f i c i e n t l y w i t h - o u t the t r a d i t i o n a l t e a c h e r image. the s t u d e n t s are a t t e m p t i n g to h e l p each o t h e r r e a l i z e t h e i r p o t e n t i a l s as e f f e c t i v e w r i t e r s . laverne g o n z a l e z ' s c o l l e g e c o m p o s i t i o n c l a s s e s a t purdue u n i v e r s i t y a l s o p a r t i c i p a t e i n p e e r c r i t i c i s m b e f o r e p u b l i c a t i o n i s e f f e c t e d i n t h e i r c o l l e g e newspaper: w o r k s - i n - p r o g r e s s a r e s u b m i t t e d t o t h r e e o r f o u r p e e r s . a t t h i s p o i n t c r i t i c i s m b e g i n s . e a r l y c r i t i c i s m n o t e s merely response t o an i d e a — i f as the a u t h o r reads he t r i g g e r s a t h o u g h t , the l i s t e n e r v e r b a l i z e s i t . then packed s e n t e n c e s , s t r o n g use o f v e r b , e x c i t i n g metaphor, v i v i d c o m p a r i s o n / c o n t r a s t , unusual d e f i n i t i o n r e c e i v e p r a i s e . c r i t i c s i n v e s t i g a t e p o s s i b l e i r o n y o r l a r g e r i d e a . b e f o r e any c u t t i n g away may be done, s t r e n g t h s e m e r g e — t h e dross may then be s l o u g h e d o f f i n the r e v i s i o n p r o c e s s . as papers c o n t i n u e to be s u b m i t t e d f o r p e e r c r i t i c i s m , the s t u d e n t s b e g i n t o s e t the c r i t e r i a f o r t o u g h e r c r i t i c i s m . the a u t h o r o f f e r s a paper deemed ready f o r p u b l i c a t i o n to a p e e r group whose members w r i t e on a c o v e r s h e e t those p l a c e s where the paper s t i l l needs work. f i n a l l y the group s c r u t i n i z e s b e g i n n i n g s , e n d i n g s , and i m p l i c a t i o n s o f the paper. as s t u d e n t s l o o k thus c r i t i c a l l y a t t h e i r own w r i t i n g , they o f t e n b e g i n to review c r i t i c a l l y a d v e r t i s e m e n t s , the r h e t o r i c a l garbage used by h i g h l y emotional a u t h o r s , and a t l a s t to produce sound c r i t i c a l w r i t i n g o f m a t e r i a l i n c l u d e d i n the newspaper. [ g o n z a l e z , , p. ] g o n z a l e z ' s system i s somewhat more s y s t e m a t i z e d than judy's t o t a l l y open workshop. the s t u d e n t r e a d e r s are almost too thorough i n t h e i r c r i t i c i s m . l i o n e l kearns, a well-known canadian w r i t e r , d i s c u s s e s h i s own e x p e r i e n c e s i n a u n i v e r s i t y o f b r i t i s h columbia c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s : . . . t h e r e was the f a c t t h a t i would be l e f t out o f the a c t i o n i f i d i d n o t hand a n y t h i n g i n . and t h e r e was a good deal o f a c t i o n i n t h a t c l a s s . the i n s t r u c t o r made no attempt to teach us how t o w r i t e . he merely conducted open-form workshop s e s s i o n s i n which we d i s c u s s e d o u r own, each o t h e r ' s o r o u t s i d e work, most o f which was c i r c u l a t e d anonymously. now t h i s , f o r me, was a v e r y s t r a n g e and s t a r t l i n g e x p e r i e n c e — t o s u d d e n l y a c q u i r e an a r t i c u l a t e and r e s p o n s i v e a u d i e n c e f o r my work, and to be i n on t h e i r honest a p p r a i s a l s o f what i had produced. needless t o say t h e i r i n d i v i d u a l responses v a r i e d , but i was a b l e to see what k i n d o f r e a c t i o n my work produced on the v a r i o u s p e o p l e i n v o l v e d . furthermore, i was a b l e to b r i n g my own c r i t i c a l f a c u l t i e s to b e a r on t h e i r work, and to hear t h e i r own defence o r e x p l a n a t i o n o f what they were a t t e m p t i n g t o do. [ k e a r n s , a p r i l , ] t h i s p a r t i c u l a r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s had a s m a l l degree o f r e g u l t i o n : anonymous s u b m i s s i o n o f m a t e r i a l s , and p a r t i c u l a r d i s c u s s i o n p e r i o d s . p e t e r elbow's book w r i t i n g w i t h o u t teachers i s a v e r i - t a b l e goldmine o f p r a c t i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n on i n s t i t u t i n g a p e e r response workshop. though h i s workshop i s i n t e n d e d f o r work on p r a c t i c a l e x p o s i t o r y w r i t i n g s , t h e r e are o b v i o u s i m p l i c a t i o n s f o r workshops i n c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s e s . elbow emphasizes the n e c e s s i t y o f w r i t e r s needing "movies o f p e o p l e ' s minds" to see how t h e i r works a r e r e c e i v e d . he e x p l i c a t e s t h i s need i n the v o i c e o f an i m p a s s i o n e d w r i t e r : don't g i v e me any more o f t h a t s u b j e c t i v e b u l l s h i t . don't e v e r t e l l me my w r i t i n g i s too u n c l e a r . t e l l me what you were p e r c e i v i n g and how you were e x p e r i e n c i n g t h a t passage you s u b j e c t i v e l y l a b e l u n c l e a r . don't t e l l me i've got too many a d j e c t i v e s . that's s u b j e c t i v e b u l l s h i t . there's no such t h i n g as too many a d j e c t i v e s . there's g r e a t w r i t i n g w i t h t w i c e as many a d j e c t i v e s . t e l l me how you were r e a c t i n g and what you were s e e i n g and where. don't t a l k to me about good w r i t i n g and bad w r i t i n g . no one knows. don't g i v e me a l o t o f u n t r u s t w o r t h y nonsense. give me some f i r s t - h a n d d a t a i can t r u s t , not a l o t o f second-hand c o n c l u s i o n s based on hidden data and f a l s e h y p o t h e s e s . [elbow, , p. ] though t h e s e s t a t e m e n t s do n o t e x a c t l y c o n s t i t u t e a r e a s o n e d a r g u - ment i n the most temperate language, elbow e f f e c t i v e l y makes h i s p o i n t . orthodoxy bound t e a c h e r s take note. elbow proceeds to g i v e d i r e c t i o n s to s t u d e n t r e a d e r s to h e l p them r e v e a l these "movies" to the w r i t e r : . . . p r e t e n d t h a t t h e r e i s a whole s e t o f i n s t r u m e n t s you have hooked up to y o u r s e l f which r e c o r d e v e r y - t h i n g t h a t o c c u r s i n you: n o t j u s t p u l s e , b l o o d p r e s s u r e , eeg, and so on, b u t a l s o ones which t e l l e v e r y image, f e e l i n g , t h o u g h t , and word t h a t happens i n y o u . p r e t e n d you have hooked them a l l up and now you are j u s t r e a d i n g o f f the p r i n t - o u t from the machines. [elbow, , pp. - ] he has f u r t h e r a d v i c e f o r the r e a d e r : . make s u r e you've had a good chance t o read the w r i t i n g . . never q u a r r e l w i t h someone e l s e ' s r e a c t i o n . . give s p e c i f i c r e a c t i o n s to s p e c i f i c p a r t s . . no k i n d o f r e a c t i o n i s wrong. . though no r e a c t i o n s are wrong, you s t i l l have to t r y to r e a d wel . . sometimes you may n o t want t o — pass y o u r t u r n . . you are always r i g h t and always wrong. - you a r e always r i g h t i n t h a t no one i s e v e r i n a p o s i t i o n t o t e l l you what you p e r c e i v e and . e x p e r i e n c e . - but you a r e always wrong i n t h a t you n e v e r see a c c u r a t e l y enough, e x p e r i e n c e f u l l y enough. such a d v i c e to the r e a d e r i s b a l a n c e d by h i s a d v i c e to the w r i t e r on l i s t e n i n g t o the r e a d e r ' s "movies": . be q u i e t and i s t e n . - guard a g a i n s t b e i n g t r i c k e d i n t o r e s p o n d i n g . . don't t r y t o understand what p e o p l e t e l l you. . but do t r y t o u n d e r s t a n d how they t e l l i t to you. . don't r e j e c t what r e a d e r s t e l l you. . don't s t o p them from g i v i n g you r e a c t i o n s . . but don't be t y r a n n i z e d by what they say. . ask f o r what you want, but don't p l a y t e a c h e r w i t h them. . you are always r i g h t and always wrong. - you are always r i g h t i n t h a t y o u r d e c i s i o n about the w r i t i n g i s always f i n a l . - but you are always wrong i n t h a t you can n e v e r q u a r r e l w i t h t h e i r e x p e r i e n c e . and you must assume t h a t you are n e v e r good enough a t s h a r i n g t h e i r p e r c e p t i o n - s h e d d i n g y o u r b l i n d e r s , g e t t i n g i n t o t h e i r shoes. elbow w r i t e s from a c t u a l e x p e r i e n c e , and h i s a d v i c e i s s o l i d . elbow warns o f the p o s s i b l e breakdown o f the workshop system, g i v e n p a r t i c u l a r c l a s s s i t u a t i o n s . the t e a c h e r s h o u l d be tuned to r e c o g n i z e the danger s i g n a l s : . people p e r s i s t i n a r g u i n g . such fuming i s e x h a u s t i n g and wastes a l l a v a i l a b l e energy. . people don't argue. the c l a s s becomes s l a c k , r e l a x e d , b o r i n g , unfocused.. . someone who l i k e s t o t a l k a l o t i s c o n t i n u o u s l y g i v e n the o p p o r t u n i t y t o do so. the c l a s s becomes a b o r i n g one-man show. there i s a p e c u l i a r t a u t n e s s o f energy and a t t e n t i o n e v i d e n t i n the s u c c e s s f u l workshop. the energy i s not d i r e c t e d towards a c h i e v i n g a common c o n c l u s i o n , but r a t h e r towards l i s t e n i n g t o and c o n s i d e r i n g e v e r y r e a d e r ' s r e a c t i o n s , and, i n a s e n s e , t r y i n g t o agree w i t h them a l l a t once. c o n s e q u e n t l y t h e r e e x i s t s a l o t o f a m b i g u i t y , and a l o t o f c o n t r a d i c t i o n , but h e r e i n l i e s the workshop's s u c c e s s . undoubtedly, the workshop approach i s the b e s t p o s s i b l e method o f e f f e c t i v e l y t e a c h i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . s t u d e n t s need the freedom to pursue t h e i r own works a t t h e i r own speeds. yet they a l s o need c l a s s d i s c u s s i o n s o f t h e i r works to see i f t h e y are e l i c i t i n g the r e a d e r response they were a i m i n g f o r . in s e n i o r s e c o n d a r y s c h o o l , i t i s e v i d e n t t h a t s t u d e n t s f e e l much more c o m f o r t a b l e as w r i t e r and as c r i t i c i f the works are s u b m i t t e d anonymously. the r e a d e r i n p a r t i c u l a r i s f r e e d from making judgements about the poem, based on h i s a c q u a i n t a n c e w i t h the w r i t e r . s t u d e n t s type up t h e i r works on d i t t o s h e e t s and the c o p i e s a r e d i s t r i b u t e d the day b e f o r e the c r i t i c a l d i s c u s s i o n p e r i o d . t h i s to a l l o w the s t u d e n t s p l e n t y o f time to r e a d and d i g e s t the works and t o a r t i c u l a t e t h e i r r e a c t i o n s t o them. the t e a c h e r and the s t u d e n t s must be wary about m o t i v e s f o r c r i t i c i z i n g each o t h e r s ' works. wordsworth's well-known l i n e s v e r b a l i z e the danger i n h e r e n t i n c r i t i c i s m : our meddling i n t e l l e c t mis-shapes the beauteous forms o f t h i n g s : we murder t o d i s s e c t . . . . c r i t i c i s m c e r t a i n l y need n o t be damaging, but everyone must be c o n s c i o u s o f the p o s s i b i l i t y i f conducted u n s c r u p u l o u s l y . a l l c r i t i c i s m must be made w i t h an eye t o b e i n g c o n s t r u c t i v e and h e l p f u l , i n terms o f p u b l i c a t i o n . there i s no s e t s c h e d u l e f o r c r i t i c a l d i s c u s s i o n p e r i o d s . when the need a r i s e s , the c l a s s o r g a n i z e s one. g e n e r a l l y they o c c u r about once e v e r y two weeks and l a s t f o r about two p e r i o d s . i t i s i m p o r t a n t t h a t the works be read o u t l o u d b e f o r e b e i n g d i s c u s s e d . two r e a d i n g s , s e p a r a t e d by a p r e g n a n t pause f o r c o n s i d e r a t i o n p u r p o s e s , tend to e l i c i t more s e n s i t i v e and w e l l - t h o u g h t o u t comments from the s t u d e n t s . through the o r a l r e a d i n g o f a c r e a t i v e work, the r e a d e r a c t i v e l y , r a t h e r than p a s s i v e l y , u n i t e s w i t h the e s s e n c e o f work. the manner i n which a work i s read r e v e a l s much about the p a r t i c u l a r i n t e r p r e t a t i o n the r e a d e r has g l e a n e d from i t and s h o u l d be o p e n l y d i s c u s s e d . c r i t i c a l d i s c u s s i o n p e r i o d s are r a t h e r s p e c i a l . they exude a f e e l i n g o f c a m a r a d e r i e , as everyone s t r i v e s f o r the common goal o f p u b l i c a t i o n . the mood i s warm as a l l s i t i n a c i r c l e , s i p p i n g t e a and d i s c u s s i n g the v a r i o u s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s o f one o f a f e l l o w w r i t e r ' s works. the t e a c h e r i s a l s o a w r i t e r and s h a r e s the same aims as h i s s t u d e n t s . the t e a c h e r ' s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n o f a s t u d e n t ' s work i s no more h o l y than an i n t e r p r e t a t i o n by a f e l l o w s t u d e n t . a l l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s , though they r e q u i r e t e x t u a l s u p p o r t , are i n d i v i d u a l i s t i c . c o n s e q u e n t l y , the t e a c h e r , though w i t h more background than h i s s t u d e n t s , has no g r e a t e r say as to the meaning of s t u d e n t works. t h i s i s presuming t h a t s t u d e n t s a r e r e a c t i n g h o n e s t l y , s e n s i t i v e l y , and i n t e l l i g e n t l y to the work a t hand. i t i s i n t h i s a r e a t h a t the t e a c h e r has t o be aware to t e a c h s t u d e n t s how to r e a c t to a work i n an a c c e p t a b l e manner. the t e a c h e r s h o u l d a l s o t e s t h i s w r i t i n g on h i s s t u d e n t s . i t i s f a s c i n a t i n g and v e r y u s e f u l to see how s t u d e n t s respond to work when they are unaware t h a t i t i s — d a s h — t e a c h e r ' s ! needless to say c r i t i c a l d i s c u s s i o n c o u l d become v e r y p a i n f u l and d e t r i m e n t a l to the s t u d e n t whose work i s b e i n g c r i t i c i z e d i f the c l a s s atmosphere i s not g e n t l y , but f i r m l y c o n t r o l l e d . high s c h o o l w r i t e r s a r e , i n g e n e r a l , v e r y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , as a c r e a t i v e work i s v e r y s e l f - r e v e a l i n g . the t e a c h e r o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g must c r e a t e an environment which i s warm and c o n d u c i v e to the e x p r e s s i o n and a c c e p t a n c e of p e r s o n a l f e e l i n g s and i d e a s . what a c h a l l e n g e t h i s i s i n a s t e r i l e c l a s s r o o m s i t u a t i o n of n a i l e d down s e a t s and s t r i c t time i m p o s i t i o n s . however, the environment b e i n g spoken of t r a n s c e n d s the p h y s i c a l l i m i t a t i o n s of the c l a s s r o o m , even though i t must deal w i t h them. that i s , even though the s c h o o l demands a one hour c l a s s d e s i g n a t e d 'time t o be c r e a t i v e , ' and t r a d i t i o n a l l y emphasizes p u b l i c i t y o v e r p r i v a c y , i n s p e c t i o n o v e r i n t r o s p e c t i o n , and the 'how' of w r i t i n g o v e r the 'what' and 'why' of w r i t i n g — t h e t e a c h e r need not bow i n r e v e r e n c e to t h e s e a n c i e n t p r a c t i c e s . one cannot emphasize too much the importance of t h i s t e a c h e r - i n i t i a t e d e n v i r - onment, because w i t h o u t i t the s t u d e n t w r i t e r ' s p o t e n t i a l w i l l remain c o n s c i o u s l y i m p r i s o n e d w i t h i n the n o n t h r e a t e n i n g w a l l s of h i s s e l f . how does a t e a c h e r go about i n i t i a t i n g such an environment? the main f a c t o r s are warmth, t r u s t and c h a r i s m a , and t h e s e cannot be t a u g h t as t h e r e a r e a s many d i f f e r e n t forms as i n d i v i d u a l s . a p r a c t i c e t h a t i s s u c c e s s f u l i n c r e a t i n g such an atmosphere i s t o i n s t i l l i n the s t u d e n t s a few b a s i c p r e m i s e s : t h e i r own work i s , i n f a c t , unique. one w r i t e r ' s good work i s n e v e r , n e v e r , n e v e r l i k e any o t h e r w r i t e r ' s good work. c o n s e q u e n t l y , each w r i t e r , s t u d e n t o r p r o f e s s i o n a l , has h i s own g o a l . t h i s s t a t e o f mind o f p e r s o n a l d i r e c t i o n i s i m p o r t a n t . s t u d e n t s s h o u l d w a i t u n t i l t h e i r works have ' c o o l e d o f f b e f o r e they ask f o r c r i t i c a l r e s p o n s e s . when a work i s s t i l l i n the i n f a n t s t a g e s o f c r e a t i o n and even when a work has been w r i t t e n , but i s s t i l l i n e x t r i c a b l e from i t s c r e a t o r , c r i t i c i s m i s t o r t u r e . i t i s g e n e r a l l y o n l y a m a t t e r o f days f o r the works to cool o f f enough f o r the w r i t e r t o s t e p back and more o b j e c t i v e l y r e g a r d h i s work a p a r t from h i m s e l f . s t u d e n t w r i t e r s must l e a r n to a c c e p t c r i t i c i s m con- s t r u c t i v e l y , w i t h an eye to p o l i s h i n g t h e i r works. t h i s becomes immensely e a s i e r i f the s t u d e n t w r i t e r can a c c e p t the f a c t t h a t i t i s h i s work, the words he chose to put on paper, t h a t are b e i n g c r i t i c i z e d , n o t the i d e a s o r emotions b e h i n d those words. i t i s d i f f i c u l t t o e x t r i c a t e the s e l f from the work, but i t i s mandatory f o r c r i t i c a l purposes and f o r p r e s e r v a t i o n o f the w r i t e r ' s w e l l - b e i n g . s t u d e n t s must a l s o l e a r n t o g i v e c r i t i c i s m c o n s t r u c - t i v e l y , g e n t l y but h o n e s t l y , and concern the work, not the wri t e r . h e n r i e t t a dombey c l a i m s she has had s u c c e s s i n t h i s area w i t h h e r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s e s i n j u n i o r h i g h . "they comment f r e e l y on each o t h e r s ' works and w i t h s u r p r i s i n g l y l i t t l e i n t e r f e r e n c e from t h e i r f e e l i n g s about each o t h e r as p e o p l e . " [dombey, autumn, , p. ] these t r a i t s o f a c c e p t a n c e and d i s p e n s a t i o n o f c r i t i c a l a n a l y s i s t h a t the s t u d e n t s are l e a r n i n g t r a n s c e n d the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s i n t h e i r v a l u e . these t r a i t s a r e v a l u e d i n g e n e r a l day-to-day l i v i n g . t h i s s u p p o r t i v e , p u b l i c a t i o n - a i m e d atmosphere o f the c l a s s r o o m s h o u l d pervade the a t t i t u d e s o f the s t u d e n t w i t h r e s p e c t to o t h e r s ' works, s t u d e n t and t e a c h e r , p e e r and p r o f e s s i o n a l ) , and o f the s t u d e n t w i t h r e s p e c t t o h i s own works. t e a c h e r as t u t o r where i s the t e a c h e r i n t h i s s t u d e n t - b u s y workshop? i d e a l l y , the t e a c h e r i s f r e e to assume the r o l e o f a r e s o u r c e person and a t u t o r . lessons d i r e c t e d to the e n t i r e c l a s s are seldom o f v a l u e t o the s t u d e n t s , as each i s f o l l o w i n g a d i f f e r e n t p u r s u i t , and i s a t a d i f f e r e n t s t a g e i n the development o f h i s i n d i v i d u a l work. of c o u r s e , i f a common concern i s e v i d e n t among the s t u d e n t s , a whole c l a s s l e s s o n i s i n o r d e r . i t i s most e f f e c t i v e i f the s t u d e n t s r e q u e s t a d v i c e when they are i n d i v i d u a l l y ready f o r i t . w r i t e r s t h e m s e l v e s , when i n t e r v i e w e d i n v a r i a b l y a p p l a u d t h i s approach. e a r l e b i r n e y , a c c o m p l i s h e d canadian w r i t e r and, one time b a s t i o n o f the ubc c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g department r e i t e r a t e s t h i s t e a c h e r r o l e : f o r the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i n s t r u c t o r i s n o t , cannot be a remote and g o d l i k e l e c t u r e r b e f o r e a mass c l a s s , n o r a d r o n i n g machine f o r t e x t b o o k s , but a man o r woman around a seminar t a b l e i n h i g h l y p e r s o n a l and spontaneous c o n t a c t w i t h a s m a l l group o f s t u d e n t s he has h i m s e l f c a r e f u l l y s e l e c t e d . he has r e a d the v o l u n t a r y e x e r c i s e s o f t h e i r i m a g i n a t i o n s , and he i s t h e r e not o n l y t o make them e x e r c i s e f u r t h e r , but t o v o c a l i z e t o them the e f f e c t o f t h e i r work on him, and t o accustom each i n h i s c l a s s t o do the same, so t h a t each may l e a r n awareness o f h i s own e f f e c t s and be a b l e to compare the r e s u l t he has produced on o t h e r s w i t h the hopes and i n t e n t i o n s and i n t u i t i o n s which i m p e l l e d him t o w r i t e . such an i n s t r u c t o r becomes more than a r e f e r e e o r master o f ceremonies; he i s the maker o f a c l i m a t e . the ' c o n t e n t ' o f the s e m i n a r i s , o f c o u r s e , produced by the s t u d e n t s . [ b i r n e y , , pp. - ] p a t r i c k lane, a more r e b e l l i o u s and outspoken contemporary p o e t , v i g o r o u s l y condemns c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s e s t h a t a r e o p e r a t e d w i t h p r o c e d u r e s t h a t are i n d i r e c t c o n t r a s t to the t e a c h e r as t u t o r p r o c e d u r e : there i n the a b s o l u t e p r e t e n s i o n o f creative writing class the s o - c a l l e d poets h o l d c o u r t from the l o f t y p i n n a c l e s o f t h e i r i n v i o l a b l e i v o r y towers o f s u p e r i o r u n d e r s t a n d i n g and knowledge. there they d i c t a t e meaning t o the fawning minds o f t h e i r a m b i t i o u s s t u d e n t s : the laws o f p o e t r y , the a n a l y s i s o f form and s t r u c t u r e and c o n t e n t , the meaning and non-meaning o f imagery, the use o f the l i n e as an e x t e n s i o n o f b r e a t h i n g , the a r c h i t e c t u r e o f the poem as a c o n c r e t e symbol on the page, the t e c h n o l o g y o f the e l e c t r i c i n terms o f the poem beyond gutenburg, the i n t e r p l a y o f p o o l e d minds around a t a b l e i n a b a r r e n room where the murmurings o f the a c o l y t e s are measured a g a i n s t the wisdom o f the h i g h p r i e s t p o e t / t e a c h e r , who, w i t h h i s s u p e r i o r knowledge and u n d e r s t a n d i n g , d i s s e m i n a t e s the accumulated wisdom o f the ages to t h e i r c o r r u p t e d g r a s p i n g minds. a b i o l o g y o f p o e t s . a c u l t u r e o f poems. i f b u l l s h i t was f e e l i n g t h e s e men c o u l d grow gardens on t h e i r tongues t h a t would put mythic b a b l y l o n to shame. f o r they p l a c e b o u n d a r i e s around the poem w i t h the laws they w r i t e as i f c r e a v i t i t y were the sum o f one p l u s one. [ e l l i s , ed., , p. ] lane's words are a p a s s i o n a t e o u t c r y from h i s e n t r a i l s t o the w o r l d a t l a r g e . lane does n o t o f f e r any s o l u t i o n s , as b i r n e y does, but c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s , n e v e r t h e l e s s , s h o u l d take n o t e . stephen judy e l a b o r a t e s on t h i s system: in a d d i t i o n , as a c l a s s 'grows' i n the c o u r s e o f a q u a r t e r o r semester, the s t u d e n t s can take o v e r more and more o f the p r o c e s s . a l l t h i s c r e a t e s more time f o r the t e a c h e r t o ' f l o a t , w o r k i n g on a one-to-one b a s i s w i t h s t u d e n t s who seek h i s h e l p as a w r i t i n g c o n s u l t a n t . r , , m - / « n o l [judy, , p. j with p u b l i c a t i o n as each s t u d e n t ' s aim, the t e a c h e r i s kept busy e v e r y minute o f the c l a s s . i t i s r e f r e s h i n g t o w i t n e s s s e n i o r h i g h s t u d e n t s c l a m o u r i n g f o r a s s i s t a n c e t o r e v i s e t h e i r works. and i f the c l a s s i s run on a workshop b a s i s , the s t u d e n t s w i l l i n d e e d clamour. o r g a n i z a t i o n and d i s c i p l i n e are needed as an u n d e r l y i n g u n i f y i n g f o r c e f o r the c l a s s t o run r e l a t i v e l y smoothly. however, t h i s o r g a n i z a t i o n and d i s c i p l i n e w i l l n o t be e v i d e n t to the o b s e r v e r who i s u n f a m i l i a r w i t h workshop methodology. an e f f e c - t i v e workshop i s an u n p r e d i c t a b l e happening, a t times p h y s i c a l l y busy and n o i s y and a t times s t i l l and s i l e n t . paddy c r e b e r has words f o r the t e a c h e r who i s c o n c e r n e d about the mania t h a t may accompany the workshop methodology: to the c y n i c a l maths master, who happens t o pass the h a l l the p r o c e s s t h a t i have c a l l e d ' s e t t i n g - f r e e ' may appear as l i t t l e l e s s than an a n a r c h i s t i c i n c i t e m e n t to r i o t i n g and worse. even the e n g l i s h t e a c h e r , h o a r s e - v o i c e d a t the end o f such a l e s s o n , may t e n d to wonder what he has a c h i e v e d . no r u l e s can be g i v e n f o r the c o n t r o l o f l e s s o n s l i k e t h e s e , each t e a c h e r has t o d e v e l o p h i s own method: some w i l l p r e f e r to impose a measure o f d i s c i p l i n e from the s t a r t ; o t h e r s may be c o n t e n t to l e t the c l a s s e v o l v e a d i s c i p l i n e o f t h e i r own. the c u r i o u s f a c t remains t h a t r a d i c a l l y d i f f e r e n t a p p r o a c h e s — p r o v i d e d they are backed up by c o n v i c t i o n , e n t h u s i a s m and s y m p a t h y — t e n d to produce comparable r e s u l t s . there must always, however, be c o n s i d e r a b l e freedom t o b e g i n w i t h . in t h i s , as i n much o t h e r e n g l i s h work, the t e a c h e r ' s r e l a t i o n t o h i s p u p i l s i s something l i k e t h a t o f a s m a l l boy t o h i s b o t t l e o f 'pop': he puts h i s thumb o v e r the mouth o f the b o t t l e and shakes i t up; he e n j o y s w a t c h i n g i t f i z z and f e e l i n g the p r e s s u r e b u i l d up; and t h e n , when the moment i s r i g h t , he p o i n t s the b o t t l e , removes h i s thumb and watches the l i q u i d s h o o t o u t — i n a p r e d e t e r m i n e d d i r e c t i o n . s i m i l a r l y , t h e r e must be f i z z ; t h e r e must be p r e s s u r e ; and t h e r e must be r e l e a s e , a l o n g a p a r t i c u l a r channel we have chosen. [ c r e b e r , , pp. - ] the t e a c h e r as t u t o r must be a c r e a t i v e i n d i v i d u a l h i m s e l f t o t o l e r a t e and t h r i v e i n the workshop s i t u a t i o n . there i s a v a s t d i f f e r e n c e between o r g a n i z e d chaos and b l a t a n t r i o t and c o n f u s i o n ! an added bonus o f the workshop method i s the odd time when, by some g o d l y i n t e r v e n t i o n , the s t u d e n t s are a l l w o r k i n g on t h e i r own and do n o t r e q u i r e any t e a c h e r a s s i s t a n c e . the t e a c h e r , t h e n , s h o u l d n o t r e v e r t t o h i s r o b o t f i l i n g d u t i e s , but s h o u l d q u i e t l y r e t r e a t i n t o a c o r n e r and s i t down to w r i t e h i m s e l f ! t h i s a c t t e a c h e s s t u d e n t s more than c o u n t l e s s d i s c u s s i o n s e v e r c o u l d . r e v i s i o n p h i l o s o p h y s t u d e n t s i n d u c t i v e l y l e a r n t h a t r e v i s i o n i s an i n e x t r i c - a b l e p a r t o f w r i t i n g as they p r o g r e s s towards t h e i r g o a l o f p u b l i c a t i o n . they are e n h e a r t e n e d by the f a c t t h a t even p r o f e s s i o n a l s must r e w r i t e c o u n t l e s s times b e f o r e s u b m i s s i o n to a p u b l i s h e r . james a. michener may rework and reshape each paragraph f i v e times b e f o r e he i s s a t i s f i e d , and leonard cohen may w r i t e o n l y words one day, e d i t them t h e n e x t , and heave them a l l i n t o the garbage on the t h i r d . s t u d e n t s , t o o , must be p e r m i t t e d t o d i s c a r d some d r a f t s , and not be p l a g u e d by f e e l i n g s o f g u i l t and f a i l u r e . e d i t i n g embodies a d d i t i o n o f m a t e r i a l s as w e l l as d e l e t i o n , even d e l e t i o n o f the whole d r a f t i f need be. t.s. e l i o t w r i t e s i n " e a s t coker" o f four q u a r t e t s about h i s c o n s t a n t s t r u g g l e w i t h the s e a r c h f o r the p e r f e c t words, the p e r p e t u a l need t o r e v i s e , and ' r e - r e v i s e ' : so here i am, i n the m i d d l e way t r y i n g to l e a r n to use words, and e v e r y attempt is a w h o l l y new s t a r t and a d i f f e r e n t k i n d o f f a i l u r e because one has o n l y l e a r n t t o g e t the b e t t e r o f words f o r the t h i n g one no l o n g e r has t o say, o r the way i n which one i s no l o n g e r d i s p o s e d t o say i t . and so each v e n t u r e is a new b e g i n n i n g , a r a i d on the i n a r t i c u l a t e with shabby equipment always d e t e r i o r a t i n g in the g e n e r a l mess o f i m p r e c i s i o n o f f e e l i n g , u n d i s c i p l i n e d squads o f emotion. [ e l i o t , , pp. - ] w r i t i n g r e q u i r e s p e r s i s t a n c e , but as l o n g as the e n d p o i n t has v a l u e , the t a s k o f r e w r i t i n g a l s o has v a l u e . laverne gonzalez i s u n e q u i v o c a b l y p l e a s e d w i t h t h i s system: as s t u d e n t s work w i t h language, they b e g i n to r e p l a c e the e v o c a t i v e but i n e f f e c t i v e ' s h i t ' w i t h d e t a i l s t h a t produced the c o m m e n t — f i n a l l y ' s h i t ' i s a cop-out employed when the a u t h o r r e f u s e s to f i l l i n the d e t a i l s . [ g o n z a l e z , , p. ] e l l e n gray massey has n o t i c e d a f a n t a s t i c change i n the a t t i t u d e s o f h e r s t u d e n t s w i t h the i n t r o d u c t i o n o f p u b l i c a t i o n : b e f o r e , .... my r e q u i r i n g much r e w o r k i n g was an i m p o s i t i o n o r r e f l e c t i o n on t h e i r a b i l i t y . the d i f f e r - ence now i s . . . i n s t e a d o f b e i n g d i s c o u r a g e d o r i n s u l t e d by my c r i t i c i s m , the s t u d e n t s are g r a t e f u l and w i l l i n g l y make changes. they would much r a t h e r have me h o n e s t l y s a y , ' i t won't do,' t o something they have done than t o l e t i t be p u b l i s h e d i n b i t t e r s w e e t ( t h e i r q u a r t e r l y magazine about the ozarks) f o r everyone to see t h e i r mediocre work. [massey, a p r i l / m a y , , pp. - ] in e f f e c t , the t e a c h e r ' s image i n t h e eyes o f the s t u d e n t s changes. he i s no l o n g e r the g u i d i n g l i g h t who l e a d s a l l h i s f o l l o w e r s a l o n g the one r i g h t path t o g l o r y and who demands r e v i s i o n f o r the good o f each s t u d e n t ' s s o u l . i n s t e a d , the t e a c h e r i s seen t o be someone who nudges the w r i t e r from b e h i n d a l o n g whatever path he i s f o l l o w i n g , and who a l s o t r i e s t o d i s p l a y the s t u d e n t s ' work i n the b e s t p o s s i b l e l i g h t to t h e i r r e s p e c t i v e a u d i e n c e s . in the eyes o f the s t u d e n t s the t e a c h e r s t e p s o v e r t h a t i n v i s i b l e l i n e and i s 'with' the s t u d e n t s i n s t e a d o f ' a g a i n s t ' them. perhaps t h i s i s an o v e r s i m p l i s t i c v e r s i o n o f the r e a l i t y , but r e v i s i o n i s d e f i n i t e l y more e a s i l y stomached by the s t u d e n t s w i t h t h i s p u b l i c a t i o n approach. e v a l u a t i o n , t o a c e r t a i n e x t e n t , f o r c e s the t e a c h e r back o v e r t h a t i n v i s i b l e l i n e , ' a g a i n s t ' the s t u d e n t . so, i n t r u t h , the t e a c h e r has a dual r o l e . the key i s t o m i n i m i z e the e v a l u a t i o n r o l e , and t o r e s t r i c t i t to o n l y a few works d e s i g n a t e d by e i t h e r t e a c h e r o r s t u d e n t . the r o l e o f e v a l u a t o r and e d i t o r - c o n s u l t a n t must n e v e r be c o n f u s e d o r attempted t o be e n a c t e d s i m u l t a n e o u s l y . the r o l e o f e v a l u a t i o n i s as synonymous t o p u b l i s h e r as c o n s u l t a n t i s to e d i t o r . p u b l i s h i n g and e d i t i n g a r e two d i s t i n c t c o n c e r n s . r e v i s i o n , i n i t i a l l y , i n v o l v e s making the work more o f what i t i s t r y i n g to be i n the eyes o f the s t u d e n t w r i t e r . the s t u d e n t must be s e n s i t i v e t o h i s work as a l i v i n g e n t i t y , and be s e r i o u s about h i s p o t e n t i a l a u d i e n c e , b e i n g c l e a r , p r e c i s e , and e f f e c t i v e . the d i s c u s s i o n o f c o r r e c t n e s s and p u b l i s h i n g con- v e n t i o n s s h o u l d be d e l a y e d u n t i l the l a s t p o s s i b l e moment i n the r e v i s i o n - e d i t o r i a l p r o c e s s , l e a v i n g the s t u d e n t s f r e e t o do the i n i t i a l w r i t i n g and r e v i s i o n s w i t h o u t concern o v e r e x t r i n s i c r u l e s . the b e s t approach t o w r i t i n g does not c o n s i s t o f a s e r i e s o f d o n ' t s , a l i s t o f r e s t r a i n t s and r e s t r i c t i o n s . such s e r i e s and l i s t s t e n d t o t r i v i a l i z e language and t o d i m i n i s h i t s p o t e n t i a l i n human c r e a t i v i t y . only a f t e r the s t u d e n t has e d i t e d h i s w r i t i n g i n t o a form t h a t s a t i s f i e s h i m s e l f s h o u l d the d i s c u s s i o n o f mechanics and usage be opened. even then r e d - p e n c i l p h o b i a s h o u l d not descend from on h i g h . the s t u d e n t must make h i s own d e c i s i o n s . an i m p o r t a n t p a r t o f the r e v i s i o n p r o c e s s i s the r e a d - i n g a l o u d o f a s t u d e n t ' s work, t o h i m s e l f o r a f e l l o w s t u d e n t . t h i s , o f c o u r s e , i s fundamental i f the i n t e n d e d p u b l i c a t i o n i s t o be o r a l . but, even i f the a u d i e n c e i s meant t o see the work, not hear i t , i t i s a v a l u a b l e e x e r c i s e . m i c r o s c o p i c weaknesses t h a t miss the eye are o f t e n m a g n i f i e d when heard. james e. m i l l e r s t a t e s : such a r e a d i n g w i l l f r e q u e n t l y r e v e a l weaknesses t h a t remain weaknesses whether the prose i s i n t e n d e d f o r h e a r i n g o r s e e i n g . i t w i l l a l s o p i c k up s e n t e n c e s and paragraphs t h a t seem harmless t o the eye, but whose s t u m b l i n g and awkward rhythms t r i p the tongue o f the s p e a k e r and d i s s i p a t e a l l emphasis and p o i n t . [ m i l l e r , , p. ] i t i s e f f e c t i v e both f o r the s t u d e n t w r i t e r to r e a d a l o u d h i s own work, h i m s e l f , and a l s o t o hear h i s own work read a l o u d by someone e l s e . everyone reads a work a l i t t l e d i f f e r e n t l y . the p o i n t o f r e f e r e n c e f o r r e v i s i o n i s the p a r t i c u l a r a u d i e n c e t h a t the work i s w r i t t e n f o r . each p a r t i c u l a r a u d i e n c e demands c e r t a i n s t r u c t u r e s . hence the w r i t e r who wishes t o communicate t o an a u d i e n c e , has a p a r t i c u l a r s t r u c t u r e imposed on h i s work by t h a t a u d i e n c e ' s c a p a c i t y to p e r c e i v e . to d e v i a t e from t h i s s t r u c t u r e too d r a s t i c a l l y would undoubtedly c o s t him h i s r e a d e r s h i p . to concur w i t h stephen judy: i s u g g e s t t h a t c o n c e r n f o r s k i l l s s h o u l d have i t s p r o p e r p l a c e but be kept i j i p l a c e . that p l a c e i s i n the e d i t i n g p r o c e s s . u n t i l the s t u d e n t and t e a c h e r have determined the a u d i e n c e f o r a paper, a l m o s t any i n s t r u c t i o n o r a d v i c e i n r h e t o r i c o r mechanics i s i r r e l e v a n t . however, when the form o f p u b l i c a t i o n has been d e t e r m i n e d , commentary about w r i t i n g as w r i t i n g becomes a p p r o p r i a t e ; and the t e a c h e r and s t u d e n t can b e g i n r a i s i n g q u e s t i o n s about e f f e c t i v e n e s s , c l a r i t y , o r g a n i z a t i o n , s t y l e , and s t r u c t u r e . but i t i s c r i t i c a l t h a t t h i s commentary r e l a t e to the p a r t i c u l a r form o f p u b l i c a t i o n and the p a r t i c u l a r a u d i e n c e f o r the paper. p u b l i c a t i o n s and r e a d e r s have d i f f e r i n g s t a n d a r d s , and i f e d i t o r i a l a d v i c e i s t o be h e l p f u l , i t must be v a l i d . r, , [judy, , p. ] the s t u d e n t s and the t e a c h e r s h o u l d f a m i l i a r i z e themselves w i t h the e d i t o r i a l e x p e c t a t i o n s o f v a r y i n g a u d i e n c e s t h a t the w r i t e r s are d i r e c t i n g t h e i r works t o . a s o u r c e o f e d i t o r i a l i n f o r m a t i o n i s the l i s t s o f e x p e c t a t i o n s t h a t p u b l i s h e r s o f t e n d i s p e n s e , upon r e q u e s t , t o t h e i r p r o s p e c t i v e w r i t e r s . i t i s e s s e n t i a l f o r the s t u d e n t s t o s e a r c h out t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n , as they cannot r e l y on themselves ( g e n e r a l l y too l a x ) n o r on t h e i r t e a c h e r s ( g e n e r a l l y too s t r i c t ) . in g e n e r a l , the m a j o r i t y o f the t e a c h e r s s t i l l r e j e c t many usages t h a t p u b l i s h e d i n f o r m a t i o n tends t o s u p p o r t as a c c e p t a b l e . v a l i d i t y o f e d i t o r i a l i n f o r m a t i o n w i t h r e s p e c t t o the p a r t i c u l a r a u d i e n c e concerned i s the c o r n e r s t o n e t o t h i s s t a g e o f the s t u d e n t w r i t e r ' s work. e d i t i n g o f mechanics keeping i n mind t h e i r d e s i r e d a u d i e n c e s , the s t u d e n t s must f i n a l l y examine the b a s i c mechanical s t r u c t u r e s o f t h e i r works. too o f t e n , t h i s mechanical e d i t i n g p r o c e d u r e i s viewed as b e i n g synonymous w i t h ' c o r r e c t i n g ' one's work. t h i s i s a dangerous n o t i o n . l l o y d , i n an a r t i c l e e n t i t l e d "our n a t i o n a l mania f o r c o r r e c t n e s s " b e r a t e s our c u l t u r e ' s u n h e a l t h y compulsion f o r c o r r e c t n e s s : the demon which p o s s e s s e s us i s o u r mania f o r c o r r e c t n e s s . i t dominates our minds from the f i r s t grade t o the graduate s c h o o l ; i t i s the f i r s t and o f t e n the o n l y t h i n g we t h i n k o f when we t h i n k o f our language. our s p e l l i n g must be ' c o r r e c t ' - - e v e n i f the words are i l l - c h o s e n ; o u r 'usage' must be ' c o r r e c t ' - - even though any p o s s i b l e s u b s t i t u t e e x p r e s s i o n , however c r u d e , would be p e r f e c t l y c l e a r ; our p u n c t u a t i o n must be c o r r e c t ' - - e v e n though p r a c t i c e s surge and change w i t h the p a s s i n g o f y e a r s , and d i f f e r from book t o book, p e r i o d i c a l t o p e r i o d i c a l . c o r r e c t ! that's what we've got t o be, and the i d e a t h a t we've got t o be c o r r e c t r e s t s l i k e a soggy b l a n k e t on o u r b r a i n s and o u r hands whenever we t r y to w r i t e . [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] c l e a r l y t h e n , e d i t i n g f o r mechanics must o c c u r a t the end o f the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g p r o c e s s . premature concern o v e r mechanics i s d e a d l y , as paddy c r e b e r so e x p l i c i t l y s t a t e s : teachers whose s o l e s t a n d a r d i s c o r r e c t n e s s can dry up the f l o w o f language and s h a c k l e c r e a t i v e and i m a g i n - a t i v e w r i t i n g b e f o r e i t i s under way. [ c r e b e r , ,,p. ] e d i t i n g f o r mechanics does not presuppose any u n i v e r s a l s t a n d a r d s o f ' c o r r e c t n e s s . ' m e c h a n i c a l c o r r e c t n e s s i s not an unchanging a b s o l u t e . c o n v e r s e l y , the n o t i o n o f mechanical c o r r e c t n e s s must u l t i m a t e l y take i n t o a c c o u n t the i n t e n d e d a u d i e n c e , the t o p i c c o n c e r n e d , and the w r i t e r ' s p e r s o n a l f e e l i n g s . such areas as p u n c t u a t i o n , s p e l l i n g , c a p i t a l i z a t i o n , e t c . must be reviewed i f the p u b l i c a t i o n i s t o be w r i t t e n . however, i f a work i s t o be p u b l i s h e d o r a l l y , s o l e l y through r e a d i n g i t a l o u d o r tape r e c o r d i n g i t , any d i s c u s s i o n o f w r i t i n g s k i l l s i s a i m l e s s and a waste o f time. v a r i o u s methods o f e d i t i n g mechanics s h o u l d be con- s i d e r e d , not o n l y by the t e a c h e r , but by the c l a s s as a whole. laverne g o n z a l e z ' s f i r s t y e a r e n g l i s h c l a s s e s a t purdue u n i v e r s i t y have worked out a scheme f o r p r o o f r e a d i n g each o t h e r s ' works: b e f o r e any paper may be p u b l i s h e d , i t must undergo r e v i s i o n and e d i t i n g . to h e l p w i t h t h i s p r o c e s s p r o o f - r e a d i n g q u i c k i e s , i . e . , t h r e e o r f o u r s e n t e n c e s l i f t e d from s t u d e n t s ' papers f o c u s i n g on p u n c t u a t i o n , verb-noun- pronoun agreement, s p e l l i n g o r any grammar problem are reviewed d a i l y . sometimes a p a r t i c u l a r l y t r o u b l e s o m e s p o t w i l l e l i c i t s e v e r a l days work on grammar c o n c e p t s . each s t u d e n t keeps h i s own grammar c h a r t which a l l o w s him t o c o n c e n t r a t e on any r e c u r r i n g problem. from t h i s p a r t i c u l a r f a c e t o f the course a s l i d e s e t on p u n c t u a t i o n u s i n g the a n a l o g y o f a t r a i n e v o l v e d . grammar books appear, composed o f d i t t o e d m a t e r i a l d e v e l o p e d by each s t u d e n t . e x e r c i s e s c r e a t e d by c l a s s members t o home a p o i n t are a d m i n i s t e r e d . when the m a t e r i a l demands a s p e c i f i c r h e t o r i c a l form, s p e c i f i c t o n e , s t u d e n t s work i t through t o g e t h e r . [ g o n z a l e z , , pp. - ] i f s t u d e n t s f i n d they are e n c o u n t e r i n g d i f f i c u l t i e s a t t h i s s t a g e , i t i s a b e n e f i c i a l e x p e r i e n c e f o r them t o take the time to c o n s t r u c t a b a s i c c l a s s check l i s t t h a t i s a p p l i c a b l e t o most a u d i e n c e s . c a r r i e s t e g a l l ' s c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s t u d e n t s wrote t h e i r own " e n g l i s h book" which c o n t a i n s t h e i r r u l e s o f usage, s p e l l i n g , p u n c t u a t i o n and c a p i t a l i z a t i o n . [ s t e g a l l , ] laverne g o n z a l e z ' s s t u d e n t s wrote t h e i r own grammar book and then produced a f i l m t o a i d f u t u r e s t u d e n t s : s e v e r a l o f the s t u d e n t s were s t r u g g l i n g w i t h grammar books because they were a t the e d i t i n g s t a g e i n papers they wanted p u b l i s h e d . they complained t h a t t h e y c o u l d n ' t u n d e r s t a n d the grammar books; so the group wrote t h e i r own. the method was s i m p l e : r e c o r d f i r s t the grammar r u l e . then o b s e r v e how you wrote the s e n t e n c e : now c o r r e c t . f i n a l l y , what t e c h n i q u e d i d you f i n d f o r remembering the next time? i n c i d e n t a l l y , most o f the s t u d e n t s had memorized grammar r u l e s which they c o u l d quote but found no c o r r e l a t i o n between the r u l e and the paper they were e d i t i n g . the i m p o r t a n t p a r t o f the grammar book was, o f c o u r s e , t h e r e c o r d i n g t e c h n i q u e f o r remembering. b u i l d i n g from t h e s e t e c h n i q u e s , the group c r e a t e d a f i l m - s t r i p f o r f u t u r e use by s t u d e n t s h a v i n g p u n c t u a t i o n problems. [ g o n z a l e z , , p. ] the s t u d e n t s a r e most c a p a b l e o f c r e a t i n g t h e i r own methodology f o r e d i t i n g mechanics, under the guidance o f the t e a c h e r . whatever the p u b l i c a t i o n medium employed, the a d v i c e g i v e n t o the s t u d e n t w r i t e r must be o p e r a t i o n a l . vague a b s t r a c - t i o n s about u n i t y , coherence, p a r a l l e l i s m , t o p i c and c o n c l u d i n g s e n t e n c e s , and b r e v i t y are o f l i t t l e s i g n i f i c a n t v a l u e t o the s t u d e n t . what i s o f v a l u e a r e s p e c i f i c s u g g e s t i o n s o f a l t e r n a - t i v e s f o r the s t u d e n t t o c o n s i d e r . i t i s emphatic t h a t the t e a c h e r be e x t r e m e l y c a r e f u l not t o remodel the s t u d e n t ' s work so t h a t i t becomes the ' s t u d e n t ' s work w i t h t e a c h e r r e v i s i o n s . a l l e d i t i n g changes, a d d i t i o n s and d e l e t i o n s a l i k e , must u l t i m a t e l y come from the s t u d e n t h i m s e l f . form there i s a d e f i n i t e s p l i t among c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s on the t e a c h i n g o r the not t e a c h i n g o f form. at the h o l l i n s c o n f e r e n c e i n c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g and cinema, c o n v e r s a t i o n s w i t h poets and n o v e l i s t s who t e a c h c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g a t v a r i o u s u n i v e r s i t i e s i n the u n i t e d s t a t e s r e v e a l t h i s s p l i t i s p a r t i c u l a r l y e v i d e n t . [ g a r r e t t , ed., ] however, the m a j o r i t y o f c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s a p p l a u d the abandonment o f the formal t e a c h i n g o f form. even c o l e r i d g e i n the romantic p e r i o d was most concerned w i t h t h i s m a t t e r : the form i s mechanic, when on any g i v e n m a t e r i a l we impress a p r e - d e t e r m i n e d form, not n e c e s s a r i l y a r i s i n g o u t o f the p r o p e r t i e s o f the m a t e r i a l ; — a s when t o a mass o f wet c l a y we g i v e whatever shape we wish i t t o r e t a i n when hardened. the o r g a n i c form, on the o t h e r hand, i s i n n a t e ; i t shapes, as i t d e v e l o p s , i t s e l f from w i t h i n , and the f u l l n e s s o f i t s development i s one and the same w i t h the p e r f e c t i o n s o f i t s outward form. nature . . . i n e x h a u s t i b l e i n d i v e r s e powers, i s e q u a l l y i n e x h a u s t i b l e i n f o r m s ; — e a c h e x t e r i o r i s the physiognomy o f the b e i n g w i t h i n . . . . some w r i t e r s go so f a r as t o c o n c u r w i t h w i l l i a m c a r l o s w i l l i a m s ' a d v i c e t o w r i t e r s : f o r g e t a l l r u l e s , f o r g e t a l l r e s t r i c t i o n s , as t o t a s t e , as t o what ought t o be s a i d , w r i t e f o r t h e p l e a s u r e o f i t — w h e t h e r s l o w l y o r f a s t — e v e r y form o f r e s i s t a n c e t o a complete r e l e a s e s h o u l d be abandoned. [ w i l l i a m s , , p. ] p a t r i c k lane o v e r f l o w s w i t h p a s s i o n at the v e r y i d e a o f w r i t e r s r e s t r i c t i n g themselves t o t r a d i t i o n a l form: the poet has no p l a c e w i t h i n the law. he e x i s t s w i t h o u t i t . not f o r him the p u r i t y o f the i n v i o l a b l e s t r a i g h t l i n e t h a t s t a g g e r s , f a l l s and. ends. to lane, r e a l p o e t r y has a form t h a t i s : "impure as the c l o t h i n g we wear, s o u p - s t a i n e d , s o i l e d w i t h our shameful b e h a v i o u r , our w r i n k l e s and v i g i l s and dreams." he r e i t e r a t e s h i s p o i n t . "no p o e t r y born i n the bondage o f e x p e r i e n c e was e v e r w r i t t e n w i t h i n the law." [ e l l i s , ed., , p. ] e a r l e b i r n e y quotes from mcluhan's u n d e r s t a n d i n g media, remarking t h a t a r t , when i t i s most s i g n i f i c a n t , " i s a d e w l i n e , a d i s t a n t e a r l y warning system t h a t can always be r e l i e d on t o t e l l the o l d c u l t u r e what i s b e g i n n i n g t o happen t o i t . " n o n - w r i t e r s are o f the o l d c u l t u r e . b i r n e y , i n h i s e l o q u e n t manner, p h i l o s o p h i z e s on the n e c e s s i t y o f p e r p e t u a l change t o r e t a i n the v i t a l i t y o f a l l a r t , w r i t i n g i n c l u d e d : l i v i n g a r t , l i k e a n y t h i n g e l s e , s t a y s a l i v e o n l y by c h a n g i n g . the young a r t i s t must c o n s t a n t l y examine the forms and the a e s t h e t i c t h e o r i e s he has i n h e r i t e d ; he must r e j e c t most o f them, and he must s e a r c h f o r new ones. l i t e r a t u r e i s a l l the more a l i v e today because i t i s changing so r a p i d l y . in f a c t i t ' s a d j u s t - i n g t o the p o s s i b i l i t y t h a t the p r i n t e r page i s no l o n g e r the c h i e f d i s s e m i n a t o r o f i d e a s , and t h a t a u t h o r s must f i n d ways t o bend the new t e c h n o l o g i c a l media t o a r t i s t i c purposes. the r e b e l s and e x p e r i m e n t e r s who are f o r c i n g t h e s e changes a r e , o f c o u r s e , h a v i n g t o f i g h t the same b a t t l e s a g a i n s t the same k i n d o f academic c r i t i c s who a t t a c k e d the l i t e r a r y r e v o l u t i o n - a r i e s o f the l a s t g e n e r a t i o n . in t h e i r b e g i n n i n g s , j o y c e , k a f k a , rimbaud, r i l k e , pound, b r e c h t , even e l i o t , were pooh-poohed o r i g n o r e d as cheap and s e n s a t i o n a l , as mad o r f r i v o l o u s d e s t r o y e r s o f s a c r e d t r a d i t i o n . now t h e s e men are the a n c i e n t g r e a t — a n d the young w r i t e r s who f i n d them i n a d e q u a t e are g e t t i n g the same t r e a t m e n t . of c o u r s e , many l i t e r a r y move- ments i n e v e r y g e n e r a t i o n t u r n out to be b l i n d a l l e y s , but no c r i t i c s h o u l d t h i n k h i m s e l f so p e r c e p t i v e t h a t he can always t e l l the p a s s i n g f a s h i o n from the s i g n i f i c a n t b r e a k t h r o u g h . i don't know e x a c t l y where the l i t e r a r y dew l i n e i s t h i s moment, but i'm s u r e i t l i e s somewhere i n the c o m p l i c a t e d w o r l d o f today's l i t t l e - l i t t l e magazines and s m a l l - p r e s s chapbooks. [ b i r n e y , , pp. - ] he goes on, s p e c i f i c a l l y z e r o i n g i n on the comtemporary changes w r i t i n g t e c h n i q u e s : in t h a t w o r l d y o u ' l l f i n d t h a t many o f the p o e t i c and p r o s e t e c h n i q u e s which were r e g a r d e d a few y e a r s ago as merely f a r o u t and p r o b a b l y i n c o n s e q u e n t i a l are now customary and e s t a b l i s h e d ones. to b e g i n w i t h a s m a l l example, p u n c t u a t i o n i n p o e t r y i s now used f u n c t i o n a l l y o n l y — o r not a t a l l . s y n t a c t i c a l a m b i g u i t i e s a r e e i t h e r p e r m i t t e d , o r o b v i a t e d by a r t f u l b r e a k i n g s between l i n e s , and b l a n k s o r b r e a t h i n g spaces between p h r a s e s . or, i f p u n c t u a t i o n i s used, i t may be i n company w i t h s p e l l i n g d i s t o r t i o n s and enormous v a r i a t i o n s o f t y p e f a c e s and s i z e s , t o s i g n a l v o i c e tones s i m u l t a n e o u s l y w i t h v i s u a l e f f e c t s , t o r e i n f o r c e the f e e l i n g and meaning o f the poem. one l a t i n - a m e r i c a n p o e t , jose g a r c i a v i l l a , i s p a r t i c u l a r l y known f o r a s e r i e s o f s h o r t v e r s e s he c a l l e d comma poems, i n which a l l words a r e s e p a r a t e d by commas, t o f o r c e the r e a d e r t o a c c e p t each word as o f equal importance. here i s the c o n c l u s i o n o f one o f t h e s e p i e c e s ( i n which the poet has been v i s i o n i n g god danc- i n g on a bed o f s t r a w b e r r i e s : 'yet, he, h u r t , n o t , the l i t t l e s t , one,/ but, gave, them, r i p e n e s s , a l l . ' [ b i r n e y , , p. ] denise l e v e r t o v e x p r e s s e s h i s views on form i n a poem o f non- t r a d i t i o n a l f o r m a t : i b e l i e v e e v e r y space and comma i s a l i v i n g p a r t o f the poem and has i t s f u n c t i o n , j u s t as e v e r y muscle and pore o f the body has i t s f u n c t i o n . and the way the l i n e s a r e broken i s a f u n c t i o n i n g p a r t e s s e n t i a l t o the l i f e o f the poem. the l e s s r a d i c a l contend t h a t pure form i s a myth and hence i t i s r i d i c u l o u s t o be concerned about i t : i f we l o o k a t any p i e c e o f w r i t i n g , we f i n d n a r r a t i o n mixed up w i t h e x p o s i t i o n , argument c r e e p i n g i n t o d e s c r i p t i o n , f i c t i o n f i l t e r i n g through p o e t r y , and p o e t r y e n c r o a c h i n g on drama. sometimes f i x e d and r i g i d n o t i o n s about form w i l l cause one t o d i s t o r t r e a l i t y , demanding p u r i t y where t h e r e i s o n l y a l l o y . i t i s b e t t e r t o remain f l e x i b l e , and t o t a k e w r i t i n g as we f i n d i t , not as we might wish t o f o l l o w from p a t and t i d y d e f i n i t i o n s . [ m i l l e r , , p. ] pure form i s an i n v e n t i o n o f e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s t o l a b e l and c a t e g o r i z e . stephen judy speaks f o r the f a r r i g h t o f t h i s ' f o r m - l e s s ' s c h o o l . s t u d e n t s need forms, o r mediums, through which they d e l i v e r t h e i r messages. yet they do not r e q u i r e i n s t r u c t i o n i n form: there seemed t o be two s o u r c e s f o r t h e s e s k i l l s : f i r s t , f o r many o f the a c t i v i t i e s the s t u d e n t s had an i n t u i t i v e sense o f form based on r o u t i n e r e a d i n g h a b i t s ( t h e y had a l l r e a d e d i t o r i a l s , columns, p l a y s , commer- c i a l s ) o r on human e x p e r i e n c e ( a f t e r a l l 'drama,' ' s t o r y , ' 'essay' r e f l e c t ways o f l i v i n g and t h i n k i n g ; t h e y a r e not a r b i t r a r y ) . the second s o u r c e was q u e s t i o n - i n g . when s t u d e n t s d i d n ' t know what something was, they n a t u r a l l y asked: 'what's g r a f f i t i ? ' 'what's s a t i r e ? ' t h i s d i s c o v e r y l e d t o a n o t h e r from t h a t same c l a s s : q u e s t i o n s about form a r e b e s t answered i n o p e r a t i o n a l , not d e f i n i t i o n a l , terms. . . . in the end, the s t u d e n t s t i l l may not be a b l e t o d e f i n e s a t i r e , but he w i l l know how t o make one. [ j u d y j m ^ pp_ _ ] i n d u b i t a b l y , t h e s e b a s i c p h i l o s o p h i e s each have v a l i d i t y f o r the s t u d e n t w r i t e r . rohman and wlecke, i n an a r t i c l e e n t i t l e d "the person i n the p r o c e s s " c o n s e r v a t i v e l y sum up t h i s g e n e r a l approach t o the t e a c h i n g o f form: we do not deny the v a l i d i t y o f e x t r i n s i c approaches t o c o m p o s i t i o n and t o w r i t e r s , w i t h t h e i r emphasis upon methods, t r a d i t i o n , c o n d i t i o n i n g , grammar and the l i k e ; we o n l y h o l d t h a t t h e s e a l o n e and t h e s e f i r s t w i l l n e v e r produce good w r i t i n g d e f i n e d as f r e s h p e r s p e c t i v e . [kaufman and powers, ed., , p. ] i t i s the s t u d e n t w r i t e r who must make the d e c i s i o n as t o what form h i s work w i l l t a k e , i f i t w i l l a b i d e by the laws o f t r a d i t i o n a l forms o r not. i f he d e c i d e s h i s work needs a t r a - d i t i o n a l f o r m a t , the l i s t he has t o choose from i s l o n g . and, i n r e a l i t y , the s t u d e n t s h o u l d have a sample l i s t , such as f o l l o w s , t o mull o v e r : adventure t a l e a d v e r t i s e m e n t animated f i l m a u t o b i o g r a p h y b a l l a d c a r t o o n c o l l a b o r a t i v e novel c o l l a g e commercial c o n c r e t e p o e t r y c o n f e s s i o n c r i t i c i s m debate d i a l o g u e e x p o s i t o r y e s s a y fantasy f i c t i o n f l y e r free v e r s e f u l l l e n g t h drama g r e e t i n g c a r d haiku and tanka i m p r o v i s a t i o n ( w r i t t e n down) informal speech i n s t r u c t i o n s i n t e r v i e w joke j o u r n a l and d i a r y l e t t e r l i g h t e s s a y l i g h t show ( d i r e c t i o n s w r i t t e n down) l i g h t v e r s e l i m e r i c k magazine m a n i f e s t o memoir metaphor monograph monologue m u s i c a l novel one-act s k i t pamphlets panel p e r s o n a l e s s a y p e t i t i o n p o e t r y p o l i c y paper p l a y p o s t e r probe propaganda puppet show radio s c r i p t reminiscence research review (books, c o n c e r t s , s p o r t s , d a t e s ) ri d d l e soap opera s h o r t scene s h o r t s t o r y songs sonnet sound tape stream o f c o n s c i o u s n e s s telegram t e l e v i s i o n s c r i p t t h i r t y - s e c o n d drama underground newspaper w r i t e r ' s notebook i f , on the o t h e r hand, the s t u d e n t w r i t e r d e c i d e s to s t r i k e o u t i n s e a r c h o f h i s own new form, he does so as h i s own path-maker. he has gone beyond the law, and w h i l e t h e r e are no i m p r i s o n i n g r u l e s , t h e r e a r e a l s o no s i g n p o s t s o r h e l p f u l g u i d e l i n e s t o r e l y on. he i s a l o n e . whatever the s t u d e n t ' s c h o i c e , t r a d i t i o n a l form o r e x p e r i m e n t a l , the t e a c h e r must be c o n s c i o u s l y aware t h a t w r i t e r s a r e i n a d i f f e r e n t p h i l o s o p h i c a l w o r l d than c r i t i c s (most t e a c h e r s i n c l u d e d ) . i f a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r i s a l s o a w r i t e r , as he c e r t a i n l y s h o u l d be, he w i l l u n d e r s t a n d t h a t i t i s the w r i t e r s who i n v e n t form. c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s a r e a l l i n a w o r l d o f p o t e n t i a l new forms and, p o s s i b l y , new laws. s t y l e the t e a c h i n g o f s t y l e i s an i m p o s s i b l e t a s k . w r i t i n g i s an e x p r e s s i o n o f s e l f which i s m a n i f e s t i n the s t y l e o r v o i c e o r d i s t i n c t i v e a c c e n t o f the w r i t e r . s t y l e , t h e n , i s not a t e c h n i q u e t h a t can be t a u g h t o r l e a r n e d . i t can o n l y be g i v e n freedom t o d e v e l o p . s t y l e i s as unique to each w r i t e r as h i s f i n g e r p r i n t : . . . the essence o f a sound s t y l e i s t h a t i t cannot be r e d u c e d t o r u l e s — t h a t i t i s a l i v i n g and b r e a t h i n g t h i n g , w i t h something o f the demoniacal i n i t — t h a t i t f i t s i t s p r o p r i e t o r t i g h t l y and y e t e v e r so l o o s e l y , as h i s s k i n f i t s him. i t i s , i n f a c t , q u i t e as s e c u r e l y an i n t e g r a l p a r t o f him as t h a t s k i n i s . i t hardens as h i s a r t e r i e s harden. i t i s gaudy when he i s young and g a t h e r s decorum when he grows o l d . on the day a f t e r he makes a mash on a new g i r l i t glows and g l i t t e r s . i f he has f e d w e l l , i t i s mellow. i f he has g a s t r i t i s i t i s b i t t e r . in b r i e f , a s t y l e i s always the outward and v i s i b l e symbol o f a man, and i t cannot be a n y t h i n g e l s e . to attempt t o t e a c h i t i s as s i l l y as t o s e t up c o u r s e s i n making l o v e . [ m e n c k e n , > p > ] there i s no such animal as 'a b e s t s t y l e . i t cannot be t a u g h t because i t does not e x i s t . i t would be a b s u r d t o ask joyce t o w r i t e i n the s t y l e o f hemingway, o r f e r l i n g h e t t i i n the s t y l e o f d i c k i n s o n . james e. m i l l e r i s most adamant about t h i s p o i n t : there i s , i n p o i n t o f f a c t , no 'best s t y l e ' f o r a l l w r i t e r s . and the p r e v a l e n t view t h a t everyone s h o u l d w r i t e i n the same s i m p l i s t i c s t y l e i s based on a misunder- s t a n d i n g o f the n a t u r e o f language and the w r i t i n g p r o c e s s . the b e s t s t y l e f o r any w r i t e r w i l l be one t h a t t a k e s i n t o account h i s own temperament and p e r s o n a l - i t y , the r e q u i r e m e n t s o f h i s s u b j e c t , and the n a t u r e o f h i s a u d i e n c e . on some o c c a s i o n s t h e s e may c a l l f o r l o n g words r a t h e r than s h o r t , f o r c o m p l i c a t e d s e n t e n c e s r a t h e r than s i m p l e , f o r an i n t e n t i o n a l opaqueness r a t h e r than a d i s t o r t i n g l u c i d i t y . they might c a l l , i n d e e d , f o r a t o r r e n t o f words r a t h e r than a t r i c k l e , f o r a f l o o d o f r h e t o r i c r a t h e r than a r i v u l e t . [ m i l l e r , , p. ] he condemns the dated n o t i o n o f ' c o r r e c t ' w r i t i n g : so many p e o p l e have been i n d o c t r i n a t e d w i t h the view t h a t good w r i t i n g i s p r i m a r i l y ' c o r r e c t ' w r i t i n g , and t h a t the b e s t w r i t i n g i s ' o b j e c t i v e ' and ' i m p e r s o n a l ' (and t h e r e f o r e d e v o i d o f the f i r s t - p e r s o n s i n g u l a r ) , t h a t t h e r e i s abroad i n the c o u n t r y an ' i d e a l ' p r o s e t h a t i s almost u n r e a d a b l e . t h i s p r o s e pours out o f government o f f i c e s , u n i v e r s i t i e s , b u s i n e s s e s ; has become a k i n d o f e s t a b l i s h m e n t p r o s e ; and might be d e s c r i b e d as the p r o s e i n the gray f l a n n e l s u i t . i t i s a f a c e l e s s and v o i c e - l e s s p r o s e : the sound t h a t a r i s e s from i t i s monotonous and b o r i n g . r m - n m - ? - . m / n [ m i l l e r , , p. ] s t u d e n t s and t e a c h e r s s h o u l d beware o f s i m p l e r u l e s f o r good w r i t i n g . a l l g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s which a r e supposed t o have u n i v e r s a l a p p l i - c a t i o n a r e most l i k e l y m i s l e a d i n g , i f not t o t a l l y f a l s e . even the d i a l e c t a w r i t e r uses s h o u l d be o f h i s own c h o o s i n g , be i t a r e g i o n a l o r a s o c i a l d i a l e c t . language i s too v i t a l t o the w r i t e r ' s i d e n t i t y and t o the e f f e c t s o f h i s work t o be s t r i c t l y c o n t r o l l e d by any p r e s c r i p t i o n s o f one ' s t a n d a r d language.' p u b l i c a t i o n : end o r a n o t h e r b e g i n n i n g ? throughout t h i s t h e s i s p u b l i c a t i o n has been spoken o f a s t h e c u l m i n a t i o n o f a l l t h e s t u d e n t w r i t e r ' s w r i t i n g e f f o r t s . p u b l i c a t i o n i s , i n f a c t , an end p o i n t , b u t i t i s a l s o a n o t h e r b e g i n n i n g . p u b l i c a t i o n : . . . i s not the f i n i s h e d p r o d u c t , i t i s a t e a c h i n g t o o l - - s i n c e s t u d e n t s l e a r n p r i n t i n g does not make an a r t i c l e p r o f o u n d o r even c o r r e c t - c r i t i c a l t h i n k i n g - [ g o n z a l e z , , p. ] a f t e r p u b l i c a t i o n has been e f f e c t e d , the s t u d e n t s s h o u l d not abandon the p u b l i s h e d works, r e g a r d i n g them as 'done.' there i s s t i l l much t o l e a r n o f a work a f t e r i t has been p u b l i s h e d . p u b l i c a t i o n does n o t mark t h e e n d p o i n t f o r t h e r e v i s i o n p r o c e s s , though p r e - sumably most e n s u i n g r e v i s i o n s w i l l be r e l a t i v e l y minor. t.s. e l i o t makes note o f the i m p o s s i b i l i t y o f even a r r i v i n g a t a c o n c l u s i v e e n d p o i n t : what we c a l l the b e g i n n i n g i s o f t e n the end and to make an end i s t o make a b e g i n n i n g . the end i s where we s t a r t from. and e v e r y phrase and s e n t e n c e t h a t i s r i g h t (where e v e r y word i s a t home. t a k i n g i t s p l a c e t o s u p p o r t the o t h e r s , the word n e i t h e r d i f f i d e n t o r o s t e n t a t i o u s , an easy commerce o f the o l d and the new, the common word e x a c t w i t h o u t v u l g a r i t y , the formal word p r e c i s e but not p e d a n t i c , the complete c o n s o r t d a n c i n g t o g e t h e r ) e v e r y phrase and e v e r y s e n t e n c e i s an end and a b e g i n n i n g , every poem an e p i t a p h . [ e l i o t , , p. ] the p r o c e s s o f w r i t i n g i s a c o n t i n u o u s endeavour, and the word ' p r o d u c t , ' o r 'work o f a r t , s i m p l y d e s i g n a t e s the development a t a p a r t i c u l a r pause i n the w r i t e r ' s p e r p e t u a l l a b o u r . i t i s not i n t e n d e d t h a t the p r o c e s s o f w r i t i n g be viewed as an e x i s t e n t i a l i s t a l b a t r o s s . rather, i t i s s u g g e s t e d t h a t the s t u d e n t keep an open mind t o change, even a f t e r h i s work has been p u b l i s h e d . e d i t i n g and p u b l i s h i n g summary fundamental i s the b a s i c p h i l o s o p h y o f stage two, the e d i t i n g and p u b l i s h i n g stage o f w r i t i n g . a f t e r the i n i t i a l c r e a t i v e d r a f t i n g o f a work, the w r i t e r t h e n , and o n l y t h e n , becomes c o n c e r n e d w i t h p o l i s h i n g the work f o r h i s i n t e n d e d a u d i e n c e , and then proceeds t o p u b l i s h i t . i t must be kept i n mind t h a t i t t a k e s both a w r i t e r and a r e a d e r t o b r i n g a l i t e r a r y work t o l i f e : t r a n s c e n d e n t ' p o e t i c ' e x p e r i e n c e b e f o r e p u b l i c a t i o n and r e a d e r r e s p o n s e , the l i t e r a r y work i s i n c o m p l e t e . the words o f the p u b l i s h e d l i t e r a r y work aim a t u n i t i n g p a r t i c u l a r e x p e r i e n c e s o f the w r i t e r w i t h s i m i l a r e x p e r i e n c e s o f the r e a d e r . the r e a d e r b r i n g s h i s e x p e r i e n c e s t o b e a r on words t h a t have been c r a f t e d by the w r i t e r , molded by the w r i t e r ' s e x p e r i e n c e s . i f the words are s u c c e s s f u l , they c r e a t e a unique bond between r e a d e r and w r i t e r t h a t t r a n s c e n d s e i t h e r i n d i v i d u a l ' s l o n e e x p e r i e n c e . both the r e a d e r and the w r i t e r then g i v e the l i t e r a r y work meaning. conse- q u e n t l y , the w r i t e r must u l t i m a t e l y p r e p a r e h i s work, h i s p e r f e c t l y n u r t u r e d embryo, f o r the r e a d e r t o g i v e i t b i r t h . evaluation with a l l t h i s g r e a t t a l k about p r o c e s s , p r o d u c t , s e l f - d i s c o v e r y and p u b l i c a t i o n , where does e v a l u a t i o n f i t ? in t r u t h , the e v a l u a t i o n t h a t i s synonymous w i t h the d i s p e n s a t i o n o f judgement does not f i t . (the e v a l u a t i o n t h a t i s synonymous w i t h s e n s i t i v e and c o n c e r n e d t e a c h e r r e a c t i o n to s t u d e n t work i n s p e c i f i c u t i l i t a r i a n language, has pervaded the e n t i r e w r i t i n g p r o c e s s ) . u n f o r t u n a t e l y , the e d u c a t i o n a l system demands t h a t s t u d e n t s ' work be graded on a r e g u l a r b a s i s . so t e a c h e r s a r e caught, i n the end, w i t h d e s p e r a t e l y t r y i n g to compromise the r e a l w o r l d s i t u a t i o n t h a t i s b e i n g s t r i v e n f o r , and the f a l s e c l a s s r o o m r e q u i r e m e n t s . the aim here i s to make t h i s compromise m i n i m a l . the prime magic a c t , a t t h i s p o i n t , i s to c o n v i n c e the s t u d e n t s t h a t the t e a c h e r ' s dual r o l e s o f e d i t o r and judge a r e m u t u a l l y e x c l u s i v e . and, t o o , i t must be o b v i o u s to the s t u d e n t which r o l e the t e a c h e r i s e n a c t i n g a t any g i v e n time. t h i s f e a t a c c o m p l i s h e d , the t e a c h e r can become as c o n s c i e n c e - f r e e a judge as i s humanly p o s s i b l e ! but how do you grade c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ? i f one d o e s n ' t l o o k f o r 'correctness', what does one l o o k f o r ? s i n c e the b e g i n n i n g o f time p e o p l e have not been a b l e t o agree on a d e f i n i - t i o n o r s p e c i f i c a t i o n o f what c o n s t i t u t e s e f f e c t i v e n e s s i n w r i t i n g . whenever anyone has a p r o m i s i n g t h e o r y , some well-known and w e l l - l i k e d p i e c e s o f w r i t i n g a r e always o m i t t e d from the exem- p l a r y l i s t because t h e y c o n t r a d i c t the t h e o r y . a t the p r e s e n t time, w r i t i n g i s t o a g r e a t e x t e n t , a mystery. w r i t e r s make marks on paper and w a i t t o see what w i l l happen when o t h e r p e o p l e come a l o n g and s t a r e a t t h e s e marks. t h i s whole u n p r e d i c t a b l e mess i s a c c e n t u a t e d by the f a c t t h a t d i f f e r e n t p e o p l e have d i f f e r e n t r e a c t i o n s t o any g i v e n p i e c e o f work, and even one p e r s o n w i l l l i k e l y have d i f f e r e n t r e a c t i o n s on d i f f e r e n t days. so how, on t h i s e a r t h , can a t e a c h e r e v a l u a t e c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g w i t h an i n d e l i b l e l e t t e r - g r a d e ? s u g g e s t i o n : v e r y c a u t i o u s l y , and i n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h c l a s s response and w i t h the s t u d e n t h i m s e l f . c r i t i c a l e v a l u a t i o n and c r e a t i v i t y are i n t e r t w i n e d i n the s t u d e n t ' s mind from the o n s e t o f the c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s . the s t u d e n t i s c o n s t a n t l y c h o o s i n g h i s words from the whole p r o l i f e r a - t i o n o f words i n the e n g l i s h language. he i s c r i t i c a l l y c h o o s i n g , i n a d v e r t e n t l y e v a l u a t i n g , as he i s c r e a t i n g . hence i t i s im- p o r t a n t f o r the s t u d e n t t o s h a r e i n the f i n a l p r o c e s s o f grade e v a l u a t i o n . s e l f - c r i t i c i s m i s a most v a l u a b l e growth f a c t o r . i t i s not o n l y the s t u d e n t who b e n e f i t s from p a r t i c i - p a t i n g i n the g r a d i n g p r o c e d u r e . the t e a c h e r ' s marking burden i s somewhat l i g h t e n e d . but more i m p o r t a n t y e t , the t e a c h e r who i n c l u d e s h i s s t u d e n t s i n the g r a d i n g t a s k w i l l i n e v i t a b l y f i n d t h a t h i s t e a c h i n g becomes t a u t e r and more c l e a r l y f o c u s e d as a r e s u l t , and t h a t h i s u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f the s t u d e n t s ' d i f f i - c u l t i e s , and c o n s e q u e n t l y h i s a b i l i t y t o h e l p them, are i n d e e d i n c r e a s e d . some v a r i a t i o n s i n g r a d i n g methods can be c o n s i d e r e d the t e a c h e r , dependent upon a d m i n i s t r a t i v e e x p e c t a t i o n : non-graded systems: w r i t t e n e v a l u a t i o n ( l e t t e r g r a d i n g ) by t e a c h e r w r i t t e n s e l f - e v a l u a t i o n by s t u d e n t s t u d e n t and t e a c h e r w r i t t e n e v a l u a t i o n e x p e r i e n c e p o r t f o l i o performance c h e c k l i s t ( s t u d e n t w r i t t e n c h e c k l i s t which i s compared t o h i s a c t u a l performance) a l t e r n a t i v e s t o c o n v e n t i o n a l g r a d i n g : p a s s / f a i l p a s s / q u e s t i o n ( q u e s t i o n i s an i n t e r i m grade which can be upgraded t o a pass) p a s s / q u e s t i o n / d e s c r i b e c r e d i t / n o c r e d i t a, b, c, ip ( i n p r o g r e s s ) , w (withdrew) a l t e r n a t i v e approaches t o g r a d i n g : recommended g r a d i n g ( c o n v e n t i o n a l g r a d i n g ) grades w i t h w r i t t e n e v a l u a t i o n s e l f - g r a d i n g matched g r a d i n g w i t h o r w i t h o u t w r i t t e n e v a l u a t i o n (take the average o f t e a c h e r and s t u d e n t recommended grades) c o n f e r e n c e g r a d i n g (same as matched g r a d i n g , o n l y w i t h f a c e t o f a c e d i s c u s s i o n ) performance mastery by l e v e l p o i n t system b l a n k e t g r a d i n g (the e n t i r e c l a s s i s g i v e n the same grade, perhaps even b e f o r e the c o u r s e s t a r t s ) c o n t r a c t g r a d i n g p o r t f o l i o g r a d i n g (can be combined w i t h any o f the o t h e r methods) c o n t r a c t g r a d i n g has had w i d e s p r e a d p u b l i c i t y o f l a t e , and has had a wide range o f s u c c e s s . some s t u d e n t s f i n d t h i s system m o t i v a t i o n a l , w h i l e o t h e r s f i n d i t an easy way o f d i s c o v e r i n g the minimum r e q u i r e m e n t s f o r a p a s s , and h o l d i n g the t e a c h e r to i t . because o f i t s a c t i v e i n c l u s i o n o f the s t u d e n t i n the g r a d i n g t a s k and because o f i t s i n c r e a s i n g p o p u l a r i t y , some e x p l i c i t c o n t r a c t s a r e i n c l u d e d : s t r u c t u r i n g c o n t r a c t s p r e - c o n t r a c t p r e p a r a t i o n : thorough exposure t o the o p t i o n s a v a i l a b l e t o the s t u d e n t . d e f i n e the b a l l p a r k . t y p i c a l c o n t r a c t components . d e s c r i p t i o n o f a r e a o f s t u d y . d e t a i l e d l i s t o f o b j e c t i v e s . c r i t e r i a f o r g r a d i n g (time commitment, q u a n t i t y o f r e a d i n g and w r i t i n g , e t c . ) . c r i t e r i a o f q u a l i t y f o r a c c e p t a n c e o f work . p l a n o f a t t a c k (a) reading and r e s o u r c e l i s t (b) independent r e s e a r c h p l a n s (c) p o s s i b l e f i e l d o r community work (d) schedule o f c o n f e r e n c e s and/or i n t e r i m d e a d l i n e s (e) p r o j e c t e d t e a c h e r h e l p and r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s . e v a l u a t i o n p r o c e d u r e . when g r a d i n g i s b e i n g f o r m u l a t e d whether by t e a c h e r , s t u d e n t o r b o t h , many f a c t o r s have to be c o n s i d e r e d v e r y c a r e f u l l y . q u a l i t y o f work, q u a n t i t y o f work, s t u d e n t e f f o r t , c l a s s p a r t i c i p a t i o n , c o o p e r a t i o n and a t t i t u d e , n o t to mention i n d i v i d u a l s t u d e n t improvement are but a few o f these 'bug-bears.' kenneth lewis o u t l i n e s a system t h a t i n c l u d e s these d i v e r s e f a c t o r s : grading standards q u a l i t y o f work — w r i t t e n , o r a l r e p o r t s , e t c . ( t h i s i s i n comparison w i t h a h i g h and demanding s t a n d a r d i c a r r y around i n my head--not i n comparison w i t h anyone e l s e i n t h i s c l a s s ) e x c e l l e n t — c o n s i s t e n t l y meeting o r even e x c e e d i n g the h i g h s t a n d a r d s i h o l d a good-accurate but n o t t o p - n o t c h , o r i n c o n s i s t e n t work b m e d i o c r e — b a r e l y meeting a s s i g n m e n t s — s o - s o q u a l i t y c p o o r — l o w q u a l i t y d e f f o r t always work to b e s t o f y o u r a b i i t y — e v e r y a c t i v i t y , . be i t w r i t i n g o r o r a l work was a c c o m p l i s h e d w i t h p r i d e and a d e t e r m i n a t i o n to do y o u r b e s t . . . . a making a good e f f o r t — g o o d but n o t c o n s i s t e n t l y g i v i n g y o u r ' a l l ' b so-so e f f o r t — o r e x t r e m e l y i n c o n s i s t e n t e f f o r t — y o u d i d n ' t c o n s i s t e n t l y c a r e much o r t r y v e r y h a r d . . c l i t t l e e f f o r t — o n l y a f l i c k e r o f r e s p o n s e — n o t t r y i n g o r c a r i n g , o n l y f i l l i n g a space up d c l a s s p a r t i c i p a t i o n , c o o p e r a t i o n , a t t i t u d e s i g n i f i c a n t c o n t r i b u t i o n — f o r w a r d i n g a l l group a c t i v i t i e s — p o s i t i v e , open a t t i t u d e — c o n s t a n t and spontaneous e f f o r t t o make t h i s c l a s s ( t h i s p a r t n e r s h i p o f t e a c h e r and s t u d e n t s t o l e a r n ) work a some c o n t r i b u t i o n — w o r k i n g f o r the c l a s s sometimes — 'proper' a t t i t u d e b answers when o b l i g e d to n e u t r a l a t t i t u d e — i r r e g u l a r c o o p e r a t i o n c f i l l i n g a s p a c e — l i t t l e c o - o p e r a t i o n — i n d i f f e r e n t — even h o s t i l e — g e t s i n the way o f the c l a s s . . . . d i n d i v i d u a l improvement ( w i t h i n the l i m i t a t i o n s o f my a b i l i t y as a t e a c h e r and the s t r u c t u r e o f t h i s c l a s s — o b v i o u s l y you s h o u l d n o t be p e n a l i z e d i f i o r the c l a s s do n o t a i d y o u r honest and de- l i b e r a t e e f f o r t s a t improvement) marked and growing a s i g n s o f p r o g r e s s , r e s p o n d i n g to c l a s s o r i n d i v i d - ual s t i m u l a t i o n b no p r o g r e s s c [ l e w i s , march, , p. ] the t e a c h e r and s t u d e n t s i n any c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c l a s s can use t h i s b a s i c l i s t as a s t a r t i n g p o i n t f o r d i s c u s s i o n s on g r a d i n g t e c h n i q u e s . a d d i t i o n s and d e l e t i o n s s h o u l d be c o n s i d e r e d . the t e a c h e r and s t u d e n t s can d e c i d e how t o b a l a n c e and average t h e s e f a c t o r s t o make a t o t a l grade. by g i v i n g n u m e r i c a l e q u i v a l e n t s a mark can r e a d i l y be a r r i v e d a t . i t must be s t r e s s e d a g a i n t h a t t h e r e i s a d i s t i n c t d i f f e r - ence between the e v a l u a t i o n t h a t i n v o l v e s s k i l l f u l t e a c h e r q u e s t i o n - i n g and b e n e f i c i a l s u g g e s t i o n i n p r e c i s e language, and the e v a l u a t i o n t h a t i s synonymous w i t h marking and g r a d i n g , i n v o l v i n g the d i s p e n - s a t i o n o f judgement. t e a c h e r s , not o n l y o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g but o f a l l s u b j e c t s , must c o n s t a n t l y be on the a l e r t f o r the a l l too common s u b o r d i n a t i o n o f honest, i n t e l l i g e n t r e a c t i o n , to r e l a t i v e l y s u p e r f l u o u s r a n k i n g and c l a s s i f i c a t i o n . beyond a l l o f t h i s d i s c u s s i o n on e v a l u a t i o n p r o c e d u r e , i s the u l t i m a t e q u e s t i o n t h a t a l l s t u d e n t s s h o u l d be encouraged to g r a p p l e w i t h and f o r m u l a t e an answer t o , r e g a r d l e s s how t e n t a t i v e . what i s s u c c e s s i n c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g f o r each i n d i v i d u a l ? h i g h marks? e n c o u r a g i n g comments? a t t e n t i o n ? c o l l e a g u e a p p r o v a l ? p u b l i c a t i o n ? s e l f - s a t i s f i c t i o n ? in the r e a l w o r l d good w r i t e r s do n o t g e t marks; t h e y g e t p u b l i s h e d . the more i n g r a i n e d t h i s c o n c e p t becomes i n each i n d i v i d u a l , the l e s s i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d and i m p r i s o n e d the s t u d e n t s , and t h e i r w r i t i n g , w i l l be. conclusion c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g journey summary .work s u b m i t t e d q u e s t i o n : is t h i s b a s i c a l l y an i n v o l v e d p i e c e o f w r i t i n g ? are t h e r e s i g n s t h a t the s t u d e n t \-no—> e n j o y e d d o i n g i t ? can you hear the s t u d e n t ' s v o i c e coming through? e s s e n t i a l l y . . . i s i t r e a l ? yes respond as h o n e s t l y as the s t u d e n t has w r i t t e n . t e l l about y o u r p e r s o n a l r e a c t i o n s . t e l l the s t u d e n t about the p a r t s t h a t most i n t e r e s t e d o r e x c i t e d you. d i s a g r e e i f you d i s a g r e e , but don't t e a c h , p r e a c h , o r 'improve.' in s h o r t , be a human a u d i e n c e o f one. q u e s t i o n : is t h i s a work t h a t s h o u l d be made p u b l i c ? w i l l i t a p o s i t i v e e x p e r i e n c e f o r the s t u d e n t i f i t i s ? be yes \-no-^ decide ( o r h e l p the s t u d e n t d e c i d e ) the most s u i t a b l e medium f o r p u b l i c a t i o n . o r a l r e a d i n g ? b u l l e t i n board? c l a s s magazine? school paper? i q u e s t i o n why was the v o l v e d w i t h the what went wrong? s t u d e n t s n o t i n - h i s work? read work, f i n d the good p a r t s , respond p o s i t i v e l y , r e t u r n i t , and then s t a r t over. return i t w i t h y o u r compliments. not a l l w r i t i n g needs an a u d i - ence anyway. t e l l the s t u d e n t how and why you e n j o y e d i t . respond i n p e r s o n a l terms as a p p r o p r i a t e . i n v i t e more w r i t i n g . suggest new d i r e c t i o n s , r e l a t e d r e a d i n g s . e d i t i n g . the aim now becomes h e l p - i n g the s t u d e n t get t h i s work ready f o r t h i s p u b l i s h i n g medium and t h i s a u d i e n c e a t t h i s time. here i s where the t e a c h e r ' s e x p e r t i s e can l e a d t o q u e s t i o n s about ' e f f e c t i v e n e s s . ' how w i l l the work be r e c e i v e d ? what r e v i s i o n s w i l l h e l p improve i t ? these s u g g e s t i o n s are b e s t o f f e r e d i n terms o f o p e r a t i o n a l a d v i c e (how to do i t ) r a t h e r than a b s t r a c t i o n s about r h e t o r i c , and the t e a c h e r does i t w i t h the aim o f h e l p i n g a s t u d e n t s u c c e e d , n o t t r y i n g , t o change a human b e i n g . c o l l e a g u e response: the work i s c r i t i c a l l y d i s c u s s e d by the o t h e r s t u d e n t s i n the c l a s s , i n terms o f e f f e c t i v e n e s s . p u b ! i c a t i o n . c o p y r e a d i n g (not to be c o n f u s e d w i t h r e v i s i n g ) . help the s t u d e n t p o l i s h the work to e l i m i n a t e any g r a p h i c , mechanical o r s y n t a c t i c b a r r i e r s to s u c c e s s . a g a i n r e l a t e a d v i c e and sugges- t i o n s to the p a r t i c u l a r form o f p u b l i c a t i o n ( e . g . , i f the s t u d e n t -is g o i n g t o r e a d the work a l o u d , don't g i v e a d v i c e about s p e l l i n g e r r o r s ) . i f the t e a c h e r has been a good e d i t o r , the work i s a s u c c e s s w i t h the a u d i e n c e . both p r o c e s s and p r o d u c t are v i t a l n e c e s s i t i e s t o round the s t u d e n t w r i t e r ' s w r i t i n g e x p e r i e n c e . n e i t h e r i s s t r e s s e d above the o t h e r . three b a s i c assumptions which have run t h r o u g h t h i s t h e s i s w a r r a n t v e r b a l i z i n g . . language s e r v e s each s t u d e n t both i n the e x p l o r a t i o n and d i s c o v e r y o f h i s i n n e r s e l f , and i n c o n n e c t i n g him t o o t h e r s . . r e v i s i o n , o r e d i t i n g , can be m o t i v a t e d i n e v e r y s t u d e n t , and must be f o r e f f e c t i v e w r i t i n g t o r e s u l t . p u b l i c a t i o n m o t i v a t e s . . a l l n o t i o n s o f ' c o r r e c t n e s s ' o f language are r e l a t i v e t o the i n d i v i d u a l w r i t e r , t o the s p e c i f i c s u b j e c t m a t t e r o f the work and t o the i n t e n d e d a u d i e n c e . when f i n i s h e d the i n i t i a l w r i t i n g , the s t u d e n t w r i t e r must ask him- s e l f s e r i o u s l y , "do i wish t o be understood? do i c a r e i f my a u d i e n c e m i s r e a d s o r m i s j u d g e s me?." he must g l a n c e i n s e v e r a l d i r e c t i o n s as he p o l i s h e s h i s work. he must keep an eye on h i s a u d i e n c e , h i s s u b j e c t m a t t e r , and, p o s s i b l y , the n a t u r e o f the o c c a s i o n f o r h i s w r i t i n g . s i m u l t a n e o u s l y , he must a l s o keep a n o t h e r eye on h i s own s e n s i t i v i t i e s and a t t u n e h i s v o i c e t o the v i b r a t i o n s o f h i s i n n e r s e l f . the s t u d e n t s should e x p e r i e n c e a s e r i e s o f s t a g e s i n t h e i r w r i t i n g . b r o a d l y , they a r e p s y c h o l o - g i c a l p r e p a r a t i o n , i n i t i a l w r i t i n g , p e e r r e s p o n s e , r e v i s i o n and e d i t i n g , and p u b l i c a t i o n . the w r i t i n g t e a c h e r must p r e p a r e the s t u d e n t s t o a c c e p t the d i f f i c u l t y i n v o l v e d i n w r i t i n g and r e w r i t i n g . v e r b a l e x p r e s s i o n o f e x p e r i e n c e i s p a i n f u l and f r u s t r a t i n g and the s t u d e n t s must a c c e p t i t as such. however, they must a l s o be made aware o f the rewarding f e e l i n g o f s u c c e s s when they f i n a l l y do c a p t u r e the essence o f thoughts w i t h the ' p e r f e c t ' words, and e f f e c t i v e l y r e c r e a t e t h e i r e x p e r i e n c e s i n the minds o f t h e i r a u d i e n c e s . u n q u e s t i o n a b l y , the s e c r e t to an e x c i t i n g , m o t i v a t e d , and p r o d u c t i v e s e c o n d a r y w r i t i n g program i s k e e p i n g the s t u d e n t s d i s c o v e r i n g t h e i r i n n e r w o r l d s through w r i t i n g , w h i l e s i m u l t a n e o u s l y k e e p i n g the i n t e r e s t and s p i r i t o f p u b l i c a t i o n a l i v e . the l a s t word c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s an e x c i t i n g f i e l d t o be i n v o l v e d i n a t p r e s e n t , because r e s e a r c h and p r a c t i c a l i t i e s are j u s t be- g i n n i n g t o merge. the c o u r s e i s o n l y on t h e ground f l o o r now, but the i m p l i c a t i o n s and p o t e n t i a l i t i e s a r e sky-bound. there i s a r a g i n g need f o r the department o f e d u c a t i o n t o update i t s t h i n k i n g w i t h r e s p e c t t o t h i s c o u r s e . the c u r r i c u l u m guide and the p r e s c r i b e d textbook l i s t need much r e w o r k i n g and augmentation. seven y e a r s have passed s i n c e i t s i n c e p t i o n . c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g may have begun as an added e x t r a , an e x p e r i m e n t a l f r i l l t o the b a s i c s . however, i t s c o n t i n u a l growth i n e n r o l l m e n t a t t e s t s t o i t s r e l e v a n c e and importance i n the s t u d e n t s ' eyes. c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g must be made a d i s t i n c t c r e d i t , d i v o r c e d c o m p l e t e l y from j o u r n a l i s m , b r o a d c a s t media, o r whatever e l s e w r i t i n g has come t o l a b e l t h r o u g h o u t b.c. s c h o o l s . and c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g must be r e c o g n i z e d and deemed worthy o f c o u r s e c r e d i t s . the t e a c h e r s o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g a r e d o i n g a r e s p e c t a b l e j o b g i v e n the l a c k o f guidance and the l a c k o f m a t e r i a l s . t e a c h i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s a very demanding endeavour t h a t r e q u i r e s l i m i t l e s s energy and p e r s o n a l a t t e n t i o n . when p r a c t i c a l t e a c h e r guidance and r e l e v a n t m a t e r i a l s become a v a i l a b l e , the c o u r s e w i l l r e a l l y blossom. a t p r e s e n t , the c o u r s e i s l i m i t e d o n l y by the numbers o f t e a c h e r s who f e e l competent t o t e a c h i t , knowing f u l l w e l l t h a t they a r e , f o r the most p a r t , g r o p i n g i n the dark, f o l l o w i n g t h e i r own w r i t i n g bent. the g u i d e l i n e s f o r c u r r i c u l u m development t h a t a r e p r e s e n t e d a r e i n t e n d e d f o r c o n s i d e r a t i o n by each c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r w h i l e he i s p l a n n i n g h i s c u r r i c u l u m . what i s p r e s e n t e d i s not a c u r r i c u l u m p e r s e , but r a t h e r g u i d e l i n e s f o r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c u r r i c u l u m d e v e l o p e r s , i . e . the a c t u a l t e a c h e r s . the s t u d e n t s i n each c l a s s w i l l v a r y a c c o r d i n g t o t h e i r needs and d e s i r e s , and the t e a c h e r s v a r y a c c o r d i n g t o t h e i r i d e o l o g y and methodology. no c o n s t a n t c u r r i c u l u m c o u l d meet even a f r a c t i o n o f t h e s e v a r i a t i o n s . but the g u i d e l i n e s do remain c o n s t a n t . each t e a c h e r must s e r i o u s l y c o n s i d e r the s p e c i f i c n a t u r e o f h i m s e l f and o f h i s c l a s s and then a p p l y the g u i d e l i n e s t o the unique s i t u a t i o n a t hand. perhaps the key c o n c e p t i n c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s the a b s o l u t e i n d i v i d u a l i t y o f each w r i t e r . u l t i m a t e l y t h i s must be the c o n c e r n o f the c r e a t i v i t y r e s e a r c h e r s , the department o f e d u c a t i o n p o l i c y makers, the t e a c h e r , and the s t u d e n t h i m s e l f . c o n s e q u e n t l y , a c o u r s e o f t h i s n a t u r e has t o be 'ry.eal'; i t has t o o f f e r something more than c o u r s e c r e d i t s and graded papers. in o r d e r t o be " r e a l , the c o u r s e has t o h e l p each s t u d e n t a l o n g an i n d i v i d u a l p u r s u i t t h a t goes beyond the s c h o o l ' s w a l l s i n t o the o u t s i d e w o r l d . i t i s no one's d e c i s i o n but the s t u d e n t ' s what h i s p u r s u i t w i l l be. p.k. page, a v e r y contemporary p o e t , c r i e s o u t f o r r e c o g n i t i o n o f t h i s i n d i v i d u a l j o u r n e y each w r i t e r must t a k e : i am t r a v e l l e r . i have a d e s t i n a t i o n but no maps. others perhaps have reached t h a t d e s t i n a t i o n a l r e a d y , s t i l l o t h e r s a r e on t h e i r way. but none has had to go from here b e f o r e - - n o r w i l l a g a i n . one's r o u t e i s one's own. one's j o u r n e y unique. what l i e s on the way i s unknown. how to go? land, sea o r a i r ? what t e c h n i q u e s to use? what v e h i c l e ? [ e l l i s , ed., , p. ] so, i n the end, the w r i t e r i s a l o n e . but r e g a r d l e s s o f whether he i s w r i t i n g i n b u s i n e s s o r i n f r i e n d s h i p , f o r a p o l i t i c a l group o r a c h u r c h community, o r j u s t f o r h i m s e l f , the w r i t e r i s coming to know and u n d e r s t a n d h i s own s e l f i n a v e r y s p e c i a l way. u l t i - m a t e l y a l l c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e s must endeavour to h e l p each i n d i v i d u a l w r i t e r w r i t e what i t i s t h a t he f e e l s c o m p e l l e d to w r i t e about. a p p e n d i x a provincial survey letter to all b.c. superintendents september , school d i s t r i c t no. attention: mr. . . . . d i s t r i c t s u p e r i n t e n d e n t gentlemen: i am c o m p i l i n g a l i s t o f a l l the d i s t r i c t s i n b r i t i s h columbia which o f f e r the e l e c t i v e c o u r s e w r i t i n g . t h i s i n f o r - mation i s n o t on f i l e a t the department o f e d u c a t i o n i n v i c t o r i a , and i s u r g e n t l y needed. my p a r t i c u l a r i n t e r e s t i n t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n i s t o a l l o w me t o c o n t a c t the w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s i n d i v i d u a l l y t o e x p l o r e w i t h them t h e c u r r i c u l u m they a r e employing. i am w r i t i n g my m.a. t h e s i s i n e n g l i s h e d u c a t i o n a t the u n i v e r s i t y o f b r i t i s h columbia and need t o know the numbers o f t h i s c o u r s e o f f e r e d i n b r i t i s h columbia, and the type o f c o u r s e o f f e r e d , be i t j o u r n a l i s m , c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g , communications, o r j u s t a c a t c h - a l l l a b e l . the b.c. e n g l i s h t e a c h e r ' s a s s o c i a t i o n a l s o needs t h i s l i s t f o r workshop purposes. i am r e q u e s t i o n t h a t you respond t o the a t t a c h e d q u e s t i o n s , and promptly r e t u r n y o u r response i n the s e l f - a d d r e s s e d e n v e l o p e i n c l u d e d . i a p p r e c i a t e y o u r time and c o n c e r n . thank you. yours t r u l y , nj/mle e n c l o s u r e mrs. norma jamieson e n g l i s h c u r r i c u l u m c o o r d i n a t o r a p p e n d i x b provincial survey letter to all teachers of creative writing in british columbia principal - r. v. simpson matthew mcnair senior secondary school vice principal - e. t. novakowski no. road richmond, b.c. v a y - today's date name school address c i t y p o s t a l code dear mr./mrs./miss : i have r e c e i v e d y o u r name from y o u r d i s t r i c t s u p e r i n t e n d e n t , , and d e s p e r a t e l y need you to respond. i am c o m p i l i n g a l i s t o f a l l the s c h o o l s i n b r i t i s h columbia which o f f e r the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g o p t i o n o f the the e l e c t i v e , w r i t i n g . t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n i s n o t on f i l e a t the department o f e d u c a t i o n i n v i c t o r i a , and i s d e s p e r a t e l y needed. my p a r t i c u l a r i n t e r e s t i n t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n i s t h a t i am w r i t i n g my m.a. t h e s i s i n e n g l i s h e d u c a t i o n a t u.b.c. my t h e s i s t o p i c c o n c e r n s c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i n b.c. s e n i o r s e c o n d a r y s c h o o l s , a t o p i c on which no i n f o r m a t i o n has been g a t h e r e d . the b.c. e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n a l s o needs t h i s l i s t f o r work- shop p u r p o s e s . i am r e q u e s t i n g t h a t you respond to the a t t a c h e d q u e s t i o n s and p r o m p t l y r e t u r n y o u r response i n the s e l f - a d d r e s s e d e n v e l o p e i n c l u d e d . i a p p r e c i a t e y o u r time and c o n c e r n . thank you. yours t r u l y , urs/nj e n c l o s u r e s mrs. norma jamieson e n g l i s h c u r r i c u l u m c o o r d i n a t o r . do any s e n i o r secondary s c h o o l s i n y o u r d i s t r i c t o f f e r the c o u r s e w r i t i n g ? . i f w r i t i n g i s o f f e r e d , p l e a s e l i s t the names o f the s c h o o l s i n v o l v e d and t h e i r r e s p e c t i v e a d d r e s s e s and, i f p o s s i b l e , the names o f the t e a c h e r s . p l e a s e r e t u r n t h i s q u e s t i o n n a i r e , even i f y o u r d i s t r i c t does not o f f e r w r i t i n g . thank you n. jamieson creative writing in b.c. . does y o u r c l a s s " p u b l i s h " a "book"? u s i n g s c h o o l d i t t o machines? u s i n g the s c h o o l o f f s e t p r e s s ? u s i n g o u t s i d e p u b l i s h e r s ? do you s e l l y o u r p u b l i c a t i o n ? . does y o u r c o u r s e r e v o l v e about a s e r i e s o f assignments? or, do the s t u d e n t s w r i t e what t h e y wish? . do you s e t d e a d l i n e s ? . do you i n s i s t s t u d e n t s m i n i c the form o f o u t s t a n d i n g w r i t e r s ? . do you i n s i s t s t u d e n t s t r y w r i t i n g i n v a r y i n g genres? . do you i n s i s t on r e v i s i o n ? . do you mark i n d i v i d u a l p i e c e s o f w r i t i n g ? i f so — e v e r y p i e c e ? i f not — e x p l a i n . . do you i n s i s t on s i l e n c e i n y o u r c l a s s ? . do s t u d e n t s d i s c u s s o t h e r s t u d e n t s ' works? i f so -- as a p r e s c r i b e d p a r t o f the c o u r s e ? or, o n l y c a s u a l l y and s p o n t a n e o u s l y among i n d i v i d u a l s ? . do you p r e s c r i b e r e a d i n g ? i f so -- by the s t u d e n t s ? - - b y community w r i t e r s ? s p e c i f y . . do you have r e a d i n g s ? i f so — by the s t u d e n t s ? — by community w r i t e r s ? s p e c i f y . . do you i n s i s t t h a t s t u d e n t s keep a d a i l y j o u r n a l ? i f so -- do you i n s p e c t i t ? — do you mark i t ? . do you i n v o l v e the s t u d e n t s i n o t h e r modes o f e x p r e s s i o n ? i f so -- s p e c i f y . . do you use any t e x t s ? i f so -- s p e c i f y . . does y o u r s c h o o l o f f e r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ? i f so -- what i s i t l a b e l l e d on the s t u d e n t s ' t r a n s c r i p t s ? . do you f e e l more d i r e c t i o n from the department o f e d u c a t i o n i s needed f o r t h i s c o u r s e ? . do you have a c o u r s e d e s c r i p t i o n t h a t you use i n y o u r s c h o o l c o u r s e c a t a l o g u e ? i f so -- p l e a s e send the d e s c r i p t i o n a l o n g . p l e a s e f e e l f r e e t o add any comments on the back, and to r e q u e s t a copy o f the r e s u l t s o f t h i s endeavour. thank you a g a i n f o r y o u r e f f o r t s . a p p e n d i x c schools offering creative writing in - with the respective teachers appendix c schools offering creative writing in - with the respective teachers school t e a c h e r f e r n i e secondary school d i s t r i c t # nd avenue f e r n i e , b.c. the t e a c h e r i s not known. s t a n l e y humphries secondary school d i s t r i c t # box c a s t l e g a r , b.c. ms. t. hal l a s j . f l o y d crowe secondary school d i s t r i c t # th avenue t r a i l , b.c. mr. j . r a n a l l o southern okanagon secondary school d i s t r i c t # box o l i v e r , b.c. voh t mr. c m . t a y l o r similkameen secondary school d i s t r i c t # box keremeos, b.c. vox n mr. r. thomas kelowna secondary school d i s t r i c t # harvey avenue kelowna, b.c. mrs. n. c a s s i d y appendix c ( c o n t i n u e d ) school t e a c h e r c o r r e l i e u s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # anderson d r i v e q u e s n e l , b.c. v j g mr. mrs. mark kunen j i l l l e b e d o f f s a r d i s j r - s r secondary school d i s t r i c t # box s a r d i s , b.c. l i n d a l u t c h e r c h i l l i w a c k s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # y a l e road e a s t c h i l l i w a c k , b.c. ms. m.j. m o r r i s a b b o t s f o r d s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # c/ mccallum road a b b o t s f o r d , b.c. v s p mr. jack wood e a r l m a r r i o t t secondary school d i s t r i c t # - th avenue s u r r e y , b.c. mr. v. webber p r i n c e s s margaret s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # - nd avenue s u r r e y , b.c. mr. d. l a r s e n \ appendix c ( c o n t i n u e d ) school t e a c h e r s t e v e s t o n s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # no. road richmond, b.c. mr. gary m a c h e l l mcnair s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # - # road richmond, b.c. mrs. n. jamieson c h u r c h i l l secondary school d i s t r i c t # heather s t r e e t vancouver, b.c. mr. stubbs g l a d s t o n e secondary school d i s t r i c t # g l a d s t o n e vancouver, b.c. mr. r. cooper p o i n t grey secondary school d i s t r i c t # e a s t b o u l e v a r d vancouver, b.c. miss schwartz p r i n c e o f wales secondary school d i s t r i c t # e d d i n g t o n vancouver, b.c. mr. f e a r i n g tupper secondary school d i s t r i c t # e a s t th avenue vancouver, b.c. mr. robb appendix c ( c o n t i n u e d ) school t e a c h e r u n i v e r s i t y h i l l school d i s t r i c t # a c a d i a vancouver, b.c. ms. barb baker burnaby north s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # hammarskjold d r i v e burnaby, b.c. mr. v.f. w r i g h t a r g y l e secondary school d i s t r i c t # f r e d e r i c k road north vancouver, b.c. v k j mr. mr. mr. j . bryan h. cross ed. reimer s e n t i n e l secondary school d i s t r i c t # c h a r t w e l l d r i v e west vancouver, b.c. v s r mrs . m. t i n g e y max cameron secondary school d i s t r i c t # j o y c e avenue powell r i v e r , b.c. v a a mr. t.m. foreman p r i n c e rupert secondary school d i s t r i c t # west th avenue p r i n c e rupert, b.c. v j p mr. m. clement appendix c ( c o n t i n u e d ) school t e a c h e r s m i t h e r s secondary school d i s t r i c t # box s m i t h e r s , b.c. voj n g a r r e t t m. vanweetherizen lakes d i s t r i c t secondary school d i s t r i c t # box burns lake, b.c. voj e mrs.doreen woodal nechako v a l l e y secondary school d i s t r i c t # p.o. box vanderhoof, b.c. voj a mr. l. c o l o n e l l o k e l l y road secondary school d i s t r i c t # c/o th avenue p r i n c e george, b.c. v m l mr. rod m u l l i g a n mcbride secondary school d i s t r i c t # c/o th avenue p r i n c e george, b.c. v m l mrs. nora penner north peace secondary school d i s t r i c t # - th avenue f o r t s a i n t john, b.c. vij v mr. b a r r e eyre appendix c ( c o n t i n u e d ) school t e a c h e r mount douglas secondary school d i s t r i c t # gordon head road v i c t o r i a , b.c. v p x mr. c h a r l e s brookman oak bay secondary school d i s t r i c t # cranmore road v i c t o r i a , b.c. v r z the t e a c h e r i s not known. spectrum community secondary school d i s t r i c t # west b u r n s i d e road v i c t o r i a , b.c. v z e the t e a c h e r i s not known. v i c t o r i a secondary school d i s t r i c t # grant s t r e e t v i c t o r i a , b.c. v t c the t e a c h e r i s not known. p a r k l a n d secondary school d i s t r i c t # mcdonald park road s i d n e y , b.c. v l s mr. ross m a r t i n s t e l l y ' s secondary school d i s t r i c t # c/o school board o f f i c e p.o. box s i d n e y , b.c. mrs r o s a l i n d t a y l o r appendix c ( c o n t i n u e d ) school t e a c h e r claremont secondary school d i s t r i c t # wesley road v i c t o r i a , b.c. v y y mr. george k e l l y cowichan s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # james s t r e e t duncan, b.c. ms. j . s h e l b o u r n lake cowichan secondary school d i s t r i c t # box lake cowichan, b.c. mr. dave boekner nanaimo d i s t r i c t secondary school d i s t r i c t # wakesiah avenue nanaimo, b.c. mr. mr. rod brown jack hodgins ladysmith secondary school d i s t r i c t # drawer l a d y s m i t h , b.c. david k e l l e y a l b e r n i d i s t r i c t secondary school school d i s t r i c t # burde s t r e e t p o r t a l b e r n i , b.c. mr. r. rankin appendix c ( c o n t i n u e d ) school t e a c h e r georges p. v a n i e r secondary school d i s t r i c t # box courtenay, b.c. mrs. d. c r o f t f o r t nelson secondary school d i s t r i c t # box f o r t n e l s o n , b.c. voc r mrs. j i l l v i v i a n north i s l a n d secondary school d i s t r i c t # p.o. box p o r t m c n e i l l , b.c. von r mr. dave manning c a s s i a r e l e m e n t a r y - s e c o n d a r y school d i s t r i c t # box c a s s i a r , b.c. ms. donna a b l i n c a l e d o n i a s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # munroe s t r e e t t e r r a c e , b.c. v g x mr. p e t e r vogt salmon arm s e n i o r secondary school d i s t r i c t # box salmon arm, b.c. mr. duncan lowe a p p e n d i x d provincial survey: additional teacher comments appendix d provincial survey: additional teacher comments comment no. no q u e s t i o n s on c l a s s s i z e ? c l a s s s e l e c t i o n ( i . e . , c r i t e r i a f o r e n t r y ) . comment no. s t u d e n t assignments i n c l u d e d i r e c t i o n t o seek o u t s i d e p u b l i c a t i o n o f m a t e r i a l s . u s u a l l y some do g e t p u b l i s h e d and get payment. comment no. a d v i c e to a l l c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s t u d e n t s : i t i s f a r b e t t e r t o screw i n one s m a l l l i g h t - b u l b than t o reach f o r the sun a t m i d n i g h t . comment no. have you e v e r thought o f t r y i n g t o o r g a n i z e w r i t i n g t e a c h e r s i n the p r o v i n c e so t h a t we can exchange i d e a s more f r e q u e n t l y . such an exchange would be most u s e f u l . appendix d ( c o n t i n u e d ) comment no. i t s h o u l d be n o t e d t h a t the book we produce i s an 'annual' ( y e a r b o o k ) . i t o f f e r s a c e r t a i n o u t l e t f o r some o f the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g t h a t i s done. the o t h e r method we used, t o p u b l i s h c.w., was the monthly s c h o o l newspaper. i t would c e r t a i n l y be b e n e f i c i a l t o have a p r o v i n c i a l j o u r n a l p u b l i s h e d (monthly?) w i t h v a r i o u s s t u d e n t c r e a t i o n s . . . . comment no. i have been t e a c h i n g t h i s c o u r s e f o r o n l y two y e a r s , and am s t i l l s e a r c h i n g f o r ways t o d e v e l o p the elements o f the w r i t e r ' s s t y l e . i doubt t h a t the department o f e d u c a t i o n c o u l d do v e r y much i n t h i s f i e l d , u n l e s s they c o u l d commission a b o o k l e t c o n t a i n i n g passages i l l u s t r a t i n g v a r i o u s s t y l e s , w i t h a s i m p l e a n a l y s i s o f the s t y l e o f each. t h i s s h o u l d be o f such a l e v e l as to be a c c e s s i b l e t o the s t u d e n t . such a b o o k l e t would a l l o w the s t u d e n t t o become f a m i l i a r w i t h s t y l e s , and t o o b s e r v e the manner i n which they d i f f e r . appendix d ( c o n t i n u e d ) the g r e a t e s t h e l p would be t o hear from o t h e r s i n v o l v e d i n t e a c h i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . perhaps t h i s c o u l d be a l o n e by the p r o v i n c i a l e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n . comment no. i am a new t e a c h e r o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g and am g r e a t l y i n t e r e s t e d i n l e a r n i n g p r o c e d u r e s used by o t h e r t e a c h e r s . do you know o f any a r t i c l e s o r books r e l a t e d t o the s u b j e c t o f t e a c h i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ? comment no. j u s t f o r the r e c o r d , i ' v e d i v i d e d the c o u r s e i n t o t h r e e segments:journal ism, b r o a d c a s t i n g (emphasis on r a d i o t e c h n i q u e s ) and c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g . in a small s c h o o l such as t h i s i t ' s d i f f i c u l t t o o f f e r r e a l l y " i n depth" c o u r s e s which one m a i n l y makes up o n e s e l f . i was g i v e n the c o u r s e t o t e a c h as i had a one time worked i n the newsroom o f the vancouver sun--hence i had j o u r n a l i s t i c e x p e r i e n c e . appendix d ( c o n t i n u e d ) i'm not an e n g l i s h t e a c h e r — r a t h e r my f i e l d i s t h a t o f h i s t o r y and geography but i'm v e r y t h a n k f u l f o r t a k i n g e n g l i s h a t the u n i v e r s i t y o f b r i t i s h columbia. i don't know what the c o u r s e was supposed t o c o n t a i n but my i n s t r u c t r e s s f e l t the o u t l i n e as put f o r t h by the f a c u l t y o f e d u c a t i o n l e f t "something" t o be d e s i r e d and what she d i d was o f f e r a c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g c o u r s e a l b e i t f a i r l y w e l l s t r u c t u r e d s t a r t i n g w i t h how t o w r i t e so o t h e r s can u n d e r s t a n d what y o u ' r e t r y i n g t o say. i've used a g r e a t p a r t o f my n o t e s , e t c . from my o l d e n g l i s h c o u r s e and have found them i n v a l u a b l e f o r t h i s p a r t i c u l a r s e c t i o n o f w r i t i n g .. comment no. i f e e l t h a t t h i s c o u r s e was one o f the most s u c c e s s f u l i have t a u g h t because we jumped r i g h t i n and d i d t h i n g s and l e a r n e d from e x p e r i e n c e . we made a movie, made a v i d e o t a p e , made a l i t e r a r y magazine, e t c . and then a n a l y z e d o u r e f f o r t s a f t e r w a r d s t o see where we c o u l d improve. we o n l y l o o k e d something up t o see how t o do i t i f we got s t u c k . i thought t e x t b o o k s t u d i e s i n appendix d ( c o n t i n u e d ) t h i s c o u r s e would s t i f l e c r e a t i v i t y . as i t was, we had no l a c k o f c r e a t i v e i d e a s . e n c l o s e d i s a copy o f o u r l i t e r a r y magazine. very l i t t l e o f the c l a s s ' s t o t a l c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g o u t p u t i s i n the magazine because we t r i e d t o b a l a n c e the c o n t r i b u - t i o n s from d i f f e r e n t g r a d e s . a l s o , we a r e somewhat l i m i t e d by o u r g e o g r a p h i c a l l o c a t i o n ! for i n s t a n c e , t h e r e p r o b a b l y i s n ' t a p r o f e s s i o n a l ( o r even s e m i - p r o f e s s i o n a l ) w r i t e r w i t h i n m i l e s who c o u l d do a r e a d i n g . comment t h i s j u s t got t o me today so i hope i t reaches you on time! yea creative writing'. long live writers. don't l e t the government put i n c o u r s e o u t l i n e s o r screw us up a t a l l . we can d e v e l o p genre s e c t i o n s and d e v e l o p s k i l l s o u r s e l v e s i f we have p e o p l e who know what they a r e d o i n g . we need p e o p l e who know w r i t i n g , p r e f e r a b l y w r i t e r s who l i k e h e l p i n g o t h e r s t o l e a r n . the s t u d e n t s a r e v e r y i n t e l l i g e n t , can h a n d l e d i f f i c u l t c o n c e p t s and a r e v e r y f u n t o work w i t h . i am going back t o do my m.f.a. i n c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g and o n l y then w i l l i f e e l r e a l l y q u a l i f i e d t o t e a c h the c o u r s e . appendix d ( c o n t i n u e d ) comment no. c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s a v e r y p o p u l a r e l e c t i v e h e r e — a b o u t s i x t y s t u d e n t s do i t each semester. (school r o l l - ) many s t u d e n t s w r i t e f a r more than e x p e c t e d amounts and o f t e n c o n t i n u e t o b r i n g work i n a f t e r c o m p l e t i n g the c o u r s e . p o e t r y i s most p o p u l a r . i e n j o y r e a d i n g n e a r l y e v e r y t h i n g t h a t i s handed i n , m a i n l y because p e o p l e a r e encouraged t o w r i t e what i s most i m p o r t a n t t o them from d a y - t o - d a y — a n d i emphasize e m o t i o n a l s i n c e r i t y so t h a t p e o p l e e x p r e s s s u b s t a n t i a l a s p e c t s o f t h e m s e l v e s . i used t o s u g g e s t t o p i c s a t the b e g i n n i n g o f e v e r y p e r i o d but i t seems t h a t the more i withdraw my d i r e c t i o n t h e more t h e q u a l i t y o f w r i t i n g i m p r o v e s — a d e l i c a t e p r o c e s s . comment i would a p p r e c i a t e any h e l p o r s u g g e s t i o n s i can g e t . next y e a r i w i l l i n s i s t on a j o u r n a l kept f o r the y e a r . i w i l l a l s o spend some time t e a c h i n g standard grammar and u s a g e — s e n t e n c e s , p a r a g r a p h s , e s s a y s . i b e l i e v e i a l s o emphasize e n j o y i n g t h e p r o c e s s r a t h e r than a c h i e v i n g the g o a l . i t seems t o w o r k — t h e r e s u l t s a r e g e n e r a l l y i m p r e s s i v e . appendix d ( c o n t i n u e d ) t h a t c r e a t i v e w r i t e r s must be aware o f the " s t a n d a r d " t h e y a r e r a n g i n g from. i l o o k upon standard grammar and usage as a knowledge o f the craftsmanship o f w r i t i n g . i w i l l a l s o spend time on a h i s t o r y o f s t y l e s — h a v e s t u d e n t s parody s t y l e s . i w i l l , i n a d d i t i o n , do a l i t t l e s u r v e y o f g e n r e s . once s t u d e n t s have a background o f s t a n d a r d grammar and usage, an awareness o f d i f f e r e n t s t y l e s and forms, then they can t r y t h e i r hand f r e e l y moulding t h e i r own t h o u g h t s . then i w i l l have workshops t o d i s c u s s themes, compare notes and so on. d i s c u s s i o n s , r e a d i n g s . . . . next y e a r w i l l be the second y e a r f o r t h i s c o u r s e . t h i s y e a r i made the m i s t a k e o f assuming: ( ) o n l y p e o p l e i n t e r e s t e d i n w r i t i n g o r p e o p l e who are w r i t i n g a l r e a d y w i l l be i n the c o u r s e ( c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i s a c o n v e n i e n t dumping ground f o r s t u d e n t s who have no p l a c e t o g o — s c h o o l problem which won't c o n c e r n y o u r t h e s i s but which n o n e t h e l e s s a f f e c t s the c o u r s e ) . appendix d ( c o n t i n u e d ) ( ) c r e a t i v i t y i s i t s own m o t i v a t i o n . ( ) c r e a t i v i t y f u n c t i o n s b e s t w i t h i n a s t r u c t u r - l e s s ( f r e e ) environment) i w i l l h e a v i l y s t r u c t u r e the c o u r s e f o r a p p r o x i - m a t e l y o n e - h a l f a y e a r — s e n t e n c e s , p a r a g r a p h s , l o n g e r c o m p o s i t i o n s , h i s t o r y o f s t y l e s , s u r v e y o f f o r m s — t h e n o n e - h a l f y e a r on workshops, ' f r e e r ' environment e t c . , r e a d i n g s . i ' l l ' i m p r i s o n ' them i n a s t r u c t u r e f i r s t , then s e t them f r e e . comment no. your q u e s t i o n n a i r e uses ' i n s i s t ' i n s e v e r a l q u e s t i o n s . i t i s c o n t r a r y w i t h the s p i r i t , o f my c o u r s e t o i n s i s t on a n y t h i n g c r e a t i v e — w i t h one e x c e p t i o n , i i n s i s t t h a t s t u d e n t s not be humble about t h e i r work but t h a t they s h a r e i t w i t h o t h e r s . h o p e f u l l y , they work because they want t o . comment i am c u r r e n t l y e n d e a v o u r i n g t o persuade the department o f e d u c a t i o n i n v i c t o r i a t h a t s e p a r a t e c r e d i t s s h o u l d be g i v e n f o r c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g and j o u r n a l i s m , as they d e v e l o p e n t i r e l y d i f f e r e n t s k i l l s . i am o f the o p i n i o n t h a t t h e y appear t o d i f f e r e n t types o f s t u d e n t s and c a p i t a l i z e on d i f f e r e n t t a l e n t s . so f a r , i have met the usual b u r e a u c r a t i c 'red t a p e ' — b u t i haven't g i v e n upl appendix e ways o f knowing the s t u d e n t a. ideas r e l e v a n t to an awareness o f the person's i n d i v i d u a l i t y . remember t h a t p o t e n t i a l i t i e s have t o be l o o k e d f o r and t h a t t h i s t a k e s e f f o r t . . t r y t o d i s c o v e r something unique about each c h i l d o r young p e r s o n . . expect him t o be d i f f e r e n t . . i d e n t i f y him by name as e a r l y as p o s s i b l e . . remember t h a t c h i l d r e n come i n many d i f f e r e n t shapes, s i z e s , c o l o r s . each has h i s own p e r s o n a l i t y t h a t needs t o be d i f f e r e n t i a t e d . . remember t h a t each has h i s own p a t t e r n o f l e a r n i n g and t h a t i t i s i m p o r t a n t t o "tune i n t o i t " o r become aware o f i t . . a c c e p t him as he i s . every c h i l d and young p e r s o n has i n - t e r e s t i n g , e x c i t i n g , and v a l u a b l e q u a l i t i e s . . observe the e n v i r o n m e n t a l e f f e c t s on him; know the e n v i r o n - mental background. . be aware o f the p r e v i o u s i n j u r i e s o r e x p e r i e n c e s t h a t have shaped h i s way o f t h i n k i n g , a c t i n g , and f e e l i n g . . be f a m i l i a r w i t h h i s p a s t r e c o r d , achievement, d i s c i p l i n e , h e a l t h , e t c . . learn something o f h i s f a m i l y r e l a t i o n s h i p s ("chip o f f o l d b l o c k " ) . . know what the normal p a t t e r n i s and compare t o see how h i s p a t t e r n d i f f e r s from i t . . remember t h a t we n e v e r l e a r n a l l t h e r e i s t o know about a p e r s o n . b. ideas i n v o l v i n g h e i g h t e n e d sensory e x p e r i e n c e . look him o v e r . . focus y o u r a t t e n t i o n d i r e c t l y on him. . a c h i l d ' s p h y s i c a l q u a l i t i e s a r e one way o f knowing him. . use a l l y o u r senses o f " k n o w i n g " — s t r e t c h i n g them t o the utmost. * [ t o r r a n c e , , pp. - ]. . weigh and t e s t . . look a t , l i s t e n t o , r e a c t t o him from al a n g l e s . . observe i n v a r i o u s k i n d s o f l i g h t ( i n as many s i t u a t i o n s as p o s s i b l e ) . b r i g h t l i g h t s b r i n g o u t some c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s , w h i l e shade b r i n g s o u t o t h e r s . . observe the c h i l d f i r s t as an i s o l a t e d i n d i v i d u a l , and then h i s r e a c t i o n t o h i s environment, the r e a c t i o n s o f o t h e r s t o him, and h i s b e h a v i o r i n d i f f e r e n t s i t u a t i o n s . . t e s t the depth and genuineness o f h i s o b s e r v a b l e ( s u r f a c e ) c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s . what you might assume t o be sham o r p r e t e n s e may be genuine. . observe what he does when l e f t a l o n e . . empathize. t r y to imagine how he e x p e r i e n c e s t h i n g s . . c o n s t r u c t f a n t a s i e s o r dream c a s t l e s about what he c o u l d become. . observe c l e a n l i n e s s o r l a c k o f c l e a n l i n e s s . what appears t o be u n c l e a n l i n e s s may o n l y be s t a i n s . . go below the s u r f a c e appearance t o f i n d the r e a l c h i l d . . see him from a l l s i d e s and p o s i t i o n s . . n o t i c e p h y s i c a l d i f f e r e n c e s so as t o d i s t i n g u i s h one p u p i l from a n o t h e r as e a r l y as p o s s i b l e . . photograph him engaged i n v a r i o u s k i n d s o f a c t i v i t i e s . record h i s v o i c e . . observe whether he i s r e l a x e d o r t e n s e . . look, l o o k , l o o k , and then l o o k a g a i n . c. e x t e n s i o n o f s e n s i n g through e x p e r i m e n t a t i o n . encourage him t o go f u r t h e r than he t h i n k s he c a n , t o t e s t h i s l i m i t s . . f i n d h i s most o b v i o u s a s s e t s , put them t o use, and see what o t h e r s emerge. . do not be a f r a i d t o c h a l l e n g e a c h i l d o r a young person t o h i s l i m i t s o c c a s i o n a l l y , even t o the f r u s t r a t i o n p o i n t . . p r o v i d e m a t e r i a l s f o r m a n i p u l a t i o n , g i v e o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r t h e i r use, and see what p o t e n t i a l i t i e s emerge. . s e t up a v a r i e t y o f s i t u a t i o n s where he may work a l o n e , w i t h one, w i t h a committee, and w i t h a s t r u c t u r e d c l a s s , and o b s e r v e changes i n b e h a v i o r . . observe h i s response t o d i f f e r e n t e n v i r o n m e n t a l f a c t o r s . . a l t e r the c l a s s r o o m s t r u c t u r e . . give him an i n t e r e s t i n v e n t o r y o f some k i n d . . c h a l l e n g e him w i t h a v a r i e t y o f types o f assignments and note the r e s u l t s . . use him f o r an i m p o r t a n t purpose o r goal and o b s e r v e what new p o t e n t i a l i t i e s t h i s b r i n g s out. . observe him under s t r e s s , when he i s angry, e t c . . observe what he chooses t o do when he i s a l o n e . . give him o p p o r t u n i t i e s t o pursue h i s hobbies o r s t r o n g i n t e r e s t s as a way o f b r i n g i n g o u t some o f h i s b e s t a b i l i t i e s and s t r o n g e s t m o t i v a t i o n s . . observe changes o r l a c k o f change ( s t a b i l i t y ) under d i f f e r - e n t c o n d i t i o n s . . keep c h a n g i n g the c o n d i t i o n s . give d i f f e r e n t a c t i v i t i e s t o b r i n g out new p o t e n t i a l i t i e s t h a t don't j u s t happen t o come o u t . . observe how he responds and t o what he responds. . l e t him a c t i n d e p e n d e n t l y . . give him a chance t o e x p r e s s h i m s e l f . . experiment and e v a l u a t e ; o b s e r v e what new q u a l i t i e s come out under v a r i o u s c o n d i t i o n s . . use a v a r i e t y o f ways o f t e s t i n g them. . develop o r enhance one p o t e n t i a l i t y and see what o t h e r s come o u t . . joke w i t h him. . needle him. . remember t h a t e v e r y c h i l d and young person has i n f i n i t e p o t e n t i a l i t i e s , and t h e r e i s no end t o them i f we are open, and i f we e x e r t e f f o r t . . observe him under s t r e s s and c o m p e t i t i o n . . s y n t h e s i z e t e s t s c o r e s and o t h e r d a t a i n t o a c o h e r e n t m e a n i n g f u l p i c t u r e . d. e x t e n d i n g awareness by r e c o r d i n g , p r e d i c t i n g , and c h e c k i n g p r e d i c t i o n s . a f t e r making o b s e r v a t i o n s , p r e d i c t how the c h i l d o r young person w i l l p e r f o r m (behave, a c h i e v e , r e a c t , respond) i n v a r i o u s s i t u a t i o n s ; how he w i l l meet p r e d i c t a b l e s t r e s s e s , e . have him r e a c t to c e r t a i n o b j e c t s , and p r e d i c t h i s r e a c t i o n . . w i t h h o l d f i n a l judgment. keep open t o changes and unseen p o t e n t i a l i t i e s . . l i s t o b s e r v a b l e c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s . w r i t e down p r e d i c t i o n s and keep a r e c o r d o f t h e i r outcome. . record o b s e r v a t i o n s from time t o t i m e , o v e r a span o f time. observe t r e n d s . . when you combine h i s p o t e n t i a l i t i e s w i t h someone e l s e ' s , what new q u a l i t i e s emerge. . examine performance d a t a , i f a v a i l a b l e . study growth t r e n d s . e. e x t e n d i n g awareness through i n t e r p e r s o n a l r e a c t i o n . f i n d ways o f r e a r r a n g i n g c h i l d r e n f o r g r e a t e r i n t e r a c t i o n . . a l l o w c h i l d r e n t o work i n teams, and l i s t e n and o b s e r v e t o see what unexpected q u a l i t i e s are m a n i f e s t e d . . observe what t a l e n t s , i n t e r e s t s , o r m o t i v a t i o n s emerge i n r o l e p l a y i n g , p l a y g r o u n d a c t i v i t i e s , lunchroom i n t e r a c t i o n , f a n t a s y a c t i v i t i e s , e t c . . observe the c h i l d ' s b e h a v i o r i n d i f f e r e n t c o m b i n a t i o n s o f o t h e r p u p i l s . . ask o t h e r people about him; f i n d out how o t h e r s see him. . use sociograms and o t h e r peer r a t i n g s , i n t e r a c t i o n i n f o r m a t i o n , e t c . . observe how he i n t e r a c t s w i t h h i s peers i n the c l a s s r o o m . . compare him w i t h o t h e r s h i s age, sex, e t c . . n o t i c e h i s moods and r e a c t i o n s day a f t e r day; o b s e r v e how h i s p r e s e n c e o r absence a f f e c t s o t h e r s . f. u s i n g s e l f i n i n t e r a c t i o n p r o c e s s . remember t h a t warmth o f p e r s o n a l i t y i s f e l t o n l y by c o n t a c t , a s s o c i a t i o n , e t c . . touch him. . h o l d him. . c a r e s s him. . converse w i t h the c h i l d o r young person i n d i v i d u a l l y . . a c t as a r e s p o n s i v e environment. . be a v a i l a b l e , always take time to l i s t e n , and l o o k f o r p o t e n t i a l i t i e s . . be r e a l l y i n t e r e s t e d ; r e a l l y c a r e . . t r y t o get t o know him w e l l enough t o d i s c o v e r what "warms" o r " s p a r k s " him. '. love him. . enjoy him. . work and p l a y a l o n g w i t h him; c o - e x p e r i e n c e , c o - l e a r n . g. through h e i g h t e n e d c o n s c i o u s n e s s . become aware o f y o u r own b i a s e s — p o t e n t i a l i t i e s you t e n d e i t h e r t o see o r t o i g n o r e . . i n s t e a d o f f o r c i n g the c h i l d i n t o y o u r mold, t h i n k o f ways o f h e l p i n g him develop as he i s , u s i n g h i s own b e s t poten- t a l i t i e s . . become aware o f the c h i l d o r young person's e f f e c t on you e m o t i o n a l l y . . remember t h a t no c h i l d o r young person i s d u l l o r u n i n t e r e s t - i n g ; i t t a k e s time and q u i e t e f f o r t t o f i n d the q u a l i t i e s t h a t make him unique. . a person's p o t e n t i a l i t i e s are many-sided; sometimes we see o n l y one dominant q u a l i t y and miss a l l the o t h e r s . . do not l e t a l a b e l b l i n d you t o what the c h i l d r e a l l y i s and can become. the l a b e l may sometimes be i n c o r r e c t o r i n a p p r o p r i a t e . . know what b i a s e s and l i m i t a t i o n s f o r awareness keep you from u n d e r s t a n d i n g a c h i l d o r young p e r s o n . . r e f l e c t about the c h i l d and y o u r own f e e l i n g s about him. . take time out t o become aware o f h i s p o t e n t i a l i t i e s . . keep open t o the c h i l d ' s developmental and b e h a v i o r a l p a t t e r n . . seek t o know the c h i l d i n t i m a t e l y and i n t u i t i v e l y . . a f t e r making o b s e r v a t i o n s , l e t the p r o c e s s e s o f i n c u b a t i o n o p e r a t e . . d i f f e r e n t i a t e the s i m i l a r i t i e s and d i f f e r e n c e s between you and him; do not assume t h a t he responds as you do i n a l l r e s p e c t s . appendix f h e l p f u l a r t i c l e s on the p r a c t i c a l i t i e s o f s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n s w i t h i n the school benjamin w. a l l n u t . "why do you do i t ? , " c.s.p.a.a. b u l l e t i n : v o l . , may . t h i s a r t i c l e reviews the r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s o f h i g h s c h o o l s t u d e n t s and a d v i s o r s i n v o l v e d i n p r o d u c i n g s c h o o l p u b l i c a t i o n s . edmund a r n o l d . "your p u b l i c a t i o n s can improve when you s e t high s t a n d a r d s , " communication: j o u r n a l i s m e d u c a t i o n today: v o l . , w i n t e r . t h i s a r t i c l e s u g g e s t s i d e a s f o r e n c o u r a g i n g h i g h s c h o o l p u b l i c a t i o n s s t a f f e r s t o produce c o n s i s t e n t l y h i g h q u a l i t y work. j u l i a m. connor. " a d v i s i n g s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n s - s t e p by s t e p , " s c h o l a s t i c e d i t o r graphics/communications: v o l . , o c t o b e r . connor p r o v i d e s a number o f p r a c t i c a l t i p s f o r t e a c h e r s who are c u r r e n t l y f a c u l t y a d v i s o r s f o r s t u d e n t p u b l i - c a t i o n s o r a r e c o n t e m p l a t i n g such a move. joseph m. murphy. " l i v i n g a f t e r three," c.s.p.a.a. b u l l e t i n : v o l . , may . c o n t a i n e d i n t h i s a r t i c l e i s the address o f d i r e c t o r e m e r i t u s , dr. joseph m. murphy o f the columbia s c h o l a s t i c p r e s s a d v i s o r s a s s o c i a t i o n , on the n a t u r e o f t h e r e l a t i o n s h i p o f the j o u r n a l i s m a d v i s o r and h i s s t u d e n t s . robert stephen s i l v e r m a n . "how t o measure a p u b l i c a t i o n s ' l e g i b i l i t y , " school p r e s s review: v o l . , f e b r u a r y . s i l v e r m a n p r o v i d e s and d i s c u s s e s the use o f an i n s t r u - ment f o r e v a l u a t i n g the l e g i b i l i t y o f any p u b l i c a t i o n . howard j . waters. "step up advocacy, s o f t - p e d a l a u t h o r i t y , " c a t h o l i c school e d i t o r : v o l . , march . p a r t one o f a two p a r t s e r i e s , t h i s a r t i c l e examines the r o l e and r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s o f f a c u l t y a d v i s o r s f o r s e c o n d a r y p u b l i c a t i o n s . l e s l i e z a i t a . " l e t your s t u d e n t s c a r r y the b a l l , " c a t h o l i c school e d i t o r : v o l . , march . p a r t two o f a two p a r t s e r i e s , t h i s a r t i c l e examines the r o l e s o f the f a c u l t y a d v i s o r and s t u d e n t e d i t o r from the p o i n t o f view o f a former s t u d e n t e d i t o r . a book t h a t i s p a r t i c u l a r l y h e l p f u l i s the school l i t e r a r y magazine, by b. jo. k i n n i c k , ed. i t i s an i m p r e s s i v e book t h a t p u b l i s h i n g c l a s s r o o m s s h o u l d not be w i t h o u t . appendix g exemplary p u b l i s h e d s t u d e n t work »foxfire. anya seton ed. s t u d e n t s d e l v e i n t o the f o l k a r t s and f o l k l o r e o f the r u r a l a p p a l a c h i a s . sunshine u n f o l d i n g . c r a i g h o l d r e g e , and o t h e r s . s t u d e n t s d e s i g n e d t h i s book f o r use by both e l e m e n t a r y and h i g h s c h o o l s t u d e n t s . t o p i c s c o v e r e d i n c l u d e hinduism, yoga, t r a n s c e n d e n t a l m e d i t a t i o n , t r a d i t i o n a l american p h i l o s o p h i e s , f a r - e a s t e r n p h i l o s o p h i e s (taoism, zen buddhism, and zen c o n c e p t s ) , m a c r o b i o t i c s and judeo- c h r i s t i a n t e a c h i n g s . the w h i s p e r i n g wind: p o e t r y by young american i n d i a n s . t e r r y a l l e n ed. t h i s book i s a c o l l e c t i o n o f p o e t r y by s t u d e n t s from the i n s t i t u t e o f american i n d i a n a r t s . many poems a r e r o o t e d i n the i n d i a n o r a l t r a d i t i o n . wishes, l i e s and dreams. kenneth koch and the s t u d e n t s o f p.s. i n new york c i t y . t h i s book i s a c o l l e c t i o n o f c h i l d r e n ' s p o e t r y , augmented by kenneth koch's d e s c r i p t i o n s o f how he t a u g h t the c h i l d r e n t o w r i t e p o e t r y and t o e n j o y the e x p e r i e n c e . those i n t e r e s t e d i n r e a d i n g o t h e r s t u d e n t a u t h o r e d work, s h o u l d r e a d the a r t i c l e , " c h i l d r e n as a u t h o r s , " elementary e n g l i s h : v o l . , o c t o b e r , by mary anne h a l l and l i n d a b. g a m b r e l l . appendix h musts f o r the c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g s t u d e n t l i b r a r y canadian w r i t e r ' s guide. canadian a u t h o r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n . t h i s comprehensive manual and market l i s t i s a must f o r e v e r y canadian w r i t e r . i t e x p l a i n s the r e q u i r e - ments o f canadian e d i t o r s , s u p p l i e s i n f o r m a t i o n on such items as g r a n t s , c o p y r i g h t and f e e s t r u c t u r e s . the c r e a t i v e w r i t e r . e a r l e b i r n e y . t h i s book c o n t a i n s the t e x t s o f seven h a l f - h o u r p h i l o s o - p h i c a l t a l k s w i t h e a r l e b i r n e y about the w r i t e r and h i s a r t . how t o p u b l i s h your own book. l.w. m u e l l e r . as a guide f o r a u t h o r s who wish to p u b l i s h a book a t t h e i r own expense, t h i s book i s complete i n i t s p r a c t i c a l s u g g e s t i o n s . d e t a i l e d i n f o r m a t i o n i s p r o - v i d e d on e v e r y a s p e c t o f p u b l i c a t i o n . the o n l y drawback i s i t s l a c k o f p a r t i c u l a r canadian i n f o r m a t i o n . i n t e r n a t i o n a l d i r e c t o r y o f l i t t l e magazines and small p r e s s e s . len f u l t o n ed. a l l the p e r t i n e n t d e t a i l s , f o r both s u b m i s s i o n s and o r d e r s , f o r e v e r y magazine p r i n t e d are i n c l u d e d i n t h i s c o m p i l a t i o n . ^ l e t ' s w r i t e a s c r i p t . t.e. h a r d i n g . some problems o f w r i t i n g s c r i p t s f o r r a d i o and/or t e l e v i s i o n are d i s c u s s e d . notes are a l s o i n c l u d e d t o h e l p the f r e e l a n c e w r i t e r who wishes to s e l l h i s work. the p u b ! i s h - i t - y o u r s e l f handbook. b i l l henderson ed. t h i s book i s a c o l l e c t i o n o f p r a c t i c a l t i p s f o r many k i n d s o f p u b l i c a t i o n s , from r e c i p e books t o under- ground newspapers. i t i s w r i t t e n by w r i t e r s who have a l r e a d y p u b l i s h e d i n the f i e l d they are w r i t i n g about. western windows: a comparative a n t h o l o g y o f p o e t r y i n b r i t i s h columbia. p a t r i c i a m. e l l i s ed. t h i s contemporary a n t h o l o g y o f poems, w i t h accompanying p o e t i n t e r v i e w s , i s i n t e n d e d to f o r c e r e a d e r s t o a c c e p t p o e t r y as r e a l and v i t a l messages from one human b e i n g t o a n o t h e r . w r i t e r ' s market. canadian a u t h o r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n . t h i s book expands on the i n f o r m a t i o n p r o v i d e d i n canadian w r i t e r ' s guide. w r i t i n g c h i l d r e n ' s books. c h i l d r e n ' s book c o u n c i l pamphlet. t h i s pamphlet concerns what the w r i t e r needs t o know: s p e c i a l t e c h n i q u e s , how to submit a m a n u s c r i p t and what happens to a m a n u s c r i p t a t a p u b l i s h i n g house. w r i t i n g f o r c h i l d r e n and teen-agers. lee wyndham. the purpose o f t h i s book i s to t e a c h would-be a u t h o r s how to w r i t e and p u b l i s h a book f o r young p e o p l e . i t i s d i v i d e d i n t o two p a r t s : "a p r a c t i c a l guide t o p u b l i s h i n g " and " s p e c i a l w r i t i n g problems and p r o j e c t s . " appendix i w r i t e r s ' market the a n t i g o n i s h review. s t . f r a n c i s x a v i e r u n i v e r s i t y , a n t i g o n i s h , nova s c o t i a . b l a c k f i s h . moore avenue, burnaby , b r i t i s h columbia bluenose magazine, box , p o r t m a i t l a n d , nova s c o t i a , bow v . the canadian f i c t i o n magazine, p.o. box , s t a . g., vancouver, b r i t i s h columbia. canadian p o e t r y , department u n i v e r s i t y uni ve r s i t y london, o n t a r i o . o f e n g l i s h , col l e g e , o f western o n t a r i o , the c a p i l a n o review, p u r c e l l way, north vancouver, b r i t i s h columbia, v j h . charasee p r e s s , p.o. box , s t a t i o n e, t o r o n t o , o n t a r i o d a v a n c i , p.o. box , s t a t i o n a, m o n t r e a l , quebec. e v e n t , douglas c o l l e g e p.o. box , new westminster, b r i t i s h columbia f i l e , a r t o f f i c i a l i n c . , yonge s t r e e t , t o r o n t o , o n t a r i o , m b n g r a i n , box , s a s k a t o o n , saskatchewan. impulse, box , s t a t i o n "q", t o r o n t o , o n t a r i o , m t p . i t needs to be s a i d , r.r. , box , k i n g s t o n , o n t a r i o . c/o. e n g l i s h department, c o n c o r d i a u n i v e r s i t y , l o y o l a campus, sherbrooke s t r e e t , w. m o n t r e a l , quebec. k a r a k i , apt. irma s t r e e t v i c t o r i a , b r i t i s h columbia v a s . makara, commercial d r i v e , vancouver, b r i t i s h columbia v l x . malahat review, u n i v e r s i t y o f v i c t o r i a , v i c t o r i a , b r i t i s h columbia. newest review, - avenue, edmonton, a l b e r t a . only paper today, c/o a space, s t . n i c h o l a s s t r e e t , t o r o n t o , o n t a r i o . o n t a r i o review, , r i v e r s i d e dr. e., windsor, o n t a r i o , n s b p a r a c h u t e , c p . , s u c c u r s a l e n, m o n t r e a l , quebec, h x n . p o e t r y windsor p o e s i e , box , sandwich, p.o. windsor, o n t a r i o , n c y . p r i s m i n t e r n a t i o n a l , department o f c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g u n i v e r s i t y o f b r i t i s h columbia vancouver, b r i t i s h columbia. r e p o s i t o r y , r.r. , buckhorn road, p r i n c e george, v n j . revue, box , s t a . a, vancouver, b r i t i s h columbia. room o f one's own, waterloo s t r e e t , vancouver, b r i t i s h columbia, v r g . west c o a s t review, simon f r a s e r u n i v e r s i t y , burnaby , b r i t i s h columbia. wascana review, wascana parkway, regina, saskatchewan. there a r e c e r t a i n l y many o t h e r some o f which are l i s t e d below: anansi a r t s c a n a d a a t h a n o r blewointment b r a n c h i n g out canada west canadian forum canadian l i t e r a t u r e coach house combustion c o n t a c t cv'/ii d a l h o u s i e review d e l t a . f i d d l e h e a d imago is i s l a n d moment m o r r i s e p r e s s new p r e s s poet l o r e p o e t r y bag p o e t r y northwest quarry queen's q u a r t e r l y i c a t i o n s worthy o f a t t e n t i o n , q u i l l " a n d q u i r e sono n i s t a l o n tamarack review vancouver l i fe v i g i l a n t e white p e l i c a n the whole apple w r i t i n g yes appendix j w r i t i n g c o m p e t i t i o n s canada c o u n c i l o f teachers o f e n g l i s h (ccte): p r o j e c t pandora p o e t r y content r submit through b r i t i s h columbia e n g l i s h t e a c h e r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n (bceta) - d e t a i l s a v a i l a b l e i n bceta p u b l i c a t i o n : update canada permanent t r u s t : s h o r t s t o r y c o n t e s t - submit through s t u d e n t w r i t i n g c o n t e s t , the permanent, room , bay s t r e e t , t o r o n t o , o n t a r i o m h p - submit by december - w r i t e f o r d e t a i l s n a t i o n a l c o u n c i l o f teachers o f e n g l i s h : s p r i n g p o e t r y f e s t i v a l - submit through the e n g l i s h j o u r n a l , kenyon road, urbana, i l l i n o i s , - submit by march s c h o l a s t i c magazine: s c h o l a s t i c awards - annual w r i t i n g awards i n s h o r t s t o r y , p o e t r y , drama and a r t i c l e - submit through s c h o l a s t i c magazine, w. th s t r e e t , new york, n.y., - submit i n january seventeen magazine: s h o r t s t o r y c o n t e s t - submit through s e v e n t e e n , park avenue, new york, n.y., - see march i s s u e - submit by j u l y u n i v e r s i t y o f v i c t o r i a : s c i e n c e and humanities symposium - e s s a y c o m p e t i t i o n - w r i t e f o r d e t a i l s youth magazine: c r e a t i v e a r t s awards - submit through youth magazine, room , race s t r e e t , p h i l a d e l p h i a , pa - w r i t e f o r d e t a i l s w r i t e r ' s d i g e s t : annual c o n t e s t f o r s h o r t s t o r y , a r t i c l e o r poem - submit through w r i t e r ' s d i g e s t , a l l i a n c e road, c i n c i n n a t i , ohio - not l i m i t e d to s t u d e n t s - submit by may bibliography abraham, w. common sense about g i f t e d c h i l d r e n (new york, h a r p e r and row, ). a l l e n , t e r r y , ed. w h i s p e r i n g wind: p o e t r y by young american i n d i a n s (new york, doubleday, ). a l l n u t , benjamin w. "why do you do i t ? " c.s.p.a.a. b u l l e t i n . v o l . , may (new york, new york, c.s.p.a.a. a s s . ) , ed. j . f . p a s c h a l . a r n o l d , edmund. "your p u b l i c a t i o n s can improve when you s e t high s t a n d a r d s , " communications: j o u r n a l i s m e d u c a t i o n today. v o l . , w i n t e r ( s p r i n g f i e l d , mo., j o u r n a l i s m e d u c a t i o n a s s . ) , ed. v i r g i n i a woodring. b a g n a l l , n i c h o l a s , ed. new movements i n the study and t e a c h i n g o f e n g l i s h (london, temple smith, ). b i r n e y , e a r l e . the c r e a t i v e w r i t e r ( t o r o n t o , o n t a r i o , cbc p u b l i c a t i o n s , ). b l i s h e n , edward. "a golden age o f rubbish," times e d u c a t i o n a l supplement. september (london, e n g l a n d , times newspapers l t d . ) , ed. s t u a r t maclure. booth, wayne. " m o t i v a t i o n i n the t e a c h i n g o f c o m p o s i t i o n , " e n g l i s h t e a c h i n g i n south a f r i c a . . braddock, r i c h a r d , e t a l . research i n w r i t t e n c o m p o s i t i o n ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e., ). branowsky, a l v i n and morton b o t e l . " c r e a t i v e t h i n k i n g , reading and w r i t i n g i n the classroom," elementary e n g l i s h ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. i r i s m. t i e d t . b r i a n , m i c h a e l and lewis p o t e e t , eds. ateq j o u r n a l . v o l . , no. a p r i l (urbana, i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.). b r i t t o n , james. t a l k i n g and w r i t i n g (london, methune and co., ). campbell, laurence r. the high school magazine. u n p u b l i s h e d monograph (iowa, a q u i l l and s c r o l l study, ). canadian a u t h o r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n . canadian w r i t e r ' s guide ( t o r o n t o , o n t a r i o , f i t z h e n r y and w h i t e s i d e l t d . , ). canadian a u t h o r s ' a s s o c i a t i o n . w r i t e r ' s market' (don m i l l s , o n t a r i o , f i t z h e n r y and w h i t e s i d e l t d , ). c a r l i s l e , c a r o l . " p r o d u c t i o n m o t i v a t i o n : leave i t to the k i d s , " a u d i o v i s u a l i n s t r u c t i o n . v o l . , march (washington, d.c.", ass. f o r e d u c a t i o n a l communications and t e c h n o l o g y ) , ed. howard b. h i t c h e n s . c a r r , john c. "why newspapers i n the j u n i o r high s c h o o l ? " school p r e s s review. v o l . , f e b r u a r y (new york, new york, columbia s c h o l a s t i c press a s s n . ) , ed. joseph m. murphy. c h a p n i c k , e l a i n e . " t u r n i n g c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i n t o c r e a t i v e drama," i n s t r u c t o r . v o l . , december ( d a n s v i l l e , new york, i n s t r u c t o r p u b l i c a t i o n s i n c . ) , ed. e a r n e s t h i l t o n . chase, naomi c. " c h i l d r e n ' s w r i t i n g : the p r o d u c t , " elementary e n g l i s h . v o l . , september ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. i r i s m. ' t i e d t . c h i l d r e n ' s book c o u n c i l pamphlet. w r i t i n g c h i l d r e n ' s books (new york, new york, c h i l d r e n ' s book c o u n c i l , i n c . , j u l y ). c h i s h o l m , w i l l i a m s. the new e n g l i s h (new york, funk and wagnall ). c o l e r i d g e , s.t. b i o g r a p h i a l i t e r a r i a (new york, new york, every- man e d i t i o n , e.p. dutton and co.). connor, j u l i a m. " a d v i s i n g s t u d e n t p u b l i c a t i o n s - step by stem," s c h o l a s t i c e d i t o r graphics/communications. v o l . , o c t o b e r ( m i n n e a p o l i s , m i n n e s o t a , u n i v e r s i t y o f m i n n e s o t a ) , ed. k r i s t i hedstrom. c r e b e r , j.w. p a t r i c k . l o s t f o r words (markham, o n t a r i o , penguin books, ).. c r e b e r , j.w. p a t r i c k . sense and s e n s i t i v i t y (london, e n g l a n d , u n i v e r s i t y o f london p r e s s l t d . , ). dixon, john. growth through e n g l i s h ( r e a d i n g , n.a.t.e., ). dombey, h e n r i e t t a . " c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g i n the j u n i o r s c h o o l , " e n g l i s h i n e d u c a t i o n . v o l . , autumn ( y o r k s , e n g l a n d , n.a.t.e., o x f o r d u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s ) , ed. andrew w i l k i n s o n . dunn, dorothy. "students shoot t h e i r book r e p o r t s , " a u d i o v i s u a l i n s t r u c t i o n . v o l . , o c t o b e r (washington, d.c., ass. f o r e d u c a t i o n a l communications and t e c h n o l o g y ) , ed. howard b. h i t c h e n s . durr, w.k. the g i f t e d student (new york, o x f o r d u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s ]^ e a s t o , m a r j o r i e . " e a t i n g reading," e l e m e n t a r y e n g l i s h . v o l . , a p r i l ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. i r i s m. t i e d t . elbow, p e t e r . w r i t i n g without t e a c h e r s (new york, n.y., o x f o r d u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s , ). e l i o t , t.s. the four q u a r t e t s (london, faber and faber, ). e l i o t , t.s. s e l e c t e d essays (london, faber and faber, ). e l l i s , p a t r i c i a m. ed. western windows: a comparative a n t h o l o g y o f p o e t r y i n b r i t i s h columbia (vancouver, b.c., commcept pub. co., ). emig, j a n e t . the composing p r o c e s s e s o f t w e l f t h g r a d e r s : research report no. ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e., ). e n g l e , p a u l . on c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g (new york, dutton, ) fabun, don. you and c r e a t i v i t y ( b e v e r l y h i l l s , glencoe p r e s s , t f i n k e l b r a n d , i r i s . "tuning i n the t e a c h e r , " reading newsreport. v o l . , may-june-july (new york, n.y., reading newsreport pub.), ed. susan zuckerman. f i s h e r , martha a. does anybody need reed and k e l l o g g anymore? u n p u b l i s h e d monograph p r e s e n t e d a t the annual meeting o f the n.c.t.e. ( p h i l a d e l p h i a , penn., november, ). f u l t o n , len, ed. i n t e r n a t i o n a l d i r e c t o r y o f l i t t l e magazines and small p r e s s e s . th ed. - ( c a l i f o r n i a , d u s t b o o k s ) . f u r n e r , b e a t r i c e a. c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g f o r s e l f - u n d e r s t a n d i n g : approaches and outcomes. u n p u b l i s h e d speech g i v e n a t the annual c o n v e n t i o n o f the n.c.t.e. ( a t l a n t a , g e o r g i a , november ). gage, n.l. handbook o f research on t e a c h i n g ( c h i c a g o , rand m c n a l l y , ). g a r r e t t , george ed. c r a f t so hard t o learn (new york, morrow paperback e d i t i o n s , ). g o n z a l e z , laverne. t u r n i n g on to w r i t i n g - freshman c o m p o s i t i o n : ways and means. u n p u b l i s h e d paper p r e s e n t e d a t the annual meeting o f the n.c.t.e. ( p h i l a d e l p h i a , penn., november ). granowsky, a l v i n and morton b o t e l . " c r e a t i v e t h i n k i n g , reading and w r i t i n g i n the classroom," e l e m e n t a r y e n g l i s h . v o l . , may (urbana, i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. i r i s m. t i e d t . guth, hans p. e n g l i s h f o r a new g e n e r a t i o n (new york, mcgraw- h i l l book co., ). h a l l , mary anne and l i n d a b. g a m b r e l l . " c h i l d r e n as a u t h o r s , " e l e m e n t a r y e n g l i s h . v o l . , o c t o b e r ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. i r i s m. t i e d t . h a r d i n g , t.e. l e t ' s w r i t e a s c r i p t (amersham, bucks, a u s t r a l i a , h u l t o n e d u c a t i o n a l pub. l t d . , ). henderson, b i l l ed. the p u b l i s h - i t - y o u r s e l f handbook ( y o n k e r s , new york, p u s h c a r t book p r e s s , ). h i l l o c k s , george, j r . a l t e r n a t i v e s i n e n g l i s h : a c r i t i c a l a n a l y s i s o f e l e c t i v e programs (urbana, n.c.t.e., ). h i p p i e , t.w. t e a c h i n g e n g l i s h i n secondary s c h o o l s (new york, m a c m i l l a n co., ). h o l d r e g e , c r a i g , e t a l . sunshine u n f o l d i n g ( b o u l d e r , c o l o r a d o , s o c i a l s c i e n c e e d u c a t i o n c o n s o r t i u m , ). hook, j.n. the t e a c h i n g o f high school e n g l i s h (new york, ronald p r e s s co., ). hughes, ted. " c a p t u r i n g a n i m a l s , " a b r o a d c a s t t o s c h o o l s r e p r i n t e d i n the b.b.c. pamphlet l i s t e n i n g and w r i t i n g (autumn, ). james, henry. "a l e t t e r to the d e e r f i e l d summer school ," the f u t u r e o f the novel (new york, v i n t a g e - random house, ), ed. leon e d e l . judy, stephen n. e x p l o r a t i o n s i n the t e a c h i n g o f secondary e n g l i s h : a source book f o r e x p e r i m e n t a l t e a c h i n g (new york, dodd, mead and co., ). kaufman, w a l l a c e . "the i n h i b i t e d t e a c h e r , " e n g l i s h j o u r n a l march ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. s.n. judy. kaufman, w a l l a c e and w i l l i a m powers. the w r i t e r ' s mind (englewood c l i f f s , n.j., p r e n t i c e - h a l l i n c . , ). kearns, l i o n e l . e x c e r p t s from a t a l k given by canadian poet l i o n e l kearns on a p r i l , . u n p u b l i s h e d monograph r e c o r d e d by wes knapp, g l a d s t o n e s r . sec. s c h o o l , vancouver, b.c. k i n n i c k , b . jo. ed. the school l i t e r a r y magazine ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e., t knowles, marlene. c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g : informal p r o s e . u n p u b l i s h e d monograph, ( ). koch, kenneth and students o f p.s. i n new york c i t y . wishes, l i e s and dreams (new york, random house, ). landrum, roger, e t a l . a day dream i had a t n i g h t and o t h e r s t o r i e s : t e a c h i n g c h i l d r e n how to make t h e i r own readers. unpub- l i s h e d monograph (new york, n.y., t e a c h e r s and w r i t e r s c o l l a b o r a t i v e , ). lawrence, e u n i c e ed. a c t i o n e n g l i s h . book ( t o r o n t o , o n t a r i o , gage educ. pub. l t d . , ). lea, james, e t a l . "students as c o n t r i b u t o r s to the i n s t r u c t i o n a l p r o c e s s , " j o u r n a l o f m e d i c a l e d u c a t i o n . v o l . , j u l y (washington, d.c., ass. o f american m e d i c a l c o l l e g e s ) , ed. m e r r i l l t. mccord. lebaron, john. v i d e o , t e l e v i s i o n and the open c l a s s r o o m . u n p u b l i s h e d monograph (may, ). lewis, kenneth. " p u t t i n g the hidden c u r r i c u l u m o f g r a d i n g to work, e n g l i s h j o u r n a l . march, ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. stephen judy. l i v i n g s t o n , myra cohn. when you are a l o n e , i t keeps you capone: an approach to~c~reative w r i t i n g w i t h c h i l d r e n (new • york, n.y., atheneum pub., ). l o g i e , r., m c d e l l , b., ramsdale, j . , roddan, s. and f. shepherd. c u r r i c u l u m guide f o r w r i t i n g ( p r o v i n c e o f b.c., department o f e d u c a t i o n , d i v . o f c u r r i c u l u m , ). maloney, h.b., ed. new e n g l i s h , new i m p e r a t i v e s ( i l l i n o i s , n.c. t.e., tt: maltzman, i. "on the t r a i n i n g o f o r i g i n a l i t y , " p s y c h o l o g i c a l review. v o l . , (washington, d.c., american psych. ass. i n c . ) , ed. george mandler. massey, e l l e n gray. "students d i s c o v e r the magic o f p u b l i c a t i o n , " e n g l i s h e d u c a t i o n . v o l . , a p r i l / m a y ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. ben f. nelms. massey, e l l e n gray. "using c a s s e t t e s and cameras t o teach w r i t i n g , " media and methods. v o l . , march ( p h i l a d e l p h i a , penn., north american pub. c o . ) , ed. frank m c l a u g h l i n . m c c l e l l a n d , m a r j o r y . "the n i n e t e e n t h century meets the media: a s l i d e - t a p e research p r o j e c t , " e n g l i s h j o u r n a l . v o l . , o c t o b e r ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. stephen judy. mcclosky, m i l d r e n and p e t e r k l e i n b a r d . youth into a d u l t : nine s e l e c t e d youth p a r t i c i p a t i o n programs (new york, n.y., n a t i o n a l commission on resources f o r youth, i n c . , ). mckee, john dewitt. " a l l good w r i t i n g i s c r e a t i v e , " c o l l e g e composition and communication. v o l . , no. , f e b r u a r y (urbana, i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. edward c o r b e t t . mearnes, hughes. c r e a t i v e power: the e d u c a t i o n o f youth i n the c r e a t i v e a r t s (new york, dover p u b l i c a t i o n s i n c . , ). mencken, h.l. "on s t y l e , " a mencken chrestomathy (new york, a l f r e d a. knopf, ). m i c h a e l , l.s. "secondary-school programs," e d u c a t i o n f o r the g i f t e d . yearbook nat. soc. stud. educ., v o l . , p a r t i i , ( c h i c a g o , n.s.s.e., ), ed. nelson b. henry. m i l l e r , james e. " r e d i s c o v e r i n g the r h e t o r i c o f i m a g i n a t i o n , " c o l l e g e composition and communication. v o l . , december (urbana, i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. edward c o r b e t t . m i l l e r , james e. word, s e l f , r e a l i t y : the r h e t o r i c o f i m a g i n a t i o n (new york, dodd, mead and co., ). m u e l l e r , l.w. how to p u b l i s h your own book ( d e t r o i t , m i c h i g a n , h a r l o p r e s s , ). m u e l l e r , lavonne and j e r r y d. reynolds. c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ( r i v e r f o r e s t , i l l i n o i s , doubleday and co., ). m u l l e r , h.j. the uses o f e n g l i s h (new york, h o l t , r i n e h a r t and winston i n c . , ) murphy, joseph m. " l i v i n g a f t e r three," c.s.p.a.a. b u l l e t i n , v o l . , may (new york, n.y., c.s.p.a.a. a s s . ) , ed. j . f . p a s c h a l . murray, d.m. "the e x p l o r e r s o f inner space," e n g l i s h j o u r n a l . september ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. r i c h a r d s. aim. norn's, ruby lee. the t u r t l e and the t e a c h e r : a d i a l o g u e between poets and s t u d e n t s ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e., ). osborne, a.f. a p p l i e d i m a g i n a t i o n (new york, s c r i b n e r ' s , ), p a r k e r , robert p. j r . "focus i n the t e a c h i n g o f w r i t i n g : on p r o c e s s o r p r o d u c t ? , " e n g l i s h j o u r n a l . december ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. stephen judy. p e t e r s o n , m a r i a . "the l i b e r a t i n g i n f l u e n c e o f s t u d e n t involvement, american v o c a t i o n a l j o u r n a l . v o l . , september (washington, d.c., american v o c a t i o n a l ass. l t d . ) , ed. l o w e l l a. b u r k e t t . p e t e r s o n , p a t r i c i a . "the f o x f i r e concept," media and methods. v o l . , november ( p h i l a d e l p h i a , penn., north american pub. co.), ed. frank m c l a u g h l i n . p r o j e c t s.e.r.v.e. s t u d e n t e d u c a t i o n a l radio: v i l l a g e e x t e n s i o n . u n p u b l i s h e d monograph ( d i l l i n g h a m c i t y school d i s t r i c t , a l a s k a , march ). p u r v e s , a l a n , ed. how p o r c u p i n e s make love: notes on a response- c e n t r e d c u r r i c u l u m (boston, g i n n , ). rohman, d. gordon and a l b e r t . wlecke. p r e w r i t i n g : the c o n s t r u c t i o n and a p p l i c a t i o n o f models f o r concept formation i n w r i t i n g ( m i c h i g a n , m i c h i g a n s t a t e u n i v . , ). rudner, lawrence m i c h a e l . the e f f e c t o f s t u d e n t - p r o d u c e d f i l m s t r i p s on mathematics achievement i n grade e i g h t . u n p u b l i s h e d monograph ( f e b r u a r y ). s a p i r , edward. c u l t u r e , language and p e r s o n a l i t y ( c a l i f o r n i a , univ. o f c a l i f o r n i a p r e s s , ). schwartz, p h y l l i s b. t e a c h e r s ' resource book t o western windows a comparative a n t h o l o g y o f p o e t r y i n b r i t i s h columbia (vancouver, b.c., commcept pub. l t d . , ). s e t o n , anya, ed. f o x f i r e (new york, n.y., pyramid pub., ). shugrue. m i c h a e l f. pegasus, j e n g l i s h i n a decade o f change (new york, shugrue, m i c h a e l f. how the "new e n g l i s h " w i l l (new york, a s s o c i a t i o n p r e s s , ). help your c h i l d shuman, r. b a i r d , ed. c r e a t i v e approaches t o the t e a c h i n g o f e n g l i s h : secondary ( i t a s c a , peacock, ). s i l v e r m a n , robert stephen. "how t o measure a p u b l i c a t i o n s ' l e g i b i l i t y , " school p r e s s review. v o l . , f e b r u a r y (new york, n.y., columbia s c h o l a s t i c p r e s s a s s n . ) , ed. joseph m. murphy. s l o s s o n , e.e. and j . e . downey. p l o t s and p e r s o n a l i t i e s (new york, c e n t u r y , t s o u t h a l l , ivan. " c a l l i t a wheel," horn book magazine. v o l . , o c t o b e r ( b o s t o n , mass., horn book i n c . ) , ed. paul h e i n s . s t a l l a r d , c h a r l e s k. "an a n a l y s i s o f the w r i t i n g b e h a v i o r o f good s t u d e n t w r i t e r s , " research i n the t e a c h i n g o f e n g l i s h . v o l . , f a l l ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. a l a n c. p u r v e s . s t e g a l l , c a r r i e . the adventures o f brown sugar: adventures i n c r e a t i v e w r i t i n g ^ u n p u b l i s h e d monograph (champaign, i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e., ). stone, george w i n c h e s t e r , j r . , ed. i s s u e s , problems, and approaches i n the t e a c h i n g o f e n g l i s h (new york, h o l t , ). t o r r a n c e , e. p a u l . e n c o u r a g i n g c r e a t i v i t y i n the c l a s s r o o m (dubuque, iowa, wm. c. brown & co. pub., ). t r o u t , lawana. "i'm reading paperbacks and w r i t i n g p o e t r y , " e n g l i s h j o u r n a l . v o l . , o c t o b e r ( i l l i n o i s , n.c.t.e.), ed. stephen judy. tway, e i l e e n . w r i t i n g : an i n t e r p e r s o n a l as w e l l as p e r s o n a l p r o c e s s . u n p u b l i s h e d monograph p r e s e n t e d a t the annual meeting o f the n a t i o n a l c o n f e r e n c e on the language a r t s i n the e l e m e n t a r y school ( s e a t t l e , march ). v a l l e r , thomas. "student media p r o d u c t i o n : m a x i m i z i n g a v a i l a b l e resources," a u d i o v i s u a l i n s t r u c t i o n . v o l . , o c t o b e r (washington, d.c., ass. for e d u c a t i o n a l communications and t e c h n o l o g y ) , ed. howard b. h i t c h e n s , w a l l , judy. " g e t t i n g i n t o p r i n t i n p. and g.: how i t ' s done, p e r s o n n e l and guidance j o u r n a l . v o l . , may (washington, d c , american p e r s o n n e l and guidance a s s . ) , ed. dr. les goldman. waters, howard j . "step up advocacy, s o f t - p e d a l a u t h o r i t y , " c a t h o l i c school e d i t o r . v o l . , march (milwaukee, wis., c a t h o l i c school p r e s s a s s . ) , ed. warren g. bovee. w i l l i a m s , w i l l i a m s c a r l o s . "how to w r i t e , " new d i r e c t i o n s i n prose and p o e t r y (new york, new d i r e c t i o n s , ), ed. james l a u g h l i n . winn, w i l l i a m d. "using s t u d e n t - p r o d u c e d media to develop b a s i c s k i l l s " i n the design and development o f simple i n s t r u c t i o n a l systems," a u d i o v i s u a l i n s t r u c t i o n . v o l . , o c t o b e r (washington, d.c., ass. f o r e d u c a t i o n a l communications and t e c h n o l o g y ) , ed. howard b. h i t c h e n s . wolsch, robert a. p o e t i c composition through the grades: a language s e n s i t i v i t y (new york, n.y., t e a c h e r s c o l l e g e p r e s s , teachers c o l l e g e , columbia u n i v . , ). wyndham, lee,. w r i t i n g f o r c h i l d r e n and teen-agers ( c i n c i n n a t i , ohio, w r i t e r ' s d i g e s t , ). z a i t a , l e s l i e . " l e t your s t u d e n t s c a r r y the b a l v c a t h o l i c school e d i t o r . v o l . , march (milwaukee, wis., c a t h o l i c school p r e s s assn.),, ed. warren g. bovee. de la simple existencia: antología poética by wallace stevens, and: la roca by wallace stevens, and: poemas tardíos by wallace stevens, and: ideas de orden by wallace stevens, and: las auroras de otoño y otros poemas by wallace stevens (review) de la simple existencia: antología poética by wallace stevens, and: la roca by wallace stevens, and: poemas tardíos by wallace stevens, and: ideas de orden by wallace stevens, and: las auroras de otoño y otros poemas by wallace stevens (review) santiago rodríguez guerrero-strachan wallace stevens journal, volume , number , spring , pp. - (review) published by johns hopkins university press doi: for additional information about this article [ access provided at apr : gmt from carnegie mellon university ] https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ reviews reading both versions they will be able to strike a balance, as in a single chord of different notes, enjoying both the intimacy of the particular and the grandi- ose effect of the whole. gül bilge han university of stockholm sweden de la simple existencia: antología poética. by wallace stevens. translated into spanish by andrés sánchez robayna. bar- celona: debolsillo, . la roca. by wallace stevens. translated into spanish by daniel aguirre. barcelona: lu- men, . poemas tardíos. by wallace stevens. translated into spanish by daniel aguirre. barcelona: lu- men, . ideas de orden. by wallace stevens. translated into spanish by daniel aguirre. barcelona: lu- men, . las auroras de otoño y otros poemas. by wallace stevens. translated into spanish by jenaro talens. madrid: visor, . in the last few years, spanish readers have been treated to an unusually rich selection of wallace stevens’ writings, all made available in bilingual edi- tions. the relatively small number of books that stevens published during his lifetime turns the five collections of translations listed above into a substantial selection from his works. not only can the spanish reader now find transla- tions of a sizable number of canonized poems, from “the idea of order at key west” and “the man with the blue guitar” to “the auroras of autumn” and “final soliloquy of the interior paramour,” he or she can also enjoy spanish versions of stevens’ major prose writings, whether they be the essays collect- ed in the necessary angel or epigraphs from “adagia.” that a poet’s personal collection of aphorisms has been translated may itself be regarded as a mean- ingful indication of the stature he has achieved in a foreign country. there are several explanations for the interest stevens has aroused in span- ish readers and, above all, poets. the most important one, it seems to me, is his defining concern with the relations between poetry and philosophy. such a concern has been typical of an important strand in spanish poetry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. characteristically, andrés sánchez ro- bayna, one of the poet-translators under review here, entitled a talk he gave a the wallace stevens journal few years ago about a selection of twentieth-century spanish poets, “poesía y pensamiento” [poetry and thought]. in spain, the cross-fertilization of these two spheres has resulted in a poetic lineage that has been most fruitful. quite a few spanish poets have looked to british romantic poetry, for example, as a philosophical poetry (see eugenia perojo arronte’s contribution to the recep- tion of s. t. coleridge in europe [london: continuum, ]). wordsworth’s and coleridge’s poetry has been regarded among spanish admirers as a form of secular meditation, with its own reflective pace and tone. stevens’ analogous interest in meditative poetry and substitutions for religion fits this mold par- ticularly well. one of the first explicit references to the american poet’s works appears in a collection of essays by josé Ángel valente ( – ) published in un- der the title las palabras de la tribu [the words of the tribe]. early in this book, valente quotes from the introduction to the necessary angel: “one function of the poet at any time is to discover by his own thought and feeling what seems to him to be poetry at that time” (cpp ). valente, who spent four years as a visiting lecturer at oxford university, kept up a sustained friendship with josé lezama lima, the cuban poet-editor who collaborated with stevens’ epistolary friend josé rodríguez feo on the magazine orígenes. in addition, valente always acknowledged louis martz’s the poetry of meditation ( ) as a fundamental source of inspiration. martz, as we know, also published various essays on stevens, and it seems plausible that valente was familiar with at least some of this work as well. with stevens, valente may be said to have shared ideas about decreation, the role of the imagination in poetry, the ascendancy of romanticism, and the relations between painting and poetry. in recent decades, it is sánchez robayna who has written most extensively on stevens. his interest in the american modernist is consistent both with his own poetics and the ties that bind him to valente. not only was sánchez robayna sought out by valente as his personal advisor whose task it was to keep the aging poet from repeating himself, the younger poet also coedited valente’s collected works. in , sánchez robayna published his first gath- ering of stevens in translation, poemas (barcelona: plaza y janés), and he wrote on several occasions to reflect on stevens’ importance. he was by no means the only spanish poet to show himself susceptible to stevens’ influence: most poets who emerged in the s would acknowledge the american poet as instrumental in forging their poetics. if spanish poets of the fifties valued con- tent over form (with important exceptions, such as valente), poets of the sev- enties tended to choose foreign poets as their models, especially when these gave pride of place to form and language. as was the case in the u.s. before the historical turn in stevens criticism, stevens was viewed as a proponent of pure poetry for whom the poem functioned principally as an artistic artifact. sánchez robayna’s most recent gathering of translations was published in as de la simple existencia: antología poética [of mere being: an anthology of poems], reissued in as a paperback. the anthology, which has been revised in the course of a workshop on literary translation taught by sánchez robayna himself at the university of la laguna, comprises work from all of stevens’ published volumes, in addition to some of the “adagia.” it thus reviews intends to offer a wide-ranging perspective on the poet’s literary output, even if the balance is clearly uneven. with thirty-one poems, harmonium is best rep- resented, while only six poems from ideas of order and two from the auroras of autumn are included. nor do we find such staples of the stevens canon as “the idea of order at key west,” “notes toward a supreme fiction,” or “the auroras of autumn” among the selection. by and large, sánchez robayna manages to translate the poems with close attention to the recreation both of stevens’ ideas and his typical literary devices. in his prologue, he offers an updated view of stevens’ writings in which he emphasizes the importance of the imagination in the poet’s creative process, arguing that reality is not es- sentially important in a poetry in which biographical facts are not on display. more recently, daniel aguirre has set himself the daunting task of trans- lating stevens’ poetry and prose in its entirety. between and , he has published three installments that are the spanish equivalents of the rock, “late poems,” and ideas of order. to the section of “late poems” that we find in the library of america edition of the collected poetry and prose, he has also exceptionally chosen to add “as you leave the room.” both poemas tardíos and ideas de orden are accompanied by forewords in which the translator, who is a lecturer at harvard university and has also published spanish versions of w. b. yeats and john ashbery, explains the context in which the books were written. in addition, he gives us a brief explanation of the basic translation principles he has applied. the main purpose of the translations, he tells us, is to be as idiomatic as possible in spanish. finally, jenaro talens, yet another poet (besides a professor of literary theo- ry at the university of valencia), has compiled a brief but representative num- ber of poems in an anthology entitled las auroras de otoño y otros poemas [the auroras of autumn and other poems]. this gathering, too, is accompanied by a preface in which talens sketches his view of stevens’ poetry. like other poets of the seventies generation, he starts by emphasizing the independence of stevens’ poems from all referents. but by the end of his preface he modi- fies this claim somewhat: despite a lack of explicit confessionalism in stevens (which is what talens appears to have meant throughout) he concedes that the reader will not find poems made of abstract concepts but distillations of a man who has lived in a particular context. talens compiles a choice selection of poems culled from harmonium, ideas of order, the auroras of autumn, and the rock. after “the auroras of autumn,” which surprisingly kicks off the book, the reader finds “sunday morning,” while the concluding poem is “final soliloquy.” although talens is radically interested in how a poem can be theoretical, he does not translate “notes” nor, for example, “not ideas about the thing but the thing itself.” nevertheless, he does include a handful of poems about poetry, most notably “the ultimate poem is abstract” and “metaphor as degeneration.” overall, he seems to prefer shorter poems, with “the auroras” and “the owl in the sarcophagus” as principal exceptions. each in their own ways, the three translators have turned out appealing books. sánchez robayna deserves credit for having been the first to translate stevens in spain. (for lack of expertise, i am ignoring the book-length transla- the wallace stevens journal tions into spanish that have appeared in countries such as argentina, chile, and uruguay.) his anthology is still a major achievement that is reissued from time to time. talens manages to give a more concentrated if still capacious view of stevens, while aguirre is engaged in the praiseworthy task of trans- lating all of stevens’ collected writings. these three translators seem to agree fundamentally about stevens’ poetics, which explains why their conversions of the poet into spanish have so many affinities and are often so similar in poetic effect. santiago rodríguez guerrero-strachan university of valladolid spain microsoft word - the_narrated_self_martin_smith_final_highlighted.docx the narrated self how can the combination of writing and photography be used to represent individual experience? martin smith bachelor of visual arts with honours an exhibition of visual artworks and exegetical dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy july queensland college of art arts, education, and law griffith university 	 	 abstract this practice-led doctoral project explores the synthesis of the two powerful communicative modes of representation in contemporary culture: text and the photograph. the visual artworks created through this research use personal narrative in ways that seek to unsettle the recognised descriptive and representational modes and composites for using text and photographs. the majority of the works are large photographs combined with short stories. these personal narratives are made up of letters cut into the photograph and often form an additional shape or vignette within or over the photographic image. this configuration intends to disrupt the usual expectation for reading or illustrating narrative and aims to create new understanding of the nature of the photograph and the role it plays in creating narrative worlds. 	 	 table of contents list of figures ........................................................................................................................... acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. statement of originality .......................................................................................................... introduction ............................................................................................................................ chapter : theoretical framework ..................................................................................... . narrative ................................................................................................................................... narratology and narrativity ......................................................................................................... discourse and story ..................................................................................................................... . : cognitive narrative and personal history ........................................................................... . narrative worlds ...................................................................................................................... time, space, and the chronotrope ............................................................................................... epistolary voice ........................................................................................................................... metalepsis .................................................................................................................................... fork-path narratives .................................................................................................................... unreliable narrator ...................................................................................................................... . a photograph ............................................................................................................................ photographic narrativity .............................................................................................................. the decisive moment .................................................................................................................. frames and scripts ....................................................................................................................... chapter : the contemporary field ................................................................................... . william yang – “allan” from the monologue “sadness” .................................................... comparative alignment ............................................................................................................... . paul kwiatkowski – and every day was overcast .............................................................. comparative analysis .................................................................................................................. . nikel van duijvenboden – the grand absence ...................................................................... comparative alignment ............................................................................................................... chapter : studio methodology ........................................................................................... . practice-led research ............................................................................................................. . studio method: text and image ............................................................................................. text and photography .................................................................................................................. the photographic method ............................................................................................................ text as pictorial form .................................................................................................................. narrative identity ......................................................................................................................... stories and images ....................................................................................................................... chapter : outcomes ............................................................................................................. . : the perfect price for donny ................................................................................................. narrativity .................................................................................................................................. text and photography ................................................................................................................ . : new work .............................................................................................................................. narrativity .................................................................................................................................. text and photography ................................................................................................................ . : more sex, less death ............................................................................................................ narrativity .................................................................................................................................. text and photography ................................................................................................................ . i’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book .............................................. narrativity .................................................................................................................................. text and photography ................................................................................................................ . : that’s what tortures me .................................................................................................... . : the only option available .................................................................................................. 	 	 conclusion .................................................................................................................................. conclusion ............................................................................................................................ bibliography ......................................................................................................................... appendix ............................................................................................................................ paul kwiatkowski – and every day was overcast .................................................................. face breaker ...................................................................................................................... appendix ............................................................................................................................ nikel van duijvenboden – the grand absence ......................................................................... appendix ............................................................................................................................ interview between myself (ms) and nikel van duijvenboden (nvb) conducted over email st september ............................................................................................................................. appendix ............................................................................................................................ the perfect price for donny (text) .............................................................................................. appendix ............................................................................................................................ the perfect price for donny – ryan renshaw gallery, .................................................... (artworks- not already presented) .............................................................................................. appendix ............................................................................................................................ new work, sophie gannon gallery, .................................................................................. (artworks- not already presented) .............................................................................................. appendix ............................................................................................................................ more sex, less death - ryan renshaw gallery, ............................................................... (artworks- not already presented) .............................................................................................. appendix ............................................................................................................................ i’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book – sophie gannon gallery (artworks- not already presented) .............................................................................................. appendix ............................................................................................................................ that’s what tortures me – jan murphy gallery ........................................................... (artworks- not already presented) .............................................................................................. appendix .......................................................................................................................... the only option available – sophie gannon gallery ..................................................... (artworks- not already presented) .............................................................................................. appendix .......................................................................................................................... the narrated self – pop gallery ...................................................................................... (final exhibition) .......................................................................................................................... 	 	 list of figures figure . henri cartier-bresson place de l'europe 	___________________________________________	 	 figure . william yang, “allan”, from the monologue “sadness” .	_____________________________	 	 figure . william yang “allan”, from the monologue “sadness”, 	 _____________________________	 	 figure . william yang. “allan”, from the monologue “sadness”, gelatine silver photograph, ink. 	 ___	 	 figure . martin smith money laughed at my sausage, pigment print with cut-out letters, 	___________	 	 figure . martin smith, kinga nikka, inkjet print with cut-out letters, 	 ___________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, perfect price for donny (installation) 	 _________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, perfect price for donny (installation) 	 _________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, ronald desmond (installation view), 	 _____________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, yes and yes, pigment print with hand-cut letters, 	 _______________________	 	 figure . guillaume apollinaire revolver, drawing for the calligramme “Éventail des saveurs” – 	__	 	 figure . martin smith, installation detail, 	________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, more sex, less death (installation) 	__________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # 	 __________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # , 	__________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # , 	__________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # , 	__________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # , 	__________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, father's mother, 	________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, mother's father, 	________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, brother's sister, 	 ________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, stand up, 	 _____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, experiment with verbs, 	___________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, perceived indifference, 	___________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, studio detail, 	___________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, my greatest weakness, 	___________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, foamcore, 	_____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, jet-lag, 	 _______________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, cynicism, 	 _____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	_____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	_____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	_____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	_____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	_____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, boy, 	__________________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, installation, 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, installation, 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure .martin smith, heat sealing, 	___________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, storage/pleasure, 	_______________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, sister's son, 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, bear, 	_________________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, money, 	 _______________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, untitled # , 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, untitled # , 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, installation, 	____________________________________________________	 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, eyewear, 	______________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, fortunate and bored, 	____________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, i believe in, 	____________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, i regret, 	 ______________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, i like it when, 	__________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, i'll take the next one, 	 ___________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, cutting text, 	___________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, and that's what tortures me, 	_____________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, god only knows, 	_______________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, unfortunately on this occasion, 	___________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, credo, 	________________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, rd, birthday, 	_________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, eating a hotdog on th avenue, 	____________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, life without you, 	 _______________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, santa monica, 	__________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, it's difficult to love, 	_____________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, i get to emerge from it, 	 _________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, linked by absence, 	______________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, the embrace of mediocre ideas, 	___________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, you too need comfort, 	 __________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, cynicism, 	______________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, m,n,a,e, 	_______________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, ride, 	 _________________________________________________________	 	 figure . martin smith, i wish i could say i handled it well, 	 _______________________________	 	 	 	 	 	 acknowledgements there are many people who have been generous with their time and support throughout the exegesis and studio research that have made this submission possible. i must firstly thank my principal supervisor, professor jay younger, for her unfailing belief in my ability to complete this project, when i was having trouble. her support and advice throughout the whole project has been incredibly insightful and invaluable. i would like to thank the staff from the photography department of the queensland college of art. i was completing this project during a time of transition within the department and the support of previous staff such as associate professor leanne wiseman, mr david lloyd, ms angela blakeley, dr ray cook and mr bruce reynolds is gratefully acknowledged. i would also like to thank the current staff of dr heather faulkner, ms amy carkeek, dr issac brown and mr jo ruckli for their advice and support throughout the candidature. i would also like to thank evie franzidis for her tireless editing skills and helpful commentary. i would also like to acknowledge the support of my gallerists ryan renshaw, sophie gannon and jan murphy. i have been fortunate to be surrounded by ethical and hard-working people whose support of my studio practice has allowed it to grow and foster without unnecessary interference. to friends who are too many to name for their generosity in helping me through this project and turn up to my openings and are always supportive. i would to like to thank my family sachin smith, mila smith and verde smith whose support, love and guidance i will never be able to return. lastly, to my wife marisa bartolini whose presence in the exegesis and the studio research is equal to my own. i cannot begin to mention how grateful i am for your love and support. martin smith june 	 	 statement of originality this work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. to the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. (signed name: martin smith 	 	 parts of this research have been published in exhibitions during the course of the project. major exhibitions include: • the perfect price for donny ( , appendix ) at ryan renshaw gallery, brisbane • new work ( , appendix ) at sophie gannon gallery, melbourne • more sex, less death ( , appendix ) at ryan renshaw gallery, brisbane • i’m sick of sittin’’round here, tryin’ to write this book ( , appendix ) sophie gannon gallery, melbourne • that’s what tortures me ( , appendix ), jan murphy gallery, brisbane • the only option available ( , appendix ), sophie gannon gallery, melbourne 	 	 	 introduction the greatest influence in the construction of my own personal narrative is my speech impediment. i have a stammer, my father had a stammer, my brother has a stammer, my sister had a stammer, but my mother took her to a speech therapist to correct it (this is another story). i grew up too embarrassed to speak so i spent my formative years watching and observing. the inability to express myself during this time left an indelible mark on my personal history. my difficulties with verbal communication has fuelled a desire to create artworks that record, reflect and reveal personal experience. since , i have been creating and exhibiting artworks that consist of text in the form of a story that is hand-cut from the surface of a photograph. the excised texts are vignettes of personal experience told through a photograph. before commencing my phd in march , the photographs that i was producing were very simple, snapshot images such as non-descript landscapes or close ups of vegetation that allowed for the addition of text because they did not contain too much contextual information. from the outset, a major focus of this phd was to concentrate on making more complex and evocative photographs, as i was concerned that they were being overtaken and dominated by the text. the challenge was to create photographs that implied more complex scenarios while still being contextually open to receiving and transmitting the text. making new images required a balance between containing interesting information and not containing too much information. this process stayed with me throughout my candidature and, i believe, was only resolved in with the presentation of the exhibition more sex, less death ( , appendix ). the subsequent exhibitions then coalesced and developed the ideas to become more cohesive. the other focus in undertaking my phd was to develop and experiment with the narratives in the text to explore how personal experience can be represented in an artwork. in the works made prior to my candidature, the text represented events in a humorous manner, but i gave little thought to constructing alternative narrative worlds within them. since my research has developed and synchronised with my studio investigation, so the text in my work has explored diverse narrative worlds such as the metalepsis, the fork-path narrative, and the unreliable narrator. these narrative structures were incorporated in the artworks in , but 	 	 the genesis of the text development started with the perfect price for donny ( , appendix ). this investigation into narrative is paired with a narratological study of the combination of text and image. the field of studies for image and text would seem to be very well served when the literature is surveyed, with well-established journals such as word and image: a journal of verbal/visual enquiry (established ), image and text (established ), and image and narrative (established ). however, in each case, these journals are primarily aimed at researchers working with the text or discursive side of this image/text divide. in other words, the research focusses on into or through art images, including photo-image practices, with very little concern for research for art practice, as in my case, where the outcome is embodied in the creative work. although the subtitle of word and image might imply inclusion of creative research into the visual, the research is primarily aimed at art historians or literary studies researchers, with a broad historical focus for ancient, medieval to current periods but very few articles on contemporary art. image and text, published by the university of pretoria, began with a focus on design but since it has been “repositioned as a multi- and interdisciplinary journal that orbits around the nexus of visual culture”, as noted on its website. nevertheless, articles on design remain a significant focus of the journal and, while photography is often analysed, very little interest is taken in a broader interpretation of narrative. image and narrative is published by open universities press and, with its focus “on visual narratology and word and image studies in the broadest sense of the term”, obviously has most relevance to my study, but again very few studies in this journal have directly impacted my research. this exegesis traces the development of my theoretical and studio research over the course of the phd. chapter is largely devoted to forms of narrative because of the importance of the field of narrativity to my research. the theoretical framework described in this chapter understandably also includes an analysis of photographic theory relevant to my interest in personal narrative and the photograph. however, the specific theories dealing with text and photography are extended upon within the studio methodology chapter of chapter . prior to 																																																								 word and image: a journal of verbal/visual enquiry is published by taylor & francis (routledge). see https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/twim . image and text is published by the university of pretoria. see http://www.imageandtext.up.ac.za/. 	 	 this, chapter provides an extended analysis of three highly relevant works of art by established practitioners that each illuminates an aspect of my own approach. i undertake a comparative analysis with examples of my own studio research. my artworks are integrated into all chapters of the exegesis to mirror the reality of my research that interweaves discursive and studio practices; however, chapter deals with the chronological development of my exhibited works. significantly, i do not engage the aesthetics of images or aesthetic discourse more generally. this is for strategic reasons because of my use of heuristic and associated methodologies using personal narratives in tandem with the wider discourse on the mechanics of photographic representation of text and image. in established heuristic method, and particularly in the contemporary variant of autoethnography, the value of the outcome of the work is sometimes measured by the “aesthetic” qualities of the text. it would be simply too confounding to be discussing aesthetic features or elements that required constant qualification as relating to story or photograph. 	 	 	 chapter : theoretical framework an understanding of narrative structures is key to conceptualising and disseminating my visual research. the texts that i fuse to the photographs through the process of excision are constructed to illuminate the role that narrative plays in the formulation of meaning, but also in the construction of personal identity. the photographs that are created to receive the text are crafted to provide a vehicle for the creation of narratives. any reading of the visual research of this phd requires a practical knowledge of the definition, structure, and form of narrative, narratology, and narrativity, especially in relation to the construction of identity, the creation of narrative structures, and the unique spatial and temporal nature of a photograph. the purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to provide those distinctions that form the theoretical foundation of these photographic/textual-based artworks. before highlighting the discursive theoretical background, i should note that the physical act of excision in my practice performs an important role in the reception and operation of the image/text synthesis. cutting into the surface of a photograph is different by degree and type to cutting the surface of a painted canvas, for example. if anything, the self-conscious rupture of the canvas in painting has become an act of enhancement, as demonstrated by those such as lucio fontana ( – ) in the s to contemporary artists such as dana schutz (b. ). the situation is different with photography; as barbara savedoff showed in her pre- digital era analysis of photographs of torn movie posters, the disruption of the flat surface of the photograph has a particular “power to disturb us”. with the move towards the dominance of the screen image since the latter part of the twentieth century, there has been a renewed interest in the “viscerality” of artistic surfaces, as terry smith and others have pointed out. since the quality of the electronically generated screen image has become the measure against which all images are compared, there has been some abbreviation of the distance between painting and photography. as richard shiff has noted, “video exposes the material thickness of thin photographic emulsion and does the same to any thin, emulsion-like surface 																																																								 “dana schutz,” artnet, http://www.artnet.com/artists/dana-schutz/set-up-xu rz l s fe vcprvdxjw , last accessed may . barbara e. savedoff “transforming images: photographs of representations,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism , no. (spring ): . terry smith, ed., impossible presence: surface and screen in the photogenic era (sydney: power institute, ). 	 	 of painting. our response is a changed sense of the materiality of images.” with this re- materialisation of the photograph, the presence of the individual artist in the making has been re-established to some degree. in the case of my work, the text excised from the photograph becomes emphatic material evidence of the presence of the narrator. the insertion of a textual narrative into the material surface of the photograph is an important aspect in understanding the visual research. since access to digital technologies has become more available and photography is being combined seamlessly with other media the material properties of the photograph continue to be explored. while the narratology applied throughout the exegesis is derived mainly from literary sources it is worth noting several influential exhibitions such as the anxiety of photography at the aspen museum of art and ocean of images at the museum of modern art, the essay the object lost and found by curator matthew thompson and the books words without pictures by charlotte cotton and alex klein and the miracle of analogy by kaja silverman respond to artists and artworks that combine various media to extend the notions of photography. as the primary studio methodology employed through the studio research is the combination of textual narratives and photography the application of a literary narratology is consistent. french semiologist roland barthes stated in his essay “introduction to the structural analysis of narratives” that “narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself”. according to barthes, narrative is present in all cultures and takes many forms, including myths, folklore, music, novels, poetry and comics. narrative is a basic construct of human beings and fundamental to how people interpret memory, process, time and conceive of our identities. it is also crucial to how people provide meaning and context to the experiences encountered in daily life. when asked about the events of the individual’s day, there is a tendency to leave out the most mundane events and condense the 																																																								 richard shiff, “realism of low resolution, digitisation and modern painting,” in ibid., . thompson, matthew. "the anxiety of photography." edited by aspen art museum. aspen colorado, . quentin bajac, [curator], "ocean of images: new photography ." in new photography, edited by museum of modern art. new york: museum of modern art, . thompson, matthew. "the object lost and found." aspen art museum ( ). klein, alex, charlotte cotton, and art los angeles county museum of. words without pictures. st aperture ed. london; new york;: aperture, . silverman, kaja. the miracle of analogy, or, the history of photography, part . palo alto, california: stanford university press, . roland barthes, image, music, text (london: flamingo, ), . bronwen thomas, narrative: the basics (new york: routledge, ), . h. porter abbott, the cambridge introduction to narrative, ed. (cambridge: cambridge university press, ), . 	 	 enormity of life into simple narratives that explain the movements in space and time. people do this without consciously thinking about the complex structures being adhered to. needless to say, the photograph, both in formal and snapshot iterations, plays a significant role in this—“my first car”, “our wedding”, and so on. using narrative as a structural framework for decoding the studio research allows for multiple interpretations and conclusions. in american psychologists jens brockmeier and donal carbaugh’s book narrative and identity: studies in autobiography, self and culture, the authors note the “irreducibly ambiguous meanings of any narrative utterance”. it is the ambiguous nature of the narrative utterance that my studio research utilises to blend media and stories into open-ended narratives. this literal compounding of text narrative and photographic image evokes and inverts barthes’s initial interpretation of the photograph as a “message without a code” just as it embellishes his later call, in camera lucida, to draw attention to the essential mystery of the photograph: “to confront in it the waking of intractable reality”. each completed visual work represents an episode of a life, a splice of time, told through text and photograph, that does not seek narrative conclusion and is part of a much larger whole. a complete study of the influence of narrative on the visual works that comprise this phd research and our lives is beyond the scope of this exegesis, but it does strive to present relevant ideas and concepts that aid in reading the visual research through a narrative lens. this chapter outlines the theoretical framework for my investigation. it gives particular importance to narrative and is divided into four sections that explore divergent yet related topics: narrative; personal history and context; narrative worlds; and a photograph. the first section, narrative, is centred around the definitions of narrative, narrativity, narratology, story, and discourse. this section utilises the writing of american narratologist h. porter abbott, american psychologist robyn fivush, german philosopher dieter teichert, american narratologist david herman, israeli professor of comparative english studies shlomith rimmon-kenan, dutch narratologist mieke bal, american professor of english brian richardson, and english, media and communication academic bronwen thomas. 																																																								 jens brockmeier and donal carbaugh, narrative and identity: studies in autobiography, self and culture vol. (amsterdam and great britain: john benjamins pub. co, ), . roland barthes, camera lucida: reflections on photography (new york: farrar, straus and giroux, ), . 	 	 having established the definitions and conditions of narrative, the next section, cognitive narrative and personal history, discusses cognitive narrative theory to examine how narratives are used to form and interpret personal histories. in this section, an examination of russian literary critic mikhail bakhtin’s writing on the novel provides a pathway for contextualising personal histories within recognised literary structures. the third section, narrative worlds, defines and outlines the various narrative structures that are used in this visual research, such as epistolary narratives, the metalepsis, fork-path narratives and the unreliable narrator. these narrative structures are utilised to disrupt, distort, and divulge the narrative layers that exist within the studio research of this phd and, more broadly, our lives. in order to understand how narratives create multiple narrative worlds, this section also explains bakhtin’s conceptualisation of narrative space, the chronotrope, where the spatial and temporal layers of the story-world converge, allowing for the creation of other layers within the narrative. the final section of this chapter, a photograph, examines the narrativity of a single photograph. the initial discussion in this section highlights how narrative is contextualised within the reading of a photograph and the differences between the narrative of language and the narrative of imagery. the next part of this section examines the often-used narrative framework of the ‘decisive moment’ in relation to french photojournalist henri cartier- bresson. the last part of the section defines and outlines the framework of ‘frames and scripts’ as an alternative method for reading the narrativity of a photograph. the text photography, narrative, time: imaging our forensic imagination by australian photo- theorist greg battye will be used extensively in the discussion of frames and scripts to build the narrative framework through which to read the photographic element in the visual research of this phd. 																																																								 the term narrative worlds are defined by abbott and chatman as “…the mental models that readers and audiences create as they try to make sense of and interpret narratives, imaginatively reconstructing aspects of the context or of the characters’ lives that may not be overtly or fully delineated”. porter h abbott, the cambridge introduction to narrative. ed. (cambridge: cambridge university press, ) . greg battye, photography, narrative, time: imaging our forensic imagination (chicago: university of chicago press, ). 	 	 . narrative narratives were used by humans long before a name was given to them. the ability to form narratives is a uniquely human trait as we are the only species that seemingly possesses both language and the ability to recognise the passing of time. the function that narratives play in life is best described by h. porter abbott in the cambridge introduction to narrative: “narrative is the principal way in which our species organises its understanding of time”. children develop and start to place a subject with a verb, such as in “i just ate cake”, at around four or five, an age that coincides with our first memories. this has led some to theorise that memory does not exist without narrative as there is no mental record of the individual’s existence till the formation and expression of self through narratives. in her book autobiographical memory and the construction of a narrative self, robyn fivush explains the role of narrative in the development of an autobiographical memory: autobiographical memory emerges during the latter part of the pre-school years and suggests a new level of self-understanding. this level of self-understanding integrates action and consciousness into a whole self, and establishes a self-history as unique to the self, differentiated from others’ experiential histories. according to fivush, narrative aids in the establishment of autobiographical memory that links actions to consciousness and provides the tools for us to create a unique identity. in the academic field of narrative theory, there are different definitions of narrative. abbott considers the range of different ideas surrounding the description of events, sequence, and causality in his definition of narrative, which he posits as “the representation of an event or a series of events”. in his essay “narrative, identity and the self”, dieter teichert defines narrative as “…a semiotic, mostly linguistic presentation of at least two successive states of 																																																								 ibid., xv. ibid., . abbott, cambridge introduction to narrative, . ibid. robyn fivush, autobiographical memory and the construction of a narrative self (mahwah, nj; london: lawrence erlbaum, ), , my italics. abbott, cambridge introduction to narrative, . 	 	 affairs, events or actions”, while david herman states in basic elements of narrative that “at a minimum, stories concern temporal sequences—situations and events unfolding in time.” for this exegesis, i have chosen the broadest definition of narrative as articulated by abbott as “the representation of an event or a series of events”. according to abbott, “… the capacity to represent an event, either in words or in some other way, is the key gift [of narrative] and it produces the building blocks out of which all the more complex forms are built”. some scholars (for example, barthes and rimmon-kenan) require more than two sequences to be represented to qualify as a narrative, while others (for example, bal and richardson) require an actor/narrator to be present to relate the narrative. i chose abbott’s definition because it refers to the representation of events, which allows for the use of media other than text. the representation of events articulated by abbott can refer to text but equally to the application of paint, the use of actors, cameras, etc. outlining the definition of narrative is important for the exegesis as it provides the parameters with which to decide whether elements within my phd studio research constitute a narrative. of interest is being able to confirm the level or amount of narrative that exists within media or an artefact. the reading and evaluation of a narrative or ascertaining an artefact’s narrativity will be examined next. narratology and narrativity the terms ‘narratology’ and ‘narrativity’ are used throughout the exegesis to discuss the study of narrative (narratology) and the degree to which a text lends itself to be interpreted as a story (narrativity). this section expands on these terms and gives examples of their use. 																																																								 dieter teichert, “narrative, identity and the self,” journal of consciousness studies , no. – ( ): . david herman, basic elements of narrative (hoboken, nj: wiley, ), . abbott, cambridge introduction to narrative, . ibid. 	 	 narratology developed in the s and s as a structuralist method for studying written narrative texts, with a primary focus on literature. in recent years, it has branched out into a more interdisciplinary model that explores the semiotic and cultural theory of narrative texts and contexts. the term ‘narrative texts’ is based on different media that organise meaning based around narrative lines. this can include texts but also images, dance, theatre, public spaces, acts of remembrance and celebration, sporting events, and fashion. in using narrative as a theoretical framework, i will also be exploring the narrativity of the studio research. narrativity refers to the level to which the narrative lends itself to being interpreted as a story. a simple narrative such as “for sale, baby shoes” does not lend itself to an extended contemplation of the event portrayed. however, if you add the two words “never worn” at the end—so “for sale, baby shoes, never worn” —the space for a more complex narrative is created. why have the baby shoes never been worn? has the baby passed away? according to abbott, there is no definitive test to evaluate the level of narrativity in any media or to the number of characters, words, ideas, events depicted to increase any media’s narrative potential. like much to do with the study of narrative and its quality, meaning is left to subjective human response. narratology establishes terms that are used to distinguish certain elements of the narrative to provide the reader with the skills to differentiate between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ or what the narrative is about in relation to the way the story is being told. in “introduction to the structural analysis of narratives”, barthes made it explicit that in a complex system such as narrative, an organising structure must be used. the structure allows us to show that narrative is not just a mass of propositions or utterances but an enormous collection of elements that collude to construct a narrative. the two main terms used to interpret narratives and to structure their creation and dissemination in culture are ‘discourse’ and ‘story’, which will be more fully explained in the next section. 																																																								 david herman, manfred jahn, and marie-laure ryan, routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory (london; new york: routledge, ), ix. the phrase “for sale, baby shoes, never worn” is regarded as the shortest novel ever written. the writer is unknown, but the phrase is used to exemplify how much can be said with the fewest words. josh jones, “the (urban) legend of ernest hemingway’s six-word story: ‘for sale, baby shoes, never worn’.” open culture, march , http://www.openculture.com/ / /the-urban-legend-of-ernest-hemingways-six-word- story.html. barthes, image, music, text, - 	 	 discourse and story this section extrapolates the terms ‘discourse’ and ‘story’ to provide a framework for understanding the unique qualities of narrative. in outlining the definitions of discourse and story, i will be primarily drawing from abbott and the american film and literary professor seymour chatman (whom abbott quotes). by utilising abbott’s method for differentiating and explaining discourse and story, a thorough understanding of the distinctions and boundaries of the terms will emerge that will provide a pathway to the formation of multi- world narratives. the most important element in the chosen definition of narrative as “the representation of an event or a series of events” is the representation of events within a temporal space. it is important to note that not every piece of text or painting or film is a narrative. to be considered a narrative, the entity in question must consist of a story (the event or a sequence of events) and a narrative discourse (how the story is represented). later in this section, a practical example of the qualities of story and discourse will be outlined. bronwen thomas provides a simple definition of story in her book narrative: the basics: “story is used in narrative theory to refer to the chronological sequence of events that underlie the narrative … the events that you would include if you wanted to give someone a flavour of what the narrative is about.” according to thomas, story is not just the description of the action but also the order in which the events unfold. the story is used to better understand the choices that are being made to tell a particular tale. as will be further explained later in this chapter, the same story can be told in various orders and still contain the same meaning. the other important element in gaining an understanding from the narrative is how the events in the story are represented, which is referred to in this exegesis as narrative discourse. narrative discourse pertains to the way in which a story is told and the internal world created by the reader/viewer that the story takes place within. in literature, this can refer to similes, 																																																								 thomas, narrative: the basics, . for clarity, i have used abbott’s terms of ‘story’ and ‘narrative’ discourse in referring to these two characteristics of narrative. scholars using a russian formalist model, such bal and richardson, use the terms fabula (story) and sjuzet (narrative discourse). thomas uses the words ‘story’ and ‘storyworld’ when referencing narrative discourse. 	 	 metaphors, and other narrative devices such as the metalepsis and fork-path narratives (which will be discussed in greater depth later in this chapter). the narrative discourse is the author’s style in telling the story and their ability to create internal images in the mind of their audience. chatman provides another delineation of the terms and also elucidates on the nature of time within the narrative: narrative entails movement through time not only “externally” (the duration of the presentation of the novel, film, play) but also “internally” (the duration of the sequence of events that constitute the plot). the first operates in that dimension of narrative called discourse…, the second in that called story… non-narrative text-types do not have an internal time sequence, even though obviously they take time to read, view or hear. their underlying structures are static or atemporal. to put this another way, reading a non-narrative text, such as this section of the exegesis, the only time involved is the time it takes to read it and the order is the structure of the exegesis. the exegesis is, for the most part, not set within a ‘story-time’ and mostly does not include events that occur within a temporal space. the structure of the exegesis is used to, hopefully, allow for the logical (and at times chronological) flow of information, not to provide the reader with any narrative understanding. an understanding of the mechanisms of story and discourse is an important aspect of extracting meaning from narratives and it is worth extrapolating further on abbott’s explanation of story and discourse. for this part, i have also used abbott’s explanatory model to outline the different terms. in each presentation of a narrative, there is the ‘external’ time that it takes to view the film, read the novel, or watch the play in question as well as the temporal space that the narrative/story is set in, such as present, past, future. the events presented in the narrative also occur in a designed order that affects how the story is represented and interpreted. within the narrative, there is also an ‘internal’ time that the story events are presented in and an order that creates coherence. the order and time of the discourse can be different to the order and time of the story, yet still create a coherent narrative. within a few sentences that 																																																								 chatman quoted in abbott, cambridge introduction to narrative, . when writing about the studio research in chapters and , and detailing my own narratives, there is a story- world and a timeline. this comment refers to the theoretical text. 	 	 take thirty seconds to read and comprehend, one can conflate and represent several hours of real time. for example: when	he	finally	finished	lunch,	it	marked	the	most	peculiar	start	to	the	day.	it	had	 begun	by	waking	in	the	wrong	bed,	eating	his	son’s	lunch,	wearing	his	wife’s	 underwear	and	falling	asleep	on	the	train	and	waking	up	in	darra.	 the order of the sentence can change but the narrative coherence remains the same. after	waking	up	and	eating	lunch	in	darra,	he	started	to	recall	the	rest	of	this	peculiar	 day	including	wearing	his	wife’s	underwear,	eating	his	son’s	lunch	and	waking	up	in	 the	wrong	bed.	 other changes can occur but the story still remain intact: the narrative voice can change from third person to first person and specific moments within the narrative can be heightened but resemble the previous narratives. for example, i	only	remember	the	morning.	i	woke	up	in	james’s	bed	with	him	on	the	floor,	sound	 asleep.	in	an	effort	to	get	moving,	i	had	a	shower	and	grabbed	what	i	thought	was	my	 own	underwear	from	the	drawer,	but	they	ended	up	being	jill’s.	but	this	was	the	least	 of	my	worries.	i	grabbed	the	prepared	lunch	on	the	counter	and	headed	off	to	work.	 on	the	way	there	i	fell	asleep	and	awoke	in	darra	starving.	it	was	then	i	realised	i	had	 taken	james’s	lunch.	this	has	been	the	worst	morning	ever.	i	should	have	left	the	bar	 when	max	left.	 narrative discourse is endlessly malleable. it can be stretched forward and backward, change tense and voice and narrative time, as information is deciphered from the narrative, it is reassembled in the correct order to make it a story. the events depicted within a story can take a minute, an hour, a day, or a lifetime, but as the events are depicted, humans place them within a chronological time of earliest to latest. the order of the events and the length of time they take within the story are often quite different from the time and the order of events within the narrative discourse. 	 	 using the last story written above as an example, the order of the narrative discourse is as follows: time event present waking up and remembering earlier in the day waking in bed, showering, wearing wrong underwear, grabbing lunch, going to work midday waking in darra, eating lunch present remembering morning previous evening feeling regret at not leaving the bar the time sequence presented within the discourse allows one to position present and past events next to each other, whereas the story places the sequence of events into a chronological order. time event previous evening feeling regret at not leaving the bar morning waking in bed, showering, wearing wrong underwear, grabbing lunch, going to work, waking in darra, eating lunch, remembering morning midday eating wrong lunch, remembering night before one of the benefits of narrative is that the discourse can possess a temporal space and order while the story occupies another temporal space and order. it is through the aligning of the discourse and the story that the narrative coherence is created as mentioned previously, the options available in organising the structure of the narrative discourse are endless and provide the author/artist with the opportunity to conflate multiple times, events, and spaces within the design of the narrative. the discourse represents the narrative, providing it with its flavour, its essence, its tone, and its effect. the discourse sets the story within a designed environment and provides the reader/viewer with an emotional intention to receive the events depicted in the story. 	 	 defining the effects of discourse and story is important in contextualising my research project, as the stories of my personal experiences incorporated into my artworks are told through a variety of narrative discourses. each new visual work presents an opportunity to experiment with how the story is told and what narrative strategies can be used to entice the viewer to completely read the text, from fork-path narratives to metalepsis narratives (which will both be discussed in . narrative worlds). as each artwork represents a vignette of personal experience the ways narratives are interpreted and incorporated within life is examined in the next section. . : cognitive narrative and personal history this section discusses the use of narrative in the development of personal histories, including the choices made in how individual stories are told and developed. also discussed is the importance of context in deciding what aspects of our personal histories are told and retold. this section is also important in understanding the narrativity of a photograph (discussed specifically in section . a photograph), as context plays a pivotal role in framing photography within a narrative structure. this section will draw upon the writing of professor of rhetoric and linguistics barbara johnstone, american psychologist jerome bruner, american linguists william labov and joshua waletzky, english professor of language monika fludernik, and russian literary critic and scholar mikhail bakhtin. the use of narrative in fields such as ethnography, anthropology, and other human sciences as the means through which social and cultural life are interpreted and understood is becoming more widely considered. the increasing focus on narrative as a method of interpreting and rationalising our lives is discussed by barbara johnstone in her essay “discourse analysis and narrative”. she writes, “the essence of humanness, long characterised as the tendency to make sense of the world through rationality, has come increasingly to be described as the tendency to tell stories, to make sense of the world through narrative.” the tendency to make sense of the world through narratives is also addressed by jerome bruner in his essay titled “life as narrative”, where he states that narratives do not happen, 																																																								 barbara johnstone, “discourse analysis and narrative,” in the handbook of discourse analysis, ed. deborah schiffin, deborah tannen, and heidi hamilton (massachusetts: blackwell publishers, ), . 	 	 they are “created”. the stories that define and shape us are contextualised by the community that we live in and the culture/family that formed us. bruner asserts that the phrase “life imitates art and art imitates life” can also be read as “narrative imitates life and life imitates narrative”. this refers to the notion that our sense of the world that we live in and the concept of ourselves is shaped by the narrativising process. bruner states, “there is no such thing psychologically as ‘life itself.’ at the very least, it is a selective achievement of memory recall: beyond that, recounting one’s life is an interpretive feat.” bruner then goes on to state that the ways of telling stories and the means of conceptualising our lives becomes habitual and creates a pattern for how experience is structured. he argues: “…that a life as led is inseparable from a life as told—or more bluntly, a life is not ‘how it was’ but how it is interpreted and reinterpreted, told and retold”. the daily influence of narratives in the descriptions of events can also be extrapolated into larger, more overarching narratives that are used to construct versions of our personal identity. the events that make up our collective experiences are grouped together and from here an identity is created that reflects the individual’s interpretation of these events. for their essay “narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience”, william labov and joshua waletzky studied the structure of oral or “natural” narratives as a means of examining how language operates between people. they studied the underlying narrative structures at play and what purpose/s are served when the individual’s stories are narrated. according to labov and waletzky, when narrating ourselves to others, the primary purpose is more than just being able to tell a good “yarn”; it is to save “face”. in any given situation, the narrator wishes to maintain a certain control of the narrative that presents them in a positive way. to illustrate their point, labov and waletzky use the example of a somebody on a first date, stating that it is unusual for them to discuss personal failings and anxieties and that it generally serves them better to dwell on more uplifting and courageous endeavours. in 																																																								 bruner, “life as narrative,” . ibid., . ibid., . william labov and joshua waletzky, “narrative analysis: oral versions of personal experience,” in essays on the verbal and visual arts: proceedings of the annual spring meeting of the american ethnological society, ed. june helm, – . seattle: university of washington press, . subsequently published in journal of narrative and life history , no. – ( ): – . face refers to a positive self-image that narrators wish to project while in conversation with others. 	 	 conversations, the search to describe the self as committed and determined rather than overly competitive; sensitive and caring rather than clingy and needy; hard-working rather than being a workaholic. in her essay “identity/alterity”, monika fludernik discusses the self- narrating process as a fiction that we tell ourselves: “images projected in conversational narrative, like images of one’s self that one tries to live up to in one’s behaviour…are fictions/fantasies that the narrator is at pains to uphold narratively, self-images to emulate and realize.” fludernik’s reference to the ‘fiction/fantasies’ that the narrator creates and upholds suggests that larger narratives are formulated that frame the individual’s life. one of the most recognised narrative forms is the novel, a literary form that is influential in the study of narrative but also in the creation of identity. an influential figure in the study of narrative, mikhail bakhtin’s theory of the novelistic discourse reveals analogies between the discourse of novels, personal history, and autobiographical memory. bakhtin describes the language of life narrative in figurative terms or tropes, which is linked to how novels are read and understood. he draws parallels between characteristics of the modern novel, such as its sense of “temporality, polyphony and intertextuality (that is, every text derives from, and refers to, further texts)”, and the narrative construction of a life. as every self-narrative is part of a life that is developing and changing, acquiring knowledge, imagination and skills, the narrative is also developing to adapt to new contexts and ways of telling stories. this development of a self-narrative therefore allows for actual stories of real life to weave and integrate with potential stories of a possible life that has infinite permutations. as a consequence, life narratives, like most narrative texts such as novels, films, plays and art, can also be treated as open and without end. there are an infinite number of ways to tell and retell our stories as life provides us with new opportunities to recontextualise the past, present, and possible futures. the narratives that are told to the self and revealed to others are being reworked, changed, emphasised, and fictionalised. 																																																								 ibid. monika fludernik, “identity/alterity,” in the cambridge companion to narrative, ed. david herman (cambridge: cambridge university press, ), . bakhtin cited in brockmeier and carbaugh, narrative and identity, . ibid. ibid., . 	 	 in everyone’s lives, there are unrealised opportunities, unfulfilled chances, demands and options that, according to bakhtin, correlate with the genre of the novel. he suggests that we are constantly making ourselves and are unable to settle on one true identity. this is similar to the novel in the way that regardless of how thorough a characterisation is, there is always something left over—an unrealised “surplus of humanness”. as such, brockmeier and carbaugh argue that life narratives are not only connected to actual life stories but can also be used as a method for exploring multiple self-identities. brockmeier and carbaugh state that the role of narrative in the construction of our ‘identity’ is limiting in that on any given day, we exist as multiple ‘identities’. the person within his or her family is different to the person presented to the barista making his or her morning coffee, to work colleagues, and to the people in our communities. it is therefore more accurate to speak of our identities rather than our singular identity. in the desire to accurately explore the role of narratives in the construction of our identities, it is worth considering the idea that within a singular written work, there can be multiple narrative layers that contribute to the interpretation and understanding of stories. the process of how the narrative layers are combined or condensed creates a narrative world that the stories exist within. . narrative worlds this section defines how narratives create and converge time and space within a story-world to form multiple narrative worlds. in the studio research, the interdisciplinary use of text, image, form, and mark-making produces independent narrative layers. the narrative layers ‘stack’ up, creating a complex story-world that produces multiple narrative synergies.	the aim of the studio research is to collapse and adapt the different narrative layers to make the viewer aware of the existence of the narrative layers and the influence they have on how personal narratives are shaped. an important concept in the creation and fusion of time and space in narratives is that of the chronotrope, a theory developed by bakhtin as a means to conceptualise the convergence of the spatial and temporal dimensions of a fictional world. defining and explaining the effect 																																																								 m. m. bakhtin and michael holquist. the dialogic imagination: four essays. vol. . (austin, texas: university of texas press, ), . 	 	 and consequence of the chronotrope is worthwhile as it provides the conditions that allow for multiple narrative worlds to inhabit, interact, and disrupt the flow of the story. within several of the artworks produced for this research project, multiple narrative worlds have been established through the use of the epistolary voice, the metalepsis, fork-path narratives, and the unreliable narrator (each of which will be defined and their conditions for use explained below). through the application of these narrative worlds, the mechanics of narrative become observable. abbott explains the desire for the creation of narrative worlds within fiction as well as ‘life’: “every day we hope, dream, fear, urge, hypothesise, fantasise and in many other ways create worlds that don’t come into being. they remain possible worlds, yet without them life would be hard to conceive.” an aim of the studio research of this phd is to create multi-layered narratives that reference several distinct narrative functions. these functions include to write stories that entertain and elicit memories of past experiences, to create “possible worlds” where imagined scenes seem conceivable, to highlight the role that narrative plays in the development of our personal identity, to use a photograph as one medium through which to tell stories, and to develop new narrative worlds that the stories inhabit. any discussion about narrative is also a discussion about time and also place. the ability of narratives to position the reader within a time and place is crucial in any understanding of narrative function. time, space, and the chronotrope we grasp narrative of any length not only in time but in space as well. an important aspect in any discussion about narratives is space, which is more obvious in filmic and theatrical narratives. in filmic narratives, the camera and action move through a pictorial space that positions the viewer within a depicted space. in the theatre, even on a bare stage, the actors and action are situated within a theatricalised, pre-determined, and deliberate artificial space. within written or oral narratives, the temporal and spatial dimensions of the narrative create the imagined world that the story is actioned in. in the story (as opposed to film or theatre), the narrative time and space seem to fuse together in the imagined world of 																																																								 abbott, cambridge introduction to narrative, . ibid. ibid., . ibid. 	 	 the story. once the reader recognises the temporal and spatial dimensions of the story, multiple narrative worlds can be born within that space. in his essay, “forms of time and the chronotrope in the novel: notes toward a historical poetics”, bakhtin states that narrative texts are the depiction of a sequence of events that are played out within a fictional world, which he coined the chronotrope. this word combines the greek words for time and space as a means to define and describe the condition of narrative where the temporal and spatial world of the text are fused. he states his argument best in the following passage: in the literary artistic chronotrope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out concrete whole. time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. the intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotrope. in bakhtin’s theory, the fusing of time and space that creates a chronotrope is the “organising centre” for the narrative. it provides “the meaning that shapes the narrative”. it is like the background for all that occurs within the story. it is omnipresent but never there, like the ‘lighting’ of a photo-realist painting, the ‘onions and garlic’ of a pasta sauce, or the ‘court’ that a basketball game is played on. bakhtin states that “narrative [is] shaped by a specific way of conceptualising the possibilities of action”. the chronotrope serves as the primary point from which the narrative takes place. it positions the story in a spatial and temporal dimension that allows the reader to conceptualise the events depicted in the fictional world. similarly, abbott describes the convergence of time and space in american short-fiction author alice munroe’s story-world in his analysis of her short stories: with their different players, settings and contexts, these strips of memory bind together complexities of thought and feeling that co-exist in the narrator’s conscious. of course, all three could not have come into being without the dimensions of time and space, yet in consciousness they take on a new kind of being, coming together in ways that exceed the coordinates of time and space. 																																																								 mikhail bakhtin, “forms of time and the chronotrope in the novel: notes toward a historical poetics,” in the cambridge companion to narrative, . ibid., . ibid., . abbott, cambridge introduction to narrative, – . 	 	 while a complete discussion of the premise and purpose of the chronotrope is well beyond the scope of this exegesis, it is important to mention in contextualising this research. as discussed earlier, the conflation and compression of time and space allows for experimentation in the story-world in terms of character, setting, and context. in the following sections, four narrative worlds will be defined and discussed to further build on and subsequently disrupt, disturb and reveal the narratives that are situated within fictional stories as well as our own life stories. they are as follows: • epistolary voice—a story told through letters or diary entries to give a greater sense of the thought processes of the narrator. • metalepsis—where the narrator is also an agent in the narration. • fork-path narratives—where a narrative device such as a tunnel or wardrobe is used to propel the narrative to unexpected places and events. • the unreliable narrator—where the voice of a character provides signs that the information presented is not truthful. the picaro, madman, waif, and the clown will be discussed. epistolary voice the epistolary voice will be examined through the english literary stylistics academic joe bray in his book the epistolary novel ( ). the epistolary voice is a first-person account of events told through the writings of an individual in the form of a diary, or to others in the form of letters. it is used throughout the studio research to better represent the consciousness of the narrator. it might be argued that the current interest in narrative theory across many education and humanities disciplines, especially given its particular prominence in britain, could have its origins in the government-sponsored epistolary “mass observation” project, which ran from to the s in britain in which hundreds of ordinary men and women were encouraged to keep full personal diaries on a daily basis. 																																																								 the mass observation archive is now held by the university of sussex in england and full details of the archive along with its more recent revivals are available at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/library/specialcollections/massobssearch 	 	 bray explains that the epistolary method is another example of the way that the novel is “… an attempt to render individual psychology, to delve into the mind of it characters”. the epistolary is more than just unfiltered ruminations on personal experience. when used correctly, bray explains, it can be effective in representing the “divided minds” of the characters. bray cites janet altman, who writes, “for the letter novelist the choice of epistle as narrative instrument can foster certain patterns of thematic emphasis, narrative action, character types, and narrative self-consciousness”. as a form, the letter is one of the most direct ways to represent the inner world of the characters within the story. there is an intimacy in reading correspondence that is meant for only selective individuals that is unattainable in third-person renditions of the same story. metalepsis this part examines the narrative world of the metalepsis, one that contains both the external (narrator) and internal world (narration). it will draw upon the writing of french literary critic gerard genette and the english professor of english john pier. a metalepsis occurs when the external narrator enters the internal world of the story, either in the form of a character or an event. a recent example of a narrative metalepsis is the film adaptation ( ), where the scriptwriter, charlie kaufman, played by nicolas cage, is also a character in the film whose movements, dialogue, and reactions are directly related to his writing the script. as the author, charlie kaufman is racked with self-doubt about the script he is commissioned to write, and the audience witnesses the results of his writing in both the external world of the narrator and internal world of the narration. the two narrative worlds of discourse and story are conflated in such a way that it is not known whether the story is contaminated by the discourse or vice versa. the study of narrative metalepsis was propagated by genette. his book narrative discourse: an essay in method uses a structuralist model to study marcel proust’s novel in search of lost time, not as a study of value of language but more to uncover the multiple structures of narrative. genette writes about narrative, or diegetic, levels. the levels are similar to abbott’s definitions of discourse (narrative) and story (the narration). however, genette’s 																																																								 joe bray, the epistolary novel: representation of consciousness. (london; new york: routledge, ), . ibid., . janet gurkin altman, quoted in, bray, the epistolary novel, . 	 	 model also includes a level called the ‘narrating’. this is the ‘how’ of the narrative: “the real or fictive act that produces the discourse—in other words, the very fact of recounting”. narrative metalepsis is when the levels are blended, resulting in “intrusions [that] disturb, to say the least, the distinction between levels”. by the narrator being an aspect of the narration, the blending of the narrative layers reveals their existence. since the initial study of narrative metalepsis, narratologists have defined it in a variety of ways. abbott describes it as “the world of production that contains both the story-world and the world of narration.” the blending of the narrative layers causes a disruptive event in the reading of the narrative. in theatre, film, literature and painting, the use of a narrative metalepsis has become more popular as a method for disrupting the usual flow of the narrative and for highlighting the layers of narrative. in his insightful e-journal the living handbook of narratology, pier describes the use of narrative metalepsis: … with metalepsis, the author pretends to intervene in a story which is in fact a representation, so that transgression of the threshold of embedding merges with that of the threshold of representation, affirming the existence of the very boundaries that are effaced. pier confirms the existence of the narrative layers that the metalepsis reveals. in my visual research, metalepsis is used to make the reader aware of the position of the narrator and that they are reading a narrative. fork-path narratives within this phd studio research, fork-path narratives are also used to subvert the normative world that the narratives exist in. throughout my practice, i have often described these as ‘simpson’ narratives, with reference to the popular animated series the simpsons, where the story that starts an episode is not the story that ends the episode. the shift in narrative focus has been a major influence in the creation of the studio research and its disruptive qualities call for some further examination in this section. 																																																								 gerard genette, narrative discourse: an essay in method (new york: cornell university press, ), . ibid., . abbott, cambridge introduction to narrative, . john pier, “metalepsis,” the living handbook of narratology, last modified march , http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/index.php/metalepsis. matt groening, james l. brooks, and simon sam, the simpsons, minutes. th century fox, –. 	 	 narrative provides us with the opportunity to explore ‘possible worlds’ that would normally be outside of the realm of our experience. the purpose of these possible worlds is to conjure fantastic environments, characters, and scenarios that excite and expand our notions of reality. one technique for creating competing worlds within the narrative is called creating fork-path narratives, examples of which can be found in many popular stories, such as c. s. lewis’s the lion, the witch and the wardrobe and lewis carroll’s alice’s adventures in wonderland. these narratives begin in one imagined world and, through the use of a mechanism, another world is made available to the characters. the mechanism in the lion, the witch and the wardrobe is the passing through the wardrobe. the story begins as a british war story, but travelling through a wardrobe leads the four children who are the protagonists of the story to continue in an alternate world where their skills are required to rescue the participants of the new world. in alice’s adventures in wonderland, the fork-path narrative is dependent on alice falling through the rabbit hole to travel from one world to another. the new world operates in a different reality to the world alice left, and she has to acclimatise to the new conditions. the mechanism creates the opportunity to build other worlds, or narrative layers, that then interact with each other in ways that create confusion, drama, tension, or humour. unreliable narrator my studio research utilises the methodology of the unreliable narrator to further undermine the veracity and intent of the narrative. this part will investigate the unreliable narrator through the writing of american literary critics wayne c. booth and william riggan. the term ‘unreliable narrator’ usually refers to first-person narratives where the unreliability of the narrator to accurately convey the events of the story becomes obvious. the uncloaking of the narrator’s veracity happens either initially or towards the end of the story, so that the events that occur or have occurred are filtered through a fogged lens. the narrative world of the unreliable narrator is one that is constantly in flux as the narrator stumbles through the story. 																																																								 c. s. lewis, the lion, the witch and the wardrobe (london, harper collins, ). lewis carroll, alice’s adventures in wonderland (new york, macmillan, ). wayne c. booth, the rhetoric of fiction., nd ed. (chicago: university of chicago press, ). 	 	 an excellent example of the unreliable narrator is the main character of the dude in the film the big lebowski by american film-makers joel and ethan coen. the dude, played by jeff bridges, tries to find the people who urinated on his rug, but because of his marijuana use, his recollections are considered doubtful, as exemplified in the following monologue: man…i’ve got certain information…alright, certain things have come to light…and, you know, has it ever occurred to you, that instead of…ah...you know, running around blaming me…you know given the nature of all this new shit…you know, this could be…ah, ah, ah, a lot more, ah, ah, ah complex, i mean it might not be just a simple, ah, ah…you know. in his book picaros, madmen, naifs and clowns: the unreliable first-person narrator, riggan categorised the various examples of unreliable narrators in primarily first-person narratives. he provided four main definitions of unreliable narrators: the picaro, the clown, the madman, and the naif. the picaro is considered an unreliable narrator because the character is considered to be a petty criminal, a rogue, or grafter looking out for their needs above all others. a contemporary version of the unreliable narrator is infamous american gonzo journalist hunter s. thompson in his drug-fuelled account of the mint motorcycle race in las vegas, fear and loathing in las vegas ( ). the clown does not take the narration seriously and deliberately deceives and creates diversions throughout the story to play with the reader’s expectations. the clown narrator plays with the truth without any sense of consequence. of the clown, riggan states: “whether a transient or a permanent retainer of the house, such a parasite earned his keep through the amusement and diversion which his presence provided for host and guest alike.” the madman is considered unreliable because of mental illness or trauma. the full realisation of the madness of the narrator can be made in the beginning of the story but it can also be made available through a slow progression of events that lead to a conclusion of madness. riggan clarifies the way the madman is considered an unreliable narrator: “form and content thus coalesce to present not a picture of the narrator’s past and present external 																																																								 joel coen and ethan coen, dirs., the big lebowski, polygram filmed entertainment, . william edward riggan, jr, “picaros, madmen, naifs, and clowns: the unreliable first-person narrator,” phd dissertation, indiana university, , . 	 	 reality, but rather one of his present psychological derangement and, in many cases, his criminal culpability.” the naif is immature or limited in their knowledge of the world. they have a childlike naivety to situations and their role within society. the eponymous character in the feature film forrest gump by robert zemeckis is an example of the naif. the film explores thirty years in the life of the title character as he tells his story to people on a park bench. the tale includes fanciful recollections, including his meeting with many us presidents, running across the us several times, and being a world champion table tennis player. these events could not be true but because they are told through a child-like voice, the audience listens intently and wants to believe forrest. riggan also defines the traits of the naif in this passage: the naif…does not carry the stigma of the society which his account calls into question, for he views and encounters that society essentially unmarked by its traits, bringing with him only the “wonder” of adolescence or the incomprehension of simple naivete. as in all the examples of the unreliable narrator, the role of the naif is to confuse and subvert the narrative. by questioning the veracity of the information presented to us through these characters, readers and viewers become aware of the multiple narrative worlds that are created and exercised. throughout this section, the contextual themes have been framed around narratives that usually exist within extended temporal narratives, such as literature, film, and theatre. the narrative structures that exist within these media, through the use of time, are allowed to develop and deepen the spatial and temporal experience of the viewer. in the visual research, the narrative frameworks that have been previously discussed such as the metalepsis and the fork-path narrative are fused within the unique spatial and temporal world of the photograph. the next section will examine the narrative of the photograph, its limitations of meaning, and how the photograph is linked to written representations. the history, description, and practice of text and image will be further explored in chapter . 																																																								 ibid., – . ibid., . 	 	 . a photograph in the visual artworks that are the outcome of this studio research, text is excised out of a photograph. the narrative worlds of epistolary, metalepsis, the fork-path narrative, and the unreliable narrator are utilised in the construction of the text, but they are literally read through a photograph. reading the text through a photograph disrupts the viewer’s ability to consistently read the photographic and textual content. it’s beyond the scope of this exegesis to outline the entirety of photographic theory in regard to memory, time, place and narrative. however, this section provides a brief outline of the writing and ideas that inform the role of the singular photograph in the studio research. this section is divided into three parts. the first part examines the writing on photographic narrativity through a comparison of language and imagery from independent media theorist marie-laure ryan. the second part discusses american cultural theorist emma kafalenos’s writing on the photograph presenting a sliver of a narrative—a small slice of a larger whole. kafalenos’s writing is a springboard onto the key point of this part that examines the theory of the ‘decisive moment’ as championed by french photojournalist henri cartier-bresson. the decisive moment is a traditional method for conceptualising time within the photograph and as such needs to be unpacked in relation to narrativity. the final part of this section defines and explores a theory borrowed from cognitive psychology of ‘frames and scripts’ as an alternative method for thinking of narrativity in the photograph. this part will also examine the narrativity of a photograph through the writing of australian cultural historian greg battye, gestalt psychology and the work of swiss developmental psychologist jean piaget, and the american artificial intelligence theorists roger schank and robert albelson. overall, this section offers an alternative to the notion of the decisive moment and puts forward a case for the use of known frames and scripts as constants and that narrativity can occur through the disruption and distortion of perceived events. it is an important and deliberate action that this section is titled ‘a photograph’, as it will examine the narrativity of a singular image, not the presentation of sequential images. books on narrative and text, such as professor of european literature clive scott’s the spoken image: photography and language and american english professor wendy steiner’s 																																																								 clive scott, the spoken image: photography and language (london: reaktion, ). 	 	 pictorial narrativity discuss the narrativity of images through the deliberate sequential placement of images either in publication or the gallery. the photographs composed for this artistic research are single photographs that receive and transmit narratives. they are not meant to be read sequentially; rather, they are individual responses to the written text. for this reason, an analysis of a single photographic image is more productive than a review of a narrative series. in his book photography, narrative, time: imaging our forensic imagination, battye outlines the traditional theory of photographic narrativity linked to french photojournalist henri cartier-bresson’s notion of the ‘decisive moment’. in his photographs, cartier-bresson sought to capture the decisive moment in any interaction that could represent the whole event. the power of reproducing this sliver of time was that it placed the viewer in the middle of an event that allowed for imagining of the time before and after the exposure was taken. by representing an event in a single frame, the inference of cause and effect provided a degree of narrativity. battye offers an alternative theory for photographic narrativity, utilising tools from cognitive psychology known as frames and scripts that uses known spaces and actions as constants so that narrativity can occur through the disruption and distortion of perceived events. in relation to the photograph, the theory of frames and scripts offers a narrative alternative to the decisive moment and the duration of exposure as the only useful depiction of time within photography. photographic narrativity the photograph is a unique space that represents the past in the present. it pauses a moment in real time and provides a vehicle for memory and recollection. the photograph’s ability to simultaneously present the past in the present is examined in french, film theorist christian metz’s essay “photography and fetish”. he states “photography has a third character in common with death: the snapshot, like death it is an instantaneous abduction of the object out of the world into another world, into another kind of time.” however, it offers a narrative, 																																																								 wendy steiner, “pictorial narrativity,” in marie-laure ryan, narrative across media: the languages of storytelling (lincoln: university of nebraska press, ), – . metz, christian. "photography and fetish." october no. , autumn ( ): . 	 	 and therefore begs the question: what are the differences between textual and visual narratives? this section examines the narrativity of a photograph and its relationship with language, presenting a case for defining narrative within cognitive terms. it draws from the work of swiss literary scholar marie-laure ryan, german dramatist gotthold lessing, and english photographer and writer david bate. as noted earlier, the definition of narrative adopted in this exegesis is the representation of an event or a series of events. the single photographic image freezes a moment in time and presents a scene from a particular angle, distance, and scope. as a reductive medium, the photograph can reduce the entirety of an event to a single frame. being able to capture an event at an unknown time of the narrative sequence, the photograph offers the viewer an array of narrative possibilities either in the past, present, or future. every viewer will therefore seek to travel down a unique narrative path within the represented event. it follows that the pictorial narrative is not as reliable in contextualising the event as language is. ryan makes an argument for language having the highest degree of media narrativity: “it seems clear that of all the semiotic codes language is the best suited to storytelling. every narrative can be summarized in language, but very few can be retold through pictures exclusively.” she therefore proposes to make a distinction between language and image by suggesting that there are different levels of narrativity between objects “being a narrative” and “possessing narrativity”. ryan argues that language can describe action in ways that images cannot, because images alone lack the code, grammar, and syntax required to articulate specific meanings. a simple statement such as “sophie cannot eat beans” cannot be delivered with the same level of accuracy and surety through an image alone. ryan suggests that images cannot present words such as “aren’t”, because they cannot capture negatives. ryan states: “since pictures left by themselves, lack the ability to articulate specific propositions and to explicate casual relations, their principal narrative option is…the illustrative mode”. while this argument seems to support the idea that narrative is located at the locus of language, ryan puts forward an alternative proposition, that if narrative is defined in cognitive terms, 																																																								 marie-laure ryan, narrative across media: the languages of storytelling (lincoln: university of nebraska press, ), . ibid., . ibid., . ibid. ibid., . 	 	 then it becomes a mental image and not purely a linguistic object. according to ryan, in a cinematic narrative, the brain can link together divergent images to make a narrative sequence. for example, if one watches a movie showing an image of the ocean, an image of a woman looking forlorn on a beach staring at the ocean, an image of a ship starting to enter the frame, and then an image cutting back to the woman smiling on the beach, it’s not inconceivable for them to make a connection between the woman waiting for a man to return and, depending on the time frame shown in the costumes, then to make connections with various conflicts that occurred during this time. the image here is not seen as another way of telling the narrative but as a means of evoking it or recalling the story from memory. narrative images have a symbiotic relation with the verbal as they import psychological motivations, emotions, and characterisations from the main story and provide visualisations of facial features, colouring, and costuming, among many other qualities. the relationship between image and language forms a powerful combination where each component fills in the missing gaps of the other. the photographic representation of an event can evoke narrative out of one image through the use of the ‘pregnant moment’. gotthold lessing wrote in the eighteenth century that the pregnant moment of a story is “where the past, present and future of the story can be read, summed up, ‘at a glance’”. the pregnant moment seeks to locate the point where a future and past can be anticipated and predicted. kafalenos states: a painting or a photograph with narrative implications offers the perceiver an experience that is comparable to entering a narrative in medias res: we ask ourselves what has happened, what is about to occur and where we are in the sequence of a narrative. according to bate, cartier-bresson retitled the pregnant moment within the photographic canon as the decisive moment. the decisive moment is considered to be the point within an event that provides the optimum moment to contextualise it within a larger story. before continuing, it is worth briefly exploring the concept of the decisive moment and temporality within a larger discussion of photographic narrative, as it provides a point of departure for further discussion. 																																																								 david bate, photography: the key concepts (new york: berg, ), . kafalenos quoted in ryan, narrative across media , original italics. bate, photography, . 	 	 the decisive moment the theory of the decisive moment is important as it offers the notion that at a certain point in a sequence of events, a single frame can represent a scene. championed by cartier-bresson, the decisive moment is best displayed in his photograph place de l’europe, paris (figure ). figure . henri cartier-bresson place de l'europe in bate’s view, the idea of the decisive moment combines the notion of freezing and capturing the instantaneous in photography with an older strategy in art history of story- telling within one picture. even though historic paintings were not made in an instant, they also had to conceive of ways of depicting an entire narrative in one frame—a moment of anticipation when the future of the story is in the process of being determined. cartier- bresson characterises the decisive moment in this quote: 																																																								 ibid. 	 	 we work in unison with movement as though it were a presentiment of the way in which life itself unfolds. but inside movement there is one moment at which the elements in motion are in balance. photography must seize upon this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it. the narrative that the decisive moment depicts is not of the scale and ambition presented in historic paintings; they represent a ‘degree of narrativity’ rather than a more complex and evolved narrative. referring to place de l’europe, paris, battye discusses the narrativity of the image by pointing out that there is a sense of the past in the ripples that have gathered along the rungs of the ladder and that the future can be predetermined through the inevitable splash and inconvenience of being wet that will occur when the gentleman hits the puddle. within the picture, it would be pure conjecture to make assumptions about the gentleman’s occupation, age, purpose, and reasons for walking into a puddle. the title presents the context of place but provides no further narrative information. it worth noting that cartier-bresson was discussing the narrativity of a single photograph in relation to photojournalism or street photography, which has different conventions than painting, for example. the exploration of the decisive moment contextualises the studio research because when i first started combining photographs and text in my art practice in , the photographs were taken on the street and sought to provide a sliver of a narrative that was then added to by the text. the text sought to fill in the gaps of the photograph. as the project developed over the course of the phd, the photographs started to take on a more complex and ambitious role. it became an aim of the project to make photographs that possessed a greater connection to a narrative of human experience. the intention was to produce photographs that responded to experience and personal narratives through scenes that disrupted and distorted our notions of time and place. furthermore, the intention was to produce photographs that approached narrative in a cognitive sense as opposed to the temporal notions of the decisive moment. it was also an aim to develop a framework that could be used to describe the narrativity of a still life or a landscape, not just photographs produced within the conventions of the photojournalistic tradition. 																																																								 henri cartier-bresson, and michael l. sand. the mind's eye: writings on photography and photographers. st ed. new york, n.y: aperture, . - 	 	 using the theoretical framework of frames and scripts, which has been developed from cognitive psychology, supports the aims of these photographs and is the focus of the last part of this section. frames and scripts defining and exploring the theories that underpin the frames and scripts framework is important in contextualising the photographic aspect of the artistic research. this part of the section builds on the ideas first explored in section . cognitive narrative and personal history, especially in relation to how narratives are connected to the nature of human existence. the ways that scripts are framed through previous experience and narratives are formed through the disruption of the expected script will be examined in this part, and it forms the basis of the cognitive narrative framework through which the studio research should be viewed. the use of frames and scripts as a framework for discussing photographs is borrowed from gestalt psychology and the work of swiss developmental psychologist jean piaget’s work with children. gestalt theory is used within the principles of design and music. it was first articulated in germany in by german psychologists max wertheimer, kurt koffka, and wolfgang kohler through their studies into how the brain interprets individual musical notes not as single sounds but in a way that combines the score into a “whole effect” or gestalt. their work with music was also applied to design where form became a fundamental ingredient in perception. they held the view that a form composed of various separate parts, such as dots, dashes, colours or designed letters, would be perceptually combined and perceived as being a whole and possessing that form. this idea has been important in the development of design principles but also within photography, especially for the construction of images that combine objects or events that are similar. the use of gestalt meant that separate objects shown together will be perceived as being part of a whole as opposed to being read as what they are, outside of the construction of the image. an important aspect of gestalt theory that is also related to frames and scripts is the interplay between what is known about being in and experiencing the outside world and the knowledge of those actions and events that are then brought into a narrative world. 																																																								 roy r. behrens, “art, design and gestalt theory,” leonardo , no. ( ): . ibid., . 	 	 greg battye discusses the use of frames and scripts as strategies for turning a generalised notion of ‘context’ into something more tangible, to provide us with a framework to interpret specific types of context. battye defines frames as “essentially static situations”, such as the arrangement of the walls, ceilings, and the objects that populate a room, such as a stove, refrigerator and dining table that form a “kitchen”. scripts are “sequences of action that are standardized” and performed and repeated by many varied individuals, such as using a fork to stabilise food, a knife to cut the food, and a fork to transport the food into one’s mouth. the known script, the consumption of food, occurs within a known frame, the kitchen. american artificial intelligence theorists roger schank and robert abelson define a script as follows: a script is a structure that describes an appropriate sequence of events in a particular context. a script is made up of slots and requirements about what can fill those slots. the structure is an interconnected whole, and what is in one slot affects what can be in another. scripts handle stylized everyday situations […] a script is a predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions that defines a well-known situation. schank and abelson’s definition of scripts proposes that through the depiction of standardised events, scripts provide an expanded notion of time within non-verbal media. as in gestalt theory, the knowledge and practice of lived experience—the repetition and performance of daily rituals—is brought into our reading of represented events in photographs. using the notion of scripts to read photographs proposes another way to experience time and duration than that offered by the decisive moment. in order for the still image to become a narrative, the standardised or implied knowledge that the viewer brings with them becomes infused with events represented in the photograph. while a series of images that depict a subject putting toothpaste on their toothbrush, then putting the brush in their mouth and brushing their teeth, is a logical sequence of events, it is not an interesting narrative. in order for narrativity to occur, there is a requirement for a clash between the viewer’s expectations and the sequence of depicted events. battye describes this action: 																																																								 battye, photography, narrative, time, . ibid. schank and abelson quoted in ibid. 	 	 narrative occurs not in the sequence of events that is ‘in’ the text itself—not, in other words, where early narratologists were looking to find it—but in the interface, the interplay, between text and viewer/reader. according to battye, narrativity occurs in the interplay between what is expected through the standardised actions in scripts and what is then portrayed in the image. for a narrative to have ‘tellability’—to be worthy of being told—it must contain a recognisable script but also include a departure, surprise, or deferment from the script. the decisive moment of cartier- bresson alludes to a past and future through the freezing of time at a signature moment in the narrative. the narrative continues before and after the shutter has captured the event, allowing the viewer to see only a sliver of time, but still able to imagine the immediate future. the use of the decisive moment as a narrative framework for a photograph is also quite limited to the photojournalist. the use of frames and scripts as a narrative framework draws on implied knowledge and recognition of form; can be applied to still life, family photography, landscapes and portraiture; and is a more active and fluid method for reading the photographs in the studio research. in relation to narrative photographs that make documentary “truth” claims, william mitchell has noted that both evidence of external context for authentication along with “internal coherence” is required before their veracity is accepted. this chapter has introduced all of the narrative elements that are used throughout the studio research of this phd. the essential overarching narrative framework was introduced through the definition of narrative, narrativity, and narratology as well as the exploration of story and discourse as a means of discerning the difference between the events described in the story and how it is told. the ways in which narrative influences our daily lives and the construction of identity are important in understanding changes in the form of the practice-led research. the creation of multiple narrative worlds is explored and experimented with in the text that is excised out of the photograph. this physical manipulation and formation of the text becomes very important because it relates to how the narrative is disrupted and distorted within the 																																																								 battye, photography, narrative, time, . william j. mitchell, the reconfigured eye: visual truth in the post-photographic era (cambridge, ma: mit press, ), . 	 	 production of each finished work. the final section provided an overview of the various theories around the narrativity of a photograph and outlined the framework of ‘frames and scripts’ that is utilised in the studio research. overall, this chapter has sought to highlight the way that the narrative world inhabited by the photographic component of the studio research can be understood through implied knowledge and the recognition of form. 	 	 	 chapter : the contemporary field this chapter seeks to position my studio research within the field of contemporary art and to provide links with and departures from other established practitioners both within australia and internationally. as would be expected, i am unaware of any contemporary practitioner who replicates the characteristics, intentions, and outcomes of my own project or practice. however, there are a number of practitioners whose work i can establish a connection with, either through the way it has a resonance with my own thinking or contains a similar challenging of accepted conventions of practice. the relevance of these practitioners to this phd research is specific to the creation of narrative worlds through the combination of text, in the form of personal stories, combined with photography. the list of such practitioners is not insignificant when the scope is extended to the fields of contemporary art such as the artist’s book, photo-essay, and multi-modal performance, and literary forms such as the graphic novel or digital storytelling. however, i have restricted analysis to artists who use photographic image and narrative text. prominent international photo-image practitioners such as jenny holzer and barbara kruger who incorporate non-narrative or declarative text or statements in their works have naturally fallen outside of my field of interest. there is no doubting the evocative power of the use of image and text in taryn simon’s exhibition and artist’s book an american index of the hidden and unfamiliar ( ), but this work fits most comfortably into the documentary genre of photography. those working with photography who have some affinity with my interest in narrative include duane michels, who has used the addition of narrative text to subvert or sometimes bowdlerise the meaning of his photographs since the s; jim goldberg, whose influential photobook rich and poor from applied handwritten biographical vignettes from the subjects of his photographs; and jeff wolin, who has produced a number of photo-projects where he applies handwritten stories or comments over the related images of his subjects. 																																																								 taryn simon, an american index of the hidden and unfamiliar, whitney museum of american art, new york (mar –jun ), . book of the same title published and several editions since, the latest by hatje cantz in . a version of the exhibition was also mounted in brisbane at the ima ( august– october ). duane michals (born ), biography available at: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/duane- michals?all/all/all/all/ . jim goldberg’s “rich and poor” series was original exhibited in alongside robert adams and joel sternfeld in the three americans exhibition at the museum of modern art in new york, and was published the following year by random house and republished by steidl in . for information on projects by jeffrey wolin, see http://www.jeffreywolin.com/index.php. 	 	 african-american artists lorna simpson and carrie mae weems often combine text and photography in their work, with the latter sometimes overlaying text on the image; however, their clear critical imperative to deconstruct established racist expectations in the us overrides my interest in narrativity. to help locate and differentiate my approach, i have chosen to analyse the work of three selected practitioners who were chosen because each represents a particular approach to narrativity and use of the text/photograph synthesis. it is worth acknowledging that the three exemplars i have chosen are all male. while i have previously made mention of several female practitioners such as lorna simpson, carrie mae weens, taryn simon, jenny holzer and barbara kruger who use text and image to engage and question feminine expectations and experience, the choice to consider male exemplars is not through any gender bias but to reflect and represent a similar interrogation of the male voice that is present within my own studio research. 	 the australian photographic artist and performer william yang was selected because his work allen from the monologue sadness ( ) presents an effective or powerful use of the well-established and mutually reinforcing relationship between text and a photograph to drive the narrative. american writer and photographer paul kwiatkowski was selected for his ‘illustrated novel’ and every day was overcast ( ) because he uses a parallel strategy to my own of using a mixture of actual photographs of the protagonists in the narrative along with randomly selected photographs. finally, the dutch writer and artist nikel van duijvenboden was selected because he adopts the most radical treatment of the photograph in his artwork the grand absence ( ) by removing the image entirely and presenting only the text. in summary, the examples represent three of the four possible treatments of the text/photography binary: the interdependent or bonded text and photograph; the loosely contiguous combination of text and photograph; and the text with implied or invisible photograph. the fourth possibility of the photograph without text, as in the photoessay or 																																																								 for lorna simpson’s biography, see anthony craine, “lorna simpson,” encyclopedia britannica, last updated may , https://www.britannica.com/biography/lorna-simpson; for carrie mae weems’s biography, see editors of the encyclopedia britannica, “carrie mae weems,” encyclopedia britannica, last updated april , https://www.britannica.com/biography/carrie-mae-weems. 	 	 photo-narrative without any text narration, such as the famous ongoing series of the brown sisters by nicholas nixon, is not explored here as it sits outside my enterprise. during the early phases of my candidature, i interviewed yang via telephone and van duijvenboden via email (appendix ) and have had time to critically evaluate the intentions and outputs of each and the relationship of their work to my practice, and these are detailed in this chapter. apart from historically contextualising their work, i have particularly focused on the use of narrative within the chosen artworks, including detailing the narrative worlds that are created; the use of text and photography within a narrative framework; and the correlations and departures within each artist’s work in comparison to my own. my outputs that will be discussed in relation to these artists’ work are money laughed at my sausage ( , figure ), kinga nikka ( , figure ) and the perfect price for donny ( , appendix ). each of the three analytical sections will follow a tripartite sequence investigating narrativity, text and photography, and comparative alignment. . william yang – “allan” from the monologue “sadness” this section will examine william yang’s series “allan” from the monologue “sadness” ( ). the first part examines the narrativity of the series and the use of an epistolary narrative structure. the second part outlines how text and photography are incorporated within the narrative and the position of the photograph within the story of yang’s narrative. the final part compares yang’s epistolary narrative with my own in the work money laughed at my sausage ( ). yang’s series of nineteen images is held in the collection of the national gallery of australia in canberra. the information for this section has been drawn from his curriculum vitae, an interview between yang and australian independent 																																																								 see hannah kim, “nicholas nixon: years of the brown sisters,” inside/out, a moma/moma ps blog, posted december , https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/ / / /nicholas-nixon- -years-of- the-brown-sisters/. the entire series can be viewed on the national gallery of australia website: “william yang, allan,” national gallery of australia, https://artsearch.nga.gov.au/detail.cfm?irn= , last accessed may . “william yang,” andrew baker art dealer, http://www.andrew-baker.com/wy.html, last accessed april . 	 	 curator and photographer sarah rhodes, and an interview i conducted with yang on august . as well as his photographic practice, yang has been performing monologues in front of a slideshow of his images since the late s. his third performance of this ilk—titled sadness ( )—explored his chinese heritage and wove together stories surrounding the death of friends and colleagues in sydney due to the initial spread of hiv/aids. in his interview with rhodes, yang notes that he started to place himself in his performances and pictures as he was interested in creating connections between himself and his audience, to create an honest experience that was free from self-promotion or spin. he mentions that it was from performing his stage shows that he noticed a connection was being made in his audience between his stories and the images on the screen, and so he started to write directly onto the surface of his photographic prints. as he stated to rhodes, “my handwriting helps people associate the print with me.” these associations between the description of the text and the representation of the photograph provoked yang to inscribe his narratives onto the surface of the photographs. a selection of works from the series will be presented here to illustrate yang’s methods. 																																																								 sarah rhodes, “william yang: oscillating between shock and sadness, beauty, delight and humour,” time machine, april , http://timemachinemag.com/qa/william-yang/. yang was born in mareeba in northern queensland in . he graduated from architecture at the university of queensland in and moved to sydney in . yang began as a playwright then shifted to documenting the gay and party scene in sydney, with his first photographic exhibition titled sydneyphiles, which was held at the australian centre of photography in . since then, yang has held numerous exhibitions in australia, asia, europe, and the usa. his work is held in the collections of the national gallery of australia, the art gallery of new south wales, the queensland art gallery, and the tokyo metropolitan museum of photography. rhodes, “william yang.” 	 	 	 figure . william yang, “allan”, from the monologue “sadness” . “allan” from the monologue “sadness” ( ) visually and textually documents the decline and eventual death of yang’s ex-lover allan. intimate photographs that document the last days of allan’s life are combined with a first-person account that describes yang and allan’s past and allan’s present situation. the narrativity in the series is very strong, as it uses a number of narrative elements. the serial nature of the photographs shows a sequence of events that transpires over time and place. the story follows allan through recoveries in his health then his eventual decline and death. yang introduces the character of allan as somebody who was once in his life, then 																																																								 the text in . “allan”, from the monologue “sadness” (figure ) reads: i hadn’t seen allan for about three years. i lost contact with him when he moved to melbourne. i heard that he was back in sydney, i heard that he was sick. i was in ward of st vincent’s hospital, that’s the aids ward, visiting someone else. when i looked through one of the doors and i saw allan and i recognised him immediately…but he had changed. he seemed like an old man and i had a strong desire to burst into tears. 	 	 left, and has now returned. later in the text, he reveals their previous relationship: for me the attraction was mainly physical and even then i wondered if i’d still like him when he lost his boyish looks. the story generally follows a chronological path with brief lapses in the past to give context to the relationship of allan to yang. it is through the gradual release of information that the viewer/reader is able to gain an insight and eventually empathy with allan’s fight and yang’s grief. the discourse layer within the narrative of the series also adds emotional value to the relationship. the epistolary voice of the narrator is told through their hand-writing, and the text reads like a series of letters. private thoughts and events are revealed throughout the series, providing access to yang’s community. the cursive script provides a human element to the narrator. as yang has stated, the handwriting associates the details of the story with him. the writing provides a perceived layer of veracity to the story and to its telling. marking the photograph in this way also gives the impression that the endlessly reproducible photographic print has been marked unique and singular. it adds weight to the object of the photograph and subject of the narrative. the text retells moments that could only occur in private and reveals character-forming information from both the narrator and the subject. in . “allan” from the monologue “sadness” (figure ), we get a sense of what allan and yang’s relationship was like and the complexities of human interaction: when we got back to his room the nurses were making his bed and they asked us to wait. he had his hand on the arm of the chair and i put my hand over his. (i had already said goodbye to allan weeks ago, i told him that i loved him and he had smiled and said “that’s good”. it wasn’t the response i wanted, in fact i thought “you’ve always taken everything for granted.”). 																																																								 william yang, . “allan”, from the monologue “sadness”, , gelatine silver photograph, ink. william yang, . “allan”, from the monologue “sadness”, , gelatine silver photograph, ink. collection: national gallery of australia. the text reads: when we got back to his room the nurses were making his bed and they asked us to wait. he had his hand on the arm of the chair and i put my hand over his. (i had already said goodbye to allan weeks ago, i told him that i loved him and he had smiled and said “that’s good”. it wasn’t the response i wanted, in fact i thought “you’ve always taken everything for granted.”) but as we were waiting he lifted up my hand and when it was at the level of his face he lightly dropped his forehead on it. he was young when i met him, years ago, and our relationship had been full of fun, zany, exciting, sexy, but never tender…until now in this unexpected, moment of grace. 	 	 this quote extends on the nature of their relationship and how yang was upset by the original response he got from allan when he professed his love. the text also provides details of the complexity of their relationship and how even when faced with the death of a friend, personal affirmation is sought of one’s place within their lives. it is an epistolary story that uses an unaffected language as there are very few emotive phrases; the text is descriptive rather than interpretive. connections are made and bonds formed between the characters through the interplay between text and image. 	 figure . william yang “allan”, from the monologue “sadness”, 	 	 the following examination of the use of text and image in the series will utilise french sociologist pierre bourdieu’s text photography: a middle-brow art to discuss the motivations of family photography. the argument centres around the narrative qualities of the text and image and the communicative value that each component provides. this part also outlines how the text describes the stages of allan’s death while the images confirm the descriptions. finally, it analyses the visual style of the photographs that allow for yang’s deadpan text to resonate further than the use of text alone would. yang’s photographs that receive and transmit the text are intimate. they utilise a number of stylistic and contextual conventions from family photography; for example, the way the subject looks directly into the lens and the documentation of the personal and the intimate, as if the subject is familiar with and trusting of the photographer. in using the style of family photography, yang is also able to use the associations with family photography in his narratives. the ‘script’ of family photography suggests community, support, love, and friendship. using the script of family, yang links the photographs with all the connotations and feelings that belong to it. in his discussion of family photography, bourdieu states: because the family photograph is a ritual of the domestic cult in which the family is both the subject and object, because it expresses the celebratory sense which the family group gives to itself, and which it reinforces by giving its expression, the need for photographs and the need to take photographs (the internalization of the social function of this practice) are felt all the more intensely the more integrated the group and the more the group is captured at a moment of it highest integration. an inescapable aspect in reading the series is the fact that yang is gay. the images were taken in when the gay community was reeling from many aids-related diseases and deaths. through the use of family photography, yang is using a script that “expresses the celebratory sense which the family group gives to itself”. the images are a celebration of a life and a connection to community. the photographs chronicle allan’s gradual decline. when they are viewed together, one is able to compare allan’s features from his youth with those he had in death. because of the chronological nature of the photographs, one can create a sense of the story being conveyed but the clarity of the narrative is not guaranteed. it would be a fair assessment to assume that 																																																								 pierre bourdieu, photography: a middle-brow art (cambridge: polity press, ). ibid., . ibid., . 	 	 viewing the photographs alone document a man with an illness who has passed away in the penultimate frame. the details are provided through the text; the viewer is able to ascertain that the man is called allan, what the relationship is between him and the author/photographer, what their past was, where allan is living, and who his close friends are. the final frame of allan before his death is more poignant because of the empathy that viewers have for allan as they have witnessed the effects of his illness. the text in these frames adds details that the images could not. in image number (figure ) in the series, yang tells of the day when he and their friend jeffrey had to convince allan that jeffrey and his friends were no longer able to provide the care that allan required. they convinced allan to move into a hospice. the first line of this entry is “his whole face seemed to have caved in”, with the photograph showing how the illness has rendered allan’s face gaunt and emaciated. the photograph affirms the text in a way that would not be possible with just words. the author is believed because of the veracity of the documentary evidence, which adds weight to all the statements that are made throughout the series. the image of allan in his bed is heightened when it is compared to earlier images of allan when he is well. the photograph also points to the inevitable tragedy of the situation. the combination of non-emotive, descriptive text and family photography extends the narrative reach of each medium. the text in yang’s series acts in a similar way to a caption. in his book the spoken image, clive scott categorises certain titles or captions as being a “destination” because it “explains and synthesizes the image, gives it its coherence”. the use of text as a form of destination in yang’s series confirms the claims made in the story, and the photographs confirm and validate the chronological events outlined in the text. while the photographs add to the mood of the discourse, the anchor that synthesises the text to the photograph is located primarily in the story aspect of the narrative. the confirmation of the text through the photograph is an aspect of yang’s practice that differs from my own (this will be discussed later in the chapter), but an aspect that we share is the use of an epistolary voice. 																																																								 william yang . “allan”, from the monologue “sadness” , gelatine silver photograph, ink. collection: national gallery of australia. the text in the image reads: his whole face seemed to have caved in. it became apparent that jeffrey and our friends could not look after allan at home. he had his clearer moments and it was during one of these that we asked him if he would go into the hospice and reluctantly he agreed. clive scott. the spoken image: photography and language. (london: reaktion, ) . 	 	 	 figure . william yang. “allan”, from the monologue “sadness”, gelatine silver photograph, ink. comparative alignment here i bring my own work in alignment with the images and processes of yang’s project. the artworks will be contextualised within the frameworks of narrativity and the application of text and image. the creation of sympathetic characters through an epistolary voice will be explained through american popular fiction writer stephen king’s analysis of his own writing process. the image i will be comparing to yang’s series is my work money laughed at my sausage ( , figure ). 	 	 the text excised from the photograph reads: i am , a father of three and i have no relationship with money no assets and no insurance. right before my colonoscopy and in front of the whole operating theatre my gastroenterologist stated that i was a neglectful father because i didn’t have health insurance. before i could i could say, ‘shove your tube up your own…’ i was asleep. i work for an organisation that dangles carrots and offers nothing and i regularly feel as if i am about to have a nervous breakdown. it was on one hot summer evening in brisbane where the only breeze was from the million mosquitos slowly dismantling my soul that i had the most vivid and seductive dream. i dreamt that i had a date with money. money, somehow, got my number and we decided to go out for a few drinks. we went to a suburban pub, had a chicken parma and chattered, drank and flirted outrageously for several hours. money laughed at my sausage story, listened intently while i spoke about my studio methodology and my research on narrative and photography and showed genuine interest in my family. at : pm we were both a little drunk and as we were getting up to leave money lost balance and landed on my conveniently erect penis. there money lingered for, what seemed like a long time. long enough for me to ask myself a series of questions, does money find me attractive? will we be lovers? i didn’t know i was that way inclined? should i squeeze my butt cheeks together and give money a little trouser wave? i awoke to the sting of another mosquito chipping away at what’s left of my mental fortitude and i never heard from money again. figure . martin smith money laughed at my sausage, pigment print with cut-out letters, 	 	 yang and i both use an epistolary voice in the text element of the artwork. the text reveals private thoughts, events, and feelings. it makes connections to the reader through a revelation of self to build sympathy towards the characters. king analyses his own writing process in his book on writing, examining the ways that he has created sympathy in his characters, especially ones that were flawed. in the following, he discusses the protagonist annie wilkes from his novel misery: and if i am able, even briefly, to give you a wilkes’-eye-view of the world—if i can make you understand her madness—then perhaps i can make her someone you sympathize with or even identify with. the result? she’s more frightening than ever, because she’s close to real. providing the reader with the character’s point of view that reveals the inner thoughts and that reflects the characters’ honest conditions and reactions allows for a greater emotional connection with the reader. through text and photography, yang honestly records the events and his reactions surrounding allan’s last days. the access that an epistolary voice grants us to the feelings and emotions of the character’s in yang’s portrayal of allen positions us within the narrative and grants us permission to respond to the events in the story. the text from my artwork does not relate to events as dramatic as yang’s, mine are trivial in comparison. the epistolary voice used allows the reader access to the inner thoughts of the author/artist and reads like a diary entry. the story in money laughed at my sausage describes my insecurities around money and the quest to find it and keep it. money is a non- gendered, ambivalent character that i try to date in money laughed at my sausage. the narrative of the text is a first-person account of a dream and follows a disastrous first date where the highlight is money laughing at my sausage joke. it also details a true encounter with a gastroenterologist and their scolding of me for my lack of private health insurance. the narrative world that both yang and i explore in these works is a private account of personal events. our works are written to resemble letters or diary entries as the stories are told through the retelling of events that lead to the revelation of personal details. even though the events depicted in our stories are incredibly divergent, we both use an epistolary voice to build sympathetic reactions to the characters and events depicted in the artworks. where we 																																																								 stephen king, misery (new york: viking, ). stephen king, on writing: a memoir of the craft (new york: scribner, ), . 	 	 differ is how the text and photography are combined and how this affects the reading of the final artwork. yang hand writes his text below the photograph, while i hand cut my text from the photograph. yang’s application of the text below the photograph works in a similar way to a caption. the text and the photograph operate as binaries, but the final meaning is attained through their collective reading. the photograph in yang’s series supports the affirmations of the text. one reads the text and then looks at the photograph for the supporting information. scott refers to the act of reading text then looking to the photograph for meaning as a process similar to understanding a rebus. to use the text and photograph in this way “deliver[s] the photograph from its inherent gratuitousness, incoherence, randomness, and make it the instrument of a design”. without the text, the photographs could not reveal the story behind them or the depth of information. without the photographs, the validity of the text would be undermined and the sense of familial love the work emits would not be as overwhelming. the inability of the photograph to identify its subject leaves it vulnerable to being recontextualised for multiple purposes. yang’s use of text and photography identifies the subject of his series and validates the authenticity of the text and image through an anchoring of the story to its representation. money laughed at my sausage is indicative of many of the artworks produced during this phd, which diverges from yang in the application of text and photography. yang uses the relationship of text and photography to affirm the claims made by both to create a deeper understanding of the subject through the descriptive and representative links that he provides. by contrast, money laughed at my sausage provides no discernible links between the text and the photograph. the locus of understanding with my artworks is not in the conjunction and affirmation of the text to the photograph, but in the combination of each representative element in the artwork. each artwork tells a story by an actor in a space; it is in the blending of these that creates understanding. in the next section, . paul kwiatkowski – and every day was overcast, i will be extrapolating and expanding on the blending of text and photography within my visual research to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the narrative. 																																																								 a rebus is a puzzle that uses individual letters and pictures to refer to a word/phrase. a very simple rebus is the popular souvenir t-shirt from new york “i © ny”. scott, the spoken image, . 	 	 . paul kwiatkowski – and every day was overcast this section will examine paul kwiatkowski’s and every day was overcast. this illustrated novel of examines the teenage years of kwiatkowski growing up in the south florida town of loxahatchee. the information from this section will be built through the writing of american essayist susan sontag, british philosopher nigel warburton, interviews with kwiatkowski, reviews and an analysis of the publication based on its narrativity, the use of text and image within a narrative structure, and a comparison with my artwork kinga nikka ( , figure ). and every day was overcast describes the isolated, bored, and drug-addled teenage years of american author and photographer paul kwiatkowski. born and raised in the shadow of cape canaveral, kwiatkowski begins the book with the explosion of the space shuttle challenger in as a metaphor for a community that is secluded and safe but is keeping a lot of things quiet. the publication is kwiatkowski’s first novel, but he has gone on to produce several feature articles for magazines such as dazed and confused and fault magazine. the following discussion of narrativity of the publication will primarily examine the textual component of the novel and extrapolate on the story and the use of a confessional narrative voice. it will also reproduce components of the writing to display the vernacular tone of the illustrated novel. kwiatkowski’s use of novelistic text with photographs is a contemporary version of a form utilised by french surrealist andre breton’s nadja, german, novelist w. b. sebald’s austerlitz, walker evans and james agee’s let us now praise famous men and john berger and jean mohr’s a fortunate man: the story of a country doctor. the use of the photograph within these novels is to verify and connect the photograph to the text. within 																																																								 paul kwiatkowski, and every day was overcast (new york: black balloon, ). according to the routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory, a confessional narrative “…implies that the speaker or writer wishes or even needs to reveal something that is hidden, possibly shameful and difficult to articulate. the confessional tradition … will rest its claim to authenticity and importance on it revelatory quality, which may be self-accusatory or self-exculpatory, and is usually both. david herman, manfred jahn, and marie-laure ryan, routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory (london; new york: routledge, ), . 	breton, andré. nadja. new york: grove press, , sebald, winfried georg. austerlitz. germany: c. hanser, . agee, james, and walker evans. let us now praise famous men. st mariner books ed. boston: houghton mifflin, . john berger, jean mohr. a fortunate man: the story of a country doctor. new york: vintage international, . 	 	 kwitkowski’s illustrated novel the photographs don’t validate the information contained in the text but operate within the discourse of the narrative, providing a mood rather than description. the novel is a first-person account of youth published in episodes. each new chapter adds to a story that describes a descent into a drug-fuelled depravity. several characters emerge and disappear throughout the publication, with kwiatkowski as the link between the different chapters. each chapter can be read on its own without any prior knowledge of the preceding chapters and the end of one chapter does not foretell the beginning of the next; it is as if they have been dropped into the narrative. it is a confessional narrative of self-contained stories that are collected together to form a larger volume. starting each chapter is like starting a new book, with the only constants being kwiatkowski and loxahatchee. kwiatkowski’s illustrated novel is an explicit, adolescent confession of drug use, sexual discovery, and physical abuse. the stories begin in with an infatuation with mallory from family ties: during moments of distress, i often thought about mallory from family ties. in the show she wasn’t depicted as especially nurturing. i guess i wasn’t looking for stability. maybe i just wanted a pretty girl in my life? the final chapter is set in where kwiatkowski and his friend kyle are inhaling freon— an unstable refrigerant that causes hallucinations—from the school’s air conditioning unit. kyle sucked in the stream of hissing air until his expression went slack. his lips trembled as his complexion marbled toward pale blue. he flipped his shirt over his face. there was silence followed by the sharpie pen splashing into the water. i asked kyle if he was okay. i told him he was scaring me. minutes dragged before the dark breath stain on his shirt widened. the illustrated novel combines text with snapshot images taken on a disposable mm camera. similar to yang’s work, the language used is descriptive rather than emotive. the events that are described carry with them their own emotional charge. the language is so deadpan that it feels like a police report. this is especially true when detailing one of the more disturbing stories, the physical assault of the neighbourhood loner cobain by a friend named trick: 																																																								 kwiatkowski, and every day was overcast, . ibid., . 	 	 as cobain approached the -eleven, i saw trick rush at him, cornering him back against the store’s window. i thought about running out to defuse the situation, but instead i stood there, riveted and watched. cobain stood still, silent and trembling, and trick threw his weight behind a sucker punch to the eye. cobain never cried out. he just stumbled and slapped against the window. it sounded like moist meat thumping tile. the language is frank and unapologetically offensive in its portrayal of a youth spent watching and partaking in drug use and uncomfortable sexual encounters, but rarely intervening to help. it is a destructive narrative of youth, but the honesty of kwiatkowski’s story is the most disarming quality of the narrative. each chapter is also separated by a series of photographs without captions that, unlike yang’s, do not relate to the events in the story. these uncontextualised photographs flavour the narrative; they are part of the discourse as opposed to the story. the photographs anchor the discourse in a narrative of suburban decay, chaos, and debris. the following exploration of the use of vernacular text and photography throughout the publication will demonstrate how the discourse of the writing is heightened by the photography, providing the reader with a more acute sense of the decayed environment that the novel is located in. the publication is called an illustrated novel because as well as containing sixteen written chapters, it has photographs that are a mix of those taken by kwiatkowski during his adolescence as well as found photographs. in the chapter titled “ : kid tested, mother approved, part ii”, kwiatkowski writes of a sexual encounter with hailey, the mother of his friend’s girlfriend: sitting in the other side of the couch, i made a half-assed attempt at small talk. she stayed friendly enough but unresponsive. there was a lot of staring followed by a long pause during which i panicked thinking of the right thing to say. she giggled. i could tell she enjoyed watching me squirm. in an almost commanding but tender voice, she asked me to help her move two boxes from her room into the attic. i noticed the boxes weren’t sealed. they were filled with boring shit like documents, books, albums, and opened envelopes. they were mainly family photos as well as personal outtakes of hailey in the mix. i was 																																																								 ibid., . 	 	 never much of a thief but stealing those pictures was one of the best crimes i ever committed. everything after that felt like a dream. when she kissed me my stomach raised up and felt hollow. she pulled down my collar, leading my head between her legs. having pussy come to me this effortlessly was unreal. with her panties still on, i pulled her thong to the side, then ate her out. along with hailey’s guidance she was the first woman i ever made cum, and in return she let me finish in her mouth. the photographs that proceed this text are uncaptioned images of indiscriminate landscapes and an unnamed lady getting dressed. are these the images that kwiatkowski stole? are they photographs of another woman who was present? or are they found photographs that are woven into this element of the narrative to allude to the stolen image? the meaning of the photographs floats throughout the novel and validates the description of a place where societal strata and community norms are less important than primal urges. as mentioned earlier, the photographs have no captions or contextual clues to their existence, so the viewer is not sure which ones are by kwiatkwoski and which ones are found. in on photography, sontag claims that because the photograph is an isolated slice of time removed from its original context, photography cannot narrate. rather, it is “a trace, something stencilled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask”. while the photograph cannot narrate with the same accuracy as text, its depictions of events imply a past and a future beyond the original photograph. warburton states: when presented with a photograph of a family of emaciated ethiopians, we can quite reliably infer from the photograph that the people pictured had not eaten for many days before the photograph was taken. while the photographs that accompany the text provide no validation to the claims made by the text, they imply through their depiction of disaffected youth, un-manicured lawns, disused buildings and voyeuristic portraits of young women of a community struggling with the needs of its citizens. the crassness of kwiatkowski’s photographs—taken with disposable mm cameras—amplifies the crassness of the writing. they are vernacular and private photographs that support the confessional narrative of the writing through their unfiltered 																																																								 ibid., . susan sontag, on photography (london: penguin, ), . nigel warburton, “photography,” in the oxford handbook of aesthetics, ed. jerrold levinson (oxford: oxford university press, ), 	 	 portrayal of people who may or may not be associated with the text. the people portrayed in the photographs reflect the community rather than the individual characters in the novel. the lack of contextualisation of the photographs creates an uneasy combination with the text. the natural inclination is to associate the events and characters that are depicted in the preceding text with the images that follow, but this strategy is not supported by how the text and photographs are displayed. the photographs support the claims of the discourse rather than the story. in yang’s series, the photographs validate the information presented in the text, but kwiatkowski’s vernacular photographs validate the crudeness of the subject matter and the authenticity of his description of the environment in which the novel is set. they aid in evoking a story-world that is vulgar, lost, and lawless. comparative analysis the element of this illustrated novel that is most relevant to my studio research is the use of a confessional narrative voice in the text and photography that does not validate the claims of the text but seeks to situate the narrative within an illustrated environment. the writing and photography from the chapter “ face breaker” (appendix ) from every day was overcast will be comparatively aligned with the work king nikka ( , figure ). both projects use a confessional narrative voice. while both the texts portray events from adolescence, kwiatkowski details more salacious and dangerous events than i do. the text for kinga nikka discusses a school excursion where i was placed between the legs of my romanian english teacher. the confessional nature of kwiatkowski’s text creates an aura of risky and dangerous behaviour that is confirmed through his portrayals of illicit drug use and sexual awakenings. while throughout my work with text and photography i have explored issues of drug use and sexual clumsiness, the text in kinga nikka is meant to amuse rather than shock through immersing the reader in the thoughts of a shy and sexually immature youth. the character portrayal of paul kwiatkowski is not immediately likeable; he is abusive, voyeuristic, and opportunistic. in one story, he is trying to get a girl he has called ‘face breaker’ to have sex with him. his description of her is not kind: face breaker was a scrawny redhead who exclusively wore white hoodies, flared jeans that sagged around her ass, and giant hoop earrings. she slicked back her hair into a ponytail so tight it glistened under park floodlights. we called her face 	 	 breaker because she’d get drunk and make out with any guy, no matter how gross. her drink of choice was mixed fruit flavour st. ides. kwiatkowski’s crude language in describing face breaker mirrors the environment that the events are set in. in kinga nikka, my language of description is not as bleak: we were at the park with our teacher, kinga nikka, a lovely english teacher in her late ’s from romania who arrived in australia the year before. she was wearing what, in some cultures could be considered a bathing suit, but in other less liberal cultures would be called ‘your underwear’. in order for kwiatkowski to have sex with face breaker, he concocts a plan to get her drunk on st ides (a malt liqueur) and the only way to do that is to get a local vagrant named dan to buy him the alcohol. the only way he can get dan to buy him alcohol is to show him his penis: i pulled down my pants mid-thigh, flashing him a solid look at my cock. aside from pissing in public, i’d never allowed my penis to hang so freely. the air around it felt icy hot. i knew that moment would be one of the final death throes of my former self. the events depicted in kwiatkowski’s story of sexual awakening are confronting and difficult to read. the language is direct and focussed on telling the events. in kinga nikka, the events depicted are also of a sexual awakening, but they are more innocent and not as confronting. an example of this is when i was waiting to go down the slide: we joined the queue for the largest most deadly slide in the park and just as i was about to shoot down the slide ms nikka sat down at the start of the slide, put me between her legs and said ‘let’s go down together’. as i was getting ready to go i felt something scratching my back like a small rodent. i looked down and saw what looked like a stello pad with a rubber band wrapped around the middle of it. her pubes were totally up for a day at the waterpark and they didn’t care who knew. kwiatkowski’s story ends with face breaker, her friend jalenne, and him in the bathroom of a community pool. jalenne has had too much to drink and has collapsed, but neither kwiatkowski or face breaker are concerned for her condition: jalenne’s disintegration was just the confidence booster i needed. i pushed us out of sight into a toilet stall, slid my hand down face breaker’s pants, and gloriously finger-fucked her. beneath the bathroom stall, i could see jalenne’s arm sporadically 																																																								 kwiatkowski, and every day was overcast, . martin smith, kinga nikka ( ). kwiatkowski, and every day was overcast, . smith, kinga nikka. 	 	 jump and spasm, causing an empty bottle of st ides to roll across the floor. as i worked face breaker’s pants down, i noticed the inside of her thighs were dotted with cigarette burns. i wondered whether or not they were self-inflicted. i clearly had no idea what i was doing, but she let me work at it until my fingers pruned. it is a difficult passage to read and comprehend. the lack of regard for their friend’s well- being coupled with the description of the sex displays a selfishness that is disturbing in its portrayal. there is no empathy or sympathy shown for the other characters in the story. kwiatkowski still refers to the girl as face breaker and never reveals her real name. the environment and community that the story takes place in is cruel, harsh, and lonely. kinga nikka ends with my english teacher and i being shot into the pool at the bottom of the slide: at the end of the slide you were shot out into a deep pool and as i hit the pool every muscle in my body was tense waiting for the inevitable splash from ms nikka. she entered the water and engulfed me in her voluptuous body. we both came to the surface grinning but for different reasons. the stories end with vastly different experiences. my depiction of kinga nikka is not flattering but it is not cruel. i have tried to use humour and a lighter tone in my writing to depict the events. the writing for both stories tell of sexual encounters during adolescence with very different narrative voices. kwiatkowski creates a bleak world that revolves around fulfilling sexual desires in whatever way possible. the place in which the story is set is also desolate, soulless, and lost. the photographs that follow this passage of text, even though they are not contextualised, also validate this description of place. they show unnamed, overgrown, suburban carparks that may be where kwiatkowski showed dan his penis or where face breaker and jalenne used to sit. they show an anonymous girl sitting in a space and a toilet cubicle that may be where the encounter with face breaker may have taken place; photographs of young people in a classroom imitating a symbol for cunnilingus; an out-of- focus photograph of two girls kissing; and an anonymous male youth holding weapons. the sequence of photographs implies a narrative of drunken sexual encounters in cubicles and reinforces the narrative of desolation and depravity. while they do not directly refer to the events in the text, they refer to the sentiments evoked from the text. 																																																								 kwiatkowski, and every day was overcast, . smith, kinga nikka. 	 	 in kinga nikka, the text is in the shape of a human figure standing on a carpet in front of a sloth. there are no references to any of these elements in the story. the text is told through an absurd photographic scenario to validate the narrative voice in the text. the story is a humorous account of an interaction with one of my teachers. it is one that i have told to a number of people over the years as indicative of my schooling. the event hasn’t led to any emotional baggage, unlike kwiatkowski, but it has led to the formation of my personal identity. when viewing the entire collection of my artworks events that are dramatic with events that are more mundane. the collection of these stories are the ones that eventually create a version of myself. in a similar way to kwiatkowski’s work, the photograph reaffirms the environment that i wish the story to be understood through. it is playful, humorous and absurd; the human figure, surrounded by wooden blocks, in front of a sloth confirms these intentions. a more comprehensive analysis of my artworks from this series will be undertaken in chapter : outcomes. this section has examined the publication by paul kwiatkowski and every day was overcast. it ascertained its narrativity through the use of a confessional narrative voice told in episodes. the collective episodes work to provide an overview of kwiatkowski’s troubled adolescence in loxahatchee, florida. it then analysed the text and photography components of the publication and determined that the photographs add to the disconsolate and dysfunctional discourse that the text outlines. the photographs imply a connection to the text without being as explicit as yang’s photographs. the final part compared a chapter of kwiatkowski’s novel with an artwork from my phd. kwiatkoski’s bleak coming-of-age narrative is compared alongside my more innocent and mundane story. this provided the background for a comparison of the photographs that both adhere to the discursive environment that is depicted in the text. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, kinga nikka, inkjet print with cut-out letters, the school organized an excursion at the end of grade to the ferny grove woolshed. it was a working farm that also included waterslides. we arrived ready to go down the slides but we had to watch a sheep get shorn, a cow get milked and a tree get planted. this was excruciating when we could hear other children shouting and laughing on the waterslides. when the educational shit was over we were allowed to go into the waterpark. we were at the park with our teacher, kinga nikka, a lovely english teacher in her late ’s from romania who arrived in australia the year before. she was wearing what, in some cultures could be considered a bathing suit, but in other less liberal cultures would be called ‘your underwear’. we joined the queue for the largest most deadly slide in the park and just as i was about to shoot down the slide ms nikka sat down at the start of the slide, put me between her legs and said ‘let’s go 	 	 down together’. as i was getting ready to go i felt something scratching my back like a small rodent. i looked down and saw what looked like a stello pad with a rubber band wrapped around the middle of it. her pubes were totally up for a day at the waterpark and they didn’t care who knew. before i could protest she pushed off and we went hurtling down the slide. it started off ok with her wrapping her arms and pubes around me but as the slide got faster and twistier her body and pubes stopped playing by the rules. i felt a yellow fin tuna slapping against my face only to realize later that it was her breasts. they were fleshy and wet but also had bone in them. by this stage i was concentrating all my energy on not moving just trying to prevent our bodies from touching. at the end of the slide you were shot out into a deep pool and as i hit the pool every muscle in my body was tense waiting for the inevitable splash from ms nikka. she entered the water and engulfed me in her voluptuous body. we both came to the surface grinning but for different reasons. 	 	 . nikel van duijvenboden – the grand absence this section will examine the artwork the grand absence ( , appendix ) by dutch photographer, writer, and artist nikel van duijvenboden. information from this section will be drawn from a profile written by los angeles–based writer and photographer alex klein in foam magazine and an interview i conducted with the artist on september (appendix ). the grand absence consists exclusively of text; it is a written artwork that uses fiction as a means to investigate the complex relationship between words and images. a visualisation of the text through the use of an embedded narrative will be defined and explained in the first part of this section. the definition and explanation of embedded narratives will be drawn from the routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory. as there is no photograph in the artwork, an argument will be made that the locus of understanding between the text and the photograph is formed through rhetoric as opposed to narrative. the final part will compare van duijvenboden’s text with my artwork the perfect price for donny ( , appendix ), which is an artwork consisting entirely of text that formed the basis for collaged photographs. born in in amsterdam, nikel van duijvenboden was educated as a photographer. he turned to writing to address concerns he had with the nature of photography that the medium could not address on its own. in our interview conducted over email in , van duijvenboden discusses his relationship with writing and his disillusion with photography: 																																																								 herman, jahn, and ryan, routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory. 	 	 writing was already inherent before i decided to become an artist. my parents were preoccupied with language, its origin and meaning, and so was i at an early stage. in a certain sense, working with images has always felt more remote to me. at the art academy, i gradually grew disillusioned with the singularity of the photographic image. i was interested in the nature of photography, in terms of context and process. photographic history and theory didn’t necessarily concern me at that point. i was looking for ways to describe and analyse the act of looking without having to make images. i wanted to be stuck in the process forever. in finding ways to “describe and analyse the act of looking”, van duijvenboden wrote a collection of fictional essays titled the grand absence, originally performed as a spoken word piece in an empty gallery. only the title work will be examined in this analysis. since publishing this collection of fictional essays, van duijvenboden has published several books, including plateau, as well as made installations and held performances. his artistic practice investigates the complex relationship of words and imagery and asks whether mental images can replace physical ones. an important aspect of his writing is experimenting with narrative forms and theoretical texts. the following investigation of the narrativity of the grand absence and the construction of multiple narrative worlds is not anchored to material photographs since for van duijvenboden, representation through the word is the crux of his visual art practice. i consider both working with images and writing as a form of visual art. labelling might seem irrelevant from a content-driven, process-oriented point of view, but defining what i do became an essential aspect of my practice. sometimes it feels like it is my practice. the grand absence is a theoretical discussion between van duijvenboden and his father. written as a dialogue, the story explores the value of beauty in the photograph and the legitimacy of critique. the text uses narrative structures such as embedded narratives to provide the framework for a theoretical discussion that would usually have a low level of narrativity. the defining of his writing as visual art is an important distinction in any discussion on van duijvenboden’s artistic practice. the construction of a narrative in the grand absence allows van duijvenboden to assert a claim that the work is visual art as opposed to an essay. the story describes the process of conceptualising and creating his graduate photographs that are never seen. the discourse is through a dialogue with his father and the use of an embedded narrative, which is defined as follows: 																																																								 nikel van duijvenboden, email correspondence with the author, september . see appendix . nikel van duijvenboden, plateau (amsterdam: roma publications, ). ibid. 	 	 …the literary device of the ‘story within a story’, the structure by which a character in a narrative text becomes the narrator of a second narrative text framed by the first one. while this may seem quite specific, embedded narrative is a widely used method for creating multiple narrative layers within a story. the opening paragraph of the grand absence creates the narrative framework for the exploration of his ideas. it reads: the day after my graduate show opened, my father rang me up from abroad. he asked what the opening had been like and how the exhibition was going. ‘it’s a shame you can’t be here’ was the first thing i said. ‘i am trying to visualize it from here. i was hoping you’d be able to feed me a few details’, he said cheerfully. here, van duijvenboden establishes the primary narrative at the discourse level, which is a dialogue between himself and his father about his graduate exhibition. once this narrative layer is formed, a theoretical discussion on the merits of beauty in art develops between the two characters that is framed through an auxiliary narrative involving his uncle robert: ‘i had a conversation with uncle robert’, was the only thing i could think of. ‘so i heard. and?’ ‘he didn’t understand any of it.’ ‘it depends of course on whether you are willing to explain your work and what tone of voice you use. from what i heard, you were rather condescending.’ ‘me? that was him, more likely. he kept repeating, “so you’ve been studying for four years to become an artist?” he really wondered what i’d been doing all that time. it was quiet on the other end of the line. no sign of instant understanding, as i had perhaps secretly hoped for. ‘he just didn’t look’, i went on. ‘or, he looked, but he didn’t see. he considered my work from another level.’ ‘on what level did he look, you think?’ ‘he was looking for something beautiful. and found nothing, of course.’ ‘he didn’t think your photos are beautiful?’ ‘they aren’t.’ again, silence. ‘no’, i asserted firmly, in order not to sound insecure. ‘it has no function. beauty has nothing to do with what i’m trying to say.’ ‘what are you trying to say?’ using an embedded narrative within the discourse affects the way the viewer interacts with theoretical ideas articulated in the text. in the usual reading of theory, the audience is engaging directly with the rhetoric of the text. the ideas are expressed by the writer and we 																																																								 herman, jahn, and ryan, routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory, . nikel van duijvenboden, the grand absence (amsterdam: roma publications, ), . ibid., , original italics. 	 	 evaluate them through the veracity of the argument. with the grand absence, we engage with the theoretical discussion through the author, uncle robert, and the father. as the theoretical argument/story is articulated in the text, the reader has to conceptualise the theories as well as the relationship between the characters. by embedding a traditionally restricted narrative of a theoretical discussion within a more accessible narrative of familial relations, the ideas that the grand absence refers to are mediated through several narrative and rhetorical layers. this is evident is the following passage: when i started this graduation project, i wrote in my notebook: ‘a problem of art photography is that before it can communicate clearly, it first must take a position on theoretical questions about photography itself.’ to nuance that position a bit, afterwards i wrote the following paragraphs: ‘often it determines its place in this theoretical spectrum with the help of style. the process connected to this is a question of convention. a photo has a certain style, is associated with a movement in art history or on the contrary, with ignoring the question marks of its own origin, and only then does it communicate clearly. these steps are performed in a matter of seconds.’ the combination of narrative and rhetoric provides an easier environment for the expression of complex concepts while maintaining a theoretical integrity. while the theoretical arguments remain unresolved, the narrative between the characters culminates with an allusion to the fact that they were estranged and have come together again. it was quiet for a while on the other side of the line. i couldn’t tell whether he was thinking or waiting for my reply. then he said: ‘if i could come, then i’d only be coming to see what photos with nothing in them look like.’ ‘if only that were true.’ ‘what do you mean, that there was nothing in them, or that i could come?’ ‘both.’ the narrative resolution at the climax of the story provides an end point for the theoretical discussion as well. the theoretical ideas expressed throughout the story are left open; their role is to embed the story within narrative but also rhetoric. it is through narrative that van duijvenboden describes the photographs that he has taken for his graduate exhibition, but he does not show them. his descriptions of images that only exist in textual representations within the created narrative world are envisioned within the narrative, but it is through rhetoric that they meet the expectations of the text. 																																																								 ibid., . ibid., . 	 	 the relationship between text and the photograph is unusual in the grand absence as there is no photograph physically represented. this requires the audience to conjure the image in their imagination with reference to the descriptions in the text. the facility to imagine the scenes referred to is reliant on the experiences of the reader. if the reader has a limited frame of reference to the depicted scenes, then the inferred images are more abstracted. in yang’s series, the locus of understanding between the text and photograph was in the story. in kwiatkowski’s illustrated novel, the text met the photographs in the discourse. i contend that in the grand absence the text and photograph meet outside of the narrative structure: they correlate within rhetoric. the events depicted within the story occur within a narrative framework. the conversation between van duijvenboden and his father, the rumination on uncle robert’s reaction to his artworks, and the explication on the ideas of theorists such allan sekula and william jan otten all occur within a narrative world constructed by van duijvenboden. the narrative device of the dialogue with his father presents the events in a chronological sequence that bears the ingredients of a narrative. the photographs that are represented by text are an aspect of this narrative world and are discussed in this passage: ‘for example, i’ve made a photograph about objectivity—' ‘no’, he interrupted me, ‘describe what does that photo look like. what would i see if i stood in front of that photo?’ “a square. from a bird’s eye-view perspective.’ ‘what kind of square?’ “a square in a city. the houses are neither modern nor old-fashioned. there is a small public garden, and some parked cars that don’t really stand out.’ ‘people?’ ‘no people.’ ‘okay. i can see it. why a square? why that square?’ ‘i think it’s easy to get an overview of a square. that’s characteristic of squares. why that particular square…no idea. i didn’t know what else to photograph. i’m not concerned with specific features and certainly not with showing something extraordinary. what matters to me is the way of looking. the bird’s eye-view perspective is like the omniscient narrator. the photo as omniscience. because it looks out over everything, a certain objectivity prevails, but still, only one thing can be viewed at a time. a choice has to be made, such as by our own gaze.’ this passage presents the description of a photograph that may or may not have been taken. through language, it seeks to evoke a mental image of what the photograph may look like. an aerial view of a people-less square with some houses and parked cars could allude to 																																																								 ibid., . 	 	 hundreds of different places that we have visited or seen through other photographs. while a mental picture is conjured through the language used, its representational reach is constrained through our own experiences of such places speaking to the limitations of text to accurately represent descriptions of the world compared to photographs. the absence of the photograph to verify the claims in the text means that the locus of understanding exists neither in the story, such as in yang’s series, or in the discourse, such as in kwiatkowski’s illustrated novel. through the nature of van duijvenboden’s theoretical writing, the text and photograph meet in a third layer outside of narrative—the layer of rhetoric. while photographs and events are often described in text, their representation is situated within narrative frameworks. by detailing the people, events, or things located in a frame, an author evokes images in our minds that correlate with these descriptions. the difference in van duijvenboden’s photographic descriptions is that he is proposing the evocation of a photograph that can only be realised in a theoretical context. the description of a people-less square in a non-discrete place once realised in words must then be representational. american english professor james heffernan writes in relation to the textual representation of visual phenomena, or ekphrasis, that “what ekphrasis represents in words, therefore, must itself be representational”. the objectivity that van duijvenboden asks, that the un-realised photograph be viewed through, is impossible as the image can only be envisaged through an individual’s subjectivity, their own experience of such environments. in an interview with klein, van duijvenboden articulates his position in relation to the text/image relationship: i do believe that there can exist something like a third layer in between text and image. but it is a very intricate and therefore complicated affair. how does one prevent that the one becomes subordinate to the other? …i think it has to do with a certain openness: text and image need to wide enough apart to create a space for interpretation, but they need to be close enough to suggest that there might be a link. at the same time, they both need to be somehow unresolved. the third layer that van duijvenboden discusses in this interview is rhetoric. there is no anchor within his representations of text and photography for them to meet within a narrative world. his descriptions of taking the photograph reside in narrative, but the representation and expectation of the photograph reside within the limited narrative world of rhetoric. 																																																								 james heffernan, cited in herman, jahn, and ryan, routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory, , original italics. alex klein, “nikel van duijvenboden: the grand absence / plateau,” foam magazine , . 	 	 comparative alignment i will compare the grand absence with the text component from my exhibition the perfect price for donny ( , appendix ). the exhibition had twelve components: one large text piece, one installation, five photographs, and five photo-collages that responded to the ideas in the text. this part will examine the use of rhetoric in presenting extended pieces of text within a visual art context. the text for the perfect price for donny was written over two weeks during a writing exercise where i would read a text for one hour then write for one hour. at the time, i was reading several novels and articles, which influenced the writing that followed. after two weeks, i had generated a large amount of unedited text, some of it nonsense and other parts worth pursuing. the final text is an amalgamation of various stories that are embedded within a narrative framed around my inability to concentrate on one task. after completing the story, i was interested in re-contextualising the text so that it was read as an art object as opposed to a narrative. the final text was printed on vinyl and then installed directly on the gallery wall. the photographs and photo-collages were then positioned alongside the text (figures and ). the grand absence was performed in an empty gallery and the described photographs are realised through a rhetorical framework. the perfect price for donny is written and read as a story; it doesn’t claim any theoretical position in the text, but its illustrative representation within a gallery context does. the public installation of the text sought to alter the environment in which narratives are usually read and understood. it moved from a private environment to a public environment. the reading of the text becomes a public performance that also affects the discourse of the story. the story is read through the context of the gallery, a place where artworks are viewed and discussed. the story is realised and understood through the presentation of an art object. while van duijvenboden’s presentation sought to understand the reception of a photograph within a rhetorical framework, the presentation of the text for the perfect price for donny seeks to understand the reception of a narrative within a rhetorical framework. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, perfect price for donny (installation) 	 figure . martin smith, perfect price for donny (installation) 	 	 these three sections analysed the use of narrative worlds, the meeting point of the text and photograph, and made comparisons between my work and that of australian photographer william yang, american writer paul kwiatkowski, and dutch artist nikel van duijvenboden. each artist included narrative worlds in their text: yang used an epistolary voice, kwiatkowski wrote a confessional narrative, while van duijvenboden utilised an embedded narrative. in this chapter, i have examined where the text met the photograph in the narrative: yang’s text responded to the photographs in the story, kwiatkowski’s photographs populated the discourse and provided mood and atmosphere for the text, and van duijvenboden’s un-realised photographs embedded in a theoretical dialogue found meaning within a rhetorical layer. i identified that yang and i both use an epistolary voice, that kwiatkowski’s photographs that populate the discourse resonate with my own photographs, that present the environment that the narrative occurs within and that van duijvenboden’s experimental rhetorical narratives resonate with my own practice of presenting illustrated narratives. 	 	 	 chapter : studio methodology much of chapter was devoted to theorising narrative since the formulation of a story is a fundamental core of my practice. nevertheless, this conceptual basis for my studio production is one part of the research process that results in the final resolution in the creative output. in this chapter, i will outline and define the studio methodologies that reflect the aim of the phd project to explore how text and photography portray personal experience through the establishment of narrative worlds. the overarching methodology is a blended practice- led, heuristic inquiry that applies methods of creative synthesis of text and photography. the first section of this chapter will position my approach within the practice-led field of research and will then outline my particular interest in heuristic methodology. the second section will investigate the relationship of text and image in the creation of my work. the first part outlines a brief history of how text and image is used in advertising, photojournalism, and art. the second part explains how i have composed the text and created the photographs for this phd research. . practice-led research because of my teaching responsibilities, my doctoral candidature has been an extended one, but this has allowed me to observe the accelerated changes in the acceptance of studio research over recent years and the extended scope of available methodologies. when i began the research in , the common or key texts in the field were estelle barrett and barbara bolt’s practice as research: approaches to creative arts enquiry and graeme sullivan’s art as research, both of which were heavily dependent on methodologies borrowed from humanities and education research. my early reading and approach had been very much influenced by british educationist christopher frayling’s influential paper “research in art and design” precisely because he had adopted, or at least proposed, the most radical position; namely, that the final creative output embodied the research. despite the profusion of publications on creative arts research since , there have been few to take up this more radical position, with the most notable exception being tom barone and elliott eisner’s arts 																																																								 estelle barrett and barbara bolt, practice as research: approaches to creative arts enquiry (london: i.b. tauris, ); graeme sullivan, art practice as research: inquiry in visual arts. nd ed. (los angeles: sage, ). christopher frayling, “research in art and design,” royal college of art, research papers , no. ( ): – . 	 	 based research, though it has not fully impacted the field in australia. in his paper “research in art and design”, christopher frayling sought to provide a strategy for research institutions for the formalised study of the practice of visual art. he identified three categories of research in this area: research into, through, and for art and design, research into art and design is perhaps the most popular and well-known example of research in the visual arts. this involves historical research, investigations into aesthetic and perceptual theories as well as theoretical and philosophical perspectives of art and design. it is commonly undertaken within art history departments of university and normally lends itself to an extended written thesis. research through art and design involves projects where the researcher has a definitive plan that requires the development of technology or new processes. the project is usually supported by a research diary and a report that outlines the conclusions. the contentious assertion in frayling’s paper was research for art and design. the results of this method of inquiry are “embodied in the artefact”, where the goal is not communicative knowledge in a linguistic tradition “but [rather] in the sense of visual or iconic or imagistic communication”. this research is more than an argument drawn from the collection of reference materials but seeks to embody new pathways for the direction of visual art through the production and output of new artefacts. an interesting insight towards the end of frayling’s paper provides a link to the next section of this chapter. to further contextualise his thoughts, he includes a quote from the aunt of novelist e. m. forster: “how can i tell what i think till i see what i say?” frayling compares this to the research outcomes from ‘research into art and design’. to realign with the outcomes from ‘research through art and design’, he then changes the quote to “how can i tell what i think till i see what i make and do?” his last change is then in response to 																																																								 tom barone and elliot w. eisner, arts based research (los angeles: sage, ). as with many methodology studies, barone and eisner seek a methodology that will cross art forms—in this case, principally visual art and music—and this generic approach does seem to confound rather than clarify application of a method to specific fields. this non-specific approach becomes more confusing when anthologies include applied fields of education and art therapy combined with non-instrumental practices such as my own. an example of this is shaun mcniff’s edited collection art as research: opportunities and challenges (bristol: intellect, ). barone and eisner, arts based research, . ibid. 	 	 ‘research for art and design’: “how can i tell what i am till i see what i make and do?” the reframing of practice-based research as a question of autobiography and the expression of personal experience relates to the aims reflected in my application of multiple narrative worlds, combining story-telling with a photograph to represent, disrupt, and reveal personal experience. frayling’s original proposals have become part of what is now widely recognised as practice- based or practice-led research in the creative fields in the uk and australia. at the very least, because of frayling’s legacy, creative arts researchers no longer have to continually justify their role in the research landscape in academe. in the early stages of my research, i was seeking a methodology that would allow a more formal or controlled examination and expression of personal phenomena. this is what led me to heuristic research methods and the writing and practice of american psychologist clark moustakas. however, as the project progressed, this seeking of formal procedural methodology became less of an imperative. nevertheless, my engagement with heuristic research methodology for the investigation of personal experience did progress the early phases of my research. 	 heuristic research was introduced in moustakas’s publication loneliness ( ), which chronicled his personal journey through loneliness after the death of his mother and young daughter, and it used first-hand and historical case studies to create his thesis. heuristic research calls for an emphasis on self-disclosure: opening one’s own life and experiences to an audience as a means of facilitating dialogue with others. as moustakas states, “at the heart of heuristics lies an emphasis on disclosing the self as a way of facilitating disclosure from others—a response to the tacit dimension within oneself sparks a similar call from others.” this aspect certainly has relevance to my project but fits with a more general and accepted sense that personal narrative can be a useful methodology in creative research just 																																																								 ibid. for the legacy of frayling’s impact, see toby juliff, et al., “praxis now: frayling’s ‘research in art and design’ years on,” acuads conference proceedings, https://acuads.com.au/conference/conference- . clark e. moustakas, loneliness (northvale, nj: jason aronson, ); clark moustakas, heuristic research: design, methodology, and applications (newbury park: sage publication, ). ibid., . 	 	 as tacit knowledge is no longer dismissed as an illegitimate research mode. i should also note that so called autoethnographic and other self-reflective approaches have absorbed or developed much of moustakas’s original methodology. moustakas was important in foregrounding tacit knowledge as part of his conception of heuristic methodology. moustakas defines tacit knowledge as the unconscious skills that are applied to everyday acts; for example, the way that a face can be recognised out of the multitude of faces that are encountered every day. tacit knowledge is used to understand personal experience. a person can be read and understood as being upset through actions such as raising the volume of their voice or rubbing their eyes and crying. this tacit knowledge can then be called upon to respond to phenomena. moustakas asserts, “when we curtail the tacit in research, we limit possibilities for knowing. we restrict the potential for new awareness and understanding. we reduce the range and depth of meanings that are inherent in every significant human experience.” reviewing moustakas’s method, sandy sela-smith frames a heuristic methodology for use in projects that are at the last frontier of human inquiry. she states, “this final frontier, i propose, is the interiority of our experience, where feeling, which may previously not have been noticed as significant, is not just a core component of the terrain but the dominant one.” sela-smith refers to the study of personal experience through the subjectivity of the researcher; that is, the researcher is the subject and object of the research. the heuristic process is open to knowledge that is embodied and incorporated within our ideas of self. the dissemination and understanding of self is in reference to and contextualised within a dynamic and ever-changing self. sela-smith, in her description of the development of the heuristic method, mentions the work of michael polanyi and his notion that through every encounter we have with another, we grow and take that knowledge into the next encounter. the heuristic method provides researchers with the tools to analyse and interpret personal experience within the context of the evolving human subject. 	 																																																								 see, for example, heewon chang, autoethnography as method (new york: routledge, ). ibid., . ibid. sandy sela-smith, “heuristic research: a review and critique of moustakas's method,” journal of humanistic psychology , no. ( ): . ibid., . ibid. 	 	 moustakas’s outlining of six phases of heuristic was no doubt an overdetermined enterprise, but his description of “initial engagement” proved helpful. in outlining the process in this phase, moustakas states, “within each researcher exists a topic, theme, problem, or question that represents a critical interest and area of search.” he suggests that the researcher engage in self-dialogue and reflective thought to find the question that resonates and can hold the researcher’s interest for an extended period of time. i engaged with the practical processes of heuristic research during my candidature and it provided an invaluable method for outlining my concerns and motivations for creating my studio research. following is an example of how these methods were incorporated in the preparatory stages of my studio research.	 my sister passed away in , and my father in . the death of these two influential people in presented me with responsibilities and issues that i had never previously considered. in preparing my sister’s funeral, i collated photographs of her and by her and tried to connect the physical representation of her in the snapshots with the cognitive representation of her seen through her eyes. the two characters were at odds with each other. my sister’s right leg was amputated as a consequence of her having cancer at the age of fourteen. in all images of her after her operation, she is wearing an artificial leg, so she appears stilted and uncomfortable and seemingly battling with her disability while the photographs she took are exciting, full of humour, awe and comfort in her difference, she photographed her legs with the artificial one emphasised. while i was preparing my father’s funeral, many people spoke about a character who was foreign to me. i had known an unhappy man who drank too much, worked too much, and was uncommunicative. the stories that flowed after his passing were of a congenial man who was the life of the party and had interests, hobbies, and influences that i unaware of. after these two deaths and the subsequent mourning, i became interested in what materials are left behind following a person’s death and how an identity or character is formed by these media. we compile photographs, stories, music, and fashion and meaning is formed 																																																								 moustakas’s six phases were: initial engagement, immersion in the question, incubation, illumination, explication and creative synthesis. sela-smith, “heuristic research,” . 	 	 through the collection of these artefacts. the question that then led to my artistic inquiry was “what are the structures that create, form, and define our personal experiences?” while these thoughts and questions informed the creation of works before the commencement of my phd, the concerted effort to focus on the question and afforded time that has been given to it has led to fundamental shifts in how the artworks have been made. it was a sustained period of immersion in the fundamental understanding of the question that led to the new pathways that will be discussed further in chapter . following the call by moustakas for a phase of immersion, i was reading autobiographies to gauge how different authors approached and expressed personal experience. among them were the writings of american humourist david sedaris, norwegian autobiographer karl ove knausgård, american postmodern writer paul auster, and the photo-illustrated novel of american photographer/author paul kwiatkowski, and every day was overcast, previously discussed. i also took every chance to present my research to peers and to discuss my responses to the data that i was collecting. i engaged in writing exercises where i would read for one hour then immediately write for one hour. i undertook this over the course of two weeks and then edited the writing into a piece that became the perfect price for donny (appendix ). this was an intensive creative phase that yielded draft responses. there followed the critical reflection or what moustakas would have described as “incubation” which allows for the workings of the tacit dimension to clarify and extend understanding on levels outside one’s immediate awareness. the singularly important outcome of this reflection was the importance of understanding the nature of narrative and narratology in my research. the most “illuminating” aspect of this, to use moustakas’s term, was that i began to see that my ongoing investigation of personal experience through text and photography was creating a form that resembled a novel read through photographs. for me, this was a new way of 																																																								 david sedaris, me talk pretty one day (boston, ma: back bay books, ). karl ove knausgård,and don bartlett, my struggle (brooklyn: archipelago books, ) paul auster, the new york trilogy (new york: penguin books, ). kwiatkowski, and every day was overcast. ibid., . 	 	 thinking about my entire practice and reinvigorated my energies in continuing to pursue many of the themes that ignited my interests at the beginning of my journey. the adaption of heuristic research was framed around ‘how’ the studio research was completed methodologically. since commencing my artistic practice, i have experimented with the combination of text and image. this has taken many forms, such as personal stories cut into vernacular, snapshot or amateur photographs; cut-out letters resurrected and attached to the gallery wall, photographs, or paper; short phrases written onto photographs; and longer fictional stories used to inform the creation of photographs. the next section explores the combination of text and image historically and rhetorically and then outlines how it has been used within this visual research. 	 . studio method: text and image language is one species of genus sign and pictorial representations are another species of the same genus these two species can be wedded to one another. they can be either politely and comfortably (as when an illustration is wedded to a text or a caption to a drawing) or they can start an illicit liaison so intimately integrated that one doesn’t know any more who is the bride and who is the bridegroom. —stefan thermerson ( ) the studio method that i have used in the visual research is the combination of text—in the form of short stories that explore personal experience through an epistolary application of narrative worlds—and a photograph. the use of text is an indelible aspect of my practice; its form, presentation, and expression play a key role in most of my artworks. the applied method combines two communicative modes in the studio research to examine multiple narrative worlds and represent, disrupt, and reveal personal experience. this section examines the combination of text and a photograph for creating the studio research and how they have evolved over the course of the phd. it will outline how text and 																																																								 the reframing of the practice as a novel will be discussed more in chapter : outcomes. stefan themerson, “ideogrammes lyriques,” typographica (december ), quoted in aimee selby, ed., art and text (london: black dog publishing, ), . 	 	 photography is applied in the commercial, documentary, and familial fields of photography and, using these applications as an influence, explain how the visual research simultaneously expands on and subverts these recognised usages. the first part examines the discussions surrounding the use of text and a photograph in press, advertising, and art; the relationship between the two; and how meaning is constructed through them. i draw upon the writing of english linguist clive scott to frame the discussion on the general usage of text/image in society, particularly his publication on the text/image relationship, the spoken image: photography and language. i also refer to will hill’s essay “the schwitters legacy: language and art in the early twentieth century” and mary price’s book the photograph: a strange, confined space, which both extrapolate on the differences between the two communicative modes. the multi-modal communication of text and image is introduced through the work of english linguist john bateman’s text and image: a critical introduction to visual/verbal divide. the next part traces how the role of the photograph in my artworks has changed since the inception of the process, with a new way of conceptualising and producing the images commencing in . the final part examines the application of pictorial human forms that are created out of the personal stories. the visual representation of text and its connection to meaning is explored through french modernist poet guillaume apollinaire’s calligrammes. text and photography according to scott, the combination of text and photography is ubiquitous, from the caption in press and commercial photography, the title in art, to the accompanying verbal commentary in family photography. the locus of understanding in news photography is in the synchronisation between caption and image. meaning is deciphered through the believable relationship between what is described in the text and what the photograph represents. in commercial and illustrated images, the text needs to refer to an object depicted 																																																								 scott, the spoken image. will hill, “the schwitters legacy: language and art in the early twentieth century,” in art and text, ed. aimee selby (london: black dog publishing, ), mary price, the photograph: a strange confined space (california: stanford university press, ), john a. bateman, text and image: a critical introduction to the visual-verbal divide (new york: routledge, ). scott, the spoken image, . 	 	 in the photograph for the customer to link the description with the object and the cost. scott explains that the title in art photography is used as a destination, a point of departure, and as a parallel but displaced commentary. words are primarily spoken in the example of family photography. without the verbal commentary providing familial context and history, the figures portrayed in family photography are state-less, lost, and belong to no-one. in these examples, the text describes what is represented in the photograph. hill presents the relationship between text and image as the “language of description meets the language of representation”. price notes “the language of description is deeply implicated in how a viewer looks at photographs. description may be title, caption or text.” price and hill both refer to text as being descriptive, with its role being to contextualise the photograph. scott describes the caption in relation to the photograph as a binary relationship, where they are conceived and interpreted independent of each other. the caption never coincides with the image, never exists in the same time: it either precedes the image, as it may in a rebus—the image is called upon to encode or enigmatize the caption—or succeeds it acts as a reaction. consequently, meaning itself is displaced, removed from the image: the image is either only part of a metaphor or the instigator of a presiding voice which, in return, endows it with a justification. according to scott, the photograph receives the text and is a passive participant to the “presiding voice” of the text. when one reads works that combine text and image, the dominant voice that determines meaning is typically situated within the descriptive text. the representative qualities of the image aid in justifying the claims made by the words. bateman distinguishes the text–image combination as “multi-modal”, and as “the investigation of diverse modes of expression and their combinations”. according to bateman, the combination of two or more modes of communication, when used productively, can create more information than the use of a single mode. to be used productively, the process is more than just placing the two modes next to each other, but to resonate “…there must be some contact, some internal properties that allow multiplication to take place”. for 																																																								 ibid., . ibid. hill, “the schwitters legacy,” . price, the photograph, . scott, the spoken image: photography and language, . bateman, text and image, . ibid. 	 	 my artworks, i decided to avoid direct connections between the text and the object/subject depicted in the photograph. while the text is written and designed to be read in a literary sense, it is also purposely embedded into the image so that both modes of communication are evenly proportioned and have an effect on each other. there is an interdependent relationship between the text and image within the studio research, but because they lack known references to each other, it is difficult to read them as having one logical meaning. they aim to “co-determine” each other’s viability to such a degree that an interpretation can take place. when i was conceptualising the studio research in this phd, the relationship of text to image was of prime concern, especially when the image is a photograph, which as stated, is usually seen as the supportive voice to the affirmation of the text. the usual descriptive and representational cues for marrying text and image are absent and the integration of text directly into the surface of the photograph is divergent from recognised methods of incorporating language and photography. as text is often used to narrate what is ‘in’ the photographs, the finished artworks narrate ‘through’ the photographs. the combination of both text and image sought to create an alternative and disruptive space where understanding wasn’t located in the binary reading of both but in the inclusive reading of the image as a whole. the artworks produced during the phd conflate the text and the photograph, so that one cannot be read outside of the other, thereby conjoining the narrative worlds of both the text and the photograph. neither the text nor the photograph was dominant or subservient, but both served to represent and reveal aspects of personal experience. the photographic method this part will examine how my photographs evolved over the course of the studio research. it will outline the procedural changes that occurred in the thinking and the method for constructing the photographic images that simultaneously contradict, receive, and transmit the text. it will draw from the writing of barthes with reference to the context of a photograph. i will analyse photographs that were first created using the method of text excised from photographs and compare them with photographs created for an exhibition ten years later. the development of the photograph correlates with a refinement of thinking and a 																																																								 ibid., . 	 	 deeper engagement with narrative theories. the photographs that have been created for the studio research are intrinsically linked with events that have occurred in my daily life. therefore, in outlining the photographic method, personal narratives are interwoven with the analysis, so as to provide procedural context. shortly after my father passed away in , i was asked by a local artist-run gallery called the farm to exhibit new work for their space. i already had some work that was ready to be installed, but i also wanted to make work responding to my father’s death. i decided to take some landscape photographs of sandgate in brisbane, which is where i grew up. the photograph of sandgate as chosen because it represented a place of significance for my father and me. i then cut the lyrics to the johnny cash song “i walk the line” out of the photograph. the resultant image was titled ronald desmond ( , figure ). when the image was installed, i collected the released letters and scattered them below the print to mimic the tears that had been shed since his passing. at the time, making this artwork was a very reactive process as i was consulting with my family as to what song we should play at his funeral. i wanted johnny cash because i remember driving in the car with my father during my youth and listening to country music radio with him. 																																																								 johnny cash, “i walk the line,” in with his hot and blue guitar (memphis: sun records, ). 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, ronald desmond (installation view), the landscape photograph was a reaction to place, a memory marker. it showed the place where i grew up and with which i associated my relationship to my father. the song lyrics were also a memory marker as they were associated with a memory of him. the photograph wasn’t a reaction to the song lyrics, nor did it serve to represent them; it was a connected memory, meant to be read and experienced together. the song lyrics were excised from the photograph with a blade to infuse the two memories, one of place (landscape) and the other of time (song lyrics). the photographs from this point on in my practice were vernacular 	 	 photographs created through a process of shooting when i was travelling or walking to and from my work, out with my family, or going through my archive. they were people-less and often depicted mundane spaces without known contextual markers. i was driven to take images that were temporal and spatially contracted so that the added text created the context that was lacking in the photographs. bateman cites barthes, who expanded on this idea by claiming that all images are “polysemous: they imply, underlying their signifiers, a ‘floating chain’ of signified, the reader able to choose some and ignore others”. barthes claimed that societies find ways to fix the ‘floating chains’ to make photographs meaningful. the obvious method of fixing meaning to photographs is through captions or titles, but in these early works the aim was to ‘connect’ the text and photograph to the memories that remain with us throughout our lives. the effect of memory was reinforced through the act of hand-cutting the text from the photograph, as it manifests like a scar, a permanent reminder of an event and its consequences. as my reading into narrative progressed, i wished to create more complex photographs that incorporated aspects of memory but that also spoke to the role that narrative plays in the formation of identity. in the early artworks, the photographs were an anonymous space, but as the phd progressed, they became a more identifiable place where personal narratives can be presented. the first incarnation of these new photographs was for the exhibition more sex, less death ( ). in some ways, serendipity plays a role in creating new artworks. in this case, my next-door neighbour was throwing out a carpet. seeing that this beautifully textured and coloured piece of carpet was about to go in the skip, i decided to put it under my house instead and use it as the base for a stage. in previous exhibitions, the text was cut directly out of un-manipulated, vernacular photographs; for more sex, less death, the photographs that were usually used to receive the text were turned into backdrops, which gave them the perception of depth. the combination of vernacular backdrops within a staged environment was used to disrupt the known reception of the photographs; for example, yes and yes ( , figure ). the perceived stage mirrored the space where actors are called on to perform roles. this idea reflects bruner’s assertion that was outlined in chapter , that “…that a life as led is inseparable from a life as told—or more bluntly, a life is not ‘how it was’ but how it is interpreted and reinterpreted, told and retold”. this quote was represented in the photograph through the creation of a metaphorical stage that allows for the telling and 																																																								 barthes, quoted in bateman, text and image, . jerome bruner, “life as narrative,” social research , no. ( ): – . 	 	 retelling of the story of our lives to ourselves. the use of the carpet suggested that the stage was not public but private to suggest that the stories that are told are told to ourselves. the stage was private, meant for personal reflection, which is also reflected in the text. the text sought to create narrative worlds but was written in an epistolary voice. it is a letter to myself. figure . martin smith, yes and yes, pigment print with hand-cut letters, my father did shift work at the airport for years, this explains a lot. if he was on the morning shift he had a routine where he would sleep till : pm then we would drive to the brighton hotel, pick up a six-pack of xxxx and he would drink two on the way home. because he was driving, my job was to hand them to him; otherwise it would have been dangerous. he would quickly finish off the other four when we got home. this would often result in an inconsistent mood and it was also the queue for me to be anywhere else. 	 	 as opposed to being at home and tip-toeing around the house i decided that i would become a paperboy. i thought how hard could it be wandering the neighbourhood, talking to old people and handing them their northside chronicle. after accepting the job i realized that i was a lazy shit and didn’t want to do it anymore. i had the job for exactly three weeks. the first week i got bored after five streets and decided to go home and watch happy days (i was such a potsie). after that my year old brain did the math and came to the conclusion that instead of walking the streets putting newspapers into letterboxes it would be easier to cart northside chronicles up my street (approx. m), around the corner (approx. m), over the busy intersection (approx. m), down the park (approx. m) and then throw the newspapers into the lagoon. not a bad days work. #perfectcrime a few days later after dad had done a week of morning shifts and just after he had finished the last of the six-pack the editor of the northside chronicle called our house to ask whether or not… a) i was the reason nobody in my area had received a paper in three weeks and b) if i was responsible for throwing them into the lagoon. yes and yes. my father had a very strong work ethic and assumed that i, being his offspring, had a similar work ethic (he was so wrong) so when the man accused me of these heinous crimes he went to town on the poor man giving him a spray that would render him immobile. i only found out about this after because mum asked me if i knew anything about it and i stated that i threw the papers in the lagoon because i didn’t think anyone would care and anyone who did care wasn’t worth caring about. text as pictorial form this part examines a key change in my depiction of the text in my artworks. as the project progressed, i began designing the text into pictorial human forms to follow the shift in my understanding of the role that narrative plays in the formation of self and the relationship between our personal stories and their representation of identity. in this section, i draw upon the writing of jens brockmeier and donal carbaugh, who were discussed in chapter , and also that of another american psychologist, jerome bruner. the use of text as a pictorial representation will be discussed through french modernist poet guillaume apollinaire’s calligrammes. according to apollinaire, concrete poetry sought to critique the meaning systems of language by highlighting the complex relationship between the sound a word makes and its cultural construction. when i first began making images with text excised from them, the text would take up the whole pictorial plane, as in ronald desmond (figure ). the size of the image was dependent on the amount of text that had to be cut out of the photograph. as i continued to explore new processes for combining text and image, i began to design text around an aspect of the image. for example, i fitted text into a compositional shape such as a shadow or a tree or a geometric form like a circle. when i was constructing the text-based works for the exhibition more sex, less death, the stories took the shape of pictorial forms, most 	 	 noticeably a human figure (as in yes and yes, figure ). the figurative transformation of the text added another narrative layer to the artworks as the textual figures were either in the act of performance, such as dance, or standing rigid as if posing for a photograph. narrative identity the concept that narrative and narrativity play such an influential role in the construction of identity changed my thinking and required a response within the visual research. on any given day, people have many experiences, from the mundane to the extraordinary, trivial to revolutionary, domestic to social; as people go through the routines that their body requires for a sustainable life, including bowel movements, sex, breathing, and eating. however, when asked to describe their day, the body functions, the mundane, the trivial are removed and the individual’s day is condensed into a narrative that follows social conventions. it is usually the highlights, ‘the best of’ the individuals’ day, and their lives generally, that are rendered as narratives. in their book narrative and identity: studies in autobiography, self and culture, brockmeier and carbaugh state: …that such a complex and fleeting construction as human identity—the self in time— can only exist as a narrative construction. without the narrative fabric, it seems difficult to even think of human temporality and historicity at all…the very idea of human identity—perhaps we can say the very possibility of human identity—is tied to the very notion of narrative and narrativity. the narratives that are told within social communities are often different from the ones told within the family, which are also different from the ones told within the individual. the same event is told differently to several different people in different ways. narrative allows people to constantly reframe themselves to suit the social situation, whether that is - formal or casual, social or familial. the process of recalling and retelling your life experiences is outlined by bruner as follows, “when somebody tells you his life…it is always a cognitive achievement rather than a through-the-clear-crystal recital of something univocally given.” the way an identity, a character, or a figure is created out of the narratives of people’s lives was the impetus for forming the figures out of text. 																																																								 brockmeier and carbaugh, narrative and identity, . bruner, “life as narrative,” . 	 	 the pictorial figures presented in the images are usually framed to appear as if they were an aspect of the original photograph in that the shape is included in the photographic composition. the pictorial figure constructed of text stands for a human presence, which alludes to an identity, gender, and age. the narrative is then hand-cut out of a photograph, providing a physical imprint of the identity that is rendered as text. the text as figure also alludes to the notion that after death, identity and character are told through narrative. it is as if physical-selves are replaced by narrative-selves. bruner addresses the idea of how ‘a life’ is constituted: we seem to have no other way of describing “lived time” save in the form of narrative. which is not to say there are not other temporal forms that can be imposed on the experience of time, but none of them succeeds in capturing the sense of lived time: not clock or calendrical time forms, not serial or cyclical orders, not any of these. as such, i altered the form of the text to address new concerns in relation to the influence of narratives in the formation of personal identity. i also changed the text to highlight the representational limitations of text. the new pictorial form of the text sought to address the sound that a word or phrase makes and the images that that word presents to the reader. for example, when we hear the word ‘dog’, we think of a four-legged mammal that sheds hair and is completely obsessed with our thongs. the idea that the sound a word makes is linked to the thing it represents is important because, as the text took on a human form, it represents the narrative told within the self. this is not always the image that is presented to the public, but the stories told by ourselves to ourselves. the alteration of the text sought to highlight the telling of the narrative with the form of the narrative. stories and images the graphic representation of text and form in my artworks resembles apollinaire’s pictorial poems called callingrams. these graphic typological poems from created text that mimicked the shape of the ‘thing’ that the text referenced. apollinaire used text, type, and image to question the “ambiguous relationships between descriptive and representational codes”. 																																																								 ibid. hill, “the schwitters legacy,” . 	 	 as noted above, hill posits that text is descriptive while the image is representational. in apollinaire’s poems, the form the text takes is in direct relation to the themes it describes. for example, writings about a revolver take the form of a gun, as seen in figure . apollinaire’s pictorial poems sought to highlight the relationship between the word and the phrase and its representation. the word ‘revolver’ doesn’t reference what the object looks like, yet most people would be able to picture a revolver when it is mentioned. hill refers to this when discussing apollinaire’s poems: to give text a pictorial form reveals complex contradictions between the visual representation and linguistic description and reminds us that language is a fragile and illogical construct, bound to its subject by cultural compact alone. while we take for granted the equivalence between the word and its subject, they are not linked by any resemblance, but only by the shared perception of meaning inherent in language. 																																																								 ibid. ibid. 	 	 	 figure . guillaume apollinaire revolver, drawing for the calligramme “Éventail des saveurs” – apollinaire was interested in replacing the sound qualities of words and phrases with a visual representation, concluding that language is bound to its subject by cultural connections alone. in the studio research, this concept was used to emphasise that the language we use to create identity—the stories that create and define us—is also a cultural construct. the work seeks to reveal that the relationship between narrative and identity is as intertwined and as constructed as the relationship between a word and its meaning. the text as a pictorial form reinforces the 	 	 notion that the stories that are used to create and define our character are a construct for an audience. the audience is our family, the community, but also ourselves. the photograph, the story, and the human form in the visual research were all constructed to fit into a system for understanding for how narratives are made, interpreted, and understood. when all the final artworks are exhibited, they are not necessarily meant to make sense as a linear narrative, but the individual components create an epistolary account of events that are constructed into a long-form narrative. the studio methodologies of practice-led research, heuristic method, and a synthesising of text and image provided an invaluable impetus for the studio research to evolve in directions that reflected new thinking and reactions to the portrayal of personal experience. the following chapter will discuss the visual outcomes made over the course of this research. 	 	 chapter : outcomes this chapter discusses the outcomes of the studio research, illustrating the progression of the artistic research as the theoretical framework was refined and the methodical processes were applied. over the course of the phd, i have held six solo exhibitions in varying locations throughout australia and the united states of america. this chapter will detail the conceptual intent for each exhibition alongside an artwork/s that manifests the influences and outcomes of my research. an analysis will follow each, highlighting the construction and application of narrative worlds and the use of text and photography to reveal and reflect personal experience. throughout my candidature, i have experimented with different forms of narrative that sometimes conflict with each other. in some artworks, i have used a confessional voice to build trust in the narrator and the narration, while in others i have used the voice of the naif to question the validity of the narration. each artwork is seen as part of a larger whole and the collective body of artworks addresses the complexity and diversity of our life narratives. with the commencement of my phd, i had the time to reflect on my whole practice, and i began to see the collected artworks that utilise text and photography as a novel. the novel is finished when i am finished and is composed of individual episodes that follow no chronological order. seeing my work as a novel read through a series of photographs has been an interesting development in the conceptualisation of my practice although i don’t mean this to evoke john berger’s famous imaginative rendering of a peasant woman’s life in random photographs, particularly since, unlike berger’s nonlinear narrative, my collection of works include photograph and text. i do not intend to develop this background metaphor of an illustrated novel at this stage and it may have been triggered by conceptualising the final doctoral exhibition. even so, my phd exhibition is an opportunity to 																																																								 the perfect price for donny ( ) was exhibited at ryan renshaw gallery, brisbane (appendix ); new work ( ) was exhibited at sophie gannon gallery, melbourne (appendix ); more sex, less death ( ) was exhibited at ryan renshaw gallery, brisbane (appendix ); i’m sick of sittin’’round here, tryin’ to write this book ( ) was exhibited at sophie gannon gallery, melbourne (appendix ); that’s what tortures me ( ) was exhibited at jan murphy gallery, brisbane (appendix ); the only option available ( ) was exhibited at sophie gannon gallery, melbourne (appendix ). the studio research was also exhibited at united photo industries in brooklyn and the australian embassy in manhattan in . while the creation of a novel read through a photograph has been an interesting development in the conceptualisation of my practice, it will not be discussed in this exegesis. john berger and jean mohr, another way of telling: a possible theory of photography (new york: pantheon, ). 	 	 present an abridged version of the novel as it will include a number of artworks from different exhibitions. an aspect in my studio work that has taken on increasing significance in understanding its mode of operation is the inclusion of the letters that have been hand-cut from the surface of the photograph within the picture frame, as seen in figure . on closer inspection, one can see that these letters are not perfect and there are scratches on the photograph from the blade. when i first began making text and photography artworks in , the letters were scattered on the floor beneath the work. for example, in ronald desmond ( , figure ), they symbolised the tears that my mother had shed after the death of my father and sister. since this time, the released letters have become contained in the frame, representing that a change has taken place in the contextualisation of the text and photograph. the fallen letters, in figure , present an autumnal scene within the frame, symbolising that a change is occurring in the relationship between the text and the photograph. 	 figure . martin smith, installation detail, 																																																								 i have been fortunate throughout my candidature that some of the artworks presented in this chapter have been acquired by private and public collections. while every effort will be made to collect and present these works at the final exhibition, it is currently unconfirmed which artworks will be available for assessment. 	 	 the released letters have also been resurrected to create artworks that explore the construction of language. these artworks are loosely titled resurrection works, as they examine the combination of individual letters in the formation of language, with an example of these works being more sex, less death ( , figure ). works that feature the released letters as material metaphors or symbolic substitutes will be included in the final exhibition because they not only provide the useful link in the evolution of the form of the text, but also act as a key mechanism for a fusion or disruption of our understanding of a differentiation between text and photograph in creating a narrative world. 	 figure . martin smith, more sex, less death (installation) the works that will be presented for analysis have been drawn from the following six exhibitions: the perfect price for donny ( , appendix ), new work ( , appendix ), more sex, less death ( , appendix ), i’m sick of sittin’’round here, tryin’ to write this book ( , appendix ), that’s what tortures me ( , appendix ), and the only option available ( , appendix ). the strategy employed in this chapter is to discuss specific artworks from each iteration of the ideas and experiments to express a detailed analysis of the artistic outcomes. 	 	 throughout my candidature, i have also been creating artworks that do not use the combination of text and photography. these works are shown in the appendix for each exhibition but do not form part of the analysis for this chapter. some of these artworks have been influential in the development of the studio research outputs using text/photography and these works will be included in the final exhibition. . : the perfect price for donny for this exhibition, twelve artworks were produced: a large text wall, an installation of cut- out letters, five photographs of my family, and five photo-collages. the works that will be analysed from this exhibition are the photographs of my family, and are from the revelation series ( – ). while this series currently consists of seven artworks, only revelation # to # (figures – ) are presented here, because they appeared in the perfect price for donny, while revelation # and revelation # were made in . i exhibited all five prints in the perfect price for donny, but on reflection revelation # will be omitted from my final exhibition i feel that the sentiment of the photograph is not an accurate portrayal of my role as a father. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # , 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # , 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # , 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, revelation # , narrativity the revelation series of photographs were created directly after finishing the text the perfect price for donny (appendix ) and they experimented with the position and placement of the narrator within the artwork. the story that the series explores was inspired by the conversations i was having with other parents at my children’s sporting events. when i articulated to other parents that i was an artist, i recognised that there was a noticeable shift in their interest. by contrast, i noticed that certain professions were met with much greater affection, especially tradespeople. many of the other parents were in the process of undergoing home renovations, and it occurred to me that the parents’ interest had a direct correlation to how useful, or not, one might be in helping them with their impending renovations. the text and photographs that were made for this series were based on qualities i possessed and how ‘useful’ they were in the suburbs of renovation. they also commented on an infallibility of character that the men around me were portraying and i was questioning its validity. 	 	 the five photographs all begin with the phrase “my father…” and tell of flaws in my character in relation to being a ‘suburban man’, as evidenced by my inability to build with wood or to earn a significant income through my art practice. the text was conceived as conversations that my children may have with a therapist after my passing. as such, it predicts how my role and skills as a father will be defined in the future as opposed to how they are perceived now. i am both the narrator (as i am telling the stories) and the narrated. even though the photographs are of my children, i am the subject of the photographs. blending the narrative layers between narrator and narrated is one of the characteristics of a metalepsis. using a metalepsis creates a narrative world where the children that are in the photograph are not the subject of the photograph but the object that provides the vehicle for the narrative. the narrative was also written to be self-asserting because using one’s children as a vehicle for a personal musing on your value is the sign of a very flawed human being. the discourse of the photographs also adds to the familial narrative, as they are modelled around known tropes of family photography. text and photography this part examines the combination of text and photography in the revelation series, with an emphasis on the representation of text within the photographic frame and the intended connection between the story in the text and the discourse of the photograph. the text in the revelation series is depicted in the photographic frame rather than being excised from the photograph. this was a significant change in the production and distribution of these photographs, as i had the opportunity to reproduce and reprint the final artworks. the other major shift was composing and producing the photographs in a studio environment. the use of backdrops and portable studio lighting was new to the production of my photographs and became a technique i used in subsequent exhibitions. the narrative centres on my anxieties as a parent and how they may be reflected in my children, and the discourse was delivered through known tropes of family photography, such as the family portrait, the school portrait, and the documentation of achievement. while the text does not relate directly to the events depicted in the photographs, the anchor binding the text and photograph is the representation of family. the over-riding voice of the 	 	 narrator/father is embedded within the implied narrative of domestic relations. revelation # is a photograph of my daughter dressed in a tutu, holding a plaque that should acknowledge her achievement but that has instead become a proclamation about my uselessness in building stuff out of wood. this is reinforced in the photograph through the shoddiness in the construction of the shield. the text undermines the implied narrative of success in the photograph and transfers it to the unseen narrator/father/photographer. a recognised link between the text and the photograph is the most obvious in this series, as it was important to link myself as the father with children through the use of family photography. . : new work after constructing a metalepsis in the perfect price for donny, i had an opportunity the following year to explore the potential for distorting and disrupting narrative in the exhibition new work. for this exhibition, ten artworks were produced, five of which were photographs with text cut out of the surface and five were works on paper that combined resurrected letters with text. the three works that will be analysed from this exhibition are from the latter group and are titled mother’s father (figure ), father’s mother (figure ), and brother’s sister (figure ). 																																																								 from this series, revelation # was short-listed for the bowness prize at monash gallery of art in melbourne, and i was commissioned to make revelation # that was installed as a billboard as part of the brisbane city councils’ laneways project (artwork can be viewed at http://www.martinsmith.net.au/album/commissions.html.) when i was creating new artworks for the exhibition that followed the perfect price for donny, i was interested in continuing to experiment with the creation of narrative worlds through text and photography, especially the application of fork-path narratives. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, father's mother, 	 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, mother's father, 	 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, brother's sister, 	 the conceptual intent for this show emerged from my research into the cognitive choices that we make when developing the narrative that represents our personal histories, as outlined in chapter . . this exhibition also represented the application of fork-path narratives to create two possible worlds that exist simultaneously and separately. my heuristic engagement with the representation of personal experience also influenced the changes in the ways the text and photograph were combined and meaning was elicited. in creating the artworks under discussion, i was interested in the stories that linger in our subconscious, that tell an alternative narrative to the one that we tell ourselves. the hidden story is a confession that is not told to others but influences how other events in life are interpreted. 	 	 the most influential reading at this point in time was bruner’s “life as narrative” and his statement quoted earlier: “there is no such thing psychologically as ‘life itself.’ at the very least, it is a selective achievement of memory recall: beyond that, recounting one’s life is an interpretive feat.” the concept that ‘life itself’ is created as an interpretation of the phenomena around us caused me to alter the ways i fundamentally thought about my artistic practice. the text and how it is represented with the artworks needed a different form and additional significance in order to convey narrative’s effect on how i react and respond to personal experience. the artworks created for new works were the first stage in the development of a textual form. narrativity this section examines the textual component of the artworks, with an emphasis on the stylistic decision to combine two separate pieces of text into the one representative layer. it will also outline the conceptual intent of the works, the two narrative styles, and the use of a fork-path narrative to propel the reader from one possible world to an alternative world. the text in the three works analysed in this section were made through the combination of two separate and complete narratives. the ‘readable’ or foreground text for each artwork reads as follows: • my father’s mother died while giving birth to his brother. this baby was then given up for adoption and never seen again. • my mother’s father died when she was . she went to the movies and he passed away while she was out. • my brother’s sister lost her leg to cancer when she was . she then became a paralympian. the letters for each piece of text are formed through an ‘un-readable’ or background story titled when i was , that reads: when i was i was still living at home but i had a job and a car. this allowed me to travel to new south wales to buy category one, uncensored pornography because in queensland you can only purchase censored material. after a trip across the 																																																								 bruner, “life as narrative,” . 	 	 border my material was left under my mattress and if in the night or early hours of the morning the need arose i would then see to matters quickly and easily. my mother however would clean my room and change my sheets every week. i would imagine that she would pick up my mattress to change the sheets and see the collection because it would be tidied and catalogued. but even though she was catholic and modest she never mentioned it nor did she ever throw any of the offensive material away. the background story is particularly embarrassing and something that i have never brought up with my mother or anyone since. it is a memory that frames my interactions with my mother as she knows about my pornography collection but has never mentioned it. through the treatment of the text, the significant events that have formed our family narrative such as my grandmother’s passing, my grandfather’s passing, and my sister’s cancer treatment, these events are then physically formed through my recollection of purchasing and hiding pornography. the two narratives operate simultaneously but only one is visible. the background narrative creates the environment for the foreground narrative to be seen and interpreted. the conceptual intent of this approach was to demonstrate that memories are formed, shaped, and materialised through a construction of ‘life itself’. the narratives that frame the events of an individual’s life and how they are interpreted are chosen. the background narrative of my trips to new south wales to buy pornography is embedded into the familial history narratives. the two narratives also follow different styles. the background text is an epistolary tale written like a diary entry, it is a private event that is represented but not published. the foreground text retells dramatic events like a catalogue entry, referencing the style of obituaries, where our surviving relations are stated as brother to…, husband to…, or father to…. each text piece begins with the familial positioning of the subject, promoting a narrative that i am estranged from them through another member of the family, that the story of their passing or their cancer treatment is filtered through another family member. this reflects my position in the family; being the youngest, i felt that all information was filtered through others. i had to wait until i was old enough or in the right position to receive the information. in constructing the framework to represent two simultaneous narratives, i used a fork-path narrative. as mentioned in chapter . , a fork-path narrative requires the use of a mechanism to propel the narrative from one possible world to an alternative possible world. in the three artworks chosen, the narrative is situated within both worlds simultaneously but requires the 	 	 viewer/reader to exit one in order to read the other. the act of trying to read the background text propels the viewer/reader out of the world of familial history and into an epistolary world of personal recollection. conversely, when the viewer/reader exits the world of personal recollection, they are positioned in the world of family history. operating separately and consecutively, the two narratives mirror the interpretive feat of recounting one’s life through a variety of different experiences and choices. the convergence of two narrative worlds informing and responding to each other is predicated through an anonymous photograph, adding another layer to the dissemination of meaning. text and photography this part will examine the combination of text and photography in the chosen artworks, with particular emphasis on the photograph’s role in promoting a discourse of isolation and solace within the artworks. it will also outline how the function of the photograph in my art practice changed after this exhibition. the photographs that formed the base for the artworks were all taken in hong kong when i was travelling there as part of the hong kong art fair. i had written the story about my pornography collection and was unsure as to whether or not i could publish it. while i was in hong kong, i was aware that my young family was struggling at home without me. every morning, i would walk the streets of hong kong for two hours, photographing alleyways, shop-fronts, and vistas. the motivation was to capture a sense of estrangement from the environment to capture a sense of loneliness and unease. when i was conceptualising the exhibition, the motivation in choosing the photographs was to reflect the duality and confusion of the text. as in my earlier works, the photographs were meant to reflect the discourse that the story was told through. the text in the artworks, however, was not a traditional story. rather, the discourse that the text was read through was the convergence of narrative layers, and the photographs, while visually pleasing, did not advance or distort the narrative. in the artworks i made before commencing my phd, there was not an obvious anchor between the text and the photograph, but they joined within the discourse component of the narrative because the story was able to evoke a narrative world that was affirmed through the photograph. in the artworks for new work, the readable text was a catalogue of familial history and did not require the photograph to position it within a discursive environment. 	 	 as a result of the methods employed in this exhibition, i understood more about how the text and photograph were influencing each other. the major change in thinking in this exhibition was the text being formed by another text. the narrative was represented as story and discourse, but in this exhibition, it also became a physical form. this was a major breakthrough in my artistic research and was reflected on and refined in subsequent exhibitions. the other issue that emerged from this exhibition was the desire to produce photographs that responded to more than just the discourse of the narrative. they needed to evolve in the same way the text was evolving—to reflect the influence of narrative in the way we understand ‘life itself’. . : more sex, less death 	 the exhibition more sex, less death consisted of eight elements: three artworks that combined text and a photograph, two large text pieces, two smaller artworks that combined text and cut-out letters, and one installation of cut-out letters glued onto the wall of the gallery. the artwork that will be analysed as part of this section is entitled stand up ( , figure ) and was one of the three large text and photography works from this exhibition. kinga nikka (figure ), which was analysed beside paul kwiatkowski’s and every day was overcast in chapter , was also part of this exhibition. the first part of this section will outline the narrativity of the text, with an emphasis on the creation of a metalepsis in the narrative world, while the second will discuss the text as physical form and the creation of a photographic stage for the text to be performed in. 																																																								 bruner, “life as narrative,” . 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, stand up, in conceptualising the artworks for more sex, less death, i was aware of the successes and failings of the previous exhibition. of particular attention was highlighting the role of narrative in the formation of identity, especially the concept expressed in chapter . of narrating ourself to ourself. in new work, the strategy was to read one narrative through the form of another. the evolution of the text into a physical form was continued with this 	 	 exhibition, but instead of the text becoming another narrative, it took a human form. after new work, i was interested in the photograph reflecting some of the intentions of the text; in particular, representing a space where the narrative is situated to reveal the existence and function of narratives in our formation and expression of self. this was envisaged through a photograph that simultaneously depicts a space where personal narratives are created and also where they are reflected. this space was conceived through the creation of a stage that mixed private thoughts with public discussion. a convergence of two environments where different internal and external narratives occur. with the photograph representing a stage, text was written that also replicated the process of narrating ourself to ourself in the form of stand-up comedy. it reads: my dad was a lecturer at university and an artist, not like…a you know cockhead artist.... more like a, ‘oh right you’re an artist’. what they really meant was, ‘that explains why you and your kids are such freaks’. he lectured in the photography department but he had a speech impediment that not only made his lectures a lot longer than they needed to be but he couldn’t actually say the word ‘photography’. when people asked him where he worked he would shorten it to, ‘you know the thing where you are out and you see something nice and think that would look good and you use a camera to frame and expose the original thing and then you process and print it till you get the paper thing that looks like the thing you used the camera to take a picture of the original thing with’ and they would say “what…photography?” “yeah that’s it”. for about years of my life my dad was doing his phd in narrative studies. when he was about to hand in something he would start talking about his research at the dinner table. he would say that narrative is all around us, that we understand and organize our lives through narrative. that the study of narrative is a study of human experience and i needed to think about it more. all i heard was that i’m not getting anything new, anytime soon. the text that is excised out of the photograph is a fabricated comedy routine that one of my children would tell about having me as their father. the text creates a metalepsis in a similar way to the text in the revelations series, as it uses a future voice to refer to a narrator who is also the subject of the narration. this technique collapses the narrative layers and makes the narrative visible, thus providing the impetus for rendering it into the form of a human. 	 	 narrativity this part will outline the conceptual intention of the text, and the application of a metalepsis, including how it disrupts and distorts time and space within the narrative. the text was conceived as a stand-up comedy routine written about my role as a father but delivered by one of my children sometime in the future. the text continues on from a work that pre-dates my phd titled hello newmarket hotel, where i performed and documented a stand-up comedy routine at an ‘open-mic’ night that graphically outlined corporeal punishment in primary schools in the early s. in the performance, i invited a friend onto the stage who was dressed as a christian brother and he gave me ‘six cuts’ with a strap. the aims of hello newmarket hotel were to experiment with altering the context of the audience experience by performing art to a comedy audience, to explore performance as another avenue for the dissemination of my stories, and to comment on the cruelty of corporeal punishment to children. the text for stand up mirrors a known trope of stand-up comedy of discussing the failings of one’s parent. it sets up the character of ‘the father’ through my profession, mentions my speech impediment for a cheap laugh, and references this phd as a means of insinuating that i was more interested in thinking than making money, as confirmed by the last line: “all i heard was that i’m not getting anything new, anytime soon.” it is written as a short monologue delivered as part of a larger performance but has the components of a metalepsis in that the narrator is also the narrated. the narrative layers are combined through the infiltration of the narrator into the story. the start of the text refers to “my dad”, when this character is the narrator and author of the text, not the performer. the application of a metalepsis in the artwork disrupts the notion of time and space within the discourse layer of the narrative as the performer of the routine needs to be in the future to be discussing the events of the present. using a known discourse of stand-up comedy implies that the text should be delivered on a stage in front of an audience. however, the metalepsis converges the narrative layers into an undefined time and place where it is unknown where 																																																								 martin smith, hello newmarket hotel, , video. available to view at https://vimeo.com/ . smith, stand up. 	 	 the narrative is performed, for whom, and by whom. there are several possible worlds created by the text and, as mentioned in chapter . , our ‘life narrative’ is constantly being influenced and altered as potential stories mix with actual stories. the blending of narrative layers that the metalepsis provides mirrors the process of how we are combining and constructing our life narratives through the individual interpretation of personal experience. the open-ended nature of constructing our life narratives is further emphasised by the visual representations that accompany the text as they do not validate the claims in the story but rather imply an actor operating within a domestic and social space where the claims of the text are being actioned. text and photography this section will examine the construction of text into a human form, which replicates the endless and incomplete process of rendering and actioning a life. it will also discuss the photograph as a private and public space where the narrator can narrate to themselves. the creation of stand up marked a significant shift in the direction of my studio research. following on from the artworks included in new work, constructing text into a represented form was a breakthrough in defining the influence of narratives in our lives. a human form created by text suggests that our identity is constructed, stabilised, and actioned through narratives. the form also suggests that the life narratives that are being generated, lived, applied, contextualised, recontextualised, performed, fictionalised and converged are all actioned through the construct of a human that is flawed and incomplete. a figure created and interpreted through stories reinforces bakhtin’s concept of the novel that, regardless of how thorough a characterisation is—whether in a novel or in our own lives—there is always something left out, something left over, “a surplus of humanness”. the incomplete and floating figure mirrors the process of building a human character from the possible and actual events of our lives. there are infinite options available when we choose to render ourselves through our experiences, and the form of the person that is presented through this process can never be complete. the figure that receives and transmits the text is isolated in a photograph that depicts a stage that is both domestic and social, private and public; it is a converged space that neither affirms its existence or denies it. 																																																								 m. m. bakhtin and michael holquist, the dialogic imagination: four essays. vol. (austin, texas: university of texas press, ), . 	 	 after the completion of new work, i was determined to activate the photograph in a similar way to the text. specifically, i wanted the photographs to provide more than simply a discourse illustrating the intentions of the text. in response to my reading on narratives and how they represent space and time, i decided to explore the temporal and spatial dimensions of photographic narrative. as noted previously in this exegesis, bakhtin describes time and space as the “organising centre” for narratives, as they provide the “meaning that shapes the narrative”. the depiction of space whether through text, staging, photography or paint provides a means of conceptualising the intention and possibilities of a narrative. the photograph in stand up depicts a space constructed of a domestic carpet and a backdrop of a snowy landscape. the constructed space is neither public or private; it is a convergence of the domestic (the carpet) and the social (the snowy landscape). conceived as a stage, the space responds to the discursive aspect of the text and anchors the reading of the photograph to the performative characteristics of the text. the representation of a figure that is created through narrative but resides in both the private and public space reiterates that the act of constructing our life narratives is present when we are alone and in public. the photograph for stand up was conceived as a convergence of a spatial and temporal world that reinforces the notion that the performance of ourself to ourself is constant and never-ending. the construction of a figure created from narrative and a photographic stage that unites two distinct environments was a breakthrough in the studio research. these techniques were subsequently consolidated and expanded throughout the rest of my phd. it is important to note that the creation of these works is costly and time-consuming and it demanded a change in how i conceived the works. in the past, i would write the text and take the photograph separately and intuitively combine them and cut the text out. these works required a more systematic approach to the construction of the individual artworks as there were several different processes to complete, including writing the text, taking the background photograph, printing the background, positioning and shooting the backdrop in an environment, photographing the figure that is then transferred to text, and cutting the text out of the artwork. this change in method added time to the completion of my phd, but was important in the conceptual development of the studio research. the exhibition that followed 																																																								 bakhtin, “forms of time and the chronotrope in the novel,” . 	 	 more sex, less death expanded on some of these developments but also reverted back to some earlier techniques. . i’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book the exhibition i’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book consisted of nine artworks, four of which were photographs with text cut out of them and five photographs with text written directly onto the surface of the print. this section will examine the artwork experiment with verbs ( , figure ), which falls into the former category. the narrativity of this artwork will be analysed through the use of an unreliable narrator in that the construction of the narrative world questions the validity of the narrator, thereby making the reader aware of the existence of the narrative. the text and photography will be analysed through the competing discourses of a dancing textual figure cut out of a photograph of an unnamed person. the artworks created for i’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book responded to the strengths and weaknesses of the previous exhibition. when conceiving the artworks for this exhibition, i was still unsure of how the new combination of text as a human form and a photograph that converges two environments was perceived. at a meeting with my supervisor after the exhibition more sex, less death, the feedback was that the artworks were “too literal”, that i was trying too hard to represent the link between narratives and the formation of personal identity. this prompted me to slightly alter how i approached the creation of artworks for this exhibition. while i continued to explore the use of textual human forms to represent the role of narrative in our lives, i reprised earlier methods of cutting the text directly out of a photograph. another text and photography artwork that i made for this exhibition was money laughed at my sausage, which i have analysed beside william yang’s artworks in chapter . . the two works were written concurrently and both applied the unreliable narrator to construct a narrative world of fantasy around the acquisition of money and the description of sex. 																																																								 martin smith, experiment with verbs, , ink-jet print with cut-out letters. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, experiment with verbs, i remember reading an article about a local band where the lead singer used to write the sexy stories that appeared at the back of picture magazine for some extra cash. the stories revolved around somebody going about their ordinary day when events take an unexpected and ‘sexy’ turn. i thought that i may not be able to write the feel good hit of the summer (and neither could he) but i would be able to write short semi-flaccid erotic fiction. i treat sex like a whippet off the leash, something to be enjoyed with your mouth open and tongue out and if you run into a fence then so be it. to write the story i just needed to harness my natural urges, mine my own experiences and experiment with verbs, nouns, adjectives and innuendos to take my readers on a journey to pleasuretown. the story revolved around two artists martino (an inexperienced multimedia artist with a speech impediment) and alexandria (a statuesque performance artist known for her sexually charged ‘happenings’ in obscure locations). it was called ‘inter-disciplinary love’ and was an exploratory meditation on the discourse of commodification in contemporary narrative theory and good old fashioned rumpy-pumpy. my introduction, i think, went very well but it was when i started writing the sex that things got tricky. the act was occurring in the gallery when everyone went home. martino was surprised that after he had turned off all the monitors and started to head towards the door alexandria was standing at the doorway nude. her dripping (no) moist (no) tearful (yes) vagina clasped (no) grabbed (no) seized (yes) his naughty (no) fierce (no) recalcitrant (yes) penis in a tender (no) grotesque (no) nuanced (yes) embrace that left (no) rendered (yes) them both speechless (no) aimless (no) inter-disciplinary (bingo). 	 	 narrativity experiment with verbs describes my attempt to write erotic fiction after reading that a member of a prominent band used to write the sex stories at back of the adult publication picture magazine. it details the character of martino, an inexperienced multimedia artist with a speech impediment (no relation), and his quest to bed alexandria. the story was also an attempt to recontextualise the phrase “interdisciplinary” from a visual art context to an erotic fiction context. at the time, i was writing a lot of job applications and there was a need for teachers to have an interdisciplinary practice. i wondered whether the word could be transposed from art to sex (i don’t think it can). the story is an absurd farce that is told through a naïve narrator who is inexperienced in writing erotic fiction and creating an environment where characters would be likely to have sex. the narrator, through his perfunctory and adolescent explanations of a sexual act, inhabits the qualities of the naif. as defined in chapter . , the naif brings a child-like naivety to situations and their place within the community. the naif is an unreliable narrator, as their descriptions of events cannot be trusted because their view of the world is childish, adolescent and not fully formed. the use of the naif as the narrator is more obvious in the text for experiment with verbs, but it is an aspect of the character that i have created to represent myself in some of my artworks. while the naif has been employed in the text of some of the artworks, it also counteracted by a confessional voice in other artworks. when crafting the text that is excised from the photograph, i depict events where i am at my most confused, inebriated, and naïve. the naif is used as an unreliable narrator to create a narrative world that confuses and subverts the narrative by creating doubt in the validity of the information that is described. in questioning the accuracy of the text, the reader becomes aware that the narrative is a construct. the exposing of the narrative as an element that is made then positions the visual representations within this narrative world. the character of the naif is reinforced through the implied dancing of the textual figure but frozen within the body of an unknown person. 																																																								 the confessional narrative voice is used in perceived indifference to build trust in the narrator of that story. 	 	 text and photography this part will outline the competing discourses that exist within the combination of text and photography in experiment with verbs. the naïve narrator of the text is continued in the implied dancing figure. there was a desire to convey movement within the textual forms to counteract the rigidity of the text, and the outline of the figure was made from a series of photographs i took of my children dancing. the chosen form implies that the figure is caught in the middle of a more elaborate movement. as the text deals with adult themes in a childish manner, the frivolity of the figure’s movement reiterates the intentions of the text. the text and the figure are read and experienced through a nude photograph of an unnamed person. the frivolity and fun of the text and figure are not reciprocated in the photograph. a competing discourse is created between the more formal and reserved pictorial representation of the woman and the whimsy of the text and the figure. the intention was to create a dynamism between the two competing discourses that elevates the reading of the text and figure and also lessens the formalism of the photographed woman. after reflecting on the works from more sex, less death and i’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book, i decided to imbue future artworks with more complex narratives. i recognised that the combination of text, form, and photography offered an opportunity to push the artworks to express competing or divergent narratives. following these two exhibitions, the narratives within the artworks expanded to express more intricate and nuanced subjects. for the next exhibition, i was able to develop and refine the ideas from the previous presentations and to disrupt and reveal personal experience through the construction of multiple narrative worlds. to avoid repetition in the discussion, the sections that follow will not be analysed in the same fashion as the preceding sections because the artworks made following the i’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book exhibition maintained the same methodology of excising text in a human shape form out of a photograph that converges two environments. while each artwork displays subtle differences within the constructed narrative worlds and considered pictorial options within the composition of the photograph, there was a conceptual stabilising within the production and thinking around the artworks. 	 	 . : that’s what tortures me the exhibition that’s what tortures me consisted of nine artworks: five artworks with text cut out of photographs, two photographs with painted elements, one sculpture, and one text work with cut-out letters glued onto the surface. the work that will be analysed from this exhibition is perceived indifference ( , figure ). the first part will briefly discuss the narrativity of the artwork, with an emphasis on the application of a confessional narrative. the narrative world created in perceived indifference is similar to the artworks previously analysed in this chapter, except it utilises a confessional narrative as opposed to a metalepsis or an unreliable narrator. the next part will examine the text, form, and photography of the artwork with reference to the construction of a multi-layered narrative outlining my relationship with my wife. the artworks for that’s what tortures me emerged from the amalgamation of the ideas explored in more sex, less death and i’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book. in regards to the application of text and photography, this exhibition signified a stabilisation in the methodology for creating and presenting the artworks. having had time to reflect on the outcomes of the two previous exhibitions, i wanted to further explore creating a photograph that converges two environments and that features text forming figures that reinforce the discourse of the narrative. the story in perceived indifference describes an odd, ongoing relationship with the woolworths supermarket, or woolies, in the northern brisbane suburb of sandgate. it was the place of my first job and also the place where i met my wife. the first part of the story positions the narrative as a coming-of-age tale about my first experience at work. the narrative then travels to when i had finished my degree and needed to fulfil a commitment to take still photography at a friend’s short film and ended up meeting my wife. the narrative uses the phrase “perceived indifference” throughout to suggest that the space hasn’t changed in over twenty years as it appears throughout the story even though several years have passed between the first part of the story and its conclusion. a confessional narrative is established at the beginning of the story when i detail my working life and my relationship with my boss knob, and continues through the story, ending with the 	 	 detail about my wife’s wedding ring. the confessional narrative is required to build a sense of trust within the narrative, so that the expression of love at the conclusion is considered genuine. the sharing of personal details, such as the origin of the text that is engraved on my wife’s ring adds to the faith in the validity and accuracy of the narrative. while the events that are described in the story revolve around my meeting with and eventual marriage to my wife, the text, form and photography also validate the details mentioned in the story. the text forms two figures that are leaning towards each other. the figure on the left is male and the figure on the right female. the aspect of the narrative that details my employment at woolworths creates the male figure and the typeface is sans-serif. the opposing figure is created through the second part of the story and is formed through a serif typeface. the difference in the typefaces addresses the different focus of the story, as it moves from an individual to the couple. in conceptualising the textual forms, i wanted to experiment with ways to create tension between the two figures. the rigidity of the male figure is counterbalanced by the ease of the female figure. the photograph was taken on the road in the middle of the night. a backdrop of a rocky landscape was created and installed behind a cycling icon on a road near my house. the conflation of the background photograph and the road creates a stage that the narrative is performed on. as the text is written and read through the photograph, there is a constant back and forth between the text and photograph; one can’t read the text without experiencing the photograph and vice versa. the photograph therefore provides the space in which the narrative is situated in. the usual representation of both a road and a landscape is disrupted through the deliberate positioning of them overlapping each other. the conflicted photographic space does not follow the expected scripts of each component as it becomes obvious that it is a constructed environment built to house the narrative. the exposure of the artificial space highlights the creation of the narrative. while the events depicted in the story are true, the articulation, dissemination, and interpretation of the narrative are subjective and infinite. the next section examines the final series of artworks created for phd and recognises the consolidation and stabilisation of ideas that have occurred during my candidature. 	 	 figure . martin smith, perceived indifference, 	 “perceived indifference” was the last thing you saw as you went from the staff offices down to the deli at woolies, sandgate. it was my first job and my first encounter with an irrational boss. i can’t remember his name, but for now let’s call him knob. knob was about forty-six, had blond streaks and used to wear heeled boots and a big old texan belt buckle to contain his ample stomach. he moved me from the deli when a customer complained that i used a hanky and not a tissue when handling the small goods…fair enough really. from there i was the trolley boy and used to walk many kilometres in search of trollies. i eventually came to the conclusion that a career in grocery retail was not for me and resigned. as i was hardly employee of the month material i assumed that knob would just offer perceived indifference to my leaving. but instead he went ape-shit yelling and pointing and pulling his pants up, calling me a fucking arsehole and then told me to never come into the store again. twelve years later i am sitting on my couch in paddington comfortably stoned after completing the last assignment for university, when i remember that i had agreed to do photo stills for a student film at woolies sandgate. thinking of all the ways to cancel i relented thinking that i could at least get some kfc chips with extra seasoning on the way. with perceived indifference i arrived onto the set to find the usual crew of students busily working away on film about chickens and xmas. i found my friend marissa who was doing art department and she introduced me to marisa who was helping out in art department. i interrupted them to offer her a chip and she politely refused. the 	 	 first shot was in frozen foods and because both stills and assistant art department are not critical to anything marisa and i hung out the back. over her shoulder i noticed frozen rice in a bag. intrigued by this product i asked aloud “why would anyone need frozen rice in a bag?” agreeing with observation marisa then started telling me about $ . melons in japan. the best segue ever. many years later when asking marisa to marry me i couldn’t afford a stone so i etched the text “frozen rice in a bag” onto a gold ring, it’s in italian though, cause i’m classy. . : the only option available the exhibition the only option available consisted of thirteen artworks: four photographs with text cut out of them, four photographic collages, and a series of five unaltered photographs. all four text and photography artworks will be analysed from this exhibition, and are titled greatest weakness ( , figure ), foamcore ( , figure ), cynicism ( , figure ), and jetlag ( , figure ). the final section of this chapter recognises the coalescence and fusion of the conceptual framework and the studio methodology from previous exhibitions and will outline the process for creating the artworks. consequently, the narrativity and application of text and photography will not be discussed. the four artworks will be described collectively as they were all completed during a three-month artist residency i had in new york in . the text is an epistolary account of some of my experiences and observations while living in new york, and early drafts of it were published as “stand clear of the open doors, please” in the verso-art-writing blog. the text was initially created through a process where i would enter the studio and write directly onto the studio walls. i would then cut out the photograph that was on the back page of the local new york post that day and use the excised letters to create the human form on the wall. this process was engaged as a means to calm my anxieties about being away from my family for so long. it gave me a purpose and opened up new and previously unknown methods for creating the text. some of the text was nonsense, but on other days i found that i could coalesce concise ideas and create threads that could be extrapolated on later. at the end of the residency, i had a wall of text and textual forms that were drafts for further experiments (figure ). 																																																								 the artist residency at new york artist residency and studios (nars), brooklyn, new york in oct–dec . martin smith, “stand clear of the closing doors, please,” in verso-art-writing, blog edited by alex beckinsale and christina peek edwina cooper, january , https://www.verso-art- writing.com/blog/ / / /stand-clear-of-the-closing-doors-please. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, studio detail, during the residency, i also took several thousand photographs, adopting a similar method of collection as the one i used for the photographs in new work. i would walk the city and photograph, constantly looking for moments, abstractions in the landscape, or ironic scenes that could be used in the artworks. after collating all the photographs, i printed a select few into backdrops and set them up within locations around brisbane, converging the two landscapes together. an alternative series of photographs on people taking ‘selfies’ at major tourist attractions was also produced while i was completing the residency. these photographs were then used as the shapes that formed the text, where it seems like they are interacting and responding to the backgrounds. the conceptual intent was to experiment with the usual vantage of first-person narration that is used throughout the studio research. through their supposed interplay, the textual forms are photographed photographing the landscape switching the narrative voice from first-person in the text to third-person in the photographs. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, my greatest weakness, my greatest weakness is my inability to question what is happening around me at any given time. i believe the universe has my best interests at heart so why should i have to read the whole document, scrutinize my bank accounts or consolidate my super. it will all turn out ok if we just think about other things. you could therefore imagine my surprise when i booked a shitty apartment, cancelled the shitty apartment causing it to invalidate my refund and booked another apartment for a day fewer than i needed. surely the universe wasn’t telling me something. needing a place to stay for a night an old friend from brisbane generously offered me a place in her apartment. when i stay with people who aren’t family i get quite nervous as my body has started to emit more noises, some voluntary but most…not so much. i was anxious to get back to their apartment, to collect my things and move to a new place. i had just gotten out of the subway, found my bearings and was waiting to cross a set lights when a lady leaned over and said, “i’ll suck your dick for five dollars”. “sorry” she turned, walked away and i crossed the road. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, foamcore, my senses were on high alert as i boarded the subway with two large sheets of foam core. my goal for every subway trip is to cause the least amount of disruption to the fabric of time and space to prevent people from confirming that i have no place being here and my pursuit of this international opportunity is folly as i am essentially mediocre…but perhaps i’m over-thinking it. i found a seat in the corner and tried to camouflage my two large sheets of form core under an imaginary cloak of ‘nothing to see here’. what i didn’t see was the warmth of the previous sitter, still on the seat, so i sat in it. having been alone for the past few weeks the warmth of another human caused an equally unsettling and strangely comforting sensation. the rush of sitting in the warmth of a stranger was diminished as my presence started to overweigh their absence and i was left in the corner with my two large sheets of foam core. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, jet-lag, travelling internationally in an airplane is proof that under the right conditions, humans can be controlled, corralled and coerced to do almost anything. after flying, sitting, watching and queuing for hours it was only when i landed in new york and went to my “apartment” that the longest monday of my life turned like full cream milk left in the glovebox of a mazda hatchback on a ° day. the cab driver dropped me off and left unnervingly fast. as i entered the “apartment” that i had rented and paid upfront for four weeks all the anxiety of the past six months that i had kept carefully contained broke the walls of the dam and flooded the nearby township. the air in the apartment was old and still with a crocheted blanket covering its legs. the noises that emanated from the walls, floor and ceiling called all night for the lost souls who weren’t there. the power sockets were hanging from the wall like a pawnshop painting and the bed…oh my god…the bed, it did not want me in it. the scariest thing about jet-lag is it is one of the few occasions where you are forced to hang out with yourself and as i lay there for many hours trying to sleep, trying to relax, trying to contain my anxiety, guilt and confusion, in a room that seemed to feed on negative self-worth, i wished i was with somebody else, anybody else, but me. 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, cynicism, the former campaign manager of the current president of the united states of america, donald j trump, was indicted for, conspiracy, money laundering and providing false statements. i was on the subway trying to follow the story by updating my twitter feed at every stop. it was during one update that instead of wallowing in the details of a corrupt, irrational president i got the news that a classmate from high school had passed away. i deliberately haven’t seen anyone from school in over years. i lost contact with them after i started studying photography and got tired of them asking if i was going to shoot for playboy. i felt that i had outgrown the relationships of my youth and didn’t wish to travel back to a time that still feels uncomfortable. when frank passed away people expressed appreciation at the ongoing friendship that our class had maintained as many of them through death, divorce or work had become isolated from their present community. one classmate reflected on his battle with mental illness and isolation and expressed profound relief that he had rediscovered an old community that reflected a side of him that had been lost in the years since. in a facebook group created for our th reunion i kept reading the replies of support, watching the size of the ‘thumbs up’ emoji increase and the endless drinking memes with a confusion that bordered on cynicism. the comfort felt through reconnecting and recontextualising your past has been of great solace to many of the men i went through high school with and as this group gets closer to they decided it is important to make peace with the demons that divide. 	 	 conclusion in this chapter, i have traced and analysed the use of narrative, text, and photography over six exhibitions of artworks over a period of seven years. in relation to the perfect price for donny, i discussed the creation of multiple narrative worlds within an extended text. in new work, i analysed the text being formed by another text, marking the start of the narrative becoming a physical form, and the photographs responding to more than just the discourse of the narrative, so as to reflect the influence of narrative in the way ‘life itself’ is understood. in the critical reflection on more sex, less death, i discussed the text taking the shape of a human form and the photographs converging two environments to mirror that the performance of our life narrative is constant. in the section on i’m sick of sittin’’round here, tryin’ to write this book, the emphasis was on the creation of divergent narratives to disrupt the story and make the narrative layers visible. the key to that’s what tortures me was a consolidation of the methodology of text, form, and photography to present more complex narratives scenarios. the most recent body of work, the only option available, represents a pivotal point in the trajectory of my studio research in that the textual forms are interacting with the backgrounds through the incorporation of the action for a ‘selfie’. this adds another layer of complexity to the narrative as it positions the forms into a third-person narration as opposed to a first-person narration. the final presentation of my studio research from my candidature represents a milestone for my practice as it confirms and validates the theoretical and methodological framework that was developed and applied in completing my phd. the initial desire to bring awareness to and representation of the narratives that inform and create our personal identity led to the creation of narrative worlds in the text, the development of the textual human forms, and the construction of convergent photographic environments. the combination of these diverse elements creates a narrative that expresses personal experience while revealing the mechanisms of its creation. each exhibition of my studio research progressed the theoretical and methodological framework to a natural conclusion. while the studio research will 																																																								 bruner, “life as narrative,” . 	 	 continue to develop and expand its ambitions and level of visibility, the process of formalising my practice has been enriching and fruitful. conclusion 	 this exegesis has traced the development of my phd visual research and studio outcomes, which has grappled with how personal experience can be expressed through a combination of text and photography. chapter introduced and outlined the theoretical framework of narrative and narratology. after providing a theoretical background of the field, narrative was defined as the “representation of an event or a series of events”. the internal structure of narrative was explained as the combination of ‘story’ (the events as described) and ‘discourse’ (how the story is represented). extrapolating these terms was important as they provided a narrative model through which to analyse my studio research and the artworks of my contemporaries. this chapter also examined the field of cognitive narrative to consider how narratives are incorporated and interpreted in our daily lives. this section highlighted the concept outlined by bruner that our ability to recount and recall the events of our lives is an interpretive feat that is framed through narrative. the idea that memory recall and dissemination are reliant on our personal interpretation of events was significant in the development of the studio research as it informed the modification of the text into a visual representation of the process of recollection. a definition and examination of the use of narrative worlds followed. i referenced mikhail bakhtin’s theory of the chronoscope as the mechanism that narratives use to converge time and space into one layer to allow for the projection of possible narrative worlds. the narrative worlds of epistolary, metalepsis, fork-path narratives, and the unreliable narrator were all defined, with examples provided of their implementation. understanding narrative worlds was important as it provided a method to reveal the existence, structure and reach of the narratives in the studio research. 																																																								 abbott, cambridge introduction to narrative, . bakhtin, “forms of time and the chronotrope in the novel,” . 	 	 the final section of chapter examined the narrativity of a photograph, providing a theoretical background of the study of narrative within photography, including the ‘decisive moment’ coined by henri cartier-bresson and the incorporation of narrative through a series of photographs. the key theory extrapolated by battye that underpinned this section was the use of frames and scripts as a method for reading the ‘implied’ narrative from a photograph. the implementation of frames and scripts into the conceptualising of the photographs provided insights into how the usual flow of a narrative reading could be distorted and disrupted through altering the collection of objects and events that are represented in the photograph. after the establishment of a narrative framework, chapter contextualised the studio research within the contemporary field. a sample of artists who work with the combination of text and photography was outlined, including australian photographer william yang, american writer paul kwiatkowski, and dutch artist nikel van duijvenboden. the various methods in which the three artists connect the text to the photograph were analysed in selected works of theirs. yang’s more traditional method of validating the content of the text through the complementary photograph differed from kwiatkowski’s more unconventional snapshot photographs that do not validate the claims of the text but represent the discourse that the story is told through. the extended text piece of van duijvenboden that described the content and concept of the photograph without showing it was analysed as a rhetorical work that required narrative as a means of positioning it within the visual arts. within the artworks of each practitioner, i found aspects that resonated with my own process in relation to the creation of narrative worlds, but that diverged in the method of linking the text to the objects and events represented in the photographs. the photograph in my work does not validate the claims in the text, but is situated between the narrative and its meaning. chapter summarised my use of a blended studio methodology that combined practice-led research for art and design, heuristic research, and the use of text and photography discourse. i referred to christopher frayling’s original and still relevant paper from , which outlined the field of practice-led research, and then discussed the practical application of clark moustakas’s heuristic research methodology. these two methodologies that value intuitive and tacit knowledge provided the foundations for disciplined experimentation in the 																																																								 battye, photography, narrative, time, . 	 	 processes and production of the studio research. the final section examined the combination of text and photography within contemporary society and also within the artworks. emphasis was given to the development of text as a pictorial form and how this was utilised within the studio research to reveal the narratives that inform our lives. the final chapter surveyed the studio research and provided a chronological account of the development of the artworks from the commencement of the phd to its completion. significant breakthroughs occurred through the candidature as my reading into the structure and influence of narratives in our lives was reflected in the studio research. these breakthroughs were the creation of narrative worlds such as the metalepsis and the fork-path narrative as a method for revealing the existence of narratives, the development of text as a pictorial form making the narrative a material element and creating photographs that present a vignette of possible worlds that exist between the narrative and its meaning. the mechanisms i have created, developed and implemented in the creation of the artworks express personal experience through the universal form of narrative. the personal vignettes are depersonalised through the process of excising the non-existent text from the surface of a photograph, making the text a ghost photograph and the photograph a text. the locus of understanding between the text and the photograph is not found through the traditional methods of validation of the two modes, but in a space outside the text and removed from the representation of the photograph and found in the material surface of the artwork. the released letters that are gathered at the base of the artwork evoke the process of creating our life narratives through the basic materials, the individual letters, that collectively form stories and form our sense of self. throughout life, stories are narrated within individuals to create and destroy narrative worlds that define and confirm the individual’s presence in life. i set out in this project to develop a greater understanding of the role of text and a photograph in the formation of personal identity through narrative. in achieving this, i have made a contribution to our understanding of how a particular synthesis of text and photographic image can transcend the specificity of its individual and often banal personal elements to create a universal narrative world. 	 	 	 	 	 	 bibliography abbott, h. porter. the cambridge introduction to narrative. nd ed. cambridge: cambridge university press, . ———"narrativity." in the handbook of narratology. berlin, münchen, boston: de gruyter, ( ): - . adams, zed. “photography and philosophy: essays on the pencil of nature edited by walden, scott.” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism , no. 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kwiatkowski – and every day was overcast 	 face breaker 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 appendix nikel van duijvenboden – the grand absence 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 appendix interview between myself (ms) and nikel van duijvenboden (nvb) conducted over email st september 	 ms: firstly what led you to start writing and what were your intentions? nvd: writing was already inherent before i decided to become an artist. my parents were preoccupied with language, its origin and meaning, and so was i at an early stage. in a certain sense, working with images has always felt more remote to me. at the art academy, i gradually grew disillusioned with the singularity of the photographic image. i was interested in the nature of photography, in terms of context and process. photographic history and theory didn’t necessarily concern me at that point. i was looking for ways to describe and analyse the act of looking without having to make images. i wanted to be stuck in the process forever. ms: you say that you are a photographer and that this is an ‘entry point’. would you say that you write ‘through’ photography as opposed to ‘about’ or ‘for’ it? i am interested in your text because it is like you are writing about the limitations and the possibilities of the medium at the same time. nvd: i wouldn’t call myself a photographer. i graduated without showing any images and hadn’t published any professional images until five years after. since then, i sporadically use photography in my work, but i consider both working with images and writing as a form of visual art. labelling might seem irrelevant from a content-driven, process-oriented point of view, but defining what i do became an essential aspect of my practice. sometimes it feels like it is my practice. conversely, if i focus on a story for months on end, it may feel like that’s the only thing that counts. it’s confusing – but not entirely unintentionally. in a sense my work as a whole deals with conventions, yet the individual works have distinct themes, which are necessarily linked with existing art, literature, and music. in recent years, many people have come up to me and asked: ‘why don’t you just say you’re a writer?’ i’ve asked myself that question on numerous occasions, and sometimes – when i am pessimistic – i contemplate ‘giving up’ art altogether. in fact, it’s not a matter of choice; it is determined by the work and its reception. if i would say that i am a literary author, it would alter the meaning of my work. it would perhaps function better within a certain framework, but i’m afraid it would also lose a reflective, discursive dimension. it would certainly lose an indecisiveness, an insecurity or self-questioning element, which i think belongs to art. 	 	 photography is an ‘entry point’ in the sense that it opens up an entire field of analogies, attitudes, consequences and conditions. my work used to be more about the gaze, representation, and our relation with reality, but now it is more about the urge to record things, prevent them from being forgotten, and the idea that the act of recording actually turns you into a first-person narrator. my fascination with in the autobiographical record, whether it’s written, visual or aural, originates from my use of photography. for readers of literature, the relation with photography might not be discernible anymore. which isn’t undesirable; it means they have a more direct experience of a text’s tenor. visual artists and the art audience generally do take my position into account, which is a more indirect approach. ideally, the work engages with both modes of understanding. ms: in your interview in foam you spoke about a “third layer” between words and image. for me, in my work, i find that the words articulate the internal while images represent the external. it is in the mingling of these two states that create an abstracted yet richer understanding of phenomena. nvd: that makes sense to me. as of late, words and images have drifted further apart in my practice. in hindsight, this seems inevitable. it has much to do with the question whether writing in an art context can ever be truly autonomous. the last four years i have been collaborating with geert goiris, a visual artist from belgium. he approached me after reading plateau, which seemed to fuse with his approach of landscape photography. from the outset, we agreed to make a book with his photos and a short fiction of mine, whereby both halves would be totally autonomous. it was a test as to whether this strategy could work. up to that point, i had written several contributions to art projects from a similar vantage point: creating an autonomous imaginary space that would indirectly influence the reading of the other works. we would come to doubt, a collaboration with documentary photographer wytske van keulen, is an example of this. this time, however, the urge to write fiction had dissipated. i ended up writing a somewhat psychological roman à clef about a solitary desert journey, which only corresponded to geert’s photographs in a remote sense. in most respects, there was an underlying discrepancy. the story was obviously not about the photographs. when i sent him the first complete draft, after one and a half years of work, he contemplated it for a long time and finally reached the conclusion that the connection with his photographs was lost. he wrote to me: ‘two strong things put together can cripple each other.’ this was true in both directions. we then made the mutual decision not to make the book together. this experience has had a big impact on me, especially since the circumstances for a ‘third layer’-type amalgamation were ideal. there was a real understanding, we knew what we were doing right until the end. 	 	 looking back, i’ve invariably had difficulties defining my position within collaborative projects. text tends to take on a certain role, especially in a book. i usually ended up taking an antagonistic position, doing exactly what was not expected so as to maintain a certain autonomy. but that still is a position of dependency. honestly, and without bitterness, i cannot mention a single case where this strategy has led to true equality or unity. the result is either disparate or subordinate. ms: do you want your audience to imagine the photograph that would have been taken in a particular scene? nvd: i want them to feel the compulsive desire that leads to making photographs, or any type of record. it is a reconstruction, or better yet a construction, of a process. the end result is only interesting in so far as it allows the unfolding of a process. ms: in “embedded texts” you write about the desire to record silence and “plateau” the work down to map a landscape? for me your writing possesses a tension in the way that our actions and desires will never be fully met, either through the image or the processes of creation. essentially it seems to be about futility and that appeals to me. nvd: right, it is about futility and desire. when i think about it, the art, literature and music that is really meaningful to me, all has an element of consolation. 	 	 	 	 appendix the perfect price for donny (text) 	 most of my time had been spent trying to break the psychological barrier of minutes of continuous concentration. my current personal best was still well below expectation. thursday, april th, : am- : pm stevenson street, paddington, qld ° c as a means of governing the legitimacy of any given activity i had conceived a set of rules. . when engaging in concerted concentration the aforementioned concentrator had to sit in the same spot. movement is only legitimate if it is to pick up a new text, writing implement, beverage or snickers. . text that the aforementioned concentrator is permitted to read must be based on pre- proposed, pertinent, theoretical topics. . any written activity that the aforementioned concentrator engages in must be deliberate, thought provoking and without affectation. . at the beginning of any pre-proposed concentratory activity the aforementioned concentrator must record date, time, location and outdoor temperature to get accurate results. the times will be plotted to provide historical data for future researchers. friday december th : pm- : pm dunsford st, zillmere, qld °c today was going very well. i had not let my mind wander to concentration breaking thoughts such as music, dim-sims or firemen (bloody firemen my eternal nemesis). today my mind was a sponge. i was an agile intellectual capable of absorbing endless amounts of knowledge. i was feeling empowered, beautifully brisk and wanted the world to know it. the phone rang. i answered it. god damn you. wednesday june rd : am- : am edward st, brisbane, qld ° c ‘hello’ i said, cursing my own failure. 	 	 ‘hello this is tanya, i don’t know if you remember me?’ ‘tanya…tanya…tanya…umm, oh right tanya……. tanya was from my theatre days when i was years old and possessed with deluded dreams of being an actor. we were both new members of the sacred heart players, which was an assemblage of amateur thespians who met weekly in the hall of sacred heart church, and we had landed the leads in the production of ‘a perfect price for donny’ written by roger fagan. roger was an elderly member of the group and ‘the perfect price for donny’ was his first and only play. roger had worked at the railways for years and had been writing ‘a perfect price for donny’ on and off over those years. he had not started another play, he hadn’t written any short stories, prose or even a haiku. since he had retired two years earlier he finally realised his dream of finishing ‘a perfect price for donny’ at the age of . during his time at the railways roger was a shunter and that was all he did. he didn’t apply for promotions or transfers. he had seen the change from diesel to electric, the diminishment of the union and his colleague keith become a double amputee after being caught between two trains. roger had to pull the carriages apart, perform the essential first-aid and call the paramedics. roger was also there when keith’s wife and daughter left him. keith was too old and disabled to find a new life or wife and would spend hours on the phone to roger recounting his best years while wishing he was dead. roger never turned up late or called in for a sickie. he took his annual leave in winter to allow those with kids to take the summer. roger was the ideal employee and after years he had paid off his house overlooking the bay and received a handsome superannuation package that gave him the chance to finish his opus ‘the perfect price for donny’. the story of keith and roger’s relationship would have been a great play for the sacred heart players - full of drama, tragedy with a bittersweet ending (keith won a bronze medal at the paralympics, there were only double amputees in the event, still he beat the year old from nebraska). however, the play was, by all reasonable accounts,‘horrendous’*. the theatre reviewer for the bayside chronicle tristram honderich, a former high school drama teacher who reviewed all the local theatre productions at no cost, described it as ‘having no coherent narrative…the performances were nonsensical and pouty’. the only part of the play that touched on the themes of an elderly man who looked back on his life with a sense of regret or surrender was a soliloquy delivered by harry, donny’s father. its arrival in the play is ‘out of context but displays a poetic sensibility that should have been explored further’*. harry a birthday is not a day to celebrate. why would you celebrate being another year older, another year where you weren’t where you thought you would be? at this age you should be better. better at life, better at death and better at just being. depressed at the feeling of wasted energy and wasted ambition. ambition was a sure-fire path to depression. why want, why achieve, why strive when it can all come to you by lying down and accepting 	 	 the inevitable. why work hard at something when you can work average at something average and over time become above average. i had auditioned for the part of donny. it was my first role for the sacred heart players and i took it really seriously. donny was a welder from the wrong side of the tracks whose future mother-in-law was secretly trying to sell him on the black market to keep him away from her daughter, ann, who was played with ‘cardboard like intensity’* by tanya. the ironic twist was that the dodgy black market client that the mother-in-law was trying to do the trade with was actually ann who was looking for her ‘one true love’**. for research i had gone to my uncle’s factory to try and gain some insight into being a welder from the wrong side of the tracks. the problem was that my uncle was a refrigeration mechanic from a very nice suburban neighbourhood and me hanging around started to freak out his apprentices. during the gruelling weeks of rehearsal tanya and i started to get along quite well. tanya was a law student and really wanted to be a lawyer. she was only doing the play because her law lecturer had advised them to do amateur theatre as a way of honing their interrogation skills and learning techniques for public speaking. i was trying to be judd nelson and she didn’t know who judd nelson was. at the end of the play there was a kissing scene when donny and ann are finally able to express their ‘burning love’** and over the course of the season the kiss started to become more passionate and some feelings towards each other started to affirm. after the season finished tanya and i decided to see ‘a few good men’ together. tanya loved the you can’t handle the truth scene and spoke incessantly about how true to life it was whereas i was distracted by other things, any things. i started to notice her eyes and how they seemed out of shape, like they belonged somewhere else, on someone else. it was like they didn’t move. whenever she spoke or gesticulated wildly they stayed still refusing to budge. they were the most unambitious eyes ever, it was like they’d reached their pinnacle of expressiveness and had no more to do. normally this wouldn’t have concerned me as much as it did at the end of the date we hugged and tried an awkward kiss but the flame that was palpable during the finale of ‘the perfect price for donny’ had expired and i avoided seeing her again. i hadn’t had any lingering issues with tanya and i was sure she didn’t have any with me. she was a pleasant person even if her eyes were unambitious. today, however, years later, tanya was trying to contact me and this was freaking me out. ‘yes, i do, we were the leads in the hit farce ‘the perfect price for donny’ for tihe sacred heart players, ‘is everything ok ? this is a surprise, that must have been nearly years ago’ ‘yes it’s me. i just wanted to ask you something from that time and if you don’t remember than that is fine. it is a little embarrassing so please forgive me’ ‘yes, yes of course, fire away i will try and remember’ 	 	 there was quite a long uncomfortable pause then tanya asked, “what did you think of me? …you know back then” ‘sorry what do you mean?’ ‘this is stupid of me…sorry to bother you, but some patterns have kept repeating in my life and i was just curious as to what you thought about me…you know…sorry…i’m just trying to gain some insight into my life” ‘well…um…that was a long time ago and we were very young’ and then she hung up. wednesday st september : am – : archer street gordon park ° c * denotes tristram honderich’s words, not mine. ** denotes roger fagen’s words not mine. 	 	 	 	 	 	 appendix the perfect price for donny – ryan renshaw gallery, (artworks- not already presented) 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, donny # , 	 figure . martin smith, boy, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, installation, 	 figure . martin smith, installation, 	 	 	 	 appendix new work, sophie gannon gallery, (artworks- not already presented) 	 	 figure . martin smith, heat sealing, 	 figure . martin smith, storage/pleasure, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, sister's son, 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, exercise # , 	 	 	 	 appendix more sex, less death - ryan renshaw gallery, (artworks- not already presented) 	 	 figure . martin smith, bear, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, money, 	 figure . martin smith, untitled # , 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, untitled # , 	 figure . martin smith, installation, 	 	 	 	 appendix i’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book – sophie gannon gallery (artworks- not already presented) 	 	 figure . martin smith, eyewear, 	 figure . martin smith, fortunate and bored, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, i believe in, 	 figure . martin smith, i regret, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, i like it when, 	 	 	 	 appendix that’s what tortures me – jan murphy gallery (artworks- not already presented) 	 	 figure . martin smith, i'll take the next one, 	 figure . martin smith, cutting text, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, and that's what tortures me, 	 figure . martin smith, god only knows, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, unfortunately on this occasion, figure . martin smith, credo, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, rd, birthday, 	 figure . martin smith, eating a hotdog on th avenue, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, life without you, 	 figure . martin smith, santa monica, 	 	 	 	 appendix the only option available – sophie gannon gallery (artworks- not already presented) 	 figure . martin smith, it's difficult to love, figure . martin smith, i get to emerge from it, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, linked by absence, figure . martin smith, the embrace of mediocre ideas, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, you too need comfort, 	 figure . martin smith, cynicism, 	 	 	 figure . martin smith, m,n,a,e, 	 figure . martin smith, ride, 	 	 figure . martin smith, i wish i could say i handled it well, 	 	 	 	 	 appendix the narrated self – pop gallery (final exhibition) 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 																																																								 	 	 	 	 	 (re)authoring the club: bewildered voices, acousmatic audiophilia and the dangers of listening-in ben macpherson, university of portsmouth abstract this article considers the limits, layers and potential of vocal mimesis in the creation and performance of a new musical theatre work. reflecting on the process and production of all that’s left—a musical that performed imagined conversations between pop-culture icons from ‘the club’—i conceptualize voice as a plural space that connects imitation and originality by exposing, negotiating and re-siting the boundaries of mimetic vocality. specifically, using hillel schwartz’s the culture of the copy ( ) as a basis for discourse, i offer three readings of vocal mimesis as an act that constructs a space of plural and paradoxical possibilities. first, i consider the fidelity of timbral imitation or accent in ‘singing like the celebrity’, and use frith ( ) in dialogue with barthes’s concept of the ‘grain’ ( ) to explore the paradox of vocal bewilderment in performing original versions of celebrities. second, i reflect on the use of recorded voice, and draw on chion ( ) and sterne ( ) to suggest that acoumastic voice unveils the limits of mimesis while allowing a sonic (re)authoring in the process. third, i consider the audience as transgressors (connor ), and suggest that in listening-in to the ethereal and imagined thoughts of a long- deceased rock star, they themselves perform the very (re)authoring the mimetic voice itself offers. keywords vocal mimesis the club acousmatic audiophilia listening-in musical theatre imitation biography ben macpherson is senior lecturer and course leader for musical theatre at the university of portsmouth. he is co-editor of journal of interdisciplinary voice studies (intellect) and co-editor of the routledge voice studies book series, both with konstantinos thomaidis. previous publications include the edited collection voice studies: critical approaches to process, performance and experience (routledge ), along with articles in studies in musical theatre (intellect), international journal of performing arts and digital media (routledge) and new theatre quarterly (cambridge). recent and forthcoming work on voice and musical theatre includes chapters for oxford university press and routledge. for palgrave, ben is currently preparing a monograph entitled british musical theatre, - : imperialism and identity ( ). as a composer, recent work includes all that’s left ( ). introduction: (re)authoring the celebrity in this article, i explore the limits, layers and potential of vocal mimesis. conceptualizing the voice as a plural space that connects imitation and originality, i begin with a seemingly unrelated question posed by rosemary j. coombe in her book the cultural life of intellectual properties ( : ): ‘who authors the celebrity?’ using reflections on three specific aspects of the research and development of a new musical, this article aims to articulate one possible reply to coombe’s question through a focus on the vocal performance of celebrity. in january , i was commissioned by the new theatre royal portsmouth to produce a short musical work developed with my undergraduate performing arts students, to be performed as part of the annual student drama festival. the commission was an ideal opportunity to enhance the burgeoning relationship between the theatre and the performing arts department of the university of portsmouth’s school of media and performing arts. my co-writer and i had been working sporadically on a project for about eighteen months, and in an effort to catalyze its development, i suggested the piece to the commissioning producer, secured a director—a promising second-year undergraduate—and worked as md and accompanist, along with her and a cast of six students (three male and three female). with a working title of all that’s left, the project explored the nature of celebrity and conspiracy by staging imagined conversations between members of the club—the enigmatic group of popular musicians, poets and performers who all share the dubious privilege of having passed away aged , including performers such as amy winehouse ( - ). working with a collection of half-notated songs, fragments of script, and assorted materials relating to kurt cobain ( - ; lead singer of s grunge band nirvana), jim morrison ( - ; lead singer of the doors), janis joplin ( - ; american blues-rock singer), english world war one poets rupert brooke ( - ) and isaac rosenberg ( - ), and alexander bashlachev ( - ; soviet era russian punk poet), ‘the club’ became reframed as a members-only lounge in limbo, about which an extra-diegetic journalist had written an inaccurate coffee-table study based purely on second-hand evidence drawn from wikipedia. what became particularly fascinating during the development of the work, and as a partial answer to coombe’s opening question, was the nature of writing original material for such iconic celebrities in a process of (re)authoring them for the musical stage. in doing so, all that’s left opened the way for a consideration of the limits and layers of vocal performance; limits and layers that offer rich theatrical potential in the performance of real people on the musical stage. the culture of the copy (re)presenting well-known cultural figures on the musical stage is not new. tribute acts are a popular form of entertainment, and the commercially successful ‘bio-musical’ format has gained popularity in recent years, with production such as jersey boys ( ), which tells the story of franki valli and the four seasons, or beautiful: the carole king musical ( ), offering a biographical depiction of a band or artist using their songs as dramatic or narrative punctuation. often presenting hermetically-sealed narratives that claim to stage the ‘true’ (authentic) story of celebrity lives, ‘bio-musicals’ are performed by actors who carefully imitate the artist, with the production values all working alongside in order to evoke a sense of authenticity in the re-creation. such a mimetic strategy operates on the basis of similarity between the imitation and the original. yet, costuming or physical embodiment notwithstanding, of all the points of comparison, vocal similarity often forms the primary point of departure. to what extent the performer ‘sounds like’ the singer they are emulating therefore becomes the barometer of accuracy. echoing platonic doctrine, sociologist hillel schwartz has noted that while any copy is inherently flawed, contemporary culture consumes replication in order to provide ‘continuity, value, and authenticity’, as seen in the popular consumption of tribute acts and ‘bio-musicals’, with the overt primacy of vocal imitation offering itself a site of evaluation ( : ). yet, all that’s left was to be an original work, not a ‘bio-musical’. kurt cobain would not be recognized through any shouted reference to ‘teen spirit’, and at no point would jim morrison laconically invite anyone to ‘light his fire’, in reference to popular songs by these musicians. the ability to offer continuity, value, and authenticity through immediate musico-vocal imitation was therefore different in this case. the ways in which this was negotiated and developed through the process proved provocative and yielded fascinating insights into the authoring of celebrity on the musical stage. three aspects brought the layers, limits and potential of vocal performance into sharp focus in this regard: ) the uses and problems of emulation and accent, ) the distancing of voice from character, and ) the ethics of stealing a character’s voice in an act of eavesdropping. reflecting on these areas and the strategies used in performance, the voice is found to be a place in and from which celebrities may be (re)authored and reinterpreted on the musical stage. the uses and problems of emulation and accent in her book the human voice, anne karpf ( : ) notes that there seems to be an inherent pre-occupation with accent, ‘as if dialect and pronunciation made up the whole of the subject’ of voice production. while many other anatomical, aural, oral, cultural and linguistic aspects combine in each unique voice, it is perhaps a truism that people are readily identifiable through accent and speech pattern. in this respect, in a later chapter of her book, karpf considers the ‘different vocal melodies’ of countries, acknowledging certain characteristics that are broadly attributable to various regions and places ( : ). a salient factor of celebrity identity can often be characteristics of the voice: jim morrison had notable vocal fry, while robert johnson appears to sound nasal and high-pitched in the few recordings available, albeit that these musicians—and the poets rupert brooke and isaac rosenberg—were not known for their speaking voices. yet, in an active display of encultured compulsion, the first workshop saw the cast automatically explore vocal emulation and imitation of the real-life figures they were (re)authoring in the piece. youtube clips were played and verbatim monologues were developed, with much discussion of imitation and emulation as necessary to provide something for the audience in the absence of well-known songs from which they might deduce a sense of imitation of authenticity. this sense of vocal imitation conferring continuity or attributing authenticity quickly became problematic, indicative of a particular limitation and subsequent possibility that we chose to exploit. as roland barthes suggests in his by-now ubiquitous text, no matter how much one voice tries to imitate another, emulation will always be limited by ‘the materiality of the body speaking its mother tongue’ ( : ). even the best tribute act or impersonator will, in the end, never really sound like anyone but themselves—their vocal ‘grain’ betrays them. vocal imitation—even through imitated ‘vocal melodies’—therefore has its limits, meaning that any imitative quality can only exist and be experienced in relation to its own artifice (karpf : ). such limitations subsequently opened up possibilities for other aspects of vocal performance in the (re)authoring of these well-known celebrities. these possibilities are best articulated with reference to simon frith’s sociological conception of the performing voice as a plural space of interpretive practice, constituting:  a musical instrument  a body (echoing barthes)  a person  a character (frith in clayton : ) while the students who performed as jim morrison, janis joplin, robert johnson and kurt cobain all assumed various iterations of a stereotypical ‘general american’ accent, and the voices developed for rupert brook and isaac rosenberg were mock-rp english, these broad cultural signifiers were the expressed limits of mimetic character in their vocal performance. their use of voice as musical instrument was freed from subservience to well-known melodies in a performance of tribute or direct imitation, and as students learned new songs about jim morrison’s allegedly spiritual encounter with the navaho (‘one amerindian on the roadside, crying’), or mtv star michelle parma ( - ) sang about her career as a dallas cowboys cheerleader (‘couldn’t make the moon’), their vocal colours and intonation patterns remained their own: the actor playing jim morrison did not overly employ vocal fry in his dialogue (evident on many recorded interviews with the doors’ frontman), and the student who portrayed janis retained her strong mezzo range without aspirate onset or twang. in this sense, while vocal mimesis served to reference aesthetic or stylistic features, it was only one part of the voice as a plural site in performance. in fact, given the original nature of the musical material, the voice as ‘musical instrument’ would operate differently in this piece, re-authoring the musico-vocal expression in a new cultural space. elsewhere in schwartz’s study of copies, he conceives of the potential relationship between a copy and its original through a devastating social observation about codependency: ‘we use copies to certify originals, originals to certify copies, then we stand bewildered’ ( : ). in other words, if imitation is the site of constructed continuity or authenticity, it only operates because of limits imposed by its ‘bewildering’, co-dependent dialogue with the original. this might be illustrated by the following diagram: figure . schwartz’s culture of the copy, diagram by ben macpherson. this interrelationship between the original and the copy, and the sense of bewilderment wrought by a dialogue between them provides an interesting framework for considering the vocal performance of celebrity in all that’s left. with reference to the above discussion, a direction inclusion of frith’s vocal plurality into schwartz’s equation leads to the following expansion of the relationship between the original and the copy, articulating the potential limits and layers of vocal mimesis: figure . a culture of vocal mimesis, diagram by ben macpherson. in this iteration, the voice acts as a site which negotiates the limits of vocal mimesis as it seeks authorization within the context of an original musical score. accent and visual cues invoke references to celebrities in the performance, but while schwartz suggests that copies and originals ratify each other, the vocal mimesis finds its limits in the lack of original source material. the absence of a tangible ‘original’ produces what might be termed ‘vocal bewilderment’; the voice can longer be a barometer of accuracy in judging the imitation, as the performers are (re)authoring celebrities through imitative affectation via the use of original material. the freedom this offers allowed such (re)authoring to explore these characters in new and exciting ways. additionally, along with the limitations of vocal mimesis, the bewildered vocality also performed the distancing of voice from character. ‘blackvoice’: acousmatic audiophilia and the distancing of voice from character if the voice acts as a plural site for bewilderment, then any further inducement to audial anxiety through the distancing of the imitative voice from its subject would surely seem to complicate the nature of the copy and the attribution of continuity. in developing the character of robert johnson—the african-american musician whose style of blues guitar influenced a host of performers from b.b. king to stevie ray vaughan—a simultaneous challenge and reinforcement of the relationship between the copy and the original occurred. born in , johnson is seen as the elder statesman of the club in popular culture; a performer whose genius was gifted by the devil in a faustian pact at the crossroads near dockery plantation mississippi, and about whom little is known. a performance that explored the club would hardly have been complete without his character as a stalwart and backbone to the scenario we were trying to establish. however, at the time, there were no black students to assume this role, and having discounted blackface performance as a political and ethical strategy that would complicate the intentions of the work more than serve the dramaturgy, we began exploring the idea that johnson’s legacy was all-pervasive. his voice, therefore, would need to be more ethereal than that of more contemporary musicians and poets. as johnson was performing in the early twentieth century, during a period that saw much development in sound recording, we considered the idea of pre-recording the voice of robert johnson in order to evoke an era-specific technological advancement and a strong sense of ‘authenticity’ in the mimetic representation of this character. yet, already offering bewildered voices through the removal of original material with which the audience might validate these moments of (re)authoring, i was reminded of adorno’s sense of auditory distress over the identity of the recorded female voice without a body in ‘the curves of the needle’ ([ ] ). considering adorno’s experience, ella finer has recently argued that the dislocation of voice from body complicates ‘easy identification or characterization’ ( : ), effecting a distancing of reception and resulting in what michel chion has defined as the acousmatic voice, leading to ‘sounds one hears without seeing their originating cause’ ( : ). in deliberately using recorded voice, were we further dislocating the connection between voice and celebrity? how might this impact the potential (re)authoring of johnson? the intention had always been for johnson to be all-at-once ethereal and also strongly identifiable, and on this basis, i headed into a recording booth with an old, slightly out -of- tune guitar, and with a -year-old white student from basingstoke in hampshire. in just two takes, we recorded a musicalized account of johnson’s faustian encounter with satan, called ‘when the devil drives’, along with several lines of dialogue spoken by johnson. once again, almost automatically, the student actor assumed a faux-southern drawl, which we decided to retain for the recording, and to which we also added a vintage scratched vinyl effect as part of the post-production rendering. the voice of robert johnson had become a stereotype. along with the recording effects, the patterning, inflections and accent in this performance were ‘like’ an old song performed by johnson: frith’s vocal character was present. yet, the voice was unmistakably the student’s. his flat, short vowel sounds were present, the placement of his tongue overly-forward in his mouth when articulating was evident in the recording, and the over-pronunciation of various words betrayed the mimesis: ‘was’ became ‘waws’, ‘devil’ became ‘devarl’. in short, this copy became ‘black-voiced’; caught, bewildered between (stereotypical) imitation and (re)authoring. however, rather than causing auditory distress through acousmatization as finer, adorno or chion might reason, the dislocation of voice from source on the recording seemed to have the opposite effect. joseph sterne ( ) has suggested that the recorded voice may offer a different sense of embodied voice, rather than a dislocation, while pieter verstraete ( : - ) has drawn on jonathan burston’s discussion of ‘fetishistic audiophilia’ to suggest that the totalizing acousmatization of the voice in electronic form might create a new sonic materiality – one for which the audience might seek ratification but which leaves them bewildered. verstraete continues his consideration of the way in which this new sonorous materiality ‘gives the impression of having a life of its own, moving uncontrollably through space as an invisible, immaterial body that produces a direct, physical sensation on the listener’ ( : ). this sensation is particularly powerful through electronic recordings, as steven connor has likewise noted: ‘recording makes listening transitive, and therefore powerful’ ( : ). for connor, the power in recorded voice is, in part, due to its acousmatic properties, but specifically as a result of the enforced active engagement by the listener. if this recorded voice has a life of its own, this cannot be mimetic. this voice—pre-recorded, with an obvious digital effect, betraying the limits of its own mimetic character through accent—becomes a sonic materiality that explicitly resists categorization as a mimetic imitation, even when the student automatically attempted to emulate a stereotypical vocality of the genre concerned. it is simultaneously an imitative copy and an original. the acousmatized recorded voice ratifies itself, becoming its own authenticity as argued by verstraete, and might be understood in this context with the phrase acousmatic audiophilia. this voice is the site of struggle: privileged, bewildered. for ursula bloom, such a state may (re)author the power of the voice, for she argues that it is the ‘voice’s distance from, rather than presence in, the body [its acousmatization] that constitutes the conditions of agency’ ( : ). indeed, this voice is a (sonic) copy of a (recorded) copy of a (mimetic) copy of a (mythological) copy—the popular lore of johnson’s pact; any ‘original’ source that schwartz may wish to use for ratification is perpetually indeterminate. yet, as verstraete ( ) and sterne ( ) have suggested, the very act of such mimetic indeterminacy assuming a new sonic materiality through recording allows it to become the focal point in an uncanny, dislocated performance of the limits of mimesis. this focus, dislocation and bewilderment allowed for a (re)authoring of the johnson myth in performance. yet, in staging johnson’s song the stage director was keen that ‘something should happen onstage’. various suggestions were made throughout the first week as to what this should be, and eventually, a prop was selected to ‘represent’ johnson’s presence: an old rocking-chair was added to the performance space, on which sat a broken guitar. scholars john bell ( ) and jody joy ( ) have noted that the use of material objects to represent characters in performance bring with them a chain of associated socio-cultural meanings, and can act as material or referential metaphors, altering the configuration of distance or intimacy between character, performer, and audience. in this case, the chair did not become endowed with a persona; it remained a chair—the visual object representative of a character that was present in the space via a pre-recorded voice, which sonically ‘bounced off’ the legs, arms, back, seat and spokes, rather than becoming absorbed by them. the sense of disconnect between the visual and the vocal/aural was further reinforced by the activation of the object in performance. scholar penny francis ( : ) has distinguished between objects that are configured as figures (personified or anthropomorphized) or objects (retaining their everyday materiality or function), suggesting that animated objects remain in their natural state, despite assuming the properties of the character represented, if manipulated or animated somehow. in the case of robert johnson, the performance of his song and dialogue was signified by a spotlight on the chair, as it was rocked by the foot of another performer. the chair’s agency as a representative object was activated by other performers in a manner somewhat reminiscent of tadeusz kantor’s description of puppets as poor objects, secondary onstage to the performer that activates them. the agency of the visual object was not even to act as a surrogate body: it was conceptually and performatively separate, maintaining the sense of disconnect and unrest that evoked the effervescence of the character. this reinforced the theatricality of the voice by denying it material agency, and allowed the plurality of the voice—as person, character, instrument and body—to become the primary focus as a dramatic agent through acousmatic audiophilia. in short, the material object endowed the voice with uncanny agency as a paradoxically imitative medium, mimetic at the point of the original. robert johnson’s voice was therefore experienced as a plural site between mimesis and materiality: a moment of new sonority through acousmatic audiophilia, found in the gaps and spaces between the material object (the rocking chair), the imitative medium (the recorded voice) and the audience’s collusion in the uncanny paradox, which forced them to listen, ‘straining toward a possible meaning’ in the subtext and characterization, through the layers and limits of this bewildering voice (nancy : ). therefore, it is not only the performing voice involved in (re)authoring these celebrities, it is also the listening ears of the audience. when it came to giving voice—or the opposite—to kurt cobain, the bewildered voice did not perform a sense of aural negation between absence and fetishism but a sense of sadistic ambivalence evoking his legacy through the act of listening. eavesdropping, stolen voices and the sadistic power of listening as the lead singer of s seattle grunge band nirvana, kurt cobain’s suicide note is widely available online. if it is genuine, it is tragic. if it is fake, it is also tragic. in either instance, one question pervaded the rehearsal room: how do you sing a suicide note? as a dramatic text — whether epistolary, linguistic or sung—its honesty and directness, along with the sheer sense of memory and regret, seemed to embody the conflict between personal demons and the hostages to celebrity and fame that many of those who died at never negotiated successfully. this is not to romanticize the loss, pointlessness, brazen self-destruction, or otherwise nefarious circumstances that led to popular counter-cultural conspiracies and the mythology of a shared association and narrative between ultimately unrelated deaths; it does perhaps suggest the reason we were drawn to the subject as a potential music theatre project in the first place. still, until the death of amy winehouse, cobain was lauded in the popular press as the dominant icon of this counter-cultural community; making him sing was always going to be a problem. as a liminal artefact, the alleged suicide note left by cobain was written when he was alive, and only read when he was deceased. as his last words, the intensity and intimacy in what would be the final song of the show led to a ballad in ab major, with a simple chordal rhythm and piano-only accompaniment. in rehearsal, the student playing cobain (who also played richey edwards from the manic street preachers) really struggled to connect to the material in a meaningful way. ‘it’s too real—what if he actually wrote this?’, he asked. during the process, the song was reassigned to the student playing jim morrison, who had also previously voiced robert johnson. in performing the suicide note as a song entitled ‘letter to an imaginary friend’—addressed to cobain’s imaginary childhood companion boddah—he hands the letter to jim morrison. singing these words, the cocksure front-man of the doors, who spent much of the show championing the members of this club as immortal geniuses, is forced into his own vocal bewilderment. with the following first verse, the dramatic irony of morrison’s voice singing cobain’s words proved very interesting to develop: kurt i didn’t want to do this, did you? i’d rather be emasculated. i’d rather play the simpleton, don’t know it’s over, ‘til it’s gone. i didn’t want to do this… in his paper ‘sadistic listening’ ( ), steven connor considers a further crucial concept that relates to voice and its mimetic layers and limitations: the position of the listener. connor discusses the sadistic subjectivity of the listener: ‘one who installs themselves as the unheard hearer, the invisible addressee who alone can make sense of what is being said’ ( : ). citing psychoanalyst theodore reik’s work listening with the third ear, connor observes the psychoanalytical imperative of resisting a patient’s need for subjective interpretation, and the freudian practice of removing the analyst from the visual field of the analysand. in short, the analyst becomes an eavesdropper on the subject’s thoughts: ‘what the eavesdropper hears with such handrubbing relish is the deafness of the speaker, and the power that such a fantasy of deafness gives’ (connor : ). presumably, it was this sense of the deafness of the speaker that prompted the student to consider the poignancy of cobain’s alleged words. this form of eavesdropping appealed when it came to considering how we might make him sing, for in giving these words to jim morrison, the ‘deafness of the speaker’ (connor : ) that the eavesdropping audience would hear is doubled: cobain’s voice did not speak his own words, and morrison’s voice speak words that are not his. yet, is this eavesdropping? or is this a form of aural voyeurism? distinguishing between these acts, johanna linsley has suggested that the latter is directly related to sight and gratification, whereas eavesdropping allows the listener to create ‘a history and persona for [the] subject’ listened-in on ( : ). if the aural agency of eavesdropping allows the listener to create their own narrative—much like the popular press are wont to do with the lives and losses of these celebrities—then might this, in itself, suggest another limit (or layer) of vocal mimesis? does the listener create their own copy, seeking to ratify it from an already-alienated position of indeterminacy? as salomé voegelin has noted, hearing/listening is always flawed and full of doubt, without a meta-position from which to construct the discourse ( : xii). in the case of this song, the absence of a meta-position is enhanced by cobain’s ‘voice’ being silenced (perhaps stolen?); morrison’s words are not his own, but they are words nonetheless. as such, their origin is questioned, exposed, cast into doubt. the copy has no origin; the limits of mimesis are exposed through a ‘bewildered voice’ assuming the character’s agency, and the act of eavesdropping on cobain’s words becomes a moment in which the audience are forced to construct and question the many metanarratives and mythologies surrounding the contentious demise of cobain. in short, the audience themselves may (re)author the celebrity through an act of sadistic listening to his bewildered, stolen voice. conclusion this article began with rosemary j. coombe’s question ‘who authors the celebrity?’ ( : ). considering the development of all that’s left and the possibilities of vocal performance, there are several responses that might be offered. the performance of voice as a plural site of negotiation between character and performer (after frith) demonstrated the limits of vocal mimesis, while at the same time offering a sense of possibility beyond this in the performance of an original work. offering a tentative answer to her own question, coombe suggests that: ‘celebrity is authored in a multiplicity of sites of interpretive practice […] mined for its symbolic resonances’ ( : - ). the multiplicity of sites includes the popular press, the music industry, copious fan community websites, and the consumption of ephemera by the populace. notably, the voice appears to act as a repository for a ‘multiplicity of sites’ that perform the authoring of celebrities on stage. at least three sites, or layers, of authorship could be identified throughout the process. first, the use of accent allows a sense of imitation and ‘continuity’ of the celebrity image through vocal mimesis. however, the acceptance of the inescapable ‘grain’ exposes the limits of imitation. while an audience might use voice as a barometer of accuracy, the implicit acknowledgement that music-vocal performance in this context is always-already a heightened reality means that the performativity of the voice itself becomes a primary focus, with the potential for authoring the celebrity in a new way. in this sense, the celebrity may be authored by a ‘bewildered voice’. second, the use of recorded voice and the implicit acknowledgement of artifice may lead to acousmatic audiophilia, pushing even towards a ‘present sense beyond sound’ (nancy : ), only to find that the audiophilia experienced acts as an agency to unveil the limits of mimesis; even uncanny mediation renders what is heard and how it is heard indiscernible, with the resultant bewildered voice still ‘mined for its symbolic resonance’ (coombe : ). nevertheless, it is this sense of indiscernible agency, and the ineffability in performing the layers and limits of mimesis that provide a thrill, empowering singers and listeners, in the third layer of authorship, to eavesdrop on voices for which they cannot help but construct their own narrative: mimetic, flawed, and unknowable. perhaps, in the end, the act of listening to these voices reformulates the flawed and unknowable listening-in that popular culture has taken so much pleasure in, creating mythologies so far away from reality that there is no original left to ratify. an accent suggests an origin, a recording embodies a sensibility, and a transgressive act of eavesdropping performs the very (re)authoring facilitated by the limits, layers and potential of vocal mimesis in musical theatre performance. references adorno, t.w. ([ ] ), ‘the curves of the needle’, (trans. t.y. levin.), october, : pp. - . barthes, r. ( ), ‘the grain of the voice’, in image, music, text, (trans. s. heath), london: fontana press, pp. - . bell, j. ( ), ‘puppets and performing objects in the twentieth century’, performing arts journal : , pp. - . bickerdicke, j.o. ( ), fandom, image and authenticity: joy devotion and the second lives of kurt cobain and ian curtis, basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. burston, j. ( ), ‘theatre space as virtual place: audio technology, the reconfigured singing body, and the megamusical’, popular music, : , pp. - . chion, m. ( ), audio-vision: sound on screen, (trans. w. murch and c. gorbman), new york: columbia university press. --- ( ), the voice in cinema, (trans. c. gorbman), new york: columbia university press. connor, s. ( ), dumbstruck: a cultural history of ventriloquism, oxford and new york: oxford university press. --- ( ), ‘sadistic listening’, http://stevenconnor.com/sadisticlistening.html. accessed: may . --- ( ), ‘acousmania’, http://stevenconnor.com/wp- content/uploads/ / /acousmania.pdf. accessed: october . coombe, r. j. ( ), the cultural life of intellectual properties: authorship, appropriation and the law, durham: duke university press. francis, p. ( ), puppetry: a reader in theatre practice, basingstoke: palgrave. finer, e. ( ), ‘strange objects/strange properties: female audibility and the acoustic stage prop’, in k. thomaidis and b. macpherson (eds.), voice studies: critical approaches http://stevenconnor.com/sadisticlistening.html http://stevenconnor.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /acousmania.pdf http://stevenconnor.com/wp-content/uploads/ / /acousmania.pdf to process, performance and experience, oxford and new york: routledge, pp. - . frith, s. ( ), ‘the voice as a musical instrument’, in m. clayton (ed.), music, words and text: a reader, manchester: manchester university press, pp. - . gross, k. ( ), puppet: an essay on an uncanny life, chicago: university of chicago press. joy, j. ( ), ‘reinvigorating object biography: reproducing the drama of object lives’, world archaeology, : , pp. - . karpf, a. ( ), the human voice: how this extraordinary instrument reveals essential clues about who we are, london: bloomsbury. linsley, j. ( ), ‘the eavesdropper: listening-in and overhearing the voice in performance’, in k. thomaidis and b. macpherson (eds.), voice studies: critical approaches to process, performance and experience, oxford and new york: routledge, pp. - . schwartz, h. ( ), the culture of the copy: striking likenesses, unreasonable facsimiles, massachusetts: mit press. sounes, h. ( ), : a history of the club through the lives of brian jones, jimi hendrix, janis joplin and jim morrison, kurt cobain and amy winehouse, boston: da capo press. taylor, m. ( ), musical theatre, realism and entertainment, farnham, uk: ashgate. theodossopoulos, d. ( ), ‘laying claim to authenticity: five anthropological dilemmas’, anthropology quarterly, : , pp. - . verstraete, p. ( ), ‘the frequency of imagination: auditory distress and aurality in contemporary music theatre’, unpublished ph.d. thesis, http://dare.uva.nl/document/ / . accessed september . endnotes a public record of the festival might be found on twitter: https://twitter.com/pompeyunifest with the handle: @pompeyunifest. i wish to thank the faculty of creative and cultural industries, and the school of media and performing arts, for support in developing the research. in part, the piece was developed by means of institutional research funding to facilitate the project as a research-and-development activity, comprising the performance itself and the publication of concepts and issues arising from the process, as seen here. in particular, my colleague matt smith was of invaluable assistance in developing my thinking regarding puppetry and object theatre. for scholarship examining this popular cultural phenomenon, see bickerdicke and sounes . ‘authenticity’ is a complicated and much contested term that demitrious theodossopolous argues ‘encompasses diverse sets of meaning that range from genuineness and originality to accuracy and http://dare.uva.nl/document/ / https://twitter.com/pompeyunifest truthfulness […] it is concerned with […] the authorship of products, producers, and cultural practices, the categorical boundaries of society: “who” or “what” is “who” or “what” claims to be’ ( : ). the relationship to authorship and whether something or someone ‘is’ (or ‘is like’) what they claim is an appropriate definition with regards to this discussion. this explanation is necessarily quite reductive; the process is, in reality, far more nuanced and complex than space allows here. see millie taylor ( : - ). on a broader level, the compulsion to ‘make copies’ was particularly pertinent in the case of the club, as the multitude of popular mythologies that have developed around these performers constantly re-author them in culture, and ‘best of’ albums provide a sense of continuity, keeping the performers ‘alive’ after their untimely demise. in many cases, all that is left of them is a recorded voice. see burston . the same is true of puppets, although not all object theatre is puppetry. because of the recent nature of winehouse’s death, the decision was taken early on in the writing process not to include her in the narrative until the very end. in the course of developing the work, she was cut from the final performance altogether. the self-conscious narrator in donald barthelme and vladimir nabokov by donald hutton stanley b.a., honours, university of b r i t i s h columbia, m.a., state university of new york at binghamton, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy i n the faculty of graduate studies department of english we accept t h i s thesis as conforming to the required standard the university of british columbia october, (c) donald hutton stanley, in p r e s e n t i n g t h i s t h e s i s i n p a r t i a l f u l f i l l m e n t of the requirements f o r an advanced degree a t the u n i v e r s i t y of b r i t i s h columbia, i agree t h a t the l i b r a r y s h a l l make i t . f r e e l y a v a i l a b l e f o r r e f e r e n c e and study. i f u r t h e r agree t h a t p e r m i s s i o n f o r e x t e n s i v e copying of t h i s t h e s i s f o r s c h o l a r l y purposes may be granted by the head of my department or h i s r e p r e s e n t a t i v e . i t i s understood t h a t copying or p u b l i c a t i o n o f t h i s t h e s i s f o r f i n a n c i a l g a i n s h a l l not be allowed without my w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . (donald hutton stanley) abstract the l i t e r a r y d e v i c e of a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s p r e v a l e n t i n the works of donald barthelme and v l a d i m i r nabokov. however, the themes and world view of the works are not predetermined by any q u a l i t i e s i n h e r e n t i n the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . d e s p i t e a c u r r e n t c r i t i c a l tendency to suppose t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s n e c e s s a r i l y i m p l i e s a p r o b l e m a t i c or s o l i p s i s t i c stance towards both r e a l i t y and t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m , the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r remains a m a l l e a b l e d e v i c e which can be used i n c o n j u n c t i o n with t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m , and which can be shaped a c c o r d i n g to the unique purposes of a p a r t i c u l a r author. a tendency among c e r t a i n contemporary t h e o r i s t s -- robert a l t e r , susan sontag, maurice beebe and o t h e r s — would make s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s , r a t h e r than r e a l i s m , c e n t r a l to the t r a d i t i o n of the n o v e l . t h i s tendency r e p r e s e n t s a phase i n the h i s t o r i c a l p a t t e r n by which the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r goes i n and out of f a s h i o n . in the e i g h t e e n t h century e n g l i s h novel he appeared to be a s p r i g h t l y v a r i a n t of the formal r e a l i s m of defoe and r i c h a r d - son, i n t h a t he i n t e r r u p t e d the n a r r a t i v e to comment on n a r r a t i v e technique, and to emphasize the a r t i f i c i a l or c o n t r i v e d aspect of what were otherwise presented as r e a l events. d e s p i t e an e a r l y f r u i t i o n i n sterne, the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ' s p o p u l a r i t y d e c l i n e d , and c r i t i c s came to regard him as an a b e r r a t i o n , and an impediment to the novel's " i m p l i c i t methods." he r e v i v e d i n the modern e r a , and a t present s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i t s e l f i s assumed by some c r i t i c s to be "at the h e a r t of the modernist consciousness i n a l l the a r t s . " t h i s somewhat exaggerated s t a t u s of l i t e r a r y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s leads to a corresponding condes- c e n s i o n towards t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m , a condescension which i s r e v e a l e d i n the c r i t i c a l response to nabokov's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . some of the c r i t i c i s m of nabokov i s v i t i a t e d by the s i m p l i s t i c assumption t h a t nabokov, the wizard of m i r r o r s and word games, has banished from h i s novels a l l t r a c e s of the r e a l world. in f a c t , however, nabokov's n a r r a t o r s c o n t r i b u t e to a unique world view i n which there i s an i m p l i e d i d e n t i t y between the f i c t i o n a l world of a r t and the r u l e s of the u n i v e r s e . the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r emphasizes the a r t i f i c e of the n a r r a t i v e , but a t the same time he p e r s o n i f i e s , as i t were, c e r t a i n n a r r a t i v e conven- t i o n s , and adds what c h a r l e s kinbote c a l l s a "human r e a l i t y . " his ongoing d i a l o g u e with the reader helps the reader to r e c o g n i z e the f a l s e a r t i f i c e of t o t a l i t a r i a n s t a t e s and t o t a l i t a r i a n a r t , and teaches the reader to regard f i c t i o n a l c h a r a c t e r s w i t h a sympathetic eye. in the words of a l b e r t guerard, "within nabokov's i n v o l u t i o n s , behind h i s many screens, l i e r e a l people." donald barthelme's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s might a t f i r s t appear to be r a t h e r t y p i c a l spokesmen f o r c e r t a i n c l i c h e s of avant garde theory: o n t o l o g i c a l chaos, the breakdown of language and meaning, e x i s t e n t i a l dread. but the n a r r a t o r s are a l s o s a t i r i s t s of avant garde theory, p a r t i c u l a r l y the theory t h a t the l i t e r a r y past has been d i s c r e d i t e d and language no longer communicates. rather than i n t i m i d a t i n g the reader, the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r sometimes a c t s as h i s a l l y , i n v i t i n g the reader to check the f i c t i o n a g a i n s t c o n d i t i o n s i n the reader's own world ("look f o r y o u r s e l f , " i v says one n a r r a t o r ) . s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s shown to be p a r t of a malaise i n s o c i e t y i t s e l f , a malaise t h a t i s o c c a s i o n e d not so much by e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l breakdown as by moral f a i l u r e . s e l f - consciousness i s a symptom of a s o c i e t y t h a t i s a t h e a r t e v i l and murderous. barthelme and nabokov employ t h e i r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s to d i f f e r e n t ends: nabokov's g i f t e d s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r c o n t r i b u t e s to nabokov's serene sense of an i d e n t i t y between a r t and r e a l i t y ; barthelme d i s c o v e r s a moral f a i l u r e a t the heart of a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s o c i e t y . the works and world views of each author are made p o s s i b l e by a unique t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of a t r a d i t i o n a l n a r r a t i v e convention. table of contents introduction chapter i the pedigree of the self-conscious narrator i n t r o d u c t i o n i n a r r a t i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s defined ' the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s 'narrator i l l u s t r a t e d the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n the e i g h t e e n t h century the d e c l i n e of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r the inhuman n a r r a t o r s o c i a l realism the breakdown of s o c i a l realism the return of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r chapter i i the "gift" of the self-conscious narrator: the fiction of vladimir nabokov i n t r o d u c t i o n nabokov's p r i v a t e l i f e the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r as a r t i s t the m u l t i p l e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r the p e r s u a s i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r the metaphysics of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s chapter i i i the murderous self-conscious narrator: the fiction of donald barthelme i n t r o d u c t i o n the urban n e u r o t i c the philosophy of chaos language problems: the l i s t language problems: m a l f u n c t i o n language problems: the loss of emotion s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l i t e r a t u r e the other side of the avant garde the n a r r a t o r as plain-speaker the o r i g i n a l , a u t h e n t i c s e l f as a d i r t y great v i l l a i n c o n c l u s i o n conclusion bibliography v acknowledgement i wish to acknowledge the a s s i s t a n c e of my d i s s e r t a t i o n committee, j e r r y wasserman ( s u p e r v i s o r ) , roger seamon and graham good. v i introduction my s u b j e c t i s the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n the f i c t i o n of v l a d i m i r nabokov- and donald barthelme. n e i t h e r of these w r i t e r s has e s t a b l i s h e d a monopoly on the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , whose presence i n contemporary american l i t e r a t u r e has become p e r v a s i v e . his u b i q u i t y i s a symptom of a change i n the t r a d i t i o n of the n o v e l , a change characterized by the d i m i n i s h i n g c r i t i c a l s t a t u s of r e a l i s m . the long t r a d i t i o n t h a t r e a l i s m i s c e n t r a l to the novel has been r e v i s e d ; as i s usual with r e v i s i o n i s t t h e o r i e s , t h e r e i s an element of d i s t o r t i o n . contemporary t h e o r i s t s tend to argue t h a t the presence of d e l i b e r a t e a r t i f i c e and n a r r a t i v e s e l f - consciousness w i t h i n a work i m p l i e s a r e j e c t i o n of t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m , and, perhaps, a s o l i p s i s t i c stance towards both language and meaning. joyce c a r o l oates, w r i t i n g i n r e a c t i o n to the new t h e o r i e s , asks, q u e r u l o u s l y , "why i s i t t h a t our c l e v e r e s t w r i t e r s , pushed forward by e d i t o r s , c r i t i c s and f e l l o w - w r i t e r s a l i k e , have f o l l o w e d so e a g e r l y the s o l i p s i s t i c examples of nabokov, beckett and, more r e c e n t l y and most p o w e r f u l l y , borges?""^ oates o v e r - g e n e r a l i z e s , but her f r e t f u l q u e s t i o n i s germane; w i t h r e f e r e n c e to our p a r t i c u l a r i n t e r e s t , the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , i t i s c l e a r t h a t some c r i t i c s c o n s i d e r him the bearer of o v e r t l y a r t i f i c i a l and c o n t r i v e d f i c t i o n , f i c t i o n which, to ( ) joyce carol oates, "whose side are you on?/the guest word," new york times book review, june , p. . evoke page stegner on nabokov, escapes i n t o a e s t h e t i c s . contem- porary c r i t i c s , p a r t i c u l a r l y c r i t i c s w i t h a l l e g i a n c e s to the avant garde, tend to smuggle t h e i r preconceptions a c r o s s the border of a g i v e n work by means of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ; but the n a r r a t o r , l i k e the c r i t i c , i s j u s t a t o u r i s t w i t h i n the abso- l u t e d i c t a t o r s h i p of the author. hence the t h e s i s of the p r e s e n t work: the p h i l o s o p h i c and a e s t h e t i c e f f e c t of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n a g i v e n work by barthelme or nabokov i s determined by the author, and not by any i n h e r e n t and i n e s c a p a b l e q u a l i t y of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s d e v i c e i t s e l f . barthelme and nabokov bend the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n the d i r e c t i o n of t h e i r own unique aims and o b s e s s i o n s . they e x e r c i s e complete c o n t r o l over t h e i r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s d e v i c e s , i n c l u d i n g the e f f e c t of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r on r e a l i s m ; they do not f o n d l y suppose t h a t i f the n a r r a t o r ' s i m a g i n a t i o n i s s t r o n g , the h o l d on r e a l i t y must be weak. since i t might seem s e l f - e v i d e n t to argue t h a t authors are masters of the a v a i l a b l e techniques, l e t me d e s c r i b e i n some- what more d e t a i l c e r t a i n contemporary a t t i t u d e s towards s e l f - conscious f i c t i o n . i t should be remembered t h a t when the novel had the a u t h e n t i c i t y of h i s t o r y or biography, the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r was thought to be an e x c e s s i v e l y p e r s o n a l and even amat- e u r i s h i n t r u s i o n i n t o the novel's c a r e f u l v e r i s i m i l i t u d e ; to quote henry james, the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r seemed " i n a r t i s t i c . " ( ) henry james, "anthony trollope," in the future of the novel, ed. leon edel (new york: random house, ), p. . but i n contemporary theory the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s o f t e n taken to be the a r t i s t i c s a l v a t i o n of what would otherwise be h o p e l e s s l y p e d e s t r i a n r e a l i s m . for example, maurice beebe remarks t h a t many c r i t i c s have been w r i t i n g "about the r e f l e x i v e and s o l i p s i s t i c q u a l i t y of modernist l i t e r a t u r e , the way i n which i t t u r n s inward and con- s i d e r s i t s e l f . " from the i m p r e s s i o n i s t s on, "most of our s i g - n i f i c a n t a r t i s t s have i m p l i e d t h a t t h e i r v i s i o n of t h i n g s i s more important than the t h i n g s themselves" (p. ), and, adds beebe, i n a trendy t r u i s m , the " c r e a t i o n of a r t i s almost always a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a c t " (p. ). beebe i s c a r e f u l not to take a s i d e , and h i s argument i s f u l l of c a r e f u l q u a l i f i c a t i o n s ; neverthe- l e s s there i s a d i s c e r n i b l e tendency to t h i n k of the novel as e s s e n t i a l l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s . the same c o u l d be s a i d f o r robert a l t e r ' s book, as one might gather from the s u b t i t l e : p a r t i a l magic: the novel as a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s genre. a l t e r says he i s b a l a n c i n g a c r i t i c a l b i a s f o r r e a l i s m : e s p e c i a l l y w i t h i n the sphere -of e n g l i s h c r i - t i c i s m of the n o v e l , there has been a r e c u r - r e n t e x p e c t a t i o n t h a t " s e r i o u s " f i c t i o n be an i n t e n t , v e r i s i m i l a r r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of moral s i t u a t i o n s i n t h e i r s o c i a l con- t e x t s ; and, w i t h ; few e x c e p t i o n s , t h e r e has been a lamentable l a c k of c r i t i c a l a p p r e c i - a t i o n f o r the k i n d of novel t h a t expresses i t s s e r i o u s n e s s through p l a y f u l n e s s , t h a t i s a c u t e l y aware of i t s e l f as a mere s t r u c t u r e of words even as i t t r i e s to d i s c o v e r ways of going beyond words to the experiences words seek to indicate.,. ( ) maurice beebe,"refleeti ve- and reflexive trends in modern l i t e r a t u r e , " in twentieth-century poetry, f i c t i o n , theory, ed. harry r. garvin (lewisburg, penn.: bucknell univ. press, ), p. . ( ) robert alter, p a r t i a l magic (berkeley: univ. of c a l i f . press, ), p. ix. the t r a d i t i o n of the novel i s informed by a " c r i t i c a l - p h i l o s o p h i c a l awareness" i n which ontology i s " e s s e n t i a l l y p r o b l e m a t i c , " and the novel i s " l e s s c l o s e l y l i n k e d w i t h the s o l i d assurances and m a t e r i a l views of bourgeois s o c i e t y than some observers have imagined" (pp. x, x v ) . those same p u r b l i n d observers have missed the importance to the novel of " r e s t l e s s s e l f - q u e s t i o n i n g " (p. x v ) . however, a l t e r stops s h o r t of p r o c l a i m i n g t h a t the novel i s e s s e n t i a l l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , or t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s c h a r a c t - e r i z e s what he f a c e t i o u s l y terms "the other great t r a d i t i o n " (p. i x ) . other c r i t i c s have been l e s s circumspect; c o n s i d e r , f o r example, john d i t s k y ' s a n a l y s i s of the w i l l i a m gass n o v e l , w i l l i e masters' lonesome wife. d i t s k y says the novel's patron s a i n t i s laurence sterne, a reminder t h a t the t r a d i t i o n a l n o v e l has had a v a i l a b l e f o r c e n t u r i e s the model i t has now chosen to f o l l o w up, and a f i g u r e whose e x i s - tence makes p o s s i b l e the d i s t u r b i n g suggestion t h a t the n o v e l form has been s i d e t r a c k e d s i n c e long b e f o r e austen. d i t s k y here a r t i c u l a t e s a concept dear to some contemporary c r i t i c s , t h a t sterne's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s more c e n t r a l than austen's r e a l i s m , t h a t the novel as a genre has u n t i l r e c e n t l y been " s i d e t r a c k e d . " when c r i t i c s begin to d i s t i n g u i s h h i g h roads as opposed to s i d e t r a c k s , and p l a y the p a r l o r game of great t r a d i t - ions i n which o n l y approved works q u a l i f y , the unique v a l u e s of a p a r t i c u l a r work tend to be s l i g h t e d . i t i s the s i g n of a s h i f t ( ) john ditsky, "the man on the quaker oats box: characteristics of recent experimental fiction," georgia review, ( ), . i n f a s h i o n , a new f a d , when c r i t i c s c o n t i n u o u s l y b r i n g sterne on stage. we r e c o g n i z e h i s mischievous i n f l u e n c e i n d i t s k y ' s d e s c r i p t i o n of the "conscious presence of the c r e a t i v e i n t e l l i - gence as a c t i v e p a r t i c i p a n t i n the reader's v i c a r i o u s experience of the f i c t i o n a l work's substance," and i n d i t s k y ' s b r e a t h l e s s announcement t h a t "the a r t i s t - a u d i e n c e - w o r k r e l a t i o n s h i p becomes one of a c t i v e and r a d i c a l c o n s p i r a c y — one not to be confused w i t h the p a t r o n i z i n g h o m i l y - s e s s i o n s of an e a r l i e r day" (p. ). d i t s k y ' s own p a t r o n i z i n g d i s d a i n f o r the homily s e s s i o n s of an e a r l i e r day i s p a r t of a c r i t i c a l s t r a t e g y t h a t c a l l s f o r a " r a d i c a l " break w i t h the t r a d i t i o n a l n o v e l . today's brash s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r must be d i s a s s o c i a t e d from h i s sedate n i n e t e e n t h century a n c e s t o r s . t h e o r i e s of a r a d i c a l break w i t h convention emphasize the n a r r a t o r ' s c r e a t i v e ( s o l i p s i s t i c ) i m a g i n a t i o n to the detriment of t r a d i t i o n a l mimesis. the f i r s t c a s u a l t i e s of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s f i c t i o n are t h i n g s as they are — a mercy k i l l i n g , a c c o r d i n g to some c r i t i c s . c h a r l e s r u s s e l l , f o r example, maintains t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l i t e r a t u r e denies r e a l i t y , or evades r e a l i t y , or gets by without r e a l i t y , on the ground t h a t language i s i n c a p a b l e of e x p r e s s i n g anything about the r e a l world. value and meaning are dead i s s u e s , says r u s s e l l , who assumes t h a t the authors he analyzes share h i s negations. he says c h e e r f u l l y t h a t , "as saussure has shown, a l l g l i n g u i s t i c systems are fundamentally a r b i t r a r y . " "language ... can never be more than a tenuous i m p o s i t i o n on a meaningless world. ( ) charles russell, "the vault of language: s e l f - r e f l e x i v e a r t i f i c e in contemporary american fiction," modern f i c t i o n studies, ( ), . u l t i m a t e l y , meaning can r e f e r o n l y to i t s own l i n g u i s t i c system. i t has o n l y a s e l f - r e f e r e n t i a l s i g n i f i c a n c e . " t h e r e f o r e , " s e l f - r e f l e c t i v e a r t r e v e a l s t h i s e x i s t e n c e centered upon i t s e l f " (p. ). r u s s e l l ' s c l o s e d c i r c l e surrounds the l i n e s of w i l l i a m h. gass: on the other s i d e of a novel l i e s the v o i d . think f o r i n s t a n c e , of a s t r i d i n g s t a t u e ; imagine the p u r p o s e f u l i n c l i n a t i o n of the t o r s o , the a l e r t and p e n e t r a t i n g gaze of the head and i t s eyes, the o u t s t r e t c h e d arm and p o i n t i n g f i n g e r ; e v e r y t h i n g would appear to d i r e c t us toward some g o a l i n f r o n t of i t . yet our eye t r a v e l s o n l y to the f i n g e r ' s end, and not beyond. though p o i n t i n g , the f i n g e r b i d s us stay i n s t e a d , and we journey s l o w l y back along the t e n s i o n of the arm. in our h e a r t s we know what a c t u a l l y surrounds the s t a t u e . the same surrounds every other work of a r t : empty space and s i l e n c e . ^ but, as we w i l l argue l a t e r , donald barthelme's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s f i c t i o n i s not s e l f - c o n t a i n e d ; h i s e x q u i s i t e l y - c a r v e d s t a t u e s p o i n t a f i n g e r d i r e c t l y a t the reader's world. when r u s s e l l c l a i m s t h a t v l a d i m i r nabokov's novels are " t o t a l l y s e l f - a b s o r b e d , s e l f - r e f e r e n t i a l l i n g u i s t i c games c l a i m i n g no entrance i n t o , no involvement with, the phenomenal world" (p. ), he i s t a k i n g no account of nabokov's p a s s i o n f o r s c i e n t i f i c accuracy and f i d - e l i t y to the n a t u r a l world. r u s s e l l i s f o r c e d to ignore such nabokov s t o r i e s as "an a f f a i r of honour," i n which the n a r r a t o r s a d l y d e f l a t e s the daydreams of the l e a d i n g c h a r a c t e r on the ground' t h a t , "such t h i n g s don't happen i n r e a l l i f e . " ( ) william h. gass, fiction and the figures of l i f e (new york: random house, vintage books, ), as quoted i n russell, p. . ( ) vladimir nabokov, "an affair of honour," i n a russian beauty and other stories, trans. dmitri nabokov, vladimir nabokov and simon karlinsky (new york: mcgraw-hill, ), p . . but to continue with r u s s e l l ' s argument. he i n s i s t s t h a t john barth "comprehends t h a t a l l f i c t i o n s are u l t i m a t e l y about themselves, about the c r e a t i o n of the world by the word" (p. ). barth's i r o n y : i negates any demand of the contemporary a r t i s t t o c r e a t e a r a d i c a l l y new v i s i o n ..." (p. ); i n f a c t , barth and other contemporary w r i t e r s , i n the attempt to reach toward "the l a t e n t e x i s t e n c e of the world around us ... always r e t u r n t o the meaning of t h a t r e a c h i n g . i f we see, or c r e a t e , meaning, i t i s r e c o g n i z e d as one more a r t i f i c e " (p. ). anything t h a t resem- b l e s meaning or t r u t h i s j u s t another i l l u s o r y l a y e r of a r t i f i c e , and t h i s s t a t e of a f f a i r s holds t r u e f o r most contemporary f i c t i o n , s i n c e r u s s e l l assures us t h a t "both the two main d i r - e c t i o n s to contemporary l i t e r a t u r e " r e v e a l "the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y e x p l o r a t i v e nature of our a r t " (p. ). the s h o r t term f o r such t h e o r i z i n g would seem to be s o l i p - sism, although r u s s e l l s sometimes opaque argument i s never q u i t e t h a t b l u n t . one i s t h a n k f u l , t h e r e f o r e , f o r the s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d candor.of a r l e n hansen's t i t l e , "the c e l e b r a t i o n of s o l i p s i s m : a new trend i n american f i c t i o n . " a f t e r d i s c o v e r i n g s o l i p s i s m i n barth, barthelme, gass and o t h e r s , hansen concludes t h a t contem- porary w r i t e r s : began i n r e a c t i o n to the d e t e r m i n i s t s ' d e n i a l of the power or s i g n i f i c a n c e of man's c r e a t i v e i m a g i n a t i o n . in the end, some may t r y to deny the adjustmental aspect of experience, and thus t h e i r v i s i o n may become too h i g h l y s u b j e c t i v e and d e l u s o r y . but the moments of d e l u s i o n and p r e c i o u s n e s s might prove i n the f i n a l a n a l y s i s a small p r i c e to pay f o r a renewed a t t e n t i o n t o , and r e s p e c t f o r , man's i m a g i n a t i o n . q ( ) arlen j. hansen, "the celebration of solipsism," modern f i c t i o n studies, ( ), . although hansen i s more temperate than r u s s e l l , h i s c o n c l u s i o n r e s t s on the same assumption t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l i t e r a t u r e downplays the "adjustmental aspect of experience" (by which hansen presumably means such hard f a c t s as s t i c k s and stones, f i r i n g squads and g r a v i t y ) . the c o r o l l a r y of h i s argument i s t h a t c o n v e n t i o n a l r e a l i s t i c novels f a i l to g i v e a t t e n t i o n t o , or l a c k r e s p e c t f o r , "man's i m a g i n a t i o n . " t h i s does a d i s s e r v i c e to the numerous contemporary w r i t e r s who employ n a r r a t i v e s t y l e s innocent of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s i n n o v a t i o n . is i t f a i r to say t h a t a l i c e munro, mordecai r i c h l e r , l a r r y mcmurtry, saul bellow and p h i l i p roth l a c k r e s p e c t f o r man's imagination? when graham greene says, "what i would l i k e i s to achieve an u n n o t i c e a b l e s t y l e , " he r e p r e s e n t s a host of w r i t e r s who c r e a t e f i c t i o n t h a t r e s p e c t s the i m a g i n a t i o n without making use of the e x h i b i t i o n i s t i c and o v e r t l y s t y l i s h s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . furthermore, the i m p l i c i t or e x p l i c i t p r e j u d i c e a g a i n s t c o n v e n t i o n a l r e a l i s t i c f i c t i o n i n the t h e o r i e s of r u s s e l l , hansen' and o t h e r s r e s u l t s i n a p r e j u d i c e a g a i n s t the r e a d i n g p u b l i c t h a t borders on e l i t i s m . realism remains e s s e n t i a l to the n o v e l , not j u s t . a s i d e t r a c k . although some c r i t i c s might condemn the a t t r a c t i o n s of " l o c a l colour, ' the reader, l i k e the movie-goer, continues to hunger f o r a sense of the t e x t u r e of the r e a l world. f a c t s are always welcome. furthermore, the reader's a p p e t i t e f o r the commonplace, f o r f a c t u a l i n f o r m a t i o n and accuracy, i s shared by many of those w r i t e r s who are thought to be c e l e b r a t o r s of s o l i p s i s m . for ( ) as quoted in "a novel sort of l i f e , " by e r i c young and louise dennys, weekend magazine, march , p. . example, r u s s e l l assures us t h a t nabokov's novels are s e l f - r e f e r e n t i a l l i n g u i s t i c games c l a i m i n g no involvement with the phenomenal world. yet a p r e c i s e l y o p p o s i t e a e s t h e t i c i s advanced i n "a guide to b e r l i n , " a s t o r y i n which, as nabokov says i n a : note about i t s t r a n s l a t i o n , "two or three s c a t t e r e d phrases have been added f o r the sake of f a c t u a l clarity.""'"''" the horse-drawn tram has vanished, and so w i l l the t r o l l e y , and some e c c e n t r i c b e r l i n w r i t e r i n the twenties of the t w e n t y - f i r s t century, wishing t o p o r t r a y our time , w i l l go to a museum of t e c h n o l o g i c a l h i s t o r y and l o c a t e a hundred-year-old s t r e e t c a r , yellow, uncouth, w i t h o l d - f a s h i o n e d curved s e a t s , and i n a museum of o l d costumes d i g up a b l a c k , shiny-buttoned conductor's uniform. then he w i l l go home and compile a d e s c r i p t i o n of b e r l i n s t r e e t s i n bygone days. e v e r y t h i n g , every t r i f l e , w i l l be v a l u a b l e and meaningful: the conductor's purse, the advertisement over the window, t h a t p e c u l i a r j o l t i n g motion which our g r e a t - g r a n d c h i l d r e n w i l l perhaps imagine -- e v e r y t h i n g w i l l be ennobled and j u s t i f i e d by i t s age. i t h i n k t h a t here l i e s the sense of l i t e r a r y c r e a t i o n : to p o r t r a y o r d i n a r y o b j e c t s as they w i l l be r e f l e c t e d i n the k i n d l y m i r r o r s of f u t u r e times; to f i n d i n the o b j e c t s around us the f r a g r a n t tenderness t h a t o n l y p o s t e r i t y w i l l d i s c e r n and a p p r e c i a t e i n the f a r - o f f times when every t r i f l e of our p l a i n everyday l i f e w i l l become e x q u i s i t e and f e s t i v e i n i t s own r i g h t ... (pp. . - ). t h i s s t o r y , or m i l d manifesto, was w r i t t e n i n , when nabokov's audience was minimal, which p a r t l y e x p l a i n s the i m p l i c a t i o n t h a t h i s contemporary b e r l i n audience was i n c a p a b l e of a p p r e c i a t i n g r e a l i t y ' s " f r a g r a n t tenderness." the p o i n t remains t h a t h i s a e s t h e t i c depends on f i d e l i t y to the t r i f l e s of everyday l i f e , from buttons to s t r e e t c a r s . one can j u s t i f y a c e r t a i n s k e p t i c i s m ( ) vladimir nabokov, "a guide to b e r l i n , " in details of a sunset, trans. dmitri nabokov and vladimir nabokov (new york: mcgraw-hill, ), p. . when a c r i t i c announces c o y l y t h a t , the " r e a l " world, such as i t i s , such as i t i s rumored to be, has been i n c r e a s i n g l y s u b j e c t e d to abuse l a t e l y , both from the w r i t e r s of v a r i o u s s o r t s of " f i c t i o n s " and "new n o v e l s , " and a l s o from t h e i r defenders i n the new c r i t i c a l a n t i - w o r l d t h a t has grown up around such e x p e r i - mentation. ^ c e r t a i n of these experimental new n o v e l i s t s are l e s s abusive towards the r e a l world than the c r i t i c s might t h i n k . ronald suken- i c k , who humorously champions a new i n t e r n a t i o n a l s t y l e i n which one of the main q u a l i t i e s i s " o p a c i t y , " n e v e r t h e l e s s maintains t h a t "the movement of f i c t i o n should always be i n the d i r e c t i o n of what we sense as r e a l . " a l a i n r o b b e - g r i l l e t , a noted exponent of the new n o v e l , has been known to speak f a v o u r a b l y of f i d e l i t y to the r e a l world: a l l w r i t e r s b e l i e v e they are r e a l i s t s . none ever c a l l s h i m s e l f a b s t r a c t , i l l u s i o n i s t i c , c h i m e r i c a l , f a n t a s t i c , f a l s i t i c a l .... and no doubt we must b e l i e v e them a l l , on t h i s p o i n t . i t i s the r e a l world which i n t e r e s t s them; each one attempts as best as can to c r e a t e "the r e a l . " ^ even john barth, o f t e n taken as the l e a d i n g exemplar of the contemporary s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n o v e l i s t , does not r e p r e s e n t a complete break w i t h the v a l u e s of the c o n v e n t i o n a l n o v e l , and w i t h the phenomenal world; a t l e a s t , he does not r e p r e s e n t as complete a break as some c r i t i c s would suggest. for example, robert scholes leans h e a v i l y on. b a r t h s works i n h i s p r o p o s a l f o r a new n a r r a t i v e genre, which scholes c a l l s " t a b u l a t i o n " : " d e l i g h t i n design, ( ) ditsky, p. . ( ) ronald sukenick, "the new tradition," partisan review, ( ), , . ( ) alain robbe-grillet, for a new novel, trans. richard howard (new york: grove press, ), p. . . and i t s concurrent emphasis on the a r t of the d e s i g n e r , w i l l serve i n p a r t to d i s t i n g u i s h the a r t of the f a b u l a t o r from the work of the n o v e l i s t or the s a t i r i s t . of a l l n a r r a t i v e forms, f a b u l a t i o n puts the h i g h e s t premium on a r t and j o y . " scholes says h i s term " f a b u l a t o r " i s "an honest attempt to f i n d a word f o r something t h a t needs one." (we should note h i s disarming a s i d e t h a t the term i s "of course a gimmick, an a t t e n t i o n - g e t t e r " [ p . ] . ) but i s i t t r u e t h a t a n a r r a t o r who d e l i g h t s i n n a r r a t i v e d e s i g n cannot be understood i n terms of both the novel genre and the long t r a d i t i o n of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ? " f a b u l a t i o n " might be merely a novel t h a t f e a t u r e s a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n a c h e e r f u l phase. since l i t e r a r y c r i t i c i s m does not l a c k f o r c o n f u s i n g terminology, perhaps we should r e s i s t a t t e n t i o n - g e t t i n g gimmicks p r e d i c a t e d on the n o t i o n t h a t contemporary w r i t e r s are so r a d i c a l t h a t the t r a d i t i o n a l c r i t i c a l terms no longer apply. john barth h i m s e l f o f f e r s support f o r our r e s i s t a n c e i n a c o n v e r s a t i o n with joe david bellamy, i n which bellamy des- c r i b e s a type of f i c t i o n "which tends to s t a r t t a l k i n g about the formal nature of the s t o r y and the process of i t s d e s c r i p - t i o n " (that i s , s e l f - c o n s c i o u s f i c t i o n ) . bellamy asks barth i f . there i s "a b a s i c c o n f l i c t between t h a t k i n d of a n t i - i l l u s i o n i s t i c w r i t i n g and the s t o r y - t e l l i n g impulse?": b a r t h : no, i don't t h i n k t h e r e ' s a c o n f l i c t , o n l y a k i n d of t e n s i o n , which can be used. when we t a l k about i t t h i s way i t a l l sounds d r e a d f u l l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , i n v o l u t e d , v e r t i - ginous, d u l l . in the a c t u a l e x e c u t i o n i t ( ) robert scholes, the fabulators (new york: oxford univ. press, ), p. . doesn't have to be t h a t a t a l l ; i t can be charming, e n t e r t a i n i n g ; i t can even be i l l u s i o n i s t . -. r s o r t i n g through the terms, i t seems t h a t barth r e j e c t s the n o t i o n t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s d e v i c e s p r e c l u d e r e a l i s m (the t r a d i t i o n a l i l l u s i o n i s t i c " s t o r y t e l l i n g impulse"). i t i s a mistake to t h i n k t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s novels have nothing i n common w i t h r e a l i s t i c n o v e l s , and i t i s a worse mistake to t h i n k t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s novels are s u p e r i o r i n k i n d to r e a l i s t i c n o v e l s . one must p r o t e s t what d i t s k y c a l l s "the l a t e s t french t h i n k i n g i n the l a t e s t sontag abridgment," p a r t i c u l a r l y when i t l e a d s susan sontag (among o t h e r s , as we s h a l l see i n the t h i r d chapter) to argue t h a t our contemporary r e a l i s t i c novels " r e p r e - sent b a r e l y noteworthy products of a r e t a r d e d or r e a c t i o n a r y consciousness." in f a c t , however, both the r e a l i s t i c and the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s novel must be f a i t h f u l to the s t o r y t e l l i n g impulse and the "adjustmental aspect of experience"; the s i g n of a " r e t a r d e d consciousness" would be a novel t h a t went too f a r i n the d i r e c t i o n of a r t i f i c e and s o l i p s i s m . in the words of a l b e r t cook: a l l a r t , of course, envisages r e a l i t y : any work of a r t i s , among other t h i n g s , an i n t u i - t i v e statement about our experience of the world. and any work of a r t , a t the same time, i n t e r e s t s i t s e l f ... i n i t s own appear- ance, the a r t i f i c e i t c o n s t i t u t e s of p a i n t or sound or words • • • «]_g ( ) joe david bellamy, "john barth," in the new f i c t i o n , ed. bellamy (urbana: univ. of i l l i n o i s press, ), p. . ( ) ditsky, p. ; susan sontag, pref., writing degree zero, by roland barthes, trans. annette lavers and colin smith (new york: h i l l and wang, ), p. ix. ( ) albert cook, the meaning of f i c t i o n (detroit: wayne state univ. press, ), p. . cook c a l l s t h i s a r t i f i c e " r e f l e x i v i t y , " which, l i k e any l i t e r a r y d e v i c e , does not, or should not operate i n a v o i d : a r t i f i c e s would be v a i n i f they c o u l d be p u r e l y a r t i f i c i a l ; they cannot because they must i n some way d e s i g n a t e the r e a l i t y from which they s p r i n g . when a novel uses r e f l e x i v i t y i t must d i s c o v e r a r e a l i t y . otherwise we f e e l i t to be g r a t u t i o u s l y a r t i f i c i a l ..... (p. ) . i t i s r e f r e s h i n g to f i n d i n cook a c r i t i c who can d i s c o v e r r e f l e x i v i t y " i m p l i c i t i n the formalism of most well-made novels s i n c e f l a u b e r t " (p. ), and y e t r e f r a i n from p r o c l a i m i n g t h a t the novel has been s i d e t r a c k e d i n t o f u t i l e r e a l i s m s i n c e austen. s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s should be thought of as one more d e v i c e by which the a r t i s t can f a s h i o n h i s v i s i o n of the world, s i n c e i t by no means commits the a r t i s t to a s o l i p s i s t i c v i s i o n i n which l a y e r s of a r t i f i c e . i n f i n i t e l y r e g r e s s from the r e a l world; i n f a c t , s e l f - c o n s c i o u s d e v i c e s can strengthen the reader's sense of t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m . t h i s apparent paradox can be i l l u s t r a t e d by b r i e f l y r e f e r r i n g to the works of two american authors who are not u s u a l l y l i s t e d among the promoters of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s f i c t i o n . consider t h i s passage from a s h o r t s t o r y by c h a r l e s bukowski: so, reader, l e t ' s f o r g e t mad jimmy f o r a minute and get i n t o a r t h u r — which i s no b i g problem — what i mean i s a l s o the way i w r i t e : i can jump around and you can come r i g h t along and i t won't matter a b i t , y o u ' l l s e e . , q ( ) charles bukowski, "nut ward just east of hollywood," in erections, ejaculations, exhibitions and general tales of ordinary madness (san francisco: city lights, ), p. . bukowski here uses what we w i l l see i n the next chapter are some of the e s s e n t i a l d e v i c e s of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r : the n a r r a t o r c a l l s a t t e n t i o n to h i m s e l f , and emphasizes the a r t i f i c e of h i s n a r r a t i v e . but, taken i n the l a r g e r context of bukowski s f i c t i o n , the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s d e v i c e s have the p a r a d o x i c a l e f f e c t of making the n a r r a t i v e seen n a t u r a l and r e a l i s t i c , the o p p o s i t e of c o n t r i v e d . bukowski's n a r r a t o r s g e n e r a l l y pretend to p r e s e n t t r u e s t o r i e s from the slums and the mean s t r e e t s ; the form of bukowski's f i c t i o n i s l i t t l e d i f f e r e n t from the o s t e n s i b l e n o n - f i c t i o n i n h i s columns i n a now defunct underground newspaper. the n a r r a t o r i s o f t e n named bukowski, or some t r a n s p a r e n t pseudonym, adding to the i l l u s i o n t h a t the n a r r a t i v e i s the r e c o r d of an a c t u a l occurrence. the n a r r a t o r i s c a r e f u l to d i s t i n g u i s h h i m s e l f from those american a r t i s t s who, i n bukowski*s o p i n i o n , are e l i t i s t s preoccupied w i t h a r t i f i c e to the detriment of meaning and communication: poetry i s s t i l l the b i g g e s t snob-racket i n the a r t s ... i n essence, the g e n e r a l l y accepted p o e t r y of today has a k i n d of g l a s s o u t s i d e to i t , s l i c k and s l i d i n g , and sunned down i n s i d e t h e r e i s a j o i n i n g of word to word i n a r a t h e r m e t a l l i c inhuman summation or semi-secret angle. t h i s i s a poetry f o r m i l l i o n a i r e s and f a t men of l e i s u r e so i t does get backing and i t does s u r v i v e because the s e c r e t i s i n t h a t those.who belong really belong and to h e l l with the r e s t , but the p o e t r y i s d u l l , very d u l l , so d u l l t h a t the d u l l n e s s i s taken f o r hidden meaning — the meaning i s hidden, a l l r i g h t , so w e l l hidden t h a t there i s n ' t any meaning. but i f you can't f i n d i t , you l a c k s o u l , s e n s i t i v i t y and so f o r t h , so you better find it or you don't belong, and i f you don't f i n d i t , keep quiet.„ n ( ) charles bukowski, :'eyes like the sky," in erections, p. . thus the n a r r a t o r e s t a b l i s h e s a r h e t o r i c a l bond w i t h the reader. he i s the reader's f r i e n d (and f e l l o w ignoramus), and t h e i r r e l a t i o n s h i p w i l l bypass the formidable f o r m a l i t y of contem- porary l i t e r a t u r e . for example, "non-horseshit horse advice" says, " f o r those of you u n f a m i l i a r w i t h the b a s i c p r i n c i p l e s of horse-wagering, a l l o w me to d i v e r t you •with a few b a s i c s . " "allow me to d i v e r t you" -- the n i n e t e e n t h century i n g r a t i a t i n g tone, combined w i t h l o w l i f e s u b j e c t matter and a d e l i b e r a t e l y u n s o p h i s t i c a t e d s t y l e , r e s u l t i n s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s which i s anything but s o l i p s i s t i c . the n a r r a t o r attempts to convince the reader t h a t he i s the o n l y a r t i s t s t i l l connected with r e a l i t y i n america; he and the readers are a l l i e s a g a i n s t s o p h i s t r y and a r t i f i c e . joyce c a r o l oates employs a s i m i l a r technique i n her expensive people. in t h i s c u r i o u s novel a f i r s t - p e r s o n n a r r a t o r d e s c r i b e s the unhappy c h i l d h o o d i n which he may or may not have murdered h i s mother. the n a r r a t o r i s extremely s e l f - c o n s c i o u s i n the novel's opening pages, and i n s c a t t e r e d l a t e r passages — f o r example, he d i s c u s s e s h i s l i t e r a r y i n f l u e n c e s , which i n c l u d e an a r t i c l e i n the amateur penman, " j u s t what is r e a l l y necessary i n your w r i t i n g ? " he asks p e r m i s s i o n to use " c e r t a i n r h e t o r i c a l f l o u r i s h e s and t r i c k s , and the p a t h e t i c m e l v i l l i a n d e v i c e of enormous b u i l d - u p s f o r f l a b b y walk-ons . . . . " yet long s t r e t c h e s ( ) charles bukowski, "non-horseshit horse advice," in erections, p. . ( ) joyce carol oates, expensive people ( ; rpt. new york: fawcett, ), pp. - . of the novel are not s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a t a l l , as though the n a r r a t o r had f o r g o t t e n about h i m s e l f i n the e f f o r t of producing a t a l e of h i g h emotion and melodrama. the remaining s e l f - consciousness does not c o n t r i b u t e to a theme o f a r t i f i c e and l i t e r a r y e x h i b i t i o n ; on the c o n t r a r y , the n a r r a t o r argues t h a t h i s s t o r y i s not f i c t i o n , but t r u t h . he says h i s "memoir" i s not "well rounded or hemmed i n by f a t e i n the shape of n o v e l - i s t i c a r c h i t e c t u r e . i t c e r t a i n l y i s n ' t w e l l planned. i t has no c o n c l u s i o n but j u s t d r i b b l e s o f f , i n much the same way i t begins. t h i s i s l i f e " (p. ). the n a r r a t o r , l i k e bukowski's n a r r a t o r , wants to "minimize the t e n s i o n between w r i t e r and r e a d e r . . . . you t h i n k i am t r y i n g to put something over on you, but t h a t i s n ' t t r u e . i t i s n ' t t r u e . i am honest and dogged and e v e n t u a l l y the t r u t h w i l l be t o l d ..." (pp. - ). the f a c t i s , says the n a r r a t o r , " t h i s i s not f i c t i o n . t h i s i s l i f e " (p. ). the context of an a r t i s t ' s work governs the e f f e c t s of a p a r t i c u l a r l i t e r a r y d e v i c e . the p r e v a l e n c e of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s d e v i c e s i n contemporary w r i t e r s has l e d to c e r t a i n g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s about the p h i l o s o p h i c b a s i s f o r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s , and of course these g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s are p a r t l y t r u e ; but the percentage of t r u t h i s g r e a t l y attenuated when the g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s are a p p l i e d to a p a r t i c u l a r w r i t e r , p a r t i c u l a r l y a w r i t e r of any o r i g i n a l i t y . one suspects t h a t a work which corresponded i n every r e s p e c t to the s t r i c t u r e s of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s would be, i n barth's words, " i n v o l u t e d , v e r t i g i n o u s , d u l l . " instead of conforming to the a l l e g e d r u l e s of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s , however, the a r t i s t causes a metamorphosis of h i s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s d e v i c e s u n t i l they c o n t r i b u t e to the unique context o f a g i v e n work. whatever i n h e r e n t q u a l i t i e s these s e l f - c o n s c i o u s d e v i c e s may c o n t a i n i n theory, the a r t i s t transforms them i n the e x e c u t i o n . the f i r s t chapter d e f i n e s the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , and i l l u s t r a t e s the d e f i n i t i o n w i t h examples taken from s e v e r a l contemporary w r i t e r s ; the examples w i l l i n d i c a t e t h a t the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r s vary as much as the authors they r e p r e s e n t . the chapter argues t h a t the t r a d i t i o n of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r goes back a t l e a s t as f a r as the e i g h t e e n t h century; i t i s p o s s i b l e t h a t a g r e a t e r f a m i l i a r i t y w i t h the antecedents of the contemporary s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r might have prevented c r i t i c s from t r y i n g to c a s t him i n the r o l e of the r e v o l u t i o n a r y l e a d e r of a r a d i c a l a e s t h e t i c . the b r i e f h i s t o r i c a l survey w i l l a l s o show t h a t c r i t i c s i n past eras have managed to f i n d what seemed to them good and s u f f i c i e n t reasons f o r j u s t i f y i n g t h e i r preconceptions about the n a r r a t o r ' s r o l e . the chapter concludes by s k e t c h i n g i n some of the themes t h a t r e c u r i n contemporary f i c t i o n ; these i n c l u d e the image of the i s o l a t e d a r t i s t , the use of experimental language, and the s t r e s s on i n n o v a t i v e n a r r a t i v e techniques. the second chapter, on v l a d i m i r nabokov, argues t h a t nabokov transforms h i s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s i n t o agents f o r nabokov's own f i e r c e l y i n d i v i d u a l i s t i c a e s t h e t i c . the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r becomes the exponent of the g l o r y of the human i m a g i n a t i o n , d e s p i t e such c o n s t r a i n t s on the i m a g i n a t i o n as p o l i c e s t a t e s and l i t e r a r y conventions. however, nabokov's n a r r a t o r s a r e n o t e x p o n e n t s o f h e r m e t i c a l l y s e a l e d w o r d - w o r l d s . the n a t u r a l w o r l d r e t a i n s a n h o n o u r e d p l a c e i n n a b o k o v ' s f i c t i o n ( w i t n e s s h i s s c r u p u l o u s , s c i e n t i f i c d e s c r i p t i o n s o f n a t u r e ) , and t h e n a r r a t o r i s p a r t o f a p h i l o s o p h i c s y s t e m t h a t i n c o r p o r - a t e s b o t h a r t i f i c e and r e a l i t y ; i n ' f a c t , t h e n a r r a t o r ' s i m a g - i n a t i v e f o r a y s o f t e n c o r r e s p o n d i n a m y s t e r i o u s manner t o t h e l a w s o f t h e u n i v e r s e . the c o r r e s p o n d e n c e i s d i f f i c u l t t o d e f i n e ( a l l n a b o k o v ' s w o r k s m i g h t be t h o u g h t o f a s p a r t i a l adumbra- t i o n s ) , b u t i t i s c l e a r l y n o t a n a r t i f i c i a l e n v i r o n m e n t f o r c r o s s w o r d p u z z l e p u p p e t s : " w i t h i n n a b o k o v ' s i n v o l u t i o n s , b e h i n d h i s many s c r e e n s , l i e r e a l p e o p l e . " the t h i r d c h a p t e r d e a l s w i t h d o n a l d b a r t h e l m e . i n b a r t h e l m e ' s w o r k s , a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s o c i e t y h a s a d e b i l i t a t i n g e f f e c t o n t h e i n d i v i d u a l . i n "what to do n e x t , " a c h a r a c t e r i s s a i d t o be " h o p e l e s s l y c o m p r o m i s e d " by " l i s t e n i n g t o t h e i n s t r u c t i o n s o f o t h e r s , o r t o t h e w h i s p e r s o f y o u r h e a r t , w h i c h i s i n i t s e l f s u s p e c t , i n t h a t i t h a s b e e n t a u g h t t o b e h a v e ... by t h e v e r y c u l t u r e t h a t h a s p r o d u c e d t h e d e s p e r a t e s i t u a t i o n . " the i n d i v i d u a l f i n d s h i m s e l f s o c i a l l y programmed f o r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s f u t i l i t y . however, t h e s t o r i e s do n o t c e l e b r a t e t h e s o l i p s i s t i c i n t e l l e c t . they r e v e a l t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s r o o t e d i n s o m e t h i n g d e e p e r , w h i c h i s t h e g e n e r a l m o r a l f a i l u r e : b a r - b a r i t y , g r e e d , m u r d e r o u s n e s s . a l t h o u g h b a r t h e l m e ' s n a r r a t o r s ( ) albert j. guerard, "notes on the rhetoric of a n t i - r e a l i s t f i c t i o n , " triquarterly, no. ( ), p. . ( ) donald barthelme, "what to do next," in amateurs (new york: farrar, straus, and giroux, ), p. . appear to be p l a y f u l l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s a t i r i s t s , they are g r a d u a l l y r e v e a l e d to be p a r t i c i p a n t s i n a grave moral drama; i t seems "the c e n t r e of your d i f f i c u l t i e s ... i s the f a c t t h a t you are no good" (p. ). ours i s a c o n s e r v a t i v e argument. although both nabokov and barthelme are i n n o v a t i v e a r t i s t s , barthelme h a r d l y p r o v i d e s t i d y textbook examples f o r avant garde t h e o r i s t s , and nabokov's works r e s t on an understanding o f , and even a reverence f o r , l i t e r a r y t r a d i t i o n . thus the i n t r o d u c t i o n has attempted to discourage c e r t a i n preconceptions t h a t would, perhaps, make i t a l l too easy to e x p l a i n the use of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . the chapters t h a t f o l l o w attempt to be i n d u c t i v e r a t h e r than d e d u c t i v e ; the f a c t t h a t barthelme and nabokov c r e a t e f i c t i o n a l worlds so different from one another, d e s p i t e u s i n g s i m i l a r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s methods, suggests t h a t the i n d u c t i v e method i s p r e f e r a b l e . at any r a t e , we should be able to a v o i d the mistake of c o n f u s i n g what the a r t i s t c r e a t e d w i t h what he was expected to c r e a t e . i the pedigree of the self-conscious narrator i n t r o d u c t i o n the argument i s t h a t the p h i l o s o p h i c and a e s t h e t i c import of the works of barthelme and nabokov i s not predetermined by- c e r t a i n i n h e r e n t q u a l i t i e s of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . on the c o n t r a r y , the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s a m a l l e a b l e d e v i c e which the authors bend i n the d i r e c t i o n of t h e i r own s p e c i a l l i t e r a r y aims. the f u n c t i o n of t h i s f i r s t chapter i s to show t h a t the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s not a commanding f i g u r e on the l i t e r a r y scene, but r a t h e r a f a m i l i a r f i g u r e who has gone i n and out of l i t e r a r y f a s h i o n . at one time he wore the sedate vestments of the n i n e t e e n t h century gentleman, and d u r i n g the era of n o v e l - i s t i c i m p e r s o n a l i t y he was so drab as to appear almost i n v i s i b l e . his s t a r t l i n g , avant garde, and indeed r e v o l u t i o n a r y appearance i n contemporary l i t e r a t u r e i s due mainly to the s t a r t l i n g , avant garde, and r e v o l u t i o n a r y wardrobe a f f o r d e d him by contemporary c r i t i c s . the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s d e f i n e d as a n a r r a t o r who i n t r u d e s on the n a r r a t i v e to comment on h i s n a r r a t i v e techniques, and to emphasize the a r t i f i c i a l and c o n t r i v e d q u a l i t y of what are otherwise presented as r e a l events. the d e v i c e developed i n step with the development of the e n g l i s h novel i n the e i g h t e e n t h century. most of the r a m i f i c a t i o n s of the contemporary novel are r e p r e - sented i n the c y c l e t h a t began w i t h defoe's v e r i s i m i l i t u d e and ended w i t h sterne's v e r y o b t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r . sterne i s of course now c o n s i d e r e d c e n t r a l to the n o v e l , but f o r c e n t u r i e s the novel was much c l o s e r to the formal r e a l i s m of defoe and richardson. although n i n e t e e n t h century novels c o n t a i n shandean elements, the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r operates w i t h i n c e r t a i n l i m i t - a t i o n s , and the t y p i c a l n i n e t e e n t h century omniscient n a r r a t o r was e a s i l y d i s c a r d e d when the novel s e t t l e d i n t o the mold of imper- s o n a l i t y and s o c i a l r e a l i s m . there was l i t t l e need f o r a s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r when t h e o r i s t s c a l l e d f o r a dehumanized a r t and: an a u t h o r i a l v o i c e r e f i n e d out of e x i s t e n c e . the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r went i n t o e c l i p s e , an e c l i p s e which i n a sense has never ended. c e r t a i n l y i n the american n o v e l , our s p e c i a l i n t e r e s t , a case c o u l d be made t h a t the r e a l i s t i c novel ( o f t e n c h a r a c t e r i z e d by an o b j e c t i v e and impersonal, r a t h e r than a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , n a r r a t o r ) has remained the dominant mode, i n both c r i t i c a l and popular terms, s i n c e james. however, i n r e c e n t american l i t e r a t u r e , the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r has r e t u r n e d . the eventual breakdown of s o c i a l r e a l i s m o f f e r e d him new o p p o r t u n i t i e s . authors used him to dramatize the l o n e l y i n t e g r i t y of the a r t i s t , and to experiment with language and w i t h n a r r a t i v e techniques. consequently, i t i s now t y p i c a l of a growing number of contemporary works t h a t the n a r r a t o r of barthelme's snow white should i n t e r r u p t the n a r r a t i v e t o ask the reader, "have you understood, i n r e a d i n g to t h i s p o i n t , t h a t paul i s the prince-figure?"''" i n e v i t a b l y , the c r i t i c s conclude t h a t ( ) donald barthelme, snow white (new york: atheneum, ), p. . the times "demand" s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s : the modernist s e n s i b i l i t y does indeed demand a degree of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s , an o v e r t acknowledg- ment on the p a r t of the a r t i s t of h i s awareness of the i d e n t i t y of h i s m a t e r i a l , techniques and p r o c e s s e s . that a r t i s i l l u s i o n , and the r e v e l - a t i o n of the nature of t h i s i l l u s i o n ... are a t the h e a r t of the modernist consciousness i n a l l the a r t s . "the age demanded an image/ of i t s a c c e l e r a t e d grimace," says the s a r d o n i c speaker i n pound's "hugh selwyn mauberley," which should c a u t i o n us a g a i n s t an e n t h u s i a s t i c and u n c r i t i c a l acceptance of the new s t a t u s of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , who now stands "at the heart of the modernist consciousness i n a l l the a r t s . " the purpose of t h i s chapter i s to keep the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n h i s t o r i c a l p e r s p e c t i v e , even i f p e r s p e c t i v e d i m i n i s h e s h i s p h i l o s o p h i c s t a t u s . n a r r a t i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s defined in "the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n comic f i c t i o n before t r i s t - ram shandy," wayne booth analyzes what he c a l l s the " i n t r u d i n g " n a r r a t o r . booth says a l l n a r r a t o r s are i n t r u s i v e i n the sense t h a t they choose what they t a l k about, and t h a t t h i s primary form of i n t r u s i o n should not be t r e a t e d as a s i n g l e d e v i c e . booth d e f i n e s a second c l a s s o f n a r r a t i v e i n which the n a r r a t o r i s the hero or main t o p i c of h i s own account; t h i s second c l a s s i s almost ( ) barbara rose, "wolfeburg," the new york review of books, june , p. . ( ) ezra pound, "hugh selwyn mauberley," in selected poems (new york: new directions, ), p. . ( ) wayne booth, "the self-conscious narrator in comic f i c t i o n before tristram shandy," pmla, ( ), . as general and variable as the f i r s t : "indeed, a l l f i r s t - p e r s o n narrators ... 'intrude' quite e x p l i c i t l y ..." (p. ). a t h i r d type of narrator "indulges i n ' r h e t o r i c a l ' commentary on the characters or events of his story, i n order to induce appropriate attitudes i n the reader. these comments may range from the simplest kind of weighted language ... to f a i r l y extended commentary on the i n t e l l e c t u a l issues involved ...." refining t h i s t h i r d class one step further, booth arrives at the "self-conscious narrator," "who intrudes into his novel to comment on himself as a writer, and on his book, not simply as a series of events with moral implications, but as a created l i t e r a r y product" (pp. , ). the self-conscious narrator comments on himself as a writer, and comments on his narrative as a created l i t e r a r y product. booth's d e f i n i t i o n was designed to f i t the works surrounding the eighteenth century's tristram shandy, but i t i s very useful i n terms of contemporary self-consciousness as well. however, there are two s a l i e n t features of contemporary self-consciousness which are perhaps i m p l i c i t i n booth's d e f i n i t i o n , but which for our purposes need to' be emphasized. f i r s t , the self-conscious narrator i n contemporary l i t e r a t u r e has developed i n reaction to the p r e v a i l i n g impersonality of the novel during the modern period (broadly defined as james to the second world war). james, flaubert, and others had reacted i n t h e i r turn against sentimentality and overt moralizing, and had developed an impersonal and objective narrative voice. this new modernist s p i r i t would, i n the words of stephane mallarme, minimize the author's " o r a t o r i c a l presence" and d i s c r e d i t "the o l d l y r i c a l a s p i r a t i o n or the e n t h u s i a s t i c p e r s o n a l d i r e c t i o n of the sentence." t h e r e f o r e the contemporary s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r o f t e n adopts a q u i r k y , i d i o s y n c r a t i c , all-too-human v o i c e , which i s a t times g u i l t y of a d o c t r i n a i r e s u b j e c t i v i t y . a second f e a t u r e o f the contemporary s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s h i s a s s o c i a t i o n with metaphysical u n c e r t a i n t y . the n o t i o n of a p r o b i n g , i r o n i c n a r r a t o r a t odds w i t h l i t e r a r y convention and bourgeois epistemology i s perhaps i m p l i c i t i n both booth's theory and sterne's p r a c t i c e , but i n contemporary f i c t i o n the p r o b l e m a t i c aspect has been exaggerated. but r a t h e r than c o n t i n u i n g to speak i n t h e o r e t i c a l terms, l e t us c o n s i d e r s e v e r a l i l l u s t r a t i v e examples of the contemporary s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . the examples are designed to i n d i c a t e the v a r i e t y of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s ( d e s p i t e the p r e s c r i p t i v e t h e o r i e s surrounding them), and a l s o to show, w i t h i n the l i m i t s of b r i e f examples, t h a t the n a r r a t o r s tend to conform to the s p e c i f i c purposes of a s p e c i f i c author i n a s p e c i f i c work. the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i l l u s t r a t e d john fowles' p s e u d o - v i c t o r i a n narrative, the french lieutenant's woman, p r o v i d e s a u s e f u l l y b l a t a n t example of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . one scene ends i n a c l o s e - u p of the h e r o i n e , sarah, her face wet w i t h s i l e n t t e a r s . "who i s sarah?" asks a disem- bodied v o i c e . "out of what shadows does she come?" ( ) mallarme, as quoted in erich kahler, the disintegration of form in the arts (new york: george b r a z i l l e r , ), pp. , . chapter answers the q u e s t i o n as f o l l o w s : i do not know. t h i s s t o r y i am t e l l i n g i s a l l i m a g i n a t i o n . these c h a r a c t e r s i c r e a t e never e x i s t e d o u t s i d e my own mind. i f i have pretended u n t i l now to know my c h a r a c t e r s ' minds and i n n e r - most thoughts, i t i s because i am w r i t i n g i n ( j u s t as i have assumed some of the vocabulary and " v o i c e " of) a convention u n i v e r s a l l y accepted a t the time of my s t o r y : t h a t the n o v e l i s t stands next to god .... but i l i v e i n the age of a l a i n r o b b e - g r i l l e t and roland barthes; i f t h i s i s a n o v e l , i t cannot be a novel i n the modern sense of the word. so perhaps i am w r i t i n g a transposed auto- biography; perhaps i now l i v e i n one of those houses i have brought i n t o the f i c t i o n ; perhaps c h a r l e s i s myself d i s g u i s e d . perhaps i t i s o n l y a game. ... or perhaps i am t r y i n g to pass o f f a concealed book of essays on you.^ fowles' s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r conforms to our d e f i n i t i o n i n t h a t he i n t r u d e s on the n a r r a t i v e to comment on h i s problems as a w r i t e r , and to comment on h i s n a r r a t i v e as a l i t e r a r y . c r e a t i o n . in the process of c h a l l e n g i n g the conventions of the ' v i c t o r i a n novel he addresses the reader d i r e c t l y , over the heads of the c h a r a c t e r s , as i t were. note the n a r r a t o r ' s symptomatic c l a i m t h a t the innocent v i c t o r i a n technique of omniscience i s no longer v a l i d i n the age of profound french t h e o r i z i n g . now t h a t the age of innocence i s over, the n o v e l i s t must f a l l i n l i n e with newly d i s c o v e r e d o n t o l o g i c a l t r u t h s : "the n o v e l i s t i s s t i l l a god ...; what has changed i s t h a t we are no longer the gods of the v i c t o r i a n image, omniscient and d e c r e e i n g ; but i n the new t h e o l o g i c a l image, w i t h freedom our f i r s t p r i n c i p l e , not a u t h o r i t y " (p. ). in order to f r e e h i m s e l f , the n a r r a t o r must g i v e h i s c h a r a c t e r s t h e i r freedom: "there i s o n l y one good ( ) john fowles, the french lieutenant's woman (boston: l i t t l e , brown, ), pp. - . d e f i n i t i o n of god; the freedom that allows other freedoms to e x i s t . and i must conform to that d e f i n i t i o n " (p. ). the narrator's notions of god and r e a l i t y are not very i n t e r - esting i n themselves; what i s interesting i s the way i n which the ponderous theory a f f e c t s the self-conscious device. this p a r t i c u l a r self-conscious narrator seems to be grey-haired with r e s p o n s i b i l i t y , and the s t r a i n shows as he develops something of a whining tone: "perhaps you suppose that a n o v e l i s t has only to p u l l the r i g h t strings and his puppets w i l l behave i n a l i f e l i k e manner ..." (p. ). the tone suggests that bellamy's fears about an impediment to t r a d i t i o n a l s t o r y t e l l i n g are j u s t i f i e d . the narrator's troubled musings about the narrative rules (is the novel a concealed book of essays, a disguised autobiography, a game?) are indeed what barth c a l l e d "vertiginous," not to mention involuted and d u l l , although one of the factors that made t h i s novel a best s e l l e r , aside"from the endless marketability of h i s t o r i c a l romance, was the i n t e r e s t of some readers i n the behind-the-scenes, workshop chatter. presumably these same readers enjoyed the figure of the a r t i s t i n the rather tedious second part of the c o l l e c t o r. at any rate, fowles' fascination with n o v e l i s t i c theory r e s u l t s i n a serious and sober self-conscious narrator. he can be contrasted with the narrator of john updike's novel, a month of sundays. the narrator, a promiscuous- c l e r i c , sneaks from his wife's bed to snoop on his mistress: [he] made his way down oaken staircases flayed with moonbeams to a front door whose f a n l i g h t held i n byzantine r i g i d i t y the ghosts of i t s tiffany colors .... [he] pressed his thumb upon the concussive l a t c h , eased the towering giant of a parsonage portal towards his twitter- ing- chest, stepped outside, onto granite, and bathed his legs i n the wintery a i r . this i s fun! f i r s t you whittle the puppets, then you move them around.^ unlike fowles narrator, updike's narrator seems to enjoy manip- ulating his puppets. since tristram shandy, i n fact, self-conscious narrators have been associated with comic narratives. john barth says he prefers "a kind of f i c t i o n that, i f i t ' s going to be self-conscious, i s at least comic about i t s own s e l f - consciousness," and we noted scholes' attempt to describe a comically self-conscious narrative as a c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of a new a r t form. but the self-conscious narrator i n a cheerful phase , whether or not he puts "the highest premium on art and joy," i s merely one of the variables of the self-conscious narrator open to the s k i l f u l n o v e l i s t . john updike i s not necessarily a happy " f a b u l i s t . " in the following passage he uses a s e l f - conscious narrator, but i n t h i s case the narrator i s not a month of sundays' c h e e r f u l l y naive amateur (writing as part of a pro- gram of psychological therapy), but, i t seems, a professional author: a blue jay l i g h t s on a twig outside my window. momentarily sturdy, he stands astraddle, his dingy rump towards me, his head a l e r t l y frozen i n s i l h o u - ette, the predatory curve of his beak stamped on a sky almost white above the misting tawny marsh. see him? i do, and, snapping the chain of my thought, i have reached through glass and seized him and stamped him on t h i s page. now he i s gone. and yet, there, a few l i n e s above, he s t i l l i s , ( ) john updike, a month of sundays (new york: knopf, ), p. . ( ) "john barth," in bellamy, p. . " a s t r a d d l e , " rump " d i n g y , " h i s h e a d " a l e r t l y f r o z e n . " a c u r i o u s t r i c k , p o s s i b l y u s e l e s s , b u t m i n e . -y the, n a r r a t o r o f " l e a v e s " i s a t t e m p t i n g t o come t o t e r m s w i t h n a t u r e , h i s l i t e r a r y g i f t s , a n d , n o t l e a s t i n i m p o r t a n c e , h i s r e c e n t d i v o r c e . a l t h o u g h t h e p a s s a g e i s h i g h l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , t h e r e i s n o t a s e n s e o f " a r t a n d j o y , " b u t a r t and f u t i l i t y : "a c u r i o u s t r i c k , p o s s i b l y u s e l e s s one s h o u l d a l s o n o t e t h e e m p h a s i s on m i m e s i s i n t h e u p d i k e p a s s a g e , a n d c o n t r a s t i t w i t h t h e f o l l o w i n g f r o m j o r g e l u i s b o r g e s : f o r y e a r s now, i h a v e b e e n t e l l i n g p e o p l e i g r e w up i n t h a t p a r t o f buenos a i r e s known a s p a l - ermo. t h i s , i ' v e come t o r e a l i z e , i s mere l i t e r - a r y b r a v a d o ; t h e t r u t h i s t h a t i r e a l l y g r e w up on t h e i n s i d e o f a l o n g i r o n p i c k e t f e n c e i n a h o u s e w i t h a g a r d e n and w i t h my f a t h e r ' s and h i s f a t h e r ' s l i b r a r y . the p a l e r m o o f k n i f e f i g h t s a n d o f g u i t a r p l a y i n g l u r k e d ( s o t h e y s a y ) o n s t r e e t c o r n e r s a n d down b a c k a l l e y s . i n , i w r o t e a s t u d y o f e v a r i s t o c a r r i e g o , a n e i g h b o r o f o u r s , a p o e t a n d g l o r i f i e r o f t h e c i t y ' s o u t - l y i n g s l u m s . a l i t t l e a f t e r t h a t , c h a n c e b r o u g h t me f a c e t o f a c e ^ i t h e m i l i o t r s p a n i . i was o n t h e t r a i n t o m o r o n . t r a p a n i , who was s i t t i n g n e x t t o t h e window, c a l l e d me by name. f o r some t i m e i c o u l d n o t p l a c e h i m , so many y e a r s h a d p a s s e d s i n c e we'd b e e n c l a s s m a t e s i n a s c h o o l o n thames s t r e e t . r o b e r t o g o d e l , a n o t h e r c l a s s - m a t e , may remember h i m . ... r i d i n g a l o n g , we s t r u c k up one o f t h o s e t r i v i a l c o n v e r s a t i o n s t h a t f o r c e y o u t o u n e a r t h p o i n t l e s s f a c t s a n d t h a t l e a d up t o t h e d i s c o v e r y o f t h e d e a t h o f a f e l l o w - s c h o o l m a t e who i s no l o n g e r a n y t h i n g more t h a n a name. t h e n , a b r u p t l y , t r a p a n i s a i d t o me, "someone l e n t me y o u r c a r r i e g o b o o k , w h e r e y o u ' r e t a l k i n g a b o u t h o o d l u m s a l l t h e t i m e . t e l l me, b o r g e s , what i n t h e w o r l d c a n y o u know a b o u t h o o d l u m s ? " he s t a r e d a t me w i t h a k i n d o f w o n d e r . " i ' v e done r e s e a r c h , " i a n s w e r e d . '.( ) j o h n u p d i k e ' , " l e a v e s , " - i n t h e m u s i c s c h o o l ( ; r p t . new y o r k : f a w c e t t , ), p . . not l e t t i n g me go on, he said, "research i s the word, a l l r i g h t . personally, i have no use for research — i know these people inside out." after a moment's silence, he added, as though he were l e t t i n g me i n on a secret, "i'm juan murana's nephew." of a l l the men around palermo famous for handling a knife way back i n the nineties, the one with the widest .reputation was murana. trapani went on, "florentina -- my aunt -- was his wife. maybe y o u ' l l be interested i n t h i s story." certain devices of a l i t e r a r y nature and one or two longish sentences led me to suspect that t h i s was not the f i r s t time he had t o l d the story. in one sense, of course, borges i s following a convention at l e a s t as old as self-consciousness, that of distancing the narrator from his narrative by means of convenient intermediaries. the purpose of t h i s distancing i s to make the narrative more r e a l i s t i c . one thinks of the gothic novelists who i n s i s t e d that t h e i r man- uscripts had been found i n trunks with squeaky l i d s , written i n anonymous blood; of cervantes, who bought the manuscript of don quixote from a r e l i a b l e arabic h i s t o r i a n i n the toledo marketplace; of the narrative of arthur gordon pym, which, said pym, was not f i c t i o n but fact.'*'"'" borges s i m i l a r l y distances his narrative from the narrator by means of the convenient emilio trapani, but the self-conscious note i s s i g n i f i e d by the narrator's consciousness of himself as an ( ) j.l. borges, "juan murana," in doctor brodie's report, trans. norman thomas di giovanni and j.l. borges (new york: e.p. dutton, ),pp. - . ( ) pym was afraid to publish his memoirs, for fear they would be mis- interpreted as "merely an impudent and ingenious f i c t i o n . " he applied to "edgar allen poe," then the editor of the southern l i t e r a r y messenger, who advised him to publish the narrative, just as i t was, and trust the "shrewdness and common sense of the public." pym decided, however, to dupe the public by publishing his adventures as f i c t i o n , and "that they might c e r t a i n l y be regarded as f i c t i o n , the name of mr. poe was affixed to the a r t i c l e s in the table of contents of the magazine." the narrative of arthur gordon pym ( ; rpt. new york: h i l l and wang, ), pp. , . a r t i s t . we l e a r n , f o r example, t h a t the b i o g r a p h i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n i n the f i r s t l i n e i s " l i t e r a r y bravado." borges appears i n person i n the r a i l r o a d c a r but i s t h i s the r e a l borges? borges t a l k s elsewhere of "working i n imaginary and r e a l people i n the same s t o r y . for example, i f i quote an apocryphal book, then the next book to be quoted i s a r e a l one, or perhaps an imaginary one, by a r e a l w r i t e r , no? when a man w r i t e s he f e e l s r a t h e r l o n e l y , and then he has to keep h i s s p i r i t s up, no?" u n l i k e updike's more or l e s s s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d n a r r a t o r i n "leaves," borges' n a r r a t o r emphasizes n a r r a t i v e ambiguity and d e c e p t i v e n e s s ; the "borges" of the s t o r y i s somewhat removed from a l i t e r a l s e l f - p o r t r a i t , and t r a p a n i , the o s t e n s i b l e eye- witness, who pretends to b e l i e v e i n the v i r t u e of f a c t u a l , f i r s t - hand r e p o r t i n g , i s a l s o a n a r r a t o r who i n t r o d u c e s a r t i f i c e i n t o the o s t e n s i b l e r e c o r d of t r u e events: " c e r t a i n d e v i c e s of a l i t e r a r y nature ... l e d me to suspect t h a t t h i s was not the f i r s t time he had t o l d the s t o r y . " the borges example demonstrates n a r r a t i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s a t a f a r remove from r e a l i s m . c e r t a i n l y those c r i t i c s who argue t h a t n a r r a t i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s leads to s o l i p s i s m and r e g r e s s i v e l a y e r s of a r t i f i c e would have a good argument i f they r e s t r i c t e d themselves to borges. and y e t , i t might be more accurate to say t h a t borgesian s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s leads not to s o l i p s i s m , or indeed any standard p h i l o s o p h i c p o s i t i o n , but to paradox, and ( ) richard burgin, conversations with jorge luis borges (new york: holt, rinehart and winston, ), p. . to u n i q u e l y borgesian paradox a t t h a t . consider the c o n c l u s i o n to "borges and i " : . years ago i t r i e d to f r e e myself from him and went from the mythologies of the suburbs to the games with time and i n f i n i t y , but those games belong to borges now and i s h a l l have to- imagine other t h i n g s . thus my l i f e i s a f l i g h t and i l o s e e v e r y t h i n g and e v e r y t h i n g belongs to o b l i - v i o n , or to him. i do not know which of us has w r i t t e n t h i s p a g e . i t seems t h a t borges uses the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r as a means towards s e l f - d i s c o v e r y , and although i t might be d i f f i c u l t f o r the reader to i n t e r p r e t the f i n d i n g s , s u r e l y the s t o r i e s r e v e a l something more s u b t l e than s o l i p s i s m . nabokov and borges go i n d i f f e r e n t d i r e c t i o n s of course, w i t h nabokov much more c l o s e l y a l l i e d w i t h the r e a l world, but both t r a n s f o r m the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n t o something l i t e r a l l y u n i q u e ^ the f o l l o w i n g d e s c r i p - t i o n of s e b a s t i a n knight might remind us of the n a r r a t i v e s of both nabokov and borges: [he] was aware of h i s i n a b i l i t y to f i t i n t o the p i c t u r e — i n t o any k i n d of p i c t u r e . when a t l a s t he thoroughly understood t h i s and g r i m l y s t a r t e d to c u l t i v a t e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s as i f i t had been some r a r e t a l e n t or p a s s i o n , o n l y then d i d s e b a s t i a n d e r i v e s a t i s f a c t i o n from i t s r i c h and monstrous growth ••••^ the f o r e g o i n g examples should be s u f f i c i e n t to make the ( ) j.l. borges, "borges and i," trans. james e. irby, in labyrinths: selected stories and'other writings-, ed. donald a. yates and james e. irby, trans. j.e. irby et al. (new york: new directions, ), pp. - . ( ) see p a t r i c i a merivale, ''the flaunting of a r t i f i c e in vladimir nabokov and jorge luis borges," wisconsin"studies in contemporary l i t e r a t u r e , ( ), - ; rpt. in nabokov: the man and his work, ed. l.s. dembo (milwaukee: univ. of wisconsin press, ), pp. - . subseguent references to the several a r t i c l e s on nabokov in the wisconsin studies issue w i l l be attributed to dembo. ( ) vladimir nabokov, the real l i f e of sebastian knight ( ; rpt. norfolk, conn.: new directions, ), p. . d e f i n i t i o n of the self-conscious narrator clear; however, i t might s t i l l be objected that a l l narrators are to a c e r t a i n extent self-conscious. the answer to t h i s objection, as booth points out, i s that what appears to be self-consciousness i s the root intrusiveness of the f i r s t - p e r s o n narrator. furthermore, one could admit a degree of self-consciousness i n every narrator, but s t i l l i n s i s t that the l a b e l "self-conscious narrator" i s use- f u l when applied to works i n which the self-consciousness inher- ent i n narration i s emphasized, or brought to the reader's perhaps unwilling attention. consider, for example, the contrast i n the opening paragraphs of larry mcmurtry's the last picture show and sasha sokolov's a school for fools, respectively: sometimes sonny f e l t l i k e he was the only human creature i n town. it was a bad f e e l i n g , and i t usually came on him i n the mornings early, when the streets were completely empty, the way they were one saturday morning i n late november. the night before sonny had played his l a s t game of f o o t b a l l a l l r i g h t , but how do you begin, what words do you use? it makes no difference, use the words: there, at the station pond. at the station pond? but that's incorrect, a s t y l i s t i c mistake.^ the sokolov passage has c e r t a i n a f f i n i t i e s with the previous examples, whereas the mcmurtry passage seems impersonal, p l a i n , straightforward — unself-conscious. sokolov's narrator i s aware of himself as a writer, and aware that he i s creating a l i t e r a r y e f f e c t with words. by contrast with mcmurtry, who i s obviously beginning a t r a d i t i o n a l narrative about a young man i n a r u r a l ( ) larry mcmurtry, the last picture show (new york: dial, ), p. . ( ) sasha sokolov, a school for fools, trans. carl r. proffer (ann arbor, michigan: ardis, ), p. . t o w n , s o k o l o v seems t o be r a t h e r a r t i f i c i a l , a l t h o u g h one h e s - i t a t e s t o u s e t h a t t e r m when a l l w o r k s o f a r t a r e b y d e f i n i t i o n a r t i f i c i a l ; y e t t h e c l u m s y t e r m s t i l l e x p r e s s e s t h e i d e a t h a t t h e r e a d e r m u s t n o t e x p e c t l i t e r a r y t r o m p e l ' o e i l , o r t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m . i n s t e a d , d e s p i t e t h e l o n g t r a d i t i o n o f t h e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , t h e o r d i n a r y r e a d e r w i l l be somewhat t h r o w n o f f by t h e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s t y l e . as t h e b l u r b on t h e j a c k e t p h r a s e s i t , " s o k o l o v p u r p o s e l y s t u n s t h e r e a d e r i n t h e w h i m s i c a l o p e n i n g p a g e s . the r e - r e a d e r w i l l s e e t h a t t h e n o v e l c o n t a i n s a s much p l a n a s p a s s i o n . b u t s o k o l o v o u t d o e s s t e r n e w i t h d i g r e s s i o n s the q u e s t i o n i s ; why s h o u l d s o k o l o v ' s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s m e t h o d s " s t u n " t h e r e a d e r , when t h e r e a d e r h a s h a d t h e two c e n t u r i e s s i n c e s t e r n e t o a s s i m i l a t e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s t e c h n i q u e s ? the a n s w e r l i e s i n t h e h i s t o r y o f t h e n o v e l . d e s p i t e t h e c o n c u r r e n c e o f b o t h s e l f - c o n s c i o u s f i c t i o n a n d w h a t i s now t h o u g h t o f a s t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s t i c f i c t i o n i n t h e e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y , r e a l i s m p r e v a i l e d . a l t h o u g h b o t h f i e l d i n g and s t e r n e c o m b i n e d s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s w i t h r e a l i s m , t h e t r a d i t i o n p a s s e d o n t o t h e n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y was t h e r e a l i s t i c t r a d i t i o n ; p o o r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s d i d a b o u t a s w e l l a s t h e g o t h i c . t h e r e w e r e o f c o u r s e c r i t i c s p r e p a r e d t o a r g u e t h a t w h a t d i d i n f a c t h a p p e n was w h a t s h o u l d h a v e h a p p e n e d ; t h e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r was e v e n t u a l l y b a n n e d f r o m w h a t was t h o u g h t t o be t h e r e a l i s t i c m a i n s t r e a m o f t h e n o v e l . c o n s e q u e n t l y , t h e c o n t e m p o r a r y r e s u r g e n c e o f t h e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r h a s l e d t o e x a g g e r a t e d and e n t h u s i a s t i c n o t i o n s t h a t he i s a r e v o l u t i o n a r y f i g u r e t o be a s s o c i a t e d w i t h t h e b r e a k d o w n o f l a n g u a g e , p h i l o s o p h i c c h a o s , l i t e r a t u r e as s o l i p s i s t i c escapism -- a l l those notions based on the idea that self-consciousness and realism are somehow mutually- exclusive. this notion i s of course f a l s e , and leads to exagger- ations on the order of ditsky s that "the novel form has been sidetracked since austen." the self-conscious narrator i n the eighteenth century the conventional novel i s based on what ian watt c a l l s formal realism. the use of a self-conscious narrator for years implied an anti-conventional departure from the norm, the norm having been established i n the eyes of theoreticians of the novel by defoe and richardson. a sense of norms and t r a d i t i o n s was quickly established despite the fact that the word "novel," as i s endlessly pointed out, implies something innovative and new. what was new about the novel i n the eighteenth century was that i t answered the middle class need for f a c t s . the lowest common denominator of the novel, watt's formal realism, i n s i s t s o n the things of t h i s world. we are t o l d that the novel was stimulated by the new individualism of the competitive marketplace and free- form protestantism, or by trends i n philosophy towards nominalist language and the evidence of the senses, or by a new s c i e n t i f i c i n t e r e s t i n the quotidian; but i n any case the middle-class reading public desired information about t h e i r very r e a l world. these very r e a l wants were answered by defoe, who i n published a journal of the plague year, a work of f i c t i o n that ( ) see ian watt ), the rise of the novel (london, ; rpt. berkeley and los angeles: univ. of california press, ), pp. - . d i s g u i s e d i t s e l f as an eye-witness, f i r s t - p e r s o n account of the great plague of london i n . about two decades l a t e r r i c h a r d - son wrote pamela, f i c t i o n d i s g u i s e d as a conduct book f o r young g i r l s who might f i n d themselves r e s i s t i n g the somewhat unwelcome advances of lecherous gentlemen. both richardson and defoe used n a r r a t o r s who were unconcerned about s t y l i s t i c virtuosity. m o l l , robinson crusoe and pamela are not l i t e r a r y craftsmen. f i e l d i n g c h a l l e n g e d the conventions o f the n o v e l , which had b a r e l y begun, w i t h h i s p a r o d i e s shamela and joseph andrews. tom jones i s the most r a d i c a l departure, as f i e l d i n g h i m s e l f announced: i s h a l l not look on myself as accountable to any c o u r t of c r i t i c a l j u r i s d i c t i o n whatever; f o r as i am, i n r e a l i t y , the founder of a new p r o v i n c e of w r i t i n g , so i am a t l i b e r t y to make what laws i p l e a s e t h e r e i n . ^ even a t t h i s e a r l y stage of the novel's development, the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r has an important p l a c e . we r e c o g n i z e h i s presence i n a chapter heading of tom jones — "a s h o r t h i n t of what we can do i n the sublime ...." — and i n the d e l i b e r a t e l y exagger- ated mock-epic s t y l e of the passage t h a t p r o v i d e s a h i n t of the sublime: "hushed be every ruder b r e a t h . may the heathen r u l e r of the winds c o n f i n e i n i r o n c h a i n s the b o i s t e r o u s limbs of n o i s y boreas ..." (p. ). but the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n a l l h i s i n v o l u t e d g l o r y a r r i v e s w i t h sterne's t r i s t r a m shandy: ( ) henry f i e l d i n g , tom jones (london, ; rpt. new york: new american library, ), p. . we are now going to enter upon a new scene of events. — leave we then the breeches i n the t a y l o r ' s hands, with my f a t h e r standing over him .... leave we poor le fever to r e c o v e r , and get home from m a r s e i l l e s as he can. — and l a s t of a l l , -- because the hardest of a l l -- l e t us l e a v e , i f p o s s i b l e , myself: — but ' t i s i m p o s s i b l e , — i must go along w i t h you to the end of the w o r k ^ g from defoe's r e a l i s m to one of the most s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , a r t i f i c i a l , meddling n a r r a t o r s i n l i t e r a t u r e . a l i t e r a r y c r i t i c who was born i n , and who attempted throughout h i s l i f e to s t a y up to date with the avant garde, would have thrown h i s hands up i n d e s p a i r when t r i s t r a m shandy began to be p u b l i s h e d i n . by .the novel had combined s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s with formal r e a l i s m ; i t should be remembered t h a t n e i t h e r f i e l d i n g nor sterne abandoned r e a l i s m . sterne's n a r r a t o r might be s e l f - c o n s c i o u s and whimsical, but h i s account of the siege of namur i s a c c u r a t e . f i e l d i n g ' s n o v e l , l i k e many a r e a l i s t i c novel a f t e r i t , took a chance on i n s u l t i n g i t s audience by d e s c r i b i n g l i f e among the lower c l a s s e s ; and the complex, " a r t i f i c i a l " p l o t i s s a i d to c o r r e l a t e with the almanac of . n e v e r t h e l e s s , i t was the more s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d r e a l i s m o f defoe and richardson which came to be thought of as the c e n t r a l t r a d i t i o n of the n o v e l , and the s e l f - conscious s t y l e of sterne, i n p a r t i c u l a r , was c o n s i d e r e d a b l i n d , a l l e y o f f the novel's h e a l t h y highroad. thus the loaded terms of e r n e s t baker: the f r e a k i s h d e v i a t i o n s from the norm t y p i f i e d by t r i s t r a m shandy and a sentimental journey were ( ) laurence sterne, tristram shandy, ed. ian watt (boston: houghton m i f f l i n , ), p. . not,however, a t h i n g e n t i r e l y new, but on the c o n t r a r y a r e v i v a l of n o n d e s c r i p t kinds of f i c t i o n t h a t had been common enough b e f o r e richardson and f i e l d i n g took h o l d of the novel and put i t i n o r d e r . ^ such p o l a r i z a t i o n of " f r e a k i s h d e r i v a t i o n " vs. the novel i n good order i s an impediment to understanding s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i n nabokov and barthelme. s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s had i t s t u r n as the f r e a k i s h d e r i v a t i o n , but now i n much contemporary c r i t i c i s m r e a l i s m has to p l a y the v i l l a i n o u s r o l e of f r e a k i s h d e r i v a t i o n , or, as sontag would have i t , the product of a r e t a r d e d c o n s c i o u s - ness. behind the mad pendulum swing of c r i t i c a l o p i n i o n the work i t s e l f tends to be obscured; the process of r e v i s i n g l i t e r - ary h i s t o r y has a marked e f f e c t on our understanding of contem- porary w r i t e r s who the c r i t i c s i n s i s t operate under sterne's shadow. joyce c a r o l oates, f o r example, says i t i s a "commonplace of c r i t i c a l thought to p o i n t a l l the way back to t r i s t r a m shandy as a convention-breaking work"; a commonplace, t h a t i s , of r e c e n t c r i t i c a l thought, which i s dominated by the n o t i o n t h a t works which break with t r a d i t i o n are the most v a l u a b l e . . i t i s a f u r t h e r s i g n of sterne's new c e n t r a l i t y t h a t wayne booth has p r o v i d e d t r i s t r a m w i t h h i s own t r a d i t i o n , beginning w i t h don quixote, "the f i r s t important novel u s i n g the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r " (p. ). sterne's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r suddenly develops a p e d i g r e e : booth mentions i n h i s a r t i c l e f u r e t i ^ r e ' s le roman bourgeois ( ), scarron's roman comique ( i n two p a r t s , ( ) ernest baker, the history of the english novel, iv (london: h.f. and g. witherby, ), p. . ( ) joe david bellamy, "joyce carol oates," in bellamy, p. . and ), congreve's i n c o g n i t a ( ), the important pharsamon ( ) by marivaux, and a mass of " f a c e t i a e " , a term t h a t i s probably subsumed under e r n e s t baker's c r u e l phrase, "non- d e s c r i p t k i n d s of f i c t i o n . " we are now assured t h a t sterne's times were p o s i t i v e l y c h a r a c t e r i z e d by s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s : [r]egardless of the h i s t o r i a n ' s d e c i s i o n as to the date of the o r i g i n of the novel as a l i t e r a r y form, the form i t s e l f ... became important i n the e i g h t e e n t h century concurrent w i t h the new s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s of western man about h i s need to hammer out f o r h i m s e l f the answers to h i s i n c r e a s i n g l y p r o b l e m a t i c and f r e n e t i c e x i s t e n c e . ... and the major i s s u e s themselves are t r a n s - formed i n t o fundamental q u e s t i o n s about the form i t s e l f and how to use i t ^ ^ kaplan's v e r s i o n of l i t e r a r y h i s t o r y makes s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s and sterne c e n t r a l to the e i g h t e e n t h century. in f a c t , however, the r e a l i s m of defoe and richardson p r e v a i l e d , which e x p l a i n s why the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r l a n g u i s h e d i n the f o l l o w i n g century. he s u r v i v e d o n l y i n a weakened c o n d i t i o n as p a r t of what i s known as e d i t o r i a l omniscience, which r e f e r s to a n a r r a - t o r who knows as much about h i s c h a r a c t e r s as god, and who enjoys commenting on the a c t i o n as i t u n f o l d s . the omniscient n a r r a t o r d i f f e r s from the e i g h t e e n t h century s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n t h a t he g e n e r a l l y r e s t r i c t s h i m s e l f to m o r a l i z i n g commentary, r a t h e r than a e s t h e t i c debates t h a t would s i g n i f i c a n t l y d i s t u r b h i s novel's r e a l i s t i c s u r f a c e . the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r e x p i r e d , and the c r i t i c s gathered a t h i s s i c k b e d to say t h a t h i s death might be necessary to c l e a r ( ) see also booth's "tristram shandy and i t s precursors: the self- conscious narrator," diss. univ. of chicago ; and his the rhetoric' of f i c t i o n (chicago: univ. of chicago press, ), p a r t i c u l a r l y pp. - . ( ) fred kaplan, " v i c t o r i a n modernists: fowles and nabokov," the journal of narrative technique, ( ), . the way f o r the p u r e l y r e a l i s t i c n o v e l . t h i s u n f o r t u n a t e c r i t i c a l b i a s has had an e f f e c t on our understanding of contemporary n o v e l i s t s , whose use of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s taken to be a r e p u d i a t i o n of r e a l i s m , w i t h a l l the accompanying p h i l o s - o p h i c a l c o n n o t a t i o n s , r a t h e r than the r e j u v e n a t i o n of a l i t e r - ary d e v i c e which can be used as a f u l l p a r t n e r of r e a l i s m r a t h e r than i t s p o l a r o p p o s i t e . but l e t us look a t the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ' s d e c l i n i n g f o r t u n e s i n more d e t a i l . the d e c l i n e of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i t i s t r u e t h a t s e v e r a l n i n e t e e n t h century n a r r a t o r s i n t r u d e to comment on the a c t i o n , and to a c e r t a i n extent make the reader aware of a c o n t r o l l i n g a r t i s t i c presence. for example, here i n the e a r l y p a r t of the century is: jane austen, g e n e r a l l y deemed "impersonal," n e v e r t h e l e s s commenting i n a f a c e t i o u s v e i n towards the end of m a n s f i e l d park: "let other pens d w e l l on g u i l t and misery. i q u i t such odious s u b j e c t s as soon as i can, impatient to r e s t o r e every body, not g r e a t l y i n f a u l t themselves, to t o l e r a b l e comfort, and to have done with a l l the rest.," in adam bede, while the s t o r y "pauses a l i t t l e , " george e l i o t chats w i t h a reader about her treatment of the clergyman, mr. irwine. in v a n i t y f a i r , thackeray promises t h a t once the c u r t a i n i s r a i s e d he w i l l bow to the audience and r e t i r e ; i n f a c t , however, he can't r e s i s t a f u r t h e r p e r s o n a l appearance, and ( ) jane austen, mansfield park, ed. reuben^'a. brower (boston: houghton m i f f l i n , ), p. . ( ) george e l i o t , adam bede (london, ; rpt. new york: crowell- collier, ), p. . t r a v e l s t o t h e d u c a l town o f p u m p e r n i c k e l , a t t e n d s t h e t h e a t r e , and p e r s o n a l l y w i t n e s s e s t h e s o c i a l e m b a r r a s s m e n t o f d o b b i n a n d emmy: " i t was o n t h i s v e r y t o u r t h a t i , t h e p r e s e n t w r i t e r o f a h i s t o r y o f w h i c h e v e r y w o r d i s t r u e , h a d t h e p l e a s u r e t o ... make t h e i r a c q u a i n t a n c e . " the r e t i c e n t ..and w i t h d r a w n n a t h - a n i e l h a w t h o r n e s u r p r i s e d h i m s e l f i n t h e o p e n i n g t o the s c a r l e t l e t t e r : i t i s a l i t t l e r e m a r k a b l e , t h a t — t h o u g h d i s i n c l i n e d t o t a l k o v e r m u c h o f m y s e l f and my a f f a i r s a t t h e f i r e s i d e , and t o my p e r s o n a l f r i e n d s — a n a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l i m p u l s e s h o u l d t w i c e i n my l i f e h a v e t a k e n p o s s e s s i o n o f me, i n a d d r e s s i n g t h e p u b l i c . the f i r s t t i m e was t h r e e o r f o u r y e a r s s i n c e , when i f a v o r e d t h e r e a d e r — i n e x c u s a b l y , and f o r no e a r t h l y r e a s o n , t h a t e i t h e r t h e i n d u l g e n t r e a d e r o r t h e i n t r u s i v e a u t h o r c o u l d i m a g i n e — w i t h a d e s - c r i p t i o n o f my way o f l i f e i n t h e d e e p q u i e t u d e o f a n o l d manse. and now — b e c a u s e , b e y o n d my d e s e r t s , i was h a p p y e n o u g h t o f i n d a l i s t - e n e r o r two on t h e f o r m e r o c c a s i o n — i a g a i n s e i z e t h e p u b l i c b y t h e b u t t o n , a n d t a l k o f my t h r e e y e a r s ' e x p e r i e n c e i n a custom-house. g b u t t h e r e i s a f u n d a m e n t a l d i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n t h i s n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r a n d t h e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s o f b a r t h e l m e o r n a b o k o v o r s t e r n e . p a r a d o x i c a l l y e n o u g h , a u s t e n and h a w t h o r n e seem a n y t h i n g b u t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s ; t h e i r i n t r u s i o n s seem n a t u r a l , i n n o c e n t and u n s o p h i s t i c a t e d . t h e i r n a r r a t o r s a r e n o t s t r u g g l i n g w i t h d i f f e r e n t m e t h o d s o f n a r r a t i o n , a n d n o t h i n g i s p r o b l e m a t i c a b o u t t h e i r c h o i c e s ; i n s t e a d , t h e y r e s t w i t h i n t h e c o n v e n t i o n o f e d i t o r i a l o m n i s c i e n c e . the n a r r a t o r i s o m n i s c i e n t i n t h a t he h a s f u l l k n o w l e d g e o f e v e r y t h i n g t h a t p a s s e s i n t h e ( ) thackeray, vanity fair, ed. geoffrey and kathleen t i l l o t s o n (boston: houghton m i f f l i n , ), p. . ( ) nathaniel hawthorne, the scarlet letter, ed. sculley bradley, richmond croom beatty, and e. hudson long (new york: norton, ), p. . minds of h i s c h a r a c t e r s ; but i n r e t u r n f o r t h i s power, he must t r e a t the reader w i t h r e s p e c t . t h i s i s the era of dear reader. the u n w r i t t e n c o n t r a c t demands g e n t e e l deference to the audience and to t r a d i t i o n a l methods of t e l l i n g a s t o r y ; although the n a r r a - t o r has a b s o l u t e power, he must never break the r u l e s of v e r i s i m - i l i t u d e . the n a r r a t o r r a r e l y e x p l o r e s h i s own p e r s o n a l i t y , or r e v e a l s h i s s t y l i s t i c and t e c h n i c a l problems; h i s a t t e n t i o n i s focused i n s t e a d on e n t e r t a i n i n g and e n l i g h t e n i n g h i s guest, the reader: i t i s the f i r s t n e c e s s i t y of [the n o v e l i s t ' s ] p o s i t i o n t h a t he make h i m s e l f p l e a s a n t . o q perhaps the reader — whom i cannot help con- s i d e r i n g as my guest i n the old manse, and e n t i t l e d to a l l c o u r t e s y i n the way of s i g h t - showing . . . . omniscience w i t h i n gentlemanly l i m i t s becomes a k i n d of de- p e r s o n a l i z e d omniscience, which means the death of a s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r who would i n s i s t on the v a g a r i e s of a e s t h e t i c methods and on h i s own p e r s o n a l i t y . norman friedman uses the u s e f u l term n e u t r a l omniscience to d e s c r i b e the d e p e r s o n a l i z a t i o n of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s v o i c e . whereas e d i t o r i a l omniscience admits " a u t h o r i a l i n t r u s i o n s and g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s about l i f e , manners and morals," n e u t r a l omniscience " d i f f e r s from e d i t o r i a l omniscience o n l y i n the absence of d i r e c t a u t h o r i a l i n t r u s i o n s (the author speaks i m p e r s o n a l l y i n the t h i r d person) . . . . " as the "author- ( ) anthony trollope, autobiography, in miriam allott,novelists on the novel (london: routledge and kegan paul, ) p. . ( ) nathaniel hawthorne, mosses from an old manse ( ; rpt. chicago: rand, mcnally, n.d.), p. . ( ) norman friedman, "point of view in fiction: the development of a critical concept," pmla, ( ), - . i a l i n t r u s i o n s " (more a c c u r a t e l y , the n a r r a t o r ' s i n t r u s i o n s ) dwindle and e v e n t u a l l y disappear, the n a r r a t o r drops from the reader's s i g h t , to be r e p l a c e d by an impersonal omniscient v o i c e which r a r e l y r e f e r s to the f a c t t h a t the s t o r y a t hand, " i n which every word i s t r u e , " i s a c r e a t e d work of a r t . t h i s d e p e r s o n a l i z a t i o n r e c e i v e d the i n f l u e n t i a l approval of henry james, who c o n s i d e r e d i t s a c r i l e g i o u s f o r a n a r r a t o r to i n t r u d e on the s t o r y . consider h i s remarks from an essay on anthony t r o l l o p e : he took a s u i c i d a l s a t i s f a c t i o n i n reminding the reader t h a t the s t o r y he was t e l l i n g was o n l y , a f t e r a l l , a make-believe. he h a b i t u a l l y r e f e r r e d to the work i n hand ( i n the course of t h a t work) as a n o v e l , and to h i m s e l f as a n o v e l i s t , and was fond of l e t t i n g the reader know t h a t t h i s n o v e l i s t c o u l d d i r e c t the course o f events a c c o r d i n g t o h i s p l e a s u r e . a l r e a d y , i n b a r c h e s t e r towers, he f a l l s i n t o t h i s per- n i c i o u s t r i c k . . . . these l i t t l e s l a p s a t c r e d - u l i t y (we might g i v e many more specimens) are v e r y d i s c o u r a g i n g , but they are even more i n e x p l i c a b l e ; f o r they are d e l i b e r a t e l y i n a r t - i s t i c .... i t i s i m p o s s i b l e to imagine what a n o v e l i s t takes h i m s e l f to be u n l e s s he regards h i m s e l f as an h i s t o r i a n and h i s n a r r a t i v e as a h i s t o r y . . . . as a n a r r a t o r of f i c t i t i o u s events he i s nowhere.... t h e r e f o r e , when t r o l l o p e suddenly winks a t us and reminds us t h a t he i s t e l l i n g us an a r b i t r a r y t h i n g , we are s t a r t l e d and s h o c k e d . . . . ^ james p r e f e r r e d a s i n g l e , focused p e r s p e c t i v e r a t h e r than the m u l t i p l e p e r s p e c t i v e of the omniscient n a r r a t o r . he p r e f e r r e d ( ) james, pp. - . ( ) "to employ more perspectives than are necessary for the 'treat- ment of the subject' i s seen by them [james and percy lubbock] as an a r t i s t i c f a i l u r e . (this judgment i s probably i t s e l f based on an analogy with the l o g i c a l p r i n c i p l e known as occam's razor, which assigns a superior v a l i d i t y to the simpler of two arguments',} " robert scholes and robert kellogg, the nature of narrative (new york: oxford univ. press, ), p. . to i n c o r p o r a t e the s i n g l e p e r s p e c t i v e as a c h a r a c t e r w i t h i n the p l o t ; hence, such c h a r a c t e r s as lambert . s t r e t h e r , and " p o i n t of view" r a t h e r than a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . "as a n a r r a t o r of f i c t i t i o u s events he i s nowhere," suggests the scope of james' p r e j u d i c e a g a i n s t the o v e r t a r t i f i c e of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ; n e v e r t h e l e s s h i s t h e o r i e s were f u l l of q u a l i f i c a t i o n s and good sense. u n f o r t u n a t e l y , h i s t h e o r i e s were s i m p l i f i e d by percy lubbock i n the i n f l u e n t i a l c r a f t of f i c t i o n : lubbock's account i s c l e a r e r and more s y s t e m a t i c than james's ; he g i v e s us a neat and h e l p f u l scheme of r e l a t i o n s h i p s among the terms panorama, p i c t u r e , drama and scene. i t i s a scheme t h a t james can be made to support, but i n james's account i t i s surrounded w i t h important q u a l i - f i c a t i o n s which i n lubbock are a l r e a d y beginning to be s l i g h t e d . james and h i s d i s c i p l e lubbock c o n t r i b u t e d to the demise of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , an easy t a r g e t i n t h a t he u s u a l l y appeared i n the form of a surrogate f o r the m o r a l i z i n g author. instead of f o c u s i n g the reader's a t t e n t i o n on the a e s t h e t i c s of the n a r r a t i v e , he o f f e r e d a running moral commentary; and i n s t e a d of f l a u n t i n g h i s q u i r k y , s u b j e c t i v e p e r s o n a l i t y , he e i t h e r mod- u l a t e d towards a n e u t r a l and even i n v i s i b l e i m p e r s o n a l i t y , or e l s e presented h i m s e l f as a decorous gentleman, the w i l l i n g servant of h i s reader's e x p e c t a t i o n s . such a t l e a s t were the tendencies of the n i n e t e e n t h century s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , and those who wanted a more impersonal and o b j e c t i v e novel were not about to advocate a r e t u r n to the more e x h i b i t i o n i s t i c ( ) booth, rhetoric, pp. - . tendencies of a sterne. consequently, by , and point counter point, aldous huxley uses the notebook of a character named p h i l i p quarles to complain about the disappearance of the s e l f - conscious narrator i n his role as meddling author. quarles muses on the former "god-like creative p r i v i l e g e " of the novel- i s t , to consider the events of the story i n t h e i r various aspects — emotional, s c i e n t i f i c , economic, r e l i g i o u s , metaphysical, etc. he w i l l modulate from one to the other .... but perhaps t h i s i s a too tyrannical imposition of the author's w i l l . some people would think so. but need the author be so r e t i r i n g ? i think we're a b i t too squeamish about these personal appearances nowadays. ford madox ford wrote unequivocally that the n o v e l i s t "must not, by taking sides, exhibit his preferences." "no author would, l i k e thackeray, today intrude his broken nose and myopic spectacles into the middle of the most t h r i l l i n g scene he ever wrote, i n order to t e l l you that though his heroine was rather a wrong 'un his own heart was i n the r i g h t place." joseph warren beach could j u s t i f i a b l y claim that, "in a bird's-eye view of the english novel from f i e l d i n g to ford, the one thing that w i l l impress you more than any other i s the disappearance of the author." although beach states a fact rather than making a judgment, other c r i t i c s stood ready to eleyate what _is to what should be. in a chapter of the world ( ) aldous huxley, point counter point ( ; rpt. harmondsworth, middlesex: penguin, ), p. . ( ) ford madox ford, the english novel ( p h i l a d e l p h i a and london: j.b. lippincott, ), pp. , . ( ) joseph warren beach, the twentieth century novel: studies in technique (new york: appleton-century-crofts, ), p. . of f i c t i o n w i t h the apt t i t l e , "the i n v i s i b l e n o v e l i s t , " bernard devoto d e c l a r e s t h a t the " i n t e r p o s i t i o n of the n o v e l - i s t i n person i s d i s c o r d a n t " : c e r t a i n l y the sentiment i s not u n i v e r s a l ; there are many r e a d e r s who do not share i t and some n o v e l i s t s who do not observe i t . [nevertheless] i t i s one of the determining p r i n c i p l e s of modern f i c t i o n and one of the refinements, or p u r i f i c a t i o n s , t h a t f i c t i o n has achieved on the way to i t s i m p l i c i t methods. devoto s " i m p l i c i t methods" h i n t a t the s t e r i l e dogmatism o f new c r i t i c a l t h e o r i e s about the n o v e l . a n a r r a t o r commenting c a s u a l l y on h i s n a r r a t i v e i n a r e l a x e d , m o r a l i s t i c , o l d - f a s h i o n e d tone i s an embarrassment t o the c r i t i c engaged i n c l o s e r e a d i n g to e s t a b l i s h s t r u c t u r e , t e n s i o n , "pseudo-statement" and h o l i s t i c form. the author's biography was d e c l a r e d out of bounds (the i n t e n t i o n a l f a l l a c y ) , and h i s r h e t o r i c a l e f f e c t on the audience was deemed i r r e l e v a n t (the a f f e c t i v e f a l l a c y ) . thus a l l e n tate: the l i m i t e d and thus c r e d i b l e a u t h o r i t y f o r the a c t i o n , which i s gained by p u t t i n g the knower of the a c t i o n i n s i d e i t s frame, i s perhaps the d i s t i n c t i v e f e a t u r e of the modern n o v e l ; and i t i s , i n a l l the i n f i n i t e s h i f t s of focus of which i t i s capable, the s p e c i f i c f e a t u r e which more than any other has made i t p o s s i b l e f o r the n o v e l i s t to achieve an o b j e c t i v e s t r u c t u r e . there i s no p r o v i s i o n i n the " o b j e c t i v e s t r u c t u r e " f o r s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r s who might leave around the unsharpened pen- c i l s o f t h e i r c r a f t , and o f f e r u n s o l i c i t e d o p i n i o n s r e g a r d i n g the m o r a l i t y of the c h a r a c t e r s , and perhaps c a l l i n t o q u e s t i o n ( ) bernard devoto, the world of f i c t i o n (boston: the writer, inc., ), p. . ( ) allen tate, "the post of observation in f i c t i o n , " maryland quarterly, i ( ), p. . the terms of e x i s t e n c e of the o b j e c t , the o b j e t d ' a r t . the r i g i d c r i t i c a l orthodoxy t h a t proclaimed the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r " d i s c o r d a n t " was p a r t of a l a r g e r c r i t i c a l tendency towards the impersonal and even the dehumanized. -by compar- i s o n w i t h the sympathetic c l u c k i n g n o i s e s thackeray makes over h i s f a v o u r i t e c h a r a c t e r s , f l a u b e r t ' s a t t i t u d e towards madame bovary seems inhuman and t h e r e f o r e c r u e l ( i n so f a r as the n a r r a t i v e v o i c e i n madame bovary has any human dimension a t a l l ) . there i s no longer any need f o r the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ' s tendency to meddle i n the p l o t , f o r h i s o v e r t a e s t h e t i c p r e - occupations, h i s m o r a l i z i n g , o r , of course, h i s r h e t o r i c . i f the novel i s a p e r f e c t o b j e c t , there i s no need to c a j o l e the audience. t h e r e f o r e the next s e c t i o n examines the d e p e r s o n a l i z a t i o n of the n a r r a t i v e , which has r a m i f i c a t i o n s f o r the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n the contemporary n o v e l . when the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r f i n a l l y r e t u r n e d to the n o v e l , a f t e r being banished from h i s p a r t n e r s h i p i n the r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of r e a l i t y f o r so long, he n a t u r a l l y enough appeared to be a s o l i p s i s t i c agent of chaos, designed to e l i m i n a t e any p o s s i b i l i t y of agreement between the a r t i s t and the audience about t h e i r common r e a l i t y . l e t us look f i r s t a t what jose ortega y gasset would c a l l the dehumanization of a r t . the inhuman n a r r a t o r there i s a famous passage r e l a t i n g to the d e p e r s o n a l i z a t i o n of the novel i n a p o r t r a i t of the a r t i s t as a young man: the personality of the a r t i s t , at f i r s t a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluent and lambent narrative, f i n a l l y refines i t s e l f out of existence, impersonalizes i t s e l f , so to speak.... the a r t i s t , l i k e the god of the creation, remains behind or within or beyond or above his handiwork, i n v i s i b l e , refined out of existence, i n d i f f e r e n t , paring his finger- n a i l s . p o r t r a i t was published i n . four years l a t e r t.s. e l i o t published the sacred wood, which includes the i n f l u e n t i a l essay, "tradition and the individual talent." e l i o t also wants to minimize the a r t i s t ' s personality, or at least the c u l t of personality: " i t i s not i n his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by p a r t i c u l a r events i n his l i f e , that the poet i s i n any way remarkable or interesting." "poetry i s ... not the expres- sion of personality, but an escape from personality. but, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what i t means to want to escape from these things."^"*" given the i n t e l l e c t u a l climate, i t i s not surprising that a prejudice developed i n favor of impersonal "showing" over r h e t o r i c a l " t e l l i n g . " wayne booth has attempted to dispense with the d i s t i n c t i o n between showing and t e l l i n g once and for a l l . "everything [the author] shows w i l l serve to t e l l ; the l i n e between showing and t e l l i n g i s always to some degree an a r b i t r a r y one." in short, "the author's judgment i s always present, always evident to one who knows how to look for i t . " booth i s reacting ( ) james joyce, a p o r t r a i t of the a r t i s t as a young man, ed. chester g. anderson (new york: viking, ), p. . ( ) t.s. e l i o t , "tradition and the individual talent," in the sacred wood: essays on poetry and c r i t i c i s m ( ; rpt. london: methuen, ), pp. , . ( ) booth, rhetoric, p. . a g a i n s t a b i a s which i s d i s p l a y e d i n the f o l l o w i n g d i s c u s s i o n of the d i f f e r e n c e between defoe (who we are to b e l i e v e i s a clumsy t e l l e r ) and joyce (a s o p h i s t i c a t e d shower). john peter compares a passage from robinson crusoe w i t h a passage from the p o r t r a i t : in the one case [defoe] the t e x t u r e i s com- p a r a t i v e l y opaque: we hear the v o i c e of the author speaking, n a r r a t i n g . in the o t h e r case the t e x t u r e i s comparatively t r a n s p a r e n t , so t h a t i t i s r a t h e r a matter of the s t o r y e n a c t i n g i t s e l f through an u n o b s t r u c t i v e medium of words. ... we a s s o c i a t e the undeveloped s t y l e with the use of the f i r s t person, and with v e r b o s i t i e s l i k e "i take up my pen" and "gentle reader," and i t i s probably t r u e t h a t an e a r l y n o v e l i s t l i k e richardson was p r e c l u d e d , by h i s use of the e p i s t o l a r y method, from a c h i e v i n g the f o r c e of a developed s t y l e . . . . [in many e a r l y novels] the n a r r a t o r , though not the author h i m s e l f , per- mits him the l a t i t u d e of e x p a t i a t i o n and surmise, a s o r t of d a i r i a n ease, and here too the prose seldom transcends the l e v e l of i t s words....^ peter confuses the author w i t h the n a r r a t i v e v o i c e . we do not have the author "speaking, n a r r a t i n g " i n defoe's n o v e l , because i t i s a f i r s t person n a r r a t i o n by a c h a r a c t e r named robinson crusoe. a novel i s never n a r r a t e d by the author, but by a n a r r a t i v e v o i c e which i s as much a c r e a t i o n as the c h a r a c t e r s , and which can be f i r s t - p e r s o n or t h i r d - p e r s o n , o b j e c t i v e or s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , or whatever. obviously peter sees any i n t e r - mediary between the events and the reader as a flaw r e v e a l i n g the amateurish presence of the author, and an impediment to the progress of the "developed" s t y l e . but whether the p e r p e t r a t o r i s the n a r r a t o r , or the author, or the "use of the f i r s t person," ( ) john peter, "joyce and the novel," kenyon review, ( ), . the s i n i s " l a t i t u d e of e x p a t i a t i o n and surmise, a s o r t of d a i r i a n ease"; s i n c e t h i s d e s c r i p t i o n c o u l d e a s i l y f i t t r i s t r a m shandy, we can surmise t h a t -there i s no p l a c e f o r the "verbose" s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n p e t e r ' s developed s t y l e . the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r would f a r e no b e t t e r i n what jose ortega y gasset c a l l e d the " p r e s e n t a t i v e " n o v e l . ortega says t h a t while the " p r i m i t i v e reader" may have enjoyed the n a r r a t i v e n o v e l , the modern s o p h i s t i c a t e d reader demands a novel " d i r e c t and d e s c r i p t i v e . the b e s t word would be ' p r e s e n t a t i v e ' . " "during the n i n e t e e n t h century," ortega says, " a r t i s t s proceeded i n a l l too impure a f a s h i o n . they reduced the s t r i c t l y a e s t h e t i c elements to a minimum and l e t the work c o n s i s t almost e n t i r e l y i n a f i c t i o n of human r e a l i t i e s " (p. ). the p r e s e n t - a t i v e novel would maximize a e s t h e t i c s and minimize human r e a l i t i e s . such a novel would f i t the laws of the new "pure" a r t , which would meet the e x p e c t a t i o n s of what ortega c a l l s "the most a l e r t young people of two s u c c e s s i v e g e n e r a t i o n s " (p. ). the new "pure" a r t tends "( ) to dehumanize a r t , ( ) to a v o i d l i v i n g forms, ( ) to see to i t t h a t the work of a r t i s nothing but a work of a r t ..." (p. ) . these formidable " a l e r t young people" p l a c e d t h e i r f a i t h i n the presented o b j e c t . there i s , of course/ an immense c r i t i c a l problem i n the dichotomy between the o b j e c t as a symbol f o r v a s t f o r c e s i n the e x t e r n a l world, i n the sense of a g r a i n of sand c o n t a i n i n g the u n i v e r s e , and the o b j e c t as supremely u n r e a l , ( ) jos? ortega y gasset, the dehumanization of art and notes on the novel, trans. helene weyl ( ; rpt. new york: peter smith, ), pp. , . with other works of a r t as i t s o n l y c o n t e x t . but i n e i t h e r case the emphasis i s on the o b j e c t , the " t h i n g " i n a l l i t s r e v e r b e r a t i o n s , and the n a r r a t o r i s s u p e r f l u o u s : the work of a r t i n i t s complete p u r i t y i m p l i e s the disappearance of the poet's o r a t o r i c a l presence. the poet leaves the i n i t i a t i v e to the words, to the c l a s h of t h e i r m o b i l i z e d d i v e r s i t i e s . the words i g n i t e through mutual r e f l e x e s l i k e a f l a s h of f i r e over jewels. such r e f l e x e s r e p l a c e t h a t r e s p i r a t i o n ... p e r c e p t i b l e i n the o l d l y r i c a l a s p i r a t i o n or the e n t h u s i a s t i c p e r s o n a l d i r e c t i o n of the s e n t e n c e . ^ the n o v e l i s t was urged to present o b j e c t s : ortega's " u l t r a - o b j . e c t s " (p. ) or e l i o t ' s more famous o b j e c t i v e c o r r e l - a t i v e . thus the impersonal s t y l e of hemingway, who waged war a g a i n s t r h e t o r i c : they whack-whacked the white horse on the l e g s and he kneed h i m s e l f up. the p i c a d o r t w i s t e d the s t i r r u p s s t r a i g h t and p u l l e d and hauled up i n t o the saddle. the horse's e n t r a i l s hung down i n a blue bunch and swung backward and forward as he began to c a n t e r , the monos whacking him on the back of h i s l e g s w i t h the rods. he cantered j e r k i l y along the b a r r e r a . he stopped s t i f f and one of the monos h e l d h i s b r i d l e and walked him forward. the p i c a d o r k i c k e d i n h i s spurs, leaned forward and shook h i s l a n c e a t the b u l l . blood pumped r e g u l a r l y from between the horse's f r o n t l e g s . he was n e r v o u s l y unsteady. the b u l l c o u l d not make up h i s mind to c h a r g e . a , ( ) mallarme, as quoted in kahler, disintegration of form, pp. - . perhaps borges mocks t h i s tendency in one of the f i e r c e l y avant-garde mono- graphs of pierre menard, "on the p o s s i b i l i t y of constructing a poetic vocab- ulary of concepts which would not be synonyms or periphrases of those which make up our everyday language, 'but rather ideal objects created according to convention and e s s e n t i a l l y designed to s a t i s f y poetic needs (labyrinths, p. ). ( ) ernest heminway, in our time ( ; rpt. new york: scribner's, ), p. . hemingway banishes the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ; i n f a c t , one b a r e l y senses the presence of a n a r r a t i v e v o i c e a t a l l . but there i s an i m p l i e d v o i c e , a moral v o i c e t h a t r e f u s e s to accept the world's h o r r o r s . r o b b e - g r i l l e t would do away with even the i m p l i e d presence of a human consciousness: in t h i s f u t u r e u n i v e r s e of the n o v e l , g e s t - ures and o b j e c t s w i l l be there b e f o r e being something; and they w i l l s t i l l be there a f t e r - wards, hard, u n a l t e r a b l e , e t e r n a l l y p r e s e n t .... ... no longer w i l l o b j e c t s be merely the vague r e f l e c t i o n of the hero's vague s o u l , the image of h i s t o r r e n t s , the shadow of h i s d e s i r e s . or r a t h e r , i f o b j e c t s s t i l l a f f o r d a momentary prop to human p a s s i o n s , they w i l l do so o n l y p r o v i s i o n a l l y , and w i l l accept the tyranny of s i g n i f i c a t i o n s o n l y i n appearance -- d e r i s i v e l y , one might say -- the b e t t e r to show how a l i e n they remain to man. ... whereas the t r a d i t i o n a l hero i s ... destroyed by these i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s of the a u t h o r ' s , c e a s e l e s s l y p r o j e c t e d i n t o an immat- e r i a l and u n s t a b l e elsewhere ... the f u t u r e hero w i l l remain, on the c o n t r a r y , t h e r e . i t i s the commentaries t h a t w i l l be l e f t elsewhere; i n the face of h i s i r r e f u t a b l e presence, they w i l l seem u s e l e s s , s u p e r f l u o u s , even i m p r o p e r l y ortega's program of dehumanization i s f i n a l l y achieved i n robbe- g r i l l e t ' s novels; i n s t e a d of a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r t h e r e i s a detached monotone which drones out the l i s t of o b j e c t s : in the second row [of banana t r e e s ] , s t a r t i n g from the f a r l e f t , there would be twenty-two t r e e s (because of the a l t e r n a t e arrangement) i n the case of a r e c t a n g u l a r patch. there would a l s o be twenty-two f o r a patch t h a t was b a r e l y t r a p e z o i d a l , the r e d u c t i o n being s c a r c e l y n o t i c e a b l e a t such a s h o r t d i s t a n c e from i t s base. and, i n f a c t , there are twenty-two t r e e s t h e r e . but the t h i r d row too has o n l y twenty-two t t s * * * * ii o ( ) alain robbe-grillet, for a new novel, pp. - . ( ) alain robbe-grillet, jealousy, trans. richard howard (new york: grove press, ), p. . a b i a s a g a i n s t emotional commentary i n f a v o r of impersonal a e s t h e t i c o b j e c t s denies the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r freedom to f u n c t i o n . a r e l a t e d f a c t o r m i l i t a t i n g a g a i n s t the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r i s the novel of s o c i a l r e a l i s m , by which we mean novels t h a t focus on the s o c i e t y r a t h e r than the i n d i v i d u a l , and novels which emphasize s o c i a l f o r c e s , i d e o l o g i c a l and n a t u r a l , r a t h e r than s t y l e and a e s t h e t i c s . s o c i a l r e a l i s m i s p a r t i c u l a r l y important i n american f i c t i o n , our main i n t e r e s t i n t h a t b a r t h - elme i s an american w r i t e r , and nabokov, a d m i t t e d l y a d e l i c a t e , problem i n n a t i o n a l i s t i c c l a s s i f i c a t i o n , l i k e d to d e s c r i b e him- s e l f as an american w r i t e r and taxpayer. when one t h i n k s of s o c i a l r e a l i s m i n the novel ;— o f , say, the s o c i a l e p i c s of thackeray and t o l s t o y , - - one a l s o t h i n k s of the e a r l y c h a l l e n g e to s o c i a l r e a l i s m made by what are now c a l l e d the e n g l i s h modernists — joyce, woolf and lawrence, f o r example. yet d e s p i t e the f a c t t h a t these w r i t e r s , p a r t i c u l a r l y joyce, c h a l l e n g e t r a d i t i o n a l forms of the novel and t r a d i t i o n a l world views, i t i s g e n e r a l l y t r u e to say t h a t t h e i r works are grounded i n r e a l i s t i c s t u d i e s of t h e i r s o c i e t i e s — joyce's d u b l i n , lawrence's study of c l a s s d i s t i n c t i o n s i n lady c h a t t e r l e y ' s lover, the s o c i a l mores of middle c l a s s london which l i e behind the epi-stefaologicai.;. f i r e w o r k s of mrs. dalloway. furthermore, t h e i r departures from t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m do not g e n e r a l l y depend on a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . at any r a t e , d e s p i t e any i n f l u e n c e by the e n g l i s h modernists, american l i t e r a t u r e has been dominated by s o c i a l r e a l i s m u n t i l contemporary times. a case c o u l d be made t h a t r e a l i s m i s s t i l l the dominant mode, not o n l y among the b e s t s e l l i n g c h r o n i c l e s of an a r t h u r h a i l e y or an irwin shaw (who, a f t e r a l l , r e p r e s e n t the contemporary n o v e l to most r e a d e r s ) , but among the more s o p h i s t i c a t e d n o v e l i s t s such as bellow, roth, and mcmurtry. i t i s d i f f i c u l t to say why the l i t e r a t u r e o f s o c i a l f o r c e s has been so strong i n america, although one c o u l d s p e c u l a t e t h a t i t has something to do w i t h a young, f r o n t i e r s o c i e t y , i n which the f o r c e s t h a t a c t on s o c i e t y are more crude and apparent than they are i n the more t r a d i t i o n a l and perhaps more s u b t l e european s o c i e t y . s p e c u l a t i o n a s i d e , there i s i n d i s p u t a b l y a r e a l i s t i c t r a d i t i o n bounded a t one extreme by the refinements of howells and james, and a t the o t h e r extreme by the b r u t a l i z e d r e a l i s m , or n a t u r a l i s m , of london and n o r r i s . a host of w r i t e r s f i t some- where i n between: wharton, f a r r e l l , lewis, dos passos, d r e i s e r , thomas wolfe. there has been an accompanying t r a d i t i o n of d i s t r u s t f o r a e s t h e t i c s , p a r t i c u l a r l y ivory-tower a e s t h e t i c s i n which the n o v e l i s t would s e t h i m s e l f a p a r t from the commonality. w r i t e r s who might s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y d i s t i n g u i s h themselves from the b o u r g e o i s i e n e v e r t h e l e s s tend (with some e x c e p t i o n s , to be sure) to adopt an a n t i - i n t e l l e c t u a l , a n t i - a e s t h e t i c dandy, two- f i s t e d stance. c h a r l e s bukowski comes to mind, the bard of the u n l e t t e r e d . because of the s t r e n g t h of the r e a l i s t i c t r a d i t i o n , the break w i t h i t has been a l l the more v i o l e n t . the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , w i t h h i s i n d i v i d u a l i s m , h i s egotism and h i s a e s t h e t i c p r e o c c u p a t i o n s , has been embraced a l l too e a g e r l y as a counter- t h r u s t to the r e a l i s t i c t r a d i t i o n , r a t h e r than as a d e v i c e by which the excesses o f r e a l i s m c o u l d be c o r r e c t e d . a r l e n hansen, f o r example, advocates the s o l i p s i s m of the " c r e a t i v e i m a g i n a t i o n as a necessary e v i l i n the b a t t l e a g a i n s t r e a l i s m , which he sees as p a r t l y c h a r a c t e r i z e d by "overt and d i s g u i s e d polemics on: b e h a l f of empiricism and b e h a v i o r a l i s m . " so p r e v a l e n t i s the d e t e r m i n i s t i c c o l o r a t i o n of the r e s p e c t i v e v i s i o n s of crane, d r e i s e r , dos passos, cummings, hemingway, f i t z g e r a l d , faulkner, wolfe, warren, bellow, updike, h e l l e r , malamud, roth and m a i l e r t h a t there seems l i t t l e need to c i t e s p e c i f i c examples (p. , n. ) . perhaps the most a r t i c u l a t e c r i t i c of the o v e r - r e a c t i o n to the t r a d i t i o n of s o c i a l r e a l i s m i s tom wolfe, who argues t h a t con- temporary n o v e l i s t s have embraced s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s and o t h e r a e s t h e t i c s i n s ( i n wolfe's theology) to the p o i n t of s u r r e n d e r i n g the l i t e r a t u r e of s o c i e t y to the j o u r n a l i s t s . j o u r n a l i s t s , have s e i z e d the o p p o r t u n i t y , and have been r e p a i d by being read ( u n l i k e most s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n o v e l i s t s ) . the o v e r - r e a c t i o n to s o c i a l r e a l i s m causes c r i t i c a l myopia w i t h r e s p e c t to nabokov, whose repeated f i c t i o n a l a t t a c k s on t o t a l i t a r i a n s o c i e t i e s are e i t h e r ignored, or e l s e t r i v i a l i z e d as y e t another l a y e r or a r t i f i c e i n what are thought to be i n v o l u t e d crossword p u z z l e s . l e t us examine the development of the d e s t r u c t i v e dichotomy between s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l i t e r a t u r e and r e a l i s t i c l i t e r a t u r e by f i r s t r e t u r n i n g to the l a t e n i n e t e e n t h century n o v e l , and i t s journey from europe to america. ( ) hansen, p. . s o c i a l realism as the novel gained i n p r e s t i g e as an a r t form, i t gained i n ambition; i n s t e a d of r e s t r i c t i n g i t s e l f to an i n d i v i d u a l i t took on s o c i e t y i n g e n e r a l : "the way we l i v e now," i n t r o l l o p e ' s phrase. instead of jane austen's c h a r a c t e r study of a young woman i n emma, t h e r e was george e l i o t ' s comprehensive c h r o n i c l e of an e n t i r e p r o v i n c i a l town i n middlemarch. the tendency was more pronounced i n france, where balzac attempted to r e c o r d a h a l f century of french l i f e i n h i s s e r i e s , the human comedy, and where z o l a produced a s o c i o l o g i c a l s e r i e s of twenty novels w i t h the imposing t i t l e , les rougon-macquart. h i s t o i r e n a t u r e l l e e t s o c i a l e d'une f a m i l l e sous l e second empire. french n o v e l i s t s o f t e n proceeded from twin impulses, n e i t h e r of them conducive to n a r r a t o r s who s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y comment dn a e s t h e t i c techniques. one impulse was h i s t o r i c ; the n o v e l i s t was the c h r o n i c l e r of contemporary h i s t o r y . balzac c a l l e d h i m s e l f the " s e c r e t a r y of french s o c i e t y . " ^ ^ his human comedy was s a i d to be "a p r e c i o u s c o n t r i b u t i o n to french h i s t o r y . the g r e a t h i s t o r - i a n of the french r e v o l u t i o n , a l b e r t s o r e l , thought i t s pages as luminous as those i n any a r c h i v e s . " ( s i m i l a r l y , gordon s. haight remarks of george e l i o t t h a t , "a famous h i s t o r i a n once t o l d me t h a t middlemarch contained the f i n e s t p i c t u r e he knew of england a t the time of the reform b i l l . " ) ( ) as quoted in tom wolfe, "why they aren't writing the great american novel anymore," esquire, dec. , p. . ( ) e.k. brown, introd., pere goriot and eugenie grandet, by honore de balzac, trans. e.k. brown, dorothea walter, and john watkins (new york: random house, ) , p. ix. ( ) gordon s. haight, introd. > middlemarch, by george e l i o t , ed. gordon s. haight (boston: houghton m i f f l i n , ), p. vi. the second impulse was s c i e n t i f i c ; the n o v e l i s t attempted to apply to f i c t i o n the o b j e c t i v i t y and i m p e r s o n a l i t y of s c i e n c e . s c i e n t i f i c s o c i a l r e a l i s m has common ground w i t h t h e o r i e s of the i m p e r s o n a l i t y of a r t . e l i o t says t h a t " i t i s i n t h i s deper- s o n a l i z a t i o n t h a t a r t can be s a i d to approach the c o n d i t i o n s of s c i e n c e . " b a l z a c ' s v i s i o n , i n the words of e.k. brown, i s . "the v i s i o n of a human b i o l o g i s t . " balzac t e l l s us t h a t the l e a d i n g i d e a of h i s human comedy came from the study of human l i f e i n comparison w i t h the l i f e of animals .... s o c i e t y makes the man; he develops a c c o r d i n g to the s o c i a l c e n t r e s i n which he i s p l a c e d ; there are as many d i f f e r e n t men as t h e r e are s p e c i e s i n z o o l o g y . ^ zola s i m i l a r l y p r o c l a i m s t h a t the n o v e l i s t i s l i k e a s c i e n t i s t o b s e r v i n g human phenomena: the s c i e n t i s t i n h i s l a b o r a t o r y puts h i s substances i n t o c o n t a c t i n a s u i t a b l e c o n t a i n e r (environment) and then p l a y s no f u r t h e r p e r s o n a l p a r t , but steps back and merely notes down the i n e v i t a b l e r e a c t i o n s . in e x a c t l y the same way the modern s c i e n t i f i c n o v e l i s t should b r i n g together c e r t a i n human types, whose h e r e d i t a r y composition i s known, put them together i n a s u i t a b l e environment and then r e p o r t i m p e r s o n a l l y what must happen because s c i e n t i f i c laws d i c t a t e each reaction.,.- do i t i s t r u e t h a t "zola's shocking and h i g h l y i m a g i n a t i v e novels ... are o n l y l o o s e l y ' s c i e n t i f i c , ' and as p h i l i p rahv has s a i d , the i n v o c a t i o n of s c i e n c e by the french n a t u r a l i s t s came p r i m a r i l y ( ) e l i o t , "the perfect c r i t i c , " in the sacred wood, p. . ( ) brown, p. ix. ( ) balzac, as quoted in brown, pp. ix-x. ( ) a paraphrase of zola's theories in l.w. tancock, introd.,germinal, by smile zola, trans. l.w. tancock (harmondsworth, middlesex: penguin, ), pp. - . out of a d e s i r e to a t t a c h to the novel the p r e s t i g e r a t h e r than the method of s c i e n c e . " furthermore, when enthusiasm f o r the french s c i e n t i f i c novel passed over to america, the french s c i e n t i f i c b i a s was o f t e n misunderstood or ignored. frank n o r r i s transformed zola's n a t u r a l i s m i n t o romanticism: n a t u r a l i s m , as understood by z o l a , i s but a form of romanticism a f t e r a l l .... t e r r i b l e t h i n g s must happen to the c h a r a c t e r s of the nat- u r a l i s t i c t a l e . they must be t w i s t e d from the o r d i n a r y , wrenched from the q u i e t , u n e v e n t f u l round of everyday l i f e and f l u n g i n t o the throes of a v a s t and t e r r i b l e drama t h a t works i t s e l f out i n unleashed p a s s i o n s , i n blood and i n sudden d e a t h . r o do american r e a l i s t s r e t a i n e d the french i n t e r e s t i n s o c i e t y , i n t e r p r e t e d i n p s e u d o - s c i e n t i f i c terms. the i n d i v i d u a l was . thought to be i n the control of g i g a n t i c s o c i a l f o r c e s — s o c i a l darwinism, or p e s s i m i s t i c determinism, or v o r a c i o u s c a p i t a l i s m . since the i n d i v i d u a l was, to use a word f a s h i o n a b l e a t the time, determined, the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r was s u p e r f l u o u s on s e v e r a l counts: the r e a l i s t p r e f e r r e d the d e p i c t i o n of h o s t i l e s o c i a l f o r c e s , red i n t o o t h and claw, to the a e s t h e t i c d e l i b - e r a t i o n s of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ; the r e a l i s t p r e f e r r e d comprehensive i d e o l o g i e s — g e n e r a l l y gloomy i d e o l o g i e s — to the i d i o s y n c r a c i e s of a unique s e n s i b i l i t y . the d e v e l o p i n g dichotomy between an i n t e r p r e t a t i v e consciousness w i t h an i n t e r e s t i n a e s t h e t i c s , and the crude, d i r e c t , impersonal t r a n s c r i b e r of the red meat of r e a l i t y , i s , i n the words of ( ) richard chase, the american novel and i t s tradition (garden city, new york: anchor-doubleday, ), p. . ( ) frank norris, as quoted in alfred kazin, on native grounds ( ; rpt. garden city, new york: anchor-doubleday, ), p. . l i o n e l t r i l l i n g , " e x e m p l i f i e d by the d o c t r i n a i r e indulgence which l i b e r a l i n t e l l e c t u a l s have always d i s p l a y e d towards theodore d r e i s e r . " i t was p a r r i n g t o n who e s t a b l i s h e d the formula f o r the l i b e r a l c r i t i c i s m of d r e i s e r by c a l l i n g him a "peasant": when d r e i s e r t h i n k s s t u p i d l y , i t i s because he has the slow stubborness of a peasant; when he w r i t e s badly, i t i s because he i s impatient of the s t e r i l e l i t e r a r y g e n t i l i t y of the b o u r g e o i s i e . i t i s as i f w i t , and f l e x - i b i l i t y of mind, and p e r c e p t i o n , and knowledge were to be equated w i t h a r i s t o c r a c y and p o l i t i c a l r e a c t i o n , while d u l l n e s s and s t u p i d i t y suggest •a v i r t u o u s democracy .... t h i s i m p l i e d amalgamation of mind w i t h g e n t i l i t y i s the r a t i o n a l e of the long indulgence of d r e i s e r , which i s extended even to the s t y l e of h i s prose. everyone i s aware t h a t d r e i s e r ' s prose s t y l e i s f u l l of roughness and u n g a i n l i - ness, and the c r i t i c s who admire d r e i s e r t e l l us i t does not matter (pp. - , - ). c e r t a i n l y frank n o r r i s would say t h a t a rough and u n g a i n l y prose s t y l e doesn't matter: "who cares f o r f i n e s t y l e ! t e l l your yarn and l e t your s t y l e go to the d e v i l . we don't want l i t e r a t u r e , we want l i f e . " ^ the f i n e d i s t i n c t i o n s of a f i n e s t y l e are unnecessary when n o v e l i s t s emphasize the elemental p a s s i o n s : i t was a c r i s i s .... b l i n d l y , and without knowing why, mcteague fought a g a i n s t i t .... within him, a c e r t a i n second s e l f , another b e t t e r mcteague rose w i t h the b r u t e . ... the two were a t g r a p p l e s . . . . i t was the ( ) lionel t r i l l i n g , the liberal imagination ( ; rpt. garden city, new york: anchor-doubleday, ), p. . t r i l l i n g disapprovingly quotes f.o. matthiessen: "'the . l i a b i l i t y in what santayana called the genteel t r a d i t i o n was due to i t s being the product of mind apart from experience. dreiser gave us the s t u f f of our common experience, not as i t was hoped to be by any i d e a l i z i n g t h e o r i s t , but as i t a c t u a l l y was in i t s crudity'" (p. ). ( ) norris, as quoted in kazin, p. . cf. oates' narrator in expensive people. o l d b a t t l e , o l d as the world, wide as the world -- the sudden panther leap of the animal, l i p s drawn, fangs a f l a s h , hideous, monstrous, not to be r e s i s t e d , and the simultaneous a r o u s i n g of the other man, the b e t t e r s e l f t h a t c r i e s , "down, down," without knowing why; t h a t g r i p s the monster; t h a t f i g h t s to s t r a n g l e i t , to t h r u s t i t down and back.^, the comic book s t y l e of darwinian monsters rampant on a f i e l d of determinism i s not conducive to s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i o n . the emphasis i s on e x t e r n a l s . z o l a researched r a i l r o a d i n g f o r la bete humaine and c o a l mining f o r germinal; n o r r i s " s t u d i e d the harvard l i b r a r y ' s copy of a text-book of o p e r a t i v e d e n t i s t r y so he could l o a d mcteague w i t h the d e n t a l minutiae o f bud-burrs and gutta-percha. throughout, the n a t u r a l i s t s ' most c h a r a c t e r - i s t i c t o o l has been the notebook." a n o v e l i s t eager to d i s - gorge h i s notebook's i n f o r m a t i o n i s not l i k e l y to emphasize the a e s t h e t i c b a s i s of h i s n a r r a t i v e . as f o r the i n t r o s p e c t i v e aspect of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , the more d o c t r i n a i r e n a t u r a l i s t s were not convinced t h a t i n d i v i d u a l s had any inward l i v e s worth c o n s i d e r i n g : n a t u r a l i s t d o c t r i n e ... assumes t h a t f a t e i s something imposed on the i n d i v i d u a l from the o u t s i d e . the p r o t a g o n i s t of a n a t u r a l i s t i c novel i s t h e r e f o r e a t the mercy of circumstances r a t h e r than of h i m s e l f , indeed he o f t e n seems to have no s e l f . , "a man becomes most human, says scheler i n man's p l a c e i n nature, when he separates h i m s e l f from the imperatives of h i s ( ) frank norris, mcteague, ed. carvel c o l l i n s (new york: holt, rinehart and winston, ), p. . ( ) carvel c o l l i n s , introd. , mcteague, p. ix. ( ) chase, p. . environment and becomes s e l f - c o n s c i o u s . b u t i s i t not e q u a l l y t r u e t h a t men d e f i n e themselves, become most human, when they respond to the imperatives of t h e i r environment? furthermore, i s not the " n a t u r a l i s t d o c t r i n e " t h a t f a t e i s imposed on the i n d i v i d u a l from o u t s i d e o f t e n p r e c i s e l y the case i n l i f e as w e l l as l i t e r a t u r e ? — in other words, s c h e l e r ' s premise r e v e a l s the c r i t i c a l p o l a r i z a t i o n between s e l f - consciousness and s o c i a l f o r c e s . one can see the same p o l a r i z a t i o n i n updike's bech; a book, i n which the hero v i s i t s one of the eastern european communist c o u n t r i e s , where of course contemporary s o c i a l r e a l i s m f l o u r i s h e s : in the course of t h e i r tour through the museum, bech t r i e d to cheer [his tour guide] w i t h p r a i s e of s o c i a l i s t r e a l i s m . "look a t t h a t t u r b i n e . nobody i n america can p a i n t a t u r b i n e l i k e t h a t . not s i n c e the t h i r t i e s . every p a r t so d i s t i n c t you c o u l d r e b u i l d one from i t , yet the whole t h i n g romantic as a sunset. m i m e s i s — you c a n ' t beat i t . v r - bech a s s o c i a t e s mimesis w i t h s o c i a l i s t r e a l i s m , which might be d e s c r i b e d as imposed n a t u r a l i s m ; "decadent" a e s t h e t i c s must be minimized, and the a r t i s t must f a i t h f u l l y adhere to s u b j e c t matter s e t by the s t a t e . instead of the r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of r e a l i t y , the a r t i s t adumbrates i d e o l o g y . consider i n t r e p i d tu lo, i n the contemporary chinese s t o r y , "the undaunted": under the window s a t d a u n t l e s s tu lo, h i s head c r a d l e d on h i s hands over h i s desk. he was l i s t e n i n g w i t h g r e a t c o n c e n t r a t i o n to a broad- c a s t of the i n s p i r i n g c a l l i s s u e d by the p a r t y c e n t r a l committee headed by chairman mao: h i t ( ) jerry bryant, the open decision (new york: the free press, ), p. . ( ) john updike, bech: a book (new york: knopf, ), p. . back a t the right d e v i a t i o n i s t wind to r e v e r s e c o r r e c t v e r d i c t s ! he stood up, ... then pushed open the window. ... instead of the e n d l e s s , u n d u l a t i n g p l a t e a u , he seemed to see the indomitable, r o a r i n g b i l l o w s of the mighty yellow r i v e r surging forward and s u r g i n g i n h i s b r e a s t ....gg tu lo's programmatic adventures o b v i o u s l y r e p r e s e n t a p e r v e r - s i o n of s o c i a l r e a l i s m ; but the f a c t t h a t bech c a s u a l l y assoc- i a t e s mimesis w i t h t h i s p e r v e r t e d form of l i t e r a t u r e e x e m p l i f i e s the s p l i t i n c r i t i c a l t h i n k i n g between s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a e s t h e t i c s and the r e a l i s t i c r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of s o c i e t y . the breakdown of s o c i a l realism in l i o n e l t r i l l i n g presented the theory t h a t the novel of s o c i a l r e a l i s m (which had f l o u r i s h e d i n america throughout the 's) was f i n i s h e d because the f r e i g h t t r a i n of h i s t o r y had passed i t by. the argument was t h a t such n o v e l s were a product of the r i s e of the b o u r g e o i s i e i n the n i n e t e e n t h century at the h e i g h t of c a p i t a l i s m . but now bour- g e o i s s o c i e t y was breaking up .... the o n l y hope was a new k i n d of n o v e l . . . . [ n o v e l i s t s ] rushed o f f to w r i t e every k i n d of novel you c o u l d imagine, so long as i t wasn't the so- c a l l e d " b i g n o v e l " of manners and s o c i e t y . the next t h i n g one knew, they were i n t o n o v e l s of i d e a s , f r e u d i a n n o v e l s , s u r r e a l i s t i c novels ("black comedy"), kafkaesque novels and, more r e c e n t l y , the c a t a t o n i c novel or novels of i m m o b i l i t y , the s o r t t h a t begins: "in order to get s t a r t e d , he went to l i v e alone on an i s l a n d and shot h i m s e l f . " (opening l i n e of a robert coover s h o r t s t o r y . ) ^ by the s i x t i e s , . w o l f e c o n t i n u e s , the n o v e l i s t had abandoned "the r i c h e s t t e r r a i n of the n o v e l : namely, s o c i e t y , the s o c i a l ( ) the undaunted: a revolutionary short story (toronto: norman bethune i n s t i t u t e , ), p. . ( ) wolfe/pp. - . t a b l e a u , manners and morals, the whole business of 'the way we l i v e now.'" p u b l i s h e r s wanted novels t h a t would r e c o r d the s i x t i e s , but " a l l they got was the p r i n c e of a l i e n a t i o n ... s a i l i n g o f f to lonesome i s l a n d on h i s t a r o t boat w i t h h i s back turned and h i s timeless cape on, reeking.of camphor b a l l s " (p. ). n o v e l i s t s may or may not have abandoned the " r i c h e s t t e r r a i n of the n o v e l , " but many of them d e f i n i t e l y abandoned s o c i a l r e a l i s m . wolfe among o t h e r s has t r a c e d the abandonment of s o c i a l r e a l i s m to a l a c k of f a i t h i n r e a l i s m i t s e l f . bernard bergonzi argues t h a t t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m "depended on a degree of r e l a t i v e s t a b i l i t y i n t h r e e separate a r e a s : the i d e a of r e a l i t y ; the nature of the f i c t i o n a l form; and the k i n d of r e l a t i o n s h i p t h a t might p r e d i c t a b l y e x i s t between them." when both the " i d e a of r e a l i t y " and f i c t i o n a l form became as p r o b l e m a t i c as t h e i r r e l a t i o n s h i p , a r t i s t s began to r e - e v a l u a t e , and i n f a c t devalue, the t r a d i t i o n a l mimetic f u n c t i o n of the n o v e l . j u s t as devalued currency has a s i g n i f i c a n t and p o s s i b l y d e s t r u c t i v e e f f e c t on the economy, devalued r e a l i s m has a p o t e n t i a l l y d e s t r u c t i v e e f f e c t on f i c t i o n ; as v a r i o u s t h e o r i s t s have warned, one shouldn't l i g h t l y abandon a mode which has served f i c t i o n w e l l f o r a t l e a s t three c e n t u r i e s . wolfe, f o r example, argues t h a t r e a l i s m i s the very s o u l of f i c t i o n . he says t h a t "the i n t r o d u c t i o n of r e a l i s m i n t o l i t e r a t u r e by people l i k e richardson, f i e l d i n g and s m o l l e t t was l i k e the i n t r o d u c t i o n of e l e c t r i c i t y i n t o marine technology. ( ) bernard bergonzi, the s i t u a t i o n of the novel (london; macmillan, ), p. . i t was not j u s t another d e v i c e . i t r a i s e d the s t a t e of the a r t to a new magnitude." bergonzi agrees t h a t the " a s t o n i s h i n g t e c h n i c a l development" i n the e a r l y e i g h t e e n t h century i n v o l v e d more than "mere technique, s i n c e new areas of experience and new ways of understanding were i n e x t r i c a b l y t i e d up w i t h formal change." i t i s a " r e a l problem to a v o i d t a l k i n g as i f the novel went on s t e a d i l y improving between, say, and ." george s t e i n e r , commenting on what he sees as the d e c l i n e of the n o v e l , says t h a t by " i t s very nature and v i s i o n , the a r t of the novel i s r e a l i s t i c . where i t abandons i t s r e s p o n s i b i l i t y to the r e a l , the novel b e t r a y s i t s e l f . " and one should remember e r i c h auerbach's d i s t a n t e a r l y warning i n mimesis: the r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of r e a l i t y i n western l i t e r a t u r e , which was w r i t t e n d u r i n g a war t h a t appeared to be d e s t r o y i n g the l a s t v e s t i g e s of western c i v i l i z a t i o n , and w r i t t e n w i t h the o b j e c t of " b r i n g i n g together again those whose l o v e f o r our western h i s t o r y has s e r e n e l y persevered." joyce s a i d t h a t h i s t o r y was a nightmare from which he was t r y i n g to awake; how i r o n i c t h a t auerbach's f i n a l chapter analyzes joyce and other modernists whose works seemed to auerbach to embrace and welcome the d i s - i n t e g r a t i o n of the o l d c i v i l i z e d s t a b i l i t i e s : ( ) wolfe, p. . ( ) bergonzi, p. . ( ) george steiner, " l i t e r a t u r e and post-history," in language and silence (new york: antheneum press, ), p. . ( ) erich auerbach, mimesis: the representation of reality in western l i t e r a t u r e , trans. william r. trask (princeton: princeton univ. press, ), p. . at the time of the f i r s t world war and a f t e r [says auerbach] — i n a europe unsure of i t s e l f , o v e r f l o w i n g w i t h u n s e t t l e d i d e o l o g i e s and ways of l i f e , and pregnant with d i s a s t e r — c e r t a i n w r i t e r s ... f i n d a method which d i s s o l v e s r e a l i t y i n t o m u l t i p l e and m u l t i v a l e n t r e f l e c t i o n s of consciousness .... ...there i s i n a l l those works a c e r t a i n atmos- phere of u n i v e r s a l doom: e s p e c i a l l y i n u l y s s e s , w i t h i t s mocking odi-et-amo hodgepodge of the european t r a d i t i o n , w i t h i t s b l a t a n t and p a i n - f u l c y n i c i s m , and i t s u n i n t e r p r e t a b l e symbolism — f o r even the most p a i n s t a k i n g a n a l y s i s can h a r d l y emerge w i t h anything more than an appre- c i a t i o n of the m u l t i p l e enmeshment of the m o t i f s but w i t h nothing of the purpose and the meaning of the work i t s e l f . . . . there i s o f t e n something c o n f u s i n g [about u l y s s e s and other n o v e l s ] , some- t h i n g hazy about them, something h o s t i l e to the r e a l i t y they r e p r e s e n t . . . . there i s h a t r e d of c u l t u r e and c i v i l i z a t i o n , brought out by means of the s u b t l e s t s t y l i s t i c d e v i c e s which c u l t u r e and c i v i l i z a t i o n have developed, and o f t e n a r a d i c a l and f a n a t i c a l urge to d e s t r o y (p. ). auerbach says d e s t r u c t i v e impulses on the p a r t of the modernists c o n t r i b u t e d to the breakdown of mimetic r e p r e - s e n t a t i o n ; s t e i n e r says r e a l i s m was d e f e a t e d by the c r u e l terms of contemporary h i s t o r y ( " f i c t i o n f a l l s s i l e n t b e f o r e the enormity of the f a c t ....") \ wolfe says n o v e l i s t s i g n o r e r e a l i s m through s e l f - c e n t r e d e g o t i s m - - b u t , whatever the cause, r e a l i s m i s no l o n g e r thought to be c e n t r a l to the n o v e l . i t i s i n s t r u c t i v e to compare e r n e s t baker's d e s c r i p t i o n of s e l f - conscious f i c t i o n i n the e i g h t e e n t h century as a " f r e a k i s h d e r i v a t i o n " from the norm of r e a l i s m , w i t h those contemporary t h e o r i s t s who now -describe; r e a l i s m as the f r e a k i s h d e r i v a t i o n . thus ortega's p r o c l a m a t i o n t h a t the "imperative of unmitigated r e a l i s m t h a t dominated the a r t i s t i c s e n s i b i l i t y of the l a s t ( ) steiner, " l i t e r a t u r e and post-history," p. . century must be put down as a f r e a k i n a e s t h e t i c e v o l u t i o n . " thus john barth, who says t h a t u n l i k e "those c r i t i c s who regard r e a l i s m as what l i t e r a t u r e has been aiming a t a l l along, i tend to regard i t as a k i n d of a b e r r a t i o n i n the h i s t o r y of l i t e r a t u r e . " speaking i n a calmer, and t h e r e f o r e more damning tone, w i l l i a m p h i l l i p s adds, "in f a c t , r e a l i s m i s j u s t another formal d e v i c e , not a permanent method f o r d e a l i n g w i t h .. experience. the return of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r h.g. wells w r i t e s with the tone of a s o c i a l i s t who i s c h e e r f u l l y b i d i n g h i s time: throughout the broad smooth flow of n i n e t e e n t h - century l i f e i n great b r i t a i n , the a r t of f i c t i o n f l o a t e d on t h i s same assumption of s o c i a l f i x i t y . the novel i n e n g l i s h was pro- duced i n an atmosphere of s e c u r i t y f o r the entertainment of secure people who l i k e d to f e e l e s t a b l i s h e d and safe f o r good. i t s s t a n - dards were e s t a b l i s h e d w i t h i n t h a t a p p a r e n t l y permanent frame and the c r i t i c i s m of i t began to be i r r i t a t e d and perplexed when, through a new i n s t a b i l i t y , the s p l i n t e r i n g frame began to get i n t o the p i c t u r e . ^ through t h a t s p l i n t e r i n g frame stepped the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . in the /research m a g n i f i c e n t , f o r example, wells attempted "the d e v i c e of making the o s t e n s i b l e w r i t e r s p e c u l a t e about the c h i e f c h a r a c t e r i n the s t o r y he i s t e l l i n g . the o s t e n s i b l e w r i t e r becomes a s o r t of enveloping c h a r a c t e r , h i m s e l f ortega, p. . "john barth," in bellamy, p. . william p h i l l i p s , as quoted in wolfe, p. . h.g. wells, experiment in autobiography, as quoted in bergonzi, ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) p. . i n d i s c u s s i o n w i t h the reader." many c r i t i c s s i n c e wells have noted the a s s o c i a t i o n of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r with the s p l i n t e r i n g frame of r e a l i s m , but u n f o r t u n a t e l y t h i s a s s o c i a t i o n has been e l e v a t e d to a c r i t i c a l axiom, i n which i t i s assumed t h a t the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s by nature h o s t i l e towards r e a l i t y . for example, nabokov i n s i s t s t h a t the word r e a l i t y should always be quarantined w i t h q u o t a t i o n marks; h i s i n s i s t e n c e i s based on the s u b t l e and complicated r e l a t i o n s h i p between a r t i f i c e and r e a l i t y i n h i s own works. one o f t e n sees nabokov's f a s t i d - iousness taken w i t h d o c t r i n a i r e l i t e r a l i t y , out of nabokov's s p e c i a l context, and a p p l i e d to s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a e s t h e t i c s as though everyone were agreed t h a t r e a l i t y i s an e n t i r e l y sub- j e c t i v e matter, and t h a t we a l l have nothing i n common here on our mutual e a r t h . consider jerome k l i n k o w i t z ' s t e n t a t i v e q u e s t i o n i n g of donald barthelme: "do you have any c o n s c i o u s l y formed n o t i o n s about time and space t h a t i n f l u e n c e your work? p e r c e p t i o n and imagination? or, f o r g i v e me, ' r e a l i t y ' ? " (the word r e a l i t y seems to have become v u l g a r or obscene.) s i m i l a r l y , l a r r y mccaffery d e s c r i b e s barthelme's use of myth: " l i k e a s i g n i f i c a n t number of r e c e n t w r i t e r s , barthelme has turned to a f a m i l i a r myth (rather than to ' r e a l i t y ' ) . ..." "snow white," mccaffery e x p l a i n s , "has as i t s 'subject matter' a r t i t s e l f . i t i s not the ' r e a l world' which i t seeks to ( ) ibid, p. . ( ) jerome klinkowitz, "donald barthelme," i n bellamy, pp. - . ( ) larry .mccaffery/'barthelme's snow white: the aesthetics of trash," c r i t i q u e , , no. ( ), . r e p r e s e n t , but the s t a t u s of a r t .... snow white can, t h e r e - f o r e , b e s t be termed a ' s e l f - r e f l e x i v e ' work i n t h a t even as i t i s being c r e a t e d , i t seeks to examine i t s own c o n d i t i o n " (p. ) . mccaffery's haze of d e f e n s i v e q u o t a t i o n marks suggests t h a t the s e l f - r e f l e x i v e n e s s of barthelme's f i c t i o n i s p a r t l y due to q u a l i t i e s i n barthelme's work, and p a r t l y due to the terms of mccaffery's c r i t i c a l v o c a b u l a r y . i f " s u b j e c t matter" has nothing to do w i t h the " r e a l world," i t w i l l not be s u r p r i s i n g to f i n d c r i t i c s who pronounce barthelme's work " s e l f - r e f l e x i v e " and s o l i p s i s t i c — f o r g i v e me, " s o l i p s i s t i c . " many of the themes of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n contemporary american f i c t i o n c e n t r e on the e x p e c t a t i o n t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a e s t h e t i c s are u t t e r l y d i s t i n c t from r e a l i s t a e s t h e t i c s , as we can see by d e s c r i b i n g three of the more p r e v a l e n t themes. the f i r s t theme i s the a r t i s t as h i s own s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t hero. we quoted e a r l i e r joyce's memorable d e f i n i t i o n of the impersonal a r t i s t , behind the work and beyond a n a l y s i s . yet even the c r i t i c who wants to take joyce a t h i s word d i s t r u s t s "the i n s i s t e n t s e l f - d r a m a t i z a t i o n s i n the p o r t r a i t , " and the " i n s t a n c e s of a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l e s o t e r i c i s m . " the c r i t i c might f e e l p a t r o n i z e d by "the i n v i t a t i o n a t the end of finnegan's wake — 'the keys t o . g i v e n ! — with i t s touching m a g i s t e r i a l assumption t h a t these keys w i l l seem worth d i s e n t a n g l i n g from the v e r b i a g e i n which they have been c o y l y b u r i e d . " w i t h i n the most impersonal a e s t h e t i c t h e r e l u r k s e g o c e n t r i c i n t r o s p e c t i o n . w i t h i n the contemporary s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a e s t h e t i c ( ) peter, pp. - . there l u r k s a k i n d of h e r o i c s o l i p s i s m . tom wolfe, who sees the world i n terms of s t a t u s , t h i n k s the contemporary n o v e l i s t i s c a r r i e d away w i t h h i s own p r e s t i g e . a c c o r d i n g to wolfe, e s s a y i s t s , b i o g r a p h e r s , a u t h o r i t a t i v e c r i t i c s , and so on, formed l i t e r a t u r e ' s middle c l a s s , while the p r o l e s were the j o u r n a l i s t s , "who dug up s l a g s of raw i n f o r m a t i o n f o r w r i t e r s of h i g h e r ' s e n s i b i l i t y ' to make b e t t e r use o f . " at the top were the n o v e l i s t s . "they were regarded as the o n l y ' c r e a t i v e ' w r i t e r s , the o n l y l i t e r a r y a r t i s t s . they had e x c l u s i v e e n t r y to the s o u l of man, the profound emotions, the e t e r n a l m y s t e r i e and so f o r t h and so on thus u n i v e r s i t i e s d i s p l a y t h e i r n o v e l i s t s - i n - r e s i d e n c e l i k e rose buds i n the c o r p o r a t e button- hole; there i s a market f o r a n o v e l i s t ' s c o n v e r s a t i o n s (borges) strong o p i n i o n s (nabokov), and s e l f - i n t e r v i e w s (james d i c k e y ) . on the o t h e r hand, the n o v e l i s t might sense t h a t h i s power and i n f l u e n c e are i l l u s o r y , a matter of l i p s e r v i c e on s o c i e t y ' p a r t . he might take to h e a r t ortega's o p i n i o n t h a t the import- ance of the a r t i s t peaked i n the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y : "poetry and music then were a c t i v i t i e s o f an enormous c a l i b e r . in view of the d o w n f a l l of r e l i g i o n and the i n e v i t a b l e r e l a t i v i s m of s c i e n c e , a r t was expected to take upon i t s e l f nothing l e s s than the s a l v a t i o n of mankind." but the i r o n i c temper of the new a r t , as demonstrated with e x c e s s i v e v i v a c i t y by the d a d a i s t s , meant t h a t a r t would be regarded "as a t h i n g of no t r a n s c e n d i n g consequence" (p. ). ( ) wolfe, p. . ( ) ortega, pp. - . the a r t i s t might f i n d h i m s e l f r e j e c t i n g s o c i e t y and w r i t i n g f o r h i m s e l f , an " i d e a l reader," or an e l i t e . one begins to hear such strange pronouncements as the f o l l o w i n g from w i l l i a m h. gass. an unwary i n t e r v i e w e r asked him about h i s next n o v e l , and gass r e p l i e d , "i began the tunnel i n . i imagine i t i s s e v e r a l years away y e t . who knows, perhaps i t w i l l be such a good book t h a t no one w i l l want to p u b l i s h i t . i l i v e on t h a t hope." i f i t i s a v i r t u e to be unread, p r e - sumably the contemporary n o v e l i s t w i l l have l i t t l e concern about whether h i s n a r r a t o r makes c o n t a c t w i t h an audience: occupied as he i s w i t h t h i s b a s i c task of g r a s p i n g a r t i s t i c a l l y an e x c e s s i v e l y compli- cated r e a l i t y , the n a r r a t o r n e c e s s a r i l y l o s e s s i g h t of h i s reader and the reader's r e c e p t - i v i t y . he can no longer a f f o r d to c o n s i d e r a l l t h a t . the s p e c i f i c reader and the reader's i m a g i n a t i o n l a g f a r behind him; g e n e r a t i o n s i n t e r v e n e between the author and the compre- hending r e c i p i e n t of the n a r r a t i v e . the a r t i s t becomes the complete autocrat.gr- to become an a u t o c r a t of the imagination,, as wallace stevens might phrase i t , might tempt n o v e l i s t s such as gass, as w e l l as those c r i t i c s who, n a t u r a l l y enough, take p l e a s u r e i n being among the few who can decipher an a r t i s t ' s w i l l f u l o b s c u r i t i e s and " a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l e s o t e r i c i s m . " a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r c o u l d be a surrogate f o r a s e l f - a b s o r b e d n o v e l i s t . but, as we s h a l l see i n nabokov and barthelme, the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s ( ) carol spearin mccauley, "william h. gass," in bellamy, p. . ( ) erich kahler, the inward turn of narrative, trans. richard and clara winston (princeton: princeton univ. press, ), p. . kahler reports that when hermann broch was working on the death of v i r g i l , broch remarked, "you know, i t ' s r e a l l y no longer readable" (p. ). http://autocrat.gr- n a r r a t o r can a l s o be used as a d e v i c e by which the reader i s kept i n touch w i t h the author's complex purposes. the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ' s r h e t o r i c a l tendencies are e s s e n t i a l i n m a i n t a i n i n g connections between the p u z z l e d reader and the n a r r a t i v e i n n o v a t i o n s of the contemporary n o v e l . nabokov was asked, "do you make a p o i n t of p u z z l i n g people and p l a y i n g games w i t h readers?"; : he r e p l i e d , "what a bore t h a t would be!" the p o i n t of h i s t e x t u a l games i s to m a i n t a i n the d i a l o g u e , not to demonstrate the author's i n t e l l e c t u a l s u p e r i o r i t y . a second theme of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s the d i s t r u s t of language as a means of communication. american l i t e r a t u r e , perhaps because of i t s t w o - f i s t e d f r o n t i e r t r a d i t i o n , has long been s u s p i c i o u s about language, p a r t i c u l a r l y l i t e r a r y language (as t r i l l i n g complained). one t h i n k s of the e d i t o r i n the l a s t pages of poe's n o v e l , engaged i n dubious etymology r e g a r d i n g the strange words d i s c o v e r e d by pym i n h i s journey to a l a n d s u s p i c i o u s l y r e m i n i s c e n t of the american south; of the s c a r l e t l e t t e r , which t u r n s on the ambiguity of a vowel; of hemingway's a t t a c k on a b s t r a c t i o n s i n a f a r e w e l l to arms; of addie i n faulkner's as i lay dying: and so when cora t u l l would t e l l me i was not a t r u e mother, i would t h i n k how words go s t r a i g h t up i n a t h i n l i n e , quick and harmless, and how t e r r i b l y doing goes along the e a r t h , c l i n g i n g to i t , so t h a t a f t e r a w h i l e the two ( ) vladimir nabokov, strong opinions (new york: mcgraw-hill, ), p. . ( ) "abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of v i l l a g e s , the numbers of roads, the names of r i v e r s , the numbers of regiments and the dates" (ernest hemingway, a_ farewell to arms [ ; rpt. new york: scribner's, ~] , p. ). l i n e s are too f a r apart f o r the same person to s t r a d d l e from one to the other; and t h a t s i n and l o v e and f e a r are j u s t sounds t h a t people who never sinned nor loved nor f e a r e d have f o r what they never had and cannot have u n t i l they f o r g e t the w o r d s . o q o o the contemporary american author, a c c o r d i n g to tony tanner, f e a r s t h a t "language ... may a t every t u r n be l i m i t i n g , d i r e c t i n g and perhaps c o n t r o l l i n g h i s responses and f o r m u l a t i o n s . such an author -- and i t h i n k he i s an u n u s u a l l y common phenomenon i n contemporary america — w i l l go out of h i s way to show t h a t he i s u s i n g language as i t has never been used b e f o r e , l e a v i n g the v i s i b l e marks of h i s i d i o s y n c r a s i e s on every f o r m u l a t i o n . q o c l e a r l y t h i s l i n g u i s t i c paranoia would f i n d e x p r e s s i o n i n the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , whose tendencies towards the i d i o - s y n c r a t i c might r e s u l t i n endless neologisms or a p r i v a t e code. or perhaps the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r would be too s e n s i t i v e to the l i m i t a t i o n s o f words to speak a t a l l , thus f u l f i l l i n g the prophecy of george s t e i n e r , who argues there has been a r e t r e a t from the word, i n mathematics and s c i e n c e and p h i l o s o p h y a l i k e , u n t i l the a r t i s t f i n d s h i m s e l f tempted by the " s u i c i d a l r h e t o r i c of s i l e n c e . " "when the words i n the c i t y are f u l l of savagery and l i e s , nothing speaks louder than the u n w r i t t e n poem." k a h l e r , whose i m a g i n a t i o n i s e q u a l l y a p o c a l y p t i c , l i n k s together the a v a n t - g a r d i s t s , the s o l i p s i s t s and the t e c h n o c r a t s , and e n v i s i o n s what almost amounts t o a c o n s p i r a c y , a c o n s p i r a c y "to produce incoherence," and sever language "from ( ) william faulkner, as i lay dying ( ; rpt. new york: vintage- random house, ), pp. - ^ ( ) tony tanner, city of words (london: jonathan cape, ), p. ( ) george steiner, "silence and the poet," in language and silence (new york: antheneum press, ), pp. , . human expression."^" " c e r t a i n s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s i n con- temporary f i c t i o n are as i n c o h e r e n t and unconnected to human e x p r e s s i o n as kahler says, although one suspects the a r t i s t s r e s p o n s i b l e f o r these n a r r a t o r s are f a r too s e l f - a b s o r b e d to j o i n together i n an o r g a n i z e d c o n s p i r a c y . but the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n barthelme i s o f t e n the reader's agent a g a i n s t the dead language and jargon of an ad man s o c i e t y . while barthelme's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s unden- i a b l y l e a v e the marks of t h e i r i d i o s y n c r a c i e s on every f o r m u l a t i o n , they a l s o o f f e r f r e s h language and f r e s h p e r c e p t i o n s which e n t i c e the reader i n t o sympathy w i t h the r e a l i s t i c events of the s t o r y . "i am f r e e a s s o c i a t i n g , b r i l l i a n t l y , b r i l l i a n t l y , " says the n a r r a t o r of one barthelme. s t o r y , "to put you i n t o the problem." the f i n a l theme i s the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r as an a e s t h e t i c i n n o v a t o r . we noted t h a t the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r has always been c h a r a c t e r i z e d by h i s running commentary on a e s t h e t i c s . when s o c i a l r e a l i s m was i n power, and the ground r u l e s of the novel were w e l l understood, t h e r e was l i t t l e need f o r an i n t e r p r e t a t i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ; but w i t h the breakdown of t r a d i t i o n a l forms, and w i t h the r i s e of a r a t h e r i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d avant garde, the n a r r a t o r found h i m s e l f under pressure to c r e a t e completely unique works of a r t along with ( ) kahler, disintegration of form, pp. , . ( ) e.g., breakthrough f i c t i o n e e r s , ed. richard kostelanetz (barton, vermont- something else press, ), p a r t i c u l a r l y "tablet xi" by armand schwerner and "dashing from don to t i o l i " by raymond federman, pp. - and - , respectively. ( ) donald barthelme, "florence green i s ," in come back, dr. c a l i g a r i (boston: l i t t l e , brown, ), p. . h i s f e l l o w "breakthrough f i c t i o n e e r s . " he was expected to blow the r o o f o f f the house of f i c t i o n . as one of barthelme's n a r r a t o r ' s complains, i t i s d i f f i c u l t to keep the p u b l i c i n t e r e s t e d . the p u b l i c demands new wonders p i l e d on new wonders. often we don't know where our next marvel i s coming from. the supply of strange ideas i s not e n d l e s s . ^ the novel has a p a r a d o x i c a l t r a d i t i o n of change. f i e l d i n g thought he had invented a new genre, henry james wrote about the new novel, and french n o v e l i s t s announced the newest new novel, which, as gore v i d a l waspishly remarks, " i s c l o s e to f o r t y years o l d , " and thus " o l d indeed f o r a l i t e r a r y movement, p a r t i c u l a r l y a french l i t e r a r y movement." bradbury argues t h a t of a l l the l i t e r a r y a r t s , "the novel seems l e a s t g i v e n to a p r i o r i s m , " as "each novel c r e a t e s i t s own world a f r e s h , and ^engages,;us: for the o c c a s i o n with i t s own laws": ian watt ... and bernard bergonzi ... both argue t h a t the s p e c i e s arose i n the e i g h t e e n t h century as a f u l l y f l e d g e d form w i t h — as i t s e n g l i s h name suggests -- a p r o p e n s i t y a g a i n s t g e n e r i c d e f i n i t i o n . . . . and, says bergonzi, " s t y l i s t i c dynamism, or steady formal changed has always been the e s s e n t i a l p r i n c i p l e of the novel's development, of i t s i n t e r e s t i n any one case.gg however, the contemporary novel i s h a r d l y c h a r a c t e r i z e d by "steady formal change," but by endless i n n o v a t i o n ; i n f a c t , one t h e o r i s t , speaking of the a r t s i n g e n e r a l , argues t h a t the times ( ) donald barthelme, "the f l i g h t of pigeons from the palace," in sadness (new york: farrar, straus and giroux, ), p. . ( ) gore vidal, "american p l a s t i c : the matter of f i c t i o n , " new york review of books, july , p. . ( ) malcolm bradbury, p o s s i b i l i t i e s (london: oxford univ. press, ), pp. , . are c h a r a c t e r i z e d by s t a s i s : for s t a s i s , as i i n t e n d the term, i s not an absence of n o v e l t y and change — a t o t a l quiescence — but r a t h e r the absence of ordered s e q u e n t i a l change.... indeed, i n s o f a r as an a c t i v e , conscious search f o r new techniques, new forms and m a t e r i a l s , and new modes of sen- s i b i l i t y (such as have marked our time) p r e c l u d e s the gradual accumulation of changes capable of producing a t r e n d or a s e r i e s of connected mutations, i t tends to c r e a t e a s t e a d y - s t a t e , though perhaps one t h a t i s both v i g o r o u s and v a r i e g a t e d . ^ c l e a r l y one o p t i o n open to the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s to c o n t r i b u t e to the contemporary s t a t i c chaos by accompanying h i s f e l l o w breakthrough f i c t i o n e e r s to ground where the reader cannot f o l l o w . but nabokov's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s o f t e n a c t to preserve what i s best i n the l i t e r a r y t r a d i t i o n ; i n f a c t , good t a s t e and reverence f o r the best l i t e r a t u r e of the p a s t are considered'..virtues i n nabokov. s i m i l a r l y , barthelme' s n a r r a t o r s o f t e n r i d i c u l e e x c e s s i v e l y programmatic avant garde a e s t h e t i c s . thus the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r can indeed c h a l l e n g e the reader's e x p e c t a t i o n s of t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m , but a t the same time pre- serve and r e i n f o r c e those aspects of r e a l i s m t h a t keep the reader i n touch w i t h the work of a r t , t h a t help to "put you i n the problem." ( ) leonard b. meyer, music, the art and ideas: patterns and pre- d i c t i o n s in twentieth-century culture (chicago: univ. of chicago press, ), p. . i i the "gift" of the self-conscious narrator: the fiction of vladimir nabokov i n t r o d u c t i o n page stegner says t h a t v l a d i m i r nabokov " c o n t i n u a l l y stands between sun and scene so t h a t h i s shadow w i l l be c a s t over the a c t i o n . " "he performs t h i s s p e c i a l i n t r u s i o n ... p r i m a r i l y to remind the reader t h a t he i s there w i t h h i s brush and canvas, t h a t f i c t i o n a l v e r i s i m i l i t u d e i s an i l l u s i o n , a r e f l e c t i o n i n the a r t i s t ' s mind an important d e v i c e i n the performance of t h i s s p e c i a l i l l u s i o n i s of course the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , who has t r a d i t i o n a l l y made the reader aware t h a t the n a r r a t i v e i s p a r t of a c r e a t e d l i t e r a r y product. however, the t r a d i t i o n has been s p e c i a l l y adapted by nabokov as a means of p r o t e c t i n g the autonomy of the n a r r a t i v e v o i c e from a l l those f o r c e s , both l i t e r a r y and s o c i a l , t h a t would r e s t r i c t an a r t i s t ' s freedom. nabokov has never been r e t i c i e n t about the i s s u e of a r t i s t i c freedom: no creed or s c h o o l has had any i n f l u e n c e on me whatever. [m]y p o l i t i c a l creed has remained as bleak and changeless as an o l d gray rock .... freedom ( ) page stegner, escape into aesthetics (new york: dial press, ), p. . of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of a r t . the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r c a r r i e s on nabokov's program of i n d i v i d u a l i s m . the n a r r a t o r i s not a simple t r a n s c r i b e r of the events, but a dominating p e r s o n a l i t y — a s t o r y i n h i m s e l f . he i s eager to j u s t i f y and even c e l e b r a t e h i s a n t i - s o c i a l impulses (humbert humbert, f o r example). although he i s capable of exact v e r i s i m i l t u d e , he appears to abandon the encompassing t r a d i t i o n of r e a l i s m when i t s u i t s h i s i m a g i n a t i v e purposes. in terms of technique, he i s a l i t e r a r y e x h i b i t i o n i s t who d i r e c t s the reader's a e s t h e t i c a t t e n t i o n towards h i s c l e v e r h a n d l i n g of the n a r r a t i v e . he avoids standard turns of phrase, and mocks the t r a d i t i o n a l elements by which the p l o t i s t h i c k e n e d . by means of h i s a r t - i s t i c i m a g i n a t i o n , he imposes e l e g a n t order on what a t times appears to him to be chaos, a v a r i e g a t e d v o i d . however, d e s p i t e the a e s t h e t i c i d i o s y n c r a c i e s of the n a r r a t o r , we should not conclude t h a t the works themselves are ( ) nabokov, strong opinions, pp. , - . subsequent references to works by nabokov in this chapter w i l l consist of page numbers and t i t l e s or abbreviated t i t l e s in parentheses. the publishing data for works not documented previously are as follows: ada (new york:. mcgraw-hill, ); bend s i n i s t e r ( ; rpt. new york: mcgraw-hill, ); despair (new york: putnam, ); the eye, trans. dmitri nabokov in collaboration with vladimir nabokov (new york: phaedra, ); the gift, trans. michael scammell in collaboration with vladimir nabokov (new york: putnam, ); glory, trans. dmitri nabokov in collaboration with vladimir nabokov (new york: mcgraw- h i l l , ); invitation to a beheading, trans. dmitri nabokov in c o l l - aboration with vladimir nabokov (new york: putnam, ); king, queen, knave, trans. dmitri nabokov in collaboration with vladimir nabokov (new york: mcgraw-hill, ); l o l i t a (paris, ; rpt. new york: putnam, q. j , and i t s appended essay, "on a book entitled l o l i t a ' ' ) ; look at the harlequins!. (new york: mcgraw-hill, ); mary, trans. michael glenny in collaboration with vladimir nabokov (new york: mcgraw-hill, ); nabokov's dozen ( ; rpt. new york: avon, ); nikolai gogol (new york: new directions, ); pale fire ( ; rpt. new york: berkeley, ); pnin (garden city, new york: doubleday, ); speak, memory, rev. ed. (new york: putnam, ). s o l i p s i s t i c ( i n c h a r l e s r u s s e l l ' s terms, " a l l f i c t i o n s are u l t i m a t e l y about themselves, about the c r e a t i o n of the world by the word"). one must d i s p u t e the n o t i o n t h a t nabokov's works are a h a l l of mirrors r e f l e c t i n g nothing but the wizard of montreux, a n o t i o n t h a t i s o n l y s l i g h t l y more s o p h i s t i c a t e d than the popular n o t i o n t h a t nabokov i s a russian p r i n c e who was deposed by the communists and turned to pornography. stegner's o p i n i o n i s t y p i c a l : the s p e c t r a l i n t r u s i o n reminds the reader " t h a t f i c t i o n a l v e r i s i m i l i t u d e i s an i l l u s i o n , a r e f l e c t i o n i n the a r t i s t ' s mind." s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s i m p l i e d to be the enemy of v e r i s m i l i t u d e ; i n s t e a d of a s t o r y r e f e r r i n g to the r e a l world, i t r e f e r s o n l y to the no doubt i d e a l world imprisoned i n the a r t i s t ' s mind. in f a c t , however, nabokov's work i s o f t e n as v e r i s i m i l a r as any t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s t i c work . one should remember t h a t h i s d e s c r i p t i o n s of nature are s c i e n t i f i c a l l y accurate ( i n h i s f i c t i o n as i n h i s papers on l e p i d o p t e r y ) , and c o n s i d e r t h a t r e s e a r c h r i v a l l i n g t h a t of an i n d u s t r i o u s n i n e t e e n t h century french r e a l i s t i c n o v e l i s t i s reproduced i n the chernyshevski biography w i t h i n the g i f t . in terms of the theory of the n o v e l , nabokov taught h i s c o r n e l l students joyce w i t h the a i d of a s t r e e t map of d u b l i n , and anna karenina w i t h the a i d of a s t r e e t map of moscow. in h i s review of s a r t r e ' s la nausee he i s c r i t i c a l when s a r t r e allows the e a r l y t r a v e l s of h i s c e n t r a l c h a r a c t e r to seem " i m p l a u s i b l e " (strong opinions, p. ). s a r t r e ' s hero roquentin a l s o makes the mistake of imagining t h a t the composer and the s i n g e r of a c e r t a i n popular song are a brooklyn jew and a negress, r e s p e c t i v e l y ; nabokov says c o l d l y , "i have a s c e r t a i n e d t h a t i n r e a l i t y the song i s a sophie tucker one w r i t t e n by the canadian shelton brooks" (p. ). that humbert humbert i s a h i g h l y i m a g i n a t i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r does not prevent h i s "fancy prose s t y l e " from being t r u e to the nuances of american teen-age speech ( l o l i t a , p. ). the argument should be e v i d e n t : the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r c o n t r i b u t e s not o n l y to a sense of the a r t i s t ' s per- v a s i v e presence, but to t h a t aspect of nabokov's f i c t i o n which i s r e a l i s t i c and v e r i s i m i l a r . every form of n a r r a t i o n r e q u i r e s a e s t h e t i c d e v i c e s and t r i c k s ; nabokov chooses to d i s p l a y h i s d e v i c e s i n order to h e l p the reader d i s t i n g u i s h between stock c l i c h e s and f r e s h , v i v i d , a c c u r a t e mimesis. one motive f o r the f i e r c e i n d i v i d u a l i s m of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s h i s d i s t r u s t f o r a l l the l i e s and d i s t o r t i o n s of t o t a l i t a r i a n s o c i e t y and r e p r e s s i v e i d e o l o g i e s . because nabokov's people o f t e n move both imaginatively and p h y s i c a l l y from the world i n which they f i n d themselves, i t might appear t h a t they are "escaping" i n t o the palace of art;, but i n some cases they escape not from r e a l i t y or the "adjustmental aspect of experience," but from n o t i o n s of u n r e a l i t y f o s t e r e d by the t o t a l i t a r i a n s t a t e . in i n v i t a t i o n to a beheading, f o r example, the hero escapes from a s t a t e p r i s o n to a world where there are "beings a k i n to him" (p. ). the hero i s not simply moving from unpleasant r e a l i t y to an a e s t h e t i c heaven; he i s i n f a c t escaping the i n f e r i o r , m e r e t r i c i o u s a r t of the t o t a l i t a r i a n s t a t e , where even the t r e e s are not r e a l : the f a l l e n t r e e s l a y f l a t and r e l i e f l e s s , w h i l e those that:;were s t i l l s t a n d i n g , a l s o two- di mensional, w i t h a l a t e r a l shading of the trunk to suggest roundness, b a r e l y h e l d on w i t h t h e i r branches t o the r i p p i n g mesh of the sky* (p. ). the n a r r a t o r mocks the u n r e a l i t y of the s t a t e ' s v e r s i o n of r e a l i t y — r e a l i t y by decree, r e a l i t y p a i n t e d by p o l i c e a r t i s t s . by exposing the shabby heavens and the amateurish t r e e s , he i s d i r e c t i n g both c i n c i n n a t u s and the reader away from propa- g a n d i s t s i l l u s i o n . j e r z y k o s i n s k i has d e s c r i b e d h i s p e r s o n a l exposure to the type of f a l s e world t h a t t o r t u r e s c i n c i h n a t u s : i once remarked, ... t h a t i n my view s t a l i n was "an i d e a l n o v e l i s t , " a k i n d of w r i t e r every w r i t e r s e c r e t l y would l i k e to be — to have your books p u b l i s h e d i n m i l l i o n s of c o p i e s by the s t a t e ( a l l the volumes b e a u t i f u l l y bound) and to have a l l your p o t e n t i a l c r i t i c s a r r e s t e d and e x i l e d on the day o f p u b l i c a t i o n .... i saw myself imprisoned i n a l a r g e "house of p o l i t i c a l f i c t i o n , " persecuted by a mad b e s t - s e l l i n g n o v e l i s t , s t a l i n , and a band of h i s v i c i o u s e d i t o r s from the kremlin, and q u i t e l o g i c a l l y i saw myself as a p r o t a g o n i s t of h i s f i c t i o n . . . . i r e a l l y saw myself l i v i n g i n s i d e of a "novel" c a l l e d "the s o v i e t union" c r e a t e d by the crude i m a g i n a t i o n of bad a r t i s t s •••• thus when c r i t i c s d e s c r i b e nabokov as a wizard of the p i g - ments, or an a e s t h e t i c magician t o t a l l y removed from the s o c i a l concerns t h a t dominate r e a l i s t i c f i c t i o n , they tend to f o r g e t t h a t h i s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s ' p r e o c c u p a t i o n w i t h a e s t h e t i c s i s i n f a c t a p o l i t i c a l statement. both bend s i n i s t e r and i n v i t a t i o n are as much about the freedom of the i n d i v i d u a l i n a t o t a l i t a r i a n s t a t e as or the gulag a r c h i p e l a g o . in nabokov's works, f a l s e ( ) jerome klinkowitz, "jerzy kosinski," in bellamy, p. . a e s t h e t i c s are as much a form of r e p r e s s i o n as the s e c r e t p o l i c e , and much of what appears to be d e c e i t f u l a e s t h e t i c games on the p a r t of the n a r r a t o r i s a c t u a l l y an attempt to circumvent the d i s t o r t i o n s of incompetent a r t . the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s not a d e v i c e opposed to r e a l i s m , because r e a l i t y and a r t i f i c e are somewhat m y s t e r i o u s l y u n i t e d i n nabokov's f i c t i o n . when john shade says t h a t the u n i v e r s e i s an iambic l i n e , he i s of course a c h a r a c t e r speaking i n the c o n t e x t of a p a r t i c u l a r work; but a t the same time he v o i c e s a theme e s s e n t i a l to nabokov, t h a t r e a l i t y can o n l y be understood i n terms of the h i g h e s t form of a r t . when he says t h a t s a r t r e i n la nausee l a c k e d the t a l e n t to "make the world e x i s t as a work of a r t , " nabokov i n one sense r e s t a t e s the a e s t h e t i c of t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m , and i n another sense h i n t s at\what nabokov views as the i n t e r p e n e t r a t i o n of a r t i f i c e and r e a l i t y (strong opinions, p. ). in the s e c t i o n t h a t f o l l o w s , t h e r e f o r e , our emphasis w i l l be on the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r as the agent of a c o n s i s t e n t world view which i n c l u d e s both r e a l i s m and a r t - i f i c e , and not as the agent of a world of m i r r o r s " u n r e l a t e d to the phenomenal world." nabokov's p r i v a t e l i f e although the new c r i t i c s are no longer s u f f i c i e n t l y dominant to p r o c l a i m b i o g r a p h i c a l c r i t i c i s m a heresy, t h e i r d i s t r u s t l i n g e r s on; and no doubt i t i s t r u e t h a t nothing i n a f i c t i o n a l work can be e n t i r e l y e x p l a i n e d by r e f e r e n c e to the author's l i f e . n e v e r t h e l e s s , nabokov's l i f e i s d i r e c t l y r e l a t e d to h i s development file:///what of a s p e c i a l type o f s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . nabokov's p r i v - i l e g e d and e x c e p t i o n a l c h i l d h o o d and youth, and l a t e r h i s e n f o r c e d e x i l e , o b v i o u s l y c o n t r i b u t e d to the development of a proud, i s o l a t e d , and o f t e n a r i s t o c r a t i c n a r r a t o r who s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y opposes h i s own r a r e f i e d s e n s i b i l i t y to the crude g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s of the s t a t e and the s o c i e t y . nabokov's o r i g i n s are a r i s t o c r a t i c . his grandfather was m i n i s t e r of j u s t i c e under t s a r s alexander i i and i i i , and h i s f a t h e r was an i n f l u e n t i a l l i b e r a l statesman. he was the adored o l d e s t son i n a h i g h l y s o p h i s t i c a t e d f a m i l y : "imagine being the s o r t of strange c h i l d who sees c e r t a i n l e t t e r s of the a l p h a - bet as t i n t e d with blue — ' s t e e l y x, thundercloud z, h u c k l e b e r r y k'. he c o n f i d e s i n h i s adored mother and f i n d s she shares and enlarges on these p e r c e p t i o n s ! " imagine being the s o r t of c h i l d whose e a r l y poems are p u b l i s h e d by a p r i v a t e press out of h i s allowance money, a s m a l l f r a c t i o n of the two m i l l i o n d o l l a r s he was to have i n h e r i t e d from h i s u n c l e . ^ the e x i l e d nabokov was not a prime candidate f o r a s s i m i l - a t i o n . he was much too proud, too l o y a l to russia and h i s own background and t a l e n t s . one t h i n k s of h i s anger as an a d o l e s c e n t a t the teacher a t st. petersberg's tenishev school, a d o c t r i n a i r e democrat who suggested t h a t nabokov's f a m i l y l i m o u s i n e should wait a d i s c r e e t d i s t a n c e from the s c h o o l gates. one t h i n k s a l s o of h i s r e p l y to l u c i e leon noel when she s p e c u l a t e d t h a t nabokov ( ) richard boeth, "the gamesman," newsweek, july: , p. . ( ) many of the biographical d e t a i l s in t h i s section are taken from andrew field, nabokov: his l i f e in part (new york: viking, ). must have been overawed meeting joyce: "she p i c t u r e s me as a t i m i d young a r t i s t ; a c t u a l l y i was f o r t y , with a s u f f i c i e n t l y l u c i d awareness of what i had a l r e a d y done f o r russian l e t t e r s p r e v e n t i n g me from f e e l i n g awed i n the presence of any l i v i n g w r i t e r " (strong opinions, p. ). given t h i s supreme s e l f - c o n f i d e n c e about h i s l i t e r a r y t a l e n t s and h i s s o c i a l s t a n d i n g , i t i s not s u r p r i s i n g t h a t nabokov adopted an a t t i t u d e of proud a l i e n a t i o n towards the c o u n t r i e s i n which e x i l e d e p o s i t e d him. he s a i d of the years a t cambridge: "there was a c e r t a i n make- b e l i e v e about i t a l l . " ^ in b e r l i n he was i s o l a t e d w i t h i n the emigre colony, whose members "kept to themselves.... l i f e i n t h o s e settlements was so f u l l and i n t e n s e t h a t t h e s e russian i n t e l l i g e n t ! . . . had n e i t h e r time nor reason to seek t i e s beyond t h e i r own c i r c l e " (speak memory, p. ). in f a c t , the emigres were more than j u s t n e u t r a l l y o b l i v i o u s to b e r l i n s o c i e t y . fyodor godunov-cherdynstev, the hero of the g i f t , hates the b e r l i n bus l i n e s , the u g l y s t r e e t s he sees through the wet windows, and, most of a l l , "the n a t i v e passengers": [for] some reason he got the impression t h a t a l l these c o l d , s l i p p e r y eyes, l o o k i n g a t him as i f he were c a r r y i n g an i l l e g a l t r e a s u r e (which h i s g i f t was, e s s e n t i a l l y ) , belonged o n l y to m a l i c i o u s hags and crooked h u c k s t e r s . the russian c o n v i c t i o n t h a t the german i s i n small numbers v u l g a r and i n l a r g e numbers -- unbearably v u l g a r was, he knew, a c o n v i c t i o n unworthy of an a r t i s t ; but nonetheless ... o n l y the gloomy conductor ... seemed outwardly, i f not a human being, then a t l e a s t a poor r e l a t i o n to a human being (the g i f t , pp. - ). ( ) field, his l i f e in part, p. . "fyodor's a t t i t u d e toward germany r e f l e c t s too t y p i c a l l y perhaps the crude and i r r a t i o n a l contempt t h a t russian emigres had f o r the ' n a t i v e s ' ( i n b e r l i n , p a r i s or prague)" (foreword, g i f t , p. ). but many of the b e r l i n works are too t y p i c a l . sometimes the n a t i v e s are e x p l i c i t l y abused, but g e n e r a l l y the n a r r a t o r s ' contempt takes the form of t r a n s f o r m i n g the "unbearably v u l g a r " surroundings. with r e f e r e n c e to the n o v e l , king, queen, knave, andrew f i e l d notes t h a t the novel i s c l e a r l y not "about" b e r l i n e r s , nor does i t c o n t a i n , as many reviewers thought, " b e r l i n as seen through russian eyes the novel j i s , i n a wav, a r e a l i s t i c p o r t r a y a l of the russian emigre's way of not seeing the n a t i v e s of the c o u n t r i e s i n t o which he had happened to f a l l ... except as c e l l u l o i d or cardboard f i g u r e s . ...^ the p h y s i c a l s e t t i n g can seem as i n s u b s t a n t i a l as the n a t i v e s . for example, the n a r r a t o r of " t e r r a i n c o g n i t a " c l a i m s to be engaged i n the e x p l o r a t i o n of a fabulous t r o p i c a l r e g i o n , the d e t a i l s of which o c c a s i o n a l l y fade to r e v e a l "a few p i e c e s of r e a l i s t i c f u r n i t u r e and four w a l l s . " the n a r r a t o r t r i e s to convince h i m s e l f t h a t h i s magical t r o p i c s are r e a l , and denies those "unwelcome glimpses of my supposedly r e a l e x i s t e n c e i n a d i s t a n t european c i t y (the wallpaper, the armchair, the g l a s s o f lemonade) ... ("terra i n c o g n i t a , " russian beauty, pp. , ). i t i s tempting to apply f i e l d ' s remark to s e v e r a l of the emigre n o v e l s , and argue t h a t the n o v e l s are r e a l i s t i c p o r t r a y a l s of a s o c i e t y , s p e c i f i c a l l y the small and i n s u l a r s o c i e t y of russian emigres. the n a r r a t o r ' s s o l i p s i s t i c tendencies would then ( ) andrew field; nabokov: his l i f e in art (boston: l i t t l e , brown ), p. . be c o n t r o l l e d by the r e a l i s t i c context. in the case of fyodor, who i s one of the n a r r a t o r s of the g i f t , the c o n t r o l would come from the omniscient t h i r d person n a r r a t o r , the superego with, as i t were, s p e c i a l r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r the r e a l i t y p r i n c i p l e , who would emphasize t h a t a l l these f a n t a s i e s about the german race are merely i n s i d e fyodor's head: " f o r some reason he got the impression," "a c o n v i c t i o n unworthy of an a r t i s t . " in the eye, to pursue the tempting argument, s e v e r a l j u d i c i o u s c l u e s make i t c l e a r t h a t the n a r r a t o r smurov has completely misunderstood the r e l a t i o n s h i p between vanya and mukhin, t h a t he i s not the romantic hero of h i s daydreams, and t h a t he is_ mad: i swear, i swear i am happy. i have r e a l i z e d t h a t the o n l y happiness i n t h i s world i s to observe, to spy, to watch, to s c r u t i n i z e one- s e l f and o t h e r s , to be nothing but a b i g , s l i g h t l y v i t r e o u s , somewhat bloodshot., u n b l i n k i n g eye--. i swear t h a t t h i s i s happiness. what does i t matter t h a t i am a b i t cheap, a b i t f o u l , and t h a t no one a p p r e c i a t e s a l l the remarkable t h i n g s about me — my f a n t a s y , my e r u d i t i o n , my l i t e r a r y g i f t ... i am happy t h a t i can gaze a t myself, f o r any man i s absorbing — yes, r e a l l y absorbing! the world, t r y as i t may, cannot i n s u l t me. i am i n v u l n e r a b l e . . . . oh, to shout i t so t h a t a l l of you b e l i e v e me a t l a s t , you c r u e l , smug people....(the eye, pp. - ). smurov's e y e b a l l trope immediately r e c a l l s ralph waldo emerson i n the throes of t r a n s c e n d e n t a l i s m . but i t must be remembered t h a t i n the penultimate pages of the n o v e l , smurov seems g r e a t l y a t t r a c t e d to the same bourgeois value's as the other c h a r a c t e r s , and thus the f i n a l speech of the novel i s v o i c e d not by smurov, but by one of the many aspects of smurov, the aspect t h a t possesses a " l i t e r a r y g i f t . " the g i f t i s the same g i f t as t h a t possessed by fyodor, which suggests t h a t i t i s inadequate to t h i n k of the n a r r a t o r s as s o l i p s i s t s whose excesses are c o n t r o l l e d by the context; i n f a c t , the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s are, as a f u n c t i o n of t h e i r a l i e n a t i o n from s o c i e t y , the o n l y ones who under- stand s o c i e t y ' s r e a l nature. in the passage from the g i f t quoted above, fyodor's " g i f t " r e f e r s v a r i o u s l y to h i s s o p h i s t i c a t i o n , e r u d i t i o n , l i t e r a r y t a l e n t — i n s h o r t , to a l l those q u a l i t i e s i n h i s background which make i t p o s s i b l e f o r him to comprehend and express the t r u t h about what i s going on around him. given the c o n d i t i o n s i n b e r l i n d u r i n g the two decades before the war, fyodor's p a r a n o i a i s j u s t i f i e d , and i t i s o b v i o u s l y based on nabokov's experience i n e x i l e . nabokov, a f t e r a l l , had removed h i s unique t a l e n t s from the f r y i n g pan of l e n i n to the f i r e of n a z i germany. marrying a: jew d i d not improve h i s standing with the german s t a t e . thus the f a c t of germany's unimaginable c r u e l t y merges with germany's unimaginable b a n a l i t y ; these twin e v i l s can o n l y be p e r c e i v e d f o r what they are by the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . in bend s i n i s t e r , the i d e o l o g i e s accepted as r e a l i t y would seem to be a blend of nazism and communism. the s t a t e i s run a c c o r d i n g to a theory c a l l e d ekwilism, which would e l i m i n a t e the g i f t e d i n d i v i d u a l i n favour of standard brands. f r a d r i k skotoma, the p h i l o s o p h e r of ekwilism, says t h a t the r o o t of a l l the world's woes i s the unequal d i s t r i b u t i o n of human c o n s c i o u s n e s s : i t was, however, q u i t e p o s s i b l e , he maintained, to r e g u l a t e the c a p a c i t y of the human v e s s e l s . i f , f o r i n s t a n c e , a g i v e n amount of water were contained i n a g i v e n number of heterogeneous b o t t l e s ... the d i s t r i b u t i o n of the l i q u i d would be uneven and u n j u s t , but c o u l d be made even and j u s t e i t h e r by grading the contents or by e l i m i n a t i n g the fancy v e s s e l s and adopting a standard s i z e (bend s i n i s t e r , p. ). the "fancy v e s s e l s " are those w i t h the s e n s i b i l i t y and i n t e l l i g e n c e to see through the s t a t e ' s new order, i n which "a g r e a t and b e a u t i f u l s i m p l i f i c a t i o n w i l l r e p l a c e the e v i l r e f i n e - ments of a degenerate p a s t " (p. ). again, "degenerate" and "refinements" r e f e r to those with the g i f t , i n i m i c a l to the s t a t e , of seeing t h i n g s f o r themselves. the hero of the n o v e l , krug, r e f u s e s to s i g n a document s u p p o r t i n g the p o l i c i e s of the s t a t e p r e c i s e l y on the grounds t h a t the s t a t e and a l l i t s a t t r i b u t e s are u n r e a l . as he says, "i do not b e l i e v e i n p i s t o l s ... (p. ). the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r of the novel sees both the u n r e a l i t y of the s t a t e , and i t s r e a l power. here are h i s comments a f t e r the scene i n which krug r e f u s e s to accept the p o l i c i e s of the d i c t a t o r paduk: which, of course, terminated the i n t e r v i e w . thus?. or perhaps i n some other way? did krug r e a l l y glance a t >the prepared speech? and i f he d i d , was i t r e a l l y as s i l l y as a l l t h a t ? he d i d ; i t was. the seedy t y r a n t or the p r e s - i d e n t of the s t a t e , or the d i c t a t o r , or who- ever he was — the man paduk i n a word, the toad i n another -- d i d hand my f a v o r i t e c h a r a c t e r a mysterious batch of n e a t l y typed pages (p. ). the n a r r a t o r q u e s t i o n s the v a l i d i t y of h i s i m a g i n a t i o n ; c o u l d the documents of a t o t a l i t a r i a n s t a t e be t h a t f a r c i c a l ? he concludes t h a t h i s n a r r a t i v e i s a c c u r a t e : "he d i d ; i t was." but w h i l e acknowledging the power of the s t a t e , he r e f u s e s to accept i t s l i e s . he denies paduk h i s t i t l e s — "the seedy t y r a n t or the p r e s i d e n t of the s t a t e , or the d i c t a t o r , or whoever he was j u s t as nabokov i n h i s gogol biography shows h i s scorn f o r the incompetence of gogol's p r e s i d i n g p h y s i c i a n by r e f u s i n g to s p e l l h i s name c o n s i s t e n t l y ' - "dr. auvers (or hovert) ," "auvert's (or hauvers's)" (gogol, p. ). when the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r emphasizes a r t i f i c e or i l l u s i o n , i t i s o f t e n the case t h a t the s u b j e c t of h i s n a r r a t i v e i s i n f a c t an i l l u s i o n , a sham, a f a r c i c a l imposter. because of h i s s p e c i a l l i t e r a r y g i f t s , the n a r r a t o r has the power to expose those i l l u s i o n s accepted as r e a l i t y by the r e s t of s o c i e t y . a f t e r the b e t t e r p a r t of two decades i n b e r l i n , and a few years i n p a r i s , nabokov managed to b r i b e the proper bureaucrat and moved to america, where he claimed to f e e l a t home. bend s i n i s t e r was w r i t t e n i n america, and i t i s i n t e r e s t i n g to hear krug's reminiscences of h i s l e c t u r e tour i n the land where fancy v e s s e l s are preserved, a l a n d o f " ' e l a t i o n , d e l i g h t , a q u i c k e n i n g of the i m a g i n a t i o n .... landscapes as y e t u n p o l l u t e d w i t h c o n v e n t i o n a l poetry, and l i f e , the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s t r a n g e r , being slapped on the back and t o l d to r e l a x " ..(p.' ). perhaps i n america t h e r e would be no need f o r a s k e p t i c a l n a r r a t o r , s i n c e nabokov seemed to accept the c o l d war d i a l e c t i c of a b s o l u t e l y e v i l communism opposed by p e r f e c t l y f r e e america — "i d e p l o r e the a t t i t u d e of f o o l i s h or d i s h o n e s t people who r i d i c u l o u s l y equate ... the r u t h l e s s i m p e r i a l i s m of the ussr with the e a r n e s t and u n s e l f i s h a s s i s t a n c e extended by the usa to n a t i o n s i n d i s t r e s s " (strong opinions , p. ). instead of h o l d i n g h i m s e l f a l o o f from democratic america, we are t o l d t h a t nabokov "immersed h i m s e l f i n the main- stream of american bourgeois c u l t u r e , and thus l e a r n e d a whole g s u b j e c t matter." but i n m o r r i s bishop's l i s t of nabokov's p r o d u c t i o n d u r i n g the c o r n e l l years, there i s a suggestion t h a t nabokov's a s s i m i l - a t i o n was incomplete: "in a d d i t i o n to s t o r i e s and poems f o r the new yorker he wrote pnin, l o l i t a , c o n c l u s i v e evidence, the song of igor's campaign, eugene onegin, and a number o f a r t i c l e s on l e p i d o p t e r a " (p. ) — two books on russian l i t e r a t u r e ; a memoir, most of i t s chapters d e a l i n g w i t h the russian years; and two novels whose heroes are estranged from the american scene. and d e s p i t e h i s r e s i d e n c e i n c o n g e n i a l america, nabokov d i d not e l i m i n a t e the a l i e n a t e d s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . he denied, f o r example, t h a t l o l i t a was a s o c i a l s a t i r e of american mores ( i n the manner of, say, s i n c l a i r l e w i s ) : another charge which some readers have made i s t h a t l o l i t a i s anti-american.... c o n s i d e r a t i o n s of depth and p e r s p e c t i v e (a suburban lawn, a mountain meadow) l e d me to b u i l d a number o f north american s e t s . i needed a c e r t a i n e x h i l a r - a t i n g m i l i e u . nothing i s more e x h i l a r a t i n g than p h i l i s t i n e v u l g a r i t y . but i n regard to p h i l - i s t i n e v u l g a r i t y there i s no i n t r i n s i c d i f f e r - ence between p a l e a r c t i c manners and n e a r c t i c manners.... i chose american motels i n s t e a d of swiss h o t e l s or e n g l i s h inns o n l y because i am t r y i n g to be an american w r i t e r . . . . on the other hand, my c r e a t u r e humbert i s a f o r e i g n e r and an a n a r c h i s t , and t h e r e are many t h i n g s , b e s i d e s nymphets, i n which i d i s a g r e e w i t h him. and a l l my russian readers know t h a t my o l d worlds — russian, b r i t i s h , german, french — are j u s t as f a n t a s t i c and p e r s o n a l as my new one i s ("on a book e n t i t l e d l o l i t a , " p. ). .by " p h i l i ' s t i n e v u l g a r i t y , " a q u a l i t y common to both t o t a l i t - a r i a n europe and f r e e america, nabokov means a g r e a t d e a l more than laughable bad t a s t e . his f i c t i o n equates d u l l and s t u p i d bourgeois ( ) morris bishop, "nabokov at cornell," in nabokov: c r i t i c i s m , reminiscences, translations and tributes, ed. alfred appel, jr. and charles newman (evanstbn, i l l i n o i s : northwestern univ. press, ), p. . c u l t u r e , t o t a l i t a r i a n i s m , and, not l e a s t , incompetent a r t and conn/./. v e n t i o n a l a e s t h e t i c s . nabokov has been q u i t e e x p l i c i t i n h i s equation of l i t e r a r y conventions w i t h p o l i t i c a l c o e r c i o n . he s a i d i n t h a t i n russia, a hundred years ago, "the most eloquent and i n f l u e n t i a l reviewers ... demanded t h a t russian n o v e l i s t s and poets p o r t r a y and s i f t the modern scene...." the t y p i c a l c r i t i c would i n s i s t t h a t a l i t e r a r y a r t i s t be a " r e p o r t e r on the t o p i c s of the day," a s o c i a l commentator, a class-war correspondent. that was h a l f a century before the b o l s h e v i s t p o l i c e not o n l y r e v i v e d the dismal s o - c a l l e d p r o g r e s s i v e ( r e a l l y , r e g r e s s i v e ) t r e n d c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of the e i g h t e e n s i x t i e s and s e v e n t i e s , but, as we a l l know, enforced i t . . . . the d r e a r y p r i n c i p l e s once v o i c e d i n the r e i g n of alexander the second and t h e i r subsequent s i n i s t e r transmutation i n t o the decrees of gloomy p o l i c e s t a t e s ... come to my mind whenever i hear today r e t r o - p r o g r e s s i v e book reviewers i n america and england p l e a d f o r a l i t t l e more s o c i a l comment, a l i t t l e l e s s a r t i s t i c whimsy. the accepted n o t i o n of a "modern world" c o n t i n u o u s l y f l o w i n g around us belongs to the same type of a b s t r a c t i o n as say, the "quaternary p e r i o d " of p a l e o n t o l o g y . what i f e e l to be the r e a l modern world i s the world the a r t i s t c r e a t e s , h i s own mirage, which becomes a new mir ("world" i n russian) by the very a c t of h i s shedding, as i t were, the age he l i v e s i n (strong opinions, pp. - ). nabokov i s being u n f a i r , s i n c e presumably those book reviewers who argued f o r a l i t t l e l e s s a r t i s t i c whimsy h a r d l y had i n mind the b r u t a l p o l i t i c a l r e p r e s s i o n of an a r t i s t ' s i m a g i n a t i o n . the p o i n t remains t h a t nabokov has not f o r g o t t e n h i s european experiences, which i n c l u d e d a brother murdered i n the c o n c e n t r a t i o n camps. there i s "a c e n t r a l core of s p i r i t i n me t h a t f l a s h e s and j e e r s a t the b r u t a l f o r c e of t o t a l i t a r i a n s t a t e s " (p. ). i t i s a p p a r e n t l y i n s t i n c t i v e f o r him to a s s o c i a t e pressures to i n c l u d e s o c i a l content m i r r o r i n g the modern world w i t h the e f f o r t s of a p o l i c e s t a t e to c o n t r o l r e a l i t y by c o n t r o l l i n g a r t . when he t a l k s about the a r t i s t "shedding/ as i t were, the age he l i v e s i n , " he i s not announcing h i s i n t e n t i o n to a v o i d any c o n n e c t i o n w i t h the phenomenal world. what he does want to a v o i d i s " a b s t r a c t i o n , " t h a t i s , the u n r e a l g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s of the p o l i t i c a l s t a t e , or of freudianism (which he sees as a p o l i c e s t a t e of the mind), or the unholy a l l i a n c e of i d e o l o g y and r e a l i s m which r e s u l t e d i n d o c t r i n a i r e american n a t u r a l i s m . nabokov's n a r r a t o r s a v o i d a b s t r a c t i o n s f o r s p e c i f i c s , and f o r the f i n e p e r c e p t i o n s of a s u b t l e i n t e l l e c t . when t r i l l i n g c a l l e d f o r an end to the l i b e r a l worship of d r e i s e r , he was not c a l l i n g f o r f i c t i o n unconnected w i t h r e a l i t y ; s i m i l a r l y , i t i s not the i n t e n t i o n of nabokov's f i c t i o n to c a r r y the reader to a realm o u t s i d e space and time, where the a r t i s t i s supreme (because u n c h a l l e n g e d ) . he wants r e a l i s m unencumbered w i t h the i l l u s i o n s of p o l i t i c s and r e a c t i o n a r y l i t e r a r y c r i t i c s . nabokov's "shedding no doubt h i n t s a t one of those images never f a r from h i s n a t u r a l i s t ' s mind (not jack london's comic book n a t u r a l i s m , but the n a t u r a l i s m of a l e p i d o p t e r i s t ) i n which from the o l d and unnecessary cocoon t h e r e emerges a new- born, unique and f r e s h r e a l i s m . the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r c o n t r i b u t i n g to the newborn r e a l i s m i s the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , who appears i n many ingenious v a r i a t i o n s ; the most s t r i k i n g v a r i a t i o n i s nabokov's i m i t a t i o n of the n i n e t e e n t h century omniscient n a r r a t o r . we c i t e d ford's axiom, composed a t a time when the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r was out of f a s h i o n : "no author would, l i k e thackeray, to-day i n t r u d e h i s broken nose and myopic s p e c t a c l e s i n t o the middle of the most t h r i l l i n g scene he ever wrote we a l s o c i t e d d i t s k y " s o p i n i o n , composed a t a time when the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r was i n f a s h i o n : the "conscious presence of the c r e a t i v e i n t e l l i g e n c e " means t h a t "the a r t i s t - audience-work r e l a t i o n s h i p becomes one of a c t i v e and r a d i c a l c o n s p i r a c y — one not to be confused w i t h the p a t r o n i z i n g homily s e s s i o n s of an e a r l i e r day ." nabokov of course goes h i s own way i n t h i s as i n so many other matters. his s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i n t r u d e s on the a c t i o n i n order to d i s p l a y a s p e c i a l s e n s i b i l i t y ( r a t h e r l i k e nabokov's) which denies the dehumanization of the n a r r a t i v e v o i c e , and which comments on the a c t i o n to l e a d the reader i n the r i g h t d i r e c t i o n . the method i s f a r d i f f e r e n t from t h a t o f , say, f l a u b e r t , whose impersonal and o b j e c t i v e n a r r a t i o n might l e a d the reader to wonder what poor emma had done to deserve such treatment from the author. nabokov, on the other hand, uses h i s i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r t o dispense p o e t i c j u s t i c e ( i n bend s i n i s t e r ) and to guide the reader's understanding of a r a t h e r shallow c h a r a c t e r ( i n king, queen, knave). the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r , o f t e n a surrogate f o r the author, i s not designed simply to remind the reader t h a t " v e r i s i m i l i t u d e i s an i l l u s i o n , a r e f l e c t i o n i n the a r t i s t ' s mind," but to g i v e the work a human dimension, and, p a r a d o x i c a l l y , to i n c r e a s e the reader's sympathy f o r , and com- prehension of , • the c h a r a c t e r s . here i s nabokov on composing chess problems: d e c e i t , to the p o i n t of d i a b o l i s m , and o r i g i n - a l i t y , v e r g i n g upon the grotesque, were my n o t i o n s of s t r a t e g y ; and although i n matters of c o n s t r u c t i o n i t r i e d to conform, whenever p o s s i b l e ^ to c l a s s i c a l r u l e s ... i was always ready to s a c r i f i c e p u r i t y of form to the e x i g - e n c i e s of f a n t a s t i c content, causing form to bulge and b u r s t l i k e a sponge-bag c o n t a i n g a small f u r i o u s d e v i l (speak, memory, pp. - ). the small f u r i o u s d e v i l corresponds to the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r , who has something of a d i s r u p t i v e e f f e c t on the t r a d i t i o n a l novel form. in look a t the h a r l e q u i n s , f o r example, the hero i s a famous n o v e l i s t ; i n the f o l l o w i n g passage he reviews h i s c a r e e r : n e i t h e r slaughter i n the sun (as the e n g l i s h t r a n s l a t i o n of camera lucinda got r e t i t l e d w h i l e i l a y h e l p l e s s l y h o s p i t a l i z e d i n new york) nor the red topper s o l d w e l l . my ambitious, b e a u t i f u l , strange see under real shone f o r a b r e a t h l e s s i n s t a n t on the lowest rung of the b e s t s e l l e r l i s t i n a west coast paper, and vanished f o r good. in those circumstances i c o u l d not r e f u s e the l e c t u r e s h i p o f f e r e d me i n by quirn u n i v e r s i t y on the s t r e n g t h of my european r e p u t a t i o n . i was to develop a plump tenure t h e r e and expand i n t o a f u l l p r o f e s s o r by or : i can't f i n d the exact date i n my o l d notes. although i was adequately remunerated f o r my two weekly l e c t u r e s on european masterpieces and one thursday seminar on joyce's u l y s s e s ... and had furthermore s e v e r a l s p l e n d i d l y p a i d s t o r i e s accepted by the beau and the b u t t e r f l y , the k i n d e s t magazine i n the world, i was not r e a l l y comfortable u n t i l my kingdom by the sea ( ) atoned f o r a f r a c t i o n of the l o s s of my russian f o r t u n e ... (p. ). nabokov has r e p e a t e d l y i s s u e d warnings a g a i n s t a b i o g r a p h i c a l r e a d i n g of the n o v e l s . in the i n t r o d u c t i o n to mary, f o r example, ( ) "when in his autobiography he cnabokovj writes about the delight he took in composing chess problems he is also writing about himself as a writer," says gleb struve in "notes on nabokov as a russian writer," in dembo, p. . he claims to have l e f t autobiography, behind as the bad habit of an amateur: the beginner* s well-known propensity for obtru- ding upon his own privacy, by introducing him- s e l f , or a v i c a r , into his f i r s t novel, owes less to the a t t r a c t i o n of a ready theme than to the r e l i e f of getting r i d of oneself, before going on to better things. it i s one of the very few common rules i have accepted (p. x i ) . nevertheless, the primary narrator i n look at the harlequins i s a surrogate for nabokov, and the ostensible narrative l i n e , an . e l d e r l y novelist musing over his past, i s a series of in-jokes about nabokov's publishing career. thus the narrator vadim vadimovich's novel slaughter i n the sun represents nabokov's novel, laughter i n the dark; camera lucida i s a variant of the t i t l e of the o r i g i n a l work, camera obscura; and so on. presumably only a few readers w i l l recognize the in-joke about expanding into a plump tenure and a f u l l professorship. owing to the candies that replaced a smoking habit when nabokov moved to america, he gained about s i x t y pounds, or about half of his former weight. he l i k e d to say he was "one-third american" (strong opinions, p. ). such in-jokes become a touch cruel when the narrator, poor vadim vadimovich, wakes up from a s p e l l of madness, and can't remember his own surname: i ... f e l t my family name began with an n and bore an odious resemblance to the surname or pseudonym of a presumably notorious (notorov? no) bulgarian, or babylonian, or, maybe, betel- geusian writer with whom scatterbrained emigres from some other galaxy constantly confused me; but whether i t was something on the l i n e s of nebesnyy or nabedrin or nablidze ... i simply could not t e l l . . . . without a name i remained u n r e a l i n r e g a i n e d consciousness. poor v i v i a n , poor vadim vad- imovich, was but a figment of somebody's — not even my own — i m a g i n a t i o n (harlequins, pp. - ̂ ) . vadim i s of course half-remembering nabokov's name. the s t a t i c i n h i s b r a i n i s caused by another figment of the author's imagin- a t i o n , who, as i t were, winks at the reader from behind vadim's back. the i n t r u s i v e n e s s of the omniscient n a r r a t o r on vadim's own n a r r a t i o n i s not p h y s i c a l or i n person; the i n t r u s i o n might be termed p s y c h o l o g i c a l , or i m p l i c i t . but i n king, queen, knave the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r i s as much on the scene as george e l i o t i n t e r v i e w i n g adam bede i n h i s o l d age, or thackeray a t pumper- n i c k e l . the hero of king, queen, knave i s a good-hearted german businessman named dreyer, one of nabokov's few sympathetic german c h a r a c t e r s . his s e l f i s h w i f e , martha, and h i s knavish nephew, franz, c u c k o l d dreyer and p l a n h i s murder. near the end of the novel franz n o t i c e s a g i r l i n a gleaming blue d r e s s : the f o r e i g n g i r l i n the blue dress danced w i t h a remarkably handsome man i n an o l d - f a s h i o n e d d i n n e r j a c k e t . franz had long s i n c e n o t i c e d t h i s couple; they had appeared to him i n f l e e t i n g glimpses, l i k e a r e c u r r e n t dream image or a s u b t l e l e i t m o t i v .... sometimes the man c a r r i e d a b u t t e r f l y net. the g i r l had a d e l i c a t e l y p a i n t e d mouth and tender gray-blue eyes, and her f i a n c e or husband, s l e n d e r , e l e g a n t l y b a l d i n g , contempt- ous of e v e r y t h i n g on e a r t h but her, was l o o k i n g a t her w i t h p r i d e ; franz f e l t envious of t h a t unusual p a i r ... (king, queen, knave, p. ). the g i r l resembles vera nabokov, and the gentleman nabokov him- s e l f , i n the r o l e of the s u p e r i o r a r t i s t . a c c o r d i n g to nabokov's foreword, "the appearances of my w i f e and me i n the l a s t two chapters are merely v i s i t s of i n s p e c t i o n " ( p . - v i i i ) . the d i s t i n - guished gentleman's d e s i r a b l e companion, "tanned, p a l e - h a i r e d , l o v e l y " i s an ornament f o r the omniscient n a r r a t o r , who i s b a l d i n g , but e l e g a n t l y b a l d i n g — a very f l a t t e r i n g s e l f - p o r t r a i t ; no wonder franz senses h i s own i n f e r i o r i t y : a f t e r p a s s i n g him they began t a l k i n g again; he had the impression they were d i s c u s s i n g him, and even pronouncing h i s name. i t embarrassed, i t incensed him, t h a t t h i s damned happy f o r - e i g n e r ... knew a b s o l u t e l y e v e r y t h i n g about h i s predicament and perhaps p i t i e d , not without some d e r i s i o n , an honest young man who had been seduced and a p p r o p r i a t e d by an o l d e r woman .... (p. ). franz i s i n the presence of h i s c r e a t o r . an i t i n e r a n t photo- grapher, who had been walking on the sandy beach of the novel's f i n a l scenes, had announced g r a t u i t o u s l y that,. "the a r t i s t i s coming! the d i v i n e l y f a v o r e d , der gottbegnadete a r t i s t i s ; coming!" (p. ). t h i s i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r d i f f e r s from some n i n e t e e n t h century i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r s i n t h a t he does not attempt to i n g r a t i a t e h i m s e l f w i t h the reader. rather than i n t e g r a t i n g h i m s e l f i n t o the scene,, he i s opposed to e v e r y t h i n g i n i t , save h i s companion. again, the s p e c i a l s e n s i b i l i t y of the n a r r a t o r sees through the d i s t o r t i o n s of s o c i e t y , represented i n t h i s case by a parody ..of a l o v e a f f a i r between e v i l , mercenary martha and franz, a young p r o v i n c i a l on the make i n the b i g c i t y . the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r and h i s companion, by c o n t r a s t , r e p r e s e n t r e a l l o v e ; thus w h i l e franz and martha are concerned w i t h appear- ances, the e l e g a n t gentleman i s o b l i v i o u s to e v e r y t h i n g but h i s companion, who i s d i g n i f i e d with the term, " f i a n c e . " once again, p h i l i s t i n e v u l g a r i t y i s c o r r e c t e d , or a t l e a s t put i n p e r s p e c t i v e , through a special s e n s i b i l i t y dressed i n a no doubt elegant "old-fashioned dinner jacket." there i s another important method by which the i n t r u s i v e narrator increases, rather than decreases, the v e r i s i m i l i t u d e of the scene. king,queen, knave i s often thought of as one of nabokov's more a r t i f i c i a l narratives, no doubt p a r t l y through the influence of andrew f i e l d ' s description: consciousness of the fact that l i t e r a t u r e i s an a r t i f i c i a l convention i s stretched to i t s f u r t h - est l i m i t s and used to create a r a d i c a l l y d i f f - erent style of writing.... the novel's a r t i - f i c i a l i t y i s so deft and i t s mechanisms so cunning that king, queen, knave i s , far more than pale f i r e or any other of nabokov's novels, a work i n which one sees and f e e l s the a r t i s t i n the very act of manipulating his subject and characters. but one function of the intrusive narrator i s to increase the reader's sympathy for what f i e l d c a l l s the novel's "pasteboard figures" (p. ). thus franz r e a l i z e s that the damned happy foreigner knew absolutely everything about his predicament and perhaps p i t i e d , not without some derision, an honest young man who had been seduced and appropriated by an older woman who, despite her f i n e dresses and face l o t i o n s , resembled a large white toad (king, queen, knave, p. ). here the narrator, rather i n the so-called "moralizing" manner of the previous century, establishes the moral dimension of the novel for the reader who may have been lagging behind. the use of the word toad, as with paduk, dismisses martha to the regions of the hopelessly corrupt; but although the phrase "honest young man" i s d e r i s i v e indeed, the reader should recognize that franz ( ) field, his l i f e in art, p. . i s not j u s t a crude and v u l g a r young o p p o r t u n i s t , nor a c a r d - board c h a r a c t e r , nor a minor chess p i e c e , but a rounded c h a r a c t e r d e s e r v i n g some of the sympathy readers o f f e r to c h a r a c t e r s i n t r a d i t i o n a l n o v e l s . the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r i s not a l l a r t i f i c e and magic t r i c k s , but to some extent a t r a d i t i o n a l humanist; c e r t a i n l y nabokov's works do not l a c k an e t h i c a l sense. in bend s i n i s t e r , f o r example, the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r c o u l d be s a i d to dispense p o e t i c j u s t i c e . the n a r r a t o r works i n o p p o s i t i o n to paduk's d i c t a t o r s h i p , sneaking i n t o h i s hero's consciousness while k r u g s s l e e p i n g b r a i n i s under the c o n t r o l of the mind's dream producers: but among the producers or stagehands r e s p o n s i b l e f o r the s e t t i n g t h e r e has been ... a nameless, mysterious genius"-who took advantage of the dream to convey h i s own p e c u l i a r code message which has nothing to do ... with any aspect of krug ' s p h y s i c a l e x i s t e n c e , but which l i n k s him up somehow w i t h the unfathomable mode of being, ... a k i n d of t r a n s c e n d e n t a l madness which l u r k s behind the corner of consciousness and which cannot be d e f i n e d more a c c u r a t e l y than t h i s , no matter how krug s t r a i n s h i s b r a i n (p. ). krug of course senses ..the presence of the i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r . nabokov says i n " t h e i n t r o d u c t i o n t h a t i n "the second paragraph of chapter f i v e [the passage quoted above] comes the f i r s t i n t i m a t i o n t h a t 'someone i s i n the know' — a mysterious i n t r u d e r . . . . the i n t r u d e r i s ... an anthropomorphic d e i t y impersonated by me" (p. x i i ) . the novel c e r t a i n l y d i s t u r b s the v e r i s i m i l a r s u r f a c e , and one i s indeed aware of the a r t i f i c e r behind the a r t i f i c e . but the n a r r a t o r a l s o a c t s as the reader's index to r e a l i t y . for example: i f e l t a pang of pity..?for adam [krug] and s l i d towards him along an i n c l i n e d beam of p a l e l i g h t — causing instantaneous madness, but a t l e a s t saving him from the s e n s e l e s s agony of h i s l o g i c a l f a t e (p. ). "logical fate" r e f e r s to the v e r i s i m i l a r p l o t ; t h a t i s , the i n e v i t - a b l e death of an independent i n t e l l e c t u a l i n a p o l i c e s t a t e . but the reason the n a r r a t o r rescues krug from " s e n s e l e s s agony" i s t h a t krug belongs o u t s i d e the p e r n i c i o u s i l l u s i o n s of t o t a l - i t a r i a n i s m . krug, p a r t l y the r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of the n a r r a t o r ' s s p e c i a l s e n s i b i l i t y , i s on a d i f f e r e n t l e v e l ( l i t e r a l l y ) from the u n r e a l and i n s i g n i f i c a n t v i l l a i n s of the s t o r y . nabokov asks h i m s e l f i n the i n t r o d u c t i o n whether there i s "any judgment on my p a r t c a r r i e d out, any sentence pronounced, any s a t i s f a c t i o n g i v e n to the moral sense?" he answers t h a t "crime i s punished a t the end of the book when the uniformed waxworks are r e a l l y h u r t , and the dummies are a t l a s t i n q u i t e d r e a d f u l p a i n , and p r e t t y m a r i e t t e g e n t l y b l e e d s , staked and t o r n by the l u s t of f o r t y s o l d i e r s " , (p. v i i i ) . nabokov's remark i s not without i r o n y , s i n c e i t would r e q u i r e a r a t h e r b l o o d t h i r s t y "moral sense" to take s a t i s f a c t i o n i n m a r i e t t e ' s gang rape. revenge i s not an approved motive i n nabokov's n o v e l s , nor reform f o r t h a t matter; i n s t e a d , the n a r r a t o r d i r e c t s the reader's sympathy towards those c h a r a c t e r s who, l i k e the n a r r a t o r , are capable of p e r c e i v i n g the t r u t h of t h i n g s . the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r as a r t i s t nabokov's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r o f t e n i n t r u d e s , or makes p e r s o n a l appearances, i n the r o l e of an a r t i s t . in bend s i n i s t e r , f o r example, krug's death scene i s i n t e r r u p t e d by a v i s i t to the a r t i s t ' s workshop. the w a l l vanishes, " l i k e a r a p i d l y withdrawn s l i d e , and i s t r e t c h e d myself and got up from among the chaos of w r i t t e n and r e w r i t t e n pages, to i n v e s t i g a t e the sudden twang t h a t something had made i n s t r i k i n g the wire n e t t i n g of my window" (p. ). when nabokov does not use an omniscient surrogate as a prime n a r r a t o r i n h i s s t o r i e s , he o f t e n chooses a c h a r a c t e r who i s an a r t i s t , or who has the temperament of an a r t i s t . his p r e f e r e n c e f o r a r t i s t s n i c e l y f i t s the t r a d i t i o n of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , which c a l l s f o r an emphasis on the a r t i f i c i a l i t y of the n a r r a t i v e . in f a c t i t i s d i f f i c u l t to imagine a nabokov novel i n which the c o n t r o l l i n g s e n s i b i l i t y would oe." i n a r t i c u l a t e and u n s e l f - c o n s c i o u s t h e -techniques and themes would be h o p e l e s s l y c o n s t r a i n e d by such c e n t r a l f i g u r e s as the o l d fisherman i n the old man and the sea, or benjy i n the sound and the fury, or any of the dumb brute heroes of d e t e r m i n i s t i c f i c t i o n . since nabokov b e l i e v e s t h a t t r u t h and accuracy depend on s p e c i a l i z e d g i f t s , he i s to a c e r t a i n extent i n h i s f i c t i o n trapped w i t h i n h i s own s p e c i a l i z e d i n t e r e s t s . thus he p r e f e r s to d w e l l on s e n s i b i l i t i e s w i t h some of h i s own c u l t u r a l c o e f f i c i e n t s , a r t i s t i c h e r o - n a r r a t o r s w i t h an a p p r e c i a t i o n f o r pushkin, prosody and b u t t e r f l i e s . for example, the n a r r a t o r of look a t the h a r l e q u i n s i, vadim, i s a k i n d of analogue of nabokov, and h i s novels are ex l i b r i s nabokov. john shade i s a poet, and h i s boswell, kinbote, i s a f r u s t r a t e d w r i t e r of a r i s t o c r a t i c romances s t a r r i n g h i m s e l f . such c h a r a c t e r s are o b v i o u s l y prone to n a r r a t i v e s t h a t are s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , " l i t e r a r y " and a r t i f i c i a l — shade n a r r a t e s i n rhymed c o u p l e t s . but even c h a r a c t e r s who are not a r t i s t s by p r o f e s s i o n have a tendency to shape t h e i r experiences i n t o a r t i s t i c c r e a t i o n s . hermann of despair, a businessman, seems s u s p i c i o u s l y s o p h i s t i c a t e d i n l i t e r a r y matters. "the g e n e r a l c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of h i s s t y l e , " says stephen suagee;, are t o r t u o u s sentences i n t e r s p e r s e d w i t h fragments, a s e n s i t i v i t y to c o l o r s and d e t a i l s , v i g o r o u s metaphors, p a r o d i e s of n o v e l i s t i c d e v i c e s , and so f o r t h . "i have grown much too used to an o u t s i d e view of myself, to being both p a i n t e r and model, so no wonder my s t y l e i s denied the b l e s s e d grace of s p o n t a n e i t y " .... s t y l e i s the man, and hermann i s d e f i n i t e l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s . ^ in short., says doug fowler, nabokov c r e a t e s " e q u i v a l e n t s " — t h a t i s , a r t i s t i c e q u i v a l e n t s , f o r nabokov h i m s e l f . the e q u i v a l e n t , "perhaps the most important constant w i t h i n nabokov's longer f i c t i o n , " i s "a male genius,' u s u a l l y of european b i r t h , and whose c a p a b i l i t i e s , humor and t a s t e are such t h a t , as a.c. bradley p o i n t e d out of p r i n c e hamlet, he c o u l d have conceived and w r i t t e n not o n l y the work i n which he appears but the r e s t of the canon as w e l l . in other words, nabokov c r e a t e s i n h i s f i c t i o n a c h a r a c t e r who c o u l d have c r e a t e d nabokov's f i c t i o n '•-•\ a n a r r a t i v e under the c o n t r o l of a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a r t i s t w i l l tend to emphasize i t s own a r t i f i c i a l i t y , and the f i c t i o n a l ( ) stephen suagee, "an a r t i s t ' s memory beats a l l other kinds: an essay on despair," in a book of things about vladimir nabokov, ed. carl r. proffer (ann arbor, mich.: ardis, )., p. . ( ) doug fowler, reading nabokov (ithaca: cornell univ. press, ), p. . u n i v e r s e might appear to be s e l f - i n d u l g e n t f a n t a s i z i n g . c e r t a i n l y nabokov does nothing to discourage those readers who search f o r c r a c k s i n the s u r f a c e of v e r i s i m i l i t u d e . in king, queen, knave, f o r example, the mysterious l a n d l o r d says he knows p e r f e c t l y w e l l " t h a t the whole world was but a t r i c k of h i s , and t h a t a l l these people -- e i g h t former l o d g e r s , d o c t o r s , p o l i c e - men ... franz, franz's lady f r i e n d , the n o i s y gentleman w i t h the n o i s y dog ... owed t h e i r e x i s t e n c e to the power of h i s i m a g i n a t i o n ..." (pp. - ). simon k a r l i n s k y argues t h a t nabokov's c e n t r a l theme i s the "nature of the c r e a t i v e imagin- a t i o n and the s o l i t a r y , f r e a k - l i k e r o l e i n which a man g i f t e d w i t h such i m a g i n a t i o n i s i n e v i t a b l y c a s t i n any s o c i e t y . " such a person may be shown pursuing h i s b a s i c endeavor d i r e c t l y (e.g., s e b a s t i a n knight or the hero of the g i f t ) , but more o f t e n , as khodase- v i c h dointed out, nabokov's a r t i s t - h e r o i s d i s - g u i s e d . . . . thus, the. work of a r t t h a t the hero s t r i v e s to c r e a t e ... may be presented i n the g u i s e of chess p l a y i n g (the defense), b u t t e r f l y c o l l e c t i n g ("the a u r e l i a n " ) , a murder ( d e s p a i r ) , s e d u c t i o n of a young g i r l ( l o l i t a ) ... of simply t r y i n g to r e c o n s t r u c t one's own i d e n t i t y (the eye). in a l l these cases, however, the hero uses h i s i m a g i n a t i o n to d e v i s e a r e a l i t y of h i s own, which he seeks to impose on the surrounding r e a l i t y . the hero, o f t e n the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r as w e l l , seeks to "impose" h i s v i s i o n on the surrounding s o c i e t y . the i m p o s i t i o n of a p r i v a t e r e a l i t y might seem to c a l l i n t o q u e s t i o n the v e r i - s i m i l i t u d e of the novel as a whole. i t might seem t h a t t r a d i t i o n a l mimesis has been bypassed. doug fowler complains ( ) simon karlinsky, " i l l u s i o n , reality and parody in nabokov's plays," in dembo, p. . t h a t nabokov a t times c r e a t e s a k i n d of f i c t i o n i n which the n a r r a t i v e i s " a t r o p h i e d , and the reader's i n t e r e s t i n i t i s r e p l a c e d by an i n t e r e s t i n watching the e q u i v a l e n t - a s - a r t i s t , an engagement i n watching the e q u i v a l e n t c r e a t e a r t . " however, i t i s our argument t h a t the a r t i f i c e of the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r ( k a r l i n s k y ' s hero of the c r e a t i v e i m a g i n a t i o n , f i e l d ' s " e q u i v a l e n t " ) has to some extent the p a r a d o x i c a l e f f e c t o f s t r e n g t h e n i n g the v e r i s i m i l i t u d e o f the n a r r a t i v e as a whole. the e f f e c t i s s i m i l a r to t h a t of the d e t e c t i v e s t o r y , a s t y l i z e d , even r i t u a l i z e d n a r r a t i v e form, but a form i n which d e t a i l s are as profound, c o n v i n c i n g and c r u c i a l as i n the most r e a l i s t i c f i c t i o n (no o b j e c t c o u l d be more s u b s t a n t i a l than the maltese f a l c o n ) . since k a r l i n s k y mentions l o l i t a and despair, l e t us examine the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s o f those two n o v e l s . hermann h i m s e l f w o r r i e s about i n c i p i e n t s o l i p s i s m : "maybe i t i s a l l mock e x i s t e n c e , an e v i l dream ..." (despair, p. ). the s t y l e i n which he chooses to n a r r a t e h i s despair shows a l l the s i g n s of barth's famous l i t e r a t u r e of exhaustion; t h a t i s , the exhaustion of r e a l i s m . " ^ but i n the f o l l o w i n g passage, note the a f f i n i t i e s to oates n a r r a t o r i n expensive people: how s h a l l we begin t h i s chapter? i o f f e r s e v e r a l v a r i a t i o n s to choose from. number one ( r e a d i l y adopted i n novels where the n a r r a t i v e i s conducted i n the f i r s t person by the r e a l or s u b s t i t u t e a u t h o r ) : i t i s f i n e today, but c o l d , w i t h the wind's v i o l e n c e unabated; under my window the evergreen { ) fowler, p. . ( ) john barth, "the literature of exhaustion," atlantic, aug. , pp. - . f o l i a g e rocks and r o l l s . . . . my r e s t l e s s n e s s grows.... a n i c e r e f r e s h i n g v a r i a t i o n , t h i s number one; i t allows a b r e a t h e r and helps to b r i n g i n the p e r s o n a l note; thus l e n d i n g l i f e to the s t o r y - e s p e c i a l l y when the f i r s t person i s as f i c t i t i o u s as a l l the r e s t . well, t h a t i s j u s t the p o i n t : a t r i c k of the t r a d e , a poor t h i n g worn t o shreds by l i t e r a r y f i c t i o n - m o n g e r s , does not s u i t me, f o r i have become s t r i c t l y t r u t h f u l (p. ). obviously hermann i s a more s l i p p e r y customer than oates' n a r r a t o r , and y e t there i s an analogous impulse to a v o i d what the n a r r a t o r sees an the u n r e a l conventions of mere novels i n f a v o r of the human t r u t h of h i s experience. for example, hermann worries t h a t h i s s t o r y has degenerated i n t o a diary,' "the lowest form of l i t e r a t u r e . " under the heading "march st. night," he comments as f o l l o w s : connoisseurs w i l l a p p r e c i a t e t h a t l o v e l y , s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , f a l s e l y s i g n i f i c a n t "night" (meaning readers to imag'ine the s l e e p l e s s v a r i e t y o f ' l i t e r a r y persons, so p a l e , so a t t r a c t i v e ) . but as a matter of f a c t i t is. n i g h t a t present (p. ). i t is_ n i g h t , and, to use an e x p r e s s i o n t h a t f a s t i d i o u s hermann would no doubt r e j e c t , a dark n i g h t of the s o u l f o r the novel's n a r r a t o r , who i s s u c c e s s f u l l y c r e a t i n g a novel about a s u f f e r i n g human being and not a " l i t e r a r y person." the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s t y l e p e r f e c t l y expresses the r e a l anguish of a c e r t a i n n e u r o t i c type, who s t r u g g l e s with h i s tendency towards s o l i p s i s m . when hermann r e a l i z e s t h a t h i s murderous masterpiece i s flawed, "an accursed v o i c e s h r i e k e d i n t o my ear t h a t the r a b b l e which r e f u s e d me r e c o g n i t i o n was perchance r i g h t , " and he f i n d s h i m s e l f doubting e v e r y t h i n g , "doubting e s s e n t i a l s , and i understood t h a t what l i t t l e l i f e l a y b e f o r e me would be s o l e l y devoted to a f u t i l e s t r u g g l e a g a i n s t t h a t doubt ..." (p. ). hermann g i v e s us both h i s i l l u s i o n s and the t r u t h , c r e a t i n g a c h a r a c t e r study s u f f i c i e n t l y r e a l i s t i c to awake the reader's sympathy, d e s p i t e hermann's d e n i a l s : "stop s h o r t , you people — i r a i s e a huge white palm l i k e a german policeman, stop! no s i g h s of compassion, people, none whatever. stop, p i t y ! i do not accept your sympathy ..." (p. ). the reader comes to understand hermann's torments, even when they are expressed i n s e l f - c o n s c i o u s and s e l f - p i t y i n g terms (hermann says he has "passed the supreme l i m i t o f p o s s i b l e p a i n , i n j u r y , a n x i e t y o f mind" [p. ]). the reader sympathizes because hermann i s not what he would l i k e to be, an impersonal a r t i s t , but a s u f f e r i n g n e u r o t i c . one i s impressed by the human dimensions of h i s t w i s t e d c h a r a c t e r , and not, as the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s t y l e might l e a d one to suspect, the a e s t h e t i c preoccupations of a " l i t e r a r y person." although both hermann and humbert humbert produce s e l f - conscious n a r r a t i v e s t h a t might seem designed to confuse the reader, both have the a b i l i t y to b r i n g a e s t h e t i c s to the a i d of a g r e a t e r sense of r e a l i t y ; i n humbert's case, the r e a l i t y of l o v e . since humbert i s l e s s d e s p i c a b l e than hermann, i t i s more apparent t h a t h i s a r t i s t i c s e n s i b i l i t y r e v e a l s t r u t h s about human r e l a t i o n s h i p s t h a t are l o s t i n a s o c i e t y bounded by v u l g a r g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s (such as the myth of the matinee i d o l , i n which g u i s e humbert mesmerizes poor c h a r l o t t e haze). humbert i s as s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a n a r r a t o r as hermann: my poor photogenic mother d i e d i n a f r e a k a c c i d e n t ( p i c n i c , l i g h t n i n g ) when i was t h r e e , and, save f o r a pocket of warmth i n the d a r k e s t p a r t , nothing of her s u b s i s t s w i t h i n the hollows and d e l l s of memory, over which, i f you can s t i l l stand my s t y l e (i am w r i t i n g under o b s e r v a t i o n ) , the sun of my i n f a n c y had s e t . . . ( l o l i t a , p. ). since humbert i s w r i t i n g under o b s e r v a t i o n , i n p r i s o n , and much of what he w r i t e s i s d i r e c t e d towards an u n f o r g i v i n g s o c i e t y — hence the numerous wry a s i d e s to the " l a d i e s and gentlemen of the j u r y " (p. ) — the reader might w e l l suspect humbert's w r i t i n g s t y l e , and q u e s t i o n the v e r a c i t y of h i s v e r s i o n of the events. for example, i t seems a l i t t l e s u s p i c i o u s t h a t the n a r r a t o r ' s physique seems to vary from page to page. at f i r s t humbert i s broadchested and b i g boned, lanky, a hunk of v i r i l e he-man. l a t e r he i s "elegant, s l e n d e r " (p. ), and f i n a l l y he becomes " f r a g i l e , f r i l e u x , d i m i n u t i v e ... s i c k l y " (p. ): the more v i r i l e c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s have been t r a n s f e r r e d to l o l i t a ' s husband.-... richard s c h i l l e r i s the f i n a l i n h e r i t o r of s e v e r a l normal men ... who have been c o n t r a s t e d w i t h humbert to h i s disadvantage through the second h a l f of the book. c l e a r l y , humbert's o r i g i n a l e n t i t y has again been s p l i t up, and the p a r t s d i s t r i b u t e d among d i f f e r e n t a c t o r s .... the reader has to ask h i m s e l f whether i t i s hum- b e r t or nabokov who does t h i s — whether we can d i s t i n g u i s h between what i s invented by t h i s n a r r a t o r and what i s r e p o r t e d — and the answer i s complicated. the reader has to d e a l w i t h a h i g h l y s o p h i s t i c a t e d r e a d i n g experience, which c h a l l e n g e s h i s assumption t h a t he "knows what i s going on"....^g humbert i s more than " u n r e l i a b l e , " s i n c e h i s very e x i s t e n c e i s suspect. at times he seems to be an aspect of q u i l t y ' s p e r s o n a l i t y ; or perhaps q u i l t y i s an aspect of humbert's p e r s o n a l i t y ; or perhaps ( ) martin green, "the morality of l o l i t a , " kenyon review, ( ), pp. - . t h e i r r e l a t i o n s h i p i s s t i l l more complex. consider humbert's account of the w r e s t l i n g match d u r i n g the murder: "i r o l l e d over him. we r o l l e d over me. they r o l l e d over him. we r o l l e d over us" ( l o l i t a , p. ). the exasperated green concludes t h a t l o l i t a i s "fundamentally c o u n t e r f e i t " and t h a t the t r i c k y n a r r a t - i v e v o i c e "rouses a l l of a reader's d i s t r u s t — o f a gamesman- s h i p k i n d " (pp. , ). however, i t must be remembered t h a t humbert i s r e s p o n s i b l e not o n l y f o r the i n c o n g r u i t i e s of the n a r r a t i v e , but a l s o f o r i t s r e a l i s t i c checks and balances. humbert h i m s e l f c o n t i n u a l l y draws the a t t e n t i o n of the reader t o those elements of the s t o r y t h a t seem b i z a r r e ; thus l o l i t a s l e e p s with her mouth open, " i n a k i n d of d u l l amazement a t the c u r i o u s l y inane l i f e we had a l l r i g g e d up f o r her" ( l o l i t a , p. ). humbert.reminds us t h a t he i s a "murderer with a s e n s a t i o n a l but incomplete and," s i g n i f i c a n t l y , "unorthodox memory" (p. ). j u s t as hermann i s aware of h i s " a r t i s t ' s memory" (despair, p. ),.humbert i s h i m s e l f aware, and d e l i b e r a t e l y makes the reader aware, of h i s s o l i p s i s t i c t e n d e n c i e s . humbert's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s t y l e i s an a i d to the reader i n i n t e r p r e t i n g the events of a s t o r y t h a t might otherwise be as bare, gross and u n r e a l as a newspaper h e a d l i n e . thus when humbert a c q u i r e s h i s deadly . , he remarks, s a r d o n i c a l l y , "we must remember t h a t a p i s t o l i s the f r e u d i a n symbol of the ur- f a t h e r ' s c e n t r a l f o r e l i m b " ( l o l i t a , p. ). (in nabokov's f i c t i o n freudianism i s a k i n d of mind c o n t r o l r i v a l l e d i n v u l g a r i t y and harmfulness o n l y by a d i c t a t o r s h i p . ) in humbert the reader has an a l l y against sham: "mid-twentieth century ideas concerning child-parent r e l a t i o n s h i p have been considerably tainted by the scholastic rigmarole and standardized symbols of the psychoanalytic racket, but i hope i am addressing myself to unbiased readers"(p. ). humbert's fresh perceptions are made more apparent by the framing foreword of john ray, j r . , ph.d., who, i n his role as the representative of a sane and r e a l i s t i c society, nevertheless d i s t o r t s the events into a l u r i d melodrama involving "the wayward c h i l d , the e g o t i s t i c mother, the panting maniac" (p. ). ray can only r a i s e the reader's estimation of humbert's veracity by announcing i n a fatuous tone of f i n a l i t y that humbert i s "abnormal. he i s not a gentleman" (p. ) . even ray can descry i n humbert's confession "a desperate honesty" (p. ). humbert's special s e n s i b i l i t y , which can be only expressed through an a r t i s t i c a l l y self-conscious s t y l e , produces a narrative luminous, with the truth of his r e l a t i o n s h i p with l o l i t a . for example, there i s a tendency among c r i t i c s to emphasize that part of the novel which s a t i r i z e s american mores; l o l i t a i s seen as a t y p i c a l teen-aged, gum-chewing, embryonic tramp, a f i t product of america's roadside culture. humbert of course knows better, and provides anecdotes that make l o l i t a a more three-dimensional character than most f i c t i o n a l juveniles. he reports a conversation between l o l i t a and her schoolmate, i n which l o l i t a "so very serenely and seriously" remarks, "you know, what's so d r e a d f u l about dying i s t h a t you are completely on your own"; and i t s t r u c k me ... t h a t i simply d i d not know a t h i n g about my d a r l i n g ' s mind and t h a t q u i t e p o s s i b l y , behind the awful j u v e n i l e c l i c h e s , there was i n her a garden and a t w i l i g h t , and a p a l a c e g a t e — dim and adorable r e g i o n s which happened to be l u c i d l y and a b s o l u t e l y f o r b i d d e n to me.... she would m a i l her v u l n e r a b i l i t y i n t r i t e brashness and boredom, whereas i, u s i n g f o r my d e s p e r a t e l y detached commments an a r t i f i c i a l tone of v o i c e t h a t s e t my own l a s t t e e t h on edge ... (p. ). note t h a t humbert's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s methods do not p r e c l u d e a b r i l l i a n t l y a c c u r a t e d e s c r i p t i o n of h i s own inadequacies; note a l s o t h a t even i n the overheated romanticism of gardens and t w i l i g h t s and p a l a c e gates there are dimensions of l o l i t a which cannot be understood or expressed by a l e s s s o p h i s t i c a t e d , i n v o l - uted s e n s i b i l i t y (john ray's f o r i n s t a n c e : "the wayward c h i l d " ) . humbert's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i v e methods combine w i t h t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s m to form a more s u b s t a n t i a l n a r r a t i v e than one might expect from the f a n c i f u l romanticism of humbert's opening pages. a d i s c u s s i o n of the r h e t o r i c a l emphasis of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s r e s e r v e d f o r a l a t e r s e c t i o n , but i t should be noted t h a t humbert takes g r e a t pains to keep the reader i n touch w i t h h i s p e r c e p t i o n s . "reader!" he says, a t the beginning of the famous passage i n which humbert d i s c o v e r s the t r u e nature of h i s crime (p. ). humbert boasts q u i t e r i g h t l y t h a t h i s methods are the r i g h t ones, the o n l y ones t h a t would c r e a t e "durable pigments" to i n s u r e l o l i t a ' s " i m m o r t a l i t y " (p. ) . the m u l t i p l e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r a s i n g l e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r emphasizes the a r t i f i c i a l i t y of a n a r r a t i v e . in pale f i r e and pnin there are m u l t i p l e s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r s ; the c o n f u s i o n they o c c a s i o n r e g a r d i n g " p o i n t of view" might seem s u f f i c i e n t to s i g n i f y the f i n a l abandonment of r e a l i s m and v e r i s i m i l i t u d e . however., we can take h e a r t from kinbote's a d m i t t e d l y ambiguous remark i n pale f i r e t h a t i t i s h i s notes which g i v e shade's poem a "human r e a l i t y " otherwise l a c k i n g (p. ) . in pale f i r e the i n t e r a c t i o n of the m u l t i p l e n a r r a t o r s i n c r e a s e s the r e a d e r ' s sense of a r t i f i c e , but a t the same time i t i n c r e a s e s the v e r i s i m i l i t u d e , "human r e a l i t y , " of both the main c h a r a c t e r s and t h e i r p r o d u c t i o n s . the q u a i n t c o u p l e t s of shade's poem take on anew resonance, and the mad pedant b r i n g s a new v i t a l i t y to the r a t h e r s t e r i l e business of a s c h o l a r l y commentary. because kinbote i s even more untrustworthy than humbert, the c r i t i c s have become snappish a f t e r t h e i r f r u s t r a t e d attempts a t f i n d i n g a u n i f i e d n a r r a t i v e v o i c e . they have murmured t h a t perhaps nabokov p r i z e s f a n t a s t i c form too h i g h l y over r e a l i s t i c content. but kinbote's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s l e a d s him to p r o v i d e b i o g r a p h i c a l d e t a i l s about shade t h a t make both shade and h i s poem come a l i v e , and kinbote's i n s p i r e d pedantry makes the a r t of a n n o t a t i o n seem as e x c i t i n g and c r u c i a l as the chase scene i n a t h r i l l e r . he r e s t o r e s the p a s s i o n and commitment to the o l d new c r i t i c a l a c t i v i t y of c l o s e r e a d i n g . by misreading shade's n a r r a t i v e , he makes i t worth r e a d i n g . c h a r l e s kinbote, another s t y l i s t with a mind f u l l of l i t e r a t u r e , i s a f o l l o w e r of the humbert humbert s c h o o l of f a s t and l o o s e v e r i s i m i l i t u d e . in the f o l l o w i n g passage, kinbote d e s c r i b e s the encounter between gradus and young gordon i n a swiss v i l l a : rather r e l u c t a n t l y there came out a s l e n d e r but s t r o n g - l o o k i n g l a d of f o u r t e e n or f i f t e e n dyed a n e c t a r i n e hue by the sun. he had nothing on save a l e o p a r d - s p o t t e d l o i n c l o t h . . . . through l i g h t and shade walked the strange p a i r : the g r a c e f u l boy wreathed about the l o i n s w i t h i v y and the seedy k i l l e r i n h i s cheap brown s u i t . . . . the boy a p p l i e d a v i d l i p s t o a p i p e of s p r i n g water and wiped h i s wet hands on h i s b l a c k b a t h i n g t r u n k s . "who knows," s a i d the boy s t r i k i n g h i s f l a n k s c l o t h e d i n white t e n n i s s h o r t s . . . . the young woodwose had now c l o s e d h i s eyes and was s t r e t c h e d out supine on the p o o l ' s marble margin; h i s tarzan b r i e f had been c a s t a s i d e on the t u r f . ( p p . , ). gordon's s p e c t a c u l a r costume changes are a f u n c t i o n of kinbote's l a s c i v i o u s i m a g i n a t i o n . a second h i n t t h a t the passage i s not e n t i r e l y r e a l i s t i c i s t h a t kinbote has been attempting to synchronize the adventures of gradus w i t h shade's progress i n completing h i s poem. the passage ends as f o l l o w s : from f a r below mounted the c l i n k and t i n k l e of d i s t a n t masonry work, and a sudden t r a i n passed between gardens, and a h e r a l d i c b u t t e r f l y v o l a n t en arriere, ., s a b l e , a bend g u l e s , t r a - versed the stone p a r a p e t , and john shade took a f r e s h c a r d (p. ). the i m p l i c a t i o n i s t h a t the scene between gordon and gradus i s not the work o f kinbote, but of shade, who composes h i s n a r r a t i v e s on index c a r d s . t h i s might come as a shock to the i l l reader who had accepted kinbote's d e s c r i p t i o n of the reasons f o r the book's e x i s t e n c e : to w i t , t h a t the l a s t manuscript of the deceased new england poet, john shade, had passed i n t o kinbote's hands, and t h a t kinbote had p u b l i s h e d the poem w i t h h i s own a n n o t a t i o n s . the reader would have gathered from c l u e s p r e v i o u s to the v i l l a scene t h a t kinbote i s an e c c e n t r i c , t h a t he i s not a deposed zemblan monarch but an e x i l e d russian i n t e l l e c t u a l t e a c h i n g a t shade's u n i v e r s i t y . the unwary reader would have r e l a x e d i n the d e l u s i o n t h a t he i s d e a l i n g w i t h a simple u n r e l i a b l e n a r r a t o r . the l i n e , "shade took a f r e s h card," would s h a t t e r h i s complacency. s i m i l a r l y , kinbote says t h a t "the f i n a l t e x t of the poem i s e n t i r e l y h i s [shade's]" (p. ). but i n the note to l i n e kinbote admits t h a t an e a r l i e r c a n c e l l e d fragment was f i c t i t i o u s : conscience and s c h o l a r s h i p have debated the q u e s t i o n , and i now t h i n k t h a t the two l i n e s g i v e n i n t h a t note are d i s t o r t e d and t a i n t e d by w i s h f u l t h i n k i n g . i t i s the o n l y time i n the course of the w r i t i n g of these d i f f i c u l t comments, t h a t i have t a r r i e d , i n my d i s t r e s s and disappointment, on the b r i n k of f a l s i f i c a t i o n (p. ). the shocking news t h a t kinbote may have tampered w i t h the t e x t reminds the reader t h a t the poem i t s e l f , as w e l l as a l l the b i o g r a p h i c a l d e t a i l s about shade, might be e n t i r e l y kinbote's c r e a t i o n . c e r t a i n l y much of the commentary i s o b v i o u s l y f i c t i t i o u s , being kinbote's romantic dream punctuated with r e a l i s t i c (but perhaps not r e a l ) h u m i l i a t i o n s . when kinbote p r a i s e s the poem's next l i n e about the o r b i c l e of jasp, the reader might l e g i t i m a t e l y wonder i f kinbote wrote the l i n e h i m s e l f . the exasperated reader might be tempted to d i s c o u n t kinbote e n t i r e l y , and c o n s i d e r him a c h a r a c t e r i n a novel by john shade. such a r e a d i n g would be strengthened by the f o l l o w i n g d i s p l a y of shade's p r e s c i e n c e : man's l i f e as commentary to a b s t r u s e u n f i n i s h e d poem. note f o r f u r t h e r use. ( . - ) kinbote's e x p l a n a t i o n of the l i n e i s u n s a t i s f a c t o r y . he says shade i m p l i e s " t h a t human l i f e i s but a s e r i e s of f o o t n o t e s to a v a s t obscure u n f i n i s h e d masterpiece." kinbote t y p i c a l l y takes the academic h i g h road, whereas the reader might surmise t h a t shade has somehow anticipated that kinbote would add h i s own l i f e ' s commentary to shade's u n f i n i s h e d poem (the word " u n f i n i s h e d " again undercuts kinbote's c l a i m t h a t the poem had been completed). did kinbote w r i t e the l i n e s h i m s e l f i n another a t t a c k of honesty, or can shade read the f u t u r e , and d i d he c r e a t e the e n t i r e pack- age -- poem, commentary, and c a s t of mad c h a r a c t e r s ? these q u e s t i o n s have caused c o n f u s i o n and debate among the c r i t i c s . for example, who wrote the poem, pale f i r e ? a c c o r d i n g to andrew f i e l d , t h e r e i s a p o s s i b i l i t y t h a t "john shade's long poem pale f i r e r e a l l y belongs to the pen of the mad s c h o l a r kinbote .... on the o t h e r hand, c h a r l e s kinbote and h i s zembla might j u s t as w e l l belong to the pen of john shade who has 'taken' kinbote from l i f e and put him to h i s own a r t i s t i c use a f t e r twenty pages and a diagram w i t h arrows and a sun l a b e l l e d "nabokov," f i e l d concludes: "there are many c o m p e l l i r i g l y l o g i c a l reasons to p l a c e john shade b e f o r e c h a r l e s kinbote" (p. ). ( ) field, nabokov: his l i f e in art, p. . j u l i a bader agrees: "the poet and the mad commentator are o s t e n s i b l y d i s t i n c t p e r s o n a l i t i e s . . . . but the s e p a r a t i o n i n t o autonomous c h a r a c t e r s — shade, kinbote, gradus i s o n l y apparent.... shade, i m a i n t a i n , has p e r p e t r a t e d h i s own'stylistic' death w i t h i n the n o v e l , and he has then g i v e n us a new aspect of h i m s e l f i n the g u i s e of another s o u l and another artwork (kinbote and the commentary)." both bader. and f i e l d are c o n t r a d i c t e d by page stegner, who argues t h a t i t i s " p o s s i b l e , perhaps probable, t h a t gradus and shade are as much figments of kinbote's i m a g i n a t i o n as c h a r l e s the beloved." although stegner o f f e r s h i s o p i n i o n s i n a t e n t a t i v e manner, andrew f i e l d adds a s p e c i a l commentary to h i s nabokov: his l i f e i n a r t i n order to reproach stegner f o r viewing pale f i r e ' s p u z z l e s " i n an i n v e r t e d and meaningless way." ^ alden sprowles condemns the f o r c e s of both f i e l d - b a d e r and stegner: the d i f f i c u l t y w i t h e i t h e r theory i s t h a t the n e c e s s i t y f o r having a "master thumbprint" beyond nabokov's own i s unproved. since there i s never a d i r e c t statement from an i n t e r n a l con- t r o l l i n g author, the proof depends on b u r i e d h i n t s and a r t i f i c i a l s e p a r a t i o n of genuine and a r t i f i c i a l v o i c e s , a l l of which i s r a t h e r spurious and p o i n t l e s s , as mary mccarthy p o i n t s o u t . ( ) j u l i a bader, crystal land (berkeley: univ. of c a l i f o r n i a press, ), p. . ( ) stegner, p. . ( ) field, his l i f e in art, p. . ( ) alden sprowles, "preliminary annotation to charles kinbote's commentary on 'pale f i r e , ' " in proffer, p. . for mccarthy's opinion, see her l e t t e r to the new york times book review, july , p. . no wonder w i l l i a m c a r r o l l , i n an essay on another t o p i c , almost i n a d v e r t a n t l y mentions pale f i r e and q u i c k l y adds a f o o t n o t e : " d i s c r e t i o n f o r b i d s e n t e r i n g the c o n t r o v e r s y over whether shade, kinbote, or p r o f . b o t k i n i s the 'primary' n a r r a t o r of p a l e f i r e . " when c r i t i c s begin to d e s c r i b e each o t h e r ' s o p i n i o n s as meaningless, i t seems i n e v i t a b l e t h a t the a c c u s a t i o n w i l l event- u a l l y be turned on the work i t s e l f , p a r t i c u l a r l y when the c r i t i c a l d i f f i c u l t i e s t u r n on the work's o v e r t a r t i f i c e . page stegner, f o r example, complains t h a t he wishes those c r i t i c s who c l a i m to have found moral t r u t h i n p a l e f i r e , "would somehow demon- s t r a t e where they found i t , and how, and what i t i s . " i t seems to me t h a t i n t h e i r lengthy e x p l i c a t i o n s of the r i d d l e s i n the novel they f a l l i n t o the same t r a p t h a t nabokov has perhaps f a l l e n i n t o — t h a t i s , t h i n k i n g t h a t form and s t y l e alone w i l l bear the burden of greatness and t h a t a novel i s o u t s t a n d i n g because i t s s t r u c t u r e i s f a n t a s t - i c a l l y complex. d.j. e n r i g h t comments t h a t pale f i r e , l i k e the other most c e l e - b r a t e d of nabokov's n o v e l s , i s c h a r a c t e r i z e d by " t r i c k s i n e s s . " " a l l too g e n e r a l l y , " says e n r i g h t , t h i s author, r i c h i n what i s given to few w r i t e r s and poor i n what i s g i v e n to most men, reminds me of g u l l e y jimson's comment i n the horse's mouth: "... l i k e f a r t i n g annie l a u r i e through a keyhole. i t may be c l e v e r but i s i t worth the t r o u b l e ? " (p. ) no doubt e n r i g h t has the c o m p l e x i t i e s of pale f i r e i n mind when he d e l i v e r s the i n e v i t a b l e and absurd o p i n i o n t h a t nabokov " f e e l s ( ) william c a r r o l l , "nabokov's signs and symbols," in proffer, p. , n. . ( ) stegner, p. . ( ) d.j. enright, "nabokov's wag," the new york review of books, november/ , p. . a l a r g e and f a i r l y comprehensive d i s t a s t e f o r the r e a l " (p. ). pale f i r e does not evidence a comprehensive d i s t a s t e f o r the r e a l . one o f the d e v i c e s by which the novel avoids " t r i c k s i - ness" i s the d e v i c e of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ; kinbote has a p o i n t when he says, shade's t e x t simply has no human r e a l i t y a t a l l s i n c e the human r e a l i t y of a poem such as h i s ... has to depend e n t i r e l y on the r e a l i t y of i t s author and h i s surroundings, attachments and so f o r t h , a r e a l i t y t h a t o n l y my notes can p r o v i d e . to t h i s statement my dear poet would probably not have s u b s c r i b e d , but, f o r b e t t e r or worse, i t i s the commentator who has the l a s t word (pp. i - ). kinbote i s incorrect i n saying t h a t shade was too s k i t t i s h f o r a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l d e t a i l s , or t h a t the poem s u f f e r s from the omission of c e r t a i n p i t h y v a r i a n t s , but he i s c o r r e c t i n saying t h a t he s u p p l i e s a human dimension to the minor poem of a minor poet. c r i t i c i s m s o f t e n l e v e l l e d a t nabokov h i m s e l f are p r e s e n t i n exaggerated form i n shade's poem. i t i s i n d u l g e n t l y s e l f - c e n t r e d , as i f the poet were imagining h i m s e l f a d d r e s s i n g a r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of the press w i t h an i n f i n i t e i n t e r e s t i n the s u b j e c t poet; a s e l f - i n t e r v i e w , complete w i t h w r i t i n g h a b i t s , the poet's curmud- geonly o p i n i o n s on the modern world ( . - ), and h i s g r a t u i t o u s j i b e s a t c r i t i c a l bores and englishmen who speak french p o o r l y . here the s p e c i a l s e n s i b i l i t y of nabokov's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s a t i t s weakest, s i n c e there i s no i n t e r a c t i o n w i t h other s e n s i b i l i t i e s and s o c i e t y . the poem i s q u i e s c e n t and s t e r i l e : "and so i pare my n a i l s , and muse, and hear/ your steps u p s t a i r s , and a l l i s r i g h t , my dear" ( . - ). what kinbote b r i n g s to t h i s (and whether i t i s l i t e r a l l y over shade's dead body, or whether shade invented kinbote f o r the purpose i s not the issue) are b i o g r a p h i c a l d e t a i l s which p l a c e shade i n the c o n t e x t of the world, and which make the reader take an i n t e r e s t i n h i s p e r s o n a l i t y and poem. for example, kinbote can b r i n g the dead poet to l i f e : through the back of john's t h i n c o t t o n s h i r t one c o u l d d i s t i n g u i s h patches of pink where i t stuck to the s k i n above and around the o u t l i n e s of the funny l i t t l e garment he wore under the s h i r t as a l l good americans do. i see with such awful c l a r i t y one f a t shoulder r o l l i n g , the other r i s i n g ; : h i s gray mop of h a i r , h i s creased nape; the red bandanna handkerchief l i m p l y hanging out of one h i p pocket, the w a l l e t bulge of the other ... (p. ). s i m i l a r l y , the weak ending of the poem takes on a new resonance when kinbote s u p p l i e s the death scene i m p l i e d by i t s dying f a l l ; the poem's opening l i n e s --• "i was the shadow of the waxwing s l a i n / by the f a l s e azure of the windowpane" ( . - ) — are more coherent and s i g n i f i c a n t when kinbote d e s c r i b e s the dead poet, who "had now been turned over and l a y w i t h open dead eyes d i r e c t e d up a t the sunny evening azure" (p. ; my emphasis). kinbote i s a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r d e s p i t e h i m s e l f — "i have no d e s i r e to t w i s t and b a t t e r an unambiguous apparatus c r i t i c u s i n t o the monstrous semblance of a n o v e l " (p. ). i n a d v e r t a n t l y , as i t were, he r e v i t a l i z e s the impersonal b u s i n e s s of e d i t i n g a poem. although i t i s d i f f i c u l t to look a f r e s h a t a novel t h a t has e x e r c i s e d so many exegetes, l e t us t r y and imagine a reader encountering the f i n a l pages, of the novel f o r the f i r s t time. he f i n d s a t f i r s t a dry, c o r r e c t , d u l l , f a c t u a l account of the t e x t t h a t w i l l f o l l o w , an account f i l l e d with t e c h n i c a l terms and i m p e r s o n a l i t y . although the p r e t e r n a t u r a l l y a l e r t reader might suspect something unusual i s a f o o t w i t h the terms "amusing" and "shocking," i t i s not u n t i l the bottom of the t h i r d paragraph, as kinbote c o r r e c t s something he has s a i d e a r l i e r , t h a t the reader f i r s t encounters what kinbote would c a l l "human r e a l i t y " : i mean, he preserved the date of a c t u a l c r e a t i o n r a t h e r than t h a t of second or t h i r d thoughts. there i s a very l o u d amusement park r i g h t i n f r o n t of my present l o d g i n g s (p. ). t h i s i s the b e g i n n i n g of the reader's a p p r e c i a t i o n of kinbote's humanity, the f i r s t s i g n of the migraines and other d i s t r a c t i n g p e r s o n a l problems t h a t culminate i n one of the l a s t l i n e s of the commentary: "gentlemen, i have s u f f e r e d v e r y much, and more than any of you can imagine" (p. ). then, i n s t e a d of h i n t i n g a t the almost s u b l i m i n a l p a s s i o n s and rages t h a t seethe under the decorous prose of most s c h o l a r l y e d i t i o n s , kinbote o v e r t l y begins h i s a t t a c k on h i s f e l l o w p r o f e s s o r s , "prof. hurley and h i s c l i q u e " (p. ). a c o n v e n t i o n a l l i t e r a r y form, the s c h o l a r l y commentary, has been g i v e n a human dimension through the c h a r a c t e r i s t i c r h e t o r i c a l , p a s s i o n a t e , e g o c e n t r i c v o i c e of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . c a r o l w i l l i a m s d e s c r i b e s the problems pale f i r e poses f o r the o r d i n a r y reader, who must "roam back and f o r t h — w i t h the keenest i n t e l l i - gence, a l e r t n e s s , and p h y s i c a l d e x t e r i t y — between a foreword by e d i t o r c h a r l e s kinbote, a poem, 'pale f i r e ' , by john shade, and a commentary and index by kinbote." but i t i s kinbote's ( ) carol t. williams, "'web of sense': pale f i r e in the nabokov canon," c r i t i q u e , , no. ( ), . mad i n s i s t e n c e t h a t every word of john shade's poem has profound p e r s o n a l s i g n i f i c a n c e t h a t prompts the reader to e x e r c i s e h i s i n t e l l i g e n c e and a l e r t n e s s i n c l o s e r e a d i n g ; i t r e q u i r e s a mad would-be king to breathe new l i f e i n t o new c r i t i c i s m . one does not u s u a l l y t u r n to an index to f i n d human drama, but how much scorn, envy and disappointment are i n k i n b o t e s p e r f u n c t o r y l i s t i n g of h i s a r c h - r i v a l ; " s h a d e , s y b i l , s's w i f e , passim" (p. ). in pale f i r e the commentator and the n a r r a t i v e poet i n t e r - a c t to g i v e each o t h e r l i f e . the interaction p r o v i d e s a secondary meaning to kinbote's metaphor about shade's dying f i n g e r s fumbling a t kinbote's hands, "seeking my f i n g e r t i p s , f i n d i n g them, o n l y to abandon them a t once as i f p a s s i n g to me, i n a sublime r e l a y race, the baton of l i f e " (p. ). one wonders how the s t o r y of an e x i l e d european i n t e l l e c t u a l and a m i l d new england poet c o u l d have been presented more v i v i d l y and a f f e c t i n g l y i n a more t r a d i t i o n a l n o v e l . kinbote's "notes and s e l f " (p. ) do indeed p e t e r out a t the end of the novel i n t o the f i g u r e of the russian a r t i s t who oversees the n o v e l , but b e f o r e t h a t p o i n t there i s enough of what nabokov c a l l s the t i n g l e and tang of r e a l i t y to s a t i s f y even d.j. e n r i g h t . turning now to pnin, we should note a shrewd comment by e n r i g h t on the q u e s t i o n of nabokov's compassion. e n r i g h t notes t h a t page stegner, " i n a s l i g h t l y uneasy way ... o f f e r s to j u s t i f y nabokov, to show t h a t he possesses not o n l y a b r i l l i a n t s t y l e but a l s o (though he ' t r i e s to obfuscate t h a t emotion by means of a b r i l l i a n t s t y l e ) a deeply compassionate nature." ( ) enright, p. . i t would be i n c o r r e c t to s e t up an o p p o s i t i o n between, on the one hand, s t e r i l i t y and u n r e a l i t y ( q u a l i t i e s e r r o n e o u s l y assoc- i a t e d w i t h the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ) , and on the o t h e r hand the warm and soothing b l a n k e t of humanistic compassion. although nabokov uses the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r to p e r s o n a l i z e c e r t a i n impersonal elements of the n o v e l , t h i s does not imply t h a t he tempers c o l d a r t i f i c i a l i t y w i t h warm s e n t i m e n t a l i t y ; i n s t e a d , he uses the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s v o i c e to e x p l o r e the spectrum of human emotion. u n f o r t u n a t e l y f o r pnin, the n a r r a t i v e v o i c e from which pnin s u f f e r s i s unkind, even c r u e l . on a f i r s t r e a d i n g , pnin appears to be the simple c h a r a c t e r study of a s t e r e o t y p e d absent-minded p r o f e s s o r i n a r e a l i s t i c academic s e t t i n g . many readers f i n d i t nabokov's most a c c e s s i b l e n o v e l . the n a r r a t o r appears to be the omniscient, n e u t r a l r e p o r t e r of the c o n v e n t i o n a l n o v e l . stegner, f o r example, applauds the r e d u c t i o n of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a r t i f i c e : perhaps because the composition i s more s t r a i g h t - forward and the author's c o n t r o l l i n g hand l e s s apparent, pnin i s the most moving and r e a l of nabokov's c h a r a c t e r s . i t seems as i f both com- poser and s o l v e r , being l e s s i n v o l v e d w i t h • i n t e l l e c t u a l gymnastics, are a b l e to c o n c e n t r a t e on the d e p i c t i o n and understanding of a t r u l y human being and h i s redemptive response to the p a i n f u l n e s s of e x i l e . ^ ~ stegner i s q u i t e c o r r e c t i n saying t h a t pnin i s warm and human, but t h i s i s not a f u n c t i o n of reduced s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a r t i f i c e ; stegner i s i n c o r r e c t when he says t h a t "the presence of the author as c o n t r o l l i n g d e i t y i s not f e l t , and the n a r r a t o r of the s t o r y , ( ) stegner, pp. - . a russian e x i l e and compatriot of pnin's, i s f i n a l l y an unimport- ant f i g u r e i n the n o v e l " (p. ). the n a r r a t o r i s i i n f a c t of primary importance i n the n o v e l , as pnin h i m s e l f becomes a l l too aware. the n a r r a t o r ' s i d e n t i t y seems to be m u l t i p l e . he might be p r o f . c o c k e r e l l , the top campus mimic. he might a l s o be the p r o f e s s o r who takes away pnin's job, and whose i n i t i a l s are.v.v. more than the i n i t i a l s are r e v e a l e d when pnin and h i s o l d f r i e n d p r o f e s s o r chateau examine a c l o u d of blue b u t t e r f l i e s : p i t y v l a d i m i r v l a d i m i r o v i c h i s not here," remarked chateau. "he would have t o l d us a l l about these enchanting i n s e c t s . " "i have always had the impression t h a t h i s entomology was merely a pose." "oh, no," s a i d chateau. (pnin, p. ) t h i s i s o f course a r e f e r e n c e to the h i s t o r i c a l personage, v l a d i m i r v l a d i m i r o v i c h nabokov, which leads to i n t e l l e c t u a l gymnastics indeed among the c r i t i c s . fowler says the n a r r a t o r i s "roughly nabokov." paul grams i s f o r c e d i n t o t o r t u r o u s sentences i n which nabokov's name i s surrounded by d e f e n s i v e q u o t a t i o n marks*. "in other words, the l i b e r t i e s 'nabokov' takes i n order to ' f i c t i o n a l i z e ' pnin's biography ambrose gordon, j r . says the n a r r a t o r g r a d u a l l y "takes on the f a m i l i a r lineaments of v l a d i m i r nabokov." nabokov of course d e l i g h t s i n a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l r e f e r e n c e s which make i t i m p o s s i b l e ( ) fowler, p. . ( ) paul grams, "pnin: the biographer as meddler," russian l i t e r a t u r e t r i q u a r t e r l g , no. ( ), pp. - ; rpt. in proffer, p. . ( ) ambrose gordon, jr., "the double pnin," in dembo, p. . f o r c r i t i c s to t i e up the l o o s e ends of h i s f i c t i o n s ; n e v e r t h e l e s s , the c h a r a c t e r who took away pnin's job i s not the man who was married to vera nabokov. the novel p r o v i d e s us w i t h enough i n t e r n a l i n f o r m a t i o n about the n a r r a t o r f o r the reader to c o n s t r u c t a c h a r a c t e r study t h a t does not depend on t i d b i t s from the l i f e of the r e a l nabokov. the essence of t h i s n a r r a t o r , d e s p i t e h i s m u l t i p l e i d e n t i t i e s , one of which bears a resemblance to nabokov h i m s e l f , i s h i s m a l i c i o u s n e s s . consider h i s account of a g a t h e r i n g of pnin and h i s acquaintances, a g a t h e r i n g i n which the n a r r a t o r p a r t i c i p a t e d . the n a r r a t o r recounts an anecdote about pnin's female c o u s i n , whom, the n a r r a t o r says p o i s o n o u s l y , he had p r e v i o u s l y "known i n y a l t a , athens, and london." pnin i n t e r r u p t s the s t o r y : "now, d o n ' t - b e l i e v e a word he says.... he makes up e v e r y t h i n g . he once i n v e n t e d t h a t we were schoolmates i n russia and c r i b b e d a t examinations. he i s a d r e a d f u l i n v e n t o r . . . " (p. ). pnin has good reason to dread the n a r r a t o r ' s tone of c o o l condescension. when the n a r r a t o r v i s i t s pnin's c h i l d h o o d home, he i s quick to c o n t r a s t pnin's modest surroundings with h i s own i n h e r i t e d wealth. in h i s r o l e as a c h a r a c t e r he takes away pnin's job, and i n h i s r o l e as author,, which g i v e s him the p r i v i l e g e of omniscience, he invades the p r i v a c y of pnin's mind. perhaps worst of a l l , he tampers w i t h pnin's beloved ex-wife. the n a r r a t o r has had a c a s u a l and condescending a f f a i r (on h i s part) with l i z a ; she married pnin on the rebound. through l i z a the n a r r a t o r o b t a i n s some of pnin's p a t h e t i c and r e v e a l i n g l o v e l e t t e r s , and doesn't h e s i t a t e to d i s p l a y the l e t t e r s to the reader, who begins to f e e l l i k e a voyeur. once one becomes aware of the n a r r a t o r ' s d r e a d f u l powers, i t i s d i f f i c u l t to concur w i t h fowler t h a t pnin i s " e a s i l y the most g e n t l e and humane of a l l nabokov's n o v e l s . " in s h o r t , nabokov has transformed the conventions of the omniscient and i n t r u s i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . the omniscient n a r r a t o r becomes a major c h a r a c t e r i n the s t o r y , and because •his a c t i o n s are both p e r s o n a l and a r b i t r a r y , the reader i s a l l the more sympathetic to h e l p l e s s pnin. i t i s i n t e r e s t i n g t h a t c r i t i c s o f t e n complain t h a t an a r t i s t ' s treatment of h i s c h a r a c t e r s i s a r b i t r a r y and c o n t r i v e d ; nabokov h i m s e l f a t t a c k s la nausee on the grounds t h a t s a r t r e u n s u c c e s s f u l l y " i n f l i c t s h i s i d l e and a r b i t r a r y p h i l o s o p h i c fancy on a h e l p l e s s person whom he has invented f o r t h a t purpose ..."(strong opinions, p. ). what a b r i l l i a n t technique, t h e r e f o r e , to p e r s o n a l i z e or anthropo- morphize the omniscient n a r r a t o r , so t h a t t h i n g s t h a t happen to pnin are not the a r t i f i c i a l c a l c u l a t i o n s of an impersonal v o i c e , but the v i n d i c t i v e t a c t i c s of a c h a r a c t e r w i t h i n the scene, a n a r r a t o r who parades h i s n a s t i n e s s b e f o r e the h o r r i f i e d reader. w i l l i a m c a r r o l l says i t i s no fun being a c h a r a c t e r i n nabokov's f i c t i o n : a r b i t r a r i l y c r e a t e d , the c h a r a c t e r l e a d s a l i f e i n h e r e n t l y f r a g i l e ; he i s c o n t i n u a l l y ^ j o s t l e d , t r a n s p o r t e d i n space and time, f o r c e d i n t o / e x i l e a t the s t r o k e of a pen, c a p r i c i o u s l y t o r t u r e d , d r i v e n i n t o madness a t the l a s t moment (bend s i n i s t e r ) , or a b r u p t l y " c a n c e l l e d . " ... as f l i e s to wanton boys are we to our authors, they k i l l us f o r t h e i r p l o t s . , ( ) fowler, p. . ( ) c a r r o l l , p. . t h i s i s somewhat u n f a i r to nabokov. in pnin the hero e v e n t u a l l y escapes the t o r t u r e s of h i s n a r r a t o r . in bend s i n i s t e r , the n a r r a t o r , although much l e s s a d i s t i n c t p e r s o n a l i t y , i s essen- t i a l l y benign. however, the n a r r a t o r i s never an agent f o r the s e n t i m e n t a l i t y of the reader. for example, krug i s not per- m i t t e d to use the beam of l i g h t as a deux ex machina by which he might climb to the n a r r a t o r ' s workshop, t h e r e to be r e s t o r e d to h i s son and depart f o r f r e e america on the a r t i s t ' s v i s a . s e n t i m e n t a l i t y i m p l i e s e v a s i o n of the t r u t h , and nothing c o u l d be f u r t h e r from nabokov's \ use of a l l - t o o - r e a l n a r r a t o r s . the p e r s u a s i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r the r h e t o r i c a l element i n the makeup of nabokov 's s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r s l e a d s them to attempt to persuade the reader to accept the d e v i c e s and p r e j u d i c e s of the n a r r a t o r . nabokov's n a r r a t o r s are not as contemptuous of the reader's e x p e c t a t i o n s and c a p a b i l i t i e s as has been g e n e r a l l y assumed; i n f a c t , some of the n a r r a t o r ' s repeated addresses to the reader are designed to keep the reader i n touch w i t h the events of the p l o t , to make the d e v i c e s i n h e r e n t i n any form of n a r r a t i o n apparent to t, the reader, and to make the reader a b e t t e r l i t e r a r y c r i t i c i n order to a v o i d the gross d i s t o r t i o n s of i n f e r i o r a r t . the n a r r a t o r ' s r h e t o r i c a l emphasis on a r t i f i c e i s p a r t of a pro- grammatic a t t a c k on the d i s t o r t i n g g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s of l i t e r a r y and p o l i t i c a l theory. a r t i f i c e i s o f t e n opposed to m i n d - d u l l i n g i d e o l o g y , and not n e c e s s a r i l y r e a l i t y . however, the s e l f - conscious emphasis on a r t i f i c e has made c o n v e r t s of some of the c r i t i c s , and t h e r e i s a c r i t i c a l tendency to t r e a t the r e a l i s t i c aspects o f h i s works w i t h q u o t a t i o n marks, as a s i g n of s o l i d - a r i t y w i t h the master of i l l u s i o n s . perhaps the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r has done h i s p e r s u a s i v e work too w e l l . in speak, memory, nabokov d e s c r i b e s the s t y l e of s i r i n (nabokov's e a r l y pseudonym): "russian readers who had been r a i s e d on the sturdy s t r a i g h t f o r w a r d n e s s of russian r e a l i s m and had c a l l e d the b l u f f of decadent cheats, were impressed by the m i r r o r - l i k e angles of h i s c l e a r but w e i r d l y m i s l e a d i n g sentences!..." (speak, memory, p. ). i f the reader f a i l e d to be impressed, he c o u l d be sure t h a t the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r would draw the m i r r o r - l i k e angles to h i s a t t e n t i o n . the n a r r a t o r s become, as i t were, i n t e r n a l l o b b y i s t s f o r nabokov's i d i o s y n c r a t i c techniques. speaking through h i s puppets, or w i t h a h i g h l y s t y l i s e d n a r r a t i v e v o i c e with a n a l o g i e s to h i s own, nabokov teaches h i s readers the rudiments of l i t e r a r y c r i t i c i s m as nabokov would l i k e to see i t taught, emphasizing commentaries on s p e c i f i c t e x t s . for example, here i s p e d a n t i c kinbote on john shade: the whole t h i n g [ . - ] " s t r i k e s me as too l a b o r e d and long, e s p e c i a l l y s i n c e the synchron- i z a t i o n d e v i c e has been a l r e a d y worked to death by f l a u b e r t and joyce. otherwise the p a t t e r n i s e x q u i s i t e (pale f i r e , p. ). in the g i f t , l i t e r a r y c r i t i c i s m and the p l o t are i n s e p a r a b l e . fyodor waits f o r zina i n a romantic b e r l i n n i g h t — "thus i t t r a n s p i r e d t h a t even b e r l i n c o u l d be mysterious," says fyodor, v o i c i n g the o b l i g a t o r y nabokov p r e j u d i c e : w i t h i n the l i n d e n ' s bloom the s t r e e t l i g h t winks. a dark and honeyed hush envelopes us. across the curb one's p a s s i n g shadow s i n k s : a c r o s s a stump a sable r i p p l e s thus (pp. - ). anna salehar has p o i n t e d out t h a t t h i s b i t of prose d e s c r i p t i o n i s i n f a c t the beginning of a poem; q u a t r a i n s of iambic penta- meters with the rhyme scheme abab. in her a r t i c l e , "nabokov's g i f t : an a p p r e n t i c e s h i p i n c r e a t i v i t y , " she argues t h a t the a p p r e n t i c e s h i p i s not fyodor's, but the r e a d e r ' s . we must become a r t i s t s o u r s e l v e s , or a t l e a s t c o - c r e a t o r s w i t h nabokov, and thus share i n fyodor's "remarkable a b i l i t y to see the o b j e c t i v e world i n a way d i f f e r e n t from most people...." i f the reader c o n s c i e n t i o u s l y pays a t t e n t i o n to the i d i o - s y n c r a t i c d e v i c e s presented by the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s , h i s e x p e c t a t i o n s of "sturdy r e a l i s m " are bound to be d i s a p p o i n t e d . he might begin to suspect t h a t he i s the l e a s t important element i n the r e l a t i o n s h i p of a r t i s t / w o r k / a u d i e n c e ; the work i t s e l f might seem a s e l f - s u f f i c i e n t a r t i f i c e w i t h no c o n n e c t i o n to the reader's world. why, asks the bemused reader, i s the n a r r a t o r so i n s u l t i n g ? turn-tee-turn. and once more -tum! no, i have not gone mad. i am merely producing g l e e f u l l i t t l e sounds. the k i n d of g l e e one experiences upon making an a p r i l f o o l of someone. and a damned good f o o l i have made of someone. who i s he? gentle reader, look a t y o u r s e l f i n the m i r r o r , as you seem to l i k e m i r r o r s so much (despair, p. ). however, the reader i s here encountering hermann, s u r e l y the nabokov n a r r a t o r who d i s p l a y s the g r e a t e s t h o s t i l i t y towards the reader ( s i n c e he suspects approval f o r h i s masterpiece w i l l not ( ) anna salehar, "nabokov's g i f t : an apprenticeship in c r e a t i v i t y , " in proffer, p. . be forthcoming). i t i s true that nabokov himself sounds rather l i k e hermann i n the foreword to despair when he says, s a r c a s t i c a l l y , "plain readers ... w i l l welcome i t s p l a i n structure and pleasing plot ..." (p. ); but i t i s nevertheless true that nabokov often uses the self-conscious narrator to give the reader a clearer sense of what i s going on. in ada, for example, van veen notes that the dialogue "was speckled with russian, an e f f e c t not too consistently reproduced i n t h i s chapter — the readers are r e s t l e s s tonight ..." (ada, p. ). there i s contempt i n van's ungracious concession, as though the readers were r e s t l e s s natives i n a jungle of ignorance. but van's concession, gracious or otherwise, i s repeated i n nabokov's own career. simon karlinsky says that nabokov's english t r a n s l a t i o n of the waltz invention has the ease of the reader i n mind. the translator "at times resorts to explicating the text rather than,merely t r a n s l a t i n g i t ...." [nabokov's] attitude toward the reader of the english versions of his e a r l i e r work i s mellower and more forbearing than the one he had toward the reader of the russian o r i g i n a l s . the l i t - erary a l l u s i o n s , puns, and f a l s e leads i n the o r i g i n a l version of the g i f t have l a r g e l y been elucidated and deciphered i n the t r a n s l a t i o n . s i m i l a r l y , the reader of the waltz invention i n english h a s v a somewhat s i m p l i f i e d text.... at the end of his english preface, the author o b l i g i n g l y t e l l s the reader just where the action of the play i s taking place; he further t i p s his hand by r e f e r r i n g to salvator waltz as "a fellow author" i n the newly provided l i s t of dramatis personae.•••o a ( ) simon karlinsky, " i l l u s i o n , reality and parody i n nabokov's plays," i n dembo, pp. - . • nabokov i s more r e v e a l i n g and i n t e l l e c t u a l l y generous than those c r i t i c s who welcome c a b a l i s t i c crossword p u z z l e s might admit. v l a d i s l a v khodasevich says t h a t the "key" to nabokov's work i s t h a t he does not hide or mask h i s d e v i c e s , but on the c o n t r a r y , p l a c e s them i n f u l l view l i k e a magician who, having amazed h i s audience, r e v e a l s on the very spot the l a b o r a t o r y of h i s m i r a c l e s . . . . s i r i n does not hide them because one of h i s major tasks i s j u s t t h a t ~ to show how the devices l i v e and work. the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s advocate t h e i r own s i n g u l a r methods i n order to d e f e a t what nabokov sees as the g e n e r a l i z e d l i e s f o s t e r e d by c r u e l p o l i t i c i a n s and d u l l c r i t i c s . he emphasizes the r a r e , the p a r t i c u l a r and the i d i o s y n c r a t i c , as opposed to l e v e l l i n g and t h e r e f o r e f a l s e g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s . thus nabokov on s i r i n : j u s t as m a r x i s t p u b l i c i s t s of the e i g h t i e s i n o l d russia would have denounced h i s l a c k of concern w i t h the economic s t r u c t u r e of s o c i e t y , so the mystagogues of emigre" l e t t e r s deplored h i s l a c k of r e l i g i o u s i n s i g h t and of moral p r e o c c u p a t i o n (speak, memory, p. ). in the foreword to despair he d i s p o s e s of the g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s of the sociologists," the. freudians, and the c r i t i c s : despair, i n k i n s h i p with the r e s t of my books, has no s o c i a l comment to make, no message to b r i n g i n i t s t e e t h .... the a t t r a c t i v e l y shaped o b j e c t or w i e n e r - s c h n i t z e l dream t h a t the eager f r e u d i a n may t h i n k he d i s t i n g u i s h e s i n the remoteness of my wastes w i l l t u r n out to be ... a d e r i s i v e mirage o r g a n i z e d by my agents. l e t me add, j u s t i n case, t h a t experts on l i t - e r a r y " s c h o o l s " should w i s e l y r e f r a i n t h i s time from c a s u a l l y dragging i n "the i n f l u e n c e of german i m p r e s s i o n i s t s " : i do not know german and have never read the i m p r e s s i o n i s t s — who- ever they are (despair, pp. - ). ( ) khodasevich, ,: n s i r i n , " in nabokov: c r i t i c i s m , p. . . the n a r r a t o r s ' a e s t h e t i c preoccupations are p a r t of a s t r u g g l e a g a i n s t i n t e l l e c t u a l tyranny (hence the a s s o c i a t i o n of simple or i n f e r i o r a r t w i t h t o t a l i t a r i a n i s m i n bend s i n i s t e r and i n v i t a t i o n to a beheading), and a l s o p a r t of the s t r u g g l e to preserve the i n t e l l e c t u a l t r a d i t i o n s and freedom of russia's e x i l e d i n t e l l e c t u a l s . i t i s no a c c i d e n t t h a t nabokov's o p i n i o n s i n the foreword to the g i f t are echoed by. pnin' s n a r r a t o r : the tremendous o u t f l o w of i n t e l l e c t u a l s t h a t formed such a prominent p a r t of the g e n e r a l exodus from s o v i e t russia i n the f i r s t years o f the b o l s h e v i s t r e v o l u t i o n ... remained un- known to american i n t e l l e c t u a l s (who, bewitched by communist propaganda, saw us merely as v i l l a i n o u s g e n e r a l s , o i l magnates, and gaunt l a d i e s w i t h l o r g n e t t e s ) . . . . the o l d i n t e l l e c t - u a l s are now d y i n g out and have not found successors i n the. s o - c a l l e d d i s p l a c e d persons ... who have c a r r i e d abroad the p r o v i n c i a l i s m and p h i l i s t i n i s m of their soviet .homeland ('the g i f t , p. ). i saw pnin ... a t an evening tea i n the apartment of a famous emigre ... one of those i n f o r m a l g a t h e r i n g s where o l d - f a s h i o n e d t e r r o r i s t s , h e r o i c nuns, g i f t e d h e d o n i s t s , l i b e r a l s , adventurous young poets ... would r e p r e s e n t a k i n d of s p e c i a l knighthood, the a c t i v e and s i g n i f i c a n t nucleus of an e x i l e d s o c i e t y which d u r i n g the t h i r d of a century i t f l o u r - i s h e d remained p r a c t i c a l l y unknown to american i n t e l l e c t u a l s f o r whom the n o t i o n of russian e m i g r a t i o n was made to mean by a s t u t e communist propaganda a vague and p e r f e c t l y f i c t i t i o u s mass of s o - c a l l e d t r o t s k i i t e s ... r u i n e d r e a c t i o n a r i e s ... r e s t a u r a n t keepers, and white russian m i l i t a r y groups, a l l of them of no c u l t u r a l importance whatever (pnin, p. ). jack ludwig has argued t h a t nabokov ignores the american r e a l i t y . i t i s s i g n i f i c a n t t h a t nabokov's response to ludwig's p i e c e almost by r e f l e x c e n t r e s on what nabokov sees as p o l i t i c a l ( ) see jack ludwig, "the ordinary is, too," in nabokov: c r i t i c i s m , pp. - . p r e s s u r e : i remember, not without s a t i s f a c t i o n , how f i e r c e l y and f r e q u e n t l y , d u r i n g my l a s t year of high s c h o o l i n russia (which was a l s o the f i r s t year of the r e v o l u t i o n ) , most of my t e a c h e r s and some of my. schoolmates accused me of being a " f o r e i g n e r " because i r e f u s e d to j o i n i n p o l i t i c a l d e c l a r - a t i o n s and demonstrations. mr. ludwig ... i n d i c a t e s with g r e a t sympathy and acumen the p o s s i b i l i t y of s i m i l a r a c c u s a t i o n s being made by my new f e l l o w - c i t i z e n s (strong opinions, p. ). nabokov never f o r g e t s t h a t the a c t i v i t i e s of h i s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s have a p o l i t i c a l context. there i s a tendency on the p a r t of the c r i t i c s , however, to i s o l a t e the a r t i f i c i a l i t y of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s , to the p o i n t where the n a r r a t o r s a c t i v i t i e s seem to take p l a c e i n an a e s t h e t i c vacuum. i t seems c r i t i c s tend to be overwhelmed by the a e s t h e t i c s t h a t nabokov propounds both i n s i d e and o u t s i d e h i s works: [nabokov] took the unexpected o c c a s i o n of h i s c e l e b r i t y [ a f t e r l o l i t a ] to p r o c l a i m what he had a l r e a d y been h i s s i n g through three decades of brimming o b s c u r i t y : t h a t he ... was not o n l y the g r e a t e s t but perhaps the o n l y w r i t e r of s e r i o u s f i c t i o n on the face of the e a r t h . [before] h i s death i n s w i t z e r l a n d at ... no s m a l l amount of readers, c r i t i c s and academics had surrendered the l a s t laugh and accepted the a u t o c r a t i c o l d wizard a t a p p r o x i - mately h i s own e v a l u a t i o n . ^ nabokov never s a i d t h a t he was the "only w r i t e r of s e r i o u s f i c t i o n on the face of the e a r t h " ; but i t i s t r u e t h a t h i s inno- v a t i v e methods, h i s genius, and h i s repeated a t t a c k s on other t h e o r i e s of the n o v e l , not to mention other n o v e l i s t s , have caused some c r i t i c s to decide t h a t the standard c r i t i c a l terms are inadequate. w i l l i a m c a r r o l l notes t h a t "nabokov's f i c t i o n ( ) boeth, p. . spawns s p e c i a l c r i t i c a l v o c a b u l a r i e s and d i s e a s e s i n those who attempt to-.account, f o r i t s p e r s i s t e n t l y odd e f f e c t . " one symptom of the d i s e a s e , which can be s l i g h t or n e a r l y f a t a l , depending on the p a t i e n t , i s a tendency to s l a n t one's c r i t i c i s m i n the d i r e c t i o n of the a r t i f i c e of nabokov's f i c t i o n , a t the expense of i t s realism. alden sprowles, f o r example, complains t h a t one c r i t i c a l d i f f i c u l t y r e s u l t i n g from nabokov's " d i s t i n c t i v e s t y l e i s the i n e v i t a b l e urge to emulate or parody i t w h i l e c r i t i z i n g him." the d i f f i c u l t y i s n i c e l y i l l u s t r a t e d by sprowles' own a r t i c l e , which he d e s c r i b e s as "a l o g i c a l e x t e n s i o n of kinbote's insane annotating ( i t s e l f a byproduct of nabokov's f o o t n o t i n g p r o c l i v i t i e s ) " (p. ). a c t u a l l y , the l o g i c a l e x t e n s i o n of kinbote's insane annotating i s found l a t e r i n the volume from which sprowles' a r t i c l e i s taken. kerry ahearn p r o v i d e s "a l o l i t a crossword p u z z l e " (pp. - ), w i t h up and down c l u e s from the n o v e l . one of my students once informed me, a f t e r her prolonged- exposure to a course f e a t u r i n g nabokov, t h a t a l l of l i t e r a t u r e i s crossword p u z z l e s ; nothing more, nothing l e s s . c r i t i c s under nabokov's s p e l l are t r o u b l e d by the i s s u e of r e a l i s m . for example, here i s gleb struve n e r v o u s l y approaching nabokov's f i r s t n o v e l : with a l l i t s immaturity, mashenka r e v e a l s some of the e s s e n t i a l s of nabokov's l i t e r a r y t e c h - nique. he i s a " r e a l i s t " (i know he h i m s e l f d e t e s t s the use of such l a b e l s i n l i t e r a t u r e ) i n the sense t h a t ... . a n ( ) c a r r o l l , p. . ( ) sprowles, p. . ( ) struve, p. . and here i s j u l i a bader, on her way towards the inevitable conclusion that "nabokov's work eludes t r a d i t i o n a l rubrics of interpretation": shuddering at nabokov's wise caution ("remember that mediocrity thrives on 'ideas. beware of the modish message. ask yourself i f the symbol you have detected i s not your own footprint. ignore a l l e g o r i e s . . . " ) , i have several admissions to make. the "idea" of t h i s book i s that the various l e v e l s of " r e a l i t y " i n nabokov's novels are best seen i n the perspective of the game of a r t i f i c e . . . . ~my "modish message" i s that i n various forms and strange ways a l l of nabokov's novels are about a r t . . . . this sounds allegor- i c a l , but i n the footsteps of van veen i would l i k e to propose a theory....^ an example of a good c r i t i c who has nevertheless been overly indoctrinated by the self-conscious narrators and by nabokov's public and private pronouncements i s a l f r e d appel, j r . here he deals with those c r i t i c s who considered l o l i t a a s a t i r e : [ l o l i t a s ] greatness does not depend on the pro- fundity or extent of i t s " s a t i r e , " which i s over- emphasized by readers who f a i l to recognize the extent of the parody, i t s f u l l implications, or the operative d i s t i n c t i o n made by nabokov: "satire i s a lesson, parody i s a game. note that what appel intends to be the crunching argument i s one of nabokov's personal rubrics; before we can c r i t i c i z e nabokov, we must commit to memory his operative d i s t i n c t i o n s . but perhaps appel's c a r e f u l l y q u a l i f i e d argument seems inoffensive; perhaps nabokov i s r i g h t and appel i s h e l p f u l l y passing on a truth. in the following example, however, which i s an extension of the technique used above (that i s , borrowing nabokov's weapons), appel ( ) bader, pp. - . ( ) alfred appel, jr., "background of lolita," in nabokov: criticism, p. . attempts to bypass independent c r i t i c i s m a l t o g e t h e r i n j u s t i f i - c a t i o n of h i s e a r l y (and v a l u a b l e ) review of ada: because of the novel's amplitude and complexity, i t s a l l u s i v e n e s s , e l u s i v e n e s s , and g r a d u a l a c c r e t i o n of s i g n i f i c a n t d e t a i l , my purpose here i s to l a b e l , r a t h e r than " i n t e r p r e t , " i t s contents and contours, an i n t e n t i o n f u l l y i n the s p i r i t of van veen and h i s maker. when van i s pressed f o r a p s y c h i a t r i c e x p l a n a t i o n of two d e l u s i o n s , he d o u b t l e s s speaks too f o r nabokov the l e p i d - o p t e r i s t , teacher, and t r a n s l a t o r and annotator of eugene onegin: " i n my works, i t r y not to ' e x p l a i n ' anything, i merely d e s c r i b e . . . . " ^ while the c r i t i c might sympathize w i t h the n o t i o n s of nabokov's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s , and l e a r n from them, i t i s dangerous to i d e n t i f y them w i t h nabokov, or to go f o r t h and c r i t i c i z e i n t h e i r s p i r i t . when c r i t i c s begin to form c i r c u l a r t h e o r i e s i n which a l l of nabokov's a r t i s about a r t , i t i s not s u r p r i s i n g t h a t a l f r e d appel, j r . should f i n d i t necessary to assure h i s readers t h a t he i s a r e a l person, "and has not been invented by v l a d i m i r nabokov." the metaphysics of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i t i s a mistake f o r the c r i t i c to a b s t r a c t the n o t i o n s of nabokov and h i s n a r r a t o r s i n t o an a e s t h e t i c i n which a r t i f i c e predominates; i t i s a mistake because nabokov's own a e s t h e t i c s are p a r t of the f i c t i o n ' s v e r y s i n g u l a r , and very c o n s i s t e n t , world view, a world view t h a t does not r e l y on pure a r t i f i c e , or common-sense r e a l i s m , but on t h e i r complex i n t e r p e n e t r a t i o n . ( ) alfred appel, jr.,"ada described," in nabokov: c r i t i c i s m , p. . ( ) alfred appel, jr., the annotated l o l i t a (new york: mcgraw-hill, ), p. x i i . nabokov's world view undeniably has a g r e a t d e a l to do with p e r c e i v i n g the world i n a r t i s t i c terms. clarence brown, who b e l i e v e s t h a t nabokov's works r e v e a l an "absolute u n i t y , " c i t e s one of the imaginary novels i n the real l i f e of s e b a s t i a n knight: " a l l t h i n g s belong to the same order of t h i n g s , f o r such i s the oneness of human p e r c e p t i o n , the oneness of i n d i v i d - u a l i t y , , the oneness of matter, whatever matter may be. the o n l y r e a l number i s one, the r e s t are mere r e p e t i t i o n " (p. ). a sense of the oneness of p e r c e p t i o n r e q u i r e s a s p e c i a l s e n s i b i l - i t y , which i s why nabokov chooses n a r r a t o r s as s e n s i t i v e as sebastian knight, whose " s l i g h t e s t thought or s e n s a t i o n had always a t l e a s t one more dimension than those of h i s neigh- bors ..." (p. ). although the unique p e r c e p t i o n s of the s p e c i a l s e n s i b i l i t y , which o f t e n i n c l u d e a p a r t i a l t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of the world, do not r e c e i v e b l a n k e t a p p r o v a l , they are unquestionably encouraged. when a c h a r a c t e r says j u s t i f i a b l y enough t h a t k i n - bote i s insane, john shade r e p l i e s t h a t i n s a n i t y i s the wrong word: "one should not apply i t to a person who d e l i b e r a t e l y p e e l s o f f a drab and unhappy past and r e p l a c e s i t w i t h a b r i l l i a n t i n v e n t i o n " (pale f i r e , p. ) . hermann r e p o r t s t h a t "a russian author who l i v e s i n the neighborhood h i g h l y p r a i s e s my s t y l e and v i v i d i m a g i n a t i o n " (despair, p. ). nabokov's n a r r a t o r s c o n t i n u a l l y p o s i t a world of harmony, order, v a l u e and a l l the other c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s of a e s t h e t i c and s o c i a l utopias. in "cloud, c a s t l e , lake," f o r example, one of ( ) clarence brown, "nabokov's pushkin and nabokov's nabokov," in dembo, p. . the n a r r a t o r ' s " r e p r e s e n t a t i v e s " escapes the group p u r s u i t s of a guided t o u r , and f i n d s h i s own p r i v a t e scenery: i t was a pure, blue l a k e , w i t h an unusual e x p r e s s i o n of i t s water.... of course, t h e r e are p l e n t y o f such views i n c e n t r a l europe, but j u s t t h i s one — i n the i n e x p r e s s i b l e and unique harmoniousness of i t s three p r i n c i p a l , " p a r t s , i n i t s s m i l e , i n some mysterious inno- cence i t had ... — was something so unique, and so f a m i l i a r , and so long-promised, and i t so understood the beholder, t h a t v a s i l i ivan- o v i c h even pressed h i s hand to h i s h e a r t , as i f to see whether h i s h e a r t was there in order to g i v e i t away (nabokov's dozen, p. ) . a r e g i o n so sympathetic t h a t i t understands the observer might seem a simple i l l u s t r a t i o n of the p a t h e t i c f a l l a c y '.by" which the observer animates an i n d i f f e r e n t u n i v e r s e by i n v e s t i n g i t w i t h h i s own s e n s i b i l i t y ; nabokov's works are more compli- cated than t h a t , p a r t l y because they c o n t a i n the p o s s i b i l i t y t h a t the n a r r a t o r s imaginings i n some way correspond w i t h the e x i g e n c i e s of r e a l i t y . john shade, f o r example, says e x p l i c i t l y t h a t the u n i v e r s e can o n l y be understood through a r t : i f e e l i understand e x i s t e n c e , or a t l e a s t a minute p a r t of my e x i s t e n c e , o n l y through my a r t , in terms of combinational d e l i g h t ; and i f my p r i v a t e u n i v e r s e scans r i g h t , so does the v e r s e of g a l a x i e s d i v i n e which i suspect i s an iambic l i n e . (pale f i r e , . - ) pnin appears to escape r e a l i t y i n t o a b e t t e r world, which kinbote might c a l l the refuge of a r t : • then the l i t t l e sedan [ c o n t a i n i n g pnin] b o l d l y swung p a s t the f r o n t t r u c k and, f r e e a t l a s t , spurted up the s h i n i n g road, which one c o u l d make out narrowing to a thread of g o l d i n the s o f t m i s t where h i l l a f t e r h i l l made beauty of distance,: and where there was simply no saying what m i r a c l e might happen (pnin, p. ). but i n a sense pnin i s escaping from the a r t i f i c e of the c r u e l n a r r a t o r who i s t e l l i n g h i s s t o r y . the phrases sound romantic ( s o f t m i s t , thread of g o l d ) , but one should keep i n mind another romantic, m a r t i n of g l o r y . nabokov has e x p l a i n e d t h a t h i s working t i t l e f o r the book, romanticheskiy vek, which nabokov says t r a n s l a t e d as "romantic times," was chosen not to i n d i c a t e escape from the r e a l world, but escape from the i l l u s i o n s of j o u r n a l i s t s . he says, "i had had enough of h e a r i n g western j o u r n a l i s t s c a l l our age ' m a t e r i a l i s t i c , ' p r a c t i c a l , ' ' u t i l i t - a r i a n , ' " and he wanted to s t r e s s i n g l o r y the t h r i l l of "the most o r d i n a r y p l e a s u r e s " (glory, p. x ) . so perhaps pnin's s t a t e where anything can happen i s the r e a l world, as opposed to the n a r r a t o r ' s world, j u s t as the escape of c i n c i n n a t u s t o a world where t h e r e are beings a k i n to him i s an escape from the f a l s e and t r a s h y world of a d i c t a t o r s h i p , and " a l l of t h i s t h e a t r i c a l , p a t h e t i c s t u f f -- the promises of a v o l a t i l e maiden, a mother's moist gaze, the knocking on the w a l l , a neigh- bor's f r i e n d l i n e s s , and, f i n a l l y , those h i l l s which broke out i n a deadly r a s h ( i n v i t a t i o n , p. ) . behind d e t a i l s which seem to be mere metaphors, whimsical e x e r c i s e s of fancy, there i s a metaphysic which i n c o r p o r a t e s metaphor i n t o r e a l i t y . in the g i f t we l e a r n t h a t "a very success- f u l ant f l i g h t was staged: ... i n p l a c e s where nobody bothered them they kept c r a w l i n g along the g r a v e l and shedding t h e i r f e e b l e prop-room wings" (p. ). these metaphors a l l u d i n g to the i l l u s i o n s of s t a g e c r a f t d i s g u i s e the f a c t t h a t the n a r r a t o r has i n mind the process of metamorphosis i n the n a t u r a l world, a process he invokes l a t e r i n the paragraph: i ;the l i n d e n s went through a l l t h e i r i n v o l v e d , aromatic, messy metamorphoses." when nabokov was asked whether h i s a e s t h e t i c t r i c k s and s l e i g h t - of-hand served any purpose o t h e r than amusement, he r e p l i e d by r e l a t i n g d e c e p t i o n to " t h a t other v.n., v i s i b l e nature." an i n d i v i d u a l s t y l e , he says, i s " o r g a n i c . " "the s l e i g h t - o f - h a n d you mention i s h a r d l y more than an i n s e c t ' s s l e i g h t - o f - w i n g " (strong opinions, p. ). rather than arguing t h a t nabokov and h i s n a r r a t o r s are h o s t i l e to r e a l i t y , one should note t h a t r e a l i t y i s h o s t i l e to them. pnin i s t o r t u r e d not only by the n a r r a t o r , but by grim h i s t o r y : in order to e x i s t r a t i o n a l l y , pnin had taught h i m s e l f , d u r i n g the l a s t ten years, never to remember m i r a b e l o c h k i n ... because, i f one were q u i t e s i n c e r e w i t h o n e s e l f , no conscience, and hence no consciousness, c o u l d be expected to s u b s i s t i n a world where such t h i n g s as m i r a ' s death were p o s s i b l e (pnin, pp. - ). the n a r r a t o r of "the leonardo" attempts to r o m a n t i c i z e an unworthy hero, one romantovski, who the n a r r a t o r b e l i e v e s i s " triumphing over the world through p o e t r y . the t r u t h of t h i n g s convinces him otherwise, and h i s f a i t h i n the hero d i s s i p a t e s , as does h i s a b i l i t y to assemble a s u i t a b l e stage s e t : my poor romantovski! ... i b e l i e v e d , l e t me c o n f e s s , t h a t you were a remarkable poet whom poverty o b l i g e d to dwell i n t h a t s i n i s t e r d i s t r i c t . i b e l i e v e d , on the strength of c e r t a i n i n d i c e s , t h a t every n i g h t , by working on a l i n e of v e r s e or n u r s i n g a growing i d e a , you c e l e b r a t e d an i n v u l n e r a b l e v i c t o r y over the b r o t h e r s . my poor romantovski! i t i s a l l over now. a l a s , the o b j e c t s i had assembled wander away. the young p o p l a r dims and takes o f f •— to r e t u r n where i t had been f e t c h e d from. the b r i c k w a l l d i s s o l v e s . the house draws i n i t s l i t t l e balconies one by one, then turns, and f l o a t s away. everything f l o a t s away. harmony and meaning vanish. the world i r k s me again with i t s variegated void (russian beauty, pp. - ). p a t r i c i a merivale argues that the t i d a l p u l l of the r e a l world distinguishes nabokov from borges: these prosperos, the p o e t - c o n j u r o r s of our own day, flaunt the complex a r t i f i c e s of t h e i r revels with equal s k i l l ; but while nabokov usually dismisses his actors "into t h i n a i r " and returns us to the r e a l world, borges takes the argument to i t s conclusion, and perpet- u a l l y reminds us that both author and reader "are such s t u f f / as dreams are made on.",,, an example of the ways i n which nabokov returns us to the r e a l world occurs i n "an a f f a i r of honor." the hero of the story, anton petrovich, i s a f e a r f u l man unfortunately involved i n a duel. although the story i s t o l d to a large extent i n the thoughts of the hero, the narrator interrupts at one stage of anton petrovich's sleepless night to comment on his hero's mental state: "and then anton petrovich did the very worst thing a man i n his s i t u a t i o n could have done: he decided to reason out what death r e a l l y meant" (russian beauty, pp. - ). that l i n e , so matter of fact and experienced, demonstrates that the intrusion of a self-conscious narrator does not necessarily imply f a n c i f u l a r t i f i c e . later the hero runs frightened from the duel, and to com- pensate for his f a i l u r e i n courage begins to imagine a happy ending for himself. he imagines his friends t e l l i n g him every- thing i s f i n e : ( ; patricia merivale, "the flaunting of artifice in vladimir nabokov and jorge luis borges," in dembo, p. . "and you came out of i t honorably, while he [berg, the d u e l l i s t ] i s d i s g r a c e d f o r e v e r . and, most important, your w i f e , when she heard about i t , immediately l e f t berg and r e t u r n e d to you. and you must f o r g i v e her." anton p e t r o v i c h smiled b r o a d l y , got up, and s t a r t e d f i d d l i n g w i t h the r i b b o n of h i s monocle. his smile s l o w l y faded away. such t h i n g s don't happen i n r e a l l i f e (p. ). in s h o r t , nabokov's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s are not merely imps l e a d i n g the reader through l a y e r s of a r t i f i c e towards an i n f i n i t e l y r e g r e s s i v e s o l i p s i s m . nabokovian s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i n v o l v e s a marriage of a r t i f i c e and r e a l i s m , and a t times i m p l i e s t h e i r i d e n t i t y . nabokov's metaphysic i s d i f f i c u l t to d e f i n e , but i t seems c l e a r t h a t the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , a major c o n t r i b u t o r to nabokov's f i c t i o n , i s n e i t h e r a s o l i p s i s t nor a r e a l i s t , but the spokesman o r agent of a much more comprehen- s i v e and s u b t l e world view. i t i s the s p e c i a l g i f t of nabokov's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s to i n v o l v e the reader i n the complicated i n t e r p l a y of r e a l i s m and a r t i f i c e ; the reader's a e s t h e t i c p l e a s u r e s are i n c r e a s e d , and, p a r a d o x i c a l l y enough, he i s made aware of what kinbote c a l l s the "human r e a l i t y " of p l o t s and metaphors, poems and commentators. he l e a r n s to sympathize w i t h f i c t i o n a l c h a r a c t e r s l i v i n g i n imaginary d i c t a t o r s h i p s . i n the murderous self-conscious narrator: the fiction of donald barthelme introduction modernist writing i s e b u l l i e n t l y p a r r i c i d a l and c a n n i b a l i s t i c . ^ [t]he o r i g i n a l , authentic s e l f ... i s a d i r t y great v i l l a i n ....^ c r i t i c s r a r e l y attempt to place nabokov i n the t r a d i t i o n of american l i t e r a t u r e , despite his insistence that he i s as ameri- can as apple pie and arizona. there have been more numerous attempts to place him i n the russian t r a d i t i o n ; for example, simon karlinsky tentatively - f i t s nabokov, chekhov and perhaps pushkin into what karlinsky c a l l s " b i o l o g i c a l humanitarianism," as opposed to the i d e o l o g i c a l humanitarianism of dostoevsky, tolstoy and others. although the emigre" c r i t i c s were for the most part disappointed by nabokov's divergence from russian l i t e r a r y t r a d i t i o n , some consoled themselves by discerning ( ) morris d i c k s t e i n , " f i c t i o n hot and kool: dilemmas of the experimental:. wrifeer.," triquarterly, no. ( ) , . - • " '( ) donald barthelme'; "daumier," in sadness (new york: farrar, straus', and giroux, ), p. . subsequent references to works by barthelme in t h i s chapter w i l l consist of page numbers and t i t l e s in parentheses- the publishing data for works not documented previously are as follows: c i t y l i f e (new york: farrar, straus and giroux, ); the dead father (new york: farrar, straus and giroux, ); g u i l t y pleasures (new york: farrar straus and giroux, ); unspeakable p r a c t i c e s , unnatural acts (new york: farrar, straus and giroux, ). ( ) simon karlinsky, "nabokov and chekhov: the lesser russian t r a d i t i o n , " in nabokov: c r i t i c i s m , p. . a f f i n i t i e s w i t h gogol and c o n c l u d i n g t h a t nabokov had i n h e r i t e d the " i r r a t i o n a l , comic and l i n g u i s t i c a l l y i n v e n t i v e t r a d i t i o n which passed through dostoevsky to andrey bely n e v e r t h e l e s s , nabokov's f i c t i o n o f t e n appears to be o u t s i d e l i t e r a t u r e ' s n a t i o n a l boundaries, programmatically s u i g e n e r i s . ivan bunin remarked to a f r i e n d i n t h a t nabokov had i n t r o - duced "a new k i n d of l i t e r a r y a r t , " "a whole new u n i v e r s e , " ^ and nabokov h i m s e l f , never l o a t h e to p r e s e n t h i m s e l f as someone o u t s i d e the r u l e s that govern the rest of us, once, said, "i'm the shuttle- cock over the a t l a n t i c , and how b r i g h t and blue i t i s t h e r e , i n my p r i v a t e sky, f a r from the pigeonholes and the c l a y pigeons" (strong opinions, p. ). the impression of s e l f - s u f f i c i e n c y i s p a r t l y due to nabokov's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i v e methods, i n which the p l o t i s always under the o v e r t c o n t r o l of an a e s t h e t i c s e n s i b i l i t y , and p a r t l y due to the i m p l i e d correspondence between the r u l e s of the u n i v e r s e and the v i s i o n s of the i m a g i n a t i o n . a sense of s e r e n i t y and a t l e a s t p o t e n t i a l order i s strengthened by nabokov's f a i t h i n the good o f f i c e s of the i m a g i n a t i o n ; as he says i n the foreword to the eye, the ''forces of the imagin- a t i o n " are, i n the long run, "the f o r c e s of good" (p.lo). nabokov's a e s t h e t i c s e r e n i t y i s unknown i n the f i c t i o n of donald barthelme. barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are e q u a l l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , but i n t h e i r e g o c e n t r i c worlds the c r e a t i v e i m a g i n a t i o n has gone sour. when barthelme's n a r r a t o r s attempt to emulate ( ) jane grayson, nabokov translated (london: oxford univ. press, ), p. . ( ) galina kuznetsova, grasskii dnevnik, as quoted in karlinsky, "nabokov and chekhov," p. . nabokov's z e s t f o r a n t i - b o u r g e o i s thought and a c t i o n , they j o i n an i n t i m i d a t i n g crowd of e q u a l l y s o p h i s t i c a t e d e l i t i s t s . i d i o s y n c r a t i c behavior has become the s o c i a l norm, and the con- v e n i e n t t a r g e t s once presented by lumbering p h i l i s t i n e s have disappeared. worse s t i l l , the utopian o p t i o n s w i t h i n nabokov's f i c t i o n have been d i s c r e d i t e d , s i n c e the i m a g i n a t i o n no longer works i t s way towards u n i v e r s a l o r d e r , but towards chaos and c o n f u s i o n . consider, f o r example, the n a r r a t o r ' s a t t i t u d e towards l i t e r a t u r e i t s e l f . nabokov mocks and p a r o d i e s l i t e r a t u r e , p a r t i c u l a r l y bad l i t e r a t u r e , but t h e r e i s an u n d e r l y i n g reverence f o r a r t — choosing pushkin over thomas mann i s a moral a c t . in barthelme a r t i t s e l f i s suspect, and h i s many n a r r a t o r - a r t i s t s complain b i t t e r l y about t h e i r r o l e . some of the themes o u t l i n e d i n the p r e v i o u s paragraph are p l a t i t u d e s of the avant garde — the breakdown of a r t , p h i l o s o p h i c chaos, the d e c l i n e and f a l l of c i v i l i z a t i o n as we know i t . there i s a s p i r i t of s a t i r e i n barthelme t h a t mocks f a s h i o n a b l e angst and p a c e - s e t t i n g e x i s t e n t i a l gloom. however, barthelme's s a t i r e d i f f e r s from the g r e a t models of the e i g h t e e n t h century, i n which s a t i r e s o f t e n presented p o s i t i v e a l t e r n a t i v e s : pope's reason, s w i f t ' s houyhnhnms, the exemplary l a t e r l i f e of mr. wilson i n joseph andrews — each suggesting the l o s t golden world of reasonable and v i r t u o u s conduct. in barthelme's f i c t i o n , the n a r r a t o r ' s impulse towards s a t i r e on the c u r r e n t s t a t e of a f f a i r s i s matched by h i s c o m p l i c i t y i n those a f f a i r s . barthelme h i m s e l f may be above the s t r u g g l e , but h i s n a r r a t o r s o f t e n m i r r o r the g e n e r a l l o s s of nerve, the d e b i l i t a t i n g s e l f - consciousness of the s e l f i s h modern world, and there i s no way out f o r them, e i t h e r i n p e r s o n a l conduct or i n a r t . the n a r r a t o r s , l i k e t h e i r s o c i e t y , are b r a i n damaged: oh t h e r e ' s b r a i n damage i n the e a s t , and b r a i n damage i n the west.... b r a i n damage caused by a r t . i c o u l d d e s c r i b e i t b e t t e r i f i weren't a f f l i c t e d with i t . . . ( " b r a i n damage," c i t y l i f e , p. ). however, barthelme's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s techniques do not "celebrate"..layers of a r t i f i c e i n which e v e r y t h i n g i s f u t i l e and nothing i s r e a l . s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s a l s o a means of s e l f - d i s c o v e r y ; u n f o r t u n a t e l y , what i s d i s c o v e r e d i s unpleasant. in terms of the p e r v e r s e c a t h o l i c i s m t h a t permeates barthelme's f i c t i o n l i k e a b l a c k mass, man i s d i s c o v e r e d to be i n h e r e n t l y s i n f u l and wicked. his attempts to confess h i s s i n s are f a i l u r e s s i n c e there i s no a u t h o r i t a t i v e f i g u r e to determine value -- no p r i e s t s , no pope, no o r d e r . a sense of i n h e r e n t s i n f u l n e s s , p a r t i c u l a r l y s i n f u l n e s s without recourse to c o n f e s s i o n , connects barthelme with both america's r e a l i s t t r a d i t i o n and the e a r l y p u r i t a n t r a d i t i o n . c e r t a i n l y n o r r i s would have no d i f f i c u l t y r e c o g n i z i n g barthelme's d i r t y g r e a t v i l l a i n o u s s e l f . hawthorne's nightmares i n c l u d e d young goodman brown's d i s c o v e r y of f a i t h l e s s f a i t h , and the d i s e a s e d i m a g i n a t i o n of the reverend dimmesdale. one t h i n k s a l s o of m e l v i l l e ' s c l a g g a r t , and poe's imp of the perverse, and of course the doomed s i n n e r s of wiggles- worth and the other new england keepers of the f l o c k . under- l y i n g barthelme 's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a r t i f i c e i s a sense of the american r e a l i t y which i s as strong as t h a t of h i s more convention- a l l y r e a l i s t i c contemporaries. in jack ludwig's terms, barthelme i s another devotee of america's " l o n g e s t s t a n d i n g , most profound f i x " ; t h a t i s , d e l i b e r a t i o n s about "the nature and meaning of r e a l i t y , " based on what ludwig c a l l s "the t e r r i f y - i n g p e r v a s i v e n e s s of the a c t u a l l y o r d i n a r y . " p a r t l y by means of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , who, as we s h a l l see, has a r e a l i s t i c v o i c e as w e l l as an a r t i f i c i a l v o i c e , barthelme both m i r r o r s a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s o c i e t y and p e n e t r a t e s through to the motive f o r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s . at the heart o f s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s he d i s c o v e r s the r e a l american p e r s o n a l i t y ; d e s p i t e c e r t a i n q u a l i f i c a t i o n s and f i t f u l attempts a t optimism, the e s s e n t i a l p e r s o n a l i t y i s murderous, the o l d b a r b a r i a n , c a i n the k i l l e r . the urban n e u r o t i c l e t us d e l i n e a t e barthelme's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s s o c i e t y , as r e p r e s e n t e d by the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . u n l i k e nabokov's n a r r a t o r s , barthelme's do not c u l t i v a t e t h e i r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s as p a r t of the h e a l t h y e x p r e s s i o n of t h e i r l i f e - g i v i n g d i f f e r - ences. they are h e l p l e s s l y , a u t o m a t i c a l l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , s i n c e t h e i r s o c i e t y now i n d u l g e s i n an a c t i v i t y t h a t has r e p l a c e d , say, farming i n an a g r i c u l t u r a l s o c i e t y , or r e l i g i o n i n a theocracy. s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s i n e v i t a b l e when the s a l i e n t f e a t u r e of the s o c i a l context i s i t s l a c k of context. the n a r r a t o r s are c i t y d w e l l e r s w i t h l i t t l e sense of t h e i r c i t y ' s h i s t o r y , or i t s r e l a t i o n s h i p to the surrounding n a t i o n ; they have no f a m i l y t i e s , and t h e i r sense of the n a t u r a l world i s l i m i t e d to a dim impression of t a l l b u i l d i n g s . t h e i r very names are bland and u n r e v e a l i n g ; i n the case of snow white's ( ) ludwig, pp. , . seven communal dwarfs — clem, hubert, dan, kevin, b i l l , e t c . — the names, l i k e the c h a r a c t e r s , are d e l i b e r a t e l y i n t e r c h a n g e - a b l e . the n a r r a t o r s ' jobs are g e n e r a l l y absurd or i r r e l e v a n t . they are simply of the c i t y , anonymous c i t i z e n s . the novel's t r a d i t i o n a l g r i d c o - o r d i n a t e s of community and the n a t u r a l world have disappeared. rather than b u i l d up a composite p i c t u r e of barthelme's r o o t l e s s n a r r a t o r from the many examples i n h i s f i c t i o n , l e t us use as a r o l e model barthelme h i m s e l f . although he i s l e s s r e l e n t l e s s l y a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l than nabokov, the a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l glimpses i n h i s f i c t i o n , n o n - f i c t i o n and r a r e i n t e r v i e w s seem very c l o s e to the enervated, i n t r o s p e c t i v e i n t e l l e c t u a l f e a t u r e d i n the s t o r i e s . barthelme's range of p e r s o n a l i t y types i s i n f a c t very l i m i t e d ; the n a r r a t o r s , c h a r a c t e r s and the author- i a l v o i c e i t s e l f a l l speak i n s i m i l a r p a t t e r n s , and perhaps they a l l c o u l d have had the background of "the most i m i t a t e d f i c t i o n i s t i n the u n i t e d s t a t e s today." barthelme was brought up and educated i n houston, texas, where h i s f a t h e r was an a r c h i t e c t . "he was something of an anomaly i n texas i n the t h i r t i e s , " says barthelme about h i s f a t h e r . "the atmosphere of the house was p e c u l i a r i n t h a t there were very l a r g e a r c h i t e c t u r a l books around and the c o n s i d - e r a t i o n s were: what was mies doing, what was a a l t o doing, what was neutra up t o , what about wright?" ( ) according to p h i l i p stevick, as quoted in jerome klinkowitz, "donald barthelme," in bellamy, p. . in the l a t e t h i r t i e s my f a t h e r b u i l t a house f o r us, something not too d i s s i m i l a r to mies's tugendhat house. i t was wonderful to l i v e i n but strange to see on the texas p r a i r i e . on sundays people used to park t h e i r c a r s out on the s t r e e t and s t a r e . we had a r o u t i n e , the f a m i l y , on sundays. we used to get up from sunday d i n n e r , i f enough c a r s had parked, and run out i n f r o n t of the house i n a s o r t of chorus l i n e , doing high k i c k s . g one can immediately d i s c e r n the s o p h i s t i c a t e d i n t e r n a t i o n a l i n f l u e n c e s t h a t l e d barthelme to develop a s t y l e t h a t minimizes the context of l o c a l e . doing high k i c k s i n the f a c e s of the l o c a l y o k e l s might l e a d to f i c t i o n f a r removed from t h a t of h i s f e l l o w texan author, l a r r y mcmurtry. in h i s e x c e l l e n t novels, mcmurtry a l l o w s h i s c o l o r f u l texas c h a r a c t e r s and the s p i r i t of the p l a c e to u n f o l d i n a l e i s u r e l y , o l d - f a s h i o n e d manner. his n a r r a t o r s , g e n e r a l l y omniscient and o b j e c t i v e , or e l s e a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l f i r s t - p e r s o n , never s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y d i s r u p t the smooth flow of the n a r r a t i v e ; the f i c t i o n a l process i s subordinated to texas and texans. 'by c o n t r a s t , barthelme mocks l o c a l c o l o r with arch r e f e r e n c e s to tumbleweeds and dogies. the f o l l o w i n g v i g n e t t e from snow white, i n which paul the p r i n c e poses by a western fence, suggests barthelme's i r o n i c d i s t a n c e from myths of the marlboro man: i f i had been born w e l l p r i o r to. , i c o u l d have r i d d e n w i t h pershing a g a i n s t pancho v i l l a . a l t e r n a t i v e l y , i c o u l d have r i d d e n w i t h v i l l a against 'the landowners and c o r r u p t government o f f i c i a l s of the time. in e i t h e r case, i would have had a horse. how l i t t l e o p p o r t u n i t y t h e r e i s f o r young men to have p e r s o n a l l y owned horses i n the bottom h a l f of the t w e n t i e t h century! a wonder t h a t we u.s. youth can s t i l l ( ) "donald barthelme," in bellamy, pp. - . f o r k a saddle a t a l l . . . . of course there are those 'horses' under the hoods of buicks and p o n t i a c s . . . . but those 'horses' are not f o r me. they take the tan out of my cheeks and the lank out of my arms and l e g s . tom lea or pete hurd w i l l never p a i n t me standing by the fence i f i am s i t t i n g i n s i d e an eldorado, s t a r f i r e , r i v i e r a or mustang...„(pp. - ). note paul's symptomatic ambivalence towards q u e s t i o n s of p r i n c i p l e - whether he f i g h t s f o r pershing or v i l l a , he gets what he wants, a horse to pose on. note the mockery of the western ethos i n such phrases as f o r k i n g a saddle and the d e s i r a b l e lankness of l e g . note most of a l l t h a t the n a r r a t o r i s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y aware of h i m s e l f as an i n a p p r o p r i a t e urban cowboy i n a p a i n t e d western scene. meanwhile the r e a l donald barthelme was not a cowboy i n texas, but i n the founding e d i t o r of the u n i v e r s i t y of houston forum, " w h i c h - - w i t h i t s e a r l y p u b l i c a t i o n of walker percy, w i l l i a m h. gass, joseph lyons ... — w a s f o r a time as much a l o c a l anomaly as the barthelme tugendhat home." barthelme moved to new york, where he was f i r s t the managing e d i t o r of an a r t s and o p i n i o n p e r i o d i c a l c a l l e d l o c a t i o n , and then a new yorker w r i t e r . "the teaching of don b. : a yankee way knowledge" p r o v i d e s a s e l f - p o r t r a i t i n a new york c o n t e x t : while doing a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l f i e l d work i n manhattan some years ago i met, on west e l e v e n t h s t r e e t , a male yankee of i n d e t e r - minate age whose name, i was t o l d , was don b. i found him l e a n i n g a g a i n s t a b u i l d i n g i n a profound t o r p o r - perhaps the profoundest ( ) jerome klinkowitz, l i t e r a r y disruptions: the making of a post-contemporary american f i c t i o n (urbana, i l l i n o i s : univ. of i l l i n o i s press, ), p. . t o r p o r i have ever seen. he was a t a l l i s h man w i t h an unconvincing beard and was dressed, i n the f a s h i o n of the v i l l a g e , i n jeans and a blue work s h i r t (guilty p l e a s u r e s , p. ). even a l l o w i n g f o r the c a r l o s castaneda parody, here are the a t t r i b u t e s of a barthelme n a r r a t o r : indeterminate age, u n c e r t a i n beard, c l o t h e s t h a t meekly conform to the blue urban uniform. he i s not a unique and a s p e c i a l i n d i v i d u a l , but a s t a t i s t i c i n someone's a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l r e s e a r c h . the source of h i s p r o f o u n d l y p a s s i v e t o r p o r i s the non-context of the c i t y . the anonymity and l o n e l i n e s s of the c i t y encourage the n a r r a t o r to look i n t o h i m s e l f f o r v a l u e , but a t the same time the c i t y denies him any c o n n e c t i o n w i t h t r a d i t i o n a l sources of v a l u e . in "the indian u p r i s i n g , " f o r example, a c i t y vaguely r e m i n i s c e n t of new york i s conquered by commanches. the i n h a b i t a n t s are unable to defend themselves, d e s p i t e d e f e n s i v e q u o t a t i o n s from such c u l t u r a l touchstones as t.s. e l i o t and hamlet: "on the map we c o n s i d e r e d the s i t u a t i o n w i t h i t s strung-out i n h a b i t a n t s and merely p e r s o n a l emotions" (unspeakable, pp. - ). cohesive s t r a t e g y i s i m p o s s i b l e : "what i s -the s i t u a t i o n ? " i asked. "the s i t u a t i o n i s l i q u i d , " he s a i d . "we h o l d the south q u a r t e r and they h o l d the n o r t h q u a r t e r . the r e s t i s s i l e n c e . " (p. ) instead of s t r e e t s i g n s t h a t r e f e r to the n a t u r a l world (elm, maple) or i n t e l l e c t u a l s t r u c t u r e (main) or t r a d i t i o n (washington ave.), barthelme's s t r e e t s are named a f t e r ephemeral c u l t u r e heroes: "she ran o f f down george c. m a r s h a l l all'ee ..." (p. ). the b a r r i c a d e s themselves are composed of ceramic a s h t r a y s , b o t t l e s of black and white, corkscrews and y u g o s l a v i a n carved f l u t e s . the c i t y i s composed of pop t r a s h , and i t i s not worth defending: i spoke to s y l v i a . "do you t h i n k t h i s i s a good l i f e ? " the t a b l e h e l d apples, books, l o n g - p l a y i n g r e c o r d s . she looked up. "no." (p. ). the n a r r a t o r h a l f welcomes the commanches. he looks i n t o t h e i r savage b l a c k eyes and imagines the end of what semblance of order the c i t y possesses, the " c l e a r , neat rows of houses i n the s u b d i v i s i o n s " (p. ) . the p h i l o s o p h y of chaos the urban environment f o r c e s barthelme's n a r r a t o r s to l e a d a r i d , s t e r i l e l i v e s , which n a t u r a l l y enough o c c a s i o n s a r i d and s t e r i l e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s . t h i n k i n g never leads to i n t e l l e c t u a l d i s c o v e r y ; a n a l y s i s never leads to a c t i o n ; c l e v e r and f a c i l e a r t i c u l a t i o n and pseudo-eloquence never q u i t e l e a d to the s a t i s f a c t i o n s of a r t . whenever the n a r r a t o r s attempt t o surmount the d r e a r y urban p a r t i c u l a r s of t h e i r l i v e s , and t r y to see over the t a l l . / f o r b i d d i n g b u i l d i n g s , they must contend w i t h the \ d i s o r d e r l y f i c t i o n a l - cosmos. they dwell i n p h i l o s o p h i c chaos, f r u s t r a t e d by i n t e l - l e c t u a l dead ends and random phenomena. when barthelme was asked i f any g e n e r a l conceptions of space and time were r e f l e c t e d i n h i s f i c t i o n , he answered "no";^ the s t o r i e s present p l e n t y of reasons f o r t a k i n g him a t h i s word: ( ) "donald barthelme," in bellamy, p. . t h a t ' s chaos can you produce chaos? a l i c e asked c e r t a i n l y i can produce chaos i s a i d i produced chaos she regarded the chaos chaos i s handsome and a t t r a c t i v e she s a i d and more durable than r e g r e t i s a i d and more n o u r i s h i n g than r e g r e t she s a i d t w i r l i n g around on my piano s t o o l my head begins to swim my head begins to swim t w i r l i n g around on my piano s t o o l t w i r l i n g around on my piano s t o o l a d i z z y s p e l l eventuates t w i r l i n g around on my piano s t o o l i begin to f e e l d i z z y t w i r l i n g around on my piano s t o o l chaos i s t a s t y and useful too ( " a l i c e , " unspeakable, pp. , , ) s i m i l a r l y , i n "up, a l o f t i n the a i r , " the n a r r a t o r e x p l o r e s america from an untrustworthy a i r p l a n e : "in case of orange and blue flames," he wrote on the wing, "disengage y o u r s e l f ""from the a i r c r a f t by chopping a h o l e i n i t s bottom i f necessary.... i suggest t h a t you be alarmed. you are up i n the a i r perhaps . f e e t , with orange and blue flames on the o u t s i d e and a ragged hole i n the f l o o r b o a r d s . what w i l l you do?" ( c a l i g a r i , p. ). the confused, d i z z y , t e r r i f i e d n a r r a t o r o f t e n proposes an e x i t to some b e t t e r u n i v e r s e next door. a f t e r the d u l l round of events i n "the p a r t y , " the n a r r a t o r t u r n s to h i s f r i e n d and says: dear francesca, t e l l me, i s t h i s a s u c c e s s f u l p a r t y , i n your view? ... i know t h a t you have always wanted to meet [king] kong; now t h a t you have met him and he has s a i d whatever he has s a i d to you ... can we go home? i mean you to your home, me to my home, a l l those o t h e r s to t h e i r own homes, c e l l s , cages? i am f e e l i n g a l i t t l e ragged. what made us t h i n k we c o u l d escape t h i n g s l i k e bankruptcy, a l c o h o l i s m , being d i s a p p o i n t e d , having c h i l d r e n ? say "no," r e f u s e me once and f o r a l l , l e t me t r y something e l s e (sadness, p. ). the concept of something e l s e , some o t h e r country, r e c u r s i n barthelme's f i c t i o n , as i t does i n nabokov's f i c t i o n ; however, barthelme i s even more vague than nabokov about the terms of any p r o s p e c t i v e utopia, probably because the context of h i s f i c t i o n makes i t c l e a r t h a t there i s no p h i l o s o p h i c a l escape hatch. s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s l e a d s the s e l f nowhere. the demoral- i z i n g search f o r v a l u e sometimes l e a d s the n a r r a t o r s to wonder whether t h e i r c o n t i n u e d e x i s t e n c e serves any purpose. in a review of a graham greene n o v e l , barthelme q u e s t i o n s the n o t i o n t h a t any a c t i o n , a good or an e v i l a c t i o n , i s p r e f e r a b l e to p a s s i v e i n d i f f e r e n c e : the c h i e f modern l i t e r a r y e x p r e s s i o n of t h i s p o s i t i o n i s t.s. e l i o t ' s , i n h i s essay on b a u d e l a i r e : "so f a r as we are human, what we do must be e i t h e r e v i l or good; so f a r as we do e v i l or good, we are human; and i t i s b e t t e r , i n a p a r a d o x i c a l way, to do e v i l than to do n o t h i n g : a t l e a s t , we e x i s t . " mr. e l i o t ' s remarks, u n f o r t u n a t e l y , are themselves a t the mercy of an unexamined assumption, t h a t i t i s b e t t e r to e x i s t than not to e x i s t . t h i s , t o say the l e a s t , has not been proved, and i t i s the genius of a n o v e l i s t l i k e beckett t h a t h i s c h a r a c t e r s a c t p r e c i s e l y i n the area of the unexamined assumption: they yearn toward;:) n o n e x i s t e n c e . ^ the n a r r a t o r s ' c o n f u s i o n and d e s p a i r i s d i s g u i s e d by the comic tone. the n a r r a t o r s tend to t r e a t e x i s t e n c e l i g h t l y , and r a r e l y seem tempted to demonstrate u n i v e r s a l n i h i l i s m by such apt a c t i o n s as s u i c i d e . they a v o i d any such a c t i o n because even n i h i l i s m i m p l i e s a system of thought, an orthodoxy, and the ( ) donald barthelme, "the tired terror of graham greene," holiday, a p r i l , pp. - . n a r r a t o r s r a r e l y h o l d to any i n t e l l e c t u a l p o s i t i o n f o r l o n g . i t i s d i f f i c u l t f o r the c r i t i c to demonstrate t h a t the n a r r a t o r s are confused and thrown back on themselves because they l a c k the mental landmarks of l o g i c and order; i t i s d i f f i c u l t because such lumbering terms as " n i h i l i s m " and " s o l i p s i s m " are c o n t i n - u a l l y undercut by barthelme's use of t e r s e , i r o n i c , d i s r u p t i v e statements t h a t never c o a l e s c e i n t o a philosophy of meaning or non-meaning. the n a r r a t o r s speak and t h i n k i n fragments. according to one n a r r a t o r , "fragments are the o n l y form i t r u s t " ("see the moon?" unspeakable, p. ). that l i n e has become a catch-phrase among barthelme's admirers and enemies. i t i s taken almost metonymically as the substance of barthelme s a e s t h e t i c . for example, joyce c a r o l oates too f r e e l y a s s o c i a t e s the n a r r a t o r w i t h the author: "fragments are the o n l y form i t r u s t . " t h i s from a w r i t e r of arguable genius, whose work r e f l e c t s the a n x i e t y he h i m s e l f must f e e l , i n book a f t e r book, t h a t h i s b r a i n i s a l l fragments ... j u s t l i k e e v e r y t h i n g e l s e . . . . [e]ven the c o n s t r u c t i o n of h i s sentence i s symptomatic of h i s r o l e : i t begins w i t h "fragments," the s t e r n h e a l t h y noun, and con- c l u d e s with the weak " i " . but. there i s a p o i n t i n h i s t o r y a t which wilde's remark comes h o r r i b l y t r u e , t h a t l i f e w i l l i m i t a t e a r t . and then who i s i n charge., who b e l i e v e d h i m s e l f so c l e v e r l y impotent, who supposed he had a b d i c a t e d a l l conscious d e s i g n •••?^ speaking f o r the a f f i r m a t i v e , as i t were, r i c h a r d s c h i c k e l says, ( ) o a t e s , " g u e s t . w o r d , " p . ' . you w i l l perhaps r e c a l l barthelme's most quoted dictum: "the o n l y forms i t r u s t are fragments." [ s i c ] we p e r c e i v e i n fragments, l i v e i n fragments, are no doubt dying by fragments; should we not, then, w r i t e i n fragments, emphas- i z i n g thereby the strange d i s j u n c t i o n s , the even s t r a n g e r j u x t a p o s i t i o n s , t h a t are p a r t of the everyday experience of modern l i f e ? - ^ although one applauds s c h i c k e l ' s attempt to oppose a r e a l i s t i c a e s t h e t i c ("everyday experience of modern l i f e " ) to oates' p r e d i c t a b l e a c c u s a t i o n t h a t barthelme has s u b s t i t u t e d the impotent v a l u e s of a r t f o r h e a l t h y l i f e , i t remains dangerous to a s c r i b e to barthelme any f i x e d a e s t h e t i c philosophy, p a r t i c u l a r l y one taken verbatim from a n a r r a t o r . barthelme has p u b l i s h e d a humorous r e t r a c t i o n of the fragments l i n e , which he says i s a "statement by the c h a r a c t e r about what he i s f e e l i n g a t t h a t p a r t i c u l a r moment." i hope t h a t whatever i t h i n k about a e s t h e t i c s would be a shade more complicated than t h a t . because t h a t p a r t i c u l a r l i n e - i has been r i c h l y misunderstood so o f t e n ... i have thought of making a p u b l i c r e c a n t a t i o n . i can see the s t o r y i n , say, women's wear d a i l y : writer confesses that he no longer trusts fragments t r u s t 'misplaced,' author d e c l a r e s discussed decision with daughter, six w i l l seek 'wholes* in future, he >says new york, june (asp) - donald barthelme, -year-old w r i t e r and well-known f r a g m a t i s t , s a i d today t h a t he no l o n g e r t r u s t e d fragments.... the author, l o o k i n g tense and drawn a f t e r what was des- c r i b e d as " c o n s i d e r a b l e t h o u g h t " . . . . ^ although she may have e r r e d i n g e n e r a l i z i n g too f r e e l y about barthelme's a e s t h e t i c , oates was p e r c e p t i v e i n n o t i n g a c e r t a i n l a c k of e d i t o r i a l r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . "we a l l doubt our ( ) richard schickel , "freaked out on barthelme," new york times magazine, august , p. . ( ) "donald barthelme," in bellamy, pp. - / the typography of the o r i g i n a l has been s i m p l i f i e d . a u t h o r i t y , " barthelme once said.. "we're not sure we understand i t . we doubt our competence to understand i t . " his n a r r a t o r s have d i f f i c u l t y s u s t a i n i n g an argument, or, as we s h a l l see i n "daumier," a persona. although the n a r r a t o r s might appear a t times to be c o n f i d e n t s a t i r i s t s , the s a t i r e has no f i x e d and immutable niora base. i f t h i s i s s a t i r e , i t i s s a t i r e i n a l l d i r e c t i o n s , w i t h no sense of progress towards a moral norm. furthermore, the p l e t h o r a of p h i l o s o p h i c n o t i o n s makes i t d i f f i c u l t to a l i g n barthelme's n a r r a t o r s with the a r t i c u l a t e spokesmen of those w r i t e r s u s u a l l y c l a s s i f i e d as a b s u r d i s t s , or b l a c k humorists, or e x i s t e n t i a l i s t s , or any other l a b e l i s t . barthelme i s always ready w i t h h i s r e t r a c t i o n s , and the n a r r a t o r s are anything but c o n s i s t e n t (there are even sunny patches of optimism). readers who search f o r a message, a "world view," are t h e r e f o r e p l a c e d under s t r e s s . tom wolfe i s of the o p i n i o n t h a t barthelme has no c h o i c e but to w r i t e s h o r t s t o r i e s : "as long as he's w r i t i n g i n a s h o r t space, i t h i n k people can enjoy the i n t r a c r a n i a l e x e r c i s e he's p u t t i n g you through.""*"^ whether or not a novel r e q u i r e s some a i r - t i g h t cosmology as l i t e r a r y b a l l a s t , the p o i n t i s t h a t barthelme's n a r r a t o r s must contend w i t h a f i c t i o n a l world i n which ideas are banished t h a t can't be expressed i n a s h o r t , snappy phrase; a world i n which ideas c a n c e l out, l i k e f a s h i o n s i n c l o t h e s ; mental pop, i n t r a - c r a n i a l angst, a chaos of v a l u e s i n which o n l y a d v e r t i s i n g men ( ) schickel , p. . ( ) "tom wolfe," in bellamy, p. . c o u l d s u r v i v e . although guerard, l i k e oates, confuses the author with h i s spokesmen, guerard has a p o i n t i n c a l l i n g barthelme "a c h e e r f u l h i s t o r i a n of c o l l a p s e . " language problems; the l i s t p h i l o s o p h i c i n s t a b i l i t y i s r e v e a l e d i n the n a r r a t o r s ' use of language. that the n a r r a t o r s would be arch and a r t i - f i c i a l i n t h e i r s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i v e s one would expect; t h a t they d i s r u p t t r a d i t i o n a l models of r e a l i s t i c n a r r a t i v e s one accepts as a matter of course; but what i s l e s s p r e d i c t a b l e i s t h a t the n a r r a t o r s are d i s t u r b e d by t h e i r i n a b i l i t y to use language as a medium of communication. whereas nabokov's n a r r a t o r s are e x h i l a r a t e d by the c r e a t i v e use of d o c i l e nouns and v i t a l verbs, barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are demoralized by the endless d i n of meaningless language t h a t d r i v e s them "around the bend" (snow white, p. )'. barthelme h i m s e l f does not g e n e r a l l y s u f f e r from an i n a b i l i t y to o r g a n i z e a coherent n a r r a t i v e t h a t w i l l g i v e h i s readers a e s t h e t i c p l e a s u r e . but h i s n a r r a t o r s do s u f f e r ; they seem to be d i s a p p o i n t e d i n h e r i t o r s of the f a i l e d dreams of such modernist w r i t e r s as e z r a pound, who s a i d , c o n f i d e n t l y enough, t h a t we are a l l "governed by words, the laws are graven i n words, and l i t e r a t u r e i s the s o l e means of keeping these words l i v i n g and a c c u r a t e . " i t was hoped t h a t language might a c t as p a r t of a momentary stay a g a i n s t c o n f u s i o n , a d i k e a g a i n s t ( ) guerard, p. . ( ) as quoted in mccaffery, p. . the r i s i n g t i d e of h i s t o r y . but pound a l s o expressed the counter- impulse, to make i t new, an i d e a extended by wallace stevens i n t o the formula of "the man w i t h the blue g u i t a r " : "throw away the l i g h t s , the d e f i n i t i o n s , / and say of what you see i n the dark/ that i t i s t h i s or i t i s t h a t . / but do not use the r o t t e d names." such l e x i c a l freedom i s taken to excess i n a manifesto from t r a n s i t i o n i n , a manifesto signed by hart crane among o t h e r s : . the l i t e r a r y c r e a t o r has the r i g h t to d i s i n t e g r a t e the p r i m a l matter of words imposed on him by text-books and d i c t i o n a r i e s . . . . . he has the r i g h t to use words of h i s own f a s h i o n i n g and to d i s r e g a r d e x i s t i n g grammatical and s y n t a c t i c a l laws.... a s i d e from a q u a i n t a n t i q u a r i a n impulse, barthelme's n a r r a t o r s r a r e l y a c t to p r e s e r v e the language; they f o l l o w the r e v o l u t i o n - ary s i d e o f pound's d i a l e c t i c , i n the f o o t s t e p s of stevens and the t r a n s i t i o n r a d i c a l s . but i n s t e a d of freedom they f i n d anarchy, and i n s t e a d of u n c o n s t r a i n e d s e l f - e x p r e s s i o n they are unable to a r t i c u l a t e t h e i r thoughts and emotions. i t might seem, t h e r e f o r e , t h a t barthelme's f i c t i o n i s a l l i e d w i t h c r i t i c s such as r u s s e l l , who argues t h a t language can no longer be t r u s t e d to communicate meaning. i t might seem t h a t barthelme's f i c t i o n conforms to hansen's premise t h a t s e l f - consciousness i s r e s o l v e d i n s o l i p s i s m , or to the argument of . sontag and o t h e r s t h a t r e a l i s m , which i m p l i e s language t h a t r e f e r s to the common r e a l i t y of a r t i s t and reader, has been ( ) wallace stevens, "the man with the blue guitar," in the palm at the end of the mind (new york: vintage-random house, ), p. . ( ) "proclamation," t r a n s i t i o n , no. - ( ), p. [ j . f i n a l l y d i s c r e d i t e d . such assumptions, however,, would not be c o r r e c t . the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r remains enough of a r h e t o r i c i a n to i n v o l v e the reader i n the s t o r y , and a t times t h i s involvement i n c l u d e s r e f e r e n c e s to the reader's r e a l world (as we s h a l l see i n "the glass mountain"). at times, i n f a c t , the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r adopts the o l d - f a s h i o n e d r o l e of the omniscient i n t r u s i v e n a r r a t o r to o f f e r comments on the moral s i g n i f i c a n c e of the s t o r y (as i n "rebecca"). although the l a n g - uage of contemporary america i s d e s e r v e d l y s a t i r i z e d ( p a r t i c u l a r l y t e c h n i c a l and s o c i o l o g i c a l j a r g o n ) , o f t e n the n a r r a t o r ' s s e l f - consciousness about language i n d i c a t e s a f a i l u r e on the p a r t of the n a r r a t o r r a t h e r than a f a i l u r e on the p a r t of language. s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s a symptom, not a cause, of the n a r r a t o r ' s d e b i l i t a t e d s t a t e , and a d e v i c e to a v o i d f a c i n g unpleasant t r u t h s . but l e t us look i n d e t a i l a t some of the n a r r a t o r ' s problems w i t h language, beginning w i t h the l i s t . in "hiding man," the n a r r a t o r v i s i t s a movie t h e a t r e and encounters the s i n i s t e r bane-hipkiss, who c h a l l e n g e s the n a r r a - t o r ' s u n f a s h i o n a b l e f a i t h i n c a t h o l i c i s m . "you s t i l l b e l i e v e i n s a i n t s ? " says bane-hipkiss: "i b e l i e v e i n s a i n t s , [says the n a r r a t o r ] "holy water, "poor boxes, "ashes on ash sunday, " l i l i e s on e a s t e r sunday, "creches, censers, c h o i r s , "albs, b i b l e s , m i t r e s , martyrs, " l i t t l e red l i g h t s , "ladies of the a l t a r s o c i e t y , "knights of columbus, "cassocks and c r u e t s , "dispensations and indulgences, "the e f f i c a c y of prayer, "right reverends and very reverends, "tabernacles, monstrances, " b e l l s r i n g i n g , people s i n g i n g . . . . " ( c a l i g a r i , p. ) the l i s t makes a shambles of any coherent attempt to come to g r i p s with r e l i g i o u s f a i t h . free a s s o c i a t i o n l e a d s to the j a r r i n g j u x t a p o s i t i o n of m i t r e s and martyrs; the rhythm of b e l l s r i n g i n g , people s i n g i n g i s d e l i b e r a t e l y banal; right reverends f o l l o w e d by very reverends mocks the r i g i d pecking order of the church; the l i s t i n both i t s i l l o g i c a l o r g a n i z - a t i o n and i t s c o n t r a d i c t o r y elements i s a good argument a g a i n s t f a i t h . in another s t o r y the n a r r a t o r says, "i have a deep b i a s a g a i n s t r e l i g i o n which p r e c l u d e s my d i s c u s s i n g the q u e s t i o n i n t e l l i g e n t l y " ("kierkegaard u n f a i r to s c h l e g e l , " c i t y l i f e , p. ). the n a r r a t o r of "hiding man" s i m i l a r l y attempts to a v o i d an i n t e l l i g e n t , or, a t l e a s t , r a t i o n a l , d i s c u s s i o n of the i s s u e ; i n s t e a d he o f f e r s a l i s t which i s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s and p r i v a t e to the p o i n t of being hermetic. the reader l e a r n s l i t t l e about r e l i g i o n , but much about the emotional t e n s i o n of the n a r r a t o r . in "perpetua," on the other hand, the reader i s l e f t u n e d i f i e d when an a r c h i t e c t named henry brags of h i s many b e a u t i f u l churches: a r c h i t e c t u r e i s memory, henry s a i d , and the n a t i o n t h a t had no c a t h e d r a l s to speak of had no memory to speak of e i t h e r . he d i d i t a l l , henry s a i d , w i t h a -man crew composed of i superintendent i masonry foreman i ironworker foreman i c a r p e n t e r foreman i p i p e f i t t e r foreman i e l e c t r i c i a n foreman journeyman masons journeyman ironworkers.... (sadness, p. ). henry's unpunctuated s t r i n g of t i t l e s p r o v i d e s both an over- abundance of i n f o r m a t i o n and no i n f o r m a t i o n -- j u s t as a telephone book, t h a t model of a l p h a b e t i c a l coherence, i s i n one sense an incomprehensible assemblage of s t r a n g e r s . since the l i s t s can o b v i o u s l y be expanded to i n f i n i t y , they tend t o mock the a b i l i t y of words t o t e l l a s t o r y and impart a message: q: i have a number of e r r o r messages i'd l i k e to i n t r o d u c e here and i'd l i k e you to study them carefully„... they are numbered. i ' l l go over them w i t h you: u n d e f i n a b l e v a r i a b l e ... improper sequence of o p e r a t o r s ... improper use of hierarchy. • . m i s s i n g o p e r a t o r ... mixed mode, t h a t one's p a r t i c u l a r l y grave ... argument of a f u n c t i o n i s f i x e d - p o i n t ... a: i l i k e them very much. ("the e x p l a n a t i o n , " c i t y l i f e , p. ) when the l i s t s are of o b j e c t s , the e f f e c t i s something l i k e the apocalypse of r e a l i s m , as though r e a l i s m had gone mad, and swamped both the n a r r a t o r and the reader w i t h more i n f o r m a t i o n than the mind can comprehend or language can c o n t r o l . l e t us r e t u r n to those b a r r i c a d e s a g a i n s t the commanches i n "the indian u p r i s i n g " : i analysed the composition of the b a r r i c a d e n e a r e s t me and found two a s h t r a y s , ceramic, one dark brown and one dark brown w i t h an orange b l u r a t the t i p ; a t i n f r y i n g pan; two- l i t r e b o t t l e s of red wine ... a q u a v i t , cognac, vodka, g i n , fad # sherry; a hollow-core door i n b i r c h veneer on b l a c k wrought-iron l e g s ; a b l a n k e t , red-orange w i t h f a i n t blue s t r i p e s ... a yellow-and-purple p o s t e r ; a y u g o s l a v i a n carved f l u t e , wood, dark brown; and other items. i decided i knew nothing (p. ). the l a s t l i n e i s a 'reference to a john updike s t o r y , which, l i k e "the indian u p r i s i n g , " f i r s t appeared i n the new yorker. updike's s t o r y a l s o d e s c r i b e s the breakdown of s o p h i s t i c a t e d urban l i f e , and ends, d r a m a t i c a l l y , "sunday's events repeated themselves i n h i s mind, bending l i k e nacreous f l a k e s around a c e n t r a l i n f r a n g i b l e i r r i t a n t , becoming the p e r f e c t and luminous thought: you don't know anything." thus the n a r r a t o r of barthelme s s t o r y adds an u n a t t r i b u t e d q u o t a t i o n to h i s p i l e of random urban o b j e c t s . in updike's s t o r y the l i n e i s meant to bear the i t a l i c i z e d weight of a moral, or message; i n barthelme's s t o r y i t i s j u s t a meaningless c u l t u r a l r e f e r e n t , a l i n e from a magazine s t o r y l y i n g beside the carved y u g o s l a v i a n f l u t e . barthelme's n a r r a t o r i s perhaps the more c o n v i n c i n g r e p r e s e n t a t i v e of a communication breakdown, s i n c e h i s l i s t s do not c o n t r i b u t e to a comprehensive sense of n i h i l i s m or s o l i p s i s m or any other " p e r f e c t , and luminous thought"; the l i s t s are i n the s p i r i t of what m i c h e l f o u c a u l t c a l l s h e t e r o t o p i a s : h e t e r o t o p i a s are d i s t u r b i n g , probably because they s e c r e t l y undermine language, because they make i t i m p o s s i b l e to name t h i s and t h a t , ... because they d e s t r o y 'syntax' i n advance, and not o n l y the syntax w i t h which we c o n s t r u c t sentences but a l s o t h a t l e s s apparent syntax which causes words and t h i n g s ... to 'hold together.' [heterotopias] d e s s i c a t e speech, stop words i n t h e i r t r a c k s , c o n t e s t the very p o s s i b i l i t y of grammar a t i t s source; they d i s s o l v e our myths and s t e r i l - i z e the l y r i c i s m of our sentences. myths are d e l i b e r a t e l y d i s s o l v e d i n barthelme's f i c t i o n — the myth of snow white, f o r example, — and barthelme's n a r r a t o r s o f t e n undercut the l y r i c i s m of t h e i r own sentences. ( ) john updike, "sunday teasing," in the same door ( ; rpt. greenwich, conn.: fawcett crest, ), p. . ( ) michel- foucault, the order of things (new york: pantheon books, ), p. x v i i i . but perhaps i t c o u l d be argued t h a t the n a r r a t o r s ' l i s t s are an attempt to p i n down and s p e c i f y the r e a l world; perhaps the n a r r a t o r s do not engage i n the decadent c r e a t i o n of h e t e r o t o p i a s , but r a t h e r analyze and n e a t l y p r e s e n t the raw data of urban experience. such an argument would be d e f e a t e d by an example from one of barthelme's n o n - f i c t i o n works, an assignment from e s q u i r e magazine to review the ed s u l l i v a n show. barthelme's a t t i t u d e i n the review i s a k i n d of mocking embrace of the show's u n r e l e n t i n g b a n a l i t y ; but he ends the p i e c e w i t h a long l i s t of the c r e d i t s : a s s o c i a t e producer jack mcgeehan. s e t t i n g s designed by b i l l bohnert. p r o d u c t i o n manager tony jordan. a s s o c i a t e d i r e c t o r bob schwarz... program c o o r d i n a t o r . . . ("and now l e t ' s hear i t f o r the ed s u l l i v a n show," g u i l t y p l e a s u r e s , p. ). the reader i s not being o f f e r e d u s e f u l data; i n s t e a d , by slowing down the c r e d i t s to the s t a t e l y pace of p r i n t (rather than the embarrassed speed of t e l e v i s i o n ) , barthelme emphasizes the i r r e l e v a n c e of the i n f o r m a t i o n . j u s t as ed's guests perform songs t h a t are "submemorable" (p. ), the reviewer i n d i c a t e s h i s i n a b i l i t y to respond by o f f e r i n g non-information. "the ed s u l l i v a n show i s over. i t has stopped" (p. ). however, barthelme the reviewer i s not (.totally i n c a p a b l e of response. faced w i t h what i s undeniably the b o r i n g and s t e r i l e experience of a t t e n d i n g the t a p i n g of a mediocre t e l e v i s i o n show (apparently mediocre even by s u l l i v a n ' s s t a n d a r d s ) , the reviewer p r o f e s s i o n a l l y maintains enough of an open mind to be moved by a song c a l l e d "those were the days": "song i s e r s a t z kurt w e i l l but n e v e r t h e l e s s a very n i c e song, very n o s t a l g i c , days gone by, t e a r s rush i n t o eyes (mine)" (p. ). many of barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are too d e b i l i t a t e d f o r any such d i s p l a y of emotion, suggesting t h a t barthelme the reviewer uses language to m i r r o r the s t e r i l i t y of the scene b e f o r e him, while the n a r r a t o r s ' use of language m i r r o r s t h e i r own s t e r i l i t y . the l i s t o f o b j e c t s i n "the indian u p r i s i n g " captures the t r i v i a l i t y of the c i t y , but i t a l s o expresses the d i s s a t i s f a c t i o n of the n a r r a t o r , who suspects there should be something more to h i s l i f e than sanding y e t another hollow-core door f o r a c o f f e e t a b l e : "i had made a f t e r a l l other t a b l e s , one while l i v i n g with nancy, one w h i l e l i v i n g with a l i c e , one w h i l e l i v i n g w i t h eunice, one while l i v i n g w i t h marianne" (p. ) . language problems: m a l f u n c t i o n l i s t s a t l e a s t p r o v i d e the empty form of order, and o f f e r an empty promise t h a t the n a r r a t o r ' s thoughts can be o r g a n i z e d . but-" i n s e v e r a l s t o r i e s the n a r r a t o r seems to l o s e c o n t r o l of language a l t o g e t h e r . the language tends to " l o s e d i r e c t i o n and s l i d e i n t o pure i r r e l e v a n c i e s . the d i g r e s s i v e method i s not the one found, say, i n t r i s t r a m shandy, f o r i t i s not based on an a s s o c i a t i o n a l l o g i c and does not 'lead anywhere.'" mccaffery quotes a passage from snow white i n which one of the dwarfs d e s c r i b e s another dwarf's new pyjamas, and then wanders i n t o a c u r i o u s d i g r e s s i o n about the grade of pork ears used ( ) mccaffery, p. . i n the baby food v a t s , and the f a c t t h a t s a l e s nationwide "are b r i s k , b r i s k , b r i s k . . . . the pound i s weakening. the cow i s c a l v i n g . the c a c t u s wants watering. the new b u i l d i n g i s a b u i l d i n g w i t h l e a s e s c o v e r i n g per cent o f the r e n t a b l e space a l r e a d y i n hand. the weather tomorrow, f a i r and warmer" (pp. -r ) . the r h e t o r i c of business had invaded the dwarf's p e r c e p t i o n of the n a t u r a l world ("the pound i s weakening. the cow i s c a l v i n g . " ) ; even h i s weather r e p o r t seems to i s s u e from the o f f i c e s of m e r r i l l lynch. "bone bubbles" goes even f u r t h e r ; too f a r , i n f a c t : o f f e r l a s t gesture smooth man of p o s i t i o n p u r e l y c i n e m a t i c v i c e s l a p and t i c k l e z i p p e r e d wallpaper two b e a u t i f u l ' heavy books, boxed hears n o i s e goes to window t r e a s u r e s from c e n t u r i e s f i x e r g r e a t and s t u p e f y i n g ring minimum of three i f i t hadn't been f o r y. i never would have g o t t e n my lump l o c a l white democrats... ( c i t y l i f e , p. ). numerous p a i n f u l r e r e a d i n g s suggest t h a t a n a r r a t i v e of s o r t s l u r k s i n the v e r b i a g e of "bone bubbles," but i t seems s a f e to say t h a t the n a r r a t o r has r e t i r e d i n t o a w i l l f u l o b s c u r i t y . one source of h i s d i s d a i n f o r communication i s suggested i n a passage from the dead father, i n which the l e a d i n g c h a r a c t e r s encounter two unpleasant c h i l d r e n and ask them what they have l e a r n e d a t s c h o o l : we are i n v i g o r a t e d w i t h the sweet s e n s u a l i t y of language. we l e a r n to make sentences. come to me. may i come to your house? christmas comes but once a year. i ' l l come to your q u e s t i o n . the l i g h t comes and goes. success comes to those who s t r i v e . tuesday comes a f t e r monday. her a r i a comes i n the t h i r d a c t . toothpaste comes i n a tube.... she comes from warsaw. he comes from a good f a m i l y . i t w i l l come easy w i t h a l i t t l e p r a c t i c e . i ' l l come to thee by moonlight ... (pp. - ). there i s no l i t t l e charm i n the c h i l d ' s demonstration that): the verb "to come" i s a b s u r d l y overloaded w i t h s y n t a c t i c a l f u n c t i o n s , and t h a t the o s t e n s i b l e r a t i o n a l i t y of language i s c o v e r t l y sensual; n e v e r t h e l e s s , her speech i s t y p i c a l of the attempts of barthelme's n a r r a t o r s and c h a r a c t e r s to subvert language as a n a t u r a l means of communication. p h i l i p s t e v i c k has attempted to d e f i n e the axioms of what he c a l l s new f i c t i o n : new f i c t i o n c o n s o l i d a t e s an attempt r a r e i n f i c t i o n b e f o r e the modern p e r i o d to present elements of i t s t e x t u r e as devoid of v a l u e ; y e t new f i c t i o n , i n c o n t r a s t to ' c e r t a i n areas of modern f i c t i o n , seeks t h i s v a l u e - l e s s q u a l i t y not as an a c t of sub- t r a c t i o n , or dehumanization, or metaphysical m y s t i f i c a t i o n , not as a gesture of d e s p a i r or n i h i l i s m , but as a p o s i t i v e a c t i n which the joy of the observer i s allowed to p r e - v a i l as the primary q u a l i t y of the experience.^^ barthelme the author may or may not be f i l l e d w i t h j o y a t the thought of composing h i s b r i l l i a n t s t o r i e s , and perhaps the reader f e e l s a e s t h e t i c b l i s s , tempered by h i s awareness of the p a i n and d e s p a i r a t the h e a r t of the s t o r i e s ; but the primary o b s e r v e r — t h e n a r r a t o r — i s s u r e l y not f i l l e d w i t h joy. joy does not " p r e v a i l . " despite an o p t i m i s t i c impulse i n barthelme's f i c t i o n , the o v e r r i d i n g f a c t of l i f e f o r barthelme's p r o t a g o n i s t s i s moral p a r a l y s i s , and much of t h i s p a r a l y s i s i s expressed i n t h e i r use of language. the language i s s e l f - conscious i n the sense of being processed through a willfully, d e c e p t i v e i n t e l l e c t which e l i m i n a t e s emotion and v a l u e , and l e a v e s ( ) p h i l i p stevick, "scheherazade runs out of plots, goes on t a l k i n g ; - the king, puzzled, l i s t e n s : an essay on new f i c t i o n , " triquarterly, no. ( ), pp. - ; rpt. in the novel today, ed. malcolm bradbury (n.p.: fontana, ), p. . just the dry bones of language; one has an image of desperate clever dogs picking at a dessicated skeleton. it i s true that part of the problem l i e s with language i t s e l f , p a r t i c u l a r l y the s t e r i l e lingua franca of contemporary america, but i t should not be forgotten that the narrators sometimes deliberately d i s t o r t the language as a sign of t h e i r confusion, despair and g u i l t . let us consider snow white, which several c r i t i c s i n s i s t i s a book that centres on language. mccaffery's opinion i s represent- ative : if we now turn to the central question of the role of language i n fsnow white , we f i n d that, more than anything_else^, the book seems to be "about" the condition of lang- uage. any c r i t i c a l consensus engenders suspicion. perhaps snow white i s not mainly about language, but about one of barthelme's favorite themes, the f a i l u r e of romance i n mundane modern times. nevertheless, most readers notice the overwhelming buzz of language. a l l the narrators are self-conscious c o n v e r s a t i o n a l i s t s ; , , they struggle to soothe snow white's complaint which she voices i n her f i r s t speech of the novel: "oh i wish there were some words i n the world that were not the words i always hear!" (p. ). although there i s an impersonal omniscient narrator, the narrative i s mainly carried on b y ". \ the dwarfs, who sometimes speak i n a kind of c o l l e c t i v e (or, considering the sleeping arrangements, communal) "we." one c r i t i c amusingly describes ( ) mccaffery, p. . see also dickstein, p. , and guerard, p. . the n a r r a t i v e v o i c e as " t h i r d person dwarf." in the s t r u g g l e of the n a r r a t o r s to f i n d words to s a t i s f y snow white, they n e g l e c t i n f o r m a t i o n customary i n the t r a d i t i o n a l r e a l i s t i c n a r r a t i v e ; the p r o f e s s i o n s , a c t i v i t i e s and even the i d e n t i t i e s of the seven dwarfs are o f t e n f a r from c l e a r . the n a r r a t o r s tend to n e g l e c t the p l o t i n f a v o r of p h i l o l o g i c a l .debates. for example, henry the dwarf, w i t h a nod to our theme of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s , notes h i s weaknesses on a pad: process comparable to s e a r c h i n g a dog's u n d e r b e l l y f o r f l e a s . the weaknesses pinched out of the s o u l ' s e c s t a s y one by one. of course " e c s t a s y " i s being used here i n a very s p e c i a l sense, as misery, something t h a t would be i n german one of three aspects of something c a l l e d lumpwelt i n some such sentence as, "the inmitten-ness of the lump- welt i s a t u r n i n g toward misery." so t h a t what i s meant here by e c s t a s y i s something on the order of " f i t , " but a k i n d of slow one, perhaps a s e m i - a r r e s t e d one, and one t h a t i s d i v i s i b l e by three (p. ). s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s leads to misery, and one cause of the misery i s henry's f a i l u r e to use words as a n a l y t i c a l t o o l s . his thoughts can't be c o n f i n e d to the neat p r e c i s i o n of german p h i l o s o p h i c semantics (which i s why the sudden i n t r o d u c t i o n of " f i t " l e a d s to a n o n s e n s i c a l refinement — "divisible by t h r e e " ) . immediately f o l l o w i n g henry's l i n g u i s t i c f i t , another dwarf d e f i n e s the i n t e r r u p t e d screw as "'a screw w i t h a d i s c o n t i n u o u s h e l i x , as i n a cannon breech, ' " formed by "'cutting away part or parts of the thread, and sometimes p a r t of the s h a f t . used w i t h a l o c k nut having corresponding male s e c t i o n s . " ( ) betty flowers, "barthelme's snow white: the reader-patient relationship," c r i t i q u e , , no. ( ), . " t h i s f i l t h y , " henry s a i d , " t h i s language t h i n k i n g and s t i n k i n g e v e r l a s t i n g of sex, screw, breech, 'part', s h a f t , nut, male, i t i s no wonder we are a l l going round the bend w i t h t h i s language d i n n i n g f o r e v e r i n t o our eyes and e a r s . . . . " "i am not going round the bed," dan s a i d , "not me." "round the bend," henry s a i d , "the bend not the bed, how i s i t t h a t i s a i d 'bend' and you heard 'bed, you see what i mean, i t ' s i n e s c a p a b l e . " "you l i v e i n a world of your own henry." "i can c e r t a i n l y improve on what was g i v e n , " henry s a i d (pp. - ). nabokov's n a r r a t o r s a l s o f e l t an impulse towards a p r i v a t e world, but they thought of language as a s e r v i c e a b l e medium i n which to a r t i c u l a t e t h a t p r i v a t e world; barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are not supported by language, but " d r i v e n round the bend." humbert humbert c e l e b r a t e d the magical power of language, i t s "durable pigments"; barthelme's dan the dwarf t h i n k s of language as j u s t another junk product. "'you know,'" he says, i n a parody of c o l l o q u i a l , u n s e l f - c o n s c i o u s ease, " k l i p s c h o r n was r i g h t i t h i n k when he spoke of the ' b l a n k e t i n g ' e f f e c t of o r d i n a r y language, r e f e r r i n g , as i r e c a l l , to the p a r t t h a t s o r t o f , you know, ' f i l l s i n " between the other p a r t s . that p a r t , the ' f i l l i n g ' you might say, of which the e x p r e s s i o n 'you might say' i s a good example.... might a l s o be c a l l e d the ' s t u f f i n g ' . . . . dan argues (or s p e e c h i f i e s i n t o a void) t h a t s t u f f i n g has two q u a l i t i e s , an 'endless' q u a l i t y and a 'sludge' q u a l i t y : "the 'endless' aspect of ' s t u f f i n g ' i s t h a t i t goes on and on, i n many d i f f e r e n t forms, and i n f a c t our exchanges are i n l a r g e measure composed of i t , i n l a r g e r measure even, perhaps, than they are composed of t h a t which i s not ' s t u f f i n g . ' " dan combines t h i s d e s p a i r i n g theory of language w i t h a r a t i o n a l e f o r the dwarfs' p r o f e s s i o n , which might be running a p l a n t t h a t produces t o t a l l y u s e l e s s b u f f a l o humps. since the per c a p i t a p r o d u c t i o n of t r a s h i s going up s t e a d i l y , the percentage of t r a s h to e v e r y t h i n g e l s e w i l l soon be per cent, a t which p o i n t the q u e s t i o n of d i s p o s i n g of the t r a s h becomes a q u e s t i o n " 'of apprec- i a t i n g i t s q u a l i t i e s , because, a f t e r a l l , i t ' s per cent, right?*:'."\ "'it's t h a t we want to be on the l e a d i n g edge of the t r a s h phenom- . enon,'" says dan, "'and t h a t ' s why we pay p a r t i c u l a r a t t e n t i o n , too, to those aspects of language t h a t may be seen as a model of the t r a s h phenomenon""(pp. - ). language problems: the loss of emotion dan's speech might be understood i n terms of d e l i b e r a t e l y s u p e r f i c i a l pop a r t ; or perhaps he d e s c r i b e s the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a e s t h e t i c o f "camp," i n which the observer's i r o n i c d i s t a n c e from the o s t e n s i b l e value of the a r t i f a c t i s the s o l e source of pleasure.. in any event, barthelme's n a r r a t o r s s u f f e r the emotional e f f e c t s of being on the l e a d i n g edge of the t r a s h phenomenon. t h e i r p o s i t i o n i s a long way from nabokov's c h e e r f u l a s s e r t i o n t h a t nothing i s more e x h i l a r a t i n g than p h i l i s t i n e v u l g a r i t y . the i n t e l l e c t u a l high s p i r i t s of some of barthelme's n a r r a t o r s should not f o o l us i n t o i g n o r i n g t h a t they are trapped i n a mean s i t u a t i o n . because they d i s t r u s t language, and attempt to t r e a t e v e r y t h i n g w i t h s e l f - conscious i r o n y , they transform t h e i r n a r r a t i v e s i n t o f u t i l e word games. they t r y to remain untouched by circumstances, a t tremen- dous emotional c o s t . the r e s u l t of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s towards language i s an i n a b i l i t y to express emotion, f o l l o w e d by the l o s s of emotion. the e m o t i o n a l l o s s i s r e v e a l e d i n t h e d e t a i l s o f p u n c - t u a t i o n : c h a r l e s ! i r e n e e x c l a i m e d . y o u ' r e h u n g r y ! and y o u ' v e b e e n c r y i n g ! y o u r g r a y v e s t i s s t a i n e d w i t h t e a r s ! l e t me make y o u a ham and c h e e s e s a n d w i c h . " a l l r i g h t j a n e g e t i n t o t h e c a r . " i n t h e f a l l t h e w a r was a l w a y s t h e r e , b u t we d i d n o t go t o i t a n y m o r e . ^ the f i r s t e x a m p l e u s e s e x c l a m a t i o n m a r k s a s f a l s e s i g n a l s ; t h e ham a n d c h e e s e s a n d w i c h d e f l a t e s any p o s s i b l e t e n s i o n o r e x c i t e - ment. i n t h e s e c o n d e x a m p l e , s p o k e n b y t h e v i l l a i n o f snow w h i t e , t h e a b s e n c e o f commas h e l p s r e d u c e t h e p h r a s e t o a m a c h i n e - l i k e m o n o t o n e , t h e t o n e o f some f a v o r i t e snow w h i t e t e r m s , b l a g u e and d r e c k - t h e t o n e o f p l a s t i c f i c t i o n . the t h i r d e x a m p l e , f r o m hemingway's " i n a n o t h e r c o u n t r y , " d e m o n s t r a t e s how h i s c e l e b r a t e d u n d e r s t a t e m e n t r e t a i n s a k i n d o f r o m a n t i c r e s o n a n c e ; b a r t h e l m e ' s t o n e l e s s n e s s i s somewhat more s i n i s t e r . what i s s i n i s t e r i s t h e s e n s e o f i r o n i c d i s t a n c e . the n a r r a t o r w o n ' t t a k e r e s p o n s i b i l i t y f o r w h a t he s a y s , a n e v a s i o n t h a t i r k s g o r e v i d a l : mr. b a r t h e l m e t e l l s u s t h a t h i s f a t h e r was "a 'modern' a r c h i t e c t . " i n c i d e n t a l l y , i t i s now t h e f a s h i o n t o p u t q u o t e s a r o u n d a n y s t a t e m e n t o r w o r d t h a t m i g h t be c h a l l e n g e d . t h i s means t h a t t h e q u e s t i o n a b l e w o r d o r s t a t e m e n t was n o t meant l i t e r a l l y b u t i r o n - i c a l l y o r " i r o n i c a l l y . " a n o t h e r way o f s a y - i n g , "don't h i t me. i d i d n ' t r e a l l y 'mean' i t " ( p p . - ) . ( ) donald barthelme, "will you tell me?" in caligari, p. ; snow white, p. ; ernest hemingway, "in another country," in the short stories of ernest hemingway (new york: scribner's, ), p. . ( ) see gore vidal, "american plastic: the matter of fiction," the new york times review of books, july , pp. - . the l i n k between s e l f - c o n s c i o u s language and the l o s s of emotion i s made apparent i n two s t o r i e s i n v o l v i n g a c h a r a c t e r named bloomsbury. in the f i r s t , "the big broadcast of ," blooms- bury a c q u i r e s a r a d i o s t a t i o n i n which he broadcasts f a v o r i t e words: "the word m a t r i c u l a t e had engaged h i s a t t e n t i o n , he pro- nounced i t i n t o the microphone f o r what seemed to him a p e r i o d l o n g e r than normal, t h a t i s to say, i n excess of a quarter-hour. he wondered whether or not to regard t h i s as s i g n i f i c a n t " ( c a l i g a r i , pp. - ). bloomsbury a l s o broadcasts a "commercial announce- ment" to h i s estranged w i f e (p. ). he remembers t h e i r v i s i t to the movies: the f i r s t t h i n g i knew i was i n s i d e your s h i r t w i t h my hand and i found there some- t h i n g v e r y l o v e l y and, as they say, d e s i r a b l e . ... i simply ... h e l d i t i n my hand, i t was, as the saying goes, s o f t and warm (p. ). the s t o r y i s f i l l e d w i t h such e x p r e s s i o n s as "as they say," "as the e x p r e s s i o n runs," "as the saying has i t " - and a l l these q u a l i f i c a t i o n s are a p p l i e d to concepts and t h i n g s g e n e r a l l y taken f o r granted. thus, when h i s w i f e a r r i v e s a t the r a d i o s t a t i o n , "with a s i n g l e s t r i d e , such as he had o f t e n seen p r a c t i s e d i n the f i l m s , bloomsbury was 'at her s i d e ' " (p. ). the s t o r y ends i n d e s p a i r : [the] e l e c t r i c company, which had not been p a i d from the f i r s t to the l a s t , r e f u s e d a t l e n g t h to supply f u r t h e r c u r r e n t f o r the r a d i o , i n consequence o f which the b r o a d c a s t s , both words and music, ceased. that was the end of t h i s p e r i o d of bloomsbury's, as they say, l i f e (p. ). bloomsbury's detached s t y l e merges w i t h the n a r r a t o r ' s , and both t r e a t l i f e , " l i f e , " as though i t were observed from a g r e a t d i s t a n c e . both bloomsbury and the n a r r a t o r are a f r a i d to r e v e a l too much: " a f t e r t h i s announcement was broadcast bloomsbury h i m s e l f f e l t c a l l e d upon to weep a l i t t l e , and d i d , but not 'on the a i r ' " (p. ) . that i s , not p u b l i c l y , not i n f u l l view of the reader. in "for i'm the boy whose only joy i s loving you," bloomsbury's w i f e has l e f t him again. while h i s unpleasant f r i e n d s attempt h a l f - h e a r t e d c o n s o l a t i o n s , bloomsbury imagines a l o v e d i a l o g u e w i t h a g i r l who adopts a s e r v a n t - t o - l i e g e - l o r d tone: "have ye heard the news p e l l y , t h a t martha me w i f e has l e f t me i n a yareplane? ... yer wonderfulness, wot a cheeky l o t to be p u l l i n ' the p l o g on a l o v e l y man l i k e y e r s e l f " ( c a l i g a r i , p. ) . d i a l e c t i s g e n e r a l l y used mockingly i n barthelme, to i n d i c a t e the d i s t a n c e between the olden days of d i r e c t and p a s s i o n - ate e x p r e s s i o n and modern s t e r i l i t y , . when one of bloomsbury's f a l s e f r i e n d s says, "so now ... g i v e us the f e e l i n g , " blooms- bury answers, "we can d i s c u s s ... the meaning but not the f e e l i n g " (p. ) . bloomsbury's f r i e n d a t t a c k s him a t the s t o r y ' s c o n c l u s i o n : and b e a t i n g bloomsbury i n the face f i r s t w i t h the brandy b o t t l e , then w i t h the t i r e i r o n , u n t i l a t l e n g t h the hidden f e e l i n g emerged, i n the form of s a l t from h i s eyes and b l a c k blood from h i s e a r s , and from h i s mouth, a l l s o r t s of words (p. ) . the bloomsbury s t o r i e s suggest t h a t one a l t e r n a t i v e to s e l f - c o n s c i o u s language i s an o r g i a s t i c r e l e a s e of unconsidered words, which breaks down the emotional b a r r i e r of language. a more s i n i s t e r a l t e r n a t i v e i s t h a t the n a r r a t o r has no emotions l e f t to express, s i n c e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s has l e f t him s t e r i l e and empty. i t has been argued t h a t barthelme, b r a u t i g a n and coover have i n common a post-joycean i m a g i n a t i o n which i s marked by "an e x t r a o r d i n a r y innocence, e i t h e r genuine or f e i g n e d , even a k i n d of common prose rhythm d e r i v i n g from the u n w i l l i n g n e s s to subordinate and complicate t h a t i s an a t t r i b u t e of the innocence," and "a r e a d i n e s s to c o n f r o n t c e r t a i n e x t r e m i t i e s of l i f e ... but an i n v e s t i n g of these e x t r e m i t i e s w i t h an odd and t e r r i b l y d i s t a n t a r t i f x c e . . .." w r i t i n g about snow white, b e t t y flowers notes t h a t the " b a s i c s t y l e takes a d e c e p t i v e l y simple and s t u d i e d l y innocent s u b j e c t - v e r b - o b j e c t form. yet a s t y l e which i s s t u d i e d l y innocent . i s u l t i m a t e l y mock-innocent and, t h e r e f o r e , b a s i c a l l y devious." the language i s devious and mock-innocent and c h a r a c t e r i z e d by a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s c o o l i r o n y . the i r o n y i s d i f f e r e n t i n k i n d from the p e r v a s i v e i r o n y of modern l i t e r a t u r e . the n a r r a t o r i s perhaps not i r o n i c but c a t a t o n i c . he i s a development of the hero i n robert m u s i l ' s the man without q u a l i t i e s , who t h i n k s o f h i m s e l f as a v i c t i m of ambivalent r e a l i t y : " a l l moral events," says the hero, u l r i c h , "took p l a c e i n a f i e l d of energy, the c o n s t e l l a t i o n of which charged them with meaning.... [an] endless system of r e l a t i o n s h i p s arose i n which there was no longer any such t h i n g as independent meanings, such as i n o r d i n a r y l i f e , a t a f i r s t crude approach, are a s c r i b e d to a c t i o n s and q u a l i t i e s . " u l r i c h i s i n d e s p a i r , perhaps a r a t h e r i n t e l l e c t u a l i z e d d e s p a i r , but barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are beyond d e s p a i r : ( ) stevick, p. . ( ) flowers, p . . ( ) robert musil, the man without q u a l i t i e s , as quoted i n wylie supher,loss of the self i n modern literature and art (new york: vintage- random house, ), p. . j i t was p r e t t y b o r i n g shooting up mesquite bushes, so we hunkered down behind some rocks, father and i, he hunkered down behind h i s • rocks and i hunkered down behiwd my r o c k s , and we commenced to shooting a t each o t h e r . that was i n t e r e s t i n g ("views of my father weeping," c i t y l i f e , p. ). " i n t e r e s t i n g " i s n ' t an adequate term. " i n t e r e s t i n g " seems a•, touch weak to cover d u e l s w i t h one's f a t h e r . s i m i l a r l y , the hero of "up, a l o f t i n the a i r " walked the r e s i l i e n t s t r e e t s of akron. his head was aflame w i t h c o n f l i c t i n g i d e a s . suddenly he was a r r e s t e d by a s h r i l l c r y . from the top of the zimmer b u i l d i n g ... a group o f akron l o v e r s consummated a f o u r - handed s u i c i d e l e a p . the a i r ! buck thought as he watched the t i n y f i g u r e s f a l l i n g , t h i s i s c e r t a i n l y an air-minded country, america! but i must make myself u s e f u l . he entered a bunshop and purchased a sweet green bun, and d a l l i e d w i t h the sweet green g i r l t h e r e , c a l l i n g her "poppet" and " f u n i c u l a r . " then out i n t o the s t r e e t again to l e a n a g a i n s t the warm green facade of the zimmer b u i l d i n g and watch the work- men scrubbing the crimson sidewauk (p. ). t h i s i s indeed an "odd and t e r r i b l y d i s t a n t a r t i f i c e . " the u s e l e s s n a r r a t o r d a l l i e s with words, green on green and t a s t y r e d . s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l i t e r a t u r e given the n a r r a t o r ' s d e b i l i t a t i n g s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s towards language, i t i s not s u r p r i s i n g t h a t he i s e q u a l l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s about h i s r o l e as a n a r r a t o r . of course, the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r t r a d i t i o n a l l y opposes h i s i d i o s y n c r a t i c , i n n o v a t i v e v o i c e to the l i t e r a r y o r t h o d o x i e s ; however, barthelme's n a r r a t o r a t times appears to be t r u e to the s p i r i t of an age c h a r a c t e r i z e d by d i s t r u s t f o r l i t e r a r y conventions, d i s t r u s t which sometimes r i p e n s i n t o s u b v e r s i o n . the contemporary avant garde goes f u r t h e r than merely g r a f t i n g i n n o v a t i o n to the h e a l t h y organism of l i t - e r a r y t r a d i t i o n ; t h e r e i s a new s p i r i t of d e s t r u c t i o n and a t t a c k . o john hawkes, f o r example, announces, "i began to w r i t e f i c t i o n on the assumption t h a t the t r u e enemies of the novel were p l o t , c h a r a c t e r , s e t t i n g and theme...." contemporary w r i t e r s add i n s u l t to i n j u r y by i g n o r i n g l i t e r a r y t r a d i t i o n : new f i c t i o n , though a g g r e s i v e l y non- t r a d i t i o n a l , shows l e s s involvement with the t r a d i t i o n of prose f i c t i o n than any f i c t i o n s i n c e the beginning of the n o v e l . ... new f i c t i o n , more than any f i c t i o n s i n c e cervantes, chooses s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y to depart from t r a d i t i o n without i n v e s t i n g t h a t departure w i t h any p a r t i c u l a r urgency or without making t h a t a c t of departure the s t a r t i n g . p o i n t of the f i c t i o n a t a l l . . . . ^ wylie sypher e x p l a i n s w i t h wonderful c o n f i d e n c e t h a t as "everyone r e c o g n i z e s , the s c u t t l i n g of l i t e r a t u r e s t a r t e d a century ago." he l i s t s v e r l a i n e , lewis c a r r o l l ' s " a n t i - p o e t r y , " e l i o t , s t r i n d b e r j a r r y ' s ubu roi, t r i s t r a m shandy of course, cervantes, f l a u b e r t , edouard d u j a r d i n - "one can t r a c e a whole t r a d i t i o n of a n t i - l i t e r a t u r e . " the s c u t t l i n g of l i t e r a t u r e i s not d i r e c t e d j u s t a t p a r t i c u l a r techniques, but a t l i t e r a t u r e ' s l i b e r a l promise of value and o r d e r . g e r a l d g r a f f says the "conventions of p o s t - modernist a r t s y s t e m a t i c a l l y i n v e r t the r e s p e c t f o r a r t i s t i c t r u t h and s i g n i f i c a n c e which had c h a r a c t e r i z e d modernism." snow white i s "one of the post-modernist works t h a t i s most s k i l f u l - ' i n i t s deployment of the l i t e r a r y p a s t i n a s u b v e r s i v e way." ( ) john hawkes, as quoted in bradbury, p. . ( ) stevick, p.. . ( ) sypher-.i, pp. - . ( ) gerald graff, "the myth of the postmodernist breakthrough," triquarterly, no. ( ), pp. - ; rpt. in bradbury, pp. , . barthelme's a n t i l i t e r a r y tendencies might seem s u f f i c i e n t l y l a b e l l e d ("postmodernist") and not worth examining; however, there are s e v e r a l q u a l i f y i n g .and even c o n t r a d i c t o r y f a c t o r s . f i r s t , to say t h a t snow white i s r o o t e d deeply " i n a fundamental d i s t r u s t of most of the c o n v e n t i o n a l p r i n c i p l e s of f i c t i o n " i s a tiresome c r i t i c a l p l a t i t u d e , but l i k e most p l a t i t u d e s i t c o n t a i n s some t r u t h ; however, while barthelme may indeed be f u l f i l l i n g a modern expect- a t i o n (meeting the outrage q u o t i e n t ) , he does so i n a manner con- s i s t e n t w i t h the l a r g e r themes of h i s f i c t i o n . i t i s one t h i n g to compose s e l f - a s s e r t i v e manifestos w i t h which to d a z z l e poetry conferences, and i t i s another to show c h a r a c t e r s trapped i n t h e i r own s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s . rather than merely conforming to the r u l e of m i s r u l e , barthelme examines n a r r a t o r s and c h a r a c t e r s whose d e b i l i t a t i n g s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s l e a d s them to subvert the very a c t i v i t y which might o f f e r them a sense of v a l u e . furthermore, the d o c t r i n a i r e program of the avant garde (down w i t h p l o t ! ) i s a f i t t a r g e t f o r barthelme's s a t i r i c impulse.: a n t i - r e a l i s m i s as much a l i t e r a r y convention as r e a l i s m , and i n a sense barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are a n t i - a n t i - r e a l i s t s , s i n c e a t times they appeal to the common r e a l i t y of the n a r r a t o r and the reader. barthelme's works are not f i v e - f i n g e r e x e r c i s e s f o r the a e s t h e t i c i a n , but moral e x p l o r a t i o n s ; a t the heart of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s of barthelme's n a r r a t o r s and c h a r a c t e r s i s a moral f a i l u r e ; s e l f - consciousness r e f l e c t s , m i r r o r s , r e p o r t s (to use a good r e a l i s t i c term) r e a l problems i n american s o c i e t y , and more i s a t stake ( ) mccaffery, p. . than j u s t another v i c t o r y over o u t - o f - f a s h i o n l i t e r a r y conventions. (in the s t r u g g l e a g a i n s t l i t e r a r y t r a d i t i o n s , the most minor a r t - i s t might emerge triumphant; i n f a c t , a l a c k of t a l e n t might be an important weapon i n the s t r u g g l e to a v o i d f o l l o w i n g i n the t r a d - i t i o n of the g r e a t l i t e r a r y works of the past.) l a t e r we s h a l l d e t a i l barthelme's c o u n t e r - a t t a c k on the avant garde, but a t p r e s e n t we must c o n s i d e r the n a r r a t o r ' s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s as i t a p p l i e s to h i s s t r u g g l e to f i l l the n a r r a t o r ' s r o l e . l i t e r a t u r e as a l i b e r a l e d u c a t i o n i s the n a r r a t o r ' s f i r s t problem. there i s a t r a d i t i o n d e r i v i n g from the study of the b i b l e and from the study of the c l a s s i c s ( s o r f e s v e r g i l i a e ) t h a t l i t e r a t u r e o f f e r s a guide to noble and u p r i g h t conduct. t h i s n o t i o n i s not a t the moment i n f a s h i o n . hence, i n " a l i c e , " the n a r r a t o r pauses to c o n s i d e r what he should do next: p o s s i b l e a t t i t u d e s found i n books ) i don't know what's happening to me ) what does i t mean? ) s e i z e d w i t h the deepest sadness, i know not why ) i am l o s t , my head w h i r l s , i know not where i am ) i l o s e myself ) i ask you, what have i come to? ) i no longer know where i am, what i s t h i s country? ... but i know where i am, i am on west eleventh. s t r e e t shot w i t h l u s t i speak to a l i c e on the s t r e e t . . . (unspeakable, p. ). the p o s s i b i l i t i e s from books are romantic, suggesting both the n a r r a t o r ' s n o s t a l g i a f o r times when someone c o u l d a t l e a s t f e e l d e s p a i r (barthelme's n a r r a t o r s have d i f f i c u l t y f e e l i n g a n y t h i n g ) , as w e l l as the n a r r a t o r ' s post-romantic s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s . words from books don't r e l a t e to the n a r r a t o r ' s r e a l s i t u a t i o n — "but i know where i am," shot with l u s t , not tender l o v e , on the s t r e e t s of the c y n i c a l c i t y . when the n a r r a t o r attempts to borrow the f i n e phrases of o l d e r l i t e r a t u r e , he f i n d s t h a t something has been l o s t i n the temporal t r a n s p l a n t i n g . he s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l y attempts to p l a y a r o l e from the p a s t , but the r h e t o r i c of the r o l e now sounds hollow. in "the glass mountain," f o r example, the n a r r a t o r attempts to rescue a symbolic p r i n c e s s who r e s i d e s " i n a c a s t l e of pure g o l d " ( c i t y l i f e , p. ). despite h i s adherence to a l l the " c o n v e n t i o n a l means" ( f o r example, being taken to the tower of the g l i t t e r i n g p a l a c e by an e a g l e ) , the n a r r a t o r f i n d s t h a t he must adopt modern expedients. instead of storming the c a s t l e l i k e a k n i g h t i n armour, he must ascend the w a l l of a skyscraper w i t h the a i d of plumber's h e l p e r s ; and he has f o r g o t t e n h i s bandaids. in s h o r t , the e x p e d i t i o n f a i l s and the enchanted symbol proves f a l s e : "nor are eagles p l a u s i b l e , not a t a l l , not f o r a moment" (pp. , ). the b e s t way to a t t a c k the f i n e o l d v a l u e s of l i t e r a t u r e i s through l i t e r a t u r e ' s heroes. f i r s t a c h i l l e s ' h e e l , then a c h i l l e s , then the aeneid, then the c l a s s i c a l h e r i t a g e . b a r t h - elme's n a r r a t o r s l i k e to reduce what might be c a l l e d "heroes of p o t e n t i a l " to the hopeless q u o t i d i a n . they are removed from the context of the h e r o i c book (or comic book, or movie) and r e l o c a t e d i n the mundane p r e s e n t . for example, snow white's w i t c h f i g u r e , jane, attempts an uneasy mixture of modern psycho- a n a l y s i s and a n c i e n t f o l k l o r e ; she c u l t i v a t e s her m a l i c e : "now i must w i t c h someone, f o r t h a t i s my r o l e , and to f l e e one's r o l e , as gimbal t e l l s us, i s i n the f i n a l a n a l y s i s b o o t l e s s " (p. ). snow white's l e a d i n g v i l l a i n , hogo de bergerac, i s such a s e r i o u s student of h i s adopted r o l e t h a t he s t u d i e s a t r o c i t y books f o r t i p s . he complains t h a t no one maintains the f i n e standards of e v i l of the p a s t , and expresses h i s i n d i g n a t i o n i n pseudo- shakespearean jargon, which he a p p a r e n t l y a s s o c i a t e s w i t h the f i n e s t f l o w e r i n g of v i l l a i n y (presumably edmund and iago are h i s r o l e models). of course the o l d r h e t o r i c f a i l s , and the f i n e phrases d i s s i p a t e : kiocfo was r e a d i n g a book of a t r o c i t y s t o r i e s - . "god, what f i l t h y beasts we were," he thought, "then. what a t h i n g i t must have been to be a hun! a f i l t h y boche! ... and today? we c o - e x i s t , we c o - e x i s t . f i l t h y deutschmarks! that so e c l i p s e the v e r y mark and t e x t u r e ... that so e c l i p s e the v e r y mark and bosom of a man, that v i l e n e s s h e r s e l f i s v i l e l y overthrown. that so e n f o l d . . . that so enscarp . .. bloody deu.ts'chmarks! t h a t so enwrap^ the very warp and t e x t u r e of a man, t h a t what we c h e r i s h e d i n him, v i l e - ness, i s ... d i e s , h i s ginger o'erthrown. bald p e l f ! t h a t so i n g u r g i t a t e s the very wrack and mixture of a man, t h a t i n him the sweet s t i n g s of v i l e n e s s are, a l l ginger f l e d , he..." (p. ). the heroes are r e v e a l e d to be o r d i n a r y c i t i z e n s , plagued/ with second thoughts, s e l f - c o n s c i o u s about t h e i r h e r o i c personae, and f a t i g u e d with the e f f o r t of s u s t a i n i n g them. in "the p a r t y , " f o r example, king kong i s an adjunct p r o f e s s o r of a r t h i s t o r y a t rutgers; s t i l l t e r r i f y i n g , of course, but now he i s "simply t r y i n g to make h i m s e l f i n t e r e s t i n g " (p. ). the n a r r a t o r of "the phantom of the opera's f r i e n d " g r a d u a l l y t i r e s of the phantom's self-doubts:" o c c a s i o n a l l y he [the phantom] i s overtaken by what can o n l y be c a l l e d f i t s of g r a n d i o s i t y : "one hundred m i l l i o n c e l l s i n the b r a i n ! a l l i n t e n t on being the phantom of the opera!" "between t h r e e and four thousand human languages! and i am the phantom of the opera i n every one of them!" t h i s i s q u i c k l y f o l l o w e d by the deepest d e s p a i r . he s i n k s i n t o a c h a i r , passes a hand over h i s mask. " f o r t y years of i t ! " ( c i t y l i f e , p. ) the phantom r e c e i v e s r a t h e r a low blow to the persona when the n a r r a t o r d e s c r i b e s the r e l u c t a n c e of gaston leroux to continue w i t h the s t o r y : gaston leroux was t i r e d of w r i t i n g the phantom of the opera. he r e p l a c e d h i s pen i n i t s penholder. "i can always work on the phantom of the opera l a t e r — — i n the f a l l , perhaps. jdght now i f e e l l i k e w r i t i n g the s e c r e t o f the yellow room" (p. ). in a s p e c t a c u l a r scene, batman and robin speed o f f i n the batmobile to i n t e r c e p t the joker! but f i r s t they have to ask d i r e c t i o n s : "well i f i were you [says the commissioner], i'd go out th s t r e e t u n t i l you h i t the war memorial,. then take a r i g h t on memorial d r i v e u n t i l i t connects w i t h gotham parkway! a f t e r you're on the parkway i t ' s c l e a r s a i l i n g ! " he i n d i c a t e d . "wait a minute!" batman s a i d . "wouldn't i t be q u i c k e r to get on the dugan expressway where i t comes i n there a t th s t r e e t and then take the north loop out to the r i c h a r d - son freeway? don't you t h i n k t h a t would save time?" "well i come to work t h a t way!" the commis- s i o n e r s a i d . "but they're p u t t i n g i n another two l a n e s on the north loop..." ("the joker's g r e a t e s t triumph," c a l i g a r i , p. ). in other words, comic book heroes are imprisoned i n the same d r e a r y d a i l y round of s e l f - s e r v e gas s t a t i o n s as the r e s t of us, and "the hot meat o f romance i s c o o l e d by the d u l l gravy of common sense once more" ("phantom," p. ). the tiresome con- s c i o u s n e s s of p l a y i n g a r o l e d e f e a t s the hero: robin t e l l s bat- man t h a t the joker may have l e a r n e d t h e i r s e c r e t i d e n t i t y . "great s c o t t ! " batman says. " i f he r e v e a l s i t to the whole world i t w i l l mean the end of my c a r e e r as a c r i m e - f i g h t e r ! w e l l , i t ' s a problem" ("joker," p. ). since l i t e r a t u r e does not p r o v i d e a l i b e r a l guide to moral conduct, and s i n c e i t s heroes are s p i r i t u a l l y bankrupt, barthelme's n a r r a t o r s view the a n c i l l a r y a c t i v i t y of l i t e r a r y c r i t i c i s m with s k e p t i c i s m . contemporary f i c t i o n attempts "to mock, subvert and pre-empt any t r a d i t i o n a l attempts a t c r i t i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of i t s e l f " ; but t h i s should not imply t h a t i n n o v a t i v e attempts a t c r i t i c a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n would be any more s u c c e s s f u l . nabokov's n a r r a t o r s want to p r o s e l y t i z e the reader and the c r i t i c a l i k e i n t o a c c e p t i n g the l i f e - g i v i n g v a l u e s of n a r r a t i v e s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s ; barthelme s n a r r a t o r s , conscious not of t h e i r l i t e r a r y s t r e n g t h s but t h e i r weaknesses, attempt to convince the reader t h a t l i t e r a r y c r i t i c i s m i s a waste of time. in "the g l a s s mountain," f o r example, the n a r r a t o r s c a l e s the mountain by adhering as b e s t he can to both the mountain and the b e s t procedures of romance l i t e r a t u r e . he achieves the summit and the symbol: . i approached the symbol, with i t s l a y e r s of meaning, but when i touched i t , i t changed i n t o o n l y a b e a u t i f u l p r i n c e s s . . i threw the b e a u t i f u l p r i n c e s s h e a d f i r s t down the mountain to my acquaintances. . who c o u l d be r e l i e d upon to d e a l with her (pp. - ). the n a r r a t o r presents an anti-romance, a c o u n t e r - f a i r y t a l e , which subverts the honoured p r a c t i c e of d e l v i n g beneath the s u r f a c e of the s t o r y f o r the b u r i e d t r e a s u r e s of u n i v e r s a l l y s i g n i f i c a n t symbols. a f t e r a l l , the g l a s s mountain n a r r a t o r i s o s t e n s i b l y on a c r i t i c a l quest, an e x p l i c a t o r s e a r c h i n g f o r ( ) stevick, p. . meaning i n the t e x t , hoping f o r luminous symbols to i l l u m i n a t e murky prose. thus he muses a t the -foot mark: . "the c o n v e n t i o n a l symbol (such as the n i g h t i n g a l e , o f t e n a s s o c i a t e d w i t h melancholy), even though i t i s r e c o g n i z e d o n l y through agreement, i s not a s i g n ( l i k e the . t r a f f i c l i g h t ) because, again, i t presumably arouses deep f e e l i n g s and i s regarded as p o s s e s s i n g p r o p e r t i e s beyond what the eye alone sees." .('a d i c t i o n a r y - of l i t e r a r y terms) . a number of n i g h t i n g a l e s w i t h t r a f f i c l i g h t s t i e d to t h e i r l e g s flew past me (p. ) . the o b j e c t of statement i s to make sylvan barnet's handbook d e f i n i t i o n seem l u d i c r o u s l y d o c t r i n a i r e , and, by e x t e n s i o n , make any and a l l reader's guides, t w e n t i e t h century views, and c o l e s ' notes and q u e r i e s seem f u t i l e . i remember reading those l i n e s i n "the g l a s s mountain" some years ago, j u s t a f t e r they were p u b l i s h e d i n c i t y l i f e ( ), and i n c o r p o r a t i n g them i n an essay which was f i l l e d w i t h e x h i l a r a t i o n a t the thought of a l l the s t u f f y c a t h e d r a l s of outmoded l i t e r a r y c r i t i c i s m being razed to the ground (without g i v i n g any thought to what might r e p l a c e them). on one of the more e n t h u s i a s t i c a l l y a n a r c h i s t i c pages, my p r o f e s s o r wrote i n the margin, "that way madness l i e s ! " q u i t e t r u e , and l a t e r i n the chapter i t w i l l be demonstrated t h a t many of the n a r r a t o r s are l i t e r a l l y mad. a t t h i s p o i n t however, i t should be emphasized t h a t the n a r r a t o r ' s a t t i t u d e towards l i t e r a r y c r i t i c i s m i s not o n l y d e s t r u c t i v e of phoney r h e t o r i c and cheap p l a t i t u d e s , but a l s o any form of i n t e l l e c t u a l c r i t i c i s m , p a r t i c u l a r l y criticism which has as i t s o b j e c t the d i s c o v e r y of v a l u e . s a t i r i c elements i n the s t o r i e s are r a r e l y balanced with any sense of p o s i t i v e moral a b s o l u t e s , and attacks on patently absurd methods of l i t e r a r y c r i t i c s m are not balanced by proposals of sane alternatives. snow white, for example, attempts to undermine c r i t i c i s m by means of the sudden introduction of a reader's quiz: . do you l i k e the story so far? yes ( ) no (.) . does snow white resemble the snow white you remember? yes ( ) no ( ) . have you understood, i n reading to t h i s point, . that paul i s the prince-figure? yes ( ) no ( ) . in the further development of the story, would you l i k e more emotion ( ) or less emotion ( ) ? . do you f e e l that the creation of new modes of hysteria i s a viable undertaking for the a r t i s t of today? yes ( ) no ( ) . has the work, f o r you, a metaphysical dimension? yes ( ) no ( ) . what i s i t (twenty-five words or less)? . are the seven men, i n your view, adequately characterized as individuals? yes ( ) no ( ) . do you f e e l that the authors guild has been s u f f i c i e n t l y vigorous i n representing writers before the congress i n matters pertaining to copyright l e g i s l a t i o n ? yes ( ) no ( ) . holding i n mind a l l works of f i c t i o n since the war, i n a l l languages, how would you rate . the present.-work, on a scale of one to ten, so far? (please c i r c l e your answer) . do you stand up when you read? ( ) l i e down? ( ) s i t ? ( ) (pp. - ) in t h i s parody of the gentlemanly r h e t o r i c a l exchange between reader and narrator, the reader i s reduced to the r o l e of an undergraduate answering a mid-term quiz. besides, the questions are loaded; to understand t h a t paul i s the p r i n c e - f i g u r e i s to demonstrate a r e l i a n c e on the outmoded e x p e c t a t i o n t h a t a c h a r a c t e r r e p r e s e n t s some l a r g e r a b s t r a c t i o n (we know how barthelme f e e l s about symbols). of course paul i s not a p r i n c e - f i g u r e a t a l l : snow white complains, "paul i s :. f r o g . . . . i thought he would, a t some p o i n t , c a s t o f f h i s mottled w e t t i s h green-and-brown integument to reappear washed i n the hundred g l i s t e r i n g hues of p r i n c e l i n e s s . but he i s pure f r o g " (p. ). the q u i z demonstrates a d i s t r u s t f o r the e n t e r p r i s e of a r t . when a r t i s b i g b u s i n e s s ("matters p e r t a i n i n g to copy- r i g h t l e g i s l a t i o n " ) , i t seems u n l i k e l y t h a t a r t w i l l have a metaphysical dimension. i t i s hard to say which the c y n i c a l q u e s t i o n s and damn more: the t r a d i t i o n t h a t a r t has more than a s u r f a c e , or the t r a d i t i o n t h a t a r t can be e x p l a i n e d , e x p l i c a t e d and i n t e r p r e t e d . snow white and "the glass mountain" are symptomatic of a malaise t h a t permeates a l l of barthelme's s t o r i e s . the poor d i s e a s e d n a r r a t o r , i n s t e a d of running t h i n g s w i t h calm and c o n t r o l , f i n d s h i m s e l f f i l l e d w i t h s e l f - d o u b t . how should he know what should be i n c l u d e d i n h i s s t o r y ? as one of the snow white dwarfs says, "we l i k e books t h a t have a l o t of dreck i n them, matter which p r e s e n t s i t s e l f as not wholly r e l e v a n t (or indeed, a t a l l r e l e v a n t ) but which, c a r e f u l l y attended t o , can supply a k i n d of "sense of what i s going on" (p. ). surrounded by dreck, the n a r r a t o r i s h a r d l y i n the p o s i t i o n o f , say, henry james, t r a c i n g the f i g u r e i n the c a r p e t . "where i s the f i g u r e i n the c a r p e t ? " asks. kevin the dwarf. "or i s i t j u s t ... c a r p e t ? " (p. ) . s k e p t i c a l or confused about the p o s s i b i l i t i e s of language and l i t e r a t u r e , d e f e n s i v e about c r i t i c i s m , the n a r r a t o r doubts h i s own a r t i s t i c powers. in "the p a r t y , " f o r example, h i s s p e c u l a t i o n s about h i s s o c i a l r o l e can a l s o be taken as a comment on a e s t h e t i c s . he muses t h a t s o c i e t y ' s c r u c i a l t a s k s "are o f t e n e n t r u s t e d to people who have f a t a l flaws" (p. ) . his c o n f i d e n c e has been s h a t t e r e d by h i s w i f e (barth- elme wives are g e n e r a l l y p h i l i s t i n e m a t e r i a l i s t s ) , who a t t a c k s h i s c u l t u r a l heroes, kafka and k l e i s t . he w o r r i e s t h a t he has run out of i d e a s : "when one has spoken a l o t one has a l r e a d y used up a l l of the i d e a s one has. you must change the people you are speaking to so t h a t you appear, to y o u r s e l f , to be s t i l l a l i v e " (p. ) . and i n a r a t h e r a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l phrase t h a t c h a r a c t e r i z e s barthelme's w r i t i n g s t y l e , the n a r r a t o r condemns h i m s e l f : "wonderful elegance! no good a t a l l ! " (p. ) . the n a r r a t o r of "at the t o l s t o y museum" notes evidence of f a t a l s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s even i n the monumental f i g u r e of t o l s t o y : ".to make h i m s e l f i n t e r e s t i n g , he o c c a s i o n a l l y bowed backward" ( c i t y l i f e , p. ) . the l i t e r a r y past i s not an i n s p i r a t i o n but a weight: "the e n t i r e b u i l d i n g , viewed from the s t r e e t , suggests t h a t i t i s about to f a l l on you" (p. ) . "this the a r c h i t e c t s r e l a t e to t o l s t o y ' s moral a u t h o r i t y , " adds barthelme's n a r r a t o r , a l l u d i n g to the i d e a t h a t a r t i s t s i n the past were i n t e g r a t e d and secure--^omniscient, with a h i n t of o m n i p o t e n c e — i n t h e i r r o l e s as moral a r b i t e r s f o r s o c i e t y . the modern a r t i s t , says barthelme's n a r r a t o r s , i s anything but a figure of certitude and authority. edgar of "the dolt," for example, repeatedly f a i l s the five-hour, fifty-minute national writer's examination. he also f a i l s to deal with the "son manque": edgar t r i e d to think of a way to badmouth t h i s immense son leaning over him l i k e a large b l a r i n g building. but he couldn't think of anything. thinking of anything was beyond him. i sympathize. i myself have these problems. endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of a l l i s to begin, to begin,-to begin (unspeakable, p. ). the idea of an integrated a r t i s t , i n command of his c r a f t , i s now seen as a delusion. the a r t i s t i n "a shower of gold" . objects to the art dealer's scheme of cutting his sculpture i n two (small pieces move faster; shorter s h e l f - l i f e ) ; "you have a very romantic impulse," says the art dealer, "i admire, dimly, the posture. you read too much i n the history of a r t . i t estranges you from those p o s s i b i l i t i e s for authentic selfhood that inhere i n the present century" ( c a l i g a r i , p. ). presumably authentic selfhood involves a surrender to the ethics of the marketplace. there i s a fine l i n e between the writer's unions and i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d imagination of the soviet union, and the book of the month competition of the west. a merger of the two systems i s proposed i n barthelme's a n t i - utopian story, "paraguay": the problem of a r t . new a r t i s t s have been obtained.... production i s up. quality- control devices have been i n s t a l l e d at those points where the interests of a r t i s t s and audience i n t e r s e c t . . . . the r a t i o n a l i z e d art i s dispatched from central art dumps to regional a r t dumps, and from there into the lifestreams of c i t i e s , . . . marketing c o n s i d e r a t i o n s have not been allowed to d i c t a t e product mix; r a t h e r , each a r t i s t i s encouraged to m a i n t a i n , i n h i s software, h i g h l y p e r s o n a l , even i d i o s y n c r a t i c , standards (the s o - c a l l e d "hand of the a r t i s t " c o n c e p t ) . . . ( c i t y l i f e , pp. - ). "highly p e r s o n a l , even i d i o s y n c r a t i c , standards" suggests the theme o u t l i n e d i n the f i r s t chapter, t h a t the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r p r o v i d e s an a l t e r n a t i v e to impersonal and o b j e c t i v e t h e o r i e s of n a r r a t i o n . but although barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are s u b j e c t i v e , and i n t r u s i v e enough to be n o t i c e a b l e , they o f t e n appear confused and estranged w i t h i n t h e i r own n a r r a t i v e s . we seem to be t r a c i n g a downward s p i r a l . the other side o f the avant garde the n a r r a t o r s t r e a t language and l i t e r a t u r e as dangerous a c t i v i t i e s . the n a r r a t o r s ' doubts and second thoughts are r e f l e c t e d i n both the form and content of the s t o r i e s , r e s u l t i n g i n a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s stance which i s a n t i - c o n v e n t i o n a l , sub- v e r s i v e , d i s r u p t i v e . but nothing i n the paragraph above i s s u r p r i s i n g . barthelme as an avant garde a e s t h e t i c i a n - - w h a t c o u l d be more de r i g u e u r i n the s e v e n t i e s ? one must t h e r e f o r e c o n s i d e r the n o t i o n t h a t barthelme i s aware of avant garde e x p e c t a t i o n s , and t h a t to some extent h i s work i s a r e a c t i o n a g a i n s t them. perhaps a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , mocking stance towards l i t e r a r y conventions has i t s e l f become a t e d i o u s convention ("oh god comma i abhor s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s " ) . l e t us examine barthelme's ( ) john barth, " t i t l e , " in lost in the funhouse (garden city, new york: doubleday, ), p. . work f o r what some avant garde c r i t i c s would term r e t r o g r a d e tendencies towards emotion and communication, and o u t l i n e some of the more s t r i n g e n t avant garde t h e o r i e s under which barthelme might s u p e r f i c i a l l y seem to be subsumed. to a n t i c i p a t e the chapter's subsequent argument f o r a moment, barthelme's r e a c t i o n to avant garde e x p e c t a t i o n s r e s u l t s i n an i n t e r e s t i n g t w i s t to s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s . i t seems t h a t s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s c o n t a i n s w i t h i n i t s e l f an escape route from s t e r i l i t y , archness, s o l i p s i s m and the other attendant demons. the escape route might be termed p l a i n statement, messages s t r a i g h t to the reader. t h i s i s accompl- i s h e d through a r e v i v a l of the r h e t o r i c a l n a r r a t o r - r e a d e r r e l a t i o n s h i p t h a t went out of f a s h i o n i n the n i n e t e e n t h century. u n f o r t u n a t e l y , escape from a s t r u c t u r e of s e l f - d o u b t and double-edged i r o n y leads to a new k i n d of misery. although the n a r r a t o r ' s v o i c e i s now heard with a new d i r e c t n e s s , h i s v o i c e i s not n e c e s s a r i l y more agreeable. those s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i v e masks are designed, i t seems, to c o n c e a l the t r u e i d e n t i t y of the n a r r a t o r , r e v e a l e d to be an unpleasant person. but t h i s new t w i s t i s examined l a t e r i n the chapter; we are p r e s e n t l y concerned with barthelme's conformity, or l a c k of conformity, to the i n s t i t u t i o n a l i z e d avant garde. the essence of the avant garde p o s i t i o n i s t h a t the novel i s i n a s t a t e of c r i s i s . richard gilman, f o r example, says the novel must once and f o r a l l abandon "dead forms" and r e c o g n i z e the " c r i s i s i n l i t e r a t u r e . " he f i n d s t h a t ( ) richard gilman/ the confusion of realms (new york: random house, ), p. . a s i d e from a few l a p s e s barthelme s u c c e s s f u l l y redeems f i c t i o n from i t s " a n a c h r o n i s t i c s t o r y t e l l i n g r o l e . " by c o n t r a s t , w i l l i a m gass, whom one might have thought s u f f i c i e n t l y inno- v a t i v e , stops s h o r t of h e a l t h y modernism; gass work i s guilty of "burrowing f o r comfort and s a f e t y i n t o the f a m i l i a r , not d a r i n g f u l l y to c a s t o f f i t s cargo of l i t e r a r y i n h e r i t a n c e , employing c e r t a i n r i t u a l i s t i c n a r r a t i v e procedures which i t s e n t i r e p i o n e e r i n g t h r u s t denies and seeks to a b o l i s h " (p. ). one might q u i b b l e t h a t there would be nothing l e f t of nabokov i f he were f o r c e d to abandon h i s massive cargo of l i t e r a r y i n h e r i t a n c e ; one might c i t e hawthorne's wise g l o s s on the n o t i o n of abandoning the good ship l i t e r a t u r e i n "earth's holocaust"; but i t seems the f i r s t r u l e i n an avant garde c r i s i s i s to abandon the p a s t . raymond federman i n v e n t s a new term, " s u r f i c t i o n , " i n order to express h i s d i s s a t i s f a c t i o n with "the f a i l i n g s of t r a d i t i o n a l f i c t i o n . " " i t i s t h i s ... i n s u f f i c i e n c y , t h i s c r i s i s of f i c t i o n which brings"many "contemporary w r i t e r s to ... r e w r i t e f i c t i o n i n terms and i n forms t h a t have not y e t been d e f i n e d . " richard k o s t e l a n e t z o f f e r s dark warnings about a c o n s p i r a c y a g a i n s t new l i t e r a t u r e on the p a r t of the " e s t h e t i c a l l y c o n s e r v a t i v e r e v i e w i n g media-—the new york times book review, saturday review/world, or the new york review of books," a l l of which a c t as o b s t a c l e s to t h a t l i t e r a r y i n n o v a t i o n which would " r e s u s c i t a t e modern a r t s t h a t are i n c i p - i e n t l y s e n i l e . " p h i l i p p e s o l l e r s , p r o t e s t i n g outdated n o t i o n s ( ) raymond federman, "a prefatory note," s u r f i c t i o n , ed. federman (chicago: the swallow press, inc., ), p. . ( ) richard <kostelanetz,"new f i c t i o n in america," in s u r f i c t i o n , pp. , . of genre, g i v e s the c o n s p i r a c y a m i l i t a r y c h a r a c t e r : "a book which seems to r e c o g n i z e none of the genre's r u l e s y e t dares to c a l l i t s e l f a novel provokes the anger and i r r i t a t i o n of the guardians of t h i s law, the l i t e r a r y t r a f f i c cops." the c o r o l l a r y of the t h e s i s t h a t the novel i s i n a c r i s i s i s t h a t the benighted anglo-saxon mind i s i n c a p a b l e of recog- n i z i n g a c r i s i s . many c r i t i c s use french t h e o r i s t s to b e r a t e , condemn and otherwise snub the o l d - f a s h i o n e d american and b r i t i s h n o v e l i s t s . the most noteworthy of these c r i t i c s i s susan sontag, who g r i m l y announces t h a t i n france, "the l i n e o f p o s t - n o v e l prose n a r r a t i v e from the s u r r e a l i s t f i c t i o n s to those of borges, beckett and r o b b e - g r i l l e t , are taken to occupy the c e n t r a l p o s i t i o n i n contemporary l e t t e r s , " w h i l e most novels " i n t r a d i t i o n a l ' r e a l i s t i c ' forms (such as continue to t h i s day to be c r i t i c a l successes i n england and america) are regarded as e s s e n t i a l l y u n i n t e r e s t i n g , b a r e l y noteworthy products of a r e t a r d e d or r e a c t i o n a r y consciousness." note the i m p l i e d r a d i c a l c h i c equation of r e a c t i o n a r y (conservative) views and r e t a r d a t i o n ; o n l y brain-damaged f a s c i s t s would read saul bellow. sontag argues i n a g a i n s t i n t e r p r e t a t i o n t h a t the novel r e q u i r e s " r e n o v a t i o n , " (pop a r t p o s t e r s on the w a l l s , perhaps), trapped as i t i s i n the n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y ' s "wholly mundane concept of r e a l i t y . " thus, "the novel as a form of a r t has ( ) p h i l i p p e s o l l e r s , "the novel and the experience of limits," in s u r f i c t i o n , p. . ( ) sontag, pref., writing degree zero, p. ix. ( ) susan sontag, against interpretation (new york: farrar, straus and giroux, ), p. . nothing to l o s e , and e v e r y t h i n g to g a i n , by joining the r e v o l u t i o n t h a t has a l r e a d y swept over most of the other a r t s " (p. i l l ) . a f t e r the r e v o l u t i o n , when the b a r r i c a d e s have been j o y f u l l y removed from the f r e e s t r e e t s , sontag promises t h a t the novel w i l l then and o n l y then recover from i t s present degraded depths; the novel a t the moment "has sunk to the l e v e l of an a r t form deeply, i f not i r r e v o c a b l y , compromised by philxstinismf", but i n t h a t new dawn, the renovated novel w i l l become something "which people w i t h s e r i o u s and s o p h i s t i c a t e d t a s t e i n the other a r t s can take s e r i o u s l y " (pp. , ). one i s tempted to embrace what sontag would c a l l p h i l - i s t i n i s m , i f p h i l i s t i n i s m i s the a l t e r n a t i v e to her c h i l l i n g s o p h i s t i c a t i o n . perhaps her p o s i t i o n i n the van, f a c i n g f r o n t of course, makes i t d i f f i c u l t f o r her to p e r c e i v e the l i t e r a r y landmarks behind. her d i s d a i n f o r the mundane r e a l i t y we a l l have i n common and take f o r granted (and, one l i k e s to t h i n k , share) c e r t a i n l y p l a c e s her i n the avant garde t r a d i t i o n as d e f i n e d by g e r a l d g r a f f : 'the avant-garde e s t h e t i c , whether i t m a n i f e s t s i t s e l f as a mandarin formalism consecrated to a r e l i g i o n .of h i g h a r t and t r a d i t i o n or as a s u r r e a l i s t i c a s s a u l t on e s t h e t i c form, a r t , and c u l t u r e , a s s e r t s the c r e a t i v e autonomy of consciousness a g a i n s t the bourgeois r e a l i t y p r i n - c i p l e . " " the avant garde a e s t h e t i c leads to "a permanent a l i e n - a t i o n of consciousness from any .fixe.d p o s i t i o n and from a l l previous modes of consciousness...." ( ) gerald graff, "babbitt at the abyss: the s o c i a l context of postmodern american f i c t i o n , " triquarterly, no. ( ), p. . to a c e r t a i n extent barthelme f i t s the t e n e t s of the avant garde, p a r t i c u l a r l y the avant garde as t r a n s l a t e d from the french. guerard notes shrewdly t h a t "snow white h e r s e l f has a d i s t i n c t l y french m e n t a l i t y . " "behind the fun are s e r i o u s matters: e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l nightmare and the c o l l a p s e of language, the widening s e p a r a t i o n of words and experience, the phenomenological d i s t r u s t of v a l u e : a l l very french." but what i s even more shrewd i s guerard's c o n c l u s i o n : "barth- elme may have taken the b e s t from the french i n t e l l e c t u a l while s a t i r i z i n g h i s g l i b n e s s . " one c o u l d argue t h a t b a r t h - elme s c h a r a c t e r s are not so much a l i e n i s t e s (to c o i n a french term) as p a r o d i c or mock or p s e u d o - a l i e n i s t e s : for viewed from a c e r t a i n angle, the s p e c t a c l e of a b o u r g e o i s i e equipped with i d e o l o g i e s de- v i s e d by the s p i r i t u a l r e b e l s and a r i s t o c r a t s of modernist a r t and l i t e r a t u r e , a b o u r g e o i s i e s e l f - a b s o r b e d and n u r t u r i n g an acute consciousness of p s y c h o l o g i c a l g r i e v a n c e and v i c t i m i z a t i o n , i s a r i c h t o p i c f o r s a t i r e . ^ instead of being one of the a l l i e s i n the avant garde f o r c e s , barthelme i s to some extent a s a t i r i s t of the avant garde. i t s t h e o r i e s have f i l t e r e d down through a l l s t r a t a of s o c i e t y , from the l o f t y i n t e l l e c t u a l p l a t e a u of susan sontag to the l o w l i e s t slum of an american n o v e l i s t ; z e n i t h boosters such as george f. b a b b i t t have been r e p l a c e d as s a t i r i c t a r g e t s by s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , n e u r o t i c , jean luc godard f a n s . barthelme and o t h e r s "are a b l e to achieve a type of f i c t i o n which i n c o r p o r a t e s postmodern s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s w h i l e t r a n s - ( ) guerard, p. . ( ) graff, "babbitt at the abyss," p. . cending postmodern s u b j e c t i v i s m , (p. ) . however, barthelme does not i n f a c t "transcend" postmodern s u b j e c t i v i t y i f the word i m p l i e s t h a t the i s s u e s t h a t occasioned s u b j e c t i v i s m have been somehow surmounted. while the s t o r i e s mock the f a l s e r h e t o r i c of the avant garde, they do not r e f u t e the i s s u e s c o n f r o n t e d by the avant garde — "<e/pistemologic;al nightmare and the c o l l a p s e of language ... the phenomenological d i s t r u s t of v a l u e . . . . " the s t o r i e s d e p i c t a s o c i e t y f i l l e d with d e b i l i t a t i n g s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s , angst and d e s p a i r , but they r a r e l y o f f e r h e a l t h y a l t e r n a t i v e s . the g l i b n e s s of the avant garde i s mocked, however, p a r t i c u l a r l y the g l i b n e s s as a p p l i e d to a e s t h e t i c s , and mocked i n a manner t h a t a f f e c t s the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r , a t times t r a n s f o r m i n g him i n t o an o l d - fashioned communicator, the reader's f r i e n d . the n a r r a t o r as plain-speaker peterson, the hero of "a shower of gold," encounters a number o f c h a r a c t e r s who spout avant garde p l a t i t u d e s , and y e t belong to the b o u r g e o i s i e ; h i s barber, f o r example, i s the author of "four books t i t l e d the d e c i s i o n to be" ( c a l i g a r i , p. ). peterson i s i n v i t e d to a t e l e v i s i o n program which s p e c i a l i z e s i n prime time e x i s t e n t i a l i s m . a program d i r e c t o r d e t a i l s the r a t i o n a l e of who am i? : people today, we f e e l , are hidden away i n s i d e themselves, a l i e n a t e d , desperate, l i v i n g i n anguish, d e s p a i r and bad f a i t h . why have we been thrown here, and abandoned? that's the q u e s t i o n we t r y to answer, mr. peterson. man stands alone i n a f e a t u r e l e s s , anonymous landscape, i n f e a r and t r e m b l i n g and s i c k n e s s unto death. god i s dead. nothingness every- where. dread. estrangement. f i n i t u d e . who am i? approaches these problems i n a r o o t r a d i c a l way (p. ). do these i d e a s i n the program d i r e c t o r ' s mind come from a l i f e - time o f kierkegaard s c h o l a r s h i p ? from an i n t u i t i v e understanding of the degraded depths of the human heart? or from d r u g s t o r e p h i l o s o p h e r s and n i g h t s c h o o l courses, h i s t o r y of thought . (in snow white the heroine muses t h a t , "the main theme t h a t runs through my b r a i n i s t h a t what i s , i s i n s u f f i c i e n t . where d i d t h a t s u l k y n o t i o n come from? from the r e n t a l l i b r a r y , d o u b t l e s s " [p. ].) peterson r e f u s e s to accept the premise of the tv program, and d e l i v e r s an impassioned ( i . e . , o l d - f a s h i o n e d ) speech: the emcee waved a t the f l o o r manager to t u r n peterson o f f , but peterson kept t a l k i n g . "in t h i s k i n d of a world ... absurd i f you w i l l , p o s s i b i l i t i e s n e v e r t h e l e s s p r o l i f e r a t e . ... don't be r e c o n c i l e d . . . . [i]ndulge i n a mindless optimism. v i s i t g i r l s at dusk.... my mother was a r o y a l v i r g i n ... and my f a t h e r a shower o f g o l d . my c h i l d h o o d was p a s t o r a l and e n e r g e t i c and r i c h i n experiences which developed my c h a r a c t e r . as a young man i was noble i n reason, i n f i n i t e i n f a c u l t y , i n form express and admirable, and i n apprehen- s i o n ..." peterson went on and on and although he was, i n a sense, l y i n g , i n a sense he was not (p. ). the d i r e c t o r ' s phrase about approaching contemporary prob- lems i n a " r o o t , a r a d i c a l way" c o u l d be found i n v a r i o u s permu- t a t i o n s i n any number of the c r i t i c a l a r t i c l e s surrounding the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s new f i c t i o n , and i n any number of a r t i s t i c manifestos- and canada c o u n c i l a p p l i c a t i o n s . i t i s dangerous indeed to a s c r i b e to barthelme the i n t e l l e c t u a l n o t i o n s t h a t are thought to be the i n e v i t a b l e concomitants of s e l f - c o n s c i o u s f i c t i o n ( s o l i p s i s m , p h i l o s o p h i c chaos, a n t i - r e a l i s m , "dread. estrangement:.- f i n i t u d e . " ) . however, note how the n a r r a t o r hedges h i s e p i s t e m o l o g i c a l bets i n t h a t f i n a l l i n e ("in a sense"). even i n t h i s very e a r l y ( ) and a t y p i c a l l y o p t i m i s t i c s t o r y , the t a r g e t i s not n e c e s s a r i l y the h o r r o r s of modern l i f e , but the too-easy a r t i c u l a t i o n of these h o r r o r s . thus jerome charyn sounds r a t h e r l i k e the program d i r e c t o r when he argues t h a t the b e s t postwar american w r i t e r s address themselves to a "sense of dread." he concludes t h a t language has l e f t c u l t u r e behind and turned i n on i t s e l f . l i t e r a t u r e . i s "the language of h y s t e r i a . " snow white p i c k s up on the i d e a : "do you f e e l t h a t the c r e a t i o n of new modes of h y s t e r i a i s a v i a b l e undertaking f o r the a r t i s t of today?" the q u e s t i o n exposes the element of jargon i n charyn s t h e s i s , and one i s reminded of the venomous a t t a c k on i n t e l l e c t u a l canned goods i n saul bellow's herzog: "the canned sauerkraut of spengler's 'prussian s o c i a l i s m , ' the commonplaces of the wasteland outlook, the cheap mental s t i m u l a n t s of a l i e n a t i o n , the cant and r a n t of pipsqueaks about i n a u t h e n t i c i t y and f o r l o r n n e s s . " consider a l s o ronald sukenick.. in his: the death of the novel and other s t o r i e s , sukenick says, "the contemporary w r i t e r - — the w r i t e r who i s a c u t e l y i n touch with the l i f e of which he i s p a r t - - i s f o r c e d to s t a r t from s c r a t c h : r e a l i t y doesn't e x i s t , time doesn't e x i s t , p e r s o n a l i t y doesn't e x i s t . " ( ) jerome charyn, introd., the single voice, ed. jerome charyn (new york: macmillan, ), p. ix. ( ) saul bellow, herzog (new york: viking press, ), as quoted in graff, "babbi'.tt at the- abyss,"„ p. . ( ) ronald sukenick, "the death of the novel," in the death of the novel and other stories (new york: dial press, ), p. : my emphasis. but i n "departures," the n a r r a t o r i s i n l o v e w i t h the w i f e of a famous poet. he imagines her walking w i t h her husband " i n soho, seeing what the new a r t i s t s are r e f u s i n g to do t h e r e , i n t h e i r quest f o r a s c r a t c h to s t a r t from" (sadness, p. ) . in t h a t t e l l i n g l i n e , barthelme's n a r r a t o r d i s a s s o c i a t e s h i m s e l f from d o c t r i n a i r e n o t i o n s about the n e c e s s i t y of abandoning r e a l i s m , meaningful language and other l i t e r a r y t r a d i t i o n s . by mocking the avant garde a r t i s f ' s quest f o r the a b s o l u t e freedom of an e g o i s t i n a vacuum, barthelme's n a r r a t o r e s t a b l i s h e s a r h e t o r i c a l l i n k w i t h the reader. the reader i s suddenly o f f e r e d a guide to the b e w i l d e r i n g maze of a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s a r t . for example, roland b a r t h e s c l a i m s t h a t w r i t i n g i s " i n no way an instrument f o r communication," r a t h e r , i t i s "an anti-communication, i t i s i n t i m i d a t i n g . " what would barthes make of the f o l l o w i n g passage from "the glass mountain"? . i was new i n the neighbourhood. . in the s t r e e t s were many people w i t h d i s t u r b e d eyes. . look f o r y o u r s e l f . (p. ). i s n ' t t h a t an a c t o f communication? "look f o r y o u r s e l f . " doesn' t h a t l i n e f l a t l y c o n t r a d i c t r o b b e - g r i l l e t when he says, " a r t i s based on no t r u t h t h a t e x i s t s before i t ; and one may say t h a t i t expresses nothing but i t s e l f . " ? obviously we are i n v i t e d by the n a r r a t o r to look i n our s t r e e t s , and c o n f i r m by sense ( ) barthes, pp. , . ( ) robbe-grillet, as quoted in gore vidal, homage to daniel shays (new york: random house, ), p. . impression, r a t i o n a l i t y , a common r e a l i t y and common sense, what the n a r r a t o r has p e r c e i v e d and expressed f o r our e d i f i c a t i o n . the consequent flow of sympathy between the reader and the n a r r a t o r i s based on the two s h a r i n g a common r e a l i t y . i t i s an a c t of o l d - f a s h i o n e d communication which supports t h a t naive n o t i o n of holden c a u l f i e l d t h a t a good book prompts the reader to phone up the author f o r a t e t e - a - t e t e and a h e a r t to h e a r t . in s h o r t , barthelme's n a r r a t o r s do not ignore the m i s s i n g l i n k i n much of modern a e s t h e t i c s , the audience. the s t o r i e s tend to bear out borges' o b s e r v a t i o n t h a t a'/book " i s more than a v e r b a l s t r u c t u r e or s e r i e s of v e r b a l s t r u c t u r e s ; i t i s the d i a l o g u e i t e s t a b l i s h e s w i t h i t s reader and the i n t o n a t i o n i t imposes upon h i s v o i c e and the changing and durable images i t leaves i n h i s memory." consider "sentence," which c o n s i s t s of one long uncompleted sentence t h a t proceeds by means of f r e e a s s o c i a t i o n . there are sketches of a d e t e r i o r a t i n g marriage and a l u s t f u l doctor, but, as the w r i t e r w o r r i e s , the " t h i n wires of dramatic t e n s i o n ... have been omitted" ( c i t y l i f e , p. ). the n a r r a t o r f i r s t i n t r o d u c e s and then banishes f a c t o r s t h a t would endanger the •sentence's a e s t h e t i c autonomy, such as a messenger who avoids the sentence's t r a p door long enough to demand some s o r t of d o c t r i n a i r e p r o t e s t l i t e r a t u r e : "' stop making t h i s sentence, and begin i n s t e a d to make mohoiy-nagy c o c k t a i l s , f o r those are what we r e a l l y need, on the f r o n t i e r s of bad behavior....'" and with a bow to p i r a n d e l l o , the n a r r a t o r imagines "a p o s s i b l e ( ) borges, "a note on (toward) bernard shaw," in labyrinths, p. . coup d ' e t a t w i t h i n the sentence, whereby i t s c h i e f verb would be ..." (p. ). in one sense t h i s i s a demonstration of the a e s t h e t i c s of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s v e r b a l s t r u c t u r e ; the e x p l i c i t moral of the s t o r y i s t h a t we should honor such a "man-made o b j e c t " : "a s t r u c t u r e to be t r e a s u r e d f o r i t s weakness, as opposed to the s t r e n g t h of stones" (p. ). so f a r , a r t - f o r - a r t ' s - s a k e . however, the sentence a l s o f e a t u r e s windows and a i r c o n d i t i o n i n g f o r the common reader. we note t h a t pure s t r u c t u r a l i s t s are unwelcome: "[h]ere comes ludwig, the expert on sentence con- s t r u c t i o n ... [who w i l l ] probably f i n d a way to cure the sentence's sprawl, by u s i n g the improved ways of t h i n k i n g developed i n weimar" — but ludwig d i s a p p e a r s through another t r a p door (p. ). furthermore, the sentence i s shaped by the pressures of o u t s i d e events, as the n a r r a t o r meditates on the contemporary world and such phenomena as "the run-mad skimble-skamble of i n f o r m a t i o n s i c k n e s s " (p. - ). most i m p o r t a n t l y , the n a r r a t o r i s aware of h i s reader, and even permits h i m s e l f some o l d - f a s h i o n e d n i n e t e e n t h century c h a r a c t e r - b u i l d i n g advice; he a d v i s e s us t h a t setbacks are good f o r the s o u l ; some d e f e a t s are good f o r your c h a r a c t e r , t e a c h i n g you t h a t i t i s not by success alone t h a t one surmounts l i f e , but t h a t setbacks, too, c o n t r i b u t e to t h a t roughening of the p e r s o n a l i t y t h a t , by p r o v i d i n g a t e x t u r e d s u r f a c e to p l a c e a g a i n s t t h a t of l i f e , enables you to leave s l i g h t t r a c e s , or smudges, on the face of human h i s t o r y --your mark (p. ). t h i s s u r p r i s i n g bildungsroman i n the midst of a modern sentence i s not meant i r o n i c a l l y ; the s t o r y i s f u l l of "you," meaning the reader, and the n a r r a t o r even worries how much the reader w i l l r e t a i n when "the sentence f a l l s out of the mind t h a t holds i t (temporarily) i n some k i n d of embrace, not n e c e s s a r i l y an ardent one" (p. ). the use of the a u t h o r i a l "we" c o n t a i n s a d e f i n i t e sense o f i and thou. "sentence" i s a s t r u c t u r e aimed a t an aud- i e n c e , not merely immortality. in one of h i s r a r e t h e o r e t i c a l statements, barthelme argues t h a t : the reader r e c o n s t i t u t e s the work by h i s a c t i v e p a r t i c i p a t i o n , by approaching the o b j e c t , tapping i t , shaking i t , h o l d i n g i t to h i s ear to hear the r o a r i n g w i t h i n . i t i s c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of the o b j e c t t h a t i t does not d e c l a r e i t s e l f a l l a t once, i n a rush of p l e a s a n t n a i v e t e . joyce enforces the way i n which finnegans wake i s to be read. he conceived the r e a d i n g to be a l i f e t i m e p r o j e c t , the book remaining always t h e r e , l i k e the landscape surrounding the r e a d e r ' s home or the b u i l d i n g s bounding the reader's apartment. the book remains p r o b l e m a t i c , u n e x h a u s t e d . ^ sterne s i m i l a r l y evokes the reader's " a c t i v e p a r t i c i p a t i o n " by promising he w i l l do " a l l t h a t l i e s i n my power to keep h i s [the reader's] i m a g i n a t i o n as busy as my own," and denis d i d e r o t says i n c e c i n'est pas un conte, "when one t e l l s a s t o r y , i t i s to someone who l i s t e n s ; and however b r i e f l y the s t o r y l a s t s , i t i s r a r e t h a t the t e l l e r i s not sometimes i n t e r r u p t e d by h i s l i s t e n e r . that i s why i have i n t r o d u c e d ... a f i g u r e who w i l l p l a y approximately the r o l e of the reader." i t i s ( ) donald barthelme, as quoted in klinkowitz, l i t e r a r y disrup- tions, p. . ( ) tristram shandy, p. ; denis diderot, as quoted in alter, p. . p a r t of the t r a d i t i o n of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r to pay a t t e n t i o n to the reader, and we should c o n s i d e r the l i b e r a t i n g e f f e c t on the reader of being c a t e r e d t o , i n an era where the audience i s l a r g e l y ignored. that the n o t i o n of c a t e r i n g to the reader seems s u b l i t e r a r y and b e s t s e l l e r i s h i s a measure of our r e c e n t h u m i l i t y i n the face of a r t ; there i s a t h r i v i n g t r a d i t i o n t h a t the reader i s the l e a s t important f a c t o r : . the w r i t e r expresses, he does not communicate.... . the p l a i n reader be damned! ̂ .̂ i f finnegans wake or the cantos seem impenetrable, then the f a u l t l i e s i n our inadequate educations or p i t i f u l mental c a p a c i t i e s , not i n joyce and pound. but barthelme's n a r r a t o r s o f t e n take the o p p o s i t e p o s i t i o n , and a s s i d u o u s l y c u l t i v a t e the reader's a t t e n t i o n . in " f l o r e n c e green i s ," the n a r r a t o r says, i ; i am a young man, but v e r y b r i l l i a n t , very i n g r a t i a t i n g , i adopt t h i s i n g r a t i a t i n g tone because i can't help myself (for .fear of b o r i n g you)." "reader," he c o n t i n u e s , we have r o l e s to p l a y , thou and i : you are the d o c t o r (washing your hands between hours), and i, i am, i t h i n k , the nervous d r e a r y p a t i e n t . i am f r e e a s s o c i a t i n g , b r i l l i a n t l y , b r i l l i a n t l y , to put you i n t o the problem. or f o r f e a r of b o r i n g you: which? ( c a l i g a r i , p. ) . the n a r r a t o r of "see the moon?" s i m i l a r l y senses h i s audience s l i p p i n g away: "i know you t h i n k i'm wasting my time. you've made t h a t p e r f e c t l y c l e a r " (p. ). he w o r r i e s t h a t the ( ) "proclamation," .'transition, p. fi- } . c h a r a c t e r of h i s w i f e , ann, w i l l i n t e r f e r e w i t h the flow of the s t o r y , and t h a t the reader might not be i n t e r e s t e d i n h i s p e r s o n a l problems: ann. i'm going to keep her g h o s t l y . j u s t the odd b i t o f d i a l o g u e . "what i s l i t t l e gog doing." " k i c k i n g . " i don' want her b u r s t i n g i n on us w i t h the f r e s h n e s s and o r i g i n a l i t y of her obser- v a t i o n s . what we need here i s p e r s p e c t i v e . she's good with gregory though. i t h i n k he h a l f l i k e s her. don't go. the greased-pig chase and b a l - l o o n launchings come next (pp. - ). the n a r r a t o r tops greased-pigs i n "can we t a l k , " i n which the metaphor f o r a n a r r a t i v e i s a new b u i l d i n g . he composes a brochure "to l u r e f o l k i n t o my new b u i l d i n g . t i t l e d 'the human heart i n c o n f l i c t with i t s e l f . ' promising -hour i n c i n e r a t i o n . and other f e a t u r e s " (unspeakable, p. ). in an e f f o r t to h o l d the reader's a t t e n t i o n , the n a r r a t o r becomes the reader's s p i r i t u a l guide, or h i s peer, or some other r e l a t i o n s h i p opposed to the c h i l l i n g h i e r a r c h y of e l i t i s t a r t i s t and humble reader. in "rebecca," the n a r r a t o r uses the g e n t l e - manly l o c u t i o n , "reader": i t i s c o r r e c t to f e e l f o r rebecca i n t h i s s i t u a t i o n , but, reader, n e i t h e r can h i l d a ' s p o s i t i o n be c o n s i d e r e d an e n v i a b l e one, f o r t r u t h , as bergson knew, i s a hard apple, whether one i s throwing i t or c a t c h i n g i t . "what remains?" rebecca s a i d s t o n i l y . "i can l o v e you i n s p i t e of — " do i_ want to be l o v e d i n s p i t e o f ? do you? does anyone? but a r e n ' t we a l l , to some degree? aren't there important p a r t s of a l l us which must be, so to say, gazed past? i t u r n a b l i n d eye to t h a t aspect of you, and you t u r n a b l i n d eye to t h a t aspect of me, and w i t h these b l i n d eyes e y e b a l l - t o - e y e b a l l , to use an e x p r e s s i o n from the e a r l y 's. ... (amateurs, pp. - ). the n a r r a t o r i s here a m o r a l i s t i n the mode of george e l i o t , d i r e c t i n g the reader's sympathies. the messages from the n a r r a t o r to the reader are not without g u i l e ; f o r example, the n a r r a t o r of "rebecca" e x p l a i n s t h a t h i s s t o r y has been w r i t t e n f o r " s e v e r a l reasons," and t h a t nine of those reasons are " s e c r e t s " ; but there i s a t l e a s t the p o s s i b i l i t y o f d i r e c t communication and t r u s t (p. ). d i r e c t communication r e j e c t s the extreme a e s t h e t i c p o s i t i o n t h a t the a r t i s t "expresses, he does not communicate," and i t r e j e c t s another fundamental t e n e t of the avant garde, which i s t h a t we a l l d w e l l i n p r i v a t e e p i s t e m o l o g i e s : i n f a c t , there i s a counter-impulse towards a common r e a l i t y . "i wanted to be a p a i n t e r , " says the n a r r a t o r of "see the moon?": they get away w i t h murder i n my view.... you don't know how i envy them. they can p i c k up a baby ruth wrapper on the s t r e e t , glue i t on the canvas ( i n the r i g h t p l a c e , of course, t h e r e ' s t h a t ) , and l o ! people crowd around and c r y , "a r e a l baby ruth wrapper, by god, what c o u l d be r e a l e r than t h a t ! " f a n t a s t i c metaphysical advantage. you hate them, i f you're ambitious (p. ). t h i s i s meant p l a y f u l l y , but i t i_s a f a n t a s t i c metaphysical advantage; there i s no escaping the g r a v i t a t i o n a l p u l l of r e a l i s m . modern r e a d e r s have an a p p e t i t e f o r escapism, from s c i e n c e f i c t i o n to hobbits, but they have an equal a p p e t i t e f o r a sense of the r e a l world, or a t l e a s t the t r a d i t i o n a l l i t e r a r y conventions t h a t seem to express the r e a l world (events t a k i n g p l a c e i n coherent temporal sequence, c h a r a c t e r s a c t i n g through comprehensible m o t i v a t i o n , and so on). d e s p i t e p l a t o ' s c o n t e n t i o n t h a t the t h i n g s we see around us are j u s t shadows on the cave w a l l of the undeveloped i n t e l l e c t , d e s p i t e sontag's a t t a c k on the "mundane" r e a l i s m of n i n e t e e n t h century l i t e r a r y conventions, d e s p i t e the development of a s e l f - c o n s c i o u s l i t - e r a t u r e t h a t emphasizes the a r t i f i c i a l i t y of the s t o r y and the i n h e r e n t s o l i p s i s m of the n a r r a t o r , the reader continues to t e s t the s t o r y f o r correspondence to the world he l i v e s i n . despite the s o p h i s t i c a t e d n o t i o n s of l i t e r a t u r e t h a t we have been a s s o c i a t i n g with the avant garde, the average reader continues to expect from l i t e r a t u r e u s e f u l i n f o r m a t i o n and p e n e t r a t i n g i n s i g h t s t h a t he can a p p l y to h i s own c o n d u c t - - a n d i f he doesn't f i n d them, he stops r e a d i n g . hence, the tremendous p o p u l a r i t y of j o u r n a l i s m , i n which the reader's agent i s expected to d e l i v e r f a i t h f u l r e p o r t s from the i n f o r m a t i o n f r o n t ; hence the hour, channel i n f o r m a t i o n bombardment of t e l e v i s i o n ; and hence the a r t i s t i c dominance of movies. compare the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r who h a l t i n g l y d e s c r i b e s , i n coy, p a r o d i s t i c language, a r a i l r o a d s t a t i o n , a b a t t l e and a b e a u t i f u l enchanted p r i n c e s s w i t h the movie d i r e c t o r who r e n t s an a u t h e n t i c l o c o - motive and d a z z l e s h i s audience w i t h smoke and gleaming s t e e l , , costumed e x t r a s on the h i s t o r i c a l s i t e of the b a t t l e of waterloo, and j u l i e c h r i s t i e as the p r i n c e s s . the s a t i s f i e d audience l u x u r i a t e s i n mimesis of the r e a l t h i n g ; s t e e l , blood and l o v e l y wide eyes. barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are aware of the g r a v i t a t i o n a l p u l l of r e a l i s m , or t h i n g s as they independently are, even though the b r u t e f a c t s might a c t as a check on t h e i r imagine a t i o n s . the n a r r a t o r of "departures," f o r example, remembers h i s g r a n d f a t h e r ' s c o n t r a c t to b u i l d some wooden barracks f o r army r e c r u i t s as green as the lumber. at h i s timber r i g h t s i n east texas, the grandfather- f a l l s i n l o v e w i t h a dryad — "a wood nymph ... who dances around t r e e s i n f i n e l e a f - g r e e n t u t u and who c a r r i e s a g r e a t s i l v e r - s h i n i n g axe to whack anyone who does any k i n d of t h i n g i n i m i c a l to the w e l l - b e i n g and mental h e a l t h o f t r e e s " (p. ). the s t o r y i s f i l l e d w i t h s i m i l a r whimsical touches, u n t i l the n a r r a t o r d e l i b e r a t e l y s p o i l s the mood: "this i s not r e a l l y how i t went. i am f a n t a s - i z i n g . a c t u a l l y , he j u s t p l a i n c u t down the t r e e s " (p. ). t h i s p l a i n - s p e a k i n g w i t h a vengeance , i n which the n a r r a t o r o f f e r s a c o n c e s s i o n t o t h i n g s as they are i n the r e a l world, i s p a r t of a convention i n s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i v e s , a k i n d of i n t e r n a l check and balance on the runaway i m a g i n a t i o n . for example, now t h a t don quixote i s taken by so many c r i t i c s to be the source and f o n t of s e l f - r e f l e x i v e f i c t i o n and f l a g r a n t a r t i f i c e , i t might be f o r g o t t e n t h a t cervantes makes a p e r s o n a l appearance without h i s magician's wand and robes to denounce a r e c e n t p l a g i a r i z e r : what i cannot help r e s e n t i n g i s t h a t he upbraids me f o r being o l d and c r i p p l e d , as i f i t were i n my power to stop the passage of time, or as i f the l o s s of my hand had taken p l a c e i n some t a v e r n , and not on the g r e a t e s t o c c a s i o n which any age, p a s t , p r e s e n t or f u t u r e , ever saw or can ever hope to s e e . ^ these l i n e s , touching on cervantes' wounds a t the b a t t l e of lepanto, a c t as a s t a b l e background to the novel's foreground of a r t i f i c e ; or as an index to don quixote's courage (which might ( ) miguel de cervantes saavedra, don quixote, trans. j.m. cohen (harmondworth, middlesex: penguin, ), p. . otherwise be obscured by the don's c o m i c a l l y exaggerated sense of m i l i t a r y honor). s i m i l a r l y , thackeray i n v a n i t y f a i r suddenly t a l k s about h i m s e l f : t h i s , dear f r i e n d s and companions, i s my amiable o b j e c t - - t o walk w i t h you through the f a i r , to examine the shops and the shows t h e r e ; and t h a t we should a l l come home a f t e r the f l a r e , and the n o i s e , and the g a i e t y , and be p e r f e c t l y m i s e r a b l e i n p r i v a t e (pp. - ) . some c r i t i c s c o n s i d e r such l i n e s to be a r t i s t i c flaws. dorothy van ghent says of thackeray's methods, what we f e e l i s t h a t two o r d e r s of r e a l i t y are clumsily g e t t i n g i n each o t h e r ' s way: the order of i m a g i n a t i v e r e a l i t y , where becky l i v e s , and the order of h i s t o r i c a l r e a l i t y , where w i l l i a m makepeace thackeray l i v e s . ... thackeray seems ... to be v i c t i m i z e d or t r i c k e d [by the convention of a u t h o r i a l a s i d e s ] i n t o a clumsy mishandling of perspec- robert a l t e r , commenting on the thackeray passage quoted above, admits t h a t the l i n e s have resonance, "but i t i s the wrong k i n d of resonance." the immediate f i c t i o n a l context of the passage i s thackeray "at h i s e n e r g e t i c b e s t , and i t does not j u s t i f y t h i s sense of brooding misery, which would seem to be the author's own. in the very a c t , then, of p o i n t i n g to h i s motley garb, he removes h i s a r t i s t ' s mask and takes h i s p l a c e as a man among m i s e r a b l e men..." (p. ). ( ) dorothy van ghent, the english novel: form and function ( ; rpt. new york: harper and row, ), pp. - . note that she could apply the same argument to the cervantes passage. ( ) alter, p. . but f o r the n a r r a t o r to take h i s p l a c e among m i s e r a b l e men i s p r e c i s e l y the e f f e c t r e q u i r e d to put the reader i n the problem, to make him c a r e , and make him t r u s t the man- i p u l a t i v e n a r r a t o r . we a l l know e l i o t ' s l i n e t h a t mankind can o n l y stand so much r e a l i t y ; the same goes f o r a r t i f i c e . both van ghent and a l t e r argue f o r a k i n d of c r i t i c a l t i d i n e s s ; the author can do what he wants as long as he doesn't s l i p o u t s i d e the frame and i n t o h i s t o r i c a l circumstance (van ghent), or shamefully remove the sacred a r t i s t ' s mask ( a l t e r ) . but perhaps s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i o n leads almost i n e v i t a b l y to a c o u n t e r - v o i c e t h a t turns away from d e l i b e r a t e l y a r t i f i c i a l techniques a s s o c i a t e d w i t h the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i o n i n the d i r e c t i o n of r e a l i s m . in barthelme's f i c t i o n , t h i s c o u n t e r - v o i c e works a g a i n s t the conventions of the avant garde by p r e s e n t i n g the p o s s i b i l i t y of d i r e c t communication and d i r e c t understanding, from the page to the reader's h e a r t . the o r i g i n a l , a u t h e n t i c s e l f as a d i r t y great v i l l a i n now f o r the f i n a l t h r i l l i n g d i p on the r o l l e r c o a s t e r of argument. i t was argued t h a t barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are s e l f - c o n s c i o u s i n response to t h e i r urban s o c i e t y - a s o c i e t y t h a t d i s c o u n t s the p o s s i b i l i t y of v a l u e i n language or l i t e r - a t u r e . the c o u n t e r - n o t i o n was i n t r o d u c e d t h a t barthelme's n a r r a t o r s n e v e r t h e l e s s r e s i s t the avant garde conventions t h a t arose from the breakdown of t r a d i t i o n a l a r t , and t h a t the n a r r a t o r sometimes a c t s as a l i a i s o n to the common r e a l i t y of the common reader. but now i t i s necessary to conclude t h a t barthelme's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r does not have the o p t i o n of c o n s i s t e n t r e a l i s m a t h i s command, f o r the simple reason t h a t he f i n d s the r e a l world unbearable. u n l i k e nabokov's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s , who found t h a t t h e i r imaginations c o u l d a t times a c t i n c o n c e r t w i t h the laws of the r e a l world, barthelme's n a r r a t o r s f i n d t h a t t h e i r imagin- a t i v e f o r a y s are c u r t a i l e d by the r e a l world. there i s no p o s s i b i l i t y of i n t e g r a t i n g the s e l f with the world by means of the a r t i s t i c i m a g i n a t i o n because the world i s i n t r a c t a b l e and because the s e l f , the o r i g i n a l , a u t h e n t i c s e l f , i s a d i r t y g r e a t v i l l a i n , a c r e a t u r e t h a t c i v i l i z a t i o n w i l l never improve, a k i l l e r . i n "departures," the n a r r a t o r r e p u d i a t e d h i s f a n c i f u l i m a g i n a t i o n and r e t u r n e d to the f a c t s of h i s g r a n d f a t h e r ' s l i f e -- "he j u s t p l a i n cut down the t r e e s . " the f l a t tone r e p r e s e n t s the world's a t t a c k on the i m a g i n a t i o n , the t o n a l e q u i v a l e n t of the treacherous r e a l i s m of a p o l l o n i u s i n ikeats. lamia. the world of b r u t e f a c t i s i n i m i c a l to the n a r r a t o r ' s i m a g i n a t i o n , l e a d i n g him i n snow white to p o s i t an a l t e r n a t i v e u n i v e r s e : t r y i n g to break out of t h i s bag t h a t we are i n . what gave us the i d e a t h a t t h e r e was something b e t t e r ? how does the concept, "something b e t t e r , " a r i s e . what does i t look l i k e , t h i s something b e t t e r ? (p. ). the heroes of snow white n e v e r t h e l e s s "depart i n search of a new p r i n c i p l e " (p. ). "party" ends w i t h the n a r r a t o r saying to h i s w i f e , "say, 'no,' r e f u s e me once and f o r a l l , l e t me t r y something e l s e " (p. ), the h e r o i n e - n a r r a t o r of " c i t y l i f e " imagines t h a t she has become the chosen d a r l i n g of the c i t y . when the " m i l l i o n s of u n i t s c r a w l i n g about on the s u r f a c e of the c i t y ... began dancing l i t t l e dances of suggestion and f e a r , " she imagines t h a t the "dances c o n s t i t u t e an i n v i t a t i o n of unmistakable import --an i n v i t a t i o n which, i f j accepted, l e a d s one down many muddy roads. i accepted. what was the a l t e r n a t i v e ? " ( c i t y l i f e , pp. - ). „ snow white c o n t a i n s t y p o g r a p h i c a l b i l l b o a r d s which seem to be notes to or by the n a r r a t o r ; f o r example, "anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world" (p. ). despite t h i s h e l p f u l memo, the n a r r a t o r i s g e n e r a l l y unable to r e c o n c i l e h i m s e l f to the world. there are two sources of h i s f a i l u r e . one i s t h a t the world i s too much f o r him i n h i s d e b i l i t a t e d s t a t e ; the o t h e r i s t h a t he i s u n w i l l i n g to f a c e the more c h a o t i c and barbarous elements of the world t h a t are rooted i n h i s own psyche. the n a r r a t i v e masks, the non-emotions or concealed emotions, the. v a c i l l a t i o n of the " b r a i n damage" n a r r a t o r , who l i v e s i n t h a t "gray area where nothing i s done, r e a l l y , but you v a c i l l a t e f o r a w h i l e , t h i n k i n g about i t " (p. . ), a l l are p a r t of the n a r r a t o r ' s n e u r o t i c shame about h i s t r u e p e r s o n a l i t y and h i s r e a l emotions. the avant garde a e s t h e t i c a s s e r t s "the c r e a t i v e autonomy of consciousness a g a i n s t the bourgeois r e a l i t y p r i n c i p l e " and demands "a permanent a l i e n a t i o n of consciousness from any f i x e d p o s i t i o n and from a l l p r e v i o u s modes of consciousness," l e a d i n g "to the i r r a t i o n a l i s m [and] s u b j e c t i v i s m ... t h a t mark numerous m a n i f e s t a t i o n s of modernist a r t . " ^ ^ the q u e s t i o n i s whether t h i s a r t i s t i c s t r a t e g y has any j u s t i f i c a t i o n , "now t h a t i t seems to r e p r e s e n t l e s s a c r i t i c a l departure from the s t a t e of e x i s t i n g s o c i e t y than a mere r e f l e c t i n g m i r r o r of " i t " (p. ). here are three attempts a t p s y c h o l o g i c a l s e l f - a n a l y s i s by t h r e e t y p i c a l l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s ; the l a s t makes an e x p l i c i t c o n n e c t i o n between the s o c i e t y and the observer: i am not w e l l ("game," unspeakable, p. ' ) . i s u f f e r from a f r i g h t f u l i l l n e s s of the mind, light-mindedness. i t ' s not c a t c h i n g . you needn't s h r i n k ("see the moon?" p. ). t h i s i s the country of b r a i n damage, t h i s i s the map o f b r a i n damage, these are the r i v e r s of b r a i n damage, and see, those l i g h t e d - u p p l a c e s are the a i r p o r t s of b r a i n damage, where the damaged p i l o t s l a n d the b i g , damaged s h i p s . . . . and you can hide under the bed but b r a i n damage i s under the bed, you can h i d e i n the u n i v e r s i t i e s but they are the v e r y seat and s o u l of b r a i n damage - - b r a i n damage caused by bears who put your head i n t h e i r foaming jaws w h i l e you are s i n g i n g 'masters of war,' ... b r a i n damage caused by a r t . i c o u l d d e s c r i b e i t b e t t e r i f i weren't a f f l i c t e d with i t ... ("brain damage," p. ). the narratbi i s a s m a < ^ a s ^ i s s o c i e t y , and the a r t i s t i c process of d e s c r i b i n g the s o c i e t y generates more madness. "kierkegaard u n f a i r to s c h l e g e l " e x p l a i n s j u s t how a r t damages the n a r r a t o r ' s p e r s o n a l i t y . i t seems he i s d i s t u r b e d about h i s mental h a b i t of i r o n y . a c c o r d i n g to kierkegaard, the i r o n i s t d i r e c t s h i s i r o n y a t the world and "the whole of e x i s t e n c e has become a l i e n to the i r o n i c s u b j e c t ..." (p. ). kierkegaard says t h a t a c t u a l i t y o f i r o n y i s p o e t r y , and thus he i s hard ( ) graff, "babbitt at the abyss," p. . on a novel by s c h l e g e l c a l l e d lucinde. he says t h a t s c h l e g e l has c r e a t e d a new r e a l i t y t h a t r e p l a c e s a c t u a l i t y , c o n s t i t u t i n g a " v i c t o r y over the world" (p. ). but what i s wanted i s not triumph over the world, which means animosity towards the world, but r e c o n c i l i a t i o n w i t h the world. the t r u e recon- c i l i a t i o n w i t h the world i s r e l i g i o n : without d i s c u s s i n g whether or not the t r u e r e c o n c i l i a t i o n i s r e l i g i o n (i have a deep b i a s a g a i n s t r e l i g i o n which p r e c l u d e s my d i s c u s s i n g the q u e s t i o n i n t e l l i g e n t l y ) l e t me say t h a t i b e l i e v e t h a t kierkegaard i s here u n f a i r to s c h l e g e l . . . . i have reasons f o r t h i s ... but my reasons are not so i n t e r e s t i n g . what i s i n t e r e s t i n g i s my making the statement t h a t i t h i n k kierkegaard i s u n f a i r to s c h l e g e l . and t h a t the whole t h i n g i s nothing e l s e but a damned shame and a crime! because t h a t i s not what i t h i n k a t a l l . we have to do here w i t h my own i r o n y . because of course kierkegaard was " f a i r " to s c h l e g e l . in making a statement to the c o n t r a r y ... i am t r y i n g to a n n i h i l a t e kierkegaard i n order to d e a l w i t h h i s d i s a p p r o v a l . q: of s c h l e g e l ? a: of me. (pp. - ) the n a r r a t o r , shown here a t h i s most s p e c t a c u l a r l y s e l f - c o n s c i o u s , i s c l e a r l y g u i l t y and d e f e n s i v e about both h i s i d e n t i t y and h i s a r t i s t i c methods. his defensiveness r e c u r s throughout the s t o r i e s . for example, i n a manner . r s i m i l a r to t h a t of j.d. s a l i n g e r i n "for e s m e — w i t h love and squalor," i n which the n a r r a t o r says he has " d i s g u i s e d myself so c u n n i n g l y t h a t even the c l e v e r e s t reader w i l l f a i l to r e c o g n i z e me," the n a r r a t o r of "the f a l l i n g dog" r e c e i v e s a ( ) j.d. salinger, "for esm§ --with love and squalor," in nine stories (boston: l i t t l e , brown, ), pp. - . l e t t e r addressed to "mr. xxxxxxxx" ( c i t y l i f e , p. ). in "see the moon?" the n a r r a t o r says: i was promising once.... 'you w i l l be a c r e d i t to us, george,' the admiral s a i d . that's not my name. i'm p r o t e c t i n g my ' i d e n t i t y , what t h e r e i s of i t (p. ). in "daumier," which i s almost a parody of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i v e , every stage of the s t o r y i s h e l p f u l l y c a p t i o n e d : further boiling of the plot in summary form, and so on. the conclusion c o n t a i n s the e x p l i c i t moral of the s t o r y : "the s e l f cannot be escaped, but i t can be, with i n g e n u i t y and hard work, d i s t r a c t e d " , (p. ). by way of escaping the s e l f , the n a r r a t o r of the s t o r y , daumier, performs a k i n d of self-slaughter;'"'not s e l f - s l a u g h t e r i n the crude sense,'" .he e x p l a i n s . "'rather the c o n s t r u c t i o n of s u r r o g a t e s . think of i t as a t r a n s p l a n t ' " (p. ). he t h e r e f o r e c o n s t r u c t s two s u r r o g a t e s , a second-person daumier and a t h i r d - p e r s o n daumier, who a c t as s t a n d - i n s f o r the n a r r a t o r w i t h i n the p l o t . in the c o n c l u d i n g passages the n a r r a t o r f o l d s up the s t o r y ' s c h a r a c t e r s , wraps them i n t i s s u e paper, and puts them " c a r e f u l l y away i n a drawer" (p. ). he a l s o saves the two surrogate daumiers. he says, "the second-person daumier e s p e c i a l l y w i l l bear watching and someday when my s o u l i s again s i c k l y and f u l l o f sores i w i l l take him out o f the drawer and watch him" (p. ). c l e a r l y the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s manipu- l a t i o n of the n a r r a t i v e i s a method of purging the n a r r a t o r o f sores and d i s e a s e s . t h i s i s made e x p l i c i t a t the b e g i n n i n g of the s t o r y : i was speaking to amelia. "not s e l f - s l a u g h t e r i n the crude sense. rather the c o n s t r u c t i o n of s u r r o g a t e s . think of i t as a t r a n s p l a n t . " j "daumier," she s a i d , "you are not making me happy." "the f a l s e s e l v e s i n t h e i r c l a t t e r and b o i s t e r and y o u t h f u l b r i o w i l l s l a y and bother and push out and put to a l l types of t r o u b l e the o r i g i n a l , a u t h e n t i c s e l f , which i s a d i r t y g r e a t v i l l a i n , as can be t e s t i f i e d and sworn to by anyone who has ever been awake" (p. ). i t i s t r u e t h a t o t h e r barthelme s t o r i e s are more o p t i m i s t i c about the nature of the s e l f . "the sandman," f o r example, c o n s i s t s of a l e t t e r from the n a r r a t o r to h i s g i r l f r i e n d ; susan's p s y c h i a t r i s t ; the l e t t e r proposes an end to the t h e r a p e u t i c s e s s i o n s because, i n the n a r r a t o r ' s o p i n i o n , "susan i s wonderful. as i s " (sadness, p. ). furthermore, "daumier" i t s e l f o f f e r s s e v e r a l q u a l i f i c a t i o n s . when daumier says the s e l f i s a d i r t y g r e a t v i l l a i n , amelia r e p l i e s , "the s e l f a l s o dances ... sometimes" (daumier answers, "i have not- i c e d t h a t , but one pays dear f o r the o c c a s i o n a l s c h o t t i s c h e " [p. ]). daumier's f r i e n d d e l i v e r s an amusingly d o c t r i n a i r e speech on the n e c e s s i t y o f s e l f - l e a r n i n g , and daumier makes a g r e a t pretense of having g i v e n profound thought to h i s c o n c l u s i o n s on innate d e p r a v i t y ^ c i t i n g a list of research materials consulted: ... self-abuse by samuels, the armed s e l f by c r a w l i e , burt's the concept of s e l f , se f-congratu a on by mcfee, f i n g a r e t t e ' s se f-deception ... the many-colored s e l f by winsor and newton... (p. ). despite these u n d e r c u t t i n g i r o n i e s , the f a c t remains t h a t the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t i v e techniques are the n a r r a t o r ' s attempt to " d i s t r a c t " a t t e n t i o n from the a v i l a t h i s h e a r t . furthermore, the n a r r a t o r ' s p e r s o n a l e v i l i s matched by an e v i l and d e s t r u c t i v e a e s t h e t i c : a l l modernist w r i t i n g i s i n some ways exper- imental and r e v i s i o n a r y , t h r i v i n g on the decadence of p r e v i o u s forms and norms l i k e s w i f t ' s t u l i p s r i s i n g out of dung. modernist w r i t i n g i s e b u l l i e n t l y p a r r i c i d a l and c a n n i b a l i s t i c . i t r e v e l s a p o c a l y p t i c a l l y i n the end of c u l t u r e --- the death of the n o v e l , the death of rhyme, the exhaustion o f n a r r a t i v e , the end o f the n i n e t e e n t h century — y e t feeds l u s t i l y on i t s murdered f o r e b e a r s . . . . ' ~ one suspects t h a t d i c k s t e i n t r e a t s terms l i k e " p a r r i c i d e " and " c a n n i b a l i s t i c " as c o l o r f u l but harmless metaphors. otherwise he might have avoided " e b u l l i e n t . " the d e s t r u c t i o n of the l i t e r a r y t r a d i t i o n and the f i n e o l d v a l u e s of the n i n e t e e n t h century, a sense of p r e s i d i n g over the c a t a c l y s m i c c o n c l u s i o n to c u l t u r e - - t h i s e n t a i l s a c e r t a i n amount of p a i n , p a r t i c u l a r l y to the a r t i s t who might be expected to have a g r e a t e r apprec- i a t i o n o f c u l t u r e and t r a d i t i o n than the average hoodlum. the guilty n a r r a t o r o f "kierkegaard and s c h l e g e l " makes i t c l e a r t h a t barthelme's n a r r a t o r s are aware of the a r t i s t i c s i n s they commit; they are not always as " e b u l l i e n t " as the humor of t h e i r c u l t u r a l pranks might suggest. one c o u l d t r a c e a c e r t a i n lowering of h i g h s p i r i t s from the c h e e r f u l e a r l y s t o r i e s to the l a t e s t , as i t g r a d u a l l y becomes more and more d i f f i c u l t to s u s t a i n what daumier c a l l s n a r r a t i v e " b r i o . " a c r i t i c has complained t h a t barthelme "stopped being ( ) dickstein, p. . h i l a r i o u s and became so deadpan you c o u l d n ' t t e l l what he was up t o " ; but i f one c o n c e n t r a t e s on the longer n a r r a t i v e s , snow white and p a r t i c u l a r l y the dead father, there i s s u f f i c i e n t evidence t h a t barthelme's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s are modernist p a r r i c i d e s , depraved a t h e a r t , and s i c k about i t . snow white ends w i t h the murder of b i l l , the l e a d e r of the dwarfs. his major s i n , a s i d e from the comic " v a t r i c i d e , " i s " f a i l u r e " (p. ). one presumes t h a t the f o l l o w i n g --"the failure of snow white's arse/revirginization of snow white/ apotheosis of snow white" (p. ) - - i s a euphemism f o r the murder of snow white as w e l l . p a u l , the o n l y redemptive f i g u r e i n the n o v e l , i s poisoned. the last.words of the n o v e l , heigh-ho, e t c . , are c h e e r f u l enough, but r a t h e r i n c o n c l u s i v e , j u s t as snow white i t s e l f i s a somewhat rambling n a r r a t i v e , r e a d i n g l i k e a s e r i e s of tour de f o r c e s e t p i e c e s on a comic theme, which i s an o l d f a i r y t a l e (more disney than grimm) brought up to date. the dead father on the o t h e r hand, i s c o n c l u s i v e indeed. the hero, thomas, and h i s two g i r l f r i e n d s are conducting the dead father on an e p i c e x p e d i t i o n to f i n d the golden f l e e c e , which the dead father hopes w i l l r e v i v i f y h i s f a d i n g powers. such i s the o s t e n s i b l e purpose, o f the journey, the purpose the dead f a t h e r b e l i e v e s i n . the a c t u a l pur- pose of the t r i p i s to bury him a l i v e i n a g i a n t grave t h a t w i l l be f i l l e d i n by the f i n a l word of the s t o r y , "bulldozers. ( ) joe goldberg, "hyperactive ho-hum?" creem, may , p. . the dead father i s of course god the.father. barthelme's s t o r i e s are a l l t i n g e d w i t h r a t h e r s a c r i l e g i o u s eschatology, roman c a t h o l i c g e n e r a l l y , although the i s s u e of jesus c h r i s t r a r e l y , as i t were, a r i s e s . his i n t e r e s t i s i n the one t r u e god, the source of v a l u e - — " o n angels" begins, "the death of god l e f t the angels i n a strange p o s i t i o n " ( c i t y l i f e , p. ). the dead father i s a l s o the dead t r a d i t i o n of a r t and c u l t u r e , although he i s presented as something of an e t h i c a l b a r b a r i a n ; he r e p r e s e n t s t r a d i t i o n i n i t s l e a s t a t t r a c t i v e a s p e c t : o p p r e s s i v e power. the dead father i s a f a t h e r , a parent, and thus h i s b u r i a l i s the end of f a m i l y l o v e , r e s p e c t and benign a u t h o r i t y . an i n t e r p o l a t e d s e c t i o n c a l l e d a manual for sons i s l e s s than r e s p e c t - f u l ; many of barthelme's s t o r i e s t u r n on d i v o r c e and a s t r a i n e d r e l a t i o n s h i p with c h i l d r e n . in "the genius," f o r example, "the genius has n o t i c e d t h a t he does not i n t e r a c t w i t h c h i l d r e n s u c c e s s f u l l y " (sadness, p. ). in other words, the dead father i s a p a r a b l e about the death, the murder a c t u a l l y , of v a l u e . thomas and h i s c o h o r t s are moral monsters, c r u e l i n the s u p e r c i l i o u s and i r o n i c modern manner, so greedy and u n f e e l i n g t h a t one would sympathize completely with the dead father, i f h i s o l d testament q u a l i t i e s weren't c o n s t a n t l y emphasized: then h i s anger grew and he c a l l e d f o r a brand o f even g r e a t e r weight and l e n g t h which was brought him by a m e t a p h o r i c a l l y present g i l l i e and s e i z i n g i t with h i s two fine-formed and noble hands he r a i s e d i t above h i s head, and every l i v i n g t h i n g w i t h i n h i s reach trembled and every dead t h i n g w i t h i n h i s reach remembered how i t got t h a t way... (pp. - ). the dead father i s k i l l e d by thomas, who f i r s t undergoes a mock i n i t i a t i o n r i t e i n which two t o r t u r e r s conduct thomas to the great father serpent, who r i d d l e s thomas a r i d d l e . thomas reads the c o r r e c t answer i n a s e c r e t p l a c e , and i n h i s h a b i t u a l s t u t t e r c o r r e c t l y answers the q u e s t i o n , "what do you r e a l l y f e e l ? " l i k e murderinging, i answered.... why b l e s s my s o u l , s a i d the great father serpent, he's got i t , and the two r u f f i a n s b l i n k e d a t me i n stunned wonder and i myself wondered, and marveled, but what i was wondering and marveling a t was the c l o s e n e s s w i t h which what i had answered accorded w i t h my f e e l i n g s , my l o s t f e e l i n g s t h a t i had never found b e f o r e . i suppose, the father serpent s a i d , t h a t the boon you wish granted i s the a b i l i t y to c a r r y out t h i s f o u l n e s s ? of course, i s a i d , what e l s e ? granted then he s a i d . . . . i was abroad i n the c i t y w i t h murderinging i n mind... (p. ). d e b i l i t a t i n g s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s and a t t e n u a t e d emotions can o n l y be d i s p e l l e d by d e s t r u c t i o n . thomas, who d i s c o v e r s h i s l o s t f e e l i n g s , i s the p r i n c i p a l c h a r a c t e r of the s t o r y , and the n a r r a t o r of h i s i n t e r p o l a t e d mock r i t e . the "second-person surrogate" appears b r i e f l y a t the beginning o f the n a r r a t i v e (which i s gener- a l l y t o l d i n deadpan t h i r d person omniscience). he seems to be a spokesman f o r s o c i e t y , the c i t i z e n s of the c i t y c o n t r o l l e d by i the g i a n t f i g u r e of the dead father. the dead father works f o r the good o f a l l , but h i s 'leg i s o f t e n punctured by t i n y arrows: "we want the dead father to be dead," says the v o i c e of the murderous people. "we s i t w i t h t e a r s i n our eyes wanting the i dead father to be dead — meanwhile doing amazing t h i n g s w i t h our hands" (p. ). c o n c l u s i o n t h i s chapter has recorded the f a i l u r e of barthelme's s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r . not an a r t i s t i c f a i l u r e , s i n c e there i s "enough a e s t h e t i c excitement here to s a t i s y anyone but a damned f o o l " ("the indian u p r i s i n g , " p. ); but a f a i l u r e i n terms of the moral development and p s y c h i c i n t e g r a t i o n of the n a r r a t o r , who i s "not w e l l . " s e q u e n t i a l p l o t , r e a l i s t i c s e t t i n g , l o g i c a l m o t i v a t i o n , c o n s i s t e n t c h a r a c t e r s and other standard elements of the l i t e r a r y n a r r a t i v e have broken down over the century, so why not the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r ? "to bore the d o c t o r i s to become ... a case s i m i l a r to other cases; the p a t i e n t s t r i v e s m i g h t i l y to e s t a b l i s h h i s uniqueness" ("florence green i s ," pp. - ). u n f o r t u n a t e l y f o r the n a r r a t o r h i s case i s not unique; h i s whole s o c i e t y i s s i c k . i t has no h i s t o r y , no sense of community, no f a m i l y t r a d i t i o n s , no c o n n e c t i o n with nature. there i s no governing code of ethics*, hence a l l behavior i s e q u a l l y p e r m i s s i b l e and f u t i l e . language has been r e p l a c e d with v e r b a l t r a s h , and everyone has a problem e x p r e s s i n g value and emotion; i n f a c t , the n a r r a t o r ' s prose seems c a l c u l a t e d to g i v e nothing away. the n a r r a t o r i s aware, however, t h a t h i s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s t y p i c a l of the s o c i e t y , and t h a t h i s p a r t i c u l a r problems are a l s o the c l i c h e s and g l i b g e n e r a l i z a t i o n s o f pop s o c i o l o g y and undergraduate l i t e r a t u r e courses; thus he i s r a r e l y the spokesman f o r r e c e i v e d i d e a s . although he s t r u g g l e s w i t h the r e v o l u t i o n a r y advances of "experimental" l i t e r a t u r e , he i s not enough of a d o c t r i n a i r e avant garde a r t i s t to search f o r a s c r a t c h to s t a r t from. instead, the n a r r a t o r i s o l d - f a s h i o n e d enough to attempt to keep i n touch w i t h h i s r e a d e r s , even to the e x t e n t of a p p e a l i n g to the reader's common-sense n o t i o n s o f r e a l i t y . although the avant garde c o n t a i n s an impulse to abandon the o r d i n a r y reader i n f a v o r of t o t a l l y p r i v a t e f i c t i o n a l worlds, v e r b a l gardens f i l l e d with a r t i f i c i a l f l o w e r s and s t a t u e s o f n a r c i s s u s , barthelme's n a r r a t o r s c a t e r to the reader (with mixed motives, to be s u r e ) : reader ... we have r o l e s to p l a y , thou and i: you are the d o c t o r (washing your hands between h o u r s ) , and i, i am, i t h i n k , the nervous d r e a r y p a t i e n t . i am f r e e a s s o c i a t i n g , b r i l l i a n t l y , b r i l l i a n t l y , to put you i n t o the problem. or f o r f e a r of b o r i n g you: which? ("florence green i s ," p. ). the n a r r a t o r ' s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s d i a l o g u e w i t h the reader and with h i m s e l f r e v e a l s t h a t h i s problems are not e n t i r e l y due to the complex of breakdowns (language, p h i l o s o p h y , r e l i g i o n ) ; i n p a r t , the n a r r a t o r ' s problems l i e w i t h i n h i m s e l f . he knows h i m s e l f g u i l t y , irredeemable and depraved. barthelme uses h i s s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r s to show t h a t c i v i l i z a t i o n i n america i s i a facade, and t h a t h y p e r c i v i l i z e d s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n e s s i s a means of evading the l i t e r a l l y b r u t a l t r u t h — "we want the dead father to be dead." one wonders what w i l l happen i n barthelme's f i c t i o n i n the f u t u r e . his n a r r a t o r s c e r t a i n l y f o r e s e e a s t r u g g l e , a t y p i c a l l y v i o l e n t , " p a r r i c i d a l and c a n n i b a l i s t i c " s t r u g g l e : our r e p u t a t i o n f o r e x c e l l e n c e i s u n e x c e l l e d ... and w i l l be maintained u n t i l the de- s t r u c t i o n of our a r t by some other a r t . . . ("our work and why we do i t , " amateurs, p. ). perhaps i n barthelme's f u t u r e work the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r w i l l become the s e l f - d e s t r u c t i v e n a r r a t o r . conclusion one i s tempted to make pronouncements and p r e d i c t i o n s about the f u t u r e of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n o v e l . has m t h e c y c l e of r e l e x - i v i t y ... gone about as f a r as i t can," as maurice beebe believes,"'" or does the good f i g h t remain to be fought a g a i n s t what some c r i t i c s t e l l us i s a lumbering superannuated monster, the r e a l i s t i c n o v e l : [john gardner's grendel] i s another f i e r c e blow s t r u c k a g a i n s t the r e a l i s t i c n o v e l , the dead n o v e l . good, i say: l e t ' s h o l d no more m i r r o r s up to nature. make nature approach the a r t i s t ; make nature g r o v e l ^ the temptation to make p r e d i c t i o n s should be r e s i s t e d , because i t should be obvious by now t h a t c r i t i c a l o r t h o d o x i e s r e g a r d i n g the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r q u i c k l y go out of f a s h i o n . we c i t e d ford madox ford as a c r u s t y and p e t u l a n t foe of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , but i t i s o n l y f a i r to remember t h a t ford was aware t h a t t a s t e s change: that t h i s i s not the f i n a l stage of the novel i s obvious; there w i l l be developments t h a t we cannot foresee,, strain our visions;n how we may. there are probably -- humanity being s t a b l e , change the world how i t may — t h e r e are probably e t e r n a l p r i n c i p l e s f o r a l l the a r t s , but the a p p l i c a t i o n s of those . p r i n c i p l e s are e t e r n a l l y changing, or e t e r n a l l y r e v o l - v i n g . i t i s f o r i n s t a n c e an obvious and unchanging f a c t t h a t i f an author i n t r u d e s h i s comments i n t o the middle of h i s s t o r y he w i l l endanger the i l l u s i o n conveyed by t h a t s t o r y — but a g e n e r a t i o n of readers may come ( ) beebe, p. . ( ) d. keith mano, as quoted in ditsky, p. . along who would p r e f e r w i t n e s s i n g the capers of the author to being c a r r i e d away by s t o r i e s and t h a t g e n e r a t i o n o f r e a d e r s may c o i n c i d e w i t h a g e n e r a t i o n of w r i t e r s t i r e d of s e l f - o b l i t e r a t i o n . .. . or you might, again, have a world t i r e d of the r e a l l y w e l l c o n s t r u c t e d novel every word of which c a r r i e s i t s s t o r y forward: then you w i l l have a movement towards d i f f u s e n e s s , backboneless sentences, d i g r e s s i o n s , and inchoateness.^ ford i s t h i n k i n g of the " i n t r u s i v e author" of the n i n e - t e e n t h century, and a l s o , i t would seem, of sterne. although c r i t i c s would now t e l l us t h a t every l i n e of t r i s t r a m shandy c o n t r i b u t e s to a r i g i d , l o g i c a l scheme -- ford's " w e l l c o n s t r u c t e d " n o v e l , p e r h a p s — i t remains t r u e t h a t sterne g i v e s the impres- s i o n of being d i f f u s e , d i g r e s s i v e and i n c h o a t e . the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r i s a d e v i c e a t the d i s p o s a l of the i n n o v a t i v e a r t i s t . the f o l l o w i n g i s not an i n t e r c h a n g e a b l e example of the t y p i c a l s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r , i t i s an example of sterne's unique n a r r a t o r i n i n i m i t a b l e a c t i o n : i have dropp'd the c u r t a i n over t h i s scene f o r a minute, — to remind you of one t h i n g , -- and to inform you of another,^ the very p u n c t u a t i o n — those u b i q u i t o u s dashes — captures the e f f e c t of a n a r r a t o r who p r i z e s the s i n g u l a r and the t e l l i n g d e t a i l above e v e r y t h i n g , and whose k i n d l y , s e n t i m e n t a l view of the world i s expressed, p a r a d o x i c a l l y enough, through an a g i l e , indeed r e s t l e s s , i n t e l l e c t . those dashes seem to be the typo- g r a p h i c a l e q u i v a l e n t to a s t r a y thought snatched from the t h i n a i r i n s i d e the n a r r a t o r ' s head — or a quick t r i p to france. think of the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r as a l i t e r a r y t o o l which i s kept i n a k i n d of co-op warehouse open to any w r i t e r i n ( ) ford, pp. - . ( ) sterne, p. '. any century. i t should be obvious t h a t the use of the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r does not imply any promise on the p a r t of the a r t i s t to c r e a t e an a n t i - r e a l i s t i c work. ford says the s e l f - conscious n a r r a t o r (which he t h i n k s of as an i n t r u s i v e author) n e c e s s a r i l y i m p l i e s the breakdown of f i c t i o n a l v e r i s i m i l i t u d e , but t h e r e i s no reason why the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r can't be as v i v i d and r e a l i s t i c a presence as a c h a r a c t e r . such t h i n g s don't happen i n r e a l l i f e , says nabokov's sad n a r r a t o r , s i g n i f y - i n g h i s w i l l i n g n e s s to p l a y by the r u l e s of the u n i v e r s e . look f o r y o u r s e l f , says barthelme's b i t t e r n a r r a t o r , s i g n i f y i n g the c o r r e l a t i o n between the f i c t i o n a l world and the reader's world. but i f each a r t i s t transforms h i s a r t i s t i c d e v i c e s , and presents a unique v i s i o n , then i s n ' t the f i c t i o n a l world p r i v a t e , s o l i p s i s t i c , e s c a p i s t ...? no, because the a r t i s t g i v e s f r e s h and unique e x p r e s s i o n to the o l d and unchanging i s s u e s — which i s why l i t e r a t u r e from ages long gone and f o r g o t t e n s t i l l i n t e r e s t s us. there i s nothing new under the sun, and i t i s the task of the a r t i s t to r e v i t a l i z e such t i r e d c l i c h e s as "there i s nothing new under the sun." what o f t was thought, but ne'er so w e l l expressed i s s t i l l a d e f i n i t i o n of g r e a t a r t , d e s p i t e the romantic r e v o l u t i o n t h a t separates our times from those of pope. the s e l f - c o n s c i o u s n a r r a t o r i s the means by which the reader i s seduced to become i n t e r e s t e d once again i n the t i r e d o l d s u b j e c t s of l o v e , j u s t i c e , s i n and death. he i s not t h e r e to caper l i k e ford's f o o l f o r the e q u a l l y f o o l i s h reader, or to a c t as the spokesman f o r s t e r i l e p h i l o s o p h e r s of meaninglessness. he i s there to a c t as a b r i d g e between the a r t i s t ' s v i s i o n and the reader's world: he wanted to be an untouchable, paul d i d . that was h i s i d e a of a contemporary c a r e e r . but then a g i r l walked up and touched him (slapped him, a c t u a l l y ; i t ' s a complicated s t o r y ) . and he j o i n e d us, here i n the i m b r o g l i o ("see the moon?."; p. ). j o i n e d us, here i n the common i m b r o g l i o . i bibliography (works cited) a l l o t t , miriam. novelists on the novel. london: routledge and kegan paul, . a l t e r , robert. p a r t i a l magic: the novel as a self-conscious genre• berkeley: univ. of c a l i f o r n i a press, . appel, a l f r e d , j r . the annotated l o l i t a . new york: mcgraw h i l l , . and charles newman, eds. nabokov: c r i t i c i s m , reminiscences, translations and tributes. evanston, i l l i n o i s : northwestern univ. press, . the contents appeared i n triquarter -y, no. 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"in another country." in the short s t o r i e s o f e r n e s t hemingway. new york: s c r i b n e r ' s , , pp. - . huxley, jvldous. p o i n t counter p o i n t . ; r p t . harmondsworth, middlesex: penguin, . joyce, james. a p o r t r a i t of the a r t i s t as a young man. ed. chester g. anderson. new york: v i k i n g , . kahler, e r i c h . the d i s i n t e g r a t i o n of form i n the a r t s . new york: george b r a z i l l e r , . . the inward turn o f n a r r a t i v e . trans. r i c h a r d and c l a r a winston. p r i n c e t o n : p r i n c e t e o n univ. p r e s s , . kaplan, fred. " v i c t o r i a n modernists: fowles and nabokov." the j o u r n a l of n a r r a t i v e technique, ( ), - . k a z i n , . a l f r e d . on n a t i v e grounds. ; r p t . garden c i t y , new york: anchor-doubleday, . k l i n k o w i t z , jerome. l i t e r a r y d i s r u p t i o n s : the making of a post- contemporary american f i c t i o n . urbana, i l l i n o i s : univ. of i l l i n o i s p r e s s , . k o s t e l a n e t z , r i c h a r d , ed. breakthrough f i c t i o n e e r s . barton, vermont: something e l s e p r e s s , . meyer, leonard,b. music, the a r t s and ideas: p a t t e r n s and p r e d i c t i o n s i n twentieth century c u l t u r e . chicago: univ. of chicago p r e s s , . mccaffery, l a r r y . "barthelme's snow white: the a e s t h e t i c s of trash." c r i t i q u e , , no. ( ), - . mccarthy, mary. l e t t e r . new york times book review, j u l y , p. . mcmurtry, l a r r y . the l a s t p i c t u r e show. new york: d i a l , . nabokov, v l a d i m i r . ada. new york: mcgraw-hill, . . bend s i n i s t e r . ; r p t . new york: mcgraw-hill, . . d e s p a i r . new york: putnam, . . d e t a i l s of a sunset. trans. d m i t r i nabokov i n c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h v l a d i m i r nabokov. new york: mcgraw-hill, . - the eye. trans. d m i t r i nabokov i n c o l l a b o r - a t i o n w i t h v l a d i m i r nabokov. new york: phaedra, . . the g i f t . trans. m i c h a e l scammell i n c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h v l a d i m i r nabokov. new york: putnam, . __. g l o r y . trans. d m i t r i nabokov i n c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h v l a d i m i r nabokov. new york: mcgraw-hill, . • . i n v i t a t i o n to a beheading. trans. d m i t r i nabokov i n c o l l a b o r a t i o n with v l a d i m i r nabokov. new york: putnam, . . king, queen, knave. trans. d m i t r i nabokov i n c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h v l a d i m i r nabokov. new york: mcgraw-hill, . . l o l i t a . p a r i s , ; r p t . new york: putnam, [ ]. . look a t the h a r l e q u i n s ! new york: mcgraw- h i l l , . . mary. trans. michael glenny i n c o l l a b o r - a t i o n with v l a d i m i r nabokov. new york: mcgraw-hill, . . nabokov's dozen. ; r p t . new york: avon, . . n i k o l a i gogol. new york: new d i r e c t i o n s , . . p a l e f i r e . ; r p t . new york: berkeley, . pnin. garden c i t y , new york: doubleday, . . . the real l i f e of s e b a s t i a n knight. ; r p t . n o r f o l k , conn.: new d i r e c t i o n s , . . a russian beauty and other s t o r i e s . trans. v l a d i m i r nabokov, d m i t r i nabokov and simon k a r l i n s k y . new york: mcgraw-hill, . nabokov, v l a d i m i r . strong opinions. new york: mcgraw-hill, . n o r r i s , frank. mcteague. ed. c a r v e l c o l l i n s . new york: h o l t , rinehart and winston, . oates, joyce c a r o l . expensive people. ; r p t . new york: fawcett, . . "whose side are you on? /the guest word." new york times book review, june , p. . ortega y gasset, joss. the dehumanization of a r t and notes on the novel. trans. helene weyl. ; r p t . new york: peter smith, . peter, john. "joyce and the novel." kenyon review, ( ), - . poe, edgar a l l e n . the n a r r a t i v e of a r t h u r gordon pym of nantucket. ; r p t . new york: h i l l and wang, . pound, e z r a . "hugh selwyn mauberley." s e l e c t e d poems of e z r a pound. new york: new d i r e c t i o n s , , pp. - . "proclamation." t r a n s i t i o n , no. - ( ), p. [ ]. p r o f f e r , c a r l r., ed. a book of things about v l a d i m i r nabokov. ann arbor, mich.: a r d i s , . r o b b e - g r i l l e t , a l a i n . for a new novel: essays on f i c t i o n . trans. r i c h a r d howard. new york: grove p r e s s , . . j e a l o u s y . trans. richard howard. new york: grove p r e s s , . rose, barbara. "wolfeburg." the new york review of books, june , - . r u s s e l l , c h a r l e s . "the v a u l t of language: s e l f - r e f l e x i v e a r t i f i c e i n contemporary american f i c t i o n . " modern f i c t i o n s t u d i e s , ( ), - . s a l i n g e r , j.d. "for esme--with love and squalor." in nine s t o r i e s . boston: l i t t l e , brown, , pp. - . s c h i c k e l , r i c h a r d . "freaked out on barthelme." new york times magazine, august , pp. - , , , - . scholes, robert. the f a b u l a t o r s . new york: oxford univ. press, . scholes, robert and robert k e l l o g g . the nature of n a r r a t i v e . new york: oxford univ. press. . sokolov, sasha. a school f o r f o o l s . trans. c a r l r. p r o f f e r . ann arbor, michigan: a r d i s , . sontag, susan. a g a i n s t i n t e r p r e t a t i o n and other essays. new york: f a r r a r , straus and giroux, . stegner, page. escape into a e s t h e t i c s . new york: d i a l press, . s t e i n e r , george. language and s i l e n c e . new york: atheneum:*. press, . sterne, laurence. t r i s t r a m shandy. ed. ian watt. boston: houghton m i f f l i n , . stevens, wallace. "the man w i t h the blue g u i t a r . " in the palm a t the end of the mind. new york: vintage-random house, , pp. - . sukenick, ronald. "the death of the novel." in the death o f the novel and other s t o r i e s . new york: d i a l p r e s s , , pp. - . "the new t r a d i t i o n . " p a r t i s a n review, ( ), - . sypher, wylie. loss of the s e l f i n modern l i t e r a t u r e and a r t . new york: vintage-random house, . tancock, l.w., i n t r o d . germinal. by emile z o l a . trans. l.w. tancock. harmondsworth, middlesex: penguin, . tanner, tony. c i t y of words. london: jonathan cape, . tate, a l l e n . "the post of observation i n f i c t i o n . " maryland q u a r t e r l y , i ( ), - . thackeray, w i l l i a m . v a n i t y f a i r . ed. g e o f f r e y and kathleen t i l l o t s o n . boston: houghton m i f f l i n , . t r i l l i n g , l i o n e l . the l i b e r a l imagination. ; r p t . garden c i t y , new york: anchor-doubleday, . the undaunted: a r e v o l u t i o n a r y short s t o r y . toronto: norman bethune i n s t i t u t e , . updike, john. bech: a book, new york: knopf, . a month of sundays. new york: knopf, . updike, john. "leaves." in the music school. ; r p t . new york: fawcett, , pp. - . . "sunday t e a s i n g . " in the same door. ; r p t . greenwich, conn.: fawcett c r e s t , , pp. - . van ghent, dorothy. the e n g l i s h novel: form and f u n c t i o n . ; r p t . new york: harper and row, . v i d a l , gore. "american p l a s t i c : the matter of f i c t i o n . " the new york review of books, j u l y , pp. - . . homage to d a n i e l shays: c o l l e c t e d essays. new york: random house, . watt, ian. the rise of the novel: s t u d i e s i n defoe, richardson and f i e l d i n g . london, ; r p t . berkeley and los angeles: univ. of c a l i f o r n i a p r e s s , . w i l l i a m s , c a r o l t. "'web of sense': pale f i r e i n the nabokov canon." c r i t i q u e , , no. ( ), - . wolfe, tom. "why they aren't w r i t i n g the great american novel anymore." e s q u i r e , dec. , pp. - , , , , . young, e r i c and l o u i s e dennys. "a novel s o r t of l i f e . " weekend magazine, march , pp. - . time and chance, , pages, david z. albert, david z albert, , , harvard university press, download http://bit.ly/ ovvank http://goo.gl/rjy http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/?store=book&keyword=time+and+chance this book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. the trouble is about the direction of time. the situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can just as naturally happen backwards. albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a newtonian-mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the second law of thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. the book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. table of contents: preface . time-reversal invariance . thermodynamics . statistical mechanics . the reversibility objections and the past-hypothesis . the scope of thermodynamics . the asymmetries of knowledge and intervention . quantum mechanics appendix: gedankenexperiments with heat engines index reviews of this book: the foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. by challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, time and chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation.--jean bricmont, sciencealbert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...it has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. the foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; 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king of sport , terry lovell, sep , , biography & autobiography, pages. for nearly forty years he has ruthlessly exploited and dominated formula one motor racing, and now he is setting his sights further afield...this is the true story of bernie download time and chance , the almost world , hans koning, , biography & autobiography, pagesrealism and educational research new perspectives and possibilities, david scott, jan , , education, pages. covers the social role of educational research, an area where there has been little published. covers a range of conceptual and theoretical discussions, and applies these , http://rekeja.files.wordpress.com/ / /exp-microsft-offc tait-v phit-xclword.pdf http://rekeja.files.wordpress.com/ / /exp-microsft-offc tait-v phit-xclword.pdf scepticism , christopher hookway, , philosophy, pages. scepticism is a subject which has preoccupied philosophers for two thousand years. this book presents an historical perspective on scepticism by considering contrasting viewsbiodiversity strategy and action plan national report, , , biodiversity conservation, pages time and chance pages early artists in laguna beach the impressionists : september to november , , laguna art museum, janet b. dominik, laguna art museum (laguna beach, calif.), , art, pages "a beautiful, intelligent book that renders pain both ordinary and extraordinary into art."—susanna sonnenberg, san francisco chronicle in , during the months before nick. adding it up explores how students in pre-k through th grade learn mathematics and recommends how teaching, curricula, and teacher education should change to improve. from the editor of the popular annotated pride and prejudice comes an annotated edition of jane austen’s northanger abbey that makes her lighthearted satire of the gothic novel. http://rekeja.files.wordpress.com/ / /ron-arad.pdf download time and chance created: st september http://rekeja.files.wordpress.com/ / /ron-arad.pdf http://rekeja.files.wordpress.com/ / /time-and-chance.pdf how hooker found his boogie: a rhythmic analysis of a classic groove popular music ( ) volume / . copyright © cambridge university press, pp. – doi: . /s printed in the united kingdom how hooker found his boogie: a rhythmic analysis of a classic groove f e r n a n d o b e n a d o n † a n d t e d g i o i a ‡ †american university, massachusetts ave nw, washington dc , usa e-mail: fernando@american.edu ‡plano, tx, usa e-mail: tedgioia@hotmail.com abstract this article closely analyses the rhythmic components in john lee hooker’s boogie. we show how hooker recasts a signature riff from a ternary to a binary beat subdivision, paving the way for the triple-to-duple shift that characterised mid-century american popular music. further, we attribute the boogie’s ‘hypnotic’ feel to two psychoacoustic phenomena: stream segregation and temporal order misjudgement. stream segregation occurs when the musical surface is divided by the listener into two or more auditory entities ( streams ), usually as a result of timbral and registral contrasts. in hooker’s case, these contrasts occur between the guitar groove’s downbeats and upbeats, whose extreme proximity also blurs their temporal order. these expressive effects are complemented by global and gradual accelerandos that envelop hooker’s early performances. introduction john lee hooker’s recording of ‘boogie chillen’ in november stands out as one of the greatest, and most unlikely, hits in the history of blues music. composers of popular songs often claim that a ‘hook’ is essential to a successful recording, so if ‘boogie chillen’ had a hook, surely it was a rhythmic one. the song’s melodic and harmonic content is practically nil. it is mostly an up-tempo talking blues, spoken or semi-spoken in a type of blues recitative. nor did hooker rely on clever arrangements and slick studio effects – so common during these post-war years – to secure a hit song. he performed solo, with only his guitar and stomping foot for accompaniment. yet this stark, idiosyncratic song proved to be a runaway hit. ‘boogie chillen’ climbed to the top spot in billboard’s r&b charts, and propelled hooker from obscurity to fame almost overnight. it is hard to imagine the lyrics as the source of the song’s appeal; they are simple, almost simple-minded, little more than a series of short declamatory sentences such as: i heard everybody talking about . . . the henry swing club . . . i decided i’d drop in there that night . . . and when i got there . . . [sung] i said yes, people . . . yes, they was really having a ball . . . [spoken] yes, i know . . . [spoken rapidly] boogie chillen! the song, in fact, is more a loose improvisation, a stream-of-consciousness monologue let loose over a repetitive guitar groove. this groove, or what hooker called his ‘boogie’, proved to be so irresistible that it eventually formed the basis of more than one third of his early recorded output. why did the boogie hold such appeal for audiences, who purchased the recordings of ‘boogie chillen’ and its many knock-offs and imitations? blues historians have described hooker’s boogie as a ‘rhythmic drone, twisting and turning the sound’ ( oakley , p. ), a ‘jumping, polyrhythmic groove’ ( murray , p. ) that can ‘rattle your bones’ ( davis , p. ). equally colourful is the rhetoric of popular magazine writers. according to downbeat maga- zine’s obituary, hooker’s boogie had a ‘soulful, grinding edge. once hooker locked into a boogie . . . the most powerful hurricane could not knock him out of his groove’ ( koransky , p. ). to sound like him, advises guitar magazine, try ‘dispersing with everything but the upbeats [to] get unadulterated, driving syncopation’ ( ellis , p. ). hooker himself had difficulty in describing the origins of his boogie. ‘it’s just there. i can’t explain it. and it just comes out’ ( o’neal and van singel , p. ). when pressed, he would sometimes cite his step-father will moore, a guitarist who played in the clarksdale, mississippi area before world war ii, as the originator of this distinctive boogie rhythm. but moore is a puzzling figure who does not figure in any of the oral histories related to the delta blues, making it difficult to trace specific linkages between hooker’s own style of playing and the delta tradition. although the early history of hooker’s sound may elude us, this paper hopes to unravel some of his boogie’s visceral and hypnotic aspects by focusing on its rhythmic properties. the blues literature has allocated limited space to the subject of rhythm, but a salient feature that has received some attention is the irregularity of metre and hypermetre in the music of bluesmen blind lemon jefferson ( evans ) and robert johnson ( ford ). titon’s ( , pp. – ) insightful rhythmic analyses of ‘downhome’ blues cover some of the topics addressed in this paper, including tempo fluctuation and the interplay of duple and triple rhythms. this last topic is central to stewart ( ), who lays out the rhythmic transformation of popular music in america as a transition from shuffle ( ‘swing’ ) to duple ( ‘even’ ) rhythms. our aim here will be to focus on only a fraction of the rhythmic components that make up hooker’s boogie, all the while recognising that his boogie is greater than the sum of its parts. we shall undoubtedly overlook important elements, unintentionally in unforeseen ways which we hope other writers will address, and intentionally in several ways, one of which requires mention. our analysis is restricted to the first four years of hooker’s recorded output ( detroit to ), mainly because this period finds his boogie in its most original and bare form. two tempo regions prior to delving into the boogie’s rhythmic detail, it will be helpful to gain a bird’s eye view of hooker’s overall rhythmic landscape by examining his choice of song tempos. these span a wide spectrum of metronome markings ranging roughly from to beats per minute – a testament to the blues’ ‘enormous potential for tempo transfor- mation’ ( kubik , p. ). in the middle of this range, however, there is a narrow strip of unused tempo markings: of the -plus songs that hooker recorded between and , none is faster than and slower than beats per minute. in other words, there is a gap between these two metronome values that provides a clear-cut separation between the slow and up-tempo songs. this divide allows us to categorise fernando benadon and ted gioia hooker’s early oeuvre according to two tempo regions, which we will call blues ( – bpm ) and boogie ( – bpm ). the sizeable buffer zone between the two regions underscores their stylistic differences. a blues may be as fast as bpm; speed it up further and its inherent rhythmic makeup becomes – to hooker’s ears, we must presume – unacceptably agitated. likewise, a boogie begins to sound languid once it dips below bpm, the tempo of hooker’s slowest unaccompanied boogie, ‘talkin’ boogie’. ( this hypothesis can be tested by artificially slowing the song’s tempo to bpm with a time-expansion algorithm that retains the original pitch level, an operation that disintegrates the boogie’s rhythmic feel. ) that hooker’s boogie should comprise the fast-tempo category is obvious but not trivial. fast tempos are generally associated with two characteristics not readily attributable to the slower paced blues: dancing and physical restlessness – which may explain why younger people prefer fast tempos ( leblanc et al. ) and why, in a downbeat interview, hooker explained that his ‘jump’ style was intended ‘for the kids’ ( quoted in evans , p. ). besides raw speed, a distinguishing feature between the blues and boogie tempos relates to the ‘free’ speech-like rhythms. in hooker’s blues, these brief passages usually consist of a unison ( almost heterophonic ) melody line shared by the guitar and voice, during which the otherwise unambiguous beat often evaporates momentarily. this rhythmic device occurs only within the blues tempo region ( although not in every song ). of course, it makes sense that these free rhythms should be absent from the boogie, since their unpredictability would jar the groove- and dance-inducing regularity of up-tempo music. even though the spoken and sung passages in boogies do exhibit considerable rhythmic freedom, they float above a steady pulse without impinging upon it. duplets, triplets, and the mutable isoriff with the exception of the free rhythms mentioned above, the principal organising force in hooker’s blues and boogies is the triple subdivision of the beat, sometimes completely filled in and sometimes with a tacit middle subdivision that produces a long-short rhythm. / is generally recognised as the de facto metre of blues music, although many exceptions can be cited. for instance, charley patton’s first country blues recordings from omit the triplet entirely ( stewart ); / metre does not figure prominently until his final recordings in . blind lemon jefferson’s introduction to his ( ) ‘matchbox blues’ makes explicit use of even quavers; the mostly-triplet feel that ensues in the accompaniment is frequently warped into moments of duple subdivisions. robert johnson’s ( ) ‘cross road blues’ also shifts back and forth between two’s and three’s, although the governing metre is clearly compound ( as in all his other slow blues from that decade ). sometimes, johnson’s rhythm undergoes a gradual microrhythmic morphing from triple to duple and back, as in the alternate take of ‘ramblin’ on my mind’ ( benadon ). and the first-ever recorded vocal blues, mamie smith’s ( ) ‘crazy blues’, inhabits the metrically liquid zone of duple-triple ambiguity typical of jazz. thus, we are reminded that within the ( nominally ) duple/triple divide, there exists a rich amalgam of beat subdivisions. we also find exceptions to ternary subdivision in hooker’s music. within the blues tempo region, instances of duple subdivision are rare, and they tend to be microrhythmically derived rather than metrical, as in robert johnson’s example above. in other words, hooker sometimes tones down the -to- ratio of the ternary how hooker found his boogie long-short pattern by evening out the durations of the two notes, a feature of jazz rhythm ( friberg and sundström ; benadon ) and possibly of rhythm production in general ( collier and wright ). the boogie also exhibits the expected microrhythmic variance typical of long- short pairs. for instance, in ‘boogie awhile’ ( example ), scarcely any beats break down cleanly into a triplet – the long-short ratio being frequently skewed in favour of the second note in the pair – so much so, that at times the durations are unambigu- ously even. more significantly, hooker challenges many assumptions about musical logic by producing a rhythm that sounds long-short no matter how it is approached – upbeats to beats or vice versa. normally, if a rhythm’s beat/upbeat pattern is long- short, then its upbeat/beat pattern should be the reverse, short-long. but not here. the duration ratios for example are shown in table . values near . represent a ternary long-short -to- ratio between two adjacent notes, values near . represent an even -to- ratio ( two equidurational quavers ), and intermediate values ( such as . ) denote evened-out long-short patterns. two concurrent relationships are at play: beat/upbeat ( x:y ) and upbeat/beat ( a:b ) pairs. the foot acts as a metronome that provides the beats; they are subdivided by the guitar’s upbeats. these x:y ratios are usually tripleted ( shown in bold type ), but enough of them are not to preclude a tidy triplet feel from forming. still, the overall feel produced by foot beats and guitar upbeats is long-short ( x greater than y ), as expected in compound time. but the guitar line in isolation reveals a puzzling piece of evidence. the a:b ratio measures the guitar’s upbeats ( a ) against its – rather than the foot’s – beat attacks ( b ). to agree with the long-short x:y ratio, the a:b ratio should be short-long and therefore less than . ( a short upbeat followed by a longer duration on the beat ). in other words, the value of a should be smaller than the value of b. however, in this case the guitar follows the opposite route: a is almost always longer than b, yielding a:b ratio values above . . this occurs because the downward guitar slides lead to constant delays with respect to the foot. the result is a kaleidoscopic rhythm consisting predominantly of long- short patterns regardless of whether one listens to pairs of beats/upbeats ( x:y ) or upbeats/beats ( a:b ). beyond microrhythm, duple subdivision often plays a central and explicit role, as with the transformed version of the motive shown in example ( a ). commonly referred to as the elmore james riff ( because he featured it on ‘dust my broom’ in example . ‘boogie awhile’ ( : – : ). fernando benadon and ted gioia ), this motive was in fact used rather extensively more than a decade earlier by robert johnson. this riff, which we will refer to as the isoriff because it is isochronous and ‘isophonic’ ( a single note or chord comprised of pitches from the tonic triad or tonic dominant ), appears in almost all of hooker’s detroit recordings. even though the isoriff is inherently a triplet, hooker’s boogie often converts it into a duple construct, as shown in example ( b ). the reason for this might be purely practical, since maintaining the speed of the triplet at a boogie tempo may have translated into a technical feat beyond hooker’s reach. instead of abandoning the isoriff during the fast songs, hooker essentially retains the motive’s basic physical speed, allowing it to fit comfortably into a binary rather than ternary subdivision of the beat. in a sense, the slower note value compensates for the faster tempo. as mentioned previously, the spontaneous alternation of two- and three-way beat subdivisions is hardly exclusive to hooker’s boogie. but the importance of his duple isoriff should not be understated, for it lies at the heart of what stewart ( , p. ) calls a ‘sweeping metric shift in popular music that began in the s’. he notes that as the decades passed, ‘the underlying rhythms of american popular music underwent a basic, yet generally unacknowledged transition from triplet or shuffle feel ( / ) to even or straight eighth notes ( / )’ ( ibid., p. ). figure illustrates the changing note values that comprise the isoriff as it migrates across tempos. notice how the isoriff operates within well-defined tem- poral boundaries. its notes are about milliseconds at their slowest and ms at their fastest – regardless of their actual music notation values. no boogie contains table . durational ratios for ‘boogie awhile’ ( see example ). the x:y ratio measures beats/upbeats between foot and guitar; the a:b ratio measures upbeats/beats in the guitar. values above . denote long-short patterns. beat measure measure measure measure x:y a:b x:y a:b x:y a:b x:y a:b . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . example ( a ). triple isoriff. example ( b ). duple isoriff. how hooker found his boogie triplet-quaver isoriffs because they would be too fast ( less than ms per note ). conversely, quaver isoriffs are too slow ( more than ms ) for the blues and are therefore absent from that tempo region. hence, the isoriff can take on either form provided it lies within the rather narrow temporal band of – ms. it is interesting to note how the quaver (! in the graph ) dovetails roughly where the trendline of the triplet-quaver (") trails off, providing a link across the blues/boogie tempo gap mentioned earlier. the graph also shows that at sufficiently fast tempos, the isoriff can take the form of crotchet triplets (d), or even crotchets ( × ) if the tempo is faster still. this metrical fluidity suggests that the isoriff’s character is defined more by the raw physicality of successive strokes than by the actual note values, which result from accommodating the riff’s technical demands to the given tempo. thus, a ms-per- note isoriff can comprise quavers at bpm ( as in ‘good business’ ) or crotchet triplets at bpm ( as in ‘devil’s jump’, not shown ). some tempos make it possible for more than one type of isoriff to appear within the same song, as in ‘my baby’s got something’, ‘talkin’ boogie’, and ‘goin’ mad blues’. at times, the boogie begins with a fanfare-like isoriff that is so metrically nondescript that the tempo remains a mystery until the isoriff subsides and the foot stomping joins in. for instance, the opening isoriff of ‘she left me by myself’ can be heard as being made up of triplets ( if this were a bpm blues ) or quavers ( a ‘slow’ bpm boogie ); instead, the entrance of hooker’s foot, which will tap at a rate of times per minute, reveals the thumb downstrokes to have been crotchet triplets. a similar guessing game opens ‘boogie chillen ( jump chillen )’, where the isoriff accelerates as much as it disorients. in ‘boogie chillen ( i gotta be comin’ baby )’, the metric relationship between foot- stomp and isoriff is so tenuous – likely a result of hooker changing his mind as to the song’s appropriate tempo – that one must wait another minute-and-half for the return of the isoriff to confirm the crotchet triplet guess as correct. the isoriff, then, is a metrically malleable figure par excellence ( london ). metric malleability occurs with melodic or rhythmic figures that can be interpreted in more than one metric context, although performers usually disambiguate these kinds of patterns with such cues as expressive timing and dynamics ( london , p. ). in the isoriff’s case, the disambiguating detail consists of a grace note-like slide or hammer-on that hooker sometimes injects every three or six strokes if the isoriff is a triplet or every eight if it is a duplet. even though a detailed analysis of blues guitar technique is beyond the scope of this article, our discussion of the isoriff leads naturally to some brief observations about hooker’s right hand approach. there are several versions of the isoriff, ranging from single-string picking to multiple-string chord bashing. two of the isoriff types employ the thumb only, either to pick a single-note rhythm in the low or middle register, or to brush full chords with thumb downstrokes. in another version of the isoriff, the thumb and index finger work together isorhythmically, with the thumb providing the chord’s bass note and the index finger brushing two or three treble strings upstroke to complete the chord. sometimes the thumb rests, leaving only the index or middle finger to brush upstroke dyads or triads in the treble register. according to cohen’s ( ) classification of blues picking styles and hand postures, hooker’s mixed approach to timekeeping places him in the ‘utility-thumb’ category, in contrast to the ‘dead-thumb’ and ‘alternating-thumb’ players, who confined the thumb to basic beat-keeping either on a single bass string or alternating between two low strings. more specifically, cohen sees hooker’s boogie as a hybrid of utility- and dead-thumb approaches, ‘a younger style’ of the post-war era ( ibid., p. ). fernando benadon and ted gioia hearing double the underlying rhythmic engine of hooker’s boogie is the perpetual cycle of alternat- ing long beats and short upbeats. this pattern appears in many composite guises that include strumming, foot taps, muffled strings, picked monophonic lines, staccato chords, and even ‘loud’ rests, a term devised by london ( , p. ) to describe unexpected silences on strong beats. iyer ( ) believes that long-short patterns are conducive to stream segregation, the phenomenon whereby the mind separates the auditory stimulus into two or more ‘auditory objects’ ( bregman ). such rhythmic unevenness is also present in jazz, where the ‘swung’ eighth-note facilitates the perception of higher level rhythmic structure. an immediate consequence of the swing feel is that it suggests the next level of hierarchical organization. in conventional terms, the swung eighth-note pairs are perceptually grouped into the larger regular interval, that is, the quarter note. if all subdivisions were performed with exactly the same duration, it would be more difficult to perceive the main beat. the lengthening of the first of two swung notes in a pair amounts to a durational accentuation of the beat. . . . the observation that swing enhances the perception of the tactus is no surprise, given its primary function in dance contexts. ( iyer , pp. – ) in hooker’s boogie, the syncopation generated by the omnipresent upbeats is so prominently featured that one is led to wonder whether they, and not the beats, carry the groove’s timekeeping function. hence, the boogie can be seen as a dichotomous framework in which beats and upbeats vie for control of the listener’s internal clock via stream segregation. moore and gockel ( ) have suggested that stream segre- gation is dependent on the degree of perceptual difference between successive sounds. according to this paradigm, the more two adjacent sounds differ in duration, pitch height, timbre, and/or loudness, the more likely it will be for the sounds to segregate. such is usually the case in hooker’s boogie, whose beat/upbeat cycle features all of the above-mentioned perceptual differences. added together, this figure . isoriff note values at different tempos. how hooker found his boogie creates the ear-boggling illusion of two parallel, quasi-simultaneous pulse keepers ( table ). moreover, bregman and campbell ( ) have shown that listeners can have a difficult time determining the order of tones within a fast repeated cycle of highs and lows. this is because a further consequence of stream segregation is that it hinders temporal order judgements, especially given a close temporal proximity between events – as in the boogie’s upbeats and beats ( see moore , pp. – for a review ). consider what happens to the long-short pattern as the tempo is increased, say from a slow blues to a fast boogie: the temporal interval between the upbeat ( short note ) and the subsequent downbeat ( long ) decreases. in theory, we could increase the tempo as much as we please to bring the upbeat closer and closer to the downbeat. at a sufficiently fast tempo, the two notes’ extreme proximity renders their temporal ordering ambiguous – that is, the listener becomes unsure of which of the two notes is played first and which second. this ‘temporal order threshold’ has been determined to be as large as ms ( warren et al. ) and as little as ms ( winckel ), depending on how the experiment is constructed. within the range of boogie tempos, the duration of the upbeat triplet-quaver ranges from to ms, which suggests that at least some temporal ambiguity is likely to arise. examples of this beat/upbeat diffusion abound in hooker’s boogies, as in ‘momma poppa boogie’ ( example ). like a dog chasing its own tail, the upbeat guitar note precedes hooker’s foot taps by such a narrow margin ( about one tenth of a second ) that one is dizzied by the blur of their cyclical alternation. indeed, at times it appears as if the foot is providing the upbeats and the guitar the downbeats. a potent mix although other blues guitarists employed boogie rhythms, they typically imitated the stylistic devices of piano players. this was a popular recipe with blues fans. during a seven-year period, for example, jimmy reed enjoyed no fewer than eighteen hits that reached the billboard r&b charts, building most of these performances off simple piano-type boogie riffs translated to the guitar. other blues artists – muddy waters, howlin’ wolf, elmore james – may have earned more respect from serious blues fans and music writers, but none of them could match reed’s sheer popularity in table . stream segregation as a result of beat/upbeat perceptual contrast. beat upbeat duration longer approximately in a : ratio to the upbeat shorter approximately in a : ratio to the beat pitch lower usually a drone-like bass string higher usually a treble chord or single-pitched note timbre darker thumb on low string or percussive foot stomp brighter brushed chord or single-pitched note loudness softer sometimes silent louder usually accented fernando benadon and ted gioia the late s. many garage bands and aspiring blues guitarists imitated reed’s performances, which employed simple figures, easy to learn and play. hooker’s boogie rhythms were also popular but, in contrast to reed’s, proved far more difficult to imitate. he had transformed the boogie from a simple jam session beat to a taut system of feints and counter-feints that not only played the beat, but played with it as well. to be sure, the rhythmic features mentioned above – upbeat/downbeat proximity, up-tempo vamping, long-short rhythmic patterns – can be found in other musical styles during the decades leading to hooker’s first recordings. but hooker’s ( or will moore’s ) contribution lay in the innovative rhythmic concoction of these elements. more specifically, hooker’s boogie conflated features from two dance- oriented black styles of music from the preceding decades: piano boogie-woogie and big band swing. piano boogie-woogie is characterised by a relentless left-hand motto perpetuo within an up-tempo / feel. this two measure cycle – sometimes referred to as ‘the sixteen’ because it contains that many quavers – constitutes the style’s principal driving force. as with hooker’s boogie, the accented triplet upbeat is a recurring element. but there is a crucial difference between the two styles. as dis- cussed earlier, hooker’s boogie tends to use upper-register ( usually chordal ) accents on the upbeat, providing a stark timbral contrast to the lower-register thumb notes and/or foot taps that mark the beat. boogie-woogie lacks this perceptual differentia- tion. a style that is replete with accented triplet-upbeats is big band swing. but those upbeats which do form part of the essential driving force in the rhythm section, such as the ride cymbal or piano’s chordal comping, are not incessantly cyclical and therefore not an integral ingredient of the overall groove. and they are not loud enough, either. the truly salient upbeat accents belong to the brass and saxophone sections, which, though frequent, are even less systematically cyclical. hence, hooker’s boogie can be said to combine the best of both worlds because its main rhythmic cell, the tripleted long-short module, employs the pronounced perceptual distinction of upbeats found in big band swing and the non-stop cyclicality of piano boogie-woogie. moreover, the static, drone-like harmony of hooker’s boogie acts as a foil to its rhythmic syncopation, a quality that is absent from the harmonic mobility of the other two styles. example . blurred temporal order as a result of beat/upbeat proximity in ‘momma poppa boogie’ ( : – : ). how hooker found his boogie when hooker’s boogie came face to face with the piano boogie-woogie in ‘do the boogie’ ( recorded in and originally unreleased ), his electric guitar avoided the stylistic contradictions by relinquishing the leading role. this first accompanied boogie finds him mainly as vocalist and bandleader, with pianist james watkin and drummer curtis foster carrying most of the rhythmic momentum. later that year, hooker let his groove mingle with that of his two accompanists in different versions of the instrumental ‘ boogie’. what ensued can be described as ( i ) a harmonic free-for-all of mismatched tonics, subdominants, and dominants; and ( ii ) a rhythmic tug-of-war that pitted watkin’s formulaic handwork against hooker’s personalised approach. things would improve slightly over time as, in the words of neil slaven ( , p. ), ‘[watkin] more or less adapted himself to the vagaries of hooker’s performance’. the later recordings show that hooker also made efforts to reach a stylistic compromise with his bandmates, even if this meant distilling some of the complexities of his groove. accelerating tempos without exception, hooker’s tempos are always on the rise. the thrill infused by the boogie’s relentless beat is further heightened by a pervasive accelerando that gradually ups the tempo by anywhere from to metronome points. even when the recklessness of the opening tempo seems immune to quickening, hooker still insists on cranking up the pace, as in the -to- bpm boost of ‘goin’ mad blues’. these unidirectional tempo transformations are not unique to his boogie; they are a universal trait of hooker’s early recordings, blues included. admittedly, many performers and styles of music allow for some degree of tempo drift. perfectly stable tempos can only be the outcome of machine-led renditions, such as those structured around the dictates of a metronome click or drum-machine track. none- theless, tempo stability is generally positively valued, since being accused of ‘rush- ing’ or ‘dragging’ the tempo is as ego-damaging as being told that one’s playing is uninspired or out of tune – the stuff of amateurs. what is particularly striking about hooker’s accelerandos is their ever-presence, which suggests that they are as funda- mental to his musical persona as his stationary harmonies and original strumming patterns. tempo acceleration appears to be an inherent feature of much blues music. david evans’ blues transcriptions reveal widespread ‘acceleration of the tempo across the course of the performance’ ( evans , p. ), as do titon’s ( ) transcriptions of forty-four ‘downhome’ blues. titon’s sample, which includes recordings made between and , includes tempos that speed up in magni- tudes comparable to john lee hooker’s. other writers have also pointed to specific instances of accelerando in the performances of robert johnson: ford ( , p. ) in the second take of ‘ramblin’ on my mind’ ( ‘a tempo that accelerates by a proportion of : in the third verse’ ), boone ( , p. ) in ‘cross road blues’ ( ‘johnson’s rhythm is similar to [fred] mcdowell’s in its intensity, its regular, swinging beat, and its gradually quickening tempo’ ), and backer ( , p. ) in johnson’s overall output ( ‘the playing is assured; the time is solid although the tempo increases. this has the effect of building excitement as the acceleration is gradual and consistent’ ). evans ( , p. ) also noticed it in blind lemon jefferson’s ‘tin cup blues’, ‘with the metronome reading fluctuating from qn = and qn = , tending overall to accelerate from the slower to the faster tempo’. and keil ( , p. ) alluded fernando benadon and ted gioia indirectly to this trend, pointing out that as blues music evolved over time, ‘a broader spectrum of tempos is found, and the tempo selected is more rigidly maintained’. to expand this list, we add, in chronological order, four classic recordings that also undergo a tempo increase: mamie smith’s ‘crazy blues’ ( , – bpm ), pine top smith’s ‘pine top’s boogie woogie’ ( , – bpm ), muddy waters’ ‘i can’t be satisfied’ ( , – bpm ), and bo diddley’s ‘i’m a man’ ( , – bpm ). accelerandos have also been noted beyond the realm of the blues. ‘most black song’, writes alan lomax ( , p. ), ‘both post- and antebellum, even when its mood is somber and serious when the song begins, usually picks up tempo and is transformed into music that can be danced to before it has been sung to a con- clusion’. a report by the georgia writing project’s savannah unit describes drum music at a daddy grace religious service in the georgia sea islands: ‘at first the procession is orderly and fairly quiet, but as time passes the music becomes increasingly loud [and] the pulsating rhythm of the instruments increases in tempo’ ( quoted in bastin , p. ). another employee of the federal writers project, folklorist zora neale hurston, describes a prayer ritual at a southern black church: there is in the body of the prayer an accelerando passage where the audience takes no part. it would be like applauding in the middle of a solo at the metropolitan. it is here that the [preacher] artist comes forth. he adorns the prayer with every sparkle of earth, water and sky, and nobody wants to miss a syllable. he comes down from this height to a slower tempo and is borne up again. ( hurston / , pp. – ) given the foregoing quotes, one is tempted to suspect the accelerando phenom- enon to have been a prominent feature of early american black musical culture. but accelerating tempos are also prevalent in numerous musical cultures from around the world, including native american powwow ( goertzen , p. ), hindustani rag ( clayton , p. ), and the chanted bargaining procedure of venezuela’s yanomami indians ( epstein , p. ). why accelerate in the first place? in music, gradual increases seem to be preferable to decreases, as may be observed in other musical parameters besides tempo. for instance, bach fugues add voices gradually but remove them suddenly ( huron a ), and beethoven’s piano sonatas contain more crescendos than decrescendos, with the former usually lasting longer than the latter ( huron b ). in his treatise on the art of teaching and practicing the piano forte, composer/theorist daniel gottlob türk wrote that ‘in pieces of a fiery, violent, and furious character, the strongest passages must be hastened a little, or played accelerando’ ( plate shown in hudson , p. ). as hinted by türk’s didacticism, musical tempo correlates with cardiovascular and respiratory rates ( bernardi et al. ). gilbert rouget, in his book music and trance, has noted that trance-inducing music is frequently marked by accelerando and crescendo, and that these processes are linked to the intensification and dramatisation of sound as music reaches a climactic moment ( rouget , p. ). comparable situations are not unknown in western concert music. for example, musicologist reinhard kopiez and his colleagues ( kopiez et al. , p. ) noticed a slight tempo increase halfway through a twenty-eight-hour piano performance of erik satie’s ‘vexations’, at which point the pianist reported being in a state of trance. a suggestive body of work studying the process of entrainment, the tendency of brainwave pat- terns to imitate external rhythms – a drum beat, a flashing light – still offers us more questions than answers ( gioia ), but the process itself is well known, measurable how hooker found his boogie and repeatable. the literature surrounding the ecstatic trances of shamans is especially rich with examples, and it is perhaps revealing that hooker’s biographer charles shaar murray ( , p. ) likens hooker to a shaman, although murray seems unaware of the systematic tendency toward tempo acceleration in the blues musician’s work. housed in these global accelerandos are the three signature rhythmic techniques described above: metric mutations of the isoriff, perceptually distinct upbeats, and blurred temporal order of attacks. the fast tempos, stationary harmonies, and fluid triplet vamps further personalise john lee hooker’s now classic groove. these kinds of rhythmic features – which are so significant in many blues-influenced styles – have been conspicuously neglected in popular music studies. in this light, hooker’s boogie of the late s presents a rich case study of rhythmic expressivity during a pivotal moment in american popular music. endnotes . definitions of what constitutes a ‘hook’ vary. the nature of rhythmic hooks is examined in traut ( ). . david evans and gayle dean wardlow ( per- sonal communication ) confirmed that will moore was virtually unknown in the clarksdale scene. evans notes, however, that hooker’s style bears some resemblance to the little- known work of country jim bledsoe and clarence london, guitarists who were recorded in shreveport, louisiana in the early s. since we know that moore hailed originally from shreveport, we can speculate that hooker’s approach may reflect a regional style centred in shreveport that his step-father brought with him to the clarksdale area. how- ever, our present knowledge of the early shreveport blues tradition is limited, although this could present an interesting area of research for later scholars. . the exceptions are all post- . the tempo of ‘that’s alright’ is – bpm; it is the result of a duo session led not by hooker but by his musical sidekick eddie kirkland in . ‘too much boogie’ ( ) drags in reminiscing slow motion at bpm. by , tempos in the s would not be uncommon, especially in accompanied numbers such as ‘i’m ready’ ( – bpm ) and ‘hug and squeeze’ ( – bpm ). . some songs, such as ‘don’t go baby’, have a boogie tempo and a stomping foot, but their character is more contemplative than rambunc- tious. a couple of others, such as ‘low down boogie’, are really slow blues despite their title. . we agree with ‘the apparent four-ness of / ’ ( agawu , p. , note ). hence, when dis- cussing ternary subdivisions of the beat, we consciously interchange the concepts of / triplet-quavers and / quavers. . clearly, neither the duple nor triple subdivi- sions receive metronomic treatment. . examples include ‘i believe i’ll dust my broom’, ‘honeymoon blues’, ‘kind hearted woman blues’, and ‘ramblin’ on my mind’. . pianists did not face same the same challenge as guitarists. for an example of triplet-quaver iso- riffs at a boogie tempo, listen to ‘do the boogie’ ( : – : ). at bpm, james watkin manages to articulate the isoriff at a tremolo-like rate of ten attacks per second. . millisecond values do not correspond to exact measurements of the audio signal. rather, they are calculated arithmetically based on the song’s approximate tempo. for example, a qua- ver is ms long at a tempo of bpm, although the actual durations as performed will be naturally higher and lower. . cohen ( , p. ) also describes the ‘t- run’, a technique whereby the thumb and index finger alternate attacks on a single string, like a plectrum, to play scalar passages. this tech- nique was more prevalent in the east than in the delta. although cohen is careful to note that players are likely to employ more than one approach to hand posture and finger picking, he maintains that these physical aspects are closely intertwined with regional styles. . a milder form of this effect was noted by titon ( , p. ): ‘when the syncopation is con- tinuous, the natural result is a conflict of pulse patterns ( polyrhythm ) between the vocal and the accompaniment’. but such instances last no longer ‘than two and a half beats’ – a stark contrast to hooker’s perennial syncopation. . in some instances, the poor quality of the acetate recordings results in a gradual fall in pitch – and a( n uncharacteristically ) steady tempo. for instance, the ‘stomp boogie’ tempo of bpm undergoes a negligible increase of two points, while the pitch drops by about cents. restor- ing the ending pitch ( by ear ) to match that of the beginning reveals that the song originally accelerated to bpm. similar re-enactments of otherwise tempo-static performances of fernando benadon and ted gioia ‘miss pearl boogie’ and ‘boogie awhile’ reveal comparable tempo changes ( – and – bpm, respectively ). . this is not a gradual accelerando; the tempo changes rather abruptly towards the end of the song. . but on the other side of that hit record, ‘i feel like going home’ maintains the tempo constant at – bpm. . hooker’s accelerando resembles two of the four types distinguished by clayton ( , pp. – ) in hindustani music: ‘( a ) gradual and slight, and perhaps unintentional’ and ‘( b ) gradual but significant; resulting in increased tension and excitement’. ( the other two are ‘( c ) step- wise; a conscious acceleration at a particular point in a performance’ and ‘( d ) temporary; for example to serve the needs of a tabla solo’. ) . more recently, composers as diverse as conlon nancarrow ( gann , pp. – ) and john adams ( adams et al., pp. – ) have often used gradual accelerandos to animate the musical surface. references adams, j., jemian, r., and de zeeuw, a.m. . ‘an interview with john adams’, perspectives of new music, / , pp. – agawu, k. . ‘structural analysis or cultural analysis? competing perspectives on the ‘‘standard pattern’’ of west african rhythm’, journal of the american musicological society, / , pp. – backer, m. . ‘the guitar’, in the cambridge companion to blues and gospel music, ed. a. moore ( cambridge, cambridge university press ), pp. – bastin, b. . red river blues: the blues tradition in the southeast ( urbana, il, illini books ) benadon, f. . ‘slicing the beat: jazz eighth-notes as expressive microrhythm’, ethnomusicology, / , pp. – . ‘a circular plot for rhythm visualization and analysis’, music theory online, / bernardi, l., porta, c., and sleight, p. . ‘cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non-musicians: the importance of silence’, heart, , pp. – boone, g.m. . ‘twelve key recordings’, in the cambridge companion to blues and gospel music, ed. a. moore ( cambridge, cambridge university press ), pp. – bregman, a. . auditory scene analysis ( cambridge, ma, mit press ) bregman, a., and campbell, j. . ‘primary auditory stream segregation and perception of order in rapid sequences of tones’, journal of experimental psychology, , pp. – clayton, m. . time in indian music: rhythm, metre, and form in north indian rag performance ( oxford, oxford university press ) cohen, a.m. . ‘the hands of blues guitarists’, american music, / , pp. – collier, g., and wright, c.e. . ‘temporal rescaling of simple and complex ratios in rhythmic tapping’, journal of experimental psychology, human perception & performance, / , pp. – davis, f. . the history of the blues ( new york, ny, da capo press ) ellis, a. . ‘how to play like john lee hooker’, guitar player, january, p. epstein, d. . shaping time: music, the brain, and performance ( new york, ny, wadsworth publishing ) evans, d. . big road blues: tradition and creativity in the folk blues ( berkeley, ca, da capo press ) . ‘musical innovation in the blues of blind lemon jefferson’, black music research journal, / , pp. – ford, c. . ‘robert johnson’s rhythms’, popular music, / , pp. – friberg, a., and sundström, a. . ‘swing ratios and ensemble timing in jazz performance: evidence for a common rhythmic pattern’, music perception, / , pp. – gann, k. . the music of conlon nancarrow ( cambridge, cambridge university press ) gioia, t. . healing songs ( durham, nc, duke university press ) goertzen, c. . ‘purposes of north carolina powwows’, in powwow, ed. c. ellis, l.e. lassiter and g.h. dunham ( lincoln, ne, bison books ), pp. – hirsh, i.j., and sherrick, c.e. . ‘perceived order in different sense modalities’, journal of experimental psychology, , pp. – hudson, r. . stolen time: the history of tempo rubato ( oxford, oxford university press ) huron, d. a. ‘increment/decrement asymmetries in polyphonic sonorities’, music perception, / , pp. – b. ‘crescendo/diminuendo asymmetries in beethoven’s piano sonatas’, music perception, / , pp. – hurston, z.n. / . ‘spirituals and neo-spirituals’, in folklore, memoirs, and other writings, ed. c. wall ( new york, ny, library of america ), pp. – iyer, v. . ‘embodied mind, situated cognition, and expressive microtiming in african-american music’, music perception, / , pp. – keil, c. . urban blues ( chicago, il, university of chicago press ) how hooker found his boogie kopiez, r., bangert, m., and altenmüller, e. . ‘tempo and loudness analysis of a continuous -hour performance of erik satie’s composition ‘‘vexations’’ ’, journal of new music research, / , pp. – koransky, j. . ‘boogie endin’: john lee hooker: – ’, downbeat, / , pp. – kubik, g. . africa and the blues ( jackson, mi, university press of mississippi ) leblanc, a., colman, j., mccrary, j., sherrill, c., and malin, s. . ‘tempo preferences of different age music listeners’, journal of research in music education, / , pp. – lomax, a. . the land where the blues began ( new york, ny, pantheon books ) london, j. . hearing in time: psychological aspects of musical meter ( oxford, oxford university press ) moore, b. . an introduction to the psychology of hearing ( san diego, ca, academic press ) moore, b., and gockel, h. . ‘factors influencing sequential stream segregation’, acta acustica – acustica, , pp. – murray, c.s. . boogie man: the adventures of john lee hooker in the american twentieth century ( new york, ny, st. martin’s griffin ) oakley, g. . the devil’s music: a history of the blues ( new york, ny, da capo press ) o’neal, j., and van singel, a. . the voice of the blues: classic interviews from living blues magazine ( new york, ny, routledge ) rouget, g. . music and trance: a theory of the relations between music and possession, trans. b. biebuyck ( chicago, il, university of chicago press ) slaven, n. . liner notes to the complete john lee hooker, detroit – , body & soul stewart, a. . ‘ ‘‘funky drummer’’: new orleans, james brown and the rhythmic transformation of american popular music’, popular music, / , pp. – titon, j.t. . early downhome blues ( chapel hill, nc, university of north carolina press ) traut, d. . ‘ ‘‘simply irresistible’’: recurring accent patterns as hooks in mainstream s music’, popular music, / , pp. – discography john lee hooker, the complete john lee hooker. body & soul; vol. detroit – , , ; vol. : detroit , , ; vol. : detroit – , , ; vol. : detroit – , , ; vol. : detroit – , bs , ; vol. : detroit/miami – ( bs , ) fernando benadon and ted gioia $$$$p popular music ( ) volume / . copyright  cambridge university press, pp. – . printed in the united kingdom is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? h a n s w e i s e t h a u n e t among the most frequently repeated formulae in the description of the traditions most often called afro-american music, in particular the styles of jazz, blues, soul and rock, is the concept of the ‘blue note’. it may also seem that this is a most widely accepted idea. the ‘blue note’ is usually thought of as a kind of basic element in those styles, as constituting the ‘ethnic’ or ‘african’ aspect of those musics as opposed to the ‘western’ contributions of harmony. my main attempt here is to step into the somewhat muddy waters of musicol- ogical and sociological/anthropoligical/cultural studies discourses of ‘the blue’ and ask what the ‘blue idea’ really is about. in rethinking the concept of the ‘blue note’, i find it necessary to differentiate between two concerns that often seem to be some- what unconsciously or muddily mixed together: ( ) the idea of the ‘blue note’ as referring to pitch, thinking of the note as an ‘item’, commonly thought of as the slight altering of the minor third and the flattened seventh; and ( ) the general concept of ‘blue feeling’ linked to the idea of playing ‘blue notes’: in short, the performance of music with a ‘blue feel’. from my analysis of performances, interviews and recordings, the conclusion will be that most musicological analyses of these styles are still based on an over- simplified idea of harmony: the applied western major/minor theory concept with the addition of ‘blue elements’. my argument is that the harmonic foundation of blues, rock, and some jazz styles, in emic terms and performance practice, in fact represents both a totally different conception of harmony to that of the western functional (tonal) harmony and also represents a different comprehension of disson- ance/consonance in music. the idea of the ‘blue note’ as pitch is there such a thing as the ‘blue note?’ this question is raised for a number of reasons. first of all i think that the concept of the ‘blue note’ is partly misunderstood and misused. as such it represents a simplified explanatory version of the style of blues music. later on, i will suggest an alternative way of thinking about ‘the blue’ elements in terms of ‘blue harmony’ and ‘bluesness’. the latter term is adopted from steven g. smith ( ) who traces the relationship between blues and ‘blues- ness’ as an aesthetic category: as embodied feeling of ‘blues’ or ‘pain’. it should also be noted that my concept of ‘blue harmony’ diverges from common notions of hans weisethaunet ‘blues harmony’, thought of as ‘patterns of harmony’ or harmonic progressions; and also from commonplace notions of ‘blue notes’ and ‘blues scales’. my concept of ‘blue harmony’ aims at a description of a particular stylised blend of harmony inherent in blues performance – but also partly transformed to other styles – such as jazz and rock. the purpose of this essay is not to give a final definition of ‘the blue’ in music, but rather to raise a few questions which seem crucial to our understanding of theoretical concepts of harmony applied and reworked in blues performance. as known, blues is also commonly understood as ‘form’. having played and intensely listened to blues music myself for more than twenty years, my experience has always been that ‘form’ is internalised by blues musicians in such a way that per- ception of formal structure (as understood in musicological theory) is not at all what is at issue in performance. discussing the topic of ‘blue notes’ with numer- ous – well-known as well as lesser-known – blues musicians and scholars, has further supported my view that the concept of ‘blue notes’ is derived from western musicology and that the ‘blue note’ may not even exist as an element of emic theory: its origin was surely invented to describe the structure of ‘negro’ music as opposed to that of european music: the blues structure, like ragtime, was an admixture of african influence (the call-and- response pattern) and european harmonically derived functional form. but unlike ragtime, the blues were improvised and as such were more successful in preserving the original and melodic patterns of african music . . . harmony has already been mentioned as the basis of blues structure in its later stages of development. (schuller [ ], p. ) the description of ‘blues structure’ here given by schuller seems representative of how jazz and blues historians have imagined how blues music came into being, and the fact that ‘harmony’ is portrayed as the ‘basis of blues structure’. blues is primarily thought of as a mixture of ‘simple structural forms’ of harmony derived from european music with the addition of the ‘negro’s’ ‘hollering’ and ‘crying’ of ‘blue notes’. as described by stearns, blues harmony is thus thought to be simple: the harmony employed in the blues is another matter. it is pretty clearly derived from european music although coloured by the blue tonality of the cry. at its simplest, the har- mony of the blues consists of the three basic chords in our musical language . . . these chords are technically known as the ‘tonic’, the ‘subdominant’, and the ‘dominant’ . . . (stearns , p. ) the view that music is foremost an expression of ‘structure’ – and in particular that of ‘harmonic structure’ – has been the ruling ideology of western musicology (including ethnomusicology) almost up to the present day. as such, the discipline of musicology has in particular been ruled by the ideas of ‘complexity’ versus ‘sim- plicity’; the ‘developed’ versus the ‘primitive’; ‘art’ versus ‘folk’ and ‘pop’; ‘high’ versus ‘low’, and so forth. even though many scholars have come to assume that ‘blues form’ often includes a wide range of variation from the basic i–iv–v, twelve- bar form, the performance of blues is still commonly thought of as exegetic of ‘simple form’ with the addition of ‘blue notes’ and sad lyrics. thus the following definition of blues is given by frank tirro: ‘blues’ refers to a style of music, a type of performance, a musical form, and a state of mind. structurally, the chief characteristic of the musical form is a repeated harmonic pattern of twelve-measures’ duration in / -time. (tirro , p. ) is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? in defining the ‘blue note’ (by quoting ethnomusicologist bruno nettl), tirro – like most jazz/blues writers and scholars – leans on the ever-repeated definition of the past where ‘blue notes’ came to be classified as the pitch-altering of thirds and sevenths: a frequently mentioned characteristic of u.s. negro songs is the so-called ‘blue note’, the flatted or slightly lowered third and seventh degrees in a major scale. the origin of this phenomenon is not known, but it probably cannot be traced to africa. here is a musical trait which may, possibly, have come into folk music from practices of american negro popular and jazz musicians. (tirro , p. ) i think nettl is wrong in suggesting that the concept of the ‘blue note’ has derived from the musicians performing this music. rather it has originated from the scholars describing the music. in addition, in blues performance every note may be bent or altered, but in different ways depending on style and how such notes appear in the harmonic texture. one of the most frequently heard ‘blue notes’ as regards pitch discrepancy in post-war electric guitar playing may be that of the bent fourth: this is commonly bent to include different pitches between the fourth and the fifth (and higher pitches as well). the second (which does not even appear in what scholars have named the blues scale) also seems to be a very common ‘blue note’ feature of most blues guitarists’ repertoires: moving between the second and the minor third in innumerable ways. in fact every note of the twelve-tone chro- matic scale may appear in a blues tune, possibly also as ‘blue notes’, because micro- tonality, attack, and timbre variation are such essential parts of blues expression. the aesthetics behind this practice – being crucial to the ‘meaning’ of blues perform- ance – is that of ‘putting things to the notes’ as described by b.b. king in his book, blues guitar method: to me it’s more like the human voice. it’s like a person singing. it seems to say more and you can feel it. it makes the sound sort of stimulating . . . i think in terms of not just playing a note but making sure that every note i play means something. you need to take time with these notes. if you just play notes and not put anything into it, you’ll never have a distinctive style. you need to put yourself into what you are doing. it will set you apart from the person just playing the guitar. in other words, make music. (king , p. ) the aesthetics of blues phrasing involves an idea of ‘personifying’ each and every note. the master of blues performance may make his personal mark on each note – with a bend or a vibrato – in such a way that the skilled/socialised listener only needs to hear one single note in order to recognise and feel the presence of the sound of a b.b. king as being distinct from albert king, albert collins, buddy guy, or players like peter green, eric clapton or jimi hendrix. this contrasts with the idea of ‘musemes’ as the smallest item of ‘music’ – sometimes defined as a minimum of three notes, sometimes more ‘flexibly’. (for a summary of the relevant theories of philip tagg and others, see middleton ( ), p. .) among the very few ever to have questioned the widespread mis-assumption of what makes up the pitches of ‘blue notes’ is jeff todd titon in his study of ‘early downhome blues’ (a term borrowed from the vernacular). from analysing a number of downhome blues performances, titon comes to the conclusion that in fact all the pitches of the western twelve-tone scale may be used in one single blues melody in this early performance style of the blues (titon , p. ). hence, titon aban- dons the notion of ‘blue notes’ in favour of his own ‘pitch complexes’. related to the keynote of c he defines groups of pitches as ‘e complex’ (the series between e § and e), ‘g complex’ (the series between g § and g), and ‘b § complex’ (the series hans weisethaunet between b § and b), which he finds to be the most frequently found microtones in this style of blues, alongside movements including the notes a, f and d, while c (tonic) and g (the fifth) still seem to be the most important notes. titon goes on to show that this particular practice does not seem to be a play of chance but occurs within a rather consistent system of melodic contour, lines and stanzas: . . . the most important argument that these quarter-tones form distinct pitches in a down- home blues mode is that singers enter and move within the complexes in a manner reason- ably consistent from phrase to phrase, line to line, and stanza to stanza throughout a given song. (titon , p. ) returning to stearns ( ), data arguing for an alternative concept of ‘blue notes’ seem to have been present also at that time; however, the emic utterances were rather used as a means of documenting the stubbornness and lack of theoreti- cal understanding of the blues performer, for instance, the harmony employed by john lee hooker is viewed as lacking in development. as stearns writes: there were blues singers on recordings in , however, who still did not employ european harmony. it is generally possible to date a blues style by the complexity of the harmony. guitarist john lee hooker, whose recordings are made for negro trade exclusively, employs a drone which sounds very much like the skirl of a bagpipe and he says his grandfather played that way. his rhythms, however, are very complicated. with big bill broonzy it’s a matter of pride not to employ european harmony, although he doesn’t think of it in those terms: . . . for me to really sing the old blues that i learned in mississippi i have to go back to my sound and not the right chords as the musicians have told me to make. they just don’t work with the real blues . . . the blues didn’t come out of no book and them real chords did . . . the real blues is played and sung the way you feel and no man or woman feels the same way every day . . . (stearns , pp. – ) in considering later examples of blues performance, in particular that of post- war electric blues with representatives like b.b. king, albert king, freddie king, john lee hooker, hubert sumlin, albert collins, otis rush, buddy guy, johnny winter, stevie ray vaughan; players like jimi hendrix, eric clapton, peter green, steve cropper, robert cray, rockers like eddie van halen or jimmy page, and even jazz players like john scofield, mike stern and john mclaughlin, my argument is that what is at stake in blues is not simply a major/minor western concept of diatonic practice with the addition of ‘blue notes’, but rather a completely different concept or reworking of functional harmony as regards the comprehension of dis- sonance/consonance. the simplified conceptualisation of what ‘blue notes’ are about partly stems from the intense musicological insistence on separation of elements of musical ‘structure’ derived from western music theory: the insistence on the separation of ‘harmony’ from ‘sound’ (timbre), ‘melody’ and ‘rhythm’, as the starting point of all analysis. music as process: ‘blue notes’ as participatory discrepancies rather than thinking of music as the structure of ‘objects’, i think it is wise to view music as a mode of performance: as a process involving musicians and participants. following charles keil, ‘the power of music lies in its participatory discrepancies’: a concept keil uses to describe the intentional ‘out-of-tuneness’ and ‘out-of- syncness’ of music performance: the ‘process’ of ‘vital drive’, ‘groove’ or ‘beat’ and the ‘texture’ of ‘timbre’, ‘sound’, ‘tone qualities’, etc. (keil and feld , p. ) a similar point of departure is taken by robert walser’s argument that music is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? table. layers of ‘sound’/‘harmonic texture’. layers instruments texture ( ) lead: vocal/lead guitar/sax melody, improvisation, lines ( ) background: guitar/piano/organ/horns/backing riff, chords vocals, etc. ( ) reference: bass guitar harmonic foundation, arpeggios, lines, root (tonic) references, riff ( ) pattern: drums sound, attack, space should be revived as a verb rather than a noun in order to challenge the common practice of analysing and understanding music in terms of objects. in doing so he takes as a starting point christopher small’s notion of ‘musicking’ (see small and ): ‘musicking embraces composition, performance, listening, dancing – all of the social practices of which musical scores and recordings are merely one- dimensional traces.’ (walser , p. xiii) ‘blue notes’ may obviously be seen as ‘participatory discrepancies’ following keil’s definition which tries to capture the fundamental feature of participation, interaction and sociality of music performance. seeing ‘grooving’ as fundamentally social, my assumption will be that ‘harmony’ must be viewed as part of what keil defines as ‘texture’: ‘sound’, ‘tone qualities’ and so forth. what blues performances of ‘chicago style’ (muddy waters, jimmy reed, etc.), ‘texas style’ (clarence gate- mouth brown, stevie ray vaughan, etc.), ‘new orleans style’ (earl king, snooks eaglin, etc.) and ‘british style’ (the bluesbreakers, s fleetwood mac, etc.) all have in common is that their music is the outcome of an interaction of individual players creating the ‘sound’ or ‘texture’ of the blues in interplay. each musician of a band participates in creating the ‘whole’ – the music – by grooving and creating sounds in real time. there may be expressed or unexpressed stylised rules govern- ing this process; however, to be accepted as a musician (to be able to play the blues), some stylised regularities must be followed as a basis of performance. in performance, interplay (collaboration/communication) is based on the idea that each player finds or defines his ‘space’ in relation to the others. at the bottom there will be a keeper of the groove: usually the bass player and the drummer in interaction. at the next layer there will be some rhythmic ‘lift-up-over-sounding’ discrepancies: rhythm guitar or keyboards. on top, there will be vocals and lead guitar soloing. together, all those layers make the ‘groove’, while simultaneously creating the ‘texture’. as regards ‘texture’, the opening up of ‘sound’ and ‘space’ is created by breaks and continuity in the rhythm pattern set by the drummer. the harmonic reference/ foundation/root is initiated by the bass player, while chords and harmonic riffs are played on guitar/keyboard. on top of this the texture is filled with melodies and lines of lead vocals, lead guitar or possibly other instruments, like piano, sax, har- monica, etc. entering this role (see the table, layer ). the table sets out a very simplified model of how ‘harmonic texture’ is set into play in the process of a blues band performance. ‘groove’ as process occurs at all layers, as does improvisation. what is of main concern here, however, is how the concept of ‘blue notes’ fits within the process of the ‘harmonic texture’: what i am going to term ‘blue harmony’. this interaction between the different layers, hans weisethaunet between different individuals, may also be the essence of the performance as regards ‘sound’ and ‘harmony’, as well as the core of the musical interaction between the members of a band. a man who came to influence the ‘sound’ of s and s soul, blues and rock performance to a great extent is guitarist and pro- ducer steve cropper, who recorded and produced artists like albert king, otis redding, wilson picket, eddie floyd, booker t & the mgs, etc., until he re-entered the stage as a ‘blues brother’ in the s. cropper, in an interview i conducted, especially speaks of ‘sound’ as the identification of different layers, and of different ‘roles’ of the individuals in a band: the ambition ‘to fill in the holes’ of the whole texture: i like to play licks that are of a rhythmic nature. that creates a feel; and a groove. and i like to play in the holes, when the singer is not singing. i like to play stuff that compliments the melody; and really get involved in what the singer is trying to do. and i think that’s where i am most valuable as a guitar player. (weisethaunet, interview with steve cropper, june ) the concept of ‘sound’ is definitively even more complex than that of ‘har- mony’, and in the way it is commonly used amongst musicians it incorporates almost every aspect of the musical performance. in what follows, my main argu- ment is that neither ‘harmony’ nor ‘sound’ are elements as easily separable as is often thought. from my analysis of a vast number of blues tunes and from the experience of playing blues music, however, some simple conclusions might never- theless be drawn as far as ‘harmony’ is concerned. if we stick with the table above, it might be observed that at layer ( ) a pattern or framework of ‘groove’ is laid down by the drummer. as regards texture, this pattern will create a temporal reference which will be varied, broken down or changed at certain points, creating both high and low end sounds and the essential ‘opening up’ and ‘closing’ of space in the texture. at layer ( ) the bass player will usually stay close to the roots of the actual chords or create patterns that will fit with the basic structure employed according to each song. usually this implies a major tonality. (minor blues forms occur but are rather to be seen as a variant that differs from the main formula.) if the ‘simplest’ twelve-bar form is followed, the bass will indicate the chords i–i–i–i–iv–iv–i–i–v–iv–i–v. the bass player will usu- ally hold on to this harmonic foundation, and at its very simplest create walking lines (or ostinato) of notes – – – : the arpeggio of the major chord with the poss- ible addition of the sixth. at layer ( ), however, rhythm guitar or piano may impose major chords, but more commonly they will in blues rather employ sevenths ( – – –§ ), ninths ( – – –§ – ), thirteens or diminished chords, etc. in the style of contem- porary ( s) blues commonly heard in texas (such as on the scene in austin, among players like jimmie vaughan, jesse taylor, john mcvey, ian moore, alan haynes and chris duarte), one of the most common rhythm chords used at this layer seems to be the –§ – – (a voicing of a ninth chord, with root omitted) or § – – – (a voicing of a th chord with the root on top and fifth omitted). on top of this, however, the most ‘naturally’/‘emic sounding’/‘diatonic scale’ on the i chord is neither the major scale (as should be indicated by the bass line) or the mixolydian scale (as should be indicated by the chords at layer ( )), but rather the notes of the dorian scale: – –§ – – – –§ – . my argument here is that the dorian scale (which also may be seen as what is named the ‘blues scale’ with, however, the addition of the significant notes and is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? ) sounds ‘less dissonant’ to blues performers and listeners when applied against the foundation of a major-oriented bass line – in a texture usually featuring vari- ations of seventh chords – than the major scale. blues players will also employ the major third in their solos and phrases; however, if this is overdone, it will take the feeling away from that of the blues and make the music sound more ‘jazzy’ or ‘country-like’. from the perspective of the blues performer and listener, the major third against the major chord may thus sound more ‘dissonant’ than the application of the minor third over the major chord! seeing the idea of the ‘blue note’ in such a context, it seems clear that the texture of ‘blue harmony’ involves a specific com- prehension of harmony that becomes neglected if ‘harmony’ and ‘melody’, or chords and solos, are analysed entirely separately from each other. in what follows, i will illustrate by examples how such an application of ‘blue harmony’ seems a common characteristic of the style of blues performance. ‘blue harmony’ – a different concept the concept governing western functional harmony (at least in theory and up to a certain point in history) is the diatonic principle: in short, the c-major scale works with c-major, a-minor, g , e-minor, d-minor chords, and so forth. however, c-minor scales are not considered to go along with c-major chords: this will usually be thought of and experienced as ‘dissonance’. in the texture of ‘blue harmony’, however, this does not sound ‘dissonant’ at all to blues people. that is why i think the concept of ‘blue harmony’ may be a good one, as it is experienced as a kind of mode of texture which is known from the blues, but which is not limited to this genre/style. it is also likely to enter into rock as well as jazz, soul, reggae and other african–american influenced popular musics. as walser points out: heavy metal, like all forms of rock and soul, owes its biggest debt to african–american blues. the harmonic progressions, vocal lines, and guitar improvisations of metal all rely heavily on the pentatonic scales derived from blues music. (walser , p. ) before this argument is taken any further, i will give a few examples of how my idea of ‘blue harmony’ has derived from analysis of the harmonic texture of blues performances. the word ‘texture’ seems to be a good one since ‘blue notes’ never appear as isolated ‘items’. often the performer will play two or three notes simul- taneously – also in solo guitar playing – and the effect of ‘blue harmony’ seems to be created by the way those are voiced; put together; imposed, in accordance with the rest of the texture. as such blues is to be experienced as tonal music; there is in blues always a tonal centre; it is a play within a tonal framework. blues is hardly ever ‘a-tonal’, as may be the case with western non-functional musics. example shows one of the most commonly heard ‘blue’ constellations of notes. it seems to occur in most blues guitar players’ repertoires: as in the beginning of eric clapton’s version of ‘ramblin’ on my mind’ (from the lp, john mayall, bluesbreakers with eric clapton, decca, ). when played ‘right’, this example may almost sound like the whistle of a train, one of the core metaphors of blues myth- ology. it is a very common lick, and clapton probably ‘got it’ from robert johnson’s playing. note, however, that the notation here is a reduction of the musical textural complexity, i.e. the notation is a representation of what is played but, on paper, definitively a reduction of the way it ‘sounds’. as such, these examples are bound to a particular performance technique but also to the intrinsic qualities of the guitar hans weisethaunet as an instrument (a pianist would have to approach the examples very differently). for the sake of simplicity, the examples are transcribed in the key of c. imposed over a c major (i) chord, the ‘lick’ in example consists of notes § + , which is like imposing the minor chord over the major. functionally, the § could also be explained as the # , but that does not change the effect. when the chord changes to iv (subdominant) (f), the same ‘lick’ may still be played, but its function has changed: to § + . § + example . another ‘lick’ which is commonly applied on the i chord is shown in example . this ‘lick’ consists of notes ( ) + § . when applied against the iv chord (subdominant) rather than on i (tonic) – which is also very usual – it changes its function to + § ( )+§ example . example is a very common ‘lick’ heard in stevie ray vaughan’s playing which includes an interchange (constant shift/‘hammer on/off ’) between the minor third and the fourth. this is usually also played over the background of a major or seventh chord (initiating a style of guitar playing which is also a typical feature of the music of john lee hooker). example . one of the most used ‘riffs’ in blues rhythm guitar playing is shown in example , and involves a constant shift – or a kind of a trill – between § and , and it is used by everyone from b.b. king to stevie ray vaughan, robert cray, clapton, etc. example . is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? in general, blues phrasing is based on a very subtle play of tonality, where rhythmic attack, microtonality and bending of strings creating an interplay between major and minor – but also other – intervals is of the essence. among the perform- ances where the kind of trill between § and shown in example may be heard, is stevie ray vaughan’s recording of the blues ‘texas flood’ (written by larry davis and joseph w. scott), from the album, stevie ray vaughan and double trou- ble, texas flood (epic/cbs, ), cf. the g chord in the very beginning. the tran- scription which follows (adapted from vaughan , p. , transcribed by jesse gress) is in g major; however, the tune is played in g §. the reason why it is notated in g is that stevie ray vaughan, like hendrix, usually tuned his guitar down half a step, from e tuning to e § tuning, in order to obtain a ‘fatter’ sound by allowing the use of heavier gauge strings without reducing the ability to perform large bends. after the introduction, displaying in particular th and th chords, the second line of notation here, from the third complete bar, shows some very typical stevie ray vaughan bends: the is bent higher than § almost to , then the line goes: – ′ – § bent almost to ′ – – ′ – ′ – § ′ (§ ) – ′ – § – ′ – § ′ bend to ′ – § ′ bent to ′ – ′ – – bent to § – then § is bent to (a well-marked bend also frequently heard in the playing of buddy guy) – – – and § slightly bent against , before the line ends on , then – § – : leading into the dominant seventh. (i have used the sign ′ just to indicate moves to an octave above.) example . ‘texas flood’ (davis, larry/scott, joseph w.)  duchess music corp./universal/ mca music ltd. used by permission. example , extract from ‘the same way’ by peter green (from the lp, john mayall, a hard road, decca, , my transcription) shows a segment of one of british guitarist peter green’s typical blues lines. the tune is clearly based in a-major tonality, with ‘shuffle’-comping rhythm guitar typical of a blues/rock style. introducing the solo is an e (dominant) chord; however, a second and third guitar play a simple riff which includes the notes c, b, a (§ , , ), also indicating a minor tonality. (while one guitar plays this melodic line, another guitar, however dis- torted, strums the full chords c, b(m) and a, underneath this line.) the overall tonality, however, is a major. in his solo, peter green begins by playing a significant , § , § line. in bar , he makes a bend from the second to § and back. in bar , he makes a very significant bend from the fourth (d) to a note slightly higher than the § (e §). then notice how he fuses major and minor tonality in the outgoing triplet hans weisethaunet line (bar ). first there is a slight indication of a minor third in front of the major third: then the line goes ′– ′– ′–§ ′– ′– – – . green is typically enough using both major and minor thirds in the same line, and ending up on the major third an octave below. example . ‘the same way’ by peter green  getaway music ltd. transcribed by h. weise- thaunet. used by permission. as already pointed out, the texture in which lines and riffs occur consists of several layers that will give an overall picture of ‘blue harmony’ which is quite complex, and much more complex than presented here. neither does the notation feature pitch discrepancies (which are essential to the feel of the overall texture), give any indication of sound/timbre, or point out how the notes appear rhythmi- cally in accordance with what is happening in other layers. my main point, how- ever, is not that of ‘complexity’, but the simple fact that the notion and definition of ‘blue notes’ most commonly applied to blues performance is a misnomer. in conclusion, performances invoking ‘blue harmony’ seem to be based on a constant interplay between pitches, between major and minor thirds; between flat- tened fifths, fourths and fifths; thirds and flattened sevenths; bent seconds; sixths, etc. etc., where a wide range of microtones are created. blues phrases rarely seem to be made out of ‘one scale’, rather they will be based on interplay, bends, slurs, slides, etc. between notes and against the layers of bass lines, guitar riffs and con- trasting chords, a practice which has not yet been adequately described from the point of view of music theory. however, some few relatively good transcriptions, supporting the claims here, do exist. i think it is evident that this stylised practice of ‘blue discrepant harmony’ has also found its way into other styles of music, in particular jazz and rock. one of the jazz players who seems to have incorporated influences from ‘blue harmony’ into his music to a large extent is guitarist john scofield: i am totally in debt to the blues. i think blues is really powerful music, the good blues . . . i think i was one of the first to seriously try to incorporate that element, the phrasing of blues and rock, with be-bop chords and changes. for me it’s really hard to separate between jazz is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? or fusion, rhythm & blues, blues, or rock music. in a way, i think all those elements are in my music . . . (weisethaunet, interview with john scofield, ) this practice may be heard in almost every phrase of scofield’s music. he seems to be very aware of how ‘blue harmony’ – how each and every single note/bend – fits with the horizontal/vertical structures of chord progressions essential to jazz. essential to ‘harmonic texture’ is that in modern jazz (as in blues) there will often be a play of ambiguous tonality, like in scofield’s tune ‘blue matter’ (from the cd, john scofield, blue matter, gramavision, ) which centres around d, fm, b §, and then bm. blues performance may be completely stripped of what is commonly thought of as blues ‘form’/‘structure’, but it may still be the blues, as evident in the textures of the music of the late miles davis, in which scofield also played an essential role. another guitarist who brought discrepant blues phrases and ‘blue harmony’ concepts into jazz is john mclaughlin. in my earlier work (weisethaunet b), i tried to measure some of those discrepancies as pitch variations and found that one may clearly speak of a ‘microtonal’ practice. in interviewing mclaughlin, he made it clear that in his view the application of what may be called ‘blue harmony’ or ‘blue notes’ – the fundamental practice of bending notes in blues guitar and vocal performances – is not simply a question of ‘natural feeling’ as african–american blues players’ discourses may often seem to stress: nothing is ‘natural’. the first time you pick up a guitar it sounds like crap . . . (demonstrates). bending of strings and application of microtones is learned from listening, and training. that is not a question of ‘natural’ feeling. it is learned from practice; from the music; from the culture in which you are born. i worked a lot with indian musicians. still in my improvising my main influences are from jazz and rock. in the beginning i was very influenced by big bill broonzy . . . (weisethaunet a) mclaughlin also stresses that ‘bending’ of strings to certain intervals is nothing that happens by ‘chance’. it is practised and performed, i.e. it is culturally patterned as style. the influence from the stylised phrasing of blues performances of the past is also emphasised in my dialogue with another white guitar player who seems to have incorporated that element into his playing style, guitarist robben ford. ford in particular stresses the aural side of blues music; that it cannot actually be notated, but must be learned from listening to others: music is an audio experience, right? you listen to music . . . i think it is very important that you learn a lot about music just by listening . . . i learned a lot about phrasing from all the great blues guitar players, blues singers, very important you know; when i play, i very much feel like it’s the same thing as singing. i learned a lot from jimmy whiterspoon, billie holli- day, and b.b. king you know; as a singer as well as a guitar player. the blues really is the sort of thing . . . it’s definitively the thread that runs through music for me, it’s the main ingredient, it’s the thing that bind everything together, you know. (weisethaunet, interview with robben ford, july ) a question that may be raised is whether the practice that i have described as ‘blue harmony’ should be called ‘modal’. van der merwe in his important work tracing african origins in early blues forms, argues that the blues must be seen as a modal form: ‘african modality was reduced to the powerful simplicity of the blues mode’ (van der merwe , p. ). the problem still is, however, that the ‘blues mode’ can hardly be reduced to the notion of a ‘blues scale’ or the ‘modal application’ of certain scales, since the texture of ‘blue harmony’ rarely stays in one scale or ‘modality’ for very long. even each phrase or line will commonly be mixing several ‘modes’ or ‘scales’ together in the overall texture of harmony, and ‘scales’ hans weisethaunet are rarely imposed simply at a ‘horizontal’ level unrelated to the underlying pro- gressions of chords. in defining the ‘modality’ of blues, van der merwe, however, falls back on the notion of the ‘blue note’: what is the essence of the blues? all blues tunes have two things in common: one is synco- pation, and the other is a mode, which in fact is not merely a mode, but a particular kind of modality . . . the first and most fundamental thing to explain is the mode. the blues mode is actually a modal frame: that is, a framework of melodically sensitive notes interspersed with less important notes. among the notes constituting the framework are the famous blue notes, and my explanation of the blues mode must begin by defining them. like the blues in general the blue notes can mean many things. one quality they all have in common, however, is that they are flatter than one would expect, classically speaking. but this flatness may take several forms. on the one hand, it may be a microtonal affair of a quarter-tone or so. here one may speak of neutral intervals, neither major nor minor. on the other hand, the flattening may be a full semitone – as it must be, of course, on keyboard instruments. it may involve a glide, either upward or downward. again, this may be a microtonal, almost imperceptible affair, or it may be a slur between notes a semitone apart, so that there is actually not one blue note but two. a blue note may even be marked by a microtonal shake of a kind common in oriental music. (van der merwe , pp. – ) van der merwe finds that the most important degrees treated as ‘blue notes’ are the third, seventh, fifth and sixth. i think, from analysing performances and recordings, that any note of the twelve-tone chromatic scale may be ‘treated’ in such a way, but that the main question is how they appear within the complete harmonic texture. seeing ‘blue notes’ as ‘neutral intervals’ is off the track, since in performance they seem rather to be the opposite. the main problem is that van der merwe is trying to apply the western musicological notions of consonance/ dissonance to give an explanation of what is going on in blues performance: the reason why these notes change their pitch in this apparently haphazard way is that their function within the mode is also changing. it is a matter of a kind of instability rather anal- ogous to harmonic dissonance. so close is the parallel that it is not misleading to use the term ‘melodic dissonance’. just as a discord resolves on a concord, so a melodically dissonant note resolves on a melodically consonant note. and just as a seventh or ninth is the mark of discord, so the various forms of flattening that make a blue note are the mark of melodic dissonance. (van der merwe , p. ) this is the point where van der merwe’s notion of the ‘blue note’ and blues as a ‘mode’ becomes mistaken. for a blues performer the starting off and ending with a seventh, ninth or diminished chord is not necessarily a question of ‘dissonance’. this will more likely be experienced as the ‘good sounding’ chord/sounds (cf. also the quoted utterances of big bill broonzy), since this is how the harmonic and melodic tension of the blues is ‘resolved’, or rather not ‘resolved’ – but ‘played with’ – as similar to the ‘tension’ apparent in the music of stravinsky or debussy. however, this should be a question of ‘tension’ as emic experience, rather than assuming that music ‘naturally’ lends itself to end on major chords. i think the other main point is that ‘melodic dissonance’ and ‘harmonic dissonance’ should not, contra van der merwe, be seen as ‘independent’ of each other: it should be emphasized that melodic dissonance is completely independent of harmonic dissonance. melodic dissonances may occur against the background of pure triads, or in a single melodic line with no accompanying harmony at all; while conversely melodic conson- ance may go with a dissonant harmony. (van der merwe , p. ) from a performance perspective it is the ‘tension’ between the different layers (as described in the table) which creates the overall texture of ‘blue harmony’. in is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? my view, one should not think of ‘harmony’ as something which is just played as ‘accompaniment’ to a melodic line (an idea obviously borrowed from the experience of western ‘song’ notation). it is possible that blues performances as argued by van der merwe may be called ‘blue mode’ or ‘modal’; however, the definition of modality must then be an extremely broad one as the blues performer will commonly fuse a number of ‘modal scales’ inside each phrase. the most comprehensive work on ‘modal theory’ as applied to jazz (and rock/blues) is still that of george russell’s lydian chromatic concept, in that it presents a theory and a modal map for musicians thinking in terms of mode and improvisation. the question of creating ‘harmonic texture’ in blues, as in jazz and rock, is a question of which notes are played against which lines, riffs and chords; this comprises the overall texture of ‘blue harmony’. the practice of blues performance shows that the harmonic texture of the blues infuses both ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ approaches to harmony: a concept essential to under- standing how functional harmony applies to improvised music, and which is well explained by russell in his dialogue with martin williams (russell , pp. xx– xxiii, reprint from jazz review). improvising musicians will most commonly relate to both ‘vertical’ changes of chords and ‘horizontal’ lines of ‘melodic’/‘modal’/ diatonic/non-diatonic character. blues performance is deeply embedded in an experience of a tonal centre, which implies that ‘vertical’ phrases will operate in dialogue with more ‘horizontal’ (‘blues-modal’) phrases. a few examples of how this may theoretically work in actual performance can be given. in the soloing/improvising of a blues the choice could be any of the notes from the chromatic scale. however, when playing a major scale, which theoretically works well with the i chord, the major third imposed on the iv chord gives the major th, which may not be particularly ‘well sounding’ according to ‘style’. an easier way to go in a completely ‘horizontal’ blues approach is to hold on to the § (e §), which will change its function to the § as the chord changes to iv (f). further- more, as an overall effect, playing the major rd rather than the § on the i chord may be experienced ‘horizontally’ as creating more ‘tension’, as this note is usually to be avoided on the iv chord. the dorian scale ( – –§ – – – –§ ) or blues penta- tonic scale ( –§ – – –§ ) will go well horizontally on i, iv and v; however, the § of those scales gives the minor third of the dominant (v chord), where the major third to many players might sound more ‘natural’. as regards the modal application of minor scales in blues over the background of major chords, a is more commonly heard than a § , i.e. dorian rather than aeolian, a fact that may be explained because the sixth of the dorian (with its tonic on i) contains the major third of the subdomin- ant (iv). in a ‘horizontal’ approach, this implies that a b §-major scale may be used to improvise over a blues in c major (a practice russell might call ‘pan-tonal’), giving a (c) dorian i chord tonality, a (f) mixolydian iv chord tonality and a (g) aeolian v chord tonality. mixolydian over the iv chord may be perceived of as very ‘bluesy’, but aeolian over the v chord may, as already mentioned, not. most blues performers have learned how to master harmonic changes in such a way that they also may be playing on the edge of the actual chords: going inside/outside tonality as a part of making the music ‘come alive’ and ‘sound good’, similar to what russell ( ) terms ‘ingoing’/‘outgoing’ tonality in jazz. performance instruction books (the production of which has become an indus- try in itself) often set up scales to be imposed on certain chords, which may surely be a way of learning ‘harmony’ for beginners. blues performance, however, is not hans weisethaunet a question of imposing scales, but rather a practice in which a complex stylised idiom of phrasing and bending is essential to texture: to discrepancies as process. i asked robben ford, who himself has released a few instruction books of the kind mentioned, if he thought of the blues as ‘modal form’. his answer was, however: with the blues i never thought about it as a mode. i just listened to it, and i would find it on the guitar. (weisethaunet, interview with robben ford, july ) furthermore, in the mind of the blues performer there is no such thing as a twelve- or six-bar harmonic pattern: forms and patterns are internalised in such a way that he or she will never have to count measures (as beginners may have to do). as also noted by van der merwe, ‘the term ‘‘twelve-bar blues’’ is, as usual, a misnomer’ (van der merwe , p. ). also, harmony (chords) – what musicologists like to think of as fundamental structure – will be improvised: chords may be substituted (as in jazz), and the twelve-bar, six-bar, fourteen-bar formula, or whatever, may suddenly be changed or broken down on the impulse of the guitar player, the vocalist or the impro- vised break of a drummer. as expressed by the late stevie ray vaughan: the blues doesn’t have to be three chords, or two or one. it doesn’t have to be a lot of passing changes. it can be any of those combinations, or notes. (govenar , p. ) the question then is whether it is time for musicology to start measuring the pitch discrepancies of blues performance to ‘crack the code’, to find out what blues is ‘all about’. recent articles by keil, prögler, alén and others ( ) take on the task of measuring pds (as they have come to be called). the main problem with such approaches may be the danger of confusing music with mathematical representation. for what is there to measure? in the participatory processes of performance, time and tonality are felt rather than measured. hence, musicology may never be able to meas- ure experiences of ‘blue harmony’ and ‘bluesness’ because what is measured is not necessarily what is experienced or felt as significant. accounts of cultural discourse thus seem more relevant than the reified structuring of applied mathematics or com- puter formalism. having heard buddy guy perform at the club antone’s in austin, texas, and at other venues – with everyone screaming back, interacting, yelling, and ‘having the blues’ in a positive sense (i.e. i am stressing the point of process/event as the ultimate aspect of music) – the question is: how can the measuring of pitch ever take any account of blues experience? the main question still is: what aspects of the musical material are conceived of as significant to listeners and performers? ‘everyday i have the blues’ – ‘blue harmony’ as a discourse of identity there is only one b.b. there’s a lot of imitations, lot of people pick up the guitar and follow this man – but you can tell when the main person, the main man, hit it. you know it’s b.b. john lee hooker (obrecht , p. ) my conclusion is: there is no such thing as the blue note, the ‘item’ of musicol- ogy. there is no such thing as the ‘blue note’ as a strange or ‘out of tune’ third or seventh (apart from in the theories and ideologies of a few musicologists). rather than thinking of ‘blue notes’ as pitches being out of tune, ‘blue harmony’ creates a space for the play of identity in music performance. there is – as expressed by john lee hooker – only one b.b. king: you can tell when the main man ‘hit it’, or in b.b.’s own words ‘you need to put yourself into what you are doing’ (king , is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? p. ). that is the core aesthetics of the play of notes, bends, slides and phrases, in the texture of blues performance. following keil, ‘style’ represents struggles (of ‘peoples’, ethnic segments of the working class, etc.) to keep control of their social identities in music. as such, the notion of the ‘blue note’ may have been one of many stereotypes created by the ‘white’ to make and sell ‘black culture’, i.e. ‘the blues’ as the commodity of the suffering black (keil and feld , pp. – ). as keil and feld correctly point out, the ‘sharing’ of income and control of music as industrialised commodities have never been on ‘equal terms’ as regards class, ethnicity and race. still, rather than seeing white players doing and recording blues as a ‘rip-off ’, i think the fact that blues style and discourse have remained for such a long period is because blues has come to be an effective means of artistic expression of individuality and identity in music performance, a stylisation that cannot simply be put aside as ‘nostalgia’, ‘authenticity’ or ‘roots’ megalomania (although all those elements may be part of the experience). music is also a question of good and bad performance – not only of social or moral intentions. as keil maintains, recreation through ritual has sustained these styles, and i think to the point that blues performance for black as well as (or mostly?) for white people has become an effective means of mediating experience. part of this experience is what steven g. smith has termed ‘bluesness’. i postulate that bluesness is an effectively important way of apprehending a musical process and the human world; a way of steering through musical composition and through worldly affairs; and further – considering the passion of the blues – a specially pointed way of realis- ing the mind–body relation, one that tellingly discloses how music as such is concerned with this relation. (smith , p. ) while blues lyrics most often emphasise the fact of ‘being blue’ or ‘having the blues’, the participation in blues performance may be seen as something more’ . . . ‘‘having the blues’’ is easily if inadequately equated with being sad or down, doing blues must involve something far more’ (loc. cit.). at this point it may be that the notion of ‘blue notes’ has come to metaphorise something more than pitch discrep- ancies, namely the general feeling of ‘bluesness’, not in particular linked to that of ‘blue notes’ but to that of ‘playing the blues’ or ‘having the blues’. the latter seems to have been one of the core metaphors of blues experience, as a marker of style, just as much as any formal or structural features. it is also a part of black counterdis- course in america as described by keil ( ). got the blues, can’t be satisfied got the blues, can’t be satisfied keep the blues, i’ll catch that train and ride . . . from ‘mississippi’ john hurt’s ‘got the blues’, december (okeh ). (titon , pp. – ) houston a. baker jr ( ) and henry louis gates jr ( ) place blues as the metaphorical centre of african–american experience and, therefore, literature, taking on afro-american discourse as a ‘signifying’ practice embedded in vernacu- lar theory, or in gates’ own words: afro-american culture is a complex, reflexive enterprise which finds its proper figuration in blues conceived as a matrix . . . the matrix is a point of ceaseless input and output, a web of intersecting, crisscrossing impulses always in a productive transit. afro-american blues constitute such a vibrant network. (baker , p. ) hans weisethaunet the emic concept of ‘blue notes’ is not that of pitches out of tune, but that of ‘having the blues’: the emotional one, and steven g. smith ( ) goes on to argue that ‘blues’ might be one of the central aesthetic categories of humanity, like the ‘grotesque’ and the ‘romantic’. still, there is a danger in simplifying the whole issue by seeing the ‘blues’ metaphor basically as an expression of ‘pain’, or as a coherent mythic creation and ‘parody’ of black everyday life experiences. as correctly noted by keil: bob blaumer got the title wrong in his essay ‘black culture myth or reality?’: it should be ‘myth as reality’. black people have been making it on myth, faith, hope, soul, spirit, and the intangibles for as long as i have been witnessing. (keil , p. ) i think smith gets close in describing ‘bluesness’ as ‘a conception upon indi- viduality, the most intense statement of ‘‘here i am’’ implicit in all musical utter- ance . . .’ (ibid p. ), but i think he makes a big mistake in taking as a point of departure the notion of blues as a kind of ‘anti-music’: ‘the exceptional trick it pulls off is precisely to turn anti-music fully into music’ (ibid. p. ) and in repeating stereotypes like that ‘the harmonic simplicity of blues can be regarded as immediate release from musical tensions . . . ‘(loc. cit.), even if his conclusion fortunately comes to be a different one. i think blues is foremost a means of voiced artistic expression. as such it is the expression of individuality, sociality, sharedness and loneliness, anger and grief, pain and happiness, of being, and even of being as nothingness, in vocal as well as in instrumental performance. the essential point is that blues is music. it is ‘groove’ and ‘texture’ rather than reified forms of structure. as a field of dialogue and struggle, its ‘meanings’ are diverse rather than singular or coherent. yet, the materiality of ‘blue harmony’ is fundamental to the experience of blues music and ‘blue’ elements of related styles, among them jazz and rock. what i have termed ‘blue harmony’ – rather than ‘blue notes’ – may, as illustrated, be a more complex phenomenon than is often thought. it may be easy to play the blues, but it is still not that easy to play the blues. as a stylised expression of individuality, the perform- ances occurring within the framework of ‘blue harmony’ are not that easy to tran- scribe, describe or copy. if it were that easy to play the blues, more musicians would play just as well as b.b. king, elmore james, howlin wolf, buddy guy, jimi hend- rix or eric clapton. however, according to emic conceptualisation, that is not the case: there will always be only one b.b., one muddy, and one john lee. endnotes . i would in particular like to thank charles keil . tirro cites nettl ( , p. ) as reference for for his helpful comments in the process of this quote. it is, in fact, slightly rewritten from writing this essay, as well as the many blues nettl ( , p. ). musicians that i came to know and play with . apart from the major seventh – which seldom during my stays in austin, texas, in and occurs on the i chord apart from in more ‘jazzi- . er’ styles of the blues, due to its leading tone . swedish musicologist lars lilliestam ( ) function. thus the major seventh is seldom makes a good summary of the fundamental ‘bent’. the ‘bent’ note will be the minor sev- problem of the prevailing ideology of ‘com- enth. plexity’ within musicology. moreover, as . i use this term as commonly understood as a walser ( ) argues, the point is not that of translation from the german funktionslehre. claiming blues, pop or rock to be ‘high art’ – however, it also embraces traditional western as opposed to ‘low’ – but that even ‘classical harmonic analysis, where major and minor music’ is a relatively recent cultural construct tonalities can be viewed as very distinct. (see also hobsbawn and ranger ). . i am using the notion ‘diatonic’ to stress the is there such a thing as the ‘blue note’? fact that emic/‘native’ performance theory and . in all of the interviews he particu- may not necessarily regard the major scale as larly spoke of being influenced by the blues ‘diatonic’ in the sense that it is heard as the in his improvisations and ‘harmonic thinking’ scale being ‘closest’ to the major chord. (more detailed discussion in weisethaunet . the practice here described commonly also ). involves playing a rather straight minor over . finding also notes going from higher to lower the major chord: a phenomenon that hardly pitches, i.e. the string may be bent before it is can be explained by the notion of the ‘blue played, and then lowered after it is picked, cf. note’ thought of as a ‘flat’ third. the vast number of bends to be heard in his . i see harmony as an essential part of what keil soloing on ‘every tear from every eye’ (from terms ‘texture’. as such, ‘blue harmony’ com- electric guitarist, cbs, ). prises the harmonic part of ‘texture’ (or sound . this is also the conclusion of titon as regards in emic terms) viewed both vertically and hori- the harmony of ‘down home blues’ perform- zontally (i.e. a particular relationship between ance: ‘the simplification and ambiguities are chords, melodic lines, riffs, etc., occurring at the deliberate and controlled, not accidental and different layers of performance described in the unsuccessful attempts to achieve the standard table). possibly this might also be called ‘blue progression.’ (titon , p. ) mode’ or ‘blue harmonic texture’; however, the . that is also why allan moore’s analysis categ- essential point here is that ‘blue harmony’ orising a vast number of rock/pop songs into diverges from common concepts of modality as different ‘classes’ falls short of actually describ- well as from harmonic progressions. ing what harmonically may be going on with . however, picturing blues performance purely this music (moore ). the same problem as a ‘pentatonic’ practice i think is unfortunate occurs in berendt’s definition of jazz, which as it may simplify what is going on a little too takes as a starting point a reified separation of much. harmony from melody, sound, etc.: ‘jazz, on the . a good example of transcriptions illustrating other hand, though among the most revolution- these points are dave whitehill’s transcrip- ary developments in the arts in our century, is tions of hendrix’s material, in particular his relatively traditional in respect to harmony and transcriptions of several recorded versions of melody. its newness is based on rhythm and the blues ‘red house’ (whitehill ), which sound. almost the only novel and singular hendrix himself expressed as of the ‘down thing in jazz in the harmonic domain are the home’ type, at least as regards inspiration. blue notes.’ (berendt , p. ) analysis of the personal bending styles and . the concept of ‘individuality’ and ‘identity’ typical tonal/harmonic approaches of players advocated here must be seen as constituted by like albert king, johnny winter, t-bone the social, i.e. in accordance with (and not in walker and stevie ray vaughan, is also dem- contradiction to) keil’s concept of ‘style’ as a onstrated by chipkin ( ). furthermore, process of struggle. in figuring music as a ‘pro- there are quite good transcriptions of robert cess’, i follow bakhtin’s theory of ‘dialogue’, johnson’s music by ainslie and whitehill seeing every utterance as fundamentally ( ) indicating how a ‘blue harmony’ con- social: ‘where saussure sees passive assimi- cept also seems inherent in solo performances. lation, bakhtin sees a process of struggle and . for further discussions on the significance of contradiction. and whereas saussure dichoto- ‘style’, see keil and feld . mizes the individual and the social, bakhtin . in jazz guitar playing there was a stylistic assumes that the individual is constituted by change particularly around – – mainly the social, that consciousness is a matter of dia- influenced from blues and rock – where play- logue and juxtaposition with a social other.’ ers like george benson, john mclaughlin, (stewart , p. ) john abercrombie, bill connors, terje rypdal . as lawrence levine ( , p. ) writes: ‘the and others developed playing styles that were blues was the most highly personalised, impregnated with blues phrasing and ‘blue indeed the first almost completely personal- harmony’ textures to an extent which was not ised music that afro-americans developed.’ heard in the styles of jazz players like charlie . i think it is particularly problematic to view christian, barney kessel, tal farlow, joe the contemporary field of blues experiences as pass, etc. a coherent system or ‘culture’, even though it . i met with scofield several times between is definitively a musical ‘style’. references ainslie, s., and whitehill, d. . robert johnson: at the crossroads. the authoritative guitar transcriptions (milwaukee) hans weisethaunet baker, h.a., jr. . blues, ideology, and afro-american literature. a vernacular theory (chicago) berendt, j.e. . the jazz book. from ragtime to fusion and beyond (connecticut) chipkin, k. . real blues guitar, contemporary guitar series (miami) gates, h.l., jr. . the signifying monkey. a theory of african-american literary criticism (oxford) govenar, a. . meeting the blues. interviews with legends and friends (dallas) hobsbawn, e., and ranger, t. . the invention of tradition (cambridge) keil, c. . urban blues, nd edn (chicago) keil, c., and feld, s. . music grooves. essays and dialogues (chicago) keil, prögler, alén and others. . special issue: participatory discrepancies. ethnomusicology, / king, b.b. . blues guitar. a method by b.b. king, compiled and edited by jerry snyder (new york) levine, l. . black culture and black consciousness (new york) lilliestam, l. . gehörsmusik. blues, rock och muntlig tradering, (göteborg) middleton, r. . studying popular music (milton keynes) moore, a. . ‘patterns of harmony’, popular music, / , pp. – nettl, b. . folk and traditional music of western continents, nd edn (new jersey) obrecht, j. . ‘the meeting, b.b. and the hook’, best of guitar player, b.b. king edition, pp. – russell, g. . the lydian chromatic concept of tonal organization for improvisation (new york) schuller, g. [ ]. early jazz. its roots and musical development (oxford) small, c. . music of the common tongue (london) . musicking. the meanings of performing and listening (hanover, nh) smith, s.g. . ‘blues and our mind–body problem’, popular music, / , pp. – stearns, m.w. . the story of jazz (london) stewart, s. . ‘shouts on the street: bakhtin’s anti-linguistics’, in bakhtin, essays and dialogues on his work, ed. g.s. morson (chicago), pp. – tirro, f. . jazz. a history, nd edn (new york) titon, j.t. . early downhome blues. a musical & cultural analysis, nd edn (chapel hill) van der merwe, p. . origins of the popular style. the antecedents of twentieth-century popular music (oxford) vaughan, s.r. . texas flood. recorded versions transcribed by jesse gress (milwaukee) walser, r. . ‘eruptions: heavy metal appropriations of classical virtuosity’, popular music, / , pp. – . running with the devil. power, gender, and madness in heavy metal music (hanover, nh) weisethaunet, h. . ‘john scofield – -åras ledende jazzgitarist?’, musikk praksis, / , pp. – a. ‘john mclaughlin. med disiplin fra india’, musikk praksis, / , pp. – b. modal improvisasjon i Øst og vest. en sammenlikning av improvisasjonsestetikk i to musikkulturer, ma thesis, the university of trondheim, norway . ‘rock + bop = scofield’, musikk praksis, / , pp. – whitehill, d. . hendrix. variations on a theme: ‘red house’ (milwaukee) student stories about mathematics: a tool to understand more about the teaching and learning of mathematics. jean brennan a thesis submitted to the university of hertfordshire in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of doctor of education january acknowledgements it is with the sincerest thanks that i wish to acknowledge the following: my supervisors dr bushra connors and dr trevor barker who supported and guided me through every step of this research journey. my daughter lesley who shares my passion for teaching mathematics and my ethos and beliefs regarding the care of the learners we are responsible for. my colleagues amanda and lisa whose wisdom and thoughts were integral to the development of the research. the school mathematics students who placed their trust in me and shared their personal stories as research data. my fellow students and the staff of the university of hertfordshire school of education whose comments and thoughts kept me grounded. my dear friend professor eddie blass who got me started on this research journey. my dear friend olga who showed great interest in this research story and spent a considerable amount of time reading and checking this thesis. contents abstract ................................................................................................................................................ chapter : introduction ...................................................................................................................... . my diary extract ........................................................................................................................ . my concerns ............................................................................................................................. . the context ............................................................................................................................... . the research ............................................................................................................................. . the structure of this thesis ....................................................................................................... chapter : complexities of school mathematics ................................................................................ . introduction .............................................................................................................................. . the faces of mathematics ........................................................................................................ . mathematical knowledge ......................................................................................................... . learning mathematics in school ......................................................................................... . my diary extract ........................................................................................................................ . what students bring to the mathematics classroom ............................................................... . invisible influences .................................................................................................................... . beliefs.................................................................................................................................. . beliefs about self ................................................................................................................ . attitude ............................................................................................................................... . identity ................................................................................................................................ . mathematical identity ......................................................................................................... . concluding discussion ............................................................................................................... chapter : telling stories .................................................................................................................... . introduction .............................................................................................................................. . the potential of stories ............................................................................................................. . ethical implications ................................................................................................................... . interpretation ..................................................................................................................... . relationship ........................................................................................................................ . are they true? .................................................................................................................... . interpreting stories ................................................................................................................... . conclusion ................................................................................................................................. chapter : methodology ..................................................................................................................... . action research ........................................................................................................................ . a narrative approach................................................................................................................ . narrative as a method ...................................................................................................... . narrative as a phenomenon .............................................................................................. . issues of safe guarding ..................................................................................................... . intuitive inquiry ....................................................................................................................... . description of the intuitive inquiry method ..................................................................... . limitations and shortcomings of the intuitive inquiry approach ...................................... . portraiture .............................................................................................................................. . symbolic interactionism .......................................................................................................... . conclusion ............................................................................................................................... chapter : action research phases one, two and three ................................................................. . introduction ............................................................................................................................ . phase pilot study .................................................................................................................. . methods for phase one .................................................................................................... . organisation of the pilot workshop .................................................................................. . organisation of consent and ethical issues ....................................................................... . phase workshop details ................................................................................................. . phase storytelling workshops .............................................................................................. . introduction ...................................................................................................................... . methods ............................................................................................................................ . organisation of phase storytelling workshop ................................................................ . my diary extract ................................................................................................................ . ethical issues ..................................................................................................................... . the workshops of colleagues ........................................................................................... . phase conclusion ........................................................................................................... . phase .................................................................................................................................... . introduction ...................................................................................................................... . my diary extract. ............................................................................................................... . methods ............................................................................................................................ . my diary extract .............................................................................................................. . organisation of phase storytelling workshop ................................................................ . ethical implications ........................................................................................................... . conclusion ......................................................................................................................... chapter : data analysis model ........................................................................................................ . introduction ............................................................................................................................ . intuitive inquiry ....................................................................................................................... . intuitive inquiry step one ................................................................................................. . intuitive inquiry step two .................................................................................................. . intuitive inquiry step three............................................................................................... . intuitive inquiry step four ................................................................................................ . intuitive inquiry step five ................................................................................................. . thematic analysis ................................................................................................................... . conclusion ............................................................................................................................... chapter : data analysis phase pilot ............................................................................................. . introduction: my diary extract ................................................................................................ . intuitive inquiry first step: using phase stories to compile initial lenses ........................... . list of questions applied to my data ................................................................................ . the faces of mathematics: pilot data ..................................................................................... . the power and status associated with mathematics: pilot data ............................................ . freedom: pilot phase .............................................................................................................. . the classroom culture of school mathematics: pilot phase ................................................... . relationships: pilot phase ....................................................................................................... . discussion of the phase pilot phase ..................................................................................... . the transformational draw of student stories about school mathematics ........................... . my field notes on student story pilot phase: phd ........................................................... . pilot phase: the real story of cinderella and snow white ............................................... . my diary extract ................................................................................................................ . phase pilot: keep trying ................................................................................................. . conclusion ......................................................................................................................... chapter data analysis: phase and ........................................................................................... . introduction ............................................................................................................................ . step one intuitive inquiry model ............................................................................................ . step two intuitive inquiry model ...................................................................................... . step three: intuitive inquiry model .................................................................................. . step four: intuitive inquiry model .................................................................................... . phase and student stories ................................................................................................. . data analysis: themes ...................................................................................................... . phase : the faces of mathematics .................................................................................. . maths is powerful ............................................................................................................. . maths is measurement ..................................................................................................... . maths is changeable ......................................................................................................... . the culture of school mathematics ........................................................................................ . the teacher ...................................................................................................................... . transition .......................................................................................................................... . learning mathematics ...................................................................................................... . relationship with peers or others ..................................................................................... . exams and assessment ..................................................................................................... . perceptions of self ............................................................................................................ . feedback from the workshop of a colleague ......................................................................... . conclusion ............................................................................................................................... chapter phase and : selected individual stories ....................................................................... . phase year clown ............................................................................................................ . phase year clown: recorded transcript. ................................................................... . clown story: the faces of mathematics .......................................................................... . clown story: the culture of school mathematics ............................................................. . clown story: the surprise ................................................................................................. . clown story interview ....................................................................................................... . clown story discussion ..................................................................................................... . phase year : on beyond a million .................................................................................... . on beyond a million: interview with the student ............................................................. . on beyond a million: the faces of mathematics .............................................................. . on beyond a million: the culture of school mathematics ................................................ . on beyond a million: the surprise .................................................................................... . my diary extract ................................................................................................................ . on beyond a million: conclusion ...................................................................................... . phase year : the letter with the bad grade. .................................................................... . the letter with the bad grade: introduction .................................................................... . my diary extract ................................................................................................................ . the letter with the bad grade: the faces of mathematics .............................................. . the letter with the bad grade: the mathematics classroom culture .............................. . the letter with the bad grade: the surprise .................................................................... . the letter with the bad grade: conclusion....................................................................... . phase stories: introduction .................................................................................................. . phase year : bullies .......................................................................................................... . my diary extract after the story workshop ...................................................................... . phase year : teachers are rude ......................................................................................... . my diary extract ................................................................................................................ . phase year : teachers are rude. first story ................................................................. . my diary extract ................................................................................................................ . teachers are rude: second story ...................................................................................... . phase year : my song ....................................................................................................... . my song maths: comments of a colleague....................................................................... . phase year : amy ................................................................................................................ . my diary extract ................................................................................................................ . dream maths .................................................................................................................... . conclusion ............................................................................................................................... chapter : themes and summary of findings ................................................................................ . introduction .......................................................................................................................... . themes ................................................................................................................................. . consistency and reliability in themes .................................................................................. . discussion of themes ............................................................................................................ . conclusion ............................................................................................................................. chapter : conclusion ..................................................................................................................... . introduction .......................................................................................................................... . contribution to knowledge and practice .............................................................................. . applications for teachers ................................................................................................ . applications for mathematics departments ................................................................... . applications for school leaders ...................................................................................... . teacher training. ............................................................................................................ . concluding discussion ........................................................................................................... . limitations of this research .................................................................................................. . the importance of this research .......................................................................................... . for the future ....................................................................................................................... references ........................................................................................................................................ list of figures .................................................................................................................................... appendix a ethics application .......................................................................................................... appendix b workshop starting points .............................................................................................. appendix c: pilot study stories (note: all teacher and student names are fictitious) ..................... appendix d preliminary work with si questions ............................................................................... appendix e comments from colleagues ........................................................................................... appendix f year sentences/chunks of data ................................................................................ appendix g: adult story .................................................................................................................... appendix h phase stories .............................................................................................................. abstract this qualitative study sets out to explore the experiences of secondary school students while they are learning mathematics in school. by using student stories of learning mathematics as my main data collection method i began to understand the view of mathematics that my students were constructing as they negotiated the complicated terrain that i know as the mathematics classroom. this method of student stories to communicate student voice was selected by me to allow the students the freedom to express themselves in a variety of comfortable, differentiated formats. my methodological approach evolved as the action research phases progressed, allowing for methodological inventiveness (dadds and hart ). this was a deliberate decision by me so that my research progress could be best served by a suitable methodological approach. the end result was a qualitative study that embraced a living theory model of action research (mcniff ), where practitioners can develop their own personal theories of practice (whitehead ). within this action research structure i used a narrative approach, considering narratives both as a data collection method and as a transformative phenomenon. using the ideas of narrative research for data collection, i facilitated storytelling workshops with my students, collecting stories to inform the research interest. in this research, using narratives was also considered as a phenomenon because of their influence in allowing authors to model and re-model their experiences through their stories. i found that considering narrative as phenomenon complemented and supported a portraiture methodological stance (lawrence-lightfoot ). narrative as a phenomenon also became apparent by the influence the student stories had on my ability to understand my classroom and my subsequent teaching practice. to analyse the story data i utilised the ideas of anderson ( ) who developed a transpersonal research method that incorporates the researcher’s intuition, emotional and personal capacities into the research process. by using a multi- method approach of thematic analysis, symbolic interactionist perspective, input from colleagues and my reflexive intuition, i formed an analysis of the data that could be used to look at similarities and trends in the student stories. in addition, working with the student stories encouraged levels of empathy between the reader and the student author that transformed classroom practice and understandings. there are several ways that this thesis can contribute to practice. firstly this research develops a pedagogical tool that encourages student voice, celebrates individuality and helps create an approachable interface between mathematics teacher and student. secondly, it models how this way of working could be used to inform the practice of the classroom teacher by developing a deeper understanding of their students. thirdly, the identification of particular themes is invaluable to subject department development and planning, and these themes can feed into a department and whole school ethos. finally, it models a form of action research that encourages critical reflexive practice and utilises the knowledge, experience and intuition of the researcher with the sole purpose of improving the experiences of their students. chapter : introduction this chapter introduces the context of my research, describing from my perspective the climate with regards to being a school mathematics teacher. i describe the origin of the main questions that form the foundations of my research inquiry and what i had hoped to achieve by carrying out this particular research. i explain the reasoning behind the choices that i have made regarding the style of research and the nature of the data collected. i have included, at the start of this introduction an original diary extract written during the early stages of my research development. other diary extracts are threaded throughout the research write up to communicate to the reader my own personal story as a teacher of mathematics and researcher, and the influence that the student stories had on my practice. my research design and subsequent structure is built around addressing my main research aims and seeking answers to subsequent research questions. aim : to explore the views of my students about their experiences learning mathematics. aim : to develop a pedagogical tool that can be used to learn more about how particular students perceive learning mathematics at school. aim : to gain a deeper understanding of the less visible influences that are at play when students take part in a mathematics lesson. these aims and the influences that gave rise to the research idea led me to two initial questions that i felt that i would need to address. the first was in response to my impression that many adults that i met carried negative memories of learning mathematics in school, and my second was in my quest that this research would contribute to improving my practice. question : is learning mathematics at school an uncomfortable memory for a number of my students and if so, what are the causes? question : can mathematics teachers create a more approachable and effective interface between themselves and their students? as the research developed a number of other working sub-questions arose as a response to the research progress and these provided direction for the development of this action research. these sub-questions were designed to facilitate the production of student data that could inform the two initial research questions. although there were many questions that arose during the research, the response to these particular working questions determined the next stage of the research process. ) would students be willing to share with me, the classroom teacher, their stories about learning mathematics? ) would the student stories about learning mathematics contain rich data that could help progress this research? ) will a storytelling workshop be successful with students that have experienced a struggle in mathematics? ) is the storytelling workshop transferable? ) can sharing student stories about leaning mathematics promote a purposeful and positive change in practice for the mathematics classroom teacher? ) can experience and intuition provide the foundations for a qualitative data analysis tool? . my diary extract i have been teaching mathematics since i was seventeen years old. how strange that seems because i hated my own schooling, and as a student, when asked what i was studying at university, i cringed when i disclosed my subjects. but, that is my baggage, something that i will need to unpick as i write this story. i love teaching mathematics, it is interesting, every experience is different and i get the chance to tackle puzzles each day. in the same breath, i am exhausted teaching mathematics, people seem to have so many barriers to learning the subject, i want to ask them to trust me, to relax, to allow time and let the learning happen, but it is not as simple as that. the expectations from my institution are different, schools in general treat learning maths as a linear function, with cause and effect. teachers impart the knowledge, and in a reciprocal relationship, the students gain that knowledge. so logically, when that is not happening then there must be straightforward reasons such as, the teaching is poor, or the student has learning difficulties. so when i experience adults telling me that they could never do mathematics at school, or that learning mathematics was one of their worst experiences at school, i can console them with one of the two most obvious facts, either you are limited mathematically or your mathematics teacher was not a good teacher. how ridiculous to suggest that things can be so simple, there has to be something else that creates this phenomenon. i have worked with many students that are clearly very intelligent but are not content with their achievements in school mathematics, and i have worked with mathematics teachers who are fantastic and inspire their students, yet there are others, clearly good at mathematics but who cannot deal with the challenges that their pupils present them. what challenges you might ask? everywhere i go there are examples of perfectly intelligent people displaying examples of personal phobia in relation to mathematics, their mathematics teacher, mathematics lessons or their mathematics exam grades. i have a personal and professional need to root through, and understand this mathematical baggage. . my concerns throughout my career as a mathematician, and particularly as a teacher of mathematics in london schools i have pondered on two main issues. one is the response from the public when informed of my job, and the other is the initial interactions that occur in the first weeks of getting to know a new mathematics class. the first of my issues affected me mostly in social situations when my companions found out that i was a mathematics teacher. the declaration of my job would elicit stories about their experiences learning mathematics, and sometimes they would move on to the experience of their children. i found the stories uncomfortable because they often portrayed mathematics teachers as unkind and unapproachable. in many cases, the stories were laced with strong negative personal emotion and i felt that it was my duty to provide counsel. they often portrayed mathematics as a foreign medium that was inflicted on everybody but that only an elite few could access. this reaction to my choice of career made me reluctant to disclose my profession when i was not in an academic setting, and this overwhelming feeling to hide my talents and love of mathematics was the driver for a burning question that laid the foundation for this research. i wanted to know whether learning mathematics was an uncomfortable memory for many people, and if it was, then i wanted to explore and understand why? the second issue evolved from two areas, the first was my own professional practice as a mathematics teacher and my experiences during the introduction period involved when getting to know a new mathematics class. the second area was influenced by my role as director of learning for mathematics, witnessing on numerous occasions, groups of students bringing new mathematics teachers to their knees, taking no prisoners. it was as though they had made up their mind before the lesson had started that this teacher did not speak their language and was not worth engaging with. if they lasted the course, in time, this teacher became accepted, but for many students and mathematics teachers, this display of alienating behaviour left a lasting impression. this led to my second research area which was to explore whether mathematics teachers could create a more approachable and effective interface between themselves and their students? these two research areas led me to a specific aim for this research and this was: to understand more about what our school students experienced when learning mathematics at school, and how this process shaped their mathematics story, a story that they could potentially carry with them into adulthood. however, as my research progressed, i began to explore how the student stories about learning mathematics in school could enhance the relationship between mathematics teacher and student, and this became a powerful element of the research. . the context my research was set in an to comprehensive school that is based in the centre of london, close to excellent travel networks and a range of other to schools. the excellent access to travel links meant that teachers and students could travel to this location from considerable distances. this school historically recruited students from over different primary schools which meant that the students often arrived for their first day at school not knowing anybody else at the school. the teachers at the researched school worked with local primary schools to familiarise themselves with the students and the teaching adopted by these schools, but the reality is that in one year group this pre-school preparation would benefit only a handful of students. for many students starting at the researched school, their first experience of – education was as a stranger with no familiar faces to help them feel at ease in a new, potentially stressful, environment. the department for education published performance tables for secondary schools across the uk (dfe, ). this was seen by many people as an indicator of how successful a school was at educating the children in its care. schools were ranked, at the time of the research, by the percentage of students gaining at least a* to c including the key subjects of english and mathematics. subsequently, in schools such as the researched school, these league tables drove a rigid performance management structure which held departments and their subsequent teaching staff directly responsible for the performance and attainment of students taking that particular subject. as a key subject, the mathematics department was under considerable pressure to produce, through the attainment of its students, high gcse grades and this pressure was often communicated directly to the students studying for their gcse’s. the close proximity of four other to schools meant that students and parents that were considering the researched school could also consider seriously four other - schools. this fact created a strong competitive culture between the schools and heightened the importance of exam results and league tables in attracting students to the researched school. the children researched in this report experienced their mathematics education through the influences of the department for education national strategies for mathematics (dfe, ). a key focus of the key stage and national strategies was assessing pupil progress at regular intervals using app guidelines (dcsf ). pupil attainment was measured using national curriculum levels (dfee ), targets were set for pupil progress, pupil progress was tracked through, and across, each academic year group and reported at regular intervals. the mathematics strand of the key stage national strategy built on the achievements and experience of the national numeracy strategy for primary schools. as well as seeking to improve transition from primary to secondary school it was also a key part of the strategy to transform standards in the early years of secondary school. we have already seen from primary colleagues that targets are important to challenge, motivate and raise expectations. it is important that we carry this forward into the early years of secondary education. we recently consulted on targets for -year-olds, and we believe that they will help schools in providing a clear focus for the first year of the new strategy (blunkett, ). in the researched school, this focus on target setting and reporting became a particularly prescribed process for the key subjects, english and mathematics. the students were assessed regularly, the results of each assessment were discussed with the student in question, usually by the subject teacher, and targets were set for the next assessment. throughout their secondary school years (age to ), the students were well informed about what level of mathematics was accepted as the average for a particular age, what level would indicate that you were ‘good at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ /http:/www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/numeracy/ mathematics’, and where they ranked in the whole process. this rigorous approach to assessment created a natural tendency towards valuing correct answers and high marks in assessment. it raised a heightened awareness of ranking, associating performance in assessments directly with ability, and generally created a pressurised environment within which the students were expected to function. the prescribed periods of time between assessments made no allowances for students that may need more time, perhaps needed to absorb a particular mathematical concept or just because the students had things happening outside of the school that was interfering with their capacity for learning. i set out to explore the ways in which children make meaning about learning mathematics in response to their daily interactions and past experiences, and planned to achieve this by drawing on the experiences of children in my own class room, and then disseminating successful methodological tools and approaches in the classrooms of other mathematics teachers. in reality, this research that was initially designed as a response to gain knowledge that could address my research questions also became a pathway to self-inquiry, and scrutiny of my own professional practice. i chose to confine my research to what i felt was my area of expertise, which was secondary school mathematics teaching. during this research my professional role was as the director of learning for mathematics in an – london girl’s school. i was accountable for the progress of students in mathematics and my responsibilities included staff development, overseeing the delivery of mathematics curriculum, and raising standards in mathematics. during my work as a teacher and leader in mathematics, i made it my duty to actively seek answers to questions such as how can i improve the quality of the educational provision for children learning mathematics and how can i ensure that the children’s experience of learning mathematics is a positive and emancipatory one? my research was framed to take particular account of the social world of learning mathematics. this decision was based on tacit knowledge accumulated over many years, knowledge gathered from hearing adult stories, reflecting on my practice and observing other mathematics teachers in their classrooms. the objective of describing mathematics as ‘social’ in this research allowed the inclusion of understanding classroom behaviours and the different meanings that students bring to their encounters with school mathematics. in researching the social world of learning mathematics, i wanted to explore and gain an understanding, from the student point of view, the subjective meanings expressed by students when interacting with mathematics in their everyday school life. in doing this i hoped to move towards an understanding about why some students cope well with formal mathematics practices and some students struggle (baker and street, ). . the research my research approach incorporated an interpretive stance combined with aspects of critical inquiry. this approach allowed me to examine my values and beliefs, and consider the part they played in the research design, process and outcome. the critical approach took into account the political and ideological contexts of the research, which in my case, could be described as ‘the emancipation of individuals and groups in an egalitarian society’ (cohen et al, : ). in this approach i was particularly interested in inequalities that exist because of the nature and place of mathematics in our society, and i hold the view that in this research seeking out and highlighting these inequalities could influence institution leaders. the methodology that underpinned this research was complex and drew on various disciplines. the choice and development of methodology was driven by my aims, values, social purpose and personal beliefs about learning and the creation of knowledge. my interest in the stories of people learning mathematics defined this research for me as a qualitative study, and my desire and need to incorporate the work with my practice and values fundamentally dictated an action research design. this design supported my aim that any research i undertook should improve practice by supporting the ever continuous place of researcher reflection with an intention of making the classroom an improved learning environment. i began to understand as the research progressed that research that matters to me would not be impartial, hence a substantial influence on the research was my role in the design, progress and outcomes. the analogy of doors is one that relates well with my action research design and the potential bias that i bring to the work. to see the doorway is to notice an opening, and to investigate what is behind the door can lead you to new paths with new doors to look behind. however, some of these doors will lead to a dead end and you may have to retrace your steps, and some doors will lead you along corridors that take you back to the same initial starting point, as can the paths in the action research process. there are doors that only open at certain times, some i peek through, nervous about what is behind them, others i stride through with the confidence that this is the right thing to do, and yet there are others i let shut immediately without even considering the treasures that might lie behind them. during this research i found it important to consider the reason that i let some doors shut quickly, and this reflexive process informed the methodology and the research process, incorporating the researcher and the research reflexivity as pertinent data. i found that this research opened doorways into self-reflexivity, scrutiny of practice and relationships between researcher and those researched. reflexivity is a key concept underpinning the whole structure and development of this research and can be understood in a multitude of ways according to the aims and functions of the exercise at stake and the theoretical or methodological traditions embraced. reflexivity, or a turning back onto a self, is a way in which circularity and self- reference appear in inquiry, as we contextually recognise the various mutual relationships in which our knowing activities are embedded (steier, : ). krippendorff ( : ) highlighted a subtle difference between being reflective ‘in showing ourselves to ourselves’, and reflexive ‘being conscious of ourselves as we see ourselves’. he explained that reflexivity could be understood as a bending back on itself, a circular process, where the circularity is liberating, allowing the self to be fluid and developing alongside the research process. the reflexive process informed my methodology and the research process, with the researcher included in the research and the research reflexivity included as pertinent data. there are a number of possible motives for including self-reflexive accounts as explicit sections in a research paper. in some cases this manifests as a simple identifying of oneself and in other works researchers indulge in narratives of the self, and this process becomes the body of the research. bruner ( : ) explained that the researcher ‘appears not as an individual creative scholar, a knowing subject who discovers, but more as a material body through whom a narrative structure unfolds’. however finlay ( ) pointed out that excessive self-analysis at the expense of attending to the research participants can be problematic. being preoccupied by one’s own emotions and experiences, however, can skew findings in undesirable directions. the researcher’s position can become unduly privileged, blocking out the participant’s voice. clearly, we need to strike a balance, striving for enhanced self-awareness but eschewing navel gazing (finlay, : ). another motive for self-reflexivity may be to give the research assumptions and findings credibility. however, the danger now becomes one of power and the use of reflexivity as a tool to reinforce rather than question the author's voice. reflexivity as recognition of other is a characteristic of qualitative research. the aim of this reflexive practice is to give the researched a voice, ‘let them speak for themselves’ (pillow, : ), and one strategy for this can be to make evident how the researched has participated in the making of his or her own image, and how power is shared by researcher and researched. the researchers’ agenda will always create an imbalance of power due to the fact that the researcher has a purpose, something that they seek. the stakes for researcher and researched are not equal and hence neither is any power relationship. some researchers use reflexivity to discuss how their position as an insider researcher interacts with the research subjects and data, influencing the production of knowledge. rosaldo ( ) argued that reflexivity itself cannot generate knowledge but, can reflect what has been opened by experience. knowledge can only be generated from a shift in position and once we are repositioned reflexivity can inform us as to why, and how, we now know more, and understand better. it is possible to seek to increase the credibility of research work by engaging in reflexive processes. this raises questions surrounding the ‘politics of the gaze’ (finlay, ), who asked questions such as: who benefits from our representations? are our representations valid? do they matter? who can we research and when? reflexivity as truth supports the idea that the researcher can get it right. it is dependent on discourses of truth, and for me would be more affiliated to a quantitative methodology where we might accept that there is a truth to be found. however, we might read this idea as a quest for the researcher to take precautions to give a truthful account of events, and in this case i would replace the word truth with honest. my position is that i can offer no certainty; no definite interpretation; no answer that will make things better. the best i can pledge is a promise to do my best to represent the research in an honest and ethical manner, with an overall ambition to improve the provision, and by association the experiences, of the researched. reflexivity as transcendence, for me, is the most important reason that reflexive practice must underpin my research. reflexivity for this purpose is essential in my action research design, one which holds the optimistic premise that each action research cycle will facilitate understandings that rise and go beyond the previous cycle. the essence of reflexivity for me has two strands: one is about the choice a person makes to examine their thoughts and actions throughout their research. this choice becomes a balance of honesty and sensibility and needs to be underpinned by a commitment to learning, always seeking to understand a thought, a reaction or an emotion in more depth. for my way of working i see reflexivity as a paradigm shift from a scientific approach, to an interpretive way of working, moving from neutrality to emancipatory values. the second strand of reflexivity i find important to my research is essentially in its potential to facilitate understanding and hence aid the generation of new knowledge (chambers, ). without a reflexive thread running through my research actions i may miss a layer of understanding that becomes critical to the outcomes and subsequent use of the research. used correctly, reflexive practice can be a powerful tool to drive a research agenda forward and there are current examples of this process in action (attard, ; heikkinen et al, ; mc niff, ). these researchers employ a variety of methods based on their epistemological beliefs but each method is grounded by a reflexive process. this underpinning of reflexivity in my research helped me to monitor and critique my actions and choices throughout the research. within a practitioner action research structure the main form of data design and collection was underpinned by a commitment to narrative inquiry, and the stories of my students became my main data collection tool. this choice was guided by my assumption that students would be able to communicate their experiences both comfortably and richly through their stories about learning mathematics. i felt that using the medium of storytelling allowed the development of a data collection method that offered less intrusion and pressure than the traditional interview, but could allow space for richer, more spontaneous data than might be collected by a questionnaire or interview. my storytelling methodology was developed particularly with an aim to give my students a voice that could be communicated in a manner that was comfortable to their individual skill sets. the concept of pupil voice is a development which is often attribued to the ratification of the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc) (lundy ). the implementation of the convention on the rights of a child (unicef ) inspired, in many countries, changes in laws to protect children and policies to ensure that children had opportunities to develop to their full potential. in particular, the section of the uncrc that relates to the concept of pupil voice is article which; provides both for the right of children and young people to express their views on all matters concerning them and to have those views given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity. this right applies to children without discrimination (lundy et al., . , ). subsequently, uk government legislation has influenced the development of research that listens to pupil voice (hmso , dfes ), research that has a focus on the pupil’s perception of their school experiences in order to explore and disseminate the pupil’s point of view. compliance with the uncrc treaty is monitored by the united nations committee on the rights of a child and this committee publishes periodic reports highlighting breaches to the uncrc and makes recommendations for future development. it was documented by the committee in that ‘in education schoolchildren are not systematically consulted in matters that affect them and recommended that the uk government should ‘take further steps to promote, facilitate and monitor systematic, meaningful and effective participation of all groups of children in society, including in school, for example, through school councils’ (united nations committee on the rights of a child : ). these criticisms were also supported by the findings of a research project conducted on behalf of the northern ireland commissioner for children and young people (niccy) (kilkelly et al., ). it was felt by these studies that many of the adults involved in consulting with young people did not understand the implications of the convention, particularly its confirmation of the equal status of children as the subject of rights. (united nations committee on the rights of a child ). my aim for this research was to embrace the culture that pupil perspective is a valuable insight and makes an important contribution to the learning that takes place in school. by this i refer to the learning that takes place both for the student and the adults in authority. at the heart of this respect for informed learning is the notion that students have something to say about school mathematics and what they have to say should drive my decision making. these decisions include a consideration of teacher - pupil relationship, style of learning, curriculum content and issues that can lead to whole school improvements. the importance of engaging students in dialogue and recognising that they are actively constructing knowledge and understanding in these social interactions is a key principle of a social constructivist pedagogy (pollard ). in this view learning entails both personal and social transformation (packer & goicoechea ) ravet ( ) explained that pupil voice research empowers the young people by recognising their entitlement to democratic participation in research that is related to their interests. in addition, flutter and ruddock ( ) suggested that pupils could tell schools a great deal about what is needed for empowerment and that schools could use pupil voice research as a method for evaluation. listening to pupil voice has been used increasingly in research because it is important to listen to pupils when you want to analyse their needs and understand their perspective. in this research my aim was to utilise a method for my students to tell their mathematical story in a non-intrusive, adaptable and comfortable manner. i used the vehicle of student story to keep a focus on hearing the children’s perspective of classroom teaching and the learning of mathematics. the use of pupil voice to evaluate educational practices has some ethical implications that were important for me to consider when planning and carrying out my research. macnab et al ( ) explained that school structures can silence the pupil voice because this pupil voice can expose a variety of practices that may be considered as bad practice. the paper by macnab et al ( ) identified the use of gatekeepers, described as professionals with whom researchers have to negotiate to gain access to a sample. it was suggested that these gatekeepers have professional interests that interfered with their willingness to provide access to certain samples of pupil. in a study reported on by o’connor et al ( ), there were concerns raised regarding the potential barrier formed as professionals become wary of the researcher and the repercussions of highlighting bad practice. to address this issue an objective of the research described in the report was to work collaboratively with professionals to ensure that they were aware of what was happening at every stage. when conducting research with young people, it was important for me to acknowledge power relations. numerous suggestions have been put forward within research literature for addressing such power relations; for example, taking the time to build trust and by providing ongoing opportunities for participants to withdraw from the research (ravet ). another area of ethical consideration pertinent to my research is that of informed consent. one model often employed when working with young people is the use of another, (parent or guardian), giving the consent and then taking this as implying that the young person has given agreement to participate and that this is an informed agreement. the young person needs to understand what will be involved, what is expected of them and the right to stop participating in the research at any time. lindsay ( ) pointed out that there are a number of factors to take into account when considering informed consent from young people, in particular - age, cognitive ability, emotional status and knowledge. to address these factors, lewis ( ) indicated that there is a need for awareness and sensitivity regarding consent and competence so that the young person is in a position to make a considered decision as to whether to take part in the research. whilst developing my research i found the basic principles of portraiture (lawrence- lightfoot davies, ), methodologically attractive because it encouraged a responsive and dynamic approach to the research. lawrence-lighfoot ( ) described the methodology of portraiture as a source of empowerment for schools, communities and researchers and this approach complemented my aims for the research. the aim for this research genre is to honour and humanise the voices and the experiences of the researched as well as the researcher (chapman, ). portraitists study the collected data looking for the stories that emerge and then tell these stories with careful attention to voice. in this research i have highlighted my own voice through my writing and the voice of my research participants by the inclusion of their stories. the research account that follows is my self-portrait, it describes my journey to find a research site and establish a relationship with the research topic. the portrait offers a critical exploration of my development as a researcher and my attempt to position myself as a researcher through the use of voice. the action research structure of my work evolved naturally into four cycles, three data collection phases, which i have called phase , and and then a final fourth phase that was used to draw together ideas and form a data analysis. this structure supported my natural instinct to work with an action research lens. phase was a pilot stage designed with the specific intention to test storytelling as a data collection tool. phase , again intended to test story- telling as a data collection tool but it differed in two main ways. the first was in the selection of students, using a puposeful selection driven by refined research questions. the second was that it explored how the storytelling data collection worked in the classroom of other mathematics teachers. phase evolved from questions posed after phase and , the group of students selected was a purposive selection, my own practice became part of the data collection, and four students along with their stories became part of a mini case study. the fourth phase was period of time for the compilation and analysis of data. there was no dedicated data collection but i gave myself a period of time for the exploration and development of suitable analysis methods, which included thematic and intuitive inquiry analysis. in this phase, i also focused on my diary extracts which became the foundations of my personal story. it also was a period of time when i could, think deeply about my classroom practice, my observations, intuitions and discussions with parents, teachers and students. it was a development period that allowed me to observe my classroom, tie together ideas and think deeply about the growth and transformation for myself and some of the students that took part in the research. my research has altered slightly within each action research phase and the focus has broadened from one of collecting data for personal understanding, to one that also incorporates how that data might improve the provision for teaching school mathematics. i have chosen to include, throughout the research, a style of writing that i would describe as personal writing. i am aware that this type of writing has certain disadvantages, including an emotional attachment that can lead to the researcher being too close to the research data sometimes resulting in certain points of view being obscured or just simply ignored. my conviction that some personal writing is necessary is supported by my own experiences reading other research scripts, noting the type of writing that catches my attention and resonates with my experiences. personal writing also helps me satisfy a basic need that i have which is to tell my story, in a very open honest way, supporting my decision to commit to this storytelling methodology. it has been found that writing the personal is a way to begin to locate and critically interrogate our educational experiences, allowing room for a revision of understandings (schnee, ). schnee ( ) worked towards developing the method of personal writing to bridge and blend the worlds of pedagogy and research. this attempt to find a common understanding between the world of research and teaching was a way for me to address a variety of audiences who may be specifically interested in how school students coped with learning mathematics. to help balance the personal with a more objective style of writing, i have inserted my personal notes amongst chapters that contain a more detached and debated style of writing. during my research the model of data analysis i used was varied and adaptive. i investigated the place of content and themed analysis as a way of looking for similarities and contradictions. i explored the opinions of colleagues who also applied a themed analysis to the data set. this process highlighted institutional norms, certain social behaviours, ideas surrounding the participants’ view of mathematics and their mathematical identity. yet throughout this process i had grave doubts about what treasures were lost in the content and themed analysis exercise. after phase i decided that the true value of the student story could be appreciated by keeping the whole story as a single piece of data. by keeping the stories whole, ideas such as fighting for a mathematical identity, struggle with mathematics at school, feelings of inadequacy promoted by actions of peers, teachers or family, stories of hope and future success could be conserved and perhaps re-modelled into a more empowered scenario. the powerful stories convinced me that i needed to look for a different form of data analysis, one that had a place for the way the stories had worked on me. i found my solace in the ideas of intuitive inquiry (anderson, ), and it is through this way of working that the stories started to become powerful mediums by which i could negotiate my understanding of the relationships between teacher and student, student and mathematics. the model of intuitive inquiry proposed by anderson ( ) correlated closely with the way that i had instinctively started to work with my stories, it offered me a structured yet flexible approach that recognised and utilised my extensive experience of teaching school mathematics. i adapted the main techniques of anderson’s model to suit the research methodology that underpinned my work and the type of data collected for this research. the multiple way of working with the data highlighted my insider/ outsider positioning, my ‘diary extracts and field notes’ creating subjective data shortly after reading the student story data, and my analysis of the stories away from the classroom giving me the opportunity to analyse the data as a pseudo outsider research. there is a variety of literature that has influenced my thinking, one of my earliest influences was the work of dweck ( ) who explored how we can motivate our learners by paying attention to the type of mindset they have adopted. she claimed that what they have already decided about their brain capabilities, whether knowledge is fixed or could develop and grow, influenced how they tackled learning a subject such as mathematics, and she proposed that this mindset could be altered over time. another author that has inspired me to investigate the influence of belief and perception was gladwell ( ), who gave several examples of how influential a belief can be and how small actions can make remarkable transformations. there is a great deal of literature dedicated to teaching and learning mathematics. a partcular influence that has urged me to develop my critical voice has been the work of ernest ( ), who argued that if mathematics is inseperable from human contexts then the social implications for mathematics education have to be considered. personally, i have questioned the role that power plays in mathematics, particularly the power that is used to decide, by using mathematics results, who can enter certain fields of study and professions. gates ( : ) suggests that ‘maths education has played its part in keeping the powerless in their place and the strong in positions of power’. boaler ( , ) explores the impact that differing mathematical experiences can have on how children learn and how they perceive mathematics. for boaler, the onus is on the teaching profession to deliver mathematics that is varied and related to the world outside of the classroom. throughout the research a question that i had hoped to provide some insight into is one that was stimulated by my experience of adult stories, and was posed by fiona walls ( ), who asked what is it about people’s experiences of mathematics that brings about such a strong sense of alienation? my research participants in phase worked in groups and produced eight stories, these included drawings, cartoons, written stories and a drama. the stories produced in this phase were emotive and evocative and provided some interesting suggestions to address this question. for some it became a vehicle for them to release some pent up anger and frustration. this chance to share emotions and let go of past anger became beneficial to the confidence of the class, and the promotion of a respectful relationship between class and teacher. this was something that i had not considered before conducting the phase stage of the research and, stimulated by the outcome of the pilot phase, in latter phases i investigated the idea of storytelling as a vehicle for personal and relationship transformation. the next phases explored the outcome of colleagues using a storytelling workshop. in my own groups i utilised the success of the workshop but altered the selection of participant groups, exploring any links between the story content, achievement and ability in school mathematics. . the structure of this thesis i have used the chapters to develop a journey through the research and a development of the key themes that the data suggests were at play in my mathematics classroom. the key themes that presented themselves throughout the data are a) the way students view mathematics which i have called the faces of mathematics, and b) the classroom culture of learning school maths, these particular areas forming the foundations of memorable stories that my students shared as data. chapter is the resulting literature discussion from applying step of my intuitive inquiry process. it discusses the different ways mathematics can be viewed and sets out to argue that mathematics is a unique school subject. what mathematics is and who does it is influenced by political, cultural and social influences and the reality in the classroom is that the study of mathematics is influenced by factors that can seem elusive and abstract. within this chapter i look at literature surrounding factors such as motivation and belief, factors that often influence the learning of mathematics. chapter argues the place of stories as a powerful tool for communication (owen, ). in this section i share literature that fuelled my belief that collecting data through the medium of storytelling would provide me with rich insights into the social side of learning mathematics in school. this same literature informed my understanding that developing a personal mathematics story could have the potential for transformation, by this i mean that the process could transform contradictory experiences into more life enhancing experiences. chapter describes the methodological influences that have underpinned and guided my research design and facilitation, followed by chapter which describes the three data collection phases of my action research method of working. chapter , , , and explains my thinking and intuitions about the student stories and how my developing understandings influenced subsequent classroom practice. these chapters also describe the developing intuitive inquiry model of analysis that i adopted and why this was appropriate as a way of working on my data analysis. chapter presents data from the phase pilot stage of the action research and my subsequent thoughts and analysis. chapter presents data from the phase cycle of the action research. this data is in the form of student stories chosen for their influence on my teaching practice and contributions from colleagues regarding the use of stories in their own classrooms. the data analysis takes the form of a thematic analysis way of working and an intuitive inquiry narrative contribution. chapter applies the ideas in the previous chapters to the analysis of particular groups of students and stories chosen in phase , this analysis is supported with verbatim student story and my own diary extracts. it explains the themes that became visible to me as i worked through the data and the influence that they had on my practice. the teacher story, included as data, explores my influence in selecting those areas. chapter draws together the themes that emerged from each phase of the research and seeks patterns and repetition, collaboration and consistency drawing to a conclusion the main data influences. chapter concludes the research story and highlights for the reader my contributions to practice and reflects on some possible future applications of the research and the value of the stories for school development. in the next chapter i present ideas relating to views of mathematics and what it is to different individuals. i discuss various factors that can influence the commitment of students to engage with mathematics and where these ideas fit with my thinking and research development. chapter : complexities of school mathematics . introduction in this chapter i would like to present to you literature relating to what mathematics is and the factors that influence the learning of school mathematics. this literature has been selected to support a variety of ideas about mathematics that have surfaced during my interpretation of the student story data. i have been asked by other researchers to justify why i think mathematics is different from other school subjects. it is a valid question and i would like to draw on the material presented from other authors, and my own experiences, to put forward and justify the argument that studying mathematics holds a very unique position in comparison to many other current school subjects that the typical school student has an opportunity to study. i suspect, that the reasons that mathematics stands out from other school subjects, will inevitably underpin this research. my experiences of listening to adult stories has influenced my thinking that, for some people, learning school mathematics has left them with uncomfortable memories of failure, inadequacies and injustices. in addition, my career as a mathematics teacher has presented me with the opportunity to study a variety of students, of differing age and ability, engaging with school mathematics. i have encountered many situations that have led me to believe that it is common for students, when faced with a task that seems to them to involve mathematics, to down tools and deny that they possess any mathematical ability, subsequently underperforming considerably in any mathematical interactions that follow. mathematics is often labelled as a difficult subject by children and adults. in many cases they have come to this deduction by drawing on their own experiences, or by accepting the opinions and observations of others. mathematics is seen as a highly cognitive subject that often demands a level of determination and perseverance from its users (boaler, ). it is exacting in as much as it has answers that most see as the ultimate goal when doing mathematics and it is most usually these answers that gain the rewards and satisfaction. mathematics consists of a vast bank of connected knowledge, each mathematical concept supporting and underpinning other more complex mathematical concepts, creating a whole body of knowledge. success in mathematics is dependent on systematic, cumulative learning with each new skill being underpinned by solid foundations laid at earlier stages (borovik and gardiner, ). this means that a gap in mathematical knowledge at any stage of a learner’s development can lead to large holes in latter understanding. there are a number of scenarios that can occur which may cause a student to have a gap in knowledge and i will mention a few that are commonplace. these influencing scenarios can be one or more of the following; poor student attendance; a large number of temporary teachers leading to a lack of consistency in teaching; inadequate teaching by a practitioner with poor subject knowledge or weak classroom management; a lack of confidence on the student’s part to communicate that they do not understand something. another area that compounds the difficulties that students face when learning mathematics is the transition from concrete representation to abstract representations. how materials are used and the ability of the teacher to negotiate their differing interpretations would appear to be important factors in helping children translate their thinking processes from handling objects/using images to symbolic representations. children need to see through the objects to the mathematics which underpin the representation (harries and spooner, : ). kamina and iyer ( ) suggested that one of the most important uses of manipulation in a classroom is to aid a learner to make connections from a concrete object to its abstraction. in their study of trainee mathematic teachers they found that many ‘often encounter difficulties transferring knowledge from enactive manipulatives to math symbolization and abstraction’ (kamina and iyer, : ). post ( ) in a study looking at the role of manipulation in mathematics teaching, suggested that the use of manipulatives is often seen as playtime. with this view in mind, it was suggested that the use of manipulatives were often built in to an activity to add fun and variety rather than as a means of acquiring a deep, long term and secure understanding of the mathematics. post ( ) also suggested from his study, that the systematic use of manipulative materials is often more difficult for the teacher than working with a program designed around textbooks and exercise books, and in reality concrete manipulatives are used more with younger students. as a result of transitional problems and classroom management and control, post ( ) found that many teachers gave up using manipulatives for concrete representations prematurely, thus missing the opportunity to lay the foundations for the later use of mathematical symbols and concept building. many of the perceived difficulties when learning mathematics can be addressed if the student is in the care of an effective mathematics teacher. boaler ( ) outlined her expectations of an effective mathematics teacher as a teacher with good mathematical subject knowledge and teaching qualifications, one that understands the steps needed to develop mathematical knowledge and mathematical language. this is a teacher that knows how to elicit mathematical thinking through effective questioning, and someone who can steer students through times when they lack confidence in their own ability. one that understands the role misconceptions in the learning of mathematics and by the use of considered, constructive and informed feedback can help a student recognise good progress and suitable goals. a professional practitioner willing to think deeply about the mathematical needs of the students in their care, looking for missing building bricks in the wall of conceptual knowledge that forms the foundations of mathematics, and one that can highlight the links between school mathematics and what is mathematics in everyday life. one thing that has stood out through all the data collection phases of this research is that mathematics is viewed by learners in many different ways. there are examples within the student story data which show contradictions such as, they like mathematics and dislike mathematics in the same time frame, it is a useful thing to know yet it is a waste of time trying to do it, mathematics is said to be good and bad in the same sentence. in the same manner i have witnessed adults proclaiming that they cannot do ‘maths to save their lives!’, but i observe them using mathematics expertly in their daily functioning. it is as though mathematics can change the face it presents in a flash, or it can wear an invisible cloak being visible only to seasoned watchers. the different faces that mathematics can present, has been a theme that has occurred throughout each phase of the research and the purpose of this chapter is to explore the literature surrounding these views of mathematics. . the faces of mathematics it was during a reading of reiss et al ( ) that i started to consider the different faces of mathematics. they were discussing the gap between a- level mathematics and university mathematics, and how unprepared the students seemed when entering university. ‘mathematics has always had two faces. it is a tool in the study of the sciences, and it is an object of study in its own right’ (hoyles et al, : ). hoyles et al ( ) acknowledged that many who teach mathematics think of it as the latter face, yet often students are attracted to the subject by the other face for many reasons, including the influence that holding a mathematics award can have on future employment. students who arrive at university without an appreciation of the two faces of mathematics often find themselves confronted with a subject that they do not recognise. this led me to ponder on the different faces that mathematics presents to my students and, if perhaps, a student finds themselves confronted with a subject that they do not recognise. i felt that investigating student stories about learning mathematics could help me understand what mathematics means to them and whether the faces they see, conflict with the faces that are presented through the school mathematics curriculum, and with the face that i, the teacher wishes to convey in my teaching. i consider that mathematics has been created by society, and subsequently society has been created by mathematics. by this i mean, that the needs of society decides what counts as mathematics, yet the discipline of mathematics has enabled what we view today as a technological society. technology cannot develop without mathematics, yet mathematics does not exist without people and is developing and evolving through technology. mathematics is woven into every aspect of our lives and is an integral part of functioning in society, ‘mathematics pervades human experience and makes an impact on nearly all spheres of life’ (wood et al, : ). how one thinks about mathematics education, how one defines what it means for students to know and do mathematics in school, is influenced by ones views about the nature of mathematics, ones underlying epistemological perspective and one’s educational goals. this places pressure on teachers of mathematics to reflect on what they do and say when they teach mathematics because how they define mathematics will influence what they teach and the way it is presented. padula ( ) felt that teachers needed a view of mathematics that is sufficiently broad and able to evolve, and they needed to demonstrate a firm conviction that mathematics is inherently interesting. i personally think that a place to start when debating what face of mathematics we present to students is by asking ourselves, what is mathematics and when do we know we are doing it? a view of mathematics that is common amongst students and their parents is that mathematics is powerful and important because a grade in mathematics is often used as entrance criteria for educational establishments. clearly you need more than a mathematics qualification to earn your place at university, but for many students it is the one subject that holds them back from entering further education, and as such becomes a gate keeper to certain careers. gates ( ) argued that any activity can serve to demarcate between those who can and those who cannot, but he suggested that the particular strength of mathematics education used as a tool to promote inequity and injustice, is the way in which it encourages us to think that the divisions between those who can do mathematics and those who can’t is perfectly natural and legitimate. i have first-hand experience of students unable to enter their choice of work place or take up their preferred place of study, not because they lack the appropriate capability but simply due to their grade in mathematics. this supports the argument that gates ( ) put forward and highlights the powerful role that mathematics plays in access to school education and post school selection. mathematics appears to have many faces dependent on who you are and where you are situated in your school career. mathematicians, a genre within which i will include teachers of mathematics, describe mathematics in a number of ways. boaler ( ) described mathematics as a flexible subject that encourages you to think, and mathematical activity as a variety of mental methods such as cognitive wrestle and creativity. this supports an earlier description by ulam ( : ) who stated that ‘mathematicians wrestle with cognitive problems that have no clear solution paths.’ devlin ( : ) attempted to define mathematics by looking at some common features that characterised the activities that mathematicians are occupied with, ‘mathematics is the science of patterns’, and then expanded on this by saying that the patterns that mathematicians study could be numerical patterns, patterns of shape, and patterns of motion. hardy ( ) also spoke of patterns, but made no attempt to split mathematics into categories, he described the patterns of mathematics as one made with ideas, contrasting this with the patterns of painters made with shape, and those of a poet made with words. the mathematician’ patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics (hardy, / , p. , emphasis in original). i have heard, first-hand, mathematics described as beautiful, mostly by adults who i would describe as accomplished mathematicians. however, i was told by a student that mathematics was beautiful and they were referring to its link with art and in particular work leading to the generation of fractals. dietiker ( ) suggested that mathematics classrooms should take advantage of the potential aesthetic opportunities that mathematics offers. he also suggested that mathematics classrooms should celebrate discovery and surprise, encouraging students to wonder, imagine and explore, encouraging aesthetic ways of knowing. eisner ( ) described aesthetic as a response to an experience, explaining that aesthetic is contextual. the effect of an event or object may seem moving in a particular context. an object or event can be viewed as aesthetically pleasing to one person but may have the opposite effect on another. in the case of mathematics, burton ( ) felt that aesthetic involves the sensing of value and truth and is the essence of what it is to think mathematically. dietiker ( ) suggested that aesthetic can be the motivating influence that can engage students through challenges and setbacks, explaining that the aesthetic guides decisions, motivates the pursuit of certain lines of enquiry and helps sense the correctness of a solution. a classroom culture that values aesthetically rich learning would enable students to notice, imagine alternatives, appreciate contingencies and foster experiences such as pleasure and pride. in terms of exploring mathematics, i believe that the aesthetic way of knowing is the root of what mathematicians are describing as ‘beautiful mathematics’. it seems to me that there is a disconnect between the aesthetic for those who study mathematics for pleasure and the experience of most school children and i would encourage a freedom from the tame, harnessed approach of school mathematics to the spontaneous imagining, surprise and enjoyment of a culture of school mathematics that recognises and nurtures the aesthetic interpretation. devlin ( ) proposed that mathematics and music are both creative acts, explaining that when you are sitting with a bit of paper creating mathematics, it is very like sitting with a sheet of music creating music. he went on to explain that it is about the world we live in, it is about ideas, and far from being dull and sterile as it is so often portrayed, it is full of creativity. robinson ( ) suggested that mathematics is three separate things that are interconnected and complementary. these are mathematical tools, skills and problems. examples of mathematical tools include percentages, pythagoras theorem, rules of algebra etc. examples of skills include interpreting, proving and generalising and examples of problems would start the sentence with; how many……? can you find….? what is ….? sometimes a tool will suggest a problem and sometimes problems encourage us to discover a skill or a tool. robinson ( ) felt that teachers comfortably present tools to their students but they find teaching a skill difficult because these need to be modelled. taking these opinions into account then sets a challenge for teachers to develop problems that are sufficiently interesting and engaging, which in turn, would develop the aesthetic stimulation. on a personal note, i can describe the pleasure and interest i feel when faced with a challenging problem. i can appreciate the satisfaction i feel when manipulating a clever algebraic problem, and i find it aesthetically pleasing to see geometrical forms in buildings and art. yet i cannot pin down exactly what mathematics is for me, only that it is everywhere, i plan my day with it, i organise my routines with it, i solve problems with it, i fill my pleasure time with it and it forms the foundations of all the scientific principles that i understand and helps me grapple with those that i do not understand. because of the way i view mathematics, i hold the belief that it is virtually impossible to function well in our society without being mathematical at some level. i endorse the claim by devlin ( : ) that all people everywhere have ‘a mind for mathematic’, and that every human being with a functioning brain has ‘an innate facility for mathematical thought’ (pxvi). ernest ( ) also described mathematics as a domain that transcends any individual perspective. mathematics is not a static knowledge domain, an external thing to be internalised by a learner, but rather a socially created, culturally dependent, fallible domain, this was reiterated by boaler ( : ), describing what she believes is mathematics in a more global sense: ‘mathematics is a human activity, a social phenomenon, a set of methods used to illuminate the world; it is part of our culture’. why then is it commonplace to see people crumble in the face of a mathematical problem? what do our students think mathematics is and how do they feel when faced with what they perceive to be a mathematical problem? when do people become mathematicians and how do they know that is what they should call themselves? wood et al ( ) explained that becoming a mathematician involves not only learning mathematics, but also becoming aware of the mathematical way of looking at the world, and the role of mathematics in professional and personal life. one outcome of this research also highlighted the fact that students see mathematics in a number of different ways. woods et al ( ) supported the idea that people hold different views of mathematics. he explained that in the narrowest view, mathematics is seen as being based on techniques and components, while the broadest view appreciates the part mathematics plays in personal and professional life. woods et al ( ) argued that the role of the mathematics educator is to help our students follow the path of becoming mathematicians by taking time to talk to our students, helping them explore the range of mathematical faces, and enabling them to appreciate the role of mathematics in their lives. . mathematical knowledge greer & mukhopadhyay ( ) suggested that the answer to the question, what is mathematics is generally considered to be unproblematic once you accept that there is a fairly unified body of knowledge called mathematics. however, they suggested that we should question the relationship between this body of knowledge and what we select to teach in schools. school children are exposed to a fraction of this large body of knowledge and greer & mukhopadhyay ( ) felt that we should question who makes the selection and on what basis this selection is made. they raised the point that we should be concerned about ‘the gap between school mathematics and the lived experience of students and the adults that they become’ (greer and mukhopadhyay, : ). this point raised by greer and mukhopadhyay ( ) concerning the choice of mathematics that is presented to our learners concerns me on two levels, one at the functional personal level and the second at an institutional and political level. my first concern is that if the mathematics we teach in our classrooms bears little resemblance to the life skills that our students need to negotiate their financial, social and leisure interests, then it is not surprising that they might find mathematics foreign and alienating and perhaps a subject that they have no affinity with. noyes ( ) felt that teachers needed to develop pedagogies of both access and dissent so that mathematics education is more equitable and socially beneficial for everybody, and that the school mathematics curriculum should be rethought so that what all students should learn at each stage is given priority over the special needs of a few. my second level of concern is one that is wrapped up in issues of equity, equality and well-being, and concerns the development of the school curriculum. i have experienced the different changes that have been applied to the school mathematics curriculum over a period of approximately forty years. the reality for me, the teacher, is that the mathematics curriculum and its changes have been unresponsive to any changes that have been taking place in the immediate environment. the explosion of technology as an information source, a communication tool and social tool has had no real impact on the content of mathematics curriculum. pertinent issues that affect the well-being of society such as social injustice, environmental changes, global economy including the distribution of world wealth and power are not integrated explicitly in our school curriculum. these topics are left to the discretion of the classroom teacher, who often under pressure and overworked, has to find the time, energy and resources to deliver a unique curriculum through which they can help their students develop mathematical power. as it stands, i feel that the school mathematics curriculum has become a bit of a dinosaur, it is steeped in history and a particular type of culture, but any changes to its content have been superficial and insignificant. greer and mukhopadhyay ( ) suggested that mathematics education should be viewed from the perspective of a different value system, and that the most important reason for mathematics education is to make accessible to many people powerful mathematical ideas which can be used as conceptual and critical tools to analyse issues relevant to their lives martin et al ( ) also posed questions about what counts as mathematical knowledge and who should decide. they also argued that instead of school mathematics being used to stratify students, affording privilege to some and limiting opportunities to others, it could also be used as a tool to understand the world, and, in the case of marginalised students, it could be used as an aid in understanding the social forces that contribute to this marginalisation. clearly mathematical knowledge consists of mathematical content and research surrounding mathematical content can produce new mathematical knowledge, but there is other research about mathematics that can also produce new mathematical knowledge. understanding how and why children interact with mathematics content, as well as how and why they learn is not a question of mathematics content alone. research that probes into the complexity of learning mathematics, the social realities of the learners, and the forces affecting these realities have a vital place in my quest to gain new mathematical knowledge. research surrounding issues such as identity, language, power socialisation and racialisation within the remit of mathematics education are vital for producing new mathematical knowledge that is broad, robust and useful to a wide range of mathematical learners. martin et al ( : ), when considering particular mathematics learners, demonstrated how context produces different knowledge, and therefore why asking ‘what’s the context?’ is important. asking students to share their stories about learning mathematics provides knowledge that will help the reader appreciate the unique forms of context experienced by our students. some of the stories created by my students presented mathematics as a powerful object that can act on you. the ideas of foucault stated that it is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge, and it is impossible for knowledge not to engender power (gordon, ). i feel that the power play between the mathematical knowledge considered valuable by the education system, and that of the community, should be considered as one of the factors that makes a mathematics classroom unique, and is a key concept underpinning the negativity that much of society displays when recollecting their experiences of learning mathematics. mathematics education, as an enterprise, benefits from a variety of research perspectives and approaches. nevertheless, mathematics should not be the gatekeeper for the production of knowledge in the field (martin et al, : ). meaney ( ) suggested that power operations are the acceptance and validation of knowledge and in order for collaborative behaviour to occur there needs to be a sharing of knowledge and purposes. these behaviours can only develop from trust, built up through social relationships over time, hence, in order for a classroom to be effective, the teacher needs to ensure adequate time is set aside to build up social relationships and share knowledge. zevenberg ( ) claimed that it is possible to see this power play operating in mathematics education. one example of this is how society has influenced what is mathematical knowledge. the abstract qualities of mathematics have been valued so highly by society that the passing on of this knowledge and way of thinking have been rigidly controlled. therefore, mathematics education has concentrated on improving students’ chances of learning this mathematics rather than improving students’ ability to critique the role mathematics plays in society. chomsky ( ) was concerned about the lack of graduate programs in mathematics education that contain a class on the political aspects of mathematics education and he suggested that the establishment of such classes might be a good way to start if change is to occur within the field of mathematics. . learning mathematics in school there are many forms of knowledge brought by students to the classroom. knowledge about mathematics and how it is learnt, knowledge about teachers and schools, knowledge about themselves and their positioning with regards to ability, friendships, power relations and self-worth, and knowledge about the world outside of the school and their own (and perhaps other) cultures. this knowledge is what they know at that particular time and is the truth as they see it, it cannot be static as that would suggest that they cannot learn, instead it is malleable and open to manipulation by many variable forces. the phrase ‘i don’t know’, sometimes uttered in a mathematics class by students, is perhaps an indication of the tensions that are acting on their knowledge. yet, this phrase is one that often produces frustration on the part of the teacher who assumes they do know, but are unwilling to say. i think maybe we should consider that at that moment they do not know, because what they did know is in turmoil and being reshaped as they speak. when i hear people say that they are not good at mathematics or they cannot do it i can only conclude that people do not always know when we are doing mathematics. my premise is that people do not recognise mathematics in their everyday lives, and that the definition and descriptions of mathematics and mathematicians that they apply to their everyday practice have been constructed from experiences and histories that possibly do this vast subject an injustice. this deduction is drawn from the knowledge that all around me i see people demonstrating abilities that i can only describe as mathematical, and actions that would indicate that they enjoy mathematics. films depicting mathematics and mathematicians such as , beautiful mind, good will hunting were all box office hits, and the mathematical television show numb rs draws a large audience. it is fairly common place to see somebody on the tube working on ancient japanese puzzles such as sudoko or hanjie, and indeed the british newspapers usually contain one of these puzzles alongside the crossword. yet in this same society, people can be openly vocal about their inability to do mathematics, and their general dislike for the subject. in this sense mathematics is being treated as an object, something to stay clear of, something that does not necessarily belong to the general body of people, and more importantly something that we can do without. devlin ( : ) suggested that ‘mathematics is a woefully misunderstood subject’ and this is the reason that many people feel uneasy about it. when i reflect on why i have been driven to embark on an area of research that attempts to get to grips with how our children feel about their day to day experiences of mathematics, i start to dwell on particular events that i have observed repeatedly throughout my teaching career. to help the reader interact with the text and reflect on key aspects of this classroom event i will utilise a narrative. the diary notes were written a few hours after one particular event and are not an exact account, but i have attempted to conserve the essence of the interaction. the student name has been changed to preserve anonymity. . my diary extract the students enter the classroom, chatting amongst themselves; they appear happy, animated and lively. they move to their designated seats- not chosen by me – but by some silent selection process that is constant each lesson. “good morning” i say to them and smile, most of them reply although some are still immersed in the conversation with their friend. “ok, let’s get started; please make sure you have your maths books open and the date written”. there is a general settling period and conversation between us regarding the removal of outdoor garments. i start the lesson with a brief outline of what we are going to work on today, and where it fits with the general plan of yesterday’s lesson and subsequent lessons. the topic is standard form, and this is the second lesson. yesterday i introduced some of the skills needed for applying standard form, why standard form was useful and where, and the basic principles involved in putting various numbers into and out of standard form. i start with a power point presentation to recap on the basics of yesterday’s lesson; this includes some questions for the class to practice the work. all is well, the class is engaged, a variety of students have asked questions and others have contributed answers, including aisling, a student in this class. my assessment of the situation after this starter is that all of the class will be able to work on an exercise that i have selected from the text book. the class are given their assignment, and i start to walk around talking to the students, asking questions to enable me to get a handle on any misconceptions that might arise. i heard “i don’t understand, i can’t do this” almost immediately, but i chose not to look in the direction of the speaker. it was a common phrase often uttered in the maths classroom and my urge was to give the owner space to think and sort out what i was asking them to do. the class culture that had been established during our time together is that they could always choose to work with a partner, so i assumed another student would step in to help. there was a general hush from the students on one side of room, i could hear muffled speech but not the content, they were looking towards the seat that aisling occupied and they seemed uncomfortable. this was out of character for this class, they were usually a lively, collaborative group, who liked to discuss their answers and seek ratification from fellow class mates. my attention focused on the back row, aisling had buried her head in her folded arms, and it was possible that she was crying silently, her face was obscured from my view. “please get on with your work” my irritation was beginning to surface. this girl had clearly demonstrated minutes earlier that she could indeed answer the questions, what could possibly be the matter? i moved on to look at a student’s work, still fighting the urge to be cross with aisling, (but common sense prevails, after all, who is the adult here?) fairly quickly, i sat down next to aisling, “what is wrong? please sit up and speak to me!” aisling, sullen and quiet, sits up but does not speak, she is clearly upset. i start to explain the work, the explanation is similar to the one executed a little earlier to the whole class, but i speak quietly and in a gentle manner. aisling responds by answering my questions about the work and then starts to work her way through the set exercise. the episode is over, and ignored by all as though it had never occurred, the class returning to their usual vibrant behaviour. i tell this story because it typifies the nature of an event that happens over and over again, in different mathematic classrooms with different students working on different areas of mathematics. the behaviour of the students differ but they exhibit some similarities, they all appear to experience some sort of shut-down, (blind- sightedness), when asked to apply mathematics that they have previously shown competence in. with this short episode in mind there are a variety of ways to interpret the relationships at play between aisling and her mathematics. are the influences that cause this phenomenon located within aisling’s self? an inner voice which speaks and says “this is not me, i cannot do this.” thus allowing the classroom environment to cause her to collapse and withdraw into her shell. leaving a ‘small’ person outside who does not interact and so cannot receive emotional blows such as embarrassment and failure. or is aisling in fact standing firm and allowing her inner voice to say “this is not where i belong, none of this applies to my world, this work has no worth”, placing the fault squarely with the environment she is situated in, namely the mathematics, the class or the school, and the teacher? what is the role of aisling’s peers? was this apparent shut down due to a comment made by one of her class mates, or perhaps a particular comment or display of body language made by me? it may possibly be the result of a ‘non successful episode in the mathematics classroom’ the previous day, week or month, not memorable to me but loaded with emotion for aisling. what is clear to me is that i would be able to work with aisling more effectively if i knew more about what she was experiencing when asked to take part in this social act of doing mathematics. this interpretation became the impetus for my particular form of data collection - student stories about learning mathematics. reflecting on aisling’s behaviour addressed an aim of my research which was to gain a deeper understanding of the less visible influences that are at play when students take part in a mathematics lesson. this reflection coupled with my literature search led me to consider two further questions related to student’s learning mathematics. these were: where does the ‘self’ fit in learning school mathematics? and where in the learning of school mathematics can you insert your culture, history, personality, and aspiration desires? the position of some of the other subjects taught at school, for example, english, history, geography, sociology, naturally encourage us to think about our origins and connections and create space for the student, to explore the self. mathematics makes little room for these connections, and the expert language that surrounds mathematics makes communication for all but the most able particularly difficult. reid and solomonides ( : ) described a student’s ‘sense of being’ as their ideas and feelings about themselves in relation to other things. a core feature of the research undertaken by reid and solomonides ( ) was that the student’s suggested that a ‘sense of being’ predicates their engagement with their discipline and the ways in which creativity is perceived and manifested. this sense of being in relation to mathematics is often termed ‘mathematical identity’ and many studies have investigated the relationship between this and engagement. i believe that asking student to share their mathematical stories can give them a medium through which they can explore their identity within the world of learning mathematics. . what students bring to the mathematics classroom so what do students bring to their mathematics lessons, and is the situation unique to mathematics? i have often heard teachers use the terminology of student ‘baggage’ to explain the presence of an unknown influence that seems to dictate the way a student behaves in their interactions with others. this ‘baggage’ seems to determine their attitude towards certain subjects and learning situations. ‘baggage’ for the purpose of this paper can be thought of as anything a student brings with them to a mathematics lesson that influences their participation and engagement. we might then describe this as all objects brought to the mathematics lesson, as long as we keep the definition of objects broad. i will use the definition offered by walls ( ) which is that an object is anything that can be indicated or referred to. this idea has been taken from a symbolic interactionist viewpoint, which has been derived from a sociological attitude (blumer, ), and has been used in educational research that attempts to probe into the hiddenness of the structures and processes that generate a child’s mathematical world. (walls , woods , reay and william , yackal and cobb ). through the work of blumer ( ) and walls ( ), i began to understand and appreciate the symbolic interactionist perspective that objects are given meaning and understood only through interaction with others. using mathematics as my example of an object, the student comes to know and label mathematics through its daily use in the mathematics classroom, through the daily interactions between peer groups and mathematic teachers, and through interactions with home and society outside of the classroom. the interactions give the object its meaning and what is acceptable as being labelled mathematics is ratified by the curriculum and the mathematics teacher. although all the class will use it, the meaning associated with this object can differ from student to student, which will become evident as you work through the stories of my mathematics learners. my experience as a teacher has been that students do not come to the mathematics classroom as a blank canvas; they bring with them a range of expectations and behaviours that have been constructed around the interpretations of events from schooling, home life, relationships, social interactions, media and their own imaginations. this complex web of life experiences, defines for them what mathematics is, who does it, and where they are placed (if at all) in the mathematical world in which they are expected to succeed. the evidence from the student stories suggest that there is an interesting interplay between beliefs and behaviours and how these aid or hinder access to learning mathematics. it is widely accepted by researchers such as (boaler , reinup , yackal ), and a firm belief held by me, that a person and his/her relationship with mathematics is a complex phenomenon, which includes knowledge as well as beliefs, emotions and attitudes. each concept contains aspects that can support the learning of mathematics, and in addition aspects that can create barriers to mathematical learning. it is clear to me that if the latter is not addressed, it could slow down mathematical learning for a particular student. through the stories of my mathematics students, i have begun to understand a little about the complex forces at play that influence access to social interaction and mathematical learning in my classroom, allowing me to reflect on and adjust my practice accordingly. . invisible influences to investigate this complex web of relationships within the context of invisible influences, i have chosen to focus on four factors which contribute to this concept of invisible influences, these are: knowledge, beliefs, attitude and identity. for the purposes of this research i will address these factors in the context of mathematics and the related teaching and learning of mathematics. influencing the above concepts and inevitably entwined with their formation are other things which the students negotiate on a daily basis, these include aspects of social conditions, institutional arrangements, expectations, conceptualisations, forms of discourse and positioning. as pollard and filer ( : ) put it, ‘we need to complement this with a study of the activity of children as they negotiate within these constraints and possibilities’. i would like to state my belief that, although some of the invisible influences that student’s bring to the classroom is generic across different subjects, the situation in a mathematics classroom is unique for reasons that are explored in this paper. many students have preconceived ideas about school, their teachers, classroom dynamics, etc. and bring them, along with their associated actions to the school forum. but, for me, the distinguishing feature about a mathematics classroom is how common it is for students to experience a struggle within the context that they have been asked to function in, and how acceptable it is to voice and make known to all, this struggle. my belief in the uniqueness of mathematics as a school subject underpins my framework and methodology for the research, and strengthens my conviction that, to improve the learning of mathematics, it is wise to look at what happens in the classroom from the perspective of a student, an angle that is different from that of many of the other traditionally accepted mathematics research studies. my research design is guided by the assumption that what children carry with them into the classroom situation differs from child to child, they will have different feelings about themselves as learners, about the sorts of relationships they can have with teachers. they carry different experiences of the wider school beyond their classroom, some will view it as a place for learning, developing and enjoying a wide range of interests and skills, others will not. they will have different perspectives on, and in, the various friendship groups within the peer culture of their class, and how they define themselves and their place within that culture will differ. their particular sense of self, as clever or slow, acceptable or different, liked or disliked, someone who leads activities or is exposed by them, will vary from child to child, shaped by their past histories and present experiences. . beliefs the idea of a belief is given different meanings according to different researchers. this is understandable due to the fact that notions such as beliefs, emotion, conception and motivation are not directly observable, and their meanings are often interpretations at play between the story teller and the interpreter. my aim here is to give a brief flavour of my understanding of beliefs and the power they can play out in the mathematics classroom. research has shown that there is a relationship between pupils’ learning outcomes in mathematics and their belief about their mathematics. leder et al ( ), schoenfeld ( ), and thompson ( ) are some of the researchers who have studied mathematics and student beliefs. leder et al ( ) described beliefs as psychologically held understandings, premises or propositions about the world that a person feels to be true. he goes on to add that the first time a student perceives and understands a notion they implicitly accept it as a truth. this truth is knowledge as we understand it and it seems to be one of the basic mechanisms characterising the functioning of our mind. we start by uncritically accepting and believing everything we see or hear. if we accept this fact then it shows that at a very basic level beliefs are grounded in the social contexts within which one functions. taking this view, beliefs are a product of social life; they are a functioning of the classroom practices in which one participates, all uniquely influenced by social contexts such as family, peers and groups. a students ability to think and learn operate together (op t eynde et al, ), a student’s problem solving behaviour is always directed by what they believe to be true, referring to knowledge as well as beliefs, hence beliefs and knowledge are closely related constructs. from an epistemological perspective, beliefs are an individual construct while knowledge is essentially a social construct; knowledge requires a truth condition. beliefs are independent of their validity. this truth condition entails an agreement in a community that a certain proposition is true and has met the criteria of truthfulness in that social context. this consensus gives it its higher epistemic standing. knowledge goes beyond an individual and is situated in communities of practice. it is distributed in the world among individuals, the tools and the books they use (op t eynde et al, : ). knowledge and its tightly bound relationship with beliefs, determine what a child views as mathematics, what constitutes doing mathematics and whether they should take part in the activity of doing mathematics. martin ( ), during his research on equity in the mathematics classroom, found that some students did not believe that they were doing mathematics when they engaged in activities that were not text book or worksheet assignments. some did not view mathematical knowledge and learning as important, and by displaying strong negative attitudes towards school and mathematics made it difficult for other students to disclose that they liked mathematics, and that they were capable at it. a consideration of the beliefs at play when a learner takes part in a mathematics lesson produces a complex list of belief influences at play (figure ), all contributing to the choice of actions implicitly or explicitly executed by the student. figure below, breaks down relevant student beliefs into subheadings, each subheading is inter-related with the others and gives rise to a belief system, the area is a vast, complex mental network which is unique to a particular person. beliefs are organised in clusters around specific situations and context and people always strive for a coherent belief system so that they can function in an intelligent way. figure : student beliefs reinup ( : ) stated that: beliefs do not only influence how pupils learn but may also form an obstacle for effective teaching, which means that people who hold negative beliefs about mathematics become more often passive learners and place more emphasis on remembering than understanding. a definition of belief that fits comfortably within my understanding is one given by schoenfeld ( ). he described belief systems in mathematics as one’s mathematical world view, a sort of lens through which students view mathematics and learning. student beliefs beliefs about self beliefs about mathematics beliefs about the environment beliefs about family and history beliefs about careers beliefs about education beliefs about the situation beliefs about the teacher beliefs about the gender the literature surrounding beliefs and mathematics gives a strong message that suggests that research that effectively captures students’ and teachers’ multi-faceted beliefs, can impact on mathematical learning and behaviours (leder ). however, the literature written about beliefs is vast so at this point i have chosen to narrow down my search and specify the beliefs that seem to be most commonly at play in my mathematics classroom. these are beliefs about self (self-efficacy), and beliefs about mathematics. this focus on particular classroom affects brought about by these beliefs selects the literature that is pertinent to the topic, and the subsequent discussion that follows needs to be considered as a small subset pertaining to the area of beliefs. . beliefs about self students’ beliefs about themselves and the causes of their successes and failures in mathematics have important implications for their educational outcomes; these topics have been the focus of research carried out by middleton and spanias ( ) and yates ( ). bandura ( ) claimed, that an insight into the self-efficacy of learners could be a valuable tool for mathematics’ educators. self-efficacy is the belief we have in our own capabilities and the judgements we make about our potential to learn successfully. the choices we make, the effort we put in and how long we persist, are all influenced by self-efficacy. these behaviours are also used by educators to make assessment judgements relating to a student’s performance and as such, the origin and influences of self-efficacy becomes important research data for me. a students past experiences, which i will describe as their histories, shape their self-efficacy. perceptions of self-efficacy come from personal accomplishments, vicarious learning experiences, verbal persuasions, and psychological states (tait-mccutcheon, : ). bandura ( ) explained that efficacy beliefs influence whether people think erratically or strategically, optimistically or pessimistically, and hence the concept of efficacy beliefs could influence the development of cognition in mathematics. yates ( ) attempted to measure optimism and pessimism, against achievement in mathematics in a sample of primary and secondary students. she found that although achievement in mathematics was most strongly related to prior achievement and grade level, optimism and pessimism were also significant factors. in particular, students with a more generally pessimistic outlook on life had a lower level of achievement in mathematics over a period of time. research by tait-mccutcheon ( : ) suggested that ‘one way to gain real insight into how our learners feel, think, and act, about and towards mathematics is to examine their psychological domains of functioning: the affective, the cognitive, and the conative’. she explained that the value in examining each domain separately is that a student may feel fairly efficacious within one domain but less confident within another, and hence it is important to be able to distinguish between the factors that could aid or inhibit mathematical learning. the affective domain is a student’s internal belief system which includes students’ beliefs about themselves and their capacity to learn mathematics; their self-esteem and their perceived status as a learner; their beliefs about the nature of mathematical understanding; and their potential to succeed in the subject. the cognitive domain considers students awareness of their mathematical knowledge, their strengths and their weaknesses. conation refers to staying power and survival, and includes the inclination to plan, monitor and evaluate, thus incorporating an element of reflection. in her research, tait-mccutcheon ( ) referred to some key findings relating to the three efficacy domains. within the affective domain: there was strong correlation between enjoyment, motivation and success. students saw liking/ not liking mathematics as the beginning of a cycle of success or failure. students sought external confirmation of their answers being right or wrong and there was generally a lack of self-regulatory monitoring. within the cognitive domain: speed was valued over accuracy. students identified a need to be finished as more important than the need to be correct. students related mathematical success to hard work. within the conative domain: students valued talking and working with others, but these had to be people you agreed with quickly, differences and disagreements were not seen as valuable. one fact that has been repeated throughout the literature is that beliefs are very personal, they may meet emotional needs or provide defences from pain, and once established they are difficult to change, however, it is clear that part of the process of changing beliefs must include creating a context in which it is emotionally safe to do so. i believe that good classroom practice, which incorporates considerate and careful relationships with constant reflection, a comfortable medium to explore voice, and due care regarding ethical considerations, all contribute to a context where beliefs can be shared and explored. my desire as an educator to provide an environment that provides this context is the driving force behind my research inquiry. . attitude according to ajzen ( : ) attitude is a ‘disposition to respond favourably or unfavourably to an object, person, institution or event.’ it is a word commonly used by my colleagues in the secondary school setting in relation to students of mathematics and their interaction in the mathematics classroom. it is used very loosely as an umbrella term to explain many of the difficulties that occur between students, their mathematics and the mathematics teacher. the research investigation of fiona walls ( ) began as an exploration of children's 'attitudes' towards mathematics. her original research questions were: how do children become aware of mathematics as part of their lives? how and why do their attitudes towards mathematics, including their feelings and beliefs about mathematics, develop and evolve over time? she explained that research in this area had developed because of growing concerns that negative attitudes towards mathematics were prevalent at all instructional levels and that she believed that a link existed between attitude and achievement. in this research attitudes towards mathematics came to be viewed as a complex dimension of the learner's life, consisting of a broad range of beliefs and feelings, embedded within the individual's world of experiences associated with mathematics. the child as a mathematical subject is developing from the day it is born, the earliest mathematical influences would usually come from parents and be enacted in the learning activities that most children encounter, thinking, walking, talking and interacting with people. but mathematics is not often identified in these processes, for most, the first overt identification of mathematical activities will be in the school classroom. walls ( ) applied the ideas of foucault ( ) that as subjects we exist – for ourselves that is – only in the way we enact ourselves, to mathematics education as part of a discursive practice that is seen as more than simply what happens in the classroom. we might suppose then that whenever children hear their teachers say “it’s time for maths”, enlist their parents’ help with their maths homework, discuss their mathematics test results with their family or mates, observe a character doing maths in a television show, exchange views with friends about a particular maths teacher, or choose whether to continue their study of mathematics at secondary school, they are at the same time engaged in a discursive process of self-construction as they bring themselves and each other into being as both ‘children’ and as ‘mathematical subjects’ in their hearing, seeing, uttering and doing (walls, : ). the social enactments that go on in school under the heading mathematics define what mathematics is for most students. it is at this time also that student’s mathematical identity and beliefs are developed, ‘ a child may experience shifting or contradictory views of the self as a mathematical learner through engagement in pedagogical regimes, interactions with friends and classmates, or discussions with parents and siblings’ (walls, : ). it is a short leap of logic to assign a positive correlation between a population who are intimidated by mathematics and the role of school mathematics in causing this phenomenon. zan and di martino ( ) confirmed that attitude is a construct that plays an important role in mathematics education. they stated that much of the research on attitude lacks theoretical clarity, that the measurement instruments are inadequate, and that many studies about attitude do not provide a clear definition of the construct itself. they explained that research on attitude falls into one of three following definitions. the first definition of attitude describes it simply as a positive or negative degree of affect associated with the subject. the second definition describes attitude as a multi-dimensional construct, which recognises three components: emotional response, beliefs regarding the subject, and behaviour relating to the subject. in the third view, attitude is presented as a bi-dimensional definition in which behaviours do not appear explicitly: attitude towards mathematics is seen as the pattern of beliefs and emotions associated with mathematics. in the research of rutfell et al ( ), attitude was experienced as highly influenced by the social and emotional conditions in which it is both perceived and observed. they questioned whether people actually possess attitude and the like, and suggested that these constructs are just categories created by observers who wish to account, by language, for what they claim to see. in my research, attitude acts as a signal to me that something is happening that i need to explore, and which should be studied in its context because what is important to me is the context that has stimulated the attitude. i believe that a study of attitude within a particular context is useful, and the knowledge gained can inform future practice. zan and di martino ( ) felt that a study of attitude could enhance a researcher’s knowledge and understanding of a particular situation and hence is an important unit of measurement that could provide new knowledge. this proposition views the attitude construct as functional to the researcher’s self-posed problems: in these terms we consider it to be useful in the context of mathematics education, as long as it is not simply borrowed from the context in which it appears i.e. social psychology, but is rather outlined as an instrument capable of taking into account peculiar problems in mathematics education (zan and di martino, : ). one main message generated in the research by zan and di martino ( ) was that the simple dichotomy definition of attitudes such as like/ dislike, can do/can’t do, stated in the first definition has serious short comings. these themes are intertwined in the subject’s vision of mathematics and one single emotional reaction can be associated with conflicting visions of mathematics, often i like mathematics is associated with a relational vision, (makes me think, reason, enjoy), and i dislike mathematics is associated with an instrumental vision, (rules, operations, right/wrong answers). in the research by zan and di martino ( ) all four combinations of like/ dislike and easy/difficult were found: i like mathematics because …it is easy: since primary, i always found mathematics rather simple and easy to be understood. and maybe this is one of the reasons it has always been one of my favourite subjects. …..it is difficult: the story of mathematics in my life started off with logic: sets of fruits, difference between “and” and “or”, opposites (like red and not red)….as time was going by the fruits disappeared and notions and difficulties were increasing, and mathematics became more and more interesting and involving and my judgement changed completely. i don’t like mathematics because: ……it is easy: in the beginning mathematics was nasty because it was too easy, + , + . ……it is difficult: i didn’t like mathematics much because i saw it was difficult and i did not manage. i gave it up quickly. (zan and di martino, : ) these results suggest that for a description of pupil attitude towards mathematics it is not enough to highlight his or her positive/negative emotional disposition towards the subject, it is also necessary to discover what vision of mathematics and what self-efficacy beliefs this emotional disposition is associated with. . identity in considering the invisible influences students bring to the mathematics classroom, i make the assumption that the stakeholders (teachers and students) bring multiple and interrelated elements to the learning environment. for me the concept of identity is the potential that connects these elements, (elements that include beliefs, attitudes, emotions, cognitive capacities and life histories). broadly speaking, identity can be thought of how an individual knows and names themselves, (i am a teacher, a student, good at maths….), and how an individual is recognised by others, (she is smart, tall, extrovert …). identity is not something to be discovered, it is not an object out there waiting to be found, it is constructed and developed over time, constantly renegotiated through our interactions with one another and within the context of our culture and life histories. bauman (( ) described the anguish, pain and insecurity caused by living in society, as a catalyst for a patient and ongoing examination of reality and how individuals are ‘placed’ within it. he describes identity as ‘an ongoing process of redefining one self and of the invention and reinvention of one’s own history’ (bauman, : ). one becomes aware that belonging and identity are not cut in rock , that they are not secured by a lifelong guarantee, that they are eminently negotiable and revocable, and that one’s own decisions, the steps one takes, the way one acts- and the determination to stick by all that- are crucial factors of both (bauman, : ). it is a general consensus in the current literature that the subject of identity is, by its very nature, elusive and ambivalent. this is not to suggest that it cannot be investigated, but that the approach and consequent interpretation needs to be recognised as evolving from the different historical perspectives that identity definitions stem from. two views on identity appear to be particularly significant to my research area and these will underpin my inquiry. the first, developed from a psychological perspective, focuses on the individual, looking at variables that impact on a person’s self-concept. identity formation is seen as largely self-determined as the individual adapts or develops to fit with the events and situations of life. as the school child makes methods his own, he also permits accepted methods to make him their own. to consider as good only what works, and to feel accepted only if things work, to manage and be managed can become his dominant delight and value (erikson, : ). erikson ( ) presented the argument that youth is sensitive to any suggestion that they may be hopelessly determined by what went before in history and life histories. this gives rise to the deduction that the influences of family, peer and society in general, could play a major influential role in the development of a student’s identity with respect to their possible positioning of themselves in the environment of mathematics. within this framework it is feasible that the student can feel a need to commit to membership of some special kind (tribe, nation, class, family or type) whose insignia they will wear with conviction. the second focus on identity formation is influenced by a socio-cultural perspective; in this view identity formation is a social rather than a personal phenomenon. with this perspective in mind identity is developed through social and cultural practices. identity formation is seen as being steered by society with the individual attempting to navigate predetermined passages (corte and levine, ). both these definitions of identity highlight the changing nature of the phenomenon and provide support that identity should be considered as an ongoing process of redefining oneself and of the invention of one’s own history (bauman, ). the behaviour a student exhibits, as a consequence of their perceived identity and self-efficacy, can influence educators to make assessment judgements relating to the performance of that student, and as such, the origin and influences of this behaviour is important research data for me. . mathematical identity ‘mathematical identity is the relationship people form with mathematics and more importantly, with other actors and processes in the environs of mathematics’ (george, : ). students and teachers bring their mathematical identities to the classroom with them, these are products of earlier and ongoing mathematical experiences and these experiences shape their present day processes of becoming. the notion of mathematical identity, the relationship a student forms not only with the mathematics but also with the mathematical environment, is also described by fried ( ) as the ‘mathematical self’, which he states consists of a private entity and a public one. in this way fried ( ) also acknowledged the two perspectives, suggesting that as educators we need to recognise the importance of both these worlds. bandura ( ) claimed that an insight into the self-efficacy of learners could be a valuable tool for mathematics educators, and students’ beliefs about themselves and the causes of their successes and failures in mathematics have important implications for their educational outcomes (yates, ; middleton & spanias, ). self-efficacy is the judgements we make about our potential to learn successfully and the belief we have in our own capabilities. the choices we make, the effort we put in and how long we persist are all influenced by self-efficacy. a students past experiences, which i will describe as their histories, shape their self- efficacy. ‘perceptions of self-efficacy come from personal accomplishments, vicarious learning experiences, verbal persuasions, and psychological states’ (tait- mccutcheon, : ). formed identities are ‘hard won’ standpoints from which individuals form self - understanding of, and for, them (black et al, : ), as such they become powerful personal possessions. the identities discussed in black et al ( ) are generally strong, (whether positive, negative or a mixture). holland ( ) suggested that not all people develop much of an identity in a particular cultural world as they may not ever be sufficiently engaged by that world to do so. george ( ) also suggested that not all students form strong identities, some students experiences have not resulted from hard won standpoints, they have felt little interest in the topic in question and the emotions involved are low. for others, a breakdown within a student’s relationship with mathematics could be caused by the type of learning that is on offer in the school mathematics classroom. in order to be involved in mathematics, some students may find that they have to deny other aspects of their identity, and some students are not willing to make that sacrifice. in these circumstances the learning of mathematics will suffer and the student will never form much of a mathematical identity. the literature from black et al ( ) focused on research that probed into the development of the mathematical identities of three people, now adult, and drew from their narratives some interesting perspectives. the three people in question all had measured success in mathematics (indicated by a variety of institutional results), yet all told stories of feeling defenceless in the face of mathematics and in some ways having to find a space within their nexus of identities for this position. their mathematical self ‘self-knowledge as mathematics beings’, is a knowledge of themselves as a kind of creature that does mathematics and shows a tension between its public and private face (fried, : ). it is as if mathematics strips people bare eventually (for many people sooner, for others later), bringing them to a place where they are ‘forced’ to confront, question and even reinvent their relationship with the subject (george, : ). kendrick and mckay ( ) argued that when school practices do not afford spaces for belonging, and when students are unable to place their cherished identities that they live at home and outside of school with the new identities they encounter at school, they turn to other values and practices as forms of identification. allexsaht- snider and hart ( ) also pointed out that the extent to which students feel they belong as a member of the community in the mathematics classroom is related to how deeply and completely they engage in efforts to learn mathematics, and how accessible they find the cultural patterns embedded in the classroom processes. presmeg ( ) added credibility to my research area by suggesting that it is necessary for students and teachers to broaden their conceptions of mathematics, as well as their beliefs, about what is entailed in the learning of mathematics. davis and williams ( ) put forward a very interesting point of view, one that i had never considered while balancing the fine line between student ‘banter’ and topic specific classroom talk, and that is that when the students talk they are being social. they argue that the open acceptance of this sociality within classroom culture is crucial to the ways students will identify with mathematics’ (williams, : ). indeed the literature suggests that sociality might be especially important for those students whose community cultures are not well aligned with the dominant discourse of school as an institution. it would seem that ensuring that a student’s personality and self-behaviours are an accepted part of doing mathematics, might be the first step to them accepting that they are ‘being a maths person’. . concluding discussion in a study that has characteristics that are sympathetic with my inquiry, yackal and cobb ( ) attempted to study and make sense, of the children’s experiences in the mathematics classroom. one of their goals was to support teachers in establishing classroom environments that facilitate mathematical learning. their initial planning set out to use a cognitive perspective to make sense of experiences in the classroom but found there was a need to broaden their interpretive stance and consider a sociological perspective on mathematical activity. they drew on constructs derived from symbolic interactionism, utilising a basic assumption of interactionism and stating that cultural and social processes are integral to mathematical activity. a second research study that supports the view that the learning of mathematics should be viewed as social is the study by fiona walls ( ). she investigated a child’s ‘socio-mathematical’ world and from the outset, it became clear that each child in this study was immersed in a complex social environment of which mathematics learning was an integral part. two of my initial assumptions that have been supported during the search of related literature are that a) learning mathematics has a social nature and this needs to be considered, and b) mathematics’ classrooms are unique learning environments, and as such should be treated in a unique way. mathematics holds a prestigious position in the school curriculum, and sfard ( ) noted that the increasing use of numbers to characterise people, to succinctly describe mathematical achievement and the use of national curriculum levels to track achievement are indicators of this. these numbers, and by extension mathematics, are being used in everyday life as signals of a person’s identity. mathematics is increasingly seen as essential for a nation’s technological advancement and mathematics qualifications are used as a gate keeper to subsequent qualifications and careers. hence, as gates and vistro – yu ( ) noted, society has imbued mathematics with significant symbolic and cultural capital, which then has implications for its position and function in the school curriculum. this domination by external assessment and numerical measurements regarding ability appears to influence the mathematical identities available to students and indeed ironically, the favourite tool of those who purport to be helping students, namely teachers, may, in fact, be one of the greatest obstacles to student learning (gates and vistro-yu, ). in short, mathematics is used as a tool for measurement, and as such it is intrinsically woven in the process of ranking, order and value. for many it can become an object of humiliation, placing them in a position amongst others that can feel unacceptable and humiliating. language is a human practice; people use it to get things done. ways of talking are considered to be social acts. in mathematics education language plays a crucial role. it is not only the vehicle with which findings are reported and the recent questions of the field are discussed. it is also the most common resource for describing the practice of mathematics teaching and learning. students in mathematics classrooms have to communicate with appropriate language or a system of mathematical symbols. for some, the arena in which they have to express themselves is limiting and favours those who are fairly accomplished in the use of this language and symbolic representation. in addition to this, progression in mathematics values a move from a concrete representation to an abstract representation, reducing the possibility of relating higher mathematical context to common everyday situations. these influences make mathematic classrooms unique from other classrooms. i believe that within the language constraint lies a constraint of expression, students find it more difficult to be themselves and hence perhaps feel that they do not ‘fit’ in that environment. this can bring additional hidden tensions to the situation. the students may make assumptions about their mathematics teacher, the mathematics teacher may make assumptions about the student, each of them based on the knowledge set that the student and teacher carry around with them. many other subjects have more overt ways of allowing the participants to know and express themselves, through stories and writing in english, by means of movement, music and expression in drama, dance, physical education and performance subjects, and through other creative forms such as art and technology. subjects based on the humanities and languages give opportunities to consider cultural and historical connections and developments. the constraints of the mathematical school situation induces the teacher and student to become strangers, devoid of that much needed human relationship that promotes effective learning, and i would suggest leads in some cases to the creation of negative emotions and the objectivity of mathematics as the enemy. in this research i would like to consider the influences that students bring to mathematics lesson, and investigate how that might inform the practice of the class teacher. by investigating the students perception of the faces that mathematics presents and reviewing the influence that these views of mathematics could have on the participation in, and by association, learning of mathematics, i would like to suggest that mathematics could be presented in a more useful and aesthetic form. the development of a school mathematics curriculum that presents a ‘human face’ of mathematics could lead to a more equitable, exciting and accessible way for students to develop mathematical skills, logical reasoning and powerful mathematical ideas. my method for exploring the above is to consider suitable methods of communication by which students can communicate their mathematical stories. one such method suggested is through the creation of visual stories, children communicating through their drawings. warburton ( ) explained that mediated images communicate, they are a sign system and the messages that they carry are always representative. ‘image based research is not only useful but also illuminating, engaging and stimulating’ (prosser, : ). in the next chapter i explain my reasoning for using stories as my main data collection medium and why i feel that stories can contribute to personal growth, social understandings and the formation of identities. chapter : telling stories . introduction the main form of data driving this research is stories, stories written by my students, stories told to me by adults, stories recounted by teachers including myself. the stories are about the teaching and learning of mathematics and as such, address my practice, my career and my life interest in learning about mathematics. my concern with the understanding of how ‘i’ (my values, experiences and culture) dictate the way i conduct my research project and interpret the data uncovered, turning it into knowledge urged me to consider why stories are the data at the heart of this research. throughout the history of mankind stories have played an important part in learning at all levels, from the everyday to the sacred (owen, : ix). this research includes two main types of story, which are fictional narratives and personal narratives. it is reported in the work of catts et al ( ) that, as children develop, their stories tend to change from personal story types to more fictional types. this is attributed to the development of their literacy and academic skills. stories often include events, characters and setting details. minor events, often termed satellite events, can be omitted without any damage to the narrative but pivotal or major events are necessary (smuts ). however, the essential elements of a story are the salient elements, those that stand out and grab our attention and it is indeed the salient elements of the stories produced by my students that urged me to select particular stories to highlight as research data. although the student stories have fictional elements to them they convey a personal message to the reader that makes reference to their individual experiences learning mathematics. because of this, i have considered these student stories as integrated life stories which tell about a span of events over a period of time (westby and galatta ). westby and galatta ( ) put forward that creating personal narratives is important for social and psychological well-being, and that the generation of these types of stories stems from the author reflecting on how their characteristics have influenced past actions. the inclusion of fictional structures within these stories has been encouraged by me to help aid anonymity and to ease the difficulties associated with disclosing personal experiences. personal disclosures can make the author feel particularly vulnerable (behar ), and the inclusion of fiction can give the author somewhere to hide. my story as a mathematics teacher, which is threaded through out this research paper, is constructed in the form of an autobiography, the telling of stories of oneself. i have the belief that autobiographical stories are powerful sources for research because they are situated, personal and poignant. karpiak ( ) stated that the writing of autobiographies can bring a sense of order to life and help the author gain insight into their own development. the idea of autobiography as an educational research tool positions knowledge within the researcher learner. instead of bringing in expertise from outside the research setting it capitalises on my lived autobiographical stories as a teacher of mathematics, so that i might learn about learning and teaching through telling, interpreting and problematising in my own words (freire ). the credibility of the stories presented in this research is grounded in the idea of the believability of the message communicated. i was aware that the stories may not be factually accurate but felt that the message in the stories was trustworthy. reading the student stories elicited memories of classroom behaviours and events that i had noticed during my experiences as a teacher and they provoked thought and reflection about these various classroom situations. in addition, the credibility of my research story is related to its hearer’s readiness to make sense of the text and my cultural assumptions of the way the world works, allowing them to seek familiarity in the characters and situations. begg ( ) makes the observation that stories and autobiographies are not different from fictional stories. he explains that stories allow us to communicate multiple truths or beliefs indirectly, ones that we may find difficult to communicate directly, and therefore the quality of an autobiography cannot be judged in terms of truth. issues of validity in qualitative research should not be linked to truth or value but should be linked instead to trustworthiness (rolfe ). rolfe ( ) goes on to point out that a study is trustworthy, if and only if, the reader of the research report judges it to be so. begg ( ), in support of this idea, stated that the quality criteria of autobiography should relate both the researcher and the audience, and should communicate the purpose of the research. he goes on to point out that words such as reliability and validity were developed to support the ideas of positivist frameworks and do not easily lend themselves to addressing narrative research. begg ( ) also considers trustworthiness to be a quality criteria that could be used in this type of qualitative research but feels that the term resonance is a more useful concept, ‘having the audience resonate with a story implies that the story strikes a meaningful chord, stimulates interest and connection and seems reliable’ (begg : ). . the potential of stories it is my belief, based on my experience, that stories can have transformational potential. by this i mean that they can transform contradictory experiences into more life enhancing experiences. reproducing our own stories enables us to consider our thoughts and actions in a simulated environment; it allows space to replay the events and actions in a variety of ways, and the potential to create our own truths and realities. creating through our stories a freedom of pressure from the dominating messages of existing cultures can give us room to reframe the experiences within the story and help us develop our capacity for choice. therefore, through our creative imagination we are rewriting our fairy tales and trying out new endings with a focus on influencing personal learning. it can be said that stories serve as models that close the gap between my experience as a human being and the theories i can create to explain my experience. (bateson, : ) telling stories is therapeutic for children (coles ) and can be helpful to the practitioner in providing a more empathetic learning environment in mathematics. whiting ( ) stated that listening to children shows respect for them and acknowledges their individuality. esmode et al ( ) found that when people tell personal stories, their observations about mathematics and about themselves are tightly connected. using stories that focus on experiences relating to life and education is a research method that is situated within a matrix of qualitative research methods. within this matrix i have explored the use of written data, visual data and sound data with the intention of supporting the participants in their most comfortable and productive form of communication. . ethical implications there are some ethical issues surrounding storytelling that must be considered carefully when using stories as a way of collecting data. the following sections discuss the ethical issues surrounding the interpretation of story content, the truth and reliability of the story created and the inevitable relationship that occurs when a story is shared between author and reader. . interpretation my personal concern surrounds the issue of recording and interpreting stories accurately, both for the benefit of the participants and my audience, and these concerns led me to search for literature that would help my understanding of this storytelling methodology. i am aware that all written accounts of events are stories and the accuracy of each is debatable, and particularly dependent on who is making the judgement. a personal experience of listening to my sister recount an event that happened to us as children always brings me back to this consideration. the story she told bore little resemblance to my memories of the event, and i have no idea which of us is the more accurate as we both viewed the situation through different lenses. you might argue that perhaps it does not matter as both stories would add ‘colour’ to the event, however the reason it has always stuck in my mind is that the versions of the story are so different in their nature, one being extremely negative. the story itself is not important to me but the contrast is frightening, and highlights the role of bias in interpretation. so, i ask myself the question, how will i ensure that my interpretation of student stories is fair, honest and ethically concerned for the student in question? this question will be addressed in two ways throughout this research report. the first is the inclusion at appropriate points of my diary extracts which is my reflexive debate constructed during the research to critique and explore my thoughts and ideas. the second way is to dedicate a section in each research phase to ethical concerns, emphasising my concern and regard for the integrity and well-being of everybody concerned in the research. . relationship clandinan and connelly ( ) made a claim that collaborative research constitutes a relationship akin to friendship. this was supported by elbaz ( ) whose principle concern is with the story, emphasising that the collaborative nature of the research process is one in which participants see themselves as participants in the community. she feels this has value for researcher and practitioner, theory and practice. the implications tied up in this methodology and pointed out by the above researchers can potentially strengthen my research design as long as i am aware and respectful of the developing relationships. clandinan and connelly ( ) found that they experienced an unexpected agenda during their research: we found that merely listening, recording, and fostering participant story telling was both impossible and unsatisfactory. we learned that we too needed to tell our stories. scribes we were not, story tellers and story livers we were (clandinan and connelly, : ). i embrace this mutual relationship and consider it to be key to improvements in the teaching and learning of mathematics, creating a new mathematics agenda that allows stories of teachers and learners to influence the curriculum, stories that hold new possibilities for all those who read them. . are they true? i hold some concerns about the reliability of the content of stories, however i believe that the power of the story, the intention of the author and their transformational capacity for the reader makes these creative texts a worthy data collection tool. clough ( ) raised the question about the truth of stories and acknowledged that a single truth may not exist. my experience is that stories in general are retrospective, and as such could be said to have an element of what might be called fiction. however, i argue that the use of the word ‘fiction’ is inappropriate to describe the content of my research stories because to many people this can lead to understandings such as, does not exist or is not true. bold ( : ) replaced the word fiction with ‘representative constructions’. representative construction is based on information that is about real events. the information is reconstructed or represented in a form different from the original information while aiming to maintain the reality. this complemented bamberg’s ( : ) definition of talk who said that ‘by verbal means we relate the world to the here and now of the interactive situation’. in this research i am exploring the voice of narrators, who are engaging in the activity of giving account, for example, when they engage in making past actions accountable for a particular purpose. it is irrelevant for the purpose of my research whether the action or happening that is accounted for, lies back in time or is something of a more immediate nature. for me, also the accuracy of the details who, when, where is less important than the fact that the narrator remembers the event and wants to communicate this to an audience. my internal debate on the strength and power of stories fuelled my reflexive voice and, coupled with the work of clough ( ), led me to a long period of deliberation regarding the truth of stories, the diversity of interpretation and the possible damage that can arise by taking story content too literally. i decided that if i was concerned about particular details of a story i would ask the author to clarify the situation before making any other interpretations or judgements. . interpreting stories during my search for literature about storytelling, one book in particular caught my interest because of the relevance in the title, ‘narratives and fictions in educational research’ (clough, ). the preface contained an extract from a poem that captured the creative thread that i wanted throughout my research and made me think about the place of interpretation in research. the poem seemed to say it all, i cannot bring the world quite round by using my ‘coloured’ instrument, but try i must. the man bent over his guitar, a shearsman of sorts. the day was green. they said, ‘you have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are.’ the man replied, ‘things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar.’ and they said then, ‘but play, you must, a tune beyond us, yet ourselves, a tune upon the blue guitar of things exactly as they are.’ the guitarist continues: i cannot bring a world quite round although i patch it as i can. part of ‘ the blue guitar’ wallace, s. ( : ) this section of the poem appeals to me because it manages to be brief and yet it encapsulates the very essence of stories. the blue guitar is a symbol of the imagination. the guitar does not express reality, but instead creates a representation of reality. the poem indicates that there is a pressure from external sources to recreate reality but that this is not possible. for me, the metaphor of the guitar shares with stories, a relationship between imagination and reality, ‘things as they are’ have been changed by the imagination. imagination is not reality but imagination through stories sets out to represent things as seen in the author’s way, not as they are, but patched as best they can. narratives and fictions in educational research (clough ), contains five differently constructed stories. the story order is important because each portrays mounting difficulty both in the content and in the experimentation with form. the first four stories are made from events that are real, made with data from interviews and observations, enriched with data from the authors own experience. the fifth story is concerned with ethics and is completely fictional, it was written in response to criticism of the author’s earlier work when presented at seminars and conferences. it emerged from response to questions asked by the audience at these events, addressing raw confrontation and what could have actually happened as a result of a story interpretation. the book attempts to ‘trouble’ the common sense understanding of data and make available to the reader some experiments in making data. the author uses the analogy of an architect to explain the purpose of the storytelling, in the creation of a building, pointing out that the question is not - how do i construct the building? –but, what and who is the building for? narrative is useful only to the extent that it opens up (to its audience) a deeper view of life in familiar contexts: it can make the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. as a means of educational report, stories can provide a means by which these truths, which cannot otherwise be told, are uncovered (clough, : ). i found each of the five stories unsettling and yet compelling, each varied in its influence on my senses, embedded in the stories were issues of cruelty and violence, yet also empathy and understanding. they were confusing as to their point because it was dependent on the way i considered them. but the stories highlighted in the extreme one very important point – the role that the researchers own experiences play in reporting that of others. the author does not argue that all research should be reported in this way but that ‘some researchers might develop the capacity to make art if they are to fully embrace the postmodern ethnographic project in the twenty-first century’ (clough : ). the self-reflexivity within the written stories unmasks complex political and ideological agendas and this has helped me address some of the issues i have with reporting qualitative data. clearly, i will be telling my version of the story which i have created as a result of my own interactions and institutions. a strong message from this reading is that the role of the researcher’s self plays a large part to cloud the lens, and knowledge of this begs me to ask myself, before i tell my story, a series of questions about my assumptions in the context of my research. every researcher should ask ‘what is the story i wish to tell’ and ‘who is the audience’, and what is my purpose for telling this story? if there is one key message that i keep from the stories written by clough ( ), it is that if anyone is going to sit up and listen, i will need to capture their interests. in certain cases narratives would be better judged by aesthetic standards, by their emotive force, or their capacity to engage the reader emotionally in the story being told. in this case standard tests such as reliability, validity and replicability would not be as appropriate. any report on this research will inevitably be coloured by my own interpretation but the more skilled in storytelling i am, the more accurate, anonymous and descriptive the social phenomena will be. this research account will also need to satisfy the criteria of credibility, and i hold the view that good honest writing will alert the ‘senses’ of the reader and relate to their own knowledge and experiences. in this way the reader will be able to judge the credibility of the findings, interpretation and the writing. on a cautionary note, the stories of clough ( ) highlighted another important issue. if the task of the researcher is purely one of turning up the volume on the depressed or inaudible voice, then these stories do serve their purpose. however, the last story portrayed the other side of the coin, which was the damage that a researcher can do by bringing too much of the self into the story, sometimes completely changing the phenomena in question. i agree with the author when he suggested that ‘what is persuasive about a piece of research is its ability to speak to our experiences because it shares our objects’ (clough : ). my stance surrounding the integrity of stories is that educational researchers should strive to incorporate within their research, an honesty and integrity of language with which to express the moral positions of the inquiry. any research that can help us understand a context can also drive change, and for this reason i feel there is a time and place for this type of writing. the challenge then is to conduct research and tell stories of educational settings which bear immediate relation to the truths from which they derive. the memory of my sister’s version of her ‘story’ warns me that people are often attracted by the extreme, and this can make clough’s ( ) ideas potentially a very dangerous way of working, but ultimately courageous and effective. . conclusion in summary, stories provide a communication channel that allows the narrator to be flexible in their commitment to represent their experiences learning mathematics. on the one hand they can be vulnerable yet anonymous, hidden in the creation of a pseudo fictional plot, but on the other, if so wanted, they can be frank and more brutal with the portrayal of their learning situation. between these two modes of representations are many other ways of working, yet with all is the opportunity to be playful and creative, optimistic and courageous with the plot lines and endings, creating the potential for transformation. for these reasons i am committed to the place of stories about learning mathematics as a pedagogical tool for use in my mathematics classroom. through the medium of student stories i have gathered data about a student’s mathematical life, and in addition communicated to my reader the complex subtleties that can present themselves when learning a subject such as mathematics. in the next chapter i explain my developing methodology and how it addresses my needs as a researcher who is committed to improving practice as a teacher and leader of mathematics, and promoting a positive view of school mathematics as an approachable learning medium. chapter : methodology historically, in education research literature, methodology has been treated as a dichotomy between traditional positivistic research and a qualitative approach. for education, the qualitative – quantitative debate has been replaced with a recognition that each paradigm offers a way to focus on the complexities of contemporary education (teppo, ). my selection of an appropriate framework was in response to the contextual needs of my research questions. at its core, research is inquiry, the attempt to answer significant questions. to form a judgement related to the research, we must know from where the researcher is coming. pirie ( ) advises us to begin with our research question and then seek out an appropriate theoretical starting point. i hold the belief that a great and truly important question refuses to be answered and it leads us into deeper thinking and deeper connections. such a search can seem unmanageable while juggling the daily requirements of everyday life; we can easily ignore great questions by refusing to allocate time and energy for deeper thinking. this research is driven by my search for something compelling and worthwhile. my criteria for judging the worth of the research is, whether it advances the current knowledge in my field of interest in a significant way, which is in this case teaching and learning mathematics in secondary schools. the impetus for this research was my desire to address fundamental questions about my role in making the mathematics classroom a better place for learning. there are a variety of research methods and they all have value in the field of research however the nature of my research dictated a qualitative approach because qualitative research involves a study of things as they exist. there is no attempt to set up an artificial situation; instead the aim is to study in depth how something is with a view to get an understanding of it. this type of approach to research was ideal for my study because it was important for me to try to create an understanding of how a student perceives daily life at my school, to gather data about their experiences and construct meanings relevant to that data. my aim during this research was to develop a blend of methodologies that would fit a set of criteria, based on my beliefs and assumptions about how best to capture the often complex, unpredictable realities associated with learning mathematics. in addition, my methods needed to address and support my values about how people should be treated, and my personal belief that a teacher never stops learning. the research involved issues and problems that were a routine part of my day to day activity; and my aim was to gain a better understanding of these issues and problems as they arose in my everyday practice. the contribution that this research set out to offer was not only to develop understanding but to work towards changing practice. by acknowledging that the practitioner, (me), is a crucial part of the research process, i recognised that i am an insider researcher and my interactions affect the research outcomes. a model of action research was developed as my overall structure for the research. i knew at the onset of the research that my preferred way of working would fit the criteria for action research but it took me a considerable time to understand that certain principles of action research contributed to the theoretical framework for this particular research. . action research i set out to use an action research process, inspired by the model of kemmis and mctaggert ( ), to drive the related phases of the research. my aim was that my work was iterative and connected, with a reliant on practice and seeking to improve what i know and do with regard to the teaching and learning of school mathematics. what i discovered as my research progressed was that my initial plan of a systematic approach that utilised the iterative steps of an action research model, observe – describe-plan-act-reflect-evaluate- modify, began to evolve into something more complex. instead of one big spiral moving closer to the epicentre of my research, i found that i had spirals within spirals beginning at one place of interest and taking me to another unexpected place of interest. the action research approach had the scope to address the multiple issues within my spirals while still focusing on my main area of interest, yet i found that, because of constraints on time, i had to keep reining myself in, in some cases leaving my new avenues of inquiry for another time. it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where my action research influences originated because i feel i grew up in a world of action research, it has been prevalent throughout my teaching career, but i can name particular researchers whose words resonate with my thinking and whose ideas excite and enhance my work. i have for some time, been attracted to the thinking behind the ideas of a ‘living educational theory’ (whitehead ), where practitioners generate their own personal theories of practice through studying their practice. this empowers the practitioners to have ownership of the research and utilises practitioner knowledge, which is often accumulated over an extensive period of time. this also involves practitioners recognising and reflecting on their values and acknowledging that sometimes these have been ignored or denied in their practice. this resonated with feelings that i had experienced when i was required to wear my hat as a school manager but i felt that this position compromised my role as a mathematics teacher. i experienced feelings of frustration, knowing that in my opinion some of the decisions i was required to implement were not always in the best interest of my mathematics students. obviously imposed decisions are carefully designed to improve aspects of teaching and learning but i felt that the imposed decisions did not always consider my students, particularly their position as caring, sensitive individuals that could be easily demoralised by the actions of the adults around them. i now think that, as a consequence of my research developments, my interpretation of a living educational theory has evolved and deviated somewhat from my initial understanding. i now embrace a point made my mcniff ( ) that action research is not just about problem identification and solving but about realising human potential. ‘we offer descriptions and explanations for our work by producing professional narratives that show how the work improved the quality of life for others’ (mcniff : ). i began to appreciate at this point that a living theory, considered as an exploration of my educational influences on my own learning and that of others, could be understood as narrative research because it is my experiences lived and told by me (creswell, ). kemmis ( ) explained that action research changes people’s practice, transforming what we do, think and say, and the ways we relate. the surprise for me during this research was that a transformation of relationships between student and teacher became a defining feature of the research outcomes and i now consider it one of the research’s most powerful findings. mcniff ( ) took the view that action research leads to the generation of a dynamic, transformational form of theory based on knowledge already located within the practitioners. thus she explained, practitioners can generate relational forms of logic and fluid forms of thinking that allow them to recognise themselves in relation with their contexts, ‘ this way of knowing is embodied in the knower and their practice’ (mc niff : ). this model of action research is a form of self-reflexive research undertaken by participants in social situations (kemmis and carr, ), and as such there exists in this action research an intrinsic connectedness between reflection and action. luttenberg et al ( ) proposed that no action research occurs without reflection, yet this reflection, indispensable on the one hand, can potentially become a complicating factor on the other. the difficulty is the type of reflection that is required. it is a process that asks a researcher to lay bare their moral values, investigating their place in the process of the research and how they impinge on the rationality and fairness of their own educational practice. this personal honesty, scrutinising relevant shortcomings, requires a balance between uncovering what is useful to the research and what is not. however, as mcniff ( ) pointed out, moral reflection can transform practice because it reconstructs experience in the light of the values one has in life, values such as justice and equality. in addition to the problems that a personal critique of ones values can cause, mcniff ( ) also pointed out that there is a possibility that a researcher can experience problems between what is effective and efficient in a technical- instrumental sense and what they feel is morally right. this can cause political tensions in an educational setting that need to be reconciled so that they do not influence the research process and for this reason action researchers need the capacity to act sensibly and wisely in certain situations (mcniff, ). the balance between political tensions and my research planning caused me long periods of deliberation before proceeding with collecting my student story data. one particular area of worry for me was the use of mathematics lesson time to allow students to create their stories. i, and the leaders in my institution, had always promoted that no time should be wasted in mathematics lessons and, in particular, that students should not miss these lessons on any other school business. my first phase of data collection was slotted in a lesson at the end of an academic term when i knew that, traditionally, little mathematics ever got done. eventually, i recognised the importance of the stories for both mathematics students and their teacher, and that the optimum time for the storytelling workshop was near the start of the year during mathematics lesson time. the political tensions that i had felt with regard to using curriculum time for something different subsided with the knowledge that the benefits for the students sharing their stories could enhance the very area that the political tensions were trying to protect. these benefits appeared to enhance teacher/ pupil working which in turn was promoting the learning of mathematics, helping to educate our young people for life skills, further study and careers. before committing to an action research way of working i took some time to consider the weaknesses of this approach. a perceived problem with action research is that it is often featured in literature as a research method that is executed in the work place but does not have the credibility and support from research institutions resulting in an alleged gap between theory and practice. there is a school of thought that believes that theorists seek to change the practice of practitioners so that they follow theorist’s theories about how practice should be conducted (kemmis, ). this practice of direction from external influences has been something that i have experienced during my teaching career. kemmis ( : ) states that in his view ‘action research treats theorists as practitioners and practitioners as theorists’. by this he means that its purpose is not so much in closing the alleged gap between theory and practice, but in closing the gap between the roles of theorist and practitioner. this supported the view that action researchers generate personal theories of practice through studying their practice which, in turn, can be powerful sources of knowledge that contribute to educational research. an action research approach had the flexibility and adaptability to allow me to incorporate into my research design common elements from a variety of research perspectives. kemmis and carr ( ) identified three forms of action research. the first is a technical action research which is guided by an interest in improving control over outcomes. the second is a practical action research which has a focus on educating practitioners, and the third is critical action research which has an interest in emancipating people from injustice, harm or suffering. it is common that action research has been undertaken to intervene and change practice, and as such it is driven by a critical perspective. ‘in critical action research, the aim is to explore social realities in order to discover whether social or educational practices have such unsustainable consequences’ (kemmis, : ). the flexibility of action research allowed me to learn as i proceeded, enabling me to develop my approach as i reflected on events and outcomes, exploring different perspectives and reflecting on associated changes in practice. within the action research structure i adopted the approaches of narrative research for data collection (webster and mertova, ), intuitive inquiry (anderson, ) for data analysis, and symbolic interactionism to help me develop a perspective for examining data (blumer, ). these approaches supported my ideas surrounding the production and analysis of appropriate data, and the search for understanding that complements the assumptions that i hold as a researcher and teacher. these perspectives were all underpinned by my desire to act in a natural way of being, with an emphasis on functioning as a humanitarian and reflexive practitioner. a growing understanding of these perspectives enabled me to develop a methodology that changed and adapted as my research work progressed. examining my beliefs, values and assumptions was a difficult and time-costly task as they were embedded in my day to day practice and as such had almost become invisible to me. in addition, i believe that they are not static but evolve with everything i discover as i work my way through life. my following beliefs and assumptions guided the design, execution and interpretation of this research: for me to understand the mathematical world of school students i needed to study and make sense of that world from the perspective of the participant, and this epistemological viewpoint can be addressed by a qualitative research framework that allows the students to describe their world in a narrative form. students do not arrive at the mathematics classroom as empty vessels; they bring with them a range of expectations and behaviours that have been constructed around the interpretations of events from schooling, home life, relationships, social interactions, media and their own imaginations. these expectations and behaviours are governed by their underlying beliefs and can influence their access to learning mathematics. when students are involved in learning mathematics there are forces at play that can be invisible to an observer, instinctive to the student, and based on past histories and events. the mathematical development of every person is equally important, it is fluid and continuous, and there is no fixed ceiling on the ability of any person (dweck, ). given these beliefs i hold the opinion that every learner should be nurtured to achieve their best potential in learning and, by association, exploring and learning mathematics. mathematics classrooms contain particular authoritarian, political and social agendas that make them a unique complex learning environment, and mathematics teachers can improve practice and provision for their learners by understanding and building on this unique situation. these assumptions and beliefs that i bring to this research will influence my design of the research and my interpretation of the data produced by the students and, hence the way i use this data to formulate answers addressing my initial research questions. . a narrative approach a narrative approach to my research satisfied my needs in more than one way. the first was in a methodological sense in the creation and sharing of a living theory approach to the research, and the other was in its potential as a suitable and rich data collection method in the form of stories. cresswell ( ) claimed that not all narratives are living theories but all living theories are narratives, and that the purpose of a living theory is to explain the researcher’s educational influence on learning. the most recent school improvements involving teachers have been working towards an understanding of particular actions (for example a child’s test results) with reference to past actions and future potential actions (target setting and future learning). this can be described as a temporal relationship, a sequence of events in time, these events having a past, a present and a future. temporality gives the research a future, it embraces the change process, recording and analysing, it is not just a historical moment in time; it has a future (clandinin and connelly, ). narratives have the potential to allow the narrator to move backwards or forwards, focusing on a particular event or moment in the past and yet moving forward because they anticipate a response from an audience. this potential to manipulate the future and rewrite the past is a very powerful aspect of using narrative as a data collection method with students. it allows the potential for not only understanding the events and experiences that guide behaviour but also for communicating multiple understandings of the social world that the participant belongs to and their aspirations for the future. to explore my student’s experiences learning mathematics, i felt that i needed a research method that could incorporate the following: a) capture the complexity of human thought and behaviour; b) bring to light things that i was not aware of, c) allow a comfortable environment for the participant, and d) allow me to step back from the data generating process and act as a facilitator. bolton ( ) viewed story making as an automatic function of our mind, and argued that producing stories is a way of making sense and organising our lives. he explained that it is a natural function for people to play and replay stories allowing story characters to experiment with scenarios and our perspectives to change. i am by nature a story teller, i construct my stories about who i am, what i do and plan to do, i revisit and re-invent the reasons for my actions which are driven by my reflections about how i should live my life. i consider that it is natural for me to live my life through narrative, and it is this natural process that i would like to capture in my research methodology. it is through our stories that we can actually profess what we believe, and through the stories of others we hear what they profess to believe. my stories get me closer to knowing who i am, and hearing my student stories gives me an insight into who they are. geelan ( ) described the activity of research as an activity of imposing order on the chaotic contexts of life experience in order to be able to talk about them. the stories of students are likely to be less ordered and understood than those of an adult, but i believe will be no less rich and complex. eisner ( ) argued that in a sense all inquiry into the world is qualitative: it attends to the qualities of things – behaviour, experience, performance etc. therefore, a research method that involves written or spoken language can supply data that has the potential to reveal innermost thoughts, frames of reference, reactions to situations, and cultural conventions and as such, can be considered to be qualitative. webster and mertova ( ) claimed that using narrative inquiry as a research method can provide researchers with a rich framework allowing them to investigate the ways humans experience the world. my initial interest in narrative as a methodology was in its value as a data collection method. i considered it a useful way of collecting the type of qualitative data that i needed to address my research interest. however, a deeper understanding of narrative research furnished by wider reading has convinced me that narrative can address both the phenomenon and the method, this was an idea explored in clandinin and connelly ( ). . narrative as a method narrative can be used in the research process as a way of collecting data and making meaning, using common narrative structures and characteristics. as a data collection method i chose to describe narratives as oral, written or visual accounts of events told to others or oneself. in particular i was interested in narratives that refer to accounts of personal experience, or the experience of others. these may include accounts that appear to be fictional, but not ones that are purely descriptive lists of mathematical topics or disconnected or abstract productions. . narrative as a phenomenon in this research the narrative as a phenomenon is to be found in my personal story which will thread throughout this research. this is called ‘my diary extracts’ and will communicate to you my journey in the form of a scholarly personal narrative (nash ). the key to narrative as a phenomenon lies in the fact that narratives are simultaneously created and furnished by the individual to model the world. our narratives are influenced by our culture and experiences, ‘religion, ideology, legends, fairy tales, folk lore, the education system and academic disciplines supply ready-made models of the world’ (chafe, ). nash ( : ) identified himself as an advocate of the power of personal narratives. ‘i have found that personal narrative writing helps us to understand our histories, shape our destinies, develop our moral imaginations, and give us something truly worth living for.’ gudmundsdottir ( : ) gave some insight into the transformational value of narrative. ‘narrating an event for the first time affects how people subsequently remember and retell the event. in re-telling, the narrative can change, and people no longer have access to the original image.’ nash ( ) considered that exploring our narratives could lead to transition and self- empowerment. this resonated with my understanding of narrative as a phenomenon, and i am interested in the construction of stories because i believe that these stories can create a deeper understanding about the mismatch between personal expectations and institutional ones. so what exactly do i consider to be narrative? narratives are the stories we live by. every life has meaning both for the person and others. narrating is about expressing your voice, in your own language, with your own version of your own story, in your own manner. my interest in narratives has two dimensions; the first is my belief that narratives tell the events of human lives, it reflects human interest and supports our sense making process (bold, : ). narrative have implications for our view of the learner (webster and mertova, : ), ‘a concern for the narrative brings to the forefront features of the learners thinking and learning needs that may have been neglected through more traditional research methods.’ the second is my tacit understanding that most people find that communicating through a medium such as narrative can be unobtrusive, creative and satisfying. clough ( ) and bolton ( ) did not try to define narrative as having a particular structure but focused on the meaning that stories hold for us individually and collectively. this echoed the essence of my research, which was exploring the mathematical stories told by my students. i did this with a view to understand more about my student’s experiences learning mathematics and hence, learn more about my practice towards those individual students, enhancing my understanding of their experiences through the meaning that story has for me. i felt that this exploration could provide data to address my initial research questions and some of my sub-questions. the participants in this research were secondary school students between the ages of and years old. they were all girls and they were all students at my place of work and at the time of their story telling workshop i was their mathematics teacher. the students had different mathematical abilities and there is more detail regarding their specific mathematical levels and grades in the following sections of the research. in addition, two experienced teachers of mathematics, both who were colleagues of mine, trialled the story telling workshop with their own mathematics classes. my research was driven by the belief that my students wanted to be understood and to be heard. a methodology that allowed them to share their personal stories provided data to furnish my understanding of the complexities involved in learning mathematics. yet possibly more importantly it gave my students a forum to be heard, a forum to construct ‘their truth’, to penetrate the impersonal shield that often sits between student and teacher, student and student. i began to appreciate the role of narrative as a phenomenon during the pilot phase of my research, during my reading the first set of student stories. once a story was read, my perception of that student altered dramatically. reading their story ambushed me with a mixture of emotions and i experienced an unexpected empathy about my encounters with that student. my head began to fill with thoughts regarding prior mathematics lessons and plans for their future learning. through this phenomenon i began to appreciate the place of narrative in shaping who we are and what we do. nash ( ) discussed this shaping of ourselves as a constructivist circle explaining that the stories we construct then turn around and construct us forever. a narrative influence in my research worked for me on a personal level. i find that student work, in the form of a story, captured my interest, gave me knowledge to reflect on and allowed me to build a profile of my student and their personal needs in the mathematics classroom. these needs are not the things that i can assess by just seeing their mathematics alone. for me, the vast numbers of students i teach can feel overwhelming, i struggle to get to know them quickly and well enough, so that i can teach them uniquely and effectively. i know that for some teachers, a coping strategy can be to treat the students as objects, faceless and mechanical, adopting a ‘one size fits all’ strategy. in this strategy students are all treated in a uniform manner, taught and assessed as a uniform group and then ranked according to their performance in this uniform world. for many students this model of learning mathematics leaves them hopelessly stranded and unsure of how to move forward. this mechanical model of treating students as uniform receptacles is something that i often reflect on. if everybody has unique experiences, their own unique way of learning and a particular unique identity, then surely they need to be appreciated as unique individuals. but, how can a mathematics teacher appreciate the contour and detail of each student? my own practice has taught me that, over a period of time, i develop a deeper understanding about many of my students, and this process highlights for me distinctive features about them that has enabled me to teach them more effectively. i have always felt concerned about the length of time this process can take and that some students can stay featureless for a long period of time. if a student has no defining features to me, then my relationship with them is weak and i am concerned that, for them, my teaching is lacking. i was convinced that to improve my teaching of mathematics to any particular student i needed to understand the context within which they worked and the mathematics story they carried every day into my classroom. a child’s learning and subsequent achievement has to be set in the context of home and school, their relationship with adults and peers, and with home and school systems. understanding how individuals are affected by different contextual influences is an essential ingredient to help teachers provide the most appropriate support for the child’s learning. my reading and personal experience has convinced me that a narrative approach captures contextual influences in a way that other research methods may not. smith ( ) explained that narratives are regarded as a basic and universal mode of verbal expression. telling about past events is one of the earliest forms of children’s discourse. my personal experience as a mother, friend, colleague and child, helped me understand and appreciate this point made by smith ( ). my interactions with people provided me with evidence to support the belief that in everyday conversations we recount experiences or tell stories to inform, instruct, entertain, impress, empower or exonerate. advocates of narrative believe, as do i, that they can yield information that may be difficult to obtain by another method; this could be information that is sensitive to the informant, or that it is at the back of their mind, forgotten or purposely filed away. in contrast, bamberg ( ) argued that narratives do not give access to the speaker’s past experiences nor their reflections on their past experiences. rather, he feels that through the narrative we study talk, and in and through this talk we establish what the talk is about and particular social interactions in the form of social relationships. this view of narrative is what i believe drives the phenomenon of narrative; through narratives we explore, placing ourselves in learning situations that are not exactly accurate but are reflections and transformations of a reality. narratives cannot be simply taken and interpreted for what has been said. they have to be analysed and the analysis has to work with what the reader already understands about the world. this is particularly where a narrative written by my student worked for me, the information contained in the narrative blended with, and enhanced my thinking and reflection about the student. in this way i was a reacting human being, learning and expanding both my understanding of the student world of learning mathematics, and myself as a teacher of mathematics and carer of the students in my classroom. for the listener, narratives can raise consciousness, create a shared history and a shared group identity, and preserve and transmit culture (smith, : ). kress and leeuwen ( ) highlighted the disjunction that occurs between the context of production and the context of reception. the text (story) is written for a model reader, determined by the author, and thus the validity of that text is dependent on the shared understandings of various contexts that exist between reader and author. this element of shared understanding is constrained by differences of age, position and power, culture, social class and past experiences. due to my role as a mathematics teacher, and my experience as a school student, i felt that i had a shared understanding of some of the context in the student stories. this understanding was limited by my position and age, but i viewed the process of analysing student stories, and particularly aspects of my personal reflexivity, as a learning opportunity for me to build on my understanding. for me then, the accuracy of an account is a complex issue and was not a particular focus in my research. the need for the student to recount a particular story, and my developing understanding of the place this story has in the student world of learning mathematics, provided knowledge that had the potential to increase my understanding of the learning situation. my scrutiny of the stories focused on two main areas. one was the relationship between events pertaining to the learning of mathematics, and the subsequent experiences and behaviour of students. this gave me the opportunity to address my first research question, asking if learning mathematics is an uncomfortable memory for some students and if so, why that is. the other focus was on the influence that student mathematical stories have on their mathematics teacher and how this informs subsequent actions. by doing this, i hoped to address my second question and look at developing and improving approachable and effective ways of working between mathematics students and their teacher. . issues of safe guarding narrative research of the kind i was planning required a trust relationship between the researcher and the participant. this kind of research can make the researcher and the storyteller particularly vulnerable. after each workshop there was time built in for students to talk either in private or in groups to discuss their experiences encountered during the process. in all planning and subsequent reflections, where there may be emotional or delicate issues i adopted a collaborative approach to my critical reflections. discussions with my supervisors, and informed school colleagues helped me deal appropriately with sensitive issues. i had a safeguarding step in my planning which was that, in the event of problems, i would seek out a more experienced researcher who is experienced with narrative research and who could give me advice with my planning and analysis. . intuitive inquiry intuitive inquiry is a methodology that addresses my need to embrace the following in my research design. the first is the transformative nature of my research experience; the second is recognition of my years of experience as a teacher; the third is the preservation of student voice and the fourth is an investigation of the use of an imaginal dialogue between student story and teacher. throughout the progress of the research i began to understand that, by responding to the student stories, i had developed and changed my understanding of my role as a teacher of mathematics. moustakas ( ) explained that the growth and learning of the researcher can be as important as the conclusion in a transpersonal research. intuitive inquiry was developed by rosemary anderson in as a transpersonal research method that invites both intuition and embodied writing into the research process. this approach presented by rosemary anderson ( ) formally specified methods that incorporated the researchers’ intuitive, emotional, and personal capacities, and my particular interest in this method is in the development of intuitive inquiry into a multi-method approach to research allowing methodological inventiveness (dadds and hart, ), and flexibility. this intuitive inquiry approach was adopted in the research work of may ( ) because it has the capacity to accurately relay the richness and complexity of the creative process. it is a way of looking at the world which finds room for revealing what it means to be human, allowing a reflexive way of working to underpin values and assumptions. intuitive inquiry often applies elements of hermeneutics to qualitative analysis, which is an approach that is focused on the understanding and interpretation of texts, particularly with an emphasis on the meaning of the text from the perspective of the author (bryman, ). yet, it is possible to integrate and adapt its procedures with other analytical approaches to research (anderson, ). interpretation, in the case of intuitive inquiry, is understood to be ‘self-reflective, iterative and ongoing, with the interpreter mindful that his or her pre-understandings influence the interpretations’ (anderson, ). a key focus in an intuitive inquiry model proposed by anderson ( ) was the role of intuition in the researcher’s interpretation of the findings, and therefore it was important for the purpose of this research for me to define my personal understanding of intuition. some of the definitions readily available through a quick internet search appear to portray intuition as unintellectual and based on guesswork. wikipedia.org (accessed on / / ) stated that intuition is a phenomenon of the mind described as the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason and encarta english dictionary described intuition as distinctive knowledge, the state of being aware of knowing something without having to discover or perceive it. both these definitions make intuition sound like an apparition that is based on nothing factual or concrete, yet i believe that most people would concede that intuition is based on gut feelings and ideas formed from our past experiences and knowledge. so, i argue here that my past experiences and histories act as information receptacles from which i intuitively draw knowledge every time i engage with my students and their stories. firstly, i have taught mathematics for more than forty years, so aspects of the imaging and emotions portrayed in my student stories are ones that i am familiar with. secondly, i have been a student of mathematics, in a state school, and in that capacity i have experienced failure and success, excitement and disappointment, and the important sense of belonging and feeling excluded. finally, i have been a child with all the cultural expectations imposed by parents, including feeling misunderstood and out of place. my working definition of intuitive inquiry blends a mix of empathy with staying attuned and aware of my emotions and reflexive debate. empathy is the intellectual identification with the thoughts, feelings and attitudes of my students through engaging with their story. staying attuned and aware of my emotions is the discipline of considering affect as a reaction to my student stories and the ongoing consideration of teacher /student relationships prior to and after the storytelling. reflexive debate is the conversation i have with myself with regard to my values, my biases and my shortcomings when responding to my first reading of student stories, my analysis of these stories and my critique of my interactions with the author of each story. reflexive debate could be thought of as my inner voice speaking to my conscious, trying to make sense of an action or an event. this debate allows me to play out privately the causation of my student’s feelings and actions, and gives me a forum to try out alternative points of view. it also encourages me to question my choice of research, and my reasons for this research, examining my wounds and the degree of personal that is appropriate for me and my research participants (anderson, ). anderson ( : ), speaking of the intuitive inquiry processes stated that, ‘sometimes the processes and insights are strictly personal, and sometimes they shed light directly on the topic of inquiry, or both’. what i have described as a reflexive debate, one that tugs at my consciousness willing me to stay honest to myself and my students, with soul in mind, is my interpretation of what anderson ( ) referred to as an imaginal dialogue. to validate my understanding of intuition and use of intuitive inquiry for this research, i will draw on the work of anderson ( ), and select from her typology of intuitive modes two that resonate strongly with my particular understanding of intuition. the first is termed ‘empathetic identification’ (anderson, : ), which she describes as a form of compassionate knowing or empathetic identification which allows us to inhibit the lived world of another person or object. the second she terms as ‘through our wounds’ (anderson, : ), by which she means that ‘a researcher’s intuitive style tends to settle among the fault lines or wounds in the researchers personality’. i have interpreted this as an internal feeling that all is not well, either with my identity as a teacher of mathematics or within the culture of mathematics that i am expected to function in. this description planted the seed that encouraged me to examine my thoughts regarding the complex relationship between me, the researcher and the topic being researched. anderson ( : ) explained that from a spiritual perspective, our wounds can be seen as openings to the world and explorations along these lines often ‘invite change and transform these openings’. through the work of romanyshyn ( ), i began to appreciate that the research topic had chosen me perhaps even more than i had chosen it. out of all the possible topics linked with mathematics that i could have researched, i entered into a research endeavour that i find difficult to describe, give name to, and give it justice when writing this report. this mode of intuition begs me to dig deep inside my consciousness, asking myself exactly why this research is so important to me, what are the wounds and scars that sit in the middle ground between intellect and sense. romanyshyn ( : ), influenced by the work of jung, described a region of reality that is intermediate between sense and intellect, mediating between them. ‘this intermediate world is the world of the soul, which has its own ontological status as a domain of reality between the domains of matter and mind’. romanyshyn ( ) discussed the idea that feelings of loss and failure can come from research that keeps soul in mind, that is re-search, a searching again for something that has already made its claim upon us, something we have already known, however dimly, but have forgotten it. ‘the struggle to recover what has been lost and found again, is the struggle in the gap between what is said, and what wants and needs to be spoken’ (romanyshyan, : ). the awareness of the gap between language and experience brings about a sense of sadness, a feeling of mourning for what is lost. ‘the mourning that attaches itself to our knowing has a sweetly bitter quality that comes from yearning for something that, while never attained, is always with us’ (romanyshyn, : ). throughout this work, romanyshyn ( ) made a case for, and presented research that would keep soul in mind. this is not the concept of soul that i was indoctrinated with at an early age by my parents and schooling. romanyshyn ( ) described soul as our circumstances and vocation, it is not inside us, it surrounds us like a type of epiphany that calls us into our work. ‘but how do we give voice to such moments, and how do we re-search those moments in our work when the soul of the work shines through the idea, the theory, the fact and the data collected’ (romanyshyn : ). . description of the intuitive inquiry method intuitive inquiry describes an investigation based primarily on intuition rather than analytical or rational processes. it starts with the researcher identifying their values and assumptions and then using these as a lens to begin interpretive cycles of analysis. anderson’s model of intuitive inquiry was composed of five iterative cycles of interpretation. firstly, the researcher selects a text or image that is related to an area of personal interest that repeatedly attracts their attention. the researcher then engages with the text or image on a regular basis recording both objective and subjective thoughts, impressions, intuitions, observations, daydreams and conversations. secondly, the researcher reflects upon their understanding of the topic in light of available literature about the topic, and prepares a list of interpretive lenses that express the researcher’s understanding of the topic, often developed simultaneously with the literature review. thirdly, the researcher identifies the best source of data for the research topic, identifies criteria for selection of research informants and collects the data. ‘since intuitive inquiry invites an in-depth process, one should choose the data sources that identify their passion as researchers’ (xenitidou and gilbert, : ). the fourth step is to interpret the data in order to modify, refute, re-organise and expand their knowledge of the topic. this stage allows the researcher to refine their pre-understandings of the topic by engaging with the data, organising and reorganising the data, recording both subjective and objective data, blending a variety of analyses strategies and techniques. throughout the process, an important feature of intuitive inquiry is intuitive breakthroughs, illuminating moments when the data begins to take shape, revealing patterns and insights with each fresh set of information. in this process both observational data and intuition are encouraged as sources of amplification and refinement of one another. finally in step five, the researcher stands back from the data and considers all aspects of the study with a fresh look. . limitations and shortcomings of the intuitive inquiry approach in my review of the literature surrounding the topic of intuition as a qualitative method for interpreting data i have found that it is hard to understand how the intuitive researcher has arrived at their conclusions or how firmly they are grounded. using intuition and reflexive practice is a very personal and private process. a difficulty is finding the balance between the information that is a necessary part of the research to help the reader understand the interpretations and intuitive breakthroughs of the researcher, and information that just is included as the researcher’s voice. . portraiture discovering portraiture empowered me to proceed with my research in a way that supported my urge to be creative. it helped liberate me from my inhibition that i could not find my unique voice in a world that communicated through esoteric academic language. i also felt that the ideas behind portraiture addressed my desire to communicate to a wide and varied audience, the stakeholders concerned with learning school mathematics. these stakeholders consist of university academics, school leaders and governors, teachers and teaching assistants, parents and guardians and mathematic students. portraiture encourages a language that is understandable, not exclusive and expert, with an aim to expand the audience and welcome more voices (lawrence-lightfoot, ). portraiture describes the actions of the research as voice. lawrence-lightfoot and hoffman-davis ( ) explained that the portraitist voice is everywhere and there is no part of the research that goes untouched by some aspect of the researcher’s voice. this approach acknowledges that researchers are often attracted to a project because of personal interests and prior experiences (hackmann, ). as a result, rather than aiming for objectivity and detachment, the researcher’s voice is woven into the written document called a portrait, which is created as a result of the researcher’s interaction with the research participants. intertwining the researcher’s personal context into the research text is intended to enhance the understanding of the research subject and encourage a level of understanding and empathy that i feel would be difficult to achieve if i were writing as a detached observer. as a research strategy, lawrence-lightfoot and hoffman-davis ( ) explained that portraits are designed to capture the richness, complexity and dimensionality of human experiences in a social and cultural context. they aim to communicate the perspectives of those people who are negotiating these human experiences. in the process of creating portraits we enter the lives of people, build relationships and engage in discourse. my aim for this research was to try to create life images of learning mathematics in school and trace connections between individual personality and culture. the aim with portraiture is to create a document that comes as close as possible to painting the subject with words yet knowing that an exact image of the subject is not achievable. lawrence-lightfoot ( ) explained that the portraits are designed to capture the essence, qualities of character and history of the subject. the translation is probing, layered, and interpretive, while always being watchful of feelings, perspective and experience. in using the methods of portraiture i acknowledge that i want my research participants to feel seen, appreciated and respected. by creating opportunity for dialogue this methodology engages in implicit and explicit acts of social transformation. portraiture cannot tell you what you should do when faced with an educational problem but what it can do is help you think more intelligently about that problem (hackmann, ). laurence–lightfoot ( ) suggested that a research portrait can be used to stimulate change within individuals and organisations because enhanced understandings, (thinking more intelligently), brings with it the possibility of change. i found that the methodology of portraiture offered a different way of thinking about generalisation than many other forms of research. rather than reducing the data by seeking patterns and themes and using a codified method to connect them, portraiture seeks to illuminate the complexity and detail of a particular experience hoping that the reader will see their lives and experience reflected in it and therefore feel identified. lawrence-lightfoot ( ) stated that rather than looking for a universal truth the reader will discover resonant universal themes. this difference in perspective of generalisation became important towards the latter stages of this research when i had exhausted my work looking for themes and had started to feel that i had lost the authors voice in translation. i began to appreciate the point made by lawrence-lightfoot ( ) which was that two powerful characteristics of portraiture were its ability to embrace contradiction, and its ability to document the beauty and the ugly of experience, both of these being very much a part of human development and social relationship. once committed to the place of portraiture in my methodology, i felt that the research was potentially empowering, both to the teacher and to the student. empowering to me because it gave me an opportunity to reflect, (both beauty and ugly), on my work, goals and values. empowering to the student because it gave them a voice so that they could make known their opinions and experiences about learning mathematics. . symbolic interactionism i was introduced to the ideas of symbolic interactionism while i was searching for research that had something in common with my own. the research of wall ( ) and pollard and filer ( ) were both interested in the experiences of school children as they negotiated their way through school life. both studies adopted an approach that utilised the ideas of symbolic interactionism as a way to conduct their research and look at the subsequent data. symbolic interactionism complimented the view that learning mathematics is a social act, and hence worked well with my approach to researching this concept. blumer ( ) explained that with this perspective, groups such as societies and cultures, exist through the meanings that arise out of social interaction and for this reason should be viewed through action. by action he was referring to activities that individuals perform in their lives as they encounter one another and deal with everyday situations. learning mathematics is one of these social acts, containing classroom practices that operate within the regimes of truth, knowledge and power. i decided to use a symbolic interactionist approach to guide the framework for analysing student stories about mathematical experiences because it focused on the creation of meaning as people interact together in both verbal and non-verbal communication. i feel that symbolic interactionism would prove extremely useful as a framework for the data collection stages of my research because while it recognised the individuality and therefore uniqueness of each person, (in this case the students learning mathematics), it also acknowledged the importance of social interactions with family, peers, teachers and environmental objects such (books, teachers, classrooms and work), with which, between which and within which each individual negotiated personal meanings through interactions with others (walls, ). there is evidence in the research of walls ( ), yackal ( ), reay and wiliam ( ) and winbourne ( ) that symbolic interactionism is a useful approach for educational research that attempts to see and describe the taken for granted, ordinary and routine in the everyday mathematical world of the child. this is because it attempts to probe into the hiddenness of the structures and processes that generate their mathematical world encouraging a sociological attitude by which to uncover and make strange the features of a child’s social world of learning mathematics. . conclusion within this overall methodological framework, i found my ideas and thoughts developing in various directions and my research became visible to me through my literature reading. my need for methodological inventiveness (dadds and hart, ), became a key feature of the research design. i found that i began to develop my own unique way of working through the research and then trying to put that way of working into a form that would identify with known methodological approaches. this became a struggle because my research contained aspects of many approaches and the comparison between my way of working and the details of each approach identified in the literature were often tenuous. i began to appreciate that it was important for my motivation and drive that i had ownership of my methodology, and that it served the purpose that it had been developed for, which was to educate my practice relevant to the daily experiences of the mathematics learners in my care. dadds and hart ( ) pointed out that it is important that the methodological approach should match the message that the researcher seeks to communicate, and that equally as important, is the willingness and courage that practitioners show when creating an inquiry approach that enables new valid understandings to develop. i placed importance on the purpose of my practice that could be served by this research, and the integrity and method by which i made my methodological choices. dadds and hart ( : ) felt that if professional intention informed the research then the methodology ‘should not be cast in stone’. in the next chapter i give a brief overview of the contents of the four data collection phases. i then give an account of the first phase of my action research process and the data outcomes that were produced during this period. chapter : action research phases one, two and three . introduction my action research progressed naturally through four phases. phase was a pilot phase to test the water for a storytelling data collection method. it was designed to address two research questions which were firstly, would students be happy to share their stories about learning mathematics and then secondly, would the stories contain rich data that would help develop my research further? phase built on the lessons learnt in phase , but the sample of students was a purposive sample selected on the basis that these students had experienced struggle to achieve their school target in mathematics. in addition the storytelling workshop was trialled by two colleagues. phase added a new dimension to the storytelling workshop because it focused on the timing of the workshop and the subsequent developing relationship between teacher and student. the last phase was a period that included my analysis, reflexive contributions related to my teaching practice and much reading and thinking about the student stories. an overview of each phase of the action research is described in the table below. figure action research table phase pilot study aims: to trial a storytelling workshop. questions: would the students share their stories about learning mathematics? do student stories provide rich data? data collection method: student stories reflexive diary observation outcomes and recommendations: students were keen to share stories and the stories were rich forms of data. reduce influence of teacher in future story telling workshop. ask for individual stories. allow more time for workshop plus include designated feedback time. build on what has been achieved re data analysis. phase storytelling workshop aims: to try the story telling workshops with different students. colleagues trial the storytelling workshop in their classrooms. include student feedback in the form of audio recordings and interview. data collection methods: student stories created as text, poem, song, poster and picture board. reflexive diary. student audio recording about their story. student interview about the story telling process. classroom observation discussion with colleagues outcomes and recommendations: the timing of the storytelling workshop, should it be earlier in the academic year? consider why some stories have a bigger impact on me than others. consider the impact the stories have on subsequent teaching and learning. include a second story later in the year to investigate student transformation. phase my special groups aim: to run the storytelling workshop early in the academic year. to investigate which stories have the most impact on me and why. to explicitly consider changes to my practice post stories. to repeat the storytelling worshop later in the academic year. data collection method: student stories created as text, poem, song, poster and picture board. reflexive diary. classroom observations. pupil progress through out the year. outcomes and recommendations: student stories had a profound effect on my relationship with the participant and my subsequent teaching of that student. the analysis of the stories takes place from the very first reading and cannot be separated as a particular section of the research. the data suggests that stories gives the student voice, power and an understanding of themselves and their relationship with mathematics. final phase used to draw together ideas and form a data analysis aim: to draw together ideas and develop an analysis model. to utilise and develop an intuitive inquiry analysis method that could preserve student voice, teacher intuition and empathy, while incorporating rigour by using thematic analysis and peer validation. to develop a style of personal writing that opens a window for readers to see and recognise aspects of their own world view. method: revisit diary extracts and notes about ideas, thoughts, intuitions and imaginings stimulated by the student stories and my classroom practice. carry out a thematic analysis to help support or refute other data analysis. outcome and recommendations: an intuitive inquiry model that complements my research. specific story themes that inform what i look at during the data analysis. a critique of my classroom practice and the development of a way of working that allowed student voice and preparation by the teacher for the individuality of the students that they teach. . phase pilot study the purpose of my pilot study was to trial a data collection method that was unfamiliar to my style of working. this was a data collection method that was based on communicating experiences through the medium of storytelling. coming from a mathematical background, i felt more comfortable with data that could be measured or counted and less familiar with data collected through written methods. however, i was convinced that stories would suit the purpose of my research and therefore was a better way to proceed. the ideas behind this data collection method had largely been informed from my day to day experiences in the classroom, watching how expressive and creative students can be when allowed to explore ideas in ways that suited their imagination. the topic of the data collection was in response to a concern that i had developed over many years which was, that while many students have positive attitudes to learning mathematics at a very young age, there seemed to be a large proportion of students that lost interest in the subject as they progressed through their school years. it was found that this loss of interest could be associated with a related decline in their achievement (walls, ; boaler, ). a question that i hope to provide some insight into is one that was previously posed by walls ( ) which is, what is it about people’s experiences of mathematics that brings about such a strong sense of alienation? my focus for the pilot was centred on pedagogy, and in particular the aspect of expression and communication. i have always been intrigued when a student communicates his or her thoughts and ideas in a novel way, and the challenge for me was to allow time to understand, nurture and steer this creative aspect of communication in a direction that would both stimulate the student and meet the needs of my inquiry. my experience as a mathematics teacher had made me aware that students were often drilled in the use of appropriate mathematical language and formal methods of working (nardi and steward, ; boaler, ). when students have to communicate with mathematics or a system of mathematical symbols, this can become, for some, a very limiting arena in which to express themselves, and to feel comfortable they need to be fairly accomplished in the language field and symbolic representation of mathematics. i suspect that as a result of this, some students can become mute (in the mathematical sense), and this research places an important emphasis on the acceptance that individual, unique expression about personal mathematical experiences is a necessary and liberating part of mathematics education. with this in mind i was drawn to using a storytelling workshop as my tool for a pilot investigation. the action research model that i have described above supports the place of narrative both as a method and as a phenomenon, using stories as a communication channel to collect data and also to create a tool to navigate past and present actions and their subsequent consequences. my research narratives contained descriptive accounts of doing the research, as well as explanations of why the research was being undertaken and what the researcher hoped to achieve. . methods for phase one the data collection tools that i chose to use in this research are listed below with a rationale for their choice. throughout the research i placed an emphasis on flexibility and creativity and the methods adopted were chosen to support this approach. the main form of data collection was a storytelling workshop where students created their own stories about their experiences learning school mathematics, which for the purpose of this research, was viewed as their mathematical world. the data produced during this research method was predominantly qualitative although during the analysis i made use of a small amount of quantitative data. my second data collection tool was a reflexive diary which i have named ‘my diary extracts’. it was important to me that an attempt to improve practice should be grounded in a process of constant reflection on that practice. an assumption and belief underpinning the whole of this research process is that deep critical reflection has transformational potential. in the busy day to day bustle of fulfilling the role of school teacher and researcher it is very easy to commit things to memory only to find that on recall the essence is lost. the discipline of recording thoughts, actions, ideas and observations on a daily basis seemed essential to the research process, and yet this routine is one that i struggled with. to facilitate this process i tried to keep in mind three principle questions: why have i chosen to do this? how is it going, and what have i found out or learnt? with these questions in mind i kept a reflexive eye on my progress which then helped me make informed decisions about the research and when i needed to change direction. my third data collection tool was observational field notes. these observations were useful because they gave me the opportunity of studying students in their mathematical learning environment, and by planning and recording systematically they became a research tool that could provide accurate descriptions of situations, and equip me with data for further investigation. the limitations of these observations were that it was difficult to record detail quickly and it was not possible to go back and check my observations later, hence validity and bias was possibly compromised by my interpretations. extra care needed to be taken when interpreting my findings because the kind of knowledge created by observable situations was inevitably influenced by the assumptions i brought to bear on the situation. to address this difficult situation i set out to use a process of triangulation to collaborate my findings. this process included observing as many events as possible, drawing on the tacit knowledge collected over my teaching career, discussing interpretations with colleagues, and using a reflexive debate as explained in my methodology to critically review my findings and gather alternative perspectives. the data collected was qualitative, describing behaviours, body language and the engagement of groups of students in a variety of school mathematics lessons. my hope was to capture a moment in time of the social world of a child in a school setting, recording behaviours that could highlight the invisible influences that can be brought to various school situations. this data was available and abundant during my day to day practice and gave me an opportunity to record what was happening in the class and reflect and challenge my assumptions. the final form of data collection for this phase was discussions with teacher colleagues, researcher colleagues and likeminded people. i respect and value the place of collaboration in my research because collaboration brings a body of individual and shared knowledge to the project, gives opportunities to validate work and conclusions, and brings me back to earth in a reflective way. . organisation of the pilot workshop i had been thinking about using student stories as a form of data collection for some time but i was not sure how the students might respond to this. the idea was inspired by watching children interact while supervising a school trip. i had been asked to accompany a group of students on a retreat organised by the religious education department. the group i was asked to accompany was a group of year old students that i knew well. some of the group had a history of being badly behaved and disrespectful to other adults and i was not particular confident that they would embrace the ethos of a religious retreat. however to my surprise, they were asked to make a puppet and then give their puppet a name and a story, and their contributions made me sit up in wonder and respect. they happily took part in the process and i learnt more about the students through their puppets than i thought was actually possible. this experience gave me the inspiration and the confidence that a story telling workshop could be a very good way to collect data about learning mathematics. while considering the best way to introduce a session that would give the students a vehicle to tell their personal mathematical story, i pondered on the idea of giving them an example of my mathematical story or an anonymous mathematical story. however, i decided not to because i was worried about introducing bias through my version of mathematics, giving them too much insight into what mathematics might mean to me. so instead, as a starting point, i designed an introduction sheet that would introduce the task in a simple way, hoping to pitch the proposal well enough to elicit enthusiasm. my year nine class had just finished a project that had lasted several lessons and we had one lesson spare, it was an afternoon lesson, the last mathematics lesson that week for this group. i had wanted to try out the idea of developing student voice with this particular group and the timing seemed the ideal opportunity to try something very different. the selection of this year nine group as my participants was important to me, it was based on convenience because i was their teacher and also because i was particularly interested in their behaviour with their previous mathematics teachers. they had experienced a very troublesome mathematics education during the previous year, starting with a teacher/student relationship that proved to be inharmonious, and culminating with a stream of short term supply teachers with the result that their mathematical experiences and learning was erratic and discontinuous. the class appeared to be very angry, displaying difficult behaviour towards their mathematics teachers, and had been very vocal about their feelings towards particular teachers. this year the class had settled well, their behaviour, although often cheeky, was generally well mannered. they were in general enthusiastic about their mathematics lessons and i found them very interesting to teach. the class range of mathematical abilities, according to school data (based on prior data from key stage two), was focused towards the top end of the national curriculum spectrum. my own assessment of their range of mathematical abilities also placed them towards the higher end of the cognitive continuum but i had concerns about their confidence and how they applied themselves to new or more challenging concepts. the realities in the classroom was that formal mathematical attainment appeared to vary across the national curriculum levels depending on the mode of assessment, with test results deviating by as much as three levels lower than the school target for that student. a key feature of the class was that verbal responses by some students were vastly superior to their written responses particular when the task required sound logical reasoning and for this reason most students had teacher assessments that correlated more closely to their school target level then their test assessments. . organisation of consent and ethical issues the appropriate ethics form (appendix a), was submitted to the university of hertfordshire and approved. permission to undertake the research was obtained from the head teacher and governors of the school. the aim and design of the research was explained as fully as possible, who the potential participants were and what the possible safeguards would be. they were also assured that in all research reports the school would be anonymous, and participant identities and contributions kept anonymous and confidential. a letter of information was provided for the parent or guardian of all the students that were invited to take part and informed consent was requested. parents were able to contact me for further clarification and speak to me in person at school reporting days, and in all cases confidentiality was explained and guaranteed. any decision by participants not to take part was treated with integrity and respect. students were asked in writing and in person if they would like to contribute to the data collection process, and what was involved was set out in both forms of communication. it was made clear that they did not have to take part, and if they did choose to participate in my research that they would have the opportunity to withdraw that offer at any time. when inviting the students to participate, care was taken to ensure that they were not pressurised to take part. the purpose and content of the activities was explained to the potential participants, and my position as a researcher was explained. the participants were given time to think about the proposal, and were given guidelines about how to seek more information. i was aware that sharing personal stories could be emotional, particularly when recalling memories that were uncomfortable or embarrassing. disclosing these stories to a researcher is risky and requires you to have trust that the reader will not do or say anything that will make you regret the action of sharing a story. because of this, collecting data as narrative requires a trust relationship between the researcher and the participant. to help alleviate possible uncomfortable feelings, after each workshop, i allocated time for students to talk, either in private or in groups, to discuss their experiences encountered during the storytelling process. in all planning and subsequent reflections, where there was a possibility of emotional or delicate issues i adopted a collaborative approach to my critical reflections. this included discussions with my supervisors and informed school colleagues who helped me plan for and, if necessary, deal appropriately with sensitive issues. i did consider that, if needed, it might be pertinent for me to seek out a more experienced researcher who was experienced with narrative research and who could give me advice with my planning and analysis, however, this did not become necessary. any negativity caused by the process was addressed and any future planning was aimed at safeguarding against repetition of this. objection to the use of any data was considered and if it was appropriate that data was withdrawn. students and colleagues were advised that during the research references made to participants would be anonymous, replacing participant names with an alternative such as student a or a story name. i adopted an informal approach when talking with mathematics teachers, making use of convenient opportunities. with their permission, i attempted to write accurate accounts of the discussion, and in each case i asked them to check the accuracy of the account. the student data was locked in a secure storage environment and was not accessible by any person other than myself. the data will be shredded on completion of my thesis. this report is for the purpose of communicating the research findings and it will be part of my thesis. my expectation is that aspects of the report will be disseminated to parents, school governors, mathematics teachers, teaching assistants and training bodies in the form of a published paper and/or seminars. as these are all public domains i am aware that the privacy of individuals is respected by; a) preserving anonymity and b) respecting confidentiality even when this results in seemingly important data being omitted from the report. some stories can be extremely personal and it is possible that disclosing a student story may cause unexpected discomfort or distress of an emotional nature. to safe guard for this, care was taken to ensure that no participant suffered discomfort during or after the research, however, if this did occur i had planned to stop the research process and talk through the cause of the discomfort with the student. in addition i would have informed their parent/guardian of the situation, and if needed, i would have sought advice from the school duty of care system that has the expertise to help. during the research there were no events that caused the students noticeable discomfort, although two students decided initially not to share their story with me but changed their mind at a later date. . phase workshop details to facilitate the storytelling workshop i collected together large sheets of white paper, tubs of coloured pencils, rulers, rubbers and then set off for the class room. the students saw my load and asked ‘are we going to draw today?’ ‘yes, if you would like to’ i replied and then proceeded to explain the task. i started by explaining that i am a student also and that i go to college, i explained that i was interested in researching how school students feel about their experiences with mathematics. after answering their questions as openly as i could i explained the task. the students were asked to organise themselves into groups of three or four students and i explained that if they did not want to take part, that was perfectly fine, they could do something completely different. at this stage i did not specify what that might be as i did not want it to influence their decision to take part. the direction for the task of creating a story was deliberately left very open-ended, and i did not specify who or what should be in the story or where it might take place. the students organised themselves into groups and started to create their story. there was a general buzz in the room and the students seemed generally interested in the task. in each group, certain students took the lead and appeared to be compiling the story, the other students sat in a group around them adding comments, discussing points and chipping into the process intermittently. the atmosphere in the room seemed light and pleasant, and nobody indicated that they wanted to withdraw from the process. there were nine groups; they produced five cartoon type artwork pieces, three written stories, and one group created a story that was a mixture of both cartoon and story. in addition, one girl asked to present a drama of her experiences last year. at the end of the session some students asked if they could present their work to the rest of the class, the class voted that this was agreeable and two stories and the drama were presented. the other groups did not indicate that they wanted to share their story, however all stories were given to me and the students said they were happy for me to keep them. . phase storytelling workshops . introduction the purpose of phase was to address some of my questions and concerns that had arisen during phase . i chose to focus on two particular questions which were: a) would a storytelling workshop be equally successful with students that felt differently about mathematics or had experienced a different type of struggle/failure with mathematics? b) how would the storytelling workshop run in the classes of other mathematic teachers? these questions led to the following set of aims for phase . the first aim was to try the storytelling workshop with a different age group and with students that may be experiencing a lack of success in school mathematics. the second aim for phase was to have less personal involvement while the workshop is taking place. the third aim was to liaise with my colleagues in the mathematics department while they try the storytelling workshop in their classrooms. i also felt that i would like to include student recordings and interviews in my data collection. my next step was to draw up an action plan and starting points for my storytelling workshop that could be shared with colleagues interested in trialling the workshops (appendix b). two colleagues were interested in taking part and facilitated the workshops with their classes. . methods i chose to run the storytelling workshop with two year classes. these students were either sixteen years old or very close to that age. they were nearing the end of their ks secondary school education and approximately two months away from taking their gcse exams. these classes had been compiled at the start of year , organised by student exam results produced at the end of the previous academic year. all these students were underperforming according to school data. by this, i mean that they had a target grade that had been worked out from their primary school achievements but they had been performing below that grade in school exams. it was considered by the student achievement officers that these students would probably not achieve a grade c or better in mathematics in their gcse exam at the end of the academic year. the number of students in the two groups was kept smaller than in a typical school mathematics class, each class had twenty students and it was my responsibility to boost their performance with the aim that they would meet their targets. the students were well briefed about this situation and therefore they were experiencing a great deal of pressure from school and home. as these students were new to me, i had made the strategic decision that i would teach them for a term before we got involved in a storytelling workshop. the rationale behind this decision was based on my assumptions about the relationship needed between teacher and student for the workshop to be successful. however, i neglected to think about the possible benefits of working with the student after they had shared their mathematical story and found that i had little time, after the workshop had taken place, to adjust my practice in light of the new knowledge gained. i now know that this was a wasted opportunity and in phase , the story telling workshop took place much earlier in my teaching relationship with that class. my research experience during the pilot helped shape some of my data collection plans. i now knew, that ideally after working with the stories, it would be useful to go back to the authors and ask them to tell me more about their story and any thoughts they had about taking part in the storytelling workshop. this was also recorded as a lesson learnt in a piece of research carried out by thompson and hall ( : ), ‘speaking with the artist is generative and not to be omitted from the research.’ mitchell ( ) also discussed the involvement of the participants after the initial data collection phase, these ‘production texts’ allow the participants to talk about their work and are often elicited during follow-up interviews. to facilitate this the students were invited to go into another room and record a brief description of what their story was saying and any thoughts about the workshop. . organisation of phase storytelling workshop the students were invited by letter to take part in a storytelling workshop. they were also informed on the day of the workshop that participation was entirely voluntary and they were given a comfortable way to abstain from the process. students were invited to create their own stories about their mathematical world. the session started with me reading a short extract from ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night’, speaking briefly about the context of the extract and the organisation of the story telling workshop. the room was set up with different areas to work in and each area had a variety of paper, pens and colours, scissors and glue. in addition each area had a range of alternative activities for those students who did not want to write their story. i selected the alternative activities on the basis that they were mathematical and that, in my opinion, they were enjoyable to work on. students were told that they could work anywhere they wanted in the classroom. . my diary extract one thing that happened as an afterthought proved to be important to understanding more about the storytelling process. i had a period of reflection time during the storytelling workshop. i had made a conscious effort not to get overly involved in what the students were doing. my plan was to circulate once during each session allowing the students to ask any questions or share what they were doing. this plan was informed by the pilot workshop where on reflection i was worried that i had been too visible and that this might have influenced their stories. i had planned to spend the time absorbing the actions of the students whilst taking part in the workshop and in the midst of this process discovered that i had no real knowledge of what it might feel like to be asked to share my story. i decided that the best insight into the process was in fact to create my own story. i chose to create a story board about my education and set to work with a pencil, colours and a large sheet of plain paper. what i discovered was invaluable to the research process. the idea of creating a story was difficult, so i stopped thinking about it and just started creating a story board about my life. very quickly the process became extremely personal, i was recording events that had a particular influence on me and my attitude towards schooling, family and critical events in my life. i was particularly concerned that the students might come over and ask me a question about my story, i would answer with honesty but i felt very exposed. no student came over they were all busy with their own work. i was glad that i had chosen to keep a low profile regarding the creation of their stories; i could appreciate how intrusive my interest might have seemed. . ethical issues i adopted the same precautions as in the phase stage of the data collection allowing time for participants to speak to me during and after the workshop. the stories were private and were only seen by others in the group when the author chose to do so. in most cases the students did not put their names on the story, and although i knew who had written a particular story this information was not readily available to others. to try to be less visible in the room i decided that it would be useful for me to create my own story from my memories of school. this worked well as it stopped me carrying out my usual teacher behaviour of moving around the room attempting to take stock of everything. unexpectedly, the process of writing my own story had other outcomes as described above. . the workshops of colleagues at most of my planning steps i had discussed my ideas with two members of the mathematics department. the two colleagues were ones that i was in the habit of working closely with and they had both shown an interest in the storytelling workshop and asked if they could try it out with their classes. this was not an unusual request because we often planned together and shared ideas and lessons and i was very pleased that they wanted to carry out the workshop with their classes because it added to the credibility of the process. we sat down to talk about starting points, ground rules and the materials that needed to be available. they each carried out the workshops with a class of students; the students worked in groups and produced a range of picture boards, narratives and dramas. the feedback from both teachers was positive, both saying that they found the process enjoyable and the resulting stories very interesting and informative. as the aim of this part of the research was to test the transferability of the story telling workshop in other classrooms, the stories produced in these workshops were not included as data. i feel that it was important to test whether other teachers could carry out these workshops successfully with their students because an important outcome for this research is that the workshops could be used in other classrooms to give students a way to communicate their opinion on school experiences. . phase conclusion at the end of phase i had sixteen stories that had been written by my own students plus feedback from colleagues regarding the storytelling workshop as a process and teaching tool. i put them carefully away in art folders ready for my first chance to start the task of recording and analysing their content. this invitation to make a short recording about their stories was accepted by five of the students; many of students took longer to write their story and did not want to spend any time on the recording. two students also accepted an invitation to take part in a short interview about the meaning and production of their stories. speaking to my colleagues who had facilitated the story workshop in their classroom was also important. i felt that this data would provide evaluations and insights that will inevitably enrich the research process and help me reflect on the powerful influence the stories have on me. . phase . introduction the purpose of phase was to address my concerns after completing phase and . once establishing in phase that students were more than happy to share their stories in a variety of formats, i used the phase section of the research to look more deeply at the content of the stories. entering into phase , i had a slightly different focus for the student story workshop; it would take place earlier in the teaching year so that subsequent interactions, behaviours and any developing relationships could be observed. my target participants were two groups of students who, during the last three years, had not achieved the target grades set by the assessment system of the school. i assigned myself these two groups as my teaching classes and facilitated a storytelling work shop a month afterwards allowing the students the chance to get to know me a little first. . my diary extract. i was surprised by my reaction to the stories produced during phase . it was different than the way i had reacted reading the phase stories. the reading process felt personal and i felt a strong bond with the person portrayed in the story. i felt frustration and regret that i had not known certain things about the student earlier in the teaching year. it seemed a waste of opportunity to understand so much near the end of our time together. in response, i felt that my teaching and interactions towards a particular student would in general, be strengthened by knowing their story towards the start of our time together and hence i decided that the story telling workshop should happen earlier during the academic year. i started to consider the benefits, for the author, of telling their story. more questions were starting to form as important: could these stories be used to reconstruct their realities, to help them come to terms with conflict and discomfort? do the stories have an influence on voice and identity? these questions, in addition to all my initial questions, formed the basis for my inquiry in phase of this research. i found myself focusing on what the stories were teaching me and how these stories were influencing my actions and teaching provision for the author of the story. . methods i felt that the next phase of this research should build on the questions that had arisen during the previous phases. in addition, i decided my sample should be students who were not preparing for an imminent exam and that the timing of the workshop should allow me more time to work with the student after they have shared their story. i chose a sample of students that consisted of a group of year students (age and ) and a group of year students (age and ). both groups had been highlighted by the school as making very little mathematical progress from entering the school at age until now. the number of students in each group was kept small, (less than ), so that they could receive as much teacher help as possible during mathematic lessons. the year group consisted of students and the year consisted of students. . my diary extract i find it pertinent at this point to consider the personal dialogue that is on- going throughout this research. i ask myself ‘have i got the students best interests at heart?’ there are two reasons that influenced the selection of groups for my phase storytelling workshop. the first is based on my belief that everybody can, and should, learn mathematics. i define learning mathematics as a fusion of acquiring an understanding about particular mathematical concepts and gaining the confidence to feel comfortable demonstrating this understanding. i also believe that it is the latter part of that union that underpins my philosophy when teaching mathematics, create space for the comfortable confidence and the learning will happen. evolving from this stance is then the political influence, the lack of a mathematical qualification can block career pathways and hence, all students should be allowed the best possible chance to achieve the qualification they want and/or need for their future. the second reason is influenced by school politics and league tables. as a leader of a mathematics department i am constantly under pressure to improve the statistics reported for school league tables. i have monitored the student progress at my school for many years, and have found that historically, students who are constantly underperforming in maths throughout their secondary school education often fail to achieve that much coveted c grade in gcse mathematics. i believe that attention to these students could make a profound difference to school statistics. so although i am adamant that i have the student’s best interest at heart i must also state that it is in my interest also. . organisation of phase storytelling workshop i built on the classroom planning that had worked in the previous phases, setting out around the room workstations that contained materials to use when creating the stories plus other items for those that did not want to take part. i explained to the class that i was a student and that i was interested in their stories about learning mathematics. i explained that they did not need to take part if they did not want to and gave them some instruction regarding the materials placed around the room and the time i had allowed for them to create stories. both classes created stories and appeared to enjoy the process. some students chatted as they worked; other kept very quiet and worked in private. i did not circulate. we used one hour slots to produce the stories. some students were absent for part of the time. i had learnt from the previous phases that a lot of time can be used up decorating the story page, often before the story is written. i asked them to get their story in place first before they concentrated on the colouring and decorating. the stories produced were mainly written texts with drawings around the outside. three were in a fairy tale style, two were songs, one was written as a poem. the rest were accounts of memories and events. nobody asked to share their story with the class, but one student asked if she could have her story back and did not want anyone else to see it. i put it in an envelope and returned it to her and a few days later she gave it back to me and asked me to keep it. one group produced a second story six months later. this was called the next chapter and they were asked to write how they would like their mathematics story to continue. during the process the questions that played on my mind were similar to ones in other phases. why am i attracted by some stories, and how do i set up an analysis that is inclusive of all my students? . ethical implications again in this phase, i built in time at the end of each storytelling session for the students to talk to me about any particular issues and several did stay behind to speak to me. my main concern during this phase was how best to deal with the stories that contained negative facts about other teachers, particularly those teachers that i have responsibility for? it is important to me that i respect both the integrity and professional position of my staff, and i firmly believe that teachers in general, enter the profession because they care about young people. yet it is important that i hear what my students are saying and that their position and opinion is respected. in this phase, one story focused almost entirely on the behaviour of a teacher and how the author felt about it. the student author was clearly distressed by the episode and was experiencing strong emotions about teachers in general. other stories featured teachers shouting and not being in control of classroom behaviour. from my perspective, there was no story content describing teacher behaviour that came as a surprise. i was already aware of the staffing issues within the department and these members of staff were already receiving support. as stated in chapter three, many details contained in the stories were a private matter between author and reader and it would be unethical and unnecessary for me to share this information with others. however, i felt that the strong negative emotions expressed by one story writer and the obvious discomfort that she had experienced in a mathematics classroom needed to be addressed. i waited for a comfortable opportunity to talk to this student and had decided that if the situation could not be resolved in this way i would seek guidance from colleagues with a more professional understanding of counselling. . conclusion the data produced by my research participants was varied and rich in content and form. i found myself spending hours reading the stories and dwelling on what they might mean to me personally, and how this knowledge helped in my quest to improve my teaching practice. to focus myself on developing this specific research project i realised that any analytical framework that i decided to work with must address the research questions that this work is developed around. the potential danger in this approach is that the stories seem to be uniquely individual, and in looking for pre-decided themes and patterns, i could find that i disregard something important particularly if it only occurs in one story. to try to reduce the risk of overlooking significant areas of interest that address my research questions i designed a data analysis plan the uses the ideas of triangulation (bell, ) to approach the data analysis in a number of different ways. this approach i have described as a hybrid approach, a name taken from the work of fereday and muir-cochrane ( ). the term triangulation refers to a strategy to improve the validity of research findings by seeking convergence among differing methodologies and data sources. the primary purpose of triangulation is to find agreement even when the methods are varied. however, this is difficult when dealing with qualitative studies. in cases like mine, triangulation is used by including in the research more than one data type, with a view to compensate for potential weaknesses that are inherent in any particular data. this way triangulation is used with an aim to exploit the strength of a particular data type and neutralise the weaknesses of others. the next chapter develops my data analysis model which draws on the strengths of thematic analysis (fereday and muir-cochrane, ), intuition and teaching experience, culminating in a teacher narrative that describes the powerful role of the stories and the influence they have on practice. chapter : data analysis model . introduction the aim of this chapter is to present a rationale for my approach to data analysis and give an overview of the developing intuitive approach. in the spirit of methodological inventiveness (dadds and hart, ), and my need to search for an approach that would serve to echo student and teacher voice, i developed an intuitive inquiry model that was complemented by my strengths, experience and desire to represent in a liberating fashion, the voice of my students. the diagram below represents the components of this intuitive inquiry approach. figure : intuitive inquiry diagram intuitive inquiry approach intuition, reactions, feelings, thoughts internel reflexive, critical debate (imaginal dialogue) my diary extracts classroom observations thematic analysis content analysis critical incidents teaching experience . intuitive inquiry the powerful stories convinced me that i needed to look at a different form of data analysis, one that had a place for the way the stories had worked on me. i found my solace in the ideas of intuitive inquiry (anderson, ), and it is through this way of working that the stories started to become powerful mediums by which i could negotiate my understanding of the relationships between both teacher and student, and student and mathematics. the model of intuitive inquiry proposed by anderson ( ) correlated closely with the way that i had instinctively started to work with my stories. it offered me a structured yet flexible approach that recognised and utilised my extensive experience of teaching school mathematics. i adapted the main techniques of anderson’s model to suit the research methodology that underpinned my work and the type of data collected for this research. i also utilised the process of thematic analysis to complement and support this intuitive way of working. this multiple way of working with the data highlighted my insider/ outsider positioning, my diary extracts creating subjective data shortly after reading the student story data, yet my analysis of the stories away from the classroom giving me the opportunity to analyse the data as a pseudo outsider research. using and adapting the intuitive inquiry work of rosemary anderson ( ) helped me compile a model of intuitive inquiry analysis that i could apply to my existing action research process. it was my intention throughout this research that the method of analysis used was one that would preserve and celebrate participant voice, expose the powerful emotions communicated and transferred by the stories, and represent the diverse forms of stories created by the research participants. during the development of my analysis method i experimented with a variety of analytical approaches but always felt that they fell short of representing a) the complex subtleties communicated by the participant, and b) the emotion and transformative experience that touched me as i read my student’s creative texts. figure : intuitive inquiry model cycle cycle cycle cycle cycle a n d e rs o n ( ) the researcher clarifies the research topic through a creative process the intuitive inquirer reflects on the topics in light of extant literature and prepares a list of preliminary lenses. collecting data and preparing prescriptive reports transforming and revising interpretive lenses integration of findings and theory building w h a t i d id select texts are relevant to the research inquiry. during phase (pilot phase) of the research certain stories caught my attention and forced me to reflect on my interactions with the student, and on my practice. i repeatedly returned to the stories over a period of time engaging with the stories on a regular basis recording both objective and subjective thoughts, impressions, intuitions, observations, daydreams and conversations. in addition i developed a set of questions to apply to each story (pg ) and also used the process of thematic analysis (bryman ) to look for similarities. eventually when the process felt exhausted i compiled a list of the main themes that feature in the data. explore extant literature. using the key themes and ideas arising from my reflections on the stories in cycle . i reflected on these with knowledge drawn from relevant literature and my experience of these areas. collect data i collected new data in the phase and phase section of the action research cycle. the selection of data sources was designed to test ideas, address certain questions and challenge certain assumptions. work with the data i repeated the processes of imaginal dialogue and other analysis methods with these new stories from phase and , rethinking and revising the analytical lenses developed in cycle and . write a report in this cycle i finalised my understandings of the data analysis outcomes, thoughts and ideas from each phase. using these i compiled a report, interpreting the main themes and their implications for teacher practice and future research. . intuitive inquiry step one using phase , the pilot phase of my action research model, i examined the available texts. these were in the form of student stories, my observations and events noting which in stories in particular resonated with my original understanding about school students learning mathematics. i also found myself emotional drawn to stories that contained pictures and/or text that conveyed student emotion. most of the stories surprised me, i felt that there was a great deal about these students and their mathematics that i had not appreciated before reading the stories. all student stories in this phase were utilised as data, yet i felt it necessary to think deeply about why some stories played on my mind and i have tried to communicate this in chapter in my discussion of themes, and in chapter where i select individual stories to discuss. i spent a great deal of time pondering why particular stories seemed particularly powerful and played on my mind, and i now accept that, as advised in the intuitive inquiry approach, my intuition was being stimulated and they were those that identified with my passion as a researcher and mathematics teacher. reflecting daily on these selected texts i recorded objective and subjective impressions, observations, intuitions and questions, including why i thought these texts had caught my attention. after a period of time i began to understand that the stories that i was pondering about focused on students that displayed behaviour that indicated that they struggled with their mathematics at some stage, and their stories suggested that these students were fighting to belong to the world of mathematics and that they were in the process of shaping a mathematical identity. from these i prepared some headings by which i could examine new data collected from different participants. examining my assumptions and values helped me to embrace an imaginal dialogue, which in turn influenced my selection of groups in the next phases of this research. . intuitive inquiry step two i returned to my notes made from the literature that i had reviewed to date, i examined new literature relevant to the topics that had appeared in the selected step one texts and actively sought to support, refute and examine the story perspectives that became my headings for inquiry. my literature review in chapter two is the resulting discussion that stemmed from my work undertaken in step two of the intuitive inquiry process. at this stage the work was still very fluid, moving back and forward between my ideas drawn from data and experience and my understandings of extent literature. this process allowed me to simultaneously prepare my questions and headings that would drive the next section of my research. . intuitive inquiry step three i identified the research participants that i wanted to collect new data from, facilitated the storytelling workshops with the groups, collected data with respect to my actions, feelings, thoughts and intuitions both during the data collection process, afterwards while reading the student stories and in subsequent interactions with the authors of the stories. at the same time two of my colleagues also facilitated the storytelling workshop with their own students. this complemented the phase and sections of the action research process. at each step i prepared diary reports with as much description as possible. . intuitive inquiry step four using a variety of data analysis techniques i set about looking through the data for patterns, correlation of ideas, and key themes in order to modify, refute, reorganise and expand my pre-understanding of the topics raised in the data. at each step i used a reflexive process to examine my assumptions, bias and intuitive breakthroughs, building an imaginal dialogue into the data collection process. i spent a considerable time moving back and forth between student stories, reflexive writing and discussions with peers, sorting and resorting data, and examining extant literature that were in steps two, three and four of the intuitive cycle. . intuitive inquiry step five eventually, with great difficulty, i moved away from the data collection, interpretation and reflexive dialogue processes and considered all aspects of the study, paying attention to include both objective and subjective findings. embracing this research genre, i set out to communicate findings in an embodied manner, derived from my own personal values, assumptions and experience. woven throughout the findings i have included extracts and images from participant’s stories and my intuitive insights in the form of my diary extracts. the purpose of this style of communication was to retain and portray the fullness of the participant student voice and my personal perspective and knowledge gained throughout the research. . thematic analysis it is recommended that the intuitive inquiry approach is combined with other, more explicit and confirmatory approaches (anderson, ). i had originally set out to work with a content analysis approach to data collection but i found that coding and dissecting the stories into very small sections had the effect of losing the actual story. this process seemed to skew the data into something that was unrecognisable and meaningless and did not fit well with a narrative approach to the research. it seemed that sections of the stories used contradictory expressions that made more sense if kept as a theme rather than separated into components. braun and clarke ( ) described thematic analysis as an approach to qualitative research that is deliberate, reflective and thorough. i used a thematic analysis approach to data analysis on one group of student stories in each phase. i approached the thematic analysis in two ways. for one method, i used a scissors to separate the stories into sentences or clusters of sentences depending on the content, for example, if the next sentence was directly related to the previous i kept them together. the strips of paper containing the sentences for one group of students were then shuffled to ensure that my selection was random and i entered a sorting process, putting sentences together if they seemed related to each other. i noted the themes that emerged and at a much later date repeated the process. this process was also executed by colleagues to give some fresh thoughts to the process. i did not mix the sentences for particular groups because i had noticed early during the work that particular groups had influences that were particular to the group, for example a problem with a particular student or teacher. this information was not directly relevant to my line of inquiry and i wanted to keep it visible within the group so that i could make a decision at a later date about its contribution to my data analysis. in addition to breaking the stories into sections, i also read them as a whole noting down emerging themes. these themes were intertwined with my impressions of the particular class and my reflections of our classroom interactions. they were laced with my subjective understandings, my intuitions and my dreams for the future of that class. generally i would be alarmed that the researcher is using such a personal, subjective and obviously biased way to view data, but i knew that ethically my intentions were in the interest of improving what i do for the students. in support of my action research approach, this form of data analysis drives a reflexive approach with a view to alter practice through an understanding of the needs of a particular class. this process of noting emerging themes from stories was repeated after a few weeks. the themes were then organised into groups that appeared to have common links and this also was repeated several times at a later date. eventually, when the process seemed exhausted and no new themes were emerging i began to explore how the resulting themes in both thematic analysis methods related to my research questions. . conclusion the data analysis model evolved and adapted with progress through the action research phases. there were many false starts that included a coding process, recording and counting positive and negative attribution to mathematics and its learning, and looking for repetition of words. these ideas and the contributing work seemed to move me away from the story lines and the messages contained in the stories, yet served an invaluable place in familiarising me with the stories and helping me develop an analysis plan that celebrated individuality, student voice and the powerful influence that the stories had on subsequent teaching and learning for those students. in the next chapters i will develop the final phase of my four cycle action research. chapter , , and contain examples of selected student stories from phases , and and the development of the related data analysis that took place in the final phase. chapter : data analysis phase pilot . introduction: my diary extract i enter this section of my research like a beginner meandering through a new library. i feel overwhelmed by the question that my colleagues and interested parties ask, ‘how are you going to analyse your data?’ i want to be flippant and say that i will read it and think about it, i will manipulate and try to learn from it. but i know in my heart that ignorance is bliss, and if i just take this path through my meandering i will be in danger of over simplifying through ignorance analysis is spoken of as though it is a recipe to achieve something, such as; ‘how will you bake that cake? i wish that applying a series of steps taken from a known model would convince me that i my objective would be fulfilled, namely to connect my thinking and provide some insight into the personal difficulties encountered by students in their mathematics lessons. each time i move forward i find myself lost in a strange place with no inter- connecting routes to a familiar ground. yet, i recognise analysis to be intertwined with every thought i have about my research. it is a process that has a place in every step of the research, from the initial thoughts and planning right through to the final conclusion in my write up. perhaps that is why i find the question ‘how are you going to analyse your data?’ so confusing, it is because i am already analysing, my research analysis is not a separate part of the process. it is just so natural that i cannot name it, yet i must for the clarity of this research. the student stories are situated in the present and are written for me, their mathematics teacher. they elicit a reading in the present and any delay in this process fills me with guilt. what i am trying to say is that inevitably an analysis occurs at the reading of the stories and the subsequent thinking and actions that occur in retrospect is elicited by this initial analysis. my search through the relevant literature serves to help me make sense of this seemingly knee jerk analysis and perhaps how student stories about learning mathematics could contribute to improving the practice of mathematics teachers in general. in this section i describe my path through my data analysis, highlighting changes in direction and where literature has influenced and developed my response to ‘how will you analyse your data?’ the student stories are presented as they were written, their grammar is preserved but some spellings are corrected for ease of reading. layered intermittently between the stories are extracts of my diary which are my reflections written during the research period. i cannot speak for the students, i can only speak for myself, yet my story cannot be separated from the student story, what is inside me, also shows on the outside through my intuitions and actions. i will read and think, i will manipulate and try to learn, it is an on-going reflexive process that tells its own story. each story and its corresponding diary extracts will be supported by an inter-text which maps out the literature, my thoughts, the political climate, and my field notes supporting many of the ideas put forward. by moving between a student story and that of the teacher, i hope to create an understanding that does justice to the students who took part in this research and simultaneously broaden my own understanding as a teacher, of the influences that my thoughts and subsequent actions have on the student learning in a mathematics classroom. the style of presentation is my effort not to drown the student stories with the sound of my own voice. the aim for this style of presentation is to include many voices and to offer various levels of knowing through which a reader can make their own sense. in this way meaning is not dominated by any voice, thus allowing the reader to make their own interpretation relevant to their experiences. . intuitive inquiry first step: using phase stories to compile initial lenses the purpose of the pilot phase of this research was to investigate the use of a story telling workshop as a method for collecting rich descriptive data in a relatively non- intrusive way. i feel the outcome of this phase was very encouraging, the atmosphere of the workshop was positive and the students created nine stories that varied in format. in addition to the original purpose, the stories produced rich and thought-provoking data, some of which caught me by surprise and attracted my attention because the stories challenged my assumptions about my practice as a teacher. i have always strived to be a careful, considerate teacher who promotes a view of mathematics that echoes my values and beliefs. these stories, by challenging my assumptions, prompted me to enter into a personal critique of my classroom practice and the model of mathematics that i was promoting in my day to day practice. at first i felt a little deflated at the thought that i might be promoting, in my practice, some of the images and teacher models depicted in the stories, but i quickly began to understand that i had been given an opportunity to look, all but briefly, inside the world of a student studying mathematics, a process that could potentially be used to improve the practice of all mathematics teachers. an analysis of the content of the stories had not been part of my planning for this phase of the research, but the draw of the stories, the emotion they contained and their potential to transform my thinking about the mathematics classroom made them ideal texts to select for the first step of an intuitive inquiry process. the pilot phase of the research produced eight stories and one drama. each story was given a title based on a feature of the story. acting on the advice of mitchell ( ) i set up a digital archive of the student drawings. the eight stories can be seen in appendix c, the drama was a spontaneous contribution and was not recorded and therefore i have not included it in the pilot data. originally, in my first attempt to obtain ethics approval i had said that i would like to video the student workshops and any subsequent data that was produced. i had included this in my planning because i felt that there was a possibility that the data night be visual and therefore should be recorded for accuracy and reader interpretation. it was felt, by the ethics committee that this data should not be recorded and therefore that section of the ethics application was withdrawn. in light of this, i could not include an accurate account of the drama produced in the workshop. the student that created the drama also contributed to one of the eight other stories and three years later independently wrote her adult mathematics story which forms part of the concluding chapter. i looked at the stories daily as recommended by the intuitive inquiry model, recording my thoughts, ideas, impressions, intuitions and surprises, and over a period of time several themes began to feature in my daily notes. i wanted to be playful with my exploration of the data, testing out analysis methods to get a feel for what type of analysis seemed to work. by considering the objective content of the stories i entered into a procedure that used coding (bell, ), to highlight any patterns and connections in themes. this is a technique used to extract information from a body of material by systematically and objectively identifying special characteristics of the material (bell, ). the characteristics i chose to identify were critical incidents about learning mathematics that were communicated through the student stories. i considered that these incidents were memorable to the students evident by their inclusion in the story, and hence could be considered as important data. characteristics of learning mathematics that were identified through this process were classroom climate, the role of the teacher, student and parent beliefs about mathematics, anxiety, emotions in general, moods, motivation, personal causation, and student values. aspects of this content analysis were very useful in the identification of institutional and individual teacher practice, and identified common themes that, as a teacher and school manager, i felt i needed to address. one particular theme highlighted by the students during this pilot phase was their dislike of having many different mathematics teachers; it would seem that they would prefer to stick with one teacher regardless of the quality of that teaching. in the current educational climate, in which there is a shortage of mathematics teachers, this aspect of the research associated with a constant changing of teachers is an area that i could explore in more detail. from the pilot phase, i began to understand that knowing the particulars of student experience and opinion could inform my practice as a school manager and as a classroom teacher. in addition, my subjective impressions were noted as they occurred, these feelings, intuitions and ideas were compiled across the stories and i kept a diary of any writing that surfaced during imaginal dialogue. i then, put together a list of questions that i could apply to each of the stories to help me look at their content in more depth. these questions were compiled from notes that i had jotted down during a number of literature reviews on the subject of mathematics and school mathematics. applying a set of standard questions also helped me overcome the emotional draw that i felt when reading some of the stories allowing me to distance myself a little from the data. i looked at each story in turn, making a comment under each question heading which was recorded on the computer. each story was given a different colour and printed out. under each question heading i then compiled the various comments. the list of questions that i decided to apply to the student story was influenced by the ideas of symbolic interactionism. the conceptual framework that drives this research design is one that views learning mathematics as a social act and in my attempt to devise different ways of looking at the data i was attracted to the work of blumer ( ), who is responsible for coining the term symbolic interactionism. i became aware of symbolic interactionism through the work of fiona walls ( : ) while i was looking for research about students learning mathematics. her research ‘explored the ways in which primary school children developed understandings about mathematics, mathematical 'learning' and 'knowing' and themselves as learners of mathematics (walls, : ). this was established by looking at ways in which children made meaning through social interactions with mathematical learning environments and how this influenced the learning of mathematics. the study carried out by walls ( ) excited me because it was the first work that i had found that seemed to have close correlation with the purpose of my investigation. through the work of walls ( ) i was introduced to the ‘social world of pupil career’ by pollard and filer ( ), which is a report on several research projects that studied the ‘social world’ of pupils and in particular the ways in which children interpret and then respond to classroom, playground and family contexts. a key theoretical influence for both these researchers was symbolic interactionism which has a focus on the way meaning is developed through social processes. from a symbolic interactionist point of view, children make sense of mathematics in their social world by means of negotiated meanings, and these are expressed through understandings, feelings, opinions and beliefs, by way of social interaction through shared activities, events and experiences. the use of a symbolic interactionism perspective for looking at my research seemed a sensible way for me to look at the data because this approach focuses on the creation of meaning as people interact together in both verbal and non-verbal communication. in addition, while the approach recognised the individuality and therefore uniqueness of each person, (in this case the students learning mathematics), it also acknowledged the importance of social interactions with family, peers, teachers and environmental objects such (books, teachers, classrooms and work), with which each individual negotiates personal meanings through interactions with others (walls, ). symbolic interactionism attempts to probe into the hiddenness of the structures and processes that generate their mathematical world encouraging a sociological attitude by which to uncover and make strange the features of a child’s social world of learning mathematics (yackal, ). the questions i compiled are listed below and were used as a framework for looking at the stories in more detail. . list of questions applied to my data how do the students’ stories represent school mathematics? what seems to be important in the world of school mathematics? what is the story saying about the classroom discourse? is there evidence of taken-for-granted classroom practices? what emotions are displayed in this story? how does the student appear to feel about mathematics? what is the story saying about the school? what do the stories say about mathematics? what is the story saying about the teacher or teachers? is there any indication of cultural and social influences? what is the story saying about past experiences with mathematics/ mathematics lessons/ learning/assessment? what is the story saying about learning (mathematics)? who are the dominant players in the story, what is this saying about power? what is the role of adults in the story? where does ‘identity’ fit with these stories? how is language used in the story? a process of thematic analysis, intuitive notes and applying a variety of questions led me to compile several lists of themes. appendix d shows the preliminary work applying the questions to the pilot phase stories. the process of moving from the questions to emerging themes took several months because i needed time to move backwards and forwards between both my interpretations of how each story addressed the questions and the whole story content as a complete unit. each question had a list of statements that represented my interpretations of the stories relevant to that individual question (appendix d), and these were colour coded by story so that i could return to the particular story periodically which then allowed me to check that my interpretations had not changed. for each question, i then produced spider type diagrams, grouping and regrouping the statement listed under that question, exploring possible thematic links between the statements. after each exploration i returned to each story as a whole looking at the pictures and text that addressed these themes. initially i had many themes but i found that many of the themes were similar and could eventually be placed under one heading. both the objective content and my subjective thoughts began to have links and after a period of time i settled on the following five headings as my main lenses for the next steps of an intuitive inquiry data analysis process. i have included a discussion of each theme to give my reader an idea of the data and thinking that created them. a) the faces of mathematics b) power and status of mathematics c) freedom d) the culture of school mathematics e) relationships within each of the selected themes above, i sorted the many descriptions relating to the theme into groups, recording my reflexive ideas and thoughts. this process was repeated on several occasions rearranging the connections between the statements, all the time jotting down my ideas, imaginings, objective and subjective insights, impressions, intuitions, observations, daydreams and conversations, both with myself and others. i have included a few extracts from the data and some of my intuitive notes to help the reader follow the data analysis process. . the faces of mathematics: pilot data the first of my perspectives from the stories focuses on the view of mathematics portrayed in the student stories. this i have called ‘the faces of mathematics’, the name of the theme is terminology that supports embodied writing and an intuitive realisation that, for many students, mathematics is a complex social activity which presents itself in multiple forms, each form presenting a unique perspective of what it is like to learn mathematics. the inspiration for the name originated from a paper written by hoyles et al ( ). what mathematics is to students varies greatly, often within the same story, and is often influenced by their feelings towards the activity they are taking part in. story (phd) shows mathematics to be a about numbers and operations. the pictures suggest it is something that is told to you. it is portrayed as making the student unhappy and appears to be something to fear. the blue masked mathematics is presented as an opponent, perhaps an enemy and appears strong, male and needs to be overcome. in story (swiss roll) the story also depicts mathematics as numbers and operations in a relationship. this student also seems to be unhappy with mathematics. she has drawn angry faces, sad eyes and startled or confused expressions and in another place she describes mathematics as baffling. mathematics seems to be a process by which students are ranked and this student has placed herself in the position of last. there is an indication that mathematics is about right and wrong answers. the story has symbols referring to prison, lack of freedom and ‘no go areas’, this gives me an impression of imposed sanctions, not belonging and a lack of freedom. story (cinderella) presents a face of mathematics that is about thinking skills, knowledge, preparation and working hard. it also implies that mathematics is powerful as a selector of status. i get the feeling that this student views mathematics as fair and just, her message is that it is not just about ability and if you work hard you will get good results. it is a happy ending story and gives me the impression that she thinks maths is good. story (heart) suggests that mathematics is about number, shape, and mathematical operations. tests are represented as a theme in this story and results feature strongly. there is an indication that mathematics is a measure of cleverness. story (keep trying) shows mathematics as algebra, answering questions, passing tests, and learning by rote. the student shows lots of questions in her head and some frustration. this story also shows mathematics as something that is told to you, something that is difficult and requires a lot of work. there are pictures in this story that suggest that the student is confused and unhappy because of mathematics. story (seventeen) indicates that mathematics is not about copying pages from books. for story (sweets), mathematics is about exams, discomfort and sanctions. mathematics can mean staying quiet and perhaps isolated. mathematics appears to be stressful and the pictures show a change in the student when she is not doing mathematics. there are pictures suggesting that the student is miserable, stressed and nervous during mathematics and the story depicts relief, happiness and freedom when not doing mathematics. story (the aye) represents mathematics currently as an unpleasant experience. past experiences with mathematics were enjoyable but current experiences are confusing and unfair and this student does not like mathematics at the moment. revisiting my original research question ‘is learning mathematics an uncomfortable memory for many people, and if so, why? i can now suggest that the data from my pilot indicates that most of these stories indicate that at the moment the answer is yes, mathematics is described as an uncomfortable experience. even at this young age their memories of learning mathematics bring up many images of discomfort and unhappiness. the reasons why, seem complex, but clearly tests and test results feature in many of the stories. interestingly, in the story that does not explicitly represent learning mathematics as uncomfortable, the view of mathematics is one of thinking skills, knowledge, preparation and working hard. even though the stories show unhappy feelings doing mathematics, most stories show a happy ending which fills me with optimism that these students are determined to succeed no matter how difficult the journey. i feel that, as a mathematics teacher, with the knowledge obtained from the stories, it would be prudent to build on the optimism presented in the stories perhaps addressing the reasons why these students feel so unhappy about their mathematics. in the case of this class, once the stories were shared and i had read them in depth, i could start to think about their view of mathematics and the view of mathematics i wanted to promote. the figure below shows the results of grouping ideas relating to the faces of mathematics portrayed in the pilot stories. this grouping produced the following headings: mathematics is a measurement and/or ranking method; ways of learning mathematics; mathematics is not nice; mathematics is difficult; the effort required to do mathematics; a lack of liberty associated with doing mathematics. the group in blue did not seem to fit with the other groups. figure : the faces of mathematics . the power and status associated with mathematics: pilot data this became a theme because all the stories except the drama contained references to happiness or an elevated status, due to some type of achievement in mathematics. the stories depicted results in tests, high qualifications or position in society and i felt that there was an association between status and power. in story (phd) the story gives the impression that the student is taking part in a battle and depicts the tensions that surround this situation, winning and strength are the faces of mathematics measures cleverness tests passing tests exams used to rank used to select learning by rote told to you thinking skills knowledge right and wrong answers unhappy discomfort unpleasant angry sad frustrating confusing stressful difficult baffling about hard work requires lots of work preparation about sanctions takes away your freedom isolating unfair something to fearr enemy, strong and male (represented in one story) featured and seem to be valued. power plays an influential role showing a transfer of power from a powerful mathematics person to the student when mathematics had been successfully defeated. status in mathematics is featured by the story suggesting that overcoming difficulties in mathematics can lead to high qualifications, and the student has listed a qualification and a university that most would generally consider as associated with very high achievements. in story (swiss roll), status is featured through her picture of a rosette and her rank position as last. the story shows the student as a prisoner and this seems linked with a mathematics sign with no entry lines across it, implying to me that mathematics has the power to trap this student. in story (cinderella) mathematics is used as a selection tool by the prince, whose title suggest that he is somebody who is in a powerful position. mathematics has status and authority because your place in society is dictated by your mathematic achievement. in story (heart) the power is with the mathematics test, as it seems to provide a ranking system for cleverness. heart seems to be powerful in the fact that she perceives a problem and makes the move to correct it, carrying hexagon with her. the tutor has the power to help heart sort out the problem, this suggests that in this case power is knowledge and perhaps, as in the case of the tutor, you are powerful because you are outside of this school culture. story (seventeen) is unusual because it criticises the teacher for not having power over the class, and the story gives the message that for this student to learn mathematics there has to be someone to control the situation. the adults in the story are portrayed as powerless, incompetent, unfair and foolish and this is not a good situation. it is suggested in the story that the students held the power and were able to bully the teachers but this power was not used to promote any learning. story (the aye) also talks about the students taking control and gives you a sense that the companionship between the students makes them powerful. however the teacher holds some power as they are able to impose sanctions and punishments. . freedom: pilot phase this heading was derived from references in the stories to a lack of freedom. i have taken a definition of freedom that includes belonging to, and being part of something, the freedom to take part in something. my interpretation of this category is subjective but i feel it is worth exploring because i believe that it has an influence on mathematical identity or the lack of it. several stories suggested a culture of isolation and not belonging. story (swiss roll) in addition to showing prison bars links maths lessons with sanctions and detentions. it shows mathematics with a no entry sign and you get a feeling that this student feels she is not part of the mathematics community. there is a similar impression portrayed in story (sweets) the girl seems isolated and alone, she appears to be struggling and unhappy in the mathematics context and suffering personal image problems when released from that situation. her behaviour seems impulsive and uncomfortable, and we could suggest that she has some general personal issues, but as this student has displayed them in her mathematics story i deduce that this behaviour is linked to learning mathematics. she indicates her position by including the diagram of a student eating a lolly in the mathematics exam despite the notices that say no eating. i think this is her way of saying that she is different and refuses to conform. there is a suggestion in several stories that mathematic lessons are linked with detentions, feelings of being trapped and are not always happy events. intuitively, i perceive in these stories an air of loneliness and misery and this makes me feel that these students do not identify with doing mathematics, and one story supports this feeling by indicating that the mathematical world would not be their choice and that they are forced to do mathematics. . the classroom culture of school mathematics: pilot phase this theme refers to the student expectations of the mathematics classroom, what they think it is to ‘do’ mathematics, what the students think the teacher expects. my notes at the time of the pilot contained the following impressions from the student stories. the image of the teacher seems to be a key factor in how mathematics is perceived. teachers can control whether you enjoy mathematics. the teacher has to be ‘normal’ and take charge of the class. to learn mathematics there has to be some control, and/or respect and you cannot learn if you have lots of different teachers. classroom sanctions can be unfair and you have no way to represent your side of things. the stories paint a fairly formal image of a mathematics classroom. the teacher is standing at the front of the class, working from a board and asking the students questions, and the students raising their hands to answer. the students are sitting at a desk on their own. worksheets seem to be a feature of a mathematics classroom and the work completed quietly (or in silence). making students write out sections of text to keep control is mentioned in one story and taking tests and getting the results back is common throughout the stories. some stories carry the message that it is important to try hard and be prepared, to be able to answer questions in class, and to keep trying until you are successful. one story suggests that by doing this you will please the teacher. two of the stories suggest that it is important to do well in tests and to be successful you need to be the winner. place order and ranking is an important feature of all the stories. . relationships: pilot phase there were a number of relationships embedded in the stories, many focused on the class and student relationship with the teacher. this is not surprising to me because this class had been taught by a number of mathematic teachers due to staffing problems and had been very vocal with their complaints about this situation. in one story the student is pictured with the teacher in a classroom scene where the student is unhappy when she does not know the answer to a question posed by the teacher, but very happy when she does. my thoughts here focus on who or what the student is trying to please. in addition some stories featured the role of parents and other students. one story mentions a tutor who helped the students be successful at mathematics. two stories feature parents, in one the student is small and the parent is drawn in a way that makes them look very dominant and the pupil looks unhappy. in the other the parents are pointing a finger and shouting and the pupil appears to be shrinking. both stories show an uneasy relationship with parents because of mathematics and show a family interaction to learning mathematics that is scary and hated. the story called heart suggests a peer relationship between students; this appears to be a supportive relationship. interestingly, i had not seen these themes in my day to day work with these students. i had assumed that this was probably because they were in general, writing stories about the past and in my lessons we are interacting in the present. the class had appeared to me as a lively, hard working group, full of ideas and imagination. after reading the stories however, i started to notice the signs of anxiety and vulnerability in some students and i began to realise that before the creation of the stories i had interpreted these mannerisms differently. knowing the stories encouraged me to critique carefully my responses and instructions that i used in this classroom, checking that they were not exacerbating any situation portrayed in the stories. . discussion of the phase pilot phase i struggled for some time with the analysis of the student stories. there were a number of questions that featured in my thinking and these were: what story is being told? what is the student doing by telling this story? who is the story for? what am i learning, and how does knowing this story improve my practice to this student and to mathematics learners in general? a considered approach was my decision to use some themes and not others. many stories listed mathematical topics, for example mathematics is about numbers and number relationships. one story was in the form of a poster promoting mathematical topics. learning times tables was featured, also fractions and algebra. it is not surprising that stories contained lists of topics because the content of the mathematics school curriculum would be very familiar to these students. it is also a regular classroom practice to ask students to make posters about particular mathematical topics as a starting or ending point to a set of lessons about that topic. in addition, as mentioned earlier in the action research chapter, i had felt that some students made posters as a way of excusing themselves from sharing their story. i felt this was perfectly acceptable as i had made it clear that the whole process was entirely their choice. for the stated reasons, i did not include data that contained lists of mathematical content, however if the content was linked with another aspect of the data it was included. an example of this is evident in the pilot study story called phd, a small child is depicted as unhappy whilst her parents are helping her learn her times tables. in this story there is emotion connected to the action of learning mathematics with her parents, the topic featured in the story may be of importance and should not be discarded. i also did not include the drama as data simply because it was spontaneous and unexpected, and as such it was not recorded in any way. the content was full of emotion and directed at the shortcomings of several mathematics teachers. i felt that it would be very difficult for me to re-tell this story accurately and therefore it has not been included as data. asking the students to share their stories about mathematics proved to be a fairly simple part of the data collection. the stories were produced readily by the students and they appeared to enjoy the process. i felt very keen to read the stories, and in the pilot phase of this research i looked at every story immediately after the event. i shared some of the surprises with a colleague and a critical friend. they offered their interpretations of the stories (appendix e). i wrote what i saw in the stories with the intention of revisiting each story again with a new lens. i think what stopped me in my tracks was a growing awareness of my limitations as a researcher. firstly, the fact that i could not enter the young story teller’s world and hear the story as it was written. i was aware that i would only recognise things that i know about – i could only see things that exist in my own world and it was for this reason that i used a thematic analysis method and a question framework to revisit the stories more than once. secondly, the most profound thing about reading the stories was the way it altered my relationship with the student author. i could never see that class/student/young person in the same way. it completely enhanced how i planned the lessons with that student and the thought i gave to individual interactions and conversation with that student or group of students. i began to realise that this was a very important part of the data and needed to be written down while it was current. my research experience during the pilot helped shape my future data collection plans. i now knew that i needed to build into the process an opportunity for the authors to tell me more about the story and any thoughts they had about taking part in the storytelling workshop. whilst engrossed in the process of a thematic analysis i began to realise that within the analysis i had lost something important. up to that point i had failed to appreciate that for my research to be successful it would need to address three audiences: the academic; my profession and myself. the thematic analysis process had provided a stimulus for the first two audiences but had moved away from satisfying my personal needs and values. reducing the stories made me feel flat and empty; i had lost my view of the bigger picture which was the individuality of the student. this helped me to appreciate a problem that i felt could potentially be faced by students learning mathematics, and this was where does the ‘self’ fit? how can you bring the ‘self’ into the learning of mathematics and feel comfortable? where in the learning of school mathematics can you insert your culture, history, personality, and aspirations? in a nutshell, how can a school student bring a bit of themselves into the learning of mathematics? my thoughts around this question led me to consider some of the other subjects taught at school. i could appreciate that some subjects (for example, english, history, geography, sociology and religion), naturally encourage you to explore the ‘self’ and lend themselves to thinking about our origins and connections. mathematics makes little room for these connections and the expert language that surrounds this subject makes communication, for all but the most mathematically able, particularly difficult. i began to understand that asking a student to share their mathematical stories gives the student a medium to explore themselves within the world of learning mathematics, and the particular value of this process is an area that i felt i needed to develop further and should feature in my data analysis. . the transformational draw of student stories about school mathematics once the work on themes was completed, i started to focus on the emotional impact that the stories were having on me, their reader. i felt that this emotional draw stimulated a powerful, transformational process that could help address my original research question: how can i create a more approachable and effective interface between mathematics teachers and their students? the participants that took part in the pilot phase were not students that i knew well. i had stepped in as their mathematics teacher because they had been taught by a number of temporary teachers who felt that the class behaviour was too difficult and hence could not continue with them. each story in this phase was put together by a group of participants, and it is safe for me to say that i had no pre-relationship with the participants which would influence my reading of the story. i did not know which particular students contributed to a particular story. straight after reading the stories i made notes in my diary which i now include as analysis notes because i feel it demonstrates the potential student stories have for transformational thinking and forging relationships between student and teacher. the following section contains a sample of three stories taken from the pilot stage of this research and my notes with regard to analysis. the notes were stimulated by my initial reactions and then by considering the questions that i had put together from a symbolic interactionist perspective (page ). they have been used as examples to highlight the emotions and possible messages contained in the stories, and how they influenced the way i thought about the students in this class. this work was part of an early developmental stage of analysis and it was the foundations for what i now know as an intuitive inquiry approach to data analysis. in addition to my own analysis, i was assisted by two colleagues interested in the idea of storytelling as a tool for the mathematics classroom, they wrote down some brief first impressions of what they thought the stories were portraying and i used these to compare and critique with my own thoughts and ideas. an outline of their findings will be included at the end. although the stories were put together by groups of students, to simplify the writing process i have referred to the story as having one author. . my field notes on student story pilot phase: phd during my first read of this story i was attracted by the articulate presentation of this student’s relationship with mathematics. i could connect easily with the emotions depicted in the story and the passion and determination to succeed. the story was written by year students in the first term of that year and they are thirteen years old. on the very first read of a student’s mathematical stories an analysis began, it was intuitive, using tacit knowledge, and it drew on the context of the world that i exist in. the story is a good example of narrative as a multiple representation. it uses picture as a powerful device to convey emotion and feelings, yet when needed supplies just enough text to narrow the possible interpretations. it is temporal, it has a ‘past’ signified in the text below the first picture and the tense used in some of the text; a ‘now’ implied by the dealing with the enemy mathematics; and a ‘future’ of success with a phd. the story starts with the head and shoulders of a girl. in the speech type clouds there are symbols of mathematics suggesting to me a number of options within the context that i understand. possible interpretations are; she knows a lot of mathematics, she thinks a lot about mathematics, she is doing mathematics or mathematics is on her mind. the inclusion of the head and shoulders in the image is said by kress and leeuwen ( ) to signify intent by the author to suggest a relationship, perhaps between viewer and author, or between author and mathematics. to me this provides possible evidence that this student cares about her relationship with the subject in question, (mathematics). the story ‘as a phenomenon’, particularly featured during my analysis of student stories. each reading of the story brought with it new insights. in addition, my tacit understanding and my reaction to the story continued to develop as i taught that class. the story took on new shape and contour as i started to understand my students a little better. this example of a student story illustrates the work of kress and leeuwen ( : ), particularly their discussion of visual images. the girl in the picture is the ‘represented participant’ (the people, the places and things depicted in images). the author (the student) and the reader (me, the teacher) are the ‘interactive participants’ (the people who communicate with each other).the power of the picture is in my reaction to the represented participant, the author has provided the text to give clarity to the reason for the represented participants status. in this case it is fear of mathematics, and the choice of words is to impress on the reader that there is a history involved – a bigger picture. using the student story as an example of narrative in action i found it impossible not to form conjectures about the student story, so immediately i have entered into a relationship. the first is with the people place and things depicted in the image, the ‘represented participants’ (kress and leeuwen, : ), and the second is with the author of the story, the ‘interactive participant’. this student immediately carved a new place in my capacity to understand my students, they now have more contour, more colour, and more depth, adding to the portraiture profile that i am continually building as classroom teacher. the girl has a sad face, she is not making eye contact with the reader, and her eyes are slightly lowered. there are tears coming from her eye and rain coming from the speech-like clouds. i have a shared understanding of these symbols – upset, sadness, disappointment, worry, anguish, despair. i ask myself what could cause this sadness; is it about mathematics in general or about school mathematics experiences? i worry that it might be closer to home, is it about my lessons and my delivery of mathematics? perhaps is it more personal and about herself? the author clarifies the situation with a small amount of text; she has a fear of mathematics. the picture is powerful and quickly conveys a multitude of things, the text then gives me guidance as to which of the contexts above could be relevant. the range of explanations that can be applied to this student stories reminds me that there is no certainty in narrative research. bold ( ) explained that there is no aim to establish certainty but to apply tentativeness due to the different interpretations that are possible. the second picture shows the girl with a man, the text informs us that she is in her home; the man is possibly her father or a male relative. she is sad and small, and the man is tall and appears strong. we get the impression that he is shouting (indicated by the writing in the speech clouds and a wide open mouth), he is in authority and he is going through her maths with her. the girl has depicted herself as small and passive, she is crying and her body language portrays a meek compliant stance. the man appears to be in charge and someone to be taken notice of, but the girl is ‘scared’ of the encounters with the man and mathematics, she hates it! what occurs to me is that the picture can be seen as symbolising the traditional view of mathematics, the pupil is seen as the passive object and the mathematics is transmitted, simply told to the student, and if told enough times it will be absorbed. the third picture transmits to me the relationship the girl holds with mathematics. there are interactions between the girl and mathematics and it seems that the relationship between them is represented by their relative size. mathematics as an object is initially portrayed as strong and confrontational; the size of mathematics eyes seems large and powerful. she is making a connection with her eyes to signify an emotion, the person ‘mathematics’ is returning the look. this girl is not accepting her position in this world of mathematics; she is going to battle with mathematics and overcome her fears. mathematics is the enemy! this girl is depicted as aggressive, strong and bigger than the mathematics. later on mathematics is smaller than the girl, it is now frightened and being chased away. there appear to be a suggestion of some social norms for this student, one is a link between mathematics and negative feelings, another is a reference to pressure from others in the story. she indicates that an action linked with mathematics is learning her tables at home with her parents. the story develops into a confrontation with mathematics and then fighting, the girl is the victor and mathematics flees. perhaps she believes that you must stand up for yourself if you want to be successful. the story is full of emotion and feelings: fear; sadness; confusion; feeling small and inadequate; determination (perhaps stubborn); anger; strength; happiness and pride. the girl is a social object in this story, she is a mathematics student and she changes her appearance depending on her positioning in this story, i think this may be linked with how she feels about mathematics in those encounters. mathematics can also be viewed as an object. the girl depicts mathematics as a person and as such i can consider it as a social object that is making her life miserable, she portrays herself as sad and scared. if i consider the development of self within the context of mathematics then there is a growing sense of strength in the story, the girl is overcoming her fears by overcoming this mathematics. clearly it is a battle, and she has to fight hard, but she makes the maths retreat, run away. a phd from cambridge is her successful goal, which indicates to me that she is ambitious, stating a high qualification and a very reputable institution, yet there is no sense that she ever accepts or befriends mathematics, or becomes at ease with it. the last picture portraying her success gives me the impression that it is about pleasing herself and perhaps her father, in this she has become a scholar in mathematics and we get the thumbs up. the story highlighted some things that i find personally interesting; this interest could potentially be seen as bias which can be considered as just noticing things that suit you. the justification for my interest is that i am noticing things that have featured in my literature search pertaining to mathematics. from an intuitive inquiry standpoint i can openly examine these areas as data that can best addresses my research interests, ‘follow your enthusiasm and initiative; notice what attracts your attention again and again’ (anderson, : ). i found myself dwelling on several areas in this story, one area of interest was the way the student represented mathematics, and another was the way the student described her interaction with this object. later this interest developed into the themes which i called the faces of mathematics, power and status of mathematics and the culture of mathematics. in my role as a mathematics teacher, the power of the student story is the fact that it brings the student quickly into my focus as an individual, with a history and an experience that is unique. the process of content analysis lost the temporal nature of the stories and encouraged me to adopt a ‘one size fits all’ mentality; an approach that i feel is inappropriate for the nature of this data and hence was rejected as an adequate form of analysis for this research. to help me gauge the reliability of my interpretation of some of the stories i asked a colleague to share their interpretation, these are the notes made about the story phd. colleague comments always found maths hard, fearful upsetting. all jumbled together and nothing made sense. ‘from a young age’ shows never had good experiences of mathematics. maths is like rain pouring down from the clouds. her father at home not being supportive and making student recite times tables over and over again. being scared of going home because of the maths that would be waiting. now hating maths. the war between the student and teacher happened. the student attacked maths and found that in spite of the teacher she was beginning to understand and was no longer afraid. this meant her understanding grew and she felt much happier. very successful in the future, achieving a maths phd from cambridge. shows that all obstacles can be overcome and the boundaries no longer exist. views of mathematics are changing, no longer feels scared and upset. now feels it is possible to achieve and to reach great highs in the future with a subject that at first was not a happy experience these comments from my colleague supported my interpretation of the story and i felt encouraged that my initial instincts about the story were credible. . pilot phase: the real story of cinderella and snow white (the story below is typed as a copy of a student’s story but i have corrected some of the spellings.) long, long ago in a small town called maths land lived a very good mathematic called snow white. but also at the other end lived a very poor girl called cinderella, who was terrible at maths, but always tried. it was the night of the ball and snow white and cinderella was getting ready. they both were in love with the prince charming. but they know that he would like a wife who was very good at maths seeing as he was a professor. they both arrived in their motor-autos to be greeted by the prince charming, who said that one of them would be his wife by the end of the night. but they would be judged by their ability of maths. snow white knew this was so easy, but cinderella had a feeling that the mission was going to be hard. he asked them in the story of cinderella what was the time she had to be home. cinderella knew this because she was reading earlier and she answered o’clock. they lived happily ever after. the moral of this story is that the best mathematic is not the one who gets all the grades. but it is the one who thinks properly and has got good knowledge. and revises and always contributes. on the first reading of this story i was surprised at what it seemed to be saying to me. it was as though, to me, this student was representing society through this story and i felt that they story had a moral linked with fairness and freedom. i was drawn to the work of gates ( ) who argued that mathematics acts as a gatekeeper, allowing access to higher education and careers for those who are successful in national mathematics examinations, and blocking the path of others who cannot meet those standards. my first reading of the story led to this diary entry: . my diary extract this story has taken me by surprise. for me it contains massive cultural assumptions and maybe i see them because i have biases resulting from a working class, essentially immigrant, background. others will need to be the judge of how ridiculous my interpretation is or is not, but this is what i see. the heroine snow white is good at mathematics but poor cinderella is terrible at mathematics. for me this is symbolic of the thinking that the upper class, rich, and successful are good at mathematics, whereas the poorer classes, less privileged are not. for the more fortunate upper class, things are easy and life is good but for the poorer classes they have to work hard to succeed (cinderella always tries her best). snow white enters the contest with confidence, and cinderella knows that she may struggle. prince charming, being a royal the most elite of all, he is obviously well educated because he is a professor, and being so, he obviously needs an intelligent, educated wife, which in this story is measured as being good at mathematics. snow white and cinderella are in competition. one is perceived as good at maths (a mathematician), the other is not. the competition goal is focused on one event, the ball. only one person can win, technically the ‘clever one’ portrayed as the person good at maths, this person will be the desired one. so mathematics is portrayed as the gate keeper in this story. mathematics is the decider for the future of cinderella and snow white. fortunately, for the satisfaction of my beliefs, the story is used to promote effort and preparation so cinderella wins the prince. after several reads i applied the list of compiled questions and made the related notes. i cannot help feeling that there is an analogy to ability setting in class somewhere in this. the ball feels a bit like an examination because it is there that decisions and judgements will be made. looking at the social aspect of the story, we have the authority (the prince) who is male and making the judgements, and we have the subjects, two females in competition for a place in the world of the prince. mathematics is portrayed in this story as a means of measuring, mathematics ability seems to be something that belongs to the rich and famous yet it is recognised that mathematics success is portrayed as something that has to be worked at and earned. i think this story portrays a person, (the author), who wants the reader to sit back and withhold any judgements pertaining to her ability. this student recognises that hard work and revision has credit in the world of mathematics and can get you results that others do not expect. they have the inner strength to know that they are able to be successful in this arena if they are allowed to have the time to develop and work hard. however they measure success by winning, being above others. . phase pilot: keep trying this story attracted me for a number of reasons. i was captured by the sentiment- this student really wanted to do well in mathematics but was frustrated and upset with examination results. the use of cloud and sun to depict classroom environment and what looks like her parents telling her off made me feel sad that she has to endure these scenes. then the word failure hits the spot and i ask myself if this is really the way we make our mathematics students feel. algebra is shown in the pictures, and i wonder if the author is trying to show that mathematics can be complex and that she is struggling to reach that area of complexity. the story gives a strong image of a mathematics classroom with a girl sitting on her own raising her hand to answer a question; the teacher is at the front teaching from the board. i sense that the student wants to do well in mathematics tests and understands that she has to make the effort to revise. the end of the story brings it all together and makes it all worthwhile, perseverance, hard work and effort make good in the end and the student gets her desired exam results. colleague comments shows a very confused student with lots of questions going round in their head. needs to sit an exam on algebra. can’t answer the questions so frustrated that she breaks her pencil in half. lots of confusion everything on the paper just seems a jumble. other students in the class happy with their results, % and % being passes. both papers have large ticks on them. she on the other hand gets % and fails. paper has a large cross on it. she is very upset, there seems to be a big black cloud over her, she is crying, also lightening present this could be her anger at not being able to get a good score. and so it carries on. she cannot shake the black mood, things do not seem to improve. other students in the class understand what the teacher is saying but she does not. she does not put her hand up, either to answer a question or to ask for help. interesting to see the child who understands is smiling and has a sun over her head. looks like three children are being shouted at by their parents. the youngest is crying but none of them seem to be happy. the student feels like an absolute failure. she is lying on her bed crying. she tries really hard. she revises, then revises, then revises some more. each time she tries the test her grades improve, %, % and lastly %. the smile on the face grows as the grade improve. the moral of the story is keep trying no matter how hard you are finding things. this story board is very specific to algebra maybe this is a topic this student found hard to understand, but with practice and perseverance they got better and better. the student stories provoke me to consider all aspects of my classroom practice. i found myself interrogating my use of language and the inferences that could be taken from the words i use. because the stories had been written by groups of students, it was impossible for me to address an individual student’s needs in terms of this research and i felt that perhaps this was a missed opportunity. however, there were some general points that i could tailor my practice to address, these were: the student’s view of tests, their negativity when doing mathematics and generally their expectations of ‘doing’ school mathematics. although tests had to be part of my teaching plan i now knew that i would need to enter into individual and class discussions about the place of tests and what they show. once i had read the student stories i felt that, as a class, we had to develop an ethos about progress that would help these students move forward. in response to that, an area that i focused on in this class was the concept of progress in mathematics. i talked to each student about individual progress and i asked them to set themselves small incremental targets that they would use as their focus when considering test results. for each student i discussed and assigned targets such as showing clear steps of working when answering a question, legible work, time management in tests, improving numeracy strategies and mathematical vocabulary and language. when feeding back to the student my focus was on progress and their achievements with respect to meeting their target. by doing this i was focusing on the quality of the work and student learning, which does not over -ride the test result, but helped the student feel achievement for something other than a test score. we also talked about test scores and individual progress measured from the student’s last test score, schools often refer to this as value added scores. my philosophy about progress in a test is that anything that can be seen as improving is considered as progress and eventually all these small increments of progress fit together to make a tipping point (gladwell, ), a point when something transformational happens. this class worked with this ethos and at the end of the school year many students received their exam results with excitement and large smiles. another aspect of the stories that kept haunting me was the reference to being unhappy or uncomfortable while taking part in mathematics lessons. it made me actively seek different types of lesson that could be slotted into the curriculum on a regular basis without deviating too far from the scheme of work. developing thinking skills and group work became the theme for this part of the mathematics curriculum and many of the very successful lessons were then by my colleagues in their own classrooms. over a period of months this class changed from an angry bunch of teenagers into a relaxed, interesting, vibrant group of learners, who could discuss their mathematics, their progress throughout the year and engage in a variety of learning environments. the one point that i think the reader will, or should, ask is whether the change in the class happened because of the stories. the stories helped me to focus an intervention on the areas that were crucial to the progress of the class, they filled in the gaps that explained the class attitude towards me and their previous mathematics teachers, they invited me to hold back on behaviours that i might have used without the stories and for me, they turned what was in my eyes as a collective angry class, into a set of individual people with specific needs. . conclusion the success of the mathematics story workshop, and the knowledge that i gained from the process, the content of the stories and the subsequent development of a student and teacher relationship led to the development of the next phase of this research. i felt that individual stories, shared by mathematics learners that were finding school mathematics a struggle could potentially be a very effective tool to address my second research question which was: how can i create a more approachable and effective interface between mathematics teachers and their students? i decided in the next phase to build on the analysis techniques already employed but also to explore how the stories changed my understanding of the students in the class and my subsequent interactions with them. towards the end of the pilot phase i discovered literature that started to allow me to accept my varied analysis techniques as a planned design. intuitive inquiry analysis (anderson, ) celebrated using a variety of analysis techniques; anderson ( ) also suggested that this variety helps to promote thought, improve rigour, expose surprises and potential bias and generally helps the researcher to look at data from points of view that are not necessarily ones that they would readily lean to. in the next chapter i give a descriptive account of how the data analysis proceeded and the influence it had on my understanding of the students and classroom practice with those students. chapter data analysis: phase and . introduction after completing my data collection for phase and phase i had a variety of data types. the data consisted of student stories, two student interviews about the storytelling workshop, my diary extracts, written feedback from a colleague regarding her interpretation of the stories and a recorded discussion with a colleague who carried out the storytelling workshop. my aim for a data analysis was to include all data types in my overall impressions and outcomes, and communicate to the reader the powerful effect on me that reading the stories had induced. . step one intuitive inquiry model the first step of the intuitive inquiry process had been the pilot phase of this research where the student stories became the selected texts that could be examined to gain information and an understanding of the experiences of my students when learning school mathematics. . step two intuitive inquiry model using the literature that i had previously read and actively seeking new material i constructed my understanding of the themed headings from phase pilot phase by entering into a critical reflection on what had been written by other authors. this is represented in chapter which deals with my literature search pertinent to my themes from the phase data analysis. . step three: intuitive inquiry model for step three of the intuitive analysis process, i chose my sample and carried out the storytelling workshops with this sample. the data collected included stories from my students, stories from the classroom of colleagues and my intuitive insights in the form of a diary. the rationale for selection, organisation and field notes for these stories was discussed in chapter four phases and , which explains how the action research process evolved and developed. . step four: intuitive inquiry model entering to step of my intuitive inquiry model was an enormous step. the data consisted of stories from the students that i taught and feedback from two colleagues who trialled the storytelling workshop with their classes. the storytelling workshops covered three phases of the action research cycle as explained in chapter . i sorted the stories into groups; these were class groups and year groups. each story was given a category which described the type of story; the headings i allocated were personal narrative, story board, fairy tale or poster. i also indicated whether the main body of the story seemed, to me, either positive or negative. i felt that sorting the data in this way would help me to notice patterns and things that were particular to the class or year group, thus allowing me to decide if these things were general findings pertinent to the research. in addition, my reactions, thoughts and feelings about the stories became part of the data alongside my subsequent relationship and interaction with the storytellers. to help provide a different perspective i asked a colleague to look at a selection of the stories and record her comments. . phase and student stories two classes took part in the phase data collection process and i coded their stories aah (a) and baf (b) to help me distinguish the groups at a later date. i have decided to keep the coding algorithm personal for the protection of anonymity. in both classes there was a mix of individual work, pair work and group work and, if i have that information, it is included in the table. group a produced nine finished stories and two unfinished stories (due to some students missing workshop time). i have given each story a title based the content of their story. i labelled each story with either n (negative), p (positive), or f (neither positive or negative) according to their reference about mathematics taken from the main images or the main body of the story. originally, i gave stories with a happy ending a positive label but later decided that as a happy ending was a natural form for a fairy tale i should use the main body of the story to make a judgement. i also gave them a category of narrative if the text told a connected story, story board for a series of images, personal if the story was possibly about them, fairy tale if the format conformed with that of a standard fairy tale and, poster if the content was a list of things. i asked a colleague to do a similar exercise to add validity to my labelling. phase stories can be seen in appendix h. figure a: phase data one title type no of students working on the story changes in maths f personal narrative group cinderella n fairy tale narrative clown n personal narrative individual crying n story board/ personal faces f story board /personal pair formulas n poster i love p personal narrative mathematics p poster pair on beyond a million p personal narrative individual the unfinished work was ‘snakes and ladders’ and the ‘door to success and failure’. i did hope that these students would get some time to finish but it never happened and in hindsight if the workshop had taken place earlier in the term we could have found the time. the second group b produced seven stories. two students chose not to take part and asked if they could work on their mathematics instead. these students stayed in the classroom while the workshops were taking place. they took an interest in the stories that were being created but continued with their mathematics work, asking me for input when they needed it. figure b: phase data two title type no of students working on story coloured squares n personal narrative girl’s maths madness n personal narrative individual jessica’s maths story p personal narrative individual my maths experience p story board personal the boy who found confidence in maths p personal narrative group the letter with the maths grades p personal narrative individual whiz kid p personal narrative the table below shows the labelling over the two groups aab stories p o s itiv e n e g a tiv e n e u tra l baf stories p o s itiv e n e g a tiv e n e u tra l personal narrative fairy-tale poster/ personal story board/ personal posters personal narrative story board/personal the first set of students (phase ) were students aged fifteen and sixteen, in their final year of preparing for gcse exams. the class aab were described by the school as a borderline class, meaning they were on the border to getting a c grade at gcse. they would be entered for a higher paper in gcse maths, and during the last two years they had been studying topics that were tested on the higher gcse paper. they second group were also called a borderline group but their assessments to date had indicated that they were weaker mathematically than the first group. during the last two years they had studied many topics that were particularly targeted at the foundation gcse grade. the participants of phase were students age and . these groups were also targeted as groups that needed particular intervention in mathematics as they were underperforming. my data analysis process took three distinct forms. for the first i explored the themes produced in phase using extracts from the student stories to support and add clarity to these themes. by using a process of thematic analysis and input from colleagues, i examined the stories to see how they support or contradict the themes developed during the pilot phase. the second form of data analysis highlighted a selection of the stories that caught my attention because they surprised me. i have attempted to communicate my thinking about the surprise in the following sections and how this new knowledge influenced my subsequent work with the student, but in the spirit of an intuitive inquiry approach these are stories that identified with my research interests addressing positivity or negativity and struggle in mathematics. the third form is a report on the storytelling workshops of colleagues, focusing on the workshop as a classroom tool for mathematics teachers and feeding back the opinion of the staff facilitating these workshops. . data analysis: themes the themes arrived at in phase were as follows: the faces of mathematics, the classroom culture of school mathematics, freedom, the power and status of mathematics, and relationships. however, while the next data collection was in process, my thematic analysis continued with the original data, new data and input from colleagues, and eventually two particular themes stood out across the stories and the different data inputs. across the three phases of data there were very common themes such as transition in mathematics and mathematics changing with time, status, and a lack of freedom associated with being trapped and not belonging. however, the more i played with the data, the more it seemed that these topics were intrinsically linked with how a student viewed mathematics and should be a subset of the theme that i had named ‘the faces of mathematics’. stories that contained a reference to exam results and teacher behaviour were also common across the data set and again i felt that these were all part of the culture of learning mathematics in school. with this in mind i settled on two main themes: the first i still called the faces of mathematics and the second was called the culture of school mathematics. . phase : the faces of mathematics many of the stories treated mathematics as if it had human characteristics, others referred to how they felt when they were learning mathematics. i used spider diagrams to organise many of the ideas about mathematics presented in the stories and made links between related ideas. i began to think that the heading of different groups should be simply maths is …… and then within this i could list the phase stories that i think refer to maths as this. my original headings were maths is powerful, maths is measurement, maths is nice, maths is not nice and maths is changeable. with the story content that was not placed in these themes i regrouped repeatedly and then included two more themes which were maths is useful and maths is challenging. other groups that appeared came under the heading of how you do mathematics and that will feature in the category called the culture of mathematics. in the table below i have listed the stories in phase that make reference to these themes. figure : the faces of mathematics. maths is powerful maths is measure- ment maths is nice maths is not nice maths is useful maths is challenging maths is changeable does something to you, influences you rank, status, result, position makes you feel good, happy etc makes you feel unhappy, sad etc can be used, gets you something references to cognition, thinking etc. changes with time or situation a clown a cinderella a i love.... b my maths experience a clown a i love ... a crying b girl s maths madness b jessica maths story b my maths experiences b the letter with the bad grade a i love… a on beyond a million a mathematics a faces b coloured squares b girls maths madness b jessica’s story b whiz kid a cinderella a clown a faces b jessica’s story b my maths experience b the boy who found maths a cinderella a cinderella a clown b coloured squares a changes in maths a i love… b coloured squares b girls maths madness b jessica’s story b my maths experience b the letter with the bad grade . maths is powerful maths is powerful refers to the idea that mathematics can influence you or your actions. below are some related extracts from the student stories: (a clown) he stares me in the eyes, mocking me on his white background. my heart skips a beat, intimidated by his bold writing. …………….i take all i can from him leaving him powerless and completely worked out. with his power adding to my score, i then turn the page and go on to his brother. (cinderella) cinderella was stuck in her boring maths class (i love….) maths is getting tricky but i can’t be picky algebra can be described by the sound of my sigh . maths is measurement maths is measurement refers to the idea that mathematics can rank you, give you a number or a position amongst your peers, measure you against some institutional scale. (clown) i slowly put my pen to paper and begin to write my only wish to please him and take the marks wrapped up in him and add them to my score. (i love…) picture with sats levels sats are coming but i won’t be running they need to be done to show i have won! (crying) i won many medals from silver to bronze on the day of graduation… i remember arriving at academic review day in year and seeing an a grade on my report card. mathematics) – bottom half of poster (girl’s maths madness) layla went from a higher to a foundation student. layla did many maths exams but never got the c for foundation. she tried and tried and when she went in for results day she knew that she had failed, but she passed, the hard work had paid off. (jessica’s story) so she didn’t try so she failed but the following year the last year, year , she suddenly grasped the technique, skill and revised pattern needed to be successful in maths and she hopeful will pass her gcses and have her c or more in maths. (my maths experience) pictures plus caption (the letter with the bad grade) getting the results of my maths exam that morning changed everything. the minute i opened the envelope i could taste disappointment…; i was months away from finishing school, it seemed impossible to achieve good grades. . maths is changeable maths is changeable was a theme that i was particularly fascinated by. it seems to take a variety of forms so the extracts below are made up of: a) mathematics seeming to be a different subject over a period of time: b) mathematics being good or nice then mathematics being unpleasant or not nice: c) changing whether you like or dislike mathematics and d) changing if you are good or not good at mathematics. interestingly, with the exception of the first story, the stories below are all from the b group of students. as these students did not work together this result caught my attention and encouraged me to consider why this had occurred. (changes in maths) video transcript (made in private) this is my story about, um, how maths changes, um, from primary school to secondary school. and on primary school it’s got like the division signs and the times signs and the times tables and how to do division, and in secondary school it’s got a squared plus b squared equals c squared and cos and sine rule and stuff. (coloured squares) when i got to secondary school, my love for maths wasn’t as strong as adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing turned into things like algebra and pythagoras theorem. (girls maths madness) when layla went to secondary school she was quite bright from year – year . as soon as she started year she slowly started to lose her knowledge in maths. layla went from a higher to a foundation student (jessica’s story) year was the year were it all clicked, she realised that when you listen to the teachers instruction and actually practice it, life, school, maths became so much better for jessica. she began to love maths. year was when she lost her new found love for maths. the reason was because she didn’t want to challenge herself and improve but jessica wanted to stick to what she knows because she did not want to be reminded of my first year. (my maths experience) the first two pictures show a change in maths. the first shows a student with coloured blocks and indicates maths lessons were easy. the second picture shows a student with paper in front of them and states maths is harder than last year. (the letter with the bad grade) maths was the best subject when i was younger but everything changed. it became a challenge, something i couldn’t cope with. every topic seemed hard algebra, equations, pythagoras, shapes, angles, finding volumes etc. the thematic analysis produced some very interesting ideas relating to how these students thought about mathematics and learning mathematics. this gave me much food for thought about how a mathematics department could develop and grow with current student views and opinions. however, the process felt a little clinical and disconnected, i felt that by dismantling the stories i had lost the essence of the data, and by association i had lost the student as a person. the methodology of asking the students to share their stories was designed to allow them voice, uniqueness, differentiation and comfort. i knew that i had to find a way to allow these traits to feature through my data analysis; i could feel, in that sort of embodied way, that thematic analysis was not doing the stories, or their author, justice. while reading some of the stories, i started to get an emerging impression of the plot that was not being represented through the thematic analysis, that the whole story was greater than the sum of its parts. i attributed this phenomenon to the relationship that was developing between the story, its author and the reader. . the culture of school mathematics figure : the culture of school mathematics the teacher transition learning mathematics relationship with peers or others exams and assessment perceptions of self teacher influence and relationship with student changes in mathematics to do with changes in school, class, teacher or experience how maths is taught and learnt others in the class and school, family results, status, preparation and emotions how you think you fit in a mathematical world, comments on ability and relating to self-reflection. a on beyond a million b layla b jessicas maths story b my maths experience b the boy who found confidence in maths a on beyond a million a changes in maths a i love b coloured squares b jessicas math’s story b my maths experience b the letter with the bad grade b whizkid a on beyond a million a clown a changes in maths a cinderella a crying a i love b coloured squares b layla b jessicas math’s story b my maths experience b the boy who found confidence in maths b the letter with the bad grade b whizkid a on beyond a million a cinderella b layla b my maths experience b the letter with the bad grade a on beyond a million a clown a crying b layla b jessicas math’s story b my maths experience b the letter with the bad grade a on beyond a million a clown a crying a coloured squares a mathematics a i love b coloured squares b jessicas math’s story b my maths experience b the letter with the bad grade b whizkid . the teacher this refers to references made about any mathematics teacher, teaching assistants or tutors. the pilot phase stories had made specific reference to teacher behaviour and change of teacher, the students here connected these to their learning and how they felt when doing mathematics. they were angry stories full of emotion. the phase stories portray teachers as people that help you although two stories mention teacher behaviour. again as in phase there is indication that the students do not like teachers shouting. (on beyond a million) my teacher is great as she helped throughout the three years i was at school and she continues to help me so that i can finish my gcse’s and get an a. (layla) she attempted to learn in the maths classes but she struggled because she had a bigger class with two teachers. when layla asked for help the teachers helped her. (jessica’s maths story) and with the ta’s shouting and nagging at her she just stopped trying. (my maths experience) …. she realised that when you listen to the teachers instruction and actually practice it, life, school, maths became so much better for jessica. (the boy who found confidence in maths) two pictures feature teachers, one depicts a student being told off for not listening and the other is a teacher giving back work to the student and has a similar caption as the first, saying i didn’t pay attention in class. until one day his teacher told him about a website called ‘manga high’. the teacher said it would prove to be very useful and a fun way of learning maths. . transition this refers to changes of school, class or teacher. the stories indicate that the transition from primary school to secondary school can be the catalyst for students turning away from the subject because they find the mathematics different and difficult. (on beyond a million) when i came to england in in august i went to two different schools. maths in england is different from maths in pakistan. we are taught different methods. (changes in maths) this is my story about, um, how maths changes, um, from primary school to secondary school. and on primary school it’s got like the division signs and the times signs and the times tables and how to do division, and in secondary school it’s got a squared plus b squared equals c squared and cos and sine rule and stuff. so, what i think is, that it’s fairly confusing from this stage to that stage, because one minute( laughs) you are all happy because it is quite easy and then you come into year , year and year and you have to learn algebra and statistics and everything and it’s a bit hard. (coloured squares) when i got to secondary school, my love for maths wasn’t as strong as adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing turned into things like algebra and pythagoras theorem. jessica’s maths story works its way through the year group commenting on the differences. . learning mathematics this includes references made to curriculum, the manner of learning, and classroom practices. (on beyond a million) the methods which we used were different from the methods which we used in london. we are taught different methods. i have really enjoyed this experience as now i know how to do both of the methods. (clown) … mocking me on his white background. my heart skips a beat, intimidated by his bold writing. (cinderella) cinderella was stuck in her boring maths class. this story mentions homework, struggle with algebra and her compass. (i love) maths was always a mission but i could do the division. adding and subtracting is the easy way of acting. (coloured squares) was all about adding, subtracting and multiplying small numbers. however, i was always bad at multiplying in maths. (layla) there was a girl called layla, when she was younger she really enjoyed mathematics. every classwork that was handed out, layla was the first one to complete it. sometimes she didn’t understand the work but carried on like she did. (the boy who found confidence in maths) the boy hated maths. he didn’t know his times tables nor did he know how to add fractions. maths for the boy was a pain, especially maths lessons. the boy always worried about having the wrong answers. the story below called my maths experiences, has pictorial descriptions of classroom practices in each frame. . relationship with peers or others there are clearly people other than the author in the student stories. in many the pictures show other students and teachers. teachers are shown in a variety of relationship forms which include, being helpful and telling the student off. other students are present in stories but the relationships are not clear except when there is a school bully. (cinderella) the school bully sees the compass that cinderella dropped and hid it in the art room. when ardino met her in the library he managed to complete the homework and they lived happily ever after with the compass. my maths experiences (pictured above) includes peers. layla story suggests that it is harder to learn with a bigger class size. (the letter with the bad grade) my mother looked anxious about my future; i was months away from finishing school, it seemed impossible to achieve good grades. it was that moment she said it, ‘i believe you will reach the aim of an amazing grade in maths but we have to work hard.’ my mother supported me all the way through my hard time with maths, we revised, put effort into my studies, got a maths tutor. everything improved with time. . exams and assessment not surprisingly exams and grades feature in most stories. i would expect this as both classes are preparing for their gcse exams. (jessica’s maths story) so by the time she got to year it all became very real and she found it quite hard to adjust to the higher level more serious work. so she didn’t try so she failed but the following year the last year, year , she suddenly grasped the technique, skill and revised patterns she needed to be successful in maths and she hopeful will pass her gcses and have her c or more in maths. (the boy who found confidence in maths) on the day of the maths exam the boy would sit there in the hall and stress about everything maths related. (the letter with the bad grade) getting the results of my maths exam that morning changed everything. the minute i opened the envelope i could taste disappointment. it was the day i found out my results, did the hard work pay off? today was the day i was going to find out. (on beyond a million) ……. she continues to help me so that i can finish my gcse’s and get an a. . perceptions of self this refers to references made by students about themselves in relation to their mathematics learning. (on beyond a million) the feelings that i had towards maths whilst i was in pakistan was really good but i found it a little hard, but maths was my favourite subject as i could use my brain (jessica’s maths story) year was when she lost her new found love for maths. the reason was because she didn’t want to challenge herself and improve but jessica wanted to stick to what she knows because she did not want to be reminded of my first year. (layla) so she entered year , she practised what she learnt from primary and became very successful in year maths but as she got to year she fall back into her old way and became lazy and in year she became even lazier and started seeing school in a new light, which didn’t end very well. layla did many maths exams but never got the c for foundation. she tried and tried and when she went in for results day she knew that she had failed, but she passed, the hard work had paid off. (the letter with the bad grade) if the letter with the bad grade didn’t come, i wouldn’t have known what i am capable of doing, but the truth is anyone is capable of doing so. . feedback from the workshop of a colleague two colleagues carried out the storytelling workshop with their year class, the students were sixteen years old and just finishing their gcse course. i asked my colleagues to feed back any thoughts to me and this was kept informal. the feedback about the management of carrying out the workshop was very positive and both colleagues said they found the stories interesting and informative. one colleague recorded her comments and impressions from the stories and i have included below, with her permission, the main points. i asked one of these colleagues to take part in an informal style feedback talk on the storytelling workshop and the stories produced. with the agreement of my colleague we had the tape running so that our record of the conversation could be accurate. the feedback from the running of the storytelling workshop was that all students wanted to take part, most of them worked in small groups and they seemed to enjoy the process. the class teacher said that she found the session interesting and enjoyable. below i am going to feedback some main points that came out of the recorded informal feedback from the class teacher who i will refer to as colleague a. colleague a carried out the workshop with two classes, one higher set class that were producing very good mathematics results in assessments, and another class that would be described as a lower set class whose school mathematics targets were c and d grades. the students were in their last term of gcse work and by the time we carried out this feedback they had finished their mathematics exam. colleague a felt that carrying out the workshop with the higher set group was not so useful because most of the students communicated that mathematics was good and that they were happy with the grades they were getting. some stories also predicted a future that included mathematics and this was presented in most stories as being important, ‘my life depends on my a - level maths’ (student story extract). two stories stood out as different, both mentioned the differing mathematical experience between primary and secondary school. ‘maths was fun in primary school and it is not fun anymore’ (student story extract), and there were other indications that they worried about transitions in mathematics such as changing class or teacher. there were also indications that their mathematics experiences were changeable, ‘maths can make you angry and can make you happy’ (student extract). colleague a said that she would find the stories particularly informative if she had them at the beginning of year rather than at the end of year because all stories contributed information about the student and her mathematics that could be very useful for future planning and classroom work. one story that caught her attention had a section as follows: my relationship with maths: -maths to me is a load of numbers and rules that will not apply anywhere in life unless i become a mathematics teacher. memories from when i was younger: - me sitting on carpet confused as a cow on astroturf trying to figure out why i am here. the majority of time maths and me do not see eye to eye as i question the rules. colleague a felt that the second set of stories were completely different and repeated again that if she had seen the stories at the start of the year she could have addressed particular issues that are mentioned in the stories. referring to the story telling workshop, colleague a said, ‘i think that it is good because it allows people who say nothing in class to have a voice’. she said that she would now like to build in to her curriculum work on the importance of mathematics and where it impacts on life outside of school, and incorporate into the planning other tasks designed to raise the self-esteem of the group. there are many extracts from this set of group stories that correlate with themes that arose in the stories created by my classes. most stories gave an indication of how each particular student viewed mathematics, many mentioned change and transition and an inconsistency in mathematics and its expectations. unlike my students, the higher set stories gave an overall message that mathematics was a means to an end in as much as getting a particular grade was the key to their future. in summary, colleague a reported that all students happily took part in the storytelling workshop and the process seemed enjoyable. she also enjoyed facilitating the workshop and reinforced my feelings about the timing of the stories, pointing out that they could be a very powerful tool for teaching and learning if known early in a student’s mathematical career. she felt that allowing students this type of voice could help her plan effectively. she found that there was a difference in the stories told by able mathematical students and the less able, and that she personally found the stories told by less able students more informative, in the sense that she could use the story content to plan her teaching for those students more effectively. . conclusion in phase the storytelling workshop was conducted with two groups that were similar ages and at the same stage of their gcse course, yet there was a difference in how they tackled their stories in the storytelling workshop. one group, group a, produced four personal narratives, four poster type stories and one fairy tale. the other group, group b, all produced personal narratives. when i discussed this fact with a colleague i also started to note the subtle differences between the positions of the two groups as mathematic learners. group a were a borderline group that were mostly targeted c grade at gcse, they were all on course for this target, and had consistency in teachers for the last three years. their stories gave an impression of being in control and on target, they indicated that they would work hard and fight to achieve their grade. some students made posters and my assumption about this was that they had no burning desire to tell their story. group b were also a borderline group and most were also targeted a c although two were targeted higher than this. they had a history of being a little difficult to manage with a small number of students displaying poor behaviour. their record of teachers over the last three years was not so consistent. many of these stories conveyed an air of helplessness and no real fight or ideas relating to how they might be successful in this subject. i found the differences in the stories between the two groups interesting and felt that through knowledge of their stories, it might be possible for a teacher to address social issues that were particular to specific groups of students. in the next chapter, i examine the content of particular stories and describe the influence that they had on my thinking and practice. chapter phase and : selected individual stories i entered into the phase section of this research with some specific targets in mind. firstly, i wanted to collect individual stories rather than group stories, and secondly, i wanted to hear the stories of students that may have found learning school mathematics a struggle. i had some assumptions in mind when designing this phase and i was keen to see the outcome of the data collection. i had begun to understand that the stories could be a very good way of getting to know certain mathematically related views and behaviours about individual students that could be very beneficial to my planning and work with that student. i was also keen to explore the changes in class engagement and behaviour after the storytelling workshop. i used the phase section of the research to a) examine the stories of a purposefully selected sample of students and b) consider how the content of the stories supports or rejects my initial themes. at the end of phase , i had read stories written by year students, each story made a contribution to the development of this research but a few stories surprised me and made me reflect on my reaction to the stories and my practice with that student. i started to think also about data that suggested that the students also gained some benefit from sharing their story. the data produced by my student research participants was varied and rich in content and form. i found myself spending hours reading the stories and dwelling on what they might mean to me personally, and in my quest to improve my teaching practice. to focus myself on developing this phase of my research, i returned to my initial research questions, which were: is learning mathematics an uncomfortable memory for many people, and if so, why? and; how can i create a more approachable and effective interface between mathematics teachers and their students? the uniqueness of the student stories and the impression that they made on me encouraged me to build into my data analysis model an opportunity to study each story as a whole unit, thus preserving the story message. i felt that this process complemented my narrative approach to the research and preserved that uniqueness that was unveiling itself as crucial information in this research. i also felt that by looking for patterns and set themes and applying a set of questions taken from a symbolic interactionist view point, i was learning and expanding my field of view, and trying to avoid overlooking significant areas of interest to this research. the themes compiled through the process of intuitive inquiry and thematic analysis provided a variety of information that could contribute to a discussion regarding how students felt when learning school mathematics. to address the second of my research questions above, i felt that i could make the following claims about what i had started to appreciate from working with my student stories: the first was that knowing more about historical and social interactions pertaining to the learning of mathematics for each student was enhancing my ability to teach them effectively and sympathetically. the second was that encouraging students to explore their voice through the creation of a mathematical story was influencing the relationship between student and teacher, and was contributing to the growth of student and teacher confidence with respect to the learning of mathematics. these claims were based on my understanding, which was drawn from studying the data that was produced across the three phases. i discovered that the student stories could give me information about my students that would often stay invisible to me during my normal daily classroom interactions with those students. some examples of this information included their feelings, fears, expectations and ambitions. this additional knowledge allowed me to consider reflexively my position and the position of the student when manoeuvring the mathematical classroom terrain. this classroom terrain is influenced by my expectations, biases, behaviours, and values, my choice of language (including body language) and my mathematical approach. in addition, the classroom terrain is a function of the expectations and behaviour of the students and the general ethos of the establishment. it is possible that these understandings and expectations are not shared by the teacher, the student and the establishment which can lead to non-harmonious classroom practices. knowing the student stories can help me, the teacher, gauge the best approaches needed to challenge or support student thinking and student behaviour, consider the appropriate degree of sensitivity needed when correcting a student response, and plan what design of task (open, closed, short or extended) will best stimulate a particular student. i felt that the process of students creating their story about their mathematical experiences could be thought of as students constructing new ways of being during the story. through the medium of stories, students can relive experiences, justify behaviours, rewrite endings and try out scenarios, allowing a relatively safe way to experiment with new ideas and plot lines. an understanding of oneself across time can be accomplished by organising and clarifying temporal experiences through the medium of narrative, which ricoeur ( ) described as a narrative identity. the data that follows includes some examples of the memorable mathematical stories that my students created and the influence these stories had on my practice. the stories have been selected from the phase and section of this research. i have selected three individual stories from phase and four from phase . the particular stories caught me by surprise and i found myself dwelling on their content and my classroom recollections of the student author. they were not the only stories that surprised me but were selected by me on the basis of the influence they had on me, their contrast to each other and the differing relationship i had with the students. for the purpose of exploring analysis i will limit my discussion to the three following areas: firstly, how the story addresses the themes developed earlier; secondly, how the story addresses my initial research questions; and thirdly, the surprises and influence on my teaching. when i read the phase stories, i had very little teaching time left with these students before they started their examinations. in hindsight, the timing of the story telling workshop was a limitation of the research design because the subsequent teacher/student interactions that happened after the stories were shared, has now become a very important aspect of this research. . phase year clown when this story was being created the student shared with me the thinking behind the image. she had been working on the clown face for a little while and she explained that she found the face scary but if you looked at it longer it was actually ok. this she said, was like maths questions, when she first saw them she was scared but the longer she spent looking at them the better they became. she attached the clown head protruding from the paper on folded concertina paper (like a spring). this made the head stick out a little and wobble. at this time there was no writing with this image, the writing was attached at the end. he stares me in the eyes, mocking me on his white background. my heart skips a beat, intimidated by his bold writing. i stare back at him trying to work out exactly what he wants from me. i read over him repeatedly analysing his every word. i slowly put my pen to paper and begin to write my only wish to please him and take the marks wrapped up in him and add them to my score. as my ball point pen connects to the paper he begins to make sense his once mean and intimidating persona now becomes simple and easy to read. i take all i can from him leaving him powerless and completely worked out. with his power adding to my score, i then turn the page and go on to his brother. my first thoughts and reflections were as follows; i was impressed by the student’s considered depth of analysis regarding her relationship with mathematics. we had spoken before the story creation about her fear of tests but we had not reached a solution about how to deal with things. i was aware that this student was a very logical thinker, and was very frustrated by her exam results which tended to be a grade under her school target grade. target grades are compiled by the school and usually based on primary school performance and this student’s target grade was a grade higher than any other person in the class. this target grade is not just from mathematics achievement but an amalgamation of the points scored in core subjects (english, mathematics and science) in primary school and at the end of year (ks ). when the student attached her writing to the clown image and asked me if i would like to read it, i was attracted by the descriptions, the use of metaphor and the way it played on my emotions. the image of the clown immediately caught my attention. the face is not particularly pleasant and the neck was made in the form of a spring so that it wobbles at you, making the whole image a bit unsettling. the student took her story into another room and made a short recording for me. . phase year clown: recorded transcript. em, this is my maths, em, poster, and the clown here explains em what i think when i see a maths, em, exam so it’s very scary. and then, but really inside when i start working it out, represented by the pink and the blue, it’s not as scary as it looks. . clown story: the faces of mathematics mathematics is portrayed as powerful, bold, and mocking. it is confrontational – it stares, ‘bold writing on a white background’. it wants something from the author - it takes, and the author wants to please it - ‘my only wish to please it’. the author takes the role of the subject in a power relationship and my thoughts flash back to the pilot stories where another author refers to pleasing the teacher, and another suggests that they are pleasing their parents. mathematics appears to be male, ‘he’ appears mean and intimidating but there is a softer side ‘he becomes simple and easy to read’. the author takes from him and leaves him powerless. power is threaded through the whole extract; if you can work out the maths you hold the power. there is a measure called score – power adding to my score. it seems that increasing the score gives you power. in this story gaining the power is important and so by association your score is important. the whole story feels ruthless and the sentence ‘leaving him powerless and completely worked out’ makes me think about the concept of knowledge. i wonder is the student suggesting that knowledge is powerful when it is not shared and if you can work it out then you also hold the knowledge, which by association, makes you powerful. the author feels strength at overcoming the mathematic problem; this is cumulative, building to gain strength for the next problem. there is a sense of victory, a feeling of power. i cannot help but worry about what happens if the mathematics is not overcome and rendered powerless? what happens to the next problem? the story suggests to me that the student is able to function in an independent way. she shows determination and courage and a refusal to be defeated by a mathematics question. it is possible that endurance, perseverance and strength of mind are considered by the student as important for mathematics. however doing mathematics questions makes her feel nervous, anxious or scared, indicated by the phrase ‘my heart skips a beat’. . clown story: the culture of school mathematics what appears to be recognised as ‘doing’ mathematics is answering the question then moving to the next question. the story suggests that by overcoming you please, but the question that forms in my head is who or what is pleased, the student, the teacher, parents or the school system? the story implies that this battle is a common way of working with mathematics. mathematics elicits this battle by its provoking stance which makes me think that the author feels frustration when ‘doing’ mathematics problems and the struggle is never-ending, it just moves on. it occurs to me that this may be a reflection of the way the student views the mathematics lesson and it is something for me to give consideration to. there is no sharing, no equality, no compassion and no relief, as the victory is short and the girl has to do battle again. i have tried to imagine a setting where this sequence would look natural and i can only align it with a relationship that acknowledges that whatever you do, it is not good enough. is this something this student lives with or has experienced in a mathematics classroom? perhaps it is in her personality, or it is a message from somebody close. teachers do not feature explicitly, however the story conveys a discourse that is associated with mathematics teaching - ’bold writing on white background’. the image of a next question makes me think of common instructions used in the mathematics classroom, ‘do the next question’ and ‘complete the exercise’. there is a sense that the working on the question is important, no mention of the right answer just ‘all worked out’. the student gives the impression that she is alone in this battle and she must be able to overcome the problem and solve it. at no time does she mention help or support. the story implies a relationship with a male; it comes across as intimate yet one- sided with the author as subject. it conveys a situation of trying to please but as a ‘trojan horse’ with a real intention to conquer and ‘leave wasted’. it feels like a battle in which there has to be a victor. the student gives me a strong message that she knows that she is able to complete the mathematics, she has the ability but there is always something that halts this process momentarily. . clown story: the surprise the surprise for me was that i had seriously underestimated the depth of feeling and emotion that this student was undergoing during tests and exams. before i read the story, i was aware that this student had a problem with tests and exams. she had explained that she felt she did not perform well under this pressure and was usually frustrated with the results. my initial assumption was that her difficulty was with her preparation for tests and exams, and that she was experiencing what many students feel which is often referred to as exam nerves. the pressure of school assessments is often a talking point amongst teachers and students and it is a common assumption that students will get ‘over it’ with practise and time. my normal response to this sort of problem would be to advise and support the way the student prepares for the exam or test. however, if my assumption was correct it would happen in all subject tests and exams but this student shared during interview that this phenomenon was restricted to mathematics. . clown story interview the interview with this student started off with questions about the clown face and general questions about her story and the struggle she has with examination questions. the response to these questions helped shape my interpretation of the story and subsequent planning for this student and informs the discussion in the next section. in addition i asked the two final questions below. the researcher questions are in italic. did you find it useful to write your mathematics story? i think it is, it kind of made me realise that it is not so much my ability it is the confidence side of stuff, i think. do you think it would be useful to maths teachers to read a student’s story while they are teaching them? yeh, i think it would help them understand what their point of view towards maths is and then, to cater to those needs . clown story discussion this story influences the way i think about this girl and subsequently the way i deal with her in my day to day teaching. how i might present a mathematics test to a class that contains this student needs serious consideration. it certainly could not be on white paper with bold writing, and contain lots of questions. the language i might use in conversation about mathematics questions would now be informed by what i know. it would not now seem appropriate to suggest that she should try harder in a test, or that she might need to improve her performance. i would want to move away from the aspects of conquer, win, defeat by moving the emphasis away from questions and classroom procedures that had one correct answer, and i would focus more on exploring lessons where marks were awarded for working and ideas but not for answers. to move away from a focus of just answering questions, i would build into each lesson some time spent reading a mathematical question but instead of trying to answer it, establish a thinking time for collecting thoughts, some notes and/or diagrams about the question and then some class feedback. this could lead to this student writing her own exam questions for others ensuring that problems with mathematical language and communication were highlighted. i feel this student does not hold a strong mathematical identity. she is not comfortable doing mathematics or conforming to the day to day procedural side. she is not empowered by her mathematical skills, although others with similar abilities might be. she knows that passing in mathematics will strengthen her social empowerment and this awareness could be intensifying the problem. she does not indicate in her story that she finds the questions difficult or that she cannot answer them. there is only a sense that they frighten her, her personal empowerment is penetrated, and she loses confidence in herself. my relationship with the student was comfortable, we shared a common interest in riding horses and she had riding lessons at a local stable that i also rode at. after her story i spoke to her often about her aspirations for the next few years and where mathematics featured in this plan. for her, mathematics was a means to an end, she needed a c grade to get into college but that was her only interest in the subject. i was uncomfortable with her view of mathematics and i wanted to explore with her the other faces that mathematics could present, perhaps one that could show a more enjoyable aspect of mathematics. i also wanted to explore with her the place of challenge and cognitive wrestling in mathematics and how working like this did not necessarily constitute a struggle or a fight. she was a very accomplished dance student, a very good english student and was also expecting good grades in all other subjects. i knew she was a very good mathematician because her verbal responses to mathematical situations were reasoned, logical and accurate, but she was hesitant with her written work, wanting to be sure she was correct before committing her writing to the black and white page. over the short period of time left with this year class, i put together a programme of activities that would support some of the issues that i had encountered in the student stories. some activities were built into the lessons and others used a few minutes at packing away time. i devised a set of class work activities that encouraged putting ideas on paper, including using writing frames, brainstorming, and spider diagrams, all before actually formulating a solution to a problem. we discussed how mathematics might feature in other more favoured activities such as dance and art. we also talked about subject phobias and fears, and what strategies people have for dealing with disappointing results. this student’s skills and confidence when faced with a written mathematical problem developed over this period of time. in class she displayed a good understanding of numerical techniques, logical thinking, good powers of analysis and she was very quick thinking. she knew how to work outside of the lesson and access mathematical information to support her learning. she knew that she was good at mathematics and i watched her mathematical and personal empowerment growing over time and she did achieve the grade she needed when she finally sat her gcse exam. . phase year : on beyond a million when i came to england in in august i went to two different schools. {school name } then i moved to {current school name}. maths in england is different from maths in pakistan. we are taught different methods. i have really enjoyed this experience as now i know how to do both of the methods. also my school is really good as they helped me to adjust and also helped me to achieve my grades. my teacher is great as she helped throughout the three years i was at school and she continues to help me so that i can finish my gcse’s and get an a. the feelings that i had towards maths whilst i was in pakistan was it was really good but i found it a little hard, but maths was my favourite subject as i could use my brain. the methods which we used were different from the methods which we used in london. pakistan is where my journey started. this is how we write maths in urdu “ “ life is good for two things, discovering maths and teaching maths. keep calm and do your maths at the time of the story creation i made some brief notes as follows: this student worked on her own to create this story, she took it home with her to spend more time and appeared to view her story as very important, giving full attention to what she was doing. when finished she took her work to the next door classroom and made a short recording to explain her work. my first thoughts and reflections were that this story attracted me because it was a celebration of learning mathematics and i admired how the student embraced the opportunity to learn. again, although i felt i knew this student well, i discovered through the story that i had no real understanding of what made her function as she did in the mathematics classroom. after reading the story, i began to appreciate some of her behaviours and felt a responsibility to contribute to the positive story plot. this is a story that has a sequence through it. it is a very positive story and i felt that the student was proud to communicate it to me. i felt that it was personal by the fact that she worked on her own and did not attempt to share with other students. this does, however reflect how this student liked to work in mathematics lessons which was on her own unless directed by the teacher to work with or support other students. . on beyond a million: interview with the student (the researcher questions are in italic) why did you call your story ‘on beyond a million’? because i like maths so much, i really enjoy it. what is the significance of using the word million? it is because it is better than the rest. your story suggests that you are very positive about mathematics and learning maths. is that what you tried to show? yes was there a time in your life where you felt less positive about learning mathematics? probably when i wasn’t interested at the time when was this? (student shrugs),i was a bit chilled out. when did that change? when i came here cos i saw the difference in the life styles and everything, and i saw that i could pay more attention to everything. leading on from that then when you came to england what was your first impression of mathematics in this country? it was a bit awkward in my old school because they did not teach much cos they were an art school and they concentrated more on art not on other subjects that much. is that the impression you got from that because they were called an art school? it was just like they didn’t concentrate much cos like i didn’t get the levels, what they were teaching you was not good, you can tell by the levels that what they were teaching you wasn’t good enough for me to learn. was that in the maths lessons? yes in your story you call it an ‘amazing maths journey’. why is this? because as the years developed my interest developed and i learnt more, probably this is one of the subjects i never get bored in but some of the subjects are boring and i feel like falling asleep, but maths is every time something new and i never get bored in it. if you had to sum up the main differences between mathematics in pakistan and mathematics in england, what would they be? here it is more functional and there it is a bit more formal. in pakistan i found the mathematics difficult but i did not care, i did not really care about any of the subjects. i just did them and it did not matter if i did not understand it. when i got to england i started at [school name] and i got terrible grades in year and i still did not really understand much but i kept my head down and just did what i was told. when my sister came to this school and started to do well my parents realised that they should change me to here. here people care and when i heard the students talking about how much they struggle to understand i started to care and realised it was important. i really started to like maths when you taught me because i could understand the way you were explaining things and then i started to enjoy maths. you use the phrase; ‘keep calm and do your maths’. why did you include this phrase? because it is important to keep calm does this mean that sometimes you are not calm? yes, in maths and english i look at the question and i don’t feel calm but i know to stay calm and look again at it and i will be able to answer it. do you think it is useful for a teacher to know a student’s mathematical story? yes why? because that way they get to know a bit more about the way a student feels and then they can…i think they can teach their students better if they know more about them. is it useful for you to write your mathematical story? yes it is good to be able to tell your story in this way; sometimes it is difficult to just say it. when i want to say something and i feel it is a bit difficult to say i write letters- i often write letters to my mum. . on beyond a million: the faces of mathematics this student presents mathematics as being fun and the chance to use her brain. she acknowledges that it can be hard but enjoys the challenge. in this story she talks about two views of mathematics: a formal face of mathematics and a functional face. she indicates that although she always enjoyed the challenge of mathematics, with the formal face she just did the work and it did not matter to her whether she understood it. the functional face however involved teacher explanation and her understanding the method as opposed to just applying it. she speaks about different methods used in pakistan and in england, however it is likely that the methods are similar, but one focuses on applying an algorithm and the other focuses on problem solving to adapt or create a specific algorithm. this student’s love of mathematics has helped her to embrace both approaches to learning mathematics, helping her to realise that an important aspect of mathematics is thinking and understanding. i now know from my work with her that she loves mathematics unconditionally, she will stick with the mathematics until she really understands it, it does not matter how many times or how long it takes. . on beyond a million: the culture of school mathematics this student wants a grade a in gcse mathematics even though her school prediction is a grade c. my observations are that there is an element of pride involved in this ambition and it is important to her to do better than her peers. she works alone if possible and i have assumed that she uses the mathematics lesson as a way of marking her status in the group, she sends out signals that mathematics is important and her time cannot be wasted. this student expects the teacher to be in control and teach her mathematics; she expects the teacher to deliver something that advances her learning. her interview suggests that if she is not achieving good grades then the teaching is not good enough. she recognises that there are different methods used in teaching mathematics and states that these are different in pakistan and england. i know from working with her that she likes to learn a method and then enjoys applying it. this focus on method possibly stems from the formal face of mathematics presented to her in her first years of learning mathematics, and when i first started teaching her she relied far too readily on having a method. later on she mentions that she likes mathematics because it makes you use your brain and also that she likes things explained so that she understands. this signifies to me a move away from a method type approach of a formal mathematics face and a step towards what this student refers to as a ‘functional’ face. this student states in her story that you should ‘keep calm and do your maths’, and during the interview she explained that she felt it was important for her to stay calm when reading mathematics and english questions, this allowed her some thinking time and then she could tackle the question. this was an interesting correlation with the story called ‘clown’ who also talked about her first reading of a mathematics question and how it made her feel. relationship with school and teachers is a theme in this story. she indicates that in her early education years she viewed school and maths as unimportant and did not engage with the process. but at some point, from listening to her peers, she began to view learning as important and started to embrace the process. at this point a relationship developed between the student and the learning, and the student and teachers. . on beyond a million: the surprise my surprise was a two-fold one, the first was how intense the positive story was. i knew that this student had struggled over and over again with the more difficult mathematics topics yet there was no mention of this in the story. the second was my initial lack of empathy with this student and lack of understanding about what makes her function, until i read the story i had been confident that i understood her well. . my diary extract i have worked with this student for three years but only two in the capacity of her mathematics teacher. when she arrived at the school she was placed in my form, so i became her form tutor. she had come to england two years before that and attended a school that was nearby, but once her younger sister arrived in england and was placed in this school, her parents decided that she should also attend this school. in the first year she struggled with fitting in and seemed quite isolated. her sister was achieving extremely high grades in all her assessments but this student was not, her grades were very low in comparison with her peers. she often came to my classroom to chat, usually with a friend, and they would chirp away happily asking me fairly immature questions about the school or teachers, or my opinion about an event etc. she was always smiling and happy, being silly and joking. however, when required we did talk about her progress and achievements and it was clear to me at that time that this was a very hardworking student who was struggling in all her subjects including mathematics. i was her tutor for a year and the next year she had a different tutor, yet she often arrived at my classroom during lunch or break and asked if she could stay there and get some work done. i would always oblige and let her stay. in the third year of knowing this student i became her mathematics teacher. the class was assigned to me because the students were what the school labelled as an intervention group, a group of students that should be able to achieve a c grade or better on their gcse mathematics exam but to date were not meeting their expected targets. this student fell into that category and so became one of my mathematics students. reading her story answered so many of my silent questions, i knew she had come from another school but did not understand that she had started her education in another country. i thought that she had a very strong work ethos but did not understand that she was driven by her love of mathematics. i now knew that although she liked to rely on a method to support her mathematics work, she wanted to understand more about why the method worked. i began to appreciate the place of her ambition; that for her, personal growth and cognitive process was important because she thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. i had initially viewed this student as attention seeking and when i was particularly busy i had felt a little irritated that she was always hanging around the classroom. after reading the story, these memories flooded my senses and stirred uncomfortable feelings. instead of feeling irritated that this student had taken a lot of my spare time chatting and playing, i now felt admiration for the student and she now could have as much time as she wanted. . on beyond a million: conclusion i feel that this student exemplifies the role of empowerment. i had watched her mathematical empowerment grow over the last year. developing alongside this was her personal empowerment; she grew in confidence and enthusiasm and eventually started to take risks with her mathematics. i had always thought that social empowerment was her goal in learning mathematics but the story has persuaded me that she really enjoys it and embraces the challenge; this is something that i wish i had appreciated at the start of our time working together. this student story has implications for me, the teacher. if i had more time left teaching this group, i would like to set this student a variety of activities that embrace the beauty of mathematics, incorporating aspects of mathematics that are interesting but not on the gcse curriculum. i understand now that she would really love to explore the subject further. i also think that this student would happily work with me outside of the lesson at clubs and events, and her mathematical exploration could be stretched beyond any school set targets. as an improvement to the social aspect of learning mathematics, i would encourage this student to work more collaboratively in the classroom, sharing this enthusiasm and positivity; this would benefit her communication skills in mathematics and enhance the classroom environment. i would also like to explore the original mathematical methods that she was taught in pakistan, we could look at the similarities and differences between those methods and ones taught in english schools. this would help her unpick and now understand those more formal ways of working. lastly, but probably most important, i would like to wean her away from the need of having a teacher deliver mathematics to her, setting her tasks to explore and feedback areas of mathematics that particularly interested her. in the short time left with this student i was able to focus on some of these aspects of learning mathematics. some of the things suggested above were already used in my teaching but now i could assign this student, and other students that had shared their story, particular activities that addressed their individual interests and needs. in terms of my initial research questions, this student does not view learning mathematics as an uncomfortable experience. she may have had some uncomfortable moments on her ‘amazing journey’ but for her, they are all part of the whole package. i expect that as an adult she will tell an equally positive story about learning mathematics. her gcse grade was not that iconic grade of a that she stated she wanted, but she told me that she was very happy with her grade b and would like to continue to study more mathematics. she returned to pakistan for the next stage of her education and mathematics was an integral part of the science course that she enrolled on. this young lady contacts me every now and then, and at the time of writing this thesis she was studying in pakistan. . phase year : the letter with the bad grade. (story text) maths was the best subject when i was younger but everything changed. it became a challenge, something i couldn’t cope with. every topic seemed hard algebra, equations, pythagoras, shapes, angles, finding volumes etc. getting the results of my maths exam that morning changed everything. the minute i opened the envelope i could taste disappointment. my mother looked anxious about my future; i was months away from finishing school, it seemed impossible to achieve good grades. it was that moment she said it, ‘i believe you will reach the aim of an amazing grade in maths but we have to work hard.’ my mother supported me all the way through my hard time with maths, we revised, put effort into my studies, and got a maths tutor. everything improved with time. months later it was the day i found out my results, did the hard work pay off? today was the day i was going to find out. my mother and i looked with wide opened eyes and we could see relief in each other’s eyes. i got beyond my aim and the answer to the question was yes, the hard work had paid off. if the letter with the bad grade didn’t come, i wouldn’t have known what i am capable of doing, but the truth is anyone is capable of doing so. . the letter with the bad grade: introduction i wanted to include this story as an example of the student story data because out of all the stories that were written this one caused me the most soul searching. after the story was written and i had read it, i thought long and hard about my role as a teacher and my relationship with this student. . my diary extract (student name) never really speaks to me – she mutters a short response to my questions but that is all she lets me have. i know that she can do the tasks i set to a certain degree but she works very slowly, and i also know that if i could help her she would make more progress, but when i approach her she curls into a little ball and i feel like an intruder. so i was surprised when she started to write her story. she curled into her ball and wrote for the three lessons. at the end of the workshop most students handed their stories in but (student name) wanted to keep hers. she said i could read it and take a copy. i checked again with this student whether she was still happy for me to use her story with my research and she said that was fine but she would like to keep the original. i also asked her if she would consider taking part in an interview and she declined the invitation. this student was in a different year class than the authors of the last two stories. i have coded this group as baf (b). i had been teaching this class for seven months when the storytelling workshop took place. historically, this class had been highlighted as a difficult class due to the behaviour of a handful of students and when i started with them i found that there were some very dominant members of the group that liked to speak out and voice their opinion. in contrast, there were also some very quiet, gently behaved students that said very little and tended to be overshadowed by the others. over the months, the more dominant students developed a better work ethos and used their energies in a more productive way. this allowed me to move around the class, spreading my time as equally as possible so that all the students had a chance to progress. throughout the seven months most students were making good progress towards their gcse grades, but they had entered the year with very poor results from the previous year, they seemed very frustrated and had a fairly poor idea of the work that they would need to put in to achieve their school targets. the author of the story was making progress in her mathematics lessons but she did not speak to me of her own accord. this meant that if she was unable to proceed with the work i had set, she would wait for me to circulate and get to her for any intervention. sometimes she would be fine when i was with her and then get stuck after i had moved to someone else, but by keeping her head down she looked as if she was working. i was very aware of this situation and popped back to her as often as i could, but on many occasions there were other students indicating that they needed help and sometimes she would get left for a while. i always encourage students to ask each other for help if i seem busy, this then helps keep the work flowing, but this student sat alone and did not appear to mix with anyone else in the class. often i directed another student to work with her but it was not something that she did for herself. . the letter with the bad grade: the faces of mathematics. this student’s story starts by indicating that mathematics has changed for her. this is a common theme throughout the student stories and is often linked with age ‘maths was the best subject when i was younger but everything changed’ (extract from student story). her view of mathematics now, is that it is hard and a challenge. it is interesting that in the last story the fact that mathematics was a challenge is what made that student love it. disappointing exam results are a main story line and again that is common in several student stories. mathematics presents several faces in this story, a changeable one, a difficult and challenging one and a face that is linked with status. in addition she mentions her future and how her result in mathematics influences this, so mathematics also has its useful face showing. . the letter with the bad grade: the mathematics classroom culture there is very little said in this story about mathematics classroom culture, it is almost as though it does not exist. this student relies on her support from home and her mother takes control to make things right. i could speculate why a classroom culture does not seem to feature for this student but whatever the reason is, i will always feel that i should have been able to do more for this person. . the letter with the bad grade: the surprise the surprise for me was how wrong i had got things and how little the student relied on me. i felt that i had not done enough for this student. i had experienced a dilemma in the way i needed to behave with this student and had made the decision that i needed to give her a little space. this was in response to what i thought her body language was suggesting. in fact, after reading her story, i now think that what she needed was more attention, more support, and more recognition that i understood her battle to succeed. knowing this story a little earlier would have helped me understand what was going on with this student. i suspect that the student was waiting until she saw her tutor to get help with her work and knowing this would have been a way to start a line of communication. in the time we had left, i arranged my planning to include work set to be done with mum and the tutor, this helped me communicate with the student in a way that was useful to what was actually happening in her world. this approach was particularly beneficial to me because i could then get a clear understanding of what work the student was completing with support at home and what work this student was confident to do on her own. . the letter with the bad grade: conclusion once i knew a little more about this student it felt much easier to communicate with her. i spoke to her privately about the work she did outside school and explained how i could support that and keep a check on her learning in class. when we ran out of time in a lesson, i now knew that i could write a short note in her planner so that the work could be continued at home. she achieved a grade c in her gcse which was her school target grade and was two grades higher than the grade achieved at the end of the previous year. . phase stories: introduction towards the end of my phase data analysis i had become very excited about the data that supported my second research question which was: how can i create a more approachable and effective interface between mathematics teachers and their students? keeping the stories as a whole unit gave me a chance to access a small window into the social life of my students learning mathematics. i could appreciate what was troubling them, and i could select appropriate informed responses to their behaviours and needs. this in turn allowed a more harmonious relationship to develop between mathematics teacher (me) and story author (the student). in phase , i decided to build on the work already started and keep the stories as a whole unit. with this format, i considered the two themes developed in the previous phases and the influence that the story had on teacher practice. two particular aspects of the phase and data analysis had made a strong impression on me and started to influence my work in the classroom. the first was that although i entered this research feeling i understood the students that i was teaching, it was now evident to me that my understanding was limited and not always accurate, in fact, sometimes it was wrong. the stories opened up a new way of thinking about some students, they seemed to open doorways that i did not know existed and these doorways influenced my thought processes. they encouraged me to make tailored plans that could factor in the needs of these students. i had discovered that attending to these needs did not detract from the quality of the mathematics that was taking place in the classroom. for some students their mathematical engagement improved, they appeared more relaxed when faced with mathematics and they grew in confidence as mathematicians and as achieving students. the one drawback for me from the phase and research design was the timing of the storytelling workshops. in both phases the storytelling workshop and subsequent analysis took place in the latter part of the academic year which left me very little time to analyse the stories and monitor my subsequent classroom practice. in phase , i had roughly two months teaching time left with the students and in addition, it was an unusual time of the year as they were in the last two months of preparing for gcse’s. i felt that the next phase of this research should focus on my enlightened understanding of the students once they have taken part in the storytelling workshop, and how this understanding informs and manipulates my practice with those students. the design of the phase was organised to take into account any difficulties encountered in my previous work and a) facilitate the storytelling workshop with students who were not preparing for an imminent exam, and b) have the workshop earlier in the academic year to allow me a longer observation period afterwards. i chose a sample of students that consisted of a group of year students (age and ) and a group of year students (age and ). both groups had been highlighted by the school as making very little mathematical progress from entering the school at age until now. the number of students in each group was kept small so that they could receive as much teacher help as possible during mathematics lessons. the year group consisted of students and the year consisted of students. from these groups i have selected four stories, chosen to highlight to you a) the very different contexts and content that are portrayed in the stories; b) the impact they had on me when i read them, which i will call the surprise; and c) the subsequent development of the student after the storytelling workshop. all stories were treated with the same importance and my subsequent interactions with each student were influenced by the stories. however, as before there were differences in the way some students embraced the storytelling process, with a variety in the type and length of story. i now began to consider that one possible way for a student to discreetly not take part in the storytelling workshop yet still appear to comply with the process is by making factual posters containing formulas and rules. over the three phases, a very small number of students made mathematical formula posters which contained no information about their story, i now feel that this was their way of withdrawing from the process. i have selected the following stories on the basis that they each demonstrate in a different way how valuable the storytelling process can be to a teacher. in the first two, the authors are students that i found initially very difficult to work with, but once the stories had been shared i found this new knowledge and understanding helped me develop effective strategies to foster the student/teacher relationship. the third story was chosen because it gives an example of how a story can be written in a style that suits the author. i have included the fourth story, amy, because it contains a lot of information about classroom culture. . phase year : bullies primary was never really the best time of my life with bullies, work and my weight on my mind. i was striving to do the best i can but never was i the best of the class. i was the dumbest of them all oh, i couldn’t tell the time. the time ticks by faster and faster. next thing i know secondary arrived. i was always the odd one out. no one understood my character and act. maths at my first school never had an effect, messing around and throwing things about. we left the room and turned around, the room was always left in a state and all the children will look at the teacher in spite because he could not cope. the kids thought the maths room was a playroom. work was never done and so our grades never improved. a flood load of detentions and a load of teachers on my back. i was very sure the life of mathematics was never for me. with algebra and square root of what? my head puzzled with the alphabet in the maths. stem and leaf, oh when did it become science. what happened to + and + ? at the time of reading this story i wrote these first impressions. my diary extract this student paints a bleak story of schooling, and i get the impression that she is not happy in a situation where the adult is not in control. it makes her feel spite. she makes no mention of her more recent experiences and perhaps the earlier ones have made such a stamp on her expectations that there is nothing else. i would like to build the next chapter with her. my initial thoughts are that it should include authority as a safe haven, a lack of ranking in mathematics as a classroom concept yet always include a celebration of what she can actually do. importance should be placed on being mathematical so that she acknowledges what that is and recognises it in herself. i feel that issues of kindness and acceptance are paramount and i need to be particularly careful about being explicit when these things are displayed so that she recognises these two attributes in herself and the way she is treated. i would like (student name) to be able to write her next chapter with the help of my informed classroom practice in mathematics. in phase , i decided to address the following question, ‘how does reading a student story affect the way i think about them and hence my subsequent interactions with them?’ well, without this story i would probably take this student on face value. my initial feelings about this student were that she could sometimes be a bully. she had given me this impression by hanging around after the lesson telling stories to anyone who was around to listen, describing fights that she has been part of. most of these seemed to happen outside of school and so i had no way to verify the truth of the stories. i had found it difficult to warm to her and had often found her very irritating, which meant that i had to work very hard to ensure that this was not noticed by this student and the rest of the class. she would often giggle loudly for no apparent reason and tried hard to start redundant conversation with nearby students, always in the middle of her mathematics work, thus distracting other students from their work. she was in the habit of calling out randomly when i was addressing the whole class, and sometimes these contributions were hard to justify as relevant to the topic of discussion. this set of behaviours made me annoyed as i am committed to fairness and respect in a working classroom and i view distracting others from the lesson and violent behaviour, both as acts that oppose these values. however, on the other hand, she could work very well in the class, completing some good work and usually ranking higher than others in class assessments. she was usually responsive when i asked her a question and was happy for me to sit with her to look at her work or explain something. when she had completed an assessment well, she sometimes appeared unsure of its value and was very happy when i explained that i felt that her result was good. however, she then could be a little unkind to others who had not matched her performance. again, i find this difficult as public announcement of test results is not a classroom practice that i encourage. the story gave me more information to help me focus my understanding of this student. i actually had thought her work ethos and mathematical identity were fairly positive. i did not appreciate her sensitivity or her need for somebody to be in control. i now understand that her self-esteem was low and needed to be protected, and with that in mind i felt the need to choose my choice of words carefully when i chastised this student. . my diary extract after the story workshop i am really starting to like these kids and i feel a need to go back to their stories and consider how they influence how i deal with them. i am aware that (student name) has low self-esteem about her weight and her mathematical ability. she has experienced bullying and is completely influenced by her peers. she has decided that mathematics is not for her. she says it is baffling, it has titles like ‘stem and leaf’ that are science but actually are not, and she misses the basic numeracy work of primary school. in lessons she tends to be serious about her work but seems to find it difficult to concentrate for the whole lesson. she turns around and has conversations with the students sitting behind her. i constantly have to remind her to work and i think i am only getting % of her effort. she seems to get on fairly well with the group although she makes a great effort to keep involved with them. this indicates to me that she is trying very hard to fit in. when i ask her to focus, or perhaps turn around she tends to look upset but i have noticed recently that her body language has relaxed a little and she smiles mischievously, i suspect this is because she now knows what is expected. how do i treat her differently now that i have read her story? there are many things i do as i get to know her that i may not have done without the story. what the stories do is accelerate that ‘getting to know you’ process. so where before, it has taken me a year to gain some understanding of the different way a student will function mathematically and socially, i now feel this amount of empathy has been achieved in a much shorter time. so for this student, i am strict on her behaviour with respect to how she treats others including me. however, disrespecting people needs understanding – by this i mean that you must know you are doing it to really be guilty of it. if i feel that (student name) is out of line i will explain why i feel that and try to give her a scenario that she can identify with. i am acutely aware from her story that she needs to feel that the teacher is keeping law and order in the classroom. i think before the story, i would have applied the school rules more diligently and just viewed (student name) as a difficult student with poor manners. with this student i also publically recognise good work and keep poor, incorrect work for a more private conversation. this is my attempt at helping her keep her self-esteem. a later diary extract (student name) has had a bad lesson and showed me how difficult and rude she could be. as her story has informed me that she views a lack of discipline as a real weakness in the quality and ability of the teacher, i treated her behaviour straight down the line, text book school rules and she was disciplined accordingly. it felt hard making no small allowance for her having a ‘bad day’; she has been such a good student on many occasions. anyway, it seems to have worked, the next lesson she came back with her normal ‘work orientated’ attitude and actually completed some excellent work on expanding algebraic brackets. she offered to demonstrate on the board for others, and when she made an error, which was pointed out by other students in the class, she was quite chilled about the fact that there was something in her working that was incorrect. this seems like real progress, she is thinking mathematically, happy to participate in the lesson and demonstrate a model answer, and has enough self-esteem to make a mistake publically and then move on and correct it, all with a smile. . phase year : teachers are rude . my diary extract i ask myself why i chose to use this story as an example of data. well, it is the story that has bothered me the most, the story that i have thought about the most and the story i have discussed with my colleagues the most. so for these reasons i know it must be a very important part of my data collection . phase year : teachers are rude. first story this group were a targeted group of year students who were performing in mathematic assessments at a level lower than one that would be ideal for the end of year . they were selected from a variety of different classes, and were selected because they are achieving now, the same level in mathematics assessments, as they did in their final primary school assessments. they are essentially what many schools might call a bottom set class, and although they had some difficulties with concentration span and self-study, i did not feel that they presented extreme behaviour problems. the task was presented to them, the reason for the task was communicated and they happily set about creating their stories. the only objection to the process was this student, who did not want me to keep her story, so i put it in an envelope and gave it back to her. by the second lesson, she had changed her mind and asked me if i would like to keep her story. the text below is what the student gave me as her story: maths is boring and sometimes i feel like snoring. teachers are rude and for some reason they give you attitude. in my past maths was good. i enjoyed it, i still do i just hate the fact that it is boring and usually many sums are complicated. year was the worst, my maths teacher was rude and i don’t know why but it seems they pick on the quiet ones. but on the other hand maths is quite essential to life because it involves a lot of things which is quite important. i usually enjoy maths, but through my previous experience especially in year , my confidence in maths wasn’t so good. in primary i preferred it more than i do now. ps maths isn’t really boring. . my diary extract my first impression of this student was that she was surly and uncooperative. she got on with her work quietly but worked on her own, deliberately keeping away from the other students in the class. when i asked her a question she had a habit of curling up her nose and frowning. her body language sent signals for me to leave her alone and she kept her work very private. of course, much to her discomfort that is not my way of working, every lesson i like to look at the work of each student checking on individual progress so that i have a mental image of where a student is by the end of each lesson. this can sometimes be achieved by asking the student a question, but given this student’s hostile body language, i did not want to highlight to the rest of the class any problems and so, i always sat beside her for a few minutes to look at her work. generally she turned away a little and made it clear she was not happy with me in such close proximity, and often i found it difficult to talk about the work as it was a one way conversation. at the end of the lesson, when the class had left, this student often waited behind and asked me to explain something that she had not understood in class. this was particularly frustrating because there had been ample opportunity in the lesson and i was normally limited by timetable constraints and on my way to another class. i find this student very interesting. on the surface she seems to be polite and hard-working but digging a little deeper she shows me something different. her initial story surprised me. i had seen what the student shows on the surface, the little bits of body language such as turned up nose and angry appearance, but i had assumed that she was babyish, lacking in social skills and had not yet developed her people skills. i realise now that i should have thought about this a bit more because when i mentioned the facial expressions and body language and pointed out that it was a type of bad behaviour, she was surprised, claiming that she was a good girl and never got into trouble. she was really cross about what i had said and kept repeatedly asking ‘do you really think that i am badly behaved?’ her first story filled in the spaces for me a little. this is my thinking about this story and how, by knowing this story, i changed my perception of this student. this student had compiled her story of learning mathematics and her subsequent knowledge of this event around the rhythm of her previous mathematics classroom. in this classroom she interpreted the teacher intervention as rude, she assessed that her own behaviour in comparison with others was ‘quiet’ and had come to the conclusion that teachers ‘pick’ on quiet ones. her story carried insults for a mathematics teacher ‘maths is boring’, ‘i feel like snoring’ and for all teachers, ‘teachers are rude, they give you attitude’. so is this just a really unpleasant student who thinks she is better than everybody else, or is there more going on? she was angry and felt that she had been treated unfairly in her previous mathematics lessons. she was not, as i had first assumed, a student that lacked social skills, but one who had studied the behaviour of her fellow students and her mathematics teacher. i suspect that she was so used to seeing explicit bad behaviour from some students that she has never felt the need to think about her own behaviour. her story really opened my eyes because i had made certain assumptions about this student, i had found her rude and assumed she was in control of her body language. without the story, i am not confident that we could have forged the good working relationship that developed after the story. this was an angry girl who i think had been misunderstood by her teacher, particularly in the previous year. she did not understand that the teachers had actually misunderstood her and she had perceived their response as rude. over the next few months this student changed and became confident, communicative and hard-working. her mathematics assessments started to show good progress and a colleague regularly made a jovial complaint that this student was gate crashing the after school mathematics revision club. . teachers are rude: second story the class were asked to think about their initial story written at the start of the school year and now write their next chapter. they were advised that it could be a continuation of the last one or a new story, and they might like to include in their story the future in maths that they would like to have. this was the next story created by this particular student and this time she was keen that i take it and read it immediately. maths is quite interesting because it’s different compared to other subjects. it involves solving equations and using logic. at times it can be difficult but i think that it is important to try your best regardless of how difficult it is. in my past, well through all my years really, maths hasn’t been one of my strengths. year has been good so far and i have made good progress since year but i’m determined to keep it up. in the future when i get older i’d like to think that i will aim for a b in maths. if i did i’d be proud of myself as it shows my commitment to my school work. i still don’t know what career i would like to pursue, but i like to think that it would be a successful one. i hope to go to university and get on with education as that’s my main priority for now. my goal is to make myself, my family and friends proud but most of all …… myself. this student’s second story surprised me almost as much as the first story. i had expected another story involving teachers and classroom behaviour, and what i got was a personal story containing reflection, growth and optimism. it was like a door had opened and allowed this student to step into the light. i have included below the last written contact with this student because it is relaxed, happy and much appreciated by me. the letter was written after i had left my role in the school. it was sent to me by the mathematics teacher who was now teaching this student. hi miss (my name) i heard you’re missing your classes and you might come to visit, so i’m writing this short letter to say i can’t wait to see you again. i just wanted to say thank you because when i had you as a teacher i learnt a lot and it was a pleasure knowing you as a teacher i hope you are feeling well (signature) p.s: thank you for putting me in miss (teacher name)’s class to describe exactly what i did with this student during the few months after reading her first story is difficult because much of it was fairly spontaneous, just day to day dealing with situations as they arose. i have a lot of scribbled field notes which became my diary but i can outline some of the interactions. the first conversation we had that related to the contents of her story was about being rude, or in this case appearing to be rude. i was very aware that i am often perceived to be rude by both colleagues and students because i like to get to the point quickly and as honestly as i can. i had sat beside the student to discuss her work and she had turned sideways so that most of her back was facing me. i finished the conversation about her work and then asked her if she found me rude, and to scaffold the abruptness of the question i explained that i knew that sometimes people found my directness a little rude. we discussed this point for a few minutes and she explained that she had thought that her previous mathematics teacher was very rude and she felt that she had been unfairly treated. i opened the conversation about body language talking about both my body language and hers. she was shocked that i might perceive her behaviour as rude and said that she ‘was one of the quiet ones’. the conversation only lasted a few minutes and finished with a smile and a joke. the one thing that i wanted to avoid was any upset; my only interest was to open up a communication channel. interestingly, for a few weeks after this conversation, the student found me outside of lesson time to ask me if i really thought she was rude or badly behaved. she never turned her back on me again and although on several occasions she complained about others in the class, generally, she worked with them in a respectful collaborative way. throughout the year her mathematics blossomed, she took control of her learning asking for extra work, communicating during lessons and taking herself to after school intervention (booster) classes, even though she had not been allocated a slot. the first few times that she went to the after school classes the teacher sent her away because a) her name was not on the list and b) the level of work was higher than her targeted level. however, she handled the problem in a very mature manner, seeking help from me and approaching this teacher again in a very polite way and eventually she was allowed to stay. at no time did she ever complain that the after school teacher was rude or unfair, and i got the feeling that she was now able to appreciate the teacher’s position as well as her own. i am not saying that there were not a few occasions when her attitude was less than perfect but i had realised after reading the story that this was actually one very nice caring person, who really wanted to get on with people but had lost her way a little and then the difficulties had escalated. her mathematical progress during the year was considered by the school data systems to be more than would generally be expected, and in the next year she joined a larger class who were considered by the school to be on target, taught by the teacher who had been teaching the after school class. she stayed with this teacher until she took her gcse and achieved her target grade. . phase year : my song this story was written by a student from the year , phase group. i have chosen this story as an example because the content started me thinking about assessments and the effect they have on students which in turn led to a discussion with other members of the mathematics department. this discussion turned into a debate and then a trial change of practice for the mathematics department. approximately a year later, the sentiments in the story which led to a permanent change of practice for the mathematics department, also influenced a whole school policy change regarding the recording and reporting of assessments. i will expand on this later after you have read the story and the comments of a colleague. to set the scene, this student was a hardworking, good mannered student. she worked with a small group of very nice students who were all keen to do well. she asked for help when she felt she needed it although her first port of call was usually within the group that she was working with. she was chatty and she had told me that she was very keen on music and drama. the choice of a song as her story was one that reflected her interests. verse i am confident but i still have my moment especially in maths. year i didn’t mind it actually alright but maths pulled me down. bridge well some may say i need to be afraid of losing my grades because of what i achieve never stays the same in maths. verse people bring me down by saying i can’t do it and sometimes i think they are right (aooohoohoo) and also they seem to be quite rude and jealous of what i can do. that is just me bridge well some may say i need to be afraid of losing all my grades because of what i achieve never stays the same but yet everything’s the same in this subject. bridge well i want to change the way i learn. i do want to change the way i learn in maths ( x ) i want to change the way i learn (x ) maths is so confusing to me (x ) . my song maths: comments of a colleague this story was looked at by a teaching colleague who is not a mathematic s teacher and these were her comments: interesting choice of medium – a song what does student mean by pull me down? is she talking grades, mood, both? why exactly? bridge – is student clear on grades, expectations, how these changes take place and why? verse – who is bringing her down and jealous – why link to maths only. has she genuinely cried boo hoo. or is this just away of expressing upset at the situation. bridge- slight change of wording – what does she mean about the same? bridge - step towards the positive, her wanting to change and improve. focus on the way she learns not what she learns. last lines – as though she has said everything and emphasises her feelings. maths appears confusing- what specifically? overall progression – child not fond of maths due to experience of perhaps low marks. self-esteem issues about what others think. structure of song looks like she is seeking order and direction for her learning. the song contains themes that refer to mathematics classroom culture. this story was interesting to me because it refers to her mathematics grades being changeable, in fact she says ‘losing my grades’ and ‘what i achieve never stays the same’. this attracted my attention and got me thinking about grades and achievement in general. a student who has achieved a grade in their gcse mathematics exam but actually wants to try for a higher grade has very little to lose. if they get a lower grade the next time around the highest grade is always the one that stays as their achievement. the same seems to apply in most types of assessment; you cannot lose your grade or your achievement. yet this student can lose her grade because the internal school system reports just what they achieve in a particular internal test. there are problems with this because the tests are often put together by class teachers, they are often not suitably standardised, usually they are just testing a small section of mathematical content and in some cases tests are carried out in conditions that are not always conducive for the student to achieve their best result. after reading this story, i raised the issue of a student ‘losing their grade’ at a mathematics department meeting and the topic produced a debate that lasted for several meetings. it was eventually agreed that students should not lose their grade once a grade is recorded on the school system as an achievement, any subsequent grade or level would match or better the previously achieved grade. however students should be aware of their actual test result but it should also be explained what this means regarding a grade or level that has already been achieved. students who are not making any effort to improve would stay at the same grade or level. after a couple of years this mathematics department policy of reporting levels or grades became school policy alongside rigorous standardisation of tests and their marking. the second aspect of this story that caught my attention was the influence others, (including mathematics), seemed to be having on this student. phrases such as ‘maths pulls me down’, ‘some may say i need to be afraid’, ‘people bring me down by saying’ ,’they seem to be quite rude and jealous of what i can do’, surprised me and i started to wonder if i had missed some peer behaviour that would indicate that there was an underlying problem. this student appeared to be friendly with everybody and always worked in a group that seemed to collaborate. during the next few lessons i watched and listened to interactions that included this student but i did not notice anything concerning. eventually i had to resort to asking her privately if she was having any problem with other students regarding her mathematics. she smiled and said thanks for asking but no, everything was fine. she explained that in her mathematics class last year a couple of the students had been very nasty to her and that they were also in this class, but it had stopped. she then talked about her previous mathematics experiences explaining that bad behaviour and calling out from other students stopped her from learning. she explained that even though the teacher dealt with it, the classroom atmosphere was unpleasant and the teacher was often cross and this student said she felt uncomfortable and could not think clearly. this conversation encouraged me to reflect on the way i had previously dealt with bad behaviour. i had seen many lessons with a variety of strategies, some more successful than others. i had used many of these strategies myself but now i found myself considering the rest of the class before i made a decision on the best way forward with a difficult student. . phase year : amy one day there was a girl called amy and she wasn’t really good with doing maths. she hates maths because it’s complicated and it gives her a headache. but one day in school the classes changed and she had to take maths lessons. amy was surprised, furious but also depressed. amy went to her first maths class, she was annoyed and angry, but suddenly she saw her best friend silvia was in her maths class as well. silvia is the person with them all, the smartest girl in school. amy ran up to her saying that if she could sit next to her but then silvia says that she hates maths as well. amy blacked out for a moment about to sit next to silvia then suddenly the teacher grabbed amy’s shoulder. it was miss robotnic. miss robotnic sent amy to the back of the room. amy was normal on the outside but on the inside she was screaming, ‘i hate maths it brings me bad luck’. amy was at the back of the class sitting next to the girl she hates ‘sally’. sally is a bully to amy she always makes fun of her and calls her names and picks on her because she was a little chubby. the first lesson was about adding and subtracting. amy thought it mustn’t be that hard but amy just remembered that she was in a higher maths class. when the maths sheet arrived amy could see numbers and plus and subtract signs. she was confused about the work. she looks on her right side and sees that sally is showing off saying that she is the smartest and the prettiest. amy was embarrassed of course; she did not know how to do anything. miss robotnic was looking around and she sees that amy is stuck; she came up to amy and helped her. sally was giggling at amy. amy finally understood what to do but the class was almost done. amy worked as hard as she could and finished as soon as the bell rang. amy was glad because she didn’t get put in catch up but sally did and she wanted revenge. at the playground, amy was playing catch the ball with silvia and then sally stumped into the game. silvia threw the ball to amy but sally caught it and threw it at amy’s stomach. silvia was stunned. sally was about to hit amy but the bell went and she ran off. two weeks later they were learning about fractions. amy started to like maths and became smarter, she had the second highest level in the class. sally was in the middle but she was still mad. amy thought that fractions were the most difficult but she was the smartest at it. she helped other people because they were too confused to know, she told them it was pretty simple. at the maths test amy was very confident and got a high level, silvia got the same level. miss robotnic was a really good teacher and she was a real friend sometimes amy likes to call her maria, (it’s her real name), and she doesn’t mind. sally had the lowest level but she did not care about it and said she is the baddest girl in the class. after class amy likes to clean up but sally stayed behind, she still wanted revenge so she blew out the holy candle and poured the candle wax on amy’s head. amy felt like slapping sally across the face but suddenly miss robotnic ran into the class and took sally to the head teacher. sally was excluded for at least a week and a half and amy was glad she had maths class because her best friend was there and her favourite teacher was teaching her and she says that maths is the easiest subject (except for art, art is the best). sally couldn’t mess with amy anymore because if she did she would have to leave the school. (ps she did move schools because she put candle wax on silvia’s hand and it burnt her hand badly). the end . my diary extract how surprising this story is! in my eyes the author of the story bears little resemblance to the character portrayed in the story. amy is exactly the type of student that would remain fairly anonymous to me in a large class situation. i would know the mathematics that was in her book and the results of assessments but very little else. when i ask myself why this happens, i cast my mind back to memories from the classroom. i remember students involved in incidents surrounding behaviour, disruption, conversations, some cheeky comments and smiling faces. i also have strong memories of students that find mathematics particularly difficult or others that have a grasp of mathematics that is profound. so what is so compelling about the story i am calling amy? i am not saying that i cannot tell you about amy’s mathematics and where she could improve; this is my day to day job. but, i cannot tell you why she is a member of this group of students that have slower than average progress. i cannot tell you why she appears timid in class and not confident with her words. i cannot tell you why she would work at great speed in the lesson completing more questions than any other student, but she would not stop to check that she is correct, even though she could do this quickly and easily by checking with me or with another student. i feel i know very little about this student, she never misbehaves or speaks up, and i cannot attempt to give her any type of inspirational conversation that would appeal to her interests and perhaps help build a relationship between teacher and student. i ask myself, can i do this with others in the class? well yes, for some of them to a certain degree, but very much depends on their personality and the relationship they have with me, and i don’t always get it right! for me this is where the stories come in. they alert me to possible sensitive areas. they inform me of previous histories concerning mathematics. they give me a little insight about feelings towards mathematics. they help me compile a list of possible do’s and don’ts with regard to that particular student. they give me a vehicle within which to position some individual thinking about the student. for this student, the story helped me understand how individual this student was. i had more idea what she valued and expected from her teacher. i now appreciated why it was important to her to sit in a particular place with certain students and why she was reluctant to be sat on a different table with others. i now know that she tried to give me quantity in her mathematics work to the expense of quality. the wonderful thing for me was that it was possible to address these aspects and help amy enjoy a fruitful year learning mathematics. amy wrote a second story which was totally different from the first . dream maths when i’m older i would mostly like to be a game creator but i would also like to be a creator or a builder. me and my dad would always like to build things. i help him with the measuring and designing. he says that i am really great at it. if i couldn’t get a job as a builder i would love to be a game creator. i don’t mind to do any type of game. i might even do an educational game. when i was a kid i always thought that i could work in a store like hmv, clares, toykotoys. i still think of it, and my mum says it is a good place to earn money in the future. i would work behind the register and sell people the things they want. again i found this story surprising; it seemed so different from her first story. however, it did help me with my choice of classroom activities for future lessons. . conclusion to conclude this section of the data analysis i would like to ask teachers and educators, to think about these stories and consider what messages and change of practice each of them might incite in your day to day practice. the feedback i have given is only a snippet of the influence that each story had on my practice and my development as a thinking, reflexive teacher of mathematics. the point i would like you to consider is: does the use of stories, used as a classroom practice in the manner set out in this research, have the potential to address and satisfy my second research question - how can i create a more approachable and effective interface between mathematics teachers and their students? in the next chapter i am going to look at the themes that have developed from the data over the three phases of my research looking for consistency and consonance. chapter : themes and summary of findings . introduction using data from each phase of the research i entered into a process of thematic analysis to draw together similarities and contradictions. the process at each stage was time consuming as it required the work to be put aside on more than once and revisited at a later date. this process of revisiting was fruitful because it allowed time for new thinking, further reading and discussions with colleagues. in this section i am going to summarise the themes from each phase and, where appropriate, look at themes that appear in more than one group. in addition, i will present the findings of colleagues when they applied a thematic analysis to a group of stories from phase . . themes after processing the phase pilot themes, i realised that some of the headings, such as powerful mathematics, were actually ways that mathematics can be viewed and as such were subsets of a general heading which i had named the faces of mathematics. working from this thinking, phase produced two main umbrella themes which were, how mathematics is viewed, (the faces of mathematics) and the expectations surrounding learning mathematics at school, (the culture of school mathematics). phase also produced themes that seemed to fit under these two main headings. . consistency and reliability in themes to introduce a fresh approach to the identification of emergent themes, i asked my researcher colleagues if they would take a look at the sentences/paragraphs/ chunks of data (appendix f) that i had used during my thematic analysis stage and organise them into groups that seemed to have something in common. these sentences were the same as the data i had used for my thematic analysis stage in which i had used a scissors to separate the stories into sentences or clusters of sentences depending on any relationship between the content. the strips of paper containing the sentences for group of students were shuffled to ensure that the selection was random and each colleague was given a pack. everybody in this doctorate group had some background in teaching, although not necessarily in schools and many were undertaking a qualitative study. six people sat with the data and each came up with a set of individual themes that they felt arose from the data. they wrote their themes on post-it notes and these are represented in the table below. colleague a impact of teachers and relationship with them contrast it is both positive and negative at the same time. difficult - or expect it to be difficult - surprised if it is not. purpose of mathematics exams jobs status and identity smart highest level baddest emotional response hate love enjoy boring colleague b negative view of mathematics teacher change of attitude (towards maths) lack of confidence/ self-esteem positivity towards subject positive view of mathematics teacher enjoyment of subject confidence in maths negativity towards subject other colleague c what is maths to me? boring hate confusing/silly/anxious useful/important reaction to the teacher easy/ hard colleague d maths in relation to other subjects emotions diagnostic of problems analytical approach social attitudes to mathematics functional aspects of maths – to help pay bills celebrating maths ( fingers and thumbs) overcoming problems struggle and good results good and bad (mixed opinion) maths difficulty when change to secondary school teacher colleague e is this maths teaching promoting learning product? what about learning process to encourage mathematicians for the future? colleague f fear confidence uncomfortable distracted not like it alone using these post-it headings i then sorted them into categories because some of the headings were similar. i found it difficult to place the contribution of colleague e because they were questions, but felt they addressed two themes, one being the view of mathematics we adopt i.e. the purpose for learning it and would therefore address the theme that has been consistent across the data which is the faces of mathematics. the second area referred to was what counts as learning mathematics and links to the theme that i refer to as the culture of school mathematics. the themes that emerged during each phase can be seen in the diagram below. figure : themes diagram . discussion of themes many of the themes are repeated at each phase of the data collection. the ones that stand out are relationships, contrast and change, what mathematics is to an individual and mathematics ability to be used as a measuring device to determine institutional and psychological position. all the themes can be grouped under the original two headings of a) what we believe mathematics is about and b) the culture of school mathematics in a particular establishment. the important points that can be drawn from the themed process applied to this data is whether the mathematics that students are describing, is supportive of the ethos and beliefs about mathematics that the mathematics teachers and educational establishments wish to communicate. as colleague e asks, is this view productive to the learning and promotion of useful, functional mathematics that will support the future aspirations of these students? • feelngs about mathematics • power and influence • status and school mathematics • mathematics acts on you • assessment and exams • effort/action pertaiing to doing school mathematics • year groups and school systems • teacher pupil relationship • teachers and relationships • contrast/change • status and identity • emotional response to mathematics • expectations of difficulty • what it is to do mathematics • maths is..... • changeable • useful • nice • not nice • powerful • measurement • the faces of mathematics • powerful mathematics • the culture of school mathematics • rank and status • relationships • freedom phase themes phase themes phase themes colleague themes . conclusion the themed analysis of my colleagues was applied to a subset of phase data, and even this small amount of the data proved to be a fairly large data set taking them some time to put their groups together. the process was very useful to me as it confirmed that there were recurring themes in the data groups, and that these themes were associated with the types of issues that had been attracting me throughout the data. emotions featured as themes in most of the contributions from colleagues, it also had been an overwhelming factor that had drawn me to focus on particular stories, and indeed was the foundations of the adult stories that had attracted me to this topic of research. talking about the subject of learning mathematics elicits many emotions in people and if i were to continue with this research i would want to investigate this further. the next chapter outlines what i see as contributions to practice instigated by this research and gives some practical suggestions of how these ideas might be applied. it draws together the main conclusions of this research and suggests areas for further development. chapter : conclusion . introduction a main outcome of this research has been its contribution to the task of improving practice in the mathematics classroom. within that remit it has something to offer mathematics teachers, directors of mathematics, school leaders and teacher training educators. in addition, it has transferability; there are other school subjects and educational situations that could adopt the fundamental practices of this research to explore pupil voice and how this can inform practice. in the following section, i am going to outline where i see the research contributing and then give a brief account of how this contribution can be applied in a functional environment. some of the ideas i put forward have been used and others are for future development. there will be limitations on my ideas due to the limits of my teaching experience, but i am hoping that readers of this thesis will be able to see the potential of the student stories and where they could fit in their own educational developments. referring back to my original research questions, the first one being ‘is learning mathematics an uncomfortable memory for a number of my students?’ this research suggests that for many of the students that took part in the story workshops there were periods of time where they felt emotions that i would understand as uncomfortable. this is also supported by adult stories that have been shared with me over a period of time. the second research question was also addressed by the research process. this question was, ‘can mathematics teachers create a more approachable and effective interface between themselves and their students?’ i believe this research demonstrates that incorporating student stories into our mathematics curriculum plan can make a substantial and in some cases transformational improvement in the communication channels between mathematics teachers and their students. in summary, i embarked on this research with particular aims in mind. the first was to explore the views of my students about their experiences learning mathematics and from this exploration to develop a pedagogical tool that could be used to learn more about how particular students perceive learning mathematics at school. the second aim was centred on the behaviours of mathematics classes and the difficulties that teachers of mathematics often experience when trying to address the individual needs of their students. the student stories provided a vehicle for me to investigate both of these aims, allowing me a window to access the voices of my students and then use this knowledge to critique and explore my understanding of the student learning environment. this knowledge then supported the achievement of my third aim, which was to gain a deeper understanding of the less visible influences that are at play when students take part in a mathematics lesson. . contribution to knowledge and practice the development of an emerging and personal methodology is a contribution to knowledge in this research. this broad methodology utilised aspects of action research and intuitive inquiry so that the expertise and experience of the researcher could become a relevant contribution to the research outcome. in addition the autobiographical style of report echoes the methodology of portraiture (lawrence- lightfoot and davis, ), and aims to make a contribution in the field of research regarding user friendly communication channels and appealing to a wide audience. the development of a story telling workshop that is part of a planned mathematics curriculum is a particularly novel idea. there are very few opportunities in a mathematics classroom for students to constructively voice how they feel about learning mathematics, share likes and dislikes, communicate family influences and cultural beliefs and just generally talk to their teacher on their terms. the story telling workshops provide a way for this to take place in a safe, comfortable environment, using comfortable forms of communication. this research demonstrates that classroom workshops designed to elicit student stories about learning mathematics could become a very important pedagogical tool for all teachers of mathematics. the use of pupil voice through the medium of student stories becomes a significant contribution to knowledge when used in mathematics classrooms. creating a platform where a mathematics student can openly share their experiences, using their natural methods of communication, starts to address and add knowledge to many of the literature areas that were discussed in chapter . these areas include the view of mathematics that is being developed by our students, their development of mathematical identity and their beliefs about the subject, areas that become crucial information when trying to promote and develop mathematics in schools. i have found it difficult to find literature about research that describes, from a student point of view, their experiences of learning school mathematics. in general, much of the literature that i have read explores student attitude and motivation through a quantitative approach to research (hannula, , ; ma and koshor, ; leder, ). this study contributes to knowledge by its membership of what i believe is a lesser used qualitative approach to researching student experiences in the mathematics classroom. a contribution to practice for this research was the application of the storytelling workshop in the mathematics classrooms, a forum where children share their stories about learning mathematics. i have evidenced in this research that this process can encourage student voice and reflexive teaching practices. both these outcomes appear to make a significant impact on teacher/student understanding and relationship, and as such contribute to developing a more approachable and effective interface between teachers and their students. this style of research could be used as an informative tool for school improvement. by analysing and interpreting the student stories about learning mathematics it was possible for me to use the newly gained knowledge to review the current situation with regard to how students felt learning school mathematics at my establishment. by using a similar approach, storytelling workshops could provide a tool by which teachers and educational establishments can review their own knowledge regarding the learning environment they are providing and how this might be developed further. i would like to think that this report makes a contribution to the field of practitioner research and how it is possible to use passion and insight to improve understandings related to practice. my methodology could be described as emerging and investigative and was developed by using methods that are familiar to practitioners. an aim of my descriptions and reflexive insights was to highlight possible common ground between the expertise of the practitioner and the rigour of known academic methods. i believe that this write-up contributes to further thinking that develops a methodology that incorporates the wisdom and strengths of practitioner with existing more traditional methodologies. i propose that the ideas reported in this thesis could be adjusted and manipulated to suit a variety of needs and have the potential to be applied across a range of situations. in the next section i have described how the method and outcomes of student stories about learning mathematics could inform situations that are particular to my environment. . applications for teachers the contribution to knowledge and practice for teachers of mathematics is in the potential that student stories present with respect to understanding the class environment and particular students. in addition, it allows mathematics teachers to analyse and critique their own practice as perceived by the students. as demonstrated in previous chapters, the student stories contain a great deal of information regarding the view of mathematics adopted by students. the student stories give teachers a window through which they can reflect on, and critique, the face of mathematics that a student is adopting and by association the ones that various educational establishments are presenting. these may or may not include the faces of mathematics you had hoped to present to your class of students. the knowledge gained from the stories enables teachers to build on the positive faces of mathematics and present an alternative for the faces that you do not want to promote. it is my belief that our students should be aware of the multiple views about mathematics, understanding a little about where these views might originate and the potential consequences of holding particular views. by opening the debate about mathematics, we give our students the opportunity to discuss, investigate and make selections that would be best suited to their needs. the student stories are created in a non-threatening environment using the skills and communication techniques that are comfortable to the students, and their content is an ideal starting place for promoting a human face of mathematics, one that is comfortable, accessible and aesthetically pleasing. for me, a very important outcome of the research was the unforeseen development of a different relationship between my students and myself. i thought i knew my students fairly well and i had underestimated the scope of, what i describe now, as a really good, knowledgeable and understanding working relationship between teacher and student. it transcended the daily politics of school life and made me feel that my role as their mathematics teacher was enlightened and fulfilling. at a time when i was finding school life very hard due to bureaucracy, the boost in moral was a welcome and surprising addition. another beneficial outcome of this research was how this new knowledge about my students helped me plan effectively for their particular needs, many of which were not entirely mathematical. this research was originally developed to investigate my observations that for some school students and adults, the mention of mathematics brought about negative emotions and often a change in behaviour. in addition, they often attributed teachers or school as contributing to a miserable experience learning mathematics. my student stories were full of information relating to how students felt in mathematics and what events had influenced their mathematical lives. i found that once i knew these student stories, my planning for the class changed dramatically, i could really plan with differentiation, not just mathematical content differentiation but differentiation by task or language or simply by classroom management. . applications for mathematics departments the contribution this research offers to mathematics departments is in its potential to develop reflexive mathematics teachers who can succinctly judge the best way of developing their class of potential mathematicians. in addition, it allows mathematics departments to investigate the ethos and opinions that mathematics students are developing about mathematics, giving them useful feedback which can enhance department development. the student stories are a good gauge for a mathematics department to investigate how mathematics is perceived in their school. it is a useful exercise to see how this relates to the mathematics department ethos and the school ethos. it may be that a department decides to positively promote aspects of its ethos once they have information from the stories. i have to say a word of caution at this point- asking a class to share their stories is not something that should be undertaken by all mathematics teachers, for some it would not be a way that they would like to work and this opinion must be respected. i realise that sharing the mathematical stories of your class with other mathematics teachers and your boss could make a mathematics teacher feel vulnerable. i found it impossible when i read the stories, not to worry that every negative aspect in the story was my fault. however, these students have had many different teachers and most have had experience of another school. the story and their events are a mesh of histories and experiences, and the end story is likely to be a departure from accurate accounts of classroom life. the importance of the stories is that they convey feelings, messages, likes and dislikes about mathematics and are not an account of who did what and where. the students must be protected and kept anonymous, and for this reason it would be important to compile general themes that occurred in the stories to highlight at department discussions. in my role as a department leader, there were some aspects in my student stories that i found were food for thought and contributed to department and school development. i will only mention a couple here as they are specific to the institution and not necessarily transferable. the first was a theme running through the pilot stage of the data collection which i felt was related to an institutional problem rather than a specific mathematics problem. many stories referred to having a large number of mathematics teachers and they indicated that this was not desirable. this point was also mentioned a few times in other phases but was always specific to the class. some classes had experienced a large turnover of mathematics teachers in a short period of time. nationally there is a shortage of mathematics teachers and the school had a period of two years when there were unforeseeable problems with staffing in the mathematics department and hence a string of supply teachers. although at the time the events were out of my control, it encouraged me to think about how the classes felt about teachers in general. i got the impression that it was important to them to have a teacher that they could call their own; they did not seem to reflect particularly on the ability of their mathematics teacher just the stability. this point was reflected in the future planning of the department with respect to staffing and the changing of teachers during the academic year. the second department influence that i would like to mention is the reference in the stories to the changeability of mathematics and in particular a student losing their knowledge or their grade. this idea that you could go backwards in your grade or level fuelled a department debate for a considerable time, and we concluded that in general, if you had achieved something in the world outside of the classroom, an example would be passing your driving test or a particular performance in athletics, that was recognised by all as an accomplishment, it would be exceptional circumstances for you to ‘lose’ it. yet in mathematics it seemed that you could lose your accomplishment in the next assessment. eventually, it was agreed in the mathematics department that if a student had achieved a level in mathematics, for example a, as a formal recorded assessment, then that grade or level would hold or could only be improved on. therefore, in subsequent assessments, if the student achieved a lower grade or level it would be reported to the student and home as a need for improvement but the school system would hold the original higher grade. this made allowances for the student having a bad day or other unforeseeable circumstances when taking an assessment but allowed the student to experience stability in their recorded assessment performance. this department policy was later developed as a whole school policy and is still being used at the present time. . applications for school leaders my contribution to knowledge and practice for school leaders is a model of classroom practice that can aid staff development, encourage pupil voice and help promote a current, positive mathematical ethos throughout their establishment. allowing the time for mathematics teachers to develop their student stories can have benefits in two main ways. the first is the development of student voice in what is often seen as a less accessible subject, one that the students often register that they are having difficulties with. the second is the potential that the communication of stories has to improve the planning and practice of mathematics teachers, which in turn can lead to a more equitable enhanced curriculum, a cohesive and functional classroom atmosphere and improved moral of the mathematics department. . teacher training. the concept of student stories is a useful and informative tool for developing reflexive practice with trainee teachers. the work with student stories reinforces the fact that teachers never stop learning about their students, it dispels any notions of infallibility and helps develop a knowledgeable and empathetic approach with mathematics learners. the student stories will add information to any discussion and critique regarding the values and assumptions of the classroom teacher. promoting the development of student stories encourages adaptable teaching with a view to questioning what we are teaching and why. i believe that encouraging trainee teachers to think deeply about their practice and the influence they have on their students will promote a culture of thinking, caring individuals who are proud of the work they do. . concluding discussion to conclude this section i would like to add a claim that the sharing of student stories can be linked to improved mathematics performance for many of the authors. for the groups in phase , when the stories were written early in their academic year the following effects were noticeable: a) sharing these stories seemed to have a calming effect on the classroom behaviour of several of their authors, this also contributed to improving the work ethos of the class and collaborative ways of working with peers; b) many students developed a more mature approach to their mathematics learning and how they dealt with subsequent problems, and c) communication between the students and the teacher, me, was easier and most of the students made excellent progress throughout the year. my aim has been to communicate this research as openly and honestly as possible. the ideas and references are supported by extensive reading, thinking and a personal reflexive debate on my years of teaching mathematics in school. i would hope that my contribution to the academic world of research is by highlighting the place of accessible, reflexive, self-critical, action research. research that has an intention to serve the community that it is in relationship with, and has a desire to encourage empathy and equitable behaviour when interacting with others. i champion the recognition of intuition when dealing with qualitative data that is collected by a researcher that adopts an insider approach, and would suggest that intuition infiltrates all data recognition and decisions in this situation. in this research i have drawn strands of meaning from children’s stories, confirmed these strands of meaning by looking for duplication in other forms of data, and synthesized these findings into a narrative thread, a construction of meaning that can inform a public debate that can be used to understand and improve the teaching and learning of mathematics in schools. the storytelling workshop is a reflexive tool that can be used in empathetic classrooms where the teacher has a commitment to improve his or her own practice by understanding more about a) the needs of their students (not just mathematical but mathematically related), b) the implications of his or her own perceptions and actions, and c) promoting student voice and confidence. i entered into this research with little idea of what to expect, and my key concerns were whether students would take part in a storytelling workshop and if they did, would they produce something that i could engage with. in conclusion my key findings were as follows: ) students shared their stories in a comfortable, eager manner indicating to me that storytelling as a classroom practice has the potential to be an effective tool to communicate student voice and inform teacher knowledge. in addition, there is a suggestion in phase that the process of storytelling facilitated some students to reflect on their views regarding mathematics and reconcile social difficulties when learning mathematics. ) it is possible, through the sharing of stories, for teachers and students of mathematics to create a relationship which promotes learning and understanding surrounding the topic of learning mathematics. this outcome was particularly useful where the student had communicated aspects of mathematics classroom culture and their expectations about mathematics. ) the student stories highlighted a variety of perspectives by which mathematics could be viewed. this insight into how our students think about mathematics has the potential for institutions to promote emancipatory and positive views about mathematics, and debate and analyse less productive views. ) the process of thematic analysis highlighted areas that were featured throughout the phases. specific examples of this were: confusion and discomfort surrounding change and transitions of school, year group and teacher; a variety of ways of recognising what mathematics is; particular expectations of the role of the mathematics teacher and the place of exams, tests and their results as a measure of learning and ability in mathematics. particular themes running through groups of stories could be a very useful way for institutions, departments and teachers to critique and develop their mathematics ethos and practices. through the medium of student stories, teachers can undertake critical reflexive reviews regarding the ethos they promote, the fairness of their classroom practices and the general environment that they ask their students to work in. . limitations of this research a particlar limitation of this reseach for me was the depth of emotion and responsibility that i started to feel for my students. it was an unexpected by-product of developing the student stories with a class and yet, perhaps, i should have known it would happen. i have been, and still am, a subject of the research. the topic of this research has been part of my life since i can remember and the methodology design draws me into centre stage, deciding which paths and doors should be recognised. i feel the need to have a voice in the research because i feel a vulnerable part of the community of teachers that this research targets as its audience. behar ( ) described the place of the vulnerable observer as one who makes their emotions part of the research, with a warning that ‘the exposure of oneself who is also a spectator has to take us somewhere we coundn’t otherwise get to’ (behar, : ). in the words of romanyshyn ( ) there is something of the unfinished business in this research and he argues that the completion of the work by a reseacher is not the end of the work. research with soul in mind is re-search, a process of re-turning to, and re- membering what has already made its claim apon the researcher through his or her complex relationship with the topic romanyshyn ( : xi). i found the research overtook my life somewhat, thwarting me with feelings of guilt when i was not working on it. my research participants became the centre point of my thinking and i worried about them when they moved on to another teacher or educational establishment. i found that once i read their stories i was commissioned to give them an improved classroom environment and a more knowledgeable teacher. this intense feeling of responsibility made the research slower and harder to process and elongated the writing process because i had to keep revisiting the work ensuring that my thoughts and conclusions were accurate and in the interest of the story authors rather than my own. the research work conducted with my colleagues facilitating their storytelling workshop, served its purpose to show that it could be a tool for other teachers to use. the feedback from these teachers was very positive and both said that they felt they could learn a lot about their students through the medium of student stories. students were reluctant to take part in interviews about their stories and in hindsight this is not surprising. the relationship between student and teacher is not as an equal and is often an uneasy one. the storytelling workshop was fairly personal for students and although they shared their stories with me, they did not have to be there when i read them. it was then a big step to sit in front of me, their mathematics teacher, and openly talk about these stories. in hindsight student feedback could have been planned using a less intrusive format, an example might be asking students to feedback at the end of the workshop using post it notes that can be placed anonymously on a classroom surface. some students did not share stories and used the time to work on other tasks. at each workshop an area had been set up with a range of different mathematical tasks that students might like to work on if they did not want to share their stories. the tasks were differentiated, and used a variety of skills that would complement their mathematical learning. some were formal classroom tasks, others were tactile learning tasks using shape and space ideas and others were mathematical games and puzzles. i was also prepared to sit with these students supporting their chosen work. although throughout the whole process only two students actually said they did not want to take part, others made mathematical posters that took the place of the stories. if the research looks at the stories as a classroom tool to improve the provision for students then the exclusion of these students would need to be addressed. in the case of my students that did not share a story, i chose not to ask them questions relating to why they did not share their story because i felt that they might find that intrusive. instead i made a conscious effort to work closely with them over the next few weeks and by doing this i hoped to be able to make some progress with understanding their individual needs in the mathematics classroom. this is a particular type of research in a particular context, and i believe the shape it takes is very much dictated by the personality of the researcher. this makes repeating the process in a different situation complex and i imagine the write-up would look very different. the particular knowledge produced regarding the content of the stories might not generalise and the methods of the workshops might not exactly replicate. this said, i believe the foundations of the research would hold fast encouraging student voice and transformation, reflexive practices and a more enlightened relationship between the researchers and those researched. another particular limitation of this research was the time allocated for the workshops and the fact that due to their absence some students did not complete their stories. during phase , i struggled with the idea of using mathematics lesson time to facilitate the workshops. this is because during my teaching career i had always argued that mathematics lesson time should be devoted to doing mathematics, particularly when lessons were being used for school business. after phase was completed, i started to understand the power and scope of the stories, appreciating that they made a valuable contribution to the functioning of the mathematics classroom. in hindsight, some students needed a little flexibility in the length of the workshops, allowing some students to take a little more time on their stories and thus accommodating their absences. . the importance of this research this research has highlighted that students respond to school mathematics in a variety of ways. within the stories are descriptions of experiences, some that could be described as positive and others that seem negative. reiss et al ( : ) concluded that understanding these varied responses to school mathematics ‘may make sense of the peculiarities of how different students react to school mathematics’. the concern of reiss et al ( ), was with the lack of post- participation in mathematics and physics, and stated that even the students who have done well in school mathematics often do not continue with it. student stories about learning mathematics can give teachers an insight into how students feel when learning mathematics in school and help them make recommendations about possible interventions, new initiatives and informed practices leading to a more positive, enjoyable learning experience. in the study relating to student attitude towards mathematics and achievement in mathematics, watts ( ) found that there was a strong positive correlation between the two. nardi and steward ( ) also pointed out that the strong links between attitude and performance make research in this area essential. in their research account (nardi and steward, ), they found that students want classroom mathematical experiences that are tailored to their individual needs and that in the absence of this individualism they grow alienated from the subject, losing their sense of intellectual satisfaction and enjoyment. i feel that culturally, for many students, school mathematics has an elitist undertone promoted by the focus on rank and position as a measure of ability and intelligence. in addition, the use of expert language can limit a student’s power of communication making the school mathematics classroom a place where individualism is tricky, both for the student to show and for a teacher to nurture. the student stories help bridge this difficult situation by allowing students to speak in a chosen medium and teachers to see more than just the mathematics on display. . for the future my vision is that future research will utilise the storytelling workshop in order to form strategies that will help learners of mathematics and mathematics teachers function more effectively in the school mathematics classroom. i would be very interested to see a research study where the storytelling workshops are adopted as a department practice, and the research data is a study of the subsequent changes this practice brings about for all its investors. for myself, i would like to disseminate the ideas and findings that have emerged in this research through the medium of publication, conference presentation and workshops. i would particularly like to work in collaboration with mathematics departments and teacher education establishments that have a focus on promoting positivity, intellectual satisfaction and enjoyment in the mathematics classroom. i would like to carry on studying student stories and in particular investigating the relationship between the faces mathematics presents, what a student might perceive as a public and private face of mathematics (fried, ), and how this impacts on their perception of mathematics as inconsistent and changeable. i am convinced that a particular understanding of these influences would be informative and beneficial to all who design mathematics curriculum and subsequent mathematical interactions. finally, on a personal basis, the findings of this research have provided me with knowledge that i consider as invaluable. i believe there is much work to be done if we want our adults to recall more open positive stories about learning mathematics in school and i would like to end with the inclusion of an adult story (appendix g). this was written by one of the research participants after they had finished learning mathematics at school. it was a story offered without any prompt from me and i include it because it is typical of many of the adult stories that i have heard over the years, yet it has a level of analysis about her struggle with mathematics that i find interesting and enlightening. this story gives me the impression that this student has come to terms with her position with regard to mathematics, and her sentiments promote the need for a more human face of mathematics that can celebrate a range of 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( ) ‘constructivism as a liberal bourgeois discourse’. educational studies in mathematics. . pp. – . list of figures figure : student beliefs figure : action research table figure : intuitive inquiry diagram figure : intuitive inquiry model figure : the faces of mathematics diagram figure a: phase data one figure b: phase data two figure : the faces of mathematics figure : the culture of school mathematics figure : themes diagram appendix a ethics application protocol no: - . university of hertfordshire faculty of humanities, law and education ethics committee application for approval of a study programme involving human informants this form should be completed in conformity with the faculty’s principles for conducting research involving human informants. it should be used by individual applicants, staff or students, who require protocol approval for work which they themselves intend to carry out in the session - . please word-process this document. . title of programme: what is in the baggage children bring to the mathematics classroom? . applicant’s name jean brennan status postgraduate, part time student no. scheme of study or award edd, schedule: h edd/mphil e-mail address:: brennanjean @gmail.com name/s of supervisor/s ms bushra connors prof. alan davies . chair of faculty/departmental ethics committee or chair of faculty/departmental research committee dr tim parke research aims of the programme: the aim of this research is to develop a deeper understanding of how some students deal with school mathematics by exploring a) the barriers to learning mathematics, b) how a student’s perception about the nature of mathematics and what constitutes mathematics, affects their ability to function in the mathematics classroom, and c) how the notion of mathematical identity affects learning. this research is a qualitative study that sets out to explore the mathematical lives of secondary school students. the study is working on two layers; one layer will be used to pilot and develop techniques that will help adolescent mathematic students develop a voice that enables them to communicate their affective, and sometimes unspoken, thoughts and feelings about mathematics, the other sets out to look deeply into the experiences of a few students. this study aims to maximize opportunities for children to communicate in their own individual and unique way, the meanings they have created about mathematics. with this in mind i am looking at data collection methods that will allow all abilities and talents, the freedom to communicate in the method most comfortable to them. . number of informants students: aged between and . adults: , teachers currently working in secondary school, and parents. nature of informants the sample will consist of: london secondary schools a maximum of school children between the ages of and . a parent/guardian of of the above students. six teachers who work with the above age groups sample selection for phase one the sample of children involved in the research will be classes i teach. the mathematics teachers in phase one will be colleagues in my school. . has confirmation been obtained that the informants required will be available? no. information regarding this research project and letters asking for permission to include students in the project are due to be sent out to parents at the start of the school year (january pending ethics approval). the students will also be given information about the project on each data collection occasion and the opportunity to withdraw from the process. see attached letter and leaflet. . probable duration of investigation: october to july inclusive . where will the study take place? the phase study will take place in an inner london girl’s secondary school (maria fidelis school). it is an – voluntary aided secondary school. it is in the education borough of camden and its location is in euston nw . the location of subsequent phases will be dependent on permission to access similar schools. at present, i have had an interest from the head teacher of st annes secondary school in palmers green, london, but as yet i have made no formal approach to the heads of any other schools. . describe the procedures to be used. give sufficient detail for the committee to be clear what is involved in the programme, continuing on a separate sheet if necessary. phase one data collection events student workshops interviews with volunteer students ( minutes long) informal discussions with colleagues phase two data collection events building on the findings of the phase one study, i plan to investigate similar issues with a wider sample of adolescent students. the intention is to; a) use the methodological tools trialled and developed in phase one with a wider sample of students (age – ); b) interview colleagues in other schools. ethical considerations story telling workshop i will record a copy of the student stories. student body language including laughter, hesitation and any observed emotion .a record of my instructions, and any reflections on the process. students may, if they wish make a video of their work. this will only feature the students work and a voice (not an image of the student), will only be used for purposes of accurate interpretation and will not be viewed by anyone other than the student that has produced it and myself. once the data analysis is finished the videos will be destroyed by me ( months after the story telling workshop). interviews i will make records of conversation, the setting and organization (including my performance), student body language, laughter, hesitation, and any emotion observed. if consent is given by the participant the interview will be taped to allow accuracy of recall. the interviews will take place in the school library when it is free from other students. this is a comfortable, windowed room, there is always a librarian present but they will not be close enough to hear the interview. once interview transcripts are written tapes will be destroyed). security data will be locked in a secure storage environment and will not be accessible by any other person than myself. data will be shredded on completion of my thesis and this will be no later than december . the report the report is for the purpose of communicating the research findings. it will be used in my dissertation. my expectation is that aspects of the report will be disseminated to parents, school governors, mathematics teachers, teaching assistants and training bodies in the form of a published paper and/or seminars. as these are all public domains i am aware that the privacy of individuals is respected by; a) preserving anonymity and b) respecting confidentiality even when this results in seemingly important data being omitted from the report. in the case of participant adults i will make a draft copy of the report available before it is finalised. organisation of consent prior to commencing each phase of my research, permission to undertake the research will be sort from the head teacher and governors of the school. the aim and design of the research will be explained as fully as possible, who the potential participants are and what the possible safeguards will be. they will also be assured that in all research reports the school will be anonymous, and participant identities and contributions kept anonymous and confidential. a letter of information will be provided for the parent or guardian of all the students that are invited to take part and informed consent will be requested. they will also be able to contact me for further clarification, and in all cases confidentiality will be explained and guaranteed. any decision not to take part will be treated with integrity and respect. students will be asked in writing and in person if they would like to contribute to the data collection process, and what is involved will be clearly set out in both forms of communication. it will be made clear that they do not have to take part, and if they do choose to help me with my research that they can withdraw that offer at any time. when inviting the students to participate, care will be taken to ensure that they feel no pressure to take part. the purpose and content of the activities will be explained to the potential participants, and my position as a researcher will be explained. the participants will be given time to think about the proposal, have clear guidelines about how to seek more information and will have a stress free way to contact me in the event of any problems. a debrief session will be included in the planning to allow students to ask questions, clarify their position and develop an understanding of their part in the research process. all participants will have the opportunity to hear the research outcomes and discuss any subsequent issues. any negativity caused by the process will be addressed and future planning will aim to safeguard against repetition of this. if there is an objection to any data this will be considered and may result in that data being withdrawn? students and colleagues will be advised that during the research references made to participants will be anonymous, replacing participant names with an alternative such as student a etc. data collected from colleagues. i will adopt an informal approach when talking with mathematics teachers, making use of convenient opportunities. with their permission, i will attempt to write accurate accounts of the discussion, and in each case i will ask them to check the accuracy of the account. . might the study cause discomfort or distress of a mental or emotional character? care has been taken to ensure that no participant suffers discomfort during or after the research, however, if this occurs the process will be stopped and i will talk through the cause of the discomfort with the student. i will inform their parent/guardian of the situation, and if needed, i will seek advice from the school duty of care system that have the expertise to help. . if the answer to question was yes: i) is it likely that medical, therapeutic or other aftercare may be needed by informants? no .(a) will explicit consent need to be obtained from (or on behalf of) the informants? yes, letter and leaflet attached. (b) how long before they take part in the investigation will informants' consent be sought? two weeks (c) what will informants be told as to the nature of the investigation? see leaflet (d) will informants be given an opportunity to put questions to the investigator, arising from what they have been told? yes (e) will informants' consent be requested: i) after they have been briefed in writing? yes, at the start of each activity. after oral briefing? . if the informant is a minor, or otherwise unable for any reason to give full consent on their own, state whose consent will be obtained (parent and/or guardian and/or head teacher and/or other (to be specified) and how it will be obtained. for all minors, consent will be sought from a parent or carer. .(a) is the investigator receiving any financial or other reward connected with this project? no (b) will anyone else receive any financial or other reward connected with this project? no . . are personal data of any sort (including name, age, sex, occupation, etc.) to be obtained from or in respect of any of the informants? the age (in years) of the student taking part in the research and their gender may be pertinent to the findings, however as there are a number of students of the same age taking part no students can be identified by age. names will not be included and students will be referred to as student a etc. the occupation of some adults will be important as they will predominantly work as mathematics teachers. teaching assistants will also be referred to as mathematics teachers for the purpose of this result. names will not be included and teachers will be referred to as teacher a etc. parents will be assigned as parent a, (linked with student a). the gender of the parent will also be reported for purposes of clarity. gender is not a feature of this research but it is possible that certain data may open doors for further research work. participants will be protected from any discomfort. . any other relevant matters? no . declaration by applicant (i) i confirm that, in formulating the above proposal, i have complied with the following ethical code(s). (specify here the code(s), other than the faculty principles alluded to above that you have adhered to in designing the investigation). (ii) i undertake to abide by the ethical principles of the faculty of humanities, law and education to the best of my ability in carrying out or supervising this programme. (iii) data relating to identifiable informants will be treated as confidential and not passed on to others without the written consent of the informant. where the informant is a minor, or is otherwise unable for any reason to give full consent on her/ his own, or to receive full explanation of the nature of the investigation and its risks, informant in this context will be understood as referring to the person or persons having responsibility for the actual informant in the investigation (see section above). (iv) the nature of the investigation and all possible risks will be fully explained to potential informants. where the informant is a minor, or is otherwise unable for any reason to give full consent on her / his own, or to receive full explanation of the nature of the investigation and its risks, then informant will be understood as referring to the person or persons having responsibility for the actual informant in the investigation (see section above). (v) where appropriate all informants will be informed that they (a) are not obliged to take part and (b) may withdraw from the programme at any time without disadvantage, or having to give a reason. name of applicant jean brennan signature of applicant date / / in the case of an individual applicant this form must also be signed by the applicant's supervisor. . declaration by supervisor i confirm that the proposed study has been appropriately vetted within the faculty in respect of its aims and methods as a piece of research; that i have discussed this application for ethics committee approval with the applicant and approve its submission; and that i accept responsibility for guiding the applicant so as to ensure compliance with the terms of the protocol and with any applicable code(s) of practice. name of supervisor …bushra connors signature of supervisor ……………………………………………………………. date …… / / appendix b workshop starting points starting points for pilot story telling workshop: what was said to the students. everyone has memories, from home and school, from friends and enemies. these memories tend to get hidden away and are rarely shared with other people. i would like you to think back about something memorable in mathematics and represent it in a story, or a picture or cartoon, or even a drama. it could be a good or bad event that you remember, it could be how you feel in general about mathematics or you could tell a story about your dealings with a mathematical topic either in school or out of school. try to tell your story in which ever way you feel most comfortable, you can work on your own or with others, you can make it amusing or serious, it is entirely up to you. if you are talking about a person, give them a fictitious name; remember it is all about the story not the people so try to keep it anonymous. the story will not be shared with other people in school and you can choose at the end to keep it to yourself and not show it to me. starting points for phase two workshop and the workshops of my colleagues year story telling workshop i would like you to spend a little time thinking about your experiences of mathematics. memories from when you were younger memories from more recent experiences good/ bad feelings good/ bad experiences successful/ unsuccessful times happy/ sad times what your parents/teachers/friends say about maths maths in and out of school what you think i would like you to make a story about your mathematical world. use some of the starting points above to create your story it can be a piece of writing, drawing or cartoon, a song, a poem or a drama. keep the story anonymous by using fictional names to encourage the students to engage in a story telling frame of mind i decided to read them an extract from the the curious incident of the dog in the night- time (haddon : ). it is a book that i wanted to encourage my students to read and had many positive references about mathematics. story telling workshop action plan aims: to create a vehicle for students to express and explore their feelings and beliefs regarding the nature of mathematics and their learning of mathematics. objectives:  students explore and communicate their experiences, feelings and/of beliefs about mathematics.  students understand the possible roots of any influences and emotions that may surface when people are learning mathematics.  students deepen their understanding of social, cultural and political influences that may influence the learning of mathematics for some people.  students are aware of who they are and who they want to be in the world of mathematics (i.e. their mathematical identity) activity schedule timescale story telling workshop: students develop stories in a way that appeals to them, students have the opportunity to use the flip cameras to talk about their story creation. lessons plus some home time in between. ( hours) my reading of story, initial interpretation and compilation of questions. two weeks student evaluation of the process – possibly an evaluation sheet. timescale to be decided. interviews with some students regarding their stories minutes per student allow weeks time allowed to go through interview data and compile follow up questions, and for students to ask subsequent questions. one week total time for activity. approximately two months appendix c: pilot study stories (note: all teacher and student names are fictitious) story phd story swiss roll story cinderella story heart story story seventeen story sweets story the aye appendix d preliminary work with si questions compilation of questions . what do the students stories represent mathematics as? mathematics is about thinking properly, good preparation and not just about getting grades. prison, sanctions, lacking in freedom, no go areas, and baffling number, shape, and mathematical operations. the numbers have relationships, one group is sequential and the other group is the first three even positive numbers. an indicator of place in class, this student has a last place rosette right and wrong answers. algebra, answering questions, passing tests, learning by rote. the student shows lots of questions in her head and some frustration. something that is told to you, something that is difficult and requires a lot of work. times tables features, also a jumble of signs and numbers, including decimals and fractions. mathematics is depicted as an object; it is male and the enemy. it is something that is told to you. they indicate that writing out pages of the mathematics books is not what mathematics should be. mathematics is exams, discomfort, sanctions. mathematics can mean staying quiet and perhaps, isolated. a very unpleasant experience during a particular period of time. passing exams and doing what you are told . what seems to be important in the world of mathematics? it is important to try hard and be prepared. to be successful you need to be the winner. place order (last place rosette drawn) solving problems indicated by a diagram with missing entries. relationships: with numbers. the multiply and divide sign seem to have a relationship in this picture. the student has drawn money bags which seem to indicate some financial benefit. to be able to answer questions in class, understanding algebra, revising well, to keep trying until you are successful. pleasing the teacher by trying. doing well in tests. winning is important, strength appears to be important. status as in qualification seems to be the ultimate result. to learn mathematics there has to be some control, and/or respect. the teacher has to be ‘normal’ and take charge of the class. you cannot learn from lots of teachers. a particular teacher features in this story. there is a pre and post gcse period, one is enjoyable and the other is not. . what is the story saying about past experiences with mathematics/mathematic lessons/learning mathematics /assessment? prince charming only wanting someone who was good at mathematics might indicate that you need to be good at maths to be successful in what you want. the poor girl is terrible at maths and she finds it hard. to be successful you must try hard, ability is not enough. grades are not the most important measure of ability. there is a suggestion in the story that maths lessons are linked with detention, a feeling of being trapped and that they are not always happy events. the lessons pose problems; the student finds the work baffling and does not want to be there. the picture of a swiss role gives me the message that she is talking about last year’s experiences, (the class often recount a funny story about the teacher and a swiss role). she has some diagrams surrounding the numbers and i think these are linked with memories of particular lessons. parent pressure makes her feel small and like a failure, there are some unhappy periods, being shouted at by parents, being labelled a failure. there is a classroom scene where the student is very unhappy because she does not know the answer to a question posed by the teacher, but very happy when she does. they are unpleasant and scary; they seem to be dominated by an authoritarian approach to learning – being made to learn under pressure. they show a family interaction to learning mathematics as scary and hated. the rebellion in the mathematics lesson led to students bullying teachers, students misbehaving even if they were normally well behaved, teachers not teaching them and being horrible to them. doing whatever they wanted and not learning any mathematics. the girl looks trapped and confined in the mathematics exams and there is a sudden cheeky change when the exam finishes. mathematics is stressful. past experiences were enjoyable. current experiences are confusing and unfair . how does the student appear to feel about mathematics? the story indicates that it is the route to being successful in life. this student seems to be unhappy with mathematics and finds the subject difficult. there are angry faces depicted, sad eyes, and startled/confused expressions. she seems to place herself in the position of last. she is not at ease in this situation. i get the sense that this student likes maths, finds some of it hard and really wants to do well in the subject. fearful of mathematics, scared of having to recite tables-tables. mathematics is the enemy! there is no mathematics happening in this story. but it clearly points out that bad teachers can spoil the mathematics. this student does not like mathematics at present. . what emotions are displayed in this story? there is a feeling of happiness, and a sense of justice that things will work out right in the end. unhappy, frustrated and trapped. as indicated by the drawings - possibly humiliation, anxiety, sadness and anger. also awe and confusion. this story has an air of loneliness and misery associated with it. the story suggests confusion, being unhappy, frustration, and a sense of feeling very small and bullied. there is happiness when she passes a test or knows the answer to a question. there is also an element of determination. a sense of feeling small in front of the authoritarian adult. fear, sadness, anger and aggression. hostility and rage. at the end (when successful) satisfaction and happiness. remorse- guilt (of students), anger of adults. excitement the girl looks miserable, stressed, nervous, lack of confidence lack of self-esteem lack of self-worth. there is a sense of relief, happiness and freedom for a short time. lack of respect for her body a sort of self-destruct with the sweets. there seems to be confusion, anger, but also a sense of fear and shock and perhaps guilt at her own behaviour towards this teacher. surprise at the events that unfold. . who are the people in the story? cinderella (the subject), prince charming (the object of desire), and snow white (a peer). there is one girl in this story the girl, her parents and her teacher. the girl and a male adult who could be her father. mathematics also appears as a male person. this story contains details of particular supply teachers and one permanent classroom teacher, and some students. there is only the girl in this story. the teacher, the student and there are other students in the class. . what do the stories say about classroom practices (discourse) i.e. is there evidence of classroom practices? there is an element of assessment in the story, the girls will be asked a question and this will determine their future. there is a right and wrong answer. value is given to working hard and being well prepared. the use of sanctions is an over-riding theme. the student does not know the answers, and ranking seems to feature highly. taking tests and getting the results back. sitting at a desk on own, working on paper or a book, putting up hand to answer questions. teacher standing at front of class teaching from the board, asking the student’s questions indicate a formal experience. no, there is no evidence of the classroom, the story is particularly personal. making students write out sections of text to keep classroom control. sitting at desk on own, very formal set up- could be because it is an exam but this student would not have sat a formal exam. sign asking for quiet, no eating, and no drinking. the practice of using detention as a threat to try to make students conform. students not being able to defend their position if they perceive a wrong decision has been made. worksheets given out to students in mathematics classes. sheets passed out with no explanations. teacher walking up and down the room (pacing), student misbehaviour when back is turned. using concrete examples to explain a mathematical principle. work must be completed quietly. . what is the story saying about the teacher or teachers? this is unclear, but there is a trend showing authority as entrapment, confinement and sanctions. this is not clear. they talk about their looks/ image, their ability as teachers and their management of the class. the teacher image is key to how the students perceive the subject. .what is the role of the adults in the stories? they are possibly all adult in this story. they have social roles and class roles there are no adults explicitly portrayed in this story. the parents are portrayed as dominant, the teacher? the teacher has a formal role in delivering the lesson and sharing knowledge with the student. the father is drawn as very tall, upright aggressive because he appears to be shouting, drilling mathematics into a small subserviently posed child. the girl as an adult is happy, successful and strong the adults are portrayed as powerless, incompetent, unfair and foolish. there are no adults depicted, but there are authoritarian signs – no eating! shh! etc- shown. the adult is the teacher, she licks her lips in hunger thinking about food, she walks back and forward with her daddy trainers on, she screams ‘detention’ at them. the adult is out of control in this story. .who are the dominant players in the stories? what is the story saying about power? the most powerful person in the story, prince charming is male and educated. if you are educated you will only want somebody who is educated. the adults are reasonable. there is a sense of class division with the poor girl needing to work harder but doing better in the end. this story is showing the student as a prisoner, this is significantly mixed with mathematics as she has a mathematics sign with no entry lines across it. mathematics seems to hold the power to trap this students and so appears to be the dominant player. the parents are very dominant and the girl seems to shrink in their presence. the teacher seems small and insignificant in the picture but the girl is upset if she cannot give the teacher the answer. the adult has power, the girl does not. the dominant players are the pupils, they recount the highlights of interactions with various teachers and their lack of control and power. this indicates that the pupils felt they were the controlling force and the story sounds a little like guerrilla warfare on the part of the students. there is certainly remorse and reflection in the fact that perhaps they should have tried to work with their original mathematics teacher as what they got next was not an improvement. again an indication that they were in control even if they did not realise that at the time the girl seems to have the power to rebel, she is eating a lolly in the exam/class situation a teacher and the students: the teacher is dominant by her anti social class room management, lack of teaching skills but with the power to enforce punishments. the student perceives a clear unreasonableness in the teacher as a person and as a teacher. the student indicates the power of the class by their use of misbehaviour when the teachers back is turned (paper rushed towards her like a magnetic field). . how is language used in the story? the language is very light hearted and follows the line of a fairy tale. the story is a medley of symbols that portray emotions and feelings. as such there is no story being told just a reflection of the student’s position in this world. the story is a cartoon with a set of mathematical experiences shown in the drawings. there are only words: exam, failure, revise and keep trying. the story has a language thread throughout, it is used to tell the tale and the pictures are used to display the emotion. the language is used to make an impact (perhaps to shock). it is written in pupil speak which makes it somewhat private between the students. the language is ‘colourful’ and designed to highlight flaws as teachers and people od those highlighted. the pictures are powerful in the way they show how the girl is feeling, her anxiety with the situation and her behaviour when dealing with things. the author is drawing attention to the effect the stress of doing mathematics has on her social life and how she treats herself. there are a minimal amount of words used mainly as labels of signs, packaging and to clarify what the student is carrying. this is a story where language is used to make the ‘tale’ amusing, interesting and descriptive. . where does identity fit with this story? the student identifies with justice, if you deserve success you will get success. this student knows that effort and work will help her be successful in mathematics and the story is very positive. this student does not identify with being able to do mathematics, she is trapped in the mathematic lessons and says she is baffled about what is going on. the mathematical identity is strongly negative and a mathematical world would not be her choice she indicates an element of force in making her do school mathematics. this student wants to do well in mathematics, it appears to be important. she is happy when she can answer a question and unhappy when she can’t. being able to answer questions in class is important, so she wants her peers to see she is good at maths. it looks like the key to not being labelled a failure by her parents is good maths results. this student has a strong identity with needing to be successful in mathematics, she wants to be successful in this subject and will fight to get what she wants. she is determined to be successful and knows she will win in the end. she identifies mathematics and the adult as male and unpleasant , both she is fearful of, and as such, are not part of her ideal world. she has to ‘kick ass’ to make her world the way she would like it. this might apply to how she feels about the parent and what she would like to do. these students are shaping their identity as someone who controls others even though they know it is wrong to treat another person in this way. some are exploring a ‘bad girl’ image and where that positions them in the friendship groups. the students do not want to model themselves on this teacher so the role of significant other in learning and shaping of identity is left to the strongest personality in the class. the girl seems to be two different people: the one who is miserable in the mathematics context, and the other who binges on sweets as part of her freedom from the previous oppression of tests, and then is still not happy because she is ill, fat and spotty. the student does not want to identify with this teacher or what she represents. that may transfer to the learning of mathematics as no learning takes place in this story. . is there a social aspect involved in this story? there are appears to be a class distinction in this story. poor girl, less well educated – has to try harder than the other girl but it pays off in the end. relationship is important. the mathematical world of the student consists of parents who seem to nag, chastise and drill. a teacher in a formal classroom setting. no, this is a lonely personal story of a battle. although her father is portrayed it does not signify family situation, any sense of nurture or togetherness. yes, the students looked forward to the lessons because they enjoyed bullying the teacher, the class was out of control and behaving in ways that were out of character for some usually well behaved students. this was providing entertainment. on a more subtle note, the teachers are portrayed as unnatural, alien, not normal people and the normality of a teacher seems to matter.. this girl is shown as very lonely and isolated both in school and at home. there is a strong sense of companionship amongst the students. . what is the ‘baggage’? there seems to be some preconceived ideas about poor and education. happiness is related to relationships and success in mathematics. terrible at mathematics means you won’t get your prince. mathematics has a great deal of authority and the most desired person is good at it and desires people who are also good at it. there is a work ethos brought to the setting. there is an understanding that grades are not set in stone and can be lost without effort. problem solving is mathematics and has to be worked at. the student brings negative emotions, feelings of entrapment, randomness of mathematics (symbols, signs, numbers, shapes, all with connectivity within themselves but not with each other). a sense of failure is strong. the student appears to have accepted defeat and their place in the order of things. they know that they can be naughty i am not sure where choice fits in i.e. choice to behave or take part. the student equates mathematics/ mathematics lessons with a prison cell. there are expectations that mathematics is formal and difficult. that you work on your own. it is important to be able to answer questions in class. i feel there is an expectation that mathematics should be drilled in to you. but it is clear that the student knows that she has responsibility to work at things and improve her assessment results. there are emotions embedded in this story, a sense of feeling very small and bullied. frustration and determination linked with being successful at mathematics, but happiness when she passes or knows the answer. there is an air of confidence and i get the feeling this student knows she is good at maths but is frustrated at some of the practices associated with mathematics. emotions such as sadness, fear and anger are brought into play with mathematics. there is a sense that this is a battle ground and with that the tensions that surround people at war. the facial expressions indicate a lack of comfort with her position in and with mathematics. never take teachers for granted. the consequences can be worse than the original event. the world of mathematics teachers contains some ‘misfit’people. lack of respect for supply teachers even good girls can behave badly. a teacher can spoil your mathematics. fun can be disrupting the lesson. a sense of how powerful students can be there appears to be very negative feelings associated with mathematics which in the story is linked with assessment. this girl seems to have personal problems, she is concerned about her image, and is not happy with her self image. she seems unable to be who she wants to be. she seems to feel isolated her behaviour appears impulsive that the gcse period can bring a ‘crisis’. teachers can control whether you enjoy mathematics. the image of this teacher is very poor! classroom sanctions can be very unfair and you have no way to represent your side of things. there are situations when you may behave very badly. if there is unfair behaviour on the part of the teacher then students may/will replicate that behaviour. appendix e comments from colleagues picture always found maths hard, fearful upsetting. all jumbled together and nothing made sense. ‘from a young age’ shows never had good experiences of mathematics. maths is like rain pouring down from the clouds. her father at home not being supportive and making student recite times tables over and over again. being scared of going home because of the maths that would be waiting. now hating maths. the war between the student and teacher happened. the student attacked maths and found that in spite of the teacher she was beginning to understand and was no longer afraid. this meant her understanding grew and she felt much happier. very successful in the future, achieving a maths phd from cambridge. shows that all obstacles can be overcome and the boundaries no longer exist. views of mathematics are changing, no longer feels scared and upset. now feels it is possible to achieve and to reach great highs in the future with a subject that at first was not a happy experience. picture child sitting in school looking very scared and confused. hands not on the desk, so not doing any work just sitting there watching the clock until the lesson ends. leaving school looks upset, drops maths books on the floor doesn’t turn round or even look at them. does not care about them. or maybe they have been thrown away as they are too upsetting. terrified of exams, not even able to eat as so frightened. once again hands are by her side, she has no confidence and is not able to answer the questions in the test. eats in the exam and seems much happier? teacher gives them a sweet? eating lots of rubbish makes a difference, makes her happier and she feels that she can cope. bag full of sweets etc to keep her going. (this picture was hard to see, could not make out what was written on the bag or the piece of paper sticking out of it) okay it is a sainsbury’s bag with lots of sweets in. and a packet of walkers crisps sticking out. indicates comfort eating and the girl on the picture is much larger in size than the one shown at the beginning. no longer looks so happy but still all of the sweets etc are still present in her life. being sick in the toilet, not clear if she is making herself sick. maybe she is just sick of what she is doing and what she has become. all the worry and anxiety has made her ill. she can no longer think clearly and feels sweets and chocolate will make everything all right. girl depicted is now very large and her skin is a mess. due to all the rubbish she has been eating. she no longer looks happy, comfort eating is no longer working and does not make everything alright. moral of the story, she realises that this is not a healthy way to behave and acknowledges that it is the stress that brings it on. it is good to see that she knows that she will do the best that she can and that this is okay. picture sees maths as number work. times tables. heart seems happy and able to speak. circle looks angry. triangle is very small and quiet, looks scared. hexagon looks confused. they were making a comic strip about maths. teacher miss rectangle was not happy she seems to be shouting. triangle got % in test, circle got %, hexagon got % and heart got % teacher not happy with hearts results. all of the shapes look happy with their results. students not happy with their teachers remarks, and see the only way forward is to get a tutor. do not ask their teacher for additional help. interesting that two of them get tutored together. heart and hexagon who got the lowest marks feel they need a tutor. the picture seems to show that the teacher was not supporting them, she is drawn on one side of the paper and the students with the tutor on the other. also indicated that heart has always found maths difficult. hexagon looks scared but heart looks very happy with the extra help. teacher still seems to be shouting but the square tutor is smiling and looks happy. they studied hard until they became clever! it shows that if you study you feel more confident in your ability. heart has a smile on her face and seems to be giving a thumbs up. hexagon also seems very happy. they obviously feel much happier with their maths and it seems the tutor not the teacher has made this possible. in the final picture heart still looks happy but hexagon is neither happy or sad. overall - seems to indicate that the classroom teacher has great influence over the students. did not seem willing to help the students only to criticise and tell them there results were not good enough. picture shows a very confused student with lots of questions going round in their head. needs to sit an exam on algebra. can’t answer the questions so frustrated that she breaks her pencil in half. lots of confusion everything on the paper just seems a jumble. other students in the class happy with their results, % and % being passes. both papers have large ticks on them. she on the other hand gets % and fails. paper has a large cross on it. she is very upset, there seems to be a big black cloud over her, she is crying, also lightening present this could be her anger at not being able to get a good score. and so it carries on. she cannot shake the black mood, things do not seem to improve. other students in the class understand what the teacher is saying but she does not. she does not put her hand up, either to answer a question or to ask for help. interesting to see the child who understands is smiling and has a sun over her head. looks like three children are being shouted at by their parents. the youngest is crying but none of them seem to be happy. the student feels like an absolute failure. she is lying on her bed crying. she tries really hard. she revises, then revises, then revises some more. each time she tries the test her grades improve, %, % and lastly %. the smile on the face grows as the grade improve. the moral of the story is keep trying no matter how hard you are finding things. this story board is very specific to algebra maybe this is a topic this student found hard to understand, but with practice and perseverance they got better and better appendix f year sentences/chunks of data i couldn’t tell the time. maths at my first school never had an effect. i was very sure the life of mathematics was not for me. my head puzzled with the alphabet in the maths. algebra and square root of what. stem and leaf is science? bullies, work and weight on my mind. messing around and throwing things. left the room in a state. looked at teacher in spite because he could not cope. did not like maths. found maths hard. did well in all subjects apart from maths. teachers shouting at her! in year she got a teacher who was a fairy and she helped evelyn ! evelyn got good test results. learnt very little in year and year attributes this to teacher problems. things improved in year , started to find maths easier. teacher explained very well. but failed her maths exam. did not like maths. did well in all subjects apart from maths. in year she got a teacher who was a fairy and she helped evelyn! found maths hard. evelyn got good test results. learnt very little in year and year attributes this to teacher problems. things improved in year , started to find maths easier. teacher explained very well. but failed her maths exam very upset that she had failed in year . … was happy with her test results in year . she made everyone proud of her. royal family, vast amount of land, and a kingdom. sibling who is smart but sad not to have a brother or sister. secondary school i messed around and missed out vital information. no teacher. learnt nothing in year . in year the teacher was distracting. failed several exams in these years. not reaching my target. i achieved my target grade. year learnt more and finding exam work and hwk easy. in primary school me and maths got along. year started to get my head down. learned more about maths. i went down to the level i had in primary school. i achieved a lot of praise. in primary school i understood it and got good grades. i worked hard. i need help remembering. forgetting in a test makes me angry in year my knowledge is continuously growing with maths. i’ve loved maths since i was born. i am not good at it. i hate getting questions wrong. i love times tables. confident in class. forget most of the method when doing a test. i want to work in a big company high class bank. in primary school we used a lot of times tables. teacher really good at explaining using a few words. he taught us in a fun way. the best time was in primary school. i have a job as a banker. year a lovely teacher that helped me get my grades up. i wasn’t really good at maths because year no teacher year a good teacher that shouts and bangs the tables. year a lovely teacher. year sentences/chunks of data maths is boring and sometimes i feel like snoring. teachers are rude and for some reason they give you attitude. in my past maths was good. i enjoyed it, i still do i just hate the fact that it is boring and usually many sums are complicated. year was the worst, my maths teacher was rude and i don’t know why but it seems they pick on the quiet ones. but on the other hand maths is quite essential to life because it involves a lot of things which is quite important. i usually enjoy maths, but through my previous experience especially in year , my confidence in maths wasn’t so good. in primary i preferred it more than i do now. ps maths isn’t really boring. maths is a treat in real life happening maths is needed but it is also stress but it’s a great subject a really good subject maths is a gift of life you know you’re born with eight fingers and two thumbs and ten toes don’t you know maths will help you in life to pay your bills and fly a kite with co-ordinates at the end maths is a game you win some you lose some, well you have to play when i was in primary i used to do maths, i was ok in maths but i wasn’t bad it was boring, very boring for your education, that maths for your future, that’s maths for your career that’s maths for your job that’s maths for your life that’s maths now i’m in secondary i still hate maths i know i need it, i need maths maths helps u with everything. it’s good to learn maths! in reception: what is maths? hate math! don’t get it. never listen and never revise!! get me out of here! year : i find it so boring!! seriously how could these people like maths. didn’t know how to add, subtract etc. find it so confusing. get me out of here!! year : yay! finally know how to do subtract, adding etc. so proud!! but still i hate maths. i think it’s not important. so never listen in maths lesson. get me out of here! year : ahhhh! we have sat’s. never knew therefore did not do revision. but i thought that sat’s wasn’t important. ….. who cares !!! get me out of here! year : as i go along in maths leson i find that maths is important. also i was regretting that i did not revise for maths. getting there! year : i find maths is interesting!! yay!! but i don’t really love maths. but sometimes i find maths is confusing. getting there! year : again we have sat’s. i hate it but i am not scared coz i listen in maths and try to participate. getting there ! overall i think maths and english is the important subject. i never realised that maths was important!! getting there. horray i need to read the question properly. i think as you get older you may realise how important maths is in life and how important it is to learn it because in year it is nearly near your gcse’s and you know you need to focus a lot and try the best you can. in maths sometimes i make silly mistakes like for example there was this test i got back and marked and there were some silly mistakes that i know how to do but i just make silly. fact: math, science and english are the most important subjects. before any big test i get a bit nervous and hope to do well. i really want good grades. maths is very useful in life …. for example %, because in shops they might give a % out of something you need to find out. to me maths is a very tricky subject. when i was younger i knew i had a problem with maths because everything was difficult and as i started to get older everything became harder and harder. i don’t find everything in maths hard because some things are easier in maths, for example, times tables are easy. but i do like things about maths like division, angles, times tables, adding and subtracting. my opinion of maths is that i do enjoy it most of the time. i enjoy maths because, i know it sounds stupid, but i don’t know why i do. i just do! the small % of time i don’t enjoy it is when i understand the work but when it comes down to writing the work i make stupid mistakes. i do better classwork than when i have a test. i think it is because in a test i get nervous and i just make mistakes. when i was younger i actually despised maths! but as i have gotten older i have grown to enjoy it more and more. when i was younger i was more a drama, english, music, geography girl. but now i enjoy math, dance, english and drama person! i go to army cadets and for that you need to be a bit quick in maths, because in map reading you have to add all the angles together etc. i want to be the best in maths so i can get a really good gcse level. i guess when i was younger i didn’t like maths because of my teachers. but in ……………… i have improved, i hope! i think that is because some teachers are good at helping you, well all the teachers i have had. over all my say on maths is- maths is like a coconut, it is hard to get into but once you have it’s all good. the first lesson was about adding and subtracting. ……..thought it mustn’t be that hard but amy just remembered that she was in a higher maths class. when the maths sheet arrived …… could see numbers and plus and subtract signs. she was confused about the work. she looks on her right side and sees that …….. is showing off saying that she is the smartest and the prettiest. amy was embarrassed of course; she did not know how to do anything. ms ………….. was looking around and she sees that ……is stuck; she came up to …… and helped her. …….. was giggling at……. …….. finally understood what to do but the class was almost done. …….. worked as hard as she could and finished as soon as the bell rang. …….. was glad because she didn’t get put in catch up but …….. did and she wanted revenge. at the playground, …….. was playing catch the ball with ……..and then …….. stumped into the game. ……..threw the ball to …….. but sally caught it and threw it at ……..’s stomach. …….. was stunned. ……..was about to hit b…….. ut the bell went and she ran off. two weeks later they were learning about fractions. …….. started to like maths and became smarter, she had the second highest level in the class. …….. thought that fractions were the most difficult but she was the smartest at it. she helped other people because they were too confused to know, she told them it was pretty simple. at the maths test …….. was very confident and got a high level, …….. got the same level. miss …….. was a really good teacher and she was a real friend sometimes …….. likes to call her maria, (it’s her real name), and she doesn’t mind. …….. had the lowest level but she did not care about it and said she is the baddest girl in the class. …….. was glad she had maths class because her best friend was there and her favourite teacher was teaching her and she says that maths is the easiest subject (except for art, art is the best). ……..couldn’t mess with …….. anymore because if she did she would have to leave the school. appendix g: adult story this story was written by a student that took part in the pilot stage of the research, and at this time she had contributed to a rather angry story about having many mathematics teachers and how inadequate they were. she also acted out a short drama for the class but as this was spontaneous it was not recorded as data. after that pilot stage this student worked hard at her mathematics and had a good relationship with her mathematics teacher, who stayed as her teacher until she had finished her gcse mathematics. she achieved the grade she needed for the next step of her educational journey. this story was written when the student was sixteen years old, had finished her lessons and was on study leave for her gcse exams. i will let the story speak for itself because i feel it highlights the need students have for individualism and creativity. adult story: my experiences of maths when i was a child, maths was known to me as a subject with never ending riddles that i would never be good at. everyone would excel in maths, while i would be reading a book or reciting a poem. i then remember being continuously forced to understand the subject by numerous teachers. all i really wanted was to do something expressive and creative. in year , maths was more of a drag. the room was gloomy and the work began to get harder, it felt as though someone was thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool before they were taught how to swim. i was trying my best to settle into a new school but it seemed as though i was making more of an effort to settle into a specific subject. year was full of laughter, we had about + supply teachers. our first ‘teacher’ ms e was too concerned with her ‘praise, concern and detention’ graph. we then discovered ‘ things to do in a lesson’ and began to do all activities on the list such as ‘sing opera as loudly as you can’, ‘switch the computer off while the teacher is teaching’ and our favourite, ‘throw paper around the classroom’. our second ‘teacher’ made us copy all the answers off the board and then allowed us to do whatever we wish. the final ‘teacher’ that is memorable is miss a, she had a mental breakdown in front of us and snapped my friend’s pen during the process. we felt as though we were witnessing something in a mental ward. although we had a blast with ms e and every day seemed like a party, hence my non existing ‘ brothers and sisters’ that i needed to collect after school and made up questions from my ‘text book at home’ that literally could never have an answer. i did not realise how behind i was in this subject until year . year started off quite steady as i assumed i understood everything we were doing. however, nothing was as it seemed. in the recent years, i have accepted that i will never enjoy maths but i am treating it as something that i need to look good on paper. friends that achieve high b’s and low a’s are always complaining about their grades whilst i’m achieving c’s and d’s, parents that say i am not working hard enough to understand and teachers that tell me i am doing well when i don’t believe it myself. the day that i finish maths forever will be like some ones version of paradise. i will be completely able to concentrate on art, drama and english lit, the subjects that allows me to fully enjoy and express myself whilst being creative. no matter what happens my feelings and thoughts about mathematics will never change. you may think that my thoughts have evolved by the way i was taught, my mind frame should be a lot more positive or i shouldn’t listen to what others say as i know everyone is good at something. i find no joy in either maths or science, simply because they are subjects that do not allow me to do the things that i love. furthermore, the only ‘happy’ moments in maths are the times when i understand what i’m doing. i do not enjoy the process of understanding it and i absolutely hate the idea of sitting a linear exam, although i know it is easier to pass, the very thought of doing maths in exam conditions for something as crazy as two hours is my definition of living hell. the best experiences i have had whilst being taught maths has got to be in year . the constant ‘aye too loud’ being shouted out whilst the squeaky white board marker furiously writes on the board, which sounds as though an innocent mouse is being slaughtered. to help me pass my exam, the answer booklet to the exam paper would help dearly as i would score % in the exam and my teacher would look good. after i have officially finished maths i do not ever want to see another number in my life unless it’s for useful things such as clothes, and a high value of numbers in my account or he number of awards i may get as an aspiring actor and the number of shots they may take on a future photoshoot or scenes they may film or even the number of rehearsals i may have for a theatre production. maths contains questions, equations and factorisations without simplifications, the ignition and contradictions, common sense and normal sense. the only time, when the creative mind is locked and lost inside appendix h phase stories (note: all teacher and student names are fictitious) changes in maths cinderel la cinderella was stuck in her boring maths class. she was dreaming of her fairy tale prince which somehow saved her from this boring maths lesson. the clock struck . she could hear the bell ringing from a distance; she could feel her legs moving subconsciously. ‘bring’ the bell rings she runs out of class wondering how nice lunch will be, not realising she dropped something…….. the school bully sees the compass that cinderella dropped and hid it in the art room. they pay a visit to cinderella and tease her about her new compass and how they hid it, and she won’t get it back until she completes the leader’s homework….. cinderella did not listen in her maths class so she struggled with the homework, and she struggled with algebra at the best of times and now she is under pressure. she comes to school the next day worrying about what the bullies will do to her new compass. when ardino met her in the library he managed to complete the homework and they lived happily ever after with the compass. clown (text on page ) crying faces formulas i love… mathematics on beyond a million (text on page ) the letter with the bad grade (text on page ) coloured squares when i was younger i loved maths, it was all about adding, subtracting and multiplying small numbers. however, i was always bad at multiplying in maths. i never stopped liking it but always had things i disliked due to things getting harder and seeming harder. when i got to secondary school, my love for maths wasn’t as strong as adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing turned into things like algebra and pythagoras theorem. small multiplication such as x = …. turned into x = …. subtracting turned from – = …. to – = ….. layla the boy who found confidence in maths inside the flaps. the boy hated maths. he didn’t know his times tables nor did he know how to add fractions. maths for the boy was a pain, especially maths lessons. he boy always worried about having the wrong answers. on the day of the maths exam the boy would sit there in the hall and stress about everything maths related. until one day his teacher told him about a website called ‘manga high’. the teacher said it would prove to be very useful and a fun way of learning maths. the next time the boy went to his maths lesson he was confident and began to enjoy mathematics. whizkid wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk params is empty sys_ exception wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk no params is empty exception params is empty / / - : : if (typeof jquery === "undefined") document.write('[script type="text/javascript" src="/corehtml/pmc/jig/ . . /js/jig.min.js"][/script]'.replace(/\[/g,string.fromcharcode( )).replace(/\]/g,string.fromcharcode( ))); // // // window.name="mainwindow"; .pmc-wm {background:transparent repeat-y top left;background-image:url(/corehtml/pmc/pmcgifs/wm-nobrand.png);background-size: auto, contain} .print-view{display:block} page not available reason: the web page address (url) that you used may be incorrect. message id: (wp-p m- .ebi.ac.uk) time: / / : : if you need further help, please send an email to pmc. include the information from the box above in your message. otherwise, click on one of the following links to continue using pmc: search the complete pmc archive. browse the contents of a specific journal in pmc. find a specific article by its citation (journal, date, volume, first page, author or article title). http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/ medical history, , : - . lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century: the evidence of the gentleman's magazine by roy porter* drawing attention recently in his 'health, disease and medical care' to advances made during the last generation in the study of eighteenth-century medicine, w. f. bynum also pointed to gaps remaining in our knowledge.' one of these was the understanding of medical relations from the patient's point of view. there are two main reasons why research into lay belief-systems and practices about sickness and medicine should be a matter of moment to the medical historian. first, in "the world we have lost" the sufferer habitually played an active and sometimes a decisive role in interpreting and managing his own state of health. self-diagnosis and dosing were routine amongst all ranks of society, and laymen regularly dispensed medicine to friends, family, and servants. not least, as jewson has explained, laymen also in some sense "prescribed" to the faculty: the educated and affluent sick played an assertive and sometimes even dominant role in clincial consultations. hence, in seeking an integrated panorama of the totality of medical transactions in the community, and not least in aiming to understand the standing of the practitioner himself, we need to know what the public thought and did. secondly, and more generally, we must explore lay attitudes towards health and * roy porter, ma, phd, wellcome institute for the history of medicine, euston road, london, nw bp. iw. f. bynum, 'health, disease and medical care', in g.s. rousseau and roy porter (editors), the ferment ofknowledge, cambridge university press, , pp. - . 'for an introductory survey see roy porter, 'the patient's view: doing medical history from below', to appear in theory and society; for contemporary parallels see d. locker, symptoms and illness. the cognitive organization of disorder, london, tavistock, ; a. cartwright, patients and their doctors, london, royal commission on the national health service, ; m. balint, the doctor, the patient and his illness, london, medical publishing co., , nd ed., ; p.m. strong, the ceremonial order ofthe clinic, london, routledge & kegan paul, ; d. pendleton and j. hasler (editors), doctor-patient communication, london, academic press, ; c. g. helman, "'feed a cold, starve a fever"-folk models of infection in an english suburban community, and their relation to medical treatment', culture, medicine and psychiatry, , : - ; for the rather sparse historical approaches see c. f. mullett, 'the lay outlook on medicine in england, c. - ', bull. hist. med., , : - ; and d. guthrie, 'the patient: a neglected factor in the history of medicine', proc. r. soc. med., , : - . n. jewson, 'medical knowledge and the patronage system in eighteenth century england', sociology, , : - ; idem, 'the disappearance of the sick man from medical cosmology - ', ibid., , : - . 'for backgrounds to lay initiative and english individualism see a. macfarlane, the origins ofenglish individualism, oxford, blackwell, ; c. b. macpherson, the political theory of possessive individualism, oxford, clarendon press, ; h. perkin, the origins ofmodern english society, london, routledge & kegan paul, ; j. thirsk, economicpolicy andprojects, oxford, clarendon press, . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century sickness, body and soul, living and dying-in fact, as bynum puts it, towards "birth, copulation and death"-in order to recover contemporary values and behaviour in a wider sphere. the "new social history", sometimes drawing on anthropology, has begun to explore the mentalit of past communities regarding such vital dimensions of living as reproductive behaviour, sexuality, family formation, childbirth and child-rearing, old age and death, body language and expression, pollution and taboos, gender-relations, community care, and so forth. as the french annales school of historians, overwhelmingly influential in pioneering these new perspectives, recognized long ago, attempts to reconstruct the fabric of customary material life will totter without an assured foundation in the understanding of beliefs and behaviour about health and sickness. in fact, french medical historians such as j.-p. peter, frangoise loux, mireille laget, and j.-p. goubert' have been highly innovative in probing the laity's role in the intricate networks of medical activity in pre-industrial society. and this may be one reason why other french scholars, such as michel foucault and philippe aries, not personally within the annales fold, have nevertheless written so stimulatingly about the power of the biomedical belief-systems of the past, set against the backcloth of the biology of man in history. medical history has traditionally stood in the doctor's shoes. in so doing, it has probably accurately reflected the historical community's genuine interests. but it is also easier to practise medical history that way. the scholar can draw on a compact and easily identifiable body of printed texts about medicine written by medical notables. lay views, by contrast, are less systematically stated and more difficult to retrieve; yet they have been preserved. for example, proverbs and sayings, rituals and riddles embalm a folklore of medicine from time past, a wisdom we might be tempted, rather anachronistically, to regard as exclusively an expression of "low culture", but which may wel-at least until the watersheds of industrialization and mass literacy-have been current right up the social ladder." then we also have l. stone, the family, sex and marriage in england, - , london, weidenfeld & nicolson, ; e. shorter, the making ofthe modem family, london, collins, ; r. trumbach, the rise ofthe egalitarian family, new york, academic press, . *f. bottomley, attitudes to the body in western christendom, london, lepus books, ; e. j. bristow, vice and vigilance: purity movements in britain since , dublin, gill & macmillan, ; b. s. turner, the body and society, oxford, basil blackwell, . ' see, e.g., j.-p. goubert, malades et midecins en bretagne - , rennes, institut amoricain de recherches historiques, ; f. lebrun, les hommes et la mort en anjou aux ' et t si cles, paris, mouton, . two volumes of the johns hopkins 'selections from the annales' series present some of this material in translation: biology ofman in history, baltimore, md., johns hopkins university press, , and medicine and society in france, baltimore, md., johns hopkins university press, , both edited by r. forster and . ranum, translated by e. forster and p. m. ranum. isec m. foucault, the birth ofthe clinic, eng. trans., london, tavistock, ; idem, discipline and punish, eng. trans., london, allen lane, . "see p. aries, centuries ofchildhood, london, cape, ; idem, the hour ofour death, london, allen lane, . "'for critical comment see p. wright and a. treacher (editors), the problem ofmedical knowkdge, edinburgh university press, ; j. woodward and d. richards, 'towards a social history of medicine', in their health care andpopular medicine in nineteenth-century england, london, croom helm, , pp. - ; m. pelling, 'medicine since ', in p. corsi and p. weindling (editors), information sources in the history of science and medicine, london, butterworth, , pp. - ; c. webster, 'the historiography of medicine', in ibid., pp. - ; m. macdonald, 'anthropological perspectives on the history of science and medicine', in ibid., pp. - ; and l. j. jordanova, 'the social sciences and history of science and medicine', in ibid., pp - . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter access to more private inventories-the reflections and decisions which sufferers set down in letters, commonplace books, journals, diaries, prayers, and the like, a record essentially confined to the literate. rather more formal personal documents, preserved in public archives, can be useful too; for instance, poor-law records, court proceedings, wills, and coroners' bills, and the archives of medical charities." but bulking largest, the printed word is also a giant mirror of everyreader's thoughts on health and sickness. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the common reader could find out about regimen and remedies in general interest publications such as almanacs as well as in volumes specifically devoted to medical advice, for example, john wesley's primitive physick. books and pamphlets began to proliferate on particular topics such as venereal diseases, the regulation of diet, and the art of childbirth. for the middling classes, works such as william buchan's domestic medicine dispensed traditional lay medical lore mixed with elite edinburgh therapeutics, all filtered and regularized through the pen of the trained physician. the early english novel, to look at another genre, shows how medical issues were often extremely close to the surface. after all, the first great english novelist was author of the journal of the plague year; tobias smollett, himself a medical practitioner, made a surgeon the hero of his roderick random, and laurence sterne saturated tristram shandy (written "against the spleen") with medical actions, satire, and allusions. the same also applies to a whole host of lesser-known fiction. take a scene from thomas amory's picaresque novel, the life and opinions ofjohn nuch evidence is to be found in the essays in roy porter (editor), patients and practitioners, cambridge university press, . for the problem of cultural strata see p. burke, popular culture in early modern europe, london, temple smith, ; d. leith, a social history of the english, london, ; r. paulson, popular and polite art in the age of hogarth and fielding, notre dame, indiana, and london, university of notre dame press, ; r. darnton, 'in search of the enlightenment: recent attempts to create a social history of ideas', j. mod. hist., , : - ; idem, 'the high enlightenment and the low life of literature in pre-revolutionaryfrance', past and present, , no. , - ; idem, mesmerism and the end of the enlightenment in france, cambridge, mass., harvard university press, ; h. c. payne, 'elite versus popular mentality in the eighteenth century', studies in eighteenth-century culture, madison, , vol. . pp. - . "see joan lane, "'the doctor scolds me" ... the journals and correspondence of patients in eighteenth-century england', in porter (editor), op. cit., note above. examples would be samuel johnson, for whom see j. mulhallen and d. j. m. wright, 'samuel johnson: amateur physician', j. r. soc. med., , : - ; and alexander pope, for whom see m. h. nicolson and g. s. rousseau, this long disease my life, princeton university press, . see for example m. vovelle, mourir autrefois: attitudes collectives devant la mort aux xviie et xviiie siecles, paris, gallimard, . " b. capp, astrology and the popular press, london, faber, ; g. s. rousseau, 'john wesley's primitive physick', harvard lib. bull., , : - ; p. slack, 'mirrors of health and treasuries of poor men: the uses of the vernacular medical literature of tudor england', in c. webster (editor), health, medicine and mortality in the sixteenth century, cambridge university press, , pp. - ; ginnie smith, 'prescribing the rules of health: self-help and advice in the late eighteenth century', in porter (editor), op. cit., note above. c. lawrence, 'william buchan: medicine laid open', med. hist., , : - ; a.f.m. willich. lectures on diet and regimen, london, . "for traditional medical categories in eighteenth-century novels see r. stephanson, 'defoe's "malade imaginaire": the historical foundations of mental illness in roxana', huntingdon lib. quart., , : - ; r. erikson, 'moll's fate, "mother midnight" and moll flanders', studies in philology, , : - ; g. s. rousseau, tobias smollett: essays oftwo decades, edinburgh, t. clark, ; roy porter, 'against the spleen', in v. grosvenor-myer (editor), laurence sterne, riddles and mysteries, london, vision, , pp. - . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century buncle esquire ( ). paying a visit to his fiancee's father, the eponymous hero encounters him sitting reading: as he had an essay on fevers in his hand, when i entered the room, i requested to know how he accounted for the effects of cantharides, in raising and strengthening a low trembling pulse, and driving the natural heat and efflatus of the blood outward, in giving relief in delirious ravings, stupors, and loss of reason, in reducing continual fevers to distinct remissions, and in cleansing and opening-the obstructed glands and lymphatics, so as to bring on the critical sweats, yet loose the saliva and glandular secretions, and bring down the thick soluble urine? ... "it is easily accounted for", replied dr stanvil.... passages such as this seem to indicate that novelists expected the georgian fiction-reading public to be not a little au fait with medical theories. there are, of course, pitfalls aplenty lurking ahead for the historian who hopes to put popular manuals into service as an index of what people were actually thinking and doing about their health. in the case, for example, even of a best-selling compendium of sexual advice such asaristotle's masterpiece, we lack the evidence to say whether it was read chiefly for instruction or for titillation; did it and similar works merely summarize what oft was thought, or did it actually give people ideas? but one need not be a total sceptic when faced with the problems of gauging the influence ofthe printed word upon common consciousness, especially if one examines periodical literature. for with publications appearing regularly-every week or every month-and especially those depending upon readers for contributions and correspondence, the element of continuity and feedback ensures some real rapport between the publication and the audience (or the collapse of the organ demonstrates its absence). one journal which did not fold was the gentleman's magazine. first published in , and running continuously into the present century, it appeared monthly, and attained at its peak a circulation possibly of over , copies, and far more readers. the gentleman's magazine can thus safely be assumed to mirror the sober opinions of the enlightened reading elite, the catholic taste of anyone with the rank, education, or presumption to reckon himself genteel. avoiding party politics and sectarian religious squabbles, it offered a middle-of-the-road viewpoint, reflecting moderate, enlightened common sense. t. amory, the life and opinions ofjohn buncle, esquire, london, , p. . d'arcy power, the foundations of medical history, baltimore, md., williams & wilkins, , lecture vi, 'aristotle's masterpiece'; j. blackman, 'popular theories of generation; the evolution of aristotle's works. the study of an anachronism', in woodward and richards (editors), op. cit., note above, pp. - ; . t. beall, jun., 'aristotle's masterpiece in america: a landmark in the folklore of medicine', william and mary quart. rd ser., , : - ; a. mclaren, 'the pleasures of procreation', in w. f. bynum and roy porter (editors), william hunter and the eighteenth-century medical world, cambridge university press, ; roy porter, 'spreading carnal knowledge or selling dirt cheap? nicholas venette's conjugal love in the eighteenth century', journal of european studies, , : - . c. l. carlson, the first magazine-a history ofthe gentleman's magazine, providence, r. i., brown university studies, ; a. pailler, edward cave et le gentlemans magazine ( - ), vols., lille, ; a. sullivan (editor), british literary magazines, vols., westport, conn., greenwood press, . for discussion of such matters as the authorship of medical articles see roy porter, 'medical knowledge and the gentleman's magazine: jewson revisited', in porter (editor), op. cit., note above. see the characterization of the "moderate enlightenment" in h. may, the enlightenment in america, new york, oxford university press, . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter early in the nineteenth century, the edinburgh review enunciated a policy of excluding medicine from its pages: "medical subjects ought in general, we think, to be left to the medical journals"; it would, however, make exceptions, when, as with the issue of smallpox vaccination, they were of "incalculable importance and of such universal interest". " but the edinburgh's attitude of exclusion seems to mark a new departure, a sign perhaps of a growing intellectual division of labour amongst both opinion-producers and opinion-consumers, in which medicine was being set aside for specialists. things were not so with eighteenth-century periodicals such as the gentleman's magazine. for the most cursory glance at its pages shows a high density of medical insertions, covering an impressive range of topics (many reprinted from other sources). medical books were listed and reviewed;" case histories appeared; '"edinburgh review, , : . 'see for example this list, gentleman's magazine, , : : physick books . a history of plants growing about paris. with their uses in physick; and a mechanical account of the operation of medicines. written in french. mons. tournetort. translated into english with many additions, and accommodated to the plants growing in great britain. by john martyn, f.r.s. in two volumes octavo. . a treatise of the rheumatism, as well acute as chronical. with observations under the various causes that may produce them: and a method of cure subjoined to every distinct species of that distemper. by john cheshire, m.b. . a compendious and new method of performing chirurgical operations, fit for young surgeons-to which are added, short and easy directions how to manage the venereal disease. by edward dunn, surgeon, belonging to the african company. . dr strother's lectures on the rationale of medicines. containing all that is necessary for knowing the virtues of drugs already discovered, or that may hereafter be found out. in which are inserted all simple and compound medicines now in use, and their operations clearly stated. read to pupils, and communicated to the publick for the use of young practitioners. in two volumes. . dr strother's essay on sickness and health price s. d. . criticon febrium. or. a critical essay on fevers. price s. d. . experienced measures how to manage the small-pox, price s. . pharmacopoeia practica. price s. . practical observations on the late epidemical fever, in the year , ; in which is contain'd a very remarkable history of a spotted fever. price s. . dr radcliffs practical dispensatory: containing a compleat body of prescriptions, fitted for all diseases, internal and external. the fifth edition. price s. d. . materia medica: done from the latin of dr. herman. to which is prefixed, a general introduction; containing a mechanical account of the operation of medicines upon human bodies. in two volumes, octavo. price s. these two last publish'd by dr. strother. all printed for c. rivington, at the bible and crown in st. paul's church yard. at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century readers wrote in with complaints about their own health, and replies were printed, giving advice and remedies; the proceedings of medical societies were scrutinized, and the founding and progress of new medical charities claimed much space. medical "news"l was also published. thus, for example, the first account of plastic surgery to appear in england, describing the techniques as used in india, can be found in the magazine's issue for october . and, not least, a close check was kept on the health of public figures and the royal family, from the infant prince of wales having his hair cut, to night-by-night bulletins in on the condition of george iii in his "madness": minutes of his majesty's indisposition dec. not a good night but calm this morning. dec. little sleep in the night; this morning as usual. jan. many hours yesterday in a good state; this morning better than usual. quiet as before; good night; in a comfortable way this morning. passed the day quietly yesterday; disturbed evening; good rest; calm morning. four hours sleep; comfortable this m. less tranquil last night; three hours sleep; in a state of tranquility this m.'* health matters billowed into all corners of the magazine. regular monthly items such as the printing of the london bills of mortality and the obituary column naturally dwelt on disease and death (as i shall explore below), but medical allusions were also prominent elsewhere. for example, the language of political polemic was drenched in medical metaphor. reports on parliament were not infrequently headlined "political physick", or given some similar medically-evocative title, and britannia was commonly diagnosed as suffering from "constitutional clap", with "phlebotomy" being a standard prescription.' "the nation, sir, may be compared to a diseased body, and we very properly be called its physicians", opened one typical piece.' the gentleman's magazine may then resemble a piece of amber, which contains trapped in its midst, for the eager historian, the everyday medical commonplaces of the georgian educated classes. if we then examine it more closely, what specifically will it tell us about lay attitudes toward medicine at that time? one first gets the general impression that the medical items were rather savoured. clearly, the founder and proprietor, edward cave-a man noted for his astute entrepreneurial nose-and his successors thought the public wanted plenty of medical coverage," even to the extent of reviews of rather technical anatomical and surgical publications in foreign languages. this judgement was correct, if readers' 'gentleman's magazine, , : ; for the haircut, see ibid., , : ; for george ii's death, ibid., , : . ibid., , : - ; , : ; see p. rogers, grub street, london, methuen, . 'gentleman's magazine, , : . for public literary taste, see i. watt, the rise ofthe novel, london, ; a. cruse, the englishman and his book in the early nineteenth century, london, harrap, ; i. rivers (editor), books and their readers in eighteenth-century england, leicester university press, , especially the contribution by g. s. rousseau, 'science books and their readers in the eighteenth century', pp. - ; a. s. collins, authorship in the days ofjohnson. being a study of the relation between author, patron, publisher and public, - , vols., london, r. holden, . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter letters are trustworthy sounding-boards, for they frequently enthuse about the value of the medical entries. n. elles, for example, wrote in that amongst the agreeable variety which your magazine contains, i shall always esteem that part the most useful, which can contribute towards relieving those whom it has pleased providence to afflict with sickness .... [to which the editorial response was:] to find that we have in any degree contributed to the benefit of the public, or of any individual, gives us great pleasure; and we publish the above letter that those gentlemen, who have furnished any of the matters hinted at, may share in it, and be further encouraged to communicate useful designs etc." in a similar vein "r.b." wrote in : i am pleased to observe the increase in your medical correspondents, by whom the publick must be great gainers ... [there are many sorts of interesting essays in the magazine but] none ought to be more esteemed than those that contribute to the knowledge and removal of those causes that obstruct the health of mankind. " such sentiments recur time and again. in , for example, the secretary of the humane society addressed the editor: mr. urban, spital-square, april . as you have made an appearance for more than half a century, and gained meritoriously the approbation of the medical, philosophical, and ingenious part of mankind; as, in those various branches, you have tended much to the advancement of science; it appears to me, an insertion of the following novel instance of revivication should be in your valuable repository. w. hawes. out of this general enthusiasm for the magazine's function as a medical talking-shop and organ for diffusing knowledge arose a suggestion for a more formal medical corner, a regular column whose entries would be regulated by stated criteria: mr urban, june , your having shown in some late magazines a strong inclination to contribute to the improvement of physic, put me upon thinking which way i could best promote so very benevolent and useful a design; in consequence of which i drew up the inclosed proposals which have been read and approved by some physicians of my acquaintance, and will i hope at mine and their request be inferred in the magazine for the current month. i am, sir, your constant reader, s.n.' "s.n." listed his specifications for a regular, orderly, medical correspondence. perhaps these were too regimented for the gentlemanly traditions of english liberty; certainly, nothing came of his recommendation. but the magazine's pages continued to be the vehicle not just for routine medical news and questions-and-answers about diagnosis and prescription, but also for wider initiatives and impulses of health-conscious public spirit. for instance, following the voicing of grumbles to the effect that marketing secret nostrums constituted a quack practice contrary to the public interest (knowledge should be public not private), one contributor took the ' gentleman's magazine, , : . "ibid., , : . "ibid., , '. . cave had pseudonymously christened the editor of the magazine "sylvanus urban". "ibid., , : . libid., , : ; , : . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century trouble to compile an impressively comprehensive table of the range of nostrums offered for sale, listing their proprietors, where they could be bought, the complaints for which they were specifics, and the proper price (see appendix). the readership, thus, seems to have welcomed items about health. this interest is perhaps reflected in the frequent publication of verse on this subject. as in contemporary anthologies, there are, of course, plenty of genre pieces about death, as also poems rendering thanks for recovery from sickness. but in addition, there are more specifically medical items. some gave treatments in verse, such as this one on asthma, characteristically recommending regimen and moderation: recipe for an asthma my good old friend! accept from me the following rules without a fee. an asthma is your case, i think, so you must neither eat nor drink; i mean of meat preserv'd in salt, or any liquor made of malt. from season'd sauce avert your eyes, from hams, and tongues, and pigeon pies. if ven'son pasty's set before ye, each bit you eat memento mori. now as to liquor, why, indeed what i advise, i send you, mead. glasses of this t' extinguish drought, take three with water, three without. let constant exercise be try'd and sometimes walk, and sometimes ride: health oftner comes from blackdown hill than from th' apothecary's bill. be not in haste, nor think to do your bus'ness with a purge or two; some, if they are not well at once, proclaim their doctor for a dunce; restless from quack to quack they range, when 'tis themselves they ought to change; nature hates violence and force, by method led and gentle course, rules and restraint you must endure, what comes by time 'tis time must cure. the use of vegetables try, and prize pomona in a pye. whate'er you eat put something good in, and worship ceres in a pudding, young bacchus' rites you must avoid, and venus must go unenjoy'd thus may you laugh, look clear and thrive, enrich'd by those whom you survive." but many general addresses to health were printed as well, usually invocations praying for its return: ibid., , : . ibid., , : . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter ode to health come rosy health, celestial maid, why this delay to yield me aid? swift from the rural cell advance. the rural cell of temperance, for well i trow in such a cell, and not in courts thou lov'st to dwell. fair sources whence all our pleasures spring, come rosy health, and with thee bring the gallant eve chearful crew, of youthful joys, thy offspring true. at thy appearance black despair with pain stalks off, a sullen pair, pale fear of melancholy bred, sickness that hangs the drooping head, slowly retreat;-" these slightly outnumber hymns celebrating its joyous presence along the lines of the following: ode to health hail rosy health, celestial, blooming fair, offspring of temperance, virtue's sweetest child, and soft content, that smooths the brow of care, parent of joy and pleasure ever mild. i feel thy influence, life-bestowing pow'r while the warm tide glides swiftly through my veins; and while reclin'd in blooming hebe's bow'r i consecrate to thee the living strains.' such effusions are, of course, platitudinous. but even in their conventionality they may reflect the new turn of sentiment in the age of enlighenment away from traditional christian preoccupations with the corruption and mortification of the flesh and with the afterlife (what louis martz called "the poetry of meditation"), abandoning also the aristocratic punctilio about the purity of blood. the typical cliches reveal instead more secular and individualistic visions of personal health and happiness as the summum bonum. moreover, such verse does not simply apostrophize health in the abstract, but usually proffers self-physicking advice as to how to secure and improve it, as in these lines which "confirm the truth hippocrates decrees": the economy of life (by dr. crane) be cautious of extremes in all you do, and still through life a middle course pursue; " ibid., , : . ibid., , : . 'bottomley, op. cit., note above; roy porter, 'mixed feelings: the enlightenment and sexuality in eighteenth-century england', in p.-g. bouce, (editor), sexuality in eighteenth-century britain, manchester university press, , pp. - . 'foucault argued that health became to the bourgeoisie what blood had been to aristocrats. m. foucault, a history of sexuality, vol. . introduction, london, pantheon books, ; l. martz, the poetry of meditation, new haven, conn., yale university press, . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century avoid repletion, mammon's baneful curse, but inanition more-for, that's still worse; the first by nature or by art is cur'd, the last a longer time must be endur'd, 'tis easier to deplete the loaded frame, than, when exhausted, to recruit the same; hence the robust in health by art are lower'd much sooner than the weak can be restor'd whene'er invited to the sumptuous feast, of two prevailing evils choose the least; gluttons incur more danger when they dine than what results from an excess in wine; extremes in both by prudent men are shunn'd, who squander not in early life that fund of health-on which in future they rely, the blest resource of late infirmity ... though those lines were penned by a physician, the gentleman's magazine's medical verse does not typically view health as lying in the gift of the faculty, but sees it rather as hinging on self-management and temperance of body and mind. it may be significant that amongst the few poems offering thanks to a particular physician for recovery, one is to a "mad-doctor": stanzas of gratitude addressed to dr. william perfect, of west malling; who restored the author from the most wild and frantic madness, to cool sense and rational judgement. o perfect, with power divine you all my wreck'd senses repair'd! such bays for thy brows let me twine, as truth and respect have prepar'd. my feelings and reason, when tost in the ocean of rage, your kind care prevented my bark being lost, and dash'd on the rocks of despair. my ideas derang'd and misled, hygeia you led by the hand, her poppies around me she shed, and bade my lost reason expand. thus charm'd my lost senses return'd to their seats once again in array; from darkness the change i discern'd, with intellect bright as the day. now blithely o'er nature i roam, as the lark at the dawn i am gay; and rest myself happy at home, delighted this tribute to pay. cynthius. 'gentleman's magazine, , : . ibid., , : . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter the implication, perhaps, is that the rational and sane man should endeavour to be his own physician and see prevention as better than cure; but once he has lost his mind, he has also lost his power for medical self-help. physicians are not, it would seem, pivotal figures in the models of healing presented in the magazine. but that is not to say that rational, scientific medicine is in any way discounted in favour of radical therapeutic alternatives. far from it. the general tone of gentleman's magazine contributions is one of accepting modern regular physick as part of rational enlightenment. items were inserted reporting, and even occasionally endorsing, medical "superstitions". thus: "ramsey in huntingdonshire. at mr smiths a farmer here, is a rookery, in which are many nests of young birds, ready to fly. the same thing happened about years ago, after which a great and fatal sickness spread thro' that and the adjacent villages...... but such superstitions generally got a bad press. " faith in "holy oil" as a cure-all, for instance, got short shrift as both popish and vulgar: mr urban, colchester, nov. . the pretended miraculous cure of anne mannings, inserted in your last magazine. (see p. - ) is, among many others which this age and nation hath lately produced, a glaring proof of the superstitious credulity of the lower class of people, who are ever ready to entertain and believe the grossest absurdities. similarly, a travelling healer who claimed to cure the "king's evil" was exposed by a reader as a clandestine jesuit or jacobite, while, at the other religious extreme, a work of comfort for the sick in time of tribulation was denounced as methodistic: clearly, it was thought that there were healthier and worthier things for the sick to have on their minds than hellfire and repentance. " the mere fact that the lay readership took an active interest in physick clearly does not automatically entail that the laity was cultivating a medical alternative to that of the regular faculty. the roots of "fringe" medicine are another issue entirely. in this paper i shall not attempt doggedly to plot, item by item, the entire coverage of medical topics provided by the gentleman's magazine, or even those contributions " ibid., , : ; for the same theme compare , : - . for a report of a monstrous birth resulting from the mother's imagination, see , : : monday april the wife of one rich. haynes of chelsea, aged and mother of fine children, was deliver'd of a monster, with nose and eyes like a lyon, no palate to the mouth, hair on the shoulders, claws like a lion instead of fingers, no breast-bone, something surprising out of the navel as big as an egg, and one foot longer than the other.-she had been to see the lions in the tower, where she was much terrify'd with the old lion's noise. for eighteenth-century repudiation of previous fascination with monsters see k. park and l. daston, 'unnatural conceptions: the study of monsters in sixteenth-century france and england', past and present, , no. , - ; c. j. s. thompson, the mystery and lore ofmonsters, london, williams & norgate, ; k. thomas, religion and the decline ofmagic, london, weidenfeld & nicolson, . "gentleman's magazine, , : . " ibid., , : . see more generally m. bloch, the royal touch, london, routledge & kegan paul, . "gentleman's magazine, , : . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century penned by the laity. i shall instead try to highlight typical knots of interests. numerically speaking, the most prominent of these was the request for, and exchange of, practical remedies for specific ills, to relieve personal suffering; for, as one correspondent put it, the "immediate object" is to supply information which will "tend to the cure" of disease. it was the generally unspoken assumption of the contributors that the common reader was likely to be prescribing for himself and his circle. occasionally, this was actually stated in so many words. thus in , a correspondent offered "a method to cure, or at least to prevent, the increase of any naval [sic] rupture"-which he claimed was all the more useful because it was by "a bandage which any one may make themselves"." similar do-it-yourself dispensing was in the mind of the reviewer of the new edinburgh pharmacopoeia in . in selecting extracts from this work, he chose to include tables of dosage, commenting: "this is an extremely useful little manual; and the following table, designed to shew the doses of medicine proper for persons at different ages, cannot but be acceptable to such of our country readers as attend to the relief of their distressed neighbours in a period of sickness" in number after number of the magazine, one is bombarded by requests for medical advice: how do you cure corns? or get rid of chilblains? or relieve cramp? " how do you purge worms? treat viper bites? how do you grow senna? sometimes what is sought is not a remedy but rather an explanation: why is it believed that a good antidote to excessive water retention is to apply a live toad to the region of the kidneys? many of these queries duly received their reply from other readers. for instance, in response to a plea from an asthma sufferer, an answer winged in from h. mugg, who had culled some of his advice from dr monro and culpeper but who chiefly relied on personal experience: mr. urban, chudleigh, feb . for the satisfaction of a constant reader, who, p. , requests to know if there be any simple but effectual cure for an asthma; i take the liberty to trouble you with the following remarkable instances of the good effects of honey in asthmatic cases, as related by dr. monro; and sincerely ibid., , : . "ibid., , : : p.s. as it is supposed nothing very like the bandage herein described, has ever yet appeared in publick, it is desired, if you approve of it, that you will give it a place in your useful magazine, for the sake of the public good; the person who sends it you, having experienced the utility of it for a great many years past, is unwilling that so simple, and yet so effectual a remedy should die with him. ibid., , : . s gilbert d. mcewen, the oracle of the coffee-houses. john dunton's "athenian mercury", san marino, calif., the huntington library, . gentleman's magazine, , : . ibid., , . . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : - . - ibid., , : at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter with that a fair trial of it may be attended with a farther confirmation of its utility in relieving that dreadful malady. having recommended the herb horehound, the correspondent concluded: "from the experience i have had of it on myself, in my own family, and others, i am sure that i am justified in thus recommending it, as well as culpepper [sic], from whom i originally had it, and whom others will do well to consult. h. mugg." indeed, subscribers quite frequently sent in remedies garnered from their medical reading. answering the query about purging worms, a reader copied out a treatment of dr william heberden. but such remedies taken from medical publications nestle cheek-by-jowl with folk and herbal recipies, letters from the laity alongside prescriptions from practitioners. in answer to the query on cramp, answers poured in from "g.h." ("i am no physician"), and from "meanwell", but also from dr lobb. there is little to choose between them. as filtered through the gentleman's magazine, the world of medical discussion and information seems inclusive and comprehensive rather than rigidly stratified according to professional demarcations. futhermore, hundreds of other remedies were sent in by laymen off their own bat-cures for colds and coughs, for the bloody flux, for sea-sickness, for worms, for scalds (cold water), " for sprains, for the stone, -in addition to admonitions on the dangers of sea-bathing, for example. cures were not exempt from fashion. certain treatments-such as bishop berkeley's tar water-clearly enjoyed a temporary vogue. there is a certain pattern visible in the characteristic ailments for which relief was sought. there are relatively few requests for treatments for the great killer complaints: consumption, malignant fevers, apoplexy, child-bed and infant fevers, or for other desperate chronic or fatal conditions such as madness or cancers. neither did many correspondents seek remedies for ailments such as dropsy, for which standard surgical procedures existed, and it is noteworthy that there were no requests for venereal disease cures, though this absence was presumably due to modesty. ibid., , : . ibid., , : . similarly, a cure for leg ulcers is offered which was reprinted from medical observations and inquiries, , : - . see gentleman's magazine, , : . ibid., , : - , , - . ibid., , : . o ibid., , : . ibid., , : s"ibid., , : . s ibid., , : . " ibid., , : - . m. h. nicolson and g. s. rousseau, 'bishop berkeley and tar water', in h. k. miller (editor), the augustan milieu, oxford, clarendon press, , pp. - ; cf. gentleman's magazine, , : ; , : ; etc. h. macgregor, 'eighteenth-century v.d. publicity', br. j. vener. dis., , : - . being a "gentleman's magazine" it is hardly surprising that it carries almost no discussion of "female complaints", for which see a. g. debus, 'scientific truth, and occult tradition: the medical world of ebenezer sibly ( - )', med. hist., , : - ; a. comfort, theanxiety makers: london, nelson, . also conspicuous by their absence are the nervous complaints. was the gentleman's magazine rather too sober an organ for these cosmetic afflictions? for the cultural history of these complaints see roy porter, 'the rage of party: a glorious revolution in english psychiatry?', med. hist., , : - ; g. s. rousseau, 'nerves, spirits and fibres: towards defining the origins of sensibility, with a postscript ', in the blue guitar, , - ; , - ; idem, 'science and the discovery of the imagination in at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century one may guess that readers either were inured to living with-and dying of-these critical conditions, or expected to receive regular treatment from physicians and surgeons. by contrast, the great majority of afflictions for which relief was sought consisted of the routine painful maladies and degenerative afflictions which healthy people could expect from time to time, causing suffering, inconvenience, and debility-complaints such as cramp, asthma, coughs, gravel, the stone, and gout. furthermore, the problems of coping with accidents and occupational and environmental dangers were also prominent, reminding us of the vulnerability of the human frame in an agricultural and workshop economy heavily dependent on muscle power, and in a society where there were no legislative safeguards or inspections for occupational safety, few "casualty wards", and no "ambulances" to whisk accident victims off to hospital. there are scores of entries offering "first-aid" tips and giving advice as to how to deal with such crises as accidental poisonings caused by people eating toadstools or plants like gentian root," or swallowing arsenic poison put down for vermin. snake bites are common, as are injuries sustained on the farm. and great space is given over to bites by mad dogs and other conditions transmitted from livestock and domestic animals to humans. presumably because of the horrifying nature of the symptoms and the certainty of death, many a correspondent felt the dictates of humanity obliged him to venture yet another hopeful cure for hydrophobia. thus the pages of the gentleman's magazine give a direct impulse to the relief of suffering, sustained by a paternalistic sense of responsibility for the welfare of friends and familiars, kith and kin. sometimes this rises to more general expression of concern for the health of communities. we must, however, avoid anachronism. there are hardly any harbingers of the characteristic campaigns of the victorian age-the crusades for public health, sanitary reform, occupational regulation, environmental inspection, the scandalized investigations into the diseases of the labouring dangerous classes; neither are there calls for legislative intervention. rather, what these scores of gentleman's magazine articles reveal is a sustained interest-both intellectual and practical-in understanding the relations between personal sickness and environment. the theoretical matrix for this was the ingrained hippocratic leanings of the enlightenment gentleman. aware of the non-naturals, educated opinion recognized that individual well-being hinged to a large extent upon environment, and that ill health was fomented by miasma from pestilential locations, by atmospheric enlightenment england', eighteenth-century studies, , : - ; e. fischer-homberger, 'hypochondriasis of the eighteenth century. neurosis of the present century', bull. hist. med., . : - . "'gentleman's magazine, , : . " ibid., , : . " ibid., , : . ibid., , : ; , : ; , : . "ibid., , : . "c. mullett, 'hydrophobia: its history in england to ', bull. hist. med., , : - . see gentleman's magazine, , : , , ; , : ; etc. see l. j. jordanova, 'earth science and environmental medicine: the synthesis of the late enlightenment', in l. j. jordanova and roy porter (editors), images ofthe earth, chalfont st giles, british at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter effluvia, and by the elements. each issue of the gentleman's magazine carried a digest of the previous month's weather, giving details of thermometer and barometer readings and noting levels of sunshine, rainfall, etc. and as a regular part of the weather report, outbreaks of infections, both of humans and livestock, were analysed in their relations to climate, and predictions made of likely future epidemics and seasonal health risks. for instance, the weather column for october notes about london: the town in general has been healthy, as from so equal a season might be expected; some inflammatory disorders of the bowels have occur'd but oftener occasioned by errors in diet, especially the eating of vast quantities of walnuts, which are uncommonly plentiful, than by any other cause. and here it may not be improper to observe that this nut seems entirely indigestible in the stomach unless it be first well chew'd, and by the teeth ground down as fine as it ought to be to become nutritious. without this care it breaks under the teeth into small angular bits, often with sharp edges capable of hurting very tender bowels, and by this means, and not by any acid, irritating quality, they are naturally possess'd of while recent, occasioning pains, sometimes fluxes, or spasmodick constrictions of the guts, and obstinate costiveness. stimulated perhaps by the meteorological column, numerous correspondents (including the eminent dr fothergill) called for better weather data, and speculated on the links between climate and sickness. for example, "f.y." observed in that "the intemperature of the air is the principal cause to which we may ascribe the present epidemical disorder", but also pointedly attributed the "putrescent air" to recent man-made environmental changes such as "the number of enclosures, and the many inland cuts made for navigation". similarly, the review of dr rutty's chronological history of the weather and diseases in dublin called for weather tables to be kept "from generation to generation", even while resignedly concluding that such knowledge might do little good unless "weather was in the power of the physician"-a suggestion perhaps echoing the fable of the megalomaniac astronomer in rasselas." the need for improved collection and presentation of vital statistics was a frequent call in the magazine. reflecting on the bills of mortality, published monthly in the magazine, several correspondents wanted more informative breakdowns of causes of death, and "lancastrensis" argued the need for the "establishment of a medical topography in this kingdom", citing moss's a familiar medical survey of liverpool ( ) as his model. such advances in knowledge would be the spur to action; and the pages of the magazine give copious illustration of readers' active involvement in practical health initiatives. these took many forms. one was enthusiasm for smallpox inoculation. the advent of inoculation roused moral debate and religious scruples in georgian england, and these were aired in the pages of the magazine. a typically worried society for the history of science, , pp. - ; c. j. glacken, traces on the rhodian shore, berkeley, university of california press, . gentleman's magazine, , : . ibid., , : - . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . see s. johnson, rasselas, london, r. & j. dodsley, , chs xl-xliii. gentleman's magazine, , : . for the inoculation debates see a. d. farr, 'medical developments and religious belief, with special reference to europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries', open university phd thesis, . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century enlightenment father wrote in to seek guidance as to whether-now that fathers had ceased to be filmerian patriarchs, becoming instead lockian trustees to their offspring-a parent, in fact, had the right to inflict the minor illness caused by inoculation on his child, who necessarily could not give consent. and the magazine printed a few items expressing religious opposition to variolation, alleging that it was unnatural and impious to inflict disease unnecessarily, and possibly dangerous, on healthy people. yet the bulk of entries supported inoculation-as did the occasional editorial intervention. " indeed, the magazine gave its blessing, though in rather qualified terms, to the suttonian technique of inoculation, and, in addition, lent its support to smallpox charities for the poor, on the grounds that inoculation was useful only if performed en masse throughout a community, which poorer members clearly could not afford. gentleman's magazine readers gazed out into the community; they saw suffering, much of it inflicted by ignorance or bad habit, and thus unnecessary and remediable; and they urged steps to relieve it, by intellectual enlightenment and positive action. from time to time, articles spoke out against archaic and unnatural child-rearing practices (swaddling was condemned, breast-feeding advocated ), and against the tight-lacing of young women. from similar liberal socio-moral perspectives, contributors expressed sympathetic attitudes towards suicides, above all attacking the barbarity of the laws which ruled a suicide's property forfeit. humane and practical alternatives were suggested: the extreme and evident cruelty of this law has produced an almost constant evasion of it, though it can be no otherwise evaded by perjury; and the coroner's jury generally find the suicide a lunatic, though there is no other evidence of his lunacy than his crime. i therefore propose that the goods and chattels of the suicide belong to his legal representatives and that whether lunatic or not lunatic, the body be delivered for dissection, either to the surgeons company, or to such persons as read private lectures, who shall take such bodies by rotation, entering their names with the coroner of the country for that purpose. gentleman's magazine, , : . ibid., , : ; , : . the editor, after printing a letteropposed to smallpox inoculation, replies: it is presumed that in the first transport of grief for the loss of an amiable infant, the writer of this letter concludes too hastily: for the success of inoculation in durham, according to his account, is very different from the experience of every other place; we wish however that every instance of ill success that occurs in the practice of this new fashionable operation with the circumstances and causes, as far as they can be known, may be communicated to the public. for the popularization of inoculation in england, see g. miller, the adoption ofinoculation for smallpox in england and france, philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press, . "gentleman's magazine, , : . see p. razzell, the conquest ofsmallpox, firle, sussex, caliban books, ; idem, edwardjenner's cowpox vaccine: the history ofa medical myth, firle, sussex, caliban books, . gentleman's magazine, , : . "ibid., , : ; see e. caulfield, the infant welfare movement in the eighteenth century, new york, hoeber, ; stone, op. cit., note above. "gentleman's magazine, , : . "ibid., , : . on eighteenth-century attitudes to suicide see g. noon, 'on suicide', j. hist. ideas, , : - ; lester g. crocker, 'the discussion of suicide in the eighteenth century', ibid., , : - ; s. e. sprott, the english debate on suicide, le salle, ill., . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter furthermore, the pages of the magazine were used to mobilize direct action. many good causes were publicized: for instance, attempts to float schools for the deaf and dumb, and it is, maybe, worth noting that samuel johnson, one-time gentleman's magazine contributor, regarded the presence of such a school in edinburgh as the true beacon of the scottish enlightenment: "it was pleasing to see [johnson wrote at the end of his tour] one of the most desperate of human calamities capable of so much help: whatever enlarges hope, will exalt courage; after having seen the deaf taught arithmetick, who would be afraid to cultivate the hebrides?" both the foundling hospital and the magdalen charity for reformed prostitutes received encouragement within the magazine. and it was in the pages of the gentleman's magazine that the evils of private lunatic asylums were first exposed, and calls made for legislation and inspection to prevent improper confinement and scandalous treatment. but two campaigns received particular attention. first, proponents of voluntary hospitals made full use of the pages of the gentleman's magazine for publicity. comment in the magazine on the sundry plans to establish provincial philanthropic hospitals was uniformly favourable, with regular fanfares about the general utility and benefits of such "humane and laudable" establishments, exemplified in this proposal of for establishing a hospital: i a public hospital is the only certain way of relieving the poor-sick; who are frequently neglected and over-looked at their own homes; because physicians and surgeons can neither give their attendance, nor dispense their medicines with any convenience at more places than one; and because their concerns are of too private a nature to engage the attendance of any, but the very few who make it their business to inquire after them. ii it is the most safe and eligible manner of doing it; because the care and neatness as well as the simplicity and regularity of diet with which the poor are kept in an hospital, do all contribute much sooner to their recovery, than their own way of living; and are often more effectual than physic, in the cure of several of the most inveterate distempers. iii the expense of relieving a great number of sick persons in any hospital, bears no proportion to that of assisting them at their respective homes: and the widow's mite instrusted with those who can dispose of it in this way will go farther towards answering the ends of charity, than a sum of money bestow'd at random, on such, as are incompetent judges of the use of it, or of the proper manner of laying it out. iv it opens a channel for private charities which have been long wanted, and enables persons to lay them out to certain advantage; because everyone has it in his power from the moment he subscribes to recommend a 'gentleman's magazine, , : ; , : . ' samuel johnson, a journey to the western isles, new haven, conn., yale university press, , p. ; e. a. bloom, johnson in grub street, providence, r. i., brown university press, . "gentleman's magazine, , : ; , : ; , : . "ibid., , : - . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century patient, and by that means may be assured, that his bounty cannot be misapplied: .... viii it provides for the relief and comfort of multitudes who are unable to be at the expense of advice or physick, but are not distinguished by the name of the poor, because they do not come under the care of a parish or workhouse; and yet are most of all entitled to the regards of the public; since they are in present want; and are of the diligent and industrious, which is the most useful and valuable part of all society. " the details of schemes for the establishment of provincial hospitals, such as the berkshire county infirmary, were reprinted, as were poems urging potential donors to subscribe ("hail, gen'rous berkshire"), and notices reminding subscribers that contributions were due ! and the handsome gifts of philanthropists got prominent attention. several hospitals inserted their rules in the magazine, presumably for the benefit of parish officers and jps needing to know the terms of eligibility for the poor. others, such as the winchester, published annual reports, proudly listing their cure rates, and including financial accounts. one remarkable feature of the voluntary hospital movement in the provinces in georgian england is their great uniformity of plan. this may well have owed something to the power of the gentleman's magazine as a publicity organ. what is conspicuous is that items about hospitals were angled almost wholly towards their public and philanthropic face, rather than their medical regime. the magazine carried no discussions about the therapeutics offered by hospitals (though one item investigated how the buildings might be made more wholesome ). rather, it was information and issues regarding government, finance, and the terms of admission that cropped up again and again in print. not, however, that they were controversial: such reports are bathed in a consensual glow of benevolence. indeed, the hospital appears in the gentleman's magazine as the sublime expression of lay charity directed towards the relief of the sick. a parallel is visible in the way gentleman's magazine contributors drummed up support for that other typical eighteenth-century enthusiasm, the "humane movement" for the resuscitation of the "dead", in particular the "drowned". the obituary columns of the magazine paradoxically confirm how lethal water was to britannia. it is not surprising that a maritime and naval power, so dependent upon rivers for transport and haulage, should have witnessed so many drowning accidents, particularly with the coming of canal mania in the second half of the century-though ibid., , : . these points are taken from the publicity for the devon and exeter hosptial. "ibid., , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : , . "ibid., , : . ibid., , : . "j. woodward, to do the sick no harm, london, routledge & kegan paul, ; f. n. l. poynter (editor), the evolution ofhospitals in britain, london, pitman medical publishing co., ; d. owen, english philanthropy, cambridge, mass., belknap press, ; b. rodgers, cloak of charity, london, methuen, . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter it is odd that a large percentage even of the male labouring population seems not to have been able to swim. but the frequency of mishaps involving water (there are scores of reports of drunken wayfarers stumbling and drowning in puddles and standing water), and the large number of would-be suicides by water, caused public outcry and led to agitation to spread knowledge of the techniques of revival, such as using tobacco clysters, and to the championing of the humane society. this institution received glowing publicity and staunch support in the pages of the gentleman's magazine.l° such initiatives are revealing. they show that the spur to action to secure the people's health in georgian england came at least as much from lay involvement as from pressure from the faculty. they also embody a no-nonsense practicality so characteristic of the mind of the english enlightenment."", the contrast with the tone of public medical debate in victorian periodicals is rather revealing. nineteenth-century articles are frequently shrill, full of dire warnings about the rampancy of disease in society. the nation's health is depicted by nineteenth-century campaigners as being sapped by urban filth diseases, by madness, degeneracy, alcoholism, and venereal disease rampaging through the nation, by the pestiferousness of the lumpenproletariat, by narcotics abuse and quackery. these cassandra-like forebodings of deadly peril hardly surface amongst the georgians. there is rather a confidence abroad that social diseases are manageable, and that improvement lies within man's grasp. another prominent index of public attitudes towards health appears in the obituary pages of the magazine. unfortunately, the history of the obituary remains obscure; and we know little of how the genre emerged in relation to other testaments of the deceased, such as epitaphs, funeral sermons, gloges, and printed memorials. from its inception, the gentleman's magazine ran an obituary column, but one initially giving only the barest details of demise. take these instances from : . robert bristow, aged , at stamford. [he had lost his hearing, but had his sight and other senses to the last.] 'gentleman's magazine, , : ; , : . see n. orme, early british swimming bc-ad , exeter, . "gentleman's magazine, , : - ; , : : for praise of the humane society see , : ; , : ; p. j. bishop, a short history of the royal humane society, london, . l° see roy porter, 'the enlightenment in england', in roy porter and mikulas teich (editors), the enlightenment in national context, cambridge university press, , pp. - ; roy porter, 'was there a medical enlightenment in eighteenth-century england?', british journal for eighteenth-century studies, , : - . see, for example, w. coleman, death is a social disease, madison, university of wisconsin press, . "i see c. gittings, death, burial and the individual in early modern england, london, ; and for the wider european context, j. mcmanners, death and the enlightenment oxford, clarendon press, ; aries, op. cit., note above, pp. , , refers to obituaries only in the middle ages. the historical literature on epitaphs similarly relates almost wholly to classical times. for the literature of floges, see c. b. paul, science and immortality, berkeley, university of california press, ; d. outram, 'the language of natural power: the eloges of georges cuvier and the public language of nineteenth-century science', hist. sci., , : - . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century philip markham, esq; at claxbury in lincolnshire. james earl of airly, a young nobleman, lately marry'd to a daughter of the lord dun, in scotland. . mr. hughes, wine-merchant, and one of the common-council-men in dowgate ward. thomas ereskin, esq; brother to the earl of buchan, (at edinburgh.) . edward fellows, esq; formerly master in chancery, and brother to the late sir john fellows, bart. . nathaniel halhead, esq; a pattern-drawer in cornhill, and exchange-broker." ' as time went on, more information was given abott the deceased, including character evaluations, life history, family details, etc.; until by perhaps the s it was also common to give a line or two-sometimes-on the cause or circumstances of death. these details are, i believe suggestive about contemporary perceptions of illness and its relations to death. above all, the deceased's entire biomedical profile, the focus of attention in these lengthier obituaries becomes concentrated on the actual circumstances of dying, as is evident in the following examples: aged , the wife of mr. thomas cobb, of calthrop-house, banbury, in oxfordshire, banker. mrs c. caught a cold in returning from visiting a friend a few evenings before, and without the least danger being apprehended by the family or their medical friends, sunk away into the arms of death without a sigh, groan, or struggle; one day only was wanting to complete the th year of her marriage. suddenly, the rev. mr m'kill, pastor of bankend, of duresdeen in scotland. the manner of his death was very remarkable, and has made an impression upon the minds of his parishioners ... he mounted the pulpit in good health, lectured as usual, and it being the last sabbath of the year, chose for his text these words: "we spend our years as a tale that is told." he was representing, in a very pathetic manner, the fleeting nature of human life, and of all earthly things, when, on a sudden, he dropped down in the pulpit and expired instantly. " in other words, the prime "medical" aspect of the obituary is a narrative of dying: a graphic account of how the living passed over into the dead. existential trackings of the process of decease of this kind are presented far more frequently than strictly medical explanations are offered of the cause of death. how people came to die is more important than the disease they died of. of course, fatal diseases or conditions are often enough specified-apoplexy, consumption, and cancer are all prominent-and there is a range of other descriptions occupying the middle-ground between medical labels and common (often conventionally euphemistic) parlance, so that people are often noted as dying after "a long and lingering complaint". but within the wider moral purposes of the obituary genre, death is not particularly depicted as a medical event (i.e., one in which disease and doctors hold centre stage), though gruesomely graphic post mortem details are occasionally given. "gentleman's magazine, , : . o ibid., , : . "ibid., , : . ibid., , : ; , : : "after a long and painful illness". '"cf. ibid, , : : the opinion of the physicians and surgeons concerning the distemper which occasioned the death of his late royal highness the prince of wales, on the th instant. at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter this applied to the wider sphere. an impressionistic survey of the first seventy years of obituary notices in the gentleman's magazine suggests that it was only very rarely that medicine and medical men were seen as key figures in the circumstances surrounding death. this is not to imply that the sufferers didn't make lavish recourse to doctors and medicine both during their lifetimes, and not least on their deathbeds. physicians, however, were for fighting distempers and managing pain. with the onset of the drama of the battle with death, there was no automatic and privileged role for doctors. this was not, in england, because the place by the dying man's bedside- as the obituary depicted it-was being occupied by priests. the obituaries make little mention of formal christian rituals of dying.'" clergymen hardly figure in them at all, and there are no miracles, no deathbed conversions, no providences; even pious last words are few. religion appears, but it features as part of a broadbacked fortitude, and is lay-centred, emanating from the conscience of the dying man. the reason why practitioners hardly appear in these obituaries is because they are essentially irrelevant to the two main circumstances under which obituary-column writers described people dying, each of which has its own moral. in the first scenario, certain sufferers die slow, lingering deaths, victims of generally unspecified afflictions (e.g., a "decline"), which medicine cannot halt. here the obituarist's moral lies in spotlighting the sufferer's emulable virtues in managing his condition: resignation, stoicism, composure, cheerfulness, etc. to take one example-with a nice irony, a dying physician: at portsmouth, in his th year, thomas'silver, m.d. for many years in the first practice in that and the neighbouring towns. his disease was lingering, complicated, and exquisitely painful; he was confined to his house, and almost entirely to his bed, more than months; yet he preserved his mind uniformly patient, placid and cheerful. with a perfect knowledge of the daily and rapid progress of his disease, and with the view of death rapidly approaching, he would, immediately after the most acute paroxyms of pain, converse with earnestness and animation. when, for the last few weeks of his life, his debility was so much increased as to disable him, in a great measure, to take any share in conversation, his countenance strongly marked the interest he took in that of his friends. the day before his death he observed that it had pleased god to appoint him a bitter cup of affliction, and that he saw he must drink it to the very dregs; and this, indeed he did. but he submitted to the divine dispensations with that resignation and fortitude which can only be experienced by those who feel the full force of religion on the mind. on opening the body of his royal highness we found all the parts in the lower belly, or abdomen, sound. the cavity of the thorax was naturally contracted and narrow. the lungs on the left side were perfectly sound, and without any adhesion to the surrounding parts; the heart and pericardium without distemper. on the right side upon raising the ribs we found a cyste or bag, situated between the outer surface of the lungs and the ribs, which contained half a pint of very foetid matter. this cyste was about six inches long and four in breadth, extending nearly from the third rib downwards to the seventh. the coats of this cyste were here a quarter of an inch thick, and strong. this was a new distemper, but must certainly have been growing there some considerable time. [etc.] such lurid and gross details drew occasional protests: ibid., , : . ' see i. illich, limits to medicine, london, boyars, , ch v, for the secularization of death in the enlightenment. o gentleman's magazine, , : . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century or another, putting the message in a nutshell: "after a lingering illness, which she bore with exemplary fortitude and resignation, mrs. richards, wife of mr. r. swines-market. leicester.""' in suchlike cases, death gradually tightens its grip; there is no tale of heroic medical intervention. on the other hand, at least as frequently, the drama of the narrative lies in death striking right out of the blue, souse in the midst of life. to take some examples: at wirksworth, mr. john euston, baker. his wife, who was pregnant of her seventh child, was so agitated when she heard the doleful sound of the passing-bell, that she miscarried; and, on the evening of the th, whilst the bell was tolling for the funeral of her departed husband, she expired. ' at ramsey, co. huntingdon, mr. thomas whytell, an exciseman. his death was sudden: being at the crown inn there, he complained of a pain in his stomach, and requested the landlord to assist him out of the house, and on coming out he immediately dropped down and expired. rev. marshal montagu merrick, l.l.d. lecturer of st. anne's westminster, and v. of ryegate surrey. he had retired into his library after tea, and staying somewhat longer than usual, the servant went to call him to supper, which was generally roasted apples, and found him dead on the floor and the candle under him. ' sometimes this form of death has hints of a poignant moral: "at beverley, while winding up his watch, aged . mr. lyon". -or occasionally, of just deserts: "at redruth, in cornwall, peter cox, a miner. he was drinking at the three compasses in that town, and, in a fit of inebriety, blasphemed the evangelists, wished perdition to all the kings of the earth, and drank tom paine's health; when, on a sudden, his jaw became locked, and he died on the spot in the most excruciating torments." often death is a grotesque, cruel absurdity, arising almost from nothing: "rev. mr. joseph oliver, suddenly, at bristol from cutting his thumb nail too close."' for death mocks people when most they are alive: mrs fitzherbert, relict of the late rev. mr. f. of northamptonshire. on the wednesday evening before her death this lady went to drury lane theatre, in company with some friends to see the beggar's opera. on mr. bannister's making his appearance in the character of polly, the whole audience were thrown into an uproar of laughter; unfortunately the actor's whimsical appearance had a fatal effect on mrs. fitzherbert; she could not suppress the laugh that seized her on the first view of this enormous representation; and before the second act was over she was obliged to leave the theatre. mrs f. not being able to banish the figure from her memory, was thrown into hysterics, which continued without intermission until friday morning, when she expired. ' in ways that bring to mind volume vii of tristram shandy, death thus eludes the powers of medicine. this is because in so many cases it is caused by an accident-not even a disease, which medicine could at least have a stab at. a high percentage of the fatalities obituarized are the result of clothes catching fire, people falling out of windows, being thrown from horses, carriages spilling, buildings collapsing-minor illibid., , : . 'ibid., , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter disasters in sufficient numbers to warrant the obituary column being divided in its early years into two sections, "deaths" and "casualties" (i.e., death by accident). death struck without warning in all manner of ways: by a'bite in the upper lip from a dog which went mad a few days after, a poor man, named thomas austin, of arnley, near leeds. he expired in the strongest convulsions of the hydrophobia. mrs. smith, wife of mr. p. c. s. of erwarton. she fell into a well near her dwelling house, and was drowned; although she was taken out as speedily as possible, and medical assistance procured, every effort to restore animation proved fruitless. aged , jervis gibson, esq. senior alderman of lincoln. his death was occasioned by taking poison through a mistake. having been in the medical line, he used to mix his own medicines; and intending to take some salts, he ordered his servant to bring him a paper out of a drawer, part of the contents of which he mixed in warm water, and after drinking it off, on finding a sediment, he was alarmed, and on examining the paper, found he had taken corrosive sublimate. the proper means were tried without effect, and he died in half an hour. a child of tho. king, labourer, at enfield highway, drinking a very small quantity of heslop's preparation for destroying flies (which is a composition of white arsenic and honey) died in two hours in the greatest agonies. "' to the melancholy list of sufferers by the rapid spreading of fire, when aided by the light texture of female dress, we have to add the amiable and accomplished miss taylor, of southampton; who, on a visit to her uncle at newport, in the isle of wight, about three months since, standing incautiously too near the fire, suddenly found herself involved in flames, and was so much burnt before they could be extinguished, that, after languishing seven days in extreme misery, death closed her sufferings. of convulsions in her bowels, occasioned by the thunder on monday morning, miss hallam of islington, dau', of the late mr. h. dissenting minister. a lady at hammersmith lost her life by the same causes, at the same time. '" not to mention the sad case of mr. monro devoured by a tiger." but alongside accidents, there was another mode of death which defied the doctors: suicide. the georgians were notorious for their proclivity towards suicide, " -which was, perhaps more myth than reality. but the deaths reported in the gentleman's magazine (unrepresentative as they obviously are) certainly give prominence to suicides-and other sources such as coroners' bills seem to confirm they were indeed frequent." each month sees a couple of suicides graphically depicted: thomas day, esq. of portland place. this gentleman, once amazingly rich, appeared a bankrupt in the london gazette of saturday the nd of june (as an oilman, dealer, and chapman, of ibid., , : . for a characterization of death at the end of the century, see w. r. albury, 'heart of darkness: j. n. corvisart and the medicalization of life', in historical reflections/reflexions historiques, , : - . sgentleman's magazine, , : . ""ibid., , : . " ibid., , : . " ibid., , : . "ibid., , : . ibid., , : . see note above; m. macdonald, 'the inner side of wisdom, suicide in early modern england', psychol. med., , : - . for an example see r. f. hunnisett (editor), wiltshire coroners' bills - , devizes, wiltshire record society, . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century blackman-street, southwark). unable to bear up against his wayward fate, he, in the forenoon of the th, called at an hotel in covent-garden, took laudanum, and expired in the evening. m aged , jackson hernan, esq. of great suffolk-street, charing-cross, the eldest son of the late mr. h. formerly an eminent apothecary there. he had been afflicted with an asthmatical complaint for some weeks, and was advised by his physician to change his climate for winter. this advice was so unwelcomed to him that he instantly resolved to destroy himself, and he shot himself through the head."m about o'clock this evening mr. robinson, an army-surgeon, put a period to his existence at the lodging of a friend, in fleet-street. he went upstairs on a sudden, shut the door, and discharged a pistol against his temples, which blew his head to pieces. from the conduct of the deceased previous to the commission of this dreadful deed, it is supposed he acted from the impulse of a sudden mental derangement."' indeed, the flood of felo de se led to animated discussion in the pages of the magazine, divided between a majority "soft line" who argued that the laws making suicide a felony were inhumane and needed liberalization; and a minority view seeking tougher penalties (e.g., the anatomization of suicides' corpses) as a deterrent. overall, however, the very existence of the obituary column was a monthly tribute to death's empire. death held sway because of the ubiquity of accidental and sudden death, because of death from causes beyond medical control, and not least through self-destruction. though doctors and medicine had their places in life, death was another. matter altogether. in fact, the obituary notices sometimes specifically emphasize how the time will come when medicine can be of no avail. for example: between five and six o'clock in the evening in an apoplectic fit, mr. john bull, writing-master, &c. of air-street, piccadilly, he was found, fallen down head foremost, on his face, into a dry ditch near the double post by grimwood and co.'s nursery, hogmore lane, at which, it is supposed, he was endeavouring to catch, to support himself. by falling so fatally, he was suffocated by the suffusion of blood in the throat; so that, though a surgeon came, and used the lancet, too late was human aid. ' at the bell at bromley, in his th year, mr. william poynder, of great east-cheap. his death was occasioned by having been thrown from a chaise the week before, by which unhappy accident his leg was broken, which, though immediately set, and the best advice procured, ended fatally, to the great affliction of a large class of friends and acquaintance. occasionally, the dying man even pointed the moral himself: "suddenly, at oswestry, mr. harrison, supervisor of excise in that town. just before he fell he exclaimed 'o lord! how suddenly i am struck! all medical skill and assistance is useless!' " the moral of these obituaries was not to argue the case for therapeutic nihilism, or to rail at the ineptitude of the faculty. indeed, the desire to preserve life was strong, as is evident in the occasional pathetic pharmaceutical postscript to an obituary: is gentleman's magazine, , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : . " ibid., , : - ; , : ; , : - ; , : ; , ; , t . ibid., , : . ss ibid., , : . ibid., , : . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter mr timerblin, a gardener, at chelsea, died by the bite of a mad dog this month; also a lad in suffolk, tho' both several times dip'd in the sea; therefore it may be of service, on this account, to mention, that there is a powder of dr mead's, sold by the apothecaries, which is a specifick against such misfortunes, was never known to fail.-the following powder, with the use of the cold bath, cold spring, or river, is likewise recommended for the same purpose, having lately cured mr wm goss of outwell in the isle of ely. (having washed the blood from the wound) ofash-coloured ground liver-wort, reduced to powder drachms, ofblack pepper, beaten to drachms. mix and divide them into parts, and take one every morning in half a pint of warm milk). indeed, obituaries often pointed out how fatalities might have been avoided. but the solution envisaged is not more and superior medical intervention but prevention, care against accidents, and improved personal regimen. for instance, people were instructed that if their clothes caught fire, the remedy was not to run through the streets, but to roll themselves up in a carpet; similarly, care should be taken not to catch cold. cold, of course, was regarded as one of the key threats to health in humoral medicine. cold prevented sweating (i.e., the salutary expulsion of toxic fluids), and so was thought to clog the constitution-a view particularly conspicuous in samuel pepys' diary; and the obituary columns bulge with those who by their own carelessness brought on colds and thus hastened their exit. for instance: mr. thomas bunter, a respectable farmer, of cheddon-fitzpain. returning from his grounds, where he had been with his labourers, much heated, he went to this cellar, and drank only one pint of cider, which soon occasioned a violent pain in his bowels, of which he languished till morning." of a cold, caught by being in the rain, aged , peter roberts esq. remembrancer of the city of london, and formerly comptroller of the bridgeyard; which later office he had resigned in , on being allowed an annuity from the city. ' miss elizabeth richardson, daughter of mr robert r. of the six hundreds in heckington fen, co. linc. she had been dancing a few evenings before; and the cause of her death is supposed to have originated from drinking cold water or small beer, and going in to the air before she was cool. to be weighed against these dire warnings were the success stories. the obituary columns parade many paragons of longevity; and the obituarists again generally point the self-help moral: moderation, low diet, labour: at his house in york street, westminster, aged , mr charles cruse; of whom it is worthy of record, that, having some years since been afflicted with the stone and gravel; he wore out the disease by temperance and a strict adherence to diet, which had been chiefly vegetable for years. at worlingworth, suffolk, mr j. wilson, aged . his suppers, for years past, were roasted turneps. at preston, near hull, val. cateby, who attained to the great age of , and had his intellects ibid., , : . " cf. helman, op. cit., note above. see porter, op. cit., note above. 'gentleman's magazine, , : . ibid., , : . ibid., , : ; cf. , : . ibid., , : . ' ibid., , : . at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century perfect till within two days of his dissolution. his diet for the last years was milk and biscuit. though, as if to remind us that the eighteenth century was the age of excess, this also slipped in: "in the neighbourhood of newcastle, aged , james palmer; who, for the last years of his life, never went to bed sober."' what do these obituaries collectively tell us? above all, however much medicine may have been infiltrating into other theatres of life, they show little trace of the medicalization of death. illich has characterized the enlightenment as the period when doctors commenced their secular joust with death, promising emancipation from its clutches, remarkable longevity, and even immortality. such may have been the aspirations of an intellectual elite-men such as erasmus darwin, godwin, and condorcet. but there are no signs of such medical promethianism in these obituaries. death, after all, was not about specific pathogens, against which medicine engaged in mortal combat; rather, it was either the natural running down of the system, burning out the wick of life, or it was a bolt from the blue. in neither case was physic of much use; death was not a heavily medicalized event. it is verging on platitude to state that in the pre-industrial age the public possessed a rich heritage of medical lore and practised extensive self-medication. indeed, as jewson has argued, it was this very fact which itself helped to shape professional medicine in the georgian period. yet little attention has hitherto been given to the channels by which this knowledge was diffused and reproduced. in trying to account for this medical knowledge amongst the laity, we might be tempted by two misleading models. on the one hand we might see the medical interests of laymen as essentially personal, the concerns of those who for some private reason (such as individual affliction) took up the study for remedy or consolidation. or, on the other hand, we might take it for granted that lay medical praxis was essentially a residue of folk, oral, traditional culture, which was becoming threadbare, being suppressed, or was being driven underground by the march of science and professional hegemony during the age of enlightenment, paralleling the fates suffered by popular sports, superstitions, festivities, and calendar celebrations. the evidence contained in the gentleman's magazine, however, should lead us to question both these interpretations. for as well as demonstrating the continuing strength and dexterity of public involvement with medicine, the magazine also seems to show that being familiar with medicine was not an individual and private matter, but integral to the public role of the well-informed, public-spirited, and responsible layman. furthermore, active medical engagement was far from being confined to plebeian culture. in the georgian period, lay medical culture was not in opposition to the physic of the practitioners, nor was it being threatened or suppressed by them. ibid., , : . ibid., , : . see porter, op. cit., note above. "cf. r. w. malcolmson, popular recreations in english society, - , cambridge university press, ; e. p. thompson, 'patrician society, plebeian culture', j. soc. hist., , : - ; b. bushway, by rite. custom, ceremony and community in england - , london, . ' for the shortcomings of two-culture stratification models see p. burke, popular culture in early modern europe, london, temple smith, ; idem, 'popular culture in seventeenth-century london', at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter rather, the laity had a substantial stake in forms of medicine which overlapped and interacted with professional medicine; lay medicine was, and remained, active and adaptable. it is not until the nineteenth century that we can properly identify powerful lay-directed movements which deserve to be styled "fringe", or "alternative" medicine, defining themselves in opposition to the orthodoxy of the faculty." i have been suggesting that the first seventy years of the gentleman's magazine offers a picture of medical knowledge diffused throughout the public domain, with extensive lay participation and no insuperable boundaries between lay and professional. endorsing jewson's analysis, i believe that this situation was special to the eighteenth century. this impression is confirmed if we glimpse forward to the changing place of medical matters in the gentleman's magazine in the nineteenth century, where we see changes which reflect both real shifts in the relations between the medical profession and the laity, and also changing public expectations as to the roles which miscellanies such as the gentleman's magazine could (or could not) fulfil in publicizing medicine. to some degree, the medical coverage of the magazine continued into the nineteenth century much as before. for instance, the bills of mortality continued to be routinely printed, and the book reviews section still gave prominence to often detailed accounts of specialized medical books and pamphlets. and overall, much space was still given over in the first half of the nineteenth century to medical issues. but their nature changes considerably. from about the s in particular, there was a dramatic decline in the exchange of medical advice, inquiries, remedies. the magazine clearly ceased to play any important role in instructing the laity in medical self-help or as a medical talking-shop. by contrast, for example, to the publicity given by the magazine to the voluntary hospital movement in the previous century, there is little sign that the gentleman's magazine was any longer helping to stimulate the broadcasting of lay medical initiatives. the reports of medical charities are rather few. instead, the bulk of the medical insertions were then typically reports on what the medical profession was doing, viewed as an organized profession. the proceedings of metropolitan medical societies were faithfully reported, and lengthy accounts london journal, , ; payne, op. cit., note above, pp. - ; r. muchembled, culture populaire et culture des elites paris, flammarion, . for methodological discussions see c. w. e. bigsby (editor), approaches to popular culture, london, edward arnold, ; r. samuel (editor), people's history and socialist theory, london, routledge & kegan paul, , pp. - ; r. johnson, 'three problematics', in j. clarke, c. critcher, and r. johnson (editors), working-class culture, london, hutchinson, , pp. - . 'see j. whorton, crusaders for fitness, princeton university press, ; g. risse, medicine without doctors, new york, science history publications, ; a. c. and m. fellman, making sense of self, philadelphia, university of pennsylvania press, ; r. wallis and p. morley (editors), marginal medicine, london, p. owen, ; j. v. pickstone, 'establishment and dissent in nineteenth-century medicine', in w. j. sheils (editor), the church and healing, oxford, basil blackwell, , pp. - ; and l. barrow, 'anti-establishment healing; spiritualism in britain', in ibid., pp. - . as i hope to discuss these changes in the magazine in the nineteenth century in greater detail in a subsequent article, i shall not document them here in these footnotes. at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century appeared of the medical politics surrounding public issues such as the passing of the apothecaries' act ( ), and the formulation of public health policy in the s and s. gentleman's magazine readers were thus being given a window on to the world of the medical profession and medical politics, but it was a world in which they were no longer expected to participate. it may also be significant that idealized accounts of prominent physicians' careers began to appear in the obituary columns. it seems likely that this shift in medical coverage faithfully reflects shifts in lay-professional relations during the course of these generations. a seal was set on lay exclusion by a major policy shift in the gentleman's magazine which occurred between and . till then, the periodical had been a miscellany, with a genuinely catholic range of interests. in , however, the management announced that the growing division of intellectual labour and specialization of the age no longer left that editorial policy viable; henceforth the magazine would concentrate essentially on literary and antiquarian topics. thus, from the mid-nineteenth century, medical matters disappeared from the gentleman's magazine altogether. this did not signal, it goes without saying, the end of lay medical culture; but it does represent the severing of one long-established artery through which lay and professional medical interests intermingled. the gentleman's magazine was thus an important medium for georgian medical views, serving both as a receiver and a transmitter, amplifying here, perhaps distorting there, picking up and propagating signals. it deserves further study, and in particular alongside other periodicals and similar comparable bodies of evidence. for it must not be forgotten that it catered only to one sector of society, and above all, quite explicitly, only to one sex. in no sense was it the sole accredited vox populi. before our ears can be properly tuned to the polyphonous voices of lay medicine, much further research of this kind needs to be done. acknowledgement grants from the wellcome trust during the summers of - have provided me with research assistance without which this study could not have been brought to fruition. i wish to express my gratitude for these. stephen marriage, fi godlee, and christiane harris acted as research assistants. i wish to thank them for their eager, intelligent, and cheerful work. appendix (pp. - ) table of proprietary medicines (pharmacopoeia empirica) (gentleman's magazine, , : - ) at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter r the gentleman s m xgazine. vol. xviii: pharmacopo.eia empirica, or the listof nostrums and empirics. medicins. ]balls (hfsr.e) lba lsam of lif bzdlts bitters coenficts oe us e tsconf ect ions cotr'ilats dre nc hes drinkss droji el uc a re i ii l ,. la<. as.azlls by mir townlhend hayrnarketqitto ditto norwich wr turlington lombard-ftreetmr neeler hammerfmithddr r t.cliffe royal exchangemr stolghton bath, lie.d rffel rolbourn dr comyns old baily htaydon-vard white-fri rs grigg's court mr godfrey newcafile bucklersburydr daffy tpfwicb white friars strand dr bateman bow.church yardnmrs sterling duke-ltreet fleet- freet dr marten fleet - ifr reet dr ratcliffe vert-fireet cholbourn counhill mr weft bow-church yardmr pittan cheapwide holbourn brod-fireet hiavyd n-yarddr ratcliffe reading mr rock ludgate-hilldr nemman hrli urn - dr henry bow church yarddr henry hatt n-garden h ')ourn wh,tte-friars dr c m b ,w-church yard dr neln flee, frect strand tmar townfhend h^wv-market bow - freet ha d n-yard btran rd fleet -reet 'dr bethaare drnrmark- courtdr muortitner dwv+itihefireet dr nelron flee-fitrettmr rock lugate-hill bru kie fbury 'dr bofiock bathl r d iffy s ldurvcoure war aqire poultry corthill buckl ersbury strand strandcdr barker bath amr netler hrannmerfith ox rn :rzoyal eicange n schwanberg strard v : r sco?ughs i greafe wounds wouinds, gout leprufy stomach gfeets pox impotencybarren}ne'is fair-fce stomach broken- wind molt diflempers afihmas barrenneh colds coughs deaftfac gleets ihypo impotency nervous diford. poxe rheumatifin scurvy tsurfeits (claps f colds oni..gh diabetes l-tofies ipox affhbmas barrtenneft ca nnurnpcions p;a.t',n st.rs,gl t erts iqhfltzufions scurvsy pafy skin paks a t x o a bottle a bottle a belt o a bottle o a bottle o a bolus c a box a pot o a pot o a battleo a bottle a quart o a bottk a phial abttlei o a bottle s a bot!le a bottle a a bottle a bottle oabvtle a bottle o a phial o a bottle o a bottle a bottle a bottle o a pot x a p.t i o a pot i a potlo o a pot ¶ a pot io apot a tinpot o a pot x o a bottle o a bfatle a bottle a btptle a a bottle a a bottle a bottle o a bottle a bottle s o a bottle j q a brttle a pat a bottle o a bottle a bottle acabottle a bottle bottle a biittlei a a girdle . a baglaflc a apgiafl no. i s s jj 'a ' % a . zq s z % ; $ s. sr a i i at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century lt 'r of for r claps gonorrlhoeas eyes hair itch c claps ytch ski coughs { bugs eves agues broken-wind cancer canker cenfulotions corns fevers, &c. i-leets iclout i mrpotency nervous diford. pox rheumatifm ruptures stone warts mll t tvu rise agues necxlaces cutting teeth dea,fnefs oil's scutvy varijus difeafes itch ointmenwts rubynefs pains opiates teth ?jca# iffiue ( er female diforder fever obftridom ppz rbemati&jsmst- -px §atomw arolrums and empiric'. by in mint-fireet dr ru ul iolbourn ioydon.vard royal £.x ?rbrge bucklersbux y mr rock ludgate-hill poultry newcltle buck ersbury poultry dr anderfon newcaffle fetter- lane mr key dean-afreet mrranks southwark dr dermar hlyde pjrk-corgnr poulhry mr garnet liolbourn pot tland-fl-rft a gentlewoman alderftgte-fireet mr garner porttiarlt-trect dt mortimer devonibireftrcet dr ntewrman hotbourn mr rottier golden fquare st martin's le gna. dr tenry nattn-garuen mr labar strand falcon cruirt fleet litet pall-n,a'l t ~~~~dowrgale-h, l mr archer sr jiohrf's iquarej mr titchbourn mni'or'res p§~~~ucklersburydr rebinfon little-britain mis brown tuwickenham dr ellis f!eet -ditch dr chamnberlen lng-acre iyr clil-ito-n b-ath d rogers stamfra mr i$etton flect. lane dr coflet tieok!ld's.row (dr neviman jiolkuros < \~~~~xild- i t cet nbecles u. h. roval exchange st oilsii's mr jackfon welling-on jmr del efot coronbii'i mr dla pont sufuslk-fireet mr ruleau strand c mr du£ham holbourn holbourn mr giffith holbourn dr hooper reading mrclendon fiset-fireet dr anderkn- strand dr lockyer fleet-lane mr dean tiver-hill dr mifaubiz st martin's lane dfr newman lholi.rn dr profily exeter-court mr weft chear fide la' her-lane iv 'nt- flrceti ~~~pall-nail drbellote pulteney firtet fleer. itrect mar fark;r et wcitif. medijins len ions lotse ng £s ma c a in es tdicinxs a*t ;, tb t iik a bottle - a but-le io a bottle a a b tt're eabortlej i o a lc- tle s o a botle o a bottle o a box a quart i oaphial o quantte. a a bottle a fit dofes eaf rates o a bottle o a bottle o a bottle a parcel oaparcel £t o a pot oapiece o a bottle abottie i a a bottle 'iaoabottle x apot o ab all a a pot i a pot i o a bottle a pot a o a lond, lo a box lo o a nox a pill a o a box i o a box ao a box o abox o a pilli io abap oabox o a pill abox o a box z a box a piu no. ; c to sr pg b, g.l. loft log lo; x in i ns ax ta: s ztz x ape j pals i i at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core r. porter the gewtleman's magazine,s vox. xyvnr medicins for. burns p drawing pla*.ttxrs sticking (aguea coughs f'evers fits goxt tgripes u heart-burn piles rhcumnatifr teath qvnrtisznsls impotencysalt sctirvy salves lips inm*l bottles vafirstyvapors snuffs head iteoth-achswzb c x p icx s cgrave! spireits palfy s'r'yptics scurvys'rvrrrcs-x iiaerorreagor*igar-pluma worms ae agues atlhmas blood breath s s ^c rv loxacco-& wasms-uwlls iea colic g ir-ees hyfvtlrics itc nc pains palties. st.one tooth-ada :"eyes,;, hei>adig-o eyes r.r pox lsukn leetl il..... by in llrook-fireet mr hill watling-f*reet -mr rukeau bull-inn tourtdr wriht b-olbo:rn t ~~~~fleet-ireet dr tennent gatehoufe welmont stjamnessmarket dr james paul's churchyardl sir j. hewett piccadilly dr collett the-obald's row dr newman ioboutrn fleet-itreet bucklersbury mrgoodrick bath mr capron bond-fireet mr voyce paul's churchyard cornhill newcaffle vere fireet bond-ptrect cornhill poultry cnrnhilla-r thirkell 'rooley-areet mr clinton g£iouicefler broad-ftreet buckiersbury taviyffock-ftreetmr butler rrotherhithe dr eaton salilbury court lu{.ng-acre mro bet-row peterborotigh ddr griffin royal exchaage r heary hatton-gaxden reading strand )mr thir,kell toolkv-freet bucklerthury (, ~~~poultry mlnejitrect buc!.p.-erfl'urv dr edwrds popesp dpeaje-aley mtr hdcdgona whlitecrofs. titeecr.i jaukion wellington old bailey corsahil ivofi rock ludgate_h, z ~~~strand mnir capron bond-fireet imr dtiefrort royal exchange mii gr-enough snuw-ehli mr rock ldltehill mr vera .t#i t-wyard royal exchange coroh}il maitre j'.an read t g ) ~~~~~stovle.txss jmr m .chn sr. ttsam#s |a risch red-ion-amark. srnuth-ftrccr dr d).ifavs strand mrdewtwer. hill imr' gegoudee xvhite. crts itreet or irofily exeter-c-urtu amr fu pont swt k etin:t at ooa platter it each i lpaper - , -;ttle a paper s o par 'el oadofe o a aper oa bux ; ab,x ' n oz. i ospaper ". o a bottle z a an az, i oa j abattle z abon t i o papers i; i oai paper i w a bot'a e i a bottle x s o aboele i i a oa&r;zn x a bouttle x , a o abottctc # z o abotrlei s abotte i oabottle ir oa abote i a b. trie .i ia bottle +y a bottle z o a plaal rs i q b telet i o a bhotple ! i irg a br tic i ai bott'e is ab ti ax a a botle * fs~ o a botftle is o gabot:le ; a bcrr|c o a bottle ss o a paum, i c ab ia , o at bottle ± bt :' . a bcs tlh ; a a b tuet e. o a bkttl. j apttt ; o.t;act. ti i ii i ... ,y,.i a^ at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/ . /s downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. carnegie mellon university, on apr at : : , subject to the cambridge core terms of use, available https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms https://doi.org/ . /s https://www.cambridge.org/core course:	engl	 	(ma)	 student:	tam	john	rowe	(vosper)	 student	no#:	 	 supervisors:	dr	nicholas	wright	 &	professor	paul	millar	 	 	 	 	 	 	 coming	to	terms	with	the	disenchantment	of	 the	world:	the	extent	and	limit	of	immanent	 numinosity	in	the	poetry	of	wallace	stevens	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 ~   ~  ~ ~ ~ ~ list of abbreviations * unless otherwise noted, all page references to wallace stevens’ poetry and prose will be to the following edition: stevens, wallace, ( ). wallace stevens: collected poetry and prose, frank kermode and joan richardson, eds., new york: the library of america. * other abbreviations used: (l) – stevens, holly, sel. and ed., ( ). letters of wallace stevens, london: faber and faber. (na) – stevens, wallace, ( ). the necessary angel: essays on reality and the imagination, new york: alfred a knopf. (op) – stevens, wallace, ( ). opus posthumous, london: faber and faber. * ~ ~ preliminaries * the poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, and, as imagination bodies forth the form of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. - a midsummer night’s dream, act v. scene i. * we dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows. - robert frost, ‘the secret sits’ * obviously god was a solution, and obviously none so satisfactory will ever be found again. - e. m. cioran, the trouble with being born * …the limits of the imagination are the conceivable, not the real, and it extends over death as well as life. - northrop frye, ‘the realistic oriole: a study of wallace stevens’ * high modernism is numinous through and through, as the work of art provides one of the last outposts of enchantment in a spiritually degenerate world. - terry eagleton, culture and the death of god. * the poet is the priest of the invisible. - wallace stevens, adagia * ~ ~ introduction: presiding over the invisible * ( ) ‘begin, ephebe, by conceiving the idea…’ the following thesis does not pretend to arrive at a definitive conception of what literary modernism was, or for that matter is, in the rigorous sense required of a taxonomist. attempts to define or classify modernism have been fraught with contradictions and counter-examples too numerous to be resolved within the limited scope of the present thesis. suffice it to say, i am in agreement with peter nicholls, who insists that it is more sensible to speak pluralistically of ‘modernisms’. i would, indeed, prefer to avoid using the term altogether, were it not for the fact that the inspiration for this thesis stems, as will be shortly seen, from gabriel josipovici’s endearingly eccentric study whatever happened to modernism?. my preference is for the term ‘modern’, which, as solid an arbitration as any, i would align with the period concurrent with the establishment of what we commonly refer to as the language of ‘modern english’, taking in as it does the rise of renaissance humanism and the enlightenment, historical developments that are integral to the position my thesis wishes to advance. nonetheless, i will seek recourse to the use of the term ‘modernist’, simply to distinguish, as per convention, a period in literary history spanning the close of the nineteenth century through to the mid-twentieth, while reserving the right to bracket see nicholls, peter, ( ), modernisms: a literary guide, berkeley: university of california press. following nicholls’ lead is the compendious the oxford handbook of modernisms, ( ), oxford and new york: oxford university press. ~ ~ out what does not immediately concern my thesis, namely a descriptive account of what exactly modernism qua modernism entails. instead, the provenance of this thesis issues from the implications of josipovici’s suggestion that modernism, which he dates from approximately to the mid-twentieth century, might be revealingly considered ‘a response…to that ‘disenchantment of the world’ to which cultural historians have long been drawing our attention’ (josipovici, , ). this thesis will explore the implications of josipovici’s suggestion specifically in relation to the work of the so-called ‘major’ modernist poet wallace stevens. my usage here of a circumspect qualifier is not to imply that i care to assail the canonical status that has been endowed upon stevens by the academy, nor is it to suggest that i think it is necessarily wrong-headed to analyse his work in the context of modernism, howsoever this category—if that is what we can call it—has come to be revised and by whom. rather, by situating stevens in the broader historical narrative of disenchantment, the present thesis will throw into relief many of the tensions that would arise with the ascendancy of what charles taylor calls ‘exclusive humanism’ (taylor, , ). taylor characterises exclusive humanism as an extreme anthropocentrism entailing the moral and political dispensation of human society derived entirely from an immanent self-sufficiency no longer reliant on appeals to, or extrapolations from, anything perceived to transcend the mundane world. arguably, exclusive humanism arrives at a watershed with the advent of romanticism in the late th century. romanticism, in large part, came about as a reaction against the enlightenment’s mechanistic worldview, to its tendentious scientism, sovereignty of reason, and post-deist marginalisation of humankind’s spiritual interconnection with for a thoroughgoing explication of ‘exclusive humanism’ see: charles taylor, ( ), a secular age, cambridge ma & london: the bellknap press of harvard university press, esp. - , - , , , - , , , , - , - , - , , - . ~ ~ the divine. this thesis will discern stevens’ work, for the most part implicitly, as a later development—whether combative, cooperative or collusive—of romanticism’s afore- summarised reaction to the disenchantment of the world. as this thesis presupposes, stevens inherits the basic dialectical conflict that his romantic forebears—and, in turn, the romantics’ myriad th century successors (french symbolists, victorian aesthetes, fin de siècle decadents, et al.)—had rendered explicit: namely the reception of discontents perceived to be brought about by disenchantment, and the myriad responsive strategies that are counterposed to these perceived discontents. for stevens, though, disenchantment is not exclusively a source of discontent. the frequently invoked ‘modernist crisis of faith’ would constitute an alarmist hyperbole when applied to the case of stevens. scott freer, to cite a recent instance, correctly observes that: ‘stevens is not a disillusioned modernist and the death of god is a positive condition for poetic liberation’ (freer, , ). stevens, as we will come to see, believes that the world has been disenchanted (although he does not phrase it in these terms), and that in consequence there is a desire, a necessity even, to undertake a comprehensive project of spiritual renovation. leon surette argues that stevens is quite unique among his major contemporaries: ‘eliot, returned to orthodox christianity; others, such as yeats, robert graves and ezra pound, turned to more esoteric forms of belief. stevens alone among the major figures sought to articulate an alternative faith, one that made shift to do without transcendence, and without divinity, but without surrendering the emotional intensity of religious belief. in choosing that route, stevens chose the more difficult course’ (surette, spring , - ). stevens’ choice to dispense with orthodox and esoteric belief systems, and yet still strongly defend what he considers art’s spiritually compensatory function in an age in which he would say ‘we believe without belief, beyond belief’ ( ), is what makes him such an ~ ~ interesting poet to study from the perspective of secular disenchantment. it is primarily for this reason that i have chosen a similarly difficult course in taking stevens as the subject of this study. the following series of quotations collocate a number of stevens’ most pertinent claims for art’s spiritually compensatory function. in a late essay entitled ‘the relations between poetry and painting’, stevens remarks, ‘that in an age in which disbelief is so profoundly prevalent or, if not disbelief, indifference to questions of belief, poetry and painting, and the arts in general, are, in their measure, a compensation for what has been lost’ ( ). in ‘two or three ideas’, another late essay, stevens makes a closely worded claim for poetry in particular: ‘in an age of disbelief, or, what is the same thing, in a time that is largely humanistic, in one sense or another, it is for the poet to supply the satisfactions of belief, in his measure and in his style’ ( ). poetry is, after all, stevens’ vehicle for engaging in the compensatory activity of spiritual renovation: ‘after one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence that takes its place as life’s redemption’ ( ). this attitude finds its starkest expression in section v of the long aphoristic poetic sequence ‘the man with the blue guitar’: ‘poetry / exceeding music must take the place / of empty heaven and its hymns, // ourselves in poetry must take their place’ ( - ). according to stevens the art can provide an alternative means to religion to reveal and confirm value: ‘the relation of art to life is of the first importance especially in a skeptical age since, in the absence of a belief in god, the mind turns to its own creations and examines them, not alone from the aesthetic point of view, but for what they reveal, for what they validate and invalidate, for the support they give’ ( ). the poet’s ‘role, in short, is to help people to live their lives’ ( ). the rest of this introductory chapter will elaborate upon the aforementioned claims stevens makes for art and particularly poetry. this investigation will be ~ ~ conducted in relation to further and frequently inconsistent positions stevens expresses on religion and belief over the course of his adult life. this will also involve rehearsing some critical objections to stevens’ claims. beyond that, i will describe a theory of immanent numinosity that i will be using as a hermeneutic apparatus to interpret the compensations and satisfactions of belief and spirit that i infer stevens’ poetry is attempting to rhetorically perform. however, before getting to this, in the next section i will provide an account of max weber’s argument for ‘the disenchantment of the world’, as it is a concept germane to, and corroborative of, stevens’ previously mentioned perception of ‘an age of disbelief’. * ( ) ‘evening without angels’ the german sociologist max weber is the widely acknowledged promulgator of the disenchantment of the world thesis, which ‘in its broadest terms, maintains that wonders and marvels have been demystified by science, spirituality has been supplanted by secularism, spontaneity has been replaced by bureaucratization, and the imagination has been subordinated to instrumental reason’ (saler, , ). weber’s argument for the disenchantment of the world posits the claim that coextensive with modernity the conjoined historical processes of intellectualization and rationalization have progressively divested the world of magic and spirit culminating in a cosmos devoid of meaningfulness and purpose. weber articulates his argument thus: on this last point taylor would characterize the process as a conceptual shift from cosmos to universe. see taylor, op cit.: - , , - , , , - , - , . ~ ~ …increasing intellectualization or rationalization do not…indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives. it means something else, namely the knowledge or belief that if one but wished one could learn it at any time. hence, it means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. this means the world is disenchanted. one need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. technical means and calculations perform the service. this above all is what intellectualization means. (weber, , , original italics). in this passage we can discern one of weber’s central claims, namely the ‘in principle’ notion of calculability; this is not to say that intellectualization is a completed project in weber’s view, but that ‘in principle’ it has the potential to ‘master all things’. in the following passage, weber demonstrates how this mathesis universalis in principle, coupled with empirical science, comes into conflict with religion: the tension between religion and intellectual knowledge definitely comes to the fore wherever rational, empirical knowledge has consistently worked through to the disenchantment of the world and its transformation into a causal mechanism. for then science encounters claims of the ethical postulate that the world is a god-ordained, and hence somehow meaningfully and ethically oriented, cosmos. in principle, the empirical as well as the mathematically oriented view of the world develops refutations of every intellectual approach which in any way asks for a ‘meaning’ of inner-worldly occurrences. every increase of rationalism in empirical science increasingly pushes religion from the rational into the irrational realm… (weber, , - , original italics). ~ ~ taken together, these two passages strike at the heart of weber’s formulations on the disenchantment of the world. before we proceed, though, a few distinctions must be made. first, weber’s arguments are by no means original. at least as early as lucretius’s de rerum natura ( st century bce) had the ‘notion of science as primarily a benign kind of weedkiller designed to get rid of religion’ (midgley, , ) been propounded. lucretius’s poem, the fullest expression of epicurean philosophy to survive antiquity, presents an atomistic theory of the universe in which atoms (on this view the smallest, indestructible units of matter that make up all things) exist in an eternal flux of creation and destruction. the gods, whom are still believed to exist, are nonetheless entirely indifferent to human, mundane affairs. death is conceived of as a mere return to nothingness, a reshuffling back into the degenerative/regenerative flux of primal atomic matter. ostensibly lost for centuries, a transcription of lucretius’s text was rediscovered in the early fifteenth century by poggio florentinus. it was subsequently widely disseminated, and would come to constitute one of the foundational texts of renaissance humanism. for lucretius, this worldview was on the one hand inherently wondrous (to contemplate that we are made of the same stuff as the stars, etcetera) and on the other hand it provided grounds for the pursuit of pleasure, the more intellectually refined the better, in the absence of divine retribution or ultimate purpose. it is not difficult to construe in lucretius’ text weberian (and, it must be said, stevensian) disenchantment in germinal form: the substitution of random physical forces for divine purposeful influence; the foregrounding of matter over against see stephen greenblatt’s article ‘the answer man’, ( . . ), the new yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/ / / /the-answer-man-stephen-greenblatt, for a concise historical account of the rediscovery and dissemination of lucretius’ poem during the advent of the renaissance. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/ / / /the-answer-man-stephen-greenblatt ~ ~ spirit; the negation of superstitious belief; in short, a turn from transcendence towards immanence. second, it is from friedrich schiller that weber adapts the phrase ‘the disenchantment of the world’. bruce robbins outlines how weber’s ‘entzauberung’ differs from schiller’s ‘entgötterung’ in quite a crucial respect: schiller’s version of disenchantment– it turns out that weber was not quoting him directly– is “entgötterung” (de-divinization). when schiller used the phrase “die entgötterte natur” (nature from which the gods have been eliminated) in his poem “the gods of greece,” he was criticized for seeming to lament the end of polytheism, and he backed down. weber’s term is “entzauberung” (the elimination of magic). it may bow gently to schiller but, whether for reasons of diplomacy or not, it certainly takes the emphasis off divinity. (robbins, , ). this leads us to a third consideration: that supposedly weber’s version of disenchantment accounts only for the displacement of concrete magic from the world, and leaves supernatural divinity, especially the transcendent god of post-deist protestantism, somewhere beyond its dismissive radius. weber, in point of fact, makes the argument that ascetic protestantism is the culmination of a long-standing religious agenda to eliminate magic from the world that began (at least in western tradition) with the ‘old hebrew prophets’ who ‘in conjunction with hellenic scientific thought, repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition and sin’ (weber, , ). weber collocates here what typifies for him the two prime, and in fact collaborative, motors of disenchantment throughout history: science and monotheism. however, in spite of what certain commentators might argue to the contrary, rationalisation, on weber’s telling, pushes orthodox religious belief to the edges of plausibility just as ~ ~ forcefully as it does the putatively animistic worldview of the so-called primitive savage and ancient pagan. taylor warns against confusing ‘disenchantment with the end of religion’ (taylor, , ), a trap that he believes ‘weber seems to have fallen into…at times’ (ibid). however, taylor himself later connects ‘real, thoroughgoing disenchantment’ (ibid, ) with ‘a total escape from religion’ (ibid). disenchantment, then, to recapitulate weber’s ‘in principle’ notion of calculability, if followed to its logical conclusion, would presumably exact the dissolution of religion, and thus the belief in divinity, altogether. disenchantment, on this view, exhibits an unmistakeable conceptual overlap with the narratives of secularization. fourth, and finally, much contentious debate among weberian scholars has revolved around the extent to which weber regards the disenchantment of the world as a negative and subtractive view of history, or as a positive and progressive one. h. h. gerth and c. wright mills state the distinction (which points to a theoretically useful ambivalence on weber’s part) succinctly: ‘the extent and direction of ‘rationalization’ is…measured negatively in terms of the degree to which magical elements of thought are displaced, or positively by the extent to which ideas gain in systematic coherence and naturalistic consistency’ (gerth and mills, , ). h. c. greisman maintains that ‘[t]he dominant chord sounded in weber’s formulation of disenchantment is sober resignation’ (greisman, dec. , ), while insisting that ‘weber strove towards value-neutrality’ (ibid). alternatively, a critical tendency to align weber’s perception of disenchantment with cultural pessimism persists. weber’s ominatio at the conclusion of ‘politics as a vocation’ is often rallied in support of this view: ‘not summer’s bloom lies which could be summarized as the mathematical explication of physical reality dispelling both a recourse to mystification and deference to a heteronomous referent (i.e. god). ~ ~ ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness’ (weber, , ). interestingly, stevens himself dramatizes a similar reaction on the part of the human species to the dissolution of the gods: ‘it was their [the gods] annihilation, not ours, and yet it left us feeling that in a measure we, too, had been annihilated. it left us feeling dispossessed and alone in a solitude, like children without parents, in a home that seemed deserted, in which the amical rooms and halls had taken on a look of hardness and emptiness’ ( ). the dissolution of gods, the divestment of magic and spirits, the continued viability of religious belief in a disenchanted world—as to whether or not disenchantment or secularization will succeed in wiping these things from the face of the earth is a moot point. any contemporary believer or practitioner of magic would probably argue not. we may want to ask, moreover, what might be the implications of disenchantment for the continued viability of the poet? orpheus is presumably outstripped by the mathematician and the large hadron collider at bringing into apparent being what had previously lain beyond the horizon of potential articulation. the encompassing cosmic vision of an age, such as that of homer, virgil or dante, is inconceivable—the variables are too many and their esoteric currencies nonexchangeable for the common coin of lingua franca. the secular authority of the poet is rendered increasingly private, in which an alienated subjectivity encroaching upon the mirror-game of solipsism prevails. a poetics of necessary failure thus assumes george steiner points out that ‘until the seventeenth century, the sphere of language encompassed nearly the whole of experience and reality; today, it comprises a narrower domain. it no longer articulates, or is relevant to, all major modes of action, thought, and sensibility. large areas of meaning and praxis now belong to such non-verbal languages as mathematics, symbolic logic, and formulas of chemical or electronic relation. other areas belong to the sub-languages or anti-languages of non-objective art and musique concrète. the world of words has shrunk’ (steiner, , ). ~ ~ the throne of expressive communication. in the humanities, confusion and indeterminacy reign supreme. the jeremiad i have improvised just now is a well-worn plaint. its sanguine counter-ode is the celebration of assumed freedom, of the throwing off of the chains of superstition and myth, of the overturning of benighted ecclesiastical authority and feudal government supposedly ordained by divine fiat. freedom and limit, however, are indissoluble antagonists. david jasper, repurposing milton, remarks that the modern poet writes ‘the words were all before them, which to choose’ (jasper, , ). geoffrey hill keenly observes this choice induces the following chiasmic predicament: ‘there is something in constraint which frees the mind, and something in freedom which constrains it’ (hill, , ). stevens himself arrives at a similar formulation in a letter to norman holmes pearson, june , : ‘a free form does not assure freedom’ (l, ). it is in this connection that josipovici cites (and indeed names a chapter of his book after) kierkegaard’s formulation from the concept of anxiety, that ‘anxiety is the dizziness of freedom’ (josipovici, , - , passim; kierkegaard, , ). anxiety, for kierkegaard, ‘is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite’, emphasising that it ‘is freedom's actuality as the possibility of possibility’ (kierkegaard, , ). the possibility of possibility made possible by a self-reliant (or, as taylor would say, exclusive) humanism—the putative victory of enlightened disenchantment. in the absence of a guiding, extra-human authority, the human animal, decoupled from an ultimate telos, is left to his or her own anxiogenic devices. the abiding concern is that this freedom could terminate in existential vacuity and creative paralysis. hugo von hofmannsthal epitomises this existential quandary in his ‘letter of lord chandos’, in which the fictional th century epistoler explains to ~ ~ lord bacon the reasons for his complete abandonment of literary activity: ‘in brief, this is my case: i have completely lost the ability to think or speak coherently about anything at all’ (hofmannsthal, , ). chandos, at the tender age of twenty-six years, an erstwhile litterateur of no small accomplishment, has arrived at the belief that language is no longer adequate to convey his experience, and feels ashamed to accept his former work as belonging to him. he can no longer discourse on philosophical and moral matters; everyday opining and passing judgements become increasingly insubstantial to him; and finally, his recourse to classical models, that ‘edifice of latin prose whose abstract plan and structure [had once] gladdened his heart’ (ibid, ), is met with utter incomprehension. all of his subsequent epiphanies are irrevocably lost as soon as he tries to set them down on paper. consequently, chandos concludes that the ‘the language in which i might have been granted the opportunity not only to write but also to think is not latin or english, or italian, or spanish, but a language of which i know not one word, a language in which mute things speak to me and in which i will perhaps have something to say for myself someday when i am dead and standing before an unknown judge’ (ibid, - ). this silent language, or language of silence, capable of discoursing with ‘mute things’, the primordial language before the moment of speech in which the world and all that constitutes it is entirely trans-communicant, is one of the greatest paradoxes and most enticing desiderata ever to beset the poetic imaginary. ‘poetry is the search for the inexplicable’ ( ), stevens would say, and propose ‘an unwritten rhetoric that is always changing and to which the poet must always be turning’ ( ), a ‘pure rhetoric it is worth considering as a positive counterpart to chandos’ unknown language, hart crane’s speculation, no less enigmatic, on poetry’s ability to reveal a supra-linguistic ‘word’ to its reader: ‘it is as though a poem gave the reader as he left it a single, new word, never before spoken and impossible to actually enunciate, but self- evident as an active principle in the reader’s consciousness henceforward’ (crane, , ). ~ ~ of a language without words’ ( ). the poet of the supreme fiction asks: ‘is there a poem that never reaches words’? ( ). this question is of course unanswerable. ludwig wittgenstein, hofmannsthal’s near coeval and fellow viennese, echoes chandos’ retreat from the inadequacy of language in the oft-cited proposition concluding his tractatus logico-philosophicus: ‘what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’ (wittgenstein, , ). wittgenstein also claims, however, that ‘what can be said at all can be said clearly’ (ibid, ). that which can be said clearly would find its strongest prescription during the modernist period in the verificationist principles of the vienna circle logical positivists, wittgenstein’s immediate (and contemporary) descendants. victor m. hamm as late as , in his suggestively titled lecture ‘language, truth and poetry’, argues that ‘[w]e are still living intellectually— despite recent developments away from its crude original form—in the atmosphere of positivism’ (hamm, , ). the title of hamm’s lecture is a wry nod to a. j. ayer’s language, truth and logic, the book responsible for transposing the ideas of the vienna circle into the anglosphere. according to ayer’s arguments the only propositions that are cognitively meaningful are either synthetic propositions whose truths ‘could be conclusively established by experience’ (ayer, , ) (e.g. ‘it rained in london during ayer’s day of birth’, if in fact it did rain in london on ayer’s birthday, which, being london, is quite likely); or analytic propositions, which are true either by tautological definition (e.g. ‘all sisters are female’) or mathematical correctness (e.g. in a letter to alice corbin henderson, march , , stevens would write a sentence uncannily similar to that of wittgenstein’s: ‘whatever can be expressed can be expressed clearly. epater les savants is as trifling as épater les bourgeois. but one cannot always say a thing clearly and retain the poetry of what one is saying’ ( ). see: andrew osborn, (spring ), ‘”a little hard to see”: wittgenstein, stevens, and the use of unclarity’, wallace stevens journal, : , - , for an exposition of the parallels between stevens and wittgenstein’s thought. it would be doing the genealogy of the vienna circle a disservice were one to fail to mention the influence of ernst mach, gottlob frege, david hilbert and bertrand russell, not to mention the revolution in physics ushered in, primarily, by the work of albert einstein. ~ ~ ‘ + = ’). what ayers infers from these principles of verification are that all metaphysical utterances are meaningless, ethical concepts are at best pseudo-concepts, and aesthetic declarations do not state facts but merely express feelings. ayers’ only sustained statement concerning the poet is in relation to, tellingly enough, the scientist: the difference between the man who uses language scientifically and the man who uses it emotively is not that the one produces sentences which are incapable of arousing emotion, and the other sentences which have no sense, but that the one is primarily concerned with the expression of true propositions, the other with the creation of a work of art. thus, if a work of science contains true and important propositions, its value as a work of science will hardly be diminished by the fact that they are inelegantly expressed. and similarly, a work of art is not necessarily the worse for the fact that all the propositions comprising it are literally false. (ibid, - ). hamm argues that ‘[o]n the terms of this school, therefore, poetry as a cognitive transaction becomes impossible, all that remains of it being, as the early i. a. richards put it, “emotive utterance” and “pseudo-statement”’ (hamm, , ). another of (early) richards’ remarks comprises a speculation that could not more neatly encapsulate the central anxiety of disenchantment inasmuch as poetry is concerned: ‘there is some evidence that poetry, together with the other arts, arose with [the] magical view. it is a possibility to be seriously considered that poetry may pass away with it’ (richards, , ). notwithstanding the fact that poetry has not passed away, the rationalist we should be familiar enough by now with what richards means by ‘magical view’. nonetheless, as a safeguard against uncertainty: ‘by the magical view i mean, roughly, the belief in a world of spirits and powers which control events, and which can be evoked and, to some extent, controlled themselves by human practices. the belief in inspiration and the beliefs underlying ritual are representative parts of this view’ (richards, , ). richards’ ‘magical view’, as was common currency at the time, derives from e. b. tylor’s primitive culture wherein tylor reintroduced into popular circulation the concept of animism, and was to have an enormous influence on his disciple j. g. frazer of the golden bough fame, which in turn became a touchstone work for countless philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, artists and poets. ~ ~ position exemplified by ayers and richards is merely a late iteration of the ancient quarrel instigated by plato’s banishment of the poets from his ideal republic ruled by philosopher kings. the poet’s imitative third-hand removal from the truth of the ideal forms, and their tendency to corrupt the youth and incite the passions rather than the faculties of reason, is simply a strong version of the claim that all that poetry is good for is to stir the emotions. christopher clausen argues that a similar reaction against poetry that occurs in ‘classical greece at the coming of the age of philosophy’ occurs during the seventeenth century ‘in europe on the brink of modern science’ (clausen, , ). francis bacon, clausen argues, finds poetry ‘too various to be characterized as either virtuous or vicious, [but] is in general the product of credulous ages, and as we advance in reason we ought to outgrow it’ (ibid). clausen also refers to locke’s condemnation of figurative language as an abuse of words: ‘its use was harmless where the intention was merely to entertain, but its presence in all other contexts served “for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment”’ (ibid, ). locke’s criticism is almost identical with plato’s, only locke’s is in service to natural as much as aletheic philosophy: ‘the language of the modern scientific world,’ clausen glosses, ‘like its knowledge, was to be denotative, univocal, empirical. poetry and its rather different attitudes toward language were a major threat to this view of knowledge; therefore poetry, as a major cultural force, would have to be displaced’ (ibid, ). edmund wilson describes this seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ‘in europe as the great period of the development of mathematical and physical theory…[in which] descartes and newton were influences as important as those of the classics themselves’ (wilson, , ]. wilson traces the romantic ‘revolt of the individual’ (ibid, ) against this period’s conception of the universe as ‘a fixed mechanical order’ (ibid, ), on the grounds that ‘it excluded too much of life—or rather, the description it ~ ~ supplied did not correspond to actual experience. […] the universe was not a machine, after all, but something more mysterious and less rational’ (ibid, ). wilson then points out how the romantic’s organic worldview gave way to its mechanistic counterpart with the arrival of darwin (ibid, - ), and compares the differing tendencies of naturalism and symbolism in response. nietzsche, during this late period of the nineteenth-century, would lob an anti-foundational powder-keg into the philosophical mainstream: ‘against the positivism which halts at phenomena - 'there are only facts' - i would say: no, facts are just what there aren't, there are only interpretations’ (nietzsche, , ). the logical positivists and their liege lord scientists would, of course, reject nietzsche’s perspectivism out of hand and assert the primacy of apodictic fact; and so our little peregrination has come full circle. stevens, familiar with these developments, acknowledges that locke and hobbes had denounced the connotative uses of words, desiring instead ‘a mathematical plainness; in short, perspicuous words’ ( ) but asserts that, following the nineteenth- century, ‘the connotative tendency is the tendency today’ ( ). he also cites ayer’s passage in which the latter discusses the fashion ‘to speak of the metaphysician as a kind of misplaced poet’ (ayer, , ) and wonders whether or not ‘the imagination as metaphysics will survive logical positivism unscathed’ ( ). stevens uses this as a springboard to implore that ‘we must somehow cleanse the imagination of the romantic’ ( ). he believes the romantic ‘belittles’ the imagination, which he conceives of as ‘the liberty of the mind’ ( ) and ‘the only genius’ ( ), because the romantic ‘is incapable of abstraction’ ( ). stevens’ holds the imagination’s capacity for abstraction and artifice, its metaphysics, to be its greatest value. speculating upon freud, stevens wonders if a ‘science of illusions’ ( ) might not provide ‘the clue to reality’ ( ), in which ‘the deliberate fictions arising out of the contemporary mind’ ( ) will prove ~ ~ ‘the forerunners of some science’ ( ). stevens, it is clear, does not necessarily consider the disenchantments of science and logical positivism anathematic to poetry. but in a letter to hi simons, august , , he expresses the following doubt: ‘i don’t know that one is ever going to get at the secret of the world through the sciences’ (l, ). stevens would reserve the secret of the world, what i will seek to bring under the banner of immanent numinosity, as falling within the purview of the poetic imagination. * ( ) ‘hymns of the struggle of the idea of god and the idea of man…’ northrop frye writes, in an early study published two years after the poet’s death: ‘wallace stevens was a poet for whom the theory and the practice of poetry were inseparable. his poetic vision is informed by a metaphysic; his metaphysic is informed by a theory of knowledge; his theory of knowledge is informed by a poetic vision’ (frye, , ). upon investigation one does find in stevens’ theory and practice a circular causa sui, epitomised, as frye alludes to, in section xxviii of ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’: ‘the endlessly elaborating poem / displays the theory of poetry, / as the life of poetry’ ( ). the endlessly elaborating poem self-reflexively theorises itself, and from this issues, in the manner of the ouroboros, its continued self-sustention. stevens rearranges this construction, quasi-chiasmically, in the following stanza, and, in so mark noble, for instance, in his chapter on stevens ‘matter at the end of the mind: stevens and the call for a quantum poetics’ from his american poetic materialism from whitman to stevens, ‘traces the features of stevens’s interests in materiality and modern physics in order to gather a sense of their consequences for his conception of poetry’ (noble, , ). ~ ~ doing, identifies the theory of poetry with that of life itself: ‘a more severe, // more harassing master would extemporize / subtler, more urgent proof that the theory / of poetry is the theory of life’ (ibid). this is a characteristically adaptive stevensian manoeuvre: in order to persuasively displace the idea of god, poetry must work to fill the ideational gap god’s removal would necessarily leave behind; hence stevens’ rhetorical transfiguration of poetry’s capacity to do what god had been formerly imagined capable: to provide a self-perpetuating agency out of which everything else is instantiated. in his essay ‘the figure of the youth as virile poet’, stevens refers to shelley’s defense of poetry: ‘he says that a poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. it is “indeed something divine. it is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge…”’ ( - ). kenneth burke takes shelley to be ‘pantheistically merging divinity and poetry into one’ (burke, , ), but argues that this is not stevens’ approach: ‘the next step is to drop from pantheism the theos, whereupon imagination equalling knowledge, one is left with the pan: mr stevens’ “mundo of the imagination.”’ (ibid, original italics). a notebook entry, collected in stevens’ adagia, reads: ‘god is a symbol for something that can as well take other forms, as, for example, the form of high poetry’ ( ). in dropping, or better yet, reinventing the theos, the endlessly elaborating poem does not become the atemporal omnipresent centre whose circumference is nowhere, as certain medieval scholars, and the renaissance and enlightenment theologians and philosophers who succeeded them, had held of god. it becomes instead an all-subsuming orationem generans, continuationem perseverans (continuation of a persistent speech generator). however, in that stevens does not situate the endlessly- the stevens’ quote burke reproduces is from later in the same essay just quoted ( ). this phrase is derived from the fourth definition of god proposed in the th century pseudo-hermetic text liber xxiv philosophorum, and reads in full: ‘deus est mens orationem generans, continuationem perseverans’ (‘god: the mind that generates utterance prolonged continually’. this text also provides the locus classicus for the definition of god as an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere ~ ~ elaborating poem anywhere beyond the immanent lifeworld, it is therefore sub specie temporalis, and thus subject to change, modification, development—one could say to the imperfect contingencies of history. as is often the case in stevens’ poetry, though, epitomical projections are tempered by a sceptical chariness, which suspends the relevant poem’s vatic utterance in an inchoate or provisional state, commonly bound to the futurity of a possibility as yet unrealised. in the example just presented, a more capable master than the poem’s speaker would be required to provide ‘subtler, more urgent proof’ of the totalising claim. nonetheless, the claim, though unsubstantiated by this conditional proof, is taken for granted. admittedly, this capsule reading of but a part of one section of a long poem coming very late in stevens’ career might tempt the following questions: is this what (‘deus est sphaera infinita cuius centrum est ubique, circumferentia nusquam’); a definition that was taken up and adapted by, among others, meister eckhart, nicholas of cusa, nicolas copernicus (whose application of the metaphor would have enormous consequences for the future of astronomy), giordano bruno and blaise pascal. see also: karsten harries, (jan. ), ‘the infinite sphere: comments on the history of a metaphor’, journal of the history of philosophy, : , - . harries, taking jorge luis borges’ essay ‘pascal’s sphere’ as a point of departure (wherein borges advances the following: ‘perhaps universal history is the history of the various intonations of a few metaphors’ (borges, , )) to trace the historical development of the infinite sphere metaphor, specifically in regards to nicholas of cusa’s ‘transference of the metaphor of the infinite sphere from god to the cosmos’ (harries, ). harries also acknowledges the ‘intelligible sphere’ variant of the metaphor, which borges attributes to alain de lille’s discovery of it in another pseudo-hermetic text, asclepius: ‘deus est sphaera intelligibilis, cuius centrum ubique, circumferentia nusquam’ (‘god is an intelligible sphere, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere’), (see: borges, , - ; harries, jan. , , n. ). the twenty-four definitions of god recorded in liber xxiv philosophorum are compiled in an editio minima, (that is to say without the commentaries), in the original latin with accompanying english translations by the matheson trust, and can be found at: http://themathesontrust.org/papers/metaphysics/xxiv-a .pdf. stevens’ frequent, often repetitious, use of the extensional ‘more’ will afford greater attention in due course. stevens composed ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’ in . reiterations of the conception of absolute poetry as i have interpreted it here can be found in ‘a collect of philosophy’, a lecture stevens gave two years later at the university of chicago in mid-november . paul weiss, the editor of review of metaphysics, had invited stevens to contribute to the journal. this lecture would be stevens’ contribution, which, dishearteningly for him, weiss rejected (richardson, , - ). in this lecture, stevens draws upon, among others, the thought of jean wahl, jean paulhan, and max planck, to demonstrate his thesis that: ‘it is often the case that the concepts of philosophy are poetic’ (cpp, ). here is one of his apposite glosses on hegel: ‘hegel called poetry the art of arts, specifically because in poetry the material of which the poem is made, that is to say, the language of the poem, is wholly subordinated to the idea. a poem in which the poet has chosen for his poem a philosophic theme should result in the poem of poems’ (ibid, ). http://themathesontrust.org/papers/metaphysics/xxiv-a .pdf ~ ~ stevens’ is doing? is he trying to replace god with poetry? or is it rather that he is adapting the idea of god to ‘our different intelligence’ (l, )? and why all of this talk about god anyhow in a pair of stanzas that do not apostrophise god at all? stevens does not provide any easy, much less conclusive, answers to these questions. however, it should become shortly apparent why these questions are eminently pertinent to reading stevens’ poetry, bearing in mind the claims he makes for art and poetry previously outlined. part of the reason why no conclusive answers are to be found within stevens can be paradoxically attributed to one of the fundaments that any such answer stevens does give must entail, namely, as j. hillis miller has it: ‘everywhere in stevens the reader confronts another proof that the sovereign law of reality is change’ (miller, , ). this aligns, of course, with the second of the three imperative sub-headings of his ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’, to wit, ‘it must change’ ( ). it is the protean, processual aspect of the positions informing stevens’ poetry that are recalcitrant to a terminal summary; they are, by quite deliberate design, deviant, circuitously qualified, and extensional. the imagination’s fictions, in stevens view, are narratives under ongoing emendation. these emendations are ongoing due to the imagination being subject—as stevens doggedly insists in a lecture he gave at princeton in , ‘the noble rider and the sound of words’—to the ‘pressure of reality’: ‘by the pressure of reality, i mean the pressure of an external event or events on the consciousness to the exclusion of any power of contemplation’ ( ). in effect, then, the pressure of reality is that which forcibly bars the mind from its will to pensive reflection. it would follow, axiomatically, that the mind can only contemplate the pressure of reality after the fact, if it is able to do so at all, depending on how overwhelming the pressure of reality might be in any given eventuality. due to the sovereign law of reality being change, the imagination is coerced ~ ~ into according with this changing reality: ‘it is one of the peculiarities of the imagination that it is always at the end of an era. what happens is that it is always attaching itself to a new reality, and adhering to it. it is not that there is a new imagination but that there is a new reality’ ( ). reality itself is a maddeningly unstable concept in stevens’ theoretical vocabulary. harold bloom refers to stevens’ frequent recourse to the term as ‘the problematic stevensian image that he unhelpfully always called “reality”’ (bloom, , ), and complains that it is ‘a word i wish stevens had renounced, since it takes away more meaning that it intends to give’ (ibid). bloom then proceeds to quote frank doggett’s account of stevensian ‘reality’, which he judiciously characterises as the ‘best attempt to reduce it to order’ (ibid, ): reality, in stevens' use of the word, may be the world supposed to be antecedent in itself or the world created in the specific occurrence of thought, including the thinker himself and his mind forming the thought. often the term offers the assumption that if the self is the central point of a circle of infinite radius, then reality is the not-self, including all except the abstract subjective center. sometimes reality is used in the context of the nominalist position—then the word denotes that which is actual and stands as a phenomenal identity, the existent as opposed to the merely fancied. stevens usually means by reality an undetermined base on which a mind constructs its personal sense of the world. occasionally he will use the word real as a term of approval, as a substitute for the word true, and, therefore, no more than an expression of confidence. (doggett qtd. in bloom, , , original italics; doggett, , ). stevens complicates the deterministic influence of reality on the imagination later in the same essay when he affirms the imagination’s ineluctable resistance to reality (reality, in this case, to be thought of as ‘an undetermined base on which a mind constructs its ~ ~ personal sense of the world’). in his notebooks, stevens writes: ‘the real is only the base. but it is the base’ (op, ). but it is a base, apparently, whose violent incursions upon the mind are violently opposed by the imagination: ‘it is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without. it is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality’ ( ). it is, despite the bellicose rhetoric, ‘an interdependence of imagination and reality as equals’ ( ) wherein poetic fictions are created, through which, according to robert e. doud, ‘meaning is infused into the world, and more meaning is derived out of the world. imagination and reality work together to generate meaning: this is the great discovery of stevens. static facticities are transformed by imagination into dynamic organisms, and this does not frustrate reality, but augments it and helps it to reveal itself’ (doud, sep. , ). we will return later to the vexatious issue of what comprises these fictions in stevens’ work; for the time being, we will refer to what stevens has to say concerning the effect of the imagination on reality: the world is no longer an extraneous object, full of other extraneous objects, but an image. in the last analysis, it is with this image of the world that we are vitally concerned. we should not say, however, that the chief object of the imagination is to produce such an image. among so many objects, it would be the merest improvisation to say of one, even though it is one with which we are vitally concerned, that it is the chief. the next step would be to assert that a particular image it is worth remembering that ‘the noble rider and the sound of words’ was composed during the beginning of the second world war, but prior to america’s entry into it. given this historical context, we may construe the pressure of reality as especially disruptive to the non-committal detachment so beloved of stevens: ‘this much ought be said to make it a little clearer that in speaking of the pressure of reality, i am thinking of life in a state of violence, not physically violent, as yet, for us in america, but physically violent for millions of our friends and still more millions of our enemies and spiritually violent, it may be said, for everyone alive’ ( ). stevens, in this essay and elsewhere, idealises the belle Époque as a period of comparative social harmony, ‘a time when only maniacs had disturbing things to say’ ( ); see: jahan ramazani, (spring, ), ‘elegy and anti-elegy in stevens’ “harmonium”: mockery, melancholia, and the pathetic fallacy’, journal of modern literature, : , - : . doggett is striking at a similar point when he argues that ‘stevens’ poetry envisions a world burgeoning in the flow of consciousness and created continually in his sense of it. stevens finds the actual to be an intermutation of an outer reality and the life within; he knows it through an interpretation of the indeterminate course of perception that interpretation itself alters’ (doggett, , ). ~ ~ was the chief image. again, it would be the merest improvisation to say of any image of the world, even though it was an image with which a vast accumulation of imaginations had been content, that it was the chief image. the imagination itself would not remain content with it nor allow us to do so. it is the irrepressible revolutionist. ( ). stevens, in a letter to bernard heringman, july , , refers to what he calls his ‘reality—imagination complex’ (l, ). robert rehder takes this admission to imply that stevens ‘was aware of the obsessive, almost pathological quality of his interest’ (rehder, , ) in ‘the relation between imagination and reality’ (ibid). for rehder, this relation contains stevens’ ‘single subject’ (ibid). miller addresses the creatively enabling failure of this obsession: ‘after the death of the gods stevens seemed faced with the relatively easy problem of reconciling imagination and reality, but such a reconciliation is impossible. this way and that vibrates his thought, seeking to absorb imagination by reality, to engulf reality in imagination, or to marry them in metaphor. nothing will suffice, and the poet is driven to search tirelessly for some escape from struggle. this seeking is the life of his poetry’ (miller, , ). ‘there would still remain the never-resting mind,’ ( ), writes stevens in ‘the poems of our climate’, which has its irrepressibility affirmed by ‘the well dressed man with a beard’: ‘it can never be satisfied, the mind, never’ ( ). in another letter to heringman, march , , stevens writes: ‘i have no wish to arrive at a conclusion. sometimes i believe most in the imagination for a long time and then, without reasoning about it, turn to reality and believe in that and that alone. but both of these things project themselves endlessly and i want them to do just that’ (l, ). this lack of fixity and license to improvise is indeed an expression of freedom from the static rigidities of a world authored by and ultimately terminating in god. providential stasis is one of stevens’ greatest anathemas: ~ ~ is there no change of death in paradise? does ripe fruit never fall? or do the boughs hang always heavy in that perfect sky, unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth, with rivers like our own that seek for seas they never find, the same receding shores that never touch with inarticulate pang? ( ). there are occasions when stasis is idealized as a necessary condition for realizing postlapsarian paradise. the singularly outstanding example of stasis as desideratum is to be found in stevens’ wonderwork of compounded superlatives: ‘credences of summer’. the speaker in this poem desires of the aestival pastoral that it be suspended in a midsummer pleroma, ‘beyond which there is nothing left of time’ ( ); to take the sun—‘the centre that i seek’—‘in its essential barrenness’ and ‘fix it in an eternal foliage // and fill the foliage with arrested peace, / joy of such permanence’ ( ). but these occasions are rare in stevens, and even in this abeyant idyll is ‘right ignorance / of change still possible’ ( ); impermanence and flux resurge as the figural mainstays. stevens’ frustration, of course—if ever there was a poet more obstinately committed to revolving in the dark crystal of paradox—is in his desire to arrest flux in an eternal moment or ultimate epiphany, only, whether by necessity or strategic determination, to skeptically dismiss it on the grounds of ephemeral deficiency, and thus repeat the procedure over and again. perhaps the single most concentrated lyric expressing this desire in stevens’ oeuvre is the marvellous heraclitean-inflected poem ‘this solitude of cataracts’ ( ). ~ ~ david h. hesla argues in this connection that stevens markedly deviates from the tradition of philosophical realism—which hesla traces through plato, plotinus, thomas aquinas, bishop berkeley and, somewhat egregiously, a. n. whitehead—a lineage of thinkers who, in various ways, ‘grounded the being or reality of the ideas in the divine’ (hesla, may , ). hesla, in making his case for stevens being a ‘philosophical realist for whom the ideas which inform his poetry are “unsponsored” by the holy’ (ibid), continues: because the ideas are the creatures of the poet's mind and not of god's they cannot have the independence and permanence of being which the philosophical tradition ascribed to them. this does not make them any the less real however. they are real because they are believed. god himself as a postulate of the ego (op, ) could be said to be real only so long as he could be said to be believed. it is, after all, the belief and not the god—the object of belief—that counts (op, ). hence, in the absence of a belief in god, the mind turns to its own creations (op, ). (ibid, - ). as it would be unhelpfully digressive to rehearse these arguments here, we will put to one side the debate surrounding the respective merits or faults of allying stevens with either a realist or nominalist position. the important thing to keep in mind is the restless indecision of belief, and what might comprise the object of that belief, resulting from stevens’ eschewal of divine sponsorship. as he says in a letter to hi simons, august , : ‘if one no longer believes in god (as truth), it is not possible to merely disbelieve; it becomes necessary to believe in something else’ (l, ). the speaker of ‘flyer’s fall’, advancing the point, declares of the deceased pilot’s ‘nothingness of human the citations recorded in this quotation are to the same edition of opus posthumous as listed in the abbreviations at the beginning of this document. ~ ~ after-death’ ( ), in typically equivocal stevensian fashion, that it is the ‘dimension in which / we believe without belief, beyond belief’ (ibid). we have now begun to discern stevens’ tenacity for evading any categorical lynchpin with which we might care to secure him. ‘self-division, contradiction, perpetual oscillations of thought’, writes miller, ‘these are the constants in stevens’ work’ (miller, , ). he goes on: ‘it is possible to develop radically different notions of stevens’ aims as a poet, and for each of these it is easy to find apposite passages from the texts’ (ibid). this appraisal is closely echoed by nathan a. scott, jr.: ‘so generous is the hospitality that this connoisseur of chaos offers to a wide variety of divergent perspectives and projects that one can, of course, find some basis in the poetry on which to ground any one of a dozen or so quite different views of his basic tendency’ (scott, , ). as such, stevens’ poetry is susceptible, depending upon one’s perspectival or prejudicial emphases (which probably amount to the same thing), to being variously interpreted as humanistic and/or atheistic in its basic tendency. one must tread carefully, however, when it comes to affixing these labels too readily to stevens’ work. there are plainly too many watchwords punctuating stevens’ own pronouncements on belief, elaborations of which are intertwined throughout his poetic oeuvre, forbidding the reduction of his poetry to a pervasively humanistic and/or atheistic tendency. in another letter to hi simons, january , , for instance, he theodore sampson is less gregarious about stevens’ openness to diverse interpretation than scott jr., more lacerating than miller, when discussing imre salusinszky’s strategy of asking ‘participants to provide an on-the- spot interpretation of stevens’ poem “not ideas about the thing but the thing itself”’ (sampson, , - ). on sampson’s evaluation, salusinszky’s interviewees—whom are comprised of such critical heavyweights as harold bloom, jacques derrida (who declined to offer an interpretation of the poem), northrop frye, geoffrey h. hartman, barbara johnson, frank kermode, frank lentricchia, j. hillis miller and edward said)— ‘either interpret the poem in a way that best suits his or her a priori theorizations about literature in general; or, lacking a theory in which to frame their argument, they proceed to bluff their way to what sounds like a plausible interpretation—something that almost all of stevens’ poems allow us to do with impunity’ (ibid, ). ~ ~ writes: ‘my trouble, and the trouble of a great many people, is the loss of belief in the sort of god in whom we were all brought up to believe. humanism would be the natural substitute, but the more i see of humanism the less i like it’ (l, ). the forked implication of this statement is that on the one hand there is an alternative to be sought outside of the institutionalised god of judaeo-christian tradition—in stevens’ case the ‘dried-up presbyterian’ (l, ) faith of his childhood—and on the other hand, that a reduction to humanism is unsatisfactory. in a similarly ambivalent statement made in a late letter to sister bernetta quinn, december , , stevens reiterates his abandonment of the god of his upbringing while flatly denying an alignment with atheism: ‘i am not an atheist although i do not believe to-day in the same god in whom i believed when i was a boy’ (l, ). but to claim, in the light of this pronouncement, that stevens is hereby a theist would be entirely misguided. the poet who would write in one of the most centrally important of his poems: ‘the death of one god is the death of all’ ( ), and would celebrate the dissolution of the gods thus: ‘to see the gods dispelled in mid-air and dissolve like clouds is one of the great human experiences. it is not as if they had gone over the horizon to disappear for a time; nor as if they had been overcome by other gods of greater power and profounder knowledge. it is simply that they came to nothing’ ( ), is not a person to whom the title of theist could be conscionably ascribed. a good deal of the indeterminacy surrounding stevens’ non- theistic position can be cleared away by bearing a crucial distinction in mind: stevens does believe that the world exists post mortem dei, both the god of monotheism and the gods of ancient mythology are dismissed, but the idea of god emphatically remains. how stevens translates this idea into our modern intelligence is, in scott jr.’s memorable the poem in question is of course ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’. this line is also independently recorded in his notebooks (see: ), assuming there the stature of a standalone maxim. ~ ~ phrase, ‘[t]he long meditation recorded by his poetry’ (scott, , ). stevens gives the elusive nature of this long meditation a suitably evasive description in an earlier letter to sister bernetta quinn, april , : i don’t want to turn to stone under your very eyes by saying “this is the centre that i seek and this alone.” your mind is much too much like my own for it to seem to be an evasion on my part to say merely that i do seek a centre and expect to go on seeking it. i don’t say that i shall not find it or that i do not expect to find it. it is the great necessity even without specific identification. (l, ). this elusive centre that stevens expects to go on seeking, which he concedes to identifying as ‘the great necessity without identification’, is the numinous target of what this thesis will heuristically posit as stevens’ interrogative immanentism. as this thesis will argue, interrogative immanentism is fundamentally a revisionary activity through which stevens attempts to reorient a transcendent social imaginary to an immanent domain. we will discover throughout stevens’ work, however, that this transition is not a simple logical procedure of replacing x with y, but might more accurately be conceived of as a rhetorical transfusion of x into y, with a diverse array of borrowings, i must acknowledge an indebtedness to the work of matthew mutter, within which i was first alerted to the term ‘social imaginary’ (mutter, , ). mutter adopts the term from charles taylor’s modern social imaginaries: ‘by social imaginary, i mean something much broader and deeper than the intellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about social reality in a disengaged mode. i am thinking, rather, of the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations...there are important differences between social imaginary and social theory. i adopt the term imaginary (i) because my focus is on the way ordinary people 'imagine' their social surroundings, and this is often not expressed in theoretical terms, but is carried in images, stories, legends. it is also the case that (ii) theory is often the possession of a small minority, whereas what is interesting in the social imaginary is that it is shared by large groups of people, if not the whole society. which leads to a third difference: (iii) the social imaginary is that common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy’ (taylor, , ). ~ ~ transfigurations, eliminations, syntheses, and substitutions imbricating the passage of transfer. charles m. murphy, an american roman catholic priest and commentator, makes the contradistinction between stevens and st teresa of avila, that whereas for the latter ‘the divine and earthly realms are simply opposed to one another’ (murphy, , ), for stevens, spirituality ‘[t]o be believable…must be rooted in the earth to which we belong’ (ibid). ‘the greatest poverty is not to live / in a physical world’ ( ), opines the speaker of ‘esthétique du mal’. this ‘transcendence downward’ as scott jr., inverting the typical axial trajectory, insightfully phrases it (scott, , - passim), is what murphy identifies as stevens’ ‘most significant contribution to our present spiritual situation’ (murphy, , ). the stirrings of stevens’ immanentist worldview can be discerned in journal entries dating from his early adulthood. one such entry of august st, , during the summer before stevens’ third year at harvard, reads: ‘i’m completely satisfied that behind every physical fact there is a divine force’ (l, ). mutter characterises the disposition informing this remark as ‘a symbolist mystical attitude that would be completely anathema to his mind a couple of decades later’ (mutter, fall , , n. ). both james longenbach and joan richardson infer from this statement an emersonian influence, the latter suggesting that in following emerson, the young ‘stevens considered the divine not as the idea of eternal or imminent being but as an immanent activity’ (longenbach, , ; richardson, , ). this inference finds a striking parallel with one of stevens’ later adagia: ‘the world is a force, not a presence’ ( ). the shift from divine to worldly force is characteristic of stevens’ immanentism (as it is of weber’s disenchantment). however, rather than concede to mutter’s consideration that the former betrays a symbolist mysticism that is anathema to the ~ ~ maturer stevens’ naturalism, i would contend that it is more constructive to acknowledge the fundamental continuity between these two propositions, namely that they are both posited as occurrences within the world—whatever the ontological identity of the agency of the force might be, neither configuration is postulated as, in fact neither can be, transcendent. it is in keeping with this logic that stevens can write: ‘god is in me or else is not at all (does not exist)’ ( ). this apothegm does not amount to an admission that god exists, but asserts that the condition for god’s existence is that it is immanent or else it is not at all. it is only a short stride from this position to stating, as stevens also does in his adagia, that ‘god is a postulate of the ego’ ( ), to: ‘this happy creature— it is he that invented the gods. it is he that put into their mouths the only words they have ever spoken’ ( )—variants on the familiar trope of inverting genesis : . this notion receives its most extended prose treatment in stevens’ essay ‘two or three ideas’, in which he discusses the proposition that ‘the style of the gods and the gods themselves are one’ ( ). stevens claims this part of his discussion pertains to ‘the gods, both ancient and modern, both foreign and domestic’ ( ), but that for the sake of simplicity he will ‘speak only of the ancient and the foreign gods’ ( ). this is, of course, an underhanded manoeuvre on stevens’ part in order to smuggle in implications pertaining to all gods. stevens’ expatiates on the idea that in an age of disbelief ‘[o]ne attitude is that the gods of classical mythology were merely aesthetic projections’ ( ), and asks the question: ‘is it one of the normal activities of humanity, in the solitude of reality and in the unworthy treatment of solitude, to create companions, a little colossal as i have said, who, if not superficially explicative, are, at least, assumed to be full of the secret of things and who in any event bear in themselves even, if they do not always wear it, the peculiar majesty of mankind’s sense of worth, neither too much nor too little?’ ( ). he insists that ‘[t]he people, not the priests, made the gods’ ( ), by which he means the poets or their closest analogues: ‘he that composed the most moving of apollo’s hymns’ ( ). the two propositions that he examines surrounding that pertaining to ‘the style of the gods and the gods themselves are one’, are ‘the style of a poem and the poem itself are one…[and] the style of men and men themselves are one’ ( ). in typical conditional fashion, stevens proposes that ‘if there is any true relation between the propositions, it might well be the case that the parts of these propositions are interchangeable’ ( ). he later proceeds to claim that ‘[i]n the presence of the gods, or of their images, we are in the presence of perfection in created beings. the gods are a definition of perfection in ideal creatures’ ( ). this is all preamble to the ultimate point that stevens’ is wanting to make, which is that if the foregoing propositions are interchangeable, and that ‘we use the same faculties when we write poetry that we use when we create gods or fix the bearing of men in reality’ ( ), then ‘the unity of style and the poem itself is a unity of language and life that exposes both in a supreme sense. its collation with the unity of style and the gods and the unity of style and men is intended to demonstrate this’ ( ). in sum, stevens’ triadic connection of god, poem and man in a stylistic holism, is a rhetorical demonstration of the poet’s supreme importance as both the creator of gods and fixers of reality. ~ ~ * ( ) ‘i wish that groves still were sacred—or, at least, that something was’ stevens’ dissatisfactions with the consolations of the church find an early expression in other journal entries recorded during his young adulthood. on june , he complains that ‘[t]he mind cannot always live in a “divine ether.” the lark cannot always sing at heaven’s gate’ (l, ). on august , , he rehearses an argument inherited from wordsworth, emerson and whitman: ‘an old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church but the world itself: the mysterious callings of nature and our responses. […] as i sat dreaming with the congregation i felt how the glittering altar worked on my senses stimulating and consoling them; and as i went tramping through the fields and woods i beheld every leaf and blade of grass revealing or rather betokening the invisible’ (l, - ). five years later, during the long courtship of his future wife elsie née moll—a still practising christian—he confides, after a fit of house-cleaning during which he threw out his bible, that ‘i hate the look of a bible’ (l, ). two years after that, in a somewhat more conciliatory disposition, he writes to elsie on the subject of god’s existence: ‘i think that everyone admits that [god exists] in some form or other. — the thought makes the world sweeter—even if god be no more than the mystery of life’ (l, ). one could amass further examples, but the point by now should be sufficiently made: stevens turn from the orthodoxies of the church to the search for immanence is manifestly apparent from his earliest adulthood. three decades later, stevens makes a frank admission: ‘i ought to say that it is a habit of mind with me to be thinking of some substitute for religion’ (l, ). stevens is sixty years old ~ ~ when he writes this, and—famously a late publisher—in his mid-career as an established poet with three collections in print. the significance of this chronology is that stevens, having already lived for six decades on this earth, and with only fifteen years remaining in his life (though he wasn’t to know this of course), could summarily remark that the revisionary activity of religious substitution was a habit of mind with him, that is to say an idée fixe, and one that would only become increasingly stark in the latter half of his poetic oeuvre. furthermore, stevens notably makes this statement in the present continuous, which would indicate that this ‘substitute for religion’ is yet an ongoing and inconclusive concern for him. as late in his life as when he wrote a letter to thomas mcgreevy on october , , stevens would still be no more certain of where he stood on the issue: ‘at my age it would be nice to be able to read more and think more and be myself more and to make up my mind about god, say, before it is too late, or at least before he makes his mind up about me’ (l, ). in a letter to henry church, written back in october th, , we find stevens’ oft-cited ‘memorandum’ (from which i have already briefly quoted), in which he declares: the major poetic idea in the world is and always has been the idea of god. one of the visible movements of the modern imagination is the movement away from the idea of god. the poetry that created the idea of god will either adapt it to our different intelligence, or create a substitute for it, or make it unnecessary. these alternatives probably mean the same thing, but the intention stevens’ first collection harmonium was published in september (revised in ) when he was already years old, succeeded by ideas of order ( ), the man with the blue guitar ( ), parts of a world ( ), transport to summer ( ), the auroras of autumn ( ), the collected poems of wallace stevens including the rock ( ), which taken together comprise the collections he had published during his lifetime; opus posthumous ( ) and the palm at the end of the mind ( ) gather together his uncollected poems, both late and early, as well as several items of prose, his few plays, and a miscellany of journal-culled adagia. it would be misleading, of course, to suggest that stevens hadn’t begun writing poetry until well into adulthood. stevens had written poems and published variously, albeit not prolifically, in magazines and journals since his teenage years; a poem written in adolescence entitled ‘autumn’ ( ), for instance, appeared in his high school magazine in january , a full quarter of a century before his first published collection. admittedly the much larger half, ranging from parts of a world to the late uncollected poems. ~ ~ is not to foster a cult. the knowledge of poetry is a part of philosophy, and a part of science; the import of poetry is the import of the spirit. (l, ). it is tempting, in light of the evidence thus far accumulated, to claim that stevens’ position regarding the function of poetry is ostensibly arnoldian. many critics have done just that. miller is among the earliest of stevens’ critics to baldly advance this case: ‘in defining poetry as a substitute for religion stevens is joining himself to a tradition extending from the romantics through matthew arnold down to our own day’ (miller, , ). herbert j. stern, writing at the same time as miller, says that ‘for stevens, no less than for matthew arnold, the salient function of art was one we may legitimately call a religious function’ (stern, , ). adalaide kirby morris argues that although ‘he plays pater in proclaiming “the morality of the poet’s radiant and productive atmosphere” to be the “morality of the right sensation” (na ), stevens is more like arnold in the serious elaboration of his ethics. he too believed that “we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to sustain us”’ (morris, , ). so entrenched had this mutter, however, is insistent that stevens’ distinctions do not mean the same thing. in fact, he erects the entire structure of his argument on the scaffold of a scrupulous maintenance of these very distinctions. in mutter’s view, the first option—‘adaptation’—‘is a revisionist strategy. one takes what began as a religious concept and prunes it, reinterprets it, or translates it in the light of “modern knowledge”’ (mutter, fall , ). he presents, by way of illustration, the examples of eschatological doctrine being transformed into modern doctrines of progress, or of recontextualising the doctrine of the fall, or the alienation of man from god, as the alienation of the subject from the object (ibid). he then proceeds to criticise this strategy on the grounds ‘that it tends to disfigure the original concepts to the point where they are no longer recognizable. it raises questions of legitimacy and coherence that force one to ask whether original religious ideas remain authentic and intelligible in an alien framework’ (ibid, - ). substitution, he argues, ‘overlaps with adaptation but has a different logic. substitution shifts the attention from the content of the religious idea to the needs and desires that generated it’ (ibid, ), and claims that this ‘method is at the heart of stevens’s well-known interest in a “supreme fiction”’ (ibid). he further claims that under this model ‘secularization does not necessitate the expulsion of religious content, only its rearticulation outside of mythic categories’ (ibid). mutter labels the last strategy ‘elimination’, which, he argues, ‘challenges the assumptions of both the adaptive and substitutionary models. elimination does not look for substitute satisfactions, but uproots the very needs, desires, and moral assumptions that were a part of the religious framework’ (ibid, ). mutter rightly discerns that ‘stevens never definitively chose among the three paradigms, but he experimented with them throughout his career, exploring their difficulties and limitations’ (ibid). this thesis will assimilate, where appropriate, mutter’s well extrapolated distinctions. morris is quoting from arnold’s famous essay “the study of poetry”: ‘more and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. without poetry, our science ~ ~ critical position become that frank lentricchia in , reviewing two recent books on stevens (one of them the morris book just quoted), could parody ‘the dominant mode of criticism of wallace stevens’ (lentricchia, march , ), in the following terms: ‘stevens fulfils the prophecy of matthew arnold that after the ravages of science had been totally visited upon the magical world-view, the poet (of all folk) will provide us “our consolation and our stay”’ (ibid, ). daniel r. schwarz, who would appear to remain wilfully ignorant of this commonplace, writes of stevens in : ‘to an extent he has a more arnoldian temperament than has been realized and believes, like arnold, that poetry can be a substitute for religion’ (schwarz, , ). there are some detractors. ‘after one has abandoned a belief in god poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption,’ quotes david daiches, but dissents with: ‘this was not matthew arnold’s position, that the best part of religion is its poetry and that the documents of religion should be interpreted as poetry. stevens had no wish to preserve a belief in christianity by moving from a literal to a poetic interpretation of its biblical sources’ (daiches, , ). perhaps not, but stevens, as we will come to see, was not shy of utilising biblical and other christian figures as manipulable materia poetica. david r. jarraway admonishes that ‘it would be a mistake to think that the modern poet might offer himself and his work as a replacement for the loss of faith as matthew arnold once suggested. to the contrary, stevens remarks, “we do not say that the poet is to take the place of the gods” ( ). to do so would be an argument for humanism, and stevens is quite emphatic that “the more i see of humanism the less i like it”’ (jarraway, , - ). jarraway, whose work on stevens’ complex relationship with belief is otherwise quite cogent and meticulous, will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes for religion and philosophy will appear incomplete without it’ (arnold, , ). the stevens’ quotes that morris cites are to the same edition of the necessary angel as listed in the abbreviations section at the beginning of this document. ~ ~ seems to be neglecting in this instance stevens’ comments in a letter to barbara church, august , : ‘as scepticism becomes both complete and profound, we face either a true civilization or a blank; and literature ought to be one of the factors to determine the choice. certainly, if civilization is to consist only of man himself, and it is, the arts must take the place of divinity, at least as a stage in whatever general principle or progress is involved’ (l, , my emphasis). eleanor cook claims that ‘[a]t first, [stevens] seemed to suppose, like matthew arnold, that poetry could take the place of religion, a vague humanist view’ (cook, , ), but goes onto argue the following: arnold’s simple substitution of poetry for religion has one great weakness: the obvious fact that poetry or imaginative literature simply did not have the force of religion in victorian society, nor did it seem likely to attain such force. “biblical imagination is one thing and the poetic imagination, inevitably, something else” ( ). imagination, stevens said late in life, is the next greatest power to faith. this important qualification needs to be remembered; it turns up in : “next to holiness is the will thereto, / and next to love is the desire for love” (“an ordinary evening in new haven” iii). and it turns up in : “men feel that the imagination is the next greatest power to faith: the reigning prince” ( , [cook’s] italics). to be sure, stevens’s phrase, “the reigning prince,” bears watching. a reigning prince is something more than a crown prince, though something less than a reigning king. stevens is leaving open the question of eventual reign. (ibid, ). what these detractions all gesture towards is the inherent problematics of advancing art, literature, poetry, what have you, as a surrogate for religion. it is an inevitable problem for any artist who would presume to arrogate for their art such a role, and as such is a problem for stevens. one of the most striking aspects of this problem, as the stevens quotes cited in this passage are to the same library of america edition of wallace stevens: collected poetry and prose as listed in the abbreviations at the beginning of this document ~ ~ michael kaufmann points out, is that ‘all versions of the arnoldian replacement theory rely on an analogical paradox: to arrive at a final act of differentiation, these narratives must initially rely on a supposed similarity’ (kaufmann, autumn , ). the paradox turns on the presupposition that there is such a thing as essentially secular and essentially religious categories. kaufmann, following the lead of talal asad, contends that although ‘[t]here is no idea, person, experience, text, institution, or historical period that could be categorized as essentially, inherently, or exclusively secular or religious’ (ibid, ), non-essentialist distinctions between the same terms nevertheless ‘function meaningfully within particular contexts or what [asad] calls, borrowing from wittgenstein, “discursive grammars”’ (ibid, ). ‘since the secular and the religious depend on each other for meaning,’ kaufmann continues, ‘they must always be present at the same time; we can never therefore trace a simple trajectory from one to the other because each concept is meaningless in isolation’ (ibid, original italics). returning now to the paradox of arnoldian replacement theory: …the larger trajectory of a secularization narrative aims at a final differentiation between the religious and the secular, between religion and literature. and yet along the way it must assert that the two are so similar that they are practically interchangeable: literature can replace religion with very little fanfare, very little conflict. asad helps explain this paradox in part by reminding us that the interplay of similarity and difference is a function of any two terms in binary opposition, or in an analogy. what is more important here is that these two particular sets of terms—religious/secular, literature/religion—are placed both in an analogy and in opposition in the first place. “secular” literary culture, so goes the theory, is analogous enough to dogmatic religion to be able to replace, and then eventually oppose it. the initial act of identification in the replacement narrative enables a final and determinative act of differentiation. (ibid, ). ~ ~ kaufmann suggests a possible way out of this paradoxical bind by referring to the work of colin jager, whose ‘complex account of romanticism…positions the literary as a third term, neither merely secular nor a replacement religion, but through imaginative acts of aesthetic representation, able to stand within and beside both categories’ (ibid, ). stevens applies a similar logic to free himself from the either/or bind of the analogous categories of theism and humanism. in a letter to henry church, april, , he writes: ‘we are confronted by a choice of ideas: the idea of god and the idea of man. the purpose of the notes is to suggest the possibility of a third idea: the idea of a fictive being, or state, or thing as the object of belief by way of making up for that element in humanism which is its chief defect’ (stevens qtd. in bates, , ). we will return to stevens’ ‘third idea’, as to the content of his ‘fictions’, in due course. another aspect of the art as replacement religion problem is the ‘adequacy’ argument. robert onopa, attempting to push irrecoverably the discourse of art as a spiritual project into a corner of ill-repute, argues that ‘[a]lthough a connection between art and religion has been asserted in a variety of ways since the beginnings of romanticism, the institutionalization of art into a formal religion has never taken hold’ (onopa, , ). to qualify onopa’s assertion: nobody has ever made the attempt in the wake of romanticism to institutionalize art into a formal religion in any socially prescriptive and binding fashion; there has never been a nicene council convened on behalf of art, nor would such an intervention necessarily be desirable even were one proposed. certainly, individual exponents have attempted to extol the spiritual and compensatory value of art in a putative age of religious scepticism—shelley, arnold and stevens, as we have seen, are but an exemplary triad of the case in point—but without, as jacque barzun argues, resultant enjoinment. ‘art is of all things the worst-suited to the purpose’ (barzun, , ), barzun writes, of establishing a unified spiritual community: by its very richness and variety art cannot do the simplest things that religion, philosophy, and the state do by their nature. in our cant phrase, art cannot be “a way of life” because—to take examples at random—it lacks a theology or even a popular mythology of its own; it has no bible, no ritual, and no sanctions for behavior. we are called to enjoy but we are not enjoined. […] since art brings to life in [the] realm of imagination a thousand unrelated truths, art cannot be the unifier of either the individual consciousness or mankind’s spiritual beliefs. art is inescapably pluralistic. it thrives on diversity and knows nothing of contradiction: all its opposite truths are equally true, because its type of knowledge is knowledge of, not knowledge about. hence its power of endless growth. no one can tell what the next artist will discover and transfix as new truth, any more than one can tell him what he shall discover. he is not himself aware of his terminus, however conscious he may be of his means. this being the state of affairs, it is absurd to speak of “what all art teaches us.” even should there be such a lesson, there are no penalties for deviating from it. (ibid, - ). although i find barzun’s argument compelling, i would contend that the shortcomings of both onopa and barzun’s criticisms is in their tendency to conflate the openness of spiritual seeking with the closure of religious finding. ~ ~ when stevens asserts, as has been illustrated, that poetry is a spiritual project, what he is indicating is that poetry is the medium in which he has elected to reckon with, speculate upon, reaffirm, challenge, reject and/or transfigure the culturally inherited articulations, figurations and beliefs of spiritual discourse. it does not follow from this that he is trying to establish a religious program for other people to follow—as quoted earlier, stevens’ ‘intention is not to foster a cult’. to put it bluntly, he is making inquiries rather than he is proselytizing. stevens may indeed, and does, make various pronouncements in his poems—provisional answers to his various inquiries—but nowhere deludes himself into thinking that readers will assent to his pronouncements as though they were authorised by divine fiat. moreover, stevens, a thoroughly discursive poet, does present arguments in his poems, but as with all arguments it is up to their recipients to affirm or deny the validity and applicability of the arguments in question. leaving stevens’ position on the matter to one side for the moment, an individual could declare ‘art is my god’, and further claim to find an immanent salvation in the engagement with, or practice of, art. the critic, whether or not he or she might deem this individual deluded or naïve, would be at a loss to refute this individual’s claims or the validity of his or her purported salvific experience with art—such is the impassable way with declarative commitments of faith. that said, it is by no means the intention of this thesis to construct something that stevens himself, in the final analysis, does not construct: a programmatic system of belief. stevens does not, in the manner of william blake or w. b. yeats, develop a systematic cosmo-mythology—an accomplished supreme fiction we might say—of his own making. in the letter quoted earlier, in which stevens states that it is a habit of poetic argument is a phenomenon frequently neglected by critics and theorists for whom, i imagine, facing up to the evidence of poetic argument would prove catastrophically inconvenient for their respective theses. ~ ~ mind with him to be thinking of some substitute for religion, he immediately qualifies this statement by saying: ‘i don’t necessarily mean some substitute for the church, because no one believes in the church as an institution more than i do’ (l, ). in a late letter to bernard heringman, july , , to deflect what he infers as his correspondent’s expectation of ‘a monumental explanation of my religion’ (l, ), stevens states, without equivocation, ‘my activities are not religious’ (ibid). he writes in an even later letter, to robert pack, december , , less than eight months from his death, ‘in projecting a supreme fiction, i cannot think of anything more fatal than to state it definitely and incautiously’ (l, ), and concludes the letter with: ‘the last thing in the world that i should want to do would be to formulate a system’ (l, ). what these late pronouncements retroactively augur is stevens’ awareness that poetry and religion are functionally distinct cultural praxes. that they happen to be in conversation with each other does not make them essentially the same thing—an essential identity of either praxis, much less an essential identity of one with the other, we have already dispensed with. what is the case, however, is that they can, and do, inform one another, in all of the other’s heterogeneous articulations. now that the important problem of stevens’ religious substitution has been contextualised, we can turn to outlining the particular investigation into stevens’ poetry that this thesis intends to conduct, namely, stevens’ rhetorical engagement with the limit and extent of immanent numinosity. * ( ) ‘and say of what you see in the dark…’ ~ ~ the early twentieth century calvinist theologian rudolf otto advances a description of the ‘numinous’ in an attempt to account for the unique quality of religious experience in his book des helige (the idea of the holy). otto’s account of the numinous, in short, is of a phenomenological cast and is posited as the idea of the ‘holy’ (or sacred) minus its rational and moral aspects (otto, , - ). the numinous constitutes an intuited, felt experience of something ‘objective and outside the self’ (ibid, ) which is conducive to a ‘feeling of dependence’ (ibid, ), or what otto calls ‘creature-feeling’ (ibid, - , passim). the ‘nature and the modes of its manifestations’ (ibid, ) finds its expression in what otto terms the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (ibid, - , passim), which, simply described, is the experience of a wholly mysterious other (on mysterium see: ibid, - ), a ‘numen praesens’ (ibid, ), which inspires feelings of awefulness, overpoweringness, and urgency on the one hand (on tremendum see: ibid, - ), but also ‘shows itself as something uniquely attractive and fascinating […] in a strange harmony of contrasts’ (ibid, , original italics), inspiring bliss, intoxication, rapture and grace on the other (on fascinans see: ibid, - ). the underpinning thrust of otto’s argument is that the experiences which he describes are unique to and contingent upon the presence of the divine, which, he argues, evolves over time in human awareness from a primeval feeling of uncanny daemonic dread, a feeling which endows a manifold conception of ghosts, occupant spirits, and the soul, which progresses eventually to a conception of gods, before culminating in worship of the god (ibid, - ; - ) whose ultimate expression is found, quite presumptuously, in christianity which ‘stands out in complete superiority over all its sister religions’ (ibid, it is otto’s descriptions of the numinous in the idea of the holy whence this term enters popular modern discourse. the most famous exponent of the numinous after otto is c. g. jung, for whom the numinous becomes an important part of his individuation process, of the coming into consciousness of the ultimately unknowable self. see: leon schlamm, ( ), ‘c. g. jung and numinous experience: between the known and the unknown’, european journal of psychotherapy & counselling, : , - . ~ ~ ). otto also argues that human beings are universally predisposed towards a religious impulsion (see: ibid, - ), and that numinous experience is the originary motive force of this impulsion (ibid, - ). otto’s foregoing account of the numinous can be stripped of its phenomenological and theological trappings without doing any violence to the concept of mysterium at its core; the mysterium is, after all, the a priori condition upon which otto’s numinous phenomenology and theory of evolutionary theology is predicated: taken, indeed, in its purely natural sense, mysterium would first mean merely a secret or a mystery in the sense of that which is alien to us, uncomprehended and unexplained; and so far mysterium is itself merely an ideogram, an analogical notion taken from the natural sphere, illustrating, but incapable of exhaustively rendering, our real meaning. taken in the religious sense, that which is ‘mysterious’ is—to give it perhaps the most striking expression—the ‘wholly other’…that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside the limits of the ‘canny’, and is contrasted with it, filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment. (ibid, ). the implication here is that mysterium taken in its natural sense is mysterious only until comprehension and explanation have disclosed its secret, which is somewhat analogous to weber’s principle of calculability previously outlined. otto himself distinguishes a ‘mystery’ from a ‘problem’ in a way that accords with weber’s disenchantment thesis regarding the latter, while taking leave of it on behalf of the former: i haven’t the space, much less the requirement, to enter into a prolonged analytical critique of otto’s arguments here. i would direct the interested reader to: david barstow, (jun., ), ‘otto and numinous experience’, religious studies, : , - , for a critique of otto’s under-represented indebtedness to the philosophy of j. f. fries, and, more importantly, of issues of coherency regarding otto’s ‘boldness of attempting to unite in one movement of thought, theses of three distinct types, from the disciplines of philosophy, phenomenology of religion, and theology; and thereby, by implication, of grappling with the problems of the relations between the types of judgement made in these disciplines’ (barstow, , ). ~ ~ it might be objected that the mysterious is something which is and remains absolutely and invariably beyond our understanding, whereas that which merely eludes our understanding for a time but is perfectly intelligible in principle should not be called a ‘mystery’, but merely a ‘problem’. […] the truly ‘mysterious’ object is beyond our apprehension and comprehension, not only because our knowledge has certain irremovable limits, but because in it we come upon something inherently ‘wholly other’, whose kind and character are incommensurable with our own, and before which we therefore recoil in a wonder that strikes chill and numb. (otto, , ). leaving aside the fact that weberian intellectualization is an incomplete (uncompletable?) process, the compulsion to recover the mysterium of the ‘wholly other’—to which ‘the concepts of the ‘transcendent’ and the ‘supernatural’ become forthwith designations’ (ibid, )—presents itself as the strategic ne plus ultra of challenging the empirically explicable by means of counterposing the numinously inexplicable. stevens is driving at an affined notion when in his essay ‘effects of analogy’ he declares that: ‘the corporeal world exits as the common denominator of the incorporeal worlds of its inhabitants’ ( ). the corporeal world is the empirically given world to which we all are commonly denominated; the incorporeal worlds of its inhabitants, on the other hand, are constituted by each of the inhabitants’ idiosyncratic interpretations of the corporeal world (hence the shift from singular to plural), which are manifest in accordance with their beliefs and the ordering and transfigurative powers of their imaginations. this interaction between the corporeal and incorporeal worlds could also be characterised as the tension drawn between materialism on the one hand and idealism on the other. stevens plays on this opposition in his early long poem ‘the comedian as the letter c’. in the opening canto the narrator states that ‘man ~ ~ is the intelligence of his soil / the sovereign ghost’ ( ), which presupposes that the soil, a synecdoche for the corporeal world, is but the product of the sovereign ghost’s intelligence, that is to say, the creative mind of ‘man’. by the fourth canto the formulation is reversed: ‘his soil is man’s intelligence. / that’s better. that’s worth crossing seas to find’ ( ). crispin, the poem’s protagonist, is now better satisfied that ‘man’s intelligence’, a synecdoche for the collective incorporeal worlds of each corporeal inhabitant, is a product of the soil, the corporeal world as above. the oscillations and teetering balances between these polarities prove a fecund source of rhetorical generativity throughout stevens’ poetry. suffice it to say, it is the incorporeal worlds of each individual’s imagination, unsurprisingly, that are most amenable to numinous perfusion. the ultimate limitation to the description and expression of the mystery at the heart of the numinous, on otto’s account, in fact of the numinous per se, is that it can only be recovered via negativa. the most direct means of description and expression of the numinous in art in particular, according to otto, which ‘are in a noteworthy way negative’ ( ), are ‘darkness’, ‘silence’ and ‘emptiness’ ( - ). it is worth emphasising that the numinous thus described is ontologically negative, a metaphysical abstraction entirely absented of spirits, souls, ghosts, daemons, angels and gods. the manifestation of these entities believed to populate a supramundane realm are, on otto’s evolutionary model, later developed through humankind’s diverse mythologies: it is the intuition of this ‘wholly other’ whatever, the numinous experience in its most incipient form, that first stirs the primeval consciousness to conceive of the divine. it is of the utmost importance, however, to contend that the mysterium for which otto claims that the concepts of the transcendent and the supernatural have become forthwith designations, could just as readily be designated immanent and natural. there is nothing inherent to ~ ~ the concept of the mysterious, inexplicable, ‘wholly other’ which could not be predicated on mundane experience alone. in point of fact, this latter dyad is the more compelling predication. it is epistemologically consistent that this intuition for the mysterium is immanent and natural in its provenance as the transcendent and supernatural are, by any definition that has been coherently attributed to them, necessarily inaccessible to our mundane occupancy. to put it another way, if the transcendent and supernatural are concepts whose ontological status could be proven null and void, that is, if we could prove (which we can’t) that the transcendent and supernatural simply do not exist other than as concepts, it would make no difference at all to our intuition of mysterium as otto defines it. otto’s argument falls down because it is, quite simply, a flagrant non sequitur which can be reduced to the following form: we have this feeling, intuition, or sense, of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, therefore the transcendent, the supernatural, or god, must exist (the evidence for which is the evocation of these feelings—which also begs the question). a sounder, more circumspect formulation would run: we have this feeling, intuition, or sense, of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, therefore we are clearly susceptible to forms of experience of radical ‘otherness’ we are as yet incapable of understanding (and possibly never will). i would oppose to otto’s numen praesens, as a contrary predication of numinous experience, numen abest (the absence of divinity), for the negative experience of absence is the utmost formulation of something ‘wholly other’. this absence also opens the numinous to being reformulated and thus ‘filled’ by an alternative presence, which is precisely what stevens attempts to poetically hypothesise with prodigious rhetorical variation. we could state this revised conception quite pithily: the numinous is that which we are ultimately not. ~ ~ another crucial interjection should be made at this point. otto is guilty of a sin of omission when it comes to his means of direct expression of the numinous in art. ‘darkness’, ‘silence’ and ‘emptiness’, if we situate those at the kenotic nadir of an axial continuum, would implicate their polar counterpoints at the plerotic zenith of the same continuum. i would appoint to the occupancy of these vacant polar coordinates the following: ‘illumination’, ‘logos’ and ‘fullness’, all of which are conventional signifiers for numinosity, and should not therefore consternate the reader. the rhetorical interplay between these kenotic and plerotic polarities, and their openness to perpetual analogical revision, delineate the rudimentary limit and extent of stevens’ triangulations of immanent numinosity. as i will be using the terms plerosis and kenosis to plot these polarities throughout this thesis, i should provide a short description of what i intend them to indicate. kenosis and plerosis are traditionally used to categorize ancient rites and rituals observant of seasonal patterns. theodor gaster in his thespis: ritual, myth, and drama in the ancient near east, summarises the respective rituals as such: ‘in most parts of the world, seasonal rituals follow a common pattern. this pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases that have annually to be renewed. […] they fall into two clear divisions of kenosis, or emptying, and plerosis, or filling, the former representing the evacuation of life, the latter its replenishment’ (gaster, , ). stevens’ own observance of seasonal cycles follows a similar logic. as sebastian gardner cogently argues, winter is for stevens …bare, stark reality [regarded] as at once uninhabitable and beautiful on account of its purity, freshness and absence of human disorder. we arrive at the world of winter via an operation of subtraction on the ordinary world (stevens calls it abstraction): the world of winter is a ~ ~ contraction of the ordinary world, created through disposing of the clutter of ordinary beliefs, habits, and practices, and it exposes the features of the ordinary world that make it humanly habitable as illusion, mythology and the residue of projection. […] stevens’ vision of the world of winter may be identified with reality as conceived in any metaphysic that aims to exclude, by reduction or elimination, those features of reality which have a human face. (gardner, , ). in contrast to the kenotic world of winter, the world of summer is plerotic. gardner again: the world of summer, by contrast, is the world apprehended in the full blaze of what stevens calls imagination, the mental power that pervades everyday human experience but realizes itself more fully in poetry and art, where it represents a world as a fulfilment and incarnation of value, more than adequate for the purposes of human habitation. […] so, whereas the contracted world of winter represents implicitly the everyday world of winter represents implicitly the everyday world as illusory, as containing appearances of things to which no reality corresponds, the transfigured world of summer represents it as incomplete, as failing to display the full, abundant, valuable features of reality. (ibid, ). accordingly, spring and autumn represent transitional phases between these two worlds; the former a renewal of the ritual cycle of filling toward summer’s plerosis, the latter a declination toward winter’s kenosis. this is the basic narrative of stevens’ poetry, which ‘consists in movements between the different seasonal worlds, this temporal movement symbolizing changes in the subject’s sense of reality’ (ibid, ). i will not be rehearsing stevens’ seasonal narrative in this thesis as that work has already ~ ~ been prodigiously addressed elsewhere. i am interested in abstracting the concepts of plerosis and kenosis together with their aforementioned correlates as i think they are fundamentally at the basis of all contemplation, poetic or otherwise, of numinous experience. it would be relevant at this juncture to review eric gould’s insightful summary concerning the problematic situation of maintaining the usefulness of the numinous: from the point of view of defining the numinous, we can say that it is nothing if not the paradox of exteriority demanding interiority. for the numinous to remain a useful term, it must remain problematic. to define it, then, from the perspective that rudolf otto has taken, is to use repetitively analogous terms for the “full” and “empty”: “mighty” and “fearful” mysterium tremendum, and the “empty distances” of “silence,” “darkness,” and “void.” but that is evasive, turning merely to function to account for the numinous. we are reminded also that what otto describes as the elusiveness of numena is no stranger, of course, to the nonreligious poet. […] we are not, it is clear, any nearer to knowing what the numinous is, even when we can offer interminable analogues for the “full” and “empty,” or show that its expression is fraught with ambiguity and doomed to inaccuracy. instead, perhaps all we can say about the numinous consciousness is that it leads to a persistent set of opposites, to a dismantling of its own terms to show its hermeneutic structure, a fondness for a dualistic and allegorical explanation of experience, a necessary mediation between the transparent and the opaque, the interior and the exterior, as reasonable extremes which force us to seek a hypothetical synthesis. (gould, , - ). i have in mind george s. lensing’s wallace stevens and the seasons. as i will be quoting from this work later in this thesis, i would refer the interested reader to the works cited list at the end of this document for publication details. ~ ~ this reads rather like a series of nails being hammered into the lid of numinosity’s coffin, the glaring implication being that tracing the path of the numinous is an exercise in aporetic futility. perhaps gould is right, and has accurately predicted what all attempts at numinous recovery will eventually discover. he is certainly correct in asserting that we are no nearer to knowing what the numinous is—such knowledge would necessarily negate its object. whatever the case, it is an attempt perennially made, and it is one that stevens makes over and again. the schematic i have outlined above is simply a rhetorical geometry, as it were, for establishing a way into stevens’ ‘intricate evasions of as, / in things seen and unseen, created from nothingness, / the heavens, the hells, the worlds, the longed-for lands’ ( ). what gould’s summation elides are the peculiarities and priorities of each attempt at recovering the numinous in the specific probe of a particular poem. the risk, of course, is that any particular attempt at recovering the numinous becomes mired in a generic swamp of unknowing. as such, a case has to be made for how the mysterium of the wholly other is implicated in and across a series of exemplary poems in order to discern what implications are being made and to what ends. such as it is, kenneth burke argues in the rhetoric of religion: studies in logology that: ‘“words” in the first sense have wholly naturalistic, empirical reference. but they may be used analogically, to designate a further dimension, the “supernatural.” whether or not there is a realm of the “supernatural,” there are words for it’ (burke, , , original italics). he proceeds to demonstrate how a series of words—‘grace’, ‘create’, ‘spirit’, specifically—had their etymological roots in words with secular, natural meanings, which were then borrowed and translated (analogised) into referents for the supernatural realm, and then eventually borrowed back for secular usage, only now ~ ~ altered by the connotations ascribed to them in their supernatural application (ibid, - ). in this sense, language is already functionally transcendent: the quickest and simplest way to realize that words “transcend” non-verbal nature is to think of the notable difference between the kind of operations we might perform with a tree and the kind of operations we might perform with the word “tree.” verbally, we can make “one tree” into “five thousand trees” by merely revising our text, whereas a wholly different set of procedures would be required to get the corresponding result in nature. verbally, we can say, “to keep warm, cut down the tree and burn it” and we can say this even if there is no tree. or whether we call the tree generically a tree or refer to it as some particular species of tree, the fact remains that our term for it has “transcended” its unique individuality. and if we put an apostrophe after the word “tree,” thereby getting the possessive form, “tree’s,” we’d have something quite different from the way a tree “owns” its bark, branches, etc. finally, since the word “tree” rhymes with the words “knee,” “be,” and “see,” we have here an order of associations wholly different from entities with which a tree is physically connected. (ibid, - ) significantly, this means that ‘[t]here is a sense in which language is not just “natural,” but really does add a “new dimension” to the things of nature (an observation that would be the logological equivalent of the theological statement that grace perfects nature)’ (ibid, ). the addition of new dimensions to nature and the endless play of analogies that language enables therefore makes possible the postulation and population of a supernatural realm, irrespective of whether one exists or not. the same can be said for the postulation and representation of the mysterium numinosum. short of making a kierkegaardian leap of faith or undergoing divine revelation, the most that can be said is that the numinous designates the hypothesis of a metaphysical entity or ontological gap to which we have no means of epistemological access. furthermore, we would not even be able to posit the possibility of its being, or non-being, as the case may ~ ~ be, other than through our symbol-making practices, which, in respect of poetry, implicates language specifically. gould thus concurs: ‘the sense of the numinous and the sacred—any apostrophic term to convey the idea of the holy on which religion depends—is both inside and outside the text at once. the experience of the holy outside the text, which may infiltrate writing, can only be mediated in discourse. it resists writing and speech, yet it is only in writing and speech that the definition of the boundaries of the holy and the uniqueness of the experience can take place’ (gould, , ). the ‘apostrophic terms’ used to convey the numinous are, of course, legion. the names and identities of deities and the various functions they serve in their respective mythologies are in and of themselves complex networks of analogous forms, metonymically borrowing aspects of their individual natures, physical constitutions and attendant symbols from our physical world. the supreme being, ‘god’, is the most abstracted manifestation, and thus least apprehensible, of all deities. nevertheless, god, too, bears his anthropomorphic taint: ‘the fault lies with an over-human god’ ( ). regardless, all of these apostrophic referents—the named and conceptualised deities that populate humanity’s diverse mythologies—serve to undermine the truly radical postulation of the numinous: that of a mysterious alterity which remains interminably elusive to fixed nomination and human knowing, but of which we are still capable of at least hypothesising, or, as stevens would almost certainly prefer, imagining. the task ahead, then, is one of ‘hermeneutically dismantling’, to borrow gould’s terms, what is already an interpretation of a postulated mystery using the kenotic/plerotic apparatus previously formulated. fortunately, the primary difficulty— stevens goes as far as to say, in a letter to hi simons, march , , that ‘god is the centre of the pathetic fallacy’ (l, ). ~ ~ the initial interpretation of the numinous hitherto described—has been done in each of the poems that will be examined. the secondary difficulty, the burden of this thesis, will be in establishing a cogent argument that these interpretations can be read as strategic ‘turns’ from a merely disenchanted world to a world that is both empirically actual as well as numinously potent. this argument will ground itself by tracing a pair of underpinning though differentiating topoi, which i will designate as the commonplaces wherefrom stevens embarks on his poetic explorations of immanent numinosity. the structure of these topoi are indicated by the titles of the first and second chapters in which they will be respectively dealt with: ‘emptying the heavens, filling the world’ (chapter one) and ‘decreating the world, figuring the blank’ (chapter two). the two topoi i have designated for stevens are suitably ad hoc, though not without rich precedent. these topoi can be placed, as it were, in ‘the world as our true spiritual home’ (stevens himself asserted in his notebooks: ‘reality is the spirit’s true center’ ( ).) and ‘embodied mind in the world as place of mysterious though generative blanks’ respectively. the first of these topoi will situate what i refer to as stevens’ religious naturalism. in brief, stevens’ religious naturalism entails the naturalization of ritualised behaviours such as devotion, veneration, celebration and i am using ‘commonplace’ here in its specific sense derived from ‘topoi koinoi’ (greek, literally, ‘common places’). the term comes down to us from classical rhetoric where it was used to signify modes of argument, notably ‘aristotle’s four common or universal arguments…arguments by degree, by possible and impossible, by past and future, by amplification and depreciation’ (cook, , n. ). postclassical topoi, such as those we find collated in medieval florilegia and renaissance commonplace books, include numerous exemplary treatments of recurrent themes, formulas and figurations plucked from diverse texts, which serve as didactic, ethical and, latterly, aesthetic models for imitation. for an extended treatment of topoi in the sense of a standard topic in literature, and its various manifestations thereof, see: ernst robert curtius, ( ), european literature in the middle ages, trans. willard r. trask, princeton and oxford: princeton university press, - , (first published in under its original german title europäische literatur und lateinisches mittelalter). see also: roland greene et al., ed., ( ), the princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics, th edition, princeton and oxford: princeton university press, s.v. ‘commonplace’ ( - ), s.v. ‘topos’ ( - ). topos, in modern literary discourse, has been largely supplanted by the discussion of motif; see: m. h. abrams and geoffrey galt harpham ed., ( ), a glossary of literary terms, th edition, boston: wadsworth, s.v. ‘motif and theme’ ( ). ~ ~ exaltation, ordinarily directed toward a supernatural or transcendent order, and will be developed further in the following chapter. the second of these topoi will situate stevens’ formulations and meditations upon the myterium numinosum as i have hitherto described it, and align the focus of the second chapter. i would like to finish this lengthy introduction by quoting allen curnow. curnow writes of stevens’ knack for being ‘capable to detect where reality was not / and scrupulous what to put in place of it’ (curnow, , ) in his tribute to the elder poet ‘mementos of an occasion’. curnow’s lines will serve as something of a guiding principle in the chapters to come. * ~ ~ chapter one: emptying the heavens, filling the world stevens, in his lecture ‘imagination as value’, writes: ‘and i say the world is lost to [the poet], certainly, because, for one thing, the great poems of heaven and hell have been written and the great poem of the earth remains to be written’ ( ). we might wonder whether we should take this to imply that stevens fancies himself the very poet who would write the great poem of the earth. i believe that we should, at least in the importantly qualified sense of it being a poem to which stevens aspires to contribute toward; this is to say, it is not a finite and singular, but rather a collective and accumulative, poem he has in mind. stevens, intimate with the work of shelley, would have been doubtless impressed by the latter’s vision in a defense of poetry that individual poems are but ‘episodes to that great poem, which all poets, like the co- operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world’ (shelley, , ). this is an idea that finds its culminant expression in stevens’ late poem ‘a primitive like an orb’, particularly in the three-stanza long sentence of its seventh through ninth sections, of which i present the seventh: the central poem is the poem of the whole, the poem of the composition of the whole, the composition of blue sea and of green, of blue light and of green, as lesser poems, and the miraculous multiplex of lesser poems, not merely into a whole, but a poem of the whole, the essential compact of the parts, ~ ~ the roundness that pulls tight the final ring ( ) stevens had recommended to his publisher, alfred a. knopf, that his first collection be published under the title ‘the grand poem: preliminary minutiae’ (l, )—or, so we could say, in words chosen out of the clarity of hindsight, notes toward the ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’. three decades later, when he and knopf were putting together what would eventually become the collected poems of wallace stevens, stevens had proposed naming the collection ‘the whole of harmonium: collected poems of w. s.’ (l, ). knopf discouraged him from using these alternative titles on both occasions. nonetheless, as richardson remarks, ‘the “grand” intention was never abandoned’ (richardson, , ), neither at the beginning nor, it must be said, at the end of his career. it is readily apparent throughout his poetry that stevens’ grand intention to contribute to the great pluralistic collective poem of the earth impels him to empty the heavens and relocate the old nobilities, rapturous experiences, and ascetic see: richardson, , - ; richardson, , - . nobility is a word stevens commonly used to refer to a force of qualitative heightening, whether it be in poetry or in life, and one that he says ‘is the peculiarity of the imagination’ ( ). this quote is taken from ‘the noble rider and the sound of words’, wherein the notion receives its most sustained treatment. stevens takes the figure of the soul as a pair of winged horses and a charioteer from plato’s phaedrus his starting point. he construes it as an example, following coleridge, of plato’s ‘dear gorgeous nonsense’ ( ). he says that after ‘we have identified ourselves with the charioteer’ ( ) driving the winged horses through heaven, ‘suddenly we remember, it may be, that the soul no longer exists and we droop in our flight and at last settle on the solid ground’ ( ). nonetheless, he later identifies this nobility fallen from the heavens as the marker ‘of our spiritual height and depth’ ( ). stevens, it should be acknowledged, in keeping with his logic that the gods are anthropomorphic projections, writes in a letter to ronald lane latimer, november , : ‘it is an old story that we derive our ideas of nobility, say, from noble objects of nature. but then, it is an equally old story that we derive them from ourselves. for convenience, and in view of the simplicity of the large mass of people, we give our good qualities to god, or to various gods, but they come from ourselves’ (l, ). another of his adagia reads: ‘only a noble people evolve a noble god’ ( ). it is worth bearing in mind how precisely this line of thought follows burke’s logological pattern of religious language outlined in the introduction: nobility is transposed from the world to the heavens and then back to the world again, yet this reabsorption, whether we like it or not, bears the traces of its transcendent detour. this re-secularisation of the term allows stevens to endow imagination with the power of nobility-giving: ‘…the imagination gives to everything it touches a peculiarity, and it seems to me that the peculiarity of the imagination is nobility’ ( - ). ~ ~ meditations, which had been formerly predicated upon a transcendent order, to an immanent domain. doggett, and i think correctly, discerns in stevens’ poetry a ‘preference for naturalistic thought and for ideas that lean on the imagery of organism’ (ibid, ix). moreover: ‘in general, throughout stevens’ poetry, the only continuous strand of thought is a fundamental naturalism that is immediately apparent in the poems of harmonium. this naturalism is as much a sentiment, as much an expression of an allegiance—a piety and an affection—as it is an expression of thought. the allegiance is to earth, and the sentiment is expressed in many celebrations of the reality that is the substance and support of his existence’ (ibid, ix). this last quotation leads me to the unenviable decision that any expository critic of a poet as challenging as stevens must make, which is to arrive at a certain commitment as to how to address one’s subject, recognising in advance that one must bracket out other potentially fruitful means. to this end, the current chapter is intent on exploring the tensions between agnosticism and religious naturalism which arise in stevens’ poetry. but first i must say a few words on what religious naturalism is in order to account for why i think it is fitting to include stevens under this conceptual banner. religious naturalism broadly refers to a heterogeneous belief system espoused by a diverse group of people who ‘find religious meaning, value, and importance solely in nature or in some aspect of the natural order’ (crosby, , ), and who seek ‘to explore and encourage religious ways of responding to the world on a completely naturalistic basis without a supreme being or ground of being’ (stone, , xi). jerome a. stone claims that the historical roots of religious naturalism ‘go back at least to spinoza’ (ibid), but begins his study ‘in the early twentieth century with george ~ ~ santayana and samuel alexander’ (ibid). interestingly, stevens was familiar with both of these thinkers. as helen vendler reminds us, santayana was one of stevens’ early mentors and confidantes: ‘at harvard, stevens abandoned the protestantism of his parents for the lucretian naturalism of his acquaintance george santayana’ (vendler, winter , ). not only does stevens refer to santayana several times in his letters and prose, he evidently held the philosopher in high enough regard to compose a poetic tribute for his old mentor: ‘to an old philosopher in rome’ ( - ). regarding the latter, stevens quotes from alexander’s time, space and deity concerning the philosopher’s theory of ‘compresence’ in ‘a collect of philosophy’ ( - ). the problem for the proponents of religious naturalism, as mikael stenmark points out, is to provide a philosophically satisfying explanation for what distinguishes them from non-religious naturalists, that is to say, to account for why they see fit to append the qualifier ‘religious’. stenmark cites the example of richard dawkins, whom he identifies as a non-religious naturalist who believes that ‘[r]eal science does not diminish the enchantment of nature, but rather enhances the poetry of experience by revealing the workings of the natural world in their full wonder. [dawkins] says that, when it comes to feeling awe about living things, he has more in common with the reverend william paley than with atheists such as ayer and hume. […] if religious naturalists are to be known for their reverence and awe of nature, dawkins seems to qualify as one’ (stenmark, , - ). stenmark proceeds to refer to thomas nagel, stone, in his comprehensive study religious naturalism today: the rebirth of a forgotten alternative, identifies and discusses a wide array of thinkers under the banner of religious naturalism: ‘former religious naturalists included george santayana, samuel alexander, john dewey, roy wood sellars, john herman randall, mordecai kaplan, ralph burhoe, founder of zygon, and such chicago theologians as henry nelson wieman, bernard meland, and the later bernard loomer. recent religious naturalists include william dean, willem drees, ursula goodenough, charley hardwick, henry levinson, karl peters, myself, and perhaps gordon kaufman’ (stone, , xi). ~ ~ whom he suggests ‘might offer religious naturalists some help here’ (stenmark, , ). nagel (of whom it should be pointed out does not use the phrase religious naturalism) wants to explore naturalistic alternatives to what he calls the ‘default or zero-position [of] affectless atheism, or hardheaded atheism’ (nagel, , ). he recognises that there are people, including himself, who are dissatisfied with scientific naturalism as an all-encompassing worldview, but who nevertheless do not ascribe to a theistic alternative. the distinction that he wants to draw between the scientific naturalist and the dissatisfied naturalist is one of religious temperament. those susceptible to a religious temperament, nagel suggests, are inclined to ask the following cosmic question: ‘how can one bring into one’s individual life a recognition of one’s relation to the universe as a whole, whatever that relation is?’ (ibid, ). he is adamant that this question be distinguished ‘from the pure desire for understanding the universe and one’s place in it’ (ibid). he continues: it is not an expression of curiosity, however large. and it is not the general intellectual problem of how to combine an objective conception of the universe with the local perspective of one creature within it. it is rather a question of attitude: is there a way to live in harmony with the universe, and not just in it? without god, it is unclear what we should aspire to harmony with. but still, the aspiration can remain, to live not merely the life of the creature one is, but in some sense to participate through it in the life of the universe as a whole. to be gripped by this desire is what i mean by the religious temperament. (ibid, - ). nagel believes the hardheaded atheist simply rejects the validity of the question. he characterises the view of the hardheaded atheist thus: ~ ~ the universe exists and meets a certain description; one of the things it has generated is us; end of story. of course, a new story begins with our existence, since we find our own lives extraordinarily interesting. but this is a local phenomenon of perfectly understandable self- absorption, unconnected to the big picture. the big picture is of purely theoretical interest. (ibid, ). stenmark aligns nagel’s pronouncements on hard-headed atheism with the position of the non-religious naturalist vis-à-vis the religious naturalist whose worldview is oriented by the temperament nagel proposes. stevens, in his aspirations to realise through his poetry harmonious relations with the world, the earth, the cosmos, nature in toto, belongs to this latter camp. i will endeavour in this chapter to qualify this claim by first investigating stevens’ improvisations on the idea of god, before moving onto his attempts to poetize the interpenetrative experience of belonging in the world. * although it has been widely denounced as apocryphal, there is a well-known anecdote recounting an exchange between the french mathematician and astronomer pierre- simon laplace and napoleon bonaparte concerning the former’s magnum opus mécanique céleste. napoleon, upon learning that this work contained no mention of god, gyorgi voros goes as far as to endorse stevens as a proto-deep ecologist: ‘like emerson, stevens addressed and praised the larger context that gives rise to human categories of thought and action, namely, the dynamic relation between the physical world and individual human beings or, on the larger scale, between nature and culture. however, stevens deliberately effected a figure / ground shift in focus and in doing so not only rewrote romanticism but proleptically—and prophetically—forecast a vision evolved by "deep ecologists" today. deep ecology, like traditional environmentalism, is a response to the environmental crisis. unlike traditional environmentalism, which is anthropocentric and utilitarian in pursuing wise use of natural resources for human benefit, deep ecology bases itself on philosophical, religious, and ethical reconsiderations of nature's intrinsic value and "right" to self-realization’ (voros, , ). ~ ~ conveyed his surprise to laplace that his system of the universe did not once refer to its creator. laplace declared in response: ‘je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là’. we might imagine a similar apocryphal exchange taking place between stevens and the romantics and transcendentalists to whom his preeminent literary inheritance is commonly attributed. it is from these poetic forebears that stevens inherits the topos of the world as our true spiritual home. what distinguishes stevens from these same forebears is his insistence that he can make-do in his poetic-spiritual engagement with the world without the hypothesis of the universe’s divine origins, much less of an appellate judge ruling over an empyreal court. god does make frequent appearances throughout stevens’ poetry though, both in the upper and lower case, in singular and plural manifestations, as well as under entirely different designations than ‘god/god’ altogether. stevens often stages both supernatural and worldly religious figures and their attendant beliefs and traditions in order to perform rhetorical enactments of their negation, expiry, or obsolescence, or to trivialise them through parody, mockery and satire. however, it would be improper to imply that stevens spurns all of what ‘i had no need of that hypothesis’. a version of this fabricated encounter is recounted in w. w. rouse-ball, ( ), a short account of the history of mathematics, new york: dover publications, inc., . the literature on stevens’ situation in the genealogy of romanticism is immense. a very good and concise account of stevens’ late romanticism is ‘the new romanticism of wallace stevens’, in george bornstein, ( ), the transformations of romanticism in yeats, eliot, and stevens, chicago and london: the university of chicago press, - . the literature on stevens’ indebtedness to his th-century compatriots is similarly extensive. practically everything harold bloom has written on stevens propounds the transcendentalists’ myriad influence, especially that of emerson and whitman (if we may be allowed to label whitman thus), on stevens’ thought and work. as bloom’s work is so widely known, and that i am quoting from a number of items of it throughout this thesis, i need not detail their particulars here. examples of poems performing various rhetorical enactments of the negation, expiry, or obsolescence of supernatural and worldly religious figures and/or their attendant beliefs and traditions include the following: ‘of heaven considered as a tomb’ ( ), ‘sunday morning’ ( - ), ‘negation’ ( ), ‘lunar paraphrase’ ( - ), ‘waving adieu, adieu, adieu’ ( ), ‘evening without angels’ ( - ), ‘the man with the blue guitar’ ( - ), ‘a thought revolved’ ( - ), ‘the men that are falling’ ( - ), ‘the sense of the sleight-of-hand man’ ( ), ‘esthétique du mal’ ( - ), ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’ ( - ), ‘st armorer’s church from the outside’ ( - ). examples of poems parodying, mocking or satirising the same include the following: ‘ploughing on sunday’ ( ); ‘cy est pourtraicte, madame ste ursule, et les unze mille vierges’ ( ), ‘the doctor of geneva’ ( ), ‘the worms at heaven’s gate’ ( ), ‘a high-toned old christian woman’ ( ), ‘cortege for rosenbloom’ ( - ). ~ ~ traditional religious observance and ritual has to offer. george s. lensing points out, for instance, that stevens exhibits a ‘lingering admiration for the pageantry of religious gestures and dress in poems like “winter bells,” “gray stones and gray pigeons,” “the old lutheran bells at home,” and “st. armorers church from the outside.”’ (lensing, , ). most importantly, though, are stevens’ frequent improvisations upon the ‘idea of god’, which run the entire course of his poetry. perhaps stevens reasons, as morris does, that ‘the creation of a new god is the automatic supersession of the old’ (morris, , ). lensing claims ‘[t]hat most frequently he promotes a new religion to replace the old one that will have at its center the human self and the natural world’ (lensing, , ). lensing also acknowledges stevens’ ‘disenchantment with humanism’ (ibid, ) and his counter-proposals of ‘the possibility of a modern redeemer, a poet, a hero, a giant, who would be fully human but a human-epitome, a figure who can be imagined now but whose impossibilities enticed him in poem after poem’ (ibid). all the same, god for stevens is by no means an inadmissible idea requiring permanent erasure, but rather, as i have been arguing, renovation. i will now survey, for reasons that will become readily apparent, three of stevens’ improvisations upon the ‘idea of god’. the first and most salient example of stevens’ improvisations is ananke, the greek protogenos personifying inevitability, compulsion, and, most importantly, necessity. although a feminine personification in greek mythology, stevens genders ananke male. stevens’ version of ananke appears most prominently in ‘the greenest continent’ from owl’s clover, wherein he invokes this deity with what is for him an i could have just as well used the term ‘variations’. many critics have pointed out the influence on stevens’ work of the musical form of variation. angus fletcher, for instance, argues that ‘[t]he governing rhetorical figure in stevens is a figure equivalent to musical variations’ (fletcher qtd. in eeckhout, , ). see also: northrop frye, ( ), ‘wallace stevens and the variation form’, spiritus mundi: essays on literature, myth, and society, bloomington & london: indiana university press, - . ~ ~ uncommon forthrightness: ‘fatal ananke is the common god.’ ( ); ‘fateful ananke is the final god.’ ( ). the starkly declarative syntax in these two isolated lines comprising predicate nominatives stripped of qualification, compounded appositives, and figural subterfuge, is uncharacteristic of stevens’ wider style. moreover, that they should pertain to something as momentous as a common and final god is especially atypical in stevens, who generally prefers to pose his major figures as hypothetical inventions embedded in networks of evasive syntax and figural complexity. an earlier appearance of ananke occurs in section xii of ‘like decorations in a nigger cemetery’: ‘the sense of the serpent in you, ananke, / and your averted stride / add nothing to the horror of the frost / that glistens on your face and hair.’ ( ). this short piece alludes to the ananke we find in the orphic theogonies described by the th- th ce neoplatonist scholarch damascius. according to damascius, ananke was thought to have self- emerged at the beginning of time entwined with the winged serpent chronos. she is represented, paradoxically, as an incorporeal serpent whose arms extend the expanse of the universe, thus signifying her reach of influence, which is to say, everywhere and through all time. reading ahead to the fourth canto of ‘the greenest continent’ we stevens reflects in a letter to hi simons, august , , that ‘ananke may have been an improvisation, or an importation from italy’ (l, ). whether the geographical misattribution evidenced in stevens’ latter clause is willed so as to cavalierly distance himself from the poetic sequence owl’s clover in which ananke features, or from the ‘improvisation’ itself as he has moved on artistically, or that it is simply a casual oversight, is finally indeterminable. we do know that stevens’ substantially revised and heavily cut the version of owl’s clover (which he had alcestis press publish as a stand-alone volume) for inclusion in the man with the blue guitar the following year. furthermore, we know that he chose to omit owl’s clover, in either of its version, from his collected poems, on the grounds that it was, according to samuel morse, ‘rhetorical’ (op, xxiii). stevens’ familiarity with greek and latin diction, etymology, and mythology, would call into doubt his misattribution as a casual oversight. nonetheless, these cavils will persist as the stuff of irresolvable conjecture. for further reading on these structural aspects of stevens’ poetry, see footnotes , , and , below. for an analysis of the damascian-orphic account of ananke, see: m. l. west, ( ), the orphic poems, oxford: clarendon press, esp. , , - . as to where stevens discovered the the serpent-ananke connection is unclear. he would have been familiar with plato’s description of necessity in book x of the republic, wherein she is depicted as seated at the centre of the universe with a spindle in her lap, thus accounting for the maternal lineage of the three fates; see: plato, ( ), the republic, nd edition, ed. & trans. alan bloom, new york: basic books, . a. walton litz accounts for stevens’ introduction to the deity in his correspondence with the italian scholar mario rossi, who calls her ‘imperscrutable ananke’. stevens ~ ~ learn that ‘the serpent might become a god’ ( ) and that ‘death, only, sits upon the serpent throne’ ( ). by the eighth canto, in which the ‘unmerciful pontifex’ ( ) ananke appears, we can assume that the serpent from the fourth canto has become a god, in the light of the serpent-ananke association stevens has previously drawn our attention to. ananke’s ‘voice / in the jungle is a voice in fontainebleau’ ( ), is a metonymy for the god’s universal influence as it resounds through time and space from the primordial african jungle to modern european civilisation. this fatal serpent god, emerging from the african jungle, is an example of stevens’ primitivism—a widely recognised and exotically distorted appropriation made by countless modernist artists and writers. it is an improvisation that looks ahead to a later jungle-god vision, possibly a mayan-inflected revision of the yucatan jungle scene in ‘the comedian as the letter c’ ( - ), in the third canto of the ‘it must give pleasure’ section of ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’: a lasting visage in a lasting bush, a face of stone in an unending red, red-emerald, red-slitted-blue, a face of slate, an ancient forehead hung with heavy hair, the channel slots of rain, the red-rose-red and weathered and the ruby-water-worn, the vines around the throat, the shapeless lips, considers this a ‘magnificent word’, and copied part of rossi’s letter into his commonplace book, latterly published under his ascription sur plusieurs beaux sujects (rossi and stevens qtd. in litz, , ). stevens also quotes the passage on necessity from horace’s odes, book i. , which, nonetheless, bears no mention of necessity figured as a serpent. for an extended discussion of stevens’ primitivism, see: jeffrey westover, (fall ), ‘wallace stevens’ savage commonplace’, the wallace stevens journal, : . - . ~ ~ the frown like serpents basking on the brow, the spent feeling leaving nothing of itself, red-in-red repetitions never going away, a little rusty, a little rouged, a little roughened and ruder, a crown the eye could not escape, a red renown blowing itself upon the tedious ear. an effulgence faded, dull cornelian too venerably used. that might have been. it might and might have been. ( ) whether or not it might have been, this vision of ‘a lasting visage’ has ossified into a statuesque entity, thus fixing it in a state segregated from life. although this statuesque visage is replete with asteriated spectral effects emphasising its otherworldliness, it is nonetheless in a state of ruination. as such, it is subject to reclamation by the natural region its mythology had presumably once reflected. it is ultimately a vision of deical extinction. this is, of course, later stevens. ananke is allowed to live in owl’s clover before ‘the gods are annihilated’ (vendler, , ) in that suite’s later companion piece, ‘man with the blue guitar’. it is in this latter poetic sequence, composed shortly i am improvising here on stevens’ construction from the first line of his late untitled poem beginning: ‘a mythology reflects its region.’ ( ). ananke is never mentioned by name again after the man with the blue guitar’s annihilation of the gods, save for in a rejected stanza of ‘examination of the hero in a time of war’: ‘the self-same rhythm / moves in lamenting and the fatal, / the bold, obedience to ananke.’ ( ). the serpent figure, however, reappears in ‘the bagatelles the madrigals’. the serpent in this poem, as with the serpent-ananke in ‘like decorations of a nigger cemetery’, is associated with a foreboding winter vision: ~ ~ after the publication of owl’s clover during the winter of - , that poetry is called upon ‘to take the place / of empty heaven and its hymns’ ( ). this sequence also announces ‘a substitute for all the gods’ ( ): this self, not that gold self aloft, alone, one’s shadow magnified, lord of the body, looking down, as now and called most high, the shadow of chocorua in an immenser heaven, aloft, alone, lord of the land and lord of the men that live in the land, high lord. one’s self and the mountains of one’s land, without shadows, without magnificence, the flesh, the bone, the dirt, the stone. ( ) where do you think, serpent, where do you lie, beneath snow, and with eyes closed breathe in a crevice of earth? in what camera do you taste poison, in what darkness set glittering scales and point the tipping tongue? ( ) the serpent’s most significant reappearance is in ‘auroras of autumn’, where it is has been transformed into the terrific lights of the aurora borealis: ‘this is form gulping after formlessness, / skin flashing to wished-for disappearances / and the serpent body flashing without the skin.’ ( ). note here the serpent’s indeterminate corporeality compared with damscius’ description of ananke as an incorporeal serpent outlined above. ~ ~ here is the human brought nobly low, where ‘the mind alone confronts the world alone, without any sacred parental influences’ (vendler, , ), to seek out ‘a poem like a missal / found in the mud,’ ( )—which brings us to the second of stevens’ improvisations, the ‘mud master’: the muddy rivers of spring are snarling under muddy skies. the mind is muddy. as yet, for the mind, new banks of bulging green are not; sky-sides of gold are not. the mind snarls. blackest of pickanines, there is a master of mud. the shaft of light falling, far off, from sky to land, that is he— the peach-bud maker, the mud master, the master of the mind. ( ) ~ ~ this poem is from ideas of order, and thus precedes ananke and the annihilative interventions of ‘man with a blue guitar’. this poem could be read with jarraway, mistakenly i believe, as an indicative example of ‘the transcendent perspective of ascent [that] is unmistakably the metaphorical radical’ (jarraway, , ) in ideas of order: “mud master,” for instance, moves much beyond the dilemma of determining the superiority of intelligence over soil or soil over intelligence in “the comedian as the letter c” back in harmonium. by scaling a falling shaft of light, the mud master transcends reality and lays claim to a metaphysically superior realm both soil and self. (ibid). precisely the opposite trajectory is taking place. the mud master is not at all a quasi- adamic being emerging from the mud to scale a falling shaft of light and thus assume a metaphysically superior realm. the mud master, as the poem unequivocally states, is the falling shaft of light itself, which is to say, a metonymy for the sun. the mud master is, quite simply, the sun. the world is muddy so the mind is muddy, an equation that is perfectly in keeping with the second of the propositions from ‘the comedian as the letter c’ to which jarraway is alluding, namely, ‘his soil is man’s intelligence’ ( ). it is the intervention of the sun, personified in the appositive epithets ‘the peach-bud maker, / the mud master, / the master of the mind’, which is responsible for realising the ‘new banks / of bulging green’ and the ‘sky-sides of gold’. this apposition reveals the dual function stevens’ frequently attributes to the sun: that of life-giver and illuminator of marvels. the sun, as animator in this double sense, mastering the mud into producing new life and the sky into providing spectacle, is by metaleptic extension the master of the mind, as the mind too is emergent from the sun-animated mud. what’s ~ ~ more, the trajectory follows the immanent perspective of descent, the sunlight come down to earth not from heaven, but simply the heavens. what we have then is a covert naturalist rewriting of the creation myth of genesis. the fundamental elements are cognate: mud for dust, mind for soul, animating light for inspiriting breath, and thus sun for god, taking place on earth, which substitutes as an unfallen yet muddily imperfect eden. stevens would later write in ‘the poems of our climate’: ‘the imperfect is our paradise.’ ( ), which is no less than an aphoristic summary of his recurrent naturalist argument in favour of a temporally- bound state of incompletion as our right and proper good. what frequently emerges from stevens’ poetry, and is arguably the preeminent ‘theology’ to which it bears witness, is a pseudo-heliotheism. it is ‘pseudo’ in that we must constantly remind ourselves of the shibboleth ‘this most heliocentric of poets’ (eeckhout, , ) imparts to us at the beginning of his poetic career. i am referring to the neo-pagan opening of the penultimate canto of ‘sunday morning’: supple and turbulent, a ring of men shall chant in orgy on a summer morn their boisterous devotion to the sun, not as a god, but as a god might be, naked among them, a savage source. ( - ) as with a lot of stevens poetry preceding ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’, ‘mud master’ also looks forward to that major poem, specifically in the overhaul of the edenic narrative performed in the fourth canto of ‘it must be abstract’: ‘there was a muddy centre before we breathed. / there was a myth before the myth began, / venerable, articulate and complete.’ ( ). ~ ~ the sun should be perceived with and when reading stevens: ‘not as a god, but as a god might be’. this is no less than an indispensable crux for any satisfactory apprehension of stevens’ poetry. it should also be noted that the sun is a pars pro toto for nature, and that stevens’ religious naturalism variously treats all of nature ‘not as a god, but as a god might be’. this important example of one of stevens’ many ‘intricate evasions of as’ ( ), denotes a significant emphasis of his spiritual perspective. stevens’ abandonment of belief in a supernatural god does not entail his abandonment of exercising devotion. instead, as we have come to see, stevens exercises his devotion toward what is immanent in the natural world. one of the obvious ways in which stevens accomplishes this is by reorienting religious vocabulary to secular ends. this follows the logological procedure that we have seen outlined by burke: the application of secular terms to a transcendent, supernatural realm that have been latterly taken back and reapplied to an immanent, natural realm. stevens’ purpose in doing this is neither to propound a faux mysticism nor is it to espouse pantheism. stevens rejects mysticism and nowhere ascribes to the notion that nature is in itself a total and immanent god. stevens’ purpose, rather, is to emphasise that nature is, or at least should be, a sufficient substitute for god as an object of devotion. this said, there is a rare instance of stevens’ entertaining the notion of a god immanent in nature. this god occurs in the third and last of stevens’ improvisations presently under review—in his poem ‘less and less human, o savage spirit’. the for a discussion of stevens’ employment of traditional christian language and biblical forms see morris’ chapter ‘lineage and language’ (morris, , - ). morris points out that ‘stevens’ poetry, like his prose, consciously incorporates biblical wording and echo’ (ibid, ). ‘the major biblical forms that stevens uses in his poetry are the parable, the proverb, the prayer, the hymn, and the psalm’ (ibid, ). in his essay ‘the irrational element in poetry’, stevens is assiduous in assuring his reader that: ‘i do not for a moment mean to indulge in mystical rhetoric, since for my part, i have no patience with that sort of thing’ ( ). it must be said, of course, that stevens’ reservations are by no means a prophylactic against mystical interpretations of his work. stevens’ awareness of being misconstrued as a mystic evinced in this statement could itself be interpreted as a self-realisation that he has a tendency to sail close to the mystical wind. ~ ~ speaker of this poem prescriptively accedes to a god, if, for some unbeknownst compulsion, there must be a god in the house: if there must be a god in the house, must be, saying things in the rooms or on the stair, let him move as the sunlight moves on the floor, or moonlight, silently, as plato’s ghost or aristotle’s skeleton. let him hang out his stars on the wall. he must dwell quietly. he must be incapable of speaking, closed, as those are: as light, for all its motion, is; as color, even the closest to us, is; as shapes, though they portend us, are. it is the human that is the alien, the human that has no cousin in the moon. it is the human that demands his speech from the beasts or from the incommunicable mass. if there must be a god in the house, let him be one that will not hear us when we speak: a coolness, a vermilioned nothingness, any stick of the mass of which we are too distantly a part. ~ ~ ( ) milton j. bates suggests that this poem expresses the same idea, only ‘more obliquely’ (bates, , ), as that which we encounter in the third canto of ‘esthétique du mal’. an ‘over-human god’ is reimagined in this poem, though not pejoratively, as something less and less human. it is a god stripped of logocentricity, in that it can neither hear nor speak. its demanded silence is transumed into the imperceptibility of plato’s ghostly form(s) and the physical laws of aristotelean materialism—the skeleton of motion concealed in the flesh of matter. gyorgi voros identifies the god’s positive attributes ‘as physical phenomena perceivable to the senses…sunlight, moonlight, color, and shape’ (voros, , ), while neglecting to include the most arresting of these occurring in the poem, namely temperature. voros introduces the simile that this god ‘is like a force of nature’ (ibid). however, it is difficult to comprehend how colour, for instance, could be conceived of as a force rather than as a property of nature. alternatively, it is tempting to identify this household god with the inscrutability of nature—light, colour, shape, although perceptible to us are nonetheless ‘closed’. the the passage bates presents, and which i have earlier quoted from, reads as follows: the fault lies with an over-human god, who by sympathy has made himself a man and is not to be distinguished, when we cry because we suffer, our oldest parent, peer of the populace of the heart, the reddest lord, who has gone before us in experience. if only he would not pity us so much, weaken our fate, relieve us of woe both great and small, a constant fellow of destiny, a too, too human god, self-pity’s kin and uncourageous genesis . . . it seems as if the health of the world might be enough. ( ) again, note the compensatory gesture of ‘the health of the world might be enough’. ~ ~ masterful pun on ‘incommunicable mass’ is apposite. the pun signifies on the one hand that the human is incapable of communicating with the mass of nature ‘of which we are too distantly a part’ (itself a pun: a part/apart). on the other hand it signifies a religious communion that cannot be communicated. part of the poem’s implicit argument is that we alienate nature when we attempt to demand it to speak to us in our own language, much less when we try to find anthropotheistic cousins in the heavenly bodies. therefore, we should reconcile ourselves with nature, rather than have nature reconcile itself with us. we will find this injunction recurring throughout stevens’ poetry, and often more explicitly than in the present context. the larger rhetorical argument would seem to advance an appeal against an anthropomorphic deification of nature drawn along the following lines: that if god there must be, and nature there is, then nonhuman they simply co-immanently are. this reading, however, remains problematic due to the nondisclosure of who or what is enjoining the speaker to make these concessions to a god in the house in the first place, and with the identification of this god with the personifying pronominal ‘him’. we might resolve the first of these problems by conjecturing that the speaker has wrestled with the ‘idea of god’ for some time, and that the poem soliloquizes his or her provisional submission to this idea. the second problem is trickier. stevens is too careful a poet not to have realised that he could have substituted the neutral pronoun ‘it’ for its masculine counterpart and thus avoid the compromise of personification altogether. the kenotic emptying of this numinous ‘it’ from a god ‘saying things in the rooms or on the stair’ to a god that is silent and deaf (thus ‘incommunicable’) would already take care of negating the metonymic attributions of homo loquens. but that stevens has made this compromise opens up a disjunction. on one side of this disjunction, the argument could be made that stevens’ attempt to configure a nonhuman ~ ~ god is self-refuted by identifying it as a ‘him’. on the other side of this disjunction, one could make the argument that this is not what stevens’ is attempting to do at all. rather than configuring a nonhuman god, one could argue that stevens is instead confecting a more and more, but not entirely, inhuman god—thus a god in the process of becoming inhuman (the clue, as often with stevens, is in the poem’s title). stevens posits that we are, after all, a part, albeit distantly, of the mass of which this god is a fellow constituent. that leaves us then with the sorts of insoluble contradictions in which stevens revels: with a god that is and is not us, alien and a part thereof. there still remains of course the troubling image of ‘a vermilioned nothingness’. jarraway suggests, in reference to this image, that ‘we may find a heideggerian discourse helpful…in particular, the “concept” of ereignis, or experience’ (jarraway, , ). jarraway quotes robert bernasconi’s reading of heidegger’s concept, from which i will do the same: mystics have found god in the dark night of the soul and it is now almost commonplace among theologians to recognize the experience of the loss of god in a secular society as an experience of god. such experiences do not reestablish presence in the midst of absence. they break with the dichotomy of presence and absence, establishing absence as present precisely in its absence. (bernasconi, , ). this hearkens back to the numen abest, which i have previously discussed. nothingness is a pure abstraction in the strongest sense, in that it entails the complete absence of concretion. ‘a vermilioned nothingness’, on the other hand, is figurally cognate with ‘an abstraction blooded’ ( ). blood-coloured, this ‘vermilioned nothingness’ could be this quote occurs in the sixth canto of the ‘it must be abstract’ section of ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’. ~ ~ read as a capsule ‘variant upon the incarnation’ (hoffman, , ) which frederick j. hoffman claims ‘is to be found in almost every major modern writer’ (ibid). though rather than an incarnation of the word made flesh in the body of christ, here we have a dis-incarnation of the numen praesens in blood-haunted nothingness. it is nothingness as though seen through a glass, redly. as a cross-hatching between kenotic nothingness and plerotic illumination it too breaks its formative dichotomy. stevens’ breakage with, or what i think is the stronger claimant, synthesis of the kenotic/plerotic dichotomy is locally exemplified in the paradoxical figures of ‘a vermilioned nothingness’ and ‘an abstraction blooded’. his myriad figural variations issuing from the alternate poles of kenosis and plerosis, and especially in their synthetic consummations, locate his recoveries of immanent numinosity at their most rhetorically impressive. extended forays into the paradoxical frontiers of the intelligible, however, underwrite the topos of the next chapter, and will receive due elaboration there. i have chosen to survey these particular improvisations upon the ‘idea of god’ as i believe they represent what i take to be stevens’ three fundamental modes of engagement with immanent numinosity. the first mode involves the treatment of received mythologies, which tends to find stevens at his most dismissive. it is the most easily recognizable mode and will be addressed wherever pertinent. the second mode entails stevens’ religious naturalism. this mode treats nature—which entails human beings, non-human animal and plant life, earth as such and the greater cosmos—‘not as a god, but as a god might be’, in all of the rich complexity this qualification connotes. it is this mode that will lead the continued focus of the current chapter. the third mode is that of the mysterium numinosum proper, which, broadly speaking, tropes on the negations of absence and its correlates (e.g. silence, darkness, emptiness, nothingness). as i have previously indicated, this mode will receive a full hearing in the following ~ ~ chapter. i must also emphasise that these modes are not mutually exclusive. they often inform or converge upon each other, as we have already seen, in peculiar states of confrontation and complement. * the american poet and critic j. v. cunningham, a former student of yvor winters, furnishes us with a pertinent summary of the relationship between stevens’ poetry and his spiritual disposition: the central concern of stevens’ poetry…is a concern to be at peace with his surroundings, with this world, and with himself. he requires for this an experience of the togetherness of himself and nature, an interpenetration of himself and his environment, along with some intuition of permanence in the experience of absoluteness, though this be illusory and transitory, something to satisfy the deeply engrained longings of his religious feeling. (cunningham, , ). i would like to recite, in this connection, gould’s aforementioned definition of the numinous: ‘that it is nothing if not the paradox of exteriority demanding interiority’ (gould, , ). one of stevens’ late personae, professor eucalyptus from ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’, declares: ‘“the search / for reality is as momentous as / the search for god.”’ ( ). the speaker of the poem proceeds from the professor’s declaration with the following: ‘it is the philosopher’s search / for an interior made winters was among the earliest of stevens’ critics to most influentially disseminate the hotly contested view that his poetry ‘gives us…the most perfect laboratory of hedonism to be found in literature’ (winters, , ). he would later revise his opinion in a postscript to his original essay, included in a reprint of the rd edition of his anatomy of nonsense. winters now took stevens to believe ‘that we live in a nominalistic universe made up of unrelated and inscrutable particulars, and that the only order possible in such a universe is that created by poetic imagination’ (ibid, ). ~ ~ exterior / and the poet’s search for the same exterior made / interior’ ( ). the speaker tells us, then, that whereas the philosopher wants to project her mental constructs onto the world, the poet wants instead to introject the world into himself. this introjection of the world into the self is the inverse of anthropomorphism, and has a name: physiomorphism. the poet’s introjection of the world into himself is an expression of the desire for plerotic fulfilment, which would necessarily collapse the dualisms between self/world, subject/object, mind/matter, interior/exterior, and so on, into a dynamic monistic unity. the obverse of this coin, exteriority demanding interiority, would involve the world projecting itself into the poet. were this latter transference to eventuate, the circuit of interpenetration would be complete and plerotic fulfilment achieved. the problem with this dynamic, of course, particularly once you have done away with god, is that it presupposes at the very least ascribing some form of intentionality to the material world. the best candidate to account for this physiomorphism is a term claude lévi-strauss employs in a savage mind to refer to the inverse of anthropomorphism. lévi-strauss introduces the term in a discussion comparing magic and religion, in which he argues that ‘although it can, in a sense, be said that religion consists in a humanization of natural laws and magic in a naturalization of human actions - the treatment of certain human actions as if they were an integral part of physical determinism - these are not alternatives or stages in an evolution. the anthropomorphism of nature (of which religion consists) and the physiomorphism of man (by which we have defined magic) constitute two components which are always given, and vary only in proportion. as we noticed earlier, each implies the other’ (lévi-strauss, , , original italics). graham richards defines physiomorphism thus: ‘the psychological assimilation of, identification with, or introjection of, properties found in the external world. thus external phenomena such as coldness, hardness and slipperiness enable us to identify ourselves and others as cold, hard or slippery in a psychological sense’ (richards, , ). more recently, the ecocritic ashton nichols argues for an analogous concept which he calls ‘ecomorphism’: ‘ecomorphism is the antithesis of anthropomorphism. instead of seeing myself at the center of my world, i can now help both myself, and the world around me, if i come to see my own activity—indeed, all human activity—in terms of its connectedness to nonhuman life. for centuries the poets have said, “that bird’s song is sad in the same way that i am sad” or “that flower looks happy, just as i am happy.” but the time has come to reconsider the tenor and the vehicle of such anthropomorphic metaphors. the vehicle is the personal subject—humans—from which the metaphor’s characteristic (sadness or happiness) is taken. the tenor is the natural subject (bird or flower) to which the human characteristic is given. poets, and other metaphor-makers, should now consider reversing this metaphoric order as often as possible in the interest of ecocentrism. no longer should ants be imagined to resemble humans: “the ant colony is just like the corporation for which i work; every ant is trying to work for the good of the whole, but individuals can often seem frustrated in their efforts to help others.” the time has come to reverse this claim and point out that humans often act like ants, or birds, or even flowers, not vice versa’ (nichols, , ). ~ ~ world-intention would be panpsychism, which, i will maintain, is a philosophical position stevens’ frequently entertains. nonetheless, the poet, allowing himself to entertain the notion of world-intention, has no determination over if and when the world does project itself into him. the dissolution of self in the world has often been described in the western tradition as an effect of sublime ekstasis—the experience of feeling transported outside of oneself. this experience is analogous to plerotic interpenetration insofar as the self is seized and assimilated by the object of its contemplation. if the poet is fortunate enough to experience this ekstasis his powers of cognition are momentarily suspended, rendering him dumb to articulation. nonetheless, the memory of the experience, although inexplicable, leaves its indelible trace. the poet, disappointed with the transitory nature of his experience, seeks its restitution. that he is a poet, his method of restitution is to try and write himself into it. and thus the rhetoric of plerotic desire is born. plerosis thus described as self-fulfilment by way of interpenetration with the ‘otherness’ of the exterior world, is not by any means the motivation of every poet, but it is almost certainly the motivation of every romantic poet, of which stevens is a late and to entertain is not the same as to believe. i am not making a claim for stevens’ belief in panpsychism per se, but instead suggesting that there is evidence in many of stevens’ poems which proffer a panpsychic perspective of the universe—his invocation of a ‘central mind’ in both ‘chocorua to its neighbour’ ( ) and ‘final soliloquy of the interior paramour’ ( ), later rephrased in ‘a child asleep in its own life’ as ‘that single mind’ ( ), provide the most obvious examples (which bear some resemblance to anaxagoras’ theory of nous). nowhere in stevens’ letters or essays does he explicitly refer to panpsychism. as is well known, however, stevens does convey an interest in and familiarity with the work of william james and a. n. whitehead, both of whom present arguments for particular forms of panpsychism—see, for instance, the following: william james, ( ), a pluralistic universe: hibbert lectures at manchester college on the present situation in philosophy, rockville: arc manor, esp. - ; william james, ( ), ‘novelty and causation—the perceptual view (chapter xiii)’, some problems of philosophy, new york: longmans, green, and co., - ; a. n. whitehead, ( ), process and reality: an essay in cosmology, new york: the free press; a. n. whitehead, ( ), adventures in ideas, new york: macmillan. any parallels between james and whitehead’s respective panpsychic arguments and stevens’ thought would remain highly speculative, and beyond the scope of the present thesis. suffice it to say, stevens’ poetry is rich with examples that gesture toward some form of mental or experiential aspect intrinsic to the material world at various levels of aggregate complexity. what i have explicitly in mind here is the longinian account of the sublime. see: longinus, ( ), ‘on the sublime’, classical literary criticism, ed. & trans. t. s dorsch, london: penguin, - ~ ~ exemplary case. another is whitman, as epitomised in his ‘song of myself’: ‘my tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,’ (whitman, , ). this apposition steers us toward one of stevens’ earliest plerotic personae—the eponymous protagonist of ‘tea at the palaz of hoon’: not less because in purple i descended the western day through what you called the loneliest air, not less was i myself. what was the ointment sprinkled on my beard? what were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears? what was the sea whose tide swept through me there? out of my mind the golden ointment rained, and my ears made the blowing hymns they heard. i was myself the compass of that sea: i was the world in which i walked, and what i saw or heard or felt came not but from myself; and there i found myself more truly and more strange. ( ) bloom interprets hoon as ‘a composite of stevens and whitman’ (bloom, , ), citing the start of section of ‘song of myself’ in support of this claim. we might imagine the whitman passage bloom cites runs as follows: dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, if i could not now and always send sun-rise out of me. we also ascend dazzling and tremendous as the sun, ~ ~ hoon rewriting whitman’s great poem of self, beginning thus: ‘i celebrate myself, and sing myself, / and what i assume all shall assume, / for every atom belonging to all as good becomes from me.’ this rewriting implicates the solipsism that so many of hoon’s detractors have accused him of typifying. my reading of hoon, as we will see, rejects this charge. in the context of this poem, hoon is recollecting a past experience, presumably to an unrepresented conversant with whom he is speaking over tea. we are prompted to construe hoon as an aristocratic figure due to his account that ‘in purple i descended / the western day’. in hoon’s recollection, the old rituals of anointment and their attendant hymns are transposed to his sublime communion with nature. the golden ointment that had rained from his mind and the blowing hymns that his ears had made do not prove him a solipsist. they signify instead that hoon, if we take him at his word, had temporarily accomplished plerosis, a man who had succeeded in orienting the sweep of the sea because he and the world had interpenetratively fulfilled each other; we found our own o my soul in the calm and cool of daybreak. my voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach, with the twirl of my tongue i encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. speech is the twin of my vision, it is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever, it says sarcastically, walt you contain enough, why don’t you let it out then? come now i will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation, do you know o speech how the buds beneath you are folded? waiting in the gloom, protected by the frost, the dirt receding before my prophetical screams, i underlying causes to balance them at last, my knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things, (whitman, , ). the original text reads: ‘i celebrate myself, and sing myself, / and what i assume you shall assume, / for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.’ (whitman, , ). i often wonder what goes through the minds of those people who continue to reiterate the critical commonplace of hoon as solipsist when they read the phrase ‘through what you called / the loneliest air, not less was i myself’. ~ ~ thus his will had been consistent with the will of the sea. simply put, the night, the air, the sea, had become hoon and hoon had become them; hoon had been embodied by the world and the world had been embodied by hoon. solipsism, in this light, is a faulty gauntlet to throw at hoon’s feet. i would suggest that we better read hoon as a panpsychic advocate recollecting his experience from the perspective of a manifold world-mind, of which hoon’s assertive self was but a representative part. we do not, of course, have to assent to the veracity of hoon’s account. we might write him off as delusional, as i suspect many of us do. i am of the opinion that stevens is himself sceptical of hoon’s hyperbolic reflection, the evidence for which, as i will argue presently, is underwritten in the ambiguity of the poem’s concluding line. furthermore, it is of no small significance that whitman wrote his majestic song of self in the present infinitive, whereas hoon’s testimony is relegated to the past tense. we learn from ‘sunday morning’, one of the earliest and most intertextually informative compositions in stevens’ first collection, that the world of harmonium is an ‘island solitude, unsponsored, free’ ( ). as such, the devotional object of hoon’s anointment and hymnal praise was not an absent god, but was the immanent world with which we are told he had become plerotically integrated. this is to say that hoon, richard p. adams speculates that ‘a knowledge of schopenhauers’s ideas may help us to understand stevens’ poems’ (adams, , ). stevens’ only sustained reference to schopenhauer, as adams acknowledges, occurs in ‘a collect of philosophy’. stevens’ journal entry of february , , wherein he refers to ‘schopenhauer’s psychological observations’ (l, ), indicates that he was at least partially familiar with the philosopher’s work some forty-five years before writing the aforementioned essay. i am drawing upon adams’ inference of a schopenhauerian influence on stevens’ thought regarding hoon’s will’s consistency with that of the sea. adams refers to ‘the contrast made by schopenhauer between the “the thing itself”, which for him was the world as will, and “ideas about the thing,” which of course belonged to the world as idea’ (adams, , ). i am suggesting that hoon’s claimed plerotic interpenetration with the sea itself would, following schopenhauer’s arguments, conflate the world as will with the will of hoon himself. another common interpretation of hoon is as a figure of apotheosis. curiously, part of stevens’ own gloss on leibniz’s monadology in ‘a collect of philosophy’ is written in language that reads quite pertinently to such an interpretation of hoon: ‘…in a system of monads, we come, in the end, to a man who is not only a man but sea and mountain, too, and to a god who is not only all these: man and sea and mountain but a god as well’ ( ). it should also not go by unnoticed that leibniz’s concept of the monad is a panpsychic theory. ~ ~ in anointing himself, was simultaneously anointing the world with which he had become one. the absence of god also informs the ambiguity of the poem’s concluding line, of which i am yet to read a compelling interpretation. to stay with bloom, he reads the line thus: ‘as his triumphant line makes clear, he is not a solipsist, because the “there” of his world is an arena in which he is at work finding himself, more truly the more he expands, and more strange, probably because pater, one of his high priests, had defined the romantic imagination as adding strangeness to beauty’ (bloom, , ). i am not sure this is what the line makes clear at all, and at least bloom is honest enough to admit to his speculation concerning pater’s influence on it. i accept bloom’s point that the world is where hoon is at work finding himself, but he does not sufficiently account for the proper implications of what hoon had found, not least of all because he makes the rather novice error of interpreting the line in the present continuous. what the poem does make clear is that hoon perceives the experience he recounts as having occurred in harmonium’s unsponsored world. the ointment and hymns that had issued not from god’s church, but from hoon’s plerotic interpenetration with nature, attest to this. i contend that the last line should be read as stevens’ authorial intervention into hoon’s brief narrative: the ‘i’ of the hyperbolic persona brought down to size by the authorial ‘i’ who feels dwarfed by the oversized mask he has just adorned. as such, i maintain that as hoon’s atonement was with the natural unsponsored world and not with god, accounts for stevens-as-hoon having found hoon more truly therein. margaret peterson argues, not in connection with this poem, but nonetheless applicably, that ‘[t]he nobility of man is a continuous theme and one concomitant with [steven’s] original rejection of christian belief. moreover the conception of stevens as a hedonist turned humanist overlooks the fact that his supposed humanism is based, from harmonium on, upon the naturalistic evolution of man from nature’ (peterson, , ~ ~ ). hoon, as a rhetorical projection of an aspect of stevens’ own plerotic desire, is a figure coherent with the poet’s apperception of reality, which, as peterson correctly argues, entails a naturalist belief system predicated upon the theory of evolution. stevens’ frequently literalizes evolutionary emergence as an identity between the emergent subject and that from which it has emerged. we have already seen this in ‘mud master’—the world is muddy so the mind is muddy. thus hoon’s evolutionary continuity with nature is also inscribed in how stevens-as-hoon found hoon more truly. once we understand this, we begin to see how stevens has pulled hoon away from his plerotic interpenetration with nature and into finding himself ‘more strange’. to begin with, hoon’s pseudo-apotheosis was a castle he had built in the air with the hands of emersonian self-reliance. without something like a doctrinally established formalisation of dispensation to support him, hoon would have found himself at odds with the foundations upon which his sacred expropriations were substantiated. we recall stevens’ aforementioned argument that after the gods had come to nothing, ‘it left us feeling dispossessed and alone in a solitude, like children without parents, in a home that seemed deserted, in which the amical rooms and halls had taken on a look of hardness and emptiness’ ( ). this confession’s psychological perspective underwrites hoon’s estrangement: as a descendant of god-absented nature, he is made strange in a cosmos that has no superordinate personality with which to identify. a rhetorical antagonist, to provide but one counter-example to a poetic figure made to compensate a personal desire, would maintain a belief system that did not accord with the poet’s apperception of reality so as to provide a foil with whom to argue. another early example of this literalization of the identity of emergent subject with that from which it has emerged can be found in ‘anatomy of monotony’: if from the earth we came, it was an earth that bore us as a part of all things it breeds and that was lewder than it is. our nature is her nature. hence it comes, since by our nature we grow old, earth grows the same. we parallel the mother's death. ( ). ~ ~ although hoon claims to have had achieved natural plerosis, this would have receded commensurate with his finding himself more strange: continuity is not identity, and so a difference perceived between self and a world that preceded selfhood in toto would have emerged. this emergent difference would have been quickened in that to find oneself strange in a world that is oneself is to become self-estranged. it is with this last line that stevens deflates hoon’s plerosis by drawing his ‘i was the world in which i walked’ into an ambivalence between truth and estrangement, which in this context is an ambivalence equivalent to that between identity and difference, between the world- self and its simultaneously distancing ‘there’, wherein stevens-as-hoon had found himself more strange. bloom collocates ‘tea at the palaz of hoon’, ‘the man whose pharynx was bad’ and ‘the snow man’ ‘as though they formed one larger, dialectical lyric when run together’ (bloom, , ). he is adamant that ‘[t]he reader who masters the interrelationships of these three brief texts…has reached the center of stevens’ poetic and human anxieties and of his resources for meeting those anxieties’ (ibid). bloom continues: ‘the pharynx poem states the crisis of poetic vision; the snow man meets the crisis by a reduction to the first idea; exuberantly, the great hymn of hoon, so invariably misread as irony, reimagines the first idea and restitutes, momentarily yet transumptively, the contraction of meaning provoked by the crisis’ (ibid). read intertextually, these three poems do indeed yield useful insights into stevens’ praxis in the main. however, i would reinterpret bloom’s reading of the ‘the snow man’ as ‘a reduction to the first idea’ as a figure of fully achieved kenosis. i have already reinterpreted bloom’s reading of hoon as a figure of ‘expansion’ (ibid, , ) in terms of plerotic fulfilment. hoon’s plerotic assertiveness, i would argue, is deflated by the poet’s epistemological doubt concerning his powers of expression in ‘the man whose ~ ~ pharynx was bad’. the title of this latter poem is in itself a naturalized, anatomical trope for a poet whose powers of expression have been compromised—rather than the disappearance of the muses or the absence of divine afflatus, it is simply that his own throat is at fault. the poem reads: the time of year has grown indifferent. mildew of summer and the deepening snow are both alike in the routine i know: i am too dumbly in my being pent. the wind attendant on the solstices blows on the shutters of the metropoles, stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls the grand ideas of the villages. the malady of the quotidian. . . . perhaps, if winter once could penetrate through all its purples to the final slate, persisting bleakly in an icy haze; one might in turn become less diffident, out of such mildew plucking neater mould and spouting new orations of the cold. one might. one might. but time will not relent. ( ) the indifference of the time of year forecloses the poet’s capacity to differentiate the world’s particulars. the seasonal variations have dissolved into an indistinguishable ~ ~ routine, thus relegating him to a mute confinement. not even the wind blowing at the plerotic zenith of summer’s solstice, nor at the kenotic nadir of winter’s, can stir the poet from his sleep. moreover, in a marvellous metalepsis, the wind tolls the grand ideas of the villages. this metalepsis operates in a typically stevensian double sense by punning on the verb. the ‘grand ideas of the villages’ is in itself a complex figure, no less than a metonymy of a synecdoche. the synecdoche is the village church, whose bells the wind is tolling, which stands pars pro toto for institutionalised religion. the grand ideas, then, are a metonymy for the creeds of the church. the wind tolling these grand ideas at once signifies their stale routineness metaphorised as measured time, while ironizing their very designation as grand. for stevens, inert routine stands next to death, hence the wind tolls these grand ideas in the second sense as an announcement of their demise in the disenchanted ‘malady of the quotidian’. this metalepsis also serves as an instance of stevens’ overthrowing the old transcendent order with the immanent world. the natural power of the wind has overturned the divine power of god—it has in fact delivered it of its death-knell. the ellipsis marks an anacoluthic break as the mood changes from the present indicative to an optative conditional. the poet hopes that if the winter will clarify the muddle of its purple periphrases into a ‘final slate’, a finality that in fact instantiates a new beginning, then he might be able to regain confidence in his ability to differentiate the world’s particulars again into a workable poesis. this ‘might’ is charged with an wind serves as stevens’ commonplace metonymy for natural utterance, a favourite trope of the english romantics. see, for instance, stevens’ short apostrophe: ‘to the roaring wind’ ( ). the ‘final slate’ is thematically cognate with ‘the air is not a mirror but bare board,’ ( ) in the fourth canto of ‘notes toward a supreme fiction: it must be abstract’. the speaker, revising eve’s making air the mirror of herself, asserts that the air is a bare board, that is to say, a tabula rasa free of any pre-imposed identity. again, this is thematically cognate with the figure of ‘omega refreshed at every end.’ ( ) concluding the sixth canto of ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’. t. s. eliot, in many respects stevens’ bête noire, finishes ‘east coker’ with an uncannily similar trope: ‘in my end is my beginning.’ (eliot, , ). of course eliot begins ‘east coker’ this lines inverse: ‘in my beginning is my end.’ (ibid, ). ~ ~ acute urgency, however, as the future realisation of his hope is suppressed by the relentlessness of the ongoing present. ‘the man whose pharynx was bad’ is a symptomatic figure of stevens’ epistemological doubt. stevens’ uncertainty as to whether the poet can say anything about the world as it is, of things as they are, of mere being, is the tempering cap with which he intermittently stops the lens of his refractive imagination. it takes many forms in his poetry, whether it be through dramatizing an expressive crisis as in the poem just read; through the defensive use of impersonal voice or distancing personae; through self-conscious interrogation of and within a poem; through his frequent use of evasive syntax, hypotheses, contradictions, and qualified assertions; through complex figural deviations; or by composing and arranging poems in sets that establish intertextual networks of contrary or differential variations on a guiding theme, trope or idea. it would perhaps be supererogatory to add that doubt is a deep pool of renewed creativity for stevens, as this poem exemplifies. ‘the man whose pharynx was bad’, after all, is a poem generated by the doubtfulness of being able to poetize, of being able to spout new orations of the cold. we might suppose that the speaker of ‘the man whose pharynx was bad’ could attempt to pursue hoon’s path of plerotic interpenetration, which, as we have seen, collapses back into an ambivalence between identity and difference. this eventual stevens’ frequent predication of his syntax on the objective pronoun ‘one’ is telling in this regard. see: helen vendler, ( ), ‘the qualified assertions of wallace stevens’, the act of the mind: essays on the poetry of wallace stevens, ed. roy harvey pearce and j. hillis miller, baltimore: the johns hopkins press, - ; helen vendler, (winter ), ‘wallace stevens: hypotheses and contradictions’, representations, : , - . see: frank doggett, ( ), wallace stevens: the making of a poem, baltimore and london: the johns hopkins university press, - ; laury magnus, (spring ), ‘”and things beyond resemblances”: on stevens’ embedded similes’, wallace stevens journal, : , - . ‘stevens made a habit of publishing poems in carefully organized sets, particularly in pairs in which one poem questions, undercuts, and cycles into the other’ (schulze qtd. in eeckhout, , ). ~ ~ collapse into an ambivalence between identity and difference could in fact be one remedy to the speaker’s indifferentism. yet the speaker of the poem would appear to desire realising what the kenotic ‘final slate’ of winter might entail. this latter path would involve going the way of ‘the snow man’. as i will be giving a fuller reading of ‘the snow man’ in the next chapter, i will only make some perfunctory remarks on it here. elements we are by now familiar with from our reading of hoon also appear in ‘the snow man’, only in sharper focus, which is eminently befitting of the poem’s starkness. i am of course referring to the panpsychic/physiomorphic amalgam. the titular snow man, whatever else ‘he’ might be, possesses a ‘mind of winter’, performs perceptual and cognitive acts (regarding, beholding, thinking, listening), and is perplexingly embedded within a triply compounded nothing: ‘and, nothing himself, beholds / nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.’ ( ). whereas hoon was fulfilled with the world-self, the snow man is a figure of profound emptiness—but it is an emptiness which surpasses in magnificent quietude anything of which hoon in all of his enraptured grandiloquence is capable. this distinction points to a marked difference in the tone and style of the two poems. ‘tea at the palaz of hoon’ is written in a sublime, lofty register, importing its purple diction and hieratic phrasing from the victorian aesthetes, all perfectly suitable to its ecstatic subject. ‘the snow man’, by comparison, is lexically spare, as per the credos of imagism with which stevens’ briefly flirted. it is, however, syntactically sinuous, hypotactic in its phrasing, and, if a forebear it must have, the most viable contender would be emily dickinson at her most non-exclamatory. it is a poem in the meditative tradition, and would provide the model for all of stevens’ superb late pensive lyrics. but william w. bevis refers to ‘the snow man’ as ‘a periphrastic striptease’ (bevis, , ). ~ ~ we must further explore the hoonian impulse for immanent plerosis, as it is such an integral component of stevens’ religious naturalism. * hoon reappears (or is recast), bloom correctly points out, as walt whitman in the first section of ‘like decorations in a nigger cemetery’: in the far south the sun of autumn is passing like walt whitman walking along a ruddy shore. he is singing and chanting the things that are a part of him, the worlds that were and will be, death and day. nothing is final, he chants. no man shall see the end. his beard is of fire and his staff is a leaping flame. ( ) the simile in this passage should give us pause. is it the sun who is walking along the shore, or is it walt whitman? the appositive gerunds confuse the sense. bloom’s solution, which this confusion enables, is ‘that whitman is both the sun and the world in which he walks’ (bloom, , ), and thus accounts for his alignment with hoon. the same problem, of course, that beset hoon—that of the ambivalence between identity and difference—occurs here. the ambivalence is in fact more pointed in this example, as the connection hinges on a simile as opposed to hoon’s metaphorical pronouncement. ‘i would judge that [hoon] appears again in as the walt whitman in section i of like decorations, and in his own name and right again, later in , in sad strains of a gay waltz, and finally as the insouciant well dressed man with a beard in ’ (bloom, , ). i agree with bloom on the first, the second is beyond dispute, whereas the third i consider somewhat idiosyncratic. ~ ~ likeness and unlikeness, as every poetry reader knows, are simultaneously implied in the very grammatical structure of a is like b. stevens revises hoon’s self-world integration a perspectival step further in ‘a rabbit as king of the ghosts’: and to feel that the light is a rabbit-light, in which everything is meant for you and nothing need be explained; then there is nothing to think of. it comes of itself; and east rushes west and west rushes down, no matter. the grass is full and full of yourself. the trees around are for you, the whole of the wideness of night is for you, a self that touches all edges, you become a self that fills the four corners of night. ( ) here we see stevens extending the self-world integration to include non-human animals. ‘a self that touches all edges’ is a wonderful synaesthetic stroke, especially when we consider our taken for granted conflation of feeling and tactility. when a person says ‘i feel moved’, they do not feel it with the eye, ear, tongue or nose, but in that most plerotic and least defined of bodily senses, touch. our sense of touch covers the surface of our skin and goes all the way down, as it were, from head to toe, heart to gut. it is cooperative in all of our other senses, and is the primary recipient of pleasure and the exclusive recipient of pain. it is the only sense coextensive with our entire body, ~ ~ and is therefore foremost in our contact with the phenomenal world; one need only imagine navigating an unfamiliar pitch-black room to bear home the point. it is for these reasons that it is synaesthetically bound up with our emotional being and imparts to our understanding the complex sense embedded in the verb phrase ‘to feel’. as such, it is arguably the sense most intimately linked with our intuition of being an embodied self in the world. thus, ‘a self that touches all edges’, is to absorb the hoonian figure of expansion and amplify it to the fullest degree. it takes the pronouncement ‘i was the world in which i walked’—a claim which appeals solely to the ego—and physicalizes it with and through the emotional colouring we have seen embedded in the sense of touch, and thus renders hoon’s boast rather paltry in comparison. we can enumerate stevens’ non-human extension of subjects in various states of plerotic achievement or desirousness even further: the bantam chastising the ‘damned universal cock’ in ‘bantams in pine-woods’: ‘your world is you. i am my world.’ ( ); ‘the parakeet of parakeets’ in ‘the bird with the coppery keen claws’ ( ), which operates as a satire upon a modern idealist conception of god (see: peterson, , - ); the ‘green vine angering for life’ in ‘nomad exquisite’ ( ); ‘the eminent thunder from the mouse’, a universal, heroic mouse who survives and outstrips all contemporaneous human endeavour, and predominates as ‘one of the not-numerable mice’ in ‘the blue buildings in the summer air’ ( - ); the bird who ‘kept saying that birds had once been men,’ and ‘in the little of his voice…proclaimed himself, was proclaimed’, in ‘on an old horn’ ( - ); ‘the dry eucalyptus’ who ‘seeks god in the rainy cloud’ in ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’ ( ), which illustrates in miniature mutter’s thesis concerning stevens’ strategy of substitution, in that it ‘shifts the attention from the content of the religious idea to the needs and desires that generated ~ ~ it’ (mutter, fall , ); and the titular mountain-monologist in ‘chocorua to its neighbour’, who declares from afar: to speak quietly at such a distance, to speak and to be heard is to be large in space, that, like your own, is large, hence, to be part of sky, of sea, large earth, large air. it is to perceive men without reference to their form. ( ). we can discern in this by no means exhaustive gathering stevens’ gestures toward the natural world in its nonhuman otherness. this is significant, because it intimates a fundamental aspect of the shortcomings stevens’ perceived in humanism. in a letter to henry church, may , , he writes: ‘the chief defect of humanism is that it concerns human beings. between humanism and something else, it might be possible to create an acceptable fiction’ (l, ). leon surette suggests that ‘in stevens’ view humanism is characterized by a denial of the inhuman, of that which exceeds, or, to use a derridean term, “supplements” the human’ (surette, spring , ). derrida’s ‘supplement’ is an interesting term to invoke in this connection. derrida describes the supplement as having a double signification. in the first signification it is additive: ‘the supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence’ (derrida, , , original italics), the second signification is compensatory: ‘but the supplement supplements. it adds only to replace. it intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of; if it fills, it is as if one fills a void’ (ibid, , original italics). in the first instance the supplement adds itself to a thing already whole in itself; in the second it replaces something lacking in the thing that it supplements, thus ~ ~ subverting the integrity of the lacking thing as a self-contained whole and thus replacing it with a supplemented thing. i agree with voros that the ‘something else’ stevens alludes to in his letter to henry church is ‘the physical universe, which exists prior to and beyond the human and for which stevens’s primary word was “reality.”’ (voros, , ). voros describes stevens’ reality as ‘a demythified, nontranscendental naturalistic nature’ (ibid, ); he also qualifies it as both ‘nonteleological’ and ‘nonanthropocentric’ (ibid, ). i would argue that stevens’ conception of a nonhuman nature denuded of god and ultimate purpose is the necessary supplement to the humanism he found wanting. stevens’ ‘reality’ accords with humanism insofar as it does not seek a reality beyond the natural, but goes further than humanism in asserting that the human is not a sufficient end in and of itself. the human, for stevens, is supplemented by nature in that attending to it extends human concern to a veneration of something beyond itself. thus nature also supplements, in a compensatory sense, the humanist’s lack of god. with this in mind, i think we can and should read stevens as an eloquent critic of anthropocentrism. the foregoing, however, should not be taken to imply that the human is excluded from this expanded ambit of veneration. stevens is not, by any means, an anti-humanist. his gloss on his poem ‘a fading of the sun’ ( - ) in a letter to ronald lane latimer, november , , is about as direct a humanist statement as you will find: it is an old story that we derive our ideas of nobility, say, from noble objects of nature. but then, it is an equally old story that we derive them from ourselves. for convenience, and in view of the simplicity of the large mass of people, we give our good qualities to god, or to various gods, but they come from ourselves. in a fading of the sun the point is that, instead of crying for help to god or to one of the gods, we should look to ourselves for help. the exaltation of human nature should ~ ~ take the place of its abasement. perhaps i ought to say, the sense of its exaltation should take the place of its abasement. (l, ). * i have already argued that stevens departs from his romantic and transcendentalist forebears by dispensing with their predication of communing with nature as a means to find god. for stevens, communing with nature is a sufficient good in and of itself, and it is through his poetry that he bears witness to this good. whereas a conventionally religious poet such as gerard manly hopkins would say: ‘the world is charged with the grandeur of god’ (hopkins, , ), the religious naturalist stevens would say: ‘the most beautiful (the only beautiful) (beautiful is an inadequate and temporizing improvisation) thing in the world is, of course, the world itself. this is so not only logically but categorically’ ( ). mutter describes stevens’ tautological thinking regarding the sufficiency of the natural world as follows: stevens’s ambition to make language tautological with the experience of the world in its immanence is an ambition to overturn this prejudice against the world, to experience it as stevens’ transcendence downward, to reprise scott jr.’s phrase, is emphasised in another fragmentary journal entry: ‘feed my lambs (on the bread of the living) . . . the glory of god is the glory of the world . . . to find the spiritual in reality . . . to be concerned with reality’ ( ). the trajectory is typical of stevens: rather than feed the christian flock on heavenly manna, stevens insists on feeding a worldly flock on worldly sustenance. on the face of it, the second phrase would seem to bear a close affinity to hopkins’ previously quoted line, but this would be a specious comparison. hopkins’ is making a dualistic assertion between spirit and matter: that the world is charged with a divine force, but a force nonetheless issuing from something beyond the material world. stevens’ is a monistic tautology, he is equating the glory of god with the glory of the world, which is to say that they are one and the same. it is as close as stevens gets to a pantheistic attitude and bears no repetition elsewhere in his poetry or prose, other than, so far as i can determine, in section xiv of ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’. in this section, professor eucalyptus is depicted seeking ‘god in the object itself, without much choice.’ ( ). stevens in imparting this pantheistic search to one of his personae removes himself from the commitment, but nevertheless allows it in as another ‘celestial possible’ ( ). stevens’ expressed desire to find the spiritual in reality, which is quite obviously of an immanent persuasion, is arguably analogous to professor eucalyptus’ search to find god in the object itself. ~ ~ something “complete,” “sufficient,” “adequate,” or “enough.” these sorts of words appear in stevens’s poetry again and again. to experience the world as sufficient, even as a plenitude, is to repudiate the intuition he, following william james, thought the beginning of religious consciousness; namely, that there is something wrong with the world, and that our difficulty here means we must refer our discontented desire to something “beyond” in order to render it intelligible and relieve our misery. (mutter, fall , ). as we have already seen, stevens does not repudiate the intuition toward religious consciousness outright, only what he perceives to be, as mutter points out, its pernicious tendency to transcend the natural. mutter proceeds to argue that stevens prioritises sensory experience: ‘stevens looks to the sensory because it ends with itself, is satisfied with itself, asks nothing beyond itself. it makes no sense to say of a color, a shape, or a landscape, “is it enough?” the visual imperative in stevens can therefore be understood as an attempt to overcome the uneasiness toward the visual in monotheistic religions, with their proscriptions of idolatry and their preference for the interior or the inward’ (mutter, fall , ). as i have already demonstrated, for stevens the outward or exterior is often proposed to be a manifestation of the inward or interior. a striking example of this is the early ‘anecdote of men by the thousand’: the soul, he said, is composed of the external world. there are men of the east, he said, who are the east. there are men of a province who are that province. there are men of a valley ~ ~ who are that valley. there are men whose words are as natural sounds of their places as the cackle of toucans in the place of toucans. the mandoline is the instrument of a place. are there mandolines of western mountains? are there mandolines of northern moonlight? the dress of a woman of lhassa, in its place, is an invisible element of that place made visible. ( ) the emphasis here is again on outward manifestations of numinous interior qualities peculiar to specific places. the supposition, presumably, is that the inward is to be inferred from its outward manifestations. ‘i am what is around me’ ( ) declares the speaker of ‘theory’. stevens’ pseudo-heliotheism resituates this equivalence between inward and outward from the specificity of worldly loci to their solar source. in his early suite of epigrams ‘new england verses’ it is stated bluntly: ‘all things in the sun are sun.’ ( ), and in section vi of ‘esthétique du mal’: ‘the sun is the country wherever he is.’ ( ). in ‘waving adieu, adieu, adieu’, a poem dismissive of christian notions of an ~ ~ afterlife and asserting the poignancy of death’s finality, concludes with a conciliatory resignation: ‘ever-jubilant, / what is there here but weather, what spirit / have i except it comes from the sun?’ ( ). not only is place and spirit formed from the sun, but so too the products of human making: ‘of what is this house composed if not of the sun,’ ( ) asks the speaker of ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’. and finally, in the magnificent late retrospect ‘the planet on the table’, stevens announces that his poems are also ‘makings of the sun’: ariel was glad he had written his poems. they were of a remembered time or of something seen that he liked. other makings of the sun were waste and welter and the ripe shrub writhed. his self and the sun were one and his poems, although makings of his self, were no less makings of the sun. it was not important that they survive. what mattered was that they should bear some lineament or character, some affluence, if only half-perceived, in the poverty of their words, of the planet of which they were part. ( ) ~ ~ these notions of environmental determinism would recur throughout stevens’ poetry to the end. his late posthumously published poem, ‘a mythology reflects its region’, which samuel morse speculates ‘may very well be the last poem stevens wrote’ (op, xxiii), bears this out: a mythology reflects its region. here in connecticut, we never lived in a time when mythology was possible—but if we had— that raises the question of the image’s truth. the image must be of the nature of its creator. it is the nature of its creator increased, heightened. it is he, anew, in a freshened youth and it is he in the substance of his region wood of his forests and stone out of his fields or from under his mountains. ( ) the ‘true’ image must be of the nature of its creator, but the creator ‘in a freshened youth’, is nonetheless embedded in the substance of his region. this is to say that the ‘truth’ of the mythological image, were it possible, must be derived from the substance of its region. stevens’ essay ‘the figure of youth as a virile poet’ is a crucial intertext to an understanding of this poem. in this essay the youthful, virile poet is a figure of ‘intelligence that endures’ ( ) the ‘antique imagination of the father’ (ibid). he is an emergent figure ‘stepping forward in the company of a muse of its own, still half-beast ~ ~ and somehow more than human, a kind of sister of the minotaur’ ( ) to discover ‘a pleasure of agreement with the radiant and productive world in which he lives’ ( ). this figure of the emergent poetic imagination is concerned, according to stevens, with poetic truth. whatever poetic truth involves, and stevens himself admits this, is ambiguous. it is said to involve ‘the belief of credible people in credible things’ ( ). this is tied to stevens’ notion of the youthful, virile poet who must overcome ‘the burden of the obscurities of the intelligence of the old’ ( ) to discover a credible truth for his contemporaries. it is also concerned with fact, but not, as stevens’ insists, with the absolute fact of reality, but with poetic ideas that satisfy the imagination ( ). these poetic ideas and their truth, however, are said to be congruent with reality: ‘…the truth that we experience when we are in agreement with reality is the truth to fact’ ( ). poetic truth, stevens argues, arises from the world as it is in our process of perceiving it. whereas the philosopher limits him or herself ‘to the gaunt world of reason’ ( ), the poet lives in a ‘mundo of the imagination...[whose] pleasure is the pleasure of powers that create a truth that cannot be arrived at by the reason alone, a truth that the poet recognizes by sensation’ ( ). sensory experience as it is experienced, then, is the basis of poetic truth. but the figure of the youthful, virile poet transfigures this raw data of experience through his imagination. his imagination is in conversation with his half-beast though more than human muse (a chimerical hybrid of the primordial real with a metaphysical being), which compels him to make the following address: for a lively disputation as to who or what the sister of the minotaur might be, see: stanley cavell’s ‘reflections on wallace stevens at mount holyoke’; jeffrey mehlman’s response to cavell ‘thoughts on wallace stevens’s contribution at pontigny-en-amérique’; and cavell’s counter-response to mehlman ‘postscript: response to mehlman’; collected in christopher benfey and karen remmler, eds., ( ), artists, intellectuals, and world war ii: the pontigny encounters at mount holyoke college, - , boston and amherst: university of massachusetts press, - . ~ ~ inexplicable sister of the minotaur, enigma and mask, although i am part of what is real, hear me and recognise me as part of the unreal. i am the truth but the truth of that imagination of life in which with unfamiliar motion and manner you guide me in those exchanges of speech in which your words are mine, mine yours. ( ) this amounts to an admission that the poet and his imagination aspire to mythopoeic truth—but one that must be rooted in its time and place, as the foregoing poem suggests, in order to be credible. the pollination of the real with the unreal will be the source of this mythology. the indefinite historical period the speaker refers to in connecticut was evidently not germane to a credible mythology. but the speaker has left another note toward a supreme fiction, as it were, a fragmentary blueprint for some future poet in a freshened youth to realise a possible mythology which adequately reflects its region. this rhetorical manoeuvre is typical of stevens. he is continuously positing possibilities that remain unrealised. the realisation of a mythology, a supreme fiction, is something that he only composes notes toward. this effectively places the onus on the reader to contemplate what a supreme fiction might entail in his or her own historical context. for stevens, the finality of a fully realised supreme fiction or mythology would be anathema to his pluralistic restlessness. ‘july mountain’, another short, late poem emphasises this point: we live in a constellation of patches and pitches, not in a single world, in things well said in music, ~ ~ on the piano, and in speech, as in a page of poetry— thinkers without final thoughts in an always incipient cosmos, the way, when we climb a mountain, vermont throws itself together. ( ) the plurality of worlds made up of patches and pitches for each thinker without final thoughts suggests that the mind (interior) will never find a wholly congruent satisfaction with the world (exterior). section vi of ‘extracts from addresses to the academy of fine ideas’ tells of a thinker who …wanted to think his way to life, sure that the ultimate poem was the mind, or of the mind, or of the mind in these elysia, these days, half earth, half mind; half sun, half thinking of the sun; half sky, half desire for indifference about the sky. he, that one, wanted to think his way to life, to be happy because people were thinking to be. they had to think it to be. he wanted that, to face the weather and be unable to tell how much of it was light and how much thought, in these elysia, these origins, this single place in which we are and stay, except for the images we make of it, and for it, and by which we think the way, ~ ~ and, being unhappy, talk of happiness and, talking of happiness, know that it means that the mind is the end and must be satisfied. it cannot be half earth, half mind; half sun, half thinking; until the mind has been satisfied, until, for him, his mind is satisfied. time troubles to produce the redeeming thought. sometimes at sleepy mid-days it succeeds, too vaguely that it be written in character. ( - ) the satisfactions of the mind are achieved, so the poem tells us, in a somnolent realm of unintelligibility, yet only ‘sometimes’. these satisfactions are still subject to the sovereign law of necessity, which, as bloom has it in reference to the serpent in ‘auroras of autumn’, is the law of ‘time and mutability’ (bloom, winter , ). to put it in spinozan terms, stevens is more interested in natura naturans than in natura naturata, in process rather than completion, an incipient rather than an already developed cosmos. i would argue that this is why stevens is so emphatically discursive. david ayers presents an argument not dissimilar to the one i have been making: ‘stevens sees poetry as basically discursive. he does not, however, think of writing as something that can transcend and fix experience, but as immanent to experience, permanently circulating within it, indeed constituting it. so language, though it is a discourse, is not a discourse of finality, but of openness’ (ayers, , ). where i would differ from ayers, however, is that i would argue that stevens’ poetry in its very discursiveness does indeed mimic the experience of thinking itself: its misgivings and equivocations, its occasional bursts of aphoristic certainty, its constant revisions and revolutions of ideas, ~ ~ formulations, theories, beliefs. stevens, we could argue, achieves a paradoxical resolution of mimesis in transcending and fixing the experience of non-fixedness. and this, i would further argue, is fundamentally reflective of stevens’ attitude towards mind and nature—that they parallel one another inasmuch as they are always in a state of mutable becoming and never resolved. a contrary thrust in stevens, which we will explore further in the following chapter, is that the mind or the sense of selfhood is often so resistant to assimilation that it perceives of itself as alienated from the world. as we have seen, however, stevens also constantly reiterates their unification: i am a native in this world and think like a native thinks, gesu, not native of a mind thinking the thoughts i call my own, native, a native in the world and like a native think in it. ( - ) the thoughts are not the thinker’s own, but are immanent to the world in which the thinker indigenously belongs. more than just his thinking, his imagination is determined by the world around him: the world imagines for the beholder. he is born the blank mechanic of the mountains the blank frere of fields, their matin laborer. ~ ~ he is the possessed of sense not the possessor. ( ) so to his very self: if he will be heaven after death, if, while he lives, he hears himself sounded in music, if the sun, stormer, is the color of a self as certainly as night is the color of a self, if, without sentiment, he is what he hears and sees and if, without pathos, he feels what he hears and sees, being nothing otherwise, having nothing otherwise, he has not to go to the louvre to behold himself. ( ) music, the sun, the night, are all externalities which sound out and colour a self, or a mutability of selves, changing in coextension with the changing external conditions. this is, i would maintain, a fundamentally plerotic attitude. whereas hoon’s plerosis is characterised by an assertive boastfulness approaching the apotheosis of self, the plerosis stevens appears to find more satisfying is characterised by a passive openness to the experiential unity of self and world. it is of no small significance that in this passage stevens executes something of a performative contradiction. the louvre stands as a synecdoche for the institution of art. stevens’ means of articulating the sufficiency of experiential being in the world is via the ~ ~ art of poetry. by extension, we can take this to imply that poetry, as with the art collected in the louvre, is not required to behold oneself. this can be done, so stevens seems to tell us, by merely being assiduously cognizant of one’s own experience in the world. his way out of this contradiction that would begin to dominate his thinking on poetry from the ’s onwards is to synonymise poetry with life itself. we recall his insistence from ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’ that the theory of poetry is the theory of life. this notion was seeded as early as the famous ‘memorandum’ letter that he wrote to henry church, october , : what is intended is to study the theory of poetry in relation to what poetry has been and in relation to what it ought to be. its literature is a part of it, and only a part of it. for this purpose, poetry means not the language of poetry but the thing itself, wherever it may be found. it does not mean verse any more than philosophy means prose. the subject-matter of poetry is the thing to be ascertained. […] it is the aspects of the world and of men and women that have been added to them by poetry. these aspects are difficult to recognize and to measure. (l, ). here poetry is not merely its literature, nor its form (verse), but more importantly, its subject matter. its subject matter, in a typically vague formulation, is said to be poetry’s aspectual additions to the world of men and women. if we were to make a type/token distinction, then, stevens would appear to be saying that poetry’s literature and form, that is to say actual poems, are its tokens. poetry’s type would appear to be a mode of perception—a way of viewing the world that recognises aspects of it that, presumably, had not been previously ascertained. stevens writes in ‘the man with the blue guitar’, some few years before composing this letter: poetry is the subject of the poem, ~ ~ from this the poem issues and to this returns. between the two, between issue and return, there is an absence in reality, things as they are. or so we say. but are these separate? is it an absence for the poem, which acquires its true appearances there, sun’s green, cloud’s red, earth feeling, sky that thinks? from these it takes. perhaps it gives, in the universal intercourse. ( - ). this canto would seem to lend credence to critics who want to suggest that the primary subject matter of stevens’ poetry is poetry itself. however, although the poem issues from and returns to itself, it does so by way of an ‘absence in reality, / things as they are’. the apposition of an absence in reality with things as they are suggests that poetry is that which presences things as they are. without the orphic intervention of poetry, things as they are remain absent or, as it were, unissued. but it is as much the things as they are interfusing the presencing power of poetry that imparts to poetry, upon its return, its own presence, its ‘true appearances’. poetry here seems to assume a metaphysical numinous agency of its own, as though it is the agency responsible for reality coming into awareness of itself. the green of the sun and the red of the clouds ~ ~ are defamiliarising modifiers, but no less a part of the phenomenal aspects that both the sun and the clouds are capable of exhibiting. a feeling earth and thinking sky are primary contributors to the universal intercourse of which poetry is the articulating power. what is giving or taking at any given time in this intercourse remains indeterminate. or so stevens might be saying. many years later he would write in ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’: ‘the poem is the cry of its occasion, / part of the res itself and not about it.’ ( ). poetry is here also postulated as being part of the ‘res’, the latin for ‘thing’. poetry, the cry, is occasioned by the thing; the thing is cried through poetry. this circular interrelationship between poetry and thing, or its functional cognates in stevens’ theoretical terminology, namely imagination and reality, is the arch-substitute for the idea of god. in this sense his theory of poetry, which his actual poetry frequently seeks to articulate in practice, could be described as meta-poetry. a meta-poetry in that it declares itself to be both realising agent and signifier of the ground of reality, or we might say, being, to which it is immanent. i would argue that poetry, then, as stevens declares as early as ‘a high-toned old christian woman’ ( ), is his supreme fiction. or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, stevens envisions poetry as the vehicle for articulating a supreme fiction that is, paradoxically, inarticulable. stevens’ poetry so frequently returns to rhetoricising an ultimate expression that is actually impossible to contain in expression: high poetry and low: experience in perihelion or in the penumbra of summer night— the solemn sentences, like interior intonations, ~ ~ the speech of truth in its true solitude, a nature that is created in what it says, the peace of the last intelligence; ( ) does this passage tell us what high poetry and low experience in perihelion or in the penumbra of summer night? or should the colon indicate an anacoluthic break, and that what follows is an imperative command to high poetry and low? irrespective of which grammatical path one chooses to read this passage, they both invariably lead to the postulation of an experiential truth in the solitude and the peace of the last intelligence. troublingly, the nature of this experiential truth is said to be created in what it says, but it is not in the premise that this saying is communicable in human language. such an experience, were it possible, cannot be said. this demonstrates a rhetorical collision between the plerosis of the absolute—an experience of finality in perihelion—and the kenosis of silence absenting this experience’s expressibility. language, alas, can only gesture towards the encircling silence against which it conspires to elicit veneration for its absenting delimiter. another demonstration of the venerable relationship between poetry and immanent being is given by one of stevens’ numerous personae, ‘a pastoral nun’: finally, in the last year of her age, having attained a present blessedness, she said poetry and apotheosis are one. this is the illustration she used: if i live according to this law i live in an immense activity, in which ~ ~ everything becomes morning, summer, the hero, the enraptures woman, the sequestered night, the man that suffered, lying there at ease, without his envious pain in body, in mind, the favorable transformations of the wind as of a general being or human universe. there was another illustration, in which the two things compared their tight resemblances: each matters only in that which it conceives. ( ) poetry here assumes a spiritually therapeutic function. the nun, approaching death, illustrates her thesis that poetry and apotheosis are one. significantly, the plerotic enlargements of an immense activity that living by this law give her access to have nothing to do with death or what comes after. it helps her, as we have seen stevens elsewhere claim of poetry, to live her life. living by this law enables her to conceive of life and her part in it as belonging to something immense in which everything, in principle, becomes. stevens elusively foreshortens the nun’s second illustration to an ambiguous aphoristic fragment. whatever the case, the tight resemblances between poetry and apotheosis have something to do with the significance of which each conceives. the self-reflexivity of this statement opens the matter, as it were, to whatever the comparatist finds resemblant among the conceptions of poetry and apotheosis. again, this displaces the onus of contemplating these resemblances onto the reader. it is a rhetorical tactic that compels the reader to think about how poetry and ~ ~ apotheosis are one in that which they conceive, and in so doing, elevates the reader into a contemplation that partakes of the immense activity such a comparison requires. stevens’ rhetorical persuasions to these elusive ends deflect the culpability of commitment to any final pronouncements on what poetry as the supreme fiction makes manifest. this is certainly the case for poetry qua poetry conceived of as the supreme fiction, or, as i have said, its vehicle. however, within the ‘supreme fiction’ that stevens actually writes, that is to say his body of poems, we find him concocting an array of fictive beings—his heroes, giants, major and central men (the ‘human-epitome’ figures lensing refers to), —to populate his not so disenchanted world. some of these figures will receive attention in the following chapter, so i will not expand upon their appearances in stevens’ poetry here. to finish this chapter, i will return to the natural world, so beloved of stevens, to explore the consolations of adequacy he finds there. * i have previously alluded to stevens’ frequent invocations of the adequacy, sufficiency, even the completeness, to reiterate mutter, of ‘the experience of the world in its immanence’ (mutter, fall , ). adequacy and sufficiency betoken a somewhat muted plerosis of immanent experience; completeness an increase in degree rather than a difference in kind. they are all, nonetheless, forms of fulfilment. the earliest and best known example of the sufficiency of the experience of the immanent world is of course stevens’ ‘sunday morning’, which nancy n. frankenberry judges ‘very probably the finest expression of religious naturalism in american poetry’ of which the previously discussed figure of the poet as a virile youth is an example originating outside of the poetry. ~ ~ (frankenberry, , ). the eight-stanzaed sequence takes the form of a dialogical indirect discourse between a woman who is not in attendance at church at the titularly appointed time and the poem’s expository commentator. over the course of the poem’s eight stanzas, the woman, dressed in her peignoir and enjoying a late breakfast of coffee and oranges, contemplates the ‘that old catastrophe, / […] silent palestine, / dominion of the blood and sepulchre.’ ( ). this reverie induces her to question her ambivalence toward her religious commitments, or lack thereof, in comparison with the psychological and physical satisfactions derived from the immanent world. throughout this inquiry, the commentator reaffirms the sufficiency of the immanent world to meet the satisfactions she desires. we are told along the way that divinity must live within herself: passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued elations when the forest blooms; gusty emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; all pleasures and all pains, remembering the bough of summer and the winter branch. these are the measures destined for her soul. ( ). she wonders whether these measures destined for her soul ‘shall… / seem all of paradise that we shall know’ ( ). her indirect interlocutor grants on the one hand that if we accept the doctrine of incarnation ‘the sky will be much friendlier then than now,’ ( ), but on the other hand assures that there is not any haunt of prophecy, ~ ~ nor any old chimera of the grave, neither the golden underground, nor isle melodious, where spirits gat them home, nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm remote on heaven's hill, that has endured as april's green endures; or will endure like her remembrance of awakened birds, or her desire for june and evening, tipped by the consummation of the swallow's wings. ( ) nonetheless, ‘she says, “but in contentment i still feel / the need of some imperishable bliss.”’ ( ), to which the speaker declares that ‘death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, / alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams / and our desires.’ ( ). death, so it is implied, is what sharpens our acuity of bliss and beauty in the here-and-now of lived experience. she is the author of change, without which, in an eternal paradise, we would experience only stasis. presumably, without the transiency that charges beauty and bliss with temporal allurement—which seems to be one of both of their distinguishing, albeit contingent, properties—our desire for these experiences would be nullified, which, in consequence, would eliminate the very experiences themselves. the following and penultimate stanza returns us from a meditation on edenic stagnation to the world at dawn in which a neo-pagan ritual is improvised: supple and turbulent, a ring of men shall chant in orgy on a summer morn their boisterous devotion to the sun, not as a god, but as a god might be, ~ ~ naked among them, like a savage source. their chant shall be a chant of paradise, out of their blood, returning to the sky; and in their chant shall enter, voice by voice, the windy lake wherein their lord delights, the trees, like serafin, and echoing hills, that choir among themselves long afterward. they shall know well the heavenly fellowship of men that perish and of summer morn. and whence they came and whither they shall go the dew upon their feet shall manifest. ( - ) the chant of paradise will be a chant of earthly paradise, as it will be ‘out’ of the men’s own human blood commingled with the voices of the windy lake, the trees, and the echoing hills—each of which are appointed their naturalised roles in this terrestrial congregation: the windy lake as speculum of their lord the sun’s delight; the trees as singing angels; and the hills that resound in a reverberant choir. the heavenly fellowship that these chanters shall know is the immanent cycle of death and renewal, which is thematically cognate with the ‘old dependency of day and night’ in the final stanza. the final stanza comes full circle wherein the woman’s reverie on the dominion of blood and sepulchre is encroached upon by ‘a voice that cries, “the tomb in palestine / is not the porch of spirits lingering. / it is the grave of jesus, where he lay.”’ ( ). the incarnation is refuted: jesus is merely a man who died and remained dead. the poem then closes with a virgilian pastoral scene, which i will unabashedly join the choir of stevens’ enthusiasts in affirming that what we have here are some of the finest lines of blank verse to have been written in the twentieth-century: ~ ~ deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail whistle about us their spontaneous cries; sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; and, in the isolation of the sky, at evening, casual flocks of pigeons make ambiguous undulations as they sink, downward to darkness, on extended wings. ( ) this closing pastoral implicates the expansion of the woman’s coexistence in a world of life comprising vastly more than her fellow human species. she has already admitted in the fourth stanza that ‘i am content when wakened birds, / before they fly, test the reality / of misty fields with their sweet questionings;’ ( ). her misgiving with this form of contentment, though, is marked by an eschatological wariness: ‘but when the birds are gone, and their warm fields / return no more, where, then, is paradise?’ ( ). the speaker’s recurrence to illustrations of the natural world as being not only sufficient in and of themselves, but actually preferable to an inert paradise, together with an appreciation of immanent experience in all of its sensuous detail, admonishes the woman that here and now is salve enough—it requires no supplementation from beyond. one is put in mind of mr overton’s remark in samuel butler’s the way of all flesh: ‘all animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it’ (butler, , ). ‘life is motion’, another brief poem collected in harmonium, is persuasive of this principal: in oklahoma, ~ ~ bonnie and josie, dressed in calico, danced around a stump. they cried, “ohoyaho, ohoo” . . . celebrating the marriage of flesh and air. ( ) this poem reprises the neo-pagan ritual from the seventh stanza of ‘sunday morning’. only this time, the revellers are two women in a sort of mock-may day celebration, ironised by the vestigial presence of a stumped maypole. the phallus thus truncated, bonnie and josie celebrate an immanent, naturalised, not to mention desexualised, hieros-gamos of flesh and air, replete with a whitmanian barbaric yawp. the circular form of these rituals stevens would later transmute into a whimsical pleasure, as in ‘the pleasures of merely circulating’: ‘the garden flew round with the angel, / the angel flew round with the clouds, / and the clouds flew round and the clouds flew round / and the clouds flew round with the clouds.’ ( ). in a later revision of the motif, from ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’, the pleasure of circulation is declared as a good: one of the vast repetitions final in themselves and, therefore, good, the going round and round and round, the merely going round, until merely going round is a final good, the way wine comes at a table in a wood. ~ ~ ( ) this canto concludes: ‘perhaps, / the man-hero is not the exceptional monster, / but he that of repetition is most master.’ ( ). the repetition of circulation is congruent with both the repetition of ritual and routine. eleanor cook points out, by way of northrop frye, that kierkegaard conceived of repetition in a religious context (cook, , ): ‘by it he apparently means, not the simple repeating of an experience, but the recreating of it which redeems or awakens it to life, the end of the process, he says, being the apocalyptic promise: “behold, i make all things new.”’ (frye, , ). frye’s account of kierkegaard’s concept is entirely appropriate to the ritual underpinnings of stevens’ apocalyptic rhetoric—which is not a rhetoric of terminal destruction, but of renewal. we may recall the alpha and omega canto from an ‘ordinary evening in new haven’: ‘alpha continues to begin. / omega is refreshed at every end.’ ( ). to the last, stevens was ensconced in the ritual celebration of new beginnings. ‘a discovery of thought’, a late, uncollected poem first published in , attests to the persistence of this leitmotiv in his work. this poem imagines, from ‘the antipodes of poetry, dark winter’ ( ), a kenotic reduction to the real, ‘an infancy of blue snow’ ( ) wherein ‘one is a child again’ ( ), the future arrival of ‘the susceptible being’ who will disclose ‘the true tone of the metal of winter in what it says: the ‘exceptional monster’ hearkens back to section xix of ‘the man with the blue guitar’. the exceptional monster is effectively a composite of two monsters: ‘being the lion in the lute / before the lion locked in stone.’ ( ). the lion in the lute is an emblem of the imagination, the lion in stone an emblem of life/reality. in conflating ‘the two together as one’ ( ), the poet hopes to ‘play of the monster and of myself, // or better not myself at all, / but of that as its intelligence,’ ( ). this is to say that the poet hopes to accomplish a synthesis of the monster of life/reality with the monster of his own intelligence in order to become a form of supra-intelligence of both. stevens’ own gloss of this section in a letter to hi simons, august , , is revealing of the connection between his later figuration of the exceptional monster and mastery: ‘the monster is what one faces: the lion locked in stone (life) which one wishes to match in intelligence and force, speaking (as a poet) with a voice matching its own. one thing about life is that the mind of one man, if strong enough, can become the master of all the life in the world. to some extent, this is an everyday phenomenon. any really great poet, musician, etc. does this’ (l, ). ~ ~ // the accent of deviation in the living thing / that is its life preserved, the effort to be born / surviving being born, the event of life.’ ( ). what is remarkable about this poem is how stevens achieves, by way of a telescoped prolepsis, the gestation of the inevitable event of life in the barrenness of winter, deftly captured in the image of ‘the cricket of summer forming itself out of ice.’ ( ). yet all of this is merely an elaborate conceit for the poem’s true subject, which is a renewal of the ‘first word’ ( ) of the discovery of thought, which promises a rejuvenation of the earth and with it the poet’s powers. as is so often the case with stevens, it comes down to a matter of perspective. the overriding perspective in stevens’ poetry is comic—not in the sense that we are to expect a happy ending, but rather in the sense that there are these constant assurances of renewals of happiness, of joy, of life, to come. at his bleakest, stevens is rarely tragic, but rather faces the existential void with a cool equanimity (we will have more to say on this in the following chapter). his short poem ‘gubbinal’, for example, is an ironic exercise in demonstrating his comic perspective by way of parodying its opposite: ‘have it your way. // the world is ugly, / and the people are sad’ ( ). irrespective of whatever misery or pain may occur in the world, stevens is forever counterposing the potential for joy, pleasure, or diversity of perspective in worldly experience. even in ‘esthétique du mal’, his long meditation on ‘the relation between poetry and…pain’ (l, ), the speaker muses: it seems stevens was prompted to compose ‘esthétique du mal’ after reading a letter sent to john crowe ransom published in the kenyon review, in which the correspondent, ‘a soldier in foreign service’ (ransom, spring , ), complains: ‘i find the poetry in kenyon review lamentable in many ways because it is cut off from pain. it is intellectual and it is fine, but it never reveals muscle and nerve’ (ibid). ~ ~ as if the health of the world might be enough. it seems as if the honey of common summer might be enough, as if the golden combs were part of a sustenance itself enough, as if hell, so modified, had disappeared, as if pain, no longer satanic mimicry, could be borne, as if we were sure to find our way. ( ). this long poetic sequence concludes with the famous canto beginning: ‘the greatest poverty is not to live / in a physical world, to feel that one’s desire / is too difficult to tell from despair.’ ( ). here again is a critique of an otherworldly paradise that lacks the necessary physicality required of differentiation and discernment. the speaker imagines: ‘after death, the non-physical people, in paradise, / itself non-physical, may, by chance, observe / the green corn gleaming and experience / the minor of what we feel.’ ( ). although the speaker concedes that ‘the adventurer / in humanity has this theme of posthumous beings desirous of physical experience in the immanent world is later revisited in ‘large red man reading’: they were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality, that would have wept and been happy, have shivered in the frost and cried out to feel it again, have run fingers over leaves and against the most coiled thorn, have seized on what was ugly and laughed, as he sat there reading, from out of the purple tabulae, the outlines of being and its expressings, the syllables of its law: poesis, poesis, the literal characters, the vatic lines, which in those ears and in those thin, those spended hearts, took on color, took on shape and the size of things as they are and spoke the feeling for them, which was what they had lacked. ( ) ~ ~ not conceived of a race / completely physical in a physical world’ ( ), he nonetheless affirms that for the revenant dead the physical is the truly plerotic state of affairs: ‘the green corn gleams and the metaphysicals / lie sprawling in majors of the august heat, / the rotund emotions, paradise unknown.’ ( ). this conflation of the metaphysical and the physical induces the speaker to utter one of the most unblushingly liturgical exclamations found in stevens’ poetry: ‘this is the thesis scrivened in delight, / the reverberating psalm, the right chorale.’ ( ). a physical, and more disarmingly, impersonal world, is what stevens calls his ‘ultimate inamorata’ ( ). in sur plusieurs beaux sujects, the commonplace book stevens kept in the s, he quotes the american clergyman r. s. storrs thus: ‘the philosopher could not love the indefinite and the impersonal principle of order pervading the universe, any more than he could love atmospheres or oceans’ (op, xxxii). stevens’ response is, unsurprisingly, entirely to the contrary: ‘for myself, the indefinite, the impersonal, atmospheres and oceans and, above all, the principle of order are precisely what i love; and i don’t see why, for a philosopher, they should not be the ultimate inamorata. the premise to storrs is that the universe is explicable only in terms of humanity’ ( ). stevens himself, however, vacillates between personification and objectification of the world. for example, in seeing the earth specifically ‘as one also detects in the minors and majors of feeling in this canto, stevens’ recurrent synonymy of music and feeling. we first encounter this in ‘peter quince at the clavier’: ‘just as my fingers on these keys / make music, so the self-same sounds / on my spirit make a music, too. // music is feeling, then, not sound;’ ( ). it is also interesting to note that the crescendo of this later poem’s closing canto (‘this is the thesis scrivened in delight, / the reverberating psalm, the right chorale’) echoes the conjugation of music and liturgy concluding the earlier ‘peter quince at the clavier’: susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings of those white elders; but, escaping, left only death’s ironic scraping. now, in its immortality, it plays on the clear viol of her memory, and makes constant sacrament of praise. ( ) ~ ~ inamorata’ ( ), as we find in ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’, is to feminise it, to cast it in the role of lover, companion, or muse. stevens does this again and again: in ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’, the earth is addressed as ‘fat girl, terrestrial, my summer, my night, / […] my green, my fluent mundo.’ ( ); the ocean is a feminine genius loci in the early ‘infanta marina’ ( ), as is the venereal soil in ‘o, florida, venereal soil’ ( - ); ‘the moon is the mother of pathos and pity’ ( ), in ‘lunar paraphrase’, in comparison to the masculinised sun ‘that brave man’ ( ) in ‘the brave man’; even the light produced by the sun and moon are respectively gendered in ‘of hartford in a purple light’: ‘but, master, there are / lights masculine and lights feminine.’ ( ), (the ‘master’ being addressed, again, is the masculinised, and inexplicably francophone, sun ‘master soleil’ ( )). an extensive cento of further examples could be enumerated. suffice it to say, stevens does not shy away from the use of prosopopoeia, and is therefore being somewhat disingenuous in criticising storrs for perceiving the explicability of the universe in human terms. if we recall gardner’s previously quoted analysis, we could align stevens’ figurations of the universe with a human face with his summer mode, which is ostensibly one of transfigurative addition to the material base of the universe. the contraposition is of course stevens’ winter mode, which is an ostensibly subtractive procedure to arrive at the contracted world of stark physical reality entirely absented of anthropocentric cultural additives. in ‘an evening without angels’, the speaker asserts ‘bare night is best. bare earth is best.’ ( ). it is precisely this barrenness that is celebrated in ‘how to live. what to do’: last evening the moon rose above this rock stevens remarks in a letter to ronald lane latimer, november , , that of all the poems in ideas of order ‘how to live. what to do’ is the poem he ‘preferred to all the others. […] i like it most, i suppose, because it so definitely represents my way of thinking’ (l, ). ~ ~ impure upon a world unpurged. the man and his companion stopped to rest before the heroic height. coldly the wind fell upon them in many majesties of sound: they that had left the flame-freaked sun to seek a sun of fuller fire. instead there was this tufted rock massively rising high and bare beyond all trees, the ridges thrown like giant arms among the clouds. there was neither voice nor crested image, no chorister, nor priest. there was only the great height of the rock and the two of them standing still to rest. there was the cold wind and the sound it made, away from the muck of the land that they had left, heroic sound joyous and jubilant and sure. ( - ) however, as these foregoing examples illustrate, stevens is yet encumbered by making human value judgements on the numinous otherness of the nonhuman world: bare night and earth are ‘best’; the cold wind and the sound it made is a ‘heroic sound / joyous and jubilant and sure’. it is a bind that stevens knew he could not undo. even at ~ ~ its most objectively descriptive, the act of the mind that becomes a poem is exactly that: a verbal representation produced by a perceiving subject. the representation of a view from nowhere remains impossible. ‘the plain sense of things’, to run the risk of an excruciating pun, makes this impossibility quite plain. the speaker, beholding a winter scene, proposes that ‘it is as if / we had come to an end of the imagination, / inanimate in an inert savoir.’ ( ), struggling ‘even to choose the adjective / for this blank cold, this sadness without cause’ ( ). (tellingly, the adjective that is settled for is the resoundingly kenotic ‘blank’. moreover, the perceived sadness is without cause, as though to suggest it is concurrently intrinsic to the perceiver and the thing perceived.) but then the speaker alights upon a crucial realisation: ‘yet the absence of imagination had / itself to be imagined.’ ( ). stevens’ manifold response to this bind is at least tripartite. one layer of this manifold is phenomenological in its bearing: to accept the world as it is as it appears to us. this is why throughout the poetry such emphasis is placed on the act of sensory perception, on the mere appearances, sounds, smells, and feel of things, and their susceptibility to change in accordance with environmental conditions. arguably, the deepest mine of stevens’ raw materia poetica is indeed the act of perception itself, and with it, as i have previously alluded to, perspectivism. one of his anthology pieces, ‘thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird’ from harmonium, is a famous instance of the latter. another is ‘two illustrations that the world is what you make of it’ from his last published collection the rock. the later poem, a diptych, starkly juxtaposes two illustrations: the first, a version of stevens’ kenotic vision of winter: ‘the sky seemed so small that winter day, / a dirty light on a lifeless world, / contracted like a withered stick.’ ( ); the second, a version of his plerotic vision of summer: ‘he discovered the colors of the moon // in a single spruce, when, suddenly, / the tree stood dazzling in ~ ~ the air // and blue broke from the sun, / a bullioned blue, a blue abulge, / like daylight, with time’s bellishings, / and sensuous summer stood full-height.’ ( ). this poem, then, exhibits a microcosm of stevens’ ritual cycle of kenosis and plerosis, emptying and filling. another layer is to make explicit that the bare earth, night, what have you, is the foundation of human percipience. the human reduced to merest perceiver of bare reality approaches in stevens’ poetry the essential unity of being: ‘it was in earth only / that he was at the bottom of things / and of himself. […] // the odor / of earth penetrates more deeply than any word. / there he touches his being. there as he is / he is.’ ( ). this is an example, not uncommon in stevens, of language being used against itself to assert the primacy of non-linguistic experience. it is as though the language is compelling the reader away from itself and into the inimitable experience of odour- induced unity to which it is at both an anterior and posterior remove. stevens points quite pronouncedly to the image of the ‘rock’, his most contracted figure for bare physical reality. in its namesake poem—‘the rock’—we are told that it is ‘the gray particular of man’s life, / the stone from which he rises, up—and—ho, / the step to the bleaker depths of his descents…’ ( ). here, then, we see the rock as the nonhuman ground for both the plerotic rise and the kenotic descent of the human. the rock is ‘the starting point of the human and its end’ ( ), which seems to ape the pronouncements of genesis : : ‘for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’ (kjv). however, the gaze of the other half of stevens’ janus-faced phenomenology perceives the enhancements of reality that language can imbue to perception: ‘words add to the senses. the words for dazzle / of mica, the dithering of grass, / the arachne integument of dead trees, / are the eye grown larger, more intense.’ ( ). and of metaphor: ~ ~ the bouquet stands in a jar, as metaphor, as lightning itself is, likewise, metaphor crowded with apparitions suddenly gone and no less suddenly here again, a growth of the reality of the eye, an artifice, nothing much, a flitter that reflects itself. ( ) in ‘on the road home’, the poem’s interlocutor recollects his pronouncement that ‘the world must be measured by the eye’ ( ). mutter argues that ‘for stevens experience at its most authentic is spatial rather than hermeneutic […] sight is tautological: it discloses the intensity of the unmediated, non-linguistically-altered being of the world’ (mutter, fall , ). the importance of sight for stevens and its non-pejorative superficial proclivity to ‘make gay the hallucinations in surfaces.’ ( ) is difficult to overstate. it is a rich variety in stevens’ poetry of the plenitude of immanent experience. in a short early poem, ‘tattoo’, stevens’ assimilates and physicalizes the filaments of whitman’s ‘a noiseless patient spider’. in whitman’s poem, the speaker is watching a spider launch forth ‘filament, filament, filament, out of itself.’ (whitman, , ). whitman then transposes the spider’s filaments into a metonymy of the speaker’s searching soul: and you o my soul where you stand, surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them. till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold, till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, o my soul. ~ ~ (ibid) stevens’ poem begins with a simile: ‘the light is like a spider.’ ( ), which he then literalizes: it crawls over the water. it crawls over the edges of the snow. it crawls under your eyelids and spreads its webs there— its two webs. the webs of your eyes are fastened to the flesh and bones of you as to rafters or grass. there are filaments of your eyes on the surface of the water and in the edges of the snow. ( ) thus stevens’ tropes on the interconnection between light, eye and object, in such a way as to incarnate vision as a palpably material conjunction between inner and outer. the poem is manifestly about the act of visual perception, quite apart from whitman’s hermeneutic allegory. the illuminant entanglement of eyesight and snow produces, in my opinion, one of the single most beautiful images in all of stevens’ poetry. it occurs in ‘no possum, no sop, no taters’: ‘snow sparkles like eyesight falling to earth, // like seeing fallen brightly away.’ ( ). the cinematic shift in perspective from a ground’s- ~ ~ eye-view of the falling snow, to that of a bird's or god's-eye-view looking down from the snow-clouds, is a quiet masterstroke. the third layer is in stevens’ many gestures towards the ineffability of the nonhuman world, toward its resistance to the human propensity for interpretation. this layer takes the form of abstraction and via negativa, and, i would argue, comprises stevens’ strongest observance of the world’s numinous bearing upon us. the world is there and we perceive it, classify it, look for patterns, for ways of reading it. nonetheless, the pigeons ‘make / ambiguous undulations as they sink / downward to darkness, on extended wings’ ( ). the undulations the pigeons make defy our augury. we are left only with ambiguity, with the mystification of uncertainty. that they are sinking downward to darkness only focuses their numinous trajectory toward the unknown. the blankness of the world underlying our interpretive cognition, and how stevens’ frames its representation, is where we will now turn. * it is interesting to note, in passing, that the penumbra overshadowing the ambiguity of the pigeons’ undulations has a lucent, though still extra-linguistic, counterpoint in the ‘bright, discursive wings’ ( ) of the little (is it too much to assume minervan?) owl in ‘on the adequacy of landscape’. ~ ~ chapter two: decreating the world, filling the blank * decreation is a concept that stevens adapts from the mystical writings of simone weil. he refers to weil only once throughout the entirety of his work in the lecture he gave at the museum of modern art in : ‘the relations between poetry and painting’. here is the relevant quotation: simone well in la pesanteur et la grâce has a chapter on what she calls decreation. she says that decreation is making pass from the created to the uncreated, but that destruction is making pass from the created to nothingness. modern reality is a reality of decreation, in which our revelations are not the revelations of belief, but the precious portents of our own powers. the greatest truth we could hope to discover, in whatever field we discovered it, is that man's truth is the final resolution of everything. ( ). there is no way of knowing for how long stevens had been familiar with weil’s work. his encounter with weil’s concept of decreation could not have occurred any earlier than when la pesanteur et la grâce (gravity and grace) was first published, four years after weil’s death. nonetheless, this has not prevented some of stevens’ critics from reading this concept retroactively into his earlier poetry. eleanor cook, for example, uses the concept to analyse the first and last cantos of ‘notes toward a it should also be noted that weil had never intended the material in la pesanteur et la grâce to be published. in point of fact, the book is comprised of a collection of excerpts from her notebooks, selected, edited, and organised under subject headings by weil’s friend gustave thibon. ~ ~ supreme fiction’ (cook, fall , - , passim), and james lindroth reads it as a subtext of the more chronologically plausible ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’ (lindroth, spring , - , passim). in fairness, cook uses the concept as per stevens’ adaptation of it. she correctly acknowledges that ‘stevens, following weil, is using the word in another sense. he is turning her term to his own uses’ (cook, fall , ). she does not, however, account for why she is using a concept that stevens would have only called by this name several years after writing ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’. as i will be drawing upon the concept to orient the current chapter, i suppose i will have to justify it myself. this can be simply enough done: ‘decreation’, as stevens uses the term, is a procedure, as i intend to demonstrate, that he had been following from the beginning of his poetic career. weil’s term, i would argue, is simply a serendipitous find on stevens’ part signifying what to an integral component of his poetic praxis. that leaves us then to explain how weil and stevens differ in their usage of the term, and to argue for why it is a relevant notion to read into stevens, both forward and back. for weil, ‘to make something created pass into the uncreated’ (weil, , ) means to divest the self of its createdness, that is to say, of its recognition as being a creature created by god, but distinct from god. god, in weil’s theology, is the creator of the universe, but has hidden himself from his creation: ‘god could create only by hiding himself. otherwise there would be nothing but himself’ (ibid, ). god is uncreated in the sense that he ‘renounces being everything’ (ibid, ), and ‘emptied himself of his divinity’ (ibid, ) by way of the incarnation: christ’s kenosis was also god’s. what remains is the uncreated, hidden god, and the process of decreation of the creature will, we know from his letters that stevens had been working on ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’ from at least march . see his letters to sister m. bernetta quinn, april , (l, - ), and to bernard heringman, may , (l, - ). see also: richardson, , - . ~ ~ according to weil, pass through the created into the uncreated, that is to say, the creature’s decreation will reunite him or her with god. this process of decreation entails, however, an understanding that ‘we are nothing, the object of all our efforts is to become nothing. […] may god grant me to become nothing. in so far as i become nothing, god loves himself through me’ (ibid). weil enjoins us then to undergo our own kenosis, to ‘empty ourselves of the false divinity with which we were born’ (ibid), in order to be consummated in the true divinity which is god’s love. stevens’ usage of the term, unsurprisingly, is far removed from weil’s. if i read stevens’ right, his ‘reality of decreation’ is simply the passage from a universe created by god to one that is not created by god, that is to say, uncreated. that is why decreation, in his usage, passes us through to the revelation of ‘the precious portents of our own powers’, rather than to a reunification with god. for stevens, decreation does pass through to nothingness, that is to say, at the base of an uncreated universe is nothingness. there is a numen abest inasmuch as the gods themselves have been decreated and have come to nothing. weil, and other radical theologians, would say that this coming to nothing of god, his absence, is our experience of god. we experience god in absentia. stevens does not go this far—nothingness suffices. this nothingness at the core of mysterium numinosum, however, is something that intrigued stevens throughout his poetic career. he had other designations and designs for this elusive gap—the ‘center’, ‘first idea’, and a host of superlatives such as ‘utmost’, ‘final’, ‘supreme’. whereas in the last chapter we were focused on stevens’ devotions to the natural, physical world, this chapter will focus on stevens’ metaphysical fictions. these, so far as we can know, properly belong to the abstractions of a mind, and thus pertain to the metaphysics of absence in its most basic sense: as being that which is not present in the physical, empirically observable world. it is inside the playhouse of stevens’ ~ ~ imagination resisting the given world wherein this meditation on nonphysical being, or, as we will also see, that which is not-yet-become, is confected. however, there is another side to this dualistic story. this side of the story involves the panpsychic- physiomorphic axis that i had outlined in the previous chapter. if we approach stevens from this perspective then i believe we can read a good deal of his metaphysical fictions as figurations of states of nonhuman or extra-human consciousness. this, however, does not shed an explanatory light on and therefore eliminate the numinosity of these nonhuman or extra-human conscious states, it merely gives speculative form to their otherness. what this approach does do, though, is dissolve the dualism of mind and matter into a fundamental and universal unification of the two. the mysterium numinosum nonetheless persists in the seclusion of the nonhuman or extra-human other’s subjectivity. to follow this trace through stevens’ poetry we must begin with ‘the snow man’. * ‘the snow man’ first appeared in the october issue of poetry magazine in a series of twelve poems gathered under the title ‘sur ma guzzla gracile’. in this series ‘the snow man’ appears immediately before ‘tea at the palaz of hoon’. the original placement of these two poems together (they were later separated in the published order of harmonium) indicates that they are companion pieces. we have seen from our reading of ‘tea at the palaz of hoon’, that hoon is a figure who boasts to have had achieved a sublime plerotic integration with the world and had thus become, or at least ‘[a] “buffo title,” as schulze calls it, meaning “from out of my slender gullet” and “mark[ing] the cycle as an exercise in ventriloquism.”’ (eeckhout, , ). ~ ~ for a time, a man-world. hoon is the self-asserting human counterpart to the mind of winter kenotically divested of self that is the snow man. whereas hoon claims to have had achieved an identity of self and world, the snow man simply is the thing itself—a very specific, though seemingly counterintuitive, form of nothing. the poem: one must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine-trees crusted with snow; and have been cold a long time to behold the junipers shagged with ice, the spruces rough in the distant glitter of the january sun; and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land full of the same wind that is blowing in the same bare place for the listener, who listens in the snow, and, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. ( ) ~ ~ one approaches this poem with a certain degree of trepidation. the countless variety of interpretations that this short piece has given rise to are foreboding in their disputatiousness. i will limit myself to merely two. hesla goes to painstaking lengths to demonstrate that the poem should be read, grammatically speaking, as an inferential sentence (hesla, may , - ), of the form: ‘if he did x, then he must be—i draw the inference that he is—y’ (ibid, ). he likens the poem to a statement such as: ‘you must be crazy to think a thing like that’ (ibid). he continues: ‘the ordinary meaning of this sentence is not, “if you want to believe . . . then you must go insane.” it is rather, “from the fact that you believe . . . i infer that you do not have all your wits about you.”’ (ibid). thus, he draws the conclusion that the poem ‘does not tell us what one must do or be in order not to think of any misery. it says, rather, that from the fact that someone does not or cannot think of any misery in the sound of the wind it can be inferred that the person has a mind of winter’ (ibid). this leads hesla to offer the following reading of the poem: once the inferential nature of the poem is recognized the perplexities of the last tercet disappear. the “nothing that is not there” is of course the something that is—the junipers and spruces, the sun, the ice, the leaves and the sound they make when they blow in the wind. as for the “nothing that is,” it is just what stevens says it is—misery. misery is nothing, not thing, not a thing, in the sense that the trees and sun and leaves are things, available to seeing, and that the sounds of the winds and leaves are things, available to hearing. but misery is there, and real, as the emotional meaning of the experience of this bleak winter landscape. […] what is the case, rather, is that, like misery, the listener himself is "nothing," no thing, not a thing. he is not a thing, not a man of snow, has not a mind of winter, because he is able to behold both the nothing that is not there and the nothing-the misery-that is. the tone of the poem is not that of a steely-eyed positivist calling upon us to distinguish facts from feelings; nor is it that of a dialectical ontologist courageously facing the abyss of nothingness. it is, rather, ~ ~ the tone of a person bemused, even appalled, by the fact that there can be people who have so far forgotten their humanity as to be unmoved by a winter landscape. (ibid, - ). the crucial problem, as i see it, with hesla’s interpretation is in what he infers from his inferential reading. if you do not perceive misery in the sound of the windblown leaves then i think you have a mind of winter, logically speaking, implies its inverse: namely, if you do perceive misery in the sound of the windblown leaves then i think you do not have a mind of winter, i.e. you have a mind of humanity. ergo, the listener is the snow man, who, as hesla correctly infers, has a mind of winter. the snow man is not, as hesla otherwise has it, a non-object subjective perceiver who has their humanity to think about misery in the sound of the windblown leaves still intact. in order for hesla’s reading to hold he has to write the snow man off as a person whom the speaker of the poem assumes to be a bit daft in the head for not thinking about the misery in the sound of the windblown leaves, and force the role of ‘the listener’, who is ‘nothing himself’, onto the shoulders of a properly humane person who, presumably, is himself (we might otherwise infer that this person is crazy to think that he himself is nothing). if we accept hesla’s inference that the person who does not think about the misery in the sound of the windblown leaves must have a mind of winter, then this only accounts for the subject of the ‘and not to think / of any misery’ verb phrase. there is, as i read the poem, a transitional distinction between the person who does not think about misery in the sound of the windblown leaves and the ‘listener’. the extent of hesla’s inferential reading effectively ends at the second line of the third tercet, as per his grammatical precis: ‘one must have a mind of winter . . . to regard . . . to behold . . . and not to think of any misery’ (ibid ). but this is not where the poem ends, and why hesla’s interpretation of the listener seems so remarkably out of place. one could, however, ~ ~ expand upon hesla’s inference thus: i infer that if you have been cold a long time regarding the frost and beholding the ice-shagged junipers and do not think of any misery in the sound of the windblown leaves that you must have a mind of winter; but if you literally have a mind of winter and regard and behold all of these things without thinking of the misery in the sound of the windblown leaves then i infer that you must be a snow man, which, as we will shortly see, is not a man at all. the transitional distinction i am referring to occurs between the first and second lines of the fourth tercet: ‘which is the sound of the land / full of the same wind’. the sound is the same for the listener and the person who does not think about the misery in the sound of the windblown leaves, but the listener and the thinker are not the same entity. the listener, the titular snow man, who has an actual mind of winter, as opposed to an inferred one, is neither thinking nor not thinking about the sound of the windblown leaves. this is because the listener is listening and beholding, but not thinking. more on this shortly. bevis, whose thorough book-length study of ‘the meditative state of consciousness recorded by especially buddhist testimonies and the scientific results of neurophysiological and experimental states-of-consciousness research’ (eeckhout, , - ) is entirely beyond my competence to summarise here. suffice it to say, bevis, taking ‘the snow man’ as his point of departure, seeks to elucidate the ascetic meditative streak that runs through stevens’ poetry, using the aforementioned buddhist and scientific testimony as a means to demonstrate this propensity. bevis emphasises bevis’ summary of the meditative state of consciousness reads thus: a meditative state of consciousness is a naturally occurring physiological phenomenon, possible for any person in any culture and probably experienced by everyone to some degree. there are several characteristics common to its various stages: ( ) transience, ( ) ineffability, ( ) sensations of time and space changed or transcended, ( ) sensations of self-loss—that is, absence of thought or feeling according to later reports, and minimal cortical activity as measured by machines during meditation. such a state of consciousness differs in report and measurable characteristics from other states such as waking, dreaming, day-dreaming, and hypnotic trance, and such calm self-loss differs also from the ~ ~ that ‘[c]ontrary to common western opinion, meditative experience can include vivid sensory perception, as well as reports of nothingness’ (bevis, , ). this last collocation—that of sensory perception together with reports of nothingness—appear especially pertinent to ‘the snow man’. bevis ‘begin[s] with the proposition that western experiences, as described in wallace stevens’ “the snow man,” who is “nothing himself,” or in emerson’s statement in “nature,” “i am nothing,” may have something to with the claim of yung-chia (a seventh-century chinese buddhist) that in meditation “the roots of mental activity are itself cut out.”’ (ibid, ). maybe so, but my issue with bevis’ work, as informative and fascinating as it is, is that he seems eager to correlate the experience of the listener, the snow man, with a meditative state of consciousness that experiences nothing. my issue is that although i would agree that the poem is stylistically meditative, i would disagree with reading the experience of the snow man as a human experience. this is because i take stevens’ poem at its word, and how i read these words is that they are not about a human subject at all. a satisfactory reading to me would involve the physiomorphic-panpsychic axis i have already addressed. i must lead off with a very simple premise that is almost universally ignored by critics of the poem. it is quite simply this: that the snow man of the title is exactly that—a snow man that any number of people may have made out of rolling balls of snow together and piling them on top of each other in the vaguest semblance of human form. one may choose to imagine this snow man with a carrot nose, coals for eyes, and twigs for arms if it helps to fulfil the image, but such embellishments are fancifully beside the point. that is because the snow man is simply a other mystical categories of the occult, vision, and ecstasy (excited self-loss). (bevis, , ; also qtd. in eeckhout, , ). ~ ~ synecdochic placeholder for the possession of a mind of winter. a mind of winter, which the snow man possesses, is exactly that—winter’s mind. the objection could be raised that a mind of winter is merely an anthropomorphism. but this objection can be obviated if we allow the premise of panspychism to stand, in the sense that consciousness is a fundamental and universal aspect of everything that is. we needn’t detain ourselves with the philosophical arguments for or against panpsychism, as we are talking about a poem that simply asserts that this is the case. the problem of the snow man ‘himself’ being another anthropomorphic projection—if we are reluctant to settle for the ordinary sense in which we refer to a stack of snowballs as a snow man without actually thinking that it is literally a man—can be dissolved if we invert the projection. the physiomorphic inversion would hold that the idea of personhood has been naturalised into snow. the man with a mind of winter is the actual snow man, not a metaphor for an actual man. again, we needn’t quibble over why it should be that the snow man possesses a mind of winter and not, say, a frozen lake, or the ice shagging the junipers. very possibly these particulars also possess a mind of winter. in fact, we might presume that all things that are winter possess a mind of winter, but the poem attributes this possession specifically to the snow man. now we must address why the snow man, the listener, is ‘nothing himself’. i infer that there are two parts to why the snow man is ‘nothing himself’. the first part is that the snow man is not a self at all, much less a man, ‘he’ is simply snow. the statement ‘nothing himself’ is quite obviously david perkins argues that stevens’ ‘poem does not describe but merely invokes "the snow man" by mentioning him in the title; thereafter the snowman is involved in the poem only as a metaphor of a metaphor. he is a metaphor of a "mind of winter," and this, in turn, is a metaphor of something even more abstract: a mind that entertains nothingness’ (perkins, , ). my reading of the poem, as should be quite apparent, does not share in this figurative chicanery. i take the snow man to be literally a snow man, not a metaphor of a metaphor. neither do i accept that ‘a mind of winter’ is itself a metaphor, except insofar as it applies to what a human subject is inferred to possess were he or she to regard and behold winter and not to think of any misery in the sound of the windblown leaves. the snow man, i contend, literally possesses a mind of winter. ~ ~ a self-negation in the most literal sense—a negation of self, the ultimate kenosis. the second part is that a mind of winter is itself nothing. winter is an extrinsically applied human concept to an observable natural state of affairs. to say that winter has a mind, is, in effect, to say that the human concept of winter applied to an observable state of natural affairs has a mind. moreover, ‘nothing’ is an abstraction, a pure concept. the snow man, and this the poem tells us explicitly, does not think in terms of ‘winter’ or ‘nothing’ because the snow man does not think at all, much less think of itself as winter. it does not think of itself as winter because it neither thinks nor has a self. the snow man’s mind of winter only performs acts of perception: namely listening and beholding. it is non-cognitive in the sense that it does not possess the sort of mind, such as a human mind, that transforms percept into concept. the regarding, beholding, and not thinking of misery in the sound of the windblown leaves from the first three tercets have been dispensed with by our inferential reading from above. the snow man, possessing a mind of winter, cancels itself out by not only being ‘nothing himself’, but also by beholding ‘nothing that is not there and the nothing that is’. the ‘nothing that is not there’ is simply that which is there, the material world manifesting a state of affairs we humans call winter, and the ‘nothing that is’ is the the snow man’s self-cancelling mind of winter. what the poem is inviting the reader to do is to imagine being the snow man. the poem then advances what imagining being a snow man could entail. it suggests that if we panpsychically grant to the snow man a mind of winter, this mind will do no more than behold that it is nothing, which is at once only what there is and the nothing that it is. this reading may appear paradoxically vexatious, but it is what the poem, so far as i can determine, actually says. the paradox is insoluble, but it is unavoidably there in the poem. what it tells us is that the snow man possesses a mind that listens and beholds ~ ~ but does not think, and what it hears and beholds is the nothing of is, or the is of nothing—the barest nouns signifying existence and of that which is not are become one. bevis’ analysis may be allowed a point of entry here insofar as this sort of conscious experience may well be achievable through meditative practice. be that as it may, the poem is not telling us about a human percipient. ‘the snow man’ retains its numinous charge because it soundly remains ineffably other. i would argue that it is impossible for human consciousness to perceive nothing for the entire duration of its existence, and that is why we are so confounded by this poem, because we are presented with a cipher that does exactly that. as the canon aspirin learns in ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’: ‘the nothingness was a nakedness, a point / beyond which thought could not progress as thought.’ ( ). the buddhist who claims to have experienced nothing nevertheless only does so for a limited duration. listening and beholding, the snow man’s twin perceptions, comprise for stevens, commonly enough, the two basic building blocks of his poetry. listening is correlate with the ear, sound, and verbal communication; beholding is correlate with the eye, sight, vision, imagination, and written or symbolic communication. the first branch of correlates culminates in the fictive human-epitome figure we encounter in ‘the creations of sound’: ‘a different poet, / an accretion from ourselves, intelligent / beyond intelligence, an artificial man / at a distance, secondary expositor, / a being of sound, whom one does not approach / through any exaggeration. from him, we collect.’ ( ). this formulation is typical of stevens’ figural procedure in the concoction of his fictive beings, which we will take up presently. the second branch of correlates in were one in a less charitable mood, one could refer to cioran’s sketch of a hindu monk in his aphorism on ‘the language of irony’: ‘and when, dazed, we think of some hindu monk who, for nine years, stood against a wall in paralyzed meditation, irony intervenes once more to inform us that he discovered, at the end of many sufferings, the nothingness by which he had begun!’ (cioran, , ). ~ ~ stevens culminates in his notion of the first idea, or original seeing, which will discuss in the penultimate section of this chapter. to close, we will return to the scene of ‘the snow man’, and the challenge that poem bequeaths to stevens’ later poems to push at the limits of intelligibility. * stevens’ fictive beings—what we have already seen lensing refer to as ‘human- epitomes’—are quasi-mythological figures. gary mike cronin analyses ‘the question that is a giant himself’ ( ), invoked at the beginning of ‘ordinary evening in new haven’, by way of alluding to the following startling line from canto vi of ‘it must be abstract’: ‘abstraction blooded, as a man by thought.’ ( ). cronin says that ‘stevens uses his private and cumulative symbology to express the idea that questions, and presumably answers, must be blooded; that is, made human-like. […] ‘blooding an abstraction is for stevens a way of apprehending external reality in the lived world by investing a concept with the attributes of a real object. this prosopopeiaic way of making fictions come to life allows stevens to explore and experiment with his perceptions of the lived world’ (cronin, , - ). not dissimilarly, grosvenor e. powell, describes what he calls stevens’ ‘persona’ as ‘personifications, in an epistemological sense, of various subject- object relationships’ (powell, july , ). he argues that these persona ‘replace the gods and heroes of war-like aristocracy as the larger-than-life figures that give us a sense of ourselves and our possible limits. […] through them, we see, not quite as a god sees, but usually from a humanly impossible point of view which is, nevertheless, humanly conceivable’ (ibid). these comments trace some of the essential contours of steven’ fictive beings. often these fictive beings are personifications of concepts or ~ ~ ideals, but they are often also personifications of sublimated psychic states, desires, and emotions (and more often than not they are all of these things). they tend to take the form physiomorphic entities bearing human attributes or meta-human entities composed of physiomorphic ‘bodies’. many of them are also protean figures—composed by way of something akin to a cubist multiplicity of perspective. some of them are the subjects of whole poems or sequences, others make brief cameo appearances in poems in which they play an important, albeit walk-on, role. some of them reappear across a number of poems, whether as continuations or variations upon their inaugural manifestations. some of them are given specific names, others are designated common nouns. many of them are aggregated composites unified in a singular ideal of which they are representative. some of them are figured as fictive beings that are accessible to a particular way of thinking, others a figured as possible beings that are not-yet-become. and finally, some of them are quite traditional personifications of nature (seasons, earth, moon, sun, etc.), or are drawn and recalibrated from older mythologies, such as stevens’ angels. one way of thinking about stevens’ fictive beings, such as the hero, major man, the giants, the green queen, the glass man, the figure of capable imagination, and so forth, are as what he proposes to call in ‘the pure good of theory’ ‘a large-sculptured, platonic person’ ( ). platonic personages, which i will call for the sake of brevity meta-humans, built from the ground up, as it were. another comment that i think is useful in connection with these fictive beings comes from ‘the noble rider and the sound of words’: ‘but as a wave is a force and not the water of which it is composed, so i would like to make it explicit that my use of the term ‘sublimated’ here is not to be misread as the freudian concept of diverting or modifying instinctual, usually sexual, impulses into a more socially acceptable activity or expression. i intend it in the sense of an elevation of something to a higher state or plane of existence, which also takes under its wing, by catachrestic extension, the chemical process of converting a solid to a gas and vice versa. ~ ~ nobility is a force and not the manifestations of which it is composed, which are never the same’ ( ). this goes a long way to understanding how these figures generally work: it is not what they are that matters, but what it is that compels their making. we might recall stevens’ comments from a letter quoted earlier that ‘we give our good qualities to god, or to various gods, but they come from ourselves’ (l, ). stevens gives what qualities he cares for to his fictive beings. i think it is fair to say, as powell does, that these fictive beings are, in their respective measures, ‘god substitutes’ in stevens’ homemade mythology. they are attempts to populate his supreme fiction with figures that are meant to impress by way of their extra-human capacities. stevens’ oft- cited aphorism is apposite in this regard: ‘the final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. the exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly’ ( ). the relevance of citing this aphorism here i think can be justified by referring to certain remarks stevens made in a letter to josé rodriguez feo, february , : ‘ln the other poem i have defined major men for you. i realize that the definition is evasive, but in dealing with fictive figures evasiveness at least supports the fiction. the long and short of it is that we have to fix abstract objectives and then to conceal the abstract figures in actual appearance. a hero won't do, but we like him much better when he doesn't look it and, of course, it is only when he doesn't look it that we can believe in him’ (l, ). understandably, it is well beyond the limits of this thesis to address all of these fictive beings, thus i will have to limit myself to an exemplary few. ‘paisant chronicle’, the poem stevens refers to in his letter to feo, provides a useful precis of stevens’ meta-human figurations: the poem stevens is referring to is ‘paisant chronicle’ ( ). ~ ~ what are the major men? all men are brave. all men endure. the great captain is the choice of chance. finally, the most solemn burial is a paisant chronicle. men live to be admired by men and all men, therefore, live to be admired by all men. nations live to be admired by nations. the race is brave. the race endures. the funeral pomps of the race are a multitude of individual pomps and the chronicle of humanity is the sum of paisant chronicles. the major men— that is different. they are characters beyond reality, composed thereof. they are the fictive man created out of men. they are men but artificial men. they are nothing in which it is not possible to believe, more than the casual hero, more than tarluffe as myth, the most moliere, the easy projection long prohibited. the baroque poet may see him as still a man as virgil, abstract. but see him for yourself, the fictive man. he may be seated in a cafe. there may be a dish of country cheese and a pineapple on the table. it must be so. ~ ~ ( ) many of the composite parts listed above are apparent here. the major men are a meta- human composite aggregated out of all men. they are artificial, fictive, beyond reality (i.e. imagined) but composed thereof (i.e. sublimated), but are nevertheless said to be ‘nothing in which it is not possible / to believe’. the major men are a personified ideal, in that they are metaphorical embodiments of the utmost in bravery and endurance, qualities, the poem tells us, to be admired. they are more possible to believe in than casual heroes (i.e everyday personages given the appellation of hero), or actual historical persons who endure in our collective memories as myths or abstractions. it is the turn at the conclusion of the poem that catches us off guard, however. after rejecting the casual hero and historical persons the speaker tells us to see the fictive man for ourselves. he may be seated in a café, or, presumably, waiting at the bus stop, or buying a loaf of bread from the local dairy. the scenario is irrelevant. what this turn implies is that we can see the major man in each of us, should we so care to look, as it is from us that he arises. we recall that it is not the water but the force that is the wave. it is not the major men, but the force of bravery and endurance that the major men personify that matters, and is presumably there to be found in us all. ‘examination of the hero in a time of war’ explores a meta-human persona not dissimilar to the major men of this poem, only with greater figural complexity and variation. we are lead to believe that the ‘common man is the common hero. / the common hero is the hero.’ ( ). but then, in the following canto, he is physiomorphised: make him of mud, ~ ~ for every day. in a civiler manner, devise, devise, and make him of winter's iciest core, a north star, central in our oblivion, of summer's imagination, the golden rescue: the bread and wine of the mind, permitted in an ascetic room, its table red as a red table-cloth, its windows west indian, the extremest power living and being about us and being ours, like a familiar companion. ( ) the hero is now no longer common man, but a familiar companion sublimated in the mud, the stars, the kenosis of winter and the plerosis of summer, and, ultimately, as the extremest power. it is the ideal of the hero made cosmically ubiquitous. in canto viii we are told ‘the hero is not a person.’ ( ), but in the following stanza that he is an emblem, which …stand[s] taller than a person stands, has / a wider brow, large and less human / eyes and bruted ears: the man-like body / of a primitive. he walks with a defter and lither stride. his arms are heavy and his breast is greatness. all his speeches are prodigies in longer phrases. ( ) ~ ~ in canto xii we are told the hero is a feeling, a man seen as if the eye was an emotion, as if in seeing we saw our feeling in the object seen and saved that mystic against the sight, the penetrating, pure eye. instead of allegory, we have and are the man, capable of his brave quickenings, the human accelerations that seem inhuman. ( - ) the hero as an allegorical figure is rejected, and again, as with the major men in ‘paisant chronicle’ the hero is returned to its source—within ourselves if we look ‘as if the eye was an emotion’. but then in the penultimate canto another elevation takes place. ‘the highest man with nothing higher / than himself’ ( ), assumes the various roles of ‘man-sun, man-moon, man-earth, man-ocean’ ( ), and is finally rejected for the ‘man- man as he wanted’ ( ). the same deflation of the self-aggrandizing hoon that i argued stevens had performed in that poem, is performed here for the hero. the final stanza announces that ‘after the hero, the familiar / man makes the hero artificial.’ ( ), and then asks: but was the summer false? the hero? how did we come to think that autumn was the veritable season, that familiar man was the veritable man? so ~ ~ summer, jangling the savagest diamonds and dressed in its azure-doubled crimsons, may truly bear its heroic fortunes for the large, the solitary figure. ( ) this poem is, ultimately, an overly long periphrastic exercise to arrive at the following basic point: ‘the hero is summer, when the world is largest.’ (bloom, , ). although i do not particularly care for the two preceding poems, they are useful illustrations of the complexity of stevens’ figural variation regarding the concoction of his fictive beings. i do not think, however, they come anywhere close to achieving his stated aims. they are too pompous, sentimental, and too recognisably human to accomplish the radical defamiliarisation required of a numinous mythos. i will finish this section by tracing a handful of stevens’ meta-human fictions through a series of poems that i think are more convincing, not least of all because the human aspect of these fictions ‘resist the intelligence / almost successfully’ ( ). ‘asides on the oboe’ opens with a challenge: ‘the prologues are over. it is a question, now, / of final belief. so, say that final belief / must be in a fiction. it is time to choose.’ ( ). the question of belief in a decreated world is front and centre of this poem: if you say on the hautboy man is not enough, can never stand as god, is ever wrong in the end, however naked, tall, there is still the impossible possible philosophers' man, the man who has had the time to think enough, the central man, the human globe, responsive ~ ~ as a mirror with a voice, the man of glass, who in a million diamonds sums us up. ( - ) the glass man is, not unlike the snow man, a physiomorph. the very notion of a man of glass is transparently abstract. he is both central and global, centripetally interior and centrifugally exterior. that he is responsive ‘as a mirror with a voice’, summing us up in a million diamonds, suggests that he is a figure of collective consciousness. one is put in mind of the closing tercet of the penultimate canto of ‘ordinary evening in new haven’: ‘it is not an empty clearness, a bottomless sight. / it is a visibility of thought, / in which hundreds of eyes, in one mind, see at once.’ ( ). the glass man is a conduit for precisely this visibility of thought. the figure of the mirror opens a useful ambiguity embedded in the double sense of ‘glass’, in that the glass man is both transparent and reflective. he can be seen through, but he also reflects back. this is what enables him to both respond and summarise: ‘he is the transparence of the place in which / he is and in his poems we find peace.’ ( ). a kenotic winter figure, the glass man in summer, ‘cold and numbered, dewily cries, / “thou art not august unless i make thee so.”’ ( ). a sharp pun, it is neither summer nor majestic unless he makes thee so. this is because he is so ‘perfect a perceiver of his environment that he becomes indistinguishable from it’ (powell, july , ). as he is thus one with his environment he makes it so, but his intrusions do nothing to interfere with the environment because he is indistinguishable from it. he is another of stevens’ brilliant paradoxes. the poem finishes with a ritual for the dead, during which the speaker observes that ~ ~ …we and the diamond globe at last were one. we had always been partly one. it was as we came to see him, that we were wholly one, as we heard him chanting for those buried in their blood, in the jasmine haunted forests, that we knew the glass man, without external reference. ( ). there is a final unity between the glass man and the mourners of the dead. the glass man turned diamond globe has thus become a figure of universal empathy in his assimilation of the mourners’ suffering: ‘there was nothing he did not suffer, no; nor we.’ ( ). as an abstraction of universal empathy he requires no external reference to be known. this epitomical figure is revised in ‘chocorua to its neighbour’, who is envisioned by the titular mountain (the speaker of the poem), as ‘a shell of dark blue glass, or ice, / or air collected in deep essay, / or light embodied,’ ( ), whose ‘body seemed / both substance and non-substance, luminous flesh / or shapely fire’ ( ). the mountain recollects: ‘he was not man yet he was nothing else.’ ( ). chocorua reports this figure’s mountaintop speech: "the moments of enlargement overlook the enlarging of the simplest soldier's cry in what i am, as he falls. of what i am, xi the cry is part. my solitaria are the meditations of a central mind. ~ ~ i hear the motions of the spirit and the sound of what is secret becomes, for me, a voice that is my own voice speaking in my ear. xii there lies the misery, the coldest coil that grips the centre, the actual bite, that life itself is like a poverty in the space of life, so that the flapping of wind around me here is something in tatters that i cannot hold." ( ) as with the glass man we have here another, albeit chameleonic, physiomorph, possessed of universal empathy. there is also the panpsychic invocation of a central mind, which this figure, in his solitaria, has access to. stevens revises the ‘fiction’ of a central mind in a small group of late, uncollected poems: ‘the sail of ulysses’, ‘presence of an external master of knowledge’, and ‘a child asleep in its own life’. the last of these begins: ‘among the old men that you know, / there is one, unnamed, that broods / on all the rest, in heavy thought. // they are nothing, except in the universe / of that single mind.’ ( ). this transposes the figure of a central mind to that of a quasi- transcendent single mind borne by an unnamed thinker, and, were it not for his thinking, the rest would be nothing. in section vi of ‘the sail of ulysses’, the titular soliloquist dissertates on the notion of an ancestral mind anterior to all descendant it should be noted that ‘the sail of ulysses’ and ‘presence of an external master of knowledge’, neither published during stevens’ lifetime, are two versions of what presumably began as a single poem. both of them share identical opening and closing stanzas. ‘the sail of ulysses’, a poem of eight sections, exceeds in length by some few pages the four sestets of ‘presence of an external master of knowledge’. the two poems share certain lines and phrases outside of the opening and closing stanzas. ~ ~ minds, thus invoking the presence of an external master of knowledge, a further revision on the ‘bright scienza outside of ourselves’ ( ) from ‘of bright & blue birds & the gala sun’ ( ). the man on top of chocorua, however, possesses a central mind because he is another aggregate meta-human containing multitudes: a ‘collective being [who] knew / there were others like him safely under roof.’ ( ). these others include a captain, cardinal, stone effigy, mother and scholar, which, as lensing points out, signify ‘male and female, figure of action and contemplation, religious and secular, living and non-living’ (lensing, , ). thus, in spite of his ventriloquized cry of despair in solitude, he grows strong ‘because men wanted him to be.’ ( ). chocorua declaims in section xix what i would argue is this poem’s central statement: to say more than human things with human voice, that cannot be; to say human things with more than human voice, that, also, cannot be; to speak humanly from the height or from the depth of human things, that is acutest speech. ( ) the height and depth of human speech reads conspicuously like a self-reflexive comment on stevens’ own poetic praxis. there are in a number of stevens’ poems meta- human sublimations of the figure of the poet. we have already seen from ‘the creations of sound’ the ‘other poet’ described as ‘a secondary expositor’ and ‘a being of sound’. this figure is a later revision of the ‘metaphysician in the dark’ ( ) from ‘of modern poetry’, who is the meta-human translator of ‘the speech of the place’ ( ). the speech of one’s contemporary place that must ‘speak words in the ear, / in the delicatest ear of ~ ~ the mind, repeat, / exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound of which, an invisible audience listens, / not to the play, but to itself, expressed / in an emotion as of two people, as of two / emotions becoming one.’ ( ). these figures are effectively aural daimons, sonic intermediaries in the ‘universal intercourse’ ( ) between themselves and silence. they are personifications of the unintelligible blank at the heart of mere sound that operate in such a way as to render it eloquent for the receptive poet to act as mere amanuensis. in ‘men made out of words’ the human species is sublimated into a singular meta-human poet: ‘the whole race is a poet that writes down / the eccentric propositions of its fate.’ ( ), whereas in ‘reply to papini’ the poet-speaker says: ‘you know that the nucleus of a time is not / the poet but the poem, the growth of the mind // of the world, the heroic effort to live expressed / as victory.’ ( - ). here it is ‘the poem’ that underwrites its age. we have already seen in ‘a primitive like an orb’ the sublimation of the central poem as orphic compositor of the world. another variation of stevens’ fictive beings can be found in ‘angel surrounded by paysans’: one of the countrymen: there is a welcome at the door to which no one comes? the angel: i am the angel of reality, seen for a moment standing in the door. i have neither ashen wing nor wear of ore and live without a tepid aureole, or stars that follow me, not to attend, ~ ~ but, of my being and its knowing, part. i am one of you and being one of you is being and knowing what i am and know. yet i am the necessary angel of earth, since, in my sight, you see the earth again, cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set, and, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone rise liquidly in liquid lingerings, like watery words awash; like meanings said by repetitions of half-meanings. am i not, myself, only half of a figure of a sort, a figure half seen, or seen for a moment, a man of the mind, an apparition apparelled in apparels of such lightest look that a turn of my shoulder and quickly, too quickly, i am gone? ( ) this ‘necessary angel of earth’ hearkens back to the glass man inasmuch as they both rhetorically function as metaphors for cleansers of vision. the primary difference, of course, is that this is not a meta-human fiction at all, but a transcendent being brought down to earth and made immanent. stripped of its holy trappings, this angel declares, in typically stevensian tautological logic, that ‘i am one of you and being one of you / is ~ ~ being and knowing what i am and know’. an identity between subject and pure perceiver is once again made, as it was with the glass man, only this time there is no guarantee of permanency. through the borrowed eyes of the angel the peasants are assured that they will come to see the earth again, in a wonderfully musical line: ‘cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set’ (the alliterative stops of ‘stiff’ and ‘stubborn’, succeeded by the spondee ‘man-locked’, to be picked up again by an alliterated sibilant, are suitably evocative of the derisive tone of the angel). but there is a fulgurant ephemerality about this angel’s presence that risks its being easily missed. whereas the angel of reality in the previous poem threatens imminent departure, the ‘antipodal, far-fetched creature, worthy of birth,’ in ‘a discovery of thought’ is, properly speaking, a personification of anticipation, a thing not-yet-become. the anticipation is for the arrival of a new lease on the ‘first word […] / the immaculate disclosure of the secret, no longer obscured.’ ( ). this poem, as i had discussed in the preceding chapter, promises the simultaneous rejuvenation of the earth and the poet’s powers. it recalls the earlier ‘celle qui fût hèaulmiette’: out of the first warmth of spring, and out of the shine of the hemlocks, among the bare and crooked trees, she found a helping from the cold, like a meaning in nothingness ( ). not to mention the poem stevens’ chose to close his collected poems in , namely ‘not ideas about the thing but the thing itself’, a poem that also ‘at the earliest ending ~ ~ of winter,’ ( ), yields ‘a new knowledge of reality.’ ( ). this poem develops by way of a concentric gradation moving outward from the speaker’s mind. the bird’s cry from outside seems first ‘like a sound in his mind.’ ( ). this is negated by way of a reaffirmation: ‘it would have been outside.’ ( ), followed by another negation, ‘it was not from the vast ventriloquism / of sleep’s faded papier-mâché . . .’ ( ). then another affirmation: ‘the sun was coming from outside.’ ( ). then comes the moment of revelation: ‘that scrawny cry—it was / a chorister whose c proceeded the choir. / it was part of the colossal sun, // surrounded by its choral rings, / still far away. it was like / a new knowledge of reality.’ ( ). the ‘c’ of the bird’s cry does a lot of work in this line. it connotes a musical note; the disintegration of the words ‘cry’, ‘chorister’, and ‘choir’, to their initial letter, inscribing in the very text itself the precedence of the bird’s cry; allusively echoes ‘the comedian as the letter c’ from stevens’ first published collection; and has a defamiliarising effect inasmuch as the pronounced sibilant of the letter c is not a sound that birds produce. the concentric pattern of affirmation- negation-reaffirmation-negation-affirmation, removing the sound of the cry and the sun itself further outward from the speaker’s seeming mind, is transposed into the image the sun’s choral rings synaesthetically fusing the bird’s cry with the sun’s aureole. returning to stevens’ figurations of fictive beings, we should by now be able to discern strong patterns. they are ostensibly vehicles for extra-human modes of perception that can only be imagined rather than seen, on the one hand, or projected satisfactions of certain desires or lacks, on the other. no poet of stevens’ generation was given to his prodigious appetite for producing these sorts of fictive beings. this is primarily because, as we recall from surette’s comments, stevens chose ‘the more difficult course’ (surette, spring , ) of a rigorously immanent path than most of his major contemporaries. in choosing this path, he had to make over the ‘dominant ~ ~ blank’ ( ) of the world he had decreated. his fictive beings are important characters in his ongoing ‘war between the mind / and sky, between thought and day and night’ ( ). the reader of stevens, holding in mind his idea of believable fictions, may not necessarily find his fictive beings sufficiently believable, but i think this is beside the point. if i read stevens properly, he is simply inviting us to entertain possibilities. in a letter to henry church, december , , stevens recounts an interaction that he had had with a student at trinity college: one evening, a week or so ago, a student at trinity college came to the office and walked home with me. we talked about this book. i said that i thought that we had reached a point at which we could no longer really believe in anything unless we recognized that it was a fiction. the student said that that was an impossibility, that there was no such thing as believing in something that one knew was not true. it is obvious, however, that we are doing that all the time. there are things with respect to which we willingly suspend disbelief; if there is instinctive in us a will to believe, or if there is a will to believe, whether or not it is instinctive, it seems to me that we can suspend disbelief with reference to a fiction as easily as we can suspend it with reference to anything else. (l, ). gregory brazeal takes stevens’ challenge of a believable supreme fiction head-on and finds it sorely wanting. his argument draws upon william james’ rejection of the psychological possibility of willing ourselves into believing what we know to be untrue, as well as the logical impossibility of doing the same: it is not so much that we as human beings lack the capacity to believe what we know to be untrue, as though such belief were simply an ability like any other, and some race of aliens might possess it. rather, our very concept of belief may imply that what is believed is believed to be true. our customary ways of using the word “belief” simply do not allow for the possibility of believing what one knows to be untrue. in other words, our inability to will belief in fictions recognized as fictions may be less like our inability to fly or see through steel walls, and more like the “inability” of bachelors to be married, or triangles to have four sides. we can imagine a race of creatures with enormous wings and penetrating vision, but what would it look like for a creature to believe in something it knows to be untrue? (what would it look like if a bachelor got married but succeeded, through sheer force of will, in remaining a bachelor?) (brazeal, fall , - ). ~ ~ the queen in through the looking-glass admits to alice: ‘why, sometimes i've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’ (carroll, , ). this is, of course, spoken by a fictional character—but i think it strikes at an intriguing nub. with literature, whether it is poetry, prose, plays, what have you, even if we know that what we are reading is fictional, this knowledge does not necessarily preclude the fictional text from yielding insights that we may find entirely plausible to believe. we will now turn to another of stevens’ sustaining fictions, the first idea. * the notion of a pure percipient, such as we might imagine ‘the snow man’ to represent, unsullied by figurative trope or cognitive deviation, is a recurrent motif in stevens. it is accompanied by his notion of ‘the first idea’, which is the prominent subject of the ‘it must be abstract’ section of ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’. stevens explains what he means by ‘a thinker of the first idea’ ( ), in a letter to henry church, october , : ‘if you take the varnish and dirt of generations off a picture, you see it in its first idea. if you think about the world without its varnish and dirt, you are a thinker of the first idea’ (l, - ). stevens’ indebtedness to blake is clearly apparent here. in brief, stevens’ ‘first idea’ carries the double sense of pure concept and original seeing (we recall the etymological root of ‘idea’ derives from the greek ‘ideîn’, meaning to see). the ‘hard lesson’, as desales harrison has it, for a thinker of the first idea, for the ‘ephebe’ instructed to perceive ‘the idea / of this invention, this invented world, / the inconceivable idea of the sun.’ ( ), is ‘the burden of paradox…one of the things the one has in mind the famous blakean proverb: ‘if the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.’ (blake, , ). of course, for stevens, the cleansing is a way to get at originary thought, rather than a vision of infinity. ~ ~ ephebe will learn is something about what he cannot learn, cannot know, cannot do with words’ (harrison, , ). the pedagogical speaker establishes this burden of paradox in the opening tercet by calling the idea ‘inconceivable’. the pedagogue never tells the ephebe what the first idea is, of course, but instructs him on how to go about arriving at it. one of the prerequisites is to cleanse the sun of its supernatural provenance, and ‘let purple phoebus lie in umber harvest, / let phoebus slumber and die in autumn umber’ ( ). recalling the admonition of ‘the man with the blue guitar’, to ‘throw away the lights, the definitions, / and say of what you see in the dark // that it is this or that it is that, / but do not use the rotted names.’ ( ), the pedagogue proclaims that phoebus, now lying in rot, ‘was / a name for something that never could be named.’ ( ). he then blatantly contradict himself in the succeeding tercet by reasserting that ‘the sun / must bear no name,’ ( ), only to immediately qualify this statement by naming it, ‘gold flourisher, but be / in the difficulty of what it is to be.’ ( ). this difficulty of being opens a rupture between our inability to separate things as they are from how they seem to us. as early as ‘the emperor of ice-cream’, the speaker delivers the following injunction: ‘let be be finale of seem.’ ( ), as though to suggest that the ultimacy of seeming, of phenomenal appearance, is the truth of that which is. it is a notion carried through the course of stevens’ poetry. ‘the latest freed man’, a possible precursor to the pedagogue of ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’, ‘having just / escaped from the truth’ ( ) of the ‘old descriptions of the world’ ( ), asserts that the sun, ‘(the strong man vaguely seen)’ ( ), has overtaken ‘the doctrine of this landscape. of him / and of his works, i am sure’ ( ). motivated by ‘how the sun came shining into his room’ ( ) we are given a description of what it would entail for the freed man ‘to be without a description of to be,’ ( ). the irony is not lost on us. ~ ~ nonetheless, the freed man, delivered of the ‘strength that is the strength of the sun’ ( ), undergoes a peculiar transformation: ‘to have the ant of the self changed to an ox’ (perhaps troping on the cattle of helios), which, in turn, is what delivers the freed man of his freedom: it was how he was free. it was how his freedom came. it was being without description, being an ox. it was the importance of the trees outdoors, the freshness of the oak-leaves, not so much that they were oak-leaves, as the way they looked. it was everything being more real, himself at the centre of reality, seeing it. it was everything bulging and blazing and big in itself, ( ) this is possibly one of the plerotic benefits of successfully thinking of the world in its first idea: an accomplishment of the centre of reality from which everything appears not infinite, but merely enlarged and brighter. a later lyric, ‘the red fern’, reprises this visionary aggrandizement of seeing things, as stevens’ phrases it in ‘a lot of people bathing in a stream’, ‘in a world / of nakedness, in the company of the sun,’ ( - ): the large-leaved day grows rapidly, and opens in this familiar spot its unfamiliar, difficult fern, pushing and pushing red after red. there are doubles of this fern in clouds, ~ ~ less firm than the paternal flame, yet drenched with its identity, reflections and off-shoots, mimic-motes and mist-mites, dangling seconds, grown beyond relation to the parent trunk: the dazzling, bulging, brightest core, the furiously burning father-fire . . . infant, it is enough in life to speak of what you see. but wait until sight wakens the sleepy eye and pierces the physical fix of things. ( - ) ostensibly a poem about sunrise, the speaker in the final quatrain, acting, as with the pedagogue in ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’, in loco parentis, gives a contrary lesson to the infant. admonishing that it ‘is enough in life/ to speak of what you see’, and further instructing, somewhat hermetically, to ‘wait / until sight wakens the sleepy eye’, is entirely at odds with what has preceded these advisements. the sunrise is not referred to at all, but is represented by way of a metaphorical conceit. the sunrise is the subdued tenor to the red fern’s dominant vehicle. as such, the unfurling of this conceit does indeed grow quite wildly ‘beyond relation to the parent trunk’, and becomes something of an object lesson of ‘a seeing and unseeing in the eye.’ ( ). this seeing and unseeing in the eye is one of the very functions of metaphor. one does not see the miller describes the poem being ‘about the day as governed, centered, and powered by the sun’ (miller, , ), and points out that ‘[u]nlike some of stevens's solar poems "the red fern" is explicitly about sunrise, the "appearance" of the sun out of its nighttime occultation at dawn’ (ibid). ~ ~ sunrise as a fern with the eye. however, in the unseeing eye, the eye of the secondary imagination (to borrow a coleridgean distinction), resemblances between the two are visualised. is this poem, then, a lesson by way of contrary example? or is it in fact an exhibit of the speaker’s wakened sight? if the latter, then the implication of the poem is that wakened sight is susceptible to the metaphorical transfigurations of an ecstatic imagination. piercing the physical fix of things, therefore, would be a piercing through to imperceptible relations, rather than a fixing in place of what the eye alone sees. later in ‘notes toward a supreme fiction’, in canto iv of ‘it must give pleasure’, we are told that ‘we reason of these things with later reason / and make of what we see, what we see clearly / and have seen, a place dependent on ourselves.’ ( ). ‘these things’ we later reason about, to skip back two cantos, are the things of the world—the sun, the sea, the moon—untransformed by our inherited doctrines and mythologies, that we are nevertheless ‘shaken by…as if they were’ ( ). one of the social outcomes, then, of the labours of thinking through the first idea is to arrive at a self-reliant commonal. it is certainly not to go the way of the englishman who had died in florence: paul ricoeur’s analysis of epoché in relation to metaphor is revealing in this context. epoché signifies a theoretical moment of suspension wherein our assumptions and judgements of the external world are temporarily bracketed out in order to focus on phenomenal experience in and of itself. ricoeur conceives of novel metaphor, of which stevens’ ‘the red fern’ is an apposite case, as ‘the emergence of a new semantic congruence or pertinence from the ruins of the literal sense shattered by semantic incompatibility or absurdity’ (ricoeur, , ). this newly arisen congruence is referentially split between the self-abolished literal sense and the emergent metaphorical sense, thus creating an ambiguity in reference (ibid, ). epoché, specifically in this context, signifies the imagination’s suspension of ordinary descriptive reference as a new semantic congruence emerges. this is to say, the ordinary descriptive reference is not so much negated as it is superimposed by the emergent semantic congruence. ricoeur contends: [t]hat one of the functions of imagination is to give a concrete dimension to the suspension or epoché proper to split reference. imagination does not merely schematize the predicative assimilation between terms by its synthetic insight into similarities nor does it merely picture the sense thanks to the display of images aroused and controlled by the cognitive process. rather, it contributes concretely to the epoché of ordinary reference and to the projection of new possibilities of redescribing the world (ibid). ricoeur thus makes the claim that the interaction between metaphor and imagination reifies the tensive space opened up between the ordinary descriptive reference and the emergent semantic congruence of novel metaphor, thus bridging this cognitive gap to form a basis upon which to redescribe reality. ~ ~ he stood at last by god's help and the police; but he remembered the time when he stood alone. he yielded himself to that single majesty; but he remembered the time when he stood alone, when to be and delight to be seemed to be one, before the colors deepened and grew small. ( ). the pathos of the englishman’s degeneration is heightened, in stevens’ estimation, by his recourse to authoritarian institutions in his late life: ‘if men have nothing external to them on which to rely, then, in the event of the collapse of their own spirit, they must naturally turn to the spirit of others. i don’t mean conventions: police’ (l, ). but more importantly, the englishman has lost his grasp on ‘when to be and delight to be seemed to be one’. perhaps stevens’ most radical treatment of this rupture of seeming and being is in his poem ‘description without place’. in this complex poetic sequence stevens explores the ‘idea that we live in the description of a place and not in the place itself’ (l, ). it is among the most explicit of stevens’ poems to explore the notion of linguistic mediation in the human apperception of experience. it reverses the direction of stevens’ ‘repeated thrusts for the thing itself and the first idea, his regular attempts at reaching a pure vision of the world untouched in language’ (eeckhout, , ), by affirming the poem is in seven parts and follows, as cook outlines, the following schema: ‘( ) a hypothesis that “to seem—it is to be.” ( ) actual seemings, which give identity to an age. ( ) potential future seemings. ( ) how things seemed to nietzsche and lenin. ( ) the experience of a place as description without place. ( ) description as revelation. ( ) the importance of the theory of description’ (cook, , ). unfortunately, i haven’t the space here to respond to each of the parts of this poem. ~ ~ that descriptions of the world are transformative of the world. this in despite of the fact that our descriptions are without place in the sense that they are idealist formulations of the mind: thus the theory of description matters most. it is the theory of the word for those for whom the word is the making of the world, the buzzing world and lisping firmament. it is a world of words to the end of it, in which nothing solid is its solid self. ( ) this stevens picks up again later at the conclusion of ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’: ‘it is not in the premise that reality / is a solid. it may be a shade that traverses / a dust, a force that traverses a shade.’ ( ). it is not in the premise that reality is a solid, nor that nothing solid is its solid self, if one accepts that the very concepts of reality and the world are themselves ‘fictions’, in the broadest sense of them being descriptions we humans have shaped. it could be that any number of descriptions of ‘seemings that are to be, / seemings that it is possible may be.’ ( ) may prove more compelling than those we already have. there is an eschatology at play the sun, too, stevens’ primitive emblem of reality, becomes something seemed: it is possible that to seem—it is to be, as the sun is something seeming and it is. ~ ~ the sun is an example. what it seems it is and in such seeming all things are. thus things are like a seeming of the sun or like a seeming of the moon or night or sleep. ( ) this is not an abstraction of the sun to the first idea, but a postulation of the possibility that what the sun seems it is. this entirely reverses stevens’ materialist insistence on the thing itself by re-posing the thing itself as a purely mental construct: what it seems, that is, what our minds configure as the sun, is what it is—a thoroughly idealist position. description, as we are told in canto vi, extends to one of the very foundations of numinous discourse: description is revelation. it is not the thing described, nor false facsimile. it is an artificial thing that exists, in its own seeming, plainly visible, yet not too closely the double of our lives, intenser than any actual life could be, a text we should be born that we might read, more explicit than the experience of sun ~ ~ and moon, the book of reconciliation, book of a concept only possible in description, canon central in itself, the thesis of the plentifullest john. ( ) this continues from the previous canto in which description without place is qualified as ‘the spirit’s universe […] / composed of sight indifferent to the eye’ ( ). in ‘the latest freed man’, the man was delivered of his freedom specifically because he was able ‘to be without a description of to be’. his revelation was purely an experiential enhancement of sight brought about by a concomitant sun-fuelled expansion of his animality. in the foregoing canto of ‘description without place’, the freed man’s ecstasy is superseded by an ascetic denial of both self and world in favour of a sui generis artifice ‘intenser than any life could be // a text we should be born that we might read, / more explicit than the experience of the sun // and moon’. this ‘thesis of the plentifullest john’ (an allusion to st john the divine, author of the book of revelations) is even said to hold a prescriptive sway over our existence ‘we should be born that we might read’. what this book of reconciliation is supposed to reconcile us to is presumably the concept only possible in description, which, as has been established, is not to the world as it is in itself. it is perhaps a reconciliation to the reverse negative mutter describes the man’s freedom as …a condition of animal potency and autotelic desire ("being an ox"), a condition of pure visuality as opposed to hermeneutic discovery: "the importance of the trees outdoors, / the freshness of the oak- leaves, not so much / that they were oak leaves, as the way theylooked." in that poem, knowledge ("not so much / that they were oak leaves") and style ("the way they looked") are at odds. the immanence of visuality is more important than the understanding yielded in the linguistic act of naming. (mutter, , ). ~ ~ of the first idea, insofar as the possible is invariably bound to futurity, whereas the first idea is a desire to discover primal anteriority. desire for that which is absent would seem to be their common meeting ground, as we are told in canto ii of ‘it must be abstract’ that ‘not to have is the beginning of desire. / to have what is not is its ancient cycle.’ ( ). structurally speaking, the first idea and description as revelation are rhetorically generative renewals of vision (sight) and revision (translation of sight i.e. description) in stevens’ poetry. the paradox of the first idea’s being inconceivable nevertheless functions as an immanently numinous site of poetic departure for stevens. the numinosity of the first idea resides precisely in its ineffability. the first idea is ineffable because it is not, in fact, an idea at all. it is, rather, a process of reduction and detachment, which i will have more to say about shortly. this is why, over the course of ten cantos, we as participant ephebes in our reading of ‘it must be abstract’, are never told what the first idea is. we are given instructions of what must be done in order to arrive at the first idea (‘begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea’ etc.); psychological motivations for wanting to seek it out (‘it is the celestial ennui of apartments/ that sends us back to the first idea, the quick / of this invention’, ‘it satisfies / belief in an immaculate beginning’ ( )); told that it inheres within ‘the poem’ (‘the poem refreshes life so that we share, / for a moment, the first idea . . .’ ( )); presented with second-order abstractions that supposedly follow from its unstated premise (it must be visible or invisible, / invisible or visible or both: / a seeing and unseeing in the eye.’ ( )); informed of possessors, non-possessors, and antagonists of the first idea (it feels good as it is without the giant, / a thinker of the first idea.’ ( ), ‘the first idea was not our own.’ ( ), ‘these are the heroic children whom time breeds / against the first idea’ ( )); elliptical statements that are effectively tautological (‘the first idea is an ~ ~ imagined thing.’ ( )); before the final three cantos pass on to an investigation of ‘major man’ ( - ), whom, it is to be presumed, is a fictive progeny of the first idea. the closest we come to positive content of the first idea are respectively seasonal (it is desire at the end of winter, when // it observes the effortless weather turning blue / and sees the myosotis on its bush.’ ( ) and meteorological (‘the weather and the giant of the weather, / say the weather, the mere weather, the mere air: / an abstraction blooded, as a man by thought.’ ( ) in their provenance. in the first case desire is categorically not an idea, so we can discount that immediately. the second case proves more promising, especially if we corroborate it with evidence from elsewhere: ‘well, the gods grow out of the weather. / the people grow out of the weather; / the gods grow out of the people.’ ( ). this additional evidence appears to support the idea that the weather is somehow an anterior progenitive force in the world, which would seem befitting of a first idea. moreover, if we return to the original quote, the quasi-mythological ‘giant of the weather’, by way of paratactic apposition, is metaphorised as ‘an abstraction blooded, as a man by thought’. ‘an abstraction blooded’ is arguably, on the one hand, a figuration of the instantiation of the first idea, as though the first idea is contingent upon the union of mind and body. on the other, to say that the giant of the weather is an abstraction blooded is to say that it is the reification of the concept of a giant of the weather, an abstraction given incarnated form, not unlike ‘a body wholly body, fluttering / its empty sleeves’ ( ) in reference to the sea in ‘the idea of order at key west’, or the bodiless serpent of the aurora borealis in ‘auroras of autumn’, which is figured as ‘form gulping after formlessness, / skin flashing to wished- for disappearances / and the serpent body flashing without the skin.’ ( ). another there is a sense in which the sea and the northern lights are more stably identifiable entities or phenomena than the weather. the weather is whatever the atmospheric conditions govern at a given time anywhere in the world, and is decidedly more localized in terms of a human being’s perception and evaluation of it. a person in ~ ~ felicity about the first idea being the weather is that it is in keeping with stevens’ reiterations of environmental determinism that we had touched on in the preceding chapter. my previous assertion that the first idea is not an idea but a process notwithstanding, there remains a crucial problem with settling for this solution. this problem is posed by what i would argue is the crucial canto in this entire section, namely the fourth: the first idea was not our own. adam in eden was the father of descartes and eve made air the mirror of herself, of her sons and of her daughters. they found themselves in heaven as in a glass; a second earth; and in the earth itself they found a green- the inhabitants of a very varnished green. but the first idea was not to shape the clouds in imitation. the clouds preceded us there was a muddy centre before we breathed. there was a myth before the myth began, alaska and a person in scotland will probably point at exactly the same things, or at least parts thereof, and say ‘that is the sea’ or ‘those are the northern lights’, but their geographical perspective will undoubtedly produce entirely different characterizations of the weather: ‘it is dismally wet and grey’ says the glaswegian on tuesday, while at the same time the woman from anchorage is enjoying the brilliance of the clustered stars above a crisp, clear, windless sky, and proclaiming its magnificence. the weather, in short, is whatever is climatically around at the time, and is more difficult to point to than either the sea or the northern lights (pointing to the weather would probably involve waving ones arms around in frantic circular motions while declaiming ‘this is the weather!’). i think the ubiquitous vagaries of the weather are precisely what attracts stevens to it as a poetic figure and phenomenal source. bloom, among several others, recognises that ‘for stevens the prime materia poetica is the weather’ (bloom, , ). nonetheless, the type of metaphorical figuration involved in the examples of the sea and the aurora borealis, quoted above, is the embodiment of the respective metaphor’s tenors in bodiless vehicles, much like the implied figure of blooding the weather in the form of a giant. a little intellectual fidgeting is admittedly required to think of a giant merely as a concept. ~ ~ venerable and articulate and complete. from this the poem springs: that we live in a place that is not our own and, much more, not ourselves and hard it is in spite of blazoned days. we are the mimics. clouds are pedagogues the air is not a mirror but bare board, coulisse bright-dark, tragic chiaroscuro and comic color of the rose, in which abysmal instruments make sounds like pips of the sweeping meanings that we add to them. ( - ) this canto is stevens’ decreation of genesis. the knockdown is delivered in the first sentence: ‘the first idea was not our own.’ neither adam, the first namer and logocentric ancestor of descartes, nor narcissistic eve, are the possessors of the first idea. eden is merely earth reflected back upon itself, and in that ironic reflection the green is amusingly ‘very varnished’. the clouds, synecdoches for the weather, tellingly enough, preceded us. most importantly, though, ‘there was a muddy centre before we breathed. / there was a myth before the myth began, / venerable and articulate and complete.’ the earth, as stevens wishes to persuade us, was a complete myth unto itself before we breathed and fashioned our own genetic myths. and then we have, in the fifth tercet, possibly the most alienating lines in stevens’ oeuvre. this is stevens’ bluntest pronouncement on the division between humans and the nonhuman world. not even the sun blazoning the days can relieve the hardness of the world’s recalcitrance. thus ~ ~ we find ourselves in a theatre resembling the world, the stage of which is empty of our reflections, and we are reduced to its scholarly mimes, adding the detritus of our meanings to the abysmal instruments of that give them the most diminutive voice. this is stevens at his kenotic bleakest. perhaps the only close rival elsewhere in the poetry is the conclusion of ‘the american sublime’: and the sublime comes down to the spirit itself, the spirit and space, the empty spirit in vacant space. what wine does one drink? what bread does one eat? ( ) curiously, both of these examples turn upon the despair of the numen abest. without god and his attendant myths the spirit is empty, space vacant, and we do not even know what to eat or drink because the sacraments have been denied. decreating the story of genesis leaves us estranged players in a strange land. these are quite anomalous pieces in stevens’ oeuvre, particularly for a poet who usually celebrates shaking off the musty garb of ancient doctrines in an otherwise companionable world. in saying that, there is nothing in the premise of immanent numinosity that presupposes the ineffable world, the articulate myth complete in itself, shares our concerns for belonging. it is the human listener who hears misery in the sound of windblown leaves, the snow man hears the nothing that is. ~ ~ in spite of the apparent bleakness of these two examples, they do give us a clearer idea, i think, of what stevens means by the first idea. as i have said, the first idea is not an idea at all but a process of reduction and detachment. what i mean by this, and i think these foregoing examples provide excellent illustrations of what this process involves, is simply a reimagining of the world without any human or divine intervention. it is obviously impossible to do this, as any reimagining of the world is already an intervention. nonetheless, it is, as an ascetic and meditative aesthetic praxis—of which bevis would certainly approve—a useful method for stripping away preconceptions and assumptions about the world, in an attempt to perceive it in a new, or at least qualitatively different, light. and again, this is why stevens merely posits the paradoxical notion of a first idea which supersedes conceivability. the fruits of the notion are the poems themselves. rhetorically, tropes on kenotic emptiness, silence and darkness, on the one hand, and plerotic superlatives on the other, abstract and occlude both the extent and limit of positive conception and physically available experience. they motion toward a transcendence within immanence. and this is what stevens’ poems perform, repeatedly, as the closing section of this chapter will seek to demonstrate. * stevens positioned at close of his publication of harmonium a small poem called ‘to the roaring wind’. it takes the form of an apostrophic address: jennifer anna gosetti-ferencei, for instance, argues that rilke and stevens are ‘two of the most widely invoked poets in the phenomenological tradition’ (gosetti-ferencei, summer , ), and are responsible for reorienting transcendence from a vertical to a horizontal projection, ‘a crossing of horizons between perception and imagination or imagination and reality’ (ibid). ~ ~ what syllable are you seeking, vocalissimus, in the distances of sleep? speak it. ( ) cook provides a helpful gloss on the latin epithet: ‘the superlative form, in the masculine singular vocative case, of the lat. adjective vocalis, “that utters a voice, sounding, vocal, singing,” also in a rare poetic use, “causing or inspiring speech or song”’ (cook, , ). thus, the addressor bestows the title of greatest speaker on the wind. the syllable it seeks in the distances of sleep is not disclosed. in another poem from harmonium, ‘domination of black’, leaves turning in the wind are commingled with the cry of the peacocks and the turning mind of the speaker sitting at night by a fire. the domination of black is attributed to the ‘color of the heavy hemlocks’ ( ), which is in turn compared to the oncoming night ‘striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks’ ( ). the poem follows the development of a fugue in which each of the above elements are played off one another contrapuntally to the point whereby it is difficult to distinguish what or who is turning where. it is a poem that tropes on turning, the root of trope, and is highly successful at accomplishing the perceptual vertigo it seeks to develop. these two poems and ‘the snow man’ establish early in stevens’ career a topos of images and tropes that he would revisit often. the basic elements of this topos comprise wind, leaves, paradoxical figures of extra-linguistic utterance, and, more often than not, occur in the kenosis of autumn or winter. in ‘farewell to florida’, the leading poem in stevens’ second collection, the valedictory speaker leaving key west by ship, looks grimly forward to his homecoming: ~ ~ ‘my north is leafless and lies in wintry slime / both of men and clouds, a slime of men in crowds.’ ( ). this poem is effectively a dramatization of the riddance of plerotic summer, here imaged as decadent, to return to the sharpness of the cold: ‘the palms were hot / as if i lived in ashen ground, as if / the leaves in which the wind kept up its sound / from my north of cold whistled in a sepulchral south,’ ( ). ‘on the way to the bus’, a late uncollected poem, expresses, somewhat contrary to expectation, a plerotic fulfilment in winter: a light snow, like frost, has fallen during the night. gloomily, the journalist confronts transparent man in a translated world, in which he feeds on a new known, in a season, a climate of morning, of elucidation, a refreshment of cold air, cold breath, a perception of cold breath, more revealing than a perception of sleep, more powerful than a power of sleep, a clearness emerging from cold, slightly irised, slightly bedazzled, but a perfection emerging from a new known, an understanding beyond journalism, a way of pronouncing the word inside of one's tongue under the wintry trees of the terrace. ~ ~ ( ) journalism, mere reportage, is ironized as the fluency of poetic description. the journalist, a stand-in for the poet of description, confronts a revision of the glass man from ‘asides on the oboe’. this confrontation enables him to see the translated world transparently. the journalist sublimates from the winter’s elucidation ‘a perfection emerging from a new known’. the understanding beyond journalism, that is to say, beyond description, is this perfection emerging from a new known, a trope inverting the first idea from original seeing to the revelation of futurity. the word inside of one’s tongue is obviously unpronounceable. this poem, as we so often find in stevens, sends us back to the limits of expressing that which can only be experienced. the sense of the poem is clear enough: standing outside on a winter morning is bracing. stevens takes this basic experiential premise and synaesthetises it into a clarification of mind, which, as the logic of the poem goes, is next in line to revelation. a revelation, nonetheless, that can only be pronounced inside, not with, the tongue. in ‘postcard from the volcano’, an apocalyptic poem imagining the children of a future generation ‘picking up our bones’, the misery in the sound of the leaves from ‘the snow man’ is outdone: ‘the spring clouds blow / above the shuttered mansion-house, / beyond our gate and the windy sky // cries out a literate despair.’ ( ). the wind speaks, here as in ‘the snow man’, an emotional language to the human listener. the entreaty to the roaring wind to speak the syllable it seeks is, in both of these cases, extra-linguistic. in ‘continual conversation with a silent man’ it is a proliferation of meaning that provides interpretive difficulties: ‘…and the wind, / of many meanings in the leaves, // brought down to one below the eaves, […] // it is not a voice that is under the eaves. / it is not speech, the sound we hear // in this conversation, but the sound / ~ ~ of things and their motion: the other man, / a turquoise monster moving round.’ ( - ). who or what is the turquoise monster? why is the conversation with this silent man continual? is this monster the reeling leaves imbued with the colour from ‘the turquoise hen and sky’? ( ). these questions are unanswerable, and the leaves’ many meanings will impart no more information than the sound of their motion. in ‘the motive for metaphor’: ‘the wind moves like a cripple among the leaves / and repeats words without meaning.’ ( ). this is a flat negation of both verbal and emotional communication, an unintelligible blank. in ‘an ordinary evening in new haven’ the leaves merely resemble thought: ‘and leaves whirling in the gutters, whirlings / around and away, resembling the presence of thought, / resembling the presences of thought, as if, / in the end, in the whole psychology, the self, / the town, the weather, in a casual litter, / together, said words of the world are the life of the world.’ ( ). this passage reprises the concessions stevens’ had made in ‘description without place’, and, accordingly, the self, the town, and the weather speak in unison the thought that they resemble. ‘the region november’, one of stevens’ last poems, expands upon the unintelligibility of the wind as a critical rebuke to the anthropocentric desire to seek a human tongue in nature: it is hard to hear the north wind again, and to watch the treetops, as they sway. they sway, deeply and loudly, in an effort, so much less than feeling, so much less than speech, saying and saying, the way things say on the level of that which is not yet knowledge: ~ ~ a revelation not yet intended. it is like a critic of god, the world and human nature, pensively seated on the waste throne of his own wilderness. deeplier, deeplier, loudlier, loudlier, the trees are swaying, swaying, swaying. ( - ) feeling too is denied. the critique is levelled not only at the anthropocentric desire to fix a world in language, but also at the theocentric desire to establish ultimate meaning. it is a radical gesture from stevens, only to be outdone by the marvellous late palinode to ‘the snow man’, ‘the course of a particular’. but before we read that poem we will briefly look at the text that bridges the two. i am referring to section iv of ‘extracts from addresses to the academy of fine ideas’: on an early sunday in april, a feeble day, he felt curious about the winter hills. and wondered about the water in the lake. it had been cold since december. snow fell, first, at new year and, from then until april, lay on everything. now it had melted, leaving the gray grass like a pallet, closely pressed; and dirt. the wind blew in the empty place. the winter wind blew in an empty place— there was that difference between the and an, ~ ~ the difference between himself and no man, no man that heard a wind in an empty place. it was time to be himself again, to see if the place, in spite of its witheredness, was still within the difference. he felt curious whether the water was black and lashed about or whether the ice still covered the lake. there was still snow under the trees and on the northern rocks, the dead rocks not the green rocks, the live rocks. if, when he looked, the water ran up the air or grew white against the edge of the ice, the abstraction would be broken and winter would be broken and done, and being would be being himself again, being, becoming seeing and feeling and self, black water breaking into reality. ( ) it is mid-spring but winter has been long in leaving. the man ventures into the ‘winter hills’ after the snow has finally melted to investigate whether or not the lake is still frozen over. stevens then revises the negations of ‘the snow man’. on a simple play on the definite and indefinite articles the question of a or the man’s existence hinges. no man echoes snow man, the dropping of the bookending letters revealing the snow man’s true self. the logic of this passage suggests that ‘a man’ is an abstraction, or, conversely any man, which amounts to the same, but ‘the man’ refers to an actual person. the same stevens’ performs a similar play on the definite article in ‘the man on the dump’: ‘where was it one first heard of the truth? the the.’ ( ). it is, as i understand, an extreme example of stevens’ tautology. truth is reduced to the definite article, suggesting that anything predicated by a definite article is closer to the truth than anything predicated by an indefinite article. or, perhaps more radically, the definite article is the truth, period. i think the full stop at the end of this poem is suggestive. ~ ~ applies to place. ‘no man that heard a wind in an empty place’ is a very blatant restatement of the earlier poem’s famous crux. what is actually more arresting in this section is the man wanting to see if the place ‘was still / within the difference’. what would it mean for a place to be within the difference of the and a? the breaking of winter being equated with the breaking of the abstraction would seem to suggest that winter is abstract. it belongs on the side of ‘a’ as opposed to ‘the’. but if when he arrives and beholds the ‘black water breaking into reality’ then he would be able to be himself again. what this implies is that the man’s journey into the winter hills is a kenotic descent into approximating the state of the snow man, frozen from being. only the confirmation of the defrosted lake will free him from this abstraction. ‘the course of a particular’, as with its predecessor, is a poem of five tercets: today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind, yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less. it is still full of icy shades and shapen snow. the leaves cry . . . one holds off and merely hears the cry. it is a busy cry, concerning someone else. and though one says that one is part of everything, there is a conflict, there is a resistance involved; and being part is an exertion that declines: one feels the life of that which gives life as it is. the leaves cry. it is not a cry of divine attention, nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry. it is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves, ~ ~ in the absence of fantasia, without meaning more than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all. ( ) the particular whose course is being plotted in this poem is the ‘cry’ of the leaves. we notice that in a poem of only fifteen lines the word is repeated nine times. we remember from our reading of ‘the region november’ that the trees in that poem, although they were saying ‘on the level of that which is not yet knowledge’, somewhere less than feeling and speech, they nonetheless were providing a critique. the cry of the leaves in this poem is not anything else than crying. there is no misery. this is late stevens, allowing things to be in and for themselves, without fussing over evasions, deviations, qualifications, seemings, and so on. we have seen a similar letting be in our reading of ‘not ideas about the thing but the thing itself’. in ‘a note on moonlight’, another poem from this late period, he writes: ‘the one moonlight, in the simple-colored night, / like a plain poet revolving in his mind / the sameness of his various universe, / shines on the mere objectiveness of things.’ ( ). there is a noticeable change of tone and priority in these marvellous late poems. a spare equanimity in the face of numinous otherness: ‘and being part is an exertion that declines’. the cry of the leaves do not transcend themselves. the final finding of the ear is the sound of the cry itself and nothing more. it is not a universal cry, no appeal is being made to gods, heroes, or humans, it is a particular self, and, finally, concerns no one at all. the gradual relinquishment of this letting be emphasised by the three commas in the final line separating ‘itself, until, at last,’. ~ ~ to finish i will look at one last poem. it takes us away from the world of winter and recalls the setting of stevens’ florida poems. it is, however, not florida, it is, in fact, nowhere at all. the poem i have in mind is ‘of mere being’: the palm at the end of the mind, beyond the last thought, rises in the bronze distance, a gold-feathered bird sings in the palm, without human meaning, without human feeling, a foreign song. you know then that it is not the reason that makes us happy or unhappy. the bird sings. its feathers shine. the palm stands on the edge of space. the wind moves slowly in the branches. the bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down. ( - ) cook explains that the title of this poem puns on the double sense of ‘mere’: ‘this is mere (bare, only) being and also mere (utter, very) being’ (cook, , ). the pun is apposite for on the bare side of the pun the syntax and imagery is spare. the scene depicted is of a cohesive and singular piece. on the utter side of the pun the poem is a projection that exceeds thought, it is beyond reality. it is, to be sure, a poem in extremis. many critics have pointed out its similarities to yeats’ byzantium poems, so i would only ~ ~ deem it obligatory to mention what is an apt comparison. in the same vein, certain critics have wondered whether or not it is a vision of imaginary paradise, or a threshold poem en route to death. the bird who sings in the palm at the end of the mind is unmistakably a phoenix. cook also points out that ‘[t]he greek word for this fabulous sacred bird is also used for a date-palm’ (ibid), and thus draws the inference that the bird both sings in and is the palm. it is, to my knowledge, the only poem like it in all of stevens’ poetry, inasmuch as it is an otherworldly depiction that is neither being employed as an ironic takedown, nor is it being transposed to an immanent social imaginary. it exists in a nonhuman, paradisal foreignness all on its own. conclusion: we say god and the imagination are one . . . * ‘the lean cats of the arches of the churches, / that’s the old world. in the new all men are priests.’ ( ), so says the speaker in ‘extracts from addresses to the academy of fine ideas’. the aim of this thesis has been to interpret stevens’ poetry in such a way that it does justice to its inherently numinous elements without doing violence to the dispossession of traditional religious belief upon which it is predicated. i have used weber’s theory of the disenchantment of the world as a framing device in which to situate the occasion of stevens’ poetry. i have not attempted to argue that stevens’ poetry is a substitute for traditional religious observance, as the two practices are and should be kept distinct. poetry, to paraphrase barzun, calls its reader to enjoy but not to be enjoined. that said, stevens’ poetry, as i hope to have convincingly demonstrated, ~ ~ evinces many qualities that could be construed as religious in their orientation. that is why i have chosen to interpret stevens’ poetry in the context of what i have been calling immanent numinosity. the basis of my argument has been that the concept of the numinous pertains to that which is ineffably other, and therefore falls within the purview of the mysterium. the presence of divinity is not required to make this concept hold. one need only be a non-omniscient conscious subject. i have taken the polarities of plerotic and kenotic ritual and abstracted them in order to plot the coordinates of my rhetorical analysis of stevens’ poetry. in so doing, i have shown just how replete it is with figures of fullness, emptiness, darkness, illumination, silence, renewal, desolation, centrality and finality. stevens is through and through a poet of utmosts and extremes. furthermore, i would maintain that stevens, in his ongoing engagement with the ‘idea of god’, and his numerous variations upon this idea, can be construed as at the very least an aesthetic, experimental theologian. i have also traced through the poetry what i have identified as a panpsychic-physiomorphic axis underpinning much of stevens’ peculiar figuration. nowhere in my reading of the secondary literature have i found anybody else making these profitable connections. in stevens’ poetry, early through late, the world, the earth, the cosmos, nature, are treated as ineffably other entities in and of their own right. stevens frequent recourse to the use of logologically resecularised religious language is indicative of this orientation. as are his poems that mimic forms of devotional address or ritualised veneration. he is a poet who works on a large canvas. also, his reiterations of the adequacy of the world, of lived immanent experience, signifies a poet thoroughly engaged to a reconciliation with the world as it is, without any reaching out for an improved hereafter or transcendent dispensation. that is why i have argued in my first chapter that stevens’ poetry can be read under the aegis of religious naturalism. ~ ~ religious naturalists dispense with god, but retain what nagel calls a religious temperament. that, i hope to have persuasively demonstrated, is an entirely befitting characterisation of stevens’ work. as stevens’ writes in ‘landscape with boat’: ‘he never supposed divine / things might not look divine, nor that if nothing / was divine then all things were, the world itself’ ( ). in the second chapter i argued that in decreating the world, that is, of stripping it down to its phenomenological basis without any recourse to divine origins, sent stevens on a search for what he called the ‘first idea’. the first idea, an impossibly elusive blank, nonetheless proved an enormously productive stimulus of rhetorical generativity. i have also examined a number of his fictive beings, which, as we have seen, are figurative experiments in states of consciousness or modes of perception unavailable to ordinary human experience. i also began and finished the chapter with an examination of a series of poems that push intelligibility to its limits. the limit and extent of immanent numinosity in stevens’ poetry are the very things that are most germane to its representation. the first, and perhaps the most recurrent in the poetry, is paradox. paradox is an effective means of figuring inconceivable states of affairs. we have seen, to take but one example, that in ‘the snow man’, the triple negation that concludes that poem is, ultimately, insoluble. hence the plethora of interpretations that have grown up around such a very small poem. if you are going to write on stevens, it is almost a rite of passage that you will sooner or later have to cut your teeth on that gordian knot of a sentence. the second is stevens’ extensive use of superlatives. most superlatives bear no empirical test. they are pure rhetoric. stevens not only frequently uses superlatives, but also compounds multiple superlatives into condensed stretches of syntax. moreover, he is not shy of neologising superlatives if it suits his rhetorical ends—delicatest, extremest, savagest, and ~ ~ plentifullest, are just a few examples. a third technique, is, as stevens says, to resist the intelligence almost successfully. the greatest contributor here is ambiguity, especially when mysterious figures, who enter the poems without explanation of what or who they are, body it forth. we recall, for instance, the turquoise monster from ‘continual conversation with a silent man’. stevens’ poetry abounds with these sorts of numinous beings. i would like to finish with a brief reading of stevens’ poem ‘final soliloquy of the interior paramour’. i think it is one of the poems that best exemplifies what i have been arguing for throughout this thesis: light the first light of evening, as in a room in which we rest and, for small reason, think the world imagined is the ultimate good. this is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. it is in that thought that we collect ourselves, out of all the indifferences, into one thing: within a single thing, a single shawl wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth, a light, a power, the miraculous influence. here, now, we forget each other and ourselves. we feel the obscurity of an order, a whole, a knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous. within its vital boundary, in the mind. we say god and the imagination are one . . . ~ ~ how high that highest candle lights the dark. out of this same light, out of the central mind, we make a dwelling in the evening air, in which being there together is enough. ( ) this poem elegantly weaves together stevens’ superlative rhetoric with his consolations of adequacy. the addressor of the ‘we’, the interior paramour, is the most difficult thing to determine about this poem. i am attracted to b. j. legget’s reading. legget finds it ‘curious that “final soliloquy” has so often been read as a poem about the power of the human imagination, the elevation of the self to godlike status. as is the case with all the late poetry, the endeavour of the poem is in the opposite direction, effacing the individual imagination or mind as a mere inhabitant of a larger imagination, a “central mind.”’ (legget, spring , ). he explains that by definition a paramour is the person beloved in a relationship, not the lover. he maintains that it follows from this that the soliloquist is the contained and not the container (ibid, - ). that is to say, the soliloquist is the beloved of ‘the central mind’, within which he is contained. this clearly holds quite significant implications for the famous crux: ‘we say god and the imagination are one . . .’ for if the central mind is the embodying companion of the soliloquist, and they are both saying that god and the imagination is one, then, as stevens’ reasons in the adagia: ‘the thing imagined and the imaginer are one. hence, i suppose, the imaginer is god’ ( ). how high that highest candle lights the dark indeed! could this be a reconciliation, late in stevens’ life, with god the imaginer? there ~ ~ is of course the matter of his alleged death-bed conversion to catholicism. but this, of course, is the stuff of mere speculation. and after all, it is a poem not a confession. in the world of the poem, at least, the companionship struck between the interior paramour and the central mind, whatever the latter might be, is enough. james merrill recites this poem for the stevens episode of the documentary series voices and visions. after finishing his recital, his eyes lowered, he wears a brief look of 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offer a multitude of books about spirituality and other self-help guides that are intended to help in finding meaning and fulfilment in life. most of these leave an impression of belonging to some sort of (quasi-)religion, but some of them – such as atheist spir- ituality, rediscovering spirituality in a material world, or a guide to spirituality without religion – seem to be just a materialized cognitive dissonance. taira’s ( ) state- ment, “it is difficult not to draw the conclusion that the function of putting two catch-words in the title – atheism and spirituality – is to make it a more tempting choice in the bookshop,” seems like an adequate reaction. yet, along with the increasing visibility of the so-called “new” athe- ism and rise of the “nones” (voas ; woodhead ), there has also been a rise in visibility of secular “existential cultures” (lee ) that combine seemingly contradic- tory elements. for instance, since , under the head- ing of sunday assembly (bullock ), a group of atheists have gathered on sundays to hear spiritually uplifting speeches and sing together, something that seems much like a church-related practice. is it also a form of cognitive dissonance or does it point to a different understanding of spirituality – or of atheism? the tension lies in the fact that in western thought atheism is often accompanied by materialism, (ontologi- cal) naturalism, rationalism and other lines of thought that typically oppose religion and/or deny the possibil- ity of otherworldly existence. spirituality, on the other hand, is typically associated with religion, something oth- erworldly or transcendent, therefore “the entire line of ‘spiritual’ thinking” in association with secularity is often perceived “as nothing more than a metaphor run amok” (eller ). perhaps this is the reason why atheism in combination with spirituality has been largely neglected in academic research (exceptions include baggett ; caldwell-harris et al. ; schnell & keenan ; ; taira ). yet both atheism and spirituality serve as umbrella terms for a wide variety of attitudes, values, goals, beliefs, and ways of acting. for instance, in contemporary research literature, over different definitions of spirituality have been identified (skrzypińska : ), divided between two main understandings: “a watered down religion that has benefit only to the practitioner” or “providing a way to connect with the transcendent without the confinement of organized religion” (ecklund & long ). the understanding of atheism is perhaps even more complicated. many of its definitions bear “no straightfor- ward relationship to its strict etymology” (bullivant ), since atheism is culturally constructed (baggett ), and always rejecting a particular, culturally rooted concept of the divine (armstrong : xv–xiv). therefore, there is no uniform atheism; rather we can talk about different atheisms that vary in time and place. so far the study of atheism from a historical point of view has mostly focussed on how religion has been opposed. yet, is it possible that somewhere in the hotchpotch of ideas and traditions, “atheism” and “spirituality” are not at odds; where their combination is not only a metaphor and the two can have some sort of meaningful positive rela- tionship? a particular case from recent history attracted our attention: “spirituality” and “atheism” appear together in the case of late soviet atheism (cf. smolkin-rothrock ). this flooded us with many questions, and since it has been recently asked, “are there are some elements of scientific atheism that scholars in western europe remmel, a and sillfors, m. . crossbreeding atheism with spirituality: notes on soviet and western attempts. secularism and nonreligion, :  , pp.  – . doi: https://doi.org/ . /snr. * university of tartu, ee † university of helsinki, fi corresponding author: atko remmel (atko.remmel@ut.ee) research article crossbreeding atheism with spirituality: notes on soviet and western attempts atko remmel* and mikko sillfors† the recent “nonreligious turn” in studies of secularity has changed the focus from what secularity lacks in comparison to religion to what it offers as an alternative. various forms of nonreligion have been studied extensively in recent years, yet mostly in the contemporary western societies. this article shifts the context more to the east and also towards the history by comparing two instances when meaning-making gained a central position within an atheist tradition. for our first example, we examine the appeal to spirituality in the period of late soviet atheism; the second comes from contemporary western “atheist spirituality”. by studying the publications by relevant authors, the article explores what can be learned about atheism and spirituality from this comparison, how atheism and spirituality are understood and combined, and the reasons for the sudden emphasis on existential questions within an atheist tradition. https://doi.org/ . /snr. mailto:atko.remmel@ut.ee remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of and north america might actually learn from?” (alles ), we took on the endeavor of comparing contempo- rary atheist spirituality to the “spiritual turn” in the late soviet atheism and chose “what can be learned from that comparison?” for our main research question. in particu- lar, we are interested in how “spirituality” and ”atheism” are understood, what is their mutual relationship, what caused the sudden emergence of this combination and, finally, what does it tell us about the patterns of develop- ment of atheist traditions? our comparison is based on the analysis of relevant books. the “spiritual turn” in soviet atheism is addressed according to literature printed in soviet estonia, which offers a possibility of narrowing down the material and assessing the atheist propaganda in a particular cultural context. five books were analyzed: lutheranism earlier and now ( ) and indifference – is it good or bad ( ) by kuulo vimmsaare, and believers and communists ( ) by lembit raid, both prominent figures of athe- ism in the soviet estonia; and two collections of articles, both translated from russian: atheism, religion, morality ( ) and individual approach in atheist explanatory work ( ). all books belong to a certain version of “sci- entific atheism”, an almost unreadable genre of popular- scientific propaganda, meant for both common readers and propagandists. although there are minor differences, the books represent more or less similar understanding of both atheism and spirituality, and were selected because they were almost the only representatives of the soviet spiritual atheism in estonian context. this material is sup- ported by findings from soviet era archives in estonia. from the contemporary atheist spirituality, we examine three books written by atheists with a focus on spiritual- ity: the book of atheist spirituality: an elegant argument for spirituality without god ( ) by french philoso- pher andré comte-sponville; going godless: rediscovering spirituality in a material world ( ) by american com- puter programmer j. k. fausnight; and waking up: a guide to spirituality without religion ( ) by american neuroscientist and new atheist sam harris. the selection criteria were that the authors consider themselves as athe- ists, the word “spirituality” is included in the books’ titles, and the focus of the books is on aspects of spirituality. since we are interested in how different concepts are described and tied together, our attention is on argumen- tation. we do not assess the lived experiences of spiritual atheism or the success of either tradition since life is too multi-layered and the impact of the texts can be much more complicated than one might expect from ideologi- cal texts of the past empire or from the contemporary self- help genre. so, without any further ado, we now jump to our case studies and discuss our findings later. soviet atheism à la estonia atheism in the soviet context did not have a uniform meaning; the use of the word depended on the context. in communist party materials, atheism implied a militant attitude toward religion, as well as the propaganda of athe- ism, often in a form of secular rituals. in other contexts, the term was used for state policy that originated from atheist ideology. thus, atheism also implied an action deriving from a philosophical position. in common usage atheism was understood as a mere lack of religion (rem- mel ). “scientific atheism” referred to a semi-scien- tific discipline for studying religion and atheism, with the goal of assisting the disappearance of religion (kääriäinen : ), also described as a conviction about the nonex- istence of god that is based on three pillars: science, mate- rialist philosophy, and personal experience (vimmsaare : – ). although the banner of atheism flew above the soviet union from its beginning until its end, the attitude towards religion and the effort the state expended in athe- ist propaganda was dependent on time, place, and indi- viduals who were in charge at the local level. therefore, despite the centralized system, the situation across the soviet union varied to some extent. in this article we focus on atheism in the estonian soviet socialist republic. as a non-russian speaking and historically lutheran part of the empire, atheist propaganda in estonia was somewhat isolated and entirely dependent on the activity of local activists of atheism, and translations from russian. yet, the situation was still influenced by the same currents that influenced the soviet union in general; however, what is said here about soviet atheism is just one reflection of the overall trends, and its reverse engineering into the general soviet religious situation should be done with care. estonia was occupied by the soviet union during – and then again in – , thus eluding the experience of soviet militant atheism of the s and s (see husband ; peris ). after the second world war, until the end of stalin’s reign in , athe- ist propaganda was secondary, so estonia only became acquainted with “scientific atheism” (discussed below) when khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign started in the late s (anderson ). in order to create a “new soviet man”, the remnants of “bourgeois ideology” – including religion – needed to be overcome. during the atheist campaign, many methods were implemented: from more hidden ones, such as administrative and eco- nomic measures, to more visible ones, such as intensified propaganda through printed media, atheist lectures and soviet secular rituals (remmel ). the campaign ended in – religion no longer posed an institutional threat (luehrmann : ) – but it was evident that creating an atheist society in one fell swoop was impossible and other tactics were needed. at the same time, soviet atheism had its own problems. despite being called “scientific”, atheist propaganda was characterized by low level argumentation, a militant atti- tude and monotonous messages (cf. smolkin-rothrock ), consisting mostly of mocking clerics, ridiculing reli- gion through contrasting it to science, and so on, result- ing in atheist propaganda acquiring a bad reputation. for instance, a lecture held in the stalin kolkhoz in orissaare, estonia, was delivered so poorly that “of the peo- ple who attended the lecture, only two stayed until the end—the local chairman and his deputy” (mets ). this example should not be overgeneralized, but “the need to remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spirituality art.  , page  of raise the scientific-ideological level of atheism” remained a constant topic in the discussions among leading propa- gandists of atheism (remmel : – ). an even bigger problem was the apparent success of the anti-religious campaign. religion was banished to the periphery, but without a visible enemy, atheist propa- ganda was considered an “empty and pointless struggle” (efa ), not only among common people but also among party officials (smolkin : ), and even ridiculed (valton ). by the end of the s, estonian propa- gandists of atheism admitted “a stagnation in atheist thinking”, proposing ironically that “perhaps atheists have nothing more to laugh at” (era ). concurrently, it became evident to soviet scholars that not all nonbelievers were atheists as was previ- ously thought. many cared neither about religion nor atheism, and the extent of this attitude was shocking. surveys conducted in different parts of the soviet union in indicated that more than half of the respondents were “indifferent” towards both religion and atheism (vimmsaare : ). to remain relevant in the changing soviet society, atheism had to readjust, a process smolkin- rothrock ( ) has called “the spiritual crisis of late soviet atheism”. the target group of atheist propaganda changed significantly, since it became necessary to jus- tify atheism both to believers and nonbelievers, and the struggle against religion, at least partly, changed into (dis- guised) apologetics. the change was presented as deriv- ing from the necessity to respond to developments within religion resulting from the “deep moral crisis in capitalist countries” (vimmsaare : ), explicitly assuring that “the changes do not reflect current tactical needs” (raid : ). this was clearly untrue. soviet atheism and the appeal to the spiritual the problems of the late soviet atheism sprang mostly from the understanding that atheism was perceived as something “against,” not something “for”. the lack of a clearly defined positive message may be attributed to marxist atheism as formulated by its founding fathers: “atheism is a rejection of god and affirms the humanity of man just by the same rejection” (marx & engels : ). thus, atheism was understood as having a dual nature: one of destroying and one of building up. by the late sixties it became clear that the connection between the rejection of god and the affirmation of humanity was not so self-evident. while rejection had been communi- cated quite forcefully, the other half remained obscure and when the retreat of religion from the public sphere rendered a militant attitude irrelevant, something had to change. an occasional self-criticism within atheist propaganda reveals what was seen as weaknesses of the “old” approach of khruschev’s anti-religious campaign: the latter was critically assessed for only criticizing religious ethics or theologians, for being too scientific or too militantly anti- religious, for harping on truisms about religion, its nature and history, or criticizing religious morality based on quotes from the bible taken out of their context (gubakov : ; oja ; salo : ). to justify its relevance to soviet society, atheism had to offer something positive – the answers to “life questions”, such as morality, death, suffering, or the meaning of life, with an aim to under- score the “life-affirming attitude, ethical content and positive problems of atheism that shape the scientific worldview” (era ). central to this worldview was the concept of “conscious- ness” or “awareness”, an inherent element of the soviet way of life, which allegedly distinguished soviet society from earlier societal orders through being constantly aware of one’s life goal: “for the first time in history, the whole society works together in the name of a common big goal. soviet society consciously builds up communist society” (vimmsaare : ). due to this, marxist atheism con- sidered itself the highest form of atheism, differing from the pre-marxist forms of atheism that had appeared in history as well as atheism in capitalist countries (“bour- geois atheism”). the “new” approach, therefore, was not a new form of atheism, just a change of focus – the earlier soviet atheist ideal, the “militant attitude”, was reforged into “awareness”. awareness gave atheism an “active character, the most distinctive feature of marxist atheism” (dontsov : ). but what exactly was the “active character of athe- ism”? raid’s ( : ) account of the function of athe- ism describes both the previously mentioned idea of the dual nature of atheism as well as its active charac- ter: “for marxists, atheism is not only the rejection of god(s). … scientific atheism includes the system of posi- tive knowledge that drives off religious views, at the same time functioning as a worldview.” thus, atheism was not a mere lack of beliefs (a position sometimes called nega- tive or weak atheism), but a constantly present rejection of god (strong or positive atheism) based on a scientific worldview, which influenced a person’s actions, goals, identity, practices, beliefs, and so on. therefore, the late soviet atheism tried to establish itself by fighting for “con- scious atheism” within the soviet way of life. the change was also reflected in the usage of technical terms: in the s, “antireligious propaganda” was replaced by “atheist propaganda” or “atheist explanatory work”. the importance of atheism sprang from its inher- ent relationship to the scientific worldview of marxism- leninism which, according to ideologists, tied together all aspects of soviet life. through atheism, people received “scientific knowledge about nature, society, man, and mor- als” (raid : ). science had to replace religion in the spheres that had previously been under the control of religion (e.g., using medicine rather than prayer in order to receive healing), for which atheism was the first step; atheism was also the result of the scientific worldview. in this way, atheism was simultaneously a cause and an out- come which, through being “conscious”, inevitably led to spiritual development. the term “spirituality” in estonian (and russian) often has a religious meaning, but it also encompasses moral- ity, courage, wisdom, social responsibility, cultural and intellectual interests, creativity, and so on – all of which can be understood without religious connotations, as was the case during the soviet period. for instance, a person remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of has “spiritual interests” when he reads a lot, goes to the theatre, studies at the university or reflects over existen- tial questions – as opposed to being concerned only over “materialistic” things like money or having a car (which in the soviet union gave a person a somewhat semi-godly status). this aspect of spirituality became increasingly impor- tant after the nd congress of the communist party of the soviet union in , when the moral code of the builder of communism was adopted. morality was seen as “universal to mankind in general, its content not essen- tially religious, but the church seized it a long time ago and started to interpret it religiously” (vimmsaare : ) – the importance of morality derived from its direct connection to collectivistic values, which were reflected in work ethics and the meaning of life (see also peris : – ). springing from a marxist understanding of religion as opium of the people that “implants passiv- ity, feebleness and humiliation” (vimmsaare : ), a common stereotype presented believers as not participat- ing “actively” in life (for instance, going to the theater, or playing sports), preferring to stay at home, praying, and staring the icons on the wall instead (sheinin ). this was in direct opposition to what soviet society needed: “brave, energetic and cheerful people, who are not only dreaming of a better future, but who are also prepared to fight for it” (vimmsaare : ). therefore, believ- ers were considered individualistic, working only in order to save their soul (molchanova : ) as opposed to “making one’s contribution to the progress of society” (vimmsaare : ; see also figure ), the ultimate goal of a “normal” soviet citizen. it was even claimed that by trying to save one’s soul “the believer declares indif- ference toward the fate of other people” (duluman & romenets, : ); others argued that “a person cannot be moral and harmonious when one’s activity is not asso- ciated with the needs of societal progress” (dontsov : ). “atheists’ high morality” however, was considered a “socially conditioned fact”, and these social conditions had “an irrefutable effect on everyone who is in touch with the reality of socialist society” (kitchanova : ). spiritual development in this context means that “in the moral consciousness of a soviet citizen religious ideals are replaced by the ideals of building up the soviet society” (kononenko : ) and atheist propaganda had much to do here, in helping believers to become interested in “actual life” (vimmsaare : ). therefore, the goals of atheism were threefold: differentiating religious spir- ituality and morality from atheist spirituality and moral- ity; detaching religion from spirituality and morality; and finally, associating spirituality and morality with atheism. in the end it all formed a more or less circular system: the rejection of god is a beginning that leads to a scientific worldview that leads to personal spiritual development that leads to better understanding of the soviet society and high morality, all of which lead to collective work in the name of the communist future that, through societal conditions (the social roots of religion are cut), produces atheism. in this respect, atheism was a prerequisite for building a soviet society. however, rather than answering the actual “life’s ques- tions”, soviet atheist authors chose to focus on ideological justification by trying to offer a “wholesome and mean- ingful worldview” (smolkin-rothrock ), presented figure : all-union scientific-practical conference in , dedicated to the actual questions of the ideological work of the communist party of the soviet union. the banner reads (translation from russian): “religion will disappear in accordance with the development of socialism; its disappearance must happen as a result of the development of the society, in which upbringing plays a major role. k. marx.” source: era . remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spirituality art.  , page  of through a maze of hollow slogans which, despite a some- what milder tone when compared to propaganda of khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign ten years earlier, mostly consisted of direct oppositions to religion. despite having the underlying positive program of science pro- viding answers for secular life, values, and practices – an alternative cosmology, as smolkin ( : ) calls it – “sci- entific atheism” was unable to deliver its message in a positive form: “we provide either statistics or philosophy, and other than that we give nothing” (smolkin-rothrock ). alles ( ) asks: “what specific views and theories did scholars espouse and defend in the name of scientific atheism, besides just the obvious?” but the vast majority of the literature does indeed represent “just the obvious”. considering the fact that most of the atheism lectures (the main form of soviet atheist propaganda) took the form of verbatim recitations of texts sent by knowledge society (which promoted soviet ideology through public lectures) central organs, it was not surprising that it all led to the “decrease of the reputation of atheism” (era ) as soviet atheism propagandists complained that “people seem to be afraid of atheist lectures” (era ) while indifference toward atheism and religion took hold (remmel ). the combination of atheism and spirituality in the st century west in western culture, atheism has become a major subject of public discussion in the st century – partly because of the high visibility of new atheism, and partly because the numbers of the non-religious and atheists has grown rather fast, even in the united states (zuckerman : ). also, different combinations of atheism and spiritual- ity have gained popularity to an increasing extent for a variety of reasons. first, in broad terms, after world war ii, the growth of atheism and secular spirituality was probably enabled by several interrelated sociocultural factors, including increased wealth and security, greater freedom of religion, globalization and the presence of ‘foreign’ religions (such as buddhism and hinduism), secularization, the growing support for science and education, and the rise of indi- vidualistic values (as opposed to tradition and conformity) along with a cultural awareness of naturalism, atheism, and the critique of religion (see norris & inglehart ; zuckerman ; taylor ; helkama ; frisk , casanova ; norenzayan & gervais ; sillfors ). as a result, seeking answers to spiritual needs have moved, as frisk ( ) has crystallized, from a particular to an eclectic religion, from dogma to experience, from collective to personal, from hierarchical to egalitarian, from theological to anthropological, and from after-death to this-worldliness. these approaches are typical also in present day secular (and atheist) spirituality and reflected as well in the increasingly popular self-identification, “spiritual, but not religious” (huss ). second, from the outset of the movement dubbed “new atheism” (here dated from sam harris’s book, the end of faith, ) the debate over atheism and religion has become highly polarized. however, some atheists have argued that the new atheism has gone too far with its harsh criticism and want to show that atheism can be “softer” and focus on the “good things” of religions like communality, arts, practical (meditative) methods, and rit- ual structures. these “bridge-builders”, for example alain de botton’s religion for atheists ( ), j. k. fausnight’s going godless ( ), and greg m. epstein’s good without god ( ), apply an eclectic “pick and mix” style which is nowadays typical: let’s take the best bits from different religions and philosophies, while rejecting the gods and other supernatural elements. third, for centuries spirituality has been more or less synonymous with religion and therefore it has been the general view that atheists cannot feel awe, or be moral or spiritual. this attitude is still strong, for example in the united states (see caldwell-harris et al. ; cherry ; gervais ; gervais & norenzayan ; cook et al. ; franks & scherr ) in response, some athe- ists – for example, andré comte-sponville in the book of atheist spirituality ( ) or eric maisel in the atheist’s way ( ) – have tried to argue that atheists can feel awe, and be as moral and ‘spiritual’ as any religious person. even the new atheists, sam harris ( ) and richard dawkins (discover magazine ), have publicly expressed their support for spirituality – as long as it does not involve belief in the supernatural. the appeal to individual spirituality all three western authors – fausnight, comte-sponville, (see figure ) and harris – are avowed atheists. fausnight defines atheism as “lacking belief in a god”, but he admits that he himself is one of the ‘hard’ atheists, who believes that “there is no god, rather than one lacking belief in god” (fausnight : , italics original). similarly, comte- sponville defines atheism as a negative belief, “without god”, but he considers himself as a “nondogmatic atheist” (comte-sponville : ). harris does not define athe- ism explicitly, but he too openly reveals, “i am an atheist” whose “mind is open” (harris : ). all three are also explicitly or implicitly represent- ing a naturalistic or materialistic worldview. fausnight ( : ) openly confesses that he is a materialist: “i am a materialist. i do not believe in the existence of [a] supernatural realm.” similarly, comte-sponville ( : ) admits that he is a naturalist: “to my mind, nature is the totality of reality (the supernatural does not exist).” harris ( : , , italics original) implicitly refers to the naturalistic worldview, for example by stating that “we know, of course, that human minds are the product of human brains” and that everything seems to arise from the physical world. all these authors promote science as well. comte-sponville ( : ) asserts that individual experimental evidence of gods or ghosts is inadequate, because “[…] evidence that is not shared by all and that other people can neither verify nor repeat remains frag- ile evidence indeed.” fausnight ( : ) highlights his respect for science in almost poetic phrases: “science is our sacred domain, and its integrity must be protected at all cost. it is the shining beacon that raises us above the muck and mire of ignorance.” science also allows people to gain “an appreciation and a sense of awe for this universe” remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of (fausnight : ). harris’s ( : ) project relocates spirituality within the boundaries of science: “if spiritual- ity is to become part of science, however, it must integrate with the rest of what we know about the world.” although promoting naturalism and science, all three agree that life or reality contains some magical or mys- terious elements beyond human knowledge. fausnight ( : – ) says that human experience will never be fully explained by science and that “there is something that i can only describe as magical […] that happens on a warm summer evening on the back porch while sip- ping a good wine and listening to b. b. king playing the blues guitar.” harris ( : ) sees the emergence of con- sciousness from material as a “mysterious” phenomenon. to comte-sponville ( : , italics original) the whole “being is mysterious – everything is mysterious!” such descriptions reveal an experience of awe, an overwhelm- ing feeling of reverence and wonder at simply being alive in the universe. overall, these three authors view spirituality as some- thing very experiential and personal. to harris ( : – ) the word spirituality encompasses mainly trans- cendent experiences and finding deeper well-being. the human mind is the key concept in harris’s book, because “our mind is all we have. … every experience you have ever had has been shaped by your mind” (harris : ). harris highlights the role of introspection of con- sciousness and understanding of mind in the case of the definition of spirituality: “rigorous introspection – ‘spir- ituality’ in the widest sense of the term – is an indispen- sable part of understanding the nature of mind” (harris : ). similarly fausnight defines spirituality as a construct of the human mind: “when i speak of spiritual- ity, … i am speaking of that … virtual reality we construct in our minds. … it is our mind that means everything to us” (fausnight : – ). fausnight ( : – ) crystallizes his ten principles most important to spiritu- ality, such as finding meaning, inner peace, mindfulness, self-respect, oneness, health, beauty, wonder, and awe. moreover, comte-sponville says ( : ) that in the broadest sense of the word, “spirituality can be said to include virtually all aspects of human life and spiritual is more or less the synonymous with ‘mental’ or ‘psychic’.” he is speaking about spirituality as a “part of our inner life … the part that involves the absolute, the infinite and the eternal” (comte-sponville : ). just like for harris and fausnight, for comte-sponville the key dimension of spirituality is individual experience: “metaphysics means thinking about these things; spirituality means experienc- ing them, exercising them, living them” (comte-sponville : ). so, fausnight, harris, and comte-sponville all rep- resent a highly individualistic approach to spirituality, emphasizing personal freedom and achievement. they seek meaning of life and happiness from within, rather than from outside. this connects strongly to aspirations of self-transcendence – the pursuit of losing self-centered egoism – and emphasis on positive feelings, such as love, compassion, and joy. fausnight regards meaning as the most important aspect of (atheist) spirituality, and the first of his top ten spiritual principles is: “give yourself purpose and create meaning … it is inside you” (fausnight : , italics original). several of his other spiritual principles also deal with meaning, like, “find beauty eve- rywhere” and “live in wonder and awe” (fausnight : – ). meaning equates to happiness and the goal of spirituality is inner peace and mental balance. these can be attained by a selfless attitude and meditation practice: “there is a ‘transcendental’ state that can be achieved through meditation” (fausnight : , – .) fausnight also highlights the principle of agape, a univer- sal, unconditional love: “agape is so important because it figure : andré comte-sponville lecturing at paris (january ). source: wikimedia. remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spirituality art.  , page  of is one of the ways we bring meaning into life” (fausnight : , italics original). similarly, for harris, the human mind is the only tool for seeking meaning (harris : ). the key is medita- tion, which helps to break the illusion of permanent ‘self’ that causes a lot of human suffering. meditation allows people to step into the present moment and experience the pure consciousness itself which, “prior to self-repre- sentation, is intrinsically ‘blissful’” (harris : ). by self-transcendence harris means this direct experi- ence of consciousness, which does not suffer like the illusional, conventional, and egocentric ‘self’ does: “[s] elf-transcendence is possible. … every present moment of consciousness is profound. … experiencing this directly … is the true beginning of spiritual life” (harris : ). harris too emphasizes the pursuit of unconditional love, detailing his own experiences of transcendence, which first occurred in his youth when he took mdma (a type of drug, also known as “ecstasy”): “i was no longer anxious … i was feeling boundless love … it was simply obvious that love, compassion, and joy in the joy of others extended without limit”. he relays that he has had several similar experiences, achieved through regular meditation exer- cises, which he also instructs about in his book (harris : – ; ). comte-sponville ( : ) too emphasizes meaning and happiness in the present moment: “happiness is not something to be hoped for but something to be experi- enced here and now!” he praises love ( : – ) as a central meaning-maker of human life: “[t]hings do not matter in and of themselves, but only through the attention we bring to them and the love we bear them. […] love is the supreme value.” he describes at length his own mystical experiences and their nuances, including dissolv- ing the ego, plenitude, simplicity, unity, silence, eternity, serenity, acceptance, liberation, and independence (see comte-sponville : – ); for instance: “and then, all of a sudden […] the ego had vanished: no more sepa- ration or representation, only the silent presentation of everything. […] no more time, only present. […] perfection. plenitude. bliss. such joy! such happiness! such inten- sity!” (comte-sponville : – , italics original.) all these writers also represent autonomous morality – morality is seen to be based mostly on natural empathy and altruism. harris sees a connection between medita- tion, self-transcendence, and living ethically, and asserts that some mental states, such as “boundless love”, are “intrinsically ethical” (harris : ). for fausnight the highest form of morality is purely altruistic, it comes “from within”, and is free from religion: “the morally altruistic base their morals on compassion for others. … [a] truly altruistic person does not act to please god or society […] to become whole and good, we need to break free at each level of self-centeredness and view ourselves as members of the community of mankind” (fausnight : – ). similarly, comte-sponville ( : – , ) writes about the autonomy of morality, and asserts that morals are the basis of religion, not vice versa. this individual meaning-making partly explains why eastern religions play a fairly important role in these books. harris says: “buddhism in particular possesses a literature on the nature of mind that has no peer in western religion or western science” (harris : ). like harris, fausnight says that there is little that athe- ists can learn from western religions about happiness, but eastern religions like buddhism are much more focused on it, and they hold that “happiness is found within you. … from a buddhist perspective, it is gained by letting go. it is found with inner peace. no one can get you there but yourself” (fausnight : ). also, comte-sponville sees eastern religions as being more useful for atheists than monotheistic ones, and he does not even count them as religions, but “a mixture of spirituality, ethics and philosophy rather than a religion … they are less about god than they are about human beings and nature. they have to do less with faith than with meditation” (comte- sponville : , italics original). these examples also point out their eclecticism – all three are drawing from both western and oriental influences and practices such as science, buddhism, and meditation. what is noteworthy is that the main focus of all three books is not atheism, but spirituality. harris says that it is a problem that many atheists conceive of the talk of spirituality as a kind of mental illness in a situation where people ought to find a rational approach to spirituality: “a rational approach to spirituality seems to be what is missing from secularism and from the lives of most of the people i meet” (harris : , ). fausnight ( : ) considers that the point of his book is spirituality “within the confines of the materialist and scientific viewpoint”. according to comte-sponville, spiritual life is more important than atheism or anything else, because “it is our noblest part, or rather, our highest function … man is a … spiritual animal” (comte-sponville : ). one difference between these three authors is that harris is more critical towards monotheistic religion than comte- sponville or fausnight. however, harris’s criticism has clearly softened since the early years of new atheism, and even he seems inclined towards bridge-building, stating: “for many years, i have been a vocal critic of religion, and i won’t ride the same hobbyhorse here” (harris : ). thus, one can find a pattern from these three books: there is no other reality than this-worldly material real- ity, which is perceived by the human mind in the pre- sent moment. therefore the focus of spirituality is in the human mind and how to cultivate things/states like happiness, meaningfulness, morality, positive feelings, and transcendent experiences through, for example, prac- tices like meditation. religious influences are taken, but mostly from oriental religions, especially buddhism. this turn towards buddhism is quite understandable since it is commonly seen as a nontheistic religion while it denies the idea of the creator-god and focuses on human hap- piness attained by practical methods such as ethics and meditation. discussion so, what can be learned from the comparison between the two approaches to spirituality? let’s start with the ques- tion of how spirituality and atheism can be understood remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of and combined. the examples provided here highlight that the possibility of their positive mutual entanglement depends, firstly, on the position and function of atheism in a worldview, and secondly, on the understanding of spirituality as something universal. the soviet atheists argued that by being “conscious”, soviet atheism differs essentially from “bourgeois” athe- ism, which was a secondary result, a mere outcome of materialism, rationalism, and so on, while the soviet ideol- ogists considered atheism primary, a “conscious” starting point, which leads to a scientific worldview. the ques- tion – which is primary, which is secondary, atheism or its accompanying phenomena – inevitably resembles the famous chicken-egg controversy, but also points to how atheism and spirituality can be combined. in its minimal philosophical definition – the absence of believing in god(s) – atheism is a result of the underlying premises that depend on a particular time and place, such as the lack of the concept of god in a particular culture or the lack of religious socialization, or naturalism, or the science-religion opposition. concurrently, atheism as a conviction can lead to further elements that define athe- ism in a particular cultural context, such as naturalism, science-religion opposition, rationalism or anti-religious activity. thus, we can postulate that atheism is a “meet- ing point” of different ideas, practices, and attitudes that somehow revolve around the absence of belief in god(s). this position offers a possibility to associate atheism with the elements that also constitute spirituality, thus con- necting atheism with its surrounding context, be it a uto- pian future or personal self-development. some of these elements can be preconditions of atheism, while some of them can be results – here, atheism functions as a media- tor between them. for instance, scientific knowledge can be both – a reason for atheism, or a result of atheist con- viction, just as the soviet atheists hoped. as for the understanding of spirituality, huss ( ) has distinguished between two approaches: for some scholars it is a universal entity, common to all people regardless of their religiosity or secularity, while the others regard it as a newly constituted cultural category that challenges the modern era’s division between religious and secular. from the emic point of view, our two “spiritual atheisms” clearly support the understanding of spirituality as something universally human: in their approach, ‘“spiritual” atti- tudes, values and commitments are distanced from reli- gious worldviews and the supernatural, and established in an immanentist context’ (schnell and keenan ; ). blurring the lines between the secular and religious is clearly a question of power relations; thus spirituality becomes a battleground that can be ‘hijacked’ either for religious or secular purposes. yet, the aims for doing so can be entirely different. in contemporary atheist spirituality, spirituality is understood pretty much on the lines of “alternative spirit- uality”, as a lived experience of existential questions, with the goal of subjective well-being and self-development, similarly to “self-spirituality” (heelas ). here, spiritu- ality stands for finding the meaning of life, inner peace, mindfulness, morality, wonder, and awe. in the context where spirituality is strongly associated with religiosity and the majority of the population is “institutionally” religious, the connection between atheism and spiritual- ity offers a possibility to show that atheists are “normal”, have similar feelings, morality, compassion, and so on, but it just comes from a different source. still, they also use the concept in huss’s ( ) other meaning to challenge the division between religious and secular. the fact that spiritual atheists are prone to borrowing from eastern reli- gions and openly admit it, also indicates that their goal is bridge-building. in the soviet context, spirituality was also regarded as universal; “life’s questions” were the same for both reli- gion and atheism, and self-development was of utmost importance. yet, as luehrmann ( ) has argued, the soviet atheists tried to locate the meaning of human existence in the relationships between the individual and society. here, personal spiritual development – a grow- ing awareness of the relationship between individual and society – is only a stepping stone towards the ultimate goal of building the communist society. spirituality in this setting does not only imply an interest in existential questions, but is also a process of conscious realization of these interests through living “the soviet way of life”, that is, primarily through the means of “culture”, which is by definition secular: like studying the piano, reading books to be smarter and acquiring a better understanding of existential questions and meaning of life, or attending concerts in order to feel solemnity, and practicing sports in order to be healthy and develop one’s willpower. therefore, in the soviet context the main question was about the purpose of spirituality. one can have tremen- dous willpower because of religious convictions, or work well in the factory because of the fear of god, but as soviet ideologists claimed, believers’ inner reasoning is just plain wrong – projecting their ideals into the imaginary world does not help to develop “real life”. thus, despite the similarities, our two “spiritual cul- tures” (smolkin : ) have entirely different tactics. both regard spirituality as something universally human, but while the conclusion of contemporary western atheist spirituality is “therefore we are like you, believers”, which can be seen as “bridge-building”, their soviet counterparts concluded “therefore you don’t have a monopoly here – given the circumstances of the advancements of science and soviet reality, we do”, which rather leaves an impres- sion of “bridge-breaking” (see table ). but what can be said about the sudden emergence of such “chimeras” like spiritual atheism, and what does it tell us about the development of atheist traditions? finding deeper meaning is a psychological core character of human beings (paloutzian & park ), and atheists are no exceptions. therefore, the combination of ‘spir- ituality’ and non-theism/naturalism is not anything new. for instance, in ancient greece, epicureanism was a fully naturalistic and hedonistic spiritual school (stróżyński ); in the th century, french positivist auguste comte founded the naturalistic religion of humanity (spencer ). yet there seem to be a number of fac- tors that precede the sudden desire to crossbreed these remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spirituality art.  , page  of species publicly. in addition to the two theoretical factors discussed above, the understanding of spirituality as a “contested space” and atheism as an outcome or founda- tion, there is a third major aspect that is connected with the social sphere – that it is a reaction to something. seen from that angle, despite the huge differences in socio-political background, both cases arise from a fairly similar context. “spiritual atheism” can be seen as a reac- tion to the decline of “traditional” ways of meaning-mak- ing, where religion had considerable authority. whether it is due to the “forced” (froese ) or “normal” secu- larization – or other reasons that have been constantly discussed in the sociology of religion over the past years – the situation is similar: lack of existential guidance in the context where the number of unbelievers has sig- nificantly increased. thus, spiritual atheism can be seen as one part of a larger cultural phenomenon: alternative meaning-making, which emerges when the tradition- ally dominant factors of the scene begin to deteriorate. in the soviet union the process was directed more “from above” by state ideology, while in the individualist west it is more “organic” (see zuckerman ), arising from the people’s personal needs, and everyone is allowed to seek their eclectic “own way”. perhaps it is justified to make a distinction between “atheist spirituality” and “spir- itual atheism” – although these two concepts overlap to a great extent: in “atheist spirituality”, spirituality is the main subject, and this emphasis seems to describe better the combination of atheism and spirituality in the con- temporary west, whereas “spiritual atheism” refers to a phenomenon where atheism is primary and spirituality is secondary, which better describes their combination in the late soviet union. another similarity is that both spiritual cultures were preceded by a very aggressive strand of atheism: in the soviet case, khrushchev-era atheist propaganda, in the contemporary western case, the “new atheism”. both aggressive versions seemed to miss something essential – not particularly in their teachings but in human psychol- ogy: that opposition to something or even factors that are often associated with atheism (such as rationality, natural- ism, science, criticism of religion) do not necessarily pro- vide a deeper meaningfulness or purpose in life. instead, failing to produce a positive alternative for religion in combination with the aggressive rhetoric results in a bad reputation for atheism. of course, in the us, the reputa- tion of atheism has always been bad, but it is remarkable that the aggressiveness and intolerance of new atheism has resulted in strong criticism even among the secular and atheist community, and they are seen as the main reasons for the loss of their support (amarasingam & brewster ). the pattern is similar in both instances: after an initial period of aggressiveness (that lasts less than years) a new, more moderate wave emerges that tries (more or less) to distance itself from its predecessor or offer an alternative, where “scientific” and “rational” argu- ments are complemented with existential questions. the goal in both cases is similar: to prove that atheism is not just negative, but also offers something positive, encour- aging emotions, aspirations, and other things considered part of normal life. therefore, the turn towards spirituality can be also seen as a pr-tactic, as an attempt to improve the reputation of atheism. we know that rebranding of the existing current of atheism through the top-down method in the soviet case was not successful and the result can be described table : a comparison of two combinations of atheism and spirituality. late soviet union st century west atheism coercive organic science orientated science orientated part of scientific-materialist worldview often part of naturalistic worldview critical towards religion not necessarily critical towards religion essential for the right type of spirituality not essential for spirituality change within the same atheist tradition alternative current to other atheist traditions spirituality individualistic in the name of communal activeness individualistic universally human universally human non-eclectic eclectic secular or “cultural” alternative to religion oriental influences (buddhism, meditation etc.) self-transcendence (pursuit for egoless unity with the community) self-transcendence (pursuit for transcendent experiences, feeling of awe, or oneness with the universe) meaning of life meaning of life morality (autonomous) morality (autonomous) function a reaction to earlier militant attitude, the only alternative a reaction to earlier militant attitude, one of the alternatives bridge-breaker, spirituality as necessarily secular bridge-builder, spirituality as a unifying secular and religious sphere pr-tactics, to show that atheism is still relevant pr tactics, to show that atheists are like everyone else remmel and sillfors: crossbreeding atheism with spiritualityart.  , page  of through the expression attributed to the late russian politician viktor chernomyrdin: “we wanted to do bet- ter, but it turned out as always.” as for the success of the grassroots-method of the contemporary atheist spiritual- ity that presents itself as a different current, it is hard to say anything concrete since it is still a work in progress. yet it is quite evident that the patterns described here reveal more about human psychology rather than inher- ent developments of atheist traditions. in conclusion, our comparison highlights the variety of configurations of atheism(s), and their accompanying phe- nomena, functions, and goals, which always depend on social situations and the individuals affecting it. it brings forth the need to emphasize that atheism and criticism of religion are two different things: not all atheists are critical towards religions, and also that atheists can view religion as having positive and useful aspects. moreover, there has been a growing criticism among scholars of religion towards the unhelpful dichotomy between the ‘secular’ and the ‘religious’ and it is surprising to find that even some strands of atheism are interested in a blurring of these boundaries – although their final goals can be exactly opposite. the “rise of the nones” demonstrates that a growing population of people is willing to fulfill their spiritual abilities and needs without traditional monotheistic reli- gions (taylor ) and there are multitudes of possibili- ties how that can be done. here, the soviet experience of “forced” atheism provides an interesting case study. for some reason (a language barrier?), comparative studies of soviet atheism with contemporary western atheism have been neglected, yet they can offer interesting insights and have “comparative and theoretical importance for studies of religion and modernity” (luehrmann : ). notes originally in french l’esprit de l’athéisme: introduc- tion à une spiritualité sans dieu ( ). translated by nancy huston. for an overview of the discussions among soviet aca- demics and party officials that led to the emergence of “life’s questions” within the soviet atheism, see smolkin ( , ) and luehrmann ( , ). although russian and estonian languages are entirely different, the meaning of “spirituality” (dukhovnost’ or vaimsus, respectively) largely overlaps, especially in the meaning discussed here. the connotations of spirituality and its place in soviet ideology are dis- cussed, for instance, in luehrmann ( : – ), smolkin ( ) and halstead ( ). still, for some reason, in estonian language atheist literature, “spir- itual development” as a technical term was almost absent and the expression “life’s questions” was used instead. for the development of communist morality see field ( ). it is interesting to note that despite estonia having a reputation of being “the most atheistic country in the world”, the reviews in response to the translations of the new atheists’ books have been rather critical on the grounds of their resemblance to the soviet era atheism. acknowledgements this article is written with a support from the baltic sea foundation grant “the relocation of transcendence: the sacred of the seculars around the baltic sea“, base funding of national sciences of the university of tartu, grant no. phvus and templeton foundation grant “understanding unbelief in estonia”. the authors are indebted to patrick corbeil, elliot hanowski, and anony- mous reviewers for their critical insights and constructive suggestions. competing interests the authors have no competing interests to declare. references alles, gd. . studying religions with the iron cur- tain closed and open: the 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"um primitivo co- mo um orbe" composto de doze estrofes numeradas, cada uma	 com oito versos livres. assemelham-se quase aos digitos dispostos	 em torn do mostrador de um relogio. na sec:ina- neje de doze estrofes, he rupturas gramaticais e tematicas radicais al: s cada grupo	 de tras estrofes. apos cada um desses grupos o poema comeca novamente com uma nova estrutura sintatica e com um novo conjunto de imagens ligadas por "como" ou por "é". cada novo conjunto desloca o ante- rior. se as imagens sao unificadas pela sua equivalancia implicita e problematica, a energia original que torna cada uma delas 	 ina- dequada e que leva a sua substituigao por uma outra imagem é a sua relagao de semelhanga, por sua vez ainda mais problemitica,	 ao centro ausente. centro a represented° pelo sol ma° nomeado."sol" é a unica palavra que nao pode ser pronunciada ou escrita no 	 poe- ma. se um "primitivo" a "como" um "orbe" tal ocorre porque tanto o primitivo como o orbe sao "como" o sol. um primitivo a como	 um orbe. um orbe como um primitivo. nenhuma destas palavras cons- titui a designagao normal e literal do seu referente porque ocor- re um deslocamento tanto em seu use como no deslizamento sintatico do "como" que as segue ou que as precede. sol, aquela 	 "close, parental magnitude, /at the centre on the horizon,	 concentrum, grave / and prodigious person, patron of origens" ( - )	 ("gran- deza paterna a fechada, / no centro do horizonte, concentrum, gra- ve / e prodigiosa pessoa, patrono de origens") emerge 	 gradualmen- te no desenvolvimento do poema como o referente literal manifesto da cadeia de figures interligadas que constituem o texto. mas 	 na- turalmente o sol , por sua vez, apenas uma imagem do terra "lite- ral" do poema, nomeado no primeiro verso: "o poema essencial 	 no centro das coisas". segue-se imediatamente a esta frase 	 obscura uma frase justaposta que a ainda mais obscure: "the arias	 that spiritual fiddings make" ("as arias feitas por melodies de	 etir- reos violins"). se um primitivo a como um orbe, o poema essencial no centro das coisas, se que tal expressio tem sentido, a como as arias de melodies de etereos violins, se e que eta expressio, por sua vez, tem sentido. poema avenge de enigma para enigma co- me o veo de uma lamina resvalando n'igua. avenge por	 intermedio de frases, cada uma das quais deve ser examinada em detalhe no seu intense jogo figurativo, sintitico e sementico. diner, por exempla, como diz o titulo, "a primitive like	 an orb" ("um primitive come um orbe") a muito diferente de dizer	 "o primitive como o orbe" ou "o primitivo como um orbe". na frase	 de stevens tanto primitive come orbe nada male sio do que	 categories extensivas e indefinidas de orbes e de primitivos a nunca o orbe e o primitive originals. alem disso, cada uma das dues	 palavras abre espago em seu interior para uma complexidade inesperada. 	 um orbe pode ser uma substencia selida, o flamejante orbe paterno	 do sol, ou pode ser um " " vazio, um zero, o nada nomeado no	 final do poema como o "gigante do nada", o que lembra a identidade apon- tada por paul claudel entre ova, semente, boca aberta, zero 	 -- "oeuf, semente, bouche ouverte, zero". um orbe pode ester	 ainda localizado no centre ou pode ser a circunferencia em torno de	 um centro, pode ser uma orbits ou uma trajeteria. um exemplo seria 	 o percurso daquele sol que no poema a um "concentrum" "no centro	 do horizonte. outro exemplo seria a prepria linhe do horizonte,aque- le ponto de fuga (vanishing point) na diatincia que cerca o espec- tador. a palavra "primitive", por outro lado, e algo que de alguma forma surge em primeiro lugar. um primitive di origem a uma 	 se- gaincia de geragees moldadas pelo pal mas admitindo 	 variagoes que tornem o primitive cada vez mais complexo. um primitivo e 	 um "patrono das origens". a palavra "primitive" tem sentidos especi- ficos em lingdistica, algebra e antropologia. a forma primitive de um vocibulo e o radical a partir do qual se formam palavras 	 deri- vadas no decorrer do tempo. t tambem uma equagao algebrica 	 que constitui a fonte de uma aerie de equagoes algebricas derivadas e mais complexes. diz-se que e primitive o homem que ainda nio 	 se tornou inteiramente humano e que possui apenas virtualmente,	 em forma embrionaria, o fardo da culture civilizada. tante um primitive come um orbe tem simultaneamente dimensees temporais e espaciais. serie mais exato diner que se tem em cada caso uma imagem especial do tempo. nos dole cases se falsifica o conceito de tempo ji que o tempo nao pode ser delimitado como	 um espaco. por outro lado, nos dois casos se permite ao leitor um	 a- cesso ao tempo, uma intuigio ou apreensio do sentido da temporali- dade que nao poderia ocorrer sem a intermediatio de imagens cape- ciais. tanta o espago quanta o tempo, nessa mitua confluincia con- ceitual marcada pela contradicio, giram ao redor do centro ausente ou se expandem a partir dele ou esti° em orbita ao seu redor, 	 em consonincia com as sugest es incoerentes derivadas das imagens 	 de orbe e primitivo. hi uma aproximacilo de linguagem, espago e tempo ao redor do sol em eclipse, do poema essencial no centro das 	 doi sas. dele diz o poeta que "é e / nao é, e portanto i". logo 	 que ele vislumbrado por intermedio de uma designagäo na forma	 das imagens enigmiticas que constituem os sons haranicos de violinos espirituais no poema de stevens, desaparece imediatamente na keve- lacao da insuficiencia de qualquer designee - o para o poema no oen- tro. a forge da intuicio de que alga se encontra no centre 	 esti nao na sua revelagio, mas na descoberta de que qualquer nomeacao ji é, no momento seguinte, um encobrimento, o que se conforma 	 a lei geral da linguagem apocaliptica: "no instante da fala, move-se o sopro de uma aceleragdo ("accelerando")/ que aprisiona o ser,ex- pande-se	 e li era". na estrofe seguinte este "instante da 	 fala abre um "espaco que se alarga" e revels" o inevitivel azul / 	 do trovao oculto (= secluded thunder). este azul é um ceu vazio 	 que entretanto esconde uma tempestade de relimpagos que é, no horizon- te, a luz fulgurante oculta definida a seguir como "an illusion,as it was, / oh as, always too heavy for the sense / to seize,	 the obscurest as, the distant was..." ("uma ilusio, que era / oh como, sempre opressivo demais para o sentido / para capturak, o 	 como mail obscuro, o era distante..."). "é" que nao a	 transforta-se instantaneamente ao set nomeado ou percebido em "era" e	 portan- to em uma outra imagem ou equivalente metaf rico, o "como" que 	 se acrescenta a estrutura em cadeia de deslocamentos que	 prolifera sem cessar e que constitui o poema. para apresentar ao leitor o jogo de linguagem em "a primitive like an orb", vale a pena comparar o poema com um texto extraldo da gramatologia, de jacques derrida: nero a necessirio meditat sabre este conceito heliocen- tric° de fala? e a semelhanca do logos ao sol (ao 	 bem e a morte que nao se pode encarar de frente), ao 	 rei ou ao pai (o bem ou o sol inteligivel sao comparados ao pai na republica c)? que deve ser a escritura para ameagar este sistema analogico em seu centro vul- nerfivel e secreto? que deve ser a escritura 	 para significar o eclipse do que é bem e do que pal?	 nao preciso deixar de considerar a escritura como eclipse que vem surpreender e ofuscar a gloria do ver- be? e, se hfi alguma necessidade de eclipse, a relagao da sombre e da luz, da escritura e da fala, n o	 deve ela mesma aparecer de outra maneira? 	 texto de derr/de se move de um conjunto de termos para 	 o seu equivalente, cada um deles sendo uma alternative para o ante- rior, apresentando uma "semelhanca" em relagäo e ele, em uma serie de transformacaes na qual nenhum termo o primeiro ou o nixie() ao redor do qual os outros giram ou o ponto terminal no qual 	 eles possam chegar. logos o sol que o bem que a morte que nio pode ser olhada face a face que o rei que o pai que a mente que a fala. nesta seqtrencia de analogies nenhum termo representa o inicio ou o final porque cada um apenas mais um. e porque 	 apenas um termo, uma palavra, nio a palavra. t apenas uma figura derivada em uma seqflencia potencialmente infinite de imagens, cada uma das quaffs se refere a uma outra figura, e assim por diante.ca- da termo que designa aquilo que a origem dos termos uma meta- fora extraida daquele contexto que por sua vez foi presumivelmente derivado daquilo que ele designa. sol, o pai, o rei, a luz, assim por diante, sac, supostamente metiforas que designam o	 uno, o logos, pilidas copias materials dele, analogies ou simbolos. 	 e nesse sentido que se fala da criagio como o sopro de deus -- "as noticias de deus" no verso de gerard manley hopkins. a 	 metfifora extraida daquilo que condenado como secundfirio o termo	 mais apropriado para aquilo de que se sup e que ela derive.	 derrida argumenta que a condenagfio da escrita serve para obscurecer	 este fato. serve para manter o sistema analdgico intacto ao ocultar 	 a semelhanga entre fala e escrita. ambos constituem de maneira 	 ani- loga aquilo de que propoem ser derivados, mas a autonomia, a repe- tibilidade e a distfincia de toda e qualquer voz viva da 	 escrita fazem isto de forma tao evidente que parecem obscurecer o sol,des- cobrir a escuridao no centro vulner vel e secreto deste 	 sistema analogico em sua totalidade. um conjunto semelhante de equival ncias opera do inicio 	 ao final de "a primitive like an orb", muito embora a forga da 	 pala- vra "semelhante" deva ser aqui entendida tambem anasemicamente ,ou ana-analogicamente. semelhanca e analogia implicam inevitavelmente um logos central em nome do qual os exemplos sao an&logos, 	 falam com oozes semelhantes, mas justamente a existancia e a	 natureza deste logos central que estao em questao aqui. de qualquer forma, "a primitive like an orb", como a obra de stevens em sua totalida- de, tao heliocantrica como os diälogos platanicos. em stevens 	 o use constante da figura, ou conceito, ou fato literal objetivo(tra- ta-se de todos os tres) da trajetoria do sol, da sua ascengao, 	 da sua marcha majestosa nos c us, do seu declinio, ainda um exemplo da unidade heliotrapica do repertorio de tropos ocidentais. 	 nossa "metaforologia" uma fotologia, ji que todas as metaioras	 sao formas de ilustrar ou de trazer para a luz, ainda que esta luz se- ja false ou artificial, uma lampada e nao o sol verdadeiro. em ce- de caso justamente isto, repita-se, que esta em jogo. seria 	 a luz original ou seria ela feita pelo homem, um caso de	 "poiesis"? aparentemente "um primitivo como um orbe" escolhe a primeira 	 pos- sibilidade. poema apresenta uma teoria da poesia enquanto	 reve- lagäo do gigante do horizonte, o poema no centro das coisas	 que precede todos os poemas menores, a sua fonte, o seu progenitor.	 e no entanto esse progenitor existe apenas nos poemas menores.	 "a primitive like an orb" avenga de uma para a outra das seguintes - magens em seu percurso metaforico: centro, poems, fala, bem,	 ali- mento, luz, ouro, vazio (atraves de jogo verbal existente 	 em "gorging"), ar, melodia, espaco, tempo, musics, ser, primitivo,	 o primitivo como aborigene, como palavra primitive, como 	 radical, como formula primitive da qual outras derivam, como 	 ilustragao, como fonte da forma, como ovo, como semente, como centro e 	 esfe- ra, concentricidade orbita, como mundo, como esposo, como 	 dese- jo, como vontade, como gozo, como individuo, como pai 	 (" 	 poema essential gera os demais), como circulo ("anel"), como todo,	 como vis, como principio, como fonte primitive, como natureza,	 como "repouso", como ima ou centro de um campo magnatico, como um 	 gi- gante, como fogo, como origem e secidancia, como anjo, 	 como	 poder ou fonte de poder, como destino ("prodigioso: do latim, "prodigio- sus", de "prodigium", "agouro", "portento"), como matriz,	 como abstragao encarnada, como ilustragao, como esqueleto, como a tote- lidade das pinturas, profecias, poemas e cartas amorosas,como 	 mu- dance. "a frimi .:ive like an orb" se move em meio as	 problemiticas equivalencies estabelecidas nesta surpreendente diversidade 	 de termos. tais equivalencies se baseiam no principio sintitico fun- damental do poema: frases justapostas que, entretanto, constituem comparag es desprovidas da expressao "como". comparativo aparece no titulo do poema e no verso em que se menciona "the	 obscurest as" ("o obscurissimo como") (the obcurest as). esta locugäo aponta pare a metafora e para a simile enquanto instrumentos fundamentais do pensar poetic°. metafora e simile afirmam uma equivalencia en- tre objetos que, contudo, n o sac) identicos. uma forma equivalente vem expressa em frases como "a é b". a serie de frases justapostas constitui talvez a forma dominante porque, apesar de tudo, tal ae- rie permanece unida pela ausencia ou pelo apagamento do "é" que entretanto subentendido como a base de sua equivalencia. este "e" do "ser" que e momentanemtente aprisionado, aquilo que e näo e portanto é. uma tal pseudo-aerie infinite de equivalincia, 	 na qual um "obscurissimo como" segue-se a outro, gira ao redor	 do centro ausente da nio-palavra sugerida de forma figurada por todos estes termos, e isso por intermedio da substituigao de cada novo termo figurado polo termo anterior. "obscurissimo como" estabelece uma organizagao formal para o poema como um todo. agrupamento de estrofes que vai da setima nona, por exemplo, forma um longo periodo de frases justapostas em que cada uma substitui a anterior e e substituida pela seguin- te que, por sua vez, recolhe os restos da aniquilagao da frase an- terior; o trecho como um todo, por outro lado, tem como seu centro um nico verbo, a copula "é" da primeira linha. cito essa extraor- dinaria sentenga em sua totalidade para que o leitor possa apre- ciar aqui a maneira como stevens avarice cuidadosamente de formula- gio para formulag o, desprezando-as e em seguida procurando varia- saes para a expressao rejeitada. observe tambem o leitor a comple- xidade sintatica do periodo, n o apenas em sua dependencia da 	 ae- rie aberta de frames justapostas e do "um" que aparece no titulo, mas também no "o" tanto em seu aspecto diferencial em relag o 	 ao artigo indefinido como em seu movimento de um padrão gramatical pa- ra outro por intermedio do jogo constante de dos "e", "ou" e "de". a obra de stevens pode, com certeza, ser pensada em termos de uma admirivel utilizegao daquilo que roman jakobson chamou de "poesia a gramitica". g tambem um exemplo do que poderia ser chamado 	 de poesia da pontuacio, uma poesia da virgule e da ausincia da virgu- le (como no final da sitima eatrofe), e do adiamento indefinido do foote final. aqui esti o periodo: vii the central poem is the poem of the whole, the poem of the composition of the whole, the composition of blue sea and of green, of blue light and of green, as lesser poems, and the miraculous multiplex of lesser poems not merely into a whole, but a poem of the whole, the essential compact of the parts, the roundness that pulls tight the final ring viii and that which in an altitude would soar, a vis, a principle or, it may be, the meditation of a principle, or else an inherent order active to be itself, a nature to its natives all beneficence, a repose, utmost repose, the muscles of a magnet aptly felt, a giant, on the horizon, glistening, ix and in bright excellence adorned, crested, with every prodigal, familiar fire, and unfamiliar escapades: whirroos and scintillant sizzlings such as children like, vested in the serious folds of majesty, moving around and behind, a following, a source or trumpeting seraphs in the eye, a source of pleasant outbursts on the ear. " poems da composicao do todo" nio é exatamente a mesma coisa que "o poems do todo", muito embora a justaposicio gramatical indi- que que as duas frases devem ou deveriam ser dues maneiras de dimes a mesma coisa. "um poema de um todo" aerie ainda algo diverso, alga parcial e contingente em contraste com o absoluto e o exclusivo, o marcado, a coisa carte a real no final des contas. a repeticio 	 de expressio "do todo" deixa em evidência o "de". perguntari o leitor: "de" em que sentido? "de" no sentido de "sobre", de 	 "provaniente de", de "sendo parte de"? trata-se de um poems sobre o todo, ou 	 um poems que derive do todo, ou um poems que partilha do todo, 	 "uma particula tenaz" dele? seri que o "de" tem o mesmo sentido em "cox*. posicio do azul do mar a de verde" e em "composicio do todo? em ca- da caso o "de" parece apontar pare uma direcio diverse, vindo 	 da (ou indo em diregio a) totalidade em um caso ("composic o do todo") e vindo da (ou indo pare) a multiplicidade da natureza em	 outro ("composigio do azul do mar e verde"). leitor tem que 	 procurar o seu proprio percurso de sentido de frase para frase e de	 verso para verso, testando e saboreando cada um com o seu paladar	 mental pars ver o que enema de cada um em sua diferenga minima em	 relagio ao anterior. as estrofes s o tambem, como o leitor pode ver, uma manifesta- gio daquilo sobre o que elas falam. säo uma multiplicidade 	 mila- grosa de poemas menores. cada frase explode um pouco em revelagoes aforisticas que apontam para a revelagio do todo. ou nio seria mais precisamente "a revelagio do todo, a expressdo do todo"? os 	 arti- gos definidos sao insistentes, pelo menos na primeira estrofe, mui- to embora "o poema do todo" na primeira linha se transforme em "um poema do/todo" no sexto e no setimo versos. a composigio de que	 se trata a uma revelagio do todo que ja esti , a composigio do todo ji existente, ou sera antes a composigäo de cada ate de fazer poe- tic°, ou o ato de ajustar partes que venham a formar um todo, como no ensino de redagio? em outras palavras, o "de" no "poema do to- do", colocado enfaticamente no final de um verso ("nio somente 	 em um todo, mas um poema do/todo"), possui um valor de verificagio	 ou um valor performativo? um tal poema descreve um todo que ji existe, ou trata-se de um todo no processo de ser constituido e 	 portanto nio existente antes da composigio de certas palavras numa certa or- dem? ou sera que se trata da composigio (que ji existe) atraves 	 da composigio (enquanto processo)? seja como for, a constante variagio minima de padroes sintiti- cos e lexicos nao serve apenas para por em relevo as estruturas gra- maticais do discurso meditativo ("o a do b", por exemplo). a varia- gio tambem liberta palavras abstratas como "todo", "composigio" 	 e "poema" de seu relacionamento no fluxo ou na progressao descontinua do argumento e provoca o seu isolemento, uma vez livres da sintaxe, em termos de um desprotegido poder de sentido em relagio 	 quele centro ausente e sem nome, ou poema no centro, ou poema	 central. isto se torna particularmente evidente na segunda das duas	 estro- fes citadas acima, a oitava estrofe. hi um deslizamento 	 sintatico entre a setima e a oitava estrofes, indicado pela ausencia de vir- gule no final da setima estrofe. da totalidade da composigio 	 do poema central, a que o poeta chama "o compacto essencial das	 par- tes", que me parece indicar nao apenas que elas foram	 compactadas ou justapostas, mas que elas tem, por assim dizer, um acordo	 para conviver e permanecer juntas, diz-se que e o circulo envolvente de um anel externo, como o arco que cerca um barril, ou mais precise- mente, que uma forge que torna o anel externo retesado e garan- te a estabilidade da estrutura como um todo. essa totalidade cir- cular, ou compacto, aquilo que faz o todo ser um todo, a simulta- neamente uma forge de integragao do objeto, uma energia unificado- ra sem a qual o objeto seria estilhagado ("in an altitude	 would soar"). poeta testa varies designagbes para nomear esta energia	 na oitava estrofe. salta de uma para a outra por meio do "ou" e veri- fica cada uma em termos da validade do sentido revelado. cada for- mulagao nova substitui a anterior mas nao a desqualifica enquanto o poeta caminha em direcao a revelacao mais explicita do enquanto tal, muito embora ele permanega ainda oculto em uma personifica- cao: "um gigante, no horizonte, brilhando" (a giant on u-etorizon, glistening). leitor convidado a experimentar a diferenca entre dizer que ele e uma "vis" a dizer que um "principio", ou	 entre dizer que e um principio e dizer que e a meditagao de um princi- pio" (que pode designer um principio que medita ou entao signifi- car que nos meditamos sobre o principio), ou entre dizer que 	 se trata de uma "ordem inerente" e dizer que uma natureza para seus nativos/senevol ncia total" (nature to its natives/all beneficence), ou entre dizer que de alguma forma um repouso e dizer que e	 a ausancia de repouso definida pela forge muscular de 	 um magneto. mais uma vez o poema imita aquilo que nomeia. e a meditacao de 	 um principio de unidade por intermedio da denominagao rotative 	 da- quele principio pelos seus varios nomes, "movendo-se ao redor 	 e por detras" (moving around and behind) dele, enquanto ele 	 tambem se move, numa lenta dance circular de linguagem ao redor do primi- tivo em orbita. nas nove primeiras estrofes e no poema como um todo ha 	 uma resistencia a parafrase e a comentirios interpretativos porque 	 o pressuposto duplo implicito sempre que, primeiro, nenhuma	 frase ou nome ou metafora pode adequadamente nomear o primitivo e, gundo, que cada frase ou nome inadequado tem a sua propria energia inconfundivel, simultaneamente revelando e ocultando. cada	 imagem permite vislumbrar o primitivo no moment() em que ele desaparece, como se as pr prias palavras fossem o eclipse do sol. dizer 	 de outro modo em uma tentative de parafrase ou comentirio	 como	 meu, por exemplo	 significa dizer algo diferente, algo que tenha talvez a sue propria forge significative. poems demonstra 	 isso ao tester as minims variagoes de uma dada formulag o, '‘o repouso total" (utmost repose), por exemp lo, comparado ao "repouso". 	 os interpretes poderiam supostamente acrescentar algo ao poeme,acres- center mais frases e frases justapostas, mas jamais poderiam 	 ex- plics-lo trazendo a luz algum sentido obscuro arrancado ao	 poema nomeando-o de uma vez por todas corretamente ou literalmente. porque partilha deste condicionamento lingtastico, e nao por	 um vago direito de ser "postico ou "criativo", que a critica liters- ria ou deveria ser entendida como um discurso literirio. no final da oitava estrofe, portanto, o poema avenge) por meio da personificagso latente em "msticulos de magneto" ate a	 prosopo- péia principal do sol no horizonte como o gigante fulgurante"vested in the serious folds of majesty" ("vestido nos sitrios tecidos 	 do- brados da majestade") mas simultaneamente adornado tambiam com fri- vola prodigalidade pirotscnica, "whirroos/and acintillantsizzlings such as children like" (gritos, e os fulgurantes assobios aprecia- dos por criangas). nsses sérios tecidos dobrados se moven "ao 	 re- dor e por detras", ou sera por outro lado o proprio gigante 	 que gira em seu proprio eixo e caminha para a invisibilidade	 quando se pee e aparenta mover-se ao redor a por detris da terra que 	 gi- ra? a gramitica de justaposiao torna impossivel determiner 	 com certeza da mesma forma que a impossivel saber com certeza se sol nasce ou se pie no horizonte, o que o transforms tanto em ori- gem ("source") como em destino ("a following"), em alfa e 	 omega. a revelagso fulgurante que se expande do sol nascente ou do 	 sol poente a uma sinestesia que funde o visual e o sonoro,	 "son	 at lumiire", luz tao brilhante que a percebida como som. sol 	 no horizonte é a origem de "trumpeting seraphs in the eye"	 (anjoa que somatranbetas nos olhares) e simultaneamente de	 "pleasant outbursts on the ear" ("dotes explosoes nos ouvidos"), da 	 mesma forma que na grandiose cena do sol nascente da abertura da segunda parte do fausto de goethe "um estupendo alarido proclama o sol que r chega" ("ungeheures getose verkundet das herannahen der sonne"(n to para a encenagfio ape's a linha ), e sol nasce "assombrando olhos e estonteando ouvidos" ("auge hlinzt and ohr	 erstaunet" (line )). afirmei que a personificagfio do sol como um gigante emerge no final da set:ida:iola no longo periodo que constitui a sfitima oitava none estrofes. a relagäo entre prosopopiia, catacrese a apostro- fe complexa. no caso n o existe apistrofe. wallace stevens 	 nio fala ao sol, muito embora em "chocorua to its neighbor", um poema de que antecipa de varies formes "a primitive like an orb", a montanha fala para uma montanha vizinha para que o leitor escute ao longe o discurso direcionado a outro, a metade de um 	 difilogo entre montanhas. em "a primitive like an orb" stevens fala "sabre" sol, em mfiltiplos sentidos da palavra. poema fala para	 uma audiencia de homens e mulheres que pensam e que partilham com	 a voz narrative (uma voz a que falta quase totalmente uma personali- dade que possa ser identificada) a revelagio levada a cabo pelaa falas meditativas do poema enquanto ele muda de um registro 	 pare outro: "but it is, dear sirs/ a difficult apperception, 	 this gorging good..." ( - ) ("mas , caros senhores, uma	 percepgio dificil, este deglutir bem"). seria precise um trabalho maior para identificar e discriminar a multiplicidade de vases, poemaa, e ni- veis de escolha vocabular presentee. tel multiplicidade nio con- sistente com o modelo de um finico falante dirigindo uma fele	 uni- voca para uma unica audifincia. material léxico que comp e	 essa mistura de vozes inclui termos abstratos como "composition","laraer "compact" (composigio, todo, compacto); figures de discurso expli- cites como a do "final ring" ( anel ultimo) ou a do magneto	 ou aquela que compare o sol a uma pirotecnia de gritos a 	 assobios fulgurantes apreciados por criangas; e finalmente, a personifica- gio emergente, "an abstraction given head" ( ) (uma	 abstragio com cabeca), do sol ou do poema central como "a giant 	 on	 the horizon, given arms. /a massive body end long legs,	 stretched out" ( - ) (um gigante no horizonte, com bravos, / corpo 	 macigo longas pernas, que se elonga)." a primitive like an orb"	 foi precedido no use desta figura pela extraordiraria personificagio da noite estrelada como "more than muscular shoulders, arms	 and chest" (mais do que ombros musculosos, bragos e peito) em"chocorua to its neighbor": "upon my top he breathed the pointed dark. / 	 he was not a man yet he was nothing else" ( , - ) (sobre o	 meu curve ele assoprou a escurid go aguda / ngo era um homem mas, no en- tanto, nada alem de um homem). "chocorua to its neighbor", 	 junta- mente com "um primitivo como um orbe" e "the owl in the	 sarcopha- gus", apresentam uma das grandes prosopopeias de stevens em	 poe- mas sobre a construgeo da prosopopeia. em "sobre a verdade e a mentira no sentido amoral", nietzsche inclui "antropomorfismos", juntamente com met gforas e metonimias, como parte do arsenal novel de catacreses por meio das quais a hu- manidade nomeia pela primeira vez o "x misterioso" do mundo	 e, assim, o descobre e recobre novamente com um ato lingdistico 	 ( , ). talvez a personificag go seja a mais importante e a mais 	 fun- damental destas catacreses: aquele gigante que sempre encontramos espelhado na paisagem do outro lado do nosso combate para nomear o mundo e ve-lo como ele g . talvez o gigante nao seja mais do o nos- so proprio rosto e corpo refletidos no espelho do mundo, construi- do pouco a pouco a partir do nosso hibito inveterado de chamar 	 os tragos naturais de "rostos", "cabegas", "pescogos", "perms", como em "um bravo de aqua", "a face da montanha", etc. ou talvez exista de fato algum monstro com aparencia humane no final do 	 caminho que circula ao redor do labirinto, aquele "centro no 	 horizonte" ( ). seja como for, para stevens existe tambem, neste poema e	 em muitos outros dentre as obras primas que compoem a sus 	 produgeo tardia, o confronto de uma pessoa nos limites do poder 	 nomeador da imaginageo. como diz o proprio stevens no poema, "it 	 is	 a giant, always, that evolves / to be in scale" ( - ) ( um gigan- te sempre, que se transmuta, para ganhar proporgeo). isto 	 indica tanto que o tamanho excessivo ("bulging") e a avassaladora 	 "gran- deza paterna" sec> sempre caracteristicas do poema central, 	 como tambem que o poema central tem forma humana. se a aguda 	 sensaggo onde se apaga a luz dos sentidos	 como por exemplo quanto tenta- mos olhar o sol a olho ou	 um lugar de sinestesia, o lugar 	 de uma permuta entre os sentidos, o que faz com que o brilho do 	 sol seja ouvido como sons de trombetas angelicas, atingir este 	 lugar 	 tambem o moment() da manifestag go de uma pessoa, um anjo ou	 um gigante. isto ocorre a despeito das palavras de stevens em 	 "notas sobre uma ficg go suprema" sobre a. possibilidade de abolir apolo 	 e ver o sol "na ideia que ele tem de si", desnudado de qualquer 	 me- tefora ou personificageo mitologica. "queo claro e o sol	 quando visto em sua idéia / purificado na mais distante pureza do	 cell / que nos repeliu e as nossas metiforas" (poems, ). por mais que se tente apagar as prosopopeias fundamentais que usamos para 	 no- mear o mundo, elas retornam sempre, como por exemplo na forma	 de um rosto e corpo gigantes no sol, ou como na cena do sol	 nascente no fausto de goethe, "portais de granite rangem e gritam, / as ro- das de phebo rolam e quebram" ("felsenthore knarren rasselnd, phobus rader rollen prasselnd" (versos - ), ou	 como	 no "anjo de pa frente ao sol", ou no seu "ulysses e polifemo" com o esbogo de apolo, cavalos, carros de guerra fracamente	 visiveis diante da orbita fulgurante do sol, ou como no gigante que	 emerge do longo periodo que compoe a setima, oitava e nona estrofes	 do poema de stevens. 	 em wallace stevens, o que caracteriza a descrig o desse	 re- torno progressivo é a forma pela qual se mostra o retorno da	 pro- sopopeia n o primariamente atravas das outras catacreses	 personi- ficantes da linguagem comum ("o olho do sol"), mas atraves do	 mo- vimento cinetico em palavras abstratas como "composition","ompact", "beneficence", ou "repose" (composicao, compacto, 	 beneficancia, repouso). pode parecer que as metiforas etimologicas estäo	 mortas e inofensivas nestas palavras, mas stevens compete com walter 	 pa- ter em sua aguda sensibilidade para perceber as "particulas 	 ele- mentares em palavras aparentemente abstratas, em sua 	 capacidade para sentir "o evento, a cor, os elementos fisicos em 	 palavras como absorver, considerar, extrair" (absorb, consider,	 extract" (pater, "style", ). estes elementos fisicos ou particulas 	 näo sao coisas mas sim atos ou movimentos, como no ato de extrair con- tido no "tract" de "extract" e o movimento para fora. do "ex", 	 ou no ato de colocar junto em "composition", ou de deslocar para tress em "re-pose", ou ou no ato de acoplar em "com-pact", que 	 inclui um eco proveniente da palavra anterior na forma de um "com" ou 	 de um "pos". jogo de palavra tendo como tema o "pos" jd tinha 	 na verdade sido antecipado na descrig o do poema central como "dis- posed and re-disposed / by such slight genii in such pale 	 air" (dispostos a redispostos/por genios minesculos no ar enbranqueci- do"), na primeira estrofe. stevens parece sentir nas assim 	 chama- das palavras abstratas um movimento muscular subliminar em 	 seu proprio corpo, que dessa forma reage e projeta para o mundo exte- rior atos cinesteticos. gigante no horizonte, brilhando,	 emerge gradualmente desses cotporais ativados pelo jogo de	 abstracges, combinados e recombinados de perlodo pare periodo, ate que final- mente aquela ordem ou principle inerente de reunir as partes	 em um todo, que é tanto eg g° como imobilidade, "vis" e repouso, 	 e percebida como os "mtisculos de um magneto". e destes 	 imisdulos, simultaneamente interibtes e exteriores, simultaneamente	 metgfora de uma metifora ( "mdsculos de um magneto"), abstrac go e	 datacrese ea forme de prosepopaia, que emerge e tome forma exterior o gigan- te gran: so do sol no hotizonte. 	 entte as abstragges endontra-se, na deciwa primeira	 estrofe, a pr pria palavra abstracio juntamente com tree outran( 	 "defini,- cgo" (definition), "ilustrac go" (illustration) e	 "rotulado" (labelled). em conjunto elas apresentam a anglise feita pelo	 pr - prio stevens da estratogia retorica por meio da gnat as dietincoes entre palavras abstratas, metgforas, e personificag ges se dissol- vem no reconhecimento de que todas constituem exemplos daquela	 a- rea tranabordante na qual a catadtese e a prosopopeia, a	 despeito de sells diferentes objetivos, aproximam-se na interfer gncia mgtua de uma sobre a outra. a catacrese aponta para a revelac go, para o brilho exteriorizado, como no case do sal nascente ou poente 	 no fulgor da sua gloria. a prosopopeia aponta para a morte e pare o ocultamento, para a invisibilidade, como e o case do sol na forma da morte que nao pode ser olhada frente a frente. a 	 prosopopeia 'aponte para a ode e para a elegia, como a claramente o caso	 de "the owl in the sarcophagus", de stevens. a prosopopeia e a invo- caego do ausente, do invisivel, do sepultado, como no caso do 	 sol que se oculta abaixo da linha do hotizonte, ou que ainda n go	 nas- ceu como por exemplo na extraordiniria encarnac go da desencarnacgo ja mencionada, ou seja, a personificag go do cell estrelado em "cho- corua to its neighbor": "the feeling of him was the feel of day,/ and of a day as yet unseen... / he was a shell of dark blue glass, or ice, / or air collected in a deep essay, / 	 blue's	 last transparende as it turned to black" ( - , , , ) 	 (senti-lo era sentir o dia / e o dia ainda n go visto	 / era uma concha de vidro azul eacuro, ou gelo, / ou ar inspirado em profunda busca, / a iltima transparência do azul que se torna negro). a catacrese que a tambern prosopopeia, como tantas sae), ( o caso de "muscles" em "muscles of a magnet"), encontra-se no cruza- mento destas dues orientag ges contraditorias nas quais se unem o aparecer e o desaparecer no centro do horieonte. neste lugar sem luger as distinceez lexical entre abstragao, metafora e personifi- cacao se diluem. as abstrag te de stevens sao também metaforme, e sao ainda personificagoes latentes. como a propria palavra "abs- tragao" indica em seu sentido etimolegico, o gigante a extraido e elaborado ou incorporado a partir des abstragoes, ele a aostraide delete: "here then, is an abstraction given head, / a giant on the horizon, given arms, / a massive body and long legs" ( -s )(aqui, pots, este uma abstragio coin cabega, / um gigante no horieonte,com bragos, / um corpo macigo e longas perms). esta personificacio, como o pr prio poeta die de forma certeire, e "uma definicao coin uma ilustragro, embora nao / excessivamente bem nomeade ( - ). a definigao aerie talvez a abstragao inicial a sues	 permutagees (" poema central e o poema do todo" a assim por clients). a ilus- tragao é a figuragao por catacreae que emerge des abstragees como um trazer para a luz (que e, de recto, o que "ilustragio" signifi ca etimologicamente). ato de nomear é a composigeo final deseas incorporag es transiterias analoga a personificagao do poema como um gigante. mae eases tree formes de linguagem sao simultaneamente uma definigio, um delineamento e eatabelecimento de 	 fronteiras, uma ilustragio e um trazer pare a luz, e finalmente uma rotulagao ou uma ilustragao nomeadora definitive. %des ;betas 	 iluetracems, sem as quais nao haveria poesia ou critica de poesia, 	 desaparecem naquele centro de luz ofuscante, o buraco negro que neo dove ser rotulado coin precisao excessive para que os termos usados nao per- cam totalmente a validade. elea perdem ate meemo aquela traneit - ria validade hesitante da alusao indireta que stevens celebra a se transformam na fixidez reduzida e comicamente inadequada quo narrador do poema ridicularizou um moment° antes( "as in a signed photograph on a mantelpiece" ( ) (como em uma fotografia autogra- fada sobre o movel). estes figures imoveis sro uma parodia despre- zivelmente auto-referencial da definigeo iluatrada, mae jamais ro- tulada corn precise°. gigante no horizonte nä° pode receber ne- nhum nome preprio e nem sequer diz ou designa-se a si mesmo coin um nome, como fez alguem que assina a sua prepria fotografia. afirmei anteriormente que o use feito por stevens, neste e em muitos ou- tros poemas, da trajetoria do sol como abstragao basica, tropo e figura da jornada narrative personificada o colon& no contexto da tradigao poetics ocidental originada na culture grega antiga. mae stevens tambem as situa em uma tradigao que remonta pelo menos	 a aristeiteles na medida em que fez do sol o exemplo principal 	 de catacrese. se um nome pr prio ou literal depende da visibilidade total, a luz do sol, daquilo que e nomeado, o proprio sol, nas pa- lavras de stevens, "nao pode lever um nome" (poems, ), ou	 nao pode ser nomeado com rigor, uma vez que e invisivel durante aquele periodo de sua orbita na qual se esconde e se sepulta no	 horizon- te. como todas as circunlocuc es que compoem o poema, a 	 palavra "sol" a tambem uma catacrese. nio e por acidente e nem por escolha arbitraria do poeta que o "gigante feito de nada", ou seja, o poe- ma central, o primitivo como um orbe, acaba por revelar-se como	 sol. e se a palavra nao pode aparecer no poema nao porque o poe- ta este meramente brincando com o leitor. mas apesar disso o leitor de "um primitivo como um orbe", 	 ou pelo memos o leitor que escreve estas linhas, tenta	 identificar aquele centro evasivo, tenta nomea-lo com a finalidade de inter- romper e controlar o movimento estonteante de metifora para meta- fora que constitui a textura lingdistica do poema. ha tres opgaes possiveis pars a refercncia extralingdistica que poderia, se 	 fos- sem identificada, resolver o enigma e atenuar a insatisfacao 	 men- tal perdida no movimento de imagem para imagem do poema e neces- sitada de descobrir "sobre que assunto" ele fala: ( ) poema po- deria nomear obliquamente um referente fisico, uma cena ou objeto do mundo exterior que o poema imita ou representa. logo que 	 este referente objetivo a identificado, os leitores tem alqo em que	 se apoiar no seu percurso através do poema. uma tal leitura veria 	 o poema, de uma forma ou de outra, como uma representacao 	 mimetica. ( ) poema, por outro lado, pode representar um estado psicologi- co, a mente do poeta, por exemplo, que poderia ser pensada 	 como existindo fora do poema e nele expressa e copiada. isto seria 	 a conhecida teoria do poema enquanto imitacao ou expressao de esta- dos psicologicos. ( ) poema poderia finalmente nomear 	 obliqua- mente um centro transcendental ou espiritual: deus, a ideia do uno, o ser, a "luz isolada, no cume da montanha" ( ) de que fala poema na sexta estrofe. neste terceira possibilidade 	 ter-se-ia uma nogeo de mimese como a que encontra em platao, para quern 	 os varios graus de imitagao acabam finalmente por depender de prot - tipos existentes no mundo des idelas. estes sac) tres versoes da definicio da poesia enquanto imita- o. "um primitivo como um orbe" sistematicamente confunde	 cada uma das tres explicagees possiveis. poema n o copia nenhuma cena consistente e nenhum objeto definido. que ele faz e avangar	 a- traves de uma estonteante proliferaceo de metiforas variadas, cada uma delas anulando a anterior. hi fragmentos e particulas de cenas que se superpoem de forma incoerente: musica, vide e trabalhosfar- jados, ouro essencial oculto em uma cavern, a cena de um	 passeio nos campos, uma tempestade de raios na distancia, etc. 	 somente quando o poema atinge finalmente o gigante no horizonte os	 leito- res comegam a ter algo mail definido em que pensar, mas nesse	 mo- mento eles j sabem que o gigante e apenas macs uma metifora e não aquilo "sobre o que" fala o poema. gigante e tambem apenas	 uma outra "ilustragäo", um trazer para a luz por meio de um exemplo. gigante e uma outra imagem ou emblema, ou seja, algo que se refere mail uma vez a alguma coisa alem de si mesmo. todos os termos 	 do poema sac) designagoes pare aquele primitivo central,	 invisivel e nä° nomeado, a magnitude da qual todas as ilustracoes sao partes menores ( - ), o poema-pai do qual säo filhos todos os 	 poemas reals. poema essencial, como diz o texto, gera todos os outros. quanto a segunda possibilidade, embora possa ser confortante para os leitores imaginer que eles est&c, obtendo acesso a	 "mente de stevens" ao ler o poema, a verdade e que não existe um ser 	 in- dividual no poema, neo existe uma coerencia psicológica pessoalque se expressa e a qual fariam referencia as palavras do poema.	 sho conhecidas a austeridade e a impersonalidade das oozes 	 poeticas de stevens e as suas constantes mudangas de tom. a nogäo de que a poesia ocorre quando um homem fala a outros homens não nos 	 leva muito longe na leitura de "um primitivo como um orbe" ou na 	 de outros poemas como "chocorua to its neighbor" ou "the owl in 	 the sarcophagus". que n o quer dizer que os poemas de stevens 	 sio desprovidos de intensidade passional, moss sim que as 	 categories psicologicas ou as categories que definem o ser individual 	 ajudam pouco na sua compreensio. reduzir o poema a uma express o do 	 "ser individual" de stevens ou de sua "consciencia" significaria trans- form :á- naquela "fotografia autografada sobre o movel" ( )	 de que o poema fala com ironia. reduzir, pela "forge ("virtude"), o tamanho do gigante no horizonte, "(torte-lo) / em tamanho e 	 soli- dio ou (imaginary faze-lo" ( - ) constitui um esforco	 mesquinho e 	 parece, portanto, que a terceira possibilidade aerie a	 res- posta. todos os termos no poema se referem iquela realidade	 espi- ritual evasive, o que stevens denomina em outro texto "o simples ser" (opus ). este realidade a timida amante cortejada	 por todos os seus poemas ou, mais exatamente, a totalidade daquilo que pode ser percebido e o teatro em que o gigante no horizonte corte- za a natureza e a mente como suas esposas. casamento e admira- velmente expresso na segdencia que vai dos versos a : ... it is as if the central poem became the world. vi and the world the central poem, each one the mate of the other, as if summer was a spouse, espoused each morning, each long afternoon... 	 at mesmo esta terceira possibilidade, contudo, que a	 pos- sibilidade de o poema se constituir em um ato performativo	 de revelagio em que as palavras trazem a descoberto alguma coisa ocul- ta, e questionada pela estrategia lingfilstica do poema. nas 	 ima- gens de "um primitivo como um orbe" hi uma ambigdidade sistemitica que torna o poema semelhante iquele ovo hermetic° de 	 que	 fala yeats: um ovo que se vira de dentro para fora sem quebrar a casca. a ambigdidade esti na incerteza, que existe a despeito da afirma- gio de que "o poema essencial gera os outros poemas", a respeito de quem o pai de quem. seri que o poema particular é somente uma pilida cripia do poema essencial, ou sere antes uma parte dele, co- mo afirma em certa altura o poema? no poema bem acabado a composi- gio poetica central se transforma no mundo, que se torna por 	 sua vez seu esposo, que nela tem "o seu espelho e o seu olhar" ( ),ou seja, o poema particular. poema essencial esti fora	 do	 poema particular enquanto centro no horizonte e simultaneamente a	 to- talidade de todos os "escritos, profecias, percepoes, fragmentos/ de cor" ( - ), e portanto encarnado em cada ato criador. 	 estas inscrigoes ou encarnacoes sio imitac es pilidas do poema central, dividido, fragmentado e disperso, e simultaneamente aquilo que 	 o forma e de que ele se constitui. tornados em conjunto eles sio	 o poems central, e ao mesmo tempo ales o geram enquanto o ponto 	 de fuga para o qual cada um deles aponta em sus incapacidade de	 ser mais do que parte do todo, uma sinedoque dele. esse paradoxo é ex- presso de uma outra forma em "the man with the blue guitar" e 	 no comentirio sobre o poema que aparece nas cartes de stevens a rena- to poggioli. a imaginag o deve ser um filho capaz de derrotar	 seu psi e tornar-se a "parte verdadeira" dele, ou seja, o seu sexo.	 filho tomari o lugar do pai, n o para destrui-lo, mas para 	 se transformer nele. a imaginagio filial deve superar a	 distancia entre o leäo na harpa e o leao na pedra ate que ambos possam	 se fundir e tornar-se uma se realidade. este processo de fus o, no momento em que se complete, 	 fra- cassa. e fracassa porque tanto o poeta como o leitor acabam	 por ter em maos apenas um frigil simulacro, uma imagem, ou uma ilus- trag o no sentido pejorativo, um involucro vazio, uma cepia --	 um "segundo" nas palavras de stevens. este invelucro deve ser 	 des- truido, jfi que ele perde imediatamente toda a sua autenticidade. ao ser expresso ele j se transformou em algo que era, "an illu- sion, as it was" (uma ilusao, porque foi, por assim dizer),	 como "uma fotografia autografada sobre o moven por este motivo	 que a definigio com uma ilustragio nä° deve ser nomeada exatamente de- mais. cada definigao com uma ilustracäo deve ser	 imediatamente rejeitada no memento em que e apresentada, e deve ser 	 substitui- da pela seguinte, na serie de expressoes que proliferam e que	 cons- tituem grande parte do poema. ao desaparecer, cada imagem se reve- la como um novo nome para o vazio. gigante e "o gigante do 	 na- da" ( ) apesar de the ser atribuida proeminente substancia mascu- line e solidez m scula. somente na medida em que cada imagem 	 se revela enquanto cepia, ou enquanto mais uma ilusao mimetica, 	 pode ela adequar-se aquilo de que a uma ilustracio porque tanto a ilus- tragäo (o ato de trazer para a luz) como aquilo que e ilustrado (o gigante) "modif learn-se constantemente, vivem em mudanga"	 ( ).	 a imagem deve partilhar da natureza daquilo de que e uma imagem. sua qualidade vazia, ficticia, evanescente e essencial para sua	 ade- quag o. uma vez que o preprio padroeiro (um ser?) das origens vive no tempo e na mudanga, pode apenas ser adequadamente expresso 	 em imagens temporais -- vale dizer, em imagens que sao e n o sâo 	 e portanto s o. a luz deste primitivo central nio uma luz isolada, no cume da montanha. como yeats, stevens rejeita um universo 	 de emanagoes platonicas originirias de fontes tarmicas espirituais 	 e anteriores. tambam stevens prefere o redemoinho a queda d'agua.pre- fere o labirinto da imanancia a qualquer hierarquia dependente	 do uno transcendental. tanto como yeats ou william carlos williams, stevens	 afirma energicamente o poder da poesia. essas afirmagoes permanecem sem- pre indeterminadas. serie a inveng go do poems criaggo ou descober- ta? a ilustragio ilustra uma luz que the a anterior, a chama pa- terna que gera todas as chamas menores? ou serao as chamas menores particulas da chama paterna e portanto parte essencial dela, 	 a ponto de ser possivel manifestar-se a luz apenas na presence	 do poema? ou serao as chamas menores na verdade idanticas a chama pa- terna, esta ultima existindo e sendo gerada somente pelo comarcio das imagens, sendo portanto o filho o verdadeiro pai de seu psi? "um primitive como um orbe", como todos os poemas da ultima fase de stevens, situa-se no intervalo que separa estas tras posicoes. cada uma delas constitui uma miragem das outras. stevens nao	 é um poets confuso ou propositalmente contraditorio. situa-se antes na inevitgvel oscilaggo no interior da linguagem e no interior das experiências que a linguagem simultaneamente imita e cria	 reali- zando de outra forma a mesma oscilagio. e impossivel haver criacao sem descoberta, ou descoberta e ilustragao sem criacao, sem o pra- zer da linguagem que ocorre sempre que o ser humano a usa a partir do seu desejo. nero hi invengao (no sentido de descoberta) sem in- vengao (no sentido de criagao). antes que o que ama, o que tem	 fa e o poets falem, nao existe poema essencial. poema essencial 	 s existe em poemas menores. no entanto, o poema essencial	 parece existir desde sempre, unificando todos os poemas menores. ele 	 os terns completos e cria a partir deles o poema do todo -- vale 	 di- zer, algo que se move, como o tempo, sempre em direcio ao todo, em diregao ao final que nao pode jamais ser atingido. a resposta a minha pergunta inicial sobre o poema de 	 stevens ("por que nao pode o sol ser nomeado diretamente no poema?") esti agora suficientemente esclarecida. tao esclarecida quanto 	 possi- vel, ou tao esclarecida como a clara vis go que se tem quando	 se olha diretamente para o sol. a palavra "sol" exists, e o sol a no- meado indiretamente de muitas maneiras no poema. reduzir o sol 	 ao seu (so aparentemente proprio) nome, contudo, levaria o leitor 	 a erroneamente pensar que o "assunto" ou o "objeto" de que trata poema, o seu significado basico e determinante, literalmente 	 o sol real, enquanto o sol, nomeado em condensacoes enigmaticas em deslocamentos de sentidos no poema, apenas um dos	 muitos deslocamentos de sentido que nomeiam " poema essencial no	 centro das coisas". este poema essencial, por sua vez, como a propria pa- lavra "poema" ji indica, alguma coisa que se faz em suas ilus- tragoes. poesia significa o "ato de fazer". poema central deri- ve deltas ilustragoes, muito embora ele anteceda e ultrapasse 	 to- das as ilustragoes. no centro do labirinto ou do redemoinho de palavras que cons- titui "um primitivo como um orbe" existe um x desconhecido que nao pode ser nomeado a nao ser de forma figurada. esses nomes sao por- tanto nao substituigoes para um termo literal que rotula um objeto exposto aos olhos ou a compreensao. sao antes termos 	 figurados para algo que nao nem uma palavra, nem um pensamento, nem 	 uma coisa, nem uma force	 mas que tambem /lac. um nada. nas palavras de stevens, trate-se de um "gigante de nada", algo que e nao e portanto . esse gigante palavra, pensamento, coisa, forma, pes- soa, simultaneamente. e tudo isso e ao mesmo tempo nao é 	 nada disso. ele portanto torna irrelevante e desqualifica as 	 oposicoes necessaries pars a constituigao de uma topologia exaustiva 	 das figuras e conceitos do poema. poema nao pode ser pensado 	 clara- mente muito embora, como mostra o meu comentario, haja muita coisa a ser dita sobre ele. no entanto, enquanto avanga em suas 	 obser- vagaes, o interprete se ve privado de distingoes claras entre sub- jetivo, objetivo e lingdistico e entre o literal e o figurado, que constituem as condigoes das quais toda explicacao sempre dependeu para ser clara. ao intarprete resta apenas um espaco 	 paradoxal, simultaneamente interior a exterior, objetivo e lingnistico,	 um espaco de elementos organizados como anais girat rios ao redor 	 de um centro que nao pode ser nomeado ou identificado como tal e 	 que nao , de resto, um centro propriamente dito mas algo "ecentrico", pars fora e alem da periferia, como uma trovoada no horizonte. "um primitivo como um orbe", em resumo, "(resiste) a compreensio quase com axito", o que de acordo com stevens é o que toda a poesia	 de- veria fazer (opus ). notas collected poems - . as citagoes do poema serao doravante iden- tificadas apenas pela numeragio das linhas. outras citag es 	 de stevens serao identificadas pelos numeros das piginas em poems e em opus posthumous. texto original utilizada, com pequenas alterag es, a 	 tradugao feita para o ingl s por gayatri chakravorty spivak ( - ). a tra- dugao aqui apresentada em portuguas é a de miriam schnaiderman e renato janini ribeiro (jacques derrida: gramatologia, sao	 paulo, perspective, , pp. - ). a respeito desta palavra, ver abraham, e ver tambem os comentarios de derrida a respeito do use que faz abraham da palavra 	 ("fors" - , especialmente ). para a tradugao em inglas deste ensaio, ver "fors", de barbara johnson. para a tradugao, ver a norton critical edition ( ); para o texto no original alemao, ver o hamburger ausgabe ( , ). apendice a primitive like an orb wallace stevens the essential poem at i the centre of things, the arias that spiritual fiddlings make, have gorged the cast-iron of our lives with good and the cast-iron of our works. but it is, dear sirs, a difficult apperception, this gorging good, fetched by such slick eyed nymphs, this essential gold this fortune's finding, disposed and redisposed by such slight genii in such pale air. ii we do not prove the existence of the poem. it is something seen and known in lesser poems, it is the huge, high harmony that sounds a little and a little, suddenly, by means of a separate sense. it is and it is not and, therefore, is. in the instant of speech, the breadth of an accelerando moves, captives the being, widens -- and was there. what milk there is in iii such captivity, what wheaten bread and oaten cake and kind, green guests and table in the woods and songs at heart, within an instant's motion, within a space grown wide, the inevitable blue of secluded thunder, an illusion, as it was oh as, always too heavy for the sense to seize, the obscurest as, the distant was... iv one poem proves another and the whole, for the clairvoyant men that need no proof: the lover, the believer and the poet. their words are chosen out of their desire, the joy of language, when it is themselves. with these they celebrate the central poem, the fulfillment of fulfillments, in opulent, last terms, the largest, bulging still with more, v until the used-to earth and sky, and the tree and cloud, the used-to tree and used-to cloud, lose the old uses that they made of them, and they: these men, and earth and sky, inform each other by sharp informations, sharp, free knowledges, secreted until then, breaches of that which held them fast. it is as if the central poem became the world, vi and the world the central poem, each one the mate of the other, as if summer was a spouse, espoused each morning, each long afternoon, and the mate of summer: her mirror and her look, her only place and person, a self of her that speaks, denouncing separate selves, both one. the essential poem begets the others. the light of it is not a light apart, up-hill. vii the central poem is the poem of the whole. the poem of the composition of the whole, the composition of blue sea and of green, of blue light and of green, as lesser poems, and the miraculous multiplex of lesser poems, not merely into a whole, but a poem of the whole, the essential compact of the parts, the roundness that pulls tight the final ring viii and that which in an altitude would soar, a vis, a principle or, it may be, the meditation of a principle, or else an inherent order active to be itself, a nature to its natives all beneficence, a repose, utmost repose, the muscles of a magnet aptly felt, a giant, on the horizon, glistening, ix and in bright excellence adorned, crested with every prodigal, familiar fire, and unfamiliar escapades: whirroos and scintillant sizzlings such as children like, vested in the serious folds of majesty, moving around and behind, a following, a source of trumpeting seraphs in the eye, a source of pleasant outbursts on the ear, x it is a giant, always, that is evolved, to be in scale, unless virtue cuts him, snips both size and solitude or thinks it does, as in a signed photograph on a mantelpiece. but the virtuoso never leaves his shape, still on the horizon elongates his cuts, and still angelic and still plenteous, imposes power by the power of his form. xi here, then, is an abstraction given head, a giant on the horizon, given arms, a massive body and long legs, stretched out, a definition with an illustration, not too exactly labelled, a large among the smalls of it, a close, parental magnitude, at the centre on the horizon, concentrum, grave and prodigious person, patron of origins. xii that's it. the lover writes, the believer hears, the poet umbles and the painter sees, each one, his fated eccentricity, as a part, but part, but tenacious particle, of the skeleton of the ether, the total of letters, prophecies, perceptions, clods of color, the giant of nothingness, each one and the giant ever changing, living in changer. om primitive come um orbe wallace stevens o poema essencial no centro das coisas, as arias de sons de etereos violinos, deglutiram o ferro impuro de nossas vidas com o bem e o ferro impuro de nossas obras. mas e, caros senhores, uma percepeao dificil, esse bem deglutir, procurado por ninfas de olhos espertos, esse ouro essencial, esse achado da fortuna, disposto e redisposto por ganios mindsculos do ar embranguecido. ii nao provamos a existancia do poema. e algo sabido e visto em poemas menores. e a graldiosa, elevada harmoni& que soa um momento, a mais outro, de repente, atraves de um sentido a parte. e e nao a e, portanto, e. no momento da fala, move-se o sopro de uma aceleragio, captura o ser, se expande	 e la era. qual e o leite que existe em tal captura, qual o pio de centeio e de aveia, que amiveis novos convidados e que mesas nos bosques, que cangóes na alma, no movimento de um instante, em um espago que se expande, o azul inevitivel do trovao oculto, uma huse°, como se fosse como, sempre por demais pesado para o sentido para apreender, o obscurissimo como, o distante era... iv um poema prove outro e o todo, para os clarividentes que dispensam proves: amante, o crente e o poeta. suas palavras escolhidas pelo desejo, gozo da linguagem quando com eles e. com elas celebram o poema central, conquista das conquistas, em opulentos termos finais, os maiores, e crescendo ainda com mais. v ate que a terra gasta e o ciu, e a arvore a nuvem, a ervore gasta e a nuvem gasta, percam os desgastados usos que delas fizeram, eles: esses homens, e a terra e o ceu, formam um ao outro coin precisas formagóes, precisos saberes libertos, ocultos ate enteo, intervalo daquilo que os unificava. e como se o poema central se tornasse o mundo. vi o mundo o poema central, cada um o esposo do outro, como se o verso fosse o cenjuge, esposado em cada manha, em cada longo entardecer, o esposo do verso: seu espelho e seu olhar, sua unica pessoa e local, um ser seu que fala, denunciando seres separados, os dois um so. poema essential gera os demais. a luz dele nao é uma luz aparte, morro-acima. vii poema central e o poema do todo poema da composigäo do todo, a composig o de mar azul e de verde, de luz azul e de verde, como poemas menores, a miraculosa variedade de poems menores, nio apenas em um todo, mas um poema do todo, o compacto essential das partes, circulo que retesa o anel ultimo viii que para os altos voaria, uma forge, um principio ou, talvez, a meditagäo de um principio, ou ainda uma ordem inerente que age para ser ela mesma, uma natureza para os seus toda benevolincia, um repouso, o mail profundo repouso, os musculos de um im& percebidos com rigor um gigante, no horizonte, refulgindo, ix vestido em reluzente excerencia, coroado com todas as chamas familiares, prodigas, com fugas imprevistas: algazarra os brilhantes assovios favoritos de garotos revestidos nos solenes trajes da majestade, movendo-se ao redor e por detris, uma seqd ncia, uma fonte de serafins que soam trombetas nos olhares, uma fonte de sonoras explosoes no ouvido. um gigante, sempre, que evolui para a certa medida, a menos que a virtude o corte, apare grandeza e solid o ou pense faz&-lo, como em uma foto assinada sobre o m vel. mas jamais esquece sua forma o virtuoso, alonga ainda no horizonte os seus aparos, ainda angelical e ainda em abundancia, exerce o poder pelo poder de sua forma. xi aqui, portanto, est uma abstragao com cabega um gigante no horizonte, com bragos, um corpo compacto e longas pernas, estendidas, uma definigio ilustrada, nio nomeada com excessive exatid o, um grande entre pequenos seus, uma grandeza paterna e fechada, no centro do horizonte, concentrum, grave, prodigiosa pessoa, patrono de origens. xii isso. amante escreve, o crente ouve, poeta murmura e o pintor ve, cada um, sua fatidica excentricidade, como uma parte, apenas parte, nao macs que tenaz particula, do esqueleto de ar, do total de cartas, profecias, percepoes, manchas de cor, o gigante do nada, cada um e o eternamente mutivel gigante, em mutacao vivendo. 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page 	page _pineau.pmd ( ): - maio/ago nos cruzamentos entre a performance e a pedagogia: uma revisão prospectiva elyse lamm pineau resumo – nos cruzamentos entre a performance e a pedagogia: uma revisão prospectiva. este texto é uma versão ampliada e revista de teaching is performance, de , no qual eu propunha um marco conceitual para mapear as interseções generativas entre educação libertadora e o emergente paradigma da performance crítica. essa revisão situa aquele ensaio nas inovações teóricas e metodológicas contemporâneas em pedago- gia da performance e utiliza uma nova poética da escrita performativa como método que representa a pesquisa educacional influenciada pela performance. palavras-chave: ensino como performance. educação libertadora. escrita performativa. investigação poética. abstract - at the crossroads of performance and pedagogy: a prospective review. this text is an expanded and revised version of teaching is performance ( ), in which i proposed a conceptual framework for mapping the generative intersections between liberatory education and the emerging critical performance paradigm. this revision resituates that essay within contemporary theoretical and methodological innovations in performative pedagogy, while deploying the new poetics of performative writing as a method representing performance-inflected educational research. keywords: teaching as performance. liberatory education. performative writing. poetic inquiry. i am a crossroads creature. more quiver than core, articulate body listens. i’m a builder of scaffolds whose weight-bearing beams bare bones, bear fruit, bear witness. i’m a performance teacher: work, ‘flesh of my flesh’ in the service of justice. passaram-se dezesseis anos desde que eu me coloquei no cruzamento da educação libertadora e dos estudos da performance, olhando e escutando a concatenação de conceitos nas conversações contíguas entre acadêmicos de meu curso de formação e educadores críticos dos estados unidos que, inspira- dos pelo trabalho de paulo freire, estavam abrindo caminho para uma análise performativa da educação americana. tal ato de escuta atenta interdisciplinar resultou no texto teaching is performance: reconceptualizing a problematic metaphor ( ), o qual se tornou um dos fundamentos no desenvolvimento de uma pedagogia performativa crítica junto aos estudos da comunicação. devo admitir apenas uma pequena parte do crédito pela ressonância do artigo. vivíamos um momen- to histórico, uma encruzilhada acadêmica, por assim dizer: um novo paradigma emergia dos estudos da performance (conquergood, ; pelias; vanoosting, ); educadores críticos começavam a se indagar sobre os rituais performativos do processo escolar (mclaren, ; ); artistas-acadêmicos de ambas disciplinas exploravam a poética e a política do aprendizado incorpo- rado (greene, ; fuoss; hill, ). naquele momento, eu buscava escrever uma revisão de literatura heurística, articulando as interseções gerativas entre a performance e a pedagogia. argumentava que a concepção corrente de pro- fessor-artista e, mais precisamente, de professor-ator, diminuía a complexidade tanto dos fenômenos educativos quanto performativos. ao deslocar o paradigma da performance artística para a performatividade cultural, que estava trans- formando minha própria disciplina (conquergood, ; ; ; langellier, ; strine; long; hopkins, ), eu propus um esquema alternativo para a pedagogia performativa, ligado aos preceitos da educação libertadora. por últi- mo, porquanto tenha tomado o professor de sala de aula como fundamento de minha identidade de pesquisadora, retirei exemplos do meu primeiro seminário de pós-graduação, ensino como performance, um foco curricular agora lugar comum em muitos cursos de pós-graduação. retorno então àquele artigo a fim de recapitular e refletir sobre alguns argumentos para esse número especial de educação & realidade. o convite para contribuir é, ao mesmo tempo, uma honra e uma oportunidade. nós, acadê- micos, raramente temos a chance de revisitar nossa obra inicial com um repertó- rio crítico e metodológico mais maduro, o que freema elbaz ( ) chamou de “conhecimento profissional pessoal”, aquilo que um professor desenvolve durante toda a sua vida no “cara a cara” com seus alunos na sala de aula. o artigo, assim, retorna de maneira mais aprofundada à linguagem e ao país de sua gênese conceitual, da tradição brasileira da educação emancipatória. o que segue, portanto, é uma versão retrospectiva e condensada do artigo original, retendo dele, tanto quanto possível, conceitos e referenciais teóricos chaves. utilizo também ideias de um artigo posterior (critical performative pedagogy: fleshing out the politics of liberatory education) em que operacionalizo como “a pesquisa a respeito dos corpos ideológicos, etnográficos e performáticos pode facilitar uma agenda libertadora” (pineau, , p. ). por fim, porém não menos importante, sobretudo para mim, utilizo meu trabalho de campo com estudantes nas performances de sala de aula como evidência e argumento. neste trabalho, contudo, focalizo quatro experiências fundamentais e altamen- te performativas, que dizem respeito, segundo me parece, à emergência de uma nova poética dos estudos educacionais. em sua atual e pertinente história dos estudos da performance, shannon jackson, na obra the ruined university, supõe uma genealogia desses estu- dos que estariam sobremaneira [...] relacionados à pedagogia, na qual as filigranas da pedagogia, suas breves iluminações, suas intervenções conscientes, sua dedicação diária e seus encon- tros de momento a momento, são todos eles intensamente transformadores e resistentes à documentação tradicional. a pedagogia da performance constitui um repertório como nenhum outro, um espaço de responsabilização humana que resiste a modos profissionalizados de responsabilizar ( , p. ). quero discutir a noção apresentada por jackson de uma “documentação resistente” do momento pedagógico, ou seja, aquelas experiências transformadoras de sala de aula com as quais tenho, nos últimos dezesseis anos, tentado desenvolver um repertório crítico do ensino como performance. em um esforço para capturar a “metodologia do coração” (pelias, ) que caracteriza a sala de aula de performance, parto de uma escrita performativa como uma estratégia de representação poética que tem mais uma vez transfor- mado aquilo que entendemos e desenvolvemos como performance (pollock, ; madison, ; pelias, ). nossa convergência interdisciplinar atual tem sido a causa de uma poética nova e radical da pesquisa educacional, inclu- indo um romance metodológico sobre um seminário de pós-graduação ficcional de autoetnografia (ellis, ); uma etnografia crítica de estudantes apresen- tando-se como testemunhas em uma sala de aula de performance (warren, ); a exploração de um arquivo de performances gays no contexto da heteronormatividade (gringrich-philbrook, ); um romance de formação epistolar de um relacionamento de orientação de doutorado (sameshima, ); um diálogo em texto e imagens entre professor e estudante (quinn; calkin, ); e respostas poéticas críticas ao engajamento corporal de estudantes com a teoria (alexander, ; ). ao preparar esse ensaio, fui atingida pelos abalos sísmicos que ocorreram no complexo, criativo e crítico diapasão a partir do qual a performance está sendo agora teorizada e praticada, em ambas as disciplinas. incorporar a exten- são dessa virada está para além do escopo deste ensaio; todavia, acredito que ela seja visível na justaposição do texto original com exemplos contemporâne- os. tentei preservar as projeções provisórias do primeiro ensaio – escrito quando eu era uma professora jovem e iniciante, ainda sem estabilidade no emprego, quando a performance estava apenas começando a ser incorporada no discur- so educacional –, ainda que na contramão de modelos que se tornaram possí- veis e significativos e que agora contam com duas décadas de inovação teórica e prática. nesse sentido, minha personalidade de escritora é dobrada no tempo como copresença performativa de mim, o que, segundo spry ( ), é a defini- ção do tema autoetnográfico. redesenho então o ensino como performance no cruzamento de minhas personalidades passadas e presentes, desde uma peda- gogia performativa crítica e articulada na frequência da poética performativa. uma re-visão a afirmação de que ensinar é uma performance nos parece de pronto autoevidente e um oxímoro. como uma expressão coloquial, a metáfora da performance é imediatamente reconhecida por educadores experientes que per- cebem que um ensino eficaz frequentemente repousa sobre técnicas teatrais de ensaio, dramaturgia, improvisação, caracterização, timing, presença cênica e crítica. como alegação teórica, contudo, essa afirmação é problemática, se não polêmica, face às suposições institucionalizadas sobre o propósito da educação e a função dos educadores. a ideologia da educação americana tem sido construída sobremaneira em modelos de tecnologia, indústria e burocracia corporativa (doyle, ; mclaren, ; reitman, ; wise, ). a predo- minância das metáforas do mundo do trabalho no projeto curricular e da forma- ção de professores tem contribuído para uma experiência educacional desumanizada e de progressiva desvalorização dos professores (egan, ; marshall, ). as analogias entre os contextos educacional e corporativo situam os professores como técnicos semicapacitados cuja confiabilidade acerca de sua produtividade se baseia na pontuação dos estudantes em testes de avaliação padronizados. tal utilitarismo empobrece brutalmente a experiência educacional tanto para os professores quanto para os educandos, como men- ciona mclaren, e contribui para o desenvolvimento de uma classe trabalhado- ra semiformada e de uma classe de executivos com uma formação mais liberal. em geral, o novo discurso conservador da inteligência eficiente tem encorajado as escolas a definirem-se basicamente como instituições prestadoras de servi- ços, encarregadas da tarefa de fornecer aos estudantes a competência técnica necessária para que esses encontrem um lugar dentro da hierarquia das grandes corporações (mclaren, , p. ). não é sem razão que, quando, pela primeira vez, foi cristalizada a analogia do ensino como performance, no começo dos anos de , que isso tenha tido uma difícil aceitação dentro do mainstream educacional. “a maioria dos ameri- canos, incluindo a maioria dos educadores”, observou reitman, “acreditam que o ensino tem fundamentalmente uma função utilitária, e, por isso, é ‘impor- tante’ demais para ser entendido como uma arte” ( , p. ). a compreensão americana corrente na linguagem ainda desconsidera o ensino teatral como um cantar e dançar ou um curso popular como simplesmente um show de cachor- ros e pôneis. tais epítetos, duplamente danosos, atestam o quão profunda- mente entranhado e ferozmente mantido é o preconceito antiteatral quando a performance força, de qualquer maneira significativa, mudanças no tão sério e político mundo da educação. a performance primeiramente ganhou espaço na educação, assim como nos estudos da comunicação como uma metáfora de identidade para professo- res e como um método de ensino participativo. professores eram encorajados a se conceberem como atores envolvidos em dramas educacionais (timpson; tobin, ; rubin, ), como artistas, operando com uma intuição criativa (dawe, ; hill, ; barrell, ), como regentes, orquestrando experiênci- as de aprendizagem (park-fuller, ) e como contadores de histórias (cooper, ; egan, ), transmitindo narrativas folclóricas e pessoais para envolver os estudantes. em , a revista communication education devotou uma edição especial para apresentar narrativas de quando ensinar funciona, e a educational forum produziu um número especial sobre a aprendizagem sinestésica. alguns educadores de pensamento reformista, tais como peter mclaren ( ; ), começavam a conceitualizar a educação como uma performance ritual por intermédio do exame das regras, papéis e ritos que constituem formas de participação. a despeito do interesse crescente pela performance, pesquisadores do campo da educação, não acostumados à dedi- cação diária (jackon) de uma sala de aula de performance, tinham pouco para se basear do ponto de vista metodológico. em geral, a literatura igualou performance a desempenho, utilizando-a principalmente como dicas de ensino para energizar a personalidade dos professores em sala de aula. esses artigos podem ser frouxamente categorizados em torno das metáforas do professor- ator e do professor-artista; ambas baseadas num modelo restrito centrado no ator que empobrece tanto a experiência educacional quanto a experiência performativa. a seguir, esboço com largas pinceladas algumas características e limitações dessa metáfora originária. professor-ator ironicamente, muitos daqueles que se arraigaram mais explicitamente à ter- minologia da performance são os que construíram a defesa mais fraca. a metá- fora do professor-ator foi baseada numa equação indistinta entre experiência educacional e experiência teatral e em uma concepção de performance total- mente centrada no ator. a performance foi reduzida a um estilo de desempenho de teatralidade entusiasta empregada para despertar estudantes sonolentos, para envolvê-los como que magicamente nas primeiras aulas da manhã. o arti- go de timpson e tobin, teaching as performing: a guide to energizing your public presentation ( ), é representativo dessa posição. os autores se apro- priam de exercícios de iniciação teatral tais como aquecimentos vocais e físicos, recordações emocionais e pantomima para realçar a comunicação docente não verbal e paralinguística. com efeito, a prescrição é a de que cada um se esforce por ensinar como um ator ( ). tais estudos isolam o performer do contexto da performance, privilegiam comportamentos comunicativos em detrimento de evento ou da interação comunicativa, posicionam, além do mais, os estudantes como um corpo amorfo e não reflexivo que responde melhor a uma energia acelerada – de fato, com canções e dança. não somente essa perspectiva repousa sobre um sentido empobrecido de performance, como diminui de igual modo a complexidade das interações educacionais. igualar a comunicação educativa ao estilo representacional desvaloriza sobremaneira o trabalho inte- lectual do ensino e é comparável, nos lembra sprague, “a substituir jornalistas intelectualmente formados por apresentadores atraentes que projetam uma ima- gem atraente dos meios de comunicação” ( , p. ). ainda que eu não queira ignorar a eficácia de um estilo vivo de leitura ou mesmo da ilustração dos conceitos de uma aula por intermédio de narrativas de experiências pessoais, o modelo anterior do professor-como-um-ator não tem capacidade de aproveitar a riqueza da metáfora e, de fato, ameaçar fechar-se para fora de um diálogo substantivo. essa ideia permitiu que críticos como ralph smith projetassem que “se a analogia da atuação fosse levada ao seu extremo lógico, um professor que tivesse tomado isso seriamente nunca teria que entender nada” ( , p. ). ou, para tomar emprestadas as palavras de um colega: eu costumava atuar na sala de aula, mas agora eu estou mais preocu- pado com a experiência dos meus estudantes. professor-artista a concepção de professor-artista é uma resposta a john dewey ( ), para o qual uma educação para uma cidadania comprometida e democrática estaria enraizada em uma experiência estética que educa a imaginação, apri- mora a sensibilidade e fornece experiências plenas para os estudantes. diver- sos pensadores da educação utilizam-se da metáfora do professor-artista, de- fendendo a sensibilidade estética e a criatividade espontânea associadas aos artistas da cena. a marca distintiva de um professor-artista, observa barrel, é sua voluntariedade para “abandonar a insistência acerca de objetivos comportamentais claramente definidos e de resultados de aprendizagem previ- síveis em vista da liberdade para adaptar e explorar novos caminhos de resulta- dos imprevisíveis” ( , p. ). elliot eisner e maxine greene ( ; ) são precursores do movimento do professor-artista; a obra de ambos sobre uma poética educacional enfatiza a complexidade de populações e ambientes de aprendizagem diversos juntamente com a centralidade da imaginação e das artes em qualquer esforço educacional. professores-artistas, dizem eles, culti- vam suas imaginações educacionais ao balancearem desenvolvimento com a criatividade e estrutura com espontaneidade para atender as necessidades dos educandos e estimular reconstruções imaginativas de seus mundos. ainda que a concepção de professor-artista seja filosoficamente atraente em sua forma originária, ela não é, contudo, metodologicamente educativa. de fato, uma descrição do que constituiu uma pedagogia artística ou mesmo um sistema para avaliar o grau de arte na sala de aula pareceu ir contra a criatividade instintiva e ateórica associada ao modelo. esse hiato mostrou-se sobremaneira evidente na obra the teacher as artist: the case for peripheral supervision, de john hill ( ). o autor argumenta que professores-artistas operam em um nível de competência inconsciente por intermédio da qual a interação com os estudantes é guiada pelo instinto e pela intuição. ao formular uma distinção entre artista e artesão, hill afirma que “o professor-artista é alguém tão e tão pouco autoconsciente que suas habilidades específicas acabam se perdendo entre momentos reflexivos” ( , p. ). uma vez que os professores-artistas respondem, de forma instintiva, corre- tamente a seus estudantes, a racionalidade de seu comportamento escamoteia a lógica e subestima qualquer fundamentação teórica. de fato, a defesa da supervisão periférica de hill foi baseada na suposição de que artistas são visionários não reflexivos que requerem uma visão crítica e externa para lhes dizer o que eles estão fazendo e o porquê. em outras palavras, um professor poderia ser um artista da cena, mas não um artista pensante ou um artista que teoriza. professores-performers foram encorajados a estabelecer interações cri- ativas em sala de aula, mas não pelo discurso educacional acadêmico. como eu sou tanto uma acadêmica quanto uma praticante da performance, que luta dedicadamente para articular as fontes e as estruturas do conhecimento performativo, penso que a posição de hill é, ao mesmo tempo, não sustentável teoricamente e perigosamente equivocada. sua visão de uma pedagogia performativa foi assim muito facilmente e justificadamente desconsiderada. como então a metáfora do ensino como performance ganhou legitimidade junto à comunidade educacional? nos anos de , a disciplina de estudos da performance passou por uma radical transformação, que abriu espaço para modos teóricos substantivos de conceitualização da performance como um paradigma para a experiência da comunicação humana. o paradigma da performance em seu texto between experience and meaning: performance as a paradigm for meaningful action, o etnógrafo dwight conquergood anunciou uma virada paradigmática do “positivismo à performance” que, segundo ele, permitia “os mais radicais e unificadores meios de pensar sobre as realidades humanas” ( , p. ). mais do que qualquer outro estudioso da performance, conquergood deu forma à redefinição da performance como um paradigma, como uma metáfora exploratória, como método de pesquisa e como ativismo de justiça social. em a paradigm for performance studies, de , pelias e vanoosting examinaram as renomeações mágicas que estavam conduzindo a evolução disciplinar da interpretação oral aos estudos da performance. asse- gurar o estatuto paradigmático da performance, eles argumentavam, significa- va entender “todas as enunciações como potencialmente estéticas, todos os eventos como potencialmente teatrais e todos os públicos como participantes potencialmente ativos, que podem autorizar a experiência estética” ( , p. ). embasados por uma redefinição radical e inclusiva de performers, de textos, públicos e contextos, pelias e vanoosting especularam que (...) a relação paradigmática entre a interpretação oral e os estudos da performance pode indicar a performance da literatura como o círculo central de uma figura concêntrica que se alarga para fora, incluindo dramas sociais, rituais, narração, piadas, metáforas organizacionais, conversações cotidianas, com efeito, qualquer ato de comunicação que satisfaz os critérios de discurso estético ( , p. ). esse impulso inclusivo abriu um espaço para pensar substancialmente a educação como sendo performativa. de que modo, precisamente, a prática da sala de aula, e de maneira geral a cultura educacional, abrem-se para uma inves- tigação performativa? como pode a experiência de longa data de sala de aula dos professores-artistas enriquecer os usos pedagógicos da performance? como podemos explorar ou discutir a eficácia epistemológica da metáfora do ensino como performance? elaborei meu esquema conceitual a partir do germinal ensaio de dwigth conquergood intitulado poetics, play, process and power: the performative turn in anthropology, de . nesse texto, conquergood utiliza quatro pala- vras-chave para fundamentar a perspectiva da performance, dispostas não tanto por parâmetros de pesquisa, mas pela articulação do espírito de uma sensibilidade crítica própria da performance. esse ensaio forneceu um firme quadro para tornar salientes as conexões entre a pedagogia crítica e a teoria da performance, ao mesmo tempo em que propiciou uma considerável descrição etnográfica de um semestre específico de prática. ao retornar agora a esse esquema, encontro essas palavras-chave – poética, representação, processo e poder –, que permanecem como as pedras angulares de minha prática. e eu concluo, também, que a prática de sala de aula permanece como o campo e a fundação de meus estudos acadêmicos. poéticas educacionais a poética de uma pesquisa centrada na performance, afirma conquergood, (...) apresenta a natureza fabricada, inventada, imaginada, construída das rea- lidades humanas. culturas e individualidades não são dadas, são construídas; mesmo como ficções, são ainda construídas, pois [...] elas mantêm presentes a promessa de re-imaginar e remodelar o mundo ( , p. ). a poética da performance educacional privilegia do mesmo modo as dimen- sões criativas e construídas da prática pedagógica. ela reconhece que educado- res e educandos não estão engajados na busca por verdades, mas sim em ficções colaborativas – continuamente criando e recriando visões de mundo e suas po- sições contingentes dentro delas. uma poética educacional privilegia as múlti- plas histórias e os múltiplos narradores no processo em que as narrativas da experiência humana são modeladas e compartilhadas por todos os participantes em um coletivo de performance. a pedagogia performativa suplanta o depósito de informações – tal como aparece no modelo de educação bancária de paulo freire – em prol da negociação e da encenação de novas formas de conhecimen- to. de acordo com mclaren, o educador centrado na performance “compreende o ensino basicamente como um drama improvisado que ocorre dentro de uma narrativa curricular” ( , p. ). com efeito, a performance reenquadra todo o empreendimento educacional como um conjunto mutável e contínuo de narrado- res, histórias e performances, mais do que a simples e linear acumulação de competências disciplinares específicas e isoladas. os estudos baseados em narrativas no planejamento curricular, assim como o estudo das metáforas nas falas dos professores, foram particularmente ade- quados à articulação da performance educacional. em seu texto teaching as storytelling, kieran egan afirma que “a forma narrativa reflete mais precisa- mente a predisposição para compreender o mundo de maneira afetivamente engajada” ( , p. ). egan desenvolveu uma abordagem baseada em estóri- as para a elaboração do planejamento de uma disciplina ( ) de modo a tornar o material mais acessível, relevante e de engajamento afetivo para alunos da escola fundamental com os quais ele trabalhava. estudos das falas dos profes- sores enfatizaram as metáforas utilizadas pelos professores na conceitualização de si mesmos dentro e fora da sala de aula. os estudos etnográficos de clandinin ( ) e munby utilizaram observação participante e entrevistas para “capturar o pensamento dos professores em sua própria linguagem” (munby, , p. ) e observar como seus insights experimentais influenciam as interações cotidi- anas na sala de aula. a poética da performance educacional salienta as dimensões estéticas do ensinar e do aprender, o contínuo fazer e refazer de ideias e identidades no espaço compartilhado da sala de aula. que narradores são hoje privilegiados? quais são as consequências de tomar os estudantes antes como personagens em uma estória formativa que como agentes narrativos em seu próprio proces- so de aprendizagem? como pode ser utilizada a competência interpessoal com a qual os estudantes contam estórias para facilitar sua articulação com estórias teóricas dentro de sala de aula? o que significaria estetizar o espaço da sala de aula em um comentário crítico e deliberado sobre a partilha entre arte e institucionalização? por fim, como as observações detalhadas da etnografia pedagógica poderiam ser proveitosamente combinadas com a evocação vivida de lugares e pessoas das narrativas ficcionais? mural começou de forma inocente. apenas um exercício de fazer a sala habitável. expulsos da sala de aula em que sempre fazíamos as nossas performances por força de um erro burocrático, nós colocamos nosso seminário de poética edu- cacional na estrada, movendo-o, escada abaixo, para uma sala no outro lado da divisão entre arte e educação. ao trocar a atmosfera iluminada, com tapete macio, de nosso santuário, por mesas apertadas em fileiras apertadas, sobre um piso frio, dezoito de nós tomaram a questão da poética educacional como um princípio (greene, ), uma prática (jagodzinski, ), uma política (gitlin; peck, ) e um processo de regozijo (sameshima, ). fomos comprimidos em uma estreita alcova na qual quatro turmas de cursos diferentes circulavam, e nossa sala acumulou os detritos de muitas disciplinas. escaninhos azuis cobriam uma parede, com ganchos de metal para roupas à altura baixa para o alcance das mãos de crianças, uma lembrança de metal para deixar o seu eu na porta ao entrar na sala de aula. um amontoado de mesas extras, que excediam às retas filas, empilhadas em um canto, sua superfície de madeira e estrutura de metal abertas feito os maxilares de um grande tubarão a arrebatar acima um corpo. contornada por quadros-negros tal qual um navio de batalha, uma mesa de professor, acorrentada a um antigo retroprojetor, acorrentado a um carrinho com algumas rodas faltando, destacava-se. um sofá velho de couro surrado, com três lugares – ou quatro, caso você seja descolado e não se importe de se sentar em cima do braço do sofá – no costado da parede do fundo. estávamos presos por todos os lados por quadros-negros sem giz, luzes fosforescentes que nunca diminuíam, diálogos rabiscados em corredores e muros de blocos de cimento verde e pálido que são padrão nas salas de aula de todo o país. É desnecesário dizer que não nos sentíamos em casa. e assim começou, de maneira inocente, um esforço para honrar o lar da performance no exílio. penso que jagodzinski tenha nos despertado para o papel: um pedaço de papel de açougue em branco, de dois metros por dois metros (apenas um corpo esquadrinhado), colado na parede com um convite para pintar sobre nossas impressões sobre a educação. foi um resumo corporificado de uma pesquisa de grupo intitulada curriculum as felt through six layers of an aesthethetically embodied skin: arch-writing on the body, de , e, respondendo à provocação de jagodzinski de tomar a sala de aula como um “envelope que simboliza a mitologia de uma cultura” ( , p. ), o grupo nos ofereceu tempo e ferramentas para confeccionarmos um mural que exporia nossas experiências de educação. primeiro vieram as prototípicas fileiras de mesas marcadas em preto; a se- guir, a silhueta meio tracejada de estudantes com os rostos emburrados, apequenados por um professor inexpressivo cujo corpo dividido pela fita preta trazia a legenda o grande e malvado assessor com estabilidade no emprego, posto no centro, em uma macabra variação do jogo da velha, na qual o x marca o vencedor. uma margem quadriculada alinha uma face do papel como um calendário de parede de alguém em prisão perpétua. ao trabalhar coletivamente com lápis crayon e fita isolante, nós depositamos nossas impressões: rabiscos transformavam-se em pássaros, em arco-íris, em comentários sobre o que era muralizado dentro e fora desse simulacro que não pode ser padronizado. nós deixamos o papel ficar. ao menos por um momento, pensamos. ne- nhum mal em reivindicar um espaço na parede – apenas um corpo esquadrinha- do – no qual expúnhamos figurativamente questões sobre arte e educação. como uma cortina cênica, nosso mural permaneceu na parede por toda a duração do semestre, pintado periodicamente na medida em que nossas aulas avançavam. eu não saberia dizer quem pintou o que e quando, ou que indica- ções provocaram adições ou revisões ao mural que agora dominava a sala. eu não falo; eu não posso falar; eu não falarei conjugado em francês com legen- das em alemão, em algum ponto atravessado por uma linha vertical em língua inglesa. quando não pergunte; não diga apareceu em uma cruz de fita preta, ninguém sabia dizer ao certo o que esse silêncio significava, ou que bocas foram tapadas feito um envelope sendo selado na mitologia de nossa cultura. não importa, pensamos. um mural é uma propriedade comunitária, uma performance pública, o que significa que é desde sempre “um lugar de luta no qual interesses contrários se intersecionam e no qual diferentes pontos de vista e vozes são articulados” (conquergood, , p. ). ao fim do semestre, o mural já tinha se tornado propriedade comunitária: uma área de papel em branco, feito um corpo esquadrinhado, no cruzamento de quatro disciplinas nas quais quatro turmas passavam umas pelas outras incog- nitamente, feito estranhos no exílio. “exílio, tanto físico quanto psicológico”, jagodzinski afirma que “talvez esse seja a barreira mais difícil de ser cruzada, porque demanda que lutemos com o paradoxo de ter de rejeitar uma tradição inteira que nos permeia, mas ao mesmo tempo perceber que um novo espaço precisa ser construído” ( , p. ). o impulso para resistir e reconstruir o espaço da sala de aula não era limitado aos participantes do seminário, e na medida em que o tempo passava, outros seres não identificáveis sentiam-se compelidos a deixar sua marca na parede. certo dia, uma goma de mascar endurecida foi grudada e um corpo morto com a seguinte legenda sobre a configuração da palavra cruzada trilíngue: alguém pode me ouvir? esses enfeites trazidos por outros, frequentemente por outros que não do nosso grupo, tornaram-se uma pequena, mas subversiva camada de nosso mural na medida em que as semanas passavam. paulatina- mente, o mural acumulou traços de muitas mãos e de muitos cursos, sobrepos- tas umas às outras, como resposta ao nosso convite de fazer arte e teoria na parede partilhada de nossa sala de aula, que foi preenchida e desenvolvida por outros anônimos que também se sentiam, presumimos, exilados de sua casa naquele lugar. quando o curso chegou ao seu fim, nós deixamos o mural permanecer, tal como um epitáfio que marca o lugar onde nossos corpos costumavam estar. por quanto tempo ele lá ficará?, nos perguntávamos: esse registro pictórico, esse ensaio artístico sobre o que pode significar e como pode soar escrever nas paredes da sala de aula feito um artista de grafite educacional. no outono, é claro, o mural já tinha se ido e a sala retornava à sua pálida coloração verde. não nos surpreendemos. o que é excesso excede a avaliação. o que está fora do lugar deve ser limpo. todos sabem que os produtos de pintura infantis, tais como os lápis crayon, não têm lugar na sala de aula da universidade. o apagamento é um procedimento-padrão de manutenção do limite entre a arte e a educação. jogo educacional a natureza lúdica da performance, diz conquergood, “está relacionada à improvisação, à inovação, à experimentação, ao contexto, à reflexão, à agitação, à ironia, à paródia, ao sarro, ao cômico e à carnavalização” ( , p. ). como um ato performativo, o jogo permite uma compreensão cinética e sinestésica das experiências vividas reais e imaginadas, a despeito das responsabilidades e culpabilidades que em geral atendem a tal experimentação. conquergood explica: “o sinal metacomunicativo ‘isto é um jogo’ nos libera temporariamente, mas não nos desconecta, da realidade cotidiana e das responsabilidades, abrin- do um espaço privilegiado para a desconstrução e a reconstrução” ( , p. ). como método pedagógico, o jogo performativo privilegia o envolvimento ple- no do corpo combinado a uma espécie de autorreflexão precisa da natureza e das implicações da ação de cada um. o curso interdisciplinar de harrison- pepper ( ) sobre ritual, jogo e comportamento expressivo integra a performance metodologicamente ao utilizar a improvisação, o jogo e as repre- sentações rituais para explorar as leituras do curso. nesse sentido, harrison- pepper reflete: “estudantes usavam a si mesmos e seus próprios comportamen- tos como uma ferramenta primária interdisciplinar do curso” ( , p. ). o jogo performativo alinha-se com o poder e a política, continua conquergood: [...] assim que uma visão de mundo tenha sido fabricada, linhas são destaca- das, categorias definidas, hierarquias erigidas, um personagem arquetípico aparece, o trickster . movendo-se no rompimento das normas, na violação dos tabus, o trickster vira tudo de cabeça para baixo. ao jogar com a ordem social, desalojando certezas, ele acaba por intensificar a consciência da vulnerabilidade de nossas instituições. o impulso brincalhão do trickster promove um crítico e radical autoquestionamento que leva a um conhecimento de si mais profun- do, o primeiro passo para a transformação ( , p. ). o trickster pedagogo joga com a destruição de padrões entranhados, desestabilizando relações de poder e abrindo um espaço para uma genuína pedagogia revolucionária. tal trickster poderia perguntar: sob que condições estão os participantes autorizados a quebrar as normas? não há nunca uma ação culpável? É a subversão na sala de aula genuinamente revolucionária ou é um acontecimento isolado rapidamente contido e controlado pela institui- ção? como nós enquadramos a resistência ou a licença para a transgressão face aos comportamentos entranhados e às expectativas? pedagogia da instalação: uma prática de primeiro dia primeiro dia. primeira vez. recordo-o tão vivamente... primeiro dia. primeira vez. orientando. procurando uma direção. primeiro dia. primeira vez. estes momentos, eu aprenderia, são lendas (warren, , p. ). cada primeiro dia, um novo imaginar ensina-me o poder do primeiro momento do contato. eu conheço o poder do primeiro dia, da primeira vez. disso eu sei porque ela me ensinou o que uma primeira impressão pode significar, usado como um molde para pensar sobre a pedagogia performativa na universidade (warren, , p. ). eu amo o primeiro dia da escola. amo os cadernos novos, os lápis afiados, os rostos ansiosos. de estudantes-performando-estudantes como esperado, como previsto há anos pelas regras de como agir no primeiro dia: uma lista de chamada, um plano de estudos, um sair mais cedo. eu amo até o modo como as fisionomias caem quando os minutos tiquetaqueiam, indicando que o tempo é demasiado precioso para ser desperdiçado. mesmo no primeiro dia, nossa primeira vez de conjunção. há tanto para acertar no primeiro dia de aula e talvez essa tenha se tornado minha marca pedagógica: uma orientação desconstrutiva, uma instalação de performance, marcando ou mascarando a entrada da sala em que nos encontramos. não há nenhuma tábula rasa, salvo cadernos em branco. há apenas folhas de almaço com espaço nas margens para rabisco. primeiro dia. primeira vez. ensino como performance : de minha vantajosa posição, no canto escondida, eu podia vê-los ajuntando-se. a porta para nossa sala de aula de performance estava fechada e ninguém tentou abri-la. isso era de se esperar em uma classe de performance na qual o protocolo demanda que se espere pelo aplauso antes de interrom- per o espaço. além do mais, era o primeiro dia de aula e aqueles que estavam por dentro sabiam do folclore em torno do primeiro dia de prática, a pedagogia da instalação. “coisas subversivas eram colocadas em marcha [...] a subversão sempre logo ali na esquina pregando peças nas expectativas” (warren, , p. ). um pequeno sino de mão permanecia silencioso sobre um banquinho à frente da porta. tal como em um altar ou um avatar guardando um condomínio fechado, um coletivo de universitários. afixado na porta um cartaz para ser lido: comportamento ritual de estudos da performance. vocês sabem como funciona. a aula inicia quando o sino bate. lá ficaram por muito tempo, balindo feito ovelhas à frente da porteira, de um banquinho, de um sino e de uma regra. eles esperavam por instruções. eles esperavam por permissão. eles esperaram para ver quem iria dar o primeiro passo a frente para pertur- bar as regras que governam o primeiro dia de seu primeiro semestre como alunos de formação de professores na pós-graduação. eles esperaram um longo tempo, até que o evidente se tornasse óbvio. então alguém levantou o sino e o tocou. e como ovelhas eles se moveram em uma fila para dentro da sala. o primeiro dia da reeducação havia começado. processo educacional a terceira palavra-chave de conquergood para a pesquisa performativa é processo: o “emergente, temporal, contingente, provisório, indeterminado, di- nâmico, desestabilizando [...] mudança do produto à produtividade” ( , p. ). a performance privilegia as fluidas, contínuas e frequentemente contraditórias representações da experiência humana que resistem à reificação e ao fechamen- to. a performance reconhece que as identidades são sempre múltiplas, sobre- pondo-se a um conjunto de seres reais e possíveis que encenam a si mesmos contextualmente e em comunidade. a fluidez da performance reverbera com a pesquisa que examina a multiplicidade de papéis e de responsabilidades que professores assumem no curso de sua vida pessoal e profissional. por exemplo, madeleine grumet afirma, em seu texto bitter milk: women and teaching, de , que o processo de se reproduzir – biológica, ideológica e criticamente – é uma experiência humana fundamental que pode ser vantajosamente utilizada em vista de associar fins familiares, educacionais e sociais. grumet advoga uma pedagogia feminista que “interrompe o discurso masculino [da educação] legi- timado pela epistemologia e por uma grade curricular de reprodução e domesticidade” ( , p. xix). ela discute, ainda, que as esferas interagentes da experiência pessoal e profissional enriquecem a pedagogia ao permitir que os professores afirmem essa mesma multiplicidade no desenvolvimento de si e de seus próprios estudantes. a performance demanda um deslocamento do produto à produtividade e, de igual modo, da metáfora à metodologia. não é coincidência, pois, que a maioria das inovações materiais e significativas na pedagogia performativa tenha vindo de educadores da comunicação e da performance para os quais encarnar não é nenhuma abstração teórica; é o coração de nossa prática em sala de aula (bowman; bowman, ; fasset; warren, ; pineau, ; stucky, ). a metodologia da performance é um comprometimento íntimo, somático, uma maneira de sentir o pulso, os ritmos, as nuanças e as idiossincrasias sinestésicas do comportamento humano comunicativo. em ter- mos disciplinares, trata-se de uma rigorosa e sistemática exploração-por-meio- da-encenação de experiências humanas reais e possíveis. os métodos da performance constituem-se de diversas maneiras; ainda assim, cada um deman- da um comprometimento, um completo engajamento do corpo associado à re- flexão crítica. a metodologia da performance é uma encenação reflexiva: ao mesmo tempo uma imersão e uma reflexão feita possível pela copresença do eu que atua. como diz spry: “É no conhecimento que vivenciamos a experiência de forma direta, mas o estudamos performativamente” ( , p. ); só assim a incorporação pode alcançar o estatuto de metodologia. por fim, é o processo dialético de experimentar e interpretar que distingue a metodologia da performance do mero atuar. utilizar a performance metodologicamente na sala de aula significa mais do que pedir aos estudantes para demonstrar fisicamente o que eles aprenderam. existe uma longa história de utilização da performance como demonstração da culminância de realização de uma tarefa, apresentações e exames orais por intermédio dos quais os estudantes são convocados a colocar seus corpos em evidência para apreciação, avaliação ou entretenimento do outro. embora te- nha isso seu valor, essa não é a pedagogia performativa que advogo. eu quero chamar a atenção para como a performance afina e atenua nossos sentidos cinéticos e sinestésicos em relação às nossas fisicalidades habituais e também às dos outros. ao prestar atenção não apenas ao que o corpo faz em sala de aula, mas a que significados e valores sociais responde esse corpo, a pedago- gia performativa pode intervir nos rituais da escolarização sobre os quais não pensamos. a sala de aula pode se transformar naquilo que ernst boyer chamou de cenário de renovação do eu e do social ( ), de tal forma que professores e estudantes possam ensaiar modos mais equitativos, envolvidos e passionais de ser e comportar-se. além do mais, uma vez que a performance é sempre incompleta, contingente, permeável e reativa aos momentos vividos, uma vez que se desdobra na companhia dos outros, ela nos permite atravessar e pôr abaixo ilusões acerca da aprendizagem como algo isolado, linear, cumulativo e disponível à avaliação empírica. exame final era uma sexta-feira antes dos exames finais, o começo do crescendo para o fim do semestre. na semana seguinte, muitos estudantes fariam seus exames, o mais burocráti- co crescendo da educação, ritual do espeto da avaliação de scantron, das finas habilidades motoras e da competição compulsória, dos índices de inte- ligência sobre as cabeças; das cabeças dobradas sobre as mesas, silêncio: olhos sobre seu próprio trabalho, nós dizemos: trabalhem. “trabalho”, diz o poeta libanês kahlil gibran, “é o amor tornado visível. e se você não pode trabalhar com amor, mas somente com desgosto, é melhor que você se sente defronte as portas do templo e esmole daqueles que traba- lham com alegria” ( , p. ). em minha disciplina de narração e tradição oral, de livre acesso, com jo- vens em torno dos vinte anos, muitos se deparavam seriamente com estórias pela primeira vez, tentando a performance seriamente pela primeira vez, con- siderando a comunidade seriamente pela primeira vez, talvez porque por uma combinação de sala de aula se possa ter a oportunidade e o desafio de trabalhar um pouco diferentemente. como exame final, nós realizamos conjuntamente uma performance orgâni- ca, cuja duração era de noventa minutos, sem interrupção, inspirada no hip- hop, jazz-ritmada, dialogicamente estruturada, com cada membro da turma envolvido em todos os momentos dela, ou seja, de uma performance emergen- te, improvisada e multi-autoetnográfica. ha! sim, tal como evidenciado nos dados, avalia-se o alcance dos objetivos e a realização das tarefas por parte dos estudantes em uma escala de valor mon- tada durante dezesseis semanas, replicada em duas seções demograficamente diversas e correlacionadas aos indicadores de comportamento dos objetivos gerais do curso: “[...] aprofundar o sentido de si e do outro como um desdo- bramento performativo dado por meio da partilha de histórias de nossas vidas” (pineau, plano de ensino da disciplina narração e tradição oral, ). eu ofereço, ademais, a seguinte narrativa da avaliação: tínhamos passado o semestre gerando histórias, tematizando conexões, iden- tificando onde e como narrativas pessoais se aninhariam dentro dos contex- tos culturais e folclóricos. em um gesto para a síntese e a totalização, eu pedi à turma para considerar como seus enredos tinham se cruzado, trançado-se ou colidido com o enredo dos outros durante o período que passamos juntos. perguntei: como aquele tempo junto remodelou e recriou sua pessoalidade por meio da performance coletiva? esboçamos uma árvore de estórias no quadro-negro, no qual inseríamos nossos eus nos laços e nas linhas em torno de cada um de modo a ser mais associativo que linear. falamos e andamos e falamos sobre mais algumas coisas até que padrões se formassem em torno de tópicos como educação, gênero, amor e perda, laços familiares, meios de comunicação, máscaras e autenticidade. cada estudante apontou para uma ou duas histórias, alguns as situavam em vista da progressão do quadro-negro em que suas histórias pareciam importar, mais a eles que a nós. e cada pessoa prometeu vir no dia do exame final para deixar essa história florescer como um ensaio sobre si mesmo no qual cada passo para fora da multidão apresenta-se como um espetáculo deles mesmos para apreciação e enriquecimento do coletivo. nós manteremos o passo, prometemos um ao outro: nós manteremos o círculo, seremos uma testemunha, um suporte, seu coro neste crescendo da resposta à convocação. este exame final. deixe a performance começar, eu convidava, no momento em que você cruzar a soleira da porta a cruzará junto pela última vez. pense caleidoscopicamente, pense jazz, eu dizia. pense jammin, eles diziam. [ah, sim! um quickstep, um hip-hop mais alto na escala de composição; a poética sincopada da poesia da palavra falada, talvez a modalidade narrativa que define sua geração]. isso! vamos! vamos deixar nosso roteiro nos dar uma direção, mas não uma duração. sejam felizes! sintam dentro do momento. você saberá quando se mover. seja com e para o outro. escute, realmente escute ao outro e você sentirá quando é sua vez de falar, de tomar parte na cena, de deixar-se levar na mistura e na melodia desta comunidade de narradores. coletivamente, colaborativamente. trabalhando com alegria em vista do crescendo. quando o dia veio para testemunhar o que haviam aprendido naquele semes- tre. quando o dia veio para incorporar o espírito e a estratégia da performance cultural. quando o dia veio para que eles entrassem em nossa sala de aula para o tempo final. eles estavam preparados, de prontidão, profundamente atentos, conectados, em sintonia, corporalmente à vontade. eles estavam prontos. e no curso de noventa minutos, sem intervalo ou dispersão, criaram um conto processual contínuo de quem eles eram em relação aos outros, dando espaço, dando tempo para escutar com cuidado e agenciamento articulado numa rede ética de subjetividade. ha! poder educacional conquergood conclui seu ensaio dizendo que o paradigma da performance está fundamentalmente relacionado às questões de poder e autoridade. os termos associativos que invoca são “política, história, ideologia, dominação, resistência, apropriação, luta, conflito, acomodação, subversão e contestação” ( , p. ). performances estéticas, culturais e cotidianas estão sempre políti- ca e historicamente situadas, ele observa, e, por serem eventos públicos, as performances sempre são “um espaço de luta no qual interesses contrários se cruzam e diferentes visões de mundo e vozes são articuladas” ( , p. ). a performance vive nas encruzilhadas entre a tradição e a transgressão, entre a continuidade e a possibilidade, e é desde esse ponto de vista privilegiado, conclui conquergood, que a pesquisa em performance levanta as perguntas mais significativas. como a performance reproduz, legitima, confirma ou desafia, critica ou sub- verte a ideologia? [...] como as performances são situadas entre as forças de acomodação e resistência? o que elas simultaneamente reproduzem e de que maneira se contrapõem à hegemonia? quais são os recursos performativos para interromper os scripts oficiais? (conquergood, , p. ). o compromisso com a justiça social por meio do questionamento e da ação críticos sedimenta a relação entre a performance e a educação libertadora. a estudiosa da comunicação, jo sprague, pontua essa ideia em seu ensaio intitulado expanding the research agenda for instructional communication: raising some unasked questions, de , no qual ela desafia seus colegas a empregar princípios da teoria crítica em relação a uma pedagogia da comunica- ção. tais preceitos de fundamento são sumarizados por mclaren: [...] compreende-se que as práticas pedagógicas relacionam-se a uma ideologia dominante que define o que é aceito como conhecimento legítimo, que constrói relações sociais em torno de interesses específicos os quais estabelecem estru- turas específicas de desigualdade e de relações assimétricas de poder e privilé- gio ( , p. ). ao estender a convocação de john dewey ( ), para quem as escolas ame- ricanas deveriam ser arenas públicas para a democratização de seus cidadãos, mclaren chama os educadores a criar uma “cidadania politizada capaz de lutar por formas variadas de vida pública, e baseada na busca da igualdade e da justiça social” ( , p. ). da mesma forma, giroux ( ) desafiava os educadores a se colocarem como “intelectuais transformadores, trabalhando para conectar as habi- lidades dos estudantes ao pensamento e à ação crítica, para utilizar suas habilida- des para a transformação e a integração social ( , p. - ). o inovador estudo de mclaren, schooling as a ritual performance: toward a political economy of educational symbols and gestures, de (publicado no brasil como rituais na escola pela editora vozes, em ), preparou o terreno para a pedagogia crítica performativa contemporânea. ao descrever seu trabalho como uma antropologia da educação, mclaren “encontra avan- ços teóricos nos estudos da performance e do ritual, situando-os na prática junto ao encontro pedagógico entre professor e estudante” ( , p. ). ba- seado no trabalho de campo em salas de aulas urbanas, mclaren filtrou a agenda social da teoria crítica por intermédio da epistemologia das performances rituais de victor turner como um meio de oferecer ao “educador de espírito reformador uma larga construção para deslindar e decodificar os obstáculos enfrentados pelos estudantes da classe trabalhadora em buscarem sua educa- ção” ( , p. ). vale ressaltar, ainda, que mclaren embasou sua visão crítica em uma política do corpo, afirmando que a maioria dos educadores críticos tem ignorado os meios por intermédio dos quais “a ideologia é performativamente constituída, (...) discurso que ganha sentido” ( , p. ). ele ofereceu o se- guinte corretivo: a hegemonia ideológica não é concretizada somente por intermédio de media- ções discursivas da ordem sociocultural, mas por meio da incorporação de relações de poder desiguais. a ideologia é manifesta intercorporalmente por meio da realização da carne e incorporada em experiência encarnada ( , p. ). mclaren anteviu na performance tanto um modelo quanto um método de desmitologização da cultura dominante, dada pelas etnografias performativas das experiências dos estudantes. foi nos anos de que vimos uma explosão de um trabalho pedagógico crítico, corpo-centrado, como uma forma de passagem da “pedagogia informa- tiva à pedagogia performativa” (conquergood, , p. ). em meu ensaio critical performative pedagogy: “fleshing out” the politics of liberatory education, examinei escritas representativas que tomavam a educação do cor- po como ponto de partida conceitual. identifiquei ali três meios conectados entre si de tematização do corpo que, coletivamente documentados, constituí- am o topoi somático em torno do qual essa segunda onda da pesquisa se concentrou. de maneira específica, teorizar o corpo ideológico coloca a inves- tigação dentro da questão de como tanto o corpo dos professores quanto dos estudantes tornam-se institucionalizados por meio de um currículo oculto que mantém desigualdades raciais, de gênero, linguísticas e de classe social. uma análise detalhada do corpo etnográfico pode identificar como o poder que circula nas disposições educacionais e nos métodos pedagógicos fundados sobre a ideia do corpo atuante ativa a dimensão poética, processual e partici- pante da ação educativa. tomados em conjunto, esses tropeços e relações educativas que esses autores apontam têm desenvolvido argumentos persu- asivos de que o conhecimento pedagógico está baseado na incorporação e que as ideologias curriculares cobram o preço em carne viva. tornou-se aparente, depois de duas décadas, que a pedagogia centrada na performance é, ao mesmo tempo, inerente e ironicamente contracultural, seja em relação à teoria, seja em relação à prática. as práticas mundanas das salas de aulas dos estudos da performance são frequentemente exemplos de uma peda- gogia crítica transformadora. como observa shannon jackson, (...) a rede em grande parte não-catalogada de práticas e do “pensar junto” é central a uma pedagogia da e por meio da performance que procura mover-se dentro e abaixo do radar de qualquer universidade (da razão, da cultura ou da excelência) onde está ( , p. ). no espírito de catalogação dos modos de como pensamos juntos no cres- cente borrar dos limites de nossa sala de aula, eu ofereço a seguinte narrativa de uma estudante como um exemplo pedagógico final da performance como forma de empoderamento. É certo que um estudante tenha a última palavra sobre os objetivos e os desafios da pedagogia performativa, pois é em seu corpo vivo que essa promessa se realiza. como uma estudante negra não tradi- cional, charlie hope dorsey retornou à faculdade tal como sua mentora intelec- tual, bell hooks: pensando em mim mesma antes e, sobretudo, como uma artis- ta (uma poetisa, uma pintora, uma escritora) eu busquei a carreira docente como uma vocação. meu desejo era o de criar arte, eu buscava caminhos que pudessem nutrir e sustentar esse chamado. charlie rapidamente se tornou uma participante fundamental de nosso programa de estudos da performance, uma poetisa da palavra falada bem conhecida na comunidade, uma ativista social comprometida em favor dos estudantes negros. o seguinte texto é um e-mail que ela me enviou narrando um encontro transformador com uma colega de classe. escrito no calor do momento e com tom oral próprio do tempo poético, charlie testifica o poder da performance numa recíproca transformação de vida. eu incluo a carta na íntegra tal como foi redigida, com a autorização da autora. o bater do coração em minhas mãos eu tive um dia estranho ontem na escola, eu estava já na rua depois da aula quando uma jovem colega que sentava perto de mim durante todo o semestre veio a mim e me disse que havia me visto recitando poesia em um bar numa outra noite. ela dizia o quanto havia gostado do poema, e como eu era corajosa a ponto de recitar pensamentos suicidas e compartilhar isso com os demais com uma corda enrolada no pescoço. ela então muito tranquilamente me per- guntou se eu tinha algum tempo para ler um poema que ela recém havia escrito. ao que eu disse a ela: não, mas você pode lê-lo para mim. com um sorriso, ela começou a me dizer que aquele era seu primeiro poema e que ela ficaria nervosa ao lê-lo. disse a ela para se sentar, que eu a escutaria; ela replicou dizendo que o poema falava do êxtase, não do sentimento, mas da droga. ela me disse: não posso ler aqui onde alguém possa nos ouvir. eu digo, sim, exatamente. ela então lê, discretamente, um poema de quatro páginas nunca olhando para mim, cabeça baixa, mãos trêmulas, voz fremente durante todo o tempo. estávamos sentadas debaixo de uma árvore, sobre pernas cruzadas, como usualmente fazemos. e eu atenta. sua voz torna-se mais alta quando o fim de seu poema se aproxima, como se ela achasse o ritmo de suas palavras, como se encontrasse sua voz. e eu nada posso fazer senão sentir um arrebatador orgulho e alegria, vocês sabem, há felicidade nesse momento. ela finaliza e eu a agradeço por partilhar aquilo comigo. ela sorri e diz: não, eu é que agradeço a você, talvez um dia eu crie coragem suficiente para ler isso em um microfone. e eu disse a ela: você não precisa de um microfone, você acaba de me ler seu poema. então ela levanta, olha para mim sorrindo tão enfaticamente que rubo- riza e me abraça. e tão rápido quanto ela chegou ela se foi. eu suponho que eu senti tudo isso tal como você sentiria, foi algo estranho, irônico, pelo menos. eu estava pensando sobre o que foi esse sentimento, esse sentimento de orgulho, de felicidade, é amor. sim, você está certa, eu segurei esta batida do coração nas minhas mãos, ela encontrou o poder de exprimir a sua voz. alegro- me intensamente por lá estar, por testemunhar, escutar, estar presente no momento em que o outro pari a si mesmo. no decurso de minha carreira profissional, tenho trabalhado para integrar meu compromisso com a educação libertadora com minha convicção de que a performance fornece tanto uma metáfora quanto um método para levar a termo a mudança social por meio do microcosmo da educação. eu creio que a pesqui- sa e os métodos educacionais precisam ser motivados por uma contínua ero- são das desigualdades que assolam nossa sociedade, fundada por uma pro- funda compaixão por aqueles que se situam às margens dos círculos de poder – círculos que se nutrem de minha própria cumplicidade, que de algum modo os perpetua –, orientada por uma visão de que o mundo pode ser muito diferente deste que se nos apresenta. como uma professora de estudos da performance, tenho tido o privilégio de observar, cotidianamente, o que acontece quando o meu corpo e o corpo dos meus alunos são criticamente conectados ao ensino e à aprendizagem da transgressão (hooks, ). teóricos e praticantes da educação encontram-se mais uma vez numa articulação crítica. ainda nos en- contramos sitiados por uma condenação populista da escola pública e conde- nados, por força de uma política conservadora, a nos encerrarmos de forma cada vez mais acentuada dentro de uma ideologia tecnocrática, enquanto so- mos cada vez mais exigidos pelas estruturas de nossas instituições. ao mesmo tempo, a emergência da performance como um paradigma para a experiência educacional tem modificado radicalmente as bases sobre as quais conduzimos nós mesmos e nosso trabalho. quando o texto teaching as performance foi publicado pela primeira vez, ele foi baseado em noções, intuições e projeções primárias sobre o que poderia significar educar a nós mesmos desde o ponto de vista de um corpo performático crítico e articulado. hoje, há uma infinidade de estudos sobre isso, assim como inovações nas formas e funções da educação que são tomadas muito seriamente como a arte do ensinar e do aprender. jun- tos, nós criamos um corpo de trabalho que permitirá que nossos alunos cons- truam significados a partir do que vivem no corpo, do que sentem no osso, situados dentro de um corpo político maior. recebido em janeiro de e aceito em fevereiro de . referências alexander, b. k. moving towards a critical poetic response. theatre topics, , , p. - , . alexander, b. k. intimate engagement: student performances as scholarly endeavor. theatre topics, , , , p. - . barish, j. the anti-theatrical prejudice. berkeley, califórnia: university of califórnia press, . barrel, b. classroom artistry. the educational forum, n. , , p. - . bowman, m.s.; 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(org.). teaching performance studies carbondale: southern illinois university press, . p. - . pollock, della. performing writing. the ends of performance. ed. peggy phelan and jill lane. new york: new york up, p. - , . quinn, r. j.; calkin, j. a dialogue in words and images between two artists doing arts-based educational research. international journal of education and the arts, , , p. - , . reitman, s. w. daring to make teaching an art. the educational forum, , , p. - , . rubin, l. j. artistry in teaching. new york: random, . sameshima, pauline. seeing red: a pedagogy of parallax: an epistolary bildungsroman on artful scholarly inquiry. youngstown, ny: cambria, . smith, r. is teaching really a performing art? contemporary education, , p. - , . sprague, j. expanding the research agenda for instructional communication: raising some unasked questions. communication education, , , p. - , . spry, t. a “performative-i” copresence: embodying the ethnographic turn in performance and the performative turn in ethnography. text and performance quarterly, , , p. - , . strine, m.; long, b. w.; hopkins, m. f. research in interpretation and performance studies: trends, issues, priorities. in: phillips, gerald (org.). speech communication. southern. illinois university press, . p. - . timpson, w. m.; tobin, d. n. teaching as performing: a guide to energizing your public presentation. new jersey: prentice-hall, . warren, j. performing purity: whitness, pedadogy and the reconstitution of power. new york: peter lang, . warren, j. first day, first time. paper presented at the central states communication convention, cincinnatti, oh, . wise, a. e. legislated learning: the bureaucratization of the american classroom. berkeley, ca: university of california press, . elyse lamm pineau é professora de comunicação na southern illinois university, onde dá aulas e conduz pesquisas sobre as interseções de metodologias da performance, pedagogia crítica e narrativa autoetnográficas. email: elyse@siu.edu tradução: marcelo de andrade pereira revisão da tradução: luís armando gandin realizing the flexible imaginary: canadian identity in contemporary theatre by tricia hopton bfa, the university of lethbridge, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment the requirements for the degree of master of arts in the faculty of graduate studies (theatre studies) the university of british columbia april copyright tricia hopton abstract using benedict anderson's imagined communities and michael billig's banal nationalism, this paper searches for canadian identity in five contemporary canadian plays. the plays are from writers of different ages, genders, ethnicities and parts of canada, and span approximately years. the dramatic texts include david french's jitters, kelly rebar's bordertown cafe, joan macleod's amigo's blue guitar, djanet sears' harlem duet and camyar chai, guillermo verdecchia and marcus youssef's the adventures of ah and ah and the axes of evil. the paper determines, after much exploration of the plays' characters and their actions, that flexibility is the notion reinforced as the canadian ideal. the multicultural, liberal, egalitarian nation of canada imagines itself as able to shift or change whenever necessary. with respect to individual identities, group dynamics and inhabited spaces, this flexibility is requisite for canadian citizens. the mimetic nature of theatre suggests it maintains an important role in the continual quest to discern the canadian identity. in mirroring society, the theatre offers a clear indication of the perspectives which dominate the imaginations of canadian playwrights and, therefore, their plays. the theatre and society will continue to reflect one another; in canada, they will do so with flexibility. t a b l e of c o n t e n t s abstract ii table of contents iii acknowledgements iv introduction chapter : managing insecurity: the need for individual flexibility chapter : one big alternative happy family chapter : home is where the boundaries can shift conclusion works cited iii acknowledgements i would like to acknowledge the contributions of dr. sherrill grace who began to enlighten m< on the relationship between canadian theatre and national identity. i am greatly indebted to dr. jerry wasserman for his guidance, his knowledge and his enthusiasm for canadian theatre. his lively discussions on the subject have been of much service to me and to the evolution of this thesis. •y hopton introduction the socially mimetic quality of theatre makes it a valuable means through which to explore questions of national identity and pride. canadian theatre scholar alan filewod has recently written a fascinating book about the intrinsic connection between theatre and nation, exploring their relationship through benedict anderson's notion of the 'imaginary.' filewod's performing canada: the nation enacted in the imagined theatre sets out to understand the complex relationship between nation and theatre, claiming that there is a "deep[er] conceptual structure, where the national imaginary embraces the theatrical imaginary" (filewod x). anderson's imaginary is employed to discuss how both theatre and nation exist as "loosely defined conceptfs] having to do with collectively shared (but not necessarily harmonious) narratives and experience" (ix). this correlation suggests that the prevalence of canada's national identity is deeply entrenched within the past and present of canadian theatre. he further asserts that theatre, as a constructed performance, "integrates with its society through various mutually supporting structures," and so "it is barely separable from the 'totalizing ideologies of canadian society'" (ix). thus, if notions of national identity are embedded within the theatre, and the two possess an overarching alliance in their imaginary definitions, i would argue that michael billig's concept of banal nationalism can also be observed in the theatrical domain. billig suggests that nationalism is continually reinforced in small, but infinitely important ways in all aspects of the everyday worid, and is therefore adopted into the subconscious of a nation's citizens (billig ). in this paper, i will examine how the theatre portrays, explores, champions or repudiates the characteristics of this nationalism. furthermore, if this nationalism exists as a fundamental aspect of canadian identity, why is it so prevalent in the theatre? building on filewod's argument that nation and theatre are inherently linked, i intend to explore how the presence of an imaginary national ideal in the theatre serves a greater purpose in the construction of canadian identity. in order to determine whether this imagined standardization of national values and pride truly exists, i will use a cross-section of contemporary english canadian plays. the plays i have chosen to examine as examples of national imagining or explorations of banal nationalism include a spectrum of styles, time periods, geographic origins, and playwrights. four of the five plays have received significant canadian accolades, including dora mavor moore awards and governor-general's awards; each play has received several productions hopton and four of the five have been included in jerry wasserman's two volumes of the seminal anthology modem canadian plays. chronologically, the list includes david french's jitters, kelly rebar's bordertown cafe, joan macleod's amigo's blue guitar, djanet sears' harlem duet and camyar chai, guillermo verdecchia and marcus youssef's the adventures of ah and ah and the axes of evil. i intend to locate within the aforementioned texts some common implicit ideas, which may not be immediately recognizable due to their prevalence in the realm of the banal. using billig and anderson's theories, i hope to uncover examples of deep-seated national ideals that may exist on a subconscious level. at the centre of my analysis lie the content and characters of each play, with some discussion of mise en scene to expose supporting illustrations. the plays provide a multi-faceted lens through which to further examine imaginary constructs - those of identity, theatre, the nation and nationalism. identity is an elusive and complex concept, encompassing the construction and deconstruction, negotiation and defence of self-understanding, both in terms of groups and individuals. although many different theorists have developed ideas about the formation of identity, i will rely most heavily on philosopher david hume's interpretation, which suggests that the self is "a bundle of sense impressions, that continually changed as the individual had new experiences or recalled old ones" (edgar ). in conjunction with emile durkheim, who asserts that "the individual was a product of society [...so] a modem understanding of individuality [... ] was a product of that particular culture," we may conclude that individual identity exists as a compilation of sensory impressions which have been determined by the culture in which one lives ( ). thus, one understands the world, and him/herself in the world, through his/her collective development process within a given culture. a fundamental aspect of that identity includes one's understanding of and relationship to the immediate space that s/he inhabits, as well as the surrounding philosophical and physical world. if individual identity is composed of a collection of experiences and sensory reactions to the outside world, then the nation, as a key place for the formation of culture, can be understood to have a strong influence on the way one understands oneself. of course, each individual within that nation will remain an autonomous being, but in the same way that one may belong to a family or religious group, one also belongs to a nation. that is, individuals, though independent of one another, maintain a sense of common identity through specific shared aspects of these belief systems to which each individual subscribes. although every person may choose to ally him/herself with only certain elements of the hopton common vision, the theories of the renowned anthropologist benedict anderson and prominent sociologist michael billig assert that nationalism, as a core element of national identity, involves less conscious choice than we readily recognize. anderson's imagined communities and billig's banal nationalism have led me to believe that nationalism is not a dirty word. based on their theories, i would assert that all people who live in an established nation maintain a sense of nationalism, and it is virtually irremovable from one's identity. i believe that this is due to the nature of nationalism, as defined by anderson and billig: it is infused in everyday life to such an extent that its presence is indiscernible and therefore deeply entrenched within each citizen's identity. the concept of nation as it is being used in this paper is based on anderson's imagined communities, which has been a mainstay in sociological and anthropological discussions around nationalism since its first publication in . anderson claims that a nation is "an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign" (anderson ). it is imagined in the sense that "the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion" ( ). in order for such an otherwise unconnected group to foster a sense of community, the group must work to ally itself by way of specific images, ideas and beliefs. the way in which a nation is imagined is integral to its citizen's cohesion. according to anderson, the nation is imagined as limited because of its "finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations" ( ). that is, it must have distinct, if arbitrary, borders to separate itself from other nations and their identities. he also claims it is imagined as sovereign because the concept of nation arose during a time when religion dictated the order of society; thus, the nation has come to symbolize organization established outside the constraints of religious hierarchy ( ). finally, a nation is imagined as a community because its fundamental roots are seen as a "deep, horizontal comradeship [...] regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail" ( ). thus, the affiliates of a nation conceive of themselves as inherently connected to one another, possessing something distinct from other nations, which is common to all its members; these people comprise a community in a limited and bounded space. the manner in which a nation imagines itself allows it to be distinguished from other nations; this is national identity. hopton michael billig builds on anderson's imagined communities. he asserts that notions of the imagined community are encouraged through the dissemination of "a whole complex set of beliefs, assumptions, habits, representations and practices" (billig ). it is through everyday reminders of affiliation, on television and in newspapers, that national identity is created and affirmed for citizens, thereby resulting in a sense of national pride. billig claims that "the metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is being consciously waved with fervent passion; it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building," for nationalism is not only created through the extraordinary, but also in the realm of the banal ( ). that is, concepts of national identity are flagged to members of the nation with such regularity that they are consistently forgotten or overlooked. national ideology becomes so entrenched in everyday rhetoric by politicians and media that citizens are not required to conjure it up on their own. "it is argued that these habits are not removed from everyday life, as some observers have supposed," states billig ( ). instead, "daily, the nation is indicated, or 'flagged,' in the lives of its citizenry. nationalism, far from being an intermittent mood in established nations, is the endemic condition" ( ). because these national ideologies are so deeply ingrained, the individual citizen is subconsciously receiving information that reminds him/her of his/her national affiliation on a consistent basis. choosing to filter out subconsciously transmitted messages is difficult even when one is made aware of them, but according to billig, most people would not even recognize these markers as proponents of nationalism. billig's book is essentially an exploration of how nationalism is not simply developed and propagated in periods of crisis or by fervent jingoists. he claims that national pride and loyalty are deeply rooted in the subconscious of all a nation's people, making it easy for politicians to call upon that patriotism readily, so that although the feeling may lie dormant for periods, it is easily evoked because of the regularity with which it is flagged in every day life. an example of such a banal reminder can be seen in daily news broadcasts. in a recent cbc presentation called "your turn with the prime minister," prime minister paul martin repeatedly referred to the collective 'we' - to be understood as 'we - canadians.' the referral to 'us,' 'we,' or even 'the country,' all of which are consistently used by politicians, sports fans, the media, and consequently, the general public, creates an immediate sense of communion among all those canadians who watch. these assertions work to establish a sort of in-group that is self-aware, though not conscious, of its canadian- ness. hopton billig suggests that pierre bordieu's concept of 'habitus' can further explain the process by which citizens are practicing their banal identity without being conscious of all its attributes. billig claims that "if banal life is to be routinely practised...it occurs when one is doing other things, including forgetting" ( ). to summarize the bordieu theory: 'habitus' expresses well this dialectic of remembering and forgetting. the 'habitus' refers to the dispositions, practices and routines of the familiar social world. it describes 'the second nature' which people must acquire to pass mindlessly (and also mindfully) through the banal routines of daily life. ( ). thus, if notions of nationalism are evoked with such regularity in everyday life as to become naturalized or second nature within citizens' world views, then this nationalism must exist in all aspects of life that comprise a country, including its politics, values, and art. if billig's theory is correct, then nationalism should exist on a subconscious level in everything. this nationalism, this pride in the homeland, stems from an ideally and collectively imagined notion of nation. as canada has developed from a colonial to an independent state, it has continually sought an identity; this identity has most often been distilled through comparison with value systems in other countries. specifically, canada has long looked to the u.s. to determine what it does not want to be. so, in the development of such a set of ideals, canada has determined its own set of social value systems, by which it would, ideally, like to be recognized. according to billig, "to achieve a positive identity, groups will tend to compare themselves positively with contrasting outgroups" ( ). these, in turn, become stereotypes by which the ingroup may positively recognize itself and thereby maintain its existence. in order to disseminate such an identity, the attitudes and behaviours must be enacted regularly, in all facets of life. so, the collective imagining of an idealized set of values and conduct is reinforced to a nation's citizens in the realm of the banal, in order to develop and promulgate a national identity and national pride. the following chapters examine the five selected plays in detail, relying heavily on the characters and their dialogue to analyze the presence of recurring tropes and their relevance to national identity. the first chapter looks at the prevalence of personal insecurity, which develops in each character for different reasons. through the maintenance of group equality, the characters are able to regularly enact various attitudes to combat such feelings in different ways. chapter two observes the reconstruction of the characters' social units, particularly by re-imagining the roles of family members or enacting hopton different personas with particular family members in an effort to achieve a desired outcome. chapter three examines the journey that is common to all the characters: the quest for home. all of the plays are set in liminal spaces of sorts, physical and psychological 'in- between' spaces, which make it easier for the characters to change as needed. to me the most evident overarching ideal that prevails in each of the plays is the notion of flexibility. whether this flexibility allows an individual to combat feelings of insecurity or unearth new details about him/herself, it enables the characters to change their perspectives on themselves, each other and the world in which they live. more importantly, this flexibility allows those perspectives to continue to change and shift, as needed. in each character, in each family, in each place, the most predominant similarity is the desire and ability to shift, reconfigure or change. the imaginary nation involves several qualities that connect the citizens of canada; within that identity lies a banal nationalism, a key source of which is the capacity to remain flexible. this elastic model has existed throughout the nation's history: although the french and english settlers of canada initially battled against one another, they eventually accepted the co-existence of their cultures. this has since broadened vastly and canada now embraces cultures from all around the world. it has become a principle which is reinforced with such regularity in the everyday world that it is intrinsic in the plays of this research. the prevalence of this ideal in all aspects of the plays suggests that it is a notion which is crucial to the alliance of canada's citizens. flexibility is the national ideal and it is dually reinforced: it exists in the realm of the banal, so it is reflected on the stage; this staged portrayal of such ideals then works its way back into the psychology of the citizens who witness the plays. the mimetic cycle is complete as the national ideal is flagged both explicitly, as characters physically portray different personas, and implicitly, as they psychologically inhabit new roles. this notion of flexibility is then accepted and recycled into the world of everyday canada. hopton chapter one managing insecurity: the need for individual flexibility the exploration of nationalism via the theatrical domain requires a bit of historical background. through his discussion of various theatrical endeavours in canada ranging from the theatre of neptune in to garth drabinsky's musical theatre monopoly of the s, filewod shows how canadian theatre offers "a constant historical citation and recitation of the postcolonial crises of authenticity and displacement" (xvii). he articulates the commonly evoked trope of national maturity, with canada continually cited as a 'young' country. yet, as filewod explains, "canada is no 'younger" than italy or germany. like them, it is a product of nineteenth-century liberal nationbuilding, but unlike them, canada could not legitimize the national state by a mythic invocation of racial unity" ( ). this is a valid and intriguing point: although canada is, like other nations, historically 'young,' it has the less common distinction of having a very diverse population, ethnically and culturally. canada's history lies in the founding "two solitudes" of the french and english. eventually, the two solitudes gave way to many solitudes, as trudeau proclaimed canada a 'cultural mosaic,' the outcome of which was the adoption of the official multiculturalism act in ("multiculturalism"). the implementation of the official multiculturalism act has resulted in continually high rates of immigration. new people welcomed onto canadian soil are encouraged to maintain their native languages and cultures. while the presence of various cultures within a single nation can certainly work to encourage cultural exchange and tolerance, it can also result in an increased anxiety about the stability of a national identity. as people living in a country that aims to embrace a broad spectrum of differing qualities and ideas, canadians often feel uncertainty about the true identity of their nation. this, in turn, presents obstacles for people trying to comfortably discern individual identities. so how does this insecurity impact people? more importantly, what strategies have they devised to combat such feelings? alan filewod cites american theatre scholar rosemarie k. bank's concept of ''theatre culture: the notion that peoples in a culture stage themselves and perform multiple roles" to address the idea that "theatre is a practice that cannot be separated from the hopton multiplicity of fields in which culture operates" (filewod ). the interplay between cultural and national representation may be virtually indiscernible. within this finely interwoven relationship, we may, however, elicit themes that seem to arise simultaneously, indicating that a nation reflects the theatre and vice versa. i believe that the attitude that prevails in the plays can be collectively termed flexibility. in the plays i have chosen, each of the characters is plagued by a sense of personal self-doubt, which results in an attempt to alter or shift the self. although there are elements beyond the state of the nation affecting the characters' self-consciousness, surely the omnipresence of insecurity in everyday life has contributed to this state of uncertainty. canadians live in a nation defined, in part, by its mosaic population: diversity is embraced and encouraged by the government and the people of the nation. furthermore, in the last twenty years, canada has also made significant strides in promoting gender equality and tolerance of homosexuality through governmental policies. this widespread support for differences trickles down into the banalities of everyday life, which reinforces the principle of diversity with such regularity that, ideally, it shifts from rhetoric to practice. that is, the diverse ideal is so heavily entrenched in the realm of the banal that people will move from upholding the ideal philosophically to actually practicing the acceptance and encouragement of diversity. i would also suggest that supporting diversity innately promotes an egalitarian society: differences are embraced and everyone is equally respected. furthermore, if people maintain positions of equality, they are more likely to test out new attitudes, as there is less risk involved than if the group were more distinctly stratified. equality seems to provide the ideal condition for people to explore themselves in pursuit of self-fulfillment. thus, the promotion of diversity and equality results in insecurity brought on by a lack of a singular identity and the fear or discouragement of making people into heroes. more importantly, singularity and individuality do not seem to be desirable ideals. as a result, the characters in the plays often occupy multiple roles in their attempt to change their own perspectives and eventually enable personal fulfillment. david french invites an examination of people who are commonly plagued by insecurity: his play is about artists. french himself openly admits to his own feelings of insecurity, indicating that he used to go backstage before performances and throw up (bemrose ). because of this, he claims that he is "the perfect guy to write a play about actors called jitters" (ibid). in jitters, we meet several characters openly struggling to be reassured of their identity. this hopton notion is most explicitly treated when one of the older male actors, phil, tries to assert himself against another actor's petty personal attack. in doing so, he offers insight into his individual battles: "he wants to undermine my confidence," phil proclaims,"... but the laugh's on him. i don't have any!" (french ). although phil's insecurities have developed for a myriad of reasons, including an overprotective mother, the national sense of insecurity has surely had an impact on him as well. jitters offers several acerbic observations about the state of canadian pride or confidence, all of which culminate in the suggestion that there is no such thing. as the playwright robert states on opening night, "they hate success in this country. they punish you for it" ( ). such a comment makes the claim that a pervasive feeling of insecurity exists among canadians caused by a lack of individual encouragement; if one is punished for being successful, then anxiety is sure to arise from that sense of uncertainty. these characters are forced to enact more than one identity simply to maintain any sense of self: although they long for success and the pride that accompanies it, they are assured that such confidence is not well received in canada. in this, we see exemplified the lack of praise for individuals, the choice not to celebrate one person. the characters are aware of the impossibility of individual success in canada, because to make one person a hero implies that someone else is not as successful - hero- making is not encouraged in the egalitarian canadian society. everyone in jitters seems aware of the parity that must prevail among all: no one can be singled out as better than anyone else. i would suggest that this equality provides the ideal conditions for self- exploration, allowing characters to try out different personas, as needed. whether the characters truly believe in their abilities or not, they often outwardly proclaim humility, making it apparent that they are modest. this is not the sole persona adopted by all characters, though, as each one works to find which roles work for him/herself. interestingly, the problem of insecurity is recognized by all of the characters in the play, though not all of them feel convinced that the solution lies in the land of pride and success: the united states. early in the second act, patrick argues with jessica, and their conflicting views about leaving canada to work in the u.s. become more evident. jessica claims that she's "got the guts to work outside this country," while patrick finds comfort on the less dangerous stages of canada ( ). after all, as he tells jessica: "i make a damn good living here. i have my pick of roles. i may not be a star, but who is in this country?" ( ). patrick is obviously masking his own personal longing for validation. by choosing to play at humility, he obligingly enacts an acceptable persona. that is, in a country in which hopton everyone must be accepted, no single individual should be put on a pedestal, and patrick embodies this notion. he is a model example of the encouraged canadian identity: though he desires a confirmation of his ability, as evidenced by his suggestion that george, the director, tell him he's "a helluva great actor" ( ), he tries to mask this aspiration, claiming "...not everyone feels that compulsion to outshine" ( ). patrick wants validation, but he tries to cover this. his insecurity outweighs his desire for validation and he assumes an attitude of humility. the answer to this problem of canadian insecurity is provided for many characters by the imminent arrival of the important american producer, bernard feldman, who is considering taking the show to broadway. if this move occurs, the canadian artists may find self-assuredness in america. in the u.s., pride, success and individuality are embraced, encouraged. and not everyone hides his/her anticipation of bernard feldman's arrival in the same way that patrick does. some characters openly admit that they are depending on feldman's arrival to make them successful. never is this more apparent than in the discussion between george and his assistant, susi, after she takes a phone call. george: don't tell me. if it's bad news, i don't want to hear. susi: the babysitter just called. your wife's in the hospital. she tripped on the way down the steps and broke her leg. george: oh, god, i thought you were going to tell me feldman couldn't make it. susi: you never let me finish. he just called from the airport. his plane was late getting in. soonest he could be here, he said, was forty minutes. ( ). george's reaction indicates how truly important feldman's presence really is - apparently it is more important than george's wife being taken to hospital. this sentiment becomes apparent as each of the characters finds out that feldman is not coming. even if phil does receive "the best reviews of [his] life...nothing will happen...feldman was [his] only hope: he was an american. down there they embrace success. up here it's like stepping out of line" ( ). phil's proclamation that being successful in canada is apparently frowned upon provides another example of the egalitarian attitude which is encouraged in canada. if one actor were more successful than another, inequality would arise. it seems a better prescription is to maintain a sense of insecurity: it keeps one humble and in line with the rest of the company. hopton jitters bitterly proclaims that insecurity is a part of the canadian identity, and that only by moving south of the border can this self-consciousness be put to rest. at the end of the play, though feldman does not arrive, george reassures phil that "he's not the only producer in new york" ( ). there will surely be other opportunities - american validation is still an eventual possibility. these definitive indications of insecurity represent just how deep-rooted these ideas truly are. all of the characters have a longing to reconcile their feelings of insecurity, but they recognize that the only means by which they can do so is to venture to the united states, where people take pride in their success, as opposed to masking or discarding any personal sense of confidence. this presents an idea that is quite deeply ingrained in the characters' activities and dialogue. the characters portray a definite sense of insecurity throughout the play; i would argue that this feeling is an aspect of the canadian identity. given that playwright david french also openly admits to his own feelings of insecurity, it seems reasonable to draw a correlation between life and art. furthermore, the characters are expected to maintain an individual sense of flexibility: in order to combat that impeding insecurity, the characters display humility at times, scorn at others and occasionally refute the value systems of the u.s. in their attempt to keep their insecurities at bay. it is also interesting to observe the sense of equality that the characters have: although they do each want to be singled out for praise, they are not surprised when it does not occur. as jessica says, "i have never walked out of a show in my life. the day i decide to let down my fellow actors i guarantee you will be the first to know" ( ). she clearly feels a great obligation to her group - although she was panned by the critics, she chooses to continue to work on the production, so as not to let down the group. the sense of group solidarity prevails, as it scorns individuality and obscures insecurity. though i do not claim it is an allegory for canada, jitters certainly presents some keen reflections on national identity. in kelly rebar"s bordertown cafe, we encounter another cast of insecure canadian characters. again, the characters recognize their lack of confidence and they, too, are convinced that the u.s. offers a potential elimination of such feelings. although the insecurity manifests itself in different ways than in jitters, its presence is still definitely apparent. in rebar's play, the contrast between the canadian and american sense of national identity is prevalent. the audience is provided with an accessible contrast with the presence of maxine, the american grandmother, among her canadian counterparts hopton marlene, jimmy and grandad jim. the dialectical nature of the relationship between the canadian and american sense of self offers an insightful perspective on national identities. specifically, we see behaviour indicative of insecurity in the canadians as compared to the confidence in the american. strong feelings of envy and inferiority are dredged up while marlene and jimmy await the boy's absent american father's return to canada; these feelings of insecurity are difficult to control. one way that marlene tries to defend herself is to scorn jimmy's father don's lavish gifts. she says that she does not want jimmy "to grow up spoiled, but his dad shows up here with a top o' the line model" ( ). it seems "don was always showin' up with somethin' for that kid" - things that marlene couldn't afford to buy for jimmy ( ). obviously, marlene is jealous of her american ex-husband's ability to give jimmy things, which in turn makes her feel insecure, but she does not want to display this emotion. instead, she defends herself by playing humility. near the beginning of the play, when marlene is first confronted with the possibility of jimmy's leaving for america with his father, she says to her son, "l-l-i'm not sayin' it's any great shakes livin' here" ( ). by acting meek, she tries to gain jimmy's sympathy so that he won't leave her. furthermore, enacting this role of humility enables marlene to feel somehow in control of her situation. she knows that she can't expect to provide the extravagant american lifestyle that don can, but she actually uses this to her advantage, "because [she] can put two and two together as good as anyone, even //[she] only got junior high" ( ). moreover, jimmy sees an admirable value, humility, being portrayed, and he learns to adopt such an attitude himself. jimmy knows that it is an admirable quality because not only does marlene enact humility, but his grandad jim seems to embody it also: jim is "just this perfect human-type guy...[that] no-one'll say a bad word about" ( ). although i would not argue that jim is necessarily insecure, he certainly takes on the modest role that marlene so readily portrays. when confronted with jimmy's praise, grandad humbly says, "oh, jimmy, where you got such a silly notion of me," suggesting that he is just a regular old albertan farmer and so is not worthy of acclaim ( ). thus, we see another example of how not to glorify or single out an individual. the play shows jim as a truly ideal person - a stereotypically humble, but wise, farmer. this persona then becomes jimmy's model: he wants to be humble and good, like his mother and his grandfather. and it seems that jimmy has been a good student; hopton throughout the play, his mother and grandmother praise him as a star hockey player, but jimmy remains modest, as evidenced in the following scene. jimmy: max, you seem to have this big idea that i'm someone at that school. i'm no one. maxine: you're more'n your mother was. jimmy: well, i maybe am but i'm not no hero. marlene: i didn't have no time for friends when i was rushin' back home to work dinner shift, but never mind, i- maxine: you tell your coach you wanna try a-out for the team, he'll letcha, star player like you were last year. huh, mar? jimmy: star. maxine: you were the best player on the team last year, the league - ask your grandad. jimmy: grandad? -all grandad said was my coordination was improving. i didn't even know my coordination was bad. ( ). this exchange indicates how jimmy feels insecure about his role at school and on the hockey team. but jimmy masks his insecurity with humility even though he is obviously a good hockey player. the scene also indicates the notion of minimizing individuals as heroes. it seems that he has learned lessons of equality and modesty from his mother and grandad. jimmy's grandmother, on the other hand, embodies the stereotypical american attitude of arrogance. unlike the modest jim, maxine brags to jimmy about all things american, claiming that everything in the u.s. is better than that of canada, as she tells jimmy: "i was raised down there, i know how they think - me, us, we're first, we're best" ( ). this attitude is further exemplified in maxine's discussion of her baseball skills: "all americans can [play ball], they're the best baseball players in the united states, 'erthe world - was lead pitcher for my team, that's how good i was" ( ). clearly, in bordertown cafe, the attitude of a canadian is different from that of an american. humility is a favoured canadian reaction to feelings of insecurity and becomes an attribute staunchly assigned to the occupants north of the th parallel. like the characters in jitters, marlene and jimmy of bordertown cafe hope that the appearance of an american figure will somehow validate their lives. after all, as maxine hopton claims, canada only has the west edmonton mall, and '"that shoppin' cenner don't hold a candle to disneyland'" ( ), while the u.s. has so much more to offer, with "fairs bigger'n anything you'd ever find up here [in canada]" ( ). because they feel they don't measure up to american standards, notions reinforced by don's nonchalance and maxine's criticism of all things canadian, both jimmy and marlene feel inferior, which is then hidden by showing contempt for the american way of life or enacting humility. marlene and jimmy's quest for fulfillment is a tortured one: although america offers potential happiness and excitement, life in canada, where they have a home, family and a hockey team, is definitely safer. they choose to alternate between expressing their envy of american life at times, while masking it at others with humility and scorn. in the end, the characters decide to stay in canada, where, as jimmy claims, "we're not caught up in spending a lot o' money on houses, we'd rather...travel" ( ). this idea that canadians will travel seems to be yet another assertion of national humility: big houses would suggest a flaunted affluence, not at all suitable for the humble canadian. furthermore, traveling indicates the model of flexibility that we have seen in jitters as well. characters have to be able to move and change - in this they are enacting the ideal canadian identity. so, with derision of the american value system, jimmy makes his final decision to follow in the footsteps of his noble, humble canadian grandad, instead of his confident, glamorous american father. unlike jitters, in which the characters are destined to continue to wait for validation, at the end of bordertown cafe the characters make a conscious decision to remain in canada. and, more optimistically, they decide not to "chase after somethin' unless it's worth having" - and an american life is apparently not worth the chase ( ). so, in rebar"s play, canadian values defeat american allure, but that allure does not disappear. david french's play, on other hand, closes with much more cynicism, though it is significant that the characters stay in canada, destined to live out their moderately successful, insecure lives. in a review of the blyth festival production of bordertown cafe in , maclean's magazine theatre critic john bemrose claimed that rebates play was successful because it was capable of "provoking the thrill of self-recognition in the community" (bemrose ). this statement completely supports the argument that the theatre operates as a mimetic art form, allowing canadians to see themselves represented on stage. moreover, it reinforces notions of national identity, confirming for the audience the imagined ideal: canadians may be insecure, but their flexibility allows them to combat such feelings. they recognize their hopton own insecurities in the characters on stage and see them utilizing humility or derision as coping mechanisms. bemrose went on to say that the play represented the blyth festival at its best, as "it delivered] a healthy dollop of comedy while reflecting unobtrusively on the relationship of canadians with their flashier american cousins" ( ). these statements support the suggestion that the theatre is working mimetically to reinforce notions of national identity. as we move into the s, we see that insecurity is still a prevalent issue for canadian characters. in amigo's blue guitar, the canadian characters are affected by their inability to carve out clear roles for themselves. and, yet again, we find an american character present, offering a quick contrast between the traits of canadians and americans. as the matriarchal figure in the play, martha is an american visiting her son's family in western canada. at numerous points throughout the play, martha implicitly invokes her american citizenship in her denunciations of specifically canadian ideas. for example, in martha's first scene, she informs the family that she "brought two turkeys up for thanksgiving," even though her granddaughter, callie, informs her that the family "already had thanksgiving last month" (macleod ). but there is to be no discussion about this and martha begins planning for the celebration of american thanksgiving with her canadian family. martha then naively asks about the stove: "is it in the metric too?" implying that she would not be able to cook using "the metric," and thus, this difference is not a good one ( ). yet even though her husband is dead and her son and grandchildren live in canada, martha seems content to stay locked into her outsider position as an american, choosing to maintain her home near portland, oregon. there seems to be no feeling of insecurity within martha. instead, she comfortably converses with elias, the refugee from el salvador, making faux pas without reservation, and singing a tex-mex style song by kitty wells in order to show off her (lacklustre) spanish. unlike her grandchildren, martha feels no sense of instability about her identity: she is definitely comfortable with who she is. martha's canadian grandchildren, on the other hand, are both overwhelmed by their insecurities. these characters want to do something important in the world, such as enable refugees to come into canada, yet they remain incapable of doing anything to save themselves from their own insecurities. when sander drops out of school in favour of becoming a first aid attendant, he answers his father's question: "what is it that you care about, sander?" with a single word reply: "nothing" ( ). this shows sander's inability to hopton remain focused on any one thing, opting instead to work on several different things: he drops out of college to get his first aid certification, chooses not to work with his father on the fishing boat in hopes of working at a mill or logging camp instead, and then virtually abandons elias once he arrives in canada. this myriad of activities suggests sander's attempt at flexibility: he is trying out several different personas in hopes of finding one that works for him; in the meantime, he enacts various roles as required. but sander shows signs of his insecurity as well. he does not think he is very good at anything, which is partly why he continues to seek out new things in hopes of finding fulfillment. perhaps this idea is reinforced by sander's father, who chastises him for plagiarizing an essay and suggests that he is "as organized as a two year old" ( ). these kinds of statements do not aid in building sander's confidence and likely work to reinforce his insecurities. as a result of these feelings, he questions his role in the family and in the world. owen also works to encourage sander's humility when he tells sander: "elias [...] must be appalled by the privileges you have, the choices" ( ). owen indicates that sander should be humble and grateful for the opportunities that are available to him, instead of taking his good fortune for granted. although sander remains unsure as to which persona he should enact or what it means to be a canadian, he defiantly asserts to his american grandmother that "i was bom here [in canada]! [...] i am not, repeat, not an american!" ( ). he goes on to berate the american government, claiming that it is their actions which have resulted in elias' torture and jail term. in doing this, sander is attempting to discern his own national identity through the negation of another. unlike her brother, callie has worked to define herself through scholastic endeavours, with which she finds success. yet success in one arena of life certainly does not ensure the same scenario in another. callie's insecurities become apparent in her pursuit of unfulfilling romantic relationships. having developed insecurities about herself because of negative relationships with men like roddy glass, who, as sander claims, eventually "dumped [her] for the stupidest woman on the entire west coast," callie continues to abate her uncertainty by acquiring a new romance ( ). however, callie's attempt to develop a relationship with elias is also unsuccessful - they have a brief affair based on sex. although callie had hoped elias would really love her, she comes to learn that elias is still in love with his girlfriend marina from el salvador. in fact, elias lies to callie to get her assistance in the sponsorship of marina, further sinking callie into the depths of self-doubt and insecurity. callie's insecurity is most obvious when she dishonestly tells elias that she hopton was born in a boat. apparently, callie feels so overwhelmed by her insecurities that, as jerry wasserman points out in his introduction to the play, she "insists without irony, 'i was born!'" (wasserman ). clearly, callie is sensitive to her own lack of confidence but is unsure as to how she may overcome this. she tries to be flexible: she learns about elias' culture, she tries to sponsor a refugee as well, she tries to embark on numerous relationships, but ultimately callie has not yet found the roles that work for her. when elias suggests that they not tell the rest of the family about their spending the night together, callie immediately assumes that it is somehow her fault. her insecurities again become apparent while in bed with elias, when she says, "you didn't want this. you didn't want this to happen" (macleod ). as the play closes, it seems that neither callie nor sander has found the best means to negotiate this insecurity in a positive way: they enact humble roles occasionally and they attempt to remain flexible, but they are not entirely successful. at the very end of the play, sander does seem to find a way to reconcile his feelings of insecurity by comforting elias and truly listening to him. he realizes that flexibility is truly a key to fulfillment: instead of seeing the worid in black and white, sander begins to observe the multiple shades of grey. in doing this, perhaps sander has started to discern a national identity - he chooses flexibility and canada, both of which are imperfect, but may save lives. the play's final scene, in which callie and martha learn of marina's disappearance, shows the potential for callie's insecurities to take over: the reality of a world in which people do not love you, people lie and people even disappear may be too much for callie to bear. she is unsure about how to cope with such sadness. but while martha is unwilling to recognize even the possibility of someone being lost, claiming, "people don't just disappear," callie, through elias, has become aware that, "yes, grandma, they do" ( ). her realization about the potential tragedy of the world has forced her from her land of dreams: she can no longer claim she was born in a boat or hope that the salvadoran refugee will fall madly in love with her. in this awakening, callie recognizes that the world is not solely about her. as she says, "i never meant her [marina] any harm," we recognize that callie has made a significant discovery ( ). her personal insecurities are less important, as she, like her brother, grows to understand the need for flexibility: people must be able to change and grow in order to help each other through life in this sad world. like french and rebar, macleod ends the play on a note of cynicism, with the characters' futures as yet undetermined. like the actors hopton in toronto and the farmers in alberta, this fishing family from the west coast, and their salvadoran refugee, adopt attitudes of flexibility as a means for negotiating their insecurities. macleod once quoted a negative review of amigo's blue guitar, in which the critic claimed the play, might have been more interesting if macleod could move away from the stereotype of passive, self-deprecating canadians...and create a family with a little more moxie. then — without being political in a silly way - it might be possible to underline that both they and elias come from small and powerless countries, and that this has helped to shape their personalities in a profound fashion. (macleod ). as this was a first production of the play, macleod was logically disappointed and, in the article from which this quote was taken, she discusses the overpowering insecurities that she dealt with following the review. i find it very interesting that more than one of these playwrights has commented on her/his personal insecurities in conjunction with discussions about their plays. this leads me to believe that my suggestion about national insecurity may, in fact, be plausible. surely, if we consider billig's ideas about the persistence of a national identity in the real of the banal, it would seem that we are finding evidence to show the prevalence of insecurity in the playwrights and their dramas. and in considering filewod's arguments about the overlap of theatre and nation, this notion of insecurity seems to prevail both inside and outside the theatre. thus far, both the playwrights and their characters have dealt with their insecurities through adopting flexible attitudes: the playwrights have persevered to write more plays in different styles, while their characters have persevered to change their attitudes toward life in canada. in harlem duet, the british-bom, canadian-raised playwright djanet sears introduces us to yet another cast of insecure characters. harlem duet is a (p)re-telling of shakespeare's othello, featuring billie as the black wife that othello had before (desde)mona. interestingly, in this play the majority of characters is american, though there is still an important tie to canada. the protagonist, billie, is a graduate student living in harlem, who grew up in nova scotia with her american father and canadian grandmother. her single father was an alcoholic, who "couldn't carry the weight" after billie's mother died (sears ). this initiated the move to canada, where billie's grandmother was able to help look after her and her brother drew. the relationship between billie and her symbolically named father canada is rather hostile: she holds a deep-seated grudge against her father, hopton who was an alcoholic and also had an affair with a white woman. now sober, canada comes to visit and claims, "i wish things between..." suggesting that he would like to resolve their issues and develop a new relationship ( ). it is worthwhile to note that canada, billie's father, represents a way for her to reconcile some of her earliest insecurities. surely the impact of early traumas including the loss of her mother, the move to a new country, her father's alcohol abuse and his affair with a white woman, ingrained in billie much self-doubt. having observed her father replace her mother with alcohol and a white woman, billie was shown ineffective coping mechanisms and developed uncertainty about her own role as a black woman in a north american world dominated by white people. it is also important to note that billie is considering leaving harlem to head back to nova scotia: "i could go home," she tells her landlady magi ( ). although it seems billie has spent the majority of her life in new york, she still considers canada home. thus, the freedom offered by both the place and the person called canada is significant. as a means of dealing with her various insecurities, billie can repair her relationship with her father and/or move back to nova scotia. either way, billie's canadian insecurities need to be combated in some way; perhaps she needs the flexibility that canada invites in order to allay such self-doubts. these deep-rooted insecurities have been further compounded by the emotional rejection of her husband and the awareness of her marginalized status as a black woman. having witnessed the usurpation of a black woman by a white woman in her past, billie is perhaps not entirely shocked when othello decides to leave her for a successful white woman called mona. whether or not she is surprised, billie is most definitely sad and angry about othello's leaving, and this further feeds her feelings of insecurity. but for billie, enacting humility as a means of countering the insecurity is not useful, for she has been made to feel humility on a regular basis, simply living in the world: when i go into a store, i always feel i am being watched...when someone doesn't serve me, i think it's because i'm black. when a clerk won't put change into my held-out hand, i think it's because i'm black. when i hear about a crime, any crime, i pray to god the person who did it isn't black. i'm even suspicious of the word black. who called us black anyway? it's not a country, it's not a racial category, it's not even the colour of my skin. ( ). clearly, billie has lived her whole life in a world of insecurity, always wondering if people were stereotyping and judging her because of her skin colour. as a means of compensation, i would suggest that billie has adopted an attitude of flexibility. although it hopton has been a difficult journey, she has worked hard to succeed and plans to complete her graduate degree, no matter what. furthermore, although she lives in a logical world, studying social sciences at university, billie also dabbles in the world of mysticism, developing potions with the intention of poisoning her ex-husband. she also exhibits an attempt to be flexible as she considers moving on, even after the traumatic loss of her husband. she is, unfortunately, not entirely successful in her attempt to be flexible. her insecurities are not kept at bay, and billie tries to poison othello, which results in her eventual arrival at a psychiatric hospital. harlem duet also offers a very explicit flexibility, as the main characters, othello and billie, actually play three different characters spanning time. these characters occupy an alternative imaginary space in which they play "he" and "she" (the othello and billie of ) as well as "him" and "her" (the same characters in ). textually, this implies that the characters are reliving the past of their ancestors, through the present of their own lives, each distinguished by the aforementioned character name. in the staging, the shift would only be apparent by the dialogue and the setting, as the characters engage in discussions about their love and the difficulties they encounter without names ever being used. this would make the identities of the characters infinitely more malleable and provide visual evidence of this flexible ideal enacted. sears, like the other playwrights discussed thus far, has also been recorded admitting her personal feelings of insecurity. when asked in a interview whether or not she reads reviews, sears replied: i try and stay away from them unless people put them in right in front of me, because i think that even though i start off as a playwright wanting to create something that is very meaningful or looks at issues that are very hard or issues that i'm concerned with, by the time opening night comes around all i want is for people to like it. (buntin). sears' own insecurities as an artist make their way into the play, manifesting in each of harlem duets characters in different ways. also, like the other playwrights and their plays, we see an attempt to negotiate those feelings by maintaining a sense of flexibility - trying out different personas in order to allay insecurities and change perspectives. sears has also been quoted commenting on canadian identity: "we are neither this nor that," she says, "we are both. i think it's hard to form one definitive identity that is based on so many things, hopton but i think that's the wonderful thing about us, about canadians" (ibid). i believe this offers a beautiful summary of the ingrained ideal i am trying to locate textually: in the realm of the everyday, the imagined national ideal may in fact deal with insecurity, but it does so with flexibility. this we see reflected again in both the world on stage and the one outside the theatre's doors. in the adventures of ah and ah and the axes of evil, the characters' level of insecurity is treated in a very different way. ali hakim and an ababwa have just arrived in canada from the fictional middle eastern country agraba. both characters display varying degrees of insecurity, but they seem quite aware of their capacity to counter those feelings of uncertainty by staying flexible and performing different behaviours. ali and ali, as a self- reflexive piece of theatre, readily makes use of notions of flexibility and performance. that is, this drama is quite explicit in its treatment of these ideas. for example, at one point in the play, ali ababwa goes into the audience in an attempt to find a spouse. although he presents himself as a heterosexual male, he understands the liberal canadian mindset, stating he could consider marrying a man: "is ok, i am very open-minded" (chai et al ). but the text is not without pointed commentary. although there is a great deal of humour throughout the play, there is also a sense of the truthful cultural stereotyping that still occurs in canada, as in ali ababwa's monologue: typical. you canadians. you're so nice and liberal and i support same-sex marriages and when you walk down the street and see a woman with a dot on her forehead, you think that's pretty cool and maybe you even have dot envy. but when it comes to blue agrabanians, well that's a whole different story now, isn't it? oh, yes you believe blue agrabanians should share the same rights and privileges as you and no you would never discriminate against blue agrabanians and yes you think hate-crimes legislation should be rewritten to include blue agrabanians but do you think blue is sexxxxxyyyy? ( - ). in this speech, ali's insecurities are present, which seem to come about as a result of some accurate ideas about canadian society: ideologically, all cultures are embraced, but in reality prejudice can still be a problem. some canadians would agree with neil bissoondath, who argues in his book selling illusions: the cult of multiculturalism in canada that the government view of cultures as being about festivals is an oversimplification that leads to easy stereotyping ( - ), while others support the mosaic ideal ("multiculturalism"). these are issues that logically affect all postcolonial, multi- hopton cultural nations. and, although the fact that they are being treated with humour suggests the nation has arrived at an awareness of these issues, it does not erase their existence. a canadian audience may recognize the flexible ideal, and this ideal may slowly be coming to fruition, but it still only exists philosophically for some people in canada. insecurity and flexibility become important tropes in the play at other points, as well. the storyline of the play involves ali and ali touring a play. at the beginning, they indicate that they have just arrived at the vancouver east cultural centre, where they are supposed to be presenting, according to duncan, the theatre manager, "an ethnic family drama that offers you a window onto our nation's cultural diversity yet resonates with universal themes [...] to facilitate ongoing dialogue for personal and intercultural exploration" (chai et al ). on the theatre manager's command, ali and ali quickly portray a stereotypical ethnic-style family drama, in which a chinese-canadian boy and his father argue about the difficulties of being bi-cultural. in this, the national insecurity issue is treated quite explicitly, as charlie, the chinese-canadian teenager, angrily exclaims to his father: do you understand what it's like to feel like a fruit - a banana - yellow on the outside, but white on the inside? do you feel your soul ripping because there are two people battling inside of you? [...] i'm a chink and i'm proud!...i'm canadian dammit! ( - ). this dialogue clearly shows the high level of insecurity felt by those who supposedly embody the 'canadian dream' ( ). as sears indicated, it is a difficult position of dichotomy that one must inhabit in order to retain two distinct cultures, but it is a part of being canadian. upon encountering feelings of insecurity, one may combat those feelings by trying something different: remain flexible in order to find a persona that does work - one may even try to 'be both.' furthermore, the fact that this notion has been satirized in a play within a play highlights its significance in the realm of canadian drama. surely, if the idea is being used as fodder for humour, if the scenario is evoked with such ease, it must be a stereotype which is readily available for scrutiny by the audience. were this notion not so heavily ingrained in the minds of the audience, its humour would be lost, and it would appear to be inappropriate ethnic discrimination. the insecurity prevails on another level as well. duncan, the theatre's manager, who makes several appearances throughout the play, is scottish-canadian. it seems that he has lived in canada long enough to have taken on the appropriate level of insecurity and humility. true to stereotypical canadian form, duncan prefaces his audience confrontation hopton with an apology, and then interrupts ali and ali's third ethnic family drama (this one about native canadians). when ali states that duncan, "as a member of the dominant culture...[has] a totalizing and homogenizing gaze that erases difference," the theatre manager quickly and defiantly proclaims that he "won't have tha kind of language in [his] theatre!" ( ). duncan recognizes his role in society; as a canadian, as an immigrant, as a cultural facilitator, he must ensure that he does not offend anyone. this overt caution coupled with the required determination of canadians to obscure their cultural backgrounds, to be both cultures without giving too much credence to either, has instilled in duncan a sense of self-doubt and, thus, insecurity. this becomes most apparent when he is invited to expound on his own scottish history. in telling the story of william wallace, duncan is overwhelmingly passionate and excited; after all, "it's validatin', you know," he says, "to have your own people, their history, their sufferin' up here on the stage" ( ). it is only through due respect being paid to all cultures that duncan believes the play will be successful. duncan's insecurity, brought on by his need to ensure that there is no homogenization occurring, becomes the basis for his guidance of agrabanian actors and their theatrical endeavour. at the end of the play, ali and ali remain in canada. their simultaneous dream can be interpreted in two ways: either there will be a beautiful and peaceful return to their home country of agraba, or they will stay and create their own canadian-agraba. these characters display flexibility, both implicitly in their own perception of the surrounding world and explicitly as they literally perform different identities to perhaps enable them to truly embody the ultimate flexible 'canadian dream' suggested by sears ( ). by staying in canada, they may be able to be both cultures. thus, they will overcome their insecurities by challenging stereotypes and enacting different personas, as necessary. as the most recent and the most self-reflexive play chosen for this study, i would suggest that ali and ali provides the most provocative example of the overlapping imaginary in nation and theatre. the play offers examples of implicit and explicit commentary on the identity crisis brought on by a multi-cultural nation, as well as insightful satire on the delicate relationship between performance, nation and identity. by literally performing different identities on stage, ali and ali are able to evoke a discourse which relates to the political, social and theatrical world. unlike the other plays in this research, the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil literally walks off the stage into the audience, and its characters hopton partake in actual conversation with members of the audience. they are speaking about national identity to "people in real life canada;" in this, i think we see a clear example of the nationalist ideal of flexibility truly working in the realm of the banal, both on stage and off (chai et al ). each of the playwrights presents a unique exploration of canadian identity, with its implications of insecurity and flexibility. logically, in a nation with more than two founding cultures which has been further fractured to multi-cultural, a definitive sense of national identity is difficult to distil. as elucidated by alan filewod, theatre and nation seem to co- exist, maintaining open borders between their practices of performance and notions of insecurity and flexibility. i believe that the imagined ideals that have canadians endowing their stages and their lives with a pervasive nationalism are built on a seemingly contradictory humble pride in the egalitarian model, which is the ideal condition for remaining flexible both in theory and practice. the plays and their playwrights have shown an insecurity indicative of a multicultural nation. the means by which the writers and their characters negotiate these feelings of insecurity is the adoption of flexible identities that enable them to change their perspectives as necessary. in a nation of such great diversity, flexibility seems a logical way to unify. hopton chapter one big alternative happy family having established that the characters in these plays often exhibit a visible level of insecurity, i have suggested that they try to allay those feelings of inadequacy and self- doubt by adopting flexible attitudes. yet although they may disguise or obscure these feelings of uncertainty, their methods do not seem to offer complete fulfillment. relationships provide another means to deal with such insecurity. in each of the plays, we see characters interacting with various social groups, most of which can be seen as an alternative family structure of some kind. these social groups allow the characters to further understand and develop their identities by fulfilling certain emotional needs. i would suggest that, as with their personal mechanisms for coping with insecurity, the characters adopt flexible attitudes within their social groups. moreover, the other group members allow these shifts, as each character subscribes to a similar hope: that maintaining flexible attitudes will allow them the freedom and support necessary to achieve their needs and desires by shifting or changing their roles within the group. the group settings are like a microcosm of the greater world around them: as in the world outside the home, the characters enact various roles depending on the need they are aiming to fulfill. this practice with shifting their positions or behaviours then enables them to function more successfully within the broader society. the family metaphor has long been incorporated into discourse around nation. in both the realm of the everyday and in the world of academia, the nation is often compared to a family. making this comparison is a way for a vast and complex idea, like a nation, to be understood more accessibly. furthermore, the family on stage has often stood as a symbol of the nation, with children reacting to their parents like citizens might behave towards their governments or colonized people might revolt against their colonizers. this metaphor is useful when we consider that the members of a real-life family ideally strive to support one another and harmoniously co-exist. although, as in a nation, this may be more a fantasy than a reality, in working through familial crises members learn more about themselves and each other - and the same can be said for a nation: the hope is that everyone will live together harmoniously. although these notions may exist only in the imagined world, this ideal is part of the mechanism which allows members of a nation to imagine themselves as hopton inherently connected. according to anderson, this "deep... horizontal comradeship" (anderson ) is a key aspect of the alliance of citizens within a nation. like an idealized family, a nation imagines itself as a unified group, maintaining an amicable co-existence. although it involves the promulgation of a sweeping generalization (which has been discussed at length in the past), i will venture to suggest that the families in the plays of this research may operate as allegories for the imagined nation. taking into consideration that these plays are not intended to represent the whole of canadian dramaturgy, it is still noteworthy that they each present an alternative family working to enable and encourage the success of its members, while providing some kind of a home for the group to inhabit. as mentioned, all five plays provide a depiction of a family; none of these families, however, subscribes to the stereotypical nuclear family structure. instead, each provides an alternative family unit which allows the characters opportunities to enact different roles. in jitters, there are two alternative family units available for this discussion - that of the theatre company and that of the play-within-the-play. in both families, characters play multiple roles and make use of the flexible structure to aid in their individual journeys of self-fulfillment. bordertown cafe consists of a more traditionally defined family unit than the theatre company of jitters, in that everyone is related; it consists of single mother marlene and her son who share their daily lives with marlene's parents. these characters all make use of negotiable roles within that family to meet their individual emotional needs. similarly, the family in amigo's blue guitar is somewhat more traditional - there is a father and his two children, but no mother. instead there is an occasionally visiting grandmother and a resident refugee. these characters also enact a variety of roles in their personal pursuits of self-fulfillment. in harlem duet, we see a very loosely constructed family unit, involving both related and unrelated people, in which a grown woman's family consists of her landlady, her brother and his wife and child, as well as a returned absent father and, on the periphery, an ex-husband. finally, the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil features two men who act as family to one another because they are a touring theatre company; they do talk about other family members who exist elsewhere, but they have only each other on a daily basis. ali and ali also physically portray satirical families in the plays-within-the-play. thus, each of the plays provides ample material for discussion about the pervasiveness of the idea of alternative families. in this, i suggest we can consider a correlation between the hopton family on stage and that of a wider canadian society: both imagine themselves as unified harmonious alternative families, which allow for individual and group flexibility. jitters is a backstage comedy, which involves a cast of nine characters: four actors, a playwright, a director and three technicians. the group is working together to produce a new play called the care and treatment of roses. thus, the play involves two alternative families of sorts: the family of theatre workers and the family of the care and treatment of roses. each family has characters playing the roles of parents and children. however, unlike a traditional nuclear family in which single characters enact these roles, the jitters family and the rose family offer greater flexibility, enabling characters to play, for instance, a patriarchal role when interacting with one character, then shifting to inhabit the characteristics of a child when communicating with someone else. these families are also unlike the nuclear family in their composition, possessing several parents at some points, a single parent at others or occasionally no parents at all. perhaps the type of people who exist in the group is what makes this flexible family constitution possible. after all, these are theatre artists, whose livelihoods are based on their ability to play or create make-believe. it is very interesting to note, though, that these alternative family structures exist in both worlds of the play. that is, both playwright david french and the character of the writer in the play, robert ross, have created worlds that make use of these alternative style families. the jitters family provides lots of space for characters to explore their individual identities. george ellsworth, the show's director, is most often found enacting the patriarchal role. george handles his position as the head of the family quite well, ensuring that things are organized and that his family is looked after. his fatherly duties are seemingly endless: every member of the cast and crew consults him at one point or another seeking both his advice and his approval. though the actors try his patience, george calmly addresses each matter brought to him. for instance, one of the actors, phil, complains about virtually every aspect of his costume: the pants, the collar, the shoes, and even the hairpiece that the actor himself requested. in response to this lengthy series of complaints, george simply listens and makes the necessary adjustments. like a father, george recognizes that phil is feeling insecure, and is willing to appease him in order to avoid a conflict, as can be seen in the following exchange: george: then tell wardrobe to take phil's pants away for the run-through. peggy: there's nothing wrong with his pants. hopton george: i know that, but let him think they've been worked on. he'll drive us crazy, otherwise. (french ). in this way, george also reassures the rest of the cast and crew intermittently throughout the play. in a later scene, george's role as the father becomes even more apparent, as he explains the psychology of the actors to the playwright: "...if i spend too much time with jess, he says i'm neglecting him. if i do give him special attention, he gets insecure and says, 'why don't you work with her? she's the one who needs it"* ( ). george is aware that he needs to protect and nurture the egos of the actors in the same way a parent would nurture a child's. furthermore, he recognizes that his actors are very aware of favouritism, which is yet another indication of the family dynamic that exists in jitters. when jessica argues that her complaints about the state of the dressing room "...are legitimate complaints, not the whimsy of some delinquent child," george replies, ironically, "sorry, love, i wasn't aware that i..." indicating that although he plays the role of the father convincingly, he apparently does so unwittingly ( ). this position is not, however, set in stone. when sensing that the situation calls for a different tactic, george is not averse to inhabiting another role, inviting his cast to function on an adult level: "jess, wait, wait. let's not be rash. i know you're upset, but can't we all sit down and discuss this like adults?" ( ). in this, george recognizes that his fatherty role is not necessary or welcome and may be interpreted as patronizing. instead, he chooses to appeal to jessica's rational side, recognizing that an adult would be able to see the potential consequences of hasty decision making, while a child may not have such foresight. furthermore, implying that jessica may be acting like a child could work to insult her just enough to make her recognize that she is behaving childishly, thereby forcing her to remedy the problem and act like a mature and thoughtful adult. thus, we see george quickly shifting from one familial role to another in order to best accommodate the crisis. particulariy adept at shifting from parent to child to sibling is the play's leading lady, jessica logan. when interacting with the director, as previously indicated, jessica, a - year-old woman, often assumes a childlike role, searching for approval and attention from the fatherly george, who, incidentally, is described as years old. on the other hand, when she is in conversation with her acting partner, patrick, she plays a sibling role, battling egos with him to the point of physical threats: "if i were a man, i'd take you outside and pummel you" ( ). clearly, these two have a well-established sibling rivalry. the notion of flexible roles is explored even further, as jessica assumes the role of the mother in the play- hopton within-the-play, the care and treatment of roses. playing a single mother to a grown son who is embarking on a new relationship, jessica is challenged to inhabit yet another set of traits in order to convey her character on stage. in her life offstage, jessica is actually a mother, so surely her role in the care and treatment of roses is made easier for her. however, it is interesting that although she plays a sibling role with patrick, and a child with george, she acts as a mother toward the rest of the cast and crew. when her on-stage son, tom, for example, arrives to a show drunk, jessica, like a concerned mother, helps to dress him backstage. her ability to shift from one role to another enables her to attain what she needs from other people with much greater ease than if she were to act, per se, as a mother to all the company members all the time. this would not allow her fragile ego the stroking it requires from george or the battle she appreciates with patrick. the other major characters of jitters, including robert, patrick, tom, nick and phil, operate in a similar fashion. phil is of particular interest, as a -year-old man about to get married who clearly still receives much nurturing from an overprotective mother. phil shifts from child to sibling, but never quite seems capable of invoking the role of a parent, except in the play-within-the-play, in which phil portrays the ultimate patriarchal figure: a priest. phil seems to have recognized how useful the child role can be in his real life, as it ensures that his ego is stroked regularly and his sense of insecurity is somewhat abated. furthermore, when he gets to inhabit such characters as a priest on stage, perhaps he finds it a cathartic experience in which any fatherly urges he may have are fulfilled. the world of jitters is not ideal: the characters have some difficulty getting along with one another and they are not entirely fulfilled professionally. however, this alternative family does manage to create a successful production of the care and treatment of roses and, when they finish their petty squabbling, they do help each other out. in shifting their attitudes or roles within the family, they are able to connect with one another in different ways. this flexibility of the family structure allows them to attain their personal emotional needs: the theatre company makes it possible for the characters to obtain things that they may not be able to get at home or even on stage. interestingly, alternative family structures exist in all three realms of jitters. i would suggest that billig's notion of banal nationalism is observable in this. the concept of alternative families is so pervasive that it reaches into all three levels of the theatrical world of jitters: on stage in the care and treatment of roses, oft stage in jitters and even hopton beyond the characters' family of the theatre company to the families that they have outside the theatre space. the presence of this idea of alternative families on every level indicates that it is not only significant, but also quite deep-seated. this, in turn, reaffirms its important place in the imagination of the nation. as in the world of jitters, the insecurity that plagues the family of bordertown cafe is difficult to escape. the characters work determinedly to resolve these feelings, partly by enacting different familial roles to assuage that uncertainty. furthermore, like french's alternative families, kelly rebar has created a family structure that does not consist of a father, mother and their children, as in the stereotypical nuclear family. marlene and her seventeen year-old son jimmy live in the back of the little restaurant that she owns, a meagre home in which they have to "scotch-tape the rips in the leatherette..." (rebar ). the cafe is not far from the family farm: marlene's parents maxine and jim live there, and marlene and her son still trek to the farmhouse in order to take a bath. the family seems to function as a single unit most of the time, although the familial roles that each person plays are far from clearly delineated. as jerry wasserman states, the characters of bordertown cafe "operate within an unorthodox family structure where, as [marlene] says, 'we're none of us what we're supposed to be...mom's like my daughter half the time, jimmy's more of a brother " (wasserman ). in working to understand their places in the world, these characters first must attempt to discern their places in the family. the family of bordertown, alberta works hard at everything. whether it is in the cafe or out in the field, these characters put in long days. and they do it with each other. grandad jim acts as a quiet overseeing father figure: his presence may not always be seen, but his advice is certainly observed. jimmy clearly regards his grandfather with great respect, but he also works side by side with him on the farm, almost like a peer. jimmy is trying to gain recognition as an equal contributor to the family. both marlene and maxine work at the cafe while jimmy and his grandfather work the farm. the role of the child is one that is not easily or readily abandoned for many people, particularly in dealing with one's parents. marlene exemplifies this point: she struggles with her insecurity as a single divorced mother who runs a business with her mother, maxine. as a teenaged mother, marlene was forced to grow up very quickly in many ways. ironically, this motherly role is most apparent when marlene is dealing with maxine, as opposed to hopton when dealing with her son. the two women often seem to switch roles, as is evident in marlene's response to her mother's unfruitful search for her camera: [l]t's right here, starin' you in the face...i clean this drawer out one day and you're messin' it up the next and i happen to have a bone to pick with you about this very sort o' thing - you were in my unicorn collection yesterday, it was not how i lef it and you better come clean right now, max. (rebar ). a mother would usually chastise a child in this way, as opposed to a child scolding her mother. marlene and maxine do not perform their inherent roles, but instead choose to trade behaviour patterns; this is most likely due to personality differences, as maxine is the more carefree and exuberant, the more childlike, of the two. however, marlene does assume her prescribed role as a child when she deals with her father. for instance, marlene asks her father to tell jimmy that his american father plans to come to canada to get him, instead of telling him herself: "...dad, please - please will you - so that he knows and everything like that?...i can't talk to that kid, i never could, and you know that" ( ). this statement shows marlene acting as a child with her father - she wants him to deal with an awkward situation instead of confronting it herself. we also see in this marlene's difficulty in acting as a mother to her son: she often plays a role rather like a sibling with jimmy, as opposed to that of a mother. as marlene's insecurity arises, brought on by the feeling that she has failed to provide adequately for her son, her attitude toward jimmy becomes more like a sibling: she and her son argue quite a bit. when jimmy asks if he should take the truck, marlene answers, "see what i care-", a reply that sounds far more like that of a sister to a brother than a mother to her son ( ). such banter exists all through the text, as marlene and jimmy enact these sibling roles. this is due, in part, to the fact that they are close in age - marlene had jimmy when she was seventeen, jimmy's age in the play. although their sibling style behaviour is seen throughout the play, the characters also shift back to mother and son at times. we see this in a scene in which they fight about whether or not jimmy should go to the states with his father: "well, how 'bout tellin' me if i'm comin' or goin' marlene?" says jimmy ( ). marlene tries to regain some sense of authority as she tells her son, "and you can quit callin' me marlene" ( ). jimmy seems to want to retain his sense of sibling equality with his mother by calling her by her first name, but he also has a strong desire to be given advice by his mother: "just tell me what to do," he says ( ). the ability to shift from one role to another hopton with such ease indicates that the characters are making use of the flexibility of their familial structure to get what they need individually. the absence of jimmy's father has surely had an impact on the way the family operates. this is particularly evident in jimmy's rather oedipal behaviour towards his mother, whom, as mentioned, he often refers to as marlene. jimmy is clearly not the average teenage boy: he spends his hard earned money on a pair of diamond earrings for his mother and then uses his summer savings to put a down payment on a bathroom that marlene wants. furthermore, jimmy got himself into a fairly serious car accident because he was daydreaming about "takin' mum to classy restaurants" ( ). finally, at the end of the play, jimmy tells his father that he has "already told mum [he'd] take her to hawaii...figured she'd like to see the place" ( ). in this we see jimmy enacting a partner role with marlene, as opposed to that of a son. clearly, all of the characters in bordertown cafe perform different familial roles in order to achieve their desired goals. though bordertown cafe does not offer the range of alternative families provided by jitters, it certainly presents an atypical family which retains a malleable structure. as in jitters, the family may not be perfect, or even particularly happy, but the characters seem to have developed strategies for attaining what they need or desire from their respective families. they rely on the other members of the group for physical and emotional support, which they obtain by maintaining flexible identities within a flexible familial structure. this relates to hume and durkheim's notion of the self, which they suggest is constantly shifting in reaction to our ever-changing sense impressions of the world around us (edgar ). thus, if individuals are products of their surrounding worlds, it would follow that these characters reflect the canadian world around them: a world that promotes and embraces flexibility. certainly, it would seem that at least the playwright kelly rebar"s impressions of the world around her have made their way into the play. canadian sensibilities seem to encourage flexibility in thinking, with respect to both the individual and the family. on the west coast of british columbia, we encounter another family stretching the boundaries of the typical nuclear definition: amigo's blue guitar features a single father and his two grown children, a visiting grandmother and a live-in refugee from el salvador. as in toronto and bordertown, this alternative family from the gulf islands seems to encourage the characters to shift their roles in the group as they pursue personal fulfillment. in his hopton position as a single father, owen must act as both mother and father to his children, a dual role with which he seems quite comfortable; he is both nurturing and authoritative. in talking about his son, owen claims that he "would walk through hell for sander. if i thought someone was going to harm him or hurt him in any way" (macleod ). but he also seems to act as another sibling to his children occasionally. sometimes, he is more like an older brother with his children, trying to impress them with his story about escaping from the u.s. during the draft and offering dating advice to his daughter callie. in the presence of his mother martha, owen will also revert to his role as a child, continually dredging up his feelings of anger toward his father. depending on the feeling that he wants fulfilled - admiration from his children, attention from his mother or pride as a father - owen will enact the necessary role. his children also enact different roles in accordance with their needs. callie acts like both a sister and a mother to her younger brother sander. having been the only woman in a single-parent house for most of her life, callie logically assumes some parental responsibility in dealing with sander. furthermore, owen works on a fishing boat, so he is surely away for good portions of the year, at which time callie would assume responsibility for her younger brother. she is particularly tough on him with respect to his schooling, acting quite like a concerned and upset mother. but after she hassles him about his choice to drop out of his classes and start taking first aid training, she feels bad: "i can help," she offers, "i can help you with the first aid. school too" ( ). in this parental role, callie is firm but generous with sander. she is also very protective of her brother, yelling at elias when he tries to hurt sander: "don't touch him! don't you go near my brother!" ( ). still at other times, she acts much more like a sibling, telling her father that sander copied an essay from the encyclopaedia. this sibling rivalry is apparent throughout the play: callie is obviously a much better student and sander feels threatened by her success. this younger child role is the most prevalent one enacted by sander; he acts as the somewhat rebellious drifting child with his entire family. only when the family learns that elias has lied to them, requesting his girlfriend marina be sponsored as opposed to his brother, does sander seem to take on a slightly different role. at this point he takes on an older brother role, confronting elias about the pain he has inflicted upon callie. sander physically pushes elias, as he accuses him: "you're a liar!...and callie's got feelings too, you know. you hurt her" ( ). this behaviour shows sander shifting from the petulant, misbehaving younger brother to the protective older brother in order to assert his concern for his sister. this position also enables sander hopton to obtain a sense of power and usefulness, something that he lacks in other areas of his life. clearly, the familial role changes enable each of the characters to work towards fulfilling their varying personal needs at different points in time. in elias, we observe a different phenomenon. i would not suggest that he enacts specific familial roles in the same way that the rest of the family does; he has just arrived and has not yet observed the flexible family dynamic at work. as the newest member of the group, elias is uncertain as to how he should act. furthermore, he is a guest in the home and he has come to canada under difficult circumstances - he fears for his life. owen, sander and callie all treat elias rather like a foster child: they want him to be impressed by his new family and grateful for his surroundings. elias initially accepts this role, displaying much appreciation for his room: "thank you. thank you sander. good night callie" ( ). but after a short time in canada, he chooses not to shy away from the truth. "they are very angry here with the refugees," he tells owen, "...i have no other place to go. eleven countries i am apply to before canada..." ( ). the longer he stays with the family, the more frustrated he gets with their attempt to maintain his status as a victim, as someone who needs to be saved. he recognizes that callie finds validation and excitement by being romantically involved with him and he truthfully confronts her: "this is not a true thing you are wanting...[you do not love me.] you love these terrible things that i remember" ( ). when elias comes to realize that the family does not want him to change his behaviour, to leave his victim status behind, he decides to exploit the family's desire to save, lying to them in hopes of bringing his girlfriend from el salvador. but the family is angered by elias' shifting attitude. "how stupid do you think we are?" ( ), sander asks elias. "did you think [marina would] just walk off the plane one day and grandma would set an extra place for supper?" ( ). the family wants to maintain their right to alter their behaviour as needed, but they are reluctant to allow an outsider the same privileges. in amigo's blue guitar i believe we see an important issue brought to light. if we are indeed looking at these families as allegories for canada, macleod's play highlights a bitter reality: although the ideal may be one big flexible alternative happy family, is such an attitude prevalent in practice? with the shift of the two solitudes to trudeau's cultural mosaic, has the national identity in fact just been further fractured? the insecurity discussed earlier likely stems from this splintered demographic face of canada, and although the imaginary nation longs for acceptance of all cultures, is it actually possible to hopton build a nation of nations? i would suggest that we have seen several examples of banal nationalism at work in these plays, and that ideal does indeed seem to be based largely on the notion of flexibility. although amigo's blue guitar seems to show that the model has not yet been achieved, the play's self-awareness can be seen as a step towards recognizing the imaginary ideal. the big alternative family has not yet figured out how to co-exist entirely, and although there may be too much self-satisfaction gleaned from welcoming refugees, we can see canadians putting forth a very real effort into fulfilling this nationalistic goal. the nationalistic dream of acceptance exists in a very different way in harlem duet, largely because it is set in the u.s.. however, both playwright djanet sears and protagonist billie have strong ties to canada. if, in fact, we accept the presence of the flexible banal ideal as canadian, then the family values in the play seem exemplary. harlem duet investigates yet another way to construct a family unit and allows its members to enact different roles so as to meet individual needs. as a woman in the midst of a divorce, billie clearly needs loved ones around to nurture and love her. the family that acts as her support network consists of people who are both blood relatives and not: her landlady, magi; her sister-in-law, amah; her brother drew; her niece, jenny; her father, canada; and her ex- husband, othello. with each of these people, billie plays a different role; sometimes she is a wife, other times a sister, sometimes she is a child and occasionally she is a mother. moreover, her family members will enact different roles as well depending on their affiliations. as with the families in the other plays, both billie and the family member with whom she is interacting may choose to play more than one role in their communication. for instance, when amah arrives at billie's apartment, she sees billie and, literally like a concerned mother, proclaims, "child, you look so thin," before she sits billie down, like a child, to begin work on her hair (sears ). this scene shows amah and billie physically and emotionally enacting a mother-daughter relationship, with amah standing over billie, directing billie to hold the oil while amah fixes her hair ( ). within the scene, the women talk about amah's daughter. billie asks, "how's my baby?"- it seems she is like a second mother to her niece, with whom she shares special meals and songs ( ). billie even reminisces about a time when she stood with othello, while she held baby jenny: they were approached by a man on the street who referred to them as "[t]he perfect black family," suggesting that billie has always seen herself as a kind of mother to jenny ( ). hopton furthermore, she is quite concerned that jenny does not see her in her present state; billie claims she is "...tired. exhausted...[jenny'd] feel it in me" ( ). this role as a mother to jenny fulfills for billie a position that she would not otherwise have access to, as she miscarried her own baby. so, even while she acts like a child with amah, she is aware of her role as a mother to jenny. this notion is further complicated when magi asks her where she will go if she moves out. billie replies: "i might go stay with jenny" ( ). it seems billie sees her brother's house as a place where she is needed - where her surrogate daughter lives. amah continues to enact her maternal role with billie throughout the play, even at the very end when she visits billie in the hospital. amah gives billie advice about how to begin healing, through forgiveness, and asks how the doctors are treating her. billie, in her wounded emotional state, remains a child with amah in order to fill the role of the absent parent in her life. although billie allows herself to be nurtured like a child by amah, she occupies no such role with her father, canada. instead, she again assumes her more motherly role, which her father recognizes, as evident in his statement to amah, "billie's been taking good care of me" ( ). canada tries to arouse in billie some sentimentality toward her immediate family, reminding her of how difficult it was for him to raise the children after their mother passed away. but billie refuses to enact the child role for her father, opting instead for a position of authority and even some hostility, as she calls to mind a white woman with whom she remembers her father had an affair. she further asserts her independence from her father, suggesting he should not come over the following day. she then refuses amah's offer to visit their home for a meal with her father and responds to his kiss on the forehead as he says, "good to see you, sybil - billie," with an abrupt retort: "well, it certainly was a surprise [to see you]" ( ). later in the play, canada tries again to garner a daughterly response, inviting billie to share a meal with him; upon her refusal, he offers to make her some tea. finally billie bluntly articulates her feelings to her father: i don't -don't need any tea. i don't want anything to eat. i'm fine. i'm sorry. i don't - don't mean...to be like this...but i haven't seen you in god knows how long...and you just show up, and expect things to be all hunky dory. ( ). she is unwilling to participate in canada's dream, in which she forgives him all his past sins and allows herself to become his child again. playing this role would not satisfy billie's need to assert her independence or her feelings of frustration with her father, though she eventually does choose to allow her father to be a part of her life. hopton with othello, billie plays yet another role. his presence clearly incites great passion in billie: anger, sadness, frustration and love. this diverse range of feelings requires a diverse range of roles, and billie enacts several when confronted with othello. she is a chameleon: she is a scorned lover who berates her lost partner, a mother informing her son of his misguided perspective on the world and a sister who has shared in a lifetime of growing up. in each of these roles, billie is trying to assert her control over the situation, though she is not ultimately successful. othello, too, embodies different roles at different points in time in reaction to billie's emotional vicissitudes. but his role as a child is the most notable, as it is brought on by the mere vocal presence of his new lover, mona. in this role, billie realizes how lost her lover is; mona has much more control over othello than she has. i would argue that othello's assumption of this particular role is a turning point in billie's character, which causes her to then enact her role as child for the rest of the play. like a child, she sees the only solution to her problem with othello as revenge. this particular role choice eventually overtakes her life, and billie is placed in a hospital to be cared for by the parental figures of doctors and nurses. perhaps canada's claim, "oh, i don't think i'm going anywhere just yet - least if i can help it. way too much leaving gone on for more than one lifetime already," presents for billie a viable option: she can finally live out her lost childhood ( ). no longer an abandoned child, billie is now free to continue to occupy this role for as long as she may need. john thieme suggests, in an article on harlem duet, "there is a strong sense that billie has the resources to climb back to health [...] because she has a community and an alternative body of discourse on which she can draw" (thieme ). in canada's presence, billie will be able to exhume those misplaced feelings from her childhood, which will finally enable her to move beyond such a reliance on her role as a child. with the help of this family, billie will hopefully move past her nervous breakdown and emerge as a newly revitalized woman. the family of harlem duet has certainly taken advantage of their flexible boundaries. without judgement, these characters seem able to alternate between child and parent for one another in order to help their fellow members attain personal fulfillment. as in the other plays discussed, the alternative structure of the family immediately gives licence to individuals who may need to enact other roles to achieve what they want or need. i believe that the acceptance of such flexibility in individual roles stems from the absence of the traditional nuclear family structure. for example, in the absence of a biological mother, as we have seen in amigo's blue guitar and harlem duet, other characters must assume the hopton role, whether it be for moments, months or years. clearly, it would seem that callie often enacts this role for sander, while amah generally plays mother to billie. the absence of such figures or addition of new ones invites other characters to explore themselves further and shift between different personas. thus, the alternative family structure enables or encourages the flexibility of familial roles. in considering the allegorical argument, i must also address the fact that sears' play takes place in the united states. however, as previously indicated, billie's upbringing occurred mainly in canada, where she lived with her father, brother and grandmother. this early introduction to an alternative family structure enables the characters of harlem duet to take advantage of such an education. the flexible ideal prevails throughout the play: billie's desire for a traditional nuclear family has been dashed. the only family that works for her, historically and currently, is a flexible alternative one. in this, we see the imaginary reinforced, as billie releases her dream of a nuclear family in order to begin seeking out a new one. in showing the potential success of this imagined community, we see hope for the nation as an imagined community; with its boundaries intact but able to shift, its citizens are able to change as well. in the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil, the imagined community exists in yet another way. it is certainly interesting to note that in the fifteen years between amigo's blue guitar and ali and ali, the ideal is now one that can be satirized. i believe that the satire in this play belies some truth about cultural stereotyping, as suggested in the previous chapter, but the flexible alternative ideal does seem to have become fully entrenched in the realm of the banal in a different way. no longer is this an issue of such contention. that is, the ideal has been so ingrained in our everyday lives that it is now something at which we may laugh. we have tried so hard to indoctrinate the citizens of canada with a message of tolerance, flexibility and acceptance that it can be satirized. the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil presents several different family structures. in their interaction with one another, the protagonists generally act as congenial siblings. we see this relationship quite clearly from the beginning of the show as ali ababwa cajoles ali hakim into telling a funny joke about a leprechaun, suggesting that only ali hakim can tell it properly. in this, the two inhabit brotherly roles, with ali ababwa acting like a younger brother who is slightly in awe of his elder sibling. the familial roles shift, hopton however, as ali hakim assumes a fatherly role toward ali ababwa. like a child to his parent, ali ababwa requests that ali hakim take a look at his sore bum. ali hakim does so and then replies as an authoritative father: "you fool of a copt, i have told you: do like the sammis. use hand and water technique. but you rub and rub and scrape your delicate pink asshole with harsh papers. it is small wonder"(chai et al ). the two men are so intimate that one can perform parental duties for the other. then they will shift from this parent-child kind of interaction back to sibling roles, arguing with much frequency, and they comfortably tell one another to shut up without causing substantial rifts in the relationship. after being confronted by duncan, the theatre manager, about the inappropriateness of their oval office puppet show, ali and ali begin to fight more pointedly. the two engage in a series of alternating blame assignments after neither of them will confront the theatre manager about their pay: ali hakim: why didn't you say something? ali ababwa: why didn't you? why must it always be me who does the saying? ali hakim: you? (in agrabanian) i always have to get the money. ali ababwa: no, ali hakim. i tell you. here i am speaking the english. ali hakim: pah! i am always attaining the money. who made warlord certify cheque in congo? ali ababwa: who pawned watch to bury friday kim chee? ali hakim: who bribed the guards in camp in axerbijan? and who bought passports to get out of jerkiistan? ali ababwa: (remembering audience) ali hakim...little camels have big ears... ali hakim: them - pah! they don't know what's going on. they think this is part of show. ali ababwa: arguing this way will not help us obtain money we are owed from manager. ( - ). in this scene, ali and ali argue like siblings: they blame one another while trying to assert their own personal worth. they seem to be engaging in a power struggle, which is common amongst siblings. although the men are quite brazen with each other, there seem to be no lasting feelings of anger and they are able to move on to more important things without grudges interfering. forgiving and forgetting are more important than winning the argument, when there are more vital things at stake, like money. furthermore, their sibling unity is apparently more valuable than their petty arguments. this is seen most clearly at the end of the play, when ali hakim has fallen asleep. ali ababwa says gently to the audience, "when hopton you decide to go, please leave quietly as ali hakim is sleeping" ( ). ali ababwa feels a responsibility to his partner, his brother, and wants to ensure that his sleep is not disrupted. their final and most significant union is apparent in the fact that the men share a mutual dream of a beautiful and peaceful future, in which they will live with the rest of their families. within ali and ali, there are other family constellations explored as well. of great significance is the family portrayed in the plays-within-the-play - the ethnic family dramas. in all three versions of the play, chinese, russian and native canadian, a family is parodied. these dramas poke fun at the canadian prevalence of family dramas, like the mercer plays of david french. furthermore, they serve as satirical examples of the perpetual reinforcement of multiculturalism. these notions of flexible alternative families have been so firmly entrenched in the realm of the banal that they have become something laughable. in each of the ethnic family dramas, the son is struggling to assert his independence from his father and his father's culture. the son attempts to challenge his father's perception by venting his frustration and angst, disclaiming his first culture and assigning blame to his father. in doing this, the son is trying to switch roles with his father and inhabit the parental position of authority. initially, the father reacts violently, calling upon his own story of struggle and despair endured in order to get to canada. eventually, however, the father recognizes the son's words as truth, and he gives in to his son's desire. here is a unique example of the familial role switching: the characters concurrently seem to embody both parent and child roles. only in sharing this common view can the men reconcile their differences. moreover, in this moment of shared identity the men find the most satisfaction, undergoing both a purgation and fulfillment of emotions simultaneously. their individual insecurities are subverted by their moment of true unity. unfortunately, this is an impossible role to continually inhabit because of its dialectic nature, and in each of the ethnic family dramas the father's accidental killing of the son shatters this ephemeral moment. the son cannot usurp the father's position, nor can the father bear the anguish and guilt inflicted by the death of his son. in the end, both characters must die as they are unable to return to their initial identities. only in death are they able to maintain their shared perspective. ali and ali enact their various familial roles as a means of filling the holes left by their own missing families. ali hakim, though married with children, is separated from them. he has also lost touch with his sister due to the ongoing violence in his hometown of agraba hopton city. and religious police murdered ali ababwa's love, souad. as a result, the men have to look to one another for everything that a family would provide. they inhabit different roles at times in order to meet their emotional and physical needs. moreover, in the ethnic family dramas, another level of familial role-playing occurs. ali ababwa and ali hakim each take turns playing the son to tim's father, until the final play in which ali ababwa plays the father and ali hakim plays the son. they have each briefly occupied the role of the son, and ali ababwa, who does not have children or enact a fatherly role with ali hakim, takes on the character of the father. in these shifts, ali and ali are able to explore different facets of their own identities; they seek an eventual arrival at a comfortable concept of self. until they are reunited with their families, ali and ali must act as the primary social unit for one another, embodying all the necessary familial roles. the concept of alternative families seems quite pronounced in each of these plays. acting as the key social group for the characters, the family constellation shifts and changes regularly in accordance with its members' individual needs. as they seek personal fulfillment, the characters choose to embody different roles within the family unit. whether composed of a theatre company, grandparents, parents, children, refugees, neighbours or friends, there is an alternative family structure that works for these characters. in these malleable social groups, characters are able to enact different familial roles to fulfill their personal needs. such flexibility would not likely be available in a more typical nuclear family; thus, in these less traditional family groupings, characters are better able to challenge their insecurities and negotiate their identities. returning to the argument for allegorical representations of canada, i would certainly suggest that we may in fact see these plays as banal reinforcements of the national ideal. if canada is to fulfill its proclaimed destiny as a peaceful multicultural nation, it will surely have to observe the type of attitudes that we see occurring in these five plays. furthermore, i find it intriguing to see that, chronologically, the plays indicate an increasing level of tolerance and acceptance of the flexible ideal. whether or not these families really do represent an allegorical portrait of canada is most definitely debatable; however, the prevalence of such alternative structures and the increase of their presence in the realm of the banal does suggest that these open-minded attitudes represent an ideal that canadians will continue to strive to fulfill. ali and ali show us that we are not quite there yet - there is still some work hopton to be done in moving from philosophical to practical acceptance, but the continued reinforcement of such ideals certainly breeds hope for their actualization ( - ). hopton chapter : home is where the boundaries can shift thus far, the characters of jitters, bordertown cafe, amigo's blue guitar, harlem duet and ali and ali and the axes of evil have shown themselves to be people of change. an underlying sense of insecurity leads them to display various behaviours to allay feelings of insecurity; they also enact different roles within their family groups. we have seen various examples of the characters maintaining flexible notions of themselves and those around them in an attempt to fulfill their personal needs. the ubiquity of the flexible ideal throughout the texts suggests that it is a model of billig's banal nationalism. the omnipresence of this idea works to reinforce for canadians, those in the plays and in the audiences, their affiliation with the imagined community. furthermore, this idea truly does seem entrenched in the theatrical world. in accordance with filewod's book, the dramatic texts present "the nation [indeed being] enacted in the imaginary theatre" (filewod). it would seem that canadian nationalism and theatre are mutually mimetic: each community maintains ideas of national identity, and both work to support the continuation of such an idea in the other domain. of course, in a population that consists of over , , people, / of whom consider themselves immigrants, flexibility is to be expected in order to maintain peace in the nation. one must be willing to accept new cultures and the changing face of the nation. but promoting the maintenance of those cultural differences is not necessarily the ideal to all nations. simply by comparing the (admittedly cliched) metaphors of the canadian mosaic and the american melting pot, we find a clear disconnect. without assigning judgement to either, i would assert that these divergent metaphors offer much insight into the national identities of these two countries. after all, "[c]ommunities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined" (anderson ). that is, whether or not the ideas are truly practiced in either nation is less important than the fact that they are foundational ideas in the realm of the national banal. the existence of such metaphors, mosaic or melting pot, in the language of the everyday suggests that they are an important means by which a nation distinguishes itself from others. and the continual reiteration of ideas like flexibility in the theatre, offers a fine example of banal nationalism at work, being disseminated and reinforced. so, if the imagined community of canada hopton contains the mosaic metaphor and this idea requires flexibility, then the regular reiteration of this idea in the theatre suggests that flexibility does indeed seem to be ingrained in the realm of the banal. the flexible mosaic does seem to prevail in the plays. first of all, some of the playwrights were born outside of canada but have come to make canada their home. secondly, all of the plays feature characters from different countries with various ethnic backgrounds; these characters are also trying to make canada their home. people come to canada for a myriad of reasons, including political asylum and a high quality of life. but newcomers to canada sometimes attest to the country's dullness, and the characters in these plays are often plagued by similar feelings - there is much more glamour to be found south of the t h parallel. fortunately, canada's physical beauty, liberal policies and democratic government system outweigh its tendency to be boring, and the characters recognize this, choosing to opt for safety and comfort instead of risking the dangers inherent in leaving. furthermore, in each drama, we observe characters in pursuit of home. the home that they desire is capable of accommodating many different people, both related and not, who then find ways to make theatres, houses and cafes become their homes. through their negotiation of individual and familial identities, the characters test the spaces they inhabit, requiring them to operate as places of home and work, rest and play. all of the plays are set in spaces which exist on or near borders, both physical and psychological. these border places, where it seems "reality is something neither innate nor absolute," allow the characters to discern their own realities, shifting their perceptions and ultimately finding a home in canada (wasserman ). the setting in each of the plays is a home of some kind. whether the characters are visiting, staging or living in these spaces, they all somehow represent home. the idea is inherent in both the dramatic text and in the staging: it is a vital notion both thematically and visually, as all of the characters work to negotiate their individual identities in pursuit of a place they may call home. this is the fundamental quest of each of the characters: to create or find a home. that home will surely be comprised of a physical space to inhabit, a house perhaps, but it will also involve the national location of that house. furthermore, home will involve the psychology that prevails in that immediate space, the values of the family, and its vaster placement, the values of the nation. but home is more than just a geographical or philosophical location: ideally, it is a place in which one feels at ease, a hopton place of family, of rest, of food, of communication, of safety. home is both a specific physical space in which one may comfortably rest, eat and feel safe, and a portion of the larger world, in which one subscribes to the majority of political and social values upheld by a specific nation. finding this place will provide fulfillment; it is an omnipresent goal for all of the characters in each of the plays. perhaps part of the reason that 'home' is difficult for the characters to locate is due to the seeming liminality of the spaces which they inhabit: the notion of being in-between presents potential complications. the historically fractured identity of canada may have initiated the national identity crisis, but the physical proximity to the u.s. and the constant influx of american popular culture has surely compounded the dilemma. this idea is apparent in all of the plays. each of the plays occurs in a liminal space because of their proximity to the canadian-american border. furthermore, each of the plays is set specifically in another liminal space: jitters takes place in a theatre/home, bordertown cafe in a cafe/home, amigo's blue guitar in a refuge/home, harlem duet in a lab/home and ali and ali in a theatre/home. but the space along the border does not have to be one of tortured dichotomy. instead, as homi bhabha writes, "[tjhese 'in-between spaces provide terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood" (bhabha ). this seems to be what happens in these plays: the liminal space provides the ideal conditions for space to be transformed: if nothing is fixed, then it can surely be changed. as mentioned, the plays are set in cafes, theatres, apartments and houses, within specific towns and cities; these physical spaces may be geographically real or fictitious, or even a combination of both, but their national location is not so fluid: they take place in either the united states or canada. references to location are explicit and numerous in all of the plays. surely this is in part because, as stated in a footnote of the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil, site-specific references are important: "people love that shtick" (chai et al ). by 'shtick,' i believe that the playwrights mean that people love to hear the names of their cities, provinces and country in the world of the play. this creates a sense of unity among all those present - like at a rock concert, the audience is welcomed specifically, inviting a feeling of camaraderie amongst the members of the audience and the performers. for example, in the opening of ah and ali, the characters greet the "people in real life canada" ( ). furthermore, setting the plays in specific places helps to orient the audience. moreover, geographically precise places locate the characters in the vaster world. a bond is hopton formed between the world on stage and that of the audience, which now extends out to the vaster world beyond the theatre. the bond is strengthened through the use of a domestic domain which is easily recognizable. the plays are all located in a specific town or city. this space operates, to some extent, as both a place of home and work in all of the plays. for a theatre company, the theatre space becomes a kind of home, as during rehearsals and the run of a production, people embody other lives which only exist while at the theatre. jitters is set in a small theatre in canada's biggest city, toronto. all of the actors and crew seem to feel quite comfortable in the space - they nap, drink coffee and eat sandwiches in the green room, which acts as a sort of makeshift living room. a second domestic domain exists on stage, in the play-within-the-play, where the set is the interior of a home. this feeling of homey surroundings encourages the familial behaviour discussed previously: characters feel comfortable in these spaces, which makes it possible for them to shift their roles in the family as needed. the theatre space is serving dual purposes for these characters, as the company partly lives in this space and also conducts business there. this overlap of business and home allows for an interesting dynamic, as it enables the characters to be perhaps more comfortable at work but less able to relax at home. kelly rebar's play also subscribes to such a malleability of space. set in southern alberta in a fictional place called bordertown, the action occurs in a cafe, with its backroom living area visible during the first act, while the cafe portion acts as the setting for the second act. the cafe encourages fellowship, as a domestic space for cooking and eating for its customers and the family that occupies it. the family in amigo's blue guitar lives in a more traditional home than a partly converted cafe, though its location on one of the gulf islands, "a short ferry ride from vancouver" (macleod ), also makes it a bit different than the average mainland canadian home. most of the action occurs inside the family house, in either elias' room or the living/dining room, with a few scenes set outside on the beach in front of the house. the interior setting is again a domestic space, in which cooking, eating and fellowship occur. these spaces do not technically act as work spaces in the same way as that of the theatre or the cafe, but the characters do study for school, and owen's boat, which is his livelihood, is docked right outside the house, so the area does have more than one function. the settings in harlem duet have an even greater overlap, as three distinct spaces (a front stoop, a tiny dressing room and an apartment), each from different time periods, exist simultaneously; all three spaces involve ideas of both work and home. the central focus of hopton the play (and the space to which i will give the most attention), however, is billie's small apartment in harlem, new york. billie, like a secretive dr. frankenstein, uses her kitchen as a lab in which to concoct mysterious herbal potions, meant to poison her ex-lover. in this again, we witness a character using a domestic space to function dually as a place of home and work. finally, rest, play and work also occur in the theatrical 'home' of the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil. it becomes, at different points in time, a kitchen, the oval office, an auto-racing track and a makeshift campsite. as in each of the other plays, the characters use the space as both a means of employment and as a home. the theatre is indeed a theatre in ali and ali-ihe characters ensure that the audience knows this - but the evocation of other spaces, like the brief scenes in the parodied kitchen and the camp-out scene at the play's end, creates the necessary home environment. the domestic space, both of the nation and the home, is somehow unsatisfactory, but it is safe and has the potential to be fulfilling because of its flexibility. the plays are set in a home, though it is not the ideal home that the characters would like it to be. for the characters in jitters, their theatre acts as a home. this is because none of the characters seems to have a true home elsewhere: patrick is divorced and lives alone in an apartment, jessica makes reference to grown children, but no husband or partner, phil lives with his mother and tommy is a young adult who attends his father's second marriage during the course of the play. yes, these characters live in homes outside the theatre, but they are all somehow incomplete or lacking in what might traditionally be termed ideal: a house, with a partner and children. thus, the theatre is a home away from home. though it may provide some comfort, this small canadian theatre will never provide the riches and fame that could be available to them if they were acting in the states. it is a place where they cannot afford a prompter, and even if they could, "the theatre's too small. a prompter would be heard in the last row" (french ). furthermore, their home is in canada, a place where, as patrick sarcastically claims, you can "be a top-notch actor and still die broke and anonymous" ( ). clearly the fact that their home theatre is physically and economically limited, and located in canada, indicates to the characters that it may never be like their dreams of broadway. there is, however, a flip side to this. although new york could be infinitely more glamorous, the stakes are a great deal higher - success could be greater, but so could failure. in canada, one does not have to face such devastating hopton disappointment and as patrick explains: "i make a damn good living here. i have my pick of roles. i might not be star, but who is in this country? not everyone feels the compulsion to outshine" ( ). when the successful american producer does not appear to see the care and treatment of roses, the company accepts its less than thrilling fate, but they are ready and willing to forge ahead together in the production in their small canadian home. although the characters have talked about the arrival of bernard feldman through the entire script, in the last few moments of the play they suddenly decide to accept their canadian fates. toronto will have to suffice, though new york may continue to beckon quietly from the wings. it is also important to consider the idea of the space that the cast of jitters inhabits. the theatre is ultimately a place of creative imagination; thus it is logical that the characters in this play are able to perform different identities. in the same way, they are able to re- imagine their domain. the theatrical space, by its nature, maintains a high degree of flexibility. so the characters can shift their perspectives, if necessary, and make the space what they want or need it to be. the canadian theatre may not be perfect, but it is home. the small canadian 'home,' in jitters, when placed in comparison with the potential glamour and sheer size of the united states, does seem rather lacklustre. this is also true for the characters of bordertown cafe, who live out an existence that seems composed entirely of work in a small prairie town. although rebar's bordertown is fictional, it bears a strong resemblance to the small towns located around her hometown of lethbridge, alberta. having spent four years in lethbridge and two summers working in the small town of fort macleod, just west of lethbridge, i saw a strong resemblance between the cafe of bordertown and the greyhound station cafe of fort macleod, where the same waitresses worked every day, and most of the customers were tourists or travellers just passing through town. i believe that the play is set in a fictional place so that rebar can highlight what is a reality for most canadians: close proximity to the united states. when canada seems boring, the glitter and glamour of the united states is nearby, taunting people to cross over that undefended border and embrace a new life - one that promotes "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," as opposed to "peace, order and good government." like in jitters, the characters are unsatisfied with the current state of their home, with respect to both its physical makeup and its dull surroundings. marlene's teenaged son, jimmy, is looking hopton forward to the possibility of leaving with his american truck-driving father. jimmy expounds on his excitement to marlene: a guy would have to be a fool not to wanna go on those hauls - those hauls are the highlight of my life! ...how many of my friends get to ride in a truck higher'n any old building we got around here? ...the life of a trucker, and i mean, i bin there and i know, it's better than anything you can learn in school... gives me a chance to get outta here, see for myself there's somethin' besides nothiri out some people's windows. nothin' that's what i got to look at. we live smack-dab in the middle of nowhere - correction, the canadian side of nowhere...we're sittin' in this cafe like we're stuck in the muck. (rebar - ). obviously jimmy is dissatisfied with his home - the physical space in which he showers, eats and sleeps, as well as the vaster national surroundings. he is not alone in this sentiment, as marlene expresses her own displeasure at several points throughout the play; she feels unhappy about her working situation and the home that she inhabits in the back of the cafe, which does not even have a proper bathtub. these characters continually complain about the inadequacy of their home, often making comparisons to the better life that surely exists just on the other side of the border. eventually, however, marlene is reconciled to her feeling that her home is inadequate. as she says, "i didn't wanna buy the mathison house. i wanted to stay here" ( ). although it may have problems, the cafe is her home. several heated debates ensue during the play about the dullness of canada as compared with the magic of the states, spearheaded by jimmy's american grandmother and her talk of "fairs bigger'n anything you'd ever find up here [in canada]" ( ). but in the end, grandad's arguments trump grandma's: he paints a picture of a more exciting canada. when grandad was younger, in halifax during prohibition, they could not get any liquor, so "we rioted...until they threw me in the clinker" ( ). suddenly, canada does not seem quite as boring to jimmy anymore. furthermore, grandad's speech about chasing after something only if it is truly worthwhile forces jimmy to examine his relationship with his father a little more closely ( ). he decides to assert himself with his father, telling him that he "can't sit around here waitin' for you to show up" ( ). between this and grandad's generous compliment, "you... do a good day's work, jimmy. i - well, i want you to know i'm proud of you," jimmy realizes that his home is in bordertown, where he can play hockey, work the land and take pride in both his family and in canada ( ). the canadian home is hopton again portrayed as flexible: it operates as a dichotomous place of work, rest and play, of comfort and discomfort. the characters provide for one another a shift in perspective: they are reassured that home may not be glamorous, but it can fulfill every need in its malleable form. the liminal spaces of both the cafe and the town provide ideal conditions in which to re-imagine surroundings: this cafe/home located along the border is capable of transforming in the minds of its inhabitant. thus, home is fulfilling because of its ability to remain flexible which, in turn, allows the characters to remain flexible as well. the home in macleod's play is flexible, as well, though its possibilities are not realized within the scope of the text. set on an island off the southwest coast of british columbia, the house in amigo's blue guitar is also a place for re-imagining. like bordertown, the small island is somewhat segregated from city life. i would suggest that the characters of amigo's blue guitar occupy a literally liminal space: it is surrounded by the ocean and on the coast 'in-between' vancouver, canada and the united states. but unlike the characters in jitters and bordertown cafe who manage to find some degree of satisfaction with their homes, the outcome for the family in british columbia is not so optimistic. the house belongs to owen, an american draft dodger who lives with his two grown children. for owen, canada was initially a place to escape the draft in his home country of the united states. thus, it was a place for him to re-imagine himself and create a safe new life. the house itself is apparently rather rustic, featuring a woodstove, because, as martha says, "owen wouldn't be modern" (macleod ). the simplicity is surely a symptom of owen's tendency to romanticize his life, as can be seen in his description of his flight from the states to canada. sander claims that his father is "always making it sound like the berlin wall or something," indicating that the experience was not as traumatic as owen likes to suggest ( ). the simple surroundings in which the family lives can be seen as the quintessential backdrop for owen's romanticized life. but, living in a house with a woodstove also suggests that he needs the space to be transformable -- to straddle the world between the past and the present. furthermore, owen's livelihood, his fishing boat, is stored at the house, where he can work on it. again, we see a character finding dual uses for his house. this reaffirms the notion of flexibility as an imagined ideal, which owen is attempting to practice and absorb into his habitus. his home is a refuge and a space that can be transformed to serve multiple purposes as needed. hopton sander also sees their family home as a refuge and a flexible space. having absorbed information from his father "who's always going on about how hard it was being booted out of [his] own country," sander has sponsored a refugee from el salvador - a refugee, as sander tells his father, who is going to live "with us. isn't that great?" ( ). sander claims that he is "concerned with saving other people's lives" ( ). clearly, he is hoping to find validation in helping elias, and believes that his liberal canadian home is the perfect place to which elias can escape. sander perceives his family's home as a place of refuge and his country as a place of flexibility - a place where refugees are safe and welcomed; after all, his father was allowed to remain in canada. sander assigns blame for the problems of the world to the united states, telling his grandmother that "[i]t's the americans who are responsible for [elias ] going to jail, his being tortured, his having to run away" ( ). canada is a place where refugees can live peacefully. but canada, with its employment assistance and english classes for immigrants, is not a perfect place. and for those who have not been properly indoctrinated with the philosophies of the imagined nation, canada is simply one of many countries that will accept refugees ( ). elias came to canada because he had to — "i am afraid of my house," he says, "please let me come" ( ). with its liberal policies and mosaic metaphors, the real world of canada still struggles to move beyond an ideological haven to a real home for new immigrants. sander wants to be a hero: he knows "how good you feel when you're filling out the goddamn forms" ( ) to sponsor refugees. unfortunately, elias is not as grateful as sander wants him to be; sander seems incapable of understanding that elias is in canada not because he wants to be, but because he truly has "no other place to go" ( ). canada may be a physical place of safety, but elias still dreams of the terrible torture he endured in el salvador: "i am try very hard to not let the bad dream go outside me" ( ), he tells sander. for elias, "canada is alright," but it is not the haven that sander believes it is. this is most interesting as it suggests that sander, a canadian, has had the notion of flexibility reinforced with such regularity that he truly believes this ideal is a reality and has a hard time understanding why elias cannot find home in canada ( ). it seems that the community of canada may imagine itself to be a mosaic, but the imaginary has not yet been fully realized. the reinforcement of this flexible ideal in the realm of the banal is extremely important: regardless of whether it has yet been achieved, the presence of such a notion in the imaginary suggests that it is a goal of the citizens. repeating the idea will hopefully move it hopton beyond a philosophy to eventually exist in practice, so that maybe someday elias will be able to call canada home. canada was home to billie for a portion of her childhood and its impact seems to be indelible. in harlem duet, three separate locales and eras exist simultaneously, and in each of these, the characters are working to determine whether their home is suitable. in harlem duef time is a fundamental aspect of the setting, continually reminding us of the powerful impact of history upon the present. the historical settings feature characters on the stairs outside a blacksmith's forge in and a tiny dressing room in , while in the contemporary world, billie's story unfolds in her small apartment in harlem. as the majority of the play occurs in billie's world in the present, i will focus this discussion on that setting. in the contemporary portion of the story, we see a character who seeks home, as the space she inhabits can no longer change enough to meet her needs. like bordertown cafe and amigo's blue guitar, harlem duet is also set in a space which is quite literally liminal. billie lives in "a renovated brownstone, at the corner of martin luther king and malcolm x boulevards" -- her home is situated in a place of ubiquitous dichotomy, somewhere between peaceful integration and violent black pride (sears ). and these divergent ideologies haunt the apartment, as we see in the heated arguments between billie and her ex-husband othello. after othello left her for another woman, billie stayed in their apartment, but she can no longer endure the pain of being reminded of him. "i'm moving on," billie says, "i don't want anything that's - that was ours" ( ). for her, the apartment has become a constant reminder of all that she has lost and cannot reclaim. its liminality is no longer useful to her: without othello, these arguments become soliloquies, incapable of finding even momentary resolutions. as with the characters in all of the other plays, billie also uses this space for both home and work. it is home in the sense that she will eat, sleep, bathe and feel safe in this space, and it is a place for work when she does research for her master's degree or conducts experiments and concocts mixtures in her kitchen. like the characters in ontario, alberta and british columbia, billie requires her space to serve various purposes depending on her immediate needs. that is, it must remain a flexible space in which she may carry out whatever business she wishes. hopton unfortunately, this space is simply not flexible enough to allow billie to live. in conversation with me, jerry wasserman has suggested that billie is a child of canada, literally and figuratively, so perhaps she has been driven insane by her life in the u.s. this seems quite plausible when we consider the opposing ideologies of the u.s. and canada; canada may not be a true haven for all cultures and ethnicities, but it did begin to abolish slavery a full seventy years before the u.s. ("underground railway"). as proposed in this research, canada seems prone to banal reiterations of nationalism that are rife with the notion of canada as a flexible, multicultural, liberal place. thus, if billie was raised in canada, then she would have had a great deal of exposure to such ideas and would be subconsciously troubled by the dialectical nature of her harlem home: she does not want to assimilate into the white world like the name of her street, martin luther king jr. suggests, and with whom othello agrees. furthermore, having grown up with an alcoholic, somewhat absent father and without a mother, billie likely struggled to find peace with the notion of family. but when she and othello shared the apartment, shared a dream to have a family, billie was able to abate those feelings of uncertainty about family. the couple also shared conversations about their different perspectives - and as long as othello was there, they could engage in dialogue. thus the apartment existed as a potential place of change. but othello could not endure the pressure that he seemed to feel in their home. after a particularly heated debate between him and billie, othello angrily asserts: i prefer white women [...] we'd make love and i'd fall asleep not having to beware being mistaken for someone's inattentive father [...] and not be confused with every lousy lover, or husband that has ever left them lying in a gutter of unresolved emotions. it's the truth. to a black woman, i represent every black man she has ever been with and with whom there is still so much to work out. ( ). in some ways, othello's words hold some truth for billie: she has unresolved issues with her father and she has surely ascribed some of her father's faults to her husband. when othello leaves, the apartment is no longer a place for her to discuss and change; as opposed to this home being an in-between place of privilege, in which selfhood can be explored and shifted, it has become a place of singularity. without othello, there is again no family, and there is only one side to the arguments. billie is no longer able to imagine alternative possibilities: the boundaries are no longer flexible. "i'm thinking about heading back [...to canada] myself," billie tells her father ( ). if home is, as previously discussed, a place of flexibility, security and comfort, then billie has hopton ascribed those values to canada because she can no longer find them in the u.s. billie cannot find fulfillment in her domestic space, her city or her nation, and thus she must continue to dream. "canada freedom come," she says to her sister in law, "i wanna be free;" from this, i would suggest that once billie is well enough, she may possibly return to canada ( ). or perhaps billie says these words as a kind of invocation: she remembers the imagined community of canada, with its ideal of flexibility, and she hopes that this ideology may someday come to occupy the imaginary united states - this will set her free. either way, billie's quest for home can be seen as incomplete. her journey has been from one liminal space to another: her apartment has lost its liminality with the absence of her husband, so she has been moved to a new in-between world, the hospital. here, billie is not alone and people will help her to re-imagine her life - she may test the boundaries of this space in her quest to find fulfillment of the self. as the play ends, billie and her father sit together and he takes her hand. the two sing "spanish harlem" together suggesting that something beautiful will indeed result from this difficult experience. like a rose that can grow in spanish harlem, if billie remains flexible she will find a place to feel beautiful. the play's ending is hopeful — billie will find a new home, one founded on the ideals of flexibility. she has not arrived yet, but she is on her way there. unlike billie, ali and an have definitely arrived and they are able to make home wherever necessary, as they, like the cast of jitters, occupy the most flexible space of all: the theatre. the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil deals with place in an entirely different way. this is a self-reflexive play, and place is most certainly important: physically and psychologically, the world of the play exists in a theatre space. the characters make reference to the space they inhabit, actually going so far as to change dialogue in order to accommodate the specific theatre and city in which the play is being performed. this acute spatial awareness is made clear to the audience immediately, as the play opens with a voice-over, rather like the opening of a rock concert: fresh from their sold-out tour of east monrovia and the jungle encampments of congolese bauxite smugglers...are you ready, mogadishu? butt out your cigars and wipe the buckets of sweat from your really really black brows, put your stumps and prostheses together and give a great big clash of civilizations welcome to ali and ali! (chai et al ). like a rock concert, this play does not try to suggest that it is anything other than a play. this abrupt immersion orients the audience and supplies a great deal of information about hopton the place of the play. once on stage, ali and ali quickly recognize the inaccuracy of their introduction to the audience. ali ababwa claims, "we know you're not somalia," followed by ali hakim's statement that "we know where we are" ( ). within the first fifteen minutes of the play, the characters make reference to their present location, saying, "hello people in real life canada...and thank you for coming to vancouver east church basement," at which point in the script we discover the footnote referred to earlier in this chapter ( ). the playwrights state, "this was a site-specific reference for the vancouver east cultural centre. in toronto, at theatre passe muraille, we said: 'thank you for coming to theatre past its prime'. in montreal and edmonton, something else" ( ). in doing this, the play establishes its self-reflexivity and forms an alliance with the audience, who feel included by this specific reference. there are no pretences exercised to indicate that ali and ali expect their audience to suspend their disbelief as to the location of the world on stage: it is simply the stage and is subject to change according to the scene. throughout the play, the characters make reference to canadian politics, society, ideology and public figures. clearly, these characters have either spent significant time studying canada or they have been in the country for quite a while. either way, the implications are intriguing. citing the banal reinforcements of nationalism once again, i would suggest that if these characters have been exposed to enough canadian culture to be able to make jokes and create entire parodied scenes about it, they have been exposed to the omnipresent canadian ideal of flexibility. this can be seen in their behaviour towards the space they inhabit. as in jitters, the theatre acts as the central setting and the characters treat the theatre as a place of home, in which they may conduct work. these traveling performers from the middle east use the small canadian theatre in which they are performing to entertain, make money, (attempt to) eat, rest and bask in a safety unknown in their home country. although the characters are not entirely successful in their quest for each of these things, their efforts suggest that they are indeed using the theatre as a home of sorts, as they try to abate their dreams of returning to their dangerous home country of agraba. this would suggest that ali and ali have already adopted the highly regarded canadian attitude of flexibility. their experience with canadian culture may be somewhat limited, but it was deep enough to have become somewhat ingrained in their imaginations. social and political satire are at the root of the on-stage world; the play makes great use of current events, all of which have their own specific association with place. for hopton example, the fictionalized country of agraba, apparently located in the middle east, bears strong resemblance to a real place such as iraq. this makes it easier for the audience to become immersed in the world of the play. calling upon prior knowledge of a similar place, the audience can immediately ascribe certain qualities to the place being described. like bordertown, agraba is only a real place in the play, but similar places do exist in the real world - the majority of a canadian audience will understand some things about a small town in the southern prairies, in the same way that they will have certain expectations about the current state of affairs in a country of the middle east. dealing with assumptions about place becomes a major issue throughout the play, as the characters challenge stereotypes through satire. unlike in rebar's play, in which stereotypes about place are actually reinforced (farmers from the prairies are morally good, hard-working people - the 'salt of the earth'), the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil asks its audience to recognize these stereotypes and question them. this technique is utilised again in the plays-within-the play, the 'ethnic family dramas', which clearly satirize the prevalence of plays which deal with cultural identity issues in canada. it is significant that these plays-within-the play are all set in kitchens and deal explicitly with issues of family, cultural identity and ethnicity. moreover, the kitchen acts as space from which to re-tell and satirize the canadian 'kitchen sink' dramas. the plays-within-the-play immediately evoke broader questions about canada and canadian theatre because they are located in such a space: what is canadian theatre and how are things changing? the use of satire would imply that perhaps the kitchen sink drama is no longer an entirely relevant means of examining canada, identity, or the place of canadians in the context of the surrounding world. if canadians are no longer being relegated to the kitchen, this would suggest that maybe the issues facing canadians are bigger than those that can be contained within such a space. the cultural implications of leaving one part of canada to move to another, as in french's leaving home, are not the complex issues that they were in the past: now, we see characters leaving one country to come to another, where they may adopt a new language, maintain an old religion and eat foods from around the world. furthermore, as we have seen in these five plays, the kitchen can only be a privileged liminal space in which change is fostered if it leads to another space - a stage, a prairie, a beach, a family room or a whole theatre. only when the characters are able to test the boundaries of their spaces can they practice new identities and move toward personal fulfillment. hopton moreover, as we see with ali and ali, the audience is being asked not only to reconsider their assumptions about specific places, but to go even further by re-imagining them. when ali and ali evoke a bombing, they are reminding audiences about their place in the world: "we repeat: this is not a real explosion" ( ). a real bombing is not a consideration of most canadians - such violence does not exist in canada and therefore can only be an imaginary occurrence. but in imagining such a thing, ali and ali are asking us to consider the implications of place and think about how different life could be in another part of the world. we see this reinforced at the end of the play: "ali ababwa... you are really wishing to stay here [in canada] with them?" to which ababwa replies, "i don't know, ali hakim, (a pause) i don't know-" ( ). ali hakim may recognize the potential that canada has, but he is also uncertain as to whether canada can be ultimately fulfilling. their homeland beckons and the two men dream that "the whole world was agraba" ( ). yet instead of returning to agraba, perhaps they can stay in canada, living in a nation that accepts, encourages and promotes multiculturalism and flexibility. they suggest that the dream was perhaps a dream of the future, but maybe it is actually canada? after all, canada is a nation that has moved into a world in which ethnic family dramas are being satirized; it is a place that has begun to re-imagine itself. home is certainly a relevant life-shaping force and its functions are vital to the understanding of each play, both for individual characters and groups. whether or not the characters succeed in creating their ideal world is less important than the fact that they endeavour to find it. what is significant to glean from this survey is that all of the characters do try to challenge the borders within their own worlds. instead of simply exiting immediately from a place that may not have met all their needs, they persevere in those spaces, in pursuit of what will work for them before they choose either to move on or remain in their current place. in this, we see canadian characters testing the elasticity of their boundaries, attempting to discover new realms within old ones. they are reinventing spaces and finding ways for the spaces to accommodate their needs. only in the play that uses the u.s. as its national location does the character need to leave in order to escape her fraught life. the canadian characters all choose to stay in their present locales; they may need to adjust their perception of the place they inhabit, but they are willing to stay. it is definitely interesting that each of the plays makes use of a specific domestic space of some kind, which clearly locates itself in a nation. although i recognize that hopton locating a play specifically is certainly not a groundbreaking revelation, i think the way that characters see themselves in these places is noteworthy. as discussed in this chapter, home becomes a fundamental backdrop for the plot and the characters' lives, but it is also a prevalent theme which runs through all the plays. in examining their explorations of such spaces, we see them utilising these theatres, houses, cafes and apartments as places of work and home. in finding ways for a place to serve more than one purpose, the characters reinforce the banal ideal of malleability. the idea of home, both a specific space that one inhabits and the larger nation to which one belongs, is really a question at the heart of each play. in pursuit of this home, characters test the flexibility of the boundaries of their worlds, individually, socially, physically and psychologically. it comes to pass that the place that provides safety and comfort is home. in all of the plays, we see characters challenging the confines of their immediate surroundings and making use of the physically and demographically diverse landscape of canada to find what they need. the external world is ever-present - it haunts, entices, aids and hinders characters in each of the plays, but the place of greatest significance is that which is immediate. the past and the future both loom, but the present dominates. home is that present domain of family, comfort and safety, but it exists within a much bigger world. the nation has powerful implications: it is the bigger setting for each of these plays, and thus has an important and omnipresent role. it is the physical and social sphere that informs the smaller domestic spaces, all of which cumulatively represent home. the prevalence of notions of place and home in each of the plays highlights the relevance of such ideas in the broader discussion of national identity. each of the characters seeks a place to recognize as his or her home - that home must provide safety, comfort and an ability to accommodate change, either physically or psychologically. in this, the theme of flexibility again becomes apparent. thus, i would assert that the omnipresence of such an ideal implies its existence within the canadian imagination. that is, the imagined nation of canada exists as a place of safety, accommodation and flexibility; the pervasiveness of this idea surely indicates its presence in the realm of the everyday, and therefore, as a fundamental aspect of the banal manifestations of canadian nationalism. hopton conclusion alan filewod's discussion of theatrical activity in canada illuminates the idea that "canadian theatre can as a whole be considered as a meta-performance that literally enacts crises of (postcolonial) nationhood" (xvii). the analysis of the plays in this research seems to provide concurrent evidence. moreover, i believe that in examining jitters, bordertown cafe, amigo's blue guitar, harlem duet and the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil we have seen a wide variety of illustrations to indicate the presence of an imagined community which upholds flexibility as its fundamental creed. using billig's theory we have seen how the frequent occurrence of this ideal may suggest that more people than just those who occupy the stage may feel the impact of this important message. the characters employ a vast array of mechanisms for coping with their insecurities as each of them ultimately seeks the same thing: a place to call home. the home they look for is in canada, where the mosaic prevails and flexibility is championed. this ideal is reinforced on stage and then recycled back into the daily lives of canadian citizens. this dominating idea of flexibility, in individual personalities, family relationships and inhabited places, suggests that elasticity is, indeed, an integral ideal for the imagined community of canada. both on stage and off, these imagined communities are endowed with notions of malleability. although the dream may not yet be achieved, the continual reinforcement of such a notion in the realm of the banal arguably makes it a key aspect of canadian nationalism. the promulgation of such an ideal suggests that it is truly a cornerstone of our national identity, which will eventually become more than just an imagined ideal - it will move into the real of habitus: the flexible ideal will prevail and become second nature. i would argue that, to a large extent, perhaps it already has. so, what does all of this say about canadian theatre? it seems to imply that no matter what form or style the play takes ~ be it farcical comedy, realistic drama, metatheatre, or self-reflexive re-tellings of shakespeare - that drama is endowed with a distinctly canadian flavour that exists on all planes of the plays: flexibility is a necessity! in a nation that has continued to change since its inception, that continues to pride itself on its (albeit perhaps somewhat unrealistic) dream of embracing all cultures, this notion of flexibility certainly seems a logical manifesto for canadian drama to uphold. furthermore, hopton drama, like the nation, continues to change and evolve over time as well. these imagined domains share a desire to remain malleable. there is another important thread to this research. sociologist and demographer michael adams has recently published a book called fire and ice: the united states, canada and the myth of converging values, which provides an array of statistical evidence to show "that canadians - immersed in the rhetoric of globalization, surrounded by dizzying economic and technological change [...] will still [have] a place in the world for their unique values and perspectives" (adams ). adams sets out to show that although many people may believe that canada is becoming more like the united states every day (due largely to the complex mutual dependence of the countries' economic systems and infiltration of american media that continue to dominate canadian popular culture), surveys of social values indicate that the two nations are becoming more divergent in their social attitudes than they have been in the past. that is, with respect to the canadian habitus, social value systems are actually much different than those that dominate in the united states. the book is comprised of the results of over ten years of demographic research in canada and the united states; it is a surprising accumulation of data that indicates with respect to social values, which reflect the motivations behind human behaviour, that canadians are much more liberal and much more flexible than their american neighbours ( ). this is important because it provides a link between my argument, that the canadian ideal is essentially flexibility and is reinforced through its marked prevalence in the plays, and that of adams' book, which offers a wide range of studies showing the idea of flexibility at the core of the canadian social values system. he argues that canada was founded on compromise and that this has manifested itself in a myriad of ways ( ). he writes: the culture of accommodation that has been [canada's] socio-historical tradition today expresses itself as social liberalism, multi-culturalism, multilingualism, multiple faiths and spiritual paths, and sometimes even as cultural fusion or hybridization. in its most postmodern form, it can exist as an openness to flexible, multiple expressions of individual personality, the leading edges of which are the flexibility of gender, age, and cultural identities. ( - ). michael adams' research is salient, and seems to argue just what these plays do: flexibility is indeed the ideal. canadians have expectations of malleability and this ideal continues to hopton be promulgated, even with the overwhelming exposure to american social values on a very regular basis. the canadian identity is intact. though citizens may feel insecurity brought on by living in a nation that embraces differences, these feelings are assuaged by the continual reinforcement of the flexible ideal. by imagining themselves as connected by their differences, canadians work to promote a new kind of nation, one that takes pride in its multi-ness and embraces change. instead of becoming static, laden with notions of old stoic thinking, the canadian imagination is trying to stay creative and dynamic. maintaining notions of equality and flexibility gives the imaginary the potential to be realized. the proliferation of these ideas in the realm of the banal continues to impact the theatre, which, in turn, works to reinforce these ideas for the entire imagined community of canada. the theatre is a place for performance, for creating imaginary worlds; interestingly, these plays work to encourage the actualization of such imaginary worlds. the continual reinforcement of national ideals in the everyday world works unconsciously to wave the canadian flag. canadian society and canadian theatre are inextricably linked. together they will continue to serve as a means of constructing, reinforcing and even changing the flexible national identity. the mimetic cycle is complete but it continues to revolve and evolve. david french's jitters was included in the first edition of modern canadian plays, but was later replaced by french's leaving home. the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil has only very recently been published in . in a transcript of the programme, martin refers to the collective "we" (of canada) numerous times. for example, he says: "i think we should be, as a country..." a full transcript can be viewed at the cbc archived website: http://www.cbc.ca/national/yourturn/paulmartin.html the use of the definite article asserts that there can only be one country to which we refer. canada. billig explores this phenomenon at length. see banal nationalism: . a survey conducted by environics in of some people in canada "reveals that over % of canadians agree that multiculturalism has contributed positively to the canadian identity. this view is held somewhat more strongly by the younger segment of the canadian population though consensus is fairly strong across the age spectrum." for more specific details on the polls taken, see "diversity popular among canadians" at: http://www.acs-aec.ca/polls/poll .pdf statistics canada indicates that as of , approximately % of the , , people living in canada consider themselves immigrants. for an overview of the statistics canada's "canada at a glance" booklet, see http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/ - -xie/ - -xie .pdf. compared to the us immigration rate of . % of the total population (as of ), as reported by the department of homeland security, a clearer perspective of the whole picture is gleaned. see http://www.census.gov/apsd/wepeople/we- .pdf for more information on us immigration status. http://www.cbc.ca/national/yourturn/paulmartin.html http://www.acs-aec.ca/polls/poll .pdf http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/ - -xie/ - -xie .pdf http://www.census.gov/apsd/wepeople/we- .pdf hopton having worked as an esl teacher for three years, i have encountered this comment regularly from people of other national origins, including korea, china, japan, brazil, spain, germany, argentina and mexico. this is based entirely on personal experience with people ranging from the age of eight to in the lower mainland of british columbia, with no pretence as to the academic validity of these statements. with respect to defining social values, the book "considers] values to be evidence of 'motivated cognition' [...] beliefs that both determine and reflect our responses to the world" ( ). these include such notions as, "civic apathy," "cultural assimilation," "flexible families," "gender parity," and "racial fusion." for more information on social values, see the introduction to fire and ice, - . hopton works cited anderson, benedict. imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. n d edition. london: verso, . adams, michael. fire and ice: the united states, canada and the myth of converging values. toronto: penguin canada, . bemrose, john. "romancing the rock: david french builds on his mercer saga." maclean's october , : . — "domestic drama that hits home." maclean's august , : . bhabha, homi. the location of culture. london: routledge, . billig, michael. banal nationalism. sage: london, . bissoondath, neil. selling illusions: the cult of multiculturalism in canada. n d edition. toronto: penguin, . buntin, mat. "an interview with djanet sears." march . http://www .uoguelph.ca/dfischli/i dsears.cfm march . chai, camyar, guillermo verdecchia and marcus youssef. the adventures of ali and ali and the axes of evil. unpublished. "diversity popular among canadians." the association for canadian studies. environics research group/focus canada. march . http://www.acs- aec.ca/polls/poll .pdf april . edgar, andrew and peter sedgwick. "identity." cultural theory: the key concepts. london: routledge, , - . filewod, alan. performing canada: the nation enacted in the imagined theatre. kamloops: textual studies in canada, . french, david. jitters. vancouver: talonbooks, . macleod, joan. amigo's blue guitarin modern canadian plays, volume ii. th ed. ed. jerry wasserman. vancouver: talonbooks, . - . —. "joan macleod: being fearless." micromedia limited. january . "multiculturalism". wikipedia: the free encyclopedia. march . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/multicultural march . rebar, kelly. bordertown cafe in modern canadian plays, volume ii. th ed. ed. jerry wasserman. vancouver: talonbooks, . - . sears, djanet. harlem duet in modern canadian plays, volume ii. th ed. ed. jerry wasserman. vancouver: talonbooks, . - . http://www .uoguelph.ca/dfischli/i http://www.acs- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/multicultural hopton thieme, john. "a different 'othello music': djanet sears's harlem duet." performing national identities: international perspectives on contemporary canadian theatre. eds. sherrill grace and albert-reiner glaap. vancouver: talonbooks, . - . "underground railroad." parks canada. january . http://www.pc.gc.ca/canada/proi/cfc-ugrr/itm -ex/plan a e.asp april . wasserman, jerry. "joan macleod and the geography of the imagination." performing national identities: international perspectives on contemporary canadian theatre. eds. sherrill grace and albert-reiner glaap. vancouver: talonbooks, . - . —. modern canadian theatre: a telecourse in twelve acts. unit . burnaby: open learning agency, . . http://www.pc.gc.ca/canada/proi/cfc-ugrr/itm -ex/plan a "because it is my culture": technology and agency in the overseas u.s. cultural history classroom joanne marie mancini in a essay in the journal of american history, kathryn kish sklar made a power- ful case, based upon the experience of her own undergraduate seminar in u.s. women's history, for the capacity of the internet to help address a particular pedagogical concern. accusing historians of doing "a relatively poor job of explaining their work process to others" and lamenting the fact that most students had little occasion to do more than passively consume secondary literature, sklar proposed that the internet—with its ca- pacity to "democratize the availability and analysis of documents"—could lay bare the normally opaque process that historians use to analyze and interpret their sources and thereby assist teachers of history in transforming students into "producers of new histori- cal knowledge."' in her own case, sklar turned her seminar into a laboratory for creating and posting to the internet "pedagogic units that pose central interpretive questions and provide about twenty primary documents . . . annotations of the primary documents, a bibliography, and a list of related "web links." in this way, her students gained a first- hand understanding of historical methods, produced new historical knowledge that other students could use, and disseminated primary sources that were previously available on microfilm in a new and more accessible format.̂ like sklar and many other historians of the united states, i am preoccupied with agency and see it as important to both the writing and the teaching of history. as a cul- tural historian, my expression of this preoccupation has taken a particular form: the im- perative to understand not only works of culture (be they "high" or "low," mass-produced or unique, ephemeral or canonical, or produced by women or men) but also the processes by which people engage and become engaged in the making of such works and the worlds in which those works are made. i wish to understand, in other words, how the particular institutional arrangements within those worlds have facilitated—or discouraged—peo- ple's participation in the creation of images and objects. this imperative has also caused me to reconsider the limits of my responsibilities as a researcher. while i began with the assumption that the job of the historian was only to foster historical understanding, my belief that a "good art world is one that foregrounds human capabilities"—a belief devel- oped in response to my historical research—has also led me to make normative claims joanne marie mancini is a lecturer in the department of history at the national university of ireland maynooth and is currently a visitor in the school of social science, institute for advanced study. readers may contact mancini at joanne.mancini@nuim.ie. ' kathryn kish sklar, "teaching students to become producers of new historical knowledge on the web," journal of american history, (march ), - . emphasis added. ^ ibid, . march the journal of american history the journal of american history march about the "worlds" i study and even to adopt a position of advocacy on behalf of pro- grams that foster artistic creation by nonprofessionals.^ this emphasis on agency and process in cultural history is pursued relatively straight- forwardly in the context of research and writing. in the cultural history classroom, howev- er, the pursuit presents immediate and diflicult challenges. there, students are frequently cast as the inert recipients of secondary literature or as the more or less submissive con- sumers of cultural works from the american past. this is the case even as many of us have emphasized the analysis of the institutions and processes that underpin cultural pro- duction, and even as we have defined the works and the pasts that belong to "american cultural history" in ever-broadening terms (in my case, to include sources on precontact cahokia, chaco canyon, and hawaii; colonial new spain, "the middle ground," and the african atlantic; and material culture, popular music, and digital media). such redefinitions of the content of cultural history are important; students in courses with broadened content leave with a wider sense of the temporal and geographic bound- aries of the american past and of the disciplinary borders of american historiography. however, such redefinitions do not represent a fundamental pedagogical change toward the creation of more active learners in the cultural history classroom. for that to happen, it is necessary to implement strategies that cast students in active roles: as the creators of historical knowledge or—even more radically—as the makers and performers of other cultural forms beyond the historiographical. while the main purpose of teaching cultural history may be the analysis of the cultures of the past, the creation and performance of culture in the present can also play a significant and beneficial role within the teaching of cultural history. my experience of living and teaching american cultural history outside of the unit- ed states has had a direct bearing on my adoption of this perspective. over the course of more than a decade spent primarily in ireland (at the national university of ireland maynooth and in the department of history at university college cork) but also in the department of american studies at the university of sussex, i have wrestled repeatedly with the dynamics of the complex and interesting relationships that the people around me—both students and nonstudents—have with american history and culture. i choose the word "relationships" deliberately, not least because many irish people's palpahle en- thusiasm for american culture is subject to the kinds of ebbs and flows that character- ize human relationships; indeed, it would not be misleading to suggest that the giddy upsurge of media and individual interest in all things american after the barack obama presidential campaign and election is like the rediscovery of an old love after a period of bitter estrangement.^ but the word "relationships" is also appropriate insofar as the interest of many people in ireland in american culture has been forged through direct, personal, and complex encounters with the united states, americans, and the objects, artifacts, practices, and forms of american culture. even after many years of residence in ireland, friends, col- leagues, acquaintances, and strangers still present to me—often with great flourish—tales that interweave human migration and cultural exchange in unpredictable ways. an avid ' j. m. mancini, "kotlas," american art, (spring ), - . examples of advocacy include submissions to ireland's arts council and its national economic and social forum. •* a good example is irish television personality kathryn thomas's interview on the tubridy show. "kathryn thomas interview," prod. yvonne judge, deirdre ni fhloinn, and aonghus mcanally (episode of the tubridy show), rtÉ radio qan. , ). textbooks and teaching fan of the television series the wire, for example, told me that the very first book he re- members reading was a paperback copy of one flew over the cuckoo's nest ( ) that an emigrant aunt had "borrowed" from a veterans administration hospital in queens, new york. meanwhile, an admirer of old-time music recounted with some amusement how, in the cold and damp ofhis limerick youth, he had been forced to wear lurid short- sleeved hawaiian shirts because a relative in california persistently shipped them home to ireland. while these two examples fall loosely under the category of the consumption of amer- ican culture, other stories indicate the participation of irish people in the performance and production of american culture as well. this might be summed up by the response that one of my recent students—who is both irish and french—gave to my usual query to students about why they were taking my course. he said, "because it is my culture." i assumed, in the first instance, that he was referring to the fact that he, as a european, was surrounded by american images, music, and words, or that he personally had a particular fondness for certain american authors or artists. to a certain extent, this assumption was correct: his tastes in novels run to cormac mccarthy and don delillo. but, as he told me, his response also meant that he was an avid player of the blues guitar. as such, his claim upon american culture and american cultural history derived from his participa- tion as a willing link in the ongoing creation of a global american culture.' this is not the only example, even from my most recent group of students in hy (a final-year elective in american cultural history in which students write a research essay and complete a project). another student has devoted several decades to organizing ama- teur musical theater productions with adult and youth groups. she observed that many, if not most, of these musicals—and even the genre itself—are american; the practices and institutions involved in staging them as amateur productions also have strong historical and current american links. moreover, as she notes, the adaptation and transplantation of these "american" works into mid-twentieth-century ireland—a context very different from that of their original staging and subject to different kinds of censorship and pres- sure—involved the explicit choice of adopting "american" attitudes toward what was cul- turally and socially permissible on the public stage. my students' prior experience with and interest in culture making and their attraction to the study of american cultural history presented me with a tremendous opportunity but also posed a daunting challenge. how could we harness these qualities in the class- room, to aid historical analysis and to encourage active citizenship in the republic of cul- ture? a previous experiment i had undertaken at the university of sussex to transform classroom consumers into producers and performers had not turned out well. departing from normal classroom procedures, i had required students in a seminar on the american dream (a course whose title and theme i had unwillingly inherited) to script, rehearse, direct, perform, and review a stage version of theodore dreiser's sister carrie ( ).this experience did have some positive results: students developed a deeper understanding of the text, of the complexity of the theatrical world, and of the gilded age. nonetheless, this came at the cost of nearly causing a riot in a class that was extremely resistant to do- ing anything but sitting around talking. ' there are even more complex layers to such a process, owing to the rise of immigration in ireland and the growth of immigrant professional, social, and cultural associations. filipinos in ireland, for example, have developed many such organizations, including the filipino sports club (a dublin basketball league). in this case, one can see immigrants transplanting a cultur j practice that is filipino, but whose origins can be traced to u.s. occupation. the journal of american history march at the national university of ireland maynooth, i decided to try something different, inspired by the fact that i—like sklar and so many others—had become enchanted by the internet's many cultural possibilities within and outside of the classroom. perhaps not surprisingly, i have been drawn to web sites that promote active engagement in the mak- ing, performance, transmission, and transformation of culture (present and past). one of the most interesting of such web sites, from the vantage point of access to sources and from the perspective of cultural history, is librivox (http://librivox.org). established in august by the montreal-based writer and web developer hugh mccuire, libri- vox aims to publish downloadable digital audio files of every book in the public domain. more important, the web site is entirely noncommercial: it accepts no advertising and is run entirely by volunteers who manage the site (including the index and boards) and choose, record, and disseminate its ever-growing list of books to anyone with computer access. in short, librivox is a new kind of cultural phenomenon: a giant, global, virtual meeting place for people who love books, who are interested in making performances of the books they love, and who are willing to use new technologies to turn those perfor- mances into permanent recordings that will allow others to share that love of books. as such, it is itself historically important and undoubtedly will present to future historians all sorts of analytical questions about production, consumption, and agency, about how the internet presents opportunities for institutional innovation in the realm of culture, and about the boundaries between oral and literary cultures in a digital age. librivox (along with slightly different sites such as youtube) has become a subject for analysis by my cultural history students, who have already considered earlier revolutions in media and culture, such as the emergence of photography, moving pictures, radio, and recorded sound. but it has also become the inspiration for an important feature of my course: an assignment in which students create digital audio recordings of sources rel- evant to the study of american cultural history and present a contextual analysis of those recordings to the class. because it was my original intention that students would post their recordings on librivox, i initially required students to choose sources that conformed to the web site's public domain requirements and that would be technically manageable in terms of length: short texts published before , such as speeches, poems, letters, short stories, critical commentaries, and essays; monologues or dialogues from the theatre; or songs from sheet music. i was conscious that such parameters would limit my students' choices, but many of them were able to find sources of interest to them even within the artificial boundaries i had set. some students appeared to have chosen their sources completely at random, but others had clear analytical or personal motivations for the choices they had made. one student selected an excerpt from the novel tom sawyer ( ) that reminded him of having heard mark twain's work read to him as a child. another student with an interest in civil religion chose to speak the words of george washington—in female, french-accented tones. and a student with acting aspirations performed both sides of a comic minstrel routine with a combination of embarrassment and fiair. nonetheless, other students immediately pushed against the boundaries i had set, seeking to exercise a greater degree of autonomy as performers and producers. one stu- dent wanted to "be" colonel kurtz from the film apocalypse now ( ). one wanted to perform a t. s. eliot poem that was still covered by copyright—and to add sound ef- fects. one wanted to appeal to the "silent majority" in the words of richard m. nixon. textbooks and teaching perhaps not surprisingly, given what i have said above, one wanted to direct scenes from the play fiddler on the roof and another wanted to abandon texts altogether and play the blues guitar. although i could not let such recordings go live into cyberspace, how—for the purposes ofthe assignment—could i say no? from the very beginning, the implementation of this project required technical assis- tance and equipment that is not normally available to history faculty. indeed, even before discovering librivbx, i had considered trying to pilot an audio project in my course, but had run up against a lack of equipment. luckily, on a second attempt i was able to col- laborate with the university's learning technology officer. lisa o'regan. she has admira- bly trained my students to download and use audacity (a free software program) so that they can make and edit recordings to an appropriate standard. she has facilitated access to scarce equipment (microphones, digital audio recorders, and computers) and recording space, and she has provided ongoing technical and logistical support. unlike my earlier experiment at the university of sussex, this experience has been al- most entirely successful. the quality of the final essays in the course improved after the introduction ofthe audio project. the students learned to use a new technology that they may use in other areas of their lives. and they have been confirmed in their roles as cul- tural performers, creators, critics, and historians. indeed, since completing the first round of the project i have seen one of my students on television and heard another on the ra- dio—an entirely new and unexpected development. the only hitch is that in loosening the requirements for sources to accommodate student interests, it became necessary to drop the requirement that students post their recordings on librivox. while i have made this a voluntary aspect of the assignment, students have thus far been disinclined to post their recordings even when their sources have fallen within the web site's rules. but this issue can be addressed as the project evolves. like kathryn kish sklar, i have found that a key strategy for addressing the peda- gogical and ideological issue of transforming students from consumers into producers is to join that pursuit to the employment of a new technology. students are interested in new technologies and desire mastery over them. thus in part because they were gain- ing a measurable skill that they would not normally have obtained in their history stud- ies—competence in the use of digital audio software—my students in maynooth have been much less resistant than my earlier students to the idea of creating performances. of course, other factors also explain the willingness and enthusiasm that many of them showed. the general university culture in maynooth encourages ongoing participation in creative activities; whether one is teaching u.s. cultural history or some other subject, one is likely to have a few playwrights, filmmakers, set designers, or musicians in class. may- nooth also has a large number of "mature" students, who have not entered the university directly from secondary school and who in many cases have begun their higher education significantly later in life. such students tend to be engaged and ambitious, and—while they sometimes require more assistance with technical matters—are also sometimes less reluctant to take on unusual tasks than the youngest students. moreover, in irish univer- sities virtually all students take "joint honours" (a double major). thus in maynooth one is likely to have at least a few students who are also taking media studies, music, or other subjects in which creative or studio work is expected. to this mix are added large numbers of international students from as close as england and as far away as the french indian ocean department of réunion—with well over one hundred of them taking courses in the journal of american history march the history department last year. a number of them from the more overburdened euro- pean universities have told me that their home institutions offer virtually no opportunity for personal attention and training or for expression outside the normal boundaries of the academic examination or essay. thus it has been possible, with my university's support, to provide my students with a pedagogical experience that is empowering, innovative, and practical. i would like to think that all of these things are imperatives o("my culture"—and should be goals in the teaching of u.s. cultural history. i hope to keep this and other experiments running for years to come. copyright of journal of american history is the property of organization of american historians and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. however, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. editorial rainbow country surgery reggae seeds smile dear readers, let us start with a smile. today, we frequently experience meeting people who lack a friendly smile. great, that you stopped by to come in for those lines. take your time. did you just swallow your old years’ globus sensation saliva? feel free to sit down, relax, and follow me to the start of an important sound. it seems you had a very hard day. be happy and satisfied. tuff gong surgery. very special cases. hard-rock dissection. caval naval valve blood spearing activities. ready for heart clubbing. you did a great job for the master entertainer of your institution; there is always one above and ahead of you within this type of institution. do you wish to have a drink? twinkle water? lemon joke? hour of ginger? guinea pig pasta? gin chromo stain? bladder on the rocks? taste your rhythmic mood. when did you stop to smoke, chill, and make love? who killed your motivation? liver loves fatty leisure taste of pure cure. slowness opens the eye and gives birth to a new happy smiling lovely day. beauty enters the atmosphere. coziness flavors the mind. colors are the wings of your thoughts. fly permanently high. ideas follow the leaves of the tree (fig.  ). dread locks are the branches to the i (fig.  ). what makes the being to be, to come into exis- tence? perception? thought? you? can there be being without perception of existence? with time, the leaves cover the soil of their ground surrounding the root of the tree like a shadow follows the matter within the radiation of light (figs.  and ). grass eats the light and cuts it into black pieces. spirit uncovers a soul. open your mind and eyes for the horizon above (fig.  ). far above the limits of any system that you may be aware of. saints are air- planes within a carrier. mission deserves attention, even in syria and egypt. do not be afraid. nsa is watching you, so they say and sniff snow then. there is no proof. maybe reggae counts different, because of a myth. tv presents a continuous youtube hollywood entertainment radia- tion show. rockers seed the burdens. penny market feeds them all. striking event : thus came into thought the emotion to think. get yourself together and find some time to exam- ine your world, while snow covers most of the northern hemisphere. winter not only names a blue jeans-wearing tattoo-lined singing johnny with an electric homemade blues guitar ( ). critical thinkers do not follow the sound of the magic flute, the smell of the designer cake, and the sweet trum- pet taste of the candida cardia. get ready to twist your chronicle. step out of the clinic, close the door behind you, take the full blow of the entire winds, and stand in front of the worldwide cosmic blue-yellow soundless ocean light. behind you, there feels history. angles are nurses with qualities. sickle cell phones to blood stream: give me planets. future is the expectation. foetor ex oracle. giving signs. face the waving hot water shine in your moving face mingling from far-away pastures turn- ing the ancient legacies into pyramid bag published future assumptions (sri lanka tea test ; p < . ). the now counts the cow brilliant diamond coin visions into the evidence-based model emotions of your half-moon minded nails. it seems we are stuck, somehow. version captures existence. foster frames. there is a shallow rainbow horizon teaching you plentiful matrix of stars. take five beethoven, mahler, and brubeck and listen to the verily tunes of the laughing saxophone trombone bra bras rainbow ahead. listen to the rainbow: “i am one of the very last opener with the colorful beams of swinging wing. spectrum of sounds, colors, and tastes, rivers, mountains, skies, and seas remember my name. from far-away distant times, f. m. riegler () manometry lab & department of surgery, medical university vienna, waehringer guertel - , vienna, austria e-mail: franz.riegler@meduniwien.ac.at published online: november © springer-verlag wien eur surg ( ) : – doi . /s - - - rainbow country surgery reggae seeds smile f. m. riegler editorial rainbow country surgery reggae seeds smile i pass myself over to you to open a verily wisdom to the academic surgeon behind the muting mask of mystery. it only needs rain, light, and you to watch me to keep me alive. would i exist if you would not see me, recognize me, perceive me, nourish me with adoration? you may not be able to cut me out into pieces, although you are a brilliant on-call surgeon. who aims to cut light serves a star.” here and now, there comes the time for the roots returner basic academic surgeon. unmask the masks of the monastery of oncology and functional life quality- deserving activities. the rainbow mingled: “listen to my colors mutation: our time is now. ray bone la monde bring lane face the automatic multiplication of systems within systems giving birth to deprivation, anxiety, and loss of link to the very roots of our existence: my cal mod- ern life lacks link to the soil of being, you did the spirit of waters revealing the running polyposis pearl cover- ing the knowledge of the well. as the number of systems and subsystems increases, the insecurity demands a rec- tum in spiritu reactor creator reaction of those captured within the network of those permanently and ubiqui- tously lying, hate-, greed-, and envy-spitting spiders.” the oncoplastic sinking planet takes it all to some point. reduction restores as black matter becomes invis- ible. momentum periodical. and here comes the rooter, the tune connected to the soil water and spirits of the universe, revealing the hidden secrets of the everlasting pusher: the more you get, the higher you grow, the more important you wish, the deeper you shall fall back into the essence. archaic bubbling be lonian linguistic linge- rie: reasoning and being is the same. today, the system divides and multiplies with enormous hyperplastic, poly- genetic speed, perception beams ahead of space, emo- tions are swallowed with a self-estimated energy drink to push it down to the hidden world of forgotten needs, and mutations cut out happiness. cold white pale-skin body outside, inside tears rush down the walls of the intestine, diarrhea cries out loud, blood pressure rises, adenomas commence to grow to sing out and are not understood, because the multiple subsystems impair the great open vision. leaders and led, who wishes to escape the pos- sible fall of the academy should reside and step out now. leave the tree (fig.  ) to prosper the vision (fig.  ). long and tuff pieces of art and organization require longer intermissions. every year needs a winter. step out of the concert hall and take a deep breath of air, fresh up your- self with the rinsing joy of a glass of water and the green fury of an apple providing neutralization of the gastric acid and offering an important pulse of energy for your body. rethink your estimates, if you wish to serve sys- tems that overdo, exploit emotions and dreams, in direct hunt for more high speed directly flying into the very end of the wall. they all follow the global google greed eater. physis takes it all; like the flower, it opens to hide and closes to reveal, as it shares when the world kisses your fig. dome-like over-out-branching network pointing out to the above behind the sky. the image mirrors how physis con- tains it all, irrespective of the model-based dimensions fig. the branches are the dreadlocks to the i, behind which opens the blue of the sky to the hidden cosmic harmony. planet biopsy obtained using iphone fig. like leaves, ideas may descend to cover the ground and shadow of the soil to which the hidden roots nourish the tree of knowledge. the image mirrors the circle of perception, as outlined in the text. optical biopsy obtained from our planet in purbach/neusiedlersee/austria, using iphone technology editorial rainbow country surgery reggae seeds smile it see fall except you? can you be sure? who stands and awaits silence? never stop to ask: why you? and here in the clinic, the majority hides behind the masks to cover their faces, to cheat, bluff, and be some- one else. did they ever wish to know who they are? those who have the power and strength to take off the heavy mask and step out quietly become loud without any sound and find the fresh waters of the well, the nour- ishing waves of the air, live a life again and smile again. at this point, the rainbow retracts into the wonderful dome glory wide uprising blue and continues to shine as remembrance of an optical taste. smile from above. may rainbows smell. rivers fly. mountains laugh. clouds hide. pass changes. politics justify fecal pride. election is selection. being answers in the form of perceptions. did you ever consider the symbolism of a mirror from this background of reasoning? who is this face? brush your soul, connector, and try the best to be you. sincerely, martin riegler conflict of interest the author declares that there is no conflict of interest. eyes for the last time before your long dive. whose river contains the leaf, whose heaven harbors the shadow below, folded unfolded goes the being beat timeless, spaceless, just so. and here starts what all poetry is about. techne forms gods, closes their eyes, and sends them to sleep. hands are made to take off the mask from our face. unmasked we start to stare behind the blue sky. physis knows, techne is not allowed to know. this is why “god” had to die in favor of the birth of “being.” this is why beckett had to make us wait for “god.” the train never came. we are touched by the perception of the tune beyond the mask. once upon a time, there was a tear, clear and wide, deep and open, and out of this tear was made your world, and so it is all you perceive: the very essence of the tear. and the ocean? the ocean forms the tear of the earth. and when the earth cries, it gives birth to her children: the moon, the stars, the milky way, and your dreams. and when men and women cry, there cries the earth. and when people, animals, plants, countries laugh, there laughs the earth. the world finds love within a tear and space for a laughter. oncology mask unhidden. leaves fell, sheet the green, hide the seen into the perspective of history. who made 	rainbow country surgery reggae seeds smile title http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . journal of the society for american music ( ) volume , number , pp. – . c© the society for american music doi: . /s “i got that something that makes me want to shout”: james brown, religion, and gospel music in augusta, georgia carrie allen abstract using ethnographic and archival data, this article explores aspects of global superstar james brown’s participation in the black gospel music community of augusta, georgia, from the s until his death in . using rare footage of brown performing sacred music on a local gospel music television program, the article builds on scholars’ longtime recognition of brown’s engagement with black sacred song by engaging the singer’s negotiation of sacred and secular musical and cultural boundaries from the perspective of his gospel performances. the article also examines brown’s personal relationships with local gospel musicians, ultimately arguing that his involvement with augusta’s gospel tradition near the end of his life provided brown with an alternative social space for articulating a musical and personal identity somewhat separate from his mainstream media image. on may , “godfather of soul” and former gospel quartet singer james brown gave an interview and sang on the parade of quartets, a black gospel music television show produced and broadcast in brown’s hometown of augusta, georgia. during the interview, brown told the program’s host: this [show] is professional, believe me. believe me, because i know detroit, chicago, new york, and all those major places—l.a.—they don’t have nothing like this. and i tell everybody about the parade of quartets. and i’m telling you, this is a landmark. a lot of times when i don’t feel like going to church and i just can’t make it—i always feel it in my heart—but i get that same feeling—if i done come in from a long trip, i don’t care what happens, i turn on to get the parade of quartets. according to this statement, brown viewed the gospel program frequently, consid- ered it a unique media product with cultural significance exceeding its broadcast many thanks to jean n. kidula and sandra graham for their insightful critiques of this research in conference paper and article form, and to two anonymous readers for their helpful suggestions on an earlier version of the article. augusta’s wjbf-tv has broadcast parade of quartets on sunday mornings from april until the present. because wjbf is an abc affiliate with a fairly wide broadcast radius, parade of quartets has enjoyed decades of exposure in eastern georgia and western south carolina. the program includes gospel music performances and interviews with black political, religious, and cultural figures. as a sustained black media presence on a southern television affiliate, the show is a rarity in television history. for an account of its development and significance to local religious and musical communities, see the author’s article, “‘when we send up the praises’: race, identity, and gospel music in augusta, georgia,” black music research journal / ( ): – , and dissertation, “‘a mighty long way’: black gospel music on television in augusta, georgia, – ” (university of georgia, ). may episode, parade of quartets collection, dvd no. .walter j. brown media archives and peabody award collection, university of georgia libraries. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen radius, and regarded it as a substitute for church services. he confirmed this high opinion of the parade of quartets in another televised interview in the early s, in which he stated that “this is the best gospel show there is” and that he would “like to see it go all over the world.” in the context of other evidence, the statements brown made on the television program indicate that in the last twenty-five years of his life, he was deeply involved with the gospel music community of augusta. in addition to extant parade of quartets footage, articles published by the augusta press, interviews with members of the local gospel community, and observations at gospel music events point toward brown’s late-life involvement with his hometown gospel tradition. from the s until his death in december , brown enacted the roles of both consumer and performer as he attended and sang at local gospel music events, performed on and regularly viewed parade of quartets, and main- tained vibrant personal relationships with augusta gospel musicians. however, no scholarship has discussed this lengthy and important phase of brown’s participation in a gospel music community or analyzed his performances of gospel music. scholars have repeatedly acknowledged brown’s general stylistic debt to black gospel music, but they have engaged his lifelong dialectic with gospel music ex- clusively through the lens of his secular music. similarly, brown’s professional and personal relationships with gospel musicians in the s and s have formed the central subject of only one article, and no scholarship has discussed his substantial interactions with gospel artists after the s. this article provides a fuller account of brown’s relationship to gospel music and musicians by describing his social and musical participation in augusta’s gospel music community during the last twenty-five years of his life. following a brief overview of brown’s complex relationship with black sacred song, religion, and gospel music from his childhood to his religious conversion in october , i describe the social connections brown formed and maintained in augusta’s gospel community from the s to his death. close readings of rare extant footage of the soul music star performing gospel music on the parade of quartets in the early s highlight the rich musical and historical excerpt of parade of quartets episode from the early s used in the dvd the brew- steraires: yesterday, today, and forever. research on brown’s musical and cultural engagement with gospel music includes will straw’s “star profile” of brown in the cambridge companion to pop and rock, ed. simon frith, will straw, and john street (cambridge: cambridge university press, ), – ; richard crawford’s discussion in america’s musical life: a history (new york: norton, ), – ; david brackett’s remarks in his pop, rock, and soul reader (new york: oxford university press, ), ; portia maultsby’s “the impact of gospel music on the secular music industry” in we’ll understand it better by and by: pioneering african american composers, ed. bernice johnson reagon (washington, d.c.: smithsonian institution scholarly press), – ; and her contextualization of brown within the genre of soul music in african american music: an introduction, ed. mellonee burnim and portia maultsby (new york: routledge, ), . musical analyses of brown’s secular repertoire that engage his complex relationship with black sacred music include brackett’s “james brown’s ‘superbad’ and the double- voiced utterance,” popular music / ( ): – ; alexander stewart’s “‘funky drummer’: new orleans, james brown, and the rhythmic transformation of american popular music,” popular music / ( ): – ; and guthrie ramsey’s discussion in race music: black cultures from bebop to hip-hop (berkeley: university of california press, ), – . fred hay focused on brown’s interactions with gospel musicians in north georgia in the s in “music box meets the toccoa band: the godfather of soul in appalachia,” black music research journal : / ( ): – . http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout layers of the sacred-secular dialectic that brown enacted in his locally televised gospel performances, illustrating teresa reed’s historicization of the radical shift in the meanings and categories of the “sacred” and the “secular” within mid- twentieth-century african american culture. ultimately, the historical data and theoretical analysis suggest that in the last few decades of his life, augusta’s gospel music tradition provided brown with a space in which to articulate a musical, social, and religious identity separate from his persona as james brown, global pop star. brown’s roots in gospel music and the church, s– brown’s late-life involvement with augusta’s gospel music tradition and religious community was only one stage of a long, vibrant, and complicated relationship with the church, religion, and black sacred song. brown recalled in his au- tobiography that as a child in augusta in the s, he absorbed the worship rituals and performative strategies of african american ministers and congrega- tions, notably the united house of prayer for all people. this predominantly black holiness/pentecostal denomination, known for its brass worship bands, charis- matic patriarchs, colorful parades, and unique theological positions, established an influential congregation in augusta in the s. brown often attended the house of prayer’s parades and church services, and his later performance style was shaped by the denomination’s dramatic worship expressions. brown’s first contact with a professional black gospel group also occurred in augusta in the late s when he met the swanee quintet, a local gospel quartet that later achieved national fame in the gospel industry. (small gospel groups with more than four singers are sometimes categorized as quartets, as long as their vocal arrangements use four-part harmony. a quartet may also retain two lead singers who take turns singing the melody in different songs, which also expands the group’s membership beyond four people.) brown sang, danced, and shined shoes outside the wgac radio studios where the quintet performed their daily radio broadcast, probably meeting them between and . when brown met them, the quintet had already toured outside of augusta, although they were still several years away from their successful recordings and national tours of the mid- s. although it is uncertain whether brown’s teresa reed, the sacred profane: religion in black popular music (lexington: university press of kentucky, ). see an official historical account of the group provided at www.swaneequintet.com. the year of brown’s first contact with the quintet is unknown, but a timeframe for their initial contact can be deduced from other evidence. the earliest evidence of the quintet’s wgac radio shows are the augusta chronicle radio logs, which indicate that the group began broadcasting on weeknights on wgac in may . in late the quintet moved to wjbf radio, according to “augusta’s most popular singing group,” augusta chronicle, october , . assuming that may marked the quintet’s first broadcast on wgac, brown would have met the group no earlier than may and no later than june , when he left augusta to enter a juvenile detention center in rome, georgia. “everybody is talking about home folks frolics,” augusta chronicle, may , ; “swanee quintet sings at lions club meeting,” augusta chronicle, april , ; “augusta’s most popular singing group,” augusta chronicle, october , ; cedric hayes and robert laughton, gospel records – : a black music discography, vol. (n.p.: record information services/paul pelletier, ); sharon wellington, “gospel singers ‘walked in the light’ for half a century,” augusta chronicle, december , b, b. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen early relationship with the group included music making, he probably overheard them singing at the radio station. in the early s, brown gained his first professional experience with the fa- mous flames, a gospel and rhythm and blues group that formed in the north georgia juvenile detention center where brown was incarcerated. the famous flames approached sacred and secular boundaries in repertoire, musical style, and performance venues with great fluidity, singing secular music at movie theaters and nightclubs and performing gospel music at religious functions. brown later reminisced about this stylistic porousness: “we weren’t even sure what kind of music we wanted to do, gospel or rhythm and blues. i hadn’t given up on gospel entirely so i taught them some songs i knew, such as ‘when i get to heaven i’ll be looking for my mother. . . .’ i guess a lot of groups start that way, looking for their identity.” the flames became increasingly popular in north georgia after brown and other members were released from the detention center in june . in late , concerned about the group’s growing success, leaders of the mount zion baptist church of toccoa, georgia, “censured” james brown and bobby byrd, the flames’ founder, stating that the group should “either . . . play blues music or gospel music,” but not both. the young men apologized but continued to perform both types. brown later speculated that the church’s opposition to the “devil’s music” (i.e., blues) was rooted in hypocrisy, stating that “some of the deacons didn’t want us to see them in some of the juke joints we played.” although it is unclear how much the incident shaped brown’s views on boundaries between sacred and secular music, it indicated that in the early s, some older members of african american churches perceived an irreconcilable dichotomy between church music and worldly music. many years later, in a interview with an african american newspaper in augusta, brown stated that he planned to pursue a career in gospel but was “talked out of” it by other gospel groups in the s. indeed, by early , he and the flames were performing and recording exclusively secular music. without changing their group name, the flames became backup singers for brown’s rhythm and blues shows and recordings. despite their movement in a more secularized direction, however, the flames’ early r&b never strayed far from the stylistic fold of gospel music. in fact, brown and the flames secured their first r&b recording contract by auditioning with an emotional rendition of a gospel song. the flames’ transition dr. james carter iii grew up across the street from rufus washington, an original member of the swanee quintet. carter often heard the group practice in the early s from his home, which suggests that the quintet may also have been audible to brown outside the radio station. author’s interview with dr. james carter iii, april . james brown and bruce tucker, james brown: the godfather of soul (new york: thunder’s mouth press, ), . hay, “music box,” ; brown and tucker, godfather of soul, – . brown and tucker, godfather of soul, – . mallory millender, “james brown is baptized; experiences great awakening,” augusta news review, october , , . hay, “music box.” http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout to a gospel-saturated r&b style in marked the end of the first phase of brown’s developing negotiations of sacred and secular musical styles. although brown abandoned professional gospel performance as a career path in the mid- s, he continued to develop personal and professional relationships with gospel musicians, and especially with the swanee quintet. in brown invited the augusta group to tour with him as his opening act; in the same year, he produced the quintet’s album step by step. the album featured brown’s horn section and a transformation of his r&b ballad “try me” into the gospel number “try me, father.” by the time they started working with brown, the quintet was firmly established as one of nashboro records’ best-selling gospel groups and as one of the country’s premiere gospel quartets. they frequently toured on large gospel concert packages with quartets such as the soul stirrers and the fairfield four and even performed their hit song “a new walk” in the warner brothers film a night in harlem. in the mid- s, the quintet opened brown’s concerts by performing thirty minutes of gospel music at venues such as madison square garden and the apollo theater. other gospel groups such as clara ward and the ward singers also opened for brown’s apollo shows. in , brown commented on his use of gospel groups to open programs: besides [bobby] byrd and vicki [anderson], i had the gospel group the swanee quintet on the show. i did a lot of split shows with gospel acts during that time. people always said you couldn’t bring together church people and people who dug music like mine, but i thought you could. i used to have the swanees, the mighty clouds of joy, the angelic gospel singers, clara ward, all of them. i had the gospel people on the first part of my show, then an intermission, and then my show. singing is all about spirit anyway—doesn’t make any kind of difference what spirit. for brown, musical and performative quality and vivacity superseded concerns about textual content, genre, or categorization. although brown himself eschewed such cultural and stylistic divisions, his respect for the sacred-secular boundaries occasionally imposed by fans and by the music industry was evident. according to percy griffin, lead singer of the swanee quintet from until the present, brown would not let the quintet perform in venues that sold alcohol. additionally, brown nashville-based nashboro records recorded southern black gospel artists in the s and s and was characterized by a raw, rural, southern sound, according to tony heilbut’s the gospel sound: good news and bad times (new york: simon and schuster, ). owner ernie young often praised the swanee quintet’s rural, blues-influenced gospel style and encouraged other nashboro artists to imitate their sound, as noted by alan young in the pilgrim jubilees (oxford: university of mississippi press, ), . “augusta singers in movie,” augusta chronicle, november , -d; peter guralnick, dream boogie: the triumph of sam cooke (new york: little, brown and company, ), ; author’s interview with percy griffin, may . brown and tucker, the godfather of soul; www.swaneequintet.com; j. carter interview; griffin interview. the quintet occasionally appeared on concerts with brown in the s but never embarked on another major tour with him after the s. brown and tucker, godfather of soul, . griffin interview. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen would sometimes perform a gospel song after the quintet’s thirty-minute set in order to conceptually and musically transition into the “secular” portion of the show. in , after several decades of personal and professional involvement with gospel music and musicians, brown converted, was baptized, and became a church member at st. peter’s baptist church in williston-elko, south carolina. brown experienced this “rebirth,” as he termed it, at a “tiny rural church” approximately forty miles from augusta. a few weeks after his conversion, brown was inter- viewed by augusta’s black newspaper for an article about his newfound religious sensibilities. he stated that this “great awakening” constituted the “high point” of his life to date. brown explained to the journalist the results of his conversion: he now sang in the church choir, was trying to help its members improve vocally, and was “hurt” by hearing profanity. brown clarified that although he had always considered himself a christian, he had decided only recently to attend a church regularly and support it financially. several years later, when describing his conversion in his autobiography, brown implied that although it was possible to sing and enjoy gospel music without sincere christian faith, such actions rang hollow and constituted merely “going through the motions”: “i’d sung gospel all my life. gospel saved me in prison and got me out. over the years i presented a lot of gospel acts on my shows, too, but somehow, i guess, i’d just been going through the motions lately. . . . leon [austin] got me thinking about all that . . . [so] i rededicated myself to god. in a little country church near where i was born, i was rebaptized. i’d been baptized when i was a little boy, but i wasn’t as serious then as when i went on my own as an adult. eventually i just let go and put things in his hands.” during a interview on the parade of quartets, brown referred to the rebap- tism as the time that “christ got into my life and made a difference.” echoing the words of his autobiography, brown’s mention of his conversion in the context of an interview on a gospel music television show obliquely linked his religious crisis with a renewal of his participation in gospel music. in the augusta news-review printed a photograph of brown receiving communion from the rev. al sharpton after his conversion. the picture, part of a retrospective “remember when” section commemorating the newspaper’s final edition, was captioned, “remember when james brown was converted?” the fact that the event was referenced several ibid.; j. carter interview. millender, “james brown is baptized,” . in late , brown was also filming the role of a charismatic black preacher in blues brothers. the role required brown to preach a truncated sermon and sing an exaggerated shout-tempo arrangement of “the old landmark,” backed by james cleveland’s choir. brown’s conversance with the rhetorical characteristics of black preaching traditions echoes even through his lampoonish onscreen antics. although it is uncertain whether his conversion experience was related to his film role, the timing of the events seems worth mentioning here because they occurred during the same time span in late . ibid., , . ibid. brown and tucker, godfather of soul, . brown attributed his conversion partially to religious conversations with his childhood friend leon austin, an augusta r&b and gospel musician. mallory millender, “remember when?” augusta news review, march , – . http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout times over a span of years in two local black media outlets suggests that brown’s spiritual journey excited some level of public attention in his hometown. these scattered pieces of evidence spanning the years from brown’s childhood to his public re-engagement with organized christianity in constitute an impor- tant conceptual thread woven throughout his life and career. musically, artistically, professionally, and personally, in various phases of his life, brown maintained either tenuous or tight connections with gospel music and with various church congregations. as brown began to spend more time in augusta in the s and s than in previous decades, he became more deeply involved with the gospel music community in that city. brown’s social relationships with augusta gospel musicians, s– brown’s social relationships with several augusta gospel artists in the s through the early s gave him the chance to enact the unusual role of consumer and fan. the first and most significant of these relationships was with the swanee quintet, the gospel group brown had met in the late s and toured with in the s. although the group stopped touring with brown in the late s, the quintet’s relationship with brown continued to thrive in local contexts in subsequent decades. for example, brown usually attended the quintet’s annual anniversary concert, which occurred in october at a large augusta civic auditorium, and he was often interviewed about the concert by the augusta chronicle. from to , brown sponsored a turkey giveaway on thanksgiving day to benefit augusta’s underprivileged citizens (figure ). the swanee quintet performed gospel music at this event every year, even singing on the rare occasions that brown was unable to attend. in the early s, brown once performed gospel music on parade of quartets with percy griffin. (other members of the quintet were absent from the television studio that day). despite his declining health in late , brown was still involved in the quintet’s activities. in september , brown described the quintet’s annual anniversary to the augusta chronicle as a time “when old acquaintances come together.” he hoped “everybody [would come] out [to the group’s anniversary], and . . . have a very good, good time and just enjoy it and rejoice in each other and rejoice in the lord.” several weeks later, when griffin announced his impending retirement, brown tried to dissuade him, telling the augusta chronicle that “we hope [griffin] changes his mind some day and comes back [to the quintet].” in november samantha c. mckevie, “many show up for free turkey: event lets brown reunite with friends,” augusta chronicle, november , http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/ / / / met .shtml; dena levitz, “sharpton stands in for james brown,” augusta chronicle, novem- ber , http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/ / / /met .shtml. virginia norton, “percy griffin, through the years: singer looks back on his career in mu- sic with swanee quintet,” augusta chronicle, september , http://old.chronicle.augusta.com/ stories/ / / /rel .shtml. ibid.; griffin interview. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen figure . james brown and percy griffin at brown’s annual thanksgiving turkey giveaway, augusta (photo credits: annette drowlette/augusta chronicle). , brown mentioned to griffin ideas for album repertoire that would “put [the quintet] on top of the world.” he died a few weeks later. after brown’s death, the quintet memorialized him publicly through musical performance, public discourse, and artifacts, beginning with their performance of “dr. jesus” at brown’s augusta funeral. at the two quintet anniversary programs i attended after brown’s death in october and , griffin mentioned brown’s support of the quintet several times from the stage, and memorabilia documenting the quintet’s role in brown’s funeral was sold in the lobby. in may , the quintet performed at the payback james brown festival in augusta, the town’s first civic event that posthumously honored brown. the group opened the festival with an hour of gospel music, just as they did while on tour with brown more than thirty years earlier. forty-five sweaty minutes into the set, griffin asked those of us in the audience “if it’s all right if we sing some of those old swanee quintet songs for y’all.” following the audience’s enthusiastic response, he added, “y’all don’t know how hard it was back then for james brown and the swanee quintet, but god made a way for us.” after this verbal cue, the guitars and keyboard that usually accompanied griffin’s stage patter ceased their restless humming and tuning, and the bass drum began griffin interview. the swanee quintet was followed by secular artists such as the modern skirts, the doobie brothers, and branford marsalis. held on may at the outdoor commons in downtown augusta, the event coincided with the opening of a three-year james brown exhibit at the augusta history museum. author’s transcription of performer’s onstage remarks during the payback james brown festi- val, may , augusta. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout to beat a slow / dirge. the deep thud rolled across the trampled brown grass of the augusta commons, silencing the audience. for the only time during their performance that day, the quintet sang in a cappella four-part harmony over the drumbeat, an anachronistic style reminiscent of mid-century gospel quartet singing. the song they performed, “how i got over,” has been a central part of the black gospel canon since the s. the refrain, trumpeting victorious arrival after a hard journey, is notable even in a genre marked by triumphalism: “you know, my soul looks back and wonders how i got over.” the quintet’s choice of an archaic arrangement of a traditional gospel song to memorialize its relationship with brown hinted richly at brown’s complex interactions with his hometown’s gospel music tradition. although the swanee quintet resolutely performed only sacred music, brown’s friends and local gospel artists flo carter and leon austin were more similar to brown in their willingness to perform both sacred and secular music simultaneously in their careers. flo carter, an augusta native and longtime parade of quartets performer, enjoyed a close musical and social relationship with brown. although she is primarily identified as a southern gospel artist, like brown she has sung sacred and secular music throughout her long career. in the s, she sang sacred and secular songs on today in dixie, an augusta television variety show she hosted. from to she sang rock ’n’ roll at augusta’s bon air hotel with her band and recorded a pop album. for the past twenty-five years, she and her family have performed gospel music monthly on the parade of quartets. she has also made gospel recordings and often performs gospel music in augusta’s black and white churches and at civic events. in the s and s, she and brown often performed both gospel and secular music at local events, sometimes singing duets. carter’s memories of brown extend from the professional (he admired her family’s performances on parade of quartets) to the personal (he once crooned “as time goes by” to carter and her husband when he ran into them during their anniversary dinner at a restaurant). she described brown to me as “deeply spiritual,” an outstanding interpreter of gospel music, and an avid supporter of local gospel artists. leon austin, an augusta gospel and r&b musician and brown’s childhood friend, also remained close to the singer in his final years. their relationship centered on music, beginning with austin’s teaching brown to play the piano and sing certain gospel songs in the s. austin eventually became a respected musician, touring with notable gospel artists such as james cleveland and the caravans in the s. about the same time, austin and brown collaborated on secular musical endeavors: austin and his r&b group, leon and the buicks, occasionally opened shows for brown, and he recorded solo repertoire such as “i’m a man,” “real woman,” and “georgia peach” as part of the james brown enterprise production company. in the s, austin continued his local gospel career, playing the organ on parade author’s interviews with flo carter, and september . don rhodes, “leon austin, longtime associate of james brown, dies at ,” augusta chronicle, june , http://augustachronicle.com. ibid. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen figure . northeast augusta chapter of the gospel music association of america, inc., cleans up brown’s childhood neighborhood (photo credits: todd bennett/augusta chronicle). of quartets for most of that decade. brown often publicly credited austin with having a great deal of religious and musical influence over him. in a joint interview with austin in a parade of quartets episode, he described austin as “so talented; he’s sanctified and got a ‘religion’ feel to him.” in addition to evidence that brown maintained friendships with several local gospel artists, other anecdotes confirm the star’s social involvement with augusta’s gospel tradition. in the s, parade of quartets producers karlton and henry howard were honored for their work in local gospel music with an appreciation ceremony at mount calvary baptist church. brown surprised them by appearing at the church with gifts of $ engraved watches. brown’s contributions to augusta’s gospel community were formally ratified in when the north east [sic] augusta chapter of the gospel music association of america, inc., sponsored a beautification project of brown’s old neighborhood (figure ). the predominantly black group claimed that “the reason we chose [james brown boulevard] . . . is that a lot of things james brown has done have gone unnoticed. not by the lord, and not by us.” far from being a distant celebrity to augusta’s gospel musicians in the author’s interview with karlton howard, september . brown and tucker, godfather of soul; interview with brown on parade of quartets, may ; sylvia cooper, “local musicians mourn loss,” augusta chronicle, december , http://old.chronicle.augusta.com/stories/ /met .shtml. howard interview, september . virginia norton, “groups want to keep the streets, spirits of city clean and beautiful,” augusta chronicle, march , http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/ / / /ent .shtml. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout s and s, brown was a well-known figure who enthusiastically supported their musical efforts. james brown and parade of quartets brown’s support of, and participation in, local gospel music later in life included frequently viewing and occasionally appearing on the parade of quartets (poq). the poq has played a major role in the religious, musical, and political life of augusta’s african american population since . brown’s performances on the sunday morning program during the s and s were viewed by a largely african american audience with strong connections to various predominantly black churches in augusta, particularly baptist churches. in fact, many african american viewers consider the program to be either a precursor to, or a replacement for, attending sunday morning church services, a perception prevalent among viewers who are sick and shut-in, hospitalized, imprisoned, or working night shifts. when brown sang and spoke on the program, he was broadcasting to an overwhelmingly religious and overwhelmingly african american audience that perceived the pro- gram as a mediator of authentic religious content and rituals. surviving footage of brown’s appearances, therefore, reveals significant aspects of how he presented himself to augusta’s black church community. flo carter recalled that shortly before brown’s death “he frequently watched the parade of quartets tv show that airs on wjbf on sunday mornings that i and my family sing on, and he came to sing on the show quite a few times. the host, henry howard, thought the world of him.” according to current producer and host karlton howard, brown sang or granted interviews on the program approximately four or five times from the early s until his death. footage of only three of these episodes appears to have survived, all dating from the early s. during his poq interviews, brown discussed the need for african american role models for troubled youth, the unrealized artistic and economic potential of augusta’s black population, his christian faith, memories of segregated augusta, and the talent of augusta’s gospel musicians. brown was childhood friends with henry howard, and the interviews often reflected their shared reminiscences. brown’s musical performances on the program included spirituals such as “old ship of zion,” funk-influenced gospel numbers such as “when that evening sun goes down,” nineteenth-century protestant hymns such as e. f. blandy’s “where he leads me, i will follow,” and a gospelized rendition of the tin pan alley allen, “when the praises go up” and “a mighty long way.” ibid. ibid. don rhodes, “james brown was deeply spiritual,” augusta chronicle, december , http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/ / / /aik .shtml. author’s interview with karlton howard, may . extant poq footage featuring brown was taped and broadcast on may , may , and an unspecified date in the early s. the first two episodes are in the parade of quartets collection in the walter j. brown media archives and peabody awards collection in the university of georgia library. the undated footage from the early s was shared with me by joel walker of the brewsteraires. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen standard “that lucky old sun.” occasionally brown performed alone on the program, but more often he spontaneously sang with gospel musicians who were also performing on that day’s episode, most of whom hailed from the program’s viewing radius (western georgia and eastern south carolina). as some of the only extant footage of james brown singing sacred music, all three surviving episodes yield rich insights into his relationship with sacred song and with augusta’s gospel music community. these relatively unexplored dimensions of his public persona were particularly evident in one of his impromptu televised performances on the program. one sunday morning in the early s, brown surprised the brewsteraires, a south carolina gospel quartet, by appearing at the wjbf studios and requesting to sing with them on that day’s episode. according to joel walker, lead singer of the brewsteraires, the quartet sang nearly every weekend on the show in this period, and brown claimed to be an ardent fan. walker described how brown approached them and suggested songs for that morning’s telecast: [one] sunday morning henry howard said, “look . . . last sunday james brown was here . . . and he said he wouldn’t come down here anymore unless y’all would be here”—and sure enough, about two weeks later, we got a phone call and [mr. howard] said “look, make sure you be at the television station ’cause he’s coming, and he wants y’all to be there. . . .” when we walked through the door, he just stopped [rehearsing] . . . like we was the celebrity. . . . [brown] says he watches [us on poq] every sunday morning, which i didn’t believe him. . . . in about ten, fifteen minutes it was time for this program to come on; so he asked me did i know a certain song [“old ship of zion”] and . . . we went right on air with him without even practicing the songs. during the episode, james brown performed three sacred songs with the brew- steraires: “old ship of zion,” “do you know him,” and “when that evening sun goes down,” all unrehearsed before the live television broadcast. brown’s slow sixteen-bar blues version of the spiritual “old ship of zion” opens up a critical window into his sacred-secular negotiations and collaborative approach during gospel music performances. the song evokes deep cultural and historical resonance in african american christian worship. the text sung by brown and the brewsteraires has its origins in the refrain of a popular spiritual dating from the mid-nineteenth century (and possibly earlier): ’tis the old ship of zion. ’tis the old ship of zion. ’tis the old ship of zion. get on board—get on board. the brewsteraires’ compilation dvd the brewsteraires: yesterday, today, forever contains footage of some of their poq appearances in the s, including the episode featuring brown. joel walker stated that the episode with brown dated from the early s, and internal evidence from the footage confirms this estimate. author’s telephone interview with joel walker, august . a rendition of “old ship of zion,” observed in cincinnati in , marked one of the earliest historical documentations of a spiritual, according to dena epstein in sinful tunes and spirituals: black folk music to the civil war (urbana: university of illinois press, ; reprint ed., ), . erskine peters has located three textual variants of “old ship of zion,” attesting to the text’s popularity in the spirituals repertoire, in lyrics of the afro-american spiritual: a documentary collection (westport, http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout during their performance, brown and the group interpolated a fragment of new text into this refrain, instructing the listener to “get on board if you want to see jesus, and follow me.” this small but significant alteration christologizes the spiritual, rendering it theologically and culturally consistent with gospel music (the figure of jesus christ is much more prevalent in the lyrics of gospel music than in the spirituals). the verse brown sang twice during the performance was a variant of the popular spiritual: it has landed many a thousand. it has landed many a thousand. it has landed many a thousand. get on board, get on board. in the twentieth century, this spiritual took on new life as a notated composition in black hymnals including the new national baptist hymnal and the african american heritage hymnal. its cultural capital was extended to gospel music in when composer thomas dorsey wrote a gospel song titled “old ship of zion.” although his title recapitulated the spiritual’s central theme of a journey from danger to safety and drew on the cultural cachet of the older spiritual/hymn, dorsey’s lyrics bore no resemblance to the spiritual’s text. many white and black gospel artists have recorded some version of either the spiritual/hymn or dorsey’s gospel composition, and black ministers such as c. l. franklin have made recordings with their congregations in which they line out its text. various incarnations of “old ship of zion” thus have deep and old roots in black worship. aside from choosing such a culturally resonant sacred song, brown historicized himself as part of the mid-twentieth-century black gospel tradition in his pre- performance remarks. immediately before singing, he recited a litany of famous gospel singers, weaving himself into the list as a historical presence: “well, you know everything starts right here, and i remember the swanees from many years back, and go back to julius cheeks, go back to the pilgrim travelers—i can do all those songs. . . . oh, archie brownlee was my all-time. and then . . . clarence fountain, and then brother joe may, and reverend c. l. franklin—so we go way back together” (author’s emphasis). three of the performers brown named sang the lead part in popular black gospel quartets of the mid-twentieth century. julius cheeks was associated with the sensational nightingales, archie brownlee with the blind boys of mississippi, and clarence fountain with the blind boys of alabama. along with the other groups brown named, these quartets were extremely popular during the commercial peak of the quartet movement. all were known for their raw, “hard gospel” singing style and charismatic stage presence, and in the s, brown and the famous flames had been particularly influenced by the quintet and the blind boys. by conn.: greenwood press, ), – . all three variants share the same refrain, which is the text sung by brown and the brewsteraires. new national baptist hymnal, ed. r. h. boyd (n.p.: triad publications/national baptist con- vention of the united states of america, ); african american heritage hymnal, ed. robert batastini (chicago: gia publications, ). hay, “music box meets the toccoa band.” http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen highlighting his participation in, and consumption of, mid-century gospel quartet music, brown was flashing his gospel music credentials to the largely church-based african american viewership of poq. having declared his intentions and qualifications to sing a culturally significant sacred song, brown then interprets “old ship of zion” as a slow sixteen-bar minor blues in which “sacred” and “secular” sonic signifiers intersect graphically. the blues influence is heard in the standard sixteen-bar harmonic progression and the deep pitch bending on an electric guitar, a sound reminiscent of the delta blues guitar style after it was transformed through amplification in chicago in the s. much like its role in the blues, the guitar here assumes the role of “respondent” in a call-and-response pattern, playing blues-based riffs at the ends of brown’s vocal phrases. other elements of the arrangement, however, evoke the soundscape of black sacred song, including the hammond b- organ and the swinging / meter that is nearly inescapable in traditional (i.e., mid-twentieth century) gospel music. halfway through the performance, the background singers begin to repeat the phrase “old ship of zion,” providing a textural foil against which the lead singers can improvise. the deployment of an ostinato by background singers has been common in gospel quartet arrangements since the s. cyclical musical and historical gestures signify on one another as brown, who “made gospel music and its delivery style a permanent fixture in american popular music,” once again bridges the gulf between the sacred and the secular—this time, in the context of singing gospel music. using multiple critical frameworks and analytical approaches, many scholars have engaged the porousness, nebulousness, or downright nonexistence of the stylistic and cultural boundaries between “sacred” and “secular” music in african american culture. a recent addition to this discourse, and one particularly fruitful in interpreting these contested dimensions of brown’s performance of “old ship of zion,” is teresa reed’s the holy profane: religion in black popular music. reed documents the fluctuating notions of “sacred” and “secular” throughout several epochs of twentieth-century african american culture. she argues that the meaning for the parade of quartets’ viewing demographics, see allen, “a mighty long way.” maultsby discusses the ubiquity of the / meter and triplet pattern in gospel music in “the impact of gospel music on the secular music industry,” in we’ll understand it better by and by, . ibid., . this issue forms one of the central inquiries in samuel floyd’s the power of black music: interpreting its history from africa to the united states (urbana: university of illinois press, ), in which the author names the ring shout as the foundational musical and cultural impulse underlying sacred and secular black music. pointing to the spirituals and the blues as early incarnations of the “ring” impulse, floyd argues that a binary division of “sacred and secular” cultural expressions was unknown in the worldview of africans enslaved in the u.s. south. several years later, guthrie ramsey focused his discussion of sacred-secular relationships on the ubiquitous manifestation of the “blues muse” in twentieth-century black music. in race music, ramsey problematizes the complex intersection of sacred and secular modes of black music making in the twentieth century without arguing for a complete elision of these boundaries. the issue of sacred-secular exchanges within the particular genre of gospel music has also been discussed by michael harris in the rise of gospel blues: the music of thomas andrew dorsey in the urban church (new york: oxford university press, ), jerma jackson in singing in my soul: black gospel music in a secular age (chapel hill: university of north carolina press, ), and portia maultsby in “the impact of gospel music.” http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout of these terms for black audiences and performers has been historically contingent, not static, and was in a state of unprecedented fluidity in the era in which brown and other soul singers came of age: the s was a highly volatile period, not only of social and political transition, but also of generational tension. . . . james brown, for example, wedded church flavor to secular lyrics to such an extent that regardless of a song’s message, the gospel ethos essentially remained intact. . . . before the s, the lines between god and the devil were so dogmatically (if not clearly) drawn that religious consumers were never expected to patronize secular music. by the s, however, the tide had clearly changed, a fact which suggests dramatically revised notions of good and evil where black music was concerned. according to reed, the black popular music emerging from that generation, em- bodied by brown, aretha franklin, and ray charles, showed “a new willingness on the part of blacks to display the fusion of their sacred and secular identities without compromise.” brown’s rendition of “old ship of zion” was a sonic representation of exactly the sort of “identity fusion” that he forged in the popular music industry of the s. by the standards of contemporary gospel music in the early s, when this episode was taped at the wjbf studios, brown’s performance of “old ship” was decidedly anachronistic; its harmonies, instrumentation, and arrangement reincarnated the style of r&b ballads of the late s. this publicly televised recapitulation of s-style rhythm and blues (sung with a sacred text) recalled the transgressive music making of the famous flames, the genre-bending vocal group with whom brown sang in the early s. brown’s performance of “old ship of zion” in the s reified for the viewer the shifting of mid-twentieth-century perspectives on the categories of the sacred and the secular in black music. as he wails the text of a spiritual over the sixteen-bar blues changes, he also concretizes theologian james cone’s assertion that the blues, which cone described as “secular spirituals,” can convey existential hope. in the spirituals and the blues, cone theorizes that the interdependence of the two genres lies at the heart of the musical, theological, and philosophical responses of african americans to radical oppression. cone reed, the sacred profane, – . ibid., . james cone, professor of systematic theology at union theological seminary and ordained minister in the african methodist episcopal church, is best known in american religious history for forging a distinctive “black liberation theology.” his theory is part of a broader network of liberation theologies that seek to address political and economic oppression on biblical terms. the core of black liberation theology is cone’s assertion that the christian gospel, revealed in the bible, aims at freeing humanity from political, economic, and social oppression. for cone, this interpretation of christianity had particular and empowering relevance for african americans. the theory enabled a new model of critical engagement between african american experiences of suffering and christianity by making the christian gospel message relevant to the tangible, felt experience of many african americans. cone propounded the theory in his and books black theology and black power (maryknoll, n.y.: orbis books, reprint ed.) and a black theology of liberation (maryknoll, n.y.: orbis books, reprint ed.) and expanded on it in later works, often drawing on black cultural traditions (including music) as an integral part of his theological thought. cone’s work has heavily influenced both academic thought and the preaching of many ministers in historically black denominations. james cone, the spirituals and the blues: an interpretation (maryknoll, n.y.: orbis books, ), – . http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen ultimately argues for recognition of the sacred amid the secular, whereas teresa reed’s work often emphasizes the inverse of this relationship. although both of these scholars argue for a theoretical collapse of the categories of the sacred and the secular in black song in certain historical epochs, brown’s “gospel blues” eloquently explodes these boundaries in practice—just as he did throughout his career when he helped forge r&b, soul, and funk using the gospel ethos as a stylistic foundation. the performance of “old ship of zion” also provides a rare insight into brown’s collaborative behavior in a noncommercial musical setting. the brewsteraires’ joel walker recalls that brown was insistent that the two men alternate singing lead on “old ship”: “well, you know, it was just amazing, you know! because . . . we started singing the song, and he would cue us when to come in, and all of a sudden, he reached in the background and caught me by the hand—you can see it on the tape—and pulled me up to take lead and he sung background. . . . i had james brown singing backup for me.” at the moment in the footage that walker described, brown audibly sings, “come on, young brother; come talk to me a little bit” as he coaxes walker to the forefront of the television set. later, when brown wants the brewsteraires to begin singing the ostinato, he sings the encouraging cue, “now brewsteraires, i want you to help me right here while i say it, one more time.” brown behaved similarly in other extant poq footage, cheerfully encouraging other musicians to sing lead during a song, to join on a chorus, or to contribute an instrumental solo. brown’s gentle sonic cues and insistence on egalitarian participation in the con- text of gospel music performance contrasts with his notorious domination of com- mercial recording sessions, rehearsals, and concerts. the absence of tyrannical musical behavior in poq footage suggests that in singing noncommercial sacred music, brown was free of the egotism, fear, and competitiveness that characterized his secular, commercial collaborations. this view is supported poignantly by footage of brown on poq in the early s in which he insisted that the program host address him as “james” rather than “mr. brown.” in the clip, brown laughs with visible relief as he explains that it had been too long since he had been called “james.” (throughout his career, brown vehemently insisted he be addressed as “mr. brown” by reporters and other musicians.) he also calls the poq host “brother howard” rather than “mr. howard.” (brown nearly always called even longtime band members “mr.”) with neither finances nor professional reputation at stake in walker, interview, . reports of brown’s dictatorial interactions with band members can be found in philip goure- vitch’s profile of brown in the new yorker, july , – , and – ; jimmy leslie’s interview with fred thomas, ray brundidge, and bootsy collins, “made men: fred thomas, ray brundidge, and bootsy collins with james brown and the hardest working man in show business,” in bass player, march , – , , , , , ; jonathan lethem’s article on brown and his bandmates, “being james brown: the godfather of soul,” in rolling stone, june , – , , – (in which lethem observed brown’s recording sessions in augusta); and fred wesley’s autobiography, hit me, fred: recollections of a sideman (durham, n.c.: duke university press, ). brown’s insistence on artistic control and his demeaning behavior and remarks caused key performers such as bassist bootsy collins and trombonist/arranger fred wesley to sever ties with brown for years at a time. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout his televised augusta gospel performances, brown was able to cede the social and artistic control that marked his commercial endeavors. conclusion: the “real” james brown brown’s complex personal and musical relationship with gospel music was lived out on his own terms for more than six decades, with its later stages occurring primarily in the context of his hometown gospel tradition. grounding brown as a participant in augusta’s sacred song tradition creates a richer, more nuanced understanding of the complicated musical trajectory of one of the primary innovators of global popular music. it is tempting to think of brown’s musical journey as a relentless, teleological march through gospel, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, and even hip-hop via sampling. in reality, however, his musical path was far more recursive and fluid, marked by a continuous relationship with gospel music that remained unconfined by strict stylistic, social, or historical boundaries. further complicating brown’s participation in gospel music and the church in his last two decades is the fact that his notorious legal problems persisted throughout these years. brown was imprisoned from december to february for leading police on a high-speed chase in georgia and south carolina. the tensions between brown’s public professions of christianity and this period of incarcera- tion were highlighted in a parade of quartets episode, when henry howard (figure ) stated that “i just want say to all our viewers out there, that this is the real james brown right here. and i say that because i know this man—i’ve known this man all my life—and this is the real james brown.” later in the episode, immediately before brown performed, howard stated, “you know . . . regardless of what you’ve seen of a person down through the years, god knows his heart. . . . today is going to prove to many of you out there, regardless of what many of you out there feel, that he is a man, a man of wisdom of faith, a man of love. . . . mr. brown, do it the way you wanna do it.” despite howard’s remarks, apparently meant to convince skeptical viewers of the sincerity of brown’s faith, in december , brown was arrested for domestic assault and battery. the personal and public identity of the “real james brown” was once again unclear. the complex notion of a “real james brown” was also articulated by brown in his autobiography. in the book’s final words, brown summarized his keen awareness of the many dimensions of his constructed identity—public, private, artificial, and authentic: where i grew up there was no way out, no avenue of escape, so you had to make a way. mine was to create james brown. god made me but . . . i created the myth. i’ve tried to fulfill it. but i’ve always tried to remember that there’s james brown the myth and james brown nelson george and alan leeds, eds., the james brown reader: fifty years of writing about the godfather of soul (new york: penguin, ), xxviii. ibid., xxix. national press coverage of brown’s legal troubles from the late s until his death in was recently compiled by nelson and leeds in their james brown reader. the augusta chronicle ran local features, editorials, and letters to the editor regarding brown’s encounters with georgia and south carolina police during these decades, although no items from the chronicle were included in nelson and leeds’ reader. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen figure . henry howard (photo credit: howard family). the man. the people own james brown. that belongs to them. the minute i say “i’m james brown” and believe it, then it will be the end of james brown. i’m james brown. in the last few decades of his life, brown mediated several dimensions of this man-myth identity through social relationships with augusta’s gospel musicians and local sacred song performances. these years, too, were part of the legacy of the “real james brown,” the performer who always managed to simultaneously praise the lord and sing the blues. references allen, carrie. “‘a mighty long way’: black gospel music on television in georgia, – .” ph.d. diss., university of georgia, . allen, carrie. “‘when we send up the praises’: race, identity, and gospel music in augusta, georgia.” black music research journal / ( ): – . “augusta’s most popular singing group.” augusta chronicle, october , . “augusta singers in movie.” augusta chronicle, november , -d. batastini, robert, ed. african american heritage hymnal. chicago: gia publica- tions, . brown and tucker, godfather of soul, . http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout boyd, r. h., ed. new national baptist hymnal. n.p.: triad publications/national baptist convention of the united states of america, . brackett, david. “james brown’s ‘superbad’ and the double-voiced utterance.” popular music / ( ): – . brackett, david. “preface: the godfather of soul and the beginnings of funk.” in the pop, rock, and soul reader: histories and debates, ed. david, brackett, – . new york: oxford university press, . the brewsteraires: yesterday, today, forever. dvd. no production credits, . brown, james, and bruce tucker. james brown: the godfather of soul. new york: thunder’s mouth press, . carter, flo. interviews with author, and september . carter, dr. james e., iii. interview with author, april . cone, james. black theology and black power. maryknoll, n.y.: orbis books, ; reprint ed., . cone, james. a black theology of liberation. maryknoll, n.y.: orbis books, ; reprint ed., . cone, james. the spirituals and the blues: an interpretation. maryknoll, n.y.: orbis books, . cooper, sylvia. “local musicians mourn loss: godfather of soul led, inspired and became like family member.” augusta chronicle, december , http://old.chronicle.augusta.com/stories/ /met .shtml. crawford, richard. america’s musical life: a history. new york: norton, . epstein, dena. sinful tunes and spirituals: black folk music to the civil war. urbana: university of illinois press, ; reprint ed., . “everybody is talking about home folks frolics.” augusta chronicle, may , . floyd, samuel a. the power of black music: interpreting its history from africa to the united states. urbana: university of illinois press, . george, nelson, and alan leeds, eds. the james brown reader: fifty years of writing about the godfather of soul. new york: penguin, . gourevitch, philip. “profile of james brown.” new yorker, july : – , – . griffin, percy. interview with author, may . guralnick, peter. dream boogie: the triumph of sam cooke. new york: little, brown and company, . harris, michael. the rise of gospel blues: the music of thomas andrew dorsey in the urban church. new york: oxford university press, . hay, fred. j. “music box meets the toccoa band: the godfather of soul in ap- palachia.” black music research journal / ( ): – . hayes, cedric j., and robert, laughton. gospel records – : a black music discography, vol. . n.p.: record information services/paul pelletier, . heilbut, tony. the gospel sound: good news and bad times. new york: simon and schuster, . howard, karlton. interview with author, september . howard, karlton. interview with author, may . http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . allen jackson, jerma. singing in my soul: black gospel music in a secular age. chapel hill: university of north carolina press, . leslie, jimmy. “made men: fred thomas, ray brundidge, and bootsy collins with james brown and the hardest working man in show business.” bass player, march , – , , , , , . lethem, 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bebop to hip-hop. berkeley: university of california press, . reed, teresa. the sacred profane: religion in black popular music. lexington: uni- versity press of kentucky, . rhodes, don. “james brown was deeply spiritual.” augusta chronicle, decem- ber , http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/ / / /aik .shtml. http://journals.cambridge.org: http://journals.cambridge.org downloaded: oct ip address: . . . i got that something that makes me want to shout rhodes, don. “leon austin, longtime associate of james brown, dies at .” augusta chronicle, june . stewart, alexander. “‘funky drummer’: new orleans, james brown, and the rhyth- mic transformation of american popular music.” popular music / ( ): – . straw, will. “star profiles: james brown,” in the cambridge companion to pop and rock, ed. simon frith, will straw, and john street, – . cambridge: cambridge university press, . “swanee quintet sings at lions club meeting.” augusta chronicle, april , . www.swaneequintet.com. walker, joel. telephone interview with author. august . wellington, sharon. “gospel singers ‘walked in the light’ for half a century.” augusta chronicle, december , b, b. wesley, fred. hit me, fred: recollections of a sideman. durham, n.c.: duke uni- versity press, . young, alan. the pilgrim jubilees. oxford: university of mississippi press, . http://journals.cambridge.org: microsoft word - prince_iconography_rt.doc pop stars and idolatry: an investigation of the worship of popular music icons, and the music and cult of prince r. till department of music and drama, university of huddersfield, huddersfield, england email: r.till@hud.ac.uk abstract: prince is an artist who integrates elements from the sacred into his work. he uses popular iconography to present himself as an icon of consumer culture, as a deified ‘rock god’ worshipped by his fans, and as a preacher leading his audience like a congregation. his personality cult mixes spirituality and sexuality, and deals with issues of ecstasy and liberation, a transgressional approach that draws both controversy and public interest. this paper investigates prince’s work and the role of the pop star as an icon within contemporary culture, an icon that contains a physicality and sexuality not present in contemporary western religious traditions. it discusses to what extent popular musical culture operates as a form of religious practice within contemporary western culture, and the implications that this has. the paper investigates the construction of prince’s public character, his manipulation of the star system, and how he uses popular iconography to blur the distinctions between spirituality and sexuality, the idealised performer and the real world, the sacred and the profane, and the human and the divine. it explores how he possesses and is possessed by the audience, who enter into the hollow vessel he offers up to his fans. keywords: prince; popular; iconography; icon; star introduction this paper investigates the construction of the cult of popular musician prince, investigating what it means to describe him as a popular icon, differentiating this terminology from ‘star’ or ‘celebrity’, which are largely synonymous. the term ‘popular icons’ is used to recognise the differing earlier traditions of iconography. a discussion of popular iconography, and the nature of popular icons, is followed by discussion of the star system and the relationships between stars and icons, using the song ‘let’s go crazy’ from the film and soundtrack album purple rain to illustrate how these issues can be seen in the work of prince. this includes looking at performance traditions, the use of overt, ambiguous and transgressional sexuality as part of marketing, and references and attitudes to religion within african american culture. it investigates other musical and performative techniques and influences, as well as the use of the colour purple by prince. his use of a graphical symbol to replace his name is also discussed. finally the paper draws conclusions about the role of, and worship of, the popular icon within postmodernity. the term cult is used in order to recognise the oppositional presentation of popular music cults, rather than the more contemporary term ‘new religious movement’. for further reading on cults see cowan and bromley ( ). the star system within popular culture, stars are those who are recognised for their ‘well-knownness’ (boorstin ), and have high visibility, suggesting people ‘whose name has attention-getting, interest riveting and profit generating value’ (rein et al. , ). they have various ways of becoming famous. in the past this was usually through their actions, whereas within contemporary society stars are icons of consumption, not necessarily having achieved anything in order to be famous (lowenthal ). dyer describes in some detail the star system and its workings amongst actors ( ). although film stars dominated the star system in the first half of the th century, and despite film stars still being both popular and famous, popular music stars have perhaps become the dominant form of european star in more recent years. for stars to progress to a point where they are described as ‘an icon’ requires their achievement of a level of fame at which they are treated with the sort of respect traditionally reserved for religious figures. they are then usually known by only one name, as are religious figures such as jesus, moses, mary, judas, buddha and the pope. the combination of an image and single name description characterises icons and differentiates them from stars. the development of icons for branding is used by the entertainment industry for marketing purposes, just as it is in the manufacturing industry. as longhurst puts it, ‘stars function as trademarks which generate sales for the music business and the culture industries more widely’ ( , ). the importance of image in this process has meant that artists’ images have become as important to success within popular music as the quality of their music, indeed it has meant that for some artists the careful handling of branding, marketing and image has been the dominant factor in, and feature of, their success. popular icons iconographic techniques either taken from, rooted in or similar to those in religious traditions are used by the music industry in order to enhance the success of a popular musician. these icons use every aspect of st century multimedia techniques in their design. videos, websites, photographs, ringtones, clothing, fanclubs, films, concerts and a huge range of merchandise, allow the icon to be a three dimensional, moving multimedia creation, based on the character of the performer, but weaving myth and fantasy into a hyperreal legend using public relations companies, press releases and media manipulation. compared with that of a painting or sculpture, popular icons have an entire fantasy world that surrounds them, in which the pop star lives. the performing arts tradition, in which the body is the main instrument, has made the creation of semi-fictional pop star characters a key part of the art-form of the pop musician. consumer culture uses popular icons as examples of idealised consumers, the music industry in particular presenting them as perfect models of consumption. their images are used to sell products with little functional value, to add enhanced value, encouraging the purchase of the products associated with these icons. consumer culture requires consumption to exceed need, in order to consume as much as is produced and sustain never-ending growth (dyer , - ). icons have apparently infinite needs; they project an imaginary (or semi-fictional) extravagant life style featuring elements such as limousines, designer clothes, huge houses and large entourages. they sell objects with little inherent value outside association with their cult, including t-shirts, badges, recordings, dvds, posters, magazines and perfumes, providing products that the consumer can buy in order to be more like, or feel closer to, their favourite icon, to allow consumption of that icon. traditionally icons were hollow vessels inhabited by god. the popular icon is to be filled or inhabited by the viewer, by the consumer or fan. this means that the fans take the place of god, deifying themselves. as bing crosby put it ‘every man who likes me sees in me the image of himself’ (buxton , - ). in a similar vein george michael has stated ‘it’s not the something extra that makes the star – it’s the something that’s missing’ (goodwin , ). the representation can never equal the represented as the signifier is never equal to the signified, and thus it can appear that the more hollow, vacuous and lacking in content stars are, the more successful they can become. holding back information about stars leaves space for observers to ‘pop’ is used here to indicate mainstream chart music traditions, pop music being traditionally associated with a younger audience and commercially driven successful current music, whereas ‘popular’ music includes folk music, underground music subcultures, historical traditions, and a broader range of less commercial forms. fill in the gaps with themselves. identification with or rejection of these signifiers is used to tell the observers’ own stories. for the performer the process is a mystical one. the emptying out of self is a mystical tradition, addressing the void, stillness and space, allowing exploration of the self, or for the divine to indwell the empty vessel. in this case the performer is filled, inspired and sustained by the projected adulation of the fans, the worshipper creating the popular icon, as without an audience a star is merely another person. the members of the audience are embodied as larger than life deific beings, possessing the star whom they consume, as they become possessed themselves by the character of the star. as longhurst describes it, ‘stars appeal because the audience wants to understand or fill in the knowledge that is missing’ ( , ). when fans listen to the singing of the star in the privacy of their bedroom, or within the exclusivity of the earphones of their mp player, this can seem a very intimate relationship. the inserting of themselves inside the star by the fan (or vice-versa) can be a very personal process, with obvious sexual analogies, which many icons exploit with a sexualised style of performance. ‘it may be that the fan of a star feels that only he or she can possess such knowledge’(longhurst , - ), that the relationship is monogamous. thus the personality cult of the star also becomes a contemporary form of possession cult. fans imagine they are like the star, and that the star is like them, projecting into the hollowed out icon. richard dyer, drawing from andrew tudor’s work ( ), defines four different ways that audiences relate to film stars; emotional affinity, self-identification, imitation, and finally projection. projection happens when imitation goes beyond image and affects the person’s life in a more substantial fashion (dyer , ). film stars promote their films only periodically, and they play different characters in different situations. popular music stars usually play only one part. their appearances onstage add credence and authenticity to their realism, as they are perceived through songs, interviews and other media outputs. this material is not always factual, but it is not clearly fictional. fans assume that popular singers are singing about their real experiences some popular music stars have renewed and reinvigorated their work by creating new versions of their onstage character, notable examples including david bowie, madonna, and adam ant. and feelings, although this is often not the case. pop stars carefully mix fact and fiction to create a hyper-real personality that is more interesting, and extravagant, than any real person. they draw upon cultural myths and archetypes, upon histories of other icons, and on numerous other media sources. in comparison to film culture, where the audience usually leaves the star behind in the cinema, the artifacts of popular music are designed to routinely penetrate deeply into the life of a fan. pop fans will routinely imitate a pop singer by singing along, memorising their words. it is quite normal for popular music fans to have a deep level of involvement with a star, imitating their dress, hair or image, and imitation and projection are both common. karaoke allows fans to further imitate their heroes, as do computer games that allow fans to play the part of a popular guitar hero or singer. fan clubs, often run by the management of the musician, allow the audience to feel more intimately involved with the star, allowing the musician to market directly to the most interested and obsessive members of the audience, building a personality cult. pop stars have the advantage of validating the authenticity of their public persona by performing live in concert. their lives are generally perceived as real, although they are usually a complex mixture of reality, construction, marketing, exaggeration, and untruth. this ambiguity offers flexibility in the perception by the audience of the nature of the star. prince prince is one such star who has managed to progress to the status of popular icon, using an overt strategy which has proven very successful. born prince rogers nelson, he launched himself as a solo artist, shortening his name to prince, creating a public persona or mediapheme drawn from his various influences, and using a number of themes and traditions. he was born in minneapolis, a united states city that has no large black community or separate black music tradition to inspire him (as in for example new york, chicago, new guitar hero computer game software for various games consoles, allows the player to seem to play guitar in a band..singstar software allows the player to sing, and rock band includes drumming, as well as bass guitar and keyboard playing. the player does not need to actually be able to play the instrument concerned. mediaphemes are quick encapulations; once a story, person or event is translated into mediapheme form, which can ricochet through the channels of mass mediation with ease. there are many similarities between an icon and a mediapheme, a mediapheme is perhaps a postmodern form of or term for an icon. (baty and paige ); johnson , - ). orleans, memphis or detroit). prince has therefore drawn from both black and white american musical cultures. he integrated funk and blues guitar music from black musical culture, along with their modern, white derivatives, new romantic and rock guitar music. he plays with and uses the black and white traditions of the guitar hero, and presents himself as an authentic virtuoso performer (marshall , ) and auteur producer. he draws themes of overt sexuality (hill , - ) from the homoerotic yet heterosexual preening of heavy metal, the raw eroticism of early blues (till ) and funk and the transgressional gender ambiguity (baitz ) of the s pop music new romantic genre. singing in a high falsetto voice and presenting a feminised image, he deals lyrically with issues such as incest, masturbation, oral sex and threesomes, adopting a complex approach to sexuality that has guaranteed a huge level of media coverage. he plays the part of a pop god, performing authenticity much like david bowie, enhanced by an exploration of spirituality and divinity. neither black nor white, he presents himself as purple. he eventually reduced himself to a symbol, both contesting and enhancing his treatment as a product within the music industry. he did this by changing his name temporarily to a simple graphical symbol, and insisting that the media use only this symbol as his name. an excellent illustration of these points is the performance of the song ‘let’s go crazy’ from the film purple rain, released in . a vehicle written to feature prince as its star, the film is styled as an extended rock video, with a loose plot gathered around musical set pieces both live and recorded. ‘let’s go crazy’ begins the film. the film blurs reality and fiction, using a mixture of autobiographical and fictional elements, creating a mythical prince. some of the music featured (not including ‘let’s go crazy’), was recorded live in concert, and this adds to the confusion of how much within the film is real and how much is fictional. this film helped to create the perception of a legendary prince that no longer had to be bound by reality and could rise to iconic status. it was a critical and commercial success and along with the soundtrack album it established prince as an international musical superstar. it allowed prince to create and present his iconic construction in detail. prince also understood the power of mixing sexuality and religious references, and that this would help to guarantee controversy and even greater media coverage. bowie has stated ‘i have never been convinced by the importance of authenticity… i have always engaged in the idea of an entertainer who performs authenticity. yes i think one cannot be authentic.’ (von appen and doehring , p. ). the sacred and the profane prince adopted many ideas from james brown’s onstage persona, which itself was based on african american gospel preachers. prince went to a live concert by ‘james brown when he was and he went straight home to practice the moves’ (sutcliffe ). prince uses numerous religious or pseudo-religious references to conjure up an atmosphere charged with a feeling of powerful emotions and transcendence. ‘let’s go crazy’ uses many of these techniques. the film begins in darkness with a simple church-like organ chord the only sound. from the darkness comes prince’s voice. he speaks as if he is officiating at a church service. his first phrase is ‘dearly beloved we are gathered here today’, a reference to the first lines of the christian marriage service, which begins ‘dear beloved we are gathered here’. the marriage service goes on to describe marriage as ‘signifying the mystical union that is betwixt christ and his church’ (church of england ). in this case prince is presiding over a joining of himself with his church, his congregation, his audience of fans. this places him in the position of christ or deity, marrying, possessing and becoming one flesh with his worshippers, carrying obvious sexual overtones. the rest of prince’s opening address is an odd mix of references, but what is notable is the organ accompaniment and spoken style that sets up a religious context for the concert, and for both the relationship of the audience with prince, and the film. it makes the audience aware that they are here to worship their idol, not just watch a concert, preparing the way for a film which features numerous opportunities for prince to be presented as a popular icon. it also places the film viewer as an audience member, voyeuristically observing what one might assume to be the early life of prince. prince is often filmed backlit during ‘let’s go crazy’, the stage lighting from the front replaced by powerful rear white lights that leave the band silhouetted. backlighting is used much in the way that a halo, a circle of light also known as a nimbus, is placed behind the head of a divine being in religious artwork in christian, hindu, roman and greek contexts. within christianity this is used to indicate the logos or divinity of christ, mary or other holy figures. here it is prince who is presented as divine. beams of light come down from above, surrounded by clouds of smoke from a smoke machine, as if the band, raised up on the stage, were in heaven, set above and beyond the audience. the crowd is encouraged to project their appreciation towards the stage by clapping, holding their hands in the air, singing along, screaming or imitating the group. at one point the audience mimics prince’s hand movements, joining in with their hero and feeling for a moment connected to him. the audience scream, shout and applaud the musicians onstage, faces looking up in adulation, reaching out towards prince to touch him. the song finishes with prince ascending into the light. he climbs up onto the piano, and, with a nimbus-like light carefully placed behind his head, plays a solo guitar cadenza, spotlighting his guitar virtuosity, his extraordinary musical ability. at this moment he is alone. he is physically alone on top of the piano, above the rest of the band as well as the audience, and musically he is alone, not accompanied by anyone else. he is alone in the light, the one and only prince, above everybody else and presented for the worship of those below him. the mixing of the sacred and secular within music has a long tradition within african american music. blues, rhythm and blues, soul, funk and disco all included elements that came from gospel music. prince’s work explores and transgresses the boundaries between the sacred and profane, much as he adopts a transgressional approach to traditional sexual boundaries. prince is similar in many ways to rock’n’roll singer little richard, who also was effeminate, looked androgenous, was of mixed race (hamilton , - ), wore make up, used a falsetto voice, was a dramatic and extravagant performer, and alternated between religious fundamentalism and homosexuality and promiscuity (white ). like little richard, prince moved beyond a racially segmented audience in order to sell to a larger, mainstream, white audience. prince has said ‘i don’t necessarily think of myself as a member of the black race - more a member of the human race’ (salewicz ). at a time when mtv showed little or no music by black artists, prince presented an image that mixed and combined elements of black and white culture. the structure of music concerts enhances the perception of musicians on stage as being above and superior to the audience. they are brightly lit, raised on a platform and separated by security guards and fences from the audience. to further avoid being pigeonholed as either primarily black or white, prince presents himself as purple. he uses the colour purple as a theme in his work, in lyrics, clothing and videos. within traditional religious icon design, red represents divine life, while blue represents human life. purple is a mixture of the two. purple dye in ancient rome was worn by senators and emperors in their togas (vout , - ) and went on to become associated more broadly with aristocracy. it is also associated with psychedelia and s culture, referencing for example the ultra-violet or black light used in hippie lighting effects, and a jimi hendrix song ‘purple haze’ ( ). purple rain features purple clothing and lighting, a purple motorbike and a purple guitar. prince has become intimately associated with purple. the symbol prince has tried to control every aspect of his work. one aspect of his career he could not control was the way he was presented and represented by his record company, warner brothers. despite having carefully packaged himself as part of his artform, prince changed his name to a symbol as a complaint against being treated as a commodity. in a press release that was widely published, prince stated, the first step i have taken towards the ultimate goal of emancipation from the chains that bind me to warner bros. was to change my name from prince to (symbol). prince is the name that my mother gave me at birth. warner bros. took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing tool to promote all of the music that i wrote. the company owns the name prince and all related music marketed under prince. i became merely a pawn used to produce more money for warner bros.… i was born prince and did not want to adopt another conventional name. the only acceptable replacement for my name, and my identity, was a symbol with no pronunciation, that is a representation of me and what my music is about. this symbol is present in my work over the years; it is a concept that has evolved from my frustration; it is who i am. it is my name. the symbol simplifies his mediapheme to one visual object, an act of overt iconography, or icon drawing. it is based on the alchemical symbol for soapstone (figure ). this is turned degrees clockwise so that the arrow is pointing downwards. a circle is then added to the top. the result is similar to a combination of the planetary symbols for mars (figure ) and venus (figure ), representing male and female genders, and his androgeny. it also appears similar to an egyptian ankh, and to a cross. this is another way that prince integrates references to religion into his work. hendrix is a key influence on prince’s image and guitar playing. led zepellin are also an important influence, prince having performed their music in his live concerts. figure figure figure figure prince had developed his iconography so well that he could be defined by and recognised from a graphical icon, something with which rock band led zeppelin had also experimented. figure is an icon used to represent occultist and guitarist jimmy page, the title of their fourth album was a series of four graphical icons representing the members of the band. prince has since reverted to using his name, and the symbol is not reproduced here as prince has restricted its use. he adopts an icon to represent him much as other products are marketed by a symbol, for example the twin arches of macdonalds or the white tick of nike. this marks his full-blown adoption of iconography as part of his work. once free of the contract that caused him initially to adopt the symbol, prince continued to use it, playing a guitar with a body made in its image, wearing symbol jewelry and branding his website, publicity and most of his products with the symbol. despite protesting that his record company had turned him into a commodity, he has continued this commodification for his own benefit. conclusions prince’s iconography was designed to reach the widest possible market. this included the use of sources from throughout popular music history, including blues, rhythm’n’blues, motown, soul, gospel, psychedelia, stax, rock, funk, disco and the new romantics. he included much that was transgressional, in order to court controversy and media attention. this included elements of black and white culture, transgressing traditional genre definitions and classifications. he adopted an overtly sexual physicality that mixed the traditionally masculine and feminine, as well as using heterosexual and homosexual references. he mixes this sexuality with religion, and uses similar techniques to those seen within traditional religions, in order to create a godlike onstage character and engender worship from his fans. the relationships between the sacred and the profane are often used to define the religious (durkheim ). clear boundaries between the two are necessary for this definition. prince is part of, and also a result of, a spiritual revolution resulting from the emergence of postmodernity, in which popular cultural artefacts are fulfilling the roles traditionally associated with religions. this is part of the impact of postmodernity (or liquidity, re-enchantment, the post-historical or post-enlightenment) on religion. postmodernity is characterised partly by the blurring of and tearing down of boundaries, especially those between high and popular culture, and also acts to make the boundaries between the sacred and the profane less clear. prince uses techniques and methods from religious traditions, fulfilling some of the roles formerly played by mainstream religions. he uses these techniques to create a form of possession cult based around his personality, drawing (often young) fans into the semi-fictional world he creates, increasing his commercial success in the process. through his music prince promotes a spiritual (rather than religious) view of life, reflecting the growing interest within contemporary popular culture in unconventional expressions of spirituality, rather than traditional religious organisations (heelas and woodhead ). his is a spirituality that mixes and confuses religion, spirituality, physicality, sexuality, dance, music, identity, ethnicity and commerce. by mixing dance music and pop/rock traditions, he merges the sacred and secular, white and black, into a single hybrid form that is attractive, easily accessible and marketable. he plays with and manipulates his public identity and uses iconography and the media as part of his art. he challenges us to understand and decode his secretive world and invites his fans to project themselves into his hollow iconographic shell, revealing ourselves as we try to understand him, empowering, deifying and enriching him through the process. prince offers salvation though a temporary escape from normality into the myth he has created around himself. his is not a world driven by morality or intellect, but by pleasure and the body. when a fan projects their self into the shell prince offers, rather than living in their everyday existence, for a moment they are instead a sexual, spiritual, beautiful demi-god, attractive to men and women, dancing on a stage under concert lights. this entering of prince by the fan (and/or vice-versa), also plays with sexual analogies, and spiritual analogies such as a spirit entering or possessing the body. whether in the audience at a concert or listening to his music at home, the fan feels they are part of prince’s world, that they understand him, they are the same as him. filling in the spaces he leaves in his character, they create a prince in their own image who is like them, allowing them to feel close to and part of him, to associate with him and feel reflected glory. the audience is able to live vicariously through prince, and indeed he is vicar to his own congregation, representing or indeed replacing god as the object of worship, and as a representation of who and how the fan would like to be. prince uses transgression to generate excitement and a sense of transcendence of the ordinary. by addressing and combining both the sacred and the profane he avoids the mundanity of the everyday and exists in the liminal world of the nightclub and rockstar lifestyle. ‘that’s what prince is about - the twin sides of human nature. “sin and salvation,” says the man who dedicates to god (the album) dirty mind’ (salewicz ). an analysis of madonna, u or many other famous popular music stars or bands could also illustrate how pop stars are worshipped by their fans. whether one considers these groups of worshippers as constituting new religious movements, cults or implicit religion, or not, it is clear that their behaviour is similar in many ways to that of religious worshippers. it offers the homeless self of contemporary culture (heelas and woodhead , ) a place of belonging within prince’s world. is there a cult of prince? are there those who worship him religiously? there are certainly those who have an image of him on their wall and who try to behave like him. every would-be pop star sets out to be worshipped by adoring fans, using the power of the media to aid them. prince is selling pleasure, selling a hollow shell that makes no pretensions that anything will be found inside. his is a material and materialist religion that is rooted in the sale and use of musical artifacts. while many religions offer a spirit to live inside the body of the worshipper, prince offers a shell to wear on the outside, a style. he is a triumph of postmodernity, of style as content. he rejects the concept of external content in a celebration of the individual. the imaginary world he has created began as a complex form of packaging for his music to try to ensure its success, but has evolved and become interwoven into his work as a vital part of a multimedia whole. pop stars acting as st century popular icons play a significant part in generating artificial needs and sustaining and developing consumer capitalism, by creating idealised consumers and training young people in brand loyalty, transforming traditions of religious observance, worship, ritual and devotion into consumer behaviours, by creating gods who have products to sell such as compact discs, posters and t-shirts. in western culture, prince and his peers in the world of music are fulfilling roles traditionally played by religious figures such as moses, jesus, mohamed and buddha, as traditional religions rapidly decline, and consumer capitialism controls the structure and development of society and culture. like many other popstars, once he gained fame and commercial success and was raised to the status of popular icon using a carefully constructed mediapheme, prince struggled with his commodification by the music industry. by adopting a symbol as a name, and playing with iconography using his onstage persona, colour, graphics, imagery, music and religious references, he both adopted and challenged the use of popular icons as idealised exemplars of consumer culture in a creative and entertaining fashion. prince initially created an onstage character and developed a myth to surround him, to aid in the marketing of his music, and help overcome his shy personality. this has developed so that the semi-fictional character of prince is now the main focus of his artwork. prince’s self, or that perceived as such by the public, is his primary text, his body is the principal instrument he uses, his guitar playing and singing subsumed as a part of the cult that surrounds him, represented by a graphic symbol, moving his form from musical artwork to performance art. more than within theatre, film, opera, television or any other multimedia form of performance art, within popular music culture prince is able to confuse the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, the concrete and the mythical. this enables him to involve, engage and interact with his audience by stepping off the screen or stage into the real world, and validate his artwork, through concerts and interviews, as being part of reality rather than fiction. this in turn allows him to adopt techniques usually seen within religions, as part of his work. it is as if he is creating a new religious movement as an artwork, with himself as the central author, text and performer. the audience takes part in the performance by consuming prince and the artifacts he sells, projecting into his shell and allowing themselves to be possessed as members of his cult. bibliography baitz, dana. let’s go crazy analysis. http://www.danabaitz.com/groove.php?s= &t=l. 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peter berger and the study of religion. ed. the adventures of prince in hyperreality continue as it is hard to tell if any news about him is factual. in he performed nights of concerts at the , capacity o arena in london. he has also apparently become a jehovah’s witness and surprised fans by knocking on their doors. ‘it is perhaps unsurprising that, like many pioneering black artists before him, prince has sought solace in the church. though he was brought up as a practising seventh day adventist he has recently, like michael jackson before him, become a jehovah's witness. the story of his conversion broke in typically surreal fashion last october, when a newspaper in his hometown reported how a married couple had answered their door to find prince proffering a copy of the watchtower. though they were orthodox jews, and it was yom kippur, they were also prince fans. they welcomed him into the house where, with his friend larry graham, erstwhile member of sly & the family stone, one of prince's core influences, he spread the word of jehovah for minutes before moving on to the next house’ (o'hagan ). linda woodhead, paul heelas and david martin. london: routledge. hill, dave. . prince; a pop life. london: three rivers press. johnson, fred. . u , mythology and mass-mediated survival. popular music and society , no. : - . longhurst, brian. . popular music and society. cambridge: polity. lowenthal, leo. . the triumph of mass idols in radio research - . ed. paul lazarsfeld and frank stanton. repr. literature and mass culture. new brunswick nj: transaction, . marshall, david. . celebrity and power: fame in contemporary culture. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. murry, charles shaar. . crosstown traffic: jimi hendrix and post-war pop. london: faber and faber. o'hagan, sean. . royal blush. the observer, april . http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/ , , , .html), [accessed january ]. rein, irving, philip cotler and martin stoller. . high visibility: the making and marketing of professionals into celebrities. chicago, il: mcgraw-hill. salewicz, chris. . prince: strutting with the new soul monarch. new musical express, june . stewart, alexander. funky drummer: new orleans, james brown and the rhythmic transformation of american popular music. . popular music , no. : - . sutcliffe, phil. . prince: the entertainment centre, sydney, australia; review and interview. q magazine, july. till, rupert. . the blues blueprint: the blues in the music of the beatles, the rolling stones and led zeppelin. cross the water blues; african american music in europe. ed. neil wynn. mississippi: university of mississippi press. tosches, nick. . unsung heroes of rock’n’roll. new york: da capo. tudor, andrew. . image and influence; studies in the sociology of film, new york: allen and unwin. von appen, ralph. and andré doehring. . nevermind the beatles, here's exile and nico: ‘the top records of all time’ - a canon of pop and rock albums from a sociological and an aesthetic perspective. popular music no. : . vincent, rickey. . funk: the music, the people, and the rhythm of the one. london: st. martin’s griffin. vout, caroline. . the myth of the toga: understanding the history of roman dress. greece & rome, nd series. , no. : - . white, charles. . the life and times of little richard: the authorised biography. new york: omnibus. discography ‘ain’t got nobody to grind my coffee’, clara smith, columbia records ( ). ‘darling nikki’, prince and the revolution, purple rain, warner brothers records ( ). ‘fire’, the jimi hendrix experience, are you experienced?, reprise records ( ). ‘kitchen man’, bessie smith, colombia records, ( ). ‘let’s go crazy’, prince and the revolution, purple rain, warner brothers records ( ). ‘pig meat papa’, lead belly, library of congress ( ). ‘purple haze’, the jimi hendrix experience, are you experienced?, reprise records ( ). ‘shave ‘em dry’, lucille bogan, banner records ( ). ‘soft and wet’, prince with chris moon, for you, warner brothers records ( ). ‘that black snake moan’, blind lemon jefferson, paramount records ( ). filmography prince - live at the aladdin las vegas, directed by hamri, s. (dir.), universal music, ( ) (dvd). purple rain, magnoli, a. (dir.), warner brothers pictures ( ). purple rain, prince and the revolution, warner brothers records ( ). the blues brothers, landis, j. (dir.), universla pictures ( ). software guitar hero software for various games consoles, activision, . singstar software for various game consoles, sony computer entertainment, . communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance: different channels, same code? patrik n. juslin and petri laukka uppsala university many authors have speculated about a close relationship between vocal expression of emotions and musical expression of emotions, but evidence bearing on this relationship has unfortunately been lacking. this review of studies of vocal expression and studies of music performance reveals similarities between the channels concerning (a) the accuracy with which discrete emotions were communicated to listeners and (b) the emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues used to communicate each emotion. the patterns are generally consistent with k. r. scherer’s ( ) theoretical predictions. the results can explain why music is perceived as expressive of emotion, and they are consistent with an evolutionary perspective on vocal expression of emotions. discussion focuses on theoretical accounts and directions for future research. music: breathing of statues. perhaps: stillness of pictures. you speech, where speeches end. you time, vertically poised on the courses of vanishing hearts. feelings for what? oh, you transformation of feelings into . . . audible landscape! you stranger: music. —rainer maria rilke, “to music” communication of emotions is crucial to social relationships and survival (ekman, ). many researchers argue that commu- nication of emotions serves as the foundation of the social order in animals and humans (see buck, , pp. – ). however, such communication is also a significant feature of performing arts such as theater and music (g. d. wilson, , chap. ). a convincing emotional expression is often desired, or even expected, from actors and musicians. the importance of such artistic expression should not be underestimated because there is now increasing evidence that how people express their emotions has implications for their physical health (e.g., booth & pennebaker, ; buck, , p. ; drummond & quah, ; giese-davis & spiegel, ; siegman, anderson, & berger, ). two modalities that are often regarded as effective means of emotional communication are vocal expression (i.e., the nonverbal aspects of speech; scherer, ) and music (gabrielsson & juslin, ). both are nonverbal channels that rely on acoustic signals for their transmission of messages. therefore, it is not surprising that proposals about a close relationship between vocal expression and music have a long history (helmholtz, / , p. ; rousseau, / ; spencer, ). in a classic article, “the origin and function of music,” spencer ( ) argued that vocal music, and hence instrumental music, is intimately related to vocal expression of emotions. he ventured to explain the characteristics of both on physiological grounds, saying they are premised on “the general law that feeling is a stimulus to muscular action” (p. ). in other words, he hypothesized that emotions influence physio- logical processes, which in turn influence the acoustic character- istics of both speech and singing. this notion, which we refer to as spencer’s law, formed the basis of most subsequent attempts to explain reported similarities between vocal expression and music (e.g., fónagy & magdics, ; scherer, ; sundberg, ). why should anyone care about such cross-modal similarities, if they really exist? first, the existence of acoustic similarities be- tween vocal expression of emotions and music could help to explain why listeners perceive music as expressive of emotion (kivy, , p. ). in this sense, an attempt to establish a link between the two domains could be made for the sake of theoretical economy, because principles from one domain (vocal expression) might help to explain another (music). second, cross-modal sim- ilarities would support the common—although controversial— hypothesis that speech and music evolved from a common origin (brown, ; levman, ; scherer, ; storr, , chap. ; zucker, ). a number of researchers have considered possible parallels between vocal expression and music (e.g., fónagy & magdics, ; scherer, ; sundberg, ), but it is fair to say that previous work has been primarily speculative in nature. in fact, only recently have enough data from music studies accumulated to make possible a systematic comparison of the two domains. the purpose of this article is to review studies from both domains to determine whether the two modalities really communicate emo- tions in similar ways. the remainder of this article is organized as follows: first, we outline a theoretical perspective and a set of predictions. second, we review parallels between vocal expression and music performance regarding (a) the accuracy with which patrik n. juslin and petri laukka, department of psychology, uppsala university, uppsala, sweden. a brief summary of this review also appears in juslin and laukka (in press). the writing of this article was supported by the bank of sweden tercentenary foundation through grant - : to patrik n. juslin. we would like to thank nancy eisenberg and klaus scherer for useful comments on previous versions of this article. correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to patrik n. juslin, department of psychology, uppsala university, box , se - uppsala, sweden. e-mail: patrik.juslin@psyk.uu.se psychological bulletin copyright by the american psychological association, inc. , vol. , no. , – - / /$ . doi: . / - . . . different emotions are communicated to listeners and (b) the acoustic means used to communicate each emotion. finally, we consider theoretical accounts and propose directions for future research. an evolutionary perspective a review needs a perspective. in this overview, the perspective is provided by evolutionary psychology (buss, ). we argue that this approach offers the best account of the findings that we review, in particular if the theorizing is constrained by findings from neuropsychological and comparative studies (panksepp & panksepp, ). in this section, we outline theory that serves to support the following seven guiding premises: (a) emotions may be regarded as adaptive reactions to certain prototypical, goal- relevant, and recurrent life problems that are common to many living organisms; (b) an important part of what makes emotions adaptive is that they are communicated nonverbally from one organism to another, thereby transmitting important information; (c) vocal expression is the most phylogenetically continuous of all forms of nonverbal communication; (d) vocal expressions of dis- crete emotions usually occur in similar types of life situations in different organisms; (e) the specific form that the vocal expres- sions of emotion take indirectly reflect these situations or, more specifically, the distinct physiological patterns that support the emotional behavior called forth by these situations; (f) physiolog- ical reactions influence an organism’s voice production in differ- entiated ways; and (g) by imitating the acoustic characteristics of these patterns of vocal expression, music performers are able to communicate discrete emotions to listeners. evolution and emotion the point of departure for an evolutionary perspective on emo- tional communication is that all human behavior depends on neurophysiological mechanisms. the only known causal process that is capable of yielding such mechanisms is evolution by natural selection. this is a feedback process that chooses among different mechanisms on the basis of how well they function; that is, function determines structure (cosmides & tooby, , p. ). given that the mind acquired its organization through the evolu- tionary process, it may be useful to understand human functioning in terms of its adaptive significance (cosmides & tooby, ). this is particularly true for such types of behavior that can be observed in other species as well (bekoff, ; panksepp, ). several researchers have taken an evolutionary approach to emotions. before considering this literature, a preliminary defini- tion of emotions is needed. although emotions are difficult to define and measure (plutchik, ), most researchers would probably agree that emotions are relatively brief and intense reac- tions to goal-relevant changes in the environment that consist of many subcomponents: cognitive appraisal, subjective feeling, physiological arousal, expression, action tendency, and regulation (scherer, , p. ). thus, for example, an event may be appraised as harmful, evoking feelings of fear and physiological reactions in the body; individuals may express this fear verbally and nonverbally and may act in certain ways (e.g., running away) rather than others. however, researchers disagree as to whether emotions are best conceptualized as categories (ekman, ), dimensions (russell, ), prototypes (shaver, schwartz, kirson, & o’connor, ), or component processes (scherer, ). in this review, we focus mainly on the expression component of emotion and adopt a categorical approach. according to the evolutionary approach, the key to understand- ing emotions is to study what functions emotions serve (izard, ; keltner & gross, ). thus, to understand emotions one must consider how they reflect the environment in which they developed and to which they were adapted. on the basis of various kinds of evidence, oatley and jenkins ( , chap. ) suggested that humans’ environment of evolutionary adaptedness about , years ago was that of seminomadic hunter– gatherer groups of to people living face-to-face with each other in extended families. most emotions, they suggested, are presumably adapted to living this kind of way, which involved cooperating in activities such as hunting and rearing children. several of the activities are associated with basic survival problems that most organisms have in common—avoiding predators, finding food, competing for resources, and caring for offspring. these problems, in turn, required specific types of adaptive reactions. a number of authors have suggested that such adaptive reactions were the prototypes of emotions as seen in humans (plutchik, , chap. ; scott, ). this view of emotions is closely related to the concept of basic emotions, that is, the notion that there is a small number of discrete, innate, and universal emotion categories from which all other emotions may be derived (e.g., ekman, ; izard, ; johnson-laird & oatley, ). each basic emotion can be de- fined, functionally, in terms of an appraisal of goal-relevant events that have recurred during evolution (see power & dalgleish, , pp. – ). examples of such appraisals are given by oatley ( , p. ): happiness (subgoals being achieved), anger (active plan frustrated), sadness (failure of major plan or loss of active goal), fear (self-preservation goal threatened or goal conflict), and disgust (gustatory goal violated). basic emotions can be seen as fast and frugal algorithms (gigerenzer & goldstein, ) that deal with fundamental life issues under conditions of limited time, knowledge, or computational capacities. having a small number of categories is an advantage in this context because it avoids the excessive information processing that comes with too many de- grees of freedom (johnson-laird & oatley, ). the notion of basic emotions has been the subject of contro- versy (cf. ekman, ; izard, ; ortony & turner, ; panksepp, ). we propose that evidence of basic emotions may come from a range of sources that include findings of (a) distinct brain substrates associated with discrete emotions (damasio et al., ; panksepp, , , table . ; phan, wager, taylor, & liberzon, ), (b) distinct patterns of physiological changes (bloch, orthous, & santibañez, ; ekman, levenson, & friesen, ; fridlund, schwartz, & fowler, ; levenson, ; schwartz, weinberger, & singer, ), (c) primacy of development of proposed basic emotions (harris, ), (d) cross- cultural accuracy in facial and vocal expression of emotion (elf- enbein & ambady, ), (e) clusters that correspond to basic emotions in similarity ratings of affect terms (shaver et al., ), (f) reduced reaction times in lexical decision tasks when priming words are taken from the same basic emotion category (conway & bekerian, ), and (g) phylogenetic continuity of basic emotions (panksepp, , chap. – ; plutchik, ; scott, ). it is fair communication of emotions to acknowledge that some of these sources of evidence are not strong. in the case of autonomic specificity especially, the jury is still out (for a positive view, see levenson, ; for a negative view, see cacioppo, berntson, larsen, poehlmann, & ito, ). arguably, the strongest evidence of basic emotions comes from studies of communication of emotions (ekman, , ). vocal communication of emotion evolutionary considerations may be especially relevant in the study of communication of emotions, because many researchers think that such communication serves important functions. first, expression of emotions allows individuals to communicate impor- tant information to others, which may affect their behaviors. sec- ond, recognition of emotions allows individuals to make quick inferences about the probable intentions and behavior of others (buck, , chap. ; plutchik, ; chap. ). the evolutionary approach implies a hierarchy in the ease with which various emotions are communicated nonverbally. specifically, perceivers should be attuned to that information that is most relevant for adaptive action (e.g., gibson, ). it has been suggested that both expression and recognition of emotions proceed in terms of a small number of basic emotion categories that represent the opti- mal compromise between two opposing goals of the perceiver: (a) the desire to have the most informative categorization possible and (b) the desire to have these categories be as discriminable as possible (juslin, ; cf. ross & spalding, ). to be useful as guides to action, emotions are recognized in terms of only a few categories related to life problems such as danger (fear), compe- tition (anger), loss (sadness), cooperation (happiness) and caregiv- ing (love). by perceiving expressed emotions in terms of such basic emotion categories, individuals are able to make useful inferences in response to urgent events. it is arguable that the same selective pressures that shaped the development of the basic emo- tions should also favor the development of skills for expressing and recognizing the same emotions. in line with this reasoning, many researchers have suggested the existence of innate affect programs, which organize emotional expressions in terms of basic emotions (buck, ; clynes, ; ekman, ; izard, ; lazarus, ; tomkins, ). support for this notion comes from evidence of categorical perception of basic emotions in facial and vocal expression (de gelder, teunisse, & benson, ; de gelder & vroomen, ; etcoff & magee, ; laukka, in press), more or less intact vocal and facial expressions of emotion in children born deaf and blind (eibl-eibesfeldt, ), and cross- cultural accuracy in facial and vocal expression of emotion (elf- enbein & ambady, ). phylogenetic continuity. vocal expression may be the most phylogenetically continuous of all nonverbal channels. in his clas- sic book, the expression of the emotions in man and animals, darwin ( / ) reviewed different modalities of expression, including the voice: “with many kinds of animals, man included, the vocal organs are efficient in the highest degree as a means of expression” (p. ). following darwin’s theory, a number of researchers of vocal expression have adopted an evolutionary perspective (h. papoušek, jürgens, & papoušek, ). a primary assumption is that there is phylogenetic continuity of vocal ex- pression. ploog ( ) described the morphological transforma- tion of the larynx—from a pure respiratory organ (in lungfish) to a respiratory organ with a limited vocal capability (in amphibians, reptiles, and lower mammals) and, finally, to the sophisticated instrument that humans use to sing or speak in an emotionally expressive manner. vocal expression seems especially important in social mam- mals. social grouping evolved as a means of cooperative defense, although this implies that some kind of communication had to develop to allow sharing of tasks, space, and food (plutchik, ). thus, vocal expression provided a means of social coordination and conflict resolution. maclean ( ) has argued that the limbic system of the brain, an essential region for emotions, underwent an enlargement with mammals and that this development was related to increased sociality, as evident in play behavior, infant attach- ment, and vocal signaling. the degree of differentiation in the sound-producing apparatus is reflected in the organism’s vocal behavior. for example, the primitive condition of the sound- producing apparatus in amphibians (e.g., frogs) permits only a few innate calls, such as mating calls, whereas the highly evolved larynx of nonhuman primates makes possible a rich repertoire of vocal expressions (ploog, ). the evolution of the phonatory apparatus toward its form in humans is paralleled not only by an increase in vocal repertoire but also by an increase in voluntary control over vocalization. it is possible to delineate three levels of development of vocal expres- sion in terms of anatomic and phylogenetic development (e.g., jürgens, , ). the lowest level is represented by a com- pletely genetically determined vocal reaction (e.g., pain shrieking). in this case, neither the motor pattern producing the vocal expres- sion nor the eliciting stimulus has to be learned. this is referred to as an innate releasing mechanism. the brain structures responsible for the control of such mechanisms seem to be limited mainly to the brain stem (e.g., the periaqueductal gray). the following level of vocal expression involves voluntary control concerning the initiation and inhibition of the innate ex- pressions. for example, rhesus monkeys may be trained in a vocal operant conditioning task to increase their vocalization rate if each it seems to us that one argument is often overlooked in discussions regarding physiological specificity, namely that this may be a case in which positive results count as stronger evidence than do negative results. it is generally agreed that there are several methodological problems involved in measuring physiological indices (e.g., individual differences, time- dependent nature of measures, difficulties in providing effective stimuli). given the error variance, or “noise,” that this produces, it is arguably more problematic for the no-specificity hypothesis that a number of studies have obtained similar and reliable emotion-specific patterns than it is for the specificity hypothesis that a number of studies have failed to yield such patterns. failure to obtain patterns may be due to error variance, but how can the presence of similar patterns in several studies be explained? love is not included in most lists of basic emotions (e.g., plutchik, , p. ), although some authors regard it as a basic emotion (e.g., clynes, ; maclean, ; panksepp, ; scott, ; shaver et al., ), as have philosophers such as descartes, spinoza, and hobbes (plutchik, , p. ). in accordance with spencer’s law, darwin ( / ) noted that vocalizations largely reflect physiological changes: “involuntary . . . con- tractions of the muscles of the chest and the glottis . . . may first have given rise to the emission of vocal sounds. but the voice is now largely used for various purposes”; one purpose mentioned was “intercommunication” (p. ). juslin and laukka vocalization is rewarded with food (ploog, ). brain-lesioning studies of rhesus monkeys have revealed that this voluntary control depends on structures in the anterior cingulate cortex, and the same brain region has been implicated in humans (jürgens & van cramon, ). neuroanatomical research has shown that the anterior cingulate cortex is directly connected to the periaqueduc- tal region and thus in a position to exercise control over the more primitive vocalization center (jürgens, ). the highest level of vocal expression involves voluntary control over the precise acoustic patterns of vocal expression. this in- cludes the capability to learn vocal patterns by imitation, as well as the production of new patterns by invention. these abilities are essential in the uniquely human inventions of language and music. among the primates, only humans have gained direct cortical control over the voice, which is a prerequisite for singing. neuro- anatomical studies have indicated that nonhuman primates lack the direct connection between the primary motor cortex and the nu- cleus ambiguus (i.e., the site of the laryngeal motoneurons) that humans have (jürgens, ; kuypers, ). comparative research. results from neurophysiological re- search that indicate that there is phylogenetic continuity of vocal expression have encouraged some researchers to embark on com- parative studies of vocal expression. although biologists and ethologists have tended to shy away from using words such as emotion in connection with animal behavior (plutchik, , chap. ; scherer, ), a case could be made that most animal vocal- izations involve motivational states that are closely related to emotions (goodall, ; hauser, ; marler, ; ploog, ; richman, ; scherer, ; snowdon, ). the states usually have to be inferred from the specific situations in which the vocalizations occurred. “in most of the circumstances in which animal signaling occurs, one detects urgent and demanding func- tions to be served, often involving emergencies for survival or procreation” (marler, , p. ). there is little systematic work on vocal expression in animals, but several studies have indicated a close correspondence between the acoustic characteristics of animal vocalizations and specific affective situations (for reviews, see plutchik, , chap. – ; scherer, ; snowdon, ). for instance, ploog ( , ) discovered a limited number of vocal expression categories in squirrel monkeys. these categories were related to important events in the monkeys’ lives and in- cluded warning calls (alarm peeps), threat calls (groaning), desire for social contact calls (isolation peeps), and companionship calls (cackling). given phylogenetic continuity of vocal expression and cross- species similarity in the kinds of situations that generate vocal expression, it is interesting to ask whether there is any evidence of cross-species universality of vocal expression. limited evidence of this kind has indeed been found (scherer, ; snowdon, ). for instance, e. s. morton ( ) noted that “birds and mammals use harsh, relatively low-frequency sounds when hostile, and higher-frequency, more pure tonelike sounds when frightened, appeasing, or approaching in a friendly manner” (p. ; see also ohala, ). another general principle, proposed by jürgens ( ), is that increasing aversiveness of primate vocal calls is correlated with pitch, total pitch range, and irregularity of pitch contours. these features have also been associated with negative emotion in human vocal expression (davitz, b; scherer, ). physiological differentiation. in animal studies, descriptions of vocal characteristics and emotional states are necessarily im- precise (scherer, ), making direct comparisons difficult. how- ever, at the least these data suggest that there are some systematic relationships among acoustic measures and emotions. an impor- tant question is how such relationships and examples of cross- species universality may be explained. according to spencer’s law, there should be common physiological principles. in fact, physiological variables determine to a large extent the nature of phonation and resonance in vocal expression (scherer, ), and there may be some reliable differentiation of physiological patterns for discrete emotions (cacioppo et al., , p. ). it might be assumed that distinct physiological patterns reflect environmental demands on behavior: “behaviors such as with- drawal, expulsion, fighting, fleeing, and nurturing each make different physiological demands. a most important function of emotion is to create the optimal physiological milieu to support the particular behavior that is called forth” (levenson, , p. ). this process involves the central, somatic, and autonomic nervous systems. for example, fear is associated with a motivation to flee and brings about sympathetic arousal consistent with this action involving increased cardiovascular activation, greater oxygen ex- change, and increased glucose availability (mayne, ). many physiological changes influence aspects of voice production, such as respiration, vocal fold vibration, and articulation, in well- differentiated ways. for instance, anger yields increased tension in the laryngeal musculature coupled with increased subglottal air pressure. this changes the production of sound at the glottis and hence changes the timbre of the voice (johnstone & scherer, ). in other words, depending on the specific physiological state, one may expect to find specific acoustic features in the voice. this general principle underlies scherer’s ( ) component process theory of emotion, which is the most promising attempt to formulate a stringent theory along the lines of spencer’s law. using this theory, scherer ( ) made detailed predictions about the patterns of acoustic cues (bits of information) associated with different emotions. the predictions were based on the idea that emotions involve sequential cognitive appraisals, or stimulus eval- uation checks (secs), of stimulus features such as novelty, intrin- sic pleasantness, goal significance, coping potential, and norm or self compatibility (for further elaboration of appraisal dimensions, see scherer, ). the outcome of each sec is assumed to have a specific effect on the somatic nervous system, which in turn affects the musculature associated with voice production. in addi- tion, each sec outcome is assumed to affect various aspects of the autonomous nervous system (e.g., mucous and saliva production) in ways that strongly influence voice production. scherer ( ) did not favor the basic emotions approach, although he offered predictions for acoustic cues associated with anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness—“five major types of emotional states that can be expected to occur frequently in the daily life of many organisms, both animal and human” (p. ). later in this review, we provide a comparison of empirical findings from vocal expres- sion and music performance with scherer’s ( ) revised predictions. although human vocal expression of emotion is based on phy- logenetically old parts of the brain that are in some respects similar to those of nonhuman primates, what is characteristic of humans is that they have much greater voluntary control over their vocaliza- communication of emotions tion (jürgens, ). therefore, an important distinction must be made between so-called push and pull effects in the determinants of vocal expression (scherer, ). push effects involve various physiological processes, such as respiration and muscle tension, that are naturally influenced by emotional response. pull effects, on the other hand, involve external conditions, such as social norms, that may lead to strategic posing of emotional expression for manipulative purposes (e.g., krebs & dawkins, ). vocal expression of emotions typically involves a combination of push and pull effects, and it is generally assumed that posed expression tends to be modeled on the basis of natural expression (davitz, c, p. ; owren & bachorowski, , p. ; scherer, , p. ). however, the precise extent to which posed expression is similar to natural expression is a question that requires further research. vocal expression and music performance: are they related? it is a recurrent notion that music is a means of emotional expression (budd, ; s. davies, ; gabrielsson & juslin, ). indeed, music has been defined as “one of the fine arts which is concerned with the combination of sounds with a view to beauty of form and the expression of emotion” (d. watson, , p. ). it has been difficult to explain why music is expressive of emotions, but one possibility is that music is reminiscent of vocal expression of emotions. previous perspectives. the notion that there is a close rela- tionship between music and the human voice has a long history (helmholtz, / ; kivy, ; rousseau, / ; scherer, ; spencer, ; sundberg, ). helmholtz ( / )— one of the pioneers of music psychology—noted that “an endeavor to imitate the involuntary modulations of the voice, and make its recitation richer and more expressive, may therefore possibly have led our ancestors to the discovery of the first means of musical expression” (p. ). this impression is reinforced by the voicelike character of most musical instruments: “there are in the music of the violin . . . accents so closely akin to those of certain contralto voices that one has the illusion that a singer has taken her place amid the orchestra” (marcel proust, as cited in d. watson, , p. ). richard wagner, the famous composer, noted that “the oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice” (as cited in d. watson, , p. ). indeed, stendhal commented that “no musical instrument is satisfactory except in so far as it approximates to the sound of the human voice” (as cited in d. watson, , p. ). many performers of blues music have been attracted to the vocal qualities of the slide guitar (erlewine, bogdanov, woodstra, & koda, ). similarly, people often refer to the musical aspects of speech (e.g., besson & friederici, ; fónagy & magdics, ), particularly in the context of infant- directed speech, where mothers use changes in duration, pitch, loudness, and timbre to regulate the infant’s level of arousal (m. papoušek, ). the hypothesis that vocal expression and music share a number of expressive features might appear trivial in the light of all the arguments by different authors. however, these comments are primarily anecdotal or speculative in nature. indeed, many authors have disputed this hypothesis. s. davies ( ) observed that it has been suggested that expressive instrumental music recalls the tones and intonations with which emotions are given vocal expression (kivy, ), but this . . . is dubious. it is true that blues guitar and jazz saxophone sometimes imitate singing styles, and that singing styles sometimes recall the sobs, wails, whoops, and yells that go with ordinary occasions of expressiveness. for the general run of cases, though, music does not sound very like the noises made by people gripped by emotion. (p. ) (see also budd, , p. ; levman, , p. .) thus, awaiting relevant data, it has been uncertain whether spencer’s law can provide an account of music’s expressiveness. boundary conditions of spencer’s law. it does actually seem unlikely that spencer’s law can explain all of music’s expressive- ness. for instance, there are several aspects of musical form (e.g., harmonic progression) that have no counterpart in vocal expres- sion but that nonetheless contribute to music’s expressiveness (e.g., gabrielsson & juslin, ). consequently, spencer’s law cannot be the whole story of music’s expressiveness. in fact, there are many sources of emotion in relation to music (e.g., sloboda & juslin, ) including musical expectancy (meyer, ), arbi- trary association (j. b. davies, ), and iconic signification— that is, structural similarity between musical and extramusical features (langer, ). only the last of these sources corresponds to spencer’s law. yet, we argue that spencer’s law should be part of any satisfactory account of music’s expressiveness. for the hypothesis to have explanatory power, however, it must be con- strained. what is required, we propose, is specification of the boundary conditions of the hypothesis. we argue that the hypothesis that there is an iconic similarity between vocal expression of emotion and musical expression of emotion applies only to certain acoustic features—primarily those features of the music that the performer can control (more or less freely) during his or her performance such as tempo, loudness, and timbre. however, the hypothesis does not apply to such features of a piece of music that are usually indicated in the notation of the piece (e.g., harmony, tonality, melodic progression), because these features reflect to a larger extent characteristics of music as a human art form that follows its own intrinsic rules and that varies from one culture to another (carterette & kendall, ; juslin, c). neuropsychological research indicates that certain aspects of music (e.g., timbre) share the same neural resources as speech, whereas others (e.g., tonality) draw on resources that are unique to music (patel & peretz, ; see also peretz, ). thus, we argue that musicians communicate emotions to listeners via their performances of music by using emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues derived from vocal expression of emotion (juslin, ). the extent to which spencer’s law can offer an explanation of music’s expressiveness is directly proportional to the relative contribution of performance variables to the listener’s perception of emotions in music. because performance variables include such perceptually salient features as speed and loudness, this contribu- tion is likely to be large. it is well-known that the same sentence may be pronounced in a large number of different ways, and that the way in which it is pronounced may convey the speaker’s state of emotion. in princi- ple, one can separate the verbal message from its acoustic realiza- tion in speech. similarly, the same piece of music can be played in a number of different ways, and the way in which it is played may convey specific emotions to listeners. in principle, one can sepa- juslin and laukka rate the structure of the piece, as notated, from its acoustic real- ization in performance. therefore, to obtain possible similarities, how speakers and musicians express emotions through the ways in which they convey verbal and musical contents should be explored (i.e., “it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”). the origins of the relationship. if musical expression of emo- tion should turn out to resemble vocal expression of emotion, how did musical expression come to resemble vocal expression in the first place? the origins of music are, unfortunately, forever lost in the history of our ancestors (but for a survey of theories, see various contributions in wallin, merker, & brown, ). how- ever, it is apparent that music accompanies many important human activities, and this is especially true of so-called preliterate cultures (e.g., becker, ; gregory, ). it is possible to speculate that the origin of music is to be found in various cultural activities of the distant past, when the demarcation between vocal expression and music was not as clear as it is today. vocal expression of discrete emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, and love probably became gradually meshed with vocal music that accom- panied related cultural activities such as festivities, funerals, wars, and caregiving. a number of authors have proposed that music served to harmonize the emotions of the social group and to create cohesion: “singing and dancing serves to draw groups together, direct the emotions of the people, and prepare them for joint action” (e. o. wilson, , p. ). there is evidence that listeners can accurately categorize songs of different emotional types (e.g., festive, mourning, war, lullabies) that come from different cultures (eggebrecht, ) and that there are similarities in certain acoustic characteristics used in such songs; for instance, mourning songs typically have slow tempo, low sound level, and soft timbre, whereas festive songs have fast tempo, high sound level, and bright timbre (eibl-eibesfeldt, , p. ). thus, it is reasonable to hypothesize that music developed from a means of emotion sharing and communication to an art form in its own right (e.g., juslin, b; levman, , p. ; storr, , p. ; zucker, , p. ). theoretical predictions in the foregoing, we outlined an evolutionary perspective ac- cording to which music performers are able to communicate basic emotions to listeners by using a nonverbal code that derives from vocal expression of emotion. we hypothesized that vocal expres- sion is an evolved mechanism based on innate, fairly stable, and universal affect programs that develop early and are fine-tuned by prenatal experiences (mastropieri & turkewitz, ; verny & kelly, ). we made the following five predictions on the basis of this evolutionary approach. first, we predicted that communi- cation of basic emotions would be accurate in both vocal and musical expression. second, we predicted that there would be cross-cultural accuracy of communication of basic emotions in both channels, as long as certain acoustic features are involved (speed, loudness, timbre). third, we predicted that the ability to recognize basic emotions in vocal and musical expression devel- ops early in life. fourth, we predicted that the same patterns of acoustic cues are used to communicate basic emotions in both channels. finally, we predicted that the patterns of cues would be consistent with scherer’s ( ) physiologically based predictions. these five predictions are addressed in the following empirical review. definitions and method of the review basic issues and terminology in nonverbal communication vocal expression and music performance arguably belong to the general class of nonverbal communication behavior. fundamental issues concern- ing nonverbal communication include (a) the content (what is communi- cated?), (b) the accuracy (how well is it communicated?), and (c) the code usage (how is it communicated?). before addressing these questions, one should first make sure that communication has occurred. communication implies (a) a socially shared code, (b) an encoder who intends to express something particular via that code, and (c) a decoder who responds sys- tematically to that code (e.g., shannon & weaver, ; wiener, devoe, rubinow, & geller, ). true communication has taken place only if the encoder’s expressive intention has become mutually known to the encoder and the decoder (e.g., ekman & friesen, ). we do not exclude that information may be unwittingly transmitted from one person to another, but this would not count as communication according to the present definition (for a different view, see buck, , pp. – ). an important aspect of the communicative process is the coding of the nonverbal signs (the manner in which information is transmitted through the signal). according to ekman and friesen ( ), the nature of the coding can be described by three dimensions: discrete versus continuous, probabilistic versus invariant, and iconic versus arbitrary. nonverbal sig- nals are typically coded continuously, probabilistically, and iconically. to illustrate, (a) the loudness of the voice changes continuously (rather than discretely); (b) increases in loudness frequently (but not always) signify anger; and (c) the loudness is iconically (rather than arbitrarily) related to the intensity of the felt anger (e.g., the loudness increases when the felt intensity of the anger increases; juslin & laukka, , figure ). the standard content paradigm studies of vocal expression and studies of music performance have typically been carried out separately from each other. however, one could argue that the two domains share a number of important characteristics. first, both domains are concerned with a channel that uses patterns of pitch, loudness, and duration to communicate emotions (the content). second, both domains have investigated the same questions (how accurate is the communication?, what is the nature of the code?). third, both domains have used similar methods (decoding experiments, acoustic anal- yses). hence, both domains have confronted many of the same problems (see the discussion section). in a typical study of communication of emotions in vocal expression or music performance, the encoder (speaker/performer in vocal expression/ music performance, respectively) is presented with material to be spoken/ performed. the material usually consists of brief sentences or melodies. each sentence/melody is to be spoken/performed while expressing differ- ent emotions prechosen by the experimenter. the emotion portrayals are recorded and used in listening tests to study whether listeners can decode the expressed emotions. each portrayal is analyzed to see what acoustic cues are used in the communicative process. the assumption is that, because the verbal/musical material remains the same in different portray- als, whatever effects that appear in listeners’ judgments or acoustic mea- sures should primarily be the result of the encoder’s expressive intention. this procedure, often referred to as the standard content paradigm (davitz, b), is not without its problems, but we temporarily postpone our critique until the discussion section. communication of emotions criteria for inclusion of studies we used two criteria for inclusion of studies in the present review. first, we included only studies focusing on nonverbal aspects of speech or performance-related aspects of music. this is in accordance with the boundary conditions of the hypothesis discussed above. second, we in- cluded only studies that investigated the communication of discrete emo- tions (e.g., sadness). hence, studies that focused on emotional arousal in general (e.g., murray, baber, & south, ) or on emotion dimensions (e.g., laukka, juslin, & bresin, ) were not included in the review. similarly, studies that used the standard paradigm but that did not use explicitly defined emotions (e.g., cosmides, ) or that used only positive versus negative affect (e.g., fulcher, ) were not included. such studies do not allow for the relevant comparisons with studies of music performance, which have almost exclusively studied discrete emotions. search strategy emotion in vocal expression and music performance is a multidisci- plinary field of research. the majority of studies have been conducted by psychologists, but contributions also come from, for instance, acoustics, speech science, linguistics, medicine, engineering, computer science, and musicology. publications are scattered among so many sources that even many review articles have not surveyed more than a subset of the literature. to ensure that this review was as complete as possible, we searched for relevant investigations by using a variety of sources. more specifically, the studies included in the present review were gathered using the following internet-based scientific databases: psycinfo, medline, linguistics and language behavior, ingenta, and rilm abstracts of music literature. whenever possible, the year limits were set at articles published since . the following words, in various combinations and truncations, were used in the literature search: emotion, affective, vocal, voice, speech, prosody, paralanguage, music, music performance, and expression. the goal was to include all english language publications in peer-reviewed journals. we have also included additional studies located via informal sources, including studies reported in conference proceedings, in other languages, and in unpublished doctoral dissertations that we were able to locate. it should be noted that the majority of studies in both domains correspond to the selection criteria above. we located studies of vocal expression and studies of music performance in our literature search, which was completed in june . emotional states and terminology we review the findings in terms of five general categories of emotion: anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and love–tenderness, primarily because these are the only five emotion categories for which there is enough evidence in both vocal expression and music performance. they roughly correspond to the basic emotions described earlier. these five categories represent a reasonable point of departure because all of them comprise what are regarded as typical emotions by lay people (shaver et al., ; shields, ). there is also evidence that these emotions closely corre- spond to the first emotion terms children learn to use (e.g., camras & allison, ) and that they serve as basic-level categories in cognitive representations of emotions (e.g., shaver et al., ). their role in musical expression of emotions is highlighted by questionnaire research (lind- ström, juslin, bresin, & williamon, ) in which music students were asked what emotions can be expressed in music. happiness, sadness, fear, love, and anger were among the most highly rated words of a list of words containing both basic and complex emotions. an important question concerns the exact words used to denote the emotions. a number of different words have been used in the literature, and there is little agreement so far regarding the organization of the emotion lexicon (plutchik, , p. ). therefore, it is not clear how words such as happiness and joy should be distinguished. the most prudent approach to take is to treat different but closely related emotion words (e.g., sorrow, grief, sadness) as belonging to the same emotion family (e.g., the sadness family; ekman, ). table shows how the emotion words used in the present studies have been categorized in this review (for some empirical support, see the analyses of emotion words presented by johnson-laird & oatley, ; shaver at al., ). studies of vocal expression: overview darwin ( / ) discussed both vocal and facial expression of emotions in his treatise. in recent years, however, facial expression has received far more empirical research than vocal expression. there are a number of reasons for this, such as the problems associated with the recording and analysis of speech sounds (scherer, ). the consequence is that the code used in facial expression of emotion is better understood than the code used in vocal expression. this is unfortunate, however, because recent studies using self-reports have revealed that, if anything, most theorists distinguish between passionate love (eroticism) and companionate love (tenderness; hatfield & rapson, , p. ), of which the latter corresponds to our love–tenderness category. some re- searchers suggest that all kinds of love originally derived from this emo- tional state, which is associated with infant– caregiver attachment (e.g., eibl-eibesfeldt, , chap. ; oatley & jenkins, ; p. ; panksepp, , chap. ). table classification of emotion words used by different authors into emotion categories emotion category emotion words used by authors anger aggressive, aggressive–excitable, aggressiveness, anger, anger–hate–rage, angry, ärger, ärgerlich, cold anger, colère, collera, destruction, frustration, fury, hate, hot anger, irritated, rage, repressed anger, wut fear afraid, angst, ängstlich, anxiety, anxious, fear, fearful, fear of death, fear–pain, fear– terror–horror, frightened, nervousness, panic, paura, peur, protection, scared, schreck, terror, worry happiness cheerfulness, elation, enjoyment, freude, freudig, gioia, glad, glad–quiet, happiness, happy, happy–calm, happy–excited, joie, joy, laughter–glee–merriment, serene– joyful sadness crying despair, depressed–sad, depression, despair, gloomy–tired, grief, quiet sorrow, sad, sad–depressed, sadness, sadness–grief–crying, sorrow, trauer, traurig, traurigkeit, tristesse, tristezza love–tenderness affection, liebe, love, love–comfort, loving, soft–tender, tender, tenderness, tender passion, tenerezza, zärtlichkeit juslin and laukka vocal expressions may be even more important predictors of emotions than facial expressions in everyday life (planalp, ). fortunately, the field of vocal expression of emotions has recently seen renewed interest (cowie, douglas-cowie, & schröder, ; cowie et al., ; johnstone & scherer, ). thirty-two studies were published in the s, and al- ready studies have been published between january and june . table provides a summary of studies of vocal expression included in this review in terms of authors, publication year, emotions studied, method used (e.g., portrayal, manipulated portrayal, induction, natural speech sample, synthesis), language, acoustic cues analyzed (where appli- cable), and verbal material. thirty-nine studies presented data that permit- ted us to include them in a meta-analysis of communication accuracy (detailed below). the majority of studies ( %) used english-speaking encoders, although as many as different languages, plus nonsense utterances, are represented in the studies reviewed. twelve studies ( %) can be characterized as more or less cross-cultural in that they included analyses of encoders or decoders from more than one nation. the verbal material features series of numbers, letters of the alphabet, nonsense syllables, or regular speech material (e.g., words, sentences, paragraphs). the number of emotions included ranges from to (m � . ). ninety studies ( %) used emotion portrayals by actors, studies ( %) used manipulations of portrayals (e.g., filtering, masking, reversal), studies ( %) used mood induction procedures, and studies ( %) used natural speech samples. the latter comes mainly from studies of fear expressions in aviation accidents. twenty-one studies ( %) used sound synthesis, or copy synthesis. seventy-seven studies ( %) reported acoustic data, of which studies used listeners’ ratings of cues rather than acoustic measurements. studies of music performance: overview studies of music performance have been conducted for more than years (for reviews, see gabrielsson, ; palmer, ). however, these studies have almost exclusively focused on structural aspects of perfor- mance such as marking of the phrase structure, whereas emotion has been ignored. those studies that have been concerned with emotion in music, on the other hand, have almost exclusively focused on expressive aspects of musical composition such as pitch or mode (e.g., gabrielsson & juslin, ), whereas they have ignored aspects of specific performances. that performance aspects of emotional expression did not gain attention much earlier is strange considering that one of the great pioneers in music psychology, carl e. seashore, made detailed proposals about such studies in the s (seashore, ). seashore ( ) later suggested that music researchers could use the same paradigm that had been used in vocal expression (i.e., the standard content paradigm) to investigate how per- formers express emotions. however, seashore’s ( ) plea went unheard, and he did not publish any study of that kind himself. after slow initial progress, there was an increase of studies in the s ( studies pub- lished). this seems to continue into the s ( studies published – ). the increase is perhaps a result of the increased availability of software for digital analysis of acoustic cues, but it may also reflect a renaissance for research on musical emotion (juslin & sloboda, ). figure illustrates the timeliness of this review in terms of the studies available for a comparison of the two domains. table provides a summary of the studies of emotional expression in music performance included in the review in terms of authors, publication year, emotions studied, method used (e.g., portrayal, manipulated por- trayal, synthesis), instrument used, number and nationality of performers and listeners, acoustic cues analyzed (where applicable), and musical material. twelve studies ( %) provided data that permitted us to include them in a meta-analysis of communication accuracy. these studies covered a wide range of musical styles, including classical music, folk music, indian ragas, jazz, pop, rock, children’s songs, and free improvisations. the most common musical style was classical music ( studies, %). most studies relied on the standard paradigm used in studies of vocal expression of emotions. the number of emotions studied ranges from to (m � . ), and emotions typically included happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and tenderness. twelve musical instruments were included. the most frequently studied instrument was singing voice ( studies), followed by guitar ( ), piano ( ), synthesizer ( ), violin ( ), flute ( ), saxophone ( ), drums ( ), sitar ( ), timpani ( ), trumpet ( ), xylophone ( ), and sentograph ( —a sentograph is an electronic device for recording patterns of finger pressure over time—see clynes, ). at least different nationalities are represented in the studies (fónagy & magdics, , did not state the nationalities clearly), with sweden being most strongly represented ( %), followed by japan ( %) and the united states ( %). most of the studies analyzed professional musicians (but see juslin & laukka, ), and the performances were usually monophonic to facilitate measurement of acoustic parameters (for an exception, see dry & gabrielsson, ). (monophonic melody is probably one of the earliest forms of music, wolfe, .) a few studies ( %) investigated what means listeners use to decode emotions by means of synthesized performances. eighty-five percent of the studies reported data on acoustic cues; of these studies, used listeners’ ratings of cues rather than acoustic measurements. results decoding accuracy studies of vocal expression and music performance have con- verged on the conclusion that encoders can communicate basic emotions to decoders with above-chance accuracy, at least for the five emotion categories considered here. to examine these data closer, we conducted a meta-analysis of decoding accuracy. in- cluded in this analysis were all studies that presented (or allowed computation of) forced-choice decoding data relative to some independent criterion of encoding intention. thirty-nine studies of vocal expression and studies of music performance met this criterion, featuring a total of decoding experiments, for vocal expression, for music performance. one problem in comparing accuracy scores from different stud- ies is that they use different numbers of response alternatives in the decoding task. rosenthal and rubin’s ( ) effect size index for one-sample, multiple– choice-type data, pi (�), allows researchers to transform accuracy scores involving any number of response alternatives to a standard scale of dichotomous choice, on which . is the null value and . corresponds to % correct decod- ing. ideally, an index of decoding accuracy should also take into account the response bias in the decoder’s judgments (wagner, ). however, this requires that results be presented in terms of a confusion matrix, which very few studies have done. therefore, we summarize the data simply in terms of rosenthal and rubin’s pi index. summary statistics. table summarizes the main findings from the meta-analysis in terms of summary statistics (i.e., un- weighted mean, weighted mean, median, standard deviation, (text continues on page ) copy synthesis refers to copying acoustic features from real emotion portrayals and using them to resynthesize new portrayals. this method makes it possible to manipulate certain cues of an emotion portrayal while leaving other cues intact (e.g., juslin & madison, ; ladd et al., ; schröder, ). communication of emotions t ab le s u m m a ry o f s tu d ie s o n v o ca l e xp re ss io n o f e m o ti o n in cl u d ed in th e r ev ie w s tu dy e m ot io ns st ud ie d (i n te rm s us ed by au th or s) m et ho d s pe ak er s/ li st en er s a co us ti c cu es an al yz ed a v er ba l m at er ia l n l an gu ag e . a be li n & a ll w oo d ( ) a ng er , di sg us t, do m in an ce , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s, su rp ri se , sh yn es s p / s w e/ e ng ( ) , s w e/ f in ( ) , s w e/ s pa ( ) , s w e/ s w e ( ) s r , pa us es , f , in t b ri ef se nt en ce . a lb as et al . ( ) a ng er , ha pp in es s, lo ve , sa dn es s p , m / e ng ( )/ e ng ( ) , c re ( ) , c re ( )/ e ng ( ) , c re ( ) “a ny tw o se nt en ce s th at co m e to m in d” . a l- w at ba n ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s p / a ra s r , f , in t b ri ef se nt en ce / e ng . a no ll i & c ic er i ( ) c ol le ra [a ng er ], di sp re zz o [d is gu st ], gi oi a [h ap pi ne ss ], pa ur a [f ea r] , te ne re zz a [t en de rn es s] , tr is te zz a [s ad ne ss ] p , m / it a s r , pa us es , f , in t, s pe ct r b ri ef se nt en ce . a pp le & h ec ht ( ) a ng er , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s, su rp ri se p , m / e ng b ri ef se nt en ce . b an se & s ch er er ( ) a nx ie ty , bo re do m , co ld an ge r, co nt em pt , de sp ai r, di sg us t, el at io n, ha pp in es s, ho t an ge r, in te re st , pa ni c, pr id e, sa dn es s, sh am e p / n on /g er s r , f , in t, s pe ct r b ri ef se nt en ce . b ar on i et al . ( ) a ng er , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p / it a s r , f , in t b ri ef se nt en ce . b ar on i & f in ar el li ( ) a gg re ss iv e, de pr es se d– sa d, se re ne –j oy fu l p / it a s r , in t b ri ef se nt en ce . b er gm an n et al . ( ) ä rg er li ch [a ng ry ], än gs tl ic h [a fr ai d] , en tg eg en ko m m en d [a cc om od at in g] , fr eu di g [g la d] , ge la ng w ei lt [b or ed ], na ch dr üc kl ic h [i ns is te nt ], tr au ri g [s ad ], ve rä ch tl ic h [s co rn fu l] , vo rw ur fs vo ll [r ep ro ac hf ul ] s / g er s r , f , f co nt ou r, in t, ji tt er b ri ef se nt en ce . b on eb ri gh t ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s p / e ng s r , f , in t l on g pa ra gr ap h . b on eb ri gh t et al . ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s (s am e po rt ra ya ls as in s tu dy ) p / e ng l on g pa ra gr ap h . b on ne r ( ) f ea r p / e ng s r , f , pa us es b ri ef se nt en ce . b re it en st ei n et al . ( ) a ng ry , fr ig ht en ed , ha pp y, ne ut ra l, sa d p , s / g er /g er ( ) , g er /e ng ( ) s r , f b ri ef se nt en ce . b re zn it z ( ) a ng ry , ha pp y, sa d, ne ut ra l (p os t ho c cl as si fi ca ti on ) n / e ng f r es po ns es fr om in te rv ie w s . b ri gh et ti et al . ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , di sg us t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s, su rp ri se p / it a s er ie s of nu m be rs . b ur kh ar dt ( ) b or ed om , co ld an ge r, cr yi ng de sp ai r, fe ar , ha pp in es s, ho t an ge r, jo y, qu ie t so rr ow s p / / g er g er s r , f , s pe ct r, fo rm an ts , a rt ., gl ot ta l w av ef or m b ri ef se nt en ce . b ur ns & b ei er ( ) a ng ry , an xi ou s, ha pp y, in di ff er en t, sa d, se du ct iv e p / e ng b ri ef se nt en ce . c ah n ( ) a ng ry , di sg us te d, gl ad , sa d, sc ar ed , su rp ri se d s / e ng s r , pa us es , f , s pe ct r, a rt ., gl ot ta l w av ef or m b ri ef se nt en ce . c ar ls on et al . ( ) a ng ry , ha pp y, ne ut ra l, sa d p , s / s w e s r , f , f co nt ou r b ri ef se nt en ce . c hu ng ( ) jo y, sa dn es s n / k or /k or ( ) , k or /e ng ( ) , k or /f re ( ) s r , f , f co nt ou r, s pe ct r, ji tt er , sh im m er r es po ns es fr om t v in te rv ie w s / e ng s / . c os ta nz o et al . ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , gr ie f, in di ff er en ce , lo ve p / e ng (s r , f , in t) b ri ef pa ra gr ap h juslin and laukka s tu dy e m ot io ns st ud ie d (i n te rm s us ed by au th or s) m et ho d s pe ak er s/ li st en er s a co us ti c cu es an al yz ed a v er ba l m at er ia l n l an gu ag e . c um m in gs & c le m en ts ( ) a ng ry (� no ne m ot io n te rm s) p / e ng g lo tt al w av ef or m w or d . d av it z ( a ) a dm ir at io n, af fe ct io n, am us em en t, an ge r, bo re do m , ch ee rf ul ne ss , de sp ai r, di sg us t, di sl ik e, fe ar , im pa ti en ce , jo y, sa ti sf ac ti on , su rp ri se p / e ng b ri ef pa ra gr ap h . d av it z ( b ) a ff ec ti on , an ge r, bo re do m , ch ee rf ul ne ss , im pa ti en ce , jo y, sa dn es s, sa ti sf ac ti on p / e ng (s r , f , f co nt ou r, in t, a rt ., rh yt hm , ti m br e) b ri ef pa ra gr ap h . d av it z & d av it z ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, je al ou sy , lo ve , ne rv ou sn es s, pr id e, sa dn es s, sa ti sf ac ti on , sy m pa th y p / e ng l et te rs of th e al ph ab et . d us en bu ry & k no w er ( ) a m az em en t– as to ni sh m en t– su rp ri se , an ge r– ha te –r ag e, de te rm in at io n– st ub bo rn es s– fi rm ne ss , do ub t– he si ta ti on –q ue st io ni ng , fe ar –t er ro r– ho rr or , la ug ht er –g le e– m er ri m en t, pi ty –s ym pa th y– he lp fu ln es s, re li gi ou s lo ve –r ev er en ce –a w e, sa dn es s– gr ie f– cr yi ng , sn ee ri ng –c on te m pt –s co rn , to rt ur e– gr ea t pa in –s uf fe ri ng p / e ng l et te rs of th e al ph ab et . e ld re d & p ri ce ( ) a ng er , an xi et y, de pr es si on n / e ng (s r , pa us es , f , in t) s pe ec h fr om ps yc ho th er ap y se ss io ns . f ai rb an ks & h oa gl in ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , fe ar , gr ie f, in di ff er en ce p / e ng s r , pa us es b ri ef pa ra gr ap h . f ai rb an ks & p ro vo no st ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , fe ar , gr ie f, in di ff er en ce (s am e po rt ra ya ls as in s tu dy ) p / e ng f b ri ef pa ra gr ap h . f ai rb an ks & p ro vo no st ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , fe ar , gr ie f, in di ff er en ce (s am e po rt ra ya ls as in s tu dy ) p / e ng f , f co nt ou r, pa us es b ri ef pa ra gr ap h . f en st er et al . ( ) a ng er , co nt en tm en t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, lo ve , sa dn es s p / e ng b ri ef se nt en ce . f ón ag y ( ) a ng er , co qu et ry , di sd ai n, fe ar , jo y, lo ng in g, re pr es se d an ge r, re pr oa ch , sa dn es s, te nd er ne ss p , m / f re f , f co nt ou r b ri ef se nt en ce . f ón ag y & m ag di cs ( ) a ng er , co m pl ai nt , co qu et ry , fe ar , jo y, lo ng in g, sa rc as m , sc or n, su rp ri se , te nd er ne ss p — / h un , f re , g er , e ng s r , f , f co nt ou r, in t, ti m br e b ri ef se nt en ce . f ri ck ( ) a ng er (f ru st ra ti on , th re at ), di sg us t p / e ng f b ri ef se nt en ce . f ri en d & f ar ra r ( ) a ng ry , ha pp y, ne ut ra l p , m / e ng f , in t, s pe ct r b ri ef se nt en ce . g år di ng & a br am so n ( ) a ng er , su rp ri se , ne ut ra l (� no ne m ot io n te rm s) p / e ng f , f co nt ou r b ri ef se nt en ce , di gi ts s / . g ér ar d & c lé m en t ( ) h ap pi ne ss , ir on y, sa dn es s (� no ne m ot io n te rm s) p / f re s r , f , f co nt ou r b ri ef se nt en ce / . g ob l & n ı́ c ha sa id e ( ) a fr ai d/ un af ra id , bo re d/ in te re st ed , co nt en t/ an gr y, fr ie nd ly /h os ti le , re la xe d/ st re ss ed , sa d/ ha pp y, ti m id /c on fi de nt s / s w e in t, ji tt er , fo rm an ts , s pe ct r, gl ot ta l w av ef or m b ri ef se nt en ce . g ra ha m et al . ( ) a ng er , de pr es si on , fe ar , ha te , jo y, ne rv ou sn es s, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s p / e ng /e ng ( ) , e ng /j ap ( ) , e ng /s pa ( ) l on g pa ra gr ap h . g re as le y et al . ( ) a ng er , di sg us t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s n / e ng s pe ec h fr om t v an d ra di o (t a b le co n ti n u es ) communication of emotions t ab le (c o n ti n u ed ) s tu dy e m ot io ns st ud ie d (i n te rm s us ed by au th or s) m et ho d s pe ak er s/ li st en er s a co us ti c cu es an al yz ed a v er ba l m at er ia l n l an gu ag e . g ui de tt i ( ) c ol èr e [a ng er ], jo ie [j oy ], ne ut re [n eu tr al ], pe ur [f ea r] , tr is te ss e [s ad ne ss ] p / n on /f re b ri ef se nt en ce . h av rd ov a & m or av ek ( ) a ng er , an xi et y, jo y i / c ze s r , f , in t, s pe ct r b ri ef se nt en ce . h öf fe ( ) ä rg er [a ng er ], en tt äu sc hu ng [d is ap po in tm en t] , er le ic ht er un g [r el ie f] , fr eu de [j oy ], sc hm er z [p ai n] , sc hr ec k [f ea r] , tr os t [c om fo rt ], tr ot z [d ef ia nc e] , w oh lb eh ag en [s at is fa ct io n] , zw ei fe l [d ou bt ] p / g er f , in t w or d . h ou se ( ) a ng ry , ha pp y, ne ut ra l, sa d p , m , s / s w e f , f co nt ou r, in t b ri ef se nt en ce . h ut ta r ( ) a fr ai d/ bo ld , an gr y/ pl ea se d, sa d/ ha pp y, ti m id /c on fi de nt , un su re /s ur e n / e ng s r , f , in t s pe ec h fr om cl as sr oo m di sc us si on s . ii da et al . ( ) a ng er , jo y, sa dn es s i / ja p s r , f , in t p ar ag ra ph s / . ir io nd o et al . ( ) d es ir e, di sg us t, fe ar , fu ry , jo y, sa dn es s, su rp ri se (t hr ee le ve ls of in te ns it y) p / , s pa s r , pa us es , f , in t, s pe ct r p ar ag ra ph s / — . jo et al . ( ) a fr ai d, an gr y, ha pp y, sa d p / — k or s r , f b ri ef se nt en ce s / . jo hn so n et al . ( ) a ng er , fe ar , jo y, sa dn es s p , s / e ng b ri ef se nt en ce m / . jo hn st on e & s ch er er ( ) a nx io us , bo re d, de pr es se d, ha pp y, ir ri ta te d, ne ut ra l, te ns e p / f re f , in t, s pe ct , ji tt er , gl ot ta l w av ef or m b ri ef se nt en ce , ph on em e, nu m be rs . ju sl in & l au kk a ( ) a ng er , di sg us t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, no ex pr es si on , sa dn es s (t w o le ve ls of in te ns it y) p / e ng ( ), s w e ( )/ s w e ( ) s r , pa us es , f , f co nt ou r, in t, at ta ck , fo rm an ts , s pe ct r, ji tt er , a rt . b ri ef se nt en ce . l . k ai se r ( ) c he er fu ln es s, di sg us t, en th us ia sm , gr im ne ss , ki nd ne ss , sa dn es s p / d ut s r , f , f co nt ou r, in t, fo rm an ts , s pe ct r v ow el s . k at z ( ) a ng er , di sg us t, ha pp y– ca lm , ha pp y– ex ci te d, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s i / e ng s r , f , in t b ri ef se nt en ce . k ie na st & s en dl m ei er ( ) a ng er , bo re do m , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p / g er s pe ct r, fo rm an ts , a rt . b ri ef se nt en ce . k it ah ar a & t oh ku ra ( ) a ng er , jo y, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s p / ja p s r , f , in t b ri ef se nt en ce m / s / . k la sm ey er & s en dl m ei er ( ) a ng er , bo re do m , di sg us t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p / g er f , in t, s pe ct r, ji tt er , gl ot ta l w av ef or m b ri ef se nt en ce . k no w er ( ) a m az em en t– as to ni sh m en t– su rp ri se , an ge r– ha te –r ag e, de te rm in at io n– st ub bo rn ne ss – fi rm ne ss , do ub t– he si ta ti on –q ue st io ni ng , fe ar –t er ro r– ho rr or , la ug ht er –g le e– m er ri m en t, pi ty –s ym pa th y– he lp fu ln es s, re li gi ou s lo ve –r ev er en ce –a w e, sa dn es s– gr ie f– cr yi ng , sn ee ri ng –c on te m pt –s co rn , to rt ur e– gr ea t pa in –s uf fe ri ng p , m / e ng l et te rs of th e al ph ab et juslin and laukka t ab le (c o n ti n u ed ) s tu dy e m ot io ns st ud ie d (i n te rm s us ed by au th or s) m et ho d s pe ak er s/ li st en er s a co us ti c cu es an al yz ed a v er ba l m at er ia l n l an gu ag e . k no w er ( ) a m az em en t– as to ni sh m en t– su rp ri se , an ge r– ha te –r ag e, de te rm in at io n– st ub bo rn ne ss – fi rm ne ss , do ub t– he si ta ti on –q ue st io ni ng , fe ar –t er ro r– ho rr or , la ug ht er –g le e– m er ri m en t, pi ty –s ym pa th y– he lp fu ln es s, re li gi ou s lo ve –r ev er en ce –a w e, sa dn es s– gr ie f– cr yi ng , sn ee ri ng –c on te m pt –s co rn , to rt ur e– gr ea t pa in –s uf fe ri ng p / e ng l et te rs of th e al ph ab et . k ra m er ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , gr ie f, in di ff er en ce , lo ve p , m / e ng ( )/ e ng , ja p ( )/ e ng b ri ef pa ra gr ap h . k ur od a et al . ( ) f ea r (e m ot io na l st re ss ) n / e ng r ad io co m m un ic at io n (f li gh t ac ci de nt s) . l au kk an en et al . ( ) a ng er , en th us ia sm , ne ut ra l, sa dn es s, su rp ri se p / n on /f in f , in t, gl ot ta l w av ef or m , su bg lo tt al pr es su re b ri ef se nt en ce . l au kk an en et al . ( ) a ng er , en th us ia sm , ne ut ra l, sa dn es s, su rp ri se (s am e po rt ra ya ls as in s tu dy ) p , s / n on /f in g lo tt al w av ef or m , fo rm an ts b ri ef se nt en ce . l ei no ne n et al . ( ) a dm ir in g, an gr y, as to ni sh ed , co m m an di ng , fr ig ht en ed , na m in g, pl ea di ng , sa d, sa ti sf ie d, sc or nf ul p / f in s r , f , f co nt ou r, in t, s pe ct r w or d . l éo n ( ) a dm ir at io n [a dm ir at io n] , co lè re [a ng er ], jo ie [j oy ], ir on ie [i ro ny ], ne ut re [n eu tr al ], pe ur [f ea r] , su rp ri se [s ur pr is e] , tr is te ss e [s ad ne ss ] p / f re s r , pa us es , f , f co nt ou r, in t b ri ef se nt en ce . l ev in & l or d ( ) d es tr uc ti on (a ng er ), pr ot ec ti on (f ea r) p / e ng f , s pe ct r w or d . l ev it t ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , di sg us t, fe ar , jo y, su rp ri se p / e ng b ri ef pa ra gr ap h . l ie be rm an ( ) b or ed , co nf id en ti al , di sb el ie f/ do ub t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, ob je ct iv e, po m po us p / e ng ji tt er b ri ef se nt en ce . l ie be rm an & m ic ha el s ( ) b or ed om , co nf id en ti al , di sb el ie f, fe ar , ha pp in es s, po m po us , qu es ti on , st at em en t p / e ng f , f co nt ou r, in t b ri ef se nt en ce m / . m ar ke l et al . ( ) a ng er , de pr es si on i / e ng (s r , f , in t) r es po ns es to th e t he m at ic a pp er ce pt io n t es t . m or iy am a & o za w a ( ) a ng er , fe ar , jo y, so rr ow p / ja p s r , f , in t w or d . m oz zi co na cc i ( ) a ng er , bo re do m , fe ar , in di gn at io n, jo y, ne ut ra li ty , sa dn es s p / d ut s r , f , f co nt ou r, rh yt hm b ri ef se nt en ce s / . m ur ra y & a rn ot t ( ) a ng er , di sg us t, fe ar , gr ie f, ha pp in es s, sa dn es s s / e ng s r , pa us es , f , f co nt ou r, a rt ., s pe ct r, gl ot ta l w av ef or m b ri ef se nt en ce , pa ra gr ap h . n ov ak & v ok ra l ( ) a ng er , jo y, sa dn es s, ne ut ra l p / c ze f , s pe ct r l on g pa ra gr ap h . p ae sc hk e & s en dl m ei er ( ) a ng er , bo re do m , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p / g er f , f co nt ou r b ri ef se nt en ce . p el l ( ) a ng ry , ha pp y, sa d p / e ng s r , f , f co nt ou r b ri ef se nt en ce . p fa ff ( ) d is gu st , do ub t, ex ci te m en t, fe ar , gr ie f, ha te , jo y, lo ve , pl ea di ng , sh am e p / e ng n um be rs (t a b le co n ti n u es ) communication of emotions t ab le (c o n ti n u ed ) s tu dy e m ot io ns st ud ie d (i n te rm s us ed by au th or s) m et ho d s pe ak er s/ li st en er s a co us ti c cu es an al yz ed a v er ba l m at er ia l n l an gu ag e . p ol la ck et al . ( ) a ng er , ap pr ov al , bo re do m , co nf id en ti al it y, di sb el ie f, di sg us t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, im pa ti en ce , ob je ct iv e, pe da nt ic , sa rc as m , su rp ri se , th re at , un ce rt ai nt y p m / / e ng b ri ef se nt en ce . p ro to pa pa s & l ie be rm an ( ) t er ro r n s / / e ng f , ji tt er r ad io co m m un ic at io n (f li gh t ac ci de nt s) . r oe ss le r & l es te r ( ) a ng er , af fe ct , fe ar , de pr es si on n / e ng f , in t, fo rm an ts s pe ec h fr om ps yc ho th er ap y se ss io ns . s ch er er ( ) a ng er , bo re do m , di sg us t, el at io n, fe ar , ha pp in es s, in te re st , sa dn es s, su rp ri se s / n on /a m s r , f , f co nt ou r, in t t on e se qu en ce s . s ch er er et al . ( ) a ng er , di sg us t, fe ar , jo y, sa dn es s p / n on /d ut ( ) , n on /e ng ( ) , n on /f re ( ) , n on / g er ( ) , n on /i ta ( ) , n on /i nd ( ) , n on /s pa ( ) b ri ef se nt en ce . s ch er er et al . ( ) a ng er , di sg us t, fe ar , jo y, sa dn es s p / n on /g er s r , f , in t, s pe ct r b ri ef se nt en ce . s ch er er & o sh in sk y ( ) a ng er , bo re do m , di sg us t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s, su rp ri se s / n on /a m s r , f , f co nt ou r, in t, at ta ck , s pe ct r t on e se qu en ce s . s ch rö de r ( ) a ng er , fe ar , jo y, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s p / g er b ri ef se nt en ce s / . s ch rö de r ( ) a dm ir at io n, bo re do m , co nt em pt , di sg us t, el at io n, ho t an ge r, re li ef , st ar tl e, th re at , w or ry p / g er a ff ec t bu rs ts . s ed lá če k & s yc hr a ( ) a ng st [f ea r] , ei nf ac he r au ss ag e [s ta te m en t] , fe ie rl ic hk ei t [s ol em ni ty ], fr eu de [j oy ], ir on ie [i ro ny ], ko m ik [h um or ], li eb es ge fü hl e [l ov e] , tr au er [s ad ne ss ] i / c ze f , f co nt ou r b ri ef se nt en ce . s im on ov et al . ( ) a nx ie ty , de li gh t, fe ar , jo y p / r us f , fo rm an ts v ow el s . s ki nn er ( ) jo y, sa dn es s i / e ng f , in t, s pe ct r w or d . s ob in & a lp er t ( ) a ng er , fe ar , jo y, sa dn es s i / e ng s r , pa us es , f , in t b ri ef se nt en ce . s og on ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , gr ie f, in di ff er en ce , lo ve p / ja p b ri ef se nt en ce . s te ff en -b at óg et al . ( ) a m az em en t, an ge r, bo re do m , jo y, in di ff er en ce , ir on y, sa dn es s p / p ol (s r , f , in t, vo ic e qu al it y) b ri ef se nt en ce . s ti bb ar d ( ) a ng er , di sg us t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s (s am e sp ee ch m at er ia l as in s tu dy ) n /— e ng s r , (f , f co nt ou r, in t, a rt ., vo ic e qu al it y) s pe ec h fr om t v . s ul c ( ) f ea r (e m ot io na l st re ss ) n / e ng f r ad io co m m un ic at io n (f li gh t ac ci de nt s) . t ic kl e ( ) a ng ry , ca lm , fe ar fu l, ha pp y, sa d p / e ng ( ), ja p ( )/ e ng ( ) , ja p ( ) b ri ef se nt en ce , vo w el s . t is ch er ( , ) a bn ei gu ng [a ve rs io n] , an gs t [f ea r] , är ge r [a ng er ], fr eu de [j oy ], li eb e [l ov e] , lu st [l us t] , se hn su ch t [l on gi ng ], tr au ri gk ei t [s ad ne ss ], üb er ra sc hu ng [s ur pr is e] , un si ch er he it [i ns ec ur it y] , w ut [r ag e] , zä rt li ch ke it [t en de rn es s] , zu fr ie de nh ei t [c on te nt m en t] , zu ne ig un g [s ym pa th y] p / g er s r , p au se s, f , in t b ri ef se nt en ce , pa ra gr ap h juslin and laukka t ab le (c o n ti n u ed ) s tu dy e m ot io ns st ud ie d (i n te rm s us ed by au th or s) m et ho d s pe ak er s/ li st en er s a co us ti c cu es an al yz ed a v er ba l m at er ia l n l an gu ag e . t ra in or et al . ( ) c om fo rt , fe ar , lo ve , su rp ri se p / e ng s r , f , f co nt ou r, rh yt hm b ri ef se nt en ce . va n b ez oo ij en ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , di sg us t, fe ar , in te re st , jo y, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s, sh am e, su rp ri se p / d ut s r , f , in t, s pe ct r, ji tt er , a rt . b ri ef se nt en ce . va n b ez oo ij en et al . ( ) a ng er , co nt em pt , di sg us t, fe ar , in te re st , jo y, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s, sh am e, su rp ri se (s am e po rt ra ya ls as in s tu dy ) p / d ut /d ut ( ) , d ut /t ai ( ) , d ut /c hi ( ) b ri ef se nt en ce . w al lb ot t & s ch er er ( ) a ng er , jo y, sa dn es s, su rp ri se p / g er s r , f , in t b ri ef se nt en ce m / . w hi te si de ( a ) c ol d an ge r, el at io n, ha pp in es s, ho t an ge r, in te re st , ne ut ra l, sa dn es s p / e ng s r , fo rm an ts b ri ef se nt en ce . w hi te si de ( b ) c ol d an ge r, el at io n, ha pp in es s, ho t an ge r, in te re st , ne ut ra l, sa dn es s (s am e po rt ra ya ls as in s tu dy ) p / e ng f , in t, ji tt er , sh im m er b ri ef se nt en ce . w il li am s & s te ve ns ( ) f ea r n / e ng f , ji tt er r ad io co m m un ic at io n (f li gh t ac ci de nt s) . w il li am s & s te ve ns ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ne ut ra l, so rr ow p n / / e ng e ng s r , pa us es , f , f co nt ou r, s pe ct r, ji tt er , fo rm an ts , a rt . b ri ef se nt en ce . z uc ke rm an et al . ( ) a ng er , di sg us t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s, su rp ri se p / e ng b ri ef se nt en ce n o te . a da sh in di ca te s th at no in fo rm at io n w as pr ov id ed . t yp es of m et ho d in cl ud ed po rt ra ya l (p ), m an ip ul at ed po rt ra ya l (m ), sy nt he si s (s ), na tu ra l sp ee ch sa m pl e (n ), an d in du ct io n of em ot io n (i ). s w e � s w ed is h; e ng � e ng li sh ; f in � f in ni sh ; s pa � s pa ni sh ; s r � sp ee ch ra te ; f � fu nd am en ta l fr eq ue nc y; in t � vo ic e in te ns it y; c re � c re e- sp ea ki ng c an ad ia n in di an s; a ra � a ra bi c; it a � it al ia n; s pe ct r � cu es re la te d to sp ec tr al en er gy di st ri bu ti on (e .g ., hi gh -f re qu en cy en er gy ); n on � n on se ns e ut te ra nc es ; g er � g er m an ; a rt . � pr ec is io n of ar ti cu la ti on ; k or � k or ea n; f re � f re nc h; h un � h un ga ri an ; a m � a m er ic an ; ja p � ja pa ne se ; c ze � c ze ch os lo va ki an ; d ut � d ut ch ; in d � in do ne si an ; r us � r us si an ; p ol � p ol is h; t ai � t ai w an es e; c hi � c hi ne se . a a co us ti c cu es li st ed w it hi n pa re nt he se s w er e ob ta in ed by m ea ns of li st en er ra ti ng s ra th er th an ac ou st ic m ea su re m en ts . communication of emotions t ab le (c o n ti n u ed ) t ab le s u m m a ry o f s tu d ie s o n m u si ca l e xp re ss io n o f e m o ti o n in cl u d ed in th e r ev ie w s tu dy e m ot io ns st ud ie d (i n te rm s us ed by au th or s) m et ho d n in st ru m en t (n ) n at . a co us ti c cu es an al yz ed a m us ic al m at er ia l p/ l p/ l . a rc os et al . ( ) a gg re ss iv e, ca lm , jo yf ul , re st le ss , sa d, te nd er p , s / — s ax op ho ne s pa t em po , ti m in g, in t, a rt ., at ta ck , vi br at o ja zz ba ll ad s . b aa rs & g ab ri el ss on ( ) a ng ry , fe ar fu l, ha pp y, no ex pr es si on , sa d, so le m n, te nd er p / s in gi ng s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, a rt . f ol k m us ic . b al kw il l & t ho m ps on ( ) a ng er , jo y, pe ac e, sa dn es s p / f lu te ( ), si ta r ( ) in d/ c an (t em po , pi tc h, m el od ic an d rh yt hm ic co m pl ex it y) in di an ra ga s . b ar on i et al . ( ) a gg re ss iv e, sa d– de pr es se d, se re ne –j oy fu l p / s in gi ng it a t em po , ti m in g, in t, pi tc h o pe ra . b ar on i & f in ar el li ( ) a gg re ss iv e, sa d– de pr es se d, se re ne –j oy fu l p / s in gi ng it a t im in g, in t o pe ra . b eh re ns & g re en ( ) a ng ry , sa d, sc ar ed p / s in gi ng ( ), tr um pe t ( ), vi ol in ( ), ti m pa ni ( ) a m im pr ov is at io ns . b re si n & f ri be rg ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, no ex pr es si on , sa dn es s, so le m ni ty , te nd er ne ss s / p ia no s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, a rt . c hi ld re n’ s so ng , cl as si ca l m us ic (r om an ti c) . b un t & p av li ce vi c ( ) a ng ry , fe ar fu l, ha pp y, sa d, te nd er p / v ar e ng (t em po , ti m in g, in t, ti m br e, a rt ., pi tc h) im pr ov is at io ns . c an az za & o ri o ( ) a ct iv e– an im at ed , ag gr es si ve – ex ci ta bl e, ca lm –o pp re ss iv e, gl ad –q ui et , gl oo m y– ti re d, po w er fu l– re st le ss p / s ax op ho ne ( ), pi an o ( ) it a t em po , in t, a rt . ja zz . d ry & g ab ri el ss on ( ) a ng ry , fe ar fu l, ha pp y, ne ut ra l, sa d, so le m n, te nd er p / r oc k co m bo s w e (t em po , ti m in g, ti m br e, at ta ck ) r oc k m us ic . e bi e ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p / s in gi ng a m n ew ly co m po se d m us ic (c la ss ic al ) . f ón ag y & m ag di cs ( ) a ng er , co m pl ai nt , co qu et ry , fe ar , jo y, lo ng in g, sa rc as m , sc or n, su rp ri se p — /— — v ar (t em po , in t, ti m br e, a rt ., pi tc h) f ol k m us ic , cl as si ca l m us ic , op er a . g ab ri el ss on & ju sl in ( ) a ng ry , fe ar fu l, ha pp y, no ex pr es si on , sa d, so le m n, te nd er p / e le ct ri c gu it ar s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, s pe ct r, a rt ., pi tc h, at ta ck , vi br at o f ol k m us ic , cl as si ca l m us ic , po pu la r m us ic / f lu te ( ), vi ol in ( ), si ng in g ( ) . g ab ri el ss on & l in ds tr öm ( ) a ng ry , ha pp y, in di ff er en t, so ft – te nd er , so le m n p / s yn th es iz er , se nt og ra ph s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, a rt . f ol k m us ic , po pu la r m us ic . ja ns en s et al . ( ) a ng er , fe ar , jo y, ne ut ra l, sa dn es s p / s in gi ng d ut t em po , in t, f , s pe ct r, vi br at o c la ss ic al m us ic (l ie d) . ju sl in ( ) a ng er , ha pp in es s, so le m ni ty , te nd er ne ss , no ex pr es si on p / e le ct ri c gu it ar s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, ti m br e, a rt ., at ta ck f ol k m us ic . ju sl in ( a ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s, te nd er ne ss p , s / e le ct ri c gu it ar ( ), sy nt he si ze r s w e f ol k m us ic . ju sl in ( b ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, no ex pr es si on , sa dn es s p / e le ct ri c gu it ar s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, a rt ., at ta ck ja zz . ju sl in ( c ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s, te nd er ne ss p , m , s / e le ct ri c gu it ar ( ), sy nt he si ze r s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, s pe ct r, a rt ., at ta ck , vi br at o f ol k m us ic s / s yn th es iz er . ju sl in ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p / e le ct ri c gu it ar s w e t em po , in t, s pe ct r, a rt . ja zz , fo lk m us ic juslin and laukka s tu dy e m ot io ns st ud ie d (i n te rm s us ed by au th or s) m et ho d n in st ru m en t (n ) n at . a co us ti c cu es an al yz ed a m us ic al m at er ia l p/ l p/ l . ju sl in et al . ( ) s ad ne ss s / p ia no s w e t em po , in t, a rt . b al la d . ju sl in & l au kk a ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p / e le ct ri c gu it ar s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, s pe ct r, a rt . ja zz , fo lk m us ic . ju sl in & m ad is on ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p , m / p ia no s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, a rt . ja zz , fo lk m us ic . k on is hi et al . ( ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p / s in gi ng ja p v ib ra to c la ss ic al m us ic . k ot ly ar & m or oz ov ( ) a ng er , fe ar , jo y, ne ut ra l, so rr ow p / s in gi ng r us t em po , ti m in g, a rt ., in t, at ta ck c la ss ic al m us ic m / . l an ge he in ec ke et al . ( ) a ng er , fe ar , jo y, sa dn es s p / s in gi ng g er t em po , ti m in g, in t, s pe ct r, vi br at o c la ss ic al m us ic . l au kk a & g ab ri el ss on ( ) a ng ry , fe ar fu l, ha pp y, no ex pr es si on , sa d, so le m n, te nd er p / d ru m s s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t r hy th m pa tt er ns (j az z, ro ck ) . m ad is on ( b ) a ng er , fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p , m / p ia no s w e t im in g, in t, a rt . (p at te rn s of ch an ge s) p op ul ar m us ic . m er gl et al . ( ) f re ud e [j oy ], tr au er [s ad ne ss ], w ut [r ag e] p / x yl op ho ne g er (t em po , in t, a rt ., at ta ck ) im pr ov is at io ns . m et fe ss el ( ) a ng er , fe ar , gr ie f, lo ve p / s in gi ng a m v ib ra to p op ul ar m us ic . m or oz ov ( ) f ea r, ho t an ge r, jo y, ne ut ra l, so rr ow p , m — /— s in gi ng r us s pe ct r, fo rm an ts c la ss ic al m us ic , po p, ha rd ro ck . o hg us hi & h at to ri ( a ) a ng er , fe ar , jo y, ne ut ra l, so rr ow p / s in gi ng ja p t em po , f , in t, vi br at o c la ss ic al m us ic . o hg us hi & h at to ri ( b ) a ng er , fe ar , jo y, ne ut ra l, so rr ow p / s in gi ng ja p c la ss ic al m us ic . o ur a & n ak an is hi ( ) a ng er , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s p / p ia no ja p t em po , in t c la ss ic al m us ic . r ap op or t ( ) c al m , ex ci te d, ex pr es si ve , in te rm ed ia te , ne ut ra l- so ft , sh or t, tr an si ti on al –m ul ti st ag e, vi rt uo so b p — / s in gi ng v ar f , in to na ti on , vi br at o, fo rm an ts c la ss ic al m us ic , op er a . s al ga do ( ) a ng ry , fe ar fu l, ha pp y, ne ut ra l, sa d p / s in gi ng p or in t, s pe ct r c la ss ic al m us ic (l ie d) . s ch er er & o sh in sk y ( ) a ng er , bo re do m , di sg us t, fe ar , ha pp in es s, sa dn es s, su rp ri se s / s yn th es iz er a m t em po , f , f co nt ou r, in t, at ta ck , s pe ct r c la ss ic al m us ic . s en ju & o hg us hi ( ) s ad (� no ne m ot io n te rm s) p / v io li n ja p c la ss ic al m us ic . s he rm an ( ) a ng er –h at e, fe ar –p ai n, so rr ow , su rp ri se p , m / s in gi ng a m — . s ie gw ar t & s ch er er ( ) f ea r of de at h, m ad ne ss , sa dn es s, te nd er pa ss io n p / s in gi ng — in t, s pe ct r o pe ra . s un db er g et al . ( ) a ng ry , ha pp y, ha te fu l, lo vi ng , sa d, sc ar ed , se cu re p / s in gi ng s w e t em po , ti m in g, in t, s pe ct r, pi tc h, at ta ck , vi br at o c la ss ic al m us ic (l ie d) n o te . a da sh in di ca te s th at no in fo rm at io n w as pr ov id ed . t yp es of m et ho d in cl ud ed po rt ra ya l (p ), sy nt he si s (s ), an d m an ip ul at ed po rt ra ya l (m ). p � pe rf or m er s; l � li st en er s; n at . � na ti on al it y; s pa � s pa ni sh ; in t � in te ns it y; a rt . � ar ti cu la ti on ; s w e � s w ed is h; in d � in di an ; c an � c an ad ia n; it a � it al ia n; a m � a m er ic an ; v ar � va ri ou s; e ng � e ng li sh ; s pe ct r � cu es re la te d to sp ec tr al en er gy di st ri bu ti on (e .g ., hi gh -f re qu en cy en er gy ); d ut � d ut ch ; f � fu nd am en ta l fr eq ue nc y; ja p � ja pa ne se ; r us � r us si an ; g er � g er m an ; p or � p or tu gu es e. a a co us ti c cu es li st ed w it hi n pa re nt he se s w er e ob ta in ed by m ea ns of li st en er ra ti ng s ra th er th an ac ou st ic m ea su re m en ts . b t he se te rm s de no te pa rt ic ul ar m od es of si ng in g, w hi ch in tu rn ar e us ed to ex pr es s di ff er en t em ot io ns . communication of emotions t ab le (c o n ti n u ed ) range) of pi values, as well as confidence intervals. also indicated is the number of encoders (speakers or performers) and studies on which the estimates are based. the estimates for within-cultural vocal expression are generally based on more data than are those for cross-cultural vocal expression and music performance. as seen in table , overall decoding accuracy is high for all three sets of data (� � . –. ). indeed, the confidence intervals suggest that decoding accuracy is typically significantly higher than what would be expected by chance alone (� � . ) for all three types of stimuli. the lowest estimate of overall accuracy in any of the decoding experiments was . (fenster, blake, & goldstein, ). overall decoding accuracy across within-cultural vocal expression and music performance was . , which is equivalent to a raw accuracy score of . in a forced-choice task with five response alternatives (the average number of alternatives across both channels; see, e.g., table of rosenthal & rubin, ). however, overall accuracy was significantly higher, t( ) � . , p � . , for within-cultural vocal expression (� � . ) than for cross-cultural vocal expression (� � . ). the differences in overall accuracy between music performance (� � . ) and within-cultural vocal expression and the differences between mu- sic performance and cross-cultural vocal expression were not sig- nificant. the results indicate that musical expression of emotions was about as accurate as vocal expression of emotions and that vocal expression of emotions was cross-culturally accurate, al- though cross-cultural accuracy was % lower than within-cultural accuracy in the present results. note also that decoding accuracy for vocal expression was well above chance for both emotion portrayals and natural expressions. the patterns of accuracy estimates for individual emotions are similar across the three sets of data. specifically, anger (� � . , m � . ) and sadness (� � . , m � . ) portrayals were best decoded, followed by fear (� � . , m � . ) and happiness portrayals (� � . , m � . ). worst decoded throughout was tenderness (� � . , m � . ), although it must be noted that the estimates for this emotion were based on fewer data points. further analysis confirmed that, across channels, anger and sadness were significantly better communicated (t tests, p � . ) than fear, happiness, and tenderness (remaining differences were not signif- icant). this pattern of results is consistent with previous reviews of vocal expression featuring fewer studies (johnstone & scherer, ) but differs from the pattern found in studies of facial expression of emotion, in which happiness was usually better decoded than other emotions (elfenbein & ambady, ). the standard deviation of decoding accuracy across studies was generally small, with the largest being for tenderness in music performance. (this is also indicated by the small confidence in- tervals for all emotions except tenderness in the case of music performance.) this finding is surprising; one would expect the accuracy to vary considerably depending on the emotions studied, the encoders, the verbal or musical material, the decoders, the procedure, and so on. yet, the present results suggest that the estimates of decoding accuracy are fairly robust with respect to these factors. consideration of the different measures of central tendency (unweighted mean, weighted mean, and median) shows that they differed little and that all indices gave the same patterns of findings. this suggests that the data were relatively homoge- nous. this impression is confirmed by plotting the distribution of data on decoding accuracy for vocal expression and music perfor- mance (see figure ). only eight ( %) of the experiments yielded accuracy estimates below . . these include three cross-cultural vocal expression experiments (two that involved natural expres- sion), four vocal expression experiments using emotion portrayals, and one music performance experiment using drum playing as stimuli. possible moderators. although the decoding data appear to be relatively homogenous, we investigated possible moderators of decoding accuracy that could explain the variability. among the moderators were the year of the study, number of emotions en- coded (this coincided with the number of response alternatives in the present data set), number of encoders, number of decoders, recording method (dummy coded, � portrayal, � natural sample), response format ( � forced choice, � rating scales), laboratory (dummy coded separately for knower, scherer, and juslin labs; see table ), and channel (dummy coded separately for cross-cultural vocal expression, within-cultural vocal expression, and music performance). table presents the correlations among the investigated moderators as well as their correlations with overall decoding accuracy. note that overall accuracy was nega- tively correlated with year of the study, use of natural expressions (recording method), and cross-cultural vocal expression, whereas it was positively correlated with number of emotions. the latter finding is surprising given that one would expect accuracy to decrease as the number of response alternatives increases (e.g., rosenthal, ). one possible explanation is that certain earlier studies (e.g., those by knower’s laboratory) reported very high accuracy estimates (for knower’s studies, mean � � . ) although they used a large number of emotions (see table ). subsequent studies featuring many emotions (e.g., banse & scherer, ) have reported lower accuracy estimates. the slightly lower overall accuracy for music performance than for within-cultural vocal expression could be related to the fact that more studies of music performance than studies of vocal expression used rating scales, which typically yield lower accuracy. in general, it is surprising the mean was weighted with regard to the number of encoders included. figure . number of studies of communication of emotions published for vocal expression and music performance, respectively, between and . juslin and laukka that recent studies tended to include fewer encoders, decoders, and emotions. a simultaneous multiple regression analysis (cohen & cohen, ) with overall decoding accuracy as the dependent variable and six moderators (year of study, number of emotions, recording method, response format, knower laboratory, and cross-cultural vocal expression) as independent variables yielded a multiple correlation of . (adjusted r � . , f[ , ] � . , p � . ; n � with outliers, standard residual � �, removed). cross-cultural vocal expression yielded a significant beta weight (� � –. , p � . ), but knower laboratory (� � . ), response format (� � –. ), recording method (� � –. ), number of emotions (� � . ), and year of the study (� � . ) did not. these results indicate that only about % of the variability in decoding data can be explained by the investigated moderators. individual differences. the present results indicate that com- munication of emotions in vocal expression and music perfor- mance was relatively accurate. the accuracy (mean � across data sets � . ) was well beyond the frequently used criterion for correct response in psychophysical research (proportion correct [pc] � . ), which is midway between the levels of pure guessing (pc � . ) and perfect detection (pc � . ; gordon, , p. ). however, studies in both domains have yielded evidence of con- siderable individual differences in both encoding and decoding accuracy (see banse & scherer, ; gabrielsson & juslin, ; juslin, b; juslin & laukka, ; scherer, banse, wallbott, & goldbeck, ; wallbott & scherer, ; for a review of gender differences, see hall, carter, & horgan, ). particularly, en- coders differ widely in their ability to portray specific emotions. this problem has probably contributed to the noted inconsistency of data concerning code usage in earlier research (scherer, ). because many researchers have not taken this problem seriously, several studies have investigated only one speaker or performer (see tables and ). individual differences in decoding accuracy have also been reported, though they tend to be less pronounced than those in encoding. moreover, even when decoders make incorrect re- sponses their errors are not entirely random. thus, error distribu- tions are informative about the subjective similarity of various emotional expressions (davitz, a; van bezooijen, ). it is of interest that the errors made in emotion decoding are similar for vocal expression and music performance. for instance, sadness and tenderness are commonly confused, whereas happiness and sadness are seldom confused (baars & gabrielsson, ; davitz, a; davitz & davitz, ; dawes & kramer, ; fónagy, ; juslin, c). similar error patterns in the two domains it may be argued that in many studies of vocal expression, estimates are likely to be biased because of preselection of effective portrayals before inclusion in decoding experiments. however, whether preselection of portrayals is a moderator of overall accuracy was not examined because only a minority of studies stated clearly the extent of preselection carried out. however, it should be noted that decoding accuracy of a comparable level has been found in studies that did not use preselection of emotion portrayals (juslin & laukka, ). table summary of results from meta-analysis of decoding accuracy for discrete emotions in terms of rosenthal and rubin’s ( ) pi category emotion overallanger fear happiness sadness tenderness within-cultural vocal expression mean (unweighted) . . . . . . % confidence interval � . � . � . � . � . � . mean (weighted) . . . . . . median . . . . . . sd . . . . . . range . – . . – . . – . . – . . –. . – . no. of studies no. of speakers cross-cultural vocal expression mean (unweighted) . . . . . . % confidence interval � . � . � . � . � . mean (weighted) . . . . . . median . . . . . sd . . . . . range . –. . –. . –. . –. . –. no. of studies no. of speakers music performance mean (unweighted) . . . . . . % confidence interval � . � . � . � . � . � . mean (weighted) . . . . . . median . . . . . . sd . . . . . . range . – . . – . . – . . – . . – . . –. no. of studies no. of performers communication of emotions provide a first indication that there could be similarities between the two channels in terms of acoustic cues. developmental trends. the development of the ability to de- code emotions from auditory stimuli has not been well researched. recent evidence, however, indicates that children as young as years old are able to decode basic emotions from vocal expression with better than chance accuracy (baltaxe, ; friend, ; j. b. morton & trehub, ), at least when the verbal content is made unintelligible by using utterances in a foreign language or filtering out the verbal information (friend, ). the ability seems to improve with age, however, at least until school age (dimitrovsky, ; fenster et al., ; mccluskey & albas, ; mccluskey, albas, niemi, cuevas, & ferrer, ) and perhaps even until early adulthood (brosgole & weisman, ; mccluskey & albas, ). similarly, studies of music suggest that children as young as or years old are able to decode basic emotions from music with better than chance accuracy (cunningham & sterling, ; dol- gin & adelson, ; kastner & crowder, ). although few of these studies have distinguished between features of performance (e.g., tempo, timbre) and features of composition (e.g., mode), dalla bella, peretz, rousseau, and gosselin ( ) found that -year-olds were able to use tempo (i.e., performance) but not mode (i.e., composition) to decode emotions in musical pieces. again, decoding accuracy seems to improve with age (adachi & trehub, ; brosgole & weisman, ; cunningham & ster- ling, ; terwogt & van grinsven, , ; but for excep- tions, see giomo, ; kratus, ). it is interesting to note that the developmental curve over the life span appears similar for vocal expression and music but differs from that of facial expres- sion. in a cross-sectional study, brosgole and weisman ( ) found that the ability to decode emotions from vocal expression and music improved during childhood and remained asymptotic through age . then, it began to decline from middle age onward (see also mccluskey & albas, ). it is hard to determine whether emotion decoding occurs in children younger than years old, as they are unable to talk about their experiences. however, there is preliminary evidence that infants are at least able to discriminate between some emotions in vocal and musical expres- sions (see gentile, ; mastropieri & turkewitz, ; nawrot, ; singh, morgan, & best, ; soken & pick, ; svejda, ). code usage most early studies of vocal expression and music performance were mainly concerned with demonstrating that communication of emotions is possible at all. however, if one wants to explore communication as a process, one cannot ignore its mechanisms, in particular the code that carries the emotional meaning. a large number of studies have attempted to describe the cues used by speakers and musicians to communicate specific emotions to lis- teners. most studies to date have measured only a small number of cues, but some recent studies have been more inclusive (see tables and ). before taking a closer look at the patterns of acoustic cues used to express discrete emotions in vocal expression and music performance, respectively, we need to consider the various cues that were used in each modality. table shows how each acoustic cue was defined and measured. the measurements were usually carried out using advanced computer software for digital analysis of speech signals. the cues extracted involve the basic dimensions of frequency, intensity, and duration, plus vari- this is because the verbal content may interfere with the decoding of the nonverbal content in small children (friend, ). figure . the distributions of point estimates of overall decoding accuracy in terms of rosenthal and rubin’s ( ) pi for vocal expression and music performance, respectively. juslin and laukka ous combinations of these dimensions (see table ). for a more extensive discussion of the principles underlying production of speech and music and associated measurements, see borden, har- ris, and raphael ( ) and sundberg ( ), respectively. in the following, we divide data into three sets: (a) cues that are common to vocal expression and music performance, (b) cues that are specific to vocal expression, and (c) cues that are specific to music performance. the common cues are of main importance to this review, although channel-specific cues may suggest additional aspects of potential overlap that can be explored in future research. comparisons of common cues. table presents patterns of acoustic cues used to express different emotions as reported in studies of vocal expression and studies of music performance. very few studies have reported data in such detail to permit inclusion in a meta-analysis. furthermore, it is usually difficult to compare quantitative data across different studies because studies use different baselines (juslin & laukka, , p. ). the most prudent approach was to summarize findings in terms of broad categories (e.g., high, medium, low), mainly according to the interpretation of the authors of each study but (whenever possible) with support from actual data provided in tables and figures. many studies provided only partial reports of data or reported data in a manner that required careful analysis to extract usable data points. in the few cases in which we were uncertain about the interpreta- tion of a particular data point, we simply omitted this data point from the review. in the majority of cases, however, the scoring of data was straightforward, and we were able to include , data points in the comparisons. starting with the cues used freely in both channels (i.e., in vocal expression/music performance, respectively: speech rate/tempo, voice intensity/sound level, and high-frequency energy), there are relatively similar patterns of cues for the two channels (see table ). for example, speech rate/tempo and voice intensity/sound level were typically increased in anger and happiness, whereas they were decreased in sadness and tenderness. furthermore, the high- frequency energy was typically increased in happiness and anger, whereas it was decreased in sadness and tenderness. although less data were available concerning voice intensity/sound level vari- ability, the results were largely similar for the two channels. the variability increased in anger and fear but decreased in sadness and tenderness. however, there were differences as well. note that fear was most commonly associated with high intensity in vocal ex- pression, albeit low intensity (sound level) in music performance. one possible explanation of this inconsistency is that the results reflect various intensities of the same emotion (e.g., strong fear and weak fear) or qualitative differences among closely related emo- tions. for example, mild fear may be associated with low voice intensity and little high-frequency energy, whereas panic fear may be associated with high voice intensity and much high-frequency energy (banse & scherer, ; juslin & laukka, ). thus, it is possible that studies of music performance have studied almost exclusively mild fear, whereas studies of vocal expression have studied both mild fear and panic fear. this explanation is clearly consistent with the present results when one considers our findings of bimodal distributions of intensity and high-frequency energy for vocal expression as compared with unimodal distributions of sound level and high-frequency energy for music performance (see table ). however, to confirm this interpretation one would need to conduct studies of music performance that systematically ma- nipulate emotion intensity in expressions of fear. such studies are currently underway (e.g., juslin & lindström, ). overall, however, the results were relatively similar across the channels for the three major cues (speech rate/tempo, vocal intensity/sound level, and high-frequency energy), although there were relatively baseline refers to the use of some kind of frame of reference (e.g., a neutral expression or the average across emotions) against which emotion- specific changes in acoustic cues are indexed. the problem is that many types of baseline (e.g., the average) are sensitive to what emotions were included in the study, which renders studies that included different emo- tions incomparable. table intercorrelations (rs) among investigated moderators of overall decoding accuracy across vocal expression and music performance moderators acc. . year of the study �. * — . number of emotions . * �. * — . number of encoders . �. * . * — . number of decoders . �. . * �. — . recording method �. * . �. * �. �. — . response format �. . �. �. . �. — . knower laboratorya . * �. * . * . * . * �. �. — . scherer laboratoryb �. . * �. �. . �. �. { — . juslin laboratoryc . . �. �. �. �. . * { { — . cross-cultural vocal expression �. * . * �. �. �. . �. �. . * �. — . within-cultural vocal expression . * �. * . * . . �. �. * . * �. �. * { — . music performance �. . * �. �. �. �. . * �. �. . * { { — note. a diamond indicates that the correlation could not be given a meaningful interpretation because of the nature of the variables. acc. � overall decoding accuracy. a this includes the following studies: dusenbury and knower ( ) and knower ( , ). b this includes the following studies: banse and scherer ( ); johnson, emde, scherer, and klinnert ( ); scherer, banse, and wallbott ( ); scherer, banse, wallbott, and goldbeck ( ); and wallbott and scherer ( ). c this includes the following studies: juslin ( a, b, c), juslin and laukka ( , ), and juslin and madison ( ). * p � . . communication of emotions table definition and measurement of acoustic cues in vocal expression and music performance acoustic cues perceived correlate definition and measurement vocal expression pitch fundamental frequency (f ) pitch f represents the rate at which the vocal folds open and close across the glottis. acoustically, f is defined as the lowest periodic cycle component of the acoustic waveform, and it is extracted by computerized tracking algorithms (scherer, ). f contour intonation contour the f contour is the sequence of f values across an utterance. besides changes in pitch, the f contour also contains temporal information. the f contour is hard to operationalize, and most studies report only qualitative classifications (cowie et al., ). jitter pitch perturbations jitter is small-scale perturbations in f related to rapid and random fluctuations of the time of the opening and closing of the vocal folds from one vocal cycle to the next. extracted by computerized tracking algorithms (scherer, ). intensity intensity loudness of speech intensity is a measure of energy in the acoustic signal, and it reflects the effort required to produce the speech. usually measured from the amplitude acoustic waveform. the standard unit used to quantify intensity is a logarithmic transform of the amplitude called the decibel (db; scherer, ). attack rapidity of voice onsets the attack refers to the rise time or rate of rise of amplitude for voiced speech segments. it is usually measured from the amplitude acoustic waveform (scherer, ). temporal aspects speech rate velocity of speech the rate can be measured as overall duration or as units per duration (e.g., words per min). it may include either complete utterances or only the voiced segments of speech (scherer, ). pauses amount of silence in speech pauses are usually measured as number or duration of silences in the acoustic waveform (scherer, ). voice quality high-frequency energy voice quality high-frequency energy refers to the relative proportion of total acoustic energy above versus below a certain cut-off frequency (e.g., scherer et al., ). as the amount of high-frequency energy in the spectrum increases, the voice sounds more sharp and less soft (von bismarck, ). it is obtained by measuring the long-term average spectrum, which is the distribution of energy over a range of frequencies, averaged over an extended time period. formant frequencies voice quality formant frequencies are frequency regions in which the amplitude of acoustic energy in the speech signal is high, reflecting natural resonances in the vocal tract. the first two formants largely determine vowel quality, whereas the higher formants may be speaker dependent (laver, ). the mean frequency and the width of the spectral band containing significant formant energy are extracted from the acoustic waveform by computerized tracking algorithms (scherer, ). precision of articulation articulatory effort the vowel quality tends to move toward the formant structure of the neutral schwa vowel (e.g., as in sofa) under strong emotional arousal (tolkmitt & scherer, ). the precision of articulation can be measured as the deviation of the formant frequencies from the neutral formant frequencies. glottal waveform voice quality the glottal flow waveform represents the time air is flowing between the vocal folds (abduction and adduction) and the time the glottis is closed for each vibrational cycle. the shape of the waveform helps to determine the loudness of the sound generated and its timbre. a jagged waveform represents sudden changes in airflow that produce more high frequencies than a soft waveform. the glottal waveform can be inferred from the acoustical signal using inverse filtering (laukkanen et al., ). music performance pitch f pitch acoustically, f is defined as the lowest periodic cycle component of the acoustic waveform. one can distinguish between the macro pitch level of particular musical pieces, and the micro intonation of the performance. the former is often given in the unit of the semitone, the latter is given in terms of deviations from the notated macro pitch (e.g., in cents; sundberg, ). f contour intonation contour f contour is the sequence of f values. in music, intonation refers to manner in which the performer approaches and/or maintains the prescribed pitch of notes in terms of deviations from precise pitch (baroni et al., ). juslin and laukka few data points in some of the comparisons. it must be noted that these cues account for a large proportion of the variance in listen- ers’ judgments of emotional expression in synthesized sound se- quences (e.g., juslin, c; juslin & madison, ; scherer & oshinsky, ). the present results are not as clear cut as one would hope for, but some inconsistency in the data is only what should be expected given that there were large individual differ- ences among encoders and that many studies included only a single encoder. (further explanation of the inconsistency in these findings is provided in the discussion section.) in addition to the converging findings for the three major cues, there are also similarities with regard to some other cues. it can be seen in table that the degree to which emotion portrayals display microstructural regularity versus irregularity (with respect to fre- quency, intensity, and duration) can discriminate between certain emotions. specifically, it would appear that positive emotions (hap- piness, tenderness) are more regular than negative emotions (anger, fear, sadness). that is, irregularities in frequency, intensity, and du- ration seem to be signs of negative emotion. this hypothesis, men- tioned by davitz ( a), deserves more attention in future research. another cue that has been little studied so far is voice onsets/ tone attack. sundberg ( ) observed that perceptual stimuli that change are easier to process than quasi-stationary stimuli and that the beginning and the end of a sound may be particularly revealing. indeed, the limited data available suggest that voice onsets and tone attacks differed depending on the emotion ex- pressed. as can be seen in table , studies of music performance suggest that fast tone attacks were used in anger and happiness, whereas slow tone attacks were used in sadness and tenderness. (text continues on page ) table (continued ) acoustic cues perceived correlate definition and measurement music performance (continued) vibrato vibrato vibrato refers to periodic changes in the pitch (or loudness) of a tone. depth and rate of vibrato can be measured manually from the f trace (or amplitude envelope; metfessel, ). intensity intensity loudness intensity is a measure of the energy in the acoustic signal. it is usually measured from the amplitude of the acoustic waveform. the standard unit used to quantify intensity is a logarithmic transformation of the amplitude called the decibel (db; sundberg, ). attack rapidity of tone onsets attack refers to the rise time or rate of rise of the amplitude of individual notes. it is usually measured from the acoustic waveform (kotlyar & morozov, ). temporal aspects tempo velocity of music the mean tempo of a performance is obtained by dividing the total duration of the performance until the onset of its final note by the number of beats and then calculating the number of beats per min (bpm; bengtsson & gabrielsson, ). articulationa proportion of sound to silence in successive notes the mean articulation of a performance is typically obtained by measuring two durations for each tone—the duration from the onset of a tone until the onset of the next tone (dii), and the duration from the onset of a tone until its offset (dio). these durations are used to calculate the dio:dii ratio (the articulation) of each tone (bengtsson & gabrielsson, ). these values are averaged across the per- formance and expressed as a percentage. a value around % refers to legato articulation; a value of % or lower refers to staccato articulation (woody, ). timing tempo and rhythm variation timing variations are usually described as deviations from the nominal values of a musical notation. overall measures of the amount of deviations in a performance may be obtained by calculating the number of notes whose deviation is less than a given percentage of the note value. another index of timing changes concerns so-called durational contrasts between long and short notes in rhythm patterns. contrasts may be played with “sharp” durational contrasts (close to or larger than the nominal ratio) or with “soft” durational contrasts (a reduced ratio; gabrielsson, ). timbre high-frequency energy timbre high-frequency energy refers to the relative proportion of total acoustic energy above versus below a certain cut-off frequency in the frequency spectrum of the performance (juslin, ). in music, timbre is in part a characteristic of the specific instrument. however, different techniques of playing may also influence the timbre of many instruments, such as the guitar (gabrielsson & juslin, ). singer’s formant timbre the singer’s formant refers to a strong resonance around – hz and is that which adds brilliance and carrying power to the voice. it is attributed to a lowered larynx and widened pharynx, which forms an additional resonance cavity (sundberg, ). a this use of the term articulation should be distinguished from its use in studies of vocal expression, where articulation refers to the settings of the articulators (lips, tongue, lower jaw, pharyngeal sidewalls) that determine the resonant characteristics of the vocal tract (sundberg, ). to avoid confusion in this review, we use the term articulation only in its musical sense, whereas vocal expression articulation is considered only in terms of its consequences for voice quality (e.g., in the term precision of articulation). communication of emotions t ab le p a tt er n s o f a co u st ic c u es u se d to e xp re ss d is cr et e e m o ti o n s in s tu d ie s o f v o ca l e xp re ss io n a n d m u si c p er fo rm a n ce e m ot io n c at eg or y v oc al ex pr es si on st ud ie s c at eg or y m us ic pe rf or m an ce st ud ie s s pe ec h ra te t em po a ng er f as t ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) f as t ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) m ed iu m ( , , ) m ed iu m ( ) s lo w ( , , , ) s lo w f ea r f as t ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) f as t ( , , , , , , , , ) m ed iu m ( , , ) m ed iu m ( , , ) s lo w ( , ) s lo w ( , ) h ap pi ne ss f as t ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) f as t ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) m ed iu m ( , , , , ) m ed iu m ( , ) s lo w ( , , , , , ) s lo w s ad ne ss f as t ( ) f as t m ed iu m ( , , , , ) m ed iu m s lo w ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) s lo w ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) t en de rn es s f as t f as t m ed iu m ( ) m ed iu m s lo w ( , , ) s lo w ( , , , , , , , , , , ) v oi ce in te ns it y (m ) s ou nd le ve l (m ) a ng er h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) m ed iu m ( ) m ed iu m l ow ( ) l ow f ea r h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , ) h ig h m ed iu m ( , , ) m ed iu m ( ) l ow ( , , , , , , , ) l ow ( , , , , , , , , , , ) h ap pi ne ss h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( , , , , , , ) m ed iu m ( , , , , , ) m ed iu m ( , , , , , , , , , , , , ) l ow l ow ( ) s ad ne ss h ig h ( ) h ig h m ed iu m ( , ) m ed iu m ( , ) l ow ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) l ow ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) t en de rn es s h ig h h ig h m ed iu m m ed iu m l ow ( , , , ) l ow ( , , , , , , , , , , ) v oi ce in te ns it y va ri ab il it y s ou nd le ve l va ri ab il it y a ng er h ig h ( , , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( , , ) m ed iu m ( ) m ed iu m l ow ( , ) l ow ( , ) juslin and laukka e m ot io n c at eg or y v oc al ex pr es si on st ud ie s c at eg or y m us ic pe rf or m an ce st ud ie s v oi ce in te ns it y va ri ab il it y (c o n ti n u ed ) s ou nd le ve l va ri ab il it y (c o n ti n u ed ) f ea r h ig h ( , , , , , , ) h ig h ( , , , , ) m ed iu m ( , , , ) m ed iu m l ow ( ) l ow h ap pi ne ss h ig h ( , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( , , ) m ed iu m ( , , ) m ed iu m ( ) l ow ( , ) l ow ( , , , ) s ad ne ss h ig h ( , ) h ig h ( ) m ed iu m ( ) m ed iu m l ow ( , , , , , , , ) l ow ( , ) t en de rn es s h ig h h ig h m ed iu m m ed iu m l ow l ow ( , , ) h ig h- fr eq ue nc y en er gy h ig h- fr eq ue nc y en er gy a ng er h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , ) m ed iu m m ed iu m l ow l ow f ea r h ig h ( , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( , ) m ed iu m ( , ) m ed iu m l ow ( , , , , , ) l ow ( , , , , , ) h ap pi ne ss h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( ) m ed iu m ( , , ) m ed iu m ( , , , , , , , , , ) l ow ( ) l ow ( ) s ad ne ss h ig h h ig h m ed iu m m ed iu m l ow ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) l ow ( , , , , , , , , ) t en de rn es s h ig h h ig h m ed iu m m ed iu m l ow ( , , ) l ow ( , , , , , ) f (m ) f (m )a a ng er h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) s h ar p ( , ) m ed iu m ( , , , , ) p re ci se ( ) l ow ( , , , , ) f la t ( ) f ea r h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) s h ar p ( , ) m ed iu m ( , , , , , , , ) p re ci se l ow ( , , ) f la t ( ) h ap pi ne ss h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) s h ar p ( , , ) h ig h (h ev ne r, ; r ig g, ; w ed in , ) m ed iu m ( , ) p re ci se l ow ( , ) f la t s ad ne ss h ig h ( , , , ) s ha rp m ed iu m ( ) p re ci se (t a b le co n ti n u es ) communication of emotions t ab le (c o n ti n u ed ) e m ot io n c at eg or y v oc al ex pr es si on st ud ie s c at eg or y m us ic pe rf or m an ce st ud ie s f (m ) (c o n ti n u ed ) f (m )a (c o n ti n u ed ) l ow ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) f la t ( , , , , , ) l ow (g un dl ac h, ; h ev ne r, ; r ig g, ; k . b . w at so n, ; w ed in , ) t en de rn es s h ig h ( ) s ha rp m ed iu m p re ci se l ow ( , , , ) f la t f va ri ab il it y f va ri ab il it y a ng er h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( ) m ed iu m ( , , , ) m ed iu m ( ) l ow ( , , , ) l ow ( ) f ea r h ig h ( , , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( ) m ed iu m ( , , , , , ) m ed iu m l ow ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) l ow ( , ) h ap pi ne ss h ig h ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) h ig h ( , , ) m ed iu m ( , ) m ed iu m l ow ( ) l ow ( ) s ad ne ss h ig h ( , ) h ig h m ed iu m ( ) m ed iu m l ow ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) l ow ( , , ) t en de rn es s h ig h h ig h m ed iu m m ed iu m l ow ( , , , , ) l ow ( ) f co nt ou rs p it ch co nt ou rs a ng er u p ( , , , , , ) u p ( , ) d ow n ( , ) d ow n f ea r u p ( , , , , , ) u p ( , ) d ow n d ow n h ap pi ne ss u p ( , , , , , , ) u p ( , , , , ) d ow n d ow n s ad ne ss u p u p d ow n ( , , , , , , , , , , ) d ow n ( , ) t en de rn es s u p ( ) u p d ow n ( , , ) d ow n ( ) v oi ce on se ts t on e at ta ck a ng er f as t ( ) f as t ( , , , , , , , , ) s lo w ( ) s lo w f ea r f as t ( ) f as t ( ) s lo w ( ) s lo w ( , ) juslin and laukka t ab le (c o n ti n u ed ) e m ot io n c at eg or y v oc al ex pr es si on st ud ie s c at eg or y m us ic pe rf or m an ce st ud ie s v oi ce on se ts (c o n ti n u ed ) t on e at ta ck (c o n ti n u ed ) h ap pi ne ss f as t ( , ) f as t ( , , , , ) s lo w s lo w ( ) s ad ne ss f as t ( ) f as t s lo w ( ) s lo w ( , , , , , , , ) t en de rn es s f as t f as t s lo w ( ) s lo w ( , , ) m ic ro st ru ct ur al re gu la ri ty m ic ro st ru ct ur al re gu la ri ty a ng er r eg ul ar r eg ul ar ( ) ir re gu la r ( , , ) ir re gu la r ( , , , ) f ea r r eg ul ar r eg ul ar ( ) ir re gu la r ( , ) ir re gu la r ( , , ) h ap pi ne ss r eg u la r ( , ) r eg u la r ( , , , ) ir re gu la r ir re gu la r s ad ne ss r eg ul ar r eg ul ar ( ) ir re gu la r ( , , , ) ir re gu la r ( , ) t en de rn es s r eg u la r ( ) r eg u la r ( , , ) ir re gu la r ir re gu la r n o te . n um be rs w it hi n pa ra nt he se s re fe r to st ud ie s, as in di ca te d in t ab le (v oc al ex pr es si on ) an d t ab le (m us ic pe rf or m an ce ) re sp ec ti ve ly . t ex t in bo ld in di ca te s th e m os t fr eq ue nt fi nd in g fo r re sp ec ti ve ac ou st ic cu e an d m od al it y. f � fu nd am en ta l fr eq ue nc y. a a s re ga rd s f (m ) in m us ic , on e sh ou ld di st in gu is h be tw ee n th e m ic ro in to na ti on of th e pe rf or m an ce , w hi ch m ay be sh ar p (h ig he r th an pr es cr ib ed pi tc h) , pr ec is e (p re sc ri be d pi tc h) , or fl at (b el ow pr es cr ib ed pi tc h) an d th e m ac ro pi tc h le ve l (e .g ., hi gh , lo w ) of sp ec if ic pi ec es of m us ic (s ee t ab le ) . t he ad di ti on al st ud ie s ci te d he re fo cu s on th e la tt er as pe ct . communication of emotions t ab le (c o n ti n u ed ) the data for studies of vocal expression are less convincing. however, only three studies have reported data on voice onsets thus far, and these studies used different methods (synthesized sound sequences and listener judgments in scherer & oshinsky, , vs. measurements of emotion portrayals in fenster et al., , and juslin & laukka, ). in this review, we chose to concentrate on those features that may be independently controlled by speakers and performers al- most regardless of the verbal and musical material used. as we noted, a number of variables in musical compositions (e.g., har- mony, scales, mode) do not have any direct counterpart in vocal expression, and vice versa. however, if we broaden the perspective for one moment, there is actually one aspect of musical composi- tions that has an approximate counterpart in vocal expression, namely, the pitch level. the pitch level in musical compositions might be compared with the fundamental frequency (f ) in vocal expression. thus, it is interesting to note that low pitch was associated with sadness in both vocal expression and musical compositions (see table ), whereas high pitch was associated with happiness in both vocal expression and musical compositions (for a review of the latter, see gabrielsson & juslin, ). the cross-modal evidence for the other three emotions is still provi- sionary, although studies of vocal expression suggest that anger and fear are primarily associated with high pitch, whereas tender- ness is primarily associated with low pitch. a study by patel, peretz, tramo, and labreque ( ) suggests that the same neural resources may be involved in the processing of f contours in speech and melody contours in music; thus, there may also be similarities regarding pitch contours. for example, rising f con- tours may be associated with “active” emotions (e.g., happiness, anger, fear), whereas falling contours may be associated with less active emotions (e.g., sadness, tenderness; cordes, ; fónagy, ; m. papoušek, ; scherer & oshinsky, ; sedláček & sychra, ). this hypothesis is supported by the present data (table ) in that anger, fear, and happiness were associated with a higher proportion of upward pitch contours than were sadness and tenderness. further research is needed to confirm these preliminary results, because most of the data were based on informal observa- tions or simple acoustic indices that do not capture the complex nature of f contours in vocal expression. (for an attempt to develop a more sensitive measure of f contour using curve fitting, see katz, cohn, & moore, .) cues specific to vocal expression. table presents additional data for acoustic cues measured specifically in vocal expression. these cues, by and large, have not been investigated systemati- cally, but some tendencies can still be observed. for instance, there is fairly strong evidence that portrayals of sadness involved a large proportion of pauses, whereas portrayals of anger involved a small proportion of pauses. (note that the former relationship has been considered as an acoustic correlate to depression; see ellgring & scherer, .) the data were less consistent for portrayals of fear and happiness, and pause distributions in tenderness have been little studied thus far. as regards measurements of formant fre- quencies, the results were, again, most consistent for anger and sadness; beginning with precision of articulation, table shows that anger was associated with increases in precision of articula- tion, whereas sadness was associated with decreases. similarly, results so far indicate that formant (f ) was raised in anger and happiness but lowered in fear and sadness. furthermore, the data indicate that f bandwidth (bw) was narrowed in anger and happiness but widened in fear and sadness. clearly, though, these findings must be regarded as preliminary. it should be noted that the results for f , f (bw), and precision of articulation may be partly explained by intercorrelations that reflect the underlying vocal production (borden et al., ). a tense voice leads to pharyngeal constriction and tensing, as well as a shortening of the vocal tract, which leads to a rise in f , a more narrow f (bw), and stronger high-frequency resonances. this pattern was seen in anger portrayals. sadness portrayals, on the other hand, appear to have involved a lax voice, with unconstricted pharynx and lower subglottal pressure, which yields lower f , precision of articulation, and high-frequency but wider f (bw). it has been found that formant frequencies can be affected by facial expression. smiling tends to raise formant frequencies (tartter, ), whereas frowning tends to lower them (tartter & braun, ). a few studies have measured glottal waveform (see, in particular, laukkanen, vilkman, alku, & oksanen, ), and again the results were most consistent for portrayals of anger and sadness: anger was associated with steep glottal waveforms, whereas sadness was associated with rounded waveforms. results regarding jitter (f perturbation) are still preliminary, partly be- cause of the problems involved in reliably measuring jitter. as seen in table , the results do not yet allow any definitive con- clusions other than the possible tendency for anger portrayals to show more jitter than sadness portrayals. it is quite possible that jitter is a voice cue that is difficult to manipulate for actors and therefore that more consistent results require the use of natural samples of vocal expression (bachorowski & owren, ). cues specific to music performance. table shows additional data for acoustic cues measured specifically in music performance. one of the fundamental cues in music performance is articulation (i.e., the relative proportion of sound to silence in note values; see table ). staccato articulation means that there is much air be- tween the notes, whereas legato articulation means that the notes are played continuously. the results concerning articulation were relatively consistent. anger, fear, and happiness were associated primarily with staccato articulation, whereas sadness and tender- ness were associated primarily with legato articulation. one ex- ception is that guitar players tended to play anger with legato articulation (see, e.g., juslin, , b, ), suggesting that the code is not entirely invariant across musical instruments. both the mean value and the standard deviation of the articulation can be important, although the two are intercorrelated to some extent (juslin, ) such that when the articulation becomes more stac- cato the variability increases as well. this is explained by the fact that certain notes in the musical structure are performed legato regardless of the expression. therefore, when the remaining notes are played staccato, the variability automatically increases. how- ever, this intercorrelation is not perfect. for instance, anger and happiness expressions were both associated with staccato mean articulation, but only happiness expressions were associated with large articulation variability (juslin & madison, ; see table ). closer study of the patterns of articulation within musical performances may provide important clues about characteristics associated with various emotions (juslin & madison, ; mad- ison, b). the data regarding use of vibrato (i.e., periodic changes in the juslin and laukka pitch of a tone) were relatively inconsistent (see table ) and suggest that music performers did not use vibrato systematically to communicate particular emotions. large vibrato extent in anger portrayals and slow vibrato rate in sadness portrayals were the only consistent tendencies, with the possible addition of fast vibrato rate in fear and happiness. it is still possible that extent and rate of vibrato is consistently related to listeners’ judgments of emotion because it has been shown that listeners can correctly decode emotions like anger, fear, happiness, and sadness from single notes that feature vibrato (konishi, imaizumi, & niimi, ). because music is usually performed according to a metrical framework, it is meaningful to describe the nature of a perfor- mance in terms of its microstructural deviations from prescribed note values (gabrielsson, ). data concerning timing variabil- ity suggest that fear portrayals showed most timing variability, followed by anger, sadness, and tenderness portrayals. happiness portrayals showed the least timing variability of all. moreover, limited findings regarding durational contrasts between long and short notes indicate that the contrasts were increased (sharp) in anger and fear portrayals, whereas they were reduced (soft) in sadness and tenderness portrayals. the results for happiness por- trayals were still equivocal. finally, a few studies measured the singer’s formant as a function of emotional expression, although more data are needed before any definitive conclusions can be drawn (see table ). relative importance of different cues. what is the relative importance of the different acoustic cues in vocal expression and music performance? the findings from a number of studies have shown that speech rate/tempo, voice intensity/sound level, voice quality/timbre, and f /pitch are among the most powerful cues in terms of their effects on listeners’ ratings of emotional ex- pression (juslin, c, ; juslin & madison, ; lieber- man & michaels, ; scherer & oshinsky, ). in particu- lar, studies that used synthesized sound sequences indicate that speech rate/tempo was of primary importance for listeners’ judg- ments of emotional expression (juslin, c; scherer & oshin- sky, ; see also gabrielsson & juslin, ), but in music performance, the impact of tempo was decreased if listeners were required to judge different melodies with different associated base- lines of tempo (e.g., juslin, ). similar effects may also occur with regard to different baselines of speech rate for different speakers. it is interesting to note that when researchers of nonverbal communication of emotion have investigated how people use various nonverbal channels to infer emotional states in every- day life, they most frequently report vocal cues. they particu- larly mention using loudness and speed of talking (e.g., planalp, ), the same cues (i.e., sound level and tempo) that explain most variance in listeners’ judgments of emotional expression in musical performances (juslin, c, ; juslin & madison, ). there is further indication that cue levels (e.g., mean tempo) have a larger influence on listeners’ judgments than do patterns of cue variability (e.g., timing patterns; figure of mad- ison, a). comparison with scherer’s ( ) predictions. table pre- sents a comparison of the summarized findings in vocal expression and music performance with scherer’s ( ) theoretical predic- tions. because of the problems associated with establishing a precise baseline, we compare results and predictions simply in terms of direction of effect rather than in terms of specific degrees of effect. table shows the data for eight voice cues and four emotions (scherer, , did not make predictions for love– tenderness), for a total of comparisons. the comparisons are made in regard to scherer’s ( ) predictions for rage– hot anger, fear–terror, elation–joy, and sadness– dejection because these cor- respond best, in our view, with the emotions most frequently investigated. careful inspection of table reveals that ( %) of the predictions match the present results. predictions and results did not match in the cases of f (sd) and f (m) for fear, as well as in the case of f (m) for happiness. however, the findings are generally consistent with scherer’s ( ) physiologically based predictions. discussion the empirical findings reviewed in this article generally support the theoretical predictions made at the outset. first, it is clear that communication of emotions may reach an accuracy well above the accuracy that would be expected by chance alone in both vocal expression and music performance—at least for broad emotion categories corresponding to basic emotions (i.e., anger, sadness, happiness, fear, love). decoding accuracy for individual emo- tions showed similar patterns for the two channels. anger and sadness were generally better communicated than fear, happiness, and tenderness. second, the findings indicate that vocal expression of emotion was cross-culturally accurate, although the accuracy was lower than for within-cultural vocal expression. unfortu- nately, relevant data with regard to music performance are still lacking. third, there is preliminary evidence that the ability to decode basic emotions from vocal expression and music perfor- mance develops in early childhood at least, perhaps even in in- fancy. fourth, the present findings strongly suggest that music performance uses largely the same emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues as does vocal expression. table presents the hypothesized emotion-specific patterns of cues according to this review, which could be subjected to direct tests in listening exper- iments using synthesized and systematically varied sound sequenc- es. however, the review has also revealed many gaps in the data base that must be filled in further research (see tables – ). finally, the emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues were mainly consistent with scherer’s ( ) predictions, which presumed a correspondence between emotion-specific physiological changes and voice production. taken together, these findings, which are it may be noted that the pattern of cues for sadness is fairly similar to the pattern of cues obtained in studies of vocal correlates of clinical depression (see alpert, pouget, & silva, ; ellgring & scherer, ; hargreaves et al., ; kuny & stassen, ; nilsonne, ; stassen, kuny, & hell, ). note that these findings are consistent both with basic emotions theory and component process theory in showing that there are emotion- specific patterning of acoustic cues over and above what would be pre- dicted by a dimensional approach involving the dimensions activation and valence. however, these studies did not test the most important of the component theory’s assumptions, namely that there are highly differenti- ated, sequential patterns of cues that reflect the cumulative result of the adaptive changes produced by a specific appraisal profile (scherer, ). see johnstone ( ) for an attempt to test this notion. communication of emotions table patterns of acoustic cues used to express emotions specifically in vocal expression studies emotion category vocal expression studies proportion of pauses anger large medium small ( , , , , , , , ) fear large ( , ) medium ( , , ) small ( , , , ) happiness large ( ) medium ( , ) small ( , , ) sadness large ( , , , , , , , , , , ) medium small ( ) tenderness large ( ) medium small precision of articulation anger high ( , , , , , , ) medium low fear high ( , ) medium ( , ) low ( , ) happiness high ( , , ) medium ( , ) low sadness high medium low ( , , , , , ) tenderness high medium low ( ) formant (m) anger high ( , , , , , ) medium low fear high ( ) medium low ( , , ) happiness high ( , , , , ) medium ( ) low sadness high ( ) medium low ( , , , , ) tenderness high medium low formant (bandwidth) anger narrow ( , , , ) wide fear narrow wide ( , ) happiness narrow ( , ) wide ( ) sadness narrow wide ( , , ) tenderness narrow wide juslin and laukka based on the most extensive review to date, strongly suggest— contrary to some previous reviews (e.g., russell, bachorowski, & fernández-dols, )—that there are emotion-specific patterns of acoustic cues that can be used to communicate discrete emo- tions in both vocal and musical expression of emotion. theoretical accounts accounting for cross-modal similarities. similarities between vocal expression and music performance in terms of the acoustic cues used to express specific emotions could, on a superficial level, be interpreted in five ways. first, one could argue that these parallels are merely coincidental—a matter of sheer chance. how- ever, because we have discovered a large number of similarities regarding many different aspects, this interpretation seems far fetched. second, one might argue that the obtained similarities are due to some third variable—for instance, that both vocal expres- sion and music performance are based on principles of body language. however, that vocal expression and music performance share many characteristics that are unique to acoustic signals (e.g., timbre) renders this explanation less than optimal. furthermore, an account in terms of body language is less parsimonious than spencer’s law. why evoke an explanation through a different perceptual modality when there is an explanation within the same modality? vocal expression of emotions mainly reflects physio- logical responses associated with specific emotions that have a direct and differentiated impact on the voice organs. third, one could argue that speakers base their vocal expressions of emotions on how performers express emotions in music. to support this hypothesis one would have to demonstrate that music performers’ use of the code logically precedes its use in vocal expression. however, given phylogenetic continuity of vocal expression of emotion, involving subcortical parts of the brain that humans share with other social mammals (panksepp, ), and that music seems to involve specialized neural networks that are more recent and require cortical mediation (e.g., peretz, ), this hypothesis is implausible. fourth, one could argue, as indeed some authors have, that both channels evolved in parallel without one preceding the other. however, this argument is similarly inconsistent with neuropsychological results that suggest that those parts of the brain that are concerned with vocal expressions of emotions are proba- bly phylogenetically older than those parts concerned with the processing of musical structures. finally, one could argue that musicians communicate emotions to listeners on the basis of the principles of vocal expression of emotion. this is the explanation that is advocated here. human vocal expression of emotion is organized and initiated by evolved affect programs that are also present in nonhuman primates. hence, vocal expression is the model on which musical expression is based rather than the other way around, as postulated by spencer’s law. this evolutionary perspective is consistent with the present findings that (a) vocal expression of emotions is cross-culturally accurate and (b) decod- ing of vocal expression of emotions develops early in ontogeny. however, it is crucial to note that our argument applies only to the nonverbal aspects of vocal communication. in our estimation, it is likely that vocal expression of emotions developed first and that music performance developed concurrently with speech (brown, ) or even prior to speech (darwin, / ; rousseau, / ). accounting for inconsistency in code usage. in a previous review of vocal expression published in this journal, scherer table (continued ) emotion category vocal expression studies jitter anger high ( , , , , , ) low ( ) fear high ( , , , ) low ( , , , ) happiness high ( , , , , ) low ( , , ) sadness high ( ) low ( , , , , ) tenderness high low glottal waveform anger steep ( , , , , , ) rounded fear steep ( , ) rounded ( , , , ) happiness steep ( , ) rounded sadness steep rounded ( , , , ) tenderness steep rounded note. numbers within parantheses refer to studies as numbered in table . text in bold indicates the most frequent finding for respective acoustic cue. communication of emotions table patterns of acoustic cues used to express emotions specifically in music performance studies emotion category music performance studies articulation (m; dio/dii) anger staccato ( , , , , , , , , , ) legato ( , , , , ) fear staccato ( , , , , , , , , ) legato ( ) happiness staccato ( , , , , , , , , , , , , ) legato ( , ) sadness staccato legato ( , , , , , , , , , , , , , ) tenderness staccato legato ( , , , , , , , , ) articulation (sd; dio/dii) anger large medium ( , , , , ) small fear large ( , , , ) medium small happiness large ( , , , , , ) medium small sadness large medium small ( , , , ) tenderness large medium small ( ) vibrato (magnitude/rate) anger large ( , , , , , , , ) fast ( ) small slow fear large ( , ) fast ( , , ) small ( , , ) slow happiness large ( , ) fast ( , , ) small ( , ) slow sadness large ( ) fast small ( , , ) slow ( , , , , ) tenderness large fast small ( ) slow ( ) timing variability anger large medium ( , , ) small ( , ) fear large ( , , , , , , , ) medium small happiness large medium ( ) small ( , , , , , , ) sadness large ( , , ) medium ( , , ) small ( ) tenderness large ( , , ) medium small ( ) duration contrasts (between long and short notes) anger sharp ( , , , , ) soft fear sharp ( , ) soft juslin and laukka ( ) observed the apparent paradox that listeners are successful at decoding emotions from vocal expressions despite researchers’ having found it difficult to identify acoustic cues that reliably differentiate among emotions. in the present review, which has benefited from additional data collected since scherer’s ( ) review, we have found evidence of emotion-specific patterns of cues. even so, some inconsistency in code usage remains (see table ) and requires explanation. we argue that part of this explanation should be sought in terms of the coding of the com- municative process. studies of vocal expression and studies of music performance have shown that the relevant cues are coded probabilistically, continuously, and iconically (e.g., juslin, b; scherer, ). furthermore, there are intercorrelations between the cues, and these correlations are of about the same magnitude in both chan- nels (banse & scherer, ; juslin, ; juslin & laukka, ). these features of the coding could explain many charac- teristics of the communicative process in both vocal expression and music performance. to capture these characteristics, one might benefit from consideration of brunswik’s ( ) conceptual framework (hammond & stewart, ). specifically, it has been suggested that brunswik’s lens model may be useful to describe the communicative process in vocal expression (scherer, ) and music performance (juslin, , ). the lens model was originally intended as a model of visual perception, capturing relations between an organism and distal cues. however, it was later used mainly in studies of human judgment. although brunswik’s ( ) lens model failed as a full-fledged model of visual perception, it seems highly appropriate for de- scribing communication of emotion. specifically, the lens model can be used to illustrate how encoders express specific emotions by using a large set of cues (e.g., speed, intensity, timbre) that are probabilistic (i.e., uncertain) though partly redundant. the emo- tions are recognized by decoders, who use the same cues to decode the emotional expression. the cues are probabilistic in that they are not perfectly reliable indicators of the expressed emotion. therefore, decoders have to combine many cues for successful communication to occur. this is not simply a matter of pattern matching, however, because the cues contribute in an additive fashion to decoders’ judgments. brunswik’s concept of vicarious functioning can be used to capture how decoders use the partly interchangeable cues in flexible ways by occasionally shifting in fact, brunswik ( ) applied the model to facial expression of emotion, among other things (pp. – ). table comparison of results for acoustic cues in vocal expression with scherer’s ( ) predictions acoustic cue main finding/prediction by emotion category anger fear happiness sadness speech rate �/� �/� �/� �/� intensity (m) �/� �/� �/� �/� intensity (sd) �/� �/� �/� �/� f (m) �/ �/� �/� �/� f (sd) �/� �/� �/� �/� f contoura �/� �/� �/� �/� high-frequency energy �/� �/� �/� �/� formant (m) �/� �/� �/� �/� note. only the direction of the effect (positive [�] vs. negative [�]) is indicated. no predictions were made by scherer ( ) for the tenderness category or for mean fundamental frequency (f ) in the anger category. � � predictions in opposing directions. a for f contour, a plus sign indicates an upward contour, a minus sign indicates a downward contour, and an equal sign indicates no change. table (continued ) emotion category music performance studies duration contrasts (between long and short notes) (continued) happiness sharp ( , , ) soft ( , ) sadness sharp soft ( , , , ) tenderness sharp soft ( , , , , ) singer’s formant anger high ( ) low fear high ( ) low ( ) happiness high ( ) low sadness high low ( , ) tenderness high low ( ) note. numbers within parantheses refer to studies as numbered in table . text in bold indicates the most frequent finding for respective acoustic cue. dio � duration of time from the onset of tone until its offset; dii � the duration of time from the onset of a tone until the onset of the next tone. communication of emotions from a cue that is unavailable to one that is available (juslin, a). the findings reviewed in this article are consistent with bruns- wik’s ( ) lens model. first, it is clear that the cues are proba- bilistically related only to encoding and decoding. the probabilis- tic nature of the cues reflects (a) individual differences between encoders, (b) structural constraints of the verbal or musical mate- rial used, and (c) that the same cue can be used in the same way in more than one expression. for instance, fast speed can be used in both happiness and anger, and therefore speech rate is not a perfect indicator of either emotion. second, evidence confirms that cues contribute in an additive fashion to listeners’ judgments, as shown by a general lack of cue interactions (juslin, c; ladd, silverman, tolkmitt, bergmann, & scherer, ; scherer & oshinsky, ), and that emotions can be communicated success- fully on different instruments that provide relatively different, though partly interchangeable, acoustic cues to the performer’s disposal. (if a performer cannot vary the timbre to express anger, he or she compensates this by varying the loudness even more.) each cue is neither necessary nor sufficient, but the larger the number of cues used, the more reliable the communication (juslin, ). third, a brunswikian conceptualization of the communica- tive process in terms of separate cues that are integrated—as opposed to a “gibsonian” (gibson, ) conceptualization, which conceives of the process in terms of holistic higher order- variables—is supported by studies on the physiology of listening. handel ( ) noted that speech and music seem to involve similar perceptual mechanisms. the auditory pathways involve different neural representations for various aspects of the acoustic signal (e.g., timing, frequency), which are kept separate until later stages of analysis. perception of both speech and music requires the integration of these different representations, as implied by the lens model. fourth, and as noted above, there is strong evidence of intercorrelations (i.e., redundancy) among acoustic cues. the re- dundancy between cues largely reflects the sound production mechanisms of the voice and of musical instruments. for instance, an increase in subglottal pressure (i.e., the air pressure in the lungs driving the speech) increases not only the intensity but also the f to some degree. similarly, a harder string attack produces a tone that is both louder and sharper in timbre (the occurrence of these effects partly reflects fundamental physical principles, such as nonlinear excitation; wolfe, ). the coding captured by brunswik’s ( ) lens model has one particularly important implication: because the acoustic cues are intercorrelated to some degree, more than one way of using the cues might lead to a similarly high level of decoding accuracy (e.g., dawes & corrigan, ; juslin, ). the lens model might explain why we found accurate communication of emotions in vocal expression and music performance (see findings of meta- analysis in results section) despite considerable inconsistency in code usage (see tables – ); multiple cues that are partly redun- dant yield a robust communicative system that is forgiving of deviations from optimal code usage. performers are thus able to communicate emotions to listeners without having to compromise their unique playing styles (juslin, ). similarly, it may be expected that different actors communicate emotions successfully in different ways, thereby avoiding stereotypical portrayals of emotions in theater. however, this robustness comes with a price. the redundancy of the cues means that the same information is conveyed by many cues. this limits the information capacity of the channel (juslin, ; see also shannon & weaver, ). this may explain why encoders are able to communicate broad emotion categories but not finer nuances within the categories (e.g., dowl- ing & harwood, , chap. ; greasley, sherrard, & waterman, ; juslin, a; l. kaiser, ; london, ). a commu- nication system of this type shows “compromise and a falling short of precision, but also the relative infrequency of drastic error” (brunswik, , p. ). an evolutionary perspective may ex- plain this characteristic: it is ultimately more important to avoid making serious mistakes (e.g., mistaking anger for sadness) than to be able to make more subtle discriminations between emotions (e.g., detecting different kinds of anger). redundancy in the coding helps to counteract the degradation of acoustic signals during transmission that occur in natural environments because of factors such as attenuation and reverberation (wiley & richards, ). accounting for induction of emotions. this review has re- vealed similarities in the acoustic cues used to communicate emo- tions in vocal expression and music performance. can these find- table summary of cross-modal patterns of acoustic cues for discrete emotions emotion acoustic cues (vocal expression/music performance) anger fast speech rate/tempo, high voice intensity/sound level, much voice intensity/sound level variability, much high-frequency energy, high f /pitch level, much f /pitch variability, rising f /pitch contour, fast voice onsets/tone attacks, and microstructural irregularity fear fast speech rate/tempo, low voice intensity/sound level (except in panic fear), much voice intensity/sound level variability, little high-frequency energy, high f /pitch level, little f /pitch variability, rising f /pitch contour, and a lot of microstructural irregularity happiness fast speech rate/tempo, medium–high voice intensity/sound level, medium high-frequency energy, high f /pitch level, much f /pitch variability, rising f /pitch contour, fast voice onsets/tone attacks, and very little microstructural regularity sadness slow speech rate/tempo, low voice intensity/sound level, little voice intensity/sound level variability, little high-frequency energy, low f /pitch level, little f /pitch variability, falling f /pitch contour, slow voice onsets/tone attacks, and microstructural irregularity tenderness slow speech rate/tempo, low voice intensity/sound level, little voice intensity/sound level variability, little high-frequency energy, low f /pitch level, little f /pitch variability, falling f /pitch contours, slow voice onsets/tone attacks, and microstructural regularity note. f � fundamental frequency. juslin and laukka ings also explain induction of emotions in listeners? we propose that listeners can become “moved” by music performances through a process of emotional contagion (hatfield, cacioppo, & rapson, ). evidence suggests that people easily “catch” the emotions of others when seeing their facial expressions or hearing their vocal expressions (see neumann & strack, ). if performances of music express emotions in ways similar to how voices express emotions, it follows that people could get aroused by the voicelike aspect of music. evidence that individuals do react emotionally to music as they do to vocal expressions of emotion comes from investigations using facial electromyography and self-reports to measure emotion (hietanen, surakka, & linnankoski, ; lund- qvist, carlsson, & hilmersson, ; neumann & strack, ; witvliet & vrana, ; witvliet, vrana, & webb-talmadge, ). some authors, however, have argued that music performances do not sound very much like vocal expressions, at least superfi- cially (budd, , chap. ). why, then, should individuals re- spond to music performances as if they were vocal expressions? one explanation is that expressions of emotion are processed by domain-specific and autonomous “modules” of the brain (fodor, ), which react to certain acoustic features in the stimulus. the emotion perception modules do not recognize the difference be- tween vocal expressions and other acoustic expressions and there- fore react in much the same way (e.g., registering anger) as long as certain cues (e.g., high speed, loud dynamics, rough timbre) are present in the stimulus. the modular view of information process- ing has been the subject of much debate in recent years (cf. coltheart, ; geary & huffman, ; öhman & mineka, ; pinker, ), although even some of its most ardent critics have admitted that special-purpose modules may indeed exist at the subcortical level of the brain, where much of the processing of emotion occurs (panksepp & panksepp, ). although a modular theory of emotion perception in music remains to be fully investigated, limited support for such a theory in terms of fodor’s ( ) proposed characteristics of modules (see also coltheart, ) comes from evidence (a) of brain dis- sociations between judgments of musical emotion and of musical structure (peretz, gagnon, & bouchard, ; modules are domain-specific), (b) that judgments of musical emotions are quick (peretz et al., ; modules are fast), (c) that the ability to decode emotions from music develops early (cunningham & sterling, ; modules are innately specified), (d) that processing in the perception of emotional expression is primarily implicit (niedenthal & showers, ; modules are autonomous), (e) that it is impossible to relearn how to associate expressive forms with emotions (clynes, , p. ; modules are hard-wired), (f) that emotion induction through music is possible even if listeners do not attend to the music (västfjäll, ; modules are automatic), and (g) that individuals react to music performances as if they were expressions of emotion (witvliet & vrana, ) despite knowing that music does not literally have emotions to express (modules are information capsulated). one problem with the present approach is that it seems to ignore the unique value of music (budd, , chap. ). as noted by several authors, music is not only a tool for communicating emo- tion. therefore, we must reach beyond this notion and explain why people listen to music specifically, rather than to just any expres- sion of emotion. one way around this problem would be to identify ways in which musical expression is special (apart from occurring in music). juslin (in press) argued that what makes a particular music performance of, say, the violin, so expressive is the fact that it sounds a lot like the human voice while going far beyond what the human voice can do (e.g., in terms of speed, pitch range, and timbre). consequently, we speculate that many musical instru- ments are processed by brain modules as superexpressive voices. for instance, if human speech is perceived as angry when it has fast rate, loud intensity, and harsh timbre, a musical instrument might sound extremely angry in virtue of its even higher speed, louder intensity, and harsher timbre. the “attention” of the emotion-perception module is gripped by the music’s voicelike nature, and the individual becomes aroused by the extreme turns taken by this voice. the emotions evoked in listeners may not necessarily be the same as those expressed and perceived but could be empathic or complementary (juslin & zentner, ). we admit that these ideas are speculative, but we think that they merit further study given that similarities between vocal expression and music performance have been obtained. we emphasize that this is only one of many possible sources of musical emotions (juslin, ; scherer & zentner, ). problems and directions for future research in this section, we identify important problems and suggest directions for future research. first, given the large individual differences in encoding accuracy and code usage, researchers must ensure that reasonably large samples of encoders are used. in particular, researchers must avoid studying only one encoder, because doing so may cause serious threats to the external validity of the study. for instance, it may be impossible to know whether the obtained findings for a particular emotion can be generalized to other encoders. second, researchers should pay closer attention to the precise contents to be communicated, preferably basing choices of emo- tion labels on theoretical grounds (juslin, b; scherer, ). studies of music performance, in particular, have frequently in- cluded emotion labels without any consideration of what contents are theoretically or musically plausible. the results, both in terms of communication accuracy and consistency of code usage, are likely to differ greatly, depending on the emotion labels used (juslin, b). this point is brought home by the low accuracy reported in studies that used more abstract labels, such as deep or sophisticated (senju & ohgushi, ). moreover, the use of more well-differentiated emotion labels, in terms of both quantity (juslin & laukka, ) and quality (banse & scherer, ) of emotion, could help to reduce some of the inconsistency in empirical findings. third, we recommend that researchers study encoding and de- coding in a combined fashion such that the two aspects may be related. only if encoding and decoding processes are analyzed in many authors have proposed that vocal and musical expression of emotion is especially effective in causing emotional contagion (eibl- eibesfeldt, , p. ; lewis, , p. ). one possible explanation may be that hearing is the perceptual modality that develops first. in fact, because hearing is functional even prior to birth, some relations between acoustic patterns and emotional states may reflect prenatal experiences (mastropieri & turkewitz, , p. ). communication of emotions combination can a more complete understanding of the communi- cative process be reached. this is a prerequisite if one intends to improve communication (juslin & laukka, ). brunswik’s ( ) lens model and the accompanying lens model equation (hursch, hammond, & hursch, ) could be useful tools in attempts to relate encoding to decoding in vocal expression (scherer, , ) and music performance (juslin, , ). the lens model shows that the success of any communicative process depends equally on the encoder and the decoder. uncer- tainty is an unavoidable aspect of this process, and multiple re- gression analysis may be suitable for capturing the uncertain relationships among encoders, cues, and decoders (e.g., har- greaves, starkweather, & blacker, ; juslin, ; roessler & lester, ; scherer & oshinsky, ). fourth, much remains to be done concerning the measurement of acoustic cues. there is an abundance of studies that analyze only a few cues, but there is an urgent need for studies that try to describe the complete set of cues. if not all relevant cues are captured, researchers run the risk of leaving out important aspects of the code. estimates of the relative importance of cues are then likely to be grossly misleading. a challenge for future research is to go beyond the classic cues (pitch, speed, intensity) and try to analyze more subtle cues, such as continuously varying patterns of speed and dynamics. for assistance, researchers may use computer programs that allow them to extract characteristic timing patterns from emotion portrayals. these patterns might be used in synthe- sized sound sequences to examine their effects on listeners’ judg- ments (juslin & madison, ). finally, researchers should take greater care in reporting the data for all acoustic cues and emo- tions. many articles provide only partial reports of the data. this problem prevented us from conducting a meta-analysis of the results regarding code usage. by more carefully reporting data, researchers could contribute to the development of more precise quantitative predictions. fifth, studies of vocal expression and music performance have primarily been conducted in tightly controlled laboratory settings. far less is known about these phenomena as they occur in more ecologically valid settings. in studies of vocal expression, a crucial question concerns how similar emotion portrayals are to natural expressions (bachorowski, ). unfortunately, the number of studies that have used natural speech is too small to permit defin- itive conclusions. as regards music, certain authors have cautioned that performances recorded under experimental conditions may lead to different results than performances made under natural conditions, such as concerts (rapoport, ). again, relevant evidence is still lacking. to conduct ecologically valid studies without sacrificing internal validity represents a challenge for future research. sixth, findings from analyses of acoustic cues should be eval- uated in listening experiments using synthesized sound sequences to test specific hypotheses (table ). because cues in vocal expression and music performance are probabilistic and intercor- related to some degree, only by using synthesized sound sequences that are systematically manipulated in a factorial design can one establish that a given cue really has predictable effects on listeners’ judgments of expression. synthesized sound sequences may be regarded as computational models, which demonstrate the validity of proposed hypotheses by showing that they really work (juslin, ; juslin, c; juslin, friberg, & bresin, ; murray & arnott, , ). it should be noted that although encoders may not use a particular cue (e.g., vibrato, jitter) in a consistent fashion, the cue might still be reliably associated with decoders’ emotion judgments, as indicated by listening tests with synthesized stimuli. the opposite may also be true: encoders may use a given cue in a consistent fashion, but decoders may fail to use this cue. this highlights the importance of studying both encoding and decoding aspects of the communicative process (see also buck, , chap. – ). seventh, a greater variety of verbal or musical materials should be used in future research to maximize its generalizability. re- searchers have often assumed that the encoding proceeds more or less independently of the material, but this assumption has been questioned (cosmides, ; juslin, ; scherer, ). al- though some evidence of a dissociation between linguistic stress and emotion has been obtained (mcroberts, studdert-kennedy, & shankweiler, ), it seems unlikely that variability in cues (e.g., fundamental frequency, timing) that function linguistically as se- mantic and syntactic markers in speech (scherer, ) and music performance (carlson, friberg, frydén, granström, & sundberg, ) leaves the emotional expression completely unaffected. on the contrary, because most studies have included only one set of verbal or musical material, it is possible that inconsistency in previous data reflects interactions between materials and acoustic cues. future research would arguably benefit from a closer study of such interactions (cowie et al., ; juslin, , p. ). eighth, the use of forced-choice formats has been criticized on the grounds that listeners are provided with only a small number of response alternatives to choose from (ekman, ; izard, ; russell, ). it may be argued that listeners manage the task by forming exclusion rules or guessing, without thinking that any of the response alternatives are appropriate to describe the expression (e.g., frick, ). those studies that have used free labeling of emotions, rather than forced-choice formats, indicate that commu- nication is still possible, though the accuracy is slightly lower (e.g., juslin, a; l. kaiser, ). juslin ( a) suggested that what can be communicated reliably are the basic emotion categories but not specific nuances within these categories. it is desirable to use a wider variety of response formats in future research (see also greasley et al., ). finally, the two domains could benefit from studies of the neurophysiological substrates of the decoding process (adolphs, damasio, & tranel, ). for example, it would be interesting to explore whether the same neurological resources are used in de- coding of emotions from vocal expression and music performance (peretz, ). it must be noted that if the neural circuitry used in decoding of emotion from vocal expression is also involved in decoding of emotion from music, this should primarily apply to those aspects of music’s expressiveness that are common to speech and music performance; that is, cues like speed, intensity, and timbre. however, music’s expressiveness does not derive solely from those cues but also from intrinsic sources of emotion (see sloboda & juslin, ) having to do with the structure of the piece of music (e.g., harmony). thus, it would not be surprising if perception of emotion in music involved neural substrates over and above those involved in perception of vocal expression. prelimi- nary evidence that perception of emotion in music performance involves many of the same brain areas as perception of emotion in juslin and laukka vocal expression was reported by nair, large, steinberg, and kelso ( ). concluding remarks research on communication of emotions might lead to a number of important applications. first, research on vocal cues might be used to develop instruments for the diagnosis of different psychi- atric conditions, such as depression and schizophrenia (s. kaiser & scherer, ). second, results regarding code usage might be used in teaching of rhetoric. pathos, or emotional appeal, is con- sidered an important means of persuasion (e.g., lee, ), and this article offers detailed information about the practical means to convey specific emotions to an audience. third, recent research on communication of emotion might be used by music teachers to enhance performers’ expressivity (juslin, friberg, schoonder- waldt, & karlsson, in press; juslin & persson, ). fourth, communication of emotions can be trained in music therapy. proficiency in emotional communication is part of the emotional intelligence (salovey & mayer, ) that most people take for granted but that certain individuals lack. music provides a way of training encoding and decoding of emotions in a fairly nonthreat- ening situation (for reviews, see saperston, west, & wigram, ). finally, research on vocal communication of emotion has implications for human– computer interaction, especially auto- matic recognition of emotion and synthesis of emotional speech (cowie et al., ; murray & arnott, ; schröder, ). in conclusion, a number of authors have speculated about an intimate relationship between vocal expression and music perfor- mance regarding communication of emotions. this article has reached beyond the speculative stage and established many simi- larities among the two channels in terms of decoding accuracy, code usage, development, and coding. it is our strong belief that continued cross-modal research will provide further insights into the expressive aspects of vocal expression and music perfor- mance—insights that would be difficult to obtain from studying the two domains in separation. in particular, we predict that future research will confirm that music performers communicate emo- tions to listeners by exploiting an acoustic code that derives from innate brain programs for vocal expression of emotions. in this sense, at least, music may really be a form of heightened speech that transforms feelings into “audible landscape.” references references marked with an asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis. abelin, Å., & allwood, j. 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( ). encoding and decoding nonverbal cues of emotion. journal of person- ality and social psychology, , – . received november , revision received march , accepted april , � juslin and laukka the radical violinist: the radical violinist: henry flynt, tony conrad and the liberation of the violin by adam cadell bmushons , mphil queensland conservatorium of music arts, education and law griffith university submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of doctor of philosophy november abstract recognising that an environment of revolution can breed a culture outside of the mainstream - and that said culture can breed unique forms of expression – this thesis aims to answer questions hitherto undiscussed in violin performance practice discourse, and furthermore aims to propose a new direction in violin performance practice that is unique in current discourse. the research question represents a divergence from the ‘normalised’ perspective of the violin as an instrument traditionally associated with ‘classical’ or ‘museum-piece’ music, music that is relegated to consumption in state and corporate-sponsored orchestras and concert halls. the latter is a music that adheres to a set of rules and practices, whereas this thesis aims to bring attention to an alternative to modern norms in violin performance practices by asking the question: in what ways do the performance practices of underground violinists during the s in new york city reflect the revolutionary ideals and philosophies of their creators, and do these practices thereby liberate the violin from these traditions and norms? these questions will be approached through three core methods: musical analysis, critical theory, and discourse analysis. the musical analysis describes the performance practices of underground violinists and in particular those of tony conrad and henry flynt, in detail. their practices will be discussed via the discourse generated through conducting one-on-one interviews with, and analysing the writings of, conrad and flynt. this then leads to the pinnacle of this triangulation, the critical theory. drawn from socialist thinkers and the “hauntology” theory of jacques derrida – as well as the specific philosophies of underground violinists and their comrades – the thesis culminates in the manifesto of the radical violinist, ultimately proposing a new radicalised, socially and environmentally conscious violin practice. statement of originality this work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. to the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. (signed) adam cadell acknowledgements i would like to firstly acknowledge the traditional owners of the land upon which this thesis was created. i would also like to acknowledge: the invaluable guidance and support of my principal supervisor dr donna weston; the love, support and immense tolerance of my partner, ms renee montgomery; the love and support of my family and friends; mr tony conrad for his kind participation; mr ryan potter and the brisbane underground for so much inspiration and music. i would also like to dedicate this thesis in part to the memory of my associate supervisor prof. william duckworth who sadly passed away before the completion of this work. table of contents abstract ...................................................................................................................................... statement of originality ....................................................................................................... acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... chapter : heterogeneous beginnings: an introduction to underground violin ........................................................................................................................................... dragging through the underground .................................................................................................... unconventional sources ......................................................................................................................... the concept of underground ............................................................................................................... underground violin performance practice .................................................................................... revolting violins ........................................................................................................................................ sci-fi fiddling: the importance of technological innovation ............................................... auto-ethnographic influence: confessions of a radical violinist .......................................... concluding: welcome to the underground .................................................................................... chapter two: subterranean blues - world revolution & the manhattan underground ......................................................................................................................... subverting the squares: underground new york ....................................................................... radical manhattan .................................................................................................................................... the tendrils of the underground ....................................................................................................... eternal blues: la monte young, henry flynt, free jazz & afro-nationalism ................... the la monte young scene: drugs, downtown and hindustani music .............................. john cale: finds his new home in a warm drone ...................................................................... conclusion .................................................................................................................................................... chapter : methodology - researching revolutionary practices ....................... modes of investigation ............................................................................................................................ style portrait system ............................................................................................................................... how to listen to eternal music: approaches to listening analysis ........................................ who owns a drone? to notate or not to notate ......................................................................... interview technique ................................................................................................................................ manifesting a manifesto ......................................................................................................................... a bridge to analysis ................................................................................................................................. chapter : trucking and trancing - the avant-garde hillbilly and blues violin of henry flynt ....................................................................................................................... introduction to the source .................................................................................................................... the beginning: a creep is born ........................................................................................................... acognitive culture, wwp, american ethnic music ..................................................................... the true american ethnic music: rock ‘n’ roll hillbillies ...................................................... communists in the garage: protest works for band and early solo ragas ....................... the master and thereafter: the profound effect of pandit pran nath. ............................... back in the garage: nova’billy and other new country and blues music. ........................ later works: ise, c.c. hennix and other acceptable europeans ........................................... creep acognitive analysis: how to brend, american ethnic style. ...................................... the importance of glissando ............................................................................................................... cowboy raga ............................................................................................................................................... an analysis of nova’billy: unbound country rock. .................................................................... graduation: analysing the pure form of avant-garde hillbilly and blues music ........... on the path to ise (hese): illuminating hallucinatory environments ........................... in conclusion: a revolution of one ................................................................................................ chapter : deaf left ear: the radical violin practice of tony conrad .......... the beginning of eternity: manhattan and the theatre of eternal music ...................... motionless digits: analysing early minimalism ........................................................................ on the side of the machine: analysing the faust collaboration ......................................... insubordinate vibrations: concluding conrad .......................................................................... chapter : theory – the manifesto of the radical violinist .............................. underground violinists must be radicalised and part of an underground resistance centred on insubordination to all forms of authoritarian power. the underground violinist is also the radical violinist. ............................................................................................. underground violin performance practices are heterogeneous and embrace heterogeneity in culture. ..................................................................................................................... underground violinists are manifestations of marx’s spectre – haunting the hegemony of western culture. .......................................................................................................... underground violinists must embrace elements of futurism: science, elegance and violence. ..................................................................................................................................................... underground violinists must embrace electricity. .................................................................. underground violinists are acognitive realists........................................................................ underground violinists can not be genre/market musicians. their techniques must embrace and reflect the diversity of reality and not the hegemony of tradition. .... underground violinists embrace diy methods of production and presentation where necessary. .................................................................................................................................................. underground violinists must ultimately use their music as a weapon against ‘moribund capitalism’, a radical subversion of the descendents of imperialism. ....... concluding statement of the manifesto of the revolutionary radical underground violinist ...................................................................................................................................................... key recordings by underground violinists: ............................................................................... chapter : conclusion - the underground violinist as the radical violinist: the end is just the beginning ....................................................................................... the underground violinist becomes the radical violinist ................................................... bibliography ....................................................................................................................... discography ........................................................................................................................ appendix : certificate of ethical clearance ........................................................... appendix : interview with tony conrad ................................................................ chapter : heterogeneous beginnings: an introduction to underground violin the decade of the s was a monumental time in the development of western music and art as a whole. it saw the birth of a true underground culture, a movement that strove towards a utopian worldview. this culture existed in the underground of post-war, predominantly western, society and was, by its very nature, an extreme and often confrontational expression of the anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian views espoused by the wider alternative culture of the time. this underground society had its own press, poets, writers, musicians, artists, and revolutionaries, all with an international reach. in germany kosmische rock (what is now commonly referred to as “krautrock”) musicians rubbed shoulders and shared squats with red army faction commando group the baader-meinhof gang; in japan bands were involved in revolutionary acts, such as the infamous red army faction japan airlines hijacking featuring a member of rock group les rallizés dénudés. it is, however, the bohemian lower east side of new york city which forms the backdrop for the protagonists of this thesis. the greenwich village ‘heterotopia’ , as foucault dubbed it, became a crucible for the nascent avant-garde scene due to the availability of low rent loft apartments in the context of a rich avant-garde and radical heritage. underground, downtown new york was a centre for beat poetry, queer sexuality, avant-garde music and leftist politics. like much of the culture of the time, drugs, particularly marijuana, hashish, heroin and amphetamines such as dexamyl, were an important part of life in downtown new york city, and they indelibly left their mark on the music. the downtown scene in the s was fertile ground for the creation of new and original music, and the violin, along with other bowed-string instruments, was crucial to many these events and more are expanded on in chapter of this thesis. julian cope’s krautrocksampler (head heritage, ) and japrocksampler (bloomsbury, ) are the definitive works on the underground scenes of germany and japan in the s and s. both of these works refer to these radical events on several occasions, and both of these works serve as valuable sources throughout this thesis. sally banes, greenwich village (new york: duke university press, )., . of the new sounds. the violin featured prominently in psychedelic folk bands and began to feature in free jazz ensembles performing in unconventional spaces such as abandoned lofts and factory floors. in the circles of the avant-garde the violin was deconstructed by the physical act of destruction, or the alteration and modification of its parts. tony conrad and henry flynt recorded and performed works for solo violin as well as ensembles such as the theatre of eternal music and flynt’s protest band the insurrections. the velvet underground came to prominence after their , andy warhol-produced debut album in which john cale’s viola brought the sound of new york’s avant-garde underground to the ears of rock music fans for the first time. underground culture, and in particular the music that was born from it, is central to the contextual make-up of this thesis. this underground environment of revolution bred a culture outside of the mainstream, a culture that bred unique forms of expression. violinists had an important role in creating many of these unique expressions, and ultimately created their own world of radical underground violin performance that continues to evolve today. this thesis aims to answer questions hitherto undiscussed in violin performance practice discourse, and furthermore aims to propose a new direction in violin performance practice that is unique in current discourse. the research question represents a divergence from the ‘normalised’ perspective of the violin as an instrument traditionally associated with ‘classical’ or ‘museum-piece’ music, music that is relegated to consumption in state and corporate-sponsored orchestras and concert halls. the latter is part of a music culture that adheres to a set of rules and practices, whereas this thesis aims to bring attention to an alternative to modern norms in violin performance practices by asking the question: in what ways do the performance practices of underground violinists during the s in new york city reflect the revolutionary ideals and philosophies of their creators, and do these practices thereby liberate the violin from these traditions and norms? this thesis will approach these questions through three core methods: musical analysis, critical theory, and discourse analysis. the musical analysis describes in detail the performance practices of underground violinists and in particular those of tony conrad and henry flynt. their practices will be discussed via the discourse generated through conducting and surveying one-on-one interviews with, and analysing the writings of, conrad and flynt. this then leads to the pinnacle of this triangulation, the critical theory. drawn from socialist thinkers and the ‘hauntology’ theory of jacques derrida – as well as the specific philosophies of underground violinists and their comrades – the thesis culminates in the manifesto of the radical violinist, ultimately proposing a new radicalised, socially and environmentally conscious violin practice. what follows here is the background required to understand this thesis, and in order to tap the rich veins of underground violin performance practice we must first drag through the mud of history and try to understand the clandestine world of the underground itself. dragging through the underground specific literature on underground culture as a definitive subject is hard to come by, and seemingly too broad to be covered in any one study. underground culture by its very nature is mercurial and bucks against an over-arching consensus of its place in any one geographical situation or community. there are myriad forms and subgenres of underground music that would be overwhelmingly difficult to cover in one single book, however, throughout the literature relevant to the era in focus, the term ‘underground’ held a simpler meaning. underground music was made by those who took culture into their own hands with diy album releases, poetry books, festivals and performances, and strong oppositional politics based largely in the far-left of the spectrum (there were, of course, exceptions to this rule as the s also marked the resurgence of militant right-wing groups that existed even further on the fringes of mainstream society – the manson family for instance). there are many works of literature which confirm this definition of s and s underground culture, but one compilation of essays in particular has been of particular use and that is robert adlington’s sound commitments: avant-garde music and the sixties ( , oxford university press). duncan reekie’s work on the underground film scene is also of importance in this regard. titled subversion, this volume covers the work of tony conrad and other filmmakers in the new york underground during the s in some detail. furthermore, reekie’s definition for the term ‘underground’ is used in the next chapter and referred to throughout the thesis. julian cope’s comprehensive books on the underground rock scenes of germany and japan in the s and s, krautrocksampler (head heritage, ) and japrocksampler (bloomsbury, ) have also been useful both as direct sources of information on certain underground violinists, and as expert examples of writing, on the wider phenomenon of underground music and culture during the period in question, from the perspective of a practising musician. literary sources pertaining to the main protagonists of this thesis were equally difficult to acquire, and largely obscure. one work in particular proved relevant to the study, a book released after the commencement of this project titled beyond the dream syndicate: tony conrad and the arts after cage, a minor history, by branden w. joseph. this work presents itself as a somewhat biographical account of tony conrad and covers his life’s work up until the time of publication. it is framed in the context of the broader ‘minor history’ of the arts in new york city and related areas after john cage’s revelations became currency amongst the avant-garde. joseph paints a vivid picture of the underground art scene in new york city and his detailed accounts of conrad’s life and work serve as a substantial source for many sections of this thesis. joseph’s study also looks at the work of henry flynt and his influence on conrad and other contemporaries, as well as examining in some depth the work of the highly influential la monte young. indeed, the framework of beyond the dream syndicate is not dissimilar to this thesis in contextualising the new york underground scene as something which gravitated around young, his loft, and his various ensembles during the s and s. while reluctant to describe the scene specifically as ‘underground’, joseph frames the work of conrad as part of a wider response to the challenges posed by cage. this response is observed as having been largely oppositional, born from a desire for ‘newness’ spearheaded by the likes of young and other young composers fed-up with the institutionalisation of the older avant-garde. another biographical source is john cale’s autobiography what’s welsh for zen? cale covers, in strikingly frank detail, his life in the new york city underground during the s, including his time in the theatre of eternal music and his time in the velvet underground. it is a significant source for describing the basic circumstances of the scene and the day-to-day experiences of its protagonists. further, it sheds light on the use of drugs and the social scene which surrounded the music, including intimate details of his friendship with tony conrad and the importance their collaboration with young had. what’s welsh for zen? is quoted and referenced throughout the thesis, and in particular in the following chapter. the central theoretical sources fall into two categories: those sources that are applicable to the musical analysis, and those sources which make up the backbone of the manifesto. the primary source utilised for musical analysis is ekkerhard jost’s free jazz, and in particular his socially-informed ‘style portrait’ method, discussed in further detail in the methodology section of this thesis. crucial to the manifesto of the radical violinist is jacques derrida’s spectres of marx from which his theory of ‘hauntology’, derived from marx’s opening paragraph in the communist manifesto , is used to describe the spectral anti-hegemonic nature of the underground violinist’s practice. other significant sources were derived from henry flynt’s marxist art roster (as found on his philosophy website) in an attempt to stay true to the kind of works that inspired the political and philosophical ideas of underground violinists, thus working as a strong and undiluted soil from which my theory of ‘radical violin performance practice’ could grow. the most important of these sources were lee baxandall’s collection of revolutionary left writings radical perspectives in the arts and the situationist international anthology. the writings of the situationist international in particular, served as a strong firmament for the development of the manifesto style found herein. other crucial theoretical sources include the writings of leon trotsky – and in particular a compendium called the basic writings of leon trotsky – and to a lesser extent the writings of soviet documentary film-maker “a spectre is haunting europe -- the spectre of communism.” marx karl; engels marx, frederick, the manifesto of the communist party (new york: international, )., . ken knabb, ed. situationist international anthology (berkeley: the bureau of public secrets, ). dziga vertov as presented in a work entitled kino-eye. the life-story and poetry of soviet poet vladimir mayakovsky, as found in herbert marshall’s translated compendium mayakovsky, is central to the theoretical section of this thesis, and furthermore to the theory and style of henry flynt. lastly the great modernist art manifestos from groups such as the futurists served as a blueprint for my own manifesto, alongside more unconventional manifesto-style sources such as black mask as written by the s anarchist art action group of the same name. unconventional sources finding reliable peer-reviewed sources on the artists in question was a difficult task. as is the nature of much underground music, these performers have largely avoided any large-scale interest from academics. furthermore, the journalistic sources that cover their work are few and far between, the most obvious major independent magazine being the london-based wire: adventures in modern music. this publication has frequently covered several of the artists in focus throughout this thesis, including in a recent (the wire , april ) ‘primer’ feature – a regular feature that aims to ‘prime’ the reader to explore a certain genre or style of music, or a particular artist’s canon – titled ‘early minimalism’. in it they provide valuable background information on the history of minimalist music, replete with a listening guide listing important recordings by henry flynt, tony conrad and contemporaries. this feature was an important stepping stone for me with regards to discovering appropriate listening material early on in the project. internet resources have also been a seemingly endless source of information on the key subjects and their colleagues. for instance, academic and henry flynt enthusiast, benjamin piekut, compiled a series of youtube videos in featuring mr. flynt recalling his various experiences in new york city from relevant sites throughout the city. this series, titled henry flynt in new york, has been a useful primary source, especially in light of flynt’s non- brian duguid, "the primer: early minimalism," the wire, april . participation in the project. these films, however, largely deal with anecdotes of flynt’s time in downtown manhattan and do not delve into his musical practice on an analytical scale. flynt’s website is a different story altogether. due to a distinct lack of interest from publishers throughout his career, flynt has compiled almost all of his writings on a variety of topics on his website for all to view free of charge. the site includes all of his most important essays on philosophy, politics and musical practice and has been one of the major sources that i have drawn from for information on flynt, his contemporaries, predecessors and inspirations. other crucial internet sources have included blogs dedicated to fluxus and other new york city based arts organisations featuring scans of various leaflets, gig flyers, and other ephemera relevant to the scene at the time and to the protagonists of this thesis. julian cope’s head heritage website, and in particular his ‘unsung – album of the month’ section also proved to be of some use, particularly since it includes in-depth reviews of flynt and conrad-related albums from the era in focus. the concept of underground before delving into the murky depths of manhattan’s s underground culture in chapter two, it is necessary to briefly introduce the concept of ‘underground’. ‘underground’, as a symbol of insubordination, radicalism and non-conformity, and as a physical, distinctly urban space, is crucial to this thesis and to the theoretical core of the manifesto of the radical violinist presented in chapter six. the radical violinist, as this thesis will assert, is born from the underground, and in many ways still exists in an underground culture that is far more complex and difficult to define than that of the s and s. what follows is a summarised explanation of the basic tenets of underground culture, a topic that will be explored in greater detail in chapter two. some of these ideas and concepts are born of my own experience as a henry flynt, "philosophy," http://www.henryflynt.org. julian cope, "head heritage," http://www.headheritage.co.uk. musician performing in australia’s sprawling underground music scene, and as can be expected of an underground musician, my ideas on what it means to be ‘underground’ are deeply personal, while being informed by what has come before. the use of the term ‘underground’ first came to prominence during the second world war to describe the resistance groups that materialised throughout the fascist occupied zones of europe. after the war the term was born again as a name to describe the counter-cultural movement of the s. this ‘underground’ resistance was concerned not always with the eradication of an occupying force or a dominating political ideal, but with the eradication of the invisible barriers that oppress us all on an everyday basis. the blurring of cultural lines, of genres, forms, sexual norms, race and political ideologies was at its core, and born of a utopian desire for personal freedom and wholesale social change. at the dawn of the s there existed an unprecedented outburst of anti- establishment culture that still existed in the underground, beneath the far-reaching grasp of the mainstream media, and the oppressive hammer of conservative politics, and therefore truly outside the experience of your average workaday person. it was this early stage of mid- twentieth-century underground culture that forms the backdrop for this thesis and the beginnings of the protagonist’s musical awakenings, something that would leave an indelible mark on their work. defining a particular culture as ‘underground’ poses serious fundamental questions about the nature of culture itself and of people’s perception of their own culture. in the case of this thesis one of the major participants of the case studies, henry flynt, contested that the use of the term ‘underground’ showed a lack of understanding of his output. furthermore, while this decision was largely unexplained, flynt subsequently withdrew his participation entirely as the result of a perceived ‘agenda’ transmitted through my use of phrases such as ‘underground music’ and ‘revolutionary music’. his perception of his own output is highly at odds with most observers, undoubtedly leading to the negligent coverage in the media and the academy of his work. this sort of reaction from artists of all kinds is not uncommon. many of those artists that we as academics, students or journalists have lumped into the ‘isms’ and other definitional terms of arts discourse disagree with the scene in which they are situated. the artificial nature of definitions has been a problem for me, and one that i have sought to overcome through surveying literature and drawing on some sort of consensus based on other observers’ use of the term ‘underground’. almost all literature, including that of the artists in question, makes use of the term ‘underground’ to define the counter-cultural movement of the s. furthermore the term ‘underground’ works well to situate these artists in the overarching chronology of post world war two culture and the undercurrents that continue to run against mainstream enculturation, apathy and unbridled capitalism. it is, however, incorrect to suggest that the underground was in any way a movement or unified organisation of any sort. the underground was, and is, at its very heart based in a desire for personal freedoms and represents a community as far removed from anything monocultural as one could imagine. the underground represents a broad range of ideological viewpoints, philosophical revelations and aesthetic considerations that are all poised in opposition to the mainstream, either by design or by chance. to be underground does not necessarily suggest that an artist has not tried to communicate with the mainstream – as for instance henry flynt valiantly attempted throughout the s and s – but rather that their work is misunderstood or simply too alien to mainstream sensibilities. flynt’s work is perhaps less alien to the average listener than that of conrad, however the context of his work is. flynt’s politics and place within a political milieu considered the antithesis to a mainstream idea of american society immediately placed him within a long lineage of american outsiders – the radical composers conlon nacarrow and harry partch come to mind as prominent examples – who would ultimately challenge the status quo on their own. on the other side of the coin, conrad, creating often abrasive and confrontational music, has enjoyed comparative success, with invitations to major international music festivals such as the melbourne international jazz festival being the norm in recent years. such success brings into question the validity of lumping an artist such as conrad into the category of underground; however, his unwavering integrity and disinterest in engaging the machinations of the music industry are a simple and effective answer. here is an artist who at times has remained blissfully unaware of releases of his own music and not too concerned about receiving accolades for it either. in many ways the underground is also defined by such attitudes towards the means of production and the means of consumption. underground artists create work whether people want to hear it or not, standing directly in opposition to the ever-present capitalist rule of supply and demand. because of this attitude, underground musicians embraced, and continue to embrace, do-it-yourself (diy) approaches to production and presentation, producing their own recordings on their own labels, and performing in unconventional and sometimes illegal spaces. for the underground violinists that inhabit the pages of this thesis, their anti-establishment ideology and personal philosophies were heavily ingrained in their performance practices, giving birth to distinctively underground and decidedly radical approaches to violin performance practice. underground violin performance practice this thesis essentially presents an alternative history of violin performance practice that culminates in what i am terming radical violin performance practice. this radical practice is rooted in a legacy of underdog musicians, from heinrich biber’s forward-thinking scordatura polyphonic works for the austrian courts in the seventeenth century, through the court music of hindustan and the rebellious spiritualism of pandit pran nath, from the oppressed african american bluesmen of the early twentieth century, and their poor working-class white neighbours, to the black power music of free jazz musicians and the revolutionary psychedelia of the international underground of the s. this alternative history is heterogeneous and is in many ways the polar opposite of mainstream ‘classical’ violin performance, on the other hand it is also, and defiantly so, not a history of popular or folk music practices either. indeed, put simply, this is a history of unpopular violin performance practices and their presence amongst a long lineage of unpopular, complex and heterogeneous artistic undercurrents. because of this heterogeneity, it is imperative to outline the unique strains that constitute the concept of underground violin performance. the violin is an instrument long associated with traditional notions of beauty and ‘culture’ in the west. it is an instrument rarely thought of as existing in the margins of our society. it is a popular instrument for parents to seek out tuition in for their children and it often accompanies day-to-day communal events such as weddings and work functions. for most in the west, the violin experience is had in childhood and then relegated to the separate specialist field of ‘culture’ to be consumed in a similar fashion to sport or fine champagne, in essence, another commodity marketed to a specific class of people. on the other side of the violin coin we have the perception of the instrument as a rough and ready expression of folksong, the fiddling of irish, british and american folk music and the wild caterwauling of the over- romanticised gypsy fiddler. existing between these two worlds is the crossover of the violin into popular mediums, most prominently jazz, such as that performed by stephane grapelli and his hot club de france. this is a music that represents a pleasant but kitschy amalgamation of ‘classical’ violin, gypsy folk fire and an europeanised adoption of african-american idiosyncrasies such as swing and the blues. the history of violin performance as we know it today is defined by the dominant figures – in terms of popularity and pedagogical institutionalisation – of the last years, starting with the proliferation of the italian school of thought spearheaded by arcangelo corelli ( – ). the dominance of the corelli school still permeates throughout violin performance today, with his numerous compositions remaining part of the standard repertoire. nevertheless, much like any field of art today, there were figures who gained a similar level of notoriety but whose works never reached the wider european consciousness. their work was perceived as being of no lesser quality, but their contacts, nationality and pedagogic legacy django reinhardt, djangology (france: rca victor, ), vinyl lp. peter walls, "performing corelli's violin sonatas, op. ," early music , no. ( )., . ibid., . perhaps were. one figure highly pertinent to this investigation is the bohemian composer heinrich ignaz franz von bibern ( – ), a violinist of great repute during his time, but whose work could not compete with the popularity of contemporaries such as the ever-dominant corelli. indeed biber’s work fell largely into obscurity until recent years, where his works have received a revival amongst performers of historically accurate period music, and even more recently by internationally renowned ensembles such as the australian chamber orchestra. while corelli was the darling of the court of cardinal ottoboni (a future pope), biber was upsetting his then benefactor karl ii of bohemia by skipping town and working for the archbishop of salzburg. while corelli was rumoured to have been unable to play much above a d fourth finger, third position on the e string, biber was restringing the violin so that he could play nothing but octaves and reaching the comparatively stratospheric regions of sixth and seventh position. biber is a suitable figurehead for an alternative to mainstream violin performance, the genesis of underground violin performance practice. from biber we travel forward to , and to a young harvard graduate student and budding composer by the name of tony conrad. conrad had been backpacking his way around europe, absorbing countless scores stored in the great libraries of germany. in berlin he discovered a collection of scores that changed his musical world completely: the scordatura violin works of biber. at this stage there were very few available recordings of biber’s work but the writing was on the wall: sharps and flats together in the same key signature (upon playing it conrad would have discovered that this still amounted to conventional tonalities when combined with the scordatura, but as an image on a score it must have struck him as revolutionary), strings tuned to different pitches (scordatura), crossed over each other, or ibid., peter holman, "mystery man: peter holman celebrates the th anniversary of the birth of heinrich biber," the musical times , no. ( )., one need only play biber’s rosenkranz sonaten to experience the left-hand acrobatics required. likewise one need only play any of corelli’s major works for violin to experience the comparatively limited range of left hand technique required to perform them. muffled by papier-mâché. here conrad saw polyphony, improvisation, and the dominance of a steady, droning basso continuo that gave the music a rawness not found in the ‘poppy’ counterpoint of corelli and his progeny. this was a music that embraced noise and opened up the violin’s acoustic properties through alternative tuning systems and micro-tonal ornamentation. it was an almost forgotten page in the history of western music that suggested a world of possibilities that could have opened for the development of the instrument and western music as a whole. this world of possibilities seemed to die out for many years after biber’s death (and indeed even well before). the eighteenth century saw the birth, via johan sebastian bach, of the well-tempered scale and a system of tuning that continues to dominate western music today. there were glimmers of the spirit of biber during the nineteenth century in the scordatura tunings of some of nicolo paganini’s works , but largely, standard tunings (the g-d-a-e most violinists have tuned to since corelli’s time) and forms of tuning which would eventually become equal temperament prevailed. furthermore, prior to the industrial revolution and the resultant invention of the printing press, soloists were generally composers as well. the nineteenth century saw the increasing compartmentalisation of the arts in the west, with the great heroic composer now towering over the performers who must bow to his every whim. while most concert violinists continued to compose their own concert pieces into the first decade or two of the twentieth century, it slowly died out as concert violinists became interpreters of past works, eventually leading to the norms we see today. in the twenty-first century there are very few concert violinists who publicly perform or publish their own works, with the exception of the occasional signature cadenza added as an appendix to popular concert pieces such as the brahms, beethoven or mozart concerti. roland jackson, "performance practice: a dictionary-guide for musicians." (united kingdom: routledge, ), http://books.google.com.au/books?id=_w _cqdnwkc&lpg=pa &ots= cmh y - wf&dq=paganini% scordatura&pg=pa #v=onepage&q=paganini% scordatura&f=false., . the underground violinists of this thesis, however, are known only for performances of their own works. in the diy spirit that so defines underground culture, these violinists created works on their own using tape recorders, and in a post-jazz america embraced the possibilities of instant composition – of improvisation. indeed, through the possibilities opened by recording technology, the rebellious lure of anti-elitist politics, and the mind-expanding world of non- western thought, underground violinists began to shed the concept of composition altogether. this is another defining element of underground violin performance practice, the expression of distinct philosophies, political ideals, and the rejection of tradition through improvisation. we return to biber here, a performer who hundreds of years before conrad and flynt came on the scene, embraced, like most performers of his era, the thrilling expressive possibilities inherent in improvisation. in fact, improvisation was a highly important element in western performance practice up until the industrial revolution and the birth of the sanctity of the score through new forms of publishing. in biber’s time, the baroque period, a performer who couldn’t improvise was not worth his salt to anyone. for twentieth century musicians, the inspiration to improvise, however, largely came from the southern ghettos of the united states where african slaves brought thousands of years of improvisatory expression to the west, and from developing nations such as india. the importance of african-american music cannot be underestimated when discussing underground violin performance practices. string instruments were an important part of cultural life for african america and the violin was amongst these. in the united states the slaves probably came across the violin when hearing the music of their white masters, and it can be heard prominently in the recordings of african-american musicians made during the s. certainly in these early days of the recording industry, the violin was still a prominent element in african-american blues music before the more popular guitar gained prominence and the era sarah freiberg, "baroque performance basics," strings , no. ( )., various artists, folks, he sure do pull some bow! vintage fiddle music - - blues, jazz, stomps, shuffles & rags (raleigh: old hat records, ), compact disc. of the great blues guitarists took hold. african-american influence also spilled over into the fiddle music of the white farmers who owned, and then employed black workers. it can be heard prominently in appalachian folk fiddling and later in the blues infused licks of bluegrass. the african-american approach to the violin was as much a rhythmic one as it was melodic. here precision was second to timbre and that ‘feel’ so integral to really, truly playing the blues – the feeling that comes hand in hand with being black, poor, uneducated, different, other; with oppression, depression and unimaginable hardship. furthermore, improvisation reigned supreme and song structure was often unpredictable and unique to the individual writer. from this melting pot of southern white and black culture the blues was evolved and revolved, playing an integral part in the birth of the performance practices of the protagonists of this thesis. from the inspiration flynt and conrad found in the high-lonesome country and bluegrass sounds of bill munroe and hank williams, the insistent rhythms of bo diddley (who incidentally began his musical life, as did many great blues guitarists, as a violinist), the screeching sax of ornette coleman to the very acoustic fibre of the blues seventh, african-american music helped shape underground violin performance practice. the music of africa and india is another source of musical inspiration for these underground violinists. for many improvising musicians in the united states during the s and s, the music of the middle east, india and africa was appealing. for great improvisers like john coltrane the music of morocco, and in particular the trance-inducing gnawa music of the master musicians of joujouka, was a crucial source of musical and spiritual ideas. indeed, the music of africa began to see a renaissance in the s as black nationalist musicians began to seek out their cultural heritage and identify themselves as african, rather than negro. henry flynt, whose ethnicity was white caucasian, discovered field recordings of african bush music in the harvard libraries in the late s and was blown away, leading somewhat to his interest in and sympathies with the black nationalist movement. it is possible that during flynt’s listening sessions he heard compositions using the gonjé (also known in different languages and regions as gogé, riti, gonjey etc.) a one-stringed bowed fiddle common to west africa, the region where so many slaves were taken and shipped to the americas. performers of the gonjé fiddle employ driving rhythms and harmonic-laden timbres reminiscent of the blues, and not unlike the riffing of henry flynt’s solo violin works. certainly the violin itself appears in folk and ‘classical’ music all over the world, but it is the music of india that appealed to the protagonists of this thesis the most. it is not so much the violin music of india that inspired them, but the vocal and other string music of the hindustani tradition in particular. for the s counter-cultural movement, hindustani music became one of the greatest inspirations, and soon prominent indian musicians such as sitar player pandit ravi shankar shared the same bills as the grateful dead and mahavishnu orchestra, and served as musical and spiritual envoys to counter-cultural titans the beatles. for the underground in manhattan, as is characteristic of this scene, a more subterranean character became their primary influence: pandit pran nath. pandit pran nath was a hindustani singer whose work, by being heavily rooted in its spiritual traditions, was highly rebellious in the eyes of the ever-modernising all india radio and the increasingly commodified world of post- colonial indian music. his voice, mystical persona and his immense integrity were of great significance, both directly and indirectly, to the genesis of these underground violin performance practices. alongside pandit pran nath, the sarod playing of ali akbar khan is also of immense importance, with his first western recorded release influencing every corner of the manhattan music scene and beyond. the eternal drone of the tamboura became the base upon which conrad built much of his playing, while the aching glissandi and extended improvisations of pandit pran nath would become a well-mined site for henry flynt. beyond these musicians, the violin-like sarangi is another influence on underground violin performance practice. the powerful performances of sarangi masters such as khalifa ustad hafizullah khan and pandit ram narayan are seemingly more in line with their approach to the instrument than the violin gerhard kubik, africa and the blues (jackson: university press of mississipi, )., playing of l. subramaniam or the highly influential – in terms of bringing indian classical music to the west – yehudi menuhin. on the whole there was a strongly ideological undercurrent to the underground violinists’ approach to their instrument, which led them to a unique interpretation of all of these influences – perhaps adding to their preference for more obscure examples of these influences – and gave birth to a revolution in violin performance practice. revolting violins tony conrad, of his approach to violin performance practice, said, i felt that i had launched a kind of revolution if you will, revolutionary practice but revolution really isn't the right word there, because it's not a revolution unless it revolves something and this wasn't revolving anything. what it was doing was just, as it were, establishing a cultural reference site. a locus, a performance locus on a map of different practices, which was extremely distinctive within violin performance activity... the underground’s approach to the commercial aspects of art production led to a revolution in the way musicians and artists produce and distribute work. in terms of violin performance practice it led to a shift away from traditional approaches to the instrument and into a new world of extended techniques, modifications and technical innovations. in the most absurd extremities of this new practice violins would simply be polished in front of a live audience, or more extremely, destroyed. for the protagonists of this study, the violin took on a new shape when it was stripped of the constraints and heavy baggage that come with five hundred years of western tradition, and was instead plugged in, looped and modified beyond recognition. for both flynt and conrad the new technologies afforded by portable amplification, cheap and easily obtainable contact microphones and home-recording equipment helped to transform their tony conrad, interview with the author, . approach to violin performance. contact microphones helped to put a magnifying glass up to the tonal qualities of the instrument, bringing out a kind of rawness and honesty usually only found in the folk music of europe and the americas. it made the instrument as capable of exhilarating volume and noise as it is at creating courtly beauty and poise. the violin could now compete with the backbeat and cut above the intense sounds of manhattan’s streets. every scrape, bump, scratch, slide and wail could now be heard and incorporated into a violinist’s technique to great effect. henry flynt, tony conrad and other manhattan musicians were at the forefront of this revolution in performance practice and there was a finely-tuned method to the madness. for flynt in particular the revolution was not just one of sonic proportions, but also something that must be acted out in the streets through protest and political action. flynt’s practice is so intensely linked to his philosophy and ideology that, as the reader will hopefully discover in this thesis, even the most minute technical aspects of a performance can be seen as a gesture of protest or utopian yearning. this brings to mind the kind of evocative gesturing at the core of works by a composer such as heinrich biber: images of battle, work and ethnic groups living out their daily lives evoked through scordatura, instrument modification, heterophony and hints of polytonality. heterophony – the simultaneous performance of variations of a melody by multiple musicians - has often been the realm of outsiders and musical revolutionaries, from the seventeenth-century works of biber to the cacophony of charles ives’ uniquely american works, and the collective improvisations of new orleans marching bands. heterophony is a useful metaphor for the overarching values present behind revolutionary violin performance practice representing a break from the hegemony of homophony and the power- structures that gave birth to it. for conrad the revolution is both literal and figurative. he too took part in flynt’s actions against cultural imperialism, but he also insists that for a revolution to occur it must revolve something, thus bringing the word to its most literal meaning. i would argue that the tony conrad, early minimalism volume one (united states: table of the elements, ), compact disc., booklet, - . performance practices and ideals of conrad and flynt have indeed revolved, in that they have consistently reappeared in the works of underground musicians throughout the last four decades, and in particular the last two. from the droning sounds of early s college rock groups such as the dream syndicate (so named after conrad’s nickname for the legendary theatre of eternal music), the industrial nightmares of throbbing gristle and psychic tv, to the metallic drone-scapes of sunn ))) and their ilk, the sounds of s new york city underground violinists have revolved around the mercurial centre of the underground music scene. the practices of flynt and conrad have traced a full-circle through history, beginning in the fertile soils of s experimentalism, accidentally aiding in the birth of numerous scenes in the s, crawling further underground in the s before completing a full revolution and returning to the fertile soils of twenty-first century experimentalism. on a political level, their revolution represents the liberation of the violin from the shackles of tradition, out of the consumerist corporations and the state-sponsored museums of orchestras and concert repertoire, and into the world of diy production and unconventional performance spaces. their music represents a revolution in style and thought, a musical picket line calling for the death of western hegemony and the birth of a heterotopia built on the endless possibilities of a culture where sound, art and science are no longer separate. sci-fi fiddling: the importance of technological innovation while these various strains of musical inspiration add important elements to the proliferation of underground violin performance in the s, one cannot discount the basic importance of technology. the s marked an era of innovation in the recording industry, with tape recorders and microphones becoming available to the wider public on a larger scale than ever before. while cumbersome, and undoubtedly difficult to carry through the subway back to one’s apartment, reel-to-reel recording devices made the evolution of an underground approach to violin performance practice possible. underground violinists like tony conrad and henry flynt were consequently able to put their musical ideas to tape in their homes whenever they pleased. this led to a prolific output of recorded compositions, many of which arguably sit unreleased in various cupboards and basements. while the low-fidelity nature of many of these recordings hardly represents the true effect that this music must have had in the acoustic environment in which they were recorded, they serve as excellent artefacts of the time and are analysed and referenced throughout this thesis. furthermore, tape recorders could be used to create loops, a technique employed by the underground violinists discussed in this thesis, and indeed by the wider underground scene in various corners of the globe. tony conrad, henry flynt and many of the new york experimentalists used loops as an integral part of their practice and composers such as terry riley and steve reich would later make these practices famous contributing, it could be argued, to the trends of looping and sampling so prominent in much music today. the new ease with which musicians could obtain amplifiers, pick-ups and contact microphones also had a profound impact on the underground. simple but effective piezo pick- ups were used by underground violinists to plug in and take the violin into new realms of sound. the s marked a time where electricity took the music world by storm. popular artists such as bob dylan and miles davis shocked their well-established audiences by plugging in and tapping into the raucous sounds that rock ‘n’ roll and r&b musicians had used to overcome rowdy bar crowds and screaming teenage girls during the latter s. the underground saw different possibilities in amplification and took advantage of the new-found glee brought about by manipulating feedback and exploiting high-volume as a way to uncover new frequencies and hitherto unheard sounds. amplification is an essential ingredient to much underground music, and underground violinists were no exception to the rule. it is this emphasis on amplification and looping that first attracted me to these underground violinists, via their immense influence on prominent underground genres such as post punk and drone metal. they have since become a massive influence on the radical violinists of today, and my own practice as a self-confessed radical violinist, something that will be discussed in further detail in the final chapter of this thesis. auto-ethnographic influence: confessions of a radical violinist today the violin rarely breaks the chains of the strictures of any one style or tradition, however artists such as conrad continue to record and perform music increasingly recognised as an important influence on a generation of musicians. in australia, the influence of the work of conrad and flynt, as well as warren ellis, victorian born violinist and member of instrumental trio the dirty three, has permeated my own practice. ellis’s performance practice remains technically rooted in the classical traditions that are arguably the first experience of many violinists, however, his style is wild (in terms of timbre, intonation and showmanship) and intuitive in nature, existing outside of notions of genre or tradition. his group the dirty three continues to produce albums consisting almost entirely of instrumental pieces based around the trio of violin, guitar and drums. both improvised and pre-ordained, ellis and his cohorts perform music that is both reminiscent of the above-mentioned artists and entirely unique. in many ways it conjures the same inspired blend of coltrane, avant-garde classical and hard rock that so inspired henry flynt. brisbane-based duo the scrapes – in which i perform the violin – combine many influences including the harsh drones and loops of conrad and the desire to become a ‘folk creature’ as proposed by flynt in his writings. i am also involved in an improvisatory collective, brend, so named after flynt’s philosophical concept of the same name. brend is essentially based in free improvisation, the musicians performing simply as they wish to, reflecting the theoretical basis of brend. brend is now in many ways a tribute to the work of flynt without adhering strictly to his ideals of music, rather flavouring our own extemporisations with the idiosyncrasies of hillbilly fiddling and the intense, eternal drones of flynt’s new york. my experiences as a radical violinist inform much of this thesis however, they are discussed, along with other contemporary radical violinists, in finer detail in the concluding chapter. before we reach the final chapter, however, you will be taken through the streets of manhattan during the s and s, a place where the fertile soil of the underground nourishes the roots of radical violin performance. this will be followed by an overview of the methodologies applied while researching and writing this thesis, providing a look into the machinations behind my unique research outcomes. the methodology then leads into two distinct case studies, the ‘style portraits’ of underground violinists tony conrad and henry flynt. these ‘style portraits’ are brought to a suitable zenith in the manifesto of the radical violinist, where the key theoretical elements of the work of these underground violinists are presented as a platform for a new approach to violin performance practice in the twenty first century. in conclusion i will introduce you to the radical violinist, drawing a lineage from the s to my own current practice, and the continuing hard work of underground violinists such as conrad. concluding: welcome to the underground this thesis is an important discussion of performance practices that have remained largely obscure. a great deal of literature exists chronicling the practices and lives of the great violinists of the western classical tradition, but the practices of those who attempt to break free of this tradition, in a unique and personal way, have remained as footnotes in this history. underground violinists are important because they are examples of non-conformity within a musical tradition that represents the height of european artistic achievement. their work represented a revolution in the way a violinist could approach the instrument, turning it into a vehicle of philosophical expression and a vehicle for sound and noise. this presented an opportunity for liberation from the violin’s position as an expression of discipline and established notions of beauty born from centuries of aristocratic cultural monopoly. for this reason in particular this thesis may serve as a tool for fostering change in attitudes towards approaching violin performance practice, opening the potentials of the instrument for future generations of violinists. by placing these underground artists in the context primarily of their violin performance practices, this thesis will ultimately shine a light on a side of their artistic outputs that has thus far only received a cursory glance, hidden in the shadows of their more heavily documented achievements. like the literal meaning of the word ‘revolution’, the practices of underground violinists have come full circle, influencing a new generation of forward-looking musicians and, in particular, radical violinists. the following chapters will introduce the fertile ground – and the methods used to find it – in which this revolution was sown, and will aim to reap the harvest of a vast polyglot underground that held new york city as its epicentre. chapter two: subterranean blues - world revolution & the manhattan underground the locality, in time and in physical space, of this thesis is manhattan during the s and s. contextually it revolves around a specific milieu within manhattan’s underground art scene, that of la monte young and his theatre of eternal music. this composer and his ensemble serve as a point of reference to all of the goings on within the scene and as a firmament from which underground violin performance practices sprang. young’s work tied in with many of the developments in cutting-edge new music at the time, including minimalism, free jazz, new age, and eventually the avant-garde rock of john cale. this therefore places young and the musicians he worked – and continues to work – with, such as henry flynt, tony conrad and john cale, in a unique place within underground music history that few sources have yet to observe. therefore, this chapter has been drawn together from a wide range of sources, including magazine interviews; the intriguing and highly useful autobiography of john cale, what’s welsh for zen?; internet-based sources such as blogs (both those of private citizens and those attached to trendy underground publications such as vice and wire magazine, and the blogs of the subjects themselves) and youtube; and the vast wealth of recollections found in the web archives of henry flynt, trumpeter john hassell, composer rhys chatham and la monte young. this chapter serves as a map to follow the various tendrils of manhattan’s underground music scene, and the way in which these tendrils intertwine, controlled by a common source of eastern mysticism, drugs, non-conformist politics, ethnic musics and the slums of greenwich village. mark prendergast, the ambient century: from mahler to trance - the evolution of sound in the electronic age (new york: bloomsbury, )., . subverting the squares: underground new york in his book, subversion: the definitive history of underground cinema, duncan reekie describes the artistic birth of the term ‘underground’: the term ‘underground’ was first deployed by beat and early counter-cultural agents to designate their subculture of resistance beneath the square world: it was a metaphoric invocation of the resistance groups of world war two who secretly sabotaged the fascist occupation of europe. crucially the underground understood itself to be a culture; to be not only a community and a way of life but a sensibility that could realise the secret subtext of utopian liberation in popular culture. subversion and resistance are key themes in the work of the characters who once dwelt in new york city’s underground. for some it was a pre-punk insistence on creating art despite technical limitation, in effect subverting the traditional emphasis placed on skill and hard work, and for others it was the very real revolutionary struggle against the rising power of the bourgeoisie and the overbearing societal embracing of capitalism. those who dwelt in the underground lived lifestyles that were seen as appalling by mainstream society. this bohemian lifestyle of drugs and the wholesale avoidance and rejection of work or traditional career-paths defined the new york underground of the early s. the idealised role of a street hustler prowling the pavement searching for excitement and just enough money to get by was brought to prominence in the writings of william s. burroughs and the beats. this desire for experience outside the mainstream world was another defining factor of the early underground scenes. through living a life that existed beneath the goings on of ‘square’ society, underground artists hoped to liberate both themselves and art itself from the shackles of historical responsibility and tradition. with this came the subversion of class, race and sexual norms and the birth of the duncan reekie, subversion: the definitive history of underground cinema (london: wallflower press, )., - . counter-cultural movement which would emerge in the mainstream youth culture of the late s. the protagonists of this thesis were at the forefront of the early developments in underground counter-culture, psychedelia, revolutionary politics, popular music, and pop art and experienced what many describe as the pinnacle of the twentieth century avant-garde. despite being a part of all of this activity – which would bring many an artist to international stardom – and even in some ways greatly influencing much of it, being a part of its roots, the protagonists of this thesis remain creatures of the underground, their work only being recognised by those who care to search beneath the hype and the historical exaggeration. after all, it is always the victor – in this case those who emerged most commercially successful from the underground counter-culture and into the mainstream – who define the contents of our history books. the protagonists of this thesis are the underdogs of american avant-garde history, and perhaps the underground is defined by its constituents being best described as ‘underdog’, a term which suggests persistence and integrity in the face of a distinct lack of suitable recognition. for the period in focus, the word underground had a distinct meaning: a network of artists, writers and all manner of people working beneath the status-quo to subvert traditional values and transform their society. being underground meant taking things into your own hands, creating your own media; your own art; a distinct and unique culture. for this reason underground culture was, and remains manifested in different forms dependent on the host culture and environment of its protagonists. the underground culture of s and s new york city was not a monoculture and it ran in express opposition to the notion of monoculture. this scene in many ways reflected its environment, the heterophony of many different languages being spoken all at once, a vast melting pot of sounds and cultures. homogeneity had no place in this culture, it was heterogeneous in sound and vision, but in no way hetero- normative in its outward appearance and sexual orientation. the underground of new york city was both a product of and a direct opposition to its host society, and perhaps this is what best defines the nebulous term ‘underground’: underground culture exists beneath the mainstream of its host culture, but it is still made up of products of this mainstream culture and it runs in the same direction through the inevitability of time. the underground of new york city, like its vast underground network of railways, was built by new york and the people who populate it and migrate to it, and while it often went unnoticed beneath the population’s feet, it brought them to new places if they cared to descend and buy the ticket. it is my intention with this thesis to shed light on the underdog, a very australian way of viewing american cultural history, by ignoring the tall poppies and admiring the weeds. the backdrop of this thesis is manhattan, and in particular the sprawling downtown ghettos of the lower east side during the s, a place where much of the radical underground first spread its roots. radical manhattan manhattan’s radical heritage stretches as far back as the eighteenth century, and perhaps came to prominence most openly in the s when union groups, suffragettes, anarchists, communists and all other manner of political groups began to take to the streets, rising with the giddy rush of the roaring s. this was the early era of jazz and the world of f. scott fitzgerald’s great gatsby. it was a time where the great anarchist emma goldman had made greenwich village her stomping ground and swathes of african-americans left the south and brought the blues to the city in search of work in its many factories. the ensuing decades of the s and s all but crushed these early dissident movements before a rebirth, after world war two, occurred in the gleaming brass of bebop and the bad boy pin-cushion antics of charlie parker and miles davis. from the hard linear rhythms of bebop formed the beat poets, and other white artists found a new voice in the folk music of their forefathers via the musicological wanderings of alan lomax, samuel charters, or harry smith and his american folkways compendium. innovations in technology during the war also brought about a new approach to composition utilising newly available synthesisers and vast computer-like machines dedicated solely to the creation of new sounds. manhattan, and in particular the work of the columbia- princeton electronic music centre (in operation from ), would quickly become a centre for this new music with composers such as richard maxfield, morton feldman, frederic rzewski, john cage and others reinventing themselves with new found joy at the possibilities these machines could open for composition. manhattan has always been a centre for innovation and creativity, and the vast melting pot downtown of the grid flourished throughout the s and into the s. the downtown scene in the s was fertile ground for the creation of new and original music, and the violin, along with other bowed-string instruments, was crucial to many of the new sounds. it featured prominently in psychedelic folk bands such as the holy modal rounders and the fugs, being used primarily as a tool for satirizing the idiosyncratic folk fiddling of the south to aid in their cynical commentary of american society. the holy modal rounders and the fugs were essentially interchangeable groups, sharing members and performing at the same gigs alongside other provocatively named psychedelic groups such as the falling spikes and the theatre of eternal music or ‘dream syndicate’. the fugs were formed by tuli kupferberg and ed sanders in . sanders was the owner of a popular ‘head’ shop in greenwich village (peace eye bookstore), and published poet who, inspired by the success of bob dylan, decided to put together a group with other likeminded beatniks and hippies who, like him, had no idea how to play musical instruments. the holy modal rounders had a similar birth, with both members also being members of the fugs and vice-versa. these bands were a heady mixture of political satire, folk music, and hard driving garage rock, a kind of proto-punk music not dissimilar to other bands that would appear throughout the united prendergast, the ambient century., . refer to the discography section of this thesis for recommendations of fugs and holy modal rounders recordings. states during the s. this music was one of many strong roots that surfaced from the lower east side’s underground scene in the early-mid s. for a short period the heterogeneous nature of the underground brought the fugs, falling spikes and ‘free-form groups’ together on the same bill at various performances including the ‘new york underground -hour spectacle’ curated by poet and falling spikes/theatre of eternal music collaborator, angus maclise. ‘happenings’ such as this paired bands and other musical combos with visual artists and filmmakers in what are now seen as the early incarnations of multi-media events. multimedia events soon became a major part of the pop art movement in new york, spearheaded by andy warhol and his factory of freaks and underground characters. andy warhol, publicly, had very little to do with music over most of his career, but he did dabble in music during the s. his first forays into pop music occurred in when he attempted to assemble a band consisting of his local artist friends. the band consisted of artists claes and patti oldenburg, warhol and lucas samaras on vocals; op-artist larry poons on guitar; sculptor and later henry flynt collaborator walter de maria on drums; la monte young on saxophone and writer jasper johns as in-house lyricist. this attempt to form a band failed (although it is extraordinary to imagine what this combination must have sounded like together) due to young’s insistence on not being involved in the commercial realms of pop music presentation, however, warhol worked once again with young in on an installation for the second annual new york film festival. this installation involved several of warhol’s films cut down to manageable sizes and looped endlessly at the same time on various surfaces. young responded to this by making music to accompany it as a realisation of his composition # which, through a score consisting only of a horizontal line drawn on a white paper card, prompts the performer to create something as a reaction to the visual stimulus. in this case young and zazeela, “performed a single sustained tone on a bowed brass mortar. then, dubbing johan and will cameron kugelberg, angus maclise: dreamweapon (new york: boo-hooray, )., . branden joseph, ""my mind split open": andy warhol's exploding plastic inevitable," grey room, no. ( )., . a separate but identical recording to accompany each of warhol’s films, young had all four tapes broadcast simultaneously and at an earsplitting volume.” warhol’s musical collaborations did not come to the fore, however, until he took on the management of a group called the velvet underground (formerly known as the falling spikes). by the mid s warhol was already being heralded as one of the greatest living artists in the united states, and indeed the western world. despite his relative fame, or perhaps because of it, he surrounded himself with characters from the underground. in particular, he employed theatre of eternal music member billy linich (now known as billy name) as one of his assistants, and kept close association with fluxus impresario george maciunas. for a time it seemed that the orbit around warhol consisted of many shadowy underground figures who later made it to mainstream approval and even celebrity such as lou reed and john cale of the velvet underground, but for the most part the protagonists of this thesis had little or nothing to do with warhol other than a very cursory involvement in certain events. for instance, during a spell of hepatitis brought on by his increasing drug dependency john cale was forced to call on old friend, the violinist, activist and philosopher henry flynt, to replace him for a series of performances at the dom. flynt’s involvement did not last long, however, with reed eventually attacking flynt for adding in one-too-many country fiddle licks during one particular gig. perhaps warhol’s most important contribution to the underground in manhattan was his financing of the velvet underground’s first album the velvet underground & nico (verve, ) , fatefully pairing them with german-born starlet, and junky, nico. while this debut failed commercially, it became an immense influence on generations of musicians, and its melding of garage pop with the droning sounds of new york’s minimalist composers proved to be the most indelible impression made by the manhattan underground. the velvet joseph, ‘“my mind split open,”’ - . john and victor bockris cale, what's welsh for zen?: the autobiography of john cale (new york: bloomsbury, )., . the velvet underground, the velvet underground and nico (polygram records, ), compact disc. underground’s influence during their time is not to be underestimated in regards to the various underground scenes of the s and it is worth briefly discussing the spread of similar virulent strains in other corners of the globe. the tendrils of the underground on the west coast of the united states the underground had developed in a slightly different way to new york city. from the beatniks flourished a strong scene of social misfits in the los angeles area called ‘freaks’ who saw their most prominent musical expression in the avant-garde antics of frank zappa and the mothers of invention. these freaks moved north to san francisco and spawned the most famous strains of hippiedom, however, before this happened the music was harsh and atonal, inspired by the achievements of the first velvet underground record and the cacophony of composers such as edgard varèse and charles ives. frank zappa’s childhood friend don van vliet, aka captain beefheart, also formed a band melding similar influences, but to less universal approval. another university of california composition graduate and former new york avant-gardiste, joseph byrd, formed a group titled the united states of america, who specialised in a beatles-inspired epic psychedelia that blended post-sgt pepper’s lonely hearts club band rock with the polytonality of charles ives and the cacophony of stockhausen’s hymnen. the united states of america also prominently featured the violin of gordon marron who made good use of ring modulators and other new technologies in his practice. not surprisingly, zappa and the velvet underground were signed to the same record label for their debut releases, verve records, and in a further twist of underground serendipity nico allegedly even attempted to join the united states of america at one stage in . the united states of america, the united states of america (united states: columbia, ), vinyl lp. in japan the velvet underground’s darker, more dissonant resonances would inspire the work of revolutionary groups such as les rallizés dénudés, whose plodding feedback soaked noise rock sounds contemporary and no less revolutionary today. and before les rallizés dénudés struck their first dark chord, japanese fluxus-inspired performance groups such as group ongaku and hi-red centre would bring new york’s avant-garde anarchy to the streets of tokyo, and feature prominently the violin of takehisa kosugi. perhaps most famously japan’s underground is forever linked to the manhattan underground, and even directly to early underground violin performance – henry flynt’s first performances were made at concerts in yoko ono’s church street loft – by one of her most famous children, yoko ono. by the late s germany too began to fly the freak flag high with the birth of krautrock out of various student communes, revolutionary organisations and conservatories throughout the country. one group in particular, faust, were intensely influenced by the first velvet underground record and later collaborated with the young violinist who gave the velvet underground their name, tony conrad. the militant amon düül commune in munich gave birth to two ensembles, amon düül and amon düül ii, the latter featuring the wild violin of founding member chris karrer. the violin appeared as a prominent feature, often altered beyond recognition, in many krautrock groups during this period. this is but a scratch on the surface of the underground cultures that developed in direct response to that of new york city and its older cousin across the atlantic, london. in london, the underground grew in tandem with new york as british youth became fascinated with american blues records, the delay-soaked ska music and pulsing sound systems of recently-arrived jamaican immigrants, indian classical music and, like the americans, they too found inspiration in the consciousness-freeing effects of narcotics and the rebellious call to arms of revolutionary politics. the ladbroke grove underground gave birth to various highly hadaka no rallizes/les rallizes denudes, yodo-go-a-go-go/oboreru tobenai tori wa mizutani ga hitsuyo/flightless bird needs water wings (unknown: th avenue freeze out, ), compact disc. julian cope, "experimental japan ( - )," in japrocksampler: how the post-war japanese blew their minds on rock 'n' roll (london: bloomsbury, )., - . radicalised groups such as hawkwind and high tide, both of which featured the inimitable violin of simon house. free jazz would also make its mark across the atlantic, with british musicians such as guitarists keith rowe and derek bailey, taking inspiration from the likes of ornette coleman and albert ayler. blending this decidedly african-american influence with the radical politics and free-form improvisations of their own avant-garde luminaries, such as cornelius cardew, these british musicians took free improvisation out of jazz and into something entirely other. perhaps the most prominent british free improvisation group was amm, which often featured saxophonist lou gare’s creaking violin. black and ethnic musics were never far from the thoughts of the s underground, and its more extreme elements inspired most prominently another region of the united states: detroit. free jazz music and the afro-futurist world of sun ra galvanised the detroit underground, like no other music at the time, and is largely responsible for the birth of incendiary groups such as the mc (motor city five) and the stooges. the stooges also recorded john cale’s droning viola in the late s with their debut album, once again indelibly imbedding the sound of the new york underground into the history of counter-cultural music. like these detroit groups, black music is at the root of new york city’s underground culture in the s, and the violin played a small part in this. eternal blues: la monte young, henry flynt, free jazz & afro-nationalism while cale, house and karrer later took the violin and viola into all new sonic territories, it began with an influential figure who played a large part in bringing the violin to the forefront of manhattan’s underground: la monte young. during the s young studied saxophone, musicology and composition at the university of california los angeles. here he met, and performed with, some of the future greats of jazz music and developed a name for amm, ammmusic (united kingdom: elektra, ), vinyl lp. himself as a gifted alto and soprano player within the growing, more eurocentric, ‘cool jazz’ scene. for a time young showed promise as an up-and-coming star amongst an increasingly multi-racial milieu, however, upon hearing the drone of the tambura in a recording of sarod master ali akbar khan, young’s musical direction would begin to change drastically. the drone of indian classical music influenced a large number of jazz musicians toward the end of the s, including the modal jazz of john coltrane, miles davis and early ornette coleman recordings. young and coleman – along with other future free jazz originators don cherry and eric dolphy – performed together on various occasions before young moved to new york city in . in that same year coleman released a recording that would change the trajectory of american music, and particularly underground music, free jazz. previous albums such as the shape of jazz to come proved far too brutal for the ears of west coast jazz club bookers and critics, and coleman, like so many black artists before him, had made the move to new york. the jazz scene in new york had grown to be more hard-edged than that of its west coast cousin. the ferocity of hard-bop, the modal jazz of john coltrane, free jazz of coleman, and the harmonically complex works of cecil taylor, charles mingus and sun ra had brought jazz to a crossroad in the s, and innovation became the aim of many of its most prominent performers. from the release of free jazz the new black music was given a name and a whole new scene of loft gigs and self-released recordings began to spring up in new york. various small musician-run labels were created in order to bring out small runs of cutting edge music to be purchased at loft performances and in the occasional local record shop. some of these obscure labels, such as leroi jones’ (as imamu amiri baraka was known at the time) jihad and drummer rashied ali’s survival portrayed conspicuous musical, spiritual and political meanings in their names and outputs. allison welch, "meethings along the edge," american music , no. ( )., . ornette coleman, free jazz (united states: atlantic ), compact disc. ornette coleman, the shape of jazz to come (united states: atlantic, ), compact disc. the underground jazz scene, much like the wider artistic underground in new york, consisted of a group of musicians and artists well ahead of their time. it was a place for the development of new ideas that had often remained unrecognized by the wider public for many years, but incubated in the many specific neighbourhoods of manhattan’s lower east side. this neighbourhood specificity – another quality very distinct to new york’s cultural make-up – further contributed to the anti-hegemonic nature of manhattan’s underground culture. the free jazz loft scene was a fierce example of this, and while it consisted of many musicians who would go on to greater prominence such as archie shepp, rashied ali and coleman himself, it also consisted of more obscure outsiders such as albert ayler and his quintet, which featured violinist michael sampson performing sawing folk-like passages. the violin often seems to appear in the margins of new york city’s underground during this period. perhaps the use of such a traditional instrument so far outside its recognised boundaries further added to the obscurity of those who employed it. another prominent black violinist performing in this scene was billy bang, who, until his recent death ( april, ), continued to perform cutting edge improvisatory music in new york city and abroad. another was leroy jenkins, a violinist whose playing reached out from the jazz community and into the wider avant-garde as a distinct hybrid of classical technique, folk timbre and a deep sense of swing. ornette coleman was also inspired to write works for violin in the s after hearing the extended techniques of judson dance theatre and tone roads ensemble violinist malcolm goldstein. a strong sense of african american identity and an element of afro-nationalist politics began to emerge throughout this milieu. the underground, like the avant-garde, has its nomenclature based in military terms, with the underground referring to the anti-nazi resistance groups of world war two. such connotations seem fitting in reference to the black underground in new york city during the bernard gendron, "after the october revolution," in sound commitments, ed. robert adlington (new york: oxford university press, )., bernard gendron, “after the october revolution,” s and s, with militant groups rising in resistance towards racism and persecution from the white majority all over the united states. during the latter half of the s, a cluster of black revolutionary groups were making themselves heard in the streets, and on the radios and televisions of a still largely racially segregated – even if in a less obvious manner in the north – america. these groups came together to form the black panther party and other similar organisations, which began to take the issue of civil rights into their own hands with organised community services and – to the horror of white america – their own army. an important artist and writer linked to the black panther movement and to the new black arts was amiri baraka (at that time known as leroi jones). baraka’s writings, such as the highly influential blues people ( ) , influenced many musicians throughout new york city’s underground, including white musicians like henry flynt. indeed flynt played a minor part in the early struggles of the afro-nationalist movement as a columnist for the worker’s world party’s newsletter, worker’s world. the communist worker’s world party (wwp) took the line of the comintern which declared, in , the oppressed “negro” of the south – or “black belt” as the comintern described it – as a state within a state which must fight for independence against american ruling-class imperialism. the wwp is purported to have been in open support of the militarisation of the afro-american struggle that the panthers and other revolutionary groups espoused. flynt first came to the attention of the wwp by sending them an article about a civil rights demonstration in his hometown of greensboro, north carolina. from there flynt came to prominence in the organisation as a writer on the struggles for socialist liberation in africa, and an irritant to the organisation with his insistence that the party recognise african-american popular musics as the most appropriate blueprint for a communist cultural revolution. flynt’s articles were often ibid., imamu amiri baraka, blues people: negro music in white america (new york: w. morrow, ). benjamin piekut, "demolish serious culture," in experimentalism otherwise (berkeley: university of california press, )., benjamin, piekut, “demolish serious culture”, presented as highly stylised brochures designed by fluxus (named because their work was always in a state of flux or constant change) leader george maciunas, and were as a result often seen as another prank pulled by the group. the most famous so-called ‘prank’ was flynt’s picketing of the new york premiere of stockhausen’s originale. as will be discussed later in the thesis flynt intended this protest to be a serious attack on what he saw as a concert of music promoting apparent imperialist west german culture. the protest was largely ignored, but it was witnessed from across the street by none other than amiri baraka , and those who did notice saw it – much to flynt’s disappointment – as part of the performance of originale which starred many of flynt’s colleagues in the fluxus scene. henry flynt himself came to some prominence in the fluxus milieu with his provocative lectures, pamphlets designed by maciunas such as the infamous communists must give revolutionary leadership in culture (which was incidentally rejected by the wwp for inclusion in one of its newsletters ), and his various performances of ‘word score’ and other aleatory game pieces. indeed flynt made his new york loft concert debut in with a free improvised fluxus-style performance at yoko ono’s loft in front of an audience including john cage – who was impressed until discovering flynt’s main inspiration for the performance was ornette coleman and bo diddley. flynt, however, did not consider himself a member of the fluxus movement and declared himself an exponent firstly of ‘concept art’ and then of ‘anti- art’. flynt was by no means the only controversial violinist to be involved in this milieu. in the circles of the fluxus scene artists such as nam june paik deconstructed the concept of the violin concerto as a spectacle by performing a work in which a violin is physically destroyed rather than played. bruce nauman, another fluxus member, also performed a work for detuned according to fluxus folklore, flynt approached baraka and asked him to join the seemingly righteous protest, baraka declined, declaiming “but stockhausen is a radical!” piekut, “demolish serious culture”, . ibid., violin entitled violin tuned dead ( ), which involved the constant striking of the de-tuned strings at even intervals with the bow. this piece was composed in response to another composer closely affiliated with fluxus: la monte young. young made his most prominent statement at this time with a piece, dedicated to his friend henry, called x (any integer) for henry flynt. this piece consists of a simple direction to strike a cluster of sounds for a number of exact repetitions decided by the performer, lasting for a minimum of one hour. young was initially fascinated with the twelve-tone system of the viennese school, and eventually grew more and more interested in the comparatively (when held up against the compositional neuroses of arnold schoenberg and alban berg) concise, primitive brevity of the music of anton webern. at about the same time he became deeply interested in the classical music of india, particularly its droning, improvised qualities. before, and during, his time amongst the fluxus milieu, young began to compose works of increasingly minimalist, improvised and droning structures. arguably his most influential work is trio for strings ( ), a work based in the serial techniques of the second viennese school but consisting only of long tones held for set durations, making it the work commonly seen as the seed of the so-called ‘minimalist’ movement. however, for the protagonists of this study, trio for strings was perhaps not the most important work but rather la monte young’s early experiments in noise and amplification such as poem for chairs, table, benches etc. and sounds. sounds is an early experiment in the use of high amplification and tape that resounds throughout the new york underground. consisting of two separate sounds created by moving select objects across a pane of glass, sounds is performed by recording these sounds to tape and then playing them back at a high branden w. joseph, beyond the dream syndicate: tony conrad and the arts after cage (a "minor" history) (new york: zone books, )., . john schaefer, "who is la monte young," in sound and light, ed. william duckworth (london: associated university press, )., branden w. joseph, beyond the dream syndicate: tony conrad and the arts after cage (new york: zone books, )., volume level to the audience. this piece had a profound effect on the later work of tony conrad. the la monte young scene: drugs, downtown and hindustani music the scene around la monte young was an exciting one for a young artist seeking out danger and excitement. young was, by all accounts, one of the more prevalent drug dealers in the tribeca district and his loft was always a place for musical and psychic experimentation. for a period of time in the s young and his colleagues had access to some of the best quality drugs and the most cutting edge music in manhattan. however, these free times were eventually interrupted by raids and a subsequent stint in jail for young, after which he and zazeela moved to their current residence on church street. at the end of the s young was largely responsible for exposing the young artists of new york to the classical music of north india by helping the somewhat obscure indian singer pandit pran nath travel to north america and allowing him to teach students in his loft. pandit pran nath had a massive effect on the new york underground, early minimalism – most famously terry riley who spent many years as one of his students – and, in particular, the violin practices of henry flynt. pandit pran nath was a singer of the kirana style of north indian classical music. the son of a wealthy hindu family, he ran away from home to study as a disciple of the kirana guru abdul wahid khan. khan was a sufi ‘ustaad’ who was part of the ancient tradition of gharana – music guilds which encompassed a mystic and deeply spiritual attitude towards pedagogy and performance. once nath completed his studies with khan, he travelled to delhi to teach at the university of delhi, continuing the tradition of the kirana gharana and becoming known joseph, beyond the dream syndicate, . john cale and victor bockris, what’s welsh for zen?, . cale, what’s welsh for zen?, . throughout india as the leading exponent of this style of singing. the kirana style of singing is characterised by an emphasis on clear and expressive intonation, a preference for slow steady tempos, an avoidance of fast and intricate rhythms, and the use of the hindustani form of solfege known as sārgām within the lyrics as a form of rhythmic expression. pandit pran nath is known for bringing his own idiosyncratic style to kirana singing which emphasises and elongates the mīnd (meend) – sliding or connecting between pitches, similar in some aspects to glissandi in western music. furthermore, pandit pran nath, like all hindustani singers, had an approach to improvisation that had a profound effect on young and others in the new york underground: he would select only a few pitches to work with and only gradually introduced new pitches over extended periods of time. pandit pran nath soon became more deeply involved in spiritual matters and moved to tepashwari cave-temple where he lived for five years as a sadhu, a naked singer-saint covered only in ash and singing only for god. as told in the documentary in between the notes: a portrait of pandit pran nath ( ) having no tambura at hand, he would often sing a single note for many hours with only the stream outside his window as accompaniment. in the s khan encouraged pandit pran nath to settle down, marry and continue to pass on the traditions of the kirana gharana. pandit pran nath once again returned to delhi to marry and teach. in delhi he quickly gained a reputation as a rebel with his highly traditional and religious approach to raga, at odds with the new developments in indian music at the time. he soon found his techniques were appealing to a new generation of western musicians, who in the s had looked to india and asia in search of consciousness expansion and new musical ideas. young and zazeela became life-long disciples of pandit pran nath and have continued his traditions – since his death from complications due to parkinson’s disease in – to this day through their mela foundation. welch, “meetings along the edge,” william farley, in-between the notes: a portrait of pandit pran nath (other minds, ). ibid. in young formed the theatre of eternal music with partner marian zazeela on voice, poet angus maclise on percussion, young welsh émigré john cale on viola and soprano saxophonist terry jennings, amongst others. harvard mathematics graduate and violinist tony conrad soon joined the group in , bringing his violin and his mathematical prowess to the ensemble with great effect. the theatre of eternal music would perform long improvised pieces utilising high volume, drones, indian inspired vocal work and coltrane inspired soprano and sopranino saxophone extemporisations. a bootleg recording from entitled b flat dorian blues (discovered in an unofficial recording entitled the theatre of eternal music [ ]) displays well the droning viola of cale and the relentless arrhythmic drumming of maclise laying a bed upon which young’s wild sopranino saxophone lies. from this, the arrival of conrad heralded a period in which the ensemble began to distil their compositions into monumental drones improvised on a strict set of rules based around mathematical frequency ratios devised from divisions and additions of prime numbers. the ensemble began to perform in just intonation, a form of tuning inspired by non-western music; it is made possible through complex mathematics, and attempts to include all potential degrees of the octave. the theatre of eternal music – or dream syndicate as conrad, maclise and cale nicknamed it – proved to be a breeding ground of inspiration for all corners of the new york underground and its influence is still evident today. to this day young hoards the recordings of the dream syndicate’s performances and rehearsals in his archives, refusing to commercially release them despite requests from conrad and cale to do so (in young’s defence he rarely releases any recordings of his work in a commercial fashion). there is therefore little tangible evidence to display the full effect of the ensemble’s experiments, however, one commercially available recording exists – released from conrad and cale’s archives – titled day of niagara, and dated the only version of this “ultra-rare bootleg lp” recording i could find was a downloadable .zip file found on a blog dedicated to rare avant-garde and psychedelic music called fm shades. fm shades, "theatre of eternal music - ( 's nyc drone underground)," in fm shades ( ). to , which provides an example of the enormous wall of sound that contemporary audiences described. for anyone who witnessed the theatre of eternal music performing during this time it was by all accounts a confronting and semi-religious experience. the ensemble performed at volume levels in excess of decibels so that their complex harmonic effects would emerge in thrilling detail. in beyond the dream syndicate joseph quotes conrad about the necessity of this kind of extreme volume: the necessity of doing that, was...to bring the audience’s hearing up to the point of possible distortion level so that it would be possible for the audience to hear some of the modulation products, the heterodyning that occurs in the nonlinear mode. you can overdrive the ears, and then you hear all of the stuff, the difference tones and everything much more clearly. in , during the brief period in which terry riley was a member of the toem, the ensemble performed at the expanded cinema festival, at the film-makers’ cinematheque – an important site in new york city for its fertile underground film scene. the performance was described by one vogue magazine reviewer as “a long, harsh drone, not bagpipes, not buzz- saws, not amplified mosquitoes; more deliberate, more unequivocal, a distant juggernaut of noise.” for the members of the group too, being within this ‘juggernaut of noise’ was indeed something akin to a religious experience and it arguably sowed the seed for all of their future musical actions. the great wall of sound created by the group reminded conrad and cale, not just of young’s sounds – a piece which arguably inspired both of them to get involved with young and his ensemble – but also their treasured phil spector records, which they listened to at their ludlow street apartment. this parallel cannot be ignored, as both cale and conrad cale/conrad/maclise/young/zazeela, inside the dream syndicate volume : day of niagara (atlanta: table of the elements, ), compact disc. joseph, beyond the dream syndicate, ibid., went on to play loud and uncompromised rock music up until the present. this wall of sound, this niagara falls of droning noise is unfortunately only stored publicly in one – out of press due to young’s legal insistence – cd recording, but its power, even through the static hiss of tape, is unquestionable. theatre of eternal music performances, such as day of niagara are part of the larger ‘eternal music’ works of la monte young, many of which continue to evolve today from performance to performance. day of niagara is an excerpt from a larger work entitled the tortoise, his dreams and journeys, which young states as beginning in and continuing to the present time. its name is derived from a calendar devised by percussionist angus maclise – to which young and zazeela still live, including its readjustment of day lengths from twenty-four to thirty-six hours and its renaming of the seven-day calendar cycle with names such as ‘day of niagara’, ‘day of the smoking plain’, ‘dierdricsday’ and so on – and in full reads as ‘ iv c. . – . pm nyc day of niagara’. it is a piece that is at once startling in its timeless nature, sounding as much like an out-there artefact of the s, as it does something from a future yet to be experienced. the sound of the ensemble is immense and incredibly heavy in its own right, with thick intoxicating drones from conrad and cale’s instruments interplaying with the vocal intonations of zazeela and young. the low fidelity quality of the recording unfortunately hampers the overall effect, nonetheless, at proper volume the drone creates a mirage of multiple overtones and timbrel textures that shift at a glacial pace. tonally and harmonically the piece is static, but the texture of the sound is not, with various changes in bow pressure and bow changes creating a sound akin to shifting ice. it is at once a product of the seedy new york underground as well as the endless expanses of the plains that young grew up on in bern, idaho. the theatre of eternal music appears to have created pieces that were subversive in their use of extreme volume and non-western tuning systems and highly transcendental in their employment of trance and psychedelic imagery. day of niagara was recorded in young and zazeela’s loft at church street in the village, and it was in this la monte young, "on table of the elements cd "day of niagara" april , ," http://www.melafoundation.org/statemen.htm; ibid. ibid. setting, and others of a similar ilk that the theatre of eternal music would rehearse and present their long drug-fuelled performances. young and zazeela, along with yoko ono and several others – including op art pioneer larry poons and black mask & up against the wall motherfuckers anarchist ben morea – had a pioneering role in the use of alternative spaces, and this was one of the most important elements to the fermentation of the potent new york city underground sounds. the use of alternative spaces, perhaps inspired by the transformation of the urban landscape suggested by guy debord and the situationists, proved to be an appropriate platform for the presentation of subversive arts and the underground thrived amongst the lofts, galleries and cafes of downtown manhattan. much like the loft scene nurturing the music of underground black artists, other artists also embraced this use of space. disused factory spaces were being marketed throughout the late s and early s as ‘loft’ apartments, the perfect space for an artist or dance studio. while it was often illegal to reside in these spaces as they often lacked running water, heating, gas or reliable electricity, artists and musicians began to occupy them, using them both as performance and living spaces. yoko ono became well known for hosting performances in her loft on chambers street, including groundbreaking performances by john cage, la monte young and fluxus. as stated earlier, young and zazeela’s loft on church street proved to be of considerable importance to the protagonists of this thesis. for this couple it was important that they had the freedom to perform their sound and light pieces for long durations, and conventional performance spaces were simply not amenable to this. in their own space they could host performances that lasted for several hours without the restrictions of opening and closing times, licensing and employee costs. young and zazeela also began to present events in other alternative spaces such as galleries. the - gallery on th avenue hosted performances of the theatre of eternal music on thursdays and sundays where the group and their audience were free to sit on the floor and enjoy the unique lighting and long- form music in an appropriate level of comfort. it was at one of these performances that a young musician by the name of john cale experienced young’s music in the flesh for the first time. john cale: finds his new home in a warm drone the welsh violist, pianist and composer john cale first travelled to america in on a leonard bernstein scholarship to study composition with aaron copland at the berkshire music centre in tanglewood, massachusetts. cale soon became restless in the stifling academic environment there and travelled to new york city to immerse himself in the avant-garde. his new york debut was his participation in a -hour performance of erik satie’s vexations, which included notable musicians such as david tudor taking turns at the piano. through his involvement in the fluxus movement he met la monte young and soon met another young university dropout, lou reed, with whom he formed the velvet underground. cale’s experiments in the s both inside and outside of the theatre of eternal music echo those of conrad. using the high volume amplification and contact microphones he had used in the theatre of eternal music, cale – under the influence of conrad – also began to experiment with the physical viola itself, eventually filing down his bridge and stringing the instrument with guitar strings so that it would sound like a “jet-engine”. a series of recordings was recently released on table of the elements and extracted from tony conrad’s archives; it comprises cale’s early experiments during his time in the dream syndicate titled dream interpretation , sun blindness music and stainless gamelan. frank j. oteri, "la monte young and marian zazeela at the dream house," new music box( ), http://www.newmusicbox.org/assets/ /interview_young.pdf., keith potter, four musical minimalists (cambridge: cambridge university press, ), . john cale, dream interpretation: inside the dream syndicate volume (atlanta: table of the elements, ), compact disc. these recordings collect private solo performances of cale on viola, guitar and organ, as well as performances with other members of the dream syndicate, such as conrad and angus maclise. a beautiful and striking example of cale collaborating with conrad is a three-minute drone duo entitled a midnight rain of green wrens at the world’s tallest building. recorded in shortly before cale’s ousting from the velvet underground, it is an early example of the warmth that can be expressed through the buzz of rough amplification. cale had already spent many hours listening to conrad’s collection of rock ‘n’ roll s in the apartment they both shared, and had grown quite a fascination with the music when fellow university dropout lou reed was asked by his then employers, pop music publishing company pickwick, to put together a band to perform his surprise hit the ostrich. cale and conrad, along with sculptor and composer walter de maria, purely by accident and circumstance (they had adequately long hair), became the perfect choice to serve pickwick’s purposes. to solve the basic problem that cale and conrad couldn’t play guitars, reed tuned a guitar to a single note, a sharp. this greatly impressed cale and conrad as it strangely echoed the kinds of tunings they were using in the theatre of eternal music. walter de maria was given the job of drummer – a position he later returned to with henry flynt – and reed dubbed them the primitives. this exercise in commercial music brought together the great musical minds of reed and cale. along with angus maclise and an old friend of reed’s from syracuse university, sterling morrison, the first incarnation of the velvet underground: the falling spikes, was born. the velvet underground – as they were named after the book of the same name which conrad had lent to reed – produced two of the most influential and original rock albums of all time, the velvet underground and nico, and white light/white heat ( , john cale, sun blindness music (atlanta: table of the elements, ), compact disc. john cale, stainless gamelan: inside the dream syndicate volume (atlanta: table of the elements, ), compact disc. cale, dream interpretation. verve) . a large part of the unique sounds created by the velvet underground permeated through the viola playing of john cale. cale’s viola playing on these albums is, for the most part, savage. the droning, scraping sound of the viola brought a quality to the velvet underground hitherto unheard in rock music. this distorted wall of sound with its overtones, and mystic undertones has proven to be of great inspiration to bands ever since, from the punk explosion of the late s to s shoegaze, to the current drone metal and ‘post-rock’ scenes. recordings of cale and conrad performing together in conrad’s apartment, before and during the formation of the velvet underground display the similarities and mutual influence of these two men. for a period of time, during their mutual tenure in the primitives and the theatre of eternal music, conrad and cale lived together in an apartment in ludlow street on the lower east side, a place which cale describes in detail in his autobiography what’s welsh for zen? : tony conrad and i holed up in his ghetto apartment on ludlow street on the lower east side near delancey street. the street was usually in a state of disorder, littered with debris and garbage from the surrounding tenements, most buildings having no heat, hot water or electricity. the main form of defence against intrusion was a large mattress spring locked over the fire- escape window, which allowed us to have the window open in the heat of summer without making it an invitation to robbery. the block had a generous allotment of polyglot populace, consisting of puerto ricans, chinese and hassidim. the streetlights didn’t work effectively and at night the chinese merchant would be huddled in the dim light of his store as you passed to climb the five floors through a fusillade of drunken languages. the landlord had a habit of collecting the rent with a . protruding from his belt... it was in this setting of urban decay and intense heterophony that cale refined his viola sound and experimented heavily in new sounds and new drugs. many of his experiments during his ludlow street days were recorded to tape and they display a young artist exploring the sonic the velvet underground, white light/white heat (united states: polygram records, ), compact disc. cale, what’s welsh for zen, . possibilities of all the instruments at his disposal, in particular organ, viola and guitar. he, like conrad, was also involved in many of the soundtrack recordings for underground films by jack smith and piero heliczer, who lived in the apartment above them. angus maclise also lived at ludlow street in an apartment he paid for by renovating its interior. furthermore, jack smith’s star actor mario (aka maria) montez also lived in ludlow street, in a gaudy apartment decorated in gilt, purple and turquoise and replete with camp accessories. this building remained an important site for this scene throughout the s, as conrad eventually departed and lou reed moved in with cale. in the late s cale also began producing albums for various artists including iggy pop & the stooges’ debut self-titled album (elektra, ), in which cale appears performing his droning viola on we will fall. piekut points out the new york underground elements present here in his analysis of cale’s performance on we will fall in his the chapter ‘epilogue: experimentalism meets (iggy) pop’ from his book experimentalism otherwise ( ): ...it may be more revealing to consider the actual pitches cale chose to play. the dominant-tonic (c-f) dyad that he sounds throughout the ten-minute track does not stand out particularly, but when the overdubbed “solo” line begins at about : , cale’s emphasis on scale degrees , , m , and indicates a clear continuing attachment to the pitch vocabulary of the theatre of eternal music. the works in which cale’s viola features most prominently however, is his production and involvement in the solo albums of former andy warhol model nico, entitled the marble index (elektra, ) and desert shore (reprise, ) and later in the s with her swansong the end. in these albums cale’s viola takes on a more noticeably avant-garde classical style tyler hubby, "tony conrad ludlow street field recording," (youtube, ). the stooges, the stooges (united states: elektra, ), compact disc., track . benjamin piekut, "epilogue: experimentalism meets (iggy) pop," in experimentalism otherwise: the new york avant-garde and its limits (berkeley: university of california press, )., . nico, the frozen borderline - (rhino, ), compact discs. both the marble index and desert shore are compiled on this cd edition. ———, the end (japan: island records, ), vinyl lp. with disjointed melodies being recorded and then spliced together creating a disorienting effect that in many ways harks back to his experiments with conrad outside the theatre of eternal music. cale’s viola playing in these works is no longer along the lines of the static drones of his previous work, but rather passionate, romantic, folk-influenced fills more reminiscent of wagner than webern. by the end of the s manhattan’s underground was beginning to fragment as some artists became household names, and musicians like cale began to seek out work in the mainstream music industry. indeed cale eventually moved to the west coast and spent many years working as a music producer in los angeles while eking out his own prolific career as a solo artist of mixed commercial success. cale still displayed echoes of his theatre of eternal music past while recording these solo albums, a prominent example being the static droning viola of ‘wall’, an unreleased recording later added to a cd reissue of his vintage violence album ( ). lou reed spent several years in the netherworld of hard drugs and released further commercially unsuccessful velvet underground records – despite his obvious attempts to write music in a more saccharine sweet pop vein – before reaching international stardom with his reinvention as glam rock wild man in transformer (bmg/rca, ). unlike these artists, compromise never became an issue for la monte young and marian zazeela or for the main protagonists of this thesis. conclusion tony conrad and henry flynt each continue to make music that challenges mainstream perceptions of music’s place in society, and continue to brandish their own unique artform as a weapon against complacency and conservatism. they created their own musical languages in a john cale, vintage violence (sony, ), compact disc., track . lou reed, transformer (united states: bmg/rca, ), compact disc. crucible of creativity that has since disappeared under the constant progressive gentrification of manhattan and surrounding boroughs, but the spirit of their subversive work continues to live on amongst the underground music of later generations and is receiving somewhat of a revival in the second decade of the twenty-first century. the underground scene of s manhattan was a unique situation for the development of new ideas, and these ideas occurred all at once, piled upon each other, in much the same way the island itself was built. there was no standard formula, no culture in the traditional sense of the word. rather, it was a heterogeneous petri dish in which a gathering of mad scientists experimented with new sounds and a new society. this new society never eventuated, but the world of sound would never be the same, and many of these musicians continue to challenge the pervading western traditions, and in particular those pertaining to violin performance. the violin and the revolution came together in manhattan, and while it didn’t change the school of thought behind violin playing at all, it serves as a world of sound that the interested violinist can explore if they wish to descend. the violin can be used as much as an instrument to express subversive political ideas as its closeness to the human voice can speak directly to the heart and mind. henry flynt made this his modus operandi during the period in question. the violin too can be used to challenge society’s perception of beauty and order and its highly physical nature, when channelled through the microscope of electricity, continues to enlighten tony conrad’s audiences. the harmony of the spheres received an almighty slap in the s; it has never completely recovered and the violin played a small, but significant, part in this. chapter : methodology - researching revolutionary practices this thesis utilises a range of methods, employing a triangulation of musical analysis, discourse analysis and critical theory in order to outline the historical and socio-political basis for instrumental practices. the findings are then analysed and described in detail before being presented, in light of the work of relevant critical theorists, as a manifesto before finally being presented in light of my own practice, in the form of an auto-ethnographic reflection. the discourse analysis is of an interview i conducted with tony conrad; published interviews conducted with both conrad and henry flynt; and in-depth analyses of the writings of flynt, in particular those writings pertaining to his musical practice. from this the violin works of henry flynt and tony conrad will be discussed in detail, making up the bulk of the musical analyses, which includes original in-depth analysis of their practice through listening to, and reflecting upon, their recordings made between and . alongside the musical analysis, and at times weaving through it, are references to the various literature pertaining to flynt and conrad themselves, and to the underground scene they were a part of, thus painting a ‘style portrait’ of each. these case studies then form the basis for a manifesto: the critical theory section of the thesis, declaring underground violin performance practices to be the blueprint for a ‘radical’ approach to violin performance – radical violin performance practice – through a conjuring of the spirits of socialist revolutionaries, parisian philosophers, and futurist action groups, as well as the specific personal politics and ideologies of underground violinists. the manifesto format – a way of presenting ideas that was used by, and had an influence on, the protagonists of this thesis – was deemed an appropriate and creative way to summarise the core theoretical undercurrents of the thesis, drawing together the conclusions made from the musical description, and historical and socio-political elements and using them to present new ideas on performance practice. from here the thesis will discuss the influence of these practices in an auto-ethnographic context, displaying the importance of this revolutionary liberation of the violin to modern performers and summarising the main points of the thesis. below is an overview of the methods of enquiry employed in order to achieve this triangulation. modes of investigation the avenues by which i have approached this project include literature (books, magazines); web sources such as blogs, youtube, kenneth goldsmith’s voluminous ubu web archives and similar mass music databases; interviews both published and conducted by me; listening and analysis of recorded output; attendance of live performances, contemporaneous live performance observations, and secondary anecdotal evidence from colleagues. from these sources the most significant have been one-on-one interviews, literature and web blogs (most importantly that of henry flynt, which features free access to most of his written philosophical output and links to distributors of his music). running in tandem with these resources are the recorded artefacts which are the main source of data for musical analysis. the artists in focus are prolific in their musical output and i have chosen to focus only on those published recordings made between and . this period is by and large the most productive period musically for henry flynt and represents an important period of musical activity for tony conrad. i have also chosen this period for its importance within the overall development of modern music and underground culture as a whole. musical analysis forms the backbone of this thesis, without which all other elements would fail to work. the two core case studies – ‘style portraits’ – represent a process of discovery, the results of which are extracted, extrapolated upon and then moulded, along with other critical input, into the manifesto of the radical violinist. the manifesto is the analyses distilled into a distinct theory of performance practice, which is then poured into the structure of an auto-ethnographic reflection in the conclusion. while this thesis is not simply a reflection on the outcomes of analyses – as indeed i had initially attempted to do – these outcomes cannot be underestimated in their importance to the core findings of this work. the process of analysing the recordings involved initially listening to each recording several times before then making observations in real-time while in the process of listening. this data was recorded in point-form before being extracted and extrapolated upon in the text. due to the improvised nature of much of the musical material, transcriptions, musical examples and any other form of notation or visual representation has been eschewed for descriptive prose and anecdotal descriptions made by the artists themselves. the free nature of these artist’s extemporisations posed several problems with regards to analysis: firstly, how does one extract the data in an efficient and precise manner when strict form and structural considerations are no longer in the picture? secondly, how does one represent the subtle nuances and unique practices of such mercurial artists and still do their work justice without the reader actually physically hearing their work? and lastly, how should one approach synthesising what amounts to a sometimes vague collection of personal reflections and artist commentaries? one method worked best for this project, which is a method originally applied to the analysis of similarly free improvisatory works by – at the time – similarly obscure artists. this method, known as a ‘style portrait’, was constructed by author and musician ekkerhard jost and used most effectively in his volume entitled free jazz. style portrait system style portraits have been applied to this thesis in a slightly modified form. in free jazz jost describes this method: the sample of these portraits is the result of an attempt to present, as clearly and comprehensively as possible, a labyrinthine evolution in the course of which innovation and imitation over-lapped, and continuity was frequently broken by mutual influences exerted by the leading musicians on each other. this statement proved relevant to this thesis and led me to conclude that a modified style portrait method would work well. style portraits begin with an introductory statement about the period of work and the composer/performer. this introductory section explores the mutual influences and imitations that occur at the time and in the work of the artist in focus. next, significant performances are recounted and important works are analysed, blending anecdotal evidence with transcriptions of sections of solos. for the purpose of this study a further modification of mine is to not use any transcriptions. this is in part due to the non-participation of henry flynt, whose work is allegedly a mixture of free improvisation and pre-composed scores of some form or another. jost interweaves the life experiences of the composer into the analysis of the works, showing the effect that a composer’s milieu, philosophy or ideology, and personal circumstances can have on their work. some musical evidence is also made in jost’s own breakdowns of scale and chord structures and graphs depicting certain forms and textures. the term ‘style portrait’, in other words, is somewhat literal in that jost provides a comprehensive portrait of the performer and draws conclusions about their style from this, providing further evidence via anecdotes and transcriptions. one further element to the style portrait system that i was mostly unable to make use of in this study, is having a personal relationship with the subjects. jost was a practicing free jazz musician who performed with many of his subjects and their colleagues. in his style portraits, jost often refers to his experiences performing with, or the works of, the musicians in focus. due to my geographic isolation, henry flynt’s refusal to participate, and my very brief meeting with tony conrad i was unfortunately unable to have the deeper experience of performing the artist’s music with the artist (or any of their contemporaries or students) and therefore gaining ekkerhard jost, free jazz (vienna: da capo press, )., that valuable insight that jost can often refer to in his writings. therefore, i was unable to include such reflections in the style portraits. to counteract the loss of this element, however, i have instead replaced it with contemporary reflections based on my experience watching conrad perform as well as videos of flynt on sites such as youtube and vimeo. furthermore, as a practising musician who performs music openly inspired by the works of flynt and conrad and their milieu, i have incorporated personal reflections based on my own experiences attempting the sorts of nuances and techniques inherent in their practice. how to listen to eternal music: approaches to listening analysis addressing the act of simply ‘listening to music’ in an academic fashion is problematic. for the sake of this project there were several factors to consider when listening to the material: volume and duration, quality and quantity, timbre and nuance applicable to each individual performer. much of the work in focus is long-form, often quite static in nature and full of subtle shifts in timbre and nuance that requires high levels of concentration to properly observe. i personally found that repeated listening worked best, if for some reason my mind drifted or i became distracted i would nonetheless absorb its many facets over several hearings. for music built on drones and sustained tones i found that a wandering mind was part of the experience, almost as with meditation, and much like meditation i would always drift back to the point of focus. volume is one factor that would further enhance the listening experience and allow for long duration listening sessions. the music of tony conrad for instance, when experienced live is sometimes unbearably loud making the experience truly visceral and sometimes quite uncomfortable. therefore, listening to his music at as high a volume as one can bear brings about many rewards. conrad’s violin playing is like holding a microscope up to sound, and like using a microscope to see an object, conrad utilises volume to bring out the minute shifts in his glacial music, and while it is equally enjoyable at a lower volume level, the true experience of his work requires maximum volume. flynt’s work (particularly his earlier works) is less reliant on volume as a tool. no doubt much of his work was performed and recorded at a reasonable volume, particularly that which he recorded with rock band, but the nature of much of his work points toward an even more introverted approach to music making than that of conrad. flynt was a far more virtuosic – in the traditional sense of what virtuosity means to us – performer than conrad, and his recorded output requires more the approach to listening that one might apply to freer forms of jazz or rock music. there are static textures and drones much like conrad, but there too are filigree flourishes and wild extemporisations utilising both traditional and non-traditional violin techniques. much of flynt’s work is also of a much shorter duration than conrad’s, therefore allowing me to analyse his work in smaller bite-sized segments. formally flynt is also interested in an extended approach to song structure, something that conrad largely rejects (his approach is more concerned with long durations than extensions of, or departures from, established forms), further adding to the more straightforward approach to listening that i employed for flynt’s work. who owns a drone? to notate or not to notate another specific issue encountered when approaching this project from a methodological perspective was notation and graphic representation. how does one notate a drone? further, how does one notate subtle timbral nuances that are unique even to each bow- stroke? and lastly would such an undertaking help to reach deeper conclusions on each musician’s techniques? for the purpose of this thesis i surmised that this was not necessary, nor beneficial. there are various reasons for this, including henry flynt’s refusal to participate in the study. mr. flynt has stated on numerous occasions that he frequently notates his music and his techniques and that he uses a unique approach to doing so. there is photographic evidence to support this , however, without flynt’s participation it is outside the scope of this thesis to explore this any further. aside from this there is little to suggest that such an undertaking would help in my aim of linking mr. flynt’s performance practices to his unique philosophy and political ideology. notation, in my opinion, can in no way do justice to such abstract associations. in an ethno-musicological sense it has been argued by many of the united state’s most forward-thinking musicologists (leroi jones, alan lomax) that to approach vernacular musics with the attitude of a western explorer wishing to tame the uncivilised masses is highly problematic. this same viewpoint can be applied to the semi-autochthonous communities that arise from the many layers of our urban societies. if a musician desires detachment from institutionalised and academic notions of musical practices then it fundamentally contravenes their attempts to do so by relegating their work to the standardised methods of notation employed in western musical practice. jost, for instance, chose to avoid only using western notation when transcribing solos, and rather developed other graphic systems designed to depict timbre and nuance. for me this approach is problematic on several levels. firstly the overly scientific nature of such an approach gives rise to a potential distortion of the performer’s original goal – if a performer is creating a certain texture in the spur of the moment without pre-meditation how can notation possibly do this justice? to notate such nuances is to attempt to over-analyse, and therefore remove some of the potency and spontaneity of the performance. one cannot notate the express feelings and thoughts of a performer in the moment, however one can reflect on these feelings through close listening, interviews and audience/peer reflections. a graph showing the intensity of one of henry flynt’s solos will not in any way divulge to the reader the reasons for this intensity. for a man with a specific philosophy that governs all tenets of his life there are very few publicly available photos of flynt during the era in focus, and even fewer available of him specifically playing violin. there is one photo, however, in the liner notes to graduation and other new country and blues music (recorded, ) that captures flynt playing violin ca. while reading sheet music in what appears to be a recording studio. jost, free jazz., - . one only need read his great volumes of ruminations and theories in order to glean the meaning of his unique musical gestures. this does not render the process of analysis pointless however, as with a character such as flynt an outsider’s perspective on his work is needed. does his philosophy really come across in his music? and if so, how is it transmitted to his audience, and is it effective? all of these questions and more are explored in this fashion throughout the chapter on henry flynt. tony conrad’s work has been approached in a similar manner, but with some notable variations. due to the heterogeneous nature of the new york city scene it is largely inappropriate to apply a rigid analytical premise that covers both artists work with a convenient blanket of shared traits. this is after all not a comparative study, but rather a study into the genesis of new and unexplored performance practices. conrad’s work is largely based in drones and this in itself poses a problem for analysis. when does a drone truly start and end? and who can claim ownership to compositions consisting only of such a fundamental musical concept as a drone? this is at the very heart of conrad’s music, the concept of ownership and composition itself, and has previously been addressed by writers such as marcus boon in his article the eternal drone, “ just as the drone can cause powerful shifts in individual consciousness, so it also re-organizes traditional hierarchies of music production and consumption”. conrad has addressed this by declaring the death of the composer and of traditional notions of harmonic structure altogether. once again, a musician with this kind of ideology cannot be approached with a series of notes and diagrams. conrad’s music can, however, be interpreted in light of various unconventional systems of tuning such as just intonation and other pre-bach systems of western tuning. this is only one step in analysing his work, because as conrad himself suggested to me, it is work that is approached with these ideas as a premise, but not as fixed compositional ideas. conrad chooses whether to stick to his own rules or not, going with whatever he may feel at the time of performance or feeding off whomever he is marcus boon, "the eternal drone,"( ), http://marcusboon.com/node/ . performing with. conrad’s style is highly distinctive, however, and it is always easy for the initiated listener to pick out his playing in any given performance. this distinctive quality is largely down to conrad’s lifelong dedication to timbre and to sound. to listen to his music correctly one must listen as much to the very texture of the sound as to the complex intervallic relationships he manipulates. how does one depict such minutiae of timbre? conventional notation is inadequate in this context, and as with flynt, diagrams do not fit into the overall question this thesis is trying to address. the best path to analyse the work of conrad is simply to listen intently and describe the very physical experience of his music and the sounds that he creates. therefore i have approached conrad’s music once again as an observer explaining his own experience of the physical sound, blending this with the philosophical and ideological premise behind each work or collection of works. this, i believe, is how this body of work was intended to be heard and reflected upon and is by far the most accurate way to approach its analysis. interview technique as stated earlier it was my intention to interview both primary subjects, however without henry flynt’s specific participation i was able to only interview tony conrad. i approached interviewing with as informal a technique as possible, utilising a semi-structured style which involved meeting in a neutral space (in this case mr. conrad’s hotel cafe on a visit to melbourne) where i could prompt the participant with various questions and suggestions. the interview was conducted once over a period of ninety minutes and was recorded. no note taking was employed as this was deemed obstructive and non-conducive to the relaxed atmosphere of the interview, however the interviewee was asked to sign documentation as in compliance with griffith university’s ethics guidelines. since the interview did not involve questions of a highly personal or legally sensitive nature i sought, and received, ‘human er ’ ethical clearance (see appendix for the ethical clearance certificate). this clearance was granted st of may and expired on the first of march with the interview occurring on june . once the interview was completed i later witnessed a musical performance by the interviewee, and upon my return to brisbane i reflected upon the interview and the data obtained. after a further period of reflection i returned to the recording and made notes as i listened, paying close attention to any crucial pieces of data that could be extracted in such a casual manner. the interview recording was transcribed and data extracted in a more formal fashion in the form of written quotation as can be seen throughout this thesis, and at length in the conrad chapter (chapter ). no distinct interview method was employed (although the closest comparison would be a semi-structured interview), rather, through the help of my associate supervisor, the late prof william duckworth, who knew these men either personally or knew of them through his own experiences in new york city, i was able to construct an approach tailored specifically to the known traits of the interviewee. interviews on youtube and in radio podcasts were also of use in this regard, allowing me to glean some idea of what i should and shouldn’t ask the interviewee. as an example i knew that conrad has had a complicated relationship with the minimalist composer la monte young and therefore strove to not make mention of the music they made together. much to my pleasant surprise conrad discussed this era of his musical life without prompting. this was of great use to the project and could well be put down to my deciding not to push him on the matter. this interview was a crucial part of the research process, the transcript of which can be read in full as an appendix to this thesis (see appendix ). manifesting a manifesto in order to best outline the core theories behind this concept of ‘the underground violinist’ and open up new ground for violinists to explore in an interesting and accessible way, i felt it best to take a leaf out of the radical book of the s and present this in the form of a manifesto. a manifesto, according to its basic dictionary definition, is a public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions, particularly of a political nature. the manifesto presented in chapter of this thesis is a declaration of principles and intentions, of a specifically political and musical nature. ‘the manifesto of the radical violinist’ as it has been dubbed, draws together the wider theoretical discourse of the left of the s and s, with more contemporary theories and draws somewhat of a lineage back to the great manifestos of the post-industrial era. from marx and engels’ inspirational works to the early twentieth-century writings of the futurists and russian revolutionaries such as leon trotsky, right through to fluxus and underground anarchist groups such as black mask, the manifesto has been used to present new and exciting ideas on the arts. those leftist theories relevant to the s are mostly drawn from flynt’s marxist art roster, an article found on his website which lists the works that members of the hard left underground were reading at the time. from this list i selected several works and drew highly useful and important conclusions from them when held up against the ideas and philosophies of the underground violinists themselves. in particular, the writings of soviet artists such as the poet vladimir mayakovsky and film-maker dziga vertov (who didn’t make flynt’s list due to his perceived formalism, but is mentioned in the introductory paragraphs ), served as excellent ground for comparison with the practices of radical underground violinists. the writings of the situationist international , many of which are in a declamatory manifesto style, served as more of an inspiration for the form of the chapter than anything else, however their radical views on the urban landscape are reflected upon to some degree. the more contemporary theory of ‘hauntology’, as posited by a veteran of the paris student uprisings jacques derrida, forms the backbone of the manifesto, and lee baxandall, radical perspectives in the arts; leon trotsky, literature and the revolution; the situationist international anthology ed. ken knabb; harvey swados, a radical’s america; leroi jones, blues people; the poems of vladimir mayakovsky as compiled and translated by herbert marshall in his mayakovsky compendium, among others. henry flynt, "marxist art roster," philosophy, http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/syllart.html. knabb, ed. situationist international anthology. while not mentioned by any of the protagonists of this thesis as an influence, this theory serves well as a way in which to describe the spectral, marxian spirit of underground violin performance practices. indeed as the analysis herein will show, underground violinists haunted and continue to haunt, the hegemony of western culture, and the manifesto of the radical violinist is designed to challenge the reader to continue the haunting in new and innovative ways. a bridge to analysis the most appropriate character with which to begin the discussion and analysis of underground violin performance practices is arguably henry flynt. flynt was the first to embrace new ideas coming out of new york city and put them into practice on his violin and other instruments of interest to him. in the late s he met tony conrad, who introduced him to the music of la monte young, a man he would soon meet and make music with. flynt likewise introduced conrad to rock ‘n’ roll, country, and perhaps most important of all, indian classical music. without flynt’s first forays into popular and avant-garde musics, and his firm ideals and extreme philosophies – even at the earliest stages – underground violin performance practices would undoubtedly be something altogether other from what will be discussed in this thesis. his strong personality and early ambitions drew the main characters of this story together, and his musical tastes and revolutionary ideas serve as the rock beneath which conrad and his ilk would crawl and stay for decades to come. the following chapter is an overview of his revolutionary achievements and an in-depth analysis of his philosophy in practice through the medium of his violin. chapter : trucking and trancing - the avant-garde hillbilly and blues violin of henry flynt “perhaps the most diseased justification the artist can give of his profession is to say that it is somehow scientific.” henry flynt, ‘art or brend’ introduction to the source henry flynt is an artist with an extremely specified and extreme ideological basis for his practice. this ideological basis is in many ways quite obscure and is, for the most part, not shared by any of the contemporaneous philosophers of his time. therefore the primary sources for this chapter are flynt’s own writings found at his voluminous blog: http://www.henryflynt.org/. this site contains much of flynt’s philosophical writings from the s to the present day in html format, and there are several essays of central importance in constructing this chapter. much of the biographical information is taken from a collection of essays on flynt by other authors entitled ‘about henry flynt’ and a timeline compiled by flynt entitiled ‘correlative chronology’. the core philosophical, ideological and aesthetic sources are ‘art or brend?’ ( ), ‘the creep’ ( ), ‘essay: concept art’ ( ), ‘my new concept of general acognitive culture’ ( ), ‘the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music’ ( ), ‘on pandit pran nath’ ( ) and lastly the ‘brend’ chapter from ‘culture to brend’ ( ). of these, ‘the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music’ is the most referenced source for the chapter. various other articles from flynt’s archive were also sourced and are referenced as appropriate throughout. for the sake of fluidity and continuity i have chosen to list these sources here rather than interrupt the flow of the text with endless referencing and in-text citations. this decision has been made not least of all because the essays are presented in html format, thus rendering any reference to page numbers or distinctive sections almost impossible, or at the very least cumbersome. this chapter represents a first in its attempt to bring together flynt’s philosophical writings and examine, in an in-depth fashion, the way in which his works for violin transmit and express these philosophical underpinnings. this chapter addresses flynt’s violin work as a kind of agitprop via performance practice, a unique way of looking at the work of an utterly unique artist. the beginning: a creep is born henry flynt’s (b. ) musical life began in his hometown of greensboro, north carolina, where he largely took an interest in western classical music, and in particular modern classical music. flynt takes pride in the possibility that he was the only person in greensboro, or even the state, in possession of a score of schoenberg’s extremely difficult violin concerto. however, flynt began to show an interest in rock n’ roll music even at this early stage, buying copies of the sheet music of ‘hound dog’ and other hits of the period, and attempting them on his violin. this interest in african-american and working class white vernacular music, however, did not take hold until after his move to new york city in . while attending harvard as a mathematics major, flynt continued to solidify his philosophical ideas and created music that sat largely in the vein of the aleatoric works of john cage. as his interest shifted to ethnic music – both that of the americas and most particularly that of africa, india and romania – and his philosophy brought him to decidedly marxist/leninist conclusions, flynt increasingly began to compose in a style that would reflect this new-found enthusiasm for the music of those who existed at the bottom of america’s social ladder. for the sake of this study the period in focus will be that in which flynt was most active as a violinist, firstly as an exponent of his own unique, mayakovsky-inspired anti-art stance and member of the communist worker’s world party, and then as an advocate of his more nihilistic period of ‘brend’ and ‘avant-garde hillbilly and blues music’, as he would later go on to term it. this kenneth goldsmith, "henry flynt interview by kenneth goldsmith wfmu," (wfmu, ). henry flynt, "my new concept of general acognitive culture," http://www.henryflynt.org/aesthetics/acogcult.html. period stretches from his first residence in manhattan in to his violin instrumentals of the middle-to-late s and his final dismissal of the violin altogether in . in the early s, self-proclaimed “creep” henry flynt was still a mathematics student at harvard. a bright student in high school, he received a scholarship to harvard for his exceptional academic aptitude, only to gain a reputation for erratic attendance, choosing only to sample the lectures he found most important and interesting. due to his low academic performance, flynt withdrew from harvard on probation, and was drawn to new york city to be a part of the avant-garde, and the exciting movement around it. in particular, the work of composer and jazz musician la monte young was the magnet which drew him there, to whom he was introduced by fellow harvard mathematics major and violinist, tony conrad. flynt’s love of the earlier work (pre – free jazz) of ornette coleman was of particular importance in the development of his music and it is this interest in the new innovations in jazz music that inspired flynt to first travel south from his dorm in cambridge. flynt epitomises the eccentricity and uniqueness of early underground violin performance. in many ways he was the catalyst for a turn towards popular music idioms for downtown avant-garde musicians of the time, heavily influencing his contemporaries, such as tony conrad and, by proxy, a young pre-velvet underground john cale, to do the same. flynt first met la monte young in , and throughout and they rehearsed and recorded improvised works, including some for violin and piano. young would begin these sessions by comping on piano in a style that involved endless, rhythmic ostinatos, or riffs, over which a solo instrument could improvise freely. this would have a powerful effect on flynt and his music. ibid. acognitive culture, wwp, american ethnic music flynt made his new york debut in at a concert in yoko ono’s loft where he performed to an audience, which included a somewhat impressed john cage. john cage’s impression, however, quickly turned to one of dismissal after asking flynt what inspired his performance, to which he answered “bo diddley and ornette coleman”. according to flynt and those in attendance cage responded by asking him what he thought he was doing there and henceforth withdrawing any further interest in flynt’s work. this event seems to have had a profound effect on flynt and sowed one of many seeds for his belief that western art music is fundamentally racist and corrupt. flynt soon became an active, if reluctant, participant in the ‘happenings’ and ‘word scores’ of the nascent fluxus movement of which la monte young was an important figure. flynt also began to develop his philosophical ideas including what he called ‘acognitive culture’, before moving towards a more dogmatic left-wing political agenda and adopting an ‘anti-art’ stance in the tradition of lenin and soviet poet vladimir mayakovsky. after finally moving from cambridge to new york city in , flynt became a prominent figure in the sectarian left, joining a small downtown group the communist worker’s world party or wwp. as a member of the wwp, flynt became closely involved in the civil rights movement and wrote several articles on the revolutionary awakenings of africa. during this time he began devising new philosophies and ideas on art and music that were heavily imbued with a unique interpretation of revolutionary marxist ideology. indeed there is a peculiar soviet dimension to flynt’s musical works, imbued with a sensibility akin to the cut-up documentary films of dziga vertov (minus any formalist trappings) and the declamatory, vernacular ‘proletarian’ poetry of vladimir mayakovsky. proof of flynt’s interest in mayakovsky in particular can be found in benjamin piekut, "henry flynt in new york: yoko ono's loft," in henry flynt in new york (youtube, ). flynt, "my new concept of general acognitive culture." photographs of flynt presenting his anti-art lectures at harvard, portrait of mayakovsky hanging over his head. flynt quickly became disenfranchised with the overt dislike of popular music expressed by cage and, particularly, karlheinz stockhausen, which flynt saw as a barely-veiled racist rejection of african-american music. flynt accused stockhausen of propagating music for the purposes of ‘cultural imperialism’ and began to drift away from the milieu of fluxus, developing his own concept of ‘american ethnic music’. flynt states in his paper ‘the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music’, that he first truly made his break with hierarchical western musics - such as so-called classical and jazz music – when he bought his first delta blues record. from here he became infatuated with rock instrumentals such as ‘green onions’ and ‘night train’ and began to apply the sort of sonorities he was hearing in this music to his violin playing. in particular, the innovations in technology that rock ‘n’ roll had embraced were of great interest to flynt. a fascination with the power of technology runs throughout his often science fiction-influenced philosophical writings. science fiction is in many ways another element of s american popular culture that flynt took to the extreme in his writings and socialist theories, greatly inspiring his later utopian theories. in a musical sense he began to employ such innovations as the use of valve and tube amplifiers, and studio techniques used commonly by rock ‘n’ roll producers such as ample applications of reverb and tape delay. the slap-back reverb of rockabilly guitarists in particular appears prominently in his solo violin pieces from the mid- s to his works with band in the s. flynt’s brochure communists must give revolutionary leadership in culture reads like a testament to these ideas. designed by george maciunas, it displays images henry flynt, "action against cultural imperialism: picket stockhausen concert!," http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/hflynt-actionagainst.html. henry flynt, "the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music," http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/meaning_of_my_music.htm. of electric guitars, amplifiers and electric organs, as examples of the technological prowess employed by the working class denizens of american popular music. maciunas proposed the ideas presented in the brochure to the offices of the soviet union, including that of soviet union leader nikita khrushchev, who offered suggestions of how this approach could be altered, however, for the most part it was dismissed – most vehemently by worker’s world – as being a work lacking in ideological clarity. this lack of interest from the party proved to be a massive blow to maciunas’ credibility, and to that of flynt, however, flynt was not going to let this stop him from continuing to propagate his utopian vision of cultural policy. with maciunas and fluxus, flynt had largely held true to his ideology of anti-art and had written drafts of his theory of ‘veramusement’: a culture based in pure recreation, where one does not create art or perform, but rather communally or individually create their ‘just-likings’ in an environment lacking in competition or commercial interests. in fact veramusement stands in direct opposition to the notion of culture itself, and seeks to replace culture with veramusement, a word created by flynt that would later morph into his own neologism, brend. it is not surprising then that many of flynt’s compositions made in the s are solitary violin pieces recorded at home or in the loft spaces of friends such as sculptor walter de maria. a further explanation for flynt’s love of solitary musical exploration is his pre-brend theory of ‘the creep’, in which the idealised state of being for any man is to exist in a self-induced state of permanent bachelorhood. celibacy is enforced, and social interaction is seen as being based entirely in the kind of universe of constructs often evoked by nihilist philosophers and therefore entirely necessary only on the most superficial level. the ‘creep’ was a state of being which involves complete michael oren, "anti-art as the end of cultural history," performing arts journal , no. ( )., . benjamin piekut, "demolish serious culture!," in experimentalism otherwise: the new york avant- garde and its limits (berkeley: univeristy of california press, )., henry flynt, "correlative chronolgy - henry flynt: the intense years ( - ),"( ), http://henryflynt.org/overviews/henry_flynt_correlative_chronology.htm. henry flynt, "creep," in blueprint for a higher civilization (milan: multhipla edizioni, ). separation from all socialised activities and norms, therefore reaching a heightened state of being. the late s to the early s presented the period in which flynt created many of the theories behind one of very few published written works, blueprint for a higher civilization. this timeframe saw flynt create his theory of ‘the creep’ as well as his cultural manifestos for ‘creep acognitive culture’, and its alternative for “humans” , ‘general acognitive culture’, as well as his more famous ‘concept art’. acognitive culture or ‘general acognitive culture’ is flynt’s theory for the replacement of capitalist, careerist culture with the pursuit of an individual’s ‘just likes’ . these ‘just likes’ represent those activities that one does for pure recreation and acognitive culture encourages the refinement of said activities for personal enjoyment rather than social or financial gain. in a sense acognitive culture is a call to break free from the commercial realms of ‘serious culture’ : as flynt states in his article my new concept of general acognitive culture, “one can’t create acognitive culture as a profession”. further, acognitive culture works as an extension of the nihilistic allusions present in his creep manifesto. indeed flynt often describes acognitive culture as a kind of cognitive nihilism in which the reader is asked to question the validity of cognition itself. the true american ethnic music: rock ‘n’ roll hillbillies the era of american ethnic music that most affected flynt was the relatively short period from the late s to north america’s inevitable infection with ‘beatles fever’ in henry flynt, blueprint for a higher civilization (milan: multhipla edizioni, ). flynt, "my new concept of general acognitive culture." ibid. ibid. ibid. . this was a period where american working class vernacular music was being exploited by the recording industry indiscriminately, and as a result a strangely healthy diversity was encouraged. this can be quite simply summarised in the lyrics to hillbilly music – later known as hillbilly fever and derived from the s bluegrass standard of the same name by ferlin husky as sung by jerry-lee lewis: hillbilly fever goin' 'round good old mountain music's got me down you hear guitar, fiddle boy, you're shakin' around hillbilly fever goin' 'round well, rock 'n' roll music's goin' 'round when you feel it, ooh you can't sit down well, you gotta shake, break, oh yeah this thing's goin' 'round the town rock 'n' roll music goin' 'round (roll yeah!) oh, country music's goin' 'round you get the feelin', boy you can't sit down well, you rock to the right you rock to the left you feel so doggone good mmm, this country music's goin' 'round yeah, this country music's goin' 'round yeah, rock 'n' roll music's goin' 'round this song is an unabashed declaration of love for country music and rock ‘n’ roll and sonically the song very much reflects this heady mixture of afro and anglo american roots. this blend of hillbilly or country music and r&b or ‘race music’ is now commonly known as rockabilly and was the staple of famous independent labels such as sun and atlantic for the period flynt recognises as the golden era of american ethnic music. it was a music, much like flynt himself, that was an undeniable product of the south where rebellious young whites such as elvis presley would sneak into black juke joints to hear r&b artists belt out tune after tune flynt, "the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music." jerry lee lewis, hillbilly music (united states: sun recordings, ), mp . with riotous abandon. the earliest publically available piece of flynt’s to emulate the timbre and stylistic nuance of rockabilly is ‘echo rock’, recorded in . flynt saw “street-negro music” , meaning jazz, r & b, early pre-beatles rock ‘n’ roll, blues and hillbilly (meaning bluegrass and country) music, as the true music of the usa’s oppressed classes. hillbilly music, in particular, represented a very personal example of the music of oppressed people to flynt. as a native of north carolina – who grew up in a lower-middle-class family and attended public schools – he was well aware (albeit from a distance) of the plight of its poor, white rural population, however he did not develop a great love of the hillbilly fiddle music of the region until he moved north. flynt sought to break free of his classical violin training by taking on the role of a self-taught musician, invoking the origins of bluegrass in the improvisations of isolated farmers. at its very heart flynt’s music is based in this kind of ideal and imagery – the recreation and expression of workers and the working classes, particularly those of rural america. this led to flynt’s creation of what he dubbed “avant-garde hillbilly & blues music”. my music is a sophisticated, personal extension of the ethnic music of my native region of the united states [sic]. in all of my experimentation, i assert myself as an autochthon...siding with the emotional experience and the musical languages of the autochthonous communities. to flynt, reaching the mindset of autochthonous musicians is at the very core of his musical explorations. in order to ‘brend’ one must give up their pre-conceived notions of technique and play simply what comes from the heart. in flynt’s case this means playing his beloved american ethnic music in a manner as reminiscent of the untrained “folk creature” as possible. flynt gives the example of ornette coleman in his paper on the topic, ‘the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music’: “i was inspired by the image which ornette branden w. joseph, beyond the dream syndicate: tony conrad and the arts after cafe (a "minor history) (new york: zone books, )., flynt, "the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music." ibid. coleman had at the beginning of his career: the image of the untrained ‘folk creature’ as avant- gardiste.” further he sees it as entirely inappropriate to interpret american ethnic music with the ears of a western listener. this is perhaps absurd in many ways as american music is so intrinsically linked to the music of the western european homelands of white settlers, but flynt is not the first to declare such sentiments. at the same time that flynt drew such conclusions, ethnomusicologists such as lomax and writers such as leroi jones were calling for students of african-american music to free their ears of the shackles of western musical interpretation and notation. in the case of african-american music this makes perfect sense, however in the case of other american musics it is a hard pill to swallow until one embraces flynt’s view that the concept of the so-called western world is intrinsically flawed. flynt’s view of culture is entirely incompatible with the notion of a homogeneous western palette. this view is based in obvious marxist/leninist social terms as those who exist in the comfort of bourgeois society, replete with its notions of homogeneous western culture and pampered with higher standards of living and education are indeed enculturated in such a fashion. however, those at the bottom of the social ladder, where education and therefore cultural indoctrination cannot reach, are forced to create their own means of expression and artistic release. leon trotsky once wrote: “in my eyes authors, journalists and artists always stood for a world that was more attractive than any other, a world open only to the elect”. trotsky felt that this world should not only be open to the ‘elect’ but should be replaced by a new ‘proletarian culture’: “we must, first of all, take possession, politically, of the most important elements of the old culture, to such an extent, at least, as to be able to pave the way ibid. alan lomax, "song structure and social structure," in write me a few of your lines: a blues reader, ed. steven c. tracy (amherst: university of massachusettes press, )., . leon trotsky, the basic writings of trotsky, ed. irving howe (new york: schocken books, )., for a new culture”. for flynt too, it is these people’s culture – the proletariat, both black and white – which matters most, and it is their music that cannot be interpreted from the western perspective. flynt’s american ethnic music is the music of the working class of the mid twentieth century, and is therefore entirely alien to comfortable bourgeois notions of art and culture. communists in the garage: protest works for band and early solo ragas in flynt began to experiment with works composed for rock band. several factors inspired flynt to make this move and one particularly strong element was his appearance on stage at the dom with the velvet underground. while this position was short-lived due to flynt’s insistence on including his hillbilly idiosyncrasies in the velvet underground’s decidedly european aesthetic, he did benefit in the form of guitar lessons from lou reed – his payment for the engagement. flynt made good use of his brief schooling in garage rock guitar playing by starting his own punk band, the insurrections, with walter de maria on drums and paul breslin – a local jazz musician in flynt’s circle at the time – on bass. the insurrections recorded a selection of songs in walter de maria’s loft which did not see the light of day until bo’ weavil records released a compilation of them in entitled i don’t wanna. this collection of recordings includes no violin playing, but instead features flynt performing on guitar and singing in his own unique style. flynt’s experiments in minimalistic guitar playing would be reflected in his violin practice of the time and would be revisited in later years, and even today when he makes rare public performances of rockabilly guitar duos with his niece libby flynt. in flynt was inspired not only by the rock music going on in his own neighbourhood and amongst his friends and colleagues, but also by bob dylan’s decision to leon trotsky, "proletarian culture and proletarian art," literature and revolution( ), http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/ /lit_revo/ch .htm. henry flynt, henry flynt & the insurrections: i don't wanna (chicago locust records, ), compact disc. pick up an electric guitar and record ‘subterranean homesick blues’. for flynt was a time where he too embraced electricity, and his solo violin recordings of and beyond are largely performed through amplifiers and peppered with various amplifier, tape and studio effects. much of this interest in electricity naturally tied in with his and maciunas’ communists must give revolutionary leadership in culture manifesto, but it also reflected the music of his contemporaries, such as john cale and tony conrad who were using amplification and bowed string instruments to great effect. flynt recorded many other pieces with solo electric violin throughout the latter half of the s including the notable ‘hoedown’ dated to . the master and thereafter: the profound effect of pandit pran nath. one substantially important musical experience had a profound effect on flynt’s violin practice from onward. was the year that marked the long-term arrival of pandit pran nath in new york city. brought over by la monte young and marian zazeela, pandit pran nath began teaching many of manhattan’s artistic community and flynt was included amongst them. flynt would not take on the guru-student relationship that colleagues such as young, zazeela and riley embraced, however, and he only worked under the tuition of the kirana master for a short period. despite this pandit pran nath became the highest embodiment of musical achievement to flynt and their involvement would have a profound effect on flynt’s future compositions. hindustani music had begun to affect flynt’s musical practice long before meeting pandit pran nath in person. in his recollections of their days at the harvard dorms in cambridge, tony conrad described going to visit flynt’s room and stopping outside his door when hearing music: ...as i clambered up the stairs to his little apartment, i heard magical sounds coming through the door and i didn't recognise them at all and i hesitated because i knew - knowing his penchant for henry flynt, new american ethnic music vol. : spindizzy (united states: recorded, ), compact disc. privacy i knew that if i knocked on the door, the music would stop and i'd never find out anything about it. so i just stood outside the door and listened to this magical music for a half hour until it ended and then i knocked on the door and i said “what was that?” and he said “ali akbar khan's first recording on angel...” at this early stage in flynt’s musical awakening he also began to ingest field recordings of african music available in the harvard libraries, and the newly available recordings of other hindustani masters such as sarangi (a type of bowed fiddle held vertically like a viol) player, pandit ram narayan – who interestingly is the younger brother of tabla player chatur lal who famously played on the ali akbar khan record which so profoundly affected flynt and conrad when heard in flynt’s dorm at harvard. much of flynt’s later violin practice would be clearly influenced by the nuances of the sarangi, and echoes of pandit ram narayan’s playing are heard throughout the available recordings of flynt’s s works. the extent to which flynt was influenced by pandit pran nath can be clearly seen in flynt’s reflections on his own work, published in the liner notes to his graduation and other new country and blues music album. the pieces in this album, as will be discussed in more detail later, were recorded from – , the period leading up to flynt’s most indian- inspired works. flynt describes the opening piece, ‘graduation’ as a “hillbilly response to the low-and-slow vocals of pran nath”. later in the album we hear the “contemporary cowboy raga” of ‘lonesome train dreams’ as flynt describes it. on his philosophy website can be found an article titled ‘on pandit pran nath’, in which flynt goes into more detail about the profound effect this great teacher and musician had on him: i was beside myself for days after hearing [pandit pran nath’s performance of the raga] bhairava v ...pandit pran nath was more fully realized than blues musicians—no less honor to them—but he had an advantage of context. he did not have to practice an ‘illicit’ music tony conrad, interview with author, transcript, . henry flynt, graduation and other new country and blues music (united states: ampersand, ), compact disc. while situated socially below a hostile majority. (although his parents threw him out at for wanting to be a musician.) he was ‘at home’, in his own country, his own tradition, and the musical vocation entailed a comprehensive ‘yogic’ discipline which is not expected in the west. the european modernist project of annulling tradition was not an issue in his landscape. all the same, he departed the expected hindustani practice to the point where he was alone (and not universally beloved) in his originality. guruji went to strange emotional places, already familiar in his native culture, which the west would call surrealistic or like an inexplicable dream. but instead of being odd in an estranging way, it involved you; he forcibly confronted you with your own appreciation of emotion, poignancy, and exaltation. it took you into yourself and showed you that you have sensibilities, and nobility, you did not know about. a sensibility of poignancy and exaltation. other hindustani singers are great entertainers. guruji’s job description was: to awaken your true self. the most remarkable thing is that he chose the path of probing people emotionally, reaching them in an earthy and basic way and yet with an underlying strategy of the highest intelligence. he channelled his incredible technique into emotional confrontation, into involving us emotionally. clearly pandit pran nath’s singing touched flynt at a deep level, and his imprint is seen throughout flynt’s work during the s and into the s. back in the garage: nova’billy and other new country and blues music. in the early s flynt recorded more works for solo violin and resurfaced with a new combo named nova’billy. the solo works of the early s represent a further development of new american ethnic music into more and more electronically modified territory. nova’billy existed for a very short period in – and represents flynt’s first attempt to put together a country rock band to make official recordings and perform on a regular basis. the band consisted of various musicians from the new york scene, many of whom, much to flynt’s henry flynt, "on pandit pran nath ( - )," philosophy( - ), http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/on_pandit_pran_nath.htm. disappointment, would make the move into punk shortly after leaving nova’billy. indeed flynt seems to blame the emergence of punk on the demise of yet another attempt to reach a wider audience. his dismay towards this music is surprising to some degree as the sounds that nova’billy create can be compared to the no wave movement of the late s, a new york city-based movement very much started in the punk spirit. like so much in flynt’s life this attempt to reach the people did not come to fruition and nova’billy’s gigs were poorly attended, eventually leading to the group dissolving. in this incarnation, however, flynt did record a large volume of works which rarely saw the light of day at the time, but have since resurfaced in a compilation released by locust music in . nova’billy is a collection of recordings of startling inventiveness and a sound that still reverberates as being both original and forward- looking today. flynt’s violin performance on these recordings is very much at its pinnacle with improvisations that amalgamate all of the tenets of flynt’s american ethnic music philosophy inhabiting pieces that conspicuously declare allegiance to a utopian agenda and to a new found interest in hedonistic abandon. during this period flynt also participated in rare live performances, including a fundraising event, circa , for a recently incarcerated angus maclise called brain damage in oklahoma city where he performed on voice and song flute alongside tony conrad, jackson maclow, hetty and angus maclise, amongst others. flynt also made, unfortunately undocumented, live solo violin appearances opening for the fugs and at various other locations which he claims very few people attended. the period after and flynt’s break with the dogmatic left appears to represent a period of questioning for him as he, somewhat contrarily, after completing a degree in economics at nyu, took up a position as an economic consultant at a firm near the stock exchange on wall street. marks the year that flynt completed his writings on the archly utopian brend theory, culminating in an unpublished essay ‘art or henry flynt, henry flynt & nova'billy (chicago: locust music, ), compact disc. angus maclise, brain damage in oklahoma city (united states: siltbreeze, ), compact disc. che chen, "about henry flynt,"( ), http://henryflynt.org/overviews/henryflynt_new.htm. brend?’. this essay clearly outlines flynt’s view to erase the notion of work and bring about a utopian society through the wholesale embracing of one’s brend or just-likings. through replacing work with brend, art would cease to be a form of career pursuit and would rather become a form of pure leisure, henceforth making all art a personal and original expression of its creator. in this utopia the isolationist solo violin pieces that make up so much of flynt’s musical canon would exist within a great polyphonic mixture of unique human expression, free of the confines of remunerative expectations and social repression. in this sense flynt’s music almost exists as a form of art created for a society that doesn’t exist yet, or may never exist. later works: ise, c.c. hennix and other acceptable europeans another community of acognitive folk-creatures, from which flynt took much inspiration, was the peasant class peoples of romania. romanian folk music seems to have played a major part in flynt’s musical life from the beginning. during his freshman year at harvard flynt insisted that tony conrad listen to the music of béla bartok, a composer who drew heavily from his ethno-musicological research into hungarian, romanian and transylvanian folk music. while flynt would eventually dismiss bartok’s music, and in particular his ethno-musicological practices, this early interest in romanian music stuck with him. romania’s revolutionary status was no doubt another drawcard of this music, as is the non- conformist and distinctly non-european culture of the roma people whose nomadic gypsy society is largely associated with romania and surrounding areas. the violin is an instrument at the heart of romanian folk music and exists as a practice entirely unique from the european music from which the violin is borrowed. romanian violin music is rough, syncopated and swung, involves modifications of the instrument and unusual tunings, microtonal intervals and is a heterogeneous music of the people, used for the purpose of communal enjoyment and dancing. all of these qualities sit well with flynt’s idea of american ethnic music, and the henry flynt, "art or brend?,"( ), http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/artbrend.html. sizable eastern european ethnic communities of new york city no doubt added further weight to their inclusion in his practice. like american folk music, romanian music is diverse and consists of musical elements from many different ethnicities – indian, turkish, slavic amongst others – further adding to its attractiveness to flynt and his philosophical and political agenda. throughout the s flynt further deconstructed the inner-workings of cognition and presented ever more complex challenges to the pillars of western culture. during the latter half of the s flynt, along with his friend, swedish mathematician and composer catherine christer hennix, began their genius liberation project. the genius liberation project involved the establishment of a short-lived commune, designed to attract great minds whose work was cutting-edge and misunderstood like that of flynt and hennix. this project failed after a very short period of time and indeed never attracted any attention from its desired demographic. musically, however, flynt and hennix began to devise a new style of composition given the acronym ise or illuminatory sound environments. ise represented a new form of musical expression that sought to create an hallucinatory experience in sound. ise pieces involve sounds that are manipulated to a point that they no longer resemble their source materials, great smudges of glissandi and blurry clusters of notes. during the time in which hennix and flynt began to explore ise both of them were pursuing the psychedelic experience in distinctly different ways. for hennix the psychedelic experience involved altered states of consciousness, for flynt it involved a “counter-attack on everyday life and consensus reality”. flynt was interested in debunking the psychedelic experience and proving that the quasi-mystical aura that surrounded the psychedelia at the time was nothing but the propaganda of charlatans. some of the most prominent pop philosophers of the s and s were psychedelic gurus such as timothy leary – a man flynt may well have come across in his harvard days. leary preached liberation through hallucination, a new society born through the psychedelic experience brought on by the use of drugs such as mescalin and lsd. in flynt began to attempt to debunk the myth of the psychedelic experience by interviewing friends who were well-experienced in marcus boon, "shaking the foundations: catherine christer hennix," the wire ., . psychedelics, spending some time interviewing ‘drop-outs’ at a ‘dead head’ commune in kansas, and finally actually imbibing an hallucinogen himself. at the conclusion of all of this flynt discovered that the psychedelic experience is not one of hallucination, but of illumination and self-exploration and that the widely-believed notions of spiritual enlightenment were nothing but theatrical posturing by those with a vested interest in appearing like spiritually enlightened beings. flynt explains the mass acceptance of this kind of experience amongst the counter-culture as a kind of mass hysteria brought on by a form of collective wishful thinking. flynt goes into great detail on this subject in his essay ‘the psychedelic state’, found at his website. for flynt, ise compositions were about creating an illuminatory and hallucinatory state through sound and not through drugs, which only serve to fuel another commercial industry. like all of flynt’s work, ise’s ultimate goal is to challenge perception, common notions of societal experience and to transcend such base elements as commerce. flynt’s highly anti-commercial stance resulted in an uncompromising position from which he was unable to secure a record deal, despite several attempts at courting interest from major labels, such as atlantic. his unique combination of seemingly disparate philosophical elements resulted in a deeply personal practice that, through analysis, is found to be a direct and visceral expression of his singular worldview. flynt’s philosophy is constantly evolving, but the period of work that the following analyses focus on essentially covers his ideological evolution from ‘the creep’ and ‘acognitive culture,’ to ‘veramusement’ and the ultimate distillation of all of these ideas, ‘brend’. brend is the best theory with which to summarise flynt’s musical practice, and how it interacts with his philosophy and politics. by harnessing one’s ‘just-likes’ and creating music as a product of pure recreation, people of all classes are free to express themselves without the constraints of tradition and institutional expectations. this is a practice born in a desire to transcend the material world, reflecting a view of reality free of false constructs that could inspire the folk music of a future technological utopia where culture is back in the hands of the people and out of the hands of industry. this practice came to the fore henry flynt, "the psychedelic state,"( ), http://henryflynt.org/depth_psy/psychostate.html. in flynt’s world during the early s, and what follows here is original musical analysis – with reference to flynt’s own personal reflections, and those of his contemporaries – starting at his first solo work in and finishing with his final ise works in the early s. flynt’s work for violin has, until this time, largely gone unanalysed, with the exception of flynt’s own analyses and those of academic benjamin piekut, both of whose work is referenced throughout these analyses. creep acognitive analysis: how to brend, american ethnic style. flynt’s first forays into american ethnic violin performance were in the form of duets with la monte young on piano. these duets were performed and recorded in january and consist of young largely performing a straight twelve-bar blues pattern without the traditional swing element. instead, flynt encouraged young to perform with a faster, more rock ‘n’ roll, duple subdivision as an accompaniment to his “scrapes, screeches and squawks” on the violin, song flute and alto sax. according to benjamin piekut, the foremost scholar on flynt’s work at this time ( ), this session could be “considered a fourth attempt at producing his own version of ornette colemans’s innovations”. the previous three attempts by flynt are said to include his piano performances at yoko ono’s loft in (mentioned earlier) and some solo violin recordings made in august and known only as ‘tape ’. after the sessions, flynt was eager to get out and perform at clubs, however in typical beatnik style, young refused to take part in anything so commercial as paid performance dates and the project – as it so often would with flynt – folded. the duet performance recordings are unfortunately either locked away in la monte young’s archives or were destroyed by flynt during his later anti-art upheavals, however the solo violin recordings on ‘tape ’ have been heard by a select few, including piekut. according to piekut ‘tape ’, “…provides a fascinating glimpse into piekut, "demolish serious culture!.", . ibid., . his [flynt’s] musical development. both tracks last about eight minutes, and consist of flynt’s solo violin improvisations to the accompaniment of his tapping foot, the tempo of which fluctuates considerably”. furthermore, piekut finds that flynt, like his harvard classmate tony conrad, had begun to experiment with alternate tunings: “though it is impossible to be certain, his instrument sounds as though it had been set up in the open tuning bflat-f-bflat-f. the middle perfect fourth almost functions like a drone, but it is not heard often enough in this capacity”. it is likely that if flynt did indeed use such a tuning in these recordings then he was aiming for the effect of complimentary strings, as one may find on a mandolin or the norwegian hardanger fiddle, an instrument no doubt familiar to flynt. romanian fiddlers too, would often fashion their own violins to feature complementary strings in order to increase the instrument’s volume and to create a sense of accompaniment without actually using any. hindustani instruments such as the sitar and sarod also feature complimentary strings for similar reasons and would almost certainly be a reference point for flynt. piekut goes on to describe ‘tape ’ in further detail: flynt’s playing consists mainly of double-stops and shrieking glissandi up and down the fingerboard. the style is quite varied throughout both takes, but legato textures are far more prominent than “chop-chop” fiddling strokes. we heard many overtones and scratchy noises, played with manic, messy abandon. about six minutes into the second take, flynt hints at a repeating two-beat riff for about twenty seconds, but this is the closest he comes to referencing young’s rhythm piano style... this observation reveals several important points that are highlighted in the original analyses that follow: firstly the importance of double-stops and glissandi; secondly the absence of so- called ‘chopping’ fiddle strokes that are common to traditional american fiddling styles and incredibly popular for so-called pop and jazz violinists in the twenty-first century; thirdly the ibid., ibid., ibid., inclusion of extraneous noises and harmonics (not ‘overtones’ as described by piekut), both stopped and natural; and the extreme importance, borrowed from rock ‘n’ roll, and not from young, of the riff. while it is unfortunate that i was unable to hear ‘tape ’, the following original analyses further highlight many of piekut’s findings and divulge many more that are idiosyncratic to flynt and echoed in the wider world of underground violin performance. the first published recording of flynt’s violin works for solo creep is ‘acoustic hillbilly jive’, recorded in , most probably in his apartment on the upper west side of manhattan, and not released to the public until . it is immediately apparent from the opening phrase that flynt had already become obsessed with his ideal of american ethnic music. consisting of foot stomping and hypnotic bluegrass-style fiddling it represents an obvious blend of his influences at the time – that of la monte young and the delta blues records of which flynt had become very fond. the delta blues shines through flynt’s performance on this recording with ‘hammer-ons’ and other distinctly blues-based performance techniques being employed throughout. it is largely pentatonic harmonically and is clearly made up of one of the essentials of all blues and rock music: riffs. flynt’s playing is highly unusual for the time in that he employs riffs at the expense of playing the kind of licks or melodic fills that one might hear more commonly in american ethnic music (take for example the violin of doug kershaw in his, and brother, rusty’s cajun rockabilly hits of the late s and early s ). solo violin music based in the juxtaposition of riffs, or rhythmic ostinati, appears to be solely the realm of flynt and almost entirely unique in the canon of solo violin performance. flynt makes use of unusual bow techniques in ‘acoustic hillbilly jive’ by holding henry flynt, back porch hillbilly blues volume (chicago: locust, ), compact disc. hammer-ons are common to blues guitar playing, and essentially consist of a quick, sharp finger movement unplucked and moving to a note above the original struck tone. it can be likened to some hindustani vocal techniques and to western glissandi. this kind of technique can only be employed on the violin while playing pizzicato or plucked notes or when employing a struck bowing technique on a heavily-amplified instrument. rusty & doug kershaw, the cajun-country rockers - a milestone in rock 'n' roll music vol. (germany: bear family records, ( - )), vinyl lp. his bow in an unconventional manner in order to make scattershot thrown strokes reminiscent of the ‘chicken pickin’’ of american ethnic stringed instruments such as the banjo or, more likely, the attack and decay of hollow-bodied electric guitars. regardless of its specific purpose flynt clearly employs this bow technique to bring rhythm to the fore and in essence evoke the timbre and feeling essential to african-american music. another technique introduced frequently into this piece is the use of glissandi. flynt employs glissandi frequently throughout his entire recorded output, and unsurprisingly so when one thinks of the slides and bends of blues music, the wild wails and dips of hillbilly music and the aching glissandi of hindustani vocal music, the significance of which has been discussed in chapter . flynt’s use of glissandi is rooted very much in his desire to approach music from the mindset of musicians from all of these traditions without sounding like music from any tradition at all. flynt’s most effective early foray into “street-negro music” is ‘echo rock’ for solo electric violin and tape loops. it consists of flynt’s idiosyncratic fiddle riffing, however in this instance the violin is performed through a wall of reverb reminiscent of early elvis presley recordings and those of other sun recording artists of the late s. it is essentially a rock piece as it follows the twelve bar blues formula and flynt clearly attempts to emulate some essence of the rhythmic force of bo diddley and the africanised white twang of chuck berry. the use of these sorts of effects on the violin was entirely unique to flynt and is still an unusual practice today. the only violinist of flynt’s era, whom he certainly would have come across, who utilised echo and delay effects was takehisa kosugi, member of influential japanese ensembles such as group ongaku, hi-red centre and taj mahal travellers and later a student of john cage and resident composer for the new york city-based merce cunningham dance theatre. kosugi was certainly present amongst flynt’s milieu during the s and s and there are strong similarities in his delay-soaked hindustani violin solos to flynt’s later works for solo violin and tambura. ‘echo rock’ is highly representative of flynt’s “avant-garde hillbilly and blues music” and is one of his most obvious attempts to blend his philosophy and henry flynt, backporch hillbilly blues volume (chicago: locust, ), compact disc. political views with his violin practice. ‘echo rock’ is an attempt to reach flynt’s ultimate goal of bringing american ethnic music to the metaphysical realms of hindustani music and out of the degenerating realms of capitalist commerce. flynt’s work for solo and looped violin, ‘hoedown’, is a lengthy work of almost fifteen minutes and consists of up to three looped violin parts that drop in and out of the mix at different points. recorded in , this work is highly reminiscent of the innovations made in tape looping by flynt’s contemporaries such as terry riley, who by now had already made himself famous with his performances using the ‘time-lag accumulator’, a form of early loop station invented by riley. flynt, however, would not reach any level of prominence with his innovations in tape looping at the time. pieces such as ‘hoedown’ are far ahead of their time as looping has only become a widespread violin practice in the twenty-first century due to the wide availability of inexpensive digital looping systems. ‘hoedown’ is very much a clear progression of flynt’s american ethnic style, with a clear expansion of the forms used on earlier recordings bringing the work more into the territory of raga, something which flynt wholeheartedly desired. tape manipulations are brought to the fore in his works ‘telsat tune’ and ‘full telsat’ , as is what appears to be the introduction of various effects, possibly generated by the newly invented effects units being made available to the public at the time. as has been the case in previous works of flynt, delay and reverb effects play an important part in creating the desired mix of poly-rhythmic effect and rockabilly aesthetic. in the case of ‘telsat tune’ and ‘full telsat’ a more electronic form of distortion begins to come to the fore, perhaps due to the employment of a fuzz box or other signal distorter, or indeed simply by over-extending the gain setting on his amplifier (or perhaps even just overloading the microphone he has used to make the recording). regardless of the method behind this, his use of distortion at this time clearly displays flynt’s continued love of rock ‘n’ roll music and his awareness of some of its more henry flynt, new american ethnic music volume : hillbilly tape music (united states: recorded, ), compact disc. recent contemporaneous developments. both ‘telsat’ pieces are essentially duets with bass, and are a pre-cursor to the kind of instrumental interplay that will be seen in his mid- s works with band. the importance of glissando three years after recording ‘acoustic hillbilly jive’, flynt plugged in and revised his piece with a new version entitled ‘informal hillbilly jive’ . structurally this piece from – seemingly flynt’s most musically productive year – is almost identical to the early acoustic performance, however, in a timbral sense the addition of amplification transforms the feel of the piece entirely. a timbral approach to listening is integral to understanding american ethnic music, and indeed much non-western music. flynt’s reaction to traditional notions of western musical understanding can be traced as far back as when he first drafted his more well- known – at least by the wider new york city art community – essay ‘concept art’. in this essay he calls for a new type of artistic pursuit devoid of the arithmetical structure found in most western art music. flynt had indeed disavowed mathematics altogether a year or two earlier, by stating that all mathematics is essentially false. in non-western music, such as hindustani and african music, flynt saw an approach to listening and creating music that was analogous with his new ideas. these musical traditions represent an approach to music that is kinaesthetic and impressionistic in form rather than architectural and academic. ‘acoustic hillbilly jive’, for instance, is once again heavily laden with flynt’s idiosyncratic use of pronounced glissandi. in his essay ‘structure art’ flynt reflects on the importance of this musical gesture in his philosophical ideas: “for the sake of example, let me observe that old-fashioned musicology said that glissando could not be an element of melody, because it fell in the cracks between the flynt, backporch hillbilly blues volume . piano keys. a segmentation peculiar to the european mind had the effect of rendering thousand- year musical traditions non-existent”. to flynt the tyranny of the equal-tempered keyboard caused western music to be responsible – and this is mirrored with only a cursory glance into the arena of imperialist cultural policy as well – for a great deal of prejudice and injustice exacted upon non-western music. glissandi cannot be performed on a pianoforte and therefore, when such effects were employed on non-fretted string instruments such as the violin, it was seen as appropriate to perform it as an expressive ornament and not as an element of voice-leading. in some respects flynt is incorrect in suggesting this, as grossly performed glissandi were quite prevalent amongst violinists of the bravura tradition, and this is well documented in recordings of late nineteenth-century violinists such as fritz kreisler and joseph joachim. however, flynt is correct in that the aesthetic considerations behind glissandi had much more to do with ornamentation and showmanship than any integral part of the piece’s structure. in the north indian kirana vocal tradition, what we in the west may interpret roughly as glissandi appear to be an incredibly important leading device for the melodic and harmonic development of any one piece, and they held obvious emotional importance as well. to the performer of hindustani music a melody is not the result of a combination of intervals and tones but rather part of a living entity that is brought to life by the performer. a raga exists before and after the performance occurs and the performer simply channels it – as pandit pran nath once said “raga is living souls”. in american ethnic music glissandi are employed by musicians in perhaps a less self-conscious fashion. they are part of the performer’s abandonment of inhibitions and loss of self-awareness, the yelp and piano-destroying chromatics of jerry-lee lewis or the raucous screams of little richard. such performers were integral to flynt’s musical development, and all of them employ glissandi in one form or another outside the bounds of henry flynt, "structure art," against "participation": a total critique of culture( ), http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/totcritcult .html. farley, in-between the notes. formal restrictions and, therefore, exist outside the traditional western imperialist imposition of power structures via cultural indoctrination. cowboy raga it is important to note here that the following descriptions of sections of hindustani music are not in any way comparable to western notions of form. many hindustani musicians, particularly in the ancient style known as dhrupad such as pandit pran nath, lay immense importance on the free-form introductory ālāp section. this ethos influenced a generation of composers through musicians like pandit pran nath, who worked closely with both la monte young, and terry riley. while he represented the more virtuoso khyal style and was not considered a particularly significant musician in india, he would spend intensely long periods of time on the ālāp and gave only enough time as he felt he needed to on the other sections. the ālāp section of a raga performance is part of what is known as the ‘unbound’ (anibahdd) element in indian music, and this sense of being ‘unbound’ rings true with much of flynt’s violin practice. this seemingly formless approach to structuring music is crucial to understanding flynt’s desired freeing of american vernacular music from the bounds of western formalism, thus bringing it into what he perceived to be heightened realms of music, such as hindustani music (which has considerable formalism in its own right), – a music that according to encyclopædia britannica online: “dhrupad, in hindustani music, ancient vocal musical form in four parts preceded by extensive introductory improvisation (alapa) and expanded by rhythmic and melodic elaborations. it is related to the shorter, later khayal, which has somewhat eclipsed the dhrupad in popularity. the classical dhrupad, heavy and majestic in style, required great breath control. it was used in praise of heroes, gods, and kings.” martin clayton, "time in indian music: rhythm, metre, and form in north indian rag performance," oxford scholarship online( ), http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/ . /acprof:oso/ . . /acprof- ., requires an intense internalisation of rhythmic and melodic concepts. the ālāp section of hindustani music is perhaps the most important element for flynt, and indeed many others in the new york underground during this time, and can be somewhat artificially divided into three parts. the ālāp often comprises a lengthy improvisation in a slow and free fashion known as vilambit ālāp which introduces the piece and outlines the raga. flynt has described the slower, more drone orientated elements of his practice as “country vilambit”. the jor follows and is the section of the ālāp which introduces a pulse, and thus perhaps hints of the pre-composed melodic (rāg) and rhythmic (tāl) elements of a raga performance. the shift from ālāp to jor is often distinguishable by the entry of a distinct rhythmic pulse and signified in flynt’s music by a movement from more free-form elements to solid, repetitive riffing. after the jor section comes an increase in rhythm which finally reaches climax and ends the ālāp section: this is sometimes known as jhala, however this is a term also used to describe the final section of the performance where the composed melodic and rhythmic material is introduced, the gat. many of flynt’s works end in this fashion, however, he will also often return to the jor section or perhaps a more ālāp-style section. flynt’s treatment of the gat is emblematic of jazz structure where musicians more often than not return to the ‘head’ or pre-composed melodic content of a piece. flynt makes reference to these shared qualities on several occasions in ‘the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music’, stating for instance that a jazz musician’s skills or ‘chops’ can be likened to knowledge of raga and further: it seems to me that some of the esthetic [sic] values which i have affirmed are shared by indian music. it also seems that some of the overall technical characteristics which belong to my music are shared with indian music. from the start, i wanted to open up blues and country music for forward-sweeping melodic improvisation. i often eliminate chord progressions in my music, because i experience changes of root like stoplights on a highway. instead, i employ tonic pedal- george e. ruckert, music in north india: experiencing music, expressing culture (new york: oxford university press, )., martin clayton, "performance practice and rhythm in hindustani music," in time in indian music: rhythm, metre, and form in north indian rag performance (oxford scholarship online, )., - point harmony. then, i treat the melodic modalities of blues and country music literally as ragas, with extensive use of glissando and melodic ornamentation. flynt often juxtaposes these two distinctly non-western concepts of musical structure to build his pieces, once again harking back to the basic principles of his american ethnic music and the core desire to elevate it to the stature afforded hindustani music. photographic and anecdotal evidence also suggest that flynt used pre-composed and improvised sections in his music with photographs displaying flynt playing violin in front of a music stand covered in sheet music lining the sleeve notes to his graduation and other new country and blues music album. this juxtaposition of hindustani and african-american practices in flynt’s music would increase in their application throughout the late s and into the s. an analysis of nova’billy: unbound country rock. ‘conga’ , performed by flynt and his country rock combo nova’billy, is one piece which represents a pure and unusually succinct distillation of flynt’s avant-garde hillbilly and blues violin practice. it involves blues licks performed in a highly rhythmic three-way dialogue with saxophone and drums. flynt’s soloing unfolds in a non-linear modal fashion like that of ornette coleman, where an idea is stated and then varied melodically with little adherence to a strict harmonic structure. like so many of flynt’s pieces for violin, ‘conga’ is based in riffing in the bo diddley vein. a rhythmic sense based firmly in southern american and african traditions but entirely different from both. the violin soloing can be described as being ostensibly ‘free’, although flynt would perhaps be hesitant to describe it as such. he employs all of the idiosyncrasies inherent to his violin practice in this short piece, naturally utilising flynt, "the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music." flynt, graduation, sleeve notes, - flynt, henry flynt & nova'billy. glissandi to lead in quick shifts from the lower to the upper registers of the instrument and to subvert traditional european notions of violin performance and musical order. ‘conga’ also sees the introduction of a greater use of stopped and open harmonics, usually reached through glissando, which have a vibrant and piercing effect when played through flynt’s seemingly voluminous amplification. high volume open harmonics were later used to great effect in flynt’s ise (illuminatory sound environments, mistakenly referred to in most media since as hese. instead of correcting them, flynt and hennix went with it and described the acronym as hallucinatory ecstatic sound environments) pieces, where the piercing timbral effect of the harmonics would blend effortlessly with the complex harmonic overtone series conjured by christer hennix’s pandit pran nath tamboura – a type of tamboura invented by pandit pran nath and renowned for its dense harmonic textures and almost alien timbral qualities – playing. this music would strive for the kind of hallucinatory state that one would experience with lsd or mescalin, without necessarily needing to imbibe said intoxicants. flynt largely refutes the mythology of the psychedelic experience, but hallucination and drugs did play a part in his practice. one piece that overtly refers to his seeming interest in amphetamines – he makes references to his experiences with the amphetamine dexamyl in some of his writings – is ‘amphetamine rhapsody’ . flynt’s approach to his violin in this piece can best be described as skittish and angular. it has the sharp edges and extreme mood-swings inherent in the amphetamine experience. at its very core this piece sounds essentially like hillbilly music on speed, with fast repetitive riffing akin to the sort of ‘motorik’ music coming out of germany at the time and quick angular violin solos highly reminiscent of flynt’s beloved ornette coleman, replete with sul ponticello (bowstrokes on or close to the bridge) “hooting and booting”. there is a great deal of interplay between violin and saxophone in ‘amphetamine rhapsody’ and flynt’s violin playing sounds very much like an attempt to emulate the stylistic and timbral attributes of the horn. flynt employs many techniques common to blues and later jazz technique such as the fast lower and upper leading ornaments commonly called ‘hammer- ibid. ons’ or ‘hammer-offs’, the ‘hooting and booting’ more common to those saxophonists who cut their musical teeth in r & b bands, and an angular approach to register that is a decidedly virtuosic feat on the violin and is therefore more commonly employed on blown instruments. the amphetamine trip of this piece is completed by the inevitable come-down, represented by a marked slowing of pace and the break-down of the skittish soloing into a more scattered flittering of coleman licks and trilled sections reminiscent of la monte young’s tremolo ‘clouds’ and the fluttering moroccan-influenced textures of john coltrane. ‘amphetamine rhapsody’ represents one of only a couple of flynt works that refer directly to drug use, one of the others being the final piece on nova’billy titled ‘stoned jam’. this perhaps reflects flynt’s newfound interest in a more hedonistic way of life, a freer way of life that was undoubtedly brought on by his break from dogmatic ideology and the more social nature of playing in a band on a regular basis. despite flynt’s break from the dogmatic left, nova’billy performed many compositions that contained overt references to left-wing ideology. the most obvious of these is their reworking of the communist internationale into a proto-no-wave exploration replete with sing- along chorus and typically wild soloing. flynt still took an interest in the benefits of socialism, enrolling in the phd course for economics at the new school with a thesis on socialist economic administration. flynt spent eight years working on his thesis only to withdraw at the last minute, without receiving his doctorate, in typical flynt style. during this time he also moved upstate to start his ‘genius liberation project’ with fellow mathematician, philosopher and artist, christer hennix. despite all of this revolutionary activity none of the instrumentals on nova’billy are given such overt political titles, rather, they are adorned with more typical flynt-style american ethnic names such as ‘double spindizzy’, ‘lonesome train dreams’ and ‘twist out’, and thus remaining the modus operandi of most of the nova’billy pieces. nonetheless, the images that such names evoke are that of a distinctively street-level america, henry and c.c. hennix flynt, "henry flynt concept art years." (berlin: grimmuseum, ), http://www.grimmuseum.com/blog- /index.html., . the ‘street negro’ music brought about by the brend of the occupants of flynt’s utopia. in all of these pieces flynt employs the idiosyncratic techniques of his avant-garde hillbilly and blues music to great effect, evoking the constant rhythms of america’s vast railways to the wild circular dances of appalachian hillbillies. all of this evokes an image of the united states firmly rooted in the culture of the working class, while retaining the lofty heights of invention present in the free-form blues of ornette coleman or the elongated ālāp of pandit pran nath. shortly after the demise of nova’billy, flynt re-entered the studio to record material with undocumented musicians that was in , released as the graduation and other new country and blues music album. this album represents the distillation of flynt’s american ethnic music into its most potent form. graduation: analysing the pure form of avant-garde hillbilly and blues music on graduation and other new country and blues music flynt once again adopts open leftist references in song titles such as ‘no rights’, and creates what is one of his masterpieces in ‘a portrait’. his violin style in these pieces is even more defined and idiosyncratic, and it is clear that flynt has refined his own practice into a set of ideals and sonorities that are highly distinctive. ‘no rights’ is essentially a funk piece, based on a political song, reminding the listener of the angular white boy funk of later no wave artists such as james chance. layered on top of these funky rhythms is flynt’s idiosyncratic hillbilly fiddling distinguishing the piece immediately as american ethnic music. flynt’s soloing in ‘no rights’ is more reminiscent of john coltrane than coleman, with the static bluesy accompaniment making it perfect ground for more modally inclined improvisation. ‘a portrait’ is an highly inventive piece that is, like much of flynt’s music, firmly planted in the future and well ahead of its time. it opens with a typically flyntian violin riff that flynt, graduation, sleeve notes, sounds like it could be the basic progression taken from an old appalachian fiddle tune. glissandi are very prominent in this work, perhaps due to the greater influence of hindustani music on flynt’s work at this time, and certainly employed as a standard element in flynt’s violin practice to emphasise the essential ethnic qualities inherent to his style. increasingly in this piece, and others from the later s period, flynt began to introduce long, aching glissandi reaching up to open harmonics. this gesture appears in most of flynt’s later violin works and is highly reminiscent of pandit pran nath’s vocal style (see chapter for a detailed description of this style). this piece also contains a gypsy-like violin section highly reminiscent of romanian gypsy music, a musical style that flynt sees as one of the few relevant musical expressions found on the european continent. flynt’s interest in romanian gypsy music stretches all the way back to his youth in north carolina where he first discovered the music of bela bartok and began to immerse himself in his compositional style. flynt soon disavowed bartok’s work – particularly his famous ethno-musicological collections – as being a misguided product of imperialism, but interestingly it seems that bartok’s work must have been where flynt first encountered romanian music. romanian gypsy music is in many ways highly analogous with flynt’s concept of american ethnic music as it is a music derived from autochthonous communities that create a diverse musical language born out of oppression which they distil into a living folk music that lacks any academic compositional processes or commercial precedents. ‘a portrait’ also reaches back to flynt’s first jam sessions with la monte young, as flynt’s coleman-inspired soloing lies on a solid bed of tremolo piano reminiscent of young’s ‘cloud’ style. ‘a portrait’ ends, as it began, with a violin lick lifted straight from the field recordings of alan lomax and harry smith, and as timeless as the mountains that spawned the music. on the path to ise (hese): illuminating hallucinatory environments henry flynt, "the art connection: my endeavor's intersections with art,"( ), http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/the_art_connection.htm. at the end of the s and into the early s flynt began to experiment with recordings that reflected the creation of his, and c.c. hennix’s, ise concept. there are four extent major examples of this era of flynt’s practice – leading up to him putting the violin down for good in – ‘c tune’ ( ) , ‘purified by the fire’ ( ) , ‘you are my everlovin’’ ( , live) and ‘celestial power’ ( ) . another major example that will be referred to in this analysis is his ise masterpiece ‘glissando no. ’ ( ) , however whether the violin is used or not in this piece is contestable hence leading to its omission amongst the in- depth analyses to follow. it is also interesting to note that these pieces for solo violin and loops are all very similar in form and content. they by and large represent flynt’s final attempt at capturing his so-called ‘cowboy raga’ or ‘country vilambit’ to tape, consisting of long ālāp-style extemporisations littered with a documentary-like pastiche of american vernacular music and placed through a psychedelic filter. these pieces are the popular music of his technologically advanced future communist utopia, the occupants of which can brend to their heart’s content. ‘c tune’ begins, like all of the pieces from this era, with the constant drone of pedal- point tape loop. in this instance – as with ‘purified by the fire’ and ‘you are my everlovin’ – the drone loop is a pre-recorded performance by c.c. hennix on his pandit pran nath tamboura. the pandit pran nath tamboura is reminiscent of a synthesiser with its intense range of overtones. over this base flynt begins to slowly unfold melodic and harmonic material on his distorted electric violin, making use of such idiosyncratic elements as rising and descending glissandi evoking the vocal style of pandit pran nath himself. the melodic and henry flynt, c tune (chicago: locust, ), compact disc. henry flynt, purified by the fire (chicago: locust, ), compact disc. henry flynt, new american ethnic music volume one (united states: recorded, ), compact disc. ibid. henry flynt, glissando no. (united states: recorded, ), compact disc. harmonic content that begins to arise is not hindustani in character however, but rather that of flynt’s hillbilly blues and his love of the direct expression found in the modal work of ornette coleman and john coltrane. ‘c tune’ is one of the true pinnacles of flynt’s american ethnic music, presenting a language that is identifiably american but approaching it with the unfolding poise of hindustani music and the futuristic freedom of post-bop jazz. ‘c tune’ in a sense is always unfolding, giving glimpses of melody before distorting them with harmonics and permutations of bow and finger pressure. hints of riffs appear in moments of flynt’s idiosyncratic see-saw bowing and hillbilly double-stopping, and in his use of thrown-strokes and left-hand pizzicato that in even his earliest pieces, gave his playing a character akin to the lawless abandon of america’s hills and wide-open plains. there is a pastiche element to ‘c tune’ that reminds one of the way in which soviet filmmaker dziga vertov made films, a story told through glimpses of everyday proletarian life brought to the listener through the grandeur of larger forms. in vertov’s case this was feature length documentary films; in flynt’s case this is forty-five minute documentaries in musical style. in ‘c tune’ the listener hears the fiddling of rural america, the blues of black america, and the exotic sounds of ethnic america. out of all of these long-form solo violin pieces from the late s and early s ‘celestial power’ is perhaps the most intensely american. it, like ‘c tune’ takes the form of a long unfolding ālāp, however the hindustani element is less present and the proletarian street negro music is more evident. the tape loop over which flynt performs his extemporisation is not the alien drone of the pandit pran nath tamboura but a chopping rockabilly guitar riff performed by flynt himself. in a sense this tape loop works like a rockabilly tamboura over which flynt performs a long meditation on proletarian americana. there is one important point to note. the piece was recorded while flynt was under the influence of lsd giving it a much more fractured sense of direction. flynt states that he found the sound of harmonics pleasing to it is important to point out that there are a few different versions of ‘celestial power’ that were recorded at the time. the one in question in this analysis is flynt’s “psychedelic version” recorded in his apartment in during a trip on an “lsd-like drug.” his ears during his trip and therefore the piece is littered with explorations into open and stopped harmonics evoking a sound more peculiarly new york than a lot of his other work. flynt’s performance on ‘celestial power’ is quite clearly stoned when listened to carefully, featuring a much less studied approach to technique and a lot more inaccuracy in terms of intonation than one is accustomed to when hearing flynt’s recordings. in his paper describing his own perspective on psychedelic drugs and their associated culture, ‘the psychedelic state’ , flynt describes the experience of making the violin part to ‘celestial power’: during the last active phase of my episode, i recorded a forty-five minute electric violin improvisation with the celestial power guitars as accompaniment...the activity of playing the violin was entirely different from what it had ever been. usually, playing the violin was tense work for me. i tended to work in formats shorter than ten minutes, and had to make repeated takes to achieve an acceptable one. only the energy generated by having exceptionally conducive accompanists had impelled me to do long, single-take improvisations. this time, my improvisation was as i had already planned it when experimenting with this piece--flute-like, tonal, melodic. but i passed immediately to a daring, ranging style - pieced together from long glissandos, harmonics, and ‘illicit’ techniques such as ‘soft-stopping’ and legato on the bridge. instead of being tense work, playing was an unhurried exploration...while playing, it seemed that i was achieving miraculous effects, such as causing an ordinary stopped note to sound an octave above itself. in fact, i was using legato on the bridge to isolate harmonics, probably aided by the amplification, which tends to make overtones more prominent. no doubt the drug helped with the bow-sensitivity and steadiness needed to achieve this effect...i ceased to be conscious of the somatic exertion of playing the violin and only attended to what i wanted to hear and my relish of what i heard. yet that somatic exertion of improvising a new piece was indispensable. clearly for flynt the experience of recording ‘celestial power’ under the influence of lsd was very important to him, however, he later points out that: flynt, "the psychedelic state." ibid. my assumption that the recording would be able to convey to anybody what i had done and what it had meant to me was shattered when i played it to the girlfriend of a classical violinist a few years later. i thought i was doing her a favor; but she found it to be aimless scraping. once again, the drug is found to be an insignificant component; it is nothing compared to character and socially inculcated values. while flynt makes an important point about the power of perspective on a person’s reception of music, there is an element of truth to his friend’s statement. ‘celestial power’ is comparatively aimless when held against the more well-formulated ideological playing behind flynt’s other works, however this aimlessness only serves to hint at the new interests that began to obsess flynt towards the end of his practice of violin, that of shamanism and mysticism. a kind of street shamanism would not have been alien to flynt, in a city where such hobo composer geniuses as moondog, and the lesser known free jazz saxophonist charles gayle, chose to live the life of indian sadhus on the streets of manhattan, giving up all material goods in the pursuit of something higher (or perhaps, when stripped of the mask of folklore simply struggling with the demons of mental illness and drug dependency). as is always the case with flynt, he takes an extreme oppositional stance to the idea of the shaman or the mystic, seeing no trace of true spiritual enlightenment in the psychedelic experience. ‘celestial power’ is undeniably part of his journey to such conclusions and is an excellent musical example of flynt’s complex views on depth-psychology and what he began at this time ( ) to term “personhood theory” – an illogical further extension of his creep theory. this psychedelic experience was also had after several years of exploration into a more hedonistic way of living, and seems to be the logical conclusion to flynt and hennix’s forays into ise. ‘your are my everlovin’ and ‘purified by the fire’ are both similar pieces and share much in common with ‘c tune’ on a sonic and stylistic level. these pieces all seem to be grasping for the same essential truth that is at the very core of flynt’s philosophy: the death of henry flynt, "personalysis: a sketch," philosophy( ), http://henryflynt.org/person_world/pertheorysketch.html. art and the birth of a fairer, egalitarian and ultimately personal form of expression. flynt’s personal expression is present as ever in both ‘you are my everlovin’ and ‘purified by the fire’. as with ‘c tune’, they are long cowboy ragas consisting of tamboura drone and long unfolding lines of electric violin. ‘purified by the fire’ in particular represents a strong example of the “trucking and trancing” flynt describes in the liner notes to his graduation album. making use of repetitive riffs consisting of glissandi and double-stopped perfect fourths, flynt shifts in and out of the harmonic series emitted by the tamboura, creating a trancelike experience akin to driving down the highway after two consecutive sleepless nights spent in an amphetamine-enhanced state. fragments of melodies shift in and out of conscious awareness before the trance breaks down into its constituent pieces and flynt returns to his ālāp. ultimately these long-form pieces involve all of flynt’s idiosyncratic approaches to violin performance and show the highly personal and studied mannerisms inherent in this practice. it is because of flynt’s intense involvement in his personal philosophy that this is so apparent and without this extreme philosophy these pieces would be at best ineffective meandering and at worst the “aimless scraping” described by flynt’s friend. a striking example of flynt’s philosophy of music boiled down to its purest form came in the shape of what many have called his masterpiece, ‘glissando no. ’. ‘glissando no. ’, dated to , is a piece composed in response to hennix’s own ise masterpiece ‘the electric harpsichord’. ‘glissando no. ’ very much does what the title suggests, consisting of great swirling hallucinatory glissandi generated by a source that is almost completely unrecognisable. the piece is designed for performance on tape and is largely an example of flynt’s strong grasp of stereo mixing techniques and skills at tape manipulation, however, it represents a clear symbol of his ideology in practice. the glissando is one the most important symbols in flynt’s musical language, the ultimate non-western technique, impossible to perform on the great standard-bearer of post-industrial revolution european music, the pianoforte. ‘glissando no. ’ serves as an interesting point at which to move into the concluding summary of flynt’s work on flynt, graduation and other new country and blues music., liner notes, . the violin. while the violin is not discernible amongst the massed swirling glissandi, it is hard to believe that flynt could have reached such a sound, the sound of a future music yet to be properly explored, without many years refining a musical practice that has a unique and radical approach to the violin, and more broadly stringed-instruments, at its core. in conclusion: a revolution of one flynt’s violin practice was informed deeply by his political, philosophical and social ideology. flynt was a violinist whose work was a reflection of his life as a dissident, an outsider even among the subversive thinkers within his milieu. his project was – and to some extent still is – an extreme extension of a wider shift toward utopia, and for this utopia an extreme redefinition of culture was required. like the bolsheviks before him, and the maoists who were his contemporaries, flynt sought to change culture, to destroy art and replace it with a new form of expression altogether. this was to be an expression devoid of commercialism, devoid of commerce completely, careers and professionalism were to be cast aside and culture was to be reborn as something both highly individual and communally nutritious. flynt sought to burn down the established institutions of art with a stroke of his bow and cast the ghost of fascism out with new high-lonesome heterogeneity. flynt’s american ethnic music was not a völkisch attempt at asserting a distinct american national voice into the new music of the time. it was, rather, a futurist embrace of street-level america, where a polyglot populace were raising arms – or raising an electric guitar – in a class war that would never be won. to flynt the proletarian music of ‘now’, rock ‘n’ roll or country and western, were the true avant-garde. this was an avant-garde in the literal sense of the word, the forward guard of a revolutionary army ready to replace art with brend and take their music out of the commercial realms and into something more akin to hindustani music, a music made for something ‘other’. for the hindustani musician this ‘other’ is god, for the ‘street-negro’ musician this ‘other’ would be their self. for flynt, if all pursued their brend, their ‘just-likes’, then the world would be a better place. in order to do this the institutions of art must be destroyed, but his attempts to do this failed. flynt’s music for violin never reached much of an audience at the time of its creation and he was unable to gain any real interest from recording companies for his prolific compositions. as a result his music fell into obscurity until recent years where the modern taste for all things old and undiscovered has led to his voluminous works being unleashed on a new generation of musicians hungry for change. henry flynt continues to lead his revolution of one, having never been able to convince more than a few of his closest friends that his ideas were more than the ramblings of a mad man, and he has once again picked up his rockabilly guitar to brend before audiences at major art festivals. a man of contradictions and extremes, flynt and his avant- garde hillbilly and blues music is now finally getting a voice on a small, but international, stage. chapter : deaf left ear: the radical violin practice of tony conrad “heterophony is the sound of radical democracy...interwoven individual voices, in their full multiplicity.” tony conrad born anthony s. conrad, in concord, new hampshire, tony conrad had his first profound violin experiences while receiving private lessons from a local violinist while living in a small town north of baltimore, maryland. these experiences were discussed with conrad during an interview conducted on june , and will be quoted at length throughout this chapter. with conrad’s work, as a living artist, it is important to let him speak for himself, further highlighting the profound individuality of his performance practice experience. this experience at first was largely negative, with conrad showing little interest in practice and having little interest in the repertoire that he was being taught. through sheer frustration his teacher began to teach conrad the basic fundamentals of music, and upon learning that he had a penchant for mathematics and science, began to show him the fundamentals of acoustics. this suitably piqued conrad’s interest, and since his attempts to play in tune were at best dubious, his teacher began to give him double stop and scale exercises in which conrad would play double stops for long durations – a commonly-applied technique by violin teachers to get students to play in tune – and slow, deliberate scales and arpeggios. for conrad these long double stop exercises were a revelation that would change his attitude toward music forever. my own personal practice began in fact almost directly as an outgrowth of the fact that i hated how my playing sounded, for the most part, that i was unwilling to practise and that my teacher more or less gave up on me. and as in so many other things in life, it turns out that deficits are assets. negatives are positives and vice versa. so the young violinist, and a good one, with whom i was taking private lessons at the time, understood somehow that i was not dumb, i was a studious nerdy little guy from high school and he thought maybe i'd be interested in the acoustics of music and so he got me a basic book on musical acoustics and then started to help me to understand what it was about the relationship between notes that made them into musical intervals, and what that had to do with the harmonic series and all these fundamental terms. this breaking down of music to its fundamental elements led to conrad spending many hours with his ear pressed against the f-holes of his violin, focussing on the resonances he could hear and wondering how he could manipulate these resonances in new and interesting ways. conrad suffered other violin-related shortcomings that he would later turn into assets, most importantly his inability to perform vibrato. i cringed at the whole prospect, couldn't mobilise it in my own hands and so there i was playing these garish, bare notes, and not very well, and it didn't sound like the recordings that my father had on his rpm record player of jascha heifetz doing the brahms violin concerto. it just didn't sound the same. it really, really did not sound like that. it could almost have been separate universes. conrad’s frustrations with such fundamental technical shortcomings led to him quickly losing interest in the romantic era music he was fixated on and shifting his attention to the study of european early music, and in particular that of the seventeenth century. this was a music that fit in well with conrad’s fascination with the complexities arising from simple harmonic relationships and, importantly, as it is espoused by any vaguely historically-conscious interpreter of baroque-era music, is performed best with no vibrato at all. by this time he had moved to harvard and would spend his days lounging in the many campus libraries pouring over scores by contemporary composers and by seventeenth-century composers such as heinrich ignaz franz biber. his interest in european early music also coincided with his immersion in the avant-garde and his own reinvention as a composer of modern music. through tony conrad, interview with the author: transcript, (see appendix ) tony conrad, interview with the author, . the music of baroque-era composers such as biber, conrad discovered scordatura tuning (literally ‘mistuning’ when translated from the italian) and a whole new palette of sound opened up before him. this marked the beginning of a shift from equal temperament that has brought him to the open assault on this tradition of tuning that has defined his musical work since. so for example i have a tuning, in this case one of the most spectacular, which had an open fifth at the bottom, an open fifth at the top and a major third in-between. so it was a very, very careful major third, in tune major third harmonically adjusted in-between and carefully tuned, perfect fifths; the violin sounded like another instrument completely! it did things in my head and ears that were hard to understand from the ordinary perspective of standard performance technique. at this time conrad spent hours practicing pieces such as biber’s rosenkranz sonaten (rosary sonatas also known as ‘the mystery sonatas’) at a snail’s pace, often breaking it down to simply playing one double stop and attempting to play it as in tune as possible. and i began to realise that what i should do to approach these sonatas and sort of not learning them but you know, working at them, was to play them very, very slowly and in tune. and so i sort of slowed the tempo down by a factor of say eight, and then just bathed in the luxuriant timbral character... from here he began to discover the subtle nuances buried in the overtones and incidental frequencies created from the violin’s natural resonance. being unfretted the possibilities on the violin for manipulating the frequency range of a particular interval impressed conrad greatly and he also began to discover the rhythmic possibilities inherent in the manipulation of certain intervals. conrad also learned “that in playing combinations of tones very slowly and very much in tune and listening carefully, that there was a fount of detail that emerged sort of in what you might describe as the inner structure of the…composite sound”. he found this to be a completely unexpected result that accentuated “little rhythmic games that the instrument would tony conrad, interview with the author, . tony conrad, interview with the author, . tony conrad, interview with the author, . play with itself”. the violin is an instrument with a unique timbre all of its own that is neither a sine tone nor a square wave, nor is it a triangular wave, but rather, as conrad pointed out: ...some kind of like idiosyncratic wave form which is not consistent. it's a variable mish-mash of upper harmonics in a complex of sound that refers to its own fundamental that refer to its own fundamental. and the interaction among two of these systems would produce tiny events shall we say, that normally passed unnoticed. but should you start to focus and even catch one or two of these things and try and sort of squeeze them, like some kind of fruit from which you're going to get an essence, that several very unusual things begin to happen. the first of these ‘unusual things’ that he began to experiment with was bow pressure. conrad discovered that variations in bow pressure could manipulate unplayed strings, adding to the frequency range of a given interval or double-stop through complimentary vibration. furthermore he found that the best way to achieve this was to use no vibrato at all, something that suited his technical limitations well. ...through the bow itself, in a note itself through the bow, if the notes are simply harmonically related and if the pressure and velocity of the bows is just right, that there comes to be an actual mechanical linking between the strings so that they drive one another ... and they lock. and when that happens, i realised – i experienced the fact that when that happens, the little tiny micro events that i could listen to would be sustained more let's say than they ordinarily would. if you want to get rid of all of that, the first and most radical thing you can do is start playing with vibrato (laughs.) but moving in the opposite direction takes you into – opens the door into this special place. from this new ‘special place’ conrad felt that new spaces could be opened through further exploration, leading to an interest in long durations and open forms. conrad was impressed by certain elements in his new approaches to performance practice, which he suggested “in terms tony conrad, interview with the author, . tony conrad, interview with the author, . ibid., . of process needs this kind of metaphor, almost like a travel metaphor”. conrad’s travel metaphor is one in which he reaches a door or gateway to a new system, where he sees that: harmonically structured combinations of tones can engage interactive combinatorial structures that are redirecting my attention in a way that i find..."musically"... satisfying. but, i'm still a long way from some other place that i can't quite get to except when i find that i work at this on a daily basis and stay with it and stay with it and just do it and do it and do it. and three weeks later i get to the end of a kind of tunnel where the space suddenly opens out and the little teensy things that i had started off trying to do have now – they're the same things but now they have a much bigger size somehow in my hearing and practice and the scope of interaction among the tones, among the strings and the hearing sensibility suddenly expands, just hops open into an almost magically reverberant and engaging space. to conrad this new ‘space’ was better than anything he’d ever heard conjured by a violin. he had once and for all moved away from any attempt to sound like heifetz and into a “timbrally defined territory” of a character conrad suspected of being “animated by some almost metaphysically distant power source.” this new sound world came to conrad with such intensity that he felt it had very little to do with ‘ordinary’ music at all, and fortunately for him he was not the only musician at harvard who felt an aversion to the ordinary. during this time of introverted musical exploration, conrad bounced ideas off fellow student and later close friend henry flynt, who along with la monte young – with whom conrad had begun to correspond at this time – encouraged him to continue along this course of drone-based music. in and , conrad travelled throughout europe, essentially taking a gap year which he spent largely hanging out in the vast music libraries of germany, searching for scores, and in particular seventeenth-century scordatura scores as well as scores of modern composers, taking notes and absorbing as much inspiration from this as he could. in a time before recordings of ibid., . ibid., . ibid., . joseph, beyond the dream syndicate., . much of this music was available – so much of it is still unavailable outside an audience of in- the-know connoisseurs – such a journey was a necessary and seemingly powerful event for conrad and one that would solidify his new ideas on violin performance and on music as a whole. at this stage in conrad’s musical development he showed little interest in performing on stage and his practice remained an introverted and private process of discovery and experimentation: “i was in a situation which did not divide into receivership and performance. it's the same thing, i'm just receiving and playing and it's all just like an inner, it's an introspective practice”. this blurring between performance and introspective practice remained an important element of conrad’s work for violin, an ideal not unlike flynt’s brend that bore a desire for utopia and escape at its core. in the course of this period of immense inspiration and discovery conrad also discovered hindustani music through flynt. in particular, much like la monte young before him, conrad honed in on the drone of the tamboura that rang so ever-presently out of the background of ali akbar khan’s groundbreaking western recorded debut. this “magical” sound, introduced to conrad by flynt, the product of music based around long-durations and drones, was “like touching a fuse” for him. from here he began performing music of this ilk and in began to work with his friends la monte young and marian zazeela in a new improvisatory collective known as the theatre of eternal music or dream syndicate. tony conrad, interview with the author, - . ali akbar khan, music of india, morning and evening ragas (united kingdom: his master's voice, ), vinyl lp. tony conrad, interview with the author, . the beginning of eternity: manhattan and the theatre of eternal music saw conrad move from cambridge to new york city to join the theatre of eternal music (toem) on a more full-time basis. this is a period of intense productivity for conrad, during which he became heavily involved in the underground film movement centred largely on jack smith and his gang of bohemian outsiders. in this scene conrad discovered a talent for film and participated in smith’s films, both as an actor and as a musician performing on the soundtracks to several unfinished films and the infamous queer proto-psychedelia of flaming creatures ( ). these soundtracks also included performances by fellow theatre of eternal music comrades, angus maclise, john cale and terry jennings. conrad appears on many private tapes that have been collected, and since commercially released, by conrad and other surviving members of the theatre of eternal music. most notably are recent releases of recordings made with angus maclise, the cloud doctrine ( - ) and brain damage in oklahoma city ( - ) in which conrad – and often times conrad’s then-wife, the underground film star and sometime warhol muse, beverly grant – often appears playing his characteristic drone on various stringed instruments. during the early s, conrad and cale also met lou reed through whom conrad had his first chance at experiencing rock ‘n’ roll first hand as guitarist in the primitives. conrad composed several pieces during this time, including his work ‘four violins’ which he premiered in front of his harvard classmates as a tape piece in . ‘four violins’ is idiosyncratically conrad, and displays how particular his vision for the violin was from the very beginning. conrad has since elaborated on this period of development with his modern re-workings of the sort of ‘dream music’ he created in the theatre of eternal music. these pieces, titled april , may and june , along with four violins comprise the four-cd compendium, early minimalism , conrad’s largest musical jack smith, "flaming creatures," (ubuweb film, - ). angus maclise, the cloud doctrine (belgium: sub rosa, ), compact disc. maclise, brain damage in oklahoma city. conrad, early minimalism volume one. undertaking to date. the ‘dream music’ that inhabits early minimalism is largely apolitical in character, however conrad recollects in the liner notes to the compendium that four violins in particular held a political meaning to him. in conrad was engrossed in the theatre of eternal music, but the pythagorean allusions present in the name and concept – young’s ideal of ‘eternal music’ – of the group bothered him somewhat. pythagoras’ ‘music of the spheres’ represents, to conrad, a link to ancien-regime conservative republican democratic thought, a music in service to the upper classes. in conrad, standing on the steps of the lincoln memorial in washington dc, witnessed dr. martin luther-king’s iconic ‘i have a dream’ speech and was suitably moved. he recounts how this moment in his life affected his ideas on what he preferred to call ‘dream music’: “for my part, i preferred ‘dream music’ [over ‘eternal music’], which was less redolent of a socially regressive agenda – only think of martin luther- king’s ‘i have a dream’ speech, which i had heard, standing on the lincoln memorial steps a year before i recorded four violins”. in conrad made his most enduring mark on the arts with his structuralist film masterpiece the flicker. throughout the latter half of the s conrad collaborated with angus maclise in some performances and recordings – this includes soundtracks to jack smith’s films – and in various private sessions with maclise, cale and others. in conrad assembled an ensemble to perform his multimedia work, ten years alive on the infinite plain, however, it is not until and a trip to wümme, near hamburg, in germany that conrad reappears prominently in the music world. here he appears alongside krautrock pioneers faust on a recording of cult repute, outside the dream syndicate (originally released on carolina in ). its ‘motorik’ rhythms and industrial ambience would have a major influence on the nascent industrial scene and has remained one of conrad’s most well known recordings. tony conrad, early minimalism volume one, liner notes, . tony with faust conrad, outside the dream syndicate ( th anniversary edition) (atlanta: table of the elements, ), compact disc. the theatre of eternal music was the base from which conrad began to solidify his ideas on music and violin performance. conrad became involved with the group during his final year at harvard in , and it would transform his ideas on music entirely. to conrad this form of music making represented a clean break from the traditions of authorship and composition. while based in young’s jazz upbringing and their collective love of indian music, the toem was something entirely new to conrad, a kind of “new york-based drone music” in which he became deeply immersed. conrad began to play a crucial role in the creation of young’s ideal of ‘eternal’ music, helping young with complex charts of frequency ratios upon which the group built their drones. as one of the group’s principle drone-makers conrad heralded an important development in their sound, the addition of the seventh harmonic. initially conrad’s love of biber had led to him suggesting to young that they add a major third to their drones. in the traditions of avant-garde and jazz music the major third is largely taboo and did not appeal to young, however, his love of blues lead to him suggesting to conrad that he try the flattened seventh common to the blues scale. through further mathematical exploration, conrad found that a blue seventh was akin to the seventh harmonic in just intonation – the seventh harmonic is represented as the ratio : in just intonation tuning systems and sounds, in highly simplified terms, like a flattened minor seventh in the equal tempered system – and a new fundamental element to ‘eternal’ music was born. further steps were required to bring out the various tonal qualities of the seventh harmonic, the most important being amplification. in the early stages of the toem conrad was forced to place his left ear as close as possible to his violin to hear the effects he so desired over the cacophony of the other players, but discovered that the purchase of a simple contact microphone addressed this shortcoming. so the thing is that lafayette radio, this little electronics hobby shop, had these contact mikes that john cage used to use. so i put one of those on the violin and made the violin sound even tony conrad, interview with author, . less heifetz-like than ever before. really rauncho. but then these sounds came rattling out of the instrument. more than another rebellion against the tyrannous presence of heifetz, the addition of “rowdy” piezo pickups (a type of crude contact microphone that hooks into the bridge, picking up the signal through the bridge’s vibration) brought conrad’s ‘special place’ under the microscope of amplification and brought an array of timbres to life that had previously been unexplored in violin performance. this new sound was quickly transferred to john cale’s viola when he arrived in the toem’s ranks, and the industrial drones of eternal music were born. this eternal music had no composer: it was in and of itself, existing purely in the moment that the sound is created and continuing on in the vibrations inherent in the air and in human bodies. this resonated with the eastern ideas of music that conrad had been first introduced to by henry flynt and later exposed to in a much more profound sense by la monte young. certainly it seems that through the toem, tony conrad discovered his own interpretation of the nada brahma (sanskrit meaning roughly “sound is god”). if god is sound then no man or woman has the right to claim ownership over it. la monte young has contested this, stating that all work by the toem was composed by him, and him alone. conrad and cale continue to refute this to the present day, resulting in countless hours of recorded music remaining locked in young’s archives. for conrad the anarchic equality present in the group was a tangible thing at the time that has lasted with him and is present in his current practice: “one of the things that was fascinating about our collaboration at that time was the way in which each of the participants had an extreme impact or contribution to the gestalt of the enterprise”. despite this desire to destroy the convention of the composer, conrad still publishes works under the guise of being ‘his’ compositions (something which can largely be seen as a simple ibid., . ibid., . ibid., . technical need in our post-modern ultra-capitalist culture) and it is these works that will be focussed on in the following analyses. motionless digits: analysing early minimalism four violins is a recording that manifests itself somewhat as a prototype for conrad’s approach to the violin. it employs long sustained tones and what many western listeners may find to be dissonant interval relationships, and it employs distortion and electronic elements. it is a piece that displays conrad’s early forays into tape manipulation and looping, as the ‘four violins’ are all performed by conrad himself, and it seems likely, from the timbre of the violin, that he was making use of amplification and contact microphones or pickups. conrad appears to have always had a preference for a harsh and distorted violin tone and his use of vibrato is non-existent, keeping in line with his preference for th and th century performance practices, and with his desire to magnify even the most subtle changes in finger position – something that would be obscured by vibrato in the popular bravura style. four violins essentially consists of a build up of four double-stopped intervals, which eventually create one monumental drone replete with various overtones, beats and other frequency permutations that occur from the combination of particular intervals in just intonation. the rhythmic, and largely improvised, element of the piece stems from his changes in bow and bow- pressure. bow strokes often become more frequent when beats are more prominent, as conrad attempts to match the rhythmic pulse of the beats and add more intensity to the performance. this is an element of his performance practice borrowed largely from his experience in the toem, where conrad and cale would drone eternally with only bow strokes and subtle finger movements functioning as their improvisatory contribution. this glacial approach to improvisation remains a prominent feature in conrad’s practices, and was certainly his primary approach during the period in question. four violins was premiered as a tape performance at harvard in . four violins, texturally and in terms of timbre, can best be described as white hot. there is a burning intensity to conrad’s playing that leaves no room for idle listening or distraction. the tone of the violin is highly distorted causing the overtones and pitch variations to bubble and soar above the violin’s minimal intonations. conrad clearly performs in a somewhat aggressive fashion, using whole bows of varying articulation and speed, an element that appears largely improvised. the piece begins in the lower registers of the instrument and by its mid-point employs more and more double stops in the upper register. these upper register elements are evident at all times as overtones resultant from the intervals performed on the d and g strings, and conrad’s shifts to the upper registers are clearly responses to these overtones. at times throughout the piece shifts in bow and articulation are glacial and almost imperceptible were it not for the primitive nature of the tape loops. through these loops, beats, overtones and bow changes conrad creates an ever-changing palette of rhythmic pulses that shift over time, creating a sense that rhythm barely exists at all within the overall structure of the piece. in some ways the piece brings to mind the work, some years later, of terry riley and his ‘time-lag accumulator’. like riley’s better-known works, four violins is a meditative work that exists within a dream-like space seemingly lasting well beyond its thirty-two minute duration. indeed for conrad, four violins is simply a snapshot of the ‘eternal’ or ‘dream’ music that he was creating at the time with la monte young, and is very much something that neither has a beginning nor an end. the time barriers set for the piece are only created by the switching on and off of the tape machine and amplifier – something which is audible at the beginning of the recording – leaving the listener to guess at how many hours longer conrad may have continued playing after the tape ran out as the recording comes to an abrupt end. four violins is a clear example of conrad’s use of bow articulation and subtle shifts of finger-position in the left-hand which alter the pitch and resultant overtones of a certain interval or double-stop. four violins represents one of many of conrad’s experiments with modern recording technology in the s. the four violins in the piece are in fact conrad himself, overdubbing on magnetic tape. it displays well his complex and precise relationship to intonation and intervallic relationships as the piece was recorded with no playback available and yet contains perfectly formed double stops in just intonation. double-stops are the most important element to conrad’s left-hand technique as he employs them almost constantly in all of his work. these double stops adhere to his ideas on just intonation and certain interval relationships, with a complete absence of major thirds and a prominent use of unisons and their various permutations. along with these intervals is the ever-present and highly prominent presence of the seventh harmonic, a note that became a common part of conrad’s improvisations after young asked him to perform a blue note in the toem. therefore it can be said that conrad’s use of the seventh harmonic is derived from african american blues, an artform which is historically well-versed in what may be termed ‘alternative’ uses of the violin. certainly in the early days of recordings made of blues musicians the violin serves as a precursor to the guitar in its use as an instrument that performs the solo line. one of conrad and flynt’s great influences, bo diddley, was himself a violinist before moving onto the guitar at a later stage. the term ‘alternative’ or ‘underground’ can be applied to these blues violinists purely on a social level, as by simply being black these performers existed outside of mainstream american culture. in the s and s, african american culture was an obvious way for middle-class white americans to find a path to rebel against the status quo. white jazz musicians, such as sometime ornette coleman bassist charlie haden, adopted the styles of dress and lifestyle of many black jazz musicians – such as the use of heroin and cannabis and wearing of zoot suits and other common african american street clothing – to break free of the stifling conditions of white american class-based society. conrad himself can be seen in photos from the early s dressed all in black and wearing horn-rimmed glasses, with long hair and cigarette in hand. this style of appearance was prevalent amongst white american artists living in the bohemian enclaves of new york city’s lower east side and it is in many ways the quintessential image of the young american rebel of the rock ‘n’ roll era that is archetypal to viewers today – however always with a “nerdy” side to it as conrad confesses in his liner notes to early minimalism. like tony conrad, early minimalism, liner notes., . conrad, the african american blues violinists of the early twentieth century used double stops to great effect, and like conrad, these double stops were not played by those with traditional, conservative western ears, and can therefore sound somewhat ‘out of tune’ or ‘ethnic’. similarly the double-stopped fiddling of bluegrass music is an undeniable influence on conrad – via henry flynt’s obsession it would seem – with conrad claiming biber and “the high lonesome sound of bill monroe” as his main influences. this non-linear and anti-hegemonic blending of disparate influences is a tell-tale sign of conrad’s ideological agenda – the blending of the perfect intonation inherent in ancient court music and the rebellious cry of inherently working class ‘american ethnic music’, resulting in a subversive heterophony. in his comprehensive study of conrad, beyond the dream syndicate, branden joseph quotes some passages from conrad’s article, ‘inside the dream syndicate’, from the summer issue of film culture. a particular passage from this article illustrates well the detailed attention to finger position and bow-stroke that conrad and cale employed in their toem performances: ...infinitesimal control has to be used to get the precisely wanted range of interrelations. variation by extremely minute degrees, as well in fact as rates of variation, spring flagrantly into vivid distraction, creating almost the need for a new kind of instrumentalist. it seems to take a new year of listening to begin to obtain the control that comes only with the self-corrective semiautomatic control of the tiniest beat-elements of the single instrument. the string fingerer fights to find the right spot to press a motionless digit for months before noticing the demands of the right arm for microscopic fingerboard digit-rockings, compensating periodically for the tiny variations in string tension with each change of bow. this suggests an almost primitive breakdown of the basic techniques of violin performance. a kind of neolithic technique excavated from a time before the violin’s invention and juxtaposed onto the modern machine with great care. a concert violinist will spend hours before a tony conrad, "tony conrad myspace," myspace, http://www.myspace.com/slappingpythagoras. joseph, beyond the dream syndicate., . performance simply on intonation, listening carefully to every note and every interval to ensure their purity, as is demanded by the expectations of the modern concert goer. conrad takes this preparatory process and turns it into the performance itself, taking the very essence of the most basic technique and turning it into a microscopic world of colour and variation. the difficulty in obtaining this technique is only obvious once a player attempts it. to sit on a single tone for hours, only shifting the finger almost imperceptibly is a difficult task for any violinist trained in the bravura style. ours is not a culture of sitting still and listening, but rather one of progress and constant change. conrad’s performance practice is the antithesis to the post-industrial technical institution that continues to dominate western music, yet it is also the product of a scientific awakening and would be impossible without the same societal shifts that created it. conrad takes violin performance and places it under an electron microscope, displaying the very fibre of its dna. it is both a regression and a constant progression, both reaching back to our violinistic ancestors and ploughing forward toward a future yet unknown. this approach to violin technique can be seen throughout conrad’s output and particularly during the s and s. the pieces titled may, june and april – also found in the same table of the elements records collection early minimalism as four violins – are similarly composed to four violins, however these are recent recordings made with contemporary musicians and the recording technology available to artists in the s. nonetheless they reflect conrad’s practices of the s and serve as a further example of the genesis of his unique approach to violin performance – albeit with the gift of hindsight offered to any musician who revisits old material later in their life. the most notorious extant recording of the toem or dream syndicate, as conrad and cale referred to it, is the table of the elements release day of niagara , a concert performance by the dream syndicate in new york city. its notoriety has been heightened by la monte young’s wholesale condemnation of its release, with table of the elements finally ceasing to re-press it after pressure from young’s lawyers. cale/conrad/maclise/young/zazeela, day of niagara. day of niagara is archival proof of conrad’s performance practices from the very year that the aforementioned solo pieces were composed, and the similarities suggest that conrad’s approach to violin playing was heavily influenced by, and an influence on, the dream syndicate and the work of la monte young. the lo-fidelity quality of the dream syndicate recordings, however, make it difficult to make clear observations on the subtlety inherent in conrad’s playing, therefore these modern re-recordings serve as an excellent basis to make clearer judgements on conrad’s earlier performance approaches. may , june and april , all share a very similar aesthetic and combination of intervals and double-stops to four violins. the most obvious differences are the instrumentation and personnel with each of these pieces requiring performance by traditional string quartets or other combinations of bowed string instruments. at their core all of these pieces are dissonant to the western ear and conrad’s use of amplification and distortion – both through processing the electrical signal and through different finger and bow techniques such as sul ponticello (bowing close to the bridge in order to create a distorted tone) and harmonics produced by differing levels of left-hand finger pressure – make them confronting listening experiences for the uninitiated. it is without a doubt that confrontation is a major part of conrad’s art. from his violin playing to his involvement in flynt’s anti-art protests and the infamously physical reactions of audiences to the flicker, confrontation was an ever-present factor in conrad’s activities in the s, and continues to be to this day. conrad’s demeanour in interviews is often somewhat obnoxious and satirical, reminding one of the punks that would follow him in the s and humour is seemingly never far from his work. this combination of confrontation, rebellion, non-linearity and humour are all reflected in conrad’s radical democratic and profoundly anti-pythagorean weltenschauung. as a radical, conrad sees his violin playing as part of an attempt to overthrow the cultural hegemony started by pythagoras’ ‘music of the spheres’ which has led to the proliferation and dominance of the western equal- tempered scale and the mass-consumer, globalised capitalist culture industry which largely spawned from the industrial revolution and the european imperialist interests of those that put it in motion. the sheer structural simplicity of conrad’s pieces from the s and early s, and the trance-inducing nature of their long duration, stand in direct opposition to the complex bursts of energy inherent in stockhausen or the ponderous silences of john cage. conrad’s music leaves no room for silence and is renowned for its room-filling effect, both through sheer volume and through the intrusive intervals whose beats and overtones create an impassable wall of sound. the seeming simplicity of this music leaves much to the listener’s imagination, and its physicality makes them a part of the performance and no longer passive listeners. it allows the listener to search for melody and rhythm inherent in the most minute permutations, a radical music, which requires a democratic approach to listening where one must decide on elements to concentrate their listening. once such a decision is made the experience can be rewarding or challenging, beautiful or ugly, oppressive or liberating all depending on what one chooses to take from it. april is one of the more physical and rhythmic of the early minimalism collection. the recording features a performance by conrad and a quartet of musicians on violin, viola, cello and double bass and, therefore, contains a much fuller sound than that of four violins. throughout the work there is a rhythmic thrust from the lower strings that is also not present in the earlier work: at times the cello and bass grind away like a hurdy-gurdy or scottish bagpipes. this brings to mind the work of another composer who used these instruments to similar effect in the s, free jazz artist anthony braxton – giving the piece a very solid sense of even, forward motion. april is relentless with repetitive, even, whole bows heavily permeating the violin parts, and certain riffs or ostinatos appearing from the lower strings out of the endless droning. as with much of conrad’s work for violin, the contact between bow and string evokes a sawing quality suggesting an ample application of rosin and, an immense amount of constant pressure from the index finger and fore-arm of the right hand. a high degree of stamina must be required to perform a work of this nature with its hour-long duration of constant bowing at high volume, both in the amplified and dynamic sense. may consists of a primal drone accompanied by various electronic rumblings brought on by the intense contact between bow and string reminiscent of conrad’s use of an instrument he named the ‘limp string’ on recordings he made with angus maclise in the late s (conrad continues to use a similar instrument in his recent live performances). the drones are once again relentless in this piece but are of a much less rhythmic nature than that of april . in this case the personnel is more minimal, featuring conrad and jim o’rourke – a sound artist who has worked with conrad in various capacities since the early s when these recordings were largely made – on violin and alexendria gelencser on cello. this piece seems to be a study in producing beats in the lower registers of the overtone series and is decidedly guttural rather than shrill in timbre. distortion is once again a prevalent element and in may this distortion becomes part of the overall drone much like it did in the lo-fidelity recordings available of the toem from the same period. this piece, more so than the others, brings the toem to mind and would not sound out of place as a backing track for a velvet underground track. there is much of john cale’s “jet engine” sounds present in this piece, leaving one to wonder whether alterations were made to the bridge and strings of the instruments for this particular recording. may sounds like the embodiment of conrad’s music of this time, a stoned yet ecstatic wall of whole bows and primal, minute shifts of timbre and texture. intervallic shifts are rare as the bow takes importance over all other expressive qualities, shifting from intense sawing marcato strokes to lighter less pronounced strokes, however this music never reaches a state that could be described as legato. bowing in close proximity to the bridge also seems to be of importance with this work producing intense physical rumblings that give the listener the impression conrad’s amplifier or speakers may not be able to take much more. may is both disturbing and ecstatic in character, like much of conrad’s music. june is the final in the early minimalism series to date and is in a similar vein to the others in the series. the instrumentation is further shrunk to simply feature conrad and john cale, what’s welsh for zen?, gelencser and a shrill element is introduced once more to the series of intervals in use. this includes the use of open harmonics, particularly in the violin line and long periods of static soaring drones in the upper registers of both the violin and cello. while the former pieces are single movements, this piece has two distinct parts, with the first movement consisting largely of long static sheets of layered intervals that are largely open and quite consonant in nature, and the second largely continuing in this vein but growing in dissonant intensity towards its conclusion. the seemingly consonant sections are an example of the soothing beauty found in the perfect intervals one can create using a system akin to just intonation, with the violin and cello at times blending seamlessly into the spectrum of overtones with no beats or distortions within earshot. at times conrad’s playing resembles a perfect sine tone more so than a violin, with the occasional abrupt change of bow being the only noticeable shift within the music. conrad, like many of his colleagues in the new york scene, appears to have been greatly enamoured with the pure sound of sine tones created by ring modulators and synthesisers, and this fascination most prominently came to fruition in his piece fantastic glissando, a work which utilises sine tone generators in much the same way he would manipulate his violin. fantastic glissando is unsettling in nature, however, whereas june is at times deeply meditative, bringing to mind the ‘deep listening’ experiments of colleagues on the west coast of the united states such as pauline oliveros and the ‘fourth world’ experiments of fellow sometime toem collaborator, trumpeter jon hassell. the second movement introduces slight movements in the fingers of the left hand, which create audible acoustic beats of varying speeds depending on the slight shifting of the finger, a technique which permeates conrad’s work to this day. the second half of june continues the glacial droning that is the cornerstone of conrad’s work and is at once trance-inducing, meditative, disturbing and deeply physical when heard at the proper (read: high) volume. sharon stewart, "listening to deep listening: reflection on the recording and the lifework of pauline oliveros," journal of sonic studies , no. ( )., . david toop, "altered states : fourth world," in ocean of sound: aether talk, ambient sound and imaginary worlds (london: serpent's tail, )., . on the side of the machine: analysing the faust collaboration perhaps the most physical of conrad’s works from this period is outside the dream syndicate. in this recording the power of conrad’s drone is accompanied by the relentless mechanical rhythmic pulse of faust. once again, despite its harmonic stasis, there is little linearity in this music. while it is often described as a classic of so-called krautrock music, outside the dream syndicate does not sit comfortably within any genre description and was largely overlooked at the time of its release. like much of conrad’s work the listener can take what they want from the album, and this is reflected in the myriad of underground music genres that place it in their annals of influence and inspiration, from the industrial music of the late s and s, to the drone metal scene of today. conrad’s double-stops take on a new shade in these recordings, with his timbre appearing to be more electronically processed than in previous recordings and his often aggressive approach to bowing perhaps reflecting his need to compete with the dynamic power of a s rock combo. this music is clearly influenced by marijuana and the lugubrious effects it can have on a performer’s ears and physical being (see appendix for comments from conrad on the benefits of marijuana). drugs were a large part of conrad’s experience in the s and s from his experiments with ether, purchased at the hardware store near his and cale’s apartment in manhattan, to the legendary reputation of the theatre of eternal music for the consumption of hashish during rehearsals and performances. the music of conrad and his cohorts during the s is seen by many as proto-psychedelic, particularly the toem. the dream syndicate’s performances were multi-media events, involving the magenta calligraphic light shows of marian zazeela and an eastern-inspired aesthetic that predates the multi-media events of warhol and the likes of the grateful dead. certainly there is little doubt in the listener’s ears of the psychedelic nature of outside the dream syndicate. it is an album that is druggy, disorientating but also mechanistic and dystopian without a hint of hippy utopianism, despite the idyllic german countryside in which it was recorded. it gives the impression of being as much the product of lingering paranoia as it is that of hashish-induced lethargy. conrad’s musical works are closely tied in with the birth of psychedelic music in the united states. drug use has always been a part of the bohemian way of life, and with the beats it first became a popular point of entry into the world outside of the status quo for many young white artists. drugs had long been the subject of many african american songs before they reached popular use in the s and, the misadventures of black jazz musicians in the s is the stuff of legend. in conrad’s milieu, as we found with the amphetamine-inspired works of henry flynt, drugs appeared to be a major part of music making: there was a scene going on which had to do with underground artists, and i’m talking about the fugs and underground film and the drug culture in another incarnation, although the fluxus culture was not completely isolated from the drug culture, there was much greater hostility to drugs in that environment than there was in the underground culture. marijuana and hashish in particular are drugs whose properties are well suited to the playing of long-form music. certainly under the influence of marijuana one can concentrate on a single tone, and the aural hallucinations that often accompany the high can greatly enhance the experience of harmonic beats and overtones. in india the consumption of ladu – a blend of hashish and almond paste – is popular amongst musicians and mystics, and whilst pandit pran nath had a preference for whiskey, it is this legendary use of hashish that seems to have inspired the ‘theatre of eternal music’. conrad has spoken at some length, in interviews, of his penchant for smoking marijuana and has spoken amiably of his musical experiments conducted under its influence: “i won't say that smoking pot had nothing to do with it because it was a way to indulge focus and sort of like encourage emersion and self-reverence”. by the time outside the dream syndicate was recorded marijuana was, of course, a calling card of the counter chris hill, "tony conrad interviewed by chris hill,"( )., tony conrad, interview with the author – transcript, (see appendix ) culture with faust being infamous for their copious imbibing of the controlled substance. conrad himself recalled that “somebody must have been burning a pot field around where they were working” as the haze of smoke in the farmhouse at wümme engulfed the musicians making the event a hazy memory for all involved. nonetheless, outside the dream syndicate remains a lucid and forward-thinking album that was well ahead of its time. the album consists of two side-long pieces, one entitled on the side of man and womankind and the other entitled on the side of the machine. the names themselves invoke a kind of dystopianism – the battle between nature and the industrial machinations of the modern world. faust are a group who historically have experimented with the interaction of man and machine, famously improvising on angle-grinders, cement mixers and other construction equipment – an action that would later be taken to new extremes by industrial troupe einstürzende neubauten. conrad himself was no stranger to manipulating machinery, having been inspired by biber to explore alternate tunings – something which requires physical alterations to the violin machine, particularly when looking at biber’s instructions in his mystery sonatas in which he asks the player to cross over the d and a strings in symbolic remembrance of christ’s crucifixion – and his own alterations to the violin body itself such as filing the bridge down to allow one to play on all four strings at once. further, conrad’s experiments in film at this time generally involved highly physical alterations of the projector apparatus and even the film itself, such as cooking the film in a curry or running it into the projector via a bucket of casserole. both conrad and faust used these devices as a means to express their mutual love of confrontation and absurdist humour and to reflect their concerns with the society around them. outside the dream syndicate is the music of bohemian outsiders observing a battle between man, woman and the machines that once served them. machines that they now are slowly starting to resemble. faust pages, "tony conrad and jean hervé péron: the dream syndicate," http://faust- pages.com/records/conrad.dreamsyndicate.html#articles. despite the sometimes static and industrial nature of conrad’s violin playing, his is not a cold expression. the blistering heat of his violin tone and impassioned sawing of his bow technique betray a love of ecstatic music and ecstatic experience. conrad is quoted as saying this of his experience with cale in the toem: “we hungered for music almost seething beyond control – or even something just beyond music, a violent feeling of soaring unstoppably, powered by immense angular machinery across abrupt and torrential seas of pounding blood”. once again this imagery of flesh and machinery permeates conrad’s own descriptions of how he foresaw music to be. much of his own writing on his music is filled with such impassioned visions of a new music that would “recapture art music to the social level of pop.” conrad and cale’s desire for something “seething beyond control” can certainly be seen mirrored throughout the s american counter-cultural movement; a movement in which young americans broke free of the strictures of a sick society by fighting against the controlling elements placed upon them by an establishment built on slavery, both open and insidious. the idea of relinquishing control led to conrad’s view of the new musician’s place in an eternal world of communal composition, which would lead, finally, to the death of the composer. traditional bourgeois concepts of ownership needed to be challenged through music, and since the drone is a seemingly eternal musical device – and one that has existed in all the world’s cultures in one shape or form since antiquity – it is the perfect platform from which to make this challenge. who owns a drone? it is something that is seemingly impossible to claim as a ‘composition’ within the western concept of composition and copyright. drones neither consist of a form or a discernable structure that any one person could call their own. certainly conrad’s style and technique are his own, but to lay compositional claim to a drone in his eyes, is patently absurd. the drone is owned by everyone and no one, and like an indian sadhu for whom everything and nothing are his, it demands that those who play it relinquish such ideas of ownership themselves. tony conrad, early minimalism, liner notes, . tony conrad, early minimalism, liner notes, . the democratising nature of the drone fits in well with conrad’s ideological leanings. ostensibly anyone with a voice or a collection of electronic equipment – including white goods and aquariums – can create a drone. the dream syndicate would tune to the hz cycle of the american electrical grid, first discovered as a basis for tuning after la monte young recalled his experiences as a young boy listening to the hum of electrical transformers near his home in rural idaho. they would often use the filter motor from young and zazeela’s turtle aquarium as the initial tone from which to base a drone. this tone was naturally a direct voicing of the hz cycle and soon became the tuning fork for the dream syndicate’s monumental drones. from this initial drone conrad and young devised an incredibly complex system of ratios with which to tune their improvisations. these ratios soon became the basis for both young and conrad’s future work. conrad’s input into the creation of this system of ratios cannot be downplayed – although young has done so in countless interviews and articles. it is obvious to any observer that such mathematical complexities became the norm in the toem after conrad joined the group. this is hardly surprising, considering conrad’s experience as a mathematics student at harvard. it is of no benefit to this thesis to go into depth on conrad’s theories and ratios for just intonation tuning, however, it can be simplified as a system rooted in ratios of prime numbers which represent different intervals and frequencies, including those that can occur outside the realm of equal temperament. further, conrad employs alternate, or scordatura, tunings such as tuning his violin to the hz hum rather than the common western (and certainly prevalently in the united states, britain and australia) concert pitch of a . it seems that conrad rarely, if ever, tunes his violin to that which has prevailed in western music since the industrial revolution. rather, conrad chooses to emulate his hero, biber, by finding tunings that open out the violin’s resonant qualities. for instance in biber’s rosenkranz sonata v the violinist is instructed to tune the violin to a, e, a, c sharp – as opposed to g, d, a, e respectively – which instantly opens the violin to new resonances and a joseph, beyond the dream syndicate., . ibid., - . rich tapestry of overtones that are otherwise unobtainable with conventional tuning. in a sense the scordatura tuning amplifies the complimentary effect of any strings that are not being bowed. for instance, in the above mentioned tuning, the combination of the octave a to a with the perfect th a – e creates a complementary drone that resonates profusely when the performer plays runs on the detuned c sharp string. this is not unlike the tuning of a sitar where six of the seven played strings simply function as resonating strings, and the top string is often tuned to a th above the octaves and ths tuned below it. whilst the acoustic qualities of the modern violin make this need for resonance somewhat unnecessary in terms of volume production – which was largely the purpose of scordatura tuning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – it does open the violin to new properties in terms of incidental tones and overtones. this is amplified somewhat when the instrument is electrified, as the pick-ups react in various unpredictable ways to the new resonances pouring through the bridge. in an interview with wire magazine john cale describes the tuning used most commonly by the toem: we were tuning to a -cycle hum, the third harmonic was cycles tuned to the refrigerator, or to the hum of the amplifier system. in order to tune you had to hold one of the cables (makes low hum), then tony would tune first and everybody else would tune. that meant that the key we were really in was ten cycles; alpha rhythm. which is what the brain experiences in dream state. the manipulation of the audience’s perception was an important part of the toem’s aesthetic and this has stayed with conrad throughout his career. much of his art is aimed at bending, enlightening and expanding the audience’s perceptions, and his violin playing is no exception. various tunings and intervals can cause ecstasy or extreme discomfort in the listener and conrad seems all too happy to manipulate both extremes of audience reaction in almost all of his works for violin. his pieces from the early minimalism collection stand as a testament to ram 'vir' avtar, learn to play on sitar (new delhi: pankaj publication, )., edwin pouncey, "inside the dream syndicate," the wire: adventures in modern music ., this with long drawn out passages consisting only of what many western ears might consider dissonant intervals. these passages can then be followed by periods of ecstatically beautiful, perfectly tuned consonant intervals in just intonation that bring the listener into a warm zone of meditation. the violin is the perfect instrument for such manipulative uses; it is an instrument that most westerners associate either with immense beauty or immense ugliness when put in the hands of a child or an unskilled player. the old adage that bad violin playing sounds like someone ‘skinning a cat’ is known to most english speakers and conrad seems to playfully enjoy evoking these very primeval sounds from the instrument. in many ways conrad is one of the first violinists to openly embrace the uglier timbres of the instrument and use it as a vehicle for noise as much as sound. his violin playing is highly textural, rather than melodic, like the abstract expressionist painters that came before him. once again conrad’s approach to tuning is inclusive – in terms of his use of an infinitesimal range of interval permutations – but based firmly in a set of rules, albeit a radical and non-linear set of rules. his tuning is as radically democratic as all of his art and is seemingly based on the election of sounds best suited to a particular piece. insubordinate vibrations: concluding conrad a radical approach to tuning is at the very core of conrad’s work and indeed his entire artistic practice. through just intonation and similar tuning systems, conrad is able to harness the unique abilities of the violin to capture, and manipulate, vibrations. vibrations have a unique place in our world, as they are inherent in everything, our bodies, the air, the earth. when an artist draws back all constructs and dabbles in vibrations, as conrad has, they reach into the core of human relationships, into belief and social structures. indeed conrad sees the relationship between his musical practice and social and political constructs as being part of a project to bring justified attention to an alternative musical history. more than a direct and refined ideological stance conrad, through engaging in a radical and revolutionary approach to violin performance, has pursued a kind of revisionist crusade against the accepted norms of the way in which music interacts with social and political structures. as he states, “i think it's less – been less important to me to find a position for myself, honestly, and more intriguing to me to look at the meaningful social and political relationships that have inhabited musical thought over the course of the last years”. throughout the s and s conrad was aware that his practice was revolutionary and that it was both regaining old forgotten ground and carving a new path of possibilities for the violin. in the middle sixties, when all of this sort of stuff was going on and we had started doing some public performance, i had the feeling that because of the way in which i was using intonation and using what we can call, loosely speaking, microtonal interval relationships, and the way that i was using sustained tones and just done the whole thing, i felt that i had launched a kind of revolution if you will, revolutionary practice but revolution really isn't the right word there, because it's not a revolution unless it revolves something and this wasn't revolving anything. what it was doing was just, as it were, establishing a cultural reference site. a locus, a performance locus on a map of different practices, which was extremely distinctive within violin performance activity... after the outside the dream syndicate sessions this interest in social and political relationships in musical thought began to take more and more of a prevalent position in conrad’s artistic agenda. he “began to take an interest in the western tradition and how that was linked to instrumental practice” and dug further into the forgotten world of heinrich biber, ‘mistuning’ and the social structures and pressures that forced western music to go in the direction it went. western music, like much of western culture, is linked intensely to power and to power struggles. the orchestra is a reflection of western military hierarchy, and indeed is tony conrad, interview with the author: transcript, (see appendix ) tony conrad, interview with the author: transcript, (see appendix ) tony conrad, interview with the author: transcript, (see appendix ) based on the military system of rank and that of military bands in particular. the concept of subordination and, more importantly, a cheerful embracing of insubordination litters conrad’s work from the late s to the present. even in the s conrad was insubordinate to the hierarchies placed by young on the theatre of eternal music, to the point that he could no longer be a part of something that did not embrace a complete dismissal of one power structure integral to western music: the almighty power of the composer. the composer is important to western music, because ownership is important to western culture, and to the capitalism it gave birth to. conrad’s musical vision stands in abject insubordination to this and continues to this day. in tony conrad decided to take on pythagoras himself, to critical acclaim, with his album slapping pythagoras. he is now taking on the duty of indicting lully, the seventeenth-century italian largely responsible for the modern orchestra. like flynt, conrad is a protest artist, a revolutionary and an antagonist, and so much of this is expressed through his violin and his unique, inimitable performance practices. conrad, early minimalism volume one., booklet, . tony conrad, slapping pythagoras (atlanta: table of the elements, ), compact disc. chapter : theory – the manifesto of the radical violinist in order to clarify the theoretical basis for this thesis, and most importantly, to present these theories, and my findings, in an easily accessible fashion, i present them here in the form of a manifesto. each section is preceded by a declamatory heading, which summarises an aspect of a new set of approaches to the violin that i have formulated as a result of my research. this method of presentation is appropriate on two main levels: firstly, it is a creative way to present dense theories in a way that fits in with the themes of this thesis; and secondly it works as a kind of homage to the underground, my own personal way of paying credence to an approach to life and music that has influenced me greatly. this manifesto presents itself in the style of henry flynt (despite the fact that, in more recent years, flynt wrote scathingly of what he terms “the manifesto artists” ), conrad and their contemporaries in the underground. further, it defines a future manifestation of underground violin performance practice, what i term radical violin performance. manifestos have been useful in the arts for centuries, and naturally even more useful to political theorists and revolutionaries. art movements such as futurism (the art of noises manifesto by luigi russolo ), fluxus (several manifestos were drafted by various members of the organisation, most prominently george maciunas), the situationist international, black mask and more chose the manifesto as a way to present their conscious blending of art and a strong political idealism based primarily in socialist thought. for these groups the revolutionary manifestos of marx and engels, lenin, mao tse tung, and other socialist revolutionaries served as the basis, both ideologically and stylistically, for their own works of this ilk. i too have taken this stylistic, and, to a certain extent ideological, blueprint to formulate this ‘manifesto of the radical violinist’ so that it may be used to explicate clearly the theories already investigated in this thesis, and present a new theoretical approach to violin henry flynt, "against "participation": a total critique of culture - thoughts for the next draft," philosophy( ), http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/againstp thoughts.html. luigi russolo, "the art of noises: futurist manifesto," in audio culture: readings in modern music, ed. christopher and daniel warner cox (new york: continuum, ( )). performance. this is not intended to be a pedagogical tool, as individuality of expression is at its core, but rather as a guide for violinists and other instrumentalists to begin to formulate their own unique performance practices and ultimately subvert the traditions of violin performance practice as we know them today. in a world of immense change and many challenges, i see it as important for instrumentalists to use their instruments as tools of protest and agitation, and i believe that the lessons learned from underground violinists and their theories are indispensable to the twenty-first century violinist. in a time where the relevance of our discipline is often brought under question we must take charge and use what we have to criticise the establishment and make ourselves useful to our fellow citizens and to our environment. underground violinists must be radicalised and part of an underground resistance centred on insubordination to all forms of authoritarian power. the underground violinist is also the radical violinist. the underground violinist is radicalised and is a radical in one sense or another. like the anti-nazi resistance of world war ii, the underground violinist is part of a wider insubordinate resistance against the status quo, forces of conservatism and the systems of authoritarian control that promote the homogeneous hegemony of imperialism, capitalism, and consumerism. underground violinists address all of the standard webster dictionary meanings of the english word ‘radical’: . of or relating to the root: proceeding directly from the root... . of or relating to the root or origin... . marked by a considerable departure from the usual or traditional. it is perhaps this third definition that most thoroughly defines the underground violinist’s radicalism, but this departure is rendered impossible without the first two. in order to most effectively create something that represents a departure from the usual or traditional the underground violinist must first know their roots. as jacques derrida said in his ‘spectres of marx’ ( ): “...a radicalisation is always indebted to the very thing it radicalises”. only through true familiarity with these root elements can the underground violinist truly challenge and make a clearly defined departure from them. henry flynt needed to get deeply in touch with his north american folk roots in order to take them away from their traditions and into something ‘other’. tony conrad needed to spend a year travelling europe and pouring over scores in order to truly familiarise himself with an alternative history to his western european roots before taking their most base elements and magnifying them into something new. chris karrer of amon düül ii was all too familiar with his nation’s roots and the great failure of the dreams of beethoven and the early romantics became the thread that krautrockers picked up on again to create a future music. takehisa kosugi took the roots of his nation and region, blended them with western technology and a rock ‘n’ roll sensibility, that he was in so many ways far removed from, to help forge the avant-garde of japan with such seminal ensembles as group ongaku and taj mahal travellers. through the experience of tradition the underground violinist embraces insubordination towards and, ultimately, the rejection of said traditions and authoritarian structures. through this process the underground violinist is also the radical violinist. underground violin performance practices are heterogeneous and embrace heterogeneity in culture. dziga vertov – whose works and ideas have already been touched on briefly throughout this thesis – proposed, in his manifesto, a break from everything that came before the events of october and the revolution that would change the world forever. like many other soviet artists, at least in the earliest days of the soviet union, vertov took a lenin-inspired stance jacques derrida, spectres of marx: the state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international (new york: routledge, )., . against art itself. his films were montages based around documentary footage of daily life, epic stories without story lines showing the glory of the working classes and their prosperous new world of communism. these films were propaganda in essence, but they were more than that, and they influenced a whole new generation of artists in the west during the s. for vertov, an internationalist in every sense, homogeneity was of no interest and he proposed that ‘film’ as an art be destroyed and replaced with the utilitarian kino-eye (a neologism of vertov’s combining the russian for cinema and the english for eye), a mechanical eye that sees things for what they are, an agent for the truth. instead of art, vertov strove to create kinodelia (another neologism): “the rhythmic unity of heterogeneous themes”. heterogeneity is at the very root of underground violin performance and is a defining characteristic of its development. in a world that still largely prizes homogeneous ideals of culture (even in so-called multicultural australia the populace still largely prizes a form of superficial australian-ness as a core value that all new-comers should adhere to or else face the silent barrage of polite bourgeois ‘tolerance’) heterogeneity is no less relevant or powerful than it was at the dawn of the soviet union as a symbol of anti-capitalist defiance. homogeneity is profitable, is the product of authoritarian control, and is born out of cultural and social hegemony, in this case the hegemony of formula and ultimately of monopoly/monotheism/mono-culture. formulaic music is perfect for profit, consistency and reliability creates an ease in the consumer that parts them from their hard-earned money almost sub-consciously. heterogeneous music is not profitable. complex and unruly, it stands up against hegemony and is not conducive to formula, it confuses and challenges the consumer and can cause often violent reactions. underground violin performance is a truly heterogeneous practice, and there are many common wellsprings from which its practitioners have drunk draughts of inspiration. the underground violinist embraces freedom of form, diversity of source material – an open-minded attitude to musics foreign to one’s own tradition is encouraged –, ambivalence to commercial motivations, and is therefore ultimately anti-capitalist. dziga vertov, kino-eye: the writings of dziga vertov, ed. annette michelson, trans. kevin o'brien (london: university of california press, )., . soviet street poet vladimir mayakovsky’s adoption of colloquialisms is a worthy analogy to apply to the underground violinist’s practice. by taking elements of the popular musical languages of the time, underground violinists invoke the same cries of “vulgarity!” from the violinistic institution that mayakovsky so damagingly received from the stalinists. the colloquial, being mercurial and heterogeneous, is the enemy of hegemony, more often than not attracting the wrath of censors. mayakovsky did not survive the censorship of his work, but the spirit of this “vulgarity” lives on in the heterogeneous practices of underground violinists. american blues, country & western, jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, romanian gypsy music, japanese eleki, english ‘beat’ rock: these are some of the many sources making up the street-level, colloquial (and some might say punk) sound-palate of underground violinists. in the twenty- first century context, the underground violinist may wish to embrace the working class, underdog soul of underground heavy metal (as i have done), or the incisive repetition of cutting-edge underground hip-hop, and subvert their own violinistic tradition – whether this be jazz, bluegrass, classical, tango and so on. this heterogeneous melting pot of ideas is indeed required in order to make truly radical underground violin music. the lack of so-called ‘purity’ in this heterogeneousness can be seen as a symbolic rejection of the notion of ‘purity’ espoused by classicists, folklorists, and in its most extreme form, fascists. the cold, clinical, virtuosic and pure superman (übermensch) of the nineteenth-century bravura style is thus rejected and replaced with the emotive, flawed, noisy and heterogeneous underman (untermensch) of the futuristic radical underground violin style. like the definition of the term ‘radical’ suggests, the underground violinist proceeds directly from heterogeneous roots, thus marking a considerable departure from the traditional. herbert marshall, "chronology," in mayakovsy, ed. herbert marshall (london: dennis dobson, )., . underground violinists are manifestations of marx’s spectre – haunting the hegemony of western culture. hauntology, as proposed by jacques derrida in his volume ‘spectres of marx’, can be seen throughout the work of underground violinists. in , when derrida completed this work, he showed a prophetic sense of the state of marxism in the post-modern world, claiming: “at a time when a new world disorder is attempting to install its neo-capitalism and neo- liberalism, no disavowal has managed to rid itself of marx’s ghosts. hegemony still organises the repression and thus the confirmation of a haunting. haunting belongs to the structure of every hegemony”. in this case the hegemony is the institution of western violin performance practice as posited by the twentieth-century pedagogical institutions of carl flesch and ivan galamian, undeniably a product of the precedents of the neo-capitalism and neo-liberalism derrida refers to. it is important to note here that what is meant by western violin performance practice is not the description of geography, but that of a tradition based in western aristocratic artistic hegemony. this tradition has been taught to students all over the world and is an inevitable part of almost any violinist’s (an irish fiddler or middle eastern musician would not refer to themselves as a ‘violinist’) upbringing. all underground violinists display a reaction to this tradition, whether it is takehisa kosugi employing techniques and sonorities from indian music, and his own japanese musical traditions, to australian violinist jon rose using elements of the great australian colonial institution of cricket to make unimaginable noise. a certain autochthonic attitude and an autodidactic or intuitive approach to appropriating new techniques is a useful tool for the underground violinist to embrace. by taking on the guise of the autochthon the underground violinist can easily subvert, or unlearn, the strictures of their derrida, spectres of marx., . jon rose brought out an album in entitled forward of short leg which is comprised of punky, no wave pieces featuring wild violin improvisations. each of the pieces is named after an element of the game of cricket, arguably australia’s national sport. jon rose, forward of short leg (germany: dossier, ), vinyl lp. tradition and the power structures that imposed them. as an aristocratic art form, traditional violin performance practice – what from now on shall be referred to as ‘classical’ violin performance practice – is part of the imperialist culture that gave birth to the capitalist hegemony we now live under. the hegemony of classical violin is haunted by many spectres – the spectre of jazz (the legacy of slavery), the spectre of irish fiddle (the legacy of colonial brutality), the spectre of gypsy fiddle (the legacy of our shared nomadic past), the spectre of yiddish fiddle (the spectre of genocide and lost cultures) – but it is the specifically marxist spectre of radical underground violin that constitutes the most direct revolutionary action against this performative status quo. underground violinists must embrace elements of futurism: science, elegance and violence. throughout this thesis an element of futurism has been discussed, one that runs deep in the ideology and practice of what has been termed underground violin performance practice. this is a “real futurism, science, elegance and violence” as the new york anarchist, post- situationist underground group black mask declared in their retrospective article ‘flower power won’t stop fascist power’. henry flynt had some involvement with black mask (aka black mask up against the wall motherfuckers) member ben morea, often visiting him and discussing politics and ideology with him during his later days as a member of the wwp in the late s. black mask were an intense and violent group who eventually alienated much of the art scene, but there is a similar spirit of aggressive activism present throughout the lifestyles and works of all early radical underground violinists. the futurists of italy whom inspired the black mask group expressed a violent desire to attack the very fundaments of bourgeois society black mask, "black mask & up against the wall motherfuckers: flower power won't stop fascist power - the story of a small, underground s revolutionary group in new york city," black mask & up against the wall motherfuckers( )., . benjamin piekut, " east broadway, ben morea loft, of ," in henry flynt in new york (youtube, ). that lead to filippo marinetti’s ( – ) influential, and largely abhorrent, futurist manifesto and to an unfortunate alliance with fascism in the years that followed its publication in . futurism embraces the death of the old, the glorification of the new, of youth and rebellion. there is an element of nationalism attached to futurism that inspired the vulgar ideology of national socialism, but it also inspired the other side of the political spectrum, leading communists to embrace many of its tenets and ideals. the great soviet anti-art poet mayakovsky whose ideas and writings so influenced the young henry flynt, declared himself a futurist in direct opposition to the mussolini-adoring italians. the violent rejection of the past is inseparable from flynt’s philosophy and he continues to discard his own previous ideas on a regular basis in order to build on them and keep them relevant. like flynt, all underground violinists should embrace this futurist-inspired process of critique and deconstruction. like the name of revolutionary japanese playwright shuji terayama’s play throw away the books, we’re going out in the streets underground violinists, too, should take to the streets and gather new experiences in order to write a new outlaw culture on the blank pages of society’s future. mayakovsky’s writing aimed at a truly proletarian expression, making use of the language of now and of the streets and, according to flynt, his work was given full approval by the so-called “hard left” in the s. mayakovsky was a comfut, a communist-futurist who wrote poetry in a direct and vernacular way that has struck true with the works and aims of underground violinists. as a futurist he held the new above all else and rejected all past forms of art. he sought to pull art down from its pedestal and bring it to street-level, to the level of the people. furthermore, mayakovsky rejected the futurism of the italians, as his futurism was born of a truly revolutionary spirit, and a great desire for an assertion of his unique self in a terayama enlisted the compositional genius of j.a. caesar, a futen or outlaw japanese youth who lived an ascetic’s existence on the streets of many of japan’s cities throughout the s. caesar’s work shares similarities to toshi ichiyanagi and takahisa kosugi in its blending of underground rock music with japanese traditional sounds and instrumentation. for more information on this topic read julian cope, japrocksampler. flynt, "marxist art roster." society which offered him “no future and whose brutality and incompetence he condemned with all his humanity”. the underground violinist too, seeks to be only his or herself even if this is in direct confrontation with his or her host society. for the underground violinist the rejection of the traditional values of violin performance is paramount as these traditions represent a herd mentality and a practice rooted in the conformist military discipline of european feudalism. the preservation of the empire of the past is no longer their goal, thus replaced by the creation of new sounds, a future music. the industrious side of human nature is embraced by the underground violinist. when a new sound cannot be reached through new techniques, they will reach for technology, old and new, to enhance their palate. as much as they will search back into the past for inspiration they will look at the now and peer into the future. a traditional violinist will reach for new notations, mutations of the old to create something perceived as ‘new’, but an underground violinist will reach for a piece of string, tie it to their bridge, and see what comes out of it. there is an element of the peasant fiddler in this playful deconstruction, hard at work building his own violin so as to sound like no one else. it is hard to imagine that such an image would not have been appealing to mayakovsky, a man who made up his own words in order to express a “sonofabitching” revolutionary view of the future. as he saw his future utopia crumble in the hands of tyrants he took his own life in , yet his spirit haunts the future music of underground violinists and their actions. while never openly engaging in any violent actions, flynt, conrad and other underground violinists of the s engaged in public protests at cultural centres, and centres of the establishment. flynt’s protest was full of violent and destructive imagery – ‘demolish lincoln centre’, ‘demolish serious culture’, ‘down with art’, ‘the first cultural task is publicly to expose and fight the domination of white, european-us, ruling class art’. these slogans were worn on sandwich boards by flynt and his protesting cohorts, including c.m. bowra, "foreword," in mayakovsky, ed. herbert marshall (london: denis dobson, )., one of many of mayakovsky’s hybrid swearwords, this one translated as such from the russian by herbert marshall in his compendium of mayakovsky’s works entitled mayakovsky. conrad, and they are full of violent declamations – “fight”, “demolish”, “down with” – representing a cry for the destruction of the old guard and its replacement with a new culture (or in this case no ‘culture’ as we know it, at all). another underground violinist who engaged in similar actions, at the same time but on a different continent, was takehisa kosugi. as a member of group ongaku, hi-red centre and other groups, kosugi took part in infamous happenings such as ‘dinner party on the anniversary of the defeat of world war ii’ which caused a massive stir in the post-war conservative, newly americanised japan, by simply highlighting japan’s defeat in a war everyone was keen to pretend never happened. all of these japanese action groups held connections to fluxus, and all of them embraced a similar dada-inspired, anarchic, futurist and socialistic worldview and agenda. similarly in germany, classically-trained “free-jazz” violinist chris karrer, as a member of the infamous amon düül commune in munich, created a futurist vision of a world in space with amon düül ii, and like the japanese, the german legacy of fascism gave them good reason to look, often violently, to the future. amon düül’s infamy came largely from a couple of former members, ulrike meinhof and andreas baader, and their violent terrorist rampage through europe that ended in many deaths and eventual suicide all in the name of the infamous red army faction, and of a new society. amon düül ii’s music looked to space and to science fiction for inspiration, as had flynt’s, and undoubtedly kosugi’s (who worked as a composer for the hit japanese sci-fi cartoon astro boy). science-fiction’s obvious futurist links need not be proven further here, and the drive for new technology and new horizons that so often occupies the pages of science-fiction novels is echoed in the underground violinist’s embrace of technology and yearning for new and original sounds. joseph, beyond the dream syndicate., - . julian cope, japrocksampler: how the post-war japanese blew their minds on rock 'n' roll (london: bloomsbury, )., . julian cope, krautrocksampler: one head's guide to the great kosmiche music - onwards (united kingdom: head heritage, )., . technology and electricity in the way that it was brought to the violin, in the s by underground violinists, opened the instrument to one essential futurist element: noise. strange and unpredictable sounds could be brought forth from the violin through the magnifying glass of pick-ups and microphones, and the signal these magnifying glasses produced could be altered by stomp-boxes, amplifier-settings and synthesisers. science-fiction indeed found its way into violin performance and in the case of amon düül ii and british space rockers hawkwind, even became an obsession and a utopia from the increasingly dystopian failings of flower-power and the hippy movement. utilising echo effects, wah-wah pedals and other psychedelic musical tools, hawkwind’s simon house could use his violin to take the music into outer space and beyond. karrer had a similar approach to his violin and both groups used the technology at their disposal to create truly cosmic and utopian music that was equally a transcendence, and a fist in the face of, the establishment. these strange noises and effects have a precedent in the musical instruments experimented with by the futurists, and the italians in particular. marinetti’s futurist colleague luigi russolo famously invented strange instruments to invoke the sounds of the futurist metropolis that he called intonarumori. these devices created noise, and this noise was added to music in several startling compositions for intonarumori and orchestra. john cage took this embracing of noise even further by making atmospheric and incidental noise the performance itself in his ’ ”. underground violinists, just as russolo and cage had done before them, embrace noise and none more so than tony conrad. noise is an integral part of his practice, and his violin has since influenced an entire genre of music by the same name, that continues to evolve side-by-side with conrad himself. the underground violinist must radically embrace these elements of futurism in order to create fresh and vital music. for too long the violin has been an instrument of aristocratic beauty, or of paternalistically protected folk traditions. it is a living tradition that must look to the future in order to free itself of the past. the violin must be a part of the solution, not the problem, and become an instrument for social change by embracing these futurist elements in both a metaphoric and literal sense. let it be said that nam jun paik said more about the world smashing a violin in his violin concerto than jascha heifetz (famous american world war two-era concert violinist) ever did with his brilliant technique! the simple act of deconstruction or destruction can say a lot to a society obsessed with progress at the expense of progressiveness. when not destroying a violin the underground violinist can make a similar statement through modification; through the radical embrace of technology. the great altar of the immaculate stradivari need not dominate any further. what sounds ‘better’ is subjective. is not a scream as effective as a dulcet tone? if the underground violinist so chooses, they may remove varnish, file down the bridge, add extra strings, place microphones on, and plug into all manner of things, the immaculate altar of the violin and recast it anew. through the imagery of violence, the embracing of technology and science, and the fearless rebellion of youthful experimentation (and this can be embraced at any age) the underground violinist resembles the futurist, and the better they are for it. underground violinists must embrace electricity. as stated above, technology must be embraced by the underground violinist. the underground violinist should enhance their technique with the technological weapons that are available to them. if there are devices that are not available the underground violinist can seek other means of sound manipulation through building their own electrified instruments, amplifiers and modifications. amplification is absolutely integral to the practice of underground violinists as electricity and humanity are inseparable. the unity of man and machine is an important symbol for the underground violinist (evidence of this can be found most brazenly in the tony conrad and faust piece ‘from the side of the machine’ [ ]). the violin itself is a machine: to extend it with modifications and amplification is to embrace a vision for the future that is now becoming a reality, the unity of humankind and technology. the technological utopia yearned for by the underground violinists of the s and s could be easily expressed through the magnifying effect of the piezo pick-up and blasted back out in an unrecognisable form through synthesisers and analogue fx pedals. furthermore, the distorting effects made available through amplification aids in the aforementioned agitation, for the unique signal that the violin creates can cause as much discomfort as pleasure in the listener when placed under the microscope of the amplifier. while not an element that must always be used by the underground violinist in all of their work, electricity is indispensible and it must be used as an extension of technique – a purposeful and overdriven assertion of their ideas and personal expressions. underground violinists are acognitive realists. the socialist realists of communist societies favoured diversity over formalism, and so do underground violinists. in , alexander fadeyev wrote: “according to the marxist- leninist view, the true realism of art is creative work which comes as close to historic truth as possible, and is able to represent the trends indicating the real lines of development in the struggle waged against outdated forces”. historic truth is at the absolute core of conrad and flynt’s work. in particular, conrad’s project has been a lifelong search for truth, a kind of yearning for historical justice to be served. conrad explores the idea that history should have gone a different way and that, had the more interesting trends in violin performance of the seventeenth century been perpetuated then many of the systems of control inherent in western music may have never been. furthermore, conrad seeks justice in just intonation, as should all underground violinists, using it to negate the imperialist power structures inherent in the western classical violin canon. equal temperament represents the imposition of power on something which should ultimately remain free: sound. this imposition is as a cultural bi-product of the western notions of efficiency and order that is inherent too in our class systems and corporate hierarchies. in this sense flynt has used non- cultural theory panel attached to the central committee of the hungarian socialist worker's party, "of socialist realism," in radical perspectives in the arts, ed. lee baxandall (baltimore: penguin books, )., . western approaches to instrumental practice in order to express class struggle, and indeed all underground violinists should be conscious of the social dimensions of their work and actively criticise, through their practice, the power structures that govern and shape it. flynt seeks justice for the working classes in his music by embracing street-level popular music, ethnic music and vernacular styles. for him, as for all underground violinists, the truth lies in the hands of the people and not in the hands of the culture industry taste-makers. as artists with backgrounds in mathematics, both flynt and conrad aim to take the myth out of mathematics, removing its abstract constructs and their false interpretation of reality. underground violinists reject cognition and mathematical logic and reflect reality as it is, in the present, through their works. through the search for truth and justice against the status quo of myth and positivism, the underground violinist deconstructs and critiques cognition to get to an expression that reflects reality and real experience. furthermore, as part of this cognitive deconstruction, the underground violinist aims for an autochthonic (self-taught, autodidact) practice that breaks free of logical progression (working hard piece by piece to have an excellent technique for instance) and holds dear a form of autodidactic progression. the underground violinist must gather their influences and, in a sense, brend their way to a new form of expression. the underground violinist should take more from reality and real-life experience than from the isolation of the practice room. this will enhance their practice and should be approached with flynt’s concept of acognitive culture in mind – it should be born from pure experimentation and recreation, and not as ‘work’ in the capitalist sense (labour in exchange for social and financial acceptance and remuneration). while making a living from underground violin practise is desirable it should not be the driving force of the underground violinist’s work. indeed desire, in the capitalist and materialist sense of wanting what one does not have at the expense of others, is anathema to the underground violinist. the underground violinist should take inspiration from the very real experience that can be gleaned from the ascetic life. as a sadhu pandit pran nath owned everything and nothing, travelling the streets of hindustan with only his shirt on his back and an otherworldly voice. in japan, the underground youth took the hippy movement to extremes with the advent of the futen, inspired by a cartoon character that lived a humble life on the streets. the futen scene gave birth to some of japan’s most radical underground musicians. the beats and their on the road lifestyles too should be an influence, as the act of seeking experience should always fuel the underground violinist’s taste for expressing the truth and the real. perhaps most important are those artists in the deep underground of major western cities who chose to turn, in the spirit of the situationist international, the streets, alleys and disused spaces into a utopia, somehow miraculously creating great works in the direst of financial situations. flynt and conrad both lived this way in manhattan for many years and it should be a state that no underground violinist should fear. work, play, spirituality and ideology, blend together in the practise of underground violinists. this brend should not be used only as a tool for introspection, but as a way to find reality and truth in sound by first embracing a just, ethical and autochthonic culture and way of life. through cognitive nihilism the underground violinist is able to become a voice of reality through creating sounds that call into question the validity of the processes we normally attribute to making art or music. an acognitive culture is the ultimate goal of the underground violinist, and an anti-formalist diversity borrowed from socialist realism (the ideal and not the unfortunate historical reality that suggests most socialist realist work ends up being diluted through a sea of party bureaucracy and censorship) is a healthy channel through which to funnel the music of this new culture. too long has the violinist been the slave of form and formality – both in terms of the overbearing prominence of the sonata and concerto, and through the stifling demands of the western concert hall respectively – and only through the emancipation brought about by an intuitive, street-level practise can the underground violinist truly become liberated. through breaking with form, embracing the diversity of reality and critiquing fundamental ideals of cognition and experience, the underground violinist becomes an acognitive realist. underground violinists can not be genre/market musicians. their techniques must embrace and reflect the diversity of reality and not the hegemony of tradition. perhaps ironically, this manifesto, in its guise as part of a phd thesis at a major australian tertiary institution places it in direct opposition to one element of underground violin performance, its inherent anti-establishmentarianism. underground violinists must perform in a way that defies pre-determined genre specifications as are so often created by academics, and worse still by corporations, for the sake of ease of comprehension and consumption. genres create pockets where institutionalisation can creep in and ultimately corrupt. this manifesto does not seek to create a precedent with which to institutionalise underground violin performance practice, it rather simply seeks to create a part of a platform from which all violinists can begin to break free of the chains of market-driven art. it is but a suggestion, and the very nature of underground violin performance makes it far too amorphous a concept to ever properly be caged in the genre-definition construct. as a radical practice, underground violin performance can both be firmly derived from its roots and represent a direct and decisive break from the tradition that these roots represent. flynt is a perfect example of this, as his music was an extension of his own native roots music, but through embracing a heterogeneous outlook and broadening his musical influences his music ultimately broke from these roots and sprouted roots of its own. indeed it is hard to ignore the heterogeneous nature of flynt’s native music, since the numerous roots of american folk music make it difficult to define as a single genre in the first place. similarly conrad has strong roots in western european art music, citing seventeenth-century violin music as a major influence on his work; however, these roots are intertwined with a love of noisy modern technology and a complete rejection of pythagorean harmonic theory. once again a deeply heterogeneous practice is born. in their article ‘of socialist realism’ ( ), the cultural theory panel attached to the central committee of the hungarian socialist workers’ party quoted this from one of their articles: … the canonization of certain genres, forms and attitudes, artistic processes and modes is alien to socialist realism. socialist realism is characterised by diversity. while committing oneself to the outdated style of socialist realism is hardly the aim of the underground violinist, such a quote is useful in outlining an important element of one of the most radical artistic approaches during the s, diversity. if socialist realism embraces diversity and therefore heterogeneity, then the underground violinist certainly practices an art not far removed from the socialist agenda. indeed, flynt was very much a socialist and would no doubt still declare himself in allegiance with many of its tenets. conrad, too, embraces a revolutionary approach to art defined by an interest in radical democracy, utopianism and community activism. the underground violinist cannot be defined by genre, because their practice embraces diversity in the same way that socialist realism embraces diversity, as a reflection of a diverse, heterogeneous, international community. underground violinists embrace diy methods of production and presentation where necessary. the diy or do-it-yourself ethic of the underground is crucial to the artistic practice of the truly radicalised underground violinist. whether it is for the purpose of recording or for live performance, the guerrilla tactics of diy presentation are needed when one’s work sits in such opposition to the status quo. as explored earlier in this thesis (chapter ), underground musicians in new york city utilised unconventional spaces such as lofts and galleries as places to perform and present recordings to the public. in new york city community arts hubs began to spring up out of this scene and venues such as the kitchen, which still exists today, served as the sites where new recordings by henry flynt and projects such as tony conrad’s ten years alive on the infinite plain were aired or performed live. these artist-run community spaces are centres for the development of new artistic ideas all over the western world with the zodiac ibid., . café in munich serving a similar purpose to the kitchen for groups like amon düül ii in west germany during the s and s. zodiac was a psychedelic free-zone where local and visiting musicians and artists could get together, get high and make cutting-edge music for hours on end. japanese underground violinists didn’t have such well-known hubs to present their work in, so the underground took its music to the streets, to galleries and to the wild outdoor festivals that seemed to happen monthly throughout the s. taj mahal travellers were regulars on the japanese free festival circuit when they weren’t too busy playing performances to forests, or to the ocean, even using pieces of the environment around them as instruments. british underground violinists such as simon house had a similar experience, with the wild anarchic festival circuit in the uk being the way of life for hawkwind even to this day. such an attitude to performance is an integral part of the underground violinist’s practice; without it they may not have the opportunity to present their work. more importantly, it challenges the accepted ideas of where violin performance should be presented. the stuffy confines of the capitalist culture halls are no place for the underground violinist. diy recording methods are also highly important to the underground violinist. as will be extended upon in the next declamation, the underground violinist embraced the new recording technologies made available to them. in the s and s conrad, flynt and kosugi all committed large volumes of work to tape, some of which presumably have not been released yet to the public. this method of production is in part necessity and in part convenient. for conrad and flynt it was simply the norm in their milieu to hang out, play and make recordings in one’s loft. these recordings were then shared around, played to visitors or at parties, played to audiences at gigs, in political lectures, as soundtracks to underground films or pressed into flexi-discs and sold accompanying underground magazines such as la monte young’s anthology, george maciunas’s fluxus or other radical publications such as the situationist times. for kosugi recording was easy and convenient, as his work composing the electronic soundtrack to atom boy gave him access to a wide variety of cutting edge recording equipment and synthesisers and other electronic devices. furthermore, the rush to record truly japanese new sounds, and the visionary leadership of record label men like, polydor boss, ikuzo orita, meant that figures with ideas as ‘far out’ as kosugi could record their music and have it published widely on vinyl lps via major record labels such as sony/cbs. during this period artists such as kosugi had absolute freedom in the studio and a very hands-on approach to recording their works, which would most likely not be possible today. the diy approach is integral to the underground violinist’s creative freedom. with minimal outside input the underground violinist’s vision can be distilled onto the recorded medium and presented untainted by market restrictions and expectations. this too can be said for diy performances where audiences often paid nothing to attend, and the event was more about the experience of sharing sound and ideas than paying bills and promoting goods. the underground violinist must embody this community spirit and freedom. to reach this, diy is the only way. underground violinists must ultimately use their music as a weapon against ‘moribund capitalism’, a radical subversion of the descendents of imperialism. “moribund capitalism – that is how lenin described imperialism.” -ernst fischer the underground economy of diy recordings and performances ultimately negates capitalism and empowers the musicians to live beyond the legacy of imperialism. historically, those inhabiting the underground have been labelled ‘drop-outs’ and it is true that the radical underground violinist must drop out from the apathy of consumerist culture and embrace a practice that addresses the community and environment in a positive and ethical fashion. cope, japrocksampler., – . ernst fischer, "symposium on the question of decadence," in radical perspectives in the arts, ed. lee baxandall (baltimore: penguin, )., . those underground violinists for whom a more widespread distribution of work was enabled during the s and s were also part of a milieu that emphasised the exchange of ideas through the recorded medium over any financial aspirations. hawkwind are still renowned for their collective lack of regard for the business side of the music industry, and a group as anarchic and politically extreme as amon düül ii can hardly be accused of pandering to the teenybopper market. for the underground violinist the recording is a sonic piece of utopia, a simple and newly-available device for documentation, and for some a tool for agitprop. for the underground violinist who is truly radicalised, a recording forms the perfect platform to attempt to distribute the idea of a new society and to agitate – in both a literal and intellectual sense – the listener. for flynt and conrad agitation is an obvious part of their work. for kosugi who made recordings playing to the sea or to fishermen working on their nets as a member of taj mahal travellers , the agitation is more passive but the ecological and political themes that such actions present are just as obvious. the brazen agitprop of the krautrockers and hawkwind is the stuff of legend with various performances involving all manner of provocative and illegal behaviour. ultimately, through the medium of performance and recording, the underground violinist must call into question the validity of authority and the systems of control that insidiously give it its power. the means of production are different for each underground violinist but the goal is the same for all: producing a product is of no interest. underground violinists are in opposition to what marx called “commodity fetishism”. they ultimately use their music as a weapon against ‘moribund capitalism’, a radical subversion of imperialism and the hegemony of capitalism. taj mahal travellers, "taj mahal travellers on tour ," (youtube, ). meredith tax, "introductory: culture is not neutral, whom does it serve?," in radical perspectives in the arts, ed. lee baxandall (baltimore: penguin, )., . concluding statement of the manifesto of the revolutionary radical underground violinist the radical underground violinist must use their instrument as a weapon against hegemony. they must use their instrument as a weapon against oppression and complacency. the radical underground violinist must embrace “science, elegance and violence” and take their sounds to and from the streets. they must stand tall on their own two feet and use their practice as an expression of insubordination to the established power structures and their corrupt systems. the radical underground violinist must then subvert the traditions and norms of their own traditions as a reflection of a desire to subvert all staid and crooked traditions. they oppose homogeneity and embrace heterogeneity and a love of diversity in life as well as practice. the radical underground violinist must haunt the capitalist hierarchy as a living spectre of marx, holding them to account through a musical critique of their unacceptable crimes and haunting the hegemony of their dominant western imperialist culture. radical underground violinists are harbingers of the electric revolution in instrumental practice, making use of electricity as a microscope held up against the raw capabilities of the violin for creating unique and powerful sound. mask, "black mask & up against the wall motherfuckers: flower power won't stop fascist power - the story of a small, underground s revolutionary group in new york city.", . the radical underground violinist must eschew logic and embrace cognitive nihilism, pairing it to a streetwise realism based in true lived experience and reminiscent of the theory of socialist realism, thus becoming acognitive realists. the true revolutionary radical underground violinist embraces diy means of production and presentation in the face of corporate apathy, ultimately subverting the capitalist means of production and becoming a fist in the face of moribund capitalism. in the bristling words of henry flynt: the first cultural task is publicly to expose and fight the domination of white, european-u.s. ruling class art! radical underground violinists of the world, stand up, take your instruments and your intellects and help build a culture in opposition to the powers that are degrading our disadvantaged fellow humans and making our planet uninhabitable! key recordings by underground violinists: this section provides a guide to key recordings by underground violinists:  takehisa kosugi, catch wave, sony/cbs ( )  takehisa kosugi/michael ranta/toshi ichiyanagi, improvisation sep. , iskra records ( )  tony conrad, outside the dream syndicate, caroline ( ) flynt, "action against cultural imperialism."  henry flynt, you are my everlovin’/celestial power (psychedelic version), ( , reissued on cd by locust records, )  henry flynt, nova’billy, locust records ( , released )  taj mahal travellers, live stockholm, july , drone syndicate (united states: )  taj mahal travellers, august , nippon columbia ( , reissued by p-vine records in )  taj mahal travellers, july , , cbs japan ( )  group ongaku, music of group ongaku, hear sound art library (japan: )  hawkwind, doremi fasol latido, united artists records (united kingdom: )  hawkwind, hall of the mountain grill, united artists records (united kingdom: )  high tide, sea shanties, liberty/united artists (united kingdom: )  amon düül ii, phallus dei, liberty (germany: )  amon düül ii, yeti, liberty (germany: ) chapter : conclusion - the underground violinist as the radical violinist: the end is just the beginning this thesis set out to answer the question: in what ways do the performance practices of underground violinists during the s and s in new york city – and to a lesser extent those underground violinists present in other scenes throughout the world – reflect the revolutionary ideals and philosophies of their creators, and do these practices thereby liberate the violin from established traditions and norms? furthermore – and as a direct result of attempting to answer this question – this thesis proposed a new and radical way for violinists to approach their practice in a way that is relevant to the challenges of the twenty-first century. from underground violinists we have seen the birth of the radical violinist and a future for the instrument that challenges all perceived norms and traditions. despite the unconventional nature of many of its paths of enquiry and the methods in which i approached them, the thesis has ultimately resulted in a triangulation of sorts – an oddly traditional way to tackle such an anti- traditional topic. through the intersection of musical analysis, discourse analysis and critical theory, this thesis has answered these questions, and addressed the challenge of proposing a new approach to violin performance practice. each chapter of this thesis has attempted to address the work of individual musicians in light of their own ideals and practices, and in light of the work of their contemporaries and their specific milieu. firstly, it was important to address the very concept of ‘underground’ itself, and how this concept has been approached in the already established discourse on underground culture. after taking a brief respite to discuss methodology, it was then necessary to paint a picture of the underground of the s and s, its precedents and its antecedents, with a specific focus on the scene in manhattan. this established a core sociological basis for the analysis of the works of two of manhattan’s underground violinists, tony conrad and henry flynt, utilising a modified form of jost’s style portrait method that so effectively paints the picture of the musician as a living entity amongst a community of other living, breathing, creating beings. it is important to note that at no point was this thesis intended to be a comparative study, and i took painstaking measures to make it clear that, while these artist’s works are full of parallels, their individual ideas are unique, and that this uniqueness is integral to the very core of underground violin performance practices. from this base of largely new and unexplored analyses, i proposed, via the suitably revolutionary platform of the manifesto, a new radicalised and socially conscious approach to violin performance: radical violin performance practice. it is hoped that the ideas outlined in this manifesto will serve as a tool for interested musicians to carve their own revolutionary paths in the pages of history. while this thesis is now drawing to an end, it is important to outline a loose lineage from the heyday of underground violinists to the current era of radical violinists in order to prove that these practices are not simply another retro rehashing of old ideas, but rather a part of a living culture that continues to evolve what follows is a kind of chapter within a chapter, firstly declaring the death of the underground violinist and their rebirth as the radical violinist before exploring my own experiences as a performer in this vein, and how it is i came to write this work. the underground violinist becomes the radical violinist through radicalisation, resistance, diversity, subversion, hauntology and socialism, a futurist view, a transcendence of the market and ultimately a truly individual approach to practice, the radical underground violinist laid a firm ground for a new way to approach the instrument. as the final decades of the twentieth century rolled on the world changed and so did the definition and boundaries of the underground. for the underground violinists of the s and s the means of production and presentation were limited by the financial expense of self- producing music, and by the lack of networks for distributing underground music. it was still crucial for the underground violinist to establish a relationship with a record label in order to have their work published. for henry flynt this resulted in his work not being published in any sort of widely available format until the early s. for tony conrad this meant that his only published recording until the early s was his work with faust for carolina records. after the musical year zero of and the post-punk revolution of diy album releases and small independent record labels it became easier for underground musicians to produce and distribute their work. from here endless variants of musical styles and subcultures morphed and mutated and underground violinists such as the manhattan no-wave entity boris policeband – a mysterious individual who used to perform ramones-inspired solo electric violin miniatures accompanied by static announcements from a police cb radio scanner – began to publish work, on their own, or through other small independent labels. the s were a quiet time for the underground violinists, with conrad producing very little music publicly and henry flynt ending his work for violin in . other underground violinists continued to work more visibly than in the past, however, with simon house touring the world in david bowie’s band and producing strange trance records, while kosugi continued to prolifically record with various musicians and compose music for the merce cunningham dance company in new york. chris karrer and amon düül ii also continued into the s but to less and less success and with less and less violin. the violin made its presence known in the british industrial music underground at this time with artists such as throbbing gristle featuring the heavily treated, conrad-inspired violin of genesis p-orridge. industrial music then spawned the neo-folk movement, which consisted of bands obsessed with romantic and neo-classical sounds and thus featuring violinists and other classical and folk instruments. many of these musicians toured constantly and reached a level of success that transcended previous notions of the underground and what it means to be underground. however, the radical element remained undiluted, and therefore it is more appropriate to call these later-era underground violinists, ‘radical violinists’ and eschew the term ‘underground violinist’ altogether. indeed in recent years conrad and p-orridge have even collaborated on several occasions, culminating in an album entitled taking issue. tony/genesis breyer p-orridge conrad, taking issue (united states: dais records, ), vinyl lp. a brief overview of the underground movements of radical violinists during the s is required here in order to outline their significant links to the underground violinists of the s, and in order to display the continuing relevance of subversive violin practice during the last thirty years of musical upheaval and change. in the wake of punk, many musicians ensconced in the world of avant-garde and improvisatory music seemed to embrace the diy ethic more than ever. one such musician is the arguably radical, alabama-based violinist ladonna smith. in the mid- s she, along with guitarist davey williams, formed transmuseq and its label home transmuseq records. much of smith’s work of this period and into the s falls more into the free jazz/free improvisatory territory of the extended techniques world, but there are moments of pure radical violin bliss in her demented electric no wave-styled violin contortions. smith represents a continuation of the diy ethic in violin practice, and a radical love of noise that continues to be a part of her work to the present day. another s radical violinist, laurie anderson, is best known for her hit o’ superman, however she is also known for her radical innovations in technology, and in particular her mutations of the violin. using magnetic tape, instead of horsehair on her bow, she created strange midi soundscapes utilising the cutting edge computer technology of the time, and she continues to do so today. anderson brought further elegance and science to the futurist pallet of radical violin performance and, as an example of one of her many links to manhattan underground violinists, is now married to one of the velvet underground, lou reed. in australia the radical violinist jon rose brought a rebellious punk cry to his instrument, playing all manner of unique and strange sounds, in various ensembles, and with his well-known violin-based handmade instruments and other violin-like discoveries. rose continues to create new and stunning sounds including his works for bowed fences, catalogued and recorded during his travels around australia’s outback with his partner hollis taylor, together bowing the giant fences that span thousands of kilometres throughout the red centre of this country. taylor is another example of the radical violinist of the s, extending the vernacular language of the united states in a way similar to flynt, and exploring eastern- european concepts of rhythm and structure in her unsquare dances. taylor also has a long history exploring alternative tunings, winning prestigious awards for her trail mixes for five scordatura violins. in recent years she has focussed on the songs of birds, and in particular the distinctive call of the australian pied butcherbird, bringing a crucial and timely link from the suffering environment to her practice as a violinist. i was able to study briefly with taylor, and the ideas she gave me in a series of all-too-brief lessons and workshops in gave me much to ponder on. such an experience was almost certainly a corrupting step, encouraging my inevitable drift away from traditional practices. my own practice will be explored in more detail, following an overview of the radical violinists who came to the fore during the period in which i underwent my initial musical training and first became aware of underground music: the s. during the s, or what i’ll dub the era of ‘alternative’ music – which in effect was the era in which i became consciously aware of popular music – the violin seemed like a very uncool thing to play. the devastating beauty of john cale’s viola on velvet underground and stooges records, now considered classics, was still overlooked as bands like my bloody valentine and spiritualized attempted to reproduce the drone with guitars instead of strings. there was one band in particular that was the polar opposite of this however, and that was australia’s dirty three. in the mid- s, the dirty three were at their peak, i was in high school and unfortunately unaware of their existence; however, they have since become a crucial influence on my practice as a violinist. the wild and extraordinarily creative melbourne scene of the s and early s had given birth to them, and their distinctive blend of violin, guitar and drums-based rock famously drew the attention of nick cave, who enlisted violinist warren ellis to his bad seeds band and helped make the dirty three internationally renowned. the violin playing of warren ellis is undoubtedly radical on several levels. while the dirty three’s music does not contain any overt political references, the anarchic freedom inherent in ellis’s practice speaks for itself. his practice is informed by the post-punk raucousness of the drug-fuelled melbourne music scene of the s, and while now a consummate performer and showman, earlier performances suggest a kind of wilful abandon more in line with the punk aesthetic than anything else. his performances have been known to involve entire audiences sobbing from his soulful phrases, to violent outbursts ending in broken amps and even bloodshed. however, perhaps the most radical thing about ellis’s practice is his success. while not a mainstream figure by any stretch of the imagination, he is well known and respected amongst die-hard music fans the world over, and it is hard to find an independent music fan in australia that hasn’t heard of him. the simple fact that a rock band that is often free-form and led, not by a vocalist, or even a guitarist, but a violinist is singular in this current era, and therefore thoroughly subversive. furthermore ellis fits very much into australia’s proud history of working class subversive artists. hailing from ballarat – the victorian town in which australia’s most famous revolutionary uprising, the eureka stockade, occurred during the gold rushes of the late s – he displays the same sort of dishevelled honesty that reminds one of well-known rebels like bon scott, paul kelly or archie roach. ellis’s violin shares some similarity to that of the underground violinists, often resting on prolonged drones, tonally (although perhaps accidentally so) ambiguous, and full of glissandi and scatter-shot bowstrokes. it is unknown to me whether ellis is aware of conrad, flynt or kosugi, but he almost certainly is aware of cale, thus linking the time-travelling tendrils of the manhattan underground to the melbourne underground of the s, and more recently, the sydney opera house. other cultural situations made for different variations in the radical violinist’s spectral appearance throughout the s and into the s. in the united kingdom, for instance, and indeed in the eu in general, radical violinists developed ideologies that are at odds – yet oddly similar in many respects – with their underground forebears. english violinist matt howden is the perfect example of a new underground ideology that is mostly associated with the industrial, the dirty three’s music speaks for itself. see the discography (pg. ) for recommended dirty three recordings. neo-folk, gothic and black metal sub-cultures that emerged to some prominence in the s, heathenism and/or paganism. the heathen and pagan scenes are a complex sea of contradictory camps that sit way beyond the scope of this thesis, but they roughly range from extreme right- wing revolutionaries hell-bent on the dominance of the white race, to characters like howden who believe in a radical link to nature and to european soil that is not based in race politics, but rather based in extreme environmentalism and a sentimental longing for post (or perhaps pre)- industrial europe. indeed neo-folk music is often also called ‘post-industrial’ or ‘apocalyptic folk’ music, suggesting that it would be the music made by the survivors of mankind’s own self- destruction. there is much in common with howden’s violin playing and that of the underground violinists. it is minimal, trance-inducing, and is based around loops (digital rather than tape). howden also embraces multimedia elements in his performances, working with filmmakers and using lighting and projections to enhance his solo appearances. with the new technologies afforded by digital loop stations and effects pedals howden is able to create washes of symphonic violin and percussion – all created by tapping on the body of the violin and even rubbing his stubble-covered chin on the bridge – over which he sings deeply romantic lyrics devoted to nature, the goddess and the occult. tattooed prominently on his left forearm – which faces the audience as he plays his violin – is a sequence of runes making a tree-like shape, a clear statement of his radical interest in europe’s pre-christian roots. neo-folk musicians are also generally fiercely diy, and howden is no exception. he produces and sells all of his own works via his website, touring regularly and ostensibly making a decent living out of his work in the process. this way of connecting with his fans as consumers fits in well with his radical ideals, as neo-folk artists’ work is produced and distributed in a fashion not dissimilar to the slow food movement, encouraging customers to buy locally made products by producers who proudly display their indigenous origins right down to the very region from which they hail. as a sheffield man, howden’s work as sieben (his primary solo project) is full of references to this thenetineti, "niezła kiecka - sieben [matt howden]," (youtube, ). specific geographical place, the hearth and home so important to heathen and pagan ideology. this love of one’s own land can evoke a variety of taboo images in the western listener and i needn’t explain the reasons why here. there is little more subversive in the twenty-first century than a love of folk and a romantic attachment to soil. this is not to be mistaken with patriotism or nationalism, but more a kind of tribalism based in distant divisions of land and culture long shattered by successive wars and imperialist expansion. at a time where corporate greed fuels the death of cultures, ecologies and even entire species, it is perhaps no surprise that artists and musicians in the underground are embracing ever more extreme ideologies with which to haunt the current capitalist hegemony. therefore it is no shock to find another radical violinist lurking in the depths of the heathen underground, meri tadic. tadic, who performs under the pseudonym irij, walks a similar path to that of howden. indeed these musicians both perform at the same festivals and their work is sold from the same shops and mail orders, and often distributed through the same small independent record labels. tadic also performs as part of the highly successful pagan metal band eluveitie, playing violin and singing epic and operatic vocals. in the confines of eluveitie she creates violin parts that work as part of the traditional element crucial to pagan metal, playing largely upbeat lines of stereotypical celtic fiddling. as irij she creates something far more radical. her work in this guise is a flyntian extension of the music of her native region, the balkans. while eluveitie represents the kind of pan-europeanism that has more in common with the eurovision song contest than anything else, irij involves minimalist vignettes of an ideal of home, of an idea of culture that is personal and thoroughly subversive. to feel a link to the land, to nature and to strongly feminine and matriarchal symbolism is deeply radical and linked to the roots element of the word itself. matt/sieben howden, high broad field (eu: iceflower/trisol, ), compact disc. this album is largely inspired by the landscape surrounding a village in an area of moorland just outside sheffield called high bradfield. irij/meri tadic, irij (eu: ahnstern, ), compact disc. heathen radical violinists like howden and tadic are european roots radicals who, like the krautrockers before them, seek out a new/old musical style free of americanisation and corporate globalisation. like flynt they seek an autochthonous expression of a specific culture, class and people that is not necessarily swathed in tradition, but rather a radical departure from it, by pushing its symbols and nuances into something other. like conrad, their music represents an alternative history of european culture, one before capitalism, and the systems of power that created it, removed a healthy diversity and replaced it with a marketable and controllable homogeneity. the ideals of heathen radical violinists are not those of the vulgar nationalism often fallen into by elements of their sub-culture, but of a lost diversity in europe broken down by monotheism, monarchy, ministers of parliament, murdochs and most importantly, monoculture. my own practice embraces some of these values, while openly courting socialism and a more internationalist stance, and displaying a conscious influence from flynt and conrad. tony conrad, who never ceases to produce work year in year out, has received growing interest in his work since the early s and this has led to musicians – myself for instance – picking up the threads of his early minimalism and taking it in new directions. the premiere examples of this are those musicians who have worked with conrad, such as c. spencer yeh whose work on the violin is very similar to that of conrad’s. as a member of the noise rock group burning star core, yeh has brought the violin into even more extreme levels of noise production than ever heard before, and his collaborations with conrad on albums such as musculus trapezius (pica disk, ) show a startling progression of conrad’s idiosyncratic style. another artist for whom static, distorted drones in the conrad vein is important, is eyvind kang, a violist who has recently worked with the drone metal group, sunn o))). kang’s arrangements for sunn o))) and his own solo works display a rich vein of manhattan tony/c.spencer yeh/michael f. duch conrad, musculus trapezius (oslo: pica disk, ), compact disc. underground heritage, evoking the open plains of america’s west in a way that reaches into the minimalist heritage of la monte young and conrad and brings it forward to the future with his own distinct radical style. another violist who derives their style directly from the conrad anti-tradition is genevieve heidek. as a member of the viola and drums duo hanged up she has brought the viola into radical new territories while sounding heavily influenced by the underground violinists. indeed most recently hanged up have teamed up with conrad himself, releasing a collaboration on the subversive canadian label constellation , known for releases by radical yiddish groups such as black ox orkestar and thee silver mount zion, both of whom feature the violin prominently in their arrangements (not to mention the viola work of heidek herself). there are many more violinists, and other bowed string players, worthy of mention here, however, for the sake of brevity (see the discography section of this thesis for further recommendations) i will move onto something more personal: my own practice. my own project, the scrapes, which consists of myself on the violin and ryan potter on guitar, while being seemingly ‘out-there’ music often stocked in stores in the psychedelic section, has been received by a dramatically diverse group of listeners, therefore making our work an interesting case study for the practices of the contemporary radical violinist. our work is a perfect example of the increasingly opaque meaning behind the term underground. the scrapes is a duo of electric guitar and electric violin, there is no drumming, very rare percussion, no beats or vocals, and very few samples. our fan-base is small and spread out across the globe and we have trouble gathering large audiences and conventional media interest for our performances and album releases, yet our albums have received critical acclaim by underground luminaries and webzines both nationally and internationally. these are signifiers of serious underground credentials. our work is released via our own label planet of the scrapes, or via other small cottage record labels, most recently the san francisco based all is tony/hanged up conrad, transit of venus (montreal: constellation, ), flac. number records. our recording process is entirely diy and we often make use of unconventional spaces, such as warehouses, for performances and recording sessions. furthermore we count one of the gurus of the underground as a fan, julian cope, whose writings on underground music, krautrocksampler and japrocksampler, have been referenced throughout this thesis. however, we have toured australia several times with financial support from the australia council for the arts (the australian federal government peak arts funding body) and both of us have tertiary degrees in music. our music has even been aired on more conservative radio stations such as the australian broadcasting corporation’s classic fm, and on the popular national youth music station (equally conservative at times in my opinion) triple j. we, in a sense, stand with one foot in the gutter and the other in the academy, cope once declaring that our music sounded “as though john cale’s the academy in peril was the coming rage”. our outspoken radical political views, and our insistence on breaking with most accepted notions of music business protocol make us outsiders from almost all scenes here in australia, but our contacts in the cultural establishment have meant we have presented to a diverse audience at government-sponsored events. there are complex cultural reasons for much of this that are specific to australia, our welfare state and our relatively small and thinly spread cultural institutions being major points, but it is also a product of wider developments. the internet is of course largely to blame, as it has created new lines of communication between mainstream people and underground people that has never previously existed. a music fan can now have a pop star like lady gaga, and an underground degenerate like g.g. allin stored on the same ipod, all accessed for free on file-sharing sites and eccentrically eclectic music blogs put up by private citizens as a past-time which, in recent years, has turned into something bordering on a profession for some (check out the extraordinary mutant sounds blog for a julian cope, "address drudion: december ce," head heritage( ), http://www.headheritage.co.uk/addressdrudion/ / . mutant sounds, "mutant sounds," http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com. prime example). cultural lines are blurring, but one thing is for certain, a truly radical stance will always keep one on the margins and away from mainstream attention. this is why my work in the scrapes fits well as an example of the contemporary radical violinist and therefore worthy of mention here. my underground credentials are compromised by my mainstream professional requirements – as a professional musician performing at functions, weddings and so on – and my need to pay rent and eat in an incredibly expensive society, but my personal ideology and creative output is imbued with subversive, underground and ultimately radical ideals which are reflected in my creative practice. these radical ideas did not appear from nowhere. they have, in one form or another, been with me since i first became politically aware in my teens, and they have been refined prior to, and during, the process of writing this thesis. i was introduced to the velvet underground by a friend who lent me a copy of their post-cale album loaded. unfortunately it didn’t do much to my beethoven and black metal addled mind and i gave it back to him declaring my dislike of its poppy, saccharine-sweet melodies. now comprehending that i wanted the hard stuff, my friend lent me his copy of the velvet underground and nico, and after a number of listens it sunk in and had a tremendous effect on me. hearing that album ultimately led to me trying to find out where cale’s strange viola playing came from, eventually leading – via declarations of love and influence from sunn o)))’s stephen o’malley, whose work i’ve been a fan of for many years – to the discovery of conrad. at around the same time (ca ), i had become a regular reader of julian cope’s head heritage blog, and in particular the treasure trove of obscure album reviews stored in his ‘album of the month’ section. during my retromanic psychedelic searches on cope’s site, i came across an odd album entitled i don’t wanna by henry flynt and the insurrections. as i read the article i learned of flynt’s association with the velvet underground and with tony conrad, and i learnt furthermore that he too was a violinist. during this period i became aware the velvet underground, loaded (new york: cotillion, ), vinyl lp. of table of the elements releasing their essential cd collections of home recordings made by john cale and tony conrad and i found them to be extremely inspiring artefacts. recorded records, bo’ weavil recordings and locust records followed by opening the flood-gates on flynt’s voluminous archives of recorded work. from here i dug up all i could of flynt’s and conrad’s work, and my growing obsession with other s and s psychedelic artists, such as hawkwind and amon düül ii, led me towards the eventual creation of this thesis. my generation’s obsession with “retromania” as simon reynolds has recently discussed in his book of the same name , has largely led to a rebirth of interest in artists such as conrad and flynt. the internet is a powerful tool for digging up all manner of knowledge on obscure music, and so many of my generation and the ones that follow, now have at our fingertips the ability to check out any of our favourite artist’s recommendations and dig back deep into music’s past. i would never have connected so deeply with conrad or flynt if it weren’t for the online spruiking of their work by musicians i admire such as o’malley and cope. the linearity of time created by the internet has opened a treasure trove for anyone who wants to search hard enough, and has brought much belated recognition to artists such as conrad and flynt. conrad is now a hip artist, performing at all manner of festivals alongside a diverse number of bands and artists who are often more than half his age. furthermore, he seems to be producing more work than ever, collaborating with contemporary musicians and artists, and with other underground greats of his vintage, such as charlemagne palestine and japanese noise musician keiji heino. much of this growing interest has been brought about by the burst in popularity, via sunn o)))’s success, of the drone metal scene. drone metal artists such as sunn o))) and the band that most inspired them, earth, have helped open many a young metal fan’s (myself included) ears and minds to the sounds and ideas of la monte young, conrad and other early minimalists. this spruiking of obscure figures by popular artists is part of what reynolds simon reynolds, retromania (london: faber & faber, ). describes as the “the rise of the rock curator” , a new trend in the twenty-first century propagated by festivals such as all tomorrow’s parties (atp). atp enlists popular artists, such as nick cave in australia’s case, to curate their festivals, selecting the artists that inspired and influenced them and inviting them to play alongside contemporary artists. this sort of curatorship has led to the unfortunate modern trend of re-formations by any and every obscure act ever, but it has also led to some long-deserved recognition, by the wider public, of underground artists that have never stopped working and have inspired, and continue to inspire. this thesis, and my interest in the practices of underground violinists, was in effect born of the times, and while seemingly a strange topic to pursue for a young violinist from the suburbs of brisbane, australia, it makes perfect sense when factoring in these broader issues. indeed there is no sense of retrogression, reformation or recapitulation in looking at the work of any of these radical underground violinists as most of them are still working today, and if they are not still playing their violin then they were so far ahead of their time, like flynt, that we are only now catching up (or they have sadly passed on). flynt and conrad have worked tirelessly in the shadows for decades, and their recordings and writings are indeed a platform for the liberation of violin performance practices – and the practices of any musician or artist for that matter – from the shackles of our collective past. these shackles are bound to us through chains linked together by tradition (primarily western), capitalism, hegemony and homogeneity. conrad and flynt have shown, to we violinists and indeed any musician, a way to subvert the links, thus breaking the chains of an unjust and corrupt set of ideals born from the cruel and parasitic aristocratic traditions of so-called european art music. conrad has shown us that our ideas of tuning are not necessarily equally-tempered at all, but rather ill-tempered instruments of hegemony, best overridden by the justice of just intonation and a reconnection with the primal drone abandoned by sycophantic court composers four hundred years ago. he, too, has challenged the ideas of ownership at the very core of our modern western capitalist world, ibid., declaring himself a grave keeper at the tomb of composition , thus opening a radical door for all violinists to enter if they so dare. beyond this door the newly radicalised violinist finds a creative freedom unfettered by the illusion of owning sound, something surely as free of ownership as air, and a gateway to a diverse and heterogeneous world of musical practice. flynt has given us a strange but rewarding world of philosophical ideas, and a treasure-trove of tradition-bending violin music that seems to still require further unveiling in the form of future cd releases from his seemingly voluminous archive of recordings. his, and conrad’s ideas are in many ways inseparable, but flynt’s intense radicalism is unrivalled in the world of violinists. through his practice we have learned that the violin can be used as a vehicle for protest, and as a voice for the class struggle that still goes on today in an increasingly complex and difficult world. through their violin practice flynt, conrad, and the underground violinists laid the groundwork for the birth of the radical violinist, and we all have much to learn from them: hopefully this thesis has served as the first step toward a new, diverse and subversive practice that builds upon these early foundations. tony conrad has been quoted as saying this about the works of the theatre of eternal music: “this was a total displacement of the composer’s role, from progenitor of the sound to gravekeeper at its gravesite.” brian duguid, "interview with tony conrad,"( ), http://tonyconrad.net/duguid.htm. bibliography 'vir' avtar, ram. learn to play on sitar. new delhi: pankaj publication, . amm. ammmusic. united kingdom: elektra, . vinyl lp. amon düül, ii yeti. germany: liberty, . vinyl lp. amon düül, ii phallus dei. germany: liberty, . vinyl lp. artists, various. folks, he sure do pull some bow! vintage fiddle music - - blues, jazz, stomps, shuffles & rags. raleigh: old hat records, . compact disc. banes, sally. greenwich village . new york: duke university 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"creep." in blueprint for a higher civilization. milan: multhipla edizioni, . flynt, henry. glissando no. . united states: recorded, . compact disc. flynt, henry. graduation and other new country and blues music. united states: ampersand, . compact disc. flynt, henry. henry flynt & nova'billy. chicago: locust music, . compact disc. flynt, henry. henry flynt & the insurrections: i don't wanna. chicago locust records, . compact disc. http://www.headheritage.co.uk/addressdrudion/ / http://www.headheritage.co.uk/ http://tonyconrad.net/duguid.htm http://www.artnotart.com/fluxus/hflynt-actionagainst.html http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/againstp thoughts.html http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/the_art_connection.htm http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/artbrend.html http://henryflynt.org/overviews/henry_flynt_correlative_chronology.htm flynt, henry. "marxist art roster." philosophy, http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/syllart.html. flynt, henry. "the meaning of my avant-garde hillbilly and blues music." http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/meaning_of_my_music.htm. flynt, henry. "my new concept of general acognitive culture." http://www.henryflynt.org/aesthetics/acogcult.html. flynt, henry. new american ethnic music vol. : spindizzy. united states: recorded, . compact disc. flynt, henry. new american ethnic music volume : hillbilly tape music. united states: recorded, . compact disc. flynt, henry. new american ethnic music volume one. united states: recorded, . compact disc. flynt, henry. "on pandit pran nath ( - )." philosophy ( - ), http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/on_pandit_pran_nath.htm. flynt, henry. "personalysis: a sketch." philosophy ( ), http://henryflynt.org/person_world/pertheorysketch.html. flynt, henry. "philosophy." http://www.henryflynt.org. flynt, henry. "the psychedelic state." ( ), http://henryflynt.org/depth_psy/psychostate.html. flynt, henry. purified by the fire. chicago: locust, . compact disc. flynt, henry. "structure art." against "participation": a total critique of culture ( ), http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/totcritcult .html. flynt, henry and c.c. hennix. "henry flynt concept art years." berlin: grimmuseum, . freiberg, sarah. "baroque performance basics." strings , no. ( ): - . gendron, bernard. "after the october revolution." in sound commitments, edited by robert adlington. new york: oxford university press, . goldsmith, kenneth. "henry flynt interview by kenneth goldsmith wfmu." wfmu, . hawkwind. doremi fasol latido/in search of space. united kingdom: emi, . compact discs. hawkwind. hall of the mountain grill. united kingdom: united artists records, . vinyl lp. hill, chris. "tony conrad interviewed by chris hill." ( ). holman, peter. "mystery man: peter holman celebrates the th anniversary of the birth of heinrich biber." the musical times , no. ( ): - . howden, matt/sieben. high broad field. eu: iceflower/trisol, . compact disc. hubby, tyler. "tony conrad ludlow street field recording." youtube, . jackson, roland. "performance practice: a dictionary-guide for musicians." united kingdom: routledge, . joseph, branden. ""my mind split open": andy warhol's exploding plastic inevitable." grey room, no. ( ): - . joseph, branden w. beyond the dream syndicate: tony conrad and the arts after cafe (a "minor history). new york: zone books, . joseph, branden w. beyond the dream syndicate: tony conrad and the arts after cage. new york: zone books, . joseph, branden w. beyond the dream syndicate: tony conrad and the arts after cage (a "minor" history). new york: zone books, . jost, ekkerhard. free jazz. vienna: da capo press, . http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/syllart.html http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/meaning_of_my_music.htm http://www.henryflynt.org/aesthetics/acogcult.html http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/on_pandit_pran_nath.htm http://henryflynt.org/person_world/pertheorysketch.html http://www.henryflynt.org/ http://henryflynt.org/depth_psy/psychostate.html http://henryflynt.org/aesthetics/totcritcult .html kershaw, rusty & doug. the cajun-country rockers - a milestone in rock 'n' roll music vol. . germany: bear family records, ( - ). vinyl lp. khan, ali akbar music of india, morning and evening ragas. united kingdom: his master's voice, . vinyl lp. knabb, ken, ed. situationist international anthology. berkeley: the bureau of public secrets, . kosugi, takehisa. catch wave. japan: sony/cbs, . compact disc. kosugi, takehisa/michael ranta/toshi ichinyanagi. improvisation sep. . japan: iskra records, . vinyl lp. kubik, gerhard. africa and the blues. jackson: university press of mississipi, . kugelberg, johan and will cameron. angus maclise: dreamweapon. new york: boo- hooray, . lewis, jerry lee. hillbilly music. united states: sun recordings, . mp . lomax, alan. "song structure and social structure." in write me a few of your lines: a blues reader, edited by steven c. tracy. amherst: university of massachusettes press, . maclise, angus. brain damage in oklahoma city. united states: siltbreeze, . compact disc. maclise, angus. the cloud doctrine. belgium: sub rosa, . compact disc. marshall, herbert. "chronology." in mayakovsy, edited by herbert marshall. london: dennis dobson, . marx, karl; engels, frederick. the manifesto of the communist party. new york: international, . mask, black. "black mask & up against the wall motherfuckers: flower power won't stop fascist power - the story of a small, underground s revolutionary group in new york city." black mask & up against the wall motherfuckers ( ). nico. the end. japan: island records, . vinyl lp. ———. the frozen borderline - : rhino, . compact discs. ongaku, group. music of group ongaku. japan: hear sound art library, . oren, michael. "anti-art as the end of cultural history." performing arts journal , no. ( ): - . oteri, frank j. . "la monte young and marian zazeela at the dream house." new music box ( ), http://www.newmusicbox.org/assets/ /interview_young.pdf. pages, faust. "tony conrad and jean hervé péron: the dream syndicate." http://faust- pages.com/records/conrad.dreamsyndicate.html#articles. party, cultural theory panel attached to the central committee of the hungarian socialist worker's. "of socialist realism." in radical perspectives in the arts, edited by lee baxandall, - . baltimore: penguin books, . piekut, benjamin. " east broadway, ben morea loft, of ." in henry flynt in new york: youtube, . piekut, benjamin. "demolish serious culture." in experimentalism otherwise. berkeley: university of california press, . piekut, benjamin. "demolish serious culture!" in experimentalism otherwise: the new york avant-garde and its limits, . berkeley: univeristy of california press, . piekut, benjamin. 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"inside the dream syndicate." the wire: adventures in modern music, , - . prendergast, mark. the ambient century: from mahler to trance - the evolution of sound in the electronic age. new york: bloomsbury, . reed, lou. transformer. united states: bmg/rca, . compact disc. reekie, duncan. subversion: the definitive history of underground cinema. london: wallflower press, . reinhardt, django djangology. france: rca victor, . vinyl lp. reynolds, simon. retromania. london: faber & faber, . rose, jon. forward of short leg. germany: dossier, . vinyl lp. ruckert, george e. music in north india: experiencing music, expressing culture. new york: oxford university press, . russolo, luigi. "the art of noises: futurist manifesto." in audio culture: readings in modern music, edited by christopher and daniel warner cox. new york: continuum, ( ). schaefer, john. "who is la monte young." in sound and light, edited by william duckworth. london: associated university press, . shades, fm. "theatre of eternal music - ( 's nyc drone underground)." in fm shades, . smith, jack. "flaming creatures." ubuweb film, - . sounds, mutant. "mutant sounds." http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com. stewart, sharon. "listening to deep listening: reflection on the recording and the lifework of pauline oliveros." journal of sonic studies , no. ( ). stooges, the. the stooges. united states: elektra, . compact disc. tadic, irij/meri. irij. eu: ahnstern, . compact disc. tax, meredith. "introductory: culture is not neutral, whom does it serve?" in radical perspectives in the arts, edited by lee baxandall, - . baltimore: penguin, . thenetineti. "niezła kiecka - sieben [matt howden]." youtube, . tide, high. sea shanties. united kingdom: liberty/united artists, . vinyl lp. toop, david. "altered states : fourth world." in ocean of sound: aether talk, ambient sound and imaginary worlds. london: serpent's tail, . travellers, taj mahal. august . tokyo: nippon columbia/p-vine records, . vinyl lp. travellers, taj mahal. july , . japan: cbs japan, . vinyl lp. travellers, taj mahal. live stockholm, july . united states: drone syndicate, . compact disc. travellers, taj mahal. "taj mahal travellers on tour ." youtube, . trotsky, leon. the basic writings of trotsky. edited by irving howe. new york: schocken books, . trotsky, leon. "proletarian culture and proletarian art." literature and revolution ( ), http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/ /lit_revo/ch .htm. united states of america, the. the united states of america. united states: columbia, . vinyl lp. velvet underground, the. loaded. new york: cotillion, . vinyl lp. velvet underground, the. the velvet underground and nico: polygram records, . compact disc. http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/ http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/ /lit_revo/ch .htm velvet underground, the. white light/white heat. united states: polygram records, . compact disc. vertov, dziga. kino-eye: the writings of dziga vertov. translated by kevin o'brien. edited by annette michelson. london: university of california press, . walls, peter. "performing corelli's violin sonatas, op. ." early music , no. ( ): - + - . welch, allison. "meethings along the edge." american music , no. ( ): - . young, la monte. "on table of the elements cd "day of niagara" april , ." http://www.melafoundation.org/statemen.htm. http://www.melafoundation.org/statemen.htm discography amm. ammmusic. united kingdom: elektra, . vinyl lp. amon düül, ii phallus dei. germany: liberty, . vinyl lp. amon düül, ii yeti. germany: liberty, . vinyl lp. ayler, albert. new york eye and ear control. united states: esp disk, ( ). compact disc ayler, albert. lörrach, paris . switzerland: hatology, . compact disc bang, billy/john lindberg. duo. united states: anima productions, . vinyl lp. anderson, laurie. mister heartbreak. united states: warner brothers, . compact disc. cale, john vintage violence: sony, . compact disc. cale, john. dream interpretation: inside the dream syndicate volume . atlanta: table of the elements, . compact disc. cale, john. stainless gamelan: inside the dream syndicate volume . atlanta: table of the elements, . compact disc. cale, john. sun blindness music. atlanta: table of the elements, . compact disc. cale/conrad/maclise/young/zazeela. inside the dream syndicate volume : day of niagara. atlanta: table of the elements, . compact disc. cardew, cornelius. treatise. switzerland: hat hut records, . compact discs. coleman, ornette. free jazz. united states: atlantic . compact disc. coleman, ornette. the shape of jazz to come. united states: atlantic, . compact disc. coltrane, john. ascension new york: impulse, . compact disc. conrad, tony with faust. outside the dream syndicate ( th anniversary edition). atlanta: table of the elements, . compact disc. conrad, tony. bryant park moratorium rally. united states: table of the elements, ( ). compact disc. conrad, tony. early minimalism volume one. united states: table of the elements, . compact disc. conrad, tony. fantastic glissando. united states: table of the elements, ( ). compact disc. conrad, tony. joan of arc. united states: table of the elements, ( ). compact disc. conrad, tony. slapping pythagoras. atlanta: table of the elements, . compact disc. conrad, tony/c.spencer yeh/michael f. duch. musculus trapezius. oslo: pica disk, . compact disc. conrad, tony/genesis breyer p-orridge. taking issue. united states: dais records, . vinyl lp. conrad, tony/hanged up. transit of venus. montreal: constellation, . flac. conrad, tony; genesis breyer p-orridge; edley o'dowd. wfmu's strength through failure, april st . new york: wfmu, . mp . denudes, hadaka no rallizes/les rallizes. yodo-go-a-go-go/oboreru tobenai tori wa mizutani ga hitsuyo/flightless bird needs water wings. unknown: th avenue freeze out, . compact disc. flynt, henry. back porch hillbilly blues volume . chicago: locust, . compact disc. flynt, henry. backporch hillbilly blues volume . chicago: locust, . compact disc. flynt, henry. c tune. chicago: locust, . compact disc. flynt, henry. dharma/warriors. chicago: locust records, ( ). compact disc. flynt, henry. glissando no. . united states: recorded, . compact disc. flynt, henry. graduation and other new country and blues music. united states: ampersand, . compact disc. flynt, henry. henry flynt & nova'billy. chicago: locust music, . compact disc. flynt, henry. henry flynt & the insurrections: i don't wanna. chicago locust records, . compact disc. flynt, henry. new american ethnic music vol. : spindizzy. united states: recorded, . compact disc. flynt, henry. new american ethnic music volume : hillbilly tape music. united states: recorded, . compact disc. flynt, henry. new american ethnic music volume one. united states: recorded, . compact disc. flynt, henry. purified by the fire. chicago: locust, . compact disc. flynt, henry. raga electric. chicago: locust records, ( - ). compact disc. fugs, the. the fugs first album. new york: esp disk, . vinyl lp. fugs, the. virgin fugs. new york: esp disk, . vinyl lp. hawkwind. doremi fasol latido/in search of space. united kingdom: emi, . compact discs. hawkwind. hall of the mountain grill. united kingdom: united artists records, . vinyl lp. holy modal rounders, the. indian war whoop. new york: esp disk, . vinyl lp. howden, matt/sieben. high broad field. eu: iceflower/trisol, . compact disc. jenkins, le roy and rashied ali. swift are the winds of live. united states: knit classics/survival records, ( ). compact disc. johnson, robert. king of the delta blues singers. united states: columbia legacy, ( ). compact disc. kang, eyvind. live low to the earth, in the iron age. united states: abduction, . compact disc. kershaw, rusty & doug. the cajun-country rockers - a milestone in rock 'n' roll music vol. . germany: bear family records, ( - ). vinyl lp. khan, ali akbar music of india, morning and evening ragas. united kingdom: his master's voice, . vinyl lp. khan, ustad hafizullah. khalifa kirana gharana. portland: just dreams, . compact disc. kosugi, takehisa. catch wave. japan: sony/cbs, . compact disc. kosugi, takehisa/michael ranta/toshi ichinyanagi. improvisation sep. . japan: iskra records, . vinyl lp. lewis, jerry lee. hillbilly music. united states: sun recordings, . mp . lomax, alan. sounds of the south/blue ridge mountain music. united states: atlantic, . compact disc. maclise, angus and hetty maclise. dreamweapon ii. united states: boo-hooray, ( - ). vinyl lp. maclise, angus. brain damage in oklahoma city. united states: siltbreeze, . compact disc. maclise, angus. dreamweapon iii. united states: boo-hooray, ( - ). vinyl lp. maclise, angus. the cloud doctrine. belgium: sub rosa, . compact disc. maclise, angus; tony conrad; jack smith. dreamweapon i. united states: boo-hooray, ( - ). vinyl lp. nath, pandit pran. midnight. new york: just dreams, . compact disc. nath, pandit pran. raga cycle palace theatre paris . berkeley: sri moonshine, . compact disc. nico. the end. japan: island records, . vinyl lp. nico. the frozen borderline - : rhino, . compact discs. olson, tovah and tony conrad. let there be music. united states: tovinator records, . vinyl lp. ongaku, group. music of group ongaku. japan: hear sound art library, . palestine, charlemagne. strumming music. italy: new tone records, . compact disc. palestine, charlemagne; terry jennings; tony conrad; robert feldman; rhys chatham. sharing a sonority (golden ). italy: alga marghen, . compact disc. palestine, charlemagne; tony conrad. an aural symbiotic mystery. belgium: sub rosa, . compact disc. reed, lou. transformer. united states: bmg/rca, . compact disc. reinhardt, django djangology. france: rca victor, . vinyl lp. riley, terry. reed streams. united states: elision fields, ( ). compact disc. rose, jon. forward of short leg. germany: dossier, . vinyl lp. shankar, ravi. the sounds of india. united states: cbs, . vinyl lp. smith, harry. anthology of american folk music. washington d.c.: smithsonian folkways/sony music special products, . compact discs. smith, jack. les evening gowns damnees - ludlow street - , volume . atlanta: table of the elements, . compact disc. stooges, the. the stooges. united states: elektra, . compact disc. sunno))). monoliths and dimensions. united states: southern lord, . compact disc. tadic, irij/meri. irij. eu: ahnstern, . compact disc. taylor, hollis. unsquare dances. united states: twisted fiddle music, . compact disc. tide, high. sea shanties. united kingdom: liberty/united artists, . vinyl lp. three, dirty. dirty three. united states: touch and go, . compact disc. three, dirty. ocean songs. australia: anchor & hope, . compact disc. travellers, taj mahal. august . tokyo: nippon columbia/p-vine records, . vinyl lp. travellers, taj mahal. july , . japan: cbs japan, . vinyl lp. travellers, taj mahal. live stockholm, july . united states: drone syndicate, . compact disc. united states of america, the. the united states of america. united states: columbia, . vinyl lp. various artists. folks, he sure do pull some bow! vintage fiddle music - - blues, jazz, stomps, shuffles & rags. raleigh: old hat records, . compact disc. velvet underground, the. loaded. new york: cotillion, . vinyl lp. velvet underground, the. the velvet underground and nico: polygram records, . compact disc. velvet underground, the. white light/white heat. united states: polygram records, . compact disc. young, la monte and marian zazeela. the black record. germany: edition x, . vinyl lp. young, la monte and marian zazeela. the tamburas of pandit pran nath. new york: just dreams, . compact disc. young, la monte. the well tuned piano. new york: gramavision, . compact discs. appendix : certificate of ethical clearance human research ethics committee ethical clearance certificate this certificate generated on - - . this certificate comfirms that protocol 'nr: revolutionary violin: an exploration of violin performance practices in the new york city underground - , and its reverberations in today's underground.' (gu protocol number qcm/ / /hrec) has ethical clearance from the griffith university human research ethics commitee (hrec) and has been issued with authorisation to be commenced. the ethical clearance for this protocol runs from - - to - - . the named members of the research team for this protocol are: dr donna weston mr adam cadell prof bill duckworth the research team has been sent correspondence that lists the standard conditions of ethical clearance that apply to griffith university protocols. the hrec is established in accordance with the national statement on ethical conduct on research involving humans. the operation of this committee is outlined in the hrec standard operating procedure, which is available from www.gu.edu.au/or/ethics. please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries about this matter. dr gary allen manager, research ethics office for research n room . nathan campus griffith university phone: facsimile: email: g.allen@griffith.edu.au http://www.gu.edu.au/or/ethics mailto:g.allen@griffith.edu.au "dead opposites" or "reconciled among the stars"?: stevens and eliot "dead opposites" or "reconciled among the stars"?: stevens and eliot tony sharpe wallace stevens journal, volume , number , spring , pp. - (article) published by johns hopkins university press doi: for additional information about this article [ access provided at apr : gmt from carnegie mellon university ] https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ https://doi.org/ . /wsj. . https://muse.jhu.edu/article/ the wallace stevens journal . (spring ): – . © johns hopkins university press. “dead opposites” or “reconciled among the stars”? stevens and eliot tony sharpe most critics have agreed that wallace stevens and t. s. eliot had little affinity as poets, and this probably reflects a conclusion they reached themselves. in , stevens corrected william van o’connor’s supposition that he knew eliot slightly, insisting that they’d never met nor corresponded and protesting, “after all, eliot and i are dead opposites and i have been doing about everything that he would not be likely to do” (l ). o’connor had misread an eliot-themed issue of the harvard advocate (december ), attributing to him allen tate’s contribution; stevens actually wrote a rather more qualified “homage to t. s. eliot,” noting that “his prodigious reputation is a great difficulty,” and consequently asserting the need to read eliot “out of the pew, so to speak” (cpp ). in , ruminating on the possibility of establishing a “chair of poetry” with his new acquaintance henry church (its poten- tial funder) and envisaging the level of eminence necessary to its holder, stevens thought of eliot again, but was dismissive: “it is possible that a man like t. s. eliot illustrates the character, except that i regard him as a negative rather than a positive force” (cpp – ). his covering letter to church had argued that the post required “a scholar, or, perhaps better, a man with an extremely aggressive mind” (l ): possibly eliot might have been aggressive enough, but evidently not in the right way. for his part, eliot noticed stevens a good deal less than stevens noticed eliot, and when in faber and faber published the collected poems, eliot had heralded the event by a statement in the trinity review ( ) that was hardly fulsome in its praise—despite his claim to be an “admirer”—and, in its assessment of stevens’s current standing, perhaps even had an air of speaking de haut en bas. “[h]is reputation is beginning to spread,” noted the nobel laureate, whose own reputation had been judged “prodigious” sixteen years previously, while also revealing that the idea of his firm’s publishing stevens had actually originated with “one of my fellow direc- tors” (qtd. in ehrenpreis ). stevens, then, had a certain investment in asserting his difference from eliot, and eliot seems not to have bothered greatly about stevens. if the latter was not personally acquainted with eliot, he did have friendly “dead opposites” or “reconciled among the stars”? stevens and eliot relations (of his kind) with robert frost, william carlos williams, and marianne moore. in fact, the nature of stevens’s objection to eliot’s un- questioned reputation, and his perception of its negative consequences, was later replicated in something he wrote about frost in a letter to church’s widow, barbara. in this, he noted having declined an invitation to attend a celebration to mark frost’s eightieth birthday; he recalled hav- ing been confronted by frost’s bust in the rare book library at harvard “some years ago,” and went on to comment, “his work is full (or said to be full) of humanity. i suppose i shall never be eighty no matter how old i become” (l ). stevens’s attitude in each case was driven by his feeling that a certain type of public approbation—eliot’s “complete acceptance” or frost’s being “greatly admired by many people” (cpp , l )— was an impediment that he himself, intending never to be installed as an eighty-year-old smiling public man, had avoided. he distrusted what he saw as frost’s heart-on-sleeve “humanity” as much as he distrusted eliot’s churchiness, which required taking him “out of the pew” as a necessary response; for the unexamined poem was not worth reading. we might see this as little more than ill-disguised professional envy of two poets much more in the limelight than he was himself. but there is a consistent logic in stevens’s attitude, which i feel was defined less by envy than by his sense that a certain kind of “success” entailed a damaging falsification of the work, because it polluted poetic motive and, ensuingly, poetic reception. he would not want readers to confuse what he inclined to see as eliot’s pietism with his own particular piety, stated and defended in a letter to hi simons of : “i write poetry because it is part of my piety: because, for me, it is the good of life, and i don’t intend to lift a finger to advance my interest, because i don’t want to think of poetry that way” (l ). if stevens regarded eliot as a “negative” force, it was less because he wished he had himself achieved comparable success and more because in his view eliot—whose rise to prominence, like frost’s, had been a consistent objective, tactically pursued—ultimately sold poetry short by underestimating its potential centrality and importance. eliot, after all, as early as had relegated poetry to being “a superior amuse- ment” (p : ). this has a very different ring from defining it as “the supreme fiction,” as stevens had already done in “to a high-toned old christian woman” (itself a preliminary salvo against the worldview eliot would endorse) (cpp ). similarly, the eliot who could concede in east coker that “the poetry does not matter” (ptse : ) differs markedly from the stevens who at the end of his career would assert that “our belief in the greatness of poetry is a vital part of its greatness, an implicit part of the belief of others in its greatness” (cpp ). stevens’s other friends in american poetry, williams and moore, for each of whom he wrote amiable appreciations, themselves also had marked— and markedly different—responses to eliot. moore’s was consistently respectful and admiring, and williams’s was as consistently hostile and the wallace stevens journal dismissive. although it is clear that stevens maintained a critical distance from eliot, i think it is a mistake to suppose that his attitude replicated williams’s antagonism, even if he did not entirely share moore’s respect. in what follows, i want to investigate the grounds on which some scholars have supposed that to have been the case, and to explore the nature of the similarities and dissimilarities between stevens and eliot, as well as the ways in which the writing of each engages with the other’s. generically, both can be seen as modernists who disclaimed the movement: by , eliot was already associating himself with “those of us who lay no claim to being modern” (p : ), and stevens in one of the “adagia” reminded himself that “one cannot spend one’s time in being modern when there are so many more important things to be” (cpp ). certainly, there were biographical aspects in which they were not dead opposites. both were american-born and harvard-educated; both con- tracted lastingly unhappy marriages of which their families disapproved (neither eliot’s parents nor stevens’s attended their sons’ weddings); both had problematical relations with their fathers. these unhappy circum- stances, despite the privacy each militantly preserved during his lifetime, seem to have prompted certain revelations in their poetry (the wife with bad nerves in the waste land, the woman addressed by “le monocle de mon oncle,” for obvious instances), and even produce sporadic tonal similarities. for example, matrimonial desolation and thwarted emotional impulse seem to underlie each of the following passages: waking alone at the hour when we are trembling with tenderness lips that would kiss form prayers to broken stone. (ptse : ) this comes from eliot’s “the hollow men” (iii), and this, from stevens’s “yellow afternoon”: but he came back as one comes back from the sun to lie on one’s bed in the dark, close to a face without eyes or mouth, that looks at one and speaks. (cpp ) stevens’s poem was written considerably later than eliot’s, but i am not suggesting influence so much perhaps as momentary confluence of feel- ing. reversing this order of composition, there are also points of com- parison to be drawn between lines occurring in “the man with the blue guitar” ( ) and east coker ( ): “dead opposites” or “reconciled among the stars”? stevens and eliot slowly the ivy on the stones becomes the stones. women become the cities, children become the fields and men in waves become the sea. (cpp – ) this has some similarity to the cycles of transformational decay and regeneration evoked in eliot’s poem, and in particular to its summary: “the houses are all gone under the sea. // the dancers are all gone under the hill” (ptse : ). in the next section of east coker, i also wonder whether eliot’s phrase “as, in a theatre” (ptse : ) prompted the title of stevens’s late poem “as at a theatre.” these are, however, notional concurrences. less speculative connec- tions almost entirely involve stevens’s awareness of eliot, rather than the other way around. eliot said he could only be certain that james joyce had read his poem “the hippopotamus,” and similarly, the only poem of stevens’s that we can be certain eliot knew was “the emperor of ice- cream,” since he alluded to it in the title of the final lecture on the course he taught at harvard in the spring of : “lewis; and finale of seem” (p : ). his surviving notes contain no further specific elaboration of the reference, however, nor do they cite stevens by name. stevens, of course, did cite eliot by name in “effects of analogy” ( ), quoting thirteen lines from “rhapsody on a windy night” in answer to his own question “is not eliot a musical poet?” (cpp ). whether there was any intended irony in using a poem first published three decades previously (in blast!, ), perhaps to imply that eliot was rather than is a “musical poet,” must be uncertain; but eliot’s poem may linger somewhere behind stevens’s formulation (from ): “the moon / burns in the mind on lost remembrances” (cpp ). in “effects of analogy,” his appreciation of the musical qualities he defines seems genuine—and this is worth noting, because the association between eliot and music stevens enunciated in has been taken by some to justify reading “the creations of sound” ( ) as a direct critique of eliot (its first line being “if the poetry of x was music” [cpp ]). harold bloom states confidently, in several places, that the poem is “written against eliot, who appears in it as x.” i find this unpersuasive, since it rests either on a straightforward misun- derstanding of what stevens’s poem seems to say about “x,” or attributes to it a catastrophically impercipient view of eliot’s poetry. for a start, “the creations of sound” makes reasonably clear that the problem with the poetry that “x” writes is that it is not music, since the faults seemingly attributed to it and to him—he “is an obstruction, a man / too exactly himself,” whose poems “do not make the visible a little hard // to see” (cpp , )—would be remedied if his poetry were more like music, in its occurrences. in short, unlike the eliot stevens would describe in his the wallace stevens journal lecture, “x” is expressly not “a musical poet.” the poem has interpretive issues that i have not space to address—such as whether there is a critical difference between poems coming “out of the wall // or in the ceiling” and those rising “from the floor” (if they do); and whether, similarly, we should differentiate saying ourselves “in poems” from saying ourselves “in speech we do not speak,” or whether the two should ideally be the same (cpp – ). but the nature of its critique of “x,” who seems too much present as a person in his poetry, which in turn becomes too much a function of his wish and will, and overcommitted to reality as what- is-visible, is one that constitutes him very differently from the eliot who was notorious for insisting on a doctrine of poetic “impersonality” that, indeed, stevens’s poem seems also to advance in its closing lines. “x, the per-noble master,” associated with the “old world” and “the lean cats of the arches of the churches” in part iii of “extracts from addresses to the academy of fine ideas” (cpp – ), seems more plau- sibly understood as possibly alluding to the expatriated eliot who stated, in a review in the dial that it is quite possible stevens had read, “if i believe, as i do believe, that the chief distinction of man is to glorify god and enjoy him for ever, mr. [i. a.] richards’ theory of value is inadequate” (p : ). but, even if justified here, this does not oblige us to carry the identification forward to the later poem: for in poetry as in algebra, “x” is a variable unassigned quantity. stevens’s own “theory of value” was more or less antithetical to the one eliot enunciated in , and his persistent association of eliot with ancient churches and an outmoded, intrinsically hierarchical christianity doubtless threw into sharper relief his own cre- dal emancipation. where he could, he turned eliot’s words against him, as when (in “notes toward a supreme fiction”) we read, “it is the celestial ennui of apartments / that sends us back to the first idea” (cpp )—a formulation that seems to echo “milton’s celestial and infernal regions are large but insufficiently furnished apartments filled by heavy conversation” (p : ). this occurs in eliot’s essay on william blake collected in the sacred wood, a volume stevens probably knew. eliot’s sentence continues, “and one remarks about the puritan mythology its thinness” (p : ); i shall try to suggest, later, that stevens would certainly be concerned to show how the “thinness” or poverty of a “mythology” might have to be constructed as its virtue, in the context of new england. if that is a point at which i believe stevens made a private allusion to eliot—and “notes” has been seen by various critics in relation to eliot’s quartets —then i believe he more openly alludes to eliot at the end of “crude foyer,” in ways connecting with issues surrounding the nature of america and the nature of place, which seem to offer more significant grounds of differentiation between the two than the “you-are-a-christian- i-am-not” antithesis along which stevens himself tended to construct their divergence. in the third of his quartets, the dry salvages ( ), eliot chooses an american location and instructs readers on the correct “dead opposites” or “reconciled among the stars”? stevens and eliot american pronunciation of its name. the poem’s first american publi- cation was in partisan review (may-june ); it is not improbable that stevens read it there, but we can be confident that he was familiar with four quartets, which—as a sequence in which eliot’s christianity becomes ever more central—doubtless intensified his sense of the gulf between them. but there may have been a slightly different cause of offense in the dry salvages: that poem, written and published well before the attack on pearl harbor and american entry into world war ii, laid a claim on america on the part of one who was a kind of renegade, having publicly adopted british citizenship in . eliot’s poem ends with these lines, resigned to the modest spiritual at- tainments that are the lot “for most of us”: we, content at the last if our temporal reversion nourish (not too far from the yew-tree) the life of significant soil. (ptse : ) this ending, helen gardner showed ( – ), had caused eliot problems, and there is a body of critical opinion (starting with donald davie, but also including denis donoghue) that regards this poem as the weakest of the sequence. later in the s, stevens wrote “crude foyer,” a short poem that, at its primary level, seems also to reconcile itself to the shortfall between aspiration (that through “thought” we could sufficiently tran- scend the circumstantial to inhabit “a foyer of the spirit in a landscape / of the mind” [cpp ]) and our reliance on actuality, defined at its close: we are ignorant men incapable of the least, minor, vital metaphor, content, at last, there, when it turns out to be here. (cpp ) in these lines, we can hear the hint of a retort to the dry salvages, as eliot’s “we, content at the last” re-emerges in stevens’s “we . . . content, / at last, there. . . .” unlike the more private allusion to the essay on blake, i incline to think stevens hoped the reader might register this—and, given the “complete acceptance” four quartets had already achieved by this stage as well as the memorable awkwardness of eliot’s phrase, this would not have been unreasonable. but if so, why? i suggest that this shows stevens as a more penetrat- ing reader of eliot than is provided by the unconvincing example of “the creations of sound.” in the dry salvages, eliot, by this stage a professedly loyal subject of king george vi, evoked his own american origins through images of the mississippi (he had been born in st. louis, missouri) and the the wallace stevens journal new england coast, remembering boyhood sailing expeditions from the family summer residence near gloucester, massachusetts. these expedi- tions had taken him as far as casco bay, cape ann, which contributed sig- nificantly to the final poem of ash-wednesday and to “marina” (both ). to some extent, this third quartet was the culmination of his american remembering, and i suppose that, in the context of eliot’s emigration, his return in imagination to the country he had left behind was appreciatively received by many american readers. but not, i suspect, by stevens, who may have noticed that, unlike the places titling the other three quartets, “the dry salvages” were uninhabitable and therefore unhistoried (in fact, they imply the prehistorical), were etymologically related to “savages,” and, as with the mississippi, were capriciously and indiscriminately de- structive. the poem’s close seems to look elegiacally toward an english country churchyard, and its final line encapsulates precisely what has been missing from the american places evoked, as it turns back toward england in the final quartet, little gidding, where “history is now and england” (ptse : ). in doing so, eliot’s theory of value disregarded the minimal sublime that stevens felt america embodied, and that constituted his own pre- cious resource. “crude foyer” is a poem made grammatically intricate and interpretively challenging by its extending a single sentence across five four-line stanzas; but, thinking like eliot’s poem about “landscape” and its relation to “spirit,” it discriminates between a false place and a true one. it also mounts its own “critique of paradise” as a delusionary destina- tion that turns out always to be intimately related to where we imagine it from (cpp ), which is where, in the lines quoted above, we inevitably and gratefully end up. this somewhat resembles eliot’s conclusion in little gidding, that “the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time” (ptse : ); but in stevens’s riposte—in which i sense a degree of anger, of frustration—there may be an implication that eliot does not really “know the place,” if that place is america, and that the project of expatriation that has been the result of his estrangement from it has led him to substitute a false “there” for a truer “here.” although i think that this poem has greater claim than “the creations of sound” to be read as “written against eliot,” i would not wish to cast it simply within that adversarial role. nonetheless, its “there/here” di- chotomy, if understood to include reference to the america that one of them had permanently left and where the other permanently resided, highlights the nature of their responses as offering ground for difference (perhaps fueling stevens’s resentment when eliot posed as an american in the dry salvages?). to define this further, i turn to their prose, and move beyond any inference that the examples to be offered were part of an im- plied conversation. “dead opposites” or “reconciled among the stars”? stevens and eliot stevens, who wrote a poem called “description without place” and who, in “the idea of order at key west,” could describe the sea as “merely a place by which she walked to sing” (cpp ), might be represented as indifferent to location by comparison with eliot, who not only composed a suite of poems called “landscapes,” but whose final major poems evoked particular places. nonetheless, i want to propose that, for eliot, “place” was a more intermediate category than it finally was for stevens. in his closing norton lecture (march ), eliot offered some personal reflec- tions (themselves unusual, in the context of his habitual impersonality) that have subsequently become well-known: why, for all of us, out of all that we have heard, seen, felt, in a lifetime, do certain images recur, charged with emotion, rather than others? the song of one bird, the leap of one fish, at a par- ticular place and time, the scent of one flower, an old woman on a german mountain path, six ruffians seen through an open window playing cards at night at a small french railway junc- tion where there was a water-mill: such memories may have symbolic value, but of what we cannot tell, for they come to represent the depths of feeling into which we cannot peer. (p : ) this concerns “place” as a component rather than as the constituent of significant recall, but it is noteworthy that eliot, returning to america as a literary celebrity, offers specifically european examples of particular places: “on a german mountain path,” “at a small french railway junc- tion.” for comparison, here is part of stevens’s appreciation “john crowe ransom: tennessean.” “to be a ransom in tennessee is something more precious than it is easy to say,” he asserted (cpp ), going on, in a prose passage of unusual power and what seems like unguardedness, to evoke a passionate relation to place: one turns with something like ferocity toward a land that one loves, to which one is really and essentially native, to demand that it surrender, reveal, that in itself which one loves. this is a vital affair, not an affair of the heart (as it may be in one’s first poems), but an affair of the whole being (as in one’s last poems), a fundamental affair of life, or, rather, an affair of fundamental life; so that one’s cry of o jerusalem becomes little by little a cry to something a little nearer and nearer until at last one cries out to a living name, a living place, a living thing, and in crying out confesses openly all the bitter secretions of experience. this is why trivial things often touch us intensely. it is why the sight of an old berry patch, a new growth in the woods in the spring, the particular things on display at a farmers’ market, as, for the wallace stevens journal example, the trays of poor apples, the few boxes of black-eyed peas, the bags of dried corn, have an emotional power over us that for a moment is more than we can control. (cpp ) it might be said that each piece resembles a prose version of a poem each might have written (or did write). stevens’s, however, is written at a pitch of intensity relatively unusual for him in this medium, and seems unusu- ally confessional. the similarity between the extracts is that each poet enumerates things seen that have affected him; but the differences are marked. the tone of eliot’s is interrogative and speculative, starting from the question “why is it?” and continuing through its accumulated instances to the tentative conclusion “it may be that . . . ” stevens’s tone is declara- tive, opening with assertions that are reinforced by an accumulation of certainties set down in almost desperate desire to access the truth, leading from this to the explanatory “this is why,” itself substantiated by concrete specification that presumes (as indeed eliot’s does) to speak “for all of us.” whereas eliot seems content with his inability to explain the emo- tional charge contained by the items on his list—perhaps implying it is preferable there should be these “depths of feeling into which we cannot peer,” which are the source of poetry—stevens insists on explanation of the “emotional power” of “trivial things.” “there are men,” he goes on to say, “who must understand them, who isolate them in order to under- stand them” (cpp ). yet we might wonder whether, finally, eliot was so unsure, and whether stevens was so certain (tennessee, after all, had been the location for his legendarily gnomic “anecdote of the jar”). eliot’s list might initially seem so random as to defy explanation, but it also seems as if its items’ common emotional affect in fact subsumes them into a category of the coherent—so that we may finally be struck less by the heterogeneity of the vehicles by which this power manifests itself than by their homogeneity in this function. their final effect, then, may be of affirming an underlying unity in fortuity. stevens, as it were in reverse, moves from general principle to specific examples, which, unlike eliot’s, are a kind of savagely reduced romantic catalogue (each item derives from nature). but if “one’s cry” turns away from “jerusalem” toward “some- thing . . . nearer,” “a living name, a living place,” “in crying out [one] confesses openly all the bitter secretions of experience.” (“large red man reading,” contemporary with this piece, is relevant here.) the bitterness, presumably, is produced by the thwarted longing for something more, resulting in ferocious desire that what there actually is, here, now, should disclose itself and should suffice—although such desire equally provokes awareness of what he elsewhere termed “the dumbfoundering abyss / between us and the object” (cpp ) as we try to love those “black-eyed peas” or “bags of dried corn.” which of you, when your child asks for “dead opposites” or “reconciled among the stars”? stevens and eliot bread, would give him a stone? but this is what mother earth tends to do, in later stevens (or, even worse, as in “madame la fleurie”). eliot’s passage privileges mystery. this might itself lead to the sense that all is ultimately explicable by god, that “man’s accidents are god’s purposes” (as sophia hawthorne etched on her husband’s windowpane), and that the mystery therefore becomes a token of divine potentiality. stevens’s passage privileges what he so often termed “poverty” (although he does not here), and in the context of america their reactions to this were very different, as two further examples will serve to illustrate. eliot’s return to america in , his first visit since , had not seemed like a homecoming but an alienation, as a long letter he wrote to geoffrey faber in late september showed. some of his impressions (omitting disadvantageous comparisons between new england and europe) were recycled in after strange gods ( ), based on the lectures he went on to deliver at the university of virginia after leaving harvard. i cite this here because it is possible stevens could have read it, although whether he did or not does not affect my argument: my local feelings were stirred very sadly by my first view of new england, on arriving from montreal, and journeying all one day through the beautiful desolate country of vermont. those hills had once, i suppose, been covered with primaeval forest; the forest was razed to make sheep pastures for the english settlers; now the sheep are gone, and most of the de- scendants of the settlers; and a new forest appeared blazing with the melancholy glory of october maple and beech and birch scattered among the evergreens; and after this procession of scarlet and gold and purple wilderness you descend to the sordor of the half-dead mill towns of southern new hampshire and massachusetts. it is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favoured in climate that seem to me the happiest, but those in which a long struggle of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both; in which the landscape has been moulded by numerous generations of one race, and in which the landscape in turn has modified the race to its own character. and those new england mountains seemed to me to give evidence of a human success so meagre and transitory as to be more desper- ate than the desert. (asg ) as he had written to faber, “you feel that every house and sign of human life might be swept away and leave exactly the same inhuman natural beauty that was there before” (letters ): emphatically, eliot had not felt that “history” was then and america. the wallace stevens journal twenty years later, near the end of his life, stevens had occasion to ex- press his own “local feelings,” which were very different: the other day, early in april, when the weather was still bleak and everything still had the look of winter, i went from hartford to boston, on the railroad by way of willimantic. everything seemed gray, bleached and derelict and the word derelict kept repeating itself as part of the activity of the train. but this was a precious ride through the character of the state. the soil everywhere seemed thin and difficult and every cut- ting and open pit disclosed gravel and rocks, in which only the young pine trees seemed to do well. there were chicken farms, some of them abandoned, and there were cow-barns. the great barns of other states do not exist. there were orchards of apples and peaches. yet in this sparse landscape with its old houses of gray and white there were other houses, smaller, fresher, more fastidious. and spring was coming on. it was as if the people whose houses i was seeing shared the strength that was beginning to assert itself. the man who loves new england and particularly the spare region of connecticut loves it precisely because of the spare colors, the thin lights, the delicacy and slightness of the beauty of the place. the dry grass on the thin surfaces would soon change to a lime-like green and later to an emerald bril- liant in a sunlight never too full. . . . now, when all the primi- tive difficulties of getting started have been overcome, we live in the tradition which is the true mythology of the region and we breathe in with every breath the joy of having ourselves been created by what has been endured and mastered in the past. (cpp – ) this comes from “connecticut composed,” the last prose that stevens wrote before the onset of his final illness. if its valedictory tone reflects something of that sense of an oncoming ending, then the personal contexts of eliot’s comments (he had finally separated from his wife, vivienne, and was contemplating a life of spiritual austerity) are also relevant. so, too, are the larger contexts, with eliot reflecting on what was depression-era america, while stevens writes from within the postwar resurgence and menaced tranquilities of eisenhower’s presidency. the heavily ideolo- gized nature of both pieces also owes something to their contexts: eliot was addressing himself sympathetically to the southern agrarian politi- cal and cultural sensibility, and stevens’s tribute had been commissioned by the united states information agency for broadcast on the voice of america. neither, then, can be entirely disentangled from somewhat pro- “dead opposites” or “reconciled among the stars”? stevens and eliot pagandist motives; but here i want simply to consider the “america” each postulates, in order to define their differences. these might be summarized as follows: whereas eliot’s passage sees new england as the nothing that is not there, stevens’s passage sees it as the nothing that is; what one expresses as deprivation, the other em- braces as resource. we are, in some aspects, back at the division henry james insisted on in his study of hawthorne ( ) when asserting that “the flower of art blooms only where the soil is deep, that it takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature,” and when enumerating “the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of american life” ( , ). but even james admitted that, all such deficiencies accounted for, “the american knows that a good deal remains; what it is that remains—that is his secret” ( ). when james con- templates hawthorne’s “circumstances”—“struck,” he confesses, by “the large number of elements that were absent from them”—he comments that “the coldness, the thinness, the blankness . . . present themselves so vividly” ( ); and i abbreviate the quotation at his animating adverb to emphasize its predictively stevensian aspect, as “one feels the life of that which gives life as it is” (cpp ). this is the tenor of stevens’s percep- tion of connecticut: that its absences have amounted to opportunity, as he celebrates the limitations of its palette and the “hardihood” this has instilled: “the american self in the sort of place in which it was formed” (cpp ). unlike eliot, who sees virtual failure in this poverty, stevens, in on the jamesian “secret,” sees success (and not “meagre” success, as eliot terms it), albeit through an effort that may have been grimly “required, as a necessity requires” (cpp ). out of it, he argues, has been created that “mythology of the region,” that enduring linkage between self and place, and that live tradition, which eliot had felt to have been missing. this brings me back to my earlier assertion, that stevens puts more pressure on location than eliot does, or that ultimately it matters less to eliot. this in turn relates to my observation, about the first set of pas- sages, that eliot seems content with the mystery he diagnoses, whereas stevens forces toward understanding, interrogating the particulars for an answer they can give only by being irreducibly what they are. in the sec- ond set of passages, eliot already has an alternative in mind to the new england that disappoints him, whether it is figured as europe or even as the life hereafter; but for stevens, the hard truth of connecticut, the state where, as he sees, rock lies so close to the surface, is what there is. their perceptions of place cannot ultimately be detached from their different religious positions. i do not wish to simplify eliot’s christianity, which was highly complex, sophisticated, and dark; but for all that, the christian understanding is that we are god’s privileged (if unworthy) creatures, on earth as the place intended for us in preparation for enjoying god forever in an afterlife (or missing him eternally, eliot might add, in hell). in a late address, stevens insisted on the importance of a poet’s remember- the wallace stevens journal ing “that he lives in the world of darwin and not in the world of plato” (cpp ); in that perspective, our species is the consequence of natural rather than supernatural selection. god’s earth must, logically, contain god’s meanings, even if these are occult; but god’s vanishing from earth means that the meaning of our being here is not discoverable, but must be manufactured from what lies at hand. this is the “fantastic effort” on which stevens embarked (cpp ), and that eliot to some extent derided: “man is man because he can recognize spiritual realities, not because he can invent them” (p : ). in little gidding (iii), eliot implies that “love of a country,” as “attach- ment to our own field of action,” can in the “expanding / of love beyond desire” come to seem “of little importance / though never indifferent” (ptse : ). but, for stevens, being located in a “meaningless place” ne- cessitates the finding of a satisfaction in it, nevertheless (cpp ), rather than in any transcendence of it, such as eliot implies through “the timeless moment” (ptse : ). this requires forging a relation to one’s location, however depleted it seems (“the empty place”), through specific percep- tion: “there was that difference between the and an, / the difference between himself and no man” (cpp ). attachment to our own field of action is always vital, for when the necessary angel descends, it directs our attention more profoundly toward “earth” than toward “empty heaven and its hymns” (cpp , ). when the visionary moment occurs in stevens, it is transitory, like eliot’s; but, in a manifestation of secular grace, it offers intensification rather than transcendence of the ordinary, as in “contrary theses (ii)”: “the abstract was suddenly there and gone again. / the negroes were playing football in the park” (cpp ). instead of the universe of death suggested by phrases like “chemical afternoon,” “grand mechanics,” and “martyrs à la mode” (cpp – ), the poem’s various observed parts—including, in my reading, these football players—are seen to make a living whole, in which “the world itself was the truth” (cpp ). connecticut, if you like, has to be “composed,” and on such oc- casions as this the principle of harmony implicit in the act of composition suggests itself: “perhaps / the truth depends on a walk around a lake, // a composing as the body tires” (cpp ). for the “living name” and the “living place” are closely interconnected: “the thing i hum appears to be / the rhythm of this celestial pantomime” (cpp ). but more usual in stevens are “balances / that we achieve” rather than “balances that happen” (cpp ), much like poems that, while they “may very well occur, they had very much better be caused” (l ). this marks a difference from the eliot who espoused impersonality and who seems in practice to have required something like inspiration in order to write poetry. for stevens, the actively discriminating poet was an essential component; copying out a remark about the “exactness and intensity of [cézanne’s] notation,” he commented, “i note the above both for itself and because it adds to subject and manner the thing that is incessantly over- “dead opposites” or “reconciled among the stars”? stevens and eliot looked: the artist, the presence of the determining personality. without that reality no amount of other things matters much” (sur plusieurs beaux sujects , ). this may return us to their being “dead opposites.” but if eliot might have thought of stevens as a belated and semi-irrelevant romantic deploying a used-up category of “the imagination,” and stevens thought of eliot as a belated and semi-irrelevant christian deploying a used-up category of “god,” eliot has also been conscripted to the romantic tradition by various commentators, and the question of religious belief is clearly central to stevens. in , what stevens had found to applaud in eliot was his asceticism, and for both poets a kind of negative theology, a sense of the world defined by god’s actual or potential absence, was deep- ly significant. both men behaved astonishingly, in their final phases: eliot risked outraging the social decorum by which he had appeared confined, by marrying his much younger secretary in a secret ceremony; stevens, also secretly, seems to have become a roman catholic on his deathbed (though the veracity of this conversion is contested). neither event need be interpreted as the repudiation of previously held positions: for eliot, it extended his understanding of “love” to include human sexuality; for stevens, it shows the ultimate consistency of his belief in belief. for eliot, it was impossible to “let be be finale of seem” (cpp ), because the antici- pated final consummation reconciled natural and divine, when “the fire and the rose are one” (ptse : ); for stevens, however, “it is possible that to seem—it is to be” (cpp ), that consummation experienced when “observing is completing and we are content, / in a world that shrinks to an immediate whole” (cpp ). not “dead opposites,” therefore, but certainly very different. yet, more than a half-century after their deaths, each has a durable reputation, so in the notional pantheon of modern poets we might justifiably regard them, now, as being “reconciled among the stars” (ptse : ). and, possibly, during life each might have turned to the other’s poetry with the outcome predicted by their mutual friend, marianne moore: “reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in / it, after all, a place for the genuine” ( ). lancaster university united kingdom notes eliot’s prose will be cited, as far as possible, from the ongoing complete prose of t. s. eliot ( volumes to date) as p (volume number as appropriate). analogously, referenc- es to eliot’s poetry will cite the two-volume “annotated text” of the poems of t. s. eliot as ptse . all references to after strange gods will be cited as asg. this example comes from bloom, poets and poems ; see also bloom, wallace stevens – and the ringers in the tower . these have included sister bernetta quinn, a. a. alvarez, denis donoghue, and lucy beckett, to name no others. the wallace stevens journal here and later i extend aspects of my argument in “hello, hello.” stevens seems to be evoking his own feelings rather than ventriloquizing ransom’s; alan filreis has noted that in its first draft he even supposed ransom to have been born in kentucky ( ). as eliot writes, “i think that the chances for the re-establishment of a native culture are perhaps better here than in new england. you are farther away from new york; you have been less industrialised and less invaded by foreign races; and you have a more opulent soil” (asg ). randall jarrell, c. k. stead, george bornstein, and michael o’neill come to mind. for a fuller exploration of my views on stevens and belief, see my essay “religion.” i acknowledge that there is also a regrettable comparison to be drawn between them, if we consider them amid “the raciologies of canonical modernism” (galvin ); while this tarnishes their stars, it does not in my view extinguish them. works cited bloom, harold. poets and poems. bloom’s literary criticism, th anniversary collec- tion, chelsea house, . ———. the ringers in the tower: studies in romantic tradition. chicago up, . ———. wallace stevens: the poems of our climate. cornell up, . ehrenpreis, irvin, editor. wallace stevens: a critical anthology. penguin, . eliot, t. s. after strange gods. faber and faber, . ———. the complete prose of t. s. eliot: the critical edition. edited by ronald schuchard et al., volumes to date, johns hopkins up, – . ———. letters of t. s. eliot. edited by valerie eliot and john haffenden, vol. , faber and faber, . ———. the poems of t. s. eliot. edited by christopher ricks and jim mccue, volumes, faber and faber, . filreis, alan. wallace stevens and the actual world. princeton up, . galvin, rachel. “race.” wallace stevens in context, edited by glen macleod, cambridge up, , pp. – . gardner, helen. the composition of four quartets. faber and faber, . james, henry. hawthorne. edited by tony tanner, macmillan, . moore, marianne. the complete poems of marianne moore. “definitive ed.,” macmillan, . sharpe, tony. “‘hello, hello are you there?’: theatrics of place in eliot’s poetry.” the journal of the t. s. eliot society (uk), , pp. – . ———. “religion.” wallace stevens in context, edited by glen macleod, cambridge up, , pp. – . stevens, wallace. letters of wallace stevens. edited by holly stevens, u of california p, . ———. sur plusieurs beaux sujects: wallace stevens’ commonplace book. edited by milton j. bates, stanford up / huntington library, . ———. wallace stevens: collected poetry and prose. edited by frank kermode and joan richardson, library of america, . the meaning of an education the meaning of an education lifelong learning and the blues by lindsay c. mitchell m.a. the university of british columbia, a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy in the faculty of graduate studies (curriculum studies) the university of british columbia (vancouver) september © lindsay c. mitchell, ii abstract all knowledge is individually constructed and contextually situated. plainly put, different things mean different things to different people, under different circumstances, in different places, and at different times. what then is the meaning of an education? pragmatic philosophy holds the meaning of something to be intrinsically associated with its functional purpose or effect. it is what it does. education is thus commonly viewed as a way of instructing children and young persons in preparation for their making informed career choices leading to positive and productive participation in mainstream society as responsible adults. current definitions include the upgrading, retraining and re-certification of mature workers. long considered a pipeline to social and material prosperity, education is generally programmed to succeed. but no two learners are the same, and everyone’s experience is unique. what about the less well served, the ones that don’t fit in — the ones flushed out the system’s other end? what meaning does education hold for them? this exercise examines one such experience — my own. there is very little difference between one man and another, but what little there is . . . is very important. william james, “consider what effects, that conceivably might have practical bearings, we conceive the object of your conception to have. then your conception of these effects is the whole of your conception of the object” (peirce, , . ) american pragmatist philosopher william james ( - ). from the importance of individuals” ( ). found in bartlett’s familiar quotations ( , , ) iii contents abstract ........................................................................................................... ii contents ......................................................................................................... iii dedication ...................................................................................................... iv the setup ........................................................................................................ introduction ................................................................................ inquiry focus.............................................................................. mode of inquiry ......................................................................... mode of analysis ..................................................................... the story....................................................................................................... first class ................................................................................. hell-ementary school............................................................... cruel britannia ......................................................................... sick-ondary school .................................................................. premature matriculation........................................................... circus world ............................................................................ my home town ..................................................................... driving mr. dixon ................................................................. the iceman cometh ............................................................... t-bone shuffle....................................................................... driftin’ blues.......................................................................... rez blues................................................................................ that’s entertainment .............................................................. baldry, byrnes & billy .......................................................... unfinished business............................................................... bringing it all back home .................................................... interpretation & analysis............................................................................ bibliography ............................................................................................... iv love to all the setup introduction people tend to self-identify with their chosen occupation or profession (becker & carper, ). while some drive trucks for a living, others cultivate the land, teach school, work in banks, advise on financial matters, etc. i’m a working musician, a guitarist by trade, with more than four decades of experience in the field. it’s the only thing i’ve ever done for a living. as such, it’s who i am. musicianeering is a “deviant” mode of employment, historically fraught with uncertainty and peril. (becker, ) and blues musicians represent an even further occupational subset — a tribe within a tribe, figuratively akin to itinerant peddlers and carnival folk, with a correspondingly oblique perspective on life. blues music is traditionally performed late at night, or in the wee hours, on the fringes of society, in commercial establishments licensed for the sale of alcoholic beverages. typically companied by libidinous dancing, raunchy language, and general carousing, lengthy participation has been known to conjure forth a host of unwelcome daemons — like alcoholism, drug addiction, heart disease, mental illness, economic hardship, emotional distress, and domestic discord, etc. (becker, , ; murray, ) what combination of circumstances and events might prompt a rational young person to pursue occupational deviance? how might someone actually go about choosing the other side? what about me? was i just simply favourably predisposed as a child, innocently attracted by its lurid sheen? or, was i prodded in that direction. like everyone, i attended school as a youngster. might that have played a role? others in my graduating cohort moved on to the standard variety of career pursuits, becoming tradesmen, craftsmen, contractors, salespersons, housewives, clerks, bankers, managers, journalists, bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, real estate agents, doctors, dentists, and lawyers, civil servants, police officers, and politicians, etc., etc. granted, one became a famous syndicated cartoonist, and two went to prison for murdering some poor fellow in stanley park, but conversation at a recent class reunion indicated that the rest went on to lead relatively normal lives, with most now approaching comfortable retirement. i wasn’t the only budding professional musicians in my class — there were two others (also male). but unlike me (self-taught with modest technical facility), they were conventionally trained, with years of conservatory instruction between them. not surprisingly, one went on to teach theory and composition at community college, and another became organist and choirmaster at a prominent vancouver tabernacle. me? i ran away and joined the circus. in addition to being an occupational deviant, i am also an educational oddity — a sexagenarian apprentice in an area of academic inquiry known as curriculum studies. the word “curriculum” is commonly associated with the education of children and young adults in institutionalized group settings, with research primarily focussing on pedagogical practice, and the efficient delivery of skills and information. class of , north vancouver senior secondary school, north vancouver, b.c., canada. lynn johnson the th, in . but william pinar posits its latin root as currere, meaning to “run the course.” (pinar et al, ) education is thus conceived in more expansive terms — not simply as a customary rite of passage for young people, with emphasis on peak performance and punctual completion, but a lifelong journey, with inquiry focussing more on the expedition itself — the unfolding landscape, and the instructional nature of persons, places, and events encountered along the way. thus, we have the term curriculum vitae, a formal compendium of one’s educational and work-related achievements. we also have the similarly derived “careering” or “careening” — words paradoxically invoking the more dangerously unpredictable and out-of-control aspects of existence. i put off going to college until age forty-six, then began attending with classmates barely older than my own children. the desks were small and the daily schedule tight, but despite the aching joints and monstrous migraines — i managed to score well. from there i transferred to a full-fledged university (ubc), and in lengthy due course received both b.a. and m.a.certification. there’s a reason why education tends to occur when people are young — because later on it’s much more difficult. (scheutze, ; rubenson & xu, ) grown-up people in the world have grown-up problems and responsibilities — family, career, finances, illness, divorce, even death (ideally not one’s own). yes, the older you are the tougher it gets. (de beauvior, ) society does tend to privilege younger people’s projects (biggs, ; ), thus relatively few choose to embark later on in life, and fewer still prevail. and those who do, buffeted and bruised by their biographies, typically arrive on campus avec des bagages, like well-worn suitcases, bulging with opinions, attitudes, and beliefs. or so it was for me. the “art-world” is a precarious place to make a living, dangerously unstable and prone to exploitation by predatory interests. (becker, ) and older art- workers, typically ineligible for the kind of employment benefits normally available to members of the mainstream workforce such as retirement security and extended healthcare, are particularly vulnerable to calamity. (woolley, ) having spent my entire working life in the music industry trenches, perennially on the brink of economic and existential oblivion — i cheerfully confess to having developed a bit of an “attitude” problem. moreover, i’m a blues musician, and blues music — inspired by african americans’ historic struggle to live with dignity in the face of oppressive social relations — is by nature resistant to authority. so, naturally, i arrived at university with a monumental chip on my shoulder, especially respecting mainstream society and its vaunted public institutions. constructivist learning theory holds that new knowledge is figuratively built upon a foundation of previously built knowledge. (davis et al, ) we are reminded, however, that not all learning is necessarily positive and good, and that bad habits, bad attitudes and other forms of wrong thinking are similarly fabricated. (merriam et al, ) doctoral students typically matriculate in their mid-thirties, and either go on to teach at university, engage in scientific research, or otherwise function in positions commensurate with their elite qualifications. but my situation is different. i’m only a few years away from mandatory retirement in most jurisdictions. consequently, there are no decent entry-level opportunities available to me, academic or otherwise. plus, i’ve never had a real job; never worked : to : , five days a week, with weekends off, sick-leave, holiday pay, extended benefits, and other handy entitlements — like a steady paycheck. call me irresponsible. throw in unreliable too. sammy cahn, all i’ve ever done for a living is play guitar and sing in bands. having never toiled inside the box, my standard work-related resumé is thin — no formal certificate of training, no list of previous employers, no record of positions held, no performance evaluations leading to promotion, no evidence of incremental merit-based advancement. hence, from a conventional human resources (hr) perspective . . . i’m unemployable. accordingly, for better or worse, i remain a working musician. the blues is a feeling, and the blues is what i do lucky peterson ( ) excerpted song lyric, from “call me irresponsible,” composed in by jimmy van heusen (music) and sammy cahn (lyrics). buffalo, ny born bluesman judge kenneth peterson (b. ) inquiry focus the general purpose of education research is “to advance society’s understanding of educational processes and outcomes.” (aerj, ) mainstream curriculum inquiry remains focussed on day-to-day school-related matters, like institutional efficiency, professional development, and individual student performance. but i am not a teacher. nor at this late stage in life do i see myself becoming one. rather, i’m a lifelong learner — a “non-traditional” student of curriculum. (schuetze, ) what then does an education mean to me? accordingly, this study entertains four basic queries. . what role did k- education play in my decision to become a working musician? . how did i subsequently come to acquire the technical facility, the social dexterity, and the ontological assurance required to function effectively in such a role? . what role did occupational deviance play with respect to the nature and quality of my latter-day engagement with higher education. . what role does education continue to play in my ongoing life and career? there is, perhaps, no better way to study curriculum than to study ourselves. clandinin & connelly ( , ) mode of inquiry the challenge here is to identify a research strategy which is equally respectful of both scholarly tradition and the blues. inquiry is thus to be both qualitative and story-driven. simple stories told by simple people, that’s the genius of the blues. b.b. king ( ) qualitative research is an expansive designation, with various meanings across different academic fields. broadly defined, it refers to “any kind of [inquiry] that produces findings not arrived at by means of statistical procedures or other means of quantification.” (strauss and corbin, , ). generally speaking, it focusses how individuals and groups view and understand the world, and how they construct meaning out of their experiences. qualitative research emerged during the early th century in reciprocal response to limitations imposed by the stifling hegemony of th century positivism. progressive academics wilhelm dilthey ( - ), heinrich rickert ( - ), and john dewey ( - ) argued that the world of nature is not the same as the world of human society, and that the study of cultural symbols, rules, norms, and values necessarily calls for a different, more humanistic approach. (outhwaite, ) similarly rooted in the th century, blues music drew its early inspiration from african americans’ historic struggle to live with dignity under the violently emphasis added. oppressive social regime known as jim crow ( - ) which, for much of the th century, though officially unsanctioned, remained dedicated to the perpetual subordination of blacks within mainstream (white) u.s. society, and particularly in the rural south. (baraka, ; pinar, ) my life had its beginnings in the midst of the most miserable, desolate and discouraging surroundings. booker t. washington ( - ) [the blues] were a way of affirming the somebodiness of black folks, and preserving the worth of black humanity through ritual and drama. james h. cone ( , ) qualitative research methods first appeared in departments of anthropology and sociology, then spread to related fields such as women's studies, social work, cultural studies, and education, and eventually even the hard sciences like medicine and mathematics. (greenhahlg, ; burton, ). blues music developed concurrently with qualitative research, gaining widespread popularity in america during the s, and similarly proliferating far beyond its original home territories. indeed, today, more than a century removed from its genesis among impoverished agricultural workers in rural mississippi, the blues are heard throughout the world, performed and enjoyed by men and women of broadly diverse circumstances and cultural heritage. - plessy v ferguson, u.s. supreme court decision confirming the “separate but equal” doctrine of racial segregation. - u.s. civil rights act. excerpted from up from slavery ( ), found in norton anthology of african american literature (gates & mckay ( , ). autoethnography blues songs are traditionally rendered in the first person, with lyrical content focussing on the writer/performer’s day-to-day lived experiences. auto- ethnography (a subset of qualitative inquiry) similarly seeks to examine human phenomena from the researcher’s personal perspective. it differs from conventional ethnography (a positivist research method by which the detached observer uses participant observation and interviews in order to acquire an objective understanding of another culture) in that it is fundamentally auto- biographical, focussing on the writer’s own subjective experience rather than the beliefs and practices of other persons. autoethnography is a postmodern construct . . . in which the realist conventions and objective observer position of standard ethnography have been called into question. (reed-dunahay, , ) while autoethnography does touch on the lives of others (since everyone exists in a social context) it does so in a more haphazard, less systematic way than conventional ethnography. the term is thus commonly contested, and often conflated with “personal narrative,” “narrative inquiry,” or “autobiography.” practice varies considerably according to the relative emphasis placed upon the self (auto), the context (ethnos), and the kind of academic writing employed (graphein). studies of this general nature nonetheless share “four common commitments,” the first reflecting the belief that the world of human experience must be studied from the point of view of the historically and culturally situated individual. secondly, investigators are “to persist in working outwards from their own biographies [towards] the worlds of experience that surround them.” third, they “will continue to value and seek to produce works that speak clearly and powerfully about these worlds.” fourth, these texts “will be committed not just to describing the world, but to changing it.” (denzin & lincoln, , ) the method of currere the “method of currere” is a discipline-specific mode of autoethnographic inquiry conceived in curriculum studies as a way for students to contextualize their past educational experiences, both historically and culturally, and engage in critical reflection with a view towards optimizing professional teaching practice. (pinar, ; ; ) accordingly, writer/researchers are encouraged to share their school-related stories so that others might critically reflect upon and take meaning from corresponding or contradictory patterns in their own biographies. (pinar et al, ) currere is distinguished by four figurative “moments” — the regressive, progressive, analytical and synthetical. (pinar, ) first, with benefit of hindsight, “one returns to the past, to capture it as it was.” ( ). then, turning about, one gazes forward in time, progressing toward a place beyond the present, while imagining a variety of “possible futures.” (pinar, , ) “the future is then present in the same sense as the past is present.” (pinar & grumet, , ). ‘tis a poor sort of memory that only works backwards. lewis carroll, the analytical moment of currere is held to occur when, from the lofty perspective of the future, with freshly minted foresight, one turns again to face the present, only to confront the ever-pending spectre of one’s own becoming. the from alice in wonderland ( ) synthetic phase occurs when, flush with insight, one contemplates re-engagement with a brand-new reality, sublimely “integrated in [all] its meaningfulness.” (pinar, , ) currere is thus conceived as a sort of “pilgrimage,” with self- knowledge being the object of reverence or desire. (pinar, , ) currere-inspired narratives in education research tend to involve personal accounts of classroom experiences from the teacher’s inside perspective. kainin ( ) refers to these as “work stories.” some are chatty, upbeat, and inspiring. others are more gritty, and down to earth, focusing on staff-room politics, gender conflict, problems related to career advancement, relations between veteran and new teachers, and grumblings about management’s infringement upon the school’s social order, and other aspects of professional pedagogical practice. for example, rishma dunlop’s groundbreaking dissertation/novel boundary bay “investigates the nature of teachers’ lives in school and university settings, the nature of institutional education, societal issues affecting intellectual and creative life, the roles of the woman poet and teacher, the social structures and conventions of marriage and contemporary women, the conflicts and paradoxes of mother- hood, the issues of teen suicide and homosexuality, and the transformative power of literature and artistic forms of seeing the world.” (abstract). norman denzin ( , ) notes that, whereas female teachers’ stories are generally “less concerned with separation and struggle,” male narratives tend to be “more confrontational” and “obsessed with conflict.” i’m a man. bo diddley, song title, written by elia mcdaniel (aka: bo diddley) released on chess records in . arts-based narrative inquiry arts-based narrative inquiry is characterized by “the presence of certain aesthetic qualities or elements infusing a study’s conception, design, and execution. (barone & eisner, , ) unlike traditional modes of scholarly writing, which strive to appear objective and impersonal, the arts-based academic text willingly bears the author’s stylistic signature. art is the process by which raw experience is processed into aesthetic statement. albert murray ( , v) arts-based inquiry, like blues music, is naturally performative. as such, it celebrates good storytelling, of which barone and eisner ( ) posit several key characteristics. the first involves creation of a “virtual reality,” the idea being to situate certain characters and events within a recognizable socio-historic context, thereby “bestowing a measure of verisimilitude” upon which the reader might base a credible “belief in the virtual world as an analogue to the real one.” ( ) arts-based academic texts also typically feature an “expressive literary style,” with figurative language employed to promote “intersubjectivity,” or “empathetic understanding” — referring both to an author’s ability to convey his particular perspective in an effective and accessible manner, and the ability of readers to reconstruct the author’s perspective within themselves. the artful use of expressive language “allows re-creation of the mental atmosphere, thoughts, feelings, and motivations of the characters in a story, drama, or essay.” the inquiring reader is thus encouraged to “create additional material by further imaginative act” and to “vicariously experience events from a different [other] perspective.” ( ) highlighting the utility of ambiguity, iser ( , ) celebrates “the unwritten part of the text” that encourages readers to fill in “narrative gaps” by drawing upon meanings gleaned from their own personal experience. bakhtin ( ) further distinguishes between the kind of narratives that invite reader participation and those intent on rendering the final verdict, effectively muzzling other voices, and shutting down interpretive options. bildungsroman a bildungsroman is a particular type of personal narrative which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of a protagonist (typically male) from youth to adulthood and often beyond. dating to the german enlightenment ( - ), it tells about the growing up or coming of age of a sensitive person in search of experience and edification, like an orphan or youngest son venturing forth into the world to seek his fortune. it can be conceded that there is no more exemplary protagonist than one who, whether he succeeds or fails otherwise, achieves a successful integration as a human being while engaged in action to promote the general welfare. albert murray, the hero and the blues ( , ) stories of this sort usually begin with an emotional upheaval prompting the hero to embark upon his odyssey. the goal is maturation, and the process is predictably long, strenuous, and gradual — typically involving repeated clashes between the hero’s needs and desires, and the views and judgments of an unbending social measured from the prelease of descartes’ discourse on method, to the french revolution. order. a list of familiar english language bildungsroman includes james joyce’s portrait of the artist as a young man, and j.d. salinger’s catcher in the rye. the african american canon is particularly well-represented, notably by richard wright’s the long dream and ralph ellison’s invisible man. validity and truth like homer’s heroic bildungsroman, the following arts-based autoethnographic narrative represents my own true-life educational odyssey. the quantitative- objectivist criticism of storytelling as a legitimate research method draws upon traditional empiricist notions of validity and truth which hold it to be hopelessly relativist and fatally biased, offering only naive, sentimental, romantic or otherwise untruthful representations of reality, with no scientific value in fact, except perhaps as a form of confessional therapy. but champions of autobiographical inquiry counter with criticism of their own, dismissing objectivity as an unachievable illusion, and condemning habitual, lockstep adherence to established scientistic practices. how then are we to differentiate between truth and trash, when the tactics employed in arts-based auto-biographical narrative research are largely idiosyncratic, opportunistic, and unique to the investigator? dating to socrates, plato, and aristotle, the correspondence theory of truth holds that something makes ideal sense if it corresponds to objective reality, and false if it does not. relativism, however, argues that (a) cognitive bias prevents one from observing something objectively with one’s senses, (b) that notational bias problematizes that which is measured without using ones senses, and (c) that culture bias further precludes any possibility of impartiality. a “coherence theory of truth” rather sees the veracity of a proposition resting in its consistency with a specified set of rationally organized ideas. that is, in order to best “make sense,” a narrative must comprise a logically constructed, orderly, and consistently related sequence of literary elements. (cornelius, ) narrative coherence is thus seen to embody: . structural coherence: do the parts of the story “hang together?” . content coherence: does the story “hold up” in comparison to other examples of its type or genre? . character coherence: are the characters “believable?” do their relationships “play out?” is the dialogue “realistic?” (ibid.) a “social consensus” theory of truth, on the other hand, holds (a) that the value of any proposition lies in its designation as meaningful by a social group, (b) that relations between a proposition and its truthfulness are an ongoing process of negotiation, and (c) that truth is situated, local, contingent, embodied, vague and open. (goguen, ) the ethics of anonymity miles and huberman ( ) highlight several key things to consider when engaging in autobiographical research: . informed consent — have the real-life characters in ones story been told of their inclusion? do they need to be? . privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity — might identifying characteristics of certain characters require masking? . honesty and trust — is the author being truthful in presenting data? can fictionalized data represent a form of truth? respecting the protection of privacy and confidentiality in this instance — certain characters’ names have been altered where required, using various criteria, on a situation specific basis. simply stated, some have been changed, others have not. . conclusion the truthfulness of this particular arts-based auto-ethnographic narrative (or any other) is ultimately related to the terms of accountability that are attached to it (see above) and “its acceptance by a competent, critical community.” (barone & eisner, , ) blues is truth . . . brownie mcghee, tennessee-born walter brown "brownie" mcghee ( - ). noted piedmont-style bluesman, known for his lengthy collaboration with harmonica-player sonny terry. song title and name of mcghee’s posthumously established, san francisco-based blues is truth foundation. mode of analysis a commodity [may] appear at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. but analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. karl marx (attr.) analysis, by definition, involves separating something into its various constituent parts or elements for careful examination, so that one might identify and more accurately appraise key factors, causes, and results, etc. thus, it would seem to naturally embody a numerative component. education, for example, is seen to comprise equal parts ( ) learning ( ) teaching, and ( ) knowledge. music is similarly numerative by nature. the blues, for instance, in addition to being lyrically rendered in the st-person, typically proceeds in / , / , or / ( / ) rhythm, through , , , or bar passages. accordingly, the following story seems to invite a “by-the-numbers” approach to interpretation. one connotes a “whole-istic” way of looking at things. education is thus apprehended in its entirety, not just as a series of individual episodes involving instrumental instruction or practical training, but rather as a contiguous, ongoing, lifelong affair. all are but parts of one stupendous whole alexander pope ( - ) the absent numbers and are herein deemed cogent to “jazz” but not “ blues.” but it takes two to tango. a simple analytical instrument of ancient greek origin (revived in modern times by imanuel kant, johann fichte, george w. f. hegel, and karl marx ) — the dialectic is a handy double-edged tool for unearthing phenomenological situations and separating them into their constituent ontological opposites for critical observation. for instance, a primary contradiction in the following story pits education versus occupational practice. another contrasts teaching and learning. other dyads at play include self/other, formal/non-formal, male/female, past/present, young/old, art and commerce, sacred/profane, healthy/sick, rich/poor, here/there, us/them, rural/urban, traditional/contemporary, mainstream/alternative, synchronic and diachronic, etc, etc. the opposite is beneficial; from things that differ comes the fairest attunement; all things are born through strife. heraclitus ( - bce) education the following story similarly distinguishes three kinds of education. formal education tends to privilege hierarchically structured, organized classroom instruction, which in turn normally foregrounds conventional transmissive teaching methods. informal education refers to formally organized instruction which takes place outside the school or classroom such as art galleries, museums, rehearsal halls, and corporate offices, etc. the informal designation is often extended to include structured workplace situations, such as in traditional - - - - from on the universe, translation by w.h.s. jones ( ) apprenticeship and corporate training. (labelle, ) non-formal education, however, take place entirely outside the classroom, and focusses on the instructional properties of non-structured social and occupational interactions. as such, it is by nature incidental, spontaneous, and even unintended. university is a highly formalized affair, characterized by scheduled lectures, text books, exams, and ritualized advancement protocols. though similarly rich in tradition, ritual, and regalia — blues practice is quite the opposite. each, however, is educative in its own way. all individuals are engaged in learning experiences at all times. thomas j. la belle ( , abstract) learning this study acknowledges three kinds of learning. instrumental learning essentially means learning how to “do” something — like reading and writing, solving math problems, driving a car, or playing a musical instrument. communicative learning involves individuals developing ways to express their feelings, needs, and desires. transformative learning takes place when, through critical reflection, long held predispositions, beliefs and judgments are altered, refined or otherwise elaborated upon to effect positive changes in attitude or perspective. as such, it involves learning how to “be.” (davis & sumara, ; mezirow, ; ) emphasis mine. knowledge the following story highlights four different kinds of knowledge. (lave & wenger, ) knowledge gleaned by description is conceptually inferred, expressed, implied, represented, or otherwise depicted using symbols (as in spoken and written language). knowledge based on authority relies upon the status or reputation of the individual from whom it is handed down. knowledge gleaned by acquaintance is immediate and physical, demonstrated and performed rather than merely described. knowledge by participation is that which enables an organism to successfully negotiate the processes and structures that hazard its immediate environment. as such, it is adaptive, evolutionary, and naturally mimetic. teaching six perspectives on teaching are similarly entertained. the term “perspective” is taken here to mean “a way of looking” at teaching, not an inventory of pedagogical methods and procedures. transmission (a hallmark of formal, institution-based education) is seen to bear two defining characteristics — the primacy of the teacher-to-content relationship, and the efficient delivery of curriculum. (boldt, ) a developmental approach is less focussed on authority and the commodification of knowledge, rather seeking “to clarify how the human mind comes to understand something, and the nature of the relationship between learning and teaching.” developmental teaching is thus viewed more in terms of “cultivation,” with knowledge figuratively “planted” in the individual learner’s fertile mind for later gathering. (arseneau & rodenberg, ) a nurturing perspective is more learner-centred still, and sees the teacher’s role as facilitating self-efficacy. a nurturing evaluation of learning is more concerned with competence levels than relative performance, rather seeking a “consensual validation of experience.” “do no harm” is a fundamental tenet. (t’kenye, ) social reform denotes a “radical” approach to teaching predicated on the assumption that education is “naturally biased towards the interests of those in possession of social, political, and economic power.” (apple, ) radical pedagogy thus seeks to empower learners with a view to their becoming “socially active, critically thoughtful, and educated, responsible, and cooperative citizens.” (nesbit, ) apprenticeship is a traditional mode of workplace education centred around the activities of a master worker, or group of masters in an organized community of occupational practice. (johnson & pratt, ) non-hierarchical peer mentoring (or “lateral” mentoring) is an alternative mode of workplace education typical of loosely constituted, “participative” communities of practice. (ellinger, ) multiple intelligences gardner ( ) posits eight different kinds of intelligence: the verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spacial, body-kinesthetic, auditory-musical, inter- personally communicative, intra-personally communicative, and existential. it’s not how smart you are that matters, it’s how you are smart. howard gardner (attr.) upper case intended to represent “the education industry.” stages of life this study is fundamentally interested in lifelong learning. (rubenson, ; schuetze, ) erikson ( , ) sees life unfolding in eight successive stages, with the quality of progress through each in part determined by our success (or lack of success) in all the previous stages. the first stage concerns an infant’s basic needs being met by its parents, the key task being to develop trust without completely eliminating the capacity for rational mistrust. the second stage occurs in early childhood (from about eighteen months to three or four years old) with parents providing a secure home-base from which the child can venture forth into the world and assert its will. the task here is to achieve a healthy degree of autonomy while minimizing shame and doubt. stage three (ages - ) is the “genital” or “play” stage, the challenge being to develop “initiative” without accumulating too much collateral “guilt.” stage four ( - ), is where children learn to acquire the instrumental and social skills that society will later demand of them. stage five comprises adolescence (beginning with puberty and ending around eighteen). success here essentially involves learning who you are and how you fit into society. stage six comprises young adulthood ( - ) and generally involves achieving some degree of personal intimacy (as opposed to living in social isolation). stage seven denotes middle adulthood ( - ), and includes the period during which we are most likely involved with raising children. stage eight comprises late-adulthood and begins around age sixty. the task here is to develop and maintain a healthy measure of ego integrity (wisdom) into one’s dotage while minimizing the potential for desperation and despair. conclusion the following arts-based autoethnographic bildungsroman invites interpretation using the eight “heuristic instruments” introduced above — the dialectic, three sorts of education, three kinds of learning, four types of knowledge; six perspectives on teaching, eight kinds of intelligence, and eight stages of life — the idea being to emulate the employment of “musical instruments” in a meaning- filled performance of the blues. the preceding metaphor linking research methodology and music practice is further explicated in a concluding section entitled interpretation & analysis (p ). it is well that we examine the meaning of the blues while they are still falling upon us. richard wright, (in oliver, , xvii) the story first class memory is not just the past. it is the water you swim through, the words you speak, your gestures, your expectations. john ralston saul ( , ) the arsenal football club was founded in by workers at the government armaments depot in the south london (uk) borough of woolwich. my maternal great-grandfather, albert bennett (a mortician by trade), was an ardent supporter. woolwich in those days was a poor working class area. nevertheless, despite struggling financially in the amateur ranks of the english football association (founded in ), the “gunners” remained perennially competitive . requiring increased revenues to turn professional, they moved to newer and more substantial facilities across the river thames in the burgeoning north london district of holloway. ever the dutiful fan, albert followed his beloved team, eventually settling down in nearby highbury to marry and raise a family. the problem was, he didn’t tell his wife and kids back home in woolwich. that’s right, great-grandad was a bigamist. did you ever have to make up your mind? say yes to one and leave the other behind? john sebastian, his son, my maternal grandfather, also named albert, was by all reports an exemplary parent. a genial redhead, affectionately known as ginger, he fought excerpted song lyric, from “did you ever have to make up your mind,” recorded in on kama sutra records by the lovin’ spoonful. new york-born john benson sebastian jr. (b. ), american singer/songwriter, leader of the band lovin’ spoonful. in france during ww . a bus driver by occupation, he was an amateur para- legal by calling, his freely rendered counsel being highly valued within the closely knit north london community. my mother eleanor ( - ) was the middle of nine children, all highbury- born and raised. consistent with the times, mum’s education concluded at age sixteen, at a level roughly equivalent to canada’s gr. . a stylish city girl, known to friends and relatives as nellie, she was a naturally gifted seamstress and women's clothing designer. during wwii, alongside many other young british females of her generation, she served in the women's auxiliary airforce (waaf) providing home-guard logistical and administrative support. great-grandad on my father’s side was a scottish soldier, likely from glasgow, named “jock” mitchell. a non-commissioned officer stationed in the english channel port of dover, kent, he is said to have stood ’ ” tall — a veritable giant in those days (c. ). he is similarly believed to have had red hair. though spared the stain of bigamy, jock was nonetheless a cad. it seems that, shortly following his regiment’s return from ww , he disappeared — callously abandoning his wife and three young daughters to abject poverty. for years i presumed the very worst, thinking that he must have been of highly dubious moral character. but now, as a grandfather myself, looking back at the - conflict, it’s possible that he’d simply seen too much senseless killing, and just wandered away, another post-traumatic casualty of war. born in dover in , my father denis mitchell was the product of an illicit liaison between jock’s sixteen year-old daughter laurel and a randy irish fusilier a common generic english nickname for scotsmen named john. named patrick ward. sadly consistent with family tradition, this paddy also shirked his parental responsibilities. following the establishment of an independent irish republic in , he mustered back to armagh with his regiment, leaving my pregnant teen-age grandmother to fend for herself. yes, it’s true, daddy was a bastard! being born out-of-wedlock isn’t such a big deal these days, but in post-edwardian provincial england it was a major social stigma. and, being both misbegotten and lowborn, despite being more than intelligent enough to succeed academically, opportunities for his educational advancement were few. frequently the target of narrow-minded scorn, young denis had to work everyday collecting bottles and delivering papers to help support his despairing mother. when offered a modest scholarship to a respectable church of england school, his mother laurel declined. “they’re not our people sonny,” she said, anticipating the ridicule he’d most certainly face. “it would only bring more pain.” then came wwii. from my comfy st century, west-coast canadian perspective, it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like for a nineteen year-old british infantryman in , stranded on the beach at dunkerque, being strafed by stuka dive-bombers, and pummeled by german artillery, day in and day out for weeks on end, only to be miraculously whisked away to safety across the channel by a hastily assembled a common generic english nickname for irishmen named patrick. site of the nd battalion, royal irish fusiliers hq depot. flotilla of “little ships.” lost among the more than , other evacuees in desperate retreat, rather than report directly to battalion hq upon repatriation to the channel port of ramsgate, he instead walked the ten miles west along the coast to dover, for three day’s rest and relaxation at his grandmother’s house. “with so much confusion . . . they didn’t notice i was gone.” a signalsman, never rising above the rank of corporal, he later served in north africa, ceylon (now sri lanka), and singapore. but that’s all i know about “daddy’s war.” he never talked about it. my parents met at a swing dance in london shortly after the war — she the urban working-class princess, he the provincial pauper-prince. i was born on may , in the burnt oak annex of edgware general hospital, and taken home to a mock-tudor rental in north wembley. i remember the boy next door, a bit older than me, with an extensive collection of tin soldiers, each painted in english regimental finery and meticulously laid out on the dining room table in a historically correct reenactment of henry v’s triumph over the french at agincourt (i suspect his father held more than a fleeting interest in british military tradition). on the other side lived my twelve year-old baby-sitter wendy, a winsome english lass, with alabaster skin, a cheeky smile, and a carefree tousle of auburn hair. desperately in love — my pet name for her was “wo wo.” the “little ships” were the approximately private vessels that sailed from ramsgate in england to dunkerque in france between may and june , as part of operation dynamo, the rescue of more than , british and french soldiers, who were trapped on the beaches at dunkerque during the second world war. across the road, with his wife and two young daughters, lived locally famous london band leader sid phillips. the phillips girls, aged eight and six, were horrible, constantly scheming up new ways to terrorize the neighbours’ toddler, even once (to their giggling delight) inducing me to bite into a bar of laundry soap while blindfolded. sugar and spice my ass! they weren’t very nice at all. my parents, however, seemed to enjoy the idea of having a celebrity living across the street, especially mum, who boasted to her cockney brothers and sisters. “he was on at the palladium! a command performance! for princess margaret!” in , my folks bought a brand-new, semi-detached three-bedroom house at shaftesbury avenue in the newly developed middlesex suburb of south kenton. construction of this sort, designed to stimulate a still-struggling postwar economy, stood as a symbol of britain’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the blitz. down the road, tucked in beside woodcock park, stood a cluster of hastily erected “prefabs,” built to house inner-city families who’d been bombed-out during the war. their relocation to the suburbs was supposed to have been short-lived, but seven years later — they were still there. a spirit of collective wartime sacrifice still prevailed throughout the land, and working-class children were as a rule admonished to not look down on the poor and less fortunate. indeed, my mum’s working-class family was also from central london, and my dad’s provincial background was distinctly unimpressive. but, the british term for “duplex.” the blitz was the sustained bombing of britain by nazi germany during wwii (particularly between september and may ). by the end of may , over , civilians (half of them in london), had been killed, with more than a million houses destroyed or damaged. temporary “prefabricated” homes. compared to these folks — we seemed downright upper-crust. their kids were scruffy, even dirty, and wore ill-fitting, homemade clothes, with hobnailed leather boots, and swore like sailors — with heavy, slang-laden cockney accents. the neighbours didn’t like them much at all, figuring them no better than gypsies. gypsies (also known as travelers) have lived in britain and the london area for approximately years. the name ‘gypsy’ is derived from the word ‘egyptian’, as it was once believed that that was where they came from. historians and linguists agree that the original gypsies were a group of nomadic people known as romani who left india around a thousand years ago, gradually migrating across the middle east and europe before eventually arriving in britain. today’s british gypsies are descendants of these migrants. ethnic romani continued to arrive from central and eastern europe during the th century, many fleeing the nazis, others following the fall of communism. gypsies in britain have long been persecuted for pursuing a nomadic lifestyle, but many now do live in houses, especially around kent and the south east near dover, where historically they have traveled in large numbers. gypsy communities have their own unique culture,language and traditions, typically focussed around close-knit family groups. traditionally disadvantaged with respect to accommodation and the delivery of health and education services, they consequently endure high rates of sickness and illiteracy. gypsies and travelers are generally not counted in the national census. (merriman, ) but they weren’t really gypsies — were they? prefab pal clive and his brother derek seemed really nice. their mum once had me over for beans on toast. and their dad taught me how to play draughts. but i couldn’t help overhear the grownup neighbours murmuring on about their foul language, poor hygiene, and alleged propensity for petty crime. thus, i was persuaded to forego further close engagement, even though it did seem terribly wrong. at age five, i was enrolled at mount stewart primary, essentially a kindergarten, but run just like an elementary school by mrs. evans, the stern but motherly head mistress. i still recall my first day, sitting cross-legged on the assembly hall floor, gazing purposefully upwards at the large roman letters posted on the wall . . . aa . . . bb . . . cc . . . dd . . . ee . . . ff . . . etc. “oh boy!” i bubbled to myself. “soon i’ll be able to read and write! and then i’ll learn all my times tables. and then . . . and then . . .” sure enough, within a year, i could do all my sums (add, subtract, multiply, and divide) plus read and write in cursive longhand. we learned about our english forebears: beowulf and boadicea, the romans, vikings, anglo-saxons, and norman french. and our class field-trips were outstanding — the tower of london, greenwich observatory, the british museum, and kew gardens. all in all, it was terrific fun. one annoying memory, however, still remains. “we’re going to organize a choir,” said teacher. “auditions begin tomorrow.” curiously (especially considering my subsequent career as a musician), i was not selected. checkers. “we’re just little kids for christ’s sake!” i said (only to myself, of course). “what do you mean i’m not good enough?! my singing isn’t any worse than theirs! screw you!” north london’s suburban landscape was blandly homogenous. for instance, there were only two cars on our street — a nondescript gunmetal gray vauxhall velox sedan parked up one end, and a tan hillman mynx coupé down the other. with no need for a driveway and garage, each identical semi-detached house sported a neatly manicured front garden, protected by a two foot high brick fence (topiary optional). and everyone was white, with most belonging to the church of england (c of e). sure, there was a jewish family living across the street (the golds), and the o’driscolls down the way (irish and roman catholic), but the general feeling in that part of britain, having endured the war, was one of tribal unity. despite our differences, we were, above all — londoners! maybe it's because i’m a londoner, that i love london so. maybe it's because i’m a londoner that i think of her . . . wherever i go. english children in the early s didn’t think much about racial prejudice and intolerance. indeed, there weren’t any coloured people around to prejudge and tolerate. so we just blithely gorged away on golliwog bubblegum, golliwog jams and marmalade, and black sambo licorice candy. excerpted song lyric, from “maybe it’s because i’m a londoner,” written in by islington-born hubert gregg ( - ), first performed on the theatre stage by bud flanagan, later recorded by the billy cotton band. the golliwog is a character of children’s literature created in the late th century by florence kate upton, inspired by a blackface minstrel doll which she’d apparently found in her aunt’s attic. pilgrim ( ) describes golliwog as usually male, with very dark skin, big red lips, white rimmed eyes, wearing a bow tie and trouser suit. appropriated by commercial toy-makers, the golliwog character enjoyed widespread popularity, particularly in great britain and the english-speaking commonwealth (canada, australia, and new zealand) with manufacture and retail distribution continuing well into the s. the golliwog brand/image has lately become the subject of heated debate. those in favour argue that it should be preserved and passed on as a cherished cultural artifact and childhood tradition. opponents, however, insist it should be retired as a relic of an earlier more racist epoch,when ridicule and discrimination towards persons of african descent was deemed acceptable. (henry-waring, ) on my th birthday, consistent with bennett family tradition, i received an arsenal football uniform, hand-sewn by my highbury-born mother in the official team colours of red, white and black. in further ritual accordance, i was taken to see a saturday afternoon game against east london rivals west ham united. it was a strictly male affair — myself, my father, and three cockney uncles. the stadium was too far away to walk, so instead we took the tube. entering the underground at caledonian road station, we rode the crowded escalator down to platform level, where too many people were trying to cram themselves into not enough carriages. several overstuffed express trains sped by without stopping. so, with kickoff time looming, the uncles finally put their streetwise heads together and jammed us all onboard an outbound car. the trip was short, one stop only, but unnerving nonetheless. with our stadium destination rapidly approaching, the tightly packed passengers, in overeager anticipation of arrival, surged towards the unopened sliding doors. the locomotive ground to a full stop, and the boisterous partisan crowd burst forward like a swollen river, carrying with it my father and three uncles. i was only five years-old, barely knee-high to the average grown-up. startled by the intensity of the crush, i lost grip of my father’s hand, and got tangled underfoot. the platform clock was ticking, and time was running out, but there i was — still stuck in the back, behind the slowest of the slow, crawling between people’s legs, pushing as hard as i could. the superintendent blew his warning whistle. “all clear!” he barked for everyone to hear. with half of me outside, and the other half still in — the carriage doors slid shut, catching my innocent forearm in their sinister grip. then suddenly, the train began to move again, dragging me down the platform as it accelerated towards the ominous black tunnel looming at the far end. with tension rising and uncles gordie, bill, and doug desperately running alongside trying to pry the doors apart, my father finally managed to grab my flailing hand and pull me free. yikes! i don’t remember much about the football match itself, other than it was anticlimactic. we stopped in to a gunner pub on the way home, so the men could calm their nerves (and get their stories straight, lest my mother inquire). children were welcome to accompany their parents in english pubs back then (as now), and many licensed establishments had gardens in the back precisely for that purpose. a few pints of bitter later and their conversation turned louder and more determined. i’m not sure exactly what the topic of discussion was — something about “immigration,” “unemployment,” and “those bloody wogs.” “uncle doug,” i innocently ventured. “what’s a wog?” “well linny,” he replied, not wishing to appear irredeemably prejudiced. “a wog is a wily oriental gentleman.” in , like many other english families interested in viewing the coronation of queen elizabeth ii, we got a television set. but with only one bbc channel on offer, service was, by north american standards, painfully restricted. daily broadcasting started at : pm with an hour of programs aimed at infants and very young children — like mick and montmorency (featuring diminutive music- hall comedian charlie drake) and bill and ben the flowerpot men. the american-made half-hour tv westerns came on next — roy rogers, hopalong cassidy, wild bill hickock, the lone ranger, and my personal favourite — the cisco kid, starring duncan renaldo and his avuncular sidekick pancho (actor leo carillo) the legend of robin hood starring richard green, and long john silver featuring crusty british stage veteran robert newton provided a balance of u.k. domestic content. next to football (soccer), the game to play at school was “cowboys and indians.” most kids wanted to be the cowboy, probably because they always won. but i was rather more inclined to play the indian — the brave underdog, with brightly coloured eagle feathers, fringed buckskin tunics, scary war paint, and “heap big medicine.” and compared to the average cowpoke’s dowdy family-sedan mode of equine transport, the indians’ sporty pinto pony looked like an exotic racing car. bbc prime-time was for adults only, and featured the more adult-oriented hour- long westerns, like wyatt earp (starring hugh o’brian) and gun law (a rebranded british version of gunsmoke starring james arness). my parents would occasionally let me stay up late ( : pm) to watch cockney quiz-master wilfred pickles hosting have a go. and on saturdays before bedtime we’d tune in en famille for live at the london palladium, britain’s equivalent to the ed sullivan show. the weekly highlight, however, was the goon show — starring comedians spike milligan and peter sellers, and operatic-tenor harry secombe. radio programming in britain during the early s (similarly monopolized by the bbc) was decidedly middle-of-the-road. while its flagship channel remained dedicated to “quality entertainment,” with emphasis on highbrow classical music and political commentary, the light program (introduced in ) offered more accessible fare. i well remember being five or six years-old, sitting alone for hours and hours in front of the fireplace, listening to the archers (a soap-opera style drama) and tapping along to syrupy mantovani versions of “the swedish rhapsody,” “the skater’s waltz,” and the ubiquitous “happy wanderer.” i love to go a wandering, across the mountain track. and as i go, i love to sing, a knapsack on my back. falderee, faldera, faldera hah hah hah hah . . . but bbc light was also well known for playing the occasional exotic record, and sometimes, tucked in between the stodgy postwar standards, you’d hear an absolute gem. that’s when i heard american blues for the very first time. but i didn’t know it was called “the blues.” i just thought it was “happy” music. the tune was “shake rattle and roll,” an upbeat shuffle in the kansas city style. i can’t recall whether it was african american blues shouter big joe turner’s annunzio paolo mantovani ( - ), a popular conductor and light orchestra entertainer, known for his signature “cascading strings” arrangements. written by swedish composer hugo emil alfvén ( – ). written by german composer emile waldteufel ( - ). popular song, written by german composer friedrich-wilhelm möller. written in by jesse stone under the pseudonym charles e. calhoun. seminal recording or bill haley and the comets’ white cover version. either way, it was a revelation. “get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans!” exhorted the singer. and so we did, everyone — mums, dads, children, even grandparents. it was raucous lighthearted fun, just the thing that a war-weary english public needed. by we were a family of five — my parents and me plus two younger sisters (denise and kim). we had a new house in the suburbs, a radio and tv, but no car and no refrigerator. instead we had a cold cupboard called a “larder.” we did, however, have a telephone — a heavy bakelite model, perched on the hallway table like a huge, fat black cat. my sisters and i weren’t allowed to answer, let alone make outgoing calls. and if we did inadvertently pick up, we were expected to be exceedingly polite. it didn’t ring much though, hardly at all — sometimes not for days. billing time was measured by the second back then, and cash-strapped brits were rather disinclined to waste their money on small talk. when it rang, you knew it was important. mum’s family, the bennetts, hailed from central london, so their natural style of speech, with its characteristic h-dropping, t-glots and diphthong alterations, was more or less cockney. throw in a smattering of yiddish and romany, and a smidgen of rhyming slang, and you have a very colourful urban dialect. (wells, ) released in on atlantic records, produced by jerry wexler and ahmet ertegun. released in on decca records (usa). in traditionally class-conscious britain, and especially highly stratified england, fine speech remains a mark of social status. mother, bless her heart, having been brought up during difficult times and in modest circumstances, must have keenly appreciated the prestige associated with “received pronunciation” (charitably conceived in the united kingdom as a way for lowborn inarticulates to converse intelligently with their betters). sister denise and i found it amusing that in regular conversation around the house, she’d talk like her familiar north london self, blithely dropping consonants and rounding out vowels. but on the telephone? forget it. she sounded like another person altogether, all upper-crust and fancy. we called it her “talking to the queen” voice. in , mum’s eighteen year-old baby sister jean, having completed her basic education, declared that she was going to travel abroad and see the world. an adventurous gal, ebullient and pretty — she only made it as far as western canada, where she met walter jansen, an affable and handsome country boy from mcbride, british columbia, an isolated logging-town on the western slope of the rocky mountains. walt had been working as a desk clerk at the king edward hotel in banff, alberta, when aunt jean and her female traveling companion stepped off the cpr transcontinental to inquire about an overnight room. they met, fell in love, got engaged, and jean, aching to celebrate with the family, wrote a letter home to coordinate a long distance phone-call. trans-atlantic telephone communication in those days was expensive, and the time-zone difference ( hrs) made the logistics even more awkward. jean arranged for the call to be taken at our house in kenton, and mum invited everyone, even preparing hors d’oeuvres. the phone rang on schedule at precisely : pm, and everybody cheered when the impending nuptials were announced. each then took turns chatting, with aunties bawling out best wishes, and inebriated uncles offering brotherly advice. next morning, at breakfast, my father made an announcement of his own. “children!” he said. “we’re moving to canada.” hell-ementary school i didn’t want to go to canada. i wasn’t even sure where it was. all the canadian stamps in my children's philately had pictures of old king george vi, so i naturally assumed it belonged to england. “it’s an island?” i declared with schoolboy confidence, “off the coast of cornwall?” life was good in london. i was going to school with my friends, and playing cowboys and indians, football, and cricket. the plan had been for me to write and pass the eleven-plus exam, then attend a reputable grammar school like harrow county, chandos, or downer, and maybe even go on to university (which no one on either side of my family ever had). for years, between and , the eleven-plus examination was administered to british students in the final year of primary education, (typically ages - ). focussing on three fundamental areas: arithmetic, writing, and general problem solving, results were used to determine which type of school the student should next go attend - grammar school, secondary modern, or technical school. initial criticism of the eleven-plus system highlighted various inherent social inequities and the negative long-term effects of “early streaming,” particularly on “late developers.” critics alleging class bias claimed that children on the borderline of passing were more likely to be awarded grammar school placement if they came from middle and upper-class families, pointing out that questions about the role of household servants or classical composers were skewed towards children of more comfortable circumstances. accordingly, the eleven-plus exam was redesigned during the s to more resemble the standard iq test. (sampson, , ) albert frederick arthur george saxe-coburg and gotha (later changed to windsor) - . reigning as king george vi. our boat train for southampton left from london’s waterloo station. we only took along a few suitcases, the heavy steamer trunks having been sent ahead. our ship, the , ton greek-registered ss homeric, with berths for first-class and tourist-class passengers, was feet long, and had two funnels and two masts, with twin screws acquiring a top speed of knots. but docked alongside the massive , ton rms queen elizabeth, it looked like a dinghy. the six-day voyage to quebec city began okay, but on the first day out we hit rough seas, and everyone (except me) got sick. below decks reeked of stale vomit and the only air worth breathing was outside. the mid-atlantic waves were enormous, like gigantic rolling mountains, with our heroic little vessel steaming steeply uphill one minute — then free-falling down the next. everyone on deck was made to wear a life jacket and stay harnessed to a safety railing, lest they be washed away or blown overboard. day three found the ocean settled down, along with people’s stomachs, and social activity on board got fully underway. but the various entertainments on offer were geared mostly towards adults (bingo, card playing, dancing etc), and except for breakfast, lunch, and dinner — there wasn’t much for us kids to do. one of the few other families on board with young children came from kenya. they were the very first coloured folks i’d ever seen up-close and in-person. but they weren’t “coloured” at all. rather, they were black. not brown. not even dark brown. but blue-black, like bituminous coal. unlike us, who’d arrived at the dock by ordinary train, they got dropped off right at the gangplank in a huge daimler touring car. i remember being impressed by all their matching luggage, and asking myself, “what are they doing down in built in for the cunard/white star line tourist class with us?” while the mother favoured traditional african garb (a brightly coloured sarong- type dress with matching head scarf), the father dressed in fashionable western style. even at seven years-old i could tell his haberdashery was top-drawer, with expensive shoes and slacks, worsted sportcoat, tailored dress shirt with gold cufflinks, and a selection of fine silk cravattes. and his public-school accent, compared to my peoples’ relatively common mode of speech — sounded downright aristocratic. their oldest son was around my age, and we seemed to enjoy many of the same games, especially “cowboys and indians.” it turned out that he too preferred to play the role of indian, so we both did — sneaking upstairs into the first class dining room to steal fancy pastries off the dessert table, thereby enraging the stewards who would then (to our insatiable delight) chase us up and down the spiral staircase from deck to deck to deck. what were they going to do to us? lock us in the brig? throw us overboard? even seven year-olds have that one figured out. i spent a lot of time on board with my new friend and his family, perhaps more than with my own lacklustre bunch. we played cards together, mostly snap and old maid, and the dad taught me how to play chess, even deliberately losing a few games to get me started on my own. scaffolding is a concept describing the process of guiding the learner from what is presently known to what is to be known, the idea being to help students perform tasks that would normally be slightly beyond their ability without that guidance from the teacher. the arms-length application of intellectual support, analogous to spotting a gymnast or weightlifter, allows private schools in britain are called “public” schools. learners to safely extend themselves, insulated from the fear of failure, to function at the cutting edge of their potential. (hogan & pressley, ) it was the morning of may , my eighth birthday. jolted awake at dawn by the deafening silence (no engine noise, no wave motion, no vibrations), i groggily made my way upstairs and out onto the main deck, blinking and rubbing my eyes in the bright early sun. there we were, lying offshore at quebec city, in the middle of the st. lawrence river, dead in the water, waiting to be tugged in. then i saw it, on the starboard side, crowning the tip of a craggy escarpment, the magnificent chateau frontenac — a full-on, fairy-tale castle in the sky. so, this is canada, eh? disembarkation took several hours, with passengers lining up in the ship’s forward lounge for preliminary processing. then it was down the gangplank to the customs shed, where we were reunited with our heavy steamer trunks. being english, unlike my east african shipmate and his family, we were invited to jump the queue (a convenient vestige of empire). waving goodbye, we quickly climbed aboard the train to montréal, where we stayed overnight at the laurentian hotel in dominion square. i immediately got land-sick, my body having become rather accustomed to the ship’s constant heaving and lurching back and forth. so, while my parents and two younger sisters went downstairs for dinner in the hotel restaurant, i consoled myself alone in the room with a cup of tomato soup, and my first taste of american-style commercial television — the howdy doody show hosted by buffalo bob smith. next day we boarded the cpr transcontinental for the journey west to calgary, and our scheduled rendezvous with auntie jean and uncle walt. the three-day trip was comfortable enough, my father having sprung for two adjoining sleeping compartments. rounding the rugged northern coast of lake superior, i made full use of the train’s rooftop viewing car. the panorama was spectacular (just as i’d imagined). west to winnipeg, then out across the endless prairie — the trip took several days. rumbling through stations with cinematic names like swift current, moose jaw and medicine hat, i secretly prayed for our train to be attacked by marauding indians on horseback, just like on the telly back in england. sadly, no such episode took place. our train arrived in downtown calgary on july . there we were, fresh off the boat, standing on the burning sidewalk in front of the red-brick cpr station, waiting for our heavy luggage to be brought around. “finally,” i thought. “we’re here.” compared to city roads in england, calgary’s main street seemed both extra- ordinarily wide and oddly bereft of traffic. the midday sun was blazing hot; the air dusty and dry. but the sidewalks on both sides were lined with people milling around as if waiting for something special to happen. what’s going on? marvin gaye, song written by renaldo "obie" benson, al cleveland, and marvin gaye. it was the title track of gaye's groundbreaking motown lp what's going on. then, i thought i heard something . . . not quite music, more like a busy jumble of competing sounds. instinctively following my ears, i turned to look, only to be confronted by a mind-boggling apparition — the th annual calgary stampede parade, replete with uniformed american-style marching bands, themed floats, clowns on motorbikes, acrobats on stilts, white-hatted cowboys on horseback, and hundreds of whooping red-indians in full-feathered regalia heading directly towards us. needless to say, in vernacular of my cockney forebears — i was gobsmacked. and then (as if that wasn’t enough), to my absolute amazement, leading the parade aboard his magnificent palomino stallion conquistador — rode leo carillo (the cisco kid’s colourful sidekick pancho). following the trail blazed earlier by auntie jean, we took a brewster line bus along the old coach road (now hwy a) to nearby banff. with its spectacular alpine scenery and ubiquitous red-uniformed mounties, banff national park was (and still is) a world-renowned tourist mecca, with moose, elk, and bears roaming free, and cowboys and red indians everywhere (or so it seemed). i spent the summer of in banff learning how to be canadian. the british accent was immediately jettisoned (the beatles having not yet made such things fashionable). i got a crewcut, a pair of american style blue jeans, some converse “chuck taylor” basketball sneakers (not those sissy english gym-shoes called plimsoles) and a bright red flyer wagon (secondhand of course). finally, to complete the cultural transformation, i decided to drop the gender- ambiguous moniker lindsay in favour of my slightly less embarrassing middle- “the greatest outdoor show on earth,” inaugurated in . san diego-born leopoldo antonio carillo ( - ). film and tv actor, vaudevillian, political cartoonist, and conservationist. name christopher. indeed, in the rational mind of an eight year-old cockney emigré, the most sensible thing to do was “fit in.” drawing upon his wartime experience as a signals operator, my father soon secured employment with the cpr in edmonton, working the graveyard shift in what then passed for the the telecommunications department (this still being the era of teletype and morse code). we moved into a rented bungalow on the city’s south side, on a street dominated by recent german immigrants. the neighbour kids all had names like hans, dieter, eva, and gretchen, and the lingua franca of backyard play was a sort of anglo-teutonic patois. this must have been more than a bit galling for my parents, having little more than a decade earlier worked so hard to repel the dreaded hun. on the first monday of september, , i began school at prince albert elementary. being new, i showed up a half-hour early, hoping to locate my gr. peer group in the schoolyard and make a few new friends. contact was quickly made, and we played marbles and tag outside for a while before going in to our designated homeroom. after taking attendance, the teacher (a young woman) passed around some sort of aptitude test focussing on three basic areas (arithmetic, reading, and writing), apparently to determine, for standardization purposes, the relative performance of schools within the citywide public education system. it was dead easy, and i finished well before the time allotted. the teacher was initially disinclined to accept my early submission, but nevertheless acceded, and i was duly sent outside for early recess. immediately upon returning to class with my mates, i was marched down to the principal’s office and instructed to wait the monthly rent was $ . quietly in an adjacent anteroom. through a glass partition i could see a short balding man wearing a three-piece, pinstriped suit in animated conversation with the teacher, who appeared to be nodding in concurrence. “what did i do?” i wondered to myself. “am i in some sort of trouble?” peering over from under his pince-nez spectacles, principal henderson motioned me into his office. “well,” he said, shaking my hand firmly and glancing knowingly in the teacher’s direction. “it seems we have a young prodigy on our hands.” it was explained to me that, not only had i finished the test in record time, but had scored %. and, instead of using simple printed letters like the other gr. kids, i’d written in full-on cursive longhand. “i’m really not surprised,” he explained to the teacher. “you see, the english education system is far superior to our colonial brand.” “what should we do then?” she inquired. “well,” said henderson, musing out loud. “if he stays where he is, he’s bound to get bored and underperform in later grades — perhaps even drop out.” “and we can’t let that happen!” piped the teacher. “can we?!” in accordance with academic convention regarding the “ethics of anonimity” and the protection of privacy and confidentiality, certain personal and place names have been changed. “we’re in agreement then!” declared henderson, and i was immediately marched up two flights of stairs to miss aldershot’s gr. class. “wait a minute!” i protested (only to myself, of course). “i’d much rather stay back with kids my own age. besides, i’m really not that smart. honestly! it’s just that in england they start you out really young, and cram all that stuff into you really fast. i just got a head start. please no miss, pleeeeeeze!” but my silent protestations went unregistered. henderson the anglophile would have his way. and life, for me, would never be the same. at afternoon recess, i could only stare through the fence at my former mates blithely horsing around in their segregated primary playground. surgically separated from my peers, with no one else my own age to befriend, i went straight home after class. “how was your first day of school in canada dear?” inquired mum. “all right i suppose. by the way, they skipped me ahead two grades.” “that’s nice,” she muttered, busily preparing dinner. my father, worn out from working the late-night shift downtown, didn’t seem to mind either, proudly taking it as confirmation of britain’s innate moral and intellectual “greatness.” “as long as it doesn’t cost extra,” he said, casually tossing off consent. i was eight, but most of miss aldershot’s gr. students were ten or eleven. and one or two, having recently arrived from non-english speaking countries in war- ravaged europe, and thus held back, were even older. like klaus, a strapping twelve year-old dutch farm boy who had a monumental chip on his shoulder, and couldn’t wait to take things out on the new boy — “mr. smarty pants.” things were testy from the start, especially in class where i naturally did fairly well. but when i presumed to challenge his hegemony on the soccer pitch, his rage was unquenchable! i was his enemy for life, and that extended to his droogs, who were legion. the bullying wasn’t just physical, but psychological as well. for instance, before recess one day, i took off my wristwatch and put it in my desk for safe keeping. a bon voyage present from my great-grandmother in dover, though not really gold plated, it nonetheless looked impressive. anyway, after playtime, it was gone. prudently keeping quiet (not wishing to provoke), i later found it outside in the schoolyard, ground to pieces underfoot. message received. loud and clear. i’ve never worn a wristwatch since. i really did try to be one of the gang, even acting naughty now and then, but only childish things like passing notes and talking in class. one day, a particularly crude missive, which had already traveled several times around the room, ended up on my desk, catching miss aldershot’s pencil-sharp spinster eye. jane aldershot was the archetypal s alberta schoolmarm — astringently pretty, with hair pulled back in a bun, and dressed in a long shapeless flowered smock, demurely augmented by a double strand of fake pearls. the word for “friend” in the fictious argot known as nadsat, used by disaffected teenagers in the dystopian novel a clockwork orange by anthony burgess. “what’s this?!” she snapped, drawing attention to the offending artifact. “perhaps you’d like to share it with the class?” “no miss,” i replied, rather wishing it would simply disappear. “we’ll see about that!” she said, abruptly snatching the paper from my hand. her simple exasperation turned to abject horror as the grotesque nature of its contents was revealed (incredibly crude, but funny). with pursed lips and trembling hands, she grabbed me by the ear and dragged me out into the hallway. “it’s not mine!” i pleaded. “whose is it then?!!” she shrieked. “i don’t know miss! honestly!” “well then. we’ll just have to make an example out of you now — won’t we?” principal henderson wasn’t pleased at all, and scowled meanly when shown the offending item. “i’m very, very disappointed,” he said. “do you have anything else to say?” (taken as thinly veiled last chance to turn in my unknown accomplices). “no sir,” i said, oddly resigned to my fate. opening a desk drawer, he reached in and pulled out an oversized razor strop with a wooden handle attached for his convenience. “both hands out in front!” he ordered. “palms up!” “you self-aggrandizing old bastard!” i said (only to myself, of course), “how dare you arbitrarily force me up into gr. with those sadistic twelve year-olds, and leave me alone to fend for myself. fuck you!” the lash came down, eight times — four on each hand. it didn’t hurt. not the slightest. i was righteously inoculated from the pain (“stiff upper lip” and all that). but something else was deeply wrong, which hurt even more. i’d always enjoyed going to school. it had been one of my favourite things. now, the very idea felt repulsive — like i’d been kidnapped, buggered, and tossed from the van. “thank you sir,” i muttered, through tightly clenched teeth. “i’ll try better next time.” pressey ( ) describes grade acceleration as“progress through an educational program at rates faster or at ages younger than conventional.” (in southern & jones, , ) radical acceleration (ra) is defined as any combination of procedures that results in a student graduating from high school three or more years earlier than is customary (stanley, ). paulus ( ), in support of ra, tends to downplay evidence of social and emotional harm being visited upon accelerants, even suggesting such accounts have been “disproved.” gross ( , ) is more guardedly onside:“there is no indication of social or emotional maladjustment arising from well-planned programs of radical acceleration.” southern and jones ( , ) concur, observing that “the few problems that have been experienced with acceleration have stemmed from incomplete planning.” robinson ( , ) agrees:“we can lay firmly to rest the myth that acceleration is inherently dangerous for gifted students [but] assessment of the child’s abilities, skills, and personal characteristics should precede decision making.” rogers ( , ) suggests that,“the question for educators seems to be not whether to accelerate a gifted learner, but rather how,” further maintaining that “individual student readiness is critical.” “acceleration [should] not mean pushing a child. it [should] not mean forcing a child to learn advanced material or socialize with older children before he or she is ready. indeed, it is the exact opposite. acceleration is about appropriate educational planning. it is about matching the level and complexity of the curriculum with the readiness and motivation of the child” (colangelo et al, , ). each gifted child is unique, with different learning patterns and different emotional needs. “students should have access to a variety of acceleration options so that they can choose the combination of options most suited to their circumstances.” (gross, , ) since some accelerative options do seem to present some risk, “planning and collaboration among all parties involved [teachers, parents, and the student] are crucial.” (southern & jones, , ) “students taking an unusually accelerated program should be actively involved in the planning and decision making regarding each stage in the program so that they may develop a sense of ownership.” (gross, , ) “systematic plans to address concerns and potential consequences need to be developed prior to implementation. unfortunately, plans are often implemented ad hoc, without knowledge or concern for later consequences.” (southern et al, , ) accordingly, robinson ( , ) asks: “will the students make friends in the new situation or become social isolates? will younger boys find girls to date? how will they feel when their classmates start driving before they can? will they be tempted into situations such as boy-girl relationships or smoking and alcohol use before they are ready to handle such issues? will precious social and extra-curricular opportunities be lost, especially if the high school years are reduced? [and] what about the prom?” my parents weren’t told about the strapping incident. at least, if they were, they didn’t mention it (i sure didn’t let on). i guess whipping eight year-olds was considered normal back then, and not something worth reporting. or, maybe henderson felt he had something to hide. i went about my daily classroom business, trying hard not to step on other people’s toes. but the bullying was relentless, and i’d have to vary my route to and from school just to stay intact. one good thing, however — unlike in highly regimented, class-structured england, where even seven year-olds were required to audition for the class choir, everyone was included at prince albert regardless of proficiency. in fact — it was compulsory. grades six and seven bled by (so to speak). getting good marks was easy enough (stay out of trouble and tell ‘em what they want to hear). i learned how to skate (literally and figuratively), and played hockey at the nearby outdoor community- centre ice rink with kids my own age. but not at school with the boys in my class. they were way too big and mean. better to participate in solo sports, like swimming, at which i thankfully excelled. as for non-sports related activities — i remember hearing the doorbell chime early one sunday evening while gathered around the tv watching the ed sullivan show. it was an enterprising young teenager selling mail-order chet atkins method guitar lessons, for three-dollars a month (including an instruction booklet and a special lp recording). chester burton atkins ( - ) was a tennessee-born american guitarist and record producer known for his distinctive picking style. “gee,” i thought. “that sounds like fun.” “too expensive!” declared my father. “i’m not wasting hard-earned money on a cheap guitar. besides, we don’t have a record player. tell him to go away.” edmonton in the s had only one television station — cfrn. school kids normally went home for lunch every day at noon, and, while washing down our peanut butter sandwiches with carnation powdered milk, we’d watch whatever was on, like the liberace show, in colourful black and white. earlier that year ( ), just before we’d emigrated, there’d been a big fuss in england about an article in the daily mirror (mum’s favourite london tabloid) describing liberace as: the summit of sex . . . the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. everything that he, she, and it can ever want . . . a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love. (greenslade, ) claiming that the paper had damaged his professional reputation by implying he was a homosexual (particularly the phrase “fruit-flavoured”), liberace sued for libel and won a substantial award. sure, his quasi-classical histrionics appealed more to our parents’ old-fashioned musical tastes, but it was free lunchtime entertainment, and i rather liked the old queen. but i really liked my “rocket” radio, a crystal powered, earpiece model built to written by veteran columnist cassandra (william connor). homosexuality (decriminalized in canada in ) was then illegal in the u.k. wladziu valentino liberace ( - ) was a famous american entertainer and pianist of polish and italian descent. during the s– s (when elvis presley and the beatles were at the height of their popularity), he was the highest paid entertainer in the world. resemble a german v- missile, which, if atmospheric conditions cooperated, could tune in as far south as arkansas (especially late at night). commercial radio in edmonton during those days tended to feature mostly pop and old-school c&w standards, but i preferred the edgier rockabilly artists like the fendermen (from michigan), the burnette brothers (johnny and dorsey from memphis, tennessee), and buddy knox (from happy, in texas). come along and be my party doll. and i’ll make love to you, to you. and i’ll make love to you. buddy knox, having grown tired of languishing on the nightshift for cpr telecom in edmonton, my father decided to take a job with u.s. military-industrial giant it&t, signing up for succession of one-year contracts on the dew line (a series of isolated radar station in the high-arctic designed to protect north america against soviet nuclear attack). his first posting was in barrow, western alaska. then he was transferred clear across the continent, to the u.s. airbase in thule, greenland. the work involved cutting-edge cold war technology and remuneration was commensurately high. the general idea was to stay on as long as possible, then repair south to reap the benefits of one’s temporary sacrifice. communication with loved ones was virtually impossible, other than by post. there were no phone lines. not even roads. personnel had to fly in from great distance, typically on a military transport. staying in touch meant knowing someone with a short-wave “ham” radio (which we did). even still, actual conversation was limited to once or twice every several months. excerpte song , from party doll, written by buddy knox and jimmy bowen, released on the roulette label. acronym for distant early warning. the prairie winter (our third) settled in — five straight months of ice and snow ahead. with my father up north, and only a few expat brits in edmonton for friends, mum grew lonely and homesick for her family in england. finally, at breakfast one morning, with a blizzard raging outside . . . “children!” she said, “your father and i have decided . . . we’re going back!” cruel britannia the return trip back to england was much like the one which had brought us to alberta, only in reverse. the cnr train out of edmonton took the yellowhead route east to winnipeg, then the mainline over to ottawa, and finally down to montréal. our ship was the canadian pacific fleet’s empress of britain, a substantial vessel of , gross tons. i’d regale you with a detailed description of the voyage, but let’s just say it was routine. disembarking at the george docks in liverpool, we were driven down to london by mum’s brother doug in his newly acquired riley sedan. i noticed right away that the houses, streets and cars looked so much smaller and old- fashioned than in thoroughly modern western canada. we settled into a rented house in whitchurch lane, edgware, near the canons park tube station, just down the road from st. lawrence church, a medieval priory restored in by the st duke of chandos (an early patron of george frederick handel). the first order of business was going to school. accordingly, i was enrolled in the th form at stanburn primary with kids my own age and size. the problem, however, was that primary schoolboys in england back then wore short trousers. but i’d brought over my jeans and slacks from edmonton, and, having paid dearly for the right to wear them, wasn’t about to trade them in for some stupid “little kid” pants. it was late march, and the final term was well underway. i was only supposed to launched in , it was the third cp vessel of the same name. be at stanburn for a few months, just long enough to write the eleven-plus exam. then, ideally, i’d be moving up to grammar school. three years in alberta, however, had skewed my educational perspective. british schools seemed strange. for instance, morning assembly was divided into two sections. first, in the formal manner of a high church vicar, the head master would read from holy scripture, conduct the singing of hymns, and then lead us all in prayer (typically thanking god for having been born english). then, with the ecclesiastical portion of the program concluded, he’d slam his bible shut and wave his purple-robed arm dramatically over towards a side entrance, at which point the doors would fly open, and the school’s half-dozen or so non-christian students would file in and take their designated seats in the front row. induco judaicum alio! having just recently returned from north america, and being rather disinclined to regress fashion-wise, i naturally showed up on my first day of school wearing long trousers (albeit with a three-button, worsted-tweed sports coat and a tie). the homeroom teacher, apparently unimpressed with my choice of wardrobe (i thought i looked fine), promptly marched me down to see the head master, who sent me home early with a note for my mother. mum and i arrived early the next morning, and were ushered into the hm’s oak- panelled office. he was polite at first, charming even, but when push came to shove, the gloves came off . . . latin for “bring in the jews!” “the uniform code is sacrosanct!” he declared. “he must conform! “no way!” i protested. “not after all the crap i’ve been through.” “i’ve tried talking to him,” pleaded mum. “but his mind seems made up.” “we’ll see about that!” said the head master, brusquely showing us the door. a prefect is a pupil who, under the direction of a senior prefect known as the head boy or head girl, has been given limited, trustee-type authority over other pupils in the school. traditionally, in the british school system, students in the higher forms (grades) have wielded considerable coercive power, effectively controlling the school’s operation outside the classroom. though the practice is now abolished in the uk, they were once even allowed to administer corporal punishment. due to health and safety regulations, and concerns about being held legally responsible for any injury (mental, emotional, and physical) school staff have in recent years tended to more strictly limit the responsibilities that prefects may hold. (clarke, ) i’d heard through the grapevine that the prefects were out looking for me. i’d seen them around, patrolling the hallways in their precious striped blazers, with their precious little prefect pins, terrorizing the younger kids. i didn’t like them. not one bit. licensed bullies, that’s all they were. it took a few days, but finally, at lunchtime, they cornered me in the cafeteria. “watcha yank!” yelled the head boy, a chubby toussle-haired twit. “where do you think you’re going?” i kept quiet, not wishing to cause a scene. “looks like somebody here doesn’t want to follow the rules,” he prodded, playing to the gathering crowd. “and we can’t let that happen — can we?” it can’t happen here! frank zappa, “howzit goin’ guys?” i said, giving it my full-on friendly best. “he finks he’s better than us, he does,” piped his lieutenant, a snotty little shit, with pimples and a runny nose. “well then,” said the head boy, “we’ll just ‘ave to take him down a notch!” they circled threateningly, slowly inching forward, tightening the noose. “wait a minute!” i said, boldly challenging all four. “i’ve been terrorized by way bigger assholes than you. you don’t scare me one little bit.” rattled by my unscheduled resistance, head boy paused dead in his tracks. the lunchroom crowd, as if sensing a change in barometric pressure, began to murmur among themselves. “look at yourself, you fat ugly pig,” i taunted, cynically targeting his corpulence. “what are you going to do? hurt me?” “b b b . . . better do what we say!” he stammered. “or else!” “bring it on dumbo!” i countered, gamely drawing a line in the sand. song title, from the verve records lp freakout!, written by frank zappa. stalemate! suddenly realizing who among us was wearing the short pants . . . the feckless four gave in. the crowd, clearly welcoming a shift in schoolyard power relations, mumbled in accord. some even cheered. “hip hip . . . . !?” “and, by the way!” i taunted, following them down the hall as they skulked away in shame. “i’m not a yank! i’m canadian!” howard becker ( ; ) noted that, among the many musicians of his professional acquaintance in chicago ca. , the more artistically committed ones tended to have experienced significant conflict in their youth when dealing with persons in positions of authority. frith ( , ) similarly highlighted contentious relations which often later served to preclude normal compliance with mainstream standards and ideals in adulthood. “these extreme artistic and social attitudes [were] part of a total rejection of conventional society.” the head master caved in too, the long trousers stayed, and, for the short remainder of that final term at stanburn primary — i was the th form’s very own james dean. and being hormonally more advanced than we awkward, muddle-headed boys, the girls wouldn’t leave me alone (an ego-boosting bonus to be sure). next up was the eleven-plus exam, and i got top marks in everything, except for english money of course, which, before decimalization in , was a confusing mishmash of shillings, guineas, sovereigns and halfpenny-farthings — all calculated using some strange, archaic, base- math system. adrian fisher, my best friend at stanburn primary, came from a moderately affluent jewish family. he lived in a large, fully detached home in a leafy street on the far side of canons park, and had lots of neat stuff — like a -speed italian racing bike, fashionable designer clothes, and an extensive collection of rock & roll records. we were at that clumsy age — not quite old enough to do anything really fun, like get into “a” (adult) rated movies, which back then meant anything even mildly raunchy (like the carry on series). so, with little else to do outside of school, we killed time playing pinball at the chip shop drinking three-penny cokes and listening to the jukebox. rock & roll in england c. was of two distinct sorts — either the exotic american import (with its sexy, race-tinged authenticity) or britain's ersatz domestic brand. elvis presley, while away in the army, had been eclipsed by buddy holly (even in death) and the everlys (don and phil) were now on top. surf music hadn’t been invented yet, but “walk don’t run” by the ventures (from tacoma, washington) was burning up the u.k. charts. british rock & roll was comparatively lame (except for popular “king of skiffle” lonnie donegan). the male singers of the day typically had contrived surnames like “steele” (tommy), “fury” (billy) and “faith” (adam). amidst a host of limp pretenders, the reigning british rock-star then, hands down, was cliff richard. young cliff, in my view, was a bit of a pill, but his instrumental back- up band the shadows were superb. indeed, their lead-guitarist hank b. marvin was my very first “guitar hero.” galsgow-born. east london-based anthony james donegan ( - ) skiffle music is appalachian style of folk- blues. born brian robson rankin in , in newcaste-upon-tyne , u.k. the spring semester at stanburn finally came to a close, and summer holidays loomed. adrian and his parents repaired to the south of france (as was their annual habit), so i amused myself alone by watching the rome olympics on tv, listening to dutch pirate radio station veronica, and teaching myself how to play the shadows’ hit record “apache” on the arch-top acoustic guitar that mum had bought for £ at an outdoor market in high street harrow. london was extra hot that summer. so, to keep us occupied, mum took my sisters and me to the annual hampstead heath fair, an unpretentious little urban fête with games, rides, confections and other entertainments — like teenage rock and roll bands. i remember it well, because it was the very first time i ever saw an electric guitar up-close and in-person. there was this snazzily attired teddy-boy hanging around the carnival midway, leaning against a booth and chatting up his “dolly bird.” dressed in the zoot- suited hipster style of the day, with a greasy duck-tail hairdo and sharply-pointed, italian “winkle-picker” shoes, he was casually cradling a metallic blue höfner six-string model, replete with plastic knobs and chrome switches. with a towering beehive hairdo, too much make-up, tight sweater, high-heels, and short leather skirt — she was a bit of tart — climbing all over the guy, kissing his face, sucking his fingers, and groping him everywhere in every which way. i sidled up closer, to get a better look (at the guitar). “i’m onstage in two minutes,” i heard him say. “you really must be running along. i’ll drop by later, after the show. we’ll go out.” written by jerry lordon, released by the shadows on columbia records (uk) . made in west germany. crestfallen, the girl began to sulk, but the fellow was apparently consoling enough that she wandered off happy, even turning to blow him a kiss before boarding her bus. i lingered for a few extra seconds, hoping to get another glimpse of his exotic device, but as soon as the first bird had flown, another similarly well-endowed creature sidled by. “play me a tune and i’m yours,” she purred, seductively eyeing his instrument. that was it! my soul was forfeit. tracking my mother and sisters down in the carnival crowd . . . “can i have an electric guitar mum,” i pleaded. “puleeeze?” having handily passed the eleven-plus exam, i was assigned to nearby downer grammar school, and was very much looking forward to attending in the fall. accordingly, to make sure my official maroon and blue striped blazer was both in stock and in my size, i visited the school’s high street tailor. but my father, having eaten his fill of eskimo pie and whale blubber pudding up on the dew line, had finally decided to come down from the arctic and return to civilization in the south. and mum, missing all her snazzy north american mod-cons, the wide-open spaces, and the fresh canadian air, was at the same time growing tired of stuffy old class-conscious britain. besides, two more of her siblings had since emigrated. so, my sisters and i weren’t entirely surprised to hear the news. “kids!” she said. “we’re going back.” founded in , and named after thomas downer, a magistrate and accountant of harrow who died in sick-ondary school i won’t bother you with yet another transatlantic seafaring saga, except to say, “if you’ve seen one monstrous mid-ocean wave, you’ve seen them all.” once again, we sailed on the ss homeric, this time from liverpool via glasgow to montréal. then, linking up with my father in the lobby of the sheraton hotel in downtown detroit, we drove west — arriving vancouver in midsummer . vancouver’s facial complexion back then was overwhelmingly white, especially in the suburbs. sure, there were some asian faces, mostly in chinatown and on the eastside. but everywhere else, the anglo-saxon ethos ruled. indeed, in certain parts of town, notably shaughnessy and the british properties, restrictive covenants remained in place prohibiting the resale of residential properties to “coloured” people and jews. (davis, ) there weren’t many black folks, as far as i could tell. and those that did live here, it was commonly assumed, couldn’t possibly be from here, but must have arrived from someplace else (most likely the usa). history, however, tells us that “blues people” (baraka, ) have been part of vancouver’s cultural tapestry for generations, indeed since its very earliest days as a municipality. (compton, ) in , seeking to stifle american expansionism in the far-flung colony of british columbia, governor sir james douglas decided to increase the number of settlers sympathetic to british standards and values. the mulatto son of a glasgow merchant and a free black woman from british guyana douglas held a lifelong aversion to slavery which, though officially banned in british territories since , was still being practiced in many parts of the u.s.a. (blakey-smith, ) on the northern coast of south america. concluding that blacks, historically the victims of american slavery, might be more inclined than others to support british rule, douglas extended a personal invitation to more than african american homesteaders (half the negro population of san francisco at the time). accepting the offer of free transportation, full british citizenship, and male suffrage, the group sailed en masse to victoria, arriving in (kilian, ) the non-indian “settler” population of b.c. at that time was roughly , . blacks in the region therefore constituted a substantial (and highly visible) minority. others followed, spurred on by the discovery of gold in the central interior. for most, however, their move north was “an exodus from increasingly repressive [american] racial laws.” (compton, , ) some returned to the u.s. following the end of the civil war in , drawn by the promise of full citizenship. but, their numbers were replenished over the ensuing decades, as the reality of “half free” existence under jim crow set in. (dubois, ) the city of vancouver was incorporated in . a thriving port (and west coast terminus of the cpr transcontinental railroad) by its population had grown to nearly , , with business and social life centering around the bustling intersection of hastings and main (crowned in by the monumental new carnegie library). black folks continued to arrive, from both the united states and other parts of canada, notably edmonton and winnipeg. most came as individuals or with family groups -“not as a part of a larger exodus.” (compton, , ) a distinctly black neighborhood began to develop known as hogan’s alley, east of main street, near the great northern railway station, where male residents traditionally found employment as pullman-porters and dining- car waiters. dorothy nealy, in a interview, herself recalled arriving from winnipeg in . “when i got here,” she said, “this district was all negroes, from main street down to campbell avenue, just like it is with chinese folks today.” (ibid., ) the name applied to the violently oppressive social and political regime dedicted to the perpetual subordination of blacks withing mainstream (white) american society (especially in the deep south). factoring in the north atlantic boat crossing, the train ride to detroit, and the transcontinental automobile trip — the mitchell clan had been “on the road” for more than a month. relations with my father, already strained, had sadly further deteriorated. he’d always worked the nightshift, even in england, so our daily schedules had never seemed to mesh. and now he’d completely missed three very important developmental years of my life ( - ). we rented a three-bedroom apartment on eastern avenue in north vancouver, and quickly settled in with some used furniture, a tv and a radio, and a bicycle for me so i could ride around the neighborhood and check things out. my parents then contacted school district regarding my upcoming september enrollment. on the strength of both my earlier edmonton grades and my eleven- plus exam score, i was assigned to sutherland junior high school, where the principal opted to uphold henderson’s earlier dictum, and put me in gr. . there i was, a twelve year-old in class with teenagers of fourteen and fifteen, two grades ahead of myself — again! thankfully i’d grown a few inches over the summer and could more easily pass. but nobody had bothered to ask me about it. no one seemed to care how i felt. i just wanted to be normal, and fit in with the crowd. but education experts? apparently they knew better. junior high school happened to coincide with two important developments in british columbia education policy. first, having routinely for several generations been taken from their families and sent to church-run residential schools, indian children were beginning to be integrated within the public school system. (tennant, ) in north vancouver, this meant a lot of new students with for $ per month. under the aegis of the indian act, enacted by the parliament of canada in under the provisions of section ( ) of the constitution act of . surnames like nahanee, mathias, jacobs, and baker, etc. they looked tough, acted tough, and were tough (even the girls). plus they tended to stick together. it is commonly thought that original residents of b.c. arrived about , years ago from asia via land-bridge across the bering strait. europeans, arrived much later. (miller ). sir francis drake is believed to have sailed by in aboard his legendary flagship, the golden hind (bawlf, ), and ionnis fokas, a greek captain sailing for spain as juan de fuca, visited in . it was years before spain’s jose maria narvaez came in , followed the next year by british captain george vancouver. british interests prevailed, however, with early activity revolving around a lucrative offshore fur-trade. invoking the legal principle of terra nullius (latin meaning“empty land”), the hudson’s bay company imposed regional control, regulating the land for its own commercial purposes. displacement of aboriginal authority over the land was to depend on european numerical superiority, thus settlements were established on the b.c. at fort langley on the mainland ( ), and at fort victoria on the southern tip of vancouver island ( ).(ibid.) war against the indians was never officially declared (unlike in the united states) but records show that british naval forces did shell and burn unprotected coastal villages in , , and . and in , royal marines (aided by armed volunteers) were employed to suppress a rebellion among the chilcotin in b.c.’s interior. native populations in b.c. declined dramatically as a result of epidemic disease, beginning with smallpox at the end of the th century, measles in , and influenza in . (harris, ) in the federal government outlawed the potlatch, the major social, economic and political institution of pacific north coast first nations, thus effectively abrogating indians’ “right of assembly.” not until were first-nations folks legally allowed to gather in large numbers. nor had they been allowed to retain lawyers. and indians were not granted the right to vote federally until . prior to that, they were required to give up their aboriginal status to be considered canadian citizens under the law. (indian and northern affairs canada, ) “the social problems plaguing native peoples in canada [today] are caused by aggressive, oppressive and violent social, political and governmental systems which reflect embedded notions of imperialism, colonization and assimilation. (damm, , ) there was this brown skinned kid in my homeroom class at sutherland named jim crawford. a bookish boy, well-behaved, and articulate — he wore thick horn- rimmed glasses, and pretty much kept to himself. we became pals (sort of) and i remember being curious about his ethnic derivation, having him pegged as vaguely south asian — bengalese or pakistani perhaps. apparently he was first nations from haida gwaii. who knew? not me. the second historic educational development at sutherland involved the assimilation of severely disabled children into the mainstream classroom. for instance, there was this fellow in grade named charlie simpson, who suffered from a ruthlessly debilitating case of cerebral palsy. confined to a wheelchair, his body was a maelstrom of spasticity, all twisted and contorted, with arms and legs alternately flailing aimlessly one minute, then ratcheted up into a tight fetal ball the next. sometimes he’d have seizures and just sit there, all tied-up in knots, twitching helplessly with globs of drool dripping down his chin onto to his firmly seat-belted lap. his speech was virtually unintelligible, to the unfamiliar ear sounding more like grunts and wails. “he’s not retarded,” they assured us (like it was contagious). “physically handicapped only.” the quality of life for disabled children [in schools] improved greatly throughout the s . . . the problems of differential programming, along with some possible solutions, were mapped out in detail [and] parents formerly known as the queen charlotte islands. increased their demands that their exceptional children be provided with educational services in their local school districts. (winzer, , ) every day (unless necessarily absent), charlie would somehow find a way to navigate his chair down the hallways from class to class, pushing it along with his good foot, and steering and braking with his opposing elbow. then, parked up against the wall at rear of the classroom, he’d gamely poke away on a portable typewriter, sometimes landing an errant finger, sometimes using a pencil held between tightly clenched teeth, and other times using his nose — whatever worked best. charlie simpson, in every cruel schoolyard sense of the word, was a hopeless “spaz.” i thought i had it rough, being so much younger than my classmates. but his burden was downright monstrous! while his presence was occasionally unsettling, his courage and perseverance were undeniable, and some of us (though certainly not all) came to hold him in the highest regard. mister you’re a better man than i. the yardbirds, i finally did manage to make friends with some boys my own age two grades below. we did normally immature twelve year-old things together, like building model hotrods and watching pro-wrestling on tv. maple leaf wrestling from toronto was shown on the local cbc station on saturday nights. as part of the new york-based national wrestling alliance (nwa), it featured all our a derogatory term, often used hurtfully, from the word “spastic,” referring to spasticity, a medical condition characterised by hypertonia, or a high degree of muscle tightness. song title. written by mike and brian hugg. recorded by the yardbirds on the epic lp having a rave-up with the yardbirds, produced by georgio gomelsky. the canadian broacasting corporation channel cbut, with studios on georgia street at thurlow. founded in by u.s. promoter paul "pinkie" george. administered from - by toronto-based promoter frank tunney. favourite big-time stars of the day — killer kowalski, dick the bruiser, sweet daddy siki (aka: the negro gorgeous george), and the japanese bad guy tandem of kenji shibuya and mitsu arakawa (managed by the dastardly mr. fuji ). there were exotic lady wrestlers too, led by perennial women’s champion, the fabulous moolah. and the midgets, like little beaver and sky low low. extra-large personalities as well, like the giant haystack calhoun and chief jay strongbow, whose excruciating submission hold “the indian deathlock” was seemingly unbeatable. top billing, however, was reserved for steadfast canadian champion — whipper billy watson. we also enjoyed watching all-star wrestling, a local promotion based out of chan tv in nearby burnaby, which featured a stable of local nwa affiliated wrestlers augmented by touring professionals on revolving short-term contracts (much like itinerant vaudeville entertainers in earlier times). “wrestling,” writes roland barthes ( ) “is not a sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of arnolphe or andromaque.” barthes includes wrestling among the great forms of public art, such as ancient druidian solar spectacles, greek drama, and bullfighting. such spectacles, he writes “have the remarkable ability to be what they’re not - windsor, ontario-born edward walter spulnik ( - ) indiana-born william fritz afflis ( - ) jamaica- born toronto resident reginald siki (b. ) nebraska-born george raymond wagner ( - ), known for his arrgant and outrageously flamboyantly ring personna. utah-born robert shibuya japan-born mitsukazu “mack” arakawa ( - ) hawaii-born harry fujiwara (b. ) south carolina-born mary lillian ellison ( - ) st. jerome, quebec-born lionel giroux ( - ) montreal-born marcel gauthier ( - ) texas-born william d. calhoun ( - ) philadelphia-born joseph luke scarpa (b. ) toronto-born william potts ( - ) that is, to represent ideas grander than the actions they depict.” clearly, in the world of wrestling,“things aren’t what they seem.”(laver, ) consistent with grappling tradition, the all-star wrestling roster was divided into good guys (baby faces) and bad guys (rule breakers, or heels). eric froelich was the archetypal “face.” handsome and unfailingly sportsman-like, he lost every time. american don leo jonathan, cast in the role of crusading knight-errant, was routinely summoned to rid the town of dastardly villains. visiting low-lifes included the notorious hard-boiled haggerty, the masked outlaw, and dory funk sr. vancouver-based veteran sandor kovacs could be either a good bad guy or a bad good guy, depending on what the weekly script called for. the local “big man” (and co-owner of the franchise) was western canada’s very own two-time nwa world champion gene kiniski. self-proclaimed as “canada’s greatest athlete,” gentleman gene was an entertaining study in contradiction — joyfully sadistic one minute, and obsequiously polite the next. we thoroughly enjoyed the weekly spectacle, gleefully suspending our collective disbelief. but we weren’t stupid. we knew it wasn’t about the outcome — like who won or lost. rather, it was all about the wrestlers themselves, and their extraordinary biographies — however absurd. twelve year-old aficionados of the absurd, we were also avid readers of mad magazine. west german-born udo froelich (b. ) utah-born don heaton (b. ) also known as the mormon giant. born don stansauk ( - ) texas-born dorrance wilhelm funk ( - ) also doubled as the masked outlaw. hungarian-born sandor kovacs ( - ) edmonton, alberta-born eugene nicholas kiniski ( - ). founded in by editor harvey kurtzman and publisher william gaines (later his son maxwell gaines) mad magazine offered parody and satire on all aspects of american life and popular culture, politics, entertainment, and public figures, with a keen joy in exposing the fakery behind the public image. (boyd, ) “[mad] instilled in me a habit of mind, a way of thinking about a world rife with false fronts, small print, deceptive ads, booby traps, treacherous language, double standards, half truths, subliminal pitches and product placements; it warned me that i was often merely the target of people who claimed to be my friend; it prompted me to mistrust authority, to read between the lines, to take nothing at face value, to see patterns in the often shoddy construction of movies and tv shows; and it got me to think critically in a way that few actual humans charged with my care ever bothered to.”(ibid.) “mad was a revelation: it was the first to tell us that the toys we were being sold were garbage, our teachers were phonies, our leaders were fools, our religious counselors were hypocrites, and even our parents were lying to us about damn near everything.” (siano, ) “my radical journey began with mad magazine,” said american political activist tom hayden (herman, ) and film critic roger ebert ( ) concurred, saying,“i didn’t read mad, i plundered it for clues to the universe.” after mad . . . drugs were nothing. patti smith (in evanier, ) english families in north vancouver, “british” columbia c. naturally tended to socialize around their children’s weekend soccer games. that’s how my parents became acquainted with ron bennett, a robust red-haired londoner, who had recently emigrated from the u.k. with his wife and kids. founding member ( ) of the students for a democratic society (sds) at the university of michigan (ann arbour). chicago-born rock singer and visual artist patricia lee smith (b. ). we were at a summer afternoon bbq on ron bennet’s suburban backyard patio. my father and mother (nee bennett) were there, along with my uncle bill bennett. plus, my aunt jean (nee bennett) and her husband walt jansen were in town, visiting from banff. “my goodness ronnie,” said aunt jean, gazing curiously at his ginger mop. “you look just like my old dad. what part of london did you say your family was from?” well, believe it or not . . . that was how we discovered that great-grandad was a bigamist. folks were skeptical at first. pure coincidence they figured. but subsequent genealogical inquiry has shown it to be true. imagine! to stumble across this information, seventy years later, and half way around the world . . ? summer that year was particularly hot, and i recall spending numerous lazy afternoons at the mahon park public swimming pool, horsing around in the turquoise-blue chlorinated water and dropping cannonballs off the high diving board. some pals and i were showering one day, preparing to head home for supper, when somehow we managed to attract the ire of some older toughs, who began snapping their towels at us and making derisive comments. one of our group had apparently done something, or said something, or looked at somebody the wrong way. it wasn’t clear (big trouble nonetheless). dressing quickly, we exited out a side door, but several blocks away bumped into the same nasty bunch. i looked around for my buddies. no such luck. apparently they’d sensed trouble, and had somehow slipped away, leaving me to defend myself alone. “come on guys,” i pleaded, vainly trying to negotiate a truce. “this isn’t fair.” clearly unsympathetic, they closed in around me, cutting off retreat. “hey listen,” i said, “if we do have to fight (and i really, really don’t want to) at least let me take you on one at a time.” thinking it over for a second, then pointing to the smallest of the bunch, the leader granted permission to proceed. “hurry up for christ’s sake! my mum’s got dinner on.” the designated first combatant strutted forward, pausing briefly to remove his wind-breaker. eureka! opportunity knocks but once. so i kicked him squarely in the balls. falling to the ground in a crumpled heap, and moaning in agony with both arms still tangled up behind in his jacket sleeves, he couldn’t reach around to massage his aching nutsack. “so far so good!” i thought. “what now?” before his friends could organize a counterattack, i quickly placed my right leg in the vee of his crotch, crossed both his legs behind mine (right over left), reached back underneath with my right foot to hook his right ankle, then pulled myself fully upright. the indian deathlock! perfectly executed! just like on tv. professional wrestling is real . . . and everything else in the world is fake. frank deford (attr.) his agony was now twofold. “heeeeelp!” he screamed, desperately urging his associates to intervene. with the hold firmly locked-in, i straightened my leg to further intensify the pressure, the loudness of his screams rising with each incremental increase in torque. “back away!” i warned the advancing group, “or i’ll break his leg.” “do as he says!” he shrieked. “puleeeze!” still unconvinced, they instead loomed even closer. so, i cranked it up another notch and started dragging the guy on his back down the middle of the road. “do as he says!” he screamed again. finally persuaded, the gang backed away to a useful distance. quickly releasing the hold, i turned and ran like hell, never looking back. “yikes!” i thought, safely out of range. “what just happened?” whatever it was, also known as “the british figure-four leg-lock” the indian deathlock was made famous by american wrestler chief jay strongbow (joseph scarpa). wrestling mythology holds it to have been a traditional apache torture technique. baltimore-born benjamin franklin deford, iii (b. ) is a senior contributing writer for sports illustrated, author, and social commentator. it sure felt good, “improvisation, as it functions within the blues idiom, is something that not only conditions people to cope with disjuncture and change, but also provides them with a basic survival technique which is both commensurate with and suitable to the rootlessness and discontinuity so characteristic of human existence in the contemporary world . . . however such improvisation proceeds, when it succeeds it puts you on good terms with life [generating] an atmosphere of well-being and celebration.” (murray, , ) “the ancestral imperative of blues procedure is completely consistent with and appropriate to those of the frontiersman, the fugitive slave, and the picaresque hero, the survival of whom depends largely on an ability to operate on dynamics equivalent to those of the vamp, the riff, and most certainly the break, which jazz musicians regard as the moment of truth or the disjuncture which brings out your personal best.”(murray, , ). i got decent marks in junior high school. the work was routine and i didn’t have to try particularly hard. i saw lots of a’s and b’s, with the odd c minus — like in industrial arts and physical education. curiously, whereas my poor marks in metalwork and carpentry were entirely justified (i was truly incompetent), my p.e. grades seemed patently unjust. the gym teacher, apparently unaware that i was two grades younger than my classmates, wrongly took my normal twelve year-old’s performance to be sub-par. it was becoming painfully clear that every teacher from gr. forward had been “out of the loop” with respect to my accelerated status. am i suggesting that principal henderson (who initially advanced me) and the sutherland school principal (who subsequently sustained the ruling) each neglected to inform their subordinates regarding my situation? did the system let me down? j’accuse! even if my teachers did know, they didn’t seem to care. indeed, never in all the years following my initial acceleration in gr. , did anybody in authority inquire as to whether i was having any difficulty getting along, either socially or scholastically. not once! anywhere! ever! perhaps if i’d been more trouble- some or had received poor grades . . ? consistent with expert pedagogical opinion at the time, edmonton public school board policy regarding “grade skipping” was clear. epsb archives ( - ) confirm that the practice was “generally discouraged,” and “especially in the early grades,” with exceptions permissible only in conjunction with: (a) comprehensive testing (academic and psychological) (b) lengthy observation, both in-class and outside school (c) extensive interviews, with both student and parents (d) ongoing consultation with both student and parents (e) special consideration being given to alternate modes of acceleration, and (e) the establishment and maintenance of a long-term support system and “radical acceleration” (two grades or more) was even more “strongly discouraged.” nevertheless, despite policy to the contrary, i was summarily advanced from grade to grade . so much for guidelines and rules. “j’accuse!” (in english “i accuse!”) the title of an open letter published on january , , in the newspaper l'aurore by the french writer Émile zola, addressed to the french president félix faure, accusing the government of anti-semitism and the unlawful jailing of alfred dreyfus, here’s what happened in my case: testing was limited to one instrument only, administered on the very first day of school, with observation in total comprising one single ten-minute meeting with principal henderson. my parents were neither contacted nor consulted before the fact. rather, my advancement was presented as un fait accomplis. moreover, alternative forms of acceleration, such as “subject-matter concen- tration,” “combined (split) classes,” “self-paced instruction,” “curriculum compacting,” “extra-curricular instruction,” and “mentoring” (southern and jones, , ) were neither mentioned nor offered for consideration. plus, there was no support system in place whatsoever, long-term or otherwise. it would seem, therefore, that the decision to advance me was made in clear violation of epsb policy. granted, my parents did play a role. they could have perhaps pulled the plug on henderson’s folly, but his arbitrary determination played on both their steadfast belief in great britain’s historically innate superiority and their working-class deference to expert authority in such matters. hence, i rather see my folks as willing dupes. how then was something so contrary to established procedure be allowed to happen? herbold ( ) highlights the tendency for administrators in institutional settings to carve out autonomous territory over time, and generally to the detriment of the organization. valenti ( ), himself a high school principal, similarly decried the existence of such fiefdoms in the new york education system. in the early th century, educational elites saw themselves as expert social engineers who could perfect the nation by consciously directing the evolution of society. (tayack & cuban, , ) henderson’s tenure as principal at prince albert elementary extended over three decades, from to . my guess is that, by the mid- s, he had come to regard the school as his own personal demesne. granted, he may have been a prince, but he sure as hell weren’t no pal. put not thy trust in princes. the game to play at sutherland junior high was basketball. thankfully, its middle-school configuration presented an opportunity for me to participate. though i was enrolled in gr. , school administrators let me play on the gr. team (they weren’t going to at first, but relented). “give me a fucking break for christ’s sake!” i pleaded (not really). basketball appealed to me — the running, the shooting, the scoring, the crowds, the cheering, and camaraderie of team competition. i love this game! michael jordan, i practiced a lot (perhaps a bit too much), had a killer outside shot, and, being reasonably tall, competed well against others in my age-group. the team succeeded too, even winning the district championship. but kudos in gr. don’t cut it in gr. . my older classmates didn’t care about what was going on with younger kids below them. there was no glory, no status bump, no prestige bonus with the girls. and things were awkward with girls. granted, the gr. ones my age were pretty psalm : major theme of a world-wide publicity campaign promoting the national basketball association - . enough, but, from my lofty gr. perspective, they seemed childish and silly, and not much good for making out. conversely, the older girls, while much more worldly and appealing, were having none of me. i was stuck between floors, neither downstairs with the younger kids, nor two flights up with the older ones. well i’m too old for girls and i’m too young for women i’ve looked all around and my hopes are a dimmin’ i feel like a fish not allowed any swimmin’ . . . they call me mr. in-between. burl ives, my attendance at sutherland junior high is memorable for one more thing. it was the first time i ever played guitar on stage before a live audience. the instrument in question was an american-made arch-top electric model borrowed from our next-door neighbour. plugged directly into the gymnasium’s p.a. system at a lunchtime student assembly.— it sounded terrible. the tune was the old hoagy carmichael chestnut “heart and soul.” it was instrumental only (no singing), and lasted less than a minute or two. i don’t remember hearing any boos. from “mr. in-between,” song written by harlan howard, recorded by burl ives on decca reccords in . music by hoagy carmichael and lyrics by frank loesser, published in . premature matriculation from sutherland i moved up to north vancouver senior secondary (nvss) which housed only grades eleven and twelve. consequently, there was no gr. boys basketball team for me to play on (and no thirteen year-old girls to play with). there was, however, this one pretty seventeen year-old junior cheerleader, who, apparently, on the very first day of class, thought i was “kinda cute.” but later, at lunchtime, when informed by her girlfriends that i was in fact only fourteen (tall for my age) the poor child was so humiliated that she was driven to feign suicide by throwing herself in front of a slow-moving car. i kid you not. jack paar, by every conventional measurement (good behaviour, good grades) things at school were okay. but having grown concerned about certain aspects of my social and psychological development (seems i’d grown somewhat sullen and morose) my mum finally came on board, and we met with nvss principal taylor to formally inquire regarding the prospects of my “de-acceleration.” “it’s too late,” he said. “there’s been too long a headstart, and it would be unfair to the younger childen.” no deal. case closed. most of my high school teachers were of the middling variety — capable enough, but dull. english literature comes to mind, with its mindless rote memorization pet on-air phrase of jack harold paar ( - ) host of nbc’s tonight show ( - ) of poems by bliss carman, ralph waldo emerson, and hilaire belloc, et al. who were these people anyway? and why did they write like that? fair questions in my view. it was in gr. that it first dawned on me that my education wasn’t making much sense. the information imparted seemed all out of context, a jumble of disjointed concepts and ideas, with no apparent application in the real world. maths, for instance, with the introduction of calculus (sine functions, fractionals, and irrationals, etc) — all of a sudden seemed to turn weird. we did calculation after calculation after calculation, drawing curves on graph paper for hours and hours. finally i cracked. “with every respect sir,” i said, genuinely not wishing to offend, “what are we actually going to do with all this information?” i wasn’t trying to be difficult, just curious. “don’t be impertinent!” he snapped. “get back to work!” why oh why oh why oh why? oh why oh why oh why? because, because, because because. goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. woody guthrie, the avuncular mr. benning was, literally, another story. whether rattling on about the battle of the plains of abraham, the red river rebellion, or the building of the cpr transcontinental railroad, his highly entertaining narrative teaching style brought geography and history to life — the characters, the colours, the sounds, and smells etc.. it was the next best thing to being there, like excerpt from “why oh why,” song written by woody guthrie, recorded - , released on the smithsonian-folkways lp this land is your land. watching a movie. best of all, mr. b didn’t seem to mind taking dumb questions, so no one was afraid to stick their neck out and take chances. dare to be stupid! “weird al” yankovich, and then there was the french instructor — mademoiselle binoche, a s-era bohemian princess (think carla bruni-sarkozy with long black hair, black sweater, black skirt, black tights, etc). i wasn’t even taking french that year, but hung around her classroom anyway (during study block), just to look (and listen). i was also struck by euclidian geometry, in an almost spiritual way. the unshakable soundness of its theorems and corollaries seemed nothing short of godly. plus, it was graphic! that is, you could actually watch it at work: the lines, the shapes, the angles. i dug it all — every rhombus and dodecahedron. my geometry teacher, mr. dicimbriani, was clearly a smart man who loved his maths, but he had atrocious class management skills, and barely managed to keep his animals under control. i stayed out of trouble, however, and hardly ever got an answer wrong. one day, having reconciled a particularly puzzling pythagorean paradox (an independent initiative, undertaken entirely on my own time), i was eager to share my epiphany. getting to class early, i naively anticipated a positive response. but he just smugly tossed it off, as if to say, “big deal . . .i did that in gr. .” indeed, he may well have, but that’s not exactly the pedagogical point now — is it? i passed for a good teacher . . .because the rest in town were so bad. jean jacques rousseau, title song from the weird al yankovich cd dare to be stupid, released in on the scotti brothers label. from confessions of jean-jacques rousseau pt. bk (written , originally published ) published by project gutenberg, pop-music had always been a big part of my life. even as a little kid in london, i’d liked listening to the radio, and had managed to develop a reasonably discerning appreciation for rock & roll — especially regarding to the electric guitar. we’d brought my cheap acoustic model over from england, and my canadian uncle walter had shown me a few chords (enough to play all the hank williams tunes he knew). and i’d taught myself how to play the duane eddy- style solo on johnny horton’s hit recording “honky tonk man.” well i’m a honky tonk man and i can’t seem to stop. i love to give the girls a whirl to the music of that old juke box, but when my money’s all gone, i’m on the telephone, a singin’ hey hey mama, can your daddy come home. so when the beatles came along in — i was ready. i started off strumming alone in my room, learning all the tunes on their first album, like “she loves you” and “i wanna hold your hand,” but soon got bored playing with myself and went looking for other like-minded fools. eventually we found each other, and started a hobby band, practicing after school and on weekends in a shed down by the waterfront at the foot of lonsdale avenue. we weren’t any good, and no one would have considered actually paying us to play. no problem. we’d happily perform free of charge. there was this neighborhood fellow, a hard-nosed guy who worked in the shipyard nearby. he’d stop by and listen to us practice, pretending to be interested in the music, but we all knew he was actually looking to get cozy with the bass player’s mother — a -something single-parent. “i can get them a saturday afternoon spot,” he boasted, “downtown.” new york-born electric guitarist duane eddy (b. ), known for his “twangy” sound. vancouver’s downtown eastside back then wasn’t quite the sordid scene it is today — merely seedy. the new delhi cabaret (pronounced “del-high”) was one of several adult-oriented joints near hastings street and main catering to the rough and ready. being teenagers, we were far too young to play an evening set. our top-forty cover tunes were strictly teenybopper fare (they liked their r&b). plus, like i said, we weren’t really any good. but five o’clock on a weekend afternoon? no problem. the bass player’s mom and her boyfriend drove us there in his cadillac coupé (none of us had licenses yet). the flashy neon-lit marquee read: tonite! from detroit! the fabulous . . . miss lottie the body! we set up and rattled through a thirty minute set, then quickly tore down and left the stage. again, i don’t recall hearing any boos. but that was probably because the five drunk loggers and three sloshed fishermen in the audience were passed out in their padded naugahide booths, resting up before the evening show. the backstage hallway was dark and, instead of turning right, i inadvertently turned the wrong way. seeing a dressing-room door, and thinking it was ours, i opened it. there, surrounded by floor-length mirrors, in all her garmentless glory, stood “the body,” busily getting her tear-away ball gown in shape for curtain call. lottie was an “ecdysiast,” and one of the best around. ecdysis n. pl. ecdyses: the shedding of an outer integument or layer of skin, as by insects, crustaceans and snakes. a brand of artificial leather, developed in by unriroyal engineering products of naugatuck, connecticut. ecdysiast or “stripper.” term first coined by h.l. mencken in . “what you lookin’ at?!” she shrieked in mock horror. “ain’t you never seen a naked lady before?” i froze. “get out front there with all those other preverts,” (sic) she said, at first sternly, but then giving it a playful wink. “now shoosh!” i shooshed alright, all the way out the door, into the car, and back to north vancouver, where my mum had dinner waiting. “what did you and your friends do today dear?” she inquired. “oh nothing,” i said. “just hanging out.” my favourite thing to do in junior high-school, my primary mode of creative expression (besides strumming the guitar), had always been playing basketball. but now i was in senior high, with no junior grades below. consequently, with no younger team to play on, my varsity career was instantly over — kaput! it felt like my arms and legs had been amputated. basketball jones, oh yeah, i got a basketball jones. tyrone shoelaces, suffering severe withdrawal, and forced to feed my addiction outside school, i began hanging out at the nearby north vancouver recreational centre (nvrc) shooting hoops endlessly, hour after hour, as if in a sort of trance. but i wasn’t song lyric, from “basketball jones,” released on the cheech & chong comedy lp los cochinos, on ode/warner bros records, produced by lou adler. pseudonym of canadian guitarist-songwriter gaye delorme. the only gym-rat looking to score a quick fix. there was this other similarly afflicted geek, pat donahue, an irish catholic kid who’d transferred into the secular school system after becoming disenchanted with the ecclesiastical strain. we played “one-on-one,” “horse,” and “ -cents a shot” from the foul-line (double or nothing from centre-court). i believe he still owes me $ . every week, the nvrc would host a senior men’s league basketball game, with teams sponsored by local businesses. the harlem nocturne was vancouver’s premier black-owned r&b nightclub, and proprietor ernie king was the bankroll behind the city’s only all-black team (naturally named the nocturnes). the nvrc, situated two blocks from where i lived with my family, was their home- court. i was their biggest fan, and rarely missed a game. comprising a mixture of local blacks and visiting african-american “cousins” (typically from seattle), the nocturnes’ pre-game routines were performed globetrotter-style to the latest r&b hits blaring loudly from a portable record player. the combination of heavy / backbeat and improvised athletic interplay was intoxicating. fast and fabulous, they won more often than not, and in became provincial champions. their undisputed leader was player-coach john braithwaite. growing up in downtown toronto in the s and s, john bismarck braithwaite used to go to st. christopher settlement house to meet up with friends and shoot hoops, maybe play a game of pool - just the kinds of things boys do with their free hours. later, while attending the university of toronto, he became the first black player on the uoft varsity blues basketball team. his own teammates and fans were supportive, but others unfortunately were less so, especially south of the border. “i was called all kinds of names, couldn’t sleep in the same hotel with my team, and had to eat separately.” (eston, ) upon receiving his master of social work degree in , john accepted an invitation to work at neighbourhood house in north vancouver. at age twenty-seven he became its first black executive director, and over the next two decades built it into a strong, multifaceted neighborhood centre. “we were into affordable housing, inner city recreation, youth outreach, social action, aboriginal social services . . . you name it.” (ibid.) a north vancouver resident for years, he ran nine times for city councilor, topping the polls each time, and retiring in . (north vancouver, ) though in grade eleven, i was still only fourteen years-old — too young to attend the r&b dances held every weekend in the very same nvrc gymnasium. targeting older teens and young adults, they featured the city’s sharpest and best- known bands. undaunted, i’d just pedal over on my bike, sit outside on the back- door stairs — and listen. vancouver’s indigenous style of r&b c. was closely related to the seattle sound (known today as the pacific northwest sound), led by bands like the dave lewis combo, the viceroys, the wailers (with rockin’ robin roberts and gail harris), and the kingsmen of “louie louie” fame, from portland, oregon. the typical vancouver “grease-band” lineup featured a local black singer backed by a white band (a mixed-race hybrid in the memphis mode). for instance, jayson hoover sang with the epics, kentish steele fronted the shantelles, and rosalind keene was backed by her appolloes. similarly, the spectres played behind donnie gerard, and carl graves sang with soul see www.pnwb.com. an inter-generational perjorative referring to older r&b musicians’ out-dated s-era hairstyles. unlimited. other combos featured billy dixon, ron small and the collins brothers. the really big band on the block, however, was the night train revue: a massive brass-laden consortium led by organist chuck cliff, and fronted by the dynamic trio of sy risby, tony harris, and chuck flintroy. little daddy and the bachelors featuring tommy chong on guitar (later to gain brief notoriety as four n*****s & a c***k) had a somewhat different look. i fondly recall attending my very first after-school, teen-age sock-hop in the nvss cafeteria, and being impressed by tommy’s rudimentary but deeply groove- oriented rhythm guitar playing. there were all-white grease-bands as well, but they too leaned towards an r&b sound. prominent among these were the cfun classics (sponsored by a kitsilano- based radio station) featuring future motown records producer tom baird on keyboards. the teenybopper set was infatuated with anything remotely british, and tended to look upon the r&b inspired grease-bands as old-fashioned. but some (myself included), having feasted well on the fab four and their liverpool ilk, had come to appreciate the music of the london-based rolling stones, whose records, while still fashionably anglo, invoked a sexy-primitive african american r&b feel. other brit-pop groups were also beginning to mine the blues vein, such as ireland’s them (featuring van morrison), and the yardbirds (featuring über-lead guitarists eric clapton and jeff beck). aka: three coloured fellows and a chinese lad — the name of the houseband at the elegant parlour ca. , situated in the basement of the reninal circus nightclub (formerly the embassy ballroom), on davie street at burrard in vancouver. when posted on club’s marquee, the band’s name caused a media furor. in , performing as bobby taylor and the vancouvers, they had a u.s. top-forty hit with “does your mama know about me,” on motown records producer of hits by rare earth - (preceding norman whitfield), baird mysteriously disappeared in while sailing his yacht near santa cataline island off the coast of southern california. the mid- s “hootenanny” craze had spawned a folk-music club at school, where earnest preppies would at lunchtime strum and sing along to songs by the new christy minstrels, the kingston trio, and the highwaymen. indeed, it was baby-faced folksinger bob dylan who, in , first introduced me to “the blues” (or helped me put a name to it). the song in question was “freight train blues” from dylan’s eponymous debut lp, recorded at columbia studios in new york, produced by john hammond sr. the use of locomotive imagery to symbolize escape was a common feature of early blues lyrics. typically, a black man’s need to “ramble on” might stem from lack of opportunity, oppressive working conditions, the long arm of the law, or a love affair gone astray. (baker jr., ) railroad imagery in the blues can also be expressed instrumentally “by the onomatopoeia of the train’s whistle sounded on the indrawn breath of a harmonica, a train's bell tinkled on the high keys of an upright piano,” or the rhythmic “clickety-clack” of drumsticks on a metal cymbal stand. (ibid, - ) carby ( , ) counters from a feminist perspective, pointing out (a) the inherent phallic connotation of locomotive imagery, and (b) that train travel “had distinctively different meanings for black men and women . . . migration for women often meant being left behind . . . there was also an explicit recognition that journeys made by women held particular dangers.” pop-music notwithstanding, i still had to go to school everyday, and it was never fun. in , with the summer of love still several years away, north van senior secondary was ruled by a testy coalition of preppie “hershey bars” and formed by singer/guitarist randy sparks in , the group had several folk music hits, on columbia records, including “this land is your land,” and “green, green.” formed in san francisco in by bob shane, dave guard, and nick reynolds. the highwaymen were a ca. collegiate-folk group, which originated at wesleyan university, middletown, ct. the groups’ original members were david fisher, steve trott, chan daniels, steve butts and bob burnett. a term of derision among north vancouver working class kids in the s, referring to upper-middle class kids with the “preppy surfer dude” look. car-crazy “greaseballs,” with each group locked in three-way mexican standoff with the local squamish indians. consequently, for an unaffiliated interloper like me, some parts of the school were best left unexplored. one afternoon, on an upper floor in a remote wing of the building, i found myself the target of amusement for a particularly gruesome bunch of preppie boneheads (i don’t recall what school-related business might have taken me there). “who are you?” bellowed their leader, an annoyingly handsome senior dressed in powder blue chinos, brown penny-loafers with white socks, and a short-sleeved madras-plaid sportshirt. “are you lost?” “yeah!” piped an associate, “do you have an appointment?” “no,” i said, barely managing a squeak. “well then,” said the leader, poking his finger in my concave chest, “you’re trespassing, and you know what that means — right?” message received. loud and clear. then, just as the ghastly ritual was about to commence — the door to an adjacent washroom swung open venting a cloud of blue smoke. out from the mist, a mysterious dark figure materialized wearing hyper stylish garb — tight dress pants, pointed shoes, white tab-collar shirt, and a trendy grey-black, half-belted overcoat. it was frank baker, head indian. known throughout the school as “chief,” frank was a tough yet charismatic character. squamish first nations students at nvss were primarily from the mission reserve (# ) located on the north shore waterfront, at the mouth of mosquito creek. “keep it down for christ’s sake!” he muttered. “can’t a guy have a fucking cigarette in peace?” duly chastened, the evil quorum released me from their unctuous grip and slithered away in slimy obeisance. baker then similarly withdrew to the comfort of his private smoking parlour. he’d saved my bacon for sure, and for that i was grateful. it was may . i was still only fifteen, and school was coming to an end — not just for the year, but forever. with gr. final exams looming, then graduation, it was time to study and hopefully perform well. at the same time, however, i’d been given an opportunity to play music for real money at frank’s cabaret, a sleazy clip-joint downtown (three sets and a floor show for $ a night and a free spaghetti dinner). the band was led by a -something greaser with a massive red pompadour hairdo. dressed in an ill-fitting powder-blue tuxedo with a frilly-front white dress-shirt, he played a brand-new red fender stratocaster. we did all the standard rockabilly and r&b tunes, like “memphis, tennessee,” “mustang sally,” and “long tall texan.” the floor-show was m.c.’d by teddy felton, a diminutive old-school black “song and dance man” sporting white tie and tails, and a silver-tipped ebony walking cane. he typically opened with “hello dolly” and close to his theme song “bye bye blackbird.” the show itself usually comprised the club’s burly italian chef playing “la paloma” on the accordion, an overweight amateur belly dancer named bubbles, and rockin’ rollie, a black longshoreman from halifax hawking a novelty saxophone act. whenever the police raided the place looking for illicit booze and underage patrons (which they often did), the juke box would flash an early warning signal. naturally, being only fifteen, i’d have to sneak outside and wait on the fire-escape stairs until the coast was clear. then i’d rejoin the boys on the bandstand and pick up the beat as if nothing had happened. the job was easy enough — just show up on time, strum along, and keep your eyes open for trouble. there was one problem, however— it was on weekday school nights. so, i’d have to watch the clock and quit early to catch the : o’clock bus back to north vancouver, which left from in front of the hudson’s bay department store on the corner of granville street and georgia. my parents thought i’d been studying late at the library, which did in fact stay open until : pm during final exams. my marks were always decent, so the alibi held up. circus world final exams went reasonably well, despite my having neglected to study. matriculating with honours ( nd class), i went to the graduation ceremony, but not to the prom (wasn’t invited). yes, henderson’s folly had come full circle, and bit me in the ass! believe me, i’d sue the bastard — if he weren’t already dead. just turned sixteen and out of school — i had to find a job. nothing in the vancouver sun’s classified section appealed. everything seemed to involve hard manual labour, like entry-level construction or light industrial work. then one day, i noticed something different. wanted: magician’s assistant no experience necessary must be willing to travel bill and noreen bester were a long-married couple of retired schoolteachers from saskatchewan who during the summer months would take their amateur magic act on the road, performing at exhibitions and fairs in small towns throughout western canada. i answered their advertisement by letter. doubtless impressed by my penmanship, they agreed to take me on. we rendezvoused in williams lake, a ten-hour greyhound bus ride north of vancouver, at the annual rodeo and stampede. “i’ve been doing magic all my life,” said bill, “and don’t plan on stopping any time soon.” they traveled between small towns in their brand-new mercury montclair station- wagon stuffed full of magic gear, pulling a trailer. typically, they’d stay at a fairground for a week at a time, along with the other carnival workers and performers in a hastily assembled village of mobile homes and tents. in warm weather i slept under the tilt-a-whirl ride, doubling as overnight watchman. cooler nights found me in the car’s roomy back seat. typically, we’d rehearse before lunch, and do three -minute shows a day. bill’s repertoire was pretty standard: some prestidigitation (hand magic), some store-bought illusions (like zig-zag and metamorphosis), and some kreskin-style mentalism. noreen was his lovely on-stage assistant, and i was his trusty backstage hand. the deal was this — in order to be of genuine assistance, he’d have to reveal to me how certain tricks were done. naturally, i was sworn to eternal silence (something i honour to this day). but there was a downside. having been made privy to the mechanics of magic, the mystery would be gone, along with one’s childlike sense of amazement. “are you sure you want to know the secret?” inquired bill, “‘cos once you do, you’ll never be the same. it’s like finding out there’s no santa claus, only worse.” the tilt a whirl ride was invented in by herbert sellner, a woodworker and maker of water slides from faribault, minnesota. a platform-type “flat ride, it debuted at the minnesota state fair in . the earliest models were constructed of wood, powered by a gas motor, and featured nine cars. today they are constructed of steel, aluminum and fiberglass, and have seven cars, each powered by its own separate electric motor. zig-zag girl is an illusion wherein a magician appears to divide his or her assistant into thirds, only to have the assistant emerge from the illusion at the end of the performance completely unharmed. since its invention in the mid- s by robert harbin, it has been hailed as one of the greatest illusions ever invented due to both the apparent impossibility of the trick, and the fact that unlike many illusions it can be performed when surrounded by curious spectators. metamorphosis is a stage illusion invented by john nevil maskelyne, but most often associated with famous escape artist harry houdini . it is also known amongst magicians as the substitution trunk. in the illusion, an assistant is locked inside a large box or trunk, often after being restrained with handcuffs, ropes, bags, etc. the magician then stands upon the trunk and holds a curtain up to momentarily conceal his entire body. when the curtain is lowered, the assistant is seen standing atop the box, the magician and assistant having changed places instantaneously. when the box is opened, it is shown to contain the magician, restrained as the assistant had been. born george joseph kresge, jr. ( ) in montclair, nj. a veteran stage performer, better known as the amazing kreskin. between performances, to vary the routine, i’d wander the midway getting to know the carnies and their various hustles. one particularly hot evening around : pm, masked by the general cacophony, i thought i heard the sound of live music. there was no moon that night, and the northern sky was coal black. following my ear, i honed in on the source — a large oblong canvas pavilion, pulsating away on the outskirts of tent-town. the brightly lit entranceway was guarded by two large gents in shiny suits. the marquee shouted: “live from detroit! miss lottie the body!” a slightly smaller sign below read “adults only.” despite my youthful appearance, the bouncers (casual midway acquaintances of mine) winked me through. “don’t forget!” one reminded. “you’re underage. go over and sit by the band. if the cops show up, grab an instrument and pretend you’re one of them.” not unfamiliar with the concept, i parked myself directly behind the drummer, figuring it a decent place to hide should something awkward happen. the place was jammed (men only, of course), with all eyes focussed on the stage down at one end. the house lights eventually dimmed, and twin spotlights cut the smoke filled air. the band, a -piece r&b outfit, fell into low-down groove, grinding out a steamy “night train.” the supporting cast then came on — six young women (four black, two white), parading enticingly back and forth across the stage, each exotically turbaned and wrapped in a long satin cape to conceal her wares. the barker, charged with pumping up the testosterone fueled throng, lasciviously extolled their individual and collective attributes. the ladies finally got down to serious business, doffing their outer-garments and the legal age of majority in b.c. ca. was . a “twelve bar blues” instrumental standard first recorded by jimmy forrest on united records in , popularized in the early s by james brown. . giving it the full-on hootchie-coo. with the mc’s encouragement, the band smoothly picked up the beat, sliding into a bouncy “satin doll.” several tunes later, with crowd all warmed up, “the body” herself came on. lottie was special. much better than the rest. this lady could really dance. “she was built like a double order of pancakes - sweet and stacked. the only light in the room bathed her as she emerged from a thick velvet curtain, incandescent, platinum hair piled high on her head. as the band struck up a slow, seductive wail, her intricately beaded gown glimmered with each step. by the end of the tune, the dress was gone, and she wore little more than heels, a few strategically placed rhinestones, and a smile.” (klein, ) born in brooklyn, ny, and raised in syracuse, lottie “the body” graves began her dance training in the late s at the age of , first performing with a troupe called the new york lindy hoppers. trained in the katherine dunham technique of modern and afro-cuban dance, she was also heavily influenced by the great josephine baker. (ibid.) often billed as “detroit's answer to gypsy rose lee” she is quick to remind that she was “not just a stripper or shake dancer.” indeed, reviewers have routinely lauded her exceptional grace, sophistication and elegance. during her lengthy career, lotti performed with the almost the entire black showbiz pantheon, from billy eckstine, della reese, harry belafonte, billie holiday, to aretha franklin and redd foxx. she worked throughout the u.s. and canada, as well as in britain, spain, cuba, west africa, and japan. she has been retired for the past years, and presently lives in florida (michigan chronicle, ) satin doll is a popular jazz standard, written in by duke ellington and billy strayhorn with lyrics by johnny mercer . katherine mary dunham ( - ) was an american dancer, choreographer, songwriter, author, educator and activist. trained as an anthropologist at university of chicago, dunham had one of the most successful careers in american and european theater of the th century and has been called the "matriarch and queen mother of black dance". alternately known as the "bronze venus," the "black pearl", and the "créole goddess" - josephine baker ( - ) was an african american expatriate entertainer and actress, particularly popular in france, where she bacame a citizen in . she was the first african american female to star in a major motion picture, to integrate an american concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. born rose louise hovick in seattle, washington in , gypsy rose lee was an american burlesque entertainer, famous for her striptease act. she was also an actress and writer, whose memoir, written as a monument to her mother, was made into the stage musical and film gypsy. she died in . becki ross ( , abstract) addresses “ways in which white women and women of colour were differentially located within local and trans-national circuits of erotic entertainment.” hazel carby ( , ) credits the development of blues music and blues culture for enabling black women like lottie “to manipulate and control their construction as sexual objects.” michelle russell ( , ) similarly credits blues music for “enabling black women to confiscate and reconstruct their identities.” “blues women occupied a privileged space; they had broken out of the boundaries of the home and taken their sensuality and sexuality out of the private into the public sphere. their physical presence was a crucial aspect of their power . . . spangled dresses, furs, gold, diamonds . . . all the sumptuous and desirable aspects of their body reclaimed from being an objectification of male desire to being a representation of female desire.” (carby, , ) the tent was stinking hot inside, and literally dripping with raw sexual tension. then, right in the middle of lottie’s performance, the rcmp arrived (as if on cue), checking ids for horny teenagers and searching for concealed liquor. “over here kid,” beckoned the guitar player, handing me his spare instrument. “hold this and act like you know what you’re doing.” the police hung around for a while, but eventually left, and the band started up again. noticing me noodling away with some vague dexterity, the guitar-man pointed to his amplifier and said “plug in there.” and so i did, jamming along to “granny’s pad” by the viceroys (a seattle r&b group). i thought it went fairly well (again, no boos). based in vancouver, the band members were in their early thirties, several musical generations ahead of me, and steeped in the local r&b tradition. they called themselves the hepcats — four sharp-dressed city dudes, backing up strippers on the summer rodeo circuit, trying to put a few dollars away. i was just a suburban teenager, more in tune with after school sock-hops and tunes by the beatles, the rolling stones and the who. nevertheless, a few days later, the drummer floated an intriguing proposition. apparently, the guitar player was having some trouble at home. his pregnant wife desperately wanted him to come in off the road right away and — seeing as i was already here and — seeing as i sort of knew how to play guitar — the band was wondering if i might perhaps be able to fill in (at a reduced entry-level rate, of course). it was a win-win proposition if i ever heard one. what clinched the deal was that i’d actually thought to bring a guitar along to keep me company, a japanese made peerless brand electric, which my dad had bought from a pawnshop at main street and cordova for $ (lessons not included). learning how to play? that i had to figure out for myself. always a kindly gent, bill bester offered to lend me his pa system to use as an ad hoc guitar amplifier, so i drew double pay for several weeks, even managing to save a bit. then, like all good things, the season came to an end. the besters returned to wascana, the hepcats drove back down to the coast, and i traveled home alone by greyhound bus. my home town i learned two important things from the besters: ( ) there’s no such thing as magic, and ( ) things are never what they seem. back home, the magic was gone from my parents’ marriage, and the future seemed pretty bleak. forced to choose between being a sixteen year-old university student or getting a full time job, i chose the latter. guess if you can. choose if you dare. pierre corneille, i rechecked the want-ads in the newspaper. again, nothing appealed. so, i settled for a job as a bin-jockey at an automotive warehouse in north burnaby, filling orders for $ per month. the work entailed matching numbers to parts and packaging them for pickup or shipment. the tedium was excruciating, remedied only by listening to top-forty radio, and especially blues-based rock & roll records like “i’m a man” by the english group the yardbirds, which just happened to be blaring loudly when a young delivery-van driver came by one afternoon to pickup an order of widgets. “great tune!” he said. “no kidding!” i replied. we bonded immediately, united in our appreciation for that peculiar musical the university of british columbia (ubc) was the only local option in , simon fraser university across town was then not yet in operation. heraclius ( ) act iv, sc. iv. written in by bo diddley (elias mcdaniel), re-recorded in as “mannish boy” by muddy waters on chess records. quality to which we were both drawn (we weren’t sure what to call it, but we liked it). his name was dave williams and, like me, was just freshly graduated from high school. unlike me, however, he was a fully gestated eighteen and a half years-old. “i play drums in a band,” he said. “we’re playing this weekend at the community centre in north van. do you know it?” “i live two blocks away. see you there.” i showed up for their friday night show with my trusty $ höhner harmonica. to be honest, i only had two “blues harp” licks in my repertoire. but nobody else had any, so two was more than enough. invited to sit in on “ south michigan avenue” by the rolling stones, i couldn’t help but notice that the audience’s highly positive response seemed oddly disproportionate to the dodgy quality of my performance. strange how potent cheap music is. noel coward, later, after the show, i chatted with the band. apparently, their rhythm guitarist was leaving, and they were wondering if i might be interested in perhaps, you know — joining. “when do we start?!” i said. “let’s rock!” south michigan avenue is an r&b instrumental by the rolling stones, released in on the british ep five by five, and the us lp x (their second). composer credit goes to nanker phelge, the group’s collective pseudonym. the title refers to the address of the offices and recording studios of chess records in chicago, illinois, where the tune was recorded. from “private lives” ( ) act . they called themselves william tell & the marksmen, and played all the latest pop hits. they even had a manager — a slightly older ( -something) english expat named jim scott. the first teen dance i played with them, at a roller rink near cultus lake, paid $ — way more than at frank’s cabaret downtown it was great fun. plus, at sixteen years of age, i very much liked the idea of performing at high school dances, where only just recently, as an underage loser- geek, i’d been socially invisible. i want my status back, baby! frank zappa, things quickly started to heat up. first, the lead-guitar player resigned leaving me to claim his position. i was game, but my guitar and amplifier were hopelessly substandard for the job (ie: crap). but then, as if by magic, band manager scott struck a sponsorship deal with local musical instrument retailer bob tartini, whose new westminster store was one of the largest in the region. instantly, we went from frogs to teenage princes! one moment i’m playing on a piece of throwaway japanese firewood, and the next minute i have not one but three expensive american-made fender guitars — a metallic red jazzmaster, a sunburst telecaster, and a nifty -string electric. in addition, i received a brand- new fender bandmaster amplifier with two matching speaker cabinets, and a super reverb combo. talk about controlling “the means of production!” see <http://pnwbands.com/williamtell.html> band members are lindsay mitchell, geoff edington, dave wilson, morris hillen, and bill dunlop. status back baby, song written by frank zappa, recorded by the mothers of invention on the verve lp absolutely free. japanese musical products, having not yet achieved contemporary levels of manufacturing excellence, were considered inferior to american-made instruments. the fender guitar company, founded in in fullerton, california, by clarence leonides “leo” fender ( - ), is the premier manufacturer of electric guitars in the world today, and perhaps most associated with its iconic “stratocaster” model. fender was purchased by the cbs corporation in . instruments made prior to this date are thus deemed more collectible, and of higher monetary value. karl marx ( ) maintains that power adheres best to those who control “the means of production,” further distinguishing between (a) instruments of labour (tools, factories, infrastructure, etc.) and (b) subjects of labour (natural resources and raw materials). accordingly, people operate on the subject of labour, using the instruments of labour, to create a product. (evans, , ) engels suggests that using tools implies a “reciprocity” (ruckwirkung) between the human individual and nature. (marx & engels, ; in cohen , ) a musical instrument is thus seen as the material medium through which a musician’s creative inspiration enters the world. the more effective the tool, the higher likelihood of doing a decent job. hence, a good way to understand how an occupational community functions might be to think about the kinds of tools it employs, how they are acquired, and the value placed upon them. my parents were on the verge of separating, and the atmosphere at home was downright rancorous. so, i just checked out — moving into a basement room at school chum dale austin’s house. a charismatic loner, dale lived with his parents and two sisters in lower lonsdale avenue, tucked between the squamish indian reserve and the docks. my mum didn’t much care for dale’s mother, excoriating her for taking me in. “that horrible woman!” she’d say. but mrs. austin, bless her heart, saved my sanity. sixteen years-old and living away from home? seemed like the sensible thing to do at the time. some kids might have been a tad disquieted. i sure was. but at least i had a band something tangible to identify with. the marksmen were what you’d call a pre-psychedelic west-coast rock group, very much in the british invasion mode, but still geographically beholden to its seattle sound r&b roots. the main idea back then was to try and duplicate the record on the radio, and note for note if possible. improvisation, for us, hadn’t been invented yet. but we weren’t looking to alter the tunes. we just wanted to get them right, and then keep doing them exactly the same way — over and over and over again. but the summer of love was afoot. and the times? they were a changin’. i vividly recall in early going to see bob dylan perform with the band, at the then new pne agrodome. the acoustics, as now, were ridiculous. bob did a solo acoustic opening set — just him, a martin d- guitar, and a rack- harmonica. the show was riveting (even if it did sound like shit). the sight of dylan’s white-haired über-manager albert grossman, pacing back and forth in a huff at the edge of the crowd, hurling curses at the substandard pa system — was priceless. “settle down al,” chided bob on the microphone. “you’re gonna hurt yourself.” folk-icon dylan broke for intermission, and then brought on the band. but they weren’t called the band yet. rather, because they’d only just recently been working in toronto with expat arkansas rockabilly veteran ronnie hawkins, they were still known as the hawks. lead-guitarist robbie robertson, wearing a pink crushed-velvet suit, and playing a white fender telecaster (not unlike my own), was magnificent. some audience members, however, were less than impressed, instead choosing to the c.f. martin & company is a us guitar manufacturer, founded in by christian frederick martin. highly regarded for its steel-string guitars, it is a leading mass manufacturer of flattop acoustics, with models that retail for thousands of dollars and vintage instruments that often fetch six figures at resale. the company's headquarters and primary factory are located in nazareth, pa. toronto-born jaime royal klegerman (b. ) is a mohawk from the six-nations grand river reserve. designed in by leo fender, essentially a two-pickup verson of the fender esquire, it originally sold under the name “broadcaster.” renamed telecaster in following a copyright dispute with gretch drums, it was fender’s first mass produced model. walk out in protest over dylan’s decision to incorporate electric instruments into his act. “traitor!” they shouted, retreating up the aisle in anger — one purist malcontent emphasizing his displeasure by turning around and shaking his fist at the stage. it was all rather silly, and, along with others in the audience, i booed them soundly on their way out. but they were right about one thing — bob the folksinger was great! bob the rock-star, however, was just as good — even better. the best of both worlds, as far as i could tell. what really turned things around for me that night was garth hudson’s improvised lowry organ solo on “ballad of a thin man.” he started slowly, building gradually, but then really started to pour it on, eventually taking several choruses (not just one, like on the original recording). it was spontaneously conceived, and completely different. i didn’t know musicians were allowed to do that, or that it could be so much fun. meanwhile, william tell and the marksmen were doing well on the local teenage music scene. so well, in fact, that we’d come to the attention of the musicians’ union (af of m, local ). i remember paying the $ sign-up fee and receiving my membership card in the mail. labour, as an organized movement, began in europe during the industrial revolution, when agricultural jobs declined and employment moved to urban areas. the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw major gains stemming from pope leo xiii's foundational document, rerum novarum, also known as on the condition of the working classes, which advocated reforms including limits on the length of the work day, a living wage, the elimination of child labor, the rights of labor to organize, and the on the bob dylan columbia records lp highway revisited. the original studio recording featured new york studio musician al kooper on hammond organ. duty of the state to regulate labor conditions. the movement subsequently flourished, first in europe and later in north america.(st. james, ) founded in columbus, ohio in by samuel gompers, the american federation of labor (afl) was one of the first “umbrella” labour unions in the united states, and the largest such conglomerate in the u.s. during the first half of the twentieth century. the afl pursued a conservative line, its most pressing concerns being working conditions, pay and control over jobs. political activity was deemed secondary. (currarino, ) nevertheless, by sanctioning the creation of entirely separate black locals within its affiliates, particularly in the construction and railroad industries, black workers were effectively excluded from full afl membership. the afl also actively supported legislation, such as literacy tests, targeting unskilled immigrants from eastern and southern europe. afl hegemony nationwide was accomplished by advancing funds, providing organizers, and otherwise strengthening loyal affiliates, notably the international brotherhood of electrical workers, the teamsters, and the american federation of musicians.(ibid.) showing a vancouver musicians’ association card at the door in might have gained free entry to a few select adult nightclubs around town. and with it you could work a cbc show (strictly a union shop), or perform with the vancouver symphony orchestra. other than that, however, it wasn’t worth very much at all, as gigs for young rock bands were typically uncontracted, and the pay usually well below union scale (especially after factoring in production and transportation expenses). plus, being mere teenagers, the union’s pension plan was for us a far, far distant consideration. nevertheless, membership left me feeling every bit the professional that i’d always wanted to be. joining the union coincided with a major technical advancement in my guitar playing. high school pal pete foster (a fellow brit-rock enthusiast), had just returned from a six-month pilgrimage to “swinging london,” bearing two seminal recordings by english bandleader john mayall: the bluesbreakers with eric clapton ( ), and hard road featuring peter green ( ). i’d never heard anything like it — not by the beatles, the stones, or any other rock group (except maybe the yardbirds with über guitarman jeff beck). i mean, these guys could really play. clapton’s performance was certainly groundbreaking, but green’s ensuing effort was an outright tour de force. those two records alone, for several years, were sufficient to sustain my resolve as an aspiring rock musician. i spending endless hours trying to acquire that “bluesy” sound, and not without a modicum of success. but fluency was still a long way off. then, out of the blue, came african-american guitar sensation jimi hendrix! jimi’s paternal grandmother zenora “nora” rose hendrix ( - ), daughter of a cherokee father and a mother of mixed race, moved to vancouver, british columbia in . (compton, ) jimi’s father al hendrix was born in vancouver in , the same year that seminal jazz pianist and composer “jelly roll” morton began a two-year residency at pat’s pub in the patricia hotel on east hastings street. (doheny, ). al later married seventeen year-old american lucille jeter and moved to seattle, where son jimi was born in . teenage “jim marshall” would often come north to visit his grand- mother in vancouver, particularly in the summer, working part-time as in addition to mayall (guitar, keyboards, vocals), clapton, and green - the bluesbreakers were mick fleetwood (drums) and john mcvie (bass). literally (en français) “tower of strength.” ferdinand joseph lamothe ( - ), better known as “jelly roll” morton, self-proclaimed “originator of jazz,” was a frequent visitor to vancouver, eventually becoming a transfer member of the vancouver musicians’ union (afm local ) in . (miller, ) born into a creole community in the faubourg marigny neighbourhood of downtown new orleans, louisiana, morton was a virtuoso pianist, a bandleader, and composer. with a group of black musicians from seattle’s afm “coloured” local . born: johnny allen hendrix. a longshoreman, and hanging out with local r&b musicians.(beyer, ) following discharge from the u.s. army in , he started a band with former military mate billy cox called the king kasuals, and went on tour as a sideman with a recording acts like the isley brothers and little richard. “discovered” in while playing solo in a new york coffeehouse by chas chandler (bassist for the british band - the animals) he was invited to england where the jimi hendrix experience became an instant sensation. heavily influenced by both african-american bluesmen (like t- bone walker and johnny “guitar” watson) and the white british rockers (notably jeff beck), he is widely regarded as the singular most influential guitarist in the history of the genre. hendrix died of drug overdose in london on september . (cross, ;lawrence, ) william tell & the marksmen were invited to record an original song for local folksinger tom northcott’s new syndrome record label — a tune i’d written especially for the session called “outside my door.” i used my brand-new maestro brand fuzztone device to give it that “satisfaction” sound. it was never released. a few weeks later, lead singer geoff edington called a band meeting to make an announcement. it seems he’d been approached by another local group, called the seeds of time (sot), and had decided to jump ship. the marksmen were a conventional commercial pop-band. we wore mod clothes, had trendy brit-pop hairdos, and played the latest pop hits. the sots, on the other hand, were a psychedelic group, in the mode of emergent san francisco bands like the jefferson airplane, country joe and the fish, and the grateful dead. like the marksmen, they too were self-taught musicians with limited instrumental facility. the cheetah club on w. st street. a foot-swith operated guitar distortion device, distributed by the gibson guitar company (hq kalamazoo, michigan) in the s. hit record for the rolling stones, written by jagger-richards, produced by andrew loog-oldham for london/decca records, it is easily identified by its distinctive fuzz-tone guitar hook. unlike us, however, the sots dared to “trip out” on lengthy improvisational forays. the secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret to freedom is a brave heart. thucydides ( - bce) a generational upheaval was underway, with resistance to america’s war in vietnam fueling discontent among white youth, and the civil-rights movement galvanizing militant blacks. demonstrations at the democratic party convention in chicago had resulted in beatings and multiple arrests. and, in california, the revolutionary black panther party found itself under lethal attack by the fbi. the “summer of love” had officially begun with the first human be-in held on january , in san francisco’s golden gate park. two months later, on march, vancouver’s burgeoning counterculture community held its own “happening” at ceperley meadow, in stanley park near nd beach . “free the music” and “power to the people” were popular political slogans of the day and the sots routinely played unlawfully in public parks without a permit. i enjoyed their enterprising cheekiness, and tagged along with geoff to one of their rehearsals. we hit it off right away, and i was invited to join as well. we all celebrated by dropping acid. (norton, ) first synthesized in by swiss chemist albert hoffmann ( - ) from ergot, a fungus that grows on rye grain, “lysergic acid diethylamide” (lsd) is a psychedelic drug of the ergoline family. typically taken orally on a substrate such as absorbent blotter paper, the threshold dosage level needed to cause a psychoactive effect on humans is between and from history of the peloponessian war (bk. sec. ) by thucydides ( - bce) known as “the father of scientific inquiry.” micrograms. (greiner et al, ) initially produced by sandoz laboratories (switzerland) lsd showed early promise as a drug with psychiatric uses. generally beginning within thirty minutes of ingestion, the lsd user may experience anything from subtle changes in perception to overwhelming cognitive shifts. changes in audi- tory and visual perception are typical. higher doses often cause intense distortions of sensory perception such as synaesthesia, the experience of additional spatial or temporal dimensions(greiner et al, ) some users consider lsd a religious sacrament. stanislav grof, for instance, indicates that religious and mystical experiences observed during lsd sessions appear to be “phenomenologically indistinguishable” from similar descriptions in the sacred scriptures of the great religions of the world and the secret mystical texts of ancient civilizations.(grof, , - ) though proscribed commercially in the united states, prior to october , , lsd was freely available for experimental purposes. prominent among academic enthusiasts were clinical psychologists timothy leary and richard alpert (ram das) who, in , founded the international foundation for internal freedom at harvard university. their association with harvard was terminated, however, following allegations that they had distributed hallucinogens to their students. (greenfield, ) transition from one band to the other was awkward, and not without its moment of melodrama. the marksmen had been booked to play a seymour street nightclub on the same night the sots were booked to play a hippie dancehall on nearby davie street. while the marksmen had found a new lead-singer, they hadn’t yet arranged a replacement for me on guitar. consequently, i was “double booked.” the nightclub owner, a well-connected local promoter, was adamant that i stay and perform at his establishment and quickly called the musicians association to ensure that very outcome. the american federation of musicians (afm) was founded in , succeeding the national league of musicians, a loosely administered “ad hoc” organization. the afm’s best known official was long-serving president james caesar petrillo ( - ) originally a trumpet player, in he was elected head of the chicago, illinois local # . this was the era of al capone and the italian/irish mob. petrillo proved more than up to the task. elected afm national president in , he dominated the union with absolute authority. his most famous actions involved a ban on all commercial recordings by union members from – (again in ) to pressure record companies into paying higher royalty rates to artists and session musicians. these became known “the petrillo bans.” retiring as in , petrillo continued to serve the afm is president “emeritus.” in the s he was appointed head of the union’s “civil rights division” which championed the desegregation of both afm locals and the venues where member musicians played. (leiter, ) directorship of the vancouver musicians association c. was drawn from three main local status quo groups. first was the older crowd: former big-band and dixieland jazz mavens like dal richards, claude logan, and lance harrison et al. indeed, local had been their fiefdom since the petrillo days. then there was the highbrow set — members of the vancouver symphony orchestra (vso), the cbc orchestra, and the vancouver opera association (voa) orchestra — with each organization involved in complicated collective bargaining negotiations. third, there was the local r&b establishment, the very same “grease-band” musicians whose hegemony we scruffy, long-haired, hippie types had only recently managed to usurp. the union’s executive board didn’t have a clue what to do with us. our counter- culture lifestyle was a particular bone of contention. for instance, they couldn’t understand our collective approach to doing business, with shared expenses and communal living arrangements. plus, playing ad hoc political rallies in the park went against everything they stood for. and doing it unlawfully confirmed our status as dangerous subversives. the union business agent showed up within minutes of being summoned. a - something bantam rooster, with shiny hair and black leather sportscoat, he was accompanied by two imposing associates in suits. the five of us retired to the club manager’s office to discuss “our little problem.” “listen kid,” said the agent, pointedly cracking his knuckles in my face, “you’re gonna play here tonight — or you ain’t playin’ nowhere — capiche?” “yeah!” piped one of his colleagues. “capiche?!! i couldn’t believe it! it was like a scene from the movie on the waterfront. was my own professional association threatening me with physical violence? it sure seemed that way. “how about this?” i ventured, improvising on the spot. “what if i play both gigs? they’re pretty close to each other — only a few blocks apart. i’ll bet that with a car and driver at the ready, i could shuttle between the two of them, and everything would work out fine.” the heavies looked at each other, doubtless marveling at the logic. s american slang, from the italian “capisci?” meaning “do you understand?” (also coppish, kabish, capeesh). a film for columbia pictures, fucussing on violent and corrupt relations endemic to organized labour and organized crime, written by bud sculberg, directed by elia kazan, starring marlon brando, karl malden, lee j. cobb, eva marie saint, and rod steiger. “okay,” said the club owner. “better not screw up!” snarled the union agent. “yeah!” chimed his droog. “better not!” whew! i’d wiggled out of that one, and even managed to get paid double on the night. but it was the beginning of a long and bumpy relationship with the musician’s association (i never quite trusted organized labour after that). the seeds of time in their heyday played all the local psychedelic palaces, like the afterthought on th avenue in kitsilano, the pender auditorium downtown, the big mother on beatty street, and the retinal circus in the west end. as a kid, [the seeds of time] were my west coast rolling stones and velvet underground all rolled into one . . . punks ahead of their time . . . anti-authoritarian, rebellious, outrageous . . . and funny. tom harrison, yes, the sots were pretty hot stuff c. , playing events all over town. but, whereas the greater vancouver metropolitan area was relatively “hip,” the surrounding municipalities remained painfully “straight.” so, when invited to participate in a “battle of the bands” at a small-town central b.c. high school, we were naturally apprehensive. located in the old kitsilano cinema, later the russian community centre. originally operated by the kruz (krushelniski) brothers terry and gerry. later by roger schiffer. home of vancouver’s inaugural “trips festival,” hosted by doug hawthorne. opened originally by jim whisby as dante’s inferno; later, as the retinal circus by roger schiffer and blaine culling (currently of granville entertainment ltd). “tom’s top five b.c. bands.” in the vancouver province, march . the other groups in the competition were mainstream teenybopper fodder, wholesome and clean, like bright shiny pennies. a fistful of pot-metal slugs by comparison, we sots were resigned to finishing dead last in every judging category (grooming, band uniforms, choreography, repertoire, stage presence, etc). moreover, it seemed that our scruffy appearance and irreverent demeanour had drawn the ire of the school’s preppie jock-squad, who clearly wanted us gone in a hurry (why on earth did they invite us in the first place?) undaunted, we decided to go out in dramatic style, selecting (for their listening pleasure) the most grotesquely inappropriate tune we could think of — “heroin” by the new york group velvet underground. when i put a spike into my vein i tell ya, things aren’t quite the same the judging panel (comprising the vice principal, the guidance counselor, the head cheerleader, the captain of the football team, and the student council president) was visibly perturbed. no matter. after milking every exquisite moment of cognitive dissonance, we quickly packed up and drove back to vancouver — empty-handed, but triumphant just the same. the sots had a manager too. arthur james “time” wilson, a twenty-three year- old kitsilano native with a background in radio broadcasting and public relations, was (and remains) an enthusiastic homosexual — not effeminate or flamboyant, but as queer as can be nonetheless. he never made advances toward me though. “what’s the matter?” i said, feigning disappointment. “not your type?” featuring singer-songwriter lou reed on lead vocals. from the lp the velvet underground & nico, recorded in during andy warhol's exploding plastic inevitable multimedia event tour, it was released in march by verve records, and would gain notoriety for its experimentalist performance sensibilities and controversial lyrical content. “of course not.” he deadpanned, “you’re not gay.” jim’s sexuality was never an issue with the band, except maybe out of town, when he’d decide to pick an argument with some local homo-hating red-necks. then we’d have to dive in and rescue his sorry ass. “i have an idea,” he said. “let’s take this act coast to coast.” always game for shenanigans, we gleefully drove the front wheels of our blue ford econoline van into the pacific ocean off jericho beach and vowed not to stop until we’d done the same in the atlantic. the first leg of our nationwide sojourn began in banff, alberta, with a week- long engagement at the grizzly house, where we made our initial stake. then we headed east — five people and all our musical gear in the van, followed by singer geoff and his new bride jocelyn (on their honeymoon) driving their wedding present (from her parents) — a brand new datsun station wagon. it wasn’t a “tour” in the conventional music-business sense. more like a hair- brained adventure. we had no gigs booked, and very little money — barely enough for gas and food. the idea was to simply get there and see what happens. the prairies were endlessly flat and hot, and the fumes from the van’s overworked engine almost poisoned us on several occasions. bypassing winnipeg, we headed straight for kenora, across the border in ontario. the north shore of lake superior, with its white sand beaches glistening in the full moon, was outstanding. eschewing motels to save money, we camped out in tents, often sleeping out under the stars. it took three days to reach t.o. (toronto, ontario), where we limped in with a broken wheel bearing. leaving the van full of gear at a gas station (praying we could afford repairs) we drifted off to explore. the yorkville district c. was toronto’s hippie hq — full of hippie sights, smells, and sounds. i wandered into a sam the record man store, wondering what was popular on the local scene. then i heard it, over the in-store sound system. the jeff beck group’s debut lp truth with young rod stewart on lead vocals. i was floored! a work of extraordinary innovation. beck et al had clearly taken things to another level. we crashed overnight on floor of somebody’s hippie pad, and somebody picked the van up in the morning. putting the bill on somebody’s credit card, we resumed the journey east to montréal where we slept on somebody else’s floor. staying over for a few days to catch our breath (and a much needed shower), we then headed east along the southern shore of the st. lawrence river towards gaspé. turning right at rivière-du-loup we rumbled down through new brunswick, past edmunston, fredericton and moncton, then across the land-bridge into nova scotia. finally, more than a week after beginning our journey in the rocky mountains, we drove our bandwagon into the atlantic at an oceanside family- campsite near peggy’s cove. we’d made it. but, now what? there were no gigs for us there (halifax having yet to embrace the hippie counter culture scene). so we ended up busking at the campsite for a few extra day’s rent and some gas money to get back to montréal. south london-born geoffrey arnold beck (b. ) is one of the three noted blues-based rock guitarists to have played with the yardbirds, the others being eric clapton and jimmy page. supporting members included mickey waller (drums), ron wood (bass), and nicky hopkins (piano). the friend whose apartment we’d just previously invaded was kind enough to move out altogether and leave the place to us. we stayed the entire summer (seven people in a -room flat), and was a hot one. canada’s expo world’s fair, held the previous year, had been a huge success. so, with the cooperation of the key participating countries, officials decided to extend operations into summer , with most of the national pavilions remaining open — notably the usa’s giant buckminster fuller designed geodesic dome. montréal was trés chic, the clothing shops on rue st.catherine featuring all the latest euro designs — voluminous “elephant pants,” colourful satin shirts, and square-toed, platform shoes. but we’d pulled into town with little more than the clothing on our backs — blue jeans, t-shirts, and cowboy boots. there were precious few opportunities for scruffy anglais rock bands like us. it was summertime, for instance, so high school dances were out. plus, other than the esquire showbar (on the corner of rue stanley et ste. catherine), montréal didn’t seem to have much of a live-music scene at all, with “disco” then being the prevailing mode of entertainment. contrastingly, however, we’d see people lined-up around the block at various vieux-montréal venues like the hôtel iroquois, waiting to see and hear canada’s poet laureate of wine, women, and song — leonard cohen. but leonard wasn’t singing much back then, mainly just reciting from his books. counting heads, we figured he must have been raking in the dough, especially having no transport or operating under the banner “man and his world,” the expo- site remained open until , finally falling into disrepair and decay. combining the french words “disque”(disc) and “ biblioteque” (library). that is, a nightclub where patrons dance to recorded music, rather than a live band. first popularized in s paris. production expenses. la belle province was being rocked that summer by le front de liberation du québec (flq), a nationalist revolutionary group dedicated to the foundation of an entirely separate, independent country of quebec. the movement had been given a morale boost the previous year when french president charles de gaulle, in a speech from the balcony of montreal’s hotel de ville (city hall) during an official visit to expo , famously declared, “vive le québec libre!” (long live free québec). inspired by russian anarchist mikhail bakhunin ( - ), the flq seemed quite willing to employ terror tactics to further their nationalist cause. indeed, it seemed like hardly a week went by without some sort of explosion going off nearby. a mailbox blew up around the corner from our flat, for instance, and the metro police station on rue bonsecours (a few blocks away) was similarly fire- bombed. but we never felt personally threatened. in fact, folks were very nice to us we particularly enjoyed the fact that the legal drinking age in québec was eighteen, and that we could buy beer at the neighbourhood épicerie (grocery store). our public watering-hole of choice was the hotel nelson en place jacques cartier where, when we could afford it, we’d order rounds of gros cinquantes (quart bottles of labatts ). we couldn’t help noticing that montréal women were more stylish than their left- coast counterparts. for instance, while driving downtown in the bandwagon one afternoon, we saw a stunningly attractive, bardot-esque jeune-fille avec une petite july , . carniche waiting to cross the street. montréal motorists are notoriously predacious, and loathe to concede any territorial advantage — and particularly to pedestrians. nevertheless, all four opposing lanes came to a screeching halt as she sashayed sexily across the street in front of us. we all sat stunned, frozen in place, google-eyed and tongue-tied for what seemed like an eternity as mademoiselle elle et son chien continued down the block. vive la différence indeed. with no paying engagements on the immediate horizon, and funds running out, we deftly arranged for someone back in vancouver to mail us a pound of mexican marijuana via canada post. due to the tense political climate in québec, and the gigantic blue-and-white fleur de lis flag flying from our neighbours’ window — montréal’s metro police maintained close surveillance of our building. the contraband was nevertheless hand delivered right under their noses (in a plain brown wrapper), yielding a modest profit (enough to sustain us for an extra week or two). then we got an honest break. someone had caught an impromptu “unplugged” performance at the matter of opinion coffee house on rue notre dame est, liked what they heard, and invited us to participate in a battle of the bands at la ronde — the futuristic midway-style amusement park situated on the former expo site. co-sponsored by snoopy’s discotheque and local radio station ckgm, the summer-long american idol-type contest pitted local bands against each other in an outdoor amphitheatre setting. young lady with a small poodle. “the round.” located downtown on rue sherbrooke. recalling our earlier b.c. “battle of the bands” debacle, we were initially reluctant to sign-on. the only non-francophones in the contest, we somehow found ourselves billed as the “leeds of tune” (an utterly inexplicable mistranslation). surprisingly well received on our first outing, we were invited back to compete again the following week. our next performance was better attended, and the audience noticeably more appreciative. recalled for a third appearance, we again went over well. our popularity was difficult to explain. we were from “british” columbia, waaay over on the other side of the country. we didn’t speak french, and routinely found ways to mangle the native tongue. but les jeunesses didn’t seem to mind. in fact, they rather seemed to enjoy our lame efforts to communicate en francais. and we were irreverent too, our mischievous rockabilly-style rendition of “god save the queen” preceding the sex pistols’ angry punk version by almost a decade. the judging panel kept asking us back, and we began to inspire a loyal following. first it was fan mail, with one or two letters delivered to the apartment each day. then, suddenly, a cluster of teenage girls began camping out on the sidewalk across the street, stalking us in alternate half-day shifts, waiting to catch a fleeting glimpse of the elusive “west-coast hippie rock dude.” it felt good, i must admit, like our own private little beatlemania. our flat, situated above an abandoned victorian-era opera house at rue notre dame est, was in the poorest french-speaking part of the city. a once-grande address ( years ago), it was now on the wrong side of the tracks, in a decaying an english proto-punk band managed by london-based impresario malcolm mclaren,the sex pistols comprised vocalist johnny rotten, guitarist steve jones, drummer paul cook and bassist glen matlock (replaced by sid vicious in early ). their single “god save the queen,” attacking britons' social conformity and deference to the crown, generated considerable controversy. industrial area separated from the trendy tourist section of town by acres of waterfront railyard. slated for eventual demolition, the rent was month to month with no lease — and cheap. the sight of scruffy, barefoot urchins playing hide-and-seek in the decaying broken-glass and cinderblock strewn streetscape was initially unsettling. but looking directly south across the river to isle st. hélène, we had a clear view of the brand-new, sparkly clean, ultra-modern expo site. them that’s got shall get. billie holiday, getting down to business, we composed some new material especially for the contest and rehearsed all day long with the windows necessarily left wide open in the sweltering heat. consequently, our groupies across the street enjoyed an ongoing daily concert. on breaks we’d go up on the roof and wave to them. with school out for the summer, they were free to stick around for weeks on end, and often did, occasionally bringing us presents, sometimes even food (likely liberated from their parents’ freezers). somehow we made it all the way it to the finals, where we found ourselves pitted against a stylish -piece outfit from laval which had thought to bring along its own cheering section. we were outsiders, didn’t speak the lingo, played mostly original songs (not top-forty hits), and looked like a bunch of homeless hippie goofballs (which we were). but the audience liked us best, voting narrowly in our favour. our triumphant bis final was indeed memorable, not so much for its most of the original block rue notre dame est is no longer standing, having been demolished in the s and replaced by a modern office/condominium complex. $ . song lyric, from god bless the child, written by billie holiday and arthur herzog jr. in , and first released on okeh records . encore. musical excellence, but its unexpected conclusion. “merci, merci” offered sot singer geoff, striding confidently back and forth across the front of the stage, waving to the wildly appreciative crowd. “nous sommes de colombie-britannique! (we’re from british columbia!),” he declared, gamely channeling every high school french class he ever slept through. “et nous sommes perdus!” (and we are lost!). the audience roared . . . “où sommes-nous? (where are we?) he inquired, “quel est cet place magique ? (what is this magic place?)” “la ronde!! ” the audience shouted in response. “que?!! (what?!!),” geoff yelled back. “la ronde!!” they shouted again, and louder “que?!!” geoff volleyed, shamelessly milking the situation. “la ronde!! la ronde! la ronde!” came the even louder reply. “vive la ronde!!” bellowed geoff . . . and the crowd went crazy. thinking the show was over, we bowed, waved goodbye, and left the stage. but geoff wasn’t finished. turning around suddenly, he ran back out, grabbed a microphone, and, with a cheeky grin, yelled . . . “vive la ronde libre!!” the audience just sat there, stunned, staring at each other. “qu’a-t-il dit? convinced that we’d offended, we abandoned our instruments and began running towards our dressing room in the rotunda behind the stage. leaping from their seats en masse, the crowd of several hundred surged forward, shouting “leeds of tune! leeds of tune! nous vous aimons!” expo security locked the building’s glass doors behind us — with barely seconds to spare. “what’d i do?” said geoff, feigning innocence. “wha . . ?” it was a rock & roll dream come true, being mobbed by fans — a bit scary perhaps, but great fun. then, suddenly it dawned on us. the drums, keyboards and amplifiers were still on stage outside, vulnerable to pilferage or destruction. thankfully, however, the crowd had only meant us well, and the gear survived unscathed. the contest’s sponsors had hoped to present us with the winning trophy on stage, but the audience’s unscheduled eruption effectively stymied their plans, so they “what did he say?!” we love you! had to settle for a private dressing room ceremony. we hung around for a while, savouring our unlikely triumph, and waiting for the crowd of adoring fans outside to thin out. then we signed some autographs, packed up the gear, and went back to our dingy apartment — none the richer (except for the trophy) but satisfied nonetheless. the summer of ‘ was starting to wind down. our daily ration of baked potatoes and stale bread had rendered us all rather skeletal, and the novelty of sacrifice for art’s sake had well worn off. notwithstanding our victorious performance, it was time to head home. ckgm’s on-air promotion had managed to generate a few paying gigs — not many, but enough to finance the , mile trek westward. i, however, had the good sense to get seriously ill, and spent the final week in montreal general hospital. my parents (by then divorced) dutifully collaborated on the purchase of an airline ticket home, but the other sots were compelled to make the grueling , mile highway journey by car. vancouver’s counter-culture community welcomed us home with open arms. we’d been away for several months, and our supporters missed us dearly. we headlined at the retinal circus, vancouver’s downtown “hippie headquarters” and various other alternative venues around town. then, with the fall term getting underway, we picked up a number of decent paying high school and community- centre dances, eventually putting enough money aside to rent a communal band- house near renfrew park on the east-side. consistent with the times, as one of b.c.’s leading rock bands, the sots were called upon to play numerous political rallies, like for imprisoned american activist john sinclair, the simon fraser , and the georgia straight alternative newspaper which had routinely been the target of vancouver mayor tom “terrific” campbell’s reactionary ire. sure, we had plenty of street-level notoriety but, being true-blue rock & rollers, what we really wanted was a hit record. steve grossman was an eighteen year- old montréal-born whiz-kid who, while attending gr. at point grey high school in vancouver, somehow managed to parlay his wise-ass bravado into a successful on-air slot with kitsilano-based radio station cfun. seeking to expand his youthful media empire, steve built a recording studio (pbs), founded his own custom record label (coast records), and began looking for local acts to sign. convinced that the seeds of time had the right stuff, he began to court us aggressively. legendary s rock & roll icon little richard had been booked to play a week-long engagement at isy’s supper club on west georgia street. grossman arranged for us to attend as guests of the club’s owner isy walters, and afterwards meet richard himself. the legal drinking age in b.c. back then was twenty-one, but because of steve’s local celebrity, they served us anyway. i remember ordering a singapore sling, a fruity beginner cocktail, and feeling very adult. the show was terrific fun, with richard in full pancake make-up, eye-shadow, false lashes, and lipstick, and dressed in a sequined white jumpsuit, white beatle- boots and feathery boa wrap — camping it up in outrageous high-style. michigan-born john sinclair (b. ) leader of the white panther party — a militantly anti-racist group of white socialists linked to the black panther party, sentenced in to years imprisonment. a loosely constituted group of political activists arrested at a “sit-in”at simon fraser university. published by hippie entrepreneur dan mcleod. prior to the introduction of the compact disc (cd), vinyl “records” came in three formats: the -inch, rpm; the -inch rpm lp; and the . -inch, rpm “single.” on your vancouver radio dial. macon, georgia-born richard penniman (b. ) is a famous s-era american rock & roll star, with classic hits like “tutti frutti,” “good golly miss molly,” and “long tall sally.” a-wop-bom-aloo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom! afterwards, we waited a respectful length of time, then went backstage and knocked on the dressing room door (identified by its large silver star). a handsome middle-aged black lady answered. “can i help you gentlemen?” she said, only partially opening the door to protect the star’s privacy. “please tell richard that mr. grossman is here with his friends,” replied steve. “come on in boys,” said richard from behind the door. there he was, surrounded by lights and mirrors, wearing an exotic silk bathrobe and matching ostrich- plumed turban. “please say hello to miss lottie the body.” she didn’t recognize me of course, but i sure knew her. “would you boys like something to drink?” she inquired maternally. “tea? soda? richard was most gracious, and held us in thrall for some time. “thanks for dropping by steve,” he said as we were leaving. “do stay in touch.” impressed with grossman’s show-biz connections, we signed with coast records and set to work on composing our first release. our initial foray, a tune i wrote called “my home town,” came about in a rather unusual manner. we were playing at the village bistro, a folk-rock club in kitsilano, when our drummer and keyboard player, while outside getting some fresh air on a break, inadvertently found themselves detained by the notorious, hippie-hassling rcmp “narc”abe snedenko (later made famous by cheech and chong in the film up in smoke). the break ended, and it was time to go up and play again, but our bandmates were still missing in action. improvising on the spot, lead-singer geoff sidled over to the drums, and, with steve on bass and me on lead guitar, we started killing time as a power-trio. riffing in the key of e-major, i got going on a “chonka-chonka- chonka” texas-boogie kind of thing, then started singing words off the top of my head — silly inane drivel, whatever came to mind. down in my home town, there is a girrrl. i’m gonna make that girrrl mine. yada yada yada . . . . etc, etc, etc . . . we did several more hastily improvised numbers, similarly replete with long, dragged-out guitar-solo sections. then, having been sufficiently shaken down by snedenko and his crew — our colleagues returned to finish the set. afterwards, grossman came storming into the dressing room, eyes all ablaze. “that’s it!!” he proclaimed. “that’s the one we’ve been looking for. where have you been keeping it?!” “what are you talking about?” i said. “the song you opened with,” he blubbered. “you know . . . the chonka-chonka- written by cheech and chong, directed by lou adler for paramount pictures, and starring cheech marin, tommy chong, edie adams, strother martin and stacy keach. chonka one about your home town. it’s a smash!” “you’ve got to be kidding!” i said. “we’ve been slaving away for months trying to come up with a commercially viable tune, and you’re telling me that this piece of junk that i just made up on the spot is it? are you out of your fucking mind? besides, i don’t even remember it. how did it go? chonka chonka chonka? what did you say were the words about?” somehow i managed to retrieve the song from my mental hard-drive, and “my home town” became a modest nationwide hit, charting top-ten as far afield as winnipeg and toronto. i remember hearing it on the radio for the first time, while stopped at a downtown vancouver intersection in bass-player steve’s parents’ ford fairlane. we cranked up the volume, opened all the windows and, with motorists and bystanders watching confusedly, danced around the car like lunatics. coast records was headquartered at panorama film studios, tucked away in the woods above the upper levels highway, on cypress ridge in west vancouver. our recording space doubled as the facility’s screening room. so, whenever the film’s producers needed to watch their dailies, we were required to temporarily vacate — a minor convenience, considering the endless hours we spent there. the first major movie project to come through was carnal knowledge, directed by mike nichols, and starring jack nicholson, candice bergen, rita moreno, ann margret, and art garfunkel. typically, we’d get a warning call and the catering crew would show up within the hour, bringing in hors d’ouevres and a well- stocked bar. the principals usually arrived around : pm, and, after snacks and a located above the upper levels highway at folkstone way, the studios various buildings were razed in the s to make way for upscale residential development. few drinks, would be gone by : . then, we’d set our instruments back up, and continue recording into the wee hours. they were very nice to us, not at all rude or condescending — director nichols in particular. ann-margret was vivacious and funny, rita too, and twenty-four year- old ingenue candy was downright fetching. we didn’t see much of jack, who rather kept to himself, but artie would occasionally sneak back to the studio in the late evening to sample our splendid morrocan hash. shooting eventually wrapped, with nichols and co. leaving behind a virtual hoard of props and decorations slated for auction. on the final day of production, the property master hinted that if any uncatalogued items were to somehow “disappear” (wink wink, nudge nudge) they weren’t likely to be missed. live-in girlfriend cindy and i went to see carnal knowledge when it came out and were particularly amused when, during the climactic sex scene where rita moreno goes down on jack nicholson, our faux-tiffany bedside lamp was clearly in-frame, slightly above and behind her bobbing head. the release of “my home town” gave the sots a big boost. offers came rolling in and our fee increased considerably. our first big headline show was at the pender auditorium, near the cenotaph memorial downtown. presented by local music maven sam feldman, it sold out quickly, generating a long lineup around the block for last minute tickets — and we seriously rocked the joint! vancouver booking agent bruce allen (later to gain notoriety as manager of world renowned acts like bachman turner, bryan adams, martina mcbride, and michael bublé) got his start in the music business as a lowly lightman at lassetter’s den cabaret on vancouver’s eastside. adroitly sensing a business opportunity, he began booking the club’s house band at other venues. soon, he was representing all the best commercial groups in town. the seeds of time, however, were patently uncommercial. rather we were raucous, irreverent, and profane. nevertheless, in a seemingly counter-intuitive move, bruce agreed to take us on. the canadian recording industry c. , centred in toronto and regional in scope, was a relatively bush-league affair. even though “my home town” had enjoyed “high-rotation” on toronto’s leading am radio station cfto, there was no organized touring infrastructure in place across the country, no nationwide network of reputable booking agents and promoters, and no established sequence of suitable venues in which to play. westcoast bands had a particularly difficult time traveling out-of-province, the rocky mountains representing a major physical and psychological barrier. with thousands of kilometres separating population centres, roadwork was a grueling affair. and air travel was relatively uncommon back then. indeed, the only canadian band at the time with any sort of nationwide touring presence was the guess who, a veteran winnipeg outfit. notwithstanding the sots recent montréal adventure, the farthest afield we could generally afford to roam was alberta, with edmonton being a particularly favourite town to terrorize. the s were suddenly upon us, and spring meant that the th annual easter sunday be-in in stanley park was nigh. having outgrown its original site at ceperley meadow, the edition had spontaneously moved to a larger open field near prospect point. the crowd of several thousand stoned-out “heads” began hiking into the park shortly after dawn, with band vehicles gingerly navigating past the throng into the parking area behind the temporary stage. backstage was a tribal gathering unto itself, with musicians engaged in all sorts of occupational banter. the business of arranging the afternoon’s order of appearance, for instance, had thereunto been a consensual process taking into consideration a group’s seniority within the musical community, its current popularity with the general public, and logistics regarding travel to engagements later in the day. as in the previous several years, it was a friendly, collegial discussion. that is, until the bolsheviks got involved. students for a democratic university (sdu) was formed in mcgill and simon fraser university in . the sdu at sfu drew members from the student union for peace action (supa), new democratic party (ndp) youth, the sfu liberal club, and the young socialists. the sdu played a prominent role in the protests at sfu, which led to the occupation adminstration offices, and the arrest of students. following dissolution of the sdu in , some members joined the youth international party (yippies), while other more strident activists united to form the vancouver liberation front. (mercer, ) the vancouver liberation front (vlf), a group of far-left activists from simon fraser university, were bent on commandeering our hometown’s hippie “love-in.” they arrived early, about twenty of them, with armbands and walkie-talkies, immediately directing traffic and telling people where to go and what to do. while the audio-technicians and musicians were occupied with setting up the amplifiers, drums and sound equipment — the self-appointed revolutionary vanguard stealthily moved in and roped-off key areas, effectively precluding open access to the rear of the stage. within moments, our groovy ad hoc inter-band council was disrupted by a phalanx of clipboard wielding prefects. “we, the leadership of the vlf, have decided who is to play today, and in what order,” declared their chairman (the one with the biggest armband), who then listed off each band’s name and start time. “excuse me,” i said, “but you seem to have forgotten the seeds of time.” “no mistake.” he snapped. “you’re not on the list.” “why not! we’ve played every be-in so far, and our fans are out there waiting to hear us.” “the leadership of the vancouver liberation front hereby excludes the seeds of time from performing,” he declared, reading from some sort of prepared text. “for betraying the revolution and selling out to capitalist interests!” “what . . ?!” i squawked (as did everyone else within earshot). “are you telling me that after playing countless fundraisers for john sinclair and the sds, for the sfu , for kool aid (a drop-in clinic for street youth), and for dan mcleod and his precious georgia straight newspaper, we’re not allowed to perform today — simply because we’ve got a hit record on the radio?!!” “that’s right,” he said, “and because you are known to consort with decadent american movie stars.” “unbelievable!” “the rest of you!” he announced, turning to address the other musicians, “will report and sign in before going up onstage!” then, regrouping shoulder to shoulder, they retreated to the security of their carefully guarded enclave. returning to the parking lot, where the other sots were getting ready to unload the gear, i must have been purple with rage. what’s wrong?” asked geoff? “they won’t let us play,” i said, almost choking on the words. “you’re kidding?! why?” “you won’t believe it! they’re monitoring the stage, and won’t let us anywhere close. danny mack, lead-singer for the band fireweed, similarly miffed by the vlf’s bullying tactics, wandered over and joined our conversation. “dig this,” he said, offering a conspiratorial alternative. “we’ll go on and do a few songs. after twenty or so minutes, we’ll get into a long, drawn-out psychedelic jam. then you guys sneak out into the audience, climb up on stage from the front side, and slowly take our places one by one — right under their tight-ass fucking noses!” a brilliant idea (generous too), and it worked like a charm. fireweed went on as scheduled and did a few numbers. then drummer stan tait moved over, and our man rocket norton casually slid in. ditto with their leroy stevens and our steve walley on bass, then the same with keyboards and guitar. several tunes later, with the switcheroo fully complete, sot singer geoff magically materialized at the microphone and began to sing. down in my home town, there is a girrl . . . i’m gonna . . . sure enough — the politburo was caught unawares. the look of sheer horror on their faces when they looked up and figured out what was going on — was priceless! there they were, dashing around backstage in full pout, vainly trying to shut off the electrical power, while we closed to a rousing response. “you’ll never play the easter be-in again!” they huffed, hurling epithets and shaking their fists. “fuck the revolution!” was all i could muster. the vlf goon-squad was even more militant the following year, and the spectre of serious physical violence effectively precluded our appearance. but the human be-in concept had by then gone stale, and no one really gave a shit. clearly, the summer of love was over. the next hollywood production to interrupt our record making at panorama studios was mccabe and mrs. miller, a th century period-piece directed by robert altman and starring warren beatty and julie christie. the same rules applied with respect to facility-sharing and they too invited us to stick around for their daily full-service screening ritual. warren and then domestic partner julie had rented a luxurious west vancouver villa for the duration of the shoot. himself tended to be a bit reclusive, preferring to relax quietly at home in the evening after work, but the lovely ms. christie liked to party, and would occasionally turn up at sot gigs downtown in the discreet company of her hairdresser. the follow-up to “my home town” was a tune entitled “cryin’ the blues.” it wasn’t a blues song, just a rock song with the word “blues” in the title. released in , it too was a regional hit, and our fee (already somewhat enhanced) skyrocketed! our first $ payday (a significant financial breakthrough) was at the community hall in the northern b.c. logging community of prince george. to commemorate our good fortune, we decided to splurge on four corner penthouse suites at the inn of the north, a first-rate local hostelry catering mainly to government officials and resource industry executives. soon after checking in, however, we received a call from the front desk informing us that someone from the local rcmp detachment wanted to speak with us. we gathered in the lobby restaurant. “there’s been a death threat made against one of you,” said the ranking officer, calmly sipping a cup of black coffee. “we are reliably informed that the weapon to be used is a . handgun stolen from a local doctor’s home last month. however, we don’t know which one of you is being targeted. can you perhaps help us out in that regard?” written by geoff edington. >$ , today. operated by the delta hotel group, deluxe corner suites then renting for $ per night. it was a bit scary i suppose, but oddly exciting too. putting our heads together, we figured maybe it had something to do with our new manager jeff lilly (lead-singer geoff’s brother-in-law) who had recently become romantically involved with the wife of a local vancouver crime figure. “yes, law-enforcement is familiar with that individual,” said the officer. “you are all now under police protection, and we expect full cooperation.” “no problem,” we replied, in grateful unison. “thanks.” from that moment forward, there were armed police everywhere - outside our rooms, in the hotel lobby, and the parking lot. and later, during the show, there was a patrol car with lights flashing parked on each corner of the nearby venue, with cops in plainclothes sprinkled throughout the audience, and two uniformed officers standing right outside our backstage dressing room door. “you boys just go ahead and do whatever it is musicians do to get ready for a show,” quipped one constable. “we’re here to protect you, not bust you.” taking the police at their word (?), we went ahead and performed our usual herbal sacraments. downright surreal it was . . . the show ended without incident, the crowd went home, and the officer in charge called us over. “i was skeptical at first,” he said. “i didn’t think that a concert like this would be a good place to bump somebody off. but now, having been out in the audience with all that loud noise and flashing lights — shots could have easily gone off, and we long married jeff and judy lilly, presently retired and living comfortably in the south of spain. wouldn’t have heard a thing.” hmmnn? was he kidding? or not? we were just about to exit the venue and return to our hotel, when the ranking sergent made a request. “gentlemen!” he said. “the prince george rcmp detachment was wondering if you boys wouldn’t mind leaving town as soon as possible.” “no problem,” we replied. “we’ll be gone first thing in the morning.” “i’m sorry,” he said. “perhaps you misunderstood. i meant — now!” “but we’ve booked deluxe rooms . . .” a notorious local rock band with hit records on radio, the sots were often called to play back-up for big-time touring rock acts like ten years after, fleetwood mac, jethro tull, and rod stewart and the faces — routinely performing at the pne coliseum for large crowds, but always in support, never headlining. it was great fun at first, offering a tantalizing glimpse of show-biz glitz and success, but was ultimately frustrating. that’s because, when the show was over, the headliners would move on to other big shows, for big audiences, in other major centres — but we’d be stuck in small-time provincial vancouver, unable to break the bonds of our geographic isolation. frustration wrought varying degrees of anxiety and depression, with several > , seeking solace in substance abuse. singer geoff was the first to succumb, opiates being his intoxicant of choice. others joined in with varying degrees of enthusiasm (myself included), and the band began its slow but steady journey towards self-destruction. (norton, ) driving mr. dixon it was the dead of winter, and legendary bluesman willie dixon and his chicago all-stars were booked on a two-week tour of b.c.. the sots were hired as the back-up band — largely because we could pull in a younger crowd, but also because we both traveled with a powerful sound system and knew our way around the province’s dangerous high mountain roads. the contract was for ten shows in fourteen days, in towns like prince george, cranbrook, and nelson. the trek to kimberly, a mining community in the east kootenays, took us up through the kaslo-slocan pass in the monashee mountains, one of the highest on the country ( feet), with snow piled feet high on either side of the frozen pavement. each band traveled separately, but in convoy, as a safety precaution should one of our vehicles slide off the road into a ravine. i recall pulling into a rest-stop at the summit, and standing on a promontory chatting with mr. dixon, who was entranced by the alpine vista laid out before him. “don’t have none of this where i come from,” he said. “amazing!” we must have seemed an odd bunch — six “mature” african american gents traveling in a rented chevy clubwagon with illinois license plates, and six skinny hippies from vancouver driving a customized dodge van with kenworth running lights, high-powered fog lamps, and chrome air-horns. in addition to willy dixon on lead vocals and stand-up bass, the chicago all-stars were lafeyette leake (piano), eddie shaw (saxophone), buster benton (guitar), shakey jake harris (blues harp), and clarence “dogman” brown (drums and equipment manager). the weather was horrendous. each day we’d endure blizzards, white-outs, and black ice — literally risking our lives so the show that night would go on. typically, we’d arrive at the venue in late afternoon, and set up and sound-check the equipment. then afterwards, before dinner (a highlight of the day), we’d sit around listening to the veteran bluesmen warm-up their instruments, and sometimes even jam along. though rudimentary players by today’s hyper-sophisticated standards of virtuosity, the all-star mojo was definitely working, and listening to them play each night was a revelation. as a guitar player, i naturally gravitated towards buster benton, an auxiliary chicago policeman looking to make a few extra dollars while on a working vacation. unlike me, a youthful upstart traveling with a valuable collection of vintage american-made fender and gibson guitars, buster’s instrument of choice was a cheap japanese knock-off. “why’d you-all want to waste your money on that,” he scolded, eyeing my expensive gold-top les paul. “this here one’s just as good.” buster wasn’t what you’d call a “happy go lucky” fellow. indeed, he seemed to be in a bad mood most of the time. “what’s up mr. benton?” i inquired. “something wrong?” “it’s your god damned canadian border guards. motherfuckers took away my pistol.” “gee mr. benton,” i replied. “folks aren’t allowed to carry handguns up here in canada.” “i’m a cop, dammit!” he snorted. “got me a permit and everything! they made me leave it at the border. had to post a $ bond! what kind of a country you all runnin’ here boy. confisticatin’ a man’s piece! sheeeit! just ain’t right.” “gee mr. benton . . . i’m sure you won’t be needing a pistol up here.” “we’ll see.” he muttered. “we’ll see.” the tour rolled into nelson, a picturesque lakeside town in the kootenays, and the daily ritual of setting up the sound system and band gear got underway. sitting at a table in the cafeteria of notre dame college, wearing a full-length, cashmere overcoat and sporting his signature homburg hat, mr. dixon beckoned me over. “hey kid,” he said, “i heard you last night. you plays mighty fine. tell me somethin’. . . what do you think about the blues? do you like to play the blues?” “yes sir,” i answered, pulling up a chair. “i like the blues. but i’m just a white kid from the suburbs and, except for maybe hendrix, the only blues i’ve really heard is by those english guys, like eric clapton and peter green. so i don’t really feel qualified to play the blues. besides, i’m not completely comfortable with the commercial appropriation of an oppressed minority’s cultural heritage.” willie leaned forward, and looked me straight in the eye. “son,” he said. “that’s a load of crap! everybody gets the blues. the president presently selkirk college. of the united states? he gets the blues. the queen of england? mother theresa? everyday she gets the blues. elvis? the beatles? the stones? them too. the romans had the blues. so did the greeks, the egyptians, and the mesopotamians. hell! even the god damned caveman had the blues!” i didn’t know how to respond, so just sat there and listened. “listen kid,” he continued. “the blues don’t belong to just one bunch of folks. everybody’s got a right to play the blues, and if you want to play the blues — you go right ahead.” “thank you sir. that means a lot, especially coming from you.” “damn straight,” he said. “now just go up there — and be yourself! “thank you sir. i will.” “good! and remember — if anyone, anywhere, anytime, ever gives you hassle for playing the blues — you tell ‘em mr. willie dixon from chicago, illinois said it’s all right.” “i will sir. thanks” “you’re welcome. now tell me. do you boys make records. are you on the radio?” “we’ve got one out right now,” i replied. “great!” he said, reaching into his briefcase to retrieve a few lps. “here, take these. maybe there’s some tunes on there you’d like to record — just don’t forget to pay me the royalties — like them zeppelin fellas did.” william james “willie” dixon ( - ) was born in vicksburg, mississippi. in , following several scrapes with the law, he decided to hitchhike north to chicago. a large man, willie took up boxing, winning the national golden gloves amateur heavyweight title at age twenty-one. his professional boxing aspirations, however, were interrupted by world war ii , his determined resistance to the military draft garnering ten months imprisonment. a consummate musician (bass), songwriter, and record producer (primarily for the chess label) — dixon worked with and contributed greatly to the success of many blues legends, notably muddy waters, and howlin' wolf, but also otis rush, chuck berry, bo diddley, little walter, sonny boy williamson, koko taylor, little milton, eddie boyd, jimmy witherspoon, lowell fulson, willie mabon, and memphis slim. (dixon, ) willie dixon’s genius lay in his ability to reframe traditional rustic southern blues motifs in a contemporary urban context, using electric instrumentation and other modern technical innovations. willie died of heart failure in burbank, california in (baldry, ), and was posthumously inducted into america’s rock and roll hall of fame in . prominent among his career accomplishments was his mentoring of the american folk blues festival. the afbf was an all-star musical aggregation that toured europe annually between and . jazz had long been popular in europe ( shack, ), and american rock & roll was just beginning to gain a foothold with british, french, and german youth. (loog-oldham, ; ) noting that both genres drew heavily upon the blues for inspiration, german jazz publicist joachim ernst berend correctly reasoned that european audiences would flock to concert halls to see the original blues legends in person. later, in , willie dixon sued led zeppelin, claiming that their song “whole lotta love” was largely plagiarized from “you need love,” written by dixon and recorded by muddy waters as a single for chess records in . established in cleveland, ohio, . see url http://www.rockhall.com/home/default. accordingly, frankfurt-based promoters horst lippmann and fritz rau contacted dixon in chicago, who assembled a stellar roster, with a view towards promoting blues music internationally. (titon, ) since the height of its commercial popularity in the s, the blues in america had seen mostly hard times — continued racial segregation, economic depression, and world war. though restimulated in the postwar s, notably in memphis and chicago, blues music eventually came to be perceived by many african americans as a stale, dated reminder of jim crow, and its popularity within the black community was duly eclipsed by newer, more fashionable derivatives such as r&b, rock & roll, motown, funk, and soul. though blues music continued to thrive in poor, working-class black neighbourhoods with b.b. king, junior parker, albert king, freddie king and others enjoying regional chart success, blues musicians in america c. generally found it difficult to get by. but willie dixon sensed an opportunity. “i wouldn’t have gone over [to europe] in the first place,” he said, “had i been doing all right over here.” (dixon, ; in o’neal, , ) the afbf in traveled to london, hamburg, bremen, and paris. recorded for commercial release by seigfried loch and horst lippman, participants included: willie dixon, muddy waters, otis spann, lonnie johnson, victoria spivey, big joe williams, john lee hooker big mama thornton, muddy waters, sonny boy williamson, big walter horton, buddy guy, j.b. lenoir, fred mcdowell, roosevelt sykes, memphis slim, and sleepy john estes. (loch & lippman, ) afbf audiences in london included seminal english bluesmen alexis korner, long john baldry, and john mayall, plus mick jagger, eric burdon, eric clapton, jeff beck, john mayall, tom jones, john mcvie, mick fleetwood, rod stewart, steve winwood, and reg dwight (elton john) - primary movers in the subsequent british blues-rock explosion that would later yield the rolling stones, the animals, led zeppelin, fleetwood mac, and many more. (stewart, ; jones, ; baldry, ; burdon, ) “the s was the ‘re’ decade for the blues: revival, rebirth and rediscovery . . . a decade of expansion and exploration for the music and its audiences . . . a phenomenon that was multi-dimensional, multi- directional, and multinational.” (jim o’neal, in cohn, , ) the turnaround point on our tour with willie was prince george. with the night off and the evening free, he graciously invited the entire company to his premier suite at the inn of the north for drinks, and to watch a televised prize fight featuring smokin' joe frazier. the tour’s american promoter was conspicuously absent. there we were, six white kids, barely in our twenties, sitting cross-legged on the legendary bluesman’s hotel room floor watching tv as if we were in our parents’ basement recreation-room. “look at joe cut off the ring,” said willie instructively, himself having been a professional middleweight. “he’s in control. it’ll be over soon.” sure enough — boom! frazier wins . a called shot. the fight over, willie quickly rose from the couch — not an easy task, given his considerable girth. “has anyone seen that promoter cat?” he inquired, glancing around the crowded suite. “the man owes me for three shows, and i ain’t seen him around nowhere. someone get him on the phone!” buster dialed the room number, but the line was busy. “hmmn,” mused willie. “this don’t feel right. buster! go get your piece!” hank zevallos of moose valley farms concert promotions. “i ain’t got it. them border guards took it — remember?” “hmmn . . . then i guess we’ll have to improvise. where do you boys figure a guy could rent some muscle around these parts?” muscle? rent? that was beyond our pay grade. someone suggested that they try looking in the hotel’s beer parlour — a distinctly downmarket establishment operating below street level in the building’s basement. “are you crazy?” shot willie. “we’s just a bunch of old fellas trying to get along in the world. this is canada! what do you call it? the great white north? no siree. i ain’t sendin’ any of my boys down there lookin’ for trouble.” then, glancing over at us, his eyes lit up. “listen!” he said, “you boys is from around here, plus you’re the right shade of pale. why don’t you-all just mosey on down there and see if there’s any local fellas who wouldn’t mind throwin’ their weight around for a little green.” eager to assist our new mentor, sot bass player steve and i got up and headed for the door. “don’t worry,” he assured us. “i’ll be collectin’ on behalf of you boys too.” now, it’s not culturally insensitive to suggest that the patronage of premises licensed to sell alcohol tends to reflect the local demographic. accordingly, on that afternoon, in that particular northern b.c. community — the bar was full of indians. stephen cameron walley ( - ) entering the smoke-filled room, steve and i split up, and began nervously ambling from table to table, looking for likely recruits. as if we weren’t conspicuous enough (being non-native), our behaviour naturally drew additional attention. quickly surrounded by curious customers, we found ourselves being hustled out a side door and around the corner into a loading area, shielded from public view. a tall, thin, rugged-looking male with long, coal-black hair braided into a pony- tail stepped forward wearing a red aim headband and a “free leonard peltier” t-shirt. “excuse me,” he said, through characteristically clenched teeth, “but, my friends and i would like to know what it is you’re doing here.” his calm demeanour was nonetheless menacing, and all i could squeak out was a pathetic . . . “hi.” “perhaps you didn’t hear me,” he said, again softly. “who are you, and what are you doing around here?” “well,” i mumbled, “we were just wondering if you liked the blues.” “what?!” “the blues. do you like the blues? cigarette smoking was freely permitted in public places back then. the american indian movement, co-founded in by dennis banks, george mitchell, herb powless, clyde bellecourt, eddie benton-banai, and russell means et al. imprisoned aim activist leonard peltier (b. ) “the blues?” he squinted. “what do mean . . . do i like the fucking blues!?” “they must be cops,” piped up a colleague. “undercover pigs.” “are you pigs?” inquired the head indian, leaning forward. “cos we don’t like pigs nosing around our business.” “no, seriously,” i stammered. “we were just wondering if you guys like blues. music. ‘cos if you do, we can introduce you to willie dixon, the hootchie kootchie man himself. he’s in town you know. playing tomorrow night. would you like to meet him? we can arrange it. right now if you’d like.” the head man glanced around, silently calculating his colleagues’ enthusiasm. it was a dicey situation. i figured it was about / that we’d wind up some- where on the side of the highway in a bloody heap, or worse? “are you kidding!?” he replied, instantly dropping his guard. “mr. wang dang doodle!? seventh son of seventh son!?" shit yeah! indians love the blues!” “well,” i said, finally able to breathe. “he’s getting kind of old you know, and can only handle meeting one or two folks at a time. so, if you can just grab a few friends, and quietly follow me . . .” entering the hotel through the main front entrance, bass man steve ambled over to the reception desk to distract the clerk, while i snuck our friends onto the blues song, written by willie dixon, recorded by howlin' wolf, koko taylor, howlin' wolf, grateful dead, savoy brown, box tops, pj harvey, rufus thomas, the pointer sisters, the blues band, et al. blues song, written by willie dixon, recorded by willie mabon, mose allison, bill haley, johnny rivers, sting, climax blues band, and long john baldry, et al. express elevator up to willie’s room. yes, back in the early s, while ordinary indians were more than welcome to spend their money downstairs in the hotel beer parlour, their presence upstairs was generally discouraged. willie himself opened the door. “come in gentlemen,” he said. “can we get you something to drink?” we all sat down, introductions were made, and there was some small talk, mostly about the frazier fight on tv (“man! did you see that shot? pow!”). then willie went to work. “listen fellas.” he said. “we got ourselves a little problem here, and were wonderin’ if you could maybe help us out.” “sure, whatever you need,” said the indian. “weed? hash? women?” “it’s very nice of you to offer,” said willie. “and thanks. but what we really be needin’ here is a little leverage . . . if’n you know what i mean. see, the tour promoter owes me for a bunch of shows, and i’m thinkin’ that he may be thinkin’ about maybe skipping out on the bill.” the master continued . . . “now, us fellas ain’t much for the hassle no more. lafayette over there’s on his last legs, walter here has got the shakes, and eddie . . . well, he ain’t what he used to be. plus, buster here done forgot his piece down at the border.” “i did not!” protested buster. “damn! you know them guards took it.” we all chuckled. buster too. “and them boys over there (gesturing towards us) — well, they ain’t got no experience in this sort of thing. besides, they’s so skinny they couldn’t be scarin’ nobody — ‘ceptin maybe their mommas.” that one also got a good laugh. “here’s the thing. the man’s holed-up in his room on the top floor, and he’s likely got a few of his own people with him. so, we was just wonderin’ if you and your pals here wouldn’t mind coming along when i head up there to collect, if’n you know just what i mean.” the indian stood stone-faced, calmly stroking his chin. “we would be honoured sir,” he said, nodding firmly. “it would be a privilege.” willie smiled, and pulled out his billfold. “that’s not necessary sir,” said the indian. “please,” said willie, “i insist.” “seriously sir,” he said, looking willie straight in the eye, “indians love the blues.” born in , willie would have been around fifty-six years-old at the time (five years younger than my present sixty-one). but i was just a kid back then, with miles and miles yet to travel in the blues, so naturally he seemed much older. being able to chat with the man at length, and listen to his all-stars play each night, had activated something special. like countless impressionable conscripts before me, i’d been “recruited” into the blues army. (becker, ; ) with my ticket to ride officially stamped, i no longer felt unworthy in the role (still don’t, and never will). the tour closed at the pne gardens in vancouver, and we shook hands goodbye in the parking lot after the show. “don’t forget son,” he said, “stay true to the blues, and the blues will stay true to you.” the iceman cometh the sots survived the chicago blues all-stars’ winter tour unscathed, and, thanks to mr. dixon’s negotiating skills, were fairly rolling in dough. soon we were performing at large outdoor rock festivals, alongside acts like big brother & the holding company (minus janis joplin, but with nick gravenites), and texas bluesman albert “the iceman” collins. albert was outstanding. his band, a stripped-down r&b outfit featuring funk drummer larry “spider” daniels, johnny gaydon on fender bass, and a horn section of trumpet and tenor sax — laid down an unbelievably tight groove. his guitar playing was incredible, his vocals crisp and compelling, the lyrics cool and concise. “that’s it!” i remember thinking. “that’s the way i want to play!” a distant relative of lightnin’ hopkins, albert collins ( - ) was born in leona, texas. raised in nearby houston, he began recording in and released several instrumental singles, including the million selling “frosty.” in the he moved to kansas city, missouri, where he gained further notoriety. moving to california in , he settled in san francisco and played many of the venues popular with the counter- culture (winterland, fillmore west), eventually signing with imperial records in . signing with alligator records in , he recorded seven albums with the label, in winning the w. c. handy award for “don’t lose your cool,” and in sharing a grammy with robert cray and johnny copeland for the album showdown! in july , after falling ill at a show in switzerland, he was diagnosed leona, texas-born bluesman albert collins ( - ), known variously as “the iceman,” and “master of the telecaster.” with liver cancer, and died in august that same year. known worldwide as “the iceman,” and “the master of the telecaster,” he is fondly remembered as a blues musician of unique power, authority and wry humour. i ain’t drunk . . . i’m just drinkin’. albert collins, albert was unique, especially given his unorthodox f-minor open tuning. those of us who play the electric guitar conventionally (in standard tuning) can only hope to approximate his highly unusual sound. but that was fine with me. i wasn’t out to copy anyone, merely emulate. autumn found albert performing at gassy jack’s cabaret in maple tree square. i dropped by during his late-afternoon sound-check, hoping to chat in- person. finding him sitting alone at a table near the bar, i sidled into a chair opposite and introduced myself. “hi mr. collins. i’m a big fan. welcome to vancouver.” he just gave me a funny look, and ordered a glass of beer. “how’s it going?” i inquired, blathering on like a curious schoolboy. “have you been playing a lot lately. where did you travel in from?” the beer arrived, albert grunted out a “thank you,” and the waitress wandered off. then, with no one watching (except me), he reached under the table and poured half its contents out onto the club’s gaudy deep-shag carpet. excerpted lyric, from “i ain’t drunk,” written in by oklahoma bluesman jimmy liggins ( - ), from the alligator records cd cold snap. fcfabcf (low to high). eadgbe (low to high). “that’s odd,” i thought. reaching into his cowboy boot (a texan after all), he pulled out a mickey of rye whiskey, and filled the glass back to the top — the mother of all boilermakers! then, gazing up towards the ceiling as if seeking benediction, he guzzled the whole thing. “wow!” i said to myself. “he must be thirsty.” “what was that you were saying kid? where did i come in from?” “yes sir. are you on tour?” “we were just at the esquire show bar in montréal.” “oooh . . . montréal. i like it there. did you have fun?” “weren’t no fun at all god dammit!” he snorted. “why’s that,” i said, a bit taken back. “damn police kept hassling me! ain’t you canadians ever seen a black man drivin’a cadillac with a tv antenna before. sheeit! what kind of crackerhead country you runnin’ here anyway boy?” i briefly considered making some lame excuse, like “don’t mind them, they’re french,” but thought better, and bade a respectful adieu. t-bone shuffle despite having had couple of regional hit records, the seeds of time were on the decline as a viable music business entity. lucrative gigs continued to come in, but operating costs were also correspondingly high. our communal band house, for instance, was expensive to maintain. plus, we had a veritable fleet of vehicles on the road. adding up the electricity and gas, phones, fuel, musical instruments, amplifiers, and food for - (plus girlfriends, hangers-on, etc) — there wasn’t much left over for individual salaries. granted, we enjoyed a useful symbiotic relationship with our live-in drug dealer friend (cannabis only, nothing sordid) which helped to ameliorate the monthly shortfall. but personal needs and creative aspirations, having been subsumed within the collective, were not being well attended to, and internecine tensions were starting to pull the group apart. musical fashion is fleeting. what’s new today is old tomorrow. and the sots’ peculiar mode of rock & roll nonsense was no longer cutting edge. by the “hippie rock band” concept was beginning to wear thin, and just as we psychedelic groups had earlier vanquished our greaseband predecessors — now it was our turn to roll over and expire. hippie is dead! nightclubs and community centres in vancouver were once again starting to book mainstream commercial cover bands. and disco had finally invaded the west coast, first taking hold at trendy downtown establishments like sugar daddy’s and gary taylor’s show lounge, then in the suburbs and surrounding small towns. “my home town” ( / , and “cryin’ the blues “ ( / ), both on coast records. the diggers, san francisco ( october ) what comes around goes around. darwin rules! it would, however, prove to be a long, drawn-out extinction. reduced to playing five nights a week at an after- hours booze-can behind a seedy strip-joint in chinatown where cheech marin and tommy chong were busy perfecting routines for their forthcoming debut lp — we nonetheless resolved to make the best of things. the work was steady, but grueling. we normally started playing around midnight, and would go till : or : am. day was night, night was day, and the world was upside down. with bare black walls, crudely upholstered booths, a small dance floor, and a ” riser for a stage — the parlour was a decidedly inelegant establishment. traffic was typically slow, mostly street hustlers and buzzed-out stoners, but would pick up now and then. one night around : am, two black ladies and two black gents dropped in accompanied by mark derrick, who operated the café copenhåven several blocks away on main street. mark was casually attired, but the other men were wearing suits and ties. and the ladies? wow! they were all dolled up in formal gowns, with fur wraps, and glittering jewelry. “hmmnn?” i thought, from my vantage point stage-right, “i wonder what’s going on with them . . .” sliding into a rear booth, they ordered a round of “dark” coffees (the club’s code word for avec l’alcool). we finished our set, took a break, and a few minutes later i was sitting off to the side fixing a broken guitar string when one of the ladies sashayed over. an unlicenced establishment where liquor is sold unlawfully (typically beyond the normal closing times). cheech and chong, released on ode records in . operated by musician/comedian tommy chong’s older brother stan, the club’s previous incarnation had been called the “elegant” parlour. “you in charge?” she inquired. “you know . . . the bandleader?” i nodded tentatively. it was miss lottie! again, she didn’t remember me, but i knew it was her. “do you think my friend over there could sit in?” she said, gesturing towards her party. i said okay, not knowing exactly what to expect, but figuring it might be fun. lottie went back to her table, and a few minutes later returned with a diminutive, elderly fellow in tow. he didn’t have a guitar with him, so i handed him one of my several spares, and we took the stage for the second set. she may have mentioned his name, but i didn’t catch it. “any of you boys know how to play the blues?” he grunted, slipping the guitar- strap over his shoulder. “sort of,” i said, recalling our recent brush with willie dixon. dispensing with a count, he plowed into an upbeat guitar “boogie,” all by himself. it was a typically blasé late-night parlour audience, caught up in their private quasi-criminal activities, but everyone’s eyes suddenly lit up! the man’s groove was so wide you could drive a truck through it. though frail (and clearly intox- icated), his playing was un-godly powerful, its authorial intensity sending sound- lottie “the body” graves - detroit’s answer to gypsy rose lee, the motor city’s most famous exotic dancer, well known on the west-coast cabaret circuit, and a regularly visitor to vancouver c. - (jones, ; ross, ) waves through my body like nothing i’d experienced before. “wait a minute,” i thought . . . “i have heard this before. yeah! it sounds a lot like albert collins, and he plucks his strings in the same two-finger style. he must be from texas too!” the band fell in behind, trying not to mess things up too much. then he called a -bar shuffle entitled “one o’clock jump,” apparently written by some guy named “bill basie.” but i still had no idea who the fellow was. that is . . . until he paused between songs to address the audience. “we’d like to slow things down a bit now folks, and do a little tune i wrote a long, long time ago. i’m sure the boys in the band know this one.” oh yes they call it stormy monday, but tuesday’s just as bad. “yikes!” i gulped. “it’s him ” aaron thibeaux “t-bone” walker ( - ) is widely held to be the “father of the electric blues guitar.” (dance, ) his composition “(they call it) stormy monday” is a genre classic. the prototypical urban bluesman, walker’s contribution to th century american music is incalculable. b.b.king (b. ) freely acknowledges his deep personal influence. (jackson, ) his legacy extends across the generations, from clarence “gatemouth” brown ( - ), albert collins ( - ), freddie king ( - ), and albert king ( - ) through to eric clapton (b. ), keith richard (b. ), kansas city-based pianist and bandleader count basie. facetiously implying that we’d performed less that brilliantly on previous several numbers. excerpted from the song “stormy monday blues”, written by aaron “t-bone” walker, first recorded in , and released on black and white records. jimi hendrix ( - ), billy gibbons (b. ), and stevie ray vaughn ( - ). born in linden, texas of african american and cherokee indian descent, young t-bone moved to dallas, meeting and learning from seminal bluesman blind lemon jefferson ( - ). his first record, “wichita falls blues,” debuted on the columbia label in , but the distinctive “electric” sound didn’t emerge until when “mean old world” was released on fledgling capitol records. chicago’s rhumboogie club served as home base during wwii, and his biggest hit, the classic “stormy monday blues,” came out in . by the early s, in spite of successful appearances at the american folk blues festival in europe, his career had slowed down, his health was declining, and few other than seniors in the black community could recall his former greatness. dying in from a stroke at age sixty-four, aaron “t-bone” walker was posthumously inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame in . (dance, ) los angeles-based t-bone had been performing earlier that evening at local singer ron small’s riverqueen nightclub on davie street, and he and lottie were old friends. let’s be clear. lottie didn’t know me from a hole in the ground. to her, our occasionally crossing paths meant less than nothing. nevertheless, there she was again, showing up every few years like a familiar highway signpost suggesting that somehow, despite life’s numberless detours and dead-ends, i just might be headed in the right direction . . . the riverqueen. driftin’ blues well i’m drifting and drifting, like a ship out on the sea. no i ain’t got nobody, in the world to care for me. charles brown, vancouver’s “legendary seeds of time” finally disbanded in . singer geoff left first, having fully succumbed to his addictive nature. fortunately, royalties due from our hit “cryin’ the blues” were sufficient to fund his rehabilitation back east. otherwise, he’d be long dead. (norton, ) not to be judgmental here. heavens no! indeed, we were each well acquainted with the beast, and quite capable of doing ourselves serious harm. but brother geoff, it seems, was on a mission. then, doubtless foreseeing the band’s impending doom, steve the bass player also decided to pack it in - but not before becoming a jehovah’s witness! sot legend holds that he went to see the film the exorcist one night — and never returned. (ibid.) a virtual parade of substitute musicians passed through sot ranks in its waning years and months, mainly on keyboards, drums and bass. but the act was heading nowhere, and one by one the crew began to bail. finally, at a gig in kelowna, with a dearth of qualified personnel to call upon, i was myself obliged to fill in as lead vocalist. that’s it . . . i quit! excerpted lyric, from driftin’ blues, written by charles brown, released in on aladdin records. primarily from commercial radio airplay royalties, collected worldwide and distributed in canada circa by broadcast music incorporated (bmi), predessessor to today’s society of composer and music publishers (socan). for the first time since leaving home as a sixteen year-old, i had no band. nor did i have a girlfriend — my teenage sweetheart cindy and i having split several months prior. cindy freidman — a sultry, dark-haired jewish girl from toronto (a year or two younger than me but much wiser in the ways of the world) was my first true love. we’d met in montréal and had immediately felt an intense psycho-sexual attraction. soon after graduating from high school, she’d traveled west to join me on the coast. following the demise of the sot’s communal band house, we’d settled into a rented urban cottage on th street in north vancouver. but, being very young, it didn’t last. neither of us were unfaithful, that i know of. we just simply grew apart. i moved out, and she stayed (the standard connubial compromise). too bad. it really was a lovely little house. being bandless for the first time since leaving school felt strange, and i hardly knew what to do with myself. task one was to get my driver’s license, something i’d been putting off for years (another vestige of having been skipped two grades ahead). then, after selling some leftover sot band gear, i bought my first car, a five-speed fiat spyder convertible. room and board came courtesy of various gal pals around town, but the novelty soon wore off, and i slid into a semi-serious relationship with a cute blonde waitress named darlene. but that too went south. finally, i was reduced to temporarily sleeping on a bare mattress in my mother’s basement. q: what do you call a musician without a girlfriend? a: homeless! musicians in bands tend to stick closely together, like a club or a gang — writing, rehearsing, performing, and socializing almost exclusively within their own core $ per month, with a $ rental suite in the back to ameliorate the expense. group. (becker, ; ; ) but working with the same small occupational unit for a long period of time tends to narrow one’s creative vista. you get locked into and restricted by certain routines. being sans orchestre for the first time in my youthful career thus afforded the opportunity to explore artistically, and i found myself engaging a broader circle of musical friends. the lavin brothers, tom and jack, emigrated to vancouver from chicago in the early s. i’m not certain, but their exodus may have had something to do with the war in vietnam. older brother tom came first, and soon joined forces with a band of new york-based arrivistés named orvil dorp. orvil dorp was full of bravado. yankee bullshit notwithstanding, they did play well, and tom and i soon became firm allies, mixing musically and socially at happening nightspots like rohan’s rockpile on west th avenue in kitsilano. though from divergent backgrounds (his jewish parents were both academics), tom and i shared an enthusiasm for african american music, and especially chicago-style blues, with which he, a windy city native, was intrinsically familiar. when younger brother jack (also a bass-player) arrived in town the following year tom switched over to drums. the subsequent addition of piano man bruce gallagher (aka: doc fingers) made us a quartet, and we went through a succession of temporary band names before settling on the kitsilano all-stars. rohan’s started life as a used-record store, but during the s gradually morphed into one of the leading alternative live-music venues on canada’s west fresh from a stint with toronto-based arkansas rockabilly legend ronnie hawkins. like ear job, the bug eyed suckers, and fuck all from nowhere. coast. proprietor fred xavier operated on the edge of oblivion, one step ahead of the authorities, and two steps ahead of a certain unheavenly two-wheeled transportation oriented men’s club. either could have shut the joint down at any time, and occasionally did. nevertheless, our kitsilano all-star outfit served on- and-off as rohan’s de facto house-band from - . though only twenty-five, i’d been playing professionally for almost a decade. jane piirto ( , ) maintains that, in order to achieve artistic mastery, a person “must have been working in a domain for a minimum of years,” emphasizing the role of “master coaches and teachers.” but i’d never had a coach or teacher, nor any lessons whatsoever. nobody had ever shown me how to play a lick (except maybe uncle walter), or taught me how to read music. everything i knew (or didn’t know) about playing the electric guitar i’d figured out on my own by listening to records, or gleaned from watching others at a discrete distance. sure, willie dixon had been a seminal influence, but never once did he offer any technical instruction, just words of wisdom and encouragement. t-bone walker and albert collins made deep impressions too, but the time i spent with them in- person was fleeting and tangential. the kitsilano all-stars didn’t practice or rehearse together in the conventional sense. instead we jammed — informally challenging ourselves to go further and funkier, whether in the blue-eyed soul tradition, playing tunes lifted directly from the african american canon, or our own r&b-based compositions. we weren’t a “career” band as such, with long-term ambitions and goals, just a group of the b.c liquor control board, the vancouver business licensing commision, etc. whose name need not be mentioned. aspiring young rock musicians with “no particular place to go.” then, one night, while attempting to egress the stage at rohan’s, i inadvertently caught my foot on some shoddily installed bunting and tumbled down onto the dancefloor — hitting my head. lying there flat on my back, gazing upwards through the muddled haze (replete with cuckoo-birds and whirling stars) — i saw an angel. “are you all right?” she said, offering her hand. “can i help?” “thanks,” i replied, vainly trying to hide my embarrassment. she was beautiful, the prettiest girl i’d ever seen, with long wavy hair parted in the middle à la mamas and papas singer michelle phillips. “who are you?” i mumbled, clumsily trying to pull myself into vertical alignment. “and what’s your phone number?” i borrowed a pen, and she wrote it on my shirt. waking up the following morning with a monstrous hangover, i called to make a date and picked her up that evening in my sporty italian convertible. she wasn’t impressed. “could you put the top up please . . . i’m wearing contacts.” there ain’t but one kind of blues in this here world, and that’s the blues between a man and woman who’s in love. son house (attr.) song title, written by chuck berry, and featured on the chess lp from st. louis to liverpool. clarksdale, mississippi-born “delta” bluesman eddie james "son" house, jr. ( - ), leslie anne gourlay was this working-class english immigrant musician’s dream come true. we courted for several months, and it was a heavily contested affair (she already had a boyfriend). but, in the end, i won her heart, and we moved in together, eventually marrying. there’s nothing like love and marriage to get a young man thinking seriously about making money and planning for the future. accordingly, i took gigs that i previously might have avoided, like with a country-western band on a tour of b.c. and alberta. singer dave wall was a mellow baritone in the classic ernest tubb/merle haggard mode, and his silver dollar band was, if nothing else — authentic, with seasoned sidemen drawn from across canada. i knew the drummer socially, and he’d arranged for me to come on board. having never played “straight” country music before, i felt a bit like a fish out of water. nevertheless, i found that my bluesy guitar stylings traveled well across genres. but suddenly, citing health problems, veteran dave decided to retire, and the group disbanded. back to square one. then i got a call from a local booking agency. rock & roll icon chuck berry had been booked for a concert at the pne coliseum, and needed a back-up group. it was a perfect situation for the kitsilano all-stars. tom was particularly excited, devouring chuck’s greatest hits lp and studying every nuance. a few days before the show, he phoned . . . “i’ve got it!” he said. “got what?” “the key to playing chuck tunes man! it’s all in the bass drum! heavy on the down beat — like ba boom, ba boom, ba boom . . . not the other way around!” “cool,” i said. “hope you’re right.” charles edward anderson “chuck” berry, born october in st. louis missouri is a legendary african-american rock & roll singer, songwriter, and guitarist of unparalleled cultural significance. with songs such as “maybellene” ( ), “roll over beethoven” ( ), “rock and roll music” ( ) and “johnny b. goode” ( ), with lyrics astutely focusing on teenage life and s-era american consumerism, he helped refine and develop r&b into a viable, mainstream musical genre. raised in a middle-class black neighbourhood, his father was a contractor and a deacon of a nearby baptist church, and his mother an elementary school principal. his gift for music emerged at an early age, performing publicly for the first time while a student at sumner high school. but he was troubled as a youth. in , after serving a three-year prison sentence for armed robbery, he settled into married life with secure employment at an automobile assembly plant. by early ,however, he was performing nightly in st. louis with the johnnie johnson trio. heavily influenced by texas bluesman t-bone walker, chuck’s big break came in when he recorded “maybellene” (an r&b adaptation of the hillbilly country song “ida red”) featuring johnnie johnson on piano, jerome green (from bo diddley's band) on the maracas, jasper thomas on the drums and willie dixon on the upright bass. released on chicago-based chess records, it sold over a million copies, reaching # on billboard’s r&b chart. by the end of the s, chuck was an established star with numerous hit records and film appearances to his credit, a lucrative touring career, and a successful st. louis nightclub called berry’s club bandstand. in december , however, he was sentenced to five years in prison for offenses under the mann act, alleging that he had transported a -year-old girl across state lines to work at his club as a prostitute. following his release in , he had several more hits, including “no particular place to go,” “you never can tell,” and “nadine,” but these did not achieve quite the same level of success. hobbled by the advent of the beatles, the stones, and other fashionable british invasion imports, and further impeded by the emergence in the late s of hippie counterculture and psychedelia, by the s he was more in demand as a nostalgic live performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of highly variable quality. his insistence on always being paid in cash led to a conviction in for income tax evasion, for which he was sentenced to four months in prison and hours of community service. chuck berry is now in his eighties, and continues to perform at home in st. louis, elsewhere in the u.s., and in europe where he enjoys continuing popularity. (cohn, ; pegg, ) the kitsilano all-stars arrived for chuck’s show at the pne coliseum an hour early. shown to our dressing room, with plenty of time to spare, we unfastened a mirror from the wall, and began digging into a mountain of marching powder. the opening act went on, then the second warm-up band . . . and still no sign of chuck. the promoter was beginning to get nervous, and kept glancing at his watch. finally, barely minutes before curtain, the man himself showed up, driving an airport rental car. “who’s in charge?” he barked, “and where’s my money?” the promoter promptly identified himself, and the two wandered off to quickly settle up. then, with financial details taken care of (and his wallet literally bulging with cash), chuck retrieved his guitar case from the car’s trunk and turned to us. “are you guys the band?” “yes sir!” we chirped, in respectful unison. “good. then follow me.” repairing to a tiny service room (more like a broom closet), we closed the door behind us for privacy. “which one of you is the bass-player?” jack nodded. “okay then, now listen . . . whenever i turn around and give you a buggy-eyed look, i want you to stay playing on one note only — like boom, boom, boom, boom. got it!” “no problem,” said jack. “good. now, when i raise up my leg like this . . . and stomp my foot down real hard. i want you-all to stop playing. got it!” “no problem,” we replied, as one. chuck paused for a second, staring us straight in the eyes. yup. we were as high as kites, ripped to the nuts on nose-candy — and he knew it. “you boys is too cool,” he chuckled. “this here’s goin’ to be a breeze.” we went out and knocked off forty red-hot minutes to raucous response. and chuck dug it too. we could tell — he actually looked happy (not something the man is well-known for). tom smiled over at me from behind the drums between songs as if to say, “i told you so.” he was right. we were really good. while chuck remained alone on stage to play his novelty hit “my ding-a- ling,” the all-stars repaired to the dressing room for another snort. then, returning with a vengeance, we rattled off forty more dynamite minutes — hit after hit: “memphis,” “sweet little sixteen,” “johnny b. goode” — each rendered in similar tiptop form. he pulled some odd ones too, with irregular changes, like “havana moon” and “brown eyed handsome man,” even spontaneously adding a slow down-and-dirty blues — “it’s a mean old world,” by the legendary little walter jacobs (which he sang surprisingly well). and, to top things off, he gave me not one but two extended guitar solos — an unanticipated honour. between songs, he bantered with the audience, inviting questions. “hey chuck!” someone yelled, “i bet you don’t even know the names of the guys in your band” (a pointed reference to his habit of hiring inexperienced local players). chuck stiffened. “what do you mean?!!” he said, feigning insult. “of course i know the names of the guys in my band! over there — that’s the piano man. that guy is the bass man. back there is the drummer man. and this here young fella (putting his arm around me) — is the guitar man! louisiana-born marion walter jacobs ( - ), seminal “chicago-style” blues harmonica player and singer. rez blues the sunrise hotel beer parlour, aptly named because it opened every day at : am, used to be situated on the corner of hastings street and columbia avenue, deep in heart of vancouver’s downtown eastside. known as a “red bar,” due to its predominantly first nations clientele, it was considered one of the roughest joints in town. a solo gig, with one lone performer hired to entertain its several hundred nightly patrons, very few non-native musicians dared sign on. consequently, it paid triple-scale. leslie and i had been looking for ways to fund a belated honeymoon in hawaii. so, when the offer of an extended engagement at the sunrise came up, despite some initial misgivings, i accepted. setting up my guitar amp and microphone on the opening evening, i felt a tap on my shoulder. turning around, i found myself face-to-chest with an enormous native fellow. “you the new guy eh?” he said, through characteristically clenched teeth. “yeah, that’s me,” i replied, busily straightening out some errant speaker cables. “the last guy didn’t last too long, you know?” “yeah, i heard. what happened?” the sunrise hotel was purchased by the city of vancouver in the s, renovated, and turned into subsidized housing. . “oh nothing. just a little misunderstanding.” “what about?” “oh nothing.” “what do you mean . . . ‘oh nothing?’” “listen little buddy,” he whispered, leaning forward. “it can get a bit dangerous around here. but don’t worry. if anybody gives you a hard time, we’ll just take him outside — and kill him.” “oh good!” i thought, thinking it was a joke. “protection.” the first evening (a monday) was fairly uneventful, but sure enough, around closing time, this extremely drunk older white fellow staggers off the dance floor and accidentally bumps into my microphone, briefly interrupting my performance. having been challenged on stage numerous times before in my career, this was nothing, a minor inconvenience at the very worst. nevertheless, true to his word, my protector comes over, grabs the guy by the scruff of the neck, and runs him face-first into the jukebox. then, hovering over the man’s crumpled remains, he boots him in the gut for good measure and drags him out the back door into the alley. “please don’t kill him,” i pleaded. “not on my account anyway.” in addition to drawing customers from the “urban rez” the sunrise attracted visiting out-of-towners from rural reserves as far afield as bella coola, anahim local first nations like the squamish and musqueam, lake and sicamous. country people tend to like their music country-style, and my leftover silver dollar band repertoire of old-school c&w standards more or less fit the bill. the first week went okay, and the second even better. curiously, over the course of the engagement i found that, in addition to enjoying up-beat dance tunes, they especially liked the sad songs, like “blues eyes cryin’ in the rain” by willie nelson, and “heartaches by the number” by guy mitchell. well i’ve got heartaches by the number, troubles by the score every day you love me less, each day i love you more dying songs were popular too, particularly “green green grass of home” by tom jones. and drinking songs, like “wasted days and wasted nights” by freddy fender. jailhouse tunes also went over big, like “folsom prison blues” by johnny cash. but, what really got them going were the executioner ballads, like “silver wings” and “sing me back home” by merle haggard. it seemed like everyone in the place had recently lost a loved-one to internecine violence, or a drug overdose, and either knew someone in prison, or had themselves served time. indeed, the more depressing the song — the bigger the tip, with people routinely wandering up to the stage waving $ bills, bawling and wailing and begging me to “play that one again mister . . . puleeeze!” but these were poor folks, living on the social and economic margins of society, and it was hard to take their money. typically, however, they’d insist. i soon became a fixture on the scene, a fan favourite if you will. never once did feel personally threatened. in fact, folks were very nice to me. but generations of oppression and exploitation of native people by mainstream white society had written in by harlan howard. exacted a harsh toll, and every evening, like clockwork, they’d get drunk and beat the living crap out of each other. the sunrise was a sort of first nations destination resort, attracting aboriginal visitors from all across b.c. and western canada. sadly, i recall this one fellow, a quiet, bookish north saskatchewan cree, in town for a native education conference at ubc. early in the week, clearly mindful of his responsibilities, he drank little and we chatted soberly at length during my breaks. later in the week, however, having returned each subsequent evening to socialize with his new found big city friends, he was shit-faced by the second set. seriously polluted by week’s end, when the bar closed on saturday night, he was found face-down on the sidewalk outside, lying in a pool of his own blood — stabbed to death. bearing witness to that sort of carnage from the safety of my onstage vantage point was difficult — not dangerous, just depressing. the engagement itself lasted for several months, during which, in addition to developing a sense of occupational invincibilty, i gained an enhanced appreciation for the red man’s blues. i also earned enough to finance leslie’s and my belated hawaiian honeymoon. time for this here cowpoke to mosey along . . . that’s entertainment hawaii in was a fairly affordable holiday destination for canadians, with our currencies trading pretty much at par. leslie, having visited there before, astutely arranged for a two-day stop-off in waikiki to work up a pre-tan. then, safely pigmented, we took the thirty minute flight over to maui (the garden isle), and the picturesque tourist village of lahaina, where we’d booked a corner room at the historic marina-side pioneer inn. we arrived early, a few hours before check-in time, and the room’s previous occupant was slow in vacating. so, while famous folk-rock singer neil young squared up his staggeringly expensive $ per-night bill, leslie and i lingered outside on the lanai, sipping pineapple daquiris. our room was directly above the hotel bar. the resident boogie-master, new orleans piano man david paquette, was on holiday that month, but his temporary replacement was none other than fellow kitsilano all-star alumnus doc fingers. the pioneer was the local lahaina hotspot, and patrons during our stay that month included two fleetwood macs, one vacationing eagle, septua- genarian film star buddy ebsen, and sailor-mouthed m.a.s.h movie actress sally kellerman. beatle george was thought to live nearby, but didn’t show. ditto jazzman george benson. it was was my very first real vacation. sure, i’d traveled a lot as a musician, but that was always work-related, never purely recreational. this trip was different. more than a holiday, it was our honeymoon, a rite of passage heralding a new bruce gallagher. john and christine mcvie (then married) owned a place north of town in napili. original band member, guitarist bernie leadon. “hot lips” houlihan. stage in life for both of us. leslie and i returned from hawaii with happy tans and rejuvenated spirits. we were both twenty-six years-old, and having children was definitely part of our future, so we set to work trying to establish some semblance of family stability (no easy task in the music business). drawing on her experience working for the keg & cleaver restaurant chain, leslie secured employment as day-manager at rohan’s rockpile, responsible for balancing the books, making the payroll, scheduling staff, and placing the daily liquor order. the work was steady, and the pay — decent. in the months prior to going to hawaii, i’d been busy working on a commercial recording project, the idea being to purposefully pursue music business success (traditionally calculated in terms of record sales, radio airplay, and concert revenues). the late bruce fairbairn ( - ) was a decent trumpet player. but, with a masters degree from ubc in urban planning, he was also a far-seeing and well organized self-promoter. for years, in addition to learning how to play the blues, i’d dreamed of becoming a rock star, and bruce had always wanted to be a successful, big-time record producer. so, when mutual pal george lambert suggested that the two of us collaborate, interesting things began to happen. together with songwriter/drummer jim vallance, we crafted a repertoire of catchy original tunes, recruited a lead-singer (ron tabak) and rounded up a crew of capable musicians willing to work “on spec” or at a reduced rate. bruce then struck a similarly symbiotic arrangement with mushroom studios, and several de facto leader of the mid- s vancouver r&b “greaseband” the spectre (see <pnwb.com>) the organization behind the success of the seattle-based rock band heart. featuring sisters ann and nancy wilson, heart’s triumphant debut lp dreamboat annie was released on mushroom records in . months later . . . the album was finished. impressed with fairbairn’s acumen as a producer, local music business maven bruce allen (fresh from masterminding the global success of bachman turner overdrive) jumped on the bandwagon. then, armed with allen’s invaluable endorsement, fairbairn flew off to new york, toronto, and l.a. to pitch our nascent (and as yet un-named) project to all the major record labels. the rest of us waited patiently at home, with full faith in fairbairn’s powers of persuasion. in the meantime, however, we still had to make a living. vallance, for instance, was a talented session drummer, and highly sought after on the local radio advertising jingle scene. my forté, on the other hand, was down-and-dirty, electric guitar driven, blues-based rock & roll. so, what did i do? naturally, i formed a c&w band. we called it the haywire country combo, and did tunes by all the greats, from hank williams to hank thompson, george jones, merle haggard, and waylon jennings. it may have been white cracker-head music to some, but it sure felt like the blues to me. i keep my nose on the grindstone, and i work hard every day might get a little tired on the weekend, after i draw my pay but i’ll go back workin on monday, get right back with the crew and drink a little beer in the evening, sing a little bit of these working man blues. merle haggard, featuring brothers randy and robbie bachman, fred turner , and blair thornton. their hit tune “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet” (on mercury records) was # on the billboard hot- chart worldwide in . excerpted lyric, from “working man blues,” written and released on capitol records in by merle haggard. bakersfield, california-born merle ronald haggard (b. ), iconic s-era american country-western singer- songwriter. it was the autumn of , and albert collins (my numero uno guitar hero) was booked to play a week-long engagement at rohan’s rockpile. i’d seen albert perform a number of times over the years; and had chatted with him too, but never before had the honour of accompanying him onstage. rohan’s, however, was my home court, so i approached him early in the week and he graciously invited me to sit in for the last set on saturday night. the haywire combo had another gig booked that same evening, at the lynnwood hotel by the north shore docks. it concluded around : pm, however, so i had plenty of time to pack up my gear and shoot across town for albert’s midnight set (where i had an amplifier all plugged-in and ready to go). and, just to be sure, i’d arranged a ride with singer alta gray in her vw beetle. final intermission at the lynnwood found the band sitting together at a table near the stage. “what’s up man?” said the bass player. “doing anything later?” “hell yeah!” i said, all jacked-up and excited. “i’m headed over to rohan’s to play the last set with ac — and i’m totally stoked!” “better be careful,” he said, mischievously. “why?” “’well . . . i put a blotter of acid in the beer you just guzzled.” “bullshit!” i said, figuring it to be a joke. lsd- “you’ll see,” he muttered. sure enough, we took the stage for the final set, and the tell-tale signs of argot- induced psychosis soon became glaringly apparent. the house lights began to shimmer and strobe, and the sound system started zooming in and out of phase. cutting the performance short (while i still had my wits), i somehow managed to pack up and load my guitars into the car. i might have been more angry with my prankster colleague, but was instead preoccupied with getting to rohan’s — both on time and in tune. racing across the nd narrows bridge, we careened past new brighton park, the racetrack, and the pne exhibition grounds. downtown was a kaleidoscope of light, pulsating and throbbing, and i was getting higher by the minute. finally, we pulled up to the curb in front of rohan’s. the joint was grossly over- packed, with a lineup extending up th avenue and around the corner onto stephens street. the doorman, a heavy-set biker dude with whom i’d (thankfully) thought to make prior arrangements, helped me out of alta’s tiny bug. “fucking bass-player spiked my beer!” i blathered. hanging on to his coattails tightly, and hallucinating like mad, i somehow made it through the crowd into the club, and on to the stage. a roadie then guided me across to my waiting amp. albert, already tuned-up and ready to roll, nodded a quick four-count, then tore into a blistering, up-tempo “frosty.” i was seriously bent, but played great, the lsd coursing through my veins rendering no apparent deleterious effects. if anything — it served to intensify the experience (doubtless a rare fender “quad reverb” - just like albert’s. a million-selling intrumental single for collins on hall-way records (beaumont, texas). rendering it more memorable). albert dug it too, tossing me a number of solos (notably on “sex machine”), and was warmly complimentary afterwards. needless to say, i was thrilled to bits. many white blues performers who, we are told, bring their own “authenticity” to their craft, display a mad craving for approval from black listeners and black artists . . . if white blues is autonomous and self-authenticating [as purported to be], why is black approval needed? paul garon ( ; ) honestly, it wasn’t “black” approval that meant so much to me that evening. rather, like anyone seeking corroboration of their capabilities, whether in art, business, sport, or education — it was the master’s expert endorsement that i was after. fairbairn returned from new york with tremendous news. the act (now going by the name prism) had been picked up by ariola records in the united states, and by grt in canada. then, surprisingly, before ever having performed live on stage as a group — our first single “spaceship superstar” charted top-ten coast-to-coast in canada, reaching # in several major markets. “it’s gonna take a lot of time, travel, and hard work,” said fairbairn. “but it’s a solid shot at the big prize — are you in?” like many quotes cited in the dissertation, the above is referenced from an unpaginated online source. founded in , ariola america (also known as ariola and ariola-eurodisc) was the u.s. subsidiary of the german-based bmg record label, which is today controlled internationally by the sony music entertainment corporation. canadian subsidiary of general recorded tape (grt) a defunct american label which owned chicago-based chess records from to (purchased from leonard and phil chess for $ . m). written by jim vallance under the pseudonym rodney higgs. at twenty seven years-old — i wasn’t getting any younger. newly married, with family responsibilities on the horizon, i had to make a seriously important decision. sure, it was a deliberately contrived, shamelessly commercial pop-music project, and nothing at all like “the blues” — but hey . . . “it’s now or never!” i rationalized. “a real chance at show-biz success.” so, with eyes wide open, and fingers tightly crossed, i signed on for the duration. prism’s first two shows were in portland and seattle backing up the anglo- american band foreigner, followed by a headline slot at the pne coliseum in vancouver. daunted by the prospect of endless touring, drummer vallance quickly left the fold, preferring instead to remain home and nurture his studio career. but former seeds of time drummer rocket norton was immediately taken on board as his replacement. our first serious foray into the u.s. market was in washington, d.c., third on the bill to the seattle-based group heart. from there we went to chicago’s far north end and a show with the j. geils band at the fabled aragon ballroom (after which tom lavin and i jammed at kingston mines, a blues bar near famed wrigley field). then it was the royal oak theatre in detroit backing up joe cocker, followed by keil auditorium in st. louis with tower of power. began in santa monica, california, where we picked-up our brand-new tour bus, a sleek atlanta-based golden eagle with georgia license plates and all the latest high-tech bells and whistles. for the next two years we performed non-stop, from coast-to-coast, in every canadian province, most american states, and following their debut hit “cold as ice,” released on atlantic records, written by lou gramm and mick jones. built (since ) by eagle international inc. of brownsville, texas. virtually every major u.s. city. usually we played in support of currently popular bands like styx on their “grand illusion” tour, or meatloaf on his maiden “bat out of hell” excursion. now and then, however, we’d branch out and do our own independent concerts, and especially in canada where we were most successful. in due course i learned a few things about the music industry. about agents, lawyers, publicists, and accountants. about police, security guards, limousine drivers, and labour unions (afof m, teamsters, and iatse). about record companies, record executives, a&r people, producers, promoters, radio programmers, and on-air personalities. and about making records: compression, equalization, noise reduction, microphone placement, distortion management, and dolby. plus disc mastering, vinyl pressing, point of purchase retail, rack-jobbing, and wholesale distribution. then, of course, always lurking behind the scenes, there was the criminal element, the thick-necked guys with flashy gold jewelry, porsches, bentleys, and rolls royces — plus the booze, the women, the drugs, the money laundering, and “payola” (the s version of which involved cocaine, not cash). prism played loud and proud in the gilded rock-star fashion of the day, and the adulation received was well enjoyed. nevertheless, despite the glamour and the ego-boosting rewards, i rather missed the down-and-dirty blues highway. touring the american heartland nonetheless left me with a solid geographic the international alliance of theatrical stage employees. acronym for “artist and repertoire,” traditionally the record company department dedicated to producing musical product. in , influential new york dj allen freed was indicted for accepting bribes from record companies to play specific records, and for unfairly promoting records which paid him royalties as co-writer (notably “maybellene” by chuck berry). sense of how blues music had initially come into existence. for example, i remember traveling down from st. louis, missouri on i- , and entering memphis, tennessee from across the river in arkansas. we stayed at the upscale rivermont hotel, perched high on a bluff above the mississippi. help me, information, get in touch with my marie. she’s the only one who’d phone me here from memphis, tennessee. her home is on the south side, high up on a ridge, just a half a mile from the mississippi bridge. memphis in remains memorable for a number of reasons. first, it was my very first trip to the american south. second, it was very, very hot ( º f. at midnight) and unbearably muggy. third, the memphis police department was on strike, with a citywide : pm curfew and streets patrolled by the tennessee national guard. fourth, it was the first anniversary of elvis presley’s death, and the town was full of heartbroken housewives from around the globe. and finally, to top things off, our hotel was home-base for the annual southern black gospel quartet convention, with the elevators and hallways positively ringing with godly vocals. there’ll be peace in the valley for me . . . dear lord. rev. thomas a. dorsey, prism’s management felt it prudent to bring us home every several months to write and record our follow-up albums. amen! with a baby on the way (son beau,our first of three) this was particularly important for leslie and me. excerpted lyric, from “mempohis” written by chuck berry, released in on chess records. august excerpted lyric, from “peace in the valley,” written in by thomas a. dorsey. originally comosed for mahalia jackson, it was a hit in for red foley and the sunshine boys, becoming first gospel recording to sell over a million copies. thomas andrew dorsey ( - ). known as “the father of gospel music,” dorsey began his lengthy and illustrious career as boogie-woogie piano player georgia tom.” our contract called for a fresh lp every months. and, given my male forebears’ rather dubious performances in the role (pp - ), i was especially determined to be a responsible, loving parent. the ankor bar was a trendy casablanca-style nightspot on the easternmost edge of vancouver’s gastown district. nightly entertainment there typically featured an imported african american piano player/singer (preferably elderly) backed by a local trio. the gig paid surprisingly well for a local establishment, and it was great fun too. drummer chris “the wrist” nordquist from edmonton was a good pal. and pittsburgh-born bass man wyatt “bull” ruther, having performed with the likes of dave brubeck, errol garner, buddy rich, chico hamilton and miles davis et al, was a seriously credentialed jazzer. so, between and , whenever not on tour with prism, i made a decent wage performing with seminal jazz/blues piano greats like sammy price, jay mcshann, laffeyette leake, dorothy donegan, lloyd glenn, and “big joe” duskin. big joe ( - ), the son of a hard-core southern baptist preacher from cincinnati, was a relatively late-blooming professional. “i promised my father that i’d hold off playing boogie-woogie music for a living until after he died,” he said, “but i didn’t figure on the old man living to be a hundred and four!” - - - - - known by pals as “dusky.” his pet name for me was “windy” (a mispronunciation of “lindsay”) a mature rookie, in his mid-fifties but just getting started in the business, joe played in the old-school, barrelhouse style of albert ammons and johnny johnson. a big man, with massive hands — his touch on the piano keyboard was contrastingly feather light. he played all the standard jazz and blues tunes, plus a few unusual ones — like “north of alaska” (sic) a piano-boogie inspired by white country-western singer johnny horton’s hit. “how come you do that one joe?” i asked. “that’s pure cracker-head c&w.” “i don’t know,” he said. “i just heard it on the radio way back and dug it.” “you used to listen to country music radio? in cincinnati?” “yeah, back in the s. we all did.” “in the black community?” “sure, why not? it’s all the same. good tunes is good tunes.” joe’s performance was peculiar in another respect. despite being highly skilled and experienced, he’d occasionally lose track of the beat. not the overall rhythm, which remained constant and forceful throughout. but he’d drop bars, or half- bars, and sometimes in the oddest places. consequently, some of his twelve-bar tunes would turned out to be eleven and a half or thirteen metric units long. accordingly, i learned that things don’t have to be absolutely perfect in order to chicago-born albert ammons ( - ) was a seminal african american boogie-woogie pianist. west virginia-born johnnie clyde johnson ( - ) was an african american boogie-woogie piano player and blues musician, noted for his work for sun records of memphis), and in particular for his contribution to the chuck berry ouevre. los angeles born, texas raised john gale horton ( - ), american country-wester singer best known for “saga songs” like “north to alaska,” “the battle of new orleans,” and “sink the bismark.” be absolutely wonderful. prism was a huge commercial success c. . our first three lps had gone triple-platinum in canada, winning back-to-back juno awards and setting records for domestic sales. on the road, our time was divided between canada, where we headlined coast to coast and thus realized tidy profit, and the united states, where we continued to labour in a back-up role. eagerly anticipating the arrival of a substantial royalty cheque from grt records, leslie and i went house hunting, and found a lovely -bdrm home in vancouver’s leafy dunbar neighbourhood. it had a fully finished in-law suite for her elderly mother, french windows opening off the master bedroom onto a south facing deck, and a spacious tree-lined back yard — for $ , . our offer was accepted, with a decent period for completion. then, fully confident in our family’s financial future, i went back out on the road with the band. our next performance was in montréal, at the fabled forum on the southeast corner of rue atwater et ste-catherine (a dream come true for any red-blooded canadian hockey fan). in stark contrast to the seeds of time’s humble accommodations a decade earlier, this time we were booked into the -star ritz carleton à rue sherbrooke ouest, with a limousine reserved for our private use — hrs a day (just in case). arriving in town on the day of the show, we were (as usual) greeted at the airport by a phalanx of record company representatives, then escorted downtown to not so much in the usa. canada’s version of the grammy, for “best album” ( ) and “best group” ( ). likely worth around $ . million today. home to the nhl’s montreal canadiens from - . popular english-language fm radio station chom for an on-air promotional interview. the station manager bade us warm welcome. “bonjour,” he said. “please sit down.” “thanks for having us.” i said. “merci!” “i’m afraid we have something rather distressing to tell you,” he continued, glancing tentatively around at his colleagues. “pardonnez-moi.” “there’s been a death threat.” “you’re kidding?!” “seriously! no joke! our receptionist received several phones earlier today indicating that somebody in prism is going to get shot, on stage, at the forum, tonight!” “sacre bleu!” i exclaimed, invoking the venerable yogi. it’s like deja-vu — all over again!” informed of our arrival, a senior metro police officer stopped by the station to advise us regarding security. one of many quirky quotes attributed to legendary st. louis, missouri-born baseball legend lawrence peter “yogi” berra (b. ) “henceforth!” he declared. “you are under our protection.” comprenez?” our limousine back to the ritz-carleton was accompanied by officers on motorcycles, and the hotel lobby, elevators, and hallways were also closely guarded. similarly, our hospitality suite at the forum (adjacent to les canadiens’ dressing room) was brimming with uniformed interlopers. “when the shooting starts,” offered one particularly sarcastic, kevlar-vested, uzi- toting swat cop, “just duck behind your amps . . . ” but just like before in prince george — nothing happened (no shots, no injuries, no fatalities). this time, however, we were allowed to linger overnight in -star splendour. i called leslie the next morning. apparently she’d received a couple of late-night “heavy breathing” phone calls. ditto the keyboard player’s girlfriend. we figured it was a prank, and pretty much forgot about it. that is, until . . . the new york times: december beatle john lennon slain: shot down outside new york apartment . . . we were in toronto when john lennon was killed, staying at the dowager royal york hotel. a memorial gathering was hastily convened at nathan phillips square, and coverage blanketed the local tv and radio news. naturally curious, i ran down to the lobby and jumped into one of the band’s ever-ready limousines. entering the plaza, the driver idled curbside so i could get out and mingle with the crowd of several thousand listening to seminal english blues-rock singer long john baldry (then a resident of toronto) pay emotional public tribute to his fallen comrade . . . we performed the following evening at similarly storied maple leaf gardens, then worked our way incrementally westward, headlining all the exotic hotspots like thunder bay, brandon, regina, and prince albert. business was booming in canada. america, however, was a tougher nut to crack. so, once again we hit the u.s interstate highway system. stoking the star-maker machine, behind the popular song. joni mitchell, circumnavigating the continent several times, we played with just about every happening act at the time — from ac/dc to blue oyster cult and cheap trick. in pittsburgh we headlined outdoors for , at the city zoo, then fox theatre in atlanta (the heart of jimmy carter’s “new south”) and the warner in washington, d.c. — directly across the street from the white house. at an outdoor fest in charlotte, north carolina, we backed up bleach-blonde disco-maven alicia “i love the nightlife” bridges. and laffeyette, louisiana found us performing at a roadhouse down by the bayou, where the previous evening’s entertainment had been a standup comedy debate between lsd guru timothy leary and former fbi agent (and convicted watergate conspirator) g. gordon liddy. seriously, once again . . . home of the toronto maple leafs nhl hockey club. still standing today (but little used), it was built by maple leafs managing director conn smythe in at a cost of $ . million. excerpted lyric, from “free man in paris” by joni mitchell, on the asylum records lp court and spark. ft. maccleod , alberta-born roberta joan anderson (b. ) is a canadian musician, songwriter, and painter. i kid you not . . . we seemed to be making progress, getting airplay on the radio, and gradually getting our name more widely known. but then, as the story so often goes, the shit hit the fan. the iranian revolution triggered an oil crisis in the united states. while the newly installed islamic republic resumed oil exports, delivery was inconsistent and at a lower volume, thus forcing prices upward. saudi arabia and its other opec partners agreed to increase production to offset the decline. widespread panic nonetheless resulted, driving oil prices skyward, and especially in the united states. (yergin, ) industries reliant upon the use of petroleum products found themselves vulnerable to financial difficulty, even failure. the american music industry, fundamentally predicated on the mass marketing of petroleum-based vinyl discs, was particularly affected. numerous small and mid-sized record companies folded, some forced into bankruptcy, others being taken over by the emerging “big ” music industry cabal of emi, sony, bmg, polygram, wea and mca. our canadian record label grt operated as a branch-plant subsidiary of its u.s. parent. buoyed by the success of both prism and label-mate dan hill, earnings north of the border remained positive and stable. but grt america, strained by a weak domestic roster, exorbitant increases in the cost of vinyl record production, and the looming spectre of economic recession, was forced into bankruptcy, dragging its relatively prosperous canadian division down with it. acronym for the organization of petroleum exporting countries. becoming the “big ” in , with the amalgamation of sony and bmg. toronto-born singer-songwriter daniel grafton "dan" hill iv (b. ), known for his hit “sometimes when we touch.” the news reached us in houston, texas, where we were on tour with the beach boys. our holiday inn, jammed in between two freeway on-ramps, was stinking hot, with snakes lurking in the grass by the pool, and pint-sized lizards hiding under the beds. all we could do was hang around and wait while our absurdly expensive manhattan lawyer attempted to negotiate some sort of last- minute lifesaving contractual arrangement. the phone rang in my room. it was manager bruce allen. “i’ve got good news,” he said, “and bad news.” “hit me,” i replied, steeling for the worst. “grt is bankrupt, and you’ve lost everything.” “everything?” “everything.” “three triple-platinum albums’ worth of royalties?” “yes.” “all gone?” “gone . . .” “so, what’s the good news?” “you’re a free agent. and we’ll be selling to the highest bidder.” leslie, in retrospect, reacted pretty well. the offer on our dream house expired, and, to her credit — she took it like a pro. prism finished the tour, and hobbled home without a canadian recording contract (our u.s. rights still being held by ariola). within months, however, management had hammered out a worldwide deal with capitol records (emi’s american subsidiary). it was literally a “million dollar” transaction, the first of its kind in canada. (norton, ) the catch was (and there’s always a catch) — we had to finance three lps at around $ , each plus buy ourselves out of the american contract with ariola (at around $ , ). consequently, after expenses, our record-shattering deal yielded around $ , per band member. “better than a poke in the eye,” i figured. there’s no business like show business! capitol immediately re-released our final grt album “armageddon,” which had already sold more than , domestic units. in fact, it eventually went on to sell an additional , copies, the royalties from which, though a fraction of the total in default, were nonetheless gratefully accepted. bruce fairbairn, preeminent among prism’s three founding partners (with vallance and myself), left the organization in . we were in the middle of tracking the young and restless lp (our fourth). tensions within the group were at an all-time high. the keyboard player, for instance, refused to perform at all if song title. written in by by irving berlin, for the musical annie get your gun, starring ethel merman. juno award winning album of the year, it was (if not mistaken) canada’s first quadruple-platinum selling lp. double-platinum sales in canada. i was anywhere near the studio, insisting on being overdubbed separately in my scheduled absence. and, if that wasn’t bad enough — band members with no prior track record (or skill) as songwriters (such as the drummer) were insisting on compositional participation. consequently, the work became exceedingly tiresome. fairbairn and i took a break, and went for a walk outside. “i’m moving on, lin,” he said. “it’s all yours now. bruce had been the glue that kept the project together. “great,” i said. “now the inmates can take over the asylum.” the album was only partially completed. consequently, as sole remaining original prism partner, i was handed the task of producing the album’s final mix, which took place over several weeks in los angeles. next, i was invited to supervise mastering of our forthcoming rpm single at capitol records hq in toronto. “finally,” i thought, “a chance to be taken seriously in the business.” booked on the late-night redeye, i arrived at the airport early. with plenty of time to board, i decided to make a last minute phone call to leslie, then a bulging eight months pregnant with second son ian. “i’m having contractions,” she said. “it’s probably nothing, but i’m getting worried. do you really have to go? please don’t.” cover girl, with lyrics inspired by the true-life story of vancouver-born “ playboy playmate of the year” dorothy stratten (murdered by her jealous boyfriend). “wow!” i thought. “talk about a rock and a hard place.” i told bruce allen, who was booked on the same flight. “you have a decision to make,” he said. “it’s either family . . . or career.” “really? one or the other? black or white?” “absolutely! i’ve seen it before. guys get married, settle down, have children, and the whole thing turns to shit.” “are you serious?” “very serious. listen carefully. if you turn your back on this opportunity and go home to your whining pregnant wife — your precious rock-star career is over.” “really? just like that?” “maybe not right away. it might take time . . . a year, eighteen months, maybe two. but before you know it — gone! this is a cutthroat business. if you want to make things happen, you have stay on top of things. you have to be obsessed!” “obsessed?” “priorities man! priorities!” needless to say, i skipped the flight. my priorities were all wrong. a friend of mine from the vancouver suburb of new westminster (where prism singer ron tabak then lived) phoned me the next day at home. “patti and me were just sitting at a window table at the white spot restaurant on th avenue,” he stammered, “and saw ron being chased down the street by two tough-looking biker dudes with baseball bats!” “yikes!” i gulped, and hung up. inquiry revealed that ron was being extorted for $ , , over an inflated debt owed to some mysterious “doctor” in the british properties. prism paid the bill, effectively calling off the dogs, but ron’s relationship with the band (already strained) was damaged beyond repair, and he was let go, replaced by expat american singer henry small. we continued to record under contract with capitol records, mostly in los angeles, but the seeds of our eventual destruction had elsewhere already been sown. punk music emerged as a viable commercial genre in the mid-late s, conceived in aesthetic opposition to the perceived excesses of the mainstream,“corporate” rock music industry. in contrast to the sophisticated commerciality of established rock artists (such as prism), alternative new york-based bands like the new york dolls and the ramones, and london-based oufits like the sex pistols and the clash were instead offering crude, hard-edged, stripped-down instrumentation, and inflammatory, anti-establishment lyrics. moreover, punk culture tended to embody a diy (do it yourself) ethic, with bands typically self-producing their own recordings and distributing them at their concerts or through informal social channels. (keithley, ) an upscale residential enclave in west vancouver. punk-rock c. represented yet another sea-change in musical fashion, a paradigm shift if you will, just as normally occurs across succeeding generations. with the prism brand clearly past its expiry date, and band membership in disarray, i resigned. it was a difficult decision, not taken lightly. despite having had mountainous misgivings at the outset, i’d dedicated myself wholeheartedly to the project, and given it my best years. but in the end . . . there is no armour against fate. james shirley ( - ) when i’d abandoned the seeds of time a decade earlier, being sans orchestre had presented a useful opportunity to pursue alternative modes of artistic expression. but back then i’d been single, and could more easily afford to fool around. this time, however, with a growing family to support (daughter kelly having arrived in january, ), i needed to generate some income — immediately. ironically, the main impediment to me finding steady musical employment in vancouver post-prism — was prism’s very success. that is, having been absent on the road for several years (stoking the starmaker machine), my local street- level “cred” had dwindled in obverse proportion to my vaunted rock-star status. having earned numerous gold and platinum lps, with hit singles on the radio, and sold-out shows at the pacific coliseum — the vancouver music scene no longer regarded me as one of the bunch. a chance meeting at the commodore ballrom with veteran rock-star randy bachman led to several months of productive distraction at his -track studio across the border in washington state. we even did a few shows together, but excerpted from contention of ajax and ulysses ( ) sc. iii. fomerly of the guess who, and bachman turner overdrive (bto). nothing came of it. i played other gigs here and there, either as a sideman in live- performance situations, or as a producer/session player on other people’s recording projects. the work, however, was inconsistent, and finances were becoming strained. but a tardy royalty cheque finally arrived, buying us a little more time (and a brand new volvo station-wagon to safely transport the kids). i am prompted here to recall standing in the foyer of the commodore ballroom one evening, chatting with musician pal jim byrnes and a few other familiar folks, when this stranger sauntered over towards me, vying to get my attention. “hi lindsay” he said now, i don’t wish to sound conceited or pompous in any way, but seriously — in my heyday, in my home town — people used to come up and ask me for my autograph all the time, especially at concerts and public events. so please, forgive me for thinking this guy was just another fan. “hi,” i replied. wearing blue jeans, and a faded t-shirt underneath a rumpled jean jacket, with long stringy blond hair and a stubbly beard, he looked like any one of the five- hundred or so other hosers in attendance. “you don’t remember me, do you?” he said. “no.” i replied, extending my hand. “sorry.” “it’s me,” he said, smiling coyly. “charlie . . . charlie simpson . . . from school.” my jaw dropped. i just stood there. flabbergasted . . . this fellow had just walked over to me, like a regular person, with no apparent physical impediment other than perhaps appearing a bit drunk (unsteady gait, slightly slurred speech, etc). but we were all a bit lubricated that evening, and rather lurching about ourselves, so his slightly wobbly demeanor didn’t seem all that much out of place. “charlie?” i blubbered. “is that you?” “yes,” he chuckled. “it’s me.” “it couldn’t be,” i replied, dumbfounded . “you’re walking upright, fully erect, and talking to me clearly. how on earth?! it’s not possible! what happened?!” “i’m a junkie,” he said. “heroin. it’s the only thing that works.” “huh?” “well, the diazepams and the various other synthetic substitutes aren’t nearly as effective in relieving the spasticity as straight heroin. sure, the street stuff is of inconsistent quality, and there’s increased risk of overdosing, but at least the opiates are organic — much healthier in the long run.” i looked him straight in the eye, astonished at his articulation. granted, his pupils were tiny black pins and he had that characteristic flat junkie facial expression. but the upside was — he was damn near normal, not completely perhaps, but a damn sight more normal than anyone at school ever thought he could be. “unbelievable!” i croaked, and gave him a great big hug. “i’d like you to meet my girlfriend,” he said, introducing me to a pretty but tough looking young woman with conspicuous tattoos and a similarly opiated countenance. “nice to meet you,” she said, gently shaking my hand and leaning over to give charlie an affectionate peck on the cheek. “we’re a good team,” she winked, not unsubtly taking credit for supplying the aforementioned contraband. “charlie has a girlfriend?!” i exclaimed, not wishing to seem rude, but with almost celebratory glee. “congratulations!” “thanks,” he said. “it works for me.” grateful to be blessed with three normal healthy children (beau, ian, and kelly), leslie decided that the family should be going to church, unilaterally deciding to join a burgeoning nonconformist denomination. though unbelieving myself, as a dutiful spouse, i agreed to accompany her in support. it was an interesting experience, and i did get to meet a lot of people whom i otherwise might never have encountered. among them was a visiting brother from west africa, who was attending graduate school at ubc. an amateur musician in his native country, he had asked church elders if there was anybody in the congregation with whom he might commiserate artistically, and was sent to chat with me. he was blacker than black, and spoke with a clipped west african accent. note: artie simmons died in , age , of natural causes. an expression dating to th century england, referring to any denomination other than church of england or roman catholic. “i’ve heard about this music called the blues,” he said. “can you teach it to me?” “wow!” i thought. “this is weird.” i gave it a go, but didn’t have much success, as he was completely unfamiliar with the african american canon and couldn’t “swing” to save his life. . plus, being a devout christian, he was clearly uncomfortable with blues music’s traditional employment of sexual innuendo and voodoo-inspired hyperbole. i walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, i got a cobra snake for a necktie a brand new house on the road side, and it’s a-made out of rattlesnake hide got a band new chimney put on top, and it’s a-made out of human skull come on take a little walk with me baby, (tell me) who do you love? who do you love? bo diddley, the kids were growing up fast and, in order that they might enjoy a contiguous k- school experience (unlike their maladaptive male parental unit), i was determined that we remain living in the same comfortable neighbourhood that my previous rock-star status had afforded. accordingly, they were encouraged to participate in organized team sports, like soccer, basketball, and baseball. leslie and i were active volunteer parents at every level, even serving on the executive of the west point grey little league. as head grounds keeper, it was a peculiar temporal phenomenon seen to result from the interaction between “odd” ( ) and “even” ( ) numbered beats , best represented in the blues as / “shuffle” time. voodoo, from “vodun” - an afro-caribbean animistic religion. who do you love, written by bo diddley (elias mcdaniel), released on checker records in . my job to deal with the vancouver parks board, making sure we had enough diamonds for our rapidly expanding membership. i was also responsible for making sure they were well-groomed and safe to play on. essentially unemployed, with plenty of spare time on my hands, i became oddly prepossessed with manicuring the infield grass and the pitcher’s mound, maintaining the outfield, and laying out perfectly straight, crisp white foul-lines. it was demanding physical work, but zen-like and contemplative in its own way, its trance-inducing tedium mercifully ameliorating my post-prism funk. then, dewdrop early one bright sunday morning, while admiring the unspoiled geometry of my pre-game labours, in full-on field of dreams clarity, i heard the disembodied voice of willie dixon echoing across time . . . stay true to the blues son . . . and the blues will stay true to you. leaning forward on my trusty rake, i was prompted to recall those weeks spent with him on the road decades earlier. i hadn’t properly understood what he was talking about back then, being so much younger after all. but now, years later, it seemed to make more sense. his words of wisdom, masquerading as avuncular chitchat, felt like time-release knowledge capsules, belatedly streaming through my unsettled psyche. yes, i’d been unfaithful — mea culpa — and was clearly the worse for it. a veteran bluesician, and a decent one too, somewhere along the way i’d lost my cutting edge, and was in need of a good honing. alluding to the phrase “build it . . . and they will come.” from the universal pictures film field of dreams, based on the novel shoeless joe, written by canadian author w.p. kinsella. definition of the term “hone” invokes the common english word “home,” as in to “hone in” on a particular idea or an aesthetic. an alternative meaning recalls the old norse “hun,” meaning “whetstone,” as in “to sharpen.” sure, it’s easy to play the blues — badly. optimal performance, however, is another story. so i resolved to “humble myself before the genre” as one might normally do in church. (murray, ; in hill, ) former kitsilano all-star colleague jack lavin ran the saturday afternoon jam session at the yale hotel, long recognized as vancouver’s unofficial “home of the blues.” getting in line with all the others weekend warriors, i gradually worked my way back into the scene. jamming regularly at the yale got my “chops” back up, and helped restore my sense of professional place. the most fundamental of all existential imperatives [is] affirmation, which is to say reaffirmation and continuity in the face of adversity. reaffirmation is precisely the contingency upon which the very survival of man as human being, however normally unsatisfied or abnormally wretched, is predicated. albert murray ( , ) with a view to stirring up some decent local gigs, i decided to organize an r&b quartet comprising two women (drums and sax) and two men (bass and lead guitar) called the exceptions. in addition to being capable instrumentalists, we each sang (both lead and ensemble) and our -way, male/female choral blend was extremely effective. we quickly found work in vancouver’s cosmopolitan downtown core. but the suburbs were another story. one day i received a call from our booking agent. “we have a problem out in ladner,” he said. “the manager says some of his revellie nixon - drums, kirsten nash - saxophone, william taylor - bass, and myself on guitar. customers have complained.” “about what?” “it’s not the music,” he said. “that’s fine. it’s just that . . . i don’t know exactly how to put this but . . . apparently someone there was uncomfortable with the idea of two men and two women performing on stage together.” “i don’t understand. what exactly do you mean?” “well, according to them, it looks like two couples up there.” “and how is that a problem?” “w w . . . well,” he stammered, “william, your bass player . . . is black.” “you’re kidding?!” i croaked, in utter disbelief at where the conversation appeared to be heading. “it’s up to you,” replied the agent — clearly implying that in order for the band to get steady work outside the downtown core i’d have to hire an additional white guy . . . or find someone else to play bass. “isn’t that against the law?” i said, referring to canada’s charter of rights and freedoms (with which i was then only vaguely familiar). “it’s not me!” protested the agent. “i know it’s wrong. but i can’t force people to hire you guys.” “it’s !” i bellowed into the phone, “and in vancouver, british columbia for christ’s sake! not selma fucking alabama! what are these these racist assholes thinking?!” in the united states, americans are so blatant about racial prejudice. you can fight it, because they call you “nigger” and they segregate you out loud and clear. but the racism in canada is so subtle, and so elusive you can’t really pin it down. dorothy nealy, (in compton, , ) the exceptions gamely soldiered on. but with gigs in short supply, we drifted apart, eventually calling it quits altogether. too bad. it was a shit hot little combo. baldry, byrnes & billy the mid- s found me puttering around with a number of ill-fated projects. then, one day, out of the blue, i met bill cowsill ( - ). brother billy came from a once prominent american show-business family . . . formed in the spring of by four brothers from newport, rhode island (bill, bob, john, and barry), the cowsills were a family singing group specializing in what would later be defined as “bubblegum pop.” inspired by the everly brothers and later the beatles, their career began in canton, ohio, where father and manager bill sr. (bud) cowsill served as a recruiter for the u.s. navy. signed by mgm records in , the brothers were quickly joined by their siblings susan and paul and their mother barbara to form “america’s first family of song.” the newly reconstituted group’s first hit on mgm was ’s “the rain, the park and other things,” with lead vocals by eldest brother bill. reaching # on billboard magazine’s hot- chart, it sold more than three million copies domestically. ’s “indian lake” was similarly well received, as was their multi-million selling version of the title song from the musical hair (also featuring bill on lead vocals). between and , the cowsills averaged performances per year. their many network television appearances included the ed sullivan show, the tonight show with johnny carson, american bandstand, the mike douglas show, playboy after dark,, kraft music hall, and the johnny cash show. particularly noted for their ability to sing multiple-part harmonies with remarkable accuracy (in the tradition of other famous sibling ensembles like the mills brothers, the andrews sisters, the jackson , the bee gees, and the beach boys) they were one of most popular musical acts in america. in , screen gems approached the family to portray themselves in their own tv sitcom. however, when told that the role of their mother was to be played by actress shirley jones - they balked, and the deal fell through. the show went on to be called the partridge family, and enjoyed a successful four-year run on abc television. in late , while performing in las vegas, bill was fired from the group by his father (for smoking marijuana). by , with barbara, paul, and susan also having left the group, the “first-family of song” had disappeared from america’s pop-culture radar. legend has it that, after leaving the cowsill family band in , billy kicked around the los angeles music scene for a while, carousing with musician pals warren zevon and waddy wachtel. his wife consequently left, taking infant son travis. then, sadly unable to re-brand a career smeared by the dismissive descriptor “bubblegum,” and having effectively burnt all his personal and professional bridges, bill fled to austin, texas, where he cashed in his remaining royalties and bought a bar. “i drank it dry,” he later confessed. from there he traveled straight north, all the way up to canada’s northwest territories, where he found winter work riding shotgun on semi-trailer rigs traversing the ice-bridge between yellowknife and hay river. with the coming of spring, and the closing (melting) of the road, he headed south to edmonton, where he bumped into promoter/publicist sarah seigel, an old friend of mine. “tell me sarah,” i once asked. “is it true that you met billy when you were driving down the street in edmonton, saw a pair of cowboy boots sticking out of a snow bank, pulled him free, and drove him to the hospital to treat his frostbitten chicago-born rock singer, composer, and musician warren william zevon ( - ), noted for his sardonic song lyrics (eg: werewolves of london, ). new york-born rock musician and record producer robert "waddy" wachtel (b. ) at alberta-born singer-songwriter betty (chaba) mcdamiel’s funeral. fingers?” “not exactly,” she said. “actually, i was waiting in line at my bank when this dark-eyed stranger wandered in and crashed right through a plate glass window, cutting himself to ribbons . . . and i drove him to the hospital to get all bandaged up.” “close enough.” after briefly connecting with the edmonton musical community (which then included eighteen year-old ingenue k.d. lang), bill wound his way down to vancouver. my good friend mitzi gibbs (sadly deceased) was well known for taking in strays. in fact, we first met back in the late s, in old montréal, when she was nursing displaced american folk-singer jesse winchester. one morning i dropped by her house in kitsilano for some coffee and a chat, and saw a pair of cowboy boots conspicuously parked outside her bedroom door. i’d heard the local buzz about this “cowsill dude” (new in town, sings up a storm) and intuitively figured it must be him. a few stiff javas later and . . . bill and i are strumming and singing around the kitchen table, all jacked-up on the music, and resolved to find a gig together somewhere. trimbles restaurant, a floundering west side eatery operated by expat irish american raconteur bill moran (won from previous owner demetrios mitsotakis in a backgammon game), was a perfect spot. the act started out as just the two of us, with billy singing lead and me providing vocal and guitar accompaniment. but elmar spanier soon fell in on upright bass, louisiana-born musician and songwriter james ridout winchester (b. ). on the northeast corner of th avenue and trimble street. and together we played mui copacetic. at first it was just one night a week, then two, then three, and pretty soon there were lineups around the block to catch our strangely compelling little combo. one patron facetiously commented that, whereas our overall performance was technically superlative, the endings to some of our songs sounded like a “trainwreck,” and the name stuck. the trimbles gig lasted several months, generating a loyal and enthusiastic following, but things eventually got so rowdy that the neighbours complained to the authorities. so, with a view to keeping the peace, the trainwreck’s residency was necessarily truncated. no amount of hyperbole can do billy cowsill justice as a singer. simply put, his was “the voice of god.” speaking in hyperbole is comely in nothing but love. francis bacon (attr.) don’t take my word for it. internet tributes to the man’s memory abound. for example, in calgary, alberta (where bill died in ) a naive but well-meaning community group is seeking to preserve the rental property in which he lived. and, an online petition promoting the cowsill family as “forefront in the evolution of country rock,” seeks their induction into the rock and roll hall of fame. american spanish for “extremely satisfactorily.” francis bacon ( - ), english lawyer and philosopher. www.stellarshowcase.durham.on.ca/billycowsill.html www.calgaryheritage.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p= &sid=d f db f f e aa f www.petitiononline.com/tchof /petition.html>. the rock & roll hall of fame is located in cleveland, ohio. cowsill made everyone he worked with a better singer, a better musician. don freeman (in brock, ) billy cowsill brought a sense of wonder to everyone. neil macgonigall (ibid.) the trainwreck performed together in and around vancouver for the better part of a decade, guesting with roy orbison at expo ; with gene pitney at the orpheum; backing up the shirelles, del shannon, and bo diddley at the commodore ballroom; and at countless restaurants, pubs, nightclubs, galleries, theatres, and private functions. plus, we recorded extensively (the bulk of which remains unreleased). we were a minimalist outfit: acoustic guitar, “doghouse” bass, and electric guitar. and each of us sang. we weren’t really a blues band, more like a skiffle or rockabilly group — but with a shitload of folk, r&b, brit-pop, and old- school c&w thrown in. haunted by events and circumstances in his life, bill had a deep dark side, and often would retreat into impenetrable blackness. but daemons notwithstanding, his level of performance remained remarkably consistent over time. he was the real deal . . . guys like that don’t come on trees. he was one of a kind . . . he had this really unique take on music . . . it was a really bizarre thing . . . very few people have it . . . you had to see him live to really get him . . . he just brought unbelievable emotions to it, incredible pitch, incredible tone. it was like he came from outer space or something. he was like perfect all the time. john mackey, (in brock ) acoustic upright double bass. vancouver sun music columnist and critic john mackey. i recall one day bemoaning my earlier commercial success with prism, and how playing in a contrived, pop-rock group had served to compromise my status as an honest, working-class bluesician. “really?” countered bill. “try being a twenty year-old rocker in a bubblegum band with both your baby sister and your mother . . . now that’s humiliation!” bill was a recovering alcoholic, and i never ever once saw him take a drink. his main problem was with pain medication — both prescribed and purloined. plus he was bipolar — a volatile combination. as mutual pal jim byrnes once affectionately observed, bill’s was “an exquisite blend of mental illness and substance abuse.” indeed, the man was truly extraordinary, and knowing him has left an indelible mark, both professionally and personally. most of all, i found out that magic indeed does exist, and that god’s gift to mankind sometimes comes wrapped in deeply flawed packages. what is most original in a man’s nature is often that which is most desperate. leonard cohen (beautiful losers) sons ian and beau were ten and twelve years-old, and daughter kelly was coming up on eight. the west point grey little league decided to hold a fund-raising dance at nearby queen mary elementary school where all three kids were attending. naturally, being in the music business, i was asked to arrange the evening’s entertainment. provided with a decent budget, i rounded up a first-rate cast of local performers. billy instantly volunteered, as did jim byrnes, who brought along his dinner guest john hammond. byrnes is an interesting story. originally from st. louis, he emigrated to canada following a stint with u.s. forces in vietnam, ending up on vancouver island, near the town of nanaimo. on february , he was involved in automobile accident, losing both legs to above-the-knee amputation. (mitchell, ) jim and i met at oil can harry’s nightclub later that year, on halloween, shortly following his initial convalescence. i was playing the upstairs room with the seeds of time, and he was doing a sit-down set of solo blues in the main lounge. we hit it off right away, united in our appreciation for blues music, and remain friends today, occasionally even performing together. his soulful authenticity, reflecting the unrelenting struggle to overcome the burden of his physical handicap, reminds me some of brother billy. his career success, triumphantly proclaiming the triumph of perseverance over adversity, is an enduring testament to the power of the living blues. (ibid.) byrnes and billy notwithstanding, the real star of the show that evening was legendary english bluesman “long john” baldry ( - ), who’d been living in vancouver since the late s. blessed with a deep, rich voice, john stood a towering ’ ” tall. inspired as a teenager by african american bluesmaster big bill broonzy, and by john lomax’s early field-trip recordings of the legendary leadbelly, he was one of the first british vocalists to sing blues music. new york-born john paul hammond (b. ), son of legendary record producer john hammond, jr. ( - ), is a reknowned blues singer and guitarist. mississippi-born big bill broonzy ( - ) was a prolific american folk-blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. mississippi-born john avery lomax ( - ) was a noted american teacher, musicologist and folklorist. louisiana-born huddie william ledbetter ( - ) was an iconic american folk-blues musician and songwriter, noted for his strong vocals and virtuosity on the -string guitar. john baldry’s seminal lp recording r&b at london’s marquee club (with alexis korner’s band blues incorporated) is widely regarded as the very first british blues recording. eric clapton has said that he was inspired to become a blues musician after seeing baldry perform live. (schumacher, ) brit-rock luminaries mick jagger, jack bruce, charlie watts, brian jones, keith richard, and elton john were each at various times in his employ. and the rolling stones’ first major london concert (at the marquee) was in support of baldry. (stewart, ; baldry, ; oldham, , ; meyers, ) in , baldry joined the cyril davies r&b all-stars with guitarist jimmy page (later of led zeppelin), and nicky hopkins on piano. re- styled as long john baldry and his hoochie coochie men (following davies’ untimely death in ), the group’s traditional r&b revue styled lineup featured a young rod stewart, who was recruited on the spot when baldry heard him busking a muddy waters song at a london railway station. next, with the addition of organist brian auger and singer julie driscol, came steam packet. found baldry fronting bluesology, an r&b revue featuring young reginald dwight (aka: elton john) on keyboards. (ibid.) his recording of “when the heartaches begin” soared to # in the u.k. charts. a syrupy commercial-pop ballad in the mode of an englebert humperdink or matt munro, it yielded a weekly bbc television variety program and broad nationwide popularity. but his loyal blues fans were less than impressed, and accused him of selling out. “it was the hit that ruined my career” he bemoaned in conversation some years later. (baldry, ) emigrating to america in , where “heartaches” had received scant airplay, and where his reputation as a legitimate bluesman consequently remained unsullied by mainstream pop success, he lived at various times in new york, los angeles, and toronto. finally settling in vancouver, british columbia (his home for the next years) he continued to record and tour extensively, in north america, the u.k., scandinavia, and europe. john william “long john” baldry died june , in vancouver general hospital, following a four-month battle with a severe chest infection (contracted while on tour in the u.k.). his cremated remains were later returned to london. (meyers, ) on the pye label, written by tony macauley and john mcleod. john and i met at one of his legendary birthday parties, held annually at his expansive kitsilano penthouse. when it was discovered that we’d both lived in the same north london neighbourhood (near canon’s park, in whitchurch lane) and had been assigned to downer grammar school (though roughly a decade apart), we were off and running — our well-lubricated vocal duet later that evening bringing down the house. rule britannia! rule the fucking waves! britons never ever shall be fucking slaves! we became firm friends, but only occasionally performed together (his regular guitar man tony robertson being more than capable). in addition to collaborating with jim byrnes and billy cowsill on the little league dance, we produced a show for the vancouver sea festival on the old expo site, a benefit for ex- vancouver mayor sam sullivan’s disabled sailing foundation, and a gala fund- raiser for department store heiress jacqui cohen’s face the world foundation beside brit-pop legend sir tom jones (a terrific bluesman in his own right). john and i were dining out one evening at a local brit-style pub (he loved his english roast beef and yorkshire pudding), and started talking about dear old willie dixon, whom he’d known since the american folk blues festival tours of europe in the early s. “did you go to his funeral?” i inquired. “who was there? what was it like?” “goodness no!” he gasped, his face turning white. “i couldn’t possibly have.” “why not?” the disabled sailing foundation of b.c. (dsb-bc) founde by sullivan in . headquatered at the jericho sailing centre. http://www.disabledsailingbc.org “don’t you know?!” he exclaimed, as if in pain. “haven’t you heard?!” “heard what?” “well,” he said, trying to compose himself, “i was visiting willie at his home in california. his wife marie had made tea and laid out some lovely pastries, and he and i were having a wonderful time chatting about the good old days in london. then, it was time to go, and we were saying goodbye at his front door, and he had a heart attack and collapsed dead in my arms!!” “yikes!” i said. “that’s terrible. but you shouldn’t beat yourself up. it wasn’t your fault.” “i know,” he said. “i’m just getting over it now.” unfinished business eldest son beau was in grade , at lord byng secondary. a talented sixteen year-old basketball player ( ’ ” and lbs), he was also an outstanding student, confidently projecting that by graduation he’d have read the entire western canon “from homer to kerouac.” and responsible too — he took a part-time job in gr. , stuffing chickens in the delicatessen at the safeway on oak street near the old-money enclave of shaughnessy. but, less than a month later, safeway staff throughout b.c went on strike, and beau dutifully hit the picket line with his fellow workers. one saturday afternoon, after completing his assigned shift, he came home, slammed the door loudly, and stormed straight up to his room (normally he’d have headed straight for the fridge). “what’s the matter kid?” i inquired at dinner. “you wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “try me,” i replied. “well . . . there we were . . . standing outside the store with our signs, and this middle-aged woman dripping with diamonds and wearing a fur coat drives by in a huge black mercedes, rolls down her window and starts shaking her fist and shouting at us, like ‘get back to work you lazy good for nothings. who do you think you are? you should be ashamed of yourselves.’” “it’s not about me!” he continued, barely managing to control himself. “i’m just a kid from the neighbourhood, living at home with his parents. but there i am, standing next to karen, a hardworking single-mother, with two kids to support, struggling to get by on shiftwork at the meat counter, and this rich bitch has the nerve to insult her — just because she has to drive a little farther for her fucking foix gràs! what the hell is wrong with these people?” “settle down sonny,” i said. “you’re gonna hurt yourself.” “argh!” he grunted, digging into a plate of his mother’s lasagna. “i suppose then,” i ventured, “that this wouldn’t be the best time to tell you that, on the strength of both your excellent grades and your basketball skills, saint george’s school (a nearby exclusive academy) has offered you a scholarship.” “really?” he muttered, chugging down a gallon container of milk. “yup. what do you think?” he thought for a second, then looked up. “listen dad. it’s very tempting. but, i don’t think so. they’re not our people. it would only bring pain.” and interesting response, given his great-grandmother laurel’s similar misgivings long ago. aah . . . from the mouths of babes. in , i finally decided to pursue the post-secondary education that i’d run away from as a teenager. starting off at langara college, i enrolled in an asian studies program offering courses in pacific rim languages, politics, cultural history and geography. meanwhile, with the kids in school and leslie attending university full-time (ubc), i still had to work full-time. the emotional, physical and financial strain was excruciating. indeed, if it hadn’t been for nurse wendy at langara’s drop-in medical clinic, who allowed me to take naps between classes in one of their dead-quiet, pitch-black examination rooms in the back — i wouldn’t have made it. upon accumulating the required number of transfer credits, i moved on to rd year studies in the faculty of arts at ubc ( rd year), graduating in with a b.a. in political science. and it might have ended there, had i not already become addicted to education. armed with a decent grade-point average, i managed to gain admittance to a m.a. program in adult education (also at ubc), where i came across a study examining occupational deviance from the point of view of “dance musicians” in chicago c. - . (becker, ) impressed by its plain-speaking academic writing style, i was tempted to produce a comparable thesis from a contemporary “musicianeering” perspective, but instead (at the last minute) decided to write about a crisis in ubc’s faculty of education that i’d encountered in my role as student society (ams) ombudsperson. student teachers at ubc were complaining in surprisingly large numbers, especially regarding problems encountered during their -week, march-april practicums. the complainants (n , mostly female) were fearful of reprisal from the teacher education office (teo), particularly regarding prospects for future employment. prompted to look outside the faculty of education, they came to my office for advice and assistance. my job, essentially, was to smooth things over and help everyone get along. ongoing tensions nonetheless prevailed. my thesis, a narrative exercise gently chiding education for bureaucratic bullying and institutional hubris, received high praise. (mitchell, ) respectfully rendered, it nonetheless did touch a nerve, with some of the more defensive- minded senior faculty taking palpable offense (ironically corroborating its point). don’t shoot! i’m only the guitar player. meanwhile, as sole family breadwinner, i had to divide my concentration between home and school, ombudsing, and full-time musicianeering. decent in-town gigs were hard to come by, so i was occasionally obliged to go out “on the road” with a touring band, often missing classes for weeks at a time. my instructors were accommodating, however, and i managed to maintain decent grades. but something had to give, and leslie’s and my -year marriage, already strained, began to unravel. my father, denis mitchell, died in . he’d always been a hard man to know, and we’d never been particularly close. divorced from my mother for thirty-five years (and never remarried), he’d fallen out with my two younger sisters — so the job of holding his hand while he died fell to me. it was tough. very sad. but hey, that’s life. i believe he did try to make things right at in the end, but he simply couldn’t find the words, successive strokes having wiped away his thoughts. i told him things were okay, and that, being a parent myself, i understood . . . a father is a man who fails every day. michael chabon ( ) a reference to the lp don’t shoot me: i’m only the piano player released on mca records by british singer/songwriter elton john. interviewed by dave mcginn in the globe & mail, october . he apologized for “perhaps being a little too hard” on me. and, as if to make amends, left a modest inheritance. accordingly, i decided to take leslie and the kids (then , and ) on a trip to london and paris, hoping it might rejuvenate our spirits. baldry had left for the u.k. just a week earlier, where he’d been scheduled to perform a series of concerts with brit-pop legends the manfreds. contracted on the condition that he perform the song he most detested — “when the heartaches begin” — john wasn’t exactly relishing the thought. “ugh!” he grunted, just prior to departure. “i suppose i must, you know . . . give them what they want.” the next day i got a frantic phone call from baldry’s partner oz. apparently their vancouver dry-cleaners had delivered only part of john’s stage wardrobe, and he was wondering (as i was headed that way) if i might consider hand delivering a suit bag containing the remainder. happy to oblige, i called john upon arrival. “how’s it going?” i said. “all right, i suppose . . . if only those damned newspaper reporters would just leave me alone!” “that’s great john! at least they’re talking about you.” “it’s not me!” he snorted. “it’s that sir fat bloody reg. “who?” the manfred mann band sans manfred, but featuring the doo wah diddy man - paul jones.. “elton bloody john! that’s who! ever since reg got his precious knighthood, they’ve been hounding me, trying to get the lowdown, mostly about his drug use. well i’ve never seen him take any sort of drug — ever! and they’re not getting any dirt from me!” “good on you old boy,” i said. “fuck ‘em!” leaving leslie and the kids to amuse themselves for the evening in central london (they went dancing at the ministry of sound in elephant and castle), i took the train an hour south to the civic auditorium in suburban guildford, surrey. “make way for mr. baldry’s dry-cleaning!” i proclaimed. “all the way from canada!” a security guard showed me to the greenroom. “oh good!” said john, “fresh frocks!” he poured some wine, and introduced me to his british colleagues. “meet my very good friend lindsay mitchell,” he said (bless his heart). “a brilliant blues guitarist from vancouver!” we chatted for half and hour or so, then — showtime! the manfreds, featuring “doo wah diddy” singer paul jones, went on first, offering up pop hits like “pretty flamingo” and dylan’s “mighty quinn.” chris farlowe followed with a blowsy, overweight version of t-bone walker’s “stormy monday blues.” next was former zombies lead-singer colin blunstone, who offered a selection of real name: reginald dwight. british invasion classics like “no one told me about her” and “tell her no.” john’s set, wisely reserved until after the intermission, was fabulous — the highlight of the show. opening with the memphis slim staple “everyday i have the blues,” he followed by willie dixon’s classic “i’m ready,” and closed with his obligatory brit-pop chestnut “when the heartaches begin.” the punters loved it! and i did too — “heartaches” notwithstanding. sadly, as i had to leave early to catch the late train back to london, i wasn’t able to tell him so. the mitchell clan had a grand time discovering england and france — the british museum et la musée d’orsay; high street kensington et la rive gauche; the tower of london et la tour eiffel; the tate modern et le centre pompidou, buckingham palace et la versailles. we rocked them all! sadly, however, the marriage was beyond repair, and leslie and i split shortly after returning. the breaking point doubtless came while i was completing my master’s thesis. our home’s only active computer connection was in the living room (this was before wireless). and so, for the several months it took to compose, the furniture and floor were necessarily strewn with files, arranged haphazardly in a secret system known only to me, thus effectively precluding normal day-to-day domestic transnavigation. with deadlines looming, and pressure building, i grew commensurately more irascible. “enough!” she said. “i’m calling a lawyer, taking every penny you’ve got, and you’ll never see the kids again! “gee honey,” i crooned, hoping to diffuse her resolve. “the kids are all grown up, and two of them have moved out.” in truth? i saw it coming. and, in fairness, though never once unfaithful, the fault was mostly mine. she’d been musician’s wife for over twenty-five years, and a mother too. she deserved to be herself. nevertheless., my heart was broken, and it hurt like hell. serves me right to suffer. john lee hooker, like many men in similar circumstances have done, i pulled myself together, lost a few pounds, and rented a bachelor apartment near the beach. then, later that year, in the fall of , still reeling from the separation, i began my phd program. my advisor offered his assistance. “do you want to think about maybe postponing your start date?” “bring it on,” i said. “geronimo!” the faculty of education is essentially a teacher factory, especially the undergraduate division. the typical postgraduate education student, however, is a currently employed female education professional seeking to upgrade her credentials with a view to enhancing future career opportunities me? i was just middle-aged male guitar player trying to get a few things straight. the goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with nature. joseph campbell (attr.) song lyric, written by detroit-based, texas bluesman john lee hooker ( - ) released on the vj/dynasty lp in-person. american joseph campbell ( - ) best known for his work in comparative mythology and religion. as an upstart phd student, i was obliged to recruit potential committee members among education’s various departments and research centres. let’s just say there are two kinds of university professors — the ones with their heads completely up their ass, and the rest. one of the former was particular succinct in his antipathy towards my nascent “blues project” “stop wasting my time!” he sniffed dismissively, brusquely showing me the door. then there was the woman who accused me of “sabotaging” her doctoral seminar, simply because i declined to participate in an arts-and-crafts module aimed at female teachers of young children. “i wouldn’t wish to join a club that would have me as a member,” i quipped, playfully citing groucho. man! was she pissed. it was then suggested that i approach the department’s several music education experts, with a view to perhaps finding some support there. but my instrumental skills were too primitive for their pedagogical purposes, their highly refined sensibilities being more attuned to classical music and jazz. “you’ll need extensive notation and theory training,” said one, mistakenly assuming i wanted to be a music teacher. “plus instruction in classroom management, course planning, and teaching methods.” “wait a minute!” i said. “it’s not about the music. it’s about the musicians!” the next guy up was an “art education” expert. unlike his colleagues, he seemed rather intrigued. “yes, come to think of it,” he chuckled to himself, gazing wistfully out his office window, “curriculum studies sometimes does seem a bit like — muddy waters.” “bingo!” i thought. “maybe i am onto something here.” later on during that first term, while on the road performing in calgary, i paid a visit to brother billy cowsill, who was in foothills hospital recovering from surgery related to the degenerative bone condition that would eventually (two years later) claim his life. puffed up on cortisone and heavily sedated, with an intravenous drip, and oxygen tubes up his nose — he looked terrible. “how’s it goin’ pal,” i said. “not so good man,” he mumbled back. “you’ll be fine,” i ventured, clearly talking through my hat. “i don’t think so,” he replied stoically. “they collapsed my left lung so they could operate on my spine from the front, but it won’t re-inflate. it’s over man . . . i’ll never sing again.” horrified at the prospect, i reached over to touch his badly bruised hand, ravaged by repeated needle insertions. an oblique reference to legedary chicago bluesman muddy waters ( - ) born mckinley morganfield, in rolling fork, mississippi. “how’s phil?” he coughed (phil being his pet-name for leslie). “she’s okay,” i said, holding back a truckload of anger, resentment and rage. “give her my love. and a big kiss too.” suddenly, despite everything rotten that had happened between leslie and me over the past year or so, and the fact that we hadn’t spoken civilly in months, somehow . . . i just had to let it go. john lennon, as soon as i got back to my hotel . . . i phoned her to pass along billy’s love, and call a truce. “life’s too short,” i said. “yes,” she replied. “i know.” work on the phd began in earnest. the problem was that, while there is naturally a surfeit of curriculum studies related literature devoted to “education,” there’s virtually nothing concerning “the blues.” consequently, in order to amass the required number of degree-related credits, i was obliged to look outside the faculty of education for relevant courses. a section offered in the department of english entitled the blues in african leslie was “phil” everly to billy’s “don.” excerpted lyric, from “watching the wheels.” written in by john lennon, and released posthumously after his assassination, it was the third and final single of lennon and yoko ono's geffen lp double fantasy. american literature caught my eye, and i signed on, figuring to maybe learn a thing or two. i must confess, however, that given my lengthy familiarity with the genre, and my experiences meeting and playing with willie dixon, t-bone walker, and albert collins et al — i went into it with a fairly big head. i knew the history well enough (or so i thought) — slavery, jim crow, racial prejudice, oppression, lynching, the civil rights movement, etc. for instance, i still recall being eight years-old in edmonton, and watching grainy black-and- white tv news coverage of desegregation at little rock high school in arkansas. and i remember being fourteen years-old and seeing footage of martin luther king et al on their solemn march from selma to birmingham, being subjected to violence and humiliation at the hands of both the white citizenry and the thuggish police. and then there were the school bombings in birmingham, alabama; the goodman, chaney and shwerner murders in , the los angeles riots of , and chicago in . i thought i had the blues thing fairly well sussed.. how nice it is to be relieved of misconceptions. being anglo canadian, i’d never been exposed to african american literature. blues lyrics perhaps, but nothing long-form, like an actual book. high school english instruction in b.c. during the early s mostly involved the british canon — chaucer, shakespeare, and milton, etc. sure, there was some canlit on the menu, like robert service and robertson davies; and some mainstream (white) american fare, like melville’s moby dick, but no “soul food” whatsoever. our blueslit class of around twenty comprised mainly english department students, some foreign, with a fairly even male/female split. except for the eng. , a masters-level course. professor (a non-musician), and a young black woman (a dancer) whose father was a veteran local jazzer (a bassist), none of them seemed to have any previous knowledge of blues music or blues culture. the twice-a-week, two-hour seminar typically began with some recorded blues music — muddy waters, howlin’ wolf, jimmy reed, bessie smith, ma rainey, or petie “the devil’s son-in-law” wheatstraw. then, suitably acculturated, we’d convene around a conference table and discuss the week’s assigned readings. some of the titles on the list were familiar, but only vaguely. for example, i’d heard of invisible man by ralph ellison ( ), but hadn’t read it. in the hippie vernacular — my mind was blown! the “battle royale” scene (pp - ) was particularly gruesome. more than i could take. indeed, i had to put it down. i was similarly moved (though perhaps not so dramatically) by richard wright’s native son ( ), the bluest eye by toni morrison ( ), and their eyes were watching god by zora neale hurston ( ). each was devoured in quick succession. others impressed as well, like the negro artist and the racial mountain by langston hughes ( ), and blues people by leroi jones. (baraka, ) prompted to delve beyond the assigned materials, i procured a norton anthology of african american literature (gates & mckay, ), and discovered seminal works by frederick douglass, sojourner truth, w.e.b. dubois, and booker t. washington et al. i came to appreciate how the blues is more than simply music. the blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism. as a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically . . . they at once express both the agony of life and the possibility of conquering it through sheer toughness of spirit. they fall short of tragedy only in that they provide no solution, offer no scapegoat but the self. ralph ellison ( , ) i’ve lived in vancouver for most of my life, but prior to reading bluesprint, a compendium of black british columbian literature and orature edited by wade compton ( ), i knew nothing about historic hogan’s alley — the racially distinct black community which had once flourished on the city’s downtown eastside. finally, after decades of occupational practice, i was able to place the city’s indigenous r&b heritage in historical, cultural, and geographic context. the information was satisfying enough, but not particularly useful. as albert murray ( ) points out, blues musicians “do not normally give much consideration to the sociological and psycho-spiritual implications of what is they’re playing.” indeed, “their primary concerns are that of the artisan” ( ).” more about dr. murray . . . born in nokomis, alabama, on may , he received a b.sc. from tuskegee institute in . joining the u.s. air force in , he retired in with the rank of major. earning his m.a. from new york, university in , he taught literature and composition to civilians and soldiers both in the united states and abroad. (tuskegee, ) his first book, the omni-americans ( ), contains reviews, essays, and commentaries that engage and challenge the predominant frame- works within which matters of race and culture are discussed. founded in by booker t. washington as the tuskegee normal school for colored teachers. critiquing what he called “the folklore of white supremacy and the fake lore of black pathology,” the book argues that all americans are multi- colored and that social scientific attempts to explain black life in america are fundamentally mistaken. (tuskegee, ) his next book, south to a very old place ( ),“extends that argument with a series of memoirs, interviews, and reports that document the positive nurturing aspects of the african-american community in the south.” (tuskegee, ) in , he was invited to give the paul anthony brick lectures on ethics at the university of missouri. these lecturers were published as the hero and the blues ( ). in he wrote stomping the blues, “perhaps the best book ever published on jazz aesthetics,” and in collaborated with court basie on his autobiography, good morning blues. an essay on the paintings of romare bearden: finding the rhythm “extends murray’s concepts of improvisation, rhythm, and synthesis even to the realm of the visual arts.” (ibid.) many contemporary scholars (mostly white) view the blues as a privileged discursive site, asserting that african americans, through the experiences of their forebears, hold a kind of proprietary interest in the blues, that only blacks have a legitimate right to play and sing the blues, and that non-black blues represent an inferior (if not fraudulently inauthentic) copy of the real thing. (borgo, ; hill, ; garon, ; ) it was, therefore, reassuring to learn that murray rejects as simplistic the claim that non-blacks are intrinsically unqualified to play the blues, maintaining that one indeed can — if one is a good enough musician and respects the medium as he would any other art form; if one develops the same familiarity with its idiomatic nuances, and the same love and humility before it as the good negro musician does; and if one is genuinely dedicated to the idiom and “not merely ambivalent about it.” (hill, , ) the blues are not only plural, but so numerous as to be numberless. albert murray ( , ) i had previously thought it virtually impossible that one could learn anything deep or profound about the blues at university. but the literature encountered in eng turned that mistaken notion on its head. what it all represents is an attitude towards the nature of human experience (and the alternatives of human adjustment) that is both elemental and comprehensive. it is a statement about confronting the complexities inherent in the human situation and about improvising or experimenting, or riffing, or otherwise playing with (or even gambling with) such possibilities as are also inherent in the obstacles, the dis- junctures, and the jeopardy. it is also a statement about perseverance and about resilience and about the maintenance of equilibrium despite precarious circumstances and about achieving elegance in the very process of coping with the rudiments of subsistence. (murray, , ) i subsequently discovered that, along with new orleans-based trumpeter wynton marsalis, albert murray is co-founder of the new york-based institution known as jazz at lincoln center. curious regarding his present situation, i emailed their education department, inquiring as to whether the old man (b. ) was still alive, and if he might perhaps be willing to entertain some correspondence. the reply, from an amiable research assistant named patti, was immediate. “dr. murray is indeed alive and well,” she confirmed, “and would be delighted to hear from you. cross-referencing his address with the nyc online telephone directory ( .com), i managed to retrieve the man’s home phone number, but never called. it would’ve been rude. besides, what would i have said? “hi dr. murray. you don’t know me, but i’m a huge fan?” bringing it all back home in january , long john baldry became seriously ill with pneumonia and was admitted to intensive care at vancouver general hospital. a lifelong smoker with a love of rich food and drink, and an acute aversion to physical exercise — the prognosis wasn’t good. i visited him in hospital several times, both with pal jim byrnes, and with andrew loog oldham, the rolling stones’ former manager and record producer (an intermittent vancouver resident). there i met john’s younger sister margaret, who, fearing the worst, had quickly come over from england. john’s condition steadily worsened (despite b.c.’s first-rate socialized medical care) and his passing seemed imminent. sir paul mccartney telegrammed best wishes, as did sir fat reg, and rod stewart left a lovely phone message. shirley watts (wife of stones drummer charlie) sent a beautiful note, which oldham read aloud. nevertheless, severely weakened from the ordeal, john died. his memorial service, held at the arts club theatre on granville island, was a magnificent sro affair. finally, after much bickering back and forth between john’s friends in canada and his family in the u.k., it was decided that his ashes would be returned to england. as i was to be performing in europe later in the fall (with piano-man doc fingers et al) . . . i was asked to transport his ashes. “good evening sir,” said the senior security officer at vancouver international airport (yvr). “do you have any flammable liquids, lighters, matches, or sharp objects like knives, nail scissors, or anything of that sort.” “no,” i replied, carefully loading my guitar onto the conveyor belt, “but i do have some cremated human remains to declare.” he stiffened, doubtless deciding whether to take me seriously, or reach for his taser. “not joking,” i said, gingerly handing him a black vinyl carry-on bag. “there’s an urn inside containing the ashes of a deceased person.” “your boarding pass please sir.” “i’m a professional musician,” i explained, “traveling to oslo via london with a -hr layover at heathrow. the plan is to exit the international area and deliver my friend’s ashes to grieving relatives waiting in the main concourse, then go back through security and reboard. he nodded in tentative accord, mentally walking himself through the proposed procedure, carefully calculating the likelihood of deceit. “the papers are all in order,” i said, presenting him with the death certificate, the cremation certificate, and a formal document signed by b.c. premier gordon campbell acknowledging “long john john baldry’s unique contribution to canadian arts and culture.” with a sigh of relief, doubtless thankful for having been relieved of any major responsibility, he crossed himself in filipino catholic fashion. then, holding the bag at arms length, and gently admonishing his colleagues to clear a path for our improvised funeral procession, he reverently slow-marched us both over to the examination table. finally, with everything double-checked and fully signed-off, and with his crew lined up and standing respectfully at attention, he saluted farewell. “goodbye sir,” he said. “and may you and your esteemed friend have a safe trip.” boarding british airways flight to london, i requested to speak with the senior steward. “excuse me,” i said. “are you familiar with the english singer long john baldry?” “certainly,” he replied. “my mum loved that ‘heartaches’ song he had back in the s. didn’t he just recently pass away?” “yes. as a matter of fact he did,” i said, grinning coyly, “and he’s right here in this bag.” “how then may we assist you sir?” “well, my ticket is in economy, but mr. baldry is rather accustomed to flying first-class . do you think you might be able to accommodate him up there in one of those overhead luggage compartments?” “i’m sorry sir, but we can’t separate you from your carry-on luggage.” i wasn’t giving up that easily. “pardon me!” i said, channeling baldry’s booming theatrical baritone. “this is british airways . . . is it not?!!” “yes . . . of course it is sir,” said the steward, looking puzzled. “well then!” i replied, strategically focussing my delivery. “would you be the one to deny a true son of albion his rightful chariot home?!” “very well sir,” he conceded. “i’ll talk to the captain.” landing at lhr, instead of waiting around in the secure area for the connecting flight to norway, i exited through customs and immigration to the main terminal, where margaret baldry was waiting to receive her brother’s remains. “you’ll be happy to know that john flew home premier class,” i said. “thank you so much!” she sniffed, tearfully cradling her precious cargo. “so, where’s he off to now? what’s the plan?” “well, we’re going to place his urn in the family reliquary at st. lawrence church, in whitchurch lane, near canon’s park in north london.” “i know that church. and the park too. in fact, i used go by there on the bus to school everyday when i was a kid, and cut through the bushes at the back of the cemetery to get to my friend adrian’s house on the other side.” “you know st. lawrence?” she said, her eyes brightening. “really? ” the ancient name for the island of great britain, from the latin albus (meaning “white?), believed to refer to the white cliffs of dover. “certainly. it was restored from the ruins of a medieval monastery around by james brydges, st duke of chandos, patron of george frederick handel, who previewed many of his great works there.” “that’s right!” “yeah! it all seemed so incredibly ancient back then. there was this tree, a thousand years-old, all propped-up with staves and held together with ropes and chains. i tried to climb it once, but the nuns chased me away.” sister margaret began to shudder. “is everything okay?” i said. “did i say something wrong?” “oh no,” she replied, collapsing into tears, “it’s nothing like that. it’s just that (baawl) . . . when john was a young boy (baawl) . . . he used to sit and play his guitar under that very same (baawl) treeeeee . . .” mission accomplished (mortuus somes reverto), but it was time to go, so i kissed margaret on the cheek goodbye, wound my way back through airport security sans bagages, and boarded the flight to norway. “how’d it go?” inquired seat-mate doctor fingers, enjoying a glass of red wine with his in-flight meal. “well,” i mused, toasting our adventure with a flute of fine champagne. “there’s one thing you can say about the blues — they travel well.” latin for “dead body returned.” interpretation & analysis analysis is one of those impossible professions in which one can be quite sure of unsatisfying results. sigmund freud ( - ) from analysis: terminable and interminable ( ) it is not generally the business of interpretive research to render firm conclusions. inquiry of such sort rather relishes the idea of “indeterminacy,” with readers instead being encouraged “to create additional material by further imaginative act.” (maitre, , ) accordingly, imagine a blues or jazz band in live performance, with a full ensemble of musical instruments at play — the solo lead vocalist, the double bass, a three-piece horn section, a trio of back-up singers, the four-string bass, six- string guitar, six-piece drum kit, and the -key piano — and each voice contributing to a meaning-filled interpretation of the piece. analysis of the preceding bildungsroman similarly invites the participation of certain numerative heuristic instruments, each exploring a different avenue of human experience. instinct perfected involves constructing and using conventional instruments; intelligence perfected involves making and using unconventional instruments. henri-louis bergson, the dialectic, for example, speaks well on issues surrounding individual and collective identity. three-ness highlights formal, informal and non-formal education — plus instrumental, transformative, and communicative learning. four kinds of knowledge are correspondingly engaged, as are six perspectives on teaching, eight multiple intelligences, and an eight-stage model of human existence. bass drum, snare drum, tom-tom, plus hi-hat, ride, and crash cymbals. henri-louis bergson ( - ) french philosopher and colleague of american pragmatist william james. excerpted from creative evlution ( ) the dialectic the dialectic has long been conceived in terms of power relations and class. (marx, ) i’d long been aware of class as an intellectual concept, but had never given it much serious consideration prior to attending ubc in . indeed, i vividly recall standing in front of the main library on the first day of term one, and being oddly overwhelmed by a profound affinity with my long dead working-class grandparents and great-grandparents. gazing around the campus at the various faculty buildings (chemistry, law, anthropology, psychology, medicine, business management, engineering, physics, geography, mathematics, etc), i realized that, despite having grown up in relatively egalitarian post-wwii canada, i was nonetheless still very much a product of highly stratified th century victorian england — a world where people generally knew their place, and didn’t presume otherwise. the ruling ideas of each age have been the ideas of its ruling class. karl marx, in a twinkling, i understood how we do not simply exist in the present, but as an ontological extension of our forebears. constructivist learning theory sees character development involving the erection of new personality frameworks upon pre-existant familial and cultural foundations. individual identity and social class are thus inextricably linked. my parents (b. ) never thought about going to university. it simply wasn’t on their radar. like with most of their undistinguished ilk, schooling stopped in in the communist manifesto (marx & engels, , sec. ) gr. . but wwii changed everything. having pulled together as a nation to gain victory over the axis, britain in the early s began to reconsider long-held blind allegiances to old-fashioned ideas about education and social station. young parents began to entertain tentative notions of upward mobility, if not for themselves, at least for their baby-boomer children. accordingly, it was hoped that i might go on to a post-secondary institution and perhaps one day attain respectable middle-class status as a “professional” of some sort. it is said that the english aren’t happy unless they have someone to look down upon. indeed, even as a young child, i was keenly aware of how otherness was manifest in a person’s mode of speech. my father’s people were from dover, and spoke with a marked kentish twang. and my mother’s inner-city london family had strong cockney accents. but i was encouraged to speak in more measured tones, eschewing the untoward inflections of my less cultivated relations. those whose modes of speech were formed between the years - should pronounce in the churchillian manner, thus: “thowsands and thowsands of bory scowts bownding arownd in browwn trowsers,” forming the ‘ow’ sound by making a tight circle with the lips and keeping the tongue stiff, but not tremulous. younger pronouncers, educated between and , may prefer the equally prestigious but somehow brisker: “thighsands and thighsands of buy skites binding arinde in brine tryzers.” these sounds are accomplished with a baring of clenched teeth, stretched but immobile lips, and a discreet wagging of the tongue behind the ivory fence . . . there are few circumstances in which regional or working-class pronunciations are permissible, though it is admittedly useful to have a reasonable stock of them in [one’s] repertoire . . . like on the telephone when financial restraint has made it necessary to dispense with the butler or other intermediary. (chance, , ) britain’s class system in the s, though increasingly challenged, nonetheless remained deeply entrenched. emigration to the dominions offered a viable option for those seeking to transcend social and economic limitations. in addition to highlighting the distinction between first-class passengers and regular, rank- and-file humanity — our initial trans-atlantic crossing afforded the opportunity for me to meet “coloured” people for the very first time. thus, i discovered that human beings — regardless of race, ethnicity, and cultural background — are essentially the same inside. your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. genesis, : upon arrival in canada at age eight, the importance of integrating socially became painfully apparent. but my efforts were quickly stymied. prime culpability here is awarded to principal henderson, whose arbitrary decision to accelerate me ahead two grades served to distort certain aspects of my normal childhood development. the paradoxical possibility for well-intentioned pedagogy to instead effect negative consequences is thus exposed. analysis also confirms that, while women were reasonably well represented among elementary teachers in western canada during the s, school adminstration remained overwhelmingly male. mature and energetic males stood in contrast to typically young and malleable female teachers; the latter, it was implied if not overtly stated, accepted low wages and therefore undermined [the] professional quest. if the former left teaching for greener pastures, the latter typically departed to marry. (danylewycz & prentice, , ) notably canada, australia, and new zealand. principal henderson’s pedagogical authority thus generally held sway in relations with females under his institutional jurisdiction c. . moreover, his elevated status as a “professional” educator prompted my instructionally challenged working-class parents to defer criticism — particularly my mother who, in stereotypical s family fashion, was responsible for dealing with school-related issues. returning to england at age eleven served to illuminate the contrast between old and new-world values — particularly regarding education. the stringent dress- code, the eleven-plus exam, the head master’s quasi-liturgical performance, and the routine employment of corporal punishment by prefects — each demonstrated britain’s hidebound attitude compared to canada’s “more modern and up-to-date approach.” (leacock, , ) returning to canada again a year later at age twelve presented a different set of contradictions, both at school and in the greater world — racial prejudice for instance. england in the s was comparatively homogeneous, but early s vancouver, dotted with first-nations reserves, and with its highly visible asian community, was another story altogether. preceded by a lengthy local history of race-based discrimination — the anti-asians riots of , the komagata maru incident in , the asian exclusion act of , widespread ku klux klan activity in the s and s, the internment of japanese-canadians during wwii, restrictive covenants regarding the sale of property to non-whites and jews, and the ongoing systematic marginalization of first nations people — division along ethnic and cultural lines, though muted to some degree, was nonetheless clearly apparent. (davis, ; barman, ; ) notably in shaughnessy and the british properties. particularly regarding access to jobs and housing. it’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully apprehend social prejudice from a dominant-group perspective. nevertheless, having as an adolescent been obliged to endure a modicum of age-related isolation, i was perhaps a bit less insensitive to how others might feel about arbitrarily imposed limits on their participation within mainstream society. my k- educational experience, on balance, was negative. radical acceleration in the early elementary grades only served to generate a deep-seated antipathy towards schooling which festered and intensified over time. graduation meant nothing, like the proverbial “bridge to nowhere” — a non-event. consequently, rather than going to straight on to university as had been expected (given my more than adequate grades), i instead chose to look for work. but, being too young and inept to be taken seriously as a candidate for meaningful employment, my career options were severely circumscribed. looking back, had principal henderson in been aware of erikson’s ( ; ) eight-stage theory of human development. had he known, for instance, that skipping me ahead would hamper my ability to master important tasks related to successful passage through each subsequent level of maturity. had he better understood the known/unknown dichotomy . . . there are known knowns. these are things we know that we know. there are known unknowns. that is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. but there are also unknown unknowns. these are things we do not know we don’t know. donald rumsfeld, nevertheless, i was summarily advanced, and, by age eighteen had become a full- fledged working musician. conventional employment is characterized by quote from a pentagon press briefing given by former us defense secretary donald rumsfeld feb. . routinized activity and job security. the music business is not. work is instead sporadic and insecure. (becker, ; ; ) numerous other contradictions were encountered as a working musician, many of which, in their own way, were instructive — such as: (a) individual/collective: involving relationships between oneself as an individual musician, and as a participant in group undertakings, such as performing ensemble, living communally, going on tour, recording a cd, or entering into contractual arrangements, etc. (b) us/them: referring to tensions between one’s own performing unit and other players in the music industry (competing acts, record companies, promoters, retailers, media, etc). (c) success/failure: surviving the vicissitudes of show business. (d) work/play: the paradox of getting paid to do something innately enjoyable and fulfilling. (e) traditional/contemporary: the challenge of remaining up-to-date and relevant while staying true to one’s musical roots. (e) sacred/profane: being provocative and irreverent while maintaining dignity and professional credibility. (f) art/science: striking a balance between aesthetics and technology (g) art/commerce: integrity vs. prosperity. (h) young/old: involving inter-generational dynamics. (i) male/female: both with respect to professional relations between men and women in the music industry (musicians, singers, agents, managers, publicists, technicians, etc), and romantic partnerships. (j) gay/straight: interaction with homosexual men and women. (k) performer/audience: interaction between musician/singers and spectators (professional and social) . while immersed in two-ness, the hegelian dialectic concurrently also embodies a triadic component — a thesis naturally giving rise to its equal and opposite antithesis, with tension between the two being resolved through a process of synthesis. respecting the performer/audience contradiction above — “call and response” is a form of spontaneous interaction typical of african american blues-based music whereby verbal and non-verbal performative statements are reciprocated in kind by other voices, typically fellow performers (eg: back-up singers) and/or audience members. the ontological barrier between object and observer is thus transcended through mutual participation (an invitation extended to readers of this dissertation), and a peculiar third existential element is conjured forth and “entertained” (from the latin tenere, meaning “to hold,” and inter, meaning “between” or “among”). accordingly, in figurative correspondence with “call and response” — footnotes and italicized quotes are liberally employed throughout this exercise. that’s entertainment . . . oscar levant, popular song title. music by arthur schwartz. lyrics by howard deitz. from the mgm musical film the band wagon. three-ness as previewed earlier (p ), this study acknowledges three distinct modes of education. (labelle, ) formal education tends to privilege hierarchically- structured, organized classroom instruction, which in turn typically foregrounds conventional transmissive teaching methods. informal education is not altogether different, referring to formally organized instruction which takes place in institutional settings outside the school or classroom, such as art galleries, museums, rehearsal halls, and corporate offices, etc. the informal designation also refers to semi-structured workplace situations, such as traditional apprenticeship and ongoing corporate training. non-formal education, however, take place entirely outside the classroom, and focusses on the instructional properties of day-to-day social and occupational interaction. as such, it is by nature incidental, spontaneous, and often even unintended. with scheduled its lectures, text books, exams, and ritualized advancement protocols, university is a highly formalized affair. blues practice, though similarly rich in tradition, ritual, and regalia — is quite the opposite. each, however, is educative in its own way. all individuals are engaged in learning experiences at all times. thomas j. la belle ( , abstract) emphasis mine. learning this study also entertains three kinds of learning. instrumental learning involves the acquisition of basic cognitive and psychomotor proficiencies such as the fundamentals of reading, writing, vocabulary, and arithmetic, etc. the preceding story describes how the english primary school system in the mid- s promoted early and rapid development in those key areas. (pp - ) learning how to drive a car is similarly instrumental. the legal driving age in b.c. is sixteen. having been skipped forward two grades, and thus precluded from developing concurrently with my graduating cohort, i was more inclined to postpone getting my driver’s license, holding off until age twenty-four. instrumental learning in the blues primarily involves acquiring technical facility on one’s chosen musical instrument and/or as a singer. full profiency typically requires decades of purposeful career experience. as such, it is viewed as function of maturity. the dialectic distinguishes two modes of instrumental learning in the blues. one is individual, involving countless hours of lonely repetition, playing the same riffs over and over again, for days, months, even years — literally training the fingers to obey the brain’s command. guitar players call this “shedding” — as in “going to the woodshed.” it’s private work, but necessary (and time consuming too), thus best invested in while young. the other way is collective. wynton marsalis ( ) describes occupational jazz and blues music practice, with individual performers improvising together in common cause,. as “democracy in action.” indeed, for most working musicians, the goal is harmony (notwithstanding the occasional utility of dissonance). tonal harmony in the blues (as in all music) involves the maintenance of consonant relations between a multiplicity of melodic voices. rhythmic harmony in the blues resides within the “groove,” sustained in live performance through equal parts metric precision, constancy, and playfulness. as such, it is everyone’s duty to maintain, whether in the rhythm section, the horn section, the solo section, or the vocal section. rhythm rules! time is tight. booker t. jones, i am an unstudied musician; essentially self-taught. as such, a fair portion of my rhythmic education was derived through my early acquaintance with the game of basketball. much has been written about the relationship between basketball and american blues and jazz, with observers positing a variety of entertaining similarities. (o’meally, ) each, for instance, is felt to embody elements of tempo, pace, counterpoint, rhythm, and flow. like musicians, some basketball players, are gifted soloists. others seem to work better in tandem, like in duos or trios, or all together — as in a full-court press or zone-defense. counterpoint is a another shared feature, is “give and go” and “cut and fill. a primary parallel, however, involves mutual regard for extemporization (both individually and collectively) upon a previously established game-plan or musical theme. improvisation is too important to be left to chance. paul simon (attr.) communicative learning involves how individuals express their feelings, needs, and desires. canale and swain ( , - ) define communicative competence instrumental title, written and recorderd by booker t. and the mgs on the stax/atlantic label ( ). new jersey-born singer-songwriter paul frederic simon (b. ) is a member of noted american duo simon and garfunkel. in terms of three essential components: . grammatical competence: words and rules . socio-linguistic competence: verbal appropriateness . strategic competence: the purposeful deployment of appropriate grammar. elementary communicative skills are typically acquired in childhood and adolescence, through schooling and everyday socialization, but optimum facility (as with instrumental learning) is similarly seen as a function of maturity. as a working musician, i learned to communicate “instrumentally” by watching, listening, and emulating others with more experience in the field. along the way i came to better appreciate the revelatory potential of creative self-expression. music can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable. leonard bernstein (attr.) an intriguing dialectic emerges here between competencies deemed helpful as musician, songwriter, and recording artist, and the kinds of skills utilized in higher education — particularly respecting written communication. at college and university, for example, one is routinely required to submit lengthy essays and major papers involving complex reasoning couched in scholarly, discipline- specific language. popular songwriting, on the other hand, is a relatively concise undertaking, with grammar, style and syntax being uncomplicated and colloquial in nature. dissertations such as this one, involving hundreds of pages and many thousands of words, are typically evaluated by committees of fewer than ten members, with a potential readership limited to a relatively small number of people in a specific academic field. the popular song, however, normally comprises but a few lines of verse, a chorus and perhaps a bridge. and, with record sales potentially in the millions, its message is designed for mass consumption. transformative learning is seen to take place when, through critical reflection, long held predispositions, beliefs and judgments are altered, refined or otherwise elaborated upon to effect positive changes in attitude or perspective. (mezirow, ; ) as such, it tends to see things in terms of epistemic aptitude, and strives to be more discerning about the stuff we normally hold true — like faulty arguments, hasty generalizations, assertions lacking evidence and claims based on unreliable authority. (grabov, ) mezirow ( ) associates transformation with personal trauma, seeing it resulting from some sort of “disorienting dilemma,” such as is typically triggered by a “life crisis” or “major life transition.” we are once again reminded, however, that not all learning is necessarily positive and good, and that negative transformations can (and often do) take place. (merriam et al, ) you live you learn you love you learn you cry you learn you lose you learn you bleed you learn you scream you learn alanis morisette, the foregoing narrative is rife with such events. being arbitrarily skipped ahead in elementary school, for instance, helped transform a relatively normal eight excerpted song lyric, from you learn, written by alanis morisette and glen ballard, released in , on the maverick records cd jagged little pill. year-old kid into someone with a lifelong antipathy towards authority figures and the institutions they represent. and there’s nothing like decades of deviant occupational practice to further distend an already oblique outlook on life. susan merriam ( ) highlights the transformative potential of “learning that comes from the negative perception of life experience.” the working artist is no stranger to distress. becker ( , , ), for instance, has written extensively on the pathological consequences of professional “musicianeering.” and numerous other biographies and firsthand memoirs have chronicled the problems associated with extended practice. (king & ritz, ; loam, ; dance, ; cross, ; dixon, ; gussow, ; edwards, ; newman, ; waters, ; indeed, the “art-world” in general is a precarious place to make a living. (becker, ) average incomes for front-line cultural workers in canada remain below average in every province. (hill strategies, ) and older art-workers, typically ineligible for employment benefits available to members of the mainstream workforce, such as retirement security and extended healthcare, are particularly susceptible to calamity. (woolley, ) but trouble is what the blues are all about. medicine, to produce health, has to examine disease; and music, to create harmony, must investigate discord. plutarch (ad - ) contrary to common understanding, however — blues music isn’t sad. the gap is % in quebec, % in ontario and prince edward island, and % or more in all other provinces. quebec and ontario are the only provinces where artists’ earnings are above the national average — $ , . british columbia and alberta are the only other provinces where artists’ average earnings exceed $ , . from lives: demetrius (sec ). dissatisfied perhaps, regretful maybe, even contrite. but never maudlin or sentimental. rather it is the ontological antidote to sad. the fundamental function of the blues musician . . . the most obvious as well as the most pragmatic mission of whose performance is not only to drive the blues away and hold them at bay for at least the time being, but also to invoke an ambiance of dionysian revelry in the process. albert murray ( , ) knowledge this exercise acknowledges four kinds of knowledge. knowledge by description is conceptually inferred, represented, or otherwise depicted using symbols (as in spoken and written language). traditional classroom-based education, with its emphasis scheduled lectures and textbook study, typically relies on descriptive. teaching methods. the exchange of musical knowledge over distance and across has historically depended upon the manual transcription of encoded text describing the composer-lyricist’s original creative intentions. indeed, by the late th and early th centuries, publishing companies had gained almost hegemonic control of the music industry. but the ascendancy of radio and audio-recording during the s and s changed all that. focus shifted from the distribution of printed sheet music to the mass marketing of petroleum-based plastic discs. audio recording aren’t like notes on paper. they can be heard, and listened to repeatedly, by virtually everyone. thus music can be more easily apprehended, and without the necessary mediation of someone trained in musical notation. an interesting quandary thus emerges. are audio recordings descriptive? does music itself actually “represent?” scruton ( ) thinks not, perceiving no ontological distinction between the medium of transmission (the sound) and the subject itself (the music). the medium is the message. marshall mcluhan ( ) knowledge based on authority relies upon the status or reputation of the individual from whom it is handed down, typically an institutional figure, like a priest, politician, teacher, or professor. as such, it remains a primary characteristic of formal transmissive pedagogy. authority in the blues similarly derives from seniority and experience. indeed, contemporary practice remains “traditional” in the sense that the past is revered. authority without wisdom is like an axe without an edge — fitter to bruise than to polish. anne bradstreet, ultimate authority in the blues, however, resides with authenticity. the first wave of african american bluesmen and women — early th century pioneers like charlie patton, bessie smith, robert johnson, and lonnie johnson — were the undisputed “real” thing. their brazen originality, passed along through successive generations of dedicated blues people like lottie graves, willie dixon, t-bone walker, albert collins, chuck berry, big joe duskin, and long john baldry — inspires practice to this day. from meditations divine and moral (ch ) by english-american writer-poet anne bradstreet ( - ) c. - - - - authentic creation is a gift for the future. albert camus ( ) knowledge gleaned by acquaintance is firsthand knowledge, immediate and physical, eyewitness, in-your-face, sensory knowledge — demonstrated and performed rather than merely described. as such, it’s equivalent to “learning from experience.” experiential knowledge is commonly gleaned through trial and error, typically involving “common sense.” common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. albert einstein (attr.) working musicians are well acquainted with opprobrium, warranted or otherwise. everyone, it seems, has an opinion — managers, agents, publicists, a&r men, radio programmers, etc. live audiences, by virtue of their paid admission, are frequently keen to disparage, whether qualified to pass fair judgment or not. repudiation is often rendered on the spot, in simple “thumbs up-thumbs down” fashion, and expressed in a variety of ways, from silent disavowal to hurled epithets and tossed beer bottles. performers are thus advised to develop thick- skinned resistance to ill-informed appraisals, lest vital self-confidence be eroded. the intoxicating properties of excessive approval are similarly suspect. better to rely on critical reflection, and the courage of one’s own convictions. do what thy manhood bid thee do. from none but self expect applause. sir richard burton ( - ) albert camus ( - ) french algerian existential philosopher and author, awarded the nobel prize for literature in . - english explorer, writer, and diplomat. from the kasidah of haji abdu el-yazdi (pt.viii, st. ). acquaintanceship can also refer to persons with whom one is more intimately familiar. i am fortunate during my career as a musician to have engaged personally with a number of authentic blues “heroes.” (murray, ) the older i grow, the more i am convinced that there is no education that one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from great men and women. booker t. washington, but not every such encounter was entirely positive. bo diddley for instance, was cranky and difficult to deal with. and chuck berry, as we all know (pp - ), is less than saintly. but, at least those guys were honestly unpleasant. it’s the phonies i can’t abide, fraudulently famous for being unfailingly friendly. they smile in your face. all the time they want to take your place the o’jays, knowledge by participation is that which enables an organism to successfully negotiate the processes and structures that hazard its immediate environment. as such, it is adaptive, evolutionary, and mimetic. occupational blues practice, predicated on the establishment and maintenance of productive relations within the artistic community, its performing members, their mercantile partners, and the consuming public — is by its nature participatory. let’s work together. wilbert harrison, excerpted from up from slavery, written in by booker t. washington ( - ) exceprted song lyric, from back stabbers, released in on ua-emi by the philadelphia-based o’jays. song title, recorded in by n. carolina-born wilbert harrison ( - ), written by leiber & stoller. six perspectives on teaching as previewed in the introductory section (pp - ), this study acknowledges six perspectives on teaching: the transmissive, developmental, nurturing, social reform, apprenticeship and lateral or “peer” mentoring. (pratt, ; ellinger, ) the transmissive approach (hierarchically structured, content oriented, and institution-based) is a primary characteristic of formal education. though commonly associated with instrumental learning, transmissive teaching can also render transformative and communicative effects. for example, as an undergraduate at langara college i took two full terms of chinese language instruction. having grown up with the western (roman) alphabet, mastery of the ancient oriental pictographic system proved problematic. a “disorienting dilemma” thus naturally ensued, generating genuine appreciation for how other people from other cultures go about constructing and communicating thought. blues practice seems rather more in line with a developmental approach to instruction, particularly with regard to cultivating participants’ gradual improvement over time, and finding new ways to apply existing skills. some musicians, for instance, first engage the blues after having already attained high levels of facility in other genres, typically classical music and jazz. whereas relatively few blues players read music, classical and jazz musicians tend to be formally educated — instrumentally adept and fluent in complex notation. blues music, however, is relatively simple — and success sometimes eludes the over- qualified. you can’t get too jazzy with the blues. sunnyland slim (in oliver, ) a nurturing perspective on teaching is somewhat akin to the developmental approach. the qualities associated with nurturing, however, are generally regarded as maternal in nature, and, while female participation in the blues is historically important and widespread, the contemporary blues workplace is predominantly male. (davis, ; cohn, ) professional musicianeering is traditionally associated with elevated rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, health problems and other pathological traits (herer, ; ; brodsky, ; pruett, ) therefore, encouraging youthful participation in the blues could well be construed as irresponsible, not unlike contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and clearly inconsistent with the nurturing perspective’s fundamental tenet — “do no harm.” (t’kenye, ) blues practice would similarly appear to resonate with a social reform approach to teaching, especially given the oppressive circumstances surrounding its genesis. we are reminded, however, that for african americans living under jim crow, promoting social reform would have been a deadly serious undertaking. accordingly, the protest ethos generally finds scant purchase in the blues, even today. blues stood as a definite statement from “outside the system,” but was it true protest music? on the surface, most of its lyrics seemed not to address political, social, and racial issues . . . the folk-singers, they sang protest songs [and] spirituals and gospel were viewed as music of the black political struggle. modern jazz had a decidedly militant element. but blues? not so . . . lawrence, cohn ( , ) that is not to say the blues community of practice is socially unaware. rather, it tends to favour charity and benevolence, as characterized by the ubiquitous benefit concert in support of struggling individuals and embattled community organizations. (watson, , - ) indeed, tduring four decades as a working musician, i have entertained the troops at countless such events. it is not rebellion itself that ennobles, but the demands it makes upon us. albert camus ( ) the apprenticeship arrangement seems to resonate well with teaching and learning in occupational blues practice. customarily associated with the mercantile trades, with instruction and certification generally administered through sanctioned guilds, associations, trade unions, and government agencies — traditional apprenticeships are well suited to young persons seeking secure and dependable employment. as such, they are typically engaged both in good faith and with parental consent. but blues practice is historically neither secure nor dependable, with aspirants usually entering service on blind faith and without parental support. or so it was for me. becker ( ) has noted the tendency for human beings to strongly self-identify within their chosen profession, with occupational communities binding together informally as social entities through shared experience. indeed, cops have existed for centuries, with roots in medieval merchant guilds and artisans’ associations. (wenger, ; schon, ; senge, ) but such organizations need not be formally constituted. indeed, they may not even be aware of their own existence. (wenger, ) communities of practice are joint enterprises in the sense that they are collectively understood and continually renegotiated by their members, the goal being to establish “common ground.” (clark and brennan, ). such communities normally seek to maintain continuity, evolution and regeneration, through the ongoing “recruitment” of new members. (becker, ; ) today’s community of occupational blues practice is global in scope, comprising numerous national, regional, and local sub-entities. more than a century removed from its genesis among impoverished agricultural workers in rural mississippi, blues music is today heard worldwide, performed by men and women of diverse ethnicity and cultural tradition, and in many languages other than english. in buenos aries, stockholm, copenhagen, london, berlin, paris, rome, in fact, in every large city of the earth where lonely, disinherited [people] for pleasure or amusement, the orgiastic wail of the blues, and their strident offspring jazz, can be heard. richard wright (in oliver, , xiii) learning and teaching in the blues thus entails a variety of forms and procedures. legitimate peripheral participation (lpp), for example, is a model of situated social learning which finds the educand functioning within a particular community of practice at different levels depending on his or her ability, authority, or seniority. (lave & wenger, ) viewed separately, legitimization refers to the power relations at play. a formal view tends to privilege status acquired through domain knowledge or hierarchical rank and authority, but legitimacy can also be gained by acceptance through informal consensus within the group. peripherality refers to an individual’s social rather than physical position in relation to the community. this in turn is affected by the character of past relations within the see: www.electricbluesclub.co.uk group and future expectations of same. (ibid.) the blues jam session, described by cameron ( ) as a recreational practice of an occupational elite, is the embodiment of non-formal workplace lpp. trad- itionally presided over by a panel of senior community members, with local hopefuls vying to make a good impression, and visiting professionals occasionally dropping by to enliven the mix. — the jam is a place for musicians and singers to “hone” their skills. definition of the term “hone” invokes the common english word “home,” as in to “hone in” on a particular idea or an aesthetic. an alternative meaning recalls the old norse hun, meaning “whetstone,” as in “to sharpen.” zone of proximal development (zpd) is a term coined by soviet-era russian theorist lev vygotsky referring to the figurative “gap” between what a person can learn unaided and what they can learn with expert assistance and corroboration. highlighting the value of positive social interaction between participants of unequal knowledge or expertise, zpd describes the imagined “space” between a learner’s present or “actual” level of aptitude and their “potential.” this space is normally developed through “internalization,” a concept articulating how social and physical activities develop to become ingrained mental activities. (vygotsky, ; summarized in wertsch & johnson, ) accordingly, the product of social interaction is figuratively “ingested” by the learner, and then thoughtfully self-represented in order to “make sense.” normally reluctant to seize immediate possession of new knowledge, learners typically for a time remain dependent on arms-length support, or scaffolding. indeed, some remain stuck in this position, unable (or unwilling) to venture forth alone, content to merely copy or emulate. the final stage of vygotky’s model, however, recognizes the learner’s complete transition to unique and independent agent, with full ownership of their knowledge, and confidence in its usefulness. (ibid.) lesser known, perhaps, is vygotsky’s concept of “play” as an extension of the individual learner’s imagination. play is defined in terms of people extending themselves to the farther extents of creative possibility, while still adhering to certain rules (all organized play being defined by rules). (ibid.) thus, even while engaged in purposeful work-related activity — musicians are said to be “playing” their instruments. lateral or “peer” mentoring (ellinger, ) is the teaching perspective most germane to my own workplace education experience. lateral mentoring among blues musicians tends to involve transgenerational same-sex peer friendships between members of the same instrumental subgroup — guitarists, bass-players, drummers, singers, etc. such learning relationships are the stuff of legend. the following account, culled from escott & mcewen ( ), highlights the musical education of one hiram “hank” williams. it was probably in georgiana, alabama in that young hank (age ) met his first acknowledged musical influence, a black street musician named rufus payne. his nickname was “tee-tot,” a pun on teetotaler, which he most definitely wasn’t. born in on the payne plantation in sandy ridge, alabama, rufus’ parents moved to new orleans around , giving him a front-row seat for the birth of jazz. with hunched back and long arms that extended almost to his knees, he would play guitar on the streets, sometimes in the company of other black musicians, with a “jazz- horn” (kazoo) around his neck, and a cigar box on the ground in front of him where people would throw money. hiram king “hank” williams ( - ), iconic american country western singer, and composer of classic tunes such as hey good lookin’, honky tonk blues, and cold cold heart. crowds of kids would follow tee-tot around, but hank was the only one who wanted to do more than listen. he wanted to learn. exactly what passed between hank williams and rufus payne will never be known. payne certainly gave hank “lessons,” but it’s hard to know what was actually imparted. hank probably already knew most of the chords that payne knew, so perhaps the instruction involved broader strokes. rufus always stressed the importance of keeping time and getting a good rhythm going. indeed, one of the elements that would later set hank apart from his contemporaries was the irresistible drive to his music. he was never a particularly accomplished musician, but his bands would always take their cue from his forceful rhythm guitar playing. payne died in a charity hospital in montgomery, alabama on march, . he was on welfare at the time, and his trade was marked “unknown” on the death certificate. as unfashionable as it was at the time for white musicians to acknowledge the influence of black musicians, hank went out of his way to give payne full credit.“all the music training i ever had was from him,” he told the montgomery advertiser in . my learning experience in the blues wasn’t entirely dissimilar. yes, i was a white kid, born in england in , not mississippi in . and, instead of new orleans, louisiana i moved as a youngster with my family to vancouver, canada. but i too had no formal music lessons, and was heavily influenced by older, more experienced artists. with the exception of the englishman baldry, however, the time spent watching, listening, and performing with those folks was relatively brief. peer partnerships nourished by participation with fellow musicians in my local occupational group — the lavin brothers (tom and jack), doc fingers, hans staymer, jim byrnes, bruce fairbairn, billy cowsill, kenny wayne, and johnny ferreira et al — were more enduring. eight kinds of intelligence at age eight, on the very first day of public school in alberta, i was skipped ahead two grades, from gr. to gr. . was i so much smarter than the rest? principal henderson seemed to think so. what prompted his exceedingly hasty evaluation? it must have been that darned test. yes, i did perform well in the verbal-linguistic part. but, i was fresh from a s-era english primary school, where erudition, penmanship, and spelling were drummed into children's’ heads early on. my perfect score was simply the normal product of a front-loaded, old-world education system, and not indicative of any particular brilliance on my part. in retrospect, however, particularly considering my subsequent success as a composer and lyricist, i do acknowledge perhaps possessing a modicum of heightened acuity in that area. the same, however, cannot be said of logical-mathematical intelligence. yes, the english school system c. was similarly effective in promoting numeracy among young children. consequently, at eight years-old, i was reasonably skilled in basic arithmetic. middle school maths also went fairly well. but, by the later high school grades, i’d completely lost the handle. thus prompted at age sixteen to consider becoming a professional musician, i taught myself to play electric guitar by listening to rock & roll records on the radio. all music is mathematically structured to some extent, and advanced theory is highly numerative by nature. playing the blues, however, is a relatively uncomplicated undertaking. algebra, thankfully, is not required. accordingly, my ongoing inability to properly master the fundamentals of music notation suggests a deficiency in the “logical-mathematical” realm. erikson’s research indicates a degree of correlation between logical-mathematical and visual-spatial intelligence. (ibid.) it is not uncommon for people with an abundance of the latter to possess heightened hand-eye coordination, with many becoming artists and musicians. perhaps this link played a role in my case. indeed, music has always presented itself to me in geometric shapes and polygonal relationships. body-kinesthetic intelligence is related to physical movement. people so gifted tend to make good athletes and dancers. i was sporty as a kid, and in junior high could do the boogaloo. but falling behind socially effectively truncated my terpsichorean development. thus it’s hard to say how good i might have beeen. but musicians aren’t generally renowned for their ability anyway. indeed, the goal is rather opposite — to control and manipluate the rhythm so that others might feel so inclined. i refuse to dance. and i can't dance anyway. i'm not in a band for that. liam gallagher (attr.) auditory-musical intelligence is related to hearing and sense of pitch. gardner ( ) suggests that those with talent in this area, in addition to naturally excelling at music, also tend to learn better from oral lectures. my latter-day success at university perhaps supports this view. my habit of playing “by ear” is similarly demonstrative. the ear is the avenue to the heart. voltaire (attr.) manchester-born william john paul "liam" gallagher (b. ) is an english musician and songwriter best known as the lead singer of english rock band oasis. pseudonym of francois marie arouet ( - ) people with heightened interpersonal communications acuity tend to be extroverted, charismatic, charming, convincing, and diplomatic. accordingly, they function well in group situations and tend to succeed in sales, advertising, and politics. though having enjoyed a more than a modicum of music business success — i am not a “natural” performer. the challenges associated with roaming back and forth between england and canada as a youngster, and being skipped ahead two grades ahead in the process, were more than enough to diminish any genetically pre- disposed social skills i may have thereunto possessed. becoming a professional “entertainer” as a teen-ager was, for me, a compensatory process aimed at filling the social-psychological void generated by my profoundly unfulfilling k- experience. all you need to succeed in showbiz is self-confidence. and if you can fake that — you’ve got it made. anon. intrapersonal communication involves the ability to self-reflect, and is typically associated with religious and philosophical activity. critics argue that it is a vague, unmeasurable human attribute, more like a secondary personality trait. supporters, however, maintain that the ability to objectively judge one’s own weaknesses and strengths is a highly useful form of cognitive insight. an eighth intelligence category relates to the way people interact with their natural surroundings. loosely dubbed existential intelligence, it highlights sensitivity towards, or capacity for, conceptualizing and engaging questions about the meaning of life. (gardner, ; ) what then does an education mean? eight stages of life among the assortment of interpretive instruments here posited, erikson’s eight- stage model of human existence enjoys the broadest temporal range — a lifelong journey these days, on global average, of approximately . yrs. human existence is thus seen to unfold in eight successive “acts,” with the quality of progress through each in part determined by the measure of success (or lack of success) attained in all the previous ones. personal development is thus conceived in terms of structural integrity. (erikson, ; ) accordingly, just as an unsound foundation can cause a building to teeter and collapse, a person’s intellectual and psychological well-being is contingent upon the stability of previously erected conceptual frameworks and meaning schemes. the preceding story began by describing circumstances and events which molded and defined my nascent personality. infancy (< . ) and early childhood (< ) are where the seeds of familial security and trust are initially sown. genital stage ( - ) activity centred around mt. stewart primary school, in london, england, where i learned to read and write, do my sums, play sports, and relate autonomously to other kids. interestingly, it was around this time that i first heard “the blues.” stage-four childhood ( - ) is where children normally acquire the basic instrumental and social skills demanded by society at large, the task being to construct a strong and healthy self-image while avoiding role confusion and people tend to live longest ( + yrs.) in canada, europe, japan, south korea, singapore, australia, and scandinavia. in the u.s. and great britain it’s - . mexico and parts of south america follow at - . china ( - ) is doing better than both india ( - ) and russia ( - ), with africa (< ) far behind. source: http://www.who.int/topics/life_expectancy/en/ unwanted feelings of inferiority. no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. eleanor roosevelt, elementary school — eight years-old, the new kid in town (fresh off the boat), skipped two grades ahead, and three years younger than my classmates, arbitrarily distanced from my peer group, with no support system (academic or otherwise) to ameliorate the situation — that’s where things went wrong for me. becker ( , , ) notes that people disaffected in such a manner are more prone to recruitment by groups that have similarly segregated themselves from mainstream affairs, such as religious cults and civilian militia. they are also more likely to become involved in deviant occupational practice and engage in self-destructive activities such as the use of drugs and alcohol. the goal in young adulthood ( - ) is to achieve some degree of personal intimacy, as opposed to living in social isolation. this is where romantic relationships are first entertained, and forays into domesticity initiated. my “coming of age” coincided with advent of the sexual revolution, during which (as an aspiring rock musician) i was propitiously positioned. the term “sexual revolution” refers to a series of changes in social thought and behaviour throughout the western world during the s and early s, beginning with the gradual de-conditioning of traditional antecedents, and the development of new morality behavioural codes, many of which have been integrated into the contemporary mainstream. examples include the growing acceptance of premarital sex, birth control, public nudity, the legalization of abortion, and homosexuality. excepted from my story, written in by u.s. first lady eleanor roosevelt ( - ). suggested triggers include (a) the development of “the pill” in , which granted females reproductive choice, and (b) enhanced financial independence gained by women who entered the workforce in greater numbers during and after world war ii. the “hippie” movement of the mid-late s heralded an emerging counter-culture of youthful "free love" advocates who celebrated unrestrained sexuality as normal part of everyday life. the free love ethos proliferated widely in various forms throughout the s and early s, but its more assertive manifestations ended abruptly in the mid-late s with emergence of aids. (allyn, ) stage seven comprises middle adulthood (ca. - ), and includes the period during which we are most likely involved with raising children. the task here involves cultivating the proper balance between generativity and stagnation. generativity is characterized by a genuine concern for others and for future generations. stagnation, on the other hand, is a maladjustment analogous to the proverbial “mid-life crisis” where men and women approaching maturity tend to look back on their lives and wonder . . . is that all there is. peggy lee, stage eight, referred to as late-adulthood or maturity, begins roughly around age sixty. first comes a gradual detachment from society, as older folks retire from jobs they’ve held for decades and discover that their input is no longer as highly valued and sought after. aging also augers a sense of biological obsolescence. (biggs, ). mature women normally encounter menopause, and erectile dysfunction is not uncommon among older males. then there are the illnesses associated with seniority, such as arthritis, diabetes, song title. written by leiber and stoller, recorded by american jazz singer peggy lee in . heart problems, and the various cancers. the spectre of mortality looms. friends die. loved ones pass on. the task in later life, therefore, is to develop and maintain a healthy measure of ego integrity (wisdom) while minimizing desperation and despair. accordingly, some older folks become preoccupied with “the good old days,” reveling in the comfort of earlier triumphs and successes. others, however, tend to be more regretful, choosing instead to focus on their failures, faulty decisions, and missed opportunities. thus, many older people become depressed, morose, spiteful, paranoid and hypochondriacal — in effect developing symptoms of senility prematurely, and often without direct physiological cause. were it not better to forget than to remember — and regret? the meaning of an education i used to hate principal henderson for skipping me ahead in school, and would curse him every time i cursed myself for ever taking up the guitar. what if we’d never emigrated. and what if i’d been allowed to proceed through school in “real time” and not so oddly “out of phase?” i might have made an entirely different career choice, and instead become a businessman, a bureaucrat (bungling or otherwise), or a bus driver (like my cockney grandad). but “what if?” is a mug’s game. no earthly use to anyone. things are what what they are. you have to play the cards you’re dealt. even so. excerpted from despondency, by letitia elizabeth landon ( - ) the allotments of providence, when coupled with trouble and anxiety, often conceal from finite vision the wisdom and goodness in which they are sent; and, frequently, what seemed a harsh and invidious dispensation, is converted by after experience into a happy and beneficial arrangement. frederick douglass, this is an ideal place to acknowledge the wisdom and goodness of people like brian pendleton and jim plaszek, who welcomed me into the pacific rim program at langara college, as did john webb in english, and roz scarnell in geography. their combined pedagogies helped propel my timely transfer to the faculty of arts at ubc, where heath “pete” chamberlain and paul tennant together invited me to join the department of political science (poli). adult education professor dan pratt, a neighbourhood acquaintance, introduced me to his aded colleague roger boshier (my original pro-tem). carl leggo was the first to indicate that this project might find purchase in curriculum studies (cust), and linda farr-darling, temporarily charged with “rounding up strays” for the department, managed to keep me in the cust corral during the difficult period following the breakup of my marriage. lyn fels’s insightful section on performative research methods helped assuage my initial “fish out of water” misgivings. and jerry “the hammer” wasserman, whose course on african american literature opened the door to a deeper under- standing of “the blues” than one could have imagined — continues to test some of my less exacting scholarly proclivities. but fondest kudos are reserved for tony clarke, who’s had my back since the beginning — especially when i felt like giving up and tried to tender my resignation. “you can’t,” he said. “i won’t let you.” born frederick augustus washington bailey( - ), escaped slave, orator, writer, and statesman. from my bondage and my freedom ( ) conclusion thanks to you, the reader, for having persevered this far. one trusts that (a) “the story” was entertaining (b) that the narrative rang true (c) that its performative delivery didn’t undermine its scholarly effectiveness (d) that the “instrumental” model of analysis made good sense, and that (e) the study’s four fundamental thesis questions have been adequately addressed. indeed, what role did k- education play in my decision to become a working musician? how then did i subsequently acquire the technical facility, the social dexterity, and the ontological assurance required to function productively in such a role? what role did occupational deviance play with respect to the nature and quality of my latter-day engagement with higher education? and, what role does education continue to play in my ongoing life and career? some might suggest that the foregoing questions are intrinsically subjective, and thus unfairly easy to resolve. not so. an honest autobiography — rendered in an aesthetically entertaining, academically acceptable, and pedagogically useful manner — is an exceedingly demanding item to produce. “just be yourself,” said willie dixon. (p ) good advice — but much, much easier said than done. first you need to figure out who you are. education is an admirable thing. but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. oscar wilde, . from a few maxims for the use of the overeducated, written by englishma oscare wilde ( - ), published anonymously in the november edition of saturday review. note: the following bibliography is a comprehensive chart of all the various investigative routes taken, including detours and dead-ends. bibliography adams, henry b. 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( ), moving history: the evolution of the pow-wow. oklahoma city: red earth center. zukin, sharon ( ). point of purchase. new york: routledge. christine brooke-rose: the horse’s mouth christine brooke­rose : motes, beams and  the horse's mouth white, g http://dx.doi.org/ . / x. . title christine brooke­rose : motes, beams and the horse's mouth authors white, g type article url this version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/ / published date usir is a digital collection of the research output of the university of salford. where copyright  permits, full text material held in the repository is made freely available online and can be read,  downloaded and copied for non­commercial private study or research purposes. please check the  manuscript for any further copyright restrictions. for more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the repository team at: usir@salford.ac.uk. mailto:usir@salford.ac.uk christine brooke-rose: motes, beams and the horse’s mouth glyn white the founding of the christine brooke-rose society and its inaugural event prompted me to revisit my history with the author with whom i was fortunate enough to correspond during the last decade of her life. our correspondence ran alongside my completing a phd, gaining full-time employment as an academic, getting married, becoming a father and publishing a monograph and a number of articles, including over twenty-five thousand words of criticism on brooke-rose’s work. during the same time brooke-rose was working on her late novels and her last book of criticism, contending with accumulating illness and disability and the approach of the ultimate, end of. our contact focused on thru, the novel that sets itself at the intersection of the critical and the creative in an academic environment and a text she herself was already retrospectively revisiting at this time in the article that became chapter five of invisible author: last essays. this essay draws on that correspondence to consider brooke-rose’s relationship to academic criticism as a critic and novelist, the ways in which those overlapping identities affected each other and, with reference to thru, to suggest how her work in both fields offers significant insights and opportunities relevant to both contemporary critical thought and literary practice. the horse’s mouth i met christine brooke-rose once – and only briefly – in late when she came to the university of east anglia in norwich, where i was studying, and gave a paper on the first twenty-one pages of thru, exposing aspects of it that hadn’t been picked up by critics since its publication twenty years previously. the paper had been written for a conference elsewhere and, as brooke-rose indicates in the footnote on page of invisible author, she was on her way back to france when she gave it. this second airing was thus a somewhat impromptu event, set up by professor lorna sage. phd students and staff filled a medium-sized common room, seated in comfortable chairs around the edge of the space. photocopies of the first twenty-one pages of thru were distributed for us to pore over and follow the commentary. time for questions came. christine brooke-rose was lean and grey and very sharp. she wasn’t conceding anything, even to lorna. when the floor was opened, an ambitious member of staff asked a look-at-me question that was very general and coolly received. silence threatened. i asked a question about the upside down text on page twenty-seven, thereby showing that there was a person in the room who had read the book (in fact i still had the uea library copy out). this did me some good with lorna, but most importantly got an engaged answer from christine that really helped my research; thru would become central to my thesis. later, when i’d made some headway with the phd, lorna encouraged me to contact christine and passed on her avignon address. i felt obliged to write even though i was skeptical about whether much would come of it as, ideologically, i was convinced that authors were dead. my letter asked professor christine brooke-rose if she would be kind enough to look at a section of the chapter of my thesis that discussed thru, and, if so, she was invited to ‘please get in touch by any means available [since] i would be delighted to hear from you’. about a week later, as i walked into my lodgings, my landlord left the telephone receiver on the table with the words, ‘it’s for you’. it was christine brooke-rose asking who i was, what i was doing, what i was writing. it was rather like an on-the- spot viva. the outcome of our discussion was that, yes, i could send her the chapter section which we corresponded about at some length (something i will return to below). later in our correspondence we discussed an article i was writing about thru that was published in poetics today in and, several years after completing my thesis, i was able to send her the monograph arising from it ( ) which contains a substantial chapter on thru independent of the poetics today piece. in the covering letter accompanying the book i claimed it was the largest chapter, which was true in terms of wordcount, but she pointed out that the following chapter had more pages (simply due to the illustrations included). there was no getting away with anything with christine. over the telephone, she listed some minor things for me to correct for the second edition and, most exasperatingly, suggested a shorter, better title for the book. these high standards made it all the more rewarding when she was kind enough to say she liked my work or countenanced a particular reading. our initial run of correspondence closed with ‘you have got as close as can be to the text’, something i take to be high praise. i have used the term ‘the horse’s mouth’ in the title and subtitle above, not for the occasional bite or to suggest that my contribution to brooke-rose studies is any more authoritative because of these personal links, but because this was the term christine used for her authorial feedback on what i had written about her work. to hear an opinion from the horse’s mouth is a twentieth-century horseracing metaphor, indicating the reliability of a tip about the outcome of a race, but also (since it involves a talking horse) suggesting that it is too good to be true. brooke-rose’s choice of it is particularly apt, for she was well aware that the horse’s opinion is not the same as the outcome of the race, even if it is uniquely well-informed. in using it, she was expressing her own ambivalence about what the new critics called the intentional fallacy, and it was clear she was suspicious of my reasons for seeking contact in the first place: you may have expected the author to explain all, and be disappointed. but you should know my views, since you quote so much of my criticism. i am in principle against author's intention and the present fashion for students to interview them etc. it not only includes laziness, but, more seriously, if the author fails in her intention it has no value at all. thus i am all for readers' interpretations. nevertheless (and of course) this can let loose all sorts of aberrations. the fact was, rather than send the whole of my chapter on thru for approval – subjecting it to a potentially devastating authorial review – i had specifically sent material which engaged with the aspects of this novel that i was struggling with. thru’s contentious arc-icons the problematic pages were the arc-icons on pages and of the original edition, which were then quite disproportionately prominent in critical accounts of both thru and the work of christine brooke-rose. the first was reproduced in morton levitt’s dictionary of literary biography entry on brooke-rose and brian mchale’s important study postmodernist fiction reproduced the second icon. heather reyes’ thesis on brooke-rose had argued how atypical these pages were, and how this emphasis distracted from a focused interpretation of brooke-rose’s work. my thesis’s focus on the visual aspects of fiction did not allow me to sideline these icons; i had to make sense of them. i understood that the shaping of text in thru came from the narrational context and i was reaching for explanations beyond those of mchale whose main objective was to show the turn from modernist focus on epistemology to postmodern concern with literary ontology. my draft had the temerity to see a leaf shape (a visual interpretation with no textual justification) and link it to a chomskyean tree diagram (something at least referred to in the text), but these proved to be aberrations. brooke-rose insisted they were meant to represent arc-lamps (a powerful type of street lamp), though in a freudian typographic slip they also became ‘arc-lmps’. to rein me in brooke-rose cited two published examples of overinterpretation of her work that had proven irksome. damian grant’s assertion that the triangle on page of thru was james joyce’s alp triangle and, quite topically for , richard martin’s anachronistic interpretation of the phrase ‘shall we ever make europe’ in amalgamemnon ( ) as relating to britain’s joining of the european union as opposed to the creation of ‘a valid union’. the general upshot of both of her examples was: ‘n'allez pas cherchez midi à quatorze heures’. when it came to what she called the arc-lamps, brooke-rose was unhappy with mchale’s interpretation of them as resembling a lecture theatre, particularly because, as in the martin example, she’d attempted to correct his interpretation before publication: i saw mchale's pages before they were printed and wrote to him that the design couldn't possibly be students in an amphitheatre since that image doesn't occur till later. and told him author's intention. which he chose to disregard or place in a dismissive footnote. fine. in fact, mchale includes a long endnote in postmodernist fiction that is fairly even- handed. he explains that: the word-pattern of broken arches occurs only twice, here on p. and earlier, in a slightly different version, on p. , but its signification is multiple each time. it seems to refer not only to a lecture-hall, but also to patterns of light cast by streetlights on a wide boulevard…as well as to a more abstract ‘object’ of representation, discussed below. i wish to thank christine brooke-rose herself for reminding me of the proliferation and slippages of meaning among the concrete prose passages of thru. essentially, this is an agreement to a difference of opinion, though mchale doesn’t indicate which of the possibilities brooke-rose preferred. the difficulty of interpreting thru is caused by what brooke-rose called its ‘absolutely objective narration’, where the narration comes from within the thoughts of the character(s) with no introduction or framing for the reader to locate themselves, or even to identify shifts between characters. the motivation for the extraordinary shaping of the typography here and elsewhere in thru comes from within the minds of the perceiving consciousness which is being read, but a lot of the reader’s interpretation depends on which phrases, scenes or observations they take to be significant, not just within but around the ‘arc-icons’. the last words on the page preceding the first of these icons include a list of names followed by: ‘shouting at faculty meetings where faculties never meet even on an imagined curve or even as an audiovisual illusion of a coherent structure diminishing in size’ ( ). the content of the first icon appears to be dialogue from a meeting, ‘canyons of tall speeches of protest’ about ‘the idiotic affair’, punning on a relationship and ending in ‘order, [o]rder’ with both pendant to a single ‘o’ that elsewhere in the text symbolises ‘the other’, not order. on the following the page ( ) the setting is clearly an academic meeting with ‘colleagues’, ‘agenda’, and issues over recruitment policy being discussed. the second arc-icon comes over one hundred pages later, only seven from the end, and emerges out of a creative writing class voting on whether or not to kill larissa, a character in their joint narrative, and possibly also their creator and/or their tutor’s ex-wife: ‘i vote we vote first whether to vote for those against abstinence refusal of representation with a show of hands in the secret ballet of the i where faculties never meet even on an imagined curve as illusion of a coherent structure diminishing in size’ ( ). the following arc-icon has some of the same text as the first but is more clearly a classroom setting (from a lecturer’s point of view) when it includes: ‘the peripatetic fallacy of the rectangular room into which you enter and walk up and down [and are forced to read upwards and downwards] before a sea of floating faces that stare into spacetime or utter (rubbish) ances and bend their blonde black heads to write down v = f’ ( ). again the text on the page ends in a call for ‘order, [o]rder’, but a decision is not reached about larissa’s fate. she appears later, under her surname toren, in the subsequent listing of names and grades (pp. - , attributed to the student body on p. ) scoring an ‘x’. this may seem like a fail grade but it is linked to the chiasmus, used emphatically in the novel since the first page and linked to griemas’s ‘logical rectangle of contraries and contradictories’, which is seen as comically reductive and specifically parodied in thru, but which also becomes a sign of the ‘interchangeability of narrators’. in fact, a reference to the four-cornered diagram introduces the last list of grades: superimposing unlimited antisystems unto sixteen times sixteen time sixteenn possible balanced relationships in endless permutations represented in a hidden representation inside a representation alphabetically marked in columns that support the proepigrammed linguistic edifice of marked and un-re-marked sem(id)iotic irrecoverable narrators gone (thru, ) as judy little succinctly puts it in the experimental self: ‘christine brooke-rose deconstructs the presumptions of agency and authorship as her puzzled characters in thru try to ward off the comic frustration of having written each other’. i’ll say more about another aspect of the chiasmus in the novel later but, while we are here, we can look back at the above quotation and note that (if it is reproduced correctly) the first letters of the lines spell a word that can be read vertically (i.e. ‘superimposing’). this was one of the elements of the text brooke-rose revealed in her twentieth anniversary paper on thru: the existence of vertical text, superimposed on the pages and almost invisibly governing layout. what i hope to have established with the foregoing is that by the end of thru we still cannot establish a narratorial hierarchy and the text contains occulted elements dependent on its visual presentation. mchale’s decision that the arc-icon represents a lecture theatre, in the latter instance which he quotes, is thus a plausible mimetic explanation but is also, as brooke-rose complained, reductive. in the context of a survey of postmodernist fiction there is not room for all possible interpretations to be entertained, as mchale’s endnote admits, but in any individual reading such limiting of interpretative possibilities is also inevitable. it is too difficult to continue reading if the reader does not limit possibilities, just as the writer only represents certain aspects of the world they generate. brooke-rose is aware of this: ‘the moment we utter a sentence, we’re leaving out a lot. i mean this idea… that we are just taking bits and pieces of reality, which is what language does automatically. we’re doing a découpage of reality and all the more so when we write a novel or a poem or anything else’. but as the author and as ‘first reader’, brooke-rose cannot help but see, and thus wish to privilege, her intent: i can only repeat author's intention, which you're also free to say doesn't come off and anything you like. as i worked so hard at them, both writing and typing them, i do remember what i intended: the couple have parked and got out of the car, in a long street with arc-lamps that get smaller and smaller in the distance. i don't see what's so difficult about that image as such, though you're free to say that arc-lamps don't look like that or the circumstances or context aren't clear enough. armel (if it's him, and it is in my head) who's going to the girl's flat (and that scene is later told by mira as 'ruth' in a creative w. class), is standing looking at the arc-lamps and thinking of a faculty meeting quarrel, o r probably of a 'typical' quarrel, not a specific one. this typical quarrel in his head is the only indication that it's him looking at the arc-lamps and not the girl. the superimposition of that reconstruction on the arc-lamps is perhaps difficult, but once grasped there's plenty in the text to support it, only i'm still too unwell to look for it. i'd much rather you stuck to this interpretation and maybe explained why it doesn't come off (and i agree the print in the arc-lamps is very hard to read, and moves in the wrong direction in some, etc, i was after all experimenting, and that is what [typo]graphic[ally innovative] novels do, and maybe failing) than introduce all those alternative readings that blur the final effect for the reader. the best interpretation is therefore authorial intention, and though alternatives are still in theory permitted, they may negatively affect the intended effect. my response letter thanking the author for all of this input was followed by a ‘ps’ from her, showing that in spite of her ill health (mentioned in the quotation above) she was still gnawing away at some of the issues and contradictions raised. in particular brooke-rose noted that, in first letter, there was: an element of insisting both that the author's intention isn't valid and that my intention was arc-lamps. it's due to my being two people. the theorist is reader-oriented (within reason! having gone thru every position from oxford's 'first establish the author's intention' school of the late forties to 'text only' etc etc). the author gets quite peeved (a manner of speaking) at 'aberrant' readings. but you've grasped the main point. i'll add: the general rule, when interpreting, is to ask yourself; how relevant, and how enriching? it is possible to see these opinions in her contribution to interpretation and over- interpretation ( ), and in various places in invisible author. brooke-rose is conscious of ‘the author’s vanity’: ‘i'm always delighted when a critic reads something i hadn't thought of, if it enriches (i.e. i feel clever to have 'perhaps' meant that). but slightly 'peeved' if it impoverishes’. this reiterated self-awareness, was the platform for an acceptance that mchale’s position was valid: mchale's 'amphitheatre' is, as you point out, relevant to the context, and only 'mistaken' re. author's intention (which doesn't count!), i.e. armel could be superimposing amphitheatre and faculty meeting in his head at this point (ahead of the later metaphor of the amphibian-theatre). that's why i merely pointed out my intention to him in my letter but didn't pursue it. he's entitled to the interpretation, though it leaves armel in the street thinking of two other things, indeed, no longer in the street at all, and possibly no longer armel (vision detached from context could be new character). whereas in my intention he's still there in the street and the lamps make him think of faculty meetings (which 'never meet'). i.e. it's 'motivated'… part of the difference in opinion here is clearly because brooke-rose’s focus is on the earlier example of the icon while mchale’s is on the latter. though i wasn’t able to straighten this out at the time, it is clear that both readings can co-exist within the novel tied to separate icons. the question begged, however, is, even if we focus on the first of these icons, can it be reduced to one intention when other possible readings proliferate? the first icon follows on from a journey taken by the focalising consciousness of the passage (in brooke-rose’s intention armel) and a female partner, but it isn’t clear whether the character in the street seeing the arc-lamps (arcing towards each other but never meeting) and reading them as a metaphor for faculty meetings where there is no agreement or is now in the faculty meeting thinking of the arc-lamps as a metaphor. brooke-rose’s absolutely objective narration is sufficiently ambivalent for both to be possible, and both are enriching. ‘building our house on quicksands’ the ambivalence between readings allowed by this novel’s technique gives rise to a peculiar effect, specifically the feeling that, as it says in the first arc-icon text, ‘we’re building our house on quicksands’ ( ). this is an extension of the parable of the wise and foolish builders in the new testament, in which the wise builder builds on rock, the foolish builder on sand. as readers we’re not grounded in the way we feel we ought to be when reading thru: our hypotheses about who is narrating, about where they are and the nature of their relationships with other characters (who might also be narrators or co-narrators) remain deeply unstable throughout, as indicated above. this instability is the defining factor of this novel, and therefore thru has: the full postmodernist repertoire of destabilising strategies, including self- contradiction; the placing of episodes or descriptions ‘under erasure’; so- called ‘strange loops’; trompe-l’oeil effects, such as ‘demoting’ an event, character, or object to a lower narrative level or, conversely, ‘promoting’ one to a higher level; mise en abîme; irresolution or hesitation between mutually exclusive alternative scenarios; and so on. ...thru, in other words, is a text of radical ontological hesitation: a paradigmatic postmodern novel. as i argued in poetics today ( ), we must be careful not to panic when we observe all these techniques, as they do not make this text unreadable or act as devices capable of trapping the reader. while the critic might potentially end up in over their head in this quicksand-like instability and embedded within numerous theoretical contradictions, readers have to read and require quicksand-crossing techniques. reading means making a découpage of the text as indicated above, but also putting a couple of metaphorical planks down to walk across and, for future use, retrieving those planks if at all possible. thru’s technique of undercutting anything we might think we have established as solid might mean the planks we have used turn out not to exist, but as readers we have still crossed to the other side of the quicksand, even if we are only finding ourselves in more of it. the panicky feelings of the characters (‘we’re building our house on quicksands’), and their penchant for grading the performance of other characters and their writing, including ‘the placing of episodes or descriptions ‘under erasure’, the ‘demoting’ of an event, character, or object to a lower narrative level or, conversely, the ‘promoting’ of one to a higher level, and the irresolution or hesitation between mutually exclusive alternative scenarios’, are – as in the final lines of the arc-icons – attempts to impose order. however, these attempts are enacted from instability (quicksand) and therefore are destined to fail, for example the cancellation of a scene from the class’s narrative might invalidate it but cannot wipe it from the memory of the reader or the page. therefore, the internal resistance by the characters to the ‘quicksand’ of instability can be linked to another biblical reference in thru, that of the parable of the mote and the beam: ‘and why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?’. the terms ‘mote’ and ‘beam’, which other translations substitute with ‘speck’ and ‘log’, ‘splinter’ and ‘plank’, are used recurrently in the acrostic layout on page six of thru (where words can be read vertically and horizontally, with some letters doing double duty). that page is themed by eye motifs, so that king lear and georges bataille are invoked alongside derrida’s deconstruction of freud. the presence of ‘mote’ and ‘beam’ in this context is interesting. the parable illustrates the proverb contained in the previous two verses: ‘judge not that ye be not judged. for with what judgement ye judge shall ye be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you’. i believe there is a link here between the quicksand that the novel forces us to build upon and our consequent judgement of the builder. we need to remove the critical beam from our eye in order to critique any mote we perceive to be floating in the atmosphere of the text. this is a lesson against the hypocrisy of judging while blinded, and of insisting upon things being a certain way. another recurrent motif in the novel is that of wallace stevens’ poem ‘the man with blue guitar’ ( ), whose listeners complain ‘you do not play things as they are’. fiction may represent, but ‘things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar’. fiction cannot be reality, but nor can it completely cut loose from it because language has a built in referential function. furthermore, neither reader nor critic can compel a text to conform to their expectations. fiction is thus not obliged to build its house on rock: the postmodern novel is the novel in rebellion against two major laws of philosophic logic. the first is the law of non-contradiction which says that an argument is flawed if it contradicts itself. the second is the law of cause and effect which organises not only philosophical argument but the events of a novel, the relation of the novel to criticism, the relations between modernism and postmodernism, or personal and historical experience in general, as a linear sequence. the novel is superior to philosophy exactly because it is not constrained by such laws. it has acquired an epistemological importance in contemporary culture because it has always had the power to question the certainties of traditional philosophic argument, to be dialectical, to be complex. in other words, fiction can build itself on sand, even on quicksand as in thru, and endure. author and critic = horse and rider, but which rides the other? the mutability of possible interpretations of the arc-icon pages is instructive, perhaps especially as possible interpretations proliferated the more both author and critic sought to pin it down. before i had a chance to respond to the author’s second letter on the subject a pps of a third letter followed, as brooke-rose realised she hadn’t included the key point: although i may (or may not) have been aware of how 'unrealistic' the design of the arclamps had become, the important point, for me, was the metaphor: the arclamps don't meet (this is in the text), because they alternate on opposite sides; nor do the speeches of the people at the meeting, also on opposite sides (implicit only, but what they say is in the text inside the design). it's a functional metaphor, a type donne was fond of, which likens two things in virtue of what they do (or in this case don't do), rather than what they look like, which is the more usual type. finally, the whole discussion appears to be closed off with: end of horse's mouth on arclamps. except that it's not just the author's intention, it's in the text! if you use it, please make this clear, and settle these absurd mis-readings once and for all. it's also a good guide to other puzzles maybe. although i don't always remember, and can't always explain (and shouldn't!), i know there's nearly always a reason (good or bad) for anything i do (and good to me or course, otherwise i wouldn't do it). so read the text all round, closely. when the author is also a critic, they know how a critical reading should be conducted. authorial knowledge is almost a handicap. certainly the assumption that critical reading will (this time) end up in agreement with authorial intention seems to have set some alarm bells ringing for the critic and the letter ends with another paragraph that is technically a ppps: i see on checking that i didn't do this myself! on p. (opposite the arclamps) the provisional consciousness is no longer in the street (unless he's been thinking of classes etc since silver grins on p. ) but very much with teaching and meetings ('musical chairs bottom-shaped with liftable flaps...') so my last letter was misleading, i was writing from fallible memory. all the more reason for this letter, the point of which is still true but perhaps should be inverted: 'shouting at faculty meetings where faculties never meet even on an imagined curve or even as an audiovisual illusion of a coherent structure diminishing in size', i.e. we're at the faculty meeting, remembering the arclamps! easier in a way, except that the arclamps have not been mentioned before! this is a good lesson in the obligation to check and not trust one's own memory, even for the author. but that's what close reading means. this is wonderful advice for the phd researcher, both in the practice of their research and the weight they may – or may not – give to authorial statements from the horse’s mouth. but, with a little more close reading, even this conclusion could be revisited. of course, we must remember we are building our house on quicksands because the phrases we notice and pick out (our temporary planks of meaning) do not appear to stay solid, but brooke-rose’s ultimate interpretation of the first arc-icon is eminently supportable. on page arc lamps are mentioned, with the focalising character: now standing in the wide street recumbent under great curved beams of pale light equispaced but staggered each to the other laterally, the quarter arches never meeting even on an imagined curve except quite distantly along the can yon of tall blocks all asleep all dreaming along the boulevard as they diminish in size quite distantly. on page the canyons mentioned in the arc-icon are emphasised in a page of acrostic text. on page armel writes: ‘larissa my love. this is going to be a disconnected letter as i am writing it during a faculty meeting’ but, typically in thru, we don’t get true epistolary form but instead read what he thinks while he is writing. then, on page when we are in the creative writing group composing the group narrative – or flashing back to it in their teacher’s mind – we note that: ‘the writer is the reader and the reader is the writer’. reversibility is possible at virtually every turn, and questions about who is narrating (the ‘who speaks’ from barthes) are a constant refrain, but the thread of ideas that link arc-lamps and faculty meeting are clearly present. what dissolves is certainty about who is focalising and what their perspective is (are they remembering the faculty meeting or remembering the street with the arc-lamps?). that the novel could apparently catch its own author out on such details certainly illustrates its instability, but it also points to its richness. while writing my thesis, i attended an event in london where i was introduced to an american phd candidate who i soon learned was also working on brooke-rose. anyone who has done a phd will know the sort of questions that immediately follow: which novels are you studying? mostly thru. [uh oh, me too] when are you submitting? in month x. [uh oh, sooner than me] but the panic didn’t last long. the more we talked, the more it became clear that there would be virtually no overlap between our theses because of the richness of this text. my interlocutor, brad buchanan, was focusing on thru’s mythological references, while my work focused on the visual aspects of thru and how they grounded the floating text in its physical manifestation. if thru is a text that excites you, it is possible, even probable, that you have an entirely other take on it. brooke-rose should be recognised as a uniquely rich critic and novelist working at the highest intellectual level in both fields, but she seems to have become increasingly aware, as retirement, illness and age limited her capacity to work in either field, that her twin legacies are almost mutually exclusive. there is no difficulty at all in our celebrating both the novels and the critical work, but there is considerable practical difficulty in writing about them side by side. instead, one uses the criticism to interpret the novels or, perhaps, the novels to prove the criticism. it’s one of those difficult binaries where the two elements exist in an implicitly hierarchical relationship of novelist/critic, or possibly critic/experimental novelist. thru, acknowledged as her favourite novel, is the novel where the lines between critic and author are most blurred. she claims that ‘writing it resolved my writer/critic conflict’, but the long hiatus in her publishing of fiction afterwards points to either the productive nature of that inner conflict or the damage thru’s reception did to her career as a writer of fiction. in many ways her later critical works are metacriticism, commenting on the state of the discipline, noting – and protesting – its quirks and fashions. brooke-rose critiques content-based criticism predicated on summary. in her shorthand for criticism ‘the how and the what’ comes first. in invisible author brooke-rose argues for the inadequacy of the ‘narrator’ to cover all eventualities, and for the radical nature of her key innovation (or lipogram or constraint), only lately identified: ‘a refusal of the narrative past tense, replaced by a simultaneous present tense’ that she picked up from robbe-grillet’s la jalousie and ran with thereafter. the point is well made and is something brooke-rose was so passionate about she was later seeking to create an endowment fund in her name that would fund further investigation in this area. to the best of my knowledge, supported by an internet search, this did not ultimately happen. some might argue that the death of the author, figurative or literal, invalidates the setting of an agenda through which their (or all) novels are evaluated. the problems and frustrations for brooke-rose were that she was in many ways ideally equipped to pursue the topic, but was equally disqualified from pursuing it because it could not be anything other than an investigation into her own work. in invisible author she notes ‘the current double paradox, that despite the long taboo on author intention…, writers are constantly invited to talk about their work (first paradox), though the taboo survives that they are not supposed to write about it (second paradox)’. the paradox can be seen today in the insertion of brief interviews with authors into to the back of their bestselling books, in lieu of the prefaces and forewords of earlier eras. yet not all of her latter critical work is self-referential. brooke-rose conducts a fascinating analysis of house of leaves by mark z. danielewski in the dual coda to invisible author. her analysis dissects (or perhaps bisects) the novel mainly in terms of ‘how’ it relates to the concept of present narration outlined above. in particular, brooke-rose notes the traction danielewski gets out of juxtaposing a third person present tense narrative (the extensive but impossible description of a video by a blind man) with a colloquial present tense narration by the hedonistic johnny truant. no matter how technically interesting the ‘how’, the critic finds that other practitioners use it (in this case particularly effectively) to foreground a ‘what’ that fascinates. a brief example from one of truant’s extended footnotes should make the point of how the present can deliver within the gothic genre: to get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don’t let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can’t see it, something is closing in on you, so quiet in fact that you can only hear it as silence. find those pockets without sound. that’s where it is. right at this moment. but don’t look. keep your eyes here. the form (including different typefaces for different narrators) does an awful lot of work in framing and shaping house of leaves, but makes it appear uncanny rather than calculated, and excessive rather than constrained. brooke-rose suggests danielewski parodies both types of present tense and thus might (or might not) bring about a ‘sad’ end to the possibilities opened up by robbe-grillet. the chapter ends with the sense that it is impossible for a critic to predict what the future will and will not value, and the critical work with which it closes (an interview with lorna sage follows) begins with a questioning of the (perceived) value of criticism. at the end of the chapter ‘splitcrit’ in invisible author brooke-rose argues that in order to be relevant and to engage a readership criticism needs to reunify all the many now scattered ways of enthusing…and transmitting that enthusiasm without … summary, ideology, a rigidly held theory, or imposition of abstract structures that have only a limited relevance to any text, [instead] using a sort of … magpie criticism, that uses the best of past isms without fear of unfashion, and this or that theory if it can enhance understanding, but above all, genuine enjoyment, insight, imagination, a “gift outright” of ourselves, and the compliment of careful reading….’ in short, brooke-rose argues for more creative criticism engaged with the text. novelist and critic come together uniquely in brooke-rose, joined at the margins of both fields, where criticism becomes poetic and poetics engage with theory. confronting binaries in criticism and theory in many ways the plea articulated above is implicit in thru, a university-set novel full of theory in which fiction is not simply subjected to critical theory but theory is subjected to fiction, and which resists all of the critical limitations outlined above. in order to exemplify this point, i will show how thru engages in criticism by playfully including it in the fiction. the complexity of the text, as we have seen above, is such that the various commentators on thru employ many of its multiple theoretical intertexts, but usually limit themselves to a couple, for example, hanjo berressem concentrates on lacan and greimas and sarah birch on kristeva and irigaray. derrida is usually accorded some mention, but the details of his particular influence are not pursued. with a view to showing how useful thru can be to us as we gaze in retrospect at postmodernism and post-structuralism i will briefly pursue an aspect of that derridean influence here, focusing on dissemination, published in france in . brooke-rose herself admitted that she thought thru ‘a very derridean book’. the translation of deconstruction in thru emerges in numerous ways. the ‘x’ device, as in greimas’s use as a diagram of contraries and contradictories, could be a shorthand structural plan of thru (see p. ) but this is also a significant reference to the chiasmus we find in derrida is his bracketed note appendant to the greek x: ‘which can be considered a quick thematic diagram of dissemination’. with this mark as a structural principle it becomes clear thru is in some measure a deconstructionist novel. however, this does not mean that thru ultimately treats derrida uncritically. while the novel has been written contemporaneously with and in close proximity to the development of poststructuralist thought it is not, as some reviewers believed, merely a vehicle for such ideas. for example, through close-reading, we can see thru picking up on gender-based commentary from some of derrida’s work. derrida discusses an example of a semantic argument being used against new ideas, taking the instance of a reaction to freud’s application of the term ‘hysterical’ to male patients: ‘how can a man be hysterical? hysteron (sic) signifies uterus’. as brooke-rose says in stories, theories and things, ‘the very word hysteria, from ustera, uterus, womb, is misogynous…’. while derrida rejects the whole species of the argument on theoretical grounds, we find that brooke-rose’s earlier response in thru, is to pick up and play with the term. there is acrostic play with ‘the hystery of the eye’ on page of thru, and later a male character says ‘please stop this hysterical rewriting of history’ ( ). thru’s play links ‘history’ to ‘his-story’, both to a transcendental signified and phallocentric history. such awareness of the gendering of arguments will eventually find derrida’s work provocative. the ‘dissemination’ he introduces is clearly male (in which seed is spread in an anti-puritan, anti-platonic, profligate, masturbatory way) while other metaphors rely on the passivity of the female. we can see this when derrida talks about the ‘virginity of the page’ or ‘the closed feminine form of the book, protective of the secret of its hymen…’. thus the opening and reading of the book takes on a violent character: ‘perpetual, the rape has always already taken place and will nevertheless never have been perpetrated’. thru finds this hard to take, and weaves these elements into its textual play as in the following quotation: the heroine after all must not be found too soon…. this seems not to apply to the hero apparent who is allowed to dis-chant his chances and enchantments from tale to tale ten a day for a hundred days owing to the double standard or taleological fallacy of felix culpa that the end be balanced by the meanness and the woman is always the end, the matter upon which you write your narcissistic love the virgin page you soil in which you sow your seed ( ) in this quotation we move from narratologist vladimir propp to derrida, with the second-person address giving it an aggressive immediacy that possibly indicates the speaker is female, whether in her own right or as the fictional creation of another character. the phrase ‘hero apparent’ condenses ‘heir apparent’ and male narrative hero, i.e. patriarchy and narrative. we might also note the puns on ‘tale’ and ‘tail’ in this semantic environment, where ‘fallacy’ soon conjures up ‘phallusy’. in male-led theory the tale always writes on the page, male dominates female, but thru is interested in change. derrida’s list of oppositional qualities or dyads: ‘speech/writing, life/death, master/servant, …soul/body, inside/outside, good/evil, seriousness/play, day/night, sun/moon’ does not include man/woman. hélène cixous, arguing versus phallocentrism, suggests that such deconstructive binaries imply ‘superior/inferior’ and she asks why ‘…all the couples are couples. does this mean something? is the fact that logocentrism subjects thought — all of the concepts, the codes, the values — to a two-term system, related to “the” couple man/woman?’. in stories, theories and things brooke-rose accepts the importance of confronting such binaries: now deconstruction is ultimately based on polarities, such as speaking/writing, sound/silence, being/no-being, presence/ absence, man/woman, conscious/unconscious, and has shown how in the logo- phonocentric metaphysics of presence that has ruled us for twenty five centuries the first term is always somehow privileged, even when equilibrium is supposed. inverting these polarities can have a dizzy effect, and induces fear, resistance. but could not the ultimate effect not be re- equilibration …? post-structuralism and literary theory may have succeeded in removing dominance from the first term of the author/reader binary, but it also advances critical dominance. thru appears at least partly to be upsetting the male/female binary within a literary/ academic context (both as a narrative set in that context and as a textual entry within it). one of the key recurrent phrases in the latter stages of thru is ‘a complete reform of genital organisation’ ( ) ‘genital organisation’ is a freudian term, referring to a ‘stage of psychosexual development’. thus ‘reform of genital organisation’ is a pun that links the political call for ‘general reorganisation’ with a change in sexual hierarchy and ‘a complete reform of congenital [i.e. phallocentric] organisation’ ( ), ‘a complete reorganisation of flute playing phallusies’ ( ) and a ‘complete reform of pregenital organisation’ ( ). while the idea of genital reform conjured up here might be narrowly interpreted by critics as castration, thru’s genital reorganisation does not exclusively mean this. the linked phrase ‘reorganisation of visceral organs’ ( ) associates it with a characteristic of larissa whose ‘vicious organs’ ( ), which have been removed at places across the world, include a ‘womb totality’ ( ). this link between castration and other operations is made explicit on page , when larissa tells armel of the physical demands of her relationship with stavro: ‘we’re playing at gods but for all their ludicrous love life they don’t have nephrectomies and other ectomies except maybe castration’. in this light, i think it would be difficult to say that genital reorganisation is clearly gendered. ‘castration’ is simply shorthand for a type of genital reorganisation which is about de-gendering or hermaphrodisation (at least in literary terms). for example, we read that ‘castration is at the basis of this enjoyment, lancelot giving more pleasure to the ladies than any real imparfit brutal knight…he is a phallus detached from the totality [link back to womb] of the text and walking about the world as a hero’ ( , my ellipsis). this passage suggests that re- equilibration of male and female terms is at least possible in the non-physical world of fiction. armel’s portrait of larissa includes ‘the man with the blue guitar’ as one of her component parts ( ) and among the lines of stevens’ poem is: ‘i play. but this is what i think’. it seems to me that that is what is going on in thru: brooke-rose’s engagement with a species of criticism in poeticised form is much bolder than her actual criticism. among the intentions and the effects of the novel is a subversion of male critical dominance and a genuine questioning of gendered criticism. thru is that miraculous moment where creativity and criticism are one, and it must have been therapeutic even if it was poorly received or understood at the time. the finishing line brooke-rose’s critical output is just as keen as her fiction to remove the beams and planks cluttering the outlook of literary theory, but her analytic mode is always conscious of the potential for motes obscuring her own vision. while she was more than capable of holding her own as a critic, developments in the discipline and her european career placed her in the awkward situation of being potentially her own best subject and – theoretically in the context of barthes ‘death of the author’ – deceased at the same time. invisible author comes from within this bind but has high hopes for the future of criticism when its fashions change. making no large claims for my contributions to published material on brooke- rose, i can only be flattered by the time and effort she put into corresponding with me. i was already fascinated by and working on thru before we interacted, but facing the discipline of making my points plausible to the author herself formed a watershed moment in my intellectual development. i was incredibly fortunate to have the benefit of christine’s candour, honesty and engagement in my enquiries. nevertheless, i can see how nervous and defensive i was throughout our interactions, caught up –with christine– in the paradox that the author’s opinions did not count. ultimately it was the critic that i needed to hear from, rather than the author, or the rider rather than the horse herself. the critical race that is being run is long distance, however, and no one can really predict the end, but brooke-rose remains highly relevant to criticism as practitioner and subject. this has long been clear to writers on experimental literature who see the close combination of theory and practice; the focus on the ‘how’ as she put it. in a recent major survey of the field, the routledge companion to experimental writing, brooke rose is a reference point for five contributors, including all three editors in separate essays. one of these is brian mchale for whom brooke-rose’s work (most significantly thru) forms a key coordinate in an attempt to mitigate some of the fractures in postmodern theory. more recently still, in simon barton’s visual devices in contemporary fiction the unconventional pages of thru are foundational rather than examples of eccentricity or difficulty. historical perspective makes these works more, not less, accessible, but possessing a critical axe to grind or an interest in experimentation are not essential to an interest in brooke- rose. each reader finds their own way in to brooke-rose’s work (or not), and their own process of discovery is what makes her work special to them. the current volume is evidence of a wider resurgence of interest in brooke-rose which indicates that this author is still in the running for deserved and necessary posthumous recognition. brooke-rose, christine ( ) invisible author: last essays, colombus: ohio state university press; see also brooke-rose ( ) ‘is self reflexivity mere?’, quarterly west winter - : - . letter from the author to christine brooke-rose dated / / . white, glyn ( ) ‘“you are here”: reading and representation in christine brooke-rose’s thru’, poetics today ( ): - ; white, glyn ( ) reading the graphic surface: the presence of the book in prose fiction, manchester: manchester university press. christine brooke-rose, letter to the author dated / / . christine brooke-rose, letter to the author postmarked / / . christine brooke-rose, letter to the author dated / / , p. . brooke-rose, christine ( ) thru, london: hamish hamilton. page references to this novel will be given in the text. it is currently available in the christine brooke rose omnibus four novels: out, such, between, thru, ( ) manchester: carcanet and to find the relevant pages in this edition the reader will have to add the pages of the three preceding novels. levitt, morton p. ( ) ‘christine brooke-rose’ in the dictionary of literary biography: british novelists since : - , p. ; mchale, brian ( ) postmodernist fiction, new york: methuen, p. . reyes, heather ( ) ‘delectable metarealism/ ethical experiments; re-reading christine brooke-rose’, phd thesis, birkbeck, london. see white : - . christine brooke-rose, letter to the author dated / / , p. . grant, damien ( ) ‘the emperor’s new clothes: narrative anxiety in thru’ in friedman, ellen j. & martin, richard (eds), utterly other discourse, normal, illinois: dalkey archive: - discussed in brooke-rose ( ) pp. - ; martin, richard ( ) ‘stepping stones in the dark: redundancy and generation in amalgamemnon’ in friedman, ellen j. & martin, richard (eds), utterly other discourse, normal, illinois: dalkey archive: - , discussed in brooke-rose ( ) pp. - . christine brooke-rose, letter to the author dated / / , p. . christine brooke-rose, letter to the author dated / / , p. . mchale, brian ( ) p. . my ellipsis. brooke-rose, christine, letter to the author dated / / , p. . brooke-rose, christine ( ) stories, theories and things, cambridge: cambridge university press, p. . little, judy ( ) the experimental self: dialogic subjectivity in woolf, pym, and brooke-rose, carbondale: southern illinois university press, p. . see white : - . cohen, keith & hayman, david ( ) ‘an interview with christine brooke- rose’, contemporary literature : - , p. . brooke-rose ( ) p. . brooke-rose, christine, letter to the author dated / / , p. . brooke-rose, christine, letter to the author dated / / , p. . eco, umberto ( ) interpretation and overinterpretation, stefan collini (ed.), cambridge: cambridge university press; brooke-rose , see especially p. . brooke-rose, christine, letter to the author dated / / , p. . brooke-rose, christine, letter to the author dated / / , p. . matthew : - . mchale, brian ( ) ‘“i draw the line as a rule between one solar system and another”: the postmodernism(s) of christine brooke-rose’ in friedman, ellen j. & martin, richard (eds), utterly other discourse, normal, illinois: dalkey archive: - , p. , my ellipsis. white ( ) p. . mchale ( ) . matthew : . see brooke-rose ( ) p. . matthew : - . stevens, wallace ( ) selected poems, london: faber, pp. - . brooke-rose ( ) p. . currie, mark ( ) postmodern narrative theory, london: palgrave, p. . christine brooke-rose, letter to the author, dated / / , p. . christine brooke-rose, letter to the author, dated / / , p. . christine brooke-rose, letter to the author, dated / / , p. . see white ( ) p. . brooke-rose ( ) p. . brooke-rose ( ) p. . brooke-rose ( ) p. . brooke-rose ( ) p. . brooke-rose ( ) p. . e-mail correspondence from christine brooke-rose / / . brooke-rose ( ) p. , my ellipsis. danielewski, mark z ( ) house of leaves, london: anchor ( nd ed.) pp. - . brooke-rose ( ) p. . brooke-rose ( ) p. , my ellipses. berressem, hanjo ( ) ‘thru the looking glass: a journey into the universe of discourse’, utterly other discourse, in friedman, ellen j. & martin, richard (eds), pp. - ; birch, sarah ( ) christine brooke-rose and contemporary fiction, oxford: clarendon; maack, annagret ( ) ‘narrative techniques in thru and amalgamemnon’ in friedman, ellen j. & martin, richard (eds), utterly other discourse, normal, illinois: dalkey archive: - . friedman, ellen j. and fuchs, miriam ( ) ‘a conversation with christine brooke-rose’ in friedman, ellen j. & martin, richard (eds), utterly other discourse, normal, illinois: dalkey archive: - , p. . derrida, jacques ( ) dissemination, chicago: university of chicago press (translated by barbara johnson), p. . derrida ( ) footnote on p. . brooke-rose ( ) p. . derrida ( ) pp. - , . derrida ( ) p. . derrida ( ) p. . see thru pp. , , . derrida ( ) p. . cixous, hélène ( ) ‘sorties’, modern criticism and theory (d. lodge ed.), london: longman, pp. - , p. . brooke-rose ( ) p. , my ellipsis. laplanche, j. & pontalis, j.b. ( ) the language of psychoanalysis, london: karnac, p. . see cohen and hayman ( ) pp. - . compare brooke-rose ( ) p. . bray, joe, gibbons, alison and mchale, brian (eds) ( ) the routledge companion to experimental writing, abingdon: routledge. barton, simon ( ) visual devices in contemporary prose fiction, houndmills: palgrave, pp. - . when it is apt to adapt: flexible reasoning guides children’s use of talker identity and disfluency cues university of calgary prism: university of calgary's digital repository arts arts research & publications - when it is apt to adapt: flexible reasoning guides children's use of talker identity and disfluency cues graham, susan a; thacker, justine marie; chambers, craig g.; graham, susan a. elsevier thacker, j. m., chambers, c. g., & graham, s. a. ( ). when it is apt to adapt: flexible reasoning guides children’s use of talker identity and disfluency cues. journal of experimental child psychology, , – . doi: . /j.jecp. . . http://hdl.handle.net/ / journal article https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ . unless otherwise indicated, this material is protected by copyright and has been made available with authorization from the copyright owner. you may use this material in any way that is permitted by the copyright act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. for uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. downloaded from prism: https://prism.ucalgary.ca journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – contents lists available at sciencedirect journal of experimental child psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp when it is apt to adapt: flexible reasoning guides children’s use of talker identity and disfluency cues https://doi.org/ . /j.jecp. . . - /� elsevier inc. all rights reserved. ⇑ corresponding author. e-mail address: susan.graham@ucalgary.ca (s.a. graham). justine m. thacker a, craig g. chambers b, susan a. graham a,⇑ a department of psychology, university of calgary, calgary, alberta t n n , canada b department of psychology, university of toronto, mississauga, ontario l l c , canada a r t i c l e i n f o article history: received may revised november keywords: speech disfluencies talker identity eye tracking spoken language comprehension referential intent pragmatic inference a b s t r a c t an eye-tracking methodology was used to examine whether chil- dren flexibly engage two voice-based cues, talker identity and dis- fluency, during language processing. across two experiments, - year-olds (n = ) were introduced to two characters with distinct color preferences. these characters then used fluent or disfluent instructions to refer to an object in a display containing items bear- ing either talker-preferred or talker-dispreferred colors. as the utterance began to unfold, the -year-olds anticipated that talkers would refer to talker-preferred objects. when children then encoun- tered a disfluency in the unfolding description, they reduced their expectation that a talker was about to refer to a preferred object. the talker preference-related predictions, but not the disfluency- related predictions, were attenuated during the second half of the experiment as evidence accrued that talkers referred to dispreferred objects with equal frequency. in experiment , the equivocal nature of talkers’ referencing was made more apparent by removing neu- tral filler trials, where objects’ colors were not associated with talker preferences. in this case, children ceased making all talker-related predictions during the latter half of the experiment. taken together, the results provide insights into children’s use of talker-specific cues and demonstrate that flexible and adaptive forms of reasoning account for the ways in which children draw on paralinguistic infor- mation during real-time processing. � elsevier inc. all rights reserved. http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi= . /j.jecp. . . &domain=pdf https://doi.org/ . /j.jecp. . . mailto:susan.graham@ucalgary.ca https://doi.org/ . /j.jecp. . . http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/ http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – introduction successful communication frequently relies on listeners’ ability to attend to a variety of cues beyond the information conveyed by words alone. consider, for example, a woman’s utterance ‘‘i’ll have my usual!” spoken by a regular customer in a restaurant. the meaning of this statement relies in part on the listener attending to the talker’s identity (and memory for what her usual order is, e.g., a salad or pasta). these types of person-specific associations seem likely to interact with other kinds of paralinguistic cues found in spoken utterances. in the above example, imagine that the reg- ular customer instead began her order with the following: ‘‘i’ll have thee, uhh . . .” here, the talker’s hesitation (marked by the filled pause ‘‘uhh”) may suggest to the listener that she is, in fact, consid- ering ordering something other than her usual order. although there is considerable evidence that young children are adept at using different talker-produced cues to guide real-time referential inter- pretation, including talker identity and filled pauses, it is unclear the extent to which these abilities involve flexible forms of reasoning and whether these cues can be used simultaneously. the current study addressed these issues by investigating two questions. first, can -year-olds integrate two par- alinguistic cues in the speech stream (talker identity and disfluency) to inform real-time referential predictions? second, will -year-olds rapidly modify these predictions in response to counterevidence in the language they hear? as background, previous research has demonstrated that children as young as years can use talker identity cues to guide online language processing (e.g., borovsky & creel, ; creel, , ). for example, once preschoolers have learned that two distinct characters have a different pre- ferred color, they demonstrate anticipatory looking to shapes bearing the talker’s preferred color when listening to utterances produced by a given character. this is based entirely on cues to talker identity carried in the speech stream (creel, ). furthermore, children demonstrate flexible use of this cue. specifically, whereas children use talker information to anticipate reference to talker-preferred objects when a talker speaks on her or his own behalf (e.g., billy: ‘‘i want to see the square”), they will draw on knowledge of other individuals’ preferences when the talker is speaking on their behalf (e.g., billy: ‘‘anna wants to see the circle”). it remains unclear, however, how referential expectations based on learned talker preferences are affected by evolving patterns as the discourse proceeds. that is, if the objects referred to by a talker in successive statements reflect a mix of talked-preferred and talked- dispreferred things, will child listeners dynamically adjust their earlier-formed expectations? if so, this would provide an additional source of evidence for the claim that children’s use of talker identity cues relies on highly flexible forms of situation-specific reasoning. another point to consider is that research on children’s use of talker identity cues has relied heavily on the link between preferences and desires, such that the talkers in these paradigms use desire state- ments (e.g., ‘‘i want . . .”; creel, ) to indicate that previously presented preference information is relevant to the current communicative context. given that preference information can be relevant to referential intentions even when desire is not explicitly voiced, it is important to understand whether or how young children draw on a talker’s identity to inform their interpretation of utterances that do not contain explicit statements of preference or desire. hence, an additional goal of the current study was to examine whether children use recently presented preference information even when utter- ances are purely ostensive in nature such as simply directing listeners to ‘‘look” at an object in the dis- play. if young children demonstrate anticipatory use of talker identity information in the absence of explicit desire statements, this would provide evidence for a subtler kind of sensitivity to talker pref- erence information. in the current study, we also considered talker effects alongside another important paralinguistic cue relevant to referential processing, namely filled pause disfluencies such as ‘‘um” and ‘‘uh”. filled pauses occur at a rate of approximately . per words in adult speech and are associated with increased planning difficulty (bortfeld, leon, bloom, schober, & brennan, ). as such, filled pauses tend to occur in predictable locations in the speech stream such as in advance of noun phrases that refer to unfamiliar objects or to entities that have not yet been mentioned (arnold & tanenhaus, ). although there is little research on listeners’ reactions to spontaneous disfluencies, studies that j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – explore listeners’ interpretations of filled pauses in experimental settings indicate that this systematic patterning of disfluencies does not fall on deaf ears. that is, both adult and child listeners actively use filled pauses as a cue to guide referential predictions, a process that has been deemed the disfluency effect (e.g., arnold, hudson kam, & tanenhaus, ; arnold & tanenhaus, ; arnold, tanenhaus, altmann, & fagnano, ). for example, disfluent referential descriptions lead children as young as months to anticipate reference to unfamiliar discourse-new objects (kidd, white, & aslin, ; orena & white, ) or to discourse-new objects that are familiar to both the listener and the talker (owens & graham, ). thus, by their third year, children can use filled pauses to facilitate referential interpretation. as with talker identity, there is emerging evidence to suggest that children’s use of filled pauses depends on situation-specific factors. in the only study on this topic to date, orena and white ( ) used a between-participants design whereby children were introduced to either a knowledge- able or forgetful talker who then produced fluent and disfluent utterances. children exposed to the knowledgeable talker looked preferentially at novel discourse-new objects during disfluent utter- ances. in contrast, children in the forgetful talker condition did not display the same contrasts in antic- ipatory looking patterns, suggesting that ½-year-olds can suspend their use of filled pauses when a talker has justified difficulty in naming objects. in the current study, we explored the simultaneous use of disfluency and talker identity informa- tion to more fully understand the nature of children’s situation-specific reasoning during language comprehension. drawing on the methodology of creel ( ), we introduced -year-olds to two char- acters, a male character and a female one, who were described as having opposite color preferences (i.e., blue and pink). in addition, the characters established an initial tendency to refer to objects that were of their preferred color. we then manipulated the fluency of the characters’ referential descrip- tions on critical trials. on critical trials, a pair of pink and blue objects was presented on a large screen, and child participants heard either a fluent or disfluent utterance spoken by one of the two characters. on the assumption that preferred objects will be more salient to a given talker, and therefore more accessible to language production systems, it would follow that they would be more fluently described by that talker. thus, when a talker is disfluent, the disfluency is likely to cue attention to an object that does not bear the talker’s preferred color. critically, the objects that would be associated with fluent versus disfluent descriptions should vary systematically according to the identity of the talker given the talkers’ contrasting preferences. we reasoned that -year-olds’ ability to generate and draw on these inferences should be reflected in gaze patterns to distinct objects on hearing disfluent versus flu- ent descriptions produced by the two talkers. hence, a feature of the current experimental scenario is that children’s potential use of disfluency cues does not rest on established associations between filled pauses and unfamiliar or hard-to-describe objects, as has been used in previous research on disfluen- cies (e.g., kidd et al., ; owens & graham, ). instead, the disfluency effect would arise more spontaneously from knowledge about talkers’ preferences (which was presented just moments ear- lier) in combination with in-the-moment reasoning about what kinds of reference would hypotheti- cally lead to disfluency. in addition, talker specificity is not assessed by evaluating whether disfluency cues are neutralized for one talker (e.g., as in orena & white, ); rather, it is assessed by evaluating whether the cues signal reference to distinct objects depending on the talker. if children can also modify their expectations about the informativeness of disfluencies in this new paradigm, this would provide additional evidence for children’s adult-like appreciation that disfluencies can arise from a number of different sources in speech planning. a second goal of the current study was to examine children’s ability to dynamically update their assumptions based on the language patterns they encounter. this was inspired by recent work with adults showing that patterns in the language being heard, or the link between these patterns and par- ticular talkers, can shift aspects of semantic–pragmatic interpretation within the course of a single experiment. for example, adult listeners have been shown to adjust their interpretation of prosodic cues (kurumada, brown, & tanenhaus, ), pragmatic inferences (pogue, kurumada, & tanenhaus, ), and expectations for quantifier use (yildirim, degen, tanenhaus, & jaeger, ) in response to talker-specific biases and previous cue validity. in the current experiments, each talker referred to dispreferred- and preferred-color objects with equal frequency, and filled pauses occurred with equal frequency with each object type. in other words, these patterns do not, over the course of j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – the experiment, support a sustained association between disfluency and talker-dispreferred objects. if -year-olds can dynamically adjust their initial expectations based on the patterns they encounter, this would provide even further evidence for the flexible and context-sensitive nature of their use of paralinguistic cues. the first experiment was designed to provide a test of children’s ability to combine the two paralin- guistic cues of interest (talker identity and disfluency) and to evaluate their ability to adapt their use of cues when talkers’ utterances often provide counterevidence to children’s initial assumptions. exper- iment was designed to replicate experiment in a situation where the relevant counterevidence was more evident. experiment method participants participants were recruited from a database of community families in a large metropolitan area in canada. data from -year-olds ( boys; mage = . years, sd = . ) were included in the final sample. an additional children were tested but excluded from the analyses for the following rea- sons: technical error (n = ), experimenter error (n = ), and unsuccessful calibration on the eye tracker (n = ). children were primarily caucasian with english as their primary spoken language, and % of parents reported having had at least some postsecondary education. apparatus and materials the visual stimuli were presented on a -inch screen. as children listened to the recordings and viewed the images on the screen, their gaze position was tracked using a tobii x system located on a table surface in front of the participants and underneath the display screen. the experiment was con- ducted using e-prime with tobii extensions. specific areas of interest (aois), based on the location of display pictures, were set prior to data collection. children’s gaze positions were logged every ms, and fixations were defined as looks to a location that lasted longer than ms. we used eye-gaze language integration analysis (elia) software (berman, khu, graham, & graham, ) to align the gaze data with speech landmarks in the prerecorded utterances. the test trials consisted of cropped images of familiar objects, divided into object pairs (see appendix for a list of pairs). there were critical trials involving object pairs consisting of one blue object (e.g., blue cat) and one pink object (e.g., pink drum). there was no repetition in the set of target and competitor object pairs. the remaining trials were neutral filler trials involving objects whose colors were not associated with the stated speaker preferences ( trials each with yellow–green object pairs, gray–brown object pairs, and red–orange object pairs). two adult native english speakers, one female and one male, recorded the auditory stimuli. we chose to use a male voice and a female voice because young children may have difficulty in distin- guishing between same-gender speakers due to their greater acoustic similarity (creel & jimenez, ). speakers first recorded an introduction for their character (see fig. for the script). each intro- duction was played at the same time that a depiction of the corresponding character was present on the screen and established that each character had a preferred color (i.e., pink vs. blue). preferred col- ors reflected common gender stereotypes (e.g., the female character preferred pink). after the intro- ductions were completed, the depictions of the two characters were no longer displayed. similar to creel ( ), alternating color-check trials followed the introductions. color-check trials involved pairs of objects that were identical but differed in terms of color (e.g., blue sock/pink sock). the male speaker voice was used for instructions on of the color-check trials (‘‘where is the blue one?”), and the female speaker voice was used for instructions on the other trials (‘‘where is the pink one?”). these trials allowed us to verify that each participant could distinguish the colors, and reinforced chil- dren’s knowledge of the characters’ color preferences. for each of the object pairs used in the main task (both critical and filler trials), four versions of an utterance instructing participants to look at one of the objects were recorded by crossing the two key variables of interest, voice and fluency: female fig. . testing sequence with examples of visual and auditory materials. images are a schematic of what was presented. note that participants encountered a given object pair (e.g., cat/drum) only once per experiment and in one condition. however, all object pairs were cycled across each of the four conditions (female voice–fluent, female voice–disfluent, male voice–fluent, and male voice–disfluent) to create eight different orders. j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – voice–fluent, female voice–disfluent, male voice–fluent, and male voice–disfluent. disfluent utterances were characterized by the pronunciation of the determiner ‘‘the” as ‘‘thee”, followed by the filled pause ‘‘uh”. the pronunciation ‘‘thee” (instead of ‘‘thuh”) often precedes suspension of j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – speech in natural communicative exchanges and usually co-occurs with filled pauses (fox tree & clark, ). fluent utterances were recorded as ‘‘look! look at the x!” and disfluent utterances were recorded as ‘‘look! look at thee, uh, x!” utterances were recorded in their entirety and were edited using audacity, a multitrack audio editor. to ensure consistency across test trials, particular segments of the recorded utterances were standardized. specifically, the initial ‘‘look!” was excised from the same recording and then spliced into the fluent and disfluent versions. the average total length of flu- ent utterances was ms and the average length of disfluent utterances was ms. procedure the experiment began with a gaze calibration program conducted using tobii clearview software. accurate gaze calibration was required on at least three of the five test fixation points prior to initiat- ing the experiment, with calibration achieved for all five fixation points for % of participants. when the experiment proper began, each child was presented with the character introductions, followed by color-check trials, followed by a reintroduction to each character. next, children viewed the test trials that included trials of each of the four critical trial types: female voice–fluent trials, female voice–disfluent trials, male voice–fluent trials, and male voice–disfluent trials. critical and filler trials were randomly interspersed to create trial orders. the left versus right location of the target object was also randomized across test trials. results and discussion the measures of interest involve children’s eye movement behavior at different time points during the unfolding instructions and how these patterns change during the first half versus the second half of the experiment. because the talker identity and disfluency cues were relevant only for blue–pink trials, these critical trials were the focus of our analyses. the instructions ‘‘look! look at the x” or ‘‘look! look at thee, uh, x” were divided into two distinct intervals for analysis (see fig. ). for all intervals, a -ms margin was added to the boundary points to reflect the time lag in the execution of eye movements (allopenna, magnuson, & tanenhaus, ; matin, shao, & boff, ; trueswell, ). to address whether children use talker information to form predictions about the intended object, we first examined fixations during the initial portion of the utterance, which we refer to as the baseline interval. this interval consists of the shortest duration of the interval corresponding to ‘‘look! look at . . .” for both the fluent and disfluent utterances ( ms). we used the end point of this window (i.e., offset of ‘‘at”) as the boundary point to ensure that no fluency information conveyed by the determiner was included in these analyses. we also explored how children’s referential expec- tations were affected by the fluency of the unfolding description. to do so, we examined fixations in the portion of the utterance that included the determiner for both the fluent (‘‘the”) and disfluent (‘‘thee, uh”) utterances. the determiner interval was defined based on the duration of the shortest dis- fluent determiner (‘‘thee, uh”: ms), and its end point was aligned to just before the onset of the target noun to ensure that eye movements within this interval could not be driven by noun informa- tion. it is important to note that, because the duration of the determiner was by definition shorter in the condition with fluent utterances, the -ms interval included ms of the baseline interval for fluent utterances. although this entails reusing a portion of the previously analyzed time period (i.e., the baseline interval), the use of time intervals of equivalent duration is a necessary step to enable cross-condition comparisons where the potential to generate eye movements is fully equated in psy- chophysical terms. lastly, an additional interval involving the disambiguating noun was analyzed sep- arately simply to confirm that participants understood the instructions and were paying attention to the task. a one-sample t test indicated that the proportion of looks to the correct object was signifi- cantly greater than chance (. ) during this disambiguating interval (which was ms in duration, equivalent to the length of the longest noun): m = . , sd = . , p < . . baseline interval during this interval, sensitivity to talker identity would be reflected in anticipatory gaze shifts to the object bearing the current speaker’s favorite color. to provide a measure of listeners’ tendency to consider talker-preferred objects, we divided fixations to the talker-preferred object by the sum fig. . the presentation of the object pairs was followed by instructions to look at one of the objects with either a fluent or disfluent description. durations of the analysis intervals were ms for the baseline interval and ms for the determiner interval. j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – of fixations to both the talker-preferred and talker-dispreferred objects. by this measure, a value of means that a listener fixated the talker-preferred object exclusively during a given interval, and a value of means that a listener fixated the talker-dispreferred object exclusively. a value of . means that a listener spent an equal amount of time fixating both objects in the array. in addition, to deter- mine whether children’s initial predictions were altered over the course of the experiment, we com- pared the first half of the test trials (i.e., the first critical trials) with the second half of the test trials (i.e., the latter critical trials). fig. (left side) shows the average proportion of looks to talker- preferred objects during the baseline interval for the first and second halves of the experiment. note that fig. shows data from both experiments and . a two-level (trials: first half vs. second half of experiment) repeated-measures analysis of variance (anova) revealed a main effect of trials, f( , ) = . , p = . , gp = . . children’s fixations to the talker-preferred object were significantly greater during the initial critical trials (m = . , sd = . ) than during the latter critical trials (m = . , sd = . ). moreover, one-sample t tests confirmed that the proportion of fixations to talker-preferred objects was significantly greater than chance (. ) for the first critical trials, t( ) = . , p = . , but not for the latter critical trials (p = . ). thus, on hearing the very first words of the utterance, and in advance of hearing any object label or cue except for the talker’s voice, children’s gaze behavior initially showed a prediction that talkers would refer to objects bearing their preferred colors. however, this expectation was neutralized as children learned that preferred and dispreferred objects, when present, were referred to in equal measure by each talker. determiner interval next, we analyzed children’s gaze patterns during the determiner interval, which reveals how chil- dren react to disfluency cues. if these cues are spontaneously combined with talker-specific informa- tion to make referential predictions, children should expect that talker-preferred objects are more likely to be fluently described by the speaker and, conversely, that disfluencies are more likely to occur with descriptions for dispreferred objects. as before, we were also interested in how predictions were altered over the course of the experiment. fig. shows the average proportion of looks to talker- preferred objects during the determiner interval for both fluent and disfluent trial types. note that fig. shows only data from experiment . the gaze proportion measure was the same as the one used in the baseline interval. note that for these analyses, the n is equal to , reflecting the exclusion of participants for whom zero looks were registered for all trials of a given condition during the determiner interval. a (fluency: fluent vs. dis fluent) � (trials: first half vs. second half) repeated-measures anova revealed a main effect of flu- ency only, f( , ) = . , p = . , gp = . . there was no main effect of trials (p = . ), nor was there an interaction between trials and fluency (p = . ). thus, children directed a greater proportion of looks to the talker-preferred object during fluent trials (m = . , sd = . ) compared with during dis- fluent trials (m = . , sd = . ). these results indicate that children were sensitive to the presence of . . . . . . . . experiment experiment pr op or tio n of lo ok s to ta lk er -p re fe rr ed o bj ec t trials st half nd half * * fig. . average proportion of looks to talker-preferred objects during the first and second halves of the experiment, during the baseline interval, for experiments and . in both experiments, the average proportion of children’s looks to the talker- preferred object was significantly greater than chance (. ) for the first critical trials (ps < . ) but not for the latter critical trials (ps > . ). error bars depict standard errors. . . . . . . . . fluent disfluent pr op or tio n of lo ok s to ta lk er -p re fe rr ed o bj ec t trial type * fig. . average proportion of looks to talker-preferred object during the determiner interval for both fluent and disfluent trial types in experiment . children showed a significantly higher proportion of looks to talker-preferred objects when encountering a fluent determiner compared with a disfluent determiner (p = . ). error bars depict standard errors. a single asterisk represents significant differences at the p < . level. j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – disfluency and were biased to rapidly interpret filled pauses as signaling that the upcoming word would refer to something other than the contextually probable talker-preferred object. the results of experiment revealed a robust sensitivity to talker identity during the first half of the experiment, which was then attenuated during the second half of the experiment. we discuss this finding further in the general discussion. although a similar pattern was not observed for the effect of filled pauses (i.e., an interaction such that children demonstrated a disfluency effect only for the first j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – half of the experiment), we conducted exploratory analyses separately for the first and second halves of the experiment. consistent with our expectations, these results revealed a significant effect of flu- ency in only the first half of the experiment, t( , ) = . , p = . , such that children directed more looks to the talker-preferred object during fluent trials (m = . , sd = . ) compared with disfluent tri- als (m = . , sd = . ). the effect of fluency did not reach significance during the latter half of the experiment (p = . ). thus, although a change in children’s use of disfluency cues is numerically evi- dent, the pattern was not strong enough to entail a significant trials � fluency interaction. in exper- iment , we introduced a simple manipulation intended to increase the ability to detect children’s sensitivity to the relevant patterns in the talkers’ utterances. experiment the purpose of experiment was twofold. first, we sought to replicate the findings of experiment and, second, we examined whether increasing the salience of disconfirming evidence would lead child listeners to more strongly attenuate their initial talker-specific referential predictions. previous research has demonstrated that ‘‘prediction error” (i.e., recognizing that one’s predictions were incor- rect) leads to faster learning (e.g., chang, dell, & bock, ; ramscar, dye, & mccauley, ). in the current case, the sooner listeners recognize erroneous predictions regarding talkers’ reference to objects, the sooner they can recalibrate their expectations. hence, in the current experiment, neutral trials were removed to increase the proportion of trials in which children encounter a prediction error. by removing these trials and keeping the rest of the experiment the same, the result was that we increased the percentage of disconfirming trials (i.e., the trials that fail to support a clear link between [dis]fluency and talker-[dis]preferred objects) from % of the entire set of trials ( of ) to % ( of ) while retaining the essential design elements of experiment . we expected that the ‘‘condensed” counterevidence for an association between disfluency and reference to talker-dispreferred objects would result in a more detectable shift in children’s use of disfluency cues. method participants data from -year-olds ( boys; mage = . years, sd = . ) were included in the final sample. children were primarily caucasian with english as their primary spoken language, and % of parents reported having at least some postsecondary education. materials and procedure all visual stimuli were the same as the ones used in experiment with the exception that the filler trials were not presented. the procedure was the same as the one used in experiment . results and discussion as in experiment , the focus of the current analyses was on children’s eye movement behavior at different time points during the unfolding instructions and how these patterns change during the first half versus the second half of the experiment. the instructions ‘‘look! look at the x” and ‘‘look! look at thee, uh, x” were divided into the same two analysis intervals (baseline and determiner) used in experiment . baseline interval recall that, during this interval, sensitivity to talker identity would be reflected in anticipatory gaze shifts to the object bearing the current speaker’s favorite color. the gaze proportion measure was the same as the one used in experiment . to determine whether children’s initial predictions were altered over the course of the experiment, we compared the first half of the test trials (i.e., the first critical trials) with the second half of the test trials (i.e., the latter critical trials). fig. shows j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – the average proportion of looks to talker-preferred objects during the baseline interval for the first and second halves of the experiment. a two-level (trials: first half vs. second half of experiment) repeated-measures anova revealed a main effect of trials, f( , ) = . , p = . , gp = . , such that children’s fixations to the talker- preferred object were significantly greater during the initial critical trials (m = . , sd = . ) than during the latter critical trials (m = . , sd = . ). moreover, the proportion of fixations to talker- preferred objects was significantly greater than chance (. ) for the first critical trials, t( ) = . , p = . , but not during the latter critical trials (p = . ). thus, on hearing the very first words of the utterance, and in advance of hearing any object label or cue except for the speaker’s voice, chil- dren’s gaze behavior showed an initial prediction for the direction of the utterance based on recently presented gender-stereotyped preference information. as in experiment , however, the expectation that speakers would refer to talker-preferred objects was extinguished as children learned that speak- ers referred to preferred and dispreferred objects in equal measure. determiner interval as before, this interval was used to measure the effect of the fluency manipulation. recall that here, if children can use talker-specific information to make referential predictions, they should expect that talker-preferred objects are more likely to be fluently described by the speaker and, conversely, that disfluencies are more likely to occur with descriptions for dispreferred objects. fig. shows the aver- age proportion of looks to talker preferred objects during the determiner interval for both fluent and disfluent trial types. the gaze proportion measure was the same as the one used in experiment . a (fluency: fluent vs. disfluent) � (trials: first half vs. second half of experiment) repeated-measures anova revealed a fluency � trials interaction, f( , ) = . , p = . , gp = . . during the first critical trials, chil- dren directed a greater proportion of fixations to the talker-preferred object during fluent trials (m = . , sd = . ) compared with disfluent trials (m = . , sd = . ), t( ) = . , p = . . children’s pro- portion of fixations to the talker-preferred object was significantly below chance (. ) during disfluent trials, t( ) = . , p < . , indicating that children were sensitive to the presence of disfluency and were biased to rapidly interpret filled pauses as signaling that the upcoming word would refer to something other than the contextually probable talker-preferred object. children’s proportion of fixa- tions to the talker-preferred object was not significantly above chance during fluent trials (p = . ). in contrast, during the latter critical trials, the proportion of fixations to the talker-preferred object did not differ during fluent trials (m = . , sd = . ) compared with disfluent trials (m = . , sd = . ), p = . . moreover, children’s proportion of fixations to the talker-preferred object during both fluent and disfluent trials did not differ from chance (. ), ps > . . hence, over the course of the experiment, child listeners dynamically adjusted their initial referential predictions. this can be viewed as a rational response to the accumulating evidence, which failed to support a clear link between (dis)fluency and talker-(dis)preferred objects. as in experiment , an initial sensitivity to talker identity was observed during the first half of the experiment that was attenuated during the second half. that is, as a talker began to speak, children’s gaze behavior showed an initial prediction for the direction of the utterance based on each talker’s preferred colors. however, the expectation that talkers would refer to objects of a particular color was neutralized as children learned that preferred and dispreferred objects were referred to in equal measure by each talker. at the point when the fluent or disfluent determiner was encountered, chil- dren initially demonstrated an ability to use talker identity cues to guide their interpretation of a hesi- tation disfluency. this effect was also diminished during the latter half of the experiment due to the explicit counterevidence for children’s initial spontaneous hypothesis for the basis of a hesitation dis- fluency. in contrast to experiment , the more concentrated nature of counterevidence in experiment to rule out the possibility that fatigue over the course of the experiment accounted for the neutralization of expectations observed in experiment , we calculated target-looking scores during the noun region for the first and second halves of the experiment. target-looking during the first half (m = . ) and target-looking during the second half (m = . ) were not significantly different, p = . , indicating that fatigue does not explain the pattern of results. . . . . . . . . st half nd half pr op or tio n of lo ok s to ta lk er -p re fe rr ed o bj ec t trials fluent disfluent * fig. . average proportion of looks to talker-preferred object during the first and second halves of experiment , during the determiner interval, for both fluent and disfluent trial types. children showed a significantly higher proportion of looks to talker-preferred objects when encountering a fluent determiner compared with a disfluent determiner during the first half of the experiment (p = . ). during the second half of the experiment, children did not show a significantly higher proportion of looks to talker-preferred objects during disfluent utterances compared with fluent utterances (p = . ). error bars depict standard errors. a single asterisk represents significant differences at the p < . level. j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – led to a statistically robust disfluency by trials interaction. thus, it appears that children will readily adapt their concurrent use of multiple paralinguistic cues in response to situation-specific evidence. general discussion the goal of the current study was to explore -year-olds’ use of two paralinguistic cues, talker iden- tity and filled pauses, to guide referential expectations. specifically, we investigated whether children would engage both cues in the same utterance and whether sensitivity to these cues was flexible and responsive to distributional patterns in talkers’ utterances. across two experiments, there was consistent evidence that children used recently presented infor- mation about talkers’ preferences in conjunction with disfluencies to form anticipatory referential pre- dictions. with respect to talker identity, we found robust sensitivity to this cue during the first half of the experiment. as an utterance began to unfold, children predicted that talkers were likely to refer to objects bearing their preferred color. this was the case even though the utterances were entirely ostensive in nature and simply directed listeners to ‘‘look” at an object in the display (and did not, e.g., request or otherwise express a desire for a particular object, as was the case in some previous work such as creel, ). this anticipatory use of talker identity information, in the absence of expli- cit preference or desire statements, demonstrates that voice cues alone can, in some circumstances, influence children’s referential predictions. as the utterance unfolded further, children spontaneously used knowledge of a talker’s preferences to guide their interpretation of a hesitation disfluency in the unfolding utterance; when the disfluency was encountered, children reduced their expectation that the talker was about to refer to a preferred object. taken together, these results document children’s ability to use these two talker-produced cues in concert and also broaden our conceptualization of the ‘‘disfluency effect” (e.g., arnold et al., ). more specifically, the results demonstrate that disfluency attributions can involve factors beyond the difficulty associated with planning descriptions for unfa- miliar or as yet unmentioned objects. a related objective of the current study was to explore children’s ability to shift their use of paralin- guistic cues in response to patterns in speech. in both experiments, talkers referred to objects bearing j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – a preferred or dispreferred color equally often across test trials and with equal numbers of fluent and disfluent descriptions. as a result, children’s initial assumption that disfluency should accompany ref- erence to dispreferred objects proved to be inconsistent with the emerging evidence as the successive test trials were encountered. from an adult perspective, this ought to lead rational listeners to ‘‘re- think” their original assumption, such that different expectations would be evident at the end of the experiment compared with the beginning. our results clearly show that children are capable of recalibrating expectations in this same way. in experiment , children reduced their reliance on talker identity, as evidenced by the absence of talker identity effects during the latter half of the experiment. in experiment , there was a strong attenuation of all talker-specific referential predictions during the latter half of the experiment. these differing results can be attributed to the effect of the interspersed filler trials, which involved neutral colors that were not known to be preferred or dispreferred by talk- ers. the inclusion of filler trials in experiment had the effect of extending the spacing between dis- confirming trials and reducing the proportion of trials containing disconfirming evidence. we suggest that this reduces the salience of disconfirming trials, which in turn slows the rate at which the initially assumed links are extinguished. with the removal of the filler trials in experiment , the evidence that there was not in fact a clear link between (dis)fluency and talker (dis)preferred objects was corre- spondingly stronger, and as a result children were faster to adjust their referential expectations. thus, although children can spontaneously use recently presented information about a talker’s preferences (reinforced by gender stereotypes) in conjunction with disfluency cues to guide online predictions, they readily update their assumptions in response to disconfirming evidence, hence increasing the validity of their expectations. this ability to continuously reevaluate various associations is crucial given the dynamic and variable nature of real-world spoken language behavior. although, as men- tioned earlier, there is growing evidence that adults demonstrate pragmatic adaptation of this type within the course of a single experiment (e.g., kurumada et al., ; pogue et al., ; yildirim et al., ; yoon & brown-schmidt, ), this is, to our knowledge, the first set of studies to demon- strate a similar phenomenon in the real-time processing behavior of young children. comparisons with the findings from previous work are informative for understanding the ease with which children ‘‘update” the validity of speech-based cues in response to accumulated evidence. ear- lier studies examining the nature of the disfluency effect in children (e.g., kidd et al., ; orena and white, ; owens and graham, ) also included disconfirming trials but did not report changes in the strength of children’s predictions over the course of the experiment. for example, kidd et al. ( ) used a -trial paradigm where disfluencies were equally likely to precede familiar and novel targets, thereby preventing children from learning any relation between disfluencies and target famil- iarity over the course of the experiment. results indicated that children as young as months looked more to the novel object during a -s window of analysis situated in advance of target word onset when there was a disfluency present (i.e., disfluent trials). although these authors did not explore dif- ferences in the disfluency effect at the beginning versus the end of the experiment, the results (aver- aged across all trials) suggest a comparatively strong disfluency effect, unlike the eventually extinguished effect observed in the current study. these differing patterns likely highlight meaningful differences in the strength of the link between filled pauses and referential descriptions in different contexts. in previous studies (e.g., kidd et al., ; owens and graham, ), the disfluency effect hinged on a link that children have likely forged based on a broad range of samples (i.e., the link between disfluent descriptions and given/new discourse status or with hard-to-describe or unfamiliar referents). in contrast, in the current experiments, children’s initial sensitivity to disfluency cues was built on their understanding of objects the two talkers would likely want to mention, based on their stated preferences. it seems likely that this link would be comparatively fragile at the outset and that the talker-specific disfluency effects would be more likely to shift in response to disconfirming pat- terns in the language being heard. lastly, the results of the current study highlight the flexible ways in which children can use two paralinguistic cues, talker identity and disfluency, to guide referential expectations. the -year-olds demonstrated the ability not only to integrate both of these cues when processing a single utterance but also to adjust their cue-based expectations in response to talkers’ referential patterns. what remains unclear is the precise extent to which the observed patterns rest on implicitly learned asso- ciations versus forms of pragmatic reasoning (see arnold et al., ). although an association-based j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – account is not incompatible with the results, we favor the explanation that the observed patterns reflect types of social reasoning, such that children in the current study were actively recruiting their knowledge of talkers’ preferences and gender stereotypes alongside an abstract understanding that disfluencies signal a processing delay. we believe that this account provides a better overall fit with the available evidence, which includes evidence from orena and white ( ) highlighting the role of speaker-specific inferences. in summary, our results demonstrate preschoolers’ impressive ability to adapt their concurrent use of two paralinguistic cues over time in response to situation-specific evidence. one promising direc- tion for future research would be to examine children’s flexibility in cases where talker cues become increasingly predictive of referential intent. in the research to date, including the current study, this flexibility has been explored by testing for the neutralization of cue use (e.g., orena & white, ). thus, it remains unclear whether preschool-aged children would demonstrate similar online flexibility when the patterns they encounter should serve to strengthen the use of paralinguistic cues during lan- guage processing rather than weaken them. such a result would provide additional evidence for chil- dren’s ability to rapidly and efficiently adjust referential predictions in response to the patterns children encounter in talkers’ speech. acknowledgments this work was funded by an operating grant from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc) awarded to s.a.g. and c.g.c. (grant - - ) and by funds from the canada foundation for innovation, the canada research chairs program, and the university of cal- gary awarded to s.a.g. j.m.t. was supported by a graduate fellowship from sshrc and by funding from the university of calgary. appendix a. list of object pairs phase object object color-check pink backpack blue book pink band aid pink flip-flop pink piggy bank blue block blue backpack pink book blue band aid blue flip-flop blue piggy bank pink block blue lunchbox pink lunchbox pink hat blue hat test blue/pink towel blue/pink drum blue/pink car pink/blue bear pink/blue ball pink/blue boat blue/pink scooter pink/blue guitar blue/pink flower blue/pink comb blue/pink box blue/pink key green cup green sock green dinosaur green lamp brown dog brown crayon brown scarf pink/blue lion pink/blue bottle pink/blue cat pink/blue button yellow balloon yellow duck yellow bucket yellow horse gray bell gray scissors gray boot j.m. thacker et al. / journal of experimental child psychology ( ) – appendix a (continued) phase object object brown chair red hat red book red shovel red mitten gray fork orange star orange shirt orange fish orange hammer references allopenna, p. d., magnuson, j. s., & tanenhaus, m. k. 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